Pirate Wires - San Francisco Ends Homelessness.. For A Dictator | Pirate Wires Podcast #23 🏴‍☠️

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

EPISODE #23: Packed show! San Francisco Is Clean.. because Xi came to town. Reacting the latest insurrection.. errr.. protests at the DNC. Everything from the clown world nature of it all.. to the slightly fetish element? We also review Sanjana's piece on The Dream Keeper Initiative in SF, react to Nikki Haley's attempts to ban internet anons if elected President. Solana gives his full view on why he dislikes Vivek Ramaswamy. And finally, the battle for the ages: Ben Shapiro vs. Candice Owens. Featuring Mike Solana , Brandon Gorrell, River Page, Sanjana Friedman Subscribe to Pirate Wires: https://www.piratewires.com/ Topics Discussed: https://www.dolorespark.pw/p/a-potemkin-village-for-xi https://www.dolorespark.pw/p/the-dreamkeeper-initiative https://www.theindustry.pw/p/tethics-and-responsibility Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell River Twitter: https://twitter.com/river_is_nice Sanjana Twitter: https://twitter.com/metaversehell TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro - Like & Subscribe! 0:45 - Welcome To The Show - You Guys See The Latest Insurrection? 9:00 - SF is Clean! Thanks China! 15:00 - The Dream Keeper Initiative - How SF Defunded The Police And Launched A Pilot Program for Reparations 37:15 - Republican Debates 38:15 - Reveled: Why Solana DISLIKES Vivek 46:45 - Nikki Haley Wants To BAN Anons On Social Media 56:50 - THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING - Ben Shapiro vs. Candice Owens 1:04:30 - Big Interview Episode Next Week! The Rest Of The PW Crew Will Be Back The Week The Week After Thanksgiving

It's no secret that San Francisco is a hot spot for fentanyl use, but with APEC in town, well, the city underwent a major makeover. The city can take advantage of the APEC excitement to keep the city clean and hopefully safe. There are no more drug dealers. There were no encampments. There were cops inside the CVS. One of them was like, hello, gave me a nod. I'm like, what is going on right now? I know folks say, oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town. That's true. Because it's true. Why the f*** don't you do this for us? We pay you motherf***ers.

Welcome back to the pod, guys. I think first things first. Did you all see the insurrection? Which one? Oh, the DNC? Yeah. F*** those people. They should have done it when they stole it from Bernie. How about old-time.

You're not going to lie. This is... Okay, so there's this last night uh i mean for a felt you know the trolls are going off it's the insurrection it's january 6th this is like the third time they've had one of these since the gaza stuff started um it's like constant insurrections insurrections right now this one is you have a massive mob of people out in front of the DNC all chained together. And I realized this last night I'm watching this. I realized a couple of things.

There's like it's like the two genders of insurrections. You also right now have the Bay Bridge is shut down. And I want to talk about that in a second. So there's something just kind of ground floor, extremely embarrassing about public protest. It's like the musical of the 1960s is how it always comes off to me. It never really feels serious. There's no real risk involved at all for any of these people. There's something about this issue in particular. I know

that these people out in front of the DNC just learned what Gaza was two weeks ago when they Googled it. And to see them carted off screeching, it seems silly to me. I mean, what is your overall, as I get mad, a lot of these things in the past would make me mad. The Bay Bridge does make me mad. To see people sort of like getting crazy and screaming and whatnot. I don't feel mad about it really in this case, maybe anymore. Maybe they've broken me. I don't know. Where are you guys at in your sense of the insurrections and the protests? How is it making you feeling? How are you dealing with all this in the current social media age that we live in? I mean, they literally did the same thing a couple weeks ago in front of the federal building in San Francisco, where they chained themselves to the federal building.

And half the people who were there were just like taking selfies and chanting no justice, no peace. It's the same chants that they chanted in 2020 during Black Lives Matter. And, you know, I wrote about the people who stormed this military vessel in San Francisco as well, who are, you know, you look at the videos of the protests and they're like wearing kiffias they just bought an Amazon and they're banging drums. And again, they're chanting the same, no justice, no peace from the river to the sea. But like half the people there, I think are just like there to get something for their Instagram story.

And then they leave. These are certainly the huge ones are like this. But then there's this, like the ones that the one in front of the DNC, for example, that didn't look like that many people that was like a mob for sure. But they were all wearing the same t-shirt. Like they had, they all had like a, like a cute t-shirt and like a slogan prepared and they're doing they're like collective chanting and they're tied together. together. It's like you have these small little groups of people who are funded by whatever nonprofit and they go out there and they wreak havoc. And then I guess they just go home after that. I've been wondering, so the Bay Bridge right now, you have APEC happening. So everyone knows there's a lot of attention on San Francisco. The Bay Bridge is shut down. So this is where it becomes less funny to me because when you're on a bridge, you're stuck in a place, right? The bridge stops and the traffic, it was rush hour when this started. So the traffic gets backed up, you know, miles. And now you're stuck on a bridge. You could be on your way to the hospital. You could be, something could happen while you're on the bridge. Like you're, you're effectively, I mean, this is, it's just not like false imprisonment or something. I think that, I think that you can't block a bridge. That seems crazy. That should be a felony

to me. Um, I don't know what, I don't even know what the rules are on that. I don't know where these people go. I don't know how it keeps happening and nothing happens. Um, but I do think there's like maybe like a spectrum of, of, of the protests. They range from like funny to just like, I really, I'm enraged right now. And it reminds me of that dude who blew up. I mean, listen, I'm not saying he was right. But that old guy who gunned down those two environmental protesters, I'm just saying I understand where it's coming from. There's a tradition that he's working within. And part of it feels like they want this. There's this weird, I think, victim persecution thing happening. It feels also maybe a little

bit sexual. They're always in chains and they seem to really love when the police come and grab them. I was watching one yesterday where the police came up and grabbed this girl and she started screaming, but it felt a little bit ecstatic to me and i felt like almost awkward watching it is that like do you think i'm off base here no i think that like people there's like this fetishization of protests i think on the left and this misconception that it sways public opinion somehow especially if you get like beaten up by a cop and like i think this comes from like the civil rights era where you know tv had just become a thing and you had these like very well organized uh protests mostly organized by like the black

church in the south where you had like basically respectable looking people who were just like silently marching in like full sunday suits like being like having dogs sicced on them and being like beaten up by racist cops live on tv and that did like sway public opinion because people were like the people aren't doing anything wrong but when you're like trying to break into a place and you're like you look insane and like the police are arresting you people are like good that's great like they that i mean during the vietnam war like this is like the vietnam war probably would not have lasted as long as it did if it stayed like it was in the beginning where like most of the pros uh protesters were from like

the catholic worker movement it was like priests and shit who were like against the war and then it became these like insane dirty hippies who were like, we also wanted like do acid at the protest and like, you know, have gay sex or whatever. And people were like this. And they started doing terrorism and that turned like the public against it. It was finally just, you know, years and years of just like this endless war

that the public finally gave up. It had nothing to do with protests. And so people have this fake history and this fake idea of what they're doing. And it just doesn't make any sense. Do you think they really believe that they're making... I have a hard time believing that any of these people truly believe that they're out there protesting because they're going to end the war in Gaza. It has to be... It's something else. The bridge stuff in particular, to kind of piggyback off of Sanjana's social media thing,

that feels deeply narcissistic to me. I just saw someone, one of the protesters, because they're on fucking Twitter, talking about it. And this woman's like, there are dozens of protesters that have shut down the Bay Bridge. There are millions of people in the Bay Area. To think that dozens of people should be able to shut down a bridge that millions of people use is a level of narcissism that I genuinely have a hard time accessing. That's crazy to me. I can't get inside of that space. And they do seem to feel it's like they're living out some kind of weird fantasy. And it ranges from just the theatrical, the Instagram, to genuinely the sexual. It really feels like a fetish to me on some level, like with the chains and the cops and like the S&M type vibes, the Dom submission thing. Like they love it. Like they want to be held captive and to like take photographs of themselves this way. It's weird. And I just feel like I actually am not a, you know, don't kink shame kind of, I think some kinks should be shamed. I don't know. They want shamed that's the whole point yeah so they've invited me into it and that's my problem with this is they've dragged me into their fucking weird perversion without my consent and i i think

that um that's got to stop i think like the weird sexuality of it all needs to be put to bed i do want to talk about apex thoughC though. So you have a situation right now in San Francisco. I mean, obviously the whole country is talking about it. We went overnight from a dirty sort of fentanyl ridden hellscape to like, well, I don't want to say it's a utopia, but it's clean. Like they've cleaned the streets. I was downtown Friday. So before the conference even started. So I popped my head up in Union Square. There are cops everywhere. There are no more drug dealers. There are no more drug dealers in the station. There were no drug dealers outside around any of the side streets. There were no encampments. There was no crime. I went to the CVS. I had to

get shampoo. Everything seemed coped. There were cops to the CVS. I had to get shampoo. There, everything seemed, there were cops inside the CVS. One of them was like, hello, gave me a nod. I'm like, what is going on right now? And I had forgotten about APEC, but that was what was going on. So I, you know, fire off a little bit. I fire off a little tweet about it. And sure enough, like there are, I get, I receive a flood of messages from around the city. This is a citywide cleanup initiative. It seemed a little bit almost like a right-wing

talking point to me. I thought there's no way that because Xi Jinping is coming into town, they're finally cleaning up the city. That's just crazy. It can't be that simple. There's got to be sort of more to it. Or I'm sure that they're going to say something like, we've been working on this for months. It has nothing to do with this conference. But Gavin Newsom gets on stage and he's just like, yeah, we did it for that reason. Obviously, we did it for that reason. When someone visits your house, you clean it up. I know folks say, oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town um that's true because it's true but it's also true for months and months and months prior to apec we've been having different conversations begging the question

to every tax-paying citizen of the city like why the fuck don't you do this for us? We pay you motherfuckers. So yeah, what are your thoughts on the clean city? What are your thoughts on the overall politics of this maybe? I think there's an interesting political question moving forward. Are they going to have to answer to this? Is the city that clean? I think, Sandra, you're a little bit skeptical maybe of that piece. Um, you know, what's going on here? Well, I'm skeptical of it because if you look on, you know, San Francisco Reddit and some people on Twitter have been saying that they basically just pushed a lot of the homeless people out of downtown and into sort of other neighborhoods. Um, they did clean up the

city though. Like it's, it's undeniable's undeniable that they spent a lot of money and imported a lot of National Guard people and people from the California Highway Police to come and police the city. And it is really cynical. I understand why people are pissed about it because it's completely... It was for APEC nominally, but of course it's especially because Xi Jinping is coming to town and Gavin Newsom and Xi Jinping really get along. I mean, they, they met in October, um, and Chinese state media was like thrilled about Gavin Newsom going to China and trying out their self-driving cars. And, uh, you know, Newsom had a one-on-one meeting with Xi Jinping. So I don't think it's at all far-fetched that people are saying that this was literally just because

she was coming to town. I do think that, I guess the cost of political inaction on this stuff has risen, but my sense is that everyone always knew that if San Francisco city officials really wanted to, they could have ended all the insanity going on. I mean, we're talking about a city government that actively funds harm reduction policies that basically enable people to use fentanyl, that for years had a district attorney who wasn't prosecuting any form of crime, really. I mean, the city is just... People have known for a while that elected officials are essentially just getting rich while the city kind of decays in this doom loop. But now, once you know that the city is capable of doing something, so we know for sure the

city is actually capable of policing, for example. It can stem crime. It can do something about the drug dealing. It can do something about, there used to be people just like selling all of the stolen goods they bought from that drugstore that I went into in Union Square around the block, gone. You can shut that stuff down. We know that it can happen. And now that we know that it can happen, does that not change the calculus of politics a little bit? I mean, the politicians can no longer say like, look, we're just, it's not about us. It's like, oh, it's the, it's the state, it's the state law that, that doesn't allow us to, you know,

arrest people for less than however many dollars and charge them with a felony or things like that. Like they can't blame these policies because we all see what happens when they just increase the number of police. It seems like to me. Hopefully people don't have short memories on this. I think it's possible also that everybody kind of just forgets and this gets swept under the rug and we go back to business as usual in San Francisco city politics.

But I tend to agree that business as usual is just to allow the open-air drug markets back in and the fences to pop up again. Yeah. This is an interesting introduction. I don't want to say it's an introduction. Most of the country knows about San Francisco at this point. But it's maybe a fun reintroduction to San Francisco politics generally and how crazy things are here, which brings us, I think, crazy things are here. Which brings us, I think, to the Dream Keeper Initiative. Sajana just published an incredible piece on the city's funding, specifically surrounding one program. And I'm just going to let you take it away. Tell us about what is the Dream Keeper

Initiative? Where did it begin? What does it mean? Give us the dirty details. did it begin? What does it mean? Give us the dirty details. Yeah. I mean, let's begin at the beginning. So on June 4th, 2020, a week and a half after George Floyd was killed, the mayor of San Francisco, what's that? So speaking of protests, this is the height of them. Speaking of insufficient police, June 4th, 2020, a week and a half after George Floyd, the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, and a supervisor, Shimon Walton, announced that they're going to redirect $120 million from the city's police department, which at the time was around 17% of the police department's budget, to better support the African-American community. They don't say how they're going to do this. They just say, we're taking this chunk of money

and we're reallocating it. And they then task the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, which sounds made up, but actually exists and gets $20 million a year from the city. It was started back in the 60s to sort of help facilitate efforts to desegregate the city and has since metastasized into this massive, I mean, I consider it a money laundering complex. It's basically,

they give out a bunch of grants to their nonprofit cronies, ostensibly for like racial equity and like queer justice and that kind of thing. But basically the mayor and Shimon Walton tasked the Human Rights Commission with holding a series of listening sessions to figure out what the needs of the Black community are. And this is all happening during COVID. So all these listening sessions are online. And of course, they're attended by people who know about these things and have the time to go to them and know that there's, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars potentially up for grab. So they have these listening sessions. And then a year and a half later in 2021,

the city announces that they're launching something called the Dream Keeper Initiative. And so the Dream Keeper Initiative, in its own words, is an intergenerational effort that aims to ensure San Francisco's diverse Black communities are experiencing joy feelings of safety advancing educationally and economically are holistically healthy and are thriving um and in the two years that dreamkeeper has operated it has received over a hundred million dollars from the city that it from the police yeah from the police so the money ended up being allocated from a combination of the police department budget and the general fund but yeah a significant share of that money was coming from the police um and they've given this money out to a range of non-profits um that i would say range from like benign but useless to actively harmful and embroiled in

massive fraud. I want to pause really quick because on the police thing, I think it's important to highlight this. This money is coming from the police. It's not some random policy. Everyone on the left wants to distance themselves from this now, but this is and everyone in on the left wants to distance themselves from this now but this is defunding that's what this was this was it was defund the police this was the act this was the answer to defund the police they actually did it they you were talking a hundred million dollars that you took from the police and gave to a sordid variety of fucking crazy shit and go off. Give us the details. Well, so I'll say like, just to contextualize this, because I do think the story is much bigger than San Francisco. People need to understand that like in 2020, I was looking

into this. There were over, there were almost a billion dollars of direct cuts from police departments across the country. I think the exact number is like $850 million of direct cuts all over cities across the country. They did it in Austin. They did it in Philadelphia. They did it in Portland. And they did it in San Francisco. And, you know, flash forward to 2023 briefly,

San Francisco has an extreme shortage of police officers right now in their department. And they're now talking about raising taxes in an effort to refund the police department in the city um so that's just sort of high level fucking insanity um but back to dreamkeeper um essentially what they did was give i mean i think of it as like client cronyism uh but they gave essentially reparations basically to people who showed up and asked for money. I interviewed someone who runs a one-woman media company called Clarity Media.

And Brandon can talk a little bit about her YouTube videos because he's watched some of them. But she got $200,000 from the city to run her media company. $200,000 out of $100 million is a drop in the bucket. Where did the rest of that money go? Yeah. I mean, so the rest of the money, you have a lot. So the lion's share of it went to the mayor's office of housing and community development. And most of that goes to supporting something called the Dreamkeeper. Let's see. Essentially, it's a no holds barred loan program, the Dreamkeeper Down Payment Assistance Loan Program, which gives lower middle-class Black San Franciscans up to $530,000

in no interest indefinitely deferred loans. So free money. We're giving $530,000 gifts to people who want to buy a house based on the color of their skin. Yeah, exactly. So that was $20 million of that money. They've also given a ton of money to a bunch of nonprofits with connections to Breed and Shimon Walton. So they gave, and Susan Reynolds has reported on this. She's an investigative reporter in San Francisco. They gave $4 million to young community developers. Anyone who's been following

nonprofit fraud in San Francisco will be familiar with the story of them. They funded a program called Interrupt, Predict, and Organize, where they basically identified at-risk youth in San Francisco and placed them in city jobs, specifically with the Department of Public Works. And recently, two graduates of their IPO program were involved in a series of smash and grab robberies. One of them was involved in an armed robbery. And then they, I think, stole a car and were involved in a police chase that ended in a crash. One of them died. The other one is now in prison. And the director of this organization has been arrested on fraud charges. There's several cases like this where they gave money essentially to people or organizations with no discernible track record of success in their stated goals because they know, uh, Breed and Walton. Um, and you know, we, we looked at in the article, the homeless children's, uh, network, which got $2.2 million from them. Um, but their evaluation report doesn't say anything about

placing homeless children in homes they say that they provided mental health services to 26 black people with that money uh and how much money did that cost 2.2 million dollars um and they held cultural events that affirmed and celebrated black queer communities including a pride month event um and you know dreamkeeper has publicized their own they basically evaluate themselves and how they're doing their work um and they published this how do they think they're doing they think they're doing a fantastic job they and the way that they decide that i think they need more money they could do a better job if they had more let's double the budget they ask people who got money how they feel about getting money and here's what one person said the scale of investment in dreamkeeper is still not enough according to one

grantee quote you are in the desert and you get a glass of water sure it tastes good, but damn, I could use some more. And this is used as evidence that Dreamkeeper needs perpetual infusings of $60 million a year, which is what it's currently getting. All of this is in the context of an ongoing push in San Francisco for reparations. If people have been following that that the reparations advisory committee which was started around the time that dreamkeeper came out uh recently released a 400 i think it's almost 500 pages of recommendations for the city and one of the recommendations is that you know on top of this dreamkeeper money the city pay out uh five million dollars to all black san Franciscans for... A piece. So it's $5 million per person.

Per person, yes. Lump sum, $5 million payments to redress historical inequity. In San Francisco, which exists in a state that never had slavery. Yeah. I'm actually wondering, I mean, really with all of it but like especially the housing thing how does that not violate the fair housing act if you were giving like prevent well here's

what i i agree that was the first that was the thing that i keyed into as well on the as i was reading sanjay's piece for the first time i am willing to bet none of this has been challenged in court because people don't really know about it. No one's really paying attention to this shit. It's just like, oh, crazy San Francisco. And it was 2020 when all this stuff... In 2020, you couldn't really challenge anything publicly. So no one wanted to even report on this stuff. And now it's just kind of lost to the waste that people consider to be San Francisco. People just consider it to be a black hole where crazy things happen.

And it is what it is. But at this point, I don't know how this is going to hold up in court. And it seems really shocking to me. It's a really incredible scandal. I mean, I think you need someone with the sort of gumption to take on this racial justice beast, essentially, because I think this is an issue that a lot of people don't want to touch. Like if you criticize Dreamkeeper, you know, it sounds like you're criticizing. Black queer voices who just want joy. Exactly.

You don't want black queer voices to experience joy. That sounds terrible. Black queer voices to experience joy? Exactly. That sounds terrible. I don't know. For a $300,000 down payment on a house, I might challenge drinking.

You know what I mean? Not $300,000, sir. Over $500,000. It was $500,000 and what, Sanjana? Because you tallied up to $800,000 somehow. I know. Well, the math doesn't really add up because they say that they were giving... Essentially, they say they were giving

loans of up to $500,000 and then wealth building grants, which were just direct cash transfers of $30,000 to these people. But then they say that they used that $20 million to help around 22 families own their homes with three more families on the way. And that math averages out to around $800,000. Well, that probably includes whatever staff they've associated with the thing. And that math averages out to around $800,000. Well, that probably includes whatever staff they've associated with the thing. And it will likely be a lot of them and they probably have a pension. So is that the lifetime value or what are we talking here? This is the other thing

is like, so all of this sounds really bad. It needs to be investigated thoroughly by the city. Probably not the city. Probably, I mean, at this point in the city probably i mean we at this point the city man like we need some we need help from the outside we need someone to fly in and take care of shit but i wonder if you peel it back how much of this is actually going to anybody in need and how much of it is just corruption how much and i consider that to be government jobs that don't do anything corruption how much and i consider that to be government jobs that don't do anything friends of the mayor um people who buying votes just giving money to non-profits that don't do anything just to buy their votes effectively a lot of these these people do campaigning for them um it's unofficial but it's that's what they're doing in the election season like how much of

the money is going to that it's uh i think probably quite a lot probably most of it um it's a weird thing to tell us good it's it's hard to say because they're again like sanji said their impact assessments are made by consultants that they themselves hire and for example with the the what was it what was the um the initiative called? The Homeland Children's Network. The Homeland Children's Network. Their impact assessments don't even track how many kids they're putting up in homes. They track how many contacts they made in the LGBTQ community.

That's one of the things that they're tracking. So it's like impossible to know what's happening with, it's hard to not conclude that this this money is essentially just being wasted to make work for for a ladder of government employees and uh and institutions or organizations that they can that they contract to consult for them yeah i mean i i think that dreamkeeper to me just epitomizes how this parasitic class of bureaucrats and nonprofit workers expands because none of these people seem to be adding. It seems like, you know, even in a generous assessment of what they're doing for every $2 million you give them, maybe $100,000 of that goes to like something that you could deem meaningful and helping people in need. to like something that you could deem meaningful and helping people in need. Dreamkeeper created like 30 new government jobs, I think.

They have their own department. They have their own director. And he makes almost $200,000 a year. And it's like, you know, this is a class of people who doesn't, I mean, I don't know what other sort of skills they have to add to the economy. Their entire careers are defined by this kind of producing impact reports, endless bureaucratic jargon. They're just a parasitic class in our society that unfortunately controls hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. Billions in San Francisco. So I think this is really one of two or three

of the major problems facing not just San Francisco, but I think every city in the country. San Francisco, but I think every city in the country, the money that our tax dollars are supposed to be going towards to fix whatever number of things from public housing to homelessness to transit education, there's an assumption on path of the public that if you raise taxes, you have more money, it's going to those things. And it's just not. It's clearly not. I think you could look around and just see the evidence of the fact that it's not. San Francisco has a budget of close to maybe over $13 billion at this point. It doesn't add up. The math doesn't make any sense. Where are the resources going? And it's like, well, it's going to this class of people that you're talking about. And I think they really have to be just completely defunded. I think that there has to be some kind of law at this point that prohibits the funding

of nonprofits, the government funding of nonprofits, tax dollars that people that are being raised to solve problems have to be spent by the government to solve those problems. I think this is actually probably a leftist critique of all of this. This is probably what I think Marxists believe, because at this point, having spent so much time in San Francisco, I'm not even asking for lower taxes. I'm just like, this money should go towards the things that the people are saying the money is going towards. River, actually on that thought, this is very much your territory yeah um i mean i think

like a statist approach instead of this sort of like decentralized thing where we're paying for it by getting somebody else to do it i mean that would be that is traditionally more of like a left-wing position um but i think what's interesting with all this is that it's essentially the same type of corruption that's always existed in america like during the gilded age it was like if you wanted to build like a giant building or like a park or like a train or whatever it's like you know you had to pay off the mob you have to pay off the union boss you had to pay off like all of these people or whatever but at the end of it at the very least you would have like a train or a bus line or um you know a giant the empire state building or whatever and now it's like we pay we're also doing the corruption thing but we just don't get anything out of it and so

like i i mean i i think it like the i agree that like there's something more pernicious about nonprofits than even like the sort of government subsidized government subsidies, like private for profit corporations, which I don't care for that either. But generally speaking, they do produce something because they have to sell something to the market or they have to like contractually, you know, complete a service, you know, complete a building or whatever. you know complete a service constrict you know complete a building or or whatever um and when it comes to non-profits it's there's basically no it's like a handshake and like hope they're a good person and they're probably not right and but it's not it's also we have this perception that it's they don't have much money we have this perception that the non-profits are these poor people who are just trying to do good in the world and it's actually like the city is spending an enormous amount of money on this that should be spent on the many problems that it's facing. And I don't believe that if people look at this, they won't see the reality that we're talking about now. I think that more people just

have to kind of think about it this way. We have to pull the curtain back and be like, listen, these are the dynamics. This is where the money is going. It's not going to the problems. Don't you want the money to go to the problems? The answer obviously will be yes. Maybe I'm just too optimistic, but I really believe that if people just knew that this was happening, it would bother them. Yeah. And I would just add that this is happening. I'm most familiar with San Francisco, but specifically in San Franciscoisco this is happening across the board in like every aspect of city government this is how they handle homelessness in general is by contracting to non-profits um that then take the money and enrich themselves and you know this is part of this massive homelessness industrial complex right but it

keeps them it keeps them out of homelessness it keeps the non-profit workers out of homelessness. It keeps the nonprofit workers out of homelessness. It's Jen Friedenbach who runs it. So it's working. Yeah, yeah. And they do it with their Department of Public Health. And I think that people, my sense is that a lot of people don't really have the time, probably because they have actual jobs and are contributing to the economy, to look past the nice sounding rhetoric that these nonprofits kind of package

themselves up in. It's like, oh, the city's giving money to the homeless children's network. That sounds great. Like homeless, you imagine like homeless children getting taken into a warm, loving home. And you're like, I'm glad that my tax paying my taxpayer dollars are going toward this. And people don't have time to read the fucking insane evaluation report that someone you know put together um from a subcontracted uh advisory firm and realize that this is not doing anything yeah and they also don't stop to think and realize like what is this charity actually going to do because if you have like a single unaccompanied child living on the street like that child is a ward of the state like will become a ward of the state legally and basically every state law under

every state law that i can think of like so like what are they actually going to do and if we do have it also begs the question too if there's a need for um a homeless child charity which apparently there's not since they're not helping homeless children. It does beg the question, how bad has state failure gotten that we have literal Victorian street urchins running around? It's really grim. This is the central issue. The government itself is not capable of doing anything. And so I often make the argument that all of the homeless money should stay inside of the city government. There should be one director in charge of all of it, the entire budget. Let's say it was $600 million plus a year. That one person should be in charge of it. Their job should be to eradicate homelessness as a concept in the city. It should never exist again. I even outlined ways that they could potentially do this. And if they don't achieve these things, they should be fired. But the assumption in all of this that is not fair is that there is even one person in the city government who could actually manage this

problem. And there's not. We have the intellectual D team running the critical infrastructure of our entire country. And I don't know how to solve that problem because these aren't even elected positions. You know, these are the people who've just like colonized the city government and leached all of the nutrients out of the system. Well, they did just clean up San Francisco for APEC. So somebody somewhere in the government knows how to do this.

I think the state came in, threw a lot of money at it. It's like when someone's having a drug overdose or something and you give them a shot of adrenaline. I think that's what we just witnessed. I don't think the heart is healthy well i think there's also they they showed the will to move people into another area of the city which they never have they never they're always like we can't do that you know it's just it's not acceptable to to move people out of the city, but they showed that they could. Yeah. Well, I guess we'll wait and see. One thing I wanted to talk about very briefly, well, not really that briefly, because we're going to get to the question of nationalism.

Last week was the Republican national debate or the Republican debate for the presidential candidates. And I think sort of swarming around that, you have all of your candidates making their pitch for the country. Nikki Haley suggested, not on the stage, it was after, it was maybe a few days ago, her plan for social media would be to ban the anonymous accounts. So to ban anonymity, to kind of go after the shit posters. Obviously, the internet reacted furiously. This is like, she came for like the lifeblood of the internet, the memers. She since backtracked, but it's got me thinking about sort of the relationship, the bridge between tech and these candidates and how they think about tech and these candidates. As I was watching the debate,

I had a couple of choice comments about Vivek. And every time I do this, I get a lot of pushback from people who seem confused about this. They're like, how could you go after Vivek? He seems he's the strange dark horse candidate. He's the outsider. He is the tech guy. He's the America first guy. These things, for whatever reason, by many of our readers are clocked as pirate wires-y kinds of things, things that I would like, things that maybe some of you people would like. So here it is. And I usually don't talk about Vivek. I don't want to get that much into national politics, honestly. I think it's kind of stupid and impossible to really put your, to shape in any way. I like the local focus when I can, but I do think it's worth addressing the Vivek stuff. I don't believe him. I just think he's a fucking fraud. I don't believe anything he

says. And for me, it comes down to just, there are a couple of things just in total conflict with each other. So the very first thing that I noticed that made me kind of double click on this guy, it was the moment that Silicon Valley Bank was collapsing and potentially half of the startups in tech were going to go out of business because they had their money in a bank. And at this point, you have naturally a conversation about what the state's role should be here, if any. And your hardline libertarian believes there should be no role at all. The banks should fail, and that's the market correcting itself. And if you were dumb enough to put your money in this bank, you deserve to lose it. Maybe you don't, maybe that's sad,

but you kind of have to lose it. And I used to be a libertarian. I can wrap my mind around that position. I understand where they're coming from. I no longer believe that, but I get the position. On the other hand, you have a more nationalistic approach, which is like, we need to do whatever is, I think, best for the country. Whatever is going to keep the country healthy, the economy sound. This is a crisis moment. If you don't guarantee the people who had held their money in the bank, there's going to be a national bank run and we're facing a major economic calamity. You have to stem that off. You have to stop that. You have to build trust in the system and the government itself should guarantee that trust. Vivek, who is the America first nationalist guy,

he takes a libertarian position at first. He's like, the debtors should be wiped out. They're not the debtors. He's like, the people who held their money in that bank should be wiped out. That's just the free market. It is what it is. There's a lot of pushback on this. What about a national bank run? And he says, well, everybody else will be guaranteed. Every other bank, every other person, just not that bank. That was immediately, that struck me as immediately incoherent. It leads later on to a more recent position, which I think is telling in the exact same way, the question of TikTok, which Vivek believed should be banned for a while until he had dinner with Jake Paul. He has dinner with Jake Paul and he decides TikTok is important because the kids

love TikTok and it's the free market. And if Americans want to compete with TikTok, they should be able to. Our tech companies should simply compete with them in a free and open market. The problem, of course, is that all of our software is banned in China. So the Chinese are permitted to sell unencumbered into our market while we are forbidden from selling into their market. It's not a fair fight. And the nationalist response, the America first response here would be the response that was really kind of championed by both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in 2016, which is there should be free free trade, but fair trade. There should not be a trade imbalance of this kind. We shouldn't be doing things that are clearly not in the interest of America. When it comes to something like trade, you can't hide behind like, oh, it's the free market. Or I guess you could if you're a libertarian. I guess you could, but you shouldn't was the original position. And my problem with Vivek is he says he's a nationalist. He says he's America first. He's this pro-tech guy. And yet these positions don't benefit anybody other

than China. Now that would be obnoxious to me if he was just a globalist and that's just not my vibe at this point. But in comparison with his... So then that position is colored by his foreign policy position, which is classically nationalist, or at least the way that it's presenting right now on largely the right wing and a little bit of the left wing, much less on the left wing, which is more sort of bring the troops home. We shouldn't be anywhere else. Again, a position that I can wrap my head around, but only if you actually believe in everything else that comes with that, including things like trade and domestic economic policy. But he's not. It's this weird combination of things that when you sort of string them all together has one beneficiary,

and it's not the United States. It's China china and that's my problem with vivek is i just i don't believe him um i also find him extremely fucking tedious like i just don't like the way he talks it's annoying he you know who he is is uh he's pete budaj in his in form like not not necessarily anything to do with his opinions it's the way he states his opinions his view of himself which is like kind of like this onanistic like you know he's wanted to be president since he was like 15 and like i i remember there was like a video actually of in like 2004 like some presidential debate or whatever where they like went to harvard and they were like letting uh like the harvard kids like ask questions to john kerry and bush or whoever and you know who appeared in both at the same event vivek ramaswamy people to judge literally

like they were at the same school at the same time both just like you know like shirt tucked in like dorky looking you you know, like skinny college guys, like asking questions to John Kerry about foreign policy or whatever. The model Congress human being. It's the model Congress behavior. But he's trying to, I think, sort of like, he's seen like what God has done for Trump

and he, you know, wants that for him as well. And so he's trying to do kind of like a trump thing he's like well trump's not really consistent so i don't have to be either it's like yeah but people like donald trump trump's funny in the first place and i do think i actually do think that trump is consistent relatively on nationalist stuff at least in rhetoric like rhetoric not really right like but in rhetoric it's like if vivek's not consistent in rhetoric because I don't actually believe this is the thing. I agree with you. I think he's a model Congress kid.

I think he is the same as Pete Buttigieg. These are people who their primary goal was to be in power as an adult. And they are now both very close to that. Now both very close to that. And it's like you look around and you adopt the the positions that are resonating and you wear them like, I don't know. The skin of last season's dead candidate. And it's it's just not inspiring to me. And I think maybe what's worse is I'm just like sort of somewhat personally aggrieved about the whole thing because I see so many of my friends falling for it. You know, this like fake outsider thing.

And it's just it bothers me. He's good in debate. You know, he's this kind of person. He reminds me of Ben Shapiro a little bit, where they can talk. If they just talk for 60 seconds on something, at the end of those 60 seconds, you're like, yeah, that sounds right to me. Probably. He's probably right. And you just give up. It's like the Jedi mind trick or something. But yeah, it just doesn't work on me. Or that one doesn't work on me. I'm i fall for all sorts of jedi mind tricks yeah what do you think about nikki haley nikki haley i don't think that the anonymous shit poster should be put in prison that's what i'll i'll maybe just start there including nikki haley by the way whose name is like nimrata ramswam or some shit it's not nikki fucking haley i think haley is her last name nikki is not her name it's let's talk about the shit poster thing though because so i that's what i think is

to be charitable to her on this if the government should have no place here at all you should not be banning anonymity this is you know the american intellectual history begins in anonymity. It's like basically the 18th century's version of shit posters attacking each other in the press. Much more eloquent and insightful, but nonetheless, anonymity, I think, serves a purpose. It would be more civil if people had their name next to the things that they were saying, I think. I understand the impulse to want that. I had a few friends text me about this and they were saying the same thing. They would post more and whatnot. You do they don't they don't seem to really care at all um they're not they're not afraid of this uh in any way it would not impact them but i don't know i can see where she's coming if uh i can see where she's coming with the request with like

wouldn't it be nice if it was i think the the frightening thing about it was the the frame that potentially this would be the law. And that's a hard no for me. I don't know. What do you guys think about the shitposting stuff? She's fucking insane. I think it was an insane thing to say. Because her point was that she wanted to find a way to prosecute anonymous shitposters, essentially.

And of course, the Federalist Papers were written anonymously, and as you're saying, like... uh, were published anonymously, rather. Um... I think it's part of this worrying, uh... push now to sort of prosecute hate speech. I mean, they do it in Britain, um, you know, and we could go, easily go down that path

if there's enough of a political appetite for it. Um, but I they do it in Britain, you know, and we could go easily go down that path if there's enough of a political appetite for it. But I just think it's like, we shouldn't even be entertaining this thought. Like it's one thing to sort of say, oh, we should be more courteous to each other online. And that's a sort of admirable civic goal for us all to strive toward. But to think about involving law enforcement in it is really scary and unhinged. I think she has this quality that a lot of people have in politics that resonates, which is she's good at talking about the things that she cares about. She goes off about foreign policy and she sounds really reasonable. And I think the average person just tuning in doesn't

necessarily have an opinion on any of this. And so if someone sounds like they know their shit they're like oh that person knows what's going on i'm gonna maybe vote for them and that happens with evic that happens with every politician who's good i just don't really care necessarily how they say things i care about what they're saying um river sorry i cut you off um i mean i think she's very good at saying kind of insane things very confidently you know what i mean like that's her sort of like i you know like her she i think she's like listed like five different countries she thinks we should go to war with now and she just says it like so confidently every time that people are like yeah but then like people would actually never agree to that in practice they'd be like wait

what the fuck why are we going to war with you know kazakhstan or whatever you she wants you know and it's like there's i don't know i i find her to be phony in a different way than i find vivek to be phony because his is very this is got this like i don't know it's a it's a it's a very like female and like older school form of like fake politician where it's it's a lot more like convincing it's like she sounds like a politician you know what i mean like um vivek sounds like a guy who's talking about politics like yeah it feels like he could be a podcaster yes would have her podcast would be terrible but like if she was like you know giving a speech at the state department or whatever like people would be like oh that's par for the course i get that and i think there's like

something comforting about that i guess uh that's sort of like dignified um statesmen even if you know they're dragging you into a war or whatever like at least they sound like they know what they're doing and they're not um i don't know falling asleep at the podium like our current president or i i mean i think people thought trump was funny but after a while it does in certain situations i was like i don't know if he can handle this. You know what I mean? Like it was kind of. Yeah, I think our debates, the medium of debate contributes to a lot of this. They don't have much time.

And so people don't have much time with them to hear them think or speak while they think. with them to hear them think or speak while they think. I would like to see just the total abolition of the current debate format. It's not helpful for anybody to watch these people speak for 30 seconds on their healthcare policy. What is the point of this? It's good for networks. It's good for selling ads and you have two hours and set commercial breaks. That shouldn't matter. This should be not run by major media companies. This should be just done on public television. It should be three hours. People who are running for office should have 10 minutes to talk about a specific policy proposal. Rebuttal should be five minutes and we should just have an actual conversation. You can fake a sound bite, but you can't fake actual rigorous back and

forth. At some point, people are just going to start talking and telling you what they think. And that's really what I want to understand and see. And I think it will be more helpful. I think a lot more time and it should be much more grueling in terms of you have to actually tell us stuff rather than just otherwise. I mean, what are we supposed to do as an audience? Of course, it comes down to just what vibe do I like better? Who feels more like a president? Because that's all they're really giving us. And that's by design. It just doesn't have to be. So I don't understand why it is. It does not have to be this stupid. Politics does not have to be this dumb. And we always focus on the candidates because they're right there in front of us, just begging to be abused. But it's the medium. It's the actual structure

around them that forces this stupidity to happen. This is television. This is intellectualism in the age of television. It's baked for this. There are exceptions that you can make, but you have to actually think it through. And it's bleak that no one really wants to do that. Yeah. And strangely, they do this same format even when it gets to the general and there's only

like two candidates. They still only give them like two minutes to speak, which is insane because if you remember a couple of years ago, I think they stopped doing this. But CNN would like randomly do these debates between people in Congress. Like one time they did like Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders, but they let them talk for like 10 minutes each and then they would like respond to each other. Bernie Sanders, but they let them talk for like 10 minutes each and then they would like respond to each other. And like, it was actually like a lot more interesting to watch in the regular debate because they actually got to talk and they actually seem to be somewhat having a dialogue with each other in a way that felt not completely artificial. I think in a debate, in a presidential debate months from the election, both parties believe the stakes are too high.

They don't want to take risks, but they have to seem like they're strong enough to go out there and debate the issues. So it's this weird pact, I think, that they make with each other. Probably not. I don't see them sitting there talking like, hey, how do we not tell the American people anything? I don't think it's like a real conspiracy or anything. I think they both just kind of know what's up. Both parties know what's up. They want as little risk as possible.

And they want room. Both parties have an incentive to just have room for soundbites because they can craft those ahead of time. Those can be their commercials. A quick little tit for tat on stage can be repackaged as a commercial very easily. And that's the game that we're all stuck in. I don't know how it changes other than we have to just demand more as voters. But I don't know. The average voter probably shouldn't. I wonder if there will even be general election debates, assuming Biden v. Trump, because Trump isn't doing the ones now, which I mean, probably smart on him because- Why would you? Yeah.

So why would you? And I think Biden has said stuff in the past about how he doesn't want to debate Trump because of like Jan 6 or something. I could be wrong about that. But I don't know. I have serious doubts as to whether or not they will actually debate each other. I will say that it matters. But yeah, what I'm not going to do is be this. I know that if this happens, there's going to be a huge uproar and never in American history.

And this is an essential American institution. It's not. These debates are useless. And so we don't actually need them. And if it doesn't happen, I won't care. We get nothing from the debates in their current form. So, yeah, I don't want to hear it. I do want to say though, before we... Because this is an interesting topic on... We were kind of just keying into it.

On the Republican side specifically, there is this interesting divide on the question of nationalism or the role of America in the world. I would say to maybe steel man both sides maybe, both sides are America first, but one side believes that it is in America's interest to take a central role in maintaining order globally. And the other side believes it is in America's interests to kind of come home. One place where we've really seen this play out in a kind of cartoonish, ridiculous way just yesterday, crazy catfight between Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens. River, I would love you to kind of break that drama down for us. Okay. So on November 14th, so two days ago, Ben Shapiro was spotted at an event. There's a video

circulating of him at an event where he was asked about Candace Owens, his co-worker, Candace Owens at the Daily Wire, her comments on... Employer, right? Ben apparently does not run... He's not in charge of the day-to-day

anymore. He is a co-founder, but he's i think it's like some ceremonial like editor title or something um i think if he was still in charge she would probably not be working there anymore but uh anyway candace owens and some of these other people they've been sort of like they're not exactly like really criticizing israel their position from what i understand is that they don't think the united states should be involved candace owen said that you know in her interview with tucker carlson if you're um all this blew up uh she said that you know

israel has a right to get rid of hamas but like i shouldn't be called an anti-semite for feeling bad about you Palestinian children. So make to that effect. But this is just completely blown up, out of proportion. The girls are fighting. The girls are fighting really bad. After that video came out, Candace posted a Bible verse about... It's like something from the Sermon sermon on the mouth saying you can't serve dog and money at the same time.

What it takes to, to be like, I'm going to quote fucking Jesus Christ right now. Like I, this, my fight with Ben Shapiro is so important that I'm invoking Christ. Vaguely, very vaguely three minutes after the video was posted she's posting from the book

of matthew uh and uh well he he quote tweets her and says candace if you feel that taking money from the daily wire somehow comes between you and god by all means quit yeah thank you for taking thank you for finding the quotes on it and then she goes on t Tucker and she's like, you know, he supported the vaccines. His mom's a pediatrician or something. She's like, yeah, she invokes his mom as a doctor as a reason that he's in bed with big pharma. Yeah, she was like, his mom's a doctor. So of course he supports big pharma.

And I'm like, that's a crazy thing to say. There are a lot of things going on with this thing. The key one is the divide on the, I don't want to say the far right, but on the right, on the issue of nationalism and what that is. And Ben and Candace take two very different approaches there. They both have a lot of people in their corner. Ben is more institutional, generally speaking. And I think that the Daily Wire is also fractured on this issue, but it's kind of as far right as you can go in media at this point. Beyond that is, I'm not saying morally, you guys go off, do whatever you want to do. But I'm saying just if

you want any kind of tether to institutional whatever, the Daily Wire is not even that, but you're not going to have as much influence on mainstream Republican politics if you leave. What Ben Dominick said was, I think, have fun wading through the swamps or something of Infowars, which is apt. He's saying like, you know, to say this to Candace, like, you leave the Daily Wire in a huff about this issue and you're not getting a job at some like other comparable place. There is no other comparable place. You'll have a show on Twitter, for example, or possibly you'll do your own YouTube thing that'll probably get banned by the platform,

let's be honest, eventually. Or you have the Alex Jones path. But that was kind of it. That is... There's nowhere else to go. I think they were being a little bit charitable to Candice. I mean, she was definitely... I mean, that's a lot coming at you.

And I think that, Ben, we don't really know what's happening behind the scenes. We don't know what provoked this. We don't know what conversations they've had. She also, I mean, she talked about, she's invoking Christ. She's like blaming the Israelis for blowing up churches. I think the subtext there is they don't. But the subtext there.

The IDF did say that they did that. The only thing she ever said about it. They said they did it on purpose. We don't care. We want to kill Christians. Of course not course not like this is a complicated situation there's weapons and shit underneath all of these things like there are any number of things going on like no one is no one is blowing up churches on purpose um it's not like or whatever we let's table this conversation i'm not trying to have like an israel palestine debate i'm saying from their perspectives, this is about, I think, just America's role in the

world. They fundamentally disagree. Ben sees it as anti-Semitic. I think he's very personally, for obvious and understandable reasons, affected by this. Candace doesn't care. And where else is she going to go? Where does that really far right stuff go like that's i think a valid question what happened to kanye right like you you hit a point where you just there's nowhere else to go for you yeah i i don't i don't think that she's like in kanye territory but i think that there's like it really this all, as far as I can tell, whenever the bombing at that church in Gaza happened, which kind of blew up, I think, in the right-wing media. It did not start there. The guy who's a congressman.

It's been like this from the very beginning. I'm just saying, like, how this escalated is that, like, somebody made a comment about it, and then somebody got, like, accused of being anti-Semitic. It was Charlie Kirk, actually. He was very pro-Israel. And so I think that there's a reflexive sort of like, even though it wasn't that many people doing it, there's this reflexive thing that a lot of people on Candace Owens' side of the right have to any sort of ad hominem accusation of bigotry because of like BLM and all of that, where they just like, they get like a little bit, it like triggers something in them.

And I agree. I think that that has a lot to do with this too, where it's like, they don't even really care that much. It's just like, they don't like that. They feel like they can't say whatever they want to say. I think it's been simmering from the very beginning. You could, I watched Candace Owens come out on this issue day right after everything happened. And you could tell that she was holding stuff back, that she wasn't on the side of Israel.

It was very apparent by her rhetoric. And I imagine for Ben, that was infuriating because this is the house that he built. And here she is on his platform in his mind, saying things that he believes to be completely abhorrent or taking a side of things that he believes to be completely abhorrent. I think behind the scenes, that was probably a super toxic environment. And it's just the resentment is built and built and built. And now they're fighting and they're creating this very interesting conversation on the right. What is the future of the right? What I really want to know is what is donald trump's perspective on this he's been very quiet on israel palestine he did say that the israelis um are doing like bad pr or something that is the way he would think about it which is such a trump's thing to say he was like he was like they're not doing the best or something. I was like...

Well, excited for him to get back in the arena and stir up all sorts of insane, unhinged drama in the months to come. It's been real. Catch you guys next week for a special Thanksgiving edition of the pod. It's actually just, I'll be sharing an interview that I already did.

So catch it there and see you with another episode week after.