Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Hello, everybody.
Almost immediately after we wrapped our show, some breaking news happened that we just absolutely have to cover. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. From the New York Times. Quote intelligence suggests pro Ukrainian group sabotage pipelines. US officials say, oh my, okay, so let's keep reading. New intelligence reviewed by US officials suggests a pro Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the nord Stream pipeline last year, a step towards determining responsibility
for this act of sabotage. They are important to add. Quote. US officials say they had no evidence President Zelenski of Ukraine or as top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting on the direction of any Ukrainian government official. The brazen attack on the natural gas pipelines, which link Russia to Western Europe fueled speculation
about who was to blame from Moscow to Kiev. Now, after there was no evidence that Russia did it, now US officials are leaking to the New York Times that actually it was a quote pro Ukrainian group. So who exactly are these people? Well, it's kind of interesting. According to the Times, they say that the review of intel suggests that they were opponents of Vladimir Putin of Russia. Okay, but they do not specify the members of the group
or who directed or paid for the operation. US officials claim that they had no advanced knowledge of this incident. So anyway, let's take a step back for everybody. So obviously, the pipelines were blown up last year international waters just twelve miles away from NATO, ally from the International Zone, and it caused a major incident. Immediately, Western countries were quick to blame Russia. Now, Chrystal wasn't able to join me because this is such a breaking story here, but
here's what she had to say. Quote, I'm going to read her comments, you guys can get her input. Quote. It beggars belief that a sophisticated operation using experienced divers of thousands of pounds of military explosives was a non state actor with zero US involvement. It's amazing they will now openly admit that Russia never made any sense as a culprit, and when they all but blamed that country
and suggested that you were a fool if you thought otherwise. Quote. Finally, if it actually was Ukraine and we didn't know what the hell are we doing with those people, that's also my immediate take here as well. So here's what I put out. Quote. Two options, Either we helped Ukraine blow
up the Nord Stream pipeline, or we didn't. We found out later, and we continued to provide tens of billions of dollars to an ally, which finds Ally put in quote here, which finds it preferable to risk great power conflict to draw us in. I'm not sure which is worse. And it's really interesting, right, every time Ukraine blows up the Crimean Bridge, assassinates Dugan's daughter on Russian territory, or
blows up the Nord Stream pipeline. The New York Times and other pro intel a friendly media comes out later and says, hey, just so you know, yeah, they definitely did it and it was definitely bad, and they're kind of upset with them, but Zelenski had no ideas, Like, are we really supposed to believe that Zelenski had no idea that people inside of his government blew up the Nordstream pipeline and that they were able to do it
in a directed operation which obviously required sophisticated military equipment, financing, and logistics to pull it off. Same with the Crimean bridge, and same with the assassination of Dugan's daughter in Moscow. If you believe that, I honestly just think you are a complete fool. And you know, the major takeaway of this is just that it was outrageous from the beginning to smear anybody who said that either the US wasn't
involved or that it wasn't Russia. I will note that on our show we took a tremendous amount of caution from the very beginning, and we're very always important to say we're like, we don't know who the pipeline it could, you know, laid out the case in several different things. Will remember the infamous tweet from the Polish MP who said thank you USA whenever the pipeline was eventually exploded. And here's the worst part. It's almost certain, almost certain,
we will not learn anything more about this. Also, it's very possible that the only reason the US is even leaking this limited amount of information right now is because Ukraine could be on the verge of conducting another similar attack.
And also, as Crystal noted, it does not seem like it's a surprise that this happens to drop just weeks after Seymour Hirsch published that article in which he claimed to have a source that said that it was directly the United States that was involved in bloe owing up
the nord Stream pipeline. That seems very much on the table now, given Seymour Hors's reporting, given all of the questions that remain around this incident, and you know, really, all I have to come back to is you can believe that what happened to Ukraine was wrong, but you, I think would be a fool to believe that we should a trust them to just do whatever is in our best interest and that we should just back them
with a blank check. And two that the idea that their state apparatus was not involved in this in some way and that Zelenski didn't at least have some knowledge is just crazy. Remember they immediately blamed Russia for those two missiles that landed in Poland and killed two people. They tried to get America to have a no fly zone and come in only until hours later it turns out that they were Ukrainian anti aircraft missiles. The whole time, their interest is to get us involved in this war.
Their interest is to escalate this to the great power conflict level because Russia is such an existential threat to them, regardless of how well they've done on the battlefield in the last year. It's just extraordinary, and you know you can get you can bet, you can absolutely bet this is going to land with crickets on the cable television and amongst the Neapho Brigade and all the other pro Ukraine forces who are just going to write this off.
Is what you do whenever you defend yourself. Here's the thing. Maybe they're right, maybe this is something that you do, be sure as hell, don't do it with American money, with American resources and possibly even a US directed operation. We're going to continue to stay on this story, guys. I'm sure Counterpoints will have a hell of a lot of covers, but thought we owed it to you to have an immediate reaction. I'll see you guys later. Magan Markle been in the news recently, I guess to the
misfortune of us all. Apparently her and Prince Harry wanted to sue the South Park creators for the We Want Privacy Tour episode that made fun of them. Not the only comedian though, that have taken notice. Chris Rock in his latest special going after Megan Markel as well. So let's gohea and put this up on the screen. I wish you could play the clip for you, but you could take that up with Netflix and they're insane copyright standards.
So here's what he had to say, and again, it's not as funny whenever you read from somebody he says, quote, everybody's trying to be a victim, Like, who is this girl? Megan Markle seemed like a nice lady just complaining. I was like, didn't she hit the light skinned lottery? She hit the e fing light skinned lottery? And is still going off complaining, acting all dumb, like she didn't know nothing going on, Oprah, Like I didn't know, I had no idea how racist they were. It's a royal family.
You didn't google these mother efforts? What the f is she talking about? She didn't know. It's a royal family. They were the original racists. They invented colonialism. They're the ogs of racism, the Sugar Sugarhill gang of racism. That's like marrying into the Budweiser family and saying they drink a lot. So continuous there a little bit. What I think is funny about this is not only just with Chris, but for a while Megan Markle was untouchable. I know this.
I did my monologue famously defending Piers Morgan, who I still stand by my brother Peer's brother in arms in that fight against Megan Markle's narcissism. But for a while here in the US press it was completely verbot and to say anything about how this is one of the most obvious narcissists in the history of the world. Who you know, she wants to be president. She's calling up senators advocating for legislation. It's like, who the hell or you why should we care about anything that you say.
One of the most obvious attention seekers ever actually a very modern American tradition. It seems American divorcees are always a problem whenever they get involved with the royal family. The point, though, is that I think that the tide is turning. So Charlemagne the God actually backed up Chris.
Let's put this up there on the screen Monday's edition of The Breakfast Club where he says, whenever you went after Megan Markle, and he backed up and said, quote everything that he said was accurate before playing the clip. After some people said that they were mad about the Megan Markle thing where Chris Rock went after So I
don't know, Cristal. I think that between South Park Chris Rock and now you've got South Rock, south Park Chris Rock and Charlomagne the God, all these people speaking out, I think we are now able to discuss the fact that Megan Markle is not only likely a liar, maybe not necessarily about this racism thing, but just in general, but such an obvious attention culture. Two together have become,
I mean, they're just completely insufferable. I feel worse for Harry because I think he's obviously been taken advantage of, and he had a tough child. I feel bad. I mean he lost his mom y, right, Like, I feel bad for him about that. Nevertheless, come on, like you're a member of the royal family, you got a pretty good life, like multimillion. Yeah. I actually I watched the South Park episode. I watched segment because you know, I
like to do my research, and it was hilarious. Yeah, attest to it was called the Worldwide Privacy Tour, which pretty much sums up the whole thing. And then they end up moving to South Park across across from Kyle Anyway and his book. In the South Park episode, instead of what is it called spare the name of it, it's called Way, And there's a whole brand management company that's like trying to pitch these kids on like how to lean into it, how to create a brand for themselves.
And it becomes revealed that Megan has been using this brand management company and her brand is sorority Girl, actress influencer Victim. So yeah, it's too perfect. And the punchline with the brand management thing is that everybody who goes in there for their brand, it's like whatever you are, and at the end it's always victim. So I'm going to take a hopeful silver lining analysis of the whole Harry and Meghan situation, which is, I really think this
could bring the nation together. As you point out, the emotion around this couple, I think is now widely shared across the political spectrum, across racial demographics and other typical dividing lines in American society. So I really think it is a beautiful thing for us to all come together around in contempt and orison of their publicity. So I certainly hope. So something I do love about the UK is that it's only in this country where we bought
her bullshit. In the UK, in the tabloids, they were like, she's a full of shit, attention narcissist. They got it from the rigin. I love it. Yeah, So Peers, you know, he spoke through the masses. I still love him even though he went to go work for Rubert Murdock, and he was right right from the very beginning on this woman. Anyway, I'm glad the tide is turning. We'll see guys later. So John Stewart has just launched a new season of
his show The Problem with John Stewart. Already a bunch of the clips are getting a lot of attention, and I'm actually excited for some of the interviews he has coming up. He says he's going to talk to Larry Summers. That will be spicy. I'm sure he's also going to talk to David Petraeus about the military industrial complex, and he teases that they have some pretty heated disagreements about the size and nature of said military industrial complex. I'm
looking forward to that. But in his initial sort of teaser for the season, some comments he made about the Wuhan lab and the whole lab leak hypothesis got a lot of attention. You might recall, I'm pretty sure we played it here. We definitely played it when we were on with Joe Rosen. We did. We did end up covering it because we were on Rogan the very same
day that it d That's right. So he did a whole bit that was hilarious with Colbert about the lab leak and just making fun of the fact that, like, it's so obvious that this is the most likely explanation versus what was sold to the American people at Slowet Market. It's very controversial at the time, but it was also very hilarious. He reacts here in this clip I'm about to show you to the public reaction and freak ount
over this bit that he did take a lesson. It was a pretty good bit that expressed kind of how I felt. And the two things that came out of it were I'm racist against Asian people and how dare I align myselves with the alt rights I was doing a bit about, and it was similar to a bit I've done on religion. It used to do a bit about religion, saying religion's giving comfort to a world torn
apart by religion. So the idea was, you know, about the vaccines and other things that science had truly helped heal a world from a pandemic, probably called by science. And then I proceeded to go on a kind of a long tangent about why that, Why I thought that? And the backlash was swift, immediate, and quite loud, which is just a sign of something we've been talking about for a while. How even contemplating or giving any sort of credence to lab Leak was coded as being a
right wing conspiracist. And it's the way, yeah, And it's the way that, you know, and also by the way, you were racist against Asian people, even though, as I've also said many times, like the wet market theory, if anything was going to be racist, that sounded a lot
more racist to me. But whatever. But one of the most extraordinary moments when he was actually delivering that, you know, that whole like doing the bit on Colbert, was how visibly uncomfortable Cole Bear was, who basically like interrupted him and cut him off. And I remember Rogan was like, as a comedian, deeply offended and triggered by the fact that he would like jump in and screw up the
bit in the way that he tried to do. Yeah, and actually it's true because Colbert made his bones being a comedian, so for him to violate that code for John Stewart also who's doing it on his show. And by the way, oh's his entire career to John Stewart is also you know, one of those major I would say, faux pause, but you know, as what did Joe say, He was like he saw his yacht sailing away. Yeah, look, the whole thing I think was silly from the beginning.
Glenn has been talking about this as well, about how John eventually had to not walk it back per se, but clearly was affected by the criticism. And I think that's the problem, which is, look, A, he was a comedian making a funny joke, and B the reason it was funny is we all knew it was true. And the fact is is that they couldn't did not want to grapple with the facts. It didn't even want to
allow it into pop culture. So the whole episode is one of the most embarrassing things happened to the mainstream media. It seems like this just keeps happening too quickly, Like we had twenty years or so so in between Russiagate and Iraq WMD, but now it's like every two years we have a new one where they just cover themselves in glory, I guess, and never admit the failures, just keep pushing forward, never acknowledge that the train wreck that
just happened behind them. Yeah, I mean, listen, John Stewart is fine. He has his show, he has his fame, he has this. He's all good, right, But I think the critique is more about Listen, if you're up and coming, you may not make that joke because you're worried about what it's going to mean for you in terms of
your career prospects. And I also think outside of comedy, it's just a more meta narrative and commentary on the way that things get coded as Republican or Democrat or right or left in at times these really bizarrely arbitrary ways, Like there's nothing inherent about a lovely hypothesis that would make it somehow right wing, but because Trump said it, then instantly it becomes part of this weird, stupid partisan culture war that kept the media from actually investigating what
really happened here for years. So it's not like it doesn't have any impact anyway. Always, you know, always insightful, always interesting to hear from Jensuar, And I am excited about the upcoting season because he does such a great job in those interviews one on one. I mean, he's just relentless. Maybe we should have him back on the show. I would love to have him back on his front or go for producers, let's do it, let's get it done,
all right, We'll see you guys later. Hello, everybody. Breaking news. One of the most disgusting attacks by senior government officials against independent media I have ever seen just occurred today on Capitol Hill. Matt Tayebe and Michael Schellenberger appeared before Congress to talk about the Twitter files. This could have been a substitute discussion if they had wanted it to be. Instead, it was character assassination and it was attack on independent
media itself. So let's start. Stacy Plaskett, who is the delegate to Congress from the US Virgin Islands, the ranking member on the committee, starts off the hearing by attacking the credentials of Matt Tayebe of Michael Schellenberger, calling them quote so called journalists. Let's take a listen. This isn't just a matter of what data was given to the so called journalists before. So now there are many legitimate questions about where Musk got the financing to buy Twitter.
First of all, let me just say this, Stacy Plaskett is not even a real member of Congress. So who is a lady who literally can't even vote in the chamber to call anybody a so called member. See, we can all do this if we want to, or we could focus on the substance that's the problem. They would rather go after Tyibee and Schllenberger's credentials than talk about the actual censorious content of the Twitter files. Matt, to his credit, he handled it with total grace and he
laid out his credentials. Take a listen to his response, ranking member Plasket. I'm not a still called journalist. I've won the National Magazine Award, the if Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I've written ten books, including four New York Times New York Times bestseller. You know. Here's the thing, though, and look, I'm glad he obviously is an accomplished person.
But credentials don't matter anybody anybody who exposes information not previously known, that person has committed an act of journalism. That person is protected by the First Amendment. Who the fuck are these members of Congress to think that they can decide who a journalist is and who a journalist is not. Now It's not just Stacey Plaskett. Many other Democrats on the committee humiliated themselves today. One of them is Debbie Wasserman Schaltz. Let's talk about Debbie Wassermanshall's I
think we all remember her from the DNC days. Here she is attacking Matt Tayebi for the idea that he might have made money by doing his job. Take a listen. I imagine your sub stack readership, which is a subscription increased significantly because of the work that you did for Elon Musk. Now, I'm not asking you to put a dollar figure on it, but it's quite obvious that you've profited from the Twitter files. You hit the jackpot on that Vegas slot machine to which you referred. That's true,
isn't it. I've also reinvested. No, no, no, no. Is it true that you have profited since you were receiving you were the recipient of the Twitter files. You've made money? Yes or no, it's probably honestly. No, you have made money that you did not have before. Correct, But I've also spent money that I didn't have. Okay, where I just hired a whole group of people to patently obvious answer reclaiming my time. Attention is a powerful drug, eyeballs, money, prominence, attention.
All of it points to problems with accuracy and credibility, and the larger point, which is social media companies are not biased against conservatives, and if anything, they ignored their own policies by allowing Trump and other magnet extremists to post incessantly endangering public safety and even our democracy. Hypocrisy is the hangover of an addiction to attention. Oh, first of all, Matt says, it's a wash because, as all
of us know, it's not for free. We actually have to invest a lot of what we quote unquote make into our business because we don't have big corporate advertisers to back up our work. But second, when the New York Times and the Washington Post break a story, you know what they do. They advertise because we know that people you want to support work whenever they find it
to be good. So what is she attacking here? The idea that Matt Tayibi and Michael Schellenberger, an of these people did their job and so we're rewarded for it. So what what's wrong with that? This is an attack on independent media itself? Are they calling the TV executives who make billions of dollars from the big pharma companies in all their commercials? Oh, that's not so called journalism.
That's fine when they profit whenever they spin up a fake story like Russia Gate and sell corporate ad dollars on their higher ratings. That's totally legitimate, right, But it's not legitimate when he exposes the censorship industrial complex that existed over at Twitter, the actions of the FBI and the DHS. That's what the problem is. And then final this clip. This you can tell I'm hopped up because
this is everything. Watch this Democratic member of Congress refer to substack quote as some sort of a website, which she finds confusing. Yet you yourself post in on your I guess it's kind of like a web page and don't quite understand what substack is. But that I know a lot of boomers watch the show. Some of them get upset when I attack. But look, I'm just gonna say it. That's exactly why we need some new blood in Congress because that's what we're up against. People. This
is everything they are attacking. Substack is some not legitimate forum of journalism so called journalists Matt Tayebi and Michael Schellenberger. If you make money to support yourself outside of the corporate industrial complex, that suspect. But when you take Pfizer's money to support your sixty minutes program, that's totally fine. And this has got to be one of the most repulsive,
disgusting things I have seen from members of Congress. You are a government official, you say nothing about who is a journalist, who is not? Who the fuck are you? I can't I just that's all I can continue to think whenever I see the way that they behave today on Capitol Hill. We could have had a real discussion here. We could have had a real questioning, not just with Tybee, with Schellenberger, about the actual content of the Twitter files. That's what Jim Jordan and some of the other people
who were in before Congress tried to do. But instead they chose to attack their character and look, in some ways that's a good thing. That means that they're winning. That means that they don't actually have anything to say about the content. The tacit acknowledge is that they have to attack the credentials because they have no defense whatsoever of the content. But you know, don't mistake this for what it is. This is not you know, take breaking
points or whatever out of it. This is an attack on all of us so called viewers, so called journalists, so called people who question anything that these people say. So anyway, go support Matt if you can you know what, Let's actually make him some money. We'll drop a link to his substack in the description just a repulsive, repulsive display on Capitol Hill today. Hey, their money is James Lay.
Thank you so much for tuning in to another segment of fifty one to forty nine on Breaking Points and today I'm here to talk to you about what I'm calling a cooperative arms race that is currently unfolding between governments, big tech, and the ruling elites. To colonize your mind. You glance at the program running in the background on your computer screen and notice a now familiar site that appears whenever you're overloaded with pleasure. Your data bringway back
to the decreasing in the temporal of your brain. You mentally move the cursor to the left and scroll through your brain data over the past few hours. You can see your stress levels rising as the deadline to finish your memo approached, causing a peak in your beta brain wave activity. Right before and alert popped up telling you
to take a brain break. Your mind starts to wander to the new colleague on your team, whom you know you shouldn't be daydreaming about, given the policy against intra office romance, but you can't help fantasizing just a little. But then you start to worry that your boss will notice your amorous feelings when she checks your brain activity
and shift your attention back to the present. When you arrive at work the next day, a somber cloud has fallen over the office, along with emails, text messages, and GPS location data. The government has subpoenaed employees brainwave data from the past year. They have compelling evidence that one of your coworkers has committed massive wire fraud. Now they're looking for his co conspirators. You discover they are looking for synchronized brain activity between your coworker and the people
he has been working with. You know you're innocent of any crime. You've been secretly working with him on a new startup venture, shaking you remove your earbunds. What a pitch a wearable device that monitors all of your brain activity with a new type of technology for which they are attempting to manufacture public consent in the name of human wellness. How predictable with supposed applications like being able to help keep you healthy, make you more productive, steer
you clear of certain vices and even fight crime. No other possible motivations. Right, companies already investing in tech to scan employees' brains. The general pitch for this device class is familiar, if not convenient. It's a tool not only for enhancing productivity, but for ensuring employee wellness. They might technically be monitoring employees, but only for their sake. We're going to monitor you for productivity, yes, but that's not
a real focus. What we're really after is ensuring your wellness, your safety. We're monitoring you for your sake. Consider the fact that right now, many workplaces have individuals who have to be awake and alert at all times in order to do their jobs well. Sometimes that doesn't happen. Take this example, where this trucker decided to take a twenty hour shot for a fifteen hundred mile ride. It's well exceeding the amount of time that any trucker long haul
trucker is supposed to drive. His employer didn't discover his choices until the fatal accident that was disastrous for the company and cost many lives. Note the order of priorities first and foremost disastrous for the company, and then secondarily many lives lost. Quote, in five thousand companies across the world, employees are already having their brainwave activity monitored to test
for their fatigue levels. Fairhni says she is the presenter in the clip we just watched from the world that can. She cites mining operations, including one of the biggest mining companies in the world, that have their employees wear hard hat and baseball cap like devices that detect fatigue. No mention, of course, of alleviating the conditions that lead to over fatigued workers in the first place. I don't know. You tell me. Is this technology meant to improve the human experience,
improve human wellness, improve the human condition? Or is this technology meant to enable human control visa vis a centralized authority open the pod bay door as well. I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. You see,
I don't think the goal is to preserve humanity. Rather, I think the goal fairly transparent goal is to turn humans into programmable robots with no freedom to engage in independent thought, their only function being defined as whatever is necessary to serve their corporate masters. That is perhaps the only real use case of this application and the only
way that this type of technology is actually financially viable. Quote, we find the once autonomous cowboys of the highway, strapped to monitors and monitoring vests, scanned with intelligent cameras and tracked while they drive, forced to ride along with silent spies instead of hitchhiking kids like me. Despite what I think is pretty eloquent pros there that is not some movie script. That is reality, real life applications of surveillance
technology already in use to spy on people. In twenty seventeen, the US Department of Transportation decided to do something about terrible accidents and long haul trucking. The problem, as that DOT saw it, was that drivers were evading the hours of service rules that limited how long they could drive, So the federal solution was to mandate a digital ride along to stop the evasion. Starting in twenty seventeen, the DOT required that all trucks be equipped with electronic logging
devices elds. This is the exact scenario that Professor Parahani invokes in her presentation at Davos to illustrate the use case of such brain monitoring technology. But according to reporting from the American Prospect, after the ELD rollout, trucking safety stayed the same or declined. There were even more crashes in some part of the industry. As right, the roads aren't made any safer, but corporate bosses are surely more powerful and more wealthy. Every moment spent idling is a
blinking red data point at headquarters. Now drivers get pinged by their superiors when a truck stop break goes longer than expected. When a driver is tired or encounters bad weather, they no longer feel free to make a decision to sleep or take a break, because the tracking technology signals to headquarters that the truck is idle. Elds also create a new structure of ongoing data collection, which positions employers to be able to more precisely set change and withhold wages.
They use the data to push for competition between drivers, shame drivers who are less productive, and discipline them. There is a reason, not a coincidence, why corporations call it human resources. You and I are humans from the point of view of corporations, nothing more than resources that are to be managed, deployed, and transformed into a commodity, meaning to them, humans are to be treated only as objects
of trade for means of generating economic value. The moment you seize to serve that function, there is no other outcome for you other than being discarded. When do you look at it at technology transformation, it usually takes place in the terms of a S curve. And we are just now where we move into the exponential phase. And I agree artificial intelligence, but not only artificially intelligence, but also some meta worls near space technologies. And I could
go on and on, synthetic biology. Our life in ten years from now will be completely different, very much affected. And who master or SOI technology cheese in some way will be the master of the world. Masters of this technology will be masters of the world. Klaus Schwab, the WF kind of oftentimes shrouded in this kind of conspiratorial mystery, but if you listen, they are actually pretty transparent in
terms of telegraphing what their plan is. In this case, technology, while pitched as a tool to empower humans, is in reality an instrument of control to rule the masses and increase corporate power. A silicon value lawmaker wants to protect workers from employer spying. Assembly Member ash Kolera proposed a bill Monday that he said would ensure workers gain some
protection from off duty employer surveillance and retaliation. The Workplace Technology Accountability Act, or AB sixteen fifty one, would create a set of privacy standards for employer workplace monitoring to rules.
All right, So not lost on me that I'm sort of advocating for government intervention as a potential solution to protect work or privacy, since I also in this piece heavily alluded to the fact that governmental agencies and other centralized corporate authorities are prone to abuse such a technology. But what I would say to that is, I'm not opposed to governments creating rules. It's just who are they creating the rules? On? Behalf of that is what we
have to pay attention to. Does the rule centralized power or decentralized power? Is the rule meant to benefit multinational corporations or regular citizens? That is how I think we should evaluate legislation. That bill, by the way, did not even receive a vote. It was withdrawn before even a hearing. Big business predictably got involved to kill it and smear it as a job killer and that is the point.
The current economic paradigm necessarily incentivizes or requires businesses to grow, to look for new frontiers, new geographies to conquer, to monetize. It just so happens that we've just about colonized every corner of the globe. So the mind, which was once sacred to the individual, is now the final untapped trove of value, and it is under siege to be conquered
and exploited by the ruling elites. So let's be mindful of that as we scrutinize AI power, surveillance technology and the ways in which various groups, whether it be big business or consortium of public and private interests, look for ways to manufacture public consent to accept this technology. That is all for me this time. I hope you found today's segment about surveillance and brain monitoring technology to be informative and helpful. What are your thoughts? Is boss weare
a concern for you? Is privacy concern for you? I would encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Also make a ton of other videos like this breaking down many different topics on my YouTube channel fifty one to forty nine with James Lee, I would encourage you to check it out and subscribe. The link will be in the description below. Of course, keep on tuning into Breaking Points and thank you so much for your time today. Cheles tair Pak, Welcome back to Breaking Points.
I saw some news about TikTok and social media screen time limits that be built into the apps. I thought you'd be the perfect person to talk about this with the Breaking Points audience. So, yeah, what's happening. What's the big headline? You offered a bit of a correction, let's take it in there. Yeah, so there's a few headlines happening about TikTok right now, but what we're focusing on was a big headline last week is that TikTok is implementing limits on teens to just being on the app
for sixty minutes per day. That was the headline and that's what a lot of people on Twitter were going with, you know, big shock value. But there is missing context
within that headline. So what it left out is once this limit is hit, the user is able to put in a passcode that they set for themselves, unless they're under the age of thirteen, the parents sets the passcode for them, so they can go right through that limit, similar to the way that we have Apple screen time screen time limits, and also that they can turn off the feature completely. So that's where it gets a little weird.
But what is good about it is that it is going to be a default setting for those under eighteen years old, So I want to be very precise. So the significance is when you download TikTok for the first time and you're under eighteen, there is just going to be by default the setting that there's going to be a sixty minute limit. And the key thing that people should understand then is that this limit is optional in the sense that whenever you hit the sixty you just
put in the pass code. When you said the point about how thirteen year olds will require a parent to input the number, how many thirteen year olds are even like using TikTok, I don't use the app, so I'm just like curious about that, Like under thirteen's yeah. So it's similar in the way that Instagram, if a user is under thirteen, it is supposed to kind of be a parent run account if the user is under thirteen and they created the account themselves, and the birthday obviously
shows that they're under thirteen. Even though it's easy to bypass that by in putting a that shows you're over thirteen, they cannot post on the app, and they also have a bit of more content generation in terms of what is pushed them as well as they don't get ads and things like that. So it ends up not being attractive for people under thirteen and they end up not really utilizing it unless they're utilizing like their parents' platform
for example, but it's not frequently used. This, I would say, is mostly a big story between those like thirteen to eighteen and what do you think about social media screen time limits in general? So screen time limits are kind of proven to be very ineffective within China right now. For it's actually users that are under fourteen years old. Within TikTok, they have a hard screen time limit of forty minutes per day and it's no efans or butts,
like there is no passcode. They actually get kicked off after forty minutes per day. This is inching towards that. But again we know as just like adults using screen time limits, it's something more to make you. It's more
for awareness than it is for like clearcut enforcement. And what TikTok is also pushing with this as like weekly emails to teens about their screen time and all these different things that again it's very similar to what Apple has within the system, and I think it's pretty ineffective though it is again good for awareness. But what I really like about this is that it is becoming the default setting because right now, users like ninety five percent
of users never change their default settings on apps. So when you have kids come in and the settings for social media platforms are default for privacy and safety and their well being, that can make them more conscious of these things and their consumption. So that move about it, I do think is positive. But again the fact that it's just a screen time limit, I don't think it's
going to be effective in the long run. TikTok said that they did beta testing on this and within the first month it made use of screen time limits within the app go up two hundred and thirty four percent. But I'm more interested in how many of those users actually within five minutes of getting that screen time limit actually exited the app. I assume it would be a very very small person. Yeah, so why is TikTok doing this?
Assuming good faith and bad faith. There is two different answers of the question, because on the one hand, their whole business is keeping you on the app so that you see more ads, you scroll more, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Are they doing this because they're concerned that there's a lot of just discourse in the country and there's a lot of even like legal and political talk about like prestrictions in the way that China has them.
How how should we think about their motivations here? For sure, I would say there is a ton of pressure on TikTok right now, and especially just how advanced again the algorithm is, and the design of the platform, having a endless scroll, bottomless feed on like ever before on other platforms, is known to be extremely addictive, and the time spent on this platform because of how addictive it is, is
way more than any other platform right now. So it sucks users in As adults, we have all experienced that on TikTok if you've ever been on the platform, and so we know that it was probably just as bad, if not worse for kids. So there is a ton of pressure on them with that. Also, there is just a ton of legislation talk around youth well being in social media right now over the past two years. Joe Biden has mentioned it in the State of the State of the Union, addressed two years in a row now.
And also there's a bunch of different things on the table. So you know, California last year passed the Age Appropriate Design Code. There are other states right now having that in play. There's KOSA, there is a different bill that is trying to ban kids sixteen and under on social media. And there are a bunch of things at play right now because in the US there hasn't been a bill protecting kids online passed since nineteen ninety eight, and obviously
the Internet is completely different than nineteen ninety eight. Social media wasn't even a thing back then. So there is a lot of pressure right now against just social media companies in general. And I think TikTok, first of all, the pressure amongst them as well as just trying to be a leader in that space, probably wanted to make this move. But I will say Instagram has had parental
controls for years now. We're going to launch youth mode for kids years ago, but they ended up pausing that because there were a lot of just discrmpancies and scares around that. But yeah, so TikTok is trying to just be a player in the space of youth well being for sure. You know something I'm curious about when you
use the word addiction. I'm really interested in the like clinical use of the word addiction and just how we actually think about it, because, for example, back when I was in high school, like I think you could say that me and a lot of people in my generation of cohort were addicted to Facebook. Now we're just like not on Facebook. I tried to use Facebook for an event recently and I literally couldn't figure out where the event section on the mobile apples because I'm so unused
to using it anymore. So like I was addicted, but I wasn't addicted. Like there's a world war caid work. I don't want to sound like a libertarian here, but this does seem to be like something like that, Like
how do you think about that? I think it's a mix, uh, the type of content you're pushed, the features that what is enabled on the platform, and all these little cultural things that create these subconscious pools to always be opening these apps, whether it's notifications, whether it's public facing number metrics, all these different little things are these nuances that make people more appeal to keep checking the numbers, keep checking
the content, keep checking the notifications. And this has just become more prevalent over the years. I mean, yeah, I was on Facebook heavily ten years ago, but just the different features and everything weren't as compelling as the feature designs are on TikTok today. They have really optimized time spent on the platform and really hitting our psyche when it comes to that. Yeah, it's kind of funny. I'm comparing this to Facebook in the you know, late two thousands.
But like, obviously, if Facebook would have could have designed what we now have of TikTok, they'd be in a much better place than they'd be enjoying that. So it's not necessarily a defense. Yeah, like, can you get Twitter dow Yeah? Surprisingly yes, but slightly Yeah. Well, I mean this is this is the this is why tech talks so unique, just like putting aside the geopolitics and the China and the band debate, Just like short form video is just like the apex of mobile based computing entertainment.
It's a lot more engaging than text or sharing things among friends. It's like, instead of making social media about people, you know, which is Facebook and Instagram or at rest Instagram at the start, it's about things outward, beyond yourself.
So I think the last thing that people are thinking a lot about I would love to hear your thought on is just like the debate around social media TikTok, Instagram and depression, which relates to all this because if we're thinking of social media as something that can cause depression, that could cause like self image with teen girls to be in a disastrous place. Obviously they're gonna be calls for screen time limits, bands, etc. Like what's your big
take on this issue? Yeah, it's a loaded question. I feel like this topic can be like a two hour conversation, so or try to keep it short. Okay, So first of all, we'll talk about my experience. So when I was in middle school and early high school, I was heavily on Tumblr, and Tumblr was known to be like the first platform that really romanticized mental illness. I didn't know what suicide was before then, I didn't really know what mental health issues were before then. This platform really
exposed it to me. Because it's a mix of like Twitter, Energy and Pinterest, as well as like anonymous anonymous question platforms. Tumblr was kind of like the Holy Girl of all of that, though it didn't have an algorithm. It was
all based on who you followed. But I was exposed to content of people cutting themselves, all these different things, and when I was twelve years old, it warped my mind almost to think that an appropriate reaction to any feeling of negativity or sadness was to contemplate hurting myself.
It was this weird mind warp right right. And when I think about TikTok today, Wall Street Journal did amazing coverage of this, I think about three years ago now where they made a couple thousand bots on the platform and they gave these bots different interest and one of the bots they gave interests of sadness and depression, And within forty minutes of this bot being on the app, they were watching the hashtags that had anything to do with like sadness and depression, any of those any of
that type of content, they would the bot would watch those videos for longer. It got a little mixed up of if the bot one relationship content or all these different things. But again within forty minutes. Around ninety percent of the content pushed this bot had to do with sadness and depression. It makes me really think about Tumblr and my experience there, But it was more self curated TikTok when it gets a sense of like your state of mind, your mood, everything, and is continuously pushing this
content to you. The other ten percent of the content that was pushed to the bot was supposed to be content that kind of served testing their other interest, but a lot of that content ended up being advertisements. And as an adult, I've seen this. I saw it with the Andrew Tate phenomenon. When I was interested in that in terms of like curiosity around the whole phenomenon of it, I was getting pushed like every other video on TikTok
was Andrew tait. I remember when the Queen died, for example, you know, rest in peace, But I was never interested in that type of content or just like conversation around the royal family. I was getting pushed so many videos about her that day. I watched one in full out of maybe fifteen of them. In the next five videos
were about the Queen. So when I think about this, when you're exploring your identity and exploring different sides of life, exploring different emotions in your earlier state of mind and just your earlier years. An advanced algorithm like TikTok can just push you into these rabbit holes like crazy, and that is really worrisome on TikTok right now. I've been tweeting a lot about this and it kind of sounds trivial,
but it's actually pretty crazy. Is this trend of plastic surgery is exacerbating like crazy TikTok pushes like so like the trend cycle has gotten so much shorter because of the platform and so many different areas of life. But for example, someone who recently blew up the platform. Every year, there's a few people who are known to be like the Holy Grail creators of the platform kind of has
a really positive sentiment towards plastic surgery. And now all the biggest lifestyle influencers on the app have been getting plastic surgery in the past month. It's actually crazy. And a lot of the conversations about this, because you know, a lot of the conversations about girls and mental health have to do with comparison and editing their pictures. All this different stuff. People are worried. We have even adults who have made the conscious decision themselves to get these
types of things. They're worried that teen girls are also consuming this content because as soon as you're thirteen, you're seeing the same exact content as everyone else on that app. You're able to see all of this, And there's this weird conversation about transparency versus yeah, the safety of young users because they are able to be exposed to all of this. So it's kind of like a rant on the TikTok side of it, but it's these rabbit holes
as are pretty crazy. Yeah, I mean, the real takeaway there is that algorithms, especially in the TikTok short form video context, are just so powerful and we can't just understate what they can do, and not in like a science fiction y unhelpful way, but just like, don't just think this is This is why it's exhausting when someone just refers to TikTok as like you know, people dancing and stuff like the steaks, and of what this means
is so much bigger than that. So I think the last question I'll ask you is I want you to think about like the teen girl aspect of this. Why do you think this is affecting teen girls more of and boys, Because as you now, there's been a lot of discourse now about how like young men in America are struggling in a much of other contexts, but this seems to be a place where we're specifically talking about
like young women. Seems to one of the only indicators, hey, outside of school, like work, et cetera, that we're saying, actually, young women are doing much worse here being on men are. Do you have a theory or like a reaction to why that's happening. I feel like the conversation around young young men and boys a lot of it has to do with kind of systematic things. I feel like social media obviously plays a part in it, but I do
feel like there's a broader cultural conversation. I think a lot of the things happening with teen girls are very social media specific, and you know, in magazines everything beauty, beauty standards, whatever, comparison has always been pushed. But again,
these algorithms exacerbate that relationship like crazy. And it's also known that girls are more like they are kind of the ones who post on social media more when it comes to like Instagram and TikTok, Twitter and like YouTube are kind of a pretty even mix, but on things like Instagram and TikTok, it is mostly girls who are posting and kind of running those platforms in terms of content a lot of the time, and a lot of that does have to do with, you know, lifestyle type
content and beauty standards and all these different things. There's kind of jokes all the time of like today's thirteen year olds look the same as like today's twenty five year olds, and like all these different things of like pushing them to girl up a lot faster and get into these different consumer culture things a lot faster. So I do think the girl conversation is very much social media specific and the guys is kind of a mix of maybe some more systematic things as well. I think
that's an actual place to leave at Jewels. Thank you for joining us on breaking points. You want to give a shout out to where people should find your work if they're want to delve in deeper. Yes, I'm just at Jewels Turpack on all platforms, So see you guys there. Thank you, marsh Wessume Hi. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor in chief of the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People and This is the Art
of Class War. On breaking points, a sixteen year old was crushed to death on the job by a multi ton tractor. A fifteen year old died after falling fifty feet on his first day working for a roofer. Horrific revelations continue to come out about the common exploitation of child labor in meat packing and food processing plants, industrial and office cleaning, and even auto manufacturing, including in at least four Alabama parts suppliers to Hyundai and Kia. These
are not stories from the early nineteen hundreds. This is
happening here now, all around us. While we Americans like to believe that child labor is a thing of the past, an antiquated detail of a dark history that is safely in our rear view mirror, the sad reality is that even today, in the year of our Lord twenty twenty three, the exploitation of children and their labor continues to be a dismal feature throughout the production and supply chains behind many of our favorite brands and companies, including Lucky Charms, Cheetos, Walmart, Target,
Whole foods, fruit of the loom, Ben and Jerry's I mean there are kids farming the produce that we buy in the supermarket, kids making the parts that end up in our cars, kids cleaning industrial bone saws, office buildings and houses. Kids on construction sites and in the backs of restaurants. And it is getting worse. As Lauren Gurley recently reported at The Washington Post, according to data from the Department of Labor, child labor violations in the United
States have nearly quadrupled since twenty fifteen. And if that wasn't bad enough, Rather than be justifiably horrified by this situation and take serious steps to address the scourge of child labor, Republican lawmakers in states like Arkansas, Iowa, and Ohio are pushing to roll back labor laws and to make it easier for businesses to hire miners, have them do more dangerous jobs, and even extend their working hours.
As doctor James a Merchant, Professor Emeritis of Public Health and Medicine and founding Dean Emeritus in the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa recently wrote in the Des Moines Register quote last November, the US Department of Labor filed an injunction in US District Court in Nebraska against Packers Sanitation Services for illegally employing children in
meat packing plants. It serves Judge John M. Garred swiftly granted the injunction, requiring packers to stop employing oppressive child labor. The Department of Labor has now found that packers had employed at least fifty children in night shifts in four Minnesota, Nebraska, and Arkansas meat packing plants. The children, ranging in age from thirteen to seventeen, were not fluent in English, and they cleaned kill floor, bone cutting saws, grinding machines, and
electric knives with corrosive cleaning fluids. The Department of Labor reported that some of the children had suffered chemical burns and other injuries. Now in Iowa Senate File one sixty seven in House File one thirty four are moving forward in the General Assembly. The bills, as introduced BOOST seek to weaken existing child labor governed by Child Labor laws governed by the Fair Labor Standards Act by proposing multiple
changes in Iowa co Chapter ninety two. The bills would change Iowa law to allow children to work in several hazardous jobs. They would allow children as young as fourteen to work in freezers and meat coolers, work prohibited by federal law, and they do not clearly state in what other making meat packing plant areas work would be permitted.
They would allow fifteen year olds to load and unload non power driven equipment weighing up to thirty pounds and up to fifty pounds, with a waiver from the Labor Commissioner, work now prohibited by federal law. Provisions for youth under eighteen could allow youth to be employed as motor vehicle drivers,
clearly hazardous work, also inconsistent with federal regulation. Would also allow youth under eighteen to sell alcoholic beverages currently prohibited by Iowa law, if approved in writing by a parent or guardian end quote. All right, so, what the hell are we doing here? How the hell is this even a discussion right now? And what do these attempts to roll back child labor laws tell us about the economic, political,
and frankly moral state of our society today? And what can we do to fight back to talk about all of this and more. I'm honored to be joined today by Charlie Wishman. Who currently serves as the President of the Iowa Federation of Labor afl CIO. Charlie was appointed unanimously unanimously to the role in May of twenty twenty by the IFL Executive Council and was elected in August of that same year at the sixty fourth annual Iowa Federation of Labor AFL CIO convention and has ser in
that role ever since. Charlie became Secretary Treasurer of the Iowa Federation of Labor AFLCIO in January of twenty twelve and was re elected to that role many times after initially serving as Communications director for the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL CIO. Charlie is a member of AFT Local seven sixteen and has previously been a member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, as well as
the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Charlie, thank you so much for joining us today on Breaking Points. I really appreciate it. Hey, thank you very much for having us. Wish we were meeting under other circumstances, but Breaking Points is exactly the kind of appropriate title for
where we are right now in Iowa. Yeah, man, I mean I think that's well put, because, like, we got a lot to dig in here in a short amount of time to do it, and I know how busy you are, so I really really appreciate you taking time to chat with me. And let's just start by making sure that folks watching and listening have just all the basic info that they need about these bills in Iowa specifically, right, So what would these bills do if signed into law?
And like who the hell is actually pushing for these rollbacks of child labor laws? And like what is there justification for this? Sure, so a lot to unpack there, So I think it's important to start with. Yeah, so who is pushing this sort of legislation. So there's kind of the people who are out front doing it, which is the restaurant Association and the hospitality associations and things like that. You have the home builders and some folks
who are out front. But it's really interesting, I think, just really briefly, I uncovered in the last Iowa Workforce Development notes that the actually our Governor's office had helped draft this legislation as well as the Department of Workforce Development. So it's not just we can't find enough people to work at McDonald's or Burger King or wherever. There's something much much larger going on here. And I just think that you see that reflected in the legislation because I
can go over what it currently does. There's been slight amendments to it. But you know, this is just some of the low lights I think, highlights, lowlights, whatever you want to call them, of this legislation. You know, it would allow youth as young as fourteen to work six hour nightly shifts during the school year and expands working
hours to extend to nine PM. And the problem is those are both beyond federal regulations as they're currently written in for Labor Standards Act and DOL Rules and Regulations. But in addition, it also allows employers to recruit teams for a work based learning program for jobs and formerly off limits hazardous but now they would be open to fourteen to seventeen year olds under waivers provided by Iowa
Workforce Development or the Department of Education. In our state, It would allow sixteen and seventeen year olds to perform light assembly work in plants or that manufacture or story even explosives would not performed in that shipping area by machines.
Even if you're not working with explosives, if they're in the building, that's pretty darn darned dangerous, as you could see in East Palestine, Ohio or even here recently in Iowa, we had an entire plant explode and we still don't even know all the chemicals that were in that plant at the time. It allows sixteen and seventeen year olds to work in meatpacking plants and shipping in assembly areas.
Ask anybody who's ever worked in a meat packing house, there is no place for anyone under eighteen anywhere inside of a meatpacking plant. It allows sixteen and seventeen year olds. They struck the word coal from mining, but we've got other kinds of mines here. You know, the coal mines have been decommissioned pack probably decades and decades ago, but we still have gypsum mining. You know, your drywall comes
from somewhere. We've got other kinds of minds here. And you know, one of the more troubling proposals does go back to the restaurant industry, and for example, it would allow sixteen and seventeen year olds to serve alcohol, which is I know a lot of people at first blush are like, hey, that's no big deal, But I don't know would you want your as I I asked the Majority leader of the IO House when we marched on his office, do you want your daughter to be bartending
at sixteen? For god knows who who's been drinking for how long, let alone if they're a pedophile or not. He said, well, you know, my daughter works at an ice cream shop, and it's like, well, there's a big difference between ice cream and alcohol. So I mean, that's just some of the stuff that's out there. But if I think that, what I'm talking about here is, if you go and look at everything that's in this bill, it's not just the restaurant industry that wants the changes
that are being made. And even with the example right of like, oh my daughter works at an ice cream shop, I mean like, by and large, I mean not even by and large, we already know that the people in power who are making these decisions, who are pushing for these bills, it's not going to be their goddamn kids who are in those those minds. It's not gonna be their goddamn kids who are cleaning you know, bone saws
and meat packing plants. It's not their kids who are going to be cleaning office buildings at midnight when everyone's gone home. And they know that. And I think that's kind of like one of the big unspoken truths about this whole situation is like it's not just that, you know, Republican legislators in states like Arkansas, Ohio, and Iowa are pushing to roll back child labor laws and so like it's like child labor is going to come back. Like
child labor is already here. As I said in my introduction, a lot of it is being done by you know, brown kids, poor kids, black kids, migrant kids, people the most underprotected and underserved populations that we have, and everyone just kind of sits around pretending like it's not happening, even though deep down, I think we all know that it is right, and the people pushing this legislation damn well know that as well. And you know that's that's
me speaking for myself. I'm not speaking for for Charlie or anyone else here. Just want to be clear there, But like you are right, okay, It's like I'm really trying to restrain myself here because I'm about to lose it, man.
But like, let's let's put you said something about how like the deeper you dig into this, the more you realize that this is part of a bigger issue, right, And so I wanted to focus on that, Like, let's let's put this bill in Iowa or these bills in Iowa in context, like along with you know what's going on in Arkansas in Ohio, right, like, because I think people may hear about this and they may wonder, like, well that that may just be like a sort of
legislation that's put out by like some fringe elements. You know, it has no you know, hope of passing, YadA, YadA, YadA.
So like, how much is this push to roll back child labor laws in multiple states around the country, Like how much of that is actually a fringe movement by the most extreme edges of the business class and it's political acolytes, And how much is it actually symptomatic of a broader onslaught to further weekend labor protections across the board and workplace standards, right and in so doing, to undercut organize labor power, and you know, undercut workers who
are trying to make a living wage. Right, I mean, like we everyone knows we're in a what's called a tight labor market right now, right, I mean we talk about this all the time in the reporting we do here at breaking points on my show. Working people at the Real News Network like that. That's why you're seeing or partially why you're seeing a lot of rank and
file action. That's why you're seeing people quit their jobs in record numbers because they have more leverage to say, if you don't pay me more or treat me better, I'm going to walk right. At the same time, we've had the you know, the boomer generation I mean, is
aging out of you know, the workforce. A lot of people died or got sick or still dealing with long term effects of COVID, right, I mean, so this is the kind of labor situation that we're seeing here, and it feels like this is again me editorializing, this is
me hypothesizing. It feels like that rather than I don't know, listen to the concerns of workers, improve your workplace, treat workers better, pay them more, let them have a better work life balance, make yourself more attractive to job seekers. Instead of doing that what we are instead doing is saying let's raise the retirement age and let's let kids work at these jobs instead. No, I want to go back to something that you said earlier. It's let's be clear,
it's not their kids that we're talking about here. It's it's it's our kids. Right. There's nobody named that's going to be working in a packing house, I guarantee you, and if it is, it has nothing to they're no relation to Senator or Speaker of our House, Pad Grassley. Because you hit on something that's really really important here is that while this seems like out of the blue, out of left field, this wasn't on my Bengo card, right. No, what is going on here, in large part is a
legalization of bad practices that are already going on. You just saw the Department of Labor uncover hundreds of violations in meat packing plants of people who are under the legal age doing cleaning services. But this is just like one that's one industry, one section. This is going on all over the place. I think there was a New York Times article earlier where there's a girl who's a young Latina I believe, who's fifteen who's working past midnight
to make our cheerios. Right. This is multiinational corporations. They're trying to legalize their already bad practices. And last year, I think we saw the big push in a lot of states, including ours, was let's go after unemployment because really the problem is that there's just a bunch of lazy people out there sitting at home watching Judge Judy or whatever. Well, like you just explained, that's not the case,
that's not where this is coming from. You've got a whole bunch of people who are just fed up with it all. We've had, i'd say a number of strikes. Our most high profile one here in the Midwest and in Iowa I think has been the John Deere strike, But there's been so many that you have heard of, and this really has picked up since the pandemic. It's because people have had enough. It's because they've been called essential for three years now and they get treated as
nothing but expendable. And you go to any picket line and the first things out of their mouths when you're talking to a member who's on strike, they know exactly how much their company made during the pandemic, and they know exactly how much their CEO made during the pandemic, and they know exactly how much they're making, and they know they know that trickle down isn't trickling down to
them on the corporate side. Now, we got to help them understand the tax side of it as well, that trickle down isn't working for the working class of this country. Never has. But this is just part of the bigger picture of what's going on here. I think you had so many great points in your editorializing. I wouldn't call them editorializing their opinions, I'd call them facts. Thanks man, I appreciate that. And again I just I beg people, right, don't push this under the rug, right, don't just hope
that this is going to go away, right? I mean, because it's not right. You know, this is the most craven crap that you can imagine. But they're going to keep pushing it if they can get away with it, right, and if we keep buying these bs justifications for it, if we believe the corporate manufactured narrative that quote, no one wants to work anymore and that's why businesses have
to seek fourteen year olds to do these jobs. Bull crap. Right, listen to my show, Listen to the workers I talk to every single week, and tell me that people don't want to work. Then you'll actually hear directly from the mouths of the people who make our society run, the people delivering our packages, picking our food, delivering our grocery, so on and so forth. Right, I mean, these are hardworking people who are being taken advantage of left and right.
You to listen to workers, not to overpay pundits, not to bought off politicians, and not to chamber of commerce boot liquors. And I also wanted to, if I may editorialize one more time, just really entreat people to understand that as we as a society that has can agree that this is not worth it, This is not this
child labor crap needs to stay in the past. We also need to soberly acknowledge that, you know, the thing that is always in the back of our minds, but that we, especially here in the West, especially in developed countries, have the luxury of pushing out of our view right, pushing out of into the back of our minds. You already know what I'm about to say, but it needs to be said. Your phones right, have minerals are made
from minerals that are mined by children around the world. Right, A lot of the food that you eat is picked by literal children. A lot of the clothes that we wear is made by in sweatshops that are contracted out to some of the biggest brands around the world. We know that this is a problem, but we just allow ourselves to comfortably put it out of sight, out of mind.
So even as we address it here in the United States, we need to understand that this is the direction that the business class that capital that the ruling and order giving class always want to move. They want to close down in dust industries in the United States and move them across the border where they can pay workers next to nothing. Right. They want to always search for the lowest possible wage they can pay the most and the most exploited they can make their workforce so that they
can pocket all the difference. That is what this is really about, in my opinion, And we're not going to be able to address the systemic issue there unless we understand that this is not something new, This is not something that is just happening in red states or you know, like random parts of the country. It's happening all over the place, and it is happening sadly all over the world, but there are things that we can do to fight
against it. And Charlie Wit the remaining couple of minutes that I have you, I just wanted to turn it over to you and ask what can people do to push back against this? And what is being done on say the labor side and the legislative side, and like how does the Department of Labor factor in all of this? Sure all very good questions, So number one I would say, like always, whether you think you're being heard or not, you have to contact your legislators, even if you don't
believe that they're listening. The last thing that you ever want to hear is them come back to you when you complain to them about it later during election time or whenever, them saying well, I never heard from you about this, which sometimes is a BS deflection, but sometimes it's true. So they absolutely absolutely need to hear from
you in whatever form possible. We also need to make sure that even in states like ours, where legislatively and both inside the capitol and outside the capitol, we're trying to raise hell to make sure that our voices are heard. But knowing that some version of this is likely to pass. You know who knows. I believe in believing right, and that's what we do in the labor movement. But gosh, we have to make sure that our voices are heard in all kinds of different ways. So write letters to
the editor, write op ed pieces. Even if this isn't happening in your state, it is coming to your state soon, I promise you. I feel like I'm out here with a lot of other people who are trying to jump up and down and and raise the flag and say, hey, listen, help us stop this thing. Because we can stop this in a red farming state like ours, which by the way, wasn't always read and we can come back from this. But like, if we can do this here, we can
stop this from moving all across the country. But again, if it hasn't even gotten there yet, you know, make sure that this issue is front and center and preemptively make this an issue, and make it make it so that it's just deplorable for anyone to even want to
bring up. I mean, there's a reason why our governor and why workforce development will have to look in note in the minutes from you know, the board meetings and things to find out that they've been working on it because they wanted a secret because they know it looks
like crap. So one of the most important points here, Max, I think, you know, we have the Department of Labor that is typically relies on waiting until state legislation has passed before they'll come in and actually enforce the rules, regulations and laws that are already on the books before they tell us state, hey, you can't do that. And too often our progressives forget that the courts are not our friends and that we can't rely on them really
for anything. And unfortunately, you know, part of the bigger picture here too is that this is another attack on the federal government to be able to enforce on states what is right in terms of federal labor standards. And you know, it's not just about this, It's about so many different things that we see weakened. But it's this is, you know, we cannot pretend like there's only two branches
of government. Progressives need to realize and take seriously that there are three branches of government and that our courts are are in big trouble. And then we have to take that seriously, and not only that, we need to make sure that corporations are forced to do what they are supposed to do, because we know too often that unless it's at legislative or regulatory gunpoint, they're not going
to do the right thing. So that is Charlie Wishman, who currently serves as president of the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL CIO. Charlie, thank you so much for joining us today on Breaking Points and helping us break this down. Man, I really really appreciate it. Thank you for having me, and I think right now we're at the stage where we're just really uncovering a national tragedy that has been
going on for a while now. But the next time we talk, hopefully that we're going to be talking about how things are moving in the right direction and that we were able to maybe either if we're not able to stop this, how we are able to push back all over the country and make sure that not only are we were making this a better world for workers, but for our kids and generations to come. So thank
you very much, appreciate it all. Right back at you, brother, and thank you all for watching this segment with breaking points and be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, the Real News Network, with links in the description to this video. See you soon for the next edition of the Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Solidarity Forever,