The Young Turks - Recon-silly-ation

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

Jamal Khashoggi’s wife was targeted with spyware before his death. Why are Black children removed from homes at a high rate – L.A. County plans a ""blind removal"" pilot. Lindsey Graham suggests GOP Senators leave town to stop vote on the reconciliation bill: “Hell yeah I would leave!” 40 cities that could be poised for a housing crisis. Hundreds of workers at the Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas are striking for the first time. $100k gift from my parents made me resentful. Dozens arrested in Los Angeles as an anti-trans protest outside spa turns violent. Twitter is cracking up over Matt Gaetz’s security escorting away a man who does NOT think he’s “a pedophile at all.” Brian Stelter gets called out. Doocy finally decided to tell viewers that they should get the vaccine now that they’ve turned on him. A conservative porn star gets kicked out of TPUSA conference. Fact Check: have Tokyo Olympics athletes been given “anti-sex” beds? 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. What's up, what's up, everyone, welcome to TY-T-Y-T-Y-T-Y-T-Y-T. What's up, everyone? Welcome to TYT. host Anna Kasparian. Jank Yugar will be out for the week. But joining me today, the lovely Wozni Lombre host of Woznia on our Twitch channel. Check them out at Twitch.tv slash TiT and also culture and NBA writer for the ringer. What's up, Was. I'm good. Good to see you

again, Anna. Good to see you. It's been a while since we've done the show together. Yeah, it dawned on me this morning. I was like, oh wow, me and Anna haven't done the two-man tag team thing in a really long time, but I know it's gonna be fun, it's like riding a bicycle. Well, not only that, I mean, you're the perfect person to have on the show today to help me unpack the Frito-Lay strike that's taking place in Topeka, Kansas. I'm really looking forward to having that discussion with you. And unfortunately, we also have to dive into what appears to be a manufactured controversy in Los Angeles, California, regarding a Korean spa.

So we'll give you all the details on that and what the latest updates are in regard to police using excessive force toward protesters of this manufactured controversy. So we'll get to that later in the second hour of the show. But as always, I just want to encourage you guys to like and share the stream, get as many people to hear the message that TYT has. And it's an easy way to support us by just sharing the stream, letting people know about what do and what we're covering. So before we get to all the stuff that I tease, I want to start off with a different story. A story involving spyware, surveillance, and authoritarian governments

essentially using this software to keep an eye on activists, journalists, and dissidents. Story is insane, it's been developing for several months now. Luckily we have more details that I'm going to share with you. So let's get to it. Journalists, activists, and dissidents have been targeted by authoritarian governments using spyware from an Israeli cyber surveillance company known as NSO group. Now the spyware in question here is known as Pegasus, and what's pretty terrifying about it is the big names that are associated with its usage. In fact, Jamal Khashoggi and both his fiancee and wife are unfortunately targeted by this,

And I'll get to those details in just a second. But first, a little bit of context. NSO group is said to have sold a sophisticated surveillance application known as Pegasus that the journalism consortium said appears to have been used to attack or attempt to hack at least 37 smartphones owned by journalists from countries that include Azerbaijan, France, Hungary, India, and Morocco. Separately, a person familiar with NSO contracts says that NSO systems were sold to to the governments of Azerbaijan, Bahrain, India, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and UAE.

And so it's not just that this software or the spyware is being sold to authoritarian governments. It's how they utilize this spyware in order to target certain individuals with certain professions or certain political activities. So the journalist consortium linked NSO to a leaked list of more than 50,000 mobile phone numbers from more than 50 countries that it said appeared to be proposed surveillance targets for the company's clients. The alliance said the list contained the numbers of hundreds of journalists, media proprietors, government leaders, opposition politicians, political dissidents, academics, and rights campaigners. So as you can imagine, this is not good news by any means for anyone who speaks truth to power,

especially when the content or the critique is specifically toward authoritarian regimes. Now I want to go to this video that the Guardian put together to give you an idea of just how invasive this spyware really is. Let's watch. It can access every message you've ever said. It can access every message you've ever received. It can access every photo, every video, every email. It can turn on your microphone. It can turn on the microphone even when you're not using.

a phone call and just record what you're doing in the room. It can turn on your camera. It can record what's on on your screen. It can access your GPS. It can monitor your location. And it can do all of this without you ever knowing. If you are someone who thinks that you're safe

because you use WhatsApp, which is end-to-end encrypted, or you use signal, it really is meaningless once that Pegasus is on your phone. Pegasus can infect both iOS and Android. virtually undetectable. So one of the ways that Pegasus will attack your phone is through what's called a zero-day vulnerability. This is a vulnerability that the phone's manufacturer doesn't yet know exists. And I just want to reiterate something that was implied in that email, I'm sorry,

in that video, Pegasus can steal a phone's content and turn on its microphone for real-time monitoring, according to cybersecurity experts. So, Was, I want to bring you because, you know, there have been some names listed in, in the reporting on the story. You have Jamal Khashoggi's wife, Jamal Khashoggi's fiance, both being targets of the spyware. Clearly the Saudi government with Saudi royal or crown prince Mohammed bin Salman targeting Jamal Khashoggi is an important component of that. But I wanted to get your thoughts. There's a lot of backlash toward the Israeli government for approving the exporting license,

necessary for this Israeli-based company to sell the program to authoritarian governments. Do you think that that's where the ire should be directed? Not really. Honestly, we've been on a death march towards this truth and existence, basically since September 11th and the Patriot Act, where everybody was like, fine. The government can completely spy on us and monitor us in truth. track us so long as they keep us safe from, I don't know, Al Qaeda or something, right? Like that was basically the thinking behind it and nothing has been reversed since. We've only gotten the spying capabilities of governments around the world has only gotten

worse. And to be honest, and I don't know how much people really truly value their privacy or their ability to move freely without surveillance from some government body, which goes unchecked. There are no checks and balances or policing of this behavior. They do this at their own whims, right? I remember when Snowding came out and talked about some of the stuff that the NSA was doing. He was like, yo, there were guys in my office doing this as spy on ex-girlfriends, right? Like, nobody's checking this stuff.

They do it unimpeded. And yeah, it's scary stuff. But I don't know how much people are truly, you know, alarmed by it. And the Israel factor of it all, you know, this would, this shouldn't shock anybody that an authoritarian Israeli regime would be like, yeah, export authoritarianism elsewhere. Of course, you want to be big brother and all seeing eye. Yeah, and I think you are absolutely correct in noting that this isn't an Israel issue. It's more of a governmental issue, globally speaking, because the United States, with its very clear fear mongering,

convinced Americans that they needed to allow the government to spy in, almost indiscriminately, in an effort to protect national security. But we know about the abuses as a result of like the Patriot Act. We know about the abuses in regard to this type of spyware being utilized and how it's being utilized by these authoritarian governments toward anyone who dare criticize them, anyone who dares speak truth to power. But you know, I wonder, do people really care or not care about this? Because I don't think most people are fully aware of just how widespread this kind of spying really is. And I think most people are under the assumption that, well, you know, I'm not really someone who stirs the pot. I'm not someone who's involved in any

type of political activism or journalism. So I've got nothing to worry about. But once you allow the government to encroach on your civil liberties like that, anyone, anyone can be a target, really. And it undermines the point of a democratic system, right? Now, when we're talking about Saudi Arabia or some other country like that, obviously we're not having a discussion about democracy. But in the United States, where we still pretend as though we're a fully democratic

society and everything is all hunky dory. We've given the government so much power in terms of encroaching on our civil liberties, spying on our actions, and using the excuse of protecting national security to do it. Yeah, and I don't want to get too crazy conspiratorial here, but let's just understand that this information is out there on us and the government has it and they could give it to whoever they want theoretically. There's nothing stopping them from selling it to say some moneyed interest that says, yo, I got a problem with a guy. Can you give me his phone record of the last 20 years?

They can do that. They can do this. They can give it to whoever they want. So even if it's not the government encroaching on your privacy and doing something terrible, you know, private interest could get their hands on this kind of information and use it against whoever they want, however they want. That's the scariest part about this is that's why you want to prevent this kind of collection from even happening because once it exists, that means anybody can get

their hands on it, right? And I think what the Snowden thing revealed was that, no, you don't have to be some flamethrower, some rabble rouser to end up on one of these lists. You can do the smallest thing that triggers them to be like, all right, we're watching them now, all right, we're storing all their data on some server in Utah somewhere. That is the scariest part to me. Right, I mean, and okay, you just brought up corporations because, yes, there's the government side of things, but there's also the fact that major U.S. corporations engage in data mining with the sole purpose of selling your personal information to third parties. I mean, that's part of the reason why there are data brokers online where you can search anyone's name and you'll find personal information on them.

phone numbers, addresses, all of that stuff is out there. It's really easy to obtain. And it's because every time you make a transaction online, let's say you're purchasing something from an online store, you're inputting all of this personal information with the assumption that that information will remain with that company, it's not going to be sold. But oftentimes it does get sold to third parties. That's the other way that these companies make revenue.

So you have the government spying in and collecting personal. information and data on you. You have corporations who not only do the data mining themselves, but sell it to third parties for profit. So all of these issues, I mean, I know we're talking about a few different things, but when you really think about it, all of this stuff goes above and beyond in encroaching and violating our privacy rights, our civil liberties. And I feel like most Americans, you're right, have kind of been asleep at the wheel since 9-11 in regard to this kind of behavior. And I like free, like I actually do enjoy not being on surveillance. Like I enjoy being able to like go somewhere in nature and not have to worry about someone

pulling out a cell phone and filming me randomly. Like all of the surveillance is happening simultaneously, whether it's by ordinary citizens who are like have their phones out ready to record any type of controversy, the government doing it through spyware or through other means. And corporations collecting your data as well and selling it to third part. I mean, this has become so extreme and, you know, I think that this kind of stuff certainly deserves criticism, but for those who have problems with, let's say, the U.S. government engaging in spying, the federal government engaging in spying, I think the same criticism should be applied to, let's say, local governments, or let's say the state legislature

in Florida demanding that teachers get spied on to ensure that they're not teaching kids critical race theory. I mean, there's always some excuse. There's always something to fearmonger about in order to manufacture consent for these civil liberties violations. But they're taking place. And I don't know, maybe we've gone too far at this point that we can't roll it back. But it does intimidate people from being able to speak out and speak their minds when they do see injustice perpetrated by the government. Yeah, and I think people need to understand that the main to do this is it's not to save you from some perceived threat. That's what they're going to say they're keeping us quote unquote safe.

The main reason to do this to hoard people's information is to one day when they become a problem is to discredit them. That's it. Yeah. I think about, you know, you think about countless like rape allegations, right? A woman accuses a person of rape. That person's defense says, well, this person slept with 20 other people. Therefore they could not have been raped. It's just to discredit them.

And once you have access to people's personal, personal, private information, I don't think we realize how much our phones know about us. Like, they know everything about us. That's just leaves the door open for some bad actors. Whenever the case may arise, it doesn't have to be that you're, you know, uncovering Watergate, right? Or that you're, you know, discrediting the Saudi Arabian royal family or whatever. It doesn't even have to be that deep. It could be something else. And if people who have means and have power can find a way to discredit you and to make you unreliable,

make you somebody who doesn't deserve respect or dignity because of some private information they have on you, that's what people need to be thinking about. Absolutely. NSO, the company that's behind the spyware denies everything that's been reported. I mean, that's it. They just say, no, this is outrageous. We deny it. Take that for what it is. But I'm going to go ahead and go with what the journalists are saying and the investigative reporting that's been taking place on this very topic since going back to December of 2020. This has been a developing story. So happy to share it with you guys. It's just really scary stuff. Unfortunately, this is happening all around the world by governments that don't have good intentions.

Let's just put it that way. All right, well, let's move on to another story. This might seem like a local story, but I think that it's indicative of something that's taking place across the country. And I'm really curious to hear what you think about it, Waz. So the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services is launching a pilot program called Blind Removal. Now, this is the government agency that deals with child welfare issues, DCFS, is the government agency that also makes decisions about whether or not a child should be removed from a home based on the safety of that household. Now, I want to tell you more about this

blind removal pilot program because what it has to do with is the overrepresentation of children of color within the foster care system, meaning the children who are typically removed from these households happen to have parents who are black or Latino, and it looks as though there might be issues with some implicit bias in the decisions that are made. So blind removal is meant to take the race component out of it as social workers are deliberating in regard to whether or not they remove a child from a home. So I want to tell you how the numbers look right now so you can understand why this is a problem. So for instance, 7% of children in Los Angeles County are black, while 24% of those removed

from their homes from last April to this March were black, according to the LA County Department of Children and Family Services. 20% of children in the county are white, with 12% of those removed. So as you can see, there's an overrepresentation of black children being taken out of their households, removed out of their households. Now, three quarters of children removed from their homes in LA in 2020 were either black or Latino, okay? So social workers typically have access to a wide array of data on the child in question,

anything from the family's race to household income, that kind of stuff. And so the idea behind blind removal is maybe we take the race data out of it to ensure that potential implicit biases don't play a role in whether or not a child is removed from a home. Blind removal typically kicks in at a meeting involving social workers and supervisors who collectively decide what to do about a child. Race and related factors are redacted from files and are not part of those deliberations. Now, has this been tested anywhere else? Why, yes, it has. In fact, Nassau County, New York actually decided to look into this and do an experiment with blind removals. And here's what they found.

Five years after race and related factors were eliminated from removal deliberations in Nassau County, 21% of children in foster care were black compared with 57% before blind removal. After seeing those results, the New York state officials announced in October that they would implement blind removal statewide. And so there are some, I want to get into the reasons that social workers give for removing the children. But clearly, they found that this blind removal process was successful in Nassau County. So now it will be a program that's utilized statewide in New York. But I wanted to get your thoughts, Was, you know, we have these discussions and these debates about class essentialism and race essentialism and all of that. And it seems like in this particular case, race or implicit biases about race play a giant role in the decisions that these social workers make.

Yeah, of course. And just full disclosure, my mother has been a foster care provider for decades now. I'm somebody who grew up with foster kids in the house. And so I've heard the stories about how they got taken away from their families and not just that. The reason why this is important is because when you place kids in what we call the system, it's traumatic, man. Like some of the stuff that these kids have to deal with when they get put in the system is harsh. It's hard. It makes it so that it's very difficult for them to go on and live normal lives when they become these transient people.

And they're constantly living with strangers and, you know, just some of the stuff I've heard from foster kids that I've known throughout my life about like, People putting physical locks on refrigerators, right? In the homes that they stayed in like, this is why this matters. Like these, it's not, it's not fun, it's not cushy when these people have to, you know, basically have their lives and become a ward of the state. And so, yeah, and by the way, you know, I know in New York City, the social worker force is very diverse. Nassau County, which is adjacent to New York City, of course, in Long Island. very diverse.

And don't think for a second that these implicit biases don't affect black or brown people. They do. That's how insidious racism is. That's how insidious prejudice is. It infects all of us in our thinking. So don't think for a second that black people can't internalize some negative thoughts or some beliefs about a black pathology while themselves being black. It happens all the time. And so that's why this is important to take all of that out so that people can make, you know, unbiased decisions about the situation that a child is living.

And of course, some of these kids are coming from very, very, very adverse situations with substance abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, et cetera, et cetera. Like, there's some harrowing stuff that's happening a lot of times when these kids get removed. But, you know, a good system is doing the work to get these parents. in a position where they could bring the child back in a safe, loving, and caring environment. And that's where we should be working towards less removals and not more. Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. And one thing that seemed promising in the way that officials at DCFS have been talking about this is they seem to be aware that it's a problem, that implicit bias is a problem.

But more importantly, they're aware of how this is a small slice of. of something that can be reformed or changed, but it in no way deals with a much broader problem of systemic issues, right? So when you look at why children are removed from their families, the social workers have to provide reasons for it. And so here are the reasons that they typically cite.

In LA County, for instance, the biggest reason that children are removed from their homes is neglect, followed by other factors, including caretaker, relinquishment and exploitation. So I want to focus just briefly on neglect and other factors including caretaker absence. So is it because the parent is working a minimum wage job and literally can't afford living in Los Angeles working full time with a minimum wage job and needs to work more, right?

So what's leading to that absence? There's an entire systemic issue here when it comes to the way our economy is set up that also needs to be addressed, right? So there's that, I mean, exploitation is exploitation, there's no excuse for that. If a child is in any way being exploited or abused, you know, he or she is in an incredibly dangerous situation and that issue needs to be resolved. And then of course the third most common reason is physical abuse. But again, like taking a step back and looking at the system as a whole and how it's intentionally

set up to put various groups of people at a disadvantage, that needs to be addressed as well. Dealing with the implicit bias with one government agency in Los Angeles, it's a good start. But luckily DCFS understands that it's not the end-all be-all and it certainly doesn't solve the problem completely. Yeah, and it's important for everybody to understand that class is. race, they work in tandem to sort of reinforce one another, right? The idea being that if somebody's black, then they are more likely to be of the poorer class. They are more likely to have less access to means, which means they are less likely

to be able to provide the essentials for what, you know, a social worker might deem a suitable living situation. So, you know, I think what we get tripped up is when we disentangle these two issues. They're always forever linked. The reason why people harbor negative feelings towards black people is because, one, is this idea that they have no means and that that means they're more predisposed to do deviant sort of criminal, you know, stuff that we don't agree with doing, right? Like that's the point of that idea of blackness being this horrible thing. It's like, no, when you're black, you do these horrible things because of X, Y, and Z. And, you know, the financial and economic situations of what people perceive black people to have or even if you're not, even if, you know, you can be black, but you can be from a certain neighborhood that people deem to be harmful or scary or whatever and not an environment that a quote, unquote, you know, a child or ward of the state should be. And all of those, all of those things come into play. You can't separate them out, right? This is not just a race issue. It's not just a poor people issue. They're always working in TANN.

them with one another. Exactly. Absolutely. All right, we got to take a break, but when we come back, Senator Lindsey Graham has already floated what the GOP strategy is in the Senate to defeat the Democrats' robust reconciliation infrastructure bill. It's incredibly frustrating, but it gives you a sense of just how far Republicans will go to ensure that they get what they want.

So come right back, I'll share those details and more. Welcome back to TYT, Anna Casparian, and Wozni Lombre with you. Make sure you check out Waz's Twitch show for TYT, Waznia. You can watch that at Twitch.TV slash TYT. He's also a culture and NBA writer over at The Ringer. And I mean, you do so many different things, Was, it's crazy. He's also the host of woke bros along with Nando Villa. Check out that podcast wherever you get your podcast.

one of my favorites each week. So really good discussion. Thank you so much. Really good discussion about Haiti. It's the Haitian work ethic. And you know, if you were Haitian and you moved here in the 70s and 80s, they all had like 12 jobs. So I'm just carrying on in that tradition. All right.

And I wanted to read one of our member comments before we move on to our next story. It's from loser blogger Trump. And it's a comment about the Pegasus spyware that we talked about in the first segment. talked about in the first segment, here's the comment. Pegasus can get into a phone due to zero day vulnerabilities, which is a bug in the code of the phone, intelligence agencies who know of these vulnerabilities refuse to close them so they can spy on us. So I don't know how true that is, you know, it's an interesting, you know, speculation,

I guess. But remember, these are, I'm pretty sure that like the phone developers or the companies behind these phones, Apple and Google, they know it's not good for business for people to know that they have these insane vulnerabilities that allow for spyware to do what Pegasus does. But it is an interesting speculation. Then they are used by all intelligence agencies and criminals to blackmail us. It should be law that governments who know of vulnerabilities fix them. Again, it's not a government vulnerability. It's a vulnerability with the software for iPhones and Android phones. So the question is, is Apple going to do what's necessary to fix that vulnerability?

Is Google going to do what's necessary to fix that one? Google owns Android, right? Yeah, I'm right about that. Okay, just making sure. Wanted to fact check that. Obviously, I have an iPhone. Anyway, all right, but thank you so much for your comment. We appreciate it. Let's move on to the reconciliation bill, because we've got some updates on what the GOP is thinking. Noting that the Senate requires what's referred to as a quorum in order to vote on any legislation, Lindsey Graham, a GOP senator, has decided that maybe GOP lawmakers in the Senate can learn a thing or two from Democratic lawmakers in the Texas legislature who fled the state in order to prevent a vote on a voter suppression bill.

So this is telling, pay close attention to what he has to say, and then we'll unpack it when we come back. If for some reason they pass reconciliation budget resolution to bring that bill to the floor of the United States Senate, the $3.5 trillion bill, you've got to have a quorum to pass a bill in the Senate. I would leave before I'd let that happen. So to my Republican colleagues, we may learn something from our Democratic friends in Texas when it comes to avoiding a three and a half trillion. tax and spend package. Leave town. Wow. So you just see them leave and you're saying fine. They were effective in not giving the Republicans a quorum. You'll do the same thing on a $3.5 trillion on a tax and spend. Hey, Vice President Harris, if you think these people are heroes, well, and I expect you to show up and pat us on the back. Hell yeah, I would leave. I'm not, I will use

everything lawfully in my toolbox to prevent rampant inflation. I mean, to prevent rampant inflation, that last part makes my skin crawl, because again, I always go back to what the Federal Reserve is doing with insanely low interest rates, which leads to inflation more than anything else, including raising wages for people. But let's beside the point. Let's focus on what he mentioned there in regard to quorum and just not showing up for a vote on the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. Remember, Democrats just wanted to work with Republicans. So as a result, we have the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is garbage. It has some effort to fund infrastructure projects while also privatizing quite a bit of public infrastructure. I'm not in favor of that bill. But the bipartisan bill is different from the reconciliation bill, which could pass with a simple majority in the Senate.

The $3.5 trillion reconciliation infrastructure bill includes everything that we want. All of the human infrastructure components, including the necessary funding for child care, for elder care, an expansion of Medicare. I mean, everything that we need to just push for a little progress in the country. And so what Republicans like Lindsey Graham are saying is, well, you need a certain number of senators there in order to have a vote to begin with and maybe we're not gonna show up. At least 51 senators must be present on the floor for the upper chamber, the Senate, to conduct business and that's according to the Constitution. Quorum is normally assumed unless a roll call

vote or other motion finds that not enough senators are present. And the reference to Texas, for any of you who might have missed the story, the Texas legislature requires at least a hundred of the 150 representatives in the state house of representatives and 21 of the 31 senators in the state senate to be present to conduct business. So the Democrats, the Democratic lawmakers fled the state of Texas in order to deny the quorum so the state wouldn't pass a voter suppression bill. I think that that was awesome and it was within their right. It was in their toolbox, they used it. I think it makes sense. The same is gonna happen in the Senate. I don't begrudge the GOP for wanting to use the tools in their toolbox in regard to a bill that they're not in favor of, right?

But my issue was, is more with the fact that Democrats decided to play patty cakes with Republicans for a ridiculous bipartisan bill in the first place when we know that Republicans have no interest in negotiating with and working with the Democratic Party. Yeah, and you know, it's kind of funny to watch the biggest weasel, the most spineless coward in all of American politics and Lindsay Graham try to do tough talk on Fox News. It's cute, actually, Lindsey Graham, what you're doing. But, you know, all of this is just talk from a guy who clearly has no options and no power in the situation. This is all desperation talk, Hail Mary talk. If the Dems decide they're going to get this thing done via reconciliation, which I think for now that they will. I think, you know, the actual thinking people in the party are actually prevailing in this. And the idiot mansions and cinemas of the world, who these are the people they want to negotiate with, by the way. It's the Lindsey Graham's. Like, this is who we're talking about. These freaking terrorists of government is who they want to work with. And, you know, the guy showed his hand.

He said, I have no interest in that. And again, for the folks watching at home, Lindsay Graham wasn't talking about inflation, and he wasn't talking about a spend or a give back when they passed a record tax cut. Taxes are not revenue. It's the opposite. Tax cuts are a spend. You're losing money when you cut all them damn taxes. Lindsay Graham had no problem with that.

Yeah, I mean, the whole Senate parliamentarian and reconciliation work. rules in the Senate. It's all ridiculous, right? Because the legislation would need to have an impact on the federal budget. It doesn't even matter if it's a positive impact or a negative impact. As long as it has an impact on the federal budget, which the tax cuts for the rich certainly did, it qualifies as something that can pass through reconciliation, which is how the GOP in the Senate was able to pass Trump's tax cuts for the rich in 2017. Now, I'm fascinated by your take was, because Because you are way more optimistic than I am. I actually think that the reconciliation bills dead on arrival.

There are way too many obstacles in the way to pass this. And I don't think what Lindsay Graham is saying is I'll talk. I think that Republicans will stop at nothing to ensure that Biden fails, to ensure that he doesn't secure a win. And if they all need to flee the Senate on the day that there's a floor vote on the the reconciliation infrastructure bill, I think that every single one of them will be gone. I think they'll flee. You know, it's interesting.

I feel like this entire infrastructure process has been one big dog and pony show where, you know, the White House and their subordinates have felt the need to performatively be like, look, we got to take this big bill to the Republicans and try to work with them. And then the Republicans like Lindsey Graham or even, you know, Remember the other day Mitch McConnell went back to Kentucky, he bragged about the COVID bill and all the money that the state got while also talking crap about it, talking both sides of his mouth. So it's like this is what they kind of do. They do the dog and pony show. But ultimately, I think the Dems are, they know they can do it on their own. And ultimately they will. They just feel the need to always have to include these idiots in everything. And so that's the process that we're. are going through right now. We'll see what happens, but I like your optimism.

Filling in for Jenks optimism, we've got Wozni Lombray today, which I like. But don't be, don't be too optimistic that you'll make a bet with me, because I promise you you you'll lose. I don't gamble, I like to keep my money. All right, well, we gotta take our second break. So let's do that, and when we come back, we'll talk about, let's see, ooh, there is a strike in Kansas among Frito-Lay workers. I want to give you the details on that and more.

So stick around. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to TYT, Anna and Waz with you. If you haven't done it already, like and share the stream, get more eyeballs on it. We want people watching, all right? So thank you for your support

and thank you in advance for doing that. Was, are you ready to talk about this worker strike in Kansas? Let's do it. Let's do it. Frito Lay factory workers are striking for the first time in Topeka, Kansas. This is in regard to the working conditions and more importantly, the insane work hours and the fact that they're not able to take a day off due to a lack of workers.

So many of the 850 workers at the facility say that they work 84 hours a week. With no days off, workers are nominally supposed to work eight hour shifts, but because of shortages, workers are often forced to add on an extra four hours before or after their shifts. And the word forced is relevant here, right? Because this isn't an option like, hey, you want to make some extra money and maybe work some overtime hours? No, it's not up for discussion. In fact, these workers say that they're punished if they say no. So workers call these extended shifts suicides because they say the schedule kills you over time. Some workers haven't had a single day off in five months, including Saturdays and Sundays. And finally,

before we get to some video of these workers, in its latest contract offer, Frito-Lay has said it would raise wages by 4% over the next two years and put a cap at 60 hours a week. Friedole workers who are unionized with bakery, confectionary, tobacco workers, and grain Miller's local 218 say that's not enough and are demanding an end to forced overtime. So they're striking and solidarity with them. I think that they're striking for an incredibly important reason. And I don't want to put words in their mouths. Why don't we hear from the workers themselves? Force overtime causes divorces.

it caused people to kill themselves that used to work here. Okay, there have been several employees that have killed themselves, okay, that have worked here over the years. Okay, this is a continual thing. We have to do something with the suicide shifts because to work 12 hours and be off eight and work 12 hours, you got time, travel time and everything. I said that's a safety risk. Imagine being an employee in here that has not had a day off for five months. That is the reality of what you're seeing. That is the reality of why you're really seeing the picket over here.

Four or five years ago, we had a guy, and man, he was working all the time, and he stopped off at a rest stop on I-70, and he fell asleep, and, you know, he didn't wake up. No, I mean, it's just, it's so disgusting and heartbreaking to hear these stories. I love that these workers have decided to take action and engage in the strike. And it's obviously much easier to do that when you're unionized, which is why it's important for workers to organize and form a union. Was, I know you have strong feelings about these types of stories. So I wanted you to jump in and share your thoughts. Yeah, I just think about, you know, it's connected to the last sort of segment we did about Lindsey Graham talking about quote unquote inflation.

And that's the boogeyman. That's the new boogeyman, right? People need to get back to work. All the money in the economy is causing inflation because we let people have money while they were suffering without them having to work like slaves for it, et cetera, et cetera. And the conversation is never, well, maybe people aren't going back to work because the jobs suck. This job sucks, period.

The conditions under which these people have to work under are inexcusable. It's deplorable. The idea that somebody would never get any days off or that they would be forced to work 12 hours a day, no matter what, is preposterous. Workers fought for the five-day work week. Like people died behind the five-day work week. Like lives were lost behind that, right? And the Capitol was doing it just, they just wanted to run you into a nub. And let's face it, Tostitos and them, they got money.

This isn't a money problem. They could go out and hire more people, pay them a livable wage, and fix this in a day. But then, Anna, come on, profit margins, though. You know, like, the rich can't get richer that way. This is, it's absurd. It's, this is embarrassing, embarrassing stuff. And I did that a corporation, that huge, that profitable and wealthy can't create conditions under which workers, you know, can work safely. By the way, if you're working seven days a week and you're operating heavy machinery, that's a health hazard.

That's a problem. That's when terrible things happen on the job. This is just insanity. So, you know, the workers are forced to work these long hours. They don't have the ability to say no. It's not like they're being given this option to make a little extra cash. No, they're being coerced because if anyone dare say no or challenge their managers on working long hours, they will be reprimanded. And there's that threat of losing their jobs.

So let's take a look at what the workers had to say about that and what they've experienced in regard to retaliation. Yeah, the point system is used to fire people. We're getting penalized for taking time off. I've had to cancel to me a doctor appointments, dentist appointments that could not make them because of the forced overtime. Walking out the plant last second, hey, you're forced over.

Things need to change. This is not a way you treat people. Yeah, it's not a way to treat people. And this is, obviously I'm against everything that Frito Lay is doing here, especially as a highly profitable Fortune 500 company. But this is the way a corporation is going to behave under a system that's set up the way that our system is, right?

Because these companies have a fiduciary responsibility to provide a return on investment or work in the best interests of their investors as opposed to their workers, the very people who do the labor necessary to turn a profit for this company. But the profits don't go to the actual workers. The profits go to the investors. And so I want to give you a few other statements from Frito lay workers who spoke to Vice. They are anonymous in this case, but I think what they share with Vices is telling. This is not a good job.

At 7 a.m., our warehouse is 100 degrees. We don't have air conditioning. We have cooks in the kitchen on the friars that are 130 or 140 degrees making chips and sweating like pigs. Meanwhile, the managers have AC. Another worker tells Vice, quote, I can tell you that many people have had heart attacks in the heat at Frito Lay since I've been here. One guy died a few years ago, and the company had people pick him up, move him over to the side, and put another person in his spot without shutting the business down for two seconds.

I remember hearing similar stories about Amazon warehouses. So this isn't just illustrative of one company. This is something that we keep, we see keep happening over and over and over again. And it's not about a company's identity. It's about the system under which these companies are functioning and where the incentives are. The incentives are for the investor class, right, to do right by them, not to do right by the actual workers who are helping this company turn a profit in the first place. Yeah, and you know, you would think this isn't 1905, right? Like we didn't just start figuring out industrialization.

The idea that you would have a factory that didn't have access to AC in the summertime for your workers is just absurd. And again, this is what happens to working class people. You get pushed around. You get bullied when you don't. form a collective. It's the only way to combat corporate power, the money powers. Like, by yourself and individuals say, but hold on, I have a doctor's appointment that I need to make. Nah, F that. You have to work 12 hours today. Like, you know, individually, you're not going to be able to get this done and fight these people. It has to be collectively because that's all they

respond to. They don't respond to morality or something based on principle or something that just is obviously the right thing to do. They don't respond to that. They only respond to power and you can't achieve any power by yourself as a worker. So again, I'm very heartened by the fact that these people have decided collectively that they're going on strike to stick it to these damn people. Absolutely. And you know, as I mentioned earlier, these are workers who are unionized, which is a good thing because this might be the first time that they're striking, but understand that under a union, these workers have additional protection. So they're able to strike, right? Now, there's the other side of it too, which just briefly I want to tackle,

because unionized workers should be represented by the union and they should get regular raises. But some of these workers are saying that they haven't gotten raises in decades. For instance, one worker told Vice, I make $20.50 an hour after working 37 years here. I haven't gotten a raise in a decade. Three years ago, I got a $600 bonus that was taxed. And three years before that, I got another $600 bonus. That was my only raise for the past 10 years. This is from a Fortune 500 company that is making billions.

And so I don't, that's a problem, right? Like if you guys have been unionized, you deserve better representation. And how do we tackle that question was? Like how do we ensure that the unions representing these workers, the leadership in these unions are actually on a regular basis fighting for the best interests of these workers and ensuring that they get better working conditions, better hours, and also better pay and benefits? Yeah, and I think honestly, this is where the role of the government comes in as far as when you see stuff like the minimum wage hike, right? It makes it so that these private interests, because if all the private interests are colluding with each other to ensure that wages stay down and stay stagnant, somebody else has to step into that void. It has to be the union in conjunction with the government that is allegedly for the people and other people, right? Like that's the point of our government.

This is where they're supposed to step in and be like, guys, you're making a ton of cash here. Spread the wealth around a little bit. Oh, you don't want to do that? We're going to force you to do it legally. That's the only answer here, specifically when you see that in industries all across the board, wages have remained stagnant for decades. And that is this government attitude, which has been laissez-faire, let the market do. Let the market do what it does. Private interests are never wrong. Chasing money is the right thing to do it every freaking turn. The government has to step up. And to be honest with you. Yeah, absolutely. And one way that the Democratic Party has tried to step up is by proposing what's known as the Pro Act. Let's keep it real. It has, in my opinion, zero percent chance of passing. I mean, we can't even pass a wildly popular infrastructure bill.

But the Pro Act is an important piece of legislation that I wish could get passed because it does strengthen labor rights. And we certainly need that now more than ever, especially when you see the working conditions that many workers are suffering under. All right, well, that does it for our first hour. We're going to take a break. And when we come back for the second hour, I want to share a story of a gentleman who is resentful toward his parents after they paid for his MIT education and also handed him over $100,000. Why is he resentful? Well, we'll give you his Twitter thread on it and maybe even have a debate.

So come right back. We'll share that and more. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.