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Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints.
We have less than two days until what almost one hundred and fifty thousand workers could walk off the job in Detroit if they don't strike a bargain with the big three automakers. We're going to talk about that in just a moment. We also have some news on COVID origins. What else what else we got today?
Well, of course the big news about impeachment. We're going to start with that. We have lots of video clips that I think give a great glimpse and said, what was happening in Capitol Hill yesterday? Ryan was there, so he can share some color from actually doing some on the ground reporting inside the halls of the Capitol last night. We're going to talk about the Biden administration's new waiver to unfreeze some of Iran's own money and the controversy
that has erupted. We're going to hear from the White House their response to criticism from Republicans. We're gonna be talking about Woody Harrelson his response to some the war, the war in Ukraine. I'm going to be talking about a little bit of a snitch line that's happening in La Ryan, You've.
Got some Yeah, Today, we're going to get inflation numbers. Those are going to be out by the time that you've watched this, so we'll be talking about that later in the program. We'll talk about the inflation numbers as they relate to worker power and the battle between capital and labor. And then at the end, speaking of capital, we're going to talk about this incredible story of how one of Warren Buffett's kids bought a town.
Why not if you can?
Why not? Why not?
But Yeah, So I was on Capitol Hill yesterday and all the reporters, how are you responding to Kevin McCarthy deciding that he's going to open an impeachment inquiry?
And it was so kind of depressing.
It's like I was with Federmal who cares you don't have the votes for this?
Why are we doing this? What's going on? Anyway? Here is what everybody was responding to.
Let's roll Kevin McCarthy's kind of quick press conference that he called yesterday morning.
I am directing our House Committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry to President Joe Biden.
This logical next step.
Will give our committees the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public. It's exactly what we want to know, the answers. I believe the President would want to answer these questions and allegations as well.
Now, crucially, the way that an impeachment inquiry is opened is through a vote on the House floor. Typically, typically that's what it is supposed to trigger all of the kind of extra powers that come with that impeachment inquiry and the ability to obtain records, deeper subpoena power. McCarthy has said he's not going to do that, He's just going to declare an inquiry. But we also have some
suggestion of where this declaration come from came from. Here's Matt Gates speaking on the floor A little bit after McCarthy's announcement.
On this very floor in January, the whole world witnessed a historic contest for House Speaker. I rise today to serve notice, mister Speaker, you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role. The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate total compliance or remove you pursuing to emotion to vacate the chair.
So there you see very clearly the connection here between impeachment and the motion to vacate, and this is all tied together. That's why this is such a busy fall because this is going to get into the government shutdown argument, This is going to get into changing the speaker, and this is going to get into impeachment. All of this is colliding in this short number of days that they're actually in session a before a government shut down at
the end of this month. So now they're going to be fighting over whether they pass a continuing resolution to fund the government into December, which is McCarthy's preference, and then they have to figure out how to fund the government before the end of the year, or I mean, it's McCarthy's like between a rock and a hard place, and he's been there for six months now, six months plus, so he has some experience there. But holy smokes, is this entangled not for him in the next.
Couple of months.
And so Gates is saying that if he puts a CR on the floor, he will introduce a motion to kick McCarthy out of the speakership. A CR stands for continuing resolution, which also isn't very helpful if you're not following Congress. It basically means whatever the kind of line of the budget lines are now, those continue until a certain date. So if they do a CR until December fifth, then the government stays funded at the same rate until December fifth. And they've been kicking around the idea of,
you know, a CR into December. Gates said, no, you do that, We're going to kick macarthy out of the chair. Now does he have the votes to kick macarthy out of the chair, We don't know. But the alternative is to pass a dozen appropriation bills through all the different committees and then pass those through the Senate and then have those signed by President Joe Biden.
Well that's a complete fantasy, of course. So he's saying neither is okay.
And right right, and there are a million We're going to get into this, I think a little bit later in the block, but there are a million different scenarios where neither is okay. Like those are the two options on the table, and they're not workable whatsoever. So it's it's just going to be for people who want their government to function. Some people don't want their government to function. A lot of people in the on the right say like, screw it, you know you're not doing anything for us anyway.
I don't mind if you shut down for a month, but if you're not in that camp, this fall is going to be, uh, not going to be. It's going to be a bloodbath from that perspective.
And what makes it all feels so empty and why it felt so hollow upon the Hill yesterday is Later in that speech, Gates talks about the things that the Freedom Concus wants kind of in exchange for their leveraging of this this power.
Here's what he said. He wants to vote on a bounced budget amendment.
He wants a vote on an impeachment inquiry, not just a declaration of it. He wants to vote on term limits. So he wants these three votes, very reminiscent of force the vote back in twenty twenty one when the left was saying we want to vote on Medicare for all, because just like that vote, Gates acknowledges on the floor. He says, these things aren't going to pass. Bounced budget amendment's not going to pass. He no, term limits probably won't pass. And he says, oh, term limits might pass.
It's an easy thing to vote for because you know the Senate's not going.
To take it up. And he says even impeachment inquiry might not pass. But they just just wants to be seen fighting.
He needs it.
Yeah, he needs to give his base something. So it feels like McCarthy justes, okay, fine, vote on a balanced budgement. But then right exactly, you have people like Nancy Mace who are like, why are you making us walk the plank on these unpopular items?
And that's where so there's the Tuesday Group Republicans, god of moderate Republicans or people who are aligned with them, versus the Freedom Caucus Republicans. And actually, when you have the slim of a major of a majority, both are in a big position of power for Kevin McCarthy. And so Nancy Mace though, went on CNN with Caplon Collins
and defended the impeachment inquiry. And this is where without a vote, and this is where the rubber meets the road for Republicans in that they know even in moderate districts. So Nancy Mace is from a solid red state, but you know, not a not a let's say, you know, red meat necessarily.
Part of South Caroline, Charleston.
People are doing all right, not like a populist haven in South Carolina, but people want impeachment. Republican voters want impeachment. It doesn't matter if you're populist or not. They look at what's happened with Joe Biden Hunter Biden. They see that there were outright lines over the course of the campaign, and they want an impeachment from it. And so here's Nancy Mace defending impeachment. As we heard this from Kevin
McCarthy as well. But this is the key. You're going to hear what she says that it gives them certain powers. And Ryan and I are going to get into whether or not that's actually the case. But here's Nancy Mace making that case.
You support launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
Well, I mean, it's hard to say at this point. I think there's a difference between an impeachment vote and an inquiry. The inquiry would give us another tool and a toolbox, specifically to look at Joe Biden's bank records. Everyone's screaming about the evidence. Where's the evidence. The bank
records hold all of the evidence. And if the American people, Caitlin, if you could see the suspicious activity reports that I have seen on the Biden family, you would too, would probably support an impeachment inquiry just as a tool to get more information on specifically the bank information bank records of Joe Biden as family members. That's an important tool in our toolbox.
What is a difference an inquiry and a peachment?
There is no difference on They have to vote on whether to move forward on impeachments.
That's what the vote is.
That's what when we voted on impeachment of Donald Trump, who we impeached twice because there was real credible evidence that came up publicly and was evident and obvious, not this hazy gray area that they're hanging their hat on. They've acknowledged there's no evidence against Joe Biden. They are going to vote. The House has to vote to move forward on an impeachment period. They're adding the word inquiry like they're still going to do some investigations. They've been
investigating for months and months. They've acknowledged they have no evidence.
Well they have not actually acknowledged they have no evidence.
But on her other point, you do have to vote, and this is according to Politico reported this last night.
If you don't vote in the House that you're.
Opening an impeachment inquiry, then you're just some dude saying some stuff, and then therefore you don't open up the extra powers that come with the impeachment creer. That's according to Trump's Office of Legal Counsel right that issued or issued a kind of internal ruling on this. And it matters because you know, you say, well, that's just the opinion of the Trump administration, and now it is obviously
the opinion of the Biden administration. But it matters because now if you get a subpoena that gets sent to the White House, the White House, we'll just send it back. Like here's the OLC memo from the Trump administration, thank you for your subpoena. Once you vote on the House floor, then you come back to us and then maybe we'll
comply with this. Their only route then is to try to sue them, but that gets into some awfully diceyat balance of powers questions, and the White House can be like, hey, Supreme Court, thank you.
For your opinion.
Yes, but we're also not letting you weigh in on the balance of power issue like this.
And I think that's imminent no matter what, even if Kevin McCarthy brings this to a vote on the floor, I think all of this is going to get tied up. Because I actually went into this yesterday. I was trying to figure out exactly what powers are granted to you by declaring an inquiry or even voting to start an impeachment inquiry. And it's basically Court's interpretations of what it
means what powers. As you were just referencing what powers you have of the House of Representatives, what powers constitutionally impeachment grants you. And so if you're going for bank records, if you're confident that starting this impeachment inquiry is going to get you bank records, I would imagine that's going to get tied up in courts no matter what, because the Biden administration has zero interest in complying with any
of that. They don't feel like they have to comply with any of that, So I don't see why they wouldn't kick it to the court system anyway. So it's not going to be neat and clean no matter what. Here's actually speaking of the Biden White House. Here is a response from Ian Sam's he's working in communications over at the White House. I think he's actually a communications director there. He said, Well, anyone asked Speaker McCarthy, why
an impeachment inquiry is the next logical step? The House GOP investigations have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing by Potus. In fact, their own witnesses has testified to that, and their own documents have shown no life to Potus. I don't think that's true, but we'll keep reading what Ian Sam says. Reminder, McCarthy already said weeks ago in Fox he'd move forward with an impeachment, an appearance in which he based his impeachment push on non existent obstruction of
a non existent request. Why no mainstream accountability for that falsehood? We can keep going with Ian Sam's Here is his final tweet or X on the matter. McCarthy is being told by Marjorie Tayler Green to do impeachment or else sheield shut down the government. Opening impeachment despite zero evidence of wrongdoing by Potus is simply red meat for the extreme right wing, so they can keep basically attacking him. They admit it. We can move to the next element here too.
Yeah, so you admit it.
I mean, I don't know. So I actually think this is pretty interesting because even in Axios this morning, Mike Allen's newsletter Morning Newsletter admitted there's a big problem for the Biden White House here, which is that Joe Biden flat out lied about a whether he had been involved more than just like very very super officially in the business. He lied about that. He lied about whether Hunter Biden
made any money from China. Those are two things he said on the campaign trail in twenty twenty that if we zoom out to the thirty thousand foot view and look at it, say, why would somebody lie about those two things? Even though we may have like color here and there, and you know, understand it a little bit from you know, the perspective of the politics. If you zoom out as as an average American, you look at it and you're like, well, that's pretty weird and that's
pretty bad. So I think Republicans feel like they have the win at their backs when it comes to that. Now, on the other hand, when it comes to all this minutia about tying it back to Joe Biden and you know what the text about the big guy means, and you know, giving half your salary to Pops all of those things, that's a little bit more difficult of a case to make, even though I think that's legitimate evidence.
The other fundamental problem that this impeachment inquiry has is that it involves activity that predated and was known before he was president. So we had an election, I agree on which the Republicans ran heavily on the idea that he was corrupt, and he was elected anyway, and so it would be breaking new ground to say that you're going to impeach somebody for something that they did before
they were in office. Generally that's you know, you prosecute them or you sue them, But impeachment is for things that you do in office. You know, the whole audience is going to say, what about Spiro Agnew. I don't know about all the details.
Of spiritu agg.
Everyone in the audience right now.
What about spirit ag And he did not get impeached. He'd resigned in disgrace, so that's slightly Would he.
Ever have gotten impeached, I don't know.
He was busted in all sorts of Maryland corruption and he was Nixon's vice president.
That's how we wound up with Ford.
And so that's the only one that I can think of that, you know, you might have gotten close to getting impeached for something that he hadn't done while he was in office. And then I think is a high part of voters too, because the voters are like, look, this was up to us, you know, we just sid at this, And the Republics will say, well, there was you know, Twitter censored us from like sharing all this information. So therefore I guess we have to impeach him now.
But also, as Matt Gates admitted in the in the pieces that you just posted, that this is a platform, this is a way to drag.
Down his numbers.
Well, and that's why they can.
Do it fast. They will help democrats so that somebody will replace Biden. Iron Democrats can get somebody reasonable.
In there, you know. Actually that was a case made in the Washington Post just this morning, basically that like, the time is it's time for Joe Biden to step down, and the clock is ticking.
Democrats to start leaking, right, maybe they will.
Ryan's dms are open, but no, ironically, it's actually Kevin McCarthy is the one who said that about the Benghazi hearings and Hillary Clinton and gotten huge hot water with a sort of establishment Republican sect when he came out I think it was on Fox News back in twenty sixteen, I mean it must have been twenty fifteen, about how Benghazi was. He tied it to Hillary Clinton's campaign fortunes,
essentially the Benghazi hearings. On that note, and on the note of Matt Gates talking about how it's all about tarnishing Biden, let's go to the thread A seven here. The dynamics internally the Republican Party, which we talk about a lot here on the show, are absolutely key. This is Mani Roger saying. Matt Gates warns that if McCarthy puts a c R on the floor to keep the government open, then he will force a vote to oust him. He also warns there will be regular votes to oust him. Quote.
We are going to have them regularly, he says, and suggests that it could happen daily. Let's put a eight up on the screen. This is from Melanie Zna of Politico. She says, the knives are out or CNN for Representative ken Buck, one of the key lawmakers standing in the way of a Biden impeachment. There's a serious effort to recruit a primary challenger, while Marjor Taylor Green says he
shouldn't serve under the judiciary or whip team anymore. So let's quickly ken Buck is under fire and the Freedom Caucus with Freedom Caucus folks right now, because he came out against making a huge deal of the January sixth, the allegedmis treatment of January sixth prisoners, and wrote a letter to I think it was like a county chairman in his district back in Colorado, refuting some claims of
allegedmist treatment of the January sixth prisoners. This got on the wrong side of Marjori Taylor Green a lot of people in the Freedom Caucus. Marjor Taylor Green is not even in the Freedom Caucus anymore. So what does this have to do with impeachment? What does this have to
do with a government shutdown? Well, actually voting on impeachment, as we talked about earlier, if you lose Ken Buck, somebody who would have typically been counted on as a gimme because he's a member of the Freedom Caucus and you can only lose four people in an impeachment vote, that's huge in and of itself. If he's out, then
we're talking about a totally different navigation. And then on top of that, if these dynamics internally between Marjorie Taylor Green Matt Gates, Matt Gates was flirting this week with getting Democrats to help him with a motion of vacate to oust Kevin McCarthy, Meaning if he got like two hundred Democrats to vote as just chaos agents, they could ask Kevin McCarthy with justin Matt Gates and a bunch of Democrats, because that's how bad the numbers are for
Kevin McCarthy and for Republicans. So this has to do with the markets based on a government shutdown. It has to do with all of us the way that our lives run. When we're talking about a government shutdown, it has to do with what's going to happen with government funding, what's going to get funded, what's not going to get funded. It's a mess this fall, and they don't have a lot of time to handle impeachment and funding.
And what's so depressing about all this is that ken Buck has been really good on antitrust stuff and has been willing to work with Democrats going after a big tech and actually bridging that kind of populist coalition that gets talked about. But that's not what's important in Washington.
Like it, it doesn't have the juice. What has the juice is you know, impeachment hearings and saying stuff about you know, is sticking to the party line about what's going on in the DC jail, even if ken Buck looked into it and thinks that's not what's going on inside the DC jail. But the person that kind of channeled my own response to this the most was actually probably Fetterman. So do we have Fetterman's response when he was asked about.
This is the Beach inquiry?
A five? Yeah, let's watch this ask you about this news that Speaker McCarthy has formally launched an impeachment in sad he's going to Oh my god, really, oh my gosh, you know, Oh, it's devastating.
Don't do it, Please, don't do it.
Oh no, no, yeah, sounds about right, because the whole thing's theater.
They're not going to get sixty seven votes in the Senate. They might not even have the votes in the House. So what does matter?
Over in Detroit at eleven fifty nine PM on Thursday, contracts expire and president UAW President Sean Fain, who first democratically elected president of the UAW basically ever and elected by a kind of lefty reform kind of energy inside the UAW, taking a very aggressive stand and says that they will walk out on on auto companies who have not that they've not reached a bargain with yet. He spoke with Jake Tapper recently and ahead of this. What he talked about, and we're going to play some of
this clip. What we talked about is that profits and CEO pay have been up forty percent over the last couple of years. Nobody freaked out about that. Let's hear Sean Fain talking about the workers demands.
When workers ask for their fair share, it's always the end of the world. And you know, no one you know, the last four years in general, okay, in the last decade, these companies made a quarter of a trillion dollars in profit. In the last six months alone, they made twenty one billion in profit. In the last four years. The price of cars went up thirty percent, CEO pay went up forty percent. No one said a word, No one had
any complaints about that. But now God forbid that workers actually asked for their fair share of equity and the fruits of the labor and the product they produce, and all of a sudden, it's the end of the world. So you know, if you know, the talking heads, the pundits, the companies want to say that, you know, if we strive, it can wrect the economy. It's not that we're going to wreckt the economy. We're going to we're going to wreck their economy, the economy that only works for the
billionaire class. It doesn't work for the working class.
Here are that analysts? All right?
Uaw President Sean Feng, thanks for your time today, appreciate it, sir.
We did invite the big three automakers to come on. They declined. The invitation is openreach.
Brother, it's aggressive, and he is ever from his position, he has every reason to be aggressive. They have one hundred percent. And you know this is a It's actually kind of interesting because the UAW feels like they can if a strike happens. They feel like they're in a position unlike ups where they can last a little bit. Like they don't feel the same crunch to make a deal before anything happens like the rail workers like it for them, doesn't feel like an emergency to get the
deal out before a strike starts at all. Uh So, I mean it's not the same exactly the same thing. But on the other hand, the UAW has all of the leverage in the world right now. I mean, that's why you see that's such an aggressive stance from fame, because they really are in the driver's seat. And I did not mean for that horrible pun to actually be a horrible punt, and that just was actually saying they're really in the driver's seat here.
Outrageous.
Now, they have about three months in their strike fund, but within weeks the auto companies are going to start seeing problems in their supply chain. They've been working literally over time the last weeks and months to produce as many cars as possible so that they have a kind of glut so that if there is a strike, there'll be cars to go out out to the dealers, but that will only last a couple of weeks, after which consumers who are looking for new cars are going to
go to other car companies. You're going to see car prices increase, which which gives autoworkers leverage there at the same time, the auto companies have the leverage in the sense that three months is a long time, but you've seen how long the writers strike is going on, so you know, if the auto companies think they can wait them out for three months, A lot of this is going to come down to public opinion, you know, you know who, you know, who's take who's taking the heat
for this, and so we'll you know, we'll we'll see the the The U a W is also saying that it's willing to bargain with individual car companies, which I think is very smart because they're trying to then split. So if the car companies see, like, oh wait, we we have a better relationship with our union our segment
of the UADUB. So we're going to reach a deal and then we can start moving cars out and we can get the good will publicly that comes with that, while these other people get called, you know, strike breakers, and so it looks like the U a W is in a strong position to get a serious deal, just the way the teamsters did. I mean, we'll we'll see, you know, a lot of you know, there will probably be a collapse today.
That's that's how these things go.
You'll get news that like talks have completely broke down, then like six hours later, you get news that actually they're back together. And then the questions do they collapse again on Thursday?
Do they walk out for one or two days? Do we get something extended? We'll see, But this is a real chance for workers to flex some power.
We talked about this a little last week with Sarabamari, but I want to highlight this quote from Fain. He said, our union isn't going to stand by while they replace
oil barons with battery barons. And I love that because I think these dynamics are really fascinating, that sort of pit working class, bloue collar union guys who already very tentative about the uaw's politics, especially on like cultural issues, I mean basically only on cultural issues too, sort of like culturally increasingly feel alienated to the union if they care about those sorts of things, which is not everybody, but there are That is true of some union members
now against the economics of basically Democrats who are pushing for the shift to electric vehicles. That is a very very interesting fault line and basically this negotiation forcing the Biden administration to deal with it and forcing one of the biggest unions of UAW to deal with it, that is setting the tone for like the next ten years and the evolution of the economy as it shifts to
greener sources of energy. Batteries well, to the extent batteries are greener sources of energy, but you know, as we shift.
From oil more climate friendly.
Yeah, put up this a p article because that gets into this and that's where you see actually an overlap between the point that AMILY is making. The overlap between the writer's strike and the autoworkers strike is that both of them are about control of the future changing economy. When it comes to the writer's strike, AI is a huge part of it. They don't want, you know, they want to make sure that humans are still involved in the writing here and that they're not getting.
Just taken over by AI.
Whereas on the auto side, they're worried about these much lower paid and kind of easier to do in some ways electric vehicle jobs, because if you look at an electric vehicle, it's like four wheels in a battery. And you look at an internal combustion engine, you're like, whoa, you can assemble this on Christmas morning?
Yes, yes, people do. Let's slap it together.
And so there are gonna be a lot fewer workers, and UAW knows that, but they want to make sure that at least, even though they are going to be fewer workers, that at least those workers are as well paid as the workers are today. And they want to get back to where they were before because and the
APS talks about this too. Then in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, when Detroit had its crisis, the workers help save Detroit by taking huge concessions by saying, all right, we're going to get rid of our pensions.
We're going to move over to these crappy four oh one case.
We're going to give up pay raises, we're going to get worse health insurance. And what the UAW is saying now is that, Okay, we did that. Now we're back to massive profitability. So bring us back in. Yeah, and it's a completely reasonable case to make, but it shows that once capital has gotten some type of gain, they're not willing to just hand it back without it being forced to.
And to your point, I mean public opinions, public favorability of unions is soaring. I mean it is at levels that haven't been seen in years. So if the Big Three, if they want to test the political waters and public opinion on this, it's not really going to be the right time. I mean, they can send their PR people out to say the workers are going to make cars
cost more money, they're going to wreck the economy. They can try that this time, but when you have feign, you know, even defending that as well as he did on CNN saying, listen, we just went through COVID CEO pay is increased x amount and this is what we're asking for the end of the day, he's going to get a good deal no matter what. From the standpoint of right now, at least, let's see so meanwhile, just a wild story on the COVID origin controversy put up c one here.
The House Republicans announced that they have a whistleblower that they are saying is credible from inside the CIA, who tells this story that there were seven people assigned to a task force responsible for analyzing whether or not or what the origin of COVID was, was it natural origin or did it come out of this lab in Wuhan. According to this whistleblower, six of the seven analysts wanted to say with low confidence that Wuhan the lab was
the likely origin of COVID. The seventh, who was superior to these other six, wanted to say with low confidence that it was a natural origin. According to the whistle blower, there were then financial incentives that were given to the six members of the task force in order to pressure them to go along with the natural origin.
That's what we know.
Letters have been sent to the head of the CIA and to others over at the CIA asking for records and details. And we'll see if this whistleblower turns out to be a cranker, turns out to be somebody who actually has credible information.
If you read this letter.
It's somebody inside the CIA CIA who clearly knows what's going on. They got the names of the task force, they got the names of the people, they got the numbers. So it's somebody who has some sense of what's going on.
We'll find out how much of this is genuine power play that's where the whistle is being blown, and how much of this is kind of internal office drama, Like this person got a promotion and I didn't think that they deserved a promotion, And I think they got a promotion because they didn't go along with COVID, and I'm going to blow the whistle on that, Like that's possible. Well, it could be that kind of like annoying office stuff could also be a major story.
It could. It could be absolutely huge. Although at the same time, as of right now, that term financial financial incentives is so vague.
I promote like they are they could have gotten a promotion or something.
Right, because financial incentives could mean, you know, a million dollars they got a.
Three point five percent cola rather than the three.
Sure, yeah, and so so we need we need information, right, yeah, because you would think, by the way, that if it was some cold dollar amount, you would at least say they were bribed with a check or so, you know, you could say something more specific than financial incentives. Maybe you can't for legal reasons, or maybe it's even unclear to the whistle.
Go into its black box and just handing cash.
Out like Trump with the paper towels, you know. I mean, this could be a lot of different things. At the end of the day, though, when you have a CIA whistleblower making allegations like this, it's probably probably serious, but we don't quite know yet, accept Ryan. What we do know is that the intelligence community hasn't exactly been shy to say that this is likely allowed. They've had this
like low confidence. A lot of different agencies that have come out with the low confidence classification for their investigation.
The key ones have been the FBI and the Department of Energy. We don't know some of them, but the CIA has been The CIA basically has said can't figure it out. They're like, we don't know, Like we're not saying one way or the other. If we put up C three, we do have response from the CIA. It's rare that they put a name on a response or
can give a response at all. So CI Director of Public Affairs Tammy Cooperman says, at CIA, we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity.
Don't coffee. We do not pay analysts to.
Reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight comittees appropriately informed.
So it's not a denial, it's a.
Okay, this is this is a serious allegation that cuts against what we say we do, and we're going to look into it. So I think that we kind of have to leave it it there until we until we get more. The CIA is going to hopefully respond in a serious way to the COVID Select Subcommittee and either, you know, refute with some evidence these charges or maybe find out that you did have somebody who was running this task force who had a particular take on it.
And you could also see a non conspiratorial way where let's say that the boss of this task force really believes that it's natural origin and has been convinced of that that they can then use their authority inside the institution to get their way out of a task force.
That's called bureaucracy. That's how these things work. The public deserves to know if it was done in an improper way, and the public deserves to know what are these six analysts who looked closely into this actually think, Yes, call them up to the hill, let's hear from them.
We should. And this is I mean, they got it with the irs whistleblowers. We ended up hearing from them very recently, a very recent parallel to that, I'm actually really interested in this question of CIA specifically because the Trump administration was increasingly adamant that a Lablaku was not conspiratorial.
In I mean as early as like the summer of twenty twenty, as early as like the spring of twenty twenty, the Trump administration was pretty hardcore about saying, we think that there's a lot of evidence this is a lab leak. At the time, the media was saying that this was essentially a racist conspiracy theory. The evidence starts going in
different directions. But why I think the CIA's involvement is so interesting is, as we've talked about, although the media doesn't talk about it much, this implicates a Lablik directly implicates the United States government, so that the CIA would be in a very CIA way perhaps having someone go rogue and just saying like, hey, cut it out and figuring a way out where there's probably no fingerprints whatsoever. But having you know, just one rogue agent be like,
we got it. What can we do? What can we do here?
You could certainly see a situation where somebody's like, hey, by the way, this is not just a Wuhan China run lab that we can just blame on China. Turns out we were actually funding this as well, which is true, Like, that's not a conspiracy. Intercept got the documents that show US money was funding that lab and so, and that makes it uncomfortable when when if you're just trying to pin in on a lab, it's like, yeah, turns out that's a US funded lab too.
Yes. And it's something that I think the Trump administration has, not not just the Trump administration, but sort of the Republicans who are on that side of the Lab leak and were who were on that side of the Lab league early, have to really reconcile with their distaste for Fauci and the sort of byzantine bureaucratic system that allowed
American tax per dollars. As the interception is reported to fund the lab laboratory with very little transparency and apparently very little, very few guardrails as to how that money was being used, whether it was being used responsibly, with the reality that it's very possible that this bio hazard emerged from that lab, because initially the theory was that this was potentially a bio weapon or that China was a malign for an actor that couldn't be trusted for
X number of reasons, and this was proof of that. And if we're involved, and we're at the very least complicit in funding a Chinese laboratory while not enforcing any guardrails on the way that the money is being spent or whatever it is, and reckless by the way, again, at the very least, it's very difficult for Republicans to reconcile those two points because the United States government is implicated in it. Why are we funding this research? Is it just because you have gain of function nerds at
the NIH who really believe in gain of function? Maybe or maybe there's something else going on, And these are really really serious questions. So I'm glad. Actually the CIA is under a microscope because the intelligence communities motivations here, the political motivations here. That is something that I don't think has fully been probed.
Yeah.
Well yeah, as Chuck Schumer said, they have six ways to get you from Sunday. So we'll see how this works out for the covids, like subcommittee, so over and over Iran some news that also relates to gas prices, to CPI, to the economy, all of this intersects. So the big controversy now in Washington is a prisoner swap
that was struck between the United States and Iran. Five Iranian prisoners being traded for five US prisoners plus six billion dollars in Iranian funds being allowed to be released from a South Korean bank to a cuttery bank, which Iran will then have access to only for humanitarian concerns. And so people understand the way that this works. Iran ships oil around the world. We sanctioned the heck out of Iran, and so most banks don't want to move any money that might have something to do with the
Iranian oil shipments. And so if money winds up and say a South Korean bank, south Korean bank might say, wait a minute, this looks like it had something to do with Iranian oil shipping. We're not moving this money, right, and that boom, now the money is frozen. By unfreezing it, you allow Iran to continue to put more oil into the global market, which then counteracts actually opex reduction in production.
And so the Biden administration actually has real incentives. Even if we can't buy oil from Iran, the entire world price benefits from more supply being in there. John Kirby was asked this White House spokesperson was asked about this deal.
Here's was his response to it.
The parameters of this arrangement Andrea are very clear, very concise, and the Iranians have signed up to this, so there should be no doubt in anybody's mind how this is going to work. And again, I think it's important to remember this is not US tax payer dollars, It's not ransom. These were Iranian funds that had been frozen in a South Koreana account that they did not have access to.
All we're simply doing is moving this money to cutter to cuttery national banks so that it can be accessible to them for again, very discrete, targeted purposes.
I love how he's like, all we're doing it's the simple matter of transferring the funds to cutter. But actually there also I think what's so interesting about this is that it's a waiver to your point that you were making, it's a waiver that says, this whole decision was just the Biden administration saying we're going to give you a waiver.
That should assure you South Korea that this is not going to be sanctioned money, that you're not going to get sanctioned from moving this money, like US sanctions won't apply to this. Here's a waiver, sort of like a kindergarten teacher will give you a waiver. That's really what's happening here.
US sanctions are so draconian and overbroad that banks over comply with them all the time, and over compliance to
sanctions is a huge problem. So like in an Afghanistan, for instance, none of the aid money could get into the country because the banks were saying the US has said aid money can flow into Afghanistan, but our reading of the sanctions is that it's a little dice and might get too close to some of the groups that they say we're not allowed and so we're not allowed to finance, and so we're not sending money to the red Cross, We're not sending money to any of these
organizations inside Afghanistan, and so then it kicks off this entire bureaucratic process where the Treasury Department will then have to specifically say, no, we waive it. Here is paper, it's signed by all these bureaucrats. It's fine, but that's a one time thing. And then you get jammed right back up again. It appears like that's what's going on here. Okay, you can move this. You can move this six billion dollars now, now you put the Fox News clip up here.
As you know Fox News, you know acknowledges in this article, which I thought was interesting that this is Iranian money, because a lot of times in the public mind that this gets kind of conflated with US.
Money getting shipped over to Iran, that we're like giving them our money. It's not.
We give our money to Saudi Arabia, not to Iran. We would never, never, never support a theocratic terrorist financing country.
We're friends with Saudi Arabia.
But so there was kind of a maniacal ted Cruz response to this that I was curious to get your take on what he's alluding to. He thinks that he has found evidence of some secret nuclear deal. President Biden has established a secret nuclear deal with the Iranian regime that is being kept from Congress and the American people. Today's News confirms there has already been a side deal, including a six billion dollar ransom and the release of
Iranian operatives. Nevertheless, these are only the barest outlines of the staggering concessions that Biden has already made it intends to make to the Ayatola, including an additional ten billion dollar transfer and indeed hundreds of billions of dollars by not enforcing oil sanctions, he goes on. Meanwhile, he has allowed the Iranian regime to all but acquire a virtual nuclear arsenal over the last two and a half years.
The Biden administration must keep their deal secret because if they disclose it, the law requires them to come to Congress and defend it, and this appeasement is utterly indefensible. Instead, they will continue lying about their policies until Congress forces them to do otherwise. So what I'm confused about here from Ted Cruz is what kind of nuclear deal is it if we if we're giving them money and also allowing them to develop a nuclear program in nuclear weapons.
Seems like the earlier deal in which we pulled back on some sanctions in exchange for them not creating nuclear weapons, was better, and maybe we should state in that well, it's an.
Interesting question of better versus like bad. You know, there's bad and then there's bad, but better, and I think maybe that would be a good question. Top post to Ted Cruz if you see him in the hallway this week, is it a manner of like, was the Iran nuclear deal at least better than the post Iran nuclear deal order?
He'd probably say the Biden administration is still basically bungling it in the last couple of years because obviously Donald Trump, at the urging of people like Ted Cruz, pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. The Biden administration comes in and implements this policy that Cruz is taking issue with.
Here.
Your point about gas prices is what's really interesting to me, because Republicans have been pointing to the President of Iran, and we saw John Kirby say there are guardrails on how this money can be spent by Iran that are on like actually the bank, like we have ways of monitoring how this money is going to be used. It essentially has to go to helping the Iranian people. The government of Iran, the President of Iran has said, yeah,
well it for quote like helping the Iranian people. Wink and nod, basically like we can do what we want with this money, and you know whether or not we're able to actually ensure that's the case. Republicans are saying, they're basically calling bs. They're like, there's no way that this money is actually going to be used on things like food and you know, just like it's going to
go into the pockets of actually struggling Iranians. Struggling Iranians partially because of sanctions, not in any small part because of sanctions. So they're they're skeptical and have this idea that like the Biden administration is trying to do what Ben Rhoades and the Obama administration we're doing back in twenty fifteen, when the original twenty fourteen, when the original Roun nuclear deal was struck, because they just sort of
have this dubvish approach to Iran. I actually think the gas prices are a way more reasonable explanation for what's happening here than a conspiracy, right.
Yeah, the big mistake the Biden administration made was not getting back into the Iran deal as quickly as possible, you know, dragging its feet asking for some you know, concession. It's like, we sign a deal with them, they follow the deal according to all international observers and according to the EU, and then we walked out of it because Trump didn't like that. Obama cut the deal with them, and so the Iranian is like, how can we trust you to stay in it again? And it's like, well,
you can't, Like we're completely unreliable negotiating partners. We struck a deal and then two years later, for no reason other than that we had a change in president, walked out of it. And so the result has been, Yeah,
Iran getting that much closer to a nuclear weapon. It's one of the most The only explanation for it is that the leading force behind undermining it, which is the kind of pro Israel lobby and Israel itself kind of once a hawkish confrontational approach with Iran, Like the idea of an Iran that is actually not sanctioned and is abiding by a nuclear deal with the EU, the United States and Russia makes it harder for them to then, you know, raise conflict with this country like that, and
there's some domestic benefits to having Iran out there and being able to save a rattle back and forth, like none of it otherwise makes sense because our policy is pushing around closer to a nuclear weapon rather than further away from it.
You know, it's a.
Obviously on Israel's from Israel's perspective, it's a very well, it's a more existential question and visceral I think because of that, but which.
Would make you think they'd want to get it right.
Well, So this is what's interesting, because you know, we have two more elements here and that I think are worth mentioning. Iran this week confirmed the detention of a Swedish EU worker, So this is yeah, And we're also on the one year anniversary. This is the next element from the Associated Press of the Masamini protest which erupted
last fall. There is some evidence that there's government crackdowns coming right now on the anniversary of the protest, and that there have been government crackdowns in the aftermath of Masamini's death. And this is all happening as Irani and drones are being found on the battlefield in Ukraine, and the conventional wisdom of American foreign policy over the last several decades would of course be, especially in the context of Israel, would of course be, this is not the
time to be easing sanctions. This is the time to be implementing more sanctions. This is the time for saber rattling, if anything, people like Ben Rhodes and you know, I would say gas prices aside. Let's say gas prices, which I think probably is the most reasonable explanation. But hypothetically, let's say that had nothing to do with it. And there were real ideologus in the Biden administration, Ben Roads type ideologues, and we have evidence that Barack Obama is
behind a lot of the Biden administration's decision making. Let's say that's what they're doing. That's a challenge to the conventional wisdom of United States foreign policy in the way that actually Obama campaigned on challenging the conventional wisdom of US foreign policy back in two thousand and seven against Hylary Clinton and into two thousand and eight. It's not this like black and white, you know, hawk versus Dove.
It's actually saying, is the hawkishness even effective at accomplishing hawk goals.
But imagine, imagine a world where after twenty fifteen, Trump comes in and instead of becoming you know, after a close nuclear standoff with Kim Jong un like, he becomes best buddies with this North Korean dictare would imagine, becomes best buddies instead with the Iyatola and stays in the nuclear deal and money continues flowing back and forth, and relations with Iran get better, and they just they agree, like, you know, we are going to continue allowing inspectors in.
We're not gonna you know, we're not going to build this nuclear program, this nuclear weapons program anymore. Once the Ukrainian invasion comes around. Then in twenty twenty two, if Iran and the US are on much better terms at that point and Russia comes in, it is like, hey, we need help with drones.
Iran is going to.
Think twice about that, because now they have something to lose with the United States because their population loves United States already. Like that's the one kind of trump card that the US still has is that culturally the US is still very popular, or foreign policy extremely unpopular, but culturally, hip hop Hollywood just kind of the American ideals of liberty, freedom, equality, all of those things resonate with people. And if you were in a place where we're on good terms with Iran,
Russia comes in, it's like, yeah, we need drones. Iran might be like, you know what, maybe you shouldn't have invaded in another country, and you can make.
The same case. I think it's actually a case that is being made about Ukraine and China too, that the sort of conventional hawkish approach to Russia and the conventional hawkish approach to China because we're sort of caught caught in this Cold War muscle memory that is now being grafted onto the China conflict. In some ways, I think there are actually even people in the Republican Party in
the conservative movement. The Heritage Foundation put out a damning indictment of our policy towards Russia, which was rather interesting, but I think that's actually becoming a more like top line conversation. And actually, speaking speaking of which, we have some video from actor Woody Harrelson who weighed who weighed in on Ukraine and on imperialism. Let's take a listen to Woody Harrelson here.
You know, I'm the kind of guy who just thinks it's abominable when superpower with all this military might, with no provocation attacks a country that is you know, like you know, Iraq, sorry, afghan vi It, Korea, No, sorry, Ukraine terrible.
I like that he threw Korea in. There is a deep cut listening to Blowback.
What did you make of those comments from Woody Harrelson.
Love Woody, Yeah, great, so good. Well, I mean it's it's good. The mirrors need to be held up in front of imperial powers.
Yeah, it's actually so similar to what we were just talking about with Iran when you're making these equivalent sees as he's he's making his joke there about Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Ukraine.
This is.
One of the things I've been thinking about since the entire inate Russia's entire invasion of Ukraine started, is just how the Cold War is still ever present in foreign policy every single day in ways that we think we sort of turned the page on end of history. But we've had nuclear power or on the face of the
earth for not even one hundred years. As we talked about when Oppenheimer came out this summer this is really new, and the idea that humans it can eliminate tens of thousands of other humans on another part of the world with the push of a button has dramatically changed the way that we relate to each other just as human beings, let alone as great powers. And we're not even one hundred years in this vast scope of human history into
that world order. So the blink of an eye and we've run a lot of experiments unsuccessfully without realizing it yet.
So Emily, what's your point today.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was in Los Angeles giving the remarks on a panel basically, and as I was walking back to my hotel, I noticed something interesting on a bus sign. Let's put this picture up on the screen. This is exactly what I saw, report acts of hate. The sign on the bus stop said
dial to one one. That was really interesting to me because A, there are hate crime laws and the police are involved, and obviously this is there's a legal system, there's law enforcement that exists to enforce all of these things, and B I wonder just exactly how this was being facilitated in a context of a culture that doesn't really agree on what hate actually is, and that's been the case, you know, in different periods of American history, and we've
had to fight and overcome that. But it's a serious problem right now. People who tend to be on the right of center, like myself, are more concerned about it the people on the left of center, because people in the left of center right now have a lot of power in government and in pop culture, et cetera, et cetera. But I think this is a problem that affects everybody,
regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum. So we have a young writer who goes to U. C. Davis and I sent the picture to her and I was like, oh, let's look into this. At the bottom of that picture you would have seen the group la versus Hate. There's their website, la versus Hate dot org. I was particularly curious to know if this was a
government funded project and a government authorized project. So we dug into la versus Hate dot org and actually have a new story up on The Federalist from Rebecca the student I was talking about just this morning. You can put that up on the screen. What we found, in fact, is that la Versus Hate this is a government group out in Los Angeles County runs a snitch line. It's funded by Biden. They got in some sense, they got this grant from the Biden Administration's American Rescue Plan about
a million dollars. It's funded by Kaiser, Permanente and Blue Shield of California. But most importantly, it's funded by taxpayers, and it is operated by Los Angeles County. Now, the key here is not that this is merely is that this is not just merely a tip line to report hate crimes. It makes sense in some cases that you have a tip line to report things that are actual criminal behavior, for instance, domestic abiefs, women who don't want to go to the police and would be more comfortable
calling a hotline something to that extent. So I'm not saying it's crazy to have a tip line for criminal offenses. And this is a tip line for potentially criminal offenses, and they have fielded calls for criminal offenses based on their own records. But what's really important is that they're also open to calls about quote, hate incidents, hate incidents, and nowhere on their website do they define what it
actually constitutes hate. And when the federal has reached out to ask for a definition of hate to ask if things based on their website, which endorses you know, full trans ideology, endorses the Black Lives Matter movement. There are a lot of people in the country. There are certainly people in Los Angeles County who are decent and disagree with you every sort of aspect of trans ideology for whatever reason in or disagree with the Black Lives Matter
movement for whatever reason. Are they committing hate incidents if they make a reasoned case against either of those movements?
For instance, let's say the Dave Chappelle special. Let's say there, Let's say, can somebody report one of the Dave Chappelle specials his criticism of the trans movement, which some people may disagree with, But is that a reportable hate incident to the government of Los Angeles County Because they refused to define, because they refused the Free Press's questions on that, it doesn't give me a lot of optimism that this isn't you know, a government snitche line essentially that operates
in a way that should actually be chilling. This is the case actually that Edward Snowden, who hasn't you know, I don't want to put any words in his mouth. He hasn't weighed in on this particular incident, but he made a lot when he was, you know, more front and center in the news about how just the knowledge that you're being watched, just the knowledge that the government is monitoring, surveilling what you say, what you do, and is looking out for those things, changes the way that
we think. It changes the way that we interact with each other. And it's really really bad. It's a bad precedent whether you're in deep, deep blue Los Angeles County or a deep deep red area and people are having issues with let's say, you know what I think are sometimes incorrectly referred to as book bands. You know, there have been some really excessive legislations pieces of legislation when
it comes to that. I think there have been some really reasonable ones we've talked about here on the show. But the principle is basically the same that the government doesn't have any business, especially we're talking about adults, not children. The government doesn't have any business monitoring your sort of ideological consumption. Conversation. Discourse is not the business of the government. It is the business of a society to decide what
its norms are, what is hate. It's a business of individuals to come together and make those decisions, and obviously, through the democratic process, they should be reflected in our laws. But non criminal quote hate incidents should not be facilitated.
You shouldn't facilitate a tip line. The government of all places and these major corporations should not facilitate a tip line for people to snitch on one another for non criminal quote hate incidents that we can't even define the root cause of what a hate incident actually actually is. And all over the website you can see very clearly this was Elie versus Hate or something that was launched
in twenty twenty. I think they started the process of launching it in twenty eighteen, but it formally became a program in twenty twenty, so it's been around for a couple of years. They do list examples of hate incidents on their website that could call name They could include name calling, insults, displaying quote hate material on your own property, posting alleged hate material that doesn't result in property damage,
and distributing materials with hate messages in public spaces. But if you cannot fundamentally define hate, especially in a time right now when there's so much of that word being flung at people, even on the left who disagree with some people on the left. That is just extremely dangerous. And it's not just going to hurt people on the right or people who disagree with BLM or transideology. It is going to hurt everybody when we set precedents like this,
because when another person gets in power. We're actually seeing this happen in the Capitol this week as the impeachment inquiry came up for a vote. That you sort of break one of those precedents, you break a norm, that norm is going to be broken right back at you when the other side is in power. And the principle of government monitoring ideological conversations discussions and lumping it into
that broad category of hate is really really dangerous. And so my message would just be this is not good. Whether you're on the right, whether you're on the left, this is a wild abuse of government power out in La County under this very innocuous and seemingly virtuous mission of combating hate. There's nothing wrong with combating hate, that's for sure, but this is not nearly as innocuous as it sounds. There are new inflation numbers. You've been crunching
the numbers. Actually, we took a little break here so Ryan can dig into the inflation numbers, which would.
We be looking at well.
So the inflation data was released today found that the core rate of inflation remained the same at four point three percent year over year. Core inflation, which excludes energy and food basically for August, had been expected to run at zero point two percent, but came in at zero point three percent. That means that when the Fed meets next week, they're likely to keep interest rates where they
are now. The leading driver of overall inflation this month, as anybody would guess, rising gas prices.
But we'll get into all of these numbers soon in a bit.
Whenever you hear that the Fed is planning to raise interest rates to cool off the economy, because of these inflation numbers that you're hearing, it's useful to understand what the titans of industry are really after.
Now.
I often try to explain that interest rates and unemployment are really about worker power, but nobody has explained it better than this guy, Tim Gerner, who's the founder of the Gerner Group. He spoke here recently at the Financial Review Property Summit.
Here's his lesson.
I think the problem that we've had is that we've, yeah, we have people decided that they didn't really want to work so much anymore through COVID, and that has had a massive issue on productivity. You know, tradees have definitely pulled back on productivity. You know, they have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years. And we need to see that change. We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump forty fifty percent in my view. We need to see painting
the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. I mean, there is a there's been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them as opposed to the other way around. So it's a dynamic that has to change. We've got to kill that attitude and that has to come through hurting the economy, which is what the whole global you know, the world is
trying to do. The governments around the world are trying to increase unemployment to get that to some sort of normality, and we're seeing it. I think every employer now is seeing it. I mean, there is definitely massive layoffs going off for people might not be talking about it, but people are definitely laying people off, and we're starting to see less arrogance in the employment market, and that has to continue because that will cascade across the cost balance.
Now, Emily, believe it or not, it turns out that this was the avocado toast guy put at this next one.
If people remember, this feels like five ten years ago.
At this point, there was this viral sensation going around where a dude said, the reason that millennials can afford to buy a home is that they buy too much avocado toast. This guy's back with a new take, And what's useful about this guy is that that avocado toast idiocy was obvious idiocy, but it was the distilled It was the wisdom of the kind of titan class distilled down to its essence.
And by distilling it down, you can really see how idiotic it is in its purest form.
Because there are a bunch of people who were saying at the time, look, it's just these spendthrift millennials, that's the problem. It's not that rent is too high, it's not that wages are down. It's not that there aren't enough jobs coming out of this the financial crisis. It's that, yeah, they're just spoilt and spending money on avocado toast. But back to his point that he's making now, it's the same thing.
It is.
What he's saying feels idiotic because he's just saying it so bluntly, But it is really the wisdom of the ruling class distilled down to its essence. And to me, what it suggests is that a capitalist class doesn't deserve to exist because.
If they can't handle a full economy that is humming on all cylinders, you know, that.
Is employing as many people as it possibly can. Like, if they can't handle that, if their reaction to that is that they have to undermine it, then they should be thrown out, like let some other system in that can actually allow humanity to flourish in its full dignity. Like what he's saying there is that we can't do this, like we don't know how to run a full economy because if we're running a full economy, workers have power and we don't like that. Now, you go back to
some of these inflation numbers. You put up this chart from recently. This shows kind of the direction that we're looking at. And so the headline number, you know, popping up because of gas prices, but overall you're seeing this kind of mountain. You know, we climb, We climbed up the mountain in twenty twenty one, and we're heading down the other side of the mountain now.
Now.
The problem being if you look at where you know, prices were back in twenty twenty, which saw massive deflation because of COVID, compared to where they are now, that's that's the kind of that's the gap that spells the headache that we're all living in. And so you do have food prices coming down the numbers showed, but you have gas prices going up. Gas prices haven't gone up as much as people are worried about. We're probably going
to see more pain on that front. But so what it means is that we're not going to see a We're probably not going to see an inflation increase, an interest rate increase at the next FED price, but we're not going to see a cut either. I don't know what's what's your takeaway on the avocado toast man Howard Buffett, who is billionaire Warren Buffett's son own a town essentially
in Illinois, Decater, Illinois. And we're joined now by Amos Barshad of lever News, who who was out indicator to try to figure out what it's like living in a town effectively owned by a billionaire.
And the story is terrific. You can put it up here. Is called American oligarchy.
And it's and it's something of a kind of allegory for our, I think, our broader society, because we all live under the thumb of a Warren Buffett one way or the other. But these folks, you know, live right specifically underneath that thumb and they can see it every single day. Amos, you know, welcome to the program, Thanks for joining us in grats on this piece.
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Yeah, and yeah, I should clarify he obviously doesn't legally own the town, that's not possible, but yeah, his influence over you know, two decades now can be seen, can be felt, and that was kind of my hope from the piece is to to go to Decatur, uh and to hear from regular people, you know, what it feels like to live amongst amongst Buffett's influence, and that's how
the story was first introduced to me. I was happening to speak with a someone who was born and raised in Decatur who's now a professor at the University of Virginia.
His name is A. D.
Carson, and we were actually talking about a completely different topic. It was the Illuminats popularity and hip hop, and he just kind of happened.
To mention, you know, this, this this thing with with Howard Buffett, which I just had never heard of. I don't think a lot of people have.
But after he told me about it, you know, I read up and learned that there has been some great reporting on him, some of his influence on the Southern border, you know, some.
Some more positive coverage.
He donates a lot of money internationally globally, and but I felt like this piece hadn't been done, this piece where we focus on the people of Decatur, what it feels like to to live, yeah under under the influence of Howard Buffett.
Yeah nine team.
My colleague, my then colleague at the Intercept, Rachel Cohen, wrote about his wrote about this kind of phenomena. She focused on the weird marijuana fight that was going on that was that was my first introduction to the idea that Howard Buffett had decided he was going to spend his money effectively just kind of running the show over here and has all of these weird kind of interests in being a sheriff sometimes actually, as you report, literally being a sheriff, otherwise kind of playing.
One on TV.
But so when I say that he effectively owns the town, like what what is that? What does it mean to kind of like how does he exert his influence indicator?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So Yeah, first of all, that interescept PC mentioned is a great piece and I encourage everyone to seek that out. She was reporting from the time time as he it was revealed that he had pushed back against a dispensary. So Illinois had legal legalized uh, you know dispensaries, marijuana dispensaries statewide, and so then the you know, municipality of.
Decatur had to decide if they were going to have one, and a lot of people were very pro the dispensary.
There was a referendum that was run in the township of Decatur, uh uh, and and showed that there was you know overhall and majority of people wanted the dispensary. But basically, uh, you know, as the as that piece, the Intersip piece reported, you know, due to Buffet's explicit influence the city council members, the majority voted against the dispensary, and it gets tied back into his personal views.
His personal views against marijuana, against you know, pro war on drugs.
You know.
Interestingly, there's a big addiction recovery center that he built in town, which feels, you know, you know, objectively, a good thing to to to provide addiction treatment, recovery treatment.
Uh.
But where it gets more complicated is in the idea of how you you know, it's a philosophy, right, it's like a it's like a world building, is how he sees the world. So he believes in addiction recovery, but he doesn't believe in access to marijuana. So you know, you see these things as you shouldn't be opposed, but in his point of view, they are, so you know, so it's it's a very a palpable thing that he's able to control, you know, what happens in this town
through his influence and through his financial support. From there, it goes on to just kind of you know, when you walk around the town. You'll see signs, you know, thanking his foundation. The local zoo has an exhibit for the paying homage to the guards of the Verunga National Park in Congo and the mountain gorillas. You know, strange, but you know it's one of his passions.
So it's there. The Children's Museum.
Which is a private museum, it has an exhibit called the Heroes Hall, which is like this very very explicitly pro law enforcement exhibit. You basically go in there and you you know, you read these plac guards about how the police are heroes, and you can put on different uniforms and pretend to be a cop and you're told about what, you know, the great things that the police do. And you know, it's as a children's museum, it's like all primary colors and you know, fun running around stuff.
There's a statue of Buffet from his time when he guessed he was actually officially share if. There's a statue of him outside of the museum as well. So yeah, I mean it's just about I think when someone has this amount of money and this amount of focus on a small town, they're able to you know, actually literally change people's daily lives. You know, the things that they see, the information that they're provided through their daily lives.
Now, his representative told you in the story when you asked to potentially speak with Howard Buffett, basically that listen, he would have moved out of Illinois years ago if it wasn't for his wife health. You know, he's too busy for Decatur basically except for planting and harvesting season. He's traveling around the world with his charities. But you also point out that Decatur is a really interesting kind of case city. It's not your typical maybe rust belt city.
There's something it's shrinking, like many many roust belt cities are. But analysts look at it and say, there's a decent number of jobs here. People are able to make a living. What can you tell us actually about Cater just as a city? What kind of city is it? What is it like? And you know, how has the city reacted. You have some really interesting stuff in there too about how the city itself has reacted in different ways to Howard Buffett over the years.
Yeah.
Absolutely, this is you know, all stuff that I learned from my reporting, and you know, I really enjoyed being indicator and learning this and so yeah, it's you know, kind of classic Illinois farm country as you imagine you're driving through and you're seeing you know, rows and rows of crops and it feels, you know, endless. And the big company that's there is Archill Archer Daniel Midlands, this
agricultural giant. So you know they take all these uh take all his corn and make all these products that end up in our food and all these millions of different ways, and which is obviously a very lucrative business to be in. And that's actually what brought Howard Buffetts town originally, which is another kind of layer to this
that he's not from Illinois. He's from Nebraska, you know, famanasy like his father, and so he comes here almost arbitrarily and becomes it starts building his influence over the years and uh and so yeah, so there are jobs,
and that is a profitable company. What I heard from locals, people that are involved in this in the city in different ways, of activists and also a member of the school board, is that they feel that there's been a lack of you know, the maintenance of the infrastructure or the things that the school needs, you know, the thing the city needs, like schools, and you know, I was told that, you know, literally some of the public pools have been closed down as this private pool kind of
complex had come in. You know, just things that any person that lives in a town would think about, you know, if you have children or not. You know, you're just you know, this is these are the basics that the town might need. And that's what they felt. They felt that, you know, despite the fact that there's this benefactor who has spent all this money, somehow none of that has manifested in, you know, the basic needs of a town, what a town really needs. And yeah, I think that
kind of that's kind of the interesting point. You know, someone spending money, are they spending money the way they want to or are they spending money the way that the town might need. And so yeah, so I think you know, while while a Decatur has had factory closures that have led to job lost, you know, as we've seen throughout the country, throughout the rest Belt. Uh, the feeling that I got from some of these activists is that if we just made some decision decisions differently, we could.
Prop this town up a little better.
And that goes back to the dispensary you know, the tax revenue that they would hope to get from that.
Uh you know.
So, so what has happened since the original fight over it is the dispense dispensary has opened, but over the over the Decatur border, So it's a small municipality just over you know, just you know, five minute drive from
Decatur that's getting that tax revenue. So I think that's a very kind of a blunt and clear example of you know, if locals are saying that they want something because they believe that it will lead to tax money that they can spend on things they want, and then you have a billionaire who has spent all this money and has accrue political capital, you know, political influence through that spending, deciding that that's not going to happen.
Uh.
Yeah, I think I think that that that puts it pretty starkly, you know, the idea of who who like who does this person have in his best interests as himself.
Or is it the town?
And so if Buffett here is kind of an avatar for the billionaire class and the way that they are kind of organizing society to you know, to their whims, what can we learn about the pushback to that who, like, who are the activists and what can we draw from what it looks like to kind of try to like galvanize some energy against that and reclaim a kind of self government.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you know, I think that.
I think that that's what was so interesting to me about Decatur and being indicator. You can literally physically see his presence, and you can hear from people, and you know, people see him around and it's this rare example of the billionaire that is controlling or influencing your life. Isn't is really there where most of the time, you know, we'd be hard pressed to try to exactly connect the dots between you know, the way money is spent and
you know the way it affects our lives. And so I think that also manifested itself and the ability for some activist specifically to rally around the dispensary. Uh they were fighting the city council to kind of reverse the
decision against the dispensary. And I think through that a lot of attention was paid to the manner in which Buffett did influence the whole thing, and from what I was told by local activists that they feel that that did push him back somewhat from from being as gung ho about you know, further actions than that in that kind of capacity. And and you know, the idea that maybe maybe they're pushing him out of Central Illinois a
little bit altogether. Maybe he has lost the appetite to to uh, you know, influences as as aggressively as he has in the past. I think that this specific fight around the dispensary was the most kind of cohesive grassroots pushback that he's felt, that he's seen. And uh, and yeah, I think that kind of might have might might uh might kind of stymy any given person. You know, nobody really wants to be in the spotlight like that. You know, especially when you're someone who spends a lot of money,
you're also interested in how that money is interpreted. So if you can, you can google him, you'll see a ton of great coverage, you know, from his time as sheriff. You know about how he's just this guy who loves the small town life and just runs around, you know, wanting.
To help people.
You know, where the reality of how he became sheriff is much more complicated.
You know, sheriff is an elected position.
Uh, he he was, he was appointed when the acting sheriff uh quit and and and and signed him as the sheriff.
UH.
Later on this this sheriff went on to to work at this kind of police training facility, this big police training facility that one activist compared to you know, Atlanta's cop city to me that they have an indicator and so yeah, so there's just like very direct, uh kind of an influence buying that you could that you could kind of see or assume. There was also an issue with the Buffett had gotten somewhat of a fraudulent lost certificate and the person who gave him the cpercificate he
was involved with this standards board in Illinois. He ended up being indicted on on on charges of you know, felony, uh, forgery, fraud and uh and uh you know this this certificate business came out. So you see, like you see some of the more nefarious uh or or or you know sort of kind of a not as appetizing elements of how Buffett ended up becoming sheriff and how he kind of yeah, plays out some of his law enforcement fantasies.
And finally, were you able to determine uh, this shocking anecdote in the story, does the guy really drink a gallon of coke for lunch? Do you have any information on this? Could you confirm.
From an interview with an Australian newspaper that that that was you know that that that interviewer did sit down with Buffett. So I have no reason to believe that that is not true. That was not my direct reporting. I did not witness it. I have to clarify that. But I assume this person went to lunch with Buffett and that's what he saw. Otherwise, why you know why I put that in there.
I'm almost impressed.
But he doesn't like Wade, but fascinating that weed seems to be the thing that broke us back, and so the key to breaking the grip of the billionaire class is weed.
And it's also good for it broken back. So there you go.
Sager doesn't watch the segment. Amas, thank you so much. It's rare also to have such great writing and great reporting at the same time. The writing the story is really great. We recommend you check it out over at the Lever. Thank you so much, Amos, thank you so much.
I really appreciate it.
Well, that doesn't for us today on this edition of Counterpoints, we told you impeachment was coming, and here it came.
It sort of came.
Yeah, well we don't know.
So Ryan's going to head back over to Capitol Hill. We'll have more for you on all these internal dynamics and Republicans Democrats, impeachment, Will Matt Gates get AOC to finally vote with him. We'll be back with more next Wednesday. Thank you so much for liking and subscribing. It has been a year here at Counterpoints. We appreciate all of you guys so very much.
Oh yeah, and if you're here, you're in DC tonight at GW I'm going to be doing an event with Naomi Client seven pm at the GWU Amphitheater. She got a new book out, really fun book called Doppelganger.
Quite good. Anyway, see you there if you're there,