Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #54: BLM Lawsuit, Abrams Struggles, Teacher Shortage, AOC Interview, & More!

Episode Date: September 10, 2022

Krystal, Saagar, & friends cover BLM fraud accusations, the teacher shortage, Stacey Abrams campaign, AOC comments, Dems dark money, & 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/James Li: https://www.youtube.com/c/5149withJamesLi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got the cover treatment over at GQ with a big sit-down interview and photo shoot and an article-encompassing interview by quote-unquote journalist Wesley Lowery. I'll say that because let me read you. So several of AOC's comments, and I think go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen.

Several of her comments got a lot of attention, in particular here she predicts she won't be president because Americans, quote, hate women. Yep, that's the reason. I'll read you that in just a minute. But before I get to that, actually the cringiest part of this article was not AOC. It was Wesley Lau. I mean, it really is. And that takes skill. It's embarrassing.

Here, let me just read you a couple of excerpts from this docker. He says about AOC, constitutionally opposed to sitting down, shutting up, and conforming to the patriotic play theater of Washington, the right-wing's night terror in the flesh, too many foot soldiers of the fractured contradictory coalition that is the progressive left. She represents something singular, the future, a revolutionary on the rise, the clear air ascendant to an ascendant progressive movement. The best and possibly last depending on how quickly some combination of

fascism, religious fundamentalism, and climate change comes for us all. Last chance. A source of hope that things can get better in their lifetime. At another place he says, Ocasio-Cortez knows well the power of personal testimony. She's become the most talented political communicator of her generation by being frank and relatable, using her social media channels, for example, to explain policy in one moment, then share her struggles building IKEA furniture the next.

The whole thing is like this. Let me just say, like, you know, I was a fan, supporter of Bernie Sanders. If I ever say anything this cringy, like, please, please drag my ass because this is just embarrassing. And let me also say, listen, I agree with AOC on, like, 90% of issues. I am with her. I am there. You know, we have some differences in terms of how she, like, the way she sort of, like, approaches issues, the things she centers as her focus, the way she talks about things, whatever. But to call her the most talented political communicator of her generation, I looked it up. Her approval rating is like 33%. If that's the most talented

political communicator, her generation and the left movement has some really big problems here. So that's number one. I'll let you react to that. I totally agree. My personal favorite was this quote. Realistically, I can't even tell you if I'm going to be alive in September. And that weighs very heavily on me. It's not just the right wing. Misogyny transcends political ideology. Left, right, and center.

Yeah. Apparently the interview was given in September. Sorry, in the summer. Just look. Yes, she has more death threats probably than most members of Congress. Yeah. Yes, she had a bad experience on January 6th. I'm not going to sit here and say that she's clearly used it for political advantage.

But I have no doubt that it was probably very scary given her high profile. That being said, to say that your life is literally in danger uh like imminently and i have a huge risk of being killed and may not make it till september that's ridiculous and as you said uh the fact is is that she's doubling down this is always a problem right with this type of politics, which is that, yeah, she might have some great ideas on economics and all this other stuff. But when you sound like she does, you're actually poisoning the well for that entire movement by being an identitarian, by being just so unhinged in your commentary. And that's the other thing. To say anyone who is acting and speaking this way is one of the most talented politicians and communicators is a farce.

Wesley Wowie has always been like this, though, to be clear. He's always been an incredibly cringeworthy person. He was basically forced out of the Washington Post because he would always argue that it's not – as a journalist, you shouldn't be fair and you should take sides. And so I'm glad he found his sinecure at GQ. Also, why is she on the cover of GQ? As a man of male fashion, like, can't GQ just be about suits? Like, for the, you know, for, I mean, this is a whole other rant. But it's like, they've been putting people on there with dresses.

Fine, you know, okay, whatever. But, you know, keep that somewhere. Like, this is about. Fashion is political too, Sagar. No avoiding it. Listen, men want to know. Hey, by the way, I got a ton of response

whenever I was criticizing all these politicians for not wearing suits. And a lot of it was, hey, Sagar, I don't even know how to buy a suit. That's what GQ used to be. I read GQ when I wanted to learn. GQ was the first person. Remember, I came from Texas, not the best fashion standards, moved to the East Coast, and I had a

black suit. And my friend was like, dude, why do you have a black moved to the East Coast, and I had a black suit. And my friend was like, dude, why do you have a black suit? He's like, everybody knows. It's the 2000s. You shouldn't be wearing it. And I was like, really? Where should I read more about this? And he sent me a GQ article about how a black suit should be your last suit. It used to be quite practical and useful. And now this is what it's turned into. I didn't know we were going to get a whole anti-GQ screed here about how GQ has lost their way. That aspect of it I can't really comment on because I have never been much of a GQ consumer.

Used to be. However, I will say, okay, so let me do the positive part. There was a piece here where she was talking about the struggles and challenges facing men that I thought was very poignant and very accurate where she was diagnosing a lot of issues. We've been talking about some of them

here as well, and I thought that was really good. But I hate this thing that she said about, like, how she doesn't know if she can tell little girls that they can run and be president because America hates women too much. I mean, this is just, I really feel like, and I want to read you some of the whole quote so you get the context, and's not like we're just like taking it out of context or whatever. But I really feel like this being in this very high profile, very high stress, very high pressure position where she is an absolute target of the right from day one. And, you know, certainly like Pelosi and co hate her too. And she talks about that here as well. She's been, you know, she has become this lightning rod and flashpoint and it really seems like it's gotten to her. I mean, that's what I come away

with is like, you know, when she says things like, I don't even know if I'm going to be here in September. It's like, Jesus Christ, girl. Like that's a horrible, whether that is an accurate reflection of reality, I believe that she feels that, and that is a horrible way to live. I agree with you. So she talks here about, like, you know, I think about all the time whether I should do something else, whether there's another way that I could be more effective, you know, because she talks a lot about how, like, movements are so critical, and maybe she should just be a movement leader. And I just feel like this role has really taken a toll on her so that she's very, very defensive. And honestly, because she is so inundated with so much ugly commentary and, like, you know, death threats and all that all day long, it's a natural human response to then extrapolate that to say that's the character of

the American people. I think that's where it comes from. I mean, not to overly psychoanalyze here, but let me read you the quote about what she says about being president. She says, sometimes little girls will say, oh, I want you to be president or things like that. It's very difficult for me to talk about because it provokes a lot of inner conflict in that I never want to tell a little girl what she can't do. And I want to tell young people what's not possible. I've never been in the business of doing that. But at the same time, she goes on to say, I hold two contradictory things in mind at the same time. One is just the relentless belief that anything is possible. But at the same time, the experience here has given me a front row seat to how deeply and unconsciously, as well as consciously, so many people in this country hate women.

And they hate women of color. People ask me questions about the future, and realistically, I can't even tell you if I'm going to be alive in September. That weighs very heavily on me. It's not just the right wing. Misogyny transcends political ideology. Left, right, center. This grip of patriarchy affects all of Left, right, center. This grip of patriarchy affects all of us, not just women. And she goes on from there. She says, I admit to

sometimes believing that I live in a country that would never let that happen. That is a very sad and very inaccurate assessment of the American people. I mean, listen, I'm not a Barack Obama fan at this point, but we did elect the first black president. His middle name was freaking Hussein. Seven years after 9-11. Hillary Clinton is like a horror show and a war criminal and just objectively, put her ideology aside, just objectively bad at being a politician. And that woman almost ended up as president. She was in the popular vote. The fact that she was a

woman wasn't the issue either, by the way. Same thing with Kamala Harris. Like the fact that Kamala Harris was a woman of personal color, that is not the issue for Kamala Harris. That's not to say there isn't sexism. That's not to say there aren't barriers and all of those things. But you have women who are getting elected and ascending to high levels of power and a position to win their party's nominations and all of these things. So it's sad to me to see her have such a dim view of the American public. I agree with you. I think it clearly got to her. I think Fox News's attacks just rotted her brain completely. January 6th, clearly. I just think she's not cut out for this. And I think that's fine. Not everybody is. is and honestly she'd probably just be better off she resigned from congress sent out her tweets

was a movement leader personally like for her own mental health it's probably the best decision i don't think she'll do it she's too much of a narcissist and unfortunately that's what leads to that and you know uh speaking like from a third party perspective like that's very bad for the political movement she's aligned with because she's so much of a face of it. It just feels like, it just feels like so much of her commentary is like very self-focused. Yeah, I agree. You know, it's about her and her lived experience. Okay, I get it. Like that's an important component of what you bring to the table. But yeah, that's, that's the impression that comes out, especially of these interviews with all the, you know, the photos of her in these different outfits and whatever.

I don't know. Agreed. An interesting read. We'll just leave it at that. All right. Hilarious article from the New York Times basically setting expectations. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Quote, Democrats fret as Stacey Abrams struggles in the Georgia governor's race.

Here's my personal favorite line. It alarms Democrats who have celebrated her as the master strategist behind the state's democratic shift. And they specifically point to the fact, Crystal, that Stacey Abrams is running behind Brian Kemp when Raphael Warnock is running far ahead of Herschel Walker. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Stacey Abrams was the heir apparent. She was anointed. She raised tens of millions of dollars. She was hailed as the mastermind. When in reality, here's what happened.

Trump, this guy you might have heard of him, was really unpopular in 2018. It led to more Democratic votes. He was furthermore of an idiot in 2020. That led to Raphael Warnock winning. He then even was more of an idiot and endorsed a guy named Herschel Walker, who is terrible. So now Warnock has a chance. Meanwhile, Brian Kemp is, well, he did win in 2018. And then he, you know, kind of had his third way with Trump, won the Republican primary, also got some credibility with Democratic voters.

And now the person who was supposedly the architect of all of this is losing. And they point to the fact that fundraising, polling-wise, and just her general inability, none of it has showed up from the political scale that supposedly had existed. Remember, she was almost floated as the vice presidential candidate for Joe Biden. biden remember when in real time she was the first kamala she realized she wasn't gonna get yes and she was like do you remember also when she was like well i'm a very smart lady even though i have no experience she was outward yeah she was auditioning i mean she was like outwardly yes auditioning she's like well i took a course once in college i'm like yeah okay she probably would have done better than Kamala. She probably would have been.

I think she is much more politically talented than Kamala. Correct. I agree. Although I still think she's terrible. So there's a couple things to say about this. I mean, first of all, I think the underlying dynamics of the race have less to do with Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams than they do with Herschel Walker and Brian Kemp. Totally agree. Kemp is an incumbent governor.

The fact that he's an incumbent makes it harder, number one. Number two, he did, even though from a legislative perspective, he's been very, you know, hard right conservative. He did have that break with Trump and, you know, showed that he could be independent minded. And I think that has helped him with independence and even some like swing Democrats. They say in particular, Abrams is underperforming with black men. I mean, she's still winning like 80% of black men. But last time around, she won like 93% of black men. So that is one thing they're pointing to as an issue for her. So the fact that he's been able to maintain his own independence from Trump, he's relatively popular, he's an incumbent. Hershel Walker is like walking disaster. That to me is the most

important factor that explains the difference here. But part of why this is a big problem for her is because she had her whole, the whole Stacey Abrams mythology was about how she built this machine in Georgia to register voters and turn them out for Democrats in a way that it had never been done before. And Democrats tend to get obsessed with these sort of like procedural or campaign mechanics rather than like a policy agenda that's going to energize people to bring them out. And perfect contrast here is Trump in 2016, their campaign was a mess and a disaster. But he, for better or worse, in my opinion worse, resonated with a large few and brought out new voters that weren't voting in the past.

So it's not so much about the mechanics of are you registering and who are you and how is this all working, what does that operation look like? You've got to have those mechanics in place. That helps. But you also have to have something that is motivating people to want to go and vote. Otherwise, it's like, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink it. So her theory of the case that just having those mechanics without the overarching vision, message, material, like, delivery for constituents, that you could just

have those mechanics and that would be a success, that's being undermined by the fact that she is underperforming where Warnock is. I completely agree with you on that one. But I just do think it's good to dispel the myth of Stacey Abrams and learn the hard lesson of politics, which is sometimes it does have to do with candidate quality, but a lot of the times it doesn't. And it has to do with much more multifaceted factors. And people like her build entire narratives. I mean, she's become a multimillionaire, basically grifting and selling these fake books. I mean, remember that thing I did about how she has a book on how to be a good manager in business?

You've never run a business in your life. What are you talking about? Your greatest skill is raising $5 dollars from uh from michael bloomberg for your charity that's really what you're good at that was the thing that always she was the perfect case in point of like the just celebrity coverage approach to politics there was zero analysis of like what does she actually stand for what did she actually do in the georgia legislature it was all this very sort, it was like TMZ, only for politics and elevating Stacey Abrams. So anyway, it is a, I was a little bit surprised she even ran for governor because to me it was very predictable that it would be a very tough slog and a much harder road than it was last time around just facing an incumbent governor in a more difficult year. So I was kind of surprised that she went for it. But I guess in some ways,

having not gotten pulled into the Biden administration, it was her only move. Yeah, I think you're right. Got an update for you on the Black Lives Matter organization, which, of course, has had a lot of questionable, I guess, financial trouble. And this is a new revelation. Let's put this up on the screen. Allegations, I should say. According to the LA Times, one Black Lives Matter leader has been accused of stealing $10 million from the organization. This came out in a lawsuit filed by Black Lives Matter grassroots.

So this is some of his former colleagues who are saying that he siphoned off $10 million in donations. Let me read you the beginning of this story from the LA Times. The leader of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has been accused by former colleagues

of stealing more than $10 million in donation from the organization for personal use that is according to that lawsuit that was just filed in court. Shalamiya Bowers, I'm sorry if I'm getting the name pronunciation wrong, was called in the court filing a rogue administrator, a middleman turned usurper, whose siphoned contributions to the nonprofit activist group to use as a personal piggy bank. Bowers' actions led the foundation into investigations by the IRS and various state attorney general, blazing a path of irreparable harm to BLM in less than 18 months. They go on to say in this lawsuit, while BLM leaders and movement workers were on the street risking their lives, Mr. Bowers remained in his cushy offices, devising a scheme of fraud and misrepresentation to break the implied, in fact, contract between

donors and BLM. So not a lot of details in this lawsuit about specifically what this scheme looked like. These are all allegations. Of course, he's innocent until proven guilty. But this is far from the first allegation we've had of sort of like financial improprieties in this organization. What happened is when the George Floyd protests ignited across the country, you had this flood of energy and people wanting to donate money to a cause that they believed in. And because the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, or whatever it's called, was sort of a catch-all, people just assumed like, oh, this is the group. And so millions and millions of dollars came into this organization, which was relatively small. And so you end up with, you know, a lot of questions about how this money was being spent. And those questions came originally from some of the mothers of the movement and also some of the activists on the ground who said, hey, we're out here doing the work. We're not seeing any of these hundreds of millions of dollars that y'all are raising. So what is this money going towards? This is just the latest sort

of development in questions of what happened with their finances. Same thing. I mean, the founder, Patrice Cooler, we've covered her before. She paid like a million dollars to her brother for security services. She amassed a $3.2 million mansion and basically had to resign because of so much financial impropriety on her part. And look, no matter how you feel about it, Americans donated money in good faith, not just Americans, people all over the world to this organization. And you had moms from Ferguson to Trayvon Martin Foundation and others being like, hey, where is the money? We're trying, we need some of this money to support. And they actually said, stop using our kids' names.

To raise money for your thing. Which they were. I mean, it's outrageous. So this just puts him in the same league as the founder of the organization. I mean, look, I don't know if it's true. Allegedly, don't come after me, but the allegations seem pretty substantial. And look, if it's found true, he should go to jail. A lot of these people should go to jail. Let me read to you his response, which I think is also telling. He and his group denied all

claims of financial misconduct, and he chastised those suing him for, quote, falling victim to the carceral logic and social violence that fuels the legal system, saying, quote, they would rather take the same steps of our white oppressors and utilize the criminal legal system, which is propped up by white supremacy, the same system they say they want to dismantle to solve movement disputes. So trying to weaponize the language of the movement to protect himself from the allegations that he has stolen $10 million from donations that were supposed to go in to furthering the cause of the movement. She did the same thing.

Shameful. She did the same thing. She did do the same thing. She was like, this is white guilt, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, maybe you're just a crook. I mean, this, again, started from the people who were in the activists on the ground who were doing the work and the movement mothers so yeah anyway very latest there it is a sad story um and we will continue to follow it

and give you any updates as they come that's right i'll see you guys later time now for our weekly partnership segment with the lever and joining us now is the man himself, David Sirota, founder of That News Outlet. Great to see you, David. Good to see you. So you are reporting this week on kind of a moment of truth for Democrats, Democratic establishment. Let's go and put this up on the screen. You're writing, the DNC faces a vote on dark money and anonymous cash buys Democratic primaries. Party officials will be forced to declare which side of the democracy crisis they are on. Tell us more, David. So the DNC is having its meeting in Washington this week, and a group of Democratic National Committee members led by the state chair of Nevada will put on to the DNC members a resolution basically condemning and trying to, I guess, symbolically

ban dark money. I say symbolically because it's hard to know how a resolution like this would actually be enforced. But the basic thrust of the resolution is that the DNC would go on record saying that dark money should have no place in Democratic primaries. Right now, in this last election cycle, the one that we're currently in, 60% of House Democratic primary ads have been by groups that do not disclose all of their donors. Point being that dark money is really playing a particularly huge role in not only in general elections, not only in lobbying and in campaigns around issues, but it's playing a particular role inside of Democratic primaries where Democratic Party voters are selecting their nominees for general elections. And so the DNC will face a choice

about whether to actually try to move the fight against dark money forward this week at their meeting. Well, it seems noteworthy, too, that this fight is being led by a sort of like rogue state party, the Nevada Democratic Party. Could you talk to us Sanders aligned wing of that party and Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's machine in Nevada. And there was basically a takeover of the party by the now chair, Judith Whitmer. And so that's who is essentially leading this resolution. So it's not necessarily a kind of out and out fight between the progressive wing and the establishment wing, because I think in Nevada, there's been some coming together about this. There's been some healing reportedly. But I do think it's important to know that the origin story of this, that the more restive activist wing of the party is now

bringing its concerns about dark money to the middle of the party, to the belly of the beast, if you will. And we should remember that the party platform, the overall DNC party platform, says that the party is against dark money, that it wants disclosure bills to disclose dark money, the 501c4 groups. And there is Democratic legislation in the Senate supported by 50 Democratic senators that would do that. Now, that legislation hasn't moved forward. And this week's vote will be a chance to see if the DNC is willing to do something more than just have a kind of soft statement in its party platform. Well, and it does seem like the efforts on the Democratic side to rein in money in politics have kind of fizzled out, like to the extent that they were ever really serious about it, which I think is a big question mark to start with. You just don't hear this as a focus anymore. You see certainly sort of like the mainstream corporate side of the Democratic Party embracing dark money to get their chosen outcomes in these primaries. So it seems to me like it is an important moment for that reason as well. I absolutely agree. And I think you're right to sense the fact that the party is kind of rhetorically on record. Again, 50 Democratic co-sponsors of, for instance, the Disclose Act

and the Republicans, they're nowhere to be found on these issues. But I think there is a sense that it is rhetoric only, that it's not necessarily real. And as you suggested, part of the reason is because a part of the party inside of the party benefits from dark money. If you are a corporate Democrat, you are pretty happy that dark money groups are dropping into congressional races to buy races for the corporate wing of the party. So getting to an end of this or taking steps to end dark money, this is, it's not just a battle between Democrats and Republicans. It's a battle between kind of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and kind of an unholy alliance between the corporate wing of the Democratic Party and the Republicans. Yeah, I mean, because let's be clear.

Look, everybody understands the difficulty of, like, getting a constitutional amendment through and the decisions that the Supreme Court has made and the way that sort of, like, hamstrings efforts to get money in politics overall under control. But the Democratic Party has a lot of say and a lot of sway over how they conduct themselves. The problem for them is that if they actually took a stand against dark money, it would kneecap their ability to take out the progressive challengers that they want to be able to sideline

and they want to be able to defeat. And let's underscore one other point because I've seen some of the reaction to this vote. Oh, well, the Democrats shouldn't have to unilaterally disarm in general elections. What's interesting about this resolution is it's talking about Democratic primaries. So if you separate out the we need to, you know, we can't unilaterally disarm in general elections, put that aside for a second.

The question really is, should Democratic Party primaries, the process by which Democratic Party voters select their nominees, should that process be dominated by dark money? Some of the details that we know, and there's not all that much of it because these donations are anonymous, but we know that Republican money, the big Republican donors have been some of the donors funding some of the Democratic Party primary spending in these races to get more conservative corporate Democrats. So, again, the question here is how should the Democratic Party itself, inside of its own process, conduct itself? And should dark money be able to decide who the party's nominees are? That's what's at issue here. Lastly, David, I'd love it if you could just remind the audience of an example or two where dark money really played an outsized role in some of these primaries.

Oh, sure. There's the United Democracy Project. That's what the dark money group was called. It was a group that discloses some of its donors, doesn't disclose all of its donors. It's funded in part by the American Israel Public Affairs Council. It has gone into races. It went into the race in New York City recently. And part of that money is not disclosed. And it's spent the progressive candidates into the ground. And an heir to the Levi Strauss empire ended up winning that primary with a huge boost of dark money. And the sources of it weren't really disclosed to voters. So, I mean, we could go race by race, but this is happening all over the country, again, with anonymous dark money putting the thumb on the scale of the primary process so that voters are getting election communications funded anonymously

that are attacking progressive candidates. I think this is a very important and very revealing story and moment for the Democratic Party. So we will see how they ultimately respond. I think we both know how this is the vote is going to ultimately go down. David, great to see you. Thank you for the reporting. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, our pleasure. Hey there, welcome to another segment of 5149 on Breaking Points, where we dive into different

topics at the intersection of business, politics, and society. And as school is officially now in session, I want to take a few minutes today to dive deeper into the teacher shortage crisis facing public schools all over the United States. We're going to cover what you've maybe been hearing in the news about the teacher shortages, but also major aspects of the issue that I think the media has been ignoring, perhaps deliberately or unconsciously due to certain underlying biases they have. This morning, the school year's first bell is also an alarm bell as schools nationwide struggle to find enough teachers. There is a growing crisis in American education, an extreme shortage of teachers.

The U.S. is coping with a nationwide shortage of teachers, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Men and women who educate our children are increasingly burnt out, struggling with the aftermath of two-plus years of the pandemic, increasing scrutiny over curriculums that has put many of them at the center of educational culture wars, not to mention fears for their own safety. And oh, by the way, there's always that issue of low pay. Nationwide, there are more than 280,000 fewer teachers now than at the start of the pandemic. 280,000! That's according to the

Department of Labor. That is a crisis that is impacting school systems in both urban areas and rural areas. So just to provide some additional context to that 280,000 number reported in the media, although we don't know exactly how many U.S. classrooms are short teachers for the next school year, there is no national database that tracks the issue. We can look at state and district level reports to try to contextualize how bad things actually are. According to recent reporting from the Washington Post, quote, the Nevada State Education Association estimated that roughly 3,000 teaching jobs remain unfilled across the state's 17 school districts as of early August. In a January report, the Illinois Association of Regional School Superintendents found that 88% of school districts statewide were having problems with teacher shortages, while 2,040 teacher openings were either empty or filled with a less than qualified hire.

And in the Houston area, the largest five school districts are all reporting that between 200 and 1,000 teaching positions remain open. Now, I talked about this exact issue on my YouTube channel a few weeks ago and received a number of responses from teachers that the problem is indeed widespread. So what exactly is going on here

and what are the solutions? We're calling for a federal government involvement, the state involvement in our state. We're seeing this investment in education. We had a zero zero added to our public school funding in terms of investment from our joint finance committee. We can't continue to do this. Wisconsin is right now always within that one to three in terms of the lowest performance. That was Carlton Jenkins, superintendent of Madison's Metropolitan School District, speaking with Chuck Todd on NBC News' Meet the Press. He talked about the lack of school funding being a big problem. And there is an argument to be made here.

Money helps. With more money, you can immediately go out and hire more teachers, more support staff, buy supplies, improve facilities, etc. However, simply saying we need more money to fix this issue is different than following the money. And I think this is where mainstream coverage of this issue has led us astray. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the graph on your screen plots expenditures per full-time student for elementary and secondary education of OECD countries by GDP per capita. The blue line indicates the linear relationship between education spending and GDP per capita. For the most part, the higher the GDP,

the more a country spends on education. Makes logical sense. Now, one important thing to notice here is that the U.S. is not an outlier. We are spending just as much on education as other countries. Another thing to read into, perhaps, is which countries are falling above that regression means that they spend more on education than what would maybe otherwise be expected on average based on their GDP per capita, which could be interpreted positively in that in this set of countries, comparatively, they might value public education more and see it as a worthwhile investment to make. The U.S. is one of the countries above that line. So it isn't entirely the case that the U.S. isn't investing in public education. They are, but the overall spend is only a part of the equation.

And since we're talking about teachers here, let's examine the teacher's cut of the pie. According to reporting from the Reason Foundation, quote, the United States already spends more on public education per student than almost any other developed nation in the world. Yet the U.S. does not make the top of the list for teacher salaries, lagging behind nations like Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Canada, which also spend less per pupil. So logically, the next thread that we have to pull on is where is all the money going if not to teachers? Well, according to a 2018 OECD report, America spends higher proportions of education dollars on non-teaching staff, 27% of U.S. spending compared to the OECD average of 15%, and devotes a lower proportion of education spending to teacher compensation, 54%, compared to an OECD average of 63%. And these administrative and support staff costs continue

to grow. Administrative staff numbers have grown over five times faster than student populations in public schools since 2000. One of the major reasons behind these spending patterns is American dependence on school districts. While many European and Asian countries don't have separate elected bodies to administer public education, the United States is somewhat about this topic, I was asked, well, the U.S. public schools have always been organized into many local school districts, but the increase in non-teaching staff seems to be more recent. So what exactly is going on here that explains

this change? It's a fantastic question. And to answer it, I think we have to think about what incentive structures are in place. In an article in the Stanford Review addressing administrative bloat in the higher education system, which suffers from, I think, a lot of the same issues as primary and secondary education, reporter Berber-Jin wrote, quote, unlike faculty who gain prestige through quality teaching and innovative research, administrators move up the career ladder by expanding bureaucracy. In other words, an administrator's status is proportional to the number of administrators she manages and the scale of her programs. I think his commentary there is incredibly insightful. Think about maybe your own job progression. Let's say you want to go from a project coordinator to a project manager. That

prerequisite of that promotion is kind of predicated on the existence of another coordinator for you to manage. In order to move up, you necessarily need to increase the size of your team. And that's, I think, how headcounts can balloon over the course of years and decades. Now, of course, in the private sector, in the business world, budgets are a little bit easier to scrutinize. Is your team contributing to the overall growth or the profitability of the company? If it's not, headcount reductions are coming. But with education, where there is no profit motive, an admin team's performance metrics are probably a little bit harder to come by,

which leaves the institution exposed to administrative bloat. Let's take a look at the table on your screen to examine the hard data. And this is once again from the National Center for Education Statistics. Over the course of about two decades, from the year 2000 to 2017, school district administrative staff, and that includes officials, administrators, and instruction coordinators, have grown a whopping 75 percent, while instructional staff, and this cohort includes principals, assistant principals,

teachers, instructional aides, librarians, and guidance counselors, the folks who actually interact with the students, has only grown 12% over the same period. Those of the cold hard facts can't argue with it. But remember Carlton Jenkins from earlier, when NBC News, Meet the Press, and other mainstream programs bring on school district superintendents like him to talk about solutions and how we can solve our education crisis, they're highly unlikely to call out the redundancies in their own department and suggest a headcount reduction in their own teams as a solution. So could it be possible that school district officials and administrators are okay with sacrificing teaching quality in order to preserve their own jobs. Some believe so. Nancy Bailey, author of Losing America's Schools,

The Fight to Reclaim Public Education, wrote back in 2016, quote, those in charge of public schools and politicians are hypocrites when it comes to the rhetoric surrounding a teacher shortage. School districts around the country are describing hundreds of classrooms they can't seem to fill with qualified teachers. This has been a manipulated ploy to get rid of veteran teachers and employ alternative, revolving-door, unqualified teachers who will settle for smaller salaries. So, to put it bluntly, instead of properly dealing with the teacher shortage that arguably they manufactured, the large educational bureaucracy in order to preserve their own position of power are choosing to deal with it in other ways, like creating an environment that creates a downward pressure on teachers' wages, which has been

happening for quite some time now, as well as turning to privatization. I'll give you an example. On your screen is a paper put out by DC's Office of the State Superintendent of Education entitled, High Dosage Learning, a Proven Strategy to Accelerate Student Learning. High dosage learning is a new buzzword that's kind of all the rage right now in the education world that basically means one-on-one tutoring. And that apparently is the answer our school boards and our government are pushing. But which groups are funding this push? Future Ed, a think tank out of George Washington University made up of Teach for America types, some from the Broad Institute, promotes tutors

in the case for a national tutoring system. They're funded by the Barr Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York by the Barr Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Citi Fund, the Joyce Foundation, the Overdeck Family Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation. So is the picture becoming more clear now? The push for tutors to replace teachers comes down to advancing the interests of the wealthy and the powerful. Because remember, nonprofits like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation don't exist to solve any fundamental problems in society, or at least that's definitely not at the top of their list of priorities, but rather those organizations exist to advance and

protect their own status and that of its patrons. Perhaps worse, it injects a profit incentive, a money-making opportunity into public K-12 education, something that could prove very beneficial to a certain group of folks who run in those elite circles. How lucrative is the future of big tutoring? According to industry estimates between 2020 and 2025, the private tutoring market in the U.S. is expected to grow by over 8% year-over-year, roughly $8.37 billion. So a lot of money to be made there. But the reality is promoting private tutoring as a mechanism to augment public education

will only further entrench the country's widening class divide. One group who has access to a private tutor and another who doesn't. I'm a PhD student who's studying teacher attrition and the long-term impacts it's having on our field. Class sizes will be so large that individual teachers either legally or physically or both can't handle them. And so students are going to get pushed out into large group sessions that have a person who's supervising them. The person supervising them isn't necessarily going to be a teacher. Think more like a lunchroom monitor situation, and the students will be doing like a Khan Academy or otherwise online learning platform. This will likely take place in a cafeteria, in a gym, or

just a really large classroom, and they'll be in there on their headphones and laptops learning and being supervised by a human. I'm using the word teacher lightly because it's really just going to be an adult in the room who maybe passed a background check. So school attendance will still be mandatory, but it won't truly be school. It won't be a place of education, fostering learning, supporting disabilities. So what you're witnessing is the absolute deprofessionalization of teaching and shifting it from a career to a gig industry. Imagine that future, a country where teaching will no longer be a career, but just a gig classroom staffed with independent contractors who aren't

at all invested in education, but who are simply there to trade his or her time for an hourly wage, most likely with minimal benefits. I think public education maybe is the quintessential example of a long-term investment in the future of our country, right? You make that investment now to create a strong foundation from which to build a nation. And that's part of, I think, the legacy of America. Right now, we should be focused on eliminating administrative bloat within our public education system, finding better ways to allocate funding to teaching roles, and breaking up the parasitic relationship between private interests and public education.

But instead, we're essentially trading away our long-term prosperity for another revenue stream for the rich and the wealthy. And if you want to talk about free market competition, if we continue to allow our public education system to deteriorate through greed, through privatization, not only will this have catastrophic effects on our own communities, but the U.S. economy will not remain competitive. We may not feel it right away, but it's inevitable. private interests, siphoning off public resources, crippling teachers and students, all while pushing for mass privatization of the public education system for the sake of self-preservation and profit generation. That is it for me today. I hope you found this segment about the teacher shortage crisis to be helpful and informative. There's a lot to cover about this topic, so I'm sure there are some things that I've missed. So I encourage you to comment below.

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