Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #43: American Distrust, Ukraine Rebuild, FBI Tracking, Journalist Killed, Chronic Understaffing, & More!

Episode Date: July 10, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about Americans losing confidence in institutions, Ukraine demands rebuild, FBI surveillance, RadioShack cringe, Shireen Abu Akleh, airline chaos, and Max Alvarez talks staffing of workers!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/Max Alvarez: https://therealnews.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to 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. More signs of societal decline. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. American confidence in the presidency and Supreme Court has suffered the greatest drop ever between 2021 and 2022. So a lot of people, Crystal, were focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined from 36% great deal trust to 25%. Obviously, in light of the Roe versus Wade decision, that's noteworthy. But how is nobody pointing to this figure? The presidency has gone from having a 38% great deal slash quite a lot trust figure to 23%. That is a colossal drop, the single biggest drop ever recorded, a 15% drop

in just one year. By the way, Biden was also president in 2021. So this isn't just Republicans who are turning on him. I mean, this is a catastrophe. Like for a country to have only one fifth of the entire country think that they have a great deal of trust in the president is insane. That figure was in the high 80s when John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower were president. Obviously, Nixon and LBJ and the lies in Vietnam and Carter and all that contributed to a significant decline, but it was still in the high 50s, even whenever Reagan, even Clinton. Clinton has 61% approval rating, even during the whole Lewinsky scandal. So to see this, I mean, this is catastrophic. And this is 100% on Joe Biden. He was president in 2021, and he clearly has lost so much of the country with his confidence in the presidency. Well, I mean, when all you do is go around all day, every day, explaining how you

can't do anything and like making excuses for being, having your hands tied and why you totally can't act in any number to deal with any number of the crises that we're facing. Yeah. That's going to cause people to have a lot less confidence in the institution of the president. So I don't think that's a surprise. You know, you look at all of these institutions that they list, every single one of them saw a decline in confidence, except for one, which is organized labor. The numbers for organized labor are not great either, but at least they're not on the decline. So at least that's something. But yeah, I mean, you look at this as an overall picture of,

I think Americans are right to have little confidence in most of these institutions. I think they're right to look at our society and see brokenness and decline and decay and institutional rot and corruption and all of those things. So they're not wrong when they say, you know, Congress, for example, has 7% have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress. Can you blame them? Like looking at their manifest inability to rise to the moment and deal with what we're facing as a nation. Yeah, they, they deserve that. Um, so sign of the times sign of just how sort of screwed we are as a society that there is just no confidence and justifiably so in any of these institutions to deal with the moment. Media also didn't point out the fact that newspapers went from 21 to 16 and TV news went from 16 to 11.

So screw you to you people who are in the media and don't want to ask yourself why exactly you're less popular than Biden to the entire country. That's a total joke. I also think some of the other ones, as you said, organized labor saying it in net 28 is interesting, but you know, there were some other drops. Banks went from 33 to 27. That makes a lot of sense. The military dropped by five. Military has always remained one of the most trusted institutions in America. The police went down by six points. The medical system went down by six. That makes a lot of sense. Another here, church and organized religion dropped by six. Here's another bad one. Public school. Yeah, another big church scandal this year. That's right. And public school dropped from 32 to 28. Like I said, banks previously, the criminal justice system continues to decline. Big business actually dropping a new all-time low of 14%.

So basically, nobody trusts anyone in this country except for the military and small business, which is kind of amazing. I mean, I don't know. Again, you do not want to be in that type of situation. One of the hallmarks, actually, of third world countries is that the only institutions which have any legitimacy whatsoever are the military, which leads to a shit ton of military coups. So, yeah, this is not good. Not a good landscape to be in. That's right. We've sent $40 billion over to Ukraine, but according to President Zelensky, that is not nearly going to be enough, not just for the war effort, but in the long term.

Let's throw this up there on the screen. The prime minister of Ukraine is now saying that he is going to need $750 billion. So almost the cost of the entire Afghan war in order to rebuild that country. And you know, his price tag may not be off. However, uh, what he's pointing to is that it will predominantly be asked of by the European Union, by the United States, and by others who have already spent billions and billions and billions of dollars on this conflict in the immediate term. And it just does go to show you, number one, economic damage to Ukraine has been a catastrophe. We talk here about Russia,

you know, contracting 8%. Ukraine shrank by 35%. And they've lost control of some of their nuclear power plants. The eastern part of Ukraine, part of the reason it's so strategically important, that's where a lot of the grain comes from. They already had Crimea that's been gone. The Black Sea has not been able to export a sheer amount of grain for the world. That's been a big problem because the Russians are contesting that space. So in general, they're definitely in an economic catastrophe. But I think this does highlight also that there will probably be a major fight here in Washington if people do see 700 and who knows how much we're going to have to spend there. I mean,

already the bipartisan support for the war is sky high, 40 billion passed, no problem. I mean, imagine the politics of sending some 250,, $300, $500 billion over to Ukraine while our own politics remains stagnant. I can't imagine that world. I'm sorry, I can't imagine the people standing for that, but I can imagine that politically. Oh, I can imagine that being supported by almost everyone in Washington. And I have no, there's two things. Number one, the longer the war goes on, the higher this price tag will be. I mean, $750 billion is, as of today, this war is nowhere close to being over. You know, Russia continues to shell and there is no hope or progress on the

diplomatic front, in part because of our own unwillingness to push things in that direction and at times actively standing in the way of potentially fruitful diplomatic negotiations. So that's number one. Number two, I have no issue with helping the Ukrainians rebuild whatsoever. What I take issue with is, as you said, that there would be such an outpouring of ready support and money for the Ukrainians. But the minute it's time to do anything for working class people, it's like, oh, we can't, the deficit, inflation, there's a million excuses why we can never help

our own people and build in some of the areas that we desperately needed in this country. So that's a part of it that will be very frustrating. Yeah, I completely agree. Anyway, so be on the watch. A lot more money that they're asking for over in Ukraine and our political system is basically set up to cut them any type of check that they could possibly want.

So we'll see. We'll keep you guys updated. Our friends over at the FBI have sent out a bit of a notable tweet. Some new technology that they've developed that we want to cue you in on or clue you in on. That's the expression. Go ahead and put this up on the screen.

The FBI Child ID app, the first mobile application created by the Bureau, provides a convenient place to electronically store photos and other vital information about your children so that it's literally right at hand if you need it, Sagar. This elicited many responses, many people advising don't download an app of any sort that COPS made, that the Fed's made, and certainly don't enter your children's vital information into that Fed made app. The other thing that was funny is people pointed out like, oh, finally, finally a way to store photos right on your phone. Right. We already have that. We're fine. So they really nailed both the, like,

dystopian federal government surveillance state aspect and also the, like, totally irrelevant 1990s technology aspect. So they did it all with this one. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, as somebody says, I don't know who needs to hear this. Please don't give your children's personal info

to the effing feds that actively have covered up for pedophiles. Talking about Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Nassar. Now, you know, Michaela Moroney and Simone Biles are actually suing them for over a billion dollars, and I hope they win. We're going to cover that if there's any major developments that are in the case. So, yeah, look, I mean, there's no reason that you should trust these people. Also, why is this iOS like 15 years old, you know. It literally looks like iPhone 1. What's happening here?

There's still a button on that iPhone. Like, what year is it? I don't understand what's happening. Look, at the very basic level, it just shows you. This is sad, but honestly, I probably trust Apple more than I trust the FBI. Like, what kind of world is that? You have to choose between them or the other. There's no one to trust.

Even if it's in your iCloud, you basically have to make peace with the fact that it could get hacked and it could get leaked. And that's just one of those things that people have made peace with over the years. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but, you know, it certainly is. I mean, that's one of the things that we started thinking through

with the Roe versus Wade decision, too, is that the number one period tracker app, just go ahead and volunteer. We don't even need a warrant. We'll just turn over your data. No problem. If the cops ask for it, sure, we'll do that. So yeah, but no need to cut out the middleman and just give it straight to the feds. At least make them work for it a little bit.

That's right. Make them ask for a warrant. There was, I did click through and read their little like synopsis of it. And it is funny because at the bottom they added this. I wonder if this was added after the fact, after the reaction to this. They said, an important note, the FBI is not collecting or storing any photos or information that you enter in the app. All data resides solely on your mobile device. Unless you need to send it to authorities, please read your mobile provider's terms of service,

blah, blah, blah. Because, you know, very trustworthy in these regards of not overreaching and being straightforward with the public about what sort of data they're collecting and how they're using it. That's going to be a no from me. Very confidence-inspiring. All right.

We'll see you guys later. See y'all. Well, friends, you all remember the company RadioShack. In fact, Sagar, do you remember RadioShack? I remember RadioShack. I remember RadioShack. My family actually got our very first computer from RadioShack. It was just like handy.

It was very exciting. It was like maybe the end of the 80s when we got that. Anyway, RadioShack has been on a long flow decline. And they got bought out by a group that, you know, is turning around the number of these distressed retailers that have basically been decimated by the internet economy. And they have taken RadioShack in a very unexpected direction. Let's go ahead and put this article up on the screen here. They say, remember RadioShack, this is from the Washington Post. It's now a crypto company with wild tweets.

They go on to talk about, I'll read you, by the way, this is not going to be a family-friendly segment because I am going to read you a few of these tweets. But basically, they've turned it into a decentralized crypto exchange platform that allows users to swap coins or tokens. I don't really know what that means, but they say their token called Radio is worth about a penny. So that's what it actually is. And in order to drum up interest in this crypto swap scheme thing that they're doing, they've just turned their Twitter account into this really bizarre, off-the-wall, explicit, strange thing. They even got banned from Twitter for a minute, but I think they're back on. The tweet that got them banned was, just to give you a sense of the type of content they're

putting out into the world, this is the tweet that got them banned. If you find a squirter, marry her. Smart. And then, hold on, just to get a little bit more of a sense, once they got the tweet reinstated in their account back up, they said, a thing about yesterday, I see whole tits on TikTok daily and I got put on Twitter parole for talking about marrying squirters. Elon Musk, when we making moves, fam, the new generation of Twitter is here and I'm going to champion TF on it for you. So anyway, that's what they're doing. If this is what society has come to, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, if this is what society has come to, I really don't know.

I think we should just pack it up, folks. A hundred years ago, RadioShack was started. Now it's being sold as a decentralized token platform, making funny like bussin Gen Z level jokes. I really, I don't have a lot to say. It's just shocking. It's funny though, because it does actually represent the fact that crypto, it represents the precipitous decline in crypto right now, because clearly this deal was done when prices were sky high and 700 billion or so had not been erased. And now this is really all they have left because all of this talk of swapping tokens and all this just sounds like utter nonsense in the current moment, especially with the prices where they are and

with people having lost so much money. So I guess all they really do have left is edgy tweets, which are really not even funny. And it's a sad commentary also on the legacy of the US economy because RadioShack was a great brand. I mean, beyond the idea of the internet economy, it was like a centralized place for people to buy equipment and not just consumer electronics, but really harkens back to when people would try and fix stuff themselves and less prepackaged things. It was a lot more of like the American ethos

of being able to fix your own stuff, about repairing things, about building things really at home. And we've moved completely away from that in the current consumer electronics market. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's a perfect parable of like the decline of the American economy in general from, you know, something that was real and based on innovation and making things to something that is just like, how do I jump on the latest trend of financial rigging and engineering? And also a perfect parable of the crypto market and the crypto crash,

because yeah, this is like a move out of desperation to try to gin up some interest in whatever their weird crypto scheme thing is. So it is sad all the way around. Cringe all the way through. We have some new information from the U.S. government on the bullet that killed an American journalist who was reporting in Palestine and who was killed. Let's put this up there on the screen. So

Shireen Abu Akleh, she was reporting there for Al Jazeera, but she was a U.S. citizen, was killed while she was covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. She had a bulletproof vest that clearly marked her as press. Now, there's been some open source reporting that points to the fact that the bullet that might have killed her was fired by Israeli forces. But the Biden administration is now saying that results from the ballistic tests are, quote, inconclusive. Now, all of this is being released ahead of President Biden's actual, you know, trip to Israel next week on July 15th. The Palestinian Authority actually gave the bullet up to the U.S., Current indications say that Israeli fire is very likely the result, or Israeli fire is likely what

killed Shireen Abu-Akhle, the US journalist who clearly had a US press, or had a press badge on her bulletproof vest. And what a lot of people are saying in result, Crystal, of this ballistic examination and more, is that the U.S. government is basically too chicken to just say, yeah, it's pretty clear here that the IDF most likely killed this journalist. Instead of demanding answers and more, they're just kind of putting it on the table ahead of this upcoming visit by President Biden to Israel. Well, this is exactly why the Palestinians were extremely reluctant to turn over this bullet at all, because effectively what the U.S. and Israel did is they made it all about the bullet, which they could then say, oh, it's too badly damaged. We just can't figure it out. Well, the IDF were the only armed ones in the area.

You have visual evidence. You have witness evidence that was sufficient for the Washington Post, the AP, the New York Times, and the UN to all conclude this came from the Israeli military. And yet they want to focus on just this one thing where they can say, oh, yeah, we don't know. And yet at the same time, this really irritated me. This really angered me. They ruled very definitively that, oh, even if it did come from the Israelis, she wasn't targeted. Well, how did you determine that with such certainty? But you can't seem to figure out where this came from in spite of multiple witnesses and audio evidence, visual evidence, and all of these news organizations that were somehow able to figure it

out. So yeah, it's exactly the outcome that Shireen's family feared, that the Palestinians feared. It's once again, the U.S. working with their friends Israelis to, you know, cover up the crimes and atrocities of the IDF. I don't know why they can't just be honest about it and then demand answers. I mean, she's a U.S. citizen. She's a U.S. journalist. And the president is literally going there. I mean, at the very least, you should say something about it while he's over there and demand answers. I mean, as an American citizen, as a member of the, you know, again, you know, this administration says they stand up for the press, all of that. But, you know, on this, they're basically just trying to bury it and hoping that nobody notices. It's

also not like the media, CNN and others are reporting on this in any major fashion. So I do think it's deeply hypocritical on their part. And it's just a black mark on the Biden administration for doing it this way. Completely ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, the media on this, they did a better job than certainly the administration would. I mean, CNN actually did do, they did do an analysis. There were, you know, multiple news organizations that went through and interviewed the witness, looked at where the bullet landed, it hit the tree and where everybody was positioned and drew out maps of the area. There was nowhere else it could have come from than the Israeli Defense Forces. It's very clear. And yet they somehow found a way to be like, ah, we could never know. Who will ever know? Oh, well, let's move forward. I think it's so important to understand that they threw their own citizen,

American citizen, under the bus to try to cover up for the Israeli government. It's just absolutely despicable. Yeah, and it's shameful. So there's a lot to say about just how terrible the airlines are. There's been a number of stories coming out day after day, week after week, showing that they're falling apart. They're straight up falling apart. So the Hill says more than 300 flights canceled and 3000 flights delayed at the start of the holiday weekend. This was on July 1st.

Then we have this thousands more flights canceled or delayed. Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it. This was in the New York Post. Thousands more flights canceled or delayed as 4th of July travel blitz continues. So this is and this was on July 3rd. So you're getting all these delays and all these flights being canceled. And it's so bad that the more perfect union did like a detailed investigation of it and got to the roots of it. And I have to show you this because this is astonishing.

Um, I mean, they basically, the airlines basically committed fraud. So let's take a look. Taking a flight in America has never been a worse experience. Travel nightmare played out at airports across the country. Customers are left frustrated by the cancellations and the delays. Thousands of cancellations. Skyrocketing ticket prices. It's called the misery map. Tens of thousands of flights have been canceled at the last minute in recent months. Experts say they've never seen anything like it. I don't see an end in sight. This is really unprecedented in terms of the number of cancellations that are occurring

so close to departure time. Media reports have blamed the airline chaos on weather problems and staff shortages, but that misses the bigger picture. These cancellations are really a scandal about corporate power, one that airline executives engineered. Here is how it worked. During the pandemic, airlines secured one of the biggest public bailouts of any industry, $54 billion. The catch? They couldn't lay off their workers. But now look at this loophole they're about to describe right now. This should infuriate you. The whole point of, hey, we're going to bail them out is they're in trouble. They're in real trouble because of COVID.

But we'll give you this bailout, but there are strings attached. You can't lay off workers. Look at this. They found a loophole. Delta will soon offer employees buyouts and early retirement opportunities. October 1, furlough day for 30,000 workers at United and American Airlines. Instead of layoffs, airlines used furloughs and early retirements to push out pilots and crew. How weasley, how sleazy is that? How disgusting is that?

They basically lied. They lied. Now, if you're a government that's competent and looking out for the people, they would pay for this. Oh, they would pay for this. But you'll see, I'll bite my tongue here, but you'll see the official government response. It's something else. All of 2021, they shrunk their workforce by 56,000 people. Wow. Airlines schedule their flights 11 months in advance. They know they don't have the pilots to service these flights.

So now passengers... Nice system. ...are paying the price. Airlines are essentially committing fraud, scheduling and selling thousands of flights they know they can't service. They sold tickets to the traveling public that they cannot live up to, and it's driving us pilots crazy. I hate seeing some of the things that we're putting out about specifically being fully staffed for this summer. So we're well staffed for the summer? I know that that's not true.

We're making these empty promises that I'm already used to getting to the public. 1,300 pilots expected to demonstrate here outside the airport this morning. They say they're overworked and understaffed, and it's leading to delays and cancellations. Airlines are rushing to rehire, but staffing is still below pre-pandemic levels. They know they don't have pilots to fly their scheduled flights. There is pressure. We don't have the pilots that we need to fly a full regional schedule. They're just refusing to tell passengers in advance. That's incredible. And also the pilots who were there clearly super overworked. The staff that's there is super overworked. Instead, canceling flights at the

last minute. The industry acts like it can get away with this. They're just committing fraud. They know they don't have the staff. They know they don't have the planes. They know they don't have these flights. And people show up to the airport and it's like, oh, by the way, there is no flight. What? Because it usually does. A wave of mergers has left just a handful of huge, powerful airlines. They charge higher prices for worse services, pile on fees, and ignore regulations they don't like. In 2021, airlines refused to return $10 billion to customers for canceled flights despite rules requiring refunds. The finest air crews in the world belong to the United States. It's the airline personnel in the suites, the corporate suites.

They don't give a fig about their customers. The FAA is supposed to hold airlines accountable, but experts say it's one of the agencies most captured by corporate power. For example, the FAA has let airlines move most airplane maintenance to non-certified mechanics outside of the U.S. How does that make you feel? The cut costs. There's no transparency on the critical maintenance and repairs

outsourced to El Salvador, Brazil, and China, often under far less stringent oversight. The FAA also still allows airlines to charge parents Jesus Christ, that's terrible. parents a fee to be seated next to their young children. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who oversees the FAA, has done little to address these issues or the cancellations crisis. After advocates raised concerns,

Buttigieg decided to meet privately with airline CEOs and politely told them to do better. crisis. After advocates raised concerns, Buttigieg decided to meet privately with airline CEOs and politely told them to do better. I let them know that, you know, this is a moment when we were really counting on them to deliver reliably for the traveling public. The very next day, his own flight was canceled. Neoliberalism 101. Corporatism 101. I went and talked to these executives and I said, good sir, please do a good job. I would really appreciate that. Thank you. We're relying on you. We're depending on you. We'll see. That's it? That's all

you got? The answer is yes. It's just like, remember Hillary in the debate, famously 2016? I went to Wall Street and I told them to cut it out. That was right before the crash. It's like, okay, well, how did that approach work? Maybe you needed to do something different and use the force of law because just saying cut it out is not enough. The Biden administration has to take action and show that government is working. It's been done before, like in 2009, when airlines were routinely keeping passengers stuck on the tarmac for hours.

The Transportation Department barred the practice, then hit American Airlines with a $900,000 fine for keeping over 600 passengers on a tarmac for over three hours. Long tarmac delays have dropped dramatically since. Secretary Buttigieg could similarly threaten to levy hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines on airlines for every canceled flight they knew had little chance of flying. This is fraud. Buttigieg needs to act in the public's interest immediately

before Americans' travel plans are destroyed by the greed of airline monopolies. By the way, you know who released a detailed plan saying, hey, this is how we're going to go after the airlines and how we're going to correct their behavior? Bernie. He released a detailed plan. You're fined this much for this and that much for that. And wrote it all up, released it. And

of course, crickets in response. And Secretary Pete is doing Dickie McGee's acts. So as per usual, is unfolding just as we all thought it would in a broken, rotten system. And just look at look at the way it works, man. Like, the airlines got this giant bailout, there were strings attached, they just ignored the strings attached, did what they wanted, and now they're committing fraud to the general public as they're delivering a worse product. The corporate stranglehold over this country is astonishing. And they have some fucking nerve. And what we need is a new FDR to get them back in line and to get them to do the job that they're supposed to do. Because right now, I've never seen anything more egregious than this.

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. We've been hearing the same phrase for some time now, no one wants to work anymore. This time last year, mainstream media devoted breathless coverage and endless airtime to a ghoulish conga line of business owners, conservative politicians, and chamber of commerce bootlickers all coming to make baseless claims about how millions of people had just decided to be professional couch potatoes and how workers today just don't have that can-do work ethic that they did back in the good old days.

The no one wants to work narrative was an extremely lazy and convenient one for the business class and politicians to push at a time when workers, who had already been battered by a pandemic, a recession, and decades of stagnant wages and sky high inequality, were finally standing up for themselves, quitting in record numbers, going on strike, unionizing, and just refusing to take crappy jobs where, you know, they knew they would be treated poorly. And that narrative was regurgitated in state legislatures and used to justify terminating pandemic-era social safety provisions that had, for a small, all-too-brief time, lifted millions out of poverty. The order-giving class could not let that continue, so they worked overtime to kill it. Because for a moment,

it revealed the dark truth at the heart of the whole capitalist enterprise, that this system needs an endless supply of workers who can be made desperate enough to be economically coerced into working at the bare minimum of dignity and security. And it also revealed that if working people do have a modicum of security, with necessary public aid supporting them, they're going to do what they never felt they could when their survival depended on them staying quiet. They're going to do what they never felt they could when their survival depended on them staying quiet. They're going to push back. And that is exactly what workers did. We took one tiny step

in that direction and all of these rich dick politicians and their business buddies started flipping out. So they had to manufacture some sort of narrative to justify pushing working people back into the sewers, ripping away public aid, squashing the budding new unionization movement, jacking up prices on everything, etc, etc. It was convenient for business owners and corporate politicians to scapegoat workers as the problem, instead of asking themselves why workers were, you know, refusing to accept their low pay, their degrading treatment, the unpredictable schedules, the lack of opportunities for stability and advancement, and so on. It was also easy to pathologize millions of workers and to speak on their behalf when workers themselves were never in the damn room and given a chance to talk back. And we all know how the corporate media, much like the elite political and business establishments, has no qualms about shutting workers out. Rather than workers having an actual seat at the table, the union busters at Starbucks literally have an empty chair at their

corporate meetings that's supposed to represent the baristas whose rights they are currently violating. You really could not make up a better metaphor for how the people at the top of our economic hierarchy see the rest of us. And because workers are completely ignored, or at best, reduced to tiny sound bites, it's easy to take a diverse and infinitely complex working class and boil it down to demeaning and offensive and untrue stereotypes. But when you actually listen to workers, you see very quickly that the reality in workplaces around the country looks much different than what bosses and boss-loving pundits depict

in their self-serving op-eds and media appearances. If you, like me, have been relentlessly bombarded by these corporate media reports that only tell the boss's side of the story, you might reasonably think that the job market is just a hopeless wasteland of unanswered, help-wanted signs, and lazy good-for-nothings who don't appreciate the value of an honest day's work. Of course, the most obvious problem with this framing is it completely ignores the millions and millions of people who are working and have been saying out loud and clearly

for anyone who is willing to listen that the problem is coming from inside the house. For example, as someone who interviews workers for a living, one of the most consistent complaints that I've heard from workers across sectors is that cost-cutting, profit-motivated decisions handed down from management have created a crisis of deliberate understaffing and unpredictable staffing that is running workers into the ground, prompting many to leave, and making it harder for businesses to recruit and retain new staff. Recently on my podcast Working People, I spoke with Kenya Slaughter about the ridiculous conditions

that dollar store workers like herself labor under on a daily basis. And as Kenya describes, during the pandemic and now with inflation, people are obviously looking to save money wherever they can, which is why you've seen dollar stores like Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar popping up everywhere. And these companies know what they're doing. They are targeting food deserts and low-income areas where residents may have no other good, close options for buying cheap groceries and household necessities. That also means that a lot of the stores are in areas with higher levels of crime. And this is why it was so shocking for me to hear Kenya describe Dollar General's corporate cost-cutting strategy of deliberately understaffing their stores,

leaving workers overwhelmed, vulnerable, alone, and at risk. Take a listen. Dollar General is still doing the same things. People are still working alone. The store is in a high volume, high crime area. They're strategically placed. They're always in food deserts all throughout the states. It's not just Louisiana. It's all over. So we all face the same problems with the stores in the high crime areas. So there's always the potential risk for someone, you know, to come in and cut up. We have everything from, and excuse me, and if we need to take this part out, we can, but we have everything from people coming in the store, actually using the restroom, like number two in the store, the back stock room like that just happened a couple

of weeks ago we got a guy on camera who not only goes in our back stock room and does that but then he leaves the stock room and commenced to stealing and leaves the store with several items now during this time there were two employees in the store which is the norm but one was stocking and one was on the register with a line. So no one, you know, sees him because we're trying to get so much done. That's one of my main concerns with Dollar General. If we could be a little bit better staffed, you know, I'm not even going to stretch and say security. Security is a stretch. They would have to pay them and payment seems to be an issue. But if you could just pay more employees,

give us more hours so that we could have four people on the floor, three minimum at all times. That way no one ever has to be on the register alone. They would always have backup. Someone could always be constantly stocking and then the third person can float. They can help between backing up the registers and helping stock and helping customers on the floor. No one should ever have to be alone. Being alone in the store is a hazard. I had my boss fall out this year. She literally passed out in the store and had to be taken from the ambulance. She had some health issues and she was in the store alone because we don't have the man hours to give people the shifts that are required to run the store smoothly. Quick math, Max. My store requires 91 hours to

operate with just one person on the cash register from Sunday to Sunday. Okay. So that's 91 hours just for somebody, anybody during any shift to be on the register. If we're only allotted 135 hours, 140 hours, somebody is going to come up short somewhere. Someone's always going to be alone at some point in time. The bare minimum should be 180 hours. That way two people can be in the store at all times. Think of Kenya the next time you hear someone saying that no one wants to work anymore these days. She and her co-workers are begging Dollar General for more hours and more staff degrees, sitting in air-conditioned corporate headquarters somewhere, making top-down managerial decisions that look great on a spreadsheet, but look very different for the workers who make their business run. Now that's just one example. But in a deeply unsettling way, I started to realize how familiar the situation that Kenya was describing to me sounded. Here, for instance, is a clip from an interview

I did at The Real News with Karin, an education support professional who has worked in the Minneapolis school district for six years. In March of this year, 4,500 educators with the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers went on strike, demanding smaller class sizes, better pay and benefits, more mental health resources for students, and increased workforce diversity. Listen to the first thing that Karin notes when I asked her to describe the situation she and her fellow educators have been facing during and even before the pandemic. One thing that I've seen throughout my six years here is that we're chronically understaffed. That's been true the entire time I've been here. There are hundreds of ESP openings where we have lost tons and tons of teachers over the last two years.

But there were always openings. I was in a position, I worked for the EBD program, which is emotional behavioral. So there were supposed to be three of me and there was just one. And that was just one part of our program at that school. So that meant that I didn't have time to address all of the kids that I was supposed to be working with. I never knew what my schedule was going to be on a daily basis because it was just putting out fires, putting out fires, putting out fires. And it created dangerous, actual dangerous conditions. I have a little bit of PTSD from that job because like at least every two weeks I was put in situations where I was breaking up fights where I could have

gotten like very hurt. And I know other ESPs that have gotten very hurt doing those jobs. If there were more ESPs, more SEAs available to help do that work, we wouldn't have been in those dangerous conditions. And that was before the pandemic. And it saves the district money to have those positions unfilled because that's a position that they don't have to pay money for. So there's not a lot of incentive for them to go out and recruit people. Now let's move over to health care. Last year, over 700 nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, waged the longest nurses strike in the state's history. And they were striking against Tenant Health Care, the Dallas-based investor-ownedowned healthcare giant that owns St. Vincent Hospital.

At the center of the strike were workers' concerns about working conditions and staffing, specifically the unmanageable nurse-to-patient ratio that nurses, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, say make it difficult to provide safe and sufficient care to every patient, which every nurse wants to do. That is their job. And over at The Real News, we recently published a really important oral history of the strike told by the people who lived it. Listen to this clip with Julie Pinkham, the executive director for the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and see if what she says sounds familiar. It's not just Massachusetts. It's not just St. Vincent's. It's everywhere. We're hearing the issue of nurses facing staffing issues. We have this just-in-time staffing, and there's this casualization of the workforce where you

want everybody sort of part-time or per diem, so you can push them into a slot as you need it, but not otherwise there whereas previously you would have a lot more full timers which gave you the luxury of continuity at the bedside. Generally I always find that management tends to use the word flexibility and you know the converse of flexibility for management usually is control. We want to the control of determining when and if something happens but ultimately it's the nurse that's taking care of the patient, and it's him or her that's licenses on the line and their decision making. And they really are the experts right there to know whether or not they can achieve the

outcomes that they need to with the patient population based on how sick they are and how much resources they need of each other to make that happen. Management would like to make it as slim as they can because it's resources means more pay. Having people staffing is more money out of their pocket. But at the end of the day, it's the difference between patients doing well and not doing well. Listen, this is not an isolated issue. Understaffing and unpredictable staffing is a cost-cutting, labor-disciplining plague that is affecting workers all over the country. In retail, education, service work, health care, and even in manufacturing and logistics. I mean, we've been hearing constant reports about supply chain issues caused by the war

in Ukraine, the pandemic, extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change, and of course these world events have caused massive disruptions. But if you talk to folks working on the railroads, for instance, particularly in the freight service. You'll hear how corporate greed and cost-cutting, profit-juicing measures handed down from corporate executives like Katie Farmer and Warren Buffett have brought the railroads to a grinding halt. That's the supply chain crisis that no one is talking about right now. And a lot of it comes down to deliberate and chronic understaffing. I mean, if you live near a rail line, you may have noticed that the freight trains have been getting longer and heavier over the years. And that's not your imagination. They

actually have. What you may not know, though, is that those trains used to have crews of like four or five people working them. But over the years, long before the pandemic, companies like BNSF Railway and Union Pacific have done the same thing that hospitals and schools and dollar stores have done. They piled more work onto fewer people, forcing workers to adhere to impossibly brutal schedules using draconian attendance policies, reducing those train crews down to two workers. And as we speak, they are trying to achieve their long-desired goal of having just one person operate those mile-long trains. The railroad employees and former employees that I talk to keep telling me that workers are leaving in record numbers, that the supply chain is a mess, and no one in these companies is being held accountable, no one at the top at least. Here's Ron Kamenko, an Amtrak engineer in Reno who is currently serving as general secretary of Railroad Workers United,

in an interview we published at The Real News in May. The railroads are having a hell of a time recruiting new employees and retaining the ones they have. But once again, what we see is the industry, which is basically saying to hell with the unions. You're going to pay bigger co-pays and deductibles in health care. We're going to get rid of the conductor. We want massive changes in work rules for all the different crafts. And so this is hardly an industry that is serious about retaining and recruiting if they're attempting to make our lives worse. And anyone coming into the industry is getting this message. In the old days, the way the railroads recruited was largely through networks of existing employees, sons and daughters, brothers and cousins, and friends of theirs in the neighborhood and stuff. That's how the word got out. And the

railroad was a good job. So they never really had problems retaining and recruiting. Now that they do, they are actually making it worse because this network is gone. People are not advising their children to get jobs on the railroad. They're not advising their friends and neighbors or others that they're aware of who need a good job. I myself, in good conscience, find it very, very difficult. And for years, I advocated people go to work on the railroad, particularly in the freight service. And now I can't in good conscience without the caveat that being prepared for this, this, this, and this advise a railroad job to anybody. It's so sad. Don't give me this no one wants to work crap. If you want people to come work at your shitty company and devote their lives to making your business run, then

stop treating them like this. These are good, hardworking people trying to make a living for themselves and their families. Any employer should count themselves lucky to have employees like Kenya Slaughter, Karin, Julie Pinkham, and Ron Kamenko. You are not entitled to our labor. You need us to function, which is why you try to keep us down and broken and disorganized so that we are forced to work with you. And we know that you're scared right now that people are waking up and fighting back together. And you know what? You should be. 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 description. See y'all soon for the next edition of The Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and solidarity forever. 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 it. Check out this exclusive episode

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