 Pete Buttigieg finally revealed the work that he did for the notoriously evil consulting firm known as McKinsey, but to be fair to him, he actually wasn't legally allowed to talk about it because he signed an NDA, he asked to be released from said NDA and thankfully they obliged. Now this is detailed in the Atlantic in an article by Edward Isaac Dovier and essentially a lot of the work that Pete Buttigieg did was downplayed, it was described in a way that made it seem like it was seemingly innocuous and it wasn't actually that problematic. For example, his campaign also revealed to me his clients from his time at McKinsey, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Loblaws, a Canadian supermarket chain, Best Buy, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Energy Foundation and Environmental Non-Profit, the US Postal Service and the US Department of Defense. Now look, admittedly some of these are less problematic, like the work that he did for the EPA or the USPS doesn't necessarily concern me as much, but when you do work for these multi-billion dollar companies like Best Buy who exploit the labor of their workers, when you work for the Department of Defense, that I think should be a red flag for anyone who is going to be participating in this Democratic Party primary and on top of that he worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. This is a for-profit company that profits off of denying people coverage and raising insurance premiums. So what did he do at Blue Cross Blue Shield? Well, he said that while working with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan he remembered going along with his manager to a few meetings with people on staff, but he couldn't remember any meeting he'd been able to attend on his own. Mostly I was with fellow consultants in a room working on a spreadsheet, he said, understanding that the analysis had focused on rent, travel costs, mail and printing, but nothing having to do with policy or premium costs. He insisted that none of his work could have led to people's insurance changing or being taken away. Sure, Dan. Right. Now as we'll learn, that's actually not entirely true. It's fairly misleading because the way that he describes it is, look, I was just, you know, punching numbers into a spreadsheet. My job was to math, if I could use math as a verb, but that's not true. That is not true in actuality. But I mean, think about this. This individual worked for a private health insurance company, and all of a sudden he enters the 2020 race and becomes the number one Democratic Party recipient of health industry contributions, more so than anyone in this field, including the former vice president, the only person who outraised people to judge with regard to health industry donations is the sitting president. But he raised more than everyone else, and he explicitly created a health care proposal that would protect the private insurance industry. It would leave them intact. Now let me remind you, he previously supported Medicare for All ostensibly. I don't think he was ever really serious about that. But once he started to take their money, he reversed course and opted for the policy proposal that wouldn't actually get rid of them. That is not okay. Now the thing that I think should bother a lot of people, which should turn heads, is the work that he chose to do for the U.S. Department of Defense, because he participated in what a lot of people call disaster capitalism, where these private companies exploit countries who were ravaged by war or a natural disaster. And as you're going to see, this is precisely what Naomi Klein talks about in the shock doctrine. Now, here's what he reportedly did. Quote, when someone asked whether he'd be interested in a project working for the Defense Department studying economic development in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said yes. Quote, in Iraq, it had to do with a lot of state-owned enterprises that were learning to function in the post-Saddam world, helping them with basic stuff like business planning that just hadn't been done in the style of international business norms, because it was a quasi-socialist system over there, but a judge told me. In Afghanistan, they knew how to do business, but then there was a lot of trouble scaling it. So we were working more on figuring out how to help businesses grow. In other words, you're helping private companies become more profitable in post-Saddam Iraq. This is quintessential disaster capitalism. Now the way that it's kind of portrayed here is he helped a lot of state-owned enterprises, but then he kind of moves the goalpost as he explains what he did there and talks about how he helped businesses grow and they were having trouble with scaling because this was new and they were quasi-socialist at least in Iraq. So he kind of contradicts himself and that's not even pointed out by the author of this article, but what I love is that sludge writer, Alex Koch, he went over this in great detail and he kind of broke this down in a matter-of-fact way and really in a no-bullshit way and he told us exactly what Pete Buttigieg did in a way that just strips away that you know, centrist-friendly veneer. He tweeted, The way the author portrays it, most of the work sounds fairly innocuous, but Dover is one of the last reporters I would trust to report seriously on a centrist Democratic candidate. If you haven't read Naomi Klein's shock doctrine, it is essential to understanding American economic opportunism in Afghanistan. What government contractors and consultants were doing there was not good, but a judge downplays his work for Blue Cross, but regardless, this matters. A candidate who attacks Medicare for All and the candidate who truly believes in it worked for a private health insurer makes you think. See, like I said, Dover is about the last person you want, honestly, assessing a centrist and he then links to an article from The New York Times that is pretty devastating to this narrative about Pete Buttigieg doing seemingly innocuous work at McKinsey for Blue Cross. It reads, last week, Mr. Buttigieg's campaign said his time in Michigan included analytical work as part of a team identifying savings in administration and overhead costs Blue Cross of Michigan announced in January 2009 that it would cut up to 1,000 jobs or nearly 10 percent of its workforce and request rate increases. Now, the article claims his work didn't actually lead to job loss or rises in monthly premiums, but this New York Times article makes it clear that that's a lie. So in other words, quote, Buttigieg helped Blue Cross save money on administration and overhead costs, i.e. laying people off and increasing insurance premiums. Cool. Now, he was asked about this in an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and he tried to play dumb and made it seem like he didn't really know if his consulting with McKinsey led to that loss of jobs at Blue Cross Blue Shield, but watch what he does in order to deflect. He basically throws Bernie Sanders under a bus randomly when when you did that sort of cost and overhead assessment for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan a couple of years after that they laid off like a thousand people. Was your work part of what led to those last? I doubt it. I don't know what happened in the time after I left that was in 2007 when they decided to shrink in 2009. Now, what I do know is that there are some voices in the Democratic primary right now who are calling policy that would eliminate the job of every single American working at every single insurance company in the country. So just pause for a moment and reflect on what he just said in order to defend the consulting work that he did with McKinsey and the loss of jobs that his consulting facilitated. He is saying that Bernie Sanders essentially wants to do the same because if you opt to Medicare for all, then what's going to happen? Well, that will lead to the collapse of the entire for-profit health insurance industry and everyone in that industry will lose jobs. First of all, a loss of jobs is preferable to a loss of life due to a lack of health insurance. Second of all, that assumes that Bernie Sanders isn't actually going to establish a just transition so that way people who currently work in the health industry and they're just low level secretaries and what not wouldn't be able to get jobs in Medicare. So this is one of the most disgusting deflections I've ever seen. And again, this is all to defend the work that he did at McKinsey. So, you know, in spite of Edward Isaac Dover's attempt to portray his work at McKinsey as something that wasn't really that big of a deal. This was seemingly benign. That's not actually true. His work at McKinsey was problematic. And it's because McKinsey is a disgusting, disgusting company. And really, you know, when it comes to disaster capitalism, as Parker Malloy puts it, he is the shock doctrine candidate. And that's exactly it. This really tells you a lot more about Pete Buttigieg, but this isn't surprising to people who already vetted Pete Buttigieg and knew what he was. This is a ghoul. He doesn't care about policy. He cares about his own career and attaining power. That's it. That's all he cares about. That's all his career has been about up until this point. You know, he's running for president as a mayor, not even qualified to be president. And the history that we see is that he failed as a mayor and his work at McKinsey proves that he is the ghoul we all suspected he was. So if this doesn't turn voters off to Pete Buttigieg, then the media has not been doing their job because if you are participating in a Democratic party primary and you care about the issues, you cannot support Pete Buttigieg. But yet he's polling in first in Iowa and New Hampshire. If that continues to be the case and he ends up winning these two states, which are crucial, early primary states, it will be specifically because the media did not do its job at vetting him like they vetted all the other candidates. But maybe, you know, this is the beginning of the end because we've seen candidates before rise and then fall. At first, it was Beto O'Rourke who had his moment in the spotlight and the media loved him, didn't properly vet him. But with time, people saw that he was hollow and wasn't really standing for anything. And he just fell off a cliff and dropped out. The next was Kamala Harris. She had a moment in the sun where she took down Biden at a debate. Turns out she backed away from, you know, progressive policy proposals like Medicare for all. And then she plummeted and now she dropped out. We then saw Elizabeth Warren, who seemed to be the unstoppable candidate who the media loved temporarily, but then she started to back away from Medicare for all, lost the support of the left, tried to, you know, appease both sides at once. And all of a sudden, you know, Pete Buttigieg is the one who's getting the rise and Elizabeth Warren is failing. Maybe he'll also see, you know, that decrease as people like Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren saw. I'm not sure it's, you know, getting close to the Iowa caucus. But what I do know is that if he does win, it's because people are uninformed about him, because anyone with that horrible of a record, not just at McKinsey, but in South Bend, Indiana, there's no way they would win if voters knew about that candidate. So the media has got to do their job. And if they don't, we've got to come in and educate our peers about Pete Buttigieg. This is not someone who is your friend. This is a ghoul who must be defeated.