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