Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/12/21: Biden Polling Fall, Southwest Protest, VA Gov, Wealth Inequality, Covid Pill, The China Question, Healthcare Corruption, Labor Activity, and More!

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

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He's going to give us an update on all of the strikes that have been roiling the entire country, including 10,000 workers at John Deere. These are UAW members. It may be that they are headed towards a strike as well. We'll get an update from him on that. Some big polling drops from Joe Biden. We've got this whole situation with Southwest. We're going to sort of dig into what's fact and what's fiction, what's causing all of these airline flight cancellations. We're going to look at the polling in the Virginia governor's race and some very interesting recent comments from one Terry McAuliffe, who seems to have a habit, you were mentioning, of saying the quiet part out loud, especially on Zoom calls for some reason. He really lets his guard down.

Troubling new numbers regarding inequality and the extent to which the middle class is no more, and also the massive, massive price gouging that is going to happen on that new COVID pill. But we want to start saga with those Biden numbers. Those Biden numbers. This is a really interesting piece where you have to zoom out. I know we've been covering quite a bit of polling on the approval, but when you take it in the aggregate, the drop for Biden is absolutely stunning, especially in the place that matters most in terms of electoral politics. That's amongst independent voters. So let's put this up there on the screen. Alex Thompson, he's blurbing there a Harry Enten piece from CNN. In 2020, Biden had a 13-point win with independent voters. That was a group that Hillary critically lost by

four points in 2016. And September and October, he was at minus 16 within the group. And this is within both CNN polling, but also within the total aggregate. And the reason why that matters is that the slide is the most important indicator of how things are going to go in the 2022 midterm elections. It's very similar to exactly what happened with Barack Obama back in 2009, the independent slide on Obamacare, plus the economy and the morass and the chaos, and all that led to that big Republican wave. This is the same thing that you're beginning to see here. And the key thing is that the drop amongst Democrats and Republicans even is evident, as in Biden has now actually slid amongst Democrats. Now, granted,

it's nine points, so he still holds a 79% approval rating with that group. Amongst Republicans, he's at minus 84. But in those places where you have a supermajority for or against, the margins still do matter, and it's a good indicator. So you've got a nine-point drop amongst Democrats, a 12-point drop amongst Republicans, and a 19-point drop there amongst independents. So a drop all the way across the board. And I would pair it very well with this do good politico story. Let's put this up there, which goes and looks at a focus group in Atlanta. Now, you guys will remember there, Atlanta matters a lot as to why exactly what was happening. The Atlanta focus group also included some Pennsylvania voters. So in that focus group, all nine participants from this session gave Biden

a C minus grade or lower. So that was the highest grade that he received. And these are people who are independent voters. I just want to read some of the people and what they're saying and why they're dissatisfied with the president. One woman said she wanted to buy a car, but supply chain issues were delaying new shipments. One man complained about understaffed restaurants. Really what you're beginning to see here is that within the general chaos of the U.S. economy, we covered yesterday all the shortages. We covered how the fact just wait till Christmas. And when people can't get stuff for Christmas, they're going to freak out.

And you can see that the gas prices as well. All of that is kind of a cascading, a cascading feeling of you said you were going to end this thing and you didn't. Some of that is out of his hands. Some of it is directly in his hands. But all of it kind of combines for a very bad day for Joe Biden. And you see that. I mean, I can't believe it. All nine participants saying C minus or lower in terms of their grade for the president. That's that's catastrophic. I mean, it's funny because in a sense, he didn't promise anything in his presidential campaign. But in a sense, he promised something gigantic, which was a return to normal. Yeah. And so when people look around, whatever it is that's irking them, whether it's the not being able to buy the car they want because the microchip shortage, the feeling like the restaurants are understaffed, the sense of

like, oh my God, you know, schools, it's still touch and go. My kid's being pulled out to quarantine. All of these things, this confluence, some of which is in his control and some of which is not in his control, makes people to very legitimately say, you said we're going to get back to normal and this does not feel like anything approaching normal. There were a couple things that really stood out to me in those two articles that you were showing there. So in the CNN one, they also cite an NBC News poll that was back in the end of August, where only 32% of independents say that Biden has accomplished a great or fair deal in office. The vast majority say he's done only some to very little in office. I think that, again,

points directly to this strategic or tactical failure that he made, that he wanted to slow down the process and try to get a few Republicans on board rather than pushing forward to deliver with his agenda. Because ultimately, people do not give a shit about the process. They give a shit about whether there's a sense that things are getting done. There's a sense that things are moving forward. There's a sense that you're delivering for them and their families specifically. And yeah, sure, he did some good stuff at the beginning around the checks went out, temporary child tax credit, all these things. But it's kind of, all right, well, that seems like it wasn't enough because we're still stuck in this middle place of not being out of the pandemic. And the jobs report was dismal last

week. There's all these supply chain disruptions. And so people still feel like, OK, this is not anywhere close to back to normal. In the Politico piece, another thing that was really interesting to me is that the person who conducted the focus group said that she was struck by how similar the concerns of Democrats sounded to Republicans and by how little Democrats in her surveys blamed Republicans for standing in Biden's way. It's a point that was echoed by nearly a dozen strategists who have compiled or reviewed research into Biden's precipitous decline. So the whole idea is basically like, whether you're a Democrat or Republican or an independent, you feel like this isn't going that well. And Democrats have total control of Washington. So while, you know, it's easy to say from where we stand, oh, McConnell's being obstructionist or, you know, they're blocking everything. They won't even help out with the debt ceiling, et cetera, et cetera. But voters are very justified in saying y'all have

tools at your disposal and you have total control of all of these different levers of power and you're still not delivering for us. Who else are we going to blame but you? I don't know how many times I've said it here and people get mad. They're like, oh, well, you're saying the Republicans can just be obstructionists. It's like, look, people know the Democrats control the government. And so when nothing happens, Biden and Schumer and Pelosi can scream Republicans are obstructionists until they're blue in the face. They are still in power. And there are things they could do if they wanted to do. They just don't want to do it.

I mean, right now it's October 12th, Crystal. This is actually around the fake time when they said that it was going to take to pass reconciliation. Where is it? Nowhere? No, it was after them pushing it off being like, May? There's no way we can get into it then. It's going to be October. It's like, okay, well, you've been president now like 10 months. And in that 10 months, has anything happened?

No. He hung that FDR poster or the FDR portrait in the Oval Office. It's not looking very FDR. It's looking very Barack Obama. And look, there's a very common theme. Let's put this up there from the Washington Post, which went down to Atlanta to go and talk with some black voters. Same thing. You have here a man.

His name is W. Mondale Robinson. He was the founder of the Black Male Voter Project, who actually spent a large chunk of 2020 trying to whip votes. Now, for Mr. Robinson, he says that he was very upset with the Democrats in May when they were unable to pass a police reform bill. But he was particularly dismayed when Biden did not push for changes to the filibuster to enact a $15 minimum wage, and he was upset that the president did not try and halt a raft of voting restrictions passed in Georgia. Now, in terms of overturning state law, that ain't going to happen, Mr. Robinson. But the other two, those are fair concerns if you're somebody who voted for him because you believe that something was going to happen, at least from

a more left perspective. However, what they point to here, Crystal, is that the latest Pew research data shows that blacks, Latinos, women, and young people, I hear those are important constituencies for the Democratic Party, all have seen precipitous drops for Joe Biden. For black Americans, 85% in July to 67% in September. 16 points amongst Hispanic in terms of the drop, 14 amongst Asians. Now, don't get me wrong, he's still winning amongst all of those groups, but the margins matter. Not even necessarily in terms of whether these people are gonna vote Republican,

whether they are gonna vote at all, period. And that matters a lot for midterms, especially if you're not on the ballot and a guy named Trump who's super orange is also not there in order to gin people up. Yes, indeed. The key quote here from Mr. Robinson was, Black men are pissed off about the nothingness that has happened.

Does it make the work harder? It makes the work damn near impossible. Right. And as you said, he had a whole litany of things that, hey, we thought you were going to deliver on voting. We thought there was going to be some kind of police reform. We thought there was going to be some kind of economic package coming forward. And so far, all of these promises have been broken. I mean, that's the sense that a lot of people have. And so there's a, Biden is an old school politician.

And I think in a sense, you know, he really struck the right chord. Obviously, he was able to get himself through the primary, able to get himself through the general election. But now you're seeing the problem of having no one who's actually excited about you. That's true. I'll turn on you real quick. I said this before, but I would take Trump's lower approval rating, but super hardcore support any day over Biden's slightly higher approval rating, but sort of like meh, lackluster enthusiasm for him, especially when you're heading into a midterm election. So right now, what I've been thinking about lately is, you know, as we're negotiating this reconciliation package with the different

social welfare spending items, there are a bunch of members of Congress who I could tell you what their priorities are in that package, whether it's a child tax credit, whether it's climate, whether it's, you know, Bernie and the Medicare expansion. I don't know what the president of the United States priorities are. I don't know. He has not told us of this reconciliation package. This part is instrumental. I will not cut it. I will not let it go. We have zero indication of where he's actually steering the ship and what things could be on the chopping block and what things are non-negotiable. No idea of his priorities. That's kind of extraordinary. It's a disaster.

And I think it speaks to, you know, listen, sometimes it's as simple as people really want a hard and fast direction. Someone to come in and have that energy of like, I got this, whether it's on COVID. Here's our goal. Here's our strategy, here's how we're getting there, or whether it's on these social welfare spending programs and showing people like, here's how this is going to change your life. Here's how this is going to change the country. This is the direction we're going to move in. And I don't know if it's a continuation of this sort of like basement strategy where the less he talks, the less there is to pick apart, the harder it is to demonize him. But at a certain point, you got to be president. You got to come out and tell people what you believe in, what you're fighting

for and what your vision for the country is. The lack of doing that, I think, has also really hurt him. So you've got, you know, some national factors and global factors that are out of this control. You have tactical and strategic failures that have led his entire agenda to get completely mired and bogged down in Washington. And you have a lack of affirmative, assertive leadership and laying out a vision and a direction of the country that people may love or they may hate. But you got to have something for people to either love or hate. That was what Trump really understood. He would rather put out the most inflammatory, unpopular thing and make everybody fight over it and draw a hard line. And that sort of politics may be ugly at times, but it can be pretty effective, at least in terms of having an actual base of support that gives a shit whether you and

your party ultimately get reelected. And so, look, we've been saying this for a while. It's nothing new. But Democrats are in big, big trouble for the midterms. It would be very hard for them to turn it around. Passing these bills, it's not going to be enough because all of these factors, some in their control and some out of their control, are going against them. It's already extraordinarily difficult in a midterm election for the party in power. So they are in a very, very bad, sad place. Absolutely. And, you know, combining, we covered those jobs numbers yesterday. I mean, they were a total disaster. 196,000 jobs. You saw sclerotic growth in the retail industry, also in the leisure and hospitality. And the shortages, be realizing and foreseeing what's coming down the pipeline with Christmas, I think is going,

like that lady who blames Biden around the new cars. Yeah. You just wait and see what happens when people begin to try and order stuff. And we're talking about a trillion dollars. I checked yesterday, a trillion dollars worth of Christmas goods are currently not yet in the United States, sitting in a warehouse, being ready to be shipped. These Amazon and all these other people don't even know if they can scale up their operations in order to deliver because they may not have actual goods in order to send to people. That level of chaos and that level of disruption in the supply chain is going to be bad for Biden. And I don't know if we can show it. There's a book behind me called Freedom from Fear. One of the things I learned from it is a history of the FDR presidency, is that here's a dirty secret. The early couple of years of FDR,

not that much changed in terms of the actual conditions. But you know what did change? The feeling that somebody's got this under control. The feeling that somebody's actually trying to do something about it. And it turns out that feeling eventually, eventually being the key word, did translate into a different direction for the country. And ultimately World War II, all of that got us out of the depression. But one of the key things that I learned was actually the depression was getting worse in some of those early months. But the population felt as if somebody was actually trying to do something about it. They rallied behind that person because they said, oh, somebody is speaking to me. All of the chaos in the economy, the supply chain, the jobs numbers, the COVID stuff, all of that, they need to see something.

You know, I was just thinking about what Biden could have done. Imagine if he did a daily press conference, almost what Trump used to do with those COVID vaccines. And he'd be like, all right, we're at 63% today. Tomorrow, let's get to 64. Now we're at 65. Hey, we took a step back. Here's where I'm trying to get to. Once we hit this particular benchmark, it's over. And yet, he won't do it. Same thing on the economy. I mean, like you said, I don't know what's going on there. You know, FDR and many other presidents, they sent legislation down to the hill. This was, he just was like, hey, here's a number. You guys figure it out. And what, it's been a total mess.

I mean, anybody who's been in Washington for years would know that. And, you know, I keep coming back to Obamacare. What was Obama's thing? After he gave up on universal health care, I don't even know what was going on. Like, they dropped the public option. What was the point? I mean, prescription. Oh, you can stay on your parents' health insurance

until you're like 26. Everybody understood that one. The rest of the bill, they're like, I don't, exchanges. What about my doctor? Oh, that's lost now. Oh, my premiums went up a lot. These are all, that's exactly how I think

this one's going to turn out because there's no clear messaging. Returning to normal actually does require transformational change. That's a good point. We're not at a place where you can just sort of like manage by tweaks and nudges and, you know, little fine adjustments to what's been going on in the country. It requires huge changes and it requires laying out a vision that people actually buy into so that they can see past these bumps.

I think that's the problem is rather than having the sense of like, okay, but I get how we're going to get from here to there. I get how I'm going to be in a place where I feel like, okay, for myself, for my kids, for my grandkids, we're moving generally in the right direction. Instead, these bumps feel like this society is in permanent decline. This is normal. We are a decaying past our prime nation. We can't even do the very basics of governing. And, you know, we vote for this one, we vote for that one, we vote for this party, we vote for that party, and it doesn't really seem to change any of the trajectory. The rich keep getting richer and my life keeps getting more and more difficult. So look, it can be silly and we made fun, a lot

of fun of like Andrew Cuomo and his big government energy because he was great at giving the presser, but then his actual policies were killing people. But people do want to have that sense of like the I got this figure in charge that can give them some comfort to see past these very difficult and uncertain times. And he has been an utter and complete failure at all of those things. That's right. We also have a very important poll to show all of you. Oh, yes. I'm glad you remembered. I was about to forget.

All caveats. It is not scientific. It is not representative. Any of you. Oh, yes. I'm glad you remembered. I was about to forget. Look, all caveats. It is not scientific. It is not representative, any of that. We've been messing around with our YouTube community tab, and we're going to start doing polls all the time.

And so we decided to do our very first poll on this subject because we knew we were going to cover it. Let's put it up there on the screen. 64,000 people voted.

That graphic was made before another 14,000 made. Actually, though, the numbers continue to stand. The question, do you approve of President Joe Biden? Yes, 12%. No, 72%. Unsure, 16%. You know what's remarkable, Crystal?

It's actually been almost that exact figure. From the beginning. From the very beginning of like, after we got like 12,000 votes. So 64,000 of you have voted in the poll so far. You can go on the community tab. You can get engaged there if you would like to. We're going to be continuing to running polls there all the time because it's fun

and it gives us something even more to talk about. So there you go. If you want to know where the breaking points people stand, there it is. There's also some fun discussion in the comments section. So there we are. And you know what's funny? And we should, we'll play with these polls more,

but I bet if you drilled down within the Breaking Points community into what their specific critiques of Biden were, there'd be some overlap and there would be some polar opposite, like he's open borders

or he is illegally deporting all these immigrants. Let's see if we can play with that. I'll talk to James, our producer, and we'll see how much optionality that we can give people because I would love to see that. Yeah, I would love to see that too. So anyway, thanks guys for voting.

We always appreciate your engagement, support, and all of those good things. And something we'll continue to play with. Absolutely. Okay, let's talk about Southwest Airlines. So I went deep on this one. There is a lot of discussion online about Southwest Airlines.

Let's start with the very top line news. So I went deep on this one. There is a lot of discussion online about Southwest Airlines. Yeah. Let's start with the very top line news. Southwest Airlines canceled around 2,000 flights. Now, amidst all of that chaos, there was speculation as to whether this had anything to do with a hastily announced deadline and then retraction of the deadline on Southwest saying that all of its pilots and staff had to be fully vaccinated, or sorry, had to at least have one dose of the deadline on Southwest saying that all of its pilots and staff had to be fully vaccinated, or sorry, had to at least have one dose of the vaccine. Now, the cancellations came and immediately there was speculation as to whether this was some sort of planned,

quote unquote, sick out by pilots and by air traffic control staff and others who said that the reason they're not coming to work is because of these vaccine requirements. This was largely sparked by Senator Ted Cruz. So let's start with that and let's put that up there on the screen because I'm sure you guys have heard that. So Southwest yesterday canceled about a thousand flights. Cruz, Cruz, I want to be clear, Ted Cruz was the first person to say that it was because of the quote-unquote illegal vaccine mandate at work. Now, that set off a range of speculation. The actual news of there continued to cascade with Southrest.

Let's put the next one up there on the screen. CNN saying that they canceled an additional 2,000 weekend flights as all of this continued. Now, here's the interesting thing. The company came out and said that the cancellations were based on a couple of things, three things, air traffic control, limited staffing in Florida, and bad weather. Now, there was a lot of making fun of Southwest Airlines, Crystal, because there weren't any other airlines that were canceling flights. So were having massive issues. So it's like, well, okay, like, so the weather affects everybody.

So this seems like a Southwest problem. Now, everybody was trying to debunk this one way or the other. From what I can tell, and I want to be clear, from what I can tell, it seems to be a confluence of all of these events, including the vaccine protests, but not all. So let's put this up there from Axios. Axios, Southwest Airlines, specifically denies that a pilot sick out is driving weekend of delays. Now, they're blaming and basically admitting terrible management on their part and the fact that there's a lot of vacation time and staffing problems and the staff themselves are kind of being worked to the bone trying to be able to pick up other people's shifts and it kind of cascaded all into a complete and total disaster

but i did some digging on this leland vitter who is a reporter who i trust and he used to work at fox news now he works over at news nation here's what he basically got fired from fox for being too honest that's right um He said, airline sources. Yeah, exactly. So if you're one of those people, you should trust what the guy has to say. Here's what he says. Airline sources. A mass sick out at FAA Jacksonville has caused a ripple effect and a thousand flight cancellations affecting Southwest Airlines. Now, there is an email which was circulating, which shows that there was some sort of verification at the air traffic control center in Jacksonville, in which they did acknowledge that vaccine holdouts, so to quote unquote, were not there at air traffic control.

But here's the thing. You'll notice that Ted Cruz and many other Republicans seem to be saying that this is a pilot sick out. There are some pilots. That's absolutely certain. I've seen text messages and others that have validated that. However, is it the mass cause and the single thing? It does not seem to be the case because they're moving the goalposts a little bit because now they're saying, oh, well, it's air traffic control. Well, those people are pilots. They're air traffic controllers. So there are some air traffic control ripple out effects that air traffic control staffing problems, some of which, I want to be clear, some of which is attributable to vaccine holdout, as well as some pilot holdout, as well as horrific management on

the part of Southwest Airlines that as well as what they claim is bad weather. I think I'm going to go ahead and put that into the dustbin. Well, the air traffic control thing would also affect everybody. That's right. So, why, I mean, that's the whole thing is like, why Southwest? And there's a couple things. It's also important to note, of course, Southwest says this isn't a stick out, but the union itself.

The union also said that. The pilot union was very, very clear. They issued a press release. They said it was aware of operational difficulties. But, quote, we can say with confidence that our pilots are not participating in any official or unofficial job actions. The other thing to throw into the mix here is that Southwest, I haven't flown in a long time. So I haven't kept up with, like, which airline is the best and which is the worst. They're all kind of, like, routinely terrible.

But Southwest has been a mess. It's always terrible. This entire year. They had the worst on-time performance. This is from the CNN article we had up there. And the greatest percentage of canceled flights of any of the nation's four major airlines in June and July,

according to flight tracking service Sirium. I think that's how you say that. Anyway, so I do think my assessment is essentially the same as yours. Southwest is a catastrophically shitty company. The same sort of like minor issues, whether it's weather or the air traffic control thing that other airlines seem to be able to work out caused real issues for Southwest. That's right. That were, you know, catastrophic. But I don't doubt that there are also people who are calling in sick

that are part of this who have kind of used this moment to make their sort of- Make it even worse also for some people. Yeah, sort of piling on is what it seems to me. That's right. I think if there was, if this had been sparked initially by just the vaccine mandate, because part of this is like the timing of it. The pilots union had also just challenged this in court. Exactly. These deadlines had all just come into play.

So that timing is part of why that speculation, you know, understandably started. But I do think if this was really a sort of concerted intentional protest, there would be a wink and a nod to make it clear that that's what was really going on. Because a protest is not effective if you have no idea what people are protesting about or that it's even a protest. Yeah, that's right. So there has to be some sort of like, okay, and we're doing this and we're going to make it known we're doing this and we're going to continue to cause you problems unless we get our way. But the fact that they're so adamantly denying it without even like a little wink and a nod of like, well, maybe some pilots are, but we can't really say it's certainly not our intention. That also tells me that that is probably not the bulk of what's going on here. Yeah, I think you're right say. It's certainly not our intention. That also tells me that that is

probably not the bulk of what's going on here. Yeah, I think you're right. And that's why it's important to put it all together. So, I mean, you're going to see a lot of takes, a lot of people. Here's what I love. A lot of Republicans are very pro-union now, very pro-collective bargaining, collective action. Whatever, guys. Get on board. Welcome. Well, yes, but the fact is it has to take some culture war stuff in order to do so. And the moment we start talking about wages, then I think we're going to be a little bit different. Yes. And it's the same thing.

It reminds me of like Rubio and the Amazon thing where he's like, well, I don't really like worker power, but let's push back against the woke HR department. But I also saw a liberal tacit acknowledgement that this was, and they were like, how dare these Southwest pilots? And it's like, okay, well, I thought you were for collective action. So here's the deal. Collective action, generally good. Is that exactly what's happening here? We don't know. That's the simple answer. I have seen multiple pieces of anecdotal evidence, but that doesn't translate to the absolute reason. So I saw a photo of a don't tread on me flag that was hanging out of a Southwest thing. Like I said, lots of text messages, lots of anecdotal evidence from people who are pilots themselves, who have spoken with people who are Southwest pilots. And also there's a video of a Southwest pilot himself who is

explicitly saying this is the reason, but then his union is saying that it's not. Now, there could be legal play at work here in terms of if they do acknowledge a sick out, they could be fired, vacation time docked, all of that. That was another reason that I saw that this might be denied. So that's exactly what's happening here. In general, though, it is interesting, and we should acknowledge this. I did an entire monologue saying that it was possible that 40% of the people who are unvaccinated would quit if they were required to get a vaccine. And that just doesn't seem to be the case. And I think we should acknowledge that. Let's put this up there from NPR News, which is that, you know, the most recent research that we've seen in terms of places,

private employers in particular, that have vaccine mandates show that actually very few of the people who said that they were going to quit actually quit their jobs. Now, I mean, it does kind of make sense, right, Crystal, which is that by mid-June, the percentage, at least in Houston, messed at its hospital, which kind of was one of the more higher places where a lot of healthcare staff didn't want to get vaccinated. It was like two to 3% at the end of the day of the people who were actually fired or resigned. That's two to 3% of their entire workforce. I guess it does make sense when you're going to make people pick. Right. Out of 25,000 workers, only 153 were ultimately fired, which is way fewer than what was initially expected. And yeah, like you said, we were seeing these poll numbers that were like, oh, 50% of the unvaccinated, they say they'll just quit. People were talking a big game,

but when it came down to it and their job was at risk, look, you know, if you've got a job that you like, it's pretty, we know the way that threatening someone's employment can be a very powerful incentive for better or for worse. And I even sort of feel that way if this quote unquote sick out is regarding vaccine mandates, like collective action means you actually like come out, you make a demand, you stand in solidarity, and you try to, you know, affect change. Doing it in this kind of like, well, I don't really want to get in trouble. I'm just going to, like, I'll post something on Instagram, but I'm really going to keep it quiet.

I mean, first of all, you're not going to get what you want because if you aren't launching a clear, direct protest with potential consequences to the company, then it's not going to ultimately work out. But yeah, I mean, you have to be willing to take those risks. And we're seeing workers across the country that are taking gigantic risks. We're going to talk to Jonah Furman about this, who, you know, listen, the cost shouldn't be so high for workers to take a stand and stand up for what's right. But you see workers across the country who do have very clear lists of demands, who are taking collective action in solidarity. So there is a model for how to do this and ultimately, you know, have success versus a company. I don't

think they're ultimately going to get their way, especially because part of why Southwest put these mandates in place so quickly is because it is coming from the government. They are federal government contractors, so they have to abide by what's been laid out by the federal government. That's a good point. And yeah, so look, guys, if that's what you're doing, you should come out and say so, so that I can cover it, so that we can cover it properly.

Yeah, so we can talk about it. And so then the news can stop debunking or not debunking. And everybody has to rely on what some dude on Twitter is saying, which I want to go ahead and say is not the optimal way that any of this should be spreading. So there we go. Hey, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here we are again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to BreakingPoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes.

Indeed. All right. Let's turn to my home state of Virginia, the great Commonwealth of Virginia. Intense gubernatorial race fully in swing now. Terry McAuliffe, who was the potentially once and future governor versus Glenn Youngkin, who's this kind of like businessman who is trying to walk this very this tightrope of peeling to the Trump base. But also his vibe is very just like suburban dad, sort of like, you know, not too threatening. And it seems to be working out pretty well for him so far, at least in terms the polling is fairly tight in a state that Joe Biden won by 10 points, in a state where all of the statewide elected officials today are Democrats,

where the Democrats hold the House of Delegates, that's the lower house, and the state Senate. So for the race to be this close at this point already, that should be warning signs for Democrats. And you know, Terry McAuliffe, not my favorite politician. But a good politician. But he does have a tendency of like being pretty direct about what's really going on and some of the problems he's facing uphill battle in the state of Virginia is a little too honest. This moment may be on a recent Zoom. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. But we got to get Democrats out to vote. We are facing a lot of headwinds from Washington. As you know, the president is unpopular today, unfortunately, here in Virginia. So we have got to plow through. Yikes. President is unpopular today, unfortunately.

In Virginia, a state he won by 10 points. Not a good sign for Terry McAuliffe, but I think he's right in that. Listen, politics are national. That's why these races like in Virginia, California, other places, why they matter. Because they show you a little bit, a little like snapshot of what the national mood potentially is. And so he knows very much that his fate is tied to the popularity and the enthusiasm for the Democratic Party nationwide. And of course, specifically in the state of Virginia, we've got a Washington Post article we can throw here up on

the screen as well, breaking down the race. You know, there was an interesting thing here because they talk about, there it is. So this is from Josh Kroschauer. He says, he's talking about the Washington Post article. Bruce Carlson considers himself mainly a Democrat. He voted for Terry McCullough back in 2013, but he is switching over to the Republican Glenn Youngkin because he believes public schools are pushing a radical agenda. What this article gets into, really, is that Republicans have hit on a few issues that are very energizing to their base. Absolutely.

And Democrats are hoping that the sort of threat of Trump is enough to scare their people into showing up again for them, into keeping those suburban voters in their coalition. And I don't know the answer. It's a real open question mark. I think in California, at the end of the day, it did work. I think especially with that radical Texas abortion law passing that gave them a clear example to say, look, this could happen in California. It really couldn't have. But anyway, that's what they said. And people believed it. And they had a candidate in Larry Elder who was pretty, you know, he said a lot of stuff. It was like very hardcore right wing in a state of California where it's not a good match. In Virginia, you have a candidate who puts off the vibes of like very, you know, center of the road, reasonable Republican. And so it makes

it a lot harder to kind of freak people out in the same exact way. And then the last part of this Washington Post article that I thought was really interesting is I said, listen, it's kind of obvious to say, but it's going to come down to enthusiasm. So what are the indications of which side is more enthusiastic? Is it the early voting numbers that show far more people casting ballots so far, especially in Democrat-heavy Northern Virginia, than did at this point four years ago? So that would be a good sign for Democrats. Is it the slight edge McAuliffe holds in several recent surveys? Or is it the thin margin Youngkin has in a couple of polls measuring the depth of voter interest in the race. And that is really the thing that Republicans have been hanging their hat on, is their side is a lot more engaged, more likely to say they're going to

come out and vote and all of those things. Absolutely. And, you know, reading this article, I mean, look, and again, this is totally anecdotal. I was out in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and then the week before that, I was in Loudoun County, which is, you know, somewhat- Loudoun's like exurban. Right. And there were a lot of Youngkin signs, a lot. And once again, signs is generally more of a thing of enthusiasm, but there will seem to be a lot of enthusiasm, especially amongst people who can either be more disproportionately Republican or a little bit more on the fence.

And what you're reading here, and actually I also saw an ad from Terry McAuliffe while I was there on television, and it was exactly what you think, Crystal. It was just Trump. He said Trump's name like four times, and at the end it was like, I'm Terry McAuliffe, and I endorse this message. And it was like an audio recording of Glenn Youngkin saying something good about Trump, about how he was like a good force. I'm sure he's going to regret that come election day if he does lose. But more and more what you see in here, and even the headline in that story, emotions flare over Trump, COVID, and race. Here's the deal. Does Trump, COVID,

and race have anything to do with the state of Virginia and actual politics? What is the Virginia governor going to do about that? Maybe on COVID, but even then, Virginia's not that strict on COVID, you know, even under Ralph Northam. Let's be honest. And you look at that and you're like, wow, it is just purely a national election. This is the true barometer about what's going to happen. And Terry McAuliffe, you know, kind of what to what you were saying earlier, he is begging Congress to actually pass something. So let's put this up there from the Hill, which is that in a more recent speech, he gave an interview and he was like, listen, I need Congress to pass this infrastructure bill or something because I need to show voters that Democrats are actually doing something in the House or sorry, in Congress.

He's like, we have got major frustration with Washington. And part of the problem is that he wants people to do that because he can see the frustration on the. And part of the problem is that he wants people to do that because he can see the frustration on the ground amongst some of the Democrats who voted for Joe Biden and for the Democrats themselves who are not passing anything. So what Youngkin, all he has to do is stand in opposition to these like macro political forces. McAuliffe is in a way trying to validate himself on Joe Biden's end, given the fact that he campaigned so hard for Biden in Virginia. He raised millions of dollars. I mean, and now launching himself into this, he is really having to try and ride the

Biden coattails. And look, he said it himself, the president is unpopular in the state of Virginia. And part of it, it seems to be for Democrats is they're pissed that nobody's nothing is passing in Congress. It's a type of race that I absolutely hate because you have two standard issue corporate politicians. Neither one of them is going to govern all that differently. I mean, look, full disclosure, I'm going to vote for Terry McAuliffe. I live in the state of Virginia, whatever. But, you know, ultimately, rather than really focusing on, hey, here's what we're going to do for the state, this race all turns on who can freak their own side out more, who can make this the most existential, who can scare their people into showing up to vote. So it's a very uninspiring sort of a contest here, ultimately. But I do want to very strongly defend Terry McAuliffe on one particular thing that he is taking heat from. Oh, right. Let's put this Mediate article up on the screen. Okay,

so they're trying to paint him like a hypocrite for calling out, Youngkin has kind of played a little bit of footsie with the stop this deal stuff, always really focused on election integrity, et cetera, et cetera. And so Dana Bash asked him, well, listen, you said that Republicans stole the 2000 election. So isn't this hypocrisy? And he's like, no, because actually there are some. This is my this is my version of it. But he would not back down on this, which I fully support. It is not the same.

OK, Bush had his brother as governor of Florida. The Supreme Court made them stop counting the ballots. And ultimately, when the ballots were all counted, Al Gore did get more votes in the state of Florida, the Supreme Court made them stop counting the ballots. And ultimately, when the ballots were all counted, Al Gore did get more votes in the state of Florida. So whether you buy that, you know, it was completely like it should have been Gore and it ended up being Bush, clearly there were some issues there that made it a true like contest and true actual conspiracy when you consider all the players that Bush had on his side in the system. You had, remember, the Brooks Brothers riots and all of this. Oh, yeah, I remember that. All of

this nonsense. So I fully support and defend Tarek McAuliffe on these particular comments. He is right. Bush stole the 2000 election. That does not mean that Trump, you know, was robbed in this election. Just because one election was a problem doesn't mean all elections were ultimately problems. So there you go. I'm going to enjoy seeing that clip on social media from now on. All right. Inequality. What do we got here? Okay. So some new numbers that are pretty stunning. For the first time ever, let's go ahead and throw this tweet up on the screen from fantastic economist Gabriel Zuckman. He says, America's middle class now holds a smaller share of wealth than the top 1%. The middle 60% by income saw its wealth share drop to 26.6% of national wealth. That is the lowest level on record. So this is the first time ever that you have the middle class

so celebrated in America. That's what America is all about, is this strong and vibrant middle class with the idea that anybody who plays by the rules, who works hard, can make it into that middle class now has less wealth. 60% of the country, okay, the middle 60% has less wealth than the top 1% of Americans. This is an incredibly dire sign of where the economy is headed. And every single crisis, whether it was the financial crisis, whether it was COVID, every single one of them just serves to transfer more and more wealth to the very tippy top. So when you think about why politics have been so wild and you see these big swings back and forth and people feeling so despondent about the future of the country, these are the type of numbers that really tell the tale of what's going

on in this nation and why people feel that sense of decline, feel that sense of despair, while you see things like, you know, suicides up and addiction and all of these indications that things are not going well in this country, numbers like this help to explain that larger picture. Yeah. And it's interesting, you know, I went and you can actually go and you can pull the data, which is that the middle 60% of the U.S US households saw their combined assets drop to 26.6% of that national wealth, while the super rich had that 27. So that first kind of changeover. But what's really remarkable to me is that there are 77.5 million families in the middle of 60% that make between $27,000 to $141,000 annually. Now look, I would not consider

$27,000 middle class whatsoever, so I don't exactly know if that's the correct one. But that's what the Census Bureau in the United States says, maybe in like Tempe, Arizona or something like that. We're a very low cost of living. But what you can see is that the concentration of the wealth in such a fraction of the population is really one of the cores of the country's political battles. I mean, think about salt tax. Like, what are the people willing in D.C. to go to absolute war for? Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Josh Geithamer. The salt deduction.

And what have we shown you here? The salt cap deduction. And what have we shown you here? The SALT cap deduction? Yes, some people who are middle class. And I say middle with some real asterisks here because we're talking the $200,000 to $300,000 income range. I'm not saying that makes you rich, but it definitely doesn't make you poor. Yeah, you're going to get some modest benefit from that.

But here's the deal. It's overwhelmingly for the people who make over $1 million a year in income, which is less than like half a million households in America. And we're comparing those priorities, those people, to $77.5 million. And you actually pointed out this story. This is starting to manifest in all sorts of really weird ways. Put the story up there on the screen. We have now millennials teaming up to fulfill the dream of home ownership.

So people who are burdened by debt, house prices, they are pooling their finances with partners and friends and roommates in order to buy houses. So think about that. They're basically entering a roommate situation in order to just buy a house and not even really buy a house to own a fraction of a house. And of course,

that's really weird. I mean, what if somebody wants to move? Then what are they going to sell their part of their equity? It doesn't really make any sense. It's complicated. Yes, you're building up some equity in the house. And God bless you. And I fully support that in terms of what that means for what you might be able to pass down. But shouldn't people be able to afford their own house if they want to? I mean, it's totally crazy. Well, and if you read the story, they paint it like fun new trend of millennials buying houses for their best friends as if this is just like a new choice that's being made. Maybe for some people, sure. But for most, and this is what we see underlying a lot of the trends of different ways millennials are approaching their lives,

whether it's when they're getting married and how many kids they're having or whether they're buying a house with their friend instead of on their own or with a significant other, it has a lot more to do with economic necessity than it does like wacky new trend that these millennials are into. And by the way, like millennials aren't young anymore. I mean, I'm technically a millennial and I'm pushing 40. Like the oldest millennials are 40 and the youngest ones are pushing 30. Yeah, that's right. I'm going to be 30 next year. So you're just like, this is a group of people who an entire generation that's just been hit with crisis after crisis after crisis has had no opportunity to really build wealth is being wildly priced down of the housing

market, which is, of course, the number one way that Americans are able to build wealth and able to achieve that sort of like comfort and stability of a true middle class life. And they're not able to do it. Here's the data that backs it up. Since 2014, when millennials became the largest share of homebuyers in the U.S., the number of home and condo sales across the country by co-buyers has soared. Number of co-buyers with different last names increased by 771% between 2014 and 2021. That's according to data from a real estate analytics firm. So, you know, this is a massive changing situation. We've, of course, covered here the way that housing prices have completely skyrocketed. There are a lot of complicated reasons for that.

One of that is permanent capital getting in the game and wanting to be America's landlord and driving prices up even more and making them even more unaffordable. But that inability to buy a home, I wish there were more paths to wealth creation for Americans, but that has been the traditional path, and it is increasingly out of reach for millennials. And I don't think Gen Z is going to be in much of a better place. Oh, absolutely not. You know, I covered yesterday, I wish you'd been here, for a monologue on men in America. And there's this new report from Pew Research, which actually shows that increasing, there's an increased share of our population of single males, and that that actually has had a precipitous drop amongst that group, 30% actually,

in their terms of their real wages from the year 1990. And the way that that drops contributes to all sorts of bad outcomes in terms of how they actually live less long or they have worse health outcomes. That leads to lower wages, less college attainment, living with your parents longer, all sorts of bad societal things. Drug use, almost everything is completely all the way up whenever you look at it. And it's part of the same thing. And actually, I got a tremendous amount of feedback. I really didn't even expect it in terms of this.

And a lot of people were like, what chance do I got? I got paid 50-something percent of my income in rent. I can't afford college. I got credit card debt. And I work a job that pays me $11.25 an hour or something like that. I don't have an answer. I mean, what do you do if you're in that situation? You're like 26, 27 years old. I mean, how are you even supposed to take time off in order to try and go to some sort of school? That requires debt. What if you've already been

financed? And that's the situation for a lot of people. You know what was interesting? People are so conditioned to the terrible way that we have finances in the country, that when they have a modest increase, they're like, it's great. So I recently saw that a majority of Americans say that their personal finances are in excellent shape. And I was like, how is that even possible? Because I know that 40-something percent of the country is a blown tire away from bankruptcy, a single emergency away from total bankruptcy and having to live paycheck to paycheck. Well, it turns out that now it's like they've got a little bit of savings. So people are so conditioned to having nothing that they say that they're in excellent financial shape if they have somewhere between $200 to $1,000 in savings. What is that going to do for you? If you have a real

healthcare crisis or if you need to buy, what if your car breaks down? Try buying a car right now in terms of used car market. All the basic necessities of life. And I just thought that, and I was really struck by how even just having like a couple hundred dollars, people are so conditioned to having nothing, that even just having that just means the world to a lot of people. But it shouldn't be that way, especially whenever you're looking at how much so many people have made in the middle of the pandemic in particular. This idea of back to normal is kind of like, it's kind of like a deep concept that you could really dig into. Like, what does that actually mean? You know, does it mean is back to normal, like back to my only prayer of buying houses with five of my

friends? Or is back to normal, like, you know, a time when you could actually aspire as, you know, a young person to buy a house and have a family and afford to go on vacation now and again and those sorts of things. And I don't want to glorify the past. Like, there have obviously been a lot of issues, especially in terms of race and gender and all of those things. And we've made progress there. Not nearly enough progress there, but some progress there. But there's no doubt that when you look at these numbers, these are the worst numbers. These are worse now than the Gilded Age, worse than the Gilded Age. You know, the vaunted American middle class, this is what it's supposed to be all about. This is what makes us so great, right? This is the driving force why capitalism is awesome and all of

those things is now collapsing and really has been for decades. I mean, wages have been stagnant since the 80s, effectively. Workers are getting like the tiniest little bit of a wage now and everybody's melting down, freaking out over it. So it's a bad situation. I think it ties back to Biden, where he's at and our political situation, because it's just this sense of you can't just tinker around the edges. You can't just, you know, have a sort of like a managerial approach where you're just kind of managing the ship and you're not really changing anything because things have gone off the rails enough that you need a more transformational approach. Yeah, I think that's right. Okay, this caught both of our eyes on the COVID front.

Let's throw this tear sheet, a great report from The Intercept up on the screen. So Merck has gotten a lot of attention recently for this potentially very effective, possibly very effective pill to treat COVID. The numbers are very encouraging, and I think it gets it in a moment, the way that politics may have stood in the way from this pill getting approved before, but let's put that aside for a moment. They're planning to charge 40 times for this thing, what it actually costs to make. And as if that wasn't bad enough, guess who funded the research that went in to developing this miracle COVID pill? Oh, it was you. It was public funding. It was the U.S. federal government. And now they're turning around

and charging 40 times what it costs to the U.S. government that funded this thing in the first place. Let me read a little bit from the article here. It says a five-day course of Malnupiravir I'm gonna go with. Yes, I think that's what it is. I was thinking about saying it.

The new medicine being hailed as a huge advance in the treatment of COVID costs $17.74 to produce, according to a report issued last week by drug pricing experts at the Harvard School of Public Health and King's College Hospital in London. Merck is charging the U.S. government $712 for the same amount of medicine. That amounts to 40 times the price. Also, just so you know, like, the government does not have to just sit back and take this. Since it was developed with public funding, it is a candidate for using the Bayh-Dole Act and these march-in rights. So they said in the article, the pricing differential should be grounds to demand a better price under the Bayh-Dole Act, according to Knowledge Ecology International's, an expert there. Bayh-Dole passed in 1980, regulates the transfer of federally funded inventions into commercial property, and allows the government to, quote, march in and suspend the use of patents that were developed with government funding if it determines that the products are excessively priced.

If not now, when? Tell me that. If not now, when? We give you the money, you develop the drug, you get all of the profits from it already, that's a good deal, and you turn right around and gouge the American people. Insane. It's a good point, and this is part of the problem that we're having. And by the way, all of the data from this pill, it looks really good. And look, I think we would be remiss if we didn't cover this element. I wasn't even aware of it until you brought it to my attention. But Matt Taibbi wrote a very good piece on this. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is important. Which is, did political and media bias stall the release

of this new COVID-19 drug? Now, former HHS officials said that they tried to accelerate funding for what has become of the new Merck pill, but that they were blocked. Now, what they point to and what Matt points to is some anecdotal reporting here that with inside the system that they essentially blocked the funding and development of the COVID pill, which to be clear, lessens COVID symptoms for the reason, Crystal, that they thought that it would screw with people getting vaccinated. And so they were more concerned with the developing vaccine and immunity on that front than they were on any sort of therapeutic drug because they were worried that people would take the therapeutic drug or that that therapeutic drug would lessen the case

for getting vaccinated. And I do think that if that is true, and look, I doubt we will ever get a straight answer on that one. That is scandalous. I mean, because look, what happened in my particular case, I got vaccinated and I got COVID. And let me tell you, day two or three, wouldn't have mind a nice pill, a little is a way in order to make sure that we're not going to have worse COVID in the future. So, I mean, look, again, he's going off of former HHS officials, so this is not some quacks, you know, or elsewhere, but it seems like a highly plausible scenario. And you put that together with Merck now charging 40 times for that. I do want to say something though, which is that I have seen some people online, Alan West, I'm going to call him out specifically, who was the chairman of the Republican Party, who talked about how he was recently had to go to the hospital because he had COVID.

Is he better now? He's better now, so God bless him and all of that. But anyway, so he was talking about how he didn't want to give big pharma making billions off the COVID vaccine, and that's why he's taking monoclonal antibodies. People were very quick to point out that, yeah, monoclonal antibodies cost about $1,200 to $2,000 per infusion, and guess who's making those antibodies?

Big pharma. Big Pharma. They're making way more money off of that per dose than they are off a vaccine, which costs like 40 bucks. So if you're one of those people who's like, I'm going to get monoclonal antibodies because I don't want to get Big Pharma money. Yeah, you're actually plagued yourself. Like mega plagued yourself.

Well, this COVID pill is another great example. COVID pill is the other one. This is a way to like own the vaccine makers. It vaccine makers, it's just a different set of pharmaceutical executives. And it's probably the same execs in Switzerland who are still raking in the cash. Who are still making the money. So listen, if you are trying to avoid pharma getting rich in this whole situation, it ain't going to happen, folks. Yeah. And effectively, what Matt indicates may have happened with this drug is that they needed, it was originally owned by a smaller company, not Merck, and they ultimately flipped it

and sold the rights to Merck, who developed it and created the capacity to be able to produce it. That smaller company themselves, so that they could produce it more rapidly. Right. And there is a dude who ended up being a whistleblower who got hailed as like the anti-Trump guy. And I don't know if you remember this whole thing. He was getting a lot of exposure in media of like blowing the whistle on how politics

has infected the science. And I don't doubt that some of that was the case. But this guy also was a chief opponent of this drug receiving this funding. And so because then it got wrapped up in this like, oh, well, if you don't like Trump, then you don't like this drug and you don't like the funding for this drug. It got kind of caught up into this. Are you with Trump or are you against Trump, culture war nonsense. And so that delayed the development and the ability to actually produce it at capacity so that we could have the potentially very effective COVID pill. There you go. So there you go. Just culture war ruining everything once again. What a shocker. Wow. You guys must really like listening

to our voices. Well, I know this is annoying. instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kosloff called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Saga in your daily lives. Take care, guys.

Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, I went on a little road trip this weekend. That's where I was. And I was very confused by a sign for a store along the road that promised something called womb therapy. So was it selling therapy for your womb? Or was it selling some sort of therapy that involves reentering a womb-like space? Or was it something else entirely? Curiosity got the better of me, so I had to look it up.

Turns out that womb therapy offers all sorts of fake products for real and imagined ailments impacting the female anatomy. Here is one, for example, that claims to remove toxins, impurities, heavy metals, improve blood flow to reproductive organs, draw out harmful bacteria, cause tightening, pain relief, and remineralization, whatever that is. It also claims with this product, you might experience everything from cyst shrinkage to improved liver function to bladder health. The website suggests that this product called Womb Clay can be used inside or outside your lady parts, outside of your womb, don't know how you do that, on your breast, on your face, and gentlemen, if you want, it can go on your parts as well. In short, womb therapy is selling snake oil, an unregulated product making a bunch of completely

bogus, untested claims where the very best you can hope for is that it does not actively harm you. Maybe you'll benefit from a minor placebo effect. The worst case scenario is pretty ugly, though. Buying into a fake remedy for a very real problem and serious health problems ending up much, much worse. Now, before we totally look down our nose at the womb therapy clientele, though, let me ask you a few questions. Have you gone to a chiropractor? Have you sought out an acupuncturist? Do you take any supplements at all? Do you have any creams or products that promise you amazing results? Now, personally, I can answer yes to every one of those questions. And so in ways large and

small, I have been taken in by the particular forms of snake oil to which I was susceptible. In all likelihood, you have been too. And it's not an accident either. Unscrupulous, corrupt politicians have been bought off to let the scammers find their marks, erecting a regime of fake scrutiny which mostly serves to provide a patina of legitimacy to completely phony and bogus products. Now, I will save you the long legislative details, although they're really interesting, of the supplement and wellness industry taking over Washington and winning an almost completely deregulated market. There are villains for that story on both sides of the aisle, of course. Listen to the Dream Podcast if you want the whole story. I would highly recommend it,

by the way. But suffice it to say that none of your supplements, oils, tonics, or creams are likely to have been tested for safety, let alone to see if they, you know, actually do anything. The reason I'm talking about this now is because a lot of folks have been shocked by the cottage industry of unproven or completely bogus or actually dangerous COVID cures that have sprung up during the pandemic. You got your hydroxychloroquines and your ivermectins and your drinking bleach. They've all, of course, enjoyed a moment in the media spotlight. But there is so much more beyond that. In fact, there is an entire Wikipedia page of unproven methods of curing COVID that include a specific volcanic ash. There's a virus shutout protection

pendant, there's drinking camel urine, and many, many other suggestions here. But the truth is that the instinct to trust a Facebook post or Gwyneth Paltrow or your friend from high school selling Young Living essential oils is old, crosses class, race, and partisan divides, and is an entirely predictable result of our completely screwed up political and health system. And by the way, it says a lot more about those failed systems than it says about the character or intelligence of all of us. We have been set up to fail. Just think about this for one second. Millions of Americans have zero connection to the medical system. Millions more have only experiences of exploitation or racism

or classism or failure. Almost literally every day, there is a new story about the way that profits are driving global healthcare decisions. Here is Pfizer lobbying for booster shots, even though there isn't really data to support their necessity. Here is Moderna only selling its vaccine, the most effective one, by the way, to the rich world because of the premium prices that the rich world can pay. Here is Merck, selling that COVID pill we were just talking about, which was developed with U.S. government money, and they're selling it for 40 times what it actually costs to produce. I'm not here trying to make the case for the vaccine, and crap like this, by the way, really does not help. Although I will add as a public service note that the fact that the politicians and executives

are effectively limiting the vaccine to the rich world is powerful proof that the vaccine is actually effective and important. Add on top of all of that, a health care system for sale, an entire industry of snake oil salesmen has been unleashed on us by the corrupt politicians who were more interested in campaign cash than in protecting Americans from any of these charlatans. They are allowed to operate with impunity, preying on our justified skepticism of a healthcare system that is actually all about profit and not at all about health. Layer on top of all of that, the desperation of people who have serious ailments or chronic pain but are unable to afford actual care and do not want to risk

bankruptcy by seeing the doctor, and you can see how you've got a perfect storm for a tidal wave of made-up COVID cures. There's a terrific article in Jacketbin right now that makes a version of this argument explaining the very American, capitalist roots of this current pandemic failure. The author, Akhil Vicks, writes that, the idea that nefarious government actors are colluding to keep the miracle cure out of your hands so you'll take their vaccine is very appealing to those inclined to distrust our political establishment. The fact that, unlike in the developing world, vaccines are readily available in most places in the U.S., that only serves as proof that they are not to be trusted. We have long been taught that nothing good is truly free.

Think about that. Nothing good is truly free. Think about that. Nothing good is truly free. Now, I've seen a lot of contempt for the individual people who would believe that Facebook post over the medical establishment, but we should flip that equation on its head. What does it say about our political and healthcare system that millions would trust a random Facebook post over the consensus of the medical and political establishment. A president who really wanted to deal with this problem would lift the patent protections, would use his power to expand Medicare to all, would rein in and regulate the snake oil salesman. A real media would punch up, exposing the hucksters, revealing how our for-profit healthcare system has failed our citizens, and demanding answers from the politicians

and the elites who created this entire mess. Instead, I guess they'll just make more jokes about horse paste. And Sagar, you know, that Jackman article was actually really interesting because they talked about how developing world is one more thing. I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform, or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, the biggest foreign policy question of our time right now is actually really simple. What do we do with China? The simple question,

it's going to be the theme of almost every major action that we take in the post-Afghanistan war on terror era. It has got near-term ones like what should we do about Taiwan or the South China Sea? It's got long-term ones on what exactly we want our military to be doing, on whether old alliances like NATO make any sense, whether new ones with Japan and South Korea would be a lot better. Amid all of that, what matters is that we have a real debate in this country. Everything should be on the table. All the information should be considered. And while it is pretty popular online today to say that the powers that be favor war with China, and that anyone who expresses concerns about global competition is a bought-off war hawk, the reality is that China has already taken a critical step in shaping

our current information environment by actually buying off the powers that be. In fact, it is becoming clear the richest and most powerful people in America today have a lot more to lose from competition and tension with China than anything to gain. Let's take one of the greatest villains in America, BlackRock. You've probably heard about them here on this show, about their bid to buy up massive amounts of single-family housing and turn America into a rentier society. Obviously, Crystal and I say,

hell no to that one. But what people don't notice is that housing isn't their only big play to get fantastically wealthy. The other one is to sell out the United States and even manipulate our own domestic investors at the behest of the Chinese government in exchange for big favors overseas. Let me explain. Story starts in July 2021. Back then, that was when China cracked down on Tencent's

initial public offering. Tencent was a massive Chinese media company, which was going public. Well, here's what happened. They raised billions of dollars here in the US markets, but then the Chinese government decided, no, you guys are getting too big for your britches. So they fined them, took away the IPO, and exerted control over the company. And all those US investors, their money was just stolen. It's the latest company that they've done that to. And it was a signal to the Chinese billionaire class, there is only one head honcho in Beijing. That's the government. That action, as it should have, sparked some scaries on Wall Street. They wondered, hey, if they can just steal our money and then take over the companies, is this really a stable market? Should we keep giving these

people money? Well, right at the height of the sell-off, executives from Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and other U.S. financial firms were summoned to meet with the deputy head of the Chinese version of the SEC. Words were exchanged. Somehow, miraculously, 20 days later, BlackRock's long-wanted plan to offer mutual funds in China was approved. At the exact same time that this multi-billion dollar windfall comes into the lab of BlackRock, guess what happens? BlackRock goes on a major PR campaign to tell people that China not only isn't a bad investment, that American investors don't have enough of their money in China. They told their investors to boost their investments in China by two to 300%. So let's call this what it is. It's pay to play. BlackRock

does Chinese PR, and in exchange, they get to make billions in the Chinese market. You could brush it off and say, oh, it's only one farm. Well, Wall Street is actually entirely uniform in its pro-Chinese propaganda. In fact, probably without your knowledge, U.S. mutual funds and ETFs investing in China held a collective $43 billion in net assets at the end of August, up 43% from the last year. In the year in which China literally covered up a plague ravaging global society, the richest people in our country just handed them even more money. Goldman Sachs ended 2020 by actually buying the permission from the Chinese government, full ownership of its investment venture in China.

It fully integrated its Chinese business into their global operations, meaning that like all business in China, it is now essentially directed and controlled by the Chinese government, which is why in mid-September, they released a new propaganda pamphlet, which boggles the mind in how much bootlicking that you can see. Let's put it up there. They released this clownish multi-page report in which it details how pro- business China actually is. How while, yes, investors, it is a little troubling that they throw people in jail with no regard for the rule of law and they can take over a company at will,

that's a completely authoritarian system. But don't worry about that. Emerging markets aren't going to be touched, and that is why you, Goldman Sachs investor, should give us your money so we can put it into Chinese business and we can all make lots more money. Really think about that for a second. After watching with your own eyes how China controls business and will steal U.S. dollars, Goldman Sachs is writing pamphlets about why all that is fine, why you should give them more. At what point do we call BlackRock and Goldman Sachs exactly what they are? They're propaganda arms of the Chinese Communist Party. They are bought and paid for foreign actors. They should be treated as such and under our domestic laws. One of the core themes of the

show is follow the money and follow the people who have all the money. Right now, BlackRock CEO's former chief of staff, Wally Ademio, is literally Joe Biden's deputy secretary of the treasury, the person who runs all day-to-day operations of our treasury department. His other former employee is Brian Deese, the current head of the National Economic Council, who before his White House job was, quote, head of sustainable investing for BlackRock, where he pocketed at least, at least being the key, $2.3 million. I'll pause it and take which will make the online left's head explode. What if the people with the most to gain financially are those who are pushing

peace at all costs with China? It sure seems that way to me. I say this only to spark a conversation, which I think is vital. What should we do about any of this? If you in good faith think that we should be completely okay and the Chinese and US economy should be intertwined, so be it. Completely accept that. But increasingly, I see a situation, tension in East Asia is rising, and honest conversations are actually being covered up in America by the richest and most powerful people in the country. What we need instead is to examine the problem at all angles and come to a real consensus. That is how democracy is supposed to work. And it failed

the last time that we considered the China problem precisely because of the massive lobbying power of big business. And this time, we cannot let that happen again. I think it's pretty astounding, Crystal. You know, the New York Times article, you read, it's so brazen, the way that they handle themselves. Joining us now, labor reporter for Labor Notes and also author of the sub stack, whogetsthebird.substack.com, Jonah Fuhrman. Great to have you, Jonah. Welcome. Good to see you, Jonah. Yeah, thanks for having me. Absolutely. So I want to get to a couple things with you. I want to look at sort of the broader sweep of the country and all the strikes that are ongoing and have been authorized and what you think is going on there.

But let's start specifically with these 10,000 John Deere workers. I'll throw your tweet actually up there on the screen. I know we love showing our guests their own tweets. But you have here a reaction to the fact that they voted down a contract that was negotiated by their union leadership by a hefty margin. No votes were 2,518. Yes, votes were 189. Talk to us about why this is so significant, Jonah. Sure. And I should say this is just one of the locals. So there's nine of these John Deere locals. So there's 10,000 workers and it held this pattern, basically a 90% no vote. So what's so remarkable about this is, you know, this is a contract recommended not just by the company, but by the union to the members. They bring it back for a vote to say, you know, what do you think of this? It doesn't have to pass, but it's somewhat rare for contracts to be voted down by the members if the union's recommending it. And it's really rare for it to be 90 percent down. That, to me, signifies basically a revolt

of the members. They say this is nowhere near what we think we deserve versus the company and the union thinking we're sort of on track. This might be acceptable. So that's what really stood out to me. And it also means that a strike is back on the table. If you follow the ins and outs, basically two weeks ago, they were on the edge of a strike. It was narrowly averted. This rejection means that a strike is possible again. And the union actually set a deadline for Wednesday night. So now we're back on the edge of, you know, what would be a massive strike in the industrial heartland. Yeah, it absolutely would. And Joni, you know, we've been using your reporting to kind of

contextualize this. Can you put this in context, both John Deere, in terms of the strikes we're seeing across the country? We've got industrial ones like this. We've got urban workers as well. Lay out some of the top line ones that people may not know about at home. Sure. So right now, some huge strikes that are happening are 2,000 nurses in Buffalo. I should say hospital workers, all kinds of hospital workers in Buffalo. 1,400 workers who make Kellogg cereals, you know, brand names in Memphis, Michigan, Omaha, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We saw last week a one-day strike of 2,000 telecom workers, people who do very phone lines and things like that.

And just other groups of hundreds of workers are on strike right now. What's even more sort of exciting is these several massive strikes that are on the horizon. So what's gotten a lot of press is the film and TV workers with IATSE. That's, people say, 60,000 to 65,000 workers who operate cameras and run movie sets, and would, if they struck, would not just be those 65,000 workers, but tens of thousands more who would be idled by that strike. And another huge one is Kaiser Healthcare. It's the largest nonprofit healthcare company in the country. And they're facing a strike of about 35,000 of their workers, mainly in California, Oregon, and Hawaii. Beyond that, I mean, there's others that loom on the horizon, but we're looking at the possibility of 100,000 workers in the private sector on strike

within a matter of weeks. Wow. Wow. Why now? Because, you know, to go on strike, look, retaliation is supposed to be illegal, but we all know the games that these companies play to make an example of workers, make them pay for any sort of work slowdown or stoppage, for any sort of trying to assert themselves and bargain for better conditions. Why is it now so many workers, tens of thousands, potentially 100,000 across the country are saying, you know what, I don't care. I'm going to take the risk. We're going to fight for something better for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters. It's a great question. I mean, you know, I don't claim to have the answer exactly, but there's some obvious things contributing here. One thing I would highlight that people maybe ignore is that these are union workers. So these are organized workers with contracts

that have expiration dates. They have, yes, some rights, but more than that, they just have the organization to fight back. So we don't see this sort of mass strike at Walmart, despite being a massive employer with, you know, frequently very bad conditions, because those workers don't have the benefit of organization. So that to me is like the key first thing. The other things happening here are there really is a tight labor market. And what that does is both give workers more confidence to say, I'm not going to be replaced. They can't just find someone to take my job. But also is an incredibly difficult experience if you stayed in the workplace over the past

18 months and there really is a labor shortage. You're dealing with forced overtime, understaffing, workloads that are unmanageable and unbearable, as well as rising inflation. They say inflation for the consumer price index is over 5% in the past year. And finally, the last thing is that a lot of these companies, despite the fanfare about an economic recession, things like that, a lot of these companies are on that top side of the K-shaped recovery. They're making a ton of money during the pandemic. And this is true, especially for John Deere. It's their best year ever. In the first three quarters of this fiscal

year, they have made more than any other year in its entirety on record. Wow. So that's really stunning. I mean, really what you're pointing to is that there's more confidence for a lot of these people. Talk about how exactly the retaliation could come, how they're dealing with this. Are they preparing for what they see? And do you think the public is on their side? I do think the public is on their side. I think we, you know, it's hard to gauge the sort of mood, but I think people can appreciate how intense it's been to work at a factory or in a hospital for the past 18 months. I mean, almost any job where, especially if you had to stay in the workplace, has been really grueling. And I think people have a lot of sympathy and understanding for that, especially when you look at these corporate profits. In terms of retaliation,

I think, you know, again, I would just go back to what makes these workers able to fight on this scale and with this intensity is the fact that they're unionized and they're organized. So you might see, you know, we see on Twitter a picture of the Taco Bell put a sign on the drive-thru saying, we all quit today. And that's great, but it's not gonna scale to the level of tens of thousands of workers who can consolidate whatever gains they get. So retaliation is a concern, sure, but the fact of unionization gives these workers

just an order of magnitude more leverage than non-union workers have. And hopefully this is a message that resonates with the 90% than non-union workers have. And hopefully this is, you know, a message that resonates with the 90 percent of non-union workers. Got it. How have you felt about the mainstream media coverage or lack thereof of this incredibly significant and potentially historic movement of workers across the country? Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's hard. hard. I'm glad to see people picking it up. It's also people's sort of labor literacy is very low. So people will either vastly overstate it,

say we're on the edge of the most massive strike wave in history, which is not the case, or they'll think that people are saying these workers are already out on strike or things like that. It's hard to just get the story straight. And more than anything, I just wish that, you know, the mainstream media would talk to more workers. It's like there's millions of union workers who are fighting right now and they are eager to talk. And it's not hard to find them. It's just a matter of priority. So that to me is the main thing. Well, I think we have a Kellogg's worker set to join us in our next show, which we're excited to learn more about what's going on there. Jonah, the last thing I wanted to get from you today,

and I hope you'll come back again, is how does the John Deere potential strike tie into other issues of corruption at UAW? There seems to be a bit of a membership break with the leadership at the UAW. They have a referendum coming up, voting on more democracy for members. Do these two things relate to one another? Absolutely. And this, to me, is honestly the kind of elephant in the room of organized labor right now. The UAW is about to embark on a court-ordered vote to change from a heavily delegated election system to a direct election system. So working auto workers, people who work at John Deere, would get to vote on who their top union leadership is, which isn't the case right now.

This is the result of a huge corruption scandal. I mean, some people say it's the biggest corruption scandal in union history, which is honestly quite rare, despite narratives, but it's also a concession scandal. So poor union contracts that have kept these workers below what they think they should be making, below what the companies are making for a long time. So we're looking in the UAW at a massive strike that is coming at a politically very tenuous moment for the national union leadership of the UAW. And it's a chance

for these workers to say, we want to take this union in another direction, not just a non-corrupt direction, that's a given, but a direction that's ready to fight, is not going to settle for weak contracts, is not going to sell out other future contracts for current gains. And that's the mood, if you talk to these deer workers, they wanna see not just a win in this contract, but a lot of members are saying,

we need the UAW and the labor movement to change, to be ready to fight, and to be more democratic and responsive to the needs of members on the job. Yeah. Well, it's a really important job that you're doing, Jonah. We're going to have a link down there to your sub stack that we encourage everybody to go and subscribe to. One of the only people actually covering what's going on out there.

We hope you'll join us again, and we really appreciate you joining us. Thank you. Thanks, Jonah. Great to have you. Thanks. Absolutely. Okay, guys, thanks so much for watching. It's been great to have Crystal back here.

Look, just so we've been open and every time. Yesterday, Crystal, while Marshall was here, we had two segments which were demonetized. So that's just kind of par for the course about what we deal with here at Breaking Points. Once again, it's not that we care. We're just giving you as an example of how exactly we can pay our bills, keep the show going, and that's why premium subscription matters so much to us. So if you can help us out, we deeply appreciate it. There's a link down there in the description.

Thank you very much. Love you guys. Have a fantastic day. We'll have some stuff posted for you tomorrow, and we'll be back with a full show on Thursday. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to the show, guys. We really appreciate it. To help other people find the show,

go ahead and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps other people find the show. As always, a special thank you to Supercast for powering our premium membership. If you want to find out more, go to crystalandsauger.com. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's You're Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us.

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