Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/28/23: Education Dept. Investigating Harvard Admissions, Mr. Beast Vs Food Monopoly w/ Matt Stoller, Fired Rail Worker w/ Max Alvarez, Saagar At UFO Hearing w/ Jeremy Corbell, James Li On The Evils of Blackrock

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

This week we discuss the Education Department opening up a Civil Rights inquiry into Harvard Admissions favoring the rich, Matt Stoller takes a look at popular YouTuber Mr. Beast going up against the Food Monopolies, Max Alvarez interviews a fired rail worker, Saagar attends the UFO hearing in congress and speaks to UFO expert Jeremy Corbell, and James Li takes a look at the evil company Blackrock.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.

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to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know. Some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters.

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah 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. More scrutiny coming for Harvard University's admissions policy. Let's go and put this up on the screen for The New York Times. The headline here is Education Department Opens Civil Rights Inquiry into Harvard's Legacy Admissions. An inquiry into admissions preference for family of alumni and donors began after the Supreme Court's decision last month limiting affirmative action. So the TLDR here is basically, listen, you all know what happened in the Supreme Court

decision that said no more affirmative action, which considers race as a class. You can consider it in individual circumstances. Harvard was part of what led to that case getting the Supreme Court and specifically their treatment of Asians in their admissions process. And so now in the wake of that, the education department is saying, okay, well, if we're ruling out affirmative action, what about the incredible preferences that are given to the wealthy and specifically through the legacy admissions process? I actually did a whole monologue on this earlier this week because there's new research about exactly how much this matters in terms of the children of the very wealthy, not even the 1%, like the 0.1%, what a massive boost they get into admissions, into top schools like Harvard and the other Ivies through the legacy process. It gave them something

like an eight times advantage over your average student. And with regard to Harvard, they have some specific numbers here, which are pretty wild. So they say Harvard gives preference to applicants who are recruited athletes, legacies, and that just, you know, so you know you are the child of someone who also went to Harvard, relatives of donors, and children of faculty and staff. As a group, they make up less than 5% of applicants, but around 30% of those who are admitted each year. And there is, you know, because wealth has been concentrated among white people in this country for a long time, that means about 67.8% of these applicants who are admitted are white, according to court papers. So you've got a wealth privilege here that also translates into disproportionate number of white people. Yeah, it's absolutely wild. So for applicants

with legacy status at schools where they are legacies, you have a 37% admissions rate for elite colleges. When they apply to a similar school where they're not a legacy, the application is 11% successful. So you have almost a four out of 10 chance of actually getting in if you're a legacy and only one out of 10 if you aren't. Now for non-legacy applicants, the acceptance rate at the same school is 9.5%. So you can see there's relative parity for the person who's applying to the similar school when they don't have legacy status, but it's just astronomical, really, whenever it comes to the actual legacy ones for elite colleges. And then also, as you were alluding to, I would actually point more at this about the distribution of parental income for legacy admissions. Some 29% are in the top 1% of household, 29% of legacy applicants. The 36%

are in the 95th to the 99th percent. And we're not talking here just about income. We're talking about wealth. And so to be in the top one percent or the top five percent or whatever of wealth in this country is a ton of that is millions of dollars of net worth. So the inquiry is specifically going to look into allegations by three different liberal groups that Harvard's legacy admissions process discriminates against black, Hispanic and Asian applicants in favor of white and wealthy students who are less qualified. So that's where the race numbers come into play here, as they're saying, listen, we're being discriminated against. This is basically and I think this is accurate.

Legacy admissions are basically affirmative action for rich white people. So that's what the education department is looking into. They go on to say in this article that their Office of Civil Rights has powerful enforcement authority that could eventually lead to a settlement with Harvard or trigger a lengthy legal battle like the one that led to the Supreme Court's decision to severely limit race-conscious admissions last month, reversing a decades-long approach that had increased chances for black students and those from other minority groups. So that could be the end case here. You could end up with this one in front of the Supreme Court as well. And my recollection is one of the judges, it might have been Gorsuch, specifically wrote about how, about legacy

admissions, how it could potentially also be indefensible. So you may have, you know, an interesting split on this one at the Supreme Court if it ultimately ended up there. But I think this would be a major step in the right direction. Nuke it. This is what we're doing. We need real meritocracy. That's the whole goal of the affirmative action decision. That's great. Get rid of it. There's no reason you shouldn't. Another reason why legacies is complete BS is that, you know, the elite status these colleges have obtained has really only happened, let's say, in the last 50 years or so. So if your grandfather was just lucky enough to be like a relatively wealthy, like Boston businessman, like why should your grandson be allowed to get into based on that

person's code? It makes no sense. Or, you know, if you were one of these like wealthy California families that went to the original Stanford School of Mines, Stanford wasn't Stanford like back then. Yeah. Then you're in a fourth generation or something like that. Again, you're literally writing on geographical luck of where your great grandfather happened to be. So look, I don't believe in that. I don't think America's founded that on at all. It's effectively is like an American caste system. And that's what my family and many others, you know, wanted to escape by coming to the West. So I think it's important to get as far away from that as possible. Yeah, and it's important to note, too, one of the interesting results that came out of the study

that we covered earlier this week is that it doesn't actually make that much of a difference whether you go to one of the Ivy Leagues or the other of the 12 elite private schools that they studied in that particular research. It doesn't make a huge difference income-wise. It makes a huge difference in terms of whether you make it into these super elite institutions. That's where the big difference

shows up. And so, yeah, it really matters whether we like it or not, who gets into these schools. And the fact that you have the, you know, children of the elite who are given a huge leg up in terms of admissions, I mean, that's part of what makes it so that you do increasingly have this rigid class-based society where now we're in a situation where it's actually easier to ascend your, you know, whatever class status you were born with in a lot of European countries than it is here. I mean, it really is a direct attack on the American dream, I would say. I mean, even looking here, people have talked a lot about this, specifically whenever it comes to like the Supreme Court. I mean, you know, if you have talked a lot about this, specifically whenever it comes to the Supreme Court.

I mean, if you look at the current makeup, the current makeup of the Supreme Court leads almost entirely to the Ivy League. They even say that even the road to a Supreme Court clerkship starts at just three Ivy League colleges, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. I personally know people going through this process. If you think admission to Harvard is crazy, getting a clerkship is the most wild process I have ever heard of in terms of the machinations, the crap you have to go through. I mean, it definitely pays off, don't get me wrong. You get a big fat bonus whenever you eventually leave your clerkship from a nice law firm. But again, it starts so far back, like when you're a 22 year old and there's just no denying that like when you're that young, you ain't getting there on merit. You're getting there based on what your parents are. Who they know, who you know.

Who you know. Yeah, exactly. And it all comes to the dinners. And even when you get there, like you've got to have some serious cash because you have to be attending and, you know, networking and all of these things. For every Barack Obama who was the Harvard Law Review president or whatever, there are plenty of rich kids who are all around you who end up into these positions of power. So anyway, destroying it or at least making that more equitable is incredibly, incredibly important and not equitable just in the DEI way that they use that term. All right. See you guys later. his new snack food business line. And more broadly, today I'll be talking about why chocolate bars are kind of boring and what Monopoly has to do with it.

Last month, a fierce new competitor, Mars and Hershey's, went on a popular YouTube channel and attacked the chocolate duopoly for bullying rivals and buying up shelf space. Here's what the guy said. And like no one has been able to get in there. It's like Hershey's, Mars, Lent, and Ferraro. And it's just, it's pretty crazy.

But most of it, it's just Hershey's and Mars. They do like 75% of chocolate revenue in America. And so it's kind of like monopolistic almost. Like you can't, if you have a successful chocolate company, they'll just buy you or just like bully you so you don't get shell space. And so these guys like just own all the chocolate space and they don't innovate.

Like a Hershey's bar to me just tastes like yeah it tastes very processed and i don't i don't really like it um at all to be honest yeah i mean um and so it's so fascinating to me like why why are there not new innovative cool like you know snack products coming out more often it's because these guys just have all the shell space and they have no need to innovate. You're just gonna buy what's there and no one's really threatening them. So to me, it's fun to like put pressure on them and try to get as much shelf space as possible and try to figure out what they're doing, but better.

It's like the only thing in my life outside of YouTube that I've like gotten hooked on and like on that same high again, working on YouTube. That was James Steven Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast, the most popular YouTube influencer in America. Mr. Beast Empire, and that's increasingly what it is, rivals Amazon Prime in terms of reach. He has more than 160 million subscribers on his main YouTube channel and 270 million across all of them. His video recreation of the popular TV

show Squid Game, for example, has 456 million views. Mr. Beast is a 25-year-old college dropout who's simply obsessed with business strategy. His goal isn't just to be famous, but to compete aggressively in every realm that he can to make goods and services that please the public. He's been obsessed with commerce since he was 13 and started to crack the YouTube algorithm. Now, one result of his obsession and talent is that his videos regularly exceed top-grossing movies and TV shows in terms of reach. He uses his fame strategically, asking random pedestrians whether they subscribe to his various social media channels, many do, and incorporating this feedback into his videos. Over the last few years, Mr. Beast has branched out into a whole bunch of other products, doing experiments such as opening hundreds of Mr. Beast burger restaurants using ghost kitchens two years ago. While this wasn't a massive success, they are

still available in some areas, and they were a test case for his fans' interest in food products off of the YouTube channel. A year and a half ago, Mr. Beast created a line of snack foods called Feastables, headlined by organic chocolate bars, with fun, lighthearted marketing. Now, as an aside, I know a lot of people hate marketing, just realize that those of us who do hate marketing are unusual weirdos. This is actually the kind of thing that most people like. Which is better, my chocolate bar or the one that costs 100 times more? Definitely yours. Oh, really? It's second.

Mr. Beast's expansion into chocolate led him straight into the maw of dominant snack food companies, whose purchase of shelf space with giant retailers keep firms like his excluded from the market. The power of exclusive arrangements is something I've talked a lot about. And it's not a function of the market. It's a function of law. Remember earlier, Mr. Beast cited two problems with getting into chocolate as a small rival. Acquisitions by dominant firms, Hershey's and Mars will just buy you out, and then exclusion of rivals via the purchase of shelf space. They own all the

shelf space. Now, let's talk about shelf space, which is really valuable. So in 2005, Procter & Gamble bought Gillette for $57 billion. It's a similar line of business. They sell in retail outlets, razor blades and things like that. It's not that different from chocolate. One analyst said, and here's a quote, that shelf space is diamond-encrusted gold. So it's exposure to the consumer, and everyone wants exposure to the consumer. And indeed, monopolizing shelf space doesn't just happen in razor blades and chocolate. It is actually pervasive across the economy.

The Department of Justice Antitrust Division is suing Google, for example, for buying up what is the equivalent of shelf space in search, which is the default to your, to browsers on your phone. The Federal Trade Commission got involved in a series of mergers in the razor blade space, which were also all about shelf space. That had to do with Harry's. Meat monopolies, business software firms, soft drinks, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and movie, TV streaming, they're all actually about power in distribution. For example, the Kroger-Albertson supermarket merger

is about shelf space. It's about consolidating shelf space. Now, controlling shelf space, in particular bribery to control shelf space, and that's what Mars and Hershey's are engaged in, although they wouldn't call it bribery exactly, that's the key to creating monopolies. And there's a lot of research on this now. We eat unhealthy food because of this shelf space monopolies. We are charged too much for medicine because of these shelf space monopolies. We get paid less than we should because of these kinds of shelf space driven monopolies. And we have less credible information about our world because of these shelf space driven monopolies. And we have less credible information about our world because of these shelf space monopolies. Indeed, it's not too extreme to say that one of the core social problems in America, fostering everything from obesity to the dominance of big tech,

is control of shelf space, of what is put in front of us as a consumer and who controls that. So the collusive deal that Mr. Beast encountered between big suppliers and big retailers, well, it makes sense from the perspective of a big business. It's good for the dominant chocolate incumbents who get to box out rivals like Mr. Beast and a lot of other smaller entities. But it's also good for retail incumbents who get better prices from Hershey's and Mars than independent stores that compete with them. It's bad, however, for people like you and me, for everyone else.

Now here's the thing that's kind of astonishing about this situation and about Mr. Beast going on YouTube and saying exactly what he did. Agreements like this, the ones between Hershey Mars and retailers, are illegal. And they have been illegal since a law banning control of shelf space through these kickbacks called the Robinson-Patman Act was signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936. Now, at that time, the law was meant to stop the same kind of business behavior then being used by a different company called the A&P grocery giant, which was the original Walmart. In my newsletter at the bignewsletter.com, I cite this passage, which highlights a section

of the law that says middlemen can't pay or be paid to exclude rivals. The law is still on the books, and it would seem to indict all the games played by retailers. So why is Mr. Beast encountering exclusionary behavior? Well, enforcers stopped enforcing this law in the 1970s and 1980s as part of the reversal of the traditional American policy frame against monopolies. They also stopped enforcing anti-merger law, so that gets to the other thing that Mr. Beast was talking about. Now, why do they do this? Well,

one key argument for not enforcing this law was that, you know, the new technologies and then eventually the internet made fights over shelf space irrelevant, since you can sell things through mail order or through websites and get around retail bottlenecks. So, you know, there's plenty of competition, or so said the argument. That clearly, though, isn't true. After all, it's impossible to find someone with more expertise in the internet and internet marketing than Mr. Beast. And he's complaining about the shelf space bottleneck. There's good news. Today, there's a whole series of small business groups from the National Grocers Association, to the National Association of

Convenience Stores, to the National Beer Wholesalers Association. And these actually aren't just small businesses. They're small, medium, and even some large businesses, just not as big as Walmart or Amazon. These guys are actually lobbying for the enforcement of the Robinson-Patman Act and other rules against exclusionary practices. So here's an ad by one of these trade associations of smaller and medium-sized stores playing to try to influence policymakers to bring back enforcement of this law. This is the only place that you can buy fresh groceries for 20 or 30 miles. Independent grocers are the backbone of countless communities,

but big chains are using their market share to squeeze suppliers and box out competition. Americans face higher prices, less choice and access to fresh food. Existing antitrust laws have been ignored for a generation. It's time for a change. It's the reason all these laws exist. We just want our fair shot. Tell the FTC, protect American families, revive the Robinson-Patman Act. Another good sign is that the Federal Trade Commission, under 34-year-old Chair Lena Kahn and several other commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Becca Kelly Slaughter, they're actually trying to resurrect the Robinson-Patman Act. Now, Kahn is exquisitely aware of the problems that Mr. Beast

cites. In fact, in an article for Time Magazine that Kahn wrote 10 years ago when she was a young journalist, she described the candy oligopoly and how it uses control of, yes, shelf space to effectively make bringing any new candy into mainstream markets extremely difficult. Now, Mr. Beast will get into the market since his brand and distribution capacity is so powerful, but it's much harder than it should be for him. And if it's this hard for him, then imagine all the other innovators that are really good at making candy, but maybe not that great at making YouTube videos that are finding it impossible. Or, you know, don't consider it and then enjoy the endless sea of boring Hershey bars. Thanks for watching this big breakdown on the Breaking

Points channel. If you'd like to know more about big business and how our economy really works, you can sign up by going to the link in the description below and taking a look at my market power focused newsletter, Big. Thanks and have a good one. Hi, I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor-in-chief of the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People. And this is the art of class war on breaking points. On September 14th last year, right here on Breaking Points, just days before we were set to potentially see the first national rail shutdown in this country in 30 years, I interviewed Michael Paul Lindsay II, a locomotive engineer for Union Pacific. Paul is a military veteran who has worked for the past 17 years as a trained conductor

and then as an engineer based out of Pocatello, Idaho. After largely ignoring the long brewing crisis on the nation's freight rail system for months and even years, when corporate media finally started covering the national rail dispute that was playing out last year between the class one rail carriers and the 12 unions representing over 100,000 rail workers. Their coverage was predictably chock full of rail industry spokespeople, business class serving pundits, pearl clutching economists warning about the damage a railroad strike would do, and anti-union cranks of all stripes. As someone who had been interviewing countless railroad workers all year for the Real News and for my podcast Working People and even here on Breaking Points,

it was frankly maddening for me to see how difficult it was to initially get other outlets to talk to actual workers and hear their side of the story. But I also saw how much of an impact it made when a handful of brave rank-and-file workers, particularly those affiliated with the Crosscraft Solidarity Group Railroad Workers United, at great risk to themselves and their jobs, spoke out publicly about how Wall Street greed and corporate greed had destroyed the rail industry for the sake of record profits. They had run railroad workers into the ground, damaged our economy and a vital component of our supply chain, and endangered communities like East Palestine, Ohio. Paul was one of those workers. Through his popular TikTok channel, through interviews with

media outlets, and through op-eds written for industry publications like Railway Age, Paul has exposed, with a veteran railroader's insight and with a deep, clear love for the industry that he had devoted his life to, the destructive business and labor practices of Union Pacific and the other class one rail carriers. When we hear the term whistleblower, we tend to think of names like Daniel Ellsberg, Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, heroes who have risked their freedom and even their lives to expose government lies, abuses of power, and state secrets that the public has a right to know about.

But there are actually a range of federal statutes designed to protect those who blow the whistle on their employers as well, especially when those employers are breaking the law and or endangering their workers and the public. And frankly, any way you slice it, Paul is a whistleblower. And for his whistleblowing, after 17 years of dedicated service and good standing with the company, Paul was recently fired by Union Pacific. To talk about all of this and more, I'm honored to be joined on The Art of Class War once again

by Michael Paul Lindsay II. Paul, it's great to see you again, brother, although I wish more than anything that we were meeting under less despicable circumstances. And I just want to start by saying from all of us here at Breaking Points that we are sending all of our love and solidarity to you at this incredibly difficult time. Well, it's great to hear from you again, Max. I always enjoy doing segments with you. outlining the issues that need to be discussed for the sake of labor and for the country and for the businesses that rely on, you know, the services of the railroad.

You know, everyone that the consumers that rely on it. I appreciate you taking your time for this, Max. Right back at you, brother. And, you know, let's we got a lot to dig in here to here. And I know you've got a lot going on, so I don't want to keep you too long. So let's start by reflecting on your 17 years working on the railroads. Talk to us about why you started working on the rails and what that work was like, and then let's talk about what you and I have talked about on my podcast in previous segments, let's talk about how you have seen firsthand the industry change over your 17 years working for Union Pacific. As railroad executives and their Wall Street shareholders pushed these top-down, profit-maximizing policies to be implemented across the rail system, how did that change your work? And why did you feel compelled to start speaking out about this publicly? Let's see.

So the first part, what it was like initially starting out, why I started at the railroad. I always wanted to work for the railroad. I always loved the rail industry ever since I was a kid. And I loved trains. I started getting involved in learning about the industry and how it works from a very young age. It wasn't just liking trains themselves, but I wanted to see the industry expand and succeed. And, you know, as a kid looking back, seeing the merger movement growing up at the time and seeing all these paint schemes of railroads that were now merged into larger and larger and larger monopolies and not realizing at the time that I'd never see something like this again, and that it was major, it was historic, and it was going to affect my career going forward um but i i finally got my opportunity after i got back from deployment 2006 in the marine corps and hired on in california in the bay area and it was um yeah i was about the proudest moment

of my life and it took uh they the standards were very very high back then. They really tried to make sure that you were going to conduct yourself in a way that was safe because bottom line safety was really the biggest important factor because they knew they couldn't run a profitable railroad if it wasn't safe. And they had a hundred plus years of figuring that out, of chopping off people's arms and limbs and killing people over the years in the 1800s to finally create a safe environment. Well, so then you ask how I've seen the industry change. And with the Wall Street consolidation and the desire for more with less, there's been less emphasis on things that we would the aviation industry wouldn't dream of cutting because federal regulators would just come down like a ton of bricks on them. But something that we all started to notice is that, especially when it came to maintenance, if they had a train that was running out of town that was long, they keep increasing the length of these trains and it creates problems for a terminal. If you have multiple trains coming through a terminal, but by God, they've got to get their 14,000 foot monstrosity out of there and it's blocking every single main line in the terminal. Well, it doesn't matter that maybe there's some brake shoes that need to be replaced.

We can just send that on and kick it down the road to the next terminal. And then it gets to the next terminal and they've got their 14,000 foot train they need to build. And they're like, well, we can't do it here. Kick it on to the next terminal. And then, you know, cutting staff, cutting the numbers, the numbers of people doing the work so that even if they wanted to do it, there's not enough people there on hand because if they do not make their departure time numbers, then it's going to make their lives miserable. They're going to hear it on the conference call. I've seen a major stray away from caring about safety. And it almost seems like it's a calculated cost analysis.

Like they figure, well, if we have a toxic derailment that poisons a river, it's only going to cost this much. But if we manage to run 14,000 foot trains for three years leading up to it, we're still going to make profit even after paying out these people. They don't care. So. No, they clearly don't. I mean, like, and just like East Palestine is a perfect example, right? Like, I mean, I am begging folks, go to the Real News, go to my podcast. I have not only spoken with railroad workers about East Palestine, I have interviewed residents living in

and around East Palestine. They have interviewed residents living in and around East Palestine. They have been completely abandoned. They can't go home. They and their kids are continuously sick. They can't drink their water. They're not getting the help that they need from their local or federal governments. And they're sure as hell not getting the help that they need from Norfolk Southern. And yet their lives have been completely upended. There is no normal to go back to for them. This is their normal. That is what they have told me. And yet, to make Paul's point, that is just a line item on Norfolk Southern's budget.

That is just like, okay, yeah, the cleanup's going to cost this much. The negative publicity is going to cost this much. But ultimately, the destructive practices that Paul is talking about, making the trains longer, making them heavier, having fewer people working on the trains, having fewer people checking the track, checking the cars, fewer people checking the signals in the dispatch office, trying to replace human maintenance work with technology like hotbox detectors, which Paul has exposed the flaws in through his popular TikTok. And in fact, that was a big reason why Union Pacific fired him. We're going to get to that

in a second. But I'm just trying to kind of like refresh everyone's memory about what Paul and I talked about in September, what we at Breaking Points were talking about all throughout the contract dispute on the railroads last year. While all of this was happening, while staff across the rail system has been getting cut year after year after year, the class one freight rail carriers have eliminated 30% of their workforce since 2015 alone. And so when you cut that many people and you take all of that risk on of trains derailing, of workers getting exhausted and run into the ground and workers reportedly quitting in record numbers, you are inevitably going to have catastrophes like East Palestine.

You are gonna have over a thousand derailments around the country like we average here in the United States every year. And the way that everything played out last year between scab Joe Biden and Democrats and Republicans in Congress forcing railroad workers to accept a deal they did not want, they effectively endorsed all of the practices that Paul is describing here that have taken over the railroads for the sake of Wall Street and executive profits. Because let us not forget, while all of this is happening, the express goal is to maximize profit and the railroads have been successful there.

Even though we are moving less freight than we should be, even though shippers who have to use the rails are pissed off by the high prices and declining quality of service, even though rail workers like Paul are losing years off their lives from working under draconian attendance policies and workloads and having fewer people to help around. All of that has contributed to the railroads being more profitable than they've ever been. Stock buybacks, shareholder dividends, executive pay have all gone through the roof, while workers, consumers, and members of the public like the resident of East Palestine are getting screwed by this. And that is what Paul was blowing

the whistle on. Again, through his TikTok channel, through interviews, through his own writing, you know, you can see and hear how much he loves this industry and how much, how worried he has been about where this is all headed. And we saw in East Palestine where it is all headed. And instead of being rewarded for that, instead of being commended for being a hero and a patriot and doing a vital public service, Paul was targeted and fired by Union Pacific. So let's talk about that, Paul, while I still got you. Talk to us about the conditions of your firing. What happened? What reasons did the company give? And what does Union Pacific's treatment of you say about the industry as a whole right now? I'll answer your last question first. What it says about the industry as a whole is

this is an industry that feels that they're untouchable, that they will not be held accountable, which of course Joe Biden, when he broke our legitimate labor strike and then supported work stoppages by the companies themselves. They were emboldened that they are untouchable. So the conditions leading up to it really surrounded East Palestine because I've been making videos about the railroad for a very long time. I had millions of views and I decided to make one on East Palestine and the detectors. And one of the big things that's come out now is that those detectors are not actually regulated by anybody. The FRA doesn't regulate them, even though they totally should be a regulated device.

So if anything came out legislatively, that should be it. And I made a video about East Palestine and they put that and four others into an investigation against me and terminated me based on those five videos. But it's interesting. It wasn't local management. They were told, oh, we got a call from Omaha telling me to put telling them to pull them out of service, you know, to pull me out of service. And I just had a good full work day. And they came up and said, yeah, Omaha, Omaha called. We've got to pull you out of service and escort you off the property. And then they held a formal investigation over it. And then to make matters worse, to add insult to injury, another one of those, these companies are untouchable. So I believe that anyone in labor that was forced back to work against their will without a contract that they voted on would agree that we feel like, like slaves to the

company, slaves to the attendance policy and, and everything else. And I, I mentioned that in the investigation and then they came back and investigated me again for using that word to describe myself and said that apparently that's racially discriminated. So then they fired me again, defamed my character and tried to, and basically fired me again for using that word. And, and this is a company that, that openly, willingly discriminated against people of color for, you know, lots and lots of years over their history. It's really amazing that they would have that moral high ground to think that they should do that. And then they came back and used another video I made about the Shema derailment in

California and fired me again. So I've never heard of this and no one in the union has ever heard of this where they wanted me so bad they held three formal investigations against me to fire me, to silence me. And my end goal of this is legislative protection for whistleblowers, you know, really, because I believe that these whistleblower protections that we do have were created in an era before social media. And the railroad is saying that they don't believe that I have any protection because I was using social media. Well, if I can be the one that sets the precedent that gets people to be able to have a voice out there, to speak out against their employers and to speak out against companies when they are openly oppressing workers, when they're openly, openly violating safety, you know, then, then it'll all be worth it. Jesus, man, I'm, I'm barely containing my rage here because this is just so egregious, so ridiculous and so unforgivable, right? Like

two things I want to say, and we're going to wrap up in a second, but like one, it is, it is, you know, big posturing from a company like Union Pacific to suddenly get woke and say like, oh, this, this railroad worker is racist because he described himself as feeling like a slave to the company. So we're going to go after him for that. We're not going to do anything about the conditions that make him and other workers feel like slaves to the company. Instead, we're going to invoke, you know, like this kind of pseudo racial justice language to discipline and silence our workers. And I would just say that is bullshit. And we see you, Union. And another thing I wanna emphasize,

because there were also developments on the investigation into the derailment in East Palestine recently, hearings that were held in East Palestine where railroaders like Jason Cox testified about what Paul described in his TikTok about the hotbox detectors. We don't have to go into all that, but these are the machines on the track that are supposed to detect if you have, among other things, an overheated bearing like the one that caused the derailment in East Palestine. It is supposed to relay that information to the crew so they can stop in time and check it. That did not happen in time for the crew to stop the train. And it turns out there are a number of reasons for that because as Paul said, those hotbox detectors would have been, which have been

implemented on the rails explicitly to replace people like the carmen and the maintenance of way guys who are checking the cars and the track with their eyes, with their expertise to say that is not safe to go on the rails. The rail carriers would say, well, let's just automate it and it'll all be fine. Clearly in East Palestine, it was not fine. But the point I'm trying to make is that in those hearings that were held in East Palestine just last month, I believe, or at the end of June, Norfolk Southern admitted that, yeah, the federal government does not set the standards for what constitutes like a threat level to report to the crew. It's all determined internally by the rail carriers themselves. They're the ones who determine

whether or not a signal or distress signal caught by one of those hotbox detectors rises to the level of let's relay this to the train. As Paul described it to me on my podcast, Working People, this is like if you're flying on a plane and there's an engine that blows out, it's like that news goes to the ground control folks and they decide whether or not to tell the pilot. That is insane to me. So the Norfolk Southern basically admitted what Paul exposed in his TikTok about the hotbox detectors, and Paul has been fired by Union Pacific for that. That is not right. And I could go on for days about this, but our main goal here is to let people know about this injustice. Let people know about what whistleblowers like Paul are going through and to help build momentum to fight against this. And so with like the last minute I've got you, man, I just wanted to ask how you're doing and what people out there can do to support you right now.

I'm doing okay. Just kind of traveling around, spending some time with my daughter that I haven't been able to do in a long time working for the railroad. They took a lot of my time. But the way people can support is really to keep talking about these companies, to not let it be in vain. Don't let the railroads hide from what they've been doing to the U.S. economy. It'll only keep getting worse. We need to pressure regulators to bring this industry to heel,

to bring them back under control so that it actually focuses on safe transportation and not share buybacks. These problems, whether they be safety, whether they be poor transportation that results in higher prices at the grocery store, higher prices and everything else that we rely on, it'll just keep getting worse until eventually, my prediction is the industry fails and they go into bankruptcy, which they don't care about because they'll just ask you and I for a big fat bailout and say they're too big to fail. That's going to probably be the end result with this company if we do not do something to rein in the share buybacks and the obsession with more with less. And that's the curse and phrase i want to see removed from the industry and the corporate saying more with less or uh yeah more with less where they they want more profit more productivity more everything without having to put anything for with anything

more that's what needs to be reined in but um yeah so what you can do is don't stop talking about the railroad and don't let them hide in the shadows. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to whitewash the whole thing and get us to forget. So that is Michael Paul Lindsay II. Paul is a military veteran who has worked for Union Pacific as a trained locomotive conductor and engineer for the past 17 years until he was fired earlier this year by the company in suspected retaliation for his whistleblowing. See you soon for the next edition of The Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.

Solidarity forever. I am here with Jeremy Corbell. We are outside of the Rayburn House office building where we just had the historic UFO hearing. Jeremy, you were seated there right behind all the witnesses. Give us the biggest moments from the hearing, a little bit of the background about what it took to actually make this possible, you were instrumental in that. The biggest moment of the hearing is that it happened at all. This is the only time in history,

I mean, if people knew how many times this was tried to be stopped, diminished, stalled, you heard they weren't even allowed to have a skiff because there was a guy there who could have put them in a skiff and told them all the things he couldn't say in front of the public. Why don't we get into that a little bit? So for a skiff because there was a guy there who could have put them in a skiff and told them all the things he couldn't say in front of the public. Why don't we get into that a little bit?

So for a skiff, it's called a special. But I'm not done. This is historic. This is historic because it's never happened before. Firsthand, direct eyewitness testimony with somebody who is the first whistleblower who officially went through the ICIG process. That was David Grush.

You've got Commander Fravor, you've got Lieutenant Underwood, and you've got Grush. That is, it's exceptional what happened today. And then we'll go on to the next. Right. And so one of the things you're referencing, a key moment of the hearing, everyone, is when the congressmen repeatedly were talking about how they were denied access to a special compartmentalized facility so Dave Grush could give them specifics about this UFO program. Yes. And let me tell you, it shouldn't be hard. I mean, I've been in them very recently.

So the deal is this, that was intentional. And that bothers me. Yeah. This is about transparency. So you get it right there. We got a lot. So don't, don't. Right.

There were atom bombs that were dropped. Absolutely. We're going to get into it. Don't worry. Right. Yeah. But even with that said, from the get go, from the top down, there has been an attempt and, you know, just veryistically, to stop this from happening,

and we achieved it. So I'm elated, because you know I care about this truth. If it is true, I think the American public have a need to know. So that was one of the extraordinary moments for me. Dave Grush, Commander Fravor, Ryan Grave, all of these people are testifying under oath. Dave Grush made repeated and stunning allegations. So let's get into some of them. One of them is that non-human

intelligence has been in possession of the United States government since the 1930s. That actually predates UFO lore. I mean, can you maybe give us some background on that and what he's talking about here? So first of all, you said, you know, help set it up and all this. I want to be very clear. The whole thing about under oath, actually, we had to fight for that. They all wanted to be under oath, right? So that already tells you, why would people not want them to be under oath, right?

So that was a huge achievement. That was great. Now, what you're talking about, it might sound fantastical, but that doesn't have any relevancy to whether or not it's true. Yes. If that is true, then it is true.

And again, the American public and global public have a need to know that information if true. Not a right to know. They have a need to know because it would have implications for what it means to be human. Straight up. Well, one of the fascinating things also is that Dave Grush talked at certain points about non-human biologics that were in possession. He talked about theoretical studies of time travel. I mean, once again, he's testifying here under oath.

He's a physicist. These things may sound, again, fantastical to the general audience. He is testifying here under oath, but also, Jeremy, he detailed multiple threats to his own life and to other people who were around him by career government and ex-government officials. Can you maybe give us some insight into what he's talking about?

It is not my position to give insight to what he's talking about. However, it is true, and I feel that that will be revealed to everybody. But, you know, the point is, it's way beyond an individual. It's way beyond one person, one sighting, one thing. This is a symptom of what's been going on for a very long time. And there's been arguments that, well, why aren't these advanced tech that from foreign adversarial nations? We just don't know our black project. Some of our friends actually think that. Now here's the deal. One, the UFO phenomenon is not real.

The UFO phenomenon has been here a long time. Yes. Right? Any type of advanced technology that Commander Fravor can't tell you right openly what he's doing for work right now. He didn't testify to that. That's a man that would know. I'll just put it that way. So these things that we're seeing, how they operate, it predates our black programs. It predates the Pentagon. I did provide something for congressional record that was submitted into congressional record, and so did George Knapp.

Right. And in that, I try to detail the estimate of the situation from my perspective as somebody covering this with knowledge that I can't yet go public with because of issues like we're having with David Grush. Right. So this is so important for people to understand. He said on multiple occasions his life was threatened. There was retaliation. Yes. Another very interesting thing that Leslie Keen has talked about, I know you've looked into as well, is about the way that these black programs are funded. Dave Grush intimated that it effectively involves defense contractors charging the US government extra and then using that money to fund outside black programs, including possible crash retrieval, maintenance, study,

in which some cases he even said one person was injured while that occurred. Yeah. Are you surprised by that? No, but to hear it under oath, to testify to the fact that the Pentagon hasn't been able to pass an audit for five years in a row, maybe this explains a little bit to some of the people here. That really what hit home to me, just on a personal level, sitting there and understanding that this is all under oath, that this is being made on camera,

that your statements are being entered in the congressional record. Like if they're lying, they need to be prosecuted. They've actually wasted my time, your time, like so many of our time. But I mean, to put yourself in a position where you could go to jail on multiple levels for coming forward on this, that brings a hell of a lot of weight. I think the testimony

I thank you for seeing what this is what this is is a hearing to motivate inspire and provide Confidence for people who have come forward to me already People that have come forward within certain compartments within our government Because a fear of reprisal and breaking from the fold, have not come forward publicly. And again, I said the public has a need to know. So this hearing, the greatest thing that it is, is it is a symbol to give confidence. How David Grush is treated from here on out with his whistleblower complaint, how Commander Fravor, how Lieutenant Graves, how they are treated right now by the public is what's going to gauge what the public will be able to learn in the future.

These people are American heroes. And to me, I mean, I've been a champion to get them here. That's the thing. I think Commander Fravor's real pissed at me from time to time. He always blames me, talking about being a pest, getting him to do things. These guys don't want to be jumping in front of cameras. That was very clear, just so everyone knows from behind the scenes. He did not want to be in the spotlight.

Look, he's got a job. He's going back to work and jumping to work the next day. They all came on their own dime. They all came here because of a sense of duty, and maybe because I can be a pest, but they came because they have a sense of duty, and that was really empowering. So what we're seeing here, Sagar, you're going to break down for everybody that listens to you. You understand the mechanics of it more than most journalists I know that cover it, and you've really empowering. So what we're seeing here, Sagar, you're gonna break down for everybody that listens to you. You understand the mechanics of it more than most journalists I know that cover it,

and you've covered politics. Now you've got politics and UFOs. So you are in a quagmire. This is the intersection. Okay, so final question. What's next, man? You're the guy to know. Many people, congressmen included, they intimated.

They're like, hey, there's more people coming. This is just the first of many. I saw it really as the start of something, not the end of something. You are also in a position to know a little bit about that. You don't have to give away details, but you know, are we gonna learn more soon? Don't tempt me, I'm known to have a big mind.

Please. No, no, no. Here's what I can say for sure. What I can say for sure is that there are numerous individuals that have been verified to have worked within programs of reverse engineering of craft, not of only unknown origin, but craft of extreme technological advancement, where the material sciences, Commander Fravor kept saying, is something we have not achieved yet on the scope of humanity. And we will not ever get there for the next 100, 200. I think he's being really generous with how little time he thinks we might get there. Those people have already been put into process to be able to feel that they can come forward.

That is one thing I know is going to happen. I know there is going to be more hearings, 100%. This is like cracking the egg. That's what we did today. We cracked the egg. And now everybody has to acknowledge that it's cracked. As long as we keep fighting for transparency, for the right reason, not using national security as a way to subvert what the American public has a need to know, but respecting national

security, but not using it to subvert, then we're going to make progress and we're going to all learn that maybe, maybe the fabric of what we understand might change. And I think that's evolution. Absolutely. All right, Jeremy, thank you for your time. Let's scramble. Let's make an omelet. Okay. The backlash against BlackRock. All roads lead to good for BlackRock. To your point, though, about BlackRock becoming this absolute lightning rod. DeSantis, for example, pulling funds from BlackRock. BlackRock getting its headquarters sacked. You say here for BlackRock. An alliance with BlackRock.

We talk an awful lot about BlackRock here on Breaking Points, and they're also the target of numerous conspiracy theories online. What is BlackRock here on Breaking Points, and they're also the target of numerous conspiracy theories online. What is BlackRock? This company quite literally owns the world. Yeah, so BlackRock is an organization, it's a company publicly listed on Nasdaq. BlackRock runs pretty much the entire global economy. Well, here's the research more on who BlackRock is, if you don't know. That's an organization which is funded by all the same people, yeah? So they've got all these different groups that they're funding. It's all about pushing their narrative. So today we're going to dive deep into BlackRock, their business model, their agenda, the kinds of powers they wield, and if they do in fact control the world. Just a made up story.

None of it's real. Woke up this morning. United States of Black Rock. God damn, my bed sure felt comfy. But we keep it moving. So I got up. Went and hopped in the shower. Cleaned myself off.

Made myself a nice cup of coffee. And I was just about to go sit on the toilet when I got a call from my buddy. He's like, yo, we're going on vacation, but he wouldn't tell me where. So I packed a quick bag and hopped on my Harley, drove down to the airport where I checked into my gate, but I had enough time to go grab another cup of coffee.

You know me, I keep it lit. But then we hopped on our plane, and shit, we went to Disneyland, baby. Has your interest been piqued? Well, I hit up Cancel This Clothing Company, who has amassed almost a million followers on TikTok in just a few months by covering BlackRock to help us separate fact from fiction

when it comes to this seemingly mysterious Wall Street firm. When you start from a who-owns-this-company perspective, you very quickly run into BlackRock. Because when you start looking at ownership sheets, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, the big three investment firms, are at the top of all of them. But before we get to anything else, the first question we have to tackle is, how did BlackRock get so big? Well, the seeds of BlackRock were actually sown within the walls of another

financial powerhouse, Blackstone. In 1988, Larry Fink, along with seven others, founded BlackRock as an internal asset management division within Blackstone. Within just a few months, their business had turned profitable, and by 1989, the group's assets had quadrupled to $2.7 billion. Central to BlackRock's meteoric rise are two transformative innovations, ETFs and Aladdin, their proprietary trading algorithm. ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, allows investors a simple and efficient way to diversify their investments while reducing risk and costs. Aladdin is BlackRock's comprehensive risk management system, a digital brain, so to speak, that they pioneer to keep track of portfolios and manage risk by predicting how likely it is that a specific investment will fail. Today, BlackRock is the largest of the three investment firms, managing nearly $10 trillion in assets, followed by Vanguard at roughly $8 trillion and State Street at $4 trillion.

Technically, these assets do belong to investors, the clients of BlackRock. But effectively speaking, BlackRock manages or owns all of these shares. So what happens when the shares of supposedly competing firms are owned by the same few investment firms? Well, it effectively creates what Harvard Business Review calls a different form of monopoly, which they say harms competition, consumers and the economy. Just imagine two ice cream carts next to each other with different owners. They would either need to lower their price or enhance their offerings to compete for your business.

But if both carts had the same owners, they would not be incentivized to cut price because that would only result in a lower total profit for their investors. This kind of dynamic plays out every day in companies across all industries in the real world. Take supermarkets, for example. Who are the largest shareholders of Walmart,

America's largest supermarket chain? BlackRock and Vanguard. Kroger's? Also BlackRock and Vanguard. What about Target? You guessed it, BlackRock and Vanguard. And what's happened to food prices? We've all felt it.

It's gone up, up, and away. This same pattern of ownership repeats across every major industry. So what we think of as the most powerful companies in the world, companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, the executives at these firms still have to consult with companies like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street before they make any major decisions since they have such a large share of their ownership. So the point almost isn't the fact that they own every company. It's how such a structure of concentrated institutional ownership impacts the quality of life for ordinary people. They're deeply intertwined with political power, the political powers that be. When we talk about power, when we talk about control, there's perhaps no better evidence

than being given the ability to choose winners and losers. What in the world is happening on Wall Street? Two-year no yields went from 190 to 166 in the blink of an eye. The Nasdaq, everything and more has been completely wiped out. It was the worst day on Wall Street since the crash of 1987. The 2008 financial crisis proved to be a remarkable opportunity that propelled BlackRock into becoming the financial titan it is today, as the firm secured uncontested contracts to take over the assets

of major collapsed banking institutions like Bear Stearns and AIG. A similar thing happened again in 2020 when the Fed tapped BlackRock to help oversee efforts to stabilize the bond market amid the economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Now, they didn't get handed the keys by accident. It was all a very carefully and methodically orchestrated plan over time. There is a playbook, so to speak. Campaign contributions, making friends with both major political parties, specifically targeting the House Financial Services Committee, the folks who could potentially cause BlackRock headaches, and of course, employing an army of professional

lobbyists. Just how high up in the U.S. government have they been able to penetrate? Well, currently there are three BlackRock veterans with appointed positions in the Biden cabinet. Brian Deese, the former global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock, is Biden's chief economic director. Michael Pyle, BlackRock's former global chief investment strategist, is Kamala Harris's chief economic advisor. Let me tell you, those two positions do not require Senate confirmation, and they are actually the first duo of the modern era to go from the same Wall Street investment firm to jobs as top forget, Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, is a member on the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum. Let me tell you, it's not who's the president.

It's who's controlling the wallet. And who's that? The hedge funds, BlackRock, the banks. This guy's from BlackRock fun this is conjecture but it cannot be a coincidence which firm of all firms was tapped to lead the investment to rebuild ukraine you guessed it larry fink and blackrock another data point in 2021 blackrock became the first global asset manager licensed to start a wholly owned onshore mutual fund business in China. So do they own governments? Well, it's hard to say exactly what goes on behind closed doors, but I think all the evidence points to significant influence that certainly warrants further scrutiny. The people who are forcing these

companies to Bud Light themselves already have enough money. Companies like Vanguard, BlackRock, the companies that own major stakes in Target or Disney. So with all that shareholder clout, they can force these companies to do whatever they want. They confess this is what they're doing. Behaviors are going to have to change. And this is one thing we're asking companies. You have to force behaviors. And at BlackRock, we're asking companies. You have to force behaviors. And at BlackRock, we are forcing behaviors.

ESG, environmental social governance, the woke agenda, or whatever you want to call it. The idea that return on capital shouldn't be the only consideration in an investment. This is definitely a complicated topic because the genesis of this idea isn't based on indoctrination, as some of us have been led to believe, but rather it is a marketing campaign based on deflection. It's meant to give the illusion that a profit-maximizing firm cares about more than just profit maximization. They also care about other considerations like the environment, diversity, sustainability, fair compensation, etc, etc. But the complication arises because there becomes this kind of unavoidable hypocrisy. Does BlackRock have this woke agenda to incentivize companies to diversify the composition

and expand the pool of talent beyond just white men? Yes, they do. Not because they care about equality, but because they are trying to deflect from the fact that they also buy up entire neighborhoods that will in effect eliminate the possibility for historically marginalized groups of people to claim a stake in society through home ownership. Can BlackRock really advocate for climate sustainability net zero by 2030 or 2050 if they just named Saudi Aramco CEO Admin Nassar to their own board of directors? The last five and 10 years you saw Larry Fink and you saw BlackRock very aggressively talk about ESG and in particular climate. In fact, I remember doing an interview with him where he talked about climate and carbon as being one of the central issues of his life, of his life. He then gets tortured in the last two years by the right. It appears to some degree he is now placating that group and I imagine may

shoot himself in the foot again on the other side. And what I fear is that people are going to think that this firm has just flip-flopped from one side to the other side, and just whatever the wind is blowing today is the way we're going. And that is the central conundrum for BlackRock's ESG marketing campaign. Nobody is happy.

Investors aren't happy because ESG funds haven't been shown to perform very well. Conservatives flaming culture wars, well, they're not happy. And just to make a point, in several states, they've actually pulled their funds completely out of BlackRock. Progressives, they hammer BlackRock for their hypocrisy. And there's a lot to criticize there. Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, recently said he is no longer using the term ESG because it is politically weaponized and he's ashamed to be part of the debate on this issue. The truth is, from my perspective, Larry

Fink isn't ashamed of ESG. He's just come to the realization that his marketing campaign didn't work and that it's completely incompatible with the nature of the business that he's trying to run. And the end result is not only that everyone is pissed off, but his firm's bottom line is being materially affected. You need to assess humans in the space as individuals making their own choices. You need to assess corporations and companies as individual corporations and companies making their own choices. Evilness is by definition subjective, but here's what I'll say based on the incentive structures in place. BlackRock derives the majority of its revenue from investment advisory and administrative

fees charged to its clients. Their entire business model is predicated on increasing the value of the assets they manage, meaning that day by day, year over year, corporations as a whole need to grow, need to increase their value. The rules of engagement to grow in a purely capitalist society, you could like this or you could not like this, but it requires companies to extract the most value they can in every transaction, business to business and business to worker, and give up the least amount possible. There's little to no human consideration whatsoever.

The very reason why BlackRock have been able to make a name for themselves in a matter of just three decades versus firms that are hundreds and hundreds of years old is because of an algorithm. An algorithm that distills everything down and everyone down to ones and zeros and the present value of all future cash flows. There is by necessity an inherent inhumanity when we financialize and commodify everything where you and I and everybody else become objects of trade. Now, I think that's pretty darn evil,

but again, evilness is subjective and it's up to your own personal values and interpretations. That's all from me this time. What are your thoughts about BlackRock? Sound off in the comments below. If you enjoyed this Beyond the Headlines segment, I would encourage you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. The link will be in the description below. I'd really appreciate that. And as always, keep on tuning in to Breaking Points, and thank

you for your time today. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Helen 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. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves.

A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else but never forget yourself self-love made me a better dad because i realized my worth never stop being a dad that's dedication find out more at fatherhood.gov brought to you by the u.s department of health and human services and the ad council i've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters.

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.