Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #34: Corporate Tax Breaks, Billionaire Owned Media, FBI Surveillance, Barstool Conservatism, Workers Revolt, & More!

Episode Date: May 7, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover Bernie's fight against corporate tax breaks, billionaire owned media, FBI surveillance, Barstool conservatism, Rep. Henry Cuellar, CNN, class war, & 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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Cable News is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making it impossible to function as a society and to know what is true and what is false. The good news is that they're failing and they know it. That is why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com to help us out. All right, guys, joining us now for our weekly partnership segment, we have Julia Rock. She is a reporter for The Lever. Great to see you, Julia. Thanks so much for having me. So Wednesday night caught my attention. Bernie Sanders had a little spicy quote on the floor of the Senate. He said, recent polls suggest that Congress has a 19 percent favorability rating,

and I find that shocking. Clearly, if that 19 percent had any inkling as to what goes on here in the Senate, that number would be much lower. You actually have a whole report out detailing what Senator Sanders' specific frustrations in this particular moment are. So just break that down for us, Julia. Yeah. So last night, the Senate was basically going through some motions for provisions to add or propose to be added to the big China competition bill that has passed both the House and the Senate. And now the two branches need to reconcile a version that they can both get behind. And Bernie made that comment after Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, proposed a corporate tax break that corporations have been pushing for,

pushing to have it included in basically everything that's passed Congress in the past year, which obviously hasn't been very much. They tried to put it in Build Back Better. They tried to get it in the omnibus spending bill. And now they want to have it in this China competition bill that is basically guaranteed to pass Congress. It's a $125 billion tax break that allows corporations to write off expenses that they spend on research and development from taxes. And it was included in the 2017 massive tax cut bill. So that was the bill that cut the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent. And this was

supposed to be like a very sort of small offset, like, OK, corporations are getting this massive tax rate tax break. We're going to, you know, take back this one subsidy that they've had for a while. But now, you know, this the repeal of this tax break is set to go into effect and they want to make sure that doesn't happen. So the idea is basically this tax break, which really doesn't have anything to do with the broader bill that they're considering, they're trying to get it attached so that they can go even further than what the Trump tax break actually allowed them to do. Because the Trump tax break, within all of that, rolled back this one little, you know, this one little provision to help offset the cost of this massive tax break.

Now they're saying, no, no, no, even that isn't good enough for us. We want to go back to even having that beneficial provision in the tax code. Yeah. Yeah. And and sort of to your point, this bill, you know, because it's one of the few things that's going to pass and it has bipartisan support, has basically become a vehicle for everything that can't get passed through other means. I will say, you know, you could argue that this tax break is related to the bill because it is supposed to be in favor of, you know, they're opposed to the Trump tax, but they're supposed to be in favor of lifting taxes on corporations? So why is it a Democratic senator here who is pushing this amendment? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. You know, this this senator in particular is facing a tough reelection battle. She is, you know, a darling of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

She voted against a $15 minimum wage. So, you know, maybe this does really align with her ideology and it shouldn't be surprising. What's more surprising is that there were only five senators, including Sanders and including one Republican, who voted against Hassan last night, whereas 90 voted with her. And I think, you know, what that shows is just this, like, really overwhelming willingness to give corporations tax breaks. You know, and again, they say it's going to be for research and development, maybe so, but these are the same corporations that got a 40 percent tax cut under the 2017 tax bill. I think there would be a decent argument about,

you know, being able to deduct research and development expenses if you didn't have the overall landscape of corporations paying basically nothing in taxes. That's what makes it galling here is the sort of macro picture. There was another motion that you point to from Senator Sanders last night that was also very frustrating to me, perhaps even more so. And he tried to pass an amendment that would require companies that receive subsidies under this China competes bill to stay neutral in union campaigns,

which by the way, they're supposed to do legally anyway, and refrain from buying back their own stocks. That failed. So the other one passes overwhelmingly. This one fails equally overwhelmingly with only five Democrats joining Bernie in support of basically saying, hey, if you're a union buster, you don't get these massive subsidies. And also you shouldn't be buying back your own stock. You should be actually investing. That's the whole point of this bill. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, on the one hand, it's totally unbelievable, right?

Like, you know, all of these politicians are sort of willing to ride on the wave of union organizing, claim they support it. You know, it's very popular, et cetera. And yet when it comes down to it, we'll vote against this very simple provision that is oftentimes attached to government money that corporations can't bust unions if their workers are trying to organize. We wrote a very similar story actually about a year ago now about Bernie trying to include this very provision, the ban on buybacks and on corporations that receive these subsidies from busting unions. And he's been basically trying to get it in the bill ever since and has been thwarted by his own party at every turn.

Very, very revealing to see what passes easily with overwhelming bipartisan consensus and what gets stopped dead in its tracks. Julia, thank you so much for breaking it down for us. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Kind of a revealing, a little bit of a meta analysis going on over at The Washington Post. Let's go ahead and put this article up on the screen. How a billionaire's boys club came to dominate the public square. Again, this being printed in the Bezos-owned Washington Post. And what they write is, the world's richest man, Elon Musk, attacked a publication owned by the world's third richest man, Jeff Bezos, that would be the Washington Post,

last month for reprinting a column published by the world's 13th richest man, Mike Bloomberg. The Bloomberg opinion article posted by the Washington Post asked whether Musk's recent investment in Twitter would endanger freedom of speech. Wapo, always good for a laugh, Musk wrote in a tweet with smiling and crying emoji. I mean, it's actually like, if you go through, what I like about this article is that, first of all, they go after Bezos, who does own the outlet it's being published in.

But they also make it clear that, you know, the problem isn't just Elon Musk. You have the fact that, you know, the public, the modern public square is basically wholly owned by a whole range of billionaires. And I, what I, what it made me think of is in this way, I actually appreciate the freak out over Elon Musk because it has raised awareness, made it more acceptable to say, you know what, maybe billionaires owning a bunch of these major publications and owning, you know, digital media spaces and having so much control over our speech, maybe that's not a good thing because finally for the first time they have someone who they see as a threat to potentially what they want to say on these platforms. Or at the very least, it's a happening. You're not crazy for pointing it out. I cannot tell you how many times people

called us conspiracy theorists whenever we would talk about Bezos and Bloomberg during the Democratic Party. Do you remember that? Whenever Bloomberg was running, I did all these pieces about Bloomberg News and about how they were stopping the reporters from publishing stuff. And everybody in the press was defending this. And I was like, this is nuts. You have a guy running for president who owns one of the most influential news outlets in America. If you don't think that's a problem, you're out of your freaking mind. Same thing under Bezos. They would be like, oh, it's outrageous to bring up the ownership of the Washington Post. Oh, the liberals were losing their mind with Bernie. Yeah, and I did. That's the slightest thing about it. I was like, hey, you know, it's a real problem when Jeff Bezos owns this paper and also has a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon. I mean,

I'm just saying, if you think that that isn't tied together, you're an idiot. So I continue to go down the list. And at that time, you know, when it was a billionaire and their good graces, you act like you're nuts. And then, oh, all of a sudden, oh, it's a billionaire owned, you know, I love these woke liberals now are like, wait, but Elon could be controlled by China. I'm like, wake up people. They're all controlled by China. Now, look, wake up, people. They're all controlled by China. Now, look, I've done a whole segment on this show about Elon and China. I think it's a serious problem.

That being said, don't spare me your crocodile tears. Don't act like Bezos, who was the one who- Bezos also has got some China problems. And Bloomberg is more beholden to China than any other single billionaire in the top 20. So it's like the hypocrisy on this just drives me crazy. But at the very least, at least we'll open up the discussion for, let's at least talk about conflict of interest. Okay. Let's talk.

Right. Right. Because, I mean, I feel like what we've been saying for a long time is, you may be good with it now. You may be okay if you're like an ideological liberal and you're more or less like, you know, pro whatever the Democratic Party is into, you know, not like a lefty, but you're kind of in that camp. You may be comfortable with Bezos owning the post. He's certainly not on the left broadly, certainly not on the economic left. We are witnessing the union busting that his company, lengths that his company is going to. But in terms of culturally, in terms of being anti-Trump, you're probably going to feel safe with Bezos. But the whole question is like, put the individual billionaires and their ideologies aside. Do you feel comfortable

with having a handful of people or one individual person having so much control and being subject to their whims? So this is the first time really with Elon Musk that there's been a little bit of an awakening of like, among the liberal side of like, oh, maybe this isn't such a great system we have going here. So just like to see that applied consistently. All right, guys, we have a new extraordinarily troubling report on just how often the FBI is searching Americans' data without a warrant. Let's go ahead and put this report up on the screen. This is from the Wall Street Journal. They say, FBI conducted potentially millions of searches of Americans' data last year, the report says. This was after Congress pushed them to offer at least some transparency about

what was going on here. Let me read a little bit of this piece to you. They say, The FBI performed potentially millions of searches of American electronic data last year without a warrant, U.S. officials, Intel officials said Friday, a revelation likely to stoke longstanding concerns in Congress about government surveillance and privacy. Gee, you think? An annual report published Friday by the Office of the DNI disclosed they had conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of U.S. data that had been previously collected by the NSA. More than half the reported searches, nearly 2 million, were related to an investigation into a national

security threat involving attempts by alleged Russian hackers to break into critical infrastructure in the U.S. Those searches included efforts to identify and protect potential victims of the alleged Russian campaign. Now, in terms of the legality of this, after September 11th, Section 702 was passed into law. And that basically authorizes collecting of intelligence from international phone calls and emails about, quote, terrorism suspects, cyber threats, and other security risks. And data on Americans is regularly vacuumed up along with those intercepts of, you know, foreign communications. So, for example, they say when a foreign spy is communicating with someone in the U.S. or when two overseas targets are talking about an American. So congressional lawmakers, a few of them at least, have been saying, okay, well, how often does this happen? And what do you do with this data? And how do you search it? Because they argue that doing so amounts to a

backdoor search on Americans that dispenses with the requirements to obtain a warrant. Congress last renewed Section 702 in 2018 under Trump. It is up for reauthorization again. So, this is extraordinarily timely info. So, again, basically, the FBI is using this sort of legal loophole to be able to conduct these searches on Americans without warrants. And it's now a live issue in front of Congress whether they're going to continue to allow this backdoor, and potentially it is illegal and unconstitutional, violation of Americans' privacy rights. Yeah, and actually buried down in the bottom of the report, they say that there were at least four instances in which the FBI, due to factual consideration, should have sought approval from a FISA court performing a search and looking

at the content of communications and then didn't do that. The FBI has not sought approval from the court since the requirement was adopted in 2018. So that means over the last four years, they've been doing this, even though they are required by law in order to go to the court. I also love how they say stuff like this. A search for your phone number, your name, email address, and social security number does not constitute a search under the definition. Excuse me? Your email address, your phone number, and your social? I mean, those are three of what the most critical pieces of information about a person under which you could pull credit reports. You could look at all sorts of open source information. I mean, look, I'm not saying a lot of that isn't already out there, but that definitely

does constitute at least some sort of like personal interest search in terms of the U.S. government looking into that. It's just crazy that they can get away with that and not even classify that as a search in a database that they control. Well, and these procedures and this authorization is continued under both Democratic and Republican administrations, obviously.

And during the Trump administration, you had a whole full-on conversation about Section 702 and FISA court abuses and unmasking and all of these terms became very well-known on the right. And then they just go ahead and do the same thing and reauthorize the thing again. So at least that pushed some members of Congress, a few lone voices, to push for some level of transparency. And even within that, it's really interesting when you read the report, they phrase it as they conducted as many as 3.4 million searches. The FBI is like, it was probably less. And it's like, okay, well, why can't you just actually give us the number and a full picture of what's ultimately going on here?

You're right to point out that, you know, they view this as technically legal using this sort of legal loophole established by Congress to do backdoor searches without warrants on Americans. They view that as legal. But then they acknowledge, as you're pointing out, that there was actually blatantly illegal behavior. And everybody's just like, eh, do better next time, I guess. They said they're adopting new compliance. Okay, to who? Who's watching you? Are you accountable to Congress?

Are employees going to be fired over this? Like, what are the details here? How egregious was this? How widespread was it? We don't know. Don't know. This is what I mean. I mean, it's completely nuts.

And even then, these new procedures were established back in January of 2020. Okay, it's been like two years. So more than two years since that happened. Are you in compliance? What does the new regular, how did the compliance go? Has it been put into place? Is anybody in Congress asking this question? No.

I mean, the amount of things that these people get away with on a routine basis, and just look at all of them. None of them ever actually get prosecuted. They get these new jobs, some of them at Twitter, even though they're liars. It's just incredible. You know, James Comey's like a freaking multimillionaire based upon his whole episode and probably now works for some, you know, contracting company. It's just like that is always how it goes. I just think it's disgusting, especially when you reveal these things so casually. It's just like report says millions

of searches and everybody's just like, oh, okay. Well, they're entrusted with so much power and then they're given just complete leeway and total lack of accountability when they violate the extremely broad rules that have been set for them. So when you have that level of power, you have to be even more precise. You have to be even more, they should be even more accountability because yeah, you have access to all of this information, all of this data, all of this money, all of these resources. And, um, you know, at least there's a little bit of, uh, transparency here from Congress. I seriously doubt because you know what else they do. And I saw them using this against some, uh, uh, I think it's a combination of lefties and Republicans in

Congress, but I'm not sure. There's some like overly broad terrorism provision that some members of the squad are saying, hold on, we want to know more about what's going on here. And they use this stuff, they still do it, to paint you as like soft on terror and why don't you want to keep Americans safe? And this was leaks coming from, you know, Democratic members of Congress. It's completely bipartisan. Just watch. When this comes up again for reauthorization, all the concerns, you know, during the Trump administration about this, all the concerns that are being raised here, everyone's going to be too afraid to be painted by the media as soft on terror and probably just get reauthorized once again to your detriment. Almost certain. We talked a lot about this new ministry of truth that Biden administration is trying to create, the Disinformation Governance Board, and actually to their credit, CNN Press, the DHS secretary himself, about whether he had any concerns and to explain like what the hell

does this thing actually do? Let's take a listen. Would you be okay if Donald Trump were president, if he created this Disinformation Governance Board, or if it is in place and he wins again in 2024, that he's in charge of such a thing? I believe that this working group that gathers together best practices, makes sure that our work is coordinated, consistent with those best practices, that we're safeguarding the right of free speech, that we're safeguarding civil liberties, I think is an extraordinarily important endeavor. Oh, okay. I mean, it's like a robot wrote that answer, Crystal. We're safeguarding civil liberties. He's lying. You wouldn't be comfortable with that. We are safeguarding civil liberties by

establishing a disinformation governance board whose job is to determine what's disinformation and what is not with a woman who is a provable liar and has pushed disinformation herself, not to mention the many lies that Secretary Mayorkas has. Here's the thing. Governments lie all the time in a way that's kind of their job. Okay. We basically accept that in America, but we should not have it so that these people can decide what is true or not. Specifically, whenever those powers will come entrenched in a federal bureaucracy and then transferred from one to another. We should not be comfortable in any way for these people in order to tell us what's true and what's not. We need to the full ability in order to debate it. The mask example of her being wrong on masks in early 2020 is the perfect one. That's

why we can't have censorship, because by their own logic, that could have caused lies. You know, the thing that also was interesting in this clip that happened prior to that moment that we showed you, she's pressing him just on like, okay, what does it actually do? And he can't really, you know, he gives this very jargon laden buzzword heavy response. And I was reading, you know, pressed by a member of Congress on this. All he, what he said the board actually does, because this is what makes me so uncomfortable, is like you can't even give an explanation of what this thing actually is in clear language, understandable language. So he says, the board does not have any operational authority or capability.

What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries, from the cartels, and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing in addressing this threat for years. I mean, that's basically like, that's just basically like word salad. It doesn't have any specifics about what you're actually, what is this, what are their capabilities, what are they focused on, none of that. I have some insight into this because I know how the defense world works and how it is is they gather experts to create best practices. Then they use those internally in order to have policy and also distribute it externally. So, for example, the defense government or the defense industrial complex will create

like best practices. Here's our strategy. Here are the type of weapons we look for. And then they feed that to the government contracts. And the contractors are like, okay, here's the blueprint. And they build off of that. So don't act like it doesn't have. So then what are they going to do with that?

Well, that's my point. Right. Which is that we know that those best practices are obviously there are meetings right now between the DHS and the Facebook and Twitter and others about certain types of content policies, which has been exposed through Freedom of Information Act requests showing that, you know, with the request of the California government, Twitter has taken stuff down or Facebook. Well, that's exactly what's happening here. So they're going to be like, hey, here are our best practices on COVID, on this. All that comes is during the election, you know? Okay, look, I support mail-in ballots. I know a bunch of MAGA people think

that's heresy, but let's say that they say that criticizing mail-in ballots is, you know, disinformation. Okay, well now what? You know, are they going to slap? Look, I disagree with that. I think you're an idiot if you are against it, but, you know, I think you have a right to say it. That's where things become extra dicey, especially under elections, which the DHS election security is directly under their purview. So that's a perfect example. Yeah, very good example. Something I've been talking a lot about here is the phenomenon of barstool conservatism. And I know it can sound a little cringe, but the basic idea behind it is that there are a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump who don't care about traditional socially conservative values. So

abortion and guns, they're probably more likely to be secular. They're mostly men. They're people who are anti-political correctness and specifically anti-woke. Dave Portnoy and Barstool kind of typifies that exact type, both a voter and the brand itself is very aligned. So anyway, a lot of this has come up in the context of Roe versus Wade and how exactly that contingent of pro-choice Republicans are really just anti-woke Republicans, previously nonpolitical and now people who are really, really animated in the new culture war. How are they going to respond to that?

Dave himself actually spoke on his podcast. Let's take a listen to what he said. If that is an issue, I'd vote Democrat. So it's a great fucking ploy. I don't understand. And I thought this in my head too. It's like, theoretically, Republicans are like less government, small government.

So like, shouldn't Republicans be pro-choice because let the person, now I know the argument. Yeah, you don't want the federal government making the laws, you want the state. But overall know the argument. Yeah. You don't want the federal government making the laws. You want the state, but overall the less government is just let a fucking woman do what she wants with her body. Keep the government out of it. That's to me what that is. It's like, yeah, you can't ban it. If a woman wants it, great. She doesn't want it. Great. Her choice. No government, less government, less government, that whatever. It's a crazy thing. It has to be said people. I'm sure some people are like, that's not your thing. They're going cover it that whatever it's a crazy thing it has to be said people i'm sure some people are like that's not your thing they're gonna be mad it's a super sensitive issue

i don't care certain issues you have to be like what the fuck are you talking about this is one of them all right how um so any how was the Mac Jones interaction? Great. He's my new best friend. Okay. We had to keep the last part. It's so funny. By the way, shout out to Eddie. Eddie listens to the show.

He's a cool dude. I like him. Eddie's his co-host. Big fan of Eddie. Nothing to say about that. Let's talk about something I'm comfortable with. It's a hilarious. Oh, also.

So I wanted to check. Rogan is another big leader in the barstool con type thing. Somebody who's been trashing Democrats for like two years, politically correct, all of that. Opened up his latest show with Doug Stanhope. The very first thing that they talk about,

he blasts Roe versus Wade. I think these are important. Blast the ending of Roe versus Wade. He's like, this is crazy, terrible law, Texas comes out. Old right-wing Rogan once again. But this is my point,

which is that these two newly culture, again, he would dispute that he's conservative. I don't think he is, but I do think there's a difference

between being culturally right-wing today and culturally conservative. And I would put Portnoy and Rogan kind of into that category. Yeah. Whereas being culturally conservative is a whole other more of into that category. Yeah. Whereas being culturally conservative

is a whole other more of like a 1990s disposition. And so previously, Republicans were set to win an R plus seven type victory. And my friend Ruben Rodriguez on Twitter, great follow by the way, highly encourage you guys to go check him out. He said something which I thought was important. He said this election was setting up to be a referendum on the economy, on COVID, and on political correctness and gender ideology.

And those three things were going to lead to possibly the biggest Republican victory of an entire generation. Now, it's not going to be that. Now, look, that could change how exactly things vote. They'd probably still win. And look, you don't necessarily need Barstool cons in order to win the election. But a huge portion, nearly one third of the people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 were themselves pro-choice, Crystal. Well, and those are not traditional Republicans. I think and this is why, honestly, in terms of their national commentary, you have heard Republican political figures leaning less into the abortion debate until I mean, obviously, now their hand is forced. But you've heard them leaning more into, you know, the don't say gay bill down the floor and more into CRT. Yes, for a reason.

This is the this is the growth industry within the Republican Party. It's true. And so the problem with this decision and why they're like, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about the leak. The leak was terrible, right, guys? We hate the leak. It was an insurrection. It was literal terrorism, whatever, is because, yeah, there's a segment of their new followers and supporters who are not cool with this direction. Who may even not be like fully pro-choice. But again, the overturning of Roe versus Wade is, you know, by the numbers, a fairly extreme position and one that puts you on a step, even with a portion of your own base. I mean, the part that, you know, the reason why I definitely don't identify with

this movement is because, you know, economics is core to what I care about. And so even though, you know, in certain areas, I'm like anti-woke, although it very much depends on exactly how you define that, because I'm not with some of the insanity around like, oh my God, gay people are grooming people or even some of the freak out around CRT. But that's just like, to me, it's a side issue. And the core issue is economics. And I don't know what, like, I think Portnoy is like a union buster and like kind of economically conservative. So the part-

He's very libertarian. The part I don't understand is really putting wokeness as like your key, like central issue to your politics. That's the part that I don't understand. The one thing I will say is I think that because that language has been adopted so much by the right and the sort of anti-censorship language also adopted by the right,

even though, of course, we've demonstrated on the show a million ways that there's a lot of inconsistencies and hypocrisies happening there, it can be very hard for traditional political pundits to put people in the right ideological categories. Like it scrambles their brains. So Rogan scrambles their brains. You and I scramble their brains at certain ways. I get accused of being like a right winger, you know, oftentimes, even though like literally issue by issue, I am very left on almost everything because they just can't kind of understand the dynamics of what this means and where it places you politically, ideologically. So it is an interesting dynamic. I guess that's what I'll

say. No, definitely. And the reason why I think this stuff is important is that, and also another ground on which the left can now abandon, is there's all this birthing people language which is out there. And I noticed with Roe, it disappeared like the drop of a hat. And what really showed me this was Gavin Newsom put out a tweet yesterday saying, if men could get pregnant, this wouldn't even be a conversation. And that was mystified. It was amazing to me because it just showed me that they could drop their unpopular and idiotic woke language in a second

and pivot to the actually popular position of protecting what they, you know, women's rights or like how they say it. And I was like, wow, because the reason that the right was winning the new culture war is because they were like, we need to protect women's sports. They're like, we need to protect women's sports. They're like, we need to protect actual gender,

traditional gender roles and not let people brainwash our kids. That is a very popular position. And it was amazing to me that the left could immediately drop a lot of that, pivot to the extremely popular position of like, hey, like women, women are under attack and they can just pivot to this new ground, which again, just scrambles the entire new way that this conversation was trending. And so I think it's important.

Look, I'm obviously a supporter of trans rights and trans equality. And, you know, I have issues with what's going on in Florida where I have problems is because there is an instinct on the left to obsess over this language and like condemn you as like a hateful bigot if you don't use the like birthing people language, which, you know, I mean, the whole goal should be like broadening the coalition, helping bring along people who may not be exactly where you are to start with. And when you use language that's very like niche, academic and, you know, off-putting from the start, like Latinx is the perfect example of this. You aren't doing the work of broadening the coalition.

And in fact, you're just, you know, sort of trying to virtue signal and put yourself in your own little niche club that's always going to be politically irrelevant. So that's my issue with like the woke language. And it also oftentimes gets weaponized to cover by corporate forces to cover like Disney to cover for their actual like economic abuses. So that's my issue, which is a little bit different from what your issue ultimately is. But I did note that same thing as you because you know when I started tweeting about Roe being overturned I was already because I just said women I didn't say birthing people or whatever you know and I didn't have like caveats in there or whatever um I was actually ready to see in my comments like a backlash about my being insensitive or whatever because we had seen uh Bernie Sanders tweeted something along these lines a while back and got all this backlash about like, he said something about women

and women's rights and got, you know, backlash in the comments about not using the right language. So I was kind of ready for that. And I didn't see it at all. Yeah. I'm not surprised. Yeah. So when it really comes down to it, everybody knows this is bullshit, you know? Well, I think it's interesting. I think it's just like you said, there was a recognition that like, oh, we're, let's like, let's not mess this one up by using language that puts us out of step with, you know, just a sort of maturitarian language and sentiment. So interesting. I think it's an interesting phenomenon.

You know, not good for the right, in my opinion, electorally, but we'll see how it plays out. See how it shakes out. It's interesting also to see the way that Dave's talking. Okay, guys, some very interesting and rather revealing developments on the Democratic side. So, of course, the Democratic Party and many other people, by the way, very upset about the leaked draft that appears to overturn Roe v. Wade that's going to be imminently decided by the Supreme Court. Literally the day after this

decision leaks, Jim Clyburn, one of the most powerful Democrats in the House and really in the country, decides to fly down to Texas to campaign on behalf of one of the last anti-abortion Democratic lawmakers, Henry Cuellar, who is facing a very tough primary opponent from the left, Jessica Cisneros. Let's go ahead and throw this tweet up on the screen from Ryan Grimm. He says, Clyburn planning to rally with the party's staunchest foe of abortion rights. The Pelosi backed Henry Cuellar because this is all a game of ego to them at this point. Sure enough, he was there. There's a video of him speaking at a rally. And I mean, it really just exposes like what a bunch of liars they are when it comes to what they actually care about. And not only are you not backing her, you are actively trying to defeat her. This is a relatively blue district, too. So it's not like, you know, this is really, oh, they could make the argument

like, oh, if we nominate this lefty person, the district is going to fall. And the district looks like it's fairly safe for Democrats ultimately. So this is all just about making sure they get their buddy who's going to take the right vote when it comes to who will hold leadership positions. That's all they really ultimately care about here. Also worth noting, this is a rematch. Last time around, Cisneros came very close to winning the Democratic primary. In the runoff, Cuellar received 48.4 percent. Cisneros had 46.9. Then Cuellar won outright in the runoff, defeating her by just a couple of percentage points. So it was really quite close last time around. We'll see. This election is just coming up next week, I believe.

We'll see if ultimately the politics of Roe put Jessica over the top this time when she wasn't able to get it done last time. There's no way to know, obviously, right? Oh, one other thing also, Cuellar is under FBI investigation. By the way, by the way. I was going to say, there's no way to know. That being said, Cuellar actually is under FBI investigation right now. I think it's unclear exactly why. It's a, what is it, a quasi-bribery type scandal in terms of campaign finance. Anyway, I don't want the lawyers to come after me. He is definitely under FBI investigation right ahead of the election, which, you know, the FBI generally does not do that unless it is something which is pretty important. As you said, Pelosi, put that up there on the screen, affirmed her support for Cuellar after the FBI raid,

saying, I support my incumbents. That's what I do. Interesting, Crystal. Yeah, very. I mean, like I said, the one thing they really care about is that he's going to make the right vote in their opinion when it comes to who remains speaker, who remains in the top leadership positions. They know that he'll be a reliable vote for them when it comes to those core interests. So it's quite revealing. The last piece that our producer James pulled for us here is just, you know, this is a heavily majority Latino district. And obviously Latinos have been moving away from the Democratic Party. There was an Ipsos, Axios Ipsos poll that basically found that a lot of Latino Americans just feel like both of the parties completely sort of take them for granted and, you know, don't really do much to actually understand and deliver for them in terms of the issues that they care about, which I think is certainly the case and certainly likely

to be the case in this district as well. So we'll see how it all plays out. But again, just in case you were wondering how sincere Democrats are on these issues, they care more about using the issues for votes in power, just like the Republicans, by the way, than they do actually delivering. And if you had any doubt about that, their desire and willingness to line up behind Henry Cuellar, travel to his district to rally for him before his election, literally the day after this leaked decision comes out, tells you everything you need to know. There you go. All right, guys. Thanks for watching.

More for you later. Hey, guys, Kyle Kalinske is letting us post some of the clips from his channel that we think you guys will really love in the Breaking Points community on our channel. Yep, let's get to it. So I was genuinely surprised by the video that you guys are about to see. Dana Bash of CNN, who usually I am no fan of at all. I think she's very milquetoast, conventional wisdom spewing machine. But she actually pressed a Biden administration official over this new thing that they've decided to pursue, which is a disinformation czar at the Department of Homeland Security.

Now, that's concerning on its own, that the government is involved in determining what is and isn't disinformation, because, of course, they have their own biases and their own beliefs and their own agenda, and they're not objective, they're not neutral, they're not balanced. They are effectively operating as the Ministry of Truth.

Again, it's at the Department of Homeland Security. Now, the person who was picked for this position is also incredibly biased, and she has her own blind spots. I mean, there was, she apparently was tweeting about how the Hunter Biden laptop thing was Russian disinformation, and that it was a good thing that it was censored on Twitter and various social media outlets. Well, now we know from verification from the New York Times, including others, that it wasn't Russian disinformation. That was really his laptop and those were really the emails. Now, I'm not interested in all the personal stuff about Hunter

Biden. I think that goes too far and he has a right to privacy. Nobody should care about his drug use or his sex habits or whatever. But certainly the emails involving corruption and business interests and his dad, those are fair game of course the new york post was banned from twitter because uh they ran that story leading up to the election i mean that is inexcusable she defended that she liked that and now this is the person who's the disinformations are for the department of homeland security so uh down a bash of cnn he's talking to a Biden administration official here, and she's actually going to press him on whether or not this is a good idea

and why should we have it at all. Take a look. What you are calling, your department, is calling the Disinformation Governance Board. You unveiled that this week. Republicans are calling it Orwellian and comparing it to the Ministry of Truth in the novel 1984. Can you clarify what exactly is this? What exactly will this disinformation

governance board do? Will it monitor American citizens? Dan, I'm very pleased to do so. It's clear. I mean, those criticisms are precisely the opposite of what this small working group within the Department of Homeland Security will do. And I think we probably could have done a better job of communicating what it does and does not do. So the fact is that disinformation that creates a threat to the security of the homeland is our responsibility to address. And this department has been addressing it for years, throughout the years of the prior administration and an ongoing basis. Disinformation from Russia, China. We know the problems, but it's still not clear to me how this governance board will act. What will it do? So what it does is it works to ensure that the way in which we address threats, the connectivity between threats and

acts of violence are addressed without infringing on free speech, protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the right of privacy. And the board, this working group, internal working group, will draw from best practices and communicate those best practices to the operators because the board does not have operational authority. Will American citizens be monitored? No. Guarantee that. So what we do, we in the Department of Homeland Security don't monitor American citizens.

You don't, but will this board change that? No, no, no. The board does not have any operational authority or capability. What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries, from the cartels, and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing in addressing this threat for years. Republicans are criticizing your decision, the administration's decision to choose Nina Jankowicz to lead this disinformation board. They say she is not somebody who is neutral. Your response?

Eminently qualified, a renowned expert in the field of disinformation. Absolutely so. Would you be okay if Donald Trump were president, if he created this disinformation governance board, or if it is in place and he wins again in 2024, that he's in charge of such a thing? I believe that this working group that gathers together best practices, makes sure that our work is coordinated, consistent with those best practices, that we're safeguarding the right of free speech, that we're safeguarding civil liberties, I think it's an extraordinarily important endeavor. All right. So before I go comment for comment here and break down what he argues, let me just say that we learned yesterday. Now, to be fair, I have no idea if the disinformations are the Department of Homeland

Security is directly connected to what happened in this instance. But the timing, of course, is suspicious. So like a couple of days after woman is picked, there are independent news websites, Mint Press News and Consortium News, that just had their PayPals axed. Their PayPals were banned. And in one instance, PayPal may even seize the balance of the money from Consortium News. Now, I have no idea where Mint Press News or Consortium News gets their funding from, but frankly, I don't care. Because even if it is some sort of like,

you know, foreign government, there's, that's allowed. Like you're allowed to have, the BBC functions in the US. It's being funded by the UK. So is that not allowed? Is it only allowed when the government's funding the news outlets or so-called news outlets in the U.S. are ally governments? If it's an enemy government, it's just not allowed?

I mean, there's, you know, I forget which government in South America funds Telesur news, but there's a government in South America America funds Telesur news, but there's a government in South America that funds Telesur news. And that's where Abby Martin, for example, either used to work or currently works. This is what it means to have a free press. Not only is there corporate media, not only is there, you know, US funded media like PBS or NPR or something like that, there can be foreign government funded media. There could be independent funded media like PBS or NPR or something like that. There can be foreign government funded media. There could be independent funded media. Like you're allowed to have that be the case. That's not illegal. And if anything, you could argue it's actually, it's actually a good thing

because if you understand what it is that you're looking at, then you can get different perspectives. You know, the idea of like shutting down on cracking down on Russian funded news outlets here. I don't agree with not because I agree with their analysis on like the war in Ukraine, because I want to know the line of argument coming from Vladimir Putin and Russia in the situation in Ukraine, even if it just ends up ultimately, in many instances, being like comedy to me, being absurdly biased. So Mint Press News and Consortium News having their PayPal jacked from them, that is not OK. And the other thing it shows is, and we've known this because of Facebook, we've known this because of Twitter, there really is high level coordination between the intelligence agencies and these various outlets, whether social media outlets or payment processor outlets that like there are some people at Facebook or Twitter or PayPal or other outlets that are kind of taking marching

orders from the U.S. government or having some sort of collaborative thing where they agree on the actions that should be taken for certain outlets. And look, you got to call that what it is, man. That is authoritarianism. That's what it is. It's to go down that road is incredibly dangerous because again, it's not like U.S. intelligence officials and the U.S. government are solely interested in the truth. They're interested in the perspective of the U.S. government. They're interested in their own argument line and their own propaganda.

And to me, the debate-ending point on this front is like, you do know that a disinformation czar, assuming they had control in the lead-up to the Iraq war, they would have been banning the point of view that Saddam Hussein does not have weapons of mass destruction. Now, that's the correct view, it turns out, but they would have banned that. Why? Because it didn't jive with what the intelligence officials in the U.S. were saying and the

argument that the government was trying to push. So, like, there's no such thing as an actually neutral fact checker. It just doesn't exist. Everybody has blind spots. Everybody gets things wrong. You know, I wouldn't trust myself in the position to determine what is and isn't seen. Because even though, obviously, I think I'm right most of the time, but there could be things I get wrong. And I don't want to have the phenomenal power of just pulling down some stuff or totally cutting off the funding of an outlet and being wrong about it. So it's just, it's not good, man. And we've seen this in a variety of different ways. We've seen this manifest in a variety of different ways. We've seen this manifest in a variety of different ways. Chris Hedges had like, he had worked for RT and he ended up having his entire, um, you know, archive of stuff being pulled down. I think it was pulled down from YouTube and there's stuff, you know, the idea

of like, oh, since he works for RT, it's illegitimate. He even criticized the Russian government in a lot of the stuff and it was pulled down. I mean, it is just authoritarian. Now, let's go through some of the arguments that were made here. He says, this working group is there to ensure that the way we connect threats are consistent with civil liberties and rights. I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. I don't understand what that point means.

Then he says, he's asked, will American citizens be monitored? He says, no. Okay. I'm reminded of when James Clapper of the NSA was asked, are you spying on Americans or collecting data on Americans? And his response was, no, quote, not wittingly. And then, of course, we found out through the Snowden leaks, that was a total lie. They were collecting metadata on virtually all Americans. So they just, you know, you can't trust these people.

You're not supposed to take what they say at face value. Then he goes on to say, well, they have no authority or capability, this group does. Okay, so why do they exist? They're not actually doing anything. That's one of the points he made. No authority, no capability. Okay, so why are they doing it?'re not actually doing anything. That's one of the points he made. No authority, no capability. Okay, so why are they doing it?

Well, then they go on to say, oh, they pass on the information to the, quote, operators. Oh, well, who are the operators? Who are these people? So there are people who have the ability and the authority to officially crack down on disinformation and pull it from the internet, who are those

operators? Because then they would be the disinformation czars. So you can't say, oh, don't worry about it. They have no authority. They have no capability. But then they give the information to people who do, and then they act on it. Because ultimately the game is being given away there. Now,

you know that there are people who crack down on disinformation. Or so-called disinformation, I should say. And then they bring it up. Foreign state adversaries or cartels, like, when they're spreading stuff that we don't agree with, that's when we take action.

But again, what about when you're wrong? What about when you guys get stuff wrong? That's not to say the intelligence agencies are 100% of the time wrong. No, sometimes they get stuff right. But it's certainly not obvious. It's certainly not a given that, you know, U.S. intelligence will just get stuff right. And I think it really is a devastatingly accurate point

when Dana Bash says, would you be okay if Trump appointed, if Trump appointed this person? And there's not really a good answer there. But I can answer the question. Of course not. Of course Democrats and leftists and liberals, if Trump appointed some hack, some partisan hack, who gets to determine

what is and isn't disinformation, we'd all be like, oh, this is a partisan hack. This is crazy. This is authoritarian. This is censorship. This shouldn't be allowed. There's no such thing as a ministry of truth. You know, the difference is I'm consistent. I think it's a hack thing to do and an authoritarian thing to do if Biden's appointed the person or if Trump's appointed the person. Because again, the government's not supposed to be in this business. So, I mean, honestly, I think there's a case that you, this genuinely violates the First Amendment,

not just the spirit of the First Amendment, which is the case with most social media censorship stuff. But if the social media outlets or the payment processors are banning or censoring at the behest of the U.S. government, that might actually be unconstitutional. Because you're supposed to have a free press and free expression. And if the government is determining what views are and aren't allowed, that clearly violates that. So if there were to be a court case over this, I think that the disinformations are might

not even be allowed to operate, might not even be allowed to be a thing. But they're talking about it so casually and openly. Look, the argument I'm making is not that, you know, disinformation isn't a problem or misinformation isn't a problem. Of course it's a problem. But the issue here is anything that you would do to try to fix that actually creates a bigger problem. Because now not only are you going to have disinformation out there and misinformation out there, it's always going to exist, but now you have the blunt instrument of censorship that's wielded only for things that deviate from the establishment perspective,

and that's unacceptable. I mean, again, the Hunter Biden laptop thing should be game, set, match on this entire conversation anyway. The fact that there were some social media outlets that would crack down on people who floated, hey, maybe this virus came from a lab in Wuhan. That was something, in many instances, that wasn't even allowed to be discussed. And then, you know, as time went by, we realized that's certainly a possibility. Now, I don't know. It's possible it came from the wet market too, but you should definitely be allowed to discuss that. And in the middle of the pandemic,

as time goes by, you know, the science is evolving. We're learning more and more. Things that we thought were common sense weren't. And then these other things become common sense. To not be able to talk about that, or speculate about it, or give your own educated guesses,

try to connect the dots on your own, I think that's absurd. Now, that's absurd, and it also is absurd that there are people who are complete snake oil salesmen and con men and frauds and charlatans who are, you know, putting bogus cures out there and stuff and have terribly backwards opinions not based on the evidence at all.

But again, any sort of attempt to fix this actually just creates a bigger problem because now we have to deal with the issue of, like, walking on eggshells, and nobody being able, to actually speak their mind, because what if, somebody decides,

I disagree with that, can't even allow it, so I mean, look just, the next time there's a, run up to war, remember this, because anybody who's, countering the narrative, because whenever there's a push for war, it's a fever pitch. And everybody's all in on all the arguments as to why the baddie nation is bad.

And anybody who comes in and tries to temper that and say, hey, here's some mitigating facts, here's some nuance, maybe this isn't as cut and dry as we think. Those could be people who get banned. Because, oh, you're doing the propaganda of, quote, foreign state adversaries. It's a bad look, man, and it is an authoritarian policy. This shouldn't even be in the conversation. When it comes to regulation of social media, the answer is treat them like public utilities, expand First Amendment protections. You still absolutely will not be able to do direct threats of violence,

libel, slander, defamation, targeted harassment, doxing. There are very limited rules. You can't post actual crimes because they're criminal. So there will be rules. But the rules are the basics. You do not censor based on political viewpoint

or even controversial takes or even things that might be considered quote-unquote hate speech. If it's not targeted, you're allowed to do it. The ACLU, the ACLU defended neo-Nazis and Skokie. Is it because they agree with the neo-Nazis

and they're racists or bigots? No. It was a principled defense that you can't, it's a slippery slope, if you take away their free speech rights, the next day they're going to say these communists aren't allowed to march and say what they're in favor of. Because, I don't know, Stalin murdered so many people and

there may be some tankies there and they're apologists for Stalin, so it's like Holocaust denial for these people to march. They will always, there's no such thing as a little bit of censorship. Once you start, there's no stopping, and a zillion things are going to be censored, and it's going to be people you disagree with and people you agree with. So that's what we have to do. That's what

the answer is, but this conversation's not even happening. Even among people who claim to care about free speech, even among people who claim to not want the censorship, nobody gives the obvious answer. Regulate all the big social media outlets like their public utilities. And there needs to be some sort of bill of rights for the payment processors thing.

Because nobody, I mean, think about it like this. If there's a mafia hit, and the mafia Don calls the hitman on the phone and says, you know, little ponies over there on 42nd Street and he'll be there until 5 and then he leaves. So go take care of business if you know what I'm saying. And then somebody goes and murders little Tony. Would the reaction to that be, these people shouldn't be allowed to use the telephone.

Ban their ability to use the telephone. Ban their ability to use the telephone. Nobody would say that. Because everybody understands, sort of, almost innately at this point, that there aren't rules like that for the phone. It just is. It just exists. It's not the phone company's fault that that happened. So you need to start thinking about social media outlets like that and payment processors like that.

It's not signing on to disinformation or misinformation or conspiracy theories to have somebody on social media put out a conspiracy theory or misinformation or disinformation. It's not agreeing with it. To cancel the payment processing for Consortium News and Mint Press News,

that's not PayPal. If PayPal left them up, that's not them saying, I agree with what these people say. It's just that's the nature of the payment processor. There shouldn't be a middleman. Do you understand it? It's actually a very simple point, but it escapes a lot of people. You can't set up a group of people who are the overlords of information

because they have their own problems, their own biases, their own misunderstandings, their own blind spots. And that creates a bigger problem than the current problem. I'm not saying that the system is perfect or would be perfect if we regulated them like public utilities and had First Amendment protections. But it's the least bad of all bad options. And it really is, in spirit, the American way and and had First Amendment protections. But it's the least bad of all bad options, and it really is, in spirit, the American way, and embracing

the First Amendment. So, not good, man. Not good. Danabash did a great job there, but the fact that this thing exists is insane. It is not a right-wing position to say you gotta get rid of this idea of what disinformations are.

In fact, I would argue it is a left-wing position. The left-wing position on all this stuff, whether it be the payment processors, whether it be the social media outlets, the left-wing position is expand the First Amendment, declare these outlets public utilities, and regulate it in accordance with the Constitution, and that's it. That's the end of it. If actual crimes are committed, people can be prosecuted.

If crimes are not committed, it's called freedom. Something we're supposed to all agree with. So that's the left-wing position. What Biden is doing here, what I'm having at Disinformations are, is arguably a right-wing thing. Or at the very least, it is certainly an authoritarian thing. You could say it's authoritarian left

or you could say it's a right-wing position. We don't need to argue over the labels on this point, but you get it. But you get it. It's not a good path to go down. And unfortunately, we're going full speed down that path. 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. Firstly, I want to start by wishing everyone out there a happy belated May Day, or International Workers' Day, which was on May 1st earlier this week. And today, in the spirit of May Day, I want to talk to you about the workplace as a site of struggle,

a place where power and control are often consolidated at the top, but also where power can be collectively challenged and more of it can be transferred to and exerted by those at the bottom. And we're going to focus on one particular way that many of us are taught to deal with or resolve this struggle. Quitting. I want to start by telling you two of the most unremarkable stories you've ever heard. They are unremarkable because I'm positive that all of us have told similar stories at one point or another. Like many of you, I've had a lot of different jobs in the past. I was a pizza delivery guy before smartphones existed, back when managers would literally print out directions for deliveries and tape them onto the orders.

I've worked a bunch of different retail jobs. I've worked at a frozen yogurt shop, and I've taught in college classrooms. I was a waiter in Chicago, and I've been a temp laborer working in different warehouses and factories in Southern California, some as boring as you can imagine, some as nightmare-filled as an Upton Sinclair book. But my first real job, which I basically got the day after I turned 16, thanks to my big brother Zach, was at a small Mexican restaurant chain in Orange County called Pepe's. And that must have been around 2002. So the job was basically what you'd expect.

Exhausting lunch and dinner rushes, followed by slow hours filled with cleaning and shooting the shit with co-workers, loud cooks cracking jokes in Spanish, awesome custom burritos that we got to make during our lunch breaks, the absolute worst smelling bathrooms you've ever been in, and a drive-thru monitor that beeped so loudly when a new car pulled up that it felt like an ice pick being jammed into the base of your skull. And one day, that beep finally got to me. Honestly, I had only been at Pepe's for a few months, and it was fine. You know, I didn't love it, but I loved the food, and it was a paycheck. But the manager I worked with was, most of the time, a real piece of shit, pardon my French. And one day, he got drunk with the head cook in the back, and they basically both passed out in the walk-in fridge. Then the lunch rush came, and it was just me, that awful

drive-thru beep, and a new cook who only spoke Spanish and had been there for about one week. Now, I've been through much worse in my life since then, but at the time, this felt like some straight-up BS that I just really didn't want to put up with. Again, I was still fairly new. I didn't have any sway with the owners to do anything about the manager, so I quietly put in my two weeks and I quit, and I found a seasonal job at the mall. See? I told you. Unremarkable. Now, the other unremarkably common experience I had was standing on the hard, hot, concrete floor of a boiling warehouse after a 12 or 13 hour shift, drenched in sweat, panting alongside 15 to 20 other panting bodies of various ages, listening to the steely plodding of the floor manager's boots as she walked up the line, pointing at the people she wanted to

come back for more work the next day. People who all had families to support and lives to live outside of that hot box. I remember those moments. I remember saying the names of products that we shipped on repeat under my breath just to keep my brain busy until the manager got to me and I knew if I still had a paycheck coming. This was in 2011, just over 10 years ago, in the wake of the Great Recession. Now, every single person standing on that concrete warehouse floor knew how much we all needed the jobs, however shitty they were. And everyone had their own mix of reasons. Financial necessity, obviously, that was the main one, but it could be to pay off student loans or to pay a mortgage, car payments,

children's school expenses, et cetera, et cetera. And some had to hold onto the jobs for dear life because their paroles depended on it. Either way, there was no real sense of freedom in that situation. I had no choice but to be there. I had no choice but to take our manager's crap. I couldn't find any better options. Few of us could. And management knew that. They knew, like we all did, that every morning there would be a huddled mass of faceless silhouettes standing in the dark parking lot outside at four in the morning, waiting to see if someone didn't show up for their shift. These are just small, unremarkable snapshots of two completely mundane moments in my working life. My first time quitting a job, which just so happened to be my first job, gave me a very specific impression of my power and agency as an individual worker. This was before Wall Street and a whole mess of greedy people crashed the economy. This was when

I was still living at home and didn't have extra expenses like rent and child care. This was a time in my life when it felt true that I had the ability to protest bad pay or working conditions by refusing to subject myself to them and leaving. And, you know, that helped bolster my young conservative conviction that the system was working as it should and that this was me acting accordingly in it. The situation at the warehouse was entirely different. I had no real agency there. I needed the money and this was the only job I could get. At that point, three years after the financial crash, I'd begun to see how that system I once had so much faith in was doing everything it could to protect the wealthy and the powerful while tossing working people overboard left and right. Sitting in a living room full of so many memories, in a house that we would soon lose for good, my folks and I would sink deeper into a depressive abyss as we heard talking heads and partisan hacks

sing triumphantly about an economic recovery that seemed to be just passing us by. Like so many others, we felt stuck, trapped, helpless. But here's my point. Whether I was a cashier at Pepe's at a time when the economy still felt like it was working and social mobility still seemed like a real possibility, or whether I was working as a warehouse temp at a time when the world itself seemed to have broken apart and we were all just hanging on for dear life. At neither point, and at almost no other point in my life, did I think there was a third option besides quit and brave the elements, or don't quit, stay, and take the crap. At no real point did I or my co-workers think seriously about staying

and doing something together to fix the problems that we faced at work. Now that's not to say, of course, that there weren't beautiful, tender, life-saving moments of camaraderie and solidarity. Moments when a senior worker would stick up for me. Moments when servers and cooks and busboys formed an unspoken pact to never leave women on staff alone with certain managers. Moments when we actually enjoyed our work together, covered in sweat, listening to music, stacking and loading pallets, and feeling like we accomplished something and that we were worth a damn. At many of the jobs I've had, co-workers commiserated and laughed together. We hung out and learned about each other's lives, and we built bonds together that held outside of work. But we never organized, and we never thought about organizing.

And when people would quit, it was almost always a hushed affair. At best, we'd have, you know, a little send-off ceremony in the break room on their last day. And, you know, if they quit over problems at work, we just quietly, you know, nodded our heads, understanding full well why they couldn't take it anymore, while accepting that the problems themselves would go unacknowledged and would remain unchanged. There was no moment of reckoning or self-reflection from management. Departing employees were either quickly forgotten or remembered only as disgruntled, dysfunctional troublemakers. Over the past year, however, something has changed. With the phenomenon that we've come to know as the Great Resignation, record numbers of people have been voluntarily

quitting their jobs, reaching a height of 4.5 million people quitting in November of 2021 alone, the highest number since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking that data. Last year, we saw a ghoulish chorus of business owners, chamber of commerce puppets, and corporate-serving politicians plastered on every major news network, berating working people back into pre-pandemic subservience by calling us lazy and entitled, making baseless claim after baseless claim about how no one wants to work anymore, and then using those baseless claims to justify ending vital COVID relief programs instead of asking themselves why so many people were increasingly unwilling to take low-paying, dead-end, unsafe, or over-exhausting

jobs where they were treated as disposable. But historic numbers of workers standing up for themselves forced their hand and changed the narrative, including workers like Beth McGrath, a Walmart employee whose viral resignation video was covered on Breaking Points a while back. Take a listen. Attention Walmart shoppers and associates. My name is Beth from Electronics. I've been working at Walmart for almost five years, and I can say that everyone here is overworked and underpaid. The attendant policy is we are treated for management and customers poorly every day.

Whenever we have a problem with it, we're told that we're replaceable. I'm tired of the constant gaslighting. This company treats their elderly associates like manage it. And this job. I quit. Now, notice McGrath's deep breathing before she makes her announcement. I could feel that. I could feel her breathing in my own chest. I've felt that same trepidation and fear. I've dreamed of doing what people like her have done over the past year, but I never did. There's no one reason why so many people have been taking that step to quit their jobs. And those reasons vary depending on the person and the job.

But the fact that so many have taken that step, and the fact that brave people like Beth have refused to go quietly, has meant that employers haven't gotten to exercise the power they typically have to control the terms and determine the learned or unlearned lessons of their employees' departures. Even if these record numbers of quits weren't part of some coordinated collective action, the fact that they have happened en masse and gotten so much attention has meant that the balance of power has shifted ever so slightly. And it's that cumulative mass effect that has forced many employers to actually look

inward, raise wages, improve safety conditions and work flexibility, and make better offers to potential hires. And that is significant. But the gains are also unevenly distributed, insecure, and always at risk of rollbacks. I mean, inflation has already outpaced the average wage growth from last year, for instance. From companies unilaterally ripping their pandemic hero pay bumps away from workers to corporate pirates and landlords gleefully jacking up prices on all of us, we've seen how ruthlessly the order-giving class will always try to steal back any moderate gains that working people make. And I don't say this to minimize the truly historic importance of the Great Resignation and the sea change it represents in people's basic relationship to work

and in their very own sense of self-worth. I am deeply proud of anyone who has ever had the bravery to say, I am worth more than this. Because you are. No matter what this system, your boss, our politicians, or certain toxic bootlicking people in your life may tell you, we are worth more. We deserve more. And we need to fight for more. What I'm saying is that there are limits to what quitting can do for us in that fight. Ultimately, it is every individual's decision to make. There is no one-size-fits-all solution here. And I want to be very clear that sometimes the absolute best and safest and healthiest thing to do is quit your job. And the fact that so many people have been looking out for themselves, believing that they deserve better and taking that leap to prove it is

mind blowing. And I think an extremely positive thing. But what is also mind-blowing is that there are a lot of working people in this country who also felt that way and still feel that way, who also believe that they deserve better and who are proving it by staying where they are and fighting for a better and more humane work life. For example, I was up on Staten Island for the Real News two weeks ago to cover the Amazon labor union rally, which was held before a second and ultimately unsuccessful union election at the LDJ5 sorting center, which is in the same Amazon complex as the JFK8 fulfillment center that successfully voted to unionize last month. Now, since I got back from Staten Island, a lot of

people have been asking me to convey what the workers there are doing and why they're doing it. Well, this is pretty much it in a nutshell. You know, my message as always is don't listen to me, listen to the workers themselves. And this is what workers have been repeatedly saying. We actually published a compilation of on the ground interviews and speeches from the rally on my podcast, Working People. So I'm going to play a clip for you from that episode, from my interview with Michelle Valentin Nieves, a worker organizer with the Amazon Labor Union who works at the JFK 8 warehouse that made history by successfully unionizing last month. Initially, there was none, you know, there was no conversation. And then things started picking up in the direction of organizing when we lost our former manager.

And I think we were in limbo for about four months. And even then there was overseeing managers we saw maybe twice a week, if even that. We had an overseeing ASM for a bit as well, but no store manager and all these things that we wanted to change. And it was passing comments, I want to say, in between transitioning between morning to midship, you had partners coming in wondering like, why isn't this getting done? Why are so many people calling out? Why do I only have two people for the afternoon rush and having nobody to console I remember just like lower your voice like you're gonna get us in trouble but it was within that same day I was like if you're serious text me after work and I'll I'll let you know

because I'm down and I think in like record time I want to say two or three days, more than 70% of our store was drived out for the very same reason that we were driven to organize. Not being accommodated for, not being considered, being overlooked and almost bullied. And so and were there like at the so like at the was, had the Buffalo store unionized at this point? Oh yeah. Yeah. When I tell you it was fast, it was fast. When did our store file? It was April, was it, it was like two weeks ago on a Thursday. was so struck hearing Michelle and other Amazon workers describe how they took that sense of

helpless individual desperation and, you know, through hard work and worker-to-worker organizing through countless conversations, turned that into collective power and a collective commitment to stay and fight. All of the things that we know about Amazon and how it treats its workers apply here. Backbreaking, high-speed, heavily surveilled work in massive warehouses, undemocratic, top-down decisions that directly affect workers' health, safety, and livelihoods, union-busting consultants, captive audience meetings, workers berated by anti-union propaganda left and right, retaliation, and even arrests of organizers. But one thing that's important to note is, you know, it's not like workers' jobs are hell on

earth every hour of every single day. There are parts of their jobs that they like. There are reasons it's better for them or more preferable to work there than to work somewhere else. Many couldn't easily leave and many didn't want to. And it was clear that Jeff Bezos, Amazon HR, or anyone in elective office wasn't going to answer workers cries for help out of the goodness of their own hearts, so workers took it upon themselves to do something about it. And you know this is the same thing that's been happening with Starbucks workers around the country. When I got to interview workers at the North Charles store in Baltimore, who also made history by becoming the

first unionized Starbucks in Maryland last week in a clean sweep election, they told me that a lot of the workers there were trans like them. And it was a special place in that way. And they also, for those reasons, really needed the health care benefits. And so they didn't want to leave. What is truly amazing, I think, is that they are doing what I and I imagine many of you have never really thought about doing. Banding together and exerting power to make this place where we spend so much of our lives because we have to work a better place to work. For many of us, that seems like an impossible task. But if you look at Starbucks workers and what they are doing right now, you see how possible it really is. Just watch this clip of my Real News interview with Ariana

Ayala, a Starbucks partner in New York City and a member of her store's organizing committee, where she describes how quickly things got moving once she and her co-workers started talking openly about doing something to improve their situation at work. The second year I did our T-shift, which is that's the 12-hour shift. So I did that. That's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12-hour shift. I did that for a whole year and um like once I did it I'd say like maybe eight to nine months it started like affecting my health and my energy levels and the way I was behaving at home like I was like snappy at home I was always in a bad mood um it put like a lot of stress on like my relationship and my relationship with my family and my kids.

And it was just like, wow. After that second year of doing RT, I was like, OK, I have to change something. Because doing this 12 hours, it was just like pounding on my body physically and mentally. It was just like a lot. Also, there was a pandemic. Yeah, exactly. Let's not forget the pandemic. That's another thing that was just like, that was like pretty much the stick that broke the horse's back.

Like when the pandemic came out and everyone had to work twice as hard and no one was given a break. People were coming out with COVID left and right. Some people came back to work. Some people didn't. There's people that we don't even know if they passed away, if they recovered. We don't even know because Amazon keeps everything a secret. So it was just a lot. It was like all of those things combined.

But for the union itself, I think the pandemic was really what pushed it to the point where they were like, OK, we have to do this. Like, we have no other choice. It got people so desperate to the point where we were like, we have to do this like we have no other choice right like it got people so desperate to the point where we were like okay we're gonna do this because there's only like at this point there's only like 20 of us but it started out with like maybe four people originally it was like maybe four or five people so it has you have to like really be pushed to the point where okay i'm desperate i'm desperate for change desperate for change. And this is what we're going to have to do. Well, that's it. We're just going to do it. We're going to keep at it until something changes or something happens.

Talking to workers like Ariana, I often find myself thinking back to so many times at so many different jobs when I heard some version of that same refrain. If you don't like it, why don't you just leave? Now, we've all heard this phrase before. Sometimes it's posed as a genuine question. Sometimes as a suggestion. Other times it's snarled as an insult that you're really not expected to respond to. And I want to focus on that for a second, because the fact is that there are a number of different meanings packed into that blunt question. If you don't like what you've got right now, why don't you just switch, abandon your post, and leave it for some other

poor soul to deal with? You know, when I first heard this question, the logic rang true in a sort of consumer type way, right? It was similar to when people would ask if you don't like this or that brand of cereal or this news channel or this phone service provider, then why don't you just exercise your power as a consumer and switch providers or buy a different brand or watch a different channel? And, you know, it was that sentiment that led me to quit that first high school job at Pepe's. In a marketplace where businesses are supposedly competing with one another for customers and workers, it felt like I could leverage that to improve my own lot in life. And, you know, that may have been true once, but it is increasingly not the case these days.

Instead, what we've got is 90% of media operations being owned by four mega-corporations. These new techno-monopolies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google, and Apple are gobbling up every square inch of our digital world, just like big agriculture and the factory farming industry are gobbling up all the farmland and polluting the literal shit out of the surrounding area. And, you know, just like most consumer products are owned by a handful of industry behemoths, the illusion of a competitive marketplace and the power of consumer choice is increasingly giving way to an oligopolistic economy where our ability to move and make the market respond to our needs is dwindling down more and more by the day. And that really is the whole end game here. Because once the question was, if you don't like it,

why don't you just leave? What they want the question to be is, well, where else are you going to go? And they use their power and their influence to make sure the question is already answered for us. You know, workers' unrestricted freedom to reject insufficient working situations by leaving is necessary to make the whole social contract of capitalist society worth it, in theory. In practice, it doesn't really work that way. It's a lot more complicated. Just like human beings, we are much more complicated than that. Sometimes there aren't other jobs to be had. Sometimes you really like your job and you don't want to leave. Sometimes it would cause life-altering disruptions to you

and your family to lose even one day of pay, and so you can't leave. And the more that you think about this, the more that you start to get into the real deep shit that working people have been asking themselves for centuries. How free am I really in this system? We'll save that for another day, but the point is, we have to have more power than quitting in this system allows. If the power that we were promised, the power to use our feet to dictate our own futures and to discipline employers into doing better by their workers is constantly being eroded, we need to build that power back up. And, you know, I think the great resignation shows how essential that power is. But we need more than that. And we deserve more than that. We need power in the workplace. We need people staying and fighting. We need to

push for the changes that we want to see, and then we need to lock those changes into a binding contract. We need to build strong and durable infrastructures for workers to get and stay organized, because true power in the workplace comes from the collective. What they want is to rig the game so that a heavily organized and well-resourced ruling class is always going up against a permanently disorganized and atomized working class because they know, as is always the case, that there are more of us than there are of them. If we organize ourselves, if we stand together like workers around this country and around the world are standing together right now, if we stay and fight, we can win. It's more possible than you think. Just look at Starbucks.

Look at Amazon. Because what scares the bosses more than anything is the day when workers realize that. And that day is coming. Thank you for watching this segment with Breaking Points. And be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News, with links in the show description. See you soon for the next edition of The Art of Class War. Solidarity forever. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder.

I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What up, y'all? This your main man Memphis Bleak right here, host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month, so what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule.

The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn. Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. This Pride Month, we are

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