It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 93

Episode Date: July 29, 2023

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You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture

in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here

and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Ah, welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast where myself, Garrison Davis, and James Stout

just created a new soon-to-be beloved fiction character racist sherlock holmes and don't worry we're not done workshopping it it's not ready to go public yet but when this bit drops you people are going to lose your minds oh how's everyone doing today much better after learning about racist Sherlock Holmes. No, we didn't learn about him. He burst fully formed from our heads like Athena from the brain of Zeus. Good stuff. Speaking of the Greek and Roman pagan pantheon, James Garrison.

You know who does kind of have the feel of a malevolent spirit in Greek mythology? Is? Ron DeSantis. Yeah, not wrong. Sure. Meatball Ron. Malevolent Ron, that's what they call him. After all my years studying the papyri,

this is, I can confirm. Yeah, Meatball Ron. I have a long essay on my substack about how Meatball Ron and the Egyptian deity Maat are really directly related to one another. But that'll, you can find that on my substack, my Egyptology focused sub stack what's the god of the sun

the god of the sun disc the one they tried to do a monotheism for oh yeah, isn't that Ra? yeah, that one pharaoh I wasn't 100% sure it was Ra I can see DeSantis seeing himself in those terms no, Maat, like Ron DeSantis

I think DeSantis is more of like a horus figure actually yeah yeah i mean no because maat here's the thing maat has wings uh and ron de santis is currently flying over us uh shading us all in the comfort of his of his mighty technicolor wingspan um i'm seeing maat maat looks looks, there's too many colors in these wings. I don't know why we got onto a comparing Ron DeSantis to, this was a mistake. Anyway, Garrison, you just, last week, we closed out on two great episodes about Fashwave

and the adoption and kind of reposting of a lot of these aesthetics that had become popular on the far right via, you know, the dark Brandon memes. And a big part of that was how Ron DeSantis somehow allowed some incredibly internet poisoned Zoomers to make an ad for him that was far too online for a presidential campaign ad. And I felt like it was time to kind of have a discussion about Meatball Ron, because obviously things in Florida are very ugly right now. As a fascist, which he definitely is, Ron DeSantis is an effective administrator, which I mean, he's good at twisting the administrative state that exists into a weapon to attack marginalized groups. He's been effective at that. What's happening legally in the laws, a lot of the anti-trans laws, the anti-drag laws in system is very unsettling. And, you know, that is a, all of that is worthy of further discussion. But I think because the most immediate concern we have

is like, is this guy going to be able to do that on a national scale, right? Which is not to say that we should just let Florida, you know, sink into the abyss. I don't believe that. But at the moment, Ron DeSantis is tied for second place against Donald Trump. So it kind of it behooves us to ask the questions purely for the purpose of self-defense. Can Ron DeSantis win? Right. Could he actually become not even the first question is like, could he become the Republican presidential candidate? Can he beat Donald Trump? And the short, good answer to that is I don't think so. It's not looking good. Not looking good for old Meatball Ron.

Agreed. And I wanted to get into why and kind of some of the fundamental flaws. As a guy who is, there was kind of this belief, fear, I think a reasonable fear among a lot of liberals and folks on the left, that because of how effective he's been at consolidating and expanding his power in Florida, and because he's generally seemed like less of a, like, Donald Trump has certain competences as an authoritarian. There's things he's very good at. But he was not good at being the president. He was not good at using power.

He's not an effective fascist in a lot of ways. He's not an effective fascist, right? Like, he wasn't good at picking people to, like, do things for him. He wasn't good at, he was good at hurting people in a blunt way, but he was kind of incompetent at – like a competent fascist. Hitler was a competent fascist, right? He was not in there long in an elected position before he had effectively made it impossible to oust him without military force. And Trump was never good at doing that stuff, and the worry is that Ron DeSantis would be. The good news is that Ron DeSantis is incompetent

as a politician and a political candidate. So I wanted to kind of start with why a lot of his, the people who do form his base, which is quite shrinking at the moment, he's losing a lot of support, why they thought he was capable of winning the primary and the general. And when you look into kind of why a lot of sort of Republican,

like legacy Republicans, the folks who often get called rhinos, why a lot of them decided to back Ron DeSantis, the best summary you're going to get comes from Phil Huffines, who was a businessman in Texas whose car dealership ran a series of ads that are like plastered forever in the memories of everyone who lived in the DFW area in the late 90s, early 2000s. And in a CNN interview a few days ago, he said this, when one looks objectively at who can beat Biden, it's going to be DeSantis. We already had a match with Biden and Trump. Trump turns out Democrats better than anybody.

DeSantis will be able to articulate more clearly what Republicans stand for, and he's not going to be bogged down in other stuff that Trump brings to the election. Republicans stand for, and he's not going to be bogged down in other stuff that Trump brings to the election. I don't think that was a logical thing to think a year ago, right? Because it is true that Trump turns out the dims. The idea that DeSantis isn't going to get bogged down in shit has become kind of fundamentally silly. He's gotten bogged down in the fact that a lot of his backers are invested in culture war shit that does not sell well on a national level. This whole anti-trans crusade he's on, the anti-woke shit, is not a big vote getter.

It just gets the base behind you. And you're never going to beat Trump in a race to the base. Trump has the core of the hard right Republican Party in his pocket, and they're not going to move on from anybody. DeSantis' hope should have been going after independents, people on the edge, people who are unhappy with Biden. And I think when you pick this sort of hate crusade, it hasn't worked well. But Huffines decided that, yeah, this guy, this is the dude who has a shot. I think he can actually pull it out from Trump. I think he's got the ability to like get a lot of people in the

middle or close to the middle. This has been proven kind of absurd over the last couple of months of stagnating poll numbers. Huffine says that the governor recently held a meeting with about 150 Texas Republicans in Dallas, where he, quote, impressed them with his stamina, youth, and performance in recent Florida state elections. And there's a number of reasons to think that this is a bad strategy, that like really laying on his performance in the last Florida election

is like a good way for him to win support. One of these has to do with the fact that like, Florida is the national watchword for crazy, right? Like the rest of the country. Florida man. Yeah, even a lot of conservatives, when they're talking about madness in America, they talk about Florida.

Like Florida man is an archetype. And yeah, there's a lot of right-wing culture warriors who like Ron's anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT policies, but moderates and swing voters, the people he has a chance of pulling away from Trump, like, if you tell them, I want to make New Hampshire more like Florida, most swing voters are going to be like, that sounds like hell. Like, I don't want to be anything like that place. Like, what a horrible, what a horrible idea. This is a sentiment that you will find among

Republican thought leaders. Quote, one Republican consultant who has worked on presidential campaigns said DeSantis was making a classic governor's mistake by talking extensively about his past accomplishments. Yeah. Put bluntly, people in Ohio or Iowa do not want to be Florida. They don't care about Florida and they are tired of hearing about Florida. Yeah, because he's so reliant on the types of coverage that have come out during the past two years of legislative stuff he's done in Florida. types of coverage that have come out during the past two years of legislative stuff he's done in florida and he's i guess forgetting the overall uh view of that people have of florida divorced from his own administrative uh changes yeah it's not like people are moving in droves to florida because he's defeated the woke menace and he's created a paradise like yeah he's getting high

on his own supply a little bit he's getting high on his own supply it's one thing there's a degree of his campaign that's focused on like what he calls like the florida miracle the fact that florida economically weathered coven pretty well and again this would be a stronger point if like florida's economy was booming and everywhere else was bad but the u.s economy overall in terms of like the numbers that, you know, economists care about at least is like doing reasonably well. And like of the shit that is bad in the US economy, it's not any better. Like inflation is not better, markedly better in Florida than it is in Iowa, right? There's just not a good case to be made. Because like when you're not, when you can't really drive the economic point home, when you can't be like, look at how much better Florida

is doing than your home. You know, it's a, it's a fucking paradise compared drive the economic point home, when you can't be like, look at how much better Florida is doing than your home. It's a fucking paradise compared to the shitty economy in Ohio. That's an argument you can make if there's any evidence for it. But when you're like, you can't really make the economic argument. It all comes down to culture war stuff. And most Americans don't want this culture war shit going on in their backyard because it's like a gross, weird pain in the ass. So right now, the bulk of DeSantis' support comes from higher income old guard Republicans, the kind who were lukewarm for Trump from the beginning and the kind who point out rightfully

that he didn't win against Biden and it's time for new blood. This is true, but current polling indicates it's not what most GOP voters want, which is kind of the big problem the Republicans have is that, and this is why Trump's definitely going to win, you know, as the primary campaign, is that like the hardcore of the GOP cannot be overcome by the moderates because the hardcore is so in lockstep about what they want and what they want is Trump. step about what they want and what they want is Trump. The moderates don't have control of the party, but the moderates are the ones who can like actually win a general election. So yeah, it's a tough situation for them to be in. And one of the things that kind of shows how fucked Ron is, is that like Ron won reelection in Florida in his last gubernatorial campaign by about 20 points a year or so ago. In Florida, Trump currently has a 20-point lead on him. Not great. Not great.

No. That's a disaster. Because again, not only should you be able to bring in your home state as a sitting governor, but it shows that Ron is not popular because of his legislative achievements. He's popular because Florida is just that right wing, right? Like, that's like currently, like the electoral state or status of Florida is very conservative. And so Ron won by an overwhelming margin. But that doesn't mean people love him. They definitely like Trump more than they like him. Bad situation to be in. And a number of early backers in DeSantis's orbit have begun to acknowledge this reality. I'm going to quote from NBC News here. Yeah, there are a number of people grumbling about it, no doubt, a DeSantis donor said. There is an overall sense, including with me, that he just has not ignited the way we thought he would. And I find that really interesting,

because you get versions of that a lot, that we were expecting him to really take off as soon as he started campaigning, and he hasn't. And that was our only strategy. You get this – like if you read interviews with like folks who were in the DeSantis orbit and people because a number of his early backers have like peeled away and rescinded their endorsements and given them to Trump. It was this hope they had that like once – as soon as he out in front of america americans are going to love this guy because he's all the good stuff about trump with none of the baggage and that was just fundamentally disastrously wrong and i think one of the things we're starting to see is that the desantis people didn't have another plan for how to get this guy elected like their plan was that we think that trump's policies are popular but everyone doesn't like

trump and no that's actually not accurate the opposite of true almost like some of them just like trump as a as a person yeah a lot of them don't care about what he's done they like the fact that he owns the libs right they're not he's a character he's he's a compelling character yeah desantis is a void of charisma he he is he is not a compelling character he's actually like he's good at being like an administrator in like like yeah he's like he's very successful in doing bad things he's a guy you make your chief of staff if you're the president or something yeah yeah he's not like he's not a compelling character like the way Trump is. No, and it's – again, it's so fascinating to me. It says a lot about like the degree of bubble that all of the political class are in.

And when I say the political class, I mean the people, the fairly small number of people in the left and the right, liberals and conservatives, who work on political campaigns, right? Because it's actually a pretty small community of people, of the folks who do the different jobs that are running political campaigns and that are like working as the age and legislative assistants and all that stuff for elected leaders. And because to me, to just a guy sitting out there, like I'm worried about Ron because what he's doing in Florida, but from the moment I saw the guy speak, I was like, well, this man has no charisma whatsoever. moment I saw the guy speak, I was like, well, this man has no charisma whatsoever. And if you can't think about like how a guy could attract voters, if there's nothing that seems appealing about a candidate to you, if you can't understand their charisma, that's probably a good sign that they can't get elected. I am not mystified by why any president who has won in my lifetime won, right?

George W. I've been in a room with George W. Bush and watched him spoke and it immediately made sense why people fucking love George W. Bush. He had an attitude. He had an air that put people at ease. He was good at putting on a character that people found appealing in that time and place. There's a reason why so many voters who loved him, you know, especially after the first campaign where it was kind of a – but like there's a reason why he got reelected. Like there's – and it's the same thing with like Bill Clinton, right? You watch old videos of Bill Clinton on the campaign trail before he was president. You can see the charisma.

You can see the way he connects to audiences. You can see the things about him that people find appealing. There's not a mystery. It's not mysterious why Obama got elected. He's a deeply charismatic man. And Joe needed a little bit of help. That's why he lost so many presidential campaigns beforehand. But next to Donald Trump, he seems like a much more appealing person. I'm not mystified, and I'm not mystified by why Trump got elected next to Hillary Clinton. Trump felt not like a politician, not like the same people who would let us down.

There was this, this degree to which like you should never be. You should, if you're looking at like whether or not someone can win an election, you should never be like, well, I don't get it, but I guess maybe they have,

they must have some sort of charisma because everybody's talking about them as a serious candidate. No, I don't get it, but I guess maybe they have, they must have some sort of charisma because everybody's talking about them as a serious candidate. No, honestly, if you can't see anything about appealing about a candidate, then that might be a good sign that they're doomed. And I think DeSantis is fucking doomed. And this is kind of a thing that a lot of his early backers have started to realize. One DeSantis-aligned operative told NBC, from my understanding, if we don't see a bump in the polls, we're basically going to shut down the idea of a national operation. This is really something that we're probably going to see. I wouldn't be surprised if he kind of has a blowout politically pretty early in the primary season next year, because he raised a lot of money earlier in his campaign. He raised about $20 million or so between mid-May and the end of June of this year,

which actually put him ahead fundraising-wise of Trump by about $2 million or so. But the Trump campaign ended last quarter with twice as much cash on hand as Ron, alongside a still dominating lead in the poll. So Ron has raised a lot of money, which kind of speaks to the number of sort of like Republican, you know, institutional backers who hope that he could win where Trump had failed. But he blew all that shit and it didn't get him anything, right? Like he didn't raise a, he crept up a teeny amount in the polls, but he's still like tied for second with Donald Trump, despite blowing all of that money. And I think we're going to

reach a point pretty quickly where if he doesn't immediately take a state or two or three from Trump in the early primaries, any kind of hope he has for further donations is going to dry up, because why would you keep wasting that money? We all saw how much money got wasted trying to take Trump out of the primaries in 2016. I do think people are going to be a little more gun-shy this time. There have already been a number of recent layoffs of major staffers by DeSantis. He's kind of purged a big chunk of the people who started his campaign. One of the things that's a little interesting about him and his political career is that as a politician, he has always been kind of noted as kind of weird

within Florida politics because every election he's had, he's had an entirely new team of people. He does not work with the same people twice. He does not have like bring people back for his campaigns, which is really unusual in US politics for a successful politician. When you win, you tend to bring him back a lot of the same people who helped you win the last time. And so the fact that Ron doesn't do that, that he's like got such basically 100% churn in his teams, suggests a couple of things. One, he's not great to work with.

And two, the people who work with him and have been successful and are good don't see him as someone with national potential, right? They don't wanna keep working with him because then they get kind of trapped in the loop of being a DeSantis guy. They want to move on somewhere else because they think governor is as high as this guy can go.

You know, like that is kind of one of the things that you see when you note this dude has such total turnover in his fucking teams. Now, again, for all of the money that he spent, Ron's polling numbers have changed basically nil from when he announced his candidacy. According to New York Magazine, kind of collated a bunch of this together. In the Real Clear Politics average of polls starting July 1st, 2022, Trump had a 34-point lead over Ron DeSantis and 52.8% of the vote in national surveys, with DeSantis at 18.5%.

At present, he's got Trump's lead over DeSantis. So a year ago, Trump had a 34-point lead over DeSantis. Now he's at 32, which is not the speed of movement that you want to see after a year of effectively campaigning. On the national surveys, DeSantis has gone from 18.5% to about 21%, which again, is just kind of like a disastrous rate of change. Now, this is just one poll. There's potentially outliers here. I've seen other polls that show DeSantis at more like 12% and tied with Vivek Ramaswamy, who is another GOP candidate.

Like the fact that Vivek, who is not nearly the kind of national name that DeSantis is, is tied with him in some polls now is fucking disastrous. He and Trump are pretty close in terms of funding. Vivek has raised only a fraction of what DeSantis has raised. So that's a pretty bad sign. Kind of a fucking disaster. One major area in which Ron lags behind Trump is his ability to draw interest in what amounts to free advertising from the media. Trump famously got about a billion dollars in free publicity in 2016 thanks to relentless media coverage of his every move, gaffe, and speech.

He understood it didn't matter if it was negative. It didn't matter that they were shit-talking me. What matters is that they're keeping my face out front, right? This is a thing that will bring me support. It will bring me donors. It will make my supporters see me as like this kind of gladiator fighting for them. He leaned into this shit. On the surface, Ron and Trump are kind of the same in their approach to the media, and that if you

go to a DeSantis speech, you go to a Trump speech, they're going to call the media the enemy of the people or some variant thereof. They're going to talk about the need to control the press. They're going to support authoritarian measures against the free press. Again, if you're kind of just looking on the surface, it seems like they have the same attitude towards the media. But the way they treat journalists is completely different in that DeSantis has no strategy with the media. He just attacks them. If you're, if you're right wing media, if you're some podcaster he likes, he'll go on your show, he'll talk to you. But he ignores the liberal media. He ignores the mainstream media. But that's different from having a tactic for dealing with them. Trump has a strategy with the media. He

will howl that they're the enemy of the people in front of crowds. He'll talk about locking up journalists. But if you read articles about him after a speech or whatever, he always gives the press their time. He knows a lot of these guys by name. He has relationships with reporters. He's had relationships with like Maggie Haberman of the times. He's he's able to be like friendly with these people and social with them, which isn't like doesn't make it's not doing that to be a good person. He's doing it because like he wants them to feel comfortable around him and cover him. And like and this is this is the thing that he's been doing longer than he's been a politician. Like Trump is primarily a media guy. He is

someone who's been able to very successfully manipulate public image and manipulate media in his favor for years, especially as he's not a good businessman. He's a con man who's really good with media. So he knows how to do this. DeSantis has none

of this background, So he's just trying to copy like the, the hostile vibe of Trump without understanding the actual like media backing that Trump puts into his, uh, into his like relationship with, uh, with like, with like advertising and with having, you know, any, any amount of coverage that will get Republicans be like, oh, this is a guy that's worth voting for. Yeah. And will also that will, the kind of coverage that will make independents pay attention to him, right?

A big thing, part of how a lot of negative media coverage worked for Trump is that people would just see his name in the fucking news. And, you know, so they would wind up reading and listening to a lot of what he had to say. And because like, you know, he's getting so much coverage, and because all of these media outlets want to present the image of being unfair and unbiased, when Trump would go out and sit down with the New York Times, sit down with the Post, sit down with... He would often get coverage that let him say his piece, let him make his case, because they didn't want to feel like they were being biased, and he was giving them some of his

time. But when you just cut the media off like DeSantis has done, you don't get that from them. You don't get any of the benefit of this sort of idea of impartiality, which cuts down on your ability to actually reach people who might be converted to vote for you. This is highlighted particularly well in a segment from a recent New York Times article

on DeSantis' difficulty getting press coverage. Quote, assigned to cover the re-election campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, Miles Cohen, a young ABC News reporter, found himself stymied. The governor would not grant him an interview. Aides barred him from some campaign events and interrupted his conversations with supporters. When Mr. Cohen was finally able to ask a question about the governor's handling of Hurricane Ian, Mr. DeSantis shouted him down, Stop! Stop! Stop! and scolded the media for trying to cast aspersions.

The DeSantis campaign then taunted Mr. Cohen on Twitter, prompting a torrent of online vitriol. So on election night, Mr. Cohen decamped to a friendlier environment for the news media, Mar-a-Lago, where former President Donald J. Trump greeted reporters by name. He came up to us, asked how the sandwiches were, and took 20 questions, Mr. Cohen recalled. Mr. Trump, who heckled the fake news in his speech that evening, elevated media bashing into a high art for Republicans. But ahead of the next presidential race, potential candidates like Mr. DeSantis are taking a more radical approach, not just attacking nonpartisan news sources, but out ignoring them altogether. And yeah, I think that kind of like gets at the core

of what a bad strategy this is. And it shows all of the Republicans right now because of Trump's success in 2016, which we do have to remember was not based on converting a majority of Americans. It was based in part on like the electoral system and just raw luck that shit broke the way it did. But they are looking at like his success in 2016 and trying to copy that. But it's like a cargo cult thing, right? They don't actually understand what he did that worked. They see him bashing the media in his speeches. They're like, well, I'm gonna be even harder.

I'm not gonna talk to the media at all. And it's like, well, you have eliminated for yourself the primary benefit that Trump drew out from this. Yeah, I think the cargo cult description is great. They're trying to have the appearance of doing the Trump thing without understanding why the thing worked. And also importantly, it's not like 2016 anymore. As much as it feels like 2016 was the year that never ended, actually a lot has changed.

And also a lot of media has gotten a bit wise to the tactics that that trump did like they're no longer going to be blasting all of his speeches every time he says something outrageous because they know that's part of his strategy so yeah the same tactics if if desantis thinks he's going to get publicity for saying some horrible thing in his speech the media knows what's up now like they've they've already seen this like playbook get played. It's not like it's, you can't treat it like it's eight years ago. Yeah, I think a good example of this is in 2016, if it had come out, if Joe Biden had been the front writer, say he beats Hillary Clinton, but everything else is the same.

So he's the Democratic primary guy. Say it comes out that his son has been smoking crack with prostitutes and like there's pictures of his hog everywhere and he was involved and so he gets charges against him for committing a couple of crimes. That might sink a presidential campaign in 2016. Nobody gives a shit about Hunter Biden. Like zero moderates. Not a single vote is being changed as a result of the Hunter Biden situation in 2024. It's a different landscape. And these people people haven't this is a good thing i am frightened for when a new you know there's another coup in conservative politics and somebody understands that it's a different year

um yeah yeah but we are we are fortunate at this moment And you know who else is fortunate? Who's that, Robert? The sponsors of this podcast. They're fortunate to have great pitchmen like James Stout. James, why don't you tell the people which Mealbox subscription will finally cure the gnawing pit of anxiety at the center of their life and bring them both peace and the love of Jesus Christ? Yeah, absolutely. We're probably going to have to bleat some shit out here.

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Yeah, absolutely. Well, the reason Jesus actually rose from the dead was to consume a breakfast made by Blue Apron. Jesus, big omelet guy. Huge omelet guy. Anyway, I don't know. That's not really a joke. So Ron DeSantis has long ignored any media not guaranteed to be fawningly indulgent of him for political reasons. This worked well in Florida. He's been able to get by by attacking centrist and liberal media and embracing a constellation of far-right podcasters and Fox News.

But Florida is not the United States, and a governor's race is not a federal election. He simply can't succeed against Trump with the same tactics that worked in Florida's or against Florida's anemic state Democratic Party. that worked in Florida's, or against Florida's, anemic state Democratic Party. When he's tried to rebuke the naysayers who see his cause as largely doomed, DeSantis has tried to publicly downplay the significance of national polls.

This is one of my favorite things. Whenever people point out, like, your polls have not moved in a year and you've spent millions and millions of dollars, he'll be like, I don't trust those polls. Those polls don't really matter. You can't trust the poll. Look at how wrong the polls were in 2016. He's called articles i've seen him use that line a lot

look yeah look how wrong the polls were in 2016 okay ron yeah i uh i don't think they were not off by 34 points yeah uh you can see clearly how he's making his case currently to donors in private because a memo that he sent out to a bunch of his high-dollar donors leaked recently. There's been a number of websites that have written about it, but we have this memo, which is fascinating. It was sent out to a bunch of big-dollar donors to a super PAC. So these are the people who are not limited by campaign contributions because it's to a super PAC. So these are like the thick pockets people. So we get an idea of how he is marketing his campaign right now that it's in a crisis.

And it starts with a state of the race update with a subtitle, The Ballot is Very Fluid. Early state voters are only softly committed to the candidates they select on a ballot question this far out, including many Trump supporters. Our focus group participants in the early states even say they don't plan on making up their mind until they meet the candidates or watch them debate. While we know Trump's floor is 25%, that leaves three quarters of the electorate willing to consider other viable options. What has not changed are the candidates who are realistically

being courted by the electorate. As it has been for the last year, Trump and DeSantis remain the only viable options for two-thirds of the likely Republican primary electorate. While Tim Scott has earned a serious look at this stage, his bio is lacking the fight that our electorate is looking for in the next president. We expect Tim Scott to receive appropriate scrutiny in the weeks ahead. We found low to no interest in Vivek, Burgum, and Nikki, while too many voters will not consider Pence or Christie for them to be remotely viable. Now, I agree about Pence and Christie.

Neither of those people is going to be the primary candidate. But again, Vivek in some polls is right up there with Ron DeSantis. So note that neither of them's going to win. Great, great sign. Yeah. The memo goes on to note

and to sort of admit that their efforts in other primary states have hit a wall. And they're basically like, Great sign. largely that they don't think they can win in those other early states, and they know they desperately need an early win to have any hope of building up momentum. Yeah, language like this from the memo has to have experienced Republican politicos nervous. While Super Tuesday is critically important, we will not dedicate resources to Super Tuesday that slow our momentum in New Hampshire. We expect to revisit this investment in the fall. I'm sure you will. Not a great sign, guys.

The memo also... I'm sure you'll be revisiting a lot of things in the fall. Yeah. The memo also claims Governor DeSantis and his message are thriving in town hall engagements. So basically, when Ron gets in front of people, they see his magnetic charisma. They really like him once he gets a chance to shine in front of them. Now, there's been no evidence in polling.

He's been in front of people quite a bit, and he's not very impressive. Most of the social media response to his public appearances have been people making fun of the way he eats in public. Like, there's like six or seven different videos out that are him trying to eat something and looking like a goober and people making fun of the way he eats in public like there's like six or seven different videos out that are him trying to eat something and looking like a goober and people making fun of him whereas

like again trump has because he's actually charismatic trump can like sit in a truck and look like a doofus playing truck driver and everybody's like look at that guy even people who hate him are like well that's kind of endearing. Look at him. He's honking the horn. He's pretending to be a big truck driver. You know, Meatball Ron. I mean, we call him Meatball Ron because of a food-related gaffe. Putting Ron to. Putting Ron to. He's just a disaster in public.

There are some useful bits in this leaked document. This is the part of the document where the DeSantis campaign is, is like trying to lay out what they see as his assets as a candidate. And again, the goal of this is to get big dollar donors to give him more money. So this is them making the case as to why Ron is worth further investment. We found that when voters hear about the governor's bio, principally as a dad and as a veteran, they like him and are open to hearing more about him. This is to say nothing of his successes on parental rights, his leadership bringing Florida's economy back during and after COVID, fighting illegal immigration and ensuring border act security.

That he's not just a fighter, but most importantly, a winner. A major paid media effort featuring the governor's bio will help us to convert. Three big issues that, you know, that's again, so the three big issues he's he's highlighting that he says like these are the things that are going to get voters onto us enough of them that we can overcome trump's 25 floor are anti-immigration stuff well i'm sorry man trump's got you beat there the wall is his right uh desantis has tried to go one step further i don't know if you saw his press conference in texas whereated- The birthright citizenship thing.

No, just shooting people. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he said, quote, drop a few of them. Yeah, he's trying to, but again, he just talked about what's interesting to me. He opens this memo by starting like, look, Trump's got a 25% floor of support, but there's that other three quarters of people we can get.

And yet, when you are talking about gunning people down at the border, you're just trying to take that 25% from Trump. You are not reaching out to the people who are less maniac, right? Again, it's just bad strategy. It's a bad strategy within the context of what his people have laid out as a strategy right like if the good strategy is go for the other 75 of the voters well you probably don't do that by promising to be even harder on the border yeah anyway and he doesn't really even have like obviously trump didn't have a coherent border policy either, but he had a thing,

right? Like he had a sort of shiny thing that he had three words that were very powerful. Build the wall. And you know, if DeSantis thinks Americans are ready for shoot them all, right. You can try that, but he's not,

he's like trying to do this weasel. Anyway, it's just not, there's just not any evidence of an actual tactic there of an understanding of like what people find appealing and how to highlight it. He's not doing it yet. He's not, he's not, if you're a donor, he's not exhibiting the idea that he knows how to copy what Trump did and do it one better. Like your goal here, if you're running against Trump, based on kind of what they lay out as what their strategy needs to be, which is get the other 75 percent of people to back us instead of Trump, you need to be – you don't need to be yes-anding.

You are acknowledging by laying that out as the strategy that Trump, his appeal is – he's got a dedicated base of appeal, but it's limited. base of appeal, but it's limited. And so if you are trying to make the case that you're more electable than him, you need to show how you have a wider base of like a wider appeal than he does. And you don't do that by being like, I'm even shittier on the border. Like, anyway, just a bad strategy. Since he doesn't have a strong case to make an absolute numbers, Ron's campaign has made the call to push heavily on the forgotten man narrative, arguing a soft conspiratorial view that a cabal of shady elites is colluding to ruin American greatness. Here's another quote from that memo. Equally important, we will offer an economic message to disrupt and win economy voters.

American decline was not an accident. It was a choice. Our elites do not consider themselves Americans so much as they think of themselves as citizens of the world. Their loyalty is not to a discreet nation, but to the bottom line on a balance sheet. And the decisions they made in leading this country

over the past few decades has reflected that worldview. They have governed in their interests rather than ours. And I do think there's a germ of something interesting there. There's this idea of like economic populism, which was a factor in trump's campaign it's interesting to me how close ron's idea is to like outright anti-semitic conspiracy theory language like yeah they don't recognize borders uh they're citizens of the world which is a you know very similar to a lot of the arguments that like the naz the Nazis would make about the Jews, is that they're a borderless people who exist within this financial system rather than our national co-citizens. It's interesting to me that he's got this in that memo.

Again, I don't think it's a good strategy. I think the way Trump – Trump's just better at doing this, right? At like, he's made himself like, there's a lot of people who consider Trump like their kind of guy, like a working class dude, even though he's a billionaire with a gold toilet. I don't see that DeSantis has the ability to like win that kind of support from working people. No, he tried really hard to go to push his like his military record as part of a like yeah sort of i'm a normal dude kind of thing but it doesn't

seem to have stuck the landing at all like again he just yeah i just did it in a clumsy and an awkward way yeah i mean in part because like the thing he's got to hang on like that he was this fucking dude doing sketchy shit at Guantanamo. Isn't like even conservatives don't feel great about that. Right. Yeah. He tried earlier to push, like he was a legal,

he was a JAG officer, like attached to a SEAL team. Yeah. He tried to call himself a SEAL. Yeah. I think he, like, I think he flew a little bit too close to the sun on that one.

And again, like he fucked up and alienated the people he was trying to appeal to. And I also, I do kind of wonder, it was sort of taken as read for some time that having military experience was a positive aspect in a campaign, that it would win you a lot of conservative voters and whatnot.

I don't know that that's really the case anymore uh i don't see a lot of evidence for it like people certainly like shout it when they serve but i don't know that it really works for them yeah i think that's more of a like a i don't know if i'm using the right phrasing here like a traditional republican value not like a post-trump republican value because trump is like on record as being like no only idiots serving the military i'm a smart man and like that didn't seem to hurt him at all um but you know who else hates veterans oh yeah several of the uh the food box delivery companies they actually they just won't give them food they are they are, every one of our supporters is wiping their ass with whatever

flag the Navy uses. I assume they have a flag, right? Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah. Special Navy flag. It works underwater too. Very special flag. That's good. That's good. An underwater flag. That's what we need to bring nationalism to the fish. We're back. So I wanted to close out by kind of looking at a segment of DeSantis supporters, the fine people behind my favorite reliable media institution, LegalInsurrection.com. Oh, good. Now, this is a kind of libertarian right themed news website. They're like, boy, I do want you to look up LegalInsurrection.com because their website's very interesting.

It starts with this phonetic breakdown of the phrase legal insurrection. That's their logo. That includes a definition, arising up against established authority, rebellion, revolt, inconformity with or permitted by law. That's a nonsense phrase because there's no such thing as a permitted legal insurrection. We had this argument, actually, back in around 1860 and guess where it ended. Like I'm not saying it's bad to have an insurrection. I think some insurrections are potentially really good, but they're never legal.

Otherwise, they're not an insurrection. That's a silly idea. Insurrection is illegality. Yeah. Like one way or the other, I think it's this idea, these people who like pretend to be libertarians, they still have this like sacred sort of reverence for the law. They can't just say like, yeah, I believe in overthrowing the government. No, no, no. What I'm doing is actually obeying the real law. The people in charge are obeying laws that are illegal and fake, but like, I know the real

law. So what I'm not, I'm not a criminal. Like, no, man, just be and fake, but like, I know the real law. So what I'm not, I'm not a criminal. Like, no, man, just be like, yeah, man,

I'm a criminal. I want to, I want to overthrow the government. You know, what's cool is being a criminal who wants to overthrow the government. We all love criminal. This is why star Wars is the biggest movie series. We love criminals who want to overthrow the government.

That's who the founding fathers of this country war. It's a very american thing to love you shouldn't have to be like no but ours is a legal and oh fuck it you're a criminal you're cool you're fucking al capone like yeah it's very very cucked to have a legal insurrection it is very cucked anyway here's an article from legalinsurrection.com who bafflingly backs Ron DeSantis. Florida government Ron DeSantis is serious about restoring executive branch agencies and rebuilding trust with the American people who have been shocked and appalled at the weaponization of government by the Biden administration and before that the Obama administration. The federal government, specifically the executive branch alphabet agencies, has been completely corrupted by the Obama-Biden and now the Biden-Harris administrations. We all know it, and we're all disgusted and disheartened by the myriad ways the Obama administration targeted political

opponents. That's why Trump's 2016 campaign to drain the swamp was so potent. We knew the depth and breadth of the corruption, the partisan, banana-Republic-style attacks on political opponents, and we wanted it stopped. Unfortunately, trump was not able to drain the swamp at all not even a little bit so when biden took office in 2021 he just got to work picking up obama's attacks on dissent with the deep state still fully embedded through the executive branch having spent the intervening years openly working as the resistance to trump's the duly elected president's agenda god it's such first off it's very funny that they're trying to like make the resistance to be anything but like twitter libs uh like i do find it funny that they're like fucking trying to treat this like a boogeyman i'm just yeah like leading the marquee

through the through the i don't know forest of georgia and blowing up fucking train tracks it's extremely amusing to me it's just sad but it does get at something, right? This attitude among a lot of Republicans, particularly the guys who really like DeSantis, that the deep state is really powerful. These federal law enforcement agencies are fundamentally fighting against us, and we have to build an ability to compete with them. And this is, I actually think, we've been mostly talking about the weaknesses and the dumb shit about DeSantis' campaign. I think a strength he has not maybe capitalized on enough is this idea, because this is something Trump proved he was unable to do. Like he didn't go in there and unseat the deep state. And DeSantis has actually been kind of effective at resisting the federal government and even sidelining some federal agencies within Florida. And there's some actual like potential for strength here with Trump's base.

I don't know that this gets you moderates, but like it's weird to me that he hasn't pushed this harder. Part of that may be the fact that he's, like everything else, really bad at it. Kind of his strongest attempt to provide sort of a countervailing force to federal law enforcement was his activation of the Florida State Guard, which 17 or so states have state guards. It's just kind of like a state version of a national guard potentially. Florida's had not been active in a while and he reactivated them claiming

that it was going to be a force of volunteers who could respond to hurricanes and other public emergencies. But what he was actually doing was trying to create a paramilitary organization. He is in the process of attempting to do this now. These people are undergoing like military training and whatnot. He's trying to get them access to weaponry. This is potentially kind of concerning, but he's really fucking bad at it. There was a really interesting

New York Times article recently that kind of goes into the problems the Florida State Guard have had sort of spinning up. And it's a very funny read because it's like a little kid's idea about how you would build a paramilitary organization. So on paper, the governor's office has said that one of the Guard's missions would be, to ensure Florida remains fully fortified to respond not only to natural disasters, but also to protect its people and borders from illegal aliens and civil unrest. And then the New York Times article continues, The deployment this spring has been mired in internal turmoil,

with some recruits complaining that what was supposed to be a civilian disaster response organization had become heavily militarized, requiring volunteers to participate in marching drills and military-style training sessions on weapons and hand-to-hand combat. At least 20% of the 150 people initially accepted into the program dropped out or were dismissed. And if you get into this, the people dropping out are like the veterans. They're like military officers and stuff who got into this thing and then are like, I was in the military for 20 years. You know, I did deployments here and here.

And I came into this thing and it's a bunch of civilians dressed as soldiers, yelling at me to do pushups and march in a field and like trying to be an asshole to me. Cause they're angry that like, I have military experience that they think they know better. Like it is like the, the volunteers said the training seemed poorly structured with an inordinate

amount of time spent as one of them described it, marching in fields some of the men said that as veterans with years of experience in the military they were offended when they were yelled at by junior instructors acting like drill sergeants who disregarded their previous ranks i find this really fucking funny have you guys seen those videos coming out about like they're these classes where if you're like a rich or you know upper middle class dude you can pay like 10 grand to spend five days doing a fake version of the maybe seals hell week like your role you're you're like yeah incredible like yeah you're like carrying

like hitting stuff with big hammers uh you're like crawling on your back through rocks you're doing all these like shitty painful exercises while like some dude who probably fucking got an other than honorable separation from the Marine Corps as a private second class, like screams at you a lot. And it's, you know, that's what you feel. While riding a one wheel, have you seen that one? Yeah, rolling around on a one wheel,

yelling at you that you're, you know, just like making up bullshit reasons to be angry at you because idiots. Honestly, have it like. Yeah, it sounds like a weird mix of like expensive LARPing and like and like a repressed kink thing for these guys. Yeah, that's what's happening. Yeah, yeah. A lot of guys who watched the movie Full Metal Jacket and number number one didn't watch all of it because like r lee ermy or whatever his name was character there like the really mean drill sergeant

gets murdered after like emotionally abusing one of his recruits like kind of a big part of the movie um but just saw him like making fun like yelling at people and making up fun insults. And we're like, well, that's got to be key to teaching people how to fight. Garrison, have you seen Full Metal Jacket? I have not seen Full Metal Jacket. You'd actually probably like it. It's good. There's some interesting parts of that movie.

Well, well shot. But yeah, I do think it's really funny. Like there's potentially this is one of those things potentially very scary to have a far-right elected leader building his own paramilitary force that is answerable only to him right that is a frightening thing yeah i'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about him trying this but he's so shitty that's like dictator 101 yeah yeah like it makes sense that he would try it. I mean, like, yeah, I would never want to be a governor because I think that's an immoral thing to do. But if I if I was to be. Yeah.

Authoritarian governor. I would have my own hit squad. Step one, make your own army. And it says a lot about Ron. Number one, that of all of the different things he's tried to do, this is the only one that seems like, oh, you might actually be able to get a lot of Trump voters to switch over to you. If you promise them, I'm gonna do this nationwide, and you, as a guy who didn't join the army,

but is pretty sure he would have been good at it, can become a militant commander in your state guard thing that I'm going to establish, you might get some votes. I don't think you'd win a lot of moderates, but you might get the base away from Trump, right? It's just so clearly a brown shirts ripoff. Yeah.

It's just like, it's so blatant that it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like he's like poorly copying someone else's homework. Yeah. Like I don't, a lot of his campaign has that vibe that he's like, he's poorly copying someone else's homework. Like, I don't know that this would campaign has that vibe that he's like yeah poorly copying someone else's homework like i don't know that this would work and i still think he would have it would be

a long shot that he would have any chance of beating trump but if he were to be like i'm going to establish a state guard where conservatives can get access to military grade weaponry and the right to carry their handguns everywhere yeah uh you might get i don't again i don't think you win a general that way but you might get the base away I don't think you win a general that way, but you might get the base away from Trump with that. It's at least more creative than anything else he's tried. Anyway, this is all a bad idea. I want to close by reading one last anecdote

from that New York Times article on Meatball Ron's attempt to make an army. A 51-year-old former Marine captain who had retired from the military with a disability and later joined the State Guard also clashed with instructors during initial boot camp last month, raising concerns about the training. In an assault complaint filed with the Clay County Sheriff's Office, the man said he was accused by the State Guard commander of being the leader of the group that had been criticizing the organization and its leadership. He was then forcibly pushed into a van against his objections and driven to the command post where he was fired and escorted off base.

Of the nine original State Guard recruiters and commanders who spent months recruiting for the organization, fewer than a third remained. The staff director, who had been a proportion of the less militarized version of the group, appointed in January,

was removed from his post just two days before the inaugural graduation. The program's personnel director was fired this week. So, good. Sounds like it's going great over there in Florida. Sounds like Meatball Ron knows how to make an army. I don't know, folks.

That's my episode on the Ron DeSantis campaign and how he's doing. I hope you all enjoyed this little update. We're done. Cool. Stay tuned for a vivek ramaswani episode yeah uh which is just gonna be me making fart noises into the microphone you'll get everything you need on vivek here look it's gonna be trump unless he dies in which case yeah boy that could be interesting i mean i i just like decent just could have waited four years

and then he could have had the backing of trump to help yes he i don't he's such a he's such a weird little like power goblin because like yeah i mean if he was still may try to do that trump has gone back and forth on people in the past but it's such a weird call to like make this doomed play at it to build like this bad like you're gonna piss some people off yeah why yeah anyway i i yeah i remember us doing an episode not so long ago about desantis and being like well he'll just wait four years until trump's out the picture but no he fucking defied our expectations by torpedoing his own presidential chances. Yeah. And that's why I love him.

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural

creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone

from Nobel-winning economists To leading journalists in the field And I'll be digging into why the products you love Keep getting worse And naming and shaming those responsible Don't get me wrong though I love technology I just hate the people in charge And want them to get back to building things

That actually do things to help real people I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough So join me every week to understand What's happening in the tech industry And what could be done to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. In 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart. And, you know, when things fall apart, one of the few things that can keep you on an even keel, you know, keep you feeling like there's something that makes sense in the world, is good TV. You know, I think we can all agree, no job more important than making television because it's really for a surprising amount of the population, the only thing keeping them on the ragged edge of sanity. And obviously, if you're at all aware of the news, both the Writers Guild, the WGA, and the Actors Guild, SAG-AFTRA, have both separately, although they are now, you know, on strike at the same time, have both kind of independently announced strikes after a breakdown in negotiations with the major studios.

And to talk with me today about what's going on, what's it like being a writer on strike, is my friend and one of the people who makes a show that helps keep me on the ragged edge of sanity, Soren Bowie. Soren! How you doing? Woo! You're simply the best. Hey, everybody. You're better than all the rest. Oh, stop it, Tina.

Stop it. Thank you. Very good. Very good. Hi. How's it going? Soren, you are my former colleague at cracked.com.net backslash AOL. Don't send anyone there now. And you are also, or at least before the strike hit, have been for the last several years, a writer on American Dad. One of the most consistently funny animated shows of like 20 years

now, almost. It's been on the air stop it stop oh thank you robert tina you guys are the best uh that's very nice of you thank you very much for saying that it did cost a lot of money to get her in the studio today oh that's very kind of you to say yeah i we we try very hard but it also has it has like a feel at the show of like the warden isn't watching like we're kind of allowed to do what we want and it's yeah great you love your job uh it's very obvious uh that i think probably everyone there uh loves writing for that show most of the people i know who write for tv have the same attitude of like wow i can't believe i get to do this um but that attitude is great and it makes life livable but what doesn't make life livable and what makes the enjoyment of the job harder is starving to death, which is an increasing reality for a lot of writers.

Over the last like 10 years – so a decade ago, about 33 percent of TV writers got what was paid like the minimum rate, which is kind of the minimum rate you get paid to get staffed on a union show. And the WGA says that about half of TV writers are at that point now. Writer pay has declined about 14% over the last five years, and that's like if you kind of take out inflation, right? Everybody's making a – Yeah, with inflation, it's like 23. Yeah, it's about 23% writer-producer pay over the last decade with inflation it's like yeah it's about 23 writer producer pay over the last decade with inflation factored in so that sucks because people aren't watching

23 less tv in fact i think we're watching more tv than we ever have before like um so it and i like if you listen to the kind of numbers given by streaming platforms about how many people are watching, it sure doesn't seem like TV writers have have been gotten 23 percent worse at their jobs. So anyway, there was the WGA went into negotiations earlier this year and basically to kind of, you know, shorten it. Basically, to kind of shorten it, we're asking for more money, more money in residuals, more money in upfront pay, changes to some policies that streamers were using to kind of avoid. There's been sort of this effort by streamers for a while now to kind of kill the concept of a writer's room in a lot of shows, and they have a couple of different sort of fucky ways to do that. I've got to say, Robert, it is a dream to come on a podcast with you because you do your fucking homework. Usually I'm the one who has to explain all this stuff, but this is great. I'm loving where this is going.

Go on. You're absolutely right. Can you walk us through kind of what's been happening? Because that's a thing that I think is sort of, you missed that on kind of the big level sort of like discussions of this is like what a writer's room is and sort of what streamers have been trying to do to change that. Because fundamentally, like one thing people who know what they're talking about will point out is that like movies are – not that scripts don't matter but it's like a director's medium. That's like the big sort of like guiding through the vision of like what a film is going to be. And TV is a writer-driven medium more often.

You'll at least hear that a lot. And I kind of want to talk about like, what is a writer's room and what has been changing in terms of how studios have been trying to edge that concept out? Great, great question. So writer's room traditionally, like you think back to broadcast television in its heyday, the way a writer's room worked is you had probably, first of all, you're going to have like 20

to 22 episodes a season. And then within that, you've got a block of anywhere from like 10 to almost sometimes 20 writers. And the reason that you have so many writers on a show like that is because while you're working on it, it's also in production. So as stories are being broken, and that means that there are rooms where people are creating a story together. As that's going on, there's like six other things going on. Like you're going to have, they're probably filming during that time. And if that's your particular written by episode, like that's the episode with your name on it, you might be on set for that because you're going to be having to make changes on the fly while that's going on. There's table reads happening. There's joke punch-ups happening. So there's generally a

separate room for that. And so you need like a pretty big group of people to just make a show, to just write a show. And that's to keep the hours within like, to keep them bearable. I mean, it doesn't even, you wouldn't even turn that into a nine to five generally. That's still a lot of hours with a lot of people, but at least it's bearable for everybody. Now streaming has tried to change that because they're tired of hiring so many writers and they're tired of paying writers. And so with streaming, there's different loopholes that they can get into, which is if you start creating a show before it's even technically greenlit, you can start having writers write episodes. But because it's not greenlit, you're not beholden to the same rules through the WGA. You can start hiring people at their, at a minimum, even if they are, should be making more than that. And depending on what

your position is at in a, as a writer, like you start as a staff writer, then you move up to story editor, then executive story editor, and you move up and up and up from there. Generally what happens is if you leave a show as a, as an executive story editor, you don't then go to another show and drop back down to staff writer. You maintain the position that you have because you've now learned the trade enough that usually you have a skillset that's valuable enough

that you should be being paid for being an executive story editor. So what they're doing is they're making sure that people are not being paid for the roles that they generally have because they can do that before a show has been greenlit.

And then they will say, we're going to write, like, let's just write 12 episodes. And that's a lot. Like that's a whole season of television, but they're doing it before it's greenlit. And then what happens is you will have these writers who are burning the midnight oil,

trying to get this thing done and calling in a lot of favors from friends. Cause you have a, such a small group of writers. You have maybe like in a, in a pre greenlit room, you've got like three or four people trying to write an entire season of a show. And as they're writing it, they're like, they're calling in favors from friends to be like, will you come edit this and stuff? Because you don't have enough people for everything. You have to break all these stories simultaneously. You have to know what's going on in each individual room, but you don't have enough bandwidth for all of that.

So you're calling in favors from other people. Like, do we just come and like, look at this? Will you just take a look? Like, we need like eyes on this. And so you're calling in favors from friends. Students have figured out that they can, they can, you can ask people to do this essentially. It's like the gig economy. It's a natural part of the writing process.

Every writer in every form of writing does a version of this. And they're like, what if we did this to help to make it easier to starve people? Yeah, exactly. And then what they would do, there's different tactics beyond that, which is like once those episodes are written, then maybe the studio will – they can kind of pick and choose when they want to release that. They don't have like a, it's not like a broadcast television where everything gets released in the fall. It's just like, you can choose when you want to release it.

So maybe you wait a year or whatever you release it. And then you can release it in two seasons. So if you have 12 episodes, you can cut those into six episodes, which I fucking hate. This is a little bit of a distraction, but like we miss by the, because we're not doing seasons the way they used to,

there's so much good shit. We miss things like half the best episodes are Star Trek. We're just like, we have $40 to shoot this episode on. Like, what can we do with like three guys in a room? You know, I know like you,

you're like, you miss out on those bottle episodes. Those like little ones where you're just like, or like that. If you think back to breaking bad, like there's the fly episode. Yeah, the fly episode. Yeah.

Oh, it's like the best episode of the show because you've got room to stop and breathe and like build just characters. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. It's like you lose out on all that. Then you can also, because you're breaking it up, you don't have to pay people to like advance them to the next season. And then that would also be released over the course of like two years. And so you have a writer who's the course of like two years. And so you have a writer who's written for maybe like 11 weeks on something on a show. And then they don't

know that they have that job again for another two and a half years. And so like, there's no consistency. There's not, and nothing is stable. And, uh, that's makes it it very very difficult for writers to keep their jobs and like maintain a writing job it's this really fucked up situation in which i think the streaming era in freeing sort of television from some of like the the way that sweeps used to work the way that a lot of like kind of the way that you would have to like run shows and the way that they aired when you were you were doing it on like fucking cable and their ad supported has allowed for kinds of TV shows and structures of shows that you never could have had. Right. I was just we're just watching the bear.

Probably the standout episode of the bear from season two is this like episode about a family Christmas party. That's just this absolute like anxious nightmare. That's an hour long episode twice the length of a normal episode. And oftentimes that's kind of a mixed thing with TV shows, but it works in this one. And the fact that it's so much longer actually like helps with like trans, you could only do that with shows

that work the way they do in streaming. That wouldn't have been a thing that you would have gotten to do in 1993 probably. But while I think like there's a lot of cool stuff structurally that's gotten to come out of that, it's also, it's made the compensation so much worse. It's made the job so much less reliable. Like it's, it's like, it's really stark how much more difficult it's become to make a

living in TV. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. While TV is more popular than ever. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, it's making more money than it ever possibly has in the past.

Um, and certainly through streaming, like they're not, these, these studios are not moving to streaming because like they, they're early adopters of technology. The money is there. So they're going to streaming.

It's like, they're making way more through streaming, but writers are getting paid less and less because they're finding these like wild West loopholes in streaming. Um, residuals is another one. That's like a, it, the way that residuals work is it is if you have a show that then gets played again uh through syndication or through streaming you should then get a

residual check for every time the episode that you wrote shows up on television um and it was very easy to track that as it would show up on like our show on american dad yeah i know that it's going to get played on cartoon network i know that it's going to get played at these other spots the tbs will rerun it at some point and i can i know when those are coming in with streaming it's much more difficult to determine when somebody watched something not because those numbers don't exist but because all these platforms that are created by studios will not give out that information. That information is like in a black box where you have no idea how often a show gets streamed. There's a couple of reasons, like people are

speculating as to why that might be. One is that either shows are getting watched way more often and people are not getting the proper residuals that they should be, or that the whole business model doesn't quite work. Yeah, that it's all a con. Yeah, and if you found out how little people were actually watching television, all investors, everything, the whole thing would collapse. I don't know which is true. I don't care. I just want to know what the numbers are.

A big part of this is the WGA asking different streaming platforms, you've got gotta be more transparent you gotta tell us how well our show is doing so that we know if people are getting paid properly yeah and it's again it would be one thing if like writers were getting less than ever and tv was just like dying as a as a thing as a as a as a creative thing that people want but the there is the money we know where the money is going. The eight major Hollywood studio CEOs in 2021 made nearly three quarters of a billion dollars

in annual salary, which is more than the value of what the WGA and SAG-AFTRA want to take out of them and increase compensation for their members. For those eight guys, I'm going to guarantee you, Ari Emanuel, the highest compensated of these ceos uh over at endeavor 308 million dollars and like i don't think he made any of your he's not responsible for any

of your favorite shows whatever like lion and the great you know made you made you laugh or cry or like whatever whatever joke from american dad keeps joke from American Dad makes you suddenly start like bawling out laughing while you're driving down the highway. That was not Ari Emanuel. Neither of those shows were Endeavor, whatever. You know what I'm trying to do here, right? Yeah, yeah. Ted Sarandos, whatever.

Fucking Bob Iger. All these guys. I mean, fundamentally, like Bob Iger, one of the big things he did was push the Flash movie out into theaters. Really put a lot of money into that. Thought it was going to be important for the brand going forward. Lost

so much money. Lost probably about as much money as the Writers Guild is asking for in increased compensation this year. Like, if they just hadn't made that movie. So let's talk. You guys went on strike. What has it been?

It's been like two months now already. Yeah. It's like day 84 or something like that. Yeah. So a little more than two months. How are you feeling? Like what, what does it mean like physically to be on strike,

like going out and picketing and stuff? Great questions, Robert. It's actually really nice. I don't want to say like it's – I enjoy it because I would rather be getting paid and not being freaking out about the fact that I don't have a job. But going out – it gives me a sense of purpose first of all each day to like get up and go out to the picket lines. Yeah. And you're out there the picket lines. Yeah. And you're out there. You're marching around it.

You choose your studio. For the majority of the time, I go to Sony or I go to Amazon. And I know the people there now. It's like going to the gym every day where you get to know the people there and then you build your community. And so I've got this group of people that I go there. These are just people that I happen to talk to because we'd see a truck going and we're like, oh, I hope that's not Teamster truck or whatever. And then and then you just like strike up a conversation with somebody, you start talking, and then you find out that this person like ran Malcolm in the middle for eight years. And you're like, oh, OK, cool.

You know, people talk a lot about how the last writers strike, which was kind of like right when I was getting out of fucking high school. writers strike which was kind of like right when i was getting out of fucking high school they're not far from that point um like a year or two later uh how the last writer's strike was kind of what gave us the birth of like a lot of reality tv you could almost argue there was a degree to which it like was part of trump's rise to prominence right because that's why the apprentice gets on air because that's a way the studios can get around paying writers but i also wonder on the opposite end like how many shows do we get because of connections people make out of the picket line? Because like folks meet each other and get talking. I do wonder if that's like a thing.

I guarantee it is. I mean, it is shocking how like how quickly you just chum up with people. And like the contact, I shouldn't call it. It's not supposed to be a networking experience, but it just ends up being that. Like you can't help it. Like you're just talking to people and then all of a sudden your jobs come up and you start talking about your work and then people are like after a little while like well like send me something like send me some of your writing and then you just become buddies and

like you start working on stuff accidentally together and i guarantee that like by the end of this there'll be writing teams that didn't exist before. And there'll be people who are want to make stuff together. Plus the studio pipeline will be empty. So like, they're going to want to like fill it with, they're going to want to fill it when the strike ends and guaranteed there's going to be people from the lines who came up with stuff on the lines who are going to be like, we've got lots, like there's, what about this? And be like, yes, that buy it. We'll take that. And I like just kind of in general, the fact that like that's sort of the hope, right? Like that's actually the thing that can defeat these giant industry colossuses, not just like writing TV shows with other people, but like the solidarity, like the fact that you're building connections with people, the fact that you there's an understanding of shared interest. You're seeing this especially like now that like SAG-AFTRA has joined the strike. There's a lot of people who are very famous and prominent talking about issues that go

well beyond Hollywood, right? The incredible amount that executive pay and compensation has increased over the years. The fact that a lot of companies that used to do things of value and employ people and good jobs have been hollowed out for the short-term profits of vulture capitalists whose job is to fucking suck money out and hand it to shareholders and shit. Like this is not just a – a lot of this started in the fucking 90s. In the 90s, we've talked about Jack Welch and GE and how that company was turned from something that made stuff to something that produced stock value and fired people. And you're getting that all across entertainment right now. And I think this is something I think everyone knows on some level. This is an inflection point, right?

AI is a part of it. The fact that we're about to see them try to use this technology to cut down the number of people they have to pay attention exactly exactly yeah it's like it was a it's a worst case scenario honestly for like for the studios just and just because it's no coincidence that ups uh is going on strike that all these companies are going on strike right now because the same thing's happening across the board where it's like this consolidation of power and then consolidation of money and then it's just like all that you are beholden to when you are at the top of these companies is the shareholders and like getting them money. And so whatever way you can do that, you do it.

And a lot of times the way you do that is that you just fuck everybody at the bottom and figure out how to carve out money from them and bring it, rise it to the top. And so, yes, I think that it's what happened was the WGA went on strike. The WGA is a very strong, good guild, good union that like does not blink. And everyone saw that and immediately people were on the side of the WGA in a way that I think no one anticipated that all everybody else in unions is like, no, this is wrong. Like we should we're dealing with the exact same stuff. And universally, everyone seems to be on the side of unions right now.

Then that's like, we should use that. Like we should, we should ride that wave a little bit. And absolutely they should, because there's so many things that are systemically broken right now. Just happens to be the entertainment industry is the only one that I have skin in the game on. We had this moment about a week or so ago where, you know, a couple of weeks ago that

it came out that like some anonymous studio executive told a writer at, I think it was Deadline, that their plan was to, that the WGA's demands were unreasonable and we're just going to kind of wait out until they lose their homes, right? Until they're on the street. And then we'll, then we can get them to accept it. And, you know, this was right around when SAG was, you know, deciding to strike and Ron Perlman gets on and makes a little video where he basically says, you know, we can burn your houses down. Like there's more than one way to lose a house. And I thought the important thing about sharing that,

because one of the ways, you know, media works is that there's people, the things that people are willing to listen to and that can like affect them and change their minds is partly dependent on the situational context at the time this is why so many of like the journalist much of the journalism i've done the far right like has been articles that i felt like i had to get out within an hour or two of a shooting because people will pay attention to these these things that are problems that are important they won't leave if i do a deep dive on how this specific kind of radicalization works normally, but if somebody's just been shot, they'll listen, you know, and that's like unfortunate, but that's the

way people are. And there's this, I thought what I thought was important about that is that not that, you know, Ron Perlman threatened to burn down a guy's house. That's just kind of funny. But what he was doing there that's really valuable that I think more people need to think about is accepting that when you're saying something like, well, we just need to wait for writers to lose their homes. That's a violent threat. That is a threat to harm somebody for your own personal gain. And we shouldn't view that as like fundamentally morally different than saying, I want to go rob a guy with a 38, right? Like I don't, I don't feel like there's a big moral gap

between them and you can get people to actually kind of, who maybe wouldn't think about that, to think about that this way. And I think that's an important thing to transmit in this time. Oh man, a hundred percent. Yeah. The fact that, that what it gives, like gives you real context for what they're actually saying when they say, we just got to wait them out until they don't have any more money. And like, it's really starts to hurt their health and wellbeing. Like you have somebody else being like, oh,

I can hurt your health and wellbeing. And you're like, okay, I get how those are the same thing, but, but, but that's not what I, the way I was saying it was,

it was more removed, you see. And so you're absolutely right. Like having hell boy come out and be like, there's lots of ways to lose a house. It's like shit yeah yeah it's a it's a it's there's like potential right now that i i'm glad to see recognized how are you doing like just in general with this because it is you know we've talked about all the good parts there's a lot that's good this is like this is a stressful time like i'm wondering, you wake up and you hear-

Thanks for acknowledging that. Yeah, it's like, how you be? It sucks. It sucks real bad. It sucks particularly badly because I loved my job. When I talk about all these things, a lot of this wasn't happening at my job. My job was, I was working for an animated show that ran 22 episodes a season that was, it would get, we knew when we were getting our pickups generally, and it was a

system that worked and I was really, really enjoying it and very happy at my job. I was getting paid well, like I liked everything about it. I felt like it was financially stable and I was getting what I deserved and I was just happy. And that's not what's happening across like 80% of other shows right now. And so like we left, we left our show in solidarity of other writers because at some point

you know, this, I maybe won't have this job anymore and I'll have to go get another job. And also for all the people who are working those other jobs and it's really, really struggling right now to even make ends meet. We know they're watching, they're working on three different shows a year and like they got what they needed uh from the studios even though it was hard and it was bitter and a lot of them lost their jobs over it and so now it's just like even though it sucks and i'm not happy about it it's it's our turn to do it it's like our turn to make sure that everything works yeah that's such an important

detail that like a lot of the people striking when you there's been this kind of like bad faith thing i've seen i've seen some people on the left do it online where like they'll post some video of like an actor you know talking about why they're doing the strike about this person's net worth is this many millions of dollars and it's like yeah well they're not striking for them like ron ron perlman is going to be okay ron perlman is not going to be forced out of his home like that's not why they're doing this because i mean yeah that you can have a you can you can have a good job but also have a sense of the bigger picture and like a greater a greater good you can just like care about the art form you know i'm we're watching journalism get fucking eaten alive right

now and ai is gonna is could is has been a part of like people have already lost their jobs because this shit and like the thing that keeps getting brought up to me when i'll i'll talk about it to like family or whatever is like well you know they're using it to replace these low-level jobs you know sum up sports articles or like you know this kind of coverage or that kind of coverage like it's not the kind of stuff you do. It's not like investigation. You can't have a machine do that. And it's like, well, yeah, but how do you think people learn to do what I do?

Like part of it is like doing the, like that's the feeder, right? It's part of what you're saying about like TV writing. It's like, they're trying to kill the way in which people learn how to continue this art form. A hundred percent. Yeah, no, it's, there's so many parallels between this and what's happening with journalism in terms of like

it's turning it essentially into a gig economy which is exactly what destroyed the news or is destroying the news but like yeah it's the same thing and when you talk about AI like you if you were to write an episode of a show and you have a written by credit on it you get a script fee for that and ultimately like what the studios want

is to just have a piece of shit ai written script to begin with and then they're not paying a script fee to anybody and then writers just fix that and so like yeah it's a it's all these different like cost-saving measures that ensure that no one will ever come up through this industry again and learn all the things yeah there will still be people who become writers but there'll be people whose parents are rich, and so they can afford to work for free for forever. And then, you know what we don't get? The bear.

Yeah. The bear and its curiously jacked leading man. Where's he get the time? When's he putting down the protein? We're not seeing him chug a protein shake every 20 minutes. You complained about this on Twitter, and I agree with you. The structure that requires, like, to get a body like that, the structure you need in your life, and, like, the regiments that you need to follow

need to be, like, to a T every single day. And there's just, he's too spontaneous. There's too much going on in his life. He doesn't have time. He doesn't have two hours to carve out to go to the gym every day. No, no. This is my only issue. Like, this is what's really threatening my support of the WGA.

I just needed an episode of the bear where all it is is going through his workout routine. He's in the back room. He's doing some curls, you know? Yeah, he's got bags of rice back there. He's doing squats with them on his shoulders. I want to see him at 3 a.m. in the morning, and I'll buy it.

I'll be on 5 a.m. at 3 a.m. in the morning, and he buy it I'll be at 5am at 3am in the morning and he's like going to an anytime fitness or fucking whatever and he's like working out a little bit I can be like okay there it is that's when he's doing it that's how he fits it in let me see him get his BCAAs you know have fucking Richie be like you taking your pre-workout today

give me a little bit you know alright Soren you got it out here do you have anything you want to plug before, like perhaps a podcast with our other former colleague, Dan O'Brien? No. Yeah, no. Fuck it. Fuck it.

Yeah. Yeah, I got a show called Quick Question with Dan and Soren. No, Soren and Dan. Oh, God, I'm a headliner. Yeah, Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. You can check that out anywhere that you listen to podcasts. It's basically just Dan and I catching up because we live on opposite coasts and

we're good buddies. That's about it. Yeah, excellent. Check out Quick Questions with Sorin and Dan. Special show. Thank you. Just a wonderful time. Sorin, thank you so much. My pleasure.

Good luck out there on the picket line to you, to all of the other writers, and to everybody at SAG-AFTRA. Thank you. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter... Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows. Presented by I Heart and Sonorum.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted

Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Duda Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I

love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Mia from the very, very near future. We found out as we were live recording this episode that Teamsters leadership has cut a tentative agreement with UPS to try to avert the strike. So we've decided

to leave this in and you're going to hear us find this shit out literally in the middle of an interview of what we thought was going to be a really, really, really large strike starting. So enjoy. It's strike season here at It Could Happen Here, the podcast where things fall apart and sometimes you put them back together again. And as you probably have noticed, presumably from the last interview maybe from reading the news maybe from like talking to people who are in unions we are in a

genuinely historic period of labor militancy in this country that is effectively we are now we are we are we are now entering the second phase of the hot summer of 2023 uh we used to have hot summers all the time people knew what that meant and now it just means like global warming but long ago in the galaxy far far away there were these things called hot summers when everyone would fucking go on strike and there'd be you know sort of mass resistance to capital estate and yeah we're fucking going back there and to talk with me about the next series of massive private sector strikes that we're about to get is Reese Smith and Oliver Rose who are rank and file UPS workers and teamsters

doing the standard disclaimer. These individuals do not represent the union or the positions of the union. They are speaking as individuals. Yeah, we have, this is, this is, this is the disclaimer for the lawyers.

It is also true. Yeah. But Reese and Oliver, welcome to the show. Hey, yeah. Thanks for thank you much yeah i'm really really glad we can talk to you so all right uh the day this is going out it'll be six days before the teamsters are potentially going to go on strike and the current contract runs out um can i, yeah, can we talk a little bit about what, okay, who is going on strike and what do they do? Yeah, so there's going to be 340,000 UPS workers going on strike and that's going to be, you know, the inside warehouse workers and that's going to be the uh the delivery drivers um and also the feeder drivers

and the 22 fours like all of them uh could you explain uh what oh what the last two are yes yeah so 22 fours is a uh classification of worker where they're kind of half inside um and half driving uh something that the union has told us is that there's already been a tentative agreement that that classification is not going to exist anymore it was kind of a really raw deal for people that found themselves in that position um shit what was the other one that i mentioned 22 four drivers i think feeder drivers yes so feeder drivers are not your regular package delivery drivers um they drive the big semis that you see from like hub to hub and whatnot and that's how they deliver uh so those are the uh the last two classifications that i mentioned and yeah we're we're all going to be going on strike.

And well, we are potentially going to be on strike. And if we are, UPS is kind of going to be in a world of hurt because it is very hard to replace 340,000 workers in what economists have told me is a tight labor market. So yeah, it's going to be very exciting. Yeah, it's, I'm, I'm excited. Like, I don't know. You know, it's, it was funny. So when, when, when SAG officially walked off and joined the WGA strike, that was, that was the largest strike since hilariously the teamsters went on strike

and like the year I was born in like 97 and hilariously that is a title that if this happens they're going to hold that title for like one month before this ups striker places it as the largest strike in the u.s since the 90s yeah yeah it's gonna be wild if we go on strike while uh you know saga after is on strike and the writers guild are on strike that's going to be over half a million workers on strike in this country at this time and that is just going to be you know it's going to be fucking historic right yeah and and there's and there's a chance depending on how long these strikes drag out that we get to like september the big the big

three auto uh the uaw goes on strike and that happens, that, that will be like the most number of people who've been on a strike in this country since like the fifties, which is wild, especially, you know, cause this, this is supposed to be a sort of like, I don't know.

I think the sort of the especially interesting thing about this, right. Is that actual union density is really low and hasn't been increasing that much. On the other hand, like everyone seems to like unions and everyone wants to go on strike. And I don't know, it's a really interesting sort of set of conditions right now.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I'm very heartened by, you know, the support that unions have garnered. Because as you mentioned, you know, we are at a low union density. There was like that labor decline that happened, you know, we are at a low union density. There was like that labor decline that happened, you know, since the fucking like 70s and 80s, right? Like the backlash to organized labor. I am very hopeful that this strike wave can kind of turn that around, right?

around. Right. You know, something that I've been thinking about a lot is, you know, it's like UPS is a, is a major, a major company in a whole logistics sector. Right. Yeah. And like, we can set that standard for that logistics company or like a piece of shit company like Amazon can. So if we win and we win big, that could absolutely encourage more organizing in those other sectors leading to an increase of union density. So hopefully that's like the way forward past all these strikes. It'd be great. It's sorely needed, sorely needed. Absolutely. And even beyond, you know, the logistics industry, you know, I think we can show that, you know, any, you know, company or corporation that, you know, year after year is making these record-breaking profits, you know, while meanwhile there's poor

conditions or even unsafe work conditions, you know, there's pay that does not, you know, allow, you know, us to pay rent, put food on the table, you know, that pay that does not you know allow you know us to pay rent put food on the table you know that we can just show that okay you know we're done you know with giving all of the wealth that we're creating to the company and now it's going back into our hands yeah and ups fucking created 13 billion dollars in profits last year. Yeah, yeah. And that's up from, I was just reading an article this morning in Jacobin written by a fellow UPS Teamster. And that's up from $6.5 billion in 2019.

And they're also giving- So they doubled their profit. They've over doubled their profits in like three, four years. They've doubled their profits and they keep trying to tell the union that, oh, no, I'm just a poor pauper. We don't have money for your demands. Like, we're just so poor.

And it's like, meanwhile, you know, they're giving their fucking like CEO and shareholders like dividends and stock buybacks and all of that. In addition to the profits that they are reaping, right? Because profits is just the cream of the crop right like that's yeah everything past business expenses what they're paying out like salary so that's not even being touched and uh yeah no it's time for us to say we want that we created that so i i think that leads into sort of the next thing i want to ask about which is can you talk a little bit about what the sort of specific grievances were that kicked that, that kicked this off?

I'm assuming there are a lot because, you know, this thing sucks. You know, and there is a wide range of conditions because, you know, for a long time, you know,

the contract hasn't kept up with both like economic and non-economic side of things um you know and we have kind of two two dynamics where there's you know well over a majority of like part-time workers who aren't getting enough pay or hours you know to afford to live and then we also have you know the full-time workers who inside warehouse could be working you know 12-hour shifts. We have drivers who are doing 12-hour shifts and even up to 14 hours every day. And then also getting contacted to come in on their day off. I happen to do six-day weeks.

Of course, on the driver's you know we have these escalating temperatures and meanwhile there's you know no air conditioners in the vehicles and same you know thing in the warehouse um because personally you know i'm i i work inside warehouse as a loader so i'm spend you know virtually all my shift in the trailer loading boxes you. There's no airflow. Those things can be 5 to 10 degrees hotter at a minimum than the ambient temperature. Last summer, on a mid-90 day, I recorded 108 degrees inside the trailer. There's not necessarily any kind of protections

currently for that so you know that's one big lack in the contract is having those kind of you know heat heat protection and you know yeah and that can yeah i mean that could just kill people we've talked about on the show before people who've died like working conditions like that because you know it was it was too hot but their bosses were like fuck you we don't care like keep unloading this stuff yeah and it's absolutely tragic i know we had a uh you know ups teamster i believe in california uh who died due to the extreme heat conditions last summer and also no um you know there was another case where i think a driver stopped at like a convenience store to buy a drink uh and you know

was fired we're making you know off-route stop even though they tell us you know take breaks when you need it but they don't actually mean it yeah yeah because obviously you know you wouldn't be being disciplined or fired one of the things that i i saw was part of negotiations that ups had offered to be like oh we'll put in air conditionings in all new vehicles. And I was looking at this and I was like, this is the Clean Air Act loophole. I remember this. If you only specify new vehicles, we'll just never replace the old ones. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, with these companies, they're going to be looking for those loopholes, right? Yeah. going to be looking for those loopholes right yeah and like i don't know that i've seen a vehicle that looked new um when i'm uh at my hub i'm also a inside worker and yeah they all look like they've been around been around a while and i don't know that they've been uh spending the capital to uh get those new vehicles so that's absolutely absolutely something that we're going to, you know, keep their feet to the fire on, so to speak.

Yeah. And then in terms of other conditions that are like really leading up to this right now, there is a big problem with MRAs and no, not the MRAs you all might be thinking of. This is a market rate adjustment. And both are bad. Both are bad. We are staunchly against both MRAs. And essentially what an MRA does is it sounds good at first. You know, it gives the company leeway to, you know, potentially increase our pay, right, beyond what's just stipulated in the contract. However, when you kind of get late into the contract,

like, you know, towards the expiration date, the base pay that was agreed on for the last contract is no longer acceptable. And while it gives them the leeway to increase our rate wage, they can always go back down to the lower wage should they choose to. And, uh, last year at the hub that I worked at, um, it was right after peak, uh, in peak season, we were hired on at $27 an hour. And come February, you know, we're all walking into the job and there's one of the supervisors there who is frankly looking like she's not having a good time having to stop to talk to each of us to explain, oh yeah, so we are going to be bringing your pay

down to $15.50 an hour jesus don't i know i know but don't worry don't worry there's an attendance bonus there's an attendance bonus of 120 if you make all your shifts and uh that really fucking sucked like if you get like if you get sick like okay so like at this hub that i work at i work at one of the few hubs that don't have what's called the hourly guarantee. Most hubs have an hourly guarantee. If you're a part-time worker, you have an hourly guarantee of three and a half hours a day. So if they say that there's no work to be done, you can say, I want that hourly guarantee. And they either find you more work to do or they pay that out.

And then for full-time workers, that's eight hours. I work at one of the few hubs that doesn't. It's a classification related to the type of hub that I am at. And so I'm only like, at this hub, I work maybe 12 hours a week if I'm lucky. So this is 12 hours a week at $15.50 an hour with an attendance bonus. But if I get sick one of those days, that means I have a paycheck, a weekly paycheck that is going from roughly $200 to like maybe roughly $80. And that is just, it's totally, totally unacceptable. The way that they can kind of- With a plague going on.

Yeah, with a plague going on. Yes. Being sick is highly likely right now. And yeah, no, they're just kind of able to like yo-yo us around on these wages, like whenever they want. And so a demand that is being circulated in the grassroots of the union, leadership hasn't really talked about it, the union. Leadership hasn't really talked about it, to my knowledge, but there is a petition going around to have a starting wage of $25 an hour. And right now that would only be, because right now this year I'm making 24 and they didn't do that bullshit. I think kind of in anticipation of the strike coming, they didn't want to make us more angry. And so that would only be a dollar increase for me, but also it would prevent them from doing that in the future, right? Yeah.

So. And I, like Reese, you know, also was affected by the MRA, but luckily not as severe. You know, my pay went from 26 down to 23 an hour uh and of course you know what 10 11 percent pay cut also same time inflation goes up you know 10 percent uh yeah that was very difficult and enough let alone having you know your pay getting dropped almost by 50 percent yeah there's multiple hubs in the area and they're all just on different pay scales you know for the same kind of you know same same area doing the same work and we just have these like

fluctuating pay scales you know i know for us it was you know right after peak season and they're like oh thanks so much for the most successful peak season ever. We made record-breaking profits. We couldn't have done this without you. By the way, we're cutting all of your pay. And now, of course, you know, we're getting paid above 25. And hey, that helped their profits. So, you know, it's absolutely absurd to say, oh, well, you know, we can't afford,

you know, these higher wages when they can. Yeah, they doubled their profits in four years. Yeah can yeah exactly they doubled their fucking profits like are you kidding me like jesus christ it's like they think we're fucking dumb it's like no like our work far exceeded what you're paying us like an unimaginable amount. Yeah. And you guys, like, it was earlier on in the, well, not earlier on. I think this happened maybe late June, early July. It was, they leaked, it got leaked, their economic proposals for us. And they had the part-timers starting at $17 an hour. 17. And, like, I just,

I don't think that's affordable anywhere. The next thing I'm going to mention that I think is, I think it's really important, but isn't particularly well understood. So, you know, if you go back to like the original 515 campaign, right? $15 minimum wage,

like that wage, which was already like kind of nonsense in like 2012, like with inflation, that's like 1930 now yeah so this is you know this is this is how much like inflation has sort of deteriorated wages and that and that's just sort of like you know the economic terms like inflation is like the bundle of goods right and that that's not accounting for the fact that for example the increase in housing prices has been

way higher from the sort of like average rate of inflation. Right. Health care costs are increasing higher from the sort of quote unquote average rate of inflation. And so like, yeah, it's like, yeah, this sounds like a lot of money. It's fucking not like simply is not. Yeah, I heard at a rally not too long ago from one of the speakers for, you know, it was a, it was a teamster rally that, you know, we're getting our members hyped and all that. And one of the speakers mentioned that for our city, a minimum wage that could be livable would be $26 an hour. And I'm just like, yeah, that seems about right. And that's like the bare minimum. That's like, okay, I can eat enough. I can pay my rent and I probably don't have a whole lot left over. So. Yeah. Especially when we have, you know, like average rent,

you know, for one bedroom, you know, what, around like $1,500, you know, these days and so many landlords want, you know, want three times, you know, that rent and income. So, you know, I was actually just kind of, yeah, writing, you know, or, you know, doing the math last night. I was just like, oh, okay. So on my hours, I would actually need $43 an hour, you know, just to, you know, be making three times the average monthly rent. Yep. Yep.

Yeah. You're making three times the average monthly rent. Yep, yep. So that's definitely why, you know, $25, you know, an hour is the minimum, you know, that, you know, I think we can settle for. I would love to see it higher, but also recognize, you know, well, you know, maybe 25 still not quite cutting it, you in a more urban area but you know there's going to be a lot of people where that's you know significant gains are going to help so much you know to meet their material needs you know definitely have to you know consider this as you know big picture this is a national agreement and you know we got to get that really solid foundation and then we can expand from there yeah whoa what the sorry as you were talking I got a thing saying that the Teamsters

have settled what? I think oh my gosh what the fuck I knew they were back at the table back at the negotiation table Jesus Christ they they were back at the uh table back at the negotiation table jesus christ they've only been at the negotiation table for like four hours yeah uh okay what is okay well i gotta check

some signal shots here yeah jesus christ well all right i don't know if we're gonna leave this in but uh yeah we've discovered live on air that yeah team, Teamsters win historic UPS contract. Oh, boy. We'll see. Yeah, I'm also looking at this and see one of the... Yeah, I'm at the Teamster.org website where they have an update on it. Yeah, at least, you know, speaking of wages, at least the first thing that I'm seeing is existing part-timers will be raised up to no less than $21 per hour immediately.

And part-time seniority workers earning more under a market rate adjustment would still receive all new general wage increases. Yeah, yeah, this is, I'm not stoked on those wages. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm definitely, I am 25 or bust on this. Yeah. All right, so that does, that will change things. That definitely changes the timeline because this still has to be sent out to be voted on and approved by membership. this still has to be sent out to be voted on and approved by membership.

Yeah. And what we learned at the, there was a call not too long ago where they kind of explained the process of it. So in the event that they would reach a tentative agreement that gets sent out to us, we vote from home and it takes about three weeks for it to ratify. There is still a possibility that membership could vote to reject it, in which case they would be going back to the bargaining table. And we could potentially be going on strike then. But this does set it back by now three weeks.

It'll be interesting to see uh what the uh tdu which is the uh teamsters for a democratic union which is a reform caucus inside our uh our union it'll be interesting to see what their line is on this um so oh my gosh what a what a bomb drop to get in the middle of a podcast about this yeah but unfortunately can't even speak to it uh since seemed a little bit of it and yeah yeah is it do they actually have the full agreement out or do they just have this stuff? They will not have the full agreement out. Something that we've been having a little bit of frustrations with within our union is that we do not have open bargaining.

Oh, what the fuck? Yeah, bargaining happens behind closed doors. Jesus Christ. And they occasionally give us updates about what's happening but we don't really get to see the full picture until we're going to be voting on it and uh i obviously think this is bad for a number of reasons um one and a big primary one is these contracts that are negotiated. I was about to go get my copy of the contract so I could show you. And then I remembered this is a podcast and that's not actually going to be

helpful for people listening. We do visual bits on this podcast all the time. It's fine. So the size of our contract is about the size of a pocket Bible. Jesus. It is very, very big. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's written in that legalese and stuff like that. And so it's not very accessible to most of our members. And so, you know, if we had open and bargaining, if we had consistent like updates where like, you know, our union leadership would be like, all right, so this is what we've agreed upon so far.

This is what we've rejected. This is what it all means. more comprehensive understanding of what is in the contract instead of waiting until the very end as we got little bits, pieces, and snippets. And then being like, okay, well, read this and decide how you feel. Yeah. I mean, that's, I don't know. It feels like a system that's just sort of kind of designed to like railroad people into signing whatever contract negotiators agree to, which is kind of a disaster. And without that transparency, I mean, you know, you know, all of us rank and file members are, you know, essentially being removed from the process, you know, being involved in decision making, you know, stipulating what's going to do it you know to meet our needs

what what do we need you know out of these you know five-year contracts and you know i think it was just you know a few days ago got you know get an update from the local you know basically a week before you know the contract ends um you know and they're you know talking about this is like one of the most transparent contracts there's ever been there's all these updates and you know there's more rank and file um you know members involved in the bargaining and it's like well that's great you know that shows you know how far you know we've come i guess but also it's still just it's kind of sad to think that you know this this process that's all banned by NDA is the most transparent it's been. And also the fact that you're finding this out live on air from their press release that they put out on Twitter.

It's like, what? Yep. Oh my gosh. Absolutely, my gosh. Absolutely. Absolutely absurd. Yeah. So it seems like this is a this is an agreement that is going to be pushed by union leadership as a vote to vote yes on, which is a kind of a far cry from earlier in in July when, you know, you when the Teamsters were telling UPS, you need to present us with either an agreement that we actually agree with

or present your last best final offer by July 5th, right? Yeah. And yeah, yeah. So yeah, we'll see how the rank and file react. In the 2018 contract, I know that the TDU tried to organize a vote no campaign, and they did get a simple majority of the membership to vote no. However, at the time, and this has now been changed, but at the time in our Constitution, it would require a two-thirds majority to have rejected it and go on strike. Jesus Christ. Was that because it has one of those weird electoral college systems or was it like

you need two-thirds to project a contract? It was a you need two-thirds That has been changed when Sean, when the reform slate was elected and they had their Teamsters convention, they changed the constitution so that it would be a simple

majority So yeah, we'll see what teamsters convention they changed the constitution so that it would be a simple majority um so yeah we'll we'll see uh what td the line that tdu wants to take and uh yeah yeah we'll see this uh this certainly puts puts a wrinkle in things i'm gonna be honest i was actually really looking forward to strike pay because my strike pay would have paid more than my actual job does. Yeah. And I mean, I think there's like,

I mean, I think there's a few things that we can sort of immediately talk about from this. One is that it doesn't like nothing. They've put out here from what I've read so far. I'm reading. I mean, literally I'm reading from the Teamsters like, says they're doing anything about market rate

adjustments at all. And the second thing is that, you know, we were talking earlier before we knew that there was a strike about sort of the impact of this on the entire class, and it really looks like both the Teamsters and UPS

really wanted to cut a deal as part of part of part of this attempt to keep everything going and to keep this stuff from happening which i mean i think makes sense right if you're you know if you're ups you don't act like we're we're having an actual sort of like workers insurgency like having having having a summer this hot like isn't good for like it isn't good for ups it's arguably not good for some of the more sort of like from the more sort of conservative union leaderships either who do who unlike a lot of workers do not want to be on strike because

that like that cut that cuts into the sort of war chest of capital that they have to manage Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They're, you know, they're just recently on Twitter or excuse me, X. It's X now. But just recently on Twitter, there was a fair amount of strike discourse. of saying that you know like it's good it's good for you know if they reach a tentative agreement that uh you know all this yeah yeah if they reach a tentative agreement that you know makes those material gains it's better to not go on shrike and like i i know i know like and to me that's like a little bit wild because one there is so much and we could demand so much more, but also like, you know, collective action, you know, in order to be consistent, to be good at it, it requires you to undertake it. Right. Like, and you know, when I think about like how our local is um they have a very service model orientation to unionism as opposed to an organizing model and i you know i was really under the impression that this uh potential strike could have uh kind of like you know lit a fire under their ass and like kind of got back into

like the organizing aspect of unionism right uh and like they weren't that great at that i swear sometimes we would talk to them about like hey so like have you tried like mobilizing members have you tried like showing up at the gates have you like you know you can like there's like programs out there where you can text your entire membership about like you know come to this like contract update and it's like we were just speaking a different language. Like they just had no idea. Like they had no idea. And they would look at our union meetings where like, you know, we represent like, I think over like, like I think well over like a thousand workers. I don't have the numbers on that. So I'm not going to get more specific, but like well over that and they would look at our union meetings where we have maybe 50 to 70

people and they're just kind of like well this is just as good as it's going to get yeah and that's nonsense like it's nonsense it's nonsense like you know like back in the fucking like you know from like the 10s to the 50s, union meetings would bring in just so many people and they don't have anywhere near the like technological advanced advantages that we have now. And it was just it's very much of like, yes, you tell us about your grievances. We get those filed and we do make those like wins for you. And like that's that's good. Like, you know, there are some unions that barely do that much. And the fact that's, that's good. Like, you know, there are some unions that barely do that much. And the fact that they do that is great. But like, you know, at my hub, I remember I was,

I was talking to my carpool and he didn't even know who his steward was. And I'm like the only person that gives him updates about what's going on in the union. And that's just because like, when I started working at U And that's just because like, when I started working at UPS, I was just like, yeah, I'm going to go to these fucking union meetings. I'm going to find out what's going on. I want to be involved. And most people, you know, it's just a job for them and they don't know all the things that a union can provide for them or how a union can back them up. And part that's because you know union leadership you know has decided that that's not something they really don't need to be as engaged with the members as they could be yeah well and there's a second thing there too which is like okay if you are like

you know if if if if you are someone you know if you are in a position of leadership and you're in your position of leadership because there's incredible, there's like really, really low attendance for union elections, right? Really low turnout, which is usually true, right? Like union election turnout tends to be just atrocious. You don't actually want more people being involved because the more people that are involved, the more likely it is that a bunch of people are going to show up to an election. Someone's going to, you know, and someone's going to look at one of the deals you cut and it's going to be like, what the fuck are you doing? Right. So there's there's there's a lot of sort of perverse incentive structures in terms of like just sort of the basic organizational electoral structure that gets you, you know, like people cutting deals and calling and, you know, like trying to cut off the sort of like hot summer at its knees.

Yeah, I have something funny that's kind of related to that so uh when we were voting to authorize a uh to authorize a strike right you know we we did it and all of that and uh you know sean o'brien announced that there was going to be voting at the gates and our uh our local um initially it was like, oh no, we're just going to have people come to the hall between the hours of eight and 10 on two specific days. And we'll do voting that way. Eventually they did change it after they got pressure, I think probably from up top and below. But, uh, one of the members who is involved was like, oh no, no no, no, no. Like, it'll be better if it's just the people that are motivated enough to go because they're the ones that are going to like vote the thing on through. And that was just that was wild to me seeing that sort of perspective. is there, if like, you know, our union reps, our business agents, if they're there, if they're constantly engaging membership, then we will all be on the same page. Like they're the ones that

have all of the, like, you know, the like technical information. They're the ones that can really talk to, they can talk to people about, you know, like this is how much UPS is making in profits. This is like what they're paying our CEO. This is all of this. You deserve more and we're going to fight for it. And if they had those constant interactions, we would all be on the same page and we wouldn't have to worry about, well, if there's increased voter turnout, it might make the vote kind of iffy, you know, like. Yeah, there's definitely, you know, that's been one of my biggest gripes is around, you know, communications, particularly, you know, from the local, which is kind of practically non-existent. And, you know, it's, there's so many, even like between new hires and, you know, even people have been there a few years with part-timers, like don't know their rights under our contract.

don't know their rights under our contract. And, you know, it was only because of organizing and, you know, talking with people that I know those rights and can, you know, then share that, you know, knowledge, uh, with other, you know, teamsters, but it's kind of like, well, why, why are we having to do this? And I mean, of course, internal internal or organizing you know knowledge is super important but it'd be nice you know why you know why isn't there a you know like a welcome packet why are there you know not more maybe not like full meetings but at least something where you know our union officials can meet with rank and file members and And I think I'm partly, you know, speaking to that because, you know, the shift I work is during union meetings. So, you know, attending those is

not, you know, not quite feasible, you know, for me or other people on my shift. And I know that's also kind of seems like it's led to this, like some contempt for part-timers, like, oh, we're not involved, you know, we don't care, but it's like oh we're not involved you know we don't care but it's like we don't you know we don't necessarily know you know about the meetings or that you know there's the scheduling conflict or you know again talking about like we don't even know what our you know basic rights are you know under our contract well it's like a like you can't you can't not explain to people you can't not onboard people and then complain that they're not onboarded like come on this is absurd self-fulfilling

prophecy there you know you're creating the outcome that you think you know already exists because you're not engaging members so there was another thing that i wanted to talk about which is that there's been a lot of like i don't know i i i've been seeing this in sort of various places in in the discourse talking about the strike which is that there's a lot of people who basically are holding on to the notion that a people don't want to strike and b that like striking is bad and that you should want to do it as little as possible. And, you know, this pisses me off for like a lot of reasons.

One of which is that like my grandma was a teamster and she was a, she was a union punch card operator, like back in like the seventies and eighties. And, you know, my grandma is like, like not like a leftist, right?

Like she, we have, we have to stop her from giving money to the fallen gong. Like she's so you know this is the kind of issue we're dealing with here right but like she loved going on strike right like and that's the thing that like my family who's not like particularly sort of labor-friendly or like oh yeah no we love going on strike because that's that's why she has insurance right it's because because the teamsters would go on like any of these teams just would go on strike

and i you know and i think i think that's everything that's like this you know this kind of well okay there's two ways to look at it one is that it's a fundamental misreading of the situation that's happening right now which is no people absolutely love going on strike people are really excited to go on strike people who people whose politics are not like you know people whose politics are not aligned with the left really like going on strike and are really excited about it and this is something that's happening sort of irrespective of this there's been a bunch of wildcat strikes this is something that's been happening sort of irrespective of like actual union membership as people want to do this we've also seen sort of the great resignation over the last few years of you know what is effectively a massive like part of the reason the conditions

for labor are like this strong right now is because there's been this massive informal strike of people just sort of people you know walking off the job like deciding their job fucking sucks and quitting and that's been putting a lot of pressure on employers and you know and simultaneously this you know i i think i think the the reading of this that's more sort of cynical is that like these people know this right they know that people want to go on strike and they're looking at it and they're terrified and their conclusion is like we have to fucking stop you know we people want to go on strike and they're looking at it and they're terrified. And their conclusion is like, we have to fucking stop. You know, we have to stop with this wave of labor militancy before it gets going, because if it gets going, you know, if you're like if you're, you know, like a sort of centrist liberal politician or if you're like a conservative union bureaucrat, like that's terrifying for you.

for you then there's you know there's there's a lot of people who have a lot to lose if if if you know like if if really sort of a precedented wave of labor militancy gets going yeah yeah absolutely absolutely uh you know when i think of uh you know people and wanting to go on strike uh i guess i'll touch on two things here which is that you know my hub, whenever we talk about going on strike there, you know, there is a sense that, yes, people really want it. And also they're really worried that they aren't going to be able to that, like, you know, we're going to get this kind of agreement that most people will want and it's not going to happen. And we've had all of this buildup and, you know, it's kind of, kind of, you know, fall flat. And then, you know, also I've, I've spent a fair amount of time on, on picket lines as like a community supporter. And, you know, there is something incredibly magical about being on strike. You know, like there's often just this outpouring of community support

for the workers, right? And workers get to see that their labor is extremely valued by the larger community. And I think that is really important. I think that builds bonds of solidarity. And you get to see the other unions who come out in support of your strike, and then, you know, you go and support them. And then it creates, yeah, it creates these bonds that, you know, aren't really, they can be achieved without it, but it's just so much more bonding. I guess I'm going to use the term bonds a lot, but, and there really isn't a substitute for it. And, you know, and then people also, they get to experience the fan for them because they don't have us who know how to do our jobs in there doing them, right? Like, you know, I was at a picket line for this other company a few years back and like the workers there on the line were constantly giving me updates. They'd be like, yeah, man, it's wild. I heard in there that like, you know, the managers are trying to do our jobs and like none of what they make is edible and they're throwing it all away.

Like, and so they're one, they're seeing that, yes, their labor is specific. It has value. It is necessary and crucial. And they are getting that community support. And, you know, there's not a lot of other opportunities for those realizations to happen. So. Yeah. And I mean, this is something that like, I mean, I've literally seen this, like our teachers union. So, yeah, and I mean, this is something that like, I've literally seen this, like our teachers union.

We talked about this a bit on the show, but like our local teachers union in Chicago, like God, you know, they got a reform caucus and they're not perfect, but, you know, they're much better than what was happening before. And, you know, and one of the things they do is they they've been on strike a lot of times in the last about like decade, decade, bit over a decade. And it changed the city like chicago is a you know was for i mean decades decades and decades this just like interminable machine run like neoliberal hellhole and you know i mean i'm not going to say like chicago is like some kind of like you know like beacon of the left or whatever but like the city is just different after it and it wasn't just the one i tried they kept they kept going on strike and they kept going on strike and you know you can you can look at the quality of their wins and you can sort of like you know like i mean there's not like i know i mean like i know people

who like have quibbles with sort of like exactly what happened in the contract negotiations but like you know they they went on strike multiple times and they won and that really and and you know the other thing that happens the thing you were talking about right is like suddenly you're at these pickets and like the entire community is showing up like everyone's showing up with food like it it changed it changed the city and you know and i think this guy says another thing i think is important here about and what's you know sort of the potential that's being averted is the interesting thing about this strike wave is that we've had a number you know we've we've had like the whole we had sort of the wildcat teacher strikes in 2017 we've had a couple of a couple of waves of teacher strikes but like most of the strikes that have been happening at public sector

unions we haven't had these giant strikes other than basically i mean there's been some right there's there's there's been a lot of strikes in the health care sector we haven't had a strike like at this scale in the private sector in you know outside basically like the teamsters and like the teamsters and like the guild are like the only two big unions on that scale who go on strike like even kind of regularly even that's like that's like a once in like 20 year thing right and so i don't know like i think i think just sort of the potential of what's being lost here is enormous. If what happens is that this deal, which is, like, I don't know, not great from what I've seen of it from the initial things. Although, again, like, we still don't fucking know what's in this deal.

And we're not going to for, like, a bit, like, at least until they fucking release the thing. I don't know. a bit at like, at least until they fucking release the thing. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, obviously,

you know, we'll, we'll, we'll have to see, you know, what's, what's in that agreement. Yeah. You know,

at least just, you know, for, you know, my own views, you know, it's any, you know,

company, you know, that's paying you poverty wages or, you know, there's unsafe work conditions and just seems like, well, on principle, there needs to be a work stoppage.

Like that's, you know, if you're going to treat people that way, that's just the result. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Something that I'm like kind of thinking about right now is like, so like the 2175, I believe it is for part-time workers you know that is a significant increase from the 1550 but we're just at the beginning of our five-year contract yeah yeah you know like i feel like you know like it's being viewed as like oh well that's like okay for right now it's you know kind of not but it's really just not going to be okay in five years when we have to have these contract negotiations again. And because we're not starting out with a solid $25 an hour, we're going to be playing catch up to what is not really okay right now.

Like, it's just going to, like, it's like, it's just going to it's like it's just gonna keep happening you know by the time we get to uh 2028 you know we'll probably get up to 25 an hour maybe but by that time you know who knows what we're actually going to need in order to survive in this economy yeah so you know i feel like that wage is just not it's not proactive enough for what we're going to need in the coming years. And, you know, in there, there is stuff about like, you know, wage increases for like, you know, however long you've been there and stuff like that. But yeah, I, you know, you know, like I graduated from high school in like 2008. And I just feel like the my entire life, the economy has just been fucking shitty. And when they tell me the economy is great, my finances are still fucking shitty.

And, you know, like this is one of one of the old 2011 slogans that like. Well, I guess there's also 2008 slogan that like people need to fucking remember is that the g when the bank takes your house gdp goes up right the economic indicators that we have are are you know they're bourgeois economic indicators right like they are they are they are designed to measure how well capital is being extracted from you. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep, yep, yep.

I definitely know reflection on our actual, you know, day-to-day lives. You know, what our needs are. Yeah. Hey, some people made money off of your labor. So things are good. Unless, you know, you're the laborer. Yeah. And, like, you know, I think another thing that, like, happens a lot is, like, yeah, like, you know you're the laborer yeah and like you know i think i think another thing that like happens a lot is like yeah like you know it is entirely possible that a bunch of people who are

you know making like seventy thousand dollars a year are fucking doing great right now and it's like well bully for them like we're fucking not yeah yeah yeah and you know and speaking to you know to the you know what does things you know look five years out which you know it seems like you know things just kind of get exponentially worse you know i don't know what you know the environment you know what our climate's going to be i don't know what you know inflation or food costs you know it's going to be and you know so far you know i'd need to see the you know what the tentative agreement has on that market rate adjustment and then there's also the cost of living adjustment too which at least what i believe is you know it doesn't kick into like

you've been there for five years i guess you just aren't living for those first five years i don't know it's great that i you know that my utilities and my rent waives my bills for the first five years i don't know it's great that i you know that my utilities and my rent waives my bills for the first five years that i work for ups someone someone someone someone so someone also like go find the statistics on how many people get fired at four years and 11 months like yeah and that's yeah i mean that's also when the uh the pension uh minimum investment time is five years, that's also something I've thought about. Well, what happens on four years and 11 months?

Is that when, you know, now we've got a bigger target on my back? It's like already a thorn in their side. They did the thing I said they were going to do where it says UPS will equip in-cab AC and all large delivery vehicles, sprinter vans, and package cars purchased after January 1st, 2024. Cars are getting two fans and an induction vent in the cargo compartment, which is good, but also not air conditioning. It's not air conditioning, and it gets very hot in those trailers.

And yeah, no, it's like, yeah. Except all things purchased after january 1st 2024 yeah so it's just like you know they'll yeah it's like they will start purchasing cars again in like 2094 yeah yeah nothing in there about retrofitting those cars well i think i think cars i think they're well okay i i don't know this is another thing like it's it's unclear to me exactly what a lot of this means because we you know like we we're like we we can't look at the actual contract which is like yeah so this is like we need to i guess also like preface this like this is like we're not doing legal analysis of this this is like we need to i guess also like preface this like this is like we're not

doing legal analysis of this this is our speculation based on what we're reading uh this is this none of this constitutes binding legal advice yeah but i don't know yeah yeah hey i just work here uh yeah uh another thing that i'm like noticing in this contract. So another big grievance that was had was the lack of full time positions. And so, like, if you want to get a full time inside job, you know, there is a seven to 10 year wait list for that, right? So this tentative agreement stipulates that there will be a creation of 7,500 new full-time Teamster jobs at UPS and the fulfillment of 22,500 open positions. But it doesn't specify if that's going to be for inside work or for, you know, more drivers. And, you know, I have epilepsy, so I am not going to be a driver. That's just doesn't seem ideal for me.

And, yeah, I would like to see some numbers on. So that wait list, is that going down? Like, because that's like what i'm waiting for is to be able to you know snag one of those full-time inside positions but i don't know and like when you think about you know 7500 full-time positions it's also worth to keep in mind that UPS employs 340,000 people. So it's like, yeah, wait, yeah. So that's a 2%. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's like 2%. And like, admittedly, like, you know, 40% of that workforce is already like they're full-time drivers, but so that's like 60 of that is part-timers and you know i'm not going to make anyone do more math but 7500 for 60 of 340 000 people is yes it's not as exciting as

just seeing that number by itself yeah right yes it's 3%, which is like a chug. And this goes into something, you know, I've noticed, you know, with, you know, co-workers, which is always talking about, you know, like, you know, we need more hours. And that, you know, that is true to a degree. You know, really, though, it's like, well, we need more pay. You know, I, you know, I think that's, you know, would be a sign, you know, though it's like well we need more pay you know i you know i think that's you know would be a sign you know when it can be you know like a really strong union is that you know we can even just say yeah you know what maybe people shouldn't be working 70 hour weeks yeah you know maybe we should cap that at 30 with you know pt pay that you know pays like full time

but of course you know we're not there you know we need these jobs that can actually provide you know definitely not going to knock that but you know we'd definitely like to see that overall shift kind of just you know in our culture of you know we don't need to work more to have our needs met i think it's also really sort of important to understand about qps jobs it's like you're fucking destroying your body. Especially if you're one of the people sorting packages. You are lifting thousands of packages a day. These things can weigh up to like 80 fucking pounds.

They can weigh up to 150. Oh, 150. Jesus Christ. Never mind. 150 is the other limit. 70 pounds is where you can do team lift. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I'm talking to a feeder driver recently was talking about having a, you know, two of those

trailers hooked up and weighing in at something like 17,000 pounds on the scale. Jesus. Obviously, you know, that's the cabin engine included, I believe. But, you know, that's not my world. I'm kind of completely unfamiliar with that side of things. But still, yeah, it's like a lot of weight, you know, because we're carrying so many packages every day. Yeah.

And it's a lot of wear and tear on the body. And management's always pushing you to move faster, too. Yeah. Like, I had a worker who is a feeder driver for another hub, and she was telling me that a supervisor there was telling newly hired part-time employees that it's actually safer to work faster instead of slower. What? Yes. Yeah, that makes no fucking sense no fucking sense at all and like one of the reasons they have an incentive to make us work really fast which is that the full-time soups get a parts per hour bonus uh depending on how fast we go so you know they will harass you into working faster even even though, you know, we're moving these thousands of fucking packages. They'll harass us to move faster so that they get a bonus off of the packages that we handled and moved.

was like mid nineties outside or something, you know, we're not getting, Oh, do you need water? Do you need to rest? It was, Oh, you're not working fast enough. Like your packages per hours, you know, too low, you know, it's that kind of constant, you know, harassment or, you know, maybe sometimes like, you know, I know my supervisor's a little bit more subtle about it, you know, uh, versus, you know, outright being like, Oh, you need to work faster. Cause that's the thing is in our contract, you know, there's no kind of productivity quota. You know, we work safe. We follow the methods. That's something I really try and, you know, really focus on.

Because, you know, ideally, you know, I want to, you know, I would like to be here longer. Yeah. Silly enough, that is for a job with terrible conditions. But, you know. But also it's a job that has attention and that yeah that's the big thing and it's like i don't you know what's a pension gonna do if you know i'm you know have some kind of you know grave injury from from the job yeah no pension but still yeah you're dead with heat exhaustion. Like, well, pension doesn't pay out. Yeah, it's just, it's just, yeah, it's wild.

It's wild. Man, I am going to be really excited to see how this, how this vote goes. Yeah, it's going to be an interesting day at work. Yeah. Yep. interesting day at work uh yeah yep yep i'm sure that i'll have those people that know that i know about the union come up and talk to me to ask me what i think about it uh because i'm the only person they know that knows anything about the union because as we talked about earlier union reps just are barely ever there yeah and yeah we'll see we'll see man that's i'm just now really thinking about that

7500 full-time jobs three percent two or three percent depending on the metric that you're looking at yeah absolutely i mean not enough no, no. Wild. Wild. And now this is, at best, a delayed opportunity for a strike to build those, as we talked about earlier, those necessary muscles that need to be exercised. And that's at best. We might have missed it uh yeah yeah we'll we'll see we'll see yeah that that fucking sucks um yeah what a curveball to get for the podcast

oh well unless unless you have anything else you want to talk about um yeah i guess we're going to wrap up this incredibly chaotic episode of it could happen here in which we discovered the chaos of a not open bargaining process and what that looks like live on air yeah yeah exciting times but yeah i think uh i think i'm good I feel like I hit all my notes and some that I wasn't even planning on hitting because we had this new information so right good lord I was like it

couldn't have been like an hour earlier so I could have at least read it first literally in the middle of the record we gotta look over some information bear with us oh my gosh We got to look over some information. Bear with us. Oh my gosh. Well, you know, you can join us next for the live analysis of the over 300 page contract.

That we got like just the highlights. Yeah, but thank you to both for coming on. And yeah, I guess if the strike happens, we can talk to you again you both for, thank you to both for coming on. And yeah, I guess, I guess if the strike happens, we can talk to you again or maybe also if it doesn't, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Thank you for having us on. Yeah, I'd love to stay in contact to talk about if we do go on strike or, you know, if we don't, would love, I would absolutely be open to a follow-up on that.

And yeah, okay. So where can people go if they want to support like the strike or also potentially the rank-and-file workers who are trying to like make sure it happens yeah i would say that a uh good place to follow uh or like a good uh source i guess to follow um would be to follow the teamsters for a democratic union um if there is going to be any movement that is uh in the union that's organized it's going to be coming from them most likely um so they are the better version I would say to follow on that front. Um, and of course you can still follow, uh, the regular, uh, Teamsters, um, page and stuff like that to see what's going on. But yeah, yeah, that's going to be weird. I, I don't know what the TDU line is going to, is going to be on this. So I was like, we'll see. And, you know, hopefully, you know,

on this. I was like, well, see, and, you know, hopefully, you know,

if we can strike, obviously, yeah, come out to, yeah, support your fellow workers. And, you know, too,

we'll also be able to coordinate, you know, with, uh, rank and file union, uh, reps, um,

you know, what kind of needs there might be out on the picket line. Yep. Yeah. I'll say, and yeah, thank you. Uh,

yeah, very much for, for having us. Yeah. Thank you for coming on. Um, yeah, this yeah, thank you very much for having us. Yeah, thank you for coming on. Yeah, this has been It Could Happen Here. Go on strike. Don't let your leadership tell you not to go on strike. Simply

do the thing and organize so you can do it again. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America I know you. network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming

and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, it could happen here. A podcast that is right now happening in your ear. It could happen a year. That's what we should call it.

Garrison, we're changing the name. We're rebranding our valuable, valuable title. Completely moving overnight to a whole new thing based on a whim, you know? Masterful gambit, sir. Yeah, this has been a fun week. We're all laughing a little bit at Elon Musk, but we have something serious to talk about today,

and that is everybody's favorite fascist governor, Ron DeSantis. Garrison, you and I spent just way too much time last week talking about Meatball Ron, and now we're back. Now we're back because he keeps meatballing. Meatball Ron is balling and meeting. Yeah, so we wrapped up like a two-part episode on

Ron DeSantis' use of fashion aesthetics. And then, like, two days later, the funniest thing happened where he just decided to basically basically uh post son and rads so we're gonna we're gonna get to that um but first there's a whole bunch of other information that's come out these these past like really three days that have kind of that are actually giving more context to what's going on at the des campaign, because stuff doesn't look too good, actually. He kind of looks

like he's losing everything as he slowly watches it all crumble. So let's see. Let's start by talking about everyone's favorite topic, campaign finances. I know this is what everyone tunes in to listen to. Yes, we love campaign finances. Yeah. So last week, the public finally got a glimpse at DeSantis' campaign finances. The financial disclosures showed that DeSantis had about twice as much staff as Donald Trump. And as of last week- You know, Garrison, you just said that. And I imagine in my head for a second that you were referring to the amount of staff infections he's had versus Donald Trump. That's not true, no. Trump's definitely had more staff. There's almost no

way that Trump is not leading in the staff infections category. Please. I'm sorry to interrupt. But as of last week, the Florida governor had already spent about 40 percent of the $20 million fundraised from April to June of 2023. So the campaign's spending rate was averaging more than $212,000 per day, which is an astronomical cost for a campaign, for someone like running for president, basically for the first time.

Yeah, this far out too from the season proper. Yeah, it's absolutely absurd. The inflated number of staff, heavy use of private jets and luxury event venues has his campaign essentially just burning through cash with very little seeming to come of it in terms of positive poll numbers.

So another thing that these- No, they've gained maybe a point or so on Trump over the last year. Yeah. After spending $200,000 per day for the past like four months. Another thing that these financial disclosures exposed is DeSantis' heavy dependence on high contributors. So just about 15% of fundraising contributions came from donors who gave less than $200. And the vast, vast majority of DeSantis' money has come from donors who gave the legal maximum of $3,300 in the primary, which also means that those who gave that cannot contribute any more money either. So he's running out of people that are actually able to fund his operation. Yeah. And it's worth noting he does have a super PAC. You are not limited in how

much you can donate to a super PAC, but super PACs cannot spend money on the same things as general campaign funds, right? Like there are limitations in what you can use that on. So this is actually a logistical problem for him that he has maxed out his donor base. Yeah. And the New York Times has reported that future like large prospective donors have been spooked by DeSantis' sliding poll numbers, and they may be less willing to invest in what's looking like a losing battle. So to combat these swelling campaign expenses, including $279,000 at the Four Seasons in Miami, DeSantis' Tallahassee-based campaign has began undercrowing massive cuts to campaign staff this past week. Previously, DeSantis had upwards of 90 people on payroll, but just this month, they've eliminated 38 jobs in a variety of departments, cutting more than one third of his payroll. DeSantis' cutbacks are nearly equal to the size of Trump's entire 2024 campaign staff.

DeSantis' campaign manager, Grinera Peck, said in a statement, I believe, late last week, quote, week, quote, following a top to bottom review of our organization, we have taken additional aggressive steps to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden. So that was their little statement accompanying the news of firing almost 40 people from their campaign. According to the New York Times, advertisers are, quote, promising to reorient the DeSantis candidacy as a, quote, unquote, insurgent run and remake it into a, quote, unquote, leaner, meaner operation. So this is the new strategy that they're trying to do is instead of having 90 people on staff in a largely ineffectual strategy, have a more insurgent run with a smaller number of people. But in addition to the dozens of staff members who've been let go this July, two senior advisors have also departed this month to work for an outside pro-Desantis nonprofit. One of these senior advisors, who was

supposed to oversee the campaign's television messaging, voluntarily left, quote, as the reality of a disappearing advertising budget set in. So these two more kind of seasoned Republican advisors saw what was happening in the campaign, and they're still pro-DeSantis, but they believe they can be more effective by working from outside of the actual campaign. That's so funny. by working from outside of the actual campaign.

That's so funny. Which is not a great sign for DeSantis' internal team here. If you have people who still like you, but they just can't work for you because you're doing such a bad job. So DeSantis' team is now telegraphing a plan to engage with mainstream media in a way that they have not previously done because they've he's so far kind of scornfully avoided it as we've talked about previously and they're calling this new strategy the DeSantis is everywhere approach which is a

Jesus Christ bad name for strategy the part of the problem Garrison I don't know how to like I can't like prove this the way that we prove you know when we're tracing back the ideological roots of like a lot of our modern fascists

but what I what I believe in my heart is that so many of these very young people on the extreme right who are

who are driving this campaign like just want to be villains from a bad late 90s early 2000s, like just want to be villains from a bad late nineties, early two thousands movie. Like they want to be,

they want to be the bad guy in like a fucking superhero movie. Right? Like that's, you don't, you don't say that about a guy who's good. Like you would like the Biden campaign. If they came to Joe and we're like, we want to do a Biden is everywhere thing.

He'd be like, no, that sounds kind of creepy guys. Like I already got a little bit of a problem with that what with the hair sniffing i don't really want to i don't really want to jump on that train yeah no like it definitely has the vibes of like zoomers who grew up watching like late 90s animated superhero cartoons who are trying to like yes we're trying to like emulate that for some reason. There is one really funny quote from the Times that I will read. Oh, yes.

Because it quotes internal sources that I don't have access to. But anyway, quote, one person close to Mr. DeSantis who requested anonymity to speak candidly about a candidate whom the person still supports said the governor had experienced quote-unquote a challenging learning curve that has left him quote-unquote a little bit jarred so you make me sound like a six-year-old who's like not quite progressing fast enough in the reading where they're like maybe we need to try teaching him another way like we'll get out the different colored books like yeah so he's he seems to have a rough adjustment period to campaigning in just more than one Like we'll get out the different colored books. Like, yeah. So he's, he seems to have a rough adjustment period to campaigning in just more than one state and having an actual like opponent to go up against.

And also like an opponent who's like actually a good, like who's like good at being like a politician. Yeah. So yeah, a challenging learning curve indeed. Yeah. So, yeah, a challenging learning curve indeed. I might I might specify I think actually DeSantis is a lot better at being a politician than Donald Trump. But that's not what the competition is. Well, DeSantis is better at being like an effective like governor. He's better. He's better at the machinery of politics.

Yes. Yes. Whereas Trump is better at the machinery of politics. Yes. Yes. Whereas Trump is better at holding power within the GOP. Yeah. And being like a showman. So we will, we will talk more about some, uh, some actually relatively breaking news regarding the DeSantis campaign. Oh, I'm excited for this. I just saw this before we got on.

Shortly, shortly after this ad break. Okay. We are, we are back. So a lot has happened the past two days. A lot has happened the past two hours, actually. But we're going to have to work our way there. The first bit of news that was kind of both, it was both confirming my suspicions, um, and in very, in a very interesting piece of news in the first place is that, um, that Fashwave inspired kind

of homophobic pride month video that we talked about in, in, in our last DeSantis, uh, Fashwave episode. Um, it turns out to, uh, be slightly more self-inflicted than what, than what, uh, at least I, I said in the episode, cause I didn't want to make claims that I couldn't back up. Because we have some new information regarding this video. I'm going to quote from this article in The Times. A DeSantis campaign aide had originally produced the video internally, passing it off to an outside supporter to post it first and making it appear as if it was generated independently, according to a person with knowledge of the incident, unquote. So this video turned out to be actually be made in house. someone who was working for Ron DeSantis as, uh, as we speculated initially. Um, but we couldn't really like say for sure because it was, it was posted first on a third party account.

Specifically the guy who was the one who shared it is the dude who made it. Uh, no, that is, that is for this next video we're going to talk about. Um, the, the, the, the homophobic one was, was shared by this, this, pro-DeSantis account called Proud Elephant, who had a corresponding Telegram channel. This was the guy who posted the first homophobic meme one. justified a lot of our suspicions about DeSantis employing a staff of zoomers who don't actually understand how to win a political election and are more interested in just creating fascist memes which is seems to be not a very effective strategy for DeSantis so far so again just the day that this news broke that that the video was actually made in-house. Another Fashwave-inspired video, but with much, much more overt Nazi imagery, was shared online by a DeSantis campaign staffer.

Robert, have you seen this video? Yes. Okay. The Sonnenrad video? Yes. So we don't have to watch it here, but I will give a description of it for the people listening because also we probably shouldn't be sharing these things everywhere on Twitter and stuff anyway.

It's not a great idea, but it is. It's not going to make you happy or help you in any way to see this. It's just like it's surprising. I will say that I was surprised to see how. It's just like, um, it's surprising. I will say that I was surprised to see how fashy it was to see how like explicitly accelerationist mass shooter fashy it was. Yes. Like this is like Christchurch kind of shit. Uh, yeah. So we're, we're, we're not going to share it, but it, but it is useful to know what's in it. So I, I did write a, write a pretty in-depth description of this video here. So this video was posted on Sunday, July 23rd.

It's about 70 seconds long. It plays over a Meg Meyers cover of the song Running Up the Hill. Which was made, you know, wait, isn't that the one, that was the one that the new season of Stranger Things a while back,

like brought back to the mainstream. It is a Kate Bush original. a it is a kate bush original this one is a more like electronic cover of the song yes um it's talking about like you know like a like a uh trying to like ask god to help you with certain things blah blah blah blah blah anyway uh it starts with the doomer wojak sitting at a computer looking at headlines about the ineffectiveness of trump's border wall, unfulfilled anti-immigration policies, and Trump's pro-COVID vaccine statements. So I guess we should probably talk about what a Wojak is in case someone is unfamiliar. If you've ever spent any amount of time on the internet, you've probably seen memes with kind of crudely drawn human faces and heads.

These are called wojack memes they're they're they're very popular in like political spheres uh they kind of kind of rose to prominence on 4chan and spread spread out from there everyone kind of uses them nowadays they're pretty common but there's a few specific like wojak characters. Like the Chad is one. One of the more popular ones is the Doomer Wojak, which is someone who has taken the black pill, so to speak. They've looked at modern society and have decided that it's not worth engaging in. Now, there's Doomers on the right. There's Doomers on the right, there's doomers on the left, there's doomers who look at climate change and the acceleration of capitalism and just decide, hey, this is

too far gone. So they become a doomer and they're on the left. There's also doomers on the right who are looking at gay marriage and the acceptance of trans people and being like, oh, this is so socially degenerate, society's too far gone, and then they become a doomer and,

but they're on the right. So it, it, it happens on, it happens on both sides. When both, both sides use doomer memes. Uh,

this one is, uh, because we're talking about it in this context of fashion wave. This was obviously a fascist doomer meme. Uh, but that's, that's kind of what I mean when I say there's, there's a doomer Wojack sitting,

sitting at a computer. It's like, it's like a guy with a beanie, like a scruffy beard. He looks like very depressed and tired. That's kind of what I mean when I say there's a Doomer Wojak sitting at a computer. It's like a guy with a beanie, like a scruffy beard. He looks like very depressed and tired, that sort of thing. So as these kind of headlines about Trump's not conservative enough-ness are flashing on this computer, the Doomer Wojak is looking increasingly disillusioned and apathetic. Then there's the clip of Trump holding up a pride flag that plays right before we see Trump signing the First Step Act, the 2018 Criminal Justice Reform Bill. Then headlines flash about violent criminals being released into the streets,

that sort of thing. So the Doomer Wojak is looking at all these things about Trump, looking more and more depressed, when suddenly a doorway appears with an almost angelic light pouring in from behind. And as the door opens, we see a silhouette of Ron DeSantis. More short clips of Ron play. And now the Wojak is looking happy, almost like exuberant. exuberant seemingly kind of random images of outer space volcanoes rocket launches surfing and the beach flash quickly on screen with with uh with like glitchy silhouettes of ron de santis looming above coastal ocean side cities that are lit up by a sunset uh a don't tread on florida alligator flag spins onto screen like it's a fucking like MS paint like edit.

And then the video flashes more clips of DeSantis wearing sunglasses, standing in front of American flags as the sunset happy Wojak fades in. So this is another Wojak meme of somebody almost like teary eyed with like contentment staring into the horizon as like a sunset is behind their head it kind of it kind of reminds me of like the um that guy who who stole that plane in seattle and yes yeah very sad story if you're not aware of it a man hijacked i believe it was an alaska airs flight a couple of years back. It was empty. Like he worked at the airport. He just took the plane and he got up into the sky. And then like he was just kind of a dude who was sort of suicidal.

There's very sad audio of him talking to – because he gets on with air traffic control and he makes sure that he's not going to hurt anyone else. And like then the plane goes down. He goes down in it. And it's very bleak. He was not a's not going to hurt anyone else. And like, then the plane goes down, you know, he goes down in it and it's, it's very bleak. He was not a man who wanted to hurt anybody. It's just this kind of like exists. I've heard, I've found it set to a lot of vaporwave tracks, actually, like the audio, the conversation between them. Cause he's kind of, I think a lot of people identify with his sense of like, I don't really know why I was ever here.

I don't really know. Yeah was ever here i don't really know yeah it's someone who's dealing with like post-modern absurdity but in a way that like he doesn't want to like hurt anybody about it but he just doesn't know what to do with existence yeah he had part of he had like the the 10 10 of what a mass shooter has which is exactly go out and i want to do something but thankfully he was also a good person and didn't want to like murder strangers. So this became very popular on the Internet, including on Reddit and 4chan. He was dubbed Sky King. Yeah.

And there's footage of him basically crashing this plane as the sun is setting. And there's footage of him flying around in sunset, often played with Vwave with his conversation with air traffic control now this is very popular um the the sunset happy rojack is is very similar i i've i've seen people post this image in threads about sky king before um and i think a lot of people to understand is like this this act that this the sky king thing this has more in common with like accelerationist like terrorism than what most people can like really understand about like between like shooting a random person for like violent crime and this like this this is more this this is closer to why people do accelerationist like terroristic acts but this guy was like not actually a monster

so he didn't do that he like explicitly didn't want to hurt anybody he explicitly didn't want to try to land the plane at the airport because he thought he might hurt somebody yeah and presumably since he worked at an airport he had some knowledge of how easily that

could go wrong yeah so this anyway these two images are kind of linked often on the some knowledge of how easily that could go wrong. Yeah. So this, anyway, these two images are kind of linked often on the internet. So anyway, we, we, we see,

we see the video getting like more hopeful, uh, with, with, with Rhonda Santus, you know, having stupid fashion wave, having stupid fashion wave imagery is this sunset.

Happy. Wojack fades in as like, as the doomer is now has like contentment and then this this then this is followed by very quick flashes of desantis and more more more beach imagery there's a lot of beach in this video yeah um there's like this like rotating sheet of stickers that read make america florida um Then we get this shot of a small yacht zooming through the water with DeSantis campaign events played over top of the water. And during this shot, we have another Wojak holding a rifle wearing camo military fatigues that slides onto screen.

He has a patch of the flag of Florida on his plate carrier and his helmet. We get more shots of beachfront cities and rocket launches, followed by headlines about DeSantis on a variety of topics, including his anti-immigration actions, his use of Florida's National Guard in other states, DeSantis' anti-diversity initiatives, his anti-education bills, his anti-drag bills, the cancellation of pride parades in Florida, and in general, just kind of how DeSantis has been pushing Florida further right. So after this

barrage of headlines, we get to the most mask off moment of the video. The flag of Florida fills the screen with two lines of armed troops at either side marching towards the flag. A still photo of DeSantis is center frame, with his head right in the middle of the seal of Florida, which is on the center of their state flag. The head in front of the seal creates this almost like halo effect around DeSantis' head, and then the seal turns into a spinning sonnenrad as we zoom into the symbol as troops march into center,

and then the video ends. The Sonnenrad is on screen for about 10 seconds. So this was a pretty upsetting thing to see on Twitter. Yes, upsetting is one way to phrase it, yeah. And again, the Sonnenrad has a long history. It's kind of a specifically a cultic version of the swastika. It reached – it has been around for quite a while, but its most recent – the kind of thing that brought it into modern prominence was the Christchurch shooter chose it as the cover of his manifesto and also wore a Sanenrad. I believe it was on the chest of his plate carrier when he carried out his massacre. He also had a couple on his gun, I think. Yeah, so it's very clearly a Nazi symbol. I know there's some people make jokes about how this must have just been

an Azov battalion reference. Deeply unserious. No, you can see some of these on Azov. I mean, again, if you want to make the case that this is a Nazi thing, they wear this too. Azov uses it. There's people trying to excuse the use of the sun and red by saying oh it's just an azov symbol it's not a nazi thing no which is they're bad and this is bad which is a deeply unserious thing to say um so yeah this video was shared by at least one campaign staffer. It's a very short video, but it plays into a strain of like accelerationist propaganda tropes that even the previous Fastway video didn't even really have in many of the same ways. becoming like happy and content than putting on military fatigues to go fight for Ron DeSantis, who's now in the center of like a haloed son and rad. Like it's, it's, it is

emulating a type of meme that both gained popular in order to specifically like inspire mass shootings to happen. And also to like, to get young depressed males to channel their depression into like fascism. It's, itism it's it's it has a whole bunch of tropes like it's it's it's really just like playing by the playbook um so the video was first posted on the twitter account ron desantis fan cams which is a horrible sentence yeah the account is a few months old but its visible posts only go back to june uh they post a lot Yeah. people describing DeSantis as fascist, edited together with clips of DeSantis deploying National Guard and calling for a civilian state military force under his control, all sliced together next to footage of Nazis and Mussolini played over an upbeat EDM track.

So it's all like explicitly fascist stuff. Like, like, like it's people like rev, like it's like a proud proud proudly embracing the fascist label so this style of video is almost identical to the homophobic pride month video that we discussed last week and considering uh the recent news that the other video shared by the desantis warham account was secretly made by a campaign staffer that led myself and others to assume that this Slawn and Red video was most likely made by the same person inside DeSantis' campaign and was operating this DeSantis fancam account as a sock puppet. But, you know, I could not prove this myself, really.

It's just, it's a hard thing to kind of backtrack. This account was pretty clean in terms of, like, I tried to, just, it's, it's a, it's a hard thing to kind of backtrack this. I, this account was pretty clean in terms of like, I tried to like, you know, do, do pretty, pretty basic OSINT on this account, but it's, it was, it was, I could not find out much about it. Um, but, uh, the, the campaign staff member that first shared this Saanenrad video to his own Twitter account was former national Review writer Nate Hockman. We will talk about Nate Hockman's exploits shortly after this hat break. All right, we are back and in a much better position currently than 25-year-old Nate Hockman. Yes. Really was a, tragically was a promising career.

You know what? Let's give him another chance, Garrison. Reach out to Nate. We can bring him on the team. You know, have him start making some videos for us. Yeah, I'll bill an invoice to Nate Hockman's address. I'll see where he lives. So 25-year-old Nate Hockman has been working as a speechwriter for DeSantis' campaign after rising to prominence among young conservatives for his online references

and willingness to entertain ideas outside the Overton window. Hockman hosted a Twitter space late last year centered around the question of if white supremacists like Nick Fuentes should have a place in the modern conservative movement. Fuentes himself appeared in the Twitter space, and Hockman thanked him for radicalizing children by saying, quote, you've gotten a lot of kids based, and we respect you for that. And he also said that Fuentes, quote, is probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservative, unquote. So, Hockman has retweeted the DeSantis fan cam account at least six times before he shared the Sonnenrad video this past Sunday. But he's not the only DeSantis-linked account to share these videos.

But he's not the only DeSantis-linked account to share these videos. The campaign's War Room Twitter account and the pro-DeSantis-never-back-down superpack have also shared videos from this Ron DeSantis fancam Twitter account. By using this fancam account to post videos, and then by retweeting on Nate's account, someone was certainly testing the waters to see how close the DeSantis campaign can get to just doing explicit Nazi shit. And considering the New York Times, who Hockman has written for, by the way, basically confirming that the person who made the Pride Month video was secretly employed by DeSantis and posted via third party to get some distance from the official campaign, this led many to suspect that Hockman was secretly the person behind this fan cam account due to the similarities in video styles and his frequent boosting of the account. The Sonnenreiter video was deleted the same day it was posted,

and the fan cam account has not posted since then. But then suddenly, just a few hours ago, as of time of recording, news dropped that Nick Hockman has been fired from the DeSantis campaign, and the sources at Axios confirmed that he has in fact secretly been making these Fashway videos. So it was Hockman all along. This is what happens when you hire a 25-year-old grope to work on your presidential bid. Your very serious presidential campaign. Yeah. So the Descendants campaign officially has only said a few words on the subject.

Quote, Nate Hockman is no longer with the campaign and we will not be commenting on him further. Not that easy, guys. But other anonymous sources have confirmed to news outlets that it was Hockman who all this like behind the scenes, like Scooby-Doo shit of like posting fascist videos on sock puppets to then get reboosted by DeSantis' campaign. Like it's, it's all, it's all very like dark, but like comical, like it's, it's silly. Like, um, uh, similar to the DeSantis video we talked about in the last Adventures in FashRave episode, this video, it was not meant to, like, convince older Trump supporters to vote for DeSantis, right?

Like, that's not the intention of posting this video. No. This new video is... First off, going for the Zoomer vote, always a mixed bag. Always a bad call! Yeah, anytime you're going for the youth vote, this is, like, famously a difficult thing. It kind of sometimes works for the Dems because the youth tend to be pretty progressive and the republicans are

terrifying yeah but going for the trying to base your campaign as a republican presidential candidate on the youths is uh quite a move yeah like it's let's see how it pays off for him gotten yeah because like this new video is almost more chronically online than the last one uh like not even considering the nazi imagery it's it's heavy use of mojack memes is just like cartoonish to the median voter uh what this video is trying to do is signal to self-described fascists that DeSantis is their guy. And trying extremely desperately to create another meme magic moment like we had in 2016 to recruit a slew of teenage Nazis to try and meme another base president into office. Which isn't going to work this time around because it's not 2016 anymore.

16 anymore like we we've we've already been we've already been inoculated to some degree to this to this style of uh of campaign tactics all of all of the all the people in like like 4chan isn't the thing that it used to be it is it is it is a shell of its of its former self um but like what we have here on like the desantis side is like in terms of hiring people like Hockman, right? These are like seasoned Groypers who grew up and are now like getting into their 20s. You know, they're taking jobs at National Review and as campaign staffers. But due to their isolated niche political upbringing, they have deluded themselves into thinking that there is like a mythical far right youth voting bloc that just like quite simply doesn't exist. So you can spend all day making and retweeting these meme heavy videos with Nazi imagery that really only succeed in turning off the reliable boomer Republican voters. Now, like there's a few other, you know,

future scenarios here. If these, if these like up groipers continue to grow up, polish their act, take more jobs as staffers or on Capitol Hill, and slowly grow in numbers as they learn to hide their power level, aka hide their amount of racism, then we might have a problem. If they actually put intentionality into a long-term strategy like put more of these young freaks into positions in washington um but we're simply not there yet like in the case of hockman he kind of just like he blew up the spot right like he he went like he went too hard too fast and then he got fired because they don't want that shit. Yeah, the olds are going to watch this and go like, what the fuck is this? This does not look serious. This is not speaking to my issues. This is just like off-putting and strange. And most young people are going to be like, oh, it's some brain-poisoned 4chan-er.

That's who this guy is running as? The 4chan candidate? Yep. All right. No. who this guy is running as? Yeah. The 4chan candidate? Yeah.

All right. No, like. So the other fear is that they'll shift from like this electoral focus and try to just use this type of video propaganda to initiate another wave of like Nazi mass shootings like in 2018. The halo effect around DeSantis' head

is certainly cause for concern, but there's a lot of other factors that go into that sort of thing. And that is kind of just more of like an ever-present fear that anti-fascists have. And, you know, people do a lot of work into trying to catch these guys before they actually do mass shootings and try to isolate the spread of this style of propaganda for that very reason. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's certainly an interesting trajectory. When I started like finishing this episode earlier today, I had no idea that Hockman was going to get fired. I had no idea that it was going to be confirmed that Hockman was the one making the, making these

videos. So that's kind of some breaking news on our side. It's, it's been a few days. If you're, if you're listening to this at the end of the week. I'm going to read out one tweet from this guy, Double Doink, who is a stupid handle, no offense, but he made a pretty good point here. I am, quote, I think DeSantis' real problem isn't just that he's racist. It's that his campaign is racist in the same way a really annoying teenager is. Your average xenophobic suburbanite dad looks at a Sonnenrad Wojak ad like his son crashed his car. A lot of people are arguing that your average 56-year-old Trump supporter isn't as racist as your average DeSantis-supporting Zoomer, but that's not the point. Putting weird blood-and-soil shit in your ads smells. It's deeply uncool to the exact people that you want to impress. Unquote. And I'll add, it's deeply uncool to the exact people you want to impress. If you want to win at being president and are trying to move over Trump voters, it's just not going to play.

it's just not going to play. Um, so this is, this is the state of the dissenters campaign. Now they've, they've shed almost 40 people from their staff. The guy that was supposed to lead their television ads has left. Um, they seemingly just have no idea what the fuck to do.

They, they tried to have this guy do this like back door, Nazi video sock puppet strategy. That is also resulted in not very good things for the, for the DeSantis campaign. Um, so I guess we'll, we'll, we'll see how their, how their campaign develops if they, if they continue this sort of like fast wave rhetoric and style, I kind of doubt it now that, now that, now that Hockman is out. Um, but yeah, it's, it's been certainly an interesting few

months here, or a few weeks here rather, in terms of FashWave videos resurfacing again for the first time in quite a while in terms of mainstream political use. Yeah, I'm kind of suspecting that this might be the death knell of that, a uh at least for a spell as a as a relevant form of uh propaganda yeah i mean it's been in some ways like internally rejected at the desantis campaign and he is arguably the most fascist mainstream candidate that they that we like have right now nothing puts a stink on stuff like this like failure, right? These guys are not anarchists. And the anarchists are, we nearly always lose.

So there's this, because things fail, there's a lot of Spanish Civil War iconography and stuff that's still very relevant on that chunk of the left. But with the right, it is all about power. And when something like this fails, when it actually weakens a campaign, when it weakens the insurgent right, when it makes them less able to exert power, yeah, I kind of feel like we may have seen the last of this as a thing that matters, right? Yeah, I'll definitely be watching these next few months. But I think that's definitely a very, very fair assessment at this point.

Lastly, I just want to clarify one thing about our last episode due to some viewer feedback. So last time we were talking about how the Biden administration's use of dark branded memes had inadvertently led to Fashwave taking a big body blow. Now, I think some people misinterpreted our discussion as downplaying anti-fascists and leftists attempt to disrupt dark mega and Fashwave in general by like proliferating the satirical dark branded memes. So in the episode, we talked about the methodology behind this strategy of normies seizing onto memes and aesthetics, thus making them cringe and unattractive to the niche groups

that once enjoyed using them. With Dark Brandon, there was certainly an attempt from anti-fascists and leftist posters to appropriate FashWave's aesthetics with the hope that if spread widely enough, it would disarm some of FashWave aesthetics with the hope that if spread widely enough, it would disarm some of Fashwave's more dangerous and inspirational aspects. But you can't really force mainstream virality. This kind of thing works best when it appears natural. And for the majority of dark brand and posters, they were just doing this shit for shits and giggles.

That was the primary factor, is that it was funny. doing this shit for like shits and giggles. Like that, that, that was the primary factor is that it was funny. Um, and no effort to damage Fashwave's legibility would really be successful without mainstream liberal spread. A small group of leftists could meme like eternally, but until it breaks through that bubble, it would have little to no effect. Uh, now because of how Twitter's algorithm worked during the summer of last year, Now, because of how Twitter's algorithm worked during the summer of last year, after a few months, Dark Brandon did in fact break through to the liberal mainstream. But I've seen nothing to suggest that the White House staff had any intention of trying to damage Fashwave's legibility by sharing laser eye memes in August of 2022. I think the key here is that you are not saying this was purely the result of liberals accidentally, like jumping onto this, but that the primary, like, success was achieved, like the part of the success that was achieved as a result of this going like mainstream among

Biden supporters was accidental. Yeah, that was the part that was key, not not saying that the people who recognize this and were putting in the background work to try to push this stuff and make it, you know, eventually go viral. That was certainly not accidental. Correct. But the part that the liberals played

was an accidental part in killing this. That's the point. Yes, because what I mean by accidental is that when Dark Brandon started in March of 2022, there was no way to guarantee that four months later the white and like the White House and blue wave liberals would be sharing these memes

en masse like I remember conversations I had like last August when liberals were seemingly like ruining the funny dark branded memes but like me like myself and research colleagues during this time like that was when like we realized that if like if liberals keep sharing these cringy memes we

might actually have a shot at killing off a fash wave so so yes this was to not discount the efforts of anti-fascists or others who pioneered the spread of dark brandon and their attempts to insert it into greater public consciousness uh but i think to frame this as like a meticulously planned psyop from the very start is, is also kind of inaccurate in a, in like a very like spotlighted way. Like this was, this was a collaborative effort with, with the,

with the liberals not realizing the degree that their collaboration played in this like larger game of trying to disarm fascist aesthetics and like meme styles. So yeah, that's one, one clarifying note as we hopefully wrap up this DeSantis fashion wave Sega for the time being, because I definitely did not plan on making this episode when I, when I finished recording last week with you. So here we are.

Cool. All right. That's the episode. that's the episode that's the episode welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of

generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family

separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It is happening here. The thing that's happening here is fucking child labor. I am. I am deeply angry. This episode.

This is it could happen here. I'm your host, Mia Wong. And with me is Shireen. Hi, Mia. I'm so glad to join you on this really uplifting episode. Yeah, it's going to be great. So, yes. All right. uplifting episode yeah it's gonna be great so yes all right as anyone who studied like even a little bit of labor history knows the the fight over child labor is very very old it is it's one of

the first causes the sort of liberal reformers to capitalism took up nearly 1800s like it's like in the communist manifesto was one of the things it's actually it's one of the things people point out is like oh we've done all the things that was in the original Commons manifesto. And it's like, no, no, we never got rid of this. You know, it's also one of the things that like you get these sort of like capitalist triumphalist accounts that like, oh, we eliminated child labor. This is like this is proof the system works. Yeah, no, it is the battle over child labor is a battle that we are in the middle of losing. We are losing it in in worse and worse ways every day. So, okay, so why are we dealing with a new resurgence

of child labor in this country? There's a lot of reasons. One of the big problems is that vast swaths of the U.S. sees child labor as morally good. You know, they see it as something like, oh, this is like you teach your kids. Right. This is like how they grow up and get responsible. Yeah, and this is true in a lot of parts of the world.

It's also completely and absolutely bonkers. It is just, it's just nuts. Like, people shouldn't think like this. It's incredibly weird. what like people who shouldn't think like this it's incredibly weird and the other thing you get a lot is like there's you know there's sort of like different versions of like more or less socially acceptable child labor rights like i think most people agree if you're not running the business that like children shouldn't be working in like slaughterhouses or whatever yeah you know there's like lots of things that people are like,

oh, no, kid working in a restaurant. Like, that's completely fine. Like, oh, it's like a 14-year-old is like doing farm work on a farm. Like, that's fine. But it's a slippery slope, right? Because it starts with farm work and then trickle, trickle, trickle down. Also, like, I would argue that that's also not fine because what's what's essentially happening here is that there's this basically like this sort of family

loophole to people's understanding of child labor where like as long as child labor is being done by like the family as an economic unit instead of like capitalist directly yeah it's fine it's like no no it's not it's actually not fine to be working people be like be a child and then working for a living for your family like that's not okay yeah i think there's a difference between i think there's a difference between like child labor and like working like in a field for your family versus like a chore you know what i mean like yeah yeah it's i think i think that line gets blurred and uh people see their kids as much more mature than they are and like able to like no i i i understand what you're saying and i think i agree i think i agree yeah and it's

i don't know it it sucks this has a lot of sort of knock-on effects what one of the big knock-on effects this has and this is this has been a thing for like the entire history of child labor right is that like capitalists use children as a way to drive down wages for everyone else and this you know if you ever listened to argue to someone about the minimum wage right one of the big arguments about the minimum wage is that like oh well it's like it's like kids get the minimum wage so like it's fine it's like one it's not like children are not morally worth less And their labor is also not worth Less than an adult like Like if you're gonna exploit them like this

Like yeah like things are the same Price for everybody it's not like less for a Child yeah it's not like a kid Is like somehow less of a human being than An adult right like this is This just this sucks But you know it's used to sort of hold down Wages directly through things like opposing minimum wage increases used to hold down wages sort of indirectly because – and this is another – the reason, like, capitalists love child labor is that children are – like, they're physically smaller than adults.

They're easier to control. They have less social power. you're under control they have less social power and because you know because of that you can pay them less and because of you know and because because people just in our society don't fucking like kids and because of that it's so it's just socially acceptable to just pay them less all all those reasons you listed are absolutely terrifying, though. Like, oh, they will listen. Oh, they're smaller. Oh, they're like cheaper or whatever it is. They're all like terrible reasons to justify child labor. It's absurd.

No, they're not good. They're not good. And yet, however, comma, it still persists. It has persisted. It's very old. I'm going to read something from the bureau labor statistics about this fucking kid who was working in a mine what okay this is this was this is from the early 1900s one boy touchingly recounted his attitude towards facing the day at the mine this way i'll always think of my poor blind father and my mother at home but i won't

never play with the boys at all and then the cracker boss won't have to beat me like he does the others this boy was nine years old while stories like these produced outrage in many quarters in the co-producing regions there is no such concern the view that quote the little devils like it as one coal boss put it seemed to be the prevailing sentiment. Child labor wasn't discussed in these regions because it wasn't seen as an issue. So this is like 1900s American view, like early 1900s American view on this, right? Like people, by people I mean capitalists and also people who are incredibly desperate and don't have enough money to get by, like love child labor. There's, you know, it takes a long time for like an actual serious anti-child labor campaign to like get started in the u.s and of course the the exact people who you would

expect to oppose banning child labor oppose banning child labor i'm gonna read this from the also from the bureau labor statistics the chairman of the national association of manufacturers said about a law to abolish child labor, quote, this labor union plot against the advancement and happiness of the American boy is also a ploy against individual industrial expansion and prosperity in this country. So this is what their argument is, is that children don't oppose child labor.

This is being foisted upon them by outside agitator labor unions. And also, if we're not allowed to use child labor, if we're not allowed to have a nine-year-old be put in a mine, the entire American economy will collapse and every manufacturer will go broke. It's like making you like being like child labor because patriotism. Like that's basically what that means. Yeah, it's genuinely terrible like i i i don't know it's so ghoulish like america like companies today have figured out how to do this pr thing of like oh we don't condone child labor we cracked down on it very seriously we also hire children literally all the time but it's fine we're just we're gonna like you know but but back in like the 800s they hadn't really figured that out yet and so you know there's there's like the 800s, they hadn't really figured that out yet.

And so, you know, there's a sort of reform movement that happens. And one of the sort of key moments of this reform thing is the Lawrence textile strike. This strike is probably most famous today for popularizing the slogan, we want bread and roses too, which is, you know, like rung down the halls of labor in socialist history is like the names of newspapers, songs, poems, and also like being the namesake of a truly dog shit dsa caucus um we're not going to talk about this strike enormously here the short the very very short version of this strike and this

is a 1912 strike um the short version of it is that there's a law passed in massachusetts that would have reduced like the number of hours that you could have women and children work from a blistering 56 hours to a leisurely 54 hours a week oh my god um this prompted uh the local capitalists to get so mad that they did this like massive like industrial speed up so they forced everyone to work faster and then also doctor everyone's pay for it. And this set off a strike. What's relevant for, like, our story is that the workers

at this plant, you know, there's lots of coverage of the fact that, like, most of these workers are immigrant women of, like, from a bunch of different places. The part of it that's not talked about as much is that another huge portion of the workers were just fucking children. Yeah. That definitely seems to get glossed over yeah yeah and it's like i i you know i don't know maybe maybe maybe we should go back and talking about that part because it's really important for

like the stuff we're going to talk about later in this episode that made me so angry i was like physically punching my pillow what happens next is that the police crackdown on the strike gets more and more violence and as this goes on the workers at like the adult workers at this plant decide okay we're gonna like send the children who are like both the child workers and also like just people's kids to new york to keep them safe and also to make a political point but like hey look they're running our children out of town and this goes great the first ways this go great for the children like a bunch of people in new york show up are like yay hey we'll take care of these kids like and this makes like the officials in lawrence be like you have to stop this it looks really bad for us and so they they like

assembled outside of the next train that was trying to leave and tried to stop them. Oh my God. So here's some labor statistics again. When the next group of children prepared to depart the train station, they were met by police and soldiers. The police refused to let them board the trains and launch an attack on the group. A seven-year-old was given a black eye when she was picked up and thrown

into a paddy wagon by police. Another witness police another witness testified to children being thrown around like rags oh my god like yeah thin blue line baby let's fucking go the cops are the thin blue line

between order and chaos that 70 year old girl yeah that 70 year old girl is not gonna throw herself around right like someone has to beat up this children. And for that, there is the few, the proud, the American police,

but they were scared for their lives. You know what I mean? Like that, that seven year old girl looked at me really aggressively. Yeah. I was scared for my life. That's what they said. It's,

it's, you know, this is bad. And like, you know, the, like you know the the 1900s police can get away with like 1900s police we've talked about in other episodes like they can get away with just like shooting people right like they like they can they can show up to like a strike and just open fire into the crowd and it doesn't do anything uh throwing around a bunch of children like rags finally it turned out was the thing that was bad enough that it like started a congressional investigation.

Wow. I guess that's good and bad. But yeah. So Sokoli launches this investigation and there's like this 14 year old immigrant girl named Camilla Tielli testifies about how she was working at the mill when a machine caught her hair and tore her scalp off. The police promptly. And this is going. at the mill when a machine caught her hair and tore her scalp off. Ah! The police promptly, and this is going, and, okay, the police promptly arrested her dad, didn't do anything to the company, and arrested her dad for lying

about her age. Oh my god, what? Now, this, hold that one in your fucking mind, because we're gonna come back to that shit. Do I have to? Okay. Unfortunately, because it's gonna get so much worse my entire episode is over so the the product of this is that there starts to be like a really mainstream push against child labor which is you know a thing you would have

thought would have started earlier because again we're on like century two of child labor in the u.s by this point right like in? In an entity called the United States. But, you know, apparently, it takes this to actually make people go, wait, maybe this is bad. And the product of this is, you get this thing called the Kenning-Owen Child Labor Act

1916. Now, as we sort of talked about earlier, right, the weakness of this law is that it, you know, it allows kids to be used as laborers like inside of the family unit so like if you're on a family you know and then this is a very very broad category right so it's you know you can you can force your child to work as long as like you're their parents right you're the one making the money off of them and not like a capitalist but even this even this is considered too strong of a law. And in 1918, the Supreme Court rules that it's unconstitutional to ban child labor.

Wait, what? Yeah, they do this multiple times, multiple times. And we really cannot emphasize this enough on this show. The Supreme Court is and has always been just one of history's greatest monsters. Like, yeah, wait, I was right. The Supreme Court is and has always been just one of history's greatest monsters. Yeah. Wait, I was right then. Child labor does equal patriotism. That's basically what they're saying.

So eventually, FDR gets into this giant fight with the Supreme Court. And the first child labor law we get, federal child labor law that gets that sticks, like, doesn't happen until 1938 when fdr threatens to pack the court if the court refuses to fucking stop i stop saying that that that the state that the state doesn't have the government doesn't have the power to regulate child labor wow it's like literally less than a century ago that is like yesterday you know but but but you know and this actually works right but but and this is a real problem and this is a problem that we're gonna we're gonna talk about later in this fucking

episode in the modern day those child labor laws don't get enforced it doesn't that act that actual the 19 the 1938 fair labor act like basically doesn't actually do shit to like reduce the amount of child labor in the country and here's the thing like even now even before all the horror show stuff that we're about to get to that's happening right now like not kids like we never actually dealt with child labor through like the law like we just basically outsourced you know okay we had to find someone whose labor is cheaper than like an american child and we did it's either like mechanization other immigrants who like don't have legal citizenship status or just outsourcing and then you know we our kids still fucking do work you know like our like they're like it's very common for 10 and 12 year olds to work it's just that it's usually like

babysitting or like mowing lawns and we've just we've decided that like no this is actually fine like it is actually fine to fucking put 12 year olds in the labor market yeah i mean i think most people today anyway i think the common person thinks that child labor happens like in other countries over there you know what i mean i don't think they think america is still that archaic and stupid um but yeah and and oh my god yeah so uh we need to take an ad break and then i i i'm not even going to make a joke about that our sponsors and child labor because like jesus fucking christ this is about to be it so bad but yeah here's some ads, you know, we never really got rid of child labor, right? What we did basically was, to some extent, we've been able to successfully decrease the severity of it.

And, you know, in the last 20 years, there's been a decline in what economists, and I really cannot emphasize enough, this is the actual actual phrase they use is child participation in the labor market wow that's so vanilla of a way to say that so return to present day uh present day the thing that's been happening in the last few months is that in a five-week span in this country three three children died, or I would actually argue were killed by their employers on the job. Wow. Five children in three children in five weeks. So 16, these kids were all 16. 16-year-old Duven Thomas Perez got killed by a machine. He had a conveyor belt.

16-year-old Will Hampton died working in a landfill. And 16-year-old Will Hampton died working at a landfill, and 16-year-old Michael Scholes died working for a logging company. There have been other child labor deaths recently. Those are just sort of the most recent ones. And I want to get into the shit that's been happening, because in the last, really in the last bit under like eight years things have gotten you know like the child labor situation in the u.s was never good and we'll talk about that later but like things have gotten so much worse there's been an almost a factor of four

increase since 2015 in kids working illegally in hazardous jobs it's actually probably well it's unclear to me whether the numbers are actually worse than that i don't know because i i i think almost all of this these statistics are being undercounted like dramatically because the those numbers are just violate like violations that are caught i'm gonna go into that a bit later but meanwhile like right now arkansas iowa new hampshire new jersey and vermont have already passed laws in the last two years that weaken restrictions on child labor and bills are appearing like across the country to do fucking more of the same stuff like they want to allow 14 year olds to serve alcohol in bars um it's you know it is it is truly horrific and it's being

driven by restaurant business associations across the country who want to, you know, use child labor. And that's bad. The fact that there's more stuff that, you know, is on the horizon is not good. But for an enormous number of people, regardless of what the law says, the situation is absolutely intolerable. Here's from the New York Times. absolutely intolerable here's from the new york times in many parts of the country middle and high school teachers in english language learner programs say it is now common for nearly all of their students to rush off to long shift after their classes end they should not be working 12 hour days but it's happening here said valeria lindsey an arts language arts teacher at homestead

middle school near miami for the past three years almost every eighth grader in her english learner program about 100 students was also carrying an adult workload so there's been a a massive surge since 2021 in unaccompanied minors entering the u.s and this has been driven by a lot of sort of you know it's been driven by sort of pandemic pandemic driven poverty a massive upsurge in violence in a bunch of countries in central america a lot of which has to do with like you know the the u.s backed cunel salvador about a decade ago uh you know there's a lot of stuff

going on it's all very bad and it's been pushing people here but you know like the the the the situation for immigrants getting into the u.s is never good but biden specifically has managed to make it worse because biden's sort of like biden's immigration policy has been has been resting on getting kids out of shelters as fast as humanly possible and just like throwing them at literally anyone who claims to be a sponsor right and you know this has gone about as well as you would expect it would when someone like starts it you know one of the the i think it was the new york times was talking about this woman who's working you quit working in a health and human services like office because they had a quota of getting rid of 20 of their kids a week and if

they didn't do it they would get a quota yeah they had a quota for we need to get 20 of the kids out of the shelter every week wow in in the last two years they have lost track of a third of the kids they send out which is again in the last two years alone at least 85 000 children they've just lost i don't fucking know where they are um here's some new york times again it's getting to be a business for some of these sponsors and yet pasalacqua who left her job as a caseworker in central florida last year miss pasalacqua said she saw so many children put to work and found law enforcement officials so unwilling to investigate these

cases that she largely stopped reporting them. Instead, she settled for explaining to the children that they were entitled to lunch breaks and overtime. Wow. Wow. And, you know, I want to make really clear what we're talking about here.

Right. This is not like I don't think like whatever your position is on whether like a 12 year old or a 14 year old should be working any job at all. We are talking about 12 year olds working on factories. We are talking about 13 year olds cleaning up the floors of the kill floors of slaughterhouses we were talking about like we were talking about 14 year olds

who are like literally making food that like you are eating yeah and we're still right so this is happening in a large part because there's been a sort of like a a giant surgeon unaccompanied minors well it turns out a lot of those minors are unaccompanied because the biden administration wouldn't let their fucking parents into the

country and this is where this is where we need to get into the fucking like the whole sort of like sex trafficking panic right because you know one of the things that this panic specifically about sex trafficking has covered up is that most human trafficking is not sex trafficking it's almost all labor trafficking almost also maybe too strong a word but it's mostly by volume most of it is is is labor trafficking which nobody gives a single shit about because you know there's no you can't you can't have a moral panic around like you can't have a moral panic around labor trafficking like people who aren't white and simultaneously all the business groups who would normally fund these panics like love this shit because you know all of all of these capitalist ghouls drinking a

thousand dollar bottles of wine on their $30 million yachts. All of that shit is paid for by child labor. So of course they don't give a shit about it. In fact, they love it. And the product of this is you have a bunch of fucking 12-year-olds who are effectively in debt bondage working 12 hours a fucking day in a slaughterhouse or a paper mill. I'm going to read another thing from the New York

Times, which is I i don't know so many of these things are so depressing but like i think this is the most depressing thing i've read in this entire i don't know like in ages i didn't get how expensive everything was says 13 13-year-old Jose Vasquez, who works 12-hour shifts six days a week at a commercial egg farm in Michigan and lives with his teenage sister. I'd like to go to school, but then how would I pay rent? 13. 13. And of course, the other thing about is these these are people dealing with the fucking

american housing market right the american housing market is intolerable to to adults who work full-time who work like full-time jobs or multiple part-time jobs right this is a 13 year old how the fuck is a 13 year old supposed to be paying rent right and you know and every every sort of additional thing just makes it worse because the more the more of these kids and one of one of the things is happening is these kids are getting funneled into very specific areas right because they're getting they're getting funneled into like specific towns because those specific towns have a bunch of like have a bunch of companies who specifically want to hire these migrant kids and when they do that that fucking continually drives out the price of housing because all these people are competing

for the same like fucking one-bedroom apartment for 1600 a month right yeah and so every everything just sort of spirals in on each other and and until you get you get a fucking 13 year old working working fucking this is this is 996. This is the fucking thing I talk about in China is 9 a.m., 9 p.m., six days a week at a fucking egg farm in Michigan. In any just world, people would die for this. In this world, people have fucking died for this. It's a bunch of children who are dying on their fucking jobs. In this world, though, the people, you know, the people who died for this are children.

And the Biden administration, again, is actively aiding fucking human traffickers by kicking all these kids out to their families, like kicking all these people out to just like fucking anyone as soon as humanly possible and not allowing these people's families into the country and then doing literally nothing at all to ensure that like the people who are fleeing into this country like have a place to live or like any kind of reasonable job or any way to support themselves you know and we could we could fucking like there were there are individual people in the u.s who benefit from this child labor who you could fucking like throw into a box tomorrow take all of their money and you could fund this entire program there are individual people right no one will fucking

do it they will let these kids they will let every single one of these kids die before a single billionaire has to fucking spend a single cent taking care of these kids meanwhile the actual child laws that exist in this,

you know, that exist in the U.S. are completely useless because regulatory agencies are taking one of two approaches. Either they do nothing or they spend some time investigating so they can get

a cut of the child labor money by issuing a fine to the company. Are you fucking kidding me? It gets worse and worse. Now, and this is the fun part, merely taking a cut of the child labor money or doing nothing, those might arguably be the best case scenarios

because the other thing that happens, and the Washington Post has been talking, did a very good report about this, is the other thing they do is either they effectively enter the rev share agreement with the contractors did a very good report about this, is the other thing they do is, you know, either they effectively enter the rev share agreement with the contractors who are hiring these fucking human traffickers, or

they do raids. And the product of these raids is you put, is they put the families of the kids who are doing the child labor in prison, or deport them, and then they do nothing about the actual, you know, so a lot of what's happening is happening to contractors right so they'll find the contractor the parent company nothing will

fucking happen and the parents of these kids who also like cannot fucking survive and in a lot of cases are doing this because literally they do not have enough money to pay rent or buy food for their kids those people are getting fucking sent to prison are the only people, by the way, again, the only, even, even though all of these companies are systematically hiring children,

they are getting children killed. The only people going to prison are the families of the fucking kids. I, none of it makes sense. And it makes me, I mean, I, I can't really recover from any of this episode.

And I shouldn't. That is reality. But I just, I don't know. It doesn't feel like billionaires will ever lose, I guess, capitalism. My analysis of this is that any world that allows this to happen is intolerable and should be burned to the ground um i agree oh i agree i think we're ready for the rapture by that i just mean like the sun exploding into us and everyone dying yeah i'm gonna read a bit more because you know the horror the horrors never end

here's in the washington post the grand island teens had been hired to scour blood and fat from slippery quote kill floors using high pressure hoses scalding water and industrial foams and acids according to the labor department in federal court records they sanitize electric knives fat skimmers and 190 pounds saws used to split cow carcasses according to court records. Some students, and again, when they say students, they're not talking about college students, they're talking about middle and high school students, suffered chemical burns and were socially deprived

after working their night shift. They dozed off in classes, according to a local prosecutor on court records. When asked about the children, like the actual kids who were supposed to be, you know, the ones being saved by these, by the fucking Department of Labor raids, the Department of Labor pulled a

It's Not My Department, and we're like, yeah, fuck it. We don't know what happened to these kids. Hope they're okay. Have fun. There's one more part of this Washington Post article that I want to read just to sort of like... I don't know. I think the big problem with all of this washington post article that i want to read just to sort of like i don't know i think i think the big problem with all of this coverage is that it's treating this problem as if it's new

yeah this is sort of like a unique product of like oh it's a tight labor market in the pandemic it's like no no it's not here's from the washington post we have never in my memory found the types of violations that are being found in hazardous occupations that David Weill, a professor of social policy and management at Brandeis University, who was a top labor official in the Obama administration. It's outrageous. Now, this is bullshit. During Weill's Obama administration, there was absolutely a shit ton of migrant workers and specifically migrant children workers doing a bunch of incredibly dangerous and hazardous work it's just that they were mostly in agriculture i mean some of them were also in slaughterhouses right like some of the shit was

already happening and just nobody paid attention to it it's gotten worse but again they were also just a shit ton of kids fucking like picking tomatoes in like 110 degrees in california that was always happening it was always fucking happening obama specifically made it worse because one at one of the again one of the things about using immigrant child labor is that you like if you commit a labor violation against one of these against against against again someone someone who is undocumented and a child what the fuck are they gonna do about it right They can't go to the government. If they go to the government, they get deported. And Obama...

The employers know that. I mean, employers of quote-unquote, but they know that they're 100% controlled situation. And Obama fucking helped them do it because he deported so many people. Obama and this fucking guy, probably also too directly, was

helping literally the worst abuses of this system happen over and over and over again. They were using, you know, immigration. One of the only other things you can notice about these stories is that if you look at the locations, right, most of the places with these, not all, but a lot of the places with these are happening are very, very anti-immigrant southern border states. These are southern states or border states. And the reason or places or some places in the Midwest like Kansas or Nebraska. very anti-immigrant southern border states. These are southern states or border states. Or some places in the Midwest like Kansas or Nebraska. And a lot of the reason why this stuff happens here, right, is

you know, if you're like if you're a politician, right, and your allies are local business owners, you get to play this sort of like, you get to play both sides of the fucking spectrum, right? On the you get to you get to keep hiring a bunch of undocumented immigrants and on the other hand you you whip up this like enormous social hysteria

about them so that all these people you know can can be more effectively disciplined and crushed right and everyone fucking knows how this game works, right? Like all the, all the people with any real power, like actually understand this. It's, it's why, it's why like the justice department or like, you know, all the, all the immigration agencies never go after the companies who hire people. They only ever go after the actual workers themselves. It's just so upsetting because like the most in their mind, like the most helpful, like useful person is the person that has like the most to lose and they know that and use it against them for that reason yeah it's just so it's just fucked up in every possible way i don't know yeah it's also just a little silly like you said to just like think this just happened like this is something that has clearly been building to this

you know what i mean i think anyone with a brain can figure that out because this kind of intricate system doesn't just like pop up in a year or two out of nowhere. It's been building it on itself. I don't know. Yeah, it's like, yeah, like you're definitely right. It's not just like, yeah, it's been it yeah like i like you're definitely right it's not it's not just like yeah it's been building for ages like it was just it was deliberately designed by this by people who like make a bunch of fucking money from it right they make slightly more money if they fucking force a 12 year old to clean the floor of a slaughterhouse than they do if they force

like a 22 year old to do it and so they do and the last so mad yeah and the last thing that i want to sort of mention about this right is that a lot of these a lot of the states where this stuff is happening a lot of the states that are passing these laws are also states that are like simultaneously passing like enormous brass of anti-trans legislation uh like as part of their so-called like protect the kids thing and you know you can talk about the hypocrisy of it right but i i think the important thing to understand here is that protect the kids was always racialized like they don't give a shit about the kids dying in meatpacking plants because they aren't white right they're immigrant

kids who these freaks want to fucking kill anyways and if those kids die in the job nobody gives a shit right so it makes it's it's upsetting also because the majority of these kids i don't want to say majority i don't want to speak for anybody but i feel like these kids also they need to work in their minds you know what i mean like they're like i have no other choice no one's helping me this is the only option I have. And it just becomes this like snake eating its own tail bullshit where it's just, I don't know. There's no good out for them because no one's fucking helping them and their family is not there. And they need to fucking survive. So it's this thing where it's like they're consenting to it in a sick way. Like not because they're consenting to it because they want way, like not because they're consenting to it

because they want to, because they need to, to survive. And the people that are in power know that and take advantage of it. And I don't know, the lack of empathy across the board is just inhumane and disgusting, and I hate that. I don't know. That's all I have other than a general expectation that like every single part of the system that produces this the entire border regime the u.s labor regime the

regime the sort of family regimes that this stuff relies on like all of it needs to fucking go and we need to do it before another kid gets fucking killed on a factory floor yeah i have a hard time not feeling like it's too big and it's i'm too helpless and there's nothing to do but i think stuff just raising awareness and not pretending this doesn't happen here or just started happening i think that's a good step in the right direction i don't know i think one way to look at it is that like there there there have been regimes that are a lot more powerful and a lot sort of a lot more willing to kill that have been brought down and have collapsed don't exist anymore. So, you know, as bad as everything looks on any given day,

right? Like, people have done this before, they'll do it again, and, you know, at some point, we will hit a point where it's fucking too much. It will cease to be. You're right. And our responsibility is to get everyone to that

point. Yeah. I think it takes longer when the insidiousness or the evilness is more subtle, quote unquote. You know what I mean? When it's not so outright in your face, it's almost like it really takes longer to burn out. Yeah. And we're just in that burning out phase. Yep. Well, glad I joined burning out phase. Yep.

Well, glad I joined you for this. Yeah. Yeah, this is the make it happen here. Wage war against the capitalist system and the people who kill children for money. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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