Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #59: Health Insurance, CIA Failure, Rail Workers, AOC Confronted & More!

Episode Date: October 16, 2022

Krystal, Saagar, & friends provide commentary on health insurance prices, CIA failures, SCOTUS union case, AOC heckled, rail workers, & 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/The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/Max Alvarez: https://therealnews.com/The Lever: https://www.levernews.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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A very interesting moment at a Q&A session with Representative AOC, where a couple of guys confronted her over her vote for the Ukraine war effort to supply more weapons. Let's take a listen. Congresswoman, none of this matters unless there's a nuclear war, which you voted to send arms and weapons to Ukraine. Tulsi Gabbard, she's left the Democratic Party because there are a bunch of war hawks. You originally voted, you ran as an outsider. Yet you've been voting to start this war in Ukraine. You're voting to start a third nuclear war with Russia and China. Why are you playing with the lives of American citizens?

You're playing with our lives. There will be no neighbors if there's a nuclear bomb. You voted to mobilize and send money to Ukrainian Nazis. You're a coward. You're a progressive socialist. Where are you against the war mobilization? He's telling the right truth. Wow. This is from a couple of guys. Jose Vega is his name. The other one, I'm not sure what his full name is because he's tagged here on Twitter. Jose being the one who actually tweeted this out. And wow, I mean, it's just one of those things where, hey, you rarely see any of this type of pushback.

Also, I have been wondering for quite some time. I'm like, where is the anti-war movement? Well, that's what I would say. There's a lot to say about it before I get into the specifics of what they're saying there. What's remarkable to me is not that these two men are protesting. It's that this is, they're, like, the only ones I've seen. Yeah, this is the only clip I have seen yet. I mean, we are literally, as we have been, I hope, covering extensively on the show, facing down potential nuclear war.

And you see very little of this kind of direct in your face dissent. And so I fully support it. And now, I mean, if we want to get into the specifics of what they're saying, like, listen, Tulsi Gabbard left the Democratic Party. She's the warmongers. The Republicans are all on board with this. In fact, some of them are much war hawkish than what's being said here. So we'll put that aside. And, you know, the other question I think people would say is like, well, why target AOC? But they're right in saying, you know, she ran as taking a different approach. She ran as a leftist who should have a critique of like continuing to escalate without any sort of even push at diplomacy or, you know, trying to push the

Ukrainians to the negotiating table, which has been the Biden administration policy the whole time. Like, so I don't think it's inappropriate to sort of target her with this type of protest whatsoever. Also, it makes sense to target the people that you think might be moved. And since she has a gap between her stated ideology and where she's actually been, yeah, that's exactly the sort of person who you should try to persuade. Absolutely right. I mean, look, if she claims to be anti-war, anti-imperialist, you know, all this stuff, I think that's fine. You know, you have an ideology, but then you have to be consistent about it. And to date, only one senator has even tried to hold up arms sales before he even did. Yeah. Rand Paul, when he was like, hey, maybe we should have an inspector general.

And they were like, no. And then he still voted for it. Congressman Khanna, who we had on the show this week. Yes. He has taken the same votes, but at least he's been like publicly critical. And he engaged with the debate, to be fair. I've seen him confronted on it when he's like, look, I think we did it because of this and this and this. I don't necessarily agree with a lot of his analysis, but he at least gave a rationale.

Yeah, that's true. That is true. That is true. I mean, so, you know, Congressman Khanna, who is not like part of the squad, is getting to the left of her, at least rhetorically on these things. So yeah, I mean, she absolutely should be,

at least I could be wrong. I have not heard a peep of criticism out of her on the Biden administration policy, let alone not voting for just, you know, arm shipment after shipment after shipment, which is part of what continues to escalate and escalate and escalate this situation. There is no way that she could without destroying her brand amongst the blue check libs who buy a lot of her merch and probably support. I mean, look, I think we should also be real. In terms of her district, they probably do want. This is the, or not even the district.

In terms of like the elite cachet that she cares so much about, like she's very in step. But then be honest about why you're doing that or like why you're contravening what you've said

previously about war. But listen, I applaud these two gentlemen. I would like to see it happen in a couple of other town halls across the country. So if it does happen, there being incentives, you will get covered. I'm breaking

points. But don't do anything violent, please, so that they won't blame me for it. No, absolutely not. Peaceful protest, calling them out, making it uncomfortable for them. 100%. We should see way more of that. And by the way, I'm sure, you know, the way that these people would be presented is like they're the crazy ones. Like they're the only ones, in my opinion, who are acting in a sane way when you consider the dangerous situation that we're in right now. Very true. Some big news about a potential rail strike. Now, just to remind you of how we got to this place, there was initially a presidential board recommendation that was rejected by rail workers to keep them working. Then there was a compromise deal that was struck between the rail bosses and the union leadership.

That was a tentative agreement. And there was a lot of celebration in the media. These were talks led by Biden and his team. A lot of celebration in the media of like, oh, that's it. Rail strike averted. We're good to go. Well, the workers themselves have a say in that because even though their leadership might have agreed to this tentative agreement, they ultimately have to vote and sign off on it as well. And I think there's something like 13 different rail unions which are involved.

And if any one of them says, no, this is not good enough for us, and let's be clear, the provisions in it were only marginally better than what had been offered previously, that means they would likely all strike in solidarity. And we now have, let's put this up on the screen from Joe DeFerman, BMW, that's the third largest of the rail unions, has rejected that railroad company's tentative agreement. The vote was 56 percent and sent an earliest possible strike date of November 19th. Jonah says this is huge. This alone is a huge deal since a B-M-W-E strike would shut down the national rail freight system, but also makes me wonder if it'll affect the two bigger union votes. Ballots for BLET and Smart TD rail workers mail out on October 15th and are due back

November 17th. So the two largest rail unions have yet to vote on this as well. So what Joan is saying here is like seeing this sign from the third largest rail union that their members rejected it may embolden them to also reject it as well. Now, in terms of the political consequences, Biden basically effectively accomplished what he really wanted to, which was to kick all of this down past the midterm elections. Obviously, it would not be good for Democrats if you had a whole, you know, shutdown of the nation's freight rail systems and all of the catastrophic cascading consequences that would ensue if that were to ultimately occur. So we're talking about, you know, in pushing this out to the earliest possible of November 19th. But I just want to make it really clear to people, like,

this was not a done deal. The rank and file members do get a say. And so far, there are indications that they are none too impressed. Well, that was what you always warned is you're like, hey, just because this deal has happened doesn't mean that it's over. And that's, of course, media loss interest immediately whenever the immediate ramifications. But, you know, it might still happen. And all they had to do was reject it at a pretty sizable rate. And even the deal itself, I mean, we didn't know all the details, Crystal, but all these guys were asking for was like paid sick leave. Like, once again, it's not crazy. It's like we should frame their demands in a very reasonable expectation. And I would, I'd probably reject it

if I was them too. You know, especially when you have this much leverage. So we'll see how the political system reacts. I'm not sure how they will. Yeah. And the other piece to keep in mind of this is that, so rail labor is governed by its own set of laws, specifically because any shutdown of the rail system obviously is an extraordinary event and really detrimental to the economy and all of those things. So you have all of these sort of like levers and loopholes that they have to jump through in order to get to the place where they actually could strike. So one of the final ways this could all be short circuit is if Congress came in and they could pass a deal and say, this is it, and that's the end of the story. So back when Biden and the rail bosses and the union leaders were negotiating, there was a real effort from Republicans and quite a few Democrats, too, to say, let's just force them to take the presidential—it's called the PEB.

Let's just force them to take that deal, which was really bad and really favorable to the rail bosses. And basically Bernie Sanders said, no, we're not going forward with that. And then this tentative agreement was able to be struck, which push things down the road. But, you know, if you have a different Congress, if things happen in the midterms, you could still see a possibility where Congress is like, no, we're just going to cram down this deal that you guys have rejected and that you don't want, because it's more important to us to keep the railways operating than it is ultimately to resolve these worker concerns, which have been lingering for years and years. Yeah, I agree. Look, we'll see how it goes. My feeling is, unfortunately, is I think Congress probably would take that step, especially post-midterm. Probably. Right? I mean, why would they listen? And they would just try to

avert the strike by essentially forcing these guys to work and take like one paid day off. What is it? One paid month? Oh, it's crazy. One a day? Yeah. I mean, and we're not even, we're not talking about like weekends and one day. No, no, no. There are no weekends. It's like literally one day. Some interesting news around the company Liquid Death, which has sparked a lot of commentary. Let's put this up there on the screen. They are now valued at a whopping $700 million for basically water and sparkling water in a can. Now, first of all, full disclosure, Liquid Death has been very kind to us. They actually gave us a ton of free Liquid Death whenever we started the show. It's nice. I like it. Yeah, look, honestly, it's pretty good.

I'll put that aside and we'll try and put on a dispassionate hat. It's interesting. From my perspective, I think actually the single best innovation of Liquid Death is you can not drink alcohol, as I basically do now, and not appear like a total square whenever you are at a

venue. It also is more environmentally sound. Yes. The cans versus plastic. That should make a pretty good case on that, as I understand it, in terms of recycling. Aren't there health concerns about these microplastics that you're drinking when you're drinking? Yes, there are. But that, anyway.

We could go into a whole. No, they have been proven. Are they the reason that testosterone is plummeting? Oh, is that one of the things that's been? Yeah, there's a lot of discussion around this. Like, oh, microplastics. There's so many of these areas I am just totally oblivious to that you will. I'm very online, unfortunately. So yeah, there's a whole conspiracy theory about, not conspiracy theory. It's true, microplastics, a lot of other stuff is definitely affecting testosterone. Is it the main reason why global testosterone is low as opposed to, I don't know, being morbidly obese and not working out a lot.

I'm probably going to go with the latter. But it is a concern. Can't be helping, though. No, it's certainly not helping. No way. It's just that some people say that that is the main cause and vice versa. Like lifestyle. Anyway, I'm always a believer in lifestyle first.

I became aware of liquid death when they sent us a bunch of their product. I drank it for three months straight. Yeah, it was very convenient for us to use on set and whatever. And the whole thing was so hilarious to me. Because you do, you see these cans. I mean, it's very aggressively named Liquid Death. And you see these cans and the imagery on it and whatever. And then you're like, wait, it's literally just water.

Yeah. Well, yours is water. I used to drink the sparkling. Yeah. And Kyle also enjoyed the sparkling water, as you guys know. He, yours is water. I used to drink the sparkling. Yeah. And Kyle also enjoyed the sparkling water, as you guys know. He's very into that. But apparently, like, this is working out for them. I've been seeing it blow up. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I think a lot of it is just aesthetic. You know, like, you know, for people who want to get water at a venue, like, if you're

walking around at a concert with a bottle, you just look like a weirdo. And I'm saying that from personal experience. Whereas when you're walking out with Liquid Death, I guess even if everybody knows, it just fit in, you fit in more. I see them selling it like 7-Eleven and others. My only question around this whole thing is like, how much of it is paid promotion? Because at the same, and by the way,

we're not getting paid for this at all. But I hear a lot of their advertisements on like podcasts and others. So I'm like, how much of this money is just going back into promoting business? Are they doing exclusive deals? Because I think that's one of the things that they said, which is that Live Nation, which is one of those concert venues, is actually one of the people who is leading the funding round. So maybe the concert venues have realized this is a way to upcharge you. But I haven't seen any evidence of that.

I mean, you're getting upcharged at these menus regardless. I don't know. I'm just interested in it. Outside of the fact that we have sort of been interested in their business model since we had some of their product and thought that the whole model was kind of like, I mean, it was hilarious. It's funny. I remember explaining it to people. I'm like, no, it's just water and a can. Right. I did not believe it until I actually tried it. And I was like, it's literally just water. It's an interesting question of how much just brand,

pure branding, how much it matters. Like how much pure branding and aesthetic ultimately matters. And, you know, apparently at this point at least, one of their sales, I think it was like $120 million in valuation. Yeah, $130 million. That's a lot of money. $700 million valuation. And it's only started in 2019.

I will say their flavored one needs some work because it's got a bunch of carbohydrates in that. So you guys got to jack the sugar out of that and make it like LaCroix

or whatever and make it zero calories. Those of us who are on a diet can'tix or whatever, and make it zero calories. Those of us who are on a diet can't be screwing around with those 7-12 carbs. I can't attest to the flavoring of it or anything else. I won't drink it because it's got too many carbs in it. And a lot of my guys in my gym

also won't do the same thing, so anecdotal evidence. The water is very watery. It's just water. The sparkling water, I mean, okay. So I like sparkling water. I would compare it, I mean, okay. So I like sparkling water. I would compare it. I think it is, I think Topo Chico is the best, but it's a pain because it only comes in glass.

And also, I read some interesting stuff about whether their whole bottling process is actually maybe even worse than microplastics. So you put that one on the side. By the way, I love Topo Chico. Don't get me wrong. I'll probably still drink it. And I would say. Oh, really? So you put that one on the side. By the way, I love Topo Chico. Don't get me wrong. I'll probably still drink it. And I would say, like, what?

Like, Kirkland is probably, like, it's the worst, but it is the cheapest. And I think it falls somewhere in the middle on that. Okay. In terms of sparkling water. So that's my review. Yeah, I would drink it. Absolutely.

So, anyway, thank you. And thank you, Liquid Death. Apparently we're all very shallow people because we fall for, like, pretty can and interesting labeling. Why not? Okay, sure. Why not? It's like social arbitrage.

All right. We'll see you guys later. Hey, everyone. This is Ken Klippenstein with Breaking Points, the Intercept Edition. I'm joined today by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and national security reporter James Risen. We're going to be talking to you about a story that we had in The Intercept recently about something that the intelligence community doesn't like to talk about, which is that they and their intelligence made huge errors in terms of how they thought the Russian invasion of Ukraine would go. Now, to be clear, they were correct in anticipating the invasion and that has gotten no shortage of accolades and things in the press. And they're very happy to talk about that.

The part of the story they're not happy to talk about is the fact that they could hope for was arming the insurgency covertly. Jim's been in the business for a long time, has a lot of sources in the national security community. Jim, what was it like reporting on this story, and what do you make of that the CIA got this so wrong? Well, first, thanks for having me. And second, I think, yeah, you're right. There's a long tradition of the CIA getting things like this wrong, where they are not, you know, the U.S. intelligence community, not just the CIA, but the broader community, has become so reliant on technical intelligence, on satellites and listening, eavesdropping, and other kinds of technical monitoring.

They're good at counting tanks and seeing large armies where they are. But they're not very good at understanding the human side of things, like how much corruption there is in another government, or the morale or the spirit of an army, or the incompetence of training and how much, you know, contracting is being diverted for embezzlement, things like that. And so they were able to see before the war, yes, the Russian army is deploying huge amounts of troops and equipment onto the border of Ukraine.

And they could watch it over time, over the year before the invasion. They saw deployments move back and forth. And what they finally, you know, the army, the Russian army had units, I think in the spring of 2021, near the border with Ukraine, and then they pulled them back, and then they began to put them back near the border in the fall of 2021. And when they started that deployment, it was obvious that it was becoming more larger and more permanent.

But they weren't able to tell, oh, yeah, the soldiers don't want to be there. The equipment is terrible. They don't have enough fuel, things like that. So they could watch and count things, but they weren't able to do much in terms of the qualitative intelligence. It's interesting. So it sounds like what you're saying, and this tracks with what my sources told me in reporting on the story, was that this endemic corruption, these kind of cultural problems within the Russian military, was not picked up on despite the billions of dollars we're throwing at all of these sophisticated technical means

that might work at what they're designed to do or might not because there's not people, and that that is the way that you find out about these kind of problems. The reason I think this all matters to the general public and is a bigger story than just a gotcha on the CIA, although I'm happy to do that when it's factually true, is that we have had a bloated Pentagon budget for any number of decades justified largely on the idea that, the rife corruption but the incompetence and the failure to move beyond the few territories that they've taken right next to their own country. What does that say about the, again, billions of dollars that we've given virtually carte blanche to these national security agencies to meet this threat that it looks like isn't as powerful as we thought? Yeah, I mean, that goes back to the Cold War. In the early 80s, there was a divide within the CIA analytical community over the scale and power of Russia's ballistic missile fleet and its nuclear weapons.

And there was a huge fight between Republicans and Democrats. It actually started in the 70s over whether the CIA was being hawkish enough. And it became a very political fight. And the Reagan administration really came down on the side of the people in the intelligence community who were more hawkish. And so those people began to get promoted over the people who were less hawkish about the Soviet Union. And it became known within the intelligence community that if you wanted a career, if you wanted to, actually, of a lot of the neoconservatives who, by the time of 9-11, were very senior people in the Bush administration and became the leading neoconservatives, like Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith and people like that. So there's a long history here of the politicization of intelligence on Russia towards being more hawkish.

And they were wrong on the Soviet Union. They missed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. And then, you know, it never really got better. One of the problems was that the CIA had a tradition of recruiting spies inside the KGB. And that was good for counterintelligence purposes. They could find out what the KGB was doing to spy on the CIA and find out about moles in the CIA. But they never had any real spies in the Kremlin

who could tell them about Russian political intentions. And that was a real handicap because they were good at, in other words, they were good at figuring out KGB spying operations. And to some degree, they also knew a lot about the Russian order of battle because they were also able to recruit Russian military officers to some degree. And they had a lot of spies who gave them information about Russian, the technical side of Russian military equipment.

But they never had much intelligence about actual Kremlin's intentions. And that became a huge problem for them. And then, go ahead, I'm sorry. It sounds like there's a rich history of these sorts of intelligence failures that spans back to, I mean, as you said, failing to anticipate the fall of the Berlin Wall. And more recently, in the context of reporting on this story that it happened, that we overcompensated and came and looked at this and said, okay, well, how do we not get in a situation where we don't, where we say, oh no, this government will last for a year or two, as they said in the case of Afghanistan.

And then they massively overshoot in the other direction and say, as I was told, and Congress was briefed on this, that Kiev is going to fall within 48 hours. Now, I think it's easy to sit here and be, I think the reason, I'm not being money morning quarterback here, because I'm not saying that, okay, they didn't get exactly right. But to say that the capital is going to fall within two days is just so far off the mark. It makes you really wonder about this stuff that's getting briefed to the president, you know? Right. Oh, the one, one thing I was, I would add about the background and the history is that, you know, all that history about the problems in the Cold War was made worse after 9-11 when the CIA really gave up on traditional intelligence, not entirely, but the focus became military operations,

paramilitary operations, and targeted killings with drones and with special forces. And counterterrorism became their number one priority. And traditional intelligence and espionage was reduced. And I think we're seeing the bad effects of that now. They don't have the traditional, they haven't rebuilt their traditional espionage operations. Yeah, well, in their defense,

how are you going to make a bunch of money for contractors if you're just hiring spies on the ground to talk to people? You can make a whole lot more money selling AI systems that, as in your reporting, our pitch to policymakers is being able to decode secret messages in Al Jazeera to warn people about terror attacks. Does it work? No. But does it make the guy that invented it a whole bunch

of money? Yeah, it does. Pay any price. Available in bookstores. Yeah, no, it's true. It's a, there's a huge, the amount of money that is being put towards

U.S. intelligence is really kind of shocking and scandalous. The CIA's budget doubled during the first few years of the war on terror and I think it's probably doubled again. I don't know what the exact number is today, but it's just obscene amounts of money. And it's all going for this technical intelligence, which is very good for what it does. But if you've ever been to Afghanistan or Iraq and seen the way the U.S. presence was there, it's very understandable to me why we didn't have very good human intelligence. Everybody drives around in massive convoys of Humvees because they're afraid of anybody getting kidnapped, rightfully so. You know, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul was a fortress.

You couldn't get anywhere near. And so the idea that they had much interaction with locals who they could, you know, have secret conversations with was, you know, I'm sure they did some of it. very difficult for them to be in a position to understand the Taliban very well or to understand what was really going on on the ground. Yeah. Well, there's no question these are endemic problems and ones you're not going to hear about in the media outlets that have the relationships with these agencies that they do. But for anybody that wants to just open this book. I think that's one of the things I felt good about for our story was the degree to which

so much of the other coverage on the CIA during the Ukraine war has been about the successes they've had. Right. And, you know, they've had, you know, as you pointed

out correctly at the beginning, they did accurately predict the invasion and they predicted the timing. Probably more, what was more impressive for them was predicting the timing rather than the actual idea that they were going to invade. And that almost certainly came from listening to conversations between Russian generals and political leaders when they had to tell the generals when to go. But, you know, that's the idea that they completely missed the impact of corruption and deceit in the Russian system is just shocking and amazing to me. All right, Jim, I want to thank you for joining us.

Once again, this is Ken Klippenstein with Breaking Points, The Intercept Edition. Time now for our weekly partnership segment with our friends over at The Lever. Joining us this morning is David Sirota. Great to see you, sir. Good to see you. Let's put your latest reporting up here on the screen. I'm really glad you covered this because this is something I've been wanting to dig into. Your headline here is,

Health insurers get government cash, then jack up prices. Despite the Affordable Care Act's promises, publicly subsidized insurers are jacking up prices while Americans lose coverage. And David, one thing that we noted this week is, you know, we got the new inflation numbers, which continue to be bad in a lot of categories. One of the categories where we saw the highest price increases was in health insurance. So it seems to me like you're telling a really important piece of the story here that I haven't seen covered really anywhere else? Yeah, well, it's a huge story.

You know, I'm glad we started on the inflation question. You know, there's all this talk that inflation is driven by supply chains and products, etc., etc. Health insurance is notoriously an industry of paperwork. It does not really have supply chains. So there's this debate, is inflation about supply chains or is it about oligopolies and monopolies using their market power to just jack up prices, using inflation as an excuse to pad their profits? So here's a perfect example of an industry of paperwork that doesn't have supply chains, an oligopolized industry of like, you know, a few giants controlling lots and lots of markets, just jacking up their prices by 24% in a single year. That to me is proof that at least that part of the inflation crisis

is just companies deciding to say, hey, we have lots of market power, we don't have real competition, and we can just turn up the prices and squeeze people for more. Now, our reporting shows that six of the seven major health insurance companies are now making the majority, the majority of their revenues from the government. That's according to former health insurance executive Wendell Potter, who did the research. And so you put these two points together. The government, we the people, are subsidizing the insurance oligopolies who are then turning around and rewarding us with 24% year-over-year price increases. So the other piece of this is the fact that when he was campaigning, and especially in

the Democratic primary, President, now President Biden, then candidate Biden, was under a lot of pressure from Bernie Sanders and others to put out some sort of a health care plan that could compete with the vision of universal coverage under, say, a Medicare for all program. And so what he campaigned on was, hey, we're going to go back to the original idea of a public option that can compete with this. And since he's been in office, they've also been pushing this idea of let's further subsidize health insurance so that more people can afford it and will effectively get to guaranteed coverage that way. However,

as we face down a critical midterm election with more Americans, as you put it, being, you know, inadequately covered and some being pushed out of health insurance altogether, we have heard really nothing about what the Democratic Party might do if they keep power with regards to health insurance or health care in general. Tell us a little bit more about that piece. Yeah, I mean, it's really crazy. Health care, it feels like it's gone from the political agenda, gone from the election conversation. Biden campaigned on a promise to create a public option, a government-sponsored health insurance option to compete with private insurers. The Congressional Budget Office has said that if structured properly,

it would create the kind of competition that would reduce premiums, put downward pressure on that, for instance, 24% price increases that we've seen year over year under the current system. Since becoming president, he has not mentioned the public option even once, not once. The major policy proposal that Democrats have put forward is, as you say, more subsidies to ACA exchange plans and the like, essentially shoveling even more money at the insurance companies, which of course, again, are using their market power to simply jack up prices. The point being, you cannot solve this problem, this cost of living problem, because this is part of cost of living, obviously. You cannot solve that problem by simply throwing more money at it and doing nothing else. You have

to do something different. But unfortunately, the Biden administration and the Democrats don't seem interested in even having a conversation about what could be done. And there are plenty of things that could be done. The public option could be done. Some forms of Medicare for all could be discussed. I mean, there are many things that could be done, but a lot of health insurance money goes to the Democratic Party. It is a big base of support for the Democratic Party.

Joe Biden's first fundraiser in 2019 when he announced for president was with the CEO of one of Blue Cross's major affiliates. That's how tightly woven in the health insurance industry is with the Democratic Party and explains why amid a very real health care affordability crisis, two in five Americans are either uninsured or underinsured. That's why you don't see, in my view, you don't see real policy prescriptions being put forward by the Democratic Party leadership. This is part of something actually Senator Sanders critiqued in The Guardian, which is the fact that, for Americans, overwhelmingly, they tell pollsters their number one issue is the economy and inflation. Yet Democrats have effectively completely ceded that issue to Republicans.

100% of their messaging is around abortion or close to it. And listen, I'm on their side on abortion. I think it's an important issue. I'm not trying to say it's not. But when you have voters overwhelmingly saying, this is the thing that I'm voting on and that I care about, you should probably be offering some solutions that are actually going to be able to help them out on economic matters. The other piece, David, I wanted to get from you for people who don't understand this piece. There's this thing called Medicare Advantage, essentially like a privatized version of Medicare that has grown increasingly large and important in terms of our overall health insurance ecosystem. Could you help

people understand what that is and how that plays into this overall story? Sure. The Trump administration kicked off, really accelerated, and the Biden administration has continued to accelerate the push of seniors, Medicare recipients, off of traditional Medicare into privatized, privately administered Medicare Advantage plans. These plans often have high rates of denial of care, of necessary care, according to a federal report. And the cost of these plans are huge. They are costing, there are reports of billions and billions of dollars of cost overruns. Obviously, another gift to the health insurance companies. This is why so much of the health insurers' money, the revenues they're making, are from the government. I go back to the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act was sold to Americans as a way to preserve the privately financed health insurance system and reduce costs for Americans.

Now we have a system where six of the seven largest health insurers are mostly publicly financed, even though they are privately administered and healthcare prices keep going up. And you've got, and again, part of that is because so many people are being funneled into Medicare Advantage plans. And of course, part of that is because the government's only solution that they're offering is let's subsidize ACA plans. Let's throw more money at the health insurers to do ACA plans, but it's not actually necessarily expanding medical care. The health insurers are psyched. They're making huge profits. The rest of us, it's not such a great story. It's really the unaffordable care act. Yeah. I mean, classic story, socializing the cost and privatizing all

the profits is exactly what we're doing here. David, thank you so much for your reporting on this. Great to see you. Everybody go subscribe to The Lever. If you are able, they are doing work that no one else is doing in digging into these stories and exposing corruption on both sides of the aisle. Great to see you, my friend. Great to see you. Thanks so much. 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. The strike is labor's greatest weapon. When the bosses already have the power to hire and fire, when they have the power to coerce and control because they hold our checks and thus our livelihoods in their hands. When they

have the political power that money buys, when they have a legal system that overwhelmingly protects their property and commercial interests over the rights and needs of working people, and when they also have at their disposal the vicious muscle of the police. The deck is stacked in their favor. And that, at least in the U.S., is how it was designed to be. No matter how many politicians, small business tyrants, and chamber of commerce bootlickers whine about employers and investors not being able to do whatever they want want and that they have to deal with some marginal regulations and pesky things like workers' rights. Whether it's dipshits who have never had a real job like Ben Shapiro or cosplaying shills for big business like Mike Rowe,

if anyone out there is trying to convince you that unions are these all-powerful entities and that bosses and businesses are more politically and legally hamstrung in this country than workers are, I promise you they are either lying to you or they are so ignorant about what they're talking about that you probably shouldn't be listening to them. But here's the thing. The deck has always been stacked in the boss's favor. That's been true since the existence of bosses. The people at the top of hierarchical power arrangements are fortify their own privileged place within it. That is why the soul of the labor movement is collective, rank-and-file organization and action. There are more of us than there are of them, as the adage goes.

And workers' strength, the power they have to counteract the power of the bosses comes from their numbers and their ability to mobilize and act as a group. That is as true now as it ever was. As the great Big Bill Haywood, a founding member and leader of the industrial workers of the world famously said, quote, if the workers are organized, all they have to do is put their hands in their pockets and they've got the capitalist class whipped, end quote. So why is that the case? What is it about workers collectively withholding their labor that tips the scales? Well, it's kind of obvious, but the point is to disrupt production, to disrupt business as usual, to shut shit down, as is workers' right to do if they are being treated poorly and unfairly. Listen, if workers can be prevented from causing such disruption, or if their actions can be safely circumvented with scabs and legal loopholes, then their demands can be safely ignored.

Our right to strike is the foundation of the whole social contract holding this poor excuse of a society up, if we don't have that right or the cost of exercising that right becomes such a powerful deterrent that few actually exercise it, then we are just submitting to whatever unelected executives and managers want to dole out to us. We are resigning ourselves to the fate of bugs squashed under the boot of the necessary march towards whatever great future this capitalist system wants us to have. And right now, many eyes within the labor movement are fixed on this rogue Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear a case that could seriously restrict our right to strike,

which would have huge implications for all of us who consider ourselves workers or who consider ourselves part of what Richard Wolff described to me as the order-taking class, not the order-giving class. Earlier this month, the justices on the Supreme Court agreed to review a case that had been adjudicated by the Washington State Supreme Court, titled Glacier Northwest Inc. vs. the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union No. 174. and its implications without getting too mired in a bunch of eye-glossing legalese. But what you need to know up front is that the Seattle-based Ready Mix concrete supplier Glacier Northwest, which does business as Cal Portland, sued the Teamsters Local 174, claiming that a one-week walkout by workers in 2017 involved intentional property damage that the union

should have to pay for. According to the union, before drivers walked off the job, they returned loaded trucks to the company's yard and left them running so that the concrete in the mixing drums could be safely unloaded. The company, however, alleges that the union timed the work stoppage so that the concrete would harden in the mixing drums, become unusable, and cause costly repairs. Now, given this court's clearly demonstrated ideological and political mission to further empower employers and the ruling class writ large, and to disempower working people and roll back our rights. There's obviously a lot of fear right now that a ruling in this case could shatter decades of precedent and enable employers to make workers and unions pay incredibly steep prices for

exercising their right to strike and for causing the very economic disruption that is, again, the whole point of a strike. To talk about all of this and more, I'm honored to be joined today by Terri Gerstein. Terri is the director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School's Labor and Work Life Program, and she is also a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. Terry, thank you so much for joining us today on Breaking Points. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm really concerned about this case and really happy to have the opportunity to just to drill down a little bit and explain what the case is about. Well, again, I really, really appreciate you taking the time.

I know you're super busy and I'm freaked out about this case too. And I desperately need your expertise here because I know that, you know, like I said in the intro, like our eyes can start glossing over when we get into the legalese here. But, you know, the implications of this case are humongous. And so I was wondering if we could kind of start by just sort of, yeah, breaking down, you know, what this case is about and why, you know, you think the Supreme Court granted it a review. So in terms of what the case is about, you summarized some of the most important facts. There were workers who went on strike. Basically, the company, Glacier, had a contract that ended, and 11 days later, workers went on strike.

And the company makes cement and has special prepared cement that is quick dry. And so if it's not poured within 20 or 30 minutes, it will dry out. And the workers went on strike. The workday is such that some workers start at 2 a.m. when the cement has already been mixed and they start in staggered times going to 7 and they went on strike at 7 a.m. What happened was the workers then, the ones who were still at the company premises, you know, went on strike, left the cement trucks running so the cement would not dry out. The workers who were out delivering cement brought the trucks back to the company premises and again also left the trucks running so the cement wouldn't dry out. If the cement had dried out and the trucks had been turned off, for example, that could have ruined the trucks and rendered them unusable.

So what happened in this case, though, was that the company wasn't able, they were able to clean out the trucks. There was no damage to the premises, no damage to the vehicles. But the cement for that day, they were able to remove it from the premises, no damage to the vehicles. But the cement for that day, they were able to remove it from the trucks, but it wasn't usable in the end because the company didn't have a backup plan. It was during active negotiations. It happened less than two weeks after the prior contract with the no strike clause had expired. And so, you know, it perhaps would have been prudent for them to have in mind that this was among the possibilities and have some contingency plans.

But the cement was damaged. What happened in the court case, the employer filed what's called a tort lawsuit. And, you know, a tort lawsuit is basically a lawsuit for economic damages. It's, you know, someone did you harm and they owe you money for it. And the employer filed a tort lawsuit in state court saying we lost all this cement and we should be able to sue the union for damages because we lost all this money because of the cement. Now, usually that kind of lawsuit wouldn't be allowed. And this is where it does get a little wonky. It doesn't it's not allowed because of a concept called preemption. And the whole idea is that the National Labor Relations Act, our federal labor

law, is supposed to be kind of uniform nationally. And states aren't supposed to be allowed to kind of weigh in either in favor or against the union or the employer. The idea is that they kind of came up with this whole scheme and it's supposed to be all managed at the federal level. And there are a few exceptions to this. Like, you know, the classic example is if someone punches someone on a picket line, that's assault and the state can get involved. So there are some exceptions to preemption. And what's happening in this case is that Glacier is arguing that because the cement was damaged, that that's akin to something like vandalism,

and so falls outside of preemption. And they should be able to not just be governed by the NLRB, be sort of within the confines of the NLRB and the National Labor Relations Act or federal labor law, but they should be able to go into state court and file a claim for economic damages. And, you know, this is really troubling because some economic harm to employers is implicitly part of what a strike is. That's just part of what happens. That's part of sort of, you know, the cases talk about the economic weapons that are contemplated by the National Labor Relations Act and our federal labor policy. And some economic harm to the employer is what gives workers their collective leverage in a strike. Again, they're not allowed to, you know, take a bat to the, to the front door of the company.

They're not allowed to, to do things that sort of go beyond that normal economic harm. And so what's really troubling about this case is that, you know, arguing that loss of one day's supply is akin to vandalism, you know, or punching someone on a picket line to that kind of like really intentional property damage, it's really troubling. And the company argues as well that the timing of the strike is part of what makes it fall outside of preemption, that they timed the strike in a way that is like made it particularly harmful because the cement was already mixed and therefore that caused the damage. But again, you know, workers can choose strategic timing for their strikes, you know, and to argue that strategic

timing or losing, you know, a day's supply of products, there was no harm to the vehicles, no harm to the premises or anything like that. It's just a very dangerous precedent to think that it would be permitted for the employer to then sue a union for damages, you know, in a way that could be, you know, potentially extremely harmful financially to them. Right. Like you said, like it's really dangerous because that's the whole damn point of these actions, right? I mean, if Amazon workers walk out on Prime Day, there's a very obvious reason why they're doing that, right? And if employers can somehow use and weaponize the courts to say that this is, you know, vandalism that unions have

to pay for, that's obviously going to be a huge disincentive for folks to go on strike. And I wanted to sort of kind of build on that here. You know, you already started touching on this, but, you know, let's talk a little more about why this matters, right? And what the implications could be, depending on the decision, what the implications could be for workers' collective right to strike. And I mean, are there any positive outcomes that could happen from this? Well, I mean, I think the negatives really far outweigh the positives i did there are some positives that i'll talk about in a minute but when you think about the implications as well when you think about you know the fact that the concrete was quick dry and sort of in a sense like

a perishable product right there are so many things the our entire food chain consists of perishable products, right? What does this mean about the right to strike for everyone from, you know, food processing workers, restaurant workers, people who make yogurt in its brief, and I think the Washington State Supreme Court, which came out against Glacier, against the company, I think the Washington State Supreme Court cited as well, dealt with cheese. Cheese workers who had walked out in a cheese company in Colorado, the facts of that case are basically the workers wanted to have Christmas afternoon off as they had been promised. And so they walked out on cheese making and then the cheese was of a lower quality and the employer made less money selling the cheese as a result. And again, in that case, which I believe was an NLRB case and didn't end up in the courts,

but in that case, the decision was that, you know, the fact that the cheese was of a little lower quality doesn't render the strike unprotected by the National Labor Relations Act. So, you know, when you start to sort of spin out, like, what are perishable products? And even there are products that aren't perishable in the way that food is perishable or quick-dry concrete is, but, you know, there are different kinds of products and services that are seasonal as well. You know, clothing and fashion can be seasonal or, you know, the entire retailers, the entire months of December before the Christmas and winter holidays. So, but in terms of potential silver linings, this whole issue of National Labor Relations Act preemption, that the federal law, anything that is arguably covered by the federal

law, states and localities are not allowed to get involved in. This is something that has been used often by employers to prevent workers from having certain kinds of rights. So for example, even right now, there's a case going on, New York City passed a law creating just cause termination for fast food workers, that they can't be arbitrarily fired, and they have to have some kind of, you know, job-related reason for being terminated. And that law is being challenged in part on National Labor Relations Act preemption grounds, saying that this is arguably covered by the National Labor Relations Act, and it's, you know, a city shouldn't be able to make this kind of law. And so, you know, reading this case, it's interesting for me as someone,

my own background is in state labor law enforcement, and I work with a lot of states and localities. And, you know, we're often having conversations about what are ways that states and localities can actually protect workers without being constrained by preemption. And so logically, if the employer is allowed to sue the workers or the union or the union for damages for economic damages and state court for striking logically that weakening of preemption should create some space for workers to, to have other now non-existent state and local opportunities for remedies or action that could benefit workers? You know, could a worker sue for damages for an employer if the worker is terminated in retaliation and as a result of not

being paid wages ends up being evicted, for example? And there's a tort called intentional infliction of emotional distress. Like, are there damages that workers could sue for? Does it open the door for more action by progressive states and cities? So logically, if the Supreme Court were actually going to be consistent, if they were going to loosen preemption and say, yeah, there's a little bit of a wider area that states can get involved in. Logically, that should redound not only to employers' benefit in some instances, but also to workers. You know, there's a goose, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander issue here. And that prospect, frankly, I think should give the justices some real pause, even the conservative justices, because, you know, I don't

think that they're concerned about preserving the right to strike or workers' right to take collective action. But they may be concerned about overreaching by states or workers or unions, pursuing employers in various ways. You know, just given the composition of the court, though, you know, I think it's, it's, it's just really concerning. They seem to be very good at finding ways to thread the needle. You know, in this case, you really would have to thread the needle to say like, yes, you know, preemption is relaxed, but only for the employer. And, you know, their ability to thread the needle to come to outcomes that are pro-corporate and that are anti-worker, you know, are just, you know, it's been troubling and disappointing, you know, obviously, you know, for several years now. So, so I'm very, you know, to me, this case illustrates the need, among many other things, just the urgent need to have court reform, because with the Supreme Court we have, you know, it just creates a lot of really bad outcomes on a lot of issues that many of us care deeply about. Right. I mean, you know, you say if the court, you know, wants to be consistent, that's a big if with this court, right? I mean, and I think that's why we're all so nervous about stuff like this, right? wearing its politics on its sleeve. It's making it very clear that it is trying to kind of take the outcomes that the majority of the court already want and kind of, you know,

shoehorn some sort of legal justification to, you know, come out the other side with those outcomes. And so there's the obvious kind of point, as you said, about the ideological kind of makeup of the majority of the existing court. But there's also like a thing that I try to emphasize for folks, like the larger sort of system that we're seeing at work here is also very much stacked in favor of employers, of investors, of major corporations, of the ruling class writ large. Because when the court system becomes so costly and prohibitive and takes so long to move cases through the courts, let alone get up to the level of the Supreme Court, obviously there are going to be a lot of cases that make it there when they can ride on waves of cash from, you know, employer advocacy groups, conservative donor groups, shadowy PACs and stuff like that. through the side door, right? Because just like the infamous Janus decision in 2018, this case that, you know, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear, right, is it's not like just some mom and pop who like filed a lawsuit and somehow that case made it all the way to the Supreme

Court. Like, no, like there are a lot of outside interested parties that are trying to push, you know, like this case all the way up to the Supreme Court and get the kind of outcome that they want. And so I wanted to ask if you could just sort of talk a little bit more about, right, you know, like the sort of, you know, class interests that the Supreme Court is serving. And like another question I had is, you know, is this something that, you know, the Biden administration or Congress could kind of cut off at the pass with any sort of executive order or legislation? spot on because in addition to the Janus decision, we've seen other decisions in the last few years that have really shown hostility to worker collective action. There was the Epic Systems case. And in that case, that was, you know, it sort of was written about and understood as being

about forced arbitration and sort of blessing, you know, giving one more blessing to employers forcing arbitration on workers. But the Epic Systems case was really about whether requiring workers as a condition of employment to give up their right to bring a class action, you know, which is inherently collective action, whether requiring employees to give that up violates the National Labor Relations Act. And it's, you know, again, it's a real example to me, as you said, of sort of outcome-based, you know, jurisprudence that they came out against, you know, and found that it wasn't a violation of the NLRA. They could have harmonized the Federal Arbitration Act and the National Labor Relations Act, and they chose not to. And then more recently

in the last session, there was a case, Cedar Point Nursery, in which there was California state law. I guess there still is. I don't know the exact status of it. But the California law allowed unions to go onto farms, you know, agricultural job sites for like a super modest period of time, you know, during a very limited number of days per year. And the reason is obviously because farm workers are isolated and vulnerable and they're working in rural areas and are hard to reach. And so the Supreme Court basically found that this California law was a taking, an unconstitutional taking of the grower's property without just compensation. The reason I say I'm not sure what the current status is, is that generally if something's a taking, it means that you have to give just compensation. And so I don't know how you calculate just compensation for like letting organizers on for, you know, 30 minutes of, you know, a few times during the

calendar year. But both of these cases just really show hostility to collective bargaining. But in terms of the question of what Congress can do, again, this case also has so many things due these days, just to me illustrates the importance of the midterms and how much is at stake because borrowing from another area um you know the supreme court had a really bad decision uh recently earlier this year um about the clean air act that um constrained the environmental protection agency's ability to act in certain circumstances and congress when they passed the Inflation Reduction Act, they basically rectified that and changed the definitions so that now the EPA has the authority to do what the Supreme Court said the prior statute didn't permit. And so there are ways that Congress, if we get a Congress that will actually, work for working people and really fight for these issues.

You know, and we need to make sure that, you know, we need to make sure that we get worker champions in office. You know, Congress would have the ability potentially to legislate in a way that could obviate the bad results of this decision. Well, and I want to pick up on that quickly, right? And then I got to let you go because I know you're busy and we got to wrap this up. But this is like such a crucial point that I want to stress for anyone watching and listening to this, right? Because I think the situation that all of us are in, in relation to the current Supreme Court or the Supreme Court in general, right? Because I think the situation that all of us are in, in relation to the current Supreme Court or the Supreme Court in general, right, really crystallizes the dynamics of power in this country, right? Because I, you know, for anyone watching, regardless of what your politics

are, I know that, you know, we may be kind of like cheering on or lamenting, you know, the decisions that are being made by this court as if they're being somehow made for us, right? You know, like, oh, yay, you know, like the Supreme Court got, you know, overturned Roe. That's a huge win, you know, for, you know, the people who wanted that to happen, right? Or, you know, you may have been cheering on earlier in the year when the Supreme Court basically overturned OSHA's authority to enforce vaccine mandates or weekly testing for large employers who had 100 employees or more, right? You may consider that a win for your side. What I want to stress is that the Supreme Court does not give a shit about you, right? I mean,

there's a very kind of clear class dimension going on here where you could in fact interpret a lot of these decisions as kind of buttressing the power of the ruling class and disempowering working people, right? Because that is the net effect, you know, losing abortion rights, who's that going to hurt? Working people, working families. It's going to hurt people's ability to make a living. The number one justification for people getting abortions is financial need, right? And the EPA ruling that you mentioned, Terry. Look at Louisiana. Who are the people who are going to be living in sacrifice zones because it's the only place that they can afford. And now that corporations can just pollute the air, water, and so on and so forth even more,

who's going to suffer from that? Working people. Even the OSHA case that I mentioned earlier. You may be totally ideologically opposed to vaccine mandates and weekly testing. Fine. I'm honestly too exhausted to get into that right now. But you should know that the justification that was given in that court ruling for saying that OSHA did not have the authority to implement this rule, there are large implications for that. Because what they said is that COVID is a general condition that is not limited to the workplace. Thus, employers have no special requirements to increase safety measures for their workers. Now, think about climate change. We did a segment a couple months ago on the heating in UPS package cars, right?

As climate change gets worse, employers can point to that same ruling and say, well, you know, the climate problem is a general problem. It's not a workplace problem. So we don't have to do shit to protect our workers who are boiling out, you know, in the agricultural fields or warehouses or package cars, so on and so forth. Right. So just think of the implications of these and what they mean for working people in general, instead of getting sucked into this position that we're always in, where we're cheering on one side or the other. And effectively, we are put in the position of like the citizens of Tokyo cheering on Godzilla or Mothra and just hoping that they fall on the right buildings. Like, we have no influence here. Like, we are very much at the mercy of a court that is serving out, carrying out the interests of the ruling class with these

rulings. Terry, does that sound like, do I sound completely off there? Well, one framework that I would add to what you were saying is that a lot of what you're describing and a lot of these problems stem from sort of the logical extension of the 80s and the whole kind of, you know, attacking the public sector and the Reagan era of, you know, the government is bad and we don't need, I mean, in the end, what the government is, is it's, you know, socializing needs and collectively sharing, you know, I mean, everything from parks and libraries and hospitals and highways and, you know, public transit, which our country, you know, does not nearly, you know, we don't nearly invest enough in. But the entire sort of dismantling of the state, of regulation,

of antitrust enforcement, it, you know, that's sort of, again, and there are obviously, you know, corporate interests that don't want to be regulated. And so I think that's also part of the context of all of this is like deregulation, the free market kind of run amok. And I think also in moments like when we have a pandemic, you know, there are certain situations like when we have a pandemic like COVID, when we have climate change, the hurricane in Florida. These are moments when I think people realize

there are situations that we just cannot address individually and we need to have some sense of collective action, you know, separate from collective action in the workplace, just collective action, you know, separate from collective action in the workplace, just collective action as the public, as fellow human beings, and that people realize they really do need, we do need the state to play a really important role. And I think there is a danger of thinking about, you know, the important role of the state only in those crisis situations, because there is such a critical role for the state only in those crisis situations, because there is such a

critical role for the state and the public sector in so many different ways. And so I think that's also, you know, a lot of these Supreme Court decisions have just been very anti-regulation, very anti-oversight of corporations. And that's something, again, as you said, that redounds to all of our detriment. You know, people can't really, we haven't figured out a way yet for people to buy their own air. I mean, there are collective, you know, there are ways that wealthy people obviously, you know, have options that everyone else does not. But in the end, there really are some collective interests that we all share. And dismantling the regulatory state in this way, you know, not allowing anything from gun laws to environmental laws to workplace laws, you know, that's something that really harms everyone.

So that is Terry Gerstein, the director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School's Labor and Work Life Program and a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. Terry, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your brilliance so generously with us. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you all for watching this segment with Breaking Points, and be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News, with links in the show description. See you soon for the next edition of The Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.