The Young Turks - Crapitalism

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Episode summary: Clarence Thomas had a child in private school. Harlan Crow paid the tuition. Investigation uncovers two 10-year-olds working at Kentucky McDonald’s. Louisiana rejects raising minimum wage a day after advancing bill to raise lawmaker pay. Ex-Proud Boys leader Tarrio guilty of Jan. 6 sedition plot. HOSTS: HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur) & Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com 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. Woo! It's up! All right of the Young Turks, Janky Granted with you guys, lots of crazy news, is Herschel Walker going to jail?

Well, maybe. Clarence Thomas with an epic case of corruption as well, but that one we already know, nothing will happen to him. Easy way to avoid a jail sentence is to be the judge. Yeah, that's true. Or to be a person in a position of power that would require impeachment in order to lose that power. Yeah, for sure.

And obviously, the fact that Congress never does anything is going to help a lot. And they certainly don't do anything to people in power. But there's a lot more where that came from. Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump might be partnering up on a project. So crazy newsday, Casper. Well, we begin with yet another story involving a Supreme Court justice and corruption. Harlan Crow, this wealthy Republican donor, is making a series of tuition payments for Thomas's grand nephew, who Thomas was raising as a son.

We don't know the exact dollar amount, but according to ProPublica, it could have been to the of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. $150,000 from a Republican mega donor to Justice Clarence Thomas so he can send his grand nephew to two different private schools. Now again, we don't know the exact dollar amount, but before I give you the details of this incredible story, again, broken by ProPublica, I do want to remind you that Harlan Crow, that Republican mega donor, the billionaire, had been spending a lot more money in helping the Thomas's jet set. Okay, like half a million dollars a year just on one vacation that the Supreme Court Justice's family would go on

with Harlan Crow and his family. So the $150,000 sounds like a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, that's actually a drop in the bucket considering how much money this guy had funneled to the Thomas's. With that said, let's get to the details of the private school situation. So in the video that you just watched, there was reference of Justice Clarence Thomas bringing his grandnephew in as one of his own, taking care of him as if it's his own child. So his grand nephew is Mark Martin. And unfortunately, his father was in prison for a drug-related case. And so since Clarence Thomas also had some difficulty in his childhood, he brings on his grandnephew and wants to give him a good life.

So that was a kind thing to do, a good thing to do. Thomas gained legal custody of Martin and became his legal guardian around January of 1998, according to court records. Martin, who had been living in Georgia with his mother and siblings, moved to Virginia, where he lived with the justice from the ages of six to nine. So I think that's important context because those, I'm sorry, six to 19, I misspoke there. So, you know, that was basically his formative years he's, he's being taken care of by Clarence Thomas and his wife. Now, by 2001, Clarence Thomas was disillusioned, unhappy with the public school system in the area.

And at that point, he decided we need to put this, my grandnephew, into private schools. So this is where the story gets good. Martin spent his junior year of high school at Hidden Lake Academy, a therapeutic boarding school in Georgia. Hidden Lake boasted one teacher for every 10 students and activities ranging from horseback riding to canoeing. Those services came at an added cost. At the time, a year of tuition was roughly, I can't even believe, $73,000 plus fees back then. This is, you know, in the early 2,000s. Remember, I mean, he's a, he's a tiny little kid. This isn't college. This is in graduate school. 73,000 back then. It's probably over 100,000 now. Every year. That's an astounding

amount of money. And I, look, I've never been privy to schools like this. So, nor have I. And like, the name is so appropriate, hidden lakes. I guess this is where the super duper rich send their kids. And guys, this isn't like, oh, well, this. Tangential to Claris Thomas because it's like a great grand nephew or something. No, no, legal guardian of the kid since he was six years old. And proudly he says that he raised him as a son. And I believe him. And by the way, again, Deanna's point, he should get a lot of credit for raising the kid.

That's a wonderful thing to do. But when you're using a donor's money to send him to the most exclusive schools in the world, and at a bare minimum, even Harlan Crow admits they've spent at least $100,000 on these schools. And Anna, I know you've got a lot more, but I actually want to read you Graphic 9 because that's Harlan Crow's statement about this. And I found this to be the most comical of all of the things. And honestly, insulting. Yeah, 100%. Because he's co-opting certain rhetoric to provide cover for the very obvious corruption and conflicts of interest here. So go ahead. So here's how they, Harlan Crow's office, responded to Pro Publicus piece.

Harlan Crow has long been a passionate, has long been passionate about the importance of quality education and giving back to those less fortunate. Than pay your taxes. Especially at risk youth. It's disappointing that those with partisan political interests would try to turn helping an at-risk youth with tuition assistance into something nefarious or political. Wait a minute, he's living with a Supreme Court justice. What part of that is at risk? Insane. No, but was Clarence Thomas going to do something to him or Ginny Thomas or their incredibly

rich neighbors? I mean, he's kind of, he's basically calling him an at-risk youth because he's black. That's exactly right. That is exactly what he's doing. And by the way, Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas are against exactly this type of help for actual at-risk students. No, but guys, that's, in my opinion, the most important point to make here. At risk youth, I mean, in their minds, at risk youth are at risk simply because their parents

have failed them. And to be sure in a lot of cases, that is part of it. However, at risk youth are also at risk because of the lack of opportunities they have. And the lack of opportunities begin in the public education system that has been intentionally gutted by Republicans who do not want to pay taxes that adequately fund these public institutions. So with that said, let's get to actual numbers here. Because as I mentioned, Martin's only spent junior year of high school at Hidden Lake. Okay, the rest of the time, he was at a different private school, and we should get into the numbers in regard to how much Harlan Crow had funneled to

Justice Thomas, so he can pay for this tuition. Crow Holdings LLC wired $6,200 to the school, Hidden Lakes, in July of 2009, the exact cost of the month's tuition. Imagine spending $6,200 a month on high school tuition. Anyway, the wire is marked Mark Martin in the ledger. The administrator at Hidden Lake told ProPublica that Crow wired the school money once a month to pay Martin's tuition fees. Okay? So that went on for a year. But what about the rest of his high school experience?

Where did he go? Well, we've got some details on that. For the rest of high school, Thomas sent Martin to Randolph-Macon Academy, which is a military boarding school, 75 miles west of Washington, D.C., where he was in the class of 2010. The school, which sits on a 135-acre campus charged between $25,000 and $30,000 a year, which is, I guess, a bargain compared to the other private school. Jeez, it's crazy, okay. And so we've said it once, we're going to say it again, because this is also important. Like you can try to estimate how much money Harlan Crow funnel to Justice Thomas for this

tuition money, but the exact total crow paid for Martin's education over the years remains unclear. If he paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000. However, ProPublica spoke to Martin. They interviewed Thomas's great grand nephew as well. And it appears that at some point in Martin's childhood, Thomas was paying for private school himself. Martin told ProPublica that Thomas sold his Corvette,

his most prized car to pay for a year of tuition, although he didn't remember when that occurred. Yeah. Okay, so Sam Alito, I did an interview where he was crying about how the Supreme Court justices are under attack. But all they did was bribery, and now all of a sudden people are criticizing us. What are we supposed to do, right? And so, well, you're supposed to be honest.

And then he said, this is delegitimizing the court, the attacks against us. No, that's just journalism. All of that stuff actually happened, right? You can't de-legitimize the court yourself by having Clarence. Look, a lot of people writing in like Twitch Micro on Twitch, wrote in, that's old school bribery. I'm not holding my breath for consequences. And that's exactly the point.

Yes. And there's going to be no consequences. We already know it. Justice Roberts is going to protect him. Obviously, Alito and the other right-wing thugs are going to protect him. Congress isn't going to do anything. And then everybody's going to get disillusioned with the Supreme Court and think, oh, I guess now they're just allowed to take bribes, right? And then Alito will come and say, that's your fault for reporting things that we're doing.

No, that's your fault for being a crook. Yeah, exactly right. And so for any consequences to occur, you would need Congress to act because the only way to, I guess, punish a Supreme Court justice who has a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court is to impeach them, similar to how. Congress would need to impeach the President of the United States. So the House of Representatives would need to bring forth charges. After they vote on the charges, they kick it over to the Senate and they would have to convict the Supreme Court justice on the charges. And that's just not going to happen.

And so it's just such a significant flaw in the system, Jenk, because if there isn't a, if there isn't any accountability, they're just gonna do what they want. And it appears that's exactly what's happening. I mean, you have Ginny Thomas in bed with the individuals who planned the riots on January 6th. And Justice Thomas refuses to recuse himself because guess what? He can. What's gonna happen? What are we gonna do about it?

And by the way, the final thing I gotta mention is after Watergate, there were important financial disclosure rules passed, right? So Justice Thomas is supposed to disclose these gifts. When it comes to Harlan Crow, he has failed to do so. So he has broken the rules when it comes to the financial disclosures and nothing's going to happen to him. Yep, so and it's interesting because he did disclose some of the payments that he made for the kid in other instances, but when he came to Harlan Crow, he hid them.

So that shows you intent to hide because he knows that what they're doing is deeply wrong. And so look, and Harlan Crow did have business in front of that. the court. We covered that previously on the show. And of course, Harlan Crow is a massive conservative and cares about all of the business cases in front of the Supreme Court and stands the profit from a lot of them. So for him as a billionaire, this is a drop in the bucket and it's an excellent investment to make. And remember, Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas are not lifelong friends.

Harlan Crow reached out to Thomas after he got on the Supreme Court and befriended him. And how did he befriend him by giving him tons of money. Look, there's the giant vacations, there's the now this tuition, etc. But to me, probably the worst of them is that Harlan Crow finances the organization that Ginny Thomas works for and where she gets a giant salary. That's coming directly from Harlan Crow. I mean, if that isn't bribery, what is bribery? I mean, he's directly funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars, let alone the money they use to buy Clarence Thomas' mom's house and do improvements, et cetera.

This is as clear-cut case of corruption as you can get. But the great irony here is a Supreme Court legalized bribery for politicians back in 1976 and 78 in two landmark cases saying that, yeah, corporations and individuals can give unlimited money to politicians. And so now they say, oh, we're going to police ourselves. We let everybody else be corrupt. Of course, we're going to let ourselves be corrupt. So no, they're not going to do anything about it.

And yes, every institution we have gets delegitimized by these crooks who commit the corruption in the first place and destroy any kind of belief in our systems. And then they cry about it afterwards, like, you don't respect us enough. You didn't earn it, brother. You didn't earn it. Hell no. I mean, who wants to respect crooks? They're crooks, right? They have sold out our institutions for personal gain. And look, obviously it's difficult to point to exactly what kind of quid pro quo happens in these situations. But let's talk about just quickly some of the benefits that Harlan Crow has gotten from Justice Thomas through his rulings. So Harlan Crow, you know, he's a big real estate guy.

That's how he has made all that wealth. And so he had a big problem with the COVID moratoriums as it pertains to. rent. So the lever did a great piece, as always, about this. Thomas helped kill eviction ban threatening benefactor's business. And that benefactor, of course, is Harlan Crow. For the, let's go to the next graphic here. So in August of 2021, Thomas was one of the six justices who voted to strike down a federal administrative moratorium on evictions, originally enacted in September of 2020 by the CDC to halt the spread of COVID-19. In June of that year, I'm sorry, and then in June, Thomas was one of the four justices.

So June before that ruling in August, he was one of the four justices who voted to end the moratorium, but the majority actually voted to keep the moratorium in place because it was set to expire the following month. It didn't expire the following month. And in August, that is when the majority of conservative justices decided to strike down the CDC's rent moratorium. By July, between the two rulings, Crow Holdings, which owns apartment buildings, student housing and manufactured housing nationwide, was cited in congressional testimony for being one of the country's most frequent eviction filers despite the moratorium. Like, not only did Harlan Crow hate the moratorium and very likely had influence over

justices like Thomas to essentially lift the moratorium. When the moratorium was in place, Homeboy didn't even care, and he was evicting people anyway. That's who these people are. But I'm sure he's very concerned about disadvantaged youth, at risk youth in the country. I'm sure he's very worried about that. Yeah. One of our members on YouTube wrote in Supreme Court justices for sale, get it while they're

hot, get it while they're hot. If you act now, they'll throw a gorsuch for free. Okay, no, the federalist society as basically, it's not just for right wingers, it's not just for religious laws, it's mainly for corporations as a way of purchasing the entire Supreme Court. I wrote about this in my book, t.yt.com slash justice is how you can pre-order it. Chapter 4 is all about how we lost our democracy, and this is exactly how we lost it. In 1971, Lewis Powell wrote a memo saying, why don't companies take over the Supreme Court? And that way, we don't even have to pass any laws. just install activist judges to do our job for us.

Mission accomplished. That is exactly what they have done, and this is the natural consequence of it. When we come back from the break, we're gonna tell you about how three different McDonald's franchises were cited for breaking child labor laws. One of the franchises was employing kids as young as 10 years old. That and more coming up. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna with you guys, but also Jason Walker, he just became a member by hitting the join button below the video. But get a load of these American heroes. Canadian Moose Rider gifted one young Turks membership on YouTube.

Vicki Gray gifted five and Chris Birch gifted another five. You guys are amazing. Thank you for supporting the community and getting membership to more people so they get all of our shows, watch anytime they want, and spread the word. I love it. Casper. Well, we are seeing even more of these child labor violations. So let's talk about it. Three Kentucky-based, three Kentucky-based McDonald's franchises have been fined for violating child labor laws. Believe it or not, there are still some child labor laws in the country. and these three franchises managed to violate them, even though we're talking about Kentucky here. But it's precisely the slap on the wrist that these franchises received that honestly incentivizes them to continue exploiting workers and in this case, children. So let's give you the details on what's been reported here.

So Louisville-based Bower Food LLC and Bell Restaurant Group 1 LLC, as well as Archway's Richwood LLC of Walton, Kentucky were assessed a total of $212,754 in civil penalties for the violations. Now, that might sound like a pretty hefty fine, right? It sounds like this is divvied up among three different McDonald's restaurants. But no, the three franchises operate a total of 62 McDonald's locations across Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland, and Ohio. So that's a lot of stores, and when you think about, you know, the profits they get as a result of exploiting workers, underpaying them, taking advantage of literal teenagers and even kids in this case, as young as 10, well, let's actually compare the profits to what the fine is. Anyway, let's tell

you what they did wrong, why they got fined in the first place. So apparently all three franchises employed a total of 305 children to work more than the legally permitted hours and perform tasks that are prohibited by law. Bower Food LLC, for instance, had employed 24 minors under the age of 16 to work more than legally permitted hours, including two 10-year-old children who were employed at a McDonald's in Louisville. Is this what we want in our country? 10-year-olds working at a fast food restaurant. Some kids didn't even get paid. That should be mentioned.

So two children were employed but not paid. And were given responsibilities such as preparing and distributing food orders, cleaning the store, working at the drive-through window, and operating a register. Investigators also learned that one of the two children was allowed to operate a deep friar, a prohibited task for workers under 16 years old. But I'm not even done. There's even more to get into here. But before I do, Jank.

Yeah. So I've got a 10-year-old. The idea of her operating a deep fire is crazy. It's super dangerous. I would never, ever allow that, right? But why are 10-year-olds working at these places? Because people are desperate. Because wages are so ridiculously low.

And people can't make a living. The federal minimum wage is $7.25. That's $15,000 a year. year if you worked a whole year with no time off at all. Jank, I have to bring this up. Yeah. There was a study that was just done looking at the homeless population in Los Angeles and you want to know what they found out, 9% of the unhoused

individuals in L.A. are working at fast food restaurants, 9%. That's a huge percentage of them. Yeah, and so that's the working poor, they're trying to do what is right, but you just can't make enough money at these. starvation wages so they're homeless look I when I ran for office there was a somebody who was a volunteer for me social worker and had to live out of his car because the wages are too damn low right but no one in power is never gonna do anything about it instead they're like give me your 10 year olds let's go let's put

them to work and guys we're at full employment that's why they're going to the kids there's an easy fix to this you know what it is pathway to citizenship we can have a rational immigration system that says hey listen you don't just get to come in here and break the law, et cetera, but there is a pathway. Hey, if you, and the last proposal was if you work for 14 years, that's like a lifetime, then you finally make it so that you can get a green card, et cetera, and be on the path to citizenship. That's not enough. We need the workers anyway.

So why wouldn't we just go to the people who are desperate and hungry and want to provide for their family and love this country and came here for hope and do it in the legal way? We know why. We know why, because they're brown and we don't. We don't want it, we've got the great replacement theory, we don't want white people replaced. So instead we're gonna replace that, well, freaking 10 year olds and drive them into these dangerous work conditions. Look, I don't think it's a coincidence that all of these policies are happening simultaneously. I think this is on purpose, this is my opinion, but you have women's reproductive rights taken away,

which means that women are going to be forced to carry pregnancies to term and have children that they might not have the, you know, financial situation to actually provide for. There's that. You have the loosening of child labor losses. This is all happening simultaneously. And you have the, you know, anti-China rhetoric. You have the, you know, discussions about what's happening at the board. They don't want a pathway to citizenship.

Of course they don't want that. And look, Republicans pretend like they have a big problem with undocumented immigrants in the country. But their donors don't. Their donors love exploiting that labor force. And by the way, if they're illegal, it's easier to exploit them and pay them less money. When you're legal, there are some rights in this country, right? Some protections. So look, two things about that, because it's related to this story.

There's this mythology they put out there, they go, look, we're against undocumented immigration because they're taking our jobs. But wait a minute, we're a record low unemployment. The economist called this at this point basically full employment. And in fact, the employers are complaining. We don't have enough people to hire, right? And they're going to hire 14 year olds, 15 year olds, 10 year olds, et cetera. So wait, if we have open borders as the Republicans say, oh my God, the caravans are coming, they're flowing over the borders, there's unbelievable, et cetera.

And they were supposed to take our jobs, but apparently they didn't because we're at full employment. So it was a lie all along, don't make your kids go to work, force the politicians to have to past laws that allows to get paid decent wages, that's actually the answer to all of this. Just to give you some more details about one of the other franchises, so that was a Bell Restaurant Group LLC. They were discovered to have employed 39 workers between the ages of 14 and 15 to work outside of and for more hours than the law permits. Some of these children worked more than the daily and weekly limits during school days and school weeks. And the employer even allowed

two of them to work, this part really makes me enraged, work during school hours, meaning these kids weren't going to school, they were working at this McDonald's instead. Okay, so Archway's Richwood LLC is another one, allowed 242 minors between the ages of 14 and 15 to work beyond the allowable hours, federal officials said in a prepared statement. And this keeps going on, guys. Like this is, you want to know something crazy? I go on YouTube to see if there's any other news reporting on this. There were a few news reports, local news reports mostly.

But what really stood out to me was how many other examples from previous years there were of McDonald's in particular violating these child labor laws. They keep doing it over and over again. And the reason why they keep doing it over and over again is because the punishment doesn't fit the crime. They are profiting off of this practice. They are profiting off of exploiting these kids. And so when you slap them with a fine, it's like, all right, cost benefit analysis, we're going to keep violating because the profits outweigh the fine significantly. 100%. And by the way, you think the politicians don't know that? They know that. And they take

money from the fast food industry, the National Restaurant Association. Kristen Sinema and Joe Manchin famously went and collected checks right after they voted against the higher minimum wage. They went to that organization and said, give me the bribes. I mean, they did it right in front of everybody. It was the most amazing thing in the world. So that's why the government officials go, give them a tiny little fine. You give them a $200 million fine instead of a $200,000 fine. All of a sudden, they're not going to be hiring kids anymore, right?

But the politicians don't mind it either. Look, I'm going to read one thing from our YouTube member we have. It's both funny and tragic, and it gives you a good button to this story. Leon Russo wrote in, did the kids get a happy meal? Jesus. I mean, that's the age you get a happy meal. Instead, they're having to serve the happy meal so that their family can make ends meet. That's because we have a brutal system where we are getting so badly squeezed that huge

percentages to country is working for starvation wages and having to have their kids go to work as well. Go to work in some cases instead of school. But I wanted to get into one other, like, angle to this story that's specific to Iowa. So let's talk about that. Children, literal children for labor is unfortunately becoming more and more popular in several red states. Many of them have loosen child labor laws and Iowa is on the path to do so as well. In fact, the Senate, the state Senate in Iowa has just advanced a bill that would in fact

loosen child labor laws. So they have, they're looking to basically have children as young As long as 16 work in jobs involving roofing, demolition, manufacturing. This is hard labor, okay? Initially, they wanted children as young or teenagers as young as 14 to be able to do these jobs. But eventually they're like, all right, maybe that's too much, too fast, let's go to 16. So it's advanced in the Senate and it looks like this is very likely to pass, we'll see how it plays out. But I think more perfect union did a really, really great job in not only covering what's happening in Iowa when it comes to this child labor deregulation, but more importantly, explaining

who's behind these efforts. Let's watch. Why are lawmakers actually doing this? The bill was really spearheaded by the restaurant association. Policework came along. We were asked to be, we were invited to come along. That's Brad Epperly. a lobbyist who works for big corporate clients like the Iowa Grocery Industry Association.

He's outright admitting to us that the Iowa Restaurant Association was the driving force behind this bill. This child labor law rollback originated at a meeting of the Iowa Workforce Development Board, which is overseen by Governor Kim Reynolds. Most of its members are corporate CEOs and lobbyists, and they meet up several times a year to come up with new policies. This bill was a product of a meeting in November. The WDB is chaired by Jay Iverson, executive office, officer of the Association of Iowa Builders, hence the emphasis on kids using bandsaws

on work sites. Lobbyists from the Iowa Association of Business and Industry are well represented on the board, which gives member corporations like John Deere and Google seats at the table. And of course, no race to the bottom would be complete without the Coke-funded Americans for Prosperity and Opportunity Solutions Network. So this is how the game is played. This is how laws get passed. It's not about doing right by the very individuals who elected these politicians into power. It's not about representing them. It's about representing the moneyed interest that pad their pockets with this campaign cash.

Guys, if you wonder why I go on such a giant warpath against mainstream media fairly regularly on this show. Because as you see the money flowing, it's definitely coming from the restaurant association and the Koch brothers, et cetera. And developers. It's an organized effort, and they're pushing those corporate contributions to the politicians who are passing the laws. What you see in media is, oh, they're just trying to give the kids a chance to work over the summer and get some experience so they can get a better job later. But that's just mythology, and it's not even close to true. So when you look at how the sausage is actually made, was pretty appropriate for this story, you realize, oh, no, no, no, this isn't about, oh, golly, gee, some of the families. in Iowa thought they should work a little bit in construction when they're, when Bob's 16 and

be and get some experience. No, they're like, hey, the construction industry, their astron industry are like, hey, we need more workers and we need cheap workers. Get us those little kids, we don't have to pay them that much. There was another story we did a couple of weeks ago when they found out what jobs are they? Oh, is it like hey, at Burger King and you're just flipping burgers for a second when you're 17 for extra cash? No, most of the kids were working at meat packing industry with blood all over the floor, severed heads, et cetera. And why were they working in meatpacking? Because they need the money. Because they're desperate. Yes, because their families are desperate. And so they need

a little bit of extra cash. And corporate power buys off politicians, which creates desperate situations through the laws that they pass rigging the system. And then when you get desperate enough, they go, now give me your kids. This is an absolutely sick system. Absolutely. All right, let's move on to what's currently transpiring in Louisiana. The Louisiana state lawmakers have decided to reject a bill that would raise the state's minimum wage. At the same time, though, in fact, the day before that, the Louisiana state legislature decided to move forward with a bill that would raise their own pay by more than double. Now, this story has some interesting details. The lawmakers in Louisiana are not paid handsomely like our federal lawmakers.

In fact, they're paid very little, but that should give them some perspective on what it's like to try to survive on very little pay. Now, Louisiana has no state minimum wage, meaning that whatever the federal minimum wage is, that is what is enacted in the state of Louisiana. So that's why Louisiana, a Democrat in the state legislature in Louisiana introduced a bill in the state's house specifically to raise the state's minimum wage to, $10 an hour, which seems reasonable. Now the minimum wage would then rise over the next few years to reach $14 an hour by 2028. That was the proposal. Now minimum wage increases are generally speaking extremely popular in both red and blue states. If you can recall, Florida, which is a solid red state at this point, voted through a ballot initiative to increase their state's Minimum wage, a 2019 study by LSU's public policy research lab found that 81% of

Louisiana's support a state minimum wage hike, that of course would be more than $7.25. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau data, from 2019, Louisiana's poverty rate is 19%. So poverty is a big problem. Obviously people deserve to get paid more and it would create a better economic situation. But the bill was opposed by Republicans who parroted the usual talking points. So one of them said this, I don't see that a bill to raise the state's minimum wage solves those problems, especially not solving it as the free market can. Now the free market's been working its magic in Louisiana, and 19% of the population there is

living in poverty. Is that the wonderful free market that's being referred to here? Yeah, so a couple of things here. First, Louisiana and Mississippi are the two poorest states. So as Anna pointed out, how's that free market working out for you? No, it's just an excuse they use to make sure you get none of the money and the people at the top get all the money. So now when you talk about the Louisiana state legislators, they should definitely be paid more because I'm worried. And I think they're crooks, by the way, and I'm worried about them.

And I think that they're bought off by business interests. So why in the world am I saying they should get paid more? Because if you get paid really low salary, you're going to want to bribe. Yeah. And you're going to want to do other jobs and people are going to give you other jobs, knowing that you can pass state laws that will make them millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars. It's an open invitation to corruption. So I'm not, in this case, I'm not against the legislators making more money.

But you can't say, hey, I'd like to make more money. But the citizens that I'm supposed to represent, oh, hell no. No, no, they shouldn't get more money. And it's not like Louisiana's like a rich state or anything like that. meaning in terms of their workers, no, they're at the bottom. So you can't make an argument that the wages are too high in Louisiana. It's absurd, and they're saying, oh, don't worry about it. I mean, it's $7.25 because of the federal law.

But most people don't get that, really? Because it seems like in your state, they get the worst salaries along with Mississippi. So this is all an effort to make sure that they keep the costs of their business benefactors low. Yes. because those are the people who bribe them. So let's talk a little bit about how much lawmakers in the state of Louisiana make for their salaries and how much they increase their salaries after, or actually right before they decided to kill a bill that would increase the minimum wage in the state. So let's go to graphic four here.

The House and Government, governmental affairs committee voted to advance House Bill 149 by Representative Joe Marino to the House Appropriations Committee. the bill would increase the lawmakers wages from $16,800 to $40,000. The bill would go into effect next term. So just to do the math real quick, if the salary is $16,800, that means that they're making around $1,400 a month. So you're right, I mean, that's not enough money. But I have no problem with them getting paid more for the reasons that you correctly outlined, Jank. But when you yourself have experienced how difficult it is to survive on low pay, how do you then turn around and tell minimum wage workers to kick rocks?

And look, you tell them that, easily tell them that, because what's on the top of mind for them is who their donors are. 100%. Look, if you didn't have corruption, those folks would be much more predisposed to helping people that are in a similar economic situation. Now, a lot of these folks have second jobs. So it's not like they're trying to live off of that amount of money, but some of them might not, okay? And there's also a racial component, unfortunately, in Louisiana.

Because there's a perception that if you increase the minimum wage, it's mainly going to go to the black citizens. And so a lot of folks don't want that. So they said, no, I don't want it. Even if in reality, it majority of the, it goes to the white citizens, there's that perception. And unfortunately, it's a double whammy because they use it to keep your wages low and to keep you half. about how your wages are low. Jesus. So it's really, it's horrible in every way.

Now, at the national level, it's an open disaster. And that is why you have a place like Louisiana that is a symptom of the disaster that they, we started at the federal level. Minimum wage has not been raised since 2008. Obama did not raise it at all when he was in charge. Biden actively killed his, theoretically his own proposal at $15 minimum wage that was in the COVID relief bill. He had the two Delaware senators vote against it. He was, he's, as soon as he got into office, he said, we're not doing that. So he never meant it, he's not in favor of a higher minimum wage.

Democrats are liars when we have fined a politician that's honest, that's breaking news. So here I'll tell you that in this case, Bernie Sanders is going to introduce a bill for $17, $17 minimum wage. Now for the corporateists, they'll say, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, you were just saying $15 a minute ago, and now it's $17, yeah. Because the last time they proposed it was two years ago. And now with inflation, that $15 is $17. Exactly. Wait, hold on. Is this a scoop? Did we just scoop? No, no, it's, I actually did know that ahead of time, but I waited and it's already in the news today. Okay? And so the $17 is a great proposal. Thank you, Bernie, for bringing that back.

Now, look, here's how it'll play out, and here's how it should play out. Just real quick. Bernie will propose it. I don't know if Schumer will even allow a vote on it because he doesn't believe in it. hates it. He loves business interests. And if they did a lot vote on it, he probably wouldn't pass the Senate because there's eight corrupt Democrats that already voted against a higher minimum wage. They agree with their Republican colleagues. So then you'd go to the House, even if it's somehow miraculously passed in the Senate and the Republicans control the House. They'd kill it because the Republicans hate the idea of higher wages for an average American. But if it made it to Biden, I'm not even sure that he would sign it because these guys are all crooks. They all take

money from all of the companies like the restaurant association, et cetera, that are most directly affected by a higher minimum wage. But if you turn on television, they'll tell you, oh, they're just honorable people going back and forth. So what could Bernie do? He can introduce the bill and then say, if Schumer doesn't allow vote on it, he's corrupt. That would make giant national news because the media loves drama. They do. They do love drama. And I mean, I always I always think back to when AOC called out Joe Manchin's corruption. And like clockwork, Joe Manchin goes on CNN and Dan Abash asks about the corruption. It's so easy, you just have to have the courage to call out your colleagues, your beloved

colleagues. And then when you put after you put Schumer under the pressure, if it goes to Biden, you say, well Biden said he was for the higher minimum wage, was he telling the truth? Or was my friend, President Biden lying? drama, drama, drama puts a giant spotlight on Biden. Did you mean it or were you lying? But I love Bernie. He's the only one putting this forward.

I appreciate it. But he will not do those tactics because it would be impolite. There just, there needs to be some strategy among progressive lawmakers. They actually have to work together and organize something and have a well orchestrated plan to apply the appropriate amount of. pressure to get these types of policies passed, you have to actually be a tactician, right? And I can tell you this, too, from behind the scenes, there's a number of progressives that have a plan to get anything passed in the next two years. Zero. It's not that they had

chances of passing it a zero, it's that they don't even have a plan to pass it. And that's disheartening, to say the least. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, we'll give you an update on Enrique Tario, the former head of the proud boys. Not a good day for him. Back on TYT, Jankana with you guys. And it's raining membership. It's a good time to watch TYT. You might get a free membership out of it. Gail Heffner, gifted a membership, the fish dancer gifted to two, and Thailand. Thailand, Thailand. Dell 70, you give to 10. Thank you guys for looking out for one another, helping someone you don't know. That way everybody can access all of our shows if they're a member and help support the show.

So you guys are the best. We appreciate it. Anna. Well, we've got some positive updates in regard to the proud boys and their involvement on January 6th. Ex proud boy leader, proud boys leader, Enrique Atario has officially been convicted of seditious conspiracy. seditious conspiracy for his role in orchestrating the proud boys' involvement of the Capitol riots on January 6th. So the charge does carry a possible 20 years in prison. We don't

know what the judge is going to decide in the sentencing. But a jury in Washington, D.C., heard from dozens of witnesses over more than three months. So this was a lengthy trial to say the Now, Tario actually wasn't there on the day of the Capitol riots, he was someplace else because he had been arrested two days earlier in an entirely separate case and was ordered to stay away from Washington, D.C. But prosecutors argued in the trial that Tario was very much involved in the planning leading up to the capital riots that took place. Tario was also a top target of what has become the largest Justice Department investigation in American history. And that's according to the Associated Press's reporting. He led the neo-fascist group known for

their street fights and all of that to basically go to Trump's rally and then later, you know, barge into the Capitol and do what they did. So according to the AP's reporting, as Proud Boys swarmed the Capitol, Tario cheered them on from afar, writing on social media, do what must be done. In a proud boys encrypted group chat later that day, someone asked what they should do next. And Tario responded, do it again. Make no mistake, Tario wrote in another message, we did this. Oops. And that didn't play out so well for him in the trial, even though So he later started to cooperate with the authorities in basically writing out his friends and getting them in trouble as well, which I'm pretty grateful for.

Yeah, I'm glad he did that. So two things about this. One is that line is gold for a prosecutor. Make no mistake, we did this. Well, it's hard to come back from that, brother. Yeah. Okay. So now, the second part of this is at some point his defense attorney started to throw Donald Trump

under the bus and he's like look he told us to do it he said literally on the debate stage the whole country heard it for the proud boys stand by right and so they stood by and they got ready and they thought that they were Trump's army and the lawyer is not wrong about that that's all of that is absolutely true and so and you and they have the messages that they shared between each other and they really thought they were Trump's army and then when they got arrested for sedition, do you know how much Trump helped them? Zero. Zero, nothing. He raised over $200 million for a legal defense fund and didn't give them a dime. He's like, oh yeah, yeah, come on suckers and losers. Come fight for me, try to overthrow democracy.

Oh, later, when he's facing up to 20 years in prison. Yeah. When you're facing 20 years in prison, you know what I'm going to do for you? Nothing, you're an idiot. I used you. And yet all these suckers, Still go along with Donald Trump? Well, yes and no, right? Because remember, when Trump was set to be indicted by Alvin Bragg, he urged his supporters to basically to protest, but we know what that means when Trump says it, right? To protest in front of the prosecutor's office. And they didn't. And I think it's because of the fact that he refused to offer any help or support after all these people, hundreds of people ended up getting arrested for their part on January 6th.

And dozens of them have already been convicted for the crimes they committed. I do want to just quickly give you the argument from Tario's lawyer. His name is Naib Hassan, he said this, it was Donald Trump's words, it was his motivation, it was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6th in your beautiful and amazing city. It was not Enrique Tario. They want to use Enrique Tario as a scapegoat for Donald J. Trump and those in power. Well, that argument did not work and Tario got convicted anyway. But I do think that that mindset has seeped into the minds of Trump supporters,

which is why they didn't take the bait when he urged them to protest. Right. But those are among the most hardcore guys who, a lot of whom already got arrested. But Trump is still incredibly popular in the right wing. Definitely, yeah. Not one person seems, well, that's not fair. We just told you the people that did notice, but not very many people have noticed that that Trump didn't help his most hardcore supporters at all.

He just left them out there to dry. Now, if you're thinking, because a lot of this, that much people have no idea what the right wing actually thinks and they think, oh, Trump can't possibly win. They still believe in fantasies like that. So if you think, well, you know, Donald Trump didn't want to be associated with the January six people because that was an act of sedition. Now it's been, people have been convicted. including the head of the oath keepers, Stuart Rhodes.

And this is a, it basically treason against the country. So Donald Trump probably doesn't want to be associated with it. No. Whenever he sees them, he hugs them. He plays videos before his gatherings, celebrating January 6 guys. Brian killed me the other day on Fox News said it was disgusting, how much Donald Trump was wrapping himself around the January 6 rioters, right? The people who committed violence, people were killed, et cetera.

But he's only doing that rhetorically because he just wants to take further advantage of them. But he has, again, not helped at all, as these guys might go to prison for decades. And he didn't lift a finger to help them. When we come back for the second hour of the show, we'll talk a little bit about this ongoing border fight between Republicans and the Biden administration. The Biden administration made a pretty big announcement earlier this week about sending troops to the border. I want to give you the details on that and how Republicans have responded to it when we come back.

Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen ad-free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at Apple. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.