So you got a little Don Lemon update for you here. You all remember that there has been massive fallout at the network over his comments questioning when women are in their quote prime and telling people to google it. These are the facts something like that, as his female co hosts were like looking on in horror, and Bobby Harlow was like, maybe you want to clarify what exactly you mean by that. Anyway, he was forced to apologize. Chris,
like the head of the network addressed it. Don Lemon then was off of the morning show on both Friday and Monday, and I presume Tuesday when we are recording this, we do have an update. Yesterday the work had come out that they were actually considering his future at the network, like his job was actually on the line. Now we're hearing he's going to return to CNN on Wednesday. Let me read you this from the New York Times. He'll
return to his regular morning show role on Wednesday. They announced a late Monday night I'm sure to the chagrin of his female co hosts. In a terse seventy five word memo sent at seven pmc and as chairman Chris Lickz said, mister Lemon has quote agreed to participate informal training over his on air behavior and that the network
took this situation very seriously. Quote I sat down with Don and had a frank and meaningful conversation, adding, it is important to me that CNN balance's accountability with fostering a culture in which people can own, learn and grow from their mistakes. His decision to address the matter in a memo and the waiting hours of holiday week and reflected just how large a shadow the episode had cast
over the network. So I guess Don Lemon is sort of humiliatingly publicly being forced in some sort of sensitivity training. Is that the idea here couldn't have happened to a better guy, first of all, and secondly, reading between the lines of that, it sounds from my perspective like they
couldn't get him out of his contract. Those contract negotiations are really difficult, especially when you have somebody as high profile and wealthy and powerful as Don Lemon, even against something an entity as powerful as CNN, it can be really difficult. I would assume, and we talked about this yesterday, Crystal, that this was almost an opportunity, an exciting opportunity, for Chris lickt to purge Lemon from the ranks of CNN, where he's sowing a lot of descent. You can see
that in the tabloid leaks. He doesn't get along with his co hosts. His show is rated really poorly, and that's not just because of his co hosts. Obviously he plays a role in that. And he's totally out of step with the Licked brand. He's very much a holdover from the Zucker era of CNN that Licked is just desperately, furiously trying to scrub from CNN's new brand. So, especially when you cross a line on sort of like a sexual human resources question, you'd think that they would be
able to get him out of his contract. Maybe they want to keep Don Lemon. Is there a good argument for them keeping Don Lemon from a business perspective, Not one I can see. I mean, I think he's very expensive and the show that he's on isn't doing well, So I mean, bottom line is the bottom line here?
I thought this is interesting. The New York Times notes that the new morning show format was designed to be a quote mass appeal play New York Times I'm quoting from, but in its first few months on the air, it has been anything but its ratings have not kept up with competitors on MSNBC and Fox News. Tensions have bubbled up between the co anchors, and the executive producer has already been replaced. Chrys licked it comes from a morning
show background. The whole idea was, Okay, this is him really putting his imprint on the network, and they've ended up by moving you know, deck chairs around here, they've ended up actually making the product much worse. And while I personally enjoy the like tense, uncomfortable moments that periodically get clipped out of the show that we see on Twitter of them like, you know, clearly despising each other, that's not comfortable for people to watch as like an
actual morning show viewer. And then with regards to these comments, I mean, listen, your audience is exactly the women that you are offending. Such a good point. So that's why ultimately this was such a big problem, is not because you know, they really care about like, oh, this was a writer whatever. He just pissed off their entire audience basically with these remarks. So they had to do something to show that they took this seriously and they're like
responding to it. But you know, we'll see how it all works out, because it's very hard if you have personalities that don't gell. There's no sensitivity training or whatever that you can force people to go through that's going to fix that. You've got personalities that you know that aren't working well together. It's not a good morning show vibe. The show doesn't know what it is, whether it's supposed to be just like a news show or whether they're
trying to do some Today's show thing or whatever. It's very confused, and ultimately that's why it's not working. It's why I have to drink to get through shows with Ryan. Listen, girl, do what you gotta do. I support it, but no, I mean, it's a really good point and Don Lemon is just so far from what CNN is trying to do. We were talking yesterday, like there's a time when Don Lemon was entertaining like just from a purely like the
respective of theater, the theater of news broadcast. It's like, yeah, he could do that, but he is just this what happened to Megan Kelly. By the way, NBC wanted to get rid of Megan Kelly. They used the fig leaf excuse of a PC infraction basically to get it out of the contract. So that's kind of what I expected to happen with Don Lemon. But it looks like he's safer now. He might be more interesting if he just was like unleashed. Yes, you know, more of this, don't
make a bout of sense. Intimity training, get unplugged. Yeah, let's just go and go for it. You let Don, I'm here for it. I'd watched the show. Yeah, it would be It would at least be more interesting, Crystal. Let's take a look at this Washington Post headline and of course the story that goes with it. The headline is perfect in and of itself. A I is starting to pick who gets laid off. This article is talking
particularly about Google, the master of the algorithm. Imagine that their algorithm is now getting turned on employees, or their mastery of algorithms is getting turned on employees. So the Washington Post reports, days after mass layoffs trimmed twelve thousand jobs at Google twelve thousand, hundreds of former employees flocked to an online chat room to commiserate about the seemingly
erratic way that they had suddenly been made redundant. All right, So there's a theory that quote, a mindless algorithm, carefully designed not to violate any laws, chose who was staying and chose who was leaving. Whether or not this actually happened at Google this time around, it is going to happen,
and it's going to happen in more places than just Google. Amazon. Obviously, as we've reported here many times, uses really detailed tracking and looks at these things through algorithmic means and warehouses and elsewhere. We are beginning to turn people into quantities in ways that have happened sure in the past, but not like this. We are commodifying human beings as workers in ways that marks may have envisioned but maybe not would have predicted would have happened as quickly as it has.
And as just Jericronian in the Dacronian lengths that it's happened so quickly. Yeah, Well, they report here at January survey of three hundred human resource leaders at US companies reveal that ninety eight percent of them say that software and algorithms are going to help them make layoff decisions this year. So I mean this is already basically an
industry wide or economy wide practice. And to your point, Emily, there was already this level of dehumanization that was common for blue collar workers like the warehouse workers at Amazon, who have all of their steps in their movements tracked, and yes they get fired by a notification on an app like auto notification on an app. And service workers also treated with that level of dehumanization. Well that's now spreading.
It's not just service workers and blue collar workers, it's now white collar tech workers as well, who receive this type of really distant robotic treatment where they are just another number or another quantity, another line on a balance sheet. So, you know, I think this is it's not the future, it's already basically here, and it really reveals just the way that our economy is not set up to serve human beings. Ultimately, I think is kind of the bottom
line here. Our economy and our tech sector are just they're advancing on a rapid clip. Advancing is not even the right word. That's actually a word that's like euphemistic and papers over what's happening, which is not an advancement. There is no forward progress. It may be new technology
but it's taking us backwards. And that's why it's important for politicians, especially ascendant politicians who want to, you know, make a popular splash, to look at laws that are already on the books that came out of an era of the Industrial Revolution when people were being commodified in new ways. We have laws, for instance, that should make
certain surveillance capitalistic technologies regulated in the workplace. At Davos this year, there was a lecture about brain wave monitoring that employers will be able to use to tell when somebody is focused or not. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So imagine you're feeding that data into
an algorithm. I mean, just imagine maybe somebody is grieving and they're not focused, and that data is getting fed into an algorithm that determines who stays and who goes in a way that in the past a boss may have had a conversation and realize, hey, this person is going through something tough. I'm not going to do that right now because they live in my community and they go to church with me, or they're in my bowling league or whatever it is. We are so far removed
from that. When you have computers on a global scale, making decisions about people they only know as numbers. Yeah, and it's happening very fast. Well, and that's part of
the problem with how big everything is. I mean, in the scenario you're envisioning where it's like, oh, I know this person, they're in my community, were a lot more businesses that were located in the local communities where it was like you actually cared what happened there, and these were your friends and your neighbors, and so you know, you couldn't go and just like destroy people's lives heartlessly because you knew these people and they were connected to you,
and you actually cared about what happened there. But the more that industries become these giant conglomerates and giant monopolies, the more distant they are from the actual human beings who are doing the labor that are creating all the profits, by the way, for the executives and the shareholder class.
So yeah, it's troubling to think about because it's so impersonal, it's so cold, it's so lacking any sort I think there's also something here about exposing the lie of the idea of like the meritocracy that if you do the right thing, and you work hard, because this is just going through very cold, cold bloodedly and like analyzing whether you're redundant, and it doesn't really matter whether you're a good worker or smart work or a hard worker, a
nice worker, a good team player or whatever. Yeah, and so it also kind of cuts to the core of our ideas about ourselves and the way that our society should function. But does it heighten the contradictions as people realize that they're being turned into numbers. There's a question to be asked there. I mean, the numbers we all know that don't tell the full story. Maybe somebody is
a really good leader in the warehouse. Maybe somebody is a really good leader, you know, in their work team, whatever it is, maybe even at Mackenzie and they're a really good leader. They are good for the working environment, they bring up morale, whatever it does. The algorithm is not picking up on that. No matter how high tech we get, the algorithm is not picking up on that. It's human human interaction. That's what makes people's lives meaningful, purposeful, fulfilling.
And the more the further we stray from that, and we're just doing it so fast it's kind of terrifying. To think of where this goes in one year, let alone ten. Yeah, very dystopian stuff. Horrifying revelation from federal authorities. They found more than one hundred kids that we're working in slaughterhouses, cleaning slaughterhouses, was in plants across the country. That's gone and put this up on the screen. That's from the Guardian. The headline here is over one hundred
children illegally employed by US slaughterhouse cleaning firm. Labor Department investigation finds Packers Sanitation Services employed children between the ages of thirteen and seventeen in eight different states. Some of the details here are truly horrifying. So they found kids were working with hazardous chemicals, they were cleaning processing equipment including backsaws, brisket saws, and head splitters. At least three
minor suffered injuries while working for this company. And this is one of This is not some little side organization. This is one of the country's largest food safety sanitation service providers. They were working at plants owned by Cargill Tyson Food JBS, which is a gigantic meat processing company. They were the largest company that they had the most number of kids that were working in their plants, but given packing Greater Omaha Packing, Maple Leaf Farms, Turkey Valley Farms,
George's Inc. Tyson Food, among others. So horrifying discovery here. And part of what they say, Emily is, you know, some of these kids they were obviously they're working like the middle of the night while these meat packing plants are closed, and so they're falling asleep in school. Some of them suffered chemical burns. Just unbelievable that this is going on in America right now. Yeah, and here's a quote actually from the report from the Department of Labor.
They say, quote, our investigation found Packers Sanitation services systems flagged some young adult or some young workers as miners, but the company ignored the flags. When the wage and our division arrived with warrants, the adults who had recruited, hired, and supervised these children tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices. So the system, the company system worked because obviously they're asking for people's ages when they're
being hired. Obviously that fails, and they ignore the flags. Yes, and that's crazy. I mean it's so like obviously our system, you know, to the extent that it worked. They were fined one point five million dollars in civil penalties. That's what this announcement is based on. The big it's a big fine, not huge for a company of that size at all, but it's amazing because the Department of Labor
describes this as a quote systemic violation. It's across eight different states, lots of different kids involved, but you can see when you really zero down that their investigation found that they were flagged as children. Yeah, and the company just didn't care. I mean, there's a couple things that could be relevant in this situation. I mean, one thing is the rise of contractors to do work within companies.
And what happens is, you know, the big company, let's say Tyson Food, they put a lot of pressure on these subcontractors in order to come in with the lowest price, and then it allows them to kind of keep their hands clean from having to do like the horrifying child labor recruitment, and the lowest possible, the lowest bidder ends up getting the gig and they engage in all of these flagrant labor law violations, and it sort of protects the bigger company from dealing with any of the chargers.
Who knows if Tyson Foods or these other giant corporations had any inkling of what was going on with the sanitation company. It's certainly possible that they did. So that's one piece of this. The other piece that I think is relevant here is we're in a situation where, you know, people are not doing well economically because wages are still low and inflation is still high, but the unemployment rate is very low, and so a lot of companies are struggling at least at the wages they want to pay
to get workers in. So, guess what you have unscrupulous I would say evil actors like this company, who in order to get around that, what do they do they push for? You know, it may be undocumented immigrants, It may be children you know, who are un or the legal age where they could work in an environment like this. And in fact, there is a trend across the country right now in a number of different legislatures to loosen up the rules regarding child labor law. I was probably
the most egregious example. Their Republican legislators introduced a bill in January that would expand the types of work fourteen and fifteen year olds could do as part of quote approved training programs, they would extend allowable work hours and wait for it, exempt employers from liability if these kids
are sickened, injured, or killed on the job. That's nice. Yeah, So not only are we going to make more kids available to put into the workforce and lengthen the extend the amount of hours that they can work if they get hurt or sickened or killed on the job, we're going to make sure that the companies bear no cost
of that. Amazing, unbelievable right, And to your point, actually, this is another thing to think about like this, This is going to happen more and more and more because I'm actually sort of tempted by the libertarian argument that some child labor laws are too far that they prevent young kids from being able to start saving for college,
which is insanely expensive, et cetera, et cetera. But that aside these questions, we are going to see them pop up more and more because we have a completely broken immigration system, because we have so many people sitting on the sidelines of our workforce, and totally over educated people who have they were sold a false bill of goods about their college educations. They're now looking for good jobs because they paid tens of thousands of dollars to go
to college. They want to be working in a job that matches their degree so that the money wasn't a waste and they're looking for jobs. And in their absence, as they're waiting for a better for our workforce to match their skill sets. Well, who can we bring in the local children who can clean the meat packing factory from five to eleven pm after school? Yes? Who can we abuse and exploit within the system? Is basically what's
going on. So horrifying revelation, but it's important to know that these sorts of things are happening in America every single day. Bernie's and is coming out with a new book, and he has been doing some interviews with regards to that, and this one really caught our eye where he is calling out corporate media. To the face of corporate media, let's take a lesson. And the question of the book again is that how come we have so many people
who are struggling. We have a dysfunctional healthcare system, our childcare system is in disarray. We got millions of elderly people who have nothing in the bank, as they face retirement, and yet the people on top of doing phenomenally well. And Margaret, what the book is about is saying that we have more income and wealth and equality tape than we have, that we have more concentration of ownership in
sector aft the SEPPA than we have ever had. We have a political system which is increasingly corrupt because as a result of citizens United billionaires can put enormous amounts of money into it to elect their candidates. And we have eight major media conglomerates, corporate media conglomerates that control about what ninety percent of the American people see here and read. Those are really issues that we need to discuss.
That's what the book does. Do worry when you talk about the corporate media that you are targeting journalists when you say that, no, Donald Trump talks about fake news, and that's simply to the attention from the fact that he's a pathological lie. My experience one on one with media, they work on the very rarely mind, miss Quothy. But what I am talking about, Margaret, is that corporate media limits the kind of debate that we have in this country. You tell me you know more about it than I do.
How often do we talk about incoming wealthy quality we're talking about right now center. Yeah, but how often that everybody is Ernie Sanders on your show? How often do you talk about concentration of only show? How often do you talk about the fact that we are the only major country on Earth not the guarantee health kettle, and yet we spend twice as much money. How often do
you talk about that? If somebody has a baby in Finland, they get it nine months off to ten months off, paid family meet I will talk to you about paid leave for families any day of the week. They also have like a fifty six percent tax rate in Finland, though it's a very different system, but let's talk about it. What do they get for that? They get free healthcare, right, free higher education. That's the kind that's exactly what I'm
talking about. Yeah, that's the debate I want, and that's the debate we really don't have on the corporate media. That was great, Yeah, what do you think of that?
So satisfying when she asks the question about whether he's targeting borrowing journalist, But the implication of that question is that there's a legitimate argument to be made that when you criticize media in a substance of way, as Bernie Sanders has done for decades, by the way that it is a threat to journalists, that in some way that undermines the safety of journalists. Right. The fact that that question sees the light of day in an interview with
Bernie Sanders, I think is an embarrassing. It's so such a great point. Yeah, the idea that you can't critique corporate journalism without like, oh, you're yeah, you're creating a safety risk from aren't you targeting journalists? Blah blah blah. I mean, they use so much of what Trump did to justify like insulating themselves from any criticism. And meanwhile, you know, let Julie Nasans and actual fighters for press
feed freedom twist in the wind and very little coverage there. Finally, belatedly, the New York Times and other outlets did put in out a letter calling for him to you know, for the charges to ultimately be dropped. There is one thing, though about it that irritates me, which is, if you are a critic of corporate media, I don't have a problem like, go do the interviews, because reality is, you're right,
they still dominate everything but where's your independent media interviews? Yeah, And one thing that I have noticed very clearly and in fairness, Senator Sanders has, you know, set for interviews with me and a few other independent journalists a number of times. But overall, left figures in the Bernie Sanders part of the Democratic Party, they don't engage with independent media nearly as much as Matt Gates and the right quote unquote populist wing of the Republican Party, who are
all the time on independent media outlets. And there's so much more connectivity between their independent media brands and like the mainstream conservative pipeline Fox News, et cetera, et cetera. And that's reflected the politicians' choice of where they sit for interviews as well. So if you have a critique of the corporate media and you want to boost truly independent media, then you have a lot of power and a lot of cachet, and you could help with that
process of legitimizing them. Because if left wing political figures don't take their independent media outlets seriously, then how is anyone else going to such an important point? And it reminds me of a problem that also exists on the right. In one sense until the populist movement on the left that Bernie Standards himself helped catalyze. Until that really took off, I don't think the left had the ability or even
the need. I think it had the need, but people didn't recognize the need for alternative left media because on the cultural issues you got a lot of that from the corporate press, not on the economic issues, as Bernie Standers just talked about. But on the right, it's the same thing with like the Trump White House whining every single day about the fake news media and then giving all of their scoops to the New York Times or to Politico or to the Washington Post and leaking only
to them. And listen, this is actually not sound grapes. But I think it's an important point that if you are a populist politician, whether you're left or right, it's not even just about sitting down for interviews. It's about like giving information to be reported out to those outlets. And one place that's really good at doing that, the Intercept,
gets a lot of that. But like, if you're Bernie Sanders, like looking at the Intercept, looking at breaking points, like looking at these places is so so important and it's not. I think it's not just about interviews, but it's also about when you have news to break, go to them and let them do a better job reporting the story out. Yeah, let you know, let the Washington Examiner do a better job reporting the story out, then the Washington Post will.
Even though the Washington Post has this veneer of prestige that you agree is totally unearned. So why are you taking your information to them and not to the places that you could empower and build up their brand and their power by bringing it to them. Yeah, stupid and full disclosure. I have been trying to get an interview with Bernie about his new book. There's a possibility that may happen. I'm, you know, hoping, crossing my fingers. Whatever.
We'll see if it ultimately comes through. But listen, there are a lot of ways to boost independent media. Some of those ways are through legislation, you know, things that are focused on tech companies, things we've been covering here as well. But some of them are really simple. Just
actually show up with them. Like, whatever prestige and eyeballs you are able to generate as a prominent politician, you can bring credibility, Yes, and more eyeballs and new eyeballs and pull people from the mainstream to support a better ecosystem of journalism by engaging with them and you know, treating them as legitimate news sources. So that's my one that's my one beef with the way to approach that.
I totally get that. And it's not even just about like the journalists, it's not about It's definitely not about us. It's about the viewers and the listeners who you agree have good reason for tuning out of. If you agree that they have good reason for tuning out of corporate press, then show the respect that they deserve and come to meet them where they are. Yeah, do your face listen, engage with the system as it exists. I have no
problem with that totally. But hey, be on face the nation and be like hey, and by the way, you can see me on this independent outlet or give them the first interview so that it again brings a lot more eyeballs and helps to build up the ecosystem. So but in any case, it was satisfying to watch that exchange.
I enjoyed it very much. Oh my gosh, it was so good when and like imagine the advertisers that face the nation, it's probably like BP and Fire Yeah, and Coke Well, and when she's like, we're talking about inequality right now, and he's like, yeah, but you're not talking to Bernie Sanders. Yes, And she was like, oh, I'll gladly talk to you about paid leave. I'm glad And it's like, yeah, easy enough to say, but you will
never make that. You'll never make a sort of populist focus point of your show day in and day out, no matter how much you say like, oh, we gave it ten seconds here and there. Yeah, they love the horse race. That's the easiest thing for them to ultimately cover. Of brick and mortar, retail apocaly retail sales. It's literally got off. There's something strange to me about the reporting on the death of retail, the decline of fed bathroom beyond share price. The focus isn't on job losses. That
would be one thing. Makes's is closing another one hundred stores concerning Yes, the focus usually isn't on what happens to a community when a big retailer closes. That would be another thing. We hope to bring back a workforce. But the e comm side of things those people who have bet on e comm are surviving because they just have lower fixed costs with some of these brands, or just we can run a with twenty or thirty good programmers what they might have had three hundred, you know.
And if we don't care about the affected employees or what happens to an area when a mall shuts down, I'm not sure why we should care at all that these places are closing or losing ground to online sales from Amazon, because, after all, big box stores and malls
are kind of the original Amazon. Anyway, jobs be walking in and just finding where malls and stores we ever got way off because of going on into stores, and that's all you've got here, folks, mile left, a mile of mall left to mall, many many malls, major malls, and many malls they put the main malls in between them. My name is Spencer Snyder, and welcome to breaking points.
As America was becoming a huge driving nation, using highways to access places that otherwise would have been inconvenient or inaccessible, you had people trying to capitalize on this new access. So imagine we have this huge plot of land on the edge of town. It used to be way out of the way. But now that there's a highway running right by it, it's kind of convenient to get to. What do we do? We could make parks, or schools or community centers. Well, how exactly would any of those
things pay off for a developer. No, let's make some cash instead. Enter the architect of the modern mall, Victor Groen. He imagined essentially a plan shopping town in which the anarchy and ugliness of American cities would not be found. Guards would keep people safe, There would be a single, uniform aesthetic. Even the street noise would be replaced with
pleasant music. The preponderance of chains and franchises over local stores, required by big investors such as insurance companies, brought shoppers the latest national trends in products and merchandising techniques. Not only were these places in competition with the already existing downtown shopping areas, since they were located away from other shopping and had every type of shop you could want, people were more likely to do all of their shopping
at the mall. In nineteen fifty seven, New Jersey opened two malls, and in nineteen fifty eight, four hundred and thirty five families were asked about how those malls had affected where they shop. They found that a majority of families had already changed their buying patterns, and five percent of families had completely abandoned their old shopping areas. That's
after just one year people understood this was happening. There's been legislation trying fruitlessly to level the playing field between big business and small businesses since the eighteen hundreds, but the mall is a new thing, and it has some people a little freaked out. So big stores in downtown areas organize National Downtown Week Incorporated. They're trying to steal some of the business back from these malls. In nineteen fifty nine, two hundred and fifty cities participated in National
Downtown Week. It was serious enough that the Shopping Center Reporter, which I'm assuming was some kind of mall oriented trade publication, warned these malls that this was coming and they needed to take whatever action they could to get ahead of this. But it didn't matter anyway, because in the long run, National Downtown Week was going to be as effective at bringing people to shop at independent businesses as when American Express encourages you to do the same Small Business Saturday
by American Expresses, November thirtieth. By the seventies and eighties, malls were all across the country. An anchor store like a Macy's or Sears or J. C. Penny would draw people in, and then people would do the rest of their shopping there at the mall because they were there anyway. But obviously the issue is not just malls, because the same principles that allow malls to do so well also
apply to big box stores. The Walmart effect is when Walmart comes to town, drives down wages and causes businesses to close. On average, within fifteen months of a new Walmart store's opening, as many as fourteen existing retail establishments close. Now, Walmart's one of the biggest employers in the country, So not every big box store has the same power to disrupt a community as Walmart, but they're on the same spectrum.
Because the point is, why would you ever go to your locally owned store where they might have what you need, when you could go to a big box store where they will have what you need. Hey, where would lighting fixtures be? Okay? Conversely, I think the country has become so conditioned to the convenience of the giant shopping center
that it's become an object of nostalgia and mourning. Channels devoted to dead malls feature tours of these shopping centers that killed downtowns and enriched developers and sold us on the idea that hanging out with your friends in proximity to both a hot topic and a panda express is
somehow culture. But the culture and the community thing with regard to the mall is completely immateial anyway, it was always about offering shopping that was so convenient and so cheap that it just couldn't be refused even if you'd like to. And for half a century that was malls and big box stores. But the way the Highway made it more possible for a mall to monopolize regional shopping. The Internet makes it possible for Amazon to monopolize shopping
in general. Amazon makes up thirty eight percent of online retail. In second place is Walmart with only six percent. Amazon is doing exactly what malls were doing sixty years ago by creating a cheap, one stop shopping center. But what is especially scary Amazon is so massive and monopolistic. They don't simply put smaller businesses out of service, Amazon absorbs them. Sixty percent of the sales on Amazon are actually small businesses.
Many small businesses find it impossible to go without using Amazon's platform, and occasionally, because Amazon has a hand in manufacturing as well, a small business will find that their biggest selling item is now an Amazon Basic, killing off their own sales. After all, Amazon refers to these small businesses that use them as internal competitors. And for the dead malls that Amazon no doubt had to hand in closing, Amazon is buying them too, and turning them into fulfillment centers.
But for all the cooing about small businesses being the backbone of the country, we've never actually cared to observe this. All you need to do is compare how many headlines there are about small businesses getting iced out because of rent to how many headlines there are about big box
stores losing ground in the e commerce game. The idea of having a little shop and employing your kids and being self sufficient is a great story, but being satisfied and content is mutually opposed to the infinite growth that big businesses are absolutely committed to. So the decline of Mommo pop shops doesn't get headlines because they were never
the points. They were just the pretty image on the packaging of America, and for that matter, the impact on workers when big retailers come into town and then leave town, that doesn't get much attention because they're not the point either. I think the real reason the closing of retail gets attention is that some people are truly surprised that the unprecedented concentration of retail that we saw in the twentieth century is beginning to collapse under the weight of the
unprecedented concentration of retail in the twenty first century. But that will do it for me. I'm Spencer Snyder. If you found this video interesting, make sure you are subscribed to Breaking Points. You can also check out my YouTube channel where I talk all about media and politics and some other interesting things. Link in the description Liking and sharing always helps. Thank you to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in
the next one. Pete Boudaget just can't catch a break. He was walking around here on Gassy Reporter at my ow Old employer. The Daily Caller happened to notice him and said, Hey, maybe I'm going to do my job with the mainstream media is due. I'll just be like, when are you going to go to East Palestine? Ohio? He didn't take it so well, in fact, so badly. He took a picture of her in a form of intimidation for having the gall just to ask him a question,
and kept saying he was on personal time. Hi, how are you Jenny Tair at the Daily Calor News Foundation. What do you have to say to the folks in Ohio East Palestine who are suffering right now? Well, I've referred about a dozen interviews I've given today, and if she'd like to read a conversation, I'm reach out for press had that conversation with you. You don't have a message for them. I do, and I shared it with the press many times today. I'd refer you to those comments.
Are mind sharing that with us? No, I'm going to refer you to the comments that I made to the press, because right now I'm taking some personal time. Man, I'm walking down the street. Are you going down there? Are you going down there at all? Yeah? Yea, when are you going? I'll thank you? Photo? Can I take a photo of you? She's like, yeah, sure, I mean clearly
that is an act of intimidation. He's taking the photo, so you could send to the press office and be like, make sure that we never ever work with this person again, as if he was being harassed. First of all, you're walking down a public street, dude. I actually have seen Buddhaj edge around a couple of times whenever he's like walking. There is absolutely nothing that stops you from questioning a
public official. And then two, just the you know, the gall of like I would refer you to the press office. I'm taking some personal time. I'm sure the people who are during contaminated water care about your personal time, Like, why can't you just say something about like, look, of course I have a message he thought. You know, clearly he just wanted to get off the hook. And the fact that he's willing to act that way shows you also that people in the press don't actually question him
in a confrontational manner all that much. Well, he just wanted to, you know, only have his interviews with thea approved media gook keepers that he feels comfortable with. Yes and so, and her questions were not I mean, look daily callers are right wing outfit. But her questions were he didn't do anything really fair and like not hostile or aggressive. They they should be easy questions for him,
like hey, when are you going? Why haven't you gone yet, Like he should have already been there and then none of this would be an issue for him. But you know, he since he popped on the national scene, he's had this sort of like Cinderella run, you know, and the media loved him and he was the future of the Democratic Party and oh my good Nancy was like this boy wonder figure that elites the donor call, like they all just loved him. He hasn't really had this kind
of actual scrutiny, and not only from Republicans. There have been a number of Democrats, from left wing Democrats like Ilhan Omer to Joe Manchin who were saying, dude, you know you need to step up and you need to actually do something about this. So he really hasn't faced this before. And I think he can just see in real time his like policeical hopes and aspirations sort of withering on the vine. Whereas we covered. Ye know, there's some speculation maybe Biden won't run this time, which I
am doubtful of, but you never know. If that had come to pass that sort of speculation just a month ago, there would have been it would have been, Oh, Pete will be the you know, heir apparent. They're going to do everything they can. That's a much different calculus at this point. It's when he actually has been put in a position where he has power, where he needs to act, where he needs to do a job that is actually critical to people. No interest, no ability, just total failure.
It is funny that the two chosen successes to buy Buddha Jeedge and Kama have both been public humiliations while in office at you know, look, vice president is the easiest job in the world. You don't have anything to do, and she's still somehow more hated than Joe Biden. And
then number two is Budhajeg. Like Buddha, Jeedge has humiliated himself on the national stage over and over and over again, showed a lack of being politically adapt but even more importantly, being a terrible manager, and then freaking out and being publicly entitled like this. Also, you know, flying private while the rest of us flights are literally getting canceled. So look, I have no sympathy. I'm really enjoying kind of watching
the political demise of him. But it's pathetic the way that he acts whenever he's just getting asked a very basic question. Yes, indeed, there you go, and Louis de Angelus of Status qu joins us. Now, Grace Cie lewis Man, thanks for having me. So I understand you have some new reporting about the water tests which were conducted, in which we're used as the basis for telling residents it's all good, you can drink the water, there's going to
be no problems. Tell us what you've learned. Yeah, absolutely, so in you know, reporting from several other folks as well up until this point. You know, I actually ran into the governor the other day asked him a couple of tough questions that he was not necessarily excited to
have asked, and did his best to dodge them. And basically the tests that have been done initially up until basically the last forty eight hours, we're all from contractors hired by either Norfolk Southern or contractors hired by the e PA. These two contractors are companies called Tetra Tech and c T e H. Both of these companies have histories of mishandling results and information they've you know, false some of in some cases falsifying test results. This you know,
these companies were being used. One of them was during the deep Water Horizon incident. I don't know if you remember back in twenty ten, The New York Times reported on that one and the other one. Let me pull it up here just because I want to make sure I have it all accurate for you all. The other incident as well was from the let's see the Hunter's
Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. So both of these companies are giving residents more reason to question the results and the answers that their government officials are giving them or frankly more you know more realistically not giving them. So with that information, you know, up until forty eight hours ago, again, these are being provided by these two companies, one of them being hired directly by the railroad, which
has no incentive here to necessarily put out the accurate information. Right, these guys are trying to cover their butts in a lot of this stuff. And it gets a little bit worse because as we looked into this, I've been on the ground talking with residents since over the last weekend establishing trust with these folks and actually giving them the time of day to talk to them and build trust. And the children of one of the parents that I've established a good relationship with asked if he could do
an interview. Some of his friends wanted to as well. We got permission to do this interview with the children, and one of the kids mentioned that the water fountains in their school, so not the part that you can go down and get a sip from, but the part that you can fill up your water bottle in is actually open to use inside of their school. And I mean, my heart just dropped when I heard that. I mean,
I've got little nieces, you know. The kids did say there is bottled water in school, But again, these are children. We're talking about the fact that they can go fill up their water bottle in the school because officials are telling them that the water is fine when we're relying on again predominantly tests that are being contracted out by the railroad. It's unconscionable to me to hear that happen, and it you know, it's it's a it's a tough
it's a tough story. And I mean, these folks are going through so much here, it's it's tough to talk about. These conversations that I'm having with residents are are hard ones to have. These folks are being put in absolutely impossible positions. Lewis the piece about these contractors, it's the first time learning about it. Can you give us a little bit more detail about their involvement that was, you know, revealed to be fraudulent in the past, falsifying records. What
was uncovered there, just so we know some of the specifics. Yeah, so I know more about the deep Water Horizon incident, and in the article from the New York Times, essentially they do a good job with this. I encourage folks to find it. We can get you the link to
post in the description or something like that. But in that incident, the New York Times essentially found that the deep Water Horizon incident, the company had every incentive to essentially make these folks be feeling okay and getting them back to work and all of this sort of thing. So it's really the the incentives that were being placed. We're obviously incorrect in all of these instances. There should
be independent testing being done. And again, if you want residents here in East Palestine or in any other incidents, you know, across the country where this to happen. Again, let's make sure that we're using a company that does not have a history of any of this kind of fraudulent information. Yeah, So can you expand then in the context of the general kind of corporate influence and cover up that's been going on here that you've been able to witness on the ground, because it just seems like
the latest in a series of things that's been happening. No, it is, and you know, everything from initially you know, the railroad burying contaminants underneath the railroad tracks, right, residents have been very unhappy about that, and essentially even even
with the evacuations, right, there's a lot of speculation. Again I can't confirm any of this necessarily, but there's a lot of speculation that the reason the town was deemed safe again was because the railroad is not able to run trains through the town while there's still an evacuation notice ordered if no one's allowed back into town, you know, railroad conductors that sort of thing aren't going to be able to be going through this area because it's unsafe.
So there's added pressure to get folks back into town, tell them everything is fine, everything is safe, so that they can get the railroad moving again. And I can tell you after being here for several days, that railroad is busy. I mean, in some times a day it's every ten minutes a train going by. Oftentimes right now, the trains are actually being double stacked the shipping container ones.
Residents tell me that that was not the case beforehand, but it was mostly single stacked, and they're trying to catch up on the railroad being closed from before with these double stacked trains, which I don't need to tell you this. The double stack trains are to be heavier
than singles tracked one tracked ones. It's it's uncomfortable again, Lewis, we actually have you interviewed residents who voiced exactly the fear and suspicion you were laying out that basically the all clear call was rushed in order to get back to business as usual. Guys, this is the second SOT that we have. I believe it's labeled to see five Control room. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. They had that thing cleaned up and the train running
through within forty eight hours. They laid those tracks right over top of that, and there is no way that they hauled any of it out. They laid it right over top. And you know the fire department when when this initially happened, it's a fire, they're trying to put it out. There's brandon What where'd that water go? You know, it's right in the ground, in the soil. And they laid those railroad tracks over people. And the thing is they weren't allowed to run the train through an evacuated area.
So soon as the train tracks were done, the evacuations lifted. People that came home the night they we didn't come up to the next morning, but there were people that came home that night. They had videos they had to wait on the train because the train was already up and run and before they could get back in their houses. Now, is that a coincidence that they weren't allowed to run through an evacuated area and all of a sudden, the train's ready to go and the evactually vac you know,
the evacuation was lifted. You know, I think not so. Residents very fearful that their health and safety was put at risk in order to make sure that the rail companies could get back to operating a maximum capacity and get back to making the profit margins they're used to. Absolutely and I mean again Stella and Darren there, I talked to them for forty five minutes. They've got foster children,
young kids, some of them with pre existing conditions. And you know that house that we were interviewing them in there, that's been in their family for one hundred years. This is you know, they're like, what are we going to pass on to our kids? Our house is worth nothing. Now that's a major concern from a lot of folks in town. Is you know, there's folks who are looking to retire, they want to sell their house. What are
they going to do now? Norfolk Southern's not talking about buying people's houses at the value that they were beforehand, and you know, I'm sure they're not looking into doing that at any point. But again, even for renters, I mean I mentioned earlier on in this parents are being put in an absolutely impossible situation here right I'm talking to people with I'll give you some of the symptoms that we're hearing. And this isn't just from like one
or two people. I'd say roughly half of the people I'm talking to are dealing with some of these symptoms here.
So we've got rashes, bloody noses, the bloody noses, especially with kids like every night in some cases right sore throats, dry and stinging eyes, vomiting, breathing problems, diarrhea, and again, some of this stuff is hard to necessarily show on camera, but I can tell you from being invited into many of these people's homes, going into some of the businesses here, these people are not bsing you into trying to believe
this sort of thing. It's frustrating to see, you know, folks online saying, oh, you know, folks are looking for a handout. These people are in the most impossible situation ever. You walk into some of these places and you can feel it in your eyes, you can smell it's it's
an absolute shame that this is going on. And as a result of this, to talk a little bit more about some of the you know, corruption, gaslighting, whatever you want to call it going on here, the state of Ohio set up a clinic in the town for folks to go to. I asked Governor DeWine. I was like, you know, I talked to all of these people on this street. Last night. We ran into them on the street because a local resident tipped me off that he was there. I was like, I talked to all these
folks on this street. They're experiencing all of these symptoms that I just listed off for you. Where should they go? He goes, they should go to the clinic that the state of Ohio is set up. So we went to the Ohio state you know, the clinic that they set up in town. And this clinic isn't even providing actual medical services here, right, the clinic is essentially providing folks
to talk to. Right, So you go, you get you you you know, can can talk to an expert, I guess, and then they'll refer you to go to your doctor. Hopefully you've got health insurance. Hopefully you have a plan that doesn't have a high deductible or else you're on the hook or emergency room bills. That's unbelievable. And that's one more point on this, if I can make it a lot of the other you know, local journalist in town, and obviously there's exceptions to the rule, and even some
of the national media. We were there reporting from in front of the medical center and they're out there essentially reading the press release saying this medical clinic is now open. Members of the public should come here for for you know, services and whatnot. Meanwhile, I've got residents texting me saying this is ridiculous. This is no real services here. There's
no real services. And fortunately, you know, we're able to actually be here to do it because nobody you know, again, there is exceptions to the rule, no doubt about it. But you know, I'm I'm not an expert journalist. I don't have a journalism degree, right, but I feel like I'm out here asking the questions that a lot of these other folks aren't, which is a shame that I have to be in that position to try to do it well. We find ourselves in that position sometimes we're
very happy to help support your work down there. So yeah, we appreciate you being there and let us know continue if you ever need any more resources or anything. Yeah, thanks, lewis great to have you. If we're able to as well, folks, we're going to be posting a lot of content on Status qu If you're not a Status Quo subscriber already, that would be fantastic. If you can come follow some of our work there. Yeah, they've been on this from the beginning. Thanks guys, appreciate it.