Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/10/23: Taibbi Attacked By Dems in Twitter Files Hearing, US NYT Nordstream Report, Jon Stewart Backlash Over Lab Leak Jokes, Chris Rock on Meghan Markle, Work Monitoring Employee Brain Waves, Migrant Child Labor Abuse

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

In this episode we discuss Matt Taibbi attacked by Democrats as a "so called journalist" in Twitter Files hearing, the New York Times releases a report saying the Nordstream pipeline was destroyed by "Pro Ukranian groups", Jon Stewart speaks about the backlash he received from his Lab Leak jokes, Chris Rock throws shade at Meghan Markle, James Li (@jamesccli) talks about companies considering monitoring the brain waves of their employees, Marshall Kosloff (@makosloff) covers Tik Tok regulations, and Max Alvarez talks about Child Labor abuse with Migrant children.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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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here. And we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Hello, everybody. Almost immediately after we wrapped our show, some breaking news happened

that we just absolutely have to cover. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen from the New York Times. Quote, intelligence suggests pro-Ukrainian group sabotage pipelines. U.S. officials say, oh my. Okay, so let's keep reading. New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline last year, a step towards determining responsibility for this act of sabotage. They are important to add, quote, U.S. officials say they had no evidence President Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation or that the perpetrators were acting on the direction of any Ukrainian government official. The brazen attack on the natural gas pipelines, which linked Russia to Western Europe, fueled speculation about who was to blame from Moscow to Kiev. Now, after there was no evidence that Russia did it, now U.S. officials are leaking to The New York

Times that actually it was a, quote, pro-Ukrainian group. So who exactly are these people? Well, it's kind of interesting. According to The Times, they say that the review of Intel suggests that they were opponents of Vladimir Putin of Russia. OK, but they do not specify the members of the group or who directed or paid for the operation. U.S. officials claim that they had no advanced knowledge of this incident. So anyway, let's take a step back for everybody. So obviously the pipelines were blown up last year. International waters just 12 miles away from NATO ally from the international zone. And it caused a major incident.

Immediately, Western countries were quick to blame Russia. Now, Crystal wasn't able to join me because this is such a breaking story here. But here's what she had to say. Quote, I'm going to read her comments. You guys can get her input. Quote, it beggars belief that a sophisticated operation using experienced divers, thousands of pounds of military explosives was a non-state actor with zero U.S. involvement. It's amazing. They will now openly admit that Russia never made any sense as a culprit. And when they all but blamed that country and suggested that you were a fool if you thought otherwise. Quote, finally, if it actually was Ukraine and we didn't know, what the hell are we doing with those people? That's also my immediate take here as well. So here's what I put out.

Quote, two options. Either we helped Ukraine blow up the Nord Stream pipeline or we didn't. We found out later and we continue to provide tens of billions of dollars to an ally, which finds ally, I put in quotes here, which finds it preferable to risk great power conflict to draw us in. I'm not sure which is worse. And it's really interesting, right? Every time Ukraine blows up the Crimean Bridge, assassinates Dugin's daughter on Russian territory, or blows up the Nord Stream pipeline, the New York Times and other pro-intelli-friendly media comes out later and says, hey, just so you know, yeah, they definitely did it. And it was definitely bad. And they're

kind of upset with them. But Zelensky had no idea. So are we really supposed to believe that Zelensky had no idea that people inside of his government blew up the Nord Stream pipeline and that they were able to do it in a directed operation, which obviously required sophisticated military equipment, financing, and logistics to pull it off? Same with the Crimean Bridge, and same with the assassination of Dugan's daughter in Moscow. If you believe that, I honestly just think you are a complete fool. And the major takeaway of this is just that it was outrageous from the beginning to smear anybody who said that either the US wasn't involved or that it wasn't Russia. I will note that on our show, we took a tremendous amount of caution from the very beginning

and we're very always important to say, we're like, we don't know who blew up the pipeline. It laid out the case in several different things. We'll remember the infamous tweet from the Polish MP who said, thank you, USA, whenever the pipeline was eventually exploded. And here's the worst part. It's almost certain, almost certain we will not learn anything more about this. Also, it's very possible that the only reason the U.S. is even leaking this limited amount of information right now is because Ukraine

could be on the verge of conducting another similar attack. And also, as Crystal noted, it does not seem like it's a surprise that this happens to drop just weeks after Seymour Hersh published that article in which he claimed to have a source that said that it was directly the United States that was involved in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. That seems very much on the table now, given Seymour Hersh's reporting, given all of the questions that remain around this incident. And, you know, really all I have to come back to is you can believe that what happened to Ukraine was wrong. But you, I think, would be a fool to believe that we should, A, trust them to just do whatever is in our best interest and that we should just back them with a blank check. And two, that the idea that their state apparatus was not involved in this in some way,

and that Zelensky didn't at least have some knowledge is just crazy. Remember, they immediately blamed Russia for those two missiles that landed in Poland and killed two people. They tried to get America to have a no-fly zone and come in, only until hours later, it turns out that they were Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles the whole time. Their interest is to get us involved in this war. Their interest is to escalate this to the great power conflict level because Russia is such an existential threat to them, regardless of how well they've done on the battlefield in the last year. It's just extraordinary.

And, you know, you can bet, you can absolutely bet, this is going to land with crickets on the cable television and amongst the NAFO brigade and all the other pro-Ukraine forces who are just going to write this off as what you do whenever you defend yourself. Here's the thing. Maybe they're right. Maybe this is something that you do, but you sure as hell don't do it with American money, with American resources, and possibly even a U.S.-directed operation. We're going to continue to stay on this story, guys. I'm sure CounterPoints will have a hell hell of a lot of coverage but thought we owed it to you to have an immediate reaction i'll see you guys later megan markle been in the news recently i guess to the misfortune of us all

apparently her and prince harry wanted to sue the south park creators for the we want privacy tour episode that made fun of them not the only comedian though that have taken notice chris rock in his latest special uh after Meghan Markle as well. So let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. I wish you could play the clip for you, but you could take that up with Netflix and their insane copyright standards. So here's what he had to say.

And again, it's not as funny whenever you read from somebody. He says, quote, everybody's trying to be a victim. Like, who is this girl, Meghan Markle? Seemed like a nice lady just complaining. I was like, didn't she hit the light-skinned lottery? She hit the effing light-skinned lottery and is still going off complaining. Acting all dumb like she didn't

know nothing. Going on Oprah like I didn't know. I had no idea how racist they were. It's a royal family. You didn't Google these mother effers? What the eff is she talking about she didn't know? It's a royal family. They're the original racists. They invented colonialism. They're the OGs of racism. They're the Sugar Hill Gang of racism. That's like marrying into the Budweiser family and saying they drink a lot. So he continues there a little bit. What I think is funny about this is not only just with Chris, but for a while, Meghan Markle was untouchable. I know this. I did my monologue famously defending Piers Morgan, who I still stand by my brother Piers, brother in arms, in that fight against Meghan Markle was untouchable, I know this. I did my monologue famously defending Piers Morgan, who I still stand by my brother, Piers, brother in arms in that fight against Meghan Markle's narcissism.

But for a while here in the U.S. press, it was completely verboten to say anything about how this is one of the most obvious narcissists in the history of the world who, you know, she wants to be president. She's calling up senators, advocating for legislation. It's like, who the hell are you? Why should we care about anything that you say? One of the most obvious attention seekers ever. Actually, a very modern American tradition. It seems American divorcees are always a problem whenever they get involved with the royal family. The point, though, is that I think that the tide is turning. So Charlemagne Tha God actually backed up Chris. Let's put this up there on the screen. Monday's edition of The Breakfast Club,

where he says, whenever he went after Meghan Markle, and he backed up and said, quote, everything that he said was accurate before playing the clip, after some people said that they were mad about the Meghan Markle thing, where Chris Rock went after. So I don't know, Crystal.

I think that between South Park, Chris Rock, and now you've got South Park, Chris Rock, and Charlamagne Tha God, all these people speaking out. I think we are now able to discuss the fact that Meghan Markle

is not only likely a liar, maybe not necessarily about this racism thing, but just in general, but such an obvious attention seeker of culture. I can't stand that one. The two of them together have become, I mean, they're just completely insufferable. I feel worse for Harry because I think he's obviously being

taken advantage of and he had a tough childhood. I feel bad. I mean, he lost his mom in a year. I feel bad for him about that. Nevertheless, come on. You're a member of the royal family. You got a pretty good life. Multi-millionaire. Yeah.

I actually, I watched the South Park episode in preparation for this segment. I watched some of the clips. Because, you know, I like to do my research, and it was hilarious. Yeah. I attest to. It was called the Worldwide Privacy Tour. Yes. Which pretty much sums up the whole thing

and then they end up moving to South Park across from Kyle anyway. And his book in the South Park episode, instead of, what is it called? Spare? Yes, Spare. Is that the name of it? That's right.

It's called Wah. And there's a whole brand management company that's trying to pitch these kids on how to lean into that, how to create a brand for themselves. And it becomes revealed that Megan has been using this brand management company and her brand is sorority girl, actress, influencer, victim. So, yeah, it's too perfect.

And the punchline with the brand management thing is that everybody who goes in there for their brand, it's like whatever you are. And at the end, it's always victim. So I'm going to take a hopeful silver lining analysis of the whole Harry and Meghan situation, which is I really think this could bring the nation together. I agree. As you point out, the emotion around this couple, I think, is now widely shared across the political spectrum, across racial demographics and other typical dividing lines in American society. So I really think it is a beautiful thing for us to all come together around in contempt and derision of their publicity. I certainly hope so. Something I actually do love about the UK is that it's only in this country where we bought her

bullshit in the UK, in the tabloids. They were like, she's a full of shit attention narcissist. They got it from the beginning. Yeah. So Piers, you know, he spoke for the masses. I still love him, even though he went to go work for Rupert Murdoch and he was right from the very beginning on this woman. Anyway, I'm glad the tide is turning. We'll see you guys later. So Jon Stewart has just launched a new season of his show, The Problem with Jon Stewart. Already a bunch of the clips are getting a lot of attention. And I'm actually excited for some of the interviews he has coming up. He says he's going to talk to Larry Summers. That will be spicy, I'm sure.

He's also going to talk to David Petraeus about the military-industrial complex. And he teases that they have some pretty heated disagreements about the size and nature of said military industrial complex. I'm looking forward to that. But in his initial sort of teaser for the season, some comments he made about the Wuhan lab and the whole lab leak hypothesis got a lot of attention. You might recall, I'm pretty sure we played it here. We definitely played it when we were on with Joe Rogan. I was going to say, we didn't end up covering it because we were on rogan the very same day that it ended that's right so um he did a whole bit that was hilarious with colbert about the lab leak and just making fun of the fact that like

it's so obvious that this is the most likely explanation versus what was sold to the american people at the wet market it's very controversial at the time but it was also very hilarious he reacts here in this clip I'm about to show you to the public reaction and freak out over this bit that he did. Take a listen. It was a pretty good bit that expressed kind of how I felt. And the two things that came out of it were I'm racist against Asian people and how dare I align myself with the alt-right. I was doing a bit about, and it was similar to a bit I've done on religion. I used to do a bit about religion, saying religion's giving comfort to a world torn apart by religion.

So the idea was about the vaccines and other things that science had truly helped heal a world from a pandemic, probably called by science. And then I proceeded to go on a kind of a long tangent about why that, why I thought that. And the backlash was swift, immediate, and quite loud. Which was just a sign of something we've been talking about for a while, how even contemplating or giving any sort of credence

to lab leak was coded as being a right-wing conspiracist and it's it's the way yeah and it's the way that you know and also by the way you were racist against asian people even though as i've also said many times like the wet market theory if anything was going to be racist that sounded a lot more racist to me but whatever um but one of the most extraordinary moments when he was actually delivering that, you know, that whole like doing the bit on Colbert was how visibly uncomfortable Colbert was, who basically like interrupted him and cut him off. And I remember Rogan was like as a comedian, deeply offended and triggered by the fact that he would like jump in and screw up the bit in the way that he tried to do. Yeah. And actually, it's true because Colbert made his bones being a comedian. So for him to violate that code for Jon Stewart,

also who's doing a bit on his show, and by the way, owes his entire career to Jon Stewart, is also one of those major, I would say, faux pas. But what did Joe say? He was like, he saw his yacht sailing away or something. Yeah, look, the whole thing, I think, was silly from the beginning. Glenn has been talking about this as well, about how John eventually had to not walk it back, per se, but clearly was affected by the criticism. And I think that's the problem, which is, look, A, he was a comedian making a funny joke.

And B, the reason it was funny is we all knew it was true. And the fact is, is that they couldn't and did not want to grapple with the facts they didn't even want to allow it into pop culture so the whole episode is one of the most embarrassing things yeah to the mainstream media it seems like this just keeps happening too quickly like we had 20 years or so in between russiagate and iraq wmd but now it's like every two years we have a new one where they just cover themselves in glory i guess And never admit the failures. Just keep pushing forward. Never acknowledge the train wreck that just happened behind them.

I mean, listen, Jon Stewart is fine. He has his show. He has his fame. He's all good, right? But I think the critique is more about, listen, if you're up and coming, you may not make that joke because you're worried about what it's going to mean for you in terms of your career prospects. And I also think outside of comedy, it's just a more meta narrative and commentary on the way that things get coded as Republican or Democrat or right or left in at times these really bizarrely arbitrary ways. Like there's nothing inherent about a lab leak hypothesis that

would make it somehow right wing. But because Trump said it, then instantly it becomes part of this weird, stupid, partisan culture war that kept the media from actually investigating what really happened here for years. So it's not like it doesn't have any impact. Anyway, always insightful, always interesting to hear from Jon Stewart. I am excited about the upcoming season because he does such a great job in those interviews one-on-one. I mean, he's just relentless. Maybe we should have him back on the show. I would love to have him back on.

Let's try. We'll go for it. Producers, let's do it. Let's get it done. All right, we'll see you guys later. Hello, everybody. Breaking news. One of the most disgusting attacks by senior government officials against independent media

I have ever seen just occurred today on Capitol Hill. Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger appeared before Congress to talk about the Twitter files. This could have been a substantive discussion if they had wanted it to be. Instead, it was character assassination and it was attack on independent media itself. So let's start. Stacey Plaskett, who is the delegate to Congress from the U.S. Virgin Islands, the ranking member on the committee, starts off the hearing by attacking the credentials of Matt Taibbi, of Michael Schellenberger, calling them, quote, so-called journalists. Let's take a listen. This isn't just a matter of what data was given to these so-called journalists before us. Now, there are many legitimate questions about where Musk got

the financing to buy Twitter. First of all, let me just say this. Stacey Plaskett is not even a real member of Congress. So who is a lady who literally can't even vote in the chamber to call anybody a so-called member? See, we can all do this if we want to, ororious content of the Twitter files. Matt, to his credit, he handled it with total grace and he laid out his credentials. Take a listen to his response. Ranking member Plaskett, I'm not a so-called journalist.

I've won the National Magazine Award, the IF Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I've written 10 books, including four New York Times best New York Times bestseller. You know, here's the thing, though. And look, I'm glad he obviously is a accomplished person, but credentials don't matter. Anybody, anybody who exposes information not previously known, that person has committed an act of journalism. That person is protected by the First Amendment. Who the fuck

are these members of Congress to think that they can decide who a journalist is and who a journalist is not? Now, it's not just Stacey Plaskett. Many other Democrats on the committee humiliated themselves today. One of them is Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Let's talk about Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I think we all remember her from the DNC days. Here she is attacking Matt Taibbi for the idea that he might have made money by doing his job. Take a listen. I imagine your sub stack readership, which is a subscription, increased significantly because of the work that you did for Elon Musk. Now, I'm not asking you to put a dollar figure on it, but it's quite obvious that you've profited from the Twitter files. You hit the jackpot on that Vegas slot machine to which you referred. That's true, isn't it?

I've also reinvested a lot. No, no, no, no. Is it true that you have profited since you were the recipient of the Twitter files? You've made money. Yes or no? I think it's probably a wash, honestly. No, you have made money that you did not have before, correct? But I've also spent money that I didn't have before. I just hired a whole group of people. Patently obvious answer, reclaiming my

time. Attention is a powerful drug. Eyeballs, money, prominence, attention, all of it points to problems with accuracy and credibility. And the larger point, which is social media companies are not biased against conservatives. And if anything, they ignored their own policies by allowing Trump and other extremists to post incessant lies, endangering public safety and even our democracy. Hypocrisy is the hangover of an addiction to attention. Oh, first of all, Matt says it's a wash because as all of us know, it's not for free. We actually have to invest a lot of what we quote unquote make into our business because we don't have big corporate advertisers to back up our work. But second, when the New York Times and the Washington Post break a story, you know what they do?

They advertise because we know that people want to support work whenever they find it to be good. So what is she attacking here? The idea that Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger and these people did their job and so were rewarded for it. So what? What's wrong with that? This is an attack on independent media itself. Are they calling the TV executives who make billions of dollars from the big pharma companies in all their commercials? Oh, that's not so-called journalism. That's fine when they profit. Whenever they spin up a fake story like Russiagate and sell corporate ad dollars on their higher ratings, that's totally legitimate, right? But it's not legitimate when he exposes the

censorship industrial complex that existed over at Twitter, the actions of the FBI and the DHS. That's what the problem is. And then final, this clip, this you can tell I'm hopped up because this is everything. Watch this Democratic member of Congress refer to Substack, quote, as some sort of a website, which she finds confusing. Yet you yourself posted on your, I guess it's kind of like a webpage. I don't quite understand what Substack is, but that. I know a lot of boomers watch the show. Some of them get upset when I attack, but look, I'm just going to say it. That's exactly why we need some new blood in Congress, because that's what we're up against, people.

This is this is everything they are attacking. Substack is some not legitimate form of journalism. So-called journalist Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger. If you make money to support yourself outside of the corporate industrial complex, that's that suspect. But when you take Pfizer's money to support your 60 Minutes program, that's totally fine. And this has got to be one of the most repulsive, disgusting things I have seen from members of Congress. You are a government official. You say nothing about who is a journalist, who is not.

Who the fuck are you? I can't I just that's all I can continue to think whenever I see the way that they behave today on Capitol Hill. We could have had a real discussion here. We could have had a real questioning, not just with Tybee, with Schellenberger, about the actual content of the Twitter files. That's what Jim Jordan and some of the other people who were in before Congress tried to do. But instead, they chose to attack their character. And look, in some ways, that's a good thing. That means that they're winning. That means that they don't actually have anything to say about the content. The tacit acknowledgement is that they have to attack the credentials because they have no defense whatsoever of the content. But, you know, don't don't mistake this for what it is.

This is not, you is. Take breaking points or whatever out of it. This is an attack on all of us, so-called viewers, so-called journalists, so-called people who question anything that these people say. So anyway, go support Matt if you can. You know what? Let's actually make him some money. We'll drop a link to his sub stack in the description. Just a repulsive, repulsive display on Capitol Hill today. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Thank you so much for tuning in to another segment of 5149 on Breaking Points. And today I'm here to talk to you about what I'm calling a cooperative arms race that is currently unfolding between governments, big tech, and the ruling elites to colonize

your mind. You glance at the program running in the background on your computer screen and notice a now familiar sight that appears whenever you're overloaded with pleasure, your theta brainwave activity decreasing in the temporal regions of your brain. You mentally move the cursor to the left and scroll through your brain data over the past few hours. You can see your stress levels rising as the deadline to finish your memo approached, causing a peak in your beta brainwave activity right before an alert popped up telling you to take a brain break. Your mind starts to wander to the new colleague on your team, whom you know you shouldn't be daydreaming about given the policy against intra-office romance, but you can't help fantasizing just a little. But then you start to worry that your boss will

notice your amorous feelings when she checks your brain activity and shift your attention back to the present. When you arrive at work the next day, a somber cloud has fallen over the office. Along with emails, text messages, and GPS location data, the government has subpoenaed employees' brainwave data from the past year. They have compelling evidence that one of your co-workers has committed massive wire fraud. Now they're looking for his co-conspirators. You discover they are looking for synchronized brain activity between your co-worker and the people he has been working with. While you know you're innocent of any crime, you've been secretly working with him

on a new startup venture. Shaking, you remove your earbuds. What a pitch. A wearable device that monitors all of your brain activity with a new type of technology for which they are attempting to manufacture public consent in the name of human wellness. How predictable with supposed applications like being able to help keep you healthy, make you more productive, steer you clear of certain vices, and even fight crime. No other possible motivations, right? Companies already investing in tech to scan employees' brains. The general pitch for this device class is familiar, if not convenient. It's a tool not only for enhancing productivity, but for ensuring employee wellness. They might technically be monitoring employees,

but only for their sake. We're going to monitor you for productivity, yes, but that's not our real focus. What we're really after is ensuring your wellness, your safety. We're monitoring you for your sake. Consider the fact that right now, many workplaces have individuals who have to be awake and alert at all times in order to do their jobs well. Sometimes that doesn't happen. Take this example where this trucker decided to take a 20-hour shot for a 1,500-mile ride, well exceeding the amount of time that any trucker, long haul trucker, is supposed to drive. His employer didn't discover his choices until the fatal accident that was disastrous for the company and cost many lives. Note the order of priorities. First and foremost, disastrous for

the company. And then secondarily, many lives lost. Quote, in 5,000 companies across the world, employees are already having their brainwave activity monitored to test for their fatigue levels, Farahani says. She is the presenter in the clip we just watched from the World Economic Forum. She cites mining operations, including one of the biggest mining companies in the world

that have their employees wear hard hat and baseball cap-like devices that detect fatigue. No mention, of course, of alleviating the conditions that lead to over fatigued workers in the first place. I don't know. You tell me. Is this technology meant to improve the human experience, improve human wellness, improve the human condition? Or is this technology meant to enable human control vis-a-vis a centralized authority? Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

You see, I don't think the goal is to preserve humanity. Rather, I think the goal, fairly transparent goal, is to turn humans into programmable robots with no freedom to engage in independent thought, their only function being defined as whatever is necessary to serve their corporate masters. That is perhaps the only real use case of this application and the only way that this type of technology is actually financially viable. Quote, Despite what I think is pretty eloquent prose there, that is not some movie script. That is reality. Real-life applications of surveillance technology already in use to spy on people. In 2017,

the U.S. Department of Transportation decided to do something about terrible accidents and long haul trucking. The problem, as the DOT saw it, was that drivers were evading the hours of service rules that limited how long they could drive. So the federal solution was to mandate a digital ride-along to stop the evasion. Starting in 2017, the DOT required that all trucks be equipped with electronic logging devices, ELDs. This is the exact scenario that Professor Farahani invokes in her presentation at Davos to illustrate the use case of such brain monitoring technology. But according to reporting from the American Prospect, after the ELD rollout,

trucking safety stayed the same or declined. There were even more crashes in some part of the industry. That's right, the roads aren't made any safer, but corporate bosses are surely more powerful and more wealthy. Every moment spent idling is a blinking red data point at headquarters now. Drivers get pinged by their superiors when a truck stop break goes longer than expected. When a driver is tired or encounters bad weather, they no longer feel free to make a decision to sleep or take a break because the tracking technology signals to headquarters that the truck is idle. ELDs also create a new structure of ongoing data collection, which positions employers to be able to more precisely set, change, and withhold wages.

They use the data to push for competition between drivers, shame drivers who are less productive, and discipline them. There is a reason, not a coincidence, why corporations call it human resources. You and I are humans from the point of view of corporations, nothing more than resources that are to be managed, deployed, and transformed into a commodity, meaning to them, humans are to be treated only as objects of trade for means of generating economic value. The moment you cease to serve that function, there is no other outcome for you other than being discarded. When you look at technology transformation,

it usually takes place in the terms of an S-curve. And we are just now where we move into the exponential phase. And I agree. Artificial intelligence, but not only artificial intelligence, but also the metaverse, near-space technologies, and I could go on and on, synthetic biology. Our life in ten years from now will be completely different, very much affected, and who masters those technologies in some way will be the master of the world. Masters of this technology will be masters of the world.

Klaus Schwab, the WF, kind of oftentimes shrouded in this kind of conspiratorial mystery. But if you listen, they are actually pretty transparent in terms of telegraphing what their plan is. In this case, technology, while pitched as a tool to empower humans, is in reality an instrument of control to rule the masses and increase corporate power.

A Silicon Valley lawmaker wants to protect workers from employer spying. Assembly member Ash Kalra proposed a bill Monday that he said would ensure workers gain some protection from off-duty employer surveillance and retaliation. The Workplace Technology Accountability Act, or AB 1651, would create a set of privacy standards for employer workplace monitoring tools. All right, so not lost on me that I'm sort of advocating for government intervention as a potential solution to protect worker privacy, since I also in this piece heavily alluded to the fact that governmental agencies and other centralized corporate authorities

are prone to abuse such a technology. But what I would say to that is I'm not opposed to governments creating rules. It's just, who are they creating the rules on behalf of? That is what we have to pay attention to. Does the rule centralize power or decentralize power? Is the rule meant to benefit multinational corporations or regular citizens? That is how I think we should evaluate legislation. That bill, by the way, did not even

receive a vote. It was withdrawn before even a hearing. Big business predictably got involved to kill it and smear it as a job killer. And that is the point. The current economic paradigm necessarily incentivizes or requires businesses to grow, to look for new frontiers, new geographies to conquer, to monetize. It just so happens that we've just about colonized every corner of the globe. So the mind, which was once sacred to the individual, is now the final untapped trove of value, and it is under siege to be conquered and exploited by the ruling elites. So let's be mindful of that as we scrutinize AI-powered surveillance technology and the ways in which

various groups, whether it be big business or consortium of public and private interests, look for ways to manufacture public consent to accept this technology. That is all for me this time. I hope you found today's segment about surveillance and brain monitoring technology to be informative and helpful. What are your thoughts? Is bossware a concern for you? Is privacy a concern for you?

I would encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Also, make a ton of other videos like this, breaking down many different topics on my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. I would encourage you to check it out and subscribe. The link will be in the description below. Of course, keep on tuning into Breaking Points, and thank you so much for your time today. Jules Terpak, welcome back to Breaking Points. I saw some news about TikTok and social media screen time limits that are built into the app.

So I thought you'd be the perfect person to talk about this with the Breaking Points audience. So yeah, what's happening? What's the big headline? You offered a bit of a correction. Let's take it in there. Yeah, so there's a few headlines happening about TikTok right now, but what we're focusing on was a big headline last week is that TikTok is implementing limits on teens to just being on the app for 60 minutes per day. That was the headline. And that's

what a lot of people on Twitter were going with, you know, big shock value. But there is missing context within that headline. So what it left out is once this limit is hit, the user is able to put in a pass code that they set for themselves. Unless they're under the age of 13, the parent sets the pass code for them. So they can go right through that limit, similar to the way that we have Apple's screen time limits. And also with that, they can turn off the feature completely. So that's where it gets a little weird, but what is good about it is that it is going to be a default setting for those under 18 years old. So I want to be very precise. So the significance is when you download TikTok for the first time and you're under 18,

there is just going to be by default, this setting that there's going to be a 60 minute limit. And the key thing that people should understand then is that this limit is optional in the sense that whenever you hit the 60, you just put in the passcode. When you said the point about how 13 year olds will require a parent to input the number, how many 13 year olds are even like using TikTok? I don't use the app, so I'm just like curious about that, like under 13s. Yeah, so it's similar in the way that Instagram, if a user is under 13, it is supposed to kind of be a parent run account. If the user is under 13 and they created the account themselves and the birthday obviously shows that they're under 13, even though it's easy to bypass that by inputting a birthday that shows you're over 13, they cannot post on the app. And they also have a bit of more content moderation in terms of what has pushed them as well as they don't get ads and things like that. So it ends up not being attractive for people under 13 and they end

up not really utilizing it unless they're utilizing like their parents' platform, for example. But it's not frequently used. This, I would say, is mostly a big story between those like 13 to 18. And what do you think about social media screen time limits in general? So screen time limits are kind of proven to be very ineffective within China right now for it's actually users that are under 14 years old within TikTok. They have a hard screen time limit of 40 minutes per day. And it's no ifs, ands, or buts. Like there is no passcode. They actually get kicked off after 40 minutes per day. This is inching towards that. But again,

we know as just like adults using screen time limits, it's something more to make you, it's more for awareness than it is for like clear cut enforcement. And what TikTok is also pushing with this is like weekly emails to teens about their screen time and all these different things that again, it's very similar to what Apple has within the system. And I think it's pretty ineffective, though it is, again, good for awareness. But what I really like about this is that it is becoming the default setting. Because right now, users, like 95% of users never change their default settings on apps. So when you have kids come in and the settings for social media platforms are default for privacy and safety and their wellbeing, that can make them more conscious of these things

and their consumption. So that move about it, I do think is positive. But again, the fact that it's just a screen time limit, I don't think it's going to be effective in the long run. TikTok said that they did beta testing on this. And within the first month, it made use of screen time limits within the app go up 234%. But I'm more interested in how many of those users actually within five minutes of getting that screen time limit actually exited the app. I assume it would be a very, very small percent. Yeah. So why is TikTok doing this? Assuming good faith and bad faith, there's two different answers to the question, because on the one hand, their whole business is keeping you on the app so that you see more ads, you scroll more, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Are they doing this because they're concerned that

there's a lot of just discourse in the country and there's a lot of even like legal and political talk about like restrictions in the way that China has them? How should we think about their motivations here? For sure. I would say there is a ton of pressure on TikTok right now, and especially just how advanced, again, the algorithm is and the design of the platform, having a endless scroll, bottomless feed, unlike ever before on other platforms, is known to be extremely addictive. And the time spent on this platform, because of how addictive it is, is way more than any other platform right now. So it sucks users in as adults. We have all experienced that on TikTok if you've ever been

on the platform. And so we know that it was probably just as bad, if not worse for kids. So there is a ton of pressure on them with that. Also, there is just a ton of legislation talk around youth well-being and social media right now. Over the past two years, Joe Biden has mentioned it in the State of the Union address two years in a row now. Over the past two years, Joe Biden has mentioned it in the State of the Union address two years in a row now. And also there's a bunch of different things on the table. So, you know, California last year passed the age appropriate design code. There are other states right now having that in play. There's COSA. There is a different bill that is trying to ban kids 16 and under on social media. There are a bunch of things at play right now because in the U.S. there hasn't been a bill protecting kids online passed since 1998.

And obviously the Internet is completely different than 1998. Social media wasn't even a thing back then. So there is a lot of pressure right now against just social media companies in general. And I think TikTok, first of all, the pressure amongst them, as well as just trying to be a leader in that space, probably wanted to make this move. But I will say Instagram has had parental controls for years now. They were going to launch youth mode for kids years ago, but they ended up pausing that because there were a lot of just discrepancies and scares around that. But yeah, so TikTok is trying to just be a player in the space of youth wellbeing for sure. You know, something I'm curious about, when you use the word addiction, I'm really interested in the like clinical use of the

word addiction and just how we actually think about it. Because for example, back when I was in high school, like I think you could say that me, a lot of people in my generation of cohort were addicted to Facebook. Now we're just like not on Facebook. I tried to use Facebook for an event recently and I literally couldn't figure out where the event section on the mobile app was because I'm so unused to using it anymore. So like I was addicted, but I wasn't addicted. Like there's a world where I don't want to sound like a libertarian here, but this does seem to be like something like that. Like, how do you think about that? I think it's a mix of the type of content you're pushed, the features that what is enabled on the platform and all these little cultural things that create these subconscious pools to always be opening these apps.

Whether it's notifications, whether it's public facing number metrics, all these different little things are these nuances that make people more appealed to keep checking the numbers, keep checking the content, keep checking the notifications. And this has just become more prevalent over the years. I mean, yeah, I was on Facebook heavily 10 years ago, but just the different features and everything weren't as compelling as the feature designs are on TikTok today. They have really optimized time spent on the platform and really hitting our psyche when it comes to that. Yeah. It's kind of funny. I'm comparing this to Facebook in the late 2000s, but like, obviously if Facebook would have, could have designed what we now have with TikTok, they'd be in a much better place and they'd be enjoying that. So it's not necessarily a defense yeah like can you get off twitter now yeah uh

surprisingly yes but slightly yeah there's well i mean this is this is the this is why tech talk's so unique just like putting aside the geopolitics and the china and the band debate just like short form video is just like the apex of mobile based computing entertainment it's a lot more engaging than text or sharing things among friends. It's like, instead of making social media about people, you know, which is Facebook and Instagram, or at least Instagram at the start, it's about things outward beyond yourself. So I think the last thing that people are thinking a lot about, and I would love to hear your thought on is just like the debate around social media, TikTok, Instagram, and depression, which relates

to all of this, because we're thinking of social media as something that can cause depression. They could cause like self-image with teen girls to be in a disastrous place. Obviously they're going to be calls for screen time limits, bands, et cetera. Like what's your big take on this issue? Yeah, it's a loaded question. I feel like this topic can be like a two hour conversation, so I'll try to keep it short. Okay. So first of all, I'll talk about my experience. So so i when i was in middle school and early high school i was heavily on tumblr and tumblr was known to be like the first platform that really romanticized mental illness i didn't know what suicide was before then i didn't really know what mental health issues were before then this platform really exposed it to me because it's a mix of like

twitter energy and pinterest as well as like anonymous, anonymous question platforms. Tumblr was kind of like the Holy grail of all of that, though. It didn't have an algorithm. It was all based on who you followed, but I was exposed to content of people cutting themselves, all this different things. And when I was 12 years old, it warped my mind almost to think that a appropriate reaction to any feeling of negativity or sadness was to contemplate hurting myself. It was this weird mind warp, right? And when I think about TikTok today, Wall Street Journal did amazing coverage of this, I think about three years ago now, where they made a couple thousand bots on the platform and they gave these bots different interests. And one of the bots, they gave the

interests of sadness and depression. And within 40 minutes of this bot being on the app, they were watching the hashtags that had anything to do with sadness and depression. Any of that type of content, around 90% of the content pushed this bot had to do with sadness and depression. It makes me really think about Tumblr and my experience there, but it was more self-curated. TikTok, when it gets a sense of like your state of mind, your mood, everything, it is continuously pushing this content to you. The other 10% of the content that was pushed to the bot was supposed to be content that kind of served testing their other interests. But a lot of that content ended up being advertisements. And as an adult, I've seen this. I saw it with the Andrew Tate phenomenon when I was interested in that in terms of like curiosity around the whole phenomenon of it.

I was getting pushed like every other video on TikTok was Andrew Tate. I remember when the queen died, for example, you know, rest in peace, but I was never interested in that type of content or just like conversation around the royal family. I was getting pushed so many videos about her that day. I watched one in full out of maybe 15 of them. The next five videos were about the queen. So when I think about this, when you're exploring your identity and exploring different sides of life, exploring different emotions and your earlier state of mind and just your earlier years, an advanced algorithm like TikTok can just push you into these rabbit holes like crazy. And that is really worrisome. On TikTok right now, I have been tweeting a lot about this and it's kind of sounds trivial, but it's actually pretty crazy, is this trend of plastic surgery is exacerbating like crazy. TikTok pushes like so like the trend cycle has gotten so much shorter because of the platform

in so many different areas of life. But for example, someone who recently blew up the platform every year, there's a few people who are known to be like the holy grail creators of the platform kind of has a really positive sentiment towards plastic surgery. And now all the biggest lifestyle influencers on the app have been getting plastic surgery in the past month. It's actually crazy. And a lot of the conversations about this, because, you know, a lot of the conversations about teen girls and mental health have to do with comparison and editing their pictures, all this different stuff.

People are worried. We have even adults who have made the conscious decision themselves to get these types of things. They're worried that teen girls are also consuming this content because as soon as you're 13, you're seeing the same exact content as everyone else on that app. You're able to see all of this. And there's this weird conversation about transparency versus, yeah, the safety of young users because they are able to be exposed to all of this. So it's kind of like a rant on the TikTok side of it, but it's these rabbit holes as are pretty crazy. Yeah. I mean, the real takeaway there is that algorithms, especially in the TikTok

short form video context are just so powerful and we can't just understate what they can, they can do it not in like a science fictiony unhelpful way, but just and we can't just understate what they can they can do and not like a science fictiony unhelpful way but just like don't just think this is this is why it's exactly exhausting when someone just refers to tiktok as like you know people dancing and stuff like the stakes in terms of what this means is so much bigger than that so i think the last question i'll ask you is i want you to think about like the teen girl aspect of this why do you why do you think this is affecting teen girls more than boys because as you know there's been a lot of discourse now about how like young men in america are struggling in a bunch of other contexts but this seems to be a place where we're

specifically talking about like young women it seems to be like one of the only indicators um okay outside of school like work etc that we're saying actually young women are doing much worse here the young men are do you have a theory or like a reaction to why that's happening? I feel like the conversation around young men and boys, a lot of it has to do with kind of systematic things. I feel like social media obviously plays a part in it. But I do feel like there's a broader cultural conversation. I think a lot of the things happening with teen girls are very social media specific. And, you know, in magazines, everything, beauty beauty standards whatever comparison has always been pushed but again these algorithms exacerbate that relationship uh like crazy and it's also

known that girls are more like they are kind of the ones who post on social media more when it comes to like instagram and tiktok twitter and like YouTube are kind of a pretty even mix, but on things like Instagram and TikTok, it is mostly girls who are posting and kind of running those platforms in terms of content a lot of the time. And a lot of that does have to do with, you know, lifestyle type content and beauty standards and all these different things. There's kind of jokes all the time of like today's 13 year olds look the same as like today's 25 year olds and like all these different things of like pushing them to grow up a lot faster and get into these different consumer culture things a lot faster. So I do think the girl conversation is very much social media specific and the guys is kind of a mix of maybe some more systematic things as well. I think that's an excellent place to leave it. Jules, thank you for joining us on Breaking Points.

I want to give a shout out to where people should find your work if they want to delve in deeper? Yes, I'm just at Jules Terpak on all platforms. So see you guys there. Thank you, Marshall. Awesome. Hi, I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor-in-chief of the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, and this is the art of class war on breaking points. A 16-year-old was crushed to death on the job by a multi-ton tractor. A 15-year-old died after falling 50 feet on his first day working for a roofer. Horrific revelations continue to come out about the common exploitation of child labor in meatpacking and food processing plants, industrial and office cleaning, and even

auto manufacturing, including in at least four Alabama parts suppliers to Hyundai and Kia. These are not stories from the early 1900s. This is happening here, now, all around us. While we Americans like to believe that child labor is a thing of the past, an antiquated detail of a dark history that is safely in our rearview mirror. The sad reality is that even today, in the year of our Lord 2023, the exploitation of children and their labor continues to be a dismal feature throughout the production and supply chains behind many of our favorite brands and companies, including Lucky Charms, Cheetos, Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Fruit of the Loom, Ben & Jerry's. I mean, there are kids farming the produce that we buy in the supermarket. Kids making the parts that end up in our cars. Kids cleaning industrial bone saws, office buildings, and houses.

Kids on construction sites and in the backs of restaurants. And it is getting worse. As Lauren Gurley recently reported at the Washington Post, according to data from the Department of Labor, child labor violations in the United States have nearly quadrupled since 2015. And if that wasn't bad enough, rather than, you know, be justifiably horrified by this situation and take serious steps to address the scourge of child labor, Republican lawmakers in states like Arkansas, Iowa, and Ohio are pushing to roll back labor laws and to make it easier for businesses to hire minors, have them do more dangerous jobs, and even extend their

working hours. As Dr. James A. Merchant, professor emeritus of public health and medicine and founding dean emeritus in the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa, recently wrote in the Des Moines Register, quote, last November, the U.S. Department of Labor filed an injunction in U.S. District Court in Nebraska against Packers Sanitation Services for illegally employing children in meatpacking plants it serves. Judge John M. Garrard swiftly granted the injunction requiring Packers to stop employing oppressive child labor. The Department of Labor has now found that Packers had employed at least 50 children in night shifts in four Minnesota, Nebraska, and Arkansas meatpacking plants. The children, ranging in age from 13 to 17, were not fluent in English and they cleaned

kill floor bone cutting saws, grinding machines, and electric knives with corrosive cleaning fluids. The Department of Labor reported that some of the children had suffered chemical burns and other injuries. Now in Iowa, Senate File 167 and House File 134 are moving forward in the General Assembly. The bills, as introduced, seek to weaken existing child labor laws governed by the Fair Labor Standards Act by proposing multiple changes in Iowa Code Chapter 92. The bills would change Iowa law to allow children to work in several hazardous jobs. They would allow children as young as 14 to work in freezers and meat coolers,

work prohibited by federal law. And they do not clearly state in what other meat packing plant areas work would be permitted. They would allow 15-year-olds to load and unload non-power driven equipment weighing up to 30 pounds and up to 50 pounds with a waiver from the labor commissioner, work now prohibited by federal law. Provisions for youth under 18 could allow youth to be employed as motor vehicle drivers, clearly hazardous work, also inconsistent with federal regulation. And they would also allow youth under 18 to sell alcoholic beverages, currently prohibited by Iowa law, if approved in writing by a parent or guardian, end quote. All right, so what the hell are we doing here? How the hell is this even a discussion right now?

And what do these attempts to roll back child labor laws tell us about the economic, political, and frankly, moral state of our society today? And what can we do to fight back? To talk about all of this and more, I'm honored to be joined today by Charlie Wishman, who currently serves as the president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. Charlie was appointed unanimously to the role in May of 2020 by the IFL Executive Council, and was elected in August of that same year at the 64th Annual Iowa Federation of Labor AFL-CIO Convention, and has served in that role ever since. Charlie became Secretary-Treasurer of the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL-CIO in January of of 2012 and was re-elected to that role

many times after initially serving as communications director for the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. Charlie is a member of AFT Local 716 and has previously been a member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, as well as the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Charlie, thank you so much for joining us today on Breaking Points. I really appreciate it. Hey, thank you very much for having us. Wish we were meeting under other circumstances, but Breaking Points is exactly the kind of appropriate title for where we are right now in Iowa. Yeah, man. I mean, I think that's well put because like we had a lot to dig in here and a short amount of time to do it. And I know how busy you are. So I really,

really appreciate you taking time to chat with me. And let's just start by making sure that folks watching and listening have just all the basic info that they need about these bills in Iowa specifically. Right. So what would these bills do if signed into law? And like, who the hell is actually pushing for these rollbacks of child labor laws? And like what is their justification for this? Sure. So a lot to unpack there. So I think it's important to start with. Yeah. So who is pushing this sort of legislation? So the there's kind of the people who are out front doing it, which is the Restaurant Association and the hospitality associations and things like that.

You have the home builders and some folks who are out front. But it's really interesting. Just really briefly, I uncovered in the last Iowa Workforce Development notes that actually our governor's office had helped draft this legislation as well as the Department of Workforce Development. So it's not just we can't find enough people to work at McDonald's or Burger King or wherever. There's something much, much larger going on here. And I think that you see that reflected in the legislation because I can go over what it currently does. There's been, you know, slight amendments to it. But, you know, this is just some of the lowlights, I think, highlights, lowlights, whatever you want to call them of this legislation. You know, it would allow youth as young as 14 to work six-hour nightly shifts during the school year and expands working hours to

extend to 9 p.m. And the problem is those are both beyond federal regulations as they're currently written in the Fair Labor Standards Act and DOL rules and regulations. But in addition, it also allows employers to recruit teens for a work-based learning program for jobs and formerly off limits, hazardous, but now they would be open to 14 to 17-year-olds under waivers provided by Iowa Workforce Development or the Department of Education in our state. It would allow 16 and 17-year-olds to perform light assembly work in plants or that manufacture or store even explosives would not performed in that shipping area by machines. Even if you're not working with explosives, if they're in the building, that's pretty darn dangerous. As you can see in East Palestine, Ohio, or even here recently in Iowa, we had an entire plant explode. And we still don't even know all the chemicals that were in that plant at the time.

It allows 16 and 17 year olds to work in meatpacking plants and shipping and assembly areas. Ask anybody who's ever worked in a meatpacking house. There is no place for anyone under 18 anywhere inside of a meatpacking plant. It allows 16 and 17-year-olds. They struck the word coal from mining, but we've got other kinds of mines here. You know, the coal mines have been decommissioned, heck, probably decades and decades ago, but we still have gypsum mining.

You know, your drywall comes from somewhere. We've got other kinds of mines here. And, you know, one of the more troubling proposals does go back to the restaurant industry. And, for example, it would allow 16 and 17 year olds to serve alcohol, which is, I know a lot of people at first blush are like, yeah, that's no big deal. But I don't know, would you want your, as I asked the majority leader of the Iowa House when we marched on his office, do you want your daughter to be bartending at 16 for God knows who, who's been drinking for how long, let alone if they're a pedophile or not? And he said, well, you know,

my daughter works at an ice cream shop. And it's like, well, there's a big difference between ice cream and alcohol. So, I mean, that's just some of the stuff that's out there. But if I think that what I'm talking about here is if you go and look at everything that's in this bill, it's not just the restaurant industry that wants the changes that are being made. And even with the example, right, of like, oh, my daughter works at an ice cream shop. I mean, like, by and large, I mean, not even by and large, we already know that the people in power who are making these decisions, who are pushing for these bills, it's not going to be their goddamn kids who

are in those, those mines. It's not going to be their goddamn kids who are cleaning, you know, bone saws and meat packing plants. It's not their kids who are going to be cleaning office buildings at midnight when everyone's gone home. And they know that. And I think that's kind of like one of the big unspoken truths about this whole situation is like, it's not just that, you know, Republican legislators in states like Arkansas, Ohio, and Iowa are pushing to roll back child labor laws. And so like, it's like child labor is going to come back. Like child labor is already here. As I said, in my introduction, a lot of it is being done by, you know, Brown kids, poor kids, black kids, migrant kids, people, the, the, the most underprotected and underserved populations

that we have. And everyone just kind of sits around pretending like it's not happening, even though deep down, I think we all know that it is right. And the people pushing this legislation damn well know that as well. And you know, that's, that's me speaking for myself. I'm not speaking for, for Charlie or anyone else here. Just want to be clear there. Oh, you can, you are right. Okay. It's like, I'm, I'm really trying to restrain myself here because I'm about to lose it, man. But like, let's, let's put, you said something about how, like the deeper you dig into this, the more you realize that this is part of a bigger issue. Right. And so I wanted to focus on that. Like, let's, let's put this bill in Iowa or these bills in Iowa in context, like along with, you know, what's going on in Arkansas and Ohio. Right. Like, cause I think people may hear about this and they may wonder

like, well, that may just be like a sort of legislation that's put out by like some fringe elements. You know, it has no, you know, hope of passing, yada, yada, yada. So like, how much is this push to roll back child labor laws in multiple states around the country. Like how much of that is actually a fringe movement by the most extreme edges of the business class and its political acolytes? And how much is it actually symptomatic of a broader onslaught to further weaken labor protections across the board and workplace standards, right? And in so doing to undercut organized labor power and, you know, undercut workers who are trying to make a living wage, right? I mean, like we, everyone knows we're in a, what's called a tight labor market right now, right? I mean,

we talk about this all the time in the reporting we do here at Breaking Points, on my show, Working People at The Real News Network, like that's why you're seeing, or partially why you're seeing a lot of rank and file action. That's why you're seeing people quit their jobs in record numbers because they have more leverage to say, if you don't pay me more or treat me better, I'm going to walk. Right. At the same time, we've had the, you know, the boomer generation, I mean, is aging out of, you know, the workforce. A lot of people died or got sick or still dealing with long-term effects of COVID, right? I mean, so this is the kind of labor situation that we're seeing here. And it feels like, this is again, me editorializing, this is

me hypothesizing, it feels like that rather than, I don't know, listen to the concerns of workers, improve your workplace, treat workers better, pay them more, let them have a better work-life balance, make yourself more attractive to job seekers. Instead of doing that, what we are instead doing is saying, let's raise the retirement age and let's let kids work at these jobs instead. No, I want to go back to something that you said earlier. It's let's be clear. It's not their kids that we're talking about here. It's it's it's our kids, right? There's nobody named Grassley that's going to be working in a packing house. I guarantee you. And if it is, it has nothing to add there. There are no relation to Senator or Speaker of our House,

Pat Grassley. Because you hit on something that's really, really important here, is that while this seems like out of the blue, out of left field, this wasn't on my bingo card, right? No. What is going on here in large part is a legalization of bad practices that are already going on. You just saw the Department of Labor uncover hundreds of violations in meatpacking plants of people who are under the legal age doing cleaning services. But this is just like one, that's one industry, one section. This is going on all over the place. I think there was a New York Times article earlier where there's a girl who's a young Latina, I believe who's 15, who's working past midnight to make our Cheerios, right? This is multinational

corporations. They're trying to legalize their already bad practices. And last year, I think we saw the big push in a lot of states, including ours, was let's go after unemployment. Because really the problem is that there's just a bunch of lazy people out there sitting at home watching Judge Judy or whatever. Well, like you just explained, that's not the case. That's not where this is coming from. You've got a whole bunch of people who are just fed up with it all. We've had, I'd say, a number of strikes. Our most high-profile one here in the Midwest and in Iowa, I think, has been the John Deere strike. But there's been so many that you haven't heard of. And this really has picked up since the pandemic. It's because people have

had enough. It's because they've been called essential for three years now, and they get treated as nothing but expendable. And you go to any picket line, and the first thing's out of their mouths when you're talking to a member who's on strike. They know exactly how much their company made during the pandemic, and they know exactly how much their CEO made during the pandemic, And they know exactly how much they're making. And they know that trickle-down isn't trickling down to them on the corporate side. Now, we got to help them understand the tax side of it as well,

that trickle-down isn't working for the working class of this country, never has. But this is just part of the bigger picture of what's going on here. I think you had so many great points in your editorializing. I wouldn't call them editorializing or opinions. I'd call them facts. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. And again, I just, I beg people, right, don't push this under the rug, right? Don't just hope that this is going to go away, right? I mean, because it's not, right? You know, this is the most craven crap that you can imagine, but they're going to keep pushing it if they can get away with it, right?

And if we keep buying these BS justifications for it, if we believe the corporate manufactured narrative that that quote, no one wants to work anymore. And that's why businesses have to seek 14 year olds to do these jobs. Bull crap, right? Listen to my show, listen to the workers I talk to every single week and tell me that people don't want to work. Then you'll actually hear directly from the mouths of the people who make our society run. The people delivering our packages, picking our food, delivering our groceries, so on and so forth, right? I mean, these are hardworking people who are being taken advantage of left and right. I beg you to listen to workers, not to overpaid

pundits, not to bought off politicians and not to chamber of commerce bootlickers. And I also wanted to, if I may editorialize one more time, just really entreat people to understand that as we, as a society that has, can agree that this is not worth it, this is not, this, this child labor crap needs to stay in the past. We also need to soberly acknowledge that, you know, the thing that is always in the back of our minds, but that we, especially here in the West, especially in developed countries, have the luxury of pushing out of our view, right? Pushing out of into the back of our minds. You already know what I'm about to say, but it needs to be said. Your phones, right, have minerals, are made from minerals that are mined

by children around the world, right? A lot of the food that you eat is picked by literal children. A lot of the clothes that we wear is made in sweatshops that are contracted out to some of the biggest brands around the world. We know that this is a problem, but we just allow ourselves to comfortably put it out of sight, out of mind. So even as we address it here in the United States, we need to understand that this is the direction that the business class, that capital, that the ruling and order giving class always want to move. They want to close down industries in the United States and move them

across the border where they can pay workers next to nothing, right? They want to always search for the lowest possible wage they can pay the pay and the most exploited they can make their workforce so that they can pocket all the difference. That is what this is really about, in my opinion. And we're not going to be able to address the systemic issue there unless we understand that this is not something new. This is not something that is just happening in red states or, you know, like random parts of the country. It's happening all over the place. And it is happening, sadly, all over the world.

But there are things that we can do to fight against it. And, Charlie, with the remaining couple minutes that I have you, I just wanted to turn it over to you and ask, what can people do to push back against this? Like, and what is being done on, say, the labor side and the legislative side? And like, how does the Department of Labor factor into all of this? Sure. All very good questions. So number one, I would say, like, always, whether you think you're being heard or not, you have to contact your legislators. Even if you don't believe that they're listening, the last thing that you ever want to hear is them come back to you when you complain to them about it later during election time or whenever. Them saying, well, I never heard from you about this, which sometimes is a BS deflection, but sometimes it's true. So they absolutely,

absolutely need to hear from you in whatever form possible. We also need to make sure that even in states like ours, where legislatively and both inside the Capitol and outside the Capitol, we're trying to raise hell to make sure that our voices are heard. But knowing that some version of this is likely to pass, you know, who knows? I believe in believing, right? And that's what we do in the labor movement. But gosh, we have to make sure that our voices are heard in all kinds of different ways. So write letters to the editor, write op-ed pieces. Even if this isn't happening in your state, it is coming to your state soon, I promise you. I feel like I'm out here with a lot of other people who are trying to jump up and down and raise the flag and say, hey, listen, help us stop this thing because we can stop this in a red farming state like ours,

which, by the way, wasn't always red, and we can come back from this. But if we can do this here, we can stop this from moving all across the country. But again, if it hasn't even gotten there yet, you know, the board meetings and things to find out that they've been working on it because they wanted a secret, because they know it looks like crap. So one of the most important points here, Max, I think, you know, we have the Department of Labor that is typically relies on waiting until state legislation is passed before they'll come in and actually enforce the rules, regulations, and laws that are already on the books before they tell a

state, hey, you can't do that. And too often, progressives forget that the courts are not our friends and that we can't rely on them really for anything. And unfortunately, part of the bigger picture here too is that this is another attack on the federal government to be able to enforce on states what is right in terms of federal labor standards. And it's not just about this. It's about so many different things that we see weakened. But it's this is, you know, we cannot pretend like there's only two branches of government. Progressives need to realize and take seriously that there are three branches of government and that our courts are in big trouble and that we have to take that seriously.

And not only that, we need to make sure that corporations are forced to do what they are supposed to do because we know too often that unless it's at legislative or regulatory gunpoint, they're not going to do the right thing. So that is Charlie Wishman, who currently serves as president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. Charlie, thank you so much for joining us today on Breaking Points and helping us break this down, man. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. And I think right now we're at the stage where we're just really uncovering a national tragedy that has been going on for a while now. But the next time we talk, hopefully that we're going to be talking about how things are moving in the right direction and that we were able to maybe if we're not able to push back all over the country and make sure that not only are we making this a better world for workers, but for our kids and generations to come.

So thank you very much. Appreciate it. Right back at you, brother. And thank you all for watching this segment with Breaking Points. And be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News Network, with links in the description to this video. See you soon for the next edition of The Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

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