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More scrutiny coming for Harvard University's admissions policy. Let's go and put this up on the screen for the New York Times. The headline here is Education Department opens civil rights inquiry into Harvard's legacy admissions and inquiry and admissions preference for family of alumni and donors began after the Supreme Court's decision last month limiting affirmative action. So the tld R here is basically, listen, you all know what happened to the Supreme Court decision. That's a no more
affirmative action, which considers race as a class. You can consider it in individual circumstances. Harvard was part of what led to that case getting the Supreme Court, and specifically their treatment of aations in their admissions process. And so now in the wake of that, the Education Apartment is saying, okay, well, if we're ruling out affirmative action, what about the incredible preferences that are given to the wealthy and specifically through
the legacy admissions process. I actually did a whole monologue on this earlier this week because there's new research about exactly how much this matters in terms of the children of the very wealthy, not even one percent, like the point one percent. What a massive boost they get into admissions into top schools like Harvard and the other ivys through the legacy process. It gave them something like an
eight times advantage over your average student. And with regard to Harvard, they have some specific numbers here which are pretty wild. So they say Harvard gives preference to applicants who are recruited athletes, legacies and not just you know, so you know you are the child of someone who also went to Harvard, relatives of donors and children of faculty and staff. As a group, they make up less than five percent of applicants, but around thirty percent of
those who are admitted each year. And there is you know, because wealth has been concentrated among white people in this country for a long time. That means about sixty seven point eight percent of these applicants who are admitted are white according to court papers. So you've got a wealth privilege here that also translates into disproportionate number of white people.
Yeah, it's absolutely wild.
So for applicants with legacy status at schools where they are legacies, you have a thirty seven percent admissions rate for elite colleges. When they apply to a similar school where they're not a legacy, the application is eleven percent accessful, So you have almost a one in four or sorry, a four out of ten chance of actually getting in if you're a legacy, and only one out of ten if you aren't. Now, for non legacy applicants, the acceptance rate at the same school is nine point five percent.
So you can see there's relative parity for the person who's applying to the similar school when they don't have legacy status. But it's just astronomical really whenever it comes
to the actual legacy ones for elite colleges. And then the also, as you were alluding to, I would actually point more at this about the distribution of parental income for legacy admissions, some twenty nine percent are in the top one percent of household twenty nine percent of legacy applicants, the thirty six percent are in the ninety fifth to the ninety nine percent.
And we're not talking here just about income. We're talking about wealth.
And so to be in the top one percent or the top five percent or whatever of wealth in this country is a ton of that is millions of dollars in networth.
So the inquiry is specifically going to look into allegations by three different liberal groups that Harvard's legacy admissions process discriminates against black, Hispanic, and Asian applicants in favor of white and wealthy students who are less qualified. So that's where the race numbers come in to play here. As they're saying, listen, we're being discriminated against. This is basically, and I think this is accurate, legacy admissions are basically affirmative action for rich white people.
So that's what the Education Department is looking into.
They go on to say in this article that their Office of Civil Rights has powerful enforcement authority that could eventually lead to a settlement with Harvard or trigger a lengthy legal battle like the one that led to the Supreme Court's decision to severely limit race conscious admissions last month, reversing eight decades long approach that had increased chances for black students in those from other minority groups.
So that could be the end case here.
You could end up with this one in front of the Supreme Court as well, And my recollection is one of the justices.
It might have been.
Gorsa specifically wrote about how about legacy admissions, how it could potentially also be indefensible. So you may have, you know, an interesting split on this one at the Supreme Court if it ultimately ended up there.
But I think this would be a major step in the right direction.
Nukid.
This is what we need, real meritocracy. That's the whole goal of the affirmative action decision. That's great, get rid of it. There's no reason you shouldn't.
Another reason why legacies is complete BS is that you know, the elite status these colleges have obtained has really only happened, let's say, in the last fifty years or so. So if your grandfather was just lucky enough to be like a relatively wealthy, like Boston businessman, like why should your grandson be allowed to get into based on that person's code.
It makes no sense.
Or you know, if you were one of these like wealthy California families that went to the original Stanford School of minds, Stanford wasn't Stanford like back then.
Yeah, then you're in a fourth generation or something like that.
Again, you're literally writing on geographical luck of where your great grandfather happened to be. So, look, I don't believe in that. I don't think America has founded that on all. It's effectively as like an American cast system, and that's what my family and many others you know, want to escape by coming to the West.
So I think it's important to get as far away from that as pobible.
Yeah, and it's important to know too.
One of the interesting results that came out of the study that we covered earlier this week is that it doesn't actually make that much of a difference whether you go to one of the ivy leagues or the other of the twelve like elite private schools that they studied in that in that particular research doesn't make a huge difference income wise. It makes a huge difference in terms of whether you make it into these super elite institutions.
That's where the big difference shows up. And so yeah, it really matters, whether we like it or not, who gets into these schools. And the fact that you have the you know, children of the elite who are given a huge leg up in terms of admissions. I mean, that's part of what makes it so that you do increasingly have this rigid class based society where now we're in a situation where it's actually easier to withscend your you know, whatever class status you were born with in
a lot of European countries than it is here. It really is a direct attack on the American dream all that would say.
I mean, I mean, I'm even looking here.
People have talked a lot about this, specifically whenever it comes to like the Supreme Court. I mean, you know, if you if you look at the current makeup, the current makeup of the Supreme Court leads almost entirely to the Ivy League. They even say that even the road to a Supreme Court clerkship starts at just three Ivy League colleges, Harvard, Yale, and Prison. I personally know people going through this product. If you think admission to Harvard
is crazy. Getting a clerkship is the most wild process I have ever heard of in terms of the machinations, the crap you have to go through. I mean definitely pays off, don't get me wrong. You get a big fat bonus whenever you eventually leave your clerkship from a nice law firm. But again, you have to It starts so far back, like when you're a twenty two year old, and there's just no denying that.
Like, when you're that young, you ain't getting there on merit.
You're getting there based on what your parents are. They who you know, Yeah, exactly, And it all come to the dinners. And even when you get there, like you got to have some serious cash because you have to be attending and you know, networking and all of these things. For every Barack Obama who is the Harvard Law Review President or whatever, there are plenty of rich kids who are all around you who end up into these positions
of power. So anyway, destroying it or at least making that more equitable is is incredibly incredibly important, and not equitable just in the dei way that they use that term.
All right, we'll see you guys later.
Hi, I'm Matt Stoler, author of monopoly focused substech newsletter Big and an anti trust policy analyst.
I have a great segment for you today on this Big Breakdown.
It's about a young YouTube based content creator and entrepreneur with millions of fans and his new snack food business line, and more broadly, today I'll be talking about why chocolate bars are kind of.
Boring and what monopoly has to do with it.
Last month, the fierce new competitor of Mars and Hershey's went on a popular YouTube channel and attacked the chocolate deopoly for bullying rivals and buying up shelf space.
Here's what the guy said.
And like no one has been able to get in there.
It's like Hershey's, Mars, Mars, Lent and Ferraro, and it's just it's pretty crazy. But even most of it, it's just Hershey's and Mars. They like to do like seventy five percent of chocolate revenue in America, and so it's like it's kind of like monopolistic. It's like you can't if you have a successful chocolate company, they'll just buy you are just like fully use you don't get shell space. And so these guys like just own all the chocolate
space and they don't innovate, like a Hershey's bar. To me, just tastes like, yeah, it tastes very processed, and I don't really like it at all, to be honest, I mean, and so it's so fascinating to me, like why why are they not new, innovative, cool, like you know, snack products coming out more often. It's because these guys just have all the shelf space and they have no need to innovate. It's just you're just gonna buy what's there,
and no one's really threatening them. So to me, it's fun to like put pressure on them and try to get as much shelf space as possible and you know, try to figure out what they're doing but better. It's like the only thing in my life outside of YouTube that I've like gotten hooked on and like on that same high yet working on YouTube.
That was James Steven Dolinson, better known as mister Beast, the most popular YouTube influencer in America Mister Beasts Empire, and that's increasing what it is rivals Amazon Prime in terms of reach. He has more than one hundred and sixty million subscribers on his main YouTube Channe and two hundred and seventy million across all of them. His video recreation of the popular TV shows Squid Game, for example,
has four hundred and fifty six million views. Mister Beast is a twenty five year old college dropout who's simply obsessed with business strategy. His goal isn't just to be famous, but to compete aggressively in every realm that he can to make goods and services that please the public. He's been obsessed with commerce since he was thirteen and started to crack the YouTube algorithm. Now one result of his obsession in talent is that his videos regularly exceed top
grossing movies and TV shows in terms of reach. He uses his fame strategically asking random pedestrians whether they subscribe to his various social media channels many do, and incorporating.
This feedback into his videos.
Over the last few years, mister Beast has branched out into a whole bunch of other products, doing experiments such as opening hundreds of mister Beast Burger restaurants using ghost kitchens two years ago. While this wasn't a massive success, they are still available in some areas and they were a test case for his fans' interest in food products off of the YouTube channel. Year and a half ago, mister Beast created a line of snack foods called Feastables,
headlined by organic chocolate bars with fun, lighthearted marketing. Now, as an aside, I know a lot of people hate marketing. Just realized that those of us who do hate marketing are unusual weirdos. This is actually the kind of thing that most people like.
Which is better my chocolate bar are the one that costs one hundred times.
More stepan or oh really, there's seconds.
Us almost from Mister Beet's expansion into chocolate led him straight into the maw of dominant snack food companies, whose purchase of shelf space with giant retailers keep firms like his excluded from the market.
The power of exclusive arrangements.
Is something I've I've talked a lot about and it's not a function of the market, It's a function of law. Remember earlier, mister Beast cited two problems with getting into chocolate as a small rival, acquisitions by dominant firms Hershey's and marsh will just buy you out and then exclude of rivals via the purchase of shelf space. They own all the shelf space. Now, let's talk about shelf space,
which is really valuable. So in two thousand and five, Procter and Gamble bought Gillette for fifty seven billion dollars. It's a similar line of business. They sell in retail outlets, razor blades and things like that. It's not that different from chocolate. One analyst said, and here's a quote that shelf space is diamond encrusted gold. So it's exposure to
the consumer, and everyone wants exposure to the consumer. And indeed, monopolizing shelf space doesn't just happen in razor blades and chocolate. It is actually pervasive across the economy. The Department of Justice Anti Trust Division is suing Google, for example, for buying up what is the equivalent of shelf space in search, which is the default to your to browsers on your phone.
The Federal Trade Commission got involved in a series of murders in the razor blade space, which we're also all about shelf space that I do with Harry's meat monopolies business, soface for firms, soft drinks, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and TV streaming. They're all actually about power and distribution. For example, the Kroger Alberts and Supermarket merger is about shelf space. It's
about consolidating shelf space. Now controlling shelf space, in particular bribery to control shelf space, and that's what Mars and Hershey's are engaged in, although they wouldn't call it bribery exactly. That's the key to creating monopolies. And there's a lot of research on this. Now, we eat unhealthy food because of this shelf space monopolies. We are charged too much
for medicine because of these shelf space monopolies. We get paid less than we should because of these kinds of shelf space driven monopolies, and we have less credible information about our world because of these shelf space monopolies. Indeed, it's not too extreme to say that one of the core social problems in America fostering everything from obesity to the dominance of big tech, is control of shelf space, of what is put in front of us as a.
Consumer, and who controls that.
So the collusive deal that mister Beast encountered between big suppliers and big retailers, well, it makes sense from the perspective of a big business. It's good for the dominant chocolate incumbents who get to box out rivals like mister Beast and a lot of us other smaller entities. But it's also good for retail incumbents, who get better prices from Hershey's and Mars than independent stores that compete with them. It's bad, however, for people like you and me, for
everyone else. Now here's the thing that's kind of astonishing about this situation, and about mister Beasts going on YouTube and saying exactly what he did. Agreements like this, the ones between Hershey, Mars and retailers are illegal, and they have been illegal since. A law banning control of shelf space through these kickbacks, called the Robins Patman Act, was signed into law by President Franklin dell Or Roosevelt in
nineteen thirty six. Now, at that time, the law was meant to stop the same kind of business behavior then being used by a different company called the A and P.
Grocery Giant, which was the original Walmart.
In my newsletter at the Big Newsletter dot Com, I cite this passage, which highlights a section of the law that says middlemen can't pay or be paid to exclude rivals. The law is still on the books and it would seem to indict all the games played by retailers. So why is mister Beasts encountering exclusionary behavior. Well, enforcers stopped enforcing this law in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties as part of the reversal of the traditional American policy
frame against monopolies. They also stopped enforcing anti merger law. So that gets to the other thing that that Misterbeast was talking about.
Now, why do they do this?
Well, one key argument for not enforcing this law was that the new techies and then eventually the Internet made fights over shelf space irrelevant since you can sell things through mail order, through websites and get around retail bottlenecks, so you know, there's plenty of competition, or so said.
The argument that, clearly though, isn't true. After all, it's impossible to find someone with more expertise in the Internet and Internet marketing than mister Bees and he's complaining about the shelf space bottleneck.
There's good news today.
There's a whole series of small business groups, from the National Grocers Association to the National Association of Convenience Stores to the National Beer Wholesalers Association. And these actually aren't just small businesses. They're small, medium, and even some large businesses, just not as big as Walmart or Amazon. These guys are actually lobbying for the enforcement of the Robinson Patman
Act and other rules against exclusionary practices. So here's an ad by one of these trade associations of smaller and medium sized stores playing to try to influence policymakers to bring back enforcement of this law.
This is the only place that you can buy fresh groceries for twenty to thirty miles.
Independent grocers are the backbone of countless communities, but big chains are using their market share to squeeze suppliers and box out competition. Americans face higher prices, less choice, and access to fresh food. Existing antitrust laws have been ignored for a generation. It's time for a change.
That's the reason all these laws exists.
We just want our fair show.
Tell the FTC, protect American families, revive the Robinson Patman Act.
Another good sign is that the Federal Trade Commission, under thirty four year old Chair Lena Kahn and several other commissioners alv Ro, Meadoya and Becka Kelly Slaughter. They're actually trying to resurrect the Robinson Patmanact.
Now.
Con is exquisitely aware of the problems that mister Beast cites. In fact, in an article for Time Magazine that Con wrote ten years ago when she was a young journalist, she described the candy oliga and how it uses control of yes shelf space to effectively make bringing any new candy into mainstream markets extremely difficult. Now, mister Beast will get into the market since his brand and distribution capacity is so powerful, but it's much harder than it should
be for him. And if it's this hard for him, then imagine all the other innovators that are really good at making candy but maybe not that great at making YouTube videos, that are finding it impossible or you know, don't consider it, and then enjoy the endless see of boring Hershey bars, thanks for watching this big breakdown on
the Breaking Points channel. If you'd like to know more about big business and how economy really works, you could sign up by going to the link in the description below and taking a look at my market power focused newsletter.
Big Thanks and have a good one.
Hi, a 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.
On September fourteenth, last year, right here on Breaking Points, just days before we were set to potentially see the first national rail shutdown in this country in thirty years, I interviewed Michael Paul Lindsay the Second, a locomotive engineer for Union Pacific. Paul is a military veteran who has worked for the past seventeen years as a trained conductor and then as an engineer based out of Pocatello, Idaho.
After largely ignoring the long brewing crisis on the nation's freight rail system for months and even years, when corporate media finally started covering the national rail dispute that was playing out last year between the class won rail carriers and the twelve unions representing over one hundred thousand rail workers, their coverage was predictably chock full of rail industry spokespeople, business class serving pundits, pearl clutching economists warning about the
damage or railroad strike would do, and anti union cranks of all stripes. As someone who had been interviewing countless railroad workers all year for the Real News and for my podcast Working People.
And even here on Breaking Points.
It was frankly maddening for me to see how difficult it was to initially get other outlets to talk to
actual workers and hear their side of the story. But I also saw how much of an impact it made when a handful of brave rank and file workers, particularly those affiliated with the Crosscraft Solidarity group railroad Workers United, at great risk to themselves and their jobs, spoke out publicly about how Wall Street greed and corporate greed had destroyed the rail industry for the sake of record profits.
They had run railroad workers into the ground, damaged our economy and our vital component of our supply chain, and endangered communities like.
East Palestine, Ohio. Paul was one of those workers.
Through his popular TikTok channel, through interviews with media outlets, and through op eds written for industry publications like Railway Age, Paul has exposed with a veteran railroaders insight and with a deep clear love for the industry, that he had devoted his life to the destructive business and labor practices of Union Pacific and the other Class one rail carriers.
When we hear the term.
Whistleblower, we tend to think of names like Daniel Elsberg, Mark Felt aka Deep Throat, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, heroes who have risked their freedom and even their lives to expose government lies, abuses of power, and state secrets that the public has a right to know about. But there are actually a range of federal statutes designed to protect those who blow the whistle on their employers as well, especially when those employers are breaking the law and or
endangering their workers and the public. And frankly, any way you slice it, Paul is a whistleblower, and for his whistle blowing, after seventeen years of dedicated service and good standing with the company, Paul was recently fired by Union Pacific.
To talk about all of this and more, I'm honored to be joined on the art of class war once again by Michael Paul Lindsay the second Paul is great to see you again, brother, although I wish more than anything that we were meeting under less despicable circumstances, And I just want to start by saying from all of us here at breaking points that we are sending all of our love and solidarity to you at this incredibly difficult time.
Well, it's great to hear from you again.
Max.
Always joy doing segments with you, and you do a fantastic job of spotlighting the issues that need to be discussed for the sake of labor and for the country and for the businesses that rely on you know, the services of the railroad. You know everyone that the consumers that rely on it. I appreciate you taking your time for this. Max.
Right back at you, brother, and you know, let's we got a lot to dig in here too, here, and I know you've got a lot going on, so I don't want to keep you too long. So let's start by reflecting on your seventeen years working on the railroads. Talk to us about why you started working on the rails and what that work was like. And then let's talk about what you and I have talked about on
my podcast and previous segments. Let's talk about how you have seen firsthand the industry change over your seventeen years working for Union Pacific as railroad executives and their Wall Street sharehold holders pushed these top down profit maximizing policies to be implemented across the rail system. How did that change your work and why did you feel compelled to start speaking out about this publicly.
Let's see so the first part, what it was like initially starting out, Why I started at the railroad.
I always wanted to work for the railroad.
I always loved the rail industry ever since I was a kid, and I loved trains. I started getting involved in learning about the industry and how it works from a very young age. It wasn't just liking trains themselves, but I wanted to see the industry expand and succeed.
And you know, as a kid looking back seeing the merger movement growing up at the time and seeing all these paint schemes of railroads that were now merged into larger and larger and larger monopolies, not realizing at the time that I'd never see something like this again, and that it was major, it was historic, and it was
going to affect my career going forward. But I finally got my opportunity after I got back from deployment in two thousand and six in the Marine Corps and hired on in California in the Bay Area, and it was Yeah, I was about the proudest moment of my life, and it took.
The standards were very, very high back then. They really.
They really tried to make sure that you were going to conduct yourself in a way that was safe, because bottom line, safety was really the biggest important factor because they knew they couldn't run a profitable railroad if it wasn't safe. And they had one.
Hundred plus years.
Of figuring that out of chopping off people's arms and limbs and killing people over the years in the eighteen hundreds to finally create a safe environment. Well, so then you ask how I've seen the industry change, and with the Wall Street Wall Street consolidation and the desire for more with less, there's been less emphasis on things that we would consider very basic, like maintenance.
Things that industries like the like the aviation.
Industry wouldn't dream of cutting because federal regulators would just come down like a ton of bricks on them. But something that we all started to start to notice is that especially when it cut when it came to maintenance, if they had a train that was running out of town that was long, they keep they keep increasing the length of these trains, and it creates problems for a terminal if you have multiple trains coming through a terminal.
But by god, they've got to get there for teen thousand foot monstrosity out of there, and it's blocking every single main line in the terminal. Well, it doesn't matter that maybe there's some brake shoes that need to be replaced. We can just send that on and kick it down
the road to the next terminal. And then it gets to the next terminal and they've got their fourteen thousand foot train they need to build, and they're like, well, we can't do it here, kick it on to the next terminal, and then you know, cutting staff, cutting the numbers. The numbers are people doing the work so that even if they wanted to do it, there's not enough people there on hand, because if they do not make their departure time numbers, then it's going to make their lives miserable.
They're going to hear it on the conference call. I've seen.
A major stray away from caring about safety, and it almost seems like it's a calculated cost analysis, like they figure, well, if we have a toxic derailment, that poisons a river.
It's only going to cost this much.
But if we managed to run fourteen thousand foot trains for three years leading up to it, we're still going to make profit even after paying out these people.
They don't care.
So no, they clearly don't.
I mean, like and just like, East Palestine is a perfect example, right like I mean, I am begging folks, go to the real news, go to my podcast. I have not only spoken with railroad workers about East Palestine. I've interviewed residents living in and around Ease Palestine. They have been completely abandoned. They can't go home, They and their kids are continuously sick, they can't drink their water.
They're not getting the help that they need from their local or federal governments, and their sure as hell not getting the help that they need from Norfolk Southern. And yet their lives have been completely upended. There is no normal to go back to for them. This is their normal. That is what they have told me. And yet, to make Paul's point, that is just a line item on Norfolk Southern's like budget. That is just like, okay, yeah, the cleanup's going to cost this much. The negative publicity
is going to cost this much. But ultimately the destructive practices that Paul is talking about, making the trains longer, making them heavier, having fewer people working on the trains, having fewer people checking the track, checking the cars, fewer people checking the signals in the dispatch office, trying to replace human maintenance work with technology like hotbox detectors, which Paul has exposed the flaws in through his popular TikTok, and in fact, that was a big reason why Union
Pacific fired him. We're going to get to that in a second, but I'm just trying to kind of like refresh everyone's memory about what Paul and I talked about in September, what we at breaking points were talking about all throughout the contract dispute on the railroads last year, while all of this was happening, while staff across the rail system has been getting cut.
Year after year after year.
The Class one freight rail carriers have eliminated thirty percent of their workforce since twenty fifteen alone. And so when you cut that many people, and you take all of that risk on of trains derailing, of workers getting exhausted and run into the ground, and workers are reportedly quitting in record numbers. You are inevitably going to have catastrophes
like East Palestine. You are going to have over a thousand derailments around the country like we average here in the United States every year.
And the way that everything played.
Out last year between scab Joe Biden and Democrats and Republicans in Congress forcing railroad workers to accept a deal they did not want, they effectively endorsed all of the practices that Paul is describing here that have taken over the railroads for the sake of Wall Street and executive profits.
Because let us not forget while all of this is happening, the express goal is to maximize profit, and the railroads have been successful there, even though we are moving less freight than we should be, even though shippers who have to use the rails are pissed off by the high prices and declining quality of service, even though rail workers like Paul are losing years off their lives from working under draconian attendance policies and workloads and having fewer people
to help around. All of that has contributed to the railroads being more profitable than they've ever been. Stock buybacks, shareholder dividends, executive pay have all gone through the roof, while workers, consumers, and members of the public like the resident of East Palestine are getting screwed by this.
And that is what Paul was blowing the whistle on again.
Through his TikTok channel, through interviews, through his own writing, you can see and hear how much he loves this industry and how much how worried he has been about where this is all headed. And we saw in East Palestine where it is all headed. And instead of being rewarded for that, instead of being commended for being a hero and a patriot and doing a vital public service, Paul was targeted and fired by Union Pacifics. So let's talk about that, Paul, while I still got you to
us about the conditions of your firing. What happened, what reasons did the company give, and what does Union Pacific's treatment of you say about the industry as a whole.
Right now, we'll answer your last question first.
What it says about the industry as a whole is this is an industry that feels that they're untouchable, that they will not be held accountable, which, of course Joe Biden when he broke our legitimate labor strike and then supported work stoppages by the companies themselves. They were emboldened that they are untouchable. So the conditions leading up to
it really surrounded East Palestine. Because I've been making videos about the railroad for a very long time, I had millions of views, and I decided to make one on East Palestine and the detectors. And one of the big things that's come out now is that those detectors are not actually regulated by anybody. The FRA doesn't regulate them, even though they totally should be a regulated device.
So if anything came out legislatively, that should be it.
And I made a video about East Palestine and they put that and four others into an investigation against me and terminated me based on those five videos.
But it's interesting it wasn't local management.
They were told, oh, we got a call from Omaha telling me to telling them to pull them out of service, you know, to pull me out of service.
And I just had a good, full work day and they came up and said.
Yeah, Omaha, Omaha called, We've got to pull you out of service and escort you off the property. And then they held a formal investigation over it, and then to make matters worse, to add insult to injury another one of those. These companies are untouchable. So I believe that anyone in labor that was forced back to work against their will without a contract that they voted on would agree that we feel like slaves to the company, slaves
to the attendance policy and everything else. And I mentioned that in the investigation, and then they came back and investigated me again for using that word to describe myself and said that apparently that's racially discriminated. So then they fired me again, defamed my character and tried to and basically fired me again for using that word. And this is a company that openly, willingly discriminated against people of color for you know, lots and lots of years over
their history. It's really amazing that they would have that moral high ground to think that they.
Should do that.
And then they came back and used another video I made about the SEMA derailment in California and fired me again. So I've never heard of this, and no one in the Union has ever heard of this, where they wanted me so bad they held three formal investigations against me
to fire me to silence me. And my end goal of this is legislative protection for whistleblowers, you know, really, because I believe that these whistleblower protections that we do have were created in an era before social media, and the railroad is saying that they don't believe that I
have any protection because I was using social media. Well, if I can be the one that sets the precedent that gets people to be able to have a voice out there, to speak out against their employers and to speak out against companies when they are openly pressing workers, when they're open to openly violating safety, you know, then then it'll all be worth it.
Jesus man, I'm I'm barely containing.
My rage here because this is just so egregious, so ridiculous, and so unforgivable. Right, like two things I want to say, and we're going to wrap up in a second, but like one, it is it is, you know, big posturing from a company like union person to suddenly get woke and say like, oh, this railroad worker is racist because he described himself as feeling like a slave to the company.
So we're going to go after him for that.
We're not going to do anything about the conditions that make him and other workers feel like slaves to the company. Instead, we're going to invoke, you know, like this, this kind of pseudo racial justice language to discipline and silence our workers. And I would just say that is bullshit, and we see you Union Pacific. And you know, another thing I want to emphasize, because there were also developments on the
investigation into the derailment in East Palestine. Recently, hearings that were held in East Palestine where railroaders like Jason Cox testified about what Paul described in his TikTok about the hot box detectors. We don't have to go into all that, but these are the machines on the track that are supposed to detect if you have, among other things, an overheated bearing like the one that caused the derailment in East Palestine. Supposed to relay that information to the crew
so they can stop in time and check it. That did not happen in time for the crew to stop the train. And it turns out there are a number of reasons for that, because, as Paul said, those hotbox detectors would have been which have been implemented on the rails explicitly to replace people like the car men and the maintenance of way guys who are checking the cars in the track with their eyes, with their expertise, to say that is not safe to go on the rails.
The rail carriers say, well, let's just automate it and it'll all be fine. Clearly, in East Palestine it was not fine. But the thing on the point I'm trying to make is that in those hearings that were held in East Palestine just the last month I believe, or at the end of June, Norfolk Southern admitted that, Yeah, the federal government does not set the standards for what constitutes like a threat level to report to the crew.
It's all determined internally by the rail carriers themselves. They're the ones who determine whether or not a signal or a distress signal caught by one of those hotbox detectors rises to the level of let's relay.
This to the train.
As Paul described it to me on my podcast, Working People, this is like if you're flying on a plane and there's an engine that blows out. It's like that news goes to the ground control folks and they decide whether or not to tell the pilot like that is insane to me. So the Norfolk Southern basically admitted what Paul exposed and his TikTok about the hotbox detectors, and Paul has been fired.
By Union Pacific for that. That is not right.
And I could go on for days about this, But our main goal here is to let people know about this injustice, let people know about what whistleblowers like Paul are going through, and to help build momentum to fight against this. And so with the last minute I've got you, man, I just wanted to ask how you're doing and what people out there can do to support you.
Right now, I'm doing okay, just kind of traveling around, spending some time with my daughter that I haven't been able to doing a long time working for the railroad.
They took a lot of my time.
But the way people can support is really to keep talking about these companies, to not let it be in vain. Don't let the railroads hide from what they've been doing to the US economy. It'll only keep getting worse. We need to pressure regulators to bring this industry to heal, to bring them back under control so that it actually
focuses on safe transportation and not share buybacks. You know, these problems, whether they be safety, whether they be poor transportation that results in higher prices at the grocery store, higher prices and everything else that we rely on, it'll just keep getting worse until eventually, my prediction is the industry fails and they go into bankruptcy, which they don't care about because they'll just ask you and I for a big fat bailout and say that they're too big
to fail. That's going to probably be the end result with this company if we do not do something to rein in the share buybacks and the obsession with more with less, And that's the cursed phrase I want to see removed from the industry and the corporate saying more with less or yeah, more with less where they want more profit, more productivity, more everything without having to put anything with anything more.
That's what needs to be rained in.
But yeah, so what you can do is don't stop talking about the railroad and don't let them hide in the shadows. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to whitewash the whole thing and get us to forget.
So that is Michael Paul Lindsay, the second Paul is a military veteran who has worked for Union Pacific as a trained locomotive conductor and engineer for the past seventeen years until he was fired earlier this year by the company in suspected retaliation for his whistle blowing. Thank you 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. See you soon for the
next edition of the Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, Solidarity forever.
I am here with Jeremy Corbell.
We are outside of the Rayburn House office building where we just had the historic UFO hearing. Jeremy, you were seated there right behind all the witnesses. Give us the biggest moments from the hearing, a little bit of the background about what it took to actually make this possible.
You were instrumental in that.
The biggest moment of the hearing is that it happened at all. This is the only time in history. I mean, if people knew how many times this was tried to be stopped, diminished, stalled, you heard they didn't even weren't even allowed to have a skiff because there was a guy there who could have put them in a skiff and told them all the things he couldn't say in front of the public.
Why don't we get into that a little bit. So for a skiff, it's called.
A sweatshot done. This is your story of government. This is his story because it's never happened before. Firsthand direct eyewitness to climony with somebody who is the first whistleblower who officially went through the ICIG process. That was David Grush. You've got Commander Fravor got Lieutenant Underwood, and you got Grush. That is it's exceptional what happened today. And then we'll go on to the next.
Right, and so one of the things you're referencing.
A key moment of the hearing everyone is when the congressmen repeatedly were talking about how they were denied access to a special compartmentalized facility so Dave Grush could give them specifics about this UFO program.
Yes, yeah, and let me tell you shouldn't be hard. I mean, I've been in them very recently. So the deal is this that was intentional and that bothers me this is about transparency, So you get it right there. We got a lot, so don't don't there were Adam bombs that would rop don't worry right right. Yeah, But even with that said, from the get go, from the top down, there has been an attempt and you know, just very logistically to stop this from happening, and I
we achieved it. So I'm elated because you know, I care about this truth. If it is true, I think the American public have a need to know.
So that was one of the extraordinary moments for me.
Dave Grush, Commander Fraver Ryan Grave, all of these people are testifying under oath. Dave Grush made repeated and actually stunning allegation.
So let's get into some of them.
One of them is that non human intelligences be in possession of the United States government since the nineteen thirties. That actually pre dates UFO lore. I mean, can you maybe give us some background on that and what he's talking about here.
So first of all, you said, you know, I helped set it up and all this. I want to be very clear. The whole thing about under oath, actually we had to fight for that. They all wanted to be under oath right. So that already tells you why would people not want them to be under oath R right.
So that was a huge achievement. That was great.
Now, what you're talking about it might sound fantastical, but that doesn't have any relevancy to whether or not it's true.
Yes, if that is true, then it is true.
And again the American public and global public have a need to know that information, if true. Not a right to know, they have a need to know because it would have implications for what it means I mean to be human straight up.
Well, one of the fascinating things also is that Dave Grush talked at certain points about non human biologics that we're in possession. He talked about theoretical studies of time travel. I mean, once again, he is testifying here unders he's a physicist. These things may sound again fantastical to the general audience. He is testifying here under oath.
Yeah.
But also, Jeremy, he detailed multiple threats to his own life, yes, and to other people who are around him by career government and ex government officials. Can you maybe give us some insight into what he's talking about.
It is not my position to give insight to what he's talking about. However, it is true, and I feel that that will be revealed to everybody. But you know, the point is, it's way beyond an individual. It's way beyond one person, one siding one thing. This is a symptom of what's been going on for a very long time. And there's been arguments that, well, why aren't these advanced tech that from foreign adversarial nations we just don't know?
Are are black projects? Some of our friends actually, oh yeah, think now here's the deal.
One. The UFO phenomenon is not real.
I was the UFO phenomenon has been here a long time. Yes, right, any type of advanced technology that Commander Fravor can't tell you right openly what he's doing for work right now, he didn't testify to that.
That's a man that would know. And I'll put it that way.
So these things that we're seeing, how they operate, it predates our black programs, It predates the Pentagon. I did provide something for Congressional record that was submitted into congressional records, so did George Knapp, And in that I try to detail the estimate of the situation from my perspective as somebody covering this with knowledge that I can't yet go public with because of issues like we're having with David Grunt.
So this is so important for people to understand.
He said, on multiple occasions his life was threatened, there was retaliation.
Yes.
Another very interesting thing that Leslie Keen has talked about, I know you've looked into as well, is about the.
Way that these black programs are funded.
Dave Grush intimated that it defectively involves DF Defense contractors charging the US government extra and then using that money to fund outside black programs, including possible crash retrieval maintenance study in which some cases even said one person was injured.
While that occurred.
Yeah, are you surprised by that?
No, but to hear it under oath.
To testified to the fact that the Pentagon hasn't been able to pass an audit for five years in a row, maybe this explains a little bit to some of the people here. That really what hit home to me just on a personal level, sitting there and understanding that this is all under oath, that this is being made on camera, that your statements are being injured in the congressional record, Like if they're lying, they need to be prosecuted.
They've actually wasted it my time, your time, like so many of our time.
But I mean to put yourself in a position where you could go to jail on multiple levels for coming forward on this, that brings a hell of a lot of weight, I think to the testimony.
I thank you for seeing what this is.
What this is is a hearing to motivate, inspire, and provide confidence for people who have come forward to me already, people that have come forward within certain compartments within our government because a fear of reprisal and breaking from the fold, have not come forward publicly. And again I said, the public has a need to know. So this hearing is the greatest thing that it is is it is a
symbol to give confidence. How David Grush is treated from here on out with his whistleblow or complaint, how Commander fravor how Lieutenant Graves, how they are treated right now by the public is what's going to gauge what the public will be able to learn in the future. These people are American heroes and to me, I mean I've been a champion to get them here. That that's the thing I think Commander Favors really pissed at me from time to time.
You know, he always blames me.
You know're talking about being a past, you know, get him to do things. These guys that don't want to be jumping in front of cameras.
That was very clear, just so everyone knows from behind the see was he did not want. It's hard in the spotlight.
Look, he's got a job. He's going back to work and jumping jumping, you know, to work the next day. They all came on their own dime. They all came here because of a sense of duty and maybe because I can be a past, but you know, they came because they have a sense of duty and that was really empowering. So what we're seeing here saga you're going to break down for everybody that listens to. You understand the mechanics of it more than most journalists I know
that cover it. And you've covered politics. Now you've got politics and UFOs. So you are in a quagmar.
This is the intersection. Okay, So final question, what's next?
Man, you're the guy to know many people of congressmen included, they intimated they're like, hey, there's more people come in this is just the first of many. I saw it really as the start of something, not the end of something. You are also in a position to know a little bit about that.
You don't have to give away details, but you know what, are we going to learn more?
Don't tempt me. I'm known to have a been please day.
No.
No, here's what I can say for sure.
What I can't say for sure is that there are numerous individuals that have been verified to have worked within programs of reverse engineering, of craft not of only unknown origin, but craft of extreme technol logical advancement, where the Material Sciences Commander Fever kept saying is something we have not achieved yet on the scope of humanity, and we will not ever get there for the next one hundred two hundred. I think he's being really generous with how little time
he thinks we might get there. Those people have already been put into process to be able to feel that they can come forward.
That is one thing I know is going to happen. I know there's going to be more hearings. Yep. This is like cracking the egg.
That's what we did to say, we cracked the egg, and now everybody has to acknowledge that it's cracked. As long as we keep fighting for transparency for the right reason, not using national security as a way to subvert what the American public has a need to know, but respecting national security but not using it to subvert, then we're going to make progress and we're going to all learn that maybe maybe the fabric of what we understand might change.
And I think that's evolution absolutely.
All right, Jeremy, thank you for your time. Let's let's scramble. Let's make an online oka.
The backlash against Blackrocks.
All roads lead to good for Blackrocks.
To your point though, about Blackrock becoming this absolute lightning.
Rod Desantus for example, pulling funds from.
Blackrocks, Blackrock getting its headquarters sex you.
Say here for Blackrock, an alliance with Blackrock.
We're talk an awful lot about Blackrock here on Breaking Points, and they're also the target of numerous conspiracy theories online. What is Blackrock?
This company quite literally owns the world.
Yeah, so Blackrock is an Organization's a company public listed on NASDAC.
Blackrock runs pretty much the entire global economy.
Well, here's the research more on who Blackrock is.
If you don't know that's an organization which is funded all the same people.
Yeah, so they've got all these different groups that they funded. What about who's in the narrative.
So today we're going to dive deep into Blackrock, their business model, their agenda, the kinds of powers they wield, and if they do in fact control the world.
Just a made up story, none of it's real.
Welcome this morning, United States of black Rock. Id Damn, my bed shirt felt comfy. Well, we keep it moving, So I gotta went, hopped in the shower, cleaned myself off, made myself a nice cup of coffee, and I was just about to go sit on the toilet when I got a call from my buddy. He's like, Yo, we're going on vacation. Buddy wouldn't tell me where, so I had to quick bag and hopped on my Harley. Moved down to the airport where I checked into my gate.
But I had enough time to go grab another cup of coffee.
You know me, I keep it lit.
But then we hopped on our plane and shit, we went to Disneyland.
Baby, has your interest been pinked?
Well?
I hit up cancel this clothing company. Who hasn't asked almost a million followers on TikTok in just a few months. By covering Blackrock to help us separate fact from fiction when it comes to this seemingly mysterious Wall Street firm.
When you start from who owns this company perspective, you very quickly run into Blackrock because when you start looking at ownership sheets, Blackrock, Bank Guard on State Street, the Victory investment firms are at the top of all of them.
But before we get to anything else, the first question we have to tackle is how did Blackrock get so big while the seeds of Blackrock were actually sewn within the walls of another financial powerhouse, Blackstone. In nineteen eighty eight, Larry Fink, along with seven others, founded Blackrock as an
internal asset management division within Blackstone. Within just a few months, their business had turned profitable, and by nineteen eighty nine, the group's assets had quadrupled to two point seven billion dollars. Central to Blackrocks Meteoric Rise are two transformative innovations ETFs and aladden. Their proprietary trading algorithm ETFs, or exchange traded funds, allows investors a simple and efficient way to diversify their
investments while reducing risk and costs. Aladdin is Blackrocks hensive risk management system, a digital brain so to speak, that they pioneer to keep track of portfolios and manage risk by predicting how likely it is that a specific investment will fail. Today, Blackrock is the largest of the three investment firms, managing nearly ten trillion dollars in assets, followed by Vanguard at roughly eight trillion and State Street at
four trillion. Technically these assets do belong to investors the clients of Blackrock, but effectively speaking, Blackrock manages or owns all of these shares. So what happens when the shares of supposedly competing firms are owned by the same few investment firms, Well, it effectively creates what Harvard Business Review calls quote a different form of monopoly, which they say harms competition, consumers, and the economy. Just imagine two I
stream carts next to each other with different owners. They would either need to lower their price or enhance their offerings to compete for your business. But if both cards had the same owners, they would not be incentivized to cut price because that would only result in a lower total profit for their investors. This kind of dynamic plays out every day in companies across all industries in the
real world. Take supermarkets, for example, who are the largest shareholders of Walmart, America's largest supermarket chain, Blackrock and Vanguard. Kroger's also Blackrock and Vanguard. What about Target? You guessed it, Blackrock and Vanguard. And what's happened to food prices? We've all felt it. It's gone up, up and away. This
same pattern of ownership repeats across every major industry. So what we think of as the most powerful companies in the world, companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, the executives at these firms still have to consult with companies like Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street before they make any major decisions since they have such a large share of their ownership. So the point almost isn't the fact that they own every company.
It's how such a structure of concentrated institutional ownership impact the quality of life for ordinary people.
They're deeply intertwined with political power, the political.
Powers that be.
When we talk about power, when we talk about control, there's perhaps no better evidence than being given the ability to choose winners and losers.
What in the world is happening on Wall Street two.
You're no yields one from one ninety to one sixty six.
In the blink of it up the Nasdaq, everything and more has been completely wiped out.
It was the worst day on Wall Street since the crash of nineteen eighty seven. The two thousand and eight financial crisis proved to be a remarkable opportunity that propelled Blackrock into becoming the financial titan it is today, as the firm secured uncontested contracts to take over the assets of major collapse banking institutions like Bear Stearns and AIG. A similar thing happened again in twenty twenty, when the FED tapped Blackrock to help oversee efforts to stabilize the
bond market amid the economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Now, they didn't get handed the keys by accident. It was all a very carefully and methodically orchestrated plan. Over time, there is a playbook, so to speak, campaign contributions, making friends with both major political parties, specifically targeting the House Financial Services Committee, the folks who could potentially cause Blackrock headaches,
and of course, employing an army of professional lobbyists. Just how high up in the US government have they been able to penetrate well. Currently, there are three Blackrock veterans with appointed positions in the Biden cabinet. Brian Diese, the former global head of sustainable Investing at Blackrock, is Biden's chief Economic director. Michael Pyle, BlackRock's former global chief investment strategist,
is Kamala Harris's chief economic advisor. Let me tell you those two positions do not require Senate confirmation, and they are actually the first duo of the modern era to go from the same Wall Street investment firm to jobs as top economic advisors to the President and the Vice president of the United States at the same time. Wally Atayemo the former chief of staff to Blackrock CEO Larry Fink.
He is now the current Deputy Treasury Secretary. And let's not forget Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of Blackrock, is a member on the board of Trustees of the World Economic Form.
Let me tell you it's not who's the President's controlling the Wall persons.
Defense. This is conjecture, but it cannot be a coincidence which firm, of all firms was capped to lead the investment to rebuild Ukraine. You guessed it, Larry Fink and Blackrock. Another data point. In twenty twenty one, Blackrock became the first global asset manager licensed to start a wholly owned onshore mutual fund business in China. So do they own governments? Swell?
It's hard to say exactly what goes on behind closed doors, but I think all the evidence points to significant influence that certainly warrants further scrutiny.
The people who are forcing these companies to bud light themselves already have enough money. Companies like Vanguard, Blackrock, the companies that own major Stakes and Target or Disney, So with all that shareholder cloud.
They can force these companies to do whatever they want. They confess this is what they're doing. Behaviors are going.
To have to change, and this is one thing we're asking companies.
You have to force behaviors, and at Blackrock we are forcing behaviors.
Ah yesg. Environmental social governance, the woke agenda or whatever you want to call it, the idea that return on capital shouldn't be the only consideration in an investment. This is definitely a complicated topic because The genesis of this idea isn't based on indoctrination, as some of us have been led to believe, but rather it is a marketing campaign based on deflection. It's meant to give the illusion that a pro often maximizing firm cares about more than
just profit maximization. They also care about other considerations like the environment, diversity, sustainability, fair compensation, et cetera, et cetera. But the complication arises because there becomes this kind of unavoidable hypocrisy. Does Blackrock have this woll agenda to incentivize companies to diversify the composition and expand the pool of
talent beyond just white men. Yes, they do, not because they care about equality, but because they are trying to deflect from the fact that they also buy up entire neighborhoods that will in effect eliminate the possibility for historically marginalized groups of people to claim a stake in society
through home ownership. Can Blackrock really advocate for climate sustainability net zero by twenty thirty or twenty fifty if they just named Saudi Aramco CEO ADMIN NASAR to their own board of directors.
The last five and ten years, you saw Lary Fai and you saw Blackrock very aggressively talk about ESG.
And in particular climate.
In fact, I remember doing an interview with him where he talked of a climate and carbon as being one of the central issues of his life.
Of his life.
He then gets tortured in the last two years by the right. It appears to some degree he is now placating that group, and I imagine may shoot himself in the foot again on the other side. And what I fear is that people are going to think that this firm has just flipped floped from one side to the other side, to you know, and just to you know, whatever the wind is blowing today is the way we're going.
And that is the central conundrum for BlackRock's ESG marketing campaign. Nobody is happy. Investors aren't happy because ESG funds haven't been shown to perform very well. Conservatives flaming culture wars, Oh, they're not happy. And just to make a point, in several states, they've actually pulled their funds completely out of Blackrock. Progressives they hammer Blackrock for their hypocrisy, and there's a
lot to criticize there. Larry Fink the CEO of Blackrock, recently said he is no longer using the term ESG because it is politically weaponized and he's ashamed to be part of the debate on this issue. The truth is, from my perspective, Larry Fink isn't ashamed of ESG. He's just come to the realization that his marketing campaign didn't work and that it's completely incompatible with the nature of
the business that he's trying to run. And the end result is not only that everyone is pissed off, but his firm's bottom line is being materially affected.
You need to assess humans in the space as individuals making their own choices. You need to assess corporations and companies as individual corporation to companies making their own choices.
Evilness is by definition subjective. But here's what I'll say. Based on the incentive structures in place, Blackrock derives the majority of its revenue from investment, advisory and administrative fees charged to its clients. Their entire business model is predicated on increasing the value of the assets they manage, meaning that day by day, year over year, corporations as a whole need to grow, need to increase their value the rules of engagement to grow in a purely capitalist society.
You could like this or you could not like this, But it requires companies to extract the most value they can in every transaction business to business and business to worker, and give up the least amount possible. There's little to no human consideration whatsoever. The very reason why Blackrock have been able to make a name for themselves in a matter of just three decades versus firms that are hundreds and hundreds of years old, is because of an algorithm.
An algorithm that distills everything down and everyone down to ones and zeros and the present value of all future cash flows. There is, by necessity, an inherent inhumanity. Will we be financialized and commodify everything where you and I and everybody else become objects of trade? Now I think that's pretty darn evil, But again, evilness is subjective and it's up to your own personal values and interpretations. That's all from me this time. What are your thoughts about Blackrock?
Sound off in the comments below. If you enjoyed this beyond the headline segment, I would encourage you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel fifty one forty nine with James Lee. The link will be in the description below. I'd really appreciate that, and as always, keep on tuning in to breaking points and thank you for your time today.