Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/30/21: Young People, Pelosi Corruption, Cuomo Book, Meat Prices, and More!

Episode Date: December 30, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about the economic fortunes of young Americans, liberals criticizing Pelosi's corruption, Andrew Cuomo's book, the spike in meat prices, and more!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. is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning

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a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff. We can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things. Cowboy Carter. I know girl,

the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points

with Crystal and Sagar. We're going to be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are get to watch and listen to the entire show ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. We've been tracking the fortunes of young people and some new data about Gen Z college graduates of 2020 is just really disturbing. So let's go ahead and put this

up there on the screen. Just 50% of college class of 2020 has traditional full-time jobs six months after graduation. So if you were to say, okay, you know, right after graduation, I'd be like, oh, okay. And the real problem is that it's such a precipitous decline from the normal 55% that you would see amongst 2019 graduates and more. It's never been this low crystal in the last, you know, five, seven years since data has been tracked in 2014. So that just goes to show you that number one, A, if you're only getting 55% or whatever, what's going on with the college degree? But two, the drop has made it so this is actually the worst off college class ever in terms of full-time employment six months months after graduation. And, you know, Joe Biden just restarted student loan payments.

Many of these people are going to be racking up mega high interest in terms of not being able to pay and looking for jobs. In many cases, they'll have to settle, go work in an industry or for something they didn't necessarily want to or study in. And really, it just shows you that, you know, at the bottom of the sector, for young people, they're just getting screwed every which way. You have kids eating outside in the cold with masks on or whatever, nine feet apart. You have college students who the disruption that I hear for exams and daily life is unbelievable.

Working class Americans who didn't go to college, the lack of ability to get training, apprenticeships, entry-level job. And then, I donlevel job, and then, I don't know, there's just a deep sickness for a lot of people who are very young. They have no opportunities right now. Yeah, and they say to make matters worse, college graduates today also owe way more in student debt. So adjusted for inflation 2008, college grads owed $24,000 in student loans on average. Now that number is $36,000. That's a lot of money. That's a massive increase in over just, you know, basically a decade. Wages definitely did not go up that much. The other thing that I'm interested in here is, you know, this number in terms of what percentage has found, you know, full-time permanent employment. it doesn't include people who are basically in the

gig economy. And I think that's probably another major shift and major trend that's been happening for a long time of employers moving from having a standard, you know, employee-based workforce and trying to contract and subcontract and gig worker their way to do whatever they need. And I'm wondering if that's yet another trend that's been accelerated by the pandemic. I think it's very likely because you had so many people detached from the workforce that, you know, this allows them to not have to really follow labor law. They have many fewer protections for workers who are contractors, quote-unquote independent contractors, versus if it's actually their workforce. And so for a lot of young people, you know, rather than a generation

or two generations or three generations ago where you get a job. You know, my dad got a job out of college at the naval base as a civilian scientist. When he graduated college, he went, he got his post-grad degree, came back, he worked at the same job his entire career until he, you know, until he retired 30, 40 years later. That's just not the reality. It's all precarious. It's all at will. It's all, you know, gigs that you can get here or there to try to supplement your income, to try to pull it together. That means you don't have health care. It certainly means you're not getting a pension or any of those things that previous generations could also expect. And so you graduate into a landscape of precarity. And that's essentially

where you end up existing your whole life. That's why when you look at millennials, they have much less in terms of wealth and assets than previous generations did before them at the same age. Why they're so, it's so difficult to be able to start a family, to be able to buy a home, to be able to have that sort of basic stability that used to be the hallmark of America. This is just one more sign of that, which was tremendously accelerated by the pandemic and few people are paying attention to. I completely agree. Yeah. I mean, all the data is really dystopian around young people, depression, suicidal thoughts, and lack of access to health care services, lack of job opportunities. Now, you know, hope in terms of trying to do better in any way economically in the future is very only much there for a select group of people.

For whom the economy works quite well, it's everybody else who's just getting completely screwed. So it's just yet another data point there. And if this is how college grads are doing, think of how non-college grads are doing, which continues to be two-thirds of even young generations are going to get a college degree. We over-focus on college, but I always look at these. You know, you have to pair young people together because, you know, they're very much in the same boat. Like in terms of debt, consumer debt amongst young Americans who don't go to college is sky high. It's just not student debt. It's, you know, usually you have to borrow money to make rent or borrow money in order to just fulfill your daily, you know, activities or whatever.

And you put that together and you've got a big bubble and problem. People aren't able to buy cars. They're not able to buy houses. They are living with their parents longer and longer. It's not just college graduates. They're having a real problem finding actual opportunity and jobs in the communities they grew up in, meaning they have to leave, meaning they have to pay rent. They don't have a social support network.

I mean, the country is just being ripped apart very, very slowly. And separating out like this. That's right. And you are still much more likely to have a higher wage if you go to a four-year institution. But increasingly now, you've got to go to post-grad as well to get yourself you know, the middle class, which is increasingly separating into the upper middle class, which is doing well, but are terrified of falling out of their status, and everybody else. So, yeah, just another trend that has been accelerated by the pandemic that is not a good sign of where the country is headed right now.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, guys, you might remember we brought you Nancy Pelosi's horrific comments about members of Congress and their spouses being able to trade stocks. She totally dismissed the idea that this would lead to corruption. Even after Business Insider had revealed how many members of Congress were deeply conflicted or had actively violated the stock law, which requires disclosure. She said, but it's a free market. People should be able to participate in that. That language and the case she made there for overt corruption was so disgusting that even some of Wall Street's friends and handmaidens. Wall Street defenders in all of media. Even they were like, whoa, that was pretty far. Let's take a listen to Stephanie Ruhle and Andrew Ross-Orkin.

You got to walk me through this. When you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, there are all sorts of restrictions on what you can do. When you work in an investment bank, when you work as an investor, so many restrictions when it comes to personal investments. But these people, lawmakers, these are policymakers, policies that directly influence the way business is done all over the country. How is this even remotely legal? This was one of the most disappointing and maybe to put it even less politely, disgraceful comments and views I have heard espoused on this issue and surprising given Pelosi's views on many other issues. cannot trade. Members of the Federal Reserve now cannot trade. And yet we are allowing our politicians who do have access to inside information, they are often briefed regularly about all sorts of things that are about to happen and that they have a meaningful influence

on what is about to happen and they are trading. To the extent that politicians should want the public to trust them, this undermines every bit of trust. It goes to every worst expectation of corruption, and it's not even expectation. It's real. I mean, it's really interesting. It's real, all right. It's real.

It's very interesting the case they make there, Sagar, because they're like, even the crooks on Wall Street can't insider trade. They're right, though. Yeah, they're right. It's real. It's very interesting the case they make there, Sagar, because they're like, even the crooks on Wall Street can't insider trade. They're right, though. Yeah, they're right. You know, my sister works in finance. She has all kinds of restrictions on the ability that she does. She's got more restrictions on her as like an early staffer in finance as somebody who's not the speaker of the house. It's insane.

It's totally nuts. And they're right. Yeah. And why? Because those laws were not put in place by the people that are going to then be subject to those rules and laws. Whereas in Congress, we're relying on crooks like Pelosi and all the rest of them to regulate themselves. And they're just they're just brazen about it. What Business Insider uncovered, the number of 15 members who sit directly on defense committees and have direct investments in Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and these other military industrial complex places. You had something like 75 members trying to profit off the pandemic.

You had people who were just total hypocrites in terms of, oh, I'm pro-environment, I'm anti-climate change, and then they're invested in like ExxonMobil. And then you've got Republicans who are very anti-Silicon Valley and they're invested in Silicon Valley stocks. It's just complete hypocrisy, complete corruption, complete erosion of the public trust. So brazen that even Stephanie Ruhle and Andrew Ross Sorkin, who Stephanie Ruhle famously, not from Park Avenue, but pretty darn close. When you lost the multimillionaire MSNBC host who defends Park Avenue residents, you have a problem.

You have a serious corruption problem. There's no other way to describe it. Yeah, it's like, I mean, Andrew Ross Sorkin, for people who don't know, the host of CNBC's morning show Squawk Box. I mean, he co-created Bill billions, like the icon of Wall Street media. Wrote Too Big to Fail, deeply embedded with the industry. I'm not criticizing him necessarily. I'm just saying like that's who these people are. Even they are like this is totally nuts and crazy.

That is how far Pelosi is out of step on this. And you can't help but wonder, how is this lady worth $150 million? And her husband makes all sorts of sketchy options trades based on very risky information hours before votes. I mean, it's nuts. I can't even believe it's legal, and yet it is. You know, and it's only recently that we even found out about this because of the passage of the Stock Act. Now they just have to tell us, but they can still do it. Yeah, I mean, Sorkin has a lot of access in this world. He's deeply entwined. That's right.

And, you know, I hate him just because he continues to look like he's like 20 years old for his entire life. I just think that's not fair. How old is he? I want to know the answers. Like, what are you doing? 45-something? Yeah.

Until we get those answers and accountability, I'm not going to be a fan. I just looked up, he's 44. 44 years old, he is a good looking guy. Looks like he's 15. Yeah, he does. Probably working out. I gotta get on that regimen.

He's got whatever the Wall Street unicorn blood or whatever that they're drinking over there. Well, I gotta get some, hook me up. All right. All right guys, thanks for watching. We've been tracking closely the Cuomo saga, the downfall of the brothers. We saw Andrew Cuomo. He had to resign after sexual harassment scandals came to light. Then we had the report showing that he used state resources in order to help his book, his $5 million book deal,

the downfall of his brother. Well, it just keeps getting worse for the Cuomos. The fallout is incredible. Let's put this up there on the screen. Governor Cuomo has been ordered by the New York State Ethics Board to turn over millions of dollars in profits from his pandemic memoir, giving him 30 days to comply, which totals $5.1 million. Now, it's funny, Crystal. He never actually sold that many books. We actually sold more books than he did, whenever we wrote one. It wasn't even close. It wasn't even close, but he received, unlike us, $5 million in advance from a publishing company, essentially a little bit of a payoff. And then he used state resources and actually siphoned off state resources and employees to write that book for his $5 million book deal. And some justice is being

served here. The man now has to turn over $5 million. Don't worry. He's still worth millions and millions of dollars. He'll be okay. So, Governor, I look forward to seeing that check. I bet you this guy's going to make a comeback at some point, too. He's going to go into the wilderness, let people forget, and then try to make some kind of a comeback. But just so you know, too, this was not even a close vote. It was a 12-to-1 vote of the state's Joint Commission on Public Ethics. They had previously ruled that Cuomo had received authorization for the deal under false pretenses, and they decided on Tuesday that he was not entitled to keep any of the profits from it. I think the one dude who voted the other way was

like a Cuomo appointee and just like a total, you know, a total shill who was like, I'm worried about the precedent or whatever. But, you know, it's even worse than just the fact, which is bad enough, that he was using state resources to write this terrible book that nobody ultimately was interested in reading. The timeline that was revealed of when the book deal came together and when this was all happening is really stunning. Because this was early days of the pandemic when New York, I mean, he had no idea how this was going to go. The worst of everything for New York, which I mean, you guys remember, it was horrific. There were, you know, trucks parked on the street with dead bodies in them. It was terrible. All of that was still to come when he's out there signing a multimillion dollar book deal and then using the same government employees who are supposed to be dealing with this absolutely catastrophic and devastating crisis.

He's distracting them instead with helping him write his frickin book. Like, it just shows you the ego of this man, the narcissism of this man, the callousness of this man. So, the fact that he's being ordered to at least return some of those ill-gotten gains is something. At least it's something.

No, it is something. It's some measure of justice. Let's not, you know, turn our nose. It's five million dollars. That's a lot of money. Even if you're a multimillionaire, that's a lot of money. And so, look, it's possible he could have spent it already, too, which would have been extra funny. I mean, that's the way some of these people live, you know. It wouldn't surprise me if he's one of those guys who's perpetually broke and constantly needs the money, even though, you know, daddy left him a nice tidy sum and his brother's got, you know, millions and millions from his CNN contract. So we'll see. I do think it is a positive step in the right direction.

And I think the downfall of these two men shows you the hubris of a lot of elite liberalism of right in the middle of the pandemic. And to me, it's just that there is a cost. Look, you can't flagrantly flout the rules at your company when you're in media or when you're the governor. No matter how popular you are, eventually the bill will come due. Very rarely does, but eventually. And that's what happened for these two. Yeah, that is what happened. They got a little too bold here.

Last note on this is former Governor Cuomo is not out of the woods yet. He's still being investigated. Oh, that's right. Several investigations by the federal yet. He's still being investigated. Oh, that's right. Several investigations by the federal government. They're looking at the fact that his administration downplayed the death toll of nursing home residents. Reed, that's the New York Times very diplomatic wording that they lied and whitewashed the death toll of nursing home residents during the pandemic, they say, among other matters. And he was also criminally charged with groping the breast of a former executive assistant in the executive mansion last year and is scheduled to

be arraigned in January. We will bring you any updates on those investigations and prosecutions. But yeah, it's incredible to reflect on the massive downfall of Andrew Cuomo, who was not only governor, but riding high, receiving Emmys, the hero, people speculating about they're gonna sub him in for Joe Biden and all of that stuff. He was gonna be the savior of the Democratic Party. And then his brother who was, listen, it's low bar,

but the highest rated primetime host at CNN, extraordinarily influential, extraordinarily powerful in that position, and now both of them out of the job. Pretty stunning. Just incredible. It really is. Of course, we here at Breaking Points have been tracking the rise in prices of a lot of staples, things that you're picking up in the grocery store, rent, gas, of course.

And today we wanted to zoom in on one of those goods in particular, and that is beef. And to get the real story on why beef prices are increasing so dramatically, we wanted to bring in Bill Bullard. He is not only a former rancher, but he is also CEO of the national nonprofit Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund. Great to see you, Bill. Good to see you, Bill. Glad to be here. Thank you. Yeah, our pleasure. So let me throw this tear sheet up on the screen to sort of set the table here, metaphorically, no pun intended. Glad to be here. Thank you. is that meat processors, that industry has massively consolidated into four giant conglomerates.

Just take us into some of the reasons why beef prices have gone up so much. Well, the reason is, is the marketplace is fundamentally broken. You have four packers controlling 85 percent of the fed cattle market. They have control over the marketplace. We filed an antitrust lawsuit against the big four packers alleging that they have conspired to artificially depress prices to cattle producers while at the same time inflating prices to consumers. So for the past six years we've seen consumer beef prices rising and we've seen cattle prices falling. In fact, they're moving in the opposite directions. And this is a great concern because the only ingredient in beef is cattle.

And so there should be a harmonious relationship between the two price points, but that's not occurred. And since 2017, we've seen beef prices skyrocketing that consumers are paying at the grocery store. And at the same time, we have cattle producers who are being forced out of business because they cannot receive their cost of production from the broken marketplace. And we have two problems. We have a lack of competition in the entire live cattle marketing structure. And then we have globalization. We have given the meat packers the ability to source beef from anywhere around the world. Cheaper beef, it's not differentiated. Consumers can't tell the difference. So they're buying beef out of Brazil, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Australia, Mexico, Canada, passing it off to consumers as a

direct substitute for the beef produced by the American rancher. And this is harming the American rancher and it's hurting consumers because right now consumers are being exploited on one end of the supply chain and cattle producers are being exploited on the other. And as the Biden administration recently announced, the meatpackers margins have increased 300% since the pandemic. But this is a systemic problem. It's been going on since 2015 that we've seen this absolute disconnect between the value of beef and the value of cattle. And we need to fix that. But so far, the government hasn't done anything. You were the person who taught me about that. I had no idea about these labeling laws around products made in the USA, basically mislabeling via lobbying that was hurting American

consumers because they want to buy American beef, but they changed the labeling standards. So that doesn't necessarily apply to people like yourselves or for other ranchers that are actually producing beef here in the United States. Can you talk a little bit, not only to that, but just how little of the profit is actually filtering down to the folks who themselves have made a living out of raising cattle here in the U.S.? So with respect to the country of origin labeling, consumers can go to the grocery store and see a beef product with a label that says product of the USA. Now, that product may have been exclusively produced in Uruguay, for example, brought into the United States and in full compliance with our current regulations by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they can bring that Uruguayan beef product into a U.S. packing plant, take the package out or the beef out of the package, throw away the Uruguayan label, place a product of USA label on it, and

sell it to unsuspecting consumers as if it were produced by the American cattle producer. And that's false. That's deceptive. And this has been going on for a long time. And it's harming the producers and it's harming them to this extent. We go back less than just a little over a generation and about 62% of every dollar consumers spent on beef would actually flow back to the American rancher. Well, in recent years, that percentage has dropped to about 37%. So the rancher has lost half of the consumer dollar

that used to flow through the supply chain back to the cattle producers. And that profit is now being captured by the middleman in this instance, and that's the beef packing cartel. The reasons why I find this conversation so important is because so many corners of our, you know, food production industry have already been monopolized. You know, it's all, it's big ag, it's the big meat packing companies. It's the big meatpacking companies. And it seems like the ranchers are like this one holdout where you still have small producers,

you know, living living this life and deriving their economy, raising a family off of, you know, their ability to raise cattle. Could you speak to that aspect of it? Because, listen, I don't know anything about this. It strikes me from the outside. This isn't just about economics. It's also about a way of life that is dramatically under pressure by the undercutting of the ability to, you know, farming and ranching and main street businesses. And they once flourished and we had a very vibrant rural economy all across America. Drive across America today and you see rural communities literally hollowed out. They're blowing away. They've gone to dust. Weeds growing down the streets. And the reason for that is the single largest segment of American agriculture is the live cattle industry. We have about three quarters of a million cattle producers

left in this industry. Most of those are family farming and ranching operations. And they were providing the economic cornerstones for rural communities. But since we've gone through this long period of depressed profits and below the cost of production returns in the marketplace. In just over a generation, we've lost 544,000 independent beef cattle operations from this country. So cattle producers are dropping like flies. And so the industry, if we don't make a change, a fundamental change and do it quickly, this industry, the U.S. ranching industry, will no longer look like what it is today. It's going to be radically changed. It's going to be corporatized. It's going to be an industrialized model where the meatpackers decide from birth to

plate how to produce the cattle. And you will continue to see mass exoduses of cattle producers from rural communities, just as we have for the past four decades. And what's really sad about this is that Congress has just ignored this problem. The administrations of the past have all ignored this problem. And now it's gotten so critical because consumers are being exploited so terribly in the marketplace that finally attention is being drawn to it. And hopefully now we'll get some major movement as was indicated.

We have a bill introduced, Senate Bill 2716, that will restore mandatory country of origin labeling for beef. That means the consumer can go to the grocery store and see a product that says born, raised, and harvested in the United States. So when the consumer purchases that product, they will send a demand signal to the packer

to source more beef. And the only place that product, they will send a demand signal to the packer to source more beef. And the only place that packer can go is to the American ranching industry. They have to buy from American cattle producers. And that's what's going to revitalize rural America again. But we have to give consumers the 20 countries we import from. Have you been able to get bipartisan support on that on that Senate bill? Who have been some of the champions for you all? Very much so. Senator John Thune, Republican from

South Dakota. Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota. Senator John Tester, Democrat from Montana. Senator Cory Booker, Democrat from New Jersey. So we've got what we call cattle states and urban states involved in this. And then you've got Senator John Hoeven, Republican from North Dakota. We've got Senator Ben Ray Luan, a Democrat from New Mexico. And we've got Senator Heinrich from New Mexico joined on and Senator Cynthia Loomis, a Republican from Wyoming. So it's a bipartisan bill. It's clearly recognized this is an essential piece of legislation that must be passed. And yet it sits in the U.S. Senate Ag Committee, and they do nothing. And one of the reasons is, is because the beat-packing cartel is so powerful,

not just out in the marketplace, but they're powerful in Washington, D.C., and they've been successful at holding Congress and the administration at bay for decades. And we've got to do something. We've got to be forceful. We've got to be decisive and we have to be aggressive. And so we're pushing Congress for some key reforms in order to restore opportunities for the American rancher to once again be profitable and to help rebuild rural America. Great. Bill, we always love talking to you. Thank you so much for taking the time and helping to educate our audience. Thank you, Bill. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend.

I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey.

We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit adoptuskids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter.

Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.