Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/24/23 Weekly Roundup: Don Lemon in Hot Water at CNN, AI Bosses Firing Employees, Child Labor in Slaughterhouses, Bernie Calls Out Corporate Media, How Walmart and Amazon Crushed Small Businesses, Buttigieg Flustered By Reporter, Water Tests in Ohio

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

In this Weekly Roundup we cover Don Lemon in hot water at CNN over sexist comments, AI Bosses being used to fire employees, Child Labor discovered at slaughterhouses in America, Bernie Sanders calls out Corporate Media on air, our BP Partner Spencer explains How Walmart and Amazon crushed small business, Buttigieg gets upset when a reporter asks if he is going to East Palestine, and Louis DeAngelis from StatusCoup explains from the ground in East Palestine, Ohio how the issue of Water Tests has become endangered by corporate corruption.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.

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protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we got a little Don Lemon update for you here. You all remember that there has been massive fallout at the network over his comments questioning when women are in their quote prime uh and telling people to google it these are the facts something like that as his female co-hosts were like uh just looking on in horror and poppy harlow was like maybe you want to clarify what exactly you mean by that anyway he was forced to apologize uh chris lick the head of the network, addressed it.

Don Lemon then was off of the morning show on both Friday and Monday, and I presume Tuesday when we are recording this. We do have an update. Yesterday, the word had come out that they were actually considering his future at the network, like his job was actually on the line. Now we're hearing he's going to return to CNN on Wednesday. Let me read you this from The New York Times. He'll return to his regular morning show role on Wednesday. They announced late Monday night, I'm sure to the chagrin of his female co-host. In a terse 75-word memo sent at 10.37 p.m., CNN's chairman Chris Licht said Mr. Lemon has, quote,

agreed to participate in formal training over his on-air behavior and that the network took this situation very seriously. Quote, I sat down with Don and had a frank and meaningful conversation, adding, it is important to me that CNN balances accountability with fostering a culture in which people can own, learn and grow from their mistakes. His decision to address the matter in a memo in the waning hours of holiday weekend reflected just how large a shadow the episode had cast over the network. So I guess Don Lemon is sort of humiliatingly publicly being forced into some sort of sensitivity training. Is that the idea here? Couldn't have happened to a better guy, first of all. And secondly, reading between the lines of that, it sounds from my perspective like they couldn't get him out of his contract. Those contract negotiations are really difficult, especially when you have somebody as high profile and wealthy and powerful as Don Lemon, even against something, an entity as powerful as CNN. It can be really difficult. I would assume, and we talked about this yesterday, Crystal, that this was almost an opportunity, an exciting opportunity for Chris Licht to purge Lemon from the ranks of CNN, where he's sowing a lot of dissent. You can see that in the tabloid leaks. He doesn't get along

with his co-hosts. His show is rated really poorly. And that's not just because of his co-hosts. Obviously, he plays a role in that. And he's totally out of step with the Licht brand. He's very much a holdover from the Zucker era of CNN that Licht is just desperately, furiously trying to scrub from CNN's new brand. So especially when you cross a line on sort of like a sexual human resources question, you'd think that they would be able to get him out of his contract. Maybe they want to keep Don Lemon. Is there a good argument for them keeping Don Lemon from a business perspective? Not one I can see. I mean, I think he's very expensive and the show that he's on isn't doing well. So, I mean, bottom line is the bottom line here.

I thought this was interesting. The New York Times notes that the new morning show format was designed to be a, quote, mass appeal play. This is the New York Times I'm quoting from. But in its first few months on the air, it has been anything but. Its ratings have not kept up with competitors on MSNBC and Fox News. Tensions have bubbled up between the co-anchors and the executive producer has already been replaced. Chris Licht, it comes from a morning show background. The whole idea was, okay, this is him really putting his imprint on the network. And they've ended up by moving,

you know, deck chairs around here. They've ended up actually making the product much worse. And while I personally enjoy the like tense, uncomfortable moments that periodically get clipped out of the show that we see on Twitter of them, like, you know, clearly despising each other, that's not comfortable for people to watch as like an actual morning show viewer. Right. And then with regards to these comments, I mean, listen, your audience is exactly the women that you are offending. Such a good point. So that's why ultimately this was such a big problem is not because, you know, they really care about like, oh, this was a right or whatever.

He just pissed off their entire audience basically with these remarks. So they had to do something to show that they took this seriously and they're like responding to it. But, you know, we'll see how it all works out because it's very hard. If you have personalities that don't gel, there's no sensitivity training or whatever that you can force people to go through that's going to fix that. You've got personalities that, you know, that aren't working well together. It's not a good morning show vibe. The show doesn't know what it is, whether it's supposed to be just like a news show or whether we're trying to do some today's show thing or whatever. It's very confused. And ultimately, that's why it's not working. It's why I have to drink to get through shows with Ryan.

Listen, girl, do what you gotta do. I support it. But no, I mean, it's a really good point. And Don Lemon is just so far from what CNN is trying to do. We were talking yesterday, like, there was a time when Don Lemon was entertaining, like, just from a purely, like, the perspective of theater, the theater of news broadcasts. Like, he could do that. But he is just, this is what happened to Megyn Kelly, by the way. NBC wanted to get rid of Megyn Kelly.

They used the fig leaf excuse of a PC infraction, basically, to get her out of the contract. So that's kind of what I expected to happen with Don Lemon, but it looks like he's safe for now. He might be more interesting if he just was, like, unleashed. Yes! More of this! Don't make a bonus sensitivity training.

Like let's get raw Don Lennon. Let Don be Don. Unplugged. Yeah. Let's just go. Go for it. Let Don be Don. I'm here for it. I'd watch the show. Yeah. It would be, it would at least be more interesting. Crystal, let's take a look at this Washington Post headline. And of course, the story that goes with it. The headline is perfect in and of itself. AI is starting to pick who gets laid off. This article is talking particularly about Google, the master of the algorithm. Imagine that. Their algorithm is now getting turned on employees, or their mastery of algorithms is getting

turned on employees. So the Washington Post reports days after mass layoffs trimmed 12,000 jobs at Google, 12,000, hundreds of former employees flocked to an online chat room to commiserate about the seemingly erratic way that they had suddenly been made redundant. All right, so there's a theory that, quote, a mindless algorithm carefully designed not to violate any laws chose who was staying and chose who was leaving. Whether or not this actually happened at Google this time around, it is going to happen. And it's going to happen in more places than just Google.

Amazon, obviously, as we've reported here many times, uses really detailed tracking and looks at these things through algorithmic means in warehouses and elsewhere. We are beginning to turn people into quantities in ways that have happened, sure, in the past, but not like this. We are commodifying human beings as workers in ways that Marx may have envisioned, but maybe not would have predicted would have happened as quickly as it has. And as just draconian in the draconian lengths that it's happened so quickly. Yeah, well, they report here a January survey of 300 human resource leaders at U.S. companies reveal that 98 percent of them say that software and algorithms are going to help them make layoff decisions this year. So, I mean, this is already basically an industry-wide or economy-wide practice. And to your point, Emily, there was already this level of dehumanization that was common

for blue-collar workers, like the warehouse workers at Amazon who have all of their steps and their movements tracked. And yes, they get fired by a notification on an app, like auto notification on an app, and service workers also treated with that level of dehumanization, well, that's now spreading. It's not just service workers and blue-collar workers. It's now white-collar tech workers as well who receive this type of really distant robotic treatment where they are just another number, another quantity, another line on a balance sheet. So, you know, I think this is it's not the future.

It's already basically here. And it really reveals just the way that our economy is not set up to serve human beings. Ultimately, I think is kind of the bottom line here. Our economy and our tech sector are just, they're advancing at a rapid clip. Advancing is not even the right word. That's actually a word that's like euphemistic and papers over what's happening, which is not an advancement. There is no forward progress. It may be new technology, but it's taking us backwards. And that's why it's important for politicians, especially ascendant politicians who want to make a populist splash, to look at laws that are already on the books, that came out of an era of the Industrial Revolution when people

were being commodified in new ways. We have laws, for instance, that should make certain surveillance capitalistic technologies regulated in the workplace. At Davos this year, there was a lecture about brainwave monitoring that employers will be able to use to tell when somebody is focused or not. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So imagine you're feeding that data into an algorithm. I mean, just imagine maybe somebody is grieving and they're not focused and that data is getting fed into an algorithm that determines who stays and who goes. In a way that in the past, a boss may have had a conversation and realized, hey, this person is going through something tough. I'm not going to do that right now because they live in my community and they go to church with me or they're in my bowling league or whatever it is.

We are so far removed from that. When you have computers on a global scale making decisions about people they only know as numbers. Yeah. And it's happening very fast. Well, and that's part of the problem with how big everything is. I mean, in the scenario you're envisioning where it's like, oh, I know this person. They're in my community. There were a lot more businesses that were located in local communities where it was like you actually cared what happened there.

And these were your friends and your neighbors. And so, you know, you couldn't go and just like destroy people's lives heartlessly because you knew these people and they were connected to you and you actually cared about what happened there. But the more that industries become these giant conglomerates and giant monopolies, the more distant they are from the actual human beings who are doing the labor that are creating all the profits, by the way, for the executives and the shareholder class. So, yeah, it's troubling to think about because it's so impersonal. It's so cold. It's so lacking any sort. the lie of the idea of like the meritocracy that if you do the right thing and you work hard, because this is just going through very cold, cold bloodedly and like analyzing whether you're

redundant and it doesn't really matter whether you're a good worker or a smart worker, a hard worker, a nice worker, a good team player or whatever. Yeah. And so it also kind of cuts to the core of our ideas about ourselves and the way that our society should function. But does it heighten the contradictions as people realize that they're being turned into numbers? There's a question to be asked there. I mean, the numbers, we all know that don't tell the full story. Maybe somebody is a really good leader in the warehouse. Maybe somebody is a really good leader, you know, in their in their work team, whatever it is. Maybe they're at McKinsey and they're a really good leader. They're good for the working environment. They bring up morale, whatever it is. The algorithm is not picking up on that. No matter

how high tech we get, the algorithm is not picking up on that. It's human to human interaction. That's what makes people's lives meaningful, purposeful, fulfilling. And the more, the further we stray from that, I mean, we're just doing it so fast. It's kind of terrifying to think of where this goes in one year, let alone 10. Yeah, very dystopian stuff. Horrifying revelation from federal authorities. They found more than 100 kids that were working in slaughterhouses, cleaning slaughterhouses. This was in plants across the country. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from The Guardian. The headline here is, over 100 children illegally employed by U.S. slaughterhouse cleaning firm Labor Department investigation finds Packer Sanitation Services employed children between the ages of 13 and 17 in eight different states.

Some of the details here are truly horrifying. So they found kids were working with hazardous chemicals. They were cleaning meat processing equipment, including back saws, brisket saws and head splitters. At least three miners suffered injuries while working for this company. And this is one of this is not some little side organization. This is one of the country's largest food safety sanitation service providers. They were working at plants owned by Cargill, Tyson Food, JBS, which is a gigantic meat processing company. They were the largest company that they had the most number of kids that were working in their plants. But, you know,

Gibbon Packing, Greater Omaha Packing, Maple Leaf Farms, Turkey Valley Farms, George's Inc., Tyson Food, among others. So a horrifying, horrifying discovery here. And part of what they say, Emily, is, you know, some of these kids, they were obviously they're working like the middle of the night while these meatpacking plants are closed. And so they're falling asleep in school. Some of them suffered chemical burns. Just unbelievable that this is going on in America right now.

Yeah, and here's a quote, actually, from the report from the Department of Labor. They say, quote, Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags. When the wage and hour division arrived with warrants, the adults who had recruited, hired, and supervised these children tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices. So the system, the company system worked because obviously they're asking for people's ages when they're being hired, obviously. That fails and they ignore the flags. Yes. And that's great. I mean, it's so like, obviously our system, you know, to the extent that it worked, they were fined $1.5 million in civil penalties. That's what

this announcement is based on. The big, it's a big fine. Not huge for a company of that size at all. But it's amazing because the Department of Labor describes this as a quote, systemic violation. It's across eight different states, lots of different kids involved. But you can see when you really zero down that their investigation found that they were flagged as children. Yeah. And the company just didn't care. I mean, there's a couple of things that could be relevant in this situation. I mean, one thing is the rise of contractors to do work within companies. And what happens is, you know, the big company, let's say Tyson Food, they put a lot of pressure on these subcontractors in order to come in with the lowest price.

And then it allows them to kind of keep their hands clean from having to do like the horrifying child labor recruitment and the lowest possible, the lowest bidder ends up getting the gig and they engage in all of these flagrant labor law violations. And it sort of protects the bigger company from dealing with any of the chargers. Who knows if Tyson Foods or these other giant corporations had any inkling of what was going on with the sanitation company. It's certainly possible that they did. So that's one piece of this. The other piece that I think is relevant here is we're in a situation where, you know, people are not doing well economically because wages are still low and inflation is still high, but the unemployment rate is very low. And so a lot of companies are struggling, at least at the wages they want to pay, to get workers in. So guess what?

You have unscrupulous, I would say evil, actors like this company who, in order to get around that, what do they do? They push for, you know, it may be undocumented immigrants. It may be children, you know, who are under the legal age where they could work in an environment like this. And in fact, there is a trend across the country right now in a number of different legislatures to loosen up the rules regarding child labor law. Iowa is probably the most egregious example. Their Republican legislators introduced a bill in January that would expand the types of work 14 and 15-year-olds could do as part of, quote, approved training programs. They would extend allowable work hours and, wait for it, exempt employers from liability if these kids are sickened, injured, or killed on the job. That's nice.

Yeah, so not only are we going to make more kids available to put into the workforce and lengthen the, extend the amount of hours that they can work, if they get hurt or sickened or killed on the job, we're going to make sure that the companies bear no cost of that. Amazing. Unbelievable, right? And to your point, actually, this is another thing to think about. This is going to happen more and more and more because I'm actually sort of tempted by the libertarian argument that some child labor laws are too far, that they prevent young kids from being able to start saving for college, which is insanely expensive, et cetera, et cetera. But that aside, these questions, we are going to see them pop up more and more because we

have a completely broken immigration system, because we have so many people sitting on the sidelines of our workforce and totally overeducated people who have, they were sold a false bill of goods about their college educations. They're now looking for good jobs because they paid tens of thousands of dollars to go to college. They want to be working in a job that matches their degree so that the money wasn't a waste. And they're looking for jobs and in their absence, as they're waiting for a better, for our workforce to match their skill sets. Well, who can we bring in? The local children who can clean the meatpacking factory

from 5 to 11 p.m. after school. Yes. Who can we abuse and exploit within the system is basically what's going on. So a horrifying revelation. But it's important to know that these sorts of things are happening in America every single day. So Bernie Sanders is coming out with a new book and he has been doing some interviews with regards to that. And this one really caught our eye, where he is calling out corporate media to the face of corporate media. Let's take a listen. And the question of the book, again, is that how come we have so many people who are struggling, we have a dysfunctional health care system, our child care system is in disarray,

we got millions of elderly people who have nothing in the bank as they face retirement, and yet the people on top are doing phenomenally well. And Margaret, what the book is about is saying that we have more income and wealth inequality today than we have had. We have more concentration of ownership in sector F to SEPA than we have ever had. We have a political system which is increasingly corrupt because as a result of Citizens United, billionaires can put enormous amounts of money into it to elect their candidates. And we have eight major media conglomerates, corporate media conglomerates,

that control about what 90% of the American people see, hear, and read. Those are really issues that we need to discuss. That's what the book does. Do you worry when you talk about the corporate media that you are targeting journalists when you say that? No, no. Donald Trump talks about fake news,

and that's simply to deflect attention from the fact that he's a pathological liar. My experience, one-on-one with media, they work hard, they very rarely mind misquoted. But what I am talking about, Margaret, is that corporate media limits the kind of debate that we have in this country. You tell me. You know more about it than I do.

How often do we talk about income and wealth inequality? We're talking about it right now, Senator. Yeah, but how often? Not everybody is Bernie Sanders on your show. How often do you talk about concentration of ownership? How often do you talk about the fact that we are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care at all, and yet we spend twice as much money? How often do you talk about that if somebody has a baby in Finland, they're getting nine months off or 10 months off paid family leave? I will talk to you about paid leave for families any day of the week. They also have like a 56% tax rate in

Finland, though. It's a very different system. Good, but let's talk about it. What do they get for that? They get free health care, right? Free higher education? That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's the debate I want, and that's the debate we really don't have on the corporate media. That was great. Yeah. What'd you think of that? So satisfying. When she asks the question about whether he's targeting, he worries that he's targeting journalists. But the implication of that question is that there's a legitimate argument to be made that when you criticize media in a substantive way, as Bernie Sanders has done for decades, by the way, that it is a threat to journalists, that in some way that undermines the safety of journalists.

Right. The fact that that question sees the light of day in an interview with Bernie Sanders, I think is an embarrassment. It's so such a great point. Yeah. The idea that you can't critique corporate journalism without like, oh, you're yeah, you're creating a safety risk. Aren't you targeting journalists? Blah, blah, blah. I mean, they use so much of what Trump did to justify like insulating themselves from any criticism.

And meanwhile, you know, let Julian Assange and actual fighters for press freedom twist in the wind and very little coverage there. Finally, belatedly, the New York Times and other outlets did put out a letter calling for him to, you know, for the charges to ultimately be dropped. There is one thing, though, about it that irritates me, which is if you are a critic of corporate media, I don't have a problem like go do the interviews because the reality is you're right. They still dominate everything. But where's your independent media interviews? Yeah. And one thing that I have noticed very clearly and in fairness, Senator Sanders has sat for interviews, they don't engage with independent media nearly as much as Matt Gaetz and the right, quote unquote, populist wing of the Republican Party, who are all the time on independent media outlets. And there's so much more connectivity between their independent media brands and like the mainstream conservative pipeline, Fox News, et cetera, et cetera. And that's reflected in the politician's choice of where they sit for interviews as well. So if you have a critique of the corporate media and you want to

boost truly independent media, then you have a lot of power and a lot of cachet and you could help with that process of legitimizing them. Because if left-wing political figures don't take their independent media outlets seriously, then how is anyone else going to? Such an important point. And it reminds me of a problem that also exists on the right. And in one sense, until the populist movement on the left that Bernie Sanders himself helped catalyze until that really took off. I don't think the left had the ability or even the need. I think

it had the need, but people didn't recognize the need for alternative left media. Because on the cultural issues, you got a lot of that from the corporate press, not on the economic issues, as Bernie Sanders just talked about. But on the right, it's the same thing with the Trump White House whining every single

day about the fake news media and then giving all of their scoops to the New York Times or to Politico or to the Washington Post and leaking only to them. And listen, this is actually not sour grapes, but I think it's an important point that if you are a populist politician, whether you're left or right, it's not even just about sitting down for interviews. It's about, like, giving information to be reported out to those outlets. And one place that's really good at doing that, The Intercept, gets a lot of that. But, like, if you're Bernie Sanders, like, looking at The Intercept, looking at breaking points, like, looking at these places is so, so important. And it's not, I think it's not just about interviews, but it's also about when you have news to break, go to them and let them do a better job reporting the story out.

Let the Washington Examiner do a better job reporting the story out than the Washington Post will. Even though the Washington Post has this veneer of prestige that you agree is totally unearned. So why are you taking your information to them and not to the places that you could empower and build up their brand and their power by bringing it to them? Yeah. And full disclosure, I have been trying to get an interview with Bernie about his new book. There's a possibility that may happen. I'm hoping, crossing my fingers, whatever. We'll

see if it ultimately comes through. But listen, there are a lot of ways to boost independent media. Some of those ways are through legislation, you know, things that are focused on tech companies, things we've been covering here as well. But some of them are really simple. Just actually show up with them. Like whatever prestige and eyeballs you are able to generate as a prominent politician, you can bring credibility and more eyeballs and new eyeballs and pull people from the mainstream to support a better ecosystem of journalism by engaging with them and, you know, treating them as legitimate news sources. So that's my one, that's my one beef with the way you approach that. I totally get that. And it's not, it's not even

just about like the journalists. It's not about, it's definitely not about us. It's about the viewers and the listeners who you agree have good reason for tuning out of. If you agree that they have good reason for tuning out of corporate press, then show the respect that they deserve and come to meet them where they are. Yeah. I mean, do your face and listen, engage with the system as it exists. I have no problem with that. But hey, be on Face the Nation and be like, hey, I'm and by the way, you can see me on this independent outlet or give them the first interview so that it, again, brings a lot more eyeballs and helps to build up the ecosystem. So but in any case, it was satisfying to watch that exchange. I enjoyed it very much. Oh, my gosh, it was so good. And like imagine the advertisers that face the face the nation.

It's probably like BP and Farmer and Coke. Well, she's like, we're talking about inequality right now. And he's like, yeah, but you're not talking to Bernie Sanders. Yes. And she was like, oh, I'll gladly talk to you about paid leave. And it's like, yeah, easy enough to say, but you will never make that. You will never make a sort of populist focus point of your show day in and day out. No matter how much you say, like, oh, we gave it 10 seconds here and there. Yeah, they love the horse race. That's the easiest

thing for them to ultimately cover. reporting on the death of retail. The decline of Bed Bath & Beyond's share price. The focus isn't on job losses. That would be one thing. Macy's is closing another 100 stores. Concerning? Yes. The focus usually isn't on what happens to a community when a big retailer closes. That would be another thing. We hope to bring back a workforce,

but the e-comm side of things, those people who have bet on e-comm are surviving because they just have lower fixed costs. Some of these brands are just, we can run it with 20 or 30 good programmers, what they might've had 300, you know. And if we don't care about the affected employees or what happens to an area when a mall shuts down, I'm not sure why we should care at all that these places are closing or losing ground to online sales from Amazon, because after all, big box stores and malls are kind of the original Amazon anyway.

Shoppers could walk in and just find anything from sort of oddball kitchen- Malls and stores that are simply never gonna reopen because people are not in the stores and are not buying. That's all you've got here, folks. Mile after mile of mall after mall. Many, many malls. Major malls and mini malls. They put the mini malls in between them.

My name is Spencer Snyder, and welcome to Breaking Points. As America was becoming a huge driving nation, using highways to access places that otherwise would have been inconvenient or inaccessible. You had people trying to capitalize on this new access. So imagine we have this huge plot of land on the edge of town. It used to be way out of the way, but now that there's a highway running right by it, it's kind of convenient to get to. What do we do?

We could make parks or schools or community centers. Well, how exactly would any of those things pay off for a developer? No, let's make some cash instead. Enter the architect of the modern mall, Victor Gruen. He imagined essentially a planned shopping town in which the anarchy and ugliness of American cities would not be found. Guards would keep people safe, there would be a single uniform aesthetic, even the street noise would be replaced with pleasant music. The preponderance of chains and franchises over local stores required by big investors, such as insurance companies, brought shoppers the latest national trends and products and merchandising techniques. Not only were these places in competition with the already existing downtown shopping areas,

since they were located away from other shopping and had every type of shop you could want, people were more likely to do all of their shopping at the mall. In 1957, New Jersey opened two malls, and in 1958, 435 families were asked about how those malls had affected where they shop. They found that a majority of families had already changed their buying patterns, and 5% of families had completely abandoned their old shopping areas. That's after just one year. People understood this was happening. There's been legislation trying fruitlessly to level the playing field between big business and

small businesses since the 1800s. But the mall is a new thing, and it has some people a little freaked out. So big stores in downtown areas organize National Downtown Week Incorporated. They're trying to steal some of the business back from these malls. In 1959, 250 cities participated in National Downtown Week. It was serious enough that the Shopping Center Reporter, which I'm assuming was some kind of mall-oriented trade publication, warned these malls that this was coming

and they needed to take whatever action they could to get ahead of this. But it didn't matter anyway because in the long run, National Downtown Week was going to be as effective at bringing people to shop at independent businesses as when American Express encourages you to do the same. Small Business Saturday by American Express is November 30th. By the 70s and 80s, malls were all across the country. An anchor store like a Macy's or a Sears or a JCPenney would draw people in, and then people would do the rest of their shopping there at the mall because they were there

anyway. But, obviously, the issue is not just malls. Because the same principles that allow malls to do so well also apply to big box stores. The Walmart effect is when a Walmart comes to town, drives down wages, and causes businesses to close. On average, within 15 months of a new Walmart store's opening, as many as 14 existing retail establishments close. Now, Walmart's one of the biggest employers in the country so not every big-box store has the same power to disrupt a community as Walmart, but they're on the same spectrum because the point is why

would you ever go to your locally owned store where they might have what you need when you could go to a big-box store where they will have what you need. Hey where would lighting fixtures be? Hmm, okay. Conversely... I think the country has become so conditioned to the convenience of the giant shopping center that it's become an object of nostalgia and mourning. Channels devoted to dead malls feature tours of these shopping centers that killed downtowns and enriched developers and sold us on the idea that hanging out with your friends in proximity to both a Hot Topic and a Panda Express is somehow culture. But the culture and the community thing with

regard to the mall is completely immaterial anyway. It was always about offering shopping that was so convenient and so cheap that it just couldn't be refused, even if you'd like to. And for half a century that was malls and big box stores. But the way the highway made it more possible for a mall to monopolize regional shopping, the internet makes it possible for Amazon to monopolize shopping in general. Amazon makes up 38% of online retail. In second place is Walmart with only 6%. Amazon is doing exactly what malls were doing 60

years ago by creating a cheap, one-stop shopping center. But what is especially scary, Amazon is so massive and monopolistic, they don't simply put smaller businesses out of service, Amazon absorbs them. 60% of the sales on Amazon are actually small businesses. Many small businesses find it impossible to go without using Amazon's platform and occasionally, because Amazon has a hand in manufacturing as well, a small business will find that their biggest selling item is now an Amazon basic, killing off their own sales. After all, Amazon refers to the small businesses that use them as internal competitors.

And for the dead malls that Amazon no doubt had a hand in closing, Amazon is buying them too and turning them into fulfillment centers. But for all the cooing about small businesses being the backbone of the country, we've never actually cared. To observe this, all you need to do is compare how many headlines

there are about small businesses getting iced out because of rent, to how many headlines there are about big-box stores losing ground in the e-commerce game. The idea of having a little shop and employing your kids and being self-sufficient is a great story. But being satisfied and content is mutually opposed to the infinite growth that big businesses are absolutely committed to. So the decline of mom-and-pop shops doesn't get headlines because they were never the point. They were just the pretty image on the packaging of America. And for that matter, the impact on workers when big retailers come into town and then leave town, that doesn't get much attention because they're not the point either. I think the real reason the

closing of retail gets attention is that some people are truly surprised that the unprecedented concentration of retail that we saw in the 20th century is beginning to collapse under the weight of the unprecedented concentration of retail in the 21st century. But that will do it for me. I'm Spencer Snyder. If you found this video interesting, make sure you are subscribed to Breaking Points.

You can also check out my YouTube channel where I talk all about media and politics and some other interesting things. Link in the description. Liking and sharing always helps. Thank you to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next one. Pete Buttigieg just can't catch a break.

He was walking around here in D.C. A reporter at my old employer, The Daily Caller, happened to notice him and said, hey, maybe I'm gonna do my job what the mainstream media is doing. I'll just be like, when are you gonna go to East Palestine, Ohio? He didn't take it so well.

In fact, so badly, he took a picture of her in a form of intimidation for having the gall just to ask him a question and kept saying he was on personal time. Hi, how are you? Jenny Ter with the Daily Caller News Foundation. What do you have to say to the folks in Ohio, East Palestine who

are suffering right now? Well I'd refer you to about a dozen interviews I've given today and if you'd like to arrange a conversation, be sure to reach out to our press office. I've had that conversation with you. You don't have a message for them? I do and I shared it with the press many times today. I'd refer you to those comments. Do you mind sharing it with us? No, I'm going to refer you to the comments that I made to the press because right now I'm taking some personal time, and I'm walking down the street. Are you going down there? What's that? Are you going down there at all? Yeah, I am. When are you going?

I'll share that when I'm ready. Okay, thank you. Can I get a photo of you? Can I take a photo of you? She's like, yeah, sure. I mean, clearly that is an act of intimidation. He's taking the photo so he could send to the press office and be like, make sure that we never, ever work with this person again as if he was being harassed. First of all, you're walking down a public street, dude.

I actually have seen Buttigieg around a couple of times whenever he's like walking. There is absolutely nothing that stops you from questioning a public official. And then two, just the, you know, the gall of like, I would refer you to the press office. I'm taking some personal time. I'm sure the people who are drinking contaminated water care about your personal time. Like, why can't you just say something about like, look, I, of course I have a message. He thought, you know, clearly he just wanted to get off the hook. And the fact that he's willing to act that way shows you also that people in the press don't actually question him in a confrontational manner all that much. Well, he just wanted to, you know, only have his interviews with the like approved media

gatekeepers that he feels comfortable with. And so, and her questions were not, I mean, look, Daily Caller's a right-wing outfit, but her questions were perfectly fair. And, like, not hostile or aggressive. They should be easy questions for him. Like, hey, when are you going? Why haven't you gone yet? Like, he should have already been there, and then none of this would be an issue for him. But, you know, since he popped on the national scene,

he's had this sort of, like, Cinderella run, you know? And the media loved him, and he was the sort of like Cinderella run, you know, and the media loved him and he was the future of the Democratic Party. And oh, my goodness, he was like this boy wonder figure that elites in the donor club, like they all just loved him. He hasn't really had this kind of actual scrutiny. And not only from Republicans, there have been a number of Democrats from left-wing Democrats like Ilhan Omar to Joe Manchin who were saying, dude, you need to step up and you need to actually do something about this. So he really hasn't faced this before. And I think he can just see in real time his political hopes and aspirations sort of withering on the vine. Whereas we covered,

there's some speculation maybe Biden won't run this time, which I am doubtful of, but you never know. If that had come to pass, that sort of speculation just a month ago, there would have been, it would have been, oh, Pete will be the heir apparent. They're going to do everything they can. That's a much different calculus at this point. It's when he actually has been put in a position where he has power, where he needs to act, where he needs to do a job that is actually critical to people. No interest, no ability, just total failure. It is funny that the two chosen successors to Biden, Buttigieg and Kamala, have both been public humiliations while in office. Look, vice president is the easiest job in the world.

You don't have anything to do. And she's still somehow more hated than Joe Biden. And then number two is Buttigieg. Like, Buttigieg has humiliated himself on the national stage over and over and over again, showed a lack of being politically adept, but even more importantly, being a terrible manager and then freaking out and being publicly entitled

like this also, you know, flying private while the rest of us flights are literally getting canceled. So look, I have no sympathy. I'm really enjoying kind of watching the political demise of him, but it's pathetic the way that he acts whenever he's just getting asked a very basic question.

Yes, indeed. There you go. And Louis DeAngelis of Status Quo joins us now. Great to see you, Louis. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me. So I understand you have some new reporting

about the water tests which were conducted and which were used as the basis for telling residents it's all good. You can drink the water. There's going to be no problems. Tell us what you've learned. Yeah, absolutely. So in reporting from several other folks as well, up until this point, I actually ran into the governor the other day, asked him a couple tough questions that he was not necessarily excited to have asked and did his best to dodge them. And basically, the tests that have been done initially up until basically the last 48 hours were all from contractors hired by either Norfolk Southern or contractors hired by the EPA. These two contractors are companies called Tetra Tech and CTEH. Both of these companies have histories of mishandling results and information. They've, you know,

false it. Some of, in some cases, falsifying test results. This, you know, these companies were being used. One of them was during the Deepwater Horizon incident. I don't know if you remember back in 2010, the New York Times reported on that one. And the other one, let me pull it up here just because I want to make sure I have it all accurate for you all. The other incident as well was from the, let's see, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. So both of these companies are giving residents more reason to question the results and the answers that their government officials are giving them or, frankly, more, you know, more realistically not giving them. So with that information, you know, up until 48 hours ago, again, these tests are being provided by these two companies, one of them being hired directly by the railroad, which has no incentive here to necessarily put

out the accurate information, right? These guys are trying to cover their butts in a lot of this stuff. And it gets a little bit worse because as we looked into this, I've been on the ground talking with residents since over the last weekend, establishing trust with these folks and actually giving them the time of day to talk to them and build trust and the children of one of the parents that i've established a good relationship with asked if he could do an interview um some of his friends wanted to as well we got permission to do this interview with the children um and one of the kids mentioned that the uh the water fountains in their school so not the part that you can go down and get a sip from, but the part that you can fill up your water bottle in is actually open to use inside of their school. And I mean, my heart just dropped when I heard that. I mean, I've got little nieces,

you know, the kids did say there is bottled water in school. But again, these are children we're talking about. The fact that they can go fill up their water bottle in the school because officials are telling them that the water is fine. When we're relying on, again, predominantly tests that are being contracted out by the railroad. It's unconscionable to me to hear that happen. And, you know, it's a tough story. And, I mean, these folks are going through so much here. It's tough to talk about. These conversations that I'm having with residents are hard ones to have.

These folks are being put in absolutely impossible positions. Lewis, the piece about these contractors, this is the first time learning about it. Can you give us a little bit more detail about their involvement that was revealed to be fraudulent in the past, falsifying records? What was uncovered there, just so we know some of the specifics? Yeah, so I know more about the Deepwater Horizon incident. And in the article from The New York Times, essentially, they do a good job with this. I encourage folks to find it. We can get you all the link to post in the description or something like that.

But in that incident, The New York Times essentially found that the Deepwater Horizon incident, the company had every incentive to essentially make these folks be feeling OK and getting them back to work and all this sort of thing. So it's really the incentives that were being placed were obviously incorrect in all of these instances. There should be independent testing being done. And again, if you want residents here in East Palestine or in any other incidents across the country where this to happen again, let's make sure that we're using a company that does not have a history of any of this kind of fraudulent information. So can you expand then in the context of the general kind of corporate influence and cover-up that's been going on here that you've been able to witness on the ground? Because this just seems like the latest in a series of things that's been happening. No, it is. And, you know, everything from initially, you know, the railroad burying contaminants underneath the railroad tracks, right? Residents have been very unhappy about that. And essentially, even with the evacuations, right, there's a lot of speculation.

Again, I can't confirm any of this necessarily, but there's a lot of speculation that the reason the town was deemed safe again was because the railroad is not able to run trains through the town while there's still an evacuation notice ordered. If no one's allowed back into town, railroad conductors, that sort of thing, aren't going to be able to be going through this area because it's unsafe. So there's added pressure to get folks back into town, tell them everything is fine, everything is safe, so that they can get the railroad moving again. And I can tell you after being here for several days, that railroad is busy. I mean, in some times of day, it's every 10 minutes a train going by. Oftentimes right now, the trains are actually being double stacked, the shipping container ones. Residents tell me that that was not the case beforehand that it was mostly single stacked and they're trying to catch up on the railroad being closed from before with these double stack trains, which I don't need to tell you this double stack trains are going to be heavier than single stack one tracked ones.

Um, it's, it's uncomfortable again. What's what's going on with all this? We actually have, uh, you interviewed residents who voiced exactly the fear and suspicion you were laying out that basically the all clear call was rushed in order to get back to business as usual. Guys, this is the second shot that we have. I believe it's labeled a C5 control room. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. They had that thing cleaned up and the train running through within 48 hours. They laid those tracks right over top of that, and there is no way that they hauled any of it out. They laid it right over top. And you know, the fire department, when this initially happened, it's a fire. They're trying to put it out. They're spraying it with water. Where'd that water go?

You know, it's right in the ground, in the soil. And they laid those railroad tracks over people. And the thing is, they weren't allowed to run the train through an evacuated area. So as soon as them train tracks were done, the evacuations lifted. People that came home the night they, we didn't come home till the next morning, but there were people that came home that night. They had videos. They had to wait on the train because the train was already up and running before they could get back in their houses. Now, is that a coincidence that they weren't allowed to run through an evacuated area and all of a sudden the train's ready to go and the evacuation was lifted? No, I think not. So residents very fearful that their health and safety was put at risk in order to make sure that the rail companies could get back to operating

a maximum capacity and get back to making the profit margins they're used to. Absolutely. And I mean, again, Stella and Darren there, I talked to them for 45 minutes. They've got foster children, young kids, some of them with pre-existing conditions. And, you know, that house that we were interviewing them in there, that's been in their family for a hundred years. This is, you know, they're like, what are we going to pass on to our kids? Our house is worth nothing now. That's a major concern from a lot of folks in town is, you know, there's folks who are looking to retire. They want to sell their house. What are they going to do now? Norfolk Southern's not talking about buying people's houses at the value that they were beforehand. And I'm, you know, I'm sure they're

not looking into doing that at any point. But again, even for renters, I mean, I mentioned earlier on in this, parents are being put in an absolutely impossible situation here, right? I'm talking to people with, I'll give you some of the symptoms that we're hearing, and this isn't just from like one or two people. I'd say roughly half of the people I'm talking to are dealing with some of these symptoms here. So we've got rashes, bloody noses, the bloody noses, especially with kids,

like every night in some cases, right? Sore throats, dry and stinging eyes, vomiting, breathing problems, diarrhea. And again, some of this stuff is hard to necessarily show on camera, but I can tell you from being invited into many of these people's homes, going into some of the businesses here, these people are not BSing you into trying to believe this sort of thing. It's frustrating to see, you know, folks online saying, oh, you know, folks are looking for a handout. These people are in the most impossible situation ever. You walk into some of these places, you can feel it in your eyes, you can smell it. It's an absolute shame that this is going on. And as a result of

this, to talk a little bit more about some of the, you know, corruption, gaslighting, whatever you want to call it going on here, the state of Ohio set up a clinic in the town for folks to go to. I asked Governor DeWine, I was like, you know, I talked to all of these people on this street last night. We ran into him on the street because a local resident tipped me off that he was there. I was like, I talked to all these folks on the street. They're experiencing all of these symptoms that I just listed off for you. Where should they go? He goes, they should go to the clinic that the state of Ohio is set up. So we went to the Ohio state, you know, the clinic that they set up in town. And this clinic isn't

even providing actual medical services here, right? The clinic is essentially providing folks to talk to, right? So you go, you get, you, you, you know, can, can talk to an expert, I guess, and then they'll refer you to go to your doctor. Hopefully you've got health insurance. Hopefully you have a plan that doesn't have a high deductible or else you're on the hook for emergency room bills. That's unbelievable. And that's one more point on this, if I can make it a lot of the other, you know, local journalists in town. And obviously there's exceptions to the rule. And even some of the national media, we were there reporting from in front of the medical center. Uh, And they're out there

essentially reading the press release saying this medical clinic is now open. Members of the public should come here for, you know, services and whatnot. Meanwhile, I've got residents texting me saying this is ridiculous. This is no real services here. There's no real services. And fortunately, you know, we're able to actually be here to do it because nobody, you know, again, there is exceptions to the rule. No doubt about it. But, you know, I'm not an expert journalist. I don't have a journalism degree, right? But I feel like I'm out here asking the questions that a lot of these other folks aren't, which is a shame that I have to be in that position to try to do it.

Well, we find ourselves in that position sometimes. We're very happy to help support your work down there. So we appreciate you being there and let us know, continue if you ever need any more resources or anything. Yeah. Thanks, Louis. Great to have you. If we're able to as well, folks, we're going to be posting a lot of content on Status Coup. If you're not a Status Coup subscriber already, that would be fantastic if you can come follow some of our work there. Yeah. They've been on this from the beginning. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. 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.

High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, 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. I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad.

I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.