Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/10/22 - Mini Show: Tom Cotton vs. Kroger, Senate Investigations, Rail Strike Updates, Military Vaccine Battles & MORE!

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

Krystal, Saagar and friends discuss Tom Cotton vs. Kroger, Potential Senate Investigations, Rail Strike Updates, Military Vaccine Mandates, CVS lawsuit, Monopolies/National Parks, and the Homeless Epidemic.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. What are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. Well, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Republican, had a pretty fascinating exchange in the Senate this week with, actually over Kroger, there's a merger that Matt Stoller and others have covered very well between Kroger and Albertsons before the government right now. I think a merger that's worth blocking certainly on antitrust grounds and Senator Cotton confronted Kroger today on the antitrust case over basically woke concerns saying don't come crying to Senate Republicans over you know anti to get us to to stop a merger from being blocked when you are harming or going after Christians in your workplace. Now, whether or not you think the steps Kroger took amounted to

harming Christians in the workplace, we'll get into. A marginalized community. A marginalized community. Let's play the clip first and then get into some of those details. This situation reminds me a little bit of the situation big tech companies have found themselves in in recent years. They've come to Washington because they fear regulation from our Democratic friends or action by the Biden administration. And they expect Republicans who are traditionally more supportive of free enterprise to come to their defense. And I've cautioned them for years that if they silence conservatives and center-right voters across the country, if they discriminate against them in their company, they probably shouldn't come and ask Republican senators to carry the water for them whenever our Democratic friends want to regulate them or block their mergers.

So I've heard a lot of questioning about that today, and I've read a lot about it in the news. And I'll say this. I'm sorry that's happening to you. Best of luck. So conservatives saw this and were just cheering wildly for it and saying more of this, more of this, more of this. And listen, I agree, more of this for sure. But this is, again, verbal. It is an exchange in the Senate on C-SPAN that will be clipped and will be circulated. And there is a very big difference between saying something like this in the Senate and supporting, and I'm not accusing Tom Cotton, and this is about the Republican Party more broadly, supporting appointments to, for instance, the FTC that will allow mergers like this to go through, that will allow, by the way, as you merge, Matt Stoller makes this point very well,

the consolidation becomes a consolidation of viewpoints and there's less competition for viewpoint management, et cetera, et cetera. Now, Tom Cotton's complaint is basically that there was a suit that was brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2020 that was brought on behalf of two Kroger employees that didn't want to wear Kroger aprons that they interpreted as being in support of the pride movement. They had rainbow hearts stitched onto the apron. They didn't want to wear the flare. They didn't want to wear the flare. And Kroger said, this is just part of our new marketing campaign. It's not LGBT related.

But they actually settled to the tune of $180,000 with these two employees because the employees said, can we wear our name tags over the heart or I will pay to get myself a different apron. Can't cover the flare. Yeah. Well, that's what Kroger said. Can't cover the flare. Until they settled. And so that's, I think, the heart of Tom Cotton's issue with Kroger. I'm sure Kroger has other maybe objectionable diversity policies that get into questionable territory.

That's probably the case. But this was the high-profile sort of complaint against Kroger in recent years. Again, saying it is one thing, taking action on behalf, that would actually make it harder for organizations like this to impose a viewpoint, but also just would be better economically as an entirely different thing. So Tom Cotton wants free enterprise, but not like that, basically. Well, Tom Cotton introduced a federal minimum wage increase bill. There you go. He's taking some interesting steps. What regulations would Tom Cotton like around uniforms? Does he want an agency that is in charge of

inspecting uniforms for political compliance with GOP orthodoxy? Well, does he believe, like Marco Rubio, that employees in situations like this should be able to handle it through unions, right? This is something that Marco Rubio, he has a different plan to create organizations similar to unions, but a little bit different. But he has in the past said at places like Amazon, it would make increasing sense to have employees when they feel their viewpoints are being bulldozed by corporate people in C-suites in Manhattan, to litigate some of those problems through collective bargaining. Yeah. And also then there's some union protections. If a union worker

doesn't want to wear the flare, then at least, you know, then they can fight it out through the grievance process. Yeah. Rather than in the precarious situation where workers have so many fewer rights in situations where they're not in unionized stores. Well, in this case, the EEOC won the settlement to, again, the tune of $180,000. Because it fired, Kroger fired the two employees. And that's where the suit came in. For not wearing the flare. For not wearing the flare.

That's an Office Space reference of people. If people haven't seen it, maybe that's before a lot of viewers time. Incredible, incredible movie. I'm just not a big Office Space fan. I'm probably going to get so many comments about that. Great movie. It's not bad. Did she quit over the flare?

It's not a bad movie, but it has cult status, and I feel like maybe that's overstated. Anyway, it is fun to see support for cracking down on big business, with antitrust, but also more broadly from Republicans, even if it has to come because on the tech side or it's around censorship. And I guess on the grocery store side, it's even around censorship too. I guess whatever brings them to the battle against corporate power is a good thing. a coalition takes people who are there for all sorts of different reasons. And if you get to a place where the people have more control over society democratically rather than corporate America exerting its influence undemocratically, then okay,

that's a good thing and good for Tom Cotton. Yeah, and you can count probably on one hand the senators that would take a position like this from Tom Cotton when it comes to actually voting on things and not downplaying, you know, saying this publicly and saying it in the Senate. But, you know, you can say Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, certainly J.D. Vance when he enters the Senate. And that doesn't amount to an earth shattering change in the Republican Party because it's still limited to them. And if it's limited to them, it'll you'll get viral clips like that. But you won't get a different FTC. You won't get changes. And the case that I've made repeatedly to Republicans is that if you have if you see

the C-suites telling folks in Ohio that they can't wear a name badge over their union, if you see that, or they can't wear a name badge over the heart, if you see that, you should look into what Amazon Warehouse's safety records look like compared to Walmart, compared to other major competitors, because if they're doing that on the cultural level, imagine what they're getting away with on other things.

So it's just a really good glimpse, I think, for Republicans into what corporations will do when they're so divorced from their actual workers. They're in Manhattan, they're in D.C., they're in L.A., wherever they are. I think Kroger's technically based in Ohio, but the point remains that you have people who are culturally, socioeconomically very diverse from the workers they're overseeing. And without those intermediaries, that's dangerous, both on a viewpoint level, but certainly, as we've seen with Amazon, just a physical level as well. I would expect on its merits that the FTC and Lina Khan will block this merger. We'll see.

I would expect as well on the merits for sure. Wokeness aside. Yeah. So Tom Cotton will not be riding to the defense of Kroger. Sounds good to me. All right. Interesting times, that's for sure. Yeah.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is warning corporate America that now that they will have 51 senators, they will have expanded subpoena power. Previously, in a 50-50 divided Senate, it was impossible without at least one Republican vote in committee to issue subpoenas to corporations. With Raphael Warnock's victory this week, they will have a majority on the committee, so it won't need Republicans. We'll be able to issue subpoenas. Chuck Schumer said, quote, subpoena power can deal with corporate corruption and inequities and other problems throughout the country at a news conference, warning them

that this could be coming. What's your take on this? I mean, it's a good example of why, or a good indication of why, that $80 million race was money well spent for Democrats. Because procedurally, in terms of the rules of the Senate, there is a lot you can do when you add Raphael Warnock into the mix, when you go from 50 to 51. That's actually a very significant difference. Obviously, we know they had Kamala Harris to break the tie. But when you have the coalition of Sinema and Manchin that I think took arrows for other people who haven't been as public about their opposition to some of the legislation that Manchin and Sinema have gotten major changes implemented into, that 51, that's a huge, huge deal. And this is just one reason why. Now, it's always important

to remember with Chuck Schumer, one of his daughters is at Facebook, the other's at Amazon, right? He has pretty close ties to tech. I think that's probably why some of the bills haven't gotten to the floor. At least that's what I've heard from folks with some knowledge of it, that it's a matter of priority. So while Chuck Schumer might, if he's forced to, support some of these measures, anti-corporate measures, especially in the tech sector, he also doesn't have to bring them to the floor. I don't think it's his kids that is preventing that.

I think it's more just the power of big tech broadly. Yeah, I didn't mean his kids. But I think it's an indication of the closeness, certainly, to power. And in the 2000s, when Democrats were leaving the Obama administration and leaving the Senate House, going to big tech was seen as like the non-sellout way to go make money. This is the utopian. Right. You weren't going to the banks.

You weren't going to the big oil. You were going to the disruptors. Changing the world. Making the world a better place, not doing any evil. So as a result, there's a ton of Democrats that are staffing a lot of these big tech companies. I saw that Taibbi had highlighted that Twitter's giving from employees was 99% to Democrats. Usually it's like 80-20 if it's in balance. It was 99 to 1 Facebook is probably a little bit more balanced

But I suspect it probably probably is so anyway senator Bernie Sanders was asked by reporters If if he's gonna be looking forward as chairman of the Budget Committee to using the subpoena power He said it's a little bit early, but the answer is yes Elizabeth Warren was asked. She said, oh, yes. Oh, yes. And Warren is the most strategic of the Senate Democrats when it comes to targeting subpoenas in a way that can then advance some type of not just legislative agenda, but regulatory as well well because it's her allies who are running the FTC and running the CFPB. So Warren has built a sizable power structure inside Washington that when you add subpoena power to it, it becomes that much more formidable because she could also, I don't know if this

is happening but I would expect it would, that people in the CFPB or FTC or other regular could back channel, hey, look, we're hitting a wall with this fraudulent company. A little subpoena or a letter from you might be able to shake something loose right here. So I think that Bloomberg's right to warn its readership that they should be on the lookout. They'll bolo. Is there anything in your wish list, a corporation you'd want to see subpoenaed? I think some of the low-hanging fruit, maybe medical debt companies, student lending servicers. I'd love it if they would go after some of the fundraising email scammers. Anybody, like the robocall types,

you could do some of that stuff that has a combination of really annoying to people, but then on the debt collection front, people really breaking laws, some of that. Looking at all sorts of profiteering when it came to price increases during the pandemic. And not just energy companies, but you can look at the comments that a lot of the CEOs are making at their quarterly presentations. Yep, car companies. Where they're basically saying that we're using this environment as an excuse to raise prices. Whenever you find one of those, then go into subpoena and see if you can find price fixing, other types of manipulation that involves collusion.

And then you could even see corporations starting to bring prices down because it might be more important for them to stay ahead of that type of investigation if they were actually, if they're like, oh, wait, we did do that. Uh-oh. And I'd love, there are a lot of high-profile Republicans. Again, I don't think this indicates a sea change in the Republican Party at all, but there are a handful, this is a Senate that J.D. Vance will be in of Republicans that would love to join in a pile on some of these corporations, probably not all of them, but you get Larry Fink and BlackRock. Give them a subpoena and just watch Republicans. The House will have their own subpoenas that they can fire off at BlackRock.

I'm sure they will. Plenty of those. So we could be looking at a circus that is at least somewhat enjoyable from our vantage point. Drag these CEOs around. Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to that. Excellent. President Biden chose not to put seven days of sick leave into the tentative agreement that he sent to Congress. The House of Representatives famously tried to add seven days, kicked it over to the Senate, which stripped it out and passed it as Biden had initially sent it to Congress. Without those sick

days, the unions have vowed to push ahead, demanding that they be included in an executive order that gives sick leave to all employees of companies that have federal contracts. Joining us now to follow up on this is Matthew Cunningham Cook, who with his colleagues over at Lever News has been following this extremely closely. So first of all, Matthew, welcome to Breaking Points. Thanks for having me on, guys. And so what are you hearing? Pretty soon after this defeat and when Biden signed the law, he was asked, when are workers going to get seven sick days? And he said, well, when I convince Republicans to go along. But as you've pointed out, there are other ways there.

So what are those other ways? And why should people be confident, not confident, but why should people believe it's possible that it could happen if Biden chose not to include it in the first place? I think the main takeaway is that it's something that Biden can and should pick a fight on. So I think that there's certainly any executive order that extended paid sick leave to railroad workers would almost certainly be litigated in the courts. I think that's basically a guarantee. passed very recently with the vaccine mandate. The railroad industry has said that they are federal contractors. So it seems like they could be included with this. Prior concerns about preemption with railroad laws

seem to have focused on state-based legislation. So I think the executive order is one route. I think the other route, which potentially might be on more solid legal ground and addresses a broader gamut of issues that railroad workers are facing is with this fatigue management rulemaking process that was mandated in this 2008 law reforming railroad safety, where the Secretary of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration were directed by Congress to begin comprehensive rulemaking to ensure that railroad workers aren't so fatigued. And the reason why this is so important is because when railroad workers are fatigued, it's much more likely that there's going to be a crash, that there's going to be ecological disasters, people killed.

Railroads are not just transiting consumer goods. They transit dangerous chemicals, oil, coal, all things that really are not the safest things to be transporting. So that rulemaking began earlier this year, and now the railroad industry is required by next July to submit fatigue management plans. And they are supposed to be developing them in concert with the unions. And there's a lot of skepticism right now from the unions how seriously they're going to take it.

That's a huge question. I think it's basically incumbent on Secretary Buttigieg to mandate that these plans include a rollback on these heinous attendance policies that were implemented outside of the collective bargaining process for the most part. BNSF, Warren Buffett's railroad, has the most aggressive of them. That was implemented in February, and that was where the paid sick leave demand came from, is a response to these new really onerous attendance policies. So I think that that might be even on more solid legal ground, is basically Buttigieg saying, I'm not going to sign off on any plan submitted by the railroads

unless we see a real rollback of these attendance policies. And that we've really kind of consulted with the unions on how to reduce railroad worker fatigue and that, you know, it seems like you're taking those concerns seriously. So those are kind of the two, you know, main routes, I think, to moving forward. I think there's a bunch of other kind of things too, you know, I mean, as part of this, that really are just kind of statements of principles or policy from the administration, the administration could, President Biden could say to the railroads, I just gave you guys a huge favor and, you know, I'm going to be watching you very closely, you know, railroad company CEOs. And that

hasn't really happened either. So I think there's, what our reporting kind of showed is that there's a wide range of options that the administration can take to help railroad workers. And it's really about being creative at this point. the OSHA vaccine mandate, you know, where they saw kind of an urgent public health issue and kind of said, you know, we're going to say that this matters more than anything else, and we're going to implement this policy. And so I think the same kind of level of creativity that they engaged in with the OSHA vaccine mandate, they could choose to engage in with railroad workers as well. That's a great parallel. And you can also see it in the student loan debt relief. They were clearly there was some clear like innovation in terms of procedural innovation in that vein.

So I want to ask then also, Matthew, kind of the obvious question, which is, is it your sense, having looked at these mechanisms, Buttigieg is obviously aware that he's going to have to sign off on something. Is it your sense that the Biden administration is aware these routes and these mechanisms exist to tackle the issue? Do they know that they have this power? And then how confident are you, or not confident is perhaps the case, that they'll actually take any action here? I'd be astounded if they didn't know. I mean, again, you know, the main thing is that if they didn't know that they can't take concrete, immediate actions to improve safety on the railroads, right now that would be astounding to me. And if they don't understand that humans are a critical part of safety

and workers are a critical part of safety, that would fly in the face of basically every piece of rhetoric of this administration. So I think that they are aware. I think that what they're kind of dealing with is, you know, a very powerful railroad industry lobby that is opposed to anything that will improve safety on the railroad. So that's kind of my main takeaway. I think in terms of seeing action, I mean, you know, the biggest issue, I think, is that railroad workers are 115,000 workers divided into seven different international unions with not a lot of coherence or kind of a common strategy. And so that would be kind of my first kind of feeling is that, and this is really kind of what Railroad Workers United, this worker organization that unites railroad workers

across different unions and crafts is really pushing for, is for some kind of more cohesion, I think, for railroad workers as to a common approach, not only with Washington, but I think in state capitals and with the media, with the corporate media as well. So that's, I mean, when you have such such kind of levels of diffusion in the union workforce, it's hard to kind of see a coherent strategy for getting more out of the Biden administration. Yeah, I just real quickly wanted to underscore the delicious nugget that you guys, you know, unearthed in your reporting, or drawing the connection between the carriers telling the courts that they are in fact federal contractors so that they could mandate their employees

have to take the COVID vaccine, that seems like it's going to be pretty tough for them to walk back. They would obviously twist themselves in pretzels to do it. But if you're the Biden administration at this point, all you have to do is cite the carrier's own claim that they are federal contractors. Then they say, well, it would be so confusing to figure out which employees work on, you know, which trains carrying, you know, federal freight and which ones are carrying private freight. It's like, well, you didn't seem concerned about that when you were saying, well, only these employees are mandated to get the vaccine, but these employees don't. That seems like a pretty rich vein for the Biden administration there. And yeah, that was my colleague, Rebecca Burns, who unearthed that. And yeah, I think it's a very,

very good point. I mean, I think that what we see from the Roberts Court is that they will kind of change their reasoning on a dime to kind of justify whatever Ginny Thomas kind of wants at a given moment. But it's certainly worth trying. And I mean, I think the other thing is, is it's good to pick fights with the Roberts Court. This is a fundamentally undemocratic institution that frequently relies on precedent from slaveholding era or from the Gilded Age to justify its increasingly deranged decision making processes.

And I think, you know, challenging that makes a lot of sense. I think Emily agreed with every word of that. Yes, yes, I'm fully on board with that. That's a discussion for another time. But it is, I mean, if the Biden administration wasn't aware of what Rebecca unearthed there before, they sure as hell are now. Yes, yeah, yeah. It's such a, it seems like such a. Yeah. It seems like such a layup. It seems like such a... Obviously, it's easy for us to say

when they're hearing from the railroad industry and they like to keep the railroad industry super happy. But from a political perspective, let alone a moral perspective, it seems like such a layup. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, great reporting, as always, from Lever. Matthew Cunningham-Cook, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me on, guys. Appreciate it. The top brass at the military are pushing to keep the vaccine mandate in place, even as Republicans are pressing the Biden administration to end the military vaccine mandate and are also trying to use the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a must-pass piece of legislation that is currently being negotiated in Congress to force the military to end its, we could put up A1 here, to end its vaccine mandate. This is Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin saying that they believed that for military readiness, it was important that they

keep the vaccine in place. What's your read on, first of all, how do you think this is going to go? Do you think Republicans will succeed in getting this into the NDAA and ending the mandate? Depends on how hard the Pentagon pushes back. This is a sign that they're at least pushing back, but it depends. And Austin is doubling down, right? He says, I'm the guy, quote, I'm the guy, I'm the guy who did this and I'm sticking with it. I'm not walking it back. But listen to that. I mean, the Army National Guard, they have projected losing up to 14,000 members for vaccine noncompliance alone. That doesn't even count how many people are just not signing up because they don't want the mandate or they don't want to get the vaccine or be mandated to do it.

And that's just the National Guard. They are missing their recruitment targets like across the board. The military is. procedural nonsense has become the thing that everyone is trying to basically push their pet project in right now because it looks like they're doing a CR instead of an omnibus to fund the government by year end, which means we've got to get the stuff in the NDAA. At least this is military related. I was just going to say, at least this is military related, but that's what complicates the negotiations here. As Ryan said, it's an absolute must pass. You have to pass the NDAA.

And so there's all this conversation about poison pills. Ryan, do you think Democrats end up caving on this, even as L.A. County is right now talking about bringing back a mask mandate? We're seeing across the country the still uneven sense of whether the pandemic is over. And most Americans, and if you look at polling, I think this is true as well, feel like we're on the other side of the pandemic. But that's not true of everyone. So will Democrats who represent a lot of those people cave on that? I feel like this is something they would be willing to trade because Biden has said the pandemic is over. The vaccines, like usefulness for people in their 20s and 30s and teens,

which is the bulk of people in the military, is dubious. It's not nothing. But there are also side effects that make it so that a lot of people at that age at this point are like, you know, I'm not going to get this vaccine. an absolutely raging fentanyl crisis and mass incarceration, you're going to have a hard time hitting your recruitment numbers if you throw on top of that this vaccine mandate for people who are like, look, the pandemic's over. A lot of people know people who either have had bad reactions to the vaccine or feel like they've had bad reactions to the vaccine or feel like they've had bad reactions to the vaccine. And so those people are like, you know, and they also don't know people who are 20 who have died.

Now, some people in their 20s have died. It's not to say it hasn't happened. It does happen, but the percentages are very clear. Like the people who are at risk are the more elderly and also, say, like obese or people with other comorbidities. But if you're eligible for the military, you probably don't have as, you may have one comorbidity, but you likely don't have, you probably don't have any comorbidities because of the health screening that is required to get into the military, which then takes your risk of COVID down that much more. Well, that's another recruitment problem, by the way.

Right. I forgot to mention that one. Something like 50% plus of 18-year-olds are basically ineligible off the bat for the military. Right. And then you add in, like you were just saying, fentanyl crisis, mass incarceration, and a vaccine mandate. And full employment. So here's an interesting quote from Lindsey Graham that goes to, I think, whether or not, like, who's going to blink on this one? Lindsey Graham says, our recruiting goals are way short. The conflict in the world is getting worse, not better. We need more people in the military, not less. He is threatening to withhold his vote from the NDAA. So again, it's one thing to ask for it. It's another to say, listen, I'm not voting for this.

Pushing it away, I'm not voting for this. Lloyd Austin then doubles down. Now it's a staring match at that point. But I think if you have Republicans pushing that hard, literally saying we cannot get people into the military right now because of, one of the things NBC News cites is like cultural differences. And I've heard that, too, that it's a problem when you have high profile congressional testimony from people

like Mark Milley who say they're interested in learning about white rage, whatever you thought of that doesn't land particularly well with some people that were interested in the military and who feel like it won't be a, you know. Military's too woke for them. Military's too woke for them because they already, you know, don't want to deal with their HR department this sort of Culture in the military according to the Washington Examiner as of Saturday The text repealing the vaccine mandate is actually currently in the legislative text of the NDAA So again, it's in the tip. It's in the tax repealing it. Yeah

According that's as of Saturday. So this is going to be a tug of war all week. Right. And I and I think so for Lloyd Austin, you don't get to be secretary of defense without being a deaf bureaucratic infighter. And what any bureaucratic infighter knows is you don't give away something for nothing. And so if you hear that, you know, Lindsey Graham very much wants X, like it would be almost irresponsible of you to say, sure, have X. Say, okay, you know what? No, I'm drawing a hard line on this.

You want X? You got to give me Y. There are thousands of things that Austin wants. Oh, they've got a Christmas list. Yeah, they've got a Christmas list. Yeah, they've got a Christmas list. So my suspicion is he will ultimately say, you know what, fine, this means so much to you. I'll let you have that.

Let me have, I have no idea what Austin wants. A base closure, a base open, an aircraft carrier to be recommissioned. Who knows what on earth this guy wants? Related to Ukraine, related to Yemen, but I would suspect that it'll end up being part of those negotiations because it's hard, it's really hard to defend.

Like, even in his defense here in this article, he says a million people died in the United States of America. We lost hundreds in DOD. If a million people died in the military, okay. But like, she's like hundreds like that. That's a tragedy, but it's, it's hundreds. And so it's not millions. So even in that best argument, I think it's hard for them to say. Um, and you know, how many of those were vaccinated also? We don't like, it's like it's not that they were all unvaccinated. This is probably before in that in that first more in that first deadlier wave. Well, yeah, these are all completely legitimate questions. And I think for Austin, if Austin says, fine, Lindsey Graham, I'm not

I'm not budging on this and gets Democrats to take that out, really gets support and muster support among Democrats and maybe even some Republicans to keep that in place. I think it speaks to how out of touch the top brass over at the military is with the people they're trying to recruit, because you're asking them to, quote, follow the science, trust the science, that legitimately has shifted in front of their eyes and that they see contrast between what Anthony Fauci and others said at point A earlier in the pandemic and point B on vaccines. I mean, we could talk about masks, we could talk about transmissibility, we could talk about all of those things and the shifts in what we've been hearing from, quote, the science, capital T, capital S.

But on vaccines in particular, you really cannot blame people for having no trust in the product that is being sold to them right now because it has changed. Like the story has changed. And again, I get it. Like I feel like both of us have been fairly supportive over the last couple of years of vaccines, but this is a real problem and it's not going away. You can't just mandate it away because there are so many questions remaining. Right. And the vaccines do reduce the likelihood of, the data does seem clear that the vaccine does reduce the severity of your infection and does, and age cohorts does, you know, reduce the likelihood of dying from COVID, particularly among invulnerable populations. That's the key.

Right. Yeah. And that's extremely important. But if you qualify for military participation, you are likely not in one of those categories. You're likely younger, you're likely fitter than the general population. And so you can understand why people wouldn't want a dose of the mRNA when, again, they were told a lot of different things about it. Really, the benchmarks have changed on some of those metrics by the admission of folks in the industry. And for Lloyd Austin to just say, you know, if you want to join the American military, you have to comply with this mandate.

Man, that's not going to help their recruitment one bit. Well, that's and that's Lindsey Graham's whole point. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll follow the story for sure and bring any updates on it. But I think an important one to pay attention to. CVS is moving to dismiss a lawsuit that alleges its fundraiser for diabetes, a fundraiser it was having for diabetes, was being funneled, the money from

customers was being funneled into a debt, basically, that CVS had. Now, CVS's lawyers have said, quote, no good deed goes unpunished. We can put up the element here. This is a write-up in legal news line that really caught traction online this week. A lot of people saw this. But again, CVS has posted a motion to dismiss it. That was back in October. The story itself is a couple of weeks old, but I think it was a tweet that caught people's attention and went viral. And it's funny how that happens, right? And sometimes like it just takes one tweet, something goes up in the like trade publications or industry newsletters, and you don't hear about it until someone picks up on it. But it's kind of remarkable how

much traction I saw this catch online. CVS further promised that at the conclusion of a three-plus years of fundraising, CVS would, if necessary, make up the difference between the cumulative customer donations and $10 million. Obviously, upon signing, CVS did not assume an unconditional $10 million debt to the ADA. That is the American Diabetes Association. So CVS is claiming it had no debt to the ADA, but CVS agreed to fundraise from its customers and then turn those donations over to the ADA. Ryan, what do you make of this whole thing? Yeah. So the initial kind of viral meme basically was that CVS had a debt to the American Diabetes Association and that they were then getting their customers to pay their debt.

That turned out not to be true. CVS created the quote-unquote debt by agreeing to raise $10 million for the ADA. And then if they failed over that three year period to raise the full 10 million from your like five or 10 cents that you give at CVS, that they would then make up the difference. So, okay, fair point. Like that was a freak out at CVS for no reason. Now, I think you could, the reason that corporations do these things, I think, can be interrogated a little bit. It's not just pure humanitarian gestures. Although, you know, because CBS is going to get a tax deduction, you know, for bundling everybody's money and sending it over in that direction. But at least this is a place where the charitable work and the business

are kind of lined up because they actually would like the Diabetes Association to succeed in reducing the amount of diabetes. Actually, wait a minute. I've just talked myself amount of diabetes. Actually, wait a minute. I've just talked myself out of this. You changed the mid-sentence.

Wouldn't they want more diabetes for their business model? Because then they can sell more insulin? No, actually, CVS took a stand, which I did not appreciate. But they are trying to get healthier. As a college student, I did not appreciate the stand CVS took on selling tobacco products. But they did do that. And that was probably a significant hit to their business. Right, because fewer sick people to buy all their different medicine. Yes.

So good for them. I'll go back to good for them. One of the reasons I think this caught so much traction online is because people are constantly being asked to do this and are happy to round up. Not everybody does it, but I mean, I think it is really easy a lot of times for people to be happy to round up. But first of all, so that happens to a lot of people a lot. And they want to know that the money is going to the right place because they're being asked to make this donation without a lot of time to look into it. And you're just trusting that the corporation is doing the right thing with your money and that the charity is doing the right thing with your money as well. But when you're at a point of sale, it's a really

heavy trust relationship. And the burden of proof is in their court. It's in the court of the corporation and the charity, and you just have to trust them. And so because so many people have been asked to give that trust away so many times when they potentially feel like it's been violated, it's a really big deal to people. And again, I think this really started with a tweet that was on December 5th. It's mega viral. We've got 72,000 likes and around 18,000 retweets. This is the time we're taking this. What did he say? It's by Emma Van Inwagon.

I'm probably not producing that. I'm probably not pronouncing that correctly. But she said, CVS is being sued for asking customers to donate to the American Diabetes Association when they check out. Those donations are, in fact, not sent to the ADA,

but instead reimburse CVS for a legally binding obligation of $10 million that CVS promised earlier. Oh, so that's sort of accurate-ish, but not quite. Right. Not quite. What I originally read from that was there was some judgment that they owed, that it was some type of like punishment and they were asking customers to fill that in. And she's not exactly saying that, but she's kind of leading you in that direction. But the reason that they have a pledge is that CVS pledged to

give them $10 million and to help do a fundraise from their customers to get $10 million their way and said, look, if we fail, we'll make up the difference. Right, yeah, exactly. That's, I think that's a little bit, because otherwise what you would be left with would be CVS saying, we're going to try to raise you $10 million, but don't budget for it

because if we only raise you $5 million from our customers and they don't round up as much as we think they're going to round up, then you only get $5 million. Right. ADA would much prefer to have the guarantee of $10 million. Right. So in CBS's defense, their line, quote, no good deed goes unpunished is fair enough. But again, it is one of those things where people will, again, like that 72,000 likes on

that tweet in just a couple of days, that's a tweet from December 5th, I should say. So not, it's not even like one that's been up for a while, even though this lawsuit, this motion to dismiss, I believe it was from October and the write-up itself that we're looking at here is from a couple of weeks back. It's just a, what's the word I'm looking for? I mean, it's a sore spot for people because they probably have placed their trust in these companies many times at the checkout point. So CVS, I think that's also probably why CVS came out swinging with a motion to dismiss with things that say like, no good deed goes unpunished because this could be very bad for their ability to raise money in the future. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy story. Crazy how things can just strike viral gold and make us

look at trade publications articles from a couple of weeks back and get to the bottom of it. Yeah. And I don't read a lot of legal news line. Somebody was telling me like a year ago about um a a kind of a black beauty product company that got hit on tiktok with a claim it was like organic beauty products that a it's like a these are not organic and b it's no longer black owned um neither thing was true it like went viral on tiktok like destroyed the company right i mean not completely destroyed but like absolutely smashed the company that's the thing we're having all these and just completely false yeah you have all these conversations about misinformation and disinformation and a lot of times we talked about this on last week's show

like what politifact is doing i was reading a study by two academics they're actually out of europe they looked at a lot of politifact stuff that is just plainly uncheckable um and these are not like right wingers by any means, but they're just looking at certain things and saying like, you can't have an objective fact check of this percentage of claims. And it was a lot.

It came to something like 44% of PolitiFact changes in the sample of like 858 of them. And it's misinformation and disinformation. Like there's so much stuff that goes viral that is objectively fact-checkable. You can objectively say it's absolutely wrong. Is this company still blackout? Is the product still organic? Well, here's the evidence

that it is. Right, and it's not all political, but it's so damaging in certain circumstances. So it's just a shame, I think, that we spend so much time fighting about things that are subjective when you can look at things and get to the bottom of them and say, this is legitimate disinformation.

Yeah. Nobody trusts anything. That's right. And honestly, I say this, people disagree with me. It's rational. Yeah. There's a lot of lying going on out there. That's right. Crazy story. I was going to say, well, we'll keep following it, but it looks like I think CBS is going to win this motion. Hi, I'm Matt Stoller, author of Monopoly-focused newsletter, Big, and an antitrust policy analyst. I have a great segment for you today on this big breakdown. Okay, so this one's for you if you love hiking. And it's about how a giant consulting firm named Booz Allen somehow gained a measure of control over U.S. national parks. All right. Okay. So every day, visitors to Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in Northern Arizona hike into an area named Coyote Buttes North to see one of, quote, the most visually striking

geological sandstorm formations in the world, end quote, which is known as the wave. All right, here's a picture. Okay, so it's a pretty weird place. On an ancient layer of sandstone, millions of years of water and wind erosion crafted giant cliffs, weird canyons that look like you're on Mars, giant formations that look like crashing waves made of rock. There are old carvings known as petroglyphs on cliff walls and even dinosaur tracks that are embedded in the sediment. So the wave isn't like anywhere else on Earth.

It's also part of a national park, a U.S. national park, and thus technically it's open to anyone. To preserve its beauty, however, the Bureau of Land Management lets just 64 people daily visit the area. And snagging one of these slots is an accomplishment. A ticket into the wave is known as the hardest permit to get in the USA, by Outside and Backpacker magazine. To apply requires going to a site, recreation.gov, which is where the government manages national parks, public cultural landmarks, public lands. You go there, you pay $9 for a lottery application fee.

And if you win, you get a permit. Then you pay a recreation fee of $7. The success rate for the lottery is between 4% and 10%. Some people spend upwards of $500 before securing an actual permit. The golden ticket. We had to apply for a lottery for this trip because today we're doing the wave. But while the recreation fee of $7 goes to maintaining the park, the money for the lottery application fee, the $9, does not.

That money instead goes to the giant DC consulting firm Booz Allen and Company. In fact, since 2017, more and more of America's public lands, over 4,200 facilities, and 113,000 individual sites across the country at last count, have been added to the recreation.gov database and website run by Booz Allen, which in turn captures various fees that Americans pay to visit their national heritage. Now, you can do a lot at recreation.gov. You can sign up for a pass to cut down a Christmas tree on the Roosevelt National Forest, get permission to do fly fishing, rifle hunting, or target practice at thousands of sites, even secure a tour at the National Archives in Washington, DC. There are dozens of lotteries to enter for different parks and lands that are hard to

access or that require a limited number of people. This includes, you know, heavily visited lands like Acadia National Park, which has 4 million annual visitors, Arches National Park, which has 1.5 million visitors, Glacier National Park, which is 3 million, Rocky Mountain National Park, which is 4.4 million, and Yosemite, 3.3 million visitors a year. Those aren't lottery sites. Those are just places where lots of people go. The thing is, is all of them or most of them on recreation.gov come with service fees attached. And these fees go directly to Booz Allen, which built the site. The deeper you go, the more interesting the gatekeeping. Now, most people don't know that these service fees are

going to Booz Allen. They think it's going to the park, so they don't mind. But when you find out, people get really mad. So as one angry writer found out, waiting on hold and being transferred multiple times because this person was trying to find out where the money went, but also who set the fees, she found that Booz Allen, she was told, after being on hold for a long time, Booz Allen actually sets the recreation.gov fees for themselves. Now, there's nothing wrong with charging a fee for the use of a long time, Booz Allen actually sets the recreation.gov fees for themselves. Now, there's nothing wrong with charging a fee for the use of a national park as long as that fee is necessary for the upkeep and is used to maintain the public resource. And that was, in fact, the point of the law passed in 2004, the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, to give permanent authority to government agencies to charge fees for the use of public lands.

But what Booz Allen is doing is different. The incentives here are creating the same dynamics for public lands that we see across the economy with junk fees. So just as airlines charge for carry-on bags and hotels are forcing people to pay resort fees, some national parks are now requiring reservations with fees attached when before they didn't. As scalpers automatically grab Taylor Swift tickets from Ticketmaster using high-speed automated programs, there are now bots booking campsites. Okay, so what is Booz Allen? Okay, who are these guys? Now, some of you may remember it as the place, the company, where controversial national security agency whistleblower Edward Snowden worked. Now, on their website, Booz Allen lists its business as follows, quote,

we bring bold thinking and a desire to be the best in our work in consulting, analytics, digital solutions, engineering, and cyber, with industries ranging from defense to health to energy to international development. I mean, that's basically like prestige worldwide. They don't, you know, what the hell does it even mean? And the thing is, is when you can't identify what a company does, like we sell socks or whatever, when they throw out lots of garbage like that, it's usually because it does something useless or corrupt or both. And in this case, Booz Allen just operates as a shadow government. Now, Snowden was operating as a national security agency employee, but was employed by Booz Allen. And recreation.gov is a government

website that's supposed to handle government lands, but it was created and has fees going to Booz Allen. In 2017, Booz Allen got a 10-year, $182 million contract, could consolidate all booking, with 13 different government agencies participating, from the Bureau of Land Management, to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to the National Park Service, to the Smithsonian, to the Tennessee Valley Authority, to the U.S. Forest Service, and so on and so forth. And there's a lot of money involved. For instance, as one camper noted, in just one lottery to hike Mount Whitney, more than 16,000 people applied and only a third got in. Yet everyone paid the $6 registration fee, which means the gross income for the single location is over $100,000. Go to Booz Allen. There's nothing criminal about this scheme, but it does hand sort of

ticketmaster-like control of our national parks, our national lands, cultural monuments to this private firm. But that's not where the story ends. In 2020, an avid hiker named Thomas Cotaib sued the Bureau of Land Management over the $2 processing fee it charges to access the mandatory reservation system to visit Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area. He claimed, among other things, that the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, that's the law that authorizes the government to charge its fees, mandated that this fee was unlawful because it had not gone through the notice and comment period required by the law. A few years later, a judge named Jennifer Dorsey, who was appointed by Obama in 2013, agreed with him. She looked at the statute

and found that Congress authorized the charging of recreation fees for the purpose of taking care and using federal lands, not administrative fees that compensated third parties. As such, Booz Allen's ability to set its own prices was inconsistent with the law, mandating the public's right to comment on what we are charged for using our own land. The Bureau of Land Management sought to appeal, but then dropped the appeal in July. Why?

Well, rather than a bitter procedural argument about classifying fees, the government in Booz Allen just decided that they'll go through the annoying process of having the public comment on Booz Allen's compensation and then ignore us using a sort of phony process where they get fake advisors to approve things. So here's a screenshot of one of the endless they get fake advisors to approve things. So here's a screenshot

of one of the endless advisory committee meetings where they did this. So this is the Mojave Southern Great Basin Resource Advisory Council meeting in August, simply proposing directly to substitute new standard amenity fees, quote, equal to the associated recreation.gov reservation service fees. This is in response to the court loss. So one notable part of the saga is that technically the Bureau of Land Management and Booz Allen owe refunds to everyone who went through Red Rock Canyon's timed entry system from 2020 to 2022, but they'll probably ignore that and what seems like steal the money anyway. The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, which is the bill that Congress authorized to allow the government to charge fees, and they

put in restrictions because they knew that government likes to allow the government to charge fees. And they put in restrictions because they knew that government likes to charge these fees even when they shouldn't. That's what the bill was designed to do. Well, the authorization runs out in October of 2023. So that's next year. And that means that Congress has to renew it. And they sort of do this automatically. But an interested member of Congress on the relevant committee who likes hiking, and there are a bunch of them, could actually tighten the definitions here and find a way to stop Booz Allen and these 13 government agencies from engaging in this kind of like minor theft from junk fees. It wouldn't really be hard.

And it would be kind of fun to force a bunch of government agencies to actually do their job and actually take over the site themselves or pay Booz Allen a fee for its service. Another path would be that President Joe Biden, through, he's got what's called an anti-junk fee initiative, using a bunch of different regulators to say, you know, you can't charge this fee, you can't charge that fee. There's consumer protection laws and whatnot in the private sector. Well, he could just assert through what's called the White House Competition Council to the 13 different agencies that they end Booz Allen's practice of charging these kinds of fees. I mean, if you're going to try to stop

junk fees in the private sector, might as well get the government to stop it too. Now, I don't want to overstate the problem. We have wonderful national parks and, you know, they're still there. And the thing is, we can set up a website that doesn't charge junk fees. It's not that hard. But to get there, we'll have to recognize the real problem at work, which is not just that Booz Allen got, you know, this contract. The problem is ideological. The government officials supporting Booz Allen are doing it for a specific reason. They believe in something called privatization, which is the idea that the private sector can do stuff better than the government can directly. So instead of the government building a website, they hire a shadow government, aka Booz Allen, to do the same thing

and give that shadow government taxing authority, aka the junk fees on recreation.gov. Now, sometimes the private sector can do stuff better than the government. Sometimes the government can do stuff better than the private sector. It sort of depends. But this ideology is one where it's always better to have private sector actors doing things. So they think that if you have a bunch of web developers in a government building, that's somehow worse than having a bunch of web developers in a non-government building doing the same thing at three times the cost. It's stupid, but this ideology is deeply entrenched.

So if it seems like everything today in America is kind of a scam, that's because increasingly it is. But of course it doesn't have to be. And not everything. I mean, the parks are still there, right? But the problem writ large is political. It's that most of us don't know how our system works. Everyone assumes that the fees on recreation.gov go to the national parks. I've talked to members of Congress about this problem who are really surprised that the fee money on recreation.gov is going to Booz Allen. That's not what they thought. That's not why they wrote the law. If it seems like everything in America increasingly is a scam with some sort of ticky-tack fee or something, that's because increasingly it is. But of course, it doesn't have to be. And the problem here is ideological, and it's also that

most of us don't really know how the system works. So in this case, everyone assumes the fees on recreation.gov go to the national parks. I've talked to members. So in this case, everyone assumes the fees on recreation.gov go to the national parks. I've talked to members of Congress about this problem, and they are shocked that the fee money is going to Booz Allen. Now, once enough of us know, we can fix it. And there are enough Thomas Katab types in America, and he's the guy who brought the suit against the $2 fee to make sure of that. And we're going to fix this. More broadly, we're going to roll back privatization. It's too ridiculous not to. But in the meantime, we're going to have to pay our $2 fees

to get access to the national parks. And that's pretty infuriating. Thanks for watching this big breakdown on the Breaking Points channel. If you'd like to know more about how big business and how our economy really works, you can sign up below for my market power focus newsletter, BIG, in the description.

Thanks, have a good one. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Welcome to another segment of 5149 on Breaking Points, where we dive into different topics at the intersection of business, politics, and society. And today, we're gonna talk about the homeless industrial complex. The homeless crisis in America is worsening again. The COVID pandemic caused a surge in housing costs and a rise in unemployment, leaving nearly 600,000 Americans unhoused in 2020.

Cities across America are spending more than ever to combat the crisis. In 2019, New York spent a record-breaking $3 billion to support its homeless population. California is also expected to break its record, allocating $4.8 billion of its budget to the same issue over the next two years. And areas like that just don't seem to be getting any better, despite the fact that every politician claims that this is a priority of theirs and the budgets keep going up. On the contrary, 2020 saw a 30 percent increase in the unsheltered homeless, erasing over half a decade of work since its dramatic rise in 2015. Yep. If you live in an urban area, you've probably noticed the homeless problem getting worse. Everybody has seen this, I think, to some degree. And thus, we have dedicated more public funding and attention towards solving

homelessness in the U.S. than ever before. But for some reason, the homeless epidemic continues to grow. Let's look at one example, San Francisco. This graphic is from the SF Department of Public Health. The budget allocated to combat the homeless crisis in the city has increased every year, but the SF homeless population has also been increasing in lockstep every year for the past half decade. How could this be? Now, there are a lot of factors that contribute to increased rates of homelessness in America. And today's segment covers only one small sliver of that discourse, one that I think is less often discussed because it brings to light the

uncomfortable premise that maybe some of the people in charge of solving homelessness don't actually want to solve it at all. Turning now to the homeless crisis, the governor just announced almost $700 dollars in funding to convert more apartment buildings and vacant hotels into housing for the homeless. No mattress move, never easy. Governor Gavin Newsom with volunteers helping set up a new Project Homekey apartment. The space will become a home for someone living on the streets. Why can't we buy more buildings and get people off the streets today? Get buildings where we can help people ever avoid hitting the streets. That's where Project Homekey was born.

Project Homekey uses funding to convert buildings like this or motels and hotels into interim or permanent housing for the homeless. $700 million for Project Homekey in California, which is a program that sprang from a strategy to combat homelessness called Housing First, where the goal is to get every person, every homeless person into a permanent home without any kind of pre-qualifications like sobriety, drug treatment, or psychiatric care. Now, I'm not an expert in social work, so I don't know what the most effective way is to get people off the streets. I do know that the causes are multifaceted. Obviously, there's a financial component, but there's also substance abuse to consider and maybe a cultural

factor as well. But what I can comment on is that with the amount of money flowing, for example, in California, Governor Newsom has approved grants for nearly $1 billion over the past two years, $1 billion this year, and another billion dollars next year through the state's Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program to all cities and counties in the state. That is a lot of money, a billion dollars a year, which I would guess is going to be a lot of opportunity for misuse. Misuse by who? What am I talking about here? Let's take a look at the eligibility for the program. Cities, counties, or other local public entities, including housing authorities or federally recognized tribal governments within California,

may apply independently as a development sponsor. Alternatively, a local public entity may apply jointly with a non-profit or for-profit corporation. That is important to take note of. The Homekey program is designed as a public-private partnership. An important truth to remember is that private sector corporations aren't in the business to address societal problems. They are in the business to maximize profits, which unfortunately is fundamentally incompatible with something like providing universal affordable housing. And here's an example of what happens all the time

in public-private partnerships. A real estate broker, Jim Neal, who was hired by the San Diego Housing Commission, bought 40,000 shares of stock of Chatham Lodging Trust, the former corporate owner of a Mission Value Hotel, before negotiating a $67 million deal for the Housing Commission to purchase the 192-unit property, which works out to about $349,000 per room, which is the highest per room cost for any hotel sold in the county last year, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Neal also allegedly breached their broker agreement with the Housing Commission when he earned commissions totaling over a million dollars on his deals with the city's last year, according to the city attorney's office, and now he's being sued by the city.

You see, developers, brokers, government bureaucrats, nonprofit executives, they all see dollar signs. They see this opportunity to not necessarily fix homelessness, but to profit from it. City leaders, including Sacramento's Mayor Daryl Steinberg, are in a meeting right now with Governor Gavin Newsom discussing the local homeless funding he withheld until they came up with a better plan to address the crisis. Yeah, the governor said combined the plans would only reduce homelessness by two percent over the next two years. Governor Gavin Newsom walked into the meeting Friday afternoon hoping for cities to come up with a better way to address the state's homeless crisis. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said he welcomes a collaboration of ideas, but not like this.

Even a short pause means that we have to pause our own efforts because we don't have the certainty of the funding being available. We have an expectation that the state make these funds permanent and ongoing. Permanent and ongoing. That's literally what some of these people are looking for. Blank checks in perpetuity for a cause that's worthy, but also a cause they are willing to milk, of course. Since we heard from Todd Gloria, mayor of San Diego, let's take a look at what's happening in San Diego. In September, the city was awarded $37.7 million from California's HomeKey program. On March 22nd, 2021, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria boasted that HomeKey temporarily housed 330 people, which is $114,000 per person. I don't think I'm going out on much of a limb by saying that. I don't think he's spending that money very wisely. I mean, $37 million for 330 people, which is kind of comical, right?

I mean, you heard it earlier, a billion dollars, right, to be doled out to every county and the largest cities in the state of California. And the current plans as submitted by the cities would only reduce homelessness by 2% statewide over four years. Even Gavin Newsom is not too happy about it. He temporarily halted the billion dollars in an effort to demand better plans from the cities and counties, but the problem is he's kind of thrown in his lot with Project Homekey. In the state of California, there's something called a behested payment. Basically, public officials may call individuals or companies with business before the state and ask them to donate

to any governmental or charitable purpose, and there's no limit to these types of contributions. Now, it was reported that Newsom racked up an unprecedented $226 million in behested payments in 2020, mostly for purposes related to his administration's COVID-19 pandemic response and messaging. For example, Facebook was behested out of $2.1 million, which included over a million dollars of ad credits and $650,000 to support Project Homekey, an effort to buy hotels and convert them to housing for the homeless. Very interesting. He's got not only his political capital tied up in the project, but also financial capital as well, right? He kind of has to be all in. And

California is not unique. These types of situations, abuses happen all over the country. The New York Times recently ran an expose about Jack Brown, a nonprofit executive who operates New York City homeless shelters, who has siphoned off millions from the people who he's supposed to be serving. Since 2017, the city has awarded more than $352 million to CORE, a nonprofit run by Mr. Brown to operate shelters. From that funding, we're talking about him taking more than a million dollars in salary per year. We're also talking about him using his nonprofit to channel contracts worth at least $32 million into for-profit companies that he has a financial interest in. We're talking

about millions more going to real estate companies in which he has an ownership interest in. And to top it off, he's also hired his family members and given employees perks such as gym memberships and cars. You cannot convince me that he actually cares about any homelessness because if he does, by chance, all his financial investments go poof. And that is the homeless industrial complex in a nutshell. You have the politicians who are funding programs that, in theory, help promote solutions to a widespread problem, in this case, homelessness. But like any other industrial complex, you also have nonprofit executives, real estate developers, government bureaucrats, and many others

who have hijacked the original cause and turned it into a profit machine. There is something called Pornel's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which states that in any bureaucratic organization, there will be two kinds of people, those who work to further the actual goals of the organization and those who work for the organization itself. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization and will always write the rules under which the organization functions. Okay, so in this case, you have the hardworking social workers on the street trying to help make a difference, but you also have your Jack Browns of the world, the people who

run the organizations, the people whose interests are not tied to the success of the organization in terms of the causes they serve, but rather the financial success of the organization itself. All right, I'm going to end with something that is uncomfortable and potentially unpopular. I read somewhere that homelessness is both a result of and an impediment to the pursuit of economic growth. Basically, homelessness is, in our country, a feature and not a bug. You see, you need it to exist as a stick to keep people working. And the lack thereof, the lack thereof of homelessness, is kind of a moral hazard for our economic system.

And to me, that is the point. We either choose to have homelessness or we don't. Throwing billions of dollars at the problem is kind of like treating the symptom without fully understanding the cause. It only serves to enrich folks who are not in the business of solving problems, but rather in the business of milking every ounce of profit until the well runs dry. That's all for me this time. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion about the homeless industrial complex. If you did, I would encourage you to check out my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. I have tons of videos and breakdowns on different topics.

Many of them like this one. The link will be in the description below. Of course, don't forget to subscribe to Breaking Points. And thank you so much for your time today. This is an iHeart Podcast.