 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now, enjoy the show. Welcome to the Mike Report podcast. I am Humanist Figueredo. Today is Friday, April 16th, episode 286, and before we get started, I want to take some time to thank all of the folks who make this show possible. All of our newest Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members, all of which either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us, and that includes the great Bradley Miller, Bruce Allen Ross, Camille DePaolo, Ida Webbs, Karen Webster, Cassie Andrade, Kawamidori, Kellen, M. David, Sirabi, Mr. Clyde the Burb Dragon, Noa E Dawson, Sergei Abakamov, and Sue Crayer. Thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show and join the independent progressive media revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com slash humanistreport, or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. We have another phenomenal episode for you today. We'll talk about Joe Biden's announcement that the Afghanistan War will be coming to an end soon. Nancy Pelosi's suspicious stock purchases, Tucker Carlson's great replacement rents, Joe Biden's response to the murder of Dante Wright, conservatives inability to sympathize, Bill Gates' role in vaccine apartheid, and a CEO's bold move to treat his employees like human beings. Imagine that. So we've got those stories, along with some other stories we're gonna get to. Well on this episode, hopefully you will enjoy what we have in store for you. Let's waste no time and get right to it. Trying to decrease vaccine hesitancy, that's going to be an ongoing issue. But Tucker Carlson went on his program to millions and millions of viewers and during his monologue, he just made matters exponentially worse because he decided to promote the idea that the vaccines don't work. And it's not just that he misinformed his audience about what has been proven about the COVID-19 vaccines, but the next day, when it comes to vaccines on Facebook, Tucker Carlson's video was the number one topic across all of Facebook. So let's watch and see what he has to say and then I'm going to break it down. Just a forewarning, quality takes a dip about halfway through because I stitched together two separate clips of the same clip, but from different sources, just because I wanted to give you the full picture. Nonetheless, take a look. The federal health authorities also recommend that you continue to wear your mask when you go outside. How long will this continue? Well, according to Yahoo News, experts say it's, quote, not entirely clear when it will be considered okay for people who are fully vaccinated to stop wearing masks. At some point, no one's asking this, but everyone should be. What is this about? If vaccines work, why are vaccinated people still banned from living normal lives? Honestly, what's the answer to that? It doesn't make any sense at all. If the vaccine is effective, there is no reason for people who have received the vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact. So maybe it doesn't work and they're simply not telling you that. Well, you hate to think that, especially if you've gotten two shots, but what's the other potential explanation? We can't think of one. We know the Prime Minister of Canada has decided after thinking about it a lot that vaccines just don't work and we know that because he said it out loud. Watch this. I think it's really important that we work from facts and understanding of the science around things. We know, for example, that the UK is ahead of just about everybody else on vaccinations and yet they maintain very strong restrictions and are facing a very serious third wave. Vaccinations on their own are not enough to keep us safe. We need to engage in the right kinds of behaviors. Do things that the Conservatives aren't always good at, like wearing masks, jumping distances, and obeying public health rules. So the leader of Canada, our closest ally, just explained on television that according to the science, the vaccine doesn't stop COVID. Well, if that's true, why are they pushing everyone to get the vaccine? It's really one or the other. Either the coronavirus shot works or it doesn't, but the shot can't be simultaneously highly effective but not restore people's lives to normal. That doesn't make sense. That's actually not what the Prime Minister of Canada said. The message ultimately is that the vaccine alone isn't enough to stop the pandemic. We don't say that seatbelts don't work because cars have airbags now. That's not the way that this works. There's multiple things that we have to do to mitigate the spread of the virus. And using the UK as an example isn't necessarily ideal because even though the UK does have fairly high vaccination rates, the amount of people that are fully vaccinated is still pretty low. Whereas if you look to Israel, for example, their population has a lot more fully vaccinated people and their daily new cases of COVID-19 has plummeted. The vaccine works. Now it's just a matter of making sure that there's enough to go around not just in the United States but around the world and making sure that people take them. But until enough people are vaccinated to the extent that we reach herd immunity, whatever that number may be yet to be determined because this is a new virus that we're still learning about, we still have to take precautions. The reason why it's necessary for fully vaccinated folks to wear masks and social distance isn't because they're not more protected once they're vaccinated. It's because we're still learning about whether or not fully vaccinated people can carry and transmit the virus to folks who aren't vaccinated. That's the issue here. Now, sure, it is the case that there's evidence to suggest that people who are vaccinated can't carry the virus and pass it to other folks. But the experts just don't have enough information yet to say that this is the case definitively. And when CDC director Rochelle Wolinski said that there is some data suggesting that fully vaccinated people can't transmit the virus to unvaccinated people, the CDC actually had the issue of clarifying statements saying that she was just speaking more broadly about this. But overall, we still don't necessarily know for sure whether or not this is the case. So before you engage in risky behavior, just know that we don't actually have concrete data to confirm that this is the case as of yet. I'm willing to admit that public health experts, they don't have one unified cohesive message when it comes to what types of activity is risky for people who are fully vaccinated. And that's because data is still limited. We're still rolling out the vaccines. We're in the process of rolling out the vaccines. And it's kind of a catch 22 if you're a public health expert, because on one hand, if they make a prediction, but it doesn't come to fruition, then they lose credibility and nobody will trust them. But on the other hand, if they undersell the benefits of the vaccine and remain overly cautious until more data is available, then people, of course, are going to get frustrated as we see now. And they're just going to conclude that the vaccines must not work. If I can't resume normal life while fully vaccinated. And look, I feel the frustration. We all want things to get back to normal. But the fact remains that there's not going to be any consensus within the community of health experts and epidemiologists until we have more information. Now, there was a really great article in The Verge by Monica Chin that I want to direct you to. So she talked to a bunch of experts in order to try to determine how long until things get back to normal, if she takes everything that they have to say and kind of like comes away with a net conclusion. You know, an overall takeaway and she expectedly got a whole bunch of different answers and her takeaway overall was as follows. Experts across disciplines have conflicting advice as vaccination rates rise will likely see some authorities relax their demands while others continue to urge caution. Governors will allow things to open and people on Twitter will urge you not to go. It's going to be a confusing time and different areas will move at different paces, but for the riskiest indoor activities, there's a tentative finish line in sight. We're waiting for a large majority of our communities to be fully vaccinated and for cases and hospitalizations to decline. Here's my mental finish line with the caveat that variants and other circumstances could change the equation and that precautions should be eased carefully rather than thrown to the winds. 70 to 80 percent is the rough threshold I'm watching for. And having read the interviews that she conducted with health experts, I tend to agree with her conclusion, you know, there are some and the health in the health community that are a lot more conservative. There are others who are optimistic and they're going to say, you know what, once once we reach 60 percent, I think that's probably good for herd immunity. I'm comfortable with that, but others are like, no, 80 percent. So there's a lot of conflicting opinions because there's just not enough data to objectively gauge when it's safe to return to normal as it was. But we just have to make sure that we encourage people to take the vaccines so we can get back to normal. And this is the thing that really frustrates me about conservatives because no matter what we do, they're just not happy with it, right? They don't support lockdowns. They don't want to pay people to stay home. So they want the entire economy to be fully open. OK, but they also don't support masks and social distancing. So they want everything to be open, but they don't want to make any compromises, no masks, no social distancing, just open everything up at 100 percent capacity. OK, so if you don't want masks, you don't want a social distance, but you want to remain open, then, of course, you'd ideally push the vaccine to make sure that we don't have to worry about any of this. We just returned to normal as it was in 2019. But now they're against that as well. They're pushing vaccine hesitancy and conspiracy theories about the vaccine. So I mean, they want to have it both ways. People like Tucker Carlson, they want everything to return to normal, but they want to skip all the steps necessary to safely return to normal. No social distancing, you know, vaccines, those are probably bad. So let's not do it. Let's just return to normal. And if people get the virus, they get the virus. So be it. It's incredibly callous. And just it really speaks to the disregard for life that conservatives have. And so what Tucker Carlson is doing here, not only is he dangerous because he's spreading white supremacist talking points and conspiracy theories on his program. But now he's saying things that are making us making it more difficult for us collectively as a species to get a very contagious, deadly virus under control. And I've said this once, I'll say it again. We are in a race to fully vaccinate people before the mutations spread because so long as the virus continues to spread, that increases the likelihood that new variants that are resistant to the vaccines pop up and we do not want that to happen. Otherwise, it's right back to square one. So Tucker Carlson, like to say that he should be more responsible on his program is an understatement, someone who has utilized the amount of power and influence that he has that irresponsibly, that frequently should not have that kind of a platform. If me, an individual on YouTube, peddle the amount of conspiracy theories and misinformation and lies that he did, I would be the platformed. I wouldn't be able to make a living on YouTube. So it's time that there's some accountability when it comes to Tucker Carlson. But Fox News isn't going to do anything to hold him accountable. In fact, they just extended the amount of programming that they're offering to viewers as it relates to Tucker Carlson because he brings in ratings. And that's all that they care about. They don't care about the news. They don't care about how informed their viewers are. They just care about making money because Fox News is a business, not a news organization. And because we live in this late stage capitalist society where news agencies are actually businesses, things like this will continue to happen and as a species, we'll all be worse off. You know, it's always interesting to me that someone like Joe Biden, who has been an austerion for the majority of his career, is never a penny pincher when it comes to the military budget. In fact, his new budgetary proposal calls for an increase to the Pentagon budget that exceeds Trump's military budget. Yeah. So for more on this, we're going to go to John Nichols of the nation. The framing in this article is a bit weird because he frames it from the perspective of what Robert Reich says, former Labor Secretary. Nonetheless, the details here are what matters. So here's the numbers in particular, as explained through the lens of Robert Reich. Quote, Robert Reich knows a thing or two about federal budgets and the economist who has served in three presidential administrations says there is something wrong with Joe Biden's plan to increase Pentagon spending above the levels proposed by former President Trump. The Pentagon already spans seven hundred forty billion dollars every year, two billion dollars every day and one million dollars every minute, says the former Secretary of Labor. The last thing we need is a bigger military budget. Unfortunately, that's what the president is seeking. This has led Reich to announce that he is frankly disappointed that Biden's proposing seven hundred fifteen billion for the Pentagon and increase over Trump's seven hundred four billion defense budget instead of moving back towards Obama Biden era levels of defense spending or less. Yeah, so I don't necessarily agree with Robert Reich's framing here. I mean, he does throw in the or less, but we shouldn't use the Obama Biden era as the bar. We need to cut military spending in half at a minimum. We could cut it by seventy five percent, if you ask me. But understand, we spend a majority of our discretionary budget on the military and we spend more than the next several biggest countries combined, most of which are our allies, not actually threats to us in any way, shape or form. And even if they aren't our allies, there are no way planning on attacking us because we have a gigantic military that would still exist, even if we cut the Pentagon budget. So it's just this is ludicrous. This is stupidity. It really says a lot about a country when they prioritize a gigantic Pentagon budget as people literally starve to death in this country, the most richest country on the planet. Now, thankfully, progressives have spoken out against this. Besides Robert Reich, there has been elected officials who have denounced this. Bernie Sanders, the Senate Budget Committee Chairman, has spoken out against this, as have some members of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Pramila Jayapal, who says we're in the midst of a crisis that has left millions of families unable to afford food, rents and bills. But at the same time, we're dumping billions of dollars into a bloated Pentagon budget. Don't increase defense spending. Cut it and invest that money into our communities. Now, Rashida Tlaibad's 750 billion for aiding death and destruction is immoral and sick. Instead, we should spend the money to help 20 billion to end homelessness. 50 billion for free, four year public education. 50 billion for childcare is essential act. Thirty one billion to fully fund the individuals with Disabilities Education Act. And on top of that, Mark Pokan, part of CPC leadership was on MSNBC to talk about why this is bad as well. This is the clip provided courtesy of Case Study QB. Give them a follow on Twitter. Well, first off, you know, I think there's a lot of great things in the budget. There's about a 16 percent increase in a lot of discretionary non defense spending, things like housing and education and health care. So that's all very good. The problem is there still was about a 1.7 percent increase in defense spending at a time that I would argue we should have a reduced defense budget. In fact, 50 members of Congress asked to have a lower Pentagon budget due to the fact that in the last administration, the last four years at a time of relative peace, we increased the defense budget by 20 percent. And there's still so little accountability within that, that putting even more money into something that doesn't really have the same scrutiny as other taxpayer dollars, we think is a mistake. Well, where would you cut then from this proposed budget in the Pentagon? Where would they come from? And are there some pressure points to push to get decreased defense spending in the final budget? Sure. Well, there's a lot of areas you could look at. And I think we'd leave it up to the Department of Defense clearly, but we spend a lot with private contractors that cost three or more times what it does for military personnel. We have a number of programs that we would say are outdated that we don't need to do that aren't very effective. And you often hear of some of those most recently, the F-35s, for example, having some serious issues. But also there's just a lot of fraud and waste and really waste is the issue. There's a land missile-based system that we've tried, spent $5 billion on, scrapped it, spent $20 billion on, scrapped it, and we're going to try it again. And if you do that, there's very little true accountability on some of these Pentagon dollars. And that's the problem we have. We think that a lot of that money could instead be directed to things like housing and education and healthcare that people in this country would see a more direct benefit from. Okay. Now, first of all, let me just say that I really do appreciate individuals like Pramila Jayapal, Rashida Tlaib, and Mark Pokan speaking out against this. But I do have several critiques to their approach. The first is in the framing in particular that Mark Pokan used. I don't really think that progressives and leftists should ever frame things in a fiscal responsibility sense, like don't use that frame if you can avoid it. Because even though that may be useful politically to persuade some people, this is always going to be used against you, right? So if you make it seem as if you care about fiscal responsibility, then when time comes to argue in favor of Medicare for all, what's going to happen? This fiscal responsibility argument will be arbitrarily applied to you. So you don't ever want to walk yourself into that trap. And I mean, of course, if you really are nuanced, you can argue, well, actually it is more fiscally responsible to support Medicare for all, because it actually reduces overall spending when it comes to healthcare in America. It's more effective. So it leads to less administrative costs. But by the time you explain all of that, you've lost so many people. So you need a message that is clear and concise. And if we're opting for clear and concise, and you're really just trying to drive home a point, I don't think that using fiscal responsibility is the most persuasive, but I don't I don't actually fault Mark Pokan for trying. Now, when it comes to the framing overall expanding on this, I think that Rashida Tilly was closest to this, right? You don't have to frame it as, oh, well, this is irresponsible. We could be using this money for this or that. I think what we really need, the reason why there's no anti-war movement, or people just kind of check out when it comes to war, since they're fatigued because it's been going on forever, is because they've forgotten how morally reprehensible this is. Like you can actually say things to elicit a visceral response to people. This money is being used to kill people, put it bluntly, frame it in that way, because guess what? You're telling the truth. You're not lying to them. The American people, they don't have to think about our bombs that we're dropping on other countries that are killing people. They don't have to think about that out of sight, out of mind. So we need to remind them of that, let them know what's happening, what their government is doing. You can actually use that frame. Now, one last criticism that I have, and this is tough, because I'm trying to break this habit as well, I think that we want to not promote this idea that taxes fund federal spending, and you'll know what I'm talking about if you just watched my phenomenal interview with Steve Grumbine about modern monetary theory. It's not like there's a finite amount of money in this country, and we have to really meticulously plan out what we're going to use that for. We own our own sovereign currency. The US government is the sole issuer of the US dollar. So what that means is that we can spend until our hearts content. To solve crises, deficit spending is how you solve these crises. So we shouldn't have to argue, well, if we take 50 billion from the military, we can reallocate that into health care or child education. We don't have to make that argument, right? And this is why I want people to kind of shift away from the fiscal responsibility argument as it relates to the military budget, and onto the morality argument. One, because I think it's more persuasive, but two, because I don't want anyone on the left to promote this idea that the government is short on resources. We are the richest country on the planet, and we can afford not just Medicare for All and all of the priorities that were suited to leave listed, but it's actually an outrage that we're not doing that when we're fully capable of doing just that. We don't have to cut the military budget to have Medicare for All to pay for anything. We can do that like this, because again, we are the sole issuer of the US dollar. The only restraint that we have is inflation. You stop spending when we increase inflation. So that's something that I really want leftist progressives to start to get in the habit of saying. But finally, the last thing that I'll say about this is even though I really appreciate the fact that they're condemning this, and they're speaking to how egregious and irresponsible and stupid, quite frankly it is, that we have this gigantic military budget, this isn't going to matter. Like your condemnation isn't enough when your party is in power so long as there's not going to be any consequences. So Joe Biden can hear, oh well, you know, Rashida Tlaib and Pramila Jayapal, they're speaking out against my military budget. But okay, cool story, bro. What do you want me to do with that information? There's no negative ramifications if you don't support what I'm doing. So in effect, I could do anything I want so long as you're not going to push back against me. And pushback, you know, part of that is actually speaking out, you know, making sure that the public knows what's happening. But on top of that, if you have your party in power, you actually need to utilize the leverage that you have. And when you have a narrow majority in the House and the Senate, progressives do have more sway. Look at the way that conservative Democrats like Bill Pascrell in the House and Joe Manchin in the Senate are basically threatening to block everything if they don't get what they want. Joe Biden or Joe Manchin, rather, is effectively shaping every single bill that Joe Biden wants to propose. Because he knows if he doesn't get that vote, Joe Biden's agenda isn't going to pass. So unless people like Mark Pokan and Pramila Jayapal and Rashida Tlaib actually threaten to hold up Biden's agenda, he's not going to really value your input at all. He's just going to, you know, listen to what you have to say if you're lucky and then he's going to dismiss it because he knows there's really no teeth to your threats. Or denunciations, it has no implications, no bearing on his decision-making. And you have to change that. You have to utilize your leverage. Okay, you don't cut defense spending. If you don't start implementing things like, you know, student debt cancellation, we're not going to support anything. If you don't use your pen to cancel $50,000 of student debt, we're not supporting your infrastructure bill. We're not supporting it. And, you know, they're going to get attacked by the mainstream media for them. But you have to fight, right? Push back, argue. No, it's not me that's holding up this bill. It's Joe Biden who's holding up this bill because all we want for him to do is something that will easily alleviate the debt of millions of Americans. But he's not doing that. So we can't support this morally. We have to demand that he does this. Like I want them to draw a line in the sand, make demands, get concessions. You have to fight. It's a game that you have to play. And right now they're not playing it, they're getting played. So I really want them to think about the ways that they can use their leverage and also adapt their messaging in order to make what they're selling more easily digestible to people. You know, don't be afraid to get a little bit visual when you describe what happens. Like we're blowing off people's heads and that's really uncomfortable to think about. But it's happening. We want people to be uncomfortable. We want people to think, oh my God, I don't want this to happen. I don't want my government to be doing this. Maybe we should stop doing this. Like it's not a bad thing if you're advocating for a right cause to be explicit and really focusing on the moral aspect, if not exclusively, because it's persuasive. It should be persuasive to anyone who has a heart. So, you know, overall to kind of wrap a bow in this gigantic story, didn't really plan on talking about this for that long. But this is absolutely obnoxious that Joe Biden is proposing an increase to the military budget. But am I surprised in the slightest? Absolutely not. And every single president will continue to do this until Congress actually takes a stand to the credit of folks like Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders when Trump was in power. They actually did utilize the War Powers Act to try to stop our support to Saudi Arabia as they did a genocide in Yemen. Things like that need to be replicated this time for the Democratic president. Like use your powers to actually affect change. And I'll leave that there. You know, I don't want to be too down on them because their criticism of this is good. It's valid and it's necessary. It's much appreciated, but I want them to go beyond just criticizing this and I want them to put their words into action. In the age of NSA spying and warrantless surveillance and these private companies selling your private information to third parties in order to better advertise to you, I think it's time that folks really come out and take a stand unequivocally against the next step that will absolutely erode the privacies that we have left. And that means we have to ban facial recognition software. We have to do it before it catches on anymore. And Jake Johnson in Common Dreams wrote a phenomenal article explaining how there are more and more organizations calling for an outright ban on facial recognition software because this isn't just a threat to our data and information, but now private companies such as Amazon and Apple could use it to crack down on their employees and potentially use it to crack down on unions union bust. Because we already know that companies like Amazon they will monitor every little minute detail about their employees. So if they see someone in a warehouse that's talking to other co-workers that they don't usually converse with if they are suddenly doing things that are a little bit unusual that they're too conspicuous Amazon will basically suspect that they're trying to unionize. And this isn't me saying this. This is what they said in their union busting video where they influenced their employees to look for things like this. Look for signs that the co-workers that you work with are possibly trying to form a union. So this is all laid out in this article that I want to share because I think it's really brilliant and I want more and more people to actually pay attention to this. Fight for the future. The company who fought to save net neutrality in 2017. They've really led the charge on banning facial recognition software. And I really think that this issue needs to be more important to leftists because if we don't stop this now then once the floodgates open and this is implemented everywhere then we lose that much more privacy. So as Jake Johnson of Common Dreams reports a coalition of more than 20 human rights organizations released an open letter Wednesday morning calling for a total ban on private and corporate use of facial recognition and invasive technology that the groups characterized as discriminatory and too dangerous to exist. While campaigners have typically focused on the civil liberties threats posed by government and law enforcement use of facial recognition the rights groups' letter demands that businesses be barred from using the technology as well warning that proliferation of face surveillance in the private sector would have serious privacy consequences for workers and consumers. In a world where private companies are already collecting our data analyzing it and using it to manipulate us to make a profit we can't afford to naively believe that private entities can be trusted with our biometric information. The letter reads we call on all local, state, and federal elected officials as well as corporate leaders to ban the use of facial recognition surveillance by private entities. The group cites several examples of corporations using facial recognition in ways that threatened workers rights including Amazon's requirement that delivery drivers consent to allowing the company's artificial intelligence equipped cameras to collect their biometric data and surveil their activity on the job. The coalition also points to Apple's facial recognition scans of its factory employees. These cases clearly show how private use of facial recognition by corporations, institutions, and even individuals possess just as much of a threat to marginalized communities as government use. The letter reads corporations are already using facial recognition on workers in hiring to replace traditional time cards and to monitor workers' movements and productivity all of which particularly harm frontline workers and make them susceptible to harassment, exploitation, and put their personal information at risk. Several cities across the United States have banned government use of facial recognition but just one, Portland, Oregon, has banned both public agencies and private corporations from wielding the technology to surveil workers and customers. The coalition hailed the Portland ban as a template for other lawmakers to address the concerns with private and corporate use of the technology. Facial recognition technology poses serious threats to personal freedom. Letting this tool of authoritarian control spread throughout the private sector has serious implications for worker organizing rights and heightens the risk of catastrophic biometric data breaches. Tracy Rosenberg, advocacy director at Oakland Privacy said in a statement Wednesday and I think that the article speaks for itself. You know, as technology advances we have to make sure that technology is used to the benefit of humanity not to actually further suppress the rights and freedom of humanity. And it's already the case that other types of new technologies that are emerging is not helping humanity. I mean, drones are a huge example of that. I'm not talking about the ones that you can buy and fly personally. I'm talking about unmanned drones used in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. And at first you'd think, well, wow, if we can just conduct this robotic warfare where there's no human casualties then, you know, that could be great. Maybe technology can revolutionize war so that way it's not bloody. But that's not what happened. We're just using those unmanned drones to terrorize countries and murder innocent civilians in these countries that we are illegally patrolling. It's against international law. And it's happening here at home with other types of new technology. I mean, if you've seen those really cool videos of the robot dogs from Boston Dynamics and the dancing robots and how they can do all these cool things, those aren't going to be used to the betterment of humanity. It's not going to be like, you know, the Jetsons where we have these robot servants who bring us coffees and wash our cars. It's going to be used to terrorize communities. Boston Dynamics already has one of their robot dogs patrolling communities of color. I mean, this is what we're investing our money in as a country, making sure we further crack down on the civil rights and civil liberties of American citizens. So, I mean, technological advances, they're inevitable, right? As we learn more, we become more intelligent. We utilize different technology and information differently. There's going to be changes and we have to be capable of adapting. The traditional means of authoritarian control, you know, we can't just think about it in that antiquated way. We have to consider the new ways that governments will crack down on civil rights and civil liberties using technology, right? We have to adapt with the times because authoritarianism is adapting with the times. And that means that the minute any new technology pops up and it's already being used against us, then we have to take action. We have to speak out before it's too late because, again, once facial recognition software becomes widely implemented, you know, by the U.S. government, by state and local governments, by private corporations, it'll be too late if it's widespread. So, this is a phenomenal article by Jake Johnson. I would really encourage people to look into this because I didn't necessarily realize how dire the threat was posed by facial recognition software until I was able to grasp some of these concrete examples. And it's just, it's unacceptable. We can't stand for it. We've got to ban facial recognition software. I'm 100% on board with this movement. So, this didn't make the show last week, but I had to talk about it because even for Tucker Carlson, this is pretty brazen. This is very, very brazen. So, on national television, the most popular news pundit in America is literally going to recite the great replacement theory, which, for those of you unaware, is a white supremacist conspiracy theory that has literally fueled mass shootings. But Tucker Carlson is going to casually promote this idea on national television. Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term replacement. If you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the third world. But they become hysterical because that's what's happening, actually. Let's just say it, that's true. If, look, if this was happening in your house, if you were in sixth grade, for example, and without telling you, your kid, your parents adopted a bunch of new siblings and gave them brand new bikes and let them stay up later and help them with their homework and gave them twice the allowance that they gave you, you would say to your siblings, you know, I think we're being replaced by kids that our parents love more. And it'd be kind of hard to argue against you because look at the evidence. So this matters on a bunch of different levels, but on the most basic level, it's a voting rights question. In a democracy, one person equals one vote. If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter. So I don't understand what you don't understand this. I mean, everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it. Oh, the, you know, white replacement there. No, no, no. This is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they're importing a brand new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American guaranteed at birth is one man, one vote and they're diluting it. No, they're not allowed to do that. Why are we putting up with this? He is one step away from just outright calling for a white ethno state. And if he did, I honestly wouldn't be surprised. And you could already anticipate the way he'd respond. Oh, well, those who are criticizing me for saying that whites should have their own country that is, you know, to the exclusion of black and brown people, they're just trying to be hyperwoke in all this nonsense. But I mean, you and I know that this is the truth, right? The fact that they're trying to criticize me is more evidence that I'm correct. I mean, wow, again, even for Tucker Carlson, he's really just, he's saying the quiet part out loud and he knows that he can get away with whatever he wants, because regardless of how disgusting the rhetoric he's used, regardless of how explicit his white supremacy is, there hasn't been much backlash. I mean, what advertisers pull ads from Fox News for a week or so, and then they're right back to it. He brings in ratings for Fox News so they're not going to get rid of them. In fact, they just gave him another show. He says the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the white electorate, by the way, with new, more obedient voters from the third world, as if acquiring citizenship and the ability to vote is that easy. I mean, if you're an actual American citizen, it's already fairly difficult to vote in America. In Georgia, they just created a voter suppression law that makes it more difficult for Black Georgians to vote. And yet he thinks that it's so easy to just import voters from the third world. And he says, if you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live here, so every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter. So let me just put things into perspective. We have a government that is bought and paid for by corporate America. And there's been study after study that shows that Americans have zero impact on policy outcomes. But what Tucker Carlson is worried about is that more Black and brown people are going to be voting. That's the threat, is that brown votes are diluting white votes. It's not corporations, but yet this is about voting rights. He cares about democracy. Well, if you actually cared about democracy and voting rights, I wouldn't necessarily be focusing on this issue. I'd be focusing on getting money out of politics, decommodifying elections, but we know what this is about. This isn't about voting rights. This is about white supremacy. An individual who claimed that immigrants are making America dirtier, I don't think you have to dive that deep to try to find out what his underlying agenda is. And notice how he asks, why are we putting up with this? And this almost sounds like an implicit call to action to white supremacists. But here's the thing, the great replacement theory inherently is a call to action. This is part of the reason why white supremacists have carried out mass shootings. As Media Matters explains, the great replacement theory has inspired a bloody trail of horrific events across the world. The racist mass shooters in both Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas, wrote of their belief in the theory. The neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, did so to chance of Jews will not replace us and you will not replace us. These events shocked people around the globe, but the beliefs that motivated them are not confined to the dark corners of online message boards. They are increasingly present in the mainstream right-wing lexicon, especially where Carlson is involved. Following the murder of 51 people in a New Zealand mosque, Nathan Robinson and The Guardian pointed to the striking parallels between Carlson's own writing and the writing of the shooter in his manifesto. This is what Nathan J. Robinson writes. Here, for example, in a passage from Carlson's most recent book, on the topic of why diversity makes us weaker, he writes quote, when confronted or pressed for details, proponents of diversity retreat into a familiar platitude, which they repeat like a Zen cone. Diversity is our strength, but is diversity our strength? The less we have in common, the stronger we are. Is that true of families? Is it true in neighborhoods or businesses? Of course not. Then why is it true of America? Nobody knows. Nobody's even allowed to ask the question. And here is an excerpt from the manifesto issued by the man who killed 51 people in a New Zealand mosque. Why is diversity said to be our greatest strength? Does anyone even ask why? It is spoken like a mantra and repeated ad infinitum, but no one ever seems to give a reason why. What gives a nation strength? And how does diversity increase that strength? What part of diversity causes this increase in strength? No one can give an answer. The resemblance there is uncanny. It's almost like Tucker Carlson is inspiring these white supremacists. He's legitimizing and validating their white supremacist worldviews. And the El Paso shooter in his manifesto also referenced the great replacement. Now, people are going to say, well, sure, these crazy folks, they're going to justify whatever. These are deranged people. Right? It doesn't matter what Tucker Carlson says. Really individual responsibility is what matters most. If they're the ones that take up violence, then that doesn't necessarily mean that Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist because he may or may not be inspiring white supremacists. But when you just oppose Tucker Carlson's rhetoric with the rhetoric of white supremacists and actual neo-Nazis, you're going to see that the resemblance is very, very similar. Take a look at this compilation that media matters put together. Diversity is our strength. They screech as if that settles the conversation by itself like a magic talisman. Diversity. We hear about it nonstop. It's the mainstream motto. How precisely is diversity our strength? Since you've made this our new national motto, please be specific, as you explain it. Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as, I don't know, marriage or military units in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are? Do you get along better with your neighbors or your co-workers if you can't understand each other or share no common values? The problem comes from people who are different in race, language, religion, ethnicity, trying to share the same territory. Look at Great Britain, look at France, look at Sweden. They have massive terror, crime and disorder problems and cultural assimilation problems for one reason. They imported a bunch of people from a part of the world that doesn't share their values. Look at the history of multiracial nations. It's a history of conflict. It's a history of distrust. And it's ultimately a history of blood and tears. Latin American countries are changing election outcomes here by forcing demographic change on this country to rate that American voters consistently say they don't want. It sounds to me like we got a problem with people who got here legally altering the landscape politically. I don't like it. Fuck you. Stop it. And notice where this change is not happening. Anyplace our leaders live. They caused all of this with their reckless immigration policies and yet their own neighborhoods are basically unchanged. They look like it's 1960. No demographic change at all in their zip codes. Our leaders are for diversity just not where they live. I find, frankly, the kind of hypocrisy expressed by these alleged champions of diversity to be quite contemptible. They themselves can live in a way to insulate themselves from the brute strangeness of people that don't speak English or whose religion and culture are drastically different from theirs. Hazelton's population was 2% Hispanic. Just 16 years later, Hazelton is majority Hispanic. That's a lot of change. People who grew up in Hazelton return to find out they can't communicate with the people who now live there. And that's bewildering for people. That's happening all over the country. There is a campaign to make European Americans a minority in this country. Their goal is to change your country forever. And they're succeeding, by the way. We are being systematically and deliberately replaced. You're a beneficiary of white privilege. Would that be hate speech? I'm attacking you because of your membership in a group. It could incite violence. White privilege being taught at universities which is meant to build up a stigma, build up hatred, and potentially pave the way for violence against white people. As vice.com succinctly put it a couple of years ago, quote, it is literally impossible to be racist to a white person. Pretty much the entire left now takes that as a matter of faith. They deeply believe that. But what does that mean exactly? But the real racism today is not by white people. It's against white people. Terrorism may be bad, but raising doubts about multiculturalism is worse. Foreigners come to our countries and kill our people. You'd think our leaders would blame them, but no, they blame us who live here. They blame our history. They blame our culture, our opinions, our religion. It's our fault. That is their core assumption and you see it in all they say. Let me remind you that this isn't some fringe YouTuber. This isn't some, you know, Twitter account. This isn't some poster on the Daily Stormer message boards. This is a national news icon who has the most popular news show in America. And what he says sounds indistinguishable from neo-Nazis. And when he addressed the backlash that he knew he'd trigger on his program on Monday, guess what he did? Knowing that there'd be no consequences, he doubled down and proceeded to laugh at the folks who were correctly and justifiably mad at what he said. At least one prediction came true right away. All those little gatekeepers on Twitter did become hysterical. They spent the last four days jumping up and down, furiously trying once again to pull the show off the air. Once again, they will fail, though it is amusing to see them keep at it. They get so enraged, it's a riot. But why all the anger? If someone says something you think is wrong as your first instinct to hurt them, probably not. Normal people don't respond that way. If you hear something you think is incorrect, you try to correct it. But getting the facts right is hardly the point of this exercise. The point is to prevent unauthorized conversations from starting in the first place. Shut up, racist! No more questions! You've heard that before. You wonder how much longer they imagine Americans are going to go along with this. An entire country forced to lie about everything all the time. It can't go on forever, but you can see why they're trying it. Demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party's political ambitions. Let's say that again for emphasis because it is the secret to the entire immigration debate. Demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party's political ambitions. In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country. They're no longer trying to win you over with their program. They're obviously not trying to improve your life. They don't even really care about your vote anymore. Their goal is to make you irrelevant. So this is the most dangerous pundit in all of America. Fox knows that if they get rid of him, he's popular. That's going to hurt their ratings. And also when they see OAN and Newsmax out crazying them, appealing more and more to the far right and even white supremacists, they know they at least need to have one pundit on their program that is going to appeal to that group if they want to keep making money. And again, this is not a news organization. It's a business. So that's why Tucker Carlson can say explicitly white supremacist conspiracy theories and use white supremacist rhetoric. And advertisers at this point, they're just like, yeah, I mean, it's Tucker. That's where the eyeballs are. So that's where we're going to advertise. No repercussions whatsoever. Every single night, he is feeding white supremacist ideas to millions and millions of people. Think about the long-term damage that this causes to our country. And he's also incredibly strategic. He's already co-opted individuals on the left who might critique him every once in a while. He'll pepper in a critique against billionaires and maybe he'll bring on a leftist or two and make it seem as if he's on your side. He might talk about how war is bad once in a while, even though he supported the Iraq war and we all know he's lying, but people are falling for it. People are getting duped by his propaganda and leftists are getting co-opted because they see that sometimes he's anti-war, sometimes he's against the corporations and the establishment. So he must not be that bad. And if he says white supremacist things once in a while, I guess that's the price we got to pay if he's going to talk about how bad corporate America is. This is all part of a strategy to make white supremacy and white supremacist propaganda more digestible to conservative normies to a broader audience. And guess what? It is working. So I mean, if you are able to watch that clip and still defend Tucker Carlson and think, well, I don't know what the problem is with this guy. Sure, I disagree with him right there, but you know, he talks about how war is bad sometimes. You are being duped. Don't be a useful idiot for Tucker Carlson. He has an agenda and he doesn't just know how to effectively sell that agenda. He knows how to reach across the aisle and speak to folks who otherwise wouldn't necessarily be inclined to listen to a Fox News host by speaking populist language sometimes. But it's all a fucking gimmick. It's all a ruse to get everyone more comfortable with white supremacy. And he's already won. As the trial of Derek Chauvin takes place, I just want to remind everyone that there has been zero attempt to meaningfully fix the system at the federal level. In fact, you could argue that even though we have a new president who purports the support, the Black Lives Matter movement, more military gear is being given to police departments under Joe Biden than Donald Trump. So even though this trial is important because we want to make sure that we get justice for George Floyd, the ultimate goal obviously is to stop this from happening ever again. And when you have Black Lives Matter protesters taking to the streets across the country, having a message that's so powerful that even people in other countries march in solidarity with Black Americans here, we still don't really have any policy changes being implemented. And so long as this isn't fixed with the political legislative solution, nothing is going to change. And we will still continue to see things like this happen. That was Army Lieutenant Karen Nazaro, who was racially profiled by police officers in Windsor, Virginia. They pulled him over for seemingly no reason. Pepper sprayed him and also assaulted him. And this actually happened back in December, but we're only now seeing police body cam footage. And we're learning about the details of this case because of a lawsuit filed by Nazaro against the Windsor Police Department. But for more details on this, we go to Vice News who explains the incident ostensibly began after an officer believed Nazario was driving on U.S. Route 460 without a rear license plate, according to the lawsuit. While the SUV was nude and Nazaro, meaning he hadn't gotten permanent plates yet, he still had a temporary plate taped to the inside of his rear window, the lawsuit notes. The temporary tags are visible in the body camera footage. Nazario slowed down his vehicle within seconds of the police pursuing him and activated his turn signal. Because it was dark, Nazario also drove for less than a mile below the posted speed limit until he reached a well-lit BP gas station where he pulled over. In all, it took about 1 minute 40 seconds for Nazario to pull over after Crocker initiated the stop, according to the lawsuit. Still, the cops claimed in a report Nazario was alluding police, had a dark window tint and lacked plates, so officers treated the incident as a felony traffic stop or a traffic stop they believed to be risky. One of the officers admitted later that they knew why Nazario had pulled into the BP. It happened all the time and was a maneuver often used by people of color, according to the lawsuit. And the reason why people of color pull into the well-lit area where there's other people is because they're hoping that in the event they're killed by police officers, there will be witnesses there. It's an entirely gross and fucked-up system, but things like this will continue to happen unless the system itself changes. And the most ridiculous part about this story is that that story actually ended in a happy ending because Nazario left with his life. But not everyone is that lucky. Now, we talked about the trial of Derek Chauvin and George Floyd's death in Minneapolis. Not too far where that trial is taking place. Another unarmed black man was murdered by police. And I'm, of course, referring to Don T. Wright, who's a 20-year-old that was pulled over on Sunday. And the police say that they pulled him over for having expired registration, but he actually called his mom while he was being pulled over. And he told her that they said they pulled him over because he had an air freshener dangling from his rear window, which I guess is against the law. In that state, I had no idea that that was a thing. But what ultimately happened is, after they found some excuse to pull him over, he was shot by a police officer. And this is the footage. I'm just going to forewarn you. It is definitely graphic. He then drove for several blocks until he crashed into another vehicle and died. Now, the police chief explained that he believes the officer who shot him didn't actually mean to shoot him. It was an accidental discharge, as he puts it. This is done purposefully and is trained. So for those of you unaware, this is what a taser looks like. Apparently the officer in question who is trained to use both a firearm and a taser couldn't discern the differences between a firearm and a taser. In theory, a police officer, you think or hope, would know the difference, but that apparently isn't the case. Now, if you're in the heat of the moment and you're flustered and you can't really think straight, I mean, of course, this could happen theoretically. Then that also begs the question. We saw that he was resisting arrest, but there was no evidence that he posed a danger to the police officers. There was no visual evidence based on the body cam footage that he had a weapon of any sorts. Why would you even pull out your gun in the first place? If you intended on tasing him, then why would you pull out the weapon that is used explicitly to kill people to take life? Why was that necessary in this instance? In the worst case scenario, if he got away, nobody would die. You could put out a warrant for his arrest, apprehend him later. But why was your gun drawn to begin with? This is a question that they have to answer. And furthermore, does resisting arrest and trying to drive away when they're trying to arrest you, does that warrant a death sentence? Should someone die because they were resisting arrest? I don't think that's a proportional punishment for what we saw. So why was your gun drawn to begin with if you hadn't drawn your gun unnecessarily? So you wouldn't have mistaken the gun for the taser. And anyone who does that obviously isn't fit to serve. So this officer has been placed on administrative leave the mayor has called for her to be fired. And the question is what's going to happen? Is she actually going to be fired? Well, the police chief says at this point in time, we're going to allow for her to have due process. Do you believe the officer who fired this fatal shot? And I understand there's due process. We get that. But ultimately she shot and killed a 20 year old man. The mayor has indicated she should be terminated. Which your position on that? My position is that officer afforded due process just like anybody else does. She has the right to be heard. She has the right to give her statement. She has the right to tell what she felt, what she thought. Not what I thought, not what I saw, but what she thought and what she... And that may have an impact. She's on administrative... She will not be returning to duty until this investigation runs course. And she, for all intents and purposes, I think we can look at the video and ascertain whether or not she'll be returning. So we're not going to fire her just yet because we believe in due process. We have to do a full investigation. Now in theory, I don't think anyone would disagree with the idea of due process. But when we see a video that clearly shows her killing someone, I mean that's pretty clear cut. Is it not? And furthermore, it's interesting that he brings up due process. When Dante Wright didn't get due process, this officer is being afforded due process for her job. But she didn't afford Dante Wright due process for his life. Does he get due process? Do black Americans get due process? When will that right be extended to black and brown people? That's the question here. That's why what he said there is ridiculous because we have to be extra, extra cautious here. We don't want to act too soon. We don't want to fire her arbitrarily. We want to make sure that we look at all the details and conduct a thorough investigation. However, when it comes to a black American resisting arrest, automatically we have to prepare ourselves to possibly shoot and kill him because, you know, could be dangerous, could pose a threat to us. It's just, you can just sense that they value the life of the police officer more than Dante's life. And, you know, when Joe Biden was asked about this, he also stated that he values something else more than the life of Dante Wright. I haven't called Dante Wright's family, but prayers with their family is a really tragic thing that happened. But I think we got to wait and see what the investigation shows and the entire investigation. You all watched, I assume, as I did the film, which is fairly the body cam, which is fairly graphic. The question is, was it an accident? Was it intentional? That remains to be determined by a full blown investigation. But in the meantime, I want to make it clear again, there is absolutely no justification, none for looting, no justification for violence. Peaceful protest, understandable. So I mean, it's totally sad that Dante Wright, at 20 years old, lost his life and will never get it back. But I mean, we can't rush the judgment. We have to wait to see if the officer was justified in using deadly force. We just need to wait until the investigation gives us some more details. However, when it comes to looting and rioting, there's no justification there. No justification whatsoever. There may be a justification for a police officer to take the life of a 20 year old, but there's never a justification for you to loot a Walmart. That is never acceptable under any circumstances. We don't need an investigation there. We don't need to even look into whether or not the police department was antagonizing protesters and led to the crowd getting out of control because it did start out peaceful, by the way. Do you understand? Like, this is why the slogan is Black Lives Matter. Because it very clearly seems as if Black Lives don't matter in America. We value the lives of police officers and even private property more than we value Black Lives. This is why people are protesting. And as Joe Biden says this, has he ever considered the fact that maybe people wouldn't riot or protest even at all if somebody in a position of power actually fixed the fucking issue once and for all? Because guess what happened? The protests broke out. Police predictably responded with more brutality, rubber bullets when they demanded that the crowd disperse. They used chemical weapons. Notice how these protests, they never pop up spontaneously. They're always a response to something else. They're not appearing out of thin air. There's always a catalyst. What is that catalyst, Joe Biden? The catalyst is the criminal justice system in America where Black Americans are treated like second-class citizens and oftentimes profiled and murdered by the very people who are supposed to be protecting them. And if Joe Biden really wanted all of this to stop, he would take action. He's the president. But it's not just that he isn't doing enough. He's actively pouring gasoline on the fire by funneling more military gear to police departments. Because when you militarize police departments, they act increasingly like occupying forces rather than community servants. So the situation is incredibly depressing. It's frustrating, but it's not surprising. As the trial of Derek Chauvin takes place because he murdered George Floyd, we all saw it on tape. We don't even know if there will be justice for George Floyd, but as that trial happens, can't even finish this trial and not too far away from where the trial is taking place, another unarmed Black man murdered by the cops. I'd ask when will it end, but we know that answer. It's when lawmakers take action and create policies that change this system of racist policing in America. In a functioning democracy, when millions of people take to the streets in a country, that democracy would make changes to the system. But there's been nothing. Nothing has happened. The only thing that happens when people call for justice is we crack down on those protesters. We take an otherwise peaceful protest antagonize the protesters, demand that the crowd disperse and police officers end up brutalizing peaceful protesters. It then gets ugly. It turns to rioting and looting. And then they blame the rioting and the looting rather than actually looking at the root cause to begin with. It's just, I mean, this is why Black Americans are fed up. And it shouldn't just be Black Americans who are fed up. Everyone should be fed up at this. Who can look to the system and justify what's happening? It's an outrage. I don't know what else to say. It's just, it's tiring, but it's going to keep happening. It's going to keep happening unless the system changes. You know, it's really interesting to me. Members of Congress, their salary is $174,000 per year. And that is a ton of money. You are living very comfortably. If you make $174,000 per year, I'd argue that members of Congress don't do enough work to warrant that high of a salary. Nonetheless, that's the salary of members of Congress. But even though that's their salary, somehow after years of serving in Congress, they become multimillionaires. Are they getting raises? I mean, what exactly is going on here? Well, I think that insider trading watchdog Unusual Whales has a little bit of insight looking at the case of Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker. So Nancy Pelosi, she exercised $10 million in Microsoft shares on March 19th. Microsoft then launched a military deal. She sits directly on relevant committees. Also, she bought $1 million in Roblox stock, and they have the receipts right here. Nancy Pelosi bought lots of stock in Microsoft, in Roblox. Now, they go on to explain in another tweet here that Nancy Pelosi bought the Microsoft stock and then subsequently approved the deal that increases the value of Microsoft after she bought their stock. Kind of seems a little bit conspicuous there. Also, in February of 2020, she bought $6 million of Amazon and Facebook via exercising 2019 calls, which I think is pretty troubling, given that she is a regulator who's supposed to oversee them and shouldn't have a vested interest in the amount of money they make. Nonetheless, in December of 2020, when it comes to the stimulus, she was a little bit unsure. However, her husband bought ITM, Tesla, another stock, and the very next day, all of a sudden, she was in favor of the stimulus. I'm guessing this is speculation when she was able to personally profit off of it, when companies would get money out of that stimulus, benefit from that stimulus. Then, all of a sudden, she's in favor of it. Now, let's just stop for a second and let's interpret this in the best faith way imaginable. Let's be as charitable to Nancy Pelosi as we can possibly be when we don't have to do that. Let's assume that the timing isn't actually suspicious and she's just trying to enrich her own wealth, so she's buying stocks in Microsoft, in Roblox, and she's not necessarily planning on crafting legislation and voting on legislation that increases their value, which in turn benefits her. Let's assume that that's not what's happening here. Isn't it still a little bit troubling that members of Congress have a lot to earn personally if these companies increase their value? Isn't it a little bit weird that if you're going to be overseeing these companies, regulating these companies such as Amazon, such as Facebook, Tesla, wouldn't it be a conflict of interest if you personally benefit from them gaining value? The answer is yes. So even if she's not guilty of insider trading, even though many members of Congress there's evidence that that is the case, it's still a conflict of interest. Why are members of Congress allowed to purchase millions of dollars in stock of companies that they're supposed to be regulating? Am I alone here? Is this not extremely troubling? Doesn't this have implications on their legislative behavior? How is this okay? How is this acceptable? And it's not just Nancy Pelosi. We saw last year that Kelly Loeffler, David Perdue, Diane Feinstein, they did the same thing. Once they were briefed on this very day of COVID-19, they sold stocks. They didn't want to lose money. So do you understand this is a huge issue here? Members of Congress should not be able to do this. I put aside the timing of this, and if she's doing insider trading, which wouldn't surprise me, but this shouldn't be a thing that happens. Why in a democracy are we allowing this to happen? Completely unacceptable. Why should we take anything that Nancy Pelosi has to say seriously as it relates to the companies that she has stock in? Because it is her benefit to see these companies increase their value. It's just infuriating, but this continues to happen, and nothing will come of this. Nobody's going to say anything about this in Congress. It's just going to get swept under the rug, and this corruption will continue in perpetuity. It's just so disgusting, but it's commonplace. We've become so desensitized to lawmakers just being brazenly corrupt and having so many conflicts of interest that this won't even probably make headlines. When this should be a huge scandal, it just gives me a headache to think about the plethora of ways that our lawmakers are corrupt. It's not just that they buy stocks and they sell stocks based on the insider information that they have, and we have evidence that this happens time and again and again, but also they take money from large multinational corporations who they then are incentivized to do the bidding of. Do you understand? This is why nothing in Congress that the American people want gets passed. It's why in 2014, a Princeton University study by Dr. Sid Gillens and Page found that when it comes to policy outcomes, average Americans have a statistically insignificant impact on what gets passed, because the special interests, the elites, they're the ones who dictate policy outcomes. What they say gets codified into law. Things like this. This is why. Shame on Nancy Pelosi. If we had a functioning democracy and a functioning media apparatus, there would be pressure on her to resign, because this is inexcusable, it's unacceptable, and nobody should have teeth in the game as it relates to private companies. That doesn't make sense. That's something that shouldn't happen logically. We should just not let this be a thing, but I mean, this is America. So of course, this is what happens. So we actually surprisingly got some good news out of the White House regarding foreign policy, specifically as it relates to the nearly two decades-long war that we've been waging in Afghanistan. It's coming to an end. Joe Biden announced via Twitter, we will be leaving in 2014. And that sounds fantastic to me. The war will be over in 2014. Yeah, okay. I think I just said 2014, but I messed up. I believe this is the graphic that I intended on showing you. This time, we're bringing the troops home before September 11th, so mark your calendars. This time, it's definitely happening. And as CNN reports, President Joe Biden, having concluded there is no military solution to the security and political problems plaguing Afghanistan and determined to focus on more pressing national security challenges, will formally announce Wednesday that U.S. troops will withdraw from the country before the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terror attack, a senior administration official said. The withdrawal extends the U.S. troop presence past a May 1st deadline set by the Trump administration in an agreement with the Taliban, but only by a matter of months. Biden has been weighing the decision for months with his advisors and signaled he did not believe U.S. troops should remain in the country long past the deadline. Yeah. Okay. So, um, I guess that, uh, the way I feel about that is, as Ken Clippenstein puts it, I'll believe it when I see it. If it actually happens, when it actually happens, then he gets credit. But since we've been here before and this announcement has come and gone and the troops are still there, we'll have to wait to reserve judgment to determine whether or not this actually happens. What's interesting, though, is in Washington, D.C., just the mere announcement, the possibility that we might be pulling troops from a country that we've occupied for almost two decades, that is incredibly controversial. And it's not just Republican warmongers and neocons who are attacking him. Democrats are also attacking Joe Biden. As Jordan Carney of The Hill reports, the GOP backlash was swift with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanding Biden explain publicly why he's abandoning our partners and retreating in the face of the Taliban. Senator Lindsey Graham called it a disaster in the making and dumber than dirt and devilishly dangerous. Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters that the decision was outrageous. Senator Jean Shaheen, a Democrat, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said she was very disappointed by Biden's decision. Quote, the U.S. has sacrificed too much to bring stability to Afghanistan to leave without verifiable assurances of a secure future, she said. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reid, also a Democrat, was briefed this week by Defense Secretary Lord Austin on the decision but asked if he supported it, Reid visibly paused before saying, you know, there is no easy answer. There kind of is, though. There is an easy answer. Now, I want to play a little bit of a game here. Before I show you who Jack Reid's top donors are, I want you to see if you can guess who they are before I even name any of them. See if you can get at least two of them correct. I'll give you a moment. Okay. Let's take a look at number one. We have Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor. At number two, we have Lee Harris Technologies, a defense contractor. At number three, we have General Dynamics, a defense contractor. At number 20, we have Raytheon Technologies, also a defense contractor. You know, for some reason, defense contractors really seem to love Jack Reid. And don't get me wrong. They also love Gene Shaheen as well. Raytheon does in particular. But we don't even have to check the Republican Party's donors. Anyone like Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, who spoke out against this, I think it's obvious what they're going to say because of who funds them. You see, the issue here is that this isn't just about strategy. It's not that, well, we have to stay longer to make sure that their stability in Afghanistan and if we pull out all this work, all the effort that we've made to stabilize this country will have been for nothing. All of that is bullshit. We are there because war in America is now a business. It is a very lucrative business. In our capitalist system, we've commodified everything, including war. So ending war is bad for business. It hurts profits of defense contractors who also donate to Democratic Party and Republican Party officials. So if you're wondering why, whenever there's any talk of withdrawing from a country that we've occupied for a very long time, you hear all these weird defenses like, oh my God, this is dangerous. It endangers our national security. It puts our allies in the region at risk. Nine times out of 10, these are disingenuous bad faith arguments. These are shills who are being paid to say the things that they're saying that promote this idea that never ending war is a good thing that we should always have happened in this country. So whether or not Joe Biden actually withdraws from Afghanistan, we'll have to wait and see. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably not gonna happen. I would be more than happy if he proves me wrong here in this instance. But what we have to do is end imperialism more broadly speaking. We have to stop permanently occupying countries, not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but we can't continue to do drone strikes in Pakistan, in Yemen, in Somalia. That isn't just against international law. It's illegal under the US Constitution because that all constitutes acts of war, which Congress did not authorize. So it's just thinking about how strong of a hold the military industrial complex has on our lawmakers, it just really gets me in a doomer mood. It makes me feel really depressed and hopeless. But let's just hope that Biden actually holds his ground and doesn't cave to the pressure that he will inevitably receive and we'll have to wait and see. Bill Gates likes to fancy himself as the goody-two-shoes of billionaires, right? He would never exploit his workers to the extent that Jeff Bezos does, and he'd never act as douchey and public as Elon Musk does, although if you try to impose a wealth tax on him, then he might test that theory. But I mean, he really tries to project this image of purity and altruism and he wants to make it seem as if he should hoard all of this wealth because he's using this wealth exclusively to try to make the world a better place. And it's not just that he's trying to use his wealth to better the world as an individual, he's just pure. At every waking minute, he's constantly reading studies to find new ways to stop climate catastrophe. He is very immersed in the here and the now and very immersed in coming up with solutions. You know, this is a guy who reads thousands of pages of scientific reports, you know, every week. Sure, Dan. Doubtful. But Bill Gates doesn't want you to know that he has done something recently that has made him one of the most evil people in the world, not just among billionaires, but humanity's offering, one of the worst. Because New Republic explains that Bill Gates impeded global access to COVID vaccines through his hallowed foundation, the world's de facto public health has been a stalwart defender of monopoly medicine. Now, this article is so long and comprehensive, but it's also groundbreaking. And I would encourage you to pause this video and just go read that article if you have the time. Having said that, though, I can't get to everything in this article, but I'm going to try to give you the breakdown because what this describes is that Bill Gates screwed the world when it comes to COVID vaccines. He's created the global apartheid system that we're all dealing with currently. He's the reason why developing countries may not actually get the COVID vaccine until 2024. Now, to give you some context, at the start of the pandemic, before it was even declared a pandemic, there was a meeting from the global community that formulated CTAP, which is a commitment to share knowledge, intellectual property, and data all related to the novel coronavirus because they agreed that eradicating the virus, it was a global effort because no country would be safe unless all countries are safe. So there was no reason to hoard information, hoard medicine, intellectual property. Although this commitment to openness and sharing knowledge, it didn't actually bear out. Why? Because of Bill Gates. As New Republic's Alexander Zaitchik explains, in April, Bill Gates launched a bold bid to manage the world's scientific response to the pandemic. Gates's COVID-19 act accelerator expressed a status quo vision for organizing the research, development, manufacture, and distribution of treatments and vaccines. Like other Gates-funded institutions in the public health arena, the accelerator was a public-private partnership based on charity and industry enticements. Crucially, and in contrast to the CTAP, the accelerator enshrined Gates's longstanding commitment to respecting exclusive intellectual property claims. It's implicit arguments that intellectual property rights won't represent problems from meeting global demand or ensuring equitable access and that they must be protected even during a pandemic carried the enormous weight of Gates's reputation as a wise, beneficent, and prophetic leader. How he's developed and wielded this influence over two decades is one of the more consequential and underappreciated shapers of the failed global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Entering year two, this response has been defined by a zero-sum vaccination battle that has left much of the world on the losing side. Gates's marquee COVID-19 initiative started relatively small. Two days before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11th of 2020, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced something called the Therapeutics Accelerator, a joint initiative with MasterCard and the charity group, The Wellcome Trust, to identify and develop potential treatments for the novel coronavirus. Doubling as a social branding exercise for a giant of global finance, the accelerator reflected Gates's familiar formula of corporate philanthropy, which he applied to everything from malaria to malnutrition In retrospect, it was a strong indicator that Gates's dedication to monopoly medicine would survive the pandemic even before he and his foundation's officers began to say so publicly. This was confirmed when a bigger version of the accelerator was unveiled the following month at The Who. The access to COVID-19 tools accelerator, or ACT accelerator, was Gates's bid to organize the development and distribution of everything from therapeutics to testing, the biggest and most consequential arm Covax proposed to subsidize vaccine deals with poor countries through donations by and sales to richer ones. The goal was always limited. It aimed to provide vaccines for up to 20% of the population in low to middle income countries. After that, governments would largely have to compete on the global market like everyone else. It was a partial demand side solution to what the movement coalescing around a call for a people's vaccine warned would be a dual crisis of supply and access with intellectual property at the center of both. Gates not only dismissed these warnings but actively sought to undermine all challenges to his authority and the accelerator's intellectual property-based charity agenda. One year later, ACT accelerator has failed to meet its goal of providing discounted vaccines to the priority fifth of low income populations. The drug companies and rich nations that had so much praise for the initiative a year ago have retreated into bilateral deals that leave little for anybody else. As of this writing in early April, fewer than 600 million vaccine doses have been administered around the world. Three quarters of those in just 10 mostly high income countries close to 130 countries containing 2.5 billion people have yet to administer a single dose. The timeline for supplying poor and middle income countries with enough vaccines to achieve herd immunity meanwhile has been pushed into 2024. These numbers represent more than the catastrophic moral failure the director general of the who warned about this January. Technically housed within the hoop, the ACT accelerator is a Gates operation top to bottom. It is designed, managed and staffed largely by Gates organization employees. It embodies Gates's philanthropic approach to widely anticipated problems posed by intellectual property hoarding companies able to constrain global production by prioritizing rich countries and inhibiting licensing. Companies partnering with COVAX are allowed to set their own tiered prices. They are subject to almost no transparency requirements and to toothless contractual nods to equitable access that have never been enforced. Crucially, the companies retain exclusive rights to their intellectual property. If they stray from the Gates Foundation line on exclusive rights they are quickly brought to heel. When the director of Oxford's Jenner Institute had funny ideas about placing the rights to its COVAX supported vaccine candidate in the public domain, Gates intervened. As reported by Kaiser Health News a few weeks later Oxford urged on by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation reversed course and signed an exclusive vaccine deal with AstraZeneca that gave the pharmaceutical giant sole rights and no guarantee of low prices. So I just want to stop right there because we just consumed a lot of information but let's just look at that last paragraph there that last sentence in particular. So Oxford, they developed this vaccine that would go on to be the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine and originally they wanted to make sure that this vaccine was available on the public domain so smaller developing countries can use what they created and replicate that manufacture generic versions of COVID vaccines so they could vaccinate their own populations faster and not have to wait until 2024 but they had a change of heart when Bill Gates intervened and if you're asking yourself yeah well he intervened but what did he say like what could get them to change their mind about something that would very obviously be a net benefit for world health well it's not necessarily what he said it's what he could do if they don't listen because when you go to the website of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation you will see that they've given Oxford millions of dollars in grants in 2020 and they even gave them a grant for 2021 so if they don't comply with the demands of a man who's a gigantic source of funding that they rely on he could easily pull funding from them like that in other words they probably felt like they had no choice but to comply if they're gonna continue to get this funding that they desperately rely on Bill Gates stopped Oxford from making their vaccine public which would be objectively good for smaller countries now if you're one of the folks who think you know what I live in the UK in the United States in a developed country and I'm not necessarily worried about myself getting the vaccine and I mean I don't really care about these smaller countries it doesn't work that way this is a pandemic and we're not protected fully until everyone in the world is protected so let me explain to you what could happen as a result of Bill Gates and him pushing vaccine apartheid let's say we get 90% of the population in the United States vaccinated by the end of the year and it seems as if the pandemic has come to an end well in Latin America in Africa in Asia what if they don't actually vaccinate enough people and the virus continues to spread to the point where new mutations emerge that are resistant to the vaccine that we've used to inoculate all of our citizens what happens then all of us are fucked the pandemic continues for who knows how much longer all because he wants to protect the intellectual property of these big pharma giants and really it's not about the intellectual property per se but it's about them being the sole manufacturers of these vaccines they don't want to allow for a generic version to be made because they want to be the ones to profit off of it Bill Gates perpetuating that absolutely morally reprehensible objectively terrible for the human species for a man who's tried to build this reputation of stopping catastrophic climate change and saving humanity what he did to foster this atmosphere of global vaccine apartheid could very well fuck over the entire world because he's a greedy prick with a lot of influence who's using said influence to get international institutions to be greedy and horde knowledge about the vaccines that could be life-saving that will be life-saving if developed countries were able to make them themselves and didn't have to rely on Moderna or Pfizer to give them to them now when he's challenged about this this next part of the story explains that his response is to just be completely condescending and laugh off the criticism Gates can hardly disguise his contempt for the growing interest in intellectual property barriers in recent months as the debate has shifted from the who to the WTO reporters have drawn testy responses from Gates that hearken back to his prickly performances before congressional antitrust hearings a quarter century ago when a fast company reporter raised the issue in February she described Gates raising his voice lightly and laughing in frustration before snapping quote it's irritating that this issue comes up here this isn't about IP an interview after interview Gates has dismissed his critics on the issue who represent the poor majority of the global population as spoiled children demanding ice cream before dinner quote it's the classic situation in global health where the advocates all of a sudden want the vaccine for zero dollars and right away he told Reuters in late January Gates has learned the insults with comments that equate state protected and publicly funded monopolies with the free market quote North Korea doesn't have that many vaccines as far as we can tell he told the New York Times in November it is curious that he chose North Korea as an example and not Cuba a socialist country with an innovative and world-class vaccine development program with multiple COVID-19 vaccine candidates in various stages of testing the closest Gates has come to conceding that vaccine monopolies inhibit production came during a January interview with South Africa's male and guardian asked about the growing intellectual property debate he responded at this point changing the rules wouldn't make any additional vaccines available in other words oops looks like it's too late to reverse course now looks like we're gonna have to do it my way Tihi this is pure evilness I don't know what else to call it if for whatever reason some sort of mutation that's resistant to the vaccines that exist now pops up because we don't vaccinate enough human beings throughout the world fast enough Bill Gates is largely to thank for that so regardless of the public image that he tries to promote this individual is not your friend this is not a good billionaire that's not a thing this is a greedy oligarch who's using his wealth and influence to fuck over developing countries that's who Bill Gates is Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens teamed up to attack Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Kollers for reportedly buying multiple mansions which they claim is bad because she self identifies as a Marxist which I say is based but the right wing is just having a field day with this story and the allegations range from this is pretty hypocritical to maybe she's unethically using donor funds to purchase these houses maybe there's some sort of scandal here and regardless of the outcome of this story regardless of Patrice's alleged lack of moral character I think it's very transparent what the right wing is trying to do this is a concerted effort to vilify and discredit the Black Lives Matter movement if you can demonize the founder then perhaps people will think the movement itself as a whole is bad but Black Lives Matter is a largely decentralized movement and regardless of what the co-founders do the people who are on the ground fighting against police brutality fighting for Black Lives that does matter and you will never discredit that because that movement is necessary and valid but I don't necessarily have much interest in the scandal in particular that they're so concerned with but what I do want to talk about and the reason why I'm even mentioning the scandal is because I want to show you a clip from Fox News where Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens actually talked about this because the conversation that they had was so stupid that it borders on parody particularly what Candice Owens says because she's going to define Marxism here and her description is a little bit off if you ask me maybe I'm being too soft but anybody who can talk you know America's woke corporate structure into sending close to a hundred million dollars on the basis of that lame rap kind of gets my respect in a way she has my respect because she's unapologetic in her approach she's telling you what she is she's a Marxist so Marxists steal money from other people and they enrich themselves until the people that they stole from are poor and so she has stolen money from other people on the pretext of a lie that is Black Lives Matter and she's enriched herself and she's brought four homes I mean you have to kind of appreciate the honesty she's not hiding by any means you know and so yeah I tend to agree with you here she's a communist through and through and she's been unbelievably unapologetic in her approach look I've got to hand it to Candace Owens to say something that idiotic yet remains simultaneously so confident I mean you've got to hand it to her you know this is a done in Kruger in action but I want to revisit her definition of Marxism because she claims that Patrice Cullors is a Marxist so she defines Marxism she says she's telling you what she is she's a Marxist so Marxists steal money from other people and they enrich themselves until the people they stole money from are poor Candace you just described capitalism how do you not realize you straight up just described capitalism people can see it happening in America now that's what you described that's not Marxism that's capitalism Candace I love how she just makes up whatever definition I mean the way that the right and Fox News uses Marxism is they'll see whether or not somebody saying something they don't like is bad and if they think that person is bad since Marxism is bad they just say oh well that person must be a Marxist it's a synonym for stupid or bad it's like the new gay of the modern era remember when everyone used to say that's gay and really that meant that's stupid to conservatives saying that's Marxist is the modern day equivalent so I mean if we're allowed to just define political terms in any way we want to then to me my truth regarding the definition of Marxism is Marxism is when you go to McDonald's and you order a McChicken and a McDouble and you open up the McDouble and you put the McChicken in between the two beef patties and then you close it so you have one gigantic burger that in my opinion is Marxism and capitalism is when you take a dump and one of your turds stands up vertically in the toilet I mean we're allowed to just describe these terms with meanings however we want to right is that not the rules so I mean who is Candace Owens to tell me that I'm wrong when I say that capitalism is the vertical turd that stands up in the toilet who is she to tell me that my definition of Marxism is incorrect given the way that she just incorrectly frames these terms herself and she also added something really quickly and flippantly and I don't necessarily know what she meant but she she says she has stolen money from other people on the pretext of a lie that is Black Lives Matter now that really struck me off guard I don't know if she's saying that the fact that Black Lives Matter in and of itself is a lie or that the organization titled Black Lives Matter is based on a lie that Black Americans are disproportionately brutalized by police if she's actually just straight up saying that the fact that Black Lives Matter is a lie that's really odd for her to say something like that perhaps if we're being super charitable it's a lie in the sense that legally and socially and culturally Black Lives don't matter because they're treated more poorly than other types of lives white lives rich lives for example but I don't think that someone like Candace Owens a conservative capitalist would say something like that I don't think she'd have that nuanced of a take to me it sounds like she's saying it's a lie to say that Black Lives Matter that's so bizarre it'd be like if I said gay lives don't matter gay people are worthless as a gay person wouldn't that be weird why would I say something like that it's it's so like the things that she says are so bizarre and either way I mean however you interpret this she's wrong but how wrong and stupid she is really depends on what she meant by that which I mean maybe she'll clarify later but either way Candace Owens very clearly doesn't know what Marxism is she might want to learn a little bit about the ideology that she shills for because capitalism if we want to talk about theft capitalism that as I would describe it aside from my definition about it being the vertical turd that stands up in the toilet is when people steal money from other people to enrich themselves into the people they steal from money from are poor that's capitalism not Marxism so Dan Price is the CEO of a Seattle based company that made headlines back in 2015 when he announced that he'd be cutting his own pay in order to give all of his company's 120 plus employees a massive pay raise and back in the 2019 interview that he did on the Kelly Clarkson show which apparently is a thing that exists that I was unaware about he explained how the reason why he did this was actually because of a conversation that he had with one of his employees who was working two jobs and struggling to make ends meet and had she not opened his eyes he wouldn't have done this and now some time has passed and after all of the fear-mongering and the attacks that he received from Fox News because he chose as a private business owner to do something that was favorable to his employees he's announcing the results his company did not go under as Fox News hosts had predicted in fact it's doing better than ever so he writes six years ago today I raised my company's minimum wage to $70,000 per year Fox News called me a socialist whose employees would be on the bread lines since then our revenue tripled where a Harvard Business School case study in our employees had a 10 times boom in homes bought our revenue tripled headcount grew 70% customer base doubled babies had by staff grew 10 times 70% of employees paid down debt homes bought by employees grew 10 times 401k contributions grew 155% turnover dropped in half 76% of employees are engaged at work two times the national average customer attrition fell to 25% below the national average we expanded to a new Boise office and enacted $70,000 minimum wage there our highest paid employee makes four times our lowest paid employee down from 33 times so we always hear this argument that you know these companies they just can't afford to give their workers a living wage or offer them benefits because if they do that you know they're not going to be able to make a profit except he proved them wrong and he shared a compilation on Twitter of Fox News saying all these terrible things about him and even called him crazy essentially take a look at this compilation and we're going to discuss the implication of this and you know speculate on what they're saying now and whether or not anyone who attacked him had a change of heart what I wanted to announce today is we're going to have a minimum $70,000 period for everyone that works here have you seen the CEO of the Seattle based company who raised the minimum wage at his credit card processing company the $70,000 per year lunatic of all lunatics Dan Price CEO of Gravity Payments I hope this company is a case study in MBA programs on how socialism does not work because it's going to fail thoughts on this guy personally I think he's a socialist but this is the man who's doing it are you a socialist well look you know I don't support a minimum wage increase because it's a job killer but he's a private business owner if he wants to do this in between hugging trees I have a hunch we're going to know Dan Price for a really long time but the 130 employees of Gravity Payments I think they're going to be on the welfare line so I have to say Eric I think he's pretty foolish I think he's pretty foolish the whole world pretty much was against it and said we would fail people started having babies buying homes paying down debt they got healthier people multiple people lost 100 pounds beat cancer a home ownership skyrocketed especially first time home ownership we had 70 percent of the people at the company report that they had paid down debt happy employees make a much better company for the second time the CEO of credit card processing company Gravity Payments is slashing his salary in order to raise the pay of his employees three two one we purchased a company in Idaho but we've been successful enough that we're able to afford to do it and we're very proud of that we have nearly tripled our processing volume from a little over three billion dollars to over 10 since we implemented this you were laughed at you were called a socialist you were told that the business would fail that this would be a study at Harvard Business School and how not to operate a business and actually now you're being studied as an example of something that worked for you and clearly worked for these workers I think what Dan has done is not only extraordinary for his own employees I hope it sets an example for companies all over this country the sacrifice you know was worth the experiment and worth what came afterwards Dan I salute you it is astonishing to me how often fox hosts use the word socialist and very clearly have no idea what it means they just use socialist as a synonym for things that they think are bad or stupid unbelievable now it looks like Dan Price is getting the last laugh will people like Stuart Varney who's a supposed expert broadcasting on Fox Business News will he come out and apologize for calling Dan Price a lunatic because Stuart Varney claimed that this was a really dumb idea so much so that it makes you a lunatic to do something like this because your business very obviously isn't going to be able to sustain itself if you treat your employees like human beings so what now Stuart looks like you have to eat crow as do the rest of your colleagues on Fox News and Fox Business now the reason why Stuart Varney and other fox hosts were against this when in theory I mean as capitalists they shouldn't have a problem with this right what a private company chooses to do a decision that they make that shouldn't really be offensive to a capitalist but the reason why they denounce this is because if Dan Price was able to prove that this works and treating your employees like human beings and actually paying them a living wage isn't bad for business perhaps the government might want to replicate what Dan Price's company is doing and they can't have that right except I mean they have nothing to worry about our congress has been paid for by large multinational corporations we can't even get a $15 an hour minimum wage so for them to denounce this and go out of their way to try to make it seem as if what Dan Price was doing was terrible now they all look like idiots but of course they're not going to apologize they're not going to report on the truth here they're just going to sweep this under the rug I mean Charles Payne at least covered it on Fox Business but look overall what Dan Price is doing here is phenomenal I absolutely appreciate the message that he's championing and I hope that what he's doing catches on the issue however that I have with the story and I hope that this isn't the main takeaway for liberals and I suspect maybe some will take this as the main conclusion is that workers shouldn't have to rely on the kind-heartedness and generosity of their employer they shouldn't cross their fingers and toes in hope that maybe their employer will have a conversation with them and recognize their humanity and actually choose to treat them a little bit better it should be mandated they should have to treat their employees better they should have to pay their employees a living wage this isn't some sort of a solution like hoping that CEOs do the right thing and give their employees more benefits that's not going to solve the issues because one they're not going to do that and two even if Dan Price is doing a good thing here even if he's different than the rest still the structure in America the way that companies are formed and created and exist as organizations it's inherently exploitative the employer-employee relationship alone that system in and of itself is bad because even if Dan Price is unilaterally choosing to do good things the fact remains that his employees living good lives and even having a livelihood will hinge on his willingness to let them have that right so it shouldn't be the case that at any point in time if your employer doesn't like you you just can be let go like that and lose everything not just your livelihood but your health insurance which is tied to your employer we have to have a new system and that is democracy in the workplace they call Dan Price a socialist but what is socialism? socialism is when workers own the means of production does Dan Price's employees actually own the company? is this a worker-owned co-op? no so for them to say that he is a socialist in and of itself is extremely stupid and proves how ignorant they are but what should happen is there should be mandatory worker co-ops when our employers control so much of our lives we should have democracy in that space we have democracy when it comes to politics why can't we have democracy in the workplace? if employees dedicate their lives in every waking minute they have to their employers shouldn't they actually have a little bit more control over what that company does shouldn't they not have to rely on what CEOs tell them to do? shouldn't it not be a dictatorship? this is what I hope people take away from the story there are other scandals involving Dan Price that his brother apparently sued him after he made this announcement and there's disputes about why he was being sued the claim is that perhaps Dan Price made this decision not necessarily out of the goodness of his heart but because in order to deny his brother profits from the company I don't care honestly the scandals itself that's not interesting to me the story itself I think is good right? I think that the message that Dan Price is promoting is good it's beneficial and I hope that it catches on but again it's not the main takeaway that I want people to have the main takeaway is that it shouldn't be like this where we have to cross our fingers and hope that there's more Dan Price's out there it should be mandated the employer-employee relationship shouldn't exist it's exploitative people should have a say in what their companies do not just one person or a small board people should have a say people should own the companies that they work for Fox News host Jesse Waters suddenly had a change of heart on a policy that he previously did not support because surprise, surprise all of a sudden this policy now personally affects him take a look I think it's safe to say I'm the only one on the show that's been peed on twice today not true and well maybe not Gutfeld to Night's Young for Greg but my father my father said just today Jesse you better get back on the five pretty soon your replacements have been really good I was like thanks dad but now I'm pro paternity I used to mock people for taking paternity I used to think it was a big ruse but now I wish I could take six weeks but I don't know apparently I have people nipping at my heels so I gotta be back you know one thing I know you gotta have the beta and take six months yeah so look I will give him credit words due because it is objectively good that he arrived at the logical the humane the ethical and correct quite frankly position on this issue but it's frustrating to me we would make so much more progress if conservatives just tried for a minute to be sympathetic just try to put themselves in the shoes of someone less fortunate than them I mean this isn't the first time to be afraid of Jesse Waters that a conservative has publicly denounced a terrible position that they previously had I think the most notorious example is of Dick Cheney because aside from the fact that he is a gigantic neocon and a war criminal he also was a huge homophobe and back in 2004 him and George W. Bush they based their entire presidential campaign on ban and gay marriage literally introducing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages but all of a sudden he flips like that and has a change of heart when he realizes that his daughter's a lesbian and now that it affects him personally and he wouldn't want his daughter to be disadvantaged culturally and politically and legally well all of a sudden gays are good if you take what you've learned by changing your position on these issues that affect you personally and apply it to other issues we can make so much more progress if Jesse Waters thought look I don't support the $15 an hour minimum wage but if I put myself in the shoes of a worker who only made $10 an hour I could see why a $15 an hour minimum wage might be beneficial I mean that kind of gets you to think maybe the right policy isn't necessarily something that benefits me but it's good for society and it may one day benefit me to see universal healthcare perhaps you know making colleges free will be beneficial to my own child because if I'm no longer a Fox News host and we're socioeconomically disadvantaged then my child would benefit from that maybe it's beneficial if we don't treat trans and non-binary people as if they're subhuman second-class citizens because what if my child is trans or non-binary I mean if you apply this lesson to other things the world would be such a better place your policy positions would be a lot less egregious and selfish but the conservatives on Fox News Jesse Waters included their multi-millionaires so they're incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of the peasants because they're in that bubble that rich elitist bubble and I don't necessarily know what Megan McCain's position was on maternity leave but she explained before on the view that she didn't really become radicalized for lack of a better word when it comes to the issue of paid maternity leave until she realized how important it was surprise surprise when she needed it herself yeah I when I gave birth I actually had postnatal preeclampsia and I was in the hospital for a week after on a magnesium drip and it really really kicked my butt and I was planning on coming back to the show for the election in six weeks after I gave birth and I was physically unable to I was physically unable to come I was having as any woman who was experienced anything like that I had to have my husband and my mother-in-law I helped me do everything from shower to eat it was deeply humbling and to help me take care of liberty and the whole time I was thinking what a privilege it is to have this kind of of maternity leave and then as I thought about it the more angry I got that there weren't women in the rest of America that had the same kind of luxury that I had working here at the view and then I started getting more and more angry that conservatives in particular given that we are the family of family or the sorry the party of family values and that everything about our ideology sort of stems from the nucleus of the family that we are leaving women in this country without the capacity and ability unless you have an employer that allows you to take care of your child to heal physically which is something that needs to happen and I actually think there's a lot of synergy right now for a paid family leave coming from Democrats and Republicans everyone from Marco Rubio and Kristin Sinema and Joni Ernst have come on board and I think this is something that's really a really dark spot for our country we are the only developing nation that doesn't supply women with paid family leave and if we are going to continue growing as a country and we're going to be able to give you know women and families the capacity to grow in the way that we want and stop having this sort of like you know societal fracture that we're having and a lot of arguments are made it's because of the fracture that's happening at home and with families we as conservatives have to come together and allow all women in this country no matter where they're from or their socioeconomic class the capacity to have what I just had which is three months of bonding time and breastfeeding and healing from an emergency C-section which is what I had to have and postnatal preeclampsia and I just think maybe it takes personal experience sometimes to get on board but I was actually hoping that we as all women of the view I'm just going to make the guess that you are all in agreement with me that we could make this our initiative in 2021 and when we have lawmakers on the show really put pressure on them and ask them why the women of America don't get the same kind of maternity leave that Megan McCain got again I'm glad you arrived at the correct conclusion but if you if you just extended what you learned if you see the lesson in this and apply it to other political issues you'd be more right now look it is impossible to remove ourselves from our own subjectivity right we can't fully know what it's like to walk in the shoes of someone who isn't us I'll never know what it's like to be a black American who is profiled by the police but I'll also never know what it's like to be a heterosexual American who isn't accused of flaunting my sexuality if I hold hands with my spouse in public we're all confined to our own subjective bubbles but what I like to do is a mental exercise created by John Rawls so what he created was this idea of the veil of ignorance and I think that this really is the metric that folks should use to determine which policies they support so imagine you are creating society and you have no idea what your position in that society will look like so you are creating everything the type of government that exists the international entities that will exist in this society if you don't know what your position will be how are you going to design that society you don't know if you're going to be poor you don't know which country you're going to end in or end up in a developed country a poor country you don't know what you're going to be so obviously in that position where you're removed from your own subjectivity you would design a system wherein it doesn't matter what country you're born in you're still able to thrive economically you're gonna have access to water healthcare won't even be an issue you're going to maximize the position of everyone in hopes that you yourself will end up in a solid place and so basically if folks just try to be sympathetic and imagine what it would be like to be disadvantaged and not be an elitist born into wealth or super wealthy because they got lucky then society would be a lot better so i mean uh great job jesse i'm glad that you finally came to the correct conclusion now that it personally affects you but um yeah maternity leave maternity leave these are things that should be guaranteed because believe it or not human beings are not robots and if you have a new baby if you adopt a child hell even if you get a new pet why shouldn't you be able to take time away from work to get to know that human being or pet believe it or not we can prioritize enjoying life more than just slaving away at these jobs that exploit us i mean we have to really adjust our mentality as a country because we've for some reason decided to value working ourselves to death and if we don't do that then maybe we'll be lazy but it's okay to embrace our inner humanity and acknowledge that we're people maybe we want to explore uh the world maybe we want to do art maybe we just want to sit back and play video games there's nothing wrong with that embracing our humanity our humanity is important we'd all be more happier if we did that countries that allow for more time off of work guaranteed vacation time they're all happier than the united states because here we're all work to fucking death at shitty jobs we hate so i'm just saying take the lesson that you've learned here jesse apply it to other aspects of life think about if i were not in my position now would i value x policy y policy and you won't be conservative anymore if you're actually sympathetic well that's all that i've got for you today folks hopefully you enjoyed the episode as usual before we leave on a thing all of the folks to make the show possible all of our patreon paypa and youtube members thank you all so much for the lifeblood of the show you help us not just to survive but thrive as well and i can truly never vocalize just how appreciative i am of your patronage so look here's the thing if if you watched all of this and you want more humanist report content um i can't do anything about that until next week however i will be live on twitch.tv slash here in our support to continue playing Sekiro Shadows Die Twice so if you feel as if you know the news from this episode and from the last week have just been a little bit too heavy then feel free head on over there and just unwind with me play some video games we'll relax you know casually discuss politics as questions are brought up to me and it's really been therapeutic to me so i really hope that others from the channel find me on twitch and join me there but anyways if not i will see you all next week right here take care everyone my name is mike fiorito this has been the humanist report bye