Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/2/24: Introducing Master Plan: Legalizing Corruption

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

This week we’re sharing a special episode from our friends at The Lever. This is an excerpt from the first episode of their new investigative series Master Plan, which was recently named a must-listen by The Guardian and Apple Podcasts. In each episode of Master Plan, The Lever’s David Sirota and his team of journalists expose the secret scheme that legalized corruption for the wealthy. With the help of never-before-reported documents, they look back at where this plot began, how it is accelerating in the 2024 election - and how it can be stopped.  In this epic tale, you’ll learn things you never knew about icons like President Richard Nixon, Fox News founder Roger Ailes, and Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. You’ll learn how their master plan to legalize corruption affects you and your family - and undermines American democracy today.  Listen now to the full first episodes of Master Plan (https://link.chtbl.com/sIXXlFys?sid=BreakingPoints), and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to their Premium feed to hear episodes early and exclusive bonus content. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Imagine a world where big bags of dirty anonymous money buy elections, politicians, and the laws that govern our whole society. Spoiler alert, it's the current reality in the United States. Hey everyone, it's me, David Sirota. I'm thrilled to share this clip of the inaugural episode of Masterplan, the Lever's new investigative podcast series that was recently named a must-listen by The Guardian and Apple Podcasts. In each episode of Master Plan, we expose the secret scheme first hatched in the 1970s that's been methodically legalizing corruption for the wealthy. With the help of never-before-reported documents, we'll look back at how it all began,

how this plan was executed over decades, how it's still being implemented today, and how we can stop it. You'll learn things you never knew about icons like President Richard Nixon, Senator Mitch McConnell, Fox News founder Roger Ailes, and Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. You'll learn how their master plan to legalize corruption

affects you and your family and undermines American democracy today. In this special preview, we go back to 1971, a time when hot pants were hot, bell bottoms were swinging, and campaign cash flowed like milk. Without further ado, here's a short clip from Master Plan. This is corruption. This is bribery. Don't let it stand. This corruption is an American issue. We live in a corrupt nation, a nation corrupt to its bones. We have reached a saturation point of corruption at the federal level. It is corrosive on society because nobody has any trust or belief or puts

any legitimacy in our institutions anymore. When I say the word corrupt, what jumps into your mind? Maybe you think about a file on your computer's hard drive not working or the blue screen of death. The file has been corrupted. The DX has corrupted my system. Maybe you think of some far away regime on the other side of the world where government officials get rich while everyone else starves. Somalia has held the title of being one of the world's most corrupt countries for the past decade. Maybe you think of something from pop culture, like the Nevada senator in The Godfather demanding a bribe from the Corleone family. Or maybe you think of The Wire's walking bribery machine, Clay Davis. If you're a Republican political junkie, this is probably what comes to mind.

Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company, paid Hunter Biden millions of dollars to serve on its board of directors. And if you're a Democratic political junkie, I'm guessing you think of stuff like this. Trump told the group that they should donate a billion dollars to his presidential campaign because if elected, he would roll back environmental rules that he said hamper their industry. Corruption in politics is the process of using money to break the machine of government so that the machine no longer benefits the public. It only benefits the wealthy and powerful. Now, there's the corruption of, say, a cop taking a bribe to rip up a speeding ticket or a government official diverting public highway

funds into their own pocket. This kind of petty corruption is bad. But greedy individuals will always exist, which makes this kind of small-time graft inevitable, even in the best-run governments. But then there's systemic corruption, the kind of corruption that's become so pervasive and so common that you start to assume, oh, well, that's not even corruption. That's just how things work. Deep down, you sense that there's a glitch, but it's hard to pinpoint the problem when you see it everywhere. It is all around us. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. This is the deep systemic corruption that now pervades America. And you get a glimpse of it every time you hear about how much money is flooding into politics and elections. Morgan, billionaires spending a record $880 million in the midterms.

Spending projected to reach, get this, nearly $11 billion. Judy, we are seeing a storm of campaign spending. An ultra-secretive Chicago industrial mogul has quietly given $1.6 billion to the architect of the right-wing takeover of the courts. This kind of all-consuming corruption does not occur naturally. It's not inevitable. It is created by people who want to trap us inside a system of bribery, graft, and dishonesty because that serves them. So who exactly designed this dystopia we're now immersed in? The Levers team of investigative journalists has spent the last two years digging into archives and lost audio, searching for that answer.

And we've finally found it. I'm David Sirota, and this is Masterplan. In this first episode, we'll eventually go back 50 years to start exposing the epic story of how corruption was legalized in America. But first, let me tell you where this story started for me. Can you pinpoint the exact moment when you realized how corrupt and foobar everything was? I can. It was after a pre-dawn bus trip to Canada. Sarah Kanji joins us live now from the U.S.-Canadian border in Highgate with more... Hey everyone, it's Sarota again. I hope you enjoyed this preview of the first episode of our new series, Master Plan.

If you liked what you heard, head over to the Master Plan feed for new episodes every Tuesday. If you want to hear new episodes of Master Plan sooner and get exclusive bonus content, go to levernews.com and become a paying subscriber. That also gives you access to all of the Lever's podcasts, all of our live events, and all of our other exclusive content and investigative journalism. Thanks for listening. Rock the boat. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

I'm also the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy. But to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.