Grubstakers - Episode 141: Cary Katz (Blaze Media and Student Loans) feat. Adam Sokol

Episode Date: February 18, 2020

This week we're joined by Adam Sokol to talk student loan billionaire, media mogul, and poker jackass Cary Katz. Adam talks about his experiences moderating for Katz's media property The Blaze and we find absolutely no connections between Katz and a different successful businessman, gun rights advocate, and poker enthusiast from Las Vegas. Follow Adam Sokol on twitter at @SokolAdam and check out his blog Good Trek/Bad Trek at https://adamsokol.wordpress.com/

It's the kind of thing that makes the average citizen puke. I look at this system and say, yeah, you know, what's going on? I don't know anything about this man except I've read bad stuff about him. And I don't like, you know, I don't like what I read about him. We have more than just one coin. We create the world around this coin. Cop. Invention. Cop. Cop. Okay. In 5, 4, 3, 2...

The evil has gone. Hello. Welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast three, two. The evil has gone. Hello, welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. My name is Sean P. McCarthy, and I'm joined today by my co-hosts. Steve Jeffries. Andy Palmer. And so this week, we're doing a bit of a theme week. And I think the theme this week is billionaire right-wing mouthpieces. On the Patreon, later this week, we're going to have an episode about Dan

Ferris Wilkes who are the fracking billionaires who fund Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire media project and today we're going to talk about a student loan billionaire who's rather obscure his name is Cary Katz and he's the current primary owner of Blaze Media, which hosts right-wing pundits such as Mark Levin and now Glenn Beck. And joining us for this discussion is our friend, a very funny stand-up comedian, who was also a former comment moderator at The Blaze. Adam Sokol is here today. Hey, everyone. Thank you for being with us, Adam. Thank you.

And I guess before we start talking about kind of Cary Katz and his biography, I'm glad that you're here and you can kind of answer our questions because it is a very curious thing for those who remember Glenn Beck's The Blaze as kind of a precursor to the Trump era, where Glenn Beck, you know, was this Fox News pundit who talked about George Soros as the puppet master and, you know, said buy gold because there's about to be hyperinflation and really spread all these conspiracy theories and then went off and launched his own network. And you were the person who moderated the comments on that fever dream. The gold thing was a conspiracy theory?

What's that? The gold thing was a conspiracy theory? Yes. I have some gold to sell. But I guess it's something where I would be curious because you told us you worked there for about five years. About five years full-time, yeah. A couple years before that, part-time.

And I guess my first question would be, first of all, how did you find that gig? And second, did you notice any change over the time you were there in the kind of comments you were moderating? I got the job from my friend who was also a comic i probably won't say his name for his sake but uh he uh he worked there as a comment he was the the leader of the comment moderators and he got me the job uh because i needed the money and so yeah he uh he helped me get the job and yet there was from when I started to when I, because Beck came out as a pretty big anti-Trumper. I think he was one of the first media pundits who really bet wrong on that.

And he bet hard and bet wrong. And he just didn't think people were going to buy into Trump. And boy, the comments just got so vitriolic against Beck. And then they shut down the comments shortly thereafter. And eventually the subject of today's episode, Cary Katz, is the founder of Conservative Review and CRTV. He would, in December 2018,

buy out The Blaze. And this is around or just before that time you were laid off because Glenn Beck had gone so anti-trump that it cost you a job yeah that summer we we all lost our jobs that that must be a bittersweet feeling like come on man could you just drink the kool-aid so i could keep cashing this yeah this is the this is the one i mean and at that point he had drank the kool-aids we lost our jobs for nothing right went back on it and still we we all we all took it on the chin

right like for those who remember you know glenn beck uh in the lead-up to the election compared trump to hitler he did that weird stunt with the cheetos where he rubbed cheeto dust on his face and then and then after the election he went on like a apology tour where he hung out with samantha b and uh these other kind of liberal bastions and said, I'm sorry, I want to do civility politics now. Great interview with Bob Garfield on On the Media, by the way. Okay, I haven't heard it, but that's fantastic. Sounds very interesting.

Because Bob Garfield doesn't buy into it for a second, and Glenn Beck is angry that he doesn't buy into it for a second. Didn't Glenn Beck try to dress like a flower child or something for a minute like he had a weird hipster vibe going for

I mean I don't want to knock it too much because that's probably going to be my look in like five years but yeah like and so he does this whole tour and then Glenn Beck in 2018 early 2018 puts on a MAGA hat and announces on his radio program that he will vote for Donald Trump in 2020.

And, you know, there's a total about face to try and save his network, but the damage is already done. And then he gets bought out by Carrie Katz. But I guess it is just it's interesting that he is one of the people who led to Donald Trump, but ultimately, I guess, got mad that somebody else was running the same grift as him. Yeah. And, you know, being, I guess, another question I just wanted to ask before we start here is, were there any particular events that stand out in your mind

as when, like, it was all hands on deck at the Blaze comment moderating section? Oh, anything Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown. Those two. Oh, God. I mean, yeah, we just, I mean. You have to have like a team huddle right before that. We really, it was just the slack went off on our phones.

It was just like, this is the moment we've been training for. Come on. That's your Black Friday. We got to keep the store open all night. Right when you open the doors. Chaos. It's just like one of those videos of people gotta keep the store open all night right when you open the doors chaos it's just like one of those videos of people flooding into the store but it's all the n-word i hope they didn't let people post pictures there or anything no thank god they did not oh okay it's text only did what was it like when um the alt-right was briefly a huge deal?

Like when it was first... Wait, were you there in 2015? Yeah. Yeah. I don't really... See, it's one of those things where when you spend so much time in that very particular bubble, things that are a big deal everywhere else are... Like no one gave a shit about the alt-right i mean it just

wasn't an issue it's like oh all right you mean like gary everyone whatever so he's a little bit more nazi-ish than me but everyone likes that guy it would like wasn't wasn't an issue okay right there was like richard spencer giving the hail trump hail our people salute right after the election which was widely condemned. And I mean, kind of cost him his career. But there were a bunch of those moments where people weren't really sure where this was all going to go. And luckily, it all turned out great. It cost him his career in kind of a milder way that the beer hall putsch cost Hitler his career. I do just like the imagination

of being a right-wing comment section moderator is like being a first responder whenever a black teenager is killed by the police. You are the EMTs first on the scene at Tower 7. And I guess before we start, there is one other thing I wanted to mention is uh just for those who are following the current presidential campaign uh mike bloomberg the billionaire running for president uh just released a new ad where um among others he shows screenshots of various

quote-unquote bernie bros harassing him and among others he uh has a screenshot of our friend. Those are my first responders. He has a screenshot of our friend Jake Flores from the podcast Pod Damn America as an example of a person harassing his campaign. And I just wanted to say that it is very possible that we will see Mike Bloomberg go on Comptown, the podcast. And that would be like our generation's Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on Arsenio. If Mike Bloomberg went on Comptown and was like, yeah, I heard Jake Flores has sex with people with Down syndrome. Well, maybe we won't leave that. You've given me shit for talking about Comptown too much.

And then ever since then, you've brought it up like five times we can't help ourselves yeah well you know you want to run the bits sometimes your words it's embarrassing but yeah that would be that would be interesting to see but I guess we can

did you guys have any other questions for Adam by the way well i just want to note that like i remember talking to you a few years back and you were saying that you were actually working on um you'd actually done some volunteer work for sanders original senate run yeah yeah was i i thought was really cool and very surprising since you're all in for bloomberg now bloomberg klobuchar 2020 was that in 26 or 20 2006 that was yeah 2006 might have been right a little bit before that even i want to say before that and then when we talked you were like yeah you know we thought he didn't have a shot and then he almost became president. And now he's about to almost become president more. I was glad I got into ground floor and then lost my idealism years after.

And now I just don't give a shit. Yeah. I mean, we've come so far. They're going to have to actually clip Bernie this time. I mean, they had the, they had the SEAL team ready to go last time, but they might actually use it this time. I guess, you know, now that we have this subject, I am curious, did the Blaze commentators have any particular opinion on Bernie Sanders? Because I can guess what they think about Hillary Clinton. He was really a non-issue uh i mean it was all everything was was hillary and her you know the the amount of bodies

she has all over the place and bill clinton and like whitewater yeah all this crazy stuff whether or not she had parkinson's or has parkinson's so bernie he might as well have not have been running i don't think i ever heard his name. A few liberal trolls would be like, hey, Bernie's the greatest. And people would be like, who? No, I've never heard of this guy. See, when you're talking about Hillary having Parkinson's and the Clinton body count,

all I am hearing is areas of bipartisan cooperation between Bernie and the Blaze supporters. They're just threads. They're trying to track the progression of her kuru. Her kuru? The disease. Oh yeah. Because she eats the brains of children.

Yeah. The prion disorder. Yeah. But so you know and like we said I guess we should. That's just like Hillary to not get like the plebeian Kreutzfeldt-Jakob or mad cow. She goes straight to Kuru. I guess, you know, maybe 20 years from now, people will look through the Blaze comment section in the Internet Archive and find the actual coordinates of the mass grave in Haiti that Hillary Clinton dug for those children when her fake charity

went there to harvest organs and sex traffic people after the earthquake. But I guess we should kind of just start with Carrie Katz because I think this guy, this billionaire, again student loan billionaire and he buys out

The Blaze in December 2018 but before that he had launched something called Conservative Review. You might also know it as CRTV. Conservative Review is like a website as well as a media network, and Conservative Review, interestingly enough, issues these quote-unquote liberty rankings. Well, he not only launched it, he sued it. Yes, he would later sue his own thing

in order to probably try to avoid paying a legal judgment against him uh but it's interesting crtv or uh conservative review the website issues these quote-unquote liberty rankings of every single federal office holder and these liberty rankings you know of course basically line up with how they align with his business interests. So we talk about he's a student loan billionaire. There is a little known provision of Obamacare that basically destroyed the private student loan business. Not entirely destroyed. Of course, they can still collect their usurious interest and all that.

But it kind of stopped the origination of new subsidized private student loans so he became a big repeal obamacare completely guy because that would of course undo that yeah it was something that i don't think a lot of people knew about i certainly didn't but it it was um essentially there was uh starting in 65 there were uh subsidies um because before that student loans were a very risky loan to, um, to give because, you know, if someone goes to college and doesn't get a job and then they default, you know, you're shit out of luck. And so the federal government, uh, passed a law that essentially, uh, what it did was it, uh, shielded student loan companies from default, and it gave them a guaranteed interest rate.

So that if the student loan company had to – it basically filled in the gap between the interest rate that the students would pay and the guaranteed interest rate. So if someone with a student loan was paying like 1.5 percent the uh federal government would guarantee like 3.5 percent and pay the two percent difference so it's basically free money right yeah they would subsidize like a few basis points of every loan that they're made in a student loan corporation yeah yeah i mean it's it's the you know question mark suit guy uh you know it's free money from the government um there's actually a very telling quote in this uh las vegas sun article um about uh carrie katz kind of upbringing where uh it's this the quote says i'm surprised more companies hadn't gotten into this industry because it's a

cash cow mark kantrowitz whose finaid.org became the go-to reference for college borrowers and industry lenders told business journal which i mean saying i'm surprised more companies haven't gotten into this because it's a cash cow it's kind of giving the game away that oh yeah we're squeezing as much money as we can out of like students and the government right and so i think that law you're talking about is the higher education act of 1965 or i think it goes back to 1965 but in particular in the 1990s you saw this industry really explode right right universities got more and more expensive administrations started bloating yeah like student student lending didn't was just like a backwater. It wasn't really used too much until the late 80s.

Yeah, yeah. Right, and then they also started securitizing the shit in the 1990s, or probably 80s, 90s. But I guess it's so fascinating to me that this guy, Cary Katz, it's almost impossible to find information about him. You just Google it as just poker shit, because he's also a pro poker player. I do want to say something beforego um too deep into his bio is that there is absolutely no connection between carrie katz and steven paddock um even though they're both successful businessmen and poker

enthusiasts um despite being both rabid advocates of gun rights, there is no evidence that they were friends. I mean, like, you know, Steven Paddock, he played video poker, whereas Carrie Katz played poker on television. Very different people. They've never been in the same room together. You know, Paddock, he had a stash of child porn, whereas Carrie Katz has an anti-child porn charity. And so, you know, very different people. And it's even though also Carrie Katz is a billionaire political donor, which is kind of a red flag for pedophile. But yeah, very different people.

It was so tragic when Adam Sokol banned Steven Paddock from commenting on the plays. And he did not take it well at all. That was a three alarm fire. It's got to be satisfying, though, to see the effect of your work in the real world. Oh, yeah. Right. You were like the, what was it called, the Dutch kid with his finger in the dike, like trying to prevent Trumpism from running over America. Just deleting one racial slur at a time and i'm uh glad to say that uh we were successful um mission mission accomplished

the watchers on the wall yeah guarding us i'm actually did because you know facebook moderators report like symptoms of like ptsd did you have any kind of i guess after effects seeing uh let's say some of the worst of humanity i a few times i mean because i mean i've got a pretty uh uh i'd say a down view on humanity so i wasn't really i guess i moved for the most part i was able to turn off my how could people be racist? I'd just log on and be like, oh, yeah, people are shitheads. This checks out. I remember a few times where it just got the best of me,

and I would just break down every once in a while. I do remember once I was reading, it was some gay marriage story, and I was sitting in my apartment in Queens, and I was just like, I got to get out of here. And I just walked outside, just like sat in front of my house for like 10 minutes. And like this lady walks two French bulldog puppies. And I was like, all right, yeah, it's enough. I can go back now.

Just go back into the mines of inhumanity. So they didn't have any like designated like wellness place where you can go and cry? No, no, they didn't have any designated wellness place where you can go and cry? No. No, they didn't. I mean, we worked from home. So that was our... That's why you work from home. So you don't have to sit next to a guy crying. Glenn Beck is the only person allowed to cry at that company.

It does explain how in this era where at least two out of four of us in this room are big shitheads on the Internet. Like I've noticed that you've always been able to keep your cool. And I realize that now like part of that part of that is just, you know, you're you're cool. And part of that, I'm sure, is being exposed to just the dregs of the Internet to the point where like those neurons are just numbed oh yeah yeah they they stopped firing just years ago but like so when we talk about carrie katz and also even harder to find information about than carrie katz is his brother ryan katz who is also

a student loan guy and so first of all carrie Katz, Forbes doesn't put an estimate on his net worth, but multiple sources, like primarily poker sources, say that he's a billionaire. And in all likelihood, he's a billionaire. Just according to PokerNews.com, Cary Katz provided over 800,000 US students with student loans. He provided them with more than $19 billion in student loans. And of of course because of the uh joe biden among others bankruptcy law in 2005 it is impossible to get rid of your student loans through bankruptcy he is going to get all 19 billion of that back unless say you know bernie sanders wins the election um but so kerry katz has provided 19 billion student loans his brother

ryan katz has provided another 9 billion in student loans and their father, Ryan Katz, has provided another $9 billion in student loans. And their father was, according to the Las Vegas Sun profile that Andy quoted earlier, their father was a pioneer in the student loan industry in the 1990s. So it's like a family business where these kids, their dad... It looks like they started in this company called ELA Corporation, which it was called the educational loan administration group. And it took a lot of digging to kind of find anything about this company. Cause if you look up ELA corporation, you'll get like four different companies that have nothing to do with this.

But yeah, they had the education loan administration group that it looked like it was kind of it was run by their dad, and then he was the VP of sales and marketing there. And then in 1997, they sold it off to this health insurance company called Health Markets. And right after that, he, it looked like there was a good chunk of change that came out of that sale. And my guess is that ELA Corporation was probably founded by his dad, and then he brought the boys in, you know, they got equity in it,

and then they sold it off, and then Cary went off and formed his own company using that change, and then also using kind of his connections, and what he learned, built that into the behemoth that it was until like 2010 when it all came crashing down. Right. But yeah, according to this Las Vegas Sun profile, their father was Marcus Katz, who made they issued close to 10 million dollars in student loans annually throughout the 1990s. They were kind of pioneers in this industry. They were probably like one of the early people to securitize these things, just like, you know, mortgage-backed securities would later destroy the economy. But it's interesting where, just according to this profile, how quickly Cary Katz's business grows. Because like Andy just said, he was working for another company. Then in 1999, Cary Katz launches College Loan Corporation.

And then quoting from the profile, College Loan Corporation's success was eye-popping. The company made $16 million in loans in its first year, 1999. After three years, it made $3.9 billion in loans. By 2003, it was the country's seventh biggest college lender, which is around where it would stay. So, I mean, I guess it just kind of blows my mind that these people who are major players in the student loan industry, one of whom sets up a right-wing media network in order to push their own business interest, that they've been able to remain so in the shadows. And like

the growth of these lenders by itself is contributing to the so in the shadows and like the the growth of these lenders by itself is contributing to the growth in the price of education as is often the case with uh like asset prices they're often bid up when people use debt to obtain them right right like uh and of course what the ultimate effect of that is is that colleges end up just making fancier buildings and bloating out their whole administration. Like Sean and I's alma mater, the University of Washington, around the time that we graduated, they bought this 30 story tall skyscraper in the middle of the university neighborhood that was an insurance skyscraper. And they bought it just for administration i'm pretty sure there aren't any classes taught there yeah it's all overhead yeah and that's you know that's just where you know to intuition kept going up up and up and you know they were saying

oh there's nothing we can do about it and they buy this fucking skyscraper their glorious safe co building yeah yeah then they took off Safeco. Well, they took it both off that building and the baseball field. True. Right. And so his brother, Ryan, so he launches his company, uh, Carrie Katz does in 1999. His brother, Ryan Katz launches a similar company, Goal Financial LLC in 2001. Like we said, uh, his brother, Ryan Katz made about 9 billion in student loans he made about 19 billion but it is just interesting that's total issuance of yes of loans total issuance of loans uh it is interesting there's it's very hard to find sources about this but there is a blog

uh what is good what is it good for dot blogspot.com uh what is spelled W-O-T. Whatisitgoodfor.blogspot.com. And whoever is writing this in 2006. It's written by the moles from Redwall. Whoever is writing this, I want to give them credit. In 2006, they actually go through both of these brothers. Both of these brothers started donating to politicians, making political contributions heavily before they launched their student loan companies and it is very fascinating where like we were saying student loan the way this business

worked from 1965 to 2010 you have this guarantee from the federal government and you get subsidies from the government so obviously if you can get connections with various politicians, you can make a shit ton of money. And something they go through at this blog is there was a Republican congressman named Duke Cunningham. He was a Republican from California's 50th district from 1991 to 2005 until he served eight years in prison for taking bribes from defense contractors. So he was also, for a time, on the Appropriations Education... And then after that, Congress swore that would be the last time that happens. He was, just from his Wikipedia, for a time on the Appropriations Education Subcommittee, where he used his position to, quote, steer federal dollars to schools in san diego so carrie katz's company the college loan corporation was based out of san diego originally so they just kind of

went through i won't even give all the donations but they point out that um he starts his donations in 1997 again before he launches his company but from the year 2000 until uh until like 2005 he makes 230 000 to various um you know super packs he donates 55 000 to the um nrcc 25 000 to um the freedom project which john boehner was a chairman of um 20 000 to american prosperity which duke cunningham uh was the chairman of and you know on and on and on just go through the list you know the 3500 to carolina majority pack which joe wilson republican south carolina was on um uh 15 000 to americans for a republican majority which was tom delays tom delay of course was also taking bribes and you could go through the list but the point is he's making all these political donations clearly getting some money steered his way from duke cunningham and

also in 2005 we get the bankruptcy bill which is the reason that you cannot discharge student debt in bankruptcy so yeah it is just like so blatant you should not i mean it's it's completely ridiculous to point out that, you know, this guy, Carrie Katz, started in California, the same state that Stephen Paddock started in. Biden voted for that, right? Right. Biden was one of the primary architects of the bankruptcy bill. But it was, you know, bipartisan in that lots of Republicans supported it, such as Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham and all these other people that he's making donations to. But he was also, he was making donations at this point to kind of mainstream Republicans primarily, but he also made donations to, you know, what's his name, Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat congressman at the the time and so it is just something where he's also a big supporter

of uh gun owners rights who else supports gun owners rights um i mean it would just be nonsense to suggest that uh steven paddock is just an alter ego for carrie katz but um and so i'm not even gonna tease that but it's it's so funny so in this las vegas sun profile uh they interview um one of carrie katz's employee or an employee at one of his subsidiaries and he says that uh customer service was the secret behind Corp's rapid growth. Now let's dig into that for a second because there was, the thing that really killed the College Loan Corporation was of course that provision in the Affordable Care Act.

It was not a settlement with the New York State Attorney General's office, which was only $500,000, thanks to Andrew Cuomo, which noted that one of the tactics that the College Loan Corporation would use is it would get on lists of preferred lenders for colleges, which is kind of a coveted spot where if a college, you know, if they have a student who's having some financial troubles, they'll then say, well, here's a preferred list of lenders, and they will give that to the student. And the way that the College Loan Corporation was able

to get on those lists is that they would offer perks to student financial aid offices. In return for getting on the list. They would, let's see, they would sponsor advisory boards that would provide meals, entertainment, and travel for school personnel. They would also provide extra staff to work in financial aid offices during busy periods. And they even got to host financial counseling sessions on behalf of the schools for borrowers. And so if someone was having like financial issues, they would go to a financial aid counselor who would also work for the college loan corporation who would then be like, Hey,

you know, uh, um, uh, a good way that you could deal with these, uh, taking out loans with the college loan corporation. Have you considered more debt yeah yeah have you considered forfeiting your future yeah you know customer

service i don't i don't i'm not seeing a problem here those those like written lists of like approved lenders or like favored lenders it's like preferred yeah um they i think in that case they tried to argue that it's like this is something that just schools are just doing and we happen to be on that list yeah don't hate the player yeah we're just a player in the game yeah it would be ridiculous to suggest that carrot cats ruin more lives than steven paddock but um And so I'm not going to suggest that. Yeah, no, they were having these neutral sessions where, like Andy was saying, Andrew Cuomo was Attorney General of New York.

They settle in 2007 for a paltry $500,000. And, you know, if you're a regular listener, you know that the amount of the fine settlement is not equal to the amount of money that they made doing this very rarely because you might hear 500 000 and think oh this was like an isolated incident no this is how they made their business they were bribing politicians and then bribing colleges to steer students into their predatory lending practices 500 $500,000. Let's see. They had $10 billion in assets. So that's what?

0.005% of their assets? Well, clearly he learned his lesson. Yeah. It's not like he went on a- It was a very hard slap on the wrist. It's not like he went on a lifelong vendetta after his uh predatory business practices were shut down um but yeah i mean you can just imagine just uh from a reuters article about this settlement um the the in uh the new york attorney general's office said when they made this

settlement these counseling sessions we we mentioned where you know students come to um uh students come to these financial counseling sessions and think they're talking to a neutral arbiter and they're actually talking to a fucking college loan corp employee who's going to steer them into some other fucking garbage product. Like, yeah, a lot of students are saying they prefer the 12% adjustable rate to the 8% fixed rate. And they didn't really identify themselves as such.

Of course not. They just said, like, I'm here, like, the school, I'm here to help the school help you, you know, figure out your financial situation. Yeah, and the AG's office said, while these counseling sessions are required by federal law to provide lender-neutral information, respondent use these sessions,

respondent being College Law and Corporation, use these sessions Respondent being college non-corporation Use these sessions as marketing opportunities Yeah they're trying to upsell students Yeah You know you actually get a better deal With the 5 to 10% loans Than you do with the 3% loans If you It's really I mean the math is pretty complicated

So I don't want to get into it Yeah Unless you're dealing with a math major Yeah I mean, the math's pretty complicated, so I don't want to get into it. You can get an adjustable rate. Yeah. It's an interest-only period at the front. Yeah. Unless you're dealing with a math major. Yeah. Anyone. Yeah, a math or a finance major might have some, like, follow-up questions.

Yeah. They ask you. They're like, yeah, we'd like to, you know, help you guys in tutoring the students, specifically the lit majors. Yeah, before they start, they're like, so could we just like go over your math and finance transcripts here? The softer the science, the harder the loan.

That's what they say. Okay, so you've got a 1.9 in math related subjects. So I'm just going to put this big equation on the board and tell you it means that you should be in a 15% interest rate right now.

But yeah, I mean, it is. So this entire business, like Andy was saying, it's free money from the government. And I mean, that's so insane to me that I guess a lot of people don't realize that. Just what happened here with college loans is from, you know, 65 to the 90s, it was kind of dormant,

but they were getting subsidies, they were getting guaranteed loans. And then from the 90s into the 2000s, it explodes. And, you know, just like one stat of this is we went through how he was starting out in 99, loaning like, what, 10 or 20 million a year. And then just a few years later, he was loaning 2.3 billion a year. Yeah, it was 3.9 billion. It started first year, $16 million. Three years later, $3.9 billion, how much he's loaning. And then even more jarring than that, at the start of the Obama administration, there were about $500 billion in student loans outstanding in this country. At the end of the Obama administration, there are now about $1.5 trillion. So it tripled throughout the Obama administration. And that's even after what we'll talk about here is that this 2010 provision of

obamacare shut down this kind of federal program i think looking at like looking at a few of the charts of their company it looks like their their loan growth outpaced the total student loan debt outstanding growth so like they were basically they were adding pressure to the system. They were beating the market. People said it couldn't be done. They grew their loans faster than the market did. Yeah, yeah. They're the Jim Simons of student loan investing.

They cracked the algorithm. Yeah, and they eventually had like a, started sort of a cottage industry of student loan debt securitization in the 2000s. Which, you know, loan securitization only brought good things in that decade. I was going to say, put a pin on that one and check back on this episode in five years to see what's been going on

with those securitized student loans. But so Matthew Sheffield, writing for Salon.com, wrote one of the best articles I was able to find on this guy. And it goes through it in the context of his feud with another right-wing pundit named Mark Stein. They had a lawsuit back and forth we'll talk about in a minute here. But I wanted to highlight, so there's a provision in Obamacare which passes in 2010, which ends the federal family education loan program. They redirect that money. They end these subsidies for these private loans, and then the government gives more money directly.

They redirect more money to Pell Grants, the government subsidies for tuition. Though I did just want to highlight one thing from the Washington Post. The Pell Grants launched in 1973. They once covered, when they launched, around two-thirds of the total cost of an education at a public university would be covered by a Pell Grant. Now, in 2010, it covers less than a third which has only gone down so it just kind of shows you why this industry got so lucrative because of these big tuition hikes but um from the salon article by matthew sheffield uh and once the uh the provision eliminating uh his business model the federal family education loan program.

Once that became apparent, Matthew Sheffield says that Carrie Katz changed his donation habits. Instead of giving to candidates beloved by GOP elites, you know, such as Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, George W. Bush, he began massively funding conservatives who were campaigning against the Republican mainstream and party leadership. Instead of giving to the likes of Bush or Jeffords, Katz began donating to firebrands like Nevada Senatorial Candidate Sharon Engel, former Rep. Allen West of Florida, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell, the Delaware Senate Candidate,

and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. And they go through some of the other people that he backed. One other thing these political personalities had in common is their professed desire to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act and, quote, unquote, start over, as Sarah Palin has repeatedly demanded. A total repeal of Obamacare would, of necessity, also reinstate the federally backed private student loan industry on which Katz built his fortune. So you do see the shift where, and this is also around the time that he launches what would become CRTV and now the blaze. It's just entirely influence peddling under the guise of conservatism and Liberty scores or whatever else you want to call it.

I guess I don't understand. I mean, these kinds of people, like this guy made several billion doing these student loans. He got cut off. Now he's a pretty successful poker player. Why do you even want to go back? That sounds like such a shitty job.

He's just hanging around Vegas playing poker all night. Why do we even want to go back to screwing students out of loans? I mean, you've got a pretty sweet life. I mean, if you compare the... I'm on this guy's side. I just want Carrie Katz to be happy. That's all I want. Well, it's probably a bit less risky

than being a poker player to just have a massive student loan portfolio that's guaranteed by the government. You're a billionaire. There's nothing risky when you're a billionaire. Everything. That's true. If you think getting like a good flop or river or other poker term is like a huge rush, just

imagine screwing over 100,000 students in one fell swoop. It's like, here comes the river. The Fed lowers interest rates. Yeah. I'm just curious, Adam. Do you remember any student loan-related commentary on the blaze? Or was this just totally ignored over there? If there was, it was probably one of those non-stories that had like 20 comments that no one really gave a shit about.

It was just like, it's really police violence pays the bills over there. Yeah, that's what drives the advertising. That's our bread and butter. That's or was our bread and butter. But yeah, and so he launches CRTV with Mark Levin is conservative radio pundit. You might be familiar with people compare him to Master Shake. You can watch YouTube videos with his commentary played over the master shake animation it's pretty seamless but he

was he was a never Trump guy who also eventually bent the knee because of financial interest he was a big backer actually of Texas Senator Ted Cruz for the presidency Mark Levin was all in the tank for ted cruz let's see cruz won iowa i think he won one like one state early i think it was iowa yeah yeah he won iowa and there was like the the rnc establishment breathed a sigh of relief for just like one moment. Finally, we stopped him. It was a fairly somewhat close victory.

Yeah, yeah. And then it was just like all Trump for the entire rest of the contest. It turns out you can't win a presidential election focusing all of your energy on the early states. Was like the Blaze comments section at this point, was this just all Trump or were there actually like Ted Cruz people in some division?

There was a few Cruz people, a few Cruz diehards. A couple Rubio people and that was about it. Bush was not even considered by anyone. No Carly Fiorini stans? No. No one went nuts when they got to... They've been shipping Fiorina and Cruz for years and they finally teamed up.

When they joined forces, there was a pretty big backlash against Ansem. Every time there was a debate it must have been like... Shot that dream team. Every single debate night must have been like, you gotta get ready.

Yeah. Yeah, you just kind of crack your knuckles and would have... Just, you know, would take turns just like, alright. Remind people of the forum,

like the rules. Yeah, I mean... No, I mean... Insults were fine as long as they were like mild insults when so you could call you know trump a jerk or an idiot all day long and people did that some some people did that but it was more yeah that that wasn't really the problematic stuff it was just like overt when people would call for violence that's that's when we had to kind of step in like hey please quit like watering like watering that person the tree the tree of liberty oh god that quote so every day that was just like a daily occurrence just like it wouldn't even matter what the story is. That was just something that just happened every goddamn day.

I do like that Ted Cruz had a well-thought-out plan to team up with the lady famous for ending people's careers when she worked at HP. How's that going to work out for you, buddy? I do want to apologize to you, Adam, for having you on and then revealing that you were a mod for some of the most violent and insane people in the United States.

While at the same time you have a comedy career where you're in public and findable. I don't know. I don't know what kind of reach you think your podcast has, but I, I imagine the overlap is that is not much of a Venn diagram there. So it might be like two people and one's my former boss. We've been taking out ads in bright parts.

So when you ban people at The Blaze, do you leave them a why you were banned message or do they just not know what happened? Every once in a while. There would be a few people who we would ban and then we'd send a message to like hey we don't we don't use those words anymore this isn't this isn't 1861 and every sometimes they'd be like oh you know i got carried away or whatever but uh usually it

would just be it would get to the point where we would like put people in timeout. We would let them know they were in timeout. But if you got banned, you had to, we had to fuck up pretty bad. And then sometimes there was one, I can't, I wish I remember his name right now. It's, there was a few people who, there was one guy who his name was Mad as Hell originally. And then he just kept on coming back with an extra l on hell and he was up to like eight nine and we even like ip banned him and it just every time it was just mad as hell and he would be gone within like hours but he still would come back the next day with a new L.

Oh, that's so awesome. I actually do love that, though. A guy boomer enough to have that as his username, but web-savvy enough to change his IP address when you IP ban him. The most dangerous hybrid of online, combining millennial and boomer energy. We had another one. This is one of my my i don't know if you can say favorite races but this is definitely one it was this it was it was like

my white whale for the longest time because they kept on changing their names and ips and they would tow the line long enough and then they would just launch into this thing about the jews like every every once in a while and the craziest thing i don't know how i finally found information on the user and it was a young woman which just blew my mind she was a young lady named deborah so don't don't judge a book by its cover that's great that deborah is doing deep cover psyops where she's like yeah i'm gonna ingratiate myself with the blaze commentary and slowly red pill them on the jq they can't they just can't help themselves eventually

you have to go into like anti-Semitic rant. Yeah. Eventually. If only to prove your bona fides. And that was another from the boards. Racism is a lot more prevalent, but anti-Semites are a lot more tenacious, like as individuals.

Was there a lot of overlap um with uh anti-semites and people who would uh go all in on the lizard person conspiracy we we got surprisingly few lizard people uh i mean i was i'm still surprised how few lizard people people there were there were i remember once when sean and i lived together just like on a lark we started going through youtube on like well let's see what these lizard people videos are about and they would be like a um a video of you know like a secret service guy for obama like twitching his head from side to side and like then he would lick his lips and they'd be like see and then like it would be that for about three minutes and then the stars of david would come i don't think there's much

overlap between the lizard people and like people like the mad as hell like the mad as hell guy yeah the like hardcore racists probably aren't as far in the lizard people section, but the anti-Semites seem to, at least a subset of them, I think. The most powerful ones are the ones who believe the Jews are controlling the world and the lizard people are controlling the Jews. Once you get the grand unified theory, you are unstoppable at posting. I just imagine, like, it just had me thinking, did you ever have to look up, like, 19th century racial slurs that the commentators were using?

Just like, I just see Adam Sokol there, like, looking up quadroon and being like, oh, no, you got to go for that one. Can't be saying that. It's like under official review. You have to, the game is on pause. You have to instant replay. I don't know what this word means, but I don't like it. So I'm going to be back with you guys in a minute.

They can appeal directly to Glenn Beck to sort out whether or not you're allowed to be racist against the Irish. It's under review in New York. But yeah, so that is the website Because The Blaze was originally Just a website and a forum and then it launched A media not quite 24 hours But they had various personalities on there Like a video thing and they had

Tommy Lauren on there for a bit As well as of course Glenn Beck But that Is the media property that carrie cats decided to invest in um and you know just from like various so such a shame how tommy lauren died in a the thresher incident no one knows that that's true because we haven't heard from her and is she not on fox anymore oh Was she? No. Yeah. I thought she moved to Fox after The Blaze.

I just remember in like 2016, everyone was talking about her and then gone. Yeah. It would be nice if she got fired from Fox, at least for her dog, because it would stop getting kicked in the stomach while she was on air. It was funny because when she left The Blaze, she was replaced with a nearly identical equally dumb blonde lady i don't remember it was like abby or something like that i don't know they grow them in labs that's what the real boys from brazil are the girls from brazil uh i don't know i saw a bombshell and it turns out they're the real heroes the people who were racist but

once their careers were established decided to stop enabling rape and sexual harassment there's no such thing as a perfect victim but so this is of course the blaze the media empire the forum where they use 19th century racial slurs and slowly drop knowledge about the JQ and later, you know, radio empire or not empire.

But it was for a period, just according to press, the Daily Beast, the blaze was for a moment bringing in about 90 million dollars in revenue annually. So there was a second where Glenn Beck leaves Fox News in 2011 with all this conspiracy bullshit. And he has a rabid audience who wants to buy that stuff up. They love initially Sarah Palin. Then they gravitate towards Donald Trump. So he's doing all right, but he really bankrupts his own business by opposing Donald Trump. And then in mid-2008, he has to do layoffs. And I think they get down to a skeleton crew

of like 50 people or something, and then they get bought out or merged with Carrie Katz, but it's really a buyout. There also, and I don't know if this, well, I don't think I signed anything that would prevent me from saying any of this, but I don't know, I guess we'll find out. If I get sued immediately after this.

I don't know what kind of reach you think we have. Yeah, but Mr. Beck, if you're listening, I would love my job back. I will renounce these fucking idiots the second you do. No, there was like... Because a lot of the stories focus on Trump being the problem, but it was making money hand over fist. And then the Blaze started spending money

on weird, weird shit for years before that. They purchased a giant movie studio in Texas where they made a gritty Santa Claus origin story movie that there's a trailer for, but so far as I know has never seen the light of day. Wait, sort of like the passion type, like,

yeah, like the, the passion meets Batman begins meet Santa Claus, the movie and the trailer is just fucking bonkers. I haven't been able to find it in years. And then he also started a weird clothing line, like 1776 jeans where all the the jeans were like 175 dollars and his fans would just shit on it yeah it was called i think it was

called the mercury studio or something like that just according to like uh i think the daily beast glenn beck had a real obsession with, what's his? Walt Disney. Walt Disney, yeah. But also the Mercury Theater guy who did War of the Orson Welles. He also had an Orson Welles thing. And so like he gives, Glenn Beck gives these quotes about how getting bought out by CRTV will allow them to have a movie studio in Dallas andallas and uh i guess focus on making feature films which

just spielberg uh no orson welles the original um war of the worlds guy who did it as a radio play it is it is really easy to swap in glenn beck on that citizen kane clapping shot like in your mind like i was like i was trying to picture it and then it just like appeared immediately and it's like oh wow yeah you can just do a one-to-one on that i guess for the end of this unless you have anything else uh we can talk about the uh college loan corporations um uh kind of twilight activities um they they after kind of losing their free money for the government, they've shifted to a more, I guess you could say 21st century model. They now have a subsidiary called Edvisors,

which itself has several subsidiaries. One of them, Scholarship Points. Scholarship Points, you know, like those things you get from a bookie. And what they do is they offer a $10,000 scholarship to students that isn't given on merit. It's just kind of a raffle. And the way you get it is you fill out a form with all of your personal information. And then what happens after that is they sell your personal information. There was an article in the Washington Post.

It says this company, ALC, which is a data reseller, takes data from advisors and repackages it for marketers, according to advertisements on ALC's website. ALC advertised a college-bound student master file, which includes the names and home addresses of up to 3 million students for a rate of $95 per 1,000 names. And for a few extra dollars,

marketers could also buy the name of the college each student plans to attend and his or her expected field of study. And for this article, uh refuse to comment which means uh they are incredibly guilty of doing that and uh you know who else refused to comment for that article steven paddock and uh it's funny because like if you go to the advisors page, they advertise being endorsed by the Better Business Bureau. If you go to the Better Business Bureau page on advisors, they have a one-star rating in all the comments. They're like, stop calling me.

Get me off your email list. There's no unsubscribe button. And it, on top of that, they, they have a pay advisors has a page. If you look up advisors scam, you're one of the first Google results, the landing page on advisors that says,

that's about how to avoid scholarship scams um that identifies like all the different kinds of scams for instance uh uh scholarship scams often have very broad eligibility criteria so that everybody is eligible which then right above this uh i think you guys can see there's a banner that says 10k scholarship giveaway register for scholarship points for your chance to win. It's a literal everybody is eligible for this scholarship right above their warning that scholarship scams tell people that everybody is eligible. They also, towards the bottom, talk about identity theft and that some scholarship scams don't directly ask for money. Instead, they involve a form of identity theft, where the scholarship scam uses the student's information to apply for credit cards. And they don't do that specifically, they just use it to sell their personal information to people

who would do that or something. And I guess what I'm trying to get at with here is, you know, I mentioned that Steven Paddock, uh, had a bunch of child porn, but to contrast that Carrie Katz has an anti-child abuse charity. Well, the charity thing is, is fucking. And I will say that he has an anti-scholarship scam website that is engaging in scholarship scams.

So, and I'll leave it as an exercise for the listener to connect the rest of the dots. Yeah. Adam, do you want to say it and get yourself involved in two lawsuits? You get hit with the Glenn Beck lawsuit and then the Carrie Katz lawsuit immediately when this drops. Do you know if you signed an NDA or anything? I think I did, but I wrote that thing for the New York Times

and no one yelled at me, so... And you were doing that job out of Queens, New York, and Glenn Beck was in Texas this whole time? No, it started... There was an office in Midtown. There was a couple offices in Midtown and pretty sick places, actually. But then they moved to Houston or Dallas or whatever a few years after they got the job. So the last two years, there was no one around us.

Imagine if you're like a media operation being bankrolled by billionaires to promote their interests you're gonna have a pretty nice office yeah you actually did get to see what he did with all that money he got to sell gold to the suckers we've talked about digs and you could just go in and they would give you a copy of one of glenbeck's books so that's uh that's what they did with that money well spent if you ask ask me. They just had crates of them, and they're like, yeah, it's a bestseller. But so this organization Andy mentioned is called Stop Child Predators. You can check it out on Facebook. Kind of mixed reviews. A bunch of one-stars complaining about their kind of bizarre anti-Airbnb campaign,

where this anti-child sex trafficking organization says that short-term rentals are a danger to children and are how child sex trafficking happens which i mean whatever you think about airbnb it's it seems like a weird thing for that organization to focus on i thought that was one of the perks of airbnb um one of the yeah potentially one of the weirdest members of the housing coalition to try to stop short term leases in rent controlled buildings and stuff but I just wanted to go back

to this whatisitgoodfor.blogspot.com they actually do talk about this organization against stop child predators it doesn't seem like it does anything like it posts a couple Facebook things and it has a donate page on it predators it doesn't seem like it does anything like it posts a couple facebook uh things and it has a donate page on it but it doesn't really seem to do much of anything and they just kind of go through um carrie katz of course is the chairman and president

but also um on the board is um viet tien at least this is as of 2006 it's changed since then viet tien was a serves on the board of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Elizabeth Wood was a CFO at Cary Katz's College Loan Corp. But then it gets a little weird here. Lizette Benita is the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Office of Justice Programs at the U.S. Department of Justice. And Mark Carollo is the former Director of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice. So you don't really know exactly what he's using this for, but it also seems like a way

of just giving jobs to former government employees, which in turn buys him influence with these same government agencies. You can say the U.S. Department of Justice might have an interest in the fact that he's running a fucking scam and violating federal laws by steering students into uh predatory loans it's also not worth looking into that some of the most prominent politicians of the last few decades who uh also made ending child trafficking a big part of their advocacy were um deeply connected to jeffrey epstein um and we won't spend too much time on it, but I did just want to mention Republican, well, let's say kind of right wing stop the Islamatization of Europe guy,

Mark Stein. You might see him on the Tucker Carlson program semi-regularly. He went in a big back and forth lawsuit with Carrie Katz. It's kind of a murky story like um basically carrie katz wanted to buy back his uh pro trump audience after you know mark levine went on kind of a scorched earth so they hire uh mark stein to do these um video programs like five a week and then um according to carrie katz and uh the daily beast got um uh eight employees no nine former Mark Stein show employees who submitted sworn declarations for the arbitration that or eight of them said that they believe Mark Stein

quote unquote intentionally sabotaged the show by like showing up late berating the staff you know not doing the work being a fucking idiot regardless of who you believe in this story, Mark Stein or Cary Katz, they go in these dueling lawsuits,

and an arbitration court orders Cary Katz to pay Mark Stein $4 million for breach of contract, and then Cary Katz comes up with the interesting idea of suing his own CRTV, where, you know, various people have gone through how Cary Katz manages every single expenditure at CRTV. where, you know, various people have gone through how Carrie Katz manages every single expenditure at CRTV, he signs every paycheck, and then he sues CRTV, supposedly for underpaying him. And, you know, Mark Stein is probably correct when he says he's doing this just in order to avoid

paying out this $4 million judgment, where this is eventually thrown out in court. But he attempts to sue his own company in order to say, oh, we're insolvent now because of this lawsuit that I launched, so we can no longer pay Mark Stein. And he sues Mark Stein like three different times for various figures, I think $25 million total, and ties him up in court for three years or however much. But I mean, it just kind of shows you, regardless of what you think of both of the players, this is a billionaire who's willing to use the legal system to sue Mark Stein for defamation and breach a contract three times and sue one of his, two of his friends for defamation as well. It's just something that billionaires who have the

resources can do is just sue your critics for defamation and tie them up in legal fees and then sue your own company to avoid paying them if a court rules against you. So he's a shady guy and it makes sense why there's so little attention on him because, you know, you're definitely running a risk if you report on this guy. And it's worth noting that suing your critics doesn't work and you shouldn't try it. Yeah. We're sorry we just got you named in this lawsuit adam yeah well one more to the pile yeah um but yeah i mean i guess we will see what what happens with carry cats but um was was there anything at your time at the blaze that we didn't really get to that that you think is relevant for our current moment well no but also you didn't mention his stupid poker nickname that i

guarantee you he came up with it himself it was like el jaffe or something like that i mean it just has he came up with that himself written all over it i think it was el jaffe if not sue me again for that. I don't know. I don't give a shit. If it wasn't El Jaffe, it was something equally dumb. It's like a bit character who was killed off in episode three of Narcos. But yeah, he also, yeah, he did launch a poker, like a web streaming poker thing. In October 2015, he launched the website Poker Central where members can watch live poker and like we said you know that's kind of the main thing he's known for but

it is just fascinating that this guy who made you know saying he's really into video poker are there other people who are also into video poker that our listeners might be familiar with their their names escape me but it I mean it's just fascinating to me that this guy who uh though i guess we should just mention um or the the blaze article that wrote up the buyout of um the blaze by crtv currently this is owned by crtv llc and underneath that is the blaze uh conservative review the website and cr tv are all subsidiaries of his company now but the daily beast article is december 2018 and they get um one of glenn beck's former employees talking about the buyout to say quote we always thought

beck was opposed to bailouts unquote um so it is just something to to marvel marvel at that he's now, I guess, taking orders from this guy. But it is something that fascinates me that this guy who, you know, clearly made his fortune on free money from the government and predatory lending practices to students and now peddles influence and rates conservative politicians on how well they are serving his bottom line has so completely escaped scrutiny that it's almost impossible to find information

about this incredibly shady guy who very clearly corrupted our political system and made money doing it. You should try Googling El Jaffe. Give him more infringement. And I guess just last thing... Which which that's his only alter ego last thing i wanted to mention uh conservative radio host mark levine as well as former california governor pete wilson are also major shareholders in crtv

um carrie katz is the primary shareholder but um it is just interesting to note, Mark Stein makes this point, that both of them are lawyers. So that might be kind of a conflict that insider dealing transfers designed to thwart a judge's payment order are considered fraudulent. So just the fact that these two former lawyers sign on to him su, him suing his own company in order to pay a judgment, uh, should give you pause. And, uh, I guess we'll,

uh, see him at the next country music festival. Sorry, it took me a second. But, uh, Adam, thank you so much for being with us.

And, uh, where can people find you as well as do you have any closing thoughts for the listeners about your time at Blaze, now CRTV? Would you like your job back? If you could get it back, would you go back to that swamp?

If I did a moving job into a fourth floor walk-up today, I would love nothing more than to read comments for eight hours in my underwear. I don't my underwear i don't care i don't care how it doesn't even have to be the place if you're a shitty website listening to this right now i'll read whatever you want i don't i have no principles i'll tell you where to find these idiots still so we can we can take down the grub stakers empire and then the commenters

will just reign free uh but yeah i'll take that job back in a second boy and i'll say if you're gonna hire one guy hire adam sokol yeah if you're gonna hire two guys i am also looking i can just imagine the contrast between like lifting a box full of hardcover books and just clicking a button whenever you see the n-word it's just worlds apart there's air conditioning you get to like stay home and have the tv on in the background hang out with my cat it's great maybe there's an opening at the daily caller or something coming up on their website that's got to be so much easier than like trying to moderate tumblr where you just have all these factions who are all calling you like different kinds of prejudice.

Whereas like based just because they don't like how you're modding versus like on the blaze where it's just it's very cut and dry where it's just like n word block n word block. Right. The only factions on the blaze are the people who believe the moderators are lizards and the people who are Jewish. But thank you so much for listening. Check out our Patreon to drop later this week. We will have an episode on The Daily Wire, the fracking billionaires behind that. And check out Adam Sokol, very funny comedian.

Yeah, Sokol Adam on Twitter and Instagram. If you want to read my long-running blog about Star Trek that has very little n-words in it, adamsokol.wordpress.com. Yeah, that's about it. I thought it was an interesting choice that you used it for the Ferengis. Daily Beast, you mean?

The Daily Wire, sorry. Oh, okay. Yeah, Ben Shapiro's media empire, The Daily Wire. Oh, yeah. Yes. Adam Sokol on his Star Trek blog accidentally posts up a comment section. It's like, oh, shit, here we go again. Just like the beginning of San Andreas.

But thank you so much for listening, and we hope this was as informative to you as it was to us to learn about this very shady and very underreported character in the student loan and right-wing media info in ecosystem thank you i'm sean p mccarthy i'm steve jeffers i'm andy palmer and we'll see you on the premium side thanks for listening goodbye bye suck it to me