9/26/23: Perfect Storm Economy, Debunking Auto CEO Lies, Menendez Uses Cuban Heritage, Newsom DeSantis Debate, New UFO Whistleblowers, Landmark Case For Podcasts, US Subsidizing Ukraine Businesses, EV Future, Big Pharma Corruption

bring you all of that. We also have some updates about Governor Newsom and Clotheing positioning himself. I don't know about for this presidential election, but for the future for something make it moves. He has agreed to that debate with Rond DeSantis over on Fox News, so we'll talk about that. Also make it some interesting legislative choices and earning the ire of a powerful labor union in the state. Sager's got a UFO update for us based on a

Michael Schallenberger report, so he'll bring that to us. And we also have a really interesting story here about two podcasters who are hoping that Joe Biden will save their show. We'll give you all of those details. Also excited to be joined by Robert Weisman. He is an expert on government corruption. Gee, wonder how that could be relevantly a great topic. Yes, just happen to work out that there was a little bit of government corruption in the news

that we could peg this too. Before we get to any of that, remember, guys, this is a debate week, and so we've got some big plans for you guys.

so extra cost to us. You can sign up at breakingpoints dot Com become a premium subscriber as we said, we'll get the early drops and all those other things. And also everyone just want to say, I know we've been having some issues with Spotify. That's really on Spotify's end over the last couple of days. We are working on it. I know how difficult it is, all the processing nightmares with YouTube and Spotify, but unfortunately, you know, look we are at the mercy of these big corporations.

But as we said, we heard you. We are absolutely working on it, and we take it seriously. I know how much people want the show immediately on time. I'm the same way, so I would get a messages.

will the impact be. The first one they highlight here is the autoworker strike. If it is prolonged, if it ends up hitting more plans than it is right now, that could shave some small amount off of growth. You also, right now have the threat that we've been talking about here of a lengthy government shut down. Looks very likely that the government is going to shut down next week. The question is how long does it take for them to come to a deal. Obviously that could have a

significant impact on the economy as well. The other thing they point to is we are facing the resumption of student loan debt payments. That is quite a significant one. You have a lot a lot of Americans, millions of Americans who are going to be having to put out you know, hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per month to service those debts that has been on hiatus for

quite a while. This comes out of time also when Americans are increasingly stressed in terms of their debt load, in terms of their credit card debt, also in terms of you know, the interest rates that they're facing on auto loans, home loans, et cetera. The other thing they point to here is rising oil prices, which obviously hits American consumers extremely hard and sager.

was only nine hundred and seventy seven dollars. We currently have the lowest housing affordability on record in the United States, and that's largely because of high prices and because of high interest rates. So people are locked into either their home and they can't move, or their rent is going to be increasing substantially. People always forget that while yes, gas is a leading cost of inflation, shelter is right

up there with it. So you have a major assault right now on American affordability going into the most critical time for retailers in the United States, the fourth quarter, when people do Christmas shopping, they buy a lot of clothes, Black Friday, Prime Day, all these other things are coming up. And if you see even a marginal decrease in their overall level of consumer spending, that is going to impact

the overall economy. And you know, each one of these things crystal point one percent point two percent, I mean got up. If you have an overall one percent reduction in economic growth. That's a ton actually when we only supposed to grow at two percent in inflation is I mean, who the hell knows what inflation actually is. It could be somewhere between four and nine percent depending on the

way that you look at. At the point though, is that all of these are not good news as we head into a critical economic time period for the US economy, and then politically, it's also a terrible thing for Biden. So I really think this is this is you know, it's like nineteen seventies all over again. It's like the only thing that we're missing, thank god, is high unemployment.

But unfortunately it's said we still have very high underemployment or we have a decrease in overall real wages relative to inflation.

That's another thing to weigh on you to say, okay, well, as some of that coming here as well, are we going to be facing the similar struggles that other countries around the world are. Just to dig in a little bit more on the debt situation for Americans, which has been exacerbated as the Pandemic era programs have all gone away as interest rates have been on the upward swing

to try to deal with inflation. But at the same time you have inflation which is also making things so much more expensive and forcing Americans to take on more debt. We've already covered signs of stress there, the fact that credit card debt has hit over trillion dollars for the first time, But we have another indicator that Americans are feeling stressed in terms of their personal finances. Put this

up on the screen. You now have credit card losses rising at the fastest pace since the Great Financial Crisis. So what CNBC reports on here is the fact that Goldman Sax is predicting credit card losses are going to continue to climb through the end of twenty twenty four early twenty twenty five. Very unusual that these losses are accelerating outside of an economic downturn. Credit card losses currently stand at three point six three percent. That is up

one and a half percentage points from the bottom. So the fact that you have this rapid increase in credit card losses and that it's happening at this kind of unusual time period is really raising a lot of red

flags for economists. But it makes sense when you put it in with that picture that I just painted of the fact that Americans were already taking on a lot of debt, They're having to try to deal with high interest rates, They've had the loss of these programs that benefited them, they've had rising prices, and now you add on top of that the fact that student loan payments are set to restart on October one. According to The Wall Street Journal, that restart could divert roughly one hundred

billion dollars from americans pockets. That's according to an analysis from a Wells Fargo economist. It's the first time bars will have had to make payments since March of twenty twenty. And while you know this is one slice of the economy, it has been significant enough that retailers like Walmart Target and others have been really raising concerns in their investors car calls about what this could mean for spending among some of their core consumer groups. So a lot of

uneasiness about what's going on here. And listen, if you're like a normal person out there, none of this is going to be surprised to you, because even as the top line numbers in terms of unemployment have been relatively strong, we know the way that personal finances have been stretched and stretched and stretched over the past several years.

And so look, you know, I guess it's a broken record, but it is one of which I think is so so important, is that overall, the personally financial situation of the the average American household is vastly worse today than it was a couple of years ago, and that is going to manifest itself in all sorts of crazy ways in terms of how we spend our money, in terms

of how we think about our politics. And it is also why the right track wrong track number is so high for President Biden and why his disapproval rating is so high as well. You just can't get around it. And President Biden just does not seem to have the political will or necessity to actually speak to these everyday concerns and to say that I'm doing everything I possibly can in the immediate immediate term to try to get something done with this. And overall that is just hitting

people very, very hard. I think at a mass like sociological and psychic level, which is it's difficult, and you can feel it right now in the country. I think you can feel the level of dissatisfaction absolutely.

they're hoping that that is going to be enough. That's what they leaned on last time, and look it worked. It's what they leaned on in the midterms, and look it worked. So it's not like it's a crazy strategy. But when you're looking at the polls that have a best tide and that one that we covered yesterday outlier that had Trump up by ten, which again I don't believe, but the fact that you can even have a poll that says that indicates maybe you need to do a

little bit more than what you've been doing. Maybe you need to actually have an affirmative economic agenda that is going to deliver for people in the immediate term. And now I've talked about how the industrial policy and some of these bigger picture things like you know, his support for labor rights. I think that's really important for the economy for the mid term, for the medium term, and also for the long term, and is going to be

really delivering for workers over that period. We had to talk about the here and now, what have you done for me lately? I don't hear any firmative economic agenda from Actually what I hear from Trump is negative because they want to cut corporate taxes and go back to that well and do even more in that direction. From Biden, I just really don't hear any firmative economic vision at all.

also long term economic design. I talked to a lot of yesterday, So I've been thinking about the Kennedy tax bill, which shaved the income tax but also actually overall boomed the economy from nineteen sixty four, which made it both an immediate cut which boosted consumer spending, but provided a lot of the economic growth that we saw throughout the

nineteen sixties. And that was at a time of deliberative process where people actually thought about this stuff, They had real ideas, and it was like a time not only to it was a time where they would both use the political reality with design and in the future. And unfortunately, I think we really have lost a lot of that.

The more that we think about it and the way that our policy is being designed right now, fly by wire, is just so ridiculous and stupid, and that just you know, comes and want to underscore again just because we are on the verge of it. We are almost certain now

to have a government shutdown. Every person that I have seen, just from a pure timeline level, it doesn't seem possible crystal for them to be able to get out of this, even if the Senate does pass a continuing resolution which is able to get through the House of Representatives through some sort of discharge petition and all of that. Just from a pure time like time on the floor, it's September twenty sixth, we're filming this right now. The government

funding expires October one at twelve oh one am. That's just not enough time, you know, to pass these types of bills. And that's without any of the political fights that are happening. So that is going to impact the economy because not only federal I mean the federal government is the largest employer in the United States, but so that just no paychecks that are going out there. But on top of that, there's a lot of other alternative

programs that people rely on. For the Feds for services, even tourism we remember last time, like the National Park Service shutdown, stuff like that, all of that and lead into overall economic conditions.

know of that. Labor historians can figure out that a president has ever done this, which I think is a real reflection of the way that the politics around labor unions and corporate power have dramatically shifted in just a few years time, and hugely accelerated by the pandemic. So you have Biden making that trek there today, you have former President Trump speaking to workers also in Michigan in a neighboring county, sort of trying to counter program the

Republican debate that's going to be going on. He's going to be trashing the Biden ev Agena. So far, his tactic has been to sort of like trash quote unquote union bosses, but also trash the Biden ev transition and claim that, you know, he's the one who will really help workers because he opposes all of that. So you've

got those rival visions at the same time. One of the big conversations that has come out of the auto workers strike, and one of the things they've been talking about a lot, understandably, is how wildly out of step ceo pay at the Big three automakers has been versus median worker pay. Put this up on the screen. You know it's bad when even the Wall Street Journal is like, hey, auto CEOs maybe making three hundred times what workers make

is a little bit over the top. So they did what is actually a very useful analysis of where the Big three automakers stand versus other large corporations in terms of their executive compensation, and what they find is lo and behold. Even in an era when corporate executives typically pake wildly astronomical salaries as opposed to the workers, even in that era, the Big Three stand out for just how much their CEOs make versus what the median workers make.

So they also point to the fact that wage gains for rank and file employees have not actually kept pace with inflation. Rank and file employees have taken a pay cut when you account for inflation. Meanwhile, over that same period, CEO pay has gone up by forty percent. So that is why these auto workers, among a host of reasons, are calling for significant pay increases because they have actually fallen way behind in terms of their salaries. So let's

take a look at some of the specifics. Here Ford's CEO last year earned around twenty one million dollars. That's two hundred and eighty one times the company's median employee earnings, and that's actually the lowest ratio of the Big three. Over at General Mode, Mary Vera made twenty nine million dollars last year, that was three hundred and sixty two

times the median employee earnings. And over at Stalantis, the global parent of Chrysler, Dodge and other brands, their CEO last year made around twenty five million, or three hundred and sixty five times the average employee pay. So even when you account for you know what other large corporations are doing, the Big three are at the top end of those pay ratios with their executives wildly out earning by three hundred times what the typical worker is.

seven thousand, four hundred and forty dollars per year. I don't even think you could be a normal renter without penny pinching at that salary. At the top, they can make up to thirty two dollars an hour. Thirty two dollars an hour is sixty six thousand, five hundred and sixty dollars per year. That is less than the overall average household income in the United States at seventy thousand. So what are these people asking for? Okay, we can do a little bit of math. Thirty seven thousand dollars

at a thirty percent pay increase is how much. It's around forty something thousand dollars per year. That seems eminently reasonable for a skilled position of a unionized hounor worker. Same whenever we do sixty six thousand, we are just pegging slightly above the overall average household income in the United States. So when you put it that way, I

mean it completely falls apart, right, Crystal. When we're talking about we're talking about bargaining so that the top wage gets you to near average in the US, and I think that's fine. The UAW and workers, specifically auto workers, where the bedrock of the American middle class. The idea of the middle class was so you earn about a household income, and on set household income, you could mostly

make it. Now, to be honest, even seventy five thousand dollars for a family of four, you're not going to go very far. You could maybe scrape by with some rent in a not a particularly nice house, but you know, you can ish make it. You could probably save up enough to put your kid through like community college. But we're not talking about like high end fly five flying wages.

You're not traveling, you're vacation at seventy thousand dollars a year, you're driving a Disney World like if you want to make sure that you're not get taken out any debt. So that's at the top end of the spectrum. I just think we should again talk in real terms. And even this three hundred and sixty five number, it's not particularly useful when you until you think again in the overall dollar figure, we're talking about twenty twenty five thirty

million dollars in a single year. Now, obviously, yes, I understand there's a big difference between stock compensation any more, but I also don't even think it's just as useful to just focus in on CEO pay. Let's talk about executive pay. The fact is the executives are all rewarded

and overall cash bonuses or sorry, in stock bonuses. And the problem is is that these companies have financially engineered themselves such that they use huge portions of their money to buy back their own stock inflate the overall value, and then said value goes right back into their pockets, which they get to realize that grains. And even if this is the greatest scam in all of America, even

if they don't realize. Guys like CEOs, Let's say they have all this stock that's just sitting in their bank. They can take cash loans at very very low rates from their high net worth bankers, and they can live off set cash and never pay one dime on that as attacks. So it's like a perpetual motion machine that these people have created to live multi gajillion dollar lifestyles.

The people who are forwarded shareholders, GM, Stilantis, all these people, they're doing fine, but the overall workforce is making well below, even at the top rate, what the average household income is. When you put it that way, every American would be like, all right, I'm cool with this. Yeah, It's just, you know, the way we phrase and talk about all these things, it misses any of the like the brass tacks reality.

Can you actually pay a freaking mortgage for your family on the top salary that I mean, Look, we talked about mortgage payments. Good luck at two three hundred dollars at an average mortgage price somewhere even in Michigan, even in the heartland. Now at this point, what's the overall average price house Maybe four hundred fifty thousand, five hundred thousand, and that's if you're lucky enough to have one hundred

grand down, you don't have to pay PMI. So you put all these things together once again, I don't think it's a very difficult conversation.

poll just one week prior. So in spite of all of the propaganda that you hear about all the politics of envy and all these workers are asking for too much, et cetera, et cetera, In spite of what is literally decades of propaganda trying to indoctrinate the American people into believing that rank and file workers do not deserve a middle class living people aren't buying it, and that, to me is one of the most heartening, most extraordinary things

that is happening right now. Is in spite of all the money that's been spent on the other side of this, all of the years of media propaganda, all of the bias coverage, all of the bearing and smearing of working class people, in spite of all of that, the American people are not buying it, and that is the most beautiful thing to behold here now. I will say, we're starting to see some dirty tricks from the companies themselves. One of them announced that they're shutting down a battery

plan as sort of like a veiled threat. The UAW is calling them out for this. Those are the sorts of tactics that they will deploy. But I think the fact that you already have forward giving some significant ground. They're not all the way there, but some significant ground in terms of concessions, the fact that you had pilots and you had teamsters, ups drivers make significant gains from

their own labor activity. I think these auto workers, with the president coming today and with the former president showing up for whatever reason tomorrow, I think they are in a very strong position of leverage, and I'm hopeful that they're going to be able to actually secure a good deal, which matters not just for them, it matters for the whole auto industry. It matters for our conception of what working people deserve and are able to ask for and

demand when they band together. So we obviously are going to keep a close close eye on it.

Take a lesson.

justice system. We cannot set aside the presumption of innocence for political expediency when the harm is irrevocable. To those who have rushed to judgment, you have done so based on a limited set of facts, framed by the prosecution to be as salacious as possible. Remember, prosecutors get it wrong sometimes. Sadly, I know that instead of waiting for all the facts to be presented, others have rushed to judgment because they see a political opportunity for themselves or

those around them. All I humbly ask for in this moment, in my colleagues in Congress, the elected leaders and the advocates of New Jersey that I have worked with for years, as well as each person who calls New Jersey home, is to pause and allow for all the facts to be presented. Third, for thirty years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history

of my family facing confiscation in Cuba. Now this may seem old fashioned, but these were moneies drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those thirty years. I look forward to addressing other issues at trial.

under Batista's rule, not under Fidel Castro. So it's just miraculous that his parents came to this country six years prior to the communist takeover, and that he learned through their legacy of leaving Cuba under a non communist to withdraw massive amounts of cash. I will say this one reason why I'm happy that he said, this is the easiest thing in the world to check. Okay, fine, you took out x amount, Let's go check the bank. The bank easy as hell? Yeah, right. Also, if he was

withdrawing that amount of cash from his bank. You know, the bank is supposed to alert the FEDS to that. Like if you or I walk into a bank, if you or I who's not or anyone named not named Jeffrey Epstein were to walk into a cash into a bank and withdraw anything more than I think it's like ten thousand and one dollars, then they have to immediately alert the FEDS. Now, I mean, look, once again, they have easy access to his bank records. You can just

check it. Be like, all right, as he withdrawn x amount of cash, well does he have said amount of cash in his pockets? If it's more than that, where did the cash come from? Even if he didn't take it from a bribe, which again they found the DNA of the person allegedly bribing him on st cash. Well you didn't report it to the IRS. And that's a crime too. I mean, you know, we should all just start using our ethnic heritage's defense should the IRS ever come.

Like the RS comes from me. Oh, I'm Indian. You know, we we're real penny pintures. That's that's the actual It's like, what are we talking about it?

This is maybe the biggest one who is also calling for him to resign. Will show you that in a minute. But just the shit. Think about this. This dude was indicted on the most brazen allegations of corruption you can imagine, using his position as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee to literally sell out the country. I mean, this is like traitorous type of behavior that he stands accused of, and he announces his reelect like three days later. That's insane.

The shamelessness of that is just absolutely incredible. It's man, it's something something.

him out. So you had this statement from summer leave. If you want to go ahead and read it. The representaive.

If we fail to hold a senator accountable for selling on his chairmanship to a dictator gifting gold bars and cash to keep military aid flowing to Egypt as its government violates human rights. Menendez is of course O due process, but the American people are O. Trust in our institutions or fight against right wing fascism depends on that trust.

And I think she correctly identifies their saga that if you want to be the party that's talking about good government, talking about the importance of democracy and the importance of rebuilding trust and institutions, how can you look the other way on such a blatant, just insane violation of the trust and the power that he was given. And again

I can't get over the fact. Remember this is the second time he has been indicted on similar charges, and after the first time back in twenty fifteen, they went ahead and gave him the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations. I mean, this is an incredibly powerful position that they went ahead and decided to give him after he had already faced similar charges. It just boggles the mind how this is allowed to happen.

it's the most tepid. She has to be drawn to it. She's like, you know, kind of she clearly is weighing her words very carefully. Take a lesson.

state of New York, that that would hold too. But right now, sadly, because of the challenges that we face, because the skepticism that exists in our country about governance, about this Republican party that doesn't believe in governance, doesn't believe in science, so wants to take down on everything in order to give tax breaks to the wealthiest. We've got to stay focused on that. And for that reason, it probably be a good idea if you did resign.

So we gave credit Senator John Fetterman. Let's give it to Peter Welch from a Democrat from Vermont, came out and he said that, he said that Bob man Endez has got to go. He said it last night and shared. Brown also came out and said share it. And you know the thing is too this needs to be representative of there's a political benefit to being in front of

these things. Sharon Brown is in a tough spot, right, He's running in a Trump plus eight state, longtime survivor, working class democrat, longtime union guy on policy and more. And I bet you that if he didn't speak out about this, his constituents would be like, why are you okay with democratic corruption? And he can stand up and be like, no, I was the second person to come out and call on him to resign. These are, I believe, the type of things that penetrate to the core of

how everybody knows that these filthy politicians actually act. And so for a lot of doubt. You know, if the gold bar thing it's so silation, it's so perfect, they're real average, normal working day people who look at that. They're disgusted to see somebody with sixty six thousand dollars of gold in their house and cash in their pockets. That we need to normalize this. There's a benefit to speaking out on it. It's not just partisan. You got to

call out your own side. That's what we what have we found The most powerful thing on this show is when we call out the people that we even even kind of agree with, right, you know, that's what gives us credibility too.

this should be so easy. It should be so easy to look at what ninety nine point nine percent of the American people would say is completely unacceptable, wildly corrupt behavior and just say no, no, you cannot continue to serve in this position. You must step aside now in terms of the political landscapement, and has just announced for his reelect incredibly amidst all of this, he is facing

a Democratic primary challenger. It does seem like, you know, to use an old saying in politics, the walls are starting to close in when you've got much of the New Jersey Congressional delegation, the new Jersey governor now Nancy Pelosi, now a growing list of Democratic senators all saying okay, dude, time's up. Time for you to go. I don't know that he will step aside, because he obviously is very attached to this particular Senate seat and the benefit that

has conferred upon him and his family. But I do think if you have everybody line up behind his Democratic competitor in the primary, there's a good chance that he could be ousted in the primary. I think that's probably the best chance you have to get this guy out of office in the immediate term, because otherwise, you know, I don't think he's going to resign on his own.

If the pressure as hot as it is right now, isn't causing him to fold, is just causing him to be defined and make up these insane excuses like no, actually it's just because I'm Cuban. Then I don't think that he's likely to resign over any of this, no matter how pologies.

this is kind of interesting. So there's been a lot of back and forth about Governor California Gavin Newsom potentially debating Governor Florida Ron de Santis, who are both sort of like it's this weird proxy fight both between their states and their ideaologies, and also between two very ambitious men who both clearly want to be President of the United States, but are probably not going to be President of the United States at least in twenty twenty four.

So you finally appear to have an agreement between these two gentlemen to debate. Let's put this up on the screen. From Fox News, they announced that Sean Hannity is going to moderate the Red State Versus Blue State debate between Florida Governor Ran Desantas and California Governor Gavin Newsom. They go on to say that this will occur on November thirty. If it's going to be a ninety minute debate, is going to take place at a location to be determined

in Georgia. It's going to air on Hannity at nine pm. Hannity, they say, first raised the prospect of a debate with Newsom during his exclusive sit down this past June, following which Governor DeSantis officially signed on to participate in July. This will mark the first time the two governors will face off in a debate. Now, there is some indication from the Newsom side that it's not quite as locked

in as Fox News is portraying. There's still some details that need to be worked out that could cause this thing to fall apart. It looks like one of the sticking points originally was going to be whether or not there was a live studio audience. Newsom, I think understandably didn't want the optics of a Fox News audience that's just constantly cheering Desantas and constantly booing him or playing

into here or whatever. He wanted it to have, you know, for the TV viewing audience, more of a neutral feel to it, which again I think is understandable. He seems to have been able to achieve that in terms in the negotiations. But anyway, that's what we know. It'll be interesting content. I mean, I'm looking forward to it. I think it'd be fun very much looking forward. Look, we said this in I think this is great. I want

to normalize this. It's actually a lot of fun. You know, at the time we haven't done this in a long time. I'm not really sure why. I'm trying to think about it.

can run a country. It's like an executive thing, and it's probably something to it. But the point though is that at that time, in the Clinton era and when things were less Washington centric, there were like debates and elevation of statewide politicians and they were seen as the future. It's only like the Obama era onward that we just continue to nominate senators, at least on the Democratic side and obviously even on the Republican side alternatives to Trump.

You know, DeSantis is more of akin to the old era. So my point though, is that seeing the debates between these two states I mean, look, undeniable. California and Florida the two of the most dynamic and economically booming states in the country. I know that sounds odd to say about California, but listen, if it was its own country, it would be like the seventh it would be a

member of the G seven. It's a massive economy. Even with the net loss of five hundred thousand dollars five hundred thousand or so people, it's like forty million people who live in the state. They have two very different visions of governance, and so to see the two of them head to head, they're both like running ads in each other's states, like why you should.

about that. In terms of DeSantis, do you think that he, Sacer, has harmed himself in this primary sufficiently that he would be kind of out in terms of a twenty twenty eight run.

Now there's a lot of cracks that are beginning to show. You got a lot of Florida Republicans who are back from Trump. They're also like, oh, you're not as popular as we want. Stop, Maybe we're going to buck you whenever comes to the state legislature. So his overnight transformation

of the state has begun to crumble. And I think that the record that people were so celebrating, he's not going to have the same ability to just ram through and do whatever he wants in the state legislature like he did at one time, which was the bedrock of his appeal as president. So at the same time, in America, you shoot your shot, wasn't there was a chance? It

was small. I personally wouldn't have done it if I were him, But if you were as ambitious and he wants to be president, and there was a time, you know the moment, and I think he probably did make the right call in terms of there is and probably still is a small chance that he could be the eventual Republican nominee but if things can go the way that they are, I do think it probably hurt him

overall in the long run. This isn't Reagan running against Ford in the seventy six primary, which is what actually made him the air parent this time around because it was so close and Ford actually had to accommodate Reagan and even think about making this vice president and all of this thing because he showed real power and appeal to the overall base. Instead, we've seen a reversion from DeSantis's original high position and poll down to falling as

just your average other Republican. I think that is overall a political net, but it's still early. You know, you don't know.

Many of them have fallen out of love with the idea that this guy is really the future and this is you know, really the person they need to get behind. They've sort of you know, Florida with Tim Scott, Florida with Nikki Ale. The latest analysis that I saw is they've basically given up on it being anybody other than Trump at this point. Yeah, but I think the fact that whether it's fair or unfair, and it's hard for me. Look, I'm not on a campaign trail. I don't see how

he's actually interacting with voters. I can't tell how much the image of him as this like super awkward dude who you know, has these strange interactions with people. I can't tell how much of that is real and how much of it is created. But it kind of doesn't matter, because that's the impression of him that has been made with a lot of people, and it's stuck, and it's certainly stuck with that group of donors that he would need, you know, their backing in order to make a credible

run in twenty twenty eight. So oddly enough, even though DeSantis is the one actually in the race right now and has gotten so much national media attention and had the whole Fox News organization pulling for him. I would actually say Gavin Newsom is in some ways in a more powerful political position right now for the future and for representing the future of either of the two major parties.

pander to the right coalitional basis. You know, it's not easy getting elected as the governor of the state of California. He survived the recall which he could easily run on. And you know a lot of Democrats they agree with Gavin Newsom, so I could I could definitely see a world where he was able to mount a success also, you know, he's probably more likable, and this is sad

to say, than Kamala Harris, Pete Budajet. So if that's the bench, then yeah, I think, you know, given where he is, he could easily become a presidential contender in twenty twenty eight after Biden.

they're both very finger in the wind. You know, Desanta's positioned himself as this tea party small government guy when he's in the House and when that's the like thing of the day in the Republican Party, and now he's shifted to try to on this more populous rhetoric, etc.

And try to have a break from that past. So you can see very much the way that he's trying to read the mood and trying to translate that into his political position is the same thing with Gavin news You know, he's real finger in the wind, you can see. And let's go out and transition now to talking about his latest move in the state of California, which is fascinating because Newsom coming up in California. I mean, this is a guy who was really a darling of Silicon

Valley in the tech sector. And you know, a lot of fundraising in California, not just in California, a lot of the national fundraising the Democratic Party and some in the Republican Party too comes from Silicon Valley tech oligarchs, billionaires, et cetera. So he's been very closely tied with them.

They've been very responsible for his rise. At the same time, he's now trying to position himself more on the progressive end of the spectrum and as a friend and ally of labor, which has also you know, supported him in many respects throughout his career. So put this up on the screen. There was a bill but overwhelming past the California legislature which would have required that autonomous trucks have a human being, an actual truck driver present in them.

Of course, industry hates it, Silicon Valley hates it. But labor very much behind this, both out of safety concerns and also clearly out of job concerns, because if you actually move to a future where trucks are driven autonomously, you're talking about a lot of hundreds of thousands of jobs just in the state of California. So Teamster is very supportive of this bill, and, like I said, sailed

through the California legislature by huge margins. But guess what. Newsome, caught in a tough spot between his Silicon Valley donors and between labor, decides to back you know who, the Silicon Valley donor. So he vetos this bill. It was vetoed Friday night. It would a band self driving trucks weighed more than ten thousand pounds, ranging from ups to evans to massive big rigs, from operating on public roads

unless a human driver is on board. And let me tell you something, the Teamsters and their newly elected president are not having it. Put this up on the screen with what they had to say in response. This is Sean O'Brien. He says, Gavin Newsom doesn't have the guts to face working people. He'd rather give our jobs away in the dead of night. Late yesterday, the California Governor vetoed AB three sixteen that would have put human operators

in autonomous vehicle, saving jobs and protecting communities. Go on, He says, ninety five percent bipartisan support in the legislature, seventy five percent public support, but Newsom still killed it. He's giving a green light to put these dangerous rigs on the road. And there's one more piece here. He says, any politician who turns their back on workers to curry campaign contributions for Corporate America and big tech, better square

up teamsters will not walk away from this fight. Listen, maybe it's a small thing, but in this era when labor is so highly supported and so popular, and when American people are overwhelmingly backing workers and are very concerned about what these new technologies are going to mean for the workforce and for safety and for all of our future, that you're signing with the tech oligarchs in this moment is very telling and very troubling.

to me. He goes, yeah, one of these guys always hit me. One of these almost hit me yesterday. And he's like, by the way, when you're crossing the street, make sure you watch out because sometimes they don't watch pedestrians properly. And I was like, what this is crazy? And I started looking around. You could actually start to see it. Well, just yesterday a video has gone viral. Guys, let's go and put this up there on the screen

and play it as I'm talking over it. These are all of these crews operated Chevy Bolts causing a massive traffic jam. They're autonomous self driving vehicles. And one man is going, quote, are you telling me they have no way to get out of this? For those who are watching, you can see they're just lined up car after car

after car. They have no idea where they're going, and they are all over the city of Austin, in downtown, and it's one of those where, look, I'm a believer that we will maybe eventually get to the self driving technology, but having experienced some of it, been in some friends and tried multiple different variations, at this point, yeah, we're not there yet yet. I think we're at a point where,

you know, autopilot on highways, I think we're there. I think we're there everywhere else, I don't think we're there at all, especially not on the city street and especially not Austin where the infrastructure is not ready for the population boom that there is right now. So I think

it's a little bit crazy. But it gets really to what the bill was saying is just like, hey, we want to have human drivers right in the autonomous truck to make sure, just to make sure that in case anything goes wrong, just like in that video, that somebody can do it. Now, if you can prove over millions of miles, you know, and all that that that won't be the case, then fine, maybe we can have that conversation.

But in the interim it's probably a good idea. And we're talking about freaking eighteen wheeler trucks here, on major highways. I mean, if one thing goes wrong, you can kill people. Oh you get something to get terribly wrong.

the typical traffic laws, but that's what it was. Necessitated that situation. Like they can't deal with those sorts of novel situations or the way that human means actually drive versus like the technical like you always talk about the.

terrifying one to even contemplate. And you know, or even in terms of spins, and I've even read or heard about people who like to mess with Tesla's when they're in autopilots and like go into their lane because the car instantly reacts. But it's not scary. And then also it doesn't necessarily compute potholes all that well, something that we have a lot of here in Washington, d C. So it's just there's so so many things and the chaos of everyday human life, of which we're just not

there yet. Yeah, we're just not there.

Many observers wonder how much credence to put into his testimony. Grush is just a single individual. The other individual individuals were just former Navy pilots, but at least thirty whistleblowers working for the federal government or government contractors have given testimony or a protected disclosure to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, the Defense Inspector General, and to Congress over the last several months. According to multiple sources

now interviewed by public. When told whistleblowers had come forward to share this information, even skeptics the people like Mick West had said it'd be interesting. More people saying the same thing independently makes it more likely to be true. What they say is that this is all in the backdrop of a very confusing report Crystal that came out from the Inspector General that was made on September fifteenth.

In that September fifteenth letter, the current Inspector General of the Intelligence Community appeared to deny that his office was investigating these claims. He said quote that the office has not conducted any audit, inspection evaluation review of alleged UAP

programs within responsibility authority of the DNI. But the wording actually of his response gives him a lot of wiggle room of which this testimony now fits into, which is that the original official taxonomy quote for the ICIG activities include audits, investigations, inspections and reviews. It is then curious that an investigation is not being denied. So there's a lot of word salad that this all comes back into,

but the very basic is what Schollenberger can report. More than thirty former or current officials have made classified disclosures to the Inspector General of both the DoD two con UNGRESS and through the intelligence community around some of these alleged programs and some of the details about what's actually happening here, you know, really go into some of what GRUSH has made claims around, both in terms of recovered craft quote unquote biologics, in terms of quote like kinetic

incidents in some cases, you know, between these, between these alleged you know, how do I say it being's craft whatever people are saying, and I think it's just pretty extraordinary. The other one that I definitely want to highlight is

this quote. Testimony has included both firs hand and secondhand reports of crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs by the United States, Russian and Chinese governments, the testing of materials obtained from retrieve craft, active and ongoing government disinformation operations, kinetic military action with UAP's AKA shootdown or tried shootdown, and contact collaboration with quote non human intelligence, and the

successful reverse engineering of a triangle shape craft with unconventional propulsion. So some more interesting reporting there coming out from Michael Schellenberger. And before everybody says like show it to me, I agree, listen, show it to me. I want to see it too. I want to see him come before Congress. But don't forget we're seeing a major stonewalling right now in Congress.

Congressman Tim Burchett and a Paulina Luna. They've said we will have another hearing all of that, that's what they've been granted, but they still have not been given the special compartmentalized access to be given a classified briefing Guy Grush, which it doesn't make any sense to me. I've spoken now with people on the Hill and I'm like, if you're a normal congressman, like, why is it so hard to just book a special compartmentalized facility to get a briefing.

And they're like, well, if it had to do with iron or something like that, you could get it done easily. But they keep getting denied access and it's all up to the House Intelligence Community Committee which apparently doesn't want anything to do with this, so a whole there's a lot of crazy stuff that's going on behind the scenes.

at that and say that's very interesting. Of course, is there a sager Do we have any expectation of when we'll learn more about what these whistleblowers are saying, because the information here is very vague about what pieces of the story they're corroborating, whether it's actual you know, the craft retrieval programs, et cetera, or whether it is wrongdoing within this program, which may not be indicative of anything with regard to extra trustrial life.

Now let's get to the point of well, did he lie did he not lie? Let's get to the investigation of the Inspector General community. And also in terms of the way that all of these come out, the parsing of the language, they always try and emphasize one thing, there's nothing going on behind the scenes, this is all crap, But they always leave themselves room for no real explicit

denial of what's happening. And I just have to recall that when Grush came forward his claims, I'm not saying they were vetted by the Inspector General, but they called them urgent and credible. His allegations that were made. He's now spoken out. He's did a big documentary with some of the Yes Theory guys. I recommend people go and listen to it if you're interested. But what I'm looking for is not just David Grush. I mean to me, you know, no offense to him. I think he's, you know,

courageous man for coming forward. But it's not about him. It's about the claim, whether it's true, and whether there are multiple other people who can corroborate it. So Shallenberger, I mean, was one of the first to also report after Grush came forward about some of what was going on. He's a knowledgeable source and his reporting has not been denied, you know, by people inside of the intelligence community, by

the DD Inspector General. They always fall back on the same thing, like with the bs NASA conference, We've got no evidence of extraterrestrial life. It's like, yeah, but you're admitting in an open form you have no idea what any of this stuff is. You have no clue. And it's like, well, yeah, you have no evidence that it is. You got no evidence that it Isn't you just have no evidence period because you don't know what the hell is going on. And obviously I want to believe, but

I'm keeping my skeptics hat on. As everyone saw with the Aliens incident, the body on this one, I just want more people to come forward in a public setting, and ultimately it just comes down to programs like ours educating people so that they can pressure Congress. I mean, one thing that I will say about the public pressure when I showed up to that UFO hearing. I was stuck. There were there was only thirty seats for the public.

Hundreds of people lined up out of the back. The staffers told me they had not seen public participation or enthusiasm for hearing like that since the wreaking Muller report in twenty seventeen. And there's a very different crowd. Some guys that I met there. Burchette even talked about this. One guy flew all the way from Belgium just to attend this hearing. Like people are really interested, really in

the subject. So yeah, I know, I personally I wouldn't do it, but hey, you know, Belgium's a boring country. No offense. It's very beautiful, don't get me wrong. Good chocolate, Yeah, good chocolate, good fries freaks as they call them, so beautiful. I didn't truy the I didn't have hot chocolate. It was delicious. Antwerp, by the way, one of the most beautiful cities have ever been. To shout out to Antwerp. But my point though, is that immense public pressure and

public interest. It's something these politicians and no offense. I think Burchett is a believer, but the rest of them, I don't care. They don't care either way, but they see that the public is animated and interested, and so I think it was a big wake up call for many of the people, at least anecdotally from what I saw when I was in the room, many of the people who were in Congress were stunned at the amount of attention that people were that they were receiving of.

Just I mean, Burchick was agreed to, like a select use taking freaking selfies with them. So play a little bit to their vanity, you know, make it politically beneficial to them to push for investigation. And because a lot of the powers that be behind the scenes, like I said, the House Intelligence Community and a committee and others, they're

trying to quash this stuff. And so if you show them that it's undeniable and that we have to have more disclosure, more people under oath, and to just talk about it in an open public setting and form and get real yes or no answers to our questions, that's how we move forward and actually have a path to real transparency, which is what our goal should be. Indeed, Okay, let's talk about the podcast.

show that was really super popular in Texas. They worked for Cumulus Media and they couldn't come to terms on new contracts, so they left and they decided to launch their own podcast called The Dumb Zone. Well, lo and behold, Cumulus Media sent them a letter that said, no, no, no, you have a six month non compete. You cannot start this other podcast. Basically you can't work at all for

that six month period because of this non compete. Well, as I mentioned before, the Biden administration is trying to

end the abuse of these non compete agreements. Back in May, when of President Biden's appointees from the NLRB published legal guidance finding that overly broad non compete agreements violate federal labor law, and so they are going to court to challenge this non compete from Cumulus Media, and it could end up being the case that really ends a lot of over really broad and non competes that have taken

hold in massive ways on our economy. They had the estimate here of just how much of our economy is governed now by non competes, and it's a huge percentage of the workforce for things that are insane, like we've talked Soger before about like sandwich makers that are being supposedly governed by non competes. I mean industries where this makes no sense at all, because the original idea is if you are privy to trade secrets, then potentially it makes sense. But it's just gotten wildly on PA.

say you're a lawyer. You can't walk out with the client list, for example, and just say like in terms of proprietary information. But what should stop you, though, from leaving and then going to the client and be like, Hey, I think that I could provide you a better service. What's wrong with that? If you if it's up to the client, and it's up to you, if you think

you could provide a better service, then godspeed. And you know this one, maybe this one is just a little too personal, Crystal, because we quite literally had to suffer the list. I mean, I think people should understand. You know, it's not just white collar workers or people like us. Oh feel bad for the podcasters. There are millions of people who are governed by this and are held and

basically forced to work against their will. You and I not to go too into the scenes, we're quite literally forced to work against our will as part of some negotiations and work a place that we did not want to be at in order to make sure that we were not subject to these ridiculous non compete agreement. And one of the reasons why you know this is such a ridiculous one is, Crystal, they're basically claiming that they were not allowed to work for six straight months after

not even signing a new contract. It's not like they left, they didn't come to a new agreement. And now they're being sued in court and putting this to a test. So you know, by the way, shout out to my friend Akash saying he actually put me in touch with these gentlemen. He's a friend of theirs. He's one of the ones who encouraged them in order to go public. So all of us do kind of a band and

stick together. But you know, the point is that these gents have the absolute right, in my opinion, to be able to leave and to continue the show of which the intellectual property had nothing to do with the cumulous media. It had to do with their content, as you and I have discovered over here at breaking points, rebuilding a channel from zero to a million in just the span

of two years. It's because it was about me and it was about you, and it wasn't really about whatever we were doing over whatever the Hill was giving us at that time. And that's why it's really about the empowerment to the overall individual citizen that corporations do not own you, even after you were under contract with them. The entire idea actually is very dirty and gross history spanning back to indentured servitude and when we had no

labor rights in the seventeen nineties. The idea that you know, you owe me your labor and then I can even control where you go work afterwards because of the trade secrets and all that. We need to get away from this. This is very patrician nonsense.

on the side of that. I don't know if we can really limit these things. Biden has been really clear. He gave a speech several years back before he was in the White House about how he saw this as you know, a violation of federal law. And now the people that he's put in place in the administration have

attempted to make good on it. Matt Brunnig, who's the founder of the People's Policy Project and also a labor attorney, he's the one who actually filed the host's petition to the Natural Labor Relations Board to try to uphold this guidance about the non compete clause, and he says, listen if the NLRB finds in their favor, because the courts are supposed to defer to the NLRB's judgment on issues

such as this. He says, there's nothing to stop everyone else in the country with a noncompete clause from doing the same thing, because at that point, all you have to do is quit your job. Point to the NLRB case, and you are golden. He also said that this particular suit against the hosts of The Dumb Zone from Cumulus Media perfectly reflects the kind of corporate overreach the nrb's guidances intended to stop. Quote their contract clauses make it

so these guys have no outside option. They cannot really leave the employer without facing huge legal backlash. You're bound to the employer, and you effectively cannot leave without their permission, And that is so incredibly important to focus on because think of how much mon popoly consolidation that we've had, especially in the media space, but in so many sectors. So if you have no other option, you can't go

to a competitor. There are barely any competitors. You can't hang up your own shingle, as these guys did with their own you know, individual podcasts, which, by the way, the appears to have been pretty successful for them. They're doing well. It sounds like a funny podcast. I've never listened to it, but yea, yeah, I don't really sound charming and very sports those stories for culture whatever.

in technical violation well content. Yeah, and even that, they're still trying to sue them. And there's all sorts of behind the scenes stuff like if you are not working somewhere else, they should not be able to control what you are doing. And even if they get you to sign it because you know, bonuses or whatever, like these things should not be enforceable. And if we can keep this at the national level, it will free up a

lot of people. And it's one of the last tools establishment media really has over the people because they control the means of distribution. But if we can kill it, then you know, future people like us don't have to deal with that. It was a real headache. It cost us a lot of money.

politicians and much of our media class. I would classify many of these people as Ukraine firsters, meaning that their chief agenda is Ukrainian sovereignty, with many American interests secondary. My challenge at that time was the baby formula crisis. For example, it was sweeping the nation, and I sat in one debate. I believed absolutely that most American elites cared far more about Ukraine than they did about Americans

getting baby formula. The argument was that we can care about both, and what I've always said, show me what gets effortless bipartisanship and is spent without question, and I will show you where power really lies. We have an easy answer, I think, to those questions. Two years into this war, American politicians and most of the American commentariat are Ukraine firsts, perhaps even more than we thought. In the midst of a major fight about a government shutdown, quietly,

behind the scenes, machinations have been made. The Pentagon has ensured Ukrainian aid will not be touched secretly without any congressional authorization. The Pentagon has made a new change to

its rules through bureaucratic trickery. The Pentagon has internally decided any Ukraine operation will be exempt from a potential government shutdown, meaning the quote key training and other activities in supportive Kiev will move ahead uninterrupted, which means, in plain English, if a government shuts down, millions of everyday American citizens will not get a paycheck, veterans will not get benefits, services for all of us will diminish. But people in

Kiev they're gonna get paid. You can't even make it up. Who they decide to pay even when they don't have the constitutional authority to do so shows you who our government really cares the most about, and it's decidedly Ukraine. Sixty minutes invertently revealed to the historic degree to which the United States is not only propping up Ukraine's military, but as backstopping their entire economy and civil society. Take a listen to some of the stuff they found that were funding over there.

and fishing. Russia's invasions shrank Ukraine's economy by about a third. We were surprised to that to keep it afloat, the US government is subsidizing small businesses, so.

to be a Ukrainian nitwear company. I know a lot of people over here who would love it if the government paid their bills and then found them customers. As a small business owner myself with Crystal, I cannot tell you how much time we spend making sure our finances are straight, payroll, making sure it runs properly. The trains have to run on time. In many ways, it's even harder than doing the show every day. I know farmers too. They struggle on the knife's edge of making their mortgage payments,

and they battle with big grain companies over seas and fertilizer. Meanwhile, those in Kiev don't have to worry about anything. The government has got their back, our government. Perhaps some of this sounds callous, and I really don't want it to. I'm not opposed to aid to Ukraine, only within reason which advances our interests At this moment, we are not only backstopping their entire military, we are backstopping their entire

civil society. Biden and Establishment Republicans they say we're going to back Ukraine as long as it takes. It's clear that means not only do the weapons have to flow, putting us in danger of perhaps embroiling into a larger war with Russia, but we've got to backstop their whole civil society for the foreseeable future. Does that seem fair to you or does it seem like we've done our part now? If Europe wants to step up, and they can be our guest if they want to pay these

people's bills. But with the US the farthest away and the least at stake, shouldn't we have to pay? Why should we have to pay the vast majority of these countries' bills. Recently there was a concerted campaign to full the American public with talk of how the Europeans have overtaken the US in aid to Ukraine. And that's a fun talking point.

It happens to also be totally false. They do this by focusing on non military aid commitments over many years, which the governments have pledged to spend but have not appropriated and not actually spend. When you take that away, what do you find? Shocker turns out the US has provided the vast, vast majority of all military aid, the only one that also matters. Also, even whenever you take away the so called EU classification and you look at it by country guests who still provide in the vast

majority of a to Ukraine, you guessed it us. The amount of this side that we have dispersed is vastly disproportionate to our actual interests, and worse, is honestly feeding unrealistic expectations in Kiev. Do they just expect us to pay these nitmakers bills forever, even after the war is over? The answer is probably at this point yes, And the secret answer from US politicians to that question is also yes. I mean, how crazy is that we're paying this nue.

lot of things with the ev transition. I mean, we're not against a green economy. I mean we got to have clean air, we got to have clean water. You know, we've got to have a world for people to live in, future generations to live on. But it's got to be a just transition where you know, labor is guys a seed, it's a table. You know, there's a lot of money, you know, with the IRA that was put in play with the government, a lot of our taxpayer dollars to

help fund this transition. But again, like always, the corporations come with their hands out. There's always way the government finds a way to put money in their pockets, but labor gets left behind. Labor cannot continue to be left behind. And that's been our message to the White House, to Congress and to anyone that'll listen. And so you know, that's that's got to change.

offshore jobs and undercut wages. Trump was very savvy to pick up on this tension, seeks to cynically exploit it, even if he offers workers worse than nothing, because the EV transition really is the elephant in the room of this strike and of the future of the auto industry. And while it's not up for direct negotiations, the outcome of this strike could well determine whether this transition will in fact spark a blue collar rebirth or be yet

another race to the bottom. So the first thing to understand here is that the EV transition is happening regardless of who's in the White House. It's really just a matter of timing. Here in the US, evs are still a relatively small percentage of the overall market, them growing at an astonishing clip in a two year time span between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three, ev sales

shot up by one hundred and forty seven percent. Here, Taesla is still by far the market leader, but other automakers like Ford and Chevy they've been shipping into their dominance, dropping them under sixty percent of the total market for the first time ever. But in some ways, to look just that, the US is really missed the big picture. Global sales of EV's have absolutely exploded. Last year saw sales of ten million electric cars worldwide are expected to

spike another thirty five percent just this year. That means electric vehicles will jump from only four percent of the new car market in twenty twenty to eighteen percent this year. Those sales are led by China, which has aggressively incentivized development and provided consumer subsidies to try to make the cars more affordable. The Big three they see the writing on the wall, and even before the Biden ARRA incentives,

had begun investing billions into this new market. GM wants to completely switch over to EV's by twenty thirty five. Ford once half of all their sales to be elected by twenty thirty now. Biden is working aggressively to speed this transition, but his policies have been woefully incomplete. Effectively, you got to deliver here for three groups, consumers, workers, and automakers. Inflation Reduction Act only fully delivers for one of these groups, and it will not surprise you which one.

In classic DC fashion, the giant corporations got taken care of most fully with generous incentives. This industrial policy is already having a huge impact with North America's surging to become the fastest growing EV battery hub. Meanwhile, the consumers and workers are getting half a glass at best. Consumers get a seventy five hundred dollars credit on certain EV models, but that is still not enough to offset the initial

price difference. And the government is tackling the biggest pain point for EV drivers, the lack of charging stations, through funds to build around five hundred thousand new chargers nationwide. Unfortunately, experts estimate we actually need more like two million new

charging stations. In terms of workers, the automaker incentives do require jobs to be kept in the US, so those provisions do protect workers from offshoring, but there are no direct requirements on wages, benefits, or unions, a betrayal of Biden's stated desire to be a truly pro union president goes without saying that Trump and Republicans plan to do nothing on evs and to continue union busting, which will virtually guarantee that this industry and its associated jobs will

be offshore, and that any plans which happen to spring up here will suffer from low wages and dangerous conditions. Hardly an appealing alternative. But there's nothing strikers can do directly about the EV transition. That doesn't mean the strike is irrelevant to EV unionizing and wages. Just imagine that you work at Tesla and you're watching all of this unfold. Currently, non union Tesla spends about forty five dollars per hour

on wages and benefits altogether for their workers. That's as opposed to sixty six dollars right now per hour for the Big Three. So if you work at Tesla, you are already on the short end of the stick, but you're about to watch people who do the very same job as you get a double digit pay increase along with better benefits and job protections, all because they are are in a union. And this administration has just significantly eased the path to unionize thanks to some key National

Labor Relations Board decisions. You think workers at Tesla just going to sit back and accept getting dramatically underpaid versus their competitors. They're either going to unionize or Eline's going to have to cough up a good bit more money

to try to keep them from unionizing. Sustain with all the ev battery workers and what is now an extremely hot industry here in this country, battery workers don't make anywhere close to what autoworkers are making right now, and they're routinely exposed to incredibly dangerous conditions thanks to working with some very hazardous materials. Jackman wrote a great article recently which documented how wage and safety concerns recently led

a Lordstown GM battery facility to unionize. Those workers were being paid about sixteen dollars and fifty cents per hour to risk their health after being exposed to a toxic chemical spill on site. After that spill, they voted to join the UAW by a margin of seven hundred and ten to sixteen. There is to stop other battery workers from following suit. So as you're watching the auto workers strike, just remember it's not just their livelihoods which are on

the line. The entire nature of the EV transition also hangs in the balance. Will it be just the latest way to screw workers, or will they be able to organize and secure a new middle class standard of living. The UAW has a chance here to show these workers that the benefits of unionizing outweighs the always present risk

of going head to head with the bosses. And even as his EV policy has fallen short, believe me, having the President of the United States joining the strike and signaling that he'll have your back to that doesn't hurt either. And this is really the elephant in the room.

So at the end of the day, I think we have a problem of too much corporate power in America, and if you look at the polls, people across the political spectrum agree with that on issue after issue after issue and want to.

and development. They're dependent on taking at a discount or for free the fruits of that government research and development, or dependent on the government to approve their products, or dependent on the government to purchase their products, and then depend on the government to protect their monopolies and purchase

their products at too high a price. So we've seen the results of that political influence in each of those areas I'm talking and I've just talked about, including notably and probably the most corrupt deal in modern American history, where we created a Medicare drug program to provide pharmaceutical coverage for seniors, but we prohibited the government from negotiating with the drug companies over that.

we didn't know about this problem. In fact, Big Oil knew about the prospect of climate change probably before anyone else, certainly dating back to their corporate boardrooms in the nineteen seventies, and instead of saying, Okay, we're going to share this information and help the world figure out a way out of this, they engage in a concerted effort over decades

to deny the science and block action. We're still living with that right now in terms of their objection to moving forward to a clean energy future, and we're certainly living with the results of it every day.

position as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. It's very easy to look at those stories as one of personal failing, which certainly it is that. But do you see broader structure issues or is this about the people that are involved here?

Was the decision, of course from the Supreme Court that said companies could spend whatever they want to influence election outcomes.

them from leveraging their political influence. We need to support labor unions, so we've got independent check on the power of big corporations by making it legal to organize an illegal, legitimately illegal to interfere with union organizing, and on down the line. There's a set of things. There is for sure no silver bullet to the problem of too much corporate power.

of exactly the structural factors that you're talking about. And it makes me question if we even live in a democracy at this point when the will of the people seems to matter really not at all.

act and meaningful reforms. Far too little as we see every day. But we made progress. And that's how we make progress every time. You take that example of the Medicare drug program, biggest rip off I think in modern American history, but we just clawed back one hundred billion dollars of that and the Inflation Reduction Act.