Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #61: Fentanyl Crisis, Populist Dems, Grocery Stores, & More!

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

Krystal, Saagar, & friends talk about drug addiction, UPS workers, populist Dems, MSNBC coverage, & private equity taking over grocery stores!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/Ryan Grim: https://badnews.substack.com/Emily Jashinsky: https://thefederalist.com/author/emilyjashinsky/Matt Stoller: https://mattstoller.substack.com/The Lever: https://www.levernews.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell,

and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct.

And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7. Because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Table news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making it impossible to function as a society and to know what is true and what is false. The good news is that they're failing and they know it. That is why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Two articles really caught my eye. I think that the tide is really changing in the way that people talk about fentanyl, about drug use, and more. First was the Wall Street Journal.

Let's put this on the screen. This was a horrifically sad profile, Crystal, of three New Yorkers who ordered cocaine from like a text delivery service. Like a DoorDash kind of thing only for cocaine apparently. Yeah, effectively. Anyway, these three New Yorkers, all of them white-collar professionals. One of them was like a multimillionaire banker. One of them was like a 26-year-old lawyer. One of them was actually a social worker for New York state. All three of them died of a fentanyl overdose. And what's really horrific is actually that they show by

text messages that were obtained that the dealer was texting them being like, Hey, go easy on this one. It's really strong. And kept like calling and texting them, trying to get an answer because I effectively knew, I mean, I don't know if he himself spiked it, but like he knew at some point that something was wrong with it. He's being prosecuted right now by the New York state and more, but it combined that story with another one that recently came out. Matthew Perry put this on the screen. He talks about how he has spent over $9 million trying to get sober. He's part of Alcoholics Anonymous, also was a cocaine user, and has had some serious issues. And I think it's just highlighting a conversation and changing it in popular discourse that I have not seen in quite some time. There probably is a class element that it's richer people are dying now, so sure. People are paying attention. But, and

this has obviously been a horrific crisis now for a decade. I mean, that doesn't mean though that we shouldn't welcome people waking up to like, this is really bad, you know. Yes. Three people here who all died for no reason. Right. Well, and we should be clear, like with, you know, Matthew Perry's a different story, obviously. Yeah, he obviously. He's opening up about his struggles with addiction. There's no indication that these were people who were addicted, you know. No, they were mostly like social drug users. Casual social drug use, which is something that I don't personally have a problem with in the same way that, you know, people consume alcohol. I mean, to me, this is a perfect case in point of why you need some of the interventions Dr. Carl Hart has talked about.

At the very least, there should be an ability to test what you have as long as it's illegal so that you know whether or not it is laced with fentanyl, which is increasingly becoming a huge problem and leading to more and more skyrocketing deaths of people. I mean, there are some people who are, you know, hardcore junkies and addicts who actually are seeking out fentanyl, but many of the people who are dying from fentanyl, they don't even, they don't want fentanyl. They don't know this is what they're getting. They don't know this is what they're ingesting. And so that creates, you know, incredibly dangerous situation. Obviously my, you know, overall view is it should be legal tax and regulated so that you don't end up with these sorts of horrific incidents.

But, I mean, putting all of that aside, it's just an unbelievable tragedy. And it's sad that it takes, like, wealthier people who don't fit the typical idea, stereotypical idea of who is dying from drug use in order to wake up the Wall Street Journal or wake up the population in general. But yeah, this is just a growing problem. Every year we see the numbers go up and up and up. We can cry about the class element. I think it is bullshit that people don't care until, you know, like rich people die. That being said, I mean, everybody's still dying and we should do something about it. And that is, I mean, more than anything, I just think it's such a horrific, slow burning crisis. Recently, one of my favorite actors, Michael Williams, died from the wire. He also, a long time sober, same thing, went back on

heroin. It was spiked, OD'd, killed. I mean, after like 20 years of being sober, and he relapsed, and all it takes is one time, and then that was it, and he's dead. There's so many people like that who just highlight how bad the crisis is right now. I thought it was important that people see these stories. I encourage people to go and read this. We're talking about an Iranian immigrant's daughter who just graduated from Columbia Law School. One of those guys, he had a pregnant wife, stressed out, checked into a hotel just to like relax, I guess, and work. Same thing. Died.

The other one was a social worker. She actually had an 8 p.m. call, which, you know, she was doing her job, and she was dead like hours later. So, look, you know, I mean, they're just one—three of, what, 50 to 100,000 will die this year. And it's the number one cause of death for people who are under the age of 65, supplanting car accidents for the first time in modern American history. And really, nobody talks about it until something like this comes out. And a lot of it is the ubiquity of fentanyl. Yeah, it is all fentanyl.

Yeah, which is, I mean, the reason that dealers like fentanyl is because it is so potent. That makes it easier to traffic because you don't have to have as much of it. It's very small. Very small. And so that makes it easier to transport and easier to traffic. And that's how it ends up laced throughout the illegal drug market. So absolutely a tragedy. No one is having serious conversation really about how to deal with it. Ultimately, they prefer to close their eyes oftentimes. And, you know, I mean, part of this is also the spike in deaths of despair, but the particular exacerbating factor right now is, you know, the continued, like, widespread misery layered on top of that, the introduction of fentanyl and, you know, things

that were never laced with fentanyl before now being laced with fentanyl in ways that people are not at all prepared with. Yeah, absolutely. All right. We'll see you guys later. Wanted to share with you a tragic workplace death at a UPS facility in Louisville, Kentucky. These workers are represented by Teamsters 89. And this is a facility. I used to live in Louisville, Kentucky. I knew people that worked in this place. and it's relevant for a lot of different reasons. But first, the tragedy was, let's go ahead and put this up on the screen, a pregnant worker at this massive UPS facility near the airport there committed suicide on the job. And that has sparked an entire conversation with, you know, the workforce that's there at that facility and other UPS workers around the country.

Some of the details here are just absolutely heartbreaking. Apparently, she had just been fired. She was pregnant. Workers said they believe she was in her second trimester. She got fired because she fell asleep on the job instead of being walked out because whenever a person gets fired, the manager who fires them has to walk them off the property. Manager didn't do that. She said that she has to collect herself in the bathroom. He didn't make sure she came out of the bathroom, so she was given free reign of the property,

and she was found dead at the facility later that evening. They said she was terminated for falling asleep on the job, and then she ends up taking her own life. And it says broader implications. First of all, workplace suicides in the U.S. have apparently been on the uptick, risen dramatically in recent years, reached a record level in 2019. That was the last year that the Bureau of Labor Statistics kept data. This particular death is under investigation by Louisville Metro Police, and they talked to other workers at the

facility, the Guardian did, to get their sense of what it's like working there. One worker who spoke to them said they weren't surprised something like this had happened at the facility. They said workers were under immense pressure with threats of termination for being late, for going to the bathroom one too many times, all went under constant surveillance and scrutiny. The worker themselves is recovering from their hands smashed by heavy packages. They said losing fingernails, smashing fingers, and bruised toes from heavy package loads are common occurrence that workers have to work through. Here's the quote. They say, we're constantly being watched and scrutinized. Everything that we do is never good enough. I've

walked out of the building in tears before because I'm just so physically and mentally exhausted. Knowing a few people who work in this industry, this is a brutal job, incredibly difficult. And there's another piece of this too, which is, as you guys know, Teamsters just elected new international leadership. And the reason specifically that they really decided they were done with the sort of previous regime and the people they had picked to succeed Jimmy Hoffa Jr. was because they had negotiated a really terrible contract with UPS that the workers had actually, by majority vote, voted down. And the leadership went over their heads and said, no, we're going with this anyway. The implication being that they were closer to management than they were to the rank and file workers at this point. Well, this contract with UBS is coming up very soon.

And the new Teamsters International leadership, much more aggressive, much more militant, are threatening a potential strike if they're not able to get a much better deal for their workers. And I think, you know, horrific conditions like this that may have led to suicide of one of their workers who happened to be pregnant really underscores the need for a much better deal for these workers at UPS, let alone the other package delivery services that don't even have union representation. I don't think people really realize how physical of a job it is. You have to be able to lift up to 70 pounds on a repeated basis. And the average driver walks approximately four miles a day, which is a lot. I mean, if you compare average US step count to what they're doing. Yeah, they're hopping in and out of the truck. They're on a very tight time schedule. There's a lot of recriminations if you don't deliver the packages in the time that you're supposed to. I think it's UPS that the drivers don't have air conditioning. Yeah, they don't have air conditioning. And C, which we talked about here.

Yeah, there were a number of worker deaths because in the back of those trucks, you know, inside the like metal box, they're recording temperatures, 120 degrees, 130 degrees. And they're doing physical manual labor in the sun with, you know, no respite in sight. Yeah, it's insane. We covered the video of a worker who was clearly suffering from heat exhaustion in Arizona, I think it was, during the heat of the summer. A ring doorbell system captured him just collapsing on the front porch. And then he still delivers the package, gets back in his truck and keeps going. So there is a lot that is going on here.

And I think the pandemic really highlighted for people how much this work matters, how difficult it is, how truly essential it is to the functioning of our economy at this point. Right, I agree. I mean, I think this is what the price of Amazon for a lot of people need to realize. Like there are a lot of people who work insane hours

in insane working conditions to get that to your door. And the very least is that those people should be paid and compensated fairly if they're going to be doing such a job. Right, and have decent, safe working conditions, which is a lot of the problem. You know, the UPS driver is like, you know, they can make decent money. But this just also shows you the salary is not the only thing.

Being able to do the job safely and without just daily emotional abuse is also an important factor to consider here as well. So I wanted to share that sad story with you guys, and we'll have more for you later. To me, one of the most telling races that we'll be watching on Election Day is Pennsylvania 8th, which encompasses Scranton, Hazleton, and Northeast Pennsylvania. And it pits Matt Cartwright, who's kind of an under-the-radar populist Democrat who first elected in 2012 against Jim Bognet. It's a rematch. He beat Bognet two years ago, but Bognet was the first House candidate across the country to get Trump's endorsement. He served in the Trump administration as an official in the Ex-Im Bank for something like 46 days. And we have a, we have a, there was. He was imported and then exported.

Exported and exported. We had just, he was just short enough so that he kept delaying his financial disclosure. And then he left and never filed it, which came up in a debate. Oh, you actually have to disclose your finances at XM? Yes, there you go. And so last week there was a debate. This week we have an exclusive ad from the Cartwright campaign. This just began airing around northeast Pennsylvania. Let's roll this because I think it tells you a lot about the race.

This is a great place to raise a family. But in order to do that, we need good jobs that can lead to careers. You know who understands this? Matt Cartwright. That's why he's helping to bring a new plant, creating thousands of jobs and cheaper gas prices. He's working to fix our supply chain and bring jobs back from China. He's proven that he's not afraid to take on big corporations. Matt is not a politician. He's a fighter, and he's fighting for people like me. I'm Matt Cartwright, and I approve this ad. Okay, and for me, that's the kind of ad, I think,

populist Democrats would love to see all over the country. Yeah. You're going to go after the corporations. You're a fighter. You're going to go after the corporations. You're a fighter. You're going to go after the big price gouging rich people. You're going to go after China. You're going to bring jobs back to this country. And he's actually citing a very specific job plant that he's going to bring back, this alternative gas plant that he's been a big booster of for a very long time. He's going with the old, in the debate, he went with the old school, like, look, I'm bringing money back. Like, I bring money back to the district. I'm here for regular people here.

So what did you make of that ad? If Democrats across the country were running ads like that, how would you feel about Republicans' chances? It reminded me of a conversation we were having earlier. And I mentioned the Katie Porter viral videos sort of talking about corporate profit margins and inflation and how corporations have used, by their own admission, I mean, there's polls of executives of mostly lies, at best exaggerations. Why aren't Democrats even exaggerating to get a message that sounds like the Cartwright message? that they are working on supply chains. They cannot say things like they're bringing jobs back from China because if they even try to make those claims, it will blow up so hard in their faces because it's that much of a lie. They really truly are so now in bed with the Chamber of Commerce and with corporate interests. And both parties have always been in bed with corporate interests. We know that that's the case. But the Democratic Party even, like it is so lacking the ability to even exaggerate about their efforts in some of these spaces

that they can't run on this message, even though, really, it's where they should be. And, right, and he was, because he's been kind of a progressive populist in office for 10 years now, he can, like you said, he can actually make that claim with some credibility. Tim Ryan has that same thing, right? And that's why I always thought Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance, even though everyone's like, oh, Ohio, it's going to be pretty easy for Vance. Tim Ryan is probably one of the most interesting candidates that Democrats can run on a level like that, because he sort of has these populist bona fides and that he has been in this space for a long time. And whether it's political calculus or sincere, he knows where the wind, he knew what direction the wind was blowing in,

and he can talk like that. And it's, again, helpful, but that is a dying breed of Democrat. Right. And Cartwright is a sponsor of Medicare for All, for instance. For a swing district Democrat to be on Medicare for All is unusual. He was hit by it by Bognet in the debate last week. He responded by saying, yeah, I've never shied away from the fact that I think aspirationally that's where we need to go. Are we ready? Are we ready now? Is it completely sketched out? No. And until then, I want to see people's drug prices lowered. I want to see, you know, subsidies expanded. And so then he can get more purchase for his argument that he wants to make healthcare cheaper and more accessible and more affordable for everybody because he's like,

look, in the end, I'm for Medicare for all. Now, to be fair and balanced, we have a Bognet ad to play as well. He has run two ads so far in this campaign that feature him in 1993 kicking a field goal in high school. Here's one of them. Jason was so fast. Jamie was tough and had great hands. I kicked the game-winning field. A night we'd never forget. Memories of Northeast Pennsylvania end too often after high school. People leave and don't return. Biden only made things worse. Inflation, groceries, gas. Today, everything costs more. I believe we can have a better future, and it starts with changing Washington. I'm Jim Bognett, and I approve this message. Now, to pick up his bio, so he did go

to Penn State. After Penn State, he goes to New York, worked for a major investment bank. Then he worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then he worked for Mitt Romney, worked for John McCain. Hilarious. And then he worked for the Glover Park Group, which represented Saudi Arabia, which came up in the debate as well as the story that I reported on, represented Saudi Arabia when they were lobbying against the 9-11 families. He said he had, his answer, I didn't know. He was the senior vice president for communications for Glover Park Group while they were doing this. And Cartwright pointed out in the debate, he's like,

they list on their FARA filings that communications is one of the things that they're doing for you. You were the senior communications person. They're publicly filing this, telling the whole world that this is what Glover Parker was doing, but you didn't know that they were doing it? Right. They told the Justice Department that.

Yeah. And then he played this interesting Trump card where he's like, I think, you know, he was saying nice things about Trump card, right? It was. Some not nice things, but then some also nice things. He was like, he's like, I think that you know, he was saying nice things about Trump, Cartwright was. Some not nice things, but then some also nice things. He was like, he's like, I think that you left XM so quickly because you didn't want to file your financial disclosure. You didn't want to tell Trump that you were representing the Saudis and going after 9-11 families.

I don't think that's true because Trump doesn't care. Trump's so in bed with the Saudis. He'd be like, okay, good, good for you. But on this ad, I think it's a mistake for anybody to remind the public that you were the kicker. But what do you think? So that video, that kick is from 1993, the video? Yeah. I mean, I was born in 1993. He's bragging about kicking a, what, a 25-yard field goal in 1993. I mean, and then he follows it with, you know, memories of Northeast Pennsylvania, you know, too often and after high school. It's like, yeah, for you, you left after high school and didn't come back until you saw an opportunity to leave your Washington, you know, corporate executive career to run for office as a good old boy from Northeast Pennsylvania. And so playing that grainy

footage is a way to try to say, hey, I'm actually from here. I used to be from here, but I left. So yeah, but you're right. There's nothing else in the ad. Now, since then, his other ads have hammered on the wall, fentanyl, the whole- Well, I was going to say, I'm sure running as a Republican in that district, in a sort of Trump-aligned Republican— Trump won that district by a lot. Right. There's a lot of ammunition for legitimate reasons in a district like that. And so I don't think—I mean, as long as you're aligned with the Republican Party and Donald Trump on a lot of those key issues,

whether it's China, which, by the way, or the border, which people in the Rust Belt see as connected directly to fentanyl and to all of those deaths ravaging their communities. I mean, as long as you're aligned with Trump on that, you have plenty of ammunition. You can run on more than kicking the field goal, which that particular ad I thought was light on substance, not just by the standards of political ads, but just by the standards of, like, what's really going to make this work? You know, you can be the kicker, but are you the kicker that's going to secure the border?

So I thought it was a little light on substance, even from great being on the curve of politics. But still, I mean, there's plenty to run on if you're a Trump-aligned Republican in a district. And that's what Cartwright obviously knows that, because to your point, there were some interesting exchanges about abortion and Drag Queen Story Hour in this debate that show, you know show where those vulnerabilities for the left are. Yeah. And Bognet kept hitting him, calling it the kind of Biden-Cartwright agenda, or the Cartwright-Biden agenda, which is fascinating considering that Biden is from Scranton. That's his whole thing. He's the guy from Scranton. Yet Bognet clearly thinks that tying Cartwright to Biden is the best way to beat him, whereas Cartwright was kind of distinguishing himself from Biden throughout the entire thing. I vote for him when I agree with him, when I don't.

He talked about how—he's like, I fact, he said he was talking to Trump about how it was too difficult to donate a kidney and that there should be reforms around this. And Trump's like, I agree with you. And so Cartwright wrote a bill. The bill didn't become law, but Trump then did his bill basically as an executive order and invited Cartwright to sign it. He's like, so look, I don't hate Trump. I think he's terrible. He was willing to sign it. He's like, so look, I don't hate Trump. I think he's terrible on, you know, he wasn't willing to like,

he was willing to criticize him. But then, yes, you had this, you had these really interesting moments where Bognet would go back to culture war stuff and he kept, he would be brought up Dragnet, brought up Drag Queen Story Hour a couple of times. And Cartwright would say, look, this is a Washington lobbying executive. He kept calling him a lobbying executive because I guess he cares about the fact checkers because he never

officially registered to lobby. To lobby, right. But because he's doing communications, so he's not lobbying. He's just getting Saudi backed up ads in different papers. Right. So he would say, look, here he is. He's bringing up this culture war stuff just to distract you from the fact that his biggest donors, and he mentioned a guy, some Chinese semiconductor multimillionaire had given him $160,000 to a super PAC, is, you know, is he wants to distract you from, you know, the economic pain that his kind of movement actually wants to drive you into on behalf of millionaires and billionaires. Except the problem is a lot of establishment Democrats like to use culture war issues as a distraction from the pain that they are inflicting on people with their policies.

And so Bognet would link him to Pelosi constantly. Right. And Cartwright kept saying, I'm not Nancy Pelosi. Right. Right. So if this is a straight up D versus R election in Pennsylvania's eighth, Bognet wins by 10, 15 points. Like it shouldn't even be close. So Cartwright's ability to win is going to be dependent on his ability to say to Pennsylvania voters, like, I'm my own person.

And what he said was, he's like, look, I'm willing to work with Republicans. You hear this guy. There's absolutely no way he's ever going to work with Democrats on anything. And so I don't, we'll see if that resonates or not. It's going to be a very tough race. Very tough race. Uphill climb in a Trump district or a district that he won pretty handily for any Democrat in this environment. So I'd probably put my money on Bognet, but he's lost before. Yeah, right. If you're gambling,

he's probably favored in this environment. But it's all going to come down to turnout, as they say. That's right. And it's such an interesting race. And I'm glad that you pointed out because I hadn't been following it very closely. Just to see how smarter Democrats are actually able to run their races. It's always

fun to watch. And he's like the vice chair of the Democratic Caucus for Communications, but nobody talks like him. So I don't know. I don't know. So he's failing in that job. Well, it's a pretty tough job right now. Yeah. All right. Well, interesting race and definitely one we'll continue watching. All right. We're excited now to be joined once again by David Sirota. David, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. All right. So you recently did a midterm breakdown on Lever Time, your podcast over at Lever, with Chris Hayes. And I think both of us, we were talking before we cued the segment up, are interested to hear if there are any interesting or just like maybe fresh takeaways that Chris Hayes has as he's looking at some of these races. Sure. I mean, one thing that he said was that I asked him the question, you know, why have Democrats kind of avoided or been silent on economic issues? And I think he made a good point, you know, because, look, I'm somebody who's always been like the Democrats need to be making an economic case,

whether the economy's decent or terrible. And the economy right now is rough. And he said, I think he made a good point that, you know, I think that the Democrats had a big advantage on abortion. Then the Dobbs issue came and political parties have kind of an inherent desire, an inherent inkling to try to focus on the issues where polls already show they have an advantage. Of course, the danger is that no matter what issue you may have an advantage on, it may not necessarily match up with what voters think the election is actually about. And in the middle of an inflation crisis, making an economic argument to the point where, you know, there was like that tweet that

went around of Todd Young, the Senator from Indiana. It was just like Todd Young in front of a, of a gas pump. And that was it. Like, that was the only thing just like, you're just pumping gas and like the price sucks and that's it. Right. And so I, and Chris made that point that like, you know, all the Republicans have to do is just show a picture of that, right? And so I would agree that it is a more complicated or at least a two-step argument that the Democrats have to be making on inflation. But what's unbelievable is that the Democratic Party doesn't get a lot of fossil fuel money.

The fossil fuel industry that's reporting record profits is fueling inflation. There is a compelling argument that the Democratic Party could be making about the Republicans defending their big oil donors from stuff like price gouging legislation that the House passed. And I know, Ryan, The Intercept had reported that the Democrats, the DCCC, had come up with some ads making that inflation case. But those ads were never broadly aired as a campaign message. Right. I think Andy Kim ran one. Matt Cartwright ran one. But Pat Ryan did some corporate power stuff.

And yes, the DCCC tested a bunch of this stuff. The tests came back like this works, as you would expect. But right, but we're not seeing a ton of it. There's a real pining among, you know, kind of the suburban Democratic vote to say that democracy is on the ballot this time. And Summer Lee recently was the first candidate that I've seen connected to an economic message. And I thought she did it extremely well. I want to run this by you. Basically, her tweet was something like democracy is on the ballot and said that Republicans want an oligarchy that will prevent the government from cracking down on price gougers.

That makes total sense. I think she's absolutely right. I think it's not like the Republicans are offering any kind of coherent economic message, any kind of anti-oligarchy message, any kind of critique of corporate profiteering, which we know is at least in part, if not in majority, fueling the inflation crisis. So it's not like the Republicans are offering up a coherent plan, but they are in the minority in terms of Congress, and so they're trying to make it a referendum on the overall problem. I just don't see what their solution is. But I go back to the Democrats, and I think it's a fair

question, which is, why have the Democrats focused so much on things like January 6th, things like voting rights? I mean, to be clear, and Chris and I talked about this on our podcast, to be clear, those are important issues. And I asked Chris, and this is kind of interesting, I said, does part of it have to do with the kind of nichification of the media audiences? That there's always going to be inherently a small, and by small, it can be a million people, a million and a half people in a country of 300 million, is there's going to be an animated audience of a million, million and a half people in a country of 300 million, there's going to be an animated audience of a million, million and a half, two million people on MSNBC every night that's interested in

the January 6th hearing, interested in the voting rights and the threat to democracy stuff. It's compelling to them. And so the sort of corporate media world focuses intently on them, even though polls consistently show it's only about 7% of the population say that's the most important issue. And he made an interesting point, which was that, listen, it's easier in make the January 6th riot images, the January 6th dramatic hearing, make that compelling on television than arguably it is easy to make a macroeconomic problem like inflation compelling on television. And so ultimately you get a discourse that's focusing on these – I mean, it's kind of the cat video version of politics, right? You get a discourse that's focused on these very flashy, attention-grabby kind of soundbites and images, and a discourse that's not talking about the actual number one issue that people say is the most important issue to them in the election. Right. And then it sort of teaches incorrectly Democrats that people who think that people are, they're conditioned to believe that

people care about what Stephen Colbert is talking about or, you know, because the show was really successful when in fact it's really a niche. And abortion, I think is probably similar to that. We've seen a lot of focus on abortion. That doesn't mean it's not important to voters. It just means that there are a lot of priorities. And to the point, just lastly, that Ryan made about Summer Lee, it's kind of interesting to me, and David, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, that she's saying, you know, Republicans want this oligarchy. And I feel like the reason Democrats aren't making that argument is because Democrats also want the oligarchy. And she hints at that. I found the tweet, so let me read it to you. She hints at that at the end. She says, let's be clear about inflation. Republicans want to end democracy so

they can give their billionaire corporate donors the power to jack up prices as high as they wish. If Democrats keep Congress, we have to take on big corporations and bring down prices for working people. That last line seems to be an acknowledgement that one reason her line isn't going to land as well as it might otherwise is that the audience is going to be like, okay, yeah, that's probably one reason they'd like an oligarchy, but they don't have it necessarily yet, and you're still not taking on corporate power. That's a really good point. Look, I think there's an underlying unstated truth here, which is that when the Democratic leadership looks at all of the issues

it can focus on, it tends to, over and over again, prioritize the issues that do not offend their donor class. So reproductive rights and abortion, important issue. Voting rights, important issue. January 6th, the riot, et cetera, et cetera, important issue. Voting rights, important issue. January 6th, the riot, etc., etc., important issue. And also they have the benefit of not offending corporate power. So the Democratic leadership is more likely to want to focus on those because it doesn't offend the big money interests that are giving the Democratic leadership money. The problem is, is that if you also need a compelling economic message in the middle of an inflation crisis, a message that identifies the bad guys, the villains, some of

those bad guys, some of those villains are the people giving you money, the people who don't want you to make those issues salient in the election. So it's very difficult to make an economic argument about the problems that are being created, make that argument to voters without offending the donors who were the ones creating those problems. So you end up with an election happening in the middle of an economic crisis where the Democrats just aren't talking very much. As we put it at the lever, it is sort of in deference to the donors. In other words, they have gone silent out of respect or obedience to their donors. They're caught between the economy and their donors. And politically, at least in the polls, that looks like a very

dangerous bet. And they're in this weird catch-22 where consultants will tell candidates, we can't message on that in 30 seconds because it's not going to land because voters don't trust Democrats on the economy. Voters do trust the Democrats on health care, on abortion rights, on democracy protection, those things. But we can't message on that. And to add to that, I think on the Democratic side as opposed to the Republican side, the Democratic consulting class has done a terrible job of envisioning how to move the polls. The Republican consulting class often are focused on how to move the polls, not just on the issues vis-a-vis the parties, but how to move the salience of the issues in voters' minds. One example, the crime issue. Crime is somewhat up in some places, not hugely. It's still below where it has been in the past. The Republicans have focused intently on crime and have made it in voters' mind, the whole issue, salient. I think crime is now number two in the polls in terms of most important issue.

And you have to say that part of the reason of that is not necessarily only the reality of the situation. But the Republicans' success in focusing on it and putting it in voters' mind as a political issue, as a voting issue in this election. Yeah. And if the shoe were on the other foot, Democrats never would have been able to pull that off because they would have had so many people inside their coalition doing the well actuallys and the fact checks. And you'd have the cynical consultant being like, no, this works. Well, actually though. Listen, think about it this way. If Donald Trump was still president and there was an inflation crisis, we all know that Donald Trump would find a way to be campaigning against inflation and to be blaming inflation on the Democrats. The Democrats are in power and they can't find a way to make a compelling argument naming villains about inflation. But we know that Trump would be. And I'm not saying Trump's diagnosis would be correct.

I'm just saying he would find a way. And the fact that the Democrats can't or refuse to find a similar way, I think speaks to the kind of lack of imagination, lack of creativity and kind of political failure of the thinking of the Democratic consulting class. Yeah, I was thinking as you were talking about that, the messaging on abortion over the course of the summer and how that sort of shifted. And there's just, it's really hard to disentangle some of these variables because Democrats put millions into these ads, but then the economy, I mean, sort of gas prices go up, then gas prices go down, but now they're back up again and the outlook isn't so rosy. So it's been a really bad messaging cycle for Democrats just across the board.

100%. I mean, they just – and last thing we should say on this is that I think if they were ever banking that the economy would go away as an important issue in the election. That's just like a lack of paying attention to the history of elections. I mean, to be clear, it's the economy, stupid, was a mantra that they made up. Like that's their mantra. So it's completely bizarre to be in an election situation

where they have effectively discarded their own famous mantra. Well, the podcast is called Lever Time. David Sirota, founder of The Lever, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks to both of you. Hi, I'm Matt Stoller, author of Monopoly-focused newsletter, Big, and an antitrust policy analyst. I have a great segment for you today on this big breakdown.

It's about the billionaires who control food, particularly where you shop for food. It's not a sad story, though. It's a story about a battle that's not over, and one in which we the people had a surprisingly positive turn of events this week. So let's start at the beginning. A few weeks ago, supermarket chain Kroger announced it would be buying Albertsons for $24 billion. Albertsons is also a large supermarket chain, so it's the largest grocery acquisition in U.S. history. This made some serious news. It was all over the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, The Economist,

basically the money publications. But also a whole host of politicians, left-wingers like Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders, but also conservative senators like Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, were skeptical. So why did this merger generate so much fear and anxiety? Well, Kroger and Albertsons are both already monsters. The combined firm, when the two merge, or if the two merge, would employ over 700,000 people, have over $200 billion of revenue, and more than 40,000 private label products.

It would own and operate brands such as Safeway, Ralph Smith's, Harris Teeter, Dillon's, Fred Meyer, Vaughn's, King's, Hagen, Tom Thumb's, Star Market, and Shaw's, among others. And the combined supermarket would probably end up closing or selling about 650 stores, leaving a lot of places without a grocery store. The Kroger-Albertson deal would also be the capstone to a broader trend. Over the last 30 years, supermarket chains have consolidated the nearly $1 trillion dollar grocery industry. Groceries are not just a big business, but a critical one. Everyone's got to eat, and whether we eat healthy food or not is in many ways up to the dominant firms in the industry

and what they choose to sell and not sell. Okay, here's a chart from the Department of Agriculture showing the broad centralizing trend. And though industry-wide mergers are common, the USDA explicitly called out Kroger for its acquisitiveness. Also, I want to give a shout out to Canadian watchers of Breaking Points. Canada is highly concentrated in the grocery sector as well. I'm talking about America, but the same problem is there. Okay, so would this combination of Kroger and Albertsons create a monopoly? I mean, Walmart is the biggest supermarket in the country, so it's not like the new firm would lack competition. Or is it? Well, it depends on how you look at the industry. See, there are three markets roughly in which

supermarket chains operate. The first is at a national level. Supermarkets buy from consumer packaged good companies, meat packers, food processors, basically all the stuff you need to run a large supermarket chain. So that's one market. The second is at a local level. Consumers shop where they live. If there are two stores in a city, there are only two competitors in that city, even if there are stores in other states.

It's not like somebody in Boston is going to drive to Seattle to shop for groceries. So even though there could be competitors or firms with different market share nationally, it doesn't necessarily make them competitors. Now, the third market is for supermarket and warehouse workers. And this too is local. People work where they live. Now, all of these different markets will come into play in analyzing this merger. There's been tremendous concentration on both the national and local level already. As Errol Schweitzer at Forbes noted in an excellent piece published immediately after the deal came out, quote, there are already 30% fewer grocery stores than a few decades ago, and most

major metropolitan areas, with the exception of New York City, are heavily concentrated among just a handful of grocery chains. So the concentration is new. And that means that large chains not only secure better prices for goods than their smaller counterparts, but can also increase prices faster than costs, which can contribute to inflation. And that's actually one reason Senator Elizabeth Warren opposed the deal. You can look at this tweet right here.

Okay, suppliers, consumers, and workers will all feel the pressure from Kroger Albertsons. And since suppliers, food processors, and whatnot buy from farmers, farmers will feel it too, at least indirectly. So it's hard for me as an antitrust analyst, and I think us as consumers and workers and citizens, to see an upside to the combination. So let's go through some of the problems specifically. There are going to be layoffs in white-collar jobs. There always are with these large mergers. Kroger Albertsons will have more bargaining power over suppliers, as it'll have more than 5,000 stores and can, quote, more easily set payment terms, negotiate shelf space and

assortment, extract better costs and greater trade allowances for promotions, couponing, ad placement, and slotting fees. So they'll just control the grocery shelves of a large chunk of America and they can use that to manipulate prices and suppliers in all sorts of ways. Okay, deals like this concentrate grocery shelves with the goods of certain dominant foods in packaged food categories, which centralizes industrial agricultural supply chains. It leads to less seasonal foods, maybe less fresh foods. Finally, Kroger and Albertsons are combining their data hordes, since, of course, they both surveil their customers. Everything is a big tech deal when it comes to

using data at scale for targeted advertising, and this deal between Kroger and Albertsons is no exception. Okay, so what's the rationale for the deal? What are Kroger Albertsons saying? Well, their logic is that it rests on the idea that supermarkets are a business with what are called economies of scale, which means the bigger you are, the more operationally efficient you are. Kroger and Albertsons, the combined firm, will save a bunch of money because they'll just do things better because they're so big. And they will then use this savings to lower prices for consumers on food, which is important in an inflationary environment. In any local region where the new firm would have too much of the market, right, where the only stores are Albertsons and Kroger, that would create a regional monopoly. What they're saying is, oh, we'll simply sell

our stores in what's called a divestment. And the firm is committed to spinning off up to 650 stores into a smaller firm. And they're saying, well, we'll create a new and vibrant competitor. So not only are we going to not reduce competition, we're going to create more competition. Okay, the logic here is crazy. If there were true economies of scale at work, then spinning off competitive stores into a smaller firm would inherently fail. And this is indeed what we've seen in the past, in what was perhaps the all-time most embarrassing merger approval plus divestment by the Federal Trade Commission under the Obama administration. It also took place in the supermarket business and it also involved Albertsons. So in 2014, Albertsons bought Safeway for $9 billion. It sold 146 stores, a divestment, to a regional grocer to allay

regulatory fears it would have a monopoly in any particular region. A few months later, the firm it sold those stores to filed for bankruptcy, blaming the deal with Albertsons. They said that Albertsons sabotaged the stores before they sold them to it, but it really doesn't matter. It was a complete the banana in the tailpipe trick again. And frankly, this merger can be blocked in court, and I expect that antitrust enforcers will bring a merger challenge. But what worries me is not the merger trial, which will take place over the next few years as they investigate and file a complaint and do all the depositions. It's actually something different. It's the financial engineering that's taking place up front. See, here's the trick about this deal. Albertsons isn't just owned by public shareholders. It's owned in part by large private equity firms controlled by billionaires. These are Cerberus Capital and Apollo.

Both of these are giant private equity firms, and they want cash now. Two weeks after the shareholder vote, on October 22nd, shareholders will take up to $4 billion from Albertsons in a special dividend. This is a standard private equity move to shift cash from a portfolio company to themselves. And in this case, that dividend will remove pretty much all the cash, receivables, and working capital that Albertsons has in its treasury and that it uses to run its business. Once this payout happens, Albertsons will immediately begin getting weaker. And this is before the merger trial starts. It's before the merger investigation even begins. Over time, Albertsons executives will claim to the judge,

maybe in a year when it starts or something like that, that it must be allowed to merge, that only Kroger's acquisition can save it. And that's because it's been weakened, but it's been weakened because of the merger deal and the special dividend. So this is a bit like a private equity firm bloodletting someone after buying the person a life insurance policy that the private equity firm then gets to collect. It's not a great incentive system.

It's frankly arson. Now, normally this kind of arson would go without any challenge whatsoever. Fortunately, and honestly to my surprise, antitrust enforcers have noticed not only the merger, but also the special dividend. On Wednesday, seven state attorneys general, Republicans and Democrats sent a letter to the CEOs of both Kroger and Albertsons asking them to postpone the special dividend. Here's D.C. Attorney General Carl Racine on CNBC saying that they are willing to file for an injunction if the two CEOs refuse to delay the payout. But just from a legal perspective, could you sue to block payment of the special dividend? Is that something you could seek from a judge in advance of a transaction like that?

Are there examples of situations historically where attorney generals or parts of government have done such a thing? I don't want to speak specifically about the particular matter. I can tell you that state attorneys general routinely go into court and seek injunctive relief. Seeking such in this case would result in the stopping of the dividend payment. So yes, that option is on the table. You saw what he said there, and that is a big deal. Now, stopping a merger is one thing, but telling a private equity firm that they are not allowed to loot a portfolio firm with a special dividend is something I haven't seen in a merger case before. I don't know if these enforcers will succeed, but I do know that if you don't try, you can't win. So why are they doing this? Well,

in my view, these enforcers are acting in the public interest for two reasons. One, they know it's the right thing to do. Believe it or not, public servants do want to do the right thing often. But two, they are empowered to do it because you are paying attention, and they know that as well. It's easy to have zero faith in government, but frankly, it's foolish. Government isn't good or bad. It just is. And in many ways, how the government acts and how much we let Wall Street get away with looting is up to us. So thanks for paying attention because it really does matter.

And we can see why in this case. And thanks for watching this big breakdown on the Breaking Points channel. If you'd like to know more about big business, the law, and how our economy really works, you can sign up below for my Market Power Focus newsletter, big, in the description. Thanks, and have a good one. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend.

I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter.

I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories

shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7 because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.