Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/14/23: Biden Staff Fears His Private Rage, Record Number Of Americans Live Alone, CNN Attacks Cornel West, RFK Non Union Merch, School Choice Hidden Agenda, Publicly Funded Stadiums

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

This week we discuss reports of Biden's private bouts of rage with his staff, a record numbers of Americans now live alone, CNN attacks Cornel West as a spoiler candidate, RFK Jr's campaign is caught using foreign non union merch breaking from norms, James Li looks at the hidden agenda behind the "School Choice" movement, and Spencer Snyder looks at how publicly funded stadiums are a ripoff to taxpayers.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. 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 got a new report from Axios about how President Biden is a little different in private than maybe the public persona, the carefully crafted public persona. Let's put this up on the screen.

Maureen Dowd actually tweeted this piece out with some of the choice language that he apparently directs at aides. God damn it. How the F don't you know this? Don't effing bullshit me and get the F out of here. Let me read a little bit from the piece. The headline is old yeller, Biden's private fury. In public, President Biden likes to whisper to make a point. In private, he's prone to yelling. Behind closed doors, Biden has such a quick trigger temper

that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him. Some take a colleague almost as a shield against a solo blast. They can then go on to describe the language that Maureen Dowd included here. Why it matters. The private eruptions paint a more complicated picture of Biden as a manager and president than the image as a kindly uncle who loves aviator sunglasses and ice cream. They also go on to say, this is kind of interesting, some Biden aides think the president would be better off occasionally displaying his temper in public as a way to assuage voter concerns that the 80-year-old president is disengaged and too old for office. Senior and lower-level aides alike can be in Biden's line of fire. Quote, no one is safe, said one administration official. Your thoughts, Sagar?

I gotta be honest, this made me like Biden. I mean, I respect it. I personally, I saw a lot of pearl clutching around this, like, oh my gosh, I can't believe he treats people this way, blah, blah, blah. I mean, you know, I know a lot of people, politicians also, people who work for them, people who care about their work get passionate. So, I mean, the other thing is, the only way that this would be a criticism is if this was like a doddering old man thing. But by all accounts, old accounts of him as a candidate back in 1988 describe the same temper. Yeah. So it seems to be.

He's always been a sort of like cranky volcanic asshole to his staff. Right. Look, which president hasn't been? I mean, in fact, the only guy who was ever really nice to his staff was Jimmy Carter. So it's like it kind of tells you that there. I think you have to be a raging narcissist to be president. I don't think it's really possible to do it otherwise. And I think that people who all work at the highest level and care a lot about their work often behave in this manner.

I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing, but, you know, a lot of these staff, like, they also know what they're getting into. So I don't know. I saw a lot of annoying curl clutching around this. And it frankly annoyed me. I'm like, yeah, it's like the most stressful job in the world. What do you expect to happen? Especially whenever you are unable to have public outbursts in the same way. I also do agree that going out and kind of showing this kind of temperament makes you frankly a lot more relatable.

Remember when he had that look fat moment on the trail? People loved that. And people did kind of like it. They like challenge that guy to pushups or whatever. Yeah. Called that one young voter a lying dog faced pony soldier. Yeah, lying dog faced pony soldier. I still don't know what that means, but okay. So I would not ever justify this sort of treatment of individuals who work for you, your staff, who are clearly, like, terrified of him. That being said, you know, the stakes are really high with the president of the United States. And I think it would almost be an unreasonable expectation for anyone to 100% keep their cool under those circumstances, number one.

Number two, it is amazing to me the areas that the media decides to critique. Like, this is the problem you have with Joe Biden? That's such a good point. This is the one? It's such a good point. We played this week them defending the view, defending Joe Biden over literally not acknowledging

one of his grandchildren. They're willing to go to bat for him over that, but then when it comes to like, oh, he said some naughty words in the office, let's do a whole expose. And then even bigger than that, I mean, some of the policy choices, the abandonment of key campaign promises, everything from, you know, the PRO Act, minimum wage, public option is just like completely disappeared. That doesn't get scrutiny or attention, but this does. So I will say, you know, there was this piece in, I think it was Politico about Marianne Williamson and like, you know, her being having a temper with her aides at times. And part of why that piece annoyed me so much is

because I knew that this is how Joe Biden is behind the scenes. And it was like, you know, anyway, but I do think just like the choice of what the media decides to focus on is probably the biggest story here, more so than him losing his temper with his aides. Look, one of the best presidents in modern history was one of the biggest pricks to his staff, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Okay, go read a book if you want to figure out how he treated them. He also got the Civil Rights Act done. So you ask yourself, what do you value in terms of your impact? I'm not saying it's a good thing. Like you said, I don't treat people this way, but we're not the president. We're not the people who are literally running the country. So I don't know. I think that a lot of us is just a

little bit ridiculous in terms of the personal critiques, as you said. In terms of the personal critique, the only one I think that's really valid is one that we discussed on our show this week about Biden ignoring his grandchild. I think that's actually totally within the realm of what's legitimate in all this, whereas this one just seemed, you know, pretty stupid in terms of the way that he acts behind the scenes. They even note, by the way, that he doesn't even have close to as bad of a temper as Bill Clinton did. Bill Clinton had a volcanic temper in terms of the way he treated his staff. Obama too. Obama was a nasty person. He was one of those people who he would not have

the volcanic outburst, but he would undercut you in front of everybody. So if you said something that he thought was stupid, he would be like, let's sit on that for a little bit. He was like an intellectual bully. He was exactly like that. I feel like Trump, you probably, you may be able to speak to this more. I feel like he's sort of like more passive aggressive. We're in person, super nice to you. And then we'll just like blow you up. Trump also had a volcanic temper. I personally witnessed him humiliate staff and honestly, super uncomfortable. It was very Johnson-esque in terms of what he would do. Can't go into all the details, but he would effectively like call people in and

like make them stand up while he questioned them from behind the Oval Office sitting like this with a scowl on his face. And he would kind of make them tap dance a little bit. And he would do this in front of me and in front of other people to basically prove, he'd be like, look at these people. You know, he wanted to prove that. He'd be like, look at these people. He wanted to prove that one guy would come at his beck and call. So he would press that intercom thing and be like, get so-and-so here in the office. And they would come running in all sweaty. He's also big on, like I said, public humiliation.

It's big on the power. And look, I mean, I once again believe that this is probably a requirement for the job. John F. Kennedy did this to many of his aides, people who he didn't like and who he didn't respect. He would do big public shows of kind of humiliating them. I think of an example almost from every single president, like I said, except for Jimmy Carter. So, you know, maybe it's just a—this is what it takes, I think, to be in the job. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I do think it is probably intrinsic to the personality type of the person who wants to sit there. I'll just say again, don't condone this type of behavior. However, it is like very low

on my list of problems I have with Joseph Robinette Biden. Well said. All right. We'll see you guys later. Got some pretty interesting new data that we wanted to dig into. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So a record share of Americans are now living alone. Nearly 30% of American households comprise a single person. That is a record high. If you're looking and if you're watching this, you can see the way that the number of people living alone, the percent of one person households just skyrockets. Sort of starting in the 50s even, 60s, but it's continued to go up and now we are at record-breaking numbers. There's a lot that contributes to this. The older you are, the more likely you are to be living alone. So partly it's an aging population. Partly it's

the fact that fewer people are getting married. Partly it's the fact that you have more divorces, so you have fewer people who are married at any given time and I also just think it has become more of a sort of acceptable phenomenon I mean in a lot of ways our society is less doing things together in the real world and apparently that includes cohabitating so I support people having individual ability to pursue like what they want to do outside of the strictures of family because I think that that can be very oppressive. That said, I think we've probably gone too far. And one of the things that you often hear from a lot of people who are elderly and who do end up living alone is, you know, for lack of a better word, they feel lonely. They feel like they desire social connection. You know, even what they point to in the report. They feel like they desire social connection. You know,

even what they point to in the report around this is that humans are social creatures. And the problem is not living alone per se. It's that living alone is indicative of lower familial ties, of less community. And it's not like, you know, I know many people who live alone who are very, very socially active. These are people who live alone because they need their own space, but they also are out not every night, but a couple nights a week meeting friends, social clubs, trivia night, whatever. But for every one of those people, I know probably five others who live alone and report feeling very socially isolated, being attached only to their job, feeling very atomized, not feeling fulfilled very much in their life. And also you can't ignore cost, you know, really from a lot of this, which is that it is much more cost effective to have like networks of family who are around you, who can help care for your kids, who can, you know, help you in whatever circumstance that you, that befalls you whenever you're with people, even when you're younger and you're with roommates,

there's a real kind of community aspect that happens, especially when none of you are making all that much money and you're trying to figure out who you are and what to do in life. I think those are important things. So I don't know. I think it's sad because I don't think old people, many old people don't want to live alone. They just kind of end up living alone. And then many young people also, they don't want to live alone, but sometimes it's the only way to make something work. So anyway, I think things have moved in a bad direction. It is interesting. So at younger ages, it's men who are more likely to live alone.

At older ages, it's women who are more likely to live alone. They talked to a number of researchers in the field of basically like loneliness, which I do think is a really under-discussed problem in America where we have all of these like social media connections, but we're lonelier than ever. But they said there are different ways of living alone, right? You live by yourself, but you have super active social life and you're out and about and maybe you live in a city and those connections are easy and you have a big network of friends and family are constantly over, you're over at their places. That's one thing. Another thing is, you know, you live potentially more in a rural area and living alone means that you really are alone. And, you know, all the research says that this isn't

good for people. Like we are social creatures. We are not meant to just be solitary all the time. And, you know, there's also different personality ranges. Some people are more introverted. They can handle that psychologically better than people who tend towards the extroverted end of the spectrum. But, you know, we really have moved away. And the way that our cities and suburbs in particular are even constructed make it so that there are barriers to being together in person. person and instead we're fed this sort of like fake social interactions that end up not providing the, you know, real world benefits that actual in-person relationships help to create. So I do think that this is contributing to some of the issues that we have with loneliness in society. Oh, there's no question. I mean, this is why, I mean, I'm taking some flack for this, but part

of why I'm like, I'm not really for a hundred percent work from home because, and especially for really young people, because I think that, and I'm not saying this is a good thing. But it's a very key way to meet people, to meet friends, to be involved, especially post-college for a lot of people, to have relationships and develop a new life. And work from home I think is great for people who are well-established, 100 percent work from home, who are well-established in their career and they don't have problems with any of that. But I've personally seen a lot of people who kind of suffer from that. And like, look, I'm for flexibility. If that's what you want to do, I think that's, you know, go for it. But I am, I've seen a trend towards some atomization at much younger ages, which I really think is not good. And I don't know how to fix that. You know, I don't know. There's no work solution. There's no government solution even really to that.

But sociologically, it obviously does have a lot of problems. Well, maybe Elon Musk can get together with the other tech oligarchs and destroy all of the social media platforms, not just Twitter. And that may actually be very healthy and beneficial for him. You might be right. You definitely might be right. All right. We'll see you guys later. You'll be surprised to learn that CNN is gatekeeping against Cornel West's presidential run. I know that again, it's shocking.

We've never seen this treatment before from the media towards populist candidates. But let's start by rolling this clip here. I think a bigger problem for them or as big is Cornel West. Yeah. He is running as a Green Party candidate and we can look back to 2016 to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and Jill Stein. Let's actually do just that. Those numbers tell the story.

They really do. I mean, the margin on the right there, the right of the screen, that's Trump's margin and Jill Stein's margin in the green. Look at Michigan. I mean, 51,000 votes. Trump won by 10,000 votes. That's a big potential difference maker. Without question. And everything is different, of course. A lot of that Jill Stein vote was a hangover from the Bernie Sanders primary fight with Hillary Clinton. So that has been a done away with. Bernie Sanders is now very

supportive of this president, and he has been. But I think the bigger issue, other than in the no labels, is Cornel West and what is he going to do on the campaign trail. But again, a lot of questions about who's behind the funding behind these. And what does a unique ticket mean? Is that Joe Manchin? Maybe. Is it Larry Hogan? Maybe. Yeah, or some combination of the two. I mean- It's a worry for the White House, and it will continue to be probably for the next year. I think he's right to say Democrats should be worried that Cornel West could play spoiler. But again, the disrespect for voters seeping through in that tone. I think Crystal and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

What the media continues to not understand is that for some folks saying a vote for Cornel West or a vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Hillary Clinton or a vote is a vote for Trump or a vote for, you know, Ron DeSantis or whomever it is. For some people, they're like, that is absolutely accurate. Can they tell me that more? Like, I understand it. What you don't understand is I think Hillary Clinton is just as bad as Donald Trump, or I think that Joe Biden is just as bad as Donald Trump. And they continue to have absolutely no respect for that point of view, even though I think it's entirely reasonable we could have a debate over it. But if you're not privileged enough to walk the Tony Halls of CNN newsrooms,

that might be more obvious to you. Right. And there's a lot going on in that clip. And so they start the conversation talking about no labels, which is compared to the Green Party, a well-financed organization. This is a dark money group, basically, that claims to have raised some $70 million in order to get on the ballot in all 50 states and recruit a Joe Manchin type. And Joe Manchin has not ruled out whether or not he will accept this invitation to run. Sort of a Ross Perot type thing. Right, right.

Except it would be financed by private equity goons and hedge funders from around the country rather than kind of self-financed by Ross Perot. Which I feel like the American population is much cooler with somebody like a Ross Perot, which I feel like the American population is much cooler with somebody like a Ross Perot, kind of self-financing, because then he's not bought by anybody. But if your campaign is literally financed by dark money groups, mostly funded by a variety of different moguls, but primarily from the kind of private equity and hedge fund world. Yes. Like, sorry.

And what that does seem to be able to do is to hurt Democrats and help Trump because they're more likely to draw from Biden, no labels. Yeah, and that's where you get the 92 Perot dynamic. And it's usually like with Jill Stein from the other direction or Rothman from the other direction. And Perot arguably drew money more from H.W. Bush. Is that is that kind of the way that the right understands this, that Clinton, that Clinton benefited from Perot being in the race? Absolutely. And where this, again, gets interesting is that a No Labels candidate could pull from Democrats in those key suburban areas in swing states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.

You heard them actually mentioning that. But when you look at where Democrats feel, it's there like what's the 2004 version of like the Ohio soccer moms. Like that's what they – they're actually still worried about the Ohio soccer moms. And that's why they make particular decisions when it comes to salt deductions or when it comes to whatever else. I don't think Ohio is an assault state, but you know what I'm talking about. That sort of like upper middle class, educated, suburban family, that's where Democrats feel is they're against Donald Trump and against what they see as like extreme mega Republicans in general. That's their key demographic. And you could see a Joe Manchin coming in and playing on all of the Democratic Party support for things like Medicare for All and picking away key voters or being soft on crime, picking away key voters in states like that.

It could genuinely be a problem for them, especially if you have Cornel West also in the game picking off leftists in the same way Jill Stein did, like real leftists in the same way Jill Stein did. The math wouldn't be great for Democrats in that situation, but that should mean that they put forward better candidates that don't force these third party bids because nobody trusts the DNC. Right. And so then it comes to Cornel West, who initially launched with people movement for a people's party uh was kind of driven away by all the drama around that and the probably also the fact that they don't really have ballot excess anywhere or maybe maybe they have it somewhere but they don't have it all all across the country so now he's running he could still lose the green party nomination

green party's hilarious you never know he's got to fight for that. But let's assume that he wins the Green Party nomination and is on the ballot in key swing states. Then it comes down to the question of do you vote for the person whose values you support or do you vote pragmatically between the two people who are most likely to win? And then there's a third argument that our friend over at rising brown and joy gray makes which is that there's actually a pragmatic way to vote third party, which is that if you Threaten to withhold your votes from the Democratic Party That then they're going to do things to kind of win your vote over

Absolutely, the problem that happened with Jill Stein, by the way. Well, the problem for me with that argument, and I want to hear what you mean by that, is that that has to be a collective organizational decision because you have to have somebody who can negotiate these terms. Otherwise, who are the we that you're negotiating on behalf of and talking to? Who can go to Biden and say, look, if you ignore the Supreme Court and do complete student debt cancellation, we will vote for you. Who's the we and who's the you? Like who gets to sit down in that room? Because if he announced that he was going to do that now, you would have an enormous number of Cornel West supporters who would say, BS, I don't believe it. He's a fraud.

And I know this because in 2000 I was a Nader supporter. And there was absolutely nothing Al Gore could have told me that would have changed my mind on that. Everything he said was just a complete lie. If you go back and watch his 2000 convention speech, it was just an anti-corporate screed, which, great, good for him. But I watched that and I was like, this is cynical nonsense coming from, you're trying to, you're lying to me. None of this means a word to me. Yeah. Like this is all, this is all lies. And so I think so many people are in that place that there's nothing Biden can say that's going to change their mind. Absolutely. And those are things that Biden perhaps could have done, but he didn't. Now they have, they don't have the House, so there's nothing they can do. Right. Between then and now.

So what did you mean by Jill Stein though? Oh, well, I meant basically that because so many Bernie Sanders supporters ended up voting for Jill Stein or even staying home, but like since for the purposes of this conversation voted for Jill Stein, Democrats, the field was completely different. There's like this great McClatchy analysis of Hillary Clinton's platform in 2016 versus Joe Biden's in 2020. And Biden's was arguably the most moderate of all of the major candidates that ran for the Democratic nomination that year, they said it was really far to the left, even compared to Hillary Clinton's in 2016. That's McClatchy. And I agree. I think it's obvious that he ran way further to the left. And again, all of these candidates, like so-called moderates,

start Kamala Harris, embracing Medicare for all, et cetera, et cetera. Whether or not people think those are sincere concessions, they're absolutely concessions because Bernie Sanders and then downstream of Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, the fact that so many Bernie Sanders supporters were so upset by Hillary Clinton that they then went to vote for Jill Stein. I think that was a huge wake up call for the Democratic Party. And again, people may look at the way Biden has governed and say it was all insincere. And that's where they would argue Breonna's argument falls apart. Like maybe you'll get superficial concessions. But I don't think from the perspective of the left that having all of those candidates

come out for free community college, Medicare for all, et cetera, et cetera, I actually think that puts them in a really difficult position when Democrats do have governing power to make good on those promises. And it might not be the next presidential administration, but down the road, that Overton window has shifted for good. But I think the phenomenon you're describing of the Democratic Party moving to the left since 2016 actually makes the opposite case, which is that working in primaries is effective.

Primaries over generals. Right. To me, it was the Bernie Sanders campaign. It was that and then the second Bernie Sanders campaign. That is what convinced people like Kamala Harris. I don't think Kamala gave a rip about Jill Stein when she decided to endorse Medicare for All. I think Kamala was trying to win the Democratic primary voters who attached the idea of Medicare for All to the idea that you're a progressive champion. And so that's why, like you said, basically all of them except Biden were pro-Medicare for All. And I don't think that was Jill Stein. I think that was Bernie Sanders.

I guess the way I think of it, and you would know this better than I do, I just think of it as the Jill Stein losing Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin in ways that actually really could be tied back to people voting for Jill Stein, who by the way may not have voted for Hillary Clinton either way. But if they say all of those Jill Stein voters, they go for Hillary Clinton, blah, blah, blah. Well, I just feel like that has loomed so largely in the Democratic establishment's imagination that it's almost like inextricable from the Bernie thing that like so many people did end up voting for Bernie for Jill Stein because um not and Bernie told them not to do this but because they were big Bernie supporters and they didn't believe anything either Trump or Hillary were selling um that just like looms so largely in the DNC um imagination that it it's

part of what freaked them out and but part of freaked candidates out. But I say, I definitely see what you're saying there. But I think in the end though, it was actually a really tiny number. And if you can go back and look at those CNN numbers and you also had a storm that doesn't exist today. And that storm being Hillary Clinton being massively disliked by so many, like so many Democratic primary voters and Democratic voters held their nose to vote for her in the general. And then small numbers, 10, 30, and 50,000 in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan-ish, voted for Jill Stein, couldn't go forward. But also in Wisconsin, you had a huge drop off of people just not voting, which, and you know, all of that is that's on, that's on the democratic party and that's on, and that's on

Hillary Clinton. But the other elements of the storm that, uh, existed then that don't exist now is that Trump was, uh, a potential at that point rather than a reality. Like, and, and people didn't think that he was actually going to win. Yeah, that's true. Polls had him down, you know, massively. Polling units across the board giving him a, mine over at the Huffington Post, gave him like a 95% chance of losing the election. And so people, I think, weren't taking him as seriously and I bet a bunch of those voters in Pennsylvania,

Wisconsin, and Michigan who voted for Stein afterwards were like, oops, I thought I was just casting a little protest vote. I didn't actually want. So I think some of them were like, I think some were like, I think Trump and Clinton are both awful. And I don't care that, that I gave up my opportunity to vote against Trump by voting for Stein. I don't care. Like, there's lots of those. But I think, I bet there are a bunch who afterwards were like, oof, if I could do it over again, knowing that Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania were going to be close, like they thought those were blue states, blue wall was secure,

that they would go actually, they would go back and vote for Hillary. And you saw that because the Green Party was basically non-existent in 2020. Yeah, I was just going to say. And so will having somebody as charismatic and impressive and popular as Cornel West kind of change that calculation? Maybe. But I think most people who are going to support West at this point were not going to vote for Biden anyway. They were just going to not vote. Yeah, although I think that's going to vote for Biden anyway. They were just going to not vote. So. Yeah. Although I think that's going to really depend. I mean. But not, but most is, most is a lot, but if it moves

10,000 votes and the election is decided by 10,000 or a thousand or whatever. So yeah, you're right. Like even, even if 90% of West voters wouldn't have voted, but the other 10% would have voted for Biden or whoever the nominee ends up being if he doesn't make it, then that could swing a close election. And if West hits the road hard on Biden's sort of fumbling student loan debt plan going in one direction or the other and kicking it to Supreme Court in a way that was predictably going to put people in that crunch,

if he hits the road hard on other like populist priorities that Biden hasn't been great on, that young people in particular are interested in, I could see some interesting numbers. But again, it all does depend. All right. And for people who are new to politics and aren't following this, like why does Europe get to do this, but we don't? You know, Europe and other countries have these parliamentary systems where everybody votes for who they like. If you're a Green, you're a liberal Democrat, you're a communist, you're a democratic socialist, you're a Christian Democrat,

you know, nationalist, whatever. And then they all get to the parliament and they form coalitions and then whatever coalition can get a majority, then they elect a prime minister. It's like how AOC said in Europe, I wouldn't be in the same party as Nancy Pelosi. Right, yeah, and they wouldn't be. There'd be three different, but then they all get behind the same prime minister. So it's like, careful what you wish for. It's not like you're necessarily going to get that much more of a pure system.

But over here, it's called first past the post. And so Bill Clinton had 43%. And then, you know, George H.W. Bush, like whatever, low 40s, high 30s. And then Ross Perot with 19. That 43% wins. Yeah. And so that's just the system we have. People often say, well, what about the Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party?

They're a third party and they won. Except no, they were not actually a third party. There were two major parties, the Whigs and the Democrats. Democrats in that election split into two, a super pro-slavery party and a just kind of pro-slavery party. And the Whigs disappeared, evaporated. Lincoln was a partisan Whig his entire career and clung to the Whig party as a partisan until the very bitter end. And so it was completely obvious that it collapsed. And then a bunch of parties tried to come up and replace the Whigs.

And the Republican Party is the one that managed to do that. You also had a fourth party, the Constitution Party, which was your classic, like, moderate senators who were just saying, let's not talk about slavery. Let's just, can we all please just not? And I think they won Tennessee or something, maybe, around the, people can look that up. That was the fourth party. But they, you know, you had all these other ones that were trying to compete, but the Republicans were a major party immediately,

basically. This concludes today's edition of Ryan Grimm rambling about American history. I always learn, Ryan. There you go. I always learn. Someone's going to clip that and juxtapose it with another clip and I know what you're going to do. Don't do it. Which one? You know which one. Oh, that one. I really didn't know. That was Soviet history though. Yeah, but it also, we don't need to get into that. That's the last thing we need to do right now. Although that clip was cut unfairly and I saw it in a YouTube video recently once again. Again, it fed it to you or something? Yes. Outrageous. We'll wrap on that note. But we'll also obviously continue to follow the Cornel West candidacy very closely and actually the Green Party nomination, which as Ryan says, he's really going to have to fight for it. It's an interesting race. So we'll keep you posted on

any developments in the Green Party. So new Axios report detailing something that's kind of key to me, at least in terms of the RFK Jr. campaign. Let's put this up on the screen. So apparently his campaign merch is not union made, nor is it U.S. made. Let me read you a little bit of this. They say that his team is bucking Democratic Party tradition by selling campaign merchandise not made in America, not made by union leader, union labor. They also say the move is out of step with Kennedy's stated commitment to labor unions and along with his anti-vaccination views could complicate his long shot primary challenge of President Biden for generations. A rule for Democratic campaigns has been that as many materials as possible, shirts, stickers, placards, lawn signs, even campaign buses be made by union shops in America as a sign of the party's commitment to labor unions and the working class.

It appears that the t-shirts have a label that says assembled in Honduras. So this is kind of common on the Republican side. They don't typically use union shops. They don't particularly pay attention, even with the Trump campaign that talked a lot about Made in America, even their stuff was made overseas. But for a Democrat, this is really a no-go. And even putting the convention of it aside, we have merch. We went out of our way to make sure that it was consistent with our values of being Made in America and being union-made. That can be difficult. Although in the campaign space, there are all kinds of vendors who do this work. So it just shows me, like, if you're really committed to unions, number one, you need to have a plan about that, which we asked him about and he didn't have a lot to say about.

But number two, like, this is a basic gimme. He's got to prompt his staff in order to fix this. My theory most likely is that they were somebody inexperienced or whatever. They just set up merch and they didn't, they didn't think all that much about it. But yeah, as you said, if you care, which we cared a lot, and I think people should know, it's a pain in the ass.

And this is not a knock. I'm not saying you still shouldn't do it, but it's cheaper and easier for a reason to make stuff in China. We could make tons more money off of our merchandise if we were willing to do that, and it would be vastly cheaper, easier shipping and all of that to you. But because we believe in made in America and a union made, well, we have had to go in a different direction. And that's what a lot of different

Democratic candidates have done before. I've seen some Republican candidates do it as well. And I think that's the right thing to do. You know, just because economy of scale is easier to get something made in China or Honduras or whatever, that doesn't mean that's what you should do. So, again, my theory on this is just that they were like go with the easiest option. Yeah. Or just spin up. But this is an opportunity where do the work, man. Like if you think that if you do care, then you should change it.

Yeah. I mean, come on, dude. You're a Kennedy. You've been invested in democratic politics your entire life. Your campaign manager is Dennis Kucinich. Oh, that's a good point. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, that's a very good point. Who has to know about these things as well. And, you know, we, like, had to put in a lot of effort to get our stuff made union because, you know, unions have

been decimated and there just aren't that many shops that are union and American made at this point. But in the campaign world, there's a whole slew of them. You know, on the Democratic side, there's tons of them. It's not hard, you know,'s not hard to find. It's not hard to figure out. I guess the next test will be, how do they respond to this? Do they care? Do they fix it? Do they address it? Do they apologize? Where do they go from here? Because he has tried to make a point of saying he stands with labor, even though, again, on the substance, there hasn't been a plan laid out of how he would increase union participation. Just to give you one more sense of, you know, how this is significant, how this plays within the Democratic Party, they asked Ray Buckley, who's the chair of the Democratic Party in New Hampshire,

and New Hampshire key, obviously, because the whole rift with Biden is not going to be on the ballot there, but it's still going to be an early state. RFK Jr. has an actual chance to win that state. So this is really key. So the chair of the Democratic Party in New Hampshire says it's politics 101. I would hope that Kennedy would put human rights above his political aspirations. That's the nicest way I can say that. So we'll see how they respond and if they make this right. Yeah, I'm curious what his response should be, because I mean, there's no, you can't justify this. You can't be making stuff in Honduras, especially whenever you're talking about made in America. You can't be making stuff in Honduras.

Especially whenever you're talking about made in America. I mean, we asked him also about unions. He didn't have some specifics on the plan, if I recall, or on the PRO Act, but he did say he was very supportive of the union way of life. Obviously, his own father had a complicated history, I guess is the nicest way of saying it, whatever came to unions.

Some storied battles. JFK was a very pro-union president. So, you know, in terms of carrying on the Kennedy legacy, and then Ted Kennedy, of course, was a longtime friend of the unions in the actual U.S. Senate. So I think, you know, given what you said for Kennedy's electoral policies, this is one of those that you absolutely should know about. Yeah. You got to walk the walk. Right. You have to. We already got a president who claims to be pro-union and is mixed on the topic, let's just say. So anyway, we'll see where it goes from here.

All right. We'll see you guys later. What is the best way to educate our children? When that question arises, the discussion eventually turns to the issue of school choice. Still support for National School Choice Week, advocating for alternative options to public schools such as charter and magnet schools. The use of public money to fund private schools has had its fair share of controversy. Supporters say vouchers help students succeed, but opponents say they siphon away crucial public school resources. A battle is raging on in America's classrooms right now, one that seemingly pivots around giving parents the opportunity to choose between public and private education for their kids. But is there also more to this issue than what meets the eye?

Bulwark of the American form of government is education, for true democracy can exist only among a people prepared from childhood for the responsibilities of citizenship. America's public education system, since its inception in the 19th century, has been a cornerstone of the American dream and an integral part of the country's cultural fabric. Seen as the great equalizer, it offered a promise of opportunity and upward mobility to all, regardless of economic or social standing. But fast forward to today, the future of education seems to be headed in a vastly different direction. A historic night at the Statehouse Monday with both House and Senate lawmakers

passing a bill to send taxpayer money to some Iowans to pay for private school tuition. Today, just about an hour ago, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1. The education bill relates to school choice and expanding private school vouchers. Parents could get thousands of dollars back for sending their kids to a private school. The bill giving parents public dollars for private school tuition. The bill would give scholarship money to families who qualify and choose to take their children out of the public school.

That's right. Instead of directly funding the public school system, school choice or school voucher programs would allocate those public taxpayer dollars to help parents fund their children's private school tuition should they choose not to attend public school. The first program of its kind was implemented back in 1990, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Fast forward to 2023, 15 states have voucher programs to help parents pay for private school, and such programs have only exploded exponentially in recent months. Just this year, 14 states have passed bills establishing school choice programs or expanding existing ones,

and lawmakers in 42 states have introduced bills to establish similar programs. Proponents of such programs, like Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who earlier this year okayed allocating taxpayer money to fund private schools in her state, say that it will give parents more choice and improve educational outcomes by fostering competition between public and private schools. It's all about options. It's competition. It's a good thing. Now the question is, do you buy it? I mean, choice, competition, those are all universal ideals shared by almost everybody. But to achieve it by diverting taxpayer dollars from public to private schools, I think it's worthwhile for us to take a peek under the hood. Recently, I spoke with Joshua

Cowan, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who has studied school choice for nearly two decades to help us understand what the data is telling us. The one unambiguous thing that seems to come from all the pro-voucher findings is that parents who use vouchers appear to be happier with their kid's education. Happy parents, that is a good thing, right? Well, maybe. So vouchers, about three quarters of new voucher users

are actually already in private school in the first place. The new part just comes from the source of the funding, the government, instead of the parent. According to data from the National Coalition for Public Education, in Arizona, 80% of voucher applicants are from children who have never attended a public school. In New Hampshire, 89% have never attended a public school. In Wisconsin, 75% have never attended a public school. Why is that? Well, the truth is, even if some parents wanted to use a voucher, the reality is, unlike public schools, private schools can decline to admit children for any reason that's not considered a protected characteristic. So yeah, you can be

rejected simply for being poor. So in terms of opportunity, it seems to me like the group that benefits the most from school choice programs are parents of existing private school students who now get to enjoy a public subsidy for their children's private school tuition. Of course, parents are more satisfied when something they were footing the bill themselves for up until last year, all of a sudden the government comes and now gives them money for it. That's not that surprising. So the real question then just goes back to, are they delivering what the promise is, which is that the academics are better. Unfortunately, study after study confirms

that new students using vouchers to attend private schools leads to lower test scores and worse educational outcomes. How much worse? Some studies show that voucher impacts on a student's educational outcome are equivalent to or sometimes even worse than the learning loss caused by natural disasters and even the COVID-19 pandemic. For that smaller percentage, that quarter or 30 percent or so who kids who do transfer from public to private, their test scores tend to be catastrophic. And the reason

for that is that for the most part, these voucher programs prop up what I would call subprime private schools or schools that are financially distressed or struggling. They might close anyway. Often many do. You're not talking about like this pathway to elite private school education. Cowan cites Wisconsin as an example, as 41 percent of voucher schools there have closed since the program's inception in 1990. And that includes the large number of pop-up schools opening just to cash in on the new voucher payout. For those pop-up schools, average survival time is just four years before their doors close for good. But what about competition? It is true that we've seen small and really really tiny but real test score improvements in the public school side when these voucher programs expand. And the reason for that is that you find those positive effects mostly concentrated in low

income communities, communities of color, vulnerable communities, generally speaking, historically marginalized communities. And what's happening is basically when you pit these vulnerable communities against each other to compete for scarce dollars, you do see some slight uptick in scores. That sounds awfully close to an educational Hunger Games type situation, if I can editorialize a little bit. Poor kids battling it out in public schools, test scores falling off a cliff for those children who transferred with a voucher to a subprime private school, and the children who are already in elite private schools are sounding like they're even better off.

Debates really settled about whether these things do or don't help kids who use them. I mean, that's over. We just don't get evidence like that in the research community that's that consistent and that straightforward very often. Usually it's on the one hand or on the other hand. That's not what vouchers are. It's pretty bad stuff. So then it comes down to what's the idea. What is the idea here?

Well, to fully understand the true motivations behind the push for school choice, we have to go back nearly three quarters of a century to 1954, Brown versus Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. And almost immediately thereafter, attacks against the public school system began to germinate among certain elite circles. The state of schooling, elementary, secondary, higher schooling in the United States is deplorable. This man is famed economist Milton Friedman.

Yes, the same Milton Friedman who in 1970 proclaimed in the New York Times that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. The god of shareholder primacy, Friedman penned the gospel on private education a decade and a half earlier in 1955, perhaps not coincidentally, just a few months after the Brown v. Board ruling, in an essay called The Role of Government in Education, in which he advocated for governments to use school vouchers as a means to stimulate competition in the education system. Friedman's paper was published in 1955. That was just a few months after Brown versus Board of Education. The reason that's relevant today is Friedman's idea was very quickly latched onto by segregationists, particularly in

Virginia and in Texas, as kind of what they saw as something of a race-neutral way to avoid the integration orders that came out of Brown v. Sports. And that is the cold hard truth. School choice is really nothing more than a coded term used by wealthy, influential individuals and advocacy groups to maintain a segregated education system that disproportionately benefits the affluent and leaves less privileged populations at a disadvantage. It is designed as a mechanism that in effect gives choice to private schools rather than to the parents. If you close all the public schools in your area and you pop up two or three charter schools,

what is the choice? You have no choice. Maggie Perkins is a former teacher who taught for nearly a decade at both public and private institutions. It's an us-first-them situation, and this is my sense of it as a teacher's perspective, that as other groups become more included and have more access and more opportunity is there for them, that their children are getting things taken away from them. It is more about personal values and in a way, resegregation of schools. And so I think it's more based out of fear and less about let's take our money and go spend it on a quality education. I don't think it's about quality. Just the idea of resegregating education at a state or federal level might be kind of a hard sell nowadays. So it is 100% by design that school choice advocacy groups

market such programs as, quote, opportunity scholarships or lifeline scholarships. Legacy publications like the Wall Street Journal recently even framed opposition to school choice as the killing of scholarships for poor students in failing schools. So what should we do? What can we do? Because the honest truth is that I sympathize with legitimate critiques of the public school system in America. No doubt the system is in need of serious reform. I mean, we need to address that. We need to make it easier for kids with special needs to learn in public schools. We need to make it easier for kids who are struggling with mental health to go to public school and learn there. We need to invest in the teacher workforce, right? You see bills like mine and my governor here in Minnesota are putting a lot of money behind universal free

meals because there's strong evidence that hungry kids at school don't learn as well. Like those are ways to improve learning in the public school community. Many of those issues we've explored right here on this channel together. Administrative bloat diverting critical resources away from classrooms, a manufactured teacher shortage crisis, and other systemic inequalities. They all need to be taken very, very seriously. But ultimately, I have to say this, the solution or the debate over education

is fundamentally philosophical, which is to say, do we as a nation believe in a quality public education system that opens its doors to everyone regardless of their class, creed, color, and we work together to reform that institution? Or do we believe that quality education is something of a privilege, one in which public taxpayer money is turned over to private entities that don't necessarily exist to improve educational outcomes, but rather act as

gatekeepers, deciding which act as gatekeepers deciding which children should have access to which type of school. That is all for me this time. What do you think about school choice? Sound off in the comment section below. If you've been enjoying these Beyond the Headlines segments, I would highly encourage you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. Link will be in the description below. Really appreciate that. And as always, keep on tuning in to Breaking Points, and thank you so much for your time today.

New renderings of the proposed new Titan Stadium were released today. Future home of the Buffalo Bills. $2.1 billion price tax. Taxpayer dollars towards stadiums. Most people here in the Valley are against using any public money to help fund the proposed stadium. The stadium doesn't seem like it's going to fall down. This is Charles Ebbets. By 1909, he had become the sole owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers,

and he wanted to give them a new, modern home. Not like the wooden parks they had been playing in because sometimes those burned down, he decided to build a steel stadium. Ebbets took $750,000 of his own money and paid for this ballpark to be built, Ebbets Field. In 1912, they broke ground, and this stadium by Prospect Park would be the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now in 1951, the commissioner of baseball, this guy Ford Frick, basically said, hey, you know, we bring in all this money for these cities, we create jobs, we're doing these cities a favor by existing,

they should reciprocate. This is when the cost of building these stadiums really started shifting from the sports franchise to the city that hosts the franchise. So the Dodgers had been playing at Ebbets Field since 1913, and by the 1950s Walter O'Malley was the owner of the team. By this point the Dodgers were one of the most profitable teams in baseball. O'Malley wanted to build a new stadium at the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, and he began threatening to move to LA if the city didn't acquiesce. Now it's worth noting that moving cities wasn't really a thing at the time. Until 1953, no major

league baseball team had moved. The first were the Boston Braves in 1953, who had wanted to leave Boston because they were having trouble building a fan base and couldn't fill their stadium. Plus, Milwaukee gave them a stadium using public money. In 54, the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles. In 55, the Philly Athletics became the Kansas City Athletics. But officials were unmoved by the Dodgers' threats. As the mayor said, we don't intend to allow ourselves to be blackjacked into helping either the Dodgers As the mayor said, One congressman said, Plus, the city had already spent $110,000 on studying the proposed site of the new stadium. And a new stadium probably would have meant extensive use of eminent domain to clear the space. This is exactly what happened 50 years later when they started working on the Barclays Center, which is exactly where they had proposed putting a field for the Dodgers.

The new Dodgers Stadium in LA would also negatively impact residents. And that's where they've been since 1958. But this would mark a new era where professional sports teams would threaten to pull out of cities unless they got a new stadium, which coincides with a new era of public funding for private stadiums. Let's take the NFL as an example. Out of 32 teams, 27 used stadiums that were subsidized by taxpayers. These five teams play in stadiums that were privately funded, but the rest had help from the public. And for the 2026 season, the Titans and the Bills are getting new stadiums entirely, both with the aid of public financing.

In the case of the Bills, people fear that they might move to San Diego if they weren't given a new stadium. And San Diego is in need of a team because the Chargers moved from San Diego to L.A. weren't given a new stadium. And San Diego is in need of a team, because the Charters moved from San Diego to LA because they got a new stadium there. But the Bills got their stadium, and New York citizens are going to contribute $1 billion to it. The new Titans stadium is projected to cost $1.2 billion for taxpayers.

Psychotically, stadiums are considered to have hit middle age at about 20 years old. So if teams aren't working on acquiring whole new stadiums, they're working on $100 million plus repairs and upgrades. Governor Tony Evers would allocate $290 million from the state's surplus towards upgrades to American Family Field in exchange for the Milwaukee Brewers extending their lease at the stadium through 2043. This is when all the teams moved into their stadiums.

And these teams are all set to get these expensive renovations and repairs, some of which will be supported by taxpayers. The Saints actually received $27 million in pandemic aid for their recent renovations. But this is all in service to attracting or keeping a team. This is also a thing in lower levels of sports. The early 2000s in New Jersey saw a bunch of minor league baseball stadiums go up. One was Campbell's Field in Camden. It cost taxpayers $18 million.

The team that played there was the River Sharks. The River Sharks and Campbell's Field were supposed to revitalize the impoverished city by being the centerpiece of an economic development plan along the edge of the Delaware River. Actually, economic development is always the justification for publicly funding these stadiums. The idea being that if teams are here, as the former commissioner of baseball asserted, the local economy gets a boost. But things like naming rights, concessions, ticket sales, all the things that really generate money, there's not really any profit sharing between the team and the host city. In exchange for naming the stadium where the Panthers play Bank of America Stadium, Bank of America is paying the Panthers $140 million. But the state

doesn't get any of that. Or take concessions. Stadiums make as much as $2 million per game on concessions. But none of that goes to the city. So the economic boost comes from construction of the stadium, hotel stays, traffic driven to the area. But in reality, decades of academic studies consistently find no discernible positive relationship between sports facilities and local economic development, income growth, or job creation. So it's very unlikely that a sports team is going to boost your local economy. Especially if you've made an investment in a team and they decide to leave anyway. In 1995, St. Louis put $280 million

into a stadium for the Rams. And when the Rams decided to move to LA, taxpayers still owed more than $100 million in debt on the bonds used to finance the Edward Jones Dome, where the Rams played. There are several examples of taxpayers having to pay for stadiums after the team has stopped using them. The River Sharks, who played at Campbell's Field in Camden, moved to Connecticut.

So taxpayers were then on the hook for $1 million to tear the stadium down. The old Giant Stadium, demolished to make way for new Meadowland Stadium, left New Jersey with a debt of $110 million. Seattle's King County had debt over $80 million for the Kingdome, which was raised in 2000. And here's the other thing. Voters don't want to pay for your dumb stadium. Sometimes they do, in the case of the Broncos Stadium, where 51% of voters approved the stadium proposals, but sometimes they don't. San Diego voters overwhelmingly defeated a new downtown stadium plan for the San Diego Chargers. Ballot Measure C in San Diego asked voters whether they wanted to effectively increase the city's hotel room tax rate from 12.5% to 16.5%, with the proceeds

helping fund a new $1.8 billion stadium and convention center. They did not, and so the Chargers moved to LA. But often, they aren't given a say at all. For the new Bills and Titans stadiums, voters weren't consulted. However, an after-the-fact poll of New York state voters found that they opposed the Bills' deal by a whopping margin of 63% to 24%, with opposition consistent across both parties and all parts of the state. A poll by a Nashville community group of residents of the neighborhood where a new Titan Stadium would be built found 90 percent opposed to taxpayer funding of the project. So if your city is considering paying for a new stadium, it likely won't be the economic

windfall they're telling you it will be. Now, maybe that doesn't matter to you. You would vote for the stadium anyway. Either way, the citizenry should probably be allowed to have a say. And regardless of how badly you want that stadium, it should be understood that no major sports team needs subsidies. You're not voting on whether you want to keep a team or improve a stadium. You're voting on whether or not to acquiesce to the whims of an extremely wealthy team owner. And that will do it for me. If you found this video interesting, make sure you are subscribed to Breaking Points, of course. You can also check out my YouTube channel where I talk about media and politics and other interesting things. Link in description. Liking and sharing always helps. Please do that. Thank you to Breaking

Points. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one. This is an iHeart podcast.