The Young Turks - Snowflake Cruz

Episode Date: February 20, 2021

Ted Cruz admits it was a bad move to run to Cancun but still holds onto the lie that he was planning to work during the trip. 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. 3x3,000, 319, 319, 319, 319, 319, primarie, Dismartee, primarie! It's Friday. We got a lot to do, so drop it. I'm a power panel, Jake you or John I don't know. Kenya Evelyn joins us from Guardian USA.

I feel safer already. I'm being guarded. Oh, right. The newspaper, the one that it is actually honest, great reporting, and doesn't hate progressives. Thank you. How's that for a compliment? So when I do the power panel thing of dropping it and whatever awkward thing I say, my My favorite part of Friday is when I can see on Skype, all the other hosts and producers

going, oh, guilty. You made it. All right, so are we going to have a fantastic show? I'm afraid the answer is yes. So lots of information, because that's kind of what we're in the business of, but also progressive perspective, i.e., the truth. And obviously we'll come out with a little bit of passion, as you might suspect, especially about Texas where I'm raring to go. All right, John Iarola, Legend of the Internet, proceed.

Oh, that's the first time I've heard that, but now I'm going to repeat it ad nauseum. Anyway, Ted Cruz is still facing a ton of criticism over his decision to be a good dad by going to Cancun while millions of his constituents go without power or food or drinkable water. His explanation has evolved a bit. Let's take a look at one of the most recent forms. Whether the decision to go was tone deaf, look, it was obviously a mistake. And in hindsight, I wouldn't have done it. I was trying to be a dad. And all of us have made decisions when you've got two girls who have been cold for two days and haven't had heater power and they're saying, hey, look, we don't have school. Why don't we go, let's get out of here.

Yeah, they're freezing. Dad, save us, take us to the most convenient place down Cancunway. But anyway, as I talked about on the damage report this morning, I hate the little shrugs and a little, like it's so affected, it's so on purpose and performative his attempt to be folksy. And it just doesn't sell, especially when he is trying to defend the indefensible. What do you think? Yeah. So John, I kind of like the shrugs because he looks weak doing it. He looks weak doing it. He looks like a beta. And so like what you could tell when he's lying, well, first of all, when his mouth opens, but second of all, when he's defensive about his lying, when he, he does, like, he moves his head, he moves his shoulders a lot, and it looks weak and defensive. Here's how Trump

would have handled this. I went down to Cancun because only suckers and losers stay in the cold. I'm a very stable genius. Stable geniuses go to Cancun. I can afford it because I'm really rich, Unlike there's suckers in Texas and everybody in Texas who is a Republican would be like, yes, what a genius that guy is. So in a sense, politically, Ted Cruz has made a mistake here by admitting a mistake. Now, I see people still looking for a pound of flesh and saying, no, he needs to formally apologize. No, that was an apology.

Let's keep it real. I'm a progressive. I despise Ted Cruz. Okay, we'll get, no, no, no, no, we'll have a conversation about it. We'll have a conversation. Okay. So, but my favorite excuse was like, oh, my, you know, my kids, my daughters, they were a little cold. So we decided we just got to go to Ritz Carlton at Cancun. Wow, well, that must be nice. So by the way, your daughters maybe had to go to the Ritz Carlton at Cancun. You didn't have to go. So that's a totally different situation. All right, Kenya, what do you think? I mean, I think growing up, I'm just imagining growing up in Wisconsin, just a number of countries I would have almost automatic dual citizenship with every time we got to leave on account of a snowstorm. I don't, I don't think we would actually live in the state. But can you imagine? I think it speaks to something as your tenure as a congressman, your validity as a politician, and then just your overall humanity. When you know, when you're looking at when someone can log online and see, you know, what a. POS trending and immediately think to themselves, oh my gosh, what did Senator 10 Cruz do now?

Without even having to know much of the story. But I mean, with all seriousness, we're talking about a pretty serious situation here where you have folks who are going, you know, out days, weeks without power, without electricity, without heat, without food. And for that, it just sends the wrong message. And just as much as it sends a wrong message to head off to Cancun at a time when your constituents are suffering, it looks equally pathetic for you to then and be cowering and finally acknowledging the state you abandoned by wearing the state flag as your mask as you tried to tiptoe back. It just wasn't all around that look. Yeah, Jank, I think, look, very few politician apologies are very good. So I think that the bar

is set pretty low. If you even approach it, you're gonna be better than most. But I don't think it can be an apology if you do the apology and then you lie about why you had to do the thing to do the thing you're apologizing for. I don't think it can be an apology if you apologize and then you attack the media as trying to spin it into something negative when it's obviously negative. It has to be negative or you wouldn't be apologizing for it. So if you apologize and then make excuses and lie and try to turn people to be mad at the media or your daughters or whatever, it's not it's not an apology.

It's certainly not a good apology. No, no, John, of course, right? So look, the core of the lie is not just Ted Cruz, it's shared by every Republican in Texas, let alone the rest of the country. And I want to say this every time we talk about the story, you must understand that it was because of the deregulation of the energy companies. They chose not to insulate their pipes, and that's what caused the debacle. And it could have been mitigated if they were part of federal energy grid, but they chose not to be. Why? Because of both conservative ideology and crony capitalism and corruption. And so they got paid by those fossil fuel companies. And so the real apology would be Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Rick Perry, George W. Bush, all of them coming out and doing a press conference together and saying, we were wrong. We thought not being connected to the rest of the country was a good idea. But it turns out we needed the rest of you. And we're so sorry because now we're asking for federal assistance. And it turns out we're

Turns out, we did need you. And secondly, we deregulated these energy companies because they give us campaign contributions, what you colloquially call bribes. And so a lot of you died because of that. We're so sorry. That would be the proper apology. But of course we're not going to get that. And all I'm saying, John, is that politically, when he does the shrug and saying,

and I had to take my daughters to Ritz Carlton, right? And he says it was a mistake. That actually politically in Republican circles is a mistake because Republicans like dumb lying alpha dogs. So when he admits it's a mistake, they actually have less respect for. Well, I would say especially when the excuse that you come up with is going to evaporate in the next day when probably the friends who were going with you to Cancun leak the original chat conversations that led to the trip. and prove that you needing to go as a chaperone and you needing to go because your daughters came up with a trip, neither of those are actually true. So we found out that group text messages sent by Heidi Cruz, senators, the senator's wife, show that the family's Cancun controversial

getaway was a last minute decision, one that came after she invited other friends in what was an attempt on her part to flee the cruises freezing home. She wrote, anyone can or want to leave for the week. We may go to Cancun. The senator's wife also pitched a direct flight in hotels with capacity, seriously, and talked about how it was only a little bit more than $300 a night and has very good security. So apparently it was her idea, and she was going, which provides a parental chaperone if you need one. So his excuse, as I said on the day before this morning, I admire Ted Cruz for finally not throwing his wife under the bus, But his excuses just aren't true based on what has now been leaked.

Yeah, let alone a snowflake. Oh, you want to see snowflake? So the snowflake that Jenk is referring to there is his dog. Journalist Michael Hardy tweeted this, just drove by Ted Cruz's house in Houston. His lights are off, but a neighbor told me the block of its power back last night. Also, Ted appears to have left behind the family poodle, which is happy because now there's power. By the way, if you look at that picture, if you zoom in, it's the saddest thing. Snowflakes, like, where did they all go? It was freezing last night. Apparently there was a security guard, but it was basically abandoned. How could this happen to me?

It looks like Ted Cruz was trying to do a reboot of All Dogs Go to Heaven. But then the power came back on. Yeah. Look, Kenya, my sense is that you could be vicious to human beings in this country and totally get away with it, especially if you're a Republican. But if you mess with a dog, okay, black, white, liberal conservative, it doesn't matter. People will get very emotional. So when I saw Snowflake trending on Twitter, I thought it was just a reference to Ted

Cruz. But it turns out it's his dog. And this is the kind of thing that people will not like. Even Republicans like dogs. So this might be another layer of Ted Cruz's mistake. So overall, Kenya, thoughts on how much lasting damage does this do to Ted Cruz? Is it going to leave a mark? I mean, I think we've seen just in the last several weeks the depths of which Ted Cruz is willing to go to look out for Ted Cruz.

which is honestly pretty surprising than when you would miss a clear, you know, self-aggrandizing opportunity to just promote yourself, even if for no other reason than to finally look like, you know, a senator capable of getting actionable work done for your constituents, even in the terms of photo ops and opportunities to be in the state talking with people, talking with your own people who voted for you to at least appear to be working. But I mean, I think this, as we're seeing, there are calls for him to resign. And I think we are seeing him take the Donald Trump approach now, which is to assume be a victim here. And even as we saw in the last several weeks, I mean, we watched two senators who ultimately on account of this action lost their seats.

But we saw two senators, even during the coronavirus pandemic, two Georgia senators profit off of the sale of medical equipment or stock sales related to medical supplies and vaccine distributions. So, you know, it doesn't surprise me the depths to which Republicans are willing to not only profit. off of the pain and suffering of American citizens, but then just turned a blind eye to it by essentially hopping to another country, seeking a better life or better opportunity for their children. Yeah. Jank, you want to move to a little bit more about Texas? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Hold. Thank you. So why did it get so bad in Texas? It turns out it's not the frozen windmills. I know. I was as shocked as you that it turned out Fox was lying about that needlessly.

No, it turns out that some of the issues with the ability of the energy infrastructure of multiple different forms of electricity generation to weather extreme cold events was a problem that was actually known in advance of these storms. It was actually warned about about a decade earlier. And apparently, they just didn't heed those warnings. There's this new report from a 2011 analysis issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that said apparently that federal regulators warned Texas that its power plants couldn't be counted on to reliably churn out electricity in bitterly cold conditions when the last deep freeze plunged 4 million people into the dark. So it was bad back then. It wasn't as bad as most recently, but they recommended that utilities use more insulation, heat pipes, and take

other steps to winterize plants. The February 2011 incident occurred when an Arctic cold front descended on the southwest, sending temperatures below freezing for four days in a row. The result was disastrous. Equipment and instruments froze, forcing the shutdown of power plants and rolling blackouts, according to the report. Some of the same equipment, by the way, had failed during previous cold snaps as far back as December 1989, which prompted the state's grid operator to resort to system-wide rolling blackouts for the first time. Now, why, if Texas experienced this in 1989 and experienced it in 2011, and there were warnings about this, why wasn't anything done? Well, apparently Urquat officials said that while they

have called for companies to harden their facilities against cold, it can't force them to do so. And there are no regulatory penalties if they choose not to weatherize, no matter how many cycles Texas goes through, no matter how many people die when it gets bad, the companies just don't, there's no actual requirement for them to listen to this advice. So once again, not so much the frozen windmills, but deregulation has led to, if the companies are going to make money by weatherizing, and if they're just going to be protected when these bad events happen, then why would they willingly decide to do that if there's no penalties for not heating this advice? So our own reporter Tiwai Chang just posted about this, we'll put the link down below

in a description box on YouTube and Facebook if you're watching there, about how much money flowed into politicians' hands in Texas from those same companies. So, So this is how our system works. We've legalized bribery, so companies just can bribe politicians and then they'll avoid all regulation and usually avoid most taxes. And so let me break down how this works for you guys. I run a business, I know how you do budgeting. So when a company looks at this, they go, okay, this happened in 1989, it happened 2011, and

now it's happened again. So it happens, a giant horrible winter storm hits Texas at least once a decade bad enough to kill people. But and when it does, by the way, we get to crank up the prices because that was another part of the deregulation. So we're gonna make a killing, didn't mean that, but they did. We're gonna make a lot of money off of this is what they think if it happens. But it happens so infrequently, it's not worth insulating our pipelines.

which will cost us way more than the money we make once a decade when things freeze. Now, when things freeze, yes, we'll be unprepared, on purpose, and we'll have some costs attached to that. But the price increases will make up for that cost. So economically, there's no way that insulating the pipelines will pay for itself. So if the government says we suggest you do it, the CEOs and the executives will laugh and laugh, oh, did you? You suggested it? You suggested I should lose $10 million. No, I'm not going to take that. By the way, not lose it as in you're not making money, 10 million less than profits of however much it costs. But that's, and I'm making that number up. But whatever that number is, well, there's another price to it. I mean, the last time I checked dozens of people had done. died in Texas. So they're saying, oh, we know you're going to die. It happened many times before. But it's not worth it to our bottom line to protect your lives like we're supposed to. Now what the government is supposed to do is not suggested. They're supposed to say, no, you must protect the people of Texas. If you're going to provide our energy and we're

going to give you that contract and you're going to get money from us, it is not optional whether you protect our lives, let alone the energy that heats our homes and gives us other forms of sustenance. So the idea that you deregulate and cross your fingers and hope their corporations do the right thing is absurd on its face. Only someone maniacally stupid or deceitful would believe that. Well, immediately as soon as I see this and as I see the pattern of when these storms of happen and someone that chat is saying that in rural Texas back in 99, 2000 that winter, they were about a week without power. I wonder, are we going to be reporting on the next one? Like in five or six or eight years, are we going to be reporting when they probably

still don't heed the advice? And by the way, every 10 years is bad enough, but it is likely that this is going to get worse and more frequent. On the damage report, we played some videos of explanations of why climate change would result in more and hence winter storms in Texas and other parts of the US. So it is likely that not dealing with this crisis and not dealing with the climate crisis could result in a worsening of both. Yeah. In any event. Yeah, so but Kenny, I want to kick it over to you for a second, because look, you're in media, of course, we're in media as well, but you're a reporter for the Guardian and I often blame the mainstream media. And I don't think Guardians is part of

mainstream media, but I'm curious about your perspective. So look, there was a, at least print outlets, including Bloomberg, that had to correct articles on this, right? They explain where the majority of the problem comes from. It comes from fossil fuels and the pipelines of those freezing, etc. So that's great, and that's what we love about journalism, right? But when it comes to the national media, there's almost never any accountability. So they're happy to talk about Ted Cancruz, and that's good, and that's at least some accountability for a politician. a politician. But when it comes to the substance, deregulation in this instance clearly caused

the problem. Not being connected to the federal energy grid, clearly made it worse. But I don't think any of the national media will say, hence Abbott and Perry and Bush, the governors of Texas, the Republican governors of Texas, were wrong and they should fix it. If history is any guide, They won't fix a damn thing. They'll continue to take the bribes. And the next time they will do the same exact thing as this time where they'll go, oh, nobody could have seen this coming. This was a once in a century storm. I literally saw that from right wingers all over my social media today, once a century. It just happened 10 years ago. And it's not just the extreme cold. How about the extreme heat? How about the extreme rain? Houston just got hit a couple of years

ago with another once in a century storm. It might be misunderstanding the word century. Absolutely. Absolutely. If we're seeing once in a century turned into once a decade, perhaps twice a decade, when every single hurricane seizing, the next hurricane is essentially a beating its predecessor in terms of record-breaking storms, record number of death and destruction. I mean, as soon as we're starting to connect those dots more, and you're right, it's a part of it is the media.

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of the irony of it being named Snowflake but as soon So long as we're paying attention to that instead of the fact that it is black and brown communities that are going to be most readily in the dark for weeks to come, their communities are most likely to have their power or least likely to have their power restored in the early days of service. And then if we're failing to connect the dots here in terms of what politicians at the state and local level were having campaign contributions that we know to be bribes or other forms of corruption on account of this deregulation that took essentially. entire state off of a federal system that could have prevented this very disaster. Until we start connecting those dots of climate change, climate policy, and how it's impacting the very communities that live in Texas today, that are still searching for food today, that are still boiling their water today, until we make that correlation.

We'll see these episodes continue for every 10 years to come. Call it, I mean, it might as well be the census or a leap year, every four years we'll see soon. Yeah, in fact, I want to build out that real quick. Because this is our reporting that just came out from TYT Investigates. So Midland Energy is one of the companies involved here. They are the single largest donor to Governor Abbott. They were the single largest donor to Governor Perry. So every real person, including every Republican, knows that when you take millions of dollars

from these companies, they're not doing it for health or charity. They're doing it to buy Greg Abbott and Rick Perry. And they did. So then Abbott and Perry say, I don't worry about insulating it. We'll do a suggestion, right? And then you guys will get to, you give me a couple million bucks, and you'll get to save $10 or $20 million. And later, my citizens will die, but don't sweat it. We're all making money. So let me give you more of that money, quoting Tiwai Chang, our reporter here. And then Midlis founder is Saeed Javid Anwar, and he was, of course, friends with George. W. Bush, also former governor of Texas. And apparently Bush calls him jaddy. Okay, how is that

for telling? And anyway, in 2018, Anwar reportedly had donated more than $1.7 million to Texas Republicans. And Abbott got more than a million dollars of that, including both cash and airplane rides. So, and it goes on and on. Please read the story. We have a link down in the description box for you guys. see, it is very, very, very direct. The companies involved, paid Abbott, and the rest of the Texas Republicans millions of dollars to make sure that they could profit off of you, but not protect you. And so I'm just asking all the national media to do the bare minimum and report facts about the donors. If you're telling me it's not bribes,

Honestly, you should retire from journalism because you're not a journalist. You know, oh, yeah, no, Abbott is so honorable. And the million bucks that he took was to help the people of Texas. And then coincidentally, he decided that Midlands should not have extra costs that they would need to protect you. Come on, then you're not a journalist. Go home. Be a plumber. Be a dentist.

Do something else. And it follows even long after where you've been talking about these campaigns. contributions. It extends even now, as we're seeing, we'll see soon the federal government step in with FEMA relief aid, with FEMA relief loans for small businesses. And even we'll see some of these big corporations attempt to take tax write-offs on account of the sheer destruction that some of this disaster, this storm cause. When you're in one element wanting to deregulate the government and saying, you're going to be the very cause of this disaster on account of wanting to escape the government, to then come back around and say, we want

this federal assistance and being able to maintain our profits or expand our profits long after this recovery. I mean, that accountability continues long after. And to these, as these investigations continue, or even as we see moving forward, what we're even predicting as, you know, what we'll see in a couple years, having, you know, have, I think I have, we'll see having our, have. Tanya, yeah, your screen went, black, mine did do it. We can still hear you. Oh, sorry about that. That's what I was wondering. If you guys can hear me, I'll just keep talking. But in terms of what we'll see to be in the years to come, efforts to prevent or even try to modernize these facilities and fossil fuel industries moving forward. Yeah. There's no true to the rumor that Midland is also controlling Kenya's screen.

It's all a conspiracy. Yeah. To be fair to Jay Daddy, he didn't do that one. Okay, John, you want to take a break and come back with more news? Yeah, that's a good idea. All right, that sounds great. Guys, we have more updates on this. Some of you wrote in already saying, hey, did you guys know that they're now making tremendous money off of this? The same energy companies that caused disaster in the first place.

Yes, we have that leader in the program. So come right back. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fibing the Roeating. Republic, or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom.

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So, I'm going to do. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. You know, All right, back during the break, let me go to the member's comments right away. Leroy, not Jenkins, spelled with a C, wrote in, I would have to say that my favorite part of the power panel overall is the theme music with the added TYT chant, hits hard. Thank you, Leroy, I appreciate it. We like to hit hard. John Campbell Reese writes in, I bet many poor people freezing their

backsides off in Texas would like to be like Ted Cruz and his family, just be able to drop everything and head to Cancun. Yes, and by the way, last minute, tickets cost a lot on and on and on, right? It must be nice. Stiff upper lib writes in, hot darn, AOC owns Ted Cruz. He flies off to Cancun, she raises $2 million for Texas. That's called, what is it called? Oh, that's right, scoreboard. Now people say, oh, that's insensitive. She raised two million bucks to help people. Ted Cruz raised $20,000 to go on a trip to Cancun for himself. Anyway, Diana writes in, here's a concept for you, Cancruz. Take your daughters to volunteer at a shelter. It's so, such a great point.

Diana, you're awesome. Like, it never even occurs to them. Like, maybe I should teach my daughters like that I could, there's a good moment where they can help people instead of like, ah, daddy, can we just like kind of leave the poor people behind and go to the Rich Carlton? I'm not putting it on the daughters. It wasn't even their idea. Okay, so sorry about the accent.

It was actually the Heidi Cruz's idea according to the text. So, and they're not being, the parents are not being good role models here. O'Bride says Cruz won't wear a mask here, but was willing to follow mask mandates in Cancun. It is kind of- I mean, it's entirely possible that they actually require it. Well, how's that for I mean, I'm a senator, I don't have to. Here, you can get away with that. Yeah. Here, it's more like I'm an idiot and I don't have to, which is the same excuse that the energy company's had, except they're not stupid, they're greedy. And all right, here we go. Thank you to Gaza Girl Seeker and Chad Christopher who hit the join button below on YouTube and just became

Young Turks members. Look, everything we do, whether it's changed in terms of the candidates, getting the progressive message out, is because of you guys. So you should feel fantastic about the change you're bringing into the world. Starla, Herrick, and Doug Kingsbury just upgraded, also using the join button below. We appreciate that deeply. If you're watching anywhere else, t.yt.com slash join. We'll be right back. We're going to be able to be. All right, back on TYT, Jank, John and Kenya with you guys, John, go. Okay. Unfortunately throughout this week, President Joe Biden has been steadily seeming to backtrack both in public at his town hall this week and in private in conversations about their path and the timeline for canceling student loan debt.

He's been vocally in support of $10,000 of cancellation, although, you know, politicians from progressives like AOC to Chuck Schumer himself have been saying he should cancel 50,000, that he should do immediately through an executive order. He doesn't seem willing to do any of those things. He doesn't think that he has the legal authority to cancel $50,000. But he also announced this week that the 10,000 wouldn't be done via executive order. So I don't even know what the legal authority thing has to do with anything since they'd be doing it through legislation. That would also just be filibustered. So they would There's a lot of issues there.

But what do people actually think? Well, Data for Progress did a poll and found very broad support for cancellation. They found 54% of likely voters think Biden should use his executive authority to cancel $50,000 in student debt compared to just 37% who said he should not forgive that debt. But very importantly, since the numbers that are generally thrown around are 10,000 or 50,000, you should also know that according to this study, using a randomized test where voters were either asked about 10,000 or 50,000 data for progress did not find any evidence that 50,000 of cancellation would be less popular. It's not a thing where people just happen to be

okay with a little bit of cancellation, but once the number goes up, they're suddenly against it. That is not what they found. And we have additional numbers on who has debt, how much they have, but initially it is a popular position and also coincidentally one that he has promised he would do. Yeah, Kenya, one of the excuses they use is, well, look, this is going to help rich people too much. Yeah, that's the main problem with the proposal. Anyway, before I get it in my opinions, what's your take on that excuse? I think this is a part of a number of concerning dialbacks that even in some of the conversations I had with folks back in Milwaukee where President Joe Biden had his town hall earlier this week, a number of black voters who are essential

and in landing Biden the victory for the back, winning back the White House, it was a concern not only what we're hearing are, you know, the discrepancies about whether voters can expect to receive another $2,000 or $1,400 or whether there actually will be an increase in the federal minimum wage. These are issues. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients,

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That the Biden administration has lifted as poor to their priorities, which are addressing racial inequities within the institutions, within the institutions of the government. And if you're, if you're acknowledging what we're even seeing Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and others acknowledge are core elements of those racial inequities that are being made worse by a coronavirus pandemic that's disproportionately impacting these communities, what you're going to see is that, you know, these type of policies are. are largely supported by black communities, black voters, because if we're looking specifically even at student loans, it's black women who have a disproportionate amount of student loan debt who stand to benefit from this type of executive order or legislation, especially if we're talking about upwards of $50,000. But when you have a president who is as immediately as we're talking about the power of change, the unprecedented moment and how it was an urgency or righteous anger as I spoke with some others who spoke of the moment of the time, just as quickly as you're seeing

what can't be done, what might not be feasible, what will require unity, which on account of unity might therefore require a lack of accountability. When you're hearing these messages from a president who acknowledged that he needed this voting bloc's vote, that he needed the support of black Americans, this becomes problematic when you're hearing the very policies that could impact you, immediately be the ones that are subject to being reflect the table. Yeah. And you were talking about the argument that this would just be for rich people. Or sometimes it's formulated as we just don't want to cancel the debt for people who went

to Harvard, like whether, like as if only rich people go to Harvard. Like if you're lucky enough to get to go to Harvard, well screw you, you should have chosen a less prestigious school, I guess. Well, apparently passage of the $50,000 debt cancellation proposal would mean, quote, nearly 85% of young borrowers in the poorest communities would become free of student debt. This crisis is the culmination of waning government funding for higher education, wage, stagnation, wealth inequality, and a misleading emphasis on obtaining high credentials, all leading to the financial gap between college prices and later earnings.

That is according to this report, student debt in Young America. And they found that the number of borrowers is going up. The number of loans each borrower takes out is going up. The amount of each one of those loans is going up. And so you can see that in 2019, 18 to 35 year olds with student loan debt owed nearly $35,000 on average compared to just $28,000 a decade earlier. And in 2009, there were 32 million federal borrowers a decade later that had jumped up to 43 million. And they have other numbers having to do with the racial inequity in student loan debt, both average and mean as well.

But the arguments that Biden has been making or his team have been making just don't make sense. The legal argument, the political path forward, even the justification for another round of hyper-targeting of benefits that always seems to just delay and sometimes cancel the policy being proposed. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals.

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So the numbers just don't bear out what he's been saying, as thankfully some politicians like AOC have been pointing out throughout the week. Yeah, so there's two different issues here. What is, how are you going to substantively handle this? And I actually think that's complicated. So one of the things I would look at if I was doing this policy is, and of course thoughtful legislators have looked at this, is all right, public schools versus private schools. Because if we are going to do free college for public schools, which I think we should do, and I think it's really important college for all, well, then it makes a lot of sense to make sure

that you cancel the debt of the people who went to public schools earlier. And that's an issue of fairness and equity, et cetera, right? Yes, the amount of money that you forgive is potentially issue. And there are other issues to grapple with. How about the folks who paid off their debt before? So we can work through these issues. But we all have to at least agree on facts. We're supposed to be past the Trump world. So if you hear a so-called centrist Democrat, who I would call a corporate Democrat, and yes, that includes Joe Biden, tell you that doing $50,000 is less popular, it's just not true. We just gave you the facts.

There's no question that it's not true. Okay, so that's point number one. Point two, if you say, well, it becomes politically problematic. If you relieve that much debt, we could do 10,000, but not 50,000. Well, again, the numbers don't bear that out. The 50,000 is actually more popular. But second of all, politically speaking, 10,000 is good. People will feel that.

That's a giant amount of money. But 50,000 liberates millions of Americans, liberates them. They don't have any debt. Most of them will not have any student debt anymore because the average student debt's 35,000. And then they are free to take any job they want. And just the psychological relief of that, let alone the economic impact of the extra spending power they have, will be awesome. So if they say, hey, that's not doable because of those reasons, that is also definitively not true. Politically, it would definitely help. So then if you're wondering, well, look, I'm a good

Democrat, and I kind of like Biden and Pelosi and stuff. So why are they doing this, though? there must be a legitimate reason. Well, partly they've bought into this mythology of when Republicans get in, they spend like drunk sailors and give trillions of dollars of tax cuts to the rich. And when Democrats come in, they have to clean up the mess and be fiscally responsible and never add to the deficit, et cetera. I think Biden has internalized it. The other reason keeping it real is giant donors. And you say, wait a minute, what's the donor angle here? It's mainly the government that has this loan, right? The angle is if you do one point, you say, you say, $1.6 trillion in student debt relief, you won't have money left over to do $1.6 trillion in tax cuts.

So that's why Trump did $1.9 trillion of tax cuts and zero relief, whether it was student debt or healthcare or any of those issues. So if you think that politicians that are Democratic don't take millions of dollars in campaign donations in any account, well, you know, you You're just not correct. They're not angels. They're human beings. And like Professor Larry Lessig says, ironically at Harvard, they lean to the green. So that's what's happening here because the other arguments for not doing bigger relief don't hold water.

And one last one here, usually they hide behind, oh, I got a Senate tradition and technical rules about reconciliation and I got a parliamentarian and all this nonsense. And oh, golly, gee, mansion and cinema, I won't say yes. This one you can do through executive order. So honestly, Biden is nowhere to hide on this one. It looks like we should probably break and then we can move back and talk about the voting reforms in Florida. Yeah, and guys, it's super important. They steal elections from you ahead of time. Trump was an idiot who tried to do it afterwards, right?

So we got to fill you in on how they do that. And so much more. So stay right here. By the way, like and share the stream. Let's get this progressive message out to more and more people. We'll be right back. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you. All right, back on the Young Turks, I was going to say post-game, no, mid-game, in a sense, during the break here, I read your comments.

So let's go to our members section, t-y-t.com, slash join to become a member on our website. You get all of our programming, including the postgame we're going to do today. Kim McLaughlin writes, and American taxpayers will pay to repair electrical agreements. their generators and the water system. So they get the triple dip. One, save money by refusing the upgrade. Two, charge customers exorbitant prices when they supply drops. And three, have the federal government pay to repair everything.

Now, I'm going to make a note to the folks who are put these comments on and off so that I could read them. Don't take Kim's comment off. That comment is so good, I'm going to come back to it when we do the story about the energy company's profit off of this. Kim, I wish I'd said that earlier. I love how smart our audience is. That's exactly right. Honestly, I forgot about the first point you're making, which is that we're going to have to pay for the upgrades. So it's not a double dip. It's a triple dip. You're right. Okay, toss a coin to your progressive candidate says Democrats' government strategy is utterly baffling. Quote, we won. Now we need to back away from our policies. You won because people prefer those

policies. If you pursue them, hey, maybe you'll continue winning. It's so obvious, you know, and yet that's why you get so frustrated with the media. Everybody in Washington media is like, oh, no, when a Democrat wins, they should immediately renege on all of their policies. That's smart politics. No, it's the dumbest politics you can possibly imagine. Republicans never do it. Gabby Marita says, student debt is one of those dystopian terms that only Americans have to comprehend and deal with. While the rest of the world is super confused at us about, see also medical bankruptcy, school shootings, for-profit prisons, and Florida. It's true, though, those are all uniquely American terms that are baffling to any other country. So I'm a catwoman

says, well, no one ever mentions the poor people often have to go to more expensive colleges, not Harvard in order to continue working and providing for families. Poor people pay more for everything, including college. Now, I'm going to add to that, on top of that, it's a much bigger percentage of their wealth and their income. So that's a giant relief to poor people. All right, we're going to come right back. All right, back on a young Turks, Jank, John and Kenya with you guys. So we got a lot more stories for you guys. John, keep on rolling. Let's do it.

Earlier today, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, announced that despite the fact that the election went quite smoothly in Florida was very secure, everything seemed to go okay outside of right wing rhetoric, they're going to be making a number of changes to election law in Florida. That's the plan. So among the things that he's interested in, he wants more election observers. He wants lawmakers when they convened in March to bolster the vote by mail signature verification process and to not shut out Florida political parties and candidates from observing. the voter signature matching process. He wants more restrictions on a vote by mail, and he hopes that the legislature will address ballot harvesting in the state as to not allow individuals to submit other people's vote by mail ballots unless they are immediate family, despite seemingly any evidence that that led to literally any fraud even anecdotally. He wants restrictions on organizations that boost voter turnout, because why not? Other proposals would prohibit counties from accepting financial help from private organizations for get-out-the-vote vote initiatives require election supervisors to post over vote ballots for the canvassing board

to consider and real time reporting of voter turnout data. Finally, he had this to say, we need to make sure that our citizens have confidence in the elections that they have the ability to vote. We want obviously everyone to vote, but we don't want anyone to cheat. And we want to make sure that we strike that appropriate balance. And so we're going to go a little bit broader than Florida in a bit, but he's not going to let a successful, secure election stop him from making it harder for as many people, Democrats, to vote in the future. Kenya, have you ever seen in American history before maybe suppressing the votes of a certain group of people to try to get right-wingers who are opposed to that group elected?

I'm sure this must be a new concept. I mean, oh my gosh, this has to be breaking. I can't imagine what I could have possibly been done in what will be the 245 year history of this country. But as Maya Angelou tells us so often, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time, this has to be the umpteenth time for at last the 245th year. But what we see is this is, even in the state of Florida, this is nothing new just several years ago, we saw the Republican Party Institute, a state bill that dialed back amendment

for, which would a local or statewide would have restored the voting rights of returning citizens or those who were formerly incarcerated with felonies. I mean, we see that so long as there is a demographic, a voting block that, so once you are bestowing them with voting rights, they can benefit, potentially benefit Democratic candidates or progressive movements. We see these efforts to dial back. We see these efforts to speak to dog whistles, which DeSantis is doing quite readily and speaking to wanting to count every vote or count every legal vote, survey the process, or somehow

reach a balance of cheating and enfranchising voters. I don't know where you reach a balance of cheating and not cheating. But we've seen this before, and this is all a part of Republican effort to stifle democratic momentum and grassroots momentum in progressive movements across the state. Yeah. Yeah. And guys, the Republicans have looked into this dozens of times, and they're desperate to find voter fraud, and they just cannot find it. Trump did a commission, and it was headed by Chris Kobach, one of the most right-wing people in the whole country, and they had to shut down the commission because they couldn't find any evidence of voter fraud.

And then Kobach had to do this hilarious thing where he had to go back like 70 years and found like 30 cases or something like that. And then people did the math on it. It was like 0.000, 06% was voter fraud. It was comically low, when in reality, when they do these things that may get harder to vote, it disenfranchises millions of voters. So that is not a correct balancing act. So by the way, just think about it. Do progressives want there to be voter fraud in elections?

Hell no, our opponents would do it first. And almost every time, Republicans would do it first through, you know, a hundredth, and corporate Democrats would do it next. We're the last people on earth that want voter fraud in elections. But number one, good news, it doesn't really exist. Number two is that we're not going to sacrifice the votes of millions of people that are usually, by the way, African Americans, Democrats, students, young people, poor people. people, people that live in cities and hence don't have driver's licenses, and on and on it

goes. This has always been a lie. And the press has begun to turn a little bit on the issue of climate change. And they used to present it as 50-50 for decades. And now they're beginning to say most of the world scientists agree that climate change is real. The real number is 99%. They should, on this issue, they should do the same thing. Every person that has ever looked in this, I don't want, like whether it's a professor or, or let's put it this way, every study that has ever looked at this, including Republican studies, say that voter fraud is nearly non-existent, whereas disenfranchising millions of people is definitely happening. Yeah, and not just in Florida, as we've been talking about both on the Young Turks and on the

damage report, this has become very widespread since the election. So far at least 28 different states, I think it's actually up to 33, have introduced, pre-filed, or advancing 106 restrictive bills for the 2021 legislative session, according to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice. So now, this is very heavily weighted towards just a few states. Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan have dozens of bills just for those states. Oddly enough, they were states of the Democrats, one, weird how that works out. But understand that, while a lot of this is at the state level, In theory, really restrictive voting legislation could be appealed in the courts, but inevitably it will now hit a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court that is unlikely to change,

no matter what Biden wants during the next four to eight years. And the Democrats do have a couple of bills that are pending that would protect voting rights, but they also have literally zero chance of passing unless the Democrats killed a filibuster, which doesn't look like it's it's going to happen. So they've, their conservatives have now gotten in all of the defense they need in the judiciary and the Democrats are effectively disarming themselves from fighting back because they don't want to get rid of this tradition or Joe Manchin's just not into it or Kristen Cinema something something something. I don't know, but it's it's or they're crooks, yeah, it's just it's a very dark future for voting rights if the Democrats continue to let the

the Republicans do whatever they want, and they don't take it seriously as a priority for them. Yeah, I don't want anybody to get confused. Joe Manchin at Christmas, I couldn't care less about Senate tradition. And they protect the filibuster for what, let me give you two quick facts about that, because it's so important to every one of these issues. For between 1917 and 1970, the filibuster was used less than once a year. Once Obama became president, it went up to over 80 times a year because the Republicans blocked every single thing that Obama did. And they have already begun to block every single thing that Biden is doing. It is not tradition. And by the way, those 49 times they used it pre Obama, almost every time it was to block civil rights,

including anti-lynching laws. So the great tradition that Joe Manchin is protecting was to protect the right of southerners to lynch black people. Keep it real. That's a fact, and you can go ahead and look that up. We're also saying this is attempting to keep the tradition of essentially dialing back the media aggressiveness that Democrats promise every time they take over a Senate, they take over a Congress or anything. We see, I mean, saw Senate majorities under an Obama administration, later on, a Trump administration. As soon as there's this transfer of power, As soon as we see this flip of power or control of power, is Democrats dialing back on the very aggressiveness that they say they are going to have.

When we have a majority, we're going to push through some of the legislation. We're not going to be the party of obstructionism like we saw from Republican counterparts. We're going to be aggressive. We're going to push through policies that are leaning more toward the left because we have this power now, because we control both houses, because we have the White House, because we have this power. And then as soon as they have the opportunity to exercise that power, even similarly to what we're hearing now, it's the exercising of unity, which almost sounds like laying down and continuing to allow Republicans to get their way.

Definitely. Jake, you want to move on to our last topic? Yeah, look, I want to say a thousand other things about that, but let's do the next topic. Yeah, yeah, don't worry. They're going to do more legislation like this. We'll have chance to talk about it. Okay, let's move on us. Representative Roe Kana has a new piece of legislation designed to fix a problem that has often been talked about over the past few years, but not much has actually been done, and that is the gradual defunding of the IRS that just happens coincidentally to have the effect

of fewer audits of the rich and corporations happening. He has a bill that calls for an additional $100 billion in funding for the IRS over the course of the next decade, with $70 billion of that money going to enforcement. The bill would have required the IRS to use. use the additional enforcement funds to increase audits of the wealthy in corporations, requiring the agency to meet targets of auditing 95% of corporations with more than $20 billion in assets, 50% of individual tax returns with income of more than $10 million, 33% of individual tax returns with income between $5 and $10 million, and lower thresholds below that. It would also increase penalties for millionaires who falsify their tax returns to pay less

than they owe. And Rokana has said that he estimates, and this is driven by data provided by people like former Treasurer Secretary Larry Summers, University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Natasha Sarin, and former IRS Commissioner Charles Versaati, that it would generate something like $1.2 trillion in federal revenue over a decade without requiring a single dollar of tax increases. And for that reason, I imagine it is going to have a very hard path to getting past. So yeah, two things about this. Number one, the IRS, has been systematically defunded. They won't defund the police, but they'll defund the IRS.

Why? Because that's $1.2 trillion that rich people are cheating on their taxes. And guess who funds politicians? Rich people. So our system is insane. We allow for private financing of elections. So of course, rich people just buy all the politicians. Why?

Because they're about to save $1.2 trillion. On the cheating alone, let alone the tax cuts, which saves them further trillions of dollars. So now point number two is the excuse that they'll make is, oh my God, look at these no good libs. They want to spend $100 billion on the IRS. The IRS is evil, and they're gonna waste all this money. The part they don't tell you is we're gonna get $1.2 trillion back and it's going to be almost all exclusively, A, from rich people, And B, 100% from people who were cheating on their taxes. So, and guys, I just think about it.

If somebody said to you, give me $100. You might say, well, I don't know, what am I getting, right? And it's an open question, $100 is a lot. Somebody said to you, okay, give me the $100 and I'm going to give you $1,200 back. Would you do it? Of course. And that's the question Rokana is asking you. And all Republicans will say no, they'll protect.

10, you're just giving the $100 and they won't mention that you're getting the $1,200 back, can you? I mean, yeah, I have about as much faith in this bill as I usually do when I hear law enforcement agencies say that they're launching investigations into their own misconduct. I mean, when you have such a correlation between, you know, keeping taxes for the wealthy low, keeping investigation, keeping the IRS against these or off these very politicians or excuse me, these very wealthy donors, oftentimes donors to both parties, when you have incentive to keep the IRS off of these individuals who later donate to your campaigns, sustain your campaigns, I mean, we're not necessarily going to see this go far. But what I do think we're even seeing is, I mean, there's a recognition here, the IRS,

even acknowledges, they don't have the personnel, they don't have the resources, they don't have the funding to go after these billionaires or trillioners as we're seeing now. And so it's more, it's easier for them to go after the low-hanging fruit, those who maybe have had an error on their taxes or lower income individuals who are easier to audit. And so when you're exacerbating these disparities and when the Biden administration is saying that these are racial inequities that we want to tackle right away, I'm not necessarily surprised by this legislation or seeing this effort to address these disparities where they are. But I won't necessarily be surprised after that once we again see another dial back of this effort.

And one more time though, I want to give credit to the good progressives that are putting this forward. At least somebody's fighting for you. Roe-Connor is the first Justice Democrat ever. He's never taking corporate pack money. And look at that, he doesn't serve corporations, he serves you. Funny how that worked out. So support, by the there are now a couple of Republican politicians who don't take corporate pack money either. So if you're a conservative and you want to support them, I get it. I'm going to disagree with you on the policy, but at least support honest politicians who, and for Republican motors, you definitely have different priorities that I do. But at least those guys not taking

the corporate pack money are in some ways serving you. And for progressives that aren't taking corporate pack money, they're serving all of us. That would be $1.2 trillion. That could pay off all the student, almost all the student debt in the country. That can get us healthcare. They can get us so many wonderful things if we just stop letting the rich cheat on their taxes. I think that's all the time we have, Jenk. Yep. Kenya Evelyn from Guardian USA, thank you so much. You were amazing. Yeah. And John, everybody check out the damage report. Everybody knows what's happening. dragons are circling the internet, and breathing fire online.

You all know it. So check out the damage report. When we come back, we've got another great set of host for you guys. Ben Dix is going to lead. I love that. And Helen Hong is back. So nothing but fun. And we're going to talk about how the energy companies are now profiting off of your misery in Texas.

We'll be right back. 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 dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon