Collective Apathy

twenty fifteen. What is interesting about this, other than Donald Trump's Donald Trump's continued deflection and continue to hide behind executive privilege, is the montage of videos that you can see that show Donald Trump, in his own fucking words, encouraging his bodyguards his crowds in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen to rough up individuals and that he would pay their legal fees to physically harm beat the hell

out of them. He said in what at one rally the judge that was calling for his deposition allowed those snippets to be played. Other reporters are saying, you know, if it had been a more conservative judge, that that probably would not have been entered, but I say, I'm sorry why not? Because you see, Donald Trump wants all of the privileges that come with the title of presidency,

but none of their responsibility. This is not news, But the fact is is that the questions that I would ask if I were a fucking attorney would be, when you give an order, you expect people to follow it correct, yes or no? And when people don't follow that order, are they punished? And is that punishment firing? Yes or no? Did you at this rally, this rally, this rally, this rally, and this rally call for disruptors to be physically harmed? Yes or no? Roll the tape? Is this you? Yes?

It is? Did you call for the people who are disrupting your rally by protesting in it to be roughed up? What was your intent behind that? When you spoke before the Suffolk County Police officers on Long Island and you told them to rough up criminals? What was that about? Like?

There are so many fucking instances of Donald Trump calling for a violence and celebrating violence that how any judge would not allow him, in his own words, over the past five fucking years, to be evidence in a trial where people have been abused by his underlings is ridiculous to me, and just goes to show you once again how wealthy, white and well connected powerful men get to skirt the law and how we have to work overtime right to make sure that all the teas are crossed

and all the eyes are dotted, because God forbid we were to treat Donald Trump the way that we treat black and brown, low income people in our criminal justice system. I'm just so fucking sick and tired. It's just every day you see the ways in which if you don't have money, and you are not white, and you are not male, you don't fucking matter. And I'm sick of it, sick of it, and I'm like, why isn't everybody else? The other thing happening this week will be a couple

of things. There'll be the vote in the Senate to put folks on the record for a piece of voting rights legislation, which has fifty votes, all the fifty Democrats, but does not have the fucking sixty that is needed to skirt the fillibuster. But you still have Joe Manchin and Kirsten's Cinema because of their own personal greed and

fucking disgusting nature to not give a fuck. So voting rights is up for it's probably final vote this week to see whether or not our democracy has it gets its final nail in the coffin, because there's no more skirting around this, and there have been so many stories that have been done, and I got to tell you that this current administration, with all their fucking you know, robust agenda, doesn't matter at all unless you can win an election, unless the elections are free and are fair,

none of those things are true. And so under a democratic Congress and a democratic executive branch, we are watching our democracy be eroded by their fucking apathy. Right. They're fucking like wedded to bullshit Senate procedures as opposed to being wedded to uplifting the voices of the people. Every day, every fucking day, every week is just another week of disappointment.

I'm going to be writing a piece soon on you know, what my thoughts are as we come to the year mark of the twenty twenty election and the questions being asked, you know, about what people think about Biden's performance, And I'm going to frankly tell you that outside of the vaccine rollouts. I think it's fucking paltry at best. And everybody can come for me and tell me, well, you know, they're facing so many different things and blah blah, Yeah

they are. Absolutely. I would never have run for president at all, right, because I'm like, nah, y'all are on your own. But the thing is is that they signed up for this willingly, knowing exactly what the fuck they were going to be walking into, or having some idea, even though I'm sure it was worse than their worst nightmares.

But the lack of aggression, this fucking sing songy kumbayashit that they still want to practice with Republicans, the fact that there is no sense of urgency, there is no ringing of the alarm, there is no ringing of fucking necks of these two fucking supposed democrats that are double handedly strangling our democracy to death the way that Chauvin did fucking George Floyd. They they have their knees on

the neck of our democracy. And right now the Biden administration is acting like those other fucking officers and just standing by. We don't have time to continue with this. Oh they'll come together, Oh there are reasonable Republicans, motherfucker, No, there are not. Even the two that are on the one six commission voted against voting rights. The collision course that we are on with authoritarianism and fascism is really fucking wild. And what's worse is that some days I

really wish that I didn't know. Some days I do believe that ignorance would be bliss to just pretend that you know, all is well and none of this really matters, and just go on with my day to day life. Except I feel like I'm living on a countdown clock that every day we just lose more and more time, and we're going to be thrust soon into our dystopian present, and then we'll be able to absolutely pinpoint and pin

the tail on the Democrat that fucked us. The last thing that I will say is that, you know what else gets me is this saying that I want to die, This saying that, oh, but history will remember them. They are actively eracing history as we speak. They have politicized our history. They are whitewashing our history, they are criminalizing our history. So no history won't remember them, because history

is about who gets to write the story. And right now Republicans are the only one holding the fucking pen. Coming up next is my conversation with our friend, the author of Big Dirty Money, Jennifer Tobb is back with us to talk about the Pandora Papers, financial crimes, and

whether or not white collar criminals will ever be held accountable. Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to the show my friend and author of the book Big Dirty Money, The shocking injustice and unseen cost of white collar Crime, Jennifer tub Jen. Let's just say that billionaires have been in the press for their wrongdoing like non stop over

the past several weeks. Every headline from you know billionaires headed into add a space with all of you know, the tax dollars that the tax wealth that's supposed to trickle down to the rest of us, to the Pandora Papers, which showed how folks within exorbitant wealth are able to shelter their money, to the fact that you know, we haven't seen not one Trump accolyte in a jumpsuit as of now, and we are ten months past a coup

and attempted coup to overthrow our government. I don't even know where to begin, but I want to start with your thoughts around the Pandora Papers and what it illuminates to the rest of us about capitalism, about what wealthy people are privy to and protected by, and what the wealth the rest of us just have to suffer through. So I'm so glad you're talking about this because the Pandora Papers, which is which were which is a project of released by the same group that a year ago

had worked on something. So this is a consortium of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and they're working with one hundred and forty media organizations worldwide to expose what's going on across the globe so that billionaires and business and in government what they're doing to shelter, to hide their wealth and to grow richer while the rest of us, you know, continue to decline. And I what's what's the

most disturbing about this is how little attention it is writing. Yes, right, I mean it's such an ambitious title, you know, the Pandora Papers. It kind of reminds us it's kind of an echo of last year. And I'm forgetting what the release was last year before it had been the Panama Papers last year. I'm forgetting what the name of the

Finnsen release, and now we have the Pandora papers. All this is meant to echo the Pentagon papers, right, But the Pentagon papers from way back during the Vietnam War was all over the news. It really changed the public's perception of whether this was a just war to continue. But with the Pandora papers, it's kind of like silence.

I mean, I know people I spoke to who said, oh, surprise, surprise, now we know the wealthy hide their assets and don't pay taxes, Like it's just we're supposed to just accept it, right, it shouldn't. And I think, to me, I'm not actually shocked that it's not getting that much attention. What I found most shocking about this is how we continue to talk about assets being sheltered offshore when it turns out South Dakota who knew literally they said that, and they said,

offshore just now means not of the country of your origin. Right, is that you can place your money in these places. And the term came to be because it used to be places like the islands like the Caymans that had weaker kind of financial laws in place, and so you can harbor your money there. But we learned through this discovery through this investigation that we're talking about places like Delaware, We're talking about South Dakota, we're talking about Nevada. Right,

So this idea of offshore really isn't that. I mean, it's shocking. You know. I've been to South Dakota and it's you know, I grew up in the Midwest. I like the plane state. South Dakota is a charming place. I spent a summer working on in Indian reservation in South Dakota. I went to the Corn Palace, Like I am the most shocked and surprise. And I know it's been written about before, but it really hit me over the head. How there is six three hundred and sixty

billion dollars in these kinds of trusts? Are you hear me? Three hundred and sixty billion with a B in South Dakota and this is international clients from fifty four countries. Wow? Again, tax Haven's I think of sun I think of islands. I do not think of a landlocked state Aratha that can be twenty below with windshow. But I mean the point here is, you know it's called the Door of Papers,

and you know the story of Pandora's Box. You know, it's supposed to open it because all this stuff comes out and then now the world is it's kind of like a Garden of Eden story, and now there's all

kinds of disaster. But obviously, you know, I don't think that that's what these papers are going to do, obviously, and I don't even think the I think the real, the real Pandora's box here is the fact that we cannot now contain what we have done as a nation and as a globe in terms of multi billionaires getting so much wealthier than the rest of us and having all the power to shape the laws across the globe so they don't really have to pay taxes on their wealth,

and that they can also engage in illegal behavior, you know, And it's how is it? Can we can we talk about this for a moment though, because you know, wealth has changed over just my lifetime, right, Like what we used to consider as rich, now we have a whole other grouping of uber rich, right, And how is it that people during this time when millions of Americans lost their job due to the pandemic, when we saw economies grind to a halt, that billionaires got richer and millionaires

turned into billionaires during this time. How does that happen? And we don't and we don't look at the overarching picture and say, we have failed infrastructure in this country, not because of you and I who are paying our taxes, right, and the government wants to tell us, well, that's not enough money. But then you have people that are moving up the economic ladder from millionaires to billionaires with such ease. You know, you know, I there's an partial answer to

the question. Is the same thing that we've talked about that you know, the gains on the gains you can make on capital, on investment, wealth will always exceed income growth, right, And this is from the book you know, Capitalism in the twenty first century. But we but we we know this. You know. The numbers though still shock me. So the

billionaires in the US alone, these numbers are unbelievable. During the pandemic, their wealth increased by one point eight trillion dollars, you know, and globally, globally billionaires gained five point five trillion. And if you just I mean, if you just look at some of the numbers, I don't know if I have this number right, but I remember, if you look

at just Jeff Bezos alone. I think he gained if I remember correctly, and I'm just going to check it right now, I think he gained gained seventy Yes, I'm right, seventy billion dollars during the pandemic. That's just beso salon. I mean, I'm just disgusted, right Like, And why do

you think that we don't have collective outrage? Is it because we as Americans regard wealth in such high esteem and that we are so you know, dazzled by celebrity culture and wealth culture, that it's okay for us to shrug it off because in our minds we're like, well, we would do the same thing if we were them, and so we're not making the connection as to how it is hurting us, right, I guess there's so there's

two things, three things I would say. One, there's, um, I think the notion that even even if under existing law that wealth is gained, you know, legitimately, I think I have you know, many of us have a problem, um you know, going back to the Brandisi an idea that you can either have a democracy, you know, or you can have you know, a super wealthy class, but you can't have both, right, I think also though some

of that wealth is gained not lawfully. I'm not speaking to bezos, I'm speaking generally either some of it's gained by you know, union busting or things other ways, or actual actually illicit activity, right. So I think people have

trouble with that as well. But I think the last piece that's a lot more complicated is the notion that there is a lot of mistrust in what if you're talking about taxing is a form of you know, a wealth tax or what have you, which makes a lot of sense, you know, Elizabeth Warrens, you know, just two cents to have a certain amount, right, that makes a lot of sense, except for people wonder, well, what is the government going to do with that those tax dollars? Right?

It's a distributional access at distributional factors. Once the federal government has that money, you know, if are they going to distribute it to the states? Are they? You know, there's a lot of the things that people, I think worry about, and the more people lose confidence in the government, I think that's why they'll say they think things like, well, you know, Elon Musk, another one of the billionaires, maybe he's got a lot of issues you know that we

see all over the place. But at least the Rocketsy, you know, puts up in the air come down, or there's there's a way that I think, and I think a lot of them mistrust. I think you know, and I think it's a lot of them mistrust is wrong, right. I think we should trust, we can, we should be able to trust the government officials we elect. But at the same time that you and I are saying, oh my goodness, the whole system, there's voter suppression, there's money

and politics. We're trying to fix it to that the people who are elected actually represent us, even while we know a lot of them aren't looking at our interests. Right, So we're kind of talking out of both sides of our mouth. On the one hand, we want more taxes to make things more cool. On the other hand, we don't. You and I don't fully trust the people who are elected in office. I know that, and you know that.

But that that is such. That is such a valid point because if I'm relying on the same people who created tax policy to only benefit a certain class and then punish another, then I'm asking those same people and assuming that if I give you more money, you're now going to do right by it. In my response to that would be, on the other hand, we have, you know, the government needs to employ even more people. Right our

post office is slow. The government can also distribute funds to the states so they can pay for higher education and there's less student that. There's a lot that just having the money. Infrastructure. Our bridges are crumbling, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There's a lot hey, oh sorry, you know, um trying to develop industry, so we don't, you know, kill the planet.

I think even if you and I both agree that we don't fully trust the folks who may you know, funnel the money to the good stuff, we think starving the federal government starting the states is going to be far worse. Right so so, but I think it takes I'm so glad you're not gonna have this honest conversation because I think some of you just have to think

logically about what is the alternative. And I don't like the status quo right now, and I really think we need a wealth tax, and we of course need to close a lot of the loopholes that are in the tax system, and a lot of where we need to look, is this really important work that these journalists across the country are doing to shine a light on all of this. But you're in your mind, do you believe that we

are still living inside of a democracy? Because this is something that I have been honestly grappling with and writing about and talking about, you know, since before Trump came into office, because even the idea of a person like him being able to ascend shows me that our democracy is broken. And you know, oftentimes when I say things on this show, the criminal justice system is broken, I've decided to shift that and I'm like, no, it's not broken.

It's actually working exactly how it was meant to work, right. It's punishing those that they have believed don't deserve second chances, don't deserve lesser sentencing, and are not rehabable whatever. And I wonder, like I have you know, I had one of our one of our other friends watch a hot on this show, you know, last week, and I was just like, our is our democracy? Do you still think it's it's functioning? And he's like, yeah, I don't think so.

So you know, I'm going to do this like thing, which is like, uh, did it you know, were there times when it functioned better than other times. And you know, to me, democracy has always been aspirational. I think things are really in trouble right now. Let me just yea, yeah, yeah, right, But we can you know, we can talk about democracy, you know, and I don't need to tell you you know, when this nation was founded, that was aspirational only for

some group of people, right, okay? And so have we ever had you know, you know, we can talk about you know, you know, what did the fourteenth Amendment mean? Didn't mean anything until the Voting Rights Act happened? What about? You know, was there a golden age? I'm trying to figure out, you know, was there a moment when we thought, you know, was it like you know, when Barack Obama was elected? We didn't think everything was fixed then, right,

you know? In other words, I don't I'm trying to find this moment where things were perfect and they weren't. But the problem now is things are broken and there's an aggressive attempt to roll back voting rights, civil rights all you know that is happening, abortion rights. We're watching this. There's so much money in politics. The Republican Party is willing to stand behind an insurrectionist who's still claiming he won the election. I mean, a lot is really broken.

I think this is a really dangerous time. Right. This reminds me of like what you hear about before the Civil War. I mean, this is really a dangerous time. But to be you know, democracy can't Democracy itself can never be broken because it's an ideal. And the question is can be sit down and talk about the ideal and talk about how far we are ideal? Right? There's all you know. And for also a point of view, for you or me, it really feels like democracy is

broken now. But for somebody who's struggling just to get by, it looks just as broken as it always did their whole life, you know what I mean? Yeah, I do, Because you know, there is the beauty that I've always said that lies in the promise of America, is in its aspiration. Right, people come here because that we don't have a system, or at one time we didn't have a system where you were locked into a cast. Right that there, the beauty of America is embedded in its possibility.

But when possibility of economic mobility is eroded, right, and we're seeing that, I mean I think I saw a report the other day where it's like eleven million people have opted out of the workforce because they're like, yeah, these are slave wages. I don't have any health benefits, Like it's my mental health is taxed, right, I'm treated

like trash, So I'm just going to opt out. I talk to you know, a gen Zer recently, and they're like, you know, their generation is bucking against capitalism as a whole. They're like, it doesn't work, right, Like, it doesn't, it doesn't. It doesn't work for us, Like look, how look how

wide the gap is. And so when I you know, and I take all of these things in, it's just like, what I think is most eroded right now is possibility, is hopefulness, And if that's the cornerstone of a healthy democracy, on top of being able to you know, vote, then I don't know how you rectify that. I don't know

how you. I don't know how you then tap into our government and our agencies when our politicians are showing themselves to be extraordinarily selfish in ways that I don't I have never seen, you know, um, because there's so many of them and it's so obvious, and so I just wonder like, I wonder about your thoughts around the possibility of America and what it what it promised. We know that the promise doesn't match the reality, but the possibility is what keeps people wanting to actually come here.

You know. This is so I'm so glad you talked about possibility. And also you're mentioning like the labor force, because I was can get some of that this morning, and I think, you know, here's the deep irony, which is, you know, if COVID changes everything, right, we're in the still limits of this pandemic. But the first work in this almost the second year of it, and what people did learn is relationships matter, like we need each other.

I think people were and at some people you know, you had to be on the front lines in some way, and how did that feel exploitative? And yeah, people who are who don't want to go back into low wage service jobs. And it's part has to do with the fact that the wages, you know, they won't pay for childcare even if your kid is at school. Now people need to be home with their kids more than ever

when they've had learning loss, emotional issues. Right, But jobs, in addition to not paying enough, they also those kinds of jobs. You don't have certainty around what your hours are and if you're going to take a job, and it's kind of backwards in terms of supplying demand. If there's a huge demand for wait staff or for other service jobs, if you take a job like that, you're gonna have to work all the time, right, You're not gonna look, you're not gonna have that much control. You're

gonna be overworked, underpaid, and stressed out. So people don't want to go back into those jobs. Plus those jobs the men of the pandemic hid everyone got fired right away, so it's actually logical to think you don't want to go into them. Also, how many years I mean this thing about And it's mostly women parents generally, but mostly women who don't want to take jobs because there's no

real childcare. And this is like a perfect match. If the government funded decent childcare, that would create jobs for some people, right, And you know, it just it just doesn't make sense that we can't figure these these things out together. And I thought, you know, you're younger than me. I'm now in my fifties, and when I was, you know, a teenager, I thought by the time I was a

work adult, there would be childcare options. I thought at my own workplace, I believed that I would work in a business and my kid would be down the hall, right. I actually had to change my career around at some point because I realized I needed to figure out what kind of job I could have so I could be physically around my kids. And I will tell you, because I became an academic, that means I'm only in a few days a week. I can work from home. I work all the time. I mean, here it is, we're

talking right now. You know it's after hours for us. But never happened. I'll tell you, I could never go back to a job where I have to go into a place every single day from nine to eight at night or whatever. I don't have to do that, and I'm actually more productive than I've ever been in my life.

So I'm imagining all those people who a lot of people left the physical workforce or they saw others who did, and I thought, you know, I can keep my house clean, I can make sure there's dinner on the table, I can have a good relationship with my kids. And now you want me go to back to something different. Why should people do that? Here's the part. Yeah he's here. So here's the possibility instead of everyone you know saying

this is terrible. Now, no, you know, if we can't staff the neveryone's buying stuff, and if we don't staff the shipping yards and no one will get their stuff on time? Like so what like what if we slow that stuff down and built up our relationships? This is this is the possibility of work life balance. It could

be a beautiful thing. And I consider, you know not, you know, I want people to be able to be in the labor force in the ways they want to, because I actually think having work and getting paid and feeling valued are all good. But those jobs, you're expendable, that's what people learned, and why should they take them if they don't pay their rent? You know? So I mean to me, I see it as a I see this is like a rebellion, and I wish that the markets understood that people don't want to go back to

the way it used to pay. And that's what I think is that I want. But I want it to be an actualized rebellion. I want it to be a revolution of the workers rising up right, you know, from service to everywhere you shouldn't have to work in conditions that are unsuitable for your mental health, your physical well being, your ability to take care of your kids. Like no one should work forty hours a week and not be able to afford a mortgage or their rent at the

end of the month. Like that, that is that is outrageous, right that you can work that much and still at the end need to get another job or figure out what kind of you know, three card Monty, you're going to play with your utilities, your food, your medicine. You know, and what happened? I mean, cardis jump in because I'm so excited about the Please going to where my brain is going. Okay, we started talking about kind of like

tax evasion. It's my view that if you are not earning whatever the a dollar amount is in your state or your area that could pay for a two bedroom apartment, food, health insurance, and a certain amount of you know, um, disposable income because that supports the local economy, you should whatever the hourly wage is, you should have no money deducted from your paycheck period. I don't think you know later you can get the tax deduction. That's bullshit. That's

after the fact. People need money in their pockets now, I mean, whatever that number is, is it set you know right now? That what is it? Like what I think if you don't make seventy five thousand dollars a year as at certain places as a couple or whatever it is, Yeah, yeah, you should not have any So seventy five thousand dollars a year and a paycheck would be Is that like thirty Is that like thirty four dollars? I think that's wrong. It's about a little under forty

dollars an hour at a certain hourly wage. No taxes, no, no, there should be no no money taking your pycheck out of your paycheck period. Why are you making people pay taxes when they can't pay their own pay for their own stuff like this, this would stimulate local economies. I mean, I don't understand why we do that. Income tax should not be for someone who does not earn enough hourly wage to you know again, pay their rent, pay for their food, pay for their medicine, and pay for things

in their community and gas, books, clothing. They shouldn't pay any taxes. That is it for me today, Folks on woke a f as always power to the people and to all the people power, get woke, and stay woke as fuck.