The Young Turks - Sunk Costs

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

The US-built pier in Gaza to be removed and repaired after damage from rough seas. Child of famed Jewish family funded pro-Palestinian protests. Republicans prepare to fast-track tax cuts in reconciliation. Skyrocketing rents and home prices may be pivotal in the 2024 election." HOST: Ana Kasparian (@anakasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA 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. On July 18th, get exciting. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited.

Sorry. Smurfs. Only theaters July 18th. It's the Young Turks. It's the young Turks. very special Wednesday show, special because I'm feeling real good. You should be feeling real good, too, because you're about to hear the news. You're about to hear it from a spicy host. John Iderola will be joining me in the second hour, where he'll probably bring down the spice a little bit, but in a good way, in a good way. In the first hour, though, we're going to give you some updates on the insane amount of money the U.S. government wasted and taxpayer resources on that floating pier in Gaza, which has proven to be a complete and utter disaster. Later, we'll also give you some updates in regard to the funding behind the college protests. You had Joe Scarborough, Nancy Pelosi, making all sorts of allegations about nefarious figures,

funding the college protesters who, in their minds, are supporting terrorism when in reality they want a ceasefire. They want the bloodshed to stop in Gaza. So we're going to give you what has been uncovered about those funding sources. In the second hour of the show, you have to stick around, guys, for what might be my favorite story of the year so far. Believe it or not, it has to do with North Korea. And it also has to do with some strikeback against South Korea, but in a fun way, in a fun way. Not in a dangerous nuclear arms testing way, more in a balloons full of manure kind of way. We'll get to that in the second hour with John Iderola. Of course, we have some serious stories to cover with John as well. So stick around for that. And as always, you can help support the show for free just by liking and sharing the stream. Also, there's this little bell that you might notice on our channel. And it's really important that you hit that bell. You ring that bell. Because when you do it, you'll get notifications about the fresh new content that we upload to our channel. It's a great way to keep you in the know in regard to our programming, anything that we upload.

that's brand new. And you can also support the show by becoming a member. TYT.com slash join to become a member. You can also hit that join button if you're watching us on YouTube. All right. Without further ado, let's talk about that floating pier that has served as yet another embarrassment for the American government. Take a look at a portion of the failed floating pier that the United States constructed off the coast of Gaza to essentially circumvent Israel's block. of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Now, the Pentagon has just announced that the aid delivery pier,

which the U.S. government spent $320 million on in taxpayer money, is going to be shut down for repairs because it literally broke apart. That's why you saw one portion of that floating pier off the coast of Gaza. Now, that marks the second incident that has, unfortunately, interrupted the flow of aid coming in from the pier in many weeks. Now, the first shutdown actually occurred not too long ago when a large group of starving and desperate Palestinians had basically rushed aid trucks coming off of the pier. And understand that this is a problem that's been completely manufactured created by the

blockade of humanitarian aid. These are starving individuals who have been cut off from the rest of the world, who have been cut off from the food, water, fuel, and medical supplies that they need to survive. And a Palestinian man was killed as a result of that. There were also all sorts of issues with weather. In fact, the more recent incident where the pier broke apart had to do with bad weather and horrible sea conditions. That's what damaged the pier. American officials had been hoping that the sea surges would not start until later this year in the summer.

Now the peer needs repairs and a Pentagon claims that, you know, the repairs might take about a week. But even when the peer was functioning, it still was not able, like that was not the avenue in which we were able to get sufficient or adequate aid into the Gaza Strip. We still were not able to provide what Palestinians desperately need to survive. Now, Sabrina Singh, who is the deputy press secretary for the defense department, told the press the following. The rebuilding and repairing of the pier will take at least over a week and following completion will need to be re-anchored to the coast of Gaza. Thus, upon completion of the peer repair and reassembly, the intention is to re-anchor the temporary pier to the coast of Gaza and resume humanitarian aid to the people who need it most. Now, again, I really think it's important to repeat what I said earlier about why the U.S. is attempting to construct a peer. a floating pier off the coast of Gaza in the first place. Now, Gaza has seven points of entry.

And not a single one of them is being utilized to its maximum capacity to get enough humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Now, why is that? Well, because you have Israeli settlers sabotaging humanitarian aid deliveries. We've seen videos of that. You also have the Israeli government very much intentionally serving as an obstacle of entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. So U.S. taxpayers have to foot the bill to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and more funding now that we have to repair this floating pier in order to get humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people. In other words, our ally, our strongest ally in the Middle East is standing in the way of allowing aid organizations,

to deliver humanitarian aid to starving, dehydrated Palestinians who are also in huge portions of the Gaza Strip already suffering from famine. Now, the pier is not only draining taxpayer money, I would venture to say that that's actually a smaller problem when you consider the fact that American lives are also at risk. In an earlier incident, three U.S. soldiers taking part in the Gaza Pier mission were also injured, one of whom was in critical condition, and evacuated to a hospital in Israel. Now, I've been looking for some explanation about how these injuries came about for these members of our military.

There has been no word on what caused the injuries, but the injuries would not have happened if the U.S. government didn't feel the need to build a floating pier off the coast of Gaza to get humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip because of the fact that Israel is blocking the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Now, the peer also risks further escalation with basically further escalation in this war. And, you know, Hamas has said that this is really nothing more than an attempt for the U.S. to engage in PR, to cover up some of what Israel is up to, and I actually happen to agree with them on that. I mean, the U.S. knows that they're building this pier specifically due to the fact

that Israel's blocking humanitarian aid. So Hamas does have a point when they say, listen, this isn't going to facilitate adequate humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. And this is really just a PR stunt by the United States. And it's a costly one to U.S. taxpayers and to members of our military who have been tasked with essentially dealing with the construction of that pier. And look, to make matters worse, the pier was already, even before it was damage, it was already a miserable failure.

So in the first week of operations, only 820 tons of aid was delivered through the pier, of which around two thirds reached distribution points within Gaza. That sounds like a lot, right? Except it's not. That is roughly equivalent to 71 estimated minimum daily, I'm sorry, that is roughly equivalent to 71 truckloads, which is far below the initial target of 90 truckloads a day. And about 15%, just 15% of the estimated minimum daily need for a population of more than 2 million people facing crisis-level acute food insecurity. So why did only two-thirds of the trucks reach the destination?

Well, you and officials have stated that desperate gossans, because they've gone without food for so long and because they're so desperate, ended up hijacking the remaining third of the trucks. And that is because the U.N. says some 1.1 million people in Gaza, nearly half the population, face catastrophic levels of hunger and that the territory is on the brink of famine. The brink of famine line actually annoys me at this point because as humanitarian aid organizations have already stated, the northern half of the Gaza Strip is already suffering from famine. And keep in mind that now that Israel is carrying out military operations, aerial bombardments, and shelling in Rafa, where Palestinians were told to go evacuate to shelter in for safety, while all those people are being displaced again and they're being displaced to areas that are further from the Rafa border and it's harder to distribute food to them. So it's been a disaster for Palestinians. A disaster in terms of how the

United States government looks on the international stage, given the fact that rather than hold our ally accountable for blocking humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, the U.S. decides, okay, well, we'll find a work around. Let's work around our allies, since our ally is serving as such an obstacle. And let's spend hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money in order to build this floating peer. It's just, it makes Biden appear pathetic. Because let's keep it real. He is pathetic, but he's not the only one. Most of our politicians will do exactly what Biden's doing, if not worse, to be quite frank.

And it's because, God forbid, any of them have the audacity to call a spade a spade and criticize Israel for what they are doing. But I am happy to report that there are some within the Biden administration who have a conscience, who do not want to be embarrassed and humiliated on the international state. And these individuals, many of whom are within the State Department, have decided, you know, I've been a career official within the State Department, a veteran of this department. But I'm going to go ahead and resign because I actually have a conscience. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with the TD Small Business Account Manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs.

Ready to press play? Get up to $2,700 when you open select Small Business Banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit TD.com slash Small Business Match to learn more. Conditions apply. So let's talk about one of those individuals who recently resigned, marking yet another resignation from the State Department. So due to the lack of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip, we have yet another State Department official, a veteran of the department, stepping

down from her post, taking a stand, and more importantly, speaking out against a ridiculous report that was released by our government that provides cover for what Israel is doing as they block critical life-saving humanitarian aid into Gaza. Now, the individual who has just resigned is Stacey Gilbert. She served in the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. Gilbert resigned this week, citing disagreements with a recently published U.S. government report that claimed that Israel was not impeding humanitarian assistance to Gaza. She sent a an email to staff Tuesday explaining her view that the State Department was wrong to conclude that Israel had not obstructed humanitarian assistance.

Okay, let's just pause for a second. Everyone has pretty much accepted the reality of what's happening in Gaza. And when I say everyone, I mean every single humanitarian aid organization. Cindy McCain, who heads one of those humanitarian aid organizations weeks ago in one of those Sunday cable morning shows made it abundantly clear that there is already famine in the Gaza Strip. So you have everyone in the international community acknowledging what's happening. You have the United States government spending hundreds of millions of dollars to construct a floating temporary pier off the coast of Gaza in order to circumvent Israel and get humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, which by the way has been a disaster, has not worked

and has not actually led to adequate aid entering the Gaza Strip. But then at the same time, as all of this is happening, you have the State Department releasing a report, gaslighting everyone, gaslighting the American people. Now, how did this all come about? Well, the Biden administration actually pointed to that faulty, ridiculous gaslighting report in order to justify sending billions of dollars worth of additional weaponry to Israel as they carry out atrocities in the Gaza Strip, atrocities that have been described as a genocide. by a Holocaust survivor who we shared clips of on the show yesterday. He's the co-founder of Human Rights Watch.

And he says that because of the lack of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip, he does believe that Israel is carrying out a genocide. This is a Holocaust survivor, guys. We're going to hear from him again in just a moment. But back in February, Biden had issued this memo. It's known as NSM-20 asking for the State Department to specifically, look into allegations that Israel was blocking aid. Now, he did this. He sent this memo to the State Department after he got some backlash from Democratic members of Congress. So he's like,

all right, fine. Okay, I get it. We have rules. We're supposed to make sure we're not sending weapons to a country that's using our weapons to carry out war crimes or is carrying out war crimes. So fine, I'll have the State Department draft up a report. And so the State Department does it, And their report is a complete and utter joke, which is why you have Stacey Gilbert stepping down. She was so disgusted by it. The report, the product of weeks of discussion, discussion within the state and defense departments, found that while aid remains insufficient, the United States does not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance. Now again, Gilbert's views and her disgust with this ridiculous report aligned with the vast majority of aid and humanitarian organizations who state that Israel is in fact blocking aid from reaching civilians in Gaza.

Her views also align with the very Holocaust survivor that I referenced earlier. So let's hear from Ariad Neyer. The USAID Administrator Samantha Power testified before Congress that famine had set in in Gaza. The head of the UN World Food Program has said that a full-blown famine is underway in Gaza. Destroying the farms, destroying the greenhouses in Gaza, killing a large number of aid workers who were involved in the distribution of food, challenging the ability of the UN agency that has been principally involved in distributing food to continue that activity and persuading the United States and other governments to cut off funds from that agency.

All those things have had a cumulative impact on the availability of food and water and electricity and medical supplies in Gaza. I'm going to go ahead and trust what the Holocaust survivor has to say about what's currently transpiring in the Gaza Strip, as opposed to our government, which unfortunately has been thoroughly corrupted by the Israel lobby and continues to provide cover for any war crimes that are carried out by the current Israeli government. And so aid flows, according to the Washington Post, have continued to be constricted in the week since the report was issued. But the report found insufficient grounds to halt aid to Israel. Solidarity with Gilbert and all of the other federal government employees who felt that their conscience and what their conscience was telling them was far more important than their livelihood, to be quite frank with you, to be honest. I mean, these are career officials. These are veterans of the State Department. And rather than do the comfortable thing, which I think the vast majority of people within our government are willing to do and just remain in their post and stay quiet, they've decided to sacrifice quite a bit, sacrifice their careers to do the right thing. And I give them a lot of credit for that. What's amazing to me is that despite how much Biden and his handling of this war in Gaza has hurt him electorally. And despite the fact that so many people have resigned

from his government under his watch, he still refuses to change course. And so for all the people who get mad at me for being critical of Biden, as if I single-handedly decide how the election is going to play out, maybe spare a moment or two to criticize the presidential candidate running for reelection, continuing to double down on the very policies that have made him incredibly unpopular in the first place. Maybe spare a moment for that. In the meantime, though, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we've got a little more reporting on, well, Israel, Gaza-related content. We're going to go back to the United States, though, and talk about those college protests and who the funders were behind those demonstrations. Come right back.

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bonus show, I need some good news today. So that's stories from the weekend. We did reference it on the show yesterday. We didn't play the video. And Jank actually covered it through a live video he did on YouTube over the weekend. So you can check that out. But I don't think we're going to do additional coverage. At this point, the story's a little bit stale. It burns when IP. Okay. So says, so this. So this. This strain called purple runts could help solve some of these conflicts in the Middle East. Anyone tried this yet? Obama, Trump, Biden, no.

I don't know what that means, but fun handle you have there. I'm glad that I just read it out loud without, you know, pre-reading it and making sure that I didn't embarrass myself. Anyway, let's get back to the news because we've got some really interesting details about the funding behind some of those pro-Palestinian pro-peace protests that took place on. campuses across the country. We need reporters. We need people figuring out about the funding. Not just of this, but the radicalization of our students on college campuses on this issue. Some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere.

Some I think are connected to Russia. Cutter, maybe I believe they're the largest contributor to American universities. universities over the past decade, Qatar, they have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into American universities to have a radicalizing effect on Middle Eastern studies. And I must say it has worked. Do you think some of these protests are Russian plants? These are plants, I think some financing should be investigated. It was a Jewish family.

The funding for the college protest came from a Jewish family, not cut or see. But that's what the Daily Beast found. They did a little bit of digging and they found that it actually happens to be an American Jewish family and I love it. I just love it so much because notice how Scarborough never went back to the story after the results of this investigation determined that it wasn't Cutter. There's no nefarious figure funding pro-peace protests on college campuses. So let's give you the details. A much publicized recent report by the Institute for

the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy, which actually happens to be an Israeli-backed think tank, ranked the Bafrayung Fund as the single largest sponsor of pro-Palestinian activist groups involved in campus demonstrations and adjacent actions. So that fund is where the money's coming from. Now, who's behind the fund? Well, the institute's tabulations, by way, let me just pause. Let's pause. Come back to me because I have to say something. I just love that an Israeli back think tank was like, we're going to get to the bottom of this, okay? We're going to find out What kind of nefarious pro Hamas figures have been funding these dangerous college protesters who built encampments and remained in the encampments to just ask their university administrators to stop, you know, investing their money in weapons manufacturers and basically corporations that are tied to Israel and it's war on Gaza. Like, we would like them to divest from those companies.

That is what, that is literally what the main point of those protests were. Now, were there a few unhinged people that the media would hyper focus on in order to paint a picture about all the protesters? Sure. But the heart of that protest and the vast majority of those protesters were protesting for peace. They want the bloodshed to end. But the Israeli back think tank is like, no, no, this can't possibly be funded. by good people. It can't be backed by good people. There must be a nefarious individual behind all of this. And so they do their investigation and they find some amazing details. The institute's

tabulations appear to include donations to any organization that has ever supported or promoted pro-Palestinian events. The Bay for Young Fund ranks among the most consistent supporters of the Palestinian youth movement, which played a major role in the rash of encampments that spread throughout U.S. colleges this year. So the fund also contributed substantially to two of the Palestinian youth movement's allies, that includes the Arab Resource and Organizing Center and Critical Resistance. Now, each of these organizations has employed the controversial slogan from the river to the sea, which critics, of course, have interpreted as wiping out Israel, doing away with, you know, Israelis entirely, that is not what it calls for.

Look, honestly, the from the river to the sea notion, even if you interpret it in the best possible way as having a one state solution where Israelis and Palestinians live peacefully side by side among one another, I don't think is a realistic goal, certainly not now. But I at least appreciate the sentiment. I appreciate the aspirational goal of people living in a peaceful society together and no longer being enemies. That is the point. But of course it gets misinterpreted. And I think a lot of the college students who do use that chant don't really understand what they're saying or how it's being negatively interpreted.

Some do. Some don't care. But it's just so interesting to me that these are the protesters who have been getting so much heat from our media. And behind these protesters is a 33-year-old woman by the name of Rachel Gelman, a Jewish-American woman. Her cousin actually is a Jewish-American member of Congress, Representative Dan Goldman from New York. So Biden even considered appointing Rachel's mother, Susie Gelman, for U.S. ambassador to Israel. He ended up appointing her to a different position, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. I don't know what that is or what that does, but great.

That was what she was appointed to instead. Now, Susie Goldman's, I'm sorry, Susie Gelman's grandfather was actually Walter Haas, who was a businessman who actually ended up building Levi Strauss into a global brand. So that's where they get a lot of their family wealth from. But this is a Jewish family. And the money for these protests has come from specifically Rachel Gelman, who's behind the Bayfrey Young Fund. Now, Susie Gelman served from 2016 through 2023 as chairwoman of the Israel Policy Forum, an organization launched in the 1990s to basically support Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiations. Susie Gelman used the platform to criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and elements in his right-wing coalition.

to such an extent that Heretz argued that her appointment as ambassador to Israel would have sent an undeniable message from the Biden administration to the current government. So I think you can understand why Biden chose against nominating her or choosing her to serve as ambassador, U.S. ambassador to Israel. But keep in mind that Susie also happens to be one of the biggest bankrollers of the Birthright Israel Foundation. If you're unfamiliar with birthright, it's where young Jewish Americans get a free trip to Israel. There's a reason for that free trip. There's a lot of propaganda involved. I have a very close from my best friend, actually. It was like a sister to me.

She went to birthright. And so there are good elements to it, right? I mean, it's part of your identity. It's good to know about Israel as a Jewish American and all of that. But at the same time, what I appreciate about Susie Gelman is that she, She values Israel while also having enough of a conscience to criticize Israel when they do the wrong thing. And so she's highly critical of Netanyahu. And she also, you know, chaired this foundation, the birthright Israel Foundation. Now, meanwhile, the Gelmans have simultaneously bankrolled the

Bay for Young Fund, their daughter, Rachel's charity, pouring in more than $3.4 million between 2019 and 2022, the last year for which disclosures are available, all from Morning Star philanthropic, the same outfit through which the Gellman's support birthright and the Israel Policy Forum. The money for this fund that Rachel Gellman is the head of comes from just two sources. Rachel Gellman herself, she's doing well, and the Morning Star Philanthropic Foundation. Bayfrey Young has distributed $60,000 for the Palestinian youth movement, doled out an annual earmark tranches to the group sponsor, Westpac, and $40,000 for the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. The fund has also given $298,000 to critical resistance, which launched primarily as

a prison abolition organization. We don't talk about that. I'm not a big fan of that, but I have a fan of what they're doing in supporting these protesters. More recently, they've participated in multiple pro-Palestinian events in conjunction with the Palestinian Youth Movement and AROC, including protests that temporarily paralyzed San Francisco airport, the Bay Bridge, and the Port of Oakland. And while her parents give massive campaign donations to establishment Democrats, Rachel Gelman is a little different because Rachel Kelman has not contributed to establishment Democrats, including her own cousin, Dan Goldman, a Democratic representative in the

House. She has, however, given money to representatives Jamal Bowman and Ilhan Omar. So I'm just wondering, does Joe Scarborough have anything nasty to say about the Jewish family behind the protests that we saw in college campuses? Does he consider that a nefarious funding source for the protesters? Is he going to update the story? Or is he going to just allow his audience to believe that Qatar is behind funding the college protesters. I think we all know what the answer to those questions are. to some other news, including domestic policy and what Republicans are currently working on

should Donald Trump win re-election. We will cut your taxes even further. That's what built our economy. I will make the Trump tax cuts permanent. You know, they expire in a year. And we will cut your taxes even more than that. Well, Republicans in Congress are already getting to work on that very goal.

In fact, they're preparing to work with Donald Trump to extend his 2017 tax cuts if he does, in fact, win the presidency again. And that would not only just hand more gifts to the richest, wealthiest Americans, it would also serve as a disaster for our already ballooning national debt. Now, they're already talking about slashing the corporate tax even more, if you could believe it. So not only are they going to extend the tax cuts, they might cut taxes even further for corporations, and we're going to get to the details on that. So stick around for those details. But first, why don't we talk about the possible extension under Trump. Now, parts of the tax cuts and I'm sorry, the tax cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 or TCJA were permanent changes, but some were actually written to expire or sunset. And so the date of expiration, I guess, is December 31st of

next year, 2025. The major aspects of the bill set to end are provisions basically impacting individual taxpayers. So the TCGA temporarily reduced federal income taxes pretty much across the board. There's one marginal tax bracket that for some reason didn't see a change. And you're going to see what I'm talking about in just a moment as we bring this chart up. But I wanted to give you the comparisons here so you get an understanding of what the tax rates would be should the tax cuts for individuals sunset. So the top marginal tax rate, which applies to single taxpayers making over $578,000 yearly, was cut under Trump from 39.6% to 37%. Now, if the bill is allowed to expire, the individual rates will revert to pre-tax cut levels after 2025, of course, which are

shown in the right column of this chart. So the one area where there will be no change is the income level of $231,251 to $578,125. The current marginal tax rate is 35%. After the sunsetting of the Trump tax cuts for individuals, it will remain at 35%. But every other group, you will see that there is an increase in their marginal tax rates, right? So from $11,00 to $44,725, it'll go from 12% to 15%. So for ordinary people who aren't rich, there would be a little bit of a change. But let's also be realistic here and talk about where the bulk of the tax cuts are with the 2017 tax cut. They're for the rich, right? So I'll give you the details on that. So in reality, the bill overwhelmingly helped the rich. So households with incomes in the top 1% will receive an average

tax cut of more than $60,000 next year alone in 2025 compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for households in the bottom 60%, according to the tax policy center. As a share of after-tax income, tax cuts at the top for both households in the top 1% and the top 5% are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60%. So hopefully that'll help out with giving you some perspective on how, sure, ordinary workers might have seen a little bit of a decrease in their taxes under Trump's tax cuts. But the bulk of those tax savings positively impacted the wealthiest earners. And the rich would get even more goodies

if these tax cuts are extended, which is exactly what the GOP is currently working on. There are also higher federal gift and estate tax exemptions through 2025, which allow more ultra-wealthy Americans to transfer tax-free assets to the next generation. In 2024, the tax-free limits on gifts during life or death rose to $13.61 million per individual or $27.22 million for spouses. But those limits will drop by about half in 26 without new laws from Congress. So the wealthy, as we speak, are kind of panicking about the estate tax. Which is amazing to me because look, I get that I don't have kids. So maybe I just don't have that mindset since I'm not thinking about passing my wealth to someone else after I die.

But when I die, I die, it's over. I am not, I'm already stressed out about living. I'm not going to be stressed out about what happens to my assets after I'm gone. But I get it. If you have children, you want your children to inherit or your family members to inherit as much as possible without paying any taxes to the federal government. But please look at the figures we're talking about here. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars. Okay, we're talking vast majority of Americans don't need to worry about the estate tax cuts under Trump expiring.

But let me continue. Robert Dietz, who's a national director of tax research at Bernstein Private Wealth Management, says that it's the biggest issue that we're talking about with clients right now, meaning the estate tax cuts essentially sunseting. So the legislation already contributed to exploding our deficit and will continue to do so if extended. And honestly, I think it will be extended because one of the mistakes that people make, particularly those in the Democratic Party, is this assumption that Democrats don't want tax cuts for the rich. Remember, they're rich as well and they benefit from tax cuts as well. And so they'll play bad cop, but when push comes to shove, they'll totally sign on to budget reconciliation, which I'll get to the details of, in order to allow for the passage of this type of legislation in the Senate where you typically need at least 60 senators to vote in favor of something in order to pass that legislation. But with budget reconciliation, those rules don't apply. And it's interesting how the legislative filibuster gets pushed aside whenever it comes to raising

the debt ceiling or cutting taxes. But let me give you more, the CBO projected this month that extending the law through 2034 would cost $4.6 trillion. And we already know, based on analysis that was done by the CBO prior to the passage of Trump's tax cuts, that it cost us $2 trillion over the course of the decade. Now in response to these assessments, some lawmakers just denied the accuracy of the analysis. done by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Senator John Barrasso just says,

CBO is regularly wrong, and I expect that they are on this as well, because this is going to result in significant growth, except the tax cuts, unfortunately, did not result in significant growth. They didn't. The increased profits of corporations, for instance, were not trickled down onto workers, and there wasn't increased innovation.

wasn't increased innovation or increased job creation as a result of these tax cuts. And look, think tanks disagree with what John Barrasso says. The conservative leaning tax foundation says, extending the expiring cuts would spur some growth, but come more than $3 trillion short of paying for itself. So remember, you're going to hear over and over again, no, no, no, these tax cuts, the extension of these tax cuts makes all the sense in the world. It's going to pay for itself, everyone. It's going to be fine.

Except even a conservative think tank admits that is not the case. Now, let's pivot to the corporate tax because this is where things get even more insane. Now, if you can remember, Donald Trump cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. They might actually cut the corporate tax rate even more should Trump get elected and Republicans maintain control of the House. So let's get to the details of that. Representative Vern Buchanan, who heads the manufacturing taxation team on the Ways and Means Committee, which really does sound like a blast, says in terms of the corporate tax rate, that doesn't sunset. So they don't have to worry about that expiring, right? But they might try to take the tax rates down at some point. We want to find

a way that we can create more incentives for manufacturers to create more jobs and opportunity to do more of the work here in the United States instead of abroad. Or it'll just create more opportunity for you to get campaign contributions from corporate interests that obviously want to further cut corporate taxes. And remember, one of the things that Trump claimed that he was going to do with his tax reform was, okay, yeah, I'm going to cut the corporate tax rate. But I'm going to get rid of the loopholes, which significantly lowers the effective tax rate. So one analysis that was done on the effective tax rate back when the corporate tax rate was 35% showed that corporations typically pay with a 35% corporate tax rate, about 17% after all those

corporate tax loopholes and deductions come into play. Now, Trump lowered the tax rate, and he didn't get rid of those loopholes, which really did cause all. all sorts of revenue issues for our federal government. And look, I have to get this out of the way too because, look, if I felt that we had the type of government that actually fought to pass legislation that funded programs that make all of our lives better, I would be even more infuriated by this, okay? But what's infuriating is when you look at what's happening in Israel and the billions, tens of billions of dollars in weaponry that we're sending over to them so they can conduct

their atrocities in Gaza. The working class in America is funding that. And that infuriates me to know it, okay? These are the politicians who get bribed by these corporate interests, these moneyed interests. There's a lot of, you know, what do you call it? A lot of these people also tend to be in favor of funding and providing foreign aid to Israel. But it's just amazing to me because they don't have to pay the same percentage of their income toward taxes that ordinary working Americans barely getting by have to contribute to federal taxes. And then that money doesn't get used to make our lives better. That money gets used for nonsense. It gets used to pass legislation

that really ends up providing grants and all sorts of goodies to corporate interest. I mean, the infrastructure bill is a perfect example of that. I've said it time and time again, my problems with the infrastructure bill have to do with the fact that it's really a corporate handout bill. It's the federal government taking taxpayer money from the working class people who actually pay their taxes, who pay a huge percentage of their earnings toward federal taxes. They take that money and they give it to corporations In order to manage infrastructure or build infrastructure, they inflate the costs of construction to pocket some of that money. We've seen a lot of that happen here in Los Angeles with the

development of housing, right? Which is why it's cost so much money to build so few housing units in LA. And it's just in fear, it's just totally infuriating because it feels like working class people in this country get robbed. And the wealthiest people are able to skirt that system because they're not taxed to the same rate, to the same percentage. They get all these deductions, all these loopholes, all of these benefits and goodies that ordinary working class people don't get. And back in the day, you know, one of the things that Americans were able to do, one of the deductions they were able to take advantage of was the mortgage interest rate deduction. So when you pay your mortgage, you know, there's some percentage of the interest that you pay on your mortgage that is deductible. property taxes are deductible.

Donald Trump actually limited the amount of money that you can deduct from your taxes using the property taxes you pay in your state. So that was really harmful for people who live in places like New Jersey or in California. And it's just been incredibly fraud. All of this has been very frustrating for ordinary people. But what's amazing to me is no one seems to connect the dots to this awful tax policy that is not only going to be extended, it might even be expanded with additional cuts to the corporate tax rates. Now, new research shows that workers who earned less than about $114,000 on average in 2016

actually saw no change in earnings from the corporate tax rate cut. So the corporate tax rate cut did not lead to the trickle-down utopia that we keep hearing about from those who really value neoliberal policy. And if you're wondering if Republicans, are going to succeed, I think they will, honestly. I mean, if Trump gets elected, which right now, he's got a pretty good chance. And if Republicans continue to take control of the House of Representatives, I think they will probably pass this legislation. And they'll do it through budget reconciliation. So while most legislation needs the support of 60 senators to overt a filibuster, budget reconciliation allows lawmakers to pass major tax and spending bills with a simple majority

and without bipartisan backing. And according to the Hill, Republican tax writers have already broken into working groups on specific tax topics so that the House GOP can get straight to work if the GOP sweeps Congress and the White House. Ways and Means Republicans have been pretty cagey about the extensions or expansions of the Trump tax cuts and whether the tax cuts can be paid for. So there's a big enough block, I think, says Richard Rubin, I'm sorry, says David Schweckert, who is a Republican from Arizona. I think even on our side who will look for pay force. Now he says that the changes to restrain health care costs and improve government technology could be on the table. It may be our opportunity to actually do some adult policy instead of theatrics. Okay, they're not going to do any adult policy. They're going to do favors for their corporate donors, for the moneyed interest that fund their campaigns. And then when push comes to shove and there's any discussion about domestic policy that might improve the lives of ordinary Americans, suddenly we're going to hear about the filibuster.

We're going to hear about how there's gridlock in Congress. We're going to hear about how we can't pay for it because of the deficit, because of our ballooning debt. We're going to hear the same excuses over and over and over again. And so really, in my opinion, the only way to change things is to have more of a say in your personal workplace, which is why the effort to organize workplaces across the country is like the one area where I feel a little bit of hope in the country. But as long as we have this system where moneyed interests have a louder voice than ordinary voters like us, then you're going to have these lawmakers literally working on legislation and policy

before they even take control of the levers of power necessary to pass that legislation. And that is what Republicans are up to right now. All right. We're way over. I'm going to take a break. When we come back, we'll do one more segment. Talk a little bit about maybe housing, maybe something else. We'll see.

And then John Ida Rola will join me later in the second hour of the show. Come right back. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. We're going to take it back to the old school today. All right, we're going to go back to our roots and talk about housing.

Those higher prices mean you need to earn over $100,000 in 34 out of the 50 largest metro markets to buy the typical home for sale. I would say that buying a home right now is more difficult, it's more unaffordable compared to four years ago. San Jose, you've got to make $361,000. L.A., it's almost $300,000, San Diego, almost $260,000. In four years, home prices have shot up by 40%. Interest rates have gone up and wages have not kept up. This is not good.

It's not good for me. It's not good for you. And it certainly isn't good for Joe Biden, who, of course, is seeking re-election and is getting blamed for inflation in every sector of the economy where we're experiencing inflation, including in the area of housing. Now, let's take a look at the data. So you get a sense of what I'm talking about. You got a little taste with that video that we just showed you, but the S&P CoreLogic Case Schiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which is a great concise name for any type of analysis. But it's a measure of home prices across the country. It jumps 6.5% in March

from a year earlier to a record high. It's the sixth time the index has reached a new record high over the past year. So the unaffordability issue is a real problem, and it's been a problem. This is not new. I'm going to get to how the Biden administration is responding to it in just a moment, but I'm going to give you a little spoiler. It ain't good, and it ain't a real solution. Now, last month was a dozy to say the least, breaking previous records.

April ranked among the six least affordable months for buying a home in the last 38 years, according to the Mortgage Technology Division of Intercontinental Exchange, also known as ice, but not that ice, the housing ice. It's an information clearinghouse, including four mortgage listings. And this is translating to a lot of pissed off Americans. And understandably so. Look, owning a home used to be the main avenue in which ordinary, hardworking Americans were able to build wealth. They would build equity on their homes. That equity could then be used to make another purchase, maybe buy, sell the house, buy a bigger house if you need to, if you're, you know, building a family. That's out of sight, out of mind, unreachable for most Americans now, something that they're unable to obtain because of, of of the lack of inventory, the high demand of housing. And so supply demand, I mean, it makes all the sense in the world.

If there's high demand, low supply, that is going to lead to skyrocketing housing prices. And then you add higher interest rates to the mix and you've got a nightmare. Housing, by the way, was the second most common response behind inflation in a recent Gallup poll that asked Americans to name the top of financial concerns for their families. More mentioned housing than at any time since Gallup started asking the open-ended questions in 2005. So here's a map that shows where renters, so that's buying houses, right? But this also impacts renters. Because if you can't afford a house, you're going to want to rent. And if there's increased demand for renting an apartment or or renting a unit, there's still low supply of rental units.

And so you see just how many states are impacted by this with Americans spending more than 30% of their income on housing. So if you look at this map of the US, basically any area that's colored in is where Americans are paying at least 30% or more of their income. But the darker the color, the more they're spending on. housing, a higher percentage of their income goes toward housing. So Americans are actually paying more than 60% of their income on housing in like the dark purple areas. And you can see that in Texas. You can also see that in Florida, South Florida specifically. And you can probably

tell because, you know, we're guessing that most viewers are dealing with the brutal housing costs as well, this is creating a massive problem for Joe Biden. There's a lot of frustration. And I want to be fair to Biden and note that it's not just a federal issue. Certainly there could be legislation or even executive action on a federal level to alleviate some of the pain that Americans are dealing with with housing, essentially providing incentives to increase supply, increase the construction of housing units. But a lot of the policy is decided on a local level in California. It is notoriously difficult to build housing.

And what the so-called nimbies or not in my backyard individuals do is they cite environmental concerns in order to halt construction of new housing. And look, if you own a home, not all homeowners fall in this category, but a lot unfortunately do. Because again, it's seen as an avenue in which people build wealth. If you already own a home, you love that you're building equity on that house or that condo or townhouse, wherever. Any property that you purchase to live in, that increased equity means that you're building wealth, and you don't want to let that go. And so you have a lot of property owners who fight against building more housing because more supply might mean, at least temporarily, the value of their homes might go down a little. But I think that's worth it, no? I think that's worth it. I think the value of your

property going down temporarily, it'll go back up. Housing always goes up. Look at the trends. Over many, many decades, I would venture to say that it's far better to live in a community where everyone is sheltered, everyone is housed, as opposed to hoarding what little housing remains for those who were either able to purchase it when housing was affordable or are wealthy enough to purchase it. Now, doing that and allowing for this very severe homeless problem in the country to continue to expand, to continue to get worse, doesn't make it. any sense to me? Like, what kind of life is that? Like, do people enjoy living in communities where they literally have homeless encampments outside of their front door? That's no way to live.

Okay, like, take 50% of the value of my home away from me. I don't care. If everyone's housed, I'm going to be a happier person. Okay, but anyway, let me continue and give you more details about what the reporting entails. So a recent Washington Post article that analyzed Biden's problem with housing costs actually focused on one battleground state in particular, and that battleground state is Nevada, which Biden did win in 2020. Biden won the silver state by 2.4 percentage points in 2020, but is currently trailing Trump in almost every public poll conducted there. According to the national low-income housing coalition, there are only 17 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income rent or households in Nevada.

And a University of Nevada at Las Vegas study found that seven of the 10 most common jobs in Las Vegas don't even pay enough to afford a studio apartment, guys. This is no way to live. Dr. Carter, who's a 26-year-old resident, I'm sorry, not doctor, that'd be crazy. D. Carter, who's a 26-year-old resident of Las Vegas, is actually paying 50% of her income on rent. And she said this to the Washington Post. Given that the last few options haven't been that great and nobody really cares about the younger community and generations moving forward. I don't really know if me voting is going to make a difference. So the neglect that Americans have been dealing with from our federal government, and yes, in some cases from local

government as well, is actually posing a threat to democracy. Because when you have an electorate that increasingly believes that voting doesn't matter, that nothing's going to change, that their participation in our democratic process is useless and worthless. Yeah, that is a threat to democracy. So placing all the blame on Trump, and I understand why people do that, I think kind of misses the forest for the trees because I think Trump is a symptom of something much bigger that has been neglected by policymakers and our elected leaders for far too long. And I think the biggest mistakes in regard to housing policy were made under the Obama administration. He did not react or respond to the mass foreclosures that Americans were being, you know,

that were the majority of Americans who faced those foreclosures were not made whole, even after it was shown that they were victimized by predatory lending, in some cases by fraud. And so I don't think that the Obama administration responded well to the housing crash. And I think that the policies that we saw from the Obama administration have further exacerbated the housing problem for ordinary working Americans. And so finally, let's get to Biden's plan. So Biden likes to throw ideas out there and then he never fights for them. He did that with immigration policy. And he's certainly doing that with housing policy as well.

again, it's not entirely up to Biden. State and local policy plays a big role in the housing crisis as well. So I want to be clear about that. But remember, at the heart of this problem is the low supply of housing, meaning we need to build more housing. But what Biden wants to do is essentially make more money or more tax deductions available to first-time homeowners. Yeah, the tax deductions don't really work if you're unable to purchase the home because it's unaffordable. And besides which, even if the federal government just sent a check to ordinary people and said, here, here's five grand. He's not proposing this, by the way. But let's say they just give you money and say you can use this money toward a down payment for a home. How is that going

to help a terrible housing market when there is still not enough supply. All it's going to do is further increase the cost of buying a home. So really, again, at the heart of this problem is the fact that we're not building enough housing. And we need to find real solutions for that. And the incentives need to go toward states and municipalities that are making a real effort to build additional housing to alleviate the homeless crisis and alleviate the unaffordability crisis that people are basically dealing with in this housing market. Anyway, so do I think Biden's going to do anything about that? No, I don't. I think that Biden's solutions lack imagination and besides which this needs to be an effort by all levers of power.

federal, state, local, and I don't see much of a will there. I haven't seen much of a will in banning foreign investors from buying up residential real estate without having any intention of moving to the United States or living in those homes. I've seen absolutely no effort to ban private equity firms from literally buying up entire neighborhoods of homes. None of that stuff has been addressed. And I think that's really where the problem lies. There needs to be more housing built. There needs to be more restrictions on individuals who use housing for money laundering purposes or to park their money in when they have no interest in even living in the United States. Those are some actual solutions. But those are not the solutions that anyone

in government seems to be looking at. All right, we got to take a break. I'm massively over. Hopefully John's not going to be upset with me. But when we come back, we'll talk about some pretty interesting CNN reporting on the Sean Diddy Combs case. It does appear the federal investigators are looking to indict him. And we have some clues to share as to why we believe that's the case. We'll be right back.