The Young Turks - Crime Control

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

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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. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too.

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I mean, I love discussions about woodworking. I have a new project actually, and I probably will die before finishing it, but I want to at least get it out there, so I'll get some credit after I die. We're also going to discuss the seriousness of T-ball games and how they can sometimes devolve into complete and utter madness, chaos, and violence. Now, of course, this is our bonus episode. where we usually do hard news stories, but we do have a ton of important stories to get to in our main show, including The Intercept's incredible reporting on a call that Joe Manchin had

with billionaire donors. They have obtained audio from this Zoom call, so we'll give you some snippets of that audio and give you all the details you need to know about that story. Later in the show we're also going to, of course, discuss, you know, some of the nonsense kind of coming from people like Tucker Carlson in regard to the capital riots. And then what else? What else are we going to discuss, John? Let me see. Oh, Amazon, that's what I've been wanting to.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that one's a big one. There's a huge Amazon expose that we're going to get to in a little bit as well. But as always, I just want to encourage you guys to like and share the stream. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell everyone. We want as many people engaging with us as possible because we love hearing from you guys. use YouTube super chats to comment, or if you're a member, we read your comments as well during our social breaks, and of course that's for our online audience. Now without further ado, let's get to this unfortunate first story. The IDF released images of their first airstrikes

on Gaza since last month's ceasefire, which ended 11 days of deadly violence. Notably, though, for the first time in a dozen years, these airstrikes were ordered with an Israeli prime Minister not called Netanyahu. That's right. For anyone who was hoping that the removal of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel would lead to some peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, unfortunately you were misled into thinking that because we are now hearing about an increase in violence, certainly in response to what the Israeli military is referring to as incendiary balloons.

Now, that sounds comical, but I'll give you all the details you can judge for yourselves. So the helium-filled balloons, which were affixed with incendiary devices, were floated into Israel on Wednesday, both before and after the airstrikes. The IDF, the Israeli military, of course, says the balloons were launched as a protest to the provocative flag march in Jerusalem, where thousands of Israelis marched through the old city. In fact, I want to go to this video featuring Hadas Gold from CNN. She reports on the ground in Israel, and she helps to elaborate on what caused this flare-up in violence again in East Jerusalem. Take a look. Yesterday, it wasn't just the balloons that were launched. There was the flag march that took place in Jerusalem.

This is an annual march. It's usually attended by right-wing Jewish groups, and it takes place to celebrate when Israel took control. control of the Western Wall and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. March was supposed to take place last month. On Jerusalem Day, it was canceled at the last minute when Hamas began firing rockets towards Jerusalem, of course, that helping to trigger that 11-day bloody conflict. So this march was rescheduled under Netanyahu's government. Neftali Bennett, his governor, one of their first moves was to actually just allow the march

take place as scheduled. There was a huge police presence because part of the march was expected to, place in front of Damascus gate. This is the main entrance for Muslim worshippers into the old city. It's the one, it leads directly into the Muslim quarter of the old city. So it already was a provocative move to have these right-wing Jewish groups marching dance with Israeli flag in this closet in front of the gate. Now, the police did not allow them to enter the old city through the gate. They instead marched along the outside and entered through the Jasa gate. But they were, I was there. They were heard hinting slogan such as Jerusalem as ours.

Jerusalem is our home. At one point, some of them were even chanting death to Arabs. So that gives you some more details about some of the provocative moves by the ultra-conservative or ultra-nationalist, you know, Israeli group marching through this neighborhood. Hamas preemptively with these incendiary balloons decided to retaliate. And of course they did the same with the balloons after the fact. But I mean, look, I'm not justifying what Hamas did with the balloons. Obviously, that was wrong. But I also don't want to make the mistake that sometimes happens in the media where people draw these false equivalencies. Clearly, balloons with incendiary devices are very different from full-blown airstrikes.

How? I don't understand any distinction between these things. It shouldn't even have to be said, right? But I'm sure that there are some, you know, dishonest who try to pretend like they can't tell the difference. But clearly there's a difference. Here's the good thing though. Luckily, no one died from the airstrikes. No one died from the balloons. But there was one death unrelated

to the airstrikes and balloons, which I'll get to in just a minute. But John, jump in. Yes, look, I'm being sarcastic because I'm angry about the way that the media talks about this. I've talked for a long time about how annoyed I get every single time I see when there's a flare-up in violence.

You already know what the headlines and sub-headlines are going to be. X rockets were fired and then Y Palestinians were killed. So you can count the dead when Israel attacks Palestine. There's nothing equivalent when the Palestinians attack Israel, so that's why they just say how many shots they fired. Okay, you never say how many missiles were fired from Israel because you don't need to. You can just count the dead because they're that effective. And so that's why it's not to say that these balloons aren't dangerous, they do set fire to buildings.

It is entirely conceivable that someone could die as a result of them. But it is still a balloon that's being used, and if you think that they're the same, okay, swap. If it's the same, then you take the balloons and you give them the missiles. No, obviously is it very, very different. And briefly, I just want to mention one additional thing. Haras Gold there, most of what she said was perfectly fine, said the march was initially delayed because Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem. It's Jerusalem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not why it was delayed at all. You're right. I'm not to say that that wasn't a part of the story eventually, but Palestinians were brutalized. Alaksa Mosque was basically invaded by security forces. I just love, you're right. It's just like Jake Tapper before, it's this, can we wait a year before we rewrite history totally to make the Palestinians, you know, the 100% villains?

You're really gonna jump on that right now? Yeah, I'm glad you caught that because I wanted to comment on that as well, and it wasn't just the raiding of Alaksa Mosque, it was also as a result of Palestinians being forced out of their homes and evicted in Sheikh Shara. There was also the fact that during the month of Ramadan, the religious activity of Palestinians in Jerusalem were significantly restricted. So all of those provocations and all of those restrictions led to the horrible, horrible situation that we saw, the violence and aggression toward Palestinians over those 11 days that were referenced in that video. Now, I do want to talk a little more about that flag march, because I was hoping

that they would just kind of let the flag march go after canceling it earlier. But no, they didn't and they decided to do the march. And so as was reported during the flag march, Israeli police in riot gear, block surrounding streets, forcibly removing Palestinian protesters, first from the route, 33 Palestinian protesters were injured, including by stun grenade, rubber bullets, and live fire, with six evacuated two hospital following clashes with Israeli security forces around East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said, also Hamas, the, and other militant groups in Gaza did not immediately respond with rocket fire into Israel.

And I think that's important, they did retaliate after the missile strikes, but they did so with the incendiary balloons, right? But the situation along the Israel-Ghasa border remains extremely tense and the possibility of an imminent and serious escalation cannot be ruled out. And listen, I mean, when you think about the conditions that Palestinians are currently facing in Gaza, in this open-air prison, you know,

we have these discussions about Israel having the right to defend itself, but imagine if you're in these conditions, if you're held in these conditions, where it's difficult to get humanitarian aid, where your future is uncertain, where you have no freedom, where you know, you really have no real autonomy because everything you do is dictated by the Israeli government, right? And so it's important to talk about the asymmetrical nature of all of this, both politically and also when it comes to military capability and defense capability, clearly Israel has far more

than the Palestinians do in terms of being able to protect themselves. And I think that that, does oftentimes get left out of the conversation, with the exception of the 11 days of violence that we had covered about a month ago. That was when the tide kind of started to turn in the media and the way that they were covering it. Now, there was one Palestinian woman who was shot and killed as a result of some of these protests in response to the flag march. Let's take a look at that. Earlier in the day, at least 17 Palestinians were arrested as they protested the ultra-nationalist Israeli march of the flags taking place in occupied East Jerusalem. Some participants in that march chanted death to Arabs and may your village burn down. This is Palestinian

legal activists and protester, Fried al-A-Trash. They should stop all the acts by the Israeli occupation and the settlers by entering Alaksa Mosque in Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state. We're telling Jerusalem and the Jerusalem residents that you're not alone, and they should be an end to all this aggression by the Israeli occupation in front of the whole world. So that video, of course, detailed a little more about the flag march and, you know, the aftermath of that. But the video that I was referring to is this one, which gives you some more details about the Palestinian woman who was shot and killed. Forces shot dead, a Palestinian woman, and a town northeast of Jerusalem earlier today.

She's identified as 29-year-old Mejafana, a doctoral student. The Israeli military claimed she attempted to ram her car into a group of soldiers. Local media report no ambulance was sent to care for her after she was shot. The killing came the day after Israel launched overnight air raids on Gaza for the first time, since a ceasefire with Hamas was declared in May following a brutal 11-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Yeah. And look, that's, I mean.

I mean, yeah, I mean, running your car into a crowd of people is obviously wrong. And it's going to be met with brutal force. And that's exactly what happened. As far as we know from the reporting. Assuming that's what happened. Assuming that's what they're saying. And that's an important thing. Look, that's how it's being reported.

We're not on the ground, we don't know for sure. So obviously that's an important caveat. But all of this violence, all of it doesn't need to happen. That's the problem. There's absolutely no desire on the Israeli side to genuinely engage in negotiations over, you know, creating a two, really following through on a two-state solution. There's never going to be a one-state solution. I mean, I think it's, this situation is too far gone, and it's too,

I just think it's impossible at this point, right? I mean, even the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel are treated as second-class citizens. It's wrong, it's wrong. Bennett explicitly doesn't want one. Exactly. And Biden, maybe if you pressed him, might say he's in favor of it, but I don't know, that's like most of his priorities. It's like you have to dig to try to get to them.

And that's the thing too. Like, I mean, the timing of this, okay, you know, with the march and all that, Maybe that's what it's all about. Or maybe, you know, the new government would have found some way to come out the gate swinging, saying, okay, no, Nanyahu's gone, but this is still the situation. This is the status quo. I don't know, it reminds me of, you know, when Trump went in office, really quickly after he was inaugurated, we had that disastrous mission, I believe it was into Yemen. We had the deployment of the moabs in Afghanistan. People want to show, no, I'm just as bloodthirsty. as the guy that came before me. And so that's my fear. Now, we had heard in the wake of Bennett forming that coalition government that Biden's saying, this is going to be an opportunity for a new relationship. It looks pretty much like the old one, honestly.

It is. And I understand Biden's doing stuff abroad or whatever. You could ask him about this. Does he care? Does he have thoughts? But that's the thing. I think that, first off, the Israeli government really has, in their minds, no incentive. to push for a solution.

And the Biden administration, and not just the Biden administration, the U.S. government overall hasn't provided an incentive. They haven't provided carrots or sticks, right? In fact, they get carrots no matter what. The Israeli government gets help from the United States in the form of weapons sales, military funding, foreign aid on a yearly basis, all of that help. And it's pretty much unconditional.

There is no, there's nothing attached to that indicating that the United States is either demanding, even suggesting that the Israeli government, in a sincere and genuine way, engage in negotiations for a two-state solution. And that's a problem. So this violence is going to continue. And the reason why what we're seeing today really seems as though it's going to be no different from what we experienced during the, you know, during Netanyahu. and his leadership is because Bennett, Naftali Bennett, the new prime minister, is actually in some ways,

maybe even more extreme than Netanyahu was. In the past, Bennett has pushed former Prime Minister Benjamin Yahoo to take a tougher stance against Hamas and the launching of incendiary balloons. Okay, so he doesn't think that Netanyahu went far enough. As you mentioned, he certainly does not believe in a one-state solution, not even close. And he was critical of Netanyahu from the right of him.

Now this new government is a coalition government, yes, it has some Arab representation for the first time in the history of the Israeli government. But that is a very fragile coalition that's been bound by one thing and one thing only, ousting Netanyahu. Now that Netanyahu has been ousted, anyone who thinks that, you know, there's going to be a more moderate approach to this conflict, I think. is mistaken. Yeah. All right, well, we have a bunch of foreign policy stories to get to, I'm sorry, domestic policy stories to get to. So why don't we take a break? And when we come back, we'll discuss that leaked audio featuring Joe Manchin and his discussion with billionaire donors. Hey, everyone, welcome back to TYT, Anna Casparian and John Ida Rola with you. John. I'm sure you are itching to hear some leaked audio of Joe Manchin.

Okay, if it makes him look bad, I'll take a listen. I think it does, but you guys can judge for yourself. So let's get to this next story. The Intercept has obtained audio of conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and a call he had with billionaire donors. Now, it's honestly a rare glimpse into how our system of legalized bribery works, And honestly, what Manson's calculations are in regard to domestic policy and some of the ridiculous public statements he's made, speaking out against the agenda that Biden has put forth

in the name of bipartisanship. Now, we all know that bipartisanship is ridiculous considering the fact that Republicans have failed to pass any legislation along with Democrats, even when it came to the Capitol Hill riots and a commission to investigate them. Manchin couldn't get the 10 Republican senators necessary to vote in favor of that. So Republicans were able to block that effort using the legislative filibuster in the Senate. So he's been getting a lot of heat. And I've been wondering if he's noticed all that heat.

He has, and he's trying to work with these billionaire donors to get these leftists off his back. Now let me give you a few details before we get to these video clips. The meeting was hosted by the group No Labels, a big money operation co-founded by former Senator Joe Lieberman that funnels high net worth donor money to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans. Mansion told the assembled donors that he needed help flipping a handful of Republicans from no to yes on the January 6th Commission in order to strip the far left of their their best argument against the filibuster.

The January 6th Commission got 56 votes, of course, for short of the 60 needed to overcome the filibuster. A thorough embarrassment for those like Mansion who claim bipartisanship is still possible in the divided Senate chamber. Now I do want to get to some of these clips, beginning with Lee Fong, who's one of the Intercept reporters, who's done a fantastic job with this report and many others over at the Intercept. I highly recommend his work. He's about to talk about what the objectives are of this meeting.

The call opens with Nancy Jacobson. This is one of the founders of no labels who's, you know, helped found the so-called problem solvers caucus in Congress bringing together these moderate members, real mover in Shaker in Washington. And she's basically laying out some hard-nosed politics saying that, you know, the reason we have influence is because we can raise serious dollars. And we're going to basically dispense this money to make. sure that people who agree with us can't be pushed by either extreme or any special interest

that, you know, they are given the political leeway to preserve the filibuster, to kind of preserve the policies and rules that they favor. And she basically lays out, along with Andrew Berksky, the head of another private equity fund in Connecticut, who's an executive board member of no labels, the two of them, Jacobson and Berksky, are talking about how they need to raise money and dispense campaign checks, keep their allies in Congress. All right. So Lee Fong sets it up perfectly. That's what the purpose of this meeting is. That's what the purpose of no labels is. They want to ensure that the left wing, and I'm sure they pretend the right wing as well, but mostly the left wing has very little say or sway within the Democratic Party and certainly when it comes to the passage of domestic policy. And so, John, before we get to the founder of no labor, and what she's dangling in front of the likes of Joe Manchin. Do you want to jump in real quick?

Yeah, I mean a lot about this is already ridiculous. Yeah, it's not even, you're right, it's more about stopping the left than theoretically the right, but really it's not even ideological necessarily, it's just preserve the tools necessary to stop anything from significant from ever being passed. And if you think, you know what we should do, oh God, let's get some stuff that seems like it should be really easy, like come on a capital commission. Right. that. I mean, after all, they attack the capital. Let's do that. And then that will show

that the left is ridiculous in thinking that we need to get rid of the filibuster. When really, none of those donors care about the commission, whether it happens, whether it doesn't happen, they care about things that affect their bank accounts. And so, but then on top of it, it didn't even work. Yeah. So it was supposed to deprive us of our best weapon. Okay, well, I still got my best weapon here. Bipartisanship is a scam. You don't actually believe in it. It's not actually going to work to deliver any solutions for working Americans. So then we can get rid of the filibuster, right? Because this was the test.

Joe Manchin, Cinema, said, we can get 10 good Republicans. You couldn't, you're not going to. You couldn't for something so obvious, so common sense. You're obviously not going to nor do you care to for anything like the infrastructure bill as HR1 or whatever. Right. Yeah, I mean, look, again, like you're absolutely right about that. It really, I mentioned-

No quality of this a bribe though. No, exactly. The checks are a bribe, the jobs later on a bribe, none of it's a bribe. It's just intended to bribe then, that's all. Exactly. Now there are some questions about some portions of this meeting and whether or not what Manson suggests break some laws. Yes, believe it or not, even in the system of legalized bribery, there are certain things

that politicians could do that could be considered illegal regarding money in politics. We'll get to that in just a minute. There's a quote that I don't even think it's an edge case. I know, but you think- He's telling them to bribe a senator. Yes, we're gonna get to that. No, no, no, we're good. I'm not gonna say what it is. Playing the role of Jake Uger, Jada and Rolla. No, no, no, I know. I said it, I can see it's right there.

No, no, no, no, it's private. That's all it is. It is, absolutely. Here, I'll read it. No, I'm kidding, okay, go. All right, so Lee Fong sets it up. You get an idea of what the true objective of this Zoom call is. Without further ado, let's go to the founder of No Labels, this group of billionaire donors who want to keep everything the same. you know the truth is there's no other group in the center that's putting the hard dollars together and so you may see these big numbers with the campaigns but that's a lot of soft dollars it's a lot of

super PACs it's things they don't control they love the hard dollars and I would be hard pressed to think of any other group that can raise that sort of that sort of money our hope is at least 20 million over the cycle with this group and then hopefully keep doubling it uh you know as we go so um Yeah, we're waiting, right, Andy? I mean, we're gonna, we're gonna see what happens with this next vote and we want to reward those people that, you know, get to party solutions. It's just so disgusting. Okay, so let me decode a few of these statements. So she talks about hard money, so much so it makes you a little uncomfortable. And then she talks about soft money. So soft money is, you know, essentially super PACs, dark money funding politics. Hard money is individual donors, right? And there are more limits in terms of the amount of money you can contribute as an individual donor.

I think at this point it's about $2,800 per candidate. So the reason why politicians like the hard dollars is because it gives you this illusion that they're funded by small dollar donations, right? And so it helps to, I guess, deflect or hide the fact that a lot of these politicians are actually funded by dark money and hard dollars I think give them an opportunity to just I don't know make their image look better than it really is yeah and they want to report on the massive fundraising totals they definitely like that also they have more direct control over how it's actually used so they can route it

to the right consultants that they want the right firms that they want I mean it's it's sort of a blurry line because with the dark money there's not supposed to be any coordination which is why I get things like the McConnelling that we mocked years ago, but we know that they're still working together. Exactly. And the reason why I chose that clip was so you can get a sense of how the bribery really works, right? She's mentioning figures there, like actual numbers there. And remember, Senator Joe Manchin is on that call. And so when she mentions the $20 million, when she mentions that money and the legalized bribery, she doesn't say legalized bribery, but she's implying it, that's the

kind of stuff that entices politicians, whether they're on the right or the left, to just keep things the same or to be incredibly ineffective politicians that who do not serve the best interests of their constituents. And we know that Senator Joe Manchin certainly has not done that. Yeah, and really fast, like they have multiple layers of it. Manchin would vote against most of this. Manchin doesn't want to have to vote against most of this. Exactly. So they would aggressively oppose our interests, but they'd prefer to just be like, well, what can we do? I was stopped from helping you, I guess. It amounts to the same thing, but it's harder to convince people of what's going on when they're protected by these procedural maneuvers, arcane Senate rules and things like that, the procedure.

Now, what you're about to hear is Senator Joe Manchin, who has a suggestion in regard to a Republican Senator Roy Blunt, and what he wants to do is persuade Roy Blunt to change his. his vote on forming a January 6th commission to investigate the capital riots. And there's a very specific reason why he wants that. Take a listen. Right now what I'm asking for, I need to go back. I need to find three more Republican senators that'll vote for the commission so that at least we can tamping down the what people said Republicans won't even do the simple with common sense of basically voting to do a commission that was truly bipartisan.

bipartisan. You know, so once that people, and it really, it just really emboldens the far left saying, I show you, you know, how's that bipartisan working for you now, Joe? Those are the hard things. That's where I need help, Dan. That's where I need help, man. So how's it's it working out for him? It's not working out at all. It's not working at all, which is why he's trying to get these billionaire donors to entice Roy Blunt with legalized bribery, okay, or possibly illegal bribery, which we'll get to in just a minute. Okay, I don't spoil it. But exactly, to basically convince him to vote in favor of the January 6th Commission,

not because Manchin thinks the January 6th Commission is important, he might think it's important, but really the real purpose here is to pass legislation in the Senate through the Through this filibuster, right, like you don't have to throw the filibuster out, you can possibly get the 10 Republicans needed to vote yes on that legislation. And if they do, that's when Manchin gets to point to that piece of legislation that passes in the Senate and say, you see that, we can do things through bipartisanship, everybody. Yeah. I'm not wrong.

And in reality, at the end of the day, his number one goal is to protect money in politics. I mean, everything that he's done so far has made that abundantly clear. especially when it comes to H.R.1, that's the For the People Act, the election reform bill. The reason why he's put out his own version of it, an incredibly, you know, slim down, flimsy version of it is because his version doesn't include anything about campaign finance. It keeps money in politics because he loves it. And the Republicans don't even support that. Exactly. The slim down version. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And like, there's a lot that's revealed in these videos that are great.

And thank you to the intercept for making sure that people see it. But one of the more subtle things is, and you alluded to this, do you get the impression that he cares if they fail in setting up the commission? Like, it is just a means to an end. I need to demonstrate to the far left that this isn't necessary. Now, if I don't demonstrate that getting rid of the filibuster isn't necessary, I'll come up with something else. I'm not going to change my mind. It's not like we're actually doing an experiment. can there be bipartisanship on what I'm calling a truly bipartisan commission, and we will find

out. If they will work with us, then we can have more faith that we can do more things together in the future. And if they don't, then maybe the left was on to something. There's none of that. There's no concern about the commission. There's no concern about the process. It's just strategy. And it's because he doesn't have to care about literally anything, any bill that they're going to debate, any bill that could theoretically be proposed. He is rich and mediocre and comfortable with the status quo, and he's going to be fine no matter what, because Joe Lieberman's buddies are going to give him a job or give him money, they're going to protect him from primary challenges. If he ever gets knocked out, he's going to earn 10 times

as much as a lobbyist, he's going to be perfectly fine. Don't elect people like Joe Manchin, where the quality of their life, none of it depends on what they do or don't do. That's exactly right. And that's what stood out to me the most, not just about this particular story, but about politicians scheming to keep their position of power. Because what's the whole point of having that position of power? I guess there are two possible objectives, and what we're seeing represented in Congress overall is just this self-preservation for profits for power for power's sake. I mean, they certainly don't want to use their power to change the country, reform things,

and make people's lives materially better. All of the scheming that takes place, but behind the scenes is about self preservation, job opportunities should they no longer serve in Congress. And in fact, you know what? Why don't we get to that point? Because this is the moment that John's been waiting for, and I'm sure you'll be interested in this. So what exactly is Senator Manchin suggesting, right? Is he suggesting campaign contributions to Roy Blunt or is there something else at play? Well, regarding Blunt, Manchin appears to be suggesting, without perhaps quite explicitly saying so, that the wealthy executives on the call could dangle future financial opportunities in front of the outgoing senator,

because remember he's retiring, he's not gonna run for reelection. Outgoing senator, while lobbying him to change his vote, Senate ethics rules forbid future job negotiations if they create a conflict of interest or present even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Did we have the actual quote? Go ahead. I don't have it in a graphic. Oh, really? This blue one?

What's in blue? Oh, I do have it, my bad. We don't have a graphic for it, but I'll read it for you. So he says, Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that'd be nice and it'd help our country. That would be very good to get him to change his vote. And we're going to have another vote on this thing.

That'll give me one more shot at it. So for those of you who might be working with him, that might convince him to change his vote. Yeah. That's get him a job so he'll change, promise him a job if he changes his vote. There is not a lick a difference between that and a bribe. That's what a bribe is. That's take it up with Merriam Webster if you'd like to, but that's a bribe right there. They always, they hide behind things that are supposed to like kick up a little bit of like mud, like sand and, you know, like make it a little bit obscure or whatever.

They're supposed to say, no, we don't give them the donation to change their vote. We just reward the politicians that give us what we want. And generally, that's a safe bet because they know we get Joe Manchin and he's never going to do a damn thing. Just keep in office, it'll be totally fine. It's a lockdown vote. But you can't say to change their vote, that's just bribery. And like, you're right, it's probably against Senate ethics rules. How is it not a federal crime?

Like, yeah, I understand that this is a battle that TYT has been waging for longer than I've even been here. But I don't understand why you're going to like even pretend that bribery is illegal when you allow what's going on right there. So you can give them direct money, but at least there it's for their campaign. Sometimes they find ways to spend it for themselves, but at least it's not like personally for them. This is 100% money that would be going to an individual senator if he changed. his vote to achieve a short-term political goal. Lock them up. Make an example of them, lock them up. Yeah, and I'm glad that you mentioned that this is an possible ethics of violation as opposed to a federal crime because it should be a federal crime for all the reasons that you

just mentioned. But also, what's the Senate Ethics Committee, which is made up of senators who are also into legalized bribery? Like, what are they going to do? Right, remember when there was clear evidence of insider trading happening in the Senate? In the Senate, and the Senate Ethics Committee is like, insider trading, let's see. So there was confidential briefing on coronavirus immediately after that. Several senators decided to sell stocks that could be harmed by the coronavirus pandemic. And we see nothing wrong. And by ones that would benefit during a pandemic.

Exactly. We don't see anything like to me. It's totally fine. Nope. Sheila comes running out of the brief room. Sell! No, that's totally fine. She's just, you know, she had that on her to-do list, I guess.

Oh, it's so frustrating. Surely the Senate Ethics Committee will save us, he said as he died. Listen, please check out this wonderful reporting over at The Intercept. There's other details that we just don't have the time to get to, but I can't plug this particular story enough. Please read those details. And of course, help support the Intercept. They do great work, great investigative journalism, and I absolutely love that. So without further ado, let's go to our break.

And when we come back, I will tell you about this insane Amazon expose in the New York Times. Yes, they do some pretty good reporting, even though sometimes their takes are not so great. So you don't want to miss the details on that and more when we come back. Welcome back, Anna and John with you. Everyone check out Damage Report, one of our many shows on the TYT network. and support, support each other, love each other. I love you guys. All right, let's get to our next story.

An expose in the New York Times, which I think was actually pretty good. You guys should check it out for yourselves, but I'll give you all the relevant details right now. So the New York Times did an expose into the business practices over at Amazon, the treatment of workers, especially in warehouses. And they specifically zeroed in on the one and only massive warehouse in New York, where the working conditions honestly make you think of what workers are treated in an underdeveloped country, undeveloped country, whichever phrase you'd like to use. It's just absolutely deplorable, disgusting behavior, of course meant to maximize profits while cutting losses and costs.

Now, what they specifically talked about is how Amazon relies on computerized human resources, and they encourage, encourage high turnover. And there's a terrible reason for why Jeff Bezos thinks high turnover is a good thing. That success, speed, and agility were possible because Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, had pioneered new ways of mass managing people through technology, relying on a maze of systems that minimized human contact to grow unconstrained. Now, I could read graphics to you, but I think it's actually better to hear from one of the New York Times reporters

who worked on this story. So without further ado, let's go to Jody Cantor, who explains the findings in this report. It all goes back to the original vision that Jeff Bezos had for this company. And we quoted actually some brave former executives who went on the record with us to describe his philosophy and express their concerns about how it's playing out. He wanted quick turnover because he wanted people when they were fresh and new. He felt that he, to paraphrase him, he almost felt that human beings were inherently lazy.

And so he wanted to keep people moving through his system and also intentionally limited upward mobility in the warehouses. It's very hard to start at the first level at Amazon and then progress up very high. Some of those executives are actually worried that Amazon could run out of workers because they are burning through workers so quickly. So on one hand, this man thinks that workers are just inherently lazy, but he has literally intentionally created a work environment where it's impossible to strive for a better position, right?

Because he has decided to stunt any upward mobility. That's what the business model is. He wants high turnover. He wants people to be fresh. I mean, I've been at TYT for over 14 years. And I would argue that I haven't shown any, any. Lack of freshness. I mean, I would like to think that, right?

That's how I put it. I do my job every day with curiosity, you know, excitement and like that. Just think about how he thinks about ordinary people, about workers. He just thinks that they're beneath him, that they're lazy. How bad does this guy want to replace every person in there with a robot? And I already feel terrible for how he's going to treat those robots someday because he's going to work him into the end of the ground. Yeah, no, he doesn't care.

They are at best, cogs in the machine temper, he wants to get rid of them. They can phrase it as the wanting to keep them fresh. What that means is we're going to grind them down. And we could not do that. Like, we could try to care a little bit more about their quality of life, reduce the rate that they're expected to perform, give them a bit more break time, perhaps a little bit more money, a little bit time off work. We can do that stuff so they can maintain their freshness, but we're not interested in that. We want to grind under the ground because we know there's going to be more people.

And we can sustain that for a couple of decades before we worry that we've literally worked through all of the American workforce. And there's nobody desperate enough for this position that doesn't already have PTSD over the experience of having previously worked in one of our warehouses. That's what it sounds like to me. Well, the story gets worse, John, as you can imagine. And keep in mind that Amazon is aggressively anti-union for a reason, because all these business practices would need to change if there was actually labor power amongst its workers, right? And so I want you to keep that all in mind as we give you more and more details about what

this exposé are covered. Now even before the pandemic, previously unreported data shows Amazon lost about 3% of its hourly associates each week, meaning the turnover among its workforce was roughly 150% a year. That rate almost double that of retail and logistics industries. Now, John seemed a little skeptical of that figure. Well, I just want to make sure that people don't think that that means they go through more than their whole workforce every year. That's not what it means. They're going through the same portion roughly multiple times per year. Exactly, yes. Now, I also want to give

you a statement from a former vice president of Amazon who spoke to the New York Times for this story. And by the way, they spoke to 200 people who, you know, had worked at Amazon, are currently working at Amazon in order to do this story, including some former executives like David Newkirk, who says, well, David Newkirk, a former Amazon vice president who built the warehouse human resources operations, said that some problem stemmed from ideas the company had developed when it was much smaller, Bezos did not want an entrenched workforce calling it, quote, a march to mediocrity. Newkirk recalled and saw low skilled jobs as relatively short term. So again, speaking to the issues with high turnover over at Amazon. And here's a direct

quote from him. He says, it is just a numbers game in many ways. The culture gets lost. So whenever you hear about company culture, they don't care about company culture. They don't like when you hear about remote workers being forced to go back to the office, like we want to maintain company culture. No, they want to keep an eye on you. Well, I want people to come back here because I actually am lonely here and I would like the culture to return. I want people to go to a food truck with me. I also want the food trucks to come back. But in big companies, I get what you're saying and I agree.

Also, I'm not in charge by that. I want to make the very clear, it's not up to me. I'm just lonely. It's a big building and I'm here alone. Yeah, thanks. He's a good guy. All right, well, then there's the topic of tracking, something that has been covered before. But we have a little more insight into that by cancer. Let's watch. Part of what the article lays bare and makes very clear is how well Amazon tracks its own employees,

not only the packages, but it tracks things like time off task. What is that kind of tracking do to the culture at Amazon? So it is true that in most of these jobs in the warehouse, you are tracked every single second, when you pause, a computer is noting that. It's almost like an attendance system within an attendance system. Now, you may have an excused reason for pausing, but you have to go to your manager and ask them to code that in.

We write about a woman named Diana Santos, who was an excellent performer. She had lots of praise. She had one really bad day in which a series of things, some of which were beyond her control went wrong. She was fired for one bad day. So if you need to take a break, I mean you're being monitored every second that you're in that warehouse, if you need to step away for a second, you need to contact a manager, but

here's the problem. It's really hard to get in touch with the manager because they've computerized and automated a lot of that, including their human resources department, which I'll give you some details about in just a second. Yeah, and all of the human managers are so mediocre and unfresh. They've been marched into this position where they, no, it's ridiculous. The fact that it's assumed that it's not an acceptable pause and that you have to fix it is just insane. I know that a lot of people last year were really disappointed by the cyberpunk game that came out.

But like, dude, we don't need the video game. It's here. It's in these warehouses. It's huge. It's politically influential. The richest supervillain in world history is in charge of it right now. And it is amazing that, well, it's not amazing campaign finance and all that. that our government doesn't care to actually get involved, that you have a couple of politicians

who will speak out in favor of those trying to unionize. You have Amazon begrudgingly seeding to things like the conversation around $15 an hour minimum wage. So that's like the one good thing that's come to Amazon in literally years, thanks to groups like 515 and politicians like Bernie Sanders. But the issue is that I guess, okay, it's good, you're going to make $15 an hour, but how long could you possibly last? You, when we were watching that, We said we wouldn't last five minutes there. Like you are treated as if it is unfortunate that you are a flesh and butt blood thing that has a brain that sometimes get tired, that sometimes needs to urinate. Like these are inconveniences that eventually Amazon will work around.

But for now, I guess we'll deal with it, but if you pause for a second, you might potentially lose your job as a result of that. Under those conditions, does it matter that you're making $15 an hour? Kind of, but it's not the biggest thing in the world, not like for other sorts of jobs. They treat people like robots because they want them to work like robots and since humans aren't robots, they're being replaced by robots. I mean, there's a very clear reason why there's so much investment into automating these jobs. So let's go to the final video because this one helps to really humanize what's going on. We talk about the numbers, the statistics, the business model. But I think it's important to talk about specific people and what they've gone through.

One of the most poignant stories in the article is about a woman named Anne Castillo. Her husband was a very long time, very loyal, well-liked Amazon employee. He got very sick with coronavirus. He suffered brain damage. His condition is very serious. And yet she had these questions about, you know, why is the company, like, did they even know what is happening to my husband? And it led her to ask, are their workers truly replaceable to them? And the answer is yes.

In fact, just to give you some more details about Castillo and what her husband has gone through, workers like Mr. Castillo at JFK8, that's the warehouse in New York, were told to take as much unpaid time as they needed, and this is after they test positive for COVID, then hit with mandatory overtime. When Amazon offered employee flexible personal leave, the system handling them jammed, issuing a blizzard of job abandonment notices to workers and sending staff scrambling to save them, according to human resources and warehouse employees. And one of the issues that Castillo's wife had was just getting in touch with someone

over at HR, you know, to ask questions about the benefits that are supposed to be provided. At one point, the workers' comp benefits just stop being. mailed to her house and she was like what's going on she needed to get in touch with someone and it was impossible to do it right so not only are warehouse workers slowly but surely getting replaced by these robots and I know that you know if there isn't something done if there isn't an increase in labor power if there isn't organizing if there isn't like a union drive specifically in these big companies then we're gonna continue the situation will continue devolving

there's no question about it I want to just go to this one headline and And it was published by GeekWire in February, but it's relevant to what the argument that I'm trying to make right now. So Amazon now employs 1.3 million people worldwide after adding half a million workers in 2020. So during the pandemic, they really expanded. Obviously, that's worldwide, but we have about a million of those employees here in the United States. It's the second largest private employer. So when we talk, Walmart, I assume. Walmart is still number one, believe it or not.

So I bring that up because it's great when small companies unionized, like there's obviously I want everyone to have power in their workplace. But in terms of like changing the country, like having the biggest impact on working conditions, we got to focus on organizing and getting Amazon workers to push harder to form a union. Well, and to get the support that they need. Because obviously they have in some places, but you know, they'll fire you if you like get distracted for a minute. Like if they have a sniff that you're going to be unionizing, yeah, they'll fire you immediately. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely devastating. And really, are we doing

another story? Do we have a couple minutes? We'll do another story, but go ahead. We're not going to break in a second? No. Okay. Well, really fast, I just wanted to mention, when they said, you know, take all the time you want off, but then there's issues and, oh, what do you know, we can't fix it or whatever, there's a technical thing or whatever. It reminds me of, like, last week, there was a story about movie pass. Do you remember movie pass? I do, yeah. Movie pass was great. I was in it when it was good. The issue. was they decided they figured out, oh wait, this isn't sustainable. We need to figure out a way to undercut the core thing of movie pass is you can see as many movies as you want. That was

inconvenient for them. So eventually they added a thing where sometimes when you go to get your ticket, it would say you need to take a picture of your ticket and send it in. And people would find out, oh wait, sometimes it doesn't work, as if it's buggy. It wasn't buggy. It was revealed eventually, an email chain, they had a percentage set for it to break. break and they could change that percentage as they needed to. So it might be 2% and then there would be an email from a CEO saying, no, no, no, 3%. We need to make 3% of them fail when they try to take the picture of the thing. I have no idea whether anything like that could be happening at any other company, let

alone Amazon, but we should not assume that there's these coincidences, that it's just inefficiency, that it's, oh, you got lost in the system. Massive companies are in it for money, they know how to, like you can see the fact that they're checking every second of what you're doing, they know how to really hone in there. And so there should definitely be investigations into these sorts of abuses, especially when in the case with Amazon, there were so many COVID cases, people's lives were on the line, too. Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. By the way, that same story, which I don't remember if we did it on the main show, but I got to see because there were other details in that

that should make you aware of certain business models that are propped up by venture capital, Right? And so what happened with Uber, for instance, which has never turned a profit is, you know, they had this business model where venture capitalists were losing money because they were literally subsidizing the company to offer incredibly cheap rides. And so it made them a huge competitor to traditional taxis and all of that. And so they cornered that market, offered the cheap rides. And then now that they're, they've put a bunch of taxi companies out of business and all of that, that subsidy from the investors is being pulled away.

So if you've found yourself paying like $50 for an Uber ride, you're wondering what's going on. I used to pay $12 for this, understand that they're ending what was propping up that business in the first place. So what they try to do is put other people out of business, monopolize the market, and then they jack up their prices. And we're certainly seeing that with Amazon as well. Yeah, it's a Walmart market. Yeah. Like way of doing business as well. Exactly.

Now with the internet, it's just like another flavor of that. Anyway, I lied. We actually are going to take a break. But when we come back, Joe Rogan has some thoughts about defund the police, which will be fun. We will debunk it. And then later in the show, we'll discuss Tucker Carlson's weird conspiracy theories about the January 6th riots. Come right 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.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.