The Young Turks - No Escape

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Three-My team, three-like-tee, three-like-tee, three-like-te, three-like-te, three-like-te. like two years that I have done a show simultaneously with both Anna Kasparian and Francesca Fiorentini. Okay, go ahead and drop it. I may not be able to do a better drop it intro than Jenk, but I can do a longer one.

Starting point is 00:01:26 Anyway, I'm John and Roll. This is the power panel, everybody. with Anna Kasparian and Furchasekofi how's it going both of you? Pretty good. This is a, this is the kind of panel I can get behind. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, I know, I did kind of want to be in person, not going to lie, but I'm glad that if I'm at home, then both of you are at home as well. That's basically how it worked out. I'm only going to ask you this because now it's public and there might be more pressure on you. The next time you have a chance to do it in person power panel, you're going to do it? You're going to make the drive? I mean, look, we're working on the drone technology to just sort of like, you know,

Starting point is 00:02:06 stork me over like a, you know, there's a lot of traffic in L.A. Anyway, okay, well, we'll continue to work on that plan and the technology necessary to make it happen. But I am very glad to be doing the show with both of you. And it's, it's a pretty big show. We've got some I think fairly meaty topics to jump into. One in particular, I think I'm going to predict a little bit of Anna fire and salt in that one. I think that'll be coming. So you should all enjoy that. And then of course we've got an awesome second hour as well. We're going to give you the full preview on it as we go. But that said, if you wouldn't mind hit the like button sharing the stream, that'd be nice. Come on, try it out. You might like it.

Starting point is 00:02:45 And with all that said, you guys ready to talk about some news? Let's do it. Okay, it's not good. Later we've got some good news. We're going to start with this instead. Earlier this morning, it was announced that a bridge had collapsed in Pittsburgh. And I'm sure by now you've probably seen the photos. It is absolutely horrendous to see. Five vehicles and a Port Authority bus for Allegheny County were both on the overpass when it collapsed in a frick park below the bridge at around 6.40 a.m. That bridge was last inspected in September, according to Mayor Ed Ganey. And we know previously, as we'll show the evidence for, that it was in horrendous condition at that point,

Starting point is 00:03:26 perhaps they were planning some sort of renovations. But despite the fact that it was inspected several months ago, that didn't happen. And we came very close to people losing their lives. Thankfully, at this point, so far it doesn't seem to have been the case. Although 10 people did suffer minor injuries and four people were taken to area hospitals, it doesn't believe that any of their injuries at that point are life threatening. But vehicles, were destroyed, rubble rain down, gas lines were ruptured. And so sort of a big issue. For just one second, let's jump to this photo because this is a tweet from back in 2018. So several years prior to that inspection that was just alluded to, Dr. Kachanski here showed a photo from

Starting point is 00:04:08 underneath that bridge. And you can see a huge amount of rust as well as looks like steel beams that have fully rusted through. They're literally not connected anymore. Now, Dr. Kachanski acknowledges that there are some cables, but evidently those can only save you for so long. So look, this is terrifying. I know everybody is going to spend the next couple of days at least being worried about every bridge. They drive over every tunnel they go through. But Anna, I want to start with you. What was your reaction when you saw this this morning? Well, I mean, my reaction was of course first shock and just complete worry that people had died or were close to dying as a result of this.

Starting point is 00:04:50 And as you mentioned, luckily so far, there are no fatalities. Hopefully it stays that way. But it also, of course, made me think about the number of bridges that have collapsed in like the past few years that barely got any media attention. This is a common occurrence in the country. It's not usually a bridge as large or important as this one. And I say that because it's one of the main bridges that's used a favorite path to get to downtown Pittsburgh. So this isn't some small rinky dink bridge. It's a bridge that's utilized

Starting point is 00:05:25 quite a bit to get people to downtown Pittsburgh. And I just think about the fact that this is such a common occurrence in smaller instances. And yeah, infrastructure is really, really important, which is why it was important for the Biden administration to focus on an infrastructure bill. I hate the way that it was paired down with all sorts of pro corporate goodies in there. including privatizing public infrastructure, but when you really look at some of the main infrastructure that's in place in this country right now, most of it dates back to the FDR era expansion in our economy. That's terrifying, you know, and the fact that there's like a lack of real oversight in inspecting the bridges, inspecting the infrastructure to ensure that people remain safe,

Starting point is 00:06:12 that's also incredibly worrying as well. I mean, you just see this deterioration in our institutions all around. And this is a good example of it. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I was just going to say that I think that, you know, as someone who was very critical of only passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill, I think we see that even that was vitally necessary and important. And there is other, there are other goodies and good things in that bill, something like $90 billion for public transportation. So let's be honest, given the state of things the United States, that was a good bill. That being said, we need so much more. But this is, you know, we're the supposedly the world's superpower. We got all the things, all the money. We've got drive the best

Starting point is 00:07:03 cars and the most amazing access to consumer goods. And our bridges are collapsing. Like, we don't need China to beat us. We're beating our own asses ourselves very, very easily. And you see it here. And also at the same time, Pittsburgh as city after city, we roll out tax breaks for corporations. Please, please, please, come give us jobs. Come give us jobs. Meanwhile, bridges are collapsing. What is being done with all those tax breaks? When we roll out the red carpet, you can't even take care of people. So it raises eyebrows. And it also means that we did a good thing in terms of actually even Republicans got on board with that infrastructure bill. Yeah. Yeah, and at the same time, though, we can acknowledge that in theory, you could have passed some version of that bipartisan infrastructure bill giving money to things like bridge maintenance without also needlessly privatizing tons of our national infrastructure. So like we were forced to accept that because that's apparently the best the Democrats can do when they've unified control of government. That doesn't mean that even that was absent some issues. And, you know, thankfully in this case, specifically in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, there was. in theory, money that could have averted this issue if it had been passed earlier.

Starting point is 00:08:15 Biden was going to visit Pittsburgh today. So amazing timing there. The cosmos is really working overtime. And he was going to talk about the fact that there was $1.6 billion from the federal government specifically to improve Pennsylvania's bridges. So I would allocate a bit of that to the replacement post-haste if you could. But it's the amazing thing where like that That bridge in that specific bridge was constructed in 1970. So it's existed for longer than the vast majority of the people watching this have been alive. And finally money was given out to stop bridges like that and others from collapsing. It eventually happened. It took four years of a joke about infrastructure week during Trump.

Starting point is 00:09:00 And then finally after a year of debate, we got it done. Meanwhile, as we'll talk about later, you know, like Russia goes on the border with Ukraine. we're like throwing hundreds of millions of dollars. And we did allocate money to the bridges, but there's still tons of other problems, tons of money that could have been allocated to. For instance, making our infrastructure more resilient against the threat of climate change. So maybe the bridges will be improved, but like what about when the ocean's rising? Like can we get Putin to station some tanks off the coast of Florida? Maybe then the money can go there and we can start to put up some levees and things.

Starting point is 00:09:34 I mean, what I've learned especially in this past week is even if an imminent threat doesn't exist, just keep repeating that it does exist and talk about immediately shame anyone who denies that it exists. And that's it. And just keep moving forward. And maybe who knows, maybe the funding will be there. Maybe that's what we need to do. Just continue repeating things. But in this case, we're talking about infrastructure that's really vulnerable, right? I mean, we're seeing it happen in real time. And to your point, John, about how quickly Congress is willing to allocate funding for weapons in Ukraine, it shows you exactly who the real players are in our political system, who actually gets to say who's prioritized or what's prioritized. And it always goes back to corporate interests,

Starting point is 00:10:25 right? When it comes to funding weapons manufacturers or private military contractors, That's always going to take a priority as long as we have this system of legalized bribery in place. You know, all of those defense contractors spend so much money on lobbying. And they're not doing it out of the kindness of their own hearts. They're not doing it because they genuinely think that it's their way of practicing speech in our democratic system. They're doing it to buy off politicians. So they get massive contracts later. And we're seeing that play out right now. Who's advocating for or spending hundreds of millions of dollars each election season to improve our nation's infrastructure. No one. Yeah. Yeah, I will just add, you know,

Starting point is 00:11:09 we should we should dream about another, you know, federal works project. You know, we should dream about that Green New Deal. We should dream about the climate core, you know, that is embedded in the Build Back Better Act. And we should know that one day we can hopefully turn away from just corporate power, just turn away from, you know, being at the behest of whichever corporation wants to give us some jobs in exchange for giant tax breaks and you know these no bid contracts that are only making us less safe where someone's got to get rich what if nobody got rich what if we all just got better bridges so i do think that that's a worthy goal it's important for us to sort of understand what we're fighting for and my god getting back to some fdr policies putting people to

Starting point is 00:11:48 work giving them good good jobs union jobs to build climate resilience let's do it yeah Sorry, Anna, you were going to say something? Yeah, I just wanted to say one final thing. I decided to hold my nose and listen to Biden's speech today. And it was actually a really good speech, I have to say. I'm very critical of Biden, but he very clearly understands where Americans are focusing their attention right now, especially when it comes to, you know, yes, the infrastructure. But he talked about semiconductors and how there's a factory opening up in Pennsylvania that

Starting point is 00:12:25 will manufacture semiconductors, which of course, there's a huge shortage of. It's another supply chain issue. And he focused on how much workers are going to make in those new jobs producing the semiconductors. And we're talking about six figures. He said the average is somewhere in the six figures range, right? Which is good money. I'm curious, like, what's the median? Yeah, I was to say average. Right. But nonetheless, I mean, I love the idea of focusing on manufacturing products here within our country. This is not a nationalistic thing. This is about, you know, really bolstering our preparedness for things that we're experiencing right now, right? Like we were not prepared for the pandemic because of the fact that we're so reliant

Starting point is 00:13:10 on this global supply chain, which of course is much more vulnerable than we had realized. Yeah. Yeah, I will close by saying and bear in mind before I give you these stats, mostly to buttress an earlier point that Anna was saying. This is coming from effectively a trade group, a trade lobbying group. But according to this group, the United States has about 230,000 bridges collectively stretching 6,300 miles that need to either be replaced or undergo major repairs. That is effectively, if you were to put them end to end, I believe it's from about Los Angeles to Atlanta in bridges that need to be renovated. 46,000 bridges were deemed structurally deficient, the worst rating. And that group estimates the cost of the job to

Starting point is 00:13:57 replace all these at $164 billion, which obviously renovating tens of thousands of bridges is an incredible task. But that's not an incredible price tag in comparison to what we'll spend blowing up the bridges in other countries in the next year or so. I think we could manage it and imagine to renovate that many bridges, how many people would you put to work for a couple of years. Be pretty amazing, maybe some positive economic results from that. Any final comments from either of you before we jump to our break? No, let's do it. Okay, you were very concise. Okay, we're gonna go to our first break. When we come back, we have a lot more to talk about, including a little bit of good news, not necessarily something we can attribute to

Starting point is 00:14:37 the Democrats in charge, but it's good news all the same, so we'll take what we can get. We'll have that for you after this. Welcome back to the power panel, everyone with me and with Anna and with Francesca. No jank here, we banished him for the day. So we have a little bit of fun. It's a party on the power panel. Thank you for being here. Thank you. With that said, you know what a party needs? Good policy news. So with that, that's what I bring to the parties that I'm invited to. And it hasn't been recent that I've been invited one. Anyway, let's jump into our next story. We actually have a little bit of good news,

Starting point is 00:15:18 which is admittedly rare. Even more rare is that it's good news involving the environment and that it's good news involving the judiciary. But we've got all of that combined into one. It involves the leasing of land for gas and oil development being snatched back by a judge. So a federal judge just yesterday canceled oil and gas leases of more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, ruling that the Biden administration did not sufficiently take climate change into account when it auctioned the leases late last year. That's a very important detail that you're going to want to focus on, that this was not some lingering thing from back under Trump. This was the Biden administration. There is a slight bit of nuance and complexity to that that we will

Starting point is 00:16:00 return to later on. But first here are the most important details. Judge Rudolph Contreras said in his ruling that the Interior Department, quote, acted arbitrarily and capriciously in excluding foreign consumption from their greenhouse gas emissions, and that it was required to do so under the the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which says the government must consider ecological damage when deciding whether to permit drilling and construction projects. And this lawsuit was in part launched by an environmental organization, so thankfully they did that. It is an amazing, I don't even want to say like a gap in the regulations that you don't have to bear in mind the environmental impact of other countries burning the product of the development

Starting point is 00:16:44 development of this area, that seems like a willful gap in it, in fact, which it seems to me to be. But this had up until this point been the largest single lease sale by the US of this type. Shell, BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil offered $192 million for the rights to drill in about 1.7 million acres in the area. So a lot of area that is at least for now not going to be developed in that way, Although I have a feeling that those groups and the lobbyists they employ are not just going to surrender as a result of what this judge said. Yeah, they're done. They'll just be like, oh, we lost. Oh, bye. Dang, guess we have to transition to renewable energy now. The one thing I'll say about this,

Starting point is 00:17:29 I think it's huge. I think it shows a lot that like a judge, a federal judge says that climate change needs to be taken into consideration, that it exists at all, that it is an economic, a cultural, an environmental risk hazard. It's a risk to our own livelihoods. And I think that's, it's excellent. You know, there's other countries that have designated the environment as having personhood. In our country, we have corporations that are people, not like forests and oceans, but it's a step in that direction. And look, man, I hope Biden, there's a lot to say politically here, but But cancel line five, buddy. That's all I have to say. Cancel line five. You cancel the Keystone

Starting point is 00:18:12 XL pipeline, cancel line five pipeline, which is also a tar sands pipeline coming from Canada. We can keep this going and dunk on Mansion in the meantime. You don't need that dude. You don't need him. Well, he does need that dude. In fact, I think this story shows me exactly why he loves him so much and why he says such complimentary things about Mansion, even though he is effectively killed the social spending build back better bill. The build back better bill was supposed to address climate change, something that Biden claims, like rhetorically claims that, you know, he would want to pass.

Starting point is 00:18:47 He wants to take climate change seriously. But his actions don't really bear that out. And hearing about this land lease for fossil fuel companies really reinforces what, you know, I think a lot of people suspected that Biden didn't really care too much about passing that social spending bill. In fact, didn't really care too much about climate change. And that's why he didn't really fight for it. I mean, there was no fighting. There was no pressure. That was my issue with the Biden administration. There were secret backroom talks and nonstop friendly negotiations with mansion and cinema. But there was no

Starting point is 00:19:27 pressure. There were there was no, hey, play ball with me on this. If not, there will be political consequences, none of that, none of that. And it's because he didn't really care too much about it. And they've moved on. So maybe I'm being a little harsh or unfair, but I think actions speak louder than words, simply saying that he takes the climate emergency seriously doesn't fit. Like, it doesn't really do much for me. I want to see what his actions are. And clearly here, we needed a federal judge to block this land lease. I mean, it's insane. I mean, just to say instead, like, Instead of playing hardball as Anna, you're asking for, and I think a lot of us were asking for, Biden was giving handouts to Mansion was like, okay, we're going to go ahead with some new leases

Starting point is 00:20:14 in the Gulf, and then can I have B, B, B, B, no. And so it was this constant, like, what do you want? You know, and really what was up for grabs was allowing him to continue making money in the fossil fuel industry and being so scared of calling his interests out as so many senators even on the Democratic side have been like very scared of straight up calling mansion out for his ties to the fossil fuel industry as if as if we're not beyond this come on at this point you're either team death or team life when it comes to climate change yeah yeah and that's a sort of position that I think more and more voters would be like they might have been scared 15 years ago about calling someone like that out. They shouldn't be now. But they are. They're

Starting point is 00:21:02 closer friends with those people than they are political allies of ours, unfortunately. In any event, I want to quickly jump ahead to balancing the karmic scales on the environment a bit. Judges giveeth and judges might soon takeeth away because the Supreme Court said this week that it would hear a challenge to the scope of the Clean Water Act, sparking concern from environmentalists that the high court could narrow the law's reach, quote, in ways long sought by developers and home builders. I believe this is in connection to a case that has to do with some family that wanted to build a house somewhere and it ran afoul the regulations. And ever since that was past Republicans have been wanting to kill it because they do not care if your kids are drinking hot poison.

Starting point is 00:21:43 Now that's not the only thing, by the way. The judges are already poised to hear oral arguments next month in cases challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cold fired power plants. So you might soon not have clean water or clean air. Check the dirt near you, maybe clean earth. Other than that, the cleansing power of clean fire is the only thing that will remain for true environmentalists. Yeah, I'm curious how this is gonna play out. The one thing that might be saving us in these Supreme Court cases is the fact that they also have to rely on that water and they also have to breathe that air. And hopefully they can think about the ramifications of handing down yet another pro-corporate

Starting point is 00:22:28 decision. And to be sure this court is very much pro-corporate, with one exception, which we talked about on the show recently, where they sided with employees over employers when it comes to 401 s. But nonetheless, more often than not, they usually just go with what the corporation wants in these various legal battles. But maybe, just maybe, they'll think about how this would negatively affect their own lives and make the right decision. I mean, yeah, they're building that spaceship to Elysium, obviously, as we've discussed before. But no, I just think it's so funny that all these things were passed under Richard Nixon. Nixon, the godfather of like right wing thought, you know, the guy tattooed on the back of,

Starting point is 00:23:15 what's his face is Roger Stone. Thank you. Like, this is his, this is his, this This is Nixon so hot. I mean, you know, when you see that, who definitely run. But yeah, so, you know, I think I want like a Republican to be like, this is our Nixonian legacy, but they won't because again, it's just handouts to more corporations. We're moving backwards, guys.

Starting point is 00:23:39 We have to devolving and we have to consistently argue things that were argued 40 years ago. And Roe v. Wade is no different. So honestly, this week it was cool that just, it was cool. It was great that Justice Breyer decided to retire. It was great that Biden announced that he did want to appoint the first female, black female justice to the bench. But I want to hear him say that he's going to look into expanding the court and that we need to expand the court. There are way too many people in this country to have our face decided by nine elites.

Starting point is 00:24:13 I agree. Yeah, I think the trick for the Biden administration, for all of our mental health, is to keep expectations low. So like I'm I'm just hoping, this isn't even a given yet. I'm just hoping he doesn't bungle the opportunity to replace Justice Breyer. Like that's what I'm thinking about right now, you know. I am worried about that too. The Democrats have done it before. Yeah, yeah, anyway, so I had to ruin it.

Starting point is 00:24:39 It was originally in the rundown as just the good news, but I had to balance it. And by the way, Biden's kind of on the wrong side of even the good news. And he's kind of required to do to a lawsuit, but there's ambiguity anyway. So they're they're probably going to do this environmental assessment of the Gulf of Mexico and maybe end up drilling it anyway. And God only knows that. Thanks to the conservative super majority on the Supreme Court, we might lose the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Has no one read the Lorax growing up? Conservatives pretend they like Dr. Seuss. They don't seem to be familiar with some of the hits really. Yep. Anyway, with that said, let's jump to a very different topic. Very much not good news here. Anyway, as the world waits to see what the hell is going to happen between the US and its allies and all the tension that's building up over Ukraine and Russia, there are some corporations, their CEOs and boards who are already salivating at what this could do for them. We have this January 25 to 26 leaked phone call. It was part of an earnings report with investors. And we have a little bit of what the CEO of Raytheon, Greg Hayes, has to say about this situation is being reported by in these times. And here's a little bit of what was going on that call. Greg Hayes CEO of Raytheon says, we just have to look to last week where

Starting point is 00:25:59 we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities. And of course the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we're going to see some benefit from it. I mean sure some people might die, some, you know, but it's going to be good for our bottom line. Is that awesome? You also have the chairman, president, CEO of Lockheed Martin, another massive defense contractor, Jim Takeda, who said, if you look at the evolving threat level and the approach that some countries are taking, including North Korea, Iran, and some of, through

Starting point is 00:26:34 some of its proxies in Yemen and elsewhere, and especially Russia today, these days and China, there's a renewed great power competition that does include national defense and threats to it. This great power competition, he suggested, bodes more business. business for the company. So they had what, like three months following the pull out from Afghanistan where like, oh, there might have to be a little bit less defense spending and then the US government reassured them all. No, just because there's less wars does not mean there will be less spending. And now we're gearing up for some excuse to keep the spending there. We're very worried about

Starting point is 00:27:10 China. Russia's over there to chaos in the Middle East as always. They're gonna to find a way to spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. Francesco, what are your thoughts? I mean, this is when you go, why do we have President Biden and not President Sanders, for the love of God? And here's why, because Democrats have no vision for real security for this country. They have no vision that is alternative to continuing to prop up the war machine, right? to what end to create blowback in other countries to like destroy alliances to get involved in democratic elections and overturn them like why real security is having a safe bridge to drive over

Starting point is 00:27:55 having clean water to drink having housing having health care having reproductive freedom having education and access to not just access guaranteed education so like and that you know and look the hucks like the GOP is like go into Afghanistan and or Iraq and literally take everything. Leave no spoon, you know, like that's their vision. But the Democrats' vision for war is just a cut below that. It is just as hawkish in so many ways. And obviously there are gradations of that.

Starting point is 00:28:27 But I'll just say it, of course they were doing this behind the scenes. And it's frustrating and it makes us realize, man, if we don't get a new vision soon, we're gonna, we're sleepwalking into another war. Yeah, absolutely. And that sleepwalking is exactly what I've been trying to caution against. And I think there are a lot of well-meaning people who identify as on the left, who unfortunately, I think it's because of the media climate that we've experienced throughout the Trump years. And yes, even during the Biden administration, just the constant, you know,

Starting point is 00:29:01 Russia's the boogeyman, Russia's the boogeyman. And look, a lot of that is true. Vladimir Putin is awful. There's no question about that. He does assassinate journalists, you know, there's no question about that. So it's not like, you know, we want to whitewash or make excuses for or serve as apologists for Putin. However, I think that with any type of foreign policy issue, you can apply the same analysis that you typically do where you look at incentives and disincentives. What are the drivers toward escalating toward war. And also what are the government officials of Ukraine saying? I would argue that they're

Starting point is 00:29:44 far more important since they're the ones who are facing this alleged imminent threat from Russia. And so obviously the incentives really fall on the private defense contractors who are like as John said salivating at the idea of escalating war with Russia. But also I wanted to bring up the fact that Ukrainian officials, including the president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, have said repeatedly, listen, we do see Russia as a threat, but Russia is not an imminent threat, right? In fact, he had a call with Joe Biden just yesterday. I'm going to read a quick excerpt from the CNN article. And it's CNN, it's not like CNN is looking to, you know, do anti-war content. But they write that on the call with the Ukrainian official, which the

Starting point is 00:30:32 the Ukrainian official described as long as, and Frank, Biden warned his Ukrainian counterpart, Zelensky, that a Russian attack may be imminent saying that an invasion was now virtually certain once the ground had frozen later in February. Zolensky, however, restated his position that the threat from Russia remains dangerous, but ambiguous. And it's not certain that an attack will take place, the official said. So like, I don't know, guys. I think that, The intelligence and analysis coming from Ukraine is important here. But I think it's a little questionable that the United States continues moving forward, continues escalating its war rhetoric, despite what Russia is saying is actually happening on the ground.

Starting point is 00:31:18 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, at the same time, though, don't put too much faith in what the politicians of literally any country say Biden, don't trust him. Ukraine, they are much more proximate to the situation. But he also has reasons to want to not panic his population and definitely listen to. This is just a call between this is just a call between Zelensi and he's put out public statements as well saying that he doesn't believe. And definitely, you know, listen to what Russian and diplomats are saying, but they also could take the 100,000 troops away if they really wanted to send a strong signal that they're not going to war. I personally think that the situation is is different than maybe what you're describing, but almost in some ways worse. Like we have been on the

Starting point is 00:32:00 precipice of a lot of wars, and we've had media pushing for a lot of wars just in the past 22 years or so in this country. I don't think that Biden wants a war with Russia. I don't think that most people in his administration, but I definitely think they want effectively a mini cold war centered around Ukraine that can generate an arms race. I think they want the economic, military, industrial complex benefit of a war, but without a hot war with a nuclear armed country that could easily become far worse than anyone could accept. I think that they can keep tensions high and pump hundreds of billions of dollars into these corporations over the course of the next few years under the auspices of like, well, it could happen at any time. But I don't,

Starting point is 00:32:46 I don't think like when they were saying they wanted to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, they wanted to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. They wanted to send in the troops and drop the the bombs. I don't think Biden wants to attack Russian soldiers, but I think there's a lot of people surrounding him that desperately want to sell weapons, especially in the absence of a conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. I mean, yeah, yeah. Just go ahead. Just like regardless of what the intention is, whether it's a hot war or a cold war, it's insanely irresponsible when at the heart, like the motivating factor here is weapon sales. A cold war in, you know, in your analysis, that would just be a boon for the very defense contractors who were getting a lot of money, you know,

Starting point is 00:33:32 taking advantage of that gravy train in Afghanistan. But I also want to note, we've been engaging in an arms race in regard to China as well, right? I mean, we've been selling record weapons to Japan, to India, you know, and I think that the rhetoric in regard to China has a lot to do with selling weapons as well, producing weapons as well. I don't think we're actually going to go to war with China, but I do think that there are financial motives in place that maybe we should reform. Maybe we should really rethink the influence that these corporations have on the foreign policy decisions and even the foreign policy rhetoric that we hear from the federal government. Yeah, I mean, especially when sitting Congress people can trade stock in those very weapons contractors, let us never

Starting point is 00:34:23 forget. I know we got a break, but I guess the one thing I just want to add is that I think the Biden administration when it comes to foreign policy is pretty much a wash except in one area, which I think we can see movement on, and that is around its support for Saudi Arabia. It continues to support Saudi Arabia, even though Congress is super against it. There is a large majority and I think we could see pressure that to me is like a little sliver of hope especially when it comes to their behavior in Yemen and also against American journalists Russia China I don't I'm not holding my breath that's going to get better more bad news what do you know anyway what we're going to do is we're going to mix

Starting point is 00:35:04 it up not with good news but with some fun reactions to your comments as we transition into our social break we'll be right back after this Welcome back everyone to what remains of the show. This is just the first hour. I mean, not just, it's awesome. We've got Anna Kasparian, we've got Francesca, legends, both. But I do want to let you know that after this, we have a second hour. J.R. Jackson is going to be hosting, joined by Aaron, Ryan, and Lance of the Surf, so that's going to be awesome. And it just occurred to me. Sometimes during our sign-off, we're a bit rushed. And I know Francesca, you've got big

Starting point is 00:35:44 stuff coming up soon. Would you like to let people know about that while we have the time? You're so kind. Oh, I host a podcast called The Bituation Room and we're going to do it live in Brooklyn on March 10th with Sam Cedar and council member Tiffany Caban and comedian Matt Lieb. So if you're in the Brooklyn or New York City area, come through. It'll be at the Bell House. You can get tickets on the Bell House's website. Awesome. Sounds good. Okay, but that said, why don't we jump in our final two stories? Important stuff here. The government accountability office, the GAO, has released a report that's been described, I think rightfully so, as scathing in relation to the country's ability to weather things like

Starting point is 00:36:27 pandemics, weather disasters, and bioterrorism attacks. And I'm glad that they have this report because the last couple of years, there hasn't really been anything to let us know that our country is not prepared to weather these things. Anyway, they say that they're designating health and human services leadership and coordination of public health emergencies as a high risk area for the government. That is terrifying, by the way. We're covering this and I'm glad that we are, but how is this not a bigger topic? These are huge calamities that could potentially hit us. And things like pandemics, sure, they only happen constantly, but weather disasters are multiple times a year and we're simply not prepared. Let's give you some more details.

Starting point is 00:37:10 They say longstanding persistent deficiencies at HHS quote have hindered the nation's response to the current COVID-19 pandemic and a variety of past threats. If left unaddressed, these deficiencies will continue to hamper the nation's ability to be prepared for and effectively respond to future threats. And they gave ideas of what some of these shortfalls might include things like managing the medical supply chain, coordinating with federal and state agencies, and providing clear and consistent communication to the public and the healthcare community. And I think the panel can probably agree that all of these have been very clear and constant issues even during the pandemic that we're still weathering. But Anna, what are your thoughts about

Starting point is 00:37:51 this report? My thoughts are it is fine and dandy that the GAO has put out this report. The question is what will be done about it? And I hate to be a downer, but if we need to rely on Congress to allocate the necessary resources for this, nothing will be done. So we will be just as ill prepared for whether emergencies will be just as ill prepared for any type of public health issue or emergencies. It's just, that's the reality that we're dealing with right now. And so we have to think about what we can do as ordinary people to apply pressure to Congress to get them to listen to us, right? That's really what we need to focus on. In addition to being strategic electorally and all of that, because if we just have these reports and we just assume that something

Starting point is 00:38:46 will be done about it, we will be disappointed. And we will continue running into these issues. Yeah. And, you know, Anna, you always say the fish rots from the head down, you know? And this is It's so true in this case with COVID. I mean, what an exposure of the failures of American healthcare and supposedly the best health care in the world, right? And American information and all kinds of things, just any kind of coordination. This is what happens when you allow basically libertarian psychos who only care about their own pocketbooks to run government for 40 years.

Starting point is 00:39:22 Like oopsies, then there's a pandemic, ooh, there's a natural disaster. We might need a government. Hey, that's cool. And sadly, as someone who grew up very, I mean, becoming politicized, so critical of the electoral system, so done with the two parties. And you know, just when you want to throw it all out, as Anna says, we got to put the pressure on because we don't have a choice. Everyone says, I mean, whether it's climate stuff or whether it's the pandemic, you're not going to mobilize the amount of money and personnel that is needed to attack these things, to address. these things without the federal government on board. It's just not going to happen without that money. But I'm glad there's some sort of oversight, at least a little bit of a post-mortem check-in.

Starting point is 00:40:07 You know, what did we do wrong? It's still going. But it is scary to me, like, HHS, the fact that, like, CDC and HHS are so separate, and it seems like HHS has been kind of hamstrung and sideline. And, like, that's where the public health part is. CDC is where the emergency response. And What do we do? How is the, well, the CDC's been screwing up for a long time. Let's be real. They're trying, but they can't do enough because truly this is going to be endemic. We need to make this a public health priority. We need Medicare for all, but we need to address this as a public health crisis. And HHSS needs to be involved. Yeah, yeah, totally. And look, we're I think understandably focusing mainly on the pandemic that we're already in. But let's bear in mind, we've had scares in the past decade with bird flu and swine flu and

Starting point is 00:40:57 those sorts of things. Just because we have COVID, you know, all over America and all throughout the world doesn't mean that other viruses are any less likely to go wild. So bear that in mind, as well as, you know, the issues that we have with natural disasters being exacerbated by climate change and those sorts of things. And my issue is that we cannot afford to be behind, have these sorts of shortfalls that they've identified in literally any way because we know that no matter how prepared HHS or DHS or FEMA or whatever are, they're going to be weighed down by a now established and indisputable lack of willingness to participate on much of the American public's part with these sorts of things. So like for instance, leading senators on both parties

Starting point is 00:41:43 that says release draft legislation this week calling for a close study of the pandemic and an overhaul of HHS capabilities. So they want to see what we did wrong and fix it. Okay, cross your fingers at something like that if they identified a solution could even pass because we're looking at this as, oh my God, HHS and CDC, they might not be prepared. There's like 50 million people that don't want them to be prepared for literally anything. They think that they're staffed entirely by Satanists. So we need to bear that in there cannot be a gap in the capabilities of these organizations. because we know that we're already going to run up against so many issues with getting people to comply even with accurate, well transmitted, easy to follow information.

Starting point is 00:42:26 The supply chain needs to be there because we're already going to have enough trouble getting people to actually use the things if they're made available. Yeah, in fact, just to lend some meat to your argument, which is a good one, in the same one of the articles talking about this GAO report, they comment or they use a quote, coming from Republican Senator Richard Burr. And he just used it as an opportunity to say negative things about our institutions, because he's a Republican lawmaker, doesn't believe in them. So he was talking about how the CDC is a mess, and they're putting out conflicting information and confusing people. But John, if I remember correctly, wasn't Richard Burr, one of those senators who was part of that closed door coronavirus briefing in the very beginning of the pandemic, who then later on went and traded stocks that would be negatively impacted by the pandemic and then

Starting point is 00:43:22 bought stocks that would be helped by the pandemic. And then he went and told Americans that there was nothing to worry about. Yeah. So like for him to be used as a quote in any news article regarding confusing people or spreading misinformation is, it's just rich. It really is. Yeah. No, and that's, I mean, this is the other thing about Biden's handling, of the pandemic that really bothers me, to be honest, is again, the cavalierness with which he has said that he can stop the virus. Well, he can't. Nobody can. It is very, it is, we again, unprecedented was the word on everyone's lips two years ago for a reason. This thing mutates, it changes. So what can we do to mitigate the damage? Of course, the vaccine is part of that.

Starting point is 00:44:08 Of course, that rollout is part of that. But so is hazard pay. So is the ability to heal and stay home. And I know we're going to talk about that a little bit later. So I just wish there was more humility from the federal government and more of a like, all right, we can't just like Bruce Willis our way through this. And, you know, whereas the ones were like, we're going to Donald Trump our way through it, which is like the pandemic called me fat, how dare you. You know, whatever it was. Like, I'm personally offended, you know, you're just a six. And so like, But then the alternative of like Biden's like, well, I'm going to tough it out. It's like, no, no, no, no.

Starting point is 00:44:47 Everyone needs to bow down and we need to solve this. And not on a patchwork level. My God, have you felt any more atomized as a country than watching every state do something a little bit different for a period of three weeks until we change strategies? Yeah. Terrifying. 100%. Okay, we are running low on time. But conveniently, we're also running low on stories. So why don't we mesh those things together?

Starting point is 00:45:15 We'll go with one more topic in this hour. Omicron is seemingly everywhere. Lots of people still getting sick every single day. And the death counts are now up near the height, the heights of where they were during the Delta wave. But despite that, more and more employers are apparently advising their workers, whether publicly or privately, to just ignore it. And if you get sick, just come to work anyway. So we're going to roll through a couple of different examples of this. First of all, a little bit close to home, California Jack in the Box worker has talked about their experience. A pharmacist told Maria Bernal that she probably had COVID-19. When Maria told her boss, the manager told Bernal to keep working, quote, don't worry, everyone has it, you can still work, just wear a mask and don't tell anyone, the manager said. As a person who eats Jack in the box like four or five times a day. I don't think food like people are wearing food can just wear a man. Have you had the breakfast Jack? It is a delight. There's like a special sauce or a special virus to it. I don't know, it's just there's something bewitching about it. In any event, she filed a complaint with the

Starting point is 00:46:26 Sacramento County's public health department alongside other workers there saying that they'd been dissuaded from quarantining, which they've been told by their nation for two years now they should. She also said she doesn't know what the chain's protocols and sick leave benefits for workers who contract the virus as no manager at the company has given her this information, despite being in year two of a pandemic that has never gone away. It's not just them. The UC San Francisco did a poll of service sector workers who worked during the pandemic in the months leading up to this most recent surge. The results showed that two thirds of them did not stay home when they were feeling sick. And we, I mean, we keep being told there's this big labor shortage and we're

Starting point is 00:47:10 we're being told that the pandemic's over and why are you so worried about it? And so some workers are afraid to be fired, afraid to lose shifts and those sorts of things. Others probably don't know exactly what to think. They'll accept what an authority figure at their job tells them to do. The combination is that there's a lot of needless spread of COVID happening in workplaces. Yeah, I'll just say, I mean, this is just more evidence that the system that we're living under, not only has a lack of care or just fails to value workers, fails to value everyone, right? Because we're talking about people who work in the food service industry. If they're sick, they should not come to work. Even if they're, you know, dealing with a minor cold.

Starting point is 00:47:59 That's another thing, by the way, that I've been hearing a lot more lately. And this is more anecdotal than anything else. But just this attitude of, oh yeah, I'm at work, but don't worry. I don't have COVID, I just have a cold. No, go back home. We don't want, we don't want your cold either. Like, that's a bad idea. You should go get some rest, right? But it's just this. And look, I don't blame people for thinking that way because we've been conditioned to be that way, to like, just tough it out and go to work and don't take any of your, you know, time off because there's so much at stake and you could, you know, the managers might notice that you're taking too much time off to recover. That fear is real. And not only does that, you know,

Starting point is 00:48:39 abusive behavior negatively impact workers, but that transfers over to us as well during a pandemic where we're dealing with a very contagious virus. Yeah. Yeah. And it's no wonder that people are quitting their jobs on mass and are like, nope, $15. That's not even going to do it for me, man. Talk to me when it's like 25, bro. Honestly, it's not worth it. They're deciding to not do these jobs anymore. They want to spend time with family. They're understanding what is important to them and being treated like crap from your manager who says, you need to come in anyway, just put on a mask and don't tell anyone. No, that's not going to cut it anymore. And it should not cut it. And again, like, we kind of have like this really messed up relationship to what

Starting point is 00:49:25 Anna was saying of like powering through. Again, it's kind of like the messed up relationship we have around individualism and the pandemic. But we do have that like tough guy, so called tough guy mentality, like, yeah, just like brave it and just snot everywhere. And you could, and that's the American spirit. And then all of our politicians, all of our leaders, that's the American spirit. Going to work, even though you're on death's door, the American spirit. Screw that. We're done with that. Let's leave that in the past. We should be demanding a lot more. It is not worth John getting his breakfast, whatever meal, happy meal and his toy. It's not about the toy.

Starting point is 00:50:05 food. Anyway, yeah, yeah, you already have to tough it out through our health care system, student loan debt, terrible overall education system, the inability to own a home. You have to tough it out through a fatal disease as well. No, that's not, that's not okay. Unfortunately, that is going to be all the time we have for our first hour. Before I say goodbye to our guests, I do want to remind you that the fun is not over. The second hour is coming up very soon. You can join a Jer Jackson, Aaron, Ryan, and Lance of the Surf's. Also want to remind people that coming up next Monday, another special treat, Anna, not only on the power panel today, but on indisputable Dr. Rashad Ritchie next Monday, you can see that at 2.30 p.m. Eastern time.

Starting point is 00:50:48 1130 a.m. Pacific time immediately following my show, the damage report. But Anna, thank you for joining us. It's a rare treat. Thank you. And thank you for promoting that and reminding me that it's happening. It is happening. I'll call you on Monday. And Francesca, long before that even happens, there's going to be a new episode of the Bituation Room, right? Oh, yeah, Sunday, 5-8 Eastern, right during the Rams Niners game, kill me. Good timing.

Starting point is 00:51:16 Anyway, thank you, everybody. Don't go anywhere, though. A lot more coming up right after this. 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 Podcast. at apple.com slash t yt. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.

The Young Turks - No Escape

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