The Young Turks - Hypocrisy 101

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

A GOP Senator said he "never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children." A New Lines investigation revealed a network of charities funneling millions into left-wing platforms that take Beijing’s side on the genocide allegations — and they’re all connected to an American tech magnate. Ben Shapiro said we shouldn't be mad at Blackrock for inflating the housing market. The Fed is raising interest rates soon and making capitalists nervous. The Supreme Court defended American's retirement accounts from Wall Street. A Judge tried to deny a teen's abortion partly because of her GPA. Hosts: Ana Kasparian https://twitter.com/anakasparian ***  The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET.  Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA 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. Welcome to the Young Turks. I'm your host, Anna Kasparian, and we have a fantastic show ahead for you all today. In the second hour, Wozni Lombre from The Ringer, will be joining me to talk about some good news in regard to labor unions, some fun news as well. we're going to lighten the topics a little bit in the second hour. In the first hour, we also have a little bit of good news. A Supreme Court ruling that will shock you for the first

time in a long time, as long as I can remember, the Supreme Court has actually decided to side with workers over employers, and it has to do with a really important topic, retirement. So don't miss the details on that story. I have not seen a lot of reporting on it, but I'm glad that we're going to cover it on the show today. Now, there's a lot to get to, and I want to get started right now. So without further ado, let's get to our first story. Republican Senator Ron Johnson made it very clear that he does not believe that women should get any help with child care in order to be able to go back to work. So on one hand, this man thinks everyone needs to get off their lazy asses and get back to the workplace. There's a labor

shortage, it's unacceptable. But when it comes to mothers who don't have up to $18,000 a year to spend on child care, he wants to offer zero help. And of course, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that Senator Ron Johnson is not in favor of reproductive rights. He is anti-choice for women. And so he wants to force women who get pregnant to bring that pregnancy to term. He wants to provide absolutely no support for women, especially if they can't afford child care and want to go back to work. This is Republican 101. Welcome to America. Now, his latest statements were made on WKBT. This is a local platform over in Wisconsin. And here's what he said. People decide to have families. He said this. People decide to have families and become parents. That's something they

need to consider when they make that choice, I've never really felt it was society's responsibility to take care of other people's children. Oh, that's fascinating. That's fascinating. So when it's convenient for Senator Ron Johnson to make a statement about choice, he'll make it. But when push comes to shove and when it comes to earning brownie points with evangelical voters, he'll definitely tell them, no, no, no, I'm anti-choice. I want to force women to bring to term pregnancies that they don't want. I mean, it's hilarious to hear him talk about choice. Now, when discussing the impact of repealing Roe v. Wade, that's essentially the Supreme Court ruling, of course, that made abortion legal in the country, he said that in regard to it being repealed, I don't

view that as a huge threat to women's health, I think, I think things would be just fine. Would they? Would they be just fine? So I just want to understand something. What would happen if women don't have child care, need to go to work, have no support for their children? Do they just leave the kids alone at home? Is that what he's advocating for? Now, if you think that's where he stopped in regard to reproductive rights, he's actually put some action behind his words. Last year, for instance, Johnson co-sponsored the Pain Capable Unborn Child Act, which would ban abortions happening 20 weeks after fertilization. And look, some people might think, well, that seems reasonable. 20 weeks is a long time. Banning abortions after 20 weeks doesn't seem like a big

deal. I disagree with that point. Mostly because it is, of course, a sense. slippery slope. People hate slippery slope arguments, except for the fact that this is a perfect example of one. Let's go to the next graphic where Johnson joined 43 of his Senate Republican colleagues and signed on to an amicus brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that urged the court to uphold Mississippi's law that banned abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. They want to outlaw abortion. Let's just be abundantly clear about it. So he is claiming that women have a choice to have children and they should make that choice in the most educated way possible, thinking about the future ramifications of it, while we're living in an environment where various

states, especially red states, are rolling back reproductive rights essentially forcing women, the most vulnerable, economically vulnerable women, to have children. them to have children, provide absolutely no support, and then point your finger at them and call them absolute bums because they didn't go back to the workplace. Republican 101. Listen, we have a lot of critique and criticism for the Democratic Party on this show, mostly because Democrats are now captured by the same corporate interests that the Republican Party has long been captured by.

But make no mistake about it. The Republican Party is full of garbage, and this is a perfect example of. of it. Force women to bring to term a pregnancy they don't want and then abandon them and their children. What are women supposed to do? You want them back in the workplace, either pay up or shut up, either offer the support necessary so families can thrive in this country or shut your mouth about family values. I'm so sick of Republican men talking about how important unborn babies are, how much

they care about those embryos and zygotes. So, so much. Now, fact of the matter is they don't care about them at all because we have children starving in this country. We have children suffering in this country. We have parents who desperately need support so they can ensure that their children live well and thrive. But these are the Republicans. This is the party that always turns their back on them. Always. It's just absolutely sick. Now, um, I also want to just quickly note that, you know, Johnson is touching on something that continues to be a huge problem in the United States, especially when you compare the United States to other developed countries.

Other developed countries have a more robust support system, a robust social safety net in place to ensure that children grow up healthy, that parents have the support that they need. In the United States, we rely heavily on the market to determine the cost of childcare, which which is a complete and utter disaster. It actually ends up being incredibly expensive, inefficient, and the people who decide to work as childcare workers are really underpaid. And I'll give you the evidence for that in just a second. But before we get to it, how exactly, how bad is it?

How much does childcare cost in the United States? Center-based childcare costs have actually spiked 41% according to a report from LendingTree, which analyzed data from a September 2020 report from the Center for American Progress and Child Care Aware of America. That's $14,117 compared to $9,97 before the pandemic. Now why is that? Why has childcare costs just spiked in such extreme ways? Well, it has a lot to do with what the pandemic did to the workforce, and also more importantly,

little child care workers were paid even before the pandemic. So this video will explain that all in a little more detail. Let's watch. The child care industry lost 350,000 workers at the beginning of the pandemic, about a third of the workforce. Now, 115,000 of those workers still have not returned. What's the hardest part of your job right now? Lack of staffing. It's hard to get good quality teachers, simply because we can't pay them what they're worth. With COVID, they are risking their lives. Not everyone can do this job because you have to have 100% patience with these children because their behavior is not their fault.

Working at a child care like this requires specialized training. But the national average pay is just $12 an hour, less than what McDonald's and Amazon distribution centers pay. Polly can't pay her staff more unless she raises tuition. This creates a vicious cycle as workers across all industries are slow to return after pandemic shutdowns. Most of our workforce is built upon working parents. If they don't have child care, they can't work.

If they don't have child care, they can't work. But Republicans like Ron Johnson have been smearing women, workers who haven't been able to go back to the workplace as a result of not being able to afford child care. Now, he leaves out that second part. They just love to smear Americans as lazy. They love to smear Americans as people who are sitting around looking for a government check. But when you live in a society that relies on the market for everything, when you live in a society where the government has no problem taxing you, in fact, taxing you more than they do wealthy individuals and corporations, and then abandoning you and not offering any type of support, this is what happens, you get a worker shortage.

So I'm really sick of them crying about it while simultaneously offering zero support. If these poor poor corporations and companies are suffering from a labor shortage, maybe they should pay up or shut up. But they're not willing to do that, right? Now, there was a time in this country under FDR during World War II where the government actually had a program, a model that was working really, really well. Men were drafted, they had to go fight in World War II, and the women had to go work in the factories, you know, the companies still needed workers, and since men had to go fight

the war, women left the home and went off to factories and did jobs that typically men were doing. And so what happened to all the children who needed childcare? The federal government stepped in and offered incredibly affordable quality child care. It's actually been done in this country before and it's been done well. Maybe we need to rethink allowing everything to be determined by markets because guess what? Markets not so efficient sometimes. Anyway, speaking of markets, let's talk a little bit about how Ben Shapiro was right about something. I actually agreed with him on something, and it's related to the economy. So, conservative Ben Shapiro actually said something I agree with, and it has to do with the economy. But before we get to that,

I think it's important to break down the context in this story and understand what's currently happening in the U.S. economy and in the markets. So if you are in every, any way invested in the markets, you'll probably notice that there's some volatility happening. The markets are down. And what's causing that? Well, it has a lot to do with the Federal Reserve and a recent announcement by Jerome Powell. It has a lot to do with the interest rates associated with loans. So let me give you those details. The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates on borrowing pretty low for a very long time. Part of the reason why they've done this is to stimulate the economy, especially during the pandemic, the thinking was, well, let's make lending cheaper.

It'll provide more liquidity to private equity firms and to big banks. And the thinking was that that money would kind of trickle down to the ordinary American. Now, of course, it didn't trickle down. I've talked about this a million times before. And what it really led to was inflation for various assets, whether we're talking about the value of shares in the stock market, or more importantly, if you ask me, what we've seen in the housing market. Private equity firms have decided to take advantage of that cheap money. They borrow. And what do they do with the money? They just invest in real estate. They literally buy up entire neighborhoods and turn those single family homes into rentals, just so they can become the latest slumlords. We've gotten into that

story many times before. Now, Jerome Powell, head of the Federal Reserve, signaled that he and his colleagues are likely to begin raising rates in March. Raising interest rates would not solve the supply chain woes, which also are leading to inflation, but is intended to tamp down consumer demand. So the thinking is, if you limit the money available by increasing the interest rates associated with borrowing that money, well, it'll help lower what we're seeing in terms of inflation. The Fed is expected to gradually begin shrinking its portfolio of government debt and mortgage-backed securities later this year as well. Doing so is another way to fight inflation by pushing up long-term borrowing costs across the economy. Now again, low interest

rates has really mostly benefited people at the very top. Of course, banks and private equity firms are going to take that money and find a way to invest it in order to get the highest possible return on that investment. And real estate has been a huge part of that. That's why, even though we've seen economic pain and suffering for a lot of people during the pandemic, didn't really, wasn't really reflected in the housing market. We saw this insane inflation in single family homes. Now, Ben Shapiro, of all people, talked about this.

This was a few months ago. I just came across the video recently. But what he says here is so accurate, it blows my mind. So let's watch. You're seeing people get ticked off at corporations for doing what exactly it is that they do, which is they see a cheap debt instrument available to them. And they immediately start taking out loans and then buying up hard assets. Now, there are people get angry at the corporations for this.

You're getting angry at the wrong people. I may not like it either. But the point is that unless you stop the federal, reserve from pumping money into the system, corporations are going to take cheap loans, and then they are going to use those loans to arbitrage. They're going to take the loans at zero percent, and then they're either going to lend it out at three percent or they're going to go buy hard assets they think are going to appreciate at three percent or more over the course of the next 50 years.

He's right about that. Now, he made that argument with, there was a preface there that I didn't include in the video. He said, you shouldn't be mad at Black Rock. And his argument is, you know, and he said it in the video. You shouldn't be mad at corporations for doing what corporations do. I actually really appreciated that admission from Ben Shapiro because that admission makes it abundantly clear that corporations have one thing and one thing only in mind, maximize profits. So in this case, they took the cheap money from the Fed and they invested it in a way that would have the highest returns, buy up single family homes, turn them into rentals, and ensure that the insanely limited inventory for housing, in this country is limited further by this behavior.

But as Ben Shapiro says, corporations are going to do what corporations do. That's how the system works, right? And again, I appreciate that admission. But the second part of that, which is also accurate, is that the Federal Reserve just kept pumping money into the economy and corporations did with it what they're going to do, invest in these hard assets like real estate, and that drives up the price. So now with the Federal Reserve announcing that they are going to slowly but surely increase the interest rate associated with borrowing, the markets have noticeably shown some changes. So let's take a quick look at the S&P 500. This is over the last month. You can see that pretty significant dip in the markets.

And it's because that cheap money ain't going to be as easy to come by. And they not only use that money to invest in real estate, what do corporations also invest in when they get access to cheap money? Oh yeah, that's right, stock buybacks. So the market is reflecting the fact that, oh, damn, looks like corporations aren't going to be able to do the corporate stock buybacks, especially to the extent that they've been doing it during the pandemic, during the pandemic. So let's take a look at some of these graphics. So at nearly 850 billion total buyback volume for 2021 would exceed the record $806 billion seen in 2018. So we've talked about corporate stock buybacks before, but let me just remind you all what that is. It's when companies, executives for any given corporation decide to take money and buy shares of their own stock

to artificially inflate the value of the stock. Now, when we think about how the economy works, oftentimes we think about it in the form of supply and demand, right? There are consumers, consumers like a product, they buy the product, that makes the company successful. You see the share values increase as a result of that consumer activity. But what the Federal Reserve has done is essentially allowed these corporations to cut the consumers out of the equation.

Who cares about the consumers? we can just take the cheap money from the Federal Reserve and pump up the value of our stocks. And that's what they're doing. Pup up the volume. That's what they're doing all the time. It was certainly happening prior to the pandemic, but it accelerated during the pandemic, thanks to the Federal Reserve under the leadership of Jerome Powell, who has been reappointed by Joe Biden.

Remember, Jerome Powell was the Fed chair under the Trump administration. But as we know, Biden seems to really favor a lot of the behavior of the Trump administration. He's continuing on with the same immigration policy, refusing to accept asylum seekers at the border, noting that the pandemic is the reason why. And he's bringing in the same goons who made awful decisions at the Federal Reserve. So let's take a look at the S&P 500 stock buybacks, okay, just how much they have accelerated over the last two years. So if you look at the quarter one of 2020, you have a hundred. $299 billion in stock buybacks, quarter to, not as many, not as much, I should say. That was when the economy certainly took a hit as a result of the pandemic.

But once you get to the fourth quarter of 2021, $238 billion in corporate stock buybacks. The bulk of buybacks are concentrated, by the way, in a small group of companies. The top five accounted for almost 30% of the buybacks in the third quarter. Four of the five are, oh, wow, technology companies, who would have seen that coming? Apple spent $20.4 billion, for instance, on stock buybacks. Then you have meta platforms, it's Facebook, $15 billion, alphabet, $12.6 billion, Bank of America, $9.9 billion, Oracle, $8.8 billion. And again, emboldened by cheap money. And by the way, when you take a look at what happened during the Great Depression, what was

happening is people were borrowing money to invest in the stock market. And then when the stock market crashed, people were in trouble. So I'm just curious, how over leveraged are these companies? And if they're over leveraged and all of a sudden they're in trouble, are they going to ask the federal government for help? Are they going to ask for a buyback? My guess is they will. And considering the fact that our government is completely captured by corporate interests,

they'll give them the buyback. They'll give them the bailout. We've seen it happen before. Why wouldn't they do it again? Who's going to stop them? Unorganized people who have absolutely no power? Just something to keep in mind when we're considering strategies and ways to actually hold our government accountable. We can keep electing people that we think are going to help us out.

But I'm kind of tired at this point of being disappointed. We need to have a robust, well-organized outside strategy. All right, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, we have a fantastic interview for you. And it has to do with the treatment of ethnic Muslims in China and what we're seeing in terms of the denialism in response to what China's doing. It's a huge story here to break it down with me is Alexander, Alexander Ross Reed. He's a researcher on this issue and you do not want to miss this interview. So come right back.

We'll get to that and more. Welcome back to TYT, Anna Casparian with you. And now we're about to have an excellent interview. Lately, there has been pushback against the notion that China. is committing human rights abuses toward ethnic Muslims, particularly Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province. And I've been curious as to why there seems to be this orchestrated effort to deny the human rights abuses.

Now, well, on one hand, it's certainly true that nefarious figures like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will cite these human rights abuses to escalate war rhetoric toward China. It's also true that the human rights abuses are happening. You can acknowledge that without advocating for war with China. An interesting piece written in New Lines magazine actually tracks the financial part of this story, the money behind some of the denialism that you may have come across. The piece is titled The Big Business of Uyghur Genocide Denial. A New Line's investigation reveals a network of charities funneling millions into left-wing

platforms that take Beijing's side on the genocide allegations, and they're all connected to an American tech magnate. Now, in the piece, the writers note that over the past five years, almost $65 million has filtered through various entities connected with people who have defended the Chinese government and downplayed or denied documented human rights violations committed by Beijing against Uyghur and Turkic Muslim minorities. And there is a specific figure who cited in this piece. The funding has moved through a complex series of mostly tax deductible investments or investment funds and charities all linked by virtue of their governance structures to one man, the 67-year-old American tech magnate, Neville Roy Singham.

Here to talk to me about this story is one of the writers of the piece. Alexander Reed Ross, he is a PhD, he's a senior fellow at the center for analysis of the radical right and senior data analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute. Alexander, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks very much for having me. So there's a lot in this piece, and I want to get to as much of it as possible. Starting with what I would argue is, you know, an important piece of context before we, you know, get into the details. You know, it's referred to as the Uyghur genocide. What evidence is there that this genocide is in fact happening?

And why is it being referred to, more importantly, as a genocide? There's a ton of evidence coming from official sources from the Chinese yearbooks, coming from satellite imagery, and from witness testimony. We've seen on the ground footage of these detention facilities, the guard towers, and so we understand the extent to which Uyghur birth rates have been halved over just two years and how a million, over a million people have, Uighur people have been moved over, arrested and placed in these detention facilities. their children have been removed to state facilities where their cultural practices and religious identity are suppressed. So yes, as a people, they are in a sense being destroyed. The New York Times also published a pretty big expose leaking 403 pages of internal Chinese state documents. And it outlines the forced sterilizations of Uyghur Muslims and

And more. So there is quite a bit of documentation about this. And so it was kind of puzzling to me why some people who identify on the left were all of a sudden denying that all of this was happening. So you went into the potential financial motives and the funding behind some of this. And let's start off with the main individual that you cite Neville Roy Singham. Who is he? And what's the motivation here? Neville Roy Singham is a sort of interesting character. He comes from left-wing activist scenes, but he went into tech in the 90s, created his own sort of ideology called Agile, and started to work with big Chinese tech companies like Huawei in 2001 to 2008. So he was kind of ingrained into a security complex there and worked with the Chinese communist parties, essentially a number one tech company. And from there, he has established this echo chamber for disinformation. And why would he do that? Is it because of his ties to Huawei and the Chinese government?

Well, I think that there are a number of reasons. Perhaps he is very convinced that the United States is an imperialist power that can only be sort of circumvented or dismantled through working with what they call a multipolar world of authoritarian governments that seek to establish their own financial and political hegemony throughout the world. and China is doing this through its own capital investments in multinational corporations and mass production infrastructure, which requires this province, Xinjiang, as a sort of a cornerstone. So what he is doing is basically just securing the investments of the Chinese government. And in exchange, he's actually gotten some pretty sweet deals, it appears, with regards to to his own Chinese corporations based in Shanghai. So let's talk a little bit about someone who's actually in a relationship with him.

And that is a co-founder for Code Pink, a women's organization that has also weighed in on all of this. So Jody Evans is who I'm specifically talking about. You write in this piece that she co-founded a pro-China advocacy group. And you also write about how it's funded. It's known as the People's Support Foundation. And you also write about just how much money this group has, capitalized to a tune of $163.7 million. PSF, the People's Support Foundation,

which is registered in the United States as a 501C3 organization that grants its funders tax deductible status for their donations, invest heavily in corporate stocks and securities, and uses its revenue to disperse grants to other like-minded funds and educational projects. An unmistakable bias in favor of the Chinese government runs through the activities of PSF, which has no website. So talk to me a little bit about where all this money came from. How did this organization with no website secure $163.7 million? dollars. So initially the PSF just was capitalized by two corporations it appears. They're very

difficult to trace, but one of them used the same tax accountancy firm as other operations that Singham is behind. So it appears that the money did come from Singham in order to then invest in a lot of corporations and take the capital gains, take the dividends from those investments and sync them into sort of this international network of media and education centers with this pro-China tilt. So they're invested pretty heavily in companies like Caterpillar, Israel chemical corporation, they are, they don't have an ideology about where their money is invested. They're invested in whatever's going to bring in a sort of blue chip guarantee, I suppose. And then they use the dividends to fund various individuals or organizations that have the pro-China tilt.

Can you give me some examples of individuals or organizations they have given money to? So they give money to a pan-Africanist organization that has a news site and was, I believe, embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal back in 2017. And that group shares stories from other media sites that are connected to the same individuals and leaders. They invest in another fund called United Community Fund, which is also invested in the same network echo chamber of genocide deniers. And so this stuff can be traced back to the main individual that we talked about, right? Singham. Where is he getting his money from? Is it just his own personal money?

Is there any evidence that he's receiving money from the Chinese government, which is then being funneled to these various organizations and individuals? Is there any evidence of that? So it looks like Singham sold his corporation that he started in 1993 ThoughtWorks for a substantial amount of money in 2017 at the very beginning of the period where he started spending his millions across this. network. So that is where the whole network really begins. And it appears to coincide exactly with the increase in repression of the Uyghurs. So one of the individuals you write about is VJ Prashad and his involvement with the Tri-Continental Institute. Prashad actually went from acknowledging and condemning the treatment of ethnic Muslims in China to all of a sudden kind of changing his tune. We saw similar behavior by people like Max Blumenthal over at Gray Zone in regard to the

treatment of, you know, the rebels in Syria, which I thought was fascinating. And so I was curious about Vijay Prashad's change of heart on this issue. What did your research find in regard to his change of heart? What motivated that? So you're right there. There was an interesting change of heart around 2018, 2019 after Prashad walks away from his university position at Trinity College and starts this organization called the Tri-Continental. Fascinatingly, just a few months ago, members of the Tri-Continental showed up at a conference in Beijing about Xinjiang in a panel with the editor of the People's Daily, which is the main organ of the Chinese

Communist Party. The entire conference had been put on mutually by the think tank that Prashad is a member of and the Chinese propaganda, the Chinese Communist Party propaganda organ or ministry. So, you know, it does seem like he just increasingly entered closer and closer circles of political influence in the Chinese Communist Party, and his mind changed on the way. So I'm curious if you think, you know, there are financial incentives for people to deny what's happening on the ground in China, or if this is just an attempt. to prevent the United States from escalating toward war with China, which I do think there should be some concern about the U.S. I mean, they have, the U.S. government certainly has a history

of citing human rights abuses as if it cares about human rights abuses to kind of bolster support for various interventions. And, you know, I've heard from some who argue, look, there might be human rights abuses, but we don't want to give the United States the ability to cite this as a reason to invade or to do any type of intervention, how much of this is really motivated by money or how much of it is really motivated by ideology? You get what I'm saying? Absolutely. And it's hard to really parse how much influence $12 million might have on somebody, how much influence $14 million might have on a small info shop based in the garment district or something like that. So to their intentions and motives, the money has to play a pretty important role. But at the same time,

I think that there is a sort of a belief here that if we're dishonest, if we just deflect, if we ignore what's actually happening, then we are fighting an anti-imperialist struggle. And it simply doesn't work that way. So I also want to just quickly ask you about the involvement of the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund and what its purposes, because that philanthropy fund is certainly part of this equation. And it seems like it's being utilized to transfer dark money from, you know, from Singham to these various groups of people. Right. And it's sort of confusing because as we investigated the financial trail here, you know, going down to the nitty gritty of analyzing different signatures, we kind of found that everything was hiding in plain sight in a sense. And so why go through this kind of elaborate Goldman Sachs, philanthropy, fund, dark money kind of route, which has been criticized for disguising the sources of investment. investments and donations, you know, I don't know the answer to that, but it certainly appears that, you know, there's an effort to conceal the sources of funding on an international scale.

And I wanted to just throw up this graphic. It shows it helps you visualize how the funds are being circulated between key organizations. This is the last graphic. And, you know, the years that you guys looked at was 2017 through 2019, the years in which there were financial disclosures available. I'm not sure if we have that graphic. Oh, we don't have it. Okay. Well, everyone should go check out this piece. Again, it's in New Lines Magazine, the big business of Uger Genocide Denial.

And in it, there are some helpful graphics to help you kind of suss out how the money is being transferred, where it's being transferred to. And I thought that it was actually a pretty detailed piece and answered a lot of questions in my mind. Final question for you, Alexander, how should well-meaning people handle these types of stories, right? Because I do think that it's legitimate to have concerns about the United States escalating its war rhetoric toward China. I think, you know, U.S. intervention could be completely disastrous, while also acknowledging human rights abuses. But how do you reconcile those two things, right? How do you acknowledge those human rights abuses while also not really wanting the United States to intervene?

What do you think the possible solution can be in lieu of intervention? Well, yeah, I think that there are things that the international community can do to put pressure on the Chinese government in order to make life better for. the people for for for um turkic muslim minorities in chingang um but like what we can do obviously not a clamor for war or anything like any kind of great power competition or things like that um we need to uphold internationalism and uh universal human rights and recognize you know that oppression is oppression wherever it is. When we fight oppression in one place, then we fight it everywhere. All right. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and explain your reporting

with us. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. All right, everyone. We're going to take a brief break. And when we come back, we'll discuss shockingly good news coming out of the Supreme Court. We'll see you then. Welcome back to the show. Let's get to our next story. I promise you good news and I will deliver it. Okay? This is a fantastic news coming out of the Supreme Court.

In a surprising move, the Uber conservative pro-corporate Supreme Court decided to side with employees over employers. Now, this had to do with retirement accounts and the ability for employees to take legal action against their employers. if the investment funds in the 401ks that are being offered, you know, have some predatory behavior involved. So a unanimous Supreme Court ruling Monday in Hughes versus Northwestern University ensures that Americans will still be able to sue employers and Wall Street banks that bleed dry their retirement accounts, a landmark precedent in protecting the $7.3 trillion dollars Americans hold in 401k accounts. This is important in mitigating some of the damage that's done from switching over from

pensions to 401ks. Because 401Ks, as some of you might know, have various options. And if you pick the wrong funds to invest your money in, you might be fee, you might be dealing with fees that really drain your savings for your retirement. And I'll get to those details in just a second. The 8 to 0 ruling, written by Sonia Sotomayor, found that 401 plan participants could continue to take legal action against employers for including these high fee, high risk investments in their 401k lineup, even if they also include lower fee, lower risk options. Now, keep in mind that the financial industry has been salivating at the thought of being predatory in regard to your retirement. retirement savings, if you're lucky enough to have retirement savings in this country.

Powerful private equity industry titans for years have been aiming to convince 401K plans to include their high fee, high risk offerings. Blackstone Group CEO, Stephen Schwartzman, has said accessing retirees 401k accounts was, quote, one of our dreams. Of course, their dream is to rob you. It's what they do. It's their favorite thing to do. Now, I wanted to add a little more meat to this story to really, you know, ensure that everyone really understands how serious this problem is and how important it is that the Supreme Court did rule in favor of the employees here. Now, it's incredibly complicated and difficult to suss out which fund to invest your money in for your retirement account. In fact, Frontline did a great hour-long piece on this

that I highly recommend that you guys check out. It's available on YouTube. No, this is not a paid plug or anything like that. I'm just giving you guys some good advice if you want to learn more about this. The title is the retirement gamble by Frontline. I'm going to show you a few pieces from that great video that they put together. And this first video kind of explains just how difficult the process is in determining where you invest your money in your 401k account. Let's watch. About 60 million Americans have signed up for their company 401K plan. These are your 401K election forms. As you can see, there are numerous options to choose from.

And remember, this is your retirement. So make your selections carefully. But most people remember their first 401K meeting as dumbfounding. Any questions? I had no idea. I was so confused. I came out of that meeting, and I was like, oh, my God. It was just, it was overwhelming for me the knowledge that you had to have.

in order to invest. The 401 is one of the only products that Americans buy that they don't know the price of it. It's also one of the products that Americans buy that they don't even know its quality. It's one of the products that Americans buy that they don't know its danger. And it's because the industry, the mutual fund industry, have been able to protect themselves against regulation that would expose the danger and price of their products. So what's been happening is workers have been doing everything that they've been told to do, right? Be a good, responsible worker and ensure that you're putting aside a little bit of money every month into this retirement account.

And the whole idea is that you will build this nest egg and eventually when you retire, you can live off that nest egg. We are dealing with a crisis in the country when it comes to retirement. because retirees do not have enough money to retire on. For instance, as the Daily Poster reports, currently the median 401K balance for Americans 65 and older is just $64,000, $64,548. The amount could be as much as 40% higher if it wasn't for fees paid to Wall Street. And if you don't believe me, check out this next clip, which explains just how terrible those fees are and the great lengths that the funds go to to ensure that you have no idea what's going on.

I have a 401k, I save in it. It hasn't seemed to go up. It's awful. I kept checking the statement. I'd be like, why does this thing never go up? This is weird. I mean, at stock market I knew was up and down, but I was like, I still should be seeing some returns. Hilton Smith decided to make a research project out of the subject.

He began by looking at the investment options inside his 401K plan. As he dug deeper, he discovered one fund invested in mortgage-backed securities, the kind of security that caused the collapse of the housing market. But that's not what worried him. I was digging into all the different aspects of it, and I kept coming back to fees. So here's the first mention of fees, This X-Ratio right here, why would you think that X-Ratio means fees?

Hilton Smith found over a dozen different kinds of fees, including asset management fees, trading fees, marketing fees, record-keeping fees, and administrative fees. So over your career, the lifetime of your career, those fees, they might seem like a tiny, tiny percentage, But it really adds up, which is why, as the Daily Poster reports, over the lifetime of your career, as you're investing this money, you're losing, like, up to 40% of what you're investing as a result of these Wall Street fees. That's why you have Wall Street salivating over the thought of being able to take advantage of your 401k investing. They're not excited about that to help you. They're excited about that to help themselves. which again is why it's so shocking that the Supreme Court voted this way, unanimously,

eight to zero. It's really good news. It really, really is, especially when you put this all in context. And let me do that for you right now. During the 2020 to 2021 term, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the positions advocated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the powerful big business lobby group, 83% of the time. So make no mistake, rulings like this are super rare.

But when they happen, we should be happy about it, especially when it comes to a really important issue like retirement. Now, if I had my way, pensions would be far more widespread than they are. The switch over to 401Ks has been a complete and utter disaster for retirees. There's no mistake about that. This is a important win, but it doesn't go far enough in reforming a system that really still does put all of the onus and all of the responsibility and all of the risk on you as the worker. All right. So with that said, let's move on to one final story, which blew my mind today because apparently your grades matter if you're looking to get an abortion in many of the states in this. in this country. So a federal circuit judge in Florida tried to deny access to an abortion

for a 17 year old girl citing that her GPA was just too low. Now, I don't know. I mean, I would venture to say that someone's grades or someone's performance in school should have nothing to do with her reproductive rights. But we live in America, so this is what we're dealing with. Now, as you can see, I'm talking about someone who's underage. She's 17 years old. And unfortunately, in many states, if you are underage, you can't get an abortion without your parents knowing about it. But there are certain loopholes. And that's what this 17-year-old girl who goes by Jane Doe was trying to use in an effort to get the abortion. These are known as judicial bypass systems. Okay. So she goes before a judge, tries to make her

case. She got pregnant, unwanted pregnancy, and she wants to get an abortion without her parents knowing about it because her parents would force her to bring that pregnancy to term. Hillsborough County Circuit Court Judge Jared E. Smith focused on the fact that Doe had originally said she made B grades, but her current GPA is 2.0. Clearly a B average would not equate to a 2.0 GPA, Smith wrote. Doe's testimony evinces either a lack of intelligence or credibility, either of which way against a finding of maturity pursuant to the statute. So let me get this straight. First of all, I don't care what her grades are.

I think that's completely irrelevant. Secondly, so she's in the judge's mind too immature to have an abortion, but is somehow mature enough to give birth to a baby. How does that make any sense at all? Now luckily, Jane Doe decided to appeal this decision, okay? And so the 17 year old, known as Jane Doe in court papers, successfully appealed the circuit judges ruling this week. In a two to one ruling in the Florida Second District Court of Appeal, the panel of judges found that Doe was in fact mature enough to earn what's known as a judicial bypass, an arduous legal process that lets minors get a. without involving their parents.

But there was one judge on that panel who dissented. So again, the appeal worked. Luckily, she is going to be able to get the abortion. But there was about one judge who dissented with the appeal court's decision. And here's what Judge John Strangel or Stargill had to say about it. The majority discounts most of the trial court's concerns regarding Doe's credibility and demeanor as a witness, overall intelligence, emotional development and stability, and ability to accept responsibility. Ooh, that was telling, right?

Ability to accept responsibility. Because remember, the anti-abortion crowd is not really a pro-life crowd. Because if they were pro-life crowds, they would be fighting to ensure that children didn't go hungry in this country. They'd be fighting to ensure that children weren't homeless in this country. they'd be furious with the likes of Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema for blocking the buildback better agenda, which actually offered robust support to families so children can be healthy and thrive.

But they don't do any of that. What they're actually obsessed with is punishing women, making sure that they suffer the consequences, take responsibility for having sex without wanting to reproduce. And the wording here by this judge really reminds me of that ideology. But let me continue. The trial court is in a unique position to determine the credibility and demeanor of the witness. How stupid is all of this? I don't care about her credibility.

I don't care about her grades. I don't care about how I do actually care a little bit about how mature she is. I don't want an immature person to be forced to bring life into this world. And they have such a flippant attitude in regard to giving children away for adoption. Because what they're arguing here is, well, I mean, she's not mature enough to have an abortion because she maybe doesn't understand the consequences of having an abortion. You know, maybe she'll regret it. I'll tell you what the consequences of having an abortion are. The consequences are great relief.

I'm sure that there are some women who regret it. But this is a person who has gone to extreme lengths to go before judges and ask, please help me. I need to get an abortion. My parents would force me to have this baby that I don't want. It's just, it's, and they're like, no, I mean, she's not mature enough to understand the ramifications, the consequences of having an abortion. But apparently giving her baby away, giving her baby up for adoption, they're not worried about the mental toll that would have to know that she brought life into this world because she was forced to bring a pregnancy to term and that the individual that she brought into

this world is now out there somewhere. Maybe the baby will get adopted, maybe it won't, maybe the family that adopts it is a good family, maybe it's not. I'm sure that mental toll doesn't matter at all for these judges, the two judges who wanted to prevent her from having the abortion in the first place. And by the way, the reasons that have been cited in the past in regard to denying teenage girls abortions in this whole bypass system, judicial bypass system, have been insane. In a review of 40 judicial bypass cases, Mother Jones found that a host of denials for what

the outlet called arbitrary, absurd, or personal reasons, such as three judges who denied petitions because in getting pregnant by accident, the minors had demonstrated that they were too immature to get an abortion. I just don't get it. How are you too immature to get an abortion but mature enough to have a baby? It makes no sense. In one headline making 2013 case, a Nebraska judge ruled that a girl in foster care shouldn't get an abortion because she was financially dependent on her parents.

I, okay, so she's financially dependent on her parents, which means she can't get an abortion as a result and has to have a baby, forced to have a baby, while she doesn't have the financial means necessary to raise the baby. It's all about punishment, guys. It's all about punishment. It's not about being pro-life. It's all about controlling women.

They'll deny it over and over and over again. But actions speak louder than words. The actions I've seen from the so-called pro-life crowd has been to turn their backs on living, breathing children, has been the refusal to wear masks during a pandemic to prevent other people from getting sick and dying from COVID. Those are their actions. Those actions speak louder than just holding up. dorky-ass signs in front of an abortion clinic to shame women as they're going in to get an abortion. Just saying. They love to shame, they love to punish, that's all it is.

End a story. All right, when we come back, Wazni Lombre will be joining us, and we've got lots of great news to share with you, including some updates on what Amazon's up to in terms of propaganda. We've got some labor-related stories, some lighter stories. You don't want to miss it. Come right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.