Grubstakers - Episode 61: Joseph Ricketts

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

Join our deep dive into the deep-dish Chicago Cubs owner John Joseph Ricketts. He’s a 77-year-old billionaire who founded TD Ameritrade, lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and recent email leak revealed his hateful views on Muslims, people of color and former president Barack Obama. This description was written by Ritu one of the hosts cousin living in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I needed to raise money after participating in the protest for safer road conditions in 2018 to save the over 20,000 people who are injured or killed by traffic accidents. Please allow the show to become successful so the Microsoft points earned by this bio goes to a good use. Thank you. My love will always shine on those that believe in a brighter tomorrow.

This week on Grubstakers, we're talking about Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade. Hear all about how the government pushed everyone into the stock market by destroying the retirement system and made Joe Ricketts a billionaire, which gave him the free time to share racist emails about President Obama and the eminent Muslim takeover of the United States. All that and more coming up on Grubstakers. First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world. Berlusconi flatly denies that any mafia money helped him begin a start in the 50s.

I have always had a thing for black people. I like black people. These stories are funnier than the jokes you can tell. I said, what the fuck is a brain scientist? I was like, that's not a real job. Tell me the truth. But anyway. Five, four, three, two. Hello, welcome back to We Study Billionaires, the podcast about grub stakers. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. I'm here. I'm joined by my friends. Yogi Pollywool.

Steve Jeffers. Andy Palmer. And today, we're looking at a man named Joseph Ricketts. Ricketts. And this is important because Splinter.com and Deadspin or Splinter News, they got his emails. The Splinter.com, they got four articles on, you know, they just go through a choice selection of the emails. And it's pretty fascinating getting inside the mind of a 70-something billionaire. Because what I saw when I looked through these emails was essentially like, first off, you have all the racist Obama era.

Obama's a Muslimlim the muslims are our enemy kind of chain email stuff well that's just in my emails the racist obama era you know uh jokes about welfare recipients or something which will go through some of those did we do we let joe reckitts on the grubstaker slack and then like all these chain emails end with like i'll bet y'all can't forward this to 20 people or just like it is kind of like a nice look back in time at the original like and subscribe please which was forward this racist chain email to like 50 people but so you get that aspect of his emails which is like any fucking 70 year old man in America was going through that.

And women, you don't know. Yes. But also because he's a billionaire, you get tons of people hitting him up for money. And so you get actually a pretty fascinating look into the conservative political action sphere. sphere like a political uh a campaign strategist named fred davis who worked with carly fiorina and made this insane ad called demon sheep which shows like a bunch of sheep in like a meadow and then one guy dressed as a sheep with red demonic eyes and it's supposed to represent this california politician that uh carly fiorina was running against and for some reason it did not stick. Sheep with red eyes?

Yeah. And a person dressed up as it? It's like, I would play it, but it's such a visual thing. And it begins with this sheep in a meadow and then it has this voiceover reading like,

Purity. Piety. Wholesome. Honorable. Men like Tom Campbell, who would never lead us astray, his pedestal so high. Leaving but one way to fall.

The music turns ominous, and one of the sheep gets like raised up and then replaced with like a guy who's clearly a man in a sheep's costume with red eyes but but so the point is you know fred davis and he would actually joe rickett's first public exposure would be this guy in 2012 puts together a 50 paid page ad pitch, uh, for a racist campaign. They were going to run to link Obama to Reverend Jeremiah Wright in 2012. Uh, and then they backed out because the New York times,

uh, leaked this. Um, but so he's like constantly in the inbox looking for money. Uh, you have, uh, a guy named Mark mix who's runs some anti-union foundation.

And Mark Mix received at least 65... Oh, is that the IRA? Mark Mix received at least $65,000 from Joe Ricketts to write an anti-union book, which he never wrote. So you have this email about Joe Ricketts's trip to washington he's like yeah we met with mark mix he said the book is like two months away from being finished and then like you know some other lady is like a fox news contributor consultant and she takes money from him to like send him a list of 20 dumb titles for the anti-union book which i'll i'll read once we get through the biography right but um or there's an economist who i think he teaches at brown university and he wants 25 000 a quarter

from the family to give them a one hour presentation on the state of the economy every quarter and it's just like so you just see oh and former Vice President Dan Quayle hits him up for money for his son's campaign. So it's just like, it is like you get to learn about him, but you also get to learn, you know, how billionaires function in the ecosystem of reactionary grifter politics. Right. It's like looking at a hot person's Tinder account. It's like, oh, yeah, look at all these people rolling in. And he like emails like Dinesh D'Souza, George Will of the Washington Post as well. So it's like just all these kind of like general conservative figures. Oh, and Steve Bannon hits him up. But I guess we could just kind of like start with the general information about Joe Ricketts.

And then once we get through the biography, we'll go through kind of some of the stuff that you can find in his email inbox. Great. If that sounds good to everybody. So Joe Ricketts, according to Forbes, he's worth about $2.7 billion. Forbes, actually, this is a rare honor for us. Forbes gives him a 10 out of 10 on the self-made score. Congratulations, Joe.

Perfect. Damn. And I think we'll kind of go through Beating Kylie There was a societal shift Did you say that Kylie issued like a retraction Saying she wasn't really self-made Yeah since we put out our episode She learned

No such retraction from Rickett Not yet anyway Wait till he hears this episode or at least his lawyers will um but so joe ricketts he's he's the guy who essentially founded what's today known as td ameritrade which is one of those online um brokerages you know with fixed fees seven or eight dollars a trade yeah Yeah, they own TDE records as well. And so I think we'll kind of go through when we talk about Joe Ricketts being self-made. We should have gotten like stuff from Comptown on.

So you could call it like fat TDE Ameritrade. So basically when we talk about, you know, Joe Ricketts being supposedly self-made or whatever the term is, we have to underline that there was a societal shift in the united states in the 1970s and 80s that pushed workers out of defined benefit pensions into 401ks and essentially made by design of government policy it made workers rather than employers responsible for ensuring their own retirement and uh and this has had a lot of effects in particular

you know some of the stock market boom we see as a result of that but you know as far as joe ricketts being self-made we're saying that he fixed the economy there were massive societal forces pushing people into hey let's open our own td ameritrade or e-trade account because nobody else is going to take care of our retirement so So now we have to like fucking day trade. And then people like Joe Ricketts are the ones who suck up all this extra money that is being pushed into individuals diving into the stock market. And we'll kind of get into some of the business practices of TD Ameritrade that are not quite as ethical. What?

TD Ameritrade isn't ethical? EGAD. No, E-Trade. Oh, oh, okay. But I guess we should start from the beginning of the man himself, you know, Joseph Ricketts. Joe Ricketts is born in Nebraska, small town, 1941. He's the oldest of four children, born to Florence and Donovan Ricketts.

His dad, Donovan, was a carpenter, also an exterminator, small businessman, farmer, staunch Catholic, apparently. And his mother was a homemaker. But, you know, his dad was strict with the kids. But he kind of grows up, you know, lower middle class, typical Americana household in the baby boom era born 19 1941 so basically he gets like his first job in third grade this is from the Chicago mag profile they wrote after he and his family bought the Chicago Cubs oh the shadow of Magna so he gets his first job in third grade Cleaning stools at the county courthouse I thought you were going to say

As a stockbroker Wait literally cleaning the stools? I guess so yeah When people shit themselves After being sentenced to 40 years Come on in rickets He cleans it up when people get their 25 to life sentence. You've seen those reaction vids on YouTube of people reacting to getting life sentences.

Right, right. That was Joe Ricketts' job. Is that a whole theme? That's a genre, yes. He went in afterwards. He had to clean up the floor. Yeah, he had to clean up the stools. When people die and when they're committed to clean up the stools when people die when they're

committed life sentences they shit themselves and when you do you get a guy like ricketts to come and do the dirty work look just one step away from a set of reaction videos it's like we and isis just told their family that we're decapitating their daughter. But so Joseph Ricketts, he gets this early job. In 1959, he meets Marlene Volkmer. What's funny about that? The Volk. I don't know. I just got Germans, Nazis on the brain.

What do you think that's funny? Volk. Yeah, you're right. There's nothing funny about the people. When don't you have Nazis on the brain, Sean? The eight hours I sleep a night. Just kidding. Four of those hours I dream about Nazis.

So in 1959, he attends a Jesuit university called Crichton in Omaha, Nebraska. What was the timeline on that? 1959. Okay. So born 1941, 1959 1959 he attends a jesuit university but that's where he learned about uh sphere at crichton he learned that global warming isn't real there which is a recurring theme in the emails uh so it uh in 1959 he starts attending the university but he actually has to like work the entire time he's in university so he uh he attends university for nine years before he gets his degree uh in 1963 he and marlene both marry at 22 and then again from the chicago mag profile

the initial plan was marlene uh would work as a teacher while joe finished college but in 1964 she became pregnant with pete now the governor of nebraska oh uh she became pregnant with pete in 1964 um and then a year after he was born their son tom came along and then joe recalled in a 2000 interview quote the bills started piling up i had to reduce my academic effort to be more in line with my ability to pay, so I went to school part-time. So he went to school over a nine-year period, essentially, in the 60s. And this is what gets him into, I guess, the stock market.

He gets a job part-time as a credit analyst at Dun & Bradstreet. And he says he saw the fun and excitement that business people had. I decided I want to have my own business, but I didn't have any money. Rickets. The two things I didn't have were money and vitamin D.

I had nine years of school but no money. Sound familiar? That actually wasn't the family last name. He just changed it because whenever you touched his children, their bones would snap. Soft bones. But so I guess this kind of brings us in.

So he's working as a credit analyst, and this brings us into two interesting phenomenons that happen with government policy regarding the stock market and retirement that allow him to become a billionaire. The first is in what's called May Day 1975, the SEC abolishes fixed commissions or fixed commission minimums essentially. It used to be that the New York Stock Exchange got together and said, okay, if you're a broker and you want to execute a stock trade, there's a minimum or a fixed commission price you have to take on that trade. And the SEC in 1975 May Day abolishes this.

They say you can undercut and charge whatever you want. And this leads to the rise of what are called discount brokerages, including today TD Ameritrade, Joe Ricketts' company, but also Charles Schwab is a billionaire off this. Other mutual funds also got their starter in then as the woke alternative to the higher oligopolistic firms on Wall Street. And yeah, it's interesting where it's like

i mean abolishing fixed commissions i think is fine i don't have a problem with that but i think it's kind of the uh the 401k thing we'll get into in a second that uh really pushes his business but so just to kind of continue uh these fixed commissions get abolished. He had a job for a minute as a stockbroker at Dean Witter, but he quits in 1975 after fixed commissions were abolished. He quits to co-found a discount brokerage that's called First Omaha Securities. He later renames it First National Securities, and then today it's called TD Ameritrade. He later renames it Ameritrade, and then it merges after the dot-com bust to become TD Ameritrade. But so basically, from Chicago mag, this brokerage allowed investors to buy and sell securities for lower commissions than old school full service brokerages um and just as far as where he got his startup capital just from forbes we know that he got a uh twelve thousand five hundred dollar

loan from friends and family oh the usual llc way of doing it but he also got thirty seven thousand five hundred dollars from three partners and you, it's just interesting where it's like... $3,500 total or from each partner? Total. Total. So, altogether, he got $50,000 in 1975 for startup capital. You know, so it's like, even when Forbes says somebody is 10 out of 10 self-made, it's like, okay, yeah, I'm sorry you had to work while you went to college, but you still ran in the right circles

that you could get a $50,000 loan. You still went to college, so that's people helping you. Right, right. Really, no one. Let's just drop the charade. No one is self-made. Yeah.

Literally everyone needs two people to exist. So in 2017 dollars $50,000 in 1975 is $227,806 So a significant little chunk of change to start with Above average I don't think I could find $200,000 right now on a whim Could you guys find that much capital if you needed to? To buy a house

Not start a business Yeah, that's true I would extort Thomas Friedman I'm going to release the tapes of you saying Blowing up Israelis Flying airplanes into the World Trade Center That's okay What did he say about pizza parlors?

Wrapping yourself with dynamite And blowing up Israelis in a pizza parlor? That's okay. Buying a sniper rifle and hanging outside of gas stations in the Washington, D.C. area? That's okay. Poisoning the water of the citizens that live in your country? That's okay. Murdering prostitutes outside the Green River area in Washington State?

That's okay. Well, suck on this. Tom Friedman is a bad man. That's okay. So what I wanted to talk about, and so this business, he starts it in 1975. Within six years, he buys out his partners, and he's kind of running it mostly by himself and putting his idiot children in positions of responsibility as well. But I wanted to talk

about essentially something that if you live in the United States, you might be familiar with, which is, according to the Center for Retirement Research in 2007, at peak in the United States of America, 88% of private sector workers with a retirement plan had a defined benefit pension plan. Now today it's about 30, at least 2007, about 33%. So it's this massive collapse from almost 90% of people with retirement options having a defined benefit pension plan to this big shift to essentially 401ks. And what's the what's the um difference in like uh material terms well essentially like when you have a defined benefit pension plan it's you know how much you're gonna get so and you get

it for the rest of your life until you die whereas a 401k is essentially like okay so you put say 200 000 in your 401k okay now you're retired you got to make that work until you're dead oh so a defined benefit pension plan is um a guarantee over you actually have something like a guarantee right it's not a finite sum of money if you live forever you keep getting money yeah it's x every year or month or however however they do it until you die okay whereas 401k you just have to be your own portfolio manager And hopefully it's enough or not Make sure your money Compounds Compounds

The bill enabling 401ks Passed congress in 1978 It was modifying the IRS code To include such tax advantage Counts like that And then in 1980 The first employer 401k plans started showing up yeah like and in 81 just from nbc news the irs clarified that 401k plan participants could

defer regular wages not just bonuses so you know these things began to proliferate for a variety of reasons i do like that you can lose both your 401k and your pension from mortgage-backed securities. Hell yeah. But just like, again, another kind of illustrative stat from NBC News, in 1985, there were 30,000 401k plans offered by employers in the United States. Defined benefit plans were 170,000. By 2005, there were just 41,000 defined benefit plans were $170,000. By 2005, there were just $41,000 defined benefit plans.

Defined. Defined benefit plans. Defined benefit plans. Well, suck on this. And $417,000 401ks. And so it's interesting where essentially this tax incentive where there's, what is it,

401k contributions aren't taxed or taxed later. They're taxed if you take them out early, I believe. So what does this mean in material terms for Wall Street is, well, you have a lot more fees on commissions for trades, and they also have an explosion of assets under management from all the 401k plans. You can have lucrative contracts to, like, of assets under management from all the 401k plans. You can have like lucrative contracts to like,

we're going to manage all of the 401k plans for these companies. Well, I mean, it's a good thing that, you know, that law passing doesn't line up almost perfectly with New York becoming the financial capital of the world. But yeah, no, and again, from NBC News, essentially just continuing on the fees thing. And there have been a lot of studies about this and news reports. But essentially, like, if you get a 401k from your work, they'll send you a giant booklet, which you're never going to read.

And then if you go through, you're like, you know, and they'll even hide fees from that booklet. But they will, like, have this or that management fee or this or that thing just kind of hidden in there. And according to one study, from nbc news it's actually funny like a 401k guy like pitch guy came to my office to tell us about the plans and our ceo um asked like well do you want to go into uh index funds which are the um yeah lower fees and are just kind of pinned to the nasdaq or something and the guy got really evasive about it yeah so from nbc news one study found that quote as a result of high fees fund balances and defined contribution plans are about 20 less than they need otherwise be so essentially 20 of what should be your retirement is getting

eaten up by fees for wall street or whoever else is managing your 401k. And that's why this entire thing that comes from the 70s and 80s is a giant taxpayer benefit to Wall Street and a scam out of working people. Well, essentially, a mutual fund is not going to be able to beat the market because that's essentially impossible. So they might have a lucky couple of years, but that might be the best. And so if you're not just like whatever mutual fund you put your

money into at best they're probably going to do the same as the market but that's going to be minus all the fees as opposed to an index fund which will automatically do as well as the market which is already kind of a bubble that's very volatile well on the other side of that you had like jack bogle and other mutual fund people who got started in the late 70s who were saying like you know why why fight why fight the market just invest in these really low cost mutual funds and just try to match the market and wherever it goes like all right you're at least guaranteeing yourself a seven percent return over 20 years so if you're a long-term investor just keep it simple and so like that's

kind of the other side of the development of these companies yeah the only way to like really beat the market with your investing comes with the risk of your broker getting invested arrested for insider trading every 10 years well you can afford it why not yeah but yeah so like if you if you assume a seven you're not paying his prison his legal fees if you can afford it, why not? Yeah. But yeah, so like if you assume a 7% I mean, you're not paying his prison, his legal fees. If you assume a 7% annualized return over a 20-year period, which is pretty What ETFs usually return, yeah. which is pretty close to what like the S&P 500 would return.

Right. If you have fees that amount to like 1.5% of whatever you put in, that's going to be almost a quarter of your potential gains. Go away to Wall Street. Right. Now, if you want a more stable investment, I'm happy to announce that Grubstaker has partnered with WeBuyYourGold.com. And that's okay.

That's why you should get into crypto right now yeah but one last thing from this uh nbc news article um in 2011 a report by the government accountability office found that quote the percentage of workers participating in employer sponsored plans like 401ks has peaked at about 50 of the private sector workforce for most of the past two decades so the point is even though they have these 401ks a lot of people if they don't make that much money they can't really afford to put that much money into their 401k so there's at peak about 50 of people participating in these plans and then of course the other 50 have no fucking retirement plan at all so it's like why

do people try to trade their own you know try, try to go into E-Trade, try to go into TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab? Why are people, individuals being driven into the stock market? It's because we destroyed their retirement. They used to have a defined benefit pension plan. And now jobs just don't offer that anymore because of government policy choices in the 70s and 80s barbaric yeah but so uh of course joe ricketts is 10 out of 10 self-made yeah what a chooch yeah but um so i guess we can just kind of move on to the rest of his bio and what happens so six years after he founds the thing he buys out his partners um and essentially td on yes td ameritrade does uh two um kind of innovative

things in 1988 they're i believe uh one of if not the yeah they were the first uh touch tone quote and order stock system in 1988 so essentially you would just dial them and then you would enter a stock code and you would press one to buy press two to sell and touch tone however much you want to sell. And so essentially you can just order and sell stocks without any interaction with an actual broker. Wow. You know, so they introduced that in 1988. In 1995, Joe Ricketts actually, you know, to his credit and prescience, he becomes the first, Ameritrade at the time, becomes the first company to be able to execute online trades

because they buy one of the first firms that allows customers to use the internet for trading. I shouldn't say they're the first, but they get in on the ground floor in 1995 by spending about $8 million to buy a company that allowed people to trade over the internet.'re i mean they're effectively the first online brokerage interesting just because that acquisition and integrating it i mean you could say to his credit that's sort of like saying like you know to some inventors credit he was the first guy to realize that if you set up

a slot machine people will just pour money into it uh with real returns. Right. And so essentially in 1997, he becomes, he becomes a billionaire in 1997. Now TD Ameritrade at the time, Ameritrade, it goes public. It has their IPO and he actually IPOs like right as the dot com bubble is inflating.

So he becomes a billionaire. I think for a time he was actually on paper richer than he is today just because all these dot-com stocks were so fucking overvalued. But in 1997, he IPOs. And then an interesting thing happens where the stock market crashes and then they basically push him out as CEO. That was fun. That was a very interesting time. Just from...

Watching Friends, seeing that stock market crash, the 90s. From the Fortune magazine article, Ameritrade stock fell an astonishing 94% between 1999 and 2001. So basically the bottom fell out and then they pushed him out as ceo and then uh basically everything that uh td ameritrade has done since 2000 has been not his decision sure so you know again these very valuable people who are essential to the economy so for what 18 years almost 20 years he hasn't been making major decisions no yeah i mean he was on the ameritrade board until i think like 2011 or something but basically after the dot-com crash they pushed him out and a guy named joe moglia was a former merrill lynch executive i think he worked in the white house technology office too

but he came in as ceo right after the bottom fell out why is it so common that uh like a good fifth or fourth of all the rich people we talk about are linked to the government? You guys ever notice this? Every couple episodes, we had a guy that works in something that's corrupt, and they're also linked to the... Now, Yogi, off mic, you were saying more to us about this, and you were talking about the Jews?

No, I didn't say anything about those things. But you're right. Hank Paulson and all of them. I didn't say any of these things yogi stop thinking in such conspiratorial terms this is the none of what you guys are alleging is true i believe all people are equally corruptible and that no uh hank paulson was a christian scientist yes yes see so we're actually we're being you know we're being discriminatory against them off off mike yogi was like you know you know, we're being discriminatory against them.

Off mic, Yogi was like, you know, you guys, when we play that Thomas Friedman clip, I think there's an aspect about him that we should emphasize. Yogi, you were saying that on Hanukkah they have that ceremonial gelton that it prepares them to control the world banks. I like how Andy used like eight levels of Jewish knowledge to insult me in that moment. I noticed when you're talking about your bashert, that this, this, and that. Andy drawing on decades of dating pool experience to enlighten us with Jewish people knowledge. Yogi was like, yeah, guys, like we don't have... Just give me an automatic conversion. Yogi was like, guys, we don't have to come out and say it, but what if we just really put some stink on the name Friedman?

Like Friedman. Really emphasize the free part of Friedman. I'll tell you what, he won't be free when we're done with him. But so the dot-com crash happens, and then actually, interestingly interestingly enough at least according to this fortune article joe ricketts wanted to merge with e-trade of e-trade baby fame but at the time e-trade had like giant real estate exposure and a lot of executives speculated that had had it merged with e-trade the company actually would have collapsed so instead this

other guy who took over merged it with the company td waterhouse so it became td ameritrade i do i do like how you know they they get just thrashed in the dot-com burst and they're like fuck we got to invest in something stable like mortgages that's right yeah they were following alan greenspan's advice but so um and i guess like from here you know this kind of brings you up to the present like he's gotten a couple other ventures but essentially after the dot-com crash he was a retired now billionaire and he got restless so he was in like a fucking um one of his ventures was essentially they were trying to get a, like a vacation company that was like, so basically they, they bought up the,

what do you want? Sandals? Yeah. Well, they bought up these properties in like Aspen, Jackson Fort, some mansions in France and England. And,

um, so just, I just bored rich people games. I want to buy a whole bunch of land in various places I want to go to eventually. Right. So I'll, I'll just quote from splinter news here um participants 12 and up could practice survival skills in the back country learning tracking fire making in wet conditions and navigating by the stores before by the stars before returning to their luxury estates and

then this is from the an early slide deck advertisement material. It says, roughing it will never be dangerous and rarely uncomfortable. So essentially, you're pitching to rich people to go do survivalist stuff while also telling them roughing it will never be dangerous and also never uncomfortable and rarely uncomfortable. Hey, you know those places that are dangerous and uncomfortable? What if we could go there and not be in danger or uncomfortable? Let's put a hammock on the moon, guys. But so he's like bouncing around from different ventures after TD Ameritrade.

Honestly, having a hammock on the moon sounds really nice. I never said you'd be in a suit, though. Yeah. And also, why would you need a hammock? There's not that much gravity. Yeah, it's like extra comfortable. Actually, that would be pretty nice. Yeah.

But so he founds DNA Info, which is like a, he would later shut down for merging, attempting to unionize. Patent pending to any of our listeners. They golfing this? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So DNA Info was like supposed to be a hyper-local New York newspaper.

It's kind of funny. Like all this boomer. Well, expand it to other cities too. Wait, he found it? i thought he bought it i guess he bought it yeah yeah um but so he wanted to like get in the news media and it's just kind of funny like all of his boomer emails are about like uh uh yeah you know the news it's always prevented presenting their point of view i just want the facts newspaper and so you have like some boomer emails from him where he like uh emails the editor-in-chief and like you can just imagine this woman's patience having to put up with this guy because he like emails her to complain about how like the staff is editorializing by uh prevent

presenting taco trucks in a good light or something like that. So high-frequency trading, TD Ameritrade and E-Trade and all these companies heavily benefit from, essentially, to my understanding, selling your orders to high-frequency traders before they hit the markets? Well, so I guess to back up and say the advent of high-frequency trading came around like the early 90s or so,

right around when the online brokerages were just before they really became a thing. And it was still in its infancy then, but in the 2000s and going forward, a big part of how online brokerages started making their money was by basically selling information about the the flow of or stock order executions before they actually executed to these groups and so i guess how do you make money if you have the flow of order information before the trades execute well how you do it is you get you gather and quickly analyze using algorithm what trades people are hoping to place at certain prices and then look at the mass of where they, like the average price someone wants to sell at versus what they, someone else wants to buy at. You can sort of be between that and basically arbitrage off of people's,

uh, executed orders. So it's like unexecuted orders. It's like a pump and dump, but you're not doing the pumping. You just see where people are pumping and you just get your thing in ahead of time. Yeah.

You get a split second for your computer algorithm at a high-frequency trading shop to look at what people want to buy or sell. So you see a bunch of people are like, I'm investing in Lyft, and you park your stuff in Lyft, and then you see a bunch of people are like, I'm selling Lyft, and before they sell it, you can pull from Lyft,

and then Jim Cramer will say, hey, to the haters, it's going up now. And one of the biggest high-frequency trading firms that is the biggest recipient of these, what they call, payment for order of flow, is this group called Citadel. And they do a lot of business with TD Ameritrade and other online brokerages where they get information about these orders before they're actually executed. I remember reading Flashboys and like all these high frequency trades or like or trade firms or just like startups

run by like a bunch of very hostile Russian mathematicians who like fled the collapsing Soviet Union and have no compunction about like stealing money from ignorant Americans. Actually, even before the high-frequency traders... That's called reparations. Even before the high-frequency people, the New York Stock Exchange also did this, essentially.

Oh, really? And several groups have brought in cases over the years against groups like TD Ameritrade saying, like, this is unfair what what not like which seems kind of obvious on the face of it right but actually the SEC ruled in favor of the brokerages saying well actually this is making it more fair because because the New York Stock Exchange had a monopoly on this but now there's competition yeah yeah yeah so we're bringing more people in on the game like well actually the people they're bringing in are other highly leveraged, five-year-old traders who are basically closing out, just walling off.

Like, okay, no one else gets this special discount on trading. But that's how they got away with, like... So they're like, we're going to allow this because this allows us to keep not doing our jobs but still have minor results. Yeah, this makes it so, like, you want us to, like, fine or even possibly prosecute someone? We can't do that. Guys, I don't want to beat a dead horse,

but once again, it seems like the government... Yogi, you were saying off mic earlier that you wanted to beat a dead horse. He was like, now wait a minute, let's talk about some last names here. SEC, TD Ameritrade. It's all connected, guys. What are we dealing with here?

I think I know what's going on here, ladies and gentlemen. I think we've cracked the case. I believe there's a conspiracy between people who have money and the people in power, that is the government, and certain religious groups. I'm not saying which ones. And certain minority groups. You know who else was an early adopter of payment for order flows was Bernie Madoff.

Oh, I know that guy. Add that to your theory. Yeah, I think. I thought you were going to say Bernie Sanders. Check his tax returns, people. It's in there. So essentially the SEC was like, yeah, this is not insider trading because it adds more people to this monopoly that is something that regular people can't have access to, but corporations trading could. Yeah, essentially.

They actually cited the antitrust law. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow, what fucking cross. So it's like we're actually promoting competition by doing this. You know what I was having fun imagining this weekend? Competition automatically delivers a more equitable distribution of gains. And greed is good. by doing this. You know what I was having fun imagining this weekend? Competition is automatically more, delivers a more equitable distribution of gains.

And greed is good. Oh, I saw that movie. You can cut this out if you want, but I thought it was, I was watching the second season of the OA this weekend, and I thought it would be really funny if the genesis of that show

was just some Midwesterners trying to imagine what they- Bad joke alert, Cyrus. Sorry. It was just some Midwesterners trying to imagine what they... Bad joke alert, Cyrus. Sorry. It was just some Midwesterners trying to imagine Judaism. And so they're like, yeah, Jews have five motions based on the five tribes of Israel to travel interdimensionally. And they have an original angel.

That's the OA. And that's what they celebrate on Ram Kapoor. These views are not reflected on all of the members of Grubstakers, just the people that said them. The siren was the NYPD coming to this apartment to shoot Andy for that joke. It's like the fucking police cam looks bad because they're shooting him in cold blood, but then they play that clip and everyone's like all right oh no that's that guy deserves it they're like doing the the interpretive dance thing and the director walks up and he's like

uh one note could you make that more jewish um but that only works if you've seen the show yeah but so just to finish the high frequency trade thing like and so my understanding is like essentially they're like stealing just a few cents on every single trade oh like the office based game yeah i mean like not necessarily stealing but because they know where the trades are going they're able to they have an ability to execute their trades like essentially within the space between what normal people could buy or sell a stock at right but there's like a public listing of like all right this is how much people want to buy is how much people want to sell sure so what you're saying they're just trading off the momentum between those those two fluctuations

basically right so it's not stealing it's just knowing what people will do like before it's not foolproof i mean high frequency traders certainly lose money, a lot of money sometimes, like the flash crash. But over the belief and somewhat the reality is that over the long haul and with the huge volumes they trade at, they have this edge over normal traders. Right, of course, yeah. But isn't the idea that if you're not high-frequency trading, isn't every stock just that much more expensive? Because essentially you're running in their wake you know like you're paying slightly higher prices or you're if you're selling after

them you're selling at a slightly lower price like isn't that the idea yeah so they're just capitalizing off of this like inconsistency between pricing between your average public exchange like the new york stock exchange, and whatever listed price people are saying, like, all right, the pay for the information that says this person is going to buy this stock at whatever the normal price is, but you know that beforehand, so you can find a buyer. So it's technically not insider trading, though, huh? The SEC says no.

Yeah, I was just imagining the SEC officials being like, actually, it's more fair. And if you have any questions, you can reach me at my new email address at tdameritrade.com. That's great.

So what you're saying is that they thoroughly research companies based on their social utility to society as a whole. Yes, of course. And potential, future potential to increase uh the standard of living for our society and then very scientifically invest in those companies that

are most likely to improve the condition of the average american um and that's why it's necessary to keep those systems uh running in but link this back to the OA. And there's five motions that they use and there's also an octopus. So I guess we should just kind of close out the bio here because I want to get to the emails and then anything else we have time for. But essentially so

Sean's always been concerned about emails. Yes. i don't know when this started but something around 2016 ish i scroll down it's like what these aren't the joe ricketts these are the hillary clinton emails and then the nypd kicks in the door and shoots me we need that computer here they come um but so uh td amer, and so also, Stephen, one other thing. You were saying like TD Ameritrade in particular is a serious player in the high-frequency trade, like more so than others. They're one of the early adopters of having these long-term contracts that allow high-frequency traders to pay for the service. They've been doing this fucked- up practice almost since the beginning. Yeah. And they're one of the largest in terms of volume of trades for just retail.

Nice. Retail trades. And I think the largest in terms of number of trades. Oh, really? So they're just an industry leader. Yeah. And they have a lot of pricing power when it comes to setting the terms of trade for doing this. It's like McDonald's buying potatoes.

They buy the most so they control what potatoes look like. Exactly. But so I guess just to kind of like finish. Is that why I haven't seen like any busted looking potatoes recently? It's not necessarily busted. It's the sides. They're all like hot as shit. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right.

Gotta get them I'm loving it potatoes. Can't begin to know. Have it your way fries. They say potatoes not a nut, but I'm not. But so just from Splinter, in 1997, TD Ameritrade launched... What's this podcast about? It launched the $8 a trade national advertising campaign. And again, this is kind of like what's made them known is like, again, appealing to people getting into... Oh, just one last thing about that.

It's actually... So high-frequency traders have indirectly led to a drop in commissions, which would sound like an overall good thing. But also it's like the way they do that is by this method of the brokers are accepting payments for them to get the order flow. So that's actually led all the way to the creation of the group called Robinhood. It's like a, it's a non, it's a zero commission retail stock trading.

Robinhood, who famously told the rich where the poor would be so that they could be robbed. So one of the huge ways that that's viable for them to offer zero commissions is by giving this information to traders. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, of course.

High-frequency traders and a few other large institutional players. Right. But so one other thing from this Splinter News profile of Joe Ricketts that I found interesting. After his company Ameritrade goes public in 97, He buys this giant ranch in Wyoming. He spends $7 million buying a mansion in Omaha, Nebraska, I believe 17,000 square foot. He buys a 78th floor penthouse in New York City's Time Warner Center, $29 million.

But so the Splinter News thing is about his mansion. Joke's on him when the Cloverfield monster knocks that over. So from Splinter News, and I found this interesting. So Ricketts fought for nearly five years to drop the taxed appraisal of his vast mansion in Omaha, the most expensive ever sold in the city, appealing the county equalization board that sets the property taxes. He appealed it every year until it dropped the appraised value of the mansion he bought for $6.5 million to $4 million. The county was forced to pay Ricketts

a $62,700 tax refund in 2003. What? So they had to drop the appraised value to $2.5 million below what he actually bought it for, which just shows you how local government works when you have a billionaire throwing his dick around. Wait a second.

Am I hearing a pattern here, guys? Because I'm pretty sure this is a situation where government is being manipulated by a billionaire. I'm pretty sure that this is what's going on. Well, we did just have one try to build a tower here with two helicopter pads. Two helicopter pads. Good.

At least the option for two people to land a tower here with two helicopter pads. Two helicopter pads. Good. At least the option for two people to land is... Thankfully, it was canceled. Oh, no. But so he... And what happened to all that gold under the World Trade Center? You're just daring the sirens to come here, aren't you? Is that what you're calling them now? But so I guess

like... I don't know what we're... Um, so I guess to like, uh, kind of round this out, we can kind of go through some of his emails and, uh, just say, you know, he bought his family but... Should we close that? No, close it. There's a lot of sirens today. I just want to make that clear.

Usually there are not this many police sirens, and we wouldn't have this issue. Five stars. That's okay. The episode's particularly hot today. That's okay. In order to round out his biography, we mentioned he gets into DNA Info, local press.

He shuts DNA Info, local press. He shuts DNA Info and Gothamness down when they attempt to unionize. And again, throughout his emails, this man has a pathological terror of unions. And he even says when he shuts down Gothamness and DNA Info that he says unions promote an us-versus-them mentality and destroy the spirit decor of a, of a business. And again, it's of course illegal to shut down a company or fire people because of unionization, but the law is so toothless that it doesn't matter.

He can straight up come out and say that. But so, you know, and we mentioned he, I'm good that he headed off that us versus them mentality by shutting down the company um but so he so he he leaves you know active management of td ameritrade he's bored he's bouncing from venture to venture he even uh starts bored yeah he starts up a movie company they make like some uh historical movie about like this woman who like housed um the guy who shot Lincoln, and then she was hanged.

I think Mary Stewart. If you shoot our president, we will hang the owner of the last boarding house you stayed in. So he makes these movies. He raises bison. They sell bison burgers at the Chicago Cubs games, as we might have mentioned. But essentially, the emails that are leaked, and of course, the family buys the Cubs in 2009.

The emails that are leaked by Splinter and Deadspin are a very interesting look into this guy. We mentioned, you know, the grifting and these sorts of stuff. But I would just like to kind of like, there's a very fascinating thing with um old people using the computer where he has like he has a right-hand man named alfred levitt you know he's like emphasis on levitt he has a right-hand man uh and so this guy runs like the hugo enterprise is like their llc holding company but he also just like emails him about the dumbest shit. Like he emails him in 2012, Joe Ricketts emails Alfred Levitt,

what is Yelp? What is Punchard? So he just emails him shit that a normal person would Google. He also asks him in 2010, why would other sites link to us and would we link other sites on ours? Just like... Billionaire is useless. That's a real internet entrepreneur right there.

I just love the amount of stupidity in a question like, what is Yelp? But so I guess with the time we have left, I just wanted to go through some of these emails that Splinter News got that leaked to them. What do you think, Bill Corbett?ett hey you can see the cubs losing yeah not anymore they put up a giant video screen so you can't see them lose of the nearby rooftops um but so the emails are pretty fascinating we won't have time to go through all of them but i do recommend if you want to get inside the mind of a billionaire to look up what Splinter News and also Deadspin got with regard to the Cubs purchase.

But so just to kind of like go through some of these emails in not necessarily chronological order, but subject order. In 2013, the tape of Paula Deen saying the N-word or the story that she said the N-word came out. So Joe Ricketts emails Paula Deen's the N-word or the story that she said the N-word came out. So Joe Ricketts emails Paula Deen's agent to say, quote, Joe Ricketts says, quote, the next time she would be in New York, I can have my DNA info

reporter write an article for our publication that would have a headline something like, quote, Paula Deen is not racist or Paula Deen is not a bigot unquote. I like how DNA info it's mostly like you know hyper local updates like oh they're they're shutting down the R train to fix it after Sandy and Paula Deen is not a racist. But yeah like I mentioned the taco truck thing earlier what he actually says he sends the editor

in chief of dna info a message in 2011 saying quote i'm not sure the opinion in the taco truck article was correct i'll bet many neighbors didn't want the truck there are we hiring too many bleeding hearts question mark and um and it's interesting like you know you just you feel the editor-in-chief's pain where she has to like send back this very detailed two-page thing being like joe we respect your contribution to the newsroom and uh we know you're committed to just the truth and hard-hitting reporting no editorializing and that's why we make such a good partnership and you know we believe in those values too and then she kind of goes through like they quoted several different neighbors and

actually didn't insert their own opinions into this article and you know just like that kind of stuff you know but um but i guess so like and that moves us on to unions so again like he really is terrified of unions but it's kind of fascinating where his idea, it's like he builds them up as the only bogeyman keeping him back, but it's so clear that his class at this point in time had destroyed unions, you know? Like, they're very weak. And so he writes

in October 2012, in the last 40 years, the Democratic Party has been taken over by the unions, and the kooks are now in charge. The grand old party of people. Yogi was using that word. The grand old party of people like Jean Kirkpatrick and Jack Kennedy is gone. I call the Democratic Party a subsidiary of the unions. And he says that over the last 40 years. But if you look at 40 years ago union

participation rate 35 at the time he's writing this six percent for the private sector so it's like his history is exactly backwards of what's actually happening in reality look at trade unionization rates during clinton yeah yeah no i mean he's obama he's saying the democratic party has been taken over by the unions in the last 40 years i mean the guy's a fucking idiot but of course you know he's a billionaire and he has like this bugaboo like you know what he writes july 4th 2009 email to his children for the first time in my life i am afraid of my government like this is a billionaire who's just like got all this uh fear in his head you know partly from

right-wing media but just like his own time in paranoia yeah exactly he's not working anymore so he's just like sending out these crazy emails um but so just like continuing on the union thing and and i'll try to truncate this a bit but again this stuff is so fascinating to me he emails a woman named Gretchen K. Hamill, who's a political strategist who appears on Fox News frequently. She's also a director, executive director of Public Notice, which is a right-wing policy think tank. This is from Splinter News. So he, yes? Never mind. He emails her February 2010. He says this, I would like to have a book written describing the national

policies advocated by unions and why they are not good for our nation. I need a provocative title. Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks. Then about a month later, she emails him back with this list of like 20 titles. I just want to go through some of them.

One of them she suggests is, Busted! The Truth About Unions in the US. Then in them she suggests is, Busted, the truth about unions in the U.S. And then in brackets she puts, A playoff union busting. Busted, the truth about ghost busting. Busted, the truth about your face. But she also... Okay, Sean's very sensitive about his face.

She also includes as titles, dividing our union unions destroying our unions our unions destroying the union what unions are doing to the union uh nine to five how Americans actually how unions actually undermine the American worker unions against our economy? How unions are anti-intersectional? Parentheses, a math pun. Parentheses, as in set theory. Thomas Friedman, what do you think about unions? Well, suck on this.

Flying airplanes into the World Trade Center? That's okay. Friedman, what do you think about union busting? Wrapping yourself with dynamite and blowing up Israelis in a pizza parlor? Replace Israelis with Tories. That's not what we asked for, but wow. I mean, you know what? He gives you results.

For the people, but not for the union. The truth behind the union. What unions are doing to the U.S. And again, this is like 20 just dumb names, but she's getting a check for like thirty thousand dollars from him to say this so it just kind of illustrates what the actual right-wing grift is and um one last thing about the unions before we get into the real she got thirty thousand dollars for that list we don't know exactly how much he paid her but he paid the guy who didn't write the union book because this is where we mentioned earlier he's soliciting titles for this guy, I think Mark Mix, to write this anti-union book.

And he pays him at least $65,000, and then the book, to the best of my knowledge, was never delivered. It doesn't exist. Are they hiring? So one last thing. He gets some forward about unions from another person and he says my tax dollars

go to the government which in turn pay the public employees which in turn pay my dollars to the unions which then use the money to support candidates that I do not want it is a crime and in a roundabout way makes me a slave. We should pass a law

not allowing public service unions as they are a disservice to taxpaying citizens. Jeff, who is 65, thought he didn't really need to forward this email to 10 other people for good luck. And later, his wife found him dead in his car

of carbon monoxide poisoning. With a hose she did not recognize. But we were talking about slavery earlier. But this billionaire believes that because his tax dollars support public sector activities where there are public sector unions, that makes him a slave. Because the public sector unions donate makes him a slave. Because the public sector unions donate to candidates and enslave him. Yeah, I mean, he's got to email people about Yelp.

He doesn't know how to live, guy. He doesn't know how to live. That's okay. But so, I guess I want to just go through Two of these old man conspiracy emails And the payoff This might take a second to set up

Damn Sean how much research you got It's worth it okay Stick with me Stick with me when I say that he got a chain email On March 2010 And the subject line is I just couldn't help myself I had to send this one.

John Smith started the day. Was he like crouching with his hand in his fist? Yeah. Yeah. John Smith started the day early, having set his alarm clock, made in Japan for 6 a.m. While his coffee pot made in China was perking,

he shaved with his electric razor made in Hong Kong. He put on a dress shirt made in Sri Lanka, designer jeans made in Singapore, and tennis shoes made in Korea. After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet made in India, he sat down with his calculator made in Mexico to see how much he could spend today after setting his watch made in Taiwan to the radio made in India, he got in his car made in Germany, filled it with gas from Saudi Arabia, continued his search for a good paying American job. At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his computer made in Malaysia, John decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals made in Brazil, poured himself a glass of wine made in France, and turned on his TV made in Indonesia, and then wondered why he can't find a good-paying job in America. And now he's...

All caps. And now he's hoping he can get help from a president made in Kenya. Murder. Y'all gotta keep this one circulating, please. Wait, Sean, and what was that man's name? John Smith. Albert Einstein. And then Joe Ricketts sends a one-sentence response to this chain email.

Yeah, this is because of unions. But so, you know, other, like, again, I guess we were kind of truncating, so we don't have time to go through all this, but there's another racist email that suggests that Obamacare is implementing a dimmytax on non-muslims that obamacare has what what's that called am i pronouncing that wrong where uh non-muslims in muslim governments it's a tax for ashton kutcher they have to pay you have to pay it when you marry and divorced anymore non-muslims have to pay a tax in in muslim countries so that was like hidden within obamacare wait non-muslims also have to pay a tax in Muslim countries. So that was like hidden within Obamacare. Wait, non-Muslims also have to pay a tax in this country.

Yeah, but they have to pay a higher tax for being non-Muslim. Let me tell you about Sharia law. He says... Is that a singer? There's another chain email. It's Jude Law's daughter. Sharia law. There's another chain email that says uh the obamacare has exemptions from the

penalties for all muslims uh barack obama another chain email says barack obama has instructed the post office to issue a muslim stamp and it suggests that people go into the post offices and tell the clerk specifically i I do not want the Muslim stamp. There's another one where it's some fake viral speech Kramer made. This is after Kramer was saying the N-word at a stand-up comedy club. Michael Richards. Yeah, Michael Richards. So it's a viral speech he made at his court appearance, which of course didn't happen.

I'm just imagining people going into post offices saying, I do not want the Muslim stamp. And just like over weeks, there are just more and more Muslim stamps coming in until it's like all the shelves are overflowing with the Muslim stamps and they're like, everyone's saying they don't want them. This is like

Joe Ricketts' response, like, it's fucked up. I went to ask them, don't give me the Muslim stamp, but they were all closed for Friday prayers. The Muslim stamp is just Muhammad Ali. But so there's a viral, it's like a fake thing that Kramer said in court after he said the N-word about like, so when we call you N-word it's racist but when

you call us cracker honky it's not racist and there's no white history month and joe ricketts is like some generic this is great thanks for sharing those spots but um god i just that man's name yeah cosmo einstein so he gets like i just want to share one more of these he gets a chain email subject line regarding what the reply what the fire chief said and it goes this one is really priceless what the fire chief said a Mexican family of six all welfare recipients and gang members lived on the first floor they died an islamic group of seven welfare cheats all illegally in the country from kenya lived on the second floor and they too all perished in the fire six la hispanic gang bangers ex-con and ex-cons lived on the third floor and they

too died a lone white couple lived on the top floor the couple survived the fire jesse jackson john burris and al sharpton were furious they flew into la to meet with the fire chief on camera they loudly demanded to know why the blacks black muslims and hispanics all died in the fire and why the only white couple lived the fire chief said quote airplanes into the World Trade Center, that's okay. The fire chief said, quote, they were at work. And then Joe Ricketts replies, very good. This guy sucks.

It's like everyone knows that a person with time and money will eventually have obsessive hobbies that they can't get out of. But this guy's obsessive hobby is just forwarding shitty emails. I'm confused. Is this like a mixed-use building?

And so, you know, and it kind of goes on like this. Like, Joe Ricketts got attention in 2012 for, like, some racist campaign that we're going to launch against Obama, where part of the discussion is like yeah we got to get a black narrator and we should get some black groups to like come out and say this ad is good to push back against the allegations that this is racist and you know so I mean it kind of goes on and on about just all the kind of like racist different fever dreams that he has uh within uh his and his mind. He's called Islam an enemy of the West in a different one. I guess Joe Ricketts says in May 2012, please let me give you my regarding radical Islam.

Please let me give you my thoughts and attitudes. I'm very conservative and selfish. As I look at this as protecting my family, I consider the worst that can happen and develop my attitude. Due to the radical aspect of Islam, we cannot, caps, let Iran have the nuclear bomb. We must destroy this ability with whatever we have to do. Christians and Jews can have a mutual respect for each other and create a civil society. As you know, Islam cannot do that.

Therefore, we cannot ever let Islam become a large part of our society. Muslims are naturally my, parentheses, our enemy due to their deep antagonism and biased against non-Muslims. I'm giving some consideration to having a book written with the title, quote, Islam, Religion or Cult. It would describe, and if any of you

are looking for $65,000 not to write that book, hit up Joe Ricketts it would describe it would describe many things about Islam but most importantly describe and define where Islam crosses the line from a religion to a cult now I wouldn't lower myself to writing that way so I would do the illustrations Sam Harris wrote that yeah he he managed to talk to Joe Ricketts up to 75,000

we must all recognize it's sad that Dawkins lost the bidding war on that one we must all recognize the Islam the Islam is a dangerous element in our society due to its radical elements aspects but I guess

one last email to close this out I know I could read these all day. I'm sorry if they weren't as captivating to you as they were to me. I mean, www.whatthefuck.com. It's just one of those things where it's like, yeah, these emails are eye-opening, but they're also just like these are just the rantings of a madman. It's like I could listen to conspiracy theorists from a billionaire or a homeless person, but at the end of the day, I'm just going to be like,

this all just sounds crazy. It's a madman that controls a larger chunk of the economy than any one of us will ever in our lifetimes and has a massive degree of influence over the lives of people worldwide. Right, his son is the governor of nebraska his um his other son was trump wanted to appoint him deputy commerce secretary but uh they backed out because of conflict of interest or other reasons um you know his daughter was an obama

bundler interestingly enough um but so wait was she like the black sheep then Yeah the rest of the family is all like Conservative idiots Though his governor Son does like send him an email once being like Dad you should look at this on snopes.com Because he forwarded One of the fucking idiotic Emails to the rest of his family

But so I guess Where I wanted to close this is As we mentioned in 2009, they buy the Chicago Cubs and, uh, you might've heard on the previous email there where he talks about, um, all the, uh, welfare people burning in the fire. Well, so an interesting thing happens when he buys the Chicago Cubs is that initially the city of Chicago under then mayor Rahm Emanuel was going to implement that policy, was going to give him like $200 million taxpayer subsidy for the

Chicago Cubs stadium. But then it comes out in the New York Times that he wants to launch this racist multi-million dollar campaign against Obama. So Rahm Emanuel backs away from the idea. And there's like a family email chain about Rahm Emanuel making comments like telling some paper that when I first started the discussion, they wanted $200 million in taxpayer dollars. I said no. Then they wanted $150 million. I said no. And then he keeps going down and saying I'm not giving them – Emanuel is pretending that he's not going to give them any taxpayer money or at least telling the paper that.

Right. And so they're passing this around on a on a family email chain. And Todd Ricketts says, I just hate the thought of Tom having to grovel to this guy and put to put money into a building. We already own two hundred million dollars, Chicago taxpayer money. And then from Joe Ricketts to the rest of the kids, yes, Todd, it makes me sad. It hurts my feelings to see Tom treat it this way. He is way superior to the mayor in every way. I have been brought up to deplore the type of value system

adopted by the mayor of Chicago. That is stating it mildly. So again, this guy talks about how welfare and dependency and unions are destroying our country But of course, he has no problem feeling entitled to 200 fucking million dollars of taxpayer money I wonder how he feels about 10% of the Chicago aldermen being DSA members I want to get his opinion on that I wonder what he means by the uh values of uh from emmanuel um yogi

um and i guess like it should just be noted there was a federal income tax credit for 20 of the cubs renovation that the ricketts family uh paid for They also get a class L property tax incentive from Cook County. They can get their assessment values reduced during a 12 year plan is from CNN 10% for the first 10 years, 15% years, 11, 20% years, 12.

So essentially there is like a bunch of taxpayer or public money going into the Chicago Cubs regardless. So it is just one of those things where it's like, when we talk about welfare in this country, primarily it is for the rich. You know, it's the bank bailouts. It's the 401K pushing all these individuals into the stock market so they have to pay, you know, whatever brokerage fees.

It's, you know, again, the public money for stadiums like the Cubs Stadium, Wrigley Field that the Ricketts own. We just, we view, like at a profound level, we view the people who are the takers are the providers. And the providers, the workers, are suddenly the takers, basically. Yep. Of public resources and wealth. And it is just something where it's like, this is what our media reinforces. If you look at Fox News, it's always talking about these welfare cheats that fucking ricketts gets himself worked up about

but it's never talking about like the people getting public money who are at the top of the pyramid and so ricketts feels perfectly comfortable emailing and saying oh the unions are taking over when they're not or he feels perfectly comfortable emailing uh and saying like it's so disgraceful imagining you know uh mayor emmanuel making tom Grovel for this public money we're entitled to because we own the building. And there's no contradiction in his head because he's so completely convinced himself that what he's doing is different. And that's intentional and that's part of the thing. And I guess one other thing to close it out. He writes an official blog post in 2017, Joe Ricketts does.

And he talks about the opiate crisis. And he says this, almost half of the 7 million prime working age men who have dropped out of the workforce report that they take pain medication. Among those who collect disability benefits, rates are much higher. You might be asking yourself, how is it possible that people who are unemployed can pay for painkillers? The answer is that you, me, and our neighbors are bankrolling them with our tax dollars. And the idea is that these unemployed people have nothing to do so they get on painkillers as opposed to

sharing racist conspiracy emails about the president and convincing themselves that there's a Muslim stamp coming and that they should harass some clerk making $15 an hour about how you don't want Sharia law implemented on your envelopes.

And with that, this has been Grubstickers. I'm Yogi Poliwag. I'm Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffries. Sean P. McCarthy. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week. All right, let's do an intro right now.

That's okay. I'm in a timeout because apparently riding the dog like it's a small horse is frowned upon in this establishment. Luckily, though, you know, I concealed this bad boy underneath my blanket just so I can get on E-Trade. Check my investment portfolio, research stocks. Wait, what? Y-E-T? Oh, I see.

Solitary. Just a man and his thoughts. And a smartphone. With an E-Trade app. Nobody knows. The emails included racist jokes, Islamophobic rants, conspiracy theories, and even referred to Muslims as a natural enemy. The Chicago leader of the Council on American Islamic Relations says it's actually good that those private sentiments are now so public.