The Young Turks - Crowder Goes Rogue

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

Corporate support groups support the Supreme Court's war on unions. Steven Crowder gets paid bookoo bucks, and it’s depressing. An AI chat just made some pretty disturbing content. Restaurant workers are inadvertently helping restaurant lobbyists. Amazon has to pay the puniest fine ever. Host: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now.

I get a free Tilly Dog. Chilly Dog, not included. The Naked God. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. Woo! Get up! We're going to be able to be. All right, well, we're on church, Jake Huger, Anna Kusperi with you guys.

Good to be back, went away for a little bit, and had a great trip in Tampa and Atlanta. Tampa. It's not Atlanta. It's hot Atlanta. It was rain Atlanta when I was there. But anyways, so Tampa, unfortunately, quite Republican. Maybe we'll talk about it in a post game. Breaking news.

Breaking news, everybody. Okay, anyways, fun for everybody. Obviously, a killer show today. So stories will be killed and we will be the murderers. All right, so let's do it. So let me just note that we will be talking about Stephen Crowder's contract negotiation meltdown. down, having to do with the daily wire. He didn't want to name names, but it was the most obvious thing in the world.

So we'll talk about that. But you're going to have to hold on. We'll talk about it later. We're going to start the show today with how the Supreme Court could potentially undercut labor unions, even more than we've already undercut labor unions in this country. So let's get to that. Let's do it. Imagine you're a newly unionized Starbucks barista discussing whether to strike.

You've got lots to think about. But what you probably wouldn't expect to have to consider is whether your union-busting boss, Howard Schultz, is going to sue you for the impact of your strike on Starbucks. For the coffee that gets wasted or milk that goes sour or lost revenue from customers who get tired of waiting in line. But if a Seattle Concrete Mixing Company and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce get their way before the Supreme Court this year, that's the crazy position that American unions are going to be in if they want to strike. That is correct. The Supreme Court is poised to decimate the rights of hardworking Americans who have unionized and who have decided to go on strike. And that strike and the intention of that strike, of course, is to add pressure to the employers to engage in good faith in contract negotiations. Now, there are costs associated for the employer in that regard. And now the employer wants to be able to retaliate. against the striking workers by having those workers pay for the lost revenue during that strike. There are more details on this. Let's take a look at it, and then I'll give you more details on the court case that is making its way to the Supreme Court.

The case the Supreme Court is considering is called Glacier Northwest versus International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union 174. And here are the facts. After months of contract negotiations, cement mixers at Glacier Northwest decided to go on strike. They drove their trucks back to the company's headquarters and walked off the job. Workers left trucks that had already been loaded with cement running so that the cement wouldn't instantly harden inside the truck's drums. The strike lasted one week before the company's reached agreement on a new contract. The issue in this case revolves around what happened next.

The employer sued the Teamsters for tortious destruction of the company's. property. Glacier asked a Washington state court to make the Teamsters pay for damage to their trucks as a result of cement hardening after the strike began. So there are a few things to consider here. Number one, when I say that the Supreme Court is poised to decimate the rights of these unionized workers, the reason why I say that is because when it comes to the Supreme Court justices who happen to be appointed by conservative presidents, they were intentionally appointed due to their pro-corporate views, their pro-corporate anti-worker views. It's part of the reason why they were included on the Federalist Society list of candidates to be nominated to Supreme Court justices.

The other thing is, this would undercut the power of organized labor because if you are part of a union, and you and your colleagues, you and your coworkers are thinking about going on strike, you're far less likely to do so with the knowledge that the employer could then sue you, come after you for any potential financial harm that was caused as a result of that strike. Yeah. So look, there is a situation where the workers could be liable. I'm going to explain the distinction here in which side this falls on. But what the companies are doing, and here's a twist, is actually really anti-capitalist. So I'll explain why. So now in a situation where you're about to go on strike, if right before you go on strike,

you smash all the equipment in your workplace, no, you can't do that. Okay, you'll be liable for that. That makes sense, right guys? Now, by the way, in the old days, it didn't really work that way. In the old days, strikes were very physical and oftentimes violent. They absolutely were, yes. And it's sending the pinkertes to bust the heads of the guys on strike. The guy the strikers would strike back, et cetera.

And so, but now, like, corporations are so protected by the entire system. They're like, I do it, how dare you? So now the part that doesn't make sense is you're not smashing equipment. You walked out and the company is saying, well, if you hadn't walked out, I'd have made more money. So now you owe me that money. Now, that's crazy. That's nuts. And that's where it gets anti-capitalist because they're trying to build through the Supreme

court, a right to profit. That's not a thing that exists. And it is the opposite of capitalism. In capitalism, it's a free market and you compete and if you don't make it, you die. Your business dies. It's over. Sad day for you. And right wingers and Republicans are supposed to celebrate that.

Hey, that's how the market works and gets you the best results of the best companies, the best prices, et cetera, right? Now companies are saying, I don't like capitalism. I like corporatism where I'm guaranteed. to profit. And if anyone messes with my profit for one second, they owe me, which by the way, they've done on an international level. We talked about in other stories where they say if a government tries to protect its environment or its workers, et cetera, they take them to international court and say, no, I'm owed profits because I have a right to absurd levels of profit.

There is no such thing. They're making it up. It's totally a fiction. So in this particular case, the dispositive fact, which by the way, every court before the Supreme Court agreed with unanimously, including in the last round, is, well, I mean, they already loaded, the concrete was already loaded. The workers didn't do that. It's just that when they went on strike, they did everything they could to actually mitigate damages. They're like, all right, we'll keep the thing going and then let management deal with if they can rescue that concrete. They literally couldn't have done anything more. And the company said, nope, not good enough. Management didn't do anything. anything to rescue that concrete, but you owes the money anyway, because we need to be guaranteed

profit. It's absurd. It's interesting because on one hand, you have the corporate employers acknowledging the critical nature of labor in order to make revenue to turn a profit. So they'll acknowledge it when it's convenient for them in trying to retaliate against the workers for exercising the leverage they have in this contract negotiation process, right? But then they minimize the critical nature of labor when it comes to paying wages, ensuring that the working conditions are safe for their workers. It's really interesting how they'll kind of like change or how fluid they are when it comes to the importance of labor depending on what the matter is and what the argument here is.

But make no mistake about it, this is meant to do away with the leverage that the workers have. Because again, there's a form of intimidation here when if the Supreme Court, and I unfortunately think the Supreme Court will rule with the corporate employers here. But if and when that happens, it sends a message to organized labor, to teamsters, to unions that should they go on strike, again, any of the financial costs that the employer incurs as a result, of that will be something that they are potentially liable for should they get sued. And we'll see what happens. I hate my prediction. I think my prediction is correct, but I hate it because there were already successful efforts in dismantling labor unions in this country. It happened under Taft. And I think that this could potentially be the nail in the coffin, which is why, as much as I hate to say it, sometimes you do.

do have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils in presidential elections because the president gets to nominate Supreme Court justices. And we now have three Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices who were on that list by the Federalist Society, specifically because they're pro-corporate and anti-worker. So last couple of things here. First of all, to Anna's point about the Supreme Court justices, as we've told you many times, two of the justices got on there by saying corporate can kill their workers. So Kavanaugh said that Seaworld when a worker was killed by a killer, well, he signed up for it,

no big deal, no liability at all, okay? And then Gorsuch said that someone, if a company orders you to freeze to death, if you don't agree to freezing to death, they can fire you. Literally, you can look it up. Every other judge disagreed thought it was a maniacal decision. But since those two raised their hands and said, we think companies can kill their own workers and get away with it, they got a one-way ticket to the Supreme Court. So how do you think these guys are going to rule?

And so think about how economically devastating this is to the average worker. Because if you go on strike, they're going to say, now you owe us all the profit that we would have made. Well, how the hell are the workers going to pay for that, especially when they're on strike? This is just, even considering this is lunacy. I have to mention one other thing to wrap this up, because, listen, the reversal of Roe, as you can tell from my reaction to the reversal row on the show was a big deal. And there was a lot of media attention to that issue.

There were a lot of Democratic politicians who were talking about it, campaigning about it, drawing attention to it. But this potential Supreme Court ruling, which would have a severe negative impact on labor in this country, notice, I don't hear any Democrats talking about it. Oh, of course not. None. You know, this, look, Biden's been half okay to labor, which almost never happens under a Democratic president in the last 50 years.

They usually spit in labor's face. Obama did, almost Clinton did, right? So Biden's National Labor Relations Board is pretty good, and he's not a couple of quarter measures, right? But don't get it twisted. He didn't do any of the major pieces of legislation in the unions want, and he didn't even come close. He laughed and laughed.

Like, we would do something we promised to you guys. There's no way. So when the Democrat gives them like 5% on what they want, the union's like, oh my God, so the reality is they own 100% of the Republican Party. They own 95% of the Democratic Party and they own 100% of corporate media, which includes mainstream media and right wing media. And that's why you never hear about stories like this because everyone in power agrees, let's crush the workers, make them pay for everything, and then take advantage of the average

American to guarantee ourselves profits. That's exactly right. Well, let's take a little trip to Los Angeles, because this story, I think, is a cautionary tale, not just for L.A., but for other municipalities and other parts of the country. One of the Democratic Party's top fundraisers in Los Angeles has agreed to plead guilty to embezzling funds from the now defunct Hollywood anti-poverty group he led for decades. Now this was a nonprofit and it appears based on his willingness to plead guilty that he had stolen some of the money from this nonprofit and spent that money on himself pretty lavishly actually. Now the man in question is Dixon Slingerland, who says he's guilty of embezzling more than $71,000 from the Youth Policy Institute. He was the CEO of the group from 1996 to 2019 before the nonprofit collapsed. I should note that he received millions, tens of millions of dollars in both local and federal grants in order to run this nonprofit. And it's interesting because he was one of the donors for Eric Garcetti.

And oh, would you look at that? He gets local grants in order to run his nonprofit from local leaders here in Los Angeles. Now, let's give you some of the details of what he did. According to the Los Angeles Times, from 2009 to 2019, Youth Policy Institute received $281 million in federal grants. When it filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2019, the organization reported that it had demanded Slingerland repay more than 1.7 million in misspent funds. So the $71,000 that he embezzled is nothing compared to the 1.7 million that he had misused. So he also acknowledged misspending more than $600,000 in federal grants to the nonprofit for

payroll and other things that were not allowed, including personal expenses he put on the organization's American Express card. And also Dixon Slingerlin admitted charging the nonprofit for his family's $6,131 dinner at Momofuku, Co, a Manhattan restaurant where celebrity chef, David Chang, serves guests, a 10-course gourmet meal. I do declare. 14,703 in property taxes. Sounds like he lives in a pretty nice home on his L.A. home and $10,000, $10,8006 for a relative's tutoring. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. I've got more for you in just a moment, Jake. But I wanted to get your thoughts. He says they were reporting errors. Man, this guy is really bad at math. If he's misreporting $1.7 million. Here's a question

I had as I read the story. So this guy gives a lot of money to politicians. His salary is $400,000 a year, which is a really healthy salary, right? But it's not so healthy that you can give out tons of money to politicians so that they grease you back, right? And by the way, guys, if you don't know the system, welcome to America, that's how it works. This crook, alleged crook, this misreporter, okay. I mean, he's going to plead guilty, so he's a crook. Yeah.

Yeah. This crook goes and gives money to Obama, Garcetti. So yes, Democrats, I know if you watch MSNBC or CNN, you're showing. No, all the Democrats are angels. No, they're not. No, great majority of them are crooks who take bribes from guys like this. And then what do they do? They take our taxpayer money and they funnel up back to the guy. And what does he do? He spends it on Momo, Fuku, Coco, whatever the hell that thing was, and on giant properties and then greasing the politicians back. This circle jerk leads to all of us getting robbed by a so-called anti-poverty crusader. Well, okay, so there's a few, there's many things I want to bring up about this story because I think that there is this, I don't know, this thought process that if you're dealing with nonprofit, I mean, it's a nonprofit. So by the nature of it being a nonprofit, it must be a good organization looking to help people in need. And in this particular case, the nonprofit that he was running was supposed to be an anti-poverty nonprofit that focused on, you know, underprivileged youth, job training, education. One of the things that he would boast about is how he succeeded in opening up to charter schools in Los Angeles. Oh, by the way, I'm just going to interrupt for one second, man. The charter school scan, right?

Obama loved charter schools. Loved it. Okay. And by the way, Republicans are 100% in favor of charter schools. But I thought they always disagreed. That's funny on economic issues where they're both being bribed, they agree 100%. Undercutting unionized teachers is something that corporate Democrats and Republicans can, agree on and get behind.

And what the hell does that have to do with anti-poverty? Right, right. So I want to give you some more details because it turns out that he is also allegedly a tax dodger. So, I mean, accidentally misused funds, but also accidentally forgot to pay his taxes. Really interesting. So in a plea agreement that prosecutors filed Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles, Slingerlin admitted that he failed to report nearly $450,000 in income from the nonprofit

on his personal tax returns from 2016 to 2019. And as Jank mentioned, but I really want to reiterate here, he was in fact collecting a $400,000 salary, which I would venture to say is quite a bit of money for someone working at a nonprofit. I get that he's running the nonprofit, but this is not, it's not supposed to be for profit. But they got a lot of money in government grants. And that's the thing that I really want to focus on here, okay?

But first, a word from Jank. Yeah, no, just I'm going to agree with you on this one, of course. But it's that these guys, look, I don't want you to get it wrong. A lot of people that work at nonprofits, especially at the lower levels, are the most wonderful people in the world, right? They go and they take a lot less salary. They work there, and they're actually trying to help people that are homeless or, you know, have issues with poverty, et cetera.

But what the media doesn't tell you, what no one in power tells you, and we're the only show honest enough to tell you, we don't give a damn about Republicans or Democrats, is that, no, some of the people at the top level, they don't give a damn about any of the issues they claim to care about. Nope. And a lot of them go and just siphon off all the money. And it's just a giant scam. And by the way, it does massive damage.

It's like a minority that reports racism that isn't real, although like the boy who cried wolf, it does so much damage to minorities, right? Because there's so much real racism. And when you miss report, no one believes it anymore, right? So the double damage that the guys like this do is, then people go, well, am I going to give the anti-poverty programs? Because it turns out the son of bitch crooks are robbing from it, right? And so unfortunately, a lot of these organizations, a lot of people at the top, they just want to keep the gravy train going. They don't actually care about solving the issue.

They want the issue to keep going, so they keep making money off of it. So I just want to give you a sense of what their operating budget was. Because I think that, listen, I know it sounds conspiratorial, but it's something that I've been noticing locally quite a bit. When you, when your livelihood relies on a problem continuing, you know, problems like homelessness, are you really going to want to solve it when you get government grants this large? So in 2018, for instance, Youth Policy Institute received $45.6 million in government. grants. That's both state, local, and federal. Yeah, by the way, why is the government giving it to an organization that then takes

and a giant amount in income, salaries, et cetera, et cetera. Why doesn't the government do the anti-poverty program? Yes. Yes. Thank you. And by the way, there is a real reason for it. You know why? Because they like the robbery. The point is the robbery, right? Why do you need to do set up a whole different organization? And oh, look at that. that golly tea, the people we gave $45 million to, the head of that organization, funnels a certain percentage back to those same politicians. Oh, did that happen? Have we fixed poverty yet?

Look, I don't want you guys to get too jaded. We're not right wingers or right wingers to tell you that to screw poverty. No, we have to address poverty. We have to address it. But this is not the right way to do it. Getting middlemen involved who obviously, like, they've, I mean, think about that cushy salary. You're going to want to give that up by really solving the problems that you're purporting to

want to solve. I'm just keeping it real. What do you do as the CEO or the head of a nonprofit that gets tens of millions of dollars a year in government grants if you actually do solve the problem that you claim to want to solve? Like, what do you do after that? You get what I'm saying? Where do you get your livelihood from? Okay, so because two things about it. When I formed Wolfpack, I told that everybody that was involved and I tell everyone who was ever involved in Look, our job here is to shut this goddamn thing down, okay? If we're still doing this 30 years from now, well, we didn't win, okay? And then I'll shut it down anyway.

This is not supposed to be a thing where you get salary and it lasts forever because they know you'll never solve it. You won't be incentivized to solve it, right? And look, I'll leave out names, but I know that there's a former congressperson that headed a homeless organization and she didn't give it a goddamn about the homeless and she thought it was like the best grift in the whole area and she purposely went and found the highest salary she could find, why is helping the homeless get you the highest salary? It's just, unfortunately, there's a giant cottage industry of it.

And since everybody's in bed together, including the media, nobody ever tells you about it. Right. And it's just something to keep an eye out for. And I want to just go back to what Jenks said, because I think it is important to emphasize this. It doesn't mean that all nonprofits are a grift. It doesn't mean that all nonprofits are engaging in bad behavior. But when you see a nonprofit failing to actually address the issue they claim they want to address,

you should wonder about that. And you should take a look at their public filings, right? Because they do have to publicly disclose the salaries that their executives are earning. And I'm sorry, I just think that if you're taking government, grants to solve a problem having to do with poverty. I don't see why you should earn nearly half a million dollars a year. I don't, again, look, he's busted, he misappropriated all that, you know, $1.7 million and stuff. But there's no way he's given that kind of money to those politicians and living in that kind of home, even on a $400,000 salary. So there might be even more

than meets the eye here. This is a plea deal, right? God knows what he actually did. 100%. All right, we got to take a break, but you guys are going to love the next segment because we're going to dive right into Stephen Crowder's meltdown over his proposed contract from the Daily Wire. For me, it just proves that Stephen Crowder might be one of the dumbest conservatives out there. I'll explain why when we come back. All right, back on TYT, Chink, and Anna, and Shelley Burgess with you guys. Shelly just joined by hitting that beautiful join button below the video on YouTube. Thank you, Shelly, you're awesome.

Everybody else, you can do it at tyt.com slash join, fun place to go, Casper. Stephen Crowder had a meltdown, fun to watch, so let's do it. For the first time, I have to say that I believe many of those in charge in the right leaning media are actually at odds with what's best for you, the viewer, the customer, and more importantly, the country. I agree with Stephen Crowder, but we come at it from different perspectives. He has waged a war against the Daily Wire following his decision to go independent and launch his own media company.

He claims the conservative media has become a censorious cabal. Let's watch more. We here at Mulk Club, we thought that we were all in this together, that we were fighting the media, entertainment industrial complex. We thought that we were all genuinely taking it to big tech. But too many of those in charge of the big conservative platforms are verifiably in bed with them. Stephen Crowder feels that the $50 million over four years contract that the Daily Wire offered him was the equivalent of a slave contract, you know, really, really is. He's concerned about not getting paid if he ends up costing the company money through his actions, or if he fails to provide. the content that he has agreed upon in the contract.

Now, Will Summer from the Daily Beast tweeted this. There's a big feud breaking out tonight. This is something he posted yesterday. Between two of the biggest names in right wing media, it pits Stephen Crowder against Ben Shapiro's daily wire, all over a $50 million offer for Crowder that he found so offensive, he leaked the terms of the offer. Now, in Crowder's video, I just want to note, I watched the whole thing.

there is no mention of the $50 million offer. And I would venture to say that was on purpose. But as Will Summer notes in his video, Stephen Crowder insists that this is a slave contract. There's no need to be enslaved like this, he said. Then the Daily Wire revealed this slave contract was for $50 million over four years, four weeks off a year, and Crowder never working Fridays, not a bad deal. And I would agree with that. Yeah, so this is basically Shapiro versus Crowder, and I hate that Crowder is making

us take Ben Shapiro's side, but there is someone who's clearly right and clearly wrong in this case, and Shapiro's right and Crowder is wrong. So guys, think about it, man, four days a week, that's it. You get four weeks off. And by the way, you can take other days off to go touring, et cetera, et cetera, as long as he makes up. We'll give you some of the more interesting details of the contract in a second. But these are the same right wing who minimize slavery. Oh, we shouldn't teach racism and slavery and all that stuff. Critical racer. Get it out of the schools, right? And then he's like, only $50 million over four years when I barely have to work. It's like slavery. It's amazing. You're really is. And it shows an hour long and then half

an hour behind the paywall. That's like half the size of our show, right? Like the guy just barely does anything. He goes out and he's like, I don't know black people are gay people suck. And he thinks $50 million is slavery? It's insane. It is insane. Now, Crowder shares some details in regard to what it was about the contract that he was so offended by, some of the terms that he was concerned about. So let's start with this video. Let me go through this. Effectively, full ownership of all your social media platforms, channels in perpetuity, the rights to your content name, image, likeness, even the ones that you've built.

Don't sign contracts out there that include multi-million dollar penalties for different... Let me read you an example of what I mean. And this would be if it was me. If Crater fails to deliver a monthly content in any month or any of the quarterly content in the corner, including any and all ad reads, and by the way, all these contracts came with three, four, five ad reads per show, which would fundamentally change what this show is. Got to get those dollar, dollar bills. So I failed to do that. It would be a $250,000 reduction in fee per quarter. Yeah, listen, you're getting offered $50 million.

How do you think a for-profit media company, like the Daily Wire, makes its money? Through ad reads, through content that is monetized, it's almost as if Stephen Crowder is having a little bit of difficulty understanding how his $50 million salary would be funded. You get what I'm saying? 100%. So look, guys, I run a digital media company. I know how this works. So that's why I'm positive who's right and wrong. And most importantly, Crowder's an idiot. He's really dumb. He will not, I would be shocked if he makes that kind of money on his own. Shocked. I know the economics. The reason Daily Wire would make more from Crowder than Crowder makes himself is because of those ad breaks where they would put in a lot more ads and charge for all those ads. Now on YouTube, he's

choosing not to do that. There's just a pre-rolls, mid-rolls, etc. Okay, that's fine, but you'll make less money. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with that. If he rejected the contract and he was like, you know what, I don't want the $50 million over four years. Instead, I'm going to make still a lot of money, like $20 million, whatever it is, right? Because I don't want those ad breaks. Great, wonderful, nothing wrong with it at all, right? But you don't come out and be like, oh, I can't believe they're trying to make money off me. You're a right-winger. Don't you understand capitalism? Yeah, of course they're trying to make money off of you. Did you think it was a nonprofit?

Did you think it was for charity? What did you think? Look, by the way, though, to be fair to Crowder. No. A lot of the right wing just gets money handed to them from right wing billionaires. That's true, that is true. So they're used to just like, what, I'm not getting money for free? Well, I get paid for my propaganda all the time by rich people.

Why aren't you paying me more for my propaganda? Okay, so now the other thing that he mentioned is that, oh, you know, like, they have these things about how I have to deliver a certain number of videos. Yeah, that's called doing your job. Yeah, okay, we got to get to that. We got to get to that, guys. This is my favorite excerpt, favorite portion of his 27-minute-long rant, okay? Pay close attention because he has never extended this concern for other workers.

Let's watch. Don't sign something that has another $100,000. daily penalty if it's not signed off on beforehand you get a sick you get it by a car you have a sick day you can lose $100,000 a day hey anyone wonder why there's burnout and anyone wonder why you have kids come up and they leave and never to come back you think if you had that kind of a penalty you think if someone said hey we're going to penalize you $10,000? Every day you miss coming into work, you think you'd be stressed. This is worse than the left frames their contracts.

No, but Stephen Crowder literally might be the dumbest person on the right. I'm not exaggerating. That is not hyperbole. Can you guys imagine a situation in which you might get sick and you don't get paid because you stay home due to your illness? Can you guys imagine? Yeah, yeah, Stephen. Yes, we can definitely imagine that, 100%. Stephen Crowder, who felt the need to call men who want paternity leave. Well, why don't we actually go to that tweet? Let's go to graphic four here.

As a dad going through this right now, everything Matt Walsh has said is accurate. Paternity leave is for wussies, although he didn't use that word in particular. Full disclosure, I provide two weeks paternity leave for my male employees. I don't know if I believe that last part, but nonetheless, apparently, being a responsible father who has a new baby and wants to be supportive of the mother and his child in like the first few weeks of that child's life, unacceptable, get back to the minds. But for Stephen Crowder, if he can't deliver on the content that was agreed upon, and then he doesn't get paid because he didn't deliver on the content that was agreed upon,

that is one of the biggest offenses. How dare you? Guys, think about it, if he signs a contract and there's no penalty for not delivering video, or shows, then he could just go, all right, suckers, here, give me the $50 million. I'm not going to, I'm going to take a vacation for four years. Well, no, but you got to deliver on the thing that we sign. He says, no, I don't, what do you mean? I don't want to be made to work. Like, that's not a thing.

That's not a thing. Guys, you remember how we cover the railroad worker strike? You know, we remember what the strike was over? It's certainly about wages, too. But the main issue was sick days. You know why? How many sick days they got? Zero. They have zero sick days, right? So this some bitch gets all Fridays off, gets four weeks off, and any other time he wants, it gets $12.5 million a year. And he just found out that, oh, you could have sick days.

Oh, people can get sick. My absolute favorite thing about this whole debacle is how he is unwittingly criticizing capitalism. The unwitting part is the hilarious part of all of this, right? He's just so oblivious, completely unaware. And by the way, completely disconnected from the reality that. the vast majority of Americans have been dealing with and facing in this country when it comes to their workplaces. But I want to continue. There's more. Okay, let's go to more crying from Stephen Crowder over again, his $50 million contract. Let's start with a demonetization.

If blank is boycotted or dropped by more than 50% of the advertising partners, the company is not able to replace them within 90 days, the fee will be reduced by 25%. That's a sponsorship boycott. So that's saying, hey, hey, hey liberals, boycotts work. Yeah, if your content is not getting monetized because you insist on saying things that advertisers flee from, how are you going to justify making the kind of money that you would make, right, the $50 million? Like, it's just hilarious because he doesn't, anyway, let me go to Jake. Because Jank understands this perfectly, and he can crystallize it for you all.

So if your videos are demonetized, then the company makes no money, right? So he, and by the way, there's a couple things here. Number one, if he just wanted to be a jerk and he's the right wing or so, there's a good chance that he would do that. I know because of his ego, he'd probably want to keep going. But if you don't put it in the contract, then he can do this at any time. Then he'd be like, you could just go on air and say the N word 12 times, right? And you're done. All your videos will get demonetized, et cetera.

And they'd be like, okay, I guess I can't do videos. the 50 million bucks. I'm gonna go take a four year vacation. Of course you have to put it in the contract that he's not allowed to do that. If they're not making any money from his videos, how the hell are they going to pay him $50 million? That doesn't make any sense. And the thing that he said earlier about that they own all your social media in perpetuity. No, no, no, God, does he have an agent? Does he have an lawyer? Does he have any? He probably does have an agent. I think it's his dad, right? No, I don't know, but his agent is also incredibly stupid. DailyWire did a video explaining their interaction, et cetera.

So the reason I say that is because it's in perpetuity for those four years, the content that you create for those four years, they don't apparently even understand contracts. And do they get to own the things that you create while they're paying you $12.5 million a year? Of course. Of course. What did you think was going to happen? Why do you think they're paying you that much money? And by the way, it has a two-year extension. So it's actually a $75 million deal. Oh, God, I just want to hang myself when I hear about this stuff. So I don't know what the world Daily Wire was thinking. I don't know how they would ever make this much money from his show. It makes knowing the economics of the industry, it makes no sense at all.

Again, I would be shocked if Crowder made anywhere near this money on his own. I think he made the mistake of a lifetime. The Daily Wire was probably going to basically subsidize it because they think they're building a bigger business. So moron of morons and Anna, you're absolutely right. He just doesn't understand how capitalism works. He's like, what, what, now you pay me and all of a sudden you own my stuff? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's really interesting because when you're on the winning end of capitalism, right?

When the system is working out in your favor, it's all fine and dandy. And anyone else who's complaining about it, who has a valid critique of it, is just a wassy, is just a crybaby. Oh, just it wants entitlements. This is the most entitled video I've ever watched. Yeah, Anna, that's- Imagine being so entitled that you, he's saying, let me decode it for you. He's saying, I believe I should make tens of millions of dollars as I help the company lose a ton of money. And by the way, there's one other part to this, Jane, final video for you, because I think this one just really does crystallize how unbelievably dumb this guy is. Let's watch.

If any of the major platforms issues a content strike such that Crowder cannot be monetized on such a platform, and the company is not able to resolve the issue within 90 days, the fee will be reduced by 25%. Then if you get a strike, meaning a suspension, another 20% reduction. And then another 20% of it happens on Apple. And then another 10% of it happens on Facebook. And then another 10% of it happens on Spotify. This is the one thing that's unclear to me is whether Stephen Crowder's content would be grouped together with other Daily Wire hosts on one Daily Wire YouTube channel.

But understand, this is how it works. If his show does something that leads to a suspension of that channel, that is the loss of a major revenue stream, right? So if let's say, I don't know, on a Friday power panel, for instance, I'm not going to believe it on myself, I know what I'm doing, please. I'm just kidding. But like let's say there's a Friday power panel and someone says something that is promoting violence, political violence, right? And that leads to us being suspended. The entire channel being suspended, well then the actions of one host saying something incredibly dumb and irresponsible leads to everyone being punished with the entire channel being suspended. Yeah, but it's worse than that, because in that case, it's one out of many people, right? In this case, it's just Crowder, and he's making an active decision to sink his own channel by getting it demonetized, and he thinks he should be paid anyway, even though the company is not making any money. I mean, I don't know any left-winger that's that extreme in their anti-capitalist point of view.

Like, I don't care if the company's making any money. This should be $50 million anyway. No left winger has got the gonads to say such an absurd thing. And it goes even further. I don't care if the company is not making money because of my actions. That company should reward me anyway. Yeah, I don't know communists who would demand that. It's insanity.

Look, guys, there's two, there's one thing he did say that was true. I'm gonna come to that at the end. But making this video is dumb on two fronts. One is rejecting the contract was a terrible idea, he's never going to to get a deal that good again. But two, he didn't have to make the video. He didn't, he started a war here for no reason. They've actually been friends for 10 years, Ben Shapiro,

Boring, who runs Daily Wire and Crowder. And these guys are allies, friends, et cetera. Get you some better friends. And he just started a flame war for no reason when they offered him a perfectly great contract. And now, by the way, a lot of people listen to the Daily Wire video and they're like, I think Crowder's wrong. So he cost himself maybe even more audience. So but why did he do that?

Because this industry creates flame wars nonstop because it draws attention. So you saw it happen to us, right? Those harlots, Dave Rubin and Jimmy Dorr, they leave and they're like, oh, start flame wars, get attention, turn on them and we make money, right? So now it's happening to the right way. Enjoy, guys. There's going to be a lot more of that. Okay, there's going to be people who leave the Daily Wire and starts talking to smack about it, the Blaze, all of that, and they're going to snipe you and snip you and snipe you.

I love it. Have that at it, Hoss, okay? But the one thing he's right about is he talked about how big con and big tech are in bed with one another. Potentially right about it. Let's put it that way. It is awfully curious how the Daily Wire is always at the top of the Facebook rankings. Yeah, again, running this business, forget us. I've seen 1,000 other companies. And for that to happen organically, seems near impossible, okay? Shapiro and Mark Zuckerberg are good friends.

They have dinner from time to time. And voila, Shapiro's company winds up at the top of Facebook all the time. So I don't know if Crowder knows something I don't know, but he started talking about how big con as a conservatives are in bed with big tech. And that might be exactly what he's referring to. No, I don't think that's what he's referring to. What he's referring to is, oh, look at Daily Wire going along with the, honestly, the, the guidelines that Big Tech has in regard to monetizing content. And look, guys, it's the advertisers. I've said this before, I'll say it again.

Advertisers do not want to advertise their products on content where someone is repeatedly using the N-word or saying terrible, hateful, racist things. And so when the videos get demonetized, it's because of that reason. And so with the Daily Wire, he thinks he's being censored by the Daily Wire essentially for the Daily Wire contract specifically noting, hey, if you're doing things that are getting you demonetized, there are going to be consequences for that because you're not bringing in any money through your content that has been demonetized. And he thinks that means big tech is in bed with big con. It could be both of our interpretations.

Right. But I will tell you, the last thing that this reveals is that Stephen Crowder doesn't even know a single intelligent person, like that anyone could have told them, hey, it's advertisers that pay out companies like Daily Wire for the ads, and then Daily Wire then pays you. So if advertisers don't want it, Daily Wire doesn't get paid, you don't get paid. But apparently he doesn't understand that concept at all. And neither does a single human being around him. Apparently, they all looked at that contract was like, slavery. I mean, he just broke a new stupid record. 100%. We got to take a break. When we come back, we've got more news for you, including how the restaurant industry has found a tricky way to get their own workers to fund their lobbying efforts against the workers.

That and more coming right up. All right back on T-Y-T-Y-T-Y-N-A with you guys. I'm going to read two hilarious comments from YouTube members. How Blair you wrote in, Cry Louter with Crowder. Totally, yeah, 100%. So good, brother, so good. An early bird, 42, said, this is an alpha male? Good question. For real. And by the way, this is now the second example of him, like,

really embarrassing himself. I mean, the fact that he ran away from Sam Cedar, he literally said, oh no, Sam Cedar, when Sam Cedar kind of ambushed him on his own show to debate, right? Because Stephen Crowder loves to have people change his mind, right? Yeah. Except for when the person that he's, you know, going to debate actually knows what they're talking about. I'm going to throw $50 million in the garbage, change my mind. Beta. All right. This next story, oh my God, it's such a doozy.

And it just shows you the ways in which powerful lobbying groups game the system to their advantage. Okay, so let's talk about it. The National Restaurant Association has decided to game the system. So their own restaurant workers are funding. their lobbying efforts against the very workers who are funding those efforts. What do I mean by that? Well, apparently they lobbied pretty hard to make mandatory a certification having to do with food handling, a food handling course known as safe serve. Now safe serve turns out is something that ended up

being owned by these restaurant owners, right? These incredibly powerful restaurant employee restaurant groups and so what they did is they bought safe serve then they lobbied state and local governments to make mandatory that the workers take this certification and by the way pay for the certification and the course and then they took that money and used it to lobby against their workers to keep their wages low it is i mean i wouldn't say It's unbelievable. It is very believable. This is how the system really works. So the New York Times reported on this and they wrote, for many cooks, waiters and bartenders, it is an annoying entrance fee to the food service business. Before starting a new job,

they pay around $15 to a company called serve safe, serve safe, for an online class in food safety. Now, while the course teaches basic etiquettes that I think most people already know and don't necessarily need to pay for a course for, Things like washing your hand, what does mold look like, that kind of stuff. Again, it is a compulsory course. Here's where it gets tricky. So the funds from the compulsory course actually helps the restaurant lobby against the workers. The company they are paying, serve safe, doubles as a fundraising arm of the National Restaurant Association, the largest lobbying group for the food service industry, meaning the actual employers,

not the workers in the food service industry, claiming to represent more than 500,000 restaurant businesses. But in reality, for years, the restaurant association and its affiliates have used serve safe to create an arrangement with few parallels in Washington, where labor unwittingly helps to pay for the management's lobbying. The association has spent decades fighting increases, as you all know, to the minimum wage at the federal and state levels, as well as the sub-minimum wage paid to tipped workers like waiters. And the sub-minimum wage is basically a lower-than-minimum wage amount that restaurant workers, people like servers make, because the whole idea is the tips that the consumers pay

will make up the difference between the sub-minimum wage and the actual minimum wage that everyone else gets paid. Yeah, so guys, I mean, it doesn't get any worse than this. There's so many twists that make the story even worse, right? So the restaurants first started doing the scam where they were charging their workers on how to train them to work for them. It's insane. No, you're supposed to pay them for that.

So instead of paying them $15, they were charging them $15. By the way, they have to do it every three years. So this scam just keeps on rolling, okay? So they were making money off of that and get a load of this. The first thing they did in lobbying was not to cut their wages, but was the lobby states to get them to mandate this training. Now, like normally, companies are against regulation, right? But in this case, since they're making money off of it, they lobbied the states,

mandate regulation for us, because we're the ones that are getting paid for the regulation from our own workers, right? So then when it becomes a mandate, they're like, well, there's nothing we could do. You have to go and take this course and you have to pay me for it, right? And remember, it's not 15, it's 30 because they should, like when we hire, people here. And then we've got to train Bart, for example, a long time ago on the audio board, right? If we were like, all right, now we're training you, Bart, give us money. Insane.

Insane. No, no, that's insane. Okay. So, but that's what they do on a regular basis. And then they have the government mandated, okay? Then they collect all that money, and then they use it for lobbying to make sure your wages are as low as humanly possible. In fact, for that industry, the minimum wage is $2.13. Yeah. And by the way, this little scam that they're running is very profitable for them and it has served as a cash cow for their lobbying effort. So let's give you some specific numbers here. More than 3.6 million workers have taken this training providing about $25 million in revenue to the restaurant industry's lobbying arm since 2010. That was more than the National Restaurant Association spent on lobbying

in the same period. Okay. So they are profiting from this obviously to some extent. but they are mostly using this money again to lobby against the very workers who are funding the lobbying lobbying effort itself. The federal minimum wage has risen just once since 1996 to $7.25 from $5.15, while the minimum hourly wage for tipped workers has been $2.13 since 1991. Now I want to just add one caveat to that because there are some states. I've been pretty negative toward California for, I think, legitimate reasons. However, the one thing that I will say about California and some of the laws that have been passed here is that the actual minimum wage in the state that is applied to minimum wage

workers is applied to all minimum wage workers, including wait staff, including restaurant workers. So they're not making the sub-minimum wage. They're making whatever the state's minimum wage is, and they're making tips on top of that. Yeah, and so credit and discredit to California, but states like California raised the $15 minimum wage, while Barack Obama, Joe Biden, all the Democratic presidents did nothing, nothing to raise the minimum wage. Last time that it was raised was under George W. Bush, okay? And then Democratic presidents got in and went like, who cares about the workers? We were lying all along. Never did a goddamn thing about it. Now, you know with the $2.13 cents, they get tips on top of that, right? And that's why it's that low. But you're supposed to keep increasing that to keep up with inflation.

They haven't, as you saw there, haven't raised it since 91. Again, Obama, Biden, all the Democrats, Clinton, nothing, nothing, they don't care. Republicans, so don't get me wrong. We're not the stupid fake left. The Republicans are the worst of the worst. They would never raise the workers' wages if their lives depended on it. And ironically, they've convinced the average worker that they're on, they're somehow the populace. No, Republicans are dirtbags who work for the rich and have,

done so their entire lives, we get more disappointed from the Democrats because they're supposed to represent the workers and they don't. So this scam's been going out forever. And by the way, did anybody ever tell you about this scam until now? No, because unfortunately, the great majority of the media is in on it. But credit to this story is a great story. New York Times published it. So they do deserve credit for drawing attention. They definitely do. And I take on the New York Times all the time. But I wouldn't if they did great work. And this is great work. I was shocked to see it in the New York Times. Yes, and just one thing to clarify, because it's kind of easy for this point to get lost in the back and forth that we're having.

So the minimum wage was raised one time since 1996. Yeah, that was under Bush. It was under Bush. I thought it was under Bush. And then he got applied under Obama. It was applied in 2009, which is why got it. But Obama did not pass it. He did not raise it.

And remember, he had a super majority. Didn't do anything on it. Incredible. Really incredible stuff. All right. Oh, you know what? I'm gonna say one last thing about it. Just because it's about the minimum wage and the National Restaurant Association.

Remember, they voted on the minimum wage under Biden, right? And Biden said that he was in favor of it. And who killed it? Well, all the Republicans voted no, but Manchin's cinema. And you remember, cinema did the twirling no vote? That was on the minimum wage, okay? And so what does cinema and Manchu do right afterwards? They went to the same lobbying group, National Restaurant Association,

Association and collected checks and then bragged on camera about it. They're like, ha ha, I got paid. I got paid to screw over the workers. And to give you a sense of how much generally mainstream media sucks and just works for these lying Democrats and lying corporate politicians overall, you know that eight democracies, it wasn't just mentioned in a eight Democratic senators voted against it, including Biden's top ballots. Did you know that Biden during the Super Bowl interview already said the minimum wage wasn't

going to happen. Then he told a couple of weeks later in February, mayors and governors that came to the White House is definitely not going to happen. That was months before the vote. And that was remember, January 6th, 2021. And then of course his inauguration was January 20th. The Super Bowl was just a couple of weeks later. Biden knew he was never going to raise the minimum wage. He had been lying about it the entire time. Did anybody in mainstream media did MSNBC CNN in New York Times in a different context, whenever, this is a great story, but when it comes to Biden, oh, Biden, Biden, did they tell you that some bitch was lying the whole time? Never, never. Never. Learn the reality. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, though, we will, we'll give you the astronomical

fine that Amazon was slapped with for mistreating its workers. And I hope you guys picked up on the sarcasm there. We've got that story and more coming right up. Don't miss it. 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 at apple.combe. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.