The Young Turks - Corruption Chronicles

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Despite being vaccinated, Colin Powell has died due to complications from COVID. Joe Manchin has reportedly told the White House that the child tax credit must include a firm work requirement and a family income cap in the $60,000 range. Manchin also wants to keep elderly caretakers from getting the benefit. After getting ousted by AOC, Joe Crowley is now lobbying against tax hikes on giant corporations. The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks. A Republican governor is sounding off about former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him, and suggesting that the GOP’s chances in the midterms may be doomed if Trump does not change his tune soon. 9% of Georgia Republicans would consider sitting out the 2022 election unless the 2020 vote totals are audited. Australia's Northern Territory Chief Minister demolished Ted Cruz's attempt to lecture the country on their COVID prevention policies. Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Well, the Young Turks, thank you, Anna Consparing with you guys. We do news here, we follow that out with commentary, and oftentimes stage analysis, if I might say so myself. Okay, later in the show, we're gonna tell you what the guilty tax is. Yes, there is a tax known as the guilty tax. I didn't know about that tax until today, but it's an important tax. We'll get to those details. And if you've been naughty and you've been guilty, you're gonna be taxed. Have you been bad boys and girls? All of a sudden, everybody's signing up for the tax. They're like, wait, wait, wait, where do I get taxed like this? This is a kind of rich. I wish it was that fun.

I wish it was that fun. But it is an important tag, believe it or not. We will be talking about it a little later in the show. But first we begin with somber news. Somber. Okay, just stop. What are we gonna do, somber? I swear to God we're not high.

We're totally sober. This is just us. This is just us being us. Okay, no, seriously, it's the guy's dad. We'll have a full conversation about it. We will. Actually, let's start with that. Okay.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has died due to complications from coronavirus. He was 84 years old, and yes, he was fully vaccinated. However, he had a compromised immune system as a result of other conditions and other ailments he had, so we'll talk a little bit about that, but also more importantly, talk about his legacy and some of the things that might have been left out of the corporate media's reporting of his death. Now Powell also had multiple myeloma, which is a cancer that forms in plasma cells and diminishes the body's immune response. So for those who might be terrified of the fact that he was fully vaccinated, yet died due to COVID complications, just understand that he had other conditions that made him far more susceptible to COVID symptoms.

And he was expected to get a booster shot soon. He was scheduled to get one, but he didn't make it to that appointment, of course. He passed away before he could do that. Now, before you go on. So most of what we're going to discuss is this career, because there's a super interesting one that is complicated, nuanced, good sides, both sides to it. But on the COVID front, this is exactly why we wanted people to be vaccinated so that they wouldn't spread COVID to people who were immunocompromised because of other complications

like the cancers that they have. In this case, the cancer specifically made his immune system vulnerable. That was the type of cancer that it was, right? Well, then he is incredibly susceptible to dying from COVID, and presumably, obviously, we know for a fact a lot of people around him who are just generally speaking in the public that are Republicans say, I don't care. I don't care if this leads to a high probability that you will,

die. I don't want to wear a mask. I don't want to get a vaccine. And my wants and needs and hobbies are more important than your life. And I got a hobby called, I wear, you know, carry around don't tread on me flags. And I go to protest and it's so much fun. And I pretend to be a patriot. And for that hobby, Colin Powell died. Yeah. And honestly, the whole coronavirus pandemic from beginning to where we are today, needlessly turned into, and I've said this a billion times, I'll say it again, a culture war issue. It didn't need to be a culture war issue, but it became one because the powerful people in this country would want us to debate about pretty much anything other than the economic system that they created to benefit and enrich themselves

while everyone else is suffering. So let's just be clear about that, okay? It didn't need to be a culture war issue, it became one, and yeah, people are dying as a result of that. Now, With that out of the way, let's talk a little bit about who Colin Powell was, what his career entailed, and how complicated his past really was. Now, he was the first African American National Security Advisor under President Reagan. Then he became the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. And then finally, he was the first black secretary of state under George W. Bush. Now this is where his career is worth getting into the details of, okay? So in a speech before the United Nations in February of 2003,

Powell showed that he said, showed what he said was evidence from U.S. intelligence that illustrated that the Iraqi military was misleading United Nations inspectors and concealing weapons of mass destruction. Okay, that speech is probably the most important part of his career, because of course, later we discovered that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And he later regretted giving that speech before the UN Security Council. I want to show you a snippet of it, and then we'll discuss. Hussein has pursued his ambition to dominate Iraq in the broader Middle East using the only means he knows. Intimidation, coercion, and annihilation of all those who might stand in his

way. For Saddam Hussein, possession of the world's most deadly weapons is the ultimate trump card, the one he must hold to fulfill his ambition. We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction. He's determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein's history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations, and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not someday use these weapons at a

time, in a place, and in a manner of his choosing, at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond, the United States will not and cannot run that risk through the American people, leaving Saddam Hussein in position. of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option. Not in a post-September 11th world. Now that was a pivotal speech because that was what essentially helped to persuade the international

community to allow for this preemptive war in Iraq. And of course, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. And very clearly there, he's using the fear mongering associated with 9-11 in order to create this persuasive argument in favor of the preemptive war, which by the way ended up being a complete utter disaster. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died as a result. And of course, inspectors later said that weapons of mass destruction did not exist in Iraq. In 2005, two years after Powell's speech before the UN, a government report concluded that the intelligence community was dead wrong in its claim that Iraq was holding weapons of

of mass destruction prior to the United States invasion. So let me tell you the back story, because we were on air covering every detail of that. And it shows you exactly who Colin Powell was. So his career is one of, really interesting one of strength and weakness. Strengthen how he rose up, he was, did two tours in Vietnam. By the way, he was wounded twice and came out of that, being the first black man to be national security advisor and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and secretary of state. That's a hell of a career.

Now, that's where a lot of people will leave it. But understanding that in order to do all those things, he also had to go along to get along, right, or vice versa. And he had to be part of the establishment. There was no one who was going to be the first black national security advisor, certainly to a Republican president, who was going to say, hey, you know what, we should stop defense spending. That's not a good idea, right? No, he was going to be in favor of defense spending until the cows came home, whether we were going to wars or not going to wars. He was always going to tell you to increase the military budget and the defense contractors loved Colin Powell. That's a fact.

And so now people will get uncomfortable with that in Washington because they're like, no, no, no, I knew him. He was a really nice guy. I actually think that's true from what everybody says. I don't think they're all lying. Personally, I'm sure he was a terrific guy. But that doesn't excuse going along with the system that we have where we funnel almost all of our resources to defense contractors instead of to our kids, to health care. to education, etc. I mean, he was working for defense contractors, like until the very end.

I mean, I don't know why anyone in Washington would be shocked and shrewgerned at that kind of commentary. That's what he was emmeshed in around his career. No, Anna, that's exactly right. If they were real reporters, they would explain the whole context and nuance of it as we are. But that's not who they are. People in Washington know each other, like each other, and they basically support each other. that powerful protect other powerful people. That's just the reality.

So when you see news, you're seeing it through the prism of a, of power. That's how power perceives it. Okay, now here we're independent, so we tell you the truth. Now finally, from my perspective, we get to that clip that Anna showed you. Look, he did two things there, but then understand that it isn't about him being evil. Now this is the second half of his career where instead of strength, he had weakness. So he knew that a lot of things he said weren't true. He certainly had a giant inclination that they weren't true.

Let alone the weapons of mass destruction, he talked about ties to terrorists in that clip. Colin Powell full well knew that there weren't any ties to al-Qaeda, and then Saddam Hussein opposed al-Qaeda. He knew that for a fact. And then him talking about, oh, Saddam could attack at any moment. You were the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as a military expert, you thought Saddam Hussein Might attack us? Well, that would be suicide.

You knew he wasn't going to do that. You're talking about maybe Kuwait, but we already went through that. And he got, you know, through you and Bush and others, he got pushed back on that. He knew he couldn't do that again. So that was also, especially given his expertise, an unmitigated lie. So let's be honest about what happened in that situation. All right. Finally, why the weakness?

Because everyone involved there, from Powell to Negroponte, to Tenet, who you saw in the background, the CIA directors, defense directors, and et cetera, I should say a director of intelligence. They were all manipulated by Dick Cheney. This was Cheney and the neocons agenda. I remember before that meeting, Colin Powell didn't really want to do that speech. And Cheney said to him, this is a compromise. Look, you know, we're going to drive you out unless if you're not part of the agenda. What you could do is here, you could do a mitigated, careful speech in your own language,

and your own way of being careful about it. But you've got to do this speech, otherwise you're not with us. And there he was profoundly weak. And then he said to this dying day, literally, that he regretted that speech. And it was a blot on his career. Well, he should regret it because it was filled with lies and it was filled with weakness. Yeah, I think you're being way too generous to him, right? How he would ever buy for even a second that that was a compromise, right?

I have no doubt that there was a tremendous amount of pressure for him to give that speech. That speech was the speech that helped to persuade the international community to support the United States in that preemptive war, which again became a complete and utter disaster. And look, to be fair, I'll read you his remorse, his regrets. He says Powell later said his speech before the UN was a blot on his record and recognized that it would be a part of his legacy, adding that he regretted to the law. delivering the remarks. But that wasn't the only blot on his record. Remember, there were multiple war crimes committed under the Bush administration, including the so-called enhanced interrogation

slash torture, just pure torture. And he signed off on that. In fact, Jake reported on that when an ABC News report gave the details of various Bush administration officials, including Colin Powell, signing off on it. Let's watch. First of all, you know what's devastating? Col and Powell. He was in the meetings. You know, we always talk about how Colin Powell was, ah, not so bad, he was against Iraq War. Later, he wound up having objections to torture when people began to find out how bad it was, Albu Grave, et cetera. But he was in the meetings, and he signed off on it personally. That's a mistake you don't recover from.

So the CIA now on the detainee treatment, they would come back and say, all right, look, we have a new detainee, and we need permission to go ahead and do your enhanced interrogation techniques again. And every time they take it to the principals and Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, they all go, okay, go ahead and torture that detainee. And they say, oh, and we're not going to just generally ask, we're going to ask for all the different things that you mentioned here. Can we waterboard him? Yes, you can waterboard him. Can we, you know, put him in freezing conditions, strip him naked, sick dogs on him, humiliate him,

and it, degrade his religion, et cetera, et cetera, can we do all these things? Powell, check, rice, check. Rumsfeld, check, Ashcroft, check. So sure, you can, you know, frame it as a tremendous weakness, but how many times do you just go along with what the war criminals ask you to do? No, that's exactly the defining question of Colin Powell's career, and that's a shame. But, but it's, that's exactly it. If you're being honest about it, and a lot of people in Washington are, and I could say a funny thing here, understandably not honest. Because they knew him, they revered him, they're all part of the establishment, so they don't want to tell you the establishment starts endless wars and lies about it and does unspeakable things, and then has the media largely cover up for it. Now, you can watch other obits to Colin Powell today and see if they covered it with any degree of nuance and details that we did. Did any of them tell you that he signed off on torture? But he did. Maybe that makes you uncomfortable, but it's a fact. And so I think that's a

he did it out of weakness, does that excuse it? Not 1%. It doesn't really matter. The bottom line is you gave that speech. Yeah, Cheney tricked you into thinking that it was a compromise. And I talked to his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, who even more regretted that speech and was very honest about it. This is a long time ago. And but too late, it wasn't a compromise. It was filled with every lie there was. It did lead to the war. You were used and you were okay with it. A person of outstanding moral character would have said, no, not on my watch. We're not going to torture people and we're not going to lie to get America into a war shouldn't be in. That wasn't who Colin Powell was. Later, he again showed some courage by

saying enough is enough on Republicans. And he drew the line against Trump. And, you know, it's damning with faint praise. But it's true and you should know that too. And at the very end of his life, he went further and said, that's it. After January 6, he came out and said, I'm not even a Republican anymore. This is too much to bear. They're going in the very wrong direction here against our democracy. So you can say, such as it is, that was an act of courage. So it's a complicated story. You should know all of it. All right, why don't we take a break? And when we come back, we'll give you all an update on where Mansion and other corrupt Democrats stand on the budget reconciliation bill.

There's a lot of corruption in the show today, a lot of various figures in Congress who were corrupt. So we'll get to those stories and more. Don't miss it. All right, back out of Young Turks, Jane Huger Anna Kasparian, News, Truth, Change, Forward. Senator Joe Manchin has expressed what his so-called red lines are in regard to the budget reconciliation bill, which would overwhelmingly improve Americans' lives, but it would also lead to higher taxes for the rich, including people like Joe Manchin, so he doesn't like it.

Now, Mansion, according to Axios, has told the White House, the child tax credit must include a firm work requirement and family income cap in the $60,000 range. Now, in some parts of the country, a household income of $60,000 is okay, you can get by. In other parts of the country, you're not going to get by, especially if you have a family of four. So for him to demand that the child tax credit get capped at $60,000 for household income, tells you everything you need to know about Joe Manchin, who has no problem engaging in all sorts of self-dealing while he's a senator. Now, if anything, the child tax credit, as the Biden administration has basically formulated it, doesn't go far enough in helping to decrease childhood poverty.

Now, it's a good step in the right direction. It would cut childhood poverty by 50%. But I don't know, I'd like to live in a government that prioritizes cutting childhood poverty by 100%. But for Joe Mansion, 50% is just too high. He'd like to see more children in poverty. Now, Axios also fails to note that while the child tax credit would cost $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years, they say that it's very expensive. We spend $7.5 trillion on defense. Mansion, by the way, also wants to block retired guardians from getting any credit.

So that might be a grandparent with custody of children or foster or adoptive parents. Mansion's saying that they must be employed to get the money. By the way, there have been many children who have lost parents due to the opioid epidemic or COVID-19, and their families could use whatever funding possible to help. A study by pediatric cited at least 140,000 children under the age of 18 who have been orphaned due to COVID-19 between April 1st of 2020 through June 30th, 30th of 2021. So understand what he's what he's saying there. If you happen to be a grandparent, you retired, and something incredibly tragic happened to your family, right, and your grandkids are now orphaned as a result of the opioid epidemic or as a result of the COVID pandemic, and now you are the legal guardian of those children, you would not qualify for the child tax credit unless you get your ass back to work. Back to the minds. That's what Senator Manchin is saying. And by the way, just one quick tweet from Ryan Grimm that I think helps to put this all in perspective. Manchin's own children, runs the coal company, Manchin launched as a state senator,

and got a job at Mylan, run by Manchin's friend, cornered the market on EpiPen, and got a golden parachute of $30 million. Now Mansions insisting on work requirements for a child tax credit. Jank. He says you got a means test because you don't want rich kids getting unfair benefits. You don't want rich kids getting unfair benefits. Like, oh, here, here's a coal company. And by the way, your daddy's a senator who is the 50th vote.

And he'll block any legislation that would get us to clean our energy. So you can make money off that dirty coal for the rest of your life, little boy. And hey, girl, I got my little daughter. I got tens of millions of dollars for her, for free from my corrupt friend. And by the way, they outsourced all the jobs from West Virginia. They're all gone. That's why they gave her the $30 million golden parachute. They said, now do an orderly transition.

Make sure your dad tells everybody in West Virginia to shut up and not complain about those jobs. We'll ship them abroad. And we won't pay the workers at all, but we'll pay you. That guy has a temerity to talk about how you need to be means tested in order for your kids to be helped. No, but just let this all sing. Do you guys think that Joe Mansion works? What kind of work does Joe Manchin do other than hobnob with his billionaire donors and chill on his little yacht? Like what work is he doing?

Is he working for his constituents? I mean, I've seen him work against his constituents. And this is the thing, Manchin is incensed because he's not used to people talking about his corruption. He's not used to people questioning where his real priorities are. And so instead of maybe backing off a little and understanding that people are, actually paying very close attention to who he really is, he's decided to double down. And everything that continues to come out of his mouth is worse than what he previously said. In this case, I mean, just think about it, Jank.

Imagine orphaned grandchildren who are now being taken care of by their grandparents who are retired. They wouldn't qualify for a child tax credit unless they go back to work. Really? Really? I'd like to see how easy it would be for Joe Manchin at his age to get a job if he didn't have, you know, senator, and bought politician on his resume, right? If he didn't have these connections to all these corporations, we know about the revolving door. We know that if he's no longer in the Senate, he can go ahead and work as a lobbyist. But erase that possibility.

You think he's going to get hired anywhere else? Do you know how difficult it is for retired people to go back into the job market? He's disgusting. But he says, hey, grandpa, you got to get back to the mines. Okay, so that's the kind of guy he is. All right, now it gets worse. To Anna's point about, wait, do his constituents agree with this? Because they keep saying it all the time on TV, like it's true.

Even Saturday Night does skits where they pretend the people at West Virginia don't want what's in this bill. Well, let's look at some numbers and see if that's true or not. Two-thirds are more, and I'm quoting the West Virginia Gazette mail here, two-thirds or more West Virginia respondents had favorable responses to provisions in the proposal. Two thirds, that seems pretty good, doesn't it? That seems like they kind of overwhelmingly wanted, including ensuring that major public investments include requirements that products and materials use are made in America. That's 80%. Rebuilding America's water infrastructure, 77%.

These are not Democratic numbers and these are not national numbers. These are all of West Virginia, including the Republicans. Stronger protections for organized labor, 68%. More than two thirds and prioritizing investments. energy workers affected by the nation's transition to clean energy, 66%. The people of West Virginia love this bill. They love it, you know why? Get some jobs, it gets them a transition that they desperately need in West Virginia, and

they also love the paid family leave and other things that are in it, but Axios reports, the senator is less interested in the $225 billion to $450 billion paid family leave proposal, $400 billion for a new program to provide care for elderly and disabled people, according to people familiar with the matter. He's less interested in that, Anna. You know, what I felt fascinating, though, in the same report, Axios did talk a little bit about what he is interested in. And there's a reason why he's interested in this. So they write, in addition to the paired back child tax credit, Mansion is open to Biden's $450 billion plan to subsidize daycare and offer free universal preschool. Let's stop right there.

There's a reason why he's in favor of that. And it's not because he genuinely wants to help his constituents or Americans in general for that matter. It's because businesses are realizing, oh my God, this worker shortage is endless and we need to get people back to work. The only way we can do that is if we have a system in place that offers affordable and accessible childcare. Listen, I'm in favor of those provisions, but I'm in favor of the entirety of Biden's agenda here. Mansion wants to pare back everything, completely avoid raising taxes, completely avoid doing anything about climate change because he benefits from destroying the planet through the coal industry. But what he does seem to be in favor of now, maybe he got together with his billionaire buddies and they told him it's okay to support this, is the preschool, is the universal child care? because that opens up the possibility, the potential for people who can't go to work right now to go to work.

That's all it's about. The business community is finally starting to realize, oh, maybe universal pre-K makes a lot of sense here. Maybe subsidized daycare or daycare makes a lot of sense here. Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. Guys, we've told you this Rosetta Stone many times. If you want to know who's going to win, who's going to lose, and what provisions are going to favor, just look at where corporations lie, and then you'll have your answer because we live under complete another corporate rule, including corporate media that hides that fact. So in this case,

if you get child care, now companies realize belatedly, that's why they're sending Joe out there, wait, I need them to come back to work, and I get to make the taxpayer pay for that. That's pretty good deal. Okay. Now, what's the provision Joe mentioned is less interested in? Paid family leave. Well, that would mean that after you have a baby, you can be out for 12 weeks. Well, then you're not in the minds, are you? He, he don't like that. We need you in the mines. We can't go to have you going out there and recuperating for 12 weeks after having a baby.

No, no, no, back to the minds, okay? And elderly care, well, Joe Manchin has a well-known history of apparently opposing grandpas and grandmas. And so that's easy one to, there must not be a giant corporation in that industry. And in fact, it subsidizes people in the family, et cetera, that help. Well, if they're in your family, they're real human beings, and they don't. Don't donate to Joe Manchin. So finally, guys, it always comes back to the same thing, which is Chamber of Commerce says send them back to work, give them that, we like that one, we don't like that one.

And then the corporate media comes in and says, the people of West Virginia want Joe Manchin to do this. When we just read you the numbers, they don't. When you read you more numbers, they don't agree with Joe Manchin on any of it. Then you have to ask yourself, wait, why is the media covering out what's real, right? So guys, Daily Poster, Intercept, Salon Today has a great article, Guardian, there's great media, go find them, but if you're relying on mainstream media, they're going to pretend this is a battle of ideas, when in reality, all we're doing here is haggling with Democratic donors in public.

All right, well, let's move on to another corrupt Democratic politician who hasn't gotten as much attention, but certainly deserves it. So, as expected, more corrupt Democratic senators are coming out of the woodwork to go against some of the progressive Democrats' efforts to lower prescription drug prices. The latest is Senator Bob Menendez, who's so corrupt that he was previously indicted on corruption charges, more on that later. But first, let's hear what he has to say about the budget reconciliation bill, which includes the possibility for Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices directly with pharmaceutical

companies. So as the Wall Street Journal reports, concerns for Senator Sinema and Senator Robert Menendez, and a handful of conservative, let's get it straight, conservative House Democrats have complicated one of the package's most popular provisions, allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of prescription drugs, which by the way, would save U.S. taxpayers a whopping $500 to $700 million over the next decade. Okay, it would save money. In fact, it's one of the pay-for's in Biden's agenda.

But mansions against it, cinemas against it, Menendez is against it. The push is central to the package overall because it raises hundreds of billions of dollars. By the way, billion, I think I might have said million. So $500 to $700 billion over the next decade, billions of dollars for the federal government that lawmakers hope to tap to pay for other health care programs. Paring it back could force Democrats to scale down some of their other plans to broaden Medicaid coverage, extend beefed up Affordable Care Act subsidies, and expand Medicare benefits to include dental hearing and vision. So understand that that pay for that's in the legislation as we speak has a domino effect on other provisions in the bill. If they do away with that, then it means it's going to have an impact on other health care related measures or provisions in the budget reconciliation bill. And by the way, of course, Menendez is incredibly corrupt.

He has received quite a bit of money from pharmaceutical companies and also from the health. health care industry since March, for instance. The New Jersey Democrat had received at least $1,000 from each of the CEOs of eight different drug companies, including Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Bristol, Meyer Squibb, Genentech, UCB, Otsuka, and Sage Therapeutics, and that's according to federal election disclosures. The Pfizer and Merck executives both personally gave Menendez $5,000 and $5,800, respectively. executives from Amgen, Lundbeck, also wrote Menendez personal checks totaling $1,000 and $1,500. And just for your viewing pleasure, here are the top industries that donated money to Menendez

between 1991 and 2022. Of course, health professionals is at the top of that list, including lawyers and law firms. And as I've mentioned before, whenever you see lawyers and law firms on the list of top industries, just know that that's a way of funneling dark money to candidates. Usually the donors will donate the money through the law firms to kind of conceal that they're giving to these politicians. Yep. All right, so there's two elements here. One is the general corruption, and then one is about cinema and how she might throw a monkey ranch into this whole thing. I've told you from day one, she's the one person who might scuttle the entire bill and get nothing at all, okay? So first, the general corruption. Now, negotiating drug prices is favored by about 90% of all Americans.

It can't get any more popular than that. In fact, in West Virginia, where Joe Machen's from, is supported by 80% of all people of West Virginia, including Republicans, independents, etc., right? So intensely popular for a logical reason. We're needlessly paying $5 to $700 billion extra, extra on top, that we don't need to. But nobody wants to do that. You want to be able to buy the drugs and live. This is so obvious, right?

And in the past, we've gone over their BS excuses. Oh, well, that means that over the next 10 years we can only produce 90s, over 97% of the drugs we are planning to produce. That's your best case scenario? Like that's your best argument. Ooh, wow, what a problem with innovation. All of it is lies, none of it is close to true. This is as open, this is as close to open corruption. as you could possibly find.

These senators are clearly getting money funneled to them from health care companies. Anna just showed you Menendez. Earlier we showed you about a million bucks going to Christmas cinema. This is open auction buying our politicians right in front of our eyes. It's the most amazing thing you'll ever see. And so America, unfortunately, the most corrupt country in the world because we legalize bribery. And you're seeing that legal bribery right now. And so if they kill that provision, it's devastating, devastating.

Your drug prices will be higher. By the way, you were gonna get dental vision and so many other things in Medicare, normal Medicare. Now, if you got a toothache, you got rotten teeth, you can't see. You should thank Joe Manchin and Krista Sinema and Robert Menendez and other crooks in Washington, who decided to take the money and screw you over, because that's exactly what's happening. Look, but to be fair, I mean, we gotta be fair on the show, Jank. Hearing, dental, and vision is not part of healthcare.

It's not part of your body or anything. It's not like you need those things to function properly, right? Yeah, and if you're elderly, and that's falling apart for you, don't worry, it's not part of your health. I mean, they say such absurd things with so casually, right? Like, oh, no, no, eyes and ears and mouth, they're not part of your body. They're not part of your health. So we're not going to cover it. You know why?

Because Joe Manchin just got bribed more. So, to be fair, I mean, Joe Manchin and Menendez's bribes or your health. They can't quite make up their mind. Do you see corporate media covering any of this honestly, any of it? All right. One final thing I want to add, though, about Medicare, okay? I just want everyone to understand that any time democratic politicians succeed in passing something, like the Affordable Care Act, for instance, in this case, Medicare, whenever you hear arguments about how, like,

no, this is just the first step, we're going to improve upon it in the future. No, no, they won't. So Medicare was passed without covering those things, and throughout all these decades, despite how popular that program is, they still haven't included hearing vision and dental. Yeah. It never gets improved, okay? So same with the Affordable Care Act. Has the Affordable Care Act been improved?

Because Democrats kept selling it to us, right? No, no, no, no, no, we don't need Medicare fraud. We just need to improve the Affordable Care Act. That's what the plan was from the very beginning. Obama, that was Obama's intentions. No, it wasn't, no it wasn't. They never want to improve the crappy policies that they pass, okay? In the case of Medicare, awesome, right?

Affirable Care Act also accomplished wonderful things. Have they improved these programs? They have not. The fact that it's this difficult to get common sense things included in the coverage blows my mind. It's actually slightly worse there, because wait until you get to this twist. One of the provisions that Manchin and is corrupt, but he's want to take out, and we should put it more on cinema. Cinema is more adamant about this. She says, I want to take out the Affordable Care Act improvements.

She's the, I mean, they're all awful. They're all awful. And she's like, we got to take out the improvements now so we can give them to you later. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Okay.

Connor Lamb, one of the conservative Democrats, he says, oh, no. No, no, look, look. It's not that I want to cut all these programs, but I mean, I do. And my donors told me to cut them all, right? Or caught two-thirds of them. But he said, I want the one-third that remains to last longer, because I really want it to impact you. Oh, sure, sure. Come on. You'd have to be a mainstream media reporter to believe such obvious lies. He knows that if you have it for five years, you're going to want it for 50 years, just like Medicare. Now, what's wrong with that? And the democracy is you get what you want.

But his corporate donors don't want you to get what you want. That's why he's like, oh, I just want you to enjoy these benefits in a deeper way. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, sure you do. Okay, by the way, one final thing. And if there's one fact that I want you guys to remember from the story, it's this, okay? This was in the Wall Street Journal piece, and this is everything. Because every time Mansion claims, he's worried about what we're doing to our children's future

and how this bill just costs too much? Here's the reality. Mansion has said the bill shouldn't spend more than $1.5 trillion, even if its cost is offset by other revenue. That's it. That's it. He knows that there are pay-for us. He knows that there are pay-fors. He doesn't like the pay-for's.

He doesn't want to increase taxes. So anytime you hear about like the fiscal irresponsibility of this legislation, Just understand that what he's really concerned about is having to personally pay his his fair share in taxes. Let's keep it real. He's rich as hell. And also, he doesn't want his donors to have to pay more in taxes because his donors pay him to be against that. And my final point is that, as I've been telling you literally for months now, Mansion at the end is going to negotiate the best deal for himself and is for his donors. But he's likely to do a deal.

That's his track record, right? cinema on the other hand just wants to be famous and I don't know that she has any cogent real demands so here's the monkey wrench that could destroy everything cinema this is in the middle of the Axio story they casually put it as a bullet point when in fact it's everything cinema told lawmakers she will not vote for the social spending plan until the house passes the infrastructure bill okay well that's the reverse of what progressives have said so that means They're in a standoff.

There's cinema saying you have to pass my bill, which just gives money to corporations, and later trust me that I'll pass your bill, which there's a 0% chance she would. That's a flat out. There's no anybody who trusts Chris and Cinema as a fool. There's no way she's going to vote for that bill, okay? Another progressives would vote for her bill instantly if she voted for theirs. Everybody knows that the progressives would never screw over corporate democracy. Democrats. Look, I might counsel otherwise, but there's no way that they would go back on

their word. And Cinema knows it, Mature knows it, everybody knows it, right? So cinema is basically saying, no, I'm the one person who's going to hold it up and say, I want my order. And so I went either way. You vote for my bill first, and I don't vote for yours, or we don't vote on either. So that is the exact kind of warrior that corporations were rooting for. and they founded the Democratic senator from Arizona. We got to take a break when we come back. Let's catch up with Joe Crowley, the incumbent Democrat who got beaten by AOC in a congressional race.

What has he been up to? Turns out he's lobbying to defeat the budget reconciliation bill. We'll be right back. All right. Jake and Anna with you guys and all you lovely members who make this show possible and earnest producers of it. In fact, Sawyer wrote in on Twitch, love your show and so happy to be a member, Love from Maine. Love right back at you. Who does a new show with love? Well, apparently we do. All right, let's do it. Let's do more news.

Joe Crowley, the incumbent Democrat who was defeated by Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is now, unsurprisingly, a lobbyist working to defeat Biden's tax hikes on the rich. Now, those tax hikes on the rich, which would mean that wealthy people in the country would actually pay their fair share of taxes, is meant to raise the revenue necessary to pay for his build back better agenda. Now, securities industry and financial markets association, or SIFMA, has deployed Crowley to court his old colleagues as Democrats finalized legislation to implement President Joe Biden's build back better initiative, which seeks a fairer tax system and greater revenue

to pay for incredibly important programs like expanded Medicare coverage, universal pre-K, and other domestic priorities. Now, starting in July, this lobbying group, SIFMA, whose members range from Black Rock and JPMorgan to Amazon Web Services and IBM. hired Crowley and other lobbyists at law firm Squire Patent Boggs for just $30,000. That's all it takes, $30,000 to fight to defeat things that would fundamentally and materially improve Americans' lives. It's all it costs. They could probably get away with paying a lot less. Now, his lobbying, along with the lobbying of other corporate interests, is unfortunately working. So for instance, on September 24th, Texas Democratic representatives Vicente Gonzalez,

Henry Quayar, and Philemon Vela sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer a letter criticizing the proposed tax increases on corporations' foreign profits that Crowley is now targeting for SIFMA. Crowley's former leadership pack donated to all three congressmen's campaigns over his time in Congress, and Vela was a vocal supporter of Crowley's leadership ambitions. Now, what is the business community hyper-focused on? Now, of course, they don't want to raise taxes overall, but there is a tax that applies to multinational corporations known as the guilty tax. Literally, it's called the guilty tax. Okay, it's the global, intangible, low taxed income. Okay. So the build back better act, which passed the House

Ways and Means Committee just days before the letter was sent, raises the guilt tax from 10.5% to 16.5%. And by the way, that's not even really going too far. Progressive Democrats and even Biden himself wanted to go much higher. This is a modest increase. The modest increase is lower than the rate sought by Biden and a majority of congressional Democrats who want to equalize the guilty tax rate and the domestic corporate tax rate now at 21%. And by the way, I just want to quickly note that this is about, that guilty tax is meant to ensure that there's at least a minimum tax paid by these multinational corporations. Okay? So they hide their money abroad, Not just in the Cayman Islands and tax shelters like that.

That's more for individuals, but they do the double Irish and the Dutch sandwich. These are tax loopholes. I know. Tax loopholes so delicious that they have names. You could order them on a menu. Oh, I'd like to evade taxes with the Dutch sandwich. And I'll throw in a double Irish there, okay? And so that's how well known.

Now, remember, before Trump came in, corporate tax rate is 35%. Trump butchers it to 21%. That means all of us have to pay more taxes because corporations had decided to pay less taxes and they legally bribed Trump and his other Republican cronies to do that and Trump was thrilled to do that as a populist. Hilarious. Hilarious.

Okay. Now, at the time, you're going to love this. Joe Crowley, the Democrat, and he was the number four Democrat, and a lot of people thought he was in line to be Speaker of the House, said that Trump's tax plan was, quote, quote, a tax scam and that it would only benefit, quote, the largest wealthiest multinational corporations in the history of the world. So my God, that Democrat, he didn't want that tax cut for corporations all the way down in 21%. That's a crime. So now Crowley's arguing 16 and a half

percent for this particular tax for those same multinational corporations is too high, that it should be 10 and a half. That Trump was too stingy. Trump should have given away more to corporations. Now, Anna, isn't it amazing that it turns out, I mean, this is a wild coincidence. It's because corporations have now hired him to be their boy and to be their servant. So he goes and he tries to, his literal job is to try to corrupt other sitting Democrats. And he does that through legalized bribes, Quayar, you get $3,000, everybody gets Vaseline or a car or $3,000 checks. This is like the Oprah version, right? Oh, yeah, yeah.

You get $2,800, you get $2,800, you remember that old thing with the best. Yes, I do, I do remember. Okay, anyway, so. But, Jank, hold on. I just think, I want to make sure you're remembering Crowley's previous statements correctly. So why don't we just quickly go back to Crowley in January of 2018 on these tax. And what do you have to say about them? Look, at the end of the day, this was a tax scam.

It was not a tax overhaul. It was not, as the Republicans initially said, they wanted to fix the tax code in the United States. They fixed it all right. They fixed it for the largest, wealthiest multinational corporations in the history of the world. And we get 3% tax growth and real wage growth. We missed an opportunity here to invest in America.

What we had is the refinancing of the House of America. They've taken out of the house, $1.5 trillion, plus interest, and instead of investing in college tuition for the kids or putting a new roof on the infrastructure of the house, they gave that wealth to the wealthiest multinational corporations in the history of the world. Oh no, yeah, you were right, you remembered correctly. He referred to those Trump-era tax cuts for corporations as a massive scam, and then after he got paid by corporations to basically rally in support of those tax cuts, he did just

that. Okay, so guys, what we tell you is a scam is corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats, pretending to have real policy positions and going back and forth, and then robbing you blind together. And that's called bipartisanship in Washington. We told you that. And we said, hey, there's this woman named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I remember the sidebar I had. It said, Alexandria the Great, before she'd ever won a thing, before she'd won the primary, I said, she can make an impact. Crowley, on the other hand, will sell you out day and night. Don't believe a word he says. He's just going to turn into a lobbyist if he loses.

Now, gee, I wonder who was right and who was wrong. Meanwhile, what did mainstream media tell you? Crowley's a beloved Democrat who's opposing Trump. He's part of the resistance. And he is fighting back against corporations and their tax cuts. Now the jury's in. He says 21% that Trump did. It was way too low.

We got to bring it way too high. We got to bring it down to 10.5% for the corporations hiding their money abroad. This is who corporate politicians are. Do not believe the mainstream media when they tell you that they're having a battle of ideas or principles. They don't care about that at all. They're deeply corrupt. He never cared about the people of Queens. All he cared about is the money.

And anyone who tells you otherwise is not a real reporter. If they tell you, oh, no, no, no, that's scandalous. Mansion and Cinema and Crowley and all these beloved corporate Democrats. They're having exchange of ideas, understand, oh, I got it. That guy's a paid propagandist. That guy works for corporations to try to trick me into manufacturing consent. The jury's in. He's an obvious crook just like we told you.

And by the way, every crook that's taking money from him in the House now, Quayar, one of the worst corporate Democrats, and he's a sitting U.S. House member, they're also crooks. And they take that money, and then they say, oh, Trump's tax cuts are great. More tax cuts for our corporate donors. That's who they are. They're all, they are the scam. All right, we definitely went after Democrats pretty hard in our one of the show.

But don't worry, we've got a lot of love for the Republican Party as well. When we come back, we'll tell you how the organization behind CPAC is scamming its own supporters by funneling money to the private businesses of its board members. We've got those details and more for you when we come back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.