Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/8/23: Saagar Reacts To FBI LV Shooter Docs, Fired Starbucks Union Organizer Alexis Rizzo, Boomers HomeBuying Bonanza, Pentagon Claims SVB Bailout National Security Interests, James Li On Billionaires

Episode Date: April 8, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the FBI releasing documents about the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Shooter, we're joined by Alexis Rizzo a Starbucks Union Organizer who was fired days after Howard Shultz's testimony, Boomers going on a HomeBuying frenzy, Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) and Daniel Boguslaw (@DRBoguslaw) look into how the SVB Bailout was encouraged by The Pentagon to prevent in their words a "national security threat", and James Li looks into Billionaires.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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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 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. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in.

I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, 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. so we have a new report into a potential motive of that uh las vegas shooter i don't know if you guys remember the details of this uh this guy just massacred people at a concert back in 2017, shooting like a sniper from a hotel room in Mandalay Bay. And they were never able to at least publicly pin down why he did this. And it was sort of like, well, maybe he just went crazy. It was known that he was a big high stakes gambler and he'd run into some financial difficulty. There were reports that his mental health was declining, but we never really were told or a motive was never really

pinpointed by law enforcement. There's some new FBI documents that have now just come out. Let's put this up on the screen from the AP that they say give a new view into the Las Vegas shooters mindset. The FBI interviewed one of the gunman's fellow gamblers. This is detailed in what they say is hundreds of pages of documents that were just made public. He believed, this fellow gambler, that the stress of Steven Paddock having been treated not the way he wanted to by casinos, given his high roller status, may have led to this massacre. Basically, the idea is they used to do like, you know, you get cruises and you get wine tours and all this stuff. And they'd sort of cut back on that. And he'd also been kicked out, barred from a number of casinos, I guess,

because maybe he'd like, you know, done too well there or whatever, that this led to the mental break and may have contributed to the motive here. Sagaray, you've followed this one really closely, so what do you make of this potential theory? Yeah, I think this is bullshit, I'll just tell you that. I have been obsessed with the Steven Paddock case for a long time, as well as many others. It remains one of the big mysteries in terms of the official

narrative. And actually, one of the investigators said it best. She goes, there's no way that they would have hidden any potential motive from our victims and survivors for over 10 years, dismissing these as the speculations of a single gambler. Stephen Paddock was an extraordinarily strange individual, very least from his gambling. He wasn't at a gambling table socially. He would sit at video poker and sit there and gamble hundreds of thousands of dollars, and if we're to believe, some millions of dollars. The official narrative is that Stephen Paddock became obsessed with guns, and then in a period of like a year or so, and actually mostly in several months, started acquiring all these guns that he brought up in several trips to his suite in the Mandalay Bay hotel room, at which point he broke out the window and shot at these concert goers. I mean, first of all, if you're mad at gambling institutions, why would you not shoot up the casino then?

Why would you shoot people who are at a concert? The crowd, yeah. So, again, there is no technical motive there is still a lot of weird stuff like he put you know sent his girlfriend off to the philippines there was some initial speculation i was like is this an international terrorism incident because of the some isis activity that was happening there she has actually still yet to tell us the full story about what was going on there um how, there's still so many questions about the guns, about why security never flagged him. All of this was on video too, by the way. And yeah,

in terms of the motive and all of that. Now, I've never seen any indication officially about law enforcement and their involvement and all that, whether he was even known to authorities beforehand. But I'm just going to say, I think there is a massive coverup involving this case because it's been several years. Even the open records request did not reveal anything. And the FBI kind of put the kibosh on this investigation very early. By 2018, one year in, they were like, no. I mean, this was, I believe at the time it was the deadliest mass shooting in American history. It might still be. I think there might be one or, there might have been one that surpassed Las Vegas, but it was an absolutely insane event.

Killed 60. Yeah, killed 60 people. And injured hundreds more. It led to the bump stock ban, if everybody wants to remember that, by the ATF, because I believe Paddock used a bump stock. In terms of, again,

like information about his, this is part of the other problem. Since he was killed, obviously there's never been a trial where a lot of this has come out into the open. I read the original Las Vegas report about Steven Paddock, and again,

his stuff doesn't pass the smell test. So for me, I don't buy this person. Not buying this one. No, no, no, no. There's something much deeper. They said also that he had scoped down other potential live events and even booked hotel rooms at those hotels that were by different concerts before settling on this particular concert that he was able to shoot at from the Mandalay Bay.

And partly he was able to. So he was comped this room because of his quote-unquote high roller status, and he was given use of a private elevator to take up all his bags of suitcases full of these weapons. So anyway, I don't know. This one I think continues to be a mystery. This ain't – I ain't buying it. I'll just tell you that. I know a lot of other people aren't buying it either. So there you go. We covered here at Breaking Points how Howard Schultz, the founder and now former CEO of Starbucks, was compelled to testify in front of the Senate, faced some difficult questions about their just utter lawlessness

with regards to union busting, repeated infractions of the law, total lack of willingness to negotiate with the new unionized stores on new contracts. Lo and behold, two days later, let's put this up on the screen. Starbucks fired Alexis Rizzo. She was one of the first organizers of the Starbucks union campaign that unfolded initially in Buffalo. They claimed it was over some incredibly minor infractions, like being literally a minute late for work. And we're excited to talk to Alexis now about exactly what is going on there. Alexis,

welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, of course. Now, I know you worked at Starbucks for more than seven years, so you're a longtime employee. I also know you were the first, I think, worker to contact the union about starting what has become a historic and groundbreaking union drive. Give us a little bit of your history with the organization, your view of Starbucks, and how that's changed over time. Yeah. So I've been with the company since I was 17 years old. I started in October of 2015. For me, I grew up very, very impoverished. And so Starbucks was a way for me to become independent, lift myself out of that situation. And in a lot of ways, it's an

absolutely great company to work for. Like the relationships that I've made with my coworkers, the bond that I have with them, the presence that we have in our stores and the community, it really is in a lot of ways ways a wonderful place to work. Unfortunately, and why we started this union campaign, there's a lot of other things that aren't what they seem to be. Howard Schultz, you heard during his Senate testimony, him touting all the wonderful benefits that the company offers and him saying that no one made them do that, that that was just something he did out of the goodness of his heart. But in reality, most of my partners don't make enough hours per week to even qualify for those benefits, nor do they make enough money to pay for the health insurance anyway.

Most of us choose to take Medicaid or stay on our parents' health insurance as long as we can. The benefits don't mean anything if you're not being scheduled enough hours to qualify for them. If the staffing of the stores is so sporadic, it's never consistent. One week you're getting eight hours, the next you're getting 20. It's impossible to maintain that work-life balance. And we don't have a voice in the workplace. That's why in 2021, we decided that the best bet for us would be to try to organize a union campaign.

I had been in contact with one of the organizers from Workers United for a few years prior, before the pandemic. And at some point I was contacted in 2021 and we decided that that was the right time to try to organize Starbucks. Got it. And so then in the circumstances of your firing,

what are some of the excuses they tried to come up with to try and separate you from the company in retaliation? Yeah, so it kind of we have to take a little bit of a step back to the beginning of the union campaign. When Starbucks first found out that we were trying to organize, we sent our letter to Kevin Johnson. They flooded Buffalo with dozens and dozens of support managers, members of corporate. They fired all of our management. My store manager was fired. My district manager was fired. The acting district manager at the time came in and put me on a written warning for some bogus time and attendance violations that she had found in

my punches. And it's kind of gone on from there. It's been many years of psychological warfare. And I knew that they were going to fire me at some point when I saw them fire Sam Amato. He's a 13-year partner here in Buffalo who I've worked with many, many times. And he's everything you could possibly ask for an employee. He's incredible at his job. They fired him for the silliest reason that I've ever heard. And I knew that they were going to come for me too, as well as all the other union leaders. So I wish I could say I was surprised, but they changed my schedule. So I was closing every night, opening the next morning, every weekend, and all my availability requests that I put in to try to change the situation. And they ended up firing me for being one minute late to

work twice, four minutes late to work another time, five minutes late to anything that they could find. It's just been a witch hunt essentially for us. That's it's outrageous. I know previously some of the workers that they had fired, you know, they were able to go through a legal process and be reinstated. Do you have any potential legal recourse and are you pursuing it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I'm going to be fighting to get reinstated. Do you have any potential legal recourse and are you pursuing it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I'm going to be fighting to get reinstated back with the company. It's no doubt to myself or any of my other store partners

that this was just an act of retaliation. I mean, the same time in attendance violations that they separated me for committed to a much greater extent by other folks. But the only two people in my store that have been delivered any kind of discipline since 2021 are myself and the other shift supervisor that I work with folks, but the only two people in my store that have been delivered any kind of discipline since 2021 are myself and the other shift supervisor that I work with that helped me start the union

campaign at my store. Have you been able to maintain morale at the store? Because as I mentioned, none of the, what is it, like 300 stores now that have voted to form a union. Not one of them has a contract. Meanwhile, it's not just direct retaliation against worker organizers such as yourself. There's also, you know, this whole two-tiered benefit system where they roll down certain perks and benefits to non-union stores, something, again, that I believe based on labor law is illegal and that Howard Schultz was sharply questioned over. Have you been able in the face of all of that to maintain morale and commitment to the union at your own store location? Yeah. Like I was saying before, it's not the benefits that keep us with the company for all these years. It's each other. And we really do have that strong collective bond together where

we know it's not the union's fault. We know that it's the company doing this to us because they do not want us to be able to express our right to organize. I mean, here in Buffalo, there was an over 200 page decision where the company was charged and convicted of hundreds of violations of federal labor law. So at this point, we're just trying to remain strong in the face of them so brazenly breaking the law. My disciplines that I had received previously were actually deemed illegal by the judge in that decision in order to be discarded. And the company chose to separate me anyway. So it's just total disrespect for the NLRB. And so keeping the store together is really a matter of realizing that we're in an unprecedented situation, that none of us knew that our company was going to respond so violently with so little regard for

the law. We didn't know they were going to withhold our benefits, but it's just galvanizing us to stay together and stay strong and fight for what we deserve and what we're legally obligated to under the laws of the country. Absolutely. Even if our government doesn't respect those laws, they still exist. Yeah, and I mean, I think it's always important to underscore it's a company that holds itself out as supposedly progressive. We see in their actions something quite different here. Finally, Alexis, what is your message to any politicians,

either at the state or federal level or even the president of the United States in terms of what they could do to make it so that future worker organizers such as yourself don't face this dire landscape. Yeah. I mean, and the way that things stand currently, the company has been able somehow to wage a years long battle of psychological warfare on these part-time hourly employees who are simply trying to exercise their right to organize a union. This is the foundation of what our country is built upon. This is why we have what we have today. It's disgusting. And the fact that our labor law has been eroded to such a point that this is allowed to happen, that the NLRB doesn't have the funding that they need to protect us, that's the real problem.

We do need help. It's not just Starbucks Workers United, it's any young people who are trying to organize their workplace. We want to fight for something better and we need help to have the power to be able to do so. Like, we can make this workplace. Absolutely. Well, Alexis, thank you so much for taking the time. And please keep us updated and let us know if there's any way that we can be this workplace. Absolutely. Well, Alexis, thank you so much for taking the time.

And please keep us updated and let us know if there's any way that we can be helpful. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Our pleasure. We track very closely what's going on in the U.S. housing market, and the boomer bonanza is officially not stopping. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Despite a historically bad housing market for most people, boomers are cash flush, are standing in the way of millennials who are desperate to buy a home. The data is absolutely astounding. I'm just going to read quote. Between July of 2021 and June of 2022, boomers were the largest share of homebuyers for the first time since 2012. They purchased 39% of all homes that

sold in that span, up from 29% the year before. Millennials, on the other hand, saw their share of the market shrink to just 28%, down from 43% the year prior. So what can we surmise from that? I think it's actually quite obvious. When the rates were low and it was easier to qualify for a mortgage, millennials were able to compete with cash flush boomers because it was probably more about the overall price. Then when the rates went up, what happened is the millennials either no longer could afford the mortgage payment or no longer even wanted to try. And the boomers who are all cash flushed from their holdings, either in retirement or past home equity savings, were able to use that and offer an all-cash deal to buy even more

of the U.S. housing stock. Now, obviously, the reason that that's bad is that when older people are outpricing younger people in the overall marketplace. Those younger people are left behind in the generational wealth that they could build to maybe one day buy a house in cash in the future. So it's just an overall generational breakdown that's happening. And this is not how the economy is supposed to work, people. Yeah. Millennials have just been like screwed their entire economic lives. I mean, you know, basically many of them graduating into the great recession, you get behind from the jump and then you never recover. Housing prices escalating and escalating always further out of reach. And it was one thing, yeah, when mortgage rates were low and you could rely on that to be able to get your foot in the door, metaphorically

speaking here. But now when you have prices didn't really come down in a lot of places, they didn't come down at all. And you have these high mortgage rates. Well, who does that advantage? People who already have money sitting in their bank account or their stock holdings who are able to come in with those cash lump sum payments. They say here as well that millennial homebuyers are more likely than older cohorts to use financial help from friends or family, further tilting an already uneven playing field toward the haves who are able to tap resources from previous generations. So basically, if you aren't getting help from mommy and daddy to come in with some big upfront cash payment, you are shut out. And that has huge consequences for wealth building throughout your entire

lifetime. The more time that you spend on the like hamster wheel of paying rent and not building wealth, the less time you're going to have over your lifetime. So boomers have had a more favorable economic landscape their entire life. They were able to buy houses when it was, you know, when they were young, when there was like such a thing as a starter home, which doesn't even really exist anymore. They were able to get their foot in the door. They were able to build wealth and grow from when it was, you know, when they were young, when there was like such a thing as a starter home, which doesn't even really exist anymore, they were able to get their foot in the door. They were able to build wealth and grow from there. And now you have generation and millennials and Gen Z,

by the way, coming behind them that have been completely and totally screwed. So don't be surprised then when their politics reflect a much different and much more radical understanding of, you know, the nature of our economic system. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think it's going to be a huge problem in the future. And unless somebody gets their mind right, this is the other thing with the boomers, you know, it's like they're buying a lot of these houses for, and I guess you can't begrudge anybody for taking advantage of

your economic situation, but at the very same time, at least around where I live, they make it a lot more difficult for people to build new housing to basically protect their own housing stock. Sometimes it's sympathetic because they're like want to, you know, historical preserve. But sometimes you're like, you know what, this is all just about keeping your home value high so that nobody else can move in. Well, this is part of the problem and how the homeownership class can screw up our politics because they tend to be more rooted, whereas renters tend to be more transient. They tend to have more wealth. And so that all translates into more political power. And so that's why you see, you know, a decline in the

stock of affordable housing, decline in the stock of housing whatsoever that makes it so it's such a zero-sum game where, you know, the boomers gain is millennials overall loss. So yeah, it really does sort of distort our politics in the way that you're describing, which isn't about their age. It's just about their like class and economic interests being reflected in the type of politics and like local zoning laws and ordinances that they favor. So I do continue to think that housing is one of the most undercovered, undernoticed, volatile political issues that is shaping a lot of the direction of our politics in the country. And it is long past time that we deal with what is a dramatically unfair, uneven system that only perpetuates

like intergenerational wealth and then perpetuates this major divide between and clash between the generations. Well said. Hey, everyone. This is Ken Klippenstein with the Intercept Breaking Points edition. I'm joined today by my co-writer, Dan Boguslaw. We've got an important story for you today that both of us worked on concerning Silicon Valley Bank in an angle that I think has gotten far too little attention,

which is the national security component to all of this. Behind the scenes during the bank run, as the federal government was debating what the size, scope, and nature of the intervention to protect depositors would look like, there was quietly a case being made in the nature of the intervention to protect depositors would look like, there was quietly a case being made in the halls of the Pentagon for the fact that Silicon Valley Bank had depositors from the tech world that could be said to be of national security significance. They were making a case for that. They had to intervene to protect the national security of the United States. And again, this is a case that was taking place very quietly.

There was one report in it afterwards in Defense One, but far too little discussion of how they were trying to orchestrate this kind of intervention. And in addition to that, what basis that would have taken, what aegis that would have taken place under and how it might be pursued in the future, because the Treasury's intervention ended up making it so that the DOD did not have to intervene. But it turns out they had tools to do so if they wanted to. Thanks very much for joining us, Dan. Thanks for having me, Ken.

So Dan's contribution to the story was going to Congress and bird-dogging the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, who right after the bank run on SVB released a letter saying that the bank run posed a national security threat. And at about the same time, that's when the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital, a newly created office under the Biden administration in December that gives them money, resources, and authority to try to protect parts of the finance sector that they deem critical to national security. It's at that same time that Warner's letter comes out, the Pentagon starts pushing this case. And so when I contacted them for comment, they didn't respond.

I sent requests for comment like three times. So Dan just physically went to the Hill and chased him down and asked him, what is the national security basis of your claim that there's a national security threat by this bank run? What did he tell you? Well, when he came out, I think maybe it was trying to revoke the war powers authority that were used for the invasion of Iraq. I think that was the vote that he was coming out of, although I could be wrong about that. However, when he came out, he was greeted by a scrum of very excited reporters. He was smiling.

They were smiling. Yeah, can you talk about that dynamic a bit? Because when you were describing it to me, it's very different than what people think of the, you know, the press would like to think of itself as adversarial, but it sounds like that's not what's going on. No, this was towards the end of the vote. There weren't that many senators, you know, coming in and out. He said, wow, it seems like everyone here loves me. It seems like everyone's so excited to see me.

And, you know, he was kind of joking because everyone was waiting around. You know, he was one of the last people they wanted to get their questions in. But there was also an element of that that was completely true. You know, you're sort of standing there. I've been chasing him all day trying to get comment. You know, the large network reporters are there. You know, they're chopping it up. They're having a great time. They're asking. So it's a pretty warm dynamic. Warm dynamic, you know, asking, you know,

Senator, you know, any updates on, you know, the FBI hearings? You know, and it's this. Was anyone asking about the bank runs? Because this was like the big story that. I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything in that scrum. I know people, you know, obviously when the SVB news dropped, people were, you know, hounding people, especially on the revocation of certain aspects

of the Dodd-Frank legislation that was, you know, repealed by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats, some of whom, like Warner, participated in the original drafting of Dodd-Frank legislation to try to increase banking regulation, then later joined with the Republican allies to scale those back. Can you talk a bit more about that, Warner's specific role in what happened, not just in terms of his rolling back the Dodd-Frank regulations that, you know,

economists said could have prevented the SVB bank run from happening, but his own equities within banks and his own experience in the financial world. Yeah. So I believe at one point, Werner was the wealthiest member of the Senate. He was hovering, I think, between, I think, 400 million. And he's always had a cozy relationship with banks. While he was one of the drafters of the original Dodd-Frank legislation, he also championed this rollback, which eliminated certain liquidity limits, certain stress testing required for these mid-sized banks, which SBB came in just under the wire to be protected basically by this regulatory scaleback. And, you know, when I pressed Warner on this, you know,

basically what he said to me was, you tell me what regulation we could possibly come up with that could have prevented a bank run on 25 cents to the dollar, you know, a quarter of assets being withdrawn overnight. And then he proceeded to say that, you know, I'm going to ask tough questions about deepfakes and the fact that this was a... Deepfakes? ...internet-driven run. You know, deepfakes, you know, him basically...

What does that have to do with SVB? Well, he's trying to put forward the idea that, you know, because a piece of this run was catalyzed by private equity, you know, executives, basically, or sorry, VC executives, you know, texting each other back and forth about the liquidity problems at the bank, that some, and some of that occurred on Twitter and was online, that, you know, you could have this threat of digitally induced bank runs, right? Like a panic driven by some fake video. Right. But there's no evidence that that happened. No, there's absolutely no evidence that happened. So he just threw that out. In fact,

that's the symptom of an underlying disease, which was a regulatory failure, which was a scale back that he voted for and he helped champion. And also a total lack of internal oversight on the decisions that were made. You know, I think this week, I believe, an article came out, I think it was in the Post, about how SVP changed their internal risk assessments. You know, they... So they had a sense that something like this might... They absolutely had a sense that this could happen.

They absolutely knew that the rate hikes could bury them. Federal reserve rate hikes. Yeah. And they tweaked their books. Yeah. I find his comments astonishing. Can we get element two up there just to show people what the quotes are from Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner? He says, After an unprecedented and reckless run on Silicon Valley Bank, there were very real risks of instability spreading to other institutions and undermining our national security and technology innovation system. And so that's what prompted us, me first, to contact his press secretary, who they say you're supposed to go through, which she didn't respond to like three or four emails. And so Dan had to go to the Hill and

just chase him down and physically ask him. So when he asked him, Senator Warner says, when our financial system is under assault, that is a national security issue. And then he goes on to say, if you see adversaries potentially being able to use, and I'm not suggesting this, I'm going to ask this question, but I've been worried about deep fakes in the system for a while. And that's pretty much the extent of what Senator Warner had to say to try to substantiate. Let's be clear about the false equivalency that he's drawing here, right? This was not a foreign hostile nation trying to take down the US financial system. This was a group of wealthy depositors joining forces with extremely wealthy bank managers to sabotage themselves in the name of profit. I mean, you look at some of the investors and some of the depositors in SVB, like Roku, which had deposited hundreds of millions of dollars into a single

bank, you know, on the sum of the size of the GDP of some developing nations. And why did they do this? Because there was a relationship between managers and tech CEOs. And that relationship was cultivated through white glove concierge treatment, low interest loans, all sorts of things to create a sense that this bank somehow represented the incredible creative output of Silicon Valley. And at the same time,

they were altering their risk assessment tools and protocols to try to profit as much as they could from those hyper-risky deposits. Yeah, the potential conflicts here are just staggering. When I looked at Senator Warner, he's also the chair of the banking committee as well. And let's be clear about something. I think there is some legitimacy to the idea that a collapse of the US financial system could be a national security issue. Now, is the solution to that problem creating a cash bag within the Pentagon to throw at tech companies that are irresponsible with their deposits and the banks holding those deposits?

Or is it to use your power as a US senator and representative of the American people to try to create regulations that prevent both actors on both sides of this issue from conducting the behavior to maximize their profits at the risk of disrupting the entire system? at the risk of disrupting the entire system. So he was very quick to try to frame this as a warning sign for potential threats from foreign actors and therefore a national security issue without taking any responsibility for his own domestic policy decisions.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the Pentagon Point because it's a good place to segue over to the DOD office that I mentioned before, the Office of Strategic Capital, which was established very recently in December, unprecedented in its unique authorities. And I interviewed two former very high-level DOD officials who were kind of shocked at all this and said, I was really surprised by what took place because there's not really a history of the DOD having a direct role in this. They have something called the Defense Innovation Board, but that was just an advisory council. It didn't have the same power that the Office of Strategic Capital does. And going forward,

if we're going to learn anything from this, because this was something that affected that bank and then the bank in New York, but if the catalyst for this stuff is these Federal Reserve rate hikes that are going on. It's still ongoing. And that, you know, top Federal Reserve officials say that, you know, we have no intention of stopping. We need to have a plan for, you know, what could happen subsequently. I mean, I see no reason to think that this couldn't happen again. just bureaucratically within the DOD to be able to make this new case in addition to the, you know, case about the stability of the economic system for ordinary people.

Generally, now they're going to say, oh, this is going to be a, you know, coup for the Chinese if we don't intervene. And I want to bring up something that Senator Howley said to me when right at the start of the SVB collapse, when I was trying to talk to senators who had voted for the scale back of Dodd-Frank regulations. And he said to me that, you know, if this had happened, if a small community bank in Missouri had collapsed, you know, national politicians would have said, you know, that's capitalism. That's the free market. They didn't pull themselves up by bootstraps and so be it. And when it's a giant bank connected to, you know, powerful interests, like as you reported, California Governor Gavin Newsom, then all of a sudden it becomes systemic risk. Then all of a sudden it's,

we have to bail that out. And I think there's a similar point to be made here with the Department of Defense, which is that, in a sense, this is one more step in the ludicrous sums that are divvied out to defense contractors without any competition to these monopolistic firms that have consolidated, taken over all production and consulting for the Department of Defense. And they're creating an office basically to continue that, what is in one sense, socialism for the rich, what is in one sense, creating a government-funded program to ensure the continued production of technology, high-tech weapons firms, and basically saying, we're not going to try to get to the root

of the problem here. We're not going to create regulations. We're going to set up a system to not just bail banks out, but bail out the companies that are affected. Right. It's funny. When I first started working on this story, I go to somebody, sometimes when you have a certain inclination in a story, I like to go to somebody who has the opposite view to try to check and challenge what your assumptions are. So I went to a friend of mine who's a national security hawkk who works in the intelligence community and is specifically tasked with and has been specifically tasked to monitor and track and stop foreign penetration and foreign interference, foreign influence in Silicon Valley. And I asked him, I said,

just completely neutral, I said, is there a national security threat from the bank runs on SVB? And he said, what you just said, he said, no, this is an excuse for the rich to pad their pockets. This is socialism for the rich and, you know, harsh capitalism for everybody else. And it was like, this guy is not a dove on these questions. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, you know, it's one of those things. It's a new office. It's a strange new orientation. It follows a familiar pattern of funneling cash to giant contractors and giant firms.

But I think it's these subtleties that get left out. Again, go back to the Hill. People are chasing the story of the day. They're not interested. They're bosses. They're managers. Their outlets are not interested in chasing these things that get slipped in on the slide. These slight things that, like, affects the entire country.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. And, you know, there's a good anecdote, again, going back to the SVB reporting right when it happened, where, you know, I really hammered these senators on, you know, this vote rolling back these regulations. And they said, you know, well, it's unclear whether the stress testing would have done anything. And there's a measure of truth to that insofar as even the Fed's stress testing measures

are imperfect and those should be changed. But the idea that this was adequate regulation, this scale back created adequate regulation is a complete farce. Now, when I went and bird do know, bird-dogged all these Democrats who had joined with Republicans to pass this bill that Trump signed, you know, they, it was incredible to me how upset they were, how upset they were. You know, one senator from Delaware, you know, I tried to speak with him three times. He

tried to brush me off three times. They really didn't want this particular question. They did not want to talk about this. And in fact, when I pressed Angus King and we ran the story about, you know, his vote I saw him I saw another reporter been standing right next to me when I was pressing him on it and I saw him the next day after the piece came out go up to him and Try to talk to him and King was like I'm not answering any questions, especially not from you And you know that really showed, though, that if you press a little bit too hard with these senators, then they're going to— You lose access, and that's why people don't ask these things.

You lose access, and that's why there's— Especially someone like Senator Warner, to give folks at home a sense of the Washington media game. You have a chair of a committee. That guy is going to give you exclusives. That guy is going to give you access to things before investigations come out, before press releases come out, that kind of thing. So it can really cost you to cross them. But that's where we come in. Happy to cross these.

I'm always shocked by the decorum. I'm always shocked by the decorum on the Hill. They answer to the press. They answer to the people who voted to put them in office. And I'm always shocked by kind of how timid and reserved, you know, what should be interrogations on the Hill are, because, you know, they are there to answer your questions and they can't really, you know, they can't really say no. And again, Looking at this story to see how little coverage there's been, this is not a marginal issue. Again, this is systemic. This is a question of systemic risk and, you know, how we prevent

something like this going. I mean, this was a huge, I guarantee you ask any, I mean, it's very hard for me to believe that looking at something like Silicon Valley Bank, that's not something that's going to draw broad condemnation from people of both sides of the political aisle. Yeah. I mean, I think both sides tried to, to, you know, angle, you know, both, both, both on the right and the left for a narrative that suited their purposes, except for, you know, those Democrats who, who, you know, voted for these rollbacks and they just were doing everything in their power to say, we have to wait and see, wait for the news cycle to blow over. The rhetoric I saw, it was so frustrating.

From the Democrats, it was, this is not a bailout. We're protecting depositors, all these euphemisms. And then from the Republicans, it's like, this is a bailout. And then absent from the political leadership discourse is, what are we going to do to prevent this from happening again? How are we going to bring back Dodd-Frank? What are the conditions that we're going to put on these banks in exchange for, frankly, saving their ass to make it so that this doesn't happen again? Almost no discussion of any of that. And go back to what Warner said to me. Warner said,

you tell me what regulations could possibly have prevented this wild meme-driven online catastrophe. Other than the one you voted against, yeah. It's unbelievable. I mean, it's unbelievable to make that argument. It's not based in reality. It's not based in truthfulness. And it's obscene.

Well, we really appreciate your descending into the Mordor to ask these guys these questions. So thanks for joining us and for your hard work in the story. And thanks everyone for watching this. I hope you got something out of it. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Thank you for tuning into another segment of my show, 5149 on Breaking Points. And today, let's talk about billionaires. This moniker billionaire, let's just get at that, okay? I grew up in federally subsidized housing. Let me finish. I grew up in federally subsidized housing. My parents never owned a home. I came from nothing. I thought my entire life was based on the achievement of the American dream. Yes, I have billions of dollars. I earned it. No one gave it to me. And I've shared it constantly with the people of Starbucks.

And so anyone who keeps labeling this billionaire thing is- Mr. Schultz, I don't mean to cut you off. We have time limits here and you have the opportunity. I'm not cutting you off. It's your moniker constantly. It's unfair. No, it is not. It's unfair.

How do you guys feel about this? Is Bernie being rude to him? Are people unfairly demonizing billionaires, especially billionaires like Howard Schultz of Starbucks, a self-proclaimed self-made billionaire? He seems to be not taking too kindly to this billionaire moniker. I scrolled through some of the comments on TikTok. People seem kind of split. I'll just throw up a few examples for you on the screen. Bernie's feelings and logic got hurt. Schultz created 500,000 good paying jobs with benefits.

Of course, Bernie the fraud doesn't wanna hear about it. On the other side, no one earns a billion dollars. You only manage a company of thousands that earns you billions of dollars. American oligarchs, basically. Debate is good, I like debate, but how should we be thinking about this? Because income inequality has gone like this, out of control in the past few decades. The wealthy have gotten more wealthy.

They've never been more well off. And everybody else seems to be kind of getting left behind. Now, before we get back to Howard, I want to go to another billionaire for a second. We live in a world where billionaires tweet all kinds of crazy things all the time. I won't mention names, but billionaires will tweet whatever, and then they'll say, oh, it'll change the world. I'll do this. You actually did it. We're doing it. We're the real deal. Yeah, we started a company called costplusdrugs.com. If you go and you put in the drug, and if we carry it, it'll show you not only what we sell it for, it'll show you our cost. Like actual cost? Actual cost. But we really pay for it.

We market up 15%. That's it. We have a $3 pharmacy fee and $5 for shipping. That's it. Right. I don't need, you can't, I don't, my next dollar is not going to change my life, but if I get a chance to up the pharmaceutical industry. Hell yeah. Right. He's trying to fuck up big pharma his words not mine but hot take i actually think this is bad indicative of something rotten because look i'm very happy to hear about mark cuban's plans with cost plus drugs and i hope he is successful but let's imagine a different example what if a different billionaire decides i think i have a great idea about public health. It's really phenomenal what the vaccine companies have done. And we can convince people to trust the vaccine.

Getting these messages out, you need to figure out who people trust that they'll follow. And, you know, whether it's people of color or various religious groups, we somehow need to get the word out. This is quite an amazing vaccine that helps everyone. Yes. I was talking about Bill Gates. Remember when Bill Gates kept saying over and over how great the mRNA vaccine was, how the technology was phenomenal and how it would get us out of this pandemic and any discourse, any nuance around the topic of vaccines, its efficacy, safety was more or less forbidden and censored. In fact, we couldn't even really discuss other forms of intervention like diet, nutrition, exercise, and even other forms of pharmaceutical treatment were oftentimes misrepresented or discredited in the mainstream media the entire time. 2020, 2021, 2022.

It was just vaccines. Bill Gates, vaccines are a miracle. It's mind blowing. Somebody could say the opposite. The thing is, vaccines are obviously an important tool in medicine and in fighting a pandemic. But should one person, a private billionaire, be able to hijack scientific discourse at the highest level and tell governments what they should or shouldn't be doing? Because that is exactly what happened. And we all know now, but it was probably less apparent back then. But in February of this year, investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel revealed

the extent of Gates' profit-making from his investment's advisor partner BioNTech. The foundation had purchased the shares in September 2019, just months before the pandemic was announced, at a pre-public offering price of $18.10 per share. Schachtel reviewed SEC filings and found that the Gates Foundation downsides its BioNTech holdings by 86% over the third quarter of 2021, BioNTech's best performing quarter. When the foundation sold the shares at an average sale price of $300 per share, it pocketed a profit of approximately $260 million or more than 15 times its original investment. Wow. Talk about buying low and selling high, right? Now, would it be fair for me to say that his motivations are less

scientific, perhaps more financial? Could that lead him to potentially obfuscate the facts from the public? We think we can also have very early in an epidemic, a thing you can inhale that will mean that you can't be infected, a blocker, an inhaled blocker. We also need to fix the three problems with vaccines. The current vaccines are not infection blocking. They're not broad. So when new variants come up, you lose protection and they have very short duration. So there are some issues and deficiencies with the mRNA vaccines now that you've sold your stake in BioNTech and made hundreds of millions of dollars. He's like, yeah, I know we all had a few problems with the mRNA vaccine, but going forward, we have

this much better thing, a new type of vaccine, which we inhale through our nose, and that's going to be the real game changer. I looked it up, something called intranasal SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. The claim is that it is likely to prevent infection and transmission, also likely to prevent disease. Bunch of other benefits. It's made by a company called Barat Biotech. Sounds like a familiar pitch. Bill Gates, his foundation,

just happens to be also invested in this company to a tune of about $20 million. I don't know. I feel like this is kind of a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me type of situation. Will it work? I'm not sure. Maybe. We'll have to see. But the point is, or my point is, it's never our ideas getting implemented. It's never the will of the people. It's the will of the billionaire. I'm just going to toss a few other examples out there on the screen. For example, one of them has taken a liking into charter schools. Well, guess what? We got a bunch

of charter schools now. They don't like unions. They don't think it's good for business. Well, let's make it really tough to unionize. And even if people do, they could still use the law to their advantage to drag out the bargaining process. And boom, union membership is at an all-time low. Social security, not a chance. Just slash it, 401ks all the way. Any one billionaire in America can on a whim, good idea or bad idea, whatever they're feeling passionate about on the day, or in many cases, whatever they think might advance their financial objectives, they are able to more or less implement any policy they like without electoral intervention, without the

ability for the public to say no. The New York Times has termed this stealth politics. Now, is that the America that you want? Because according to the history that I learned in 1776, the founding fathers of America came together to disavow the monarchy, to overthrow the king, revolution, war, to fight for democracy, for liberty. So why today do we allow a bunch of kings, call them oligarchs, call them whatever you want, but why do we allow a bunch of people who have never been elected to public office to rule the country? What is going on here? Just an observation, just something to think about. But let's go back to Howard Schultz to tie this whole thing together. Were you informed of or involved in the decision to withhold benefits from Starbucks workers in unionized stores, including higher pay and faster sick time accrual?

My understanding, when we created the benefits in May, one month after I returned as CEO, my understanding was under the law, we did not have the unilateral right to provide those benefits to employees who were interested in joining a union. Starbucks Coffee Company did not break the law. And that clip illustrates my point exactly. It's pretty easy not to break the law

if you have a hand in crafting the law. I can't speak for everyone, and I certainly can't speak for the Starbucks employees, but me personally, I don't have a problem with for-profit enterprises. I don't have a problem with billionaires. I mean, who could be upset about a rags-to-riches story like Howard Schultz?

Well, some people maybe. But what I do take issue with is undemocratic lawmaking where money buys policy. And then to have to watch a guy like Schultz smugly declare in front of Congress that he and his company are acting perfectly within the bounds of the law. So the solution, we have to overturn Citizens United. You know, the Supreme Court case that basically legalized bribery. We need to force the issue and take seriously the effort to ratify House Joint Resolution 21, on your screen, known as the People's Rights Amendment, which would undo the court's disastrous ruling and restore the proper guardrails between money and power in government.

I can trace back so many of the problems we have in this country to the fact that we have legalized bribery, where corporations are people, where money is speech, where one single person can buy the media and our politicians in one fell swoop and implement whatever policy they damn well please. What do you think? Do you take issue with billionaires? Yes? No? If so, in what way? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. And if you feel inclined to explore more about who runs our world, subscribe to my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. The link will be in the description below. Thank you so much for watching Breaking Points, and thanks for your time today. 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 for 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. 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. What up, y'all? This your main man Memphis Bleak right here, host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month, so what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule.

The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn. Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on rock solid open your free iHeartRadio app search rock solid and listen now this is an iHeart podcast