The Young Turks - PA Special Election, Koch Candidate, and Betsy DeVos

Episode Date: March 13, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from March 12, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Hour 1:  Cenk. Dems leading in PA special election. Millions of dollars in outside spending have engulfed Tuesday’s heated special election to fill Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, and 86 percent has benefited the Republican candidate, state Rep. Rick Saccone. Providing a sizeable chunk of the money behind this election’s spending is a very familiar conservative donor family that would like to keep a small-government conservative in the district: the billionaire Koch family. Hour 2:  Cenk & Ana. In a rare interview on Sunday night, DeVos revealed that she still has a poor grasp on these subjects. There were plenty of cringe-inducing moments during the 13-minute 60 Minutes segment, from DeVos opting not to say whether she thinks the number of false accusations of sexual assault is as high as the number of actual assaults, to her declaration that the federal government has “invested billions and billions and billions of dollars from the federal level, and we have seen zero results.” 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. You're about to watch what we call an extended clip of the Young Turks, and the reality is somewhere in the middle. It's a little longer than our YouTube clips, but it's actually shorter than the whole two-hour show, which you can get if you're a member. You can get an ad-free and make sure you catch every new story we do that day. You're going to love it as a full show. That's at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join.

Thanks for watching. All right, welcome the Young Turks. A huge day ahead for you guys on TYT Network. You just watched Dan Rather. And later on, I'm going to have Rebel headquarters or we're going to have Paul Eugene Swarngen on running against Joe Manchin. She's got a lot to talk about in that race. You're going to want to see those updates, including what Manchin and herself

are doing about the striking in West Virginia. And then TYT interviews later tonight. I interviewed Ken Bone. We'll see if he brings his red sweater. That should be interesting. He says that I misrepresented his views a little bit. Well, that's we're going to have him on.

He's going to tell us all about it. It should be fascinating. So that's a little bit later in our programming. For today's show, Donald Trump did a rally in Pennsylvania. I'm not actually as down on it as some other people are, but there were some troubling parts to it. Of course. And I'll share those with you a little bit later in the program.

And you're going to love the portion where Donald Trump tucks tail and runs from the NRA like the coward that he is. So that'll be fun a little bit later. So now let's get started over here. Fun story to start with for you guys. There's a gentleman named Chris Tague. He's in New York. He's running for supervisor and assembly candidate. he's a Republican, so he wants to cut the budget.

He's going to be very tough about that, kind of. He is going to be talking to Don Matheson on WIOX, and this radio interview did not go well. Let's listen in. The current New York State budget is about $149 billion that works out to $7,570 per person. As a comparison, Florida has about the same number of people. They spend $92 billion.

That's $4,500 per person. So, does New York spend too little, too much, or maybe the right amount? I think they spend too much. So where would you cut? They don't spend it in the right places. So what would you cut? Well, there's a lot of different programs, I would say, that need to be looked at. I mean, number one, well, I would say probably in the areas of

Hold on one second, would you? Sure. I'm having one of those moments. Wow. You know who's fist pumping right now? Rick Perry, like, Yes. That guy was worse than me.

We finally found the guy. Rick Perry's going around town going, about my friend Tague over here. Look, dude, you claim that the budget is bloated. You're running on that. That's your whole thing. Oh, my God, there's some bitch Democrats and liberals overspending. Okay, name one thing.

One thing that they're overspending on. This is not a hostile interview. The guy's going to try to help him in a second. Probably agrees with him. But he's like, any idea? deal what you're running on? So it's not an obscure issue. This is not, hey, what did you think about the minutia of one particular tax bill? It's, okay, we're way overspending. Wow, we're way overspending. Anything. Anything. What are we overspending on? Oh, my favorite part was the

breathing. That put them over the top of Rick Perry, nicely done. And dude, you can't come up with a single excuse? Not one? Like, oh, hey, my kids are in the room. Sorry, I got distracted. Okay, what was that again? Let's take a break and come back if you don't mind. I'm sorry about the kids. I don't know. Make something up. He's not going to. The pain continues. Maybe I can help. Some of the biggest areas that the state spends money on are education. They also spend a lot of money for Medicaid. You know what? That's exactly where as far as education goes, I'm a proponent of education. And I'd like to see us, especially in rural upstate New York.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Yep. The question on the table is, where will you cut the budget? Well, I think Medicaid's a good place to start. But you asked me a question about, and also about education. No, I was trying to help you. I was saying those are the big areas. When somebody says they're running for office, my job is to ask them specific questions.

So, okay, you're running for the state assembly. If you get elected, you're saying to me that the state spends too much money. So I would like to know if you get elected, what areas you think the state should spend less money on. And I just told you Medicaid. That's it. Well, that's one of them. Let's talk about guns. mercy that was the host throwing in the towel trying to get him out of that ring so that's the only thing you got we should cut Medicaid by the way that's not popular either and there is a really important point here who cares about Chris Tagan he's running for assembly candidate in New York that's not the point the point is for overall for the Republican Party they're full of it they don't actually have huge areas of the budget to cut

How do I know that on the national level? Well, they told us forever, don't worry, we can do tax cuts for the rich, and then we'll find plenty of places that cut. Well, we'll cut, no problem at all, right? And then it turns out, oh, no, you couldn't. You did the giant tax cuts, and you put a one and a half trillion, not billion, one and a half trillion dollar hole in deficit. Because there aren't that many places to cut. In fact, one of the places they tried to cut was CHIP, which is health insurance for kids. And that polled at 80% popularity.

The program did. So cutting a program that was 80% popular did not play well. And then they had a bargain and they held it hostage until Democrats gave him something in the budget bill, et cetera. And then they pretended they were for trip all along. They're like, children's house insurance. Of course we're for it. We're for it. I mean, you go down the list, even if this knucklehead could name a couple of things.

A go-to move on the national level is, oh, you cut foreign aid. foreigners getting money, right? The number one recipient of foreign aid is Israel. Do you want to cut their aid? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're going to keep Israel's aid. The number two recipient is Egypt because of a peace deal they made with Israel, so we need to give it to Egypt because of Israel. Do you want to cut that aid?

Israel doesn't want us to cut us, so we can't cut that either. So what do you want to cut? Chris Deeg right there was the representation of the Republicans on a macro level, they don't know what to cut. They couldn't possibly cut enough to justify the tax cut they keep giving for the rich. That is why under Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and Donald Trump, deficits always explode. Okay.

All right, no one wants me to imitate that breathing again. So we're moving on. So, now, really interesting election going on in Pennsylvania. It's a special election. They're going to redistrict these districts in Pennsylvania, and so they'll have to do it all over again, and two guys in this race might be interestingly in different districts next time around, which is the 2018 elections. But in this special election, it's important because it's a bellwether.

Trump won this district by about 20 points, so can the Republicans keep it? That shouldn't be a difficult question. I mean, Jesus, you want it by 20. Okay, maybe you win it by 15, but it shouldn't be that close. Well, of course, it is. Now, Trump went to do a rally for Rick Saccone, the Republican candidate in that race. But what was funny is that he said a lot of crazy things that he talked for over an hour, but he hardly mentioned Rick Sacon.

So why? Well, let's go to Axios to find out. Jonathan Swan writing, there's a reason Trump said hardly anything about Republican candidate Rick Sucone during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night that was supposed to promote his candidacy. the reason Trump thinks Sacon is a terrible, quote, weak candidate, according to four sources who've spoken to the president about him. Yeah. You're not losing 20-point leads all across the country, including in places like Oklahoma and Kansas,

because of Rick Saccone. There's another factor involved here, and it might be the president. Now, let's give you a lot more context here. Nate Silver explains that this district voted for Trump by 20 points. points and Romney by 17. The previous Republican incumbent there, Tim Murphy didn't even have a Democratic challenger in 2014 or 2016. That's how a Republican district was.

And Murphy won by 28 points the last time he did back in 2012. So this is not a purple district. This is a deeply red district. Republicans, even terrible candidates like Mitt Romney, win there easily. But that is not the case now. Now we go to the hill. Democratic Connor Lamb, who's obviously running against Saconne, is gaining ground in Pennsylvania as closely watched special election and holds a six-point lead over Republican Saconne according to a poll released a day before the race. Now that's a mammoth poll. It's a little bit of an outlier. And if you take a smaller set of the people that have voted in previous elections, then you get down to a two-point advantage for Lamb. and other polls have it closer.

Most of them have lamb winning. Some still have Sacon holding on to a very narrow margin. But overall, it's at best even. So you've lost 20 points there. At a minimum, if you take the last contested election in that district, for Congress, you've lost 28 points. That is a significant trend, and it's not just about one candidate. But, of course, the Republicans would like to blame it on that. Now, you can say, well, Rick Saconne's not doing good job of raising money.

And that's relatively true. Kana Lam has actually outraised them on a personal level. But that is deeply misleading because Saconne has more money because of independent expenditures, the dark money that is flowing in from people like the Koch brothers. TYT investigates has a good story about that. We'll put the link down below. From that story, let me quote Alex Koch, one of our reporters here. As of March 12th, the top six outside spending groups in the race have all sided with SACONN,

accounting for $10.3 million or 84% of the total independent spending, according to campaign finance data compiled by ProPublica. So most of the outside money is going to Sacon significantly so, and he's got a ton of money. So money isn't the real issue. Anyone who says otherwise is, at best case scenario, not well versed with the facts. Okay. So back to Axios now. John Oswald explains, should Sacon lose, Republicans will be quick to describe his loss as meaningless and will argue it's not a bellwether for November's elections.

They'll say he was a terrible candidate and that his loss should be a wake-up call to other Republican candidates who may be getting lazy about their fundraising. Now, I just explained to you why that is a piss poor excuse. That is just not the reality of the matter. It is not money that is making the difference. It's not Saconne in particular. Otherwise, you wouldn't have massive swings in places like Kentucky, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the list goes on and on.

Deeply red places in Wisconsin flipping. The governor there, Scott Walker, is saying that it is a wake-up call for the Republican Party. But this is a party that is in deep slumber mode. And they refuse to wake up to the real problem, which is Donald Trump. So Sienna interviewed some Sacon supporters here. So they're Republicans. Let's listen in on what one of them thinks about how Trump is helping or not helping in this particular race. I don't necessarily like how the president presents things.

I don't like his persona, so to speak. That's why, while I'm still supporting Saccone, it did cause me to look a little towards Connor Liam. If anything, if I were Sukkone, I'd tell Trump to stay away because he puts his foot in his mouth. You're saying that the president's support of Sacon in his rally for Sacon would make you less inclined to support? Much less inclined. So those are two Republican voters saying they're less inclined to support the Republican. In fact, they're looking at the Democrat now because Trump is supporting Sucon, so they're thinking of fleeing from the scene. So that gives you a sense of what's happening across the country. Finally, we're going to go to

Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report, and their job is to just look at the numbers here and see how things are playing out in terms of politics. And they say, this is a red congressional district that should go for the generic Republican. But the environment today is much worse than, quote, normal for Republicans. That's not because of Sacon or Lamb, but because of Trump. That part is obvious, but of course the president is thin-skinned and would never admit to that. So like the child that he is, of course, he's blaming everyone. himself. So he's ostensibly going to help Sucone there, but all he does is talk about himself

for an hour at that rally and then leaks to the press that it's all the candidates fault and not his. Classic Donald Trump. And one of the many reasons why people have soured on him and why these red districts are now up for grabs and the Democrats look to be in pretty good shape there. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing the Republic or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom.

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

aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time.

Okay. So now, Let's go to one more story about Saccone. That's the one I was telling you about that we broke. God, I love these flies in the studio. All right, anyway. So, for God's sake, for a long time viewers, we've had this issue a lot. There's insanity in the studio.

There isn't. It's just one fly. Okay. Now, TYT investigates has broken a good story or covered a story about the race in Pennsylvania, the special election that's going on. It's Rick Succona versus Connor Lamb. Succona is the Republican in the race. There's a lot of other press talking about how Succona is not doing well in fundraising personally.

Now, what they're missing is the bigger picture about the overall money in the race and the independent expenditures. And that's where Succona is doing excellent. And so we want to show you what the real numbers are and then talk about why Saconne is doing well in that regard. So as Alex Koch reports here, as of March 12th, the top six outside spending groups in the race have all sided with Sacon, accounted for $10.3 million or 84% of the total independent spending according to a campaign finance data compiled by ProPublica. So the outside money is going almost exclusively to Sucon. Why? Well, the incredibly rich companies and people want more tax cuts. They want more deregulation.

And Sucone is their boy, and he will do as instructed. So let's give you more context. Overall, including campaign spending, the race has cost roughly $16 million. For Sucon, outside money has accounted for 94% of total spending in his favor. So does he have popular support in the district? That's how a lot of the right wing, especially national politicians, paint money in the race. Like, well, he's got popular support. No, he doesn't.

It's not from the district. 94% is outside money. They don't care about that district. They care about getting another congressman who will vote for more tax cuts for the rich, more deregulation of their industries. That's why that money is pouring in. By the way, do we have a democracy? $16 million for a house race. This is an auction.

It's not a democracy. So let's look at the people who are participating in this auction and buying this particular candidate. Since late November, Charles Koch. Oh, look at that. His wife Elizabeth, son Chase, and Coke Industries have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to committees involved in the Pennsylvania 18 race. So the Koch brothers in all the different ways that Alex explains are pouring money into this race. And the link to the full article is down below in the description box if you're watching on YouTube or comment section on Facebook. You should always look there for the links to the stories that we talk about.

He lays out all the different ways that the Koch brothers are funneling money into the race. So why? Why do the Koch brothers care so much? Well, you're not going to be surprised. It's the same old story as I've been telling you. The Coke Network pushed hard for the Giac. GOP tax cut bill last year spending $20 million, pressuring lawmakers to give corporations and the richest Americans' enormous tax breaks.

And that was money really well spent. That is why they try to buy politicians like Rick Sucone, because that $20 million is a drop in the bucket from what they made from those tax breaks. They benefit the tune of not millions, but billions of dollars. The Koch family got billions. And that's before the estate tax. We're talking about pass-through income. We're talking about the top rate being lowered, corporate taxes being lowered dramatically,

which is either going to help Coke industries because of the lower corporate tax rate or through their pass-through entities and their own personal taxes. And then you get to the state tax. Billions upon billions of dollars in savings to the Koch brothers. So sprinkling in a couple of percentage points to cheap politicians like Rick Saconne, is actually a good return on investment. Perhaps we shouldn't let them privately finance our elections so that they don't buy all of our politicians.

But in this case, it's not working so well because he's losing the race, even though that is a heavily Republican district. Because all the TV ads they're buying is not working as much anymore, but they keep going to that well. So more on why they might want to purchase Rick Saconne. For the coax and their business interests, Sucon,

is a good bet, Kotch explains. the small government conservative has touted his support for the recent tax cuts and outside groups have bought ads attacking lamb for his opposition to the cuts. And here's what Sacoan told supporters, quote, we had a great tax bill that we just passed. So good pat on the head for Rick. Good job, good job. Keep voting for those tax cuts that are worth overall trillions of dollars for the rich and for multinational corporations. So it's not the only issue they care about. Alex Koch lays out of several different issues they care about, including oil and gas interests, which Coke Industries has a lot of money tied up in those industries.

Sikona is, of course, in favor of more fracking and more fossil fuel energy industries. It's a win-win for Coke. And now one more here. Sikona is surely the better candidate for the Coke, as Koch explains, whose corporate conglagment includes oil and gas drilling, pipeline and chemical businesses. Coke Industries has an abysmal pollution record, having had to pay over $736 million in fines for numerous environmental violations since 2000. The deregulation is not so that America has more freedom.

It's deregulation so the Koch brothers don't have to keep paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines when they pollute. The pollution goes into the air and the water that you and your kids breathe and drink. Well, that's inconvenient for them. They don't want to pay those fines. They want to be able to pollute the rivers in the air without having people bothering them. So what do they do? They get a guy like Rick Succoen says, oh, you want trillions in tax cuts? Can do.

You don't want to protect the environment or people's kids or families can do. No problem, Mr. Coke. What else do you need, Mr. Koch? Oh, you'd like me to end the unions because the unions actually stand up for your workers. They collect them together so they have some sort of leverage over you guys. who have a collective about $85 billion between Charles and David Coke. Well, no problem. Attack the unions, attack the workers, attack the people who are receiving wages from Coke industries.

Whatever the coax wants, Sacon will give to them. That is why they poured in all this money. Luckily, for the moment being at least, it appears that it's not working very well. Tomorrow's election, and if you live in that district, you might want to do something about that. But there is one candidate in the race that is clearly interested in representing one family in particular, and that is Rick Sucone and Coke Industries, the Coke family overall, have to be very pleased about the policy positions of their candidate, though not pleased that people aren't buying what they're selling anymore.

Okay. Now, I've got to take a quick break. When we come back, the Trump rally, was it as bad as people say? I actually have mixed feelings about that and then Trump buckles to the NRA again. What happened? I thought you were a tough guy. We'll pick that apart when we come back. Thanks for listening to this

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whole five segments, two hours. Add free. Do it now. All right, back on a young turks. Look, I can only read a couple of comments here because we've got to go. But thank you guys for writing in. First, Jeremy Fair writes, and although I'm stuck working until 5.45 or 6 p.m. Central, it helps that I can listen to TYT for the last hour of my workday. Hearing the facts makes working at a heavily religious and conservative company more tolerable.

Keep doing what you guys do. Look, I read that because you're not alone. wherever you are, even if you were surrounded by conservatives or religious folks or whoever it might be, you're not alone and we appreciate that you're spending some time with us as well. And share this stream on YouTube and Facebook wherever you're watching so we can spread the word. All right, wicked insane writes in on YouTube super chat.

Trump charisma, if he was a wrestler, would be through the roof, biggest hypocrite ever meeting with our enemies. So now, again, I said on Friday's show, I don't mind him meeting with a North Korean leader. I'm maybe in the minority on that. But you're absolutely right that he's a perfect wrestling angle, except his followers don't realize that they're following a heel. Okay, and then finally, Elliot from YouTube super chat says, Democratic Party is not there for you. It's there to protect the donors from you. So speaking of which, can I see tYT, Kansas.com?

This is Brent Welder's effort to get small dollar donors to match the big donors. And in fact, he is trying to reach $50,000 so he'd hire field team go knock on doors without running expensive TV ads. I love to see that. If we can get to $17.50 by the end of today's programming overall, not the dollar sign, but the number of donations, 1,712. That's about 1,700 more small donors than the incumbent Yoder has, which is amazing. So that would be great. Thank you guys for chipping in. And later in the program, Anna, I don't know if you know this, not in the Young Turks, but on TYT Network today, I'm going to interview Ken Bone. Oh, really?

Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, he says that we misrepresented him. So he's coming on the air. He's got a bone to pick with us, apparently. This is the moustachio gentleman with a red sweater. Indeed, the moustachio gentleman indeed. So that's a little bit later.

Members get to watch all the interviews live. So you get rebel headquarters, then Ken Bone. t-y-tnetwork.com slash join to become a member to watch that life. All right, what's next, Anna? All right. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was interviewed by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes. And among the interview questions, they delved into the issue of school choice, something that Betsy DeVos has received a great number of criticism or critics, something that Betsy DeVos has been

criticized by a great number of people. Now, the interview was a disaster. And even White House, members of the White House spoke out about how they didn't love her performance because she was ill-prepared. But before we get to the heart of the discussion regarding school choice, let's go to the one question and answer portion that I thought was amazing, given the fact that she is the education secretary. Take a look. Have you seen the really bad schools?

Maybe try to figure out what they're doing? I have not, I have not, I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming. Maybe you should. Maybe I should. Yes. Now I might have unintentionally visited those schools. That was an accident, but I mean, I didn't want to intentionally visit any poor people. You know, I'm a billionaire. That would be unbecoming. She's the education secretary, and she goes off about how our public schools are failing and we need to fix them. And her solution is to take taxpayer money out of our public schools and funnel them into either private schools in the form of vouchers or charter schools, which is what the heart of this discussion is about. She thinks that if she says anything with a smile on our face, that it's going to work.

And that's just not how it works on the national spotlight. That might have worked in the, when you were a big donor. And there's a couple of different issues here that I'm going to get to in a little bit as to what her real problems are. And she's surrounded by sick offense, so since she's a billionaire, and she's a huge Republican donor, so everybody's constantly kissing her ass. So when she comes in with that pleasant smile, like, no, I haven't done my job. They're like, oh, Bravo!

Bravo, Betsy, you did it again. So let's say that she's had over a year being the education secretary. She just couldn't find any time to go to a poorly performing school. But she could then say, you know what, I didn't. But I'll tell you what, I've studied it at length. And here are my conclusions. But she hasn't studied it at length, which is abundantly clear in this interview. And also keep in mind, yes, she's the education secretary,

but what are her qualifications for being an education secretary? She has no teaching or administrative experience. The only experience she has had is pushing for charter schools in her own state of Michigan, which has been a complete and utter disaster. So Leslie Stahl touches on that very issue in the following portion of the video. Take a look. But when parents choose these options, taxpayer funds follow the child. Here, can I help you? And that means that the public school left behind can end up with less money. Why take money away from that school that's not working? To bring them up to a level where they are, that school is working.

Well, we should be funding investing in students, not in school buildings, not in institutions, not in systems. Okay, but what about the kids who are back at the school? It's not working. What about those kids? Well, in places where there have been, where there is a lot of choice that's been introduced, Florida, for example, the studies show that when there's a large number of students that opt to go to a different school or different schools, The traditional public schools, actually, the results get better as well. Now, has that happened to Michigan? We're in Michigan this year, home state. Michigan, yes. Well, there's lots of great options and choices for students here.

Have the public schools in Michigan gotten better? I don't know. Overall, I can't say overall that they have all gotten better. The whole state is not doing well. Well, there are certainly lots of pockets where the students are doing well. Your argument that if you take funds away, that the schools will get better is not working in Michigan, where you had a huge impact and influence over the direction of the school system here. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them.

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exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. So that was incredible, especially given the fact that, again, she is the person who pushed for these charter schools and she can't answer to the lack of success experienced by the state of Michigan. Now, let's get into the numbers and let's get into some of the specific things that she said in that answer. First of all, I just want to say that charter schools are mixed back, okay? Anyone who says charter schools are all bad is wrong. Anyone who says charter schools are all good and that's the solution, they're also wrong. They're lying. The fact of the matter

is some charter schools do outperform public schools in some districts and vice versa. Now let's get to some of the specific. She specifically mentioned the state of Florida and how school choice has been a positive thing in Florida. Well, in reality, yes, some of the charter schools in Florida perform well. However, there have been a lot of issues because charter schools are not regulated the same way that public schools are. So if you look at Florida, there was a 2014 report that indicated that 119 charter schools had shut down since 2008. And they shut down because they were failing miserably. In fact, 14 of those schools didn't finish the first school year. That's amazing. So these are the stats that never get talked about, ever, ever.

Now, again, there are some charter schools that perform well. But you've got to look at the whole picture. And the whole picture is it's a mixed bag. There is no uniformity when it comes to charter schools. The standards are different. And also, oversight is very different from what you would get from a public school. And so there's a couple of things that are important about that lacking the oversight. So Republicans often say, oh, regulations, you don't need those thinking regulations anyway. Well, if some of them didn't even finish their first year of school, what did they do? They enrolled kids and said, come here and they started studying.

In the middle of the year, they're like, you don't have a school. Good luck. I don't care. I'm a for-profit institution. I wasn't making money. I don't care about you or your education. See, that's why you use the government for some things, like putting out fires and having cops. Because if you privatize those things, they'll only protect the people who paid them.

And it's also true for public education. Because if you're doing it for profit, and it's not working, there's a guy, I already lost too much money. So all of you guys, you're done. Good luck. Go try to find a new school in the middle of the school year. I wasn't regulated. What difference does it make to me? Right.

And by the way, you could also cherry pick better students to recruit. them to your private schools and then say to the public schools, good luck with those students. They're not performing as well. I didn't recruit them. There's a lot of different mix of how you could do that in charter schools. Some do, some don't. And then by the way, when you strip the money out of the public schools to create the charter schools, when the government does that at the behest of people like Betsy DeVos, then the public schools have less money, not just for the buildings, but for the students. And then you've set them up to fail. And they do that on purpose, so they could then turn around and go, I'm going to privatize even more schools.

But even defunding them, even doing that trick, and on a mass scale like they did in Michigan because DeVos pushed so hard for it, a lot of the charter schools do worse than public schools. That means that is a miserable track record. If they have all of those advantages, they should on average be doing way better than the public schools. And that has been the thesis of people like Betsy DeVos. And overall, it is not true. And that thesis is so disingenuous because they absolutely,

despise public schools, and they've been so transparent about that. And so to say, oh, creating more private schools or school choice or charters is actually going to lead to more competition between these charter schools and these public schools. And so public schools are going to do better. They're going to compete a little harder. It's difficult to compete when, A, a public school is already underfunded. And B, the government decides to take what little resources that public school already has and then funnel it into either charter schools or public schools. Now keep in mind that charter schools do not have teachers unions, okay? So that's one thing that the right wing absolutely loves about charter schools. They despise the unions.

And then two, keep in mind that they are publicly funded with taxpayer money, but privately run. Which reminds me a lot of private prisons. That's exactly how private prisons work. You know, Anna and I did not talk about this before the show, but that's almost the same exact analogy I was about to use, and including the cherry picking, because, for example, the private prisons leave the sicker inmates in the public facilities oftentimes, so then the public prisons have to pay a lot more in health care. And it's a neat little trick, and they still don't perform as well as the public prisons in terms of any metrics that you guide them against.

No matter how much they cherry pick, they still don't perform as well, at least in the private prisons and in the charter schools, despite all those advantages, it's about even. And that is a terrible track record. So let me give you more statistics and more evidence to back this up, because I don't want anyone to think, oh, we're anti-charter schools, even if they're performing well, we're going to say negative things. Again, it's a mixed bag. Some charter schools do perform well.

But if you look at the broader picture, some studies indicate that they don't necessarily perform well as a whole. So a 2009 study from the RAND Corporation found little evidence that the person, you know, presence of charter schools affect the achievement scores of students in nearby traditional public schools, either positively or negatively. Also, 2016 analysis of New York City schools found positive effects in public schools near these charter programs. But the effect was linked to increased spending at those public schools, not necessarily increased competition. And then let's look at one of the largest studies into charter schools throughout the country.

Analysts at Stanford look into this ever so often, ever so often, and the more recent study came out last year in 2017. The Stanford analyst compared reading and math state-based standardized test scores between charter school and public school students in 15 states, as well as scores in the District of Columbia. Experts found that 37% of charter schools posted improvements in math scores. However, these improvement rates were significantly below the improvement. rates of students in public school classrooms.

46% of charter schools experienced math improvements that were statistically indistinguishable from the average improvement rates shown by public school students. So look, at best, that's even, at best. And so now, by the way, you mentioned unions. Why are they against unions? You think, oh, it's because unions cost too much money or they're not teaching the students well enough. No, unions donate to Democrats.

That is part of the reason why Republicans want to destroy them. It's also because they get better wages for their workers. So for private industry, all their private donors want to destroy the unions. And even if they start with the public sector, they think it'll affect how private sector unions are doing as well. And I want you to understand the two different things that Anna just explained. One is, how do charter schools do versus public schools? And despite all their advantages, as you saw the numbers there, it's about. about even. The second thing is what Betsy DeVos was talking about. She was claiming that the

charter schools make the, even though they're taking away money from public schools, somehow magically make them better because of competition. And that is not supported by the facts at all, okay? So she's wrong about that one. And then finally, look, I used to think competition between schools would make them better. I'm an American, and I'm a competitive dude, and I thought that would work. And then we studied Finland. And it turns out, Finland went in the opposite direction, and went to number one in education throughout the world, math, science, et cetera. Always in the top three every single year and often number one. And what did they do?

They took away all private schools. And when I first read that, I was like, no, I've got to be reading this wrong. So I read article after article. And it turns out one of the things that happens on why it succeeds is then Bill Gates' son is in your school. And all the rich peoples, and in New York, all those bankers kids are in the same public schools. as both the poor and the middle class kids. And you know what they do? They pull those schools up because they're not going to let their kids go to bad schools.

So now what do they do? They drain away all the best students and best resources to private schools. Then they're not done yet in America. Then they create charter schools and take taxpayer money and strip even more money and talent out of the public schools and then go, what, what, what? Why aren't public schools doing any better? And so that's the scam that's being played on you. And I just, to end this, want to point out two cases of abuse in the charter school system. Because there is a lack of oversight.

And as a result, whenever there's money involved, whenever there's taxpayer money involved, there's going to be issues with people trying to steal that money. So one example was in Pennsylvania where 10 school administrators pleaded guilty to embezzling school funds and also to obstruction of justice. So they were essentially using the charter school as their own. slush fund. Another example was in Ohio where charter schools were lying about the attendance in order to receive more taxpayer money. The more students they go to the charter school, the more money they receive from taxpayers. And so, of course, if there's going to be a lack of

oversight and there's going to be money involved, there are going to be issues. And it again, reminds me a lot of some of the abuses we see in the private prison industry. And my final point is why was she so unprepared? Because if you're the, you're in the cabinet, this is your job, this is your sole job, and you argued your whole life for charter schools, these should be layup questions. They should be really, really simple. My God, Michigan is your petri dish for creating more charter schools. And you did, you pushed and pushed and bribed almost all the politicians legally

by pouring money into their coffers to get more. charter schools and including religious ones that you ones that you care the most about. So don't you know the Michigan numbers at all? Can't you at least come up with a misleading stat about Michigan to make it seem better? No, why? Because she has affluenza. She was born into a family that are billionaires. So unlike you and I, her success, like Donald Trump, her success has never been tied to merit. That's why they don't do their homework. Because homework never led to good results, which led to success for them.

That's how it goes for the middle class. Success was just dumped into their lab. So doing their work is a foreign concept to them. She's never been challenged before. All she's ever had was, yes, Betsy, absolutely, Mr. Voss. You're absolutely right, Mr. Voss. How can I get some more of your money, Mr. Voss? so even though she's a cabinet level person here who should know charter schools and public schools

the ones that are doing well the ones that are doing poorly she should have all these different ideas and forget the stats but at least have a concept of what's doing well and what's doing poorly she has none of that and she brazenly walks into a 60 minutes interview without a thought in her head without a fact in her head and she just thinks if I smile politely and I'm a billionaire I'll have everything handed to me oh golly jeezes Why didn't he accept my smile and my empty head? If this is the person in charge of educating our kids, we're in for a world to hurt. We've got to take a break. We'll be right back.

Thanks for watching what I hope was a lovely edition of the Young Turks. Now you know that that is two of the five segments that we do because that's free. We want to have you support independent media and can watch the whole show that we do every day. That's five segments overall. No ads at all. that's at t ytnetwork.com slash join come become a member thanks for watching either way 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 dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank yugar and i'll see you soon