Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #22: Corporate Media Misinformation, $18/hour Minimum Wage, Olympics Disaster, Starbucks Workers, Bezos's Yacht, & More!

Episode Date: February 12, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about the $18 minimum wage initiative in California, corporate media misinformation, NBC's Olympic level failure, Starbucks workers, egging Jeff Bezos's yacht, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are ripping this country apart. They are making millions of dollars doing it. To help support our mission of making all of us hate each other less, hate the corrupt ruling class more,

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as The Daily Poster and David Sirota, the founder of that entity, which is now rebranding to The Lever. Great to see you, David. Hey, good to see you, man. Good to see you both. Talk to us about the name change first, then we'll jump into the substantive story you got here. Sure. So we're going to be expanding. We're hiring some journalists. And our new name is going to be The Lever. You can find the job listings at LeverNews.com. And the expansion of hiring more reporters is because of subscriber support. We're able to do that because we have people willing to pitch in to be subscribers for our journalism. So if you're listening to this, watching this, and you're a subscriber to what was formerly the Daily Poster and will soon be the Lever, thank you for your help in doing that.

Hugely, hugely important that you guys support the Lever and the work that they are doing. And I think the story that you have for us today illustrates that quite well. Let's go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen. Corporate media is the misinformation problem. The largest media outlets are platforming con artists, skewing the news, and immersing the country in a flood of lies. Of course, there's been a lot of discourse lately, David, about who the misinformation is coming from. And what you lay on here is a pretty compelling case that the worst offenders are the very people who protest the most about misinformation.

Absolutely. I mean, let's remember that over the course of the last week as this discussion about media misinformation has happened, there have been some things that have happened that haven't been talked about, but really embody the problem. Let me give you one example. NBC News just announced that it is hiring for across all of its platforms a guy named Stephen Hayes. He is a conservative pundit, and he is most famous for or infamous for publishing a book that platformed the biggest, most salient lie leading

America into the Iraq War. He published an entire book about the alleged connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, a connection that didn't exist, that was thoroughly debunked, but that was used to push America into the worst foreign policy disaster in modern history. And so he did that and is now being rewarded during a time of heightened fears about potentially a war with Russia and the like. He is being platformed, rewarded for that with a huge platform on one of the largest news networks in the country. So that's an example that just sticks out in your face and begs the question, what are we really talking about when we talk about misinformation?

And what is the selective outrage about misinformation? I think, listen, bad information is bad information wherever it comes from, and it should not be applauded. However, let's be honest about where so much of the bad information comes from and it should not be applauded. However, let's be honest about where so much of the bad information comes from. We're a country that got lied into the Iraq war, a country that arguably, I would argue, got lied into the policies that created the financial crisis. And it was done through a corporate media system that has never apologized for that wave of misinformation and waves of misinformation that continue to come. Yeah. I mean, this is the central problem, which is that how can they decry misinformation when they've been the purveyors, continue to be

purveyors. And David, I mean, can you explain this to people who are more left wing? I would say that this is always where you see the biggest pushback, but you are on our show talking about the media's treatment, for example, of like the Build Back Better plan and others. Put it more in terms that are outside of our culture war. The censorship situation? Just misinformation, like in terms of how they portray different things and how that affects public debate. Sure. Listen, one thing you notice is that misinformation, the drumbeat about misinformation, notice that the criticism of it is the misinformation that exists outside of the corporate media institutions. As I said, misinformation is bad across the board.

But I think we have to understand that the reason why people distrust corporate media is because they have a reason to distrust corporate media. Let me give you another example from CNN. I mean, CNN, you've seen a lot of their officials go out in the last week praising their former now disgraced, deposed president, Jeff Zucker. A lot of them praising him as some great hero. Jeff Zucker oversaw the lionization of Governor Andrew Cuomo while Cuomo was covering up a nursing home massacre in New York, while Cuomo was shielding his nursing home donors from legal consequences for that. There was one report in Rolling Stone that one source alleged that Zucker was personally involved in those segments between

Andrew Cuomo and his brother, Chris Cuomo, to sort of create that positive valorization of Andrew Cuomo. So again, my point is, what are we actually talking about when we talk about misinformation? And I think what we're talking about is, especially among liberals who purport to be concerned about misinformation, what you end up seeing is a lot of liberals are concerned about misinformation they don't like, but they are fine with the purveyors of misinformation that I guess serve, they perceive serving their own partisan political interests. And my point is, is that all of the misinformation is bad. So let's be honest about where it's coming from.

Well said. I think the CNN thing, I did a monologue on this this week, so I've thought a lot about it because you have these just like hilariously embarrassing quotes being leaked from their internal meetings about like Alison Camerota confessing she's like struggling with her mental health after Zucker was deposed. Jake Tapper hosted what was described as a wake at his house after Zucker is fired. You had Brian Stelter do this whole emotional monologue. This is CNN and we're not going anywhere. And it's like, you realize this dude got fired because he was caught being blatantly corrupt. The sort of stuff that, you know, they see very clearly when it's Fox News and the Trump White House.

Brian Stelter wrote an entire book about the incestuous relationship between the Trump White House and Fox News. And that should be decried and called out and exposed for what it is. But then when this is like revealed about Zucker and he's fired for it, they're having meltdowns, not because he was engaged in that behavior, but because he was ousted from his position because of it. Right. I mean, that should be the thing that they should be upset about. That's the thing. If I was at CNN, I would be upset about, which is to say that if I found out that the president of the network that I work at was, first and foremost, generally overseeing the lionization

of Andrew Cuomo during that debacle, I would be appalled every single day. But then to have news reports come out saying that he was potentially personally involved, one report said personally involved in writing talking points for Andrew Cuomo during that time. I mean, that's an embarrassment at a journalistic level. And so I don't think we can then see that and then turn around and say, why do so many people not trust corporate media? I don't think we can then see that and then turn around and say, why do so many people not trust corporate media? I don't understand why so many people trust. The answer is, of course, people don't trust corporate media. They've been lied to over and over and over again. And let me be clear, I don't think it's a good thing that in our democracy, there are so few trusted media

sources. That is bad for everybody. because what we really need are a set of facts that are verifiable and we stipulate and we make sure they're real and then we can debate what to do about them. Right now, we're in kind of the void where all facts are being challenged, all facts are being questioned because there are very, very few trusted sources that the audience trust doesn't have an ulterior motive and isn't skewing the facts. I mean, this is why I say, I mean, you are an independent media outlet. We are an independent media outlet. We're small in the ocean of a corporate media environment. But I think that's why I think the future of this to rebuild that trust requires really reader and subscriber supported news that doesn't have these care about that. And these examples we're talking about,

where the purveyors of misinformation are literally being enriched and rewarded. I mean, that's beyond just tolerating misinformation. That's supporting it. That's being behind it. Yeah. Celebrating it. And people know that your reporting isn't being sponsored by Chevron or Lockheed brought to you by Northrop Grumman or whatever, which is why, you know, what you do is so incredibly important. I agree with you. I don't think we're like CNN's going to have a new president now. Is anything going to be different in CNN? No, because their business model is exactly the same. And so the incentives that each individual person has, the incentives that the organization has, all push them in the same direction. So I think you're right that the only answer is sort of subscriber-supported, independent ventures, free of corporate influence that really don't give a shit about like the sort of access journalism that is the the stock and trade of most of the folks here. So, David, thank you so much. Great to have you.

Thank you, David. Thanks to both of you. Absolutely. Our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We're going to have more for you later. There's an effort in California right now to put to the voters an $18 minimum wage. And one of the key people, perhaps the key person behind this effort is Joe Sandberg. He joins us now. Joe is an entrepreneur. He's co-founder of Aspiration, an online banking platform with sort of a progressive bent to it, and also an activist in the state of California. Great to meet you, Joe. Good to see you, Sarah. Good to be with you. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So just tell us what you're proposing here, what the timeline looks like and how it's going. We're proposing raising California's minimum wage

to $18. And we're going to put it on the ballot in November of 22. And I think we're going to pass it because over five and a half million Californians would get a raise from it. And our electoral coalition centers around those five and a half million Californians would get a raise from it. And our electoral coalition centers around those 5.5 million Californians who would get more than $6,200 a year of extra pay, which we know that's the difference between whether people can afford their rent, whether they can provide three instead of two meals a day for their kids, whether they can provide healthy food for their kids, send their kids off to school with full stomachs instead of empty stomachs.

So the stakes could be higher. And I think that California is ready to lead down the field in this next chapter of the fight for a living wage. With all the credit to those over the last 10 years who have established the fight for 15, it's time to raise the stakes to 18 and 20 and 25. Because what happens is every single year with inflation, the power of our dollar declines. And so the power of that $15 ask also declines. And now it's time to move the ask to 18 and beyond. Joe, how do you assuage the concerns of the business community, the small business community specifically? I know in the previous fight to 15 in the state of California, there was a large business, small business denominator.

How have you been having those discussions? And what are some of the lessons that you learned from the Fight for 15? I think the number one lesson is that actually business people are enthusiastic about higher minimum wage. Here's why. Despite what some lobbyists might say who don't actually represent all business people, business people understand this. If your customers have more money to buy things, then they have more money to spend at your business. And we have a consumer economy here in the United States, which means that it's driven by consumption. And the problem we've had for a bunch of decades now is that people who need to buy things don't have any

money but all the money is in the hands of a small number of people who don't need to buy anything so when you raise the minimum wage you put money in the pockets of workers who are the customers of small businesses now there's a small number of lobbyists who make noise and make you think that business opposes the minimum wage but i think that one of the reasons we're going to win in November with a pretty broad coalition is because of the number of entrepreneurs and small business people in California who are going to vote in favor of raising the minimum wage because they know it's the moral thing to do and it's the smart economic thing to do.

What are some of the obstacles involved in a ballot initiative? And the reason I ask that is because we just tracked here the sort of death of single payer in the state, at least this attempt to get it passed. Gavin Newsom ran on not only single payer, but sort of mocking politicians who pretend to be in support of it. But then when it came down to it, made all kinds of excuses for not doing it. He doesn't back the bill. Democrats have control of everything. They promise voters they're going to do this. And then when they came down to it, they don't even bring the bill to a vote on the floor. And it's very clear what happened there.

A bunch of health insurer money came in, you know, millions of dollars to the California Democratic Party, lots of money to Gavin Newsom, lots of money to these individual legislators. And so they killed the bill and they don't even have to go on the record as opposing it. With a ballot initiative, it seems to me like you have much more direct access to the voting public, but you also have a lot of entrenched interests that can spend a lot of money trying to demonize this and say it's going to kill small business at all, the rest. So contrast those two different directions and what some of the challenges are that you guys are facing. Well, first of all, we have to understand that when we're fighting for working people, we have to fight as fiercely and effectively as big oil

fights for its interests or gambling or tobacco fight for their interests. And I think one of the things that's distinguished our movement in California over the last half decade plus for working people, which has included massive wins to expand the earned income tax credit that I led in 2015. And subsequently, we increased the earned income tax credit so that now it reaches almost 5 million people. And the reason that we made those wins, and the reason we're going to win a higher minimum wage is that we fight fire with fire. We use all the fierce tactics of power that big corporations use to fight for their interests. And I guess the question we have to ask is why haven't we been doing that all along? Why don't the interests of poor people and working people demand and deserve the same ferocity that is applied to the interests of big corporations. So we're going to spend a ton of money on organizing, on supporting organizations that support us and building big, broad alliances.

And frankly, we hire our own lobbyists who I want to lobby as fiercely for working people as the lobbyists of big corporations lobby for those interests. The sad reality is we're in a broken system, and we can't just sit around and complain about the broken system. We have to do everything within that system that the other side does to fight for their interests. We have to do to fight for our interests. Yeah. Well, it's really interesting to watch all of this happen. Definitely wish you luck, Joe.

We're watching with great interest here in Washington. It could become a national trend. So thanks for your work, and we'll hope that you keep us updated. Thank you. Absolutely. And thank you guys so much for watching. We'll have more for you later. I'm not sure if you've been watching the Olympics. If you haven't, you would find yourself in big company. There is a huge problem for NBC News right now. Let's put this up there on the screen,

which is that the Olympic ceremony has drawn record low ratings. The way that they are putting this is that NBC is facing a, quote, cataclysmic loss of audience for the 2022 Winter Olympics as viewership is tanked for the Friday ceremony, averaging just 16 million. It is a record low for the opening ceremony of the games and a whopping 43% below the 2018 games in South Korea that got 28 million, despite also dealing with the less than advantageous Asian time zone for American audiences. So that is a good comparison. There's a lot going on here.

NBC is getting destroyed not only because it's in availability on online platforms, but a lot of people just don't care, Crystal. Some of this has to do, obviously, with the China element. Some people not wanting to tune in. But a lot of it is one of those feelings of just like, who cares? That's kind of sad, actually, in terms of what the Olympics represent. But it just shows you where the country is right now that they're getting so destroyed. Yeah, I was trying to think about why it was that at this moment.

Because I used to, I mean, first of all, I kind of think the Olympics is a scam and all of that. But I do enjoy, anybody wants to see people who are the best in the world. And there's always been this go USA, patriotic piece of it. And so why is there just dramatically less interest now? I mean, I think part of it is that in the column they suggest it could be kind of like Olympics burnout because you just had. Oh, because you just had the Summer Olympics. Yeah. Nobody really cared about that one either.

But obviously it did better than this one did. Right. So that could be one reason. Obviously Americans don't normally care as much about the Winter Olympics as they do the Summer one anyway because we don't do as well in the Winter Olympics. But I do also think that it's a sign of our sort of patriotic, democratic collapse. Like, we don't have the same earnest, patriotic fervor to go and watch Team USA, like, get the gold in some random event that you've never watched before.

It just doesn't quite feel the same. And so the column tries to make the case that it's about, like, opposition to China and not liking the Chinese government. I kind of don't really think that that's what's going on here. I think it's part of it. It's a COVID backlash. People really, I mean, the Pew Research polling is global. You're like normie Americans. I don't think they're making super political decisions with their choice to not view the Olympics. I think

it's just like this general sense of malaise and lack of enthusiasm in the American projects right now. That is definitely true. The COVID element is huge. They're all wearing masks. There's no, there's no, what is it? Crowds are very, very limited. Some places they're banned. Also the athletes themselves, apparently this is a miserable experience. I feel terrible for these people because, and you train for four years. If you get COVID, you're done. I mean, you have a highly transmissible, you know, they're literally, they're freaking out. They're trying to keep themselves in the ultimate bubbles because if they pop positive the day before, they're done.

Or you can get disqualified. And that's your only chance. That's your only, I mean, for some of these gymnastics and stuff, what, you got one shot? Yeah, once you're like 17, you've aged out. Obviously, this is the Winter Olympics. But I know, I mean, even figure skating, aren't they all like 19 years old?

They're very young, or at least a lot of them are, at least whenever you're in your peak physical performance. So the interesting part for me is that NBC is paying the IOC $7.75 billion to broadcast the games through 2032. NBC is doing all it can and its reporters and crews are quote stuck in a closed loop because part of the other problem is that it eliminates live shots with mountains or historic buildings as backdrops, as well as stories about the culture, architecture, and China. I don't think a lot of people here want to hear that. But even if they did, because of COVID, they have bad broadcasting. They are paying billions of dollars for the privilege of being able to watch all of this. And the COVID policies have basically locked them up, in addition to a Games, which is not doing so well. I do think it's a big cultural kind of flip moment,

which is that the cascading way that the ratings for this stuff are going down, it's just changing the way popular culture is consumed. Another example was the Golden Globes, which did not air this year, period. Now, God, I wish that had always been the case. I didn't notice. But yeah, exactly. Neither did I until I saw an article about it. And the reason why is because it was like, you know, nobody really wants to watch a bunch of Hollywood people, you know, hobnobbing around with their ratings.

The Oscars always repeatedly have had record low ratings. So these types of big, like, mass events like this, it's just, it's declining in popularity. There's huge fragmenting of audiences. All media, everything. So there's no longer, like, the whole country's going to watch this thing, you know? But then also, I think for young people,

the way they'll consume it is like, you know. Clips on TikTok. Yeah, clips. Clips on TikTok, clips on Twitter, whatever the highlight reel is or the low light reel is

or whatever controversy pops out of it. Like, that's really the way that I think younger generations are likely to engage with the Olympics. So it still has a lot of cultural power and cachet, but people just aren't like tuning in for the whole thing in the same way, which is not good for the advertisers who obviously want those eyeballs there. And it's certainly not good for NBC that wants those eyeballs there. balls there and the ratings disaster is almost even worse than what they're portraying it because the 16 million that tune in for the friday's opening ceremony that's not just the tv audience

that's their spin on like the total audience including people who are streaming it and whatever so um yeah wow i didn't even realize devastating for them. Totally devastating. The next lowest was back in 1988 when 20.1 million tuned in for the opening ceremony. So they were at 16 million. So dramatically down from what it was in 1988. Pretty wild. All right. Sorry. Sorry, Olympics.

Sorry, NBC. Need to see it. All right, guys. Thanks for watching. We'll have more for you later. One of the things that we have been tracking closely here is the massive and growing number of Starbucks where workers are filing for union elections. And, of course, we detailed. It all started in Buffalo.

You had a few stores there that decided that they were going to try to unionize. They ultimately were successful, but not after facing down this insane effort at union busting from the corporates where they sent in executives and they closed stores and they flooded those stores with new workers and they pulled everybody out for these listening sessions. And still you had two stores there that ultimately decided to unionize. So one of the things, Sagar, that you and I have been talking about

is how is Starbucks now going to approach all of these union campaigns across the country? You have at least 60 stores now that are working to unionize. How are they going to deal with this when you can't just flood the zone at one store? Huffington Post is up with a look at at least the legal strategy that they are employing to try to cut this all off at the pass. Headline here says Starbucks is desperately trying to slow a union campaign that has caught fire. The company is doing whatever it can to delay elections. They're wasting everyone's time and money, a lawyer for the union says. What they detail here is that Starbucks is just reusing some of the exact playbook and tactics that they ran in Buffalo to try to prevent or at least delay union elections in these stores. to say, hey, we need more time. Let's push this down the road. And also, hey, the bargaining union, the group of people, the group of stores that should be filing this election and voting on this

should be a lot larger than just one store. They've already lost these battles at the NLRB, but that isn't stopping them from continuing to cut and paste the exact same legal strategy with regards to all of these stores, which is just an effort at trying to run out the clock and waste time. So they quote here, Ian Hayes, he's a Buffalo-based labor attorney. He's been coordinating Starbucks worker United's legal work. He described the company's mounting challenges as something close to carbon copies, quote, the same facts with different proper nouns. The company is making identical arguments and the union is forced to do the same in response. The company's lawyers are just going to continue to raise the

same dead legal issue until somebody puts a stop to it. They are not going to stop doing that out of a sense of shame or out of the knowledge they're going to lose and they are wasting everyone's time and money. So we're starting to get a little bit of a picture of the type of tactics that they're employing. Yeah. And one thing I learned from this is that even if they lose, which they probably will, it doesn't matter. Because when you delay a vote by weeks or even days, it allows the company to hold more captive audience meetings, send more text messages to workers, and organize the actual workers in the store. So time is very much of the essence. They even quote somebody who says, any employer with the resources that Starbucks has available,

time is their favorite weapon. And they also point to Amazon and other companies that have done this in the past. When you delay, delay, delay, it allows you to have the maximum propaganda effort that you can upon the workers themselves. And when you're talking here, how many stores are we talking? 60? 60 plus. Okay, so when we're talking 60 plus stores, you don't want all 60 to go.

It's a victory if you get 30 of them not to do it. 45. Say only 15 do it. I mean, it's a game of numbers. It's a game of margins. There's billions of dollars here on the line because they don't want this to be all thousands of the stores that they have. And if they can try and make it a tiny minority, then that's something that very much works in their favor. And then they can delay the negotiations even once those people are recognized. So it's all a time delay tactic on their part to try and ruin

the lives of the workers and not actually have a fair say in what's happening. So apparently, Howard Schultz in his biography lays out, and they talk about this in this Huffington Post article, with great glee, how an early union attempt in a Seattle Starbucks, like at the beginning of the company, ultimately the workers vote to unionize. And then because you have so much turnover and because of the tactics he employed even then, they ultimately voted to decertify the union before it could ever really take hold. And so that also gives you a glimpse into what they want to play out. Because, yeah, if you can keep it to a couple stores in Buffalo, maybe a few scattered across the country

and other places, then you drag out contract negotiations. You pretend like you're negotiating in good faith when you really aren't. You keep them from ever getting a union contract. Then in the food service industry, turnover is very high. Young people don't stay in these jobs oftentimes forever, although some do stay for the long term, but oftentimes turnover is quite high. And so you start to hire people and sort of screen them for what their views on the union are. And as you turn over the workforce, then you can push for them to ultimately decertify the union and roll backwards to not having the union representation. If you have a mass movement of unionization across the country in, you know, dozens or hundreds of Starbucks,

well, all of those steps then start to be a lot more complicated, a lot more difficult to ultimately implement. So yeah, the other piece with delaying just the union elections is, again, because food service industry turnover is high, while they're waiting for that election to actually start, they can be finding reasons to fire some of the agitators. They can be finding, bringing in, and this is what they did in Buffalo, flooding these stores with new workers that I'm sure they didn't screen at all for their anti-union sentiment. These are some of the tricks and the tactics that they will be using and employing here. Because in spite of their, whatever their progressive rhetoric is, what it comes down to control, when it comes down to workers having a say in their workforce, they are just as regressive as every other corporation in this country. That's well said.

All right, guys. Thanks so much for watching. We're going to have more for you later. All right, guys. We've got a little update on a story that you all were very interested in, which is that Jeff Bezos has commissioned the world's largest super yacht. What is it, like $500 million? $500 million.

It also has a support yacht. It's such a big yacht that it needs its own little baby yacht. $500 million. It also has a support yacht. Support. It's such a big yacht that it needs its own little baby yacht. Yes. It's ridiculous, okay? Disgusting, grotesque display of wealth

that literally no one should have. So, the rub, the additional rub on this, though, is that to actually get it to him,

they're going to have to disassemble a historic bridge in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. Yeah. So they're going to take apart the bridge because. Which was bombed by the Nazis, Chris.

Yes. Yeah. And which they had previously, they decommissioned it and they were planning to take it down and there was such a public outcry. It's a national monument. That they kept it, they restored it. So this is apparently important to the people of that city. And so they are, the plan was to disassemble this bridge so that the yacht can pass through.

There is a new effort afoot to fight back against this. Organized on Facebook, the Dutch, by the thousands, are vowing to egg Jeff Bezos' yacht if, in fact, this bridge is disassembled to let his yacht pass. On the Facebook page that they set up, they say, calling all Rotterdammers, take a box of rotten eggs with you and let's throw them en masse at Jeff's super yacht when it sails through the Heff in Rotterdam. This organizer wrote that. And there are, I think I saw there were like four, yeah. 13,000 people are, quote, interested. Designated that on Facebook. Nearly 4,000 have said they will actually attend. Now, this whole effort, Sagar, it turns out, sadly, is a little tongue-in-cheek.

Because apparently it's a pretty big river. So to be able to hit the yacht from the side is going to be very challenging. Well, but it's going to be disassembled. Yeah, I know. Because originally in my head, that's what I was thinking. But then over at New York Magazine, they actually did a whole analysis of how hard it would be to throw an egg and have it actually hit the yacht from the bank. And apparently it would be very difficult. I'll look it up while you're talking.

Do they have baseball players? It was like 238 feet or something. that's pretty far yeah it was pretty far baseball did they have baseball in uh the netherlands i don't know uh look this is pretty funny uh they said it originally was a joke but now they're like yeah you know maybe we actually will try and do this but i think what is the reason why it's sparking so much outrage there is, number one, it is a national monument bombed by the Nazis, built in 1927. It is looked at as a symbol of Rotterdam heritage. You know, a lot of people don't know this. The port of Rotterdam is one of the most significant points in all of global commerce and was one of the major entry points to Europe.

It's what made the Netherlands and the Dutch, you know, the whole dusty Dutch East India Company of the 1600s. It's a deep historical place. And to see it turned into its last remaining economic value is building yachts for the super rich, that's pretty sad. I mean, I know the Port of Rotterdam still moves a lot of cargo. But in terms of why you have to dismantle the bridge in the first place, and the organizer of the protest even points out, he goes, look, most places, if a bridge is too small for your boat, you make a smaller boat. Like, it's not an argument. Take the bridge apart. Right. And also, did nobody think about this?

Like, how did they know that the yacht was ever going to be able to go through? Did the government give them assurances? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't worry. As long as you pay for it, it's all good. I say don't dismantle the bridge. Yeah. out i don't know you got more money than god you can move it around you could dismantle it and put it on a truck apparently that's the other alternative okay do that because it's the mass yeah that are too tall right so you could you know not fully assemble it or take part of the boat apart and so part of the bridge apart but and it

doesn't really make sense to me they the justification that was originally given was like job creation yeah which i was like okay which i thought was sort of kind of true i feel bad for them perfect emblem perfect emblem of how the entire economy is just about like serving the whims of billionaires and we all have to, you know, hope for the crumbs that they're willing to cast off and get the job on the bridge disassembly team. Um, so I looked it up. This is from curbed, which is a website with New York mag and egg would have to travel a 30, 238 feet to hit the hole difficult, but not impossible feet they say. So you never know. And the other piece that

I found interesting is that apparently Rotterdam's mayor originally was like, we're doing this. It's job creation. We're going to disassemble the bridge. Now he's not so sure. So since there was a global outcry over this situation, officials walked back the reports. Rotterdam's mayor told a Dutch newspaper on Thursday that no decision has yet been taken, not even an application for a permit. He said the municipality would consider an application and assess the potential impacts, like whether the dismantling can be done without damaging the bridge and who would cover the cost. So they were all in on the bridge disassembly thing, but your outcry has been heard and they are now reconsidering.

So we'll see. Okay, we've heard you. Small win potentially for the people. Make him move it by road. That's the real victory. Yeah. I stand with you, Rotterdam. And also tax this man.

Tax this man. I love the Netherlands, by the way. That's the bottom line. Please, please, I want to be able to come back to your country sometimes. All right, guys. Thanks for watching. We'll have more for you later. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids,

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