The Chaser Report - A Man Without Power | Mark Humphries

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

Mark Humphries is having gas problems and finds himself without power, and Charles takes a deep dive into the life of West Virginia's senator Joe Manchin. Plus Gabbi is distraught about the fatal flaws in the canine education system. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of The Chase Report is brought to you by listening to the podcast in your car. Do you hear that? Are those sirens? Is that coming from inside the car or outside the car? I can't tell. Okay, I think it's the podcast. Oh, that's so annoying. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chase of Report.

Hello and welcome to The Chase Report for Wednesday, the 20th of October, 2021. I'm dumb night. Hello, Charles Firth and hello Gabby Bultz. Hello. Oh dear. What's happened? What happened? I'm so sad. You don't understand. Oh, dear. What? What?

Dogs can't go to puppy preschool for the last year and a half during COVID. Dogs have been dropping out of puppy preschool, despite the fact that everyone's adopting at the moment. It's like some of the highest adoption rates we've seen in the country as well as some of the lowest puppy preschool. school rates. Well, is this because dogs can catch COVID? Well, I think it's because their owners can catch COVID, so no one's taking their dog to get properly educated. So we've just got a bunch of really dumb, really anxious dogs lying around the place.

So I have a pitch. Bring all of your dogs to me, and I will educate your dogs. I mean, I don't see why dogs should have it better than we have, right? I mean, they're supposed to be our best friends. We've had a crappy few years of emotional turmoil. It's been horrible. I think the dogs should suffer through it with us. Take everything that happened with COVID, cancelled gigs, cancelled travel.

People cannot see their families, but this is by far the saddest story that I have seen come out of this pandemic. The dogs are anxious and they're dumb. They don't know how to sit and I'm sad about it. Yeah, see, I don't like to admit this, Gabby, but I don't really like dogs. How dare you? I was mauled by two big black dogs when I was about four years old. And ever since then, I just, I don't. I just don't like them.

Wait a second. They didn't go to doggy day school. They didn't go to the school to learn not to mall people. This is what I mean. We're going to see more mallings and less cuddles. We need dogs back in puppy preschool. I demand it. ScoMo, get on it.

Well, you can have, as far as I'm concerned, if all the dogs in Sydney end up at Gabby's house, so there's less of them pooing up our streets. Yes. Then I would be absolutely fine with that. Yes. So if everyone who can't take their dogs to puppy, preschool while they're getting back to normal, yeah, I will take them all.

I'll be a new kennel. And they'll all be very, very badly behaved because they haven't been to school. I'm not a trainer at all, but I will definitely take care of them. They will get lots of cuddles. And what will happen is that with all these dogs at Gabby's house, it will descend into Lord of the Flies, it will be absolute hell. They'll eat you within a day or two, and then they'll establish their own little island in community and gradually claw each other to death.

It doesn't sound like a good educational experience for the day. It's a great educational experience for me, though, Dom. But if we can bet on the outcome... Guess who's getting mauled next week, Charles? That's the one thing I'll train them. Coming up on the show, we talk to Mark Humphreys about something very important. He's got a bit of a... I think he's got another sort of medical issue, actually.

Oh, God. Good to know he's coming on the best medical advice podcast for that. And Charles has a new segment, which is called something like Deepa Dive... No, no. It's called... It's called Deeper a Dive because, you know, you hear people doing a deeper dive into something. Well, this segment's even better than that, it's a deeper a dive. Right, not deepest.

No, that would have been better. Not from Charles, no. Before that, though, we'll go to Rebecca Dean, Emuno in the Chase Newsroom right after this. The Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has responded to the government's new workplace sexual harassment rules by resorting to fucking the planet instead. After declining to make any meaningful commitment to net zero carbon emissions, he asked reporters if it felt like it was getting hotter on earth or if it was just him.

Following Joe Biden's refusal to suppress the results of the investigation into the January 6 riots, Donald Trump has asked Christian Porter for advice on getting embarrassing legal details out of the public eye. Trump also claims that he couldn't possibly have been involved in an insurrection against the US government, because of his bone spurs. Yellow Wiggle Emma Watkins has announced her departure

from the Children's Entertainment Group after admitting that she would rather have another 250 days of lockdown, raging bushfires and the oncoming climate disaster than face another crowd of screaming children. Watkins says she's looking forward to being able to correctly pronounce the word beautiful and not having to pretend that dinosaurs are real.

That's the latest from the Chaser Newsroom. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno, and I'm still feeling nauseous, thanks to that headline about Arna B. Joyce having sex. Oh. And now it's time for a new segment I like to call Deeper Deep Dive. Oh, that's right. It's actually called Deeper Deep Dive.

Yeah, good one. I think I got the name wrong. But yeah, so people do deep dives. This is the deeper deep dive. You know, like I sort of. was thinking this podcast lacks facts. Journalism. Yeah. And journalism.

Who knew? Comedy podcasts could lack fact. So why don't we actually, you know, do a deeper a dive into things? All right. And so the first one is going to be about this guy called Senator Joe Manchin. Do you know about him? Yeah, he's the one man who is ruining the United States.

Yeah, he's very big at the moment. His name keeps on popping up everywhere in relation because he's sort of the enemy of Joe Biden. I wanted to look into who he was, right? And the more you look, the more you go deeper into this, you just, it is amazing story. Now, we are very used to corrupt politicians in Australia. We've gone, you know, from, you know, like 30 years ago, 40 years ago,

you know, ministers would literally resign over not declaring that they'd been given a teddy bear or something like that. Nowadays, you know, Barney Bill at Royce can, you know, buy $80 million worth of water using taxpayers' money, from a company that Angus Taylor set up in the Cayman Islands, and then the water doesn't turn out to exist. Yes. And, you know, we still, you know, they're still employed.

Yeah. But that's all very simple stuff compared to Joe Manchin, right? Okay, so, and I always think it is good to have a look at America because Australia's only ever, you know, five or ten years behind. Yeah. So this is where we're heading. Okay, so Joe Manchin, Senator Joe Manchin, he has been a senator for 40 years for the state of West Virginia, right?

And in that time, it's gone from quite a prosperous coal mining state to the second poorest state in America. It's in the bottom five for education, health and infrastructure. It's basically just this hollowed out state. The average wage in West Virginia is literally $26,000. Oh. So this Joe Manchin guy, he's the senator from that state, he makes $180,000 a year.

But his net worth somehow, you know, And this is the only job he's really ever had, is $8 million, right? And everyone's going, so hang on. How can someone make $180,000 a year? But he's actually a multimillionaire with a yacht and everything. Yeah. Answer is, he set up a coal company. No.

Right. Called inner systems. And then he got his son to run it. And he gets $400,000 a year from that. His wife makes about $600,000. So, mine, they're sort of pulling in an extra million from this coal company, right? So you're going, okay, that's pretty bad, right? Yeah.

You know, but, you know, like, there's coal companies and next to coal companies, right? Like, not all coal companies are the devil, right? Like, although Joe Manchin's is. Joe Manchin's family owns a coal brokerage, and they sell what's called waste coal to a power plant in West Virginia that, like, basically just poisons the community. It's a very dirty form of, of energy. Wait, so it's coal that's just not even being used for electricity. It's just...

No, no, it's being used for electricity, but it's the lowest grade of coal because it pollutes... It basically poisons his own constituents to create the thing. So he's a little bit defensive, to his credit, about the fact that he owns this polluting money machine. As you would be. So he's actually managed to distance himself from it in actually quite a familiar way. He was asked about it once and he said, you know, your best of... not ask about that and pointed out that it's in a blind trust. But like how blind is the trust when it's your son running your company, the company you found it? A blind trust? Oh, we love

those. Does that remind you of anything? Oh, my God. Blind trust fixes everything. How threatening, though, like you best not ask about that. Since when could that be an acceptable answer to a question about your potential corruption? You know what, buddy? You got a good point there. Better not ask, though. Yeah, it does. I mean, it's sort of got overtones, though. doesn't it? Because it's sort of like... I'm threatened. I forgot to mention, by the way,

that while he was owning this coal company that he was making millions out of, he got himself appointed as the chair of the Energy Committee in the Senate. So he basically runs the coal industry. He oversees the running of the coal industry in America while he's also a coal owner. So that's him.

That's him. And you're sort of going, wow, what a piece of shit. Oh, well, you know, no wonder Joe Biden is against him, right? Let me just, before I get to the sort of punchline of why it actually matters, I just want to talk a little bit about his daughter, Heather, right? Okay. Her behaviour is so outrageous that his political opponents have actually started running attack ads,

just attacking his daughter, right? Imagine in Australia, if, you know, Scott Morrison's daughter. He's a Jenny and the girls. Yeah, no, we would never do that. But listen to this. This is Heather Manchin, Joe Manchin's daughter. After lying about having an MBA, she was named CEO of Mylan Industries. She artificially jacked up the price of EpiPens by 461% and was awarded with a 671% salary increase.

West Virginia is poor, poorly educated and broken, but Joe Manchin and his entire family have become multi-millionaires. Yeah, so... I feel like I'm watching, like, you know those shows, I call them sick... Sick day shows where, like, if you stayed home from school for a day and you watch Channel 10, all those, like, American, like, paranormal experiences are like, I shouldn't be alive. It sounds like one of those shows. Although, I will say jacking up EpiPens by 461% is pretty crazy.

So I kind of understand the smear campaign a little bit. The market in, you know, people who are having an epileptic shot, they'll pay anything. Yeah, well, I suppose they have to, don't they? It's that pesky thing called survival, isn't it? Anyway, so the question is, well, and this is sort of the punchline for me. me, which is, why does this any of this matter? Like, why is Joe Manchin so central to everything?

Yeah. And the answer is, he's a Democrat, right? No. So he's not, he's not a Republican. He's not like the enemy of Joe Biden. Joe Biden's role is to sort of be mates with this guy. And that's why he's sort of holding everything up because they've got a very slim

majority in the Senate, and he's sort of the last vote that they need amongst the Democrats. He's the last kid to be picked at sports. Yeah, and so Joe Biden's got this huge $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill that you're trying to get across the line. And inside that bill, and so, you know, Joe mentions going, well, I can't possibly support that. But the reason it's all come out that he's not supporting it is it's got $150 billion in there to create clean energy. Oh, no.

And he's going, well, I don't want that because they've got my coal mine. Because why would he? And then another $300 billion for loans to create. you know, electrify households, which is the actual idea that Saul Griffith had on the podcast last week. Of course. That's actually his idea. And so his whole point is, well, you know, let's take that money out of the bill.

We don't need to greenify. It's going to happen anyway. And we don't want to accelerate, you know, people not buying coal because I've got a whole lot of coal to sell in West Virginia and poison the community with it. My God. Yeah. So next time you get worried about, you know, the occasional $80 million water deal

or $600 million sports reward. Remember, that's nothing compared to the US. Yeah. At least, not yet. That was a very deep dive, Charles. Thank you. Are you proud? I will say, country road is probably going to be a very different song now.

West Virginia, multi-million dollar. Take me home. Joe Mansion. No, never mind. It's fine. Niche joke. This episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by listening to the podcast

with your kids. Hey kids, did you know that if you subtract nine months from your birthday, it'll either be New Year's, Valentine's, or your parents' birthday? I wonder why that is. You should ask mum and dad. Now, yesterday on Twitter, Mark Humphreys had a very funny, very weird story about his gas. Thank you, Charles. Now, although it is true that I do have huge gas problems,

this specific issue is to do with electricity. Masterful intro, Charles. This whole time, when God, okay, so Charles this morning was like, Mark's going to come on and talk about his gas. I was like, oh, I suppose he's already talked about his shingles. I thought it's too tall. The plumbing's not working. It's probably noxious.

I want to hear more. I've realized that basically every time I come on this show is some grievance or some mishap that has befallen me. But essentially what's happened, is that I live in a sort of a building complex of townhouses, and there are 16 of us, there are 16 units in total. And what we've discovered is that for the past two years, every single unit has been paying for some other units, electricity.

No. And it's not a kind of, oh, I've been paying for unit seven and unit seven has been paying for me. It's like, no, I've been paying for unit three, and Unit 7's been paying for me. It's like a human centipy of electricity bills. What do you mean? Like, how did you find out?

So, I've gone into the archives of my email account and realized that I actually first realized there was a problem in an email that I sent to our estate agent on September 21st, 2020. So I've been dealing with this for over a year. Happy anniversary. Thank you so much. Thank you, Doc. Only yesterday I didn't receive compliment.

of my original guess, which was that I suspected that there was a problem with the meter numbers because my brother-in-law who lives with us was doing a university assignment where he had to, he's studying engineering and he needed to look at one of our electricity bills for some assignment. And he said, can I see one? I went, oh, sure. And then I went to go and retrieve one and then realized that I'd never received one. And the lights were on. Everything was functioning. Why, Mark, did you complain about this to your real estate agent?

Why didn't you just shut up? Charles, you know me. I'm a good boy I am. Because my fear, of course, was that the lights would suddenly turn off at some point. I mean, it's not like anyone here is on life support, which even though that's the question they ask you a thousand times whenever you. You don't know the house you were paying for might have been. That's true.

Well, there's a very good point. Hang on, but are you not paying for anyone? Have you somehow been billedless for a full year? The only, you've got the cheapest electricity in Australia, and that it's free. That's right. So I had, for a period prior to September 21st, 2020, I clearly had been living electricity free. Don't worry. They're backdated it once I told them about it.

And there was no discount. There was no, you know, reduction for honesty. Anyway, so then I was put onto a plan because basically what they said is that the meter number that I was, that I believed to be my own, was being used by someone else. So they said, we'll put you on this, this other meter number that we think must correspond to your place. So we get, okay. Anyway, so we lived on that for about a year until I went to, I realized I hadn't received an electricity bill for a while. And I then realized that we had been kicked off our electricity account. So I was back to paying nothing.

So I had been paying nothing. I was a good boy, started paying something. They kicked me off again so that I was paying nothing. All this time we had electricity. So I probably, to your, in fantasy, you guys, I probably shouldn't have tried to fix it a second time. Yeah, you're overcorrected. I've overdone it.

So I flanged it with the estate agent again. Basically. Did they say, Mark, Mark, why are you pursuing this? You keep getting free electricity. just let it go I just I think I just dreaded being found out I think it was just that

I just I don't know I just I just have a sort of moral code Oh my next year will be telling me You pay for your own Netflix To someone from overseas I really want a cop show About like electricity cops Like the lights are on and someone's home

Who was going to break down your door it was a general I put your hands up, it's origin energy Yeah I'd be a terrible sort of like Tase him Oh wait a minute We weren't paying the electricity bill

So we're turning this episode of the Chaz Report Into a true crime Mystery with change genres But also this reminds you You know that new TV series That I really want to watch For Steve Martin and Martin Short Only murders in the building

Where they investigate murders Within their apartment complex I'm just thinking you could do an Australian version of that with incredibly low stakes. My whole life is low stakes. But, yeah, I mean, I think what the interest is going to be the interesting next chapter is once, because obviously I've been working through this for over a year.

So I'm intimately aware of the workings of the meter system and everything. But it's my neighbours who have only just found this out. So what I'm trying to, what I'm sort of dreading is what do the 16 of us now do? do we now go and collectively go and get our respective electricity bills that we've accrued over the year over the last two years and work out who's paid what for who you know across that i mean that could be a fun saturday afternoon yeah or i mean it could be it feels like a recipe for something um my feeling is i sort of want my preference would be just to say you know what everyone seems to have been happy with what they thought they were supposed to be paying.

Unless there's any people who have particular grievances where it is, you know, really ridiculous. But they will be, Mark, do you not understand how strata buildings? There will be massive grievances. It will come down to someone's paid 10 cents more than I'm meant to. And you'll end up in court. What have I done? What have I done?

In the criminal justice system, there are people who pay the right bills and people who don't pay bills. The other thing is you could do an apartment-based version of Utopia about a body corporate because that I mean no one's ever done anything on that possibly because it's just too boring as I say the former chair of an executive committee

that would be I mean there are so many fights in apartment buildings like you're going to unleash hell it could be like a science fiction action movie and you could call it Strata Wars Oh God I've made a terrible mistake This episode of The Chase Report is brought to you

By listening to the podcast before bed Did you lock the front door Night Night Before we go Gabby I believe you've got some amazing news Are you allowed to announce it? Yes I won the moose head

Woo! That's all I've got That and 27 dogs are currently at my house This is a comedy scholarship that Gabby has won. To the Melbourne Comedy Festival, they help sort of... Well, they pay for everything. They basically pave for Gabby

to go to the Melbourne Holiday Festival. But you are the first person, Gabby. What are you the first person Moose Head Award winner to do? So the Mooseheads are not meant for newcomers. You're meant to have had at least one show under your belt before you get one.

But I'm the first person because of COVID to win this without ever having done a solo show before. So I consider that a pretty sneaky win. Yeah. I hope no one gets mad about it because, yeah, apparently they gave it to me under the assumption that I would have done one had, you know, a life-threatening disease, not...

I love it. I'm going to try and get a Nobel Prize, you know, that... Yeah. I would have had a really... For the potential? Yeah. I would have had a breakout in peace and won the, you know, created peace. Had it not been for COVID?

Had it not been for COVID, yeah. Yeah. Good one, Charles. Hey, Giers and Road microphones are part of the Acast, Crater Network. Catch you tomorrow. See ya.