The Young Turks - Rolls-Royce Republicans

Episode Date: March 11, 2023

AOC slams GOP hearing on ‘Wokeness’ in government. Sanders bill would ensure minimum $60K salary for Public School teachers. Biden requests record $886 billion military budget. Arkansas governor signs bill rolling back child labor protections. Host: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur, Jordan Uhl Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Drop it like it's hot. All right, welcome to a power power panel is so powerful. It's just that the graphic will not leave. It needs you to know how powerful this panel is. All right. John I'd roll, a host of Damage Report. Hello, Jordan Yule, host of Game Busters, Twitch. TV slash TYT and an all-around jackaball trades in the progressive movement.

If something is a foot in the progressive movement, it's secretly Jordan Yule. Politically, he's got an afoot fetish. A foot, a foot fetish, yes. That's a new one. No one other than Jordan has it, but it's starting to spread. It's like a fungus. It'll spread as soon to all of us. What have we done?

We have now defined a new, a foot fetish. And by the way, I wish something was a foot in progressive circles. And I wish that fetish did exist, as it is for now, all we have is you all. All right. I'm speechless. All right. Well, you've done enough already. All right, seriously, guys, let's get going.

We got an amazing show for you guys. not only is the first hour amazing, not only is the second hour amazing, filled with crazy stories, as usual will be fair. I mean we're going to be fair to Yonkin, Republican governor for Chitt. What? Okay, ah, boo. But in the, but if you're a member today, today's the day to be a member. Okay, not only are we're going to talk about Elon Musk's utopia, and apparently he's planning

one in the bonus episode, but we're also going to talk about a woman who married herself and then got divorced. you're gotta love it, t yt.com slash join to become a member. All right, but without further ado or further a footing, we move to John Iderall. Oh my God, we're going to get it together, everyone. Okay, this is my last day before a week long vacation. I'm supposed to be punching and kind of just sliding. I don't know what Jenks' excuses at this point.

Are you kidding me? I'm ready to go. Okay. With Yule and Sorbo. I don't even want to know. Don't want to know. We're just jumping into this. All right, let's do it.

I think we need to have a conversation about priorities here. We're having a hearing right now, and it's about what the, that the federal government is too woke. That is what the hearing is about. And you need to brace yourself, because over the course of the next couple of years, the Republicans in the House are going to launch a whole lot of really, really dumb investigations. But a generalized investigation into the possibility that the federal workforce as a bureaucracy is too woke is just about as dumb as I hope it'll get. Anyway, there are actually important things going on in this country that in theory could be focused on. AOC turns to those in a little bit of this.

There are actual crises happening in this country. A couple weeks ago, there was a devastating, devastating, devastating derailment. in East Palestine, Ohio. And yesterday, I was just lucky enough to wrap up a hearing early. And I was going back to my office. It was not scheduled. It wrapped up early. And there were people from East Palestine at my door because they weren't getting a response

in their own other levels of government. And so they were just roaming around waiting for anybody to, open their door to them to talk to them. Any member of Congress to talk to them. And the reason they were there, the reason that they were looking for someone is that they believe that government has a function to fulfill. And they further believe that maybe, just maybe somebody in government will take that seriously. But unfortunately, despite the fact that the Republicans have talked a lot about East Palestine, it doesn't really mean that they're focused on doing much about it. It's a convenient thing to attack.

Biden on maybe get a few shots in on Buttigieg, but no, that's, they're done with that and they're on to wokeness in the federal bureaucracy, because that's fun to talk about. It's exciting. It makes for a good distraction, and you don't have to actually do anything. No matter what you do, nothing that will be discussed in these hearings, no change that's proposed, no regulations or deregulation that come from it, will in any way even slightly threaten the interests of those in a position of economic dominance in America today. And that is, after all, the whole point of this. So we're going to turn to what she thinks they really mean when they're attacking

wokeness in the federal workforce. But first, I wanted to give you both a chance to opine. This is really, this is, this is what D.C. is focused on today. Yeah. So you're going to love the numbers on what Americans think about being woke. They're kind of surprising, and I like them. Interesting, but there's a lot of nuance in there. We'll get to that in a second. But in terms of AOC here, good, God bless, great.

I mean, kind of obvious, but it's obvious to us. It's not obvious to anyone in D.C. So the fact that she's making that point is very important. It's a really good first step. Now look, progressives are pretty decent at the first step. Unfortunately, steps two, three, and four is where they falter, right? So here, if I was a progressive in Congress, I would have organized every progressive and hopefully every Democrat on that committee to say one after another what the government should be focused on instead of this woke, quote unquote woke crap, right? By crap, I don't mean that being woke, I mean attacking being woke, which is undefined just for political leverage and wedge issue machinations, right?

So I would have come up with a set of talking points that basically humiliates the Republicans for choosing to do nothing at all, right? Now, but she at least brought attention to it, brought a spotlight to it. I'll take it as a, I'll definitely take it. It's definitely a positive. So I don't want you to get me wrong, okay? But please, progressives in Congress, do steps two, three, and four, okay? Then you focus on step three is after you've coordinated all of your colleagues into doing coordinating messaging, Messaging that you're 100% right on and the great majority of the country agrees with you on.

Then you move on to step three. You actually propose legislation that I know you're going to have trouble passing in the House because the Republicans have it. But that's the point, guys, is that you then focus everybody's energy on make them vote against bills like paid family leave that have 84% approval. Instead of voting on this crap or they're not even voting on anything. It's just nonsense, right? And step four is put so much pressure on individual politicians that until you either break, them or they pass the goddamn law. This is actually, I know it's like, if you watch mainstream media, that is probably this

is going to blow your mind. Nobody's ever said anything like this. This must seem like four dimensional chess. No, it's elementary politics. It's like for anyone who's ever wanted to pass anything, it's elementary politics. So thank you for taking the first step AOC, but there's a lot of road ahead. Jordan. These complaints about diversity in the government, in schools, in society.

The elites love that conversation because it distracts people from the real issues. And that's what AOC is talking about here. She mentions East Palestine and how residents of East Palestine, this is a deeply conservative area, came to her office to find help from the government. Now, despite these, you know, the public pandering, the public shows of support from Republicans, what do they do today in the House? House Republicans voted to roll back Joe Biden's regulations maintaining protections for streams and waterways, thousands of streams and waterways all over the country. Just last week they were pretending to care

about water pollution in East Palestine. But once they have you distracted by hearings on diversity and equity and inclusion, the real threat as they want you to think, behind the scenes, they're doing the work of their corporate donors, which is to make it easier to pollute your water, your air, so they can, those companies and those corporations can save a buck. It's a total distraction. So people need to see through this and understand that a more welcoming, inclusive, multicultural society only makes us stronger. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, to give you a sense of how terrible Democrats are out messaging, I did this for a living and I try to get all the news that we can as up to date as I can.

And I didn't even hear that the Republicans were going after the streams and waterways because the Democrats never fight back. So that's why we're doing a news event about a Democrat doing the first step of the simplest thing in the world, which is to fight back against Republicans rhetorically. And in Washington, that's like, whoa, breaking news. A Democrat fights back 10%. That's amazing. They should be kicking Republican ass left and right. They're introducing child labor laws, child marriage laws.

Both of those are in the news today that we're going to share with you later in the show. My God, the Republicans are like three-headed monsters, and this is the best we got it. We are literally celebrating one member of Congress saying one obvious thing. Yeah, and the crazy thing is, maybe I'll be wrong. I'm glad that Jordan brought it up, so it's been mentioned on our show. Maybe on MSNBC Chris Hazel talk about or something. But like I remember when when the derailment happened, they like every single Fox host was saying that a private company's mistake was the EPA declaring war on white people. But when they try to make it so that your streams and waterways will be more polluted, we're not going to have, you know, hour after hour of MSNBC hosts calling this the GOPs war on conservative America or on rural America or whatever.

Like when it's total nonsense, no relationship to reality, they immediately jump to this is and anti-white genocide, but when they're actively trying to harm these communities on the other side, eh, it would be uncouth to focus on it, I guess. So anyway, thank you, Jordan, for bringing that up. Let's turn now to the concept of wokeness. First, as applied to this actual hearing, here is AOC talking about what this actually means in practice. There's no definition of what woke is, but on paper, what's actually being criticized in

this hearing is that the so-called woke policies are remote work for federal workers, especially those that live in rural areas. those who have disabilities paying interns so that critical opportunities don't just go to privileged kids whose parents can afford to pay for their rent while they go on a free internship. That is what is woke here. That is what the other side is calling woke here, making sure that OPM can create opportunities and federal careers for partners of military service members, that's woke. This is the woke alleged takeover that we have.

I'm glad that she identified those couple of policies who, like the idea that you would make accommodations for people who live in rural areas, many of them might be conservative so that they could still be a part of government. Those are disabilities. Like that's, that's woke. No wonder they don't want to actually define woke because when you take a look at what they're actually trying to do, it makes them look at what they're actually trying to do. It makes them look really bad when they oppose it.

That said, despite the fact that you have heard literally constantly from the right, four years now, woke this, woke that, woke's bad, woke's coming for your kids, woke just transd you. Even after all of that, I got an email from a guy saying if you try to trans my kids, I'm going to kill you. I don't even know what that means. I don't have a ray gun. I don't know that setting.

Anyway, we don't know your kids. You weird old parent your own kids. Exactly. But anyway, when you ask people, after all of that, this reminds me when you ask people about like the Green New Deal, after years of the only thing they hear about it is bad, but they still like it. New USA Today, Ipsos poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word woke as a positive attribute, not a negative one.

56% of those surveyed say the term means to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices. That includes not only three-fourths of Democrats, but also more than a third of Republicans. That's not necessarily the best definition that you can come up with, but from what it eventually came to mean, I don't think it's a bad one, and people actually seem to get it. 39% say instead that the word reflects what has become the geopolitical definition to be overly politically correct and police others' words. That's the view of 56% of Republicans. By the way, that is not what Republicans mean when they say. I mean, they'll call that sort of thing woke, but they call anything they don't like woke. If a bee stings them, it's a woke insect.

It just means whatever they want it to mean. Which means, by the way, that people can put into it any negative attribute they want. That should make it very easy to convince people that it's a bad thing. But despite that, all of those factors, still people largely see it as a more positive attribute. So I love the examples that AOC gave there. And let me just suggest step 1A. After you give that example, turn to whoever's leading the proceedings, you're usually some idiot like Jim Jordan, and go, Representative Jordan, do you believe that being disabled is being, helping the disabled is being woke? Yes or no? Yes or no. You're saying this is woke. It's in the papers. This is in your proposals. We're helping the disabled and you say that's a terrible, dumb, woke thing to do. So should we not help to be disabled? Should we hurt the disabled, representative Jordan? Because it's not my guy.

day proposal, it's yours. What would happen? That would create nonstop headlines about a war between AOC and Jim Jordan. She called him stupid. Does he want to hurt the disabled? These are all great headlines. These are giant headlines about how, oh my God, the Republicans want to hurt disabled people, but it's actually literally true. Why don't you take things that are literally true and use it? And by the way, again, don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing AOC. She's the best of the lot. She listed the list of the the things that they're actually trying to do, right? So, all right, now on to the woke issue.

Amazing numbers there, because you know what happens is something that is popular as proposed, in this case it's social justice. Most people are greatly in favor of social justice in America, about two thirds are. Unfortunately, we've got a third of the country that literally doesn't like justice, okay? But that's true, again, by the way, I mean, I hate to say it, but it's kind of in our minds, it's true in almost every country, that's kind of how humans are built, and And two thirds of every country is actually progressive.

Now what the media's job is, is to convince a third of those guys, half of the two thirds that are progressive in every country, you don't want to do that. Instead, you want to give all the money to the rich and the powerful, okay? You want to give all the power to the rich and the powerful. So we have to convince you to be a conservative. So how are we gonna do that? We're gonna smear everything that helps you. So Green New Deal and Universal Health Care both pulled it around 80% when they're first

introduced, okay? And then not just Republicans, but corporate Democrats. like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, etc. And all of mainstream media and all of right wing media, then pile on a pommel green new deal. They're going to ban burgers. They're going to ban airplanes. None of it is true, but they just keep putting it in the headlines.

Oh, it's going to take away all your freedom, right? Oh, Medicare for all. You think you're getting free health care. That's better and less expensive. Yes, that's actually is what you're getting, right? No, how are you going to pay for it? If it's half the cost, you can't afford it. What? Okay. And so they did that with woke. But in this case, just the Republicans, right? And they battered it.

And Bill Marr. No, no. And but guys, it's always important to have useful idiots like Bill Maher and Joe Rogan, okay? Because they make it seem like, well, everybody's against woke politics. I look, it's not normal for Tucker Carlson to be against it. But even Bill Maher says it, right? So that's, oh, that's motto from heaven. corporate goons who want to distract you and rip apart anything that might help you, okay? So now, still at 56%. They couldn't knock it down. Same thing happens with Medicare for all. They sometimes knock it down to 59%, couple months later, back up to 71%. Because we're like, God damn, and I need the health care. I need the health care, and you guys are robbing me and I know it. And despite overwhelming propaganda. Okay, now, but get a load of this. I found this to me, it's a tiny little stat in there, but I found it really interesting. Independence, because of all this propaganda against it, by 42 to 32 say woke, no, no, this is not it. Hold on. I'm going to get to that one.

52 to 32 to 32, 10 point lead say woke is an insult, perceived as an insult. But independence not put up the graphic. By 5145, say woke means being aware of social injustice, not being overly politically correct. Then they're in favor of it. They're in favor of being woke. So even though 42% of them got the memo, I'm supposed to be insulted by this. I'm supposed to think this is bad. Still, majority were like, no, I still want it. I still want social justice. I don't care what they say.

I want it, right? Now, if you turn on television today or any other day, do you think you're going to get a positive view of woke? Or are you going to get the negative view? I think you're going to get the negative view almost everywhere you turn. Yep, are you going to get the sense that the great majority of Americans are in favor of social justice like that? Are you going to get the sense that independence, a majority of independence say, I love woke people, okay? You're not going to get that sense anywhere on television, not anywhere. And this is exactly how they deceive you, Jordan.

I think you're exactly right, Jang. This is an example of a successful branding exercise. And we saw that also with critical race theory. If you look at Google search data and Google search trends, nobody was searching for talking about critical race theory until the right, Manhattan Institute, Chris Rufo. These are Coke-funded and Republican billionaire-funded enterprises made this thing materialize almost overnight. Then suddenly, that's a top concern to a lot of hardline conservatives. It's everywhere. It's in your kindergarten class.

It's in your kids' books. We're ripping libraries apart just to get rid of all of the. the critical race theory and all these books. But when you really talk to people and you see it in the same thing here about these issues without that label, without that branding, these are things they mostly think are good. For the Medicare for All Front, I did a video for you all in DC at a protest where people were calling for the release of the January 6th prisoners. And one of the questions I asked was if Trump gets reinstated, what's the first thing you want you want him to do? And an overwhelming number of people, their answer to that question was universal health care.

These are things that we all want because these systems impact everybody. Health care doesn't just affect Democrats in a negative way. Everybody is affected by these broken systems and they all want to fix. But unfortunately, because of the media, because of politicians and charlatans, they're misled through successful branding. And we really need to push back on this and just talk to people that we know in our lives and to audiences and people that are listening to us or that we know about these issues. Longbendy Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going. Keep the fun going.

You're specifically devoid of that branding and then approach that branding conversation after. Yeah, I'm going to say one last stat here that proves Jordan 100%, right? From the same poll, critical race theory, are you in favor of it or opposed to it? 53% opposed, only 41% in favor. So they're definitely against critical race theory. What is critical race theory? It is studying the, quote, ongoing effects of slavery and racism in the United States. Not just in the past, but the ongoing effects.

So the American people hated, right? So they ask them that specific question when they find out what it actually is. Right, 72% in favor of teaching it, only 26% opposed. So when you use the magic words critical race theory because of the propaganda, they say they're against it. When you tell them what critical race theory is and ask them, should we teach it? 72% say yes. Isn't that amazing? And that right there is the power of propaganda.

All right, we've got to take a break. More amazing news when we come back. All right on TYT, Jank, John and Jordan with you guys. We get a load of this, Sally Becker, Jody Lynn, Miss Kaylee, all became members, all became American heroes. I love when we do this show together. I love when we're stronger than either, but you want to talk about heroes. Sweet Dane Dragon gifted five young turst memberships. Chris Birch gifted another 10 young turks memberships.

He did one 10 yesterday. And then Lauren McCrae, as usual, the top hero of the world. 20 young turks memberships, all gifted, okay? And every once in a lot, somebody on YouTube would be like, I just got a young tourist membership. I've been watching a long time. How did this happen? This is so cool.

I could watch the bonus episode. I could watch all these things. It happened because there's wonderful people in the community who looked out for you. So thank you guys. You're all amazing, every one of you. Yeah, thank you. All right, John. Trickle down memberships.

It's finally working. Well. Anyway, no, thank you to everybody who does that. And Swadain Dragon was actually gifting memberships on TDR this morning. So beginning to end, memberships being given. Okay, that said, let's talk about a great idea coming from Bernie Sanders, starting with this. We must understand that it is absurd that there are school districts throughout this country where there are major shortages of teachers.

And if we understand the enormously important work that teachers do, that means, in my view, among many other things, that we should be paying public school teachers a minimum of at least $60,000 a year. You're probably not surprised that Bernie San Francisco. Sanders three weeks ago is advocating for people like public school teachers. Here's the amazing thing in American politics. He said we should do a thing, and now he's doing that thing. He has introduced a bill, the Pay Teachers Act that would establish a $60,000 minimum salary

for public school teachers across the country. And here he is making the case for why we need to pass this. In America today, the starting pay for teachers in almost 40% of teachers, our school districts is less than $40,000 a year. Further, 43% of all teachers in America make less than $60,000 a year. This situation has become so absurd, and it really tells us about our priorities that the top 15 hedge fund managers on Wall Street make more money, in a single year than every kindergarten teacher in America over 120,000 teachers. That's a sort of message that should probably work well in a conservative population

that says they hate elites and the deep state and all that. No, I'm glad that he's doing this, though. I have some amazing stats for you. He gave you some amazing stats. Here are some others. He said that the average weekly wage of a public school teacher has gone up in the past 30 years once you adjust for inflation, just $29. Three whole decades, multiple generations of students going through, the collective future of our country, and for all of their labor, they're 29 bucks a week better off on average. Some are actually doing worse than they would have 30 years ago. Many of the top, more than half of the nation's schools are actually understaffed right now. When you poll teachers, roughly half of them are saying that they are already considering leaving the profession. Because like I want you to just remember just briefly, like go back like six years ago, I think we could all agree that being a public school teacher was a thankless job.

It was incredibly important, but few people focused on it. It wasn't, they didn't make much money off of it. They had to work long hours, including in the summers. They had to provide supplies for their students. And as bad as it was for teachers then, that was before the Republicans decided to train their followers that every public school teachers are also probably a sexual predator. Like they could not have imagined at that point that it was going to get worse for them, but it has.

And it's time for someone to balance the scales with a bit of support. So kudos to Bernie Sanders for pushing for that. What do you think? Okay, two more amazing stats. Wages for public school teachers also comes for Bernie Sanders. Wages for public school teachers are so low that in 36 out of the 50 states, 36 out of the 50 states, the average public school teacher with a family of four qualifies for food stamps, public housing, and other government-assisted programs. Our teachers have to go on food stamps in about two-thirds of our states, food stamps. Teachers are nearly 24% less than similarly educated professionals.

And Bernie Sanders called us simply unacceptable. That's the only part that's the bad news. It's apparently eminently acceptable because that's the situation we find ourselves in now. The country has accepted it. And so, first of all, great job by Bernie Sanders. Look, by the way, now the Democrats have lost the House. Biden has proposed the fantasy budget, and I don't mind it. It's a fine first step.

He will do nothing to fight for it. You'll see every progressive proposal in there will be killed instantly without one inch of a fight, okay? And they'll accept all the conservative ones, like the defense spending. The only people fighting back are the two people we've shown you on the show today consistently, AOC and Bernie Sanders. So here's Bernie Sanders. How about the teachers? By the way, Democrats, you know, the Republicans won in 2021, like the Virginia governance race and a couple other races because they said it was a war on parents, right? Because, oh my God, they're teaching about racism.

What you should have done at that moment is immediately say that the Republicans are doing a war on teachers, which is absolutely true. attack teachers in a thousand different ways and that that don't say gay bill in Florida says that teachers can personally be sued out of existence in total and utter bankruptcy if they make the mistake of ever mentioning the word that the fact that gay people exist okay I mean if Jesus it is it is clearly obviously a warn teachers and then this would fit perfectly into that frame and then you put the the questions of the American people do you want to attack teachers or do you want to pay them a living wage so they don't have to go on food stamps. I guarantee you that three quarters of Americans,

even tons of Republicans, will say, no, no, we're for the teachers. Can I ask you to do the simplest framing? All right. So I'd say that to everybody but Bernie. And by the way, you've seen this show. We've criticized Bernie plenty lately. Okay, but here he's doing God's work. Thank you for actually taking initiative and he actually proposed a bill. Okay, last thing for me on this. To be fair, how are we going to pay for that? And this thing does cost about $45 billion a year. Well, that sounds a lot to pay teachers all across the country. All the teachers get them up to 60,000. You know, huge percentages of you just heard don't make anywhere near 60,000. Get them all up in West Virginia and Kentucky. All the teachers can be 60,000. By the way, 60,000, a lot of

parts of this country is a hell of a salary. That incentivize a lot of people to leave what they're doing, smart people, and go become teachers. Wouldn't that be amazing? Okay, well, it's $45 billion a lot? It's 5% of the defense budget. The defense budget, which is so overloaded with pork, it's just pigs at the trough. Defense contractors take half of that budget. So if all you did was take 10% of the money being completely and utterly wasted, flushed down the toilet to defense contractors, you can give every teacher in America of $60,000 salary. That would poll like 90% in the country. Democrats, do you have any fight in you?

So progressives, I love you. This is step one and step two from Bernie. Step three is the minute Biden says, no, I'm going to need all of your votes on my bloated piece of crap defense budget. You go, no, hell no, not even close. You give us the money for teachers, take it out of the defense budget. It's only 5% and you just added 10%. Well, you'll see the numbers later in the show. You just added a giant amount.

So give it to the teachers. Otherwise, we all vote no. I don't know that you win, but at least you make a stand. So thank you, Bernie, Jordan. You know, teaching is, I think we can all agree and the viewers will agree. One of the most noble lines of work in this country. And people do it out of a love for, you know, educating young people and trying to make their communities a better place. You would think for with a Republican Party so concerned about America falling behind,

you know, not become, not remaining the world's superpower, you would think they would recognize the role education plays in long-term sustained success. The reason that we're lagging behind in so many areas compared to the rest of the developed world, from infrastructure to innovation to technological advancements, you can point specifically to education. to education and a disinvestment and a tax on public education, you have to acknowledge the racism in our history, in our country's history, and how that affects this issue too. Because redlining still has an impact on school funding because they've tied school funding to property taxes. And when you had decades of redlining and Jim Crow and all of these policies, these racist policies, pushing black and poor people into the same communities and then tying the school funding to the property taxes. This is the result. You have wealthier white schools doing well and getting a ton of

funding and you have poor black schools lagging behind. We need a more equitable approach to how we see education in this country. And that is something you could really sell on a bipartisan basis if you frame it around innovation and advancement and competition on a global level. It starts It starts in the schools and it has a multi-generational effect. This is a no-brainer. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I think they put so much effort into trying to demonize teachers to get people to think of them as predators.

They're coming for your kids rather than someone who is ideally going to be helping set up your kid for a life of success, of getting a satisfying and productive career, of living a good life. Ask these parents, do you want your kid's teacher to be focused on your kids? your kid or do you want them to be working a second and a third job? Do you want your kid to be one of the priorities for this teacher because they're struggling to make ends meet? I wonder how many in Florida, for instance, would respond to that right now. In any event, we have been talking about the military budget. I think it's time for us to talk about the military budget, or at least

the budget they're trying to pass. Let's turn to that now. Joe Biden has unveiled his budget and it has a couple of good things in it for progressives when it comes to domestic spending. But oh boy, does it have a lot for the military. He has requested $886.4 billion. That's just for the next year. That's just that one year and then we're going to do this again with another nearly trillion dollars. That is an increase of $28 billion just from last year. And just in case you weren't paying attention to American politics last year, we had a really big military defense budget then. I want to go over the last couple of years. So we'd like to show this chart.

This is a chart from 2022. This is a comparison of our military budget to basically all of the other big world players. We're bigger. than all of them. By the way, that was when our budget was $801 billion. It's nearly 10% larger than that. Just in this next proposed budget, we've effectively added a Japanese and South Korean military to our military. The increase is larger than the entire military budget of literally dozens of world powers. I guess nobody knew that we were on the brink of being just utterly destroyed as a country. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not

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That's how desperate our need for additional military spending is. And this is not anything new. If you take a look at the changes over the last few years, it just always goes up. Big increases year to year to year. Back in 2018, when we were at $682 billion, we barely could survive as a people. That's why we needed an, it's been five years. They're adding $200 billion. Think about how many major programs can be funded just by that.

We were just talking about Bernie Sanders' increase of the salary for public school teachers. It would be a quarter of just the increase in the budget over just the last five years. And we would be every bit as safe as a country. What do you think? Yeah. So the CBO, that's Congressional Budget Office, this nonpartisan, says that there's about at least $100 billion of waste. $100 billion could fund so many programs that help you and your family, tons and tons of programs. And your teachers have $60,000 and have plenty of money left for paid family leave.

You could all get 12 weeks off after you have a kid. Paid. Nope, we're just going to give it to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, et cetera. And nobody's even cares. The Pentagon never passes an audit. What does that mean? That means they're taking the money, they're shoving it into the pockets of corporate executives and defense contractors.

And then when the auditors come, they go, of course you have nothing but crooks in this place. You think you're going to get results where we show you where we spent your nearly trillion dollars? No, we stole it and you'll have to like it. It's the most wasteful part of our government by an order of magnitude. When you include the money being spent, it's being sent to Ukraine, et cetera. It goes from 880 or so to about $950 billion, nearly a trillion.

It's already more than half of our entire spending, discretionary spending is on defense. You put in law enforcement things like Department of Homeland Security. It's comical, almost two-thirds of our budget is spent on war, weapons, weapons, war, weapons, weapons. Are we nuts? And yes, the answer is definitively we're nuts. We've been taken over by corporate robots, we've been put to sleep by corporate media, and we can't tell the spending two-thirds of our money on weapons, by the way, that we never even use, okay? Instead of actually helping our kids with food and education and decent paying jobs for the population

and services from the government, and parks, I mean, just anything else. Nope. This will pass easily. The rest of Biden's budget is a joke. None of the progressive parts will pass. They're all for marketing purposes. Biden will not even try to pass them. But if progressive somehow miraculously tweaked 1% or 1% of this budget, Biden would come at them with a fury you've never seen. Yeah. So wait, Obama massively increased the defense budget. Trump massively increased it on top of that, and now Biden is massively increasing it on top of that. So where's all the fighting about? Oh my God, critical race theory, M&Ms, my ass, they're robbing you blind, and it's completely bipartisan. It's funneling all of your tax dollars that you worked so hard for

to the richest corporate executives in the world and saying it's done for your security. Who the F is invading us? All we ever do is start conflicts across the world. Is Canada about to invade us? So much so that we should spend so much more money on those weapons we don't use to protect us against the Hungarians and the Canadians and people from Botswana and Laos. Okay, are you insane? Spend it on us.

And hey, Republican. I'm going to try to not use adjectives here that are insulting. Republican voters, you say you're against war, you're saying you for America first. Why not take that money and spend it in America on you and me? Why are we spending it on giant billionaire executives? Why? How does that help you? Please, you're in the middle of a rebellion against the establishment.

The rebellion is really wayward and going in weird directions. But I like that you started a rebellion. can you focus it towards things that make sense instead of agreeing with your dumb, corrupt politicians that we should give all the money to their donors? That doesn't help you 1%. For God's sake, do something rational. And Democrats, they're never, you know, by the way, last thing on this. I got a bunch of Democratic trolls, probably paid bots or whatever they are on social media

who are like, Jake, you're hurting Democrats by pointing out how gigantic the defense budget is. And you know, there's some Democrats are opposed to it. But no, I check the numbers. It's progressives. And you know what happens? These defense budgets pass overwhelmingly overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly. Overwhelming out, Republicans have a slim, slim lead in the House. No, two thirds of Democrats join the Republicans in going, pork, pork, pork, pork, pork, pork,

give all the money to our donors. Give all the money to our donors. Did you get a sense from mainstream media? Did you want get a sense from MSNBC? There's two thirds of Democrats or traders who give all of your money to their donors. No, don't criticize the beloved Democrats. All right, Jordan. This Biden military budget request is high.

It's the highest ever. But Congress, just like last year and the year before that, and year before that, Congress is going to try to punch it up even more. So it's going to get even higher. And at the same time they did this last year, the school lunch program with the federal government covered the cost of school lunches so that people who are struggling financially from the pandemic, their kids could eat lunch at school. And they didn't rack up school lunch debt, which is an insane concept to begin with in this country. But that renewing that program would have cost

around 12 billion. And Congress was on the fence about letting it slide. They extended it for a few more months and it's expired now. But at the same time, they were trying to punch up the military budget by like 50 or 60 billion more. And it's just a perfect encapsulation of how little they care about the average working person in this country and their material needs and how beholden they are to defense contractors, corporations, lobbyists, the power players in Washington who help fund their campaigns. And until people really realize that nothing's going to change, but especially if Democrats who were supposed to be the anti-war party, that's their legacy, right? and they've totally abandoned that until they start fighting back against this, even when it's their

own president, the president from their own party calling for increases to the military budget, if they turn a blind eye in four or eight years of a Democratic administration, how can anybody expect anything to change? But the answer is, like you're saying, jank, two-thirds of Democrats don't want things to change. It's working just fine for them. It keeps them in office, their paychecks keep coming in, and they're going to have a job line. lined up for them when they leave Congress. There is one last layer of this that you need to know. And you can probably, if you've been paying attention to American politics, you can probably

see where this is going to go. So Democrat proposes big increase to military defense. So obviously he gets credit from the right, right? He has been criticized. People like Barbara Lee has criticized him. By the way, she and Mark Pocan introduced legislation that would reduce the U.S. military budget by $100 billion, which is going to have them. them labeled communist scum for the rest of their life, and by the way, that would only bring us back down to 2020 levels. No, he wants to add $30 billion to the defense budget. And Mike Rogers complained that he's proposing to increase non-defense spending at more than twice the

rate of defense. He's not even like complaining like that it's not enough defense. He's just like, you do not get to do non-defense stuff more. It bothers me on a deep level that you would prioritize anything over defense. And then let's see, Rogers says he has incredibly misplaced priorities that send all the wrong messages to our adversaries. Senator Roger Wicker called his budget request woefully inadequate and a serious indication of President Biden's failure to prioritize national security. His military defense budget request is $200 billion more than Trump's first request. $200 billion. It's woefully inadequate.

And just to forget that this is like a news show, forget that we're at a desk or whatever. As a regular person, can you imagine spending $850 billion on a thing? And the next year, if you don't spend even more, your country is going to utterly fall apart. What happened to the weapons that we bought? What happened to the tanks and the helicopters and the ammunition and the missiles and all that stuff? That it just doesn't matter after one year. You might as well have not even spent it because you always have to spend more. Would you follow this sort of spending strategy on your car or on your house?

You do $800,000 of maintenance on your house. And if you don't spend a million dollars next year, the house is going to collapse. Wouldn't you start to question what's going on there in terms of the spending? It's utter madness, but almost nobody questions it. Yeah. Anyway. Well, of course, if we had a functioning press in this country, everybody would be questioning And see, this is monstrous.

Why do we need to spend more money than all of the other major countries in the world on defense? All of them combined. Why do we have to spend $200 billion more than Trump did? Why does Biden have to do that? Zero reporters will last that. Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. In fact, if you, the only thing that they'll ever do is write hit pieces on Barbara Lee and anyone who else who questions the defense budget. They'll do it on the guys of, is this a smart political strategy for Democrats?

Or could they lose some critical elections in swing states if they do this? Don't you dare ever for a post-corporate rule? You'll lose in swing states. Why? Because swing states love corporate rule. They want Racion's CEO to get even richer. Otherwise, that's it. They'll vote for Republicans.

Okay, it doesn't matter. Corporate media never proves anything. They just spew nonsense, toxic nonsense 24-7. John, I was going to read the same quotes you did. I found them hilarious. So the usual question for you guys, is Joe Biden super dumb? Like one of the dumbest people in the whole country? It's just a question, it's not a statement, okay?

Now, did he think that adding $30 billion to the defense budget would get the Republicans to say, good job, good enough, thank you, we appreciate it. Or did he realize like every sentient person in the world that they would say it's woefully inadequate? He has endangered our national security. So what were you gaining, Joe? Were you gaining political credit? No, you got zero, none. They called you a commie anyway.

Are you that unbelievably dumb that you thought the Republicans would give you credit? Or at least be neutral on this? No, the answer is Joe Biden is not that dumb. He's just as corrupt as everyone else, maybe even worse. So he tells you that he's going to do progressive things. and then he spends $200 billion more than Trump on defense. Because he never meant a word of it. I know you've been brain, a lot of you have been brainwashed by mainstream media,

especially if you're in my age demographic. Oh, Democrats are the good guys. They're here to help you. Don't ever criticize them. You'll be helping Trump and the Republicans. No, you can kick the living crap out of Trump and the Republicans and still criticize the Democrats. But that would be objective. Yeah, goddamn right.

That's what you're supposed to be. So no, Joe Biden is intensely corrupt and is funneling billions of dollars of our taxpayer money to his corporate donors. Everything else is a lie. Go ahead, Jordan. I think people really need to think about how propaganda is they are around the role of our military here and around the world. And in Congress, you see this cowardice.

They're all afraid to even propose a moderate cut to the military budget. And you're un-American, you're weak on national security, you're a traitor. If you propose restoring the military budget to Obama era levels, it's a moderate decrease. And no one will touch it other than a Bernie, I think maybe Markey did. A couple people have suggested it. But most Democrats won't. And again, this is the party that is purportedly anti-war, but through their support and continued calls for funding to Ukraine, their total hands-off approach to our role in the war in Yemen and the horrors that we are funding and inflicting there, they really don't care. And they've completely abandoned that principle.

I think that's what makes progressives mad. It's not that you want you want Democrats to lose and Republicans to win. That's a very simple-minded way of seeing politics in this country. It's that we We want Democrats to actually be a strong anti-war party. That's what we want as peace advocates, as people who want diplomacy and non-violent solutions to global conflicts, we want the Democratic Party to be that messenger. But they're not. And that's what's so frustrating. So that's where the criticism comes from.

It's not that anybody on the progressive side wants Republicans to win. That is stupid. And people who say that should not be taken seriously. great we're to take our last break we come back a little bit more news before we close up the hour we'll be back in a bit all right back on T. All right back on TYT jank Jordan and John with you guys and David R Chipman he just became member, David, you're an American hero. And 2AT wrote in a new YouTube member, thanks to whome ever gifted me a membership. Power to the people. I love it. Thanks for looking

out for one another. You guys are awesome. All right, John. Okay, let's have a little bit of fun with America, America, America. Start with this. Hey, champ. Hey, Arkansas. Good news. We're rolling back child labor protections. Wait, what? If you're under 16, the state won't have to verify your age anymore before you can take a job. But federal officials have been cracking down on child labor violations. Last month, the labor department find a subcontractor for meatpacking plants because they employed kids. Some of them sustained chemical burns after working with cleaning agents. And you can too. All right, take care, kids. Yep, it's already happening. It's becoming much more common that kids are working in these dangerous environments. And yeah, they're getting

burned by chemicals. They're working with industrial equipment, razor sharp saws. They're working as animals are being torn to shreds, heavy machinery, and you're going to see more of it. Thanks to people like Arkansas Governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who passed a bill in Arkansas that makes it easier for companies to hire younger and younger employees. Under this law, the Youth Hiring Act of 2023, children under 16 do not have to obtain permission from the Division of Labor to get a job. They will no longer need to get an employment certificate, which verified their age, described their work and work schedule, and included written consent from a parent

or guardian. And they say, well, this isn't a big deal because it's just, you know, it's going to like streamline the process and like, why do the parents have to get involved in all that, which is weird because parents need to get involved in a whole bunch of stuff when it comes to kids, according to Republicans, anything involving their gender identity or sexuality, parents need to be up in that. But when it comes to them potentially being exposed to deadly chemicals or dangerous machinery at the age of 15 or 16 years old, well, flame on. What do you think? So they, so let's talk about the power propaganda as usual.

They make it seem like, oh, like it's just your kid getting a summer job at Dairy Queen. And we're just getting rid of the red tape. No, your kids that get the summer job, it's super easy for you to write them and sign the letter saying, oh yeah, they're allowed to get one. It's their summer job, but happy to have it, good work ethic, right? That already exists, you can already do that. No, this is so that you don't have to get the parents permission so they could exploit the most vulnerable. vulnerable children. Do you think they're working at the dairy clean? No, they're

working at meat packing plants. A hundred, over a hundred kids at a meat packing plant and they're cleaning up severed heads, blood that drenches the floor, clean the axes, and a device called a head splitter. 14 years old getting the worst wages. Oh, by the way, that explains it. Why do they all of a sudden want kids to work? Because they ran out of women. Wait, what do you mean? First, it was mainly males who worked. And then women got introduced into the workforce. So that's great, right? It gives them the option of working, et cetera. But then it wasn't an option anymore because everybody needed two incomes to

survive because corporations have squeezed every penny out of our houses and our families. So now they're like, now bringing your kids. Let's go. It's time to exploit them. But I don't want them sitting around. It was a 13 year old. Get them into the meatpacking plan. Okay? No, So you're all gonna work for me, you're all gonna get the worst possible salary so that if you put all three, four, five of you together, all of your salaries together, you could barely subsist. That's the corporate plan and Sarahuckabee Sanders, who's a corporate goon extraordinaire, is happy to exploit the children of Arkansas on behalf of our donors. These are the sick, sick people called Republicans in our country. I think you're right, Jank. This problem, this push for more child workers has been framed largely as a response to a worker shortage. There is no worker shortage in this country.

There is a living wage and a robust salary shortage. Companies want to get away with paying people less and less so they can maximize profits. And one of these companies that was responsible for hiring kids, Packer Sanitation Services. They are owned by Blackstone, the largest private equity group in the world. The CEO of Blackstone, Stephen Schwartzman, you know how much he made last year? $1.3 billion. Do you think that as a company? When these companies, they buy these other companies, gut them and try to strip them for parts so they can maximize profit. For them, that includes hiring children so they don't have to pay adults a living wage. Do you think that company could afford to pay people adults a little bit more when their

CEO is making $1.3 billion in one year? I would say so. So it's important to push back on this narrative that there's a worker shortage and that's why they're doing this. But this is a last resort. No, this is purely motivated by greed. Yeah, 100%. And, you know, like Trump loves to talk about national decline. Does this seem like a country that's becoming stronger when they're having to open up opportunities for younger and younger kids to be forced into dangerous jobs? And too many conservatives just accepted that no, that's the only way I guess that it can work. It's not, they're not doing. Finland isn't like desperately trying to get 10 year olds in the meat packing plants. This is not the only path that a country can walk

down. We could go in a different direction. We could make sure that everybody makes a living wage that kids get to focus on being kids, that they get to actually have their youth, perhaps go to school, maybe spend a little bit time in a library that still has books that haven't been banned and prepare themselves for their actual lives rather than being thrown into the machinery at this young of an age. They talk about saving kids innocence. That's what Marjorie Green talks about. But they only mean that when it comes to knowing that gay people exist. When it comes to stopping them from being gunned down with A.15s or sold off his child

brides or going to work for Tyson foods, suddenly they don't care so much about the innocence. Yeah, last couple of things here for me, number one, Lever, doing fantastic job of reporting on this again, as usual. And so they're taking your retirement money, as Jordan explained, and then using it, by the way, to invest in companies that outsource your jobs. and that uses child labor, which leads me to my final point. As you guys were talking, I realized what's next. Because remember what the Republicans said, it was mainly the corporations that wanted

to undocumented immigrants in so they could pay them less, right? So there's long conversations about that and the history of that, right? But now it's corporations that say, give me the kids. I need the kids. I can pay them less. And then you know what? That'll be competition for their parents. That's an extra benefit on top.

So the way that they got you to, they got a bunch of right wingers and some well-meaning independence who got hoodwinked, et cetera, to hate immigrants, they might do it to your kids. Oh, the kids are taking your job. You should fight your kids. Don't fight the guys at the top making $1.3 billion off of all this exploitation. Fight within the family.

Oh, your wife going to work now. Oh, yeah, really? And she's got rights. Oh, she wants rights to control her own body? Oh, you guys should fight. Oh, your kids taking your job, man. You guys should fight. You guys should fight.

Wolf workers. Right wingers, I'm begging you, man. I know you care about your family. I know you care about your kids. You're not like Republican politicians. Republican politicians work for their donors. You know that they're corrupt. Democratic voters, I'm begging you.

Stop listening to mainstream media. That tells you the Democrats are good guys. and then never fights back against this. Sarah Huckabee Sanders should be driven out of politics instantly. There should be a recall effort. The Democrats in Arkansas should be talking about child labor, Sarah. Okay, she's going to drive your kids into meat packing plants so they could clean up severed heads. That's the kind of sick, go ghoul, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is.

oh no no let's be civil hey you got me the check too oh did you get it and you advertise it to new york times so they won't talk about it perfect okay all right we got to go everybody check out damage report everybody check out the million things that jordan's on game busters the insurgent podcast all right guys much love in the second hour more horrible news okay by the way the bonus episode we're going to lighten it up and then some in the second hour or two. A woman marries herself and a day later gets divorced. It's a hilarious story. And Elon Musk Utopia, all that's coming up. Stay right here. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks.

Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.