The Young Turks - Elizabeth Warren's Amazing Proposal And Facebook Joins The Education Business

Episode Date: April 23, 2019

Elizabeth Warren wants to end student debt! Silicon Valley pivots to education. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. 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. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. Hey there. Welcome to the Young Turks.

Jake Eugenica's very with you guys. I'm having fun. Okay. Okay, we got a mega, mega, massive show for you guys today. We've got the normal two hours for you guys where we'll go run through the news and we'll get a lot to run through, including Trump investigations. Seems a little nervous. I love the smell of Trump panic in the morning, although that sounds disgusting.

Okay, today is in fact Earth Day and John and I are going to do a special for you guys starting at 8 o'clock Eastern, and then we're not done yet. Because after that, we've got five town halls, and we're gonna do summaries for you guys. We're gonna show you the videos and react immediately. So you get to catch up without spending five hours on the town halls. We'll catch you up real quick on the most important parts. So don't go anywhere, buckle up, brace for impact. Tell everybody you know, including Randy Gonzalez, t.com.

Okay, that's what's happening. So that's a 7 p.m. Pacific, okay? Ida Rodriguez, John Ida Rola, and I are going to do that. So lots and lots of news to get to, and I'm back. Although, you know, I was on a cruise for seven days. Tomorrow we'll talk about it in the postgame. I got pictures for you guys, a lot of fun, okay? My God, this is a good week to be a member, okay?

Portions of the town hall and the Earth Day coverage will be for just members. But the Game of Thrones predictions that we did last night, I predicted seven deaths in the next episode, okay? I gotta check that up. TYT.com slash join free week if you do TYT.com slash trial. This would be a good week to do it. All right, Casper, let's do it. All right.

We are gonna do a rundown that's different from other news organizations. Today we are gonna start with really good news and it's a proposal by Elizabeth Warren. Senator Elizabeth Warren is of course running as a Democrat in the primaries and she's She's really differentiated herself from other candidates by putting out a steady stream of specific policy proposals. And what she's proposing now is a way in which the majority of the student debt that the country is grappling with would be canceled. So let me give you the details.

She's proposing a $1.25 trillion plan to reshape higher education by canceling most student loan debt and eliminating tuition at every public college. Now, how can she do this? Well, first, you have to understand the context of student loan debt. The majority of student loan debt is actually held by the federal government. So the federal government can do something to cancel it, and we can also change the way our taxes work in order to pay for it. So she would expand federal grants to help students with non-tuition expenses and create a $50 billion

fund to support historically black colleges and universities. She would also eliminate up to $50,000 in student loan. debt for every person with a household income of less than $100,000. Borrowers who make between $100,000 and $250,000 would have a portion of their debt forgiven. And we do have a video of Senator Warren talking about this in more detail, but before we go to that, Jenk. I just want to clarify on that. First of all, I'm gonna get back to this in a second.

I love this plan, and I love how many bold, terrific progressive plans Elizabeth Warren's put out. Okay, now, the clarification is, so 95% of the people who have loans will get some loan forgiveness, 75% of the people who have loans will have their loans completely wiped out. Now, the only people that are not at all affected are, is if your income is about $250,000, okay, because it's a graduated scale. So, and that's okay, if your income's over $250,000, you have done well with your income education, et cetera, it kind of, in a sense, you could argue it worked the way that it was supposed to increase your wages, and now you could pay it off.

But for a lot of people, it did not work the way that it was supposed to, it did not increase your wages. Instead, the companies benefited from your hard work and your education, but they didn't pay for it. And that's a great point that Elizabeth Warren makes that almost no one else does, and I want to come back to that as well. But first, let's watch Senator Warren talk about it. Anyone who's got outstanding student loan debt can have up to $50,000 worth of student loan

debt canceled out so long as their income is under $100,000, then it kind of steps in up to there's no help for anybody whose family income is above $250,000. And that's it. Yeah, so look, I also want to give credit to the people who started this idea. And so a person who gets almost no credit, in fact, a lot of disdain from the mainstream media is Jill Stein, who's the head of the Green Party. She pushed for it back in 2016. Bernie didn't, she did.

And I've told the story many times, I kind of scoffed at it when I interviewed her here at the studio and I was skeptical of it. But it turns out, Trump came in and gave away $2 trillion to the rich. And if we could afford that, we could definitely afford this. And now a lot of people have picked up the ball. Wayne Messum is also running for president. He is the mayor of Miramar, Florida. He was also in here.

He was pushing a very similar idea and was very bold with it and you should check him out. But this is incredibly detailed, really well thought out. It's $1.25 trillion easily paid for by the taxes that she has proposed. And by the way, you're gonna love the taxes that she proposed. I know that sounds like a funny sentence, but it's absolutely true. This program is not only brilliant in its policy impact, and we'll talk more about that that in a second as well, but it's also great politics. Right, and it's also very comprehensive in that it doesn't specifically focus on tuition,

it also focuses on other costs that are associated with going to college. So all of the emphasis that we hear from politicians is tuition, tuition, tuition, which is important. That is the bulk of the cost if you're going to a university or a college, but there's also the fees that are associated, and those fees can get very expensive as well. And she's focusing on ways to alleviate some of that burden as well. Now, how would this be paid for? She would pay for it through revenue generated by her proposed increase in taxes for America's

most wealthy families in corporations, which the campaign estimates to be $2.75 trillion over 10 years. Now, Warren's policy would also prohibit colleges from considering citizenship status and criminal history in admission decisions, cut off federal money from four. profit colleges, which I absolutely love, and require an annual equity audit for public colleges that would identify shortfalls in enrollment and completion rates for lower income students and students of color. So again, this is a very comprehensive plan.

And I think the issue that will stand in the way is the fact that the federal government through these loans has been making money off these students. It's a form of regressive taxation. They give out these loans and they initially charge pretty low interest rates, but the interest rates for these federal student loans have been going up consistently. And so it becomes more expensive to borrow, and the federal government gets to make money off these students who have no choice but to take out these giant loans just so they can get an education.

Yeah, I have so much more to say. So first of all, on how to pay for it, she has what Anna referred to there, the ultra-millionaire tax. it and why would you like it? Because it only affects 75,000 families. And that's the very, very top of the income brackets and the wealth brackets in this country. And now you say, oh, well, look, guys, what are you going to just take all the money of the rich?

No, it's just 2%. 2% annual tax on people that have more than $50 million in wealth. 50 million. Do you have $50 million? I don't think so, right? Only 75,000 families in this country do. They're not taking everything. They're just taking 2%.

Okay? Now, is it fair for people who have accumulated more than $50 million in wealth? Because they got to live the American dream to help other families also have a shot at living the American dream? I think we're going to get a resounding hell yes. That echoes all throughout the country. So very easy way to pay for it. It actually way more than pays for it because it costs $1.25 trillion and the tax raises

$2.75 trillion. So, now, the second part of it is when Republicans need money for tax cuts for the rich and corporations, they never tell you how they're gonna pay for it. They do this thing called magic where they go, well, you know, magically the economy is going to improve because of all the tax cuts I gave to the rich. And so the improvement in the economy will be so great that will get more revenue to the federal government. It never happens, it never happens.

It's a total lie and an excuse to give more money to the rich, okay? But in this proposal, if you actually lifted all the over a trillion dollars in debt from the American people, you know what would happen? It would immediately and massively stimulate the economy. Because people would then have more money to spend. And they could put it into buying cars, buying houses, it would also stimulate that market, right? And starting new businesses, and on and on it goes.

Because wealth at the top is saved, that's a positive way of putting it, hoarded is another way of putting it, right? But either way, it does not go back into the economy. Whereas if you have wealth that it goes to the middle class, people who got a college education, and all of that is going towards paying off their student debt, they would now be free to spend that on other things that they need. And that would greatly help the economy, which would then pay for the plan even without the ultra-millionaire tax.

Right, I love that you brought that up because that, some people keep referring to it as a philosophy, it's not a philosophy, it's fact, one of the things that's really dragging the economy down, and we'll continue to do so as student loan debt becomes more and more of a burden, is that the middle class and these college educated, you know, people who have this debt aren't able to go out there and spend, right? So then you hear from some of the other Democratic candidates who are more centrist on issues like student loan debt. Pete Buttigieg, for instance, said, I don't really see the value in having people who don't have a college education, subsidizing people who do get a college education, and those people usually make more money.

Well, that's a very narrow way of looking at it, right? First of all, if you make college affordable or free at public institutions, it's more likely that people wouldn't be deterred from getting a higher education. But also, even if you have no interest in going to college, it's not about subsidizing people, it's about having a better economy, making sure that people aren't drowning in debt, So the broader economy benefits, but also don't you want to live in a country that has innovation? Don't you want to live in a country where people can get a higher education should they choose to? And if they do get an education, who knows what type of great innovation will come from these people who have that education?

Yeah, Buttigieg just said a couple of concerning things recently, and this is among them. It's a right-wing talking point, and it's total nonsense. What it does is it provides opportunity, okay, a fair chance. Look, no one knows this better than my family, and in this case it happened to be in Turkey, not in America in the 1960s, but my dad was a farmer down in southeastern Turkey, no money at all, dirt poor, and he got a chance at a free college education, and it changed his life, it changed all of our lives. So without that opportunity, you got nothing, which leads me to what Elizabeth Warren said

about this, and then the facts that back it up. I'm gonna go to Graphics 6 here. She said, the enormous student debt burden weighing down our economy isn't the result of laziness or irresponsibility. It's the result of a government that has consistently put the interest of the wealthy and well-connected over the interest of working class families. So think about that for a second. She explains, when she was going to college, the University of Houston, it's a good school.

You know what her tuition was for a semester? 50 bucks. 50 bucks. You know what her dad did? I mean, Elizabeth Warren, now she's a U.S. senator running for president. It was a Harvard law professor. Obviously, her dad was some private equity guy, venture capital guy, because that's how it is today, right? No.

Her dad was a janitor. See, back then, everybody had a shot at the American tree. Now they took that away from us. And how did they take it away? She explains that as well in her medium post. And so what they did was in the old days, college education was seen in a lot of ways as similar to high school, junior high, and elementary. It was supposed to be public so that everybody had a shot, right?

And it was, that's why this tuition was 50 bucks at University of Houston. Well, eventually they started to basically privatize. And so they lowered the funding from at the state level, the federal level, the local level. And so they started putting that money, instead of coming from the government, we're putting it on to the kids and the students, and they get the debt piled on. So what did they do with the money instead? They cut taxes on the rich and corporations. So it was a massive redistribution of wealth from the students.

They're the ones who shoulder the burden carrying the rich and multinational corporations in this country. Madness. It makes no sense at all. And so Elizabeth Warren is saying, well, time to end that madness. Time to actually represent the American people instead and simulate the economy at the same time. Now it's a giant win-win. But the wins don't stop.

Now let's talk about how this disproportionately affects minorities in this country. So African Americans, 50% of the for-profit colleges enrollment is minorities, which is astounding, giving the overall percentages in the country. And so they're loaded up with more debt overall, and they have less money to pay for it. So it's a double whammy on minorities, particularly black students. Now, do you know what the wealth disparity in this country is for blacks and whites? This is amazing. You know how wealth works, right? And especially if you're a capitalist, you know how it works, right?

It accumulates over time. So if you started with something a long time ago, hundreds of years ago, your family did, well, it is accumulated and accumulated. If you started at zero fairly recently, it hasn't had a chance to accumulate very much. So, obviously, African Americans in this country went through slavery, Jim Crow, civil rights movement was only about 50 years ago, right? So get a load of this, for every, this graphic seven, for every $100 in white family wealth, black families hold just $5.4 cents.

But education is the great equalizer, but right now it doesn't equalize. What it does is it loads up black families with a ton of debt, and some, a lot of times You can't even finish college because you're so overloaded with that. And then you got the debt and no college degree. Triple whammy. Yeah, can I jump in on that? And what makes the situation even worse, what exacerbates the disparity is the fact that some of these for-profit colleges specifically target minorities.

They specifically try to recruit members of the black community into their schools. And if you have seen any of our previous content on these for-profit colleges, They oftentimes are unaccredited. Even if they are accredited, they inflate their job placement numbers and they're incredibly deceitful and commit fraud when it comes to recruiting some of these students. And they encourage them to take out the loans, take out the loans, take out the loans. And so again, this exacerbates the problem, especially when it comes to student loan debt. It's just the system is designed right now to continue this disparity.

So I'm gonna add one last thing here. I think this is such a terrific proposal and she's done so many great, great proposals. And normally we do this at the end of interviews, no matter whether we like the candidate don't like the candidate, we want you guys have an opportunity to make a difference. But I'm gonna do it at the end of this story. Because part of what it drove me to it was the New York Times snidly adding in their article, but she hasn't done that well in fundraising. Yeah, that's because she's not going to the rich and saying, I'll serve her.

in every way. In fact, once she said, that's it, I'm not taking any, not only am I not taking corporate pack money, which she'd said a while back, but she came on this show and said, you know what, I'm not dialing for dollars anymore. I'm not going to call rich people all day long and ask them for money. And look at these stunningly great proposals, not just since, but certainly that has helped, right? You've got universal childcare, expanding affordable housing, elimination of electoral college, but mainly focusing on the families and the average Americans and now getting rid of student loan debt and the great proposals on taxes. And I can go on and on.

So since she's relying on small donors, Elizabeth Warren.com, Elizabeth Warren.com slash join dash us if you want to volunteer or volunteers make a big difference. And Elizabeth Warren.com slash donate. Prove the New York Times wrong. the skeptics and the critics wrong. Look, there's a couple of great progressives in this race, and what a treasure. I mean, normally, you're lucky to have one progressive in the race. We actually have a couple of giants in this race. And they're both putting out incredible proposals, one after another after another. This is how politics is supposed to be if you're

actually serving the people. And they serve the people because of those small dollar donations, as opposed to the big dollar donations. So if you see that happening, go and support them back so they've got a shot at winning. Yeah, I agree. And the one thing that I will say is, who knows, maybe the electorate will kind of wake up to the fact that she is bringing something to the table. She is the only candidate who has brought forth very detailed policy proposals on the very issues that we've been ranting and raging about for a long time now.

And there's something to be said about that. And I want that to translate to her poll numbers, who cares about the fundraising? I know that it's important to some extent, but what's even more important is how she performs in the polls. And I don't know, I think the depressing part about all of this is that people don't pay attention to policy, and we need to. We need to make sure that our politicians do more than just talk. What are they bringing to the table?

And she's providing detailed policy. Right. But look, to be fair, she's pulling top five consistently. Yeah, that's true. In a field of what appears to be 98, that's not bad at all as the press keeps writing her off and writing her off, et cetera. And I understand if somebody says, hey, I like Bernie better or there's another candidate I like better, but man, I like them both.

So I want to help support both of their candidacies. That's why volunteering and donating makes a big difference. So when we come back from the break, we are not going to drop the topic of education. Silicon Valley is getting involved in public education, and it doesn't look pretty. I'll give you the details on that. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-E-Bing the Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the government.

conventional wisdom. In each episode of On The Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take the my word for it, the New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational

aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must not learn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and

exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast. podcast app today, and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained, all at the same time. All right. Back on a young Turks. Can I say I have been swaying with the ocean since I've come off the cruise? Okay, I have to ask you. So do you hate cruises yet? No, it's complicated. So we'll say, I'll name it for the post game tomorrow.

Okay, I'm surprised. Yeah. It's complicated. No, it's very complicated. So no one knew cruises were this complicated. Okay, so t.com slash join to hear how complicated cruises are tomorrow. Anyway, but I'm serious, like, now it's a day and a half later. I'm still like, oh, you know how that happens to you after you're on a bill for a while?

Oh yeah. Okay, anyways, let's go to you guys. Let's go to your comments, member section first. Riftmaster says, I recall hearing, reading somewhere that improved education results, as in better educated people, improves the economy. Granted, it's probably not the only factor, but I'm wondering if any fact signs back this up. Absolutely. In fact, I read about it recently again when I was reading Ray Dalio's proposal.

So he's the top hedge fund manager in the world, and he said capitalism has got issues, and we need to fix it. And part of what we need to do is spend more money in education. because, and then he showed all these charts very clear in every instance, spending more money in education gets you better results and improves the economy. Okay, Wendy S. says I went to a private university for two years, but could not continue to afford tuition. This was 15 years ago, finished paying off my student loans last year.

Wow. No degree, 14 years of paying off student loans anyway. So student loan debt has really sky. skyrocketed over the last decade, but there have been people who have passed away, like in their old age, with student loan debt, which is out of control. Insanity, okay, let me go to Twitter real quick. Lazy ditsy chick, fascinating handle, says, for profit education needs to be illegal. Yes.

When I couldn't find a job with my bachelor's degree, I looked into becoming a dental assistant. They wanted me to pay 20,000 for a six month program. I said, hell no, thanks to a scholarship. My bachelor's cost me about 8,000. So look, some wonderful people have gotten wonderful, you know, careers coming out of for-profit colleges. But statistically, that is not the case. Right.

And so it is a huge issue, and it does rip off a lot of people. So she's got a great point. Last one, Jasmine Poe says, it keeps getting harder and harder to choose between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for 2020. And that's a great thing. That's a great thing. I love that we've got real choices. I mean, it's certainly better than feeling that despair of having to choose the lesser of two evils, right?

Yes, can you imagine we get to choose the better of two goods? Yeah, that would be great. Unprecedented in America, at least in our lifetimes. Also, I wanted to let you know about aspiration, a partner of ours. Aspiration is a financial institution that wants you to celebrate Earth Day by going green, okay? And I'm not talking about going green with money. Go green by going to an organization that actually cares about the environment that would not invest your money in the fossil fuel industry.

It's really a progressive organization. They do not charge you fees. They allow you to decide whether or not they charge you fees. And they also donate 10% of their proceeds to charity. So this is a great institution, which is why we've partnered up with them. Go to aspiration.com slash TYT, aspiration.com slash TYT, and sign up. with them. I wanna say one more thing about that.

Look, if you're a progressive, when you put your money into other banks, they put it into oil companies, gun companies, et cetera, and your money goes to support those industries that you do not like. So have peace of mind and no fees, and they give you the highest interest rate. This is just an absolute no-brainer. But if you're a conservative, they still give you no fees. They let you charge your own fees. So if you're a conservative, like ha ha ha, yeah, oh yeah, I'm gonna charge nothing and I'm gonna

get the highest interest rate. Yeah, that's right, because progressives actually try to look out for everybody. So aspiration.com slash t-y-t, I love having them as a partner. Please check it out. All right, let's talk about education. Silicon Valley has been pushing for something known as Summit Learning. This is a type of education revolution that was spearheaded by Mark Zucker Zuckerberg and his wife.

In fact, some of the employees over at Facebook developed this, and it turns out that some of the parents and students in a local Kansas school district are revolting against it. They're rebelling against it. They believe that this is a complete and utter disaster. And let me just note that they were actually very open and receptive to summit learning, and then they realized that there were some serious issues. Now, according to New York Times, public schools near Wichita had rolled out this. web-based platform and curriculum from Summit Learning.

The Silicon Valley-based program promotes an educational approach called personalized learning, which uses online tools to customize education. So let me just give you more context. Essentially the students learn themselves through online courses or online classes. And they get a little bit of time with the teacher each week. They're supposed to get about 10 minutes one-on-one with a teacher. each week. But the bulk of the learning is done online on their own, which, look, if you're a college

student and that type of method works for you, cool. But understand that we're talking about grade school students, and it has not worked out for them. So students started coming home with headaches and hand cramps. Some said they felt more anxious. One child began having a recurrence of seizures. Another asked to bring her dad's hunting earmuffs to class to block out classmates because Because work was now done largely alone.

So you have a classroom full of students who are just in front of a computer learning on their own. And the whole idea is, well, this frees up the teachers' time so they can do what they do best, which is mentoring. No, but teachers are supposed to teach. That's what they've been trained to do. And I have my own worries about why some school districts might go in this direction. But let me give you more details.

In one class covering Paleolithic history, Summit included a link to an article in the Daily Mail, a British newspaper, which by the way is not a newspaper, it's a tabloid, that showed racy ads with bikini-clad women. For a list of the Ten Commandments, two parents said their children were directed to a Christian conversion site. So you're dealing with the internet here, you're dealing with school-aged kids doing their learning through the internet, and of course there are going to be some issues like the ones that were just raised, you know, in the times.

So this has been problematic. And now in this particular Kansas school district, parents are pulling their kids out of public school and they're putting them either in a Catholic school, a private school, or even doing homeschooling. Yeah, you know, I'm less harsh on this program because I think it's still relatively new and I'd like more information. And I'm actually surprised at the information we're getting back, which is not positive, as Anna points out.

But there's actually more concerning numbers behind it. So understand a couple of things that are important in defense of the program. One, Facebook's not charging for it. It's a Chan Zuckerberg Foundation that has actually given over $99 million to this program since 2016. So it's charity. So they're trying to do a good thing, it appears. Now, I know that people can go, oh, well, maybe there's a nefarious plot.

They're getting hooked, them hooked online, and they're going to get hooked on Facebook. Maybe, or maybe they're just trying to help kids. So, and but what we do know is they've given about $100 million. And the one possible advantage of this is kids learn at different speeds. So if a kid's talented or just, you know, gifted, he's being held back in a lot of ways because he's got to wait for everybody to catch up and they get bored and they get discouraged, et cetera. So if the kid's a little bit more gifted in that sense, he can keep on going ahead, right? And some kids have trouble keeping them.

You get the point. So this hopefully adjusts to their speed, and so that's a significant advantage. I just think that it's not such a bad idea. Okay, can I jump in? Yeah. Yeah, so I disagree with you. And the reason why I disagree is because there's a lot of value that comes out of learning in a group and having discussions about the material.

that you're learning, right? So sure, I mean, the argument that you make about some of the students who might be behind is a valid one, and that is a concern in school districts. But for some students who were behind, it actually does help them to be part of a conversation with other students who might be a little more advanced, who might know more, they learn from those students, right? And I mean, I could say that as someone, you know, who works in this field. And I have conversations with people who know way more than me on certain issues.

And I learned from them through these conversations, you know, just putting a student in front of a computer and expecting them to learn on their own, I think really takes the important elements of education out of the picture. So for instance, when I was in high school and we had our reading material, let's say we're reading 1984. The best part about reading that book was having discussions with my classmates about what it meant. What are the parallels between this book and what we're seeing right now in our government, right?

It actually added value to the reading material. So look, there might be some upsides to focusing some of the education on this online-based curriculum. But I think that we're now going to a complete opposite extreme, which is, yeah, teachers can just be mentors and they'll talk to the students for 10 minutes out of the week. That's out of control. Wrong. We don't disagree. Okay.

Okay. So look, we don't do this game that everybody does, which is, hey, my idea is 100% Right, your idea is 100% wrong. No, I do that sometimes. Well, okay. Well, then don't listen to it when she does that. Okay, so seriously, it's got upsides and downsides. And so the downsides are very clear in what Anna pointed out.

Of course, we're social creatures. And so, and it's important. And some kids, by the way, learn better through hearing. Some kids learn better by reading. And seeing, yeah. And seeing. And other kids do better in participatory settings, et cetera. And don't get me wrong.

Here's another disadvantage. Teachers, some of them say, well, I kind of like this. You know why? They don't have to do grade anybody anymore. The computer does it. And they don't have to teach. So the ones that are not particularly hardworking, they're like, how did I look into this? No, it's a trap. Be careful what you wish for. Exactly. Yeah. Because the next step is, well, why do we need to pay all these teachers? Exactly. Right? And then, hey, let's privatize education. So don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that I believe in facts and information, and I don't think that it's had a good enough run yet. What we might discover is that it's not good for everybody, but it might be good for some people.

And maybe there's an element that we could use in some ways, even if it's not for all the students in a public school. Yeah, exactly. I think that there might be some elements we can use. But I think that this particular program goes to an extreme that isn't a good idea, especially considering that those social skills are important. I think right now with the amount of screen time young people are getting, social skills are starting to suffer. And it's going to be even worse if you're not going to have a regular school experience where you communicate with your peers.

You're just in front of a screen the entire time. Now, go ahead, do you want to jump in? No, I was just going to say the last couple of things. Go ahead, give more info. So I want to give you more information. Now, Summit demands an extraordinary amount of personal information about each student and plans to track them through college and beyond. This was an issue that someone from the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy brought up. And it's a legitimate concern. There's a lot of data, personal data, that goes into this system. And it's something to worry about, especially when you have minors involved.

Also, when it comes to the lack of popularity for this program, let's take a look at what the school district says. So in a school district survey of McPherson middle school parents released this month, 77% of respondents said that they preferred their child not be in a classroom that uses summit. More than 80% said their children had expressed concerns about the program. Okay, so that's the numbers that I was talking about. There's also a study out of Indiana, there again 70% objected to the program. Now a grain of salt, whenever there's change, people are discombobulated by that change.

But remember, the parents were overwhelmingly in favor of this. They were, once it was proposed, they were receptive. I hear you, that's anecdotal because there was not polling ahead of time. But it appears that people were in favor of it ahead of time. And sometimes it takes a while to get in the groove or to adjust to it. But the fact that everywhere that they've done a poll, it's coming overwhelmingly against it, both from the parents and the students, is not a good side. So let's go to Graphics 17, because I want to do.

to give you the numbers. In Brooklyn, high school students walked out in November after their school started using summits platform in Indiana, Indiana, Pennsylvania, after a survey by Indiana University of Pennsylvania found 70% of students wanted summit dropped or made optional. The school board scaled it back and then voted this month to terminate it. And then in Cheshire, Connecticut, the program was cut after protests in 2017. So it has not been popular at all. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it.

But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with the TD Small Business Account Manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play? Get up to $2,700 when you open select small business banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit TD.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. Yeah, and by the way, something could be not popular, but really helpful anyway, but this one's got plenty of reasons to be concerned.

But my personal thought on it is that I hope they don't end it completely. I'd like to see if it's got a chance at helping some of the students in areas. But I'll end on a couple of fun notes. I did like some of the signs that they put up in one area, Deanna Garver, a church secretary, who's got sons in second and eighth grades, came out with a sign that said, don't plummet with summit. I love it. Any rhyme is going to get me to be a fan. Yes.

And I've been saying on the show, I used to say it all the time back in the day, earmuffed the kids, because we were about, when we were about the curse, right? Yeah, yeah. We finally got a story where someone earmuffed the kids. I know. I know. And another favorite part of my story is when they took the two shot and then I was about to take a drink and I couldn't make up my mind on whether to drink or not and put it down. Rewind the tape and see it.

Okay. So we like to have fun. All right. We like to have fun. Look, later in the show, we are going to talk about what happened in Sri Lanka and I promise. We're going to get to it. But when we come back from the break, we're actually going to do a Buttigieg block. Yeah.

enormously important Buttigist stories, including one that TYT broke, a huge story. We'll talk about it when we... At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN, It also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install.

A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired Magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Come back.

We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free segment. All right, back on T-Y-T. Eclectic miscellaneous from the member section. I like how he goes back and forth between member section and Twitter. It writes in, who thought it was a good idea to put Facebook in charge of school-age kids' education?

I wouldn't trust them to train a dog, much less shape the young minds of tomorrow. That's a good point. Okay, all right, well, that's one point. Woke shipmate, I wonder if you were my shipmate, says the military has been doing online learning for years. Spoiler alert, every year they come out with at least one more topic that must be taught by a person. They just keep whittling away at the online training and going back to teachers. There's probably a good reason for that. Last one's from Twitter, valid visibility says, I looked at where my student loan payments go.

The first two years all went to interest. Yes. The last two payments from I made this year, half the payment went to principal, the bank making its money. Yeah, can I, I know that this is a widespread practice, but I don't think it should be. Like the way that they, I think it's called immoralize or whatever, ammerized, right? Amortize? Amortize, whatever. I'm not a finance person.

You get what I mean, where they like, they'll front load all the interests because they want to make their interest. So if you're making extra payments and all that stuff, it doesn't have as much of an impact as it would if they didn't do that. I don't like it. Okay, she's against it. Because you know what, they don't do that, that doesn't, they don't, banks don't do that when it comes to like CDs, certificate of deposits, right? Like, let's say you're earning interest on your certificate of, anyway, maybe I'm not making any sense. Okay. I'm going to stop talking about it right now.

Okay. One day we might do a finance show, in which case we'll give you all the facts and the different borrowing and interest that you get, et cetera, when you give money to the bank. Anyways, so, but I do know that in Elizabeth Warren's proposal, they talked about one particular person who for 12 years only paid interest and then had more money that they owed at the end of the 12 years than when they began. It's madness, madness. That's you, Skip? That happened to you too?

See? No, no, look, it's a great proposal by Elizabeth Warren. If they give it airtime, it's going to be wildfire. And Fox News is going to make a mistake. They're going to fan the flames. Can you believe they're going to want to get rid of debt for students? And every student's going to be like, what? Everybody who's student is going to be like, who said that?

Yeah, because that debt does not discriminate. It doesn't matter if you're a Republican, Democrat, liberal, progressive, conservative. It does not discriminate. It impacts everyone. All right. By the way, ShopT.Y.T. is having an awesome sale right now. It's the Go Green Sale to celebrate Earth Day. And you get 20% off site wise site wide just use joint sale and you will get that 20% off go to shoptyt.com again joint sale is the promo code

for which green new deal are we doing joint sale we all know we all know okay you know you know all right let's move on to Buttigieg Pete Buttigieg was in New Hampshire at a campaign stop, and during his campaign stop, he had some commentary in regard to Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Take a look. I think the sense of anger and disaffection that comes from seeing that the numbers are fine, like unemployment's low, like all that, like you said, GDP's growing. And yet a lot of neighborhoods and families are living like this recovery never even half. They're stuck. It just kind of turns you against the system in general. And then you're more likely to want to vote to blow up the system. which could lead to somebody like Bernie, and it could lead you to somebody like Trump.

That's how we got where we are. So a lot of people are angry about what he said there, and the commentary I'm seeing alleges that he is comparing Bernie Sanders to Trump, but I didn't see it that way. I actually believe that he made a point that was completely fine, and it's a point that we've made on this show. So I'm not really understanding the criticism. Don't get me wrong, there are some, you know, positions on policy that we're Buttigieg has that I think are worth dissecting and looking into.

But I think what he said there is actually accurate. Okay, so I partly agree. So of course the reason people are upset is because it appears to comparing Trump voters to Bernie voters. And well, one side is the most progressive people in the country and the other side is the most conservative people in the country. So little apples and orange is there. But I do of course see what you're saying, Anna.

And I wanted to do that as maybe an ironic defense of Buttigieg's comments, which is that, yeah, there is a populist wave in the country. But Buttigieg is not trying to appeal to that populist wave. And I don't know if he knows this or anyone in the mainstream media has caught on to this, but Trump won. So it's kind of a funny criticism to be like, oh, Bernie Sanders is trying to appeal the voters in the way that Trump did as opposed to the way Hillary Clinton did. And who won the election again, right?

So I think that if it was meant as a criticism, I think he's got it all wrong. You're saying he might not have meant it as a criticism, but he doesn't seem to agree with Sanders on a lot of policy positions. So it seems like- He doesn't, he doesn't. And he did say, like, blow up this system, which doesn't seem like a compliment. Well, let me just say, it appears he doesn't agree with Bernie Sanders on policy, but it's It's hard to say because he's not a firm believer in being clear about what his policies are. In fact, he said that.

He said that himself, I don't think it's a good idea to be very specific about detailed policy while you're running, which I think is completely wrong. But nonetheless, I don't think he's trying to make the claim that Bernie Sanders and his voters are similar policy-wise to Trump and his supporters. I think what he's trying to do is draw this comparison regarding frustration with the establishment, and frustration with how the system has failed them. And the system has failed them and continues to do so. And you're right, in that Buttigieg, as someone who is positioning himself as more of a

moderate, should be aware that his position is not popular, right? That centrist ideology is not popular. But anyway, that's a completely different story. I think that there are similarities, not policy-wise, but similarities between Trump voters and Sanders voters, specifically because. of the frustrations, you know, pertaining to the economy. Yeah. Yeah.

So I understand what you're saying, and it's that frustration with the neoliberal economic policy and the establishment. The establishment never wants to acknowledge that, because that would mean acknowledging that they screwed people over, or certainly at a minimum that people think that they screwed them over. I haven't to agree with the people. And funny enough, the establishment does not agree that they wound up screwing everybody over, but they did.

They did. Those policies kept wages stagnant for 40 straight years where the top 1% got an enormously disproportionate percentage of the wealth. Now the giant difference between the Trump voters and the Bernie voters and their philosophies is Trump takes that fact and then misdirects them towards even greater wealth inequality and uses it as a trick and does fake populism to win the election. then to support the elites even more. In fact, he bragged about it in a rally about a year ago.

He came out and said, I'm the elite, he said. I'm more elite than the elites. So he's such a clown. He just used, he's a carnival barker. Right. Whereas Bernie Sanders is using it to actually fix the system. And hence, my biggest issue with Buttigieg's statement there is when he said to blow up the system.

No, Bernie's not looking to blow up the system, and some on the left now are saying, yeah, we're saying that Bernie's not going far enough because we think we should blow up the system, and capitalism's not working, et cetera, et cetera. But Bernie Sanders is saying, no, we should fix the system. And so for Buttigieg to then say, ah, it's all seems, you know, or at least to imply that it's radical by saying it's blowing up the system. And now he's being grouped in with Klobuchar, in terms of. terms of policy.

So look, we were all excited because he's so, it appears he's so smart and had done all these amazing, interesting things like learning Norwegian for no reason to read a book, et cetera. But how do you say bad idea in Norwegian? But more importantly, like- Maybe it's moderate. Yeah. There are plenty of smart people who are running right now. His education is impressive, the fact that he knows so many languages is impressive.

And I have no doubt that someone who's smart is very appealing to a lot of voters considering who we have in office right now. But his several languages don't positively impact Americans, especially when it comes to economic frustrations. So he can go ahead and position himself with Klobuchar all he wants. That's not what the Democratic Party is looking for right now. That's a separate discussion. Finally, I want to read Representative Rokana's statement on this.

He reacted on Twitter and said, come on people. Pete Buttigieg, it is intellectually dishonest to compare Bernie to Trump. Bernie is forgiving people health, health care, education, child care, and more pay. He wants to blow up credentialed elitism, those who reject tuition-free college for all. And so Roncana, just to be clear, is one of the campaign chairs for Bernie Sanders, as well as a representative from California. But he mentions rejecting tuition for free college for all as part of the elitism, because that's Buttigieg policy. He's against free college for all. And so, look, there's a good

reason why Buttigieg wanted to hide his policy positions. Because not just because they're not popular, but because it's really hard to walk a line between the donor class and the voters. And so he was trying to walk that line, get money from the donor class, while appealing to voters with credentials and intelligence and smooth talking, etc. But you can't do that for two straight years. He certainly can't do it for a year in the primaries. So he's starting to get exposed because people are pressing and pressing and pressing. So what are your policy positions? And the more he reveals, the more centrist slash corporate slash donor friendly they appear to be. And the more he begins to look more and more like Martin O'Malley. Yeah. And this great analysis that we talked

about a couple times on the show of Buttigieg that soured a lot of people to Buttigieg pointed out one thing that, two things that keeps sticking with me. And it was nuanced and that analysis had its own issues, we broke it down earlier, et cetera. But one, Buttigieg calling activists working for higher wages for janitors, et cetera, at Harvard, he called them social justice warriors. Yeah. Oh, that's, you know, it's just a mindset, but it's a very important mindset. It wasn't just the fact that he called them social justice warriors. It was, by the way, he published this in his book, which came out not too long ago, right?

So he proudly talked about this in his book. And it didn't even occur to him for a second, hey, this is Harvard. This is a very prestigious, you know, well-funded school. Why don't I join these protesters to ensure that custodial workers on this campus are paid a living wage. That didn't occur to him. And that's a great point about how recently the book came out, because by now you should know the Social Justice Warriors, a term used by the right wing to bash progressives.

That doesn't play well. All right. And lastly, you know, the cover of his book, as the author pointed out, we'll try to put the link down below if you're watching this later to the article that we're referring to, pointed out that the cover of his book, he's literally got a blue collar dress shirt on, he's in front of Main Street, and he's rolling up his sleeves on the cover. He's in the process of rolling up his sleeves. I know it's a small thing, but it was too literal.

I know, it's Martin O'Malley 101, and remember how that played out last time, not well. So the more we realize he's more like Martin O'Malley, the less interesting he becomes. Yeah. All right, we have one other Buttigieg story, so let's get to it. TYT Investigates looked into South Bend, Indiana, where Pete Buttigieg, of course, is the mayor, and found that there were several people in the area who had been fired as a result of recordings of police, South Bend police, saying racist things. Now, the interesting thing is all the people who have either been fired or demoted were

not racist, were not part of making these comments. These were all individuals who were either targeted in the racist rants in the tapes or discovered the racist rants in the first place. Now, Jonathan Larson looked into this story, I want to be clear in that the racist comments made in these tapes by these South Bend cops happened prior to Pete Buttigieg becoming mayor. However, Pete Buttigieg is part of some of this story that is important for you to know. But with that said, let's go to Jonathan Larson. He was on the damage report with John Iderola explaining the core of this story.

Take a look. So there's a lot of moving pieces to this one. The existence of the tapes has been known for a while since early on in Buttigieg's mayoral administration. What remains unclear is what's on the tapes. And in terms of what we did to advance that story is we got a hold of the settlement that Pete Buttigieg signed with the woman who got fired. from the police department for her role in the tapes, laying out what the city's rationale was for wanting to keep quiet the contents on the tape, which specifically talks about the fact

that if she shares what she knows from listening to the tapes, it could have a negative impact or a negative impact on some prosecution. So that was one thing we found out. And then another was that it turns out there was another incident involving police with racial overture. Jones the following year, and according to the head of public safety, the Board of Public Safety for the city of South Bend at the time, a city attorney was fired by Mayor Buttigieg for failing to block a request to have the Indiana State Police investigate that incident. So those were the kind of big overarching themes, but there was a lot more I heard while I was in South Bend as well, as I'm sure you saw in the article.

Okay, so I want to be clear about a couple of things. First of all, TYT investigates is the objective reporting arm of TYT. And so they did this report, but going to South Bend, talking to sources. He talks about sources, some of them are names, some of them are confidential. And in terms of Buttigieg's role, it appears to be the cover-up. And it is really disconcerting. So Anna's going to give you some of the details, but just to build off. of what Jonathan said, and he's not only our managing editor, but he happened to report

on this particular story. So when, then this is the official excuse in the documents that we found. Hey, we're worried that if you find out how racist our cops are, that it could impede prosecutions. Well, I would want it to impede prosecutions if the prosecutions were tainted by their racial prejudice. So I think the ACLU should look into this, civil rights activists should look into this, civil rights Activists should look into this. I mean, that is a very poor official excuse to give.

And now they could say, well, I mean, we didn't mean the ones that are exculpatory, although it certainly sounds that way. We meant, hey, we don't want to interfere with an ongoing police investigation. But that was years ago. There's no more ongoing police investigations. So what's your excuse for covering up the tapes now? Yeah, this story is super strange because it all started with the communications director for the police department coming across the tapes where the police officers were saying,

allegedly saying racist things about the police chief at the time, who was South Bend's first African American police chief. His name was Daryl Boykins. Now, Daryl Boykins was made aware of this, and at some point, the communications director was fired. And then these tapes weren't made public, okay, but they were part of an investigation. At that point, Mayor Pete gets elected, he comes into office, and he starts to encourage Daryl Boykins to step down, to resign.

Again, this is the black police chief. And the reason for asking him to resign was that he was allegedly threatening his subordinates, although that wasn't ever proven. And Boykin's first said that he would step down, and then he said, no, I'm not going to step down, I'm not going to resign. And then Buttigieg demoted him, okay? So that was an interesting thing that happened in the very beginning. Yeah, the tapes have a long history.

They started recording the cops for a legitimate reason. And then they forgot they were recording them and they kept on recording them. And then when the tapes were discovered, the claim by the people who were against the police chief was that he was using the tapes to maintain his power. Now, it is awfully convenient that the tapes have a lot of racist things in them, according to everyone who's heard them. and some of them directed at the police chief, and none of the racists are fired, but the black police chief is demoted, and the woman who revealed the racism is fired.

So you can give me a lot of excuses as to why that happened, but it looks like every other case I've ever seen where you just hire the, fire the troublemakers who are pointing out the racism in the institutions. And the people, and the guy who made those decisions was Mayor Buttigieg. Yes, and now, okay, if this is where it gets really bad, in my opinion, okay? Now, there was a vote. There was the Board of Public Safety in South Bend, and they had a public vote, right? And they wanted to have more of an investigation into the police department.

So the board has this vote, and they vote unanimously to get a different law enforcement agency involved to do an investigation into South Bend police. Buttigieg did not like that, and since he did not like that, he fired the city attorney for refusing or failing in blocking that investigation. That is unacceptable. So that was the South Bend Board of Public Safety, again, voted unanimously to petition the Indiana State Police for an investigation. And after that, again, in 2013, Buttigieg fired this other employee, a city attorney.

allegedly for failing to prevent an outside agency from being brought in to investigate the second incident with racial overtones. And by the way, the second incident involved a black police officer who was apparently dealing with a racist situation on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And the police department failed to get that black cop, any backup. In fact, the Teachman, who was the new police chief, who was appointed. by Buttigieg is the person that they were concerned did not at the time respond to back up his fellow officer.

Now, it's one thing to make judgment calls on what happened in that particular incident, but we're not doing that here. What we're pointing out is there was a vote to have that investigated by the Indiana state police to see if, hey, anything went wrong or nothing went wrong. It was just a misunderstanding or a miscommunication, just totally possible, right? But for Buttigieg to go, what, you're going to investigate the guy I appointed as chief after I demoted the black police chief? No way, no way.

You didn't block that investigation, you're fired. No, no, that's bad. That's bad. So we've got two significant issues here that TYT is uncovered. And now to go back to the other one, Karen DePape, who was fired for reporting the racist material in the tapes. She was the communications director for the South Bend Police Department. Their excuse is nearly non-existent.

For the police chief, Boykins, they said, well, maybe you were using the tape for your own benefit. It just so happens that they were yelling at you partly because you're black, okay? But I'm gonna ignore that and I'm gonna demote you instead. That's already pretty damn bad, right? But for the person who discovered the tape. What does she do wrong? Well, hey, hey, we don't like that kind of trouble around here.

Yeah, it doesn't look good. Yeah, that does not look good. And I just want to quickly note that the press secretary for Buttigieg's campaign did get in touch with TYT investigates and the statement reads as follows. These unsubstantiated allegations, these substantiated allegations in room, are too far-fetched to merit a response. Preposterous. These are documents that we found that are in the official record.

What's unsubstantiated about that? Well, he continued to respond, so let me give you more. According to the YT investigates, he reiterated Buttigieg's statement that he was, he had not listened to the tapes and that he demoted chief Boykins after losing confidence in him. That's not much of an explanation. The press secretary did not explicitly address the claim that Buttigieg fired a city attorney for failing to head off the board of public safety's request. That state police investigate a controversial 2013 incident involving South Bend police, but

said the mayor stood by the board's decision. So let me say the last couple of things here. He demoted Chief Boykins for a very vague reason, but says he didn't listen to the tapes. Wait a minute, if I'm the mayor of a town and somebody tells me, oh, a lot of your police are on tape being wildly racist, I'm gonna review the tapes. I'm not gonna be like, nah, not interested. You know what? Let him run racist all over South Bend.

They're just cops. What? Why didn't you review the tapes? That's his excuse. That's the comment they gave us. And not us as in the Young Turks doing this show. We have analysis, perspective, commentary, et cetera, to our reporters, okay? They're investigating the story.

If you got a good explanation, they definitely want to hear it. And so that's a terrible explanation. And Karen DePay was, you know, that case was settled. She was paid over $200,000. That's not a, hey, go away settlement of $15,000, and that means that the person who brought the case is usually wrong, right? That's a significant settlement where they're like, do-da-d-d-da. In South Bend, Indiana, we're going to give you over $200,000 for firing you because it

It appears because they didn't really have a good excuse. We just wanted to cover up what's in those tapes and what's in that police department. One last thing, and please read the story for yourself. It's got a lot of important details. We'll put the link down below in the description box if you're watching this later on YouTube, Facebook, or other platforms. But one of Buttigieg's top donors was also in favor of the new police chief. And he's the one that was involved in that scandal of not backing up to black police officers.

So is that the reason why? I don't know, I literally don't know. But it does raise an eyebrow as to why Buttigieg is doing these things that for most progressives would seem fairly unconscionable. And so read the story, it's important, and this is finding out more about the candidates. And that's what the primaries are for. When we come back, we are going to discuss an update to the armed militia story that we did last week.

This is the militia that has been holding immigrants at gunpoint. Luckily, there is a positive update to this story. Come right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.