Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews 11/29/22 – CHOO-CHOO-CHOOSING THE TRAIN OLIGARCHS

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

Once again we're talking the plight of the working man as a looming rail strike threatens the US economy, or, more accurately, as Big Train threatens to cripple the economy instead of allowing their workers one day of paid sick leave. Join us!Support the show

out of there everybody welcome back happy skews day to you it is november 29th 2022 i'm trey crowder and that's mark a g what's up mark how are you doing mark uh other than the fact i finally got COVID doing great uh yeah but you're you got a mild case of the rona right you're not bedridden or nothing no no no but I might say I apologize in advance if I have a little bit of a coughing fit in a little bit. But, yeah, I'm bundled up, not because I have fever chills, but because my wife has a fever and she has the AC on. Yeah.

So she's freezing me out. That's a, that's a, the tables have turned situation. I don't know about your marriage, but I just feel like typically in a marriage, it goes the other way. You know, they're always cold. Yeah, we, we have the pretty typical hacky thermostat at war. I wanted in 72 and she wants it in 77 or whatever. But the, yeah, but so because of my diagnosis, I wasn't able to meet it with you guys today, but you and Drew and her buddy, TJ watched the USA Iran game at the pub today with the chaps.

Team USA won nothing, baby. Hell yeah. That's right. And I know you were going to bring this up. But yeah, it's like, you know, go America. I'm all for it, but I did feel bad for the Iranian players because we talked about. on my previous episode, I think they had that protest during their first game that didn't sing the national anthem. And I don't know if this is true, but I read on the internet that after that they were like called or met with by like Iranian officials and shit who told them in no uncertain terms, don't fucking do that or, you know, will torture your whole family or that type of thing.

People will get thrown out of windows and shit of that nature. So it's like pretty high stakes for those guys and they played hard. all the best to them, but USA, USA, USA. Yeah, I did have mixed feelings about it, but of course, the person's personal survival and freedom shouldn't depend on one of the soccer game, so that's like not Team USA's fault. But also, if you saw that Iran tried to get America kicked out of the World Cup

because the U.S. national team, social media team, tweeted out a graphic that they used the pre-revolution Iranian flag without the Islamic Republic's symbol on it. And there's like some sort of village. thing. We're not supposed to do stuff like that. But FIFA's like, we're not kicking America out of the World Cup because of a J-Pag. Yeah. And I tell you what, as far as

Saturday goes to quote Austin Powers's dad, there's only two things in the world. I can't stand, Mark, people who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch. Played the Netherlands on Saturday. That's probably going to be pretty tough,

but fuck them. I hope they bring their wooden shoes because they're going to be running around all day. We're coming for you, wooden shoe fucks with your windmills and dikes and stuff. Bicycles and shit. Health care. Fucking assholes.

Fucking losers. Somebody made a joke the other day. How do Americans talk trash in the World Cup? Because the other team just responds, go pay your co-pay, you stupid fuck. It's like, oh, yeah, what are you going to do? We saw the interview with the Iranian government state media people were, like, interrogating American players at the press conference.

Yes. And it was essentially like, he called him out for mispronouncing Iran's name because Iran, but it's Iran, I guess, which is dumb because every country mispronounces other countries' names. Like, we've picked us yelling at Mexico for calling the United States Estados Unitos or something. It's like, it'd be a big of the fact of the case. But also he said, like, how do you feel playing for America

with its history of racism and player having to be black? It's just like, yeah, man, he's trying to get, he's playing soccer, man, 20. Also, I feel like that's a, that's pretty bold coming from that particular country. You know, I mean, I don't know how they are with like racism specifically, but I know they're, you know, pretty bad on other fronts. Ask the women who live there now. It's just like it's very much a glass houses situation. I feel like, Iran coming at America for, you know, discrimination and the like. Yeah. It's also just taking a step back. It's pretty funny with all the nationalism and his history of murders and riots wrapped up in soccer that the most contentious match so far was between the

governments of Iran, the government of Iran and the American players. So, yeah, I don't know. And Iran's own players, I guess. Yeah, that's wild. We got a fun show today, Tray. I want to yell about railroads. We did a whole episode about the Looney Railroad Strike a couple months ago, and it's about to be resolved in pretty frustrating fashion, so we're going to recap that.

Before we get to the show, the Senate passed respect for marriage act today. somebody asked about it in the questions and comments a couple weeks ago and I was like I read people debating about it whether it's good or bad or whether it doesn't go far enough or whatever so I definitely figured out what the bill does it does three important things or appeals the defensive marriage act which is like I think a Bush era fucking marriage is defying between a man a woman type bullshit it requires federal recognition of same sex marriages it does not require states to not discriminate because of sex or race and recognition of marriage so it leaves that to the state and but it does require states to, like, recognize others. I think it requires states to recognize marriage to other states. So it's basically a mandatory destination wedding act for gay. So perfect Democrat. It's like, yeah, you can't get married in Texas, Flatacobo, or you can go to go to Massachusetts. It's okay.

Yeah. It's like abortions in that way, you know. Yeah. You still get them some places and not go to jail. Yeah. They needed 10 Republican votes to pass it And they got them with this sort of That piecemeal measure

It's better than nothing So I'll take it to lame duck session One of the subject of the ETQ stuff Club Q shooting We did a whole episode in the last week And a day later The story comes out Where the shooter's lawyer says

He identifies as non-binary Right And I was like Am I have to eat shit I'm a huge man of culpo Because I think 80% Of the arguments we were making hold up Because the whole right wing

is trying to jump to sarcastic terrorism. Whether or not this happened, turned out to be one of it was true. We'll come back to it or not where I think the shooter's bullshitting. But they're politically invested in this, even though it gets nothing out of it. All that stuff is totally true. And even if this shooting didn't turn out to be stochastic terrorism by wiring reactionary, it's coming. And they're trying as much as they can to do it. So I think all that holds up.

But I haven't seen any more reporting about what the guy meant. And after that, the lawyer put that in his court filings. people found a bunch of like really hateful anti-LGGT so there's some hate groups and stuff. So whether or not the guy is involved in self-hater stuff too, he is participating in this right wing project. So I still think he sucks. And it's not clear whether or again,

he's self-hating or whether or not his lawyers or he's trolling saying you can't charge me of a hate crime because I identify as one of them. It's like that one joke. It's like, I identify as anything, right? Isn't that how you want it to work? And also I made a video after that shooting or whatever. and I said in it, you know, half the time people who do shit like this have a manifesto and claim to be the Messiah, you know what I mean?

And people don't like assume they're actually the second coming of Jesus or whatever. Like somebody that's fucked up enough to do something that, you know, awful. Like they say all kinds of shit. You know what I mean? And he's got this history of, it's like you said, it just, it doesn't, it's not like it really changes anything, in my opinion, you know, of people are still dead. it would change whether or not I can blame Tucker Carlson for it but the fact that Tucker Carlson was back to doing the same

shit the next night and basically celebrating these people's deaths then I can still say fuck you Tucker Carlson yeah one more bit of news a couple of oathkeepers were actually convicted today of seditious conspiracies the first time the government's been able to successfully make one of these cases since 1995

so congratulations to the federal government and let's that very often Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs the big ones Seward Rhodes, we talked about before. He's a psycho with the iPatch. One of several Republican psychos with iPaches. Yeah, right. It's a whole subgenre.

Yeah. Sort of a mixed bag. Some of the lower level people that didn't find out. But it's a good test case to show you can convict organizers for this kind of stuff. So if I was hypothetically a person who had helped fund or arrange all this stuff, I would be a little nervous, more nervous than I was yesterday. And Rhodes faces up to 20 years. I don't know he'll get that much.

But as long as he goes away, I don't really give a shit about how much time he spends it president. I just want these motherfuckers to, like, not be cocky about getting involved in politics anymore. Yeah. Like you said, it's rare, but I'll take it, you know, some actual accountability in this particular instance. So let's get into it. With us as always as producer Matt. This is weekly skews. I want to remind you, of course, two quick things. Number one, if you'd like to see me perform live, go to Trey Crowder.com. Get your tickets. I'll be with Corey and Drew doing well red shows in Nashville, the weekend before Christmas at Zanis, one of our favorite clubs those shows are always great and then i got a whole bunch of dates in

twenty twenty three so yeah go to traycrouter dot com come and see me number two if you enjoy this here program and would like to show your support you can do so by signing up on patreon five dollars a month gets you access to full length bonus episodes we did our first skew in a last week or we took questions from you lovely people all the patrons across the skew universe we've got plenty more episodes in store so you can go to weekly skews dot com slash more or you can go on Patreon and look me up either way, work, sign up on there, get some more skews in your life. Now, as for the show tonight, as Mark already alluded to, we're going to be revisiting the looming rail strike, siding with who else, the working man, of course. If you hear the media tell it, the looming rail strike threatens to cripple the entire U.S. economy.

But a more accurate way to put it, might be that big train is threatening to cripple the U.S. economy over one day of paid six. leave. So we'll talk about that a little bit later, but first, the Daily Dumbass. Matt, graphic, please. Our first, D, D, me and all the other parents out there who didn't spend any time polishing our kids' heads when they were smarter, trying to get them into gifted programs and stuff. That's right. This is who else? Somebody who's approaching the record, I got to think, for Daily Dumbasses. He's up there with Bobert, Marge, and even Trump at this point.

Herschel Walker. Everybody got to come to that women and go, wow, that's a beautiful little girl. Then he's going to look at Christian walking. Whoa, X-File, like he's an alien. But then, you know, being from the country, my mom said, Hershey, you can, like, round their head out by polishing. I'll usually polish his head, like, you know, his head on his head.

I don't know if y'all know that. But I was rounding his head every day, woo, and his head got round and looked like my side of the family. But it's also made him smart. The little dude is really smart. Like, he speaks four different languages at 19. He speaks Chinese, French, Spanish, and English, and he writes it. He's a junior in college, supposed to be a freshman, but, like I said, streetwide, dumb as a brick. But I kiss him all the time.

He don't like, he don't like it. He's 19. He tried to run. I catch homeboy. I'm like, but I catch him. But anyway, if you got a kid, hug your kid, everybody going to come to that winter. All right. All right.

What do you think about that, Mark? I can feel about that. A lot in that. One, the kid he's talking about absolutely hates him. Yeah, right. you know, and even though the kids are conservative, but, like, he, this kid says that Herschel, him and his mom had to move six times in six months because he thought Herschel was going to kill him, and he saw it, and Herschel hold a gun to his mom.

So I'm glad he likes him telling his story about how when he sees him, which I'm sure is, you know, once every five years ago, he insists on kissing. It's just funny to picture Herschel Walker just like trying to smush a baby's brain or head into place. You know what I mean? Like actually picturing that when it's happening, just a tiny little baby, and he's just like, smushing his head in trying to round it out thinking that that's the thing you can actually do he's wild it's like yeah i'm a football player my head got smushed a lot my life's great to smush his head early yeah i like it yeah he's uh he's been saying so much dumb shit it's hard

to keep up with him he had like he had like 10 dumb ass nominees i just picked my two favorites but just for a brief moment i want to tell watch this clip of herschel walker reminding us briefly what this clown show is all about. Well, first of all, this election is more than Herschel Walker. This erection is about the people. Yep. And I said this erection is about the misrection. Another good Freudian slip.

How do you think Cruz and Graham feel about propping up this fucking idiot? Oh, dude. I mean, I don't know. I feel like they're, I mean, we've said before, I feel like, you know, the thing with him is they know that he's very much, like, you know, a useful idiot or whatever for them like he's very he'll just do whatever they need him to do and he's not ever going to give any pushback or anything he's very you know very malleable in that

way so they're probably really down with that part but it's got to be pretty tough the actual getting him to that point stage having to act like he's not a complete dumbass all the time but you know i mean they also suck so yeah but like in theory on paper they're met of substance right because like Cruz went to like Princeton and Harvard and Lindsay Graham with the law school. It's like a lawyer in the Air Force, right? Yeah, they've both got, they've both got annoyingly like objectively impressive backgrounds if you look into, you know, which sucks, but they do. And then Trump's style with this guy. They're trying to help him limp across the finish line.

And yeah, he'll vote however they tell him to vote. But he also is not going to be any help of fundraising or being a surrogate or any of that shit. He's just total dead weight on the party. It's a joy to see. I'd be like, I saw you saw the early voting numbers, but I think Georgia's outpacing their 2020 general election vote kind of right now, so that can't be good for Herschel. Yeah, I'm just, you know, like I would almost feel like in Georgia,

you'd have to be getting fatigue at this point, you know what I mean, but they keep showing up. So I appreciate your peaches, lovely peaches down there. You found the fortune of being born in Georgia, and your reward is having to vote every two weeks in the most important election in the country. Right. All right.

Our first honorable mention for Daily Dumbass is somebody, somewhere, I guess, for maybe still wearing masks and stuff. Hit it, Matt. And we have breaking news at this hour. As Democrats in one area are bringing back masking, just short of a mandate. Somewhere out there, this is the lead story for a whole hour of their news network.

Somewhere, there's a Democrat suggesting maybe someone wear a mask, but not mandating it. It's like, we're going to be living in 2020 for fucking ever, man. I thought like relitigating the 2016 Democratic primary was a fucking nightmare for six years. But now we're going to be doing it for mask restrictions in 2020 for the rest of our goddamn lives. Speaking of which, Large Brain Marge tweeted this. out yesterday. This is like April 2020 level COVID denial. Yeah.

Where she says, let me click on right here. So many people still wearing masks. I just want to ask you, if a pair of underwear really thick ones, high-quality cotton can't protect you from a fart, then how will the mask protect you from the coat? That's the type of enlightened political discourse we look for

from our Congress people out there. I mean, without it, there's no skews. Got the fart material. I mean, yeah, you know, bless her heart, bless her fart. I would point out to her that the reason we wear underwear is because it keeps pee and poop off your pants. So if she's saying that underwear doesn't work, we really do evaluate, re-evaluate everything. Right. Yeah, wait.

So does this imply that she don't believe in underwear either because of parts? because that's hilarious to think that she's like anti-underware in general because farts still stink like that you can totally see her fully believing that too telling people about it at a party and shit that's uh it's pretty funny i had a friend once we were still doing zoom hangs during the peak of the covid lockdowns who was like somebody was arguing about mass or whatever and my friend was like i got the perfect analogy it's like underwear it's like i don't need an analogy for this i've stood face-to-face face that all you have bars and felt your spit hit my face. Like underwear, underwear would keep your pee from dribbling on your leg. It keeps you from spitting in my face. That's the end of the, I don't need intellectualize this anymore.

We can all move on. But anyway, Marge is still in 2020. And also 1952 or whatever in a lot of ways. She's still in a lot of places. But, uh, all right,

our next honorable mention is all the rest of us for not her marriage, though, Trey. Sorry. Ooh. Yeah. Slammed her. I like it.

All the rest of us for not realizing who the real clowns are here. This is from Maricopa County, Arizona in the wake of the election results.

And if you willingly by this election, look at it. Every single one of us is a poll center right networker right now is making fun of you. Every single one of us.

You are the butt of our jokes. it's so funny to think that that would like actually you know garner the response he's looking for like the idea that all this that these you know politicians the election commit whatever election officials would be like oh shit they're making fun of us well guess we better hold a whole new election then i don't like it when the dumbest people on earth make fun of me i'm not like i'm not sure why maricopa did this but just like they feels like they had these hearings

every day for two weeks and these people yelled the same the same five or six people yelled the same shit of them they thought the whole group of them was like eight of them have been camped outside the maricopa county county board supervisor's office or whatever for like six seven days straight trying to get them to redo the election and there's not even really like remember i said six or seven people there's not really a groundswell of effort for this kind of stuff anymore like it petered out like no one even really cares that carrie lake is sort of election tonight mark um micheacham or finchum or whatever the secretary of state candidate is advocating for redoing the election and everybody's just so fucking ignore him.

Anyway, Maricopa County went ahead and certified today, I think. So, or yesterday maybe good for them. That's fucking over. But these people are so specific. Like, it seems like such specific and lonely sad people. Like, I always get the vibe. These are like the same people to be yelling on the steps of a family courthouse. And then one of these ladies said this, Matt, if you have this video.

Yeah. This is from the science. like proceedings, right? This is another person in the same context. Throw her up there, Matt. Let's say it. I'm going to continue to mumble for a second until we get this play button here. There we go. I'm questioning. Why is nobody talking about us over the media? I'm nobody. Like, I'm just like mother trying to save my family because my kids were taken for me when they were little because I fought for them medical freedom because I don't go there, okay? But I want to tell you,

guys um she's there because this the government took her kids away when they were little because she was i don't know wouldn't vaccinate him or wouldn't take them to the hospital and they were sick or something and so therefore she's here yelling at the county because this is the one group of people who would take her in right this is like this is just deeply lonely fucking shit man um it's like i said maricopa county certified but this is really there's still one county in a in arizona is refusing to certify coachee's county i think coach i'm sure they say it But it's a deeply conservative county. And the funny impact of this is if they don't certify, they deprive basically the state of 47,000 Republican votes.

So I'm not sure if it's enough to swing any elections. I don't doubt it because Democrats swept statewide. It might swing out. Maybe it'll affect that house rates or something. So count individual counties can, I'd heard a lot of talk about the idea that states would refuse to certify election results and that being a whole thing. And that's why Secretary of State's important and stuff. but individual counties can do it too and the statewide election can just continue it just doesn't count any of the votes from that county that's how it works well what'll happen next is

because like it's like the law with the laws written it's like shell uh shell certifies they don't only have the option but they just didn't vote to so somebody somebody fought a lawsuit already and eventually court's going to make them certify but yeah they can they can they can act stupid and drag their feet and bitch and moan for a while but yeah like that's what we need like the electoral reform like whatever the electoral count act or whatever that's before Congress would deal with some of this shit because it would establish some harsher penalties

and quicker remedies for when people are being big babies like this but it's amazing how many the levers are a democracy just depending on people just showed up right I know that was like one of my main takeaways from the 2020 election was and we talked about it on here but realizing that it's like it was like a couple of people in very key positions who could have really fucked shit up for us for a while.

And thankfully, they just didn't, like Raffinsberger or whatever in Georgia. You know, it's like, luckily, that dude just had some integrity and refused to do it. But what if he had done otherwise, you know? But I hadn't really thought about what you just said when it comes to these individual counties and stuff. Like any county that's ran by the type of people who would pull a stunt like this is probably going to be a. county that is vital to the number of Republican votes or whatnot. You know what I mean? It's going to be a deeply rag county.

So all they're doing is getting rid of, you know, a big chunk of Republican votes. So it seems like self-defeating. It's almost like most of their shit they do just doesn't even make any sense. But, you know. Yeah. It's almost like their plans are poorly thought out. Right. The thing about January 6th is it was poorly thought out too, but it almost worked because, again, all these, all these weird leavers in our government that people don't fucking think about.

that just have just been on autopilot for 200 years. Yeah. Well, you want to get into it? Talk about big train versus the working man and the implications for us all. Yeah. So today, I think maybe last night, my mind's like I got COVID fog. But so Biden asked Congress to intervene in a railroad strike. And just we talked about, I did a whole episode about this, about the stakes and how much

railroad workers are being abused a couple months ago. And I don't rehash all of it, but I'll give you the gist that they, these guys are working like, you know, 80, 90, 100 hour weeks. They're on call 90% of the time. They get no, they get basically a couple days off a month. And even then, they don't really know which days over there's going to be because it just depends on where they're not going to be called in. When they're called in, they have an hour to get to work.

They've cut staffing down to where they want to go to one driver per train. They get penalized for taking sick days. If you have to get to accrue a certain amount of points for calling out sick, you get fired. And it's just a pretty brutal way to live. These guys don't get to see their wives and kids, yada, yada, yada. It's not great. So the dynamic right here is railroad workers around the country, but you're talking about like 115,000 people.

I mean, threatening to go on strike on December 9th, which, of course, leading up for the holidays and everything gets around on railroads. So that would be bad. It would cost $2 billion a day from the economy. So pretty much every economic sector is impact by a railroad. So that's why the president and Congress would be not want this to happen. But again, it's all boils down to just one thing, paid sick leave. The Biden administration did successfully get them a 24% pay increase, which does sound like a lot and it is nice.

But it's spread it over five years and so we did the math and wanted to keep up with inflation at this point. So it's not a lot, right? So the workers asked for 15 paid sick days. The railroads offered zero. The Biden administration gave up a compromise position for one. And then eight of the 12 unions took the deal. Four of them said, fuck you were striking. All right.

Now, because of solidarity here, if four unions strike, all of them strike. It doesn't matter the other eight voted to take the deal, right? So that's the dynamic in play here. The whole road industry would shut down if they don't take the deal. So Biden is started to Congress to get to in a second. But I want to talk about the money here and how three of these fucking railroad companies are right. 15 paid sick days for all their workers across the industry. Someone did read the math a little less than $700 million a year.

That sounds like a lot, right? But you're thinking about how profitable railroads are. Let's talk about one, BNSF, right? It's net income climbed $4.5 billion in the first nine months this year. They've already rigged in last year they made $6 billion in profits, which is a a 16% jump from the year before. Right. Your parent company, which is Warren Buffett,

that fucking liberal presenting billionaire who's a goddamn liar. Yeah. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, spent $32 billion since last year buying back stock. And they won't give $700 million of it to workers they can get off when they're fucking sick. Right. Because when they, correct me if I'm wrong here, when they buy the stop back like that, it creates, like, pumps the price up because it creates like artificial scarcity or something like that.

so there's a lower supply so that inflates their own stock and they a lot of the executives you know have the stock so it raises their net worth and shit so they're incentivized to continue to do shit like that and it doesn't do anything except the people at the very top it makes them more and it's like i just don't i don't know because this is going on with all these industries right now and we talked about how like in covid so many of these industries and since then just like profits have soared right and all this shit with gas prices and everything recently and how much money the oil companies are making. It's like that across the board.

They're just having, like, record years and can't even come off with any paid sick day. Like, I just don't know how, I don't know how you look at any regular, anyone who isn't a multi-millionaire executive. I don't know how you look at that person and just try to justify that with a straight face. And then, you know, the Republican politicians who back the corporations and stuff, I just don't know what the argument is supposed to be. like for fucking free market capitalism bullshit or whatever but i mean it's not that much to ask and again they say this would cost us 700 million dollars this year it's like yeah but you're making six billion dollars in profits you know alone so is it really that big of a deal it's just it's such horseshit man and they just get away with it you know this is how it works with all of them

and it's just fine um and it's uh it's not that cool? I think there's like we have the general idea that if you're part of a successful venture you'll be rewarded for it and like historically talking about like we're talking about democracy was running on autopy or it used to sort of be that way that like there

was a culture more of family at companies and like it was the company did well we would give people a raise or whatever it's like what do you call it like noblesse obliage or whatever like my dad worked for construction and on a handshake deal at the end of the year every year we get a Christmas bonus

the company did it, just like an envelope full of cash, right? Don't tell the government, don't for the IRS. But so, but, but, but think, look at, look at these numbers here, right, okay? So in 2001, oh, let me backtrack for a minute. The railroad actually put out a pamphlet of propaganda that it distributed to their workers, arguing that the company's financial success was totally unrelated to the productivity and contributions of its employees. How, what?

Like, like, in what universe could that even possibly be? be true. Like you, like the employees are the people that do the actual work that makes you all that money and there's no other way to explain it or even look at it. So that's just what I mean. It's like, where the fuck do they get off trying to sell people on this shit? It's just so brazen. And the argument from the capital, from, you know, capital class or entrepreneurs or whatever is, well, we're taking the investment risk. So if the, if the investment goes south, you don't take a hit for it. So why should you get rewarded when the investment pays off? I'm an answer. to that is you do take a fucking hit for as a working man if the company's value goes down you get

fucking laid off first right yeah you have more of a stake in the company's success than the guys at the top because they get golden parachutes so they get to stay there forever because their dad runs the company or whatever and they've already been doing it they've like while the profits are going up they've been like spending less on labor right they've been cutting back more like you mentioned up top to like so they're working these guys way harder than they used to and they were already you're working them pretty hard while making shit load more money and then just, you know, look at them and say, it has nothing to do with all the hard work you do. It's just, this is what we do. We print money and you get none of it. Let me give you these numbers, Trace, talking about.

This is a 20 year difference, all right? And so in 2001, the four major railroads spent, I'm just to say $9 billion on compensation benefits to generate $26 billion in profits. in 2021, the company spent only 10% more on labor for brought a nearly double the amount of revenue. So they wouldn't have been spending $9 billion and $10 billion on labor, but their profits went from $26 to $52 billion. Right. You can afford to give these guys sick time.

They have some weird point system where some days are more valuable than others to work or call in sick. Like Super Bowl Sundays, like I think if you hit 30 points negative, you get fired. But Super Bowl Sundays worth seven points. So if you work Super Bowl Sunday, you get seven points. But if you call out sick, you get negative seven. And it's like, we're not all idiots here.

I know that people when they're not sick are more likely to call in sick on Super Bowl Sunday. But you still solve that problem with a limited number of paid sick days. Because everybody's not going to take them on the same day. This is all. Yeah. Like, you can't build a system where people aren't going to lie and try to get over on you. But getting over has to be baked into the fucking thing, man. Everybody fakes sick.

We've all done it from the CEO down. People play hooky, get over it. Yeah, it's like, you know, sometimes they call it a mental health day or whatever, which I think is valid, you know what I mean? Especially when you work, the types of hours or anything that these guys work, they should be able to every now and then just say, yeah, I ain't coming today. Yeah, I had enough. Yeah.

Yeah, I worked 95 hours last week, finished this project at the end of the quarter. I'm going to the beach today. Fuck you. So, anyway, that brings us to Congress. So Biden's getting into Congress, and I had to look up, I'm not, I don't mean to sound like I'm more smart than I am, but I look at the top of my head, but so Congress passed like the National Railway Act, I think, the Railway Labor Act in 1926 to give Congress the ability to curtail strikes and resolve them if they do happen.

They don't use it very frequently, but the thing to know here is Congress can resolve this any way they want. They can give the railroads everything they want. They can give the unions anything they want. They could split the baby. They could do Biden's plan, which is not even split the baby. It's like 90% of the baby to the railroad and 10% of the workers. So just throwing it to Congress isn't the bad thing here. But Biden's also just straight up asking them to do his plan, which again is the 90% of the baby goes to the railroads. And so here's a quote from a guy named Matthew Weaver, who's a carpenter with a rail maintenance workers union, which one of the four unions that voted down the agreement. He said, like Mr. Biden's appointment, he said, like

Mr. Biden, a lot of Biden's appointments, but quote, this move seems to cater to the oligarchs. And I can't think of a better way to sum that up. And Biden, by the way, is still presenting this is a pro-union move. And again, he is the most pro-labor president of American history, but the most pro-labor is one sick day. Right. This is good as it gets for working in this country. So Biden and Pelosi essentially made the statement with it. I support unions, but Biden said he was, quote, reluctant to override the ratification procedures, which is what he's doing. He's doing it reluctantly, though, so thank you.

And Pelosi said that, quote, the railroads have been selling out to Wall Street to boost their bottom lines, making obscene profits while demanding more and more from railroad workers, end quote. But really, the quote goes on to say, and I approve with that, so I'm going to help them do it. Here's a quote for this story. The president is a staunch union backer who has previously argued against congressional intervention in railway labor disputes, arguing that it usually unfairly interferes with union bargaining efforts, which it does. In 92, he was one of only six senators to vote against legislation that ended another

bitter strike by rail workers. So when he wasn't president, and he was a guy who liked trains, he was on the right side of this. But now he's president and he has to fucking answer to people. And now he's like a candidate economy shut down during the holidays. But I do want to point out, this. negotiations are going on for months and months and months and months and the unions

pushed back the end of negotiation process months several times pretty clearly to be until after the election because Biden didn't want to write during the election and they had a Democratic president and they understand the Republicans typically are

way worse for fucking labor so another way to put this is the president Biden asked union leaders to wait after the midterm elections to strike and they did and when the election was over Biden was asking Congress to block the strike, he asked them to delay, right? I just don't, again, I don't know if it was a Republican regime, I would totally understand it, but I just don't get why, you know, you said they have the authority because of that

act or whatever to resolve it any way they want to, basically. I don't understand why they don't just do that in a way that's like, you know, beneficial to the, to the employees, I mean, like, would there, and I know it's like, because of the fucking puppet masters and the, you know, corporate lobbyist and big money and all that type of shit. But like, you know, I feel like it's not anything. You're not going to have face like electoral consequences for it or anything like that as a Democrat, you know, like I just don't understand what the problem is. They just, is it like their policy to to not do that, period? Like, they want to be like, you guys work this out. We don't need to get like in a perfect world. They

wouldn't have to get involved so they're just trying really hard not to or or what i i think it's these people are institutionally centrist as means they just want everybody to be calm down and it's just like if we if we if we just go everybody goes back to what they were doing it's fine right and these guys are like they're playing with a fire because these workers are screaming that they're not fine and their position isn't totally just rational it's also emotional they might all be like so congress can take away their infrastructure negotiate and like take the union management out of the equation but they can't force these

guys to go to work they could very they could absolutely just wildcat stripe because fuck you I quit yeah and they might they might do it and they're still not going to have railways during the holidays and I just don't like they're they're playing with fire here in a lot of really weird ways and it's also like Matt said something for the show started that like

a lot of politicians have no political imagination like trump for his all his fucking awful evil strengths understood the politics is largely bullshit and these the old rules don't necessarily play. Like, yes, Biden's probably afraid of a railroad strike during the holidays that is laid at his feet, all right?

But imagine how much different it would look and how much the story would look. If instead of the workers taking the blame for it, they clearly made the case, this is because of corporate greed, just like you suffer in your job. And here's the president, and here's a bunch of Democratic leaders marching with railroad workers on the picket lines while they're telling their horror stories about how they're struggling with the holidays too. because of the fucking shitty greed of Warren Buffett. Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, right. Who would have what regular American would have a problem with that? I mean, a lot of Republicans would hate it just because it was a Democrat president who did it. But I'm saying if you could divorce them from their political bias or whatever, like it's not a narrative that's going to upset anybody. Anybody, you know, any John Cue public out there is good. going to be, you know, down with that. When the store shelves are empty and when people can't get their kids' toys at Christmas,

they're going to be not happy, right? But Americans aren't babies. And if you make it clear who is actually to blame and how the problem can be fixed long term going forward, I don't think we're, I don't think we're that soft where we can't get through one Christmas with big presents. Like I just, I, sorry, go ahead. Well, you said, and I don't know if you're about to get to this, but you said, you know, make it clear what's really going on, who's really at fault, and how it should be addressed going forward. Like, the narrative is important to make sure people understand that.

But so far, it's not been presented that way. It's always, if you, if you don't, like, because I don't work for the, my cousin's husband does do work for a railroad. That's the only person I know it works for a railroad. But if you don't, but most people don't, only 115,000 people work for these. or in these unions, right? So really, the only way a railroad labor action would affect me is literally not be able to get my stuff, right? So that's the way most people would be impacted.

And it would sting if you didn't understand, like, who's clearly to blame for, right? But if you don't make the case, American workers fucking hate each other, just by definition. And so if Democrats did pass a generous labor compromise, they gave the workers who's sick days, Republicans probably would run ads that socialist Democrats gave socialist unions a bunch of paid time off while you still had to work, right? They probably would do that. I hope it wouldn't fucking work. But I want to watch this video next, Matt. This is how this shit filters down to people.

Right. Solidarity. A real strike is one of the most disruptive and expensive things that can happen to an economy. A real shutdown or strike would disrupt supply. A strike means food prices could skyrocket. Many experts are saying would be an economic catastrophe. That could mean a big shortage and massive price hikes. Even gas prices could increase.

And it also could cost the economy a billion dollars within the first week. That would cripple the economy. I'm not setting aside the concerns of your members, but are you and your members willing to stop the rails, in effect, and accept those costs to the U.S. economy? Do you believe the strike is... Yeah, but it's just presented as like, you know, a rail strike. the strike that's a thing that the rail workers would will do it will be the rail workers doing the

strike and as you could clearly see from the way we're talking about this a strike would be a horrible thing for everybody therefore the rail workers are threatening to do a horrible thing to the rest of us and you know no mention as to why or any context or whatever and it's just it's bullshit yeah that that last part of the clip we just watched was a newscast asking a union official if he would feel bad for hurting the economy. And it's like, I got my members dropping dead from exhaustion. They're being asked to drive trains full of nuclear waste overnight alone on two hours sleep.

And you're asking me if I want to feel bad because, you know, tomatoes are 10 cents more expensive for a couple weeks. You know, it's just like there's no solidarity here, man. Like someone needs to, what Biden should have done is kick the cans. three weeks down the road until everybody in the country to get ready for a strike because these workers

might need to do it for themselves. Everybody does that. Then maybe the fucking companies get scared and the deadline hits in the cave or the workers go on strike and then we have a week long strike and then they get what they want

or at least have a good decent shot at it. But it's just like the way we turn in each other. It's like, but I've got, you know, my kid wants their new hoodie and it won't get here from China if it can't get it off the train

off the docks on the train. it's like I'm sorry man but like the whole the whole deal with this is is we support them and then if we need to do a strike they support us right that's how solidarity is supposed to work and I do want to note here that like of 20 among 22 highly developed nations the United States is the only one that does not require employees to provide pay sick leave Spain requires 16 days Belgium provides at least a month the UK guarantees at least 28 weeks I'll take sick leave if you need it. And for more than a decade,

members of Congress have repeatedly introduced legislation called the Healthy Families Act that will require all businesses with at least 15 employees to provide seven paid sick days each year. So they can't pass that. For 10 years, they can't pass a law that will give everyone 15 paid sick days. Again, Spain has 16 days.

Belgium, a month, UK, 28 weeks. All right. right so this is we're utterly fucked in being abused and we don't see it because no right people that are also being fucked and abused yeah exactly that's what i was going to say like americans so many americans don't realize any that because they have no frame of reference because you know they're americans and have always worked in america but yeah all this type of you know workers rights and that type of ship we're at the bottom of the western world or the highly developed world or whatever it's not just sick leave it's vacation days paternity leave all that type of shit like we're far below the generally agreed upon standard for the rest of the developed world but people don't they don't realize that because it's just all we all know basically and it just you know it's just allowed to stay that way yeah it's not like those corporations in fucking spain you know like corporations in spain aren't making a shitload of money i'm sure they are you know or in the uk or any of those other places like they're doing

fine. Spain's been full-on fascist for most of the last century and they have a more generous social safety net that we do. Anyway, so I'm not, Biden also might have, I'm not sure what he thought politically was going to happen here because he needs 60 votes in the Senate to pass this, which means it needs to get 10 Republicans and Bernie. Bernie's already said that he won't vote for any legislation, doesn't guarantee sickly, right? So now you're, now you're already underwater.

Now you've got to get 11 Republican votes. Ted Cruz hit Biden from the left saying he thought the rail workers demands from more sick leave or quote, quite reasonable. And let me read this, Marcus Rubio quote here. The railroads and workers should go back and negotiate a deal that the workers, not just union bosses will accept. But if Congress is forced to do it, I will not vote to impose a deal that doesn't have the support of the rail workers. Biden and Cruz are rightfully slamming Joe Biden from the left. That's how fucked this is. Yeah, Rubio and Cruz.

But, yeah, no, that's, that's wild. Like, I didn't, so what's the fucking problem then? Like, it seems like it has bipartisan support, like, supporting the workers has bipartisan support politically. It might be one of those buying things where, like, they give him a much better bill than he asked for because, but it might be, where you, Biden seems to, like, say the wrong thing, then bumblefoot ass backwards into doing the right thing. It seems to be his move in general. So maybe it works itself out where these workers don't get fucked. But like, I just, yeah, I don't understand the politics of this or the economics of it or like how this country keeps on being or keeps on functioning. Because like I'm going to read here from a where is it.

Okay, the years of press release from one of the unions is absolutely furious about this. Regardless of what happens next, President Biden, Congress, the railroads need to know this problem is not going away soon. The road is not a place to work while you're sick. It's dangerous. It requires full concentration, situational awareness, and decision-making. Because carrier management decided to egregiously reduce workforce, more dangerous than ever, and the onus of that rest was them. So people are talking about railroad as national infrastructure.

These people are part of the infrastructure, and they're falling apart, right? Yeah. We move nuclear waste. We move, we move fucking weapons. We move military tanks. We don't just move our goods and services on railways. move all that and like if these people leave this industry or aren't compensated well enough to stay or die or crash trains that's part of this problem and they're just kicking the can down

the road with no no vision of how to make things better that's the thing that kills me is like there's never there's never a step two to any of their plans it's like how you're going to make flats better for railroad workers well we got them at 24% raise that comes in under inflation okay but like they're dying at work well we got them at one day a day off what if they get sick two days right Like, there's never an answer for any of this. I've been sick more days ago. I shouldn't train right now. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. I guess we'll see what happens, and it'll probably not be great. So everybody, you know, stay tuned. Matt, if you want to start looking for some questions and comments to put up there for us. And Mark, you wanted, Trump had dinner with a Nazi, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, so our old friend Nick Fuentes, who we talked about in the show, quite a bunch, but he made himself known to the wider political universe this week for the second time. The first time was Marjorie Taylor Green speaking in his racist conference last year, I believe. But, yeah, so Fuentes has somehow made good friends with Kanye West and got a plus one to a dinner with Trump and Marlago. Now, Trump says he didn't know who the guy was and he might not, but the fact you're only

one degree of move from a Nazi and your friendship circle seems to be problem enough. so then Trump sort of said basically did the non-denial and I don't know I don't know I man I don't know who he is he just showed up at dinner so Fuentes turned on Trump then Fuentes and Kanye went on Tim Poole's show and Kanye stormed off 10 minutes in

because Tim Poole wouldn't agree that Jews control all media it's such a fucking circus Ah I don't know Did Tim Poole didn't go with that Temple, I can see the Jews only control most of the media was not enough for Kanye.

Jason, Jason Ruderman says, Smart Mark is killing it tonight, even if he is sick. Yeah, as always, each and every skews day. But yeah, man, Kanye, Jesus Christ, like truly on one. These guys, Kanye's lost, I don't know how many billions of dollars the last few months or two. He just got hit today with $200,000 a month a month. child support payments because his wife left him. Fucking Elon's lost $100 billion.

Living in the truly epic era of the billionaire self-owned, man. Yeah, I saw Elon's been on one because Apple is threatening Twitter. Apple's like no longer advertising on Twitter, but they're also threatening to pull it from the app store and everything. So he's on there going ballistic about how Apple hates free speech and stuff. But it's like, like we were talking about, you know, the whole it's not freedom from consequent. It's, is it not Apple's right to say they don't want to do business with you just because they want it? It's the fucking free market, right? Does Apple need to be forced by law to do business with Twitter?

How the fuck does that work? Yeah, he's something else. Mary in San Francisco says American productivity has increased every year. American pay has not kept up. No. Yeah. It has. It's like gone up epically in the last, technology, robots doable work.

One person can do way more stuff, which in theory, in theory, from, the Jetson slash Star Trek theory of how the future should work. We should all reap those rewards, have more leisure time and more, and, you know, better lifestyles. But instead, one guy keeps it. The rest of us keep working the same way. But, yeah, like, the funny thing about that number is, like, there was American productivity declined last year for the first time and a long time. That's where you see all those stories about quiet quitting and people not trying hard at their jobs.

It's like, did people just catch on? You don't pay them more if they actually fucking work? Right. What do you want? Yeah. Anna Paul Gondara says first time watching live. Well, thank you. We appreciate it.

Welcome, Anna. Yeah. The funny thing about, oh, yeah, smash the like by folks. Yeah, thank you, C.C. What's new. Everybody hit that like button. Like, subscribe, share, for you, all that. A bunch of people were tweeting at Elon that he should buy Apple next.

And it was like, yeah, Elon doesn't have the money to buy Apple, y'all. You know, like, it's literally the most profitable cooperation on Earth. You could eat Twitter a lie of 400 times over. These morons think that Elon could just take it over. It's fucking wild. Joey S says after the 2020 toilet paper situation, we can handle a strike from the Teamsters. Do it.

We can make do, man. Like, it's like if we don't do something, I'm not advocating for a general strike or whatever here, but it's going to keep being this way unless somebody takes a step to change. It'll keep it worse and worse and worse until we restructure some shit. Yeah, I mean, that's how it happened with unions in this country in the first place.

you know what I mean like people fucking died like and uh you know but it's the only reason that we got any rights at all our workers got any rights at all is because people you know stood up and said no fuck that again at the risk of their actual life because mother jones those coal miners marched up blur and mountain with fucking shotguns and killed some goddamn pickertons yeah uh anna van week says uh or wickwickwick says you'd think the same republicans who supported the trucker convoys would support a rail strike, too. Well, hell, I don't know, based on what Mark was saying, I guess a lot of them do. If you tell them the railroads are moving around adrenachrome and sex-trafficked children,

then yes, I would agree with you. If you tell them the railroads are moving around, the microchips they put in the vaccines, yes, probably, but other political concerns connect with the real world. M. Savina says Biden should just shame the railroad, like how Bernie shamed Amazon. into a $15 minimum wage. It's so wild how they won't use the fucking megaphone. Like, Ron DeSantis gave a big rant about Apple and Elon today to try to bully Apple and saying that Apple should be hauled in front of a congressional committee for not fucking

giving Elon money. Right. That's why I'm saying, like, what the fuck is the argument for that? Like, they're literally saying that we should force Apple to, you know, give some of their money to Twitter. just because call the fucking execs up say hey you're a vital part of our national infrastructure right that's why we have this law we can force

these workers to go back to work right okay here's the white here's a Katie Porter whiteboard here's how much you make here's your compensation here's how much you spend on stock buybacks here's how little cost to give them their sick taste tell me tell me why this tell me just do that embarrass them on fucking television man this is just frustrating

the do nothingness just drives me absolutely insane I would I wouldn't embarrass a big time executive for the fun of it. Yeah. Where are you, where's your got a sense of adventure? I mean, shit they've done it before.

They drug Zuckerberg out there and whatnot, you know. Savannah Blom says, oh my God, I feel nauseous at agreeing with Ted Cruz about something. Well, you know,

I don't believe anything he says. Boken clocks and all that. Yeah, it's more that he's sent, like, If it was flipped and the workers are going to get those pay sick days, he'd come out and vote against an R&B. So, yeah, but he is saying the right thing.

So I agree with you there. Sonia Levine says, who doesn't understand that sometimes you get sick, like with COVID, for instance? Yeah, I mean, they know you get sick. They just want you to fucking work anyway or, you know, not get paid if you're not going to, you know.

Or, but you still get dinged, you might get fired for getting sick and not coming in. If you do true enough points doing that. But the main way you can get a day off, is if you, if you're planning on getting sick in October, you need to schedule it around May. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah, pretty sorry.

Yeah, I can't, like, just a big picture. Like, you get one ride on this rock. Is that how you want to spend it? Is making an extra 10% of your billions by forcing people to drive trains after sleep? It certainly seems to me as though that's exactly how they want to spend. But yeah, that's the whole thing with them. It's like, I mean, you know, it's greed. Like, it's greed.

It's never enough and it never will be enough. And since it's never going to be enough, no matter what, we need to force them to take fucking less and then just deal with it, you know, piss him on for a minute and then go back to their, you know, slightly smaller yacht or, you know, the only two of the previous five yachts they had beforehand or whatever, and they'll be fine. M-O-R-F-D says maybe we need Katie Porter to do a white board presentation about train corporations income and employee treatment before voting Congress about the contract. Yeah, you and Mark are on the same page. They could do so much shit.

They could, like, subpoena all their financial records and investigate them for fraud. They could do, like, Congress can do so much more shit than they do. Like, fuck. Well, they hate doing shit. As a general rule, Congress is not super into doing stuff. And that's always been the case. Uh, DGP, holy hand grenade, love that reference, says corporate bosses will spend untold millions to prevent the workers from getting thousands. Yeah.

I got a, I got a fun story. So, uh, I was working on a, uh, a comedy show, like a comedy panel show. It happened to be non-union. And, uh, one of our workers, uh, one of the other writers made a joke about we should union us, just where everybody could hear. All right. The next day, they call us into a conference room and gave us a big presentation about how they could not unionize because the budget of the show would more than double. And I was the head

writer of that show and I had a sort of understanding what everyone made. And I knew what the budget was. And I knew that the writer's budgets came out to about 3% of the show's budget. The writer's budget came out about 3% of the show's budget. So what they were telling us, lying to us about is if the

writers would go costing 3% of the show's budget to 100 and three percent of the show's budget at the same timeline. I was like, this is total worship. But what they were communicating to us pretty clearly is we unionized, they would shut the show down, even though it was the third most popular show in that particular cable network. It was ideological.

They were going to be like, fuck you, no, even if it cost them money. So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, like a lot of them, they'll just outright say, you know, we'll fire anybody that tries to unionize or whatever. Chad Fitzer says unions formed on railroads because they were a killing field. People were constantly killed and maimed. Veteran breakmen normally didn't have all their fingers, et cetera. Yeah.

I mean, what they really want is their solution to a lot of those problems were used Chinese slaves. If they could bring that back, they probably would. Oh, you know they would, dude. Bro, they would love to have slaves. Like, you think Bezos wouldn't go for slaves right now? He'd kill to have slaves. I used to. Et's what it says like they really would.

It's like, it's like a joke, but it also isn't a joke. These like corporate tycoons and stuff that we're talking about, they would. If they could and they could get away with it, they would have slaves tomorrow. I mean,

and it wouldn't bother them a bit. Didn't Bezos fire, the Amazon fire a bunch of people for leaving a warehouse during a hurricane or a tornado war? Yeah. Like you're obligated to die at your job for $15. now. Sorry. I mean, what's, what's different than that? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And again, it's just like, I just don't understand why this right here is even a

partisan thing, like why it's like a debate, because the vast majority of people are just regular people that work regular jobs. I don't understand, you know, why there's not more, you know, pushing or support for this type of thing from just everybody. It shouldn't, this shouldn't be a thing that's divided along the political lines but well it's like well it's it's not really divide it's well republicans are always firmly on the side of capital right it's like capitalism is is the capital the people represents in like that the whole argument I mentioned earlier about the railroad saying the workers like the entrepreneurs take the risk they should get all the profits right so but like I keep referencing that new republic article that I read last year two years ago where democrats don't

don't want to answer the question questions who side are you on Republicans are firmly on the side of capital, like I said. Democrats, if you ask them whose side they're on, but like, I want all Americans to have an opportunity to know, no, no, no, no. This is a two-sided position. There's no both. You've got to pick a fucking side. Whose side are you on? Answer the question,

Joe Biden. Not, no, well, not 4% compromised. Hell yeah. Answer the question, Joe Biden. All right, well, I want to remind you all again real quick. First of all, like button, subscribe, share, all that gets to all the internet stuff to do that. We would appreciate

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