TruthArchive.ai - Tweets Saved By @JohnStossel
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
If you read Wikipedia, you are told that Trump is a fascist. But bizarrely, if you look up dictator Raul Castro (who oppressed Cuba after his brother Fidel died) there’s “not one mention of the term authoritarian,” points out @ashleyrindsberg. More examples of Wiki bias here: https://t.co/O3be0k1uw0
Video Transcript AI Summary
- Grokopedia is introduced as a new alternative to Wikipedia, built on Elon Musk’s xAI model designed for deep understanding and reasoning, not just regurgitating text.
- The program suggests Wikipedia has shifted left over time. It recounts how, ten years ago, Wikipedia was praised as a dream and as a replacement for traditional encyclopedias, with Britannica’s editor deriding encyclopedias as requiring paid researchers, while Wikipedia grew to become the world’s go-to resource and Britannica stopped printing books.
- The speakers claim that, although Wikipedia allows anyone to edit, politics on the site is dominated by leftists. They point to examples of editors who advertise socialist views and display images of Che Guevara and Lenin.
- They state that Wikipedia’s bias is evident in who counts as reliable or not, asserting that conservative media are deemed unreliable while outlets like CNN, MSNBC, Vox, Slate, The Nation, and Mother Jones are considered reliable. They claim Fox News is treated as unreliable, while Al Jazeera is considered generally reliable.
- The narrative asserts bias in topic coverage and notability decisions. They mention a controversy over an article about a Ukrainian refugee that was deleted on the grounds it might not meet notability, contrasting it with other crimes that remained in Wikipedia. They also note a case where a suspect’s name was blacked out because he hadn’t been convicted, but another case (Kyle Rittenhouse) was named despite his status as a minor and not convicted.
- The discussion includes claims that public pressure can sway Wikipedia at times (e.g., Irina Zerutsko’s article staying after outcry), but overall “nothing changes.” They describe a group of editors they call the “gang of forty,” who allegedly push propaganda in the Israel-Palestine conflict by removing mentions of terror attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas, and they describe a page titled “Donald Trump and Fascism” created just before a presidential election as interfering with elections.
- They argue that Wikipedia presents a single worldview on major topics, excluding other perspectives, citing Fidel Castro’s successor Raul Castro as lacking the term “authoritarian” on his page, while other leaders have such labels applied. They also discuss government censorship and state-controlled outlets influencing Wikipedia’s content, noting that Chinese government censors flood the site and that China runs state propaganda outlets cited tens of thousands of times.
- The COVID-19 lab-leak theory is discussed, with the speakers claiming that while evidence later emerged suggesting a lab origin, Wikipedia still claims “no evidence supporting laboratory involvement,” calling it a conspiracy theory.
- Grokopedia is presented as offering an alternative where Grok lists investigations that affirm a lab-leak as the most probable origin, and the speaker says Grok is better than Wikipedia on their own page, which they claim contains mistakes and smears on the Wikipedia platform.
- They mention other competing projects like Justopedia, founded by a veteran Wikipedia editor who wanted an alternative due to perceived left-wing bias; Scienceopedia and Justopedia are described as gaining momentum to provide more source variety.
- The discussion closes with perspectives on governance of Wikipedia’s editorial direction: Catherine Mayer, head of the Wikimedia Foundation, is portrayed as evolving Wikipedia toward a woke and DEI ideology, with Maurer described as shaping critical years starting in 2016 and steering the foundation toward a social justice mission.
- The speakers conclude with a call for dedicated, area-specific editors to enter and influence topics, suggesting that a few dozen committed editors could make a difference, though acknowledging the time required.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Say hello to Grokopedia.
Speaker 1: Recently, Elon Musk launched Grokopedia to compete with Wikipedia, which he calls wokeapedia because it's so left wing. But is Wikipedia really left wing? Well,
Speaker 2: yes. Years ago, Wikipedia was a dream.
Speaker 1: Ten years ago I reported how Wikipedia had changed encyclopedias. People assumed encyclopedias needed a staff of paid researchers. Wikipedia is like a public restroom, sneered Britannica's editor. But just a few years after he said that, Wikipedia had won.
Speaker 2: Wikipedia became the world's go to resource. When you look something up, it's there.
Speaker 1: While Britannica stopped printing books. I love Britannica. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told me.
Speaker 3: I love candles too, but I sure wouldn't give up
Speaker 1: my electric light. In a TED talk, he explained.
Speaker 3: People are always asking, well, who's in charge of of this or who does that? And the answer is anybody who wants to pitch in.
Speaker 1: Anyone could edit, says Wikipedia's ad. But now I realize that when it comes to politics, leftists dominate. Some proudly advertise that they're socialists and post pictures of Che and Lenin on their profiles.
Speaker 4: No encyclopedia, to my knowledge, has been as biased as Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: Larry Sanger is Wikipedia's other founder.
Speaker 4: I inflicted this thing on the world and I kind of regret it.
Speaker 0: It's designed to push an ideological agenda that you can't see.
Speaker 1: Journalist Ashley Rinsberg runs Neutral Point of View, which exposes Wikipedia bias. It's just one website, so so what if it's biased?
Speaker 0: Wikipedia's information spreads into everything online. It sure does. And Wikipedia brags about that.
Speaker 2: AI studies Wikipedia. Search engines copy. Your smart speaker whispers it back to you.
Speaker 0: ChatGPT, every other frontier AI model onto Google, onto your phone, Siri, and Alexa when you ask a question, it is all Wikipedia. It has become the ground truth for information online against which other claims and statements get compared to be considered true or false. Wikipedia brags about that too. Here's what I found on Wikipa. I mean the Internet.
Speaker 1: When you Google or ask AI a question, you often see Wikipedia.
Speaker 0: Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Wikipedia. That in turn is shaped by a handful of editors we don't know.
Speaker 1: A handful? But Wikipedia claims.
Speaker 2: When AI uses information from Wikipedia, it's drawing on knowledge created by millions of people.
Speaker 0: At the end of the day, it's a few thousand powerful editors who are determining what gets counted as information on the most important topics.
Speaker 1: And those editors sure hate Donald Trump. When Trump put illegal immigrants in detention centers during his first term, Wikipedia editors listed that under concentration camps. Well, the media had pointed out that children were put in cages. But three years ago, since Wikipedia says anyone can edit, I tried to put that in perspective. President Barack Obama built these cages.
There. That's fixed. But within a day, my edit was taken down.
Speaker 0: Wikipedia has definitely been taken over by woke activists.
Speaker 1: Why would they lean left?
Speaker 0: By nature. When you take something academic minded and Wikipedia editors are very academic minded, they're naturally gonna draw from that pool of academia which is left leaning.
Speaker 1: People on the right are more likely to earn their living building things or farming, fishing, serving in police and military organizations. People on the left are more likely to be academics, reporters, lawyers, people who write for a living. That gives them an advantage competing on Wikipedia.
Speaker 0: The real barrier is to understand all the parliamentarian maneuvering, all the rules lawyering, all this kind of stuff that you need really takes years to understand it, to win a single debate about a single sentence.
Speaker 1: In addition, Wikipedia has simply declared most conservative media generally unreliable. That means editors should not cite Fox News, The Federalists, The Daily Wire, The New York Post. By contrast, Wikipedia not only calls CNN reliable, it deems MSNBC, Vox, Slate, The Nation, and Mother Jones reliable. If you're a leftist, that's what you think.
Speaker 0: They consider Fox in their bones to be unreliable, never to be used on a variety of important topics.
Speaker 1: And Fox is unreliable sometimes, but so is MSNBC and CNN.
Speaker 0: And The New York Times and any other rated reliable website or out news outlet that's listed. However. MSNBC, The Nation, or Mother Jones, however far left you can go, it's still gonna be considered generally reliable. This is also true with Al Jazeera, which is a Qatari controlled outlet considered to be generally reliable. That gives it a higher ranking in the reliability rating than many American conservative news outlets would have which have proper editorial structure and accountability.
Speaker 1: Wikipedia's bias is also revealed in their choice of subjects. After the murder of this Ukrainian refugee A grisly stabbing in Charlotte, North Carolina. Wikipedia editors wanted this article about her deleted arguing that the topic may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline.
Speaker 0: Erase this story because this story was a story about about race, about who gets to be acknowledged as a victim. This was a white woman killed, murdered by a black man. And Wikipedia very quickly tried to delete that article saying it wasn't notable.
Speaker 1: This is just one murder.
Speaker 0: But when you look at other instances of single crimes or crimes that end up in the news cycle, they do stay on Wikipedia and there's not an effort to delete them.
Speaker 1: Also, although the killer had been arrested 14 times.
Speaker 0: Wikipedia wouldn't allow him to be named on the website. They said we have to protect his identity because he's a suspect. He's not been convicted. Fair enough. The problem is when you look at another case on the right A 17 year old from a neighboring state is now under arrest tonight, accused of firing on demonstrators.
Kyle Rittenhouse, who was a minor. They named him dozens of times. And Rittenhouse has never been convicted. But Wikipedia had no problem putting his name out there for the world.
Speaker 1: And people point out the unfairness and inconsistency, but nothing changes.
Speaker 0: There is a point where public pressure and the culture actually does sway Wikipedia. Irina Zerutsko is a good example because there was an outcry about this, and eventually Wikipedia did allow that article to stay. But on a whole, you're absolutely right. Nothing changes.
Speaker 1: Another example of Wikipedia bias from the Israel Palestine conflict. You say pro Hamas editors push propaganda.
Speaker 0: 40 or so editors who I call the gang of forty, they've made 1,000,000 edits to 10,000 articles. They're removing mentions of terror attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas. This is a systematic coordinated effort.
Speaker 1: Right before the presidential election, Wikipedia created a page called Donald Trump and Fascism.
Speaker 0: If that is not election interference, I'm not sure what is.
Speaker 1: The Guardian, a left wing newspaper in the same day, published the same thing.
Speaker 0: And they cited heavily a Harvard scholar who has ties to an Obama appointee. But you, as a user of Wikipedia, will never see all this chain chain of sourcing. You just see the final product. So you don't know where this came from. You don't know if it was a Marxist scholar.
You just see what you see on Wikipedia on the surface. They called him first a fascist, and then they sort of evolved the messaging to call him an authoritarian.
Speaker 1: But isn't that fair?
Speaker 0: The problem is that on Wikipedia, you only get one side of it. The worldview presented doesn't allow for other perspectives to be included in what you're reading about some of the most important topics of today.
Speaker 1: If you look up Fidel Castro's successor who repressed Cuba for years, You don't get authoritarian.
Speaker 0: Not one mention of the term authoritarian on Raul Castro. There's not one mention of the word authoritarian on the entry for Ayatollah Khomeini.
Speaker 1: At least on the leader of China's page, Wikipedia does say.
Speaker 0: Some foreign diplomats consider him to be an authoritarian or they don't really make the claim. Certainly not in the way that they're making about Trump.
Speaker 1: Vinsburg says that's because Chinese government censors flood the site. But Slate says they've banned editors associated with the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 0: They banned, I think, six out of 300 that we know about. There's probably many many more than that.
Speaker 1: Maybe these are just people in China. You don't know it's the government.
Speaker 0: You can only access Wikipedia in China if you have permission from the government. In addition, China runs state sanctioned propaganda news outlets. These are cited tens of thousands of times on Wikipedia, and that's allowed to stand on the site.
Speaker 1: The COVID lab leak is treated like a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 0: In 2020, you might have been able to see that when we didn't know much about what was going on. Lab leak is a theory with no evidence whatsoever.
Speaker 1: A perfect storm for conspiracy theorists because their theories are now everywhere. Finally, after years of leftist media calling the Chinese lab leak a conspiracy, The media reported on the new evidence.
Speaker 2: COVID nineteen likely originated from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China.
Speaker 1: But Wikipedia still says no evidence supporting laboratory involvement.
Speaker 0: You will walk away with the impression that it is a conspiracy theory that is not supported by the scientists and that's just not true.
Speaker 1: All this makes me wonder about that new option, Grokopedia.
Speaker 2: Grokopedia is built on Musk's AI firm xAI's model, designed for deep understanding and reasoning, not just regurgitating text.
Speaker 1: Is Grokopedia better? Maybe. It's new in AI, so it makes mistakes. But when it comes to COVID, I noticed Grok does list investigations that affirm a lab leak is the most probable origin. Wikipedia buries that.
Grok is better than Wikipedia on my page too. My page is filled with mistakes and smears that make me look cruel. Wikipedia claims I argued that AIDS research gets too much funding, but I just reported that it got disproportionate funding compared to other diseases, which is true.
Speaker 0: We're spending 10 times as much per fatality on people with AIDS as people with breast cancer or prostate cancer.
Speaker 1: Wikipedia editors don't trash Bill Clinton for saying that, but they make me appear wrong and heartless and I can't get it corrected. It's not fair.
Speaker 0: There's no nobody for you to talk to to say this is wrong. If this was a news organization, there would be an avenue or channel for you to at least address it. In Wikipedia's case, that is not true. Until now. With Grokkopedia, we finally have another choice.
Speaker 1: And other options are springing up. Scienceopedia? Justopedia?
Speaker 0: Justopedia? It's founded by a veteran Wikipedia editor who couldn't handle the left wing bias. So she said, I'm gonna do my own thing and it's actually gaining real momentum. This is exactly what we need. We need people to be able to choose among different sources so we're not all forced into the Wikipedia information funnel.
Speaker 1: I once made a sizable donation to Wikipedia, which I now regret and they're rolling in money, And that brought me a meeting with Catherine Mayer, who was head of the foundation at the time. She says
Speaker 2: A reverence for the truth might be a distraction.
Speaker 0: Catherine Mayer is that woke ideology. She personifies it. She believes in it. She lives it, which is why NPR hired her as the CEO.
Speaker 2: When Wikipedia first started, the majority of its authors were Western white men.
Speaker 0: It was Maurer who shaped Wikipedia in these critical years starting in 2016 when she became executive director. This is where we started to see a massive shift within Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, towards woke and DEI ideology. She changed the mission of Wikipedia from developing an online encyclopedia. It was pretty straightforward. And she made it about creating a social justice movement.
Speaker 1: Is there any way to fix it?
Speaker 0: I think the best chance that we have is for dedicated people who are really interested in these topics to get in there and become a a editor that can make those kinds of changes.
Speaker 1: Months. Years it takes.
Speaker 0: Yeah. But we only need a few dozen, maybe maybe even fewer to make an impact in any given topic area. So if enough people say, you know what? I'm gonna give it a go. My voice should be represented or my worldview should be represented, they actually can make an impact.
The question is, are enough people gonna take that leap?
Speaker 1: Just a few dozen?
Speaker 0: A few dozen can actually make a difference.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Empire after empire rose and fell. It makes me worry about America—watching so many trash capitalism. Historian @JohankNorberg says, if we learn from history, “we can still save this golden age!” https://t.co/4jcbOqmbxG
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Many act as if slavery was a uniquely American crime. “One reason,” says author Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630), “is that a lot of black people survived here.” He argues that much of what Americans are taught about slavery is just wrong: https://t.co/GOQvqxPCZj
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
A Florida city fined a man $35K because they said his grass was too long. Then they moved to TAKE his home! With the help of @IJ, he fought back for 6 years. Absurdly, he lost in court… but he won in other ways. Here’s what happened: https://t.co/LLXkZujitT
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Three years ago, I interviewed a woman whose home was seized over unpaid taxes. But her house was worth $286K MORE than what she owed. The Supreme Court now says that's unconstitutional. Yet she still hasn’t gotten her money back: https://t.co/3359EhdYdS
Video Transcript AI Summary
Some American towns seize homes when property taxes are late and keep profits beyond what’s owed. Towanda Hall, $900 behind on a payment plan, faced losing her $300,000 home. Hall tried to pay, but officials would not accept it. Christina Martin of the Pacific Legal Foundation says the practice is unjust and unconstitutional, noting a prior case over an $8 debt. A judge dismissed Hall’s case because the government didn’t profit; the home was given to a private company run by the mayor and city administrator, which had made $10,000,000 selling foreclosed houses. In 11 states, local governments can grab your home and keep much more than what you owed; the Supreme Court ruled nine to nothing that this theft is unconstitutional. A grandmother in her car has since received $85,000, and the Foundation will continue to fight.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Did you know that some towns in America are basically stealing people's homes?
Speaker 1: One missed property tax payment and the government can take your home, sell it, and keep all of the profits.
Speaker 0: You heard that right. People lose their homes over one missed tax payment. It's hard to believe this happens in America, but it does. I reported on the practice a couple years ago and at the end of this video I'll cover what's new. But first, let's recap.
Speaker 2: I'm just still in shock.
Speaker 0: Towanda Hall was behind on her property taxes. She was on a payment plan, but she'd missed $900. She didn't expect to lose her entire $300,000 home.
Speaker 2: They took my whole house, my whole family's livelihood.
Speaker 0: And they didn't give you change. They kept it all. $286,000 more than what she owed. The county's lawyer says this practice may sound unfair, but it's also unfair to force those who pay their taxes to subsidize those who don't.
Speaker 2: I pay taxes.
Speaker 0: She's a nurse assistant.
Speaker 2: I'm on a brain trauma unit. I lift people. I bathe people, I work hard.
Speaker 0: When she found out she was gonna lose her home, she wanted to pay off the debt.
Speaker 2: I went to the mayor's office, I went down to the City County Building, they didn't want our money. They said no.
Speaker 0: They wanted your house.
Speaker 2: They wanted thousand
Speaker 0: dollar house rather than your tax payment.
Speaker 2: They stole our home from us and from our family, and it was a shock to all of us.
Speaker 3: Why isn't this illegal? I think it is illegal. I think it's unconstitutional.
Speaker 0: Christina Martin of the Pacific Legal Foundation.
Speaker 3: The government can't take more than it's owed. This is unjust, and it is unconstitutional.
Speaker 0: Martin won a similar case when a county took an entire home.
Speaker 1: Over, get this, an $8 debt.
Speaker 0: The government argued. There couldn't be anything more fair than informing property owners of what is going to happen, giving them time to act, and then letting them make an informed choice.
Speaker 3: Do you think if he knew he owed $8, he would have paid it? Of course. He didn't know, and there wasn't a proper incentive to let him know.
Speaker 0: So the government has an incentive to notify them in legalese so they can't understand it?
Speaker 3: Yes. And then they also have an incentive not to work with people when they are honestly trying to pay, like Towanda Hall.
Speaker 2: We did not receive anything other than get out.
Speaker 0: A judge dismissed Towanda's case because the government itself in her case did not make a profit. The town gave her home to this private company. It got the money.
Speaker 3: The government shouldn't be able to steal from its own people and then to give it over to their friends is just
Speaker 0: How do you know that they're their friends?
Speaker 3: The company is literally run by the mayor and the city administrator.
Speaker 0: Southfield mayor Ken Cyber acknowledges the company made $10,000,000 selling foreclosed houses. The
Speaker 4: mayor, I told him if I bring the money in today, could I get my property back? He told me point blankly, no. If you bring the money in, I'll take your money and take your house too.
Speaker 0: I wanted to ask him if he personally profited, but he wouldn't agree to an interview. I didn't think I was going to lose my house over $3,900. In 11 states, local governments, if you're behind on your taxes, can grab your home and keep much more than what you owed. Some guy comes in and says, how long will it take for you to get out?
Speaker 3: We have a client who's sleeping in her car right now. The city took her property, turned around and sold it within days of evicting her for $242,000
Speaker 0: You have gotten three states to stop doing this.
Speaker 3: Yes. We're asking the government to stop stealing people's life savings.
Speaker 0: Good. It often destroys lives. After Towanda's home was taken, her husband did construction work to try to recover their losses. He got sick, but then kept working. He died shortly after.
Speaker 2: It was terrible just to know that he struggled trying to make it right.
Speaker 0: The Pacific Legal Foundation appealed home thefts like that to the Supreme Court, and the court ruled nine to nothing that that kind of theft is unconstitutional. As Justice Gorsuch put it Everybody else has to abide by the usual rule, that you only take what you're owed. Finally. So now has the county that stole Towanda's house returned the excess money they took? No.
Now they're spending even more taxpayer money on legal fees forcing her to prove the house's value in court. But at least that grandmother who was living in her car has now received $85,000. And I wish I could say such abuses were finally over, but a handful of states still use loopholes to get around the Supreme Court ruling. The Pacific Legal Foundation says they'll continue to fight those cases until they end this practice for good.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
“We have to be unapologetic about our socialism,” says Zohran Mamdani, likely next mayor in NYC. But he should apologize! Socialism ALWAYS fails. MY last video covered some of his bad ideas, but sadly, he's got more. Here’s Part 2: https://t.co/0dcJiKcaiy
Video Transcript AI Summary
Socialist politicians are on the rise. "I'm running for mayor. This democratic socialist will probably be the next mayor of Minneapolis, and socialist Zoran Mondani is likely to be the next mayor of New York City." "We have to continue to elect more socialists, and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism." "But they should be apologetic. Socialism always fails." "Mamdani says he'll make our lives better by giving us free stuff." "I'll make childcare available to all New Yorkers at no cost." "Universal at no cost to New York families. Buses. Fast and free for every New Yorker." The piece notes "The original subways in New York were all private." "Private companies built most of the subways." It cites consequences: fare rises, delays, "world's most expensive subway line." It also covers minimum-wage impacts, "Flippy" robots, and Saint Paul rent controls as "the most stringent measure in the country," impacting permits. The interview ends with a challenge to Ron to defend socialist ideas.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Socialist politicians are on the rise. I'm running for mayor. This democratic socialist will probably be the next mayor of Minneapolis, and socialist Zoran Mondani is likely to be the next mayor of New York City.
Speaker 1: We have to continue to elect more socialists, and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism.
Speaker 0: But they should be apologetic. Socialism always fails. In my last video I covered some of Mamdani's bad ideas, but he has more. So I made this second video.
Speaker 1: This campaign is for every New Yorker who believes the government's job is to actually make our lives better.
Speaker 0: Mamdani says he'll make our lives better by giving us free stuff.
Speaker 1: I'll make childcare available to all New Yorkers at no cost.
Speaker 2: I like where he stands on freezing rent, making public transit cheap and free.
Speaker 1: Childcare. Universal at no cost to New York families. Buses. Fast and free for every New Yorker.
Speaker 0: And yet he has noticed that government doesn't do a great job now.
Speaker 1: These are the slowest buses in the country.
Speaker 0: Buses and subways are a good example of socialist confusion about what makes things work. I ask people, who do you think built New York City's subways?
Speaker 2: I think it was the government. Either president Eisenhower or maybe like a mayor.
Speaker 1: Union workers. Please stand away from the plentiful bench.
Speaker 0: It's logical to think that public transportation is something that must be done by government. Who else could afford to dig tunnels and create the system where everyone, rich and poor, ride for relatively little money? No private business would do that. The greedy owners wouldn't be able to charge riders enough to make a profit. But actually
Speaker 3: The original subways in New York were all private.
Speaker 1: It carried tens of millions of passengers.
Speaker 0: Private companies built most of the subways. Then after fifty years, they said, let's raise the fare from a nickel to a dime.
Speaker 3: People didn't like the idea of paying a higher fare, and, the mayor took advantage of that and said, well, fine. The government will take it over, and we won't raise the fare.
Speaker 0: But, of course, government did raise it. Our ride costs almost $3, and the subways have problems. Tunnels are deteriorating. Delays are inevitable. And when government tries to build new subways, they struggle.
This one was supposed to be done in 1938. Then they said 1980. It's still not done. And it's already the world's most expensive subway line. They work so slowly that the subway cars built for it, cars that cost a million dollars each, now won't be used because they no longer fit the tracks.
That's what you get when government runs things. The socialist politicians also say they'll make workers' lives better by raising the minimum wage to $30 an hour. That's popular. Last year, California's fast food workers celebrated the new $20 minimum wage.
Speaker 4: My workers, we did this.
Speaker 0: But when companies have to pay even beginners at least $20 an hour.
Speaker 2: Pizza Hut preemptively laid off 1,200 delivery drivers like Michael Ojeda.
Speaker 1: What's the point of the raise if you don't have a job anymore?
Speaker 0: 18,000 fast food jobs vanished while other states added jobs. Also, consumers have to pay more.
Speaker 2: Restaurants in the state have increased prices by 10% faster than all other states.
Speaker 0: It's just supply and demand. Socialists can force businesses to raise wages, but there's no free lunch. Employers respond either by raising prices or replacing workers with machines like Flippy. Flippy can cook everything from french fries and onion rings to cheese sticks. White Castle said it plans to add a 100 Flippies to its kitchens nationwide.
Finally, here's one more socialist idea that repeatedly has done more harm than good.
Speaker 1: We freeze the bread.
Speaker 0: Activists like that. Freeze the bread. But they only like it because they don't realize it creates shortages. Everywhere it's been tried. Saint Paul, Minnesota imposed rent controls.
Speaker 1: The most stringent measure in the country.
Speaker 0: So in Saint Paul's twin city, Minneapolis, socialist Ayesha Chugtai said
Speaker 4: I want us to to follow their lead.
Speaker 0: She's now vice president of the Minneapolis City Council. But when I interviewed her, she didn't even know that rent control stopped most apartment building in Saint Paul. Builders still build in Minneapolis. Building permits were up 65%. But in Saint Paul, they're down 60 because of rent control.
You're not gonna get more apartments by pushing this. Her silence reveals so much.
Speaker 4: I mean
Speaker 0: Don't politicians research issues before imposing government force on others?
Speaker 4: I'm gonna maintain that guaranteeing housing for people and making sure that they can stay in their homes matters
Speaker 2: more than anything else does.
Speaker 0: They just don't get it. I'd love to ask the man who's probably gonna be my new mayor. How will your socialist policy succeed when every other socialist government everywhere in the world has brought misery and poverty? So far he hasn't responded to my interview requests. It's too bad.
So Ron, you're just down the street. Come here. Defend your socialist ideas. Our studio here is open to you.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Minneapolis adopted most every "progressive" law: $15 min wage, housing subsidies, "green" goals, lots of school spending... Despite all that, the city's racial inequality is about the worst in the country. Government makes it worse by disincentivizing work, says @LewisForMN: https://t.co/HJin6PUuCU
Video Transcript AI Summary
- Overnight, Minneapolis on fire.
- The crowd erupted in cheers as the council voted unanimously to move ahead with a $15 minimum wage.
- The same city council that voted to abolish the police department.
- Minneapolis income gap between whites and African Americans is the second worst in the country.
- Ilhan Omar, the other day, said we need to abolish capitalism.
- Time to end capitalism as we know it.
- Capitalism as we know it's got us the housing crisis right now, and it's got us climate change.
- Everything they're proposing hasn't worked, which is why we're talking about Minneapolis.
- A rising tide truly lifts all boats.
- When socialism fails, the apologists always say, we just didn't do it enough.
- Give me low taxes and give me public order.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Overnight, Minneapolis on fire. When Minneapolis burned after police killed George Floyd, people wondered, why would this happen in Minneapolis? This is a city where politicians do most everything the protesters say they want.
Speaker 1: The crowd erupted in cheers as the council voted unanimously to move ahead with a $15 minimum wage.
Speaker 2: If you wanted a poster child for, the progressive movement, it would be Minneapolis. Minnesota senate
Speaker 0: candidate Jason Lewis.
Speaker 2: This is the same city council that voted to abolish the police department.
Speaker 0: The council, which has no Republicans, spends money on most every progressive idea.
Speaker 3: Climate change resilience An 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 0: They applaud themselves for forcing businesses to give workers more time off.
Speaker 1: The people, you marry. You never give us people.
Speaker 0: They pushed taxpayer subsidized housing.
Speaker 1: It took members less than five minutes to approve this ordinance.
Speaker 0: They passed that higher minimum wage.
Speaker 1: We have now won $15 numbers.
Speaker 0: But despite all those progressive policies meant to make life more fair.
Speaker 1: Minneapolis income gap between whites and African Americans is the second worst in the country.
Speaker 0: That confuses the media. Minneapolis had progressive policies, says the Washington Post, but its economy still left black families behind. They choose the word but. The word should be therefore. After all
Speaker 2: When you take away the incentive for work and savings and investment, you get less of it.
Speaker 0: When government sends checks to people who don't work, more people don't work.
Speaker 1: There's a sign behind you that says Waverly Job Center. Do have any intention of going in to get a job? I'm not looking for a job.
Speaker 0: And guarantees like a higher minimum wage and forced family leave raise the cost of workers, which means some people never get higher.
Speaker 1: In Minneapolis, we now recycle organics.
Speaker 0: And the higher taxes to pay for all the programs means some businesses never open.
Speaker 2: I've been touring the the businesses that were burned and did not mention global warming, recycling, or the environment one single time. You know what they say? Give me low taxes and give me public order. If you don't have good schools, low taxes, and and low crime, you're not gonna have small businessmen and women investing their lifetime of savings to open a business.
Speaker 1: A creative tax cut, creating more jobs
Speaker 2: That used to be the hallmark of the Democratic Party when John Kennedy used to talk about it.
Speaker 0: Democrats did once argue that limited government would allow free people to create wealth.
Speaker 2: Now it's command and control economy, and quite frankly, they're not even shy about it in Minnesota. Ilhan Omar, the other day, said we need to abolish capitalism.
Speaker 1: As long as our economy and political systems prioritize profit, we will perpetuate this inequality.
Speaker 2: So we can have equal poverty for everybody.
Speaker 0: She doesn't say she wants equal poverty. She thinks her ideas will lift everybody up.
Speaker 2: Show us, Ilan. Where's it worked? Everything they're proposing hasn't worked, which is why we're talking about Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: We raise our fist for the innocent black lives subject to racial discrimination.
Speaker 3: I think those disparities were caused by a long trail of historic racism.
Speaker 0: Cam Gordon is a Minneapolis councilman. He wins elections here because he's in sync with local voters.
Speaker 1: So you do have allies inside of government.
Speaker 0: Gordon tweets things like Time to end capitalism as we know it.
Speaker 3: That would be good.
Speaker 1: How would it be good?
Speaker 3: We could have more democratic control of our resources.
Speaker 1: Every alternative to capitalism brings stagnation and poverty.
Speaker 3: And I think that we can take care of each other better so that we're actually looking out for the vulnerable and the needy and also making sure that we have an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past.
Speaker 1: We are demanding justice not just for Floyd, but for a corrupt system. Because racism has never been over.
Speaker 2: Who didn't want justice for mister Floyd? There was unanimity from everybody. The Democrat County attorney got the policeman charged in four days the fastest ever. What does that have to do with abolishing our economic system?
Speaker 0: They would say economic freedom just means white people, insiders, get rich.
Speaker 2: But when we had this economic engine going before the lockdown, the people gaining the most were at the bottom end of the wage scale. A rising tide truly lifts all boats.
Speaker 0: He's right. In the past fifty years, while progressives attacked profits. That pursuit of profit, capitalism, lifted more than a billion people around the world out of the misery of extreme poverty.
Speaker 3: Problem with capitalism as we know it is there seems to be this idea that we have to have constant growth.
Speaker 1: Growth works. Growth lifts many of the poor.
Speaker 3: But it lifts the rich much faster.
Speaker 1: So what if the rich get filthy rich? If the poor do better too?
Speaker 3: Capitalism as we know it's got us the housing crisis right now, and it's got us climate change. It's actually gonna destroy the planet.
Speaker 1: But your ideas are gonna bring poverty and tyranny. They have again and again. Every time it's been The idea
Speaker 3: What idea? Community based economics?
Speaker 1: These are families that are 42% black.
Speaker 0: By community based, he means the community will decide what everyone must be paid, what landlords may charge, even what grocery stores stock. Sure sounds like socialism to me.
Speaker 2: When socialism fails, the apologists always say, we just didn't do it enough. We just didn't do it the right way. That's always been the case, and it's always failed.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Many act as if slavery was a uniquely American crime. “One reason,” says author Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630), “is that a lot of black people survived here.” He argues that much of what Americans are taught about slavery is just wrong: https://t.co/2dJD3pNmyq
Video Transcript AI Summary
Americans are taught that America was the worst when it comes to slavery, but this is complete nonsense. American slavery is portrayed as uniquely evil because slaves were considered property, but generational slavery was common worldwide. While the U.S. receives focus due to slavery, most slaves were not shipped there; the U.S. received under 400,000 out of 10-12 million.
Focusing on historical abuse by white people won't help the black community gain capital, as modern problems aren't tied to ethnic conflict from 160 years ago. Problems in the black community increased with welfare programs. Almost every society had slavery, including the Aztecs, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Vikings, and especially the Arab world, who took about 17 million people from Africa.
The British and Americans were rare in abolishing slavery. The British Navy sank around 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 people. Saudi Arabia only recently abolished the slave trade, and the global slavery index estimates over 700,000 slaves still exist there. American slavery was horrible but not unique. Focusing solely on America's evils hasn't improved race relations.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: The original sin of slavery. The original sin of slavery.
Speaker 1: Today, Americans are taught when it comes to slavery, America was the worst.
Speaker 0: The Atlantic slave trade from Africa to The Americas was different from any other type of slavery. The United States didn't inherit slavery from anybody. We created it.
Speaker 1: American slavery was worse because
Speaker 0: The slaves were reduced to to property. They were channeled property. No other system of slavery did that except of American slavery.
Speaker 1: That's complete nonsense. Wilfred Riley is a political science professor and author of Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me.
Speaker 0: Generational slavery, like if you're the son of a slave, you're a slave, that was extraordinarily common. Slavery around the world was slavery.
Speaker 1: Books like this, Unfinished Nation. Yeah. Slaves in Africa were kept unfree only for a fixed term.
Speaker 0: No is the short answer. Most of the slaves taken by these sort of players would be either kept as slaves for their entire life or more likely sold to the whites and the Arabs in two years. Today, partly thanks to the New York Times sixteen nineteen project, students are taught that America's slavery was unlike anything that existed before. We're the worst society ever. We've done things that no one else has ever done.
And sometimes there's nothing wrong with acknowledging your historical mistakes. I mean, I am black, Irish, a bit native American at least per the family lore. I mean, those are those are three peoples that have experienced a great deal historically. Nothing wrong with acknowledging that. But, it's extremely odd to focus only on the negatives of your society and to exaggerate those.
Americans are taught that slavers caught people in Africa and shipped them here. But few were taught that most slaves were not shipped to The United States. Between ten point seven million and twelve million slaves from Africa went to the New World. We got a little under 400,000. Under 400,000 out of 10,000,000.
The extreme focus on slavery in The United States, why did that happen? One reason is that a lot of black people survived here. Slavery was harsh, but it is a lot less harsh than clearing the Brazilian jungle. Alright. But American blacks are at a disadvantage.
They have less capital, financial and educational capital. What's the harm in pointing out how abusive white people were? The harm is that pointing out how abusive white people were is not going to get black Americans any more capital. Most of the problems of the modern black community don't have anything to do with historical ethnic conflict a hundred sixty years ago.
Speaker 1: The great society asked not how much,
Speaker 0: but how good.
Speaker 1: Riley says most of the problems began when welfare began. Crime in the
Speaker 0: black community, every time I've tried to break this out, increased about 800% between, say, 1963 and 1993. Racism didn't increase between 1960 and the modern era. You're looking at the impacts of the great society, the welfare programs. Riley argues it's better to teach the truth that almost every society had slavery. The Aztecs, the Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Vikings, and most of all, the Arab world.
The Arabs were probably history's premier slave traders. Sometimes they captured poor whites from Slavic countries. The Muslims, many of whom were dark skinned or even black, took so many blonde slaves out of this region that they gave the world Slav, slave, to the global slave population. Many slaves were forced into harems. Sexual slavery was a very much a part of slavery.
Like, if your group was defeated in war, the men would probably just be killed or they'd be sold as farmhands. The women would often be sold as harem girls or prostitutes. More than a million Europeans were enslaved, but Muslim slave traders took more people from Africa. The Arabs targeting Africa took out about 17,000,000 people.
Speaker 1: The British and then the Americans were the rare people who moved to abolish slavery.
Speaker 0: So, yeah, the British Navy, in a story almost no one now knows, sank something like 1,600 slave ships. It freed a 150,000 people that were enslaved at the time.
Speaker 1: Because the Brits objected for moral reasons.
Speaker 0: Yeah. They'd had enough of it.
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia only abolished the slave trade relatively recently. Well, it's another inconvenient fact. Right? The global slavery index estimates that even now, although slavery is officially illegal, there are more than 700,000 slaves in Saudi Arabia. Where there were no westerners, you'd have a lot of slavery for a long time, and you do.
American slavery was horrible, but it wasn't unique. Our culture would be healthier if we learned about that. And schools dwelling on America's evils hasn't helped Americans get over them. Gallup polls show that after schools started focusing on oppression, race relations got worse. The idea of generational slavery, the idea of slave trading, none
Speaker 0: of that was was unique to America. And another thing, you don't need radicalism to critique the worst excesses of an existing system. All you need is incrementalism and honesty.
Speaker 1: In a few weeks, I'll post a video about another of Riley's myths. The claim that before Columbus, the native people were kind stewards of the environment.
Speaker 0: I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
A a socialist is likely to be New York City's next mayor! He makes economically ignorant promises like free busing and city run grocery stores. Voters should listen to @GloriaAlvarez85. She experienced socialism first hand: https://t.co/NOF2uh8bVP
Video Transcript AI Summary
Gloria Alvarez, a viral influencer and critic of socialism, is running a "bullshit" campaign for president of Guatemala, despite not meeting the age or party requirements. She aims to highlight the lack of concrete proposals from other candidates. Alvarez argues socialism has failed globally due to its ignorance of human nature and creates a "Stockholm syndrome" where people demand more government despite its corruption.
She contrasts Latin America's cycle of socialism with the success of free markets, citing Chile as an example, while acknowledging Pinochet's dictatorship tainted the perception of economic freedom. Alvarez advocates for free markets and individual freedoms, criticizing both the socialist left and the "mediocre" populist right in Latin America. Her platform includes decriminalizing surrogacy, psychedelics, and sex work to empower individuals and create new industries. Despite facing hate, her campaign has resonated with young people.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Gloria Alvarez, here she's dressed like a Soviet apparatchik, is a viral influencer. She educates people about the failures of socialism. Here, she tells a Spanish legislature. Nothing is free. This group liked that.
But in Latin America, where she's from, leftists like these people dressed in orange sometimes stop her from speaking. They don't like that Alvarez says things like
Speaker 1: Socialism is responsible for one hundred million deaths.
Speaker 0: Alvarez was once a Stassel TV fellow where she did this video.
Speaker 1: Where has socialism ever worked? Nowhere.
Speaker 0: This video got 15,000,000 views. And now You're running for president of your country?
Speaker 1: I am. I'm running for president of Guatemala.
Speaker 0: Guatemala is one of Latin America's poorer countries. It veers between crony capitalism and socialism. What she's seen makes her want to warn people about socialism. You're teaching millennials socialism?
Speaker 1: Yes. This came out after a survey where they said 10 of every 10 millennials, eight of them would support socialism, but then when they were asked to define or describe socialism, none of them could. So I grabbed a Soviet hat that I bought in St. Petersburg, and I put a Che Guevara sticker with Mickey Mouse ears, and I started explaining Marxism and communism and socialism from its very beginnings until its current days in Latin America. And the basic premise was that when Marx was around, there was no psychology.
We didn't know that we are wired to have self esteem and self interest. So it's an obsolete idea that has unfortunately killed millions of people. And yeah, it's one of the videos, although it's twenty six minutes, and they say that millennials don't like long content, this one got a lot of views.
Speaker 0: How do you know about socialism?
Speaker 1: Well, I studied in a very libertarian university in Francisco Marroquin, and one thing that they do is actually teaching socialism and communism. And they make you read Marx and Engels and all the struggles that were happening in the nineteenth century with the Industrial Revolution. And I think that this is what is lacking in most national universities. People push for socialism because they don't study it. They don't know its history.
They don't know its massive failures.
Speaker 0: Young people in America like socialism, but it's bigger in Latin America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the constant in Latin America. We have like 50 shades of socialism, right? You have extreme socialism in countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and then you have less worse cases, but that are also dramatic, especially when you talk about massive inflation like Argentina or Brazil or Mexico, moderate socialism like Honduras or Guatemala, but we're all part of that same mentality that the government has these magical powers in order to control the economy, tell you how to live your life, and definitely not let you be free because you're too dumb or too poor in order to be free and responsible of your own life.
Speaker 0: And people see the effects. They see the inflation. They see property being taken. But they keep voting for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like a Stockholm syndrome, you know. Everywhere you go in Latin America, you have massive protests all of the time. Unions protesting, the education system protesting, the health system protesting all of the time. But when you go and you ask people who should take care of the health, who should take care of education, of football, of arts, of whatever, they always answer the government.
It's like constantly complaining about corruption, but then the solution is more government. So how are you going to not have corruption if you leave everything in the hands of the government? Unfortunately, what we're seeing is the Latin Americanization of the rest of the world. Because when you look at Europe or you look at The United States, they are becoming more like us. The circus that we have been used to for decades, now you see it here.
Things like the riots in the capital or what is going on in Europe. Those things are like we're used to them because we are developing countries, but it is sad to see how more developed countries are also falling in this trap.
Speaker 0: I would think people would see that chaos. They'd want to move the other way.
Speaker 1: And some of them do. In fact, 60,000,000 Latin Americans have voted with their feet, and they live in The United States. And in cases like my country, they are responsible for the number one income of dollars that we have back home. Remittances sustain our country.
Speaker 0: People in The United States sending money back to Guatemala. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the number $1 income that we have. So this proves that we don't need governments to take care of our poor people. If there is freedom, if there is private property, if there is rule of law, if there is an atmosphere where you can thrive, then Latin Americans do thrive. I do not believe in those theories that say that because we have better weather or because we are an inferior race or whatever. I just think that whenever there is freedom and rule of law, people thrive.
And this is what we're seeing. Venezuelans don't stay in Venezuela. You don't see Hondurans moving to neighboring Nicaragua, which is more socialist. They come to The United States.
Speaker 0: And they prosper when they do.
Speaker 1: They do, a lot. And then they sustain the ones that are left behind. And it seems to me we have like two different Latin Americans at the same time. The moochers and the looters that Anne Rand so well defined in Atlas Shrugged, they are the ones that want to keep Latin America in socialism, in protectionism, in markets that are not open. And then there are people that struggle to get out of this reality and they start thriving and working abroad and helping the people back home to have a life.
Speaker 0: The moochers and the looters. Mhmm. That's harsh.
Speaker 1: It is, but it's it's true.
Speaker 0: In your video, you say expropriations that are still an everyday thing in Latin America. Yeah. Government seizes property every day?
Speaker 1: Almost every day. In cases like Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, it's an everyday thing. They had to abandon their farm in Nicaragua because they protested against Ortega's plans to take their land. And then they come up always with this confusing laws where, for example, the mining industry, the hydroelectric industry are never secured because any day the president can say, well, there's this new law and we're gonna seize some of your production. So when you don't have certainty, it's really hard to invest.
Speaker 0: You gave a speech to a local Spanish government where you talked about free stuff, free education. You said nothing is free.
Speaker 1: I wish that there were free stuff. I wish that there were trees where schools and hospitals will just rise out of nothing. But if you're going to pay people for what they do, there needs to be an economy that runs in order to have supply and demand. And it's incredible how governments in Latin America are always promising free stuff when every cent that the government has is because someone else produced it and was forced to pay it into taxes.
Speaker 0: So the rich will pay.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, the rich always have these agreements with the governments where they evade taxes, and then you have massive informal economies when the middle class is always the one paying more taxes.
Speaker 0: The rich, the very rich can slime out of these rules.
Speaker 1: They do.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Talk about some of your popular TikTok videos.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with us?
Speaker 0: Are we stupid? We have Stockholm syndrome? We want to live in misery?
Speaker 1: Yeah, ask these questions rhetorically like Socrates did back in the time of the Greeks because maybe when you question people why they keep doing what they're doing, they can reflect. I think that not only you have to show them that freedom works, it's also asking them the honest question, why do people keep doing what doesn't work? And not only socialists, not only is the left wing, it's also the right wing. Oppositions are so crappy in Latin America that then socialists get back into power. We've seen this from 2015 until today.
Macri in Argentina, Duque in Colombia, Pena Nieto in Mexico, Perez Molina in Guatemala horrible right wing that doesn't work because they don't push for free markets.
Speaker 0: Molina, when running for office, proposed good things like legalizing drugs. But once in office, he took bribes and conspired to help his friends. Drug reform never happened.
Speaker 1: They use and manipulate people with some of the libertarian ideas when they're in campaign. But once they go into office, they raise taxes, they continue with protectionism, they don't do any of the truly retiring reforms that should be needed in order to have rule of law and free markets.
Speaker 0: Cubans warned Venezuelans about Yugoslavia?
Speaker 1: They did. They did in 1988, and the Venezuelans would laugh at them, and they would be like, Beware, this is how Fidel started. And they would be like, No, Chavez is going to be different. And then Colombians say the same about Petro, having the Venezuelans, you know, right next door, and they were like, beware, Petro sounds like Chavez, and we always say, no, no, no, this is not going to happen here, until it does. And it was the same with
Speaker 0: the
Speaker 1: You
Speaker 0: see the refugees from Venezuela escape to Colombia Yeah. And the Colombians vote for socialism.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. It's it's insane. It is insane.
Speaker 0: Socialism has a good sales agent.
Speaker 1: That is the problem. They hate free markets, but they have the best marketing ever.
Speaker 0: Talk about this video of you. You're in Guatemala. There are Marxist protesters hosting Chavez's brother.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. They're bringing Hugo Chavez's brother to the national university, San Carlos University, USAC, which I paid with my taxes. And I'm like, okay, so let's let's get you a voice inside of this conference. And in the minute that we got there, these students that act like a Guatemalan KKK because they disguised themselves, they came out and they say, you're not allowed to talk. And I was like, why not?
I paid this university with my taxes. You're hosting the brother of a dictator and an assassin. So it's only fair that there are the two sides of the story. Unfortunately, they didn't let us in.
Speaker 0: They're kind of like antifa in The United States.
Speaker 1: Yep. The cancel culture is always from that side and that's that's sad because it's like, well, if if you're in the right side of history, what are you afraid These kind of conferences are multiplying all over Latin America because this is the thing with socialism of the twenty first century. They have so much money through drug dealing, the oil of Venezuela, that they do massive propaganda in the rest of the countries to spread lies.
Speaker 0: In Mexico, they've just elected a big, almost socialist.
Speaker 2: Mexico has elected leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as its next president.
Speaker 0: Double the minimum wage. Is he a socialist?
Speaker 1: He's a socialist, but now we have a new breed of socialism because after the disaster of Venezuela, nobody really dares to go just like one day with their finger and be like, Seize this. Expropiate that. They do it in a more subtle way, and this is what is happening in Mexico. For example, they banned the airport, which was one of the most important investment deals for Mexico in the next fifty years. But this guy is not as extreme as Hugo Chavez was, and that's why people say, Well, this is not socialism, but it is.
You already don't have free markets in Latin America, and then guys like this come and they just make it worse.
Speaker 0: Chile was the success story of Latin America. Privatized its social security. It had a relatively free market, and yet there are protests all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Protesters targeted not just the fair hike and the education policy, but the whole neoliberal system and its impact on health care, rent, utilities, pensions.
Speaker 1: Not only protests, they want to go all the way like the Cuban model. They want to go all the way Marxist. The way I explain it is that you cannot enforce free markets through a dictatorship.
Speaker 0: Unfortunately, in Chile, Augusto Pinochet tried to do that. Milton Friedman, a free market economist from the University of Chicago, met with Pinochet.
Speaker 3: The Chicago boys played a major role in designing and implementing the economic reforms.
Speaker 0: Following their advice, Chile's dictator cut tariffs and taxes. He privatized state industries and Social Security. Chile prospered. When Pinochet took over, Chile was poorer than the rest of Latin America. Adopting free markets made Chile dramatically richer.
Speaker 3: Chile is by all odds the the best success story in Latin America today.
Speaker 0: However, Pinochet was also a vicious dictator. His cruelty allowed leftists to smear economic freedom as something awful. But it was Pinochet who was awful, not economic freedom. Markets by letting people vote with our dollars, Fight tyrants and central planners.
Speaker 4: In one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America, Chileans are more affluent than at any time in their history.
Speaker 1: Freedom works.
Speaker 0: That's why Gloria Alvarez keeps making these videos.
Speaker 1: Do the educational work and the philosophical work that it takes into understanding why freedom is important. And I think that the example of Chile is very similar to The United States. If you don't keep educating new generations in the philosophical aspect of why individual freedoms are sacred, eventually you will have a generation with material wealth that forgets the importance of these values and then they go out and say, let's have socialism.
Speaker 3: Equation, feed the poor. This is class war.
Speaker 0: I don't get it. They can see it. Look at Uruguay over there. Look at Argentina. Look at horrors at Venezuela.
They're not saying we want that, but they think they can get it without the bad stuff?
Speaker 1: Exactly. Always says this time is gonna work. It didn't work in Cuba because Fidel got corrupted. It didn't work in Venezuela because Chavez died. It didn't work in Brazil because they incarcerated Lula, and now Lula is back in place.
And it's always, let's try it with the new guy. The new guy is going to do it better. And it doesn't. It is what George Orwell explained in Animal Farm.
Speaker 0: From now on, I'll protect your interests and I'll make your decisions.
Speaker 1: The pigs become worse than the humans. One of the most clear examples has been Spain with Pablo Iglesias.
Speaker 5: Fist in the air, fighting for the downtrodden.
Speaker 1: Their socialist leader, and in the moment that he got more and more power, he bought a mansion.
Speaker 5: The new 250 square meter home, swimming pool, and guest house, adding up to a total property value of €600,000.
Speaker 1: And when his followers see that, they always say, Well, yeah, okay, but it's a little house. There's always this justifying the socialist leader when they start living in contradictions. Because when socialism happens and it collapses, and as Margaret Thatcher says, they run out of other people's money, they don't move to Cuba or Nicaragua or North Korea. They go to Miami, they do shopping in New York, they move to Paris like the daughter of Hugo Chavez. And when people see these contradictions, it's like nothing happens.
It's really frustrating.
Speaker 0: I noticed that Bernie Sanders, socialist, has three houses.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Socialists always loved their luxuries. All throughout history, can see that. Rolex in the Che Guevara, big houses, yachts with Fidel Castro.
Speaker 0: This popular new president of Chile. 35 year old Gabriel Boric will become the new president of Chile. Wants to abolish the successful private pension funds, make public transport free, universal health care free, raise taxes on the rich, end student debt. These are popular ideas here too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're popular everywhere. It doesn't matter that they don't work. They sound beautiful and people like beautiful. That's the thing with socialism. It's like a beautiful iceberg, right?
In an iceberg you see the tip and it's all about brotherhood and free stuff, and we're all going to get along and empathy. But in the depths of that iceberg, the sea level, is where the misery and the genocide and the injustice and the exiles happen and nobody seems to see it. Whereas the capitalist or libertarian iceberg, it sounds horrible in the tip. It's all about selfishness and greed and individualism and capitalism and all these buzzwords that people hate. But it's in its depth that progress and freedom and tolerance and thriving economies actually happen, right?
So we're competing against a very unfair marketing because nobody studies the depths of of of the history and lessons that economics give us.
Speaker 6: Chilean voters rejected the proposed new constitution. They said no to what would have been one of the most progressive constitutions in the world.
Speaker 0: In Chile, the people did vote against the new socialist constitution.
Speaker 1: Yes, by a bit. Because most countries in Latin America are divided into people who want to thrive, the mortars of the world, like Ayn Rand would call them, the Howard Roark's, the Dagny Taggart's, the pushers of the world versus the moochers and the looters. And sometimes I say in Latin America, listen, it's going to be impossible to save our countries. If you look at our political map, we're always going from extreme left to mediocre right wing, and it's just 50 shades of socialism. So maybe we're never going to be able to save Mexico or Uruguay or Argentina.
But maybe we can ask for a new territory where the people that are fed up with this mediocre right wing and horrible left can live in peace with actual free markets. I think that that's even more possible than just expecting a country not to be in this horrible pendulum.
Speaker 0: Your country has been sort of in the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, when you have this extreme socialism, anything can see as freedom. But the sad thing of Guatemala is that it follows Marxist logics in its health system, in its education system, in its rule of law. Unfortunately, the one and only task that the government should have, security and justice, is the least funded one. For every quetzal, that's our dollar, that we pay in taxes, only 2¢ go to security and justice.
And the result of this is that 98% of the crimes are never solved. Our jails and prisons are universities for thieves. You have, of course, judges that are always bribed. And 98% of the national budget is spent on bureaucracy, useless bureaucracy. So when you don't have a government doing its job and you have massive bureaucracy stealing, it is really hard to have rule of law and free markets implemented.
This is the case of Guatemala, and the saddest part of it is that we have had right wing governments, a military, a comedian, a doctor, that have only made things worse. So imagine having like three Donald Trumps in a row in The United States. How are you going to tell people not to go to the other extreme of socialism? I mean, I empathize with that when I see the mediocrity of the right wing in Latin America. And I cannot only blame the success of socialism.
It's also the mediocrity of the populist right wing.
Speaker 0: But your presidential campaign is all social issues, like decriminalized surrogate motherhood.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, but in a free market. I won't ask anybody to use their taxes in order to fund programs for surrogacy.
Speaker 0: Why is it important to decriminalize surrogacy?
Speaker 1: Well, when you look at a country like Guatemala where there's such poverty, malnourishment, we have one of the highest indexes of malnourishment and abandoned children. Why is Guatemala poor? And how can we have different markets that are not controlled by the oligarchs that hate free markets and love their protectionisms and their privileges? And thinking of what those markets could be in order for people to step out of poverty, well, your first vehicle to step out of poverty is, of course, your body. So what can a woman do with her body in order to acquire wealth?
One of those options is surrogacy.
Speaker 0: Which is not legal in Guatemala.
Speaker 1: It's not legal.
Speaker 0: People in America say it's wrong. Heritage Foundation surrogacy harms women and children. In Britain, The Guardian. All surrogacy is exploitation.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing with freedom, and especially when you're competing against utopias, because socialism is a utopia, right? They promise you heaven on earth. But you're also competing against this new conservative, extreme right wing utopia, that there was a better past somewhere in the 50s. So when you're competing against two utopias and you come with freedom, people are like, Yeah, but convince me. Convince me that your solution is better.
And what I say to people is, Listen, freedom is not perfection. All that freedom implies is that nobody else makes decisions for you, that you are the own agent of your life and that we are going to treat you as the adult that you are, not as a kid that is incapable of really taking care of yourself. This is what freedom means. And people don't like freedom. They like their populist messiah promising them bullshit because then it doesn't happen.
The populist messiah promises you never happens. Free stuff, a life without effort, happiness forever. So, what I am offering here is an alternative based in reality. But it is hard because people like their utopias.
Speaker 0: You want to legalize psychedelics?
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 0: Mushrooms, Ayahuasca. People have had bad trips.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I know that there are risks, but the more that something is transparent and the more that you have information, the better decisions that you can make. Guatemala, because of its geographical position in the planet and its amazing nature, is already a natural house for all these plant medicines that are demonstrating amazing results for people with PTSD, obesity, obsessive compulsive disorders, depression, suicidal thoughts.
Speaker 0: They grow all of their herbs to create their local medicine.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking, imagine our country could become the number one, or at least in the top five, safe havens for the world for alternative medicine. Let's open new industries that can make our country thrive.
Speaker 2: But you believe in freedom, don't
Speaker 0: want to legalize other drugs.
Speaker 1: Someday, other Guatemalans could see that legalizing drugs is the better way because the war on drugs is a complete failure. But I think if we tackle first plant medicine, it's going to be easier for a super conservative country to understand its benefits.
Speaker 0: You want to legalize sex work, prostitution? Yes,
Speaker 1: because it's already happening in Guatemala, and unfortunately women are exploited and enslaved by their pimps in horrible ways. Prostitutes are not safe anywhere in the country. If you legalize prostitution, you have a chance of making them their main characters of their own industry, and they can call the shots worldwide if you legalize it because the difference is your will. If you voluntarily, as an adult, want to have consensual relations with somebody, why should a government forbid that? And it is easier when something is transparent and legal to tackle the things that are not.
Speaker 0: What's the reaction been to your campaign?
Speaker 1: It's been really good, especially among young people. For years, I always received a lot of hate from socialists to conservatives, and this campaign How
Speaker 0: do you receive the hate? Just comments on social media?
Speaker 1: Social media, yeah. A lot of harassment and comments, and this campaign, in my postings, 95% is positive comments.
Speaker 0: There's a movement toward your ideas.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 0: But how old are you?
Speaker 1: I am 38.
Speaker 0: To run for president in Guatemala, the rule says you gotta be 40.
Speaker 1: You gotta be 40, and you have to have a political party. I don't have neither, and I am not interested in having the political So,
Speaker 0: presidential campaign is bullshit.
Speaker 1: It is bullshit, but it's less bullshit than the bullshit presented by the 32 candidates and the 32 political parties that they are not proposing anything. So one of my dreams with this campaign is for people to compare. How come this crazy woman that cannot run for president is telling me concretely her 15 proposals, whereas all these candidates that are currently running are not telling me anything? So who is the bullshitter? And what I am looking for with this campaign is to get invited to a presidential debate.
Speaker 0: And if you were in the debate?
Speaker 1: I would confront all the candidates with their lack of proposals.
Speaker 0: When you messaged me on Twitter, you didn't say that you couldn't be president.
Speaker 1: I say it in the last bit of the video because, you know, this is like a a movie happening, and and I I wanted to do the trailer. But you know what is also very interesting? Most Guatemalans before my campaign, didn't even know that 40 years old was required or that you needed to have a political party. So, only making people knowing that is a big difference and a big change because now I have Guatemalans saying, oh my god, I didn't know that that was a thing.
Speaker 0: In The United States, you would be eligible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because here is 35, right? And independent candidacies are legal already.
Speaker 0: So Guatemala has a lot of dumb rules.
Speaker 1: Yes, it does. More than 70,000 to be exact that, of course, nobody reads. How are you gonna read 70,000 laws? It's ridiculous.
Speaker 0: Gloria Alvarez, good luck to you.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, John.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Government SPIES ON US. @Snowden knows that better than anyone. Here, we talk for nearly 2 hours... he debunks many pro-spying myths: https://t.co/fGAL3SXyQh
Video Transcript AI Summary
Edward Snowden discussed his decision to leak classified information, driven by the discrepancy between the government's public representation and its private actions, particularly regarding mass surveillance. He cited Senator Wyden's exchange with James Clapper as a turning point, highlighting the NSA's collection of Americans' phone records and internet communications, despite public denials. Snowden emphasized that this was a "breathtaking sweep of intentional knowing public deception."
He detailed how he witnessed the NSA collecting more domestic communications than those of adversaries, aided by the Five Eyes Network. Snowden described his role in modernizing NSA systems and eventually realizing the extent of the surveillance, leading him to speak out despite potential repercussions. He claims internal channels were ineffective, citing the case of Thomas Drake.
Snowden argues mass surveillance is ineffective at stopping terrorism, but useful for information gathering and social influence. He addressed concerns about government access to personal data, even if companies like Google and Facebook also have it, emphasizing the government's ability to collate data across different silos. Snowden discussed his exile, the charges against him under the Espionage Act, and the potential for a pardon. He also warned about the dangers of "LOVEINT" and the increasing data collection by companies like Amazon, stressing the need for a basic privacy law and political action to protect individual rights.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: I recently spoke with Edward Snowden, a military contractor who revealed government secrets and now lives in exile. Did Snowden do the right thing? After researching this, I now think he did. You decide. Here's our full interview.
You went to work for the government. You signed agreements saying you wouldn't talk about what you did. Why go to the media?
Speaker 1: We talk about awards for progress and civil liberties. We talk about the importance of independent thought, and and the history of it. And this is really what it is. You know, I I I did sign up to work for the government. I volunteered for the army.
I I applied to the CIA. I worked as a contractor in NSA facilities on NSA computers again and again and again. People think contractors like you're working in a different building, but no, you're you're in it's just a continuation of government service.
Speaker 0: And also you joined the military after nine eleven because you wanted to fight.
Speaker 1: I did when everyone else was protesting. I was a younger man, and I was, much less politically educated, I'd like to think, than I am today. You know, some things only come with experience. But so, yeah, it raises this question of how does, you know, how does someone like who I was become someone like who I am? And I gotta tell you, was hard.
It wasn't easy. It wasn't natural. It wasn't something I ever expected to do. But like I said, I signed up to all of these things. I volunteered because I believed, in a prevailing, national mythos, to which we are all subscribed When we're born into our country, when we go to a school system where we're basically the only one in the world, where you get up in the morning and you pledge allegiance to a flag.
We all have the same stories. We all watch the same channels, you know. We see men like you on on TV kind of telling us what's happening in the world and what it's like. And what changed me was a realization that as someone who held a top secret clearance and had access far beyond what a top secret clearance would entitle someone to generally, the private truths of what was actually happening in our government, what our government actually does, what our nation was involved in without the knowledge or consent of the people that it purports to represent, was very different than the public representation of it. And that really just that seed alone was the start of a journey that would take me many years to ultimately realize and the decision as you said to come forward.
And the ultimate reason why I came forward was simply to bridge that gap in my own experience and and share that with everyone else. To share the realization that I came to that what we were being told is true and real and is the state of our world was in fact a witting and continuing lie by some of the highest representatives in our government. And I felt that people needed to know that.
Speaker 0: What was the lie?
Speaker 1: I think the most famous one for me and really, know, the turning point would be when you look at the exchange between senator Ron Wyden and then director of national intelligence, James Clapper. This is a sworn testimony in front of the senate intelligence committee. And for those who don't remember it because it was some time ago, it looked a little bit like this.
Speaker 2: So what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? No, sir. It does not.
Speaker 3: Not willingly. There are cases where they could in inadvertently perhaps, collect, but not not willingly.
Speaker 1: Now the importance of this is to to think about what that represented. This of course was was false. The NSA was collecting the phone records of every Verizon customer on a daily basis. They were doing this for other major telecommunications providers as well. I just didn't have the judicial order for that.
And this was happening to the Internet. This was happening to email communications. What was happening was a change in technology from the old Internet that was a sort of non commercial, very individual, and simple. It was pretty crude. Everything was cobbled together to this larger more corporatized Internet where all of our communications, interactions, all of our relationships, all the things that we read and like online are being passed to us through a Facebook or a Google or an Apple.
And in secret these these companies had basically gone far beyond what the law required of government to join programs where they would share information with the NSA through the front door of the FBI. And it was continuing for years without the kind of individual warrants and legal process that we expected and we had become accustomed to that we're told in the constitution this is how our government works. And so for me, when you ask what was the the lie, the lie was not any one particular part of these programs. It wasn't a particular detail. It was the fact that there was a breath taking sweep of intentional knowing public deception by people at the level of the senate, by people in these different executive agencies, intelligence agencies, and then in the White House itself, even from the president, then president Barack Obama, who campaigned on ending warrantless wiretapping that he had criticized so heavily in the Bush administration, but had in fact in secret extended and embraced these programs and these authorities to a level that I began to feel had truly narrowed the boundaries of our rights.
Speaker 4: Does the NSA routinely intercept American citizens emails? No. Does the NSA intercept Americans' cell phone conversations? No. Google searches?
No. Text messages? No. Amazon.com orders? No.
Bank records?
Speaker 0: No. We're not authorized to do it nor do we do it. You're at the NSA and you're dealing with these secrets before you even saw the head of the National Security Agency on TV and what did you think about them then?
Speaker 1: Well, this was the the thing. When you look at the arc of my career in intelligence, I was always working on the technical aspect of it. And so by and large, I was modernizing our systems because post nine eleven, the intelligence community realized they weren't very good at using technology. They thought they were. And in a way, it was true that they were, but it was a different era's technology.
They were great with radio. They were great with satellite. They weren't so good with computers. They weren't so good with the Internet. So they brought in a bunch of shaggy young guys who looked like me.
Speaker 0: And they really liked what you did and you were a star.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. But it wasn't that I was you know exceptional, so much that I represented a generation that was native to these new systems, that they had shied away from because they didn't trust the security of them. It turned out with good reason. But, my generation came in. We shared our experiences.
We shared our specialties, And we were always looking at what we were doing through a straw. And you have to understand this principle that we hear of in the movies, you know, to know, means normally you get a project, you do a project. You don't know where it goes. You don't know who else is using it. But bit by bit, I was redirecting and collecting the flow of intelligence, then I was backing it up, permanizing it, making it so that if we lost a building, if we lost a site, we didn't lose everything that had passed through that, the information that had been passed through that.
And I thought this was information about terrorists. I thought this was saving lives. I thought this was preventing wars. But as I moved higher and higher in the organization, as I moved from CIA to NSA, as I moved from office to office, my straw that I'm looking through gets wider and wider and wider until I land in this place called the office of information sharing. It turned out I would be much better at this job than anyone expected.
And I saw everything. And it's only there, when you see consequences of your, labor and the different parts of your career all brought together, with the labor of others of your entire generation who themselves not sitting in the position you are can't see the big picture impact of what they're doing. And the public who never even knew this stuff existed, and again this was occurring without their consent but in theory, it was being carried out in their name, it felt to me that we needed to know. We needed to actually decide, is this what we want to happen or not?
Speaker 0: And you talked to your supervisors?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I talked to my supervisors. I talked to my colleagues on constitution day.
Speaker 0: They were all fine with it. This is just what we do and no problem.
Speaker 1: Actually actually it's not quite that people had no problems. When I brought up these programs that many of them had never heard of because they hadn't been exposed to them, I said does this look right to you? When I show that we're collecting more internet communications in The United States at the NSA than we were in Russia. Right? Meaning, we are ingesting more Americans communication than we are ingesting Chinese people's communications or Russians communications or North Koreans communications or whoever you're afraid of.
Right? The bulk of our collection was happening domestically and happening with the aid of other partners in what's called the Five Eyes Network, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. And then the NSA would go, well, yes, we're collecting all of these communications, but we're not reading them all. We're capturing everything that you, John Stossel, are doing online. We're capturing everything that your family's doing online, that your friends are doing online.
But we just pinky promise it's not being used for anything bad. And then, you know, being an engineer, I see how these things actually are being touched. They are being processed. They are being sorted through. Every single day, algorithmically, it sort of proves the lie.
Right? That all of these promises, they don't really amount to much. All of these processes and regulations and procedures don't amount to much. And in reality, what the NSA is doing every single day, its ordinary course of business, is violating not only the laws as written but likely the constitution. And I tell this to the guy sitting to my right, a good friend of mine.
I tell this to the guy sitting on my left, a good friend of mine. To my office manager. Right? And all of them actually in private. Right?
When you're not in email, when they're just speaking heart to heart about this, they go, no. You know, this this is crazy. I'm not sure why we're doing this. I'm not sure how we're doing this. I'm not sure this is legal.
But you know what happens to people who talk about this. Right? I wouldn't put this in writing. I wouldn't go, you know, to this office or that office. They're not gonna do anything about it.
It's not your job. It's not my job. This is way above our, pay level, basically. But what happens to us as an organization at the NSA? What happens to us as Americans?
What happens to us as a society if everybody sees something wrong and goes, well, if I say something about it I'm gonna get into trouble. What happens if everybody goes, I'm not gonna do anything about this because it's not my job? That's how things go wrong, in a much more serious way. And the reality was I was just like them. For a long time I had had a growing sense of unease, but in reality it was not my job to fix it.
And this was actually one of the criticisms that was eventually leveled against me was they go, you know, who elected you? But it's not about, you know, who you are. It's about what you've witnessed. It's about what you can prove and does that matter. And I think the the last seven years when we've seen the courts review these programs and confirm that they were in fact unlawful, we've seen laws changed even by the legislature that was implicated in the wrongdoing in the first place.
Speaker 0: But at some point you decided I'm not gonna keep my mouth shut.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's exactly because of this. If I keep my mouth shut, the guy to my right, the guy to my left, we all think this is wrong and we all keep our mouth shut. What does tomorrow look like and the year after that and the year after that? The reality with these kind of extraordinary powers in government, particularly in we all understand this now in the post nine eleven moment because it's not just surveillance.
It's happened in war. It's happened in international diplomacy. It's happened in economy with the financial crisis. How we bail out the banks, but we don't bail out ordinary people. When the government writ large identifies a moment of crisis, they use that crisis for an exceptional demand for exceptional powers to which they normally wouldn't be entitled.
This was the rise of the Patriot Act. Right? This was how the Bush administration got involved in more and less wiretapping. This is how we got extrajudicial killings through drone strikes off the ground. This is how we got involved in torture.
But it's always justified as an, again, an exception to ordinary operations, something that's done for a narrow purpose in a narrow way, but then nobody objects to it. These all happen in secret, remember. They keep the body of witnesses small by design to limit the amount of dissent that can occur internally organizationally. And those who do complain are generally shuffled off the program. They're put in a closet somewhere and they ride out their days to retirement if they're lucky, never doing anything that that matters again, but also not having access to anything that could cause problems for those who are violating people's rights or our laws.
But this, as you said, why speak up? If you sit by and see a system engaged in wrongdoing and you do nothing. Even if you don't participate in it any longer, even if you resign, you are perpetuating a system of wrongdoing. You have become not just part of the wrongdoing but but party to it. And for me, when we looked at this, this was affecting, the country that I love.
This was affecting, the Internet that I grew up with, which was practically part of my family, by this point in my life. And then you extrapolate from how we got involved in sort of this overreaching surveillance state to begin with, the national security state. And step by step, bit by bit, exception after exception, these extraordinary and narrow authorities become permanent and perpetual authorities. And bit by bit as the domain of government expands, the territory that is claimed to the people narrows. And this became such a concern to me, that I was willing to risk a great deal, to tell people about it see if they agreed or if I was just crazy.
Speaker 3: My preference, and I think the American people's preference, would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws, a thoughtful, fact based debate that would then lead us to a better place. There were other avenues available for somebody whose conscience was stirred and thought that, they needed to question, government actions.
Speaker 0: So why go to certain members of the media? President Obama later said there were other avenues available for someone whose conscience was stirred. Spectre generals, congress.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No. I mean, this is a great, a great kind of question. I mean, we we always look at these things. We don't want anybody in government, to be able to go out and, you know, throw any secret about anything, out on the media, willy nilly.
And this is one of the primary institutional criticisms against me. On the other hand, are there, internal channels as Obama posited? For me, no. Even under the most generous reading of the law at the time, what he said was incorrect. And he said so at a time that by the way he knew it was incorrect, even though it was politically useful, because this had been debated in newspapers around the country by this point.
I was not an employee of the NSA. I was employee at a private company that was contracted to do work for the NSA at NSA buildings, know, on NSA equipment. The only difference between myself and the actual NSA employee sitting to my right in the office was he had a blue badge. I had a green badge. Green was for contractor.
Blue was for staff employee of government. But the whistleblower protection laws did not apply to contractors. This makes sense if you think about it in the context of the moment because how can the government protect someone from complaints when it's not actually their employee? Right? How can the government prevent someone from being disciplined when they're a private company for whatever purpose?
And the reality is there was even if I had gone through an internal purpose or sorry, internal process, had I gone to congress, had I gone to the president, himself, the ultimate result would have been the same. I would have been stopped at some level by an individual like the NSA inspector general, who is supposed to be kind of a watchdog that makes sure the NSA's activities, are legally compliant or the office of general counsel. I would have been terminated from my position. I would have been investigated by the police and I very likely would have been charged under exactly the same laws that I've been charged under today. We know this not because I'm speculating and throwing this out of air, but because it had happened before in the case of a former NSA executive at a much higher level than myself, by the name of Thomas Drake, who did go through proper channels and whose story I was very familiar with because I was determining, should I do this?
Is it right? Will it work? Will it be effective? William Binney, who was charged with, Thomas Drake at the same time or investigated at the same time as, Thomas Drake for the same disclosure.
Speaker 0: He had men with guns drawn coming to his house at dawn.
Speaker 1: Yes. Exactly. You had the FBI burst into your house. They take all your computers. They arrest you.
You know, they interrogate you. You lose your clearance. You lose your job.
Speaker 5: First, I went to the House Intelligence Committee and the staff member that I personally knew there, and she then went to the chairman of that committee. We were all trying to work internally in the government for over these years trying to get them to come around to being constitutionally acceptable and take it into the courts and have the courts oversight of it too. We naively kept thinking that that could that could happen, and it never did. They decided to raid us to keep us quiet, threaten us, you know. In my case, they came in with guns drawn.
I don't know why they did that, but they did.
Speaker 1: Thomas Drake, who was an executive at the top of The US Intelligence community, now works at an Apple store. Right? But it's important to understand that he did go through proper channels. He did everything right. And when he went to these officials, this is what they said.
This is the office of general counsel at the NSA, a man by the name of Vito Potenza.
Speaker 6: He came to me, someone who was not read into the program, told me that we were running a mock essentially and buying the constitution, there's no doubt in my mind I would have told him, you know, go talk to your management. Don't bother me with this. I mean, you know, you you you did the minute he said, if if he did say, you're using this to violate the constitution, I I mean, I probably would have stopped the conversation at that point, quite frankly. So, I mean, if that's what he said he said, then anything after that, I probably wasn't listening to anyway.
Speaker 1: And this is the reality and I think everybody understands this naturally. These internal watchdog shops in government, they're great if you need to report sexual harassment. They're great if you need to, report some kind of discrimination, if somebody's stealing office supplies. If you go, the entire agency of government is engaged in a conspiracy to deceive the public about the reality that we are right now working in concert across agencies to carry out a program that is in violation not only of law but the constitution, they're not equipped to handle that and they're not interested investigating that. That's not why they were appointed.
Speaker 0: I gotta say in my endless hundred year career, no one has ever rolled in video before. That's usually what I need to do. If you ever get back Right.
Speaker 1: I'm a technologist. Sorry. I can't help that.
Speaker 0: That's good. Alright.
Speaker 1: Why do you think you were charged under the Espionage Act? That's pretty rare.
Speaker 7: To send a chilling message. To whom? To other whistleblowers, to others in the government, not to speak out or speak out. Do not tell truth to power. We'll hammer you.
Speaker 0: Drake on sixty minutes where he said it it the purpose was to send a chilling message. Do not tell truth to power. We will hammer you.
Speaker 1: I think that that's absolutely correct. When you look at the lived experience of whistleblowers, and again these are separated by decades of, you know, different White Houses, different presidents, different administrations, different congresses, different policies, the response is always the same. If someone inside of government reveals government wrongdoing at the level that threatens the reputations and certainly the electability of whether we're talking about agency heads, whether we're talking about politicians, whether in the legislature or the executive branches, their first priority is to stop you from talking because they want to control the narrative. And and this is really what this is about. When you look at all of this mass surveillance, whether we're talking about Internet surveillance, whether we're talking about telephonic surveillance, whether we're talking about domestic surveillance, whether we're talking about international surveillance, you've been in the news a long time.
You've seen these officials. You've interviewed these officials. They constantly tell us this is for your safety. This is to investigate terrorists. Right?
Speaker 0: And I kind of believe it.
Speaker 1: Right. And we all believe it to some extent, particularly when we shared the national trauma of nine eleven. But when you look from the inside as an employee at what we're doing with this, I see all the reporting. Right? I've got access to all the reporting.
And then you look at things that happened in the wake of scandal. For example, after I came forward, Obama who was facing extraordinary pressure appointed two independent commissions to investigate these programs because he was trying to basically justify these things and find where they were accurate, where they were useful. This was the privacy and civil liberties oversight board and the president's review group on intelligence and communications technologies. Both of these groups had full access to classified information. Both of them talked to all sides of the intelligence community.
They went to the FBI. They went to the CIA. They went to the NSA. And they said, look. We've got the clearances.
Give us your success stories. Show us where this helped. Show us where this saved lives. Show us why we should be doing this. And they looked because at the time, you know, we had people.
We had Keith Alexander then, director of the National Security Agency going in front of congress, going on TV and saying, you know, this stopped 47 plots or whatever. You know, people are alive, buildings are up because of these programs. Well, Barack Obama's own investigations into this, found that in the case of the very first, program that we looked at, this was the mass surveillance of telephone records domestically, it didn't stop a single terrorist attack in more than ten years of operation. That's happening in secret, mind you, before it hits the front pages and all of that stuff. And in the only case, they also found, sorry, it never made a concrete difference and that's their words.
In a single counterterrorism investigation.
Speaker 0: There were plots that were found but the court found that they had other they already had the information. They didn't need all this spying.
Speaker 8: We've heard over and over again the assertion that 54 terrorist plots were thwarted. That's plainly wrong. These weren't all plots and they weren't all thwarted. The American people are getting left with inaccurate impression of the effectiveness of NSA programs.
Speaker 1: They actually never discovered a plot through these programs. Never. Not once. What they did do is they found information related to a plot in a single case, this was a cab driver in California, Mo'Allen, I believe, wiring about $8,500 to his clan in Somalia, which was affiliated with Al Shabaab, which was on a terrorism list by according to State Department. This was their great success story.
Right? And in this case, had or sorry. We had already had watchdogs go through it. Thanks, fortunately, to Obama in this case. And now we have since had courts go at it and look at confirm it was unlawful, and it was unnecessary.
And mind you, this is with access to the classified record because they said by the time the government had enough information to look these guys up in the NSA database, you know, CIA, FBI, whatever, they also had enough evidence to go to a court through traditional means and get a warrant without relying on all this. Right? You didn't have to collect this by violating the rights of, you know, 330,000,000 Americans when you simply could have used the old traditional means of law enforcement to get exactly the same material from exactly the same companies without breaking the law.
Speaker 0: It's dozens of terrorist events that these have helped prevent.
Speaker 9: The tip of the iceberg in terms of numbers of terrorist attacks at NSA programs contributed to stopping was 54.
Speaker 0: Keith Alexander says these programs helped prevent dozens of terrorist events. The deputy director, the reason there hasn't been a major attack in The United States since nine eleven is not an accident. The number of terrorist attacks the NSA programs contributed to stopping is 54. That makes me feel safer when I hear that.
Speaker 1: Right. And but we want to believe it's true, but it's not. This 54 number has been looked at intensively by advocates and apologists for the national security state, by critics of it, and since then it's boiled down again to I believe one case and this one case in this is not Somalian wiring, $8,500. I believe it's some, you know, guy with mental illness who was thinking about bombing a subway in New York. But it's the same context, the same thing.
They didn't need this authority. It wasn't necessary. Because look, let's say you, Stassel, work at the NSA. You do the job I did in my last position. You go in every day.
You've got the desk in front of you with your keyboard connected to a system called XKeyScore. This is basically Google for spies. Right? It allows you to search through all of the different methods of ingestion that we have, not just domestically, but overseas through our partners in what we call second party countries. These are these anglophone countries in the five eyes I mentioned earlier, as well as third party partners.
We have sensors, you know, all over the world, some of them placed by hacking, some of them placed in data centers. And you can type anybody's phone number in, anybody's email, in any website, in any IP address for a phone or a computer, a laptop, as you can see all the traffic that has passed any of these sensors, you can write to your FBI analyst buddy and have them pull anybody in the world. A whole Facebook list of everything they've ever clicked on, anything that the Facebook pixel tracker was on the website for when they were reading things, their Amazon order history, you know, everything they've typed in that Google search box, whatever. You have access to everything. Right?
And you wanna stop a terrorist blot. How do you know who to look up? And this is why these programs don't actually stop terrorism. You have to have a seed. You have to have something to start your searches from.
You have to have a cause for suspicion. Traditionally, under the fourth amendment, we require probable cause for these kind of investigations to begin. Police officers get a tip from someone. They notice something when they're working the beat. They know their communities.
They see someone acting strange. They get a complaint and they investigate on this basis. Right? Well, in intelligence, the way these tips come across is generally from the same thing. It's from a confidential informant.
It's from law enforcement. It's from whatever. But once you have this, once you have probable cause to begin investigating someone, you can go to a court, you can get a warrant, you can access the same information without collecting it from the entire Internet before. Right? And so this is the thing.
When you look at the fact that the government itself no longer makes these claims that it stopped 54 plots. Right? They have disowned that. Keith Alexander no longer works for the NSA. He's out now he works on the board of directors at Amazon.com.
The thing is, what are these things effective for? Right? Because you go, well, why does the government pay for these programs? Why go to all this trouble if it doesn't stop attacks?
Speaker 0: Yeah. Why?
Speaker 1: And the the answer, of course, is because these programs are tremendously useful for something different, and that is information gathering. Right? Intelligence, general investigation about anything on anyone. It may not be effective in preventing terrorist attacks because, again, it's not particularly more useful relative to the tools that we already have because, again, terrorism is rare. It is scarce and people don't realize this, based on the way the media has changed, but the incidence of terrorism, over time is actually declining relative to the last century.
If you look at, for example, terrorist attacks in Western Europe, they have declined decade over decade, since like the nineteen sixties. People forget about it, but things
Speaker 0: Maybe because of intelligence and the NSA.
Speaker 1: Well, again, I work for these agencies and I would like to believe that was true, but the rate at which they were falling is completely different from the rate of mass surveillance and this is what people misunderstand about my politics and my positioning. I am not against the use of intelligence. I'm not against the existence of intelligence agencies. I'm not against surveillance. I am against mass surveillance.
And this is what I brought information forward about.
Speaker 0: Just to play devil's advocate here. Why should I care? I figured Google and Facebook knows everything about everybody Anyway, I figure the teenage boy across the street could be picking up stuff I sent. The cork's out of the bottle. What difference does it make?
Speaker 1: This goes back to kind of that nothing to hide argument, which is like, I lead a very ordinary life. I watch my shows. I go to work. I take care of my family. Yeah.
I'm weird. Yeah. I look at porn. You know, if we're we're talking about the average person on the Internet, everybody looks at porn. Right?
It's happened. Even if you don't want to, there's a pop up ad somewhere. It's in your history. But the reality is most people do and they want to. And that's not strange.
People, particularly Americans, feel an enormous sense of shame about this, but it's a tremendously common activity. At the same time, it makes us feel uncomfortable. Know, for a lot of us, as our family knew everything that we looked up on the Internet, we would worry about how they would look at us. If every company in the world knew everything that you looked at, we would feel uncomfortable with it. But then what happens when your workplace knows?
What happens when your government knows? And who decides what is normal, what's acceptable, and what's not? Right? We can do things that are very common today, or we can have positions, or interests that are very uncommon today but harmless. In a free society, we are allowed to be different.
We are allowed to be weird. We can be strange as long as we're not hurting anyone else. But laws change. Social wars change. The norms shift.
And once we are entered into this system where everything we've ever done, everything we were ever interested in, everything we've ever bought, everywhere we've ever gone, everywhere that we have or anyone that we have ever talked to is instantly captured at the moment it happens and memorialized in some database somewhere just waiting to be used, it will be used and we already see this happening in places like China. Right? We don't want to emulate China where we have a social credit system, where things that you do which are harmless, aren't hurting anyone, but institutions or railways or airlines or the communist party that sweeps into power or is already in power decides is disfavored and should be penalized, should be disincentivized. Now you can no longer get a job. Now you have to wait, know, and go to the local police station to get a pass to be able to travel and visit your family.
We cannot anticipate these things and the problem is that I have with this idea of argument is that we should have to, that we should have to prepare for, that we should think and constrain our intellectual curiosity and even frankly our weirdnesses, our distinctions, our differences, our weirdness, the things that place us in the minority because we could potentially someday be judged on the basis for it even if we had done nothing wrong, even if it wasn't strange because the definition of what is wrong is constantly changing.
Speaker 0: If Google's got it and Facebook has it, why is it so much worse that our government has it?
Speaker 1: This is this is a great question. There's two ways, that this is typically, responded to. One, and this is one that I used myself many years before, is that well the difference is Google can sell you a different pair of shoes on the basis of what it knows about you. Right? The ads that it places on the side of your bar.
But they can't put you in jail. They can't bomb you. Right? The government can and for a lot of people the government does. The second thing which I think is actually more interesting, requires a little bit more technical understanding of how these programs are implemented, but not so much that I think it loses even a general audience.
Google knows an incredible amount about an incredible number of people, but it is still finite. There are things that they do not know. Google does not necessarily know what you bought on Amazon. Google does not necessarily know what you liked on Facebook. Google does not necessarily know what you posted on Instagram.
Facebook knows what you posted on Instagram because they own that. Right? Amazon knows what you bought on this, but they don't know what you sent in your email. It's on Google because it's a Gmail account. Right?
There are silos in industry that even if they're very large still limit what these different companies know, the maximum domain of their understanding of you as an individual and us broadly as a population. Government, however, through its course of authorities in these kind of systems is able to look into each of these different silos and then collate them together. They see everything that Facebook sees as well as everything that Google sees as well as everything that Amazon sees as well as everything that your phone provider sees as well as everything that your airline provider has in terms of your travel history, you know, and so on and so forth to an extraordinary extent. There are no limitations placed on this beyond the their appetite and willingness to pursue these silos and find a way into them.
Speaker 0: Now I am a little embarrassed in that I'm a consumer reporter and I report on markets. I haven't done much on spying or military secrets and I hadn't paid much attention to you. I got you confused before researching for this interview with Manning and Julian Assange, Snowden, which who did what and but now that I've done the research, I conclude that you really got screwed and yet you talk about this very dispassionately and thoughtfully. Aren't you pissed off? I mean James Clapper lied to congress and to the American people and he wasn't fired.
He served out his term in the Obama administration and now he works for CNN. And Keith Alexander Right.
Speaker 1: He's I think that's kind of a condemnation of the direction our media has has gone in, but I understand your point. Absolutely.
Speaker 0: Keith Alexander now now runs a private security firm appropriately and is on Amazon's board. They made out you're in exile.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you don't do the kind of things that I did. If you're a pessimist, you do them because you're an idealist. You believe that things can get better. You believe that we can do better.
When I came forward, it was in recognition of the fact that there is a two tiered system to the way American society is ordered today. There are those in power who operate largely behind a veil of secrecy. And even this applies even to people who aren't working for the NSA. Right? This happens to to congressmen.
It's very difficult to find out who they're meeting with. It's very difficult to figure out, you know, what lobbyists are having conversations with who and, you know, what laws are being shaped and what text is being written that is passed into law that impacts all of our lives, but was corporately sponsored. Right? And these people are getting donations to their campaign or famously the justice system. If you're a young person from a minority community with limited access to wealth and especially education, you're gonna be treated very harshly by our court system.
But if you're one of these made men, you know, working on high level, you will face a very different flavor of justice shall we say.
Speaker 0: None in the case of those two guys who lied.
Speaker 1: Precisely. Precisely. Or or no justice at all. But that will never change unless we make it change. Right?
Power admits nothing without a demand. Government is not going to reform itself and the only way that things get better anywhere is through sacrifice. We've known this since we crawled out of the swamp of history. If you wanna stay warm, somebody is gonna have to go through the trouble of building a house. It's not gonna be fun.
They're not gonna love it but they're gonna be doing it because it makes life better. Somebody out there is gonna have to do the the hard work of growing the food that we all, you know, survive on And they don't get a lot of thanks for that, but society is a team sport. Our society as exists today is flawed. I recognize that. Right?
I am doing what I can to make it better as I can. I don't have any illusions that I'm gonna fix it. I'm not gonna save the world. That's not how this works. And I think this is why I can be very much at peace with the choices that I've made and the unfortunately, the price that I've paid as a result of that because it was the right thing to do and it has made things better.
Even if it hasn't fixed the problem, people now can understand these things. We can begin to argue for better policies and in fact they're already happening. Our courts, which for literally decades, excused themselves at all from weighing in on the legality and constitutionality of surveillance in the context of national security. I have since 2013 when I came forward ruled repeatedly on these programs and repeatedly ruled against, the government, that they had backstopped these things fully for, again for a very very long time.
Speaker 8: The NSA is engaged in repeated substantial legal violations. The police accord called a systemic non compliance by the government.
Speaker 0: But the programs go on.
Speaker 1: Some of these programs have been halted. Section two fifteen of the patriot act is no more. This was, ended, by an act of congress and also at the urging of no less than Barack Obama who at the very beginning of 2014, interesting in terms of timing, after the very first court to rule against these programs said it was likely unlawful and unconstitutional, came out in his state of the union speech and said although he could never condone what I did, he felt that this conversation about surveillance, its legalities, its limits, had made us stronger as a nation. And he, urged congress to pass what was then called the USA Freedom Act to, basically put new legal restraints on this. But as you say, that didn't end the problem of mass veins.
That just pushed the tube of toothpaste Right now, the toothpaste is in a slightly different part of the same tube. However, mass surveillance occurs largely through certain technical principles, certain vulnerabilities mechanically in the way our communications move from your phone or the laptop on your desk across the Internet to whoever it is you're trying to communicate with. Right? Whether we're talking about a website, whether we're talking about someone that you're talking to on the phone. Now fewer and fewer people use plain voice.
Fewer fewer people use plain SMS. Now they're using encrypted messengers like the Signal Messenger or WhatsApp, which I would not trust myself for a long period of time because it was bought by Facebook, but WhatsApp was the world's most popular messenger. It had 1,000,000,000 users and post 2013, they adopted a new technical protection called end to end encryption, which is intentionally designed to limit precisely the kind of mass surveillance that was being discussed in 2013. So now at the flip of a switch, 1,000,000,000 people get a greater level of privacy that is not reliant on jurisdiction. It's not reliant on law.
It's not reliant on politics.
Speaker 0: And the encryption works?
Speaker 1: Encryption does work. One of the lessons as a result of 2013, all these disclosures about how the NSA works, how the surveillance works,
Speaker 10: is
Speaker 1: you can be sneaky in a lot of ways as the NSA, as the CIA, when you're trying to steal a secret. But encryption is basically just math, and there is no currently with the best knowledge that we have of mathematics any sneaky way to just make encryption go away entirely from a point of interception. Right? So as, again, your phone tries to reach this other person, wherever they are in the world, it has to go through the network of many other people, through the Starbucks that you're sitting at, through their Internet service provider, through a data center, through a transatlantic cable that goes to, for example, France. Their data center, their local Internet service provider, their Starbucks that they're sitting in, any one of these points, anybody sitting on that line can snatch a copy of the conversation and if it wasn't encrypted, they can read it.
Whether it's a criminal hacker next to you at the cafe or whether it is a national government, be that the American government or the French government or anybody in between. Right? But the thing is the only way really to get around strong encryption that is properly implemented is precisely what the purpose of the twenty thirteen stories was to achieve, which is to make governments shift from mass indiscriminate collection of communications to specific individualized targeted collection. This means hacking. Right?
So imagine for a second, you send this encrypted communication to the person that you're talking to. People in the middle, tons of them, they all catch it, they all collect it, but none of them can read it because an encrypted message cannot be unlocked without a mathematical key. It's just the answer to the math problem that you make up that you share with the other person on the other side. You guys know the answer, but nobody else in the world can come up with it. Right?
Now mass surveillance no longer works. Game over finish doesn't work quite that way. There's some more technical ways. We can talk about metadata later if you're interested, but it's in-depth. But the bottom line is how then, if you're the CIA and, for example, this is not someone harmless in a Starbucks, this is an actual terrorist or spy, or a dissident, in a place like Bahrain or Oman or Hong Kong, which unfortunately is all too real and happens every day, how do they read this message?
And the answer is they steal a copy of the key. Instead of catching it as it goes across the line, which they can no longer do, they can't do this for everybody en masse around the world, they have to target the two places in the world that that message is readable, where it's unencrypted, and that's on your device and the device of the person that you're talking with. Now instead of dealing with encryption, instead of dealing with that global network, that easy cheap mass surveillance, they do the hard work, the traditional targeted investigative work of hacking that phone or selling that person an implanted phone that's got spy devices built into it basically. And then when that person is encrypting messages or when they're receiving messages decrypting them, because they have taken over the phone, the encryption no longer matters to them because they can see it with unencrypted. They can steal that encryption key, that answer to the math problem, when it exists on the phone before it's forgotten, before it disappears.
So long and short, because I know that was probably complicated for a lot of people, encryption, end to end encryption, which is to say properly implemented encryption that doesn't have a man in the middle, doesn't have some Facebook, some Google who's keeping their own copy of the key, but encryption where the keys are only held by the communicants, by the people who are supposed to know this information, that defeats mass surveillance in the generic general sense that we understood in 2013. It does not prevent all surveillance. It does not prevent particularly legitimate targeted surveillance, but it returns the intelligence and law enforcement world to the more traditional means of investigate investigation, which have fewer implications for our rights writ large as a society.
Speaker 0: Let's talk a little more about your personal story. You decide that you've got to do this. You asked 27 countries for asylum.
Speaker 1: People are, shall we say, less familiar, particularly now with seven years of distance between it. What exactly happened in 2013? So I left The United States and met with journalists in a hotel room in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was selected because it was a kind of no man's land that had very good media access. It had a largely unfiltered Internet, neither of which is true today, unfortunately.
But it was very easy for journalists to operate. It was very easy for me to access as a US intelligence employee without popping up on any radars or anything like that. And I would meet with them there and China also would not necessarily be free to operate against us, particularly in the way they can today because of rivalries and friction and bureaucratic infighting between services and the Beijing government. So this was really an ideal kind of no man's land in which to operate. I provided them with documents and explained the significance of them.
And I didn't publish any documents. This is important for people to understand. I didn't put anything online. I instead told the journalists to look through this, explained it, and if they felt as I did that this was in the public interest to know, They would need to make an independent editorial judgment that this was the case. Go to the government in advance of publication.
Give the government a chance to argue against this. Say that snowman guy's crazy or he doesn't understand this or this document's incorrect. Or if you publish this, people will get hurt. Basically, give the government the best chance to argue against this, which the government took in almost all cases that I'm aware of.
Speaker 0: And they talked to the White House and talked to Exactly.
Speaker 1: What happened was, as I mentioned before, I had had a decade's worth of history and actually more than a decade's worth of history of cases to look over. I looked at Daniel Ellsberg in the case of the Pentagon Papers in nineteen seventies and the injunction against the newspapers working with him, how that was resolved by the courts, what that meant. I looked at the case of Thomas Drake, how even though he went through the right channels, he ended up at the same place where his story unfortunately didn't get out. He faced enormous consequences. Policy and the public were unable to grapple with this very important issue because of the government suppression of it.
And then I looked at the case of WikiLeaks and Chelsea Manning with the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs. And one of the interesting things against this was Manning, of course, was rested. And they said, you know, Manning had blood on her hands, cost the lives of all these soldiers, you know, publishing this material which was only secret, not top secret, was gonna cause basically the the atmosphere to catch fire and the oceans to boil off. And none of this happened. And in fact, at Manning's sentencing, the judge specifically asked the government, do you want to argue that people were harmed as a result of this?
Do you wanna say, you know, someone was hurt, someone died, anything like this because we'll take it into our sentencing consideration and give a harsher sentence. And the government said, actually, no. We can't show that. It doesn't exist. And this is what we saw actually in the case of Ellsberg.
It's a constant refrain where the government goes, whenever they're put in the hot seat. They don't want to talk about the concrete harms of their policy. They don't want to talk about how they violated rights. They don't want to talk about how they broke the law. Instead, they want to shift the conversation to the whistleblower, to the source of the disclosure.
Say they're weird, say they're disloyal, say they have problems, say they shouldn't have done this for whatever reason.
Speaker 0: Say that you're gonna get spies killed or you're gonna reveal troop movements.
Speaker 1: Precisely. What they want to do is talk about the theoretical risks of journalism in an open society instead of the concrete demonstrated harms as documented by the government's own malpractice. And so this was something that I anticipated. This was why this sort of process was designed. I used three different journalists, three different outlets.
They could all go to the government. The government would get a chance to do this. So we could demonstrate we had gone in theoretically the most responsible way. We had done everything the government thought was proper and appropriate as compared to prior cases and see if it made a difference. And the interesting thing is even though this was sort of tremendously indulgent of the government's interests, it didn't make a single change in their messaging.
They used the same rhetoric against me as they did with Manor, as they did with Drake, as they did with Ellsberg. But from here, I left Hong Kong en route to Latin America. And I tell this story in my book, Permanent Record, how it happened. But as I was leaving Hong Kong, the government were not sure. There there's no true way to know whether this was an intentional strategic decision or whether they panicked and it was just a mistake.
But once they learned, the government had learned that I had departed Hong Kong, they canceled my passport which meant I couldn't leave Russia and I spent the next, you know, thirty days and thirty nights basically trapped in this Russian airport, Sheremetyevo, trying to get asylum from, as you said, these 27 different countries. Things that Americans wouldn't be particularly concerned with, you know, Germany, France. And every time one of these companies companies. One of these countries would appear to be leaning towards granting asylum and saying, Come here. They would get a phone call from one of two people, then secretary of state John Kerry or soon to be possibly, excuse me, then vice president Joe Biden.
And this is this is the interesting thing. Why would the US government work so hard to keep me trapped in Russia rather than allow me to go to a jurisdiction where they would be much freer to operate, and much more comfortable realistically like France or Germany or Iceland or something like that, if they had even the slightest doubt about my loyalty. And this is something a question that even to this day I have difficulty answering.
Speaker 0: I would assume they just didn't want you to go anywhere and you happened to be in Moscow. You didn't think it's true.
Speaker 1: Right. Imagine you're the director of the NSA or you're the CIA, and you've got this guy out there and he's the person that you hate the most in the world. And you know all your authorities. You know all your incredible powers. You know even the things that I didn't know with all of my access.
Right? All the ways you can get people. And they go, you know, we really don't like this guy. We really want to do something about him. Would you rather me be in Moscow or literally anywhere else?
Right? And so to me, it's very strange that the government worked quite hard to keep me exiled specifically in Russia. And I've always been a little bit, particularly as years have gone by and you can't explain it away simply as a mistake of policy back then. They've had time to rectify it. They realize that me being in Russia provides them with an evergreen political attack that doesn't have to be explained.
It doesn't have to be justified. Simply the association with Russia is enough for them to call into question my character.
Speaker 0: And some Americans would say, really? He went to China? Admittedly, it was it was Hong Kong and different then and Russia, these two countries and there was no other way to get to Latin America except through Russia?
Speaker 1: Right. Certainly. And this, I mean, this was a subject of much debate and it was again born out. There was a lot of public reporting on this back in 2013 when it was contemporary. The reality is you can't fly from Hong Kong or at least couldn't fly from Hong Kong at the time to Latin America without crossing US airspace unless you went the long way around.
Right? And so then you do this and you have to go it's very short list. What are the non extradition countries to get from Hong Kong all the way over to South America? And again, it's just building a bridge through the air step by step and you know my whole flight manifest at this point has been made public. There were journalists on the flight that I was ticketed for from Moscow to Havana taking pictures of my empty seat when I was prevented from boarding.
And so yeah, this has all been looked into and it's just to me, it's frustrating but it's also interesting because I wonder, you know, if they did this intentionally, if they did this strategically, it was really the most brilliant move they made in terms of communications planning that they they could have. I'm not sure we can give them that much credit because it very well could have been a moment of panic. But it is I think disappointing that all these years later they still haven't rectified it.
Speaker 0: And it didn't work out well for you. Obama commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence. She's now running for political office. Politicians say you should be killed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, the funny thing is we see that much less now than we did in 2013. The reality is there's sort of a pardon movement going on on my behalf. I I have not asked for pardon from this president or the prior president, but many others have on my behalf and I'm I'm tremendously great for that and the advocacy the people brought forward. But excuse me.
The thing is as each year passes and all of those claims as you said, know, they were like, he got people killed. There were agents, you know, there were programs or whatever. All this stuff fell apart. It didn't work. Attacks are gonna get through.
None of it came to pass and this was exactly the story in the Manning case, you know. Obama could not have commuted Manning's sentence politically, realistically, in this twenty thirteen era, in this twenty fourteen era. But years after, right, when Manning's actions were actually in 02/2009, '2 thousand '10, you start getting year after year after year, the fact that what Manning did did not harm national security in a material way. It did not harm individuals lives and livelihood in a material way. All it did is inform the public and embarrass the US government and its partner governments in the case of diplomatic cables.
But largely, it was about reputational harm. Right? The government had egg on its face and it retaliates as a result of this. Moreover, you know from reporting on the justice system and other contexts, I think, the government is very interested in what it describes as the deterrent effect. Manning becomes secondary.
Right? Someone like me or Ellsberg or Drake, any of these people. They become secondary to the point of the government pointing to the rest of their workforce. Even if this person did the right thing, even if they did it carefully, even if they did it in the best way, we don't want you to emulate it. So we are gonna come after this person, chase them all the way around the earth in order to set an example.
Speaker 0: I hope you get pardoned. It's little puzzling. The attorney general says you're traitor and the information you peddled you peddled it around like a commercial merchant. Yeah. You didn't you never
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 0: Tried to get money from it. President Trump in 2013 said they got a lot of information out of this guy. He's a terrible guy who set our country back.
Speaker 1: This guy's a bad guy and you know, there is still a thing called execution.
Speaker 0: This is a bad guy and there's still a thing called execution. But then seven years later, a reporter asks him, do you want to give Edward Snowden a pardon? And he says, well, I'm gonna look into it.
Speaker 1: If you wanna give Edward Snowden a pardon Well, I'm gonna look at it. I mean, I'm not that aware of the Snowden situation, but I'm gonna start looking at it. Yeah. This is a good example of the distance Donald Trump has traveled from 2013 Trump to 2020 Trump. But also more generally when you bring up the case of the attorney general who does not seem familiar at all with the basic facts of the case when he's speaking publicly on it, that is a lot of distance historically.
A lot of things have happened in between then. And as we start to look at what happened in 2013, less with the heat of the moment and sort of careers on the line and more dispassionately from a historic context, I think it's clearer and clearer, that what I did was the right thing to do. And in fact, public opinion is swinging very heavily, toward that side. And in fact, even elite opinion, which is largely turned against individuals working outside of the organization in this kind of way. You will not find a lot of love for whistleblowers in corporate America, in government agencies, in any country in the world, I think.
But even there, you are beginning to see people speak, in in fact, I would say large majority terms favorably rather than disfavorably, and I think that's because history has a way of exonerating the truth.
Speaker 0: In some ways attitudes switch the other way. President-elect Biden before he became vice president was against the spying of this data collection and said, it's very intrusive. We're gonna trust the president and vice president to do the right thing. Don't count me in on that.
Speaker 10: The real question here is what do they do with this information that they collect that does not have anything to do with Al Qaeda? And we're gonna trust the president and the vice president of The United States that they're doing the right thing. Don't count me in on that.
Speaker 0: But he changed his tune once he was in power.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And again, this was the same for president-elect Barack Obama.
Speaker 3: Some people say, well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he's, you know, Dick Cheney.
Speaker 1: He tells this very briefly in his memoir. He said, yeah, he was campaigning against mass surveillance. Yeah, it was wrong. Yeah, shouldn't have been done. It was a problem.
So on and so forth. But then he says after he became president, he realized he was seeing that from the cheap seats And now Bush's wars were his wars. And this is very in line with his decision to move from investigating Bush era abuses, things like torture, things like unlawful killing, things like the massive domestic surveillance program that happened under the Bush administration. He didn't investigate them at all. Instead he said it was important that we look forward not backwards.
And it's this, this lack of accountability amongst the American political elite. At the same time we are constantly increasing the level of accountability for ordinary members of the public, right, particularly when we talk in the context of this mass surveillance. Not only is the government policing you, Twitter is policing you. You know, what you say online. YouTube is locking your channel, know, whatever.
There are people in little police hats everywhere you look. And at the same time, these people with power are excusing their behavior. They are heightening the standard of accountability to which we are held. And to me, I say, isn't this backwards? Right?
We used to call them public servants and we were private citizens because we were supposed to know everything about them and we were all supposed to scrutinize them. And we were private citizens because no one was supposed to know what we were doing. We had no power. We had no influence. And so we were meant to be left alone, but that is increasingly being inverted.
And we are under a constant gaze, electronically. At the same time, they are permanently sheltered by this, fog of unaccountability and that's by design.
Speaker 0: And just to be clear, Twitter and YouTube can't put us in jail.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They can't well, yet. Or Stay tuned.
Speaker 0: Or force you to stay in Moscow. You can't return to America at the moment. You got married in Russia. What's your life in exile like?
Speaker 1: Yeah. So my long term partner many years who was with me in The United States, Lindsay Mills, she's also American, and I got married. We are expecting our first child, which is a tremendous, stroke of fortune. I'm really excited about it. And this is really all consuming for us right now.
I think it's a scary thing. I've never been through this before, and I think it's even more frightening for her. But the reality is exile as a political weapon is beginning to fail. These conversations, the this what's happening between you and I today was a rare and sort of extraordinary thing when it first started happening in my story in the beginning of twenty fourteen. But now due to this global pandemic, it's everywhere all the time.
I just had a conversation with Ai Weiwei who lives in exile from China. It was a result of his own criticism of his government. And this idea from history that governments used to be able to go, fine. You know, we're just going to divorce you from the public conversation. We're going to silence you from distance.
It doesn't work anymore because even though I put my head down on the pillow far away, I still very much live in The United States, you know, and our child, I think, will hopefully embody the best of all worlds.
Speaker 0: You're applying for citizenship in Russia and some Americans say that's disloyal. That makes me suspicious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, this is part of the same conversation that I think has been intentionally pushed by the government for many years now. The reality is I've been in Russia now for seven years. I cannot leave. I'm expecting to start a family and I want my son to not grow up as an outsider.
I don't want him to feel like he is born into exile as I am. I want him to feel at home wherever he is. I don't want my wife to be separated from me because, you know, she doesn't have permanent residence in the same way that I do, particularly when the borders to Russia are closed as they are today. So the only way that my family can be together is for me to do this, and I don't think that's wrong.
Speaker 0: A year ago, you released permanent record and the government sued, froze the the proceeds.
Speaker 1: They sought to. It's true. But the reality is the government's judgment in the case of permanent record is not enforceable. Certainly not internationally, questionably domestically and I don't have any assets in The United States sort of banking system or whatever that they can pull. So that judgment hasn't had any material effect.
But more broadly, I speak publicly. I did before. That was also part of the lawsuit and I continue to do so today. I'm very fortunate for the invitations to speak because it's allowed me to live a good life in a difficult situation and I have no reason to expect that'll change.
Speaker 0: And just to be clear, we're not paying you. These are other speeches that you alright. What what are some of the worst privacy violations left And and talk for example about LoveInt.
Speaker 1: Sure. So LoveInt or LoveIntelligence as it's sort of portmanteau for, is the intelligence community's sort of insider cute term for spying on spouses, romantic interests, exes. Normally, we use this int to refer to intelligence. There's SIGINT for signals intelligence. There's COMINT for communications intelligence.
There's HUMINT for human intelligence. You would think of it as kind of the James Bond human enabled operations. Well, LOVEINT is where you take this giant sort of world spanning surveillance system or even just your local police force, whatever, And you turn it to going, hey, you know, who did she call after, you know, she hung up the phone or where is she going? You know, what is he doing? And this has happened and the NSA has actually publicly confirmed this happened after accusations came out in at least 13 different instances.
One of the particularly interesting things about this practice of love and is that the government doesn't typically charge people with crimes when they're found to do this, even though this is felony behavior. And this is true anytime analysts at the NSA or CIA or elsewhere in the intelligence community abuse their governmentally granted authorities. And you might go, why is that? But the answer is self apparent when you think through it. The existence of this program is a secret.
The operation of this program is itself possibly unlawful in the most charitable sense. Likely unlawful in the way I would put it. And so avowing that these programs exist, avowing that a government employee who had gone through a polygraph, gotten a top secret clearance, was actively using these programs to spy on Americans or any kind of unauthorized target like that. Simply admitting that is possible would expose these systems to legal challenges. So what does the government instead do?
It simply disciplines them or worst case fires them, shuffles them out and gets a new body and puts them in the chair. And so this is the kind of low level constant abuse that is not likely to go away because it's introduced by a human element in the context of this larger systemic problem.
Speaker 0: What else is the problem? Prism? Turbulence?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we could go on, all day with this. I would say for, the average listener, If you want to see the the full scope of what's happening and why it matters, all of the facets of it, look at my book, Permanent Record. That's why I wrote it. This is for you. But what's not in the book and what is a concern is what's coming down the road.
And this is I see things like companies like Amazon. For example, the fact that they just appointed the former NSA director who resigned in disgrace for having overseen the mass surveillance program that now courts have condemned as unlawful, that should be of concern to people. Why are they doing that? Why does that seem like a good idea to them? But then when you look at what they actually do, Amazon's Web Services, as it's called, which is a cloud provider for technical hosting on the Internet.
It runs basically like half the Internet. I looked at statistics recently and I I think when you look at the largest sites, it is a substantial portion of the Internet's traffic. This is all going through Amazon's data center. These are all things they can see. These are all things they can record.
Now when you intersect all of the different devices that Americans have that they visit websites from, this has an Internet address, right, associated with your device. You likely have, identifiers for the sites that you're connected to, you know, a username or a login or a phone number, a Facebook or a Gmail, login. You also have cookies. These are little digital files that are planted in your browser visiting a site, which allows them to show you different ads, to keep you logged in, different kind of things. Now, this means you can track to a more detailed degree what people are looking at on the Internet, what they're visiting, what they're searching for, what their interests are, what their political leanings are.
You can do sentiment analysis even without looking at anyone on the individual level by taking these identifiers, these locations, these associations and affiliations, where they were in the world because their location services were turned on, who they were there with. This is happening more in the context of, like, COVID tracing programs. And then you go with all this rich information that Amazon has about purchasing decisions, about financial information. They know what your card is. Right?
They know what your shipping address is. They know all of these things. And you start to collate these together. And now we see Amazon, because of their Alexa or Echo or whatever these things are called these days, They hire Keith Alexander. They implement this thing called the sidewalk program or whatever, where it is listening not just to you in your home.
It's not just listening for your devices, but it's listening for the radio information provided by other people's cell phones, by the Wi Fi access point, the unit next to you in an apartment building or you know on vacation or at a hotel, and all of this thing is being collated by Amazon and it's all being sent back. What they are doing is they are getting a broader and detailed sense of the world's identity. Right? Individual identities collectively and individually. They are cross referencing them with basically intellectual interests and pursuits and purchasing information.
This is called enriching it. And then they're sharing it. They're applying it to uses that we don't know about. They're partnering increasingly with, like, police through subsidiaries. We see things like Google and their ring doorbells and all that.
And what this means is we're entering increasingly a quantified world where everywhere you go, everything you do, everyone you interact with, and everything you are interested in, is now being prejudged. It is being collected and recorded and analyzed and assessed and not by humans. We don't have the benefit of human judgment here. An algorithm makes a decision about whether you're desirable or undesirable, about whether the things you're doing are good or bad, and we don't know how that is being applied yet. But we do know once they have this information, we can't take it back from them under the laws as they are written today.
And The United States Of America is one of the only, if not the only, developed democracy in the world today that does not have a basic privacy law. We have the constitution.
Speaker 0: Would that make a difference? I mean, it's just here's the problem that Americans by and large don't care and I mostly don't care. Alexa, are you spying on me?
Speaker 3: No. I'm not spying on you.
Speaker 0: Actually, she answers no. I'm not spying.
Speaker 2: You can learn more by visiting amazon.com/alexaprivacy.
Speaker 0: She's she's still going off. And John Oliver had to do a bit with you. The only way he could get people interested in the invasion of privacy was to point out that this little light here where I see the green light, it isn't always on if the NSA is spying on us and they might take pictures of our private parts and show it to people. Only that got a reaction.
Speaker 1: The government should not be able to look at dick pictures. If the government was looking at a picture of Gordon's penis, I definitely feel it would be an invasion of my privacy. They should never ever the US government have a picture of my dick. Yeah. This is something that's I I encounter constantly.
And again, I've spoken in places all over the world, all kinds of different countries, all kinds of different audiences, all kinds of different age groups. And I typically hear this as a question being asked by older people. And the interesting thing is it's formulated a lot of times as young people don't care. They go, they're on Facebook, they're on Instagram, know, they're putting this all out there on social media. And the reality is when I talk to audiences and I I have these conversations, young people care more about privacy and they care more about these intrusions because just as my generation grew up with the the sort of web as it was in the 1.0 version and now, you know, I'm I'm aging out of the youth even though I still consider myself young enough.
Right? They know this web2.o, this interactive web where you aren't just reading things on static sites, but you're interacting with them. You're posting. You're enriching. Right?
But that sharing is selective. And this is clear when you look to these big, you know, basically beauty pageant sites like Instagram, where people are putting themselves through filters. You know, they're showing their wonderful dinner. They're not showing their garbage piece of burnt toast in the morning. Why?
They're doing that because they understand that they are selectively sharing. They're they're looking at experiences in their lives, at parts of themselves, as thoughts, parts of a conversation that they want to bring other people into. They they want to invite you into this. They don't give you everything. And what is happening is that trust, that openness is being exploited by companies that could not sell us, you know, products when they commercialized the web.1.o.
Right? Do you remember the tech boom in pets.com? Younger listeners have no idea what we're talking about. But the early forays into the internet were not wildly successful. There was a boom and a bust because they were trying to sell us things that we did not need.
Once they realized that there was only so much they could sell us, they went searching for a new product. That led to the new web and their new product is us. We are not the users of this system. We are being used by this system and the reason that you say you don't care about this is, and I say this without any offense, intended whatsoever, is because you do not understand the way that that system is being used against you. And that's not due to a failing as you as an individual.
That is by design. These companies do not want you to understand how it is being used. They work with lawyers.
Speaker 0: How is it being used against me?
Speaker 1: It's profiling you. It is basically, taking creating what's called a pattern of life and a social graph, not just for you but for everyone. And this means that even if you're trying to do something anonymously, let's say you have something like a cancer scare, And you want to look up an oncology clinic. You want to call a doctor or there's a planned parenthood thing happening with a young woman. All of these different things you just want a moment to seek help.
You're in a vulnerable state. And you know you try to open like a private browser window. By the way that doesn't work for the kind of tracking that we're talking about here on the network level just for anybody listening. But a lot of people think it does. And they reassociate your identity based on what's called a fingerprint that they've established of your browser, of your device, of your logins.
Google's doing these things on your phone. Apple's doing these things on your phone to different extents. But the idea is they're trying to capsulate, encapsulate not just what you are, but how you think, how you live, who you interact with to make you a value in a database, in a set, in a solution that can then be influenced and controlled. And when you ask what they're doing to you, right, this is where people start to lose it because it feels like an abstraction. It's not clear to them because they haven't seen, you know, a neighbor get marched off on the street as happened in like World War two kind of Nazi uprising context where you've got datasets that were constructed for like a census by, you know, a group like IBM and then it's abused and applied to a different purpose.
And we went, well, it's harmless. You know, it's a census. It's something that you want. You don't see how these things are going to be applied later. But what they are doing today in the most concrete form as as I said is they are collapsing everything about you into a known value that can then be manipulated.
That is the beginning and the end of the system. They want to make you controllable. We talked about mass surveillance before and how it's not effective in the context of surveillance. What is it effective for? It is this kind of intelligence surveillance, which is a means of influence.
Right? People ask me about terrorism and they go, you know, why weren't these effective for the program or for stopping terrorism? It's because they were never designed to stop terrorism. They are about diplomatic manipulation. They're about social influence.
They're about an informational advantage. They are about power. The corporate variance is variant is about the same thing. When you look at all of these things where we've talked about in the past, like election interference and, you know, this last wave was really ugly with political advertising and targeting, That is just the smallest part of a very big game. The bottom line is power is derived from many means.
It can be from violence. It can be from law. It can be from money, financial influence. Right? But the new means of influence, the one that is most easily hidden and the one that is the most reliable at scale, which you can't buy off everyone in the world.
You can't murder them all if you want to have something to control. And even with law, there are law breakers. Right? There are the edge cases there. With information applied at the right time in the right way, you can change behaviors.
When you see Banner ad, they're trying to shape your behavior to sell you a new pair of shoes, but they can also control what you see and in enough time and this is, you know, been been studied by academics, what you believe. Facebook, which is a big company, know, we're we're not talking like a small startup that's a little bit shady here. They ran their own psychological studies on, you know, the the current population to see if they could make you angry. They intentionally wanted to manipulate their users And
Speaker 0: it worked. See, it did.
Speaker 1: Like you said. And it worked. Exactly. You are correct. Right?
This is controlling human behavior by a private company. For what end? Just to see if they could. Well, the next variants, and this was years ago, are not gonna be just see if they could. It is going to be for their advantage.
It is going to be to shape laws. It is going to be to shape elections, and it is going to be to shape individual outcomes. They are going to change lives. They it might be good for you. Right?
You you might get a job that you didn't expect to have, but it could also be very very bad for you. And I think for a significant portion of the population it will be.
Speaker 0: I don't feel threatened. You make a good case why I should. I'm not scared of Amazon or Facebook because yes, they want to manipulate me, but I'm a little scared of the algorithm and how it might divide America by feeding us more of what we believe and push us apart more. But basically they want my money and to get my money in a free market a company has to give me what I want and that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: Even if we look at this from the most libertarian perspective, when we talk about free market operating, are presuming that there is open competition. We are presuming that there is fair competition. We do not live in a perfect world. We do not live we do not have the benefit at a perfect market. There are monopolies that exist.
There are companies that exploit flaws in regulations and the moats that have been granted to them. And there is it's hard to find a better example of this than a lot of the Internet giants as they exist today. And so I think it's fair to recognize that even though yeah. Free market. Even though we have consumer choice, though we can do other things, that only is true where there is an alternative, where there is a reasonable competitor that can provide the same service or that it's even possible to launch a competitor to these things.
And I I don't believe this is true in in that larger sense. But as you say, so you were saying if I heard it correctly that you're not super afraid of these things in the specific sense. You understand in the general sense. You have these fears, but, you know, what can you do to protect yourself? This is always a question that I get, and it's very difficult to answer because the advice changes year to year because technology is dynamic.
The devices are changing. The protocols are changing. The services are changing. The platforms are changing. The laws are changing.
And so I don't like to give specific advice because it dates very quickly, and this video will live forever with all of the rest of the things on our permanent record. What I will tell you is there are organizations out there that are dedicated to creating these kind of guides for how to protect yourself and keeping them up to date. You can search for sites like privacy tools, like surveillance self defense guides from Electronic Frontier Foundation. The American Civil Liberties Union creates guides. The Freedom of the Press Foundation, which I'm the president of, creates a guide for working journalists.
But largely, the most important thing to protect yourself is to recognize you are not going to win an arms race against the richest companies in history and the most powerful states that the world has ever seen. The surveillance problem, first and foremost, is a political problem because it is enabled by a political class that does not share our burdens, it does not share our struggles, and, it exempts itself from this gaze. It is not held to the same standard of behavior, the same level of accountability, as you and I. And this system, this knowledge, this influence will increasingly be used to shape our lives while excusing them from the same methods of control. So political action, I think, and concern is actually the root of resolving this and recognizing what are the ways that this can be changed.
What is the single point of failure that all of these exploitative practices are relying on, that allows this system as it is to come into being? And we talked before about these silos, you know, the Google stash, the Facebook stash, know, everybody's private records that are raining in there and being used in different ways and the government can sort of open the lids to the different, you know, salt shakers and and help themselves. Well, how did those silos get filled? We have in The United States, as I said, no no basic privacy law. The fourth amendment binds the federal government and the state government, but it does not restrain these companies that are basically acting in willful conspiracy with regulators where each hand washes the other in a sort of monopoly position.
There is, I believe, a common failure in the laws as they are interpreted by the courts of The United States today. A nineteen seventies era case. This sounds random, but I promise it comes together very quickly, called Smith versus Maryland, and it led to the birth of what is called the third party doctrine. If you look back in American history into what law enforcement could get through investigations, they were strictly limited to two categories of gains. They were called the fruits and instrumentalities of a crime.
If they were chasing burglar, they could get a warrant. The warrant would allow them to go in the house, go into business, whatever. They could get the bag of loot, the fruits that they won. They could take the crowbar, the mask, the gloves, the instrumentalities of the crime, and they could use this as evidence to convict. They could not go to that burglar's landlord and, you know, get records of payment.
They could not go to the phone company and seize the phone company's records, because they were neither fruits nor instrumentalities. This new world where the government can demand, private entities, private records about customers or even your own records about yourself, your diaries or whatever, is a very, very new thing. It's about 60 years old. Right? And in this Smith versus Maryland case in the nineteen seventies, the government interpreted one case of the cops, investigating a, basically man making harassing phone calls to a woman where this was an individual who was suspected of wrongdoing.
The cops went to the phone company and said, can we get his phone records to see if he called this house? Because the woman saw his license plate as he drove by sort of leering at her house and thought it was him. The cops agreed. Phone company turned it over and sure enough, it was him. They caught the guy making harassing phone calls.
You know, it seems fair, but they did it without a warrant. And when this went all the way up to the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court knew he was a bad guy, knew he did a bad thing, they didn't want to let him walk. And so they went they tried to create a paradigm in which they could go. The phone company could do this. They could give this person's records of what they were doing over to the cops without a warrant, and this was called the third party doctrine.
The government said that because these records did not belong to the man, even though there were records about him. They belonged to the company because the company created him. That man had no privacy interest in those records. Therefore, he had no fourth amendment protections regarding those records. Well, in the decades since the nineteen seventies when you know the court could not have imagined the world that we live in today, that our movements can be tracked by our phones, that companies have records of everything about us, The government has repeatedly leaned on this one single outdated court opinion of one guy making scary phone calls to go, no one in the country, no one in the world has a privacy interest in any records that are created about them, but held by a third party.
If that changes, this surveillance ends.
Speaker 0: Ends? Really? People won't find a way to get around it?
Speaker 1: I think legally if you recognize that people have a property interest or a privacy interest in information about them, that means it's no longer the company's records, they're your records. And so you now are in the driver's seat. Yes. Amazon could create a record about you with your consent, but you control it. You can revoke it.
You can destroy it. And this is what has changed. Right now, we have a non consensual relationship. It is premised on the illusion of consent. The idea that you know you clicked okay to continue, but that doesn't work in any other contract law sense.
Know, you can't click okay to bind yourself into servitude for the rest of your life. You can't click okay to be victimized repeatedly anywhere else except the Internet. And I think as soon as we recognize that this is not proper and is not appropriate, life will be better for all of us because we will have more control over our own destinies and over our own stories.
Speaker 0: I confess that I'm a bad example when it comes to what you say about worrying about this, and that I've been on television since I was in my twenties calling businessmen crooks. And I figured I had enemies and some of them wanted to get me, so I've been very careful. When I got a cancer scare, I wrote a column about it. So I figured I have no privacy really and I've kind of come to terms with that. But there ought to be a private sphere where people could go.
Speaker 1: It's a fair point. I I will say there is a difference between you and shall we say the average person. Because just like we talked about public officials and private citizens, we also have this other category, public figures. And you aren't nobody. You have a platform.
You have a voice. You have influence. You have friends. You have associations. You have connections.
And more importantly, you derive your power, I think, in society from sharing that voice and using that voice. But not everybody is as clever as you, as well spoken as you, right, and has the the the history, and the skill set that you do. And I think recognizing that there are different people in society with different capabilities isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's okay for someone to say they do not care about this, that, or the other.
But the way rights work is it's not for the average person, and it's not especially for the most privileged among us. Right? Bill Gates doesn't need rights. Bill Gates writes the laws. Right?
Bill Gates could hire his own army. It is rights are for the least among us. They are for the minorities. They are for the strange. They are for the exposed.
Are for the people who stand out and are different. Rights exist to protect the minority from the majority because it is our differences that lead to progress, And those differences, those disagreements, those new ideas always start out as a minority of one. And just like a seedling, we in, free societies make an intentional decision to structure our systems, our laws, to protect and shelter these weirdos so that once they have been tested we can benefit from those ideas.
Speaker 0: Well I thank you very much for giving us lots of time here.
Speaker 1: You very much. It's been a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Edward Snowden.
Speaker 1: Stay free.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
With Trump's tarrifs, the media and even some world leaders now say: globalization is over! I hope they're wrong. Globalization makes the world— and even America—richer. Here's how: https://t.co/lrqonLZxWG
Video Transcript AI Summary
Globalization is under attack, but many criticisms are myths. One myth is that America is losing due to trade deficits; trade is mutually beneficial, like buying groceries. Another myth claims trade hurts American workers, but technology and innovation cause more job losses. International trade creates 60% of new jobs, and manufacturing job openings are high.
The idea that trade causes a "race to the bottom" is also a myth. While sweatshop wages are low, these jobs are better than the alternatives in developing countries. Trade helps poor countries become prosperous and reduces child labor.
Environmental degradation is linked to early development, but wealthier countries pollute less. Helping developing countries get rich through globalization is key to environmental improvement. Despite tariffs, trade levels remain high, including digital trade. Trade brings more choices and benefits everyone involved.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: America First. America First.
Speaker 1: Leaders of both parties agree. We must reduce globalization.
Speaker 0: That means using products, parts, materials built right here in The United States Of America.
Speaker 1: Why? Because apparently, we're getting ripped off.
Speaker 0: China is ripping us on trade.
Speaker 2: Selling us stuff is hardly ripping us off. Scott Linzicombe runs the new Cato Institute project. Defending globalization.
Speaker 1: Defending is needed because so much of what we hear about trade and globalization is just wrong. In this video, we'll bust six myths. First, that idea that America is losing on trade. We're losing on trade bigger than ever. People often say that because of our trade deficits.
Speaker 3: Our trade deficit with China is an immorality. Unacceptable.
Speaker 1: Why is it unacceptable?
Speaker 2: It's a one way competition and China's winning.
Speaker 1: But we're winning too. Trade doesn't need to balance.
Speaker 2: I have a trade deficit with my supermarket. That doesn't mean it's beating me at trade. They get your dollars, yes, but you get food without having to grow it yourself. That win win experience is true for everything we buy regardless whether we buy it down the block or from Korea or Mexico. Imports are great.
It means I can focus on what I wanna do for a living and not go make my own food or make my own clothes. I can buy that from somebody else. And then I can use those savings and go buy other things. That makes me better off and makes us all better off in the long run.
Speaker 1: Every trade is a win for both parties because as long as it's voluntary, you don't do it unless both sides think they win. Exactly. It's why when you pay, both you and the cashier often say thank you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's win win. But wait, I'm told buying from other countries hurts American workers.
Speaker 0: Too many good paying manufacturing jobs move overseas. Thousands and thousands of miles away.
Speaker 1: That's myth two. Some people lose jobs.
Speaker 2: Undeniably true. We lose about 5,000,000 jobs every month. But trade isn't the main reason for the job loss. Jobs are lost due to technology. They're lost due to changing consumer tastes.
They're lost from innovation. We make a lot more stuff with a lot fewer workers. That's productivity, and that's a good
Speaker 1: thing. This constant change creates jobs faster than it kills them, and trade creates even more. Companies engaged in international trade create 60% of America's new jobs. It's why the number of Americans who have jobs has been rising and unemployment is low. We're at
Speaker 2: historically high manufacturing job openings. Manufacturers in The United States can't find enough workers. And what the jobs pay is up too. Yet politicians keep saying.
Speaker 0: We don't make anything anymore.
Speaker 1: That's just wrong. Manufacturing output in The US is actually near its all time high. We make more than Japan, Germany, India, and South Korea combined. There are many reasons why the media get this wrong. One is that a factory closing's visible.
It's easy to photograph, easy to interview victims. After I lost my job, everything went downhill from there.
Speaker 2: But the job creation happens in thousands of different places. It's very difficult to write a story about broad based economic growth. Myth four, trade and open markets create a race to the bottom.
Speaker 3: Wide open markets can have a devastating effect on countries where the economy is less developed.
Speaker 1: We're told globalization promotes child labor.
Speaker 3: Wearing no shoes and in the most wretched conditions.
Speaker 1: The last few decades of globalization allowed corporations to scour the planet for the cheapest labor and loosest regulations.
Speaker 2: This race to the bottom, is a myth. But wait a sec.
Speaker 1: The company can go all around the world and look for cheap workers. But give them jobs.
Speaker 2: That's the key point. These people in Bangladesh making t shirts are paid less than Americans, but they have better lives than what they had before that company and that factory arrived.
Speaker 1: Making T shirts in a sweatshop must have been better than their other alternative or they wouldn't have taken that job.
Speaker 2: Exactly. We Americans are spoiled. We look upon the jobs in the developing world, these factory jobs, and we say, oh, how terrible this is that these people are working for such low wages. But the reality is that their alternatives in these places are far, far worse. It's subsistence farming.
It's sex work. It's getting married off to a guy down the street.
Speaker 1: Trade is what lets people in poor countries become prosperous. And when there's trade, there's less child labor.
Speaker 2: No parent wants his kid to go into the factory or the farm. They do it because they have no choice. As we get wealthier, child labor disappears. Even developing countries now are getting so rich that low skill manufacturing work is looked down upon by their workers. Factory owners in Vietnam complain that, the kids these days wanna be baristas and YouTubers and not go work in the textile factory.
Now that's not great for that factory owner, but it's great for those workers. So great that factories in Vietnam to keep workers now offer employees yoga and dance classes and in house cafes. And it shows how globalization helps them get richer.
Speaker 1: But what about myth five? Globalization causes
Speaker 3: Environmental degradation. The increased transportation of goods causes greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants.
Speaker 1: And trees get cut down.
Speaker 3: Raiding these resources almost as though they were limitless.
Speaker 2: It's undeniably true that as a nation starts along its development path, that it's going to pollute more. But a wonderful thing happens. As countries get wealthy, they become better environmentally. It's why pollution's dropping in America. Here, blue line is gross domestic product.
The red is carbon emissions. The same is true for dozens of booming capitalist countries because only when people get wealthy enough to think beyond their next meal can they afford to care about the environment. The best thing that we can do for the developing world is to help those countries get rich, and globalization is part of that recipe.
Speaker 1: Finally, myth six. Globalization is now over. The US tariffs have kicked in.
Speaker 2: China can't put as many tariffs on us as we can put on them. The wheels are slowly coming off the globalization train. But so far, that's not true either. But if you look at the data, the fact is that trade levels in The United States and around the world are at or near all time highs. That's just goods.
When you look at things like digital trade, the ability to stream Squid Game on Netflix, all of that is increasing at exponential rates.
Speaker 1: Trade brings us more stuff at lower prices and gives us more choices.
Speaker 2: Choices made by us, not by politicians. Reality is that trade and globalization at its most fundamental level are just about people doing business with other people. And the more people we trade with, the
Speaker 1: better off we are. Globalization is win win.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
In schools, students are now taught that Native Americans were peaceful. Then uniquely evil Europeans arrived. Political Science professor (@wil_da_beast630) says it’s Marxism’s fault! Karl Marx IS the most assigned economist in today’s colleges. https://t.co/uDUU8iRbfG
Video Transcript AI Summary
Political science professor Wilfred Riley's new book, "Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me," challenges the romanticized view of Native Americans as peaceful stewards of the environment. He argues that government guides and textbooks falsely portray natives as living in harmony with nature, not killing anything they couldn't use. Riley claims this is untrue, citing examples of buffalo hunts, tribal warfare, and even cannibalism.
The transcript asserts that Native Americans also practiced slavery and manipulated their environment through large-scale forest fires. It suggests that the myth of peaceful natives persists due to a "brain virus" among those who want the myth to be real and that this thinking is downstream from Marxism and critical race theory.
The transcript concludes by stating that America's sins were not unique and that the West has led the world in making things better, lifting people out of poverty, and protecting the environment.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country.
Speaker 1: Americans are taught that the people who once lived in what we now call America were stewards of the environment. They had An ancient respect and connection to the land and water. Disney movies made that their message. I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has
Speaker 0: a name. No.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't think native American hunters gave names to every rabbit in the woods around them. No. That's not that's not a real thing that happened.
Speaker 1: Political science professor Wilfred Riley's new book is Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me.
Speaker 2: We've gone into almost this cult like romanticization of the natives who were great warriors and poets, but, I mean, who hunted buffalo by driving herds of them off of 100 foot tall cliffs.
Speaker 1: Yet government guides for teachers say Native Americans lived in harmony with nature. There was love of every form of life. They didn't kill anything they couldn't use.
Speaker 2: That's just objectively untrue. I mean, that would mean no young male warrior, no brave ever killed for sport. I mean, that's we just know that's false.
Speaker 1: I heard that. I believed it.
Speaker 2: Well, I believed it too because I was 8.
Speaker 1: The best selling book, Lies My Teacher Told Taught Me, loved by teachers and students alike. Riley's new book is a response to this hugely popular book. It correctly points out that American textbooks and media portrayed Columbus simply as a hero.
Speaker 0: Let go. Let go. Arrive for admiral Columbus.
Speaker 1: Textbooks ignored Columbus's brutality and enslavement of Indians. Columbus himself wrote about his slaves saying, Indians make all our food, extract gold from the mines, and perform all other labors. The book was valid, right, with the kids were being taught at Columbus. It's wonderful.
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily think your focus should be white and native atrocities against one another in a 6th grade class.
Speaker 1: Today, students are rarely taught that natives also took slaves and considered them objects of wealth.
Speaker 2: The morality of today didn't exist anywhere in the world until about 60 years ago.
Speaker 1: White people did murder the natives cruelly. What what's the harm in sending a counter message?
Speaker 2: You don't need a counter message. No one denies that whites and native Americans killed each other. Sure. In 1970, in some southern schools, people might have been taught a jingoistic view of American history, but the the reverse has been true for 40 years.
Speaker 1: He says the old myths don't justify nuance like the one spread by today's social media influencers.
Speaker 2: We know firsthand how to live in harmony with the natural world. In fact, we did so since time in memorial.
Speaker 1: In reality, natives manipulated their environment. To make farming easier, they set big forest fires to clear land.
Speaker 2: Giant forest fires. You're you're burning alive hundreds of thousands of small animals, slower running deer. You're probably killing members of other tribes. You're you're modifying the environment more bluntly. US government curriculum guides also claimed There was no prejudice, no major wars.
Nonsensical. In the Aztec capital, there were 90 foot towers of human skulls that were brought back from their defeated enemies.
Speaker 1: Some tribes even practiced cannibalism, eating enemies they killed. But still I cannot see if the savage one is me. Yet the myth of peaceful natives lives on. You don't know.
Speaker 2: You're looking at people saying the absolute opposite of reality. When myths persist despite obvious objective reality, that's an indicator of a kind of brain virus among people who want the myth to be real.
Speaker 1: Why does the myth of peaceful, harmonious living among Indians versus uniquely evil oppression by Europeans live on? All this to me is just downstream from Marxism. Marxism? Well, it is true that at colleges today, the most assigned economist, is Karl Marx. Students are taught that western values are bad.
Critical race theory amplifies that.
Speaker 2: White Americans have more because of racism. Critical race theory is communist theory with the rich man replaced by the white man.
Speaker 1: Westerners and white people being so evil. Why is it so popular?
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of rich people don't like their father. There is a lot of dislike for our society among people who are pretty near the leadership class.
Speaker 1: I think the people who teach these myths mean well. They want minorities to feel included, but teachers should at least also teach that America's sins were not unique, that just about every society had slavery, cruel wars, and environmental destruction. The seldom taught good news is that in the last century, the West led the world in making things better.
Speaker 2: The Geneva Convention saying that you can't abuse prisoners of war who tried to kill you, The last of those was signed in, I believe, 1949.
Speaker 1: Most of the world is getting better, and the much maligned capitalist countries now are largely responsible for lifting people out of poverty and protecting the environment. They ought to teach that.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
When you hire employees, you want the best. Same with "hiring" new citizens, says@yaronbrook. He says America should let in anyone with a job offer, then the best would come here." Is that the key to making immigration work for most everyone? https://t.co/aJOqj1RhZ1
Video Transcript AI Summary
President Trump's deportation of migrants has sparked controversy, with some arguing it's inhumane while others, particularly Trump supporters, express concerns about immigrant crime. Despite perceptions, data from Texas suggests illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans.
While illegal immigrants don't qualify for most welfare benefits, their children attend public schools and hospitals often treat them, leading to resentment among some who feel their tax dollars are being misspent. Some propose restricting "goodies" rather than immigration itself, arguing immigrants benefit America.
Immigrants contribute to the economy by filling essential jobs and paying taxes, often more than they receive in benefits. They also create jobs, with immigrants founding half of successful Silicon Valley startups.
Legal immigration is complex, pushing some to enter illegally. A proposal suggests allowing entry to those with job offers, no criminal record, and no infectious diseases. Concerns about cultural changes and assimilation exist, but history shows immigrants eventually assimilate. Some worry about immigrants bringing in unwanted ideas, but others argue that promoting American values will encourage assimilation.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: We're getting the bad hard criminals out.
Speaker 1: President Trump's deporting migrants who came here illegally. That makes some people mad. It's inhumane to deport people who've been working. But most Americans want illegal immigrants kicked out, and Trump supporters are especially angry about immigrant crime.
Speaker 2: Migrants caught on camera attacking two New York City police officers.
Speaker 0: We have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime, and it's happening at levels that nobody thought possible.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, today, we have ever growing hostility towards immigrants.
Speaker 1: Yaron Brook, a legal immigrant himself, is chair of the Ayn Rand Institute. He points out that illegal immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than native born Americans. The only state that tracks immigrant crime, Texas, reports about 1,400 convictions per hundred thousand Americans versus half that number by illegal immigrants and far fewer by legal immigrants. Immigrants don't commit more crime. But there are plenty of other worries like freeloading.
People will come here and collect our welfare benefits. You can't have open borders with a welfare state.
Speaker 3: We could of course eliminate welfare for immigrants.
Speaker 1: Actually, illegal immigrants don't qualify for most welfare benefits, but migrants' kids often attend public schools, hospitals often treat them for free. Seems cruel not to. Some towns house migrants in public buildings.
Speaker 3: No. Shut the school down.
Speaker 1: These people are mad because migrants lived in their kid's high school.
Speaker 3: No. Shut the school down.
Speaker 2: No, We're paying for them. Our tax dollars are paying for them, but my kids have to stay home.
Speaker 3: There is a a a real basis for people resenting that fact that people are getting handed, goodies. And one way to deal with that is not to restrict immigration. The way to deal with that is to restrict the goodies. Why not restrict immigration itself? Immigrants ultimately are a massive benefit to the Americans that live in America.
Speaker 1: Immigrants really are. Even illegal immigrants are a net gain, not just because they harvest lots of our food, do lots of construction, but they don't collect social security or Medicare. Well, those taxes and income taxes are deducted from their paychecks. So undocumented immigrants pay more into our economy than they get back. Still.
These new rivals compete primarily with the very Americans most likely to have lost their jobs. That's true. Migrants do take away jobs from some Americans, but most Americans don't wanna do those jobs.
Speaker 3: Every serious economic study has shown that they create more jobs, than they destroy. You might lose their job, but you live now in a society that has more possibilities, more opportunities because they're immigrants, many of them entrepreneurs. Immigrants do create a remarkable number of jobs. Half of all the very successful Silicon Valley startups were founded by immigrants. Many of us benefit enormously from our interaction with immigrants, and who has the right to stop us from that interaction?
Speaker 1: Brooks says restricting migrants is like saying
Speaker 3: I have a right to stagnate and to force all of you to stagnate with me.
Speaker 0: I'm fine with legal immigration. I like it. We need people.
Speaker 1: Most Americans accept legal immigration, but a big reason people come here illegally is because
Speaker 3: Legal immigration is unbelievably complicated and complex and makes it almost impossible to come here. And many people, as a consequence, who want a part of the American dream come here illegally. It would be better, he says. If you made immigration limited to jobs, if you come to the border with a job offer and you're not a criminal, you're not a terrorist, and you don't have an infectious disease, you're in.
Speaker 1: The United States used to do that. Well, not the job part, but anyone who came here without an infectious disease was let in. Some Americans say, alright. That worked when we brought in Europeans, but now we're bringing in the wrong people.
Speaker 2: We are bringing in peasant cultures, driving drunk, and dumping your crap on the ground. I mean, is changing our culture.
Speaker 3: There are good people in every culture. When the Irish came here, they were accused of being barbarians and primitive and so on. I don't see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Every wave of immigrants has been accused of the same thing.
The fact is that within a generation or two, they assimilate quite well no matter where they come from.
Speaker 1: But assimilation takes time. People say, I don't wanna press one for English.
Speaker 3: If we demanded and required them to work, to learn English, to assimilate into our culture, then the best would come here, not the worst.
Speaker 1: Some immigrants are Muslim fundamentalists who bring in ideas we don't like. Some are socialists.
Speaker 3: Yes. Immigrants are going to bring ideas that we don't like and that we don't support. But if we're really confident in the ideas that we have, the ideas of individual rights, the ideas of capitalism and liberty, then we should fight for those ideas. It's Americans who teach at our universities that the founding fathers, you know, were terrible human beings. By contrast, immigrants tend to like America.
People come here because they want to pursue their happiness. What we need is to give them the intellectual framework, the idea of individual rights, the idea of liberty and capitalism. If we stand for those ideas, they will assimilate. If we reject those ideas, we've only got ourselves to blame.
reSee.it AI Summary
China has halted shipments of seven rare earth metals to the U.S., which are crucial for electric vehicles, military, and tech products. While America possesses these minerals, I wonder why we aren't mining them domestically. More details on China's decision to follow.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
China just stopped shipping 7 types of rare earth metals to the U.S. Minerals used to make electric vehicles, military and tech products. America has these minerals. Why don't we mine them here? Here's why:
Video Transcript AI Summary
Mining uses toxic chemicals and creates hazardous waste, yet is needed for green technologies. Demand for minerals is expected to increase 400-600%. Years ago, a proposal for Pebble Mine in Alaska was vetoed by the EPA due to environmental concerns, despite scientific studies. A Republican administration removed the EPA veto, but President Biden vetoed it again.
Environmental groups and regulators have allegedly killed new mines in America, with permitting taking decades. The Biden administration dealt a blow to Twin Metals mine plans. Environmental groups oppose American mines, but clean energy needs minerals. Windmills, solar panels, and batteries require a massive increase in minerals.
The NRDC didn't provide examples of mines they support. The Green Movement has been happy outsourcing mining to disadvantaged countries with child labor. America has child labor laws, safer equipment, and environmental rules. America once led in mineral production, but now depends on other countries. Society can't exist without mines.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Mines use toxic chemicals like cyanide and churn through millions of tons of rock.
Speaker 1: Mining is a dirty business. It creates
Speaker 0: Deep open pits and huge dams filled with hazardous waste.
Speaker 1: And yet even president Biden said, we need more mines in order to make
Speaker 2: Solar panels, wind turbines, and so much more.
Speaker 1: All are made from minerals that come from mines.
Speaker 2: We expect the demand to for them to increase by 400 to 600%.
Speaker 1: That's the reason years ago this man tried to open what he called Pebble Mine in this remote section of Alaska. Seems like a good place for a mine. So Pebble hired hundreds of people to conduct the scientific study required to ask for permission to open a mine. But before Pebble even got its application in, the EPA vetoed Pebble.
Speaker 3: They decided to kill this project before any science had been done.
Speaker 1: Why? Because environmentalists claim
Speaker 4: Pebble mine would be a catastrophic threat to the wildlife and people that depend on this fragile ecosystem.
Speaker 1: That ad was made by the Natural Resources Defense Council. It's a rich environmental group that has cozy relations with EPA officials. They're very close, aren't they? The NRDC guys go to work for They're sleeping with each
Speaker 3: other figuratively.
Speaker 1: I asked the NRDC spokesman about that. Your people are working for the EPA now and EPA people come to work for the NRDC colluding with big liberal regulators.
Speaker 2: NRDC is a source of expertise and sometimes the government takes advantage of that.
Speaker 1: Years later, a Republican administration removed the EPA's veto. That allowed the Army Corps of Engineers to study the mine and they concluded it wouldn't result in long term changes in the health of the fisheries. So is Pebble a bustling mine today? No.
Speaker 2: The mine will not be built.
Speaker 3: President Biden vetoed it again. I don't get it. He just said we need the minerals. Pebble Mine is is the has become the poster child that they want to stop, but it's not the only one.
Speaker 1: Physicist Mark Mills writes about how environmental groups and regulators have killed new mines in America.
Speaker 3: Why in the world would you put millions and millions, maybe billions of dollars at risk spending those decades to get a permit knowing there's a very good chance we'll just cancel a permit illegally, summarily. I have a pen. Boom. It happens often. The Biden administration dealt a death blow to Twin Metals plans for a copper nickel mine.
How in the world do you build mines in America knowing that that's the landscape you have?
Speaker 1: The new president may change that, but our piles of accumulated regulation will make that hard. America now ranks next to last in time it takes to develop a new mine. You start applying for permits. You're gonna be waiting not months, not years. The record shows decades.
And if a mine is approved, the Natural Resources Defense Council will run ads like this.
Speaker 4: Imagine this natural paradise destroyed by a 2,000 foot gaping hole in the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a a a big hole. It's a tiny infinitesimal pinprick in the landscape. Flying over mines like pebble, you see nothing but wilderness for miles.
Speaker 3: What I was struck by is just the vastness of the territory and how tiny the footprint that we were disturbing. And we need to disturb it a little. We need metals and materials and minerals to build everything that exists to make society possible.
Speaker 1: Roads, buildings, cell phones, medical equipment. It's kind of funny. The Andargassee touts clean energy saying it creates jobs.
Speaker 2: We created 50,000 new jobs in this country putting up wind turbines, solar panels, building the next generation of energy efficient cars. This is where the future is.
Speaker 1: Need copper and gold. Well, that's right. And we have to weigh those risks. But they don't really weigh them. They oppose all American minds.
Speaker 4: America doesn't need any more environmental disasters.
Speaker 3: Even though clean energy needs the minerals. Windmills, solar panels, and batteries require a massive increase.
Speaker 1: There are some mines where NRDC says, great. This go ahead.
Speaker 3: Well, we're it's not up any?
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's not up to us to to green light mines.
Speaker 3: But what were
Speaker 1: the you don't complain about?
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Sure.
Speaker 1: He said he'd send us some names, but the NRDC never did. And that was nine years ago. We ask again this year. Again, no names.
Speaker 3: Well, don't hold your breath. The minds that they implicitly support are in Africa, South America. Implicitly because they don't say that. They don't say it. But the Green Movement has been perfectly happy at outsourcing mining for decades to disadvantaged countries where there are thousands of children in bare feet working by hand with shovels, digging minerals out of the earth.
Speaker 5: An army of children are at
Speaker 6: the heart of the mining production, wearing no shoes and in the most wretched conditions.
Speaker 1: At least in America, there are child labor laws, advanced equipment that makes mining safer, and environmental rules. You'd think the environmentalists would want more mining in America. To have
Speaker 3: a sane world, we should be doing a lot more of it. Not all of it, but not none of it.
Speaker 1: America once led the world in producing minerals. Now we depend on other countries for a % of many of them.
Speaker 3: Not a good thing. Society can't exist without minds.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
More on China’s move here: https://nypost.com/2025/04/14/world-news/china-suspends-rare-earth-exports-kneecapping-us-industry-reliant-on-beijings-monopoly/
China suspends rare earth exports, kneecapping US industry reliant on Beijing’s ‘monopoly’
The export halt applies to all countries, but access to elements like dysprosium and yttrium are critical to US industry -- especially in the tech, electric vehicle, aircraft and defense sectors.
nypost.com
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Powerball! Mega Millions! Lotto! They're all government-run gambling schemes, with much worse odds than even slot machines. Yet in some places, slots and poker are banned, while politicians PROMOTE lotteries. https://t.co/txaRKlsg0Z
Video Transcript AI Summary
Americans gamble in various forms, spending billions annually. While some states encourage gambling, others ban it, even social gambling. Some politicians seek further restrictions, while paradoxically promoting state lotteries, which have the worst payouts. Lotteries take almost half of everything bet, disproportionately from poorer individuals, and are heavily advertised.
Private lotteries and bookmaking were once prevalent, but politicians shut them down, citing a "numbers racket," then created their own, often less successful, versions. Government-run gambling is inefficient, with high costs. Lottery odds have worsened over time, unlike private sector improvements. The association representing state lotteries claims strict oversight, but Texas lottery officials helped some companies win a $95,000,000 jackpot. Politicians ban private gambling while running their own scams with worse odds, demonstrating hypocrisy.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: A hundred and $14,000,000. Wow. How does that sound?
Speaker 1: Do you play the lottery? Lots of us gamble on something.
Speaker 0: A flood?
Speaker 1: At home poker games. Casino games, sports, even stock and commodities markets are forms of gambling.
Speaker 0: Hey. You 40 even on five.
Speaker 1: Americans like to gamble. They spent $60,000,000,000 at casinos last year, about $12,000,000,000 on online sports betting. Economist Jason Sorens ranked gambling freedom across America. Some states like Nevada let gambling flourish. Utah, Hawaii, and Georgia ban most forms of gambling.
And almost half the states even ban social gambling like home poker games. Sometimes they even arrest players. And some politicians want to ban more. Philadelphia's Mayor moved to ban arcade style gambling machines that are now in gas stations and convenience stores.
Speaker 0: It's not okay to tempt our residents to gamble away their hard earned dollars.
Speaker 1: Other politicians take pride in destroying slot machines. These
Speaker 2: machines will never go back into circulation.
Speaker 1: These no fun senators even want sports betting banned again. That is one of the most severe public health problems today. Yes. Gambling can cause problems, but it's also recreation. In a free country, people should be allowed to take risks.
This is a way of having fun often in a social environment, doing it with friends, adding some extra zing while they're watching a game on TV. And here's the really absurd thing. The politicians banning gambling don't propose banning the worst form of gambling. Worse by far, their own state lotteries. On the one hand,
Speaker 2: you have
Speaker 3: politicians' grandstanding. We need to ban sports betting. We need to destroy these slot machines. This is this is bad for people. At the same time, they're advertising on television a worse form of gambling than any other.
Speaker 0: The new game from the Florida Lottery.
Speaker 1: Lotteries pay out the least of any form of gambling. Slot machines are among the worst bets at casinos, yet they still pay out about 90% of the money bet. Sports bettors keep more. But government lotteries take almost half of everything you bet. Worse, they take it from people who need the money most.
The people who buy these things are disproportionately poor.
Speaker 3: That's right. And the state does a good job of advertising them. I see, you know, it says extreme on there. It's bright colors.
Speaker 1: New Jersey pays Shaquille O'Neal to do this.
Speaker 2: My new scratch off gives people across the great state more chances to win Shack sized prizes.
Speaker 1: Politicians approve their own lottery scams because they want the money. Over a billion dollars goes to good causes like public education. That's why governments won't allow private gambling businesses to compete with them.
Speaker 0: State governments operate all lotteries, giving it a monopoly over the lucrative business.
Speaker 1: It wasn't always like this. Private lotteries were once big. Numbers runners took bets by phone.
Speaker 2: The number business has been going on for years. The people have established a close relationship between the writer and the player. They know each other.
Speaker 1: But the politicians called out a numbers racket. They arrested the operators.
Speaker 2: Police, we have a warrant. Open up.
Speaker 1: Bookies also took bets on horse racing, providing off track betting for people who didn't have time or money to get to the racetrack. Since that reduced the government's cut at the racetrack, politicians banned that. But then they created their own off track betting. OTB players are the winningest people in town. But government is so incompetent, its off track betting managed to lose money taking bets.
OTB has been in in pretty bad shape for the past several years. OTB keeps on taking everybody's money and then they're saying they got no money. They banned bookies. Right. But they promote their own off track betting and then they can't make money at it?
Speaker 3: What we know is that government is always inefficient. The unions get their cut, the wages are high, the benefits are are immense. So that's another reason that we shouldn't want government running gambling operations
Speaker 1: because they're just going to do it at high cost. The states ban it. It hurts people. Hey, come play our game, which has worse odds. That's right.
And yet they want to ban the private sector from offering games like this. That way they can keep making your odds worse.
Speaker 0: Powerball increased the number of white balls from 59 to 69. What that did was drive down the odds of you winning the jackpot from one in one hundred and seventy five to one in two hundred and ninety two million.
Speaker 1: In the private sector, we're used to products improving. Only the government running a lottery would make it get worse over time. I wanted to confront the association representing state lotteries about their scams, but they would not agree to an interview. They did send us a statement saying, a state run lottery system offers key advantages. Government lotteries are subject to strict oversight, every dollar accounted for.
But that's not true. And Texas lottery officials helped some companies win a $95,000,000 jackpot. Politicians make pompous claims about how they know best how we should spend our money. They destroy slot machines, arrest people, and ban at home poker games while they run their own betting scams that offer worse odds.
Speaker 0: This is parabolic.
Speaker 1: Their hypocrisy is disgusting. They ought to leave us alone. Should be left up to us to spend our money how we want.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Only government spends $2 million on a tiny bathroom in a park. I investigate: https://t.co/U2NH5ZlS2g
Video Transcript AI Summary
A $2,000,000 public bathroom sparks outrage, with comparisons made to the cost of houses. Government projects, like a visitor center and a VA medical center, often exceed budget due to rules like minority outreach and wheelchair access.
The Parks Commissioner defends the cost, citing durable materials and New York's expensive market, claiming $2,000,000 was a good deal. A similar bathroom in privately-managed Bryant Park cost a fifth of the price. The Commissioner says the city builds from the ground up, unlike Bryant Park's renovation.
Government projects cost more due to prevailing (union) wages, sometimes over $100/hour. The bathroom took years to build, even with recent efforts to reduce project times from five to three years. The lengthy process involves design, procurement, construction, and public engagement, including the city planning department's review procedure, which the private sector doesn't have to follow.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Here it is. This little building is a $2,000,000 bathroom. $2,000,000? I had to check it out. I was expecting gold plated fixtures.
It's just a toilet, a couple of urinals, two sinks, $2,000,000? Do the people who use this park know what taxpayers paid for their bathroom? What should something like this cost? A couple thousand. 70 thousand?
Speaker 1: Approximately hundred thousand, maybe. Oh, maybe.
Speaker 0: They spent $2,000,000.
Speaker 1: For this? Unbelievable. Wow. Wow.
Speaker 0: You could buy a nice house here for $2,000,000. Price.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You could buy a big house here.
Speaker 0: You can. This nearby house was advertised for much less. It has six bedrooms.
Speaker 1: In the millions for this? This is ridiculous.
Speaker 0: Where does the money go? Good question. Everything costs more when government builds it. Washington DC's visitor center was supposed to cost 265,000,000. It ended up costing 600,000,000.
The Veterans Affair Medical Center near Denver was projected to cost $590,000,000 Now they estimate $1,700,000,000 Government spends more because every decision is tied up in endless rules: minority outreach, wheelchair access, zoning rules, and much more. Your department puts out a statement. The current estimate to build
Speaker 2: a new bathroom is $3,000,000. It is now approaching, in some cases, going over 3,000,000.
Speaker 0: Mitchell Silver is New York's parks commissioner.
Speaker 2: This is the most expensive market in the world. So 2,000,000
Speaker 0: was a good deal here?
Speaker 2: 2,000,000 was a good deal. We build these conference stations to last.
Speaker 0: But you can buy whole houses for in that neighborhood for less than what you spent on this bathroom.
Speaker 2: I hear that point often and if you look at the material that we use compared to a home, these are very, very durable material.
Speaker 0: That's nice, But this bathroom is made of durable materials too. It's so beautiful that a newspaper said it might be the fanciest in New York, yet it costs one fifth as much. Why? Well, it's in nearby Bryant Park and Bryant Park is privately managed. Bryant Park built one with just as many sinks and toilets for a fifth the price.
Speaker 2: Bryant Park did a renovation. When we build our comfort stations, we do it from the ground up.
Speaker 1: But why? Why they knock down the old one? It just looks the same thing.
Speaker 0: Commissioner Silver says this has to be especially sturdy because
Speaker 2: We're gonna expect thousands, if not hundreds and thousands of visitors in that facility over its life cycle.
Speaker 0: But privately run Bryant Park gets more use. No comparison. It's so busy, people wait in line to get in. Yet another reason government work costs more is that government pays more.
Speaker 2: We pay prevailing wage. So we Prevailing wage. Prevailing wage. Union wage. This is a city that does believe strongly in labor, and they wanna make sure that people get paid a prevailing wage.
Speaker 0: Prevailing wage turns out to mean union wages, sometimes more than a hundred dollars an hour. That makes everything cost more. And when we watched, the workers didn't seem to work very hard. The final reason this cost so much is that it took years to build it. It took less time to build the Empire State Building.
Speaker 2: We've now saved five months out of what used to be four years, five years for project. We're now doing them three years, in some cases under. So we've shaved five
Speaker 0: years So instead of five years, it's four and a half years? That's still terrible.
Speaker 2: Actually, we're three years and now we just finished one of our projects in under three years.
Speaker 0: Why does it take you three years
Speaker 2: to build a bathroom? We have a process that includes design, procurement, and construction.
Speaker 0: But so does the private sector.
Speaker 2: Ours, because it's a public project, we believe very strongly in engaging the public.
Speaker 0: Engaging the public means things like the city planning department's uniform land use review procedure. Try doing something quickly while following these rules.
Speaker 2: Clearly, private sector does not have to go through that same process.
Speaker 0: This is a good thing, the public process, all these meetings?
Speaker 2: Oh, yes. It's a good thing.
Speaker 0: It's ridiculous amount of money. One little building, $2,000,000. That's government at work.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Tomorrow is #TaxDay. But calling any single day “Tax Day” is misleading. The income tax is LESS THAN HALF of what most of us pay the government. @KristinBTate has been researching that: https://t.co/BGMUA2mSwp
Video Transcript AI Summary
Kristen Tate, author of "How Do I Tax Thee," argues that income taxes are just a fraction of Americans' total tax burden. She claims that taxes are embedded in almost every transaction, from cable bills to plane tickets, and many people are unaware of the extent of these taxes. For example, there is a tax on fresh fruit from vending machines in California, and a bagel cutting tax in New York.
Tate says that these taxes are often hidden as fees, allowing politicians to raise revenue without explicitly raising taxes. She claims that 911 fees, for instance, often go into general funds rather than emergency services. Tate admits to refusing to pay a pet licensing tax, arguing that these fees also go to general funds. She concludes that these "little things" add up, and what people pay in income tax is less than half of their total tax burden.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Tuesday, April 17 is tax day this year. There'll be publicity about income tax day, but it's misleading because income taxes are just a fraction of what we pay.
Speaker 1: And income taxes are arguably way too high, but they actually make up less than half of our personal tax burden.
Speaker 0: Kristen Tate just wrote what she calls a field guide to the American tax rip off. How do I tax thee explores the many other taxes we pay.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. California has a tax on fresh fruit that comes from vending machines.
Speaker 0: Car registration, entertainment tax, admissions tax for movies, property taxes, garbage taxes.
Speaker 1: This isn't an exaggeration. Every time you do anything, you're really paying taxes.
Speaker 0: Rifle tax, plane ticket tax. But these are tiny taxes.
Speaker 1: Well, some of them actually aren't tiny taxes. The reason I wrote this book is because I was getting charged about $200 a month by Comcast for my cable bill.
Speaker 0: $36 of it was tax.
Speaker 1: These kinds of fees are inflating every bill we pay.
Speaker 0: Why should we believe you? You're 12 years old.
Speaker 1: Well, I did the research. All of this information is available online. The results were shocking. What do you think you pay in taxes?
Speaker 0: Most people don't know what they pay.
Speaker 2: I think it's 22%. I'm probably paying closer to 20%.
Speaker 1: Did you take a plane here?
Speaker 2: I did. Did you
Speaker 1: know you paid 20% in taxes on your ticket?
Speaker 2: I did not realize it was that much. No.
Speaker 1: How much are you paying for your hotel?
Speaker 2: It's about a hundred dollars a night.
Speaker 1: So about $20 of that is going right to taxes.
Speaker 2: Wow. They get us everywhere. I think I need to get a side job that pays cash.
Speaker 0: We need taxes to pay for government.
Speaker 1: Of course we need taxes. The problem is that we're often being taxed without even knowing it. From going to a restaurant with our friends, to buying a movie ticket, to riding the subway. We're getting taxed on those expenses. In Colorado, they tax non essential food items like napkins, bibs, and straws.
In New York, they have a bagel cutting tax, which you get charged for whenever you buy a pre sliced bagel ready
Speaker 0: for some pay the tax.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You don't pay the tax if you buy the whole bagel. So I always get my bagels non sliced to avoid this tax.
Speaker 0: This is a left wing town. They love high taxes. It's part of the deal.
Speaker 1: If New Yorkers want to pay high taxes, they can vote for high taxes. My problem is the way that these taxes are implemented. Politicians are cowards. Instead of creating a tax, they magically create these little fees and they don't have to tell their voters they raised taxes.
Speaker 0: So people don't know.
Speaker 1: I have a list here of 100 different taxes that you pay. I even do tax me on a beer that I drink. Uncle Sam just kills me, you know.
Speaker 2: Can you
Speaker 1: think of anything you do in life that is not taxed? No. I can't.
Speaker 2: When I sleep, am I being taxed?
Speaker 0: Everything's taxed. Even when I breathe.
Speaker 1: A dollar 10 increase in the $9.01 1 phone tax.
Speaker 0: Nine one one fees pay for important emergency services.
Speaker 1: Actually, no. In most states and cities, the nine one one fees are just going to general funds. Chicago, for instance, they hiked their $9.01 1 fee in 02/2008. There was no Olympics in Chicago, but they kept that fee in place. And then in 02/2014, they raised it again.
Speaker 0: Once they put them there, they almost never go away.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. Government only grows. Can I go for a walk?
Speaker 0: Finally, there's the pet licensing tax. This is one tax that Tate and her dog refused to pay.
Speaker 1: In most cities, it doesn't go to dogs. It just goes to the general fund like all of these other fees.
Speaker 0: By saying I'm not paying this, you're you're taking a risk.
Speaker 1: Some addictive I am taking a risk. I just We pay so much of our money to
Speaker 0: be The dogs put you over the top?
Speaker 1: It's the little things, John.
Speaker 0: The little things add up. What you pay in income tax is probably less than half your total tax burden.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Economist Thomas Sowell was once a Marxist, but now he advocates for free markets. "What was your wake-up to what was wrong with [Marxism]?" @RubinReport asked him. "Facts," Sowell replies. Here’s why I admire Sowell: https://t.co/u4jKzrjJ9y
Video Transcript AI Summary
The documentary "Soul" explores economist Thomas Sowell's life and ideas. Sowell, once a Marxist, was influenced by his early life in Harlem and extensive reading. His views shifted after a summer internship at the U.S. Department of Labor, where he observed that government policies didn't always prioritize the well-being of the poor.
Sowell argues that claims of systemic racism are propaganda, pointing out that in the early 20th century, black families had lower unemployment rates than whites. He identifies the welfare state as a significant factor in current challenges faced by black communities, arguing it removed the stigma of being on relief. Sowell also criticizes affirmative action, claiming it can lead to mismatching students with schools and artificially creating failures.
Because of his views, the media often ignores his work, as they cannot argue with his logic. Sowell is currently a scholar at Stanford's Hoover Institution and continues to write about public policy.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Black matter. Lives matter. After last summer's protests, experts declared what America must do for black Americans.
Speaker 1: The only way to close a wealth gap is by transferring wealth.
Speaker 2: We have to abolish policing. Reparations.
Speaker 0: Listening to them, I kept hearing the voice of Tom Sowell.
Speaker 3: I've been able
Speaker 4: to find a single country in the world where the policies that
Speaker 3: are being advocated for blocks in The United States have lifted any people out of poverty.
Speaker 0: Sowell's an economist who writes great books about economics and culture. Today, he defends free markets and criticizes the conceit of political planners. But he once was a Marxist.
Speaker 1: What was your wake up to what was wrong with that line of thinking? Facts.
Speaker 0: Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina at the start of the Great Depression. His father died before he was born, his mother soon after. When he was nine, a relative took him to Harlem.
Speaker 3: We were much poorer than the people in Harlem, almost anywhere else today. But in another sense, in the sense of the things you need to get ahead, I was enormously more fortunate than most black kids today.
Speaker 0: Partly because a friend showed him the Harlem Public Library.
Speaker 3: When you start getting in the habit of reading when you're eight years old, that's a different ballgame.
Speaker 0: His reading and early life experiences turned him into a Marxist.
Speaker 3: So I would take the Fifth Avenue bus, pass all these Lord and Taylor and all these fancy places, and then suddenly, there were the tenements. And I wondered, why is this? It's so different. And nothing in the schools or most of the books seem to deal with that, and Marx dealt with that.
Speaker 0: What then changed him was his first job.
Speaker 3: I was a summer intern at the US Department of Labor. One of my biggest concern was about minimum wages. At first, I thought, well, this is good because all these people are poor, they'll get a little higher income. And so that that'll that'll be helpful. And then as I studied economics, I began to see, well, there's a downside.
They may lose their jobs completely. And when I came up with how we might test this, I was waiting to hear congratulations. You see that I had this. And I can see these people were stunned. They said, oh, this this idiot has stumbled on something that will ruin us all.
And I realized the US Department of Labor had its own agenda and interest, and that did not necessarily mean that whether poor people lost their jobs from minimum wages or got higher pay was their highest priority.
Speaker 2: He found out that people in the government didn't give a rip whether or not it worked or didn't work. They were simply implementing the policy, and that that's what shocked him and caused him to begin to rethink lots of his assumptions.
Speaker 0: These video clips come from a new documentary about Soul.
Speaker 4: This whole notion that this is the black family has always been disintegrating, that is nonsense.
Speaker 0: What I find most interesting about Soul's work is that it utterly contradicts what Americans are taught about black poverty. Soul says claims of systemic racism in America are propaganda.
Speaker 3: If you go back into the twenties, you find that a married couple families were much more prevalent among blacks then. As late as 1930, blacks had lower unemployment rates than whites. So all these things that we complain about and and attribute to the era of slavery, those things should have been worse in the past than in the present.
Speaker 0: Sowell says the bigger cause of blacks' problems today is welfare.
Speaker 3: You began to have the mindset that goes with the welfare state so that there was no stigma any any longer attached, for example, to being on relief.
Speaker 0: The things they thought were going to help did not help, and in many cases made things worse. Sowell concluded that many government programs did much more harm than good because of affirmative action.
Speaker 3: Something like one fourth of all the black students going to MIT do not graduate. You're talking about a pool of people whom you are artificially turning into failures by mismatching them with the school.
Speaker 0: Saying such things doesn't make Sowell popular with today's political elites, but he doesn't seem to care.
Speaker 1: Tom is absolutely fearless. He will not compromise any of his opinions for the sake of social politeness.
Speaker 0: And so today's politically correct media rarely give his work the attention it deserves.
Speaker 5: The media, the television, and the print media, they've wised up. You can't argue with Tom, so you might as well hide what he's doing. And that's what they're doing. They're they're they're they're just ignoring what he's, written because they there's no way that they can argue with Tom Sowell.
Speaker 0: Today, Sowell is a scholar at Stanford's Hoover Institution. He continues to write books about public policy. You can watch the full Soul documentary at any of these sites starting next week.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Big investment firms like @BlackRock pressured companies to hire based on race and gender. “You have to force behaviors,” said BlackRock’s CEO. But most “sustainable” funds underperformed the market, and now investors are running away: https://t.co/FLa2sQ2w7k
Video Transcript AI Summary
ESG investment measures a company's environmental, social, and governance impact. BlackRock pressured companies to adopt certain behaviors, like sustainability, which some consider meaningless marketing. Al Gore claimed sustainability investments enhance returns, but his fund underperformed, later blaming "foolish" stock prices.
Many sustainable investment funds are doing worse than the market, yet trillions flowed into them due to pressure from blue state pensions like CalPERS. Banks and BlackRock are now retreating from ESG alliances, and ESG funds are shuttering rapidly.
The ESG fad has hurt companies like Intel, which cut jobs despite government funding. Intel spent $300 million on workforce representation and ESG bureaucracy, while competitors innovated. Intel's stock is down 75%, and shares are at their worst since 1974.
American politicians haven't pushed ESG as much as Europe, possibly explaining the difference in stock market growth. Ford is ditching DEI policies, signaling a potential shift away from ESG.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: ESG investment. Have you heard about that?
Speaker 1: ESG investment has taken the financial and corporate world by storm.
Speaker 0: It sure did. ESG is a term that's supposed to measure how nice a company is. E, environment, greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 2: S stands for the social side, union rights, diversity, even abortion access. The g stands for governance, even executive pay.
Speaker 0: Big investment companies like BlackRock pressured companies to hire certain people. You have to force behaviors, whether it's gender or race, and they pushed sustainability. All investments are gonna be looked through sustainability. But sustainability is this largely meaningless word that companies use to appear nice. It's usually just marketing.
This fund bragged that it helped meet UN sustainability goals by investing in US Foods and Clorox. And former vice president Al Gore also sells so called sustainability investments, claiming
Speaker 3: The full integration of sustainability factors can actually enhance returns.
Speaker 0: But they didn't. Over the past three years, his sustainable fund rose a lot less than the stock market. His fund recently admitted, we made investment mistakes. But then they blamed the public saying stocks often trade at foolish prices. But don't worry, says Gore.
Eventually, stock markets will see the wisdom of his vision.
Speaker 3: The world is shifting toward sustainability.
Speaker 0: At least reporters now push back.
Speaker 1: People are pulling money from some of these environmental funds. Is this the beginning of the end of sustainable investing?
Speaker 3: No. I don't think so at all.
Speaker 0: It's not only Gore's fund that underperformed, most that promote sustainable investment are doing worse than the market. So why did trillions flow into such funds?
Speaker 4: They did it because of pressures.
Speaker 0: Investment manager Matt Cole worked fifteen years at CalPERS, California's government run pension fund. These greedy companies whose main goal is to say we outperform the next guy, why'd they go along with this?
Speaker 4: Their largest clients are blue states pensions like CalPERS and the New York pension who put pressure on them to say, you either adopt these agendas or you're gonna lose us as your largest customer.
Speaker 0: So CalPERS brags about mitigating climate risk and getting Exxon to hire climate conscious board members. Federal officials pushed ESG on banks. They will invest into climate related efforts. But now banks and BlackRock are running from these alliances. What you're seeing today is ESG funds shuttering at record speed.
If you
Speaker 4: remember the the Homer Simpson meme where he goes back into the shrub,
Speaker 0: they're going back into the shrub, they're not apologizing. They never do. This ESG fad didn't just hurt investors. It set back companies that America needs. Intel's cutting thousands of jobs even though our government gives them billions of dollars.
Companies often decline when they get in bed with government, probably because bosses focus more on sucking up to politicians rather than innovating. Intel's competitors did innovate.
Speaker 2: Pushing the limits of performance and energies.
Speaker 0: Meanwhile, Intel spent $300,000,000 on full workforce representation of women and minorities. Its website lists endless ESG goals. They even brag about their ESG bureaucracy. Here's their exhausting chart of it. There's an ESG steering committee, oversight groups promoting sustainable computing, and green software, whatever that is.
That's a lot of time and energy spent not making the best chip.
Speaker 2: Shares of Intel are having their worst day since 1974.
Speaker 0: Intel's stock is now worth a fraction of what it was a few years ago.
Speaker 4: You know that the AI revolution's happening. The opportunity for you is massive,
Speaker 0: yet Their stock's down 75%. Yes. You have a company like Intel that's absolutely failing. At least American politicians haven't pushed ESG and increased regulations and taxes as much as Europe's did. It's probably why America's stock market grew like this while European stocks grew much less.
ESG, funds had their worst year on record. Now that progressive ESG fantasies flopped, maybe more companies will focus on basic capitalism, producing better products for less money. Ford Motor Company says they are ditching their DEI policies.
Speaker 4: It's the beginnings of an unwind that I think is gonna be critical for us to achieve success.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Tuesday is #TaxDay. But you escape federal taxes if you move to Puerto Rico. So big earners are moving there. “It’s horrifying!” says Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Really? New jobs are appearing. https://t.co/Idn8dKmDik
Video Transcript AI Summary
Moving to Puerto Rico offers a legal way to pay zero federal income tax, with residents keeping 96% of their earnings and paying just 4% to Puerto Rico, along with 0% capital gains. This tax break, initiated after bureaucracy reduction, requires residents to stay at least six months a year.
Applications for these tax breaks have nearly tripled, sparking controversy. While some view it as colonization, others see new opportunities, citing a report that tax beneficiaries created over 40,000 jobs. Some newcomers are accused of only staying the minimum time, while others contribute by opening schools, donating to charity, renovating hotels, and building farms and tech companies.
Critics argue that importing a "ruling class" is unacceptable, while supporters believe that "all ships rise with a tide," suggesting that new wealth creation benefits everyone. Puerto Rico hopes these tax breaks will improve its economy, contrasting with past reliance on big government and strict regulations.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Would you like to pay zero federal income tax? There is a way to do that legally.
Speaker 1: I'm moving to Puerto Rico.
Speaker 0: It's why YouTube star Logan Paul has moved his show from California.
Speaker 1: I feel like people are wondering why Puerto Rico. Taxes. It's one it's one vertical. Yep. It's one.
It's a big one. It's 96% of a big one, which ironically is the same amount of money you keep every year if you move to Puerto Rico.
Speaker 0: Ninety six percent. That's how much of your earnings you now get to keep if you move to Puerto Rico. You pay no federal income tax and must give just 4% of your income to Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: Also It's like the only place you can live Of course. With 0% capital gains.
Speaker 0: No capital gains tax.
Speaker 1: I did it for the obvious benefit of being able to keep most of what I own.
Speaker 0: The tax break started after this Puerto Rican governor shrank the bureaucracy. You let 17,000 workers go. If you can't pay their salaries, what are you gonna do? He limited the tax break to people who move here and stay for at least six months a year.
Speaker 2: Last year, applications for these tax breaks nearly tripled. I think it's horrifying.
Speaker 0: Some people don't want those newcomers coming in.
Speaker 3: It's an example of the continued colonization of the people of Puerto Rico.
Speaker 0: But what AOC calls colonization, I'd call new opportunities.
Speaker 2: One report showed that the tax beneficiaries created north of 40,000 jobs.
Speaker 1: It's too bad that Puerto Rico didn't do this decades ago. They wouldn't be in the economic trouble they are today.
Speaker 3: A lot of people are moving down here.
Speaker 0: Social worker Melissa DeSilva moved here from Rhode Island. Now she runs her therapy and coaching business remotely from Puerto Rico. What's your life like there?
Speaker 3: Like living in paradise every single day. I wake up and I have the ocean in front of me. I go out my back door. The rainforest is, you know, off in a distance. It's just a a magical place to live.
Speaker 0: Also,
Speaker 3: I'm saving quite a bit, 25% of my whole income.
Speaker 0: It hasn't gotten much publicity in the Mainland, and yet it's huge.
Speaker 3: People just don't really talk about it too much.
Speaker 0: Why not?
Speaker 3: There's this fear of all of the people from the state side are gonna come down and, you know, take over everything, which is understandable. I mean, from learning about the history of Puerto Rico, the standards came over and decided it's gonna be their island and decimated all the native people who lived here. And then the state comes down, and they decide it's gonna be their island. And, again, you know, the rights are taken away from the people.
Speaker 0: That's a reason why some activists oppose this tax break.
Speaker 1: We don't work from Puerto Rico. Get the
Speaker 3: out of Puerto Rico. They're, like, invading our land.
Speaker 0: They're invading our land.
Speaker 3: And you know what? Honestly, there are some people that are doing that. I see people who come down and they just stay there six months, and they're like, we're out of here. But there are people, you know, they want to give back to the island as well.
Speaker 0: If you don't pay taxes, aren't you hurting Puerto Rico?
Speaker 3: Well, I do pay taxes. I provide other things to the community as well.
Speaker 0: She sells digital art and gives part of her earnings to a Puerto Rican charity.
Speaker 3: There's some who are opening up schools.
Speaker 1: I live my life in service. God bless Puerto Rico.
Speaker 0: Billionaire Brock Pierce moved here and now helps run the charity Toys for Tots. He also bought this hotel and is renovating another which had been abandoned after hurricane Maria. It's expected to create 300 jobs. Others are building hurricane resistant farms and tech companies.
Speaker 2: People will not allow that to happen.
Speaker 0: Still, some people always see such investment as a problem, as if someone making money means others must lose. But that's not how the world works. When markets are free, new wealth gets created, and most people win.
Speaker 3: It is not acceptable.
Speaker 0: AOC seems to think there are only winners or losers, subjects or rulers.
Speaker 3: We are essentially importing a ruling class.
Speaker 0: I like DeSilva's answer to that. A new ruling class.
Speaker 3: The saying is, like, all ships rise with a a tide. Let's all grow with this.
Speaker 0: Puerto Rico tried big government, strict regulations, handouts, and even a government controlled power company.
Speaker 3: This is our invitation.
Speaker 0: I bet tax breaks work better.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Climate change will kill crops and cause food shortages! says the UN. Bunk. Earth has MORE green areas now, and much more food. "We inject CO2 into greenhouses for a reason," chuckles @linnealueken of @HeartlandInst. "It helps to fertilize plants." More surprising facts here: https://t.co/bbp2FQ5kmf
Video Transcript AI Summary
The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived, with claims of a sixth mass extinction. This video addresses climate change myths, starting with the claim that the Arctic will soon be ice-free. While some scientists predicted an ice-free Arctic by 2030 and the Greenland ice sheet melting could raise sea levels by 22 feet, others argue that Arctic sea ice has stabilized in recent years and returns in winter. Land ice in the Arctic shows minimal decline.
Another myth is that polar bears are going extinct. Data indicates their populations have increased, contrary to environmental groups' claims.
The third myth addressed is that climate change will create massive global food shortages. Agricultural output is at record highs, and increased carbon dioxide can benefit plant growth. NASA data shows the Earth has significantly greened. While the UN warned of a climate crisis famine in Madagascar, the issues are mostly due to bad governance, not climate change. Despite media claims linking climate change to food shortages and rising prices, global coffee production has increased since the 1990s. The next video will cover myths about infernos and more.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: The era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived.
Speaker 1: Global boiling. The world's doomed, I'm told.
Speaker 2: We're in the sixth mass extinction right now.
Speaker 1: I only wish someone could have warned us about this apart from every scientist for the last fifty years. Every scientist agrees, but here's the thing, they don't. Well, yes, they agree that the climate's warming, Climate changes. But scientists don't agree on the catastrophic claims activists and the media make.
Speaker 3: Icebergs are melting, the coral reefs are dying and no one is helping.
Speaker 2: If we don't stop the sea level rising, millions of people will be in danger.
Speaker 1: In this video and the next, we'll look at seven myths about climate change, starting with
Speaker 2: The great polar ice sheets, which are melting faster than many scientists had anticipated.
Speaker 4: If global warming continues at the present rate, then the Arctic could already be ice free by the summer of twenty thirty.
Speaker 1: That's myth one. The Arctic will soon be ice free. We don't have decades. We hardly have years. These glaciers are on the brink.
Some already past the point of no return.
Speaker 2: If the entire Greenland ice sheet was lost, sea levels would increase by seven meters.
Speaker 1: That's 22 feet. At just six feet, one storm surge could leave London underwater, says this BBC documentary. This could happen this century, they say. But is the ice really melting that fast?
Speaker 5: No. As we exit ice ages, you should expect some ice melt, but it's not happening at nearly the catastrophic pace that they claim.
Speaker 1: Heartland research fellow, Lynnea Lucan, researches environmental threats. She points out that studies on Arctic sea ice don't show a catastrophic decline, although ice has melted.
Speaker 5: It's really leveled off in recent years. A lot of the time when you are looking at these, very alarming images, it seems like where'd all the ice go? There's no ice. There's all these walruses laying out on a stony beach. They should be on big icebergs.
Well, because it's the summertime and in the winter it all comes right back to where it was before.
Speaker 1: All of it?
Speaker 5: In recent years, yeah, all of it.
Speaker 1: For the past twenty years it's been largely stable. And anyway, this is just sea ice ice in the water, not the total amount of ice in the Arctic. Almost all the Arctic's ice is on land, and this is the trend line for that ice. You can barely see any decline.
Speaker 5: Compared to the amount of ice that's in the Arctic, it is like a grain of sand on the beach. It is so minuscule compared to the amount of ice that's there that it doesn't even show up on a trend chart when you plot it.
Speaker 2: Oh, my god. Oh, my god.
Speaker 1: It's so frustrating. Media keep interviewing experts who claim
Speaker 2: We still see an ice free Arctic, by the middle of the century.
Speaker 1: Zealots have predicted doom for years.
Speaker 6: There is a 75% chance that the entire North Polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice free within the next five to seven years.
Speaker 1: Well, those years have long passed. Nobody calls him on it.
Speaker 5: They absolutely should be calling him on it. A lot of these kinds of claims are based on what computer models are projecting.
Speaker 1: And they pick the ones that are alarmist.
Speaker 5: Oh, absolutely. Well, those are the ones that generate headlines. Right?
Speaker 1: Here's another myth that generates headlines.
Speaker 2: Arctic polar bears are facing near extinction by the end of the century.
Speaker 3: Imagine your family disappearing. It's happening to polar bears right now.
Speaker 1: That's myth two. Polar bears are going extinct.
Speaker 5: This is the worst one. Polar bears have increased their populations.
Speaker 1: Environmental groups, ignore that increase to sucker you into giving them more of your money.
Speaker 3: Don't give up on polar bears. Don't give up on threatened species. Your support can help environmental defense funds save the polar bears.
Speaker 1: These environmental groups are really being sleazy.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Because the data is right there. It's not hard to find out that polar bears are fine. Finding some sick polar bear out there to take a picture of does not indicate the health of the species.
Speaker 1: So polar bears aren't going extinct, but I'm told we might.
Speaker 3: The UN is warning of mass extinctions and food shortages within this century. If global warming continues
Speaker 2: Climate change could create a massive global food shortage.
Speaker 1: That's myth three.
Speaker 2: Our changing climate is already making it more difficult to produce food.
Speaker 5: There is no claim less true.
Speaker 1: Agricultural output keeps setting record highs.
Speaker 5: Food production has skyrocketed even amid the modest warming of the past hundred plus years.
Speaker 1: Extra carbon dioxide is good for food production.
Speaker 5: Well, we inject c o two into greenhouses for a reason. It's because it helps fertilize plants for faster and better growth. And NASA data show that the Earth has significantly greened over the past couple of decades, and that NASA even attributes to increased carbon dioxide fertilization.
Speaker 1: As the climate has warmed, the world experienced the biggest drop in hunger and malnutrition ever. But climate activists don't tell people that.
Speaker 5: The United Nations says Madagascar is on the verge of experiencing the world's first climate crisis famine.
Speaker 1: Climate crisis famine? No. Madagascar's problems are mostly caused by bad governance, corruption, cronyism, not climate change. But whenever there's a food shortage or even when prices rise, the media blame climate change.
Speaker 2: Food shortages driven by the effects of climate change. We're going see starvation and famine on multiple continents at the same time.
Speaker 1: When coffee prices rose, the New York Times blamed devastation that climate change wrought. But since the nineteen nineties, global coffee production has increased by 82%. The Times focused on a brief decline in Honduras. But even there, coffee production since 1990 is up more than 200%.
Speaker 5: It does not mean that there is a long term climate issue if you have one bad year.
Speaker 1: But the New York Times acts like it does.
Speaker 5: It absolutely does not and and they get egg on their face when you look at the historic data and you see they've been setting records for coffee production.
Speaker 1: But they never apologize. They never say, oh, we got this wrong.
Speaker 5: No. And even if they did have a retraction, the damage is already done. The false report already went out.
Speaker 1: Alarmist media and environmental groups never apologize. They keep predicting doom. And when they're wrong, they just move on to the next scare. Like this one. It's climate change creating inferno's larger than ever.
That's just not true. My next video will cover that and three more myths about our warming planet.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
What’s really driving America’s debt crisis? The biggest items are Medicare, Social Security, and defense – all of which Trump says he won’t touch. Can our debt still be fixed? @CatoInstitute’s @CatoEdwards says, YES: https://t.co/AzafZeCs5s
Video Transcript AI Summary
The discussion centers on Elon Musk's efforts to cut government spending, starting with foreign aid, and the challenges of reforming the federal bureaucracy. Despite Musk's attempts, even eliminating USAID would only affect a small portion of the budget. Examples of wasteful spending are highlighted, such as studies on male parents attracting females, finger snapping, and Neil Armstrong's moon landing quote.
The conversation shifts to larger potential cuts, including subsidies to state and local governments and the sale of unused federal land and buildings. The difficulty of firing federal workers is noted, and the need to address major spending programs like Medicare and Social Security is emphasized. While some cuts have been made, such as ending DEI programs, deeper reforms are needed to change the trajectory of the national debt. Bureaucratic regulations, exemplified by SpaceX's environmental impact studies, also hinder economic growth.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: This Elon Musk attempted takeover, which will not stand.
Speaker 1: Democrats of the DC media are furious about Elon Musk trying to cut government starting with foreign aid.
Speaker 2: Going after USAID? This is so preposterous.
Speaker 1: On the campaign trail, Musk talked about government waste.
Speaker 3: And the Department of Government Deficiency is gonna fix that.
Speaker 1: Now Musk has acted fast, but even if he succeeds in killing USAID, that's less than a percent of the federal budget. So can Musk's department really reform our bloated government? More efficient government's been promised before, but it's never ever happened. Government always grew bigger and less efficient. The bureaucrats' endless rules will make things tough for Doge, which is why many say
Speaker 4: Rename Doge DOA, dead on arrival.
Speaker 2: Gonna cut $2,000,000,000,000 from the budget. It's it's a joke.
Speaker 1: Reformers have long tried to reduce spending growth by mocking some of it.
Speaker 0: We're spending $700,000 studying how male parents attract female.
Speaker 1: And more than a hundred thousand dollars to study finger snapping. The National Science Foundation actually said they were inspired to do this by Marvel villain Thanos. Your government actually paid a hundred $18,000 to conclude varying friction between fingers alters the performance of a snap. These youtubers did a similar test at no cost to taxpayers. Your government also spent hundreds of of dollars.
Speaker 0: To study whether Neil Armstrong, when he stepped on the moon, said one small step for man or one small step for a man.
Speaker 1: NASA says no a is audible in the recordings. That's one small step for man. I don't hear an extra A either, but we paid the National Science Foundation to do that expensive study that concluded ambiguity exists. The list of their stupid spending goes on.
Speaker 0: $10,000 that was given to the Bearded Ladies Cabaret to fund ice skating shows about climate change.
Speaker 1: Cut it all. But even if they cut all the silly spending, it won't come close to eliminating our $2,000,000,000,000 a year deficit. Where are the bigger cuts? We need to cut corporate welfare. Chris Edwards edits the Cato Institute's downsizing government website.
What would you cut first? The first thing
Speaker 5: I would cut, the federal government spends over a trillion dollars in subsidies to state and local governments, k 12 school funding, school lunch funding. This is all activity that should be funded by state and local governments and not the federal government. The feds even pay for junk food. Taxpayers are funding chocolate bars and candy and cake. State governments have asked to be able to eliminate junk food in their programs.
And they're not allowed to? They're not allowed to.
Speaker 1: Then there's the government stockpile of unused buildings.
Speaker 5: An unbelievable 300,000 buildings.
Speaker 1: Many are underused. Hallways and offices sit empty. On top of that, the feds own most of the land in the West. Most of it.
Speaker 5: We don't know the market value. It is in the trillions. So the federal government could really make a big dent on federal government debt if it sold a lot of that land.
Speaker 1: But they don't. Instead, they spend millions buying more. At least now president Trump is making some cuts. Trump ended DEI programs, told the workers don't come in, but he's still paying them.
Speaker 5: That is very difficult to fire federal workers.
Speaker 1: He had a TV show where the punchline was
Speaker 2: You're fired. Go.
Speaker 1: And they just were. But that's not government.
Speaker 5: I think we're gonna see major reforms on the federal bureaucracy this time around.
Speaker 1: Maybe. Until then, Elon Musk is working around the bureaucracy. Since government workers are so hard to fire, he sent an email to almost all of them offering eight months paid leave if they just quit. But even if Trump fired every federal worker, that still wouldn't come close to eliminating our deficit because politicians won't touch the biggest spending.
Speaker 4: Unless we are going to talk about Medicare and Social Security reforms, cutting back on government waste is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Speaker 1: The big one is stuff that goes to old people like me, Medicare, and Social Security, which are going broke.
Speaker 5: It should be easy to start cutting wealthy people off the program. But so far, the president says no.
Speaker 2: Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security.
Speaker 1: If they won't cut Medicare or Social Security or defense or medicaid and they can't cut interest payments, eliminating the deficit is nearly impossible. On your website you list 14 big cuts but that's just 480,000,000,000 less than a tenth of the budget. That's not gonna do it.
Speaker 5: Trump does not have to solve the entire deficit problem in his four years in office, but he's gotta get the ball rolling.
Speaker 1: Getting the ball rolling means cutting enough that our economy could outgrow our debt. We don't have to balance the budget today, just change the trajectory. But how can the private sector grow when there are so many regulations?
Speaker 3: SpaceX had to do the study to see if if Starship would would hit a shark. And I'm like, it's a big ocean, you know. There's a lot of sharks. It's not impossible, but it's very unlikely.
Speaker 1: Eventually, SpaceX got a pass on the sharks.
Speaker 3: And and then we thought, okay. Now we're done. Then they said, but what about whales? I'm like, it goes on and on. And then there's like, well, what if the rocket goes underwater then explodes and then the whales have hearing damage?
Like, this is real.
Speaker 1: Maybe Doge will change things. Hope so. Today's rules and spending are absurd. Can they be reformed? Chris Edwards says, it can be done.
I'm skeptical. On the other hand, Donald Trump and Elon Musk sometimes do surprising things.
Speaker 2: Take over, Elon. Yes. Take over.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Tall grass, big fines! Dunedin, Florida fined a resident $35K because they said his grass grew too long. Then they almost took his home. Thankfully, @IJ lawyers helped him keep his house. Here’s the what happened since my first report 6 years ago: https://t.co/k7CWils65n
Video Transcript AI Summary
The city of Dunedin, Florida, fined Jim Ficken $500 a day for grass exceeding 10 inches while he was settling his deceased mother's estate. The fines totaled $30,000, leading the city to threaten foreclosure.
Dunedin officials declined interviews and instead paid a PR firm $25,000 to manage the media. While the PR firm stated Dunedin didn't want large fines, they wanted to ensure a high quality community. Critics argue Dunedin prioritizes revenue, noting a surge in fines collected, from $34,000 to $1.3 million in eleven years.
The Institute for Justice, representing Ficken, argued the fines violated the Eighth Amendment's protection against excessive fines, claiming governments use fines to oppress citizens. Despite initially losing in court, public outcry led Dunedin to revise its code, allowing residents to petition for reduced fines. Ficken's fine was reduced to $7,000, but the city then demanded $25,000 in administrative costs, later reduced to $3,000 after further legal action. Ficken now lives in his home.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Finally, it's spring. That means warmer weather, longer days, but also mowing the lawn. In some parts of America, if you don't cut your grass often enough, your local government might fine you thousands of dollars and then if you don't pay, try to take your home.
Speaker 1: The city now fining a man $30,000 for overgrown grass.
Speaker 0: I reported on that case a few years back. Here's a recap before I reveal what's happened in the five years since. The city of Dunedin, Florida wants to take this man's home.
Speaker 2: Because I was tardy cutting the grass.
Speaker 0: Jim Ficken's mom died, so he went to South Carolina to take care of her estate. City officials then started fining Ficken five hundred dollars a day because his grass had grown longer than 10 inches. Such fines add up.
Speaker 2: This is a letter from the city attorney demanding $24,454.
Speaker 0: Now the fine's up to $30,000.
Speaker 3: That's asinine.
Speaker 0: Ficken's neighbor can't believe he was fined so much. Just regrets. Because Ficken doesn't have 30,000, the city says it will foreclose on his home to collect the fine. I was shocked. The town says you're kind of a public nuisance.
Speaker 2: I got everything fixed and took care and taken care of.
Speaker 0: But you only get it after they send warning after warning, the neighbors complain.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm kind of a slob.
Speaker 0: Why don't you just pay the fine?
Speaker 2: $30,000. Do you have $30,000 lying around?
Speaker 1: In every instance that the city asked him to do something, Jim did it.
Speaker 0: Lawyer Ari Bargles defending Fichen against Dunedin.
Speaker 1: The city has gone nuclear. $500 per day for the violation of having tall grass. And now he's facing the loss of his home.
Speaker 0: Dunedin's Politicians wouldn't talk to us. Instead, they paid $25,000 for this public relations firm to speak to the media.
Speaker 3: Whereas the new PR manager costing taxpayers $25,000 for just one month.
Speaker 0: The PR firm says Dunedin has no desire to impose large fines. Their goal is just to ensure that Dunedin's a high quality community. We've had a But if the politicians only cared about the quality of the lawns.
Speaker 1: They could have done what their own ordinances permit them to do which is hire a lawn service to come out and mow the grass and send Jim a bill for a hundred and $50 but they didn't do They
Speaker 0: could do that.
Speaker 1: They absolutely can do that but they didn't do that and that's because they prioritize revenue collection. They want the money. It's pretty apparent that code enforcement is a major cash cow for the city of Dunedin.
Speaker 0: Eleven Years ago, Dunedin collected $34,000 in fines. Last year, 1,300,000.0.
Speaker 3: I got violated for a lawn mower in my yard. They violated me for a hole the size of a quarter in my stucco. They find people that they can pick on, and then they keep picking on them.
Speaker 0: Dunedin put a lien on her house. They say she owes them $32,000.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you how many sleepless nights I've had because of the city of Dunedin. Just trying to think of what to say to them, just like you have to leave me alone. The city is just a bunch of bullies and they expect people not to stand up to them because to stand up to them requires expensive legal help.
Speaker 0: Ficken managed to get that legal help for free from the Institute for Justice, a law firm that defends individuals abused by government. Its lawyers portraying themselves in this video as western heroes ready to punish bad guys, say many cities now pad their budgets by imposing excessive fines.
Speaker 4: The North Carolina city fined a local church,
Speaker 5: $100 a branch for excessive tree pruning.
Speaker 1: Private citizens are being essentially extorted by their governments and fined incredible amounts of money for really, really small violations.
Speaker 0: And if you can't pay the fine, they'll take your home.
Speaker 3: The City of Dunedin Code Enforcement Board authorized the city attorney's office to file foreclosure actions.
Speaker 1: The city attorney of Dunedin in the last year has sought permission to foreclose on 18 properties.
Speaker 0: That violates the eighth amendment says the Institute for Justice. It not only protects us from cruel and unusual punishment.
Speaker 1: But right next to that in the eighth amendment is a protection, to be free from excessive fines. Our founders, they recognize that the ability to fine is the ability to cripple, and it's one of the ways other than incarceration that government can really oppress.
Speaker 0: Government does often oppress. Jim Ficken with the help of the Institute for Justice fought back against that oppression for years.
Speaker 1: Nobody should lose their house for having tall grass.
Speaker 3: Jim has the constitution on his side.
Speaker 0: Absurdly, they lost in court. A judge ruled the fine was not excessive, but publicity around the lawsuit sparked some outrage.
Speaker 3: The city of Dunedin hiring a crisis PR firm after coming under fire from the public.
Speaker 0: The backlash eventually inspired Dunedin to change its rules.
Speaker 5: City of Dunedin changed its code to allow residents to petition for reduced fines.
Speaker 0: Ficken was able to reduce his fine from $35,000 to 7,000. Still too much, but not enough for the city, which demanded he then pay $25,000 in administrative costs to cover their legal bills. So Fichen and the Institute for Justice fought back again and finally got the city's $25,000 demand reduced to $3,000.
Speaker 3: Declaring victory following a years long legal battle.
Speaker 0: Six years of trouble over grass. It's ridiculous how some government bureaucrats abuse their power. At least Jim Ficken's battle had a relatively happy ending.
Speaker 6: Not only reducing my fine, but fines for everybody else. That to
Speaker 7: me is is the positive benefit.
Speaker 0: Today, Ficken lives safe and sound in the same Florida home.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
When @JMilei became President of Argentina, the media mocked him — said he would FAIL. One year later, he’s proved them wrong! “Inflation is down! The economy started to recover,” says @VasquezIan of @CatoInstitute, "Milei is showing that his libertarian policies are working.” https://t.co/l6AMgpww3t
Video Transcript AI Summary
A year ago, Javier Milei, a libertarian, was elected president of Argentina, promising to drastically cut government spending. Despite being labeled a far-right radical, he supports free trade, LGBTQ rights, and minimal government intervention. Upon taking office, he faced a 40% poverty rate and over 200% inflation. Critics doubted his ability to succeed, but Milei's approach of significant cuts has begun to show results. He eliminated nine ministries, reduced government spending by 30%, and lifted rent controls, which tripled apartment supply and halved prices. Although challenges remain, including ongoing inflation and poverty, Milei's policies have led to a budget surplus for the first time in 15 years. His success suggests that substantial government cuts can lead to recovery, inspiring discussions about similar approaches in other countries.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: A year ago, this man screaming about liberty was elected president of Argentina. How is that worked out? Well, Javier Mele is a libertarian who promised to slash government spending. So, of course, reporters called him Far right radical.
Speaker 1: Far right Javier Mele.
Speaker 0: Far right Javier Mele. Why far right? The far right wants to ban most immigration, ban drugs, ban sex work, wants to impose tariffs. But Millet is a libertarian. He supports free trade.
He's also fine with sex work. He says gay marriage should be none of the government's business. He says people should have a right to choose their own gender. Millet mainly wants government to do less, but the media called him far right and said his election will spell devastation. Millet's approach to everything is to cut more government support in any way that helps people.
But the country's big government had already hurt people more than it helped.
Speaker 1: People in Argentina are struggling with one of the highest inflation rates in the world.
Speaker 2: Argentina is really like a a warning and an example for the United States. Ian Vasquez studies Latin America. Argentina was one of the richest and one of the freest countries in the world, and then it started down a path of greater and greater government intrusion. It's the case study of a country that was once rich and became poor.
Speaker 0: Javier Millet has become elected president.
Speaker 2: When Millet came into power, there was 40% poverty rate. There was annual inflation of over 200%.
Speaker 0: The media said Millet can't fix that. He's a snake oil salesman, a TV pundit with no government experience. He'll fail, they said, like his predecessors had.
Speaker 1: Many predecessors have tried and failed to turn the economy around. Javier Mallet will be no exception.
Speaker 0: But Mallet is an exception, a politician who told the truth.
Speaker 2: He was the 1st politician
Speaker 0: in generations to talk to Argentinians as though they were adults. He explained that government has no money of its own, and whatever it spends, it takes from the people. It's why when campaigning, Malay brandished this chainsaw to illustrate how much government needs to be cut. For my TV show, I used to say, you gotta cut more out of the budget and use these gimmicks. Then I used the chainsaw to make really drastic, horrible cuts.
I think he copied that for me.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, he does, pay a lot of attention to libertarians from around the world.
Speaker 0: In the United States, politicians who promise cuts rarely win votes, but Malay won by a landslide. The media then eagerly covered union protests against him.
Speaker 1: Thousands are attending demonstrations opposing his drastic cuts to public spending. Cuts by the libertarian government plunged the region into a financial crisis.
Speaker 2: There was no way to avoid that because of the mess that the previous governments had left. The question is, what's the best way out? And Millet has said from the very beginning, the best path out is through freedom.
Speaker 0: Millet's big cuts worked, and now a few in the media even admit that.
Speaker 2: And what he's been able to achieve in a very short time ought to be inspiring.
Speaker 0: At first, this analyst trashed Mueller.
Speaker 2: He has no experience and not he does not have an economic team, so he's gonna fail.
Speaker 0: But 8 months later, he acknowledged.
Speaker 2: His radical plan to save Argentina's economy seems to be working. A lot of the international press in the last month has come out and said, we gotta take this guy seriously. This stuff is working.
Speaker 1: And those changes have led to a budget surplus, the first in 15 years.
Speaker 2: Inflation is down. The economy started to recover in the second part of last year, way before what most people expected. Millet is showing that his libertarian policies are working.
Speaker 0: What does libertarian policy mean? Millet got rid of 9 ministries. He cut government spending by 30%. He fired thousands of government workers and cut handouts.
Speaker 1: He has slashed energy and transport subsidies, government spending on things like pensions.
Speaker 0: His deregulation ministry shut down 200 government offices. 2 deregulation per day since he's been in office. That's remarkable. Sometimes the results were good immediately. Rent control in Argentina had created a shortage of apartments.
Speaker 2: When Millet lifted, rent controls, the supply of apartments in Argentina tripled, and their price fell by about half.
Speaker 0: Which libertarians keep saying that if you get rid of the price controls, the supply goes up, and that reduces prices. Millet really does understand free market economics. Argentina still has big problems. Although inflation is a fraction of what it was, it's still hot. There's lots of poverty, and Argentina's tariffs make consumer goods expensive.
This $800 iPhone costs almost $3,000 there. Argentina still has
Speaker 2: a long way to go and that's why Millet recently said that what's coming is the deep chainsaw,
Speaker 0: meaning much less government. What if we could have that in America?
Speaker 1: Basically, there were a path to to bankruptcy.
Speaker 0: Elon Musk and his department of government efficiency wanna make Malay style cuts in the United States.
Speaker 1: We have to cut government spending, or we're just gonna go bankrupt just like a person would.
Speaker 0: And Musk watched what Malay did.
Speaker 1: He's making all the right moves.
Speaker 0: Malay has showed that cuts are possible. And as Malay cut government, he actually gained popularity. Freedom can work if only our politicians will learn from Javier Malay.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
The Trump Administration just announced the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. Here’s why that is the right thing: https://t.co/PjwF2XbWFk
Video Transcript AI Summary
One of the hottest years on record raises concerns about global warming. Politicians worldwide promised to address this through the Paris Climate Agreement. However, when President Trump took office, he announced the U.S. would withdraw, isolating the nation. Critics argue that many countries' commitments under the agreement were minimal or non-binding. For instance, China pledged to peak emissions by 2030, which was already anticipated, while India only aimed to become more efficient at a slower rate. The agreement has been criticized for allowing countries to do little while claiming progress. President Obama made ambitious pledges for the U.S., but critics argue that without significant action from major emitters like China and India, the future of climate change remains uncertain. Trump's decision to withdraw was seen as a rejection of ineffective agreements.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: One of the hottest years on record. Is among the hottest years recorded
Speaker 1: on the hottest year on record.
Speaker 2: Another hot year. Global warming. What will we do about that? Politicians for most every country promise to deal with it by signing something called the Paris Climate Agreement.
Speaker 0: A historic climate agreement in Paris.
Speaker 2: But when president Trump took office, he said
Speaker 1: The United States will withdraw.
Speaker 2: What? We will withdraw? We alone? President Trump isolated the the United States with his reckless and indefensible decision. My neighbors in New York agree with that, and so do most of the media.
Speaker 0: A lot at stake potentially for the planet.
Speaker 2: Really? I bet they don't even know what was in the agreement.
Speaker 1: I didn't. Paris Accord was somewhere between a farce and a fraud.
Speaker 2: Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Oren Cass, is one of the few people who've actually read the Paris Agreement and also the commitment set in by every country.
Speaker 1: You don't even have to mention greenhouse gases in your commitment if you don't want to. You send in any piece of paper you want, we're gonna staple them all together, and we're gonna call that the Paris accord. Everyone sent in a piece of paper, and they stapled it together and held it up and said this is amazing. China has made a major commitment.
Speaker 2: So what's in the commitments that every country made?
Speaker 0: India has ratified the Paris Climate Accord, committing the world's fastest growing economy to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
Speaker 1: What you find is they either pledge to do exactly what they were already going to do anyway, or pledged even less than that. China, for instance, said we pledge to reach peak emissions by about 2030. Well, United States government had already done a study to guess when Chinese emissions would peak and their guess was about 2030. Peak doesn't mean stop. It just means stop increasing.
That's right. So in fact, China promised they will continue increasing their emissions for for some time to come. And yet, China was actually one of the better pledges. India made no pledge to limit their emissions at all. They pledged only to become more efficient.
But they proposed to become efficient less quickly than they're already becoming more efficient. So, their pledge was to slow down. You know, my favorite was Pakistan whose pledge was to reach a peak at some point after which to begin reducing emissions. And so, you can staple those together and you can say we now have a global agreement, but what you have is an agreement to do nothing. And if anything, you've gone backwards because whereas in the past, you could have criticized countries and said, hey, why aren't you doing anything?
Now, we have an agreement that says, in fact, we will applaud you for doing nothing.
Speaker 0: We came together around the strong agreement the world needed.
Speaker 1: Obviously, President Obama got a lot of political mileage out of that, but the climate didn't get much at all. The one country that showed up in Paris with a a very costly ambitious target was the United States. So president Obama took all the 0 commitments from everybody else, but threw in a really expensive one for us.
Speaker 2: Super expensive. Obama pledged to reduce American emissions by a quarter. Of course, it's true that United States produces twice as much greenhouse gas per person as China and India. So isn't it on us to do more? Even if we zeroed
Speaker 1: out our emissions tomorrow, the future of climate change is still a question of what happens in China and India. We're getting out.
Speaker 2: When Trump said he was leaving the Paris Accord, he was trashed by politicians across the world.
Speaker 0: I'm dismayed at the US decision to pull out of the Paris agreement.
Speaker 2: President Obama said, this administration joins a handful of nations that reject the future.
Speaker 1: If the future is worthless climate agreements that everyone goes to Paris to talk about, then first of all, that's a very sad future, and it's one that we should be proud to reject.
Speaker 2: The earth is warming. Man may well be increasing that, but the solution isn't to waste 1,000,000,000 by forcing emissions cuts here while other countries do nothing, while pretending to make cuts. Trump was right to repudiate this phony treaty. Most of us didn't even know how phony it was, but now we do.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Colleges tell students: - Words will harm you - You’re fragile - You’re a victim This isn’t education. It’s emotional abuse. https://t.co/q9YK4DHY8M
Video Transcript AI Summary
Over the past decade, many colleges have created an environment of anxiety and guilt among students. Lucy Cross Williams and Kim Katidi share their experiences of feeling pressured by concepts like white privilege and microaggressions. They felt their self-confidence erode as they were taught to view themselves as victims. This led to behaviors like censoring conservative voices and altering their speech to fit in. However, both eventually recognized the negative impact of these ideologies on their happiness. They discovered that the world wasn't as dangerous as they had been led to believe. The documentary "The Coddling of the American Mind" explores how this mindset harms students and encourages a culture of fragility, ultimately stifling critical thinking and personal growth.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Over the past 10 years, many colleges went mad. They charge students big bucks and then make them feel guilty. This is what happened to Lucy Cross Williams at Stanford.
Speaker 1: I was anxious. I felt guilty constantly. I couldn't stop thinking about the whole white privilege thing.
Speaker 0: Kim Katidi attended the Art Institutes of California.
Speaker 2: I feel like I lost my life for, like, 6 years.
Speaker 0: This new documentary, The Coddling of the American Mind, argues that today, more young people are anxious and depressed because adults at their schools brainwash them.
Speaker 2: I was full of self confidence when I was 18, but while I was in college, that disintegrated.
Speaker 0: Kimmy was taught she was a victim.
Speaker 2: I was introduced to ideas such as microaggressions.
Speaker 1: Have you heard or even said any of these common microaggressions? Wow. You're so articulate. Can I touch your hair?
Speaker 2: I began to see myself through the lens of black and a woman. If I see someone, like, coming up with their dog, for example, and the dog's barking at me, I could interpret that as a racist microaggression on the part of both the dog and the dog walker. And I was like, the world's a lot darker than than I thought it was. In order to kind of compete and get the best grades, I sort of showed how how much of a victim I was in order to impress my professors.
Speaker 0: She thought that was wrong, but she didn't push back.
Speaker 2: I thought I'm paying a lot, so they're definitely teaching me, like, the golden rules for life.
Speaker 0: Ben Shapiro go to hell. Those rules included censoring speech by conservatives like Ben Shapiro. Kimmy joined the mob trying to get Shapiro's post blocked on Twitter. She kept sending complaints to Twitter censors.
Speaker 2: I would sit down all the way through the night. Now try again. Now try again.
Speaker 0: At Stanford, Lucy was taught that Shapiro's ideas put black, brown, trans, queer, Muslim students at risk.
Speaker 1: My first thought was like, this is extreme. This is ridiculous. And then I sort of there was the, well, you're privileged. You're white.
Speaker 0: She was taught that a good person
Speaker 1: I didn't read too many books by white authors or listen to the wrong kind of music. I was really torn on rap because I didn't know if that was appropriation or appreciation.
Speaker 0: To be accepted, she changed the way she spoke.
Speaker 1: When I started to use the vocabulary of, like, marginalized, intersectional, hegemonic, blah blah blah, people just kind of smiled a little bit more. And I started feeling like I was I was part of an in group.
Speaker 0: But a few years later, she concluded
Speaker 1: This set of thought processes was really unhealthy and was making me miserable.
Speaker 3: Administrators teach students that they're fragile and in constant danger and can be permanently harmed by words. This is not a kind or compassionate thing to teach people.
Speaker 0: Greg Lukianoff cowrote The Coddling of the American Mind. Years ago, he suffered from suicidal depression. Therapy helped him, but now
Speaker 3: I'm looking on campus, and I'm like, wow. It's kind of like administrators are telling students to catastrophize, to do all these things that I was taught not to do.
Speaker 0: This is amplified by required courses that divide students into oppressed or oppressor.
Speaker 3: Colleges provide websites and phone numbers so students can report people who offend them,
Speaker 0: and lots of people offend them.
Speaker 4: In 2012, there was none of this.
Speaker 0: Coddling coauthor Jonathan Haidt.
Speaker 4: And And by 2014, 2015, there was a lot of it.
Speaker 5: What about our protection right now?
Speaker 0: At this college, they
Speaker 4: Basically took the president of the university hostage. They wouldn't even let him go to the bathroom. It wasn't about learning. It wasn't about exposure to ideas. It was about this battle between good and evil.
Speaker 0: This new censorship was supposed to help minorities, but they too were often punished. Saeed Malami spoke at a protest.
Speaker 5: I go up there, you know, feeling all cool with myself. It was like, you know, blackness is not a skin color. It's an attitude to life. If you're white, you can be black. If you're black, you can be purple.
Whatever it is, I'm like, everyone can be black. And what happened after that? A lot of people I thought I was tight with just stopped talking to me.
Speaker 0: So instead of saying, I'm no victim, he shut up.
Speaker 5: What I thought to be true, I would keep in my head and then say something else.
Speaker 0: Doing that makes other students dumber.
Speaker 4: Other people challenging us make us smart. Cancel culture is like a way of shooting yourself in the brain.
Speaker 0: For Kimmy, a turning point was when she went to a skate park in a conservative neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Are they going to hate that a black woman's in their territory? Will they literally pick up a skateboard and attack me?
Speaker 0: The park was in Orange County, California.
Speaker 2: I was afraid of Orange County to begin with just because it was notoriously conservative. So just going into Orange County was kind of scary for me.
Speaker 0: But at the park, Kimmy found the county was not evil as she'd feared.
Speaker 2: This was a really great place. That was when I knew there was a way that I was looking at the world that wasn't right. I was the one inflicting pain on myself, and it was robbing me of happiness.
Speaker 3: It's really important to have great sympathy for younger people today because they're just doing what older people are telling them. Like, this idea that they're always in constant danger, that words will permanently harm them and that they're much more fragile than they actually are.
Speaker 1: When I was a social justice advocate, I was tired, miserable, pessimistic.
Speaker 2: Now that I'm out of that and I'm thinking for myself, I'm much happier.
Speaker 1: I wasn't really sure what the alternative was until a friend sent me a link.
Speaker 0: To this YouTube channel where black scholars said things she'd never heard.
Speaker 5: The whole business of black men being at a unique risk of being killed by white cops is vastly distorted.
Speaker 1: I was astonished to find that, like, there were black thinkers writing about race and sharing ideas that I never heard on campus. This whole new world of of ideas has opened up to me, and it was so exciting to feel like I was thinking for myself again.
Speaker 0: Coddling is a good introduction to how some of today's schools harm students. This video was just a taste. There's more in the full documentary, and you can find that at the coddlingmovie.com.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Politicians and media are quick to blame California's wildfires on climate change. But the main cause is politicians failing to allow effective forest maintenance! Years ago,I made this video (it was quickly censored by Facebook) with @Shellenberger about it: https://t.co/9lZm4s9cTJ
Video Transcript AI Summary
A significant portion of America is experiencing wildfires, often attributed to climate change. However, environmentalist Michael Shellenberger argues that while climate change is real, it isn't the primary cause of California's fires. Instead, he points to poor forest management practices, where years of suppressing natural fires have led to overgrowth, increasing the risk of uncontrollable blazes. Well-managed forests have survived these fires, demonstrating that effective practices like prescribed burning are essential for maintaining biodiversity. Despite concerns over ancient redwoods, their thick bark makes them resilient to fire. Recent fires have prompted California's politicians to support tree thinning, a shift in policy that recognizes the importance of proper forest management over merely blaming climate change. Ultimately, while climate change poses challenges, it is not the sole factor in the increasing frequency of wildfires.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: A large part of America is on fire. Mother Earth is angry. Why would mother Earth be angry? Because, of climate change. Politicians are eager to blame the fires on climate change.
The debate is over around climate change. California's governor smiles while he talks about it.
Speaker 1: All of this catastrophizing around climate change is just a huge distraction.
Speaker 0: Michael Shellenberger, an environmentalist who Time Magazine calls a hero of the environment, says it's silly to blame the fires on climate change.
Speaker 1: Climate change is real. It's not the end of the world. It's not our most serious environmental problem.
Speaker 0: And it's not the main cause of the California fires.
Speaker 1: Governor Newsom tweeted out that last year, we had 1 tenth of the area burned as we're having this year, and therefore, it's climate change. It's like, well, what? Did climate change happen between last year and this year? None of this makes any sense.
Speaker 0: But the media keep talking about a climate change apocalypse. Climate apocalypse.
Speaker 1: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you all you know is climate scientist, then every weather event you blame on climate change.
Speaker 0: If not climate change, what is to blame? Only you can prevent forest fires. Foolish policies. For years, governments put out every fire they could. But if you wanna protect forests
Speaker 2: Tens of millions of acres should have naturally burned every 10 years or so in lots of fires with smaller flames, but we put most of those out.
Speaker 3: This is the overgrowth that's been accumulating in these forests for the past century because people have been putting out fires instead of letting them burn the way they naturally used to.
Speaker 1: When there is a fire, it's much more likely to burn out of control.
Speaker 0: Climate change has made things worse. California's warmed 3 degrees over 50 years. But
Speaker 1: you could have had this amount of warming and not had these fires. And the reason we know that is because the forests that were well managed have survived the mega fires.
Speaker 0: Like this forest controlled by Southern California Edison. So far, selective cutting protected it. And now the forest service is trying to educate people.
Speaker 4: Looks like a very well managed forest. I would agree.
Speaker 0: Well, let's burn it.
Speaker 4: Alright. Prescribed burning
Speaker 0: and frequent fire is a must if we're gonna
Speaker 4: maintain the biodiversity and the and frequent fire is a must if we're gonna maintain the biodiversity and the plant life.
Speaker 1: When Europeans came, we have these reports of California just being very smoky and on fire during the summers. Native Americans were burning huge amounts of land.
Speaker 0: So for the past years, it's been unnaturally unsmokey.
Speaker 1: We haven't had enough fires for maybe a 100 years.
Speaker 0: But it really sucks if you live there. The smoke is bad.
Speaker 1: But it's what a lot of forest ecosystems require.
Speaker 0: Recently, fire hit the ancient redwoods.
Speaker 1: Everyone on the East Coast goes, oh my gosh. These ancient redwoods are gonna burn down.
Speaker 0: They're trees. They're not gonna burn down.
Speaker 1: The smaller trees do, of course, burn down. But when you're talking about redwood trees and other old growth, the bark is very thick. It's fire resistant. In fact, there's a particular kind of ancient redwood where the inside of it has been entirely burned out, still alive. You can see green growth shooting out of it.
Speaker 0: This surprised the politicians.
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom visited the park and said, what a miracle. They're still standing. It was exactly what you would expect.
Speaker 0: Not if you're a journalist.
Speaker 1: Few days later, all the journalists started to kinda go, oh, wow. What a surprise. The ancient redwoods didn't burn down. Nobody's more alienated from the natural environment and really nobody's more apocalyptic than environmental journalists.
Speaker 0: We have to get away from just sort of the tree hugging mentality. You have to look at the whole it's the classic, you know, not seeing the forest for the trees. This year's fires finally persuaded California's politicians to allow more people to cut trees down.
Speaker 1: There's actually widespread agreement on this. In fact, the governor of California and president Trump recently signed an agreement to clear much more area. Even the Sierra Club, which has opposed this kind of thinning of forest, has now changed its tune.
Speaker 0: It's about time. Bad policies were the biggest cause of this year's fires, not the slightly warmer climate. And while climate change is a problem, Schellenberger's new book explains, it's not an apocalypse.
Speaker 1: Natural disasters aren't getting worse. In fact, they're getting better. The number of deaths from natural disasters has declined over 90% over the last 100 years. A small change in temperature is not the difference between normalcy and catastrophe.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
The CHIPS Act was supposed to bring semiconductor jobs back to America. But the money got tied up in DEI hiring quotas, climate pledges, and union mandates. Today, despite the billions we spent, most chips are still made in Taiwan: https://t.co/UjbB5T577S
Video Transcript AI Summary
Ten senators announced a bipartisan agreement on a $65 billion broadband initiative aimed at providing high-speed internet across America. Three years later, no projects are underway due to government inefficiencies and a focus on hiring based on diversity rather than capability. Private companies could implement broadband solutions, like Starlink, quickly, but the administration has avoided using them, citing monopoly concerns. Government failures extend beyond broadband, with significant losses in various initiatives, including high-speed rail and semiconductor manufacturing. Despite billions spent, most chips are still produced overseas. The inefficiency of government spending leads to costly outcomes, and both parties share responsibility for these failures. The solution lies in reducing government intervention and allowing the free market to operate effectively.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: 10 senators from both parties visibly happy to announce agreement.
Speaker 1: 3 years ago, Republicans and Democrats grabbed your money promising
Speaker 0: To build thousands of miles of fiber optic cable.
Speaker 1: Cable that would provide high speed Internet to all of America.
Speaker 0: $65,000,000,000 broadband push.
Speaker 1: 3 years later, no one's been connected. Not a single project is underway. Why? Because governments aren't good at building anything. As Milton Friedman put it Very few people spend other people's money as carefully as they spend their own.
Politicians spending other people's money wasted it. Private companies laid miles of cable while government officials obsessed about giving broadband to the right people.
Speaker 0: Boys, girls, people of color, were people living in rural America.
Speaker 1: Aging individuals, prisoners, LGBTQ persons. Any company that wants funds to build broadband has to hire certain people.
Speaker 2: You have to hire these certain people based on their color, based on their sex, and you have to use unions.
Speaker 1: Matt Cole's investment company researched the government's funding and made this ad. What am I looking at here? Oh, there's nothing more important than making sure you're representing all the right causes.
Speaker 2: You have all these companies that could actually do this, and I say, this is unimplementable with the restrictions, so they just walk away.
Speaker 1: Eventually government will probably succeed in installing some broadband but by then this hard to install cable may be totally unnecessary because of satellite internet like Starlink Starlink already exists and costs much less
Speaker 2: They could do it literally today You could you could have devices in these people's homes within the next couple months and they could have high speed internet access
Speaker 1: So why didn't administration officials do that? They said Starlink failed to demonstrate it, had the ability. Then once it became clear that Starlink obviously did, the administration said it won't use Starlink because it's a monopoly.
Speaker 2: So first, they're not functional. Now they have a monopoly. The reality is is that they didn't want that to be the solution.
Speaker 1: They don't wanna give money to Elon Musk. Take over, Elon. Yes. Take over. But now Musk has a friend in government, so things may change.
But that's not a good way to spend your money. Politicians doling it out to their friends. In fact, politicians have a bad track record when they decide what to build. They pump 1,000,000,000 into high speed rail. 15 years later, we still don't have it.
They lost 500,000,000 on Solyndra, almost a 1000000000 trying to create synthetic fuels. More recently, a Biden meat packing scheme starved a 1000000 chickens. And although Biden promised government would build
Speaker 3: 500,000 charging stations.
Speaker 1: 2 years later, how many have they built for $7,000,000,000? 7. And, again, government's failure at building things, it's not just a Democrat thing. Republicans joined Democrats in grabbing your money to build computer chip factories.
Speaker 3: We will enable advanced semiconductor manufacturing to make a comeback here in America.
Speaker 1: Democrats bragged about adding strength.
Speaker 0: Diversity, equity, and inclusion. The CHIPS Act contains 19 secondtions aimed at helping minority groups.
Speaker 2: You already have a talent problem. Now you're looking at only being able to recruit from a very small minority of individuals. Then you have to do climate pledges. Then you have to hire from unions.
Speaker 1: But diversity is good, and there has been horrible discrimination in this country.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that you should shift the pendulum back to hire someone because of their race or their skin color if they're
Speaker 1: a diverse candidate. Despite the billions you spent, most chips are still made in Taiwan. And even when we pay their chipmakers, they struggle to build in America. The major Taiwanese chip manufacturing plant will be delayed again. If our government wants chips made in America, they should get out of the way.
Micromanaging microchips just slows things down. Even if they get what they promise, doing the numbers, $53,000,000,000 and a 115,000 promised jobs. That's almost half a $1,000,000 per job.
Speaker 2: You would expect nothing else from government inefficiency. Right?
Speaker 1: With Republicans in charge, some think things will be better. But as I said, the problem isn't just Democrats, it's government. Republican politicians also harm people when they try to improve on the free market. Trump's steel tariffs destroyed American jobs because they raised the price of steel. Our government should just stop subsidizing politically connected businesses.
And maybe Elon Musk will convince Trump to do that. He's actually tweeted that all subsidies should end, including his own, but I won't hold my breath. We spent $2,500,000,000,000. We got everybody pay increases. Once politicians are in power, they always wanna do more with your money.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
The International Longshoremen's union promises a strike in January in order to ban automation. But that will hurt everyone—including them! Technology replaces dangerous jobs. It creates safer, higher-paid ones. Here’s how: https://t.co/EPz8BaBDRK
Video Transcript AI Summary
American ports are adopting remarkable automation technologies, leading to a strike by union dock workers who demand a ban on automated cranes and trucks. Union president Harold Daggett warns that without this ban, they will strike again in January. However, banning automation could ultimately harm workers by reducing business as shippers turn to automated ports. While Daggett raises concerns about safety, automation could make ports safer by handling dangerous tasks. U.S. ports are among the least efficient globally, lacking the automation that has improved productivity in other countries. Historically, technological advancements have led to job losses in some sectors but have also created new opportunities and higher wages in others. By resisting automation, union leaders may hinder progress and the potential for a safer, more prosperous future.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: The new machines used by some American ports are remarkable.
Speaker 1: Containers are lowered onto trailers, and within seconds, those trucks drive off. They know where to turn, where to drive, and there are no humans in sight.
Speaker 0: No humans is why some union longshoremen are mad. ILA. All the
Speaker 2: way. Thousands of union dock workers across the country are striking for the first time in nearly 50 years. Our main focus right now is automation.
Speaker 0: Automation. We can't have automation.
Speaker 3: They are demanding a total ban on automated cranes, gates, and container moving trucks.
Speaker 0: They paused their strike when they got a raise, but union president Harold Daggett says we'll strike again in January unless we get a total ban on automation.
Speaker 4: If I don't get that, I'm not coming back to the table.
Speaker 0: He's clear about how closing his ports will hurt American workers.
Speaker 4: Guys who sell cars can't sell cars because the cars ain't coming in off the ships. They get laid off. Construction workers get laid off because the materials aren't coming in. The steel is not coming in. The lumber's not coming in.
They lose their job.
Speaker 3: He doesn't care because his only priority is how do I enhance my special interest group.
Speaker 0: Economist Leah Palighashvili.
Speaker 3: They're saying, we don't care if these other jobs are destroyed as long as we get what we want.
Speaker 0: But there's a cluelessness to his demands because banning automation will also hurt his members.
Speaker 3: They'll save some jobs today, but they'll destroy a lot more jobs in the future.
Speaker 0: Because Daggett's union only controls East Gulf Coast ports, and shippers now have choices. They'll just send the stuff to automated ports.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That's right. Over the long run, we're actually gonna see less business and less activity in the stone age ports.
Speaker 0: You call them stone age ports?
Speaker 3: Well, they wanna ban, for example, opening and closing of port doors.
Speaker 0: They wanna have guys pulling the
Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. They wanna have guys pulling, opening and closing the doors, you know, by themselves.
Speaker 0: It's so absurd. I wanna yell at him. You're killing your own business. And even though he rightly complains about safety
Speaker 4: The jobs on the waterfront are very dangerous. We've had 17 people killed in the last 3 years.
Speaker 0: But that's an argument for automation.
Speaker 4: We just had a kid killed in Houston.
Speaker 0: Why does he go on like that? He's arguing against himself. I see why he wouldn't agree to an interview. Automation, by having machines do dangerous jobs, will make his ports safer.
Speaker 3: If you care about the safety of these workers, you should enhance their jobs and make them safer and better. And the only way you can do that is with technological advancements and automation.
Speaker 0: And there's lots of room for improvement.
Speaker 2: America has some of the least efficient ports in the world.
Speaker 0: Not a single American port ranks in the top 50 worldwide.
Speaker 4: US ports are, generally speaking, much less efficient. There's several explanations to it. Number 1 is lack of automation.
Speaker 0: Other countries have used automated cranes for years. They're 80% faster than human operated cranes used at some American ports.
Speaker 3: The best ports in the world are Asian and kinda Middle Eastern ports. They allow for innovation and technological advancements. You look at videos of Chinese ports. They're actually sitting behind a computer screen and directing the port activity through the computer screen and, you know, that you might say that's a better job.
Speaker 0: I bet there are fewer of them.
Speaker 3: Some port jobs will definitely be lost, but that's not a bad thing. You look at it historically, we had 100 of thousands of blacksmiths and candlemakers and watchmakers.
Speaker 0: Those jobs and many others were destroyed by new technology, but unemployment didn't surge. New jobs emerged that people then hadn't imagined, pilots, programmers, mechanics, electricians, medical technicians. That's capitalism's creative destruction. It constantly creates new jobs, and that makes most everyone richer.
Speaker 4: Support the coalition of obsolete industries.
Speaker 0: Under the union's logic, we should have banned things like flush toilets.
Speaker 4: I used to have to clean people's toilets, empty them from the alleyway behind the house, and now flushing toilets and plumbing has taken away my job.
Speaker 3: Electricity has taken over my profession. If we don't stop progress, how will anyone ever have jobs?
Speaker 0: That's what the media sound like when they cover automation.
Speaker 2: Close to 50% of the workforce being completely eliminated, as in no more jobs for them.
Speaker 3: You get this media bias where you focus on the one worker who lost their job.
Speaker 0: After I lost my job, everything went downhill from there. Because the media can see the lost job.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 0: The media are bad at paying attention to all the new jobs that replace them.
Speaker 3: That reporter doesn't follow-up with the worker 2 years later, but research does. And research shows that that worker then gets a new job.
Speaker 0: And on average, better job.
Speaker 3: They do better jobs and higher wages.
Speaker 0: Higher wages because innovation helps people do more. Look at construction.
Speaker 3: Introduction of bulldozers, crane trucks, and all these tools have made the construction industry and the construction workers better off. It's more efficient and more productive, and the real wages of those construction workers increase.
Speaker 4: Machines gotta stop.
Speaker 0: By fighting machines, union leaders don't protect workers. They hold us all back from a safer, wealthier future.
Speaker 1: Oh, these are the automated ones.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Activists kill! How? For one, they've convinced many that vaping is as deadly as smoking. It isn't! But if there isn't a crisis, who would give them money? https://t.co/qyhulslAVx
Video Transcript AI Summary
Activists claim we're facing a mass extinction and rising threats like climate change and homophobia. However, evidence shows improvements in air and water quality, health, and reduced racism and homophobia. Activists often seek new causes when previous ones succeed, as success threatens their relevance. Many organizations, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, profit from promoting fear of rising hate, despite evidence suggesting otherwise. Public support for LGBTQ+ rights is at an all-time high, yet activists declare emergencies. The narrative around racism and police violence is similarly skewed, often ignoring data showing declines in racial bias. Activists also misrepresent vaping, which has helped reduce smoking rates, to protect their interests. Overall, many activists appear unaware of the negative consequences their campaigns can create.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Activists say our future is dismal.
Speaker 1: We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. Oh, man. We just want another future.
Speaker 0: If it's not climate change, it's homophobia.
Speaker 1: It's very stressful. Like, people don't know whether we're gonna have rights next year or not.
Speaker 0: The activists say they fight to save people from homophobia, racism, hate groups, and climate change.
Speaker 1: John Hart with our eyes up and our eyes for our viewers.
Speaker 0: Listening to them, you'd think these threats are getting worse, but the opposite is true. Our air and water are cleaner. We live longer, healthier lives. There's less racism than there used to be, less homophobia too. But if the protesters acknowledge that, what would they do with their lives?
Journalist John Tierney covered activists for years.
Speaker 2: 1979, I was a reporter at the Washington Star, and I was assigned to cover the first anti nuclear march. Thousands protested nuclear power.
Speaker 0: An end to the nuclear age in its entirety.
Speaker 2: And I interviewed the organizers, and I was just struck that all of them were veterans of the anti war movement. How did they all suddenly become so passionate and so knowledgeable about nuclear power? And then it was later I realized, well, of course, the Vietnam War was over. You know, they succeeded, so they needed to find a new cause. For activists, success is a threat.
You know, it's it's gonna put you out of business unless you find a new cause.
Speaker 0: But it's not a business. They're not making money doing this.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes. They
Speaker 0: are. Environmental activists probably collect the most. Their leaders pay themselves 100 of 1,000, sometimes 1,000,000 of dollars. Racial equity groups have gotten rich too. Although when it comes to deceitful self dealing, Tierney says
Speaker 2: The ultimate example is the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Speaker 1: The Southern Poverty Law Center released a chilling report.
Speaker 0: When the center opened, it promised legal help to those harmed by racism. After their lawsuits bankrupted chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, the center changed clan watch to hate watch.
Speaker 2: Fabricating these you know, the idea that there's a rising tide of hate in this country, And they just fundraise with that, and it scares people, and they get money.
Speaker 0: They think they're making the world a better place.
Speaker 2: But they're not. They're viciously attacking and smearing.
Speaker 0: Groups like Moms for Liberty, Moms for America.
Speaker 2: We put about 10 of these major hate groups out of business. They're just scaremongering and giving people the idea that there's all this hatred and racism in the country when all the evidence shows just the reverse.
Speaker 0: The head of the group once said he'd stop fundraising if they ever got the $55,000,000.
Speaker 2: Well, now they have over $600,000,000 in the bank, and they haven't stopped fundraising.
Speaker 0: Tierney wrote a book detailing why people fall for such bad news. In The Power of Bad, you explained that we're programmed to see bad because if our ancestors didn't see the saber toothed tiger, they were dead, and they didn't give birth to us.
Speaker 2: Exactly. The ones who paid attention to threats were the ones who survived. Our brains
Speaker 0: are hardwired to react strongly to fear, and activists take advantage of that.
Speaker 2: There's this industry, the merchants of bad, who get more money by creating crises or pretending that crises exist. They're journalists. They're activists. They're lawyers, they're academics, and they're bureaucrats because, you know, the bigger the problem sounds, the bigger your budget.
Speaker 0: And the more attention you get.
Speaker 2: You get more attention, you get more money. I mean, nobody gives you money to study something that isn't a problem. But if it's a crisis, then we all have to pay attention. And and you get not only money, but you get power.
Speaker 0: That appeals to politicians.
Speaker 2: Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world. Now climate change is kind of the perfect crisis because you can attribute anything to it, and it's always in the future. And it's bizarre that environmentalists call this an existential threat.
Speaker 1: An existential threat to us as human beings.
Speaker 0: I don't even think most Americans know what the word existential means, and yet they're all using it.
Speaker 1: The greatest existential threat. This is the existential threat.
Speaker 2: The existential threat of climate change. Yeah. It's it's a great phrase. You know, during the 20th century, environmentalists warned us that overpopulation, we were all gonna starve to death.
Speaker 3: In the next 15 years, the end will come. And by the end, I mean, an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.
Speaker 0: The opposite happened. Now there are more than twice as many people and fewer star. Now it's climate activists predicting human extinction. What I'm saying is the planet's on fire.
Speaker 2: And the idea that with our advanced technology today, we we can't survive, you know, a slight rise in temperatures. It is just absurd.
Speaker 0: But wait. News channels like NBC now say storms are getting stronger and more dangerous because of human driven climate change.
Speaker 1: These events that are boosted by climate change, stronger, wetter, lasting longer.
Speaker 0: But that's just not true.
Speaker 2: There's been no long term growth in the intensity, or the number of hurricanes. But every time one comes, it's, you know, it's a great photo op for the crisis industry to say, oh, this is climate change.
Speaker 0: The crisis industry also claims in America, it's unsafe to be gay.
Speaker 4: You do realize that outside countries view America as oppressive. Right? Like, we literally have travel warnings to go to your country because of how many people are killed, but also for queer people, it's not a safe country.
Speaker 2: There's no place on earth where gays are more welcome than in the United States.
Speaker 0: Cities compete to have the best gay pride parade.
Speaker 1: Nobody in the world celebrates pride like our city.
Speaker 0: Yet the human rights campaign declared
Speaker 1: A national emergency for members of the LGBTQ plus community.
Speaker 0: Aren't they talking about a real problem?
Speaker 2: No. You know, last year, public support for gay rights reached an all time high.
Speaker 0: Strangely, that was reported by the very same group
Speaker 2: that declared the national emergency. Gays can marry in every state. There's no stigma against homosexuality. I mean, gay characters used to be taboo on on television. Now they're practically obligatory.
Speaker 1: You and daddy are gay, so I'm gay.
Speaker 2: Oh. An anti gay slur is this career suicide today, but these activists need to declare some kind of emergency.
Speaker 0: After Florida passed laws restricting things like discussion of sexual identity and government funded schools, activists issued A travel advisory for Florida in particular.
Speaker 2: It wasn't safe for gays to go to Florida. I mean, it's absurd telling gays you're not safe in Miami. I mean, it's just crazy.
Speaker 0: Trans activists even claim genocide.
Speaker 1: I am going to spend the next minute screaming. That is what the trans genocide in this country, in this city, has brought me to.
Speaker 2: I have no idea what she's even talking about.
Speaker 1: Imagine that.
Speaker 2: There has never been more public acceptance, than now of trans people. The idea that it's not safe for them or that they're there's a genocide is just ridiculous.
Speaker 0: But she really believes it. They're really upset.
Speaker 2: They're professional activists who need a cause and then they're emotionally disturbed people who, you know, who glom on to something to
Speaker 1: work out their personal problems. And then there's today's spin
Speaker 2: on racism. We know that America And then
Speaker 0: there's today's spin on racism.
Speaker 2: We know that America systemically, structurally is a racist country.
Speaker 0: Of course, America's a racist country.
Speaker 2: How did this fundamentally racist country elect Barack Obama and reelect him? And public surveys about racism have just shown this consistent decline. I mean, there's even been a decline, for instance, in the search for racist jokes on the Internet. People are more committed than ever to treating everyone
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 0: There was the George Floyd killing.
Speaker 2: But that was a very rare event. Studies do not show there's any racial bias in police shootings. And taking one death and turning that into a national reckoning with race, that was incredibly lucrative for activists.
Speaker 0: It sure was. They collected 1,000,000,000. BLM itself collected $90,000,000. Where did it go? They bought mansions.
Speaker 2: Right. It was a great business opportunity for them.
Speaker 0: BLM leaders spent 1,000,000 on themselves, 12,000,000 on luxury properties.
Speaker 1: He makes his house uncomfortable.
Speaker 0: Also, their protests got police to pull back.
Speaker 2: And the fact that that it actually led to it to thousands of additional black deaths, that that hasn't stopped them.
Speaker 0: What do you mean led to black deaths?
Speaker 2: The war on the police that was started has caused police to stop doing things they used to do. It's called the Ferguson effect.
Speaker 5: Anger exploding in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.
Speaker 2: And as a result of that, there's been a huge spike in homicides and in violence, and the chief victims of that have been black.
Speaker 5: The post George Floyd riots resulted in excess of over 15,000 black male deaths.
Speaker 0: Better not point that out on CNN.
Speaker 1: You're literally making a connection out of your own conjecture.
Speaker 0: You cannot get this wrong.
Speaker 5: Look up look up the Ferguson effect. Look up the Floyd effect. It is a real term.
Speaker 1: You cannot you cannot get
Speaker 5: this real term. I didn't make this
Speaker 1: up. Invent a connection between two things.
Speaker 2: The activists and most of the public have no idea that this is what has happened.
Speaker 0: Activists are often oblivious to the problems their activism creates. A final example, the deceitful attack on vaping.
Speaker 1: Chris, no amount of nicotine is safe. Stop flavored ecigarettes. Get the facts at Campaign For Tobacco Free Kids.
Speaker 2: One of the great public health advances this century has been vaping. Once vaping devices were introduced, smoking rates plummeted to historic lows.
Speaker 0: Lots of lives are saved because vaping's much less harmful than smoking.
Speaker 2: But this was a huge threat to the anti smoking activists because if people were quitting on their own, what happens to us? So they started scaring people about vaping.
Speaker 1: It can release dangerous chemicals like formaldehyde into your bloodstream.
Speaker 2: And they have succeeded in persuading most people, according to polls, that vaping is as dangerous as smoking. That is a horrible thing to do to the public, but it's been very good for the campaign for tobacco free kids. It's great for their careers. It's terrible for public health.
Speaker 0: We invited the campaign to appear here to argue their side. They didn't respond. I repeatedly asked activists to appear here. Tell your side of the story. They almost never do.
Are there any examples of activist groups where they said, okay. Great. We've solved it now, and they dissolve?
Speaker 2: I can't think of any.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Trump's victory may be good news for Ross Ulbricht . Trump promised to free Ulbricht. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/25/trump-commute-ross-ulbricht-sentence-libertarian-convention-00160025 Ulbricht got life in prison for running the bitcoin-for-drugs market “Silk Road." I hope Trump follows thru on this promise. #FreeRoss
Video Transcript AI Summary
The FBI shut down Silk Road, an online drug marketplace that generated over $1 billion in illegal sales. Its founder, Ross Olbricht, was arrested after mistakenly revealing his identity. Judge Katherine Forrest sentenced him to life in prison without parole for nonviolent charges, sparking debate over the fairness of such a harsh punishment. Critics argue that imprisoning Olbricht won’t stop drug sales, as other illegal sites have emerged, often larger and more dangerous. While some drugs are harmful, the war on drugs has led to more violence and corruption. The case raises questions about the effectiveness of current drug policies, as locking people up does not address the root issues of drug use and trafficking. Ultimately, many believe that Olbricht’s life sentence does not make society safer.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: The FBI shut down Silk Road, the online drug site. They called that a major victory over drug abuse. Silk Road generated more than a $1,000,000,000 in illegal business.
Speaker 1: The most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today.
Speaker 0: Because people bought drugs on the site anonymously, Silk Road's founder had bragged, the state is unable to get its thieving, murderous mitts on the site, but he slipped up. He accidentally used his real name, Ross Olbricht, on an Internet forum, and the state found him.
Speaker 1: The FBI has arrested the reputed mastermind of a popular online black market for drugs.
Speaker 0: Then judge Katherine Forrest said because Silk Road was a black market of unprecedented scope, she would sentence old British to life in prison with no possibility of parole ever.
Speaker 2: He said, mom, it's a death sentence. It just takes longer. And he's right. This is for all nonviolent charges.
Speaker 0: She and others say it was unfair to lock Ross up forever for a nonviolent crime. But why should we care? Who was old anyway? He's out of line. He seemed nice enough.
Pretty sure I wanna start a family in the next 5 years. As a kid, he was a quiet nerd, then an Eagle Scout, excited to go to college. But in college, he became a libertarian, and he wrote, I wanna use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion. Coercion, meaning force. He viewed laws against drugs as coercion, force that stops peaceful people from living the way they want.
I told you that. He was right. But many Americans hate and fear drug use.
Speaker 2: You're breaking up the social fabric of our country.
Speaker 0: They applauded when the judge announced Ross would be in jail forever.
Speaker 2: This is the judge who finally got it right.
Speaker 1: Right. Alright. We all agree here. But then life in prison without parole? Yep.
Anybody else, any other wise guys wanna do it? That's what you're gonna get.
Speaker 0: Give me a break. Prison without parole is not going to stop the sale of drugs. We should have learned that from America's attempt at alcohol prohibition. Once you're an adult, if you wanna buy intoxicants, should be your right. Where that's legal, sales are done without violence, and the products sold are safer.
Speaker 1: This is your brain on drugs.
Speaker 0: Yes. Many drugs are dangerous. Some who bought drugs in Silk Road died.
Speaker 2: At least 6 people died.
Speaker 1: His mother said nonviolent guy. No.
Speaker 2: No. Silk Road had some rules, at least, like nothing that harmed or defrauded. No child pornography was allowed.
Speaker 0: But now that the government's closed Silk Road, replacing the site with this notice, other illegal sites have opened, and they offer more drugs.
Speaker 2: These other sites I've heard, they're just open season anything. So they're actually worse and multiple times bigger.
Speaker 0: She'd actually never seen them, so we used the web browser Tor to show them to her. It's not like they got rid of these things. Here's another one.
Speaker 2: And by the way, Silk Road had 12,000 listings when, it was taken down.
Speaker 0: The news sites offer more than a 100,000.
Speaker 2: So I guess they weren't scared by Ross' life sentence as the judge said.
Speaker 0: But law enforcement keeps bragging about successes. The dark net is not a place to hide. Here's attorney general Sessions announcing that they'd shut down another website. We will use every tool we have to stop criminals from exploring vulnerable people. But the shutdowns hardly make a difference.
News sites appear.
Speaker 3: Critics will say as we shutter one site, another site emerges. And they may be right, but that is the nature of criminal work. It never goes away.
Speaker 0: Never ever heroin. Heroin. So they didn't stop anything.
Speaker 2: No. They actually there was a spike after the sentence was given. It had the opposite effect. It's a travesty, what's going
Speaker 0: on. Still, I find it hard to support her son since he was also accused of trying to kill people.
Speaker 1: A murder for hire plot. Trying to hire a hit man.
Speaker 2: It's completely digital evidence and hearsay basically by the government.
Speaker 0: Ulrich suspects an undercover cop planted those messages.
Speaker 2: A mortgage company will not take a screenshot of a bank statement because they know how easily faked it is.
Speaker 0: No one was actually killed, and the government didn't charge with murder for hire in his trial.
Speaker 1: Let's just say, for argument's sake, that everything is true. The typical sentence for murder for hire when there's no murder, because there were no murders to
Speaker 2: be clear, is 10 years.
Speaker 1: Double life plus 40 years without parole for a young guy who, you know, was a zealot. He was a libertarian. He believed in free markets and volunteerism. He is not a dangerous person.
Speaker 0: No American is safer because Ross Ulbricht is in jail for life. He's just one more casualty of our drug war. Drug dealers shoot each other, shoot bystanders, and corrupt whole neighborhoods. Police search warrant. The police risk their lives and sometimes kill innocent people.
Locking up won't make anything better. The drug war does much more harm than any drug.
Trump pledges to commute sentence of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht if elected
The moment drew cheers for Trump at the Libertarian National Convention — after a night of boos.
politico.com
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Trump wins! This time, will he actually drain the swamp? https://t.co/g5Agp8zV9u
Video Transcript AI Summary
We are going to Washington DC. Eight years ago, Trump promised to drain the swamp, referring to the Washington bureaucracy. However, under his presidency, government size increased, with more employees and nearly doubled spending, contributing to a soaring budget deficit. Programs like the farmers to families food box cost taxpayers billions. Despite claiming to empower women and cutting some spending, many initiatives only expanded the swamp. Once government programs are established, they are hard to eliminate, creating new lobbyists and constituencies. Trump acknowledged the swamp's depth but continues to promise to drain it if re-elected. Critics argue that increasing government jobs contradicts the goal of draining the swamp, suggesting privatization as a better solution. Ultimately, government control over many sectors leads to inefficiency, and real change requires reducing government involvement.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: We are going to Washington DC.
Speaker 1: 8 years ago, candidate Trump promised.
Speaker 0: We are going to drain
Speaker 1: the swamp. The swamp is the Washington bureaucracy that slows everything down.
Speaker 2: The lobbyists, the special interest.
Speaker 1: Once president, Trump said he was succeeding.
Speaker 2: We're draining the Washington swap. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But that's not true. He made government bigger. That's going in the wrong direction. Economist Ed Strayham. I was looking through a list of some of the agencies, and every single one I could see, there were more employees after his presidency than before.
Speaker 1: He did cut a few things, but overall spending under Trump nearly doubled. Some was a response to COVID, but Trump increased spending before COVID too. He even bragged about it.
Speaker 2: 2 and a half billion. 3,000,000,000. 50,000,000,000. We've spent $2,500,000,000,000.
Speaker 1: All that spending increased the size of the swamp. The US budget deficit is soaring under president Trump.
Speaker 2: We launched the farmers to families food box program.
Speaker 1: Something called a food box program brought food from farmers to families, costing taxpayers 6,000,000,000.
Speaker 3: Last I checked, we have an industry for that. It's called the supermarket industry. It exists for a reason. Markets are good at getting things from the farmer to the consumer.
Speaker 2: With a $50,000,000 commitment
Speaker 1: Trump also pandered to women, signing a women peace and security act, the women entrepreneurship act, a woman's global prosperity initiative.
Speaker 2: The United States will continue to empower women financially.
Speaker 1: All these made the swamp bigger. So did Trump's expensive gifts to politically connected industry. The American Broadband Initiative, a National Quantum Act, the Secure 5 g Act. This brought new parasites to Washington.
Speaker 0: What are you doing in my swamp?
Speaker 1: Whatever they're doing, they're here to stay.
Speaker 3: Once government implements a program, it becomes very difficult to roll that back. You've created a whole new constituency of lobbyists who love their new sets of income.
Speaker 1: Love them enough to preserve them forever. Years ago, congress fearing America wouldn't have enough mohair for soldiers' uniforms subsidize mohair production. They still subsidize it. We haven't used mohair in military uniform since the Korean War.
Speaker 2: This is the true policing of America.
Speaker 3: We still have this subsidy written into the budget to subsidize the mohair growing industry. You see a lot of programs sticking around well past their alleged usefulness and we're stuck with it because now there's a whole group of new people on the payroll who like what they have.
Speaker 1: Some are paid to make pennies. Most Americans no longer want pennies, but government still makes them at a cost of 3¢ each. 3¢ to make 1¢. Losing taxpayers a $100,000,000 a year. That's government.
Speaker 2: Here we are, 8,300,000,000.
Speaker 1: At least now Trump acknowledges his failure to drain the swamp.
Speaker 2: Now when I said it, it sounded very easy, and it was gonna happen real fast. I didn't know the swamp was this dirty and this deep.
Speaker 1: But if you elect me again, he says
Speaker 2: We will drain the swamp once and for all.
Speaker 3: You didn't drain the swamp like you said you would. You didn't drain the swamp.
Speaker 2: I did. I fired Comey. I fired a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I fired a lot of people.
Speaker 3: He fired a couple people, but hiring additional people for these government jobs, that's not draining the swamp. That's making things worse.
Speaker 1: Because once you increase the number of government employees, it's not like you can just fire them later.
Speaker 4: Gen z and millennials found a little hack looking to lock down government jobs for security.
Speaker 1: This silly reporter treats this like a good thing.
Speaker 5: Workers in the public sector hold their jobs for 3 more years.
Speaker 0: They have additional layers of protection.
Speaker 1: This popular YouTuber works for the government. He sees how hard it is to fire anyone.
Speaker 0: Bad employees. They could show up late. They cannot show up at all.
Speaker 3: They could show up drunk.
Speaker 1: Instead of hiring more government workers, Trump could have turned to the private sector.
Speaker 3: Privatize, privatize, privatize. Government doesn't need to be doing all these things when we have markets.
Speaker 1: Markets work better. British owned Jaguar lost 1,000,000. But after Britain sold Jaguar, its greedy investors quickly started making cars that pleased customers. Now the company makes a profit supporting 200,000 people around the world. No tax dollars needed.
Speaker 3: Eastern Europe privatizing Skoda. Sweden, they privatized Absolut Vodka. The more the government gets out of those industries, the better those industries become.
Speaker 1: Even things people assume can only be done by government often work better when private operators create them. People think building subways to move lots of people, many of them poor, would never be profitable enough to appeal to private companies. If you ask people, who built the subways? They say
Speaker 4: I think it was the government. Either president Eisenhower or maybe, like, a mayor.
Speaker 1: The truth is most of the subways were built by private companies.
Speaker 3: The private subways were actually clean, nice. They had private police on the private subways and it was only after decades of price controls by the government that the private subways could no longer stay in business.
Speaker 1: The government objected when the private operator tried to raise the fare from a nickel to a dime.
Speaker 3: And the minute that the government took over, they raised the prices themselves.
Speaker 1: They doubled them, then kept raising the price. Government is inferior to private operators in so many ways. The post office said it couldn't get it there overnight, but Federal Express showed it could.
Speaker 0: We have thousands of employees working throughout the wee hours of the morning.
Speaker 1: Compare that to the post office.
Speaker 0: Of course, nobody needs mail.
Speaker 1: Seinfeld's nemesis, Newman, was a postal worker for a reason.
Speaker 2: I'll handle this violence. Why don't you take your 3 hour break?
Speaker 1: Trump didn't privatize the post office or any government agency, but Trump did do some deregulation.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, government spending increased dramatically. I don't see that as draining the swamp. I see that as making the swamp a lot bigger and a lot murkier.
Speaker 1: Even brash outsiders like Donald Trump get stuck in the Washington swamp. There's only one way to drain it.
Speaker 3: We need to not have the government in control of so many things.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
CNN prime time viewership recently fell behind the History Channel, and little-known "INSP." Here's why: https://t.co/p2SUXFGRgF
Video Transcript AI Summary
Some media outlets show bias towards politicians, treating Republicans differently than Democrats. For instance, CNN cut away from Trump's Iowa victory speech, while MSNBC refused to air it, citing his tendency to lie. Both Trump and Biden have made false claims, yet the media's treatment varies. The new NPR CEO has a history of controversial statements, highlighting this bias. Coverage of Texas politicians defying federal law contrasts with the leniency shown towards sanctuary cities. Additionally, Argentina's new libertarian president is labeled "far right," despite his policies being more aligned with free trade and economic principles. Protests against his budget cuts are covered extensively, but his threat to cut welfare for illegal street blockers effectively ended the protests. More people are now turning to independent news sources, indicating a shift away from traditional media.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Have you noticed how some in the media just suck up to some politicians?
Speaker 1: I'm struck just in your presence.
Speaker 0: Struck in her presence.
Speaker 1: Looking you in the eye with your passion that you are displaying.
Speaker 0: Republicans are treated differently.
Speaker 1: If if
Speaker 0: let me finish this answer, because this is this is really important. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and interrupt you here. On the deal, Kaye. With that, sir. Let's just just just my question, though, governor. Excuse me.
Speaker 0: Aggressive interviews are easy to notice, but some bias is more subtle. For example What a great campaign. The media have always covered Iowa caucus victory speeches.
Speaker 1: We're gonna wanna listen in very, very closely. Thank you, Iowa.
Speaker 0: But this year, when Trump won
Speaker 1: Thank you. We love you all.
Speaker 0: CNN cut away from his speech.
Speaker 1: Here he is right now under under my voice. You hear him repeating his anti immigrant rhetoric.
Speaker 0: Actually, no, Jake. You hear him. We don't. CNN wouldn't let us actually listen to Trump and decide for ourselves. MSNBC showed none of Trump's speech.
Rachel Maddow said We will let you know if there's any news made. Maddow says it's not responsible to broadcast Trump live because he lies so much. But we reporters can point that out instead of cutting away when he talks. I've repeatedly reported on Trump's lies. Trump lies even about unimportant things like the crowd at his inauguration, the ratings of his TV show, but Biden lies too.
Here he lies about doing well in law school.
Speaker 1: Ended up in the top half of my class. Biden now concedes he did not graduate in the top half of his law school class.
Speaker 0: He also lied when he said
Speaker 2: I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their businesses, period.
Speaker 0: I shouldn't be surprised that the media treat Republicans differently. For every Republican in newsrooms, there are ten Democrats. And now NPR has actually hired this woman to be its new CEO. She not only tweeted, Trump's a racist. But during BLM, looting said, sure, looting is counterproductive, but it's fine because what they're looting comes from a system of oppression.
She's now the boss of government funded radio? Yes. Here's another example.
Speaker 1: The governor of Texas refuses to give in to federal law.
Speaker 0: Recently, reporters suddenly got very upset about rule of law.
Speaker 1: The governor of Texas refuses to give in to federal law.
Speaker 0: The media can't believe that Texas politicians put up a fence and won't remove it even after the feds told them to. But when it comes to sanctuary cities, the tone is very different.
Speaker 1: Communities that shield undocumented immigrants by not reporting offenses to immigration enforcement.
Speaker 3: They choose not to follow federal immigration laws.
Speaker 0: They simply choose not to follow the law. They don't refuse like Texas does.
Speaker 1: The governor of Texas refuses to give in to federal law.
Speaker 0: Finally, the way the media labels politicians is just biased. Argentina's new president is a libertarian who promises to take a chainsaw to big government, so the media call him far right. Far right radical.
Speaker 1: Far right Javier Millet. Far right Javier Millet.
Speaker 3: Far right libertarian Javier Millet.
Speaker 0: At least she calls him libertarian, but libertarians aren't far right. Most of us support ending wars, free trade, gay marriage, and all sorts of things far from far right. The late supports legalizing the sale of human organs. Maybe you oppose organ markets, but it's not far right. Conservatives are more likely to oppose organ sales.
The shallow media just label anyone who doesn't agree with them right wing.
Speaker 1: Argentina elected a right wing former TV host.
Speaker 0: Far right. Far right and Trump like.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump of Argentina.
Speaker 0: He makes Trump almost look like a conventional political candidate.
Speaker 3: He is nothing like Trump.
Speaker 0: Economist Daniel DiMartino points out that Malay's policies are very different from Trump's.
Speaker 3: The only thing that's similar to Trump is that he went against the establishment. He's funny in his speeches. He's charismatic. He has crazy hair, but that's it. I mean, this is a guy who's for free trade.
This is a guy with very set on principles, who's very smart on on economics.
Speaker 0: The media eagerly cover protesters who oppose malaise cutting the size of government.
Speaker 1: Thousands are attending demonstrations opposing his drastic cuts to public spending.
Speaker 0: Media call most any budget cut drastic, slash and burn, astronomical, draconian. But at least in Argentina, the proposed cuts are big. A lot of people don't like this. Unions are protesting.
Speaker 3: In Argentina, it's very popular to protest on block streets.
Speaker 1: It's the second protest against him this month.
Speaker 0: But president Malay did something different because some union members get welfare payments.
Speaker 3: He said that anybody who blocks a street illegally will lose all welfare benefits. Guess what happened? No streets were blocked.
Speaker 0: Who knew that protesters blocking streets could be stopped by threatening their government handouts? You won't hear it from the leftist media. Libertarians get trashed. Republicans get interrupted and their speeches cut off, but Democrats largely get a pass even if you can't tell what they say.
Speaker 1: Beer brewed here. It is used
Speaker 4: to make the brew beer in
Speaker 1: this department. Oh, earth rider. Thanks for the great legs.
Speaker 0: But there is some good news. Today, more people ignore leftist media. CNN's prime time viewership fell behind the history channels recently. More people now get their news from independent journalists who publish in places like Substack and YouTube like us. It's a good trend because we're more thoughtful than the silly people on TV.
Speaker 1: Mister president, how do you do that? Chaka chaka chip. Oh, yeah.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
This AM @theFP reports: “A House race in a solidly blue NH district has made waves…” @Lily4Liberty is doing surprisingly well against the Democrat, the wife of Biden’s national security advisor. I interviewed Williams about the horrors of communism and how she escaped, here: https://t.co/znl3EalPwl
Video Transcript AI Summary
Happy birthday, communism. This year marks 100 years since its inception. The Bolsheviks aimed to end capitalist exploitation, but resistance led to violence under Lenin and Stalin, resulting in millions of deaths and starvation. Despite this, some still believe in communism, as seen in China, where even after suffering, people revered Mao.
Lily Tang Williams, who grew up during this time, later discovered her rights through an American exchange student. She moved to the U.S. and thrived, eventually running for the Senate as a libertarian. Disillusioned by both parties' failures, she became an activist, advocating for individual rights and warning against government overreach. She emphasizes the importance of remembering the lessons of communism and encourages young people to recognize the dangers of a powerful government.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Happy birthday, communist. This year marks 100 years since communism began.
Speaker 1: Street by feet and building by building, the Bolsheviks today.
Speaker 0: The first revolution was in Russia.
Speaker 1: In those fantastic days, the sun people risen at last.
Speaker 0: No longer would capitalists exploit workers. Now the people would prosper together under Lenin. Some people resisted, so Lenin ordered them killed. You need to hang without fail, he said. So the public sees the death of the rich, the bloodsuckers.
Stalin continued the killing. Millions of people starved because it turned out that when farmers can't control their property, they don't produce much food. Yet today, many leftist Antifa activists carry communist flags. Some say, well, Russia just didn't do communism right. But when has anyone done it right?
The Chinese said they would make communism work. Instead, a mob of teenagers called the red guard lined up skeptics and executed them. Millions were murdered. Yet even after years of murder, many Chinese people still believe. Look at these people.
They are crying not because they're unhappy. They're crying with joy and excitement just because they got to see their leader, chairman Mao.
Speaker 2: I was pretty much for entire those school years, Mao was like a god to me. I couldn't listen to him talking to me from the clouds, just like religion. Right?
Speaker 0: But Chinese communism failed even the people who worshiped it.
Speaker 2: I was so hungry all the time. My uncle told me how to trap rats, but the prison, everybody's trying to catch rats. The rats run out too. It was horrible. It was horrible.
Speaker 0: Lily Tang was a little girl then. She loved Mao.
Speaker 2: Then he died. I really did not know what to believe. It's like I start to realize, was that lie? I was 12. You look at my picture when he died.
I was wearing big arm, black bed, and crying my eyes out.
Speaker 0: But about 8 years later.
Speaker 2: I met a US exchange student. We made a dancing party, we started dancing that time, opened up, he said Lee come to my room next day, visit, I'm gonna show you something. He showed me a pocket constitution, He read to me first a paragraph, declaration of independence. It's like a light bulb came out. I said I have rights.
Oh, man, credit equal. Doesn't matter which country, which race, which color. I have rights. He put something in my head. I come to America.
My family all were crying when I left. I I did not know anybody in the US. No friends in Austin, Texas. Just sponsor.
Speaker 0: Lily came to America with nothing, but here she thrived. And last year
Speaker 1: My name is Lily Tom Williams.
Speaker 0: She ran for US senate as a libertarian. She pulled high enough to make the debates.
Speaker 1: American citizen by choice.
Speaker 2: I got a 100,000 votes.
Speaker 0: Her message was that life is terrible without freedom.
Speaker 1: My name, I'm a single payer system, socialist medicine for 24 years in my total nightmare.
Speaker 2: After all my sufferings in China, my weakening process, this is what I was born to do.
Speaker 0: Before she became a libertarian, she became a republican. But then
Speaker 2: In 2008, when they bail all the banks, when Bush come out to say capitalism failed.
Speaker 0: I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.
Speaker 2: It just shocked me. They use taxpayers money to build the banks, and I thought the republicans supposed to fall to be for limited government. They expand the Medicaid, they when no child left behind and civilians, all that stuff. I got so mad. I religious liberty in 2008, so I become, like activist.
Speaker 0: When Colorado debated gun control, she posted this picture on Facebook with the caption, I once was a sleigh. I will never be one again.
Speaker 2: I was holding my AR 15 to send a strong message.
Speaker 1: You remember what happened in Tiananmen Square 19 89.
Speaker 0: She told Colorado's legislature, the history of China might have been different had the Chinese had a right to bear arms.
Speaker 1: What if you had guns? What if you had unlimited shots? It might be different.
Speaker 0: Now she speaks at colleges. She says many young people haven't learned the lessons of communism.
Speaker 2: Total brainwashed, don't know the truth, trust authority, and trust the government.
Speaker 0: So I hope more students listen to Lily Tang Williams.
Speaker 2: Big powerful government, it's a very scary. It will keep growing like cancer, will never stop. If you empower government, not the individuals, we're gonna lose this free country. That's not what I came here for. I got the 3 children now.
Like, I'm gonna fight here. I'm gonna try to wake you. It's like, don't do any crap to my country.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Politicians always have plans for us! But this #election day, take a deep breath and remember, the best of life happens when politicians leave us alone. “A lot of the order that we see wasn’t invented by someone or imposed,” says @tomgpalmer. Right! Examples: https://t.co/TSG8QIThyP
Video Transcript AI Summary
Politicians often believe they can impose order, but true order emerges spontaneously when they step back. Examples include how bananas reach markets without central planning, and how people navigate roads without constant oversight. Central Park transformed when a nonprofit took over management, leading to a vibrant space thanks to community involvement. Activities like jazz and skating thrive without strict rules, demonstrating that order can develop naturally. During COVID, relaxed regulations allowed restaurants to flourish outdoors, showcasing the benefits of flexibility. This freedom fosters innovation and creativity, suggesting that less government control can lead to better outcomes for society.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Politicians have plans for us.
Speaker 1: Pass my plan. I alone can fix it.
Speaker 0: But most of life and the best of life happen when politicians butt out and let us create order as we choose.
Speaker 2: People think of order like a military march. Everyone marching in order. But a lot of the order that we see wasn't invented by someone or imposed.
Speaker 0: The Atlas Network's Tom Palmer points out that just as a school of fish needs no leader, most of us in most of life just figure things out on our own. Spontaneous order, this Chinese philosopher called it. Economist Friedrich Hayek added that order results not from design, but spontaneously. For example, think about something we rarely think about, how bananas get to your market. They're always enough, so we have a choice, but rarely so many that they go bad.
Yet no central planner calculates how many bananas should be grown, who should pick them, when they'll be harvested, how they'll be shipped, and how many to ship to each store. This happens because billions of individuals plan and react on their own. That's spontaneous order, and that's how we get most everything, food, music, travel.
Speaker 2: Think about the spontaneous order on a road. Everyone go in all their different directions.
Speaker 0: Right. Look at all these people, old, young, smart, dumb, some super dumb, super dumb, and yet even though we're going pretty fast, people rarely smash into each other. You need some rules.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 0: Rules like pass on the left. But for the most part, people work this out on our own. Think about language.
Speaker 2: No one invented language,
Speaker 0: yet the world has 1,000. Many times, experts tried to create one new one so we could better communicate.
Speaker 2: There's Volapuk and Esperanto. How many people speak these languages?
Speaker 0: Almost no one. There's all these attempts. They're not helpful.
Speaker 1: It is. William Shatner made
Speaker 0: a movie using Esperanto. It failed too. Esperanto failed because language evolves spontaneously.
Speaker 2: And it is always superior to top down systems that rely on the information in one brain.
Speaker 0: Here are two examples from my town where politicians actually step back, allowing spontaneous order, and that made life much better. This is Central Park. Millions mingle here. If the park is beautiful and safe now, only because government let go a little. My city government used to manage the park, and when it did, it looked like this.
Graffiti covered monuments. Trash was everywhere. Grass was a wasteland of dust. Then the city agreed to let a private nonprofit manage the park. Without a government order, people came together giving money and time to turn the park around.
Now Central Park is beautiful, and without lots of rules, things work.
Speaker 2: Leave a donation right here.
Speaker 0: Musicians thrive on donations. And although there are many, they figure out how to stay out of each other's way. The jazz this group plays is another form of spontaneous order.
Speaker 2: There's no one demanding you have to play this note. Order emerges as the jazz players are going along in spontaneous form.
Speaker 0: Likewise, skate dancers spontaneously chose a spot where they meet to skate. How do we make sure they don't bump into each other? Honestly, there's no room. No one tells them where to go. You just skate with the flow of the music?
You gotta bring your kids next time.
Speaker 1: Go faster. You go slower.
Speaker 0: Several winters ago, I gave ice skaters directions to try to make skating more orderly. You turn left. Turn right. It didn't improve anyone's skating. I made things worse.
That wasn't helping? No. Take the microphone away from that guy. But don't you need police on the skating rink? Never.
Exactly. Spontaneous order works better. Oh. Back to Central Park where I play volleyball. That's me.
There's no volleyball boss. People just show up and play.
Speaker 1: Oh, Jerry.
Speaker 0: Pickup basketball is famous for that. They know the rules. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a game, but who plays and the playing is spontaneous. The park conservancy imposes very few rules. No one kicks kids off of rocks.
No traffic cops boss people around. Walkers, runners, skateboarders, bikers, pedicabs, and horse drawn carriages maneuver around each other. There are some rules. Obviously, you must get permission to shoot a movie scene right there. But the police ignore lots of law breaking.
Speaker 1: 1
Speaker 0: Unlicensed vendors sell fences. And some people illegally drink alcohol. I thought we were not causing trouble. We're good. Government that governs less governs better.
Speaker 1: Resolution 713 But
Speaker 0: politicians wanna control more things.
Speaker 1: Resolution 704.
Speaker 0: Mytown has a zillion rules. Run a restaurant and wanna offer a few outdoor tables. Job. Yeah. Until recently, the city forced you to get permission from how many people?
Speaker 1: 9 or 11 agencies to get a sidewalk cafe.
Speaker 0: 9 or 11 agencies? This restaurant owner can't remember all of them. It was the department of buildings, the fire department, the liquor authority, the city council, the controller's office.
Speaker 1: On and on and on. You had to get a lawyer. You had to get a architect, but it literally takes you a year.
Speaker 0: But during COVID, they relaxed the rules. These sheds suddenly appeared. They would have never been allowed. Because they were allowed, streets came alive. They loosened the rules.
They did it really quick, which is so unusual for the city. If they hadn't done it
Speaker 1: if they hadn't done it, we'd be close.
Speaker 0: Without an epidemic, this is simply not allowed. You'd pay such big fines, you'd lose your business.
Speaker 2: We need that flexibility to allow people to experiment.
Speaker 0: That freedom to experiment brings the best in life, medical innovation, spaceships, things we can't even imagine yet. More politicians should learn from Central Park. John Jackson. And I can't believe I'm saying this. New York City's politicians who during COVID let go a little.
Jerry, here.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Is Kamala Harris competent? We know what happened when Biden put her in charge of the border: Millions of illegal immigrants poured into the US, partly because she’d promised them free stuff. https://t.co/ov6iYK8KW7
Video Transcript AI Summary
Kamala Harris is often criticized for avoiding press conferences and repeating scripted speeches. Her campaign promotes ambitious spending plans, including a proposed $2 trillion in new spending and a $21 trillion plan for monthly payments to Americans. Harris has shifted her stance on issues like fracking and gun control, claiming she no longer supports mandatory buybacks. Her history as a prosecutor contrasts with her current progressive positions, leading to accusations of hypocrisy. Staff turnover in her office is high, and her handling of the border crisis has faced scrutiny. Despite media support, her radical views on equity and the term "woke" raise concerns. Ultimately, the checks on executive power established by America's founders are crucial in light of the current political landscape.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?
Speaker 1: Who is Kamala Harris? She won't hold news conferences and rarely takes questions from reporters. Instead, she reads the same speech off teleprompter again and again.
Speaker 0: The path to the White House runs right through this state.
Speaker 1: Her campaign also releases carefully produced videos.
Speaker 0: We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead.
Speaker 1: That would be good, but would Harris's policies allow that? America's on track to bankruptcy.
Speaker 0: The vice president votes in the affirmative.
Speaker 1: Harris repeatedly cast tie breaking votes to spend more of your money.
Speaker 0: Unlocking the ability to pass a COVID relief package without Republican votes.
Speaker 1: Last election, I ran a game show that compared candidates' spending plans. It found that Trump and Biden wanted to increase spending by more than $200,000,000,000, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders by trillions. But I was surprised that the biggest spending plans came from Kamala Harris. Her proposals would have exploded our debt. The highest inflation in 41 years.
Biden's irresponsible spending ignited nasty inflation. Imagine what inflation would be like if Harris had been president. In her first policy speech, she's proposed almost $2,000,000,000,000 in new spending.
Speaker 0: Provide first time home buyers with $25,000 Yes.
Speaker 1: And 2,000,000,000,000 small compared to what she wanted to do during COVID. Give every American $2,000 a month. That would have cost $21,000,000,000,000. She's also endorsed eliminating private health insurance, having government take it all over. Even CNN anchors seem puzzled.
Speaker 2: So for people out there who like their insurance, what they don't get to keep it?
Speaker 0: Well, listen. The idea is that everyone gets access to medical care.
Speaker 1: Now her campaign says she no longer supports entirely government run health care. She's flip flopped on other issues.
Speaker 0: There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking.
Speaker 1: No question, she told CNN. But now Harris wants votes in Pennsylvania where fracking provides jobs. Her campaign now says she won't ban fracking. And they even say Republicans claiming she wanted a fracking ban is false, an obvious attempt to distract. But what's false?
That's what she said.
Speaker 0: There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking. So yeah.
Speaker 1: She also wanted to force gun owners to sell their guns to the government.
Speaker 0: I support a mandatory buyback program.
Speaker 1: Mandatory. But, again, today
Speaker 3: A Harris campaign spokesperson tells us that the vice president would no longer require this.
Speaker 1: So who is the real Kamala Harris? She used to brag about being a tough prosecutor against even the smallest offenses.
Speaker 0: I decided I was gonna start prosecuting parents for truancy.
Speaker 1: But then when progressives said abolish the police, she flip flopped. And during the George Floyd riots when people were looting and setting fires, Harris tweeted, help post bail for those protesting. Now that the policing pendulum has swung back, she again brags about locking people up.
Speaker 0: I took on perpetrators of all kinds.
Speaker 1: During the 2019 Democratic debate, Tulsi Gabbard pointed out her hypocrisy.
Speaker 4: She put over 1500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.
Speaker 1: That was true. Have you ever smoked?
Speaker 0: I have. Okay. I can count on the job. And I inhaled. I did I did inhaled.
Speaker 1: Another criticism of Harris is that she's nasty to people who work for her. Incredibly, there's been a 92% turnover on her staff. Politico called her office abusive, an unhealthy environment. Now if she were a hard charging boss who got results, that might be okay. But we know what happened when Biden put her in charge of the border.
Speaker 3: More than 302,000 migrants crossed
Speaker 1: the southern border. Of course, more people crossed. Harris promised them free stuff.
Speaker 2: Medicare for all to people who are in this country illegally.
Speaker 0: I am opposed to any policy that would deny any human being public education or public health, period.
Speaker 1: Today, the legacy media wanna protect Harris because they hate Trump so much. They were more honest when Harris ran against other Democrats.
Speaker 2: You're considered the most liberal United States senator.
Speaker 0: I somebody said that, and it actually was Mike Pence on the debate stage.
Speaker 2: But Yeah. Well, actually, the nonpartisan, GovTrack, has rated you as the most liberal senator.
Speaker 1: GovTrack's ranking of Harris was up on their site for 5 years. But once it looked like she would get the nomination, they deleted the page. When questioned about it, they said votes from one legislative session are not sufficient to create a reliable portrait.
Speaker 0: What can be unburdened by what has been.
Speaker 1: Harris needs this media cover because she says weird things.
Speaker 0: What can be unburdened by what has been.
Speaker 1: And radical things.
Speaker 0: Yes. We do talk about equity. We actually believe it is a good principle.
Speaker 1: Equality and equal opportunity aren't good enough, she says.
Speaker 0: There's a big difference between equality and equity. Equality suggests, oh, everyone should get the same amount. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.
Speaker 1: So we need more government redistribution.
Speaker 0: Everybody should end up in the same place.
Speaker 1: Finally, Harris embraces the word woke.
Speaker 0: We have to stay woke. Like, everybody needs to be woke.
Speaker 1: What's so funny about woke?
Speaker 0: Cause a lot of us to be woke.
Speaker 1: She is the favorite to be our new president?
Speaker 0: And you can talk about if you're the wokest or woker, but just stay more woke than less woke. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's upsetting that this big government opportunist and this crass egomaniac are our choices. The good news is that America's founders wisely created checks on executive power. Foolish media often say the president runs the country.
Speaker 2: Run the country.
Speaker 0: Run this country.
Speaker 1: The worst person possible is running the country. But the president runs just one of 3 branches of government, each of which was designed to be able to stop the other from doing something crazy. The founders demanded limited government because they'd seen the damage done by tyrants. With these two candidates, I'm grateful for those limits on executive power. I sure hope they stick.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
It’s ALMOST over. Bettors say Trump wins. Republicans take both houses of Congress. https://www.electionbettingodds.com/
Election Betting Odds
Live betting odds on the 2024 presidential election, and more! Who will win? Biden, Trump, Harris, DeSantis?...
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@JohnStossel - John Stossel
CNN reporters suck up to Kamala Harris. “I am struck, just in your presence!” one told her. Interviewing Republicans, the tone is very different. Here are examples: https://t.co/Zd2Cm20bmr
Video Transcript AI Summary
Some media outlets display bias towards politicians, treating Republicans differently than Democrats. For instance, during Trump's Iowa caucus victory speech, CNN cut away, while MSNBC refused to air it, citing his tendency to lie. Both Trump and Biden have made false statements, yet the media's treatment varies significantly. The new CEO of NPR has a history of controversial tweets, highlighting this bias. Additionally, media labels like "far right" for libertarians misrepresent their principles. In Argentina, the new president's budget cuts are labeled as drastic, while protests against him are covered extensively. However, his firm stance against illegal protests has proven effective. Despite this media landscape, more people are turning to independent journalists for news, indicating a shift away from traditional outlets.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Have you noticed how some in the media just suck up to some politicians?
Speaker 1: I'm struck just in your presence.
Speaker 0: Struck in her presence.
Speaker 1: Looking you in the eye with your passion that you are displaying.
Speaker 0: Republicans are treated differently.
Speaker 1: If if
Speaker 0: let me finish this answer, because this is this is really important. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and interrupt you here. On the deal, Kaye. With that, sir. Let's just just just my question, though, governor. Excuse me.
Speaker 0: Aggressive interviews are easy to notice, but some bias is more subtle. For example What a great campaign. The media have always covered Iowa caucus victory speeches.
Speaker 1: We're gonna wanna listen in very, very closely. Thank you, Iowa.
Speaker 0: But this year, when Trump won
Speaker 1: Thank you. We love you all.
Speaker 0: CNN cut away from his speech.
Speaker 1: Here he is right now under under my voice. You hear him repeating his anti immigrant rhetoric.
Speaker 0: Actually, no, Jake. You hear him. We don't. CNN wouldn't let us actually listen to Trump and decide for ourselves. MSNBC showed none of Trump's speech.
Rachel Maddow said We will let you know if there's any news made. Maddow says it's not responsible to broadcast Trump live because he lies so much. But we reporters can point that out instead of cutting away when he talks. I've repeatedly reported on Trump's lies. Trump lies even about unimportant things like the crowd at his inauguration, the ratings of his TV show, but Biden lies too.
Here he lies about doing well in law school.
Speaker 1: Ended up in the top half of my class. Biden now concedes he did not graduate in the top half of his law school class.
Speaker 0: He also lied when he said
Speaker 2: I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their businesses, period.
Speaker 0: I shouldn't be surprised that the media treat Republicans differently. For every Republican in newsrooms, there are ten Democrats. And now NPR has actually hired this woman to be its new CEO. She not only tweeted, Trump's a racist. But during BLM, looting said, sure, looting is counterproductive, but it's fine because what they're looting comes from a system of oppression.
She's now the boss of government funded radio? Yes. Here's another example.
Speaker 1: The governor of Texas refuses to give in to federal law.
Speaker 0: Recently, reporters suddenly got very upset about rule of law.
Speaker 1: The governor of Texas refuses to give in to federal law.
Speaker 0: The media can't believe that Texas politicians put up a fence and won't remove it even after the feds told them to. But when it comes to sanctuary cities, the tone is very different.
Speaker 1: Communities that shield undocumented immigrants by not reporting offenses to immigration enforcement.
Speaker 3: They choose not to follow federal immigration laws.
Speaker 0: They simply choose not to follow the law. They don't refuse like Texas does.
Speaker 1: The governor of Texas refuses to give in to federal law.
Speaker 0: Finally, the way the media labels politicians is just biased. Argentina's new president is a libertarian who promises to take a chainsaw to big government, so the media call him far right. Far right radical.
Speaker 1: Far right Javier Millet. Far right Javier Millet.
Speaker 3: Far right libertarian Javier Millet.
Speaker 0: At least she calls him libertarian, but libertarians aren't far right. Most of us support ending wars, free trade, gay marriage, and all sorts of things far from far right. The late supports legalizing the sale of human organs. Maybe you oppose organ markets, but it's not far right. Conservatives are more likely to oppose organ sales.
The shallow media just label anyone who doesn't agree with them right wing.
Speaker 1: Argentina elected a right wing former TV host.
Speaker 0: Far right. Far right and Trump like.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump of Argentina.
Speaker 0: He makes Trump almost look like a conventional political candidate.
Speaker 3: He is nothing like Trump.
Speaker 0: Economist Daniel DiMartino points out that Malay's policies are very different from Trump's.
Speaker 3: The only thing that's similar to Trump is that he went against the establishment. He's funny in his speeches. He's charismatic. He has crazy hair, but that's it. I mean, this is a guy who's for free trade.
This is a guy with very set on principles, who's very smart on on economics.
Speaker 0: The media eagerly cover protesters who oppose malaise cutting the size of government.
Speaker 1: Thousands are attending demonstrations opposing his drastic cuts to public spending.
Speaker 0: Media call most any budget cut drastic, slash and burn, astronomical, draconian. But at least in Argentina, the proposed cuts are big. A lot of people don't like this. Unions are protesting.
Speaker 3: In Argentina, it's very popular to protest on block streets.
Speaker 1: It's the second protest against him this month.
Speaker 0: But president Malay did something different because some union members get welfare payments.
Speaker 3: He said that anybody who blocks a street illegally will lose all welfare benefits. Guess what happened? No streets were blocked.
Speaker 0: Who knew that protesters blocking streets could be stopped by threatening their government handouts? You won't hear it from the leftist media. Libertarians get trashed. Republicans get interrupted and their speeches cut off, but Democrats largely get a pass even if you can't tell what they say.
Speaker 1: Beer brewed here. It is used
Speaker 4: to make the brew beer in
Speaker 1: this department. Oh, earth rider. Thanks for the great legs.
Speaker 0: But there is some good news. Today, more people ignore leftist media. CNN's prime time viewership fell behind the history channels recently. More people now get their news from independent journalists who publish in places like Substack and YouTube like us. It's a good trend because we're more thoughtful than the silly people on TV.
Speaker 1: Mister president, how do you do that? Chaka chaka chip. Oh, yeah.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Government is eager to censor. Until they get caught. The Department of Homeland Security terminated its creepy “Disinformation Governance Board.” But information that’s been censored behind the scenes, is just as disturbing. I’ll show you: https://t.co/eaqKJLOd4M
Video Transcript AI Summary
The media allegedly censored certain COVID-19 related theories, including the virus's origin from a lab leak, the ineffectiveness of masks, and the Hunter Biden laptop story. Facebook banned the lab leak claim, but the FBI and Department of Energy later suggested a lab incident in Wuhan was likely. YouTube suspended Rand Paul for stating that masks don't work well, and Facebook throttled a science journalist who opposed mask mandates for kids.
The media initially dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian interference, with Twitter blocking its sharing and Facebook suppressing it. While the media now admits the story's authenticity, they downplay its importance.
The government also allegedly pressured social media companies to censor content. The White House urged Facebook to crack down on private messages, and various government agencies, including the FBI and DHS, made moderation requests to Twitter. The Department of Homeland Security created a Disinformation Governance Board, which was later terminated due to public backlash.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: You better not say that. That's what we reporters cover in COVID were told. There are certain things you must not say. For example, MSNBC told us.
Speaker 1: And from a certain corner of the right is this theory that the coronavirus, quote, escaped
Speaker 0: from the lab. Escaped the lab? How ignorant. Everyone knows it wasn't made in a lab.
Speaker 1: This coronavirus was not man made. That is not a possibility.
Speaker 0: And mere debate about that, we were told, posed a new threat. Not the virus itself, but misinformation. Many media decided it's our job to make certain theories disappear.
Speaker 1: One theory that just won't go away is that this virus came from a Chinese lab.
Speaker 0: Facebook totally banned this false claim, but now the FBI director says COVID's origin is Most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.
Speaker 2: The Department of Energy has concluded COVID 19 likely came from a lab leak in China.
Speaker 0: So did the smug media apologize and say, we shouldn't be in the censoring business? No. They just ignore what they did. The closest to an admission of guilt we found was this from Chris Hayes.
Speaker 1: I have to say there's a kernel of truth the idea that some folks were too quick to shut down the lab leak theory.
Speaker 0: Media imposed similar bans on what you could say about masks when senator Rand Paul made this true statement.
Speaker 3: The mask don't work very well, particularly the cloth mask.
Speaker 0: YouTube suspended him, and Facebook throttled the reporting of science journalist John Tierney when he pushed back against forcing kids to wear masks.
Speaker 3: More than 10,000 parents said that masks were giving their kids headaches, making it harder for them to concentrate.
Speaker 0: Partly false, said Facebook while cutting him off. And now a lot of science says wearing masks
Speaker 2: probably makes little or no difference.
Speaker 0: Perhaps the most blatant case was the media's claim that the New York Post scoop about Hunter Biden's emails just could not be true.
Speaker 4: We're supposed to believe that Hunter Biden and a drunken super dropped off his laptop in, I guess, apparently, Qanon repair office. Right?
Speaker 0: Obviously, Russian interference of the media.
Speaker 4: Likely Russian disinformation. It is so obviously a Russian operation.
Speaker 0: Twitter's bosses wouldn't even let users decide for themselves. They labeled The Post report potentially harmful and blocked users from sharing it. Facebook was sneakier. They suppressed the story instead of banning it outright. Of course, now the media admit the post story was true.
Speaker 2: Several news organizations have authenticated many emails from the laptop.
Speaker 0: So the media who smeared this as a Russian plot, do they now admit they were wrong? No. They just say things like,
Speaker 4: nobody cares about Hunter Biden's laptop.
Speaker 0: Bad as the media were. What's worse is that government wanted to censor.
Speaker 5: We've done nothing in terms of content regulation or in terms of content oversight.
Speaker 0: Senator Mark Warner and some other politicians recklessly proposed using government force. Fortunately, that never happened, but government did apply lots of pressure.
Speaker 2: We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook, that spread disinformation.
Speaker 0: The White House even urged Facebook to crack down on private messages on WhatsApp. We'll never know about all the government's attempts to censor. But now that Twitter's new CEO opened his books, we could see some of the things government tried to do.
Speaker 4: Moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI, the DHS, the HHS, DOD.
Speaker 0: The CIA and state department, and even individual politicians. Maine senator Angus Kingstaffe complained about accounts that were anti king. Congressman Adam Schiff's office asked Twitter to remove content, suspend many accounts, and suppress search results. To Twitter's credit, a staffer responded, no. We don't do this.
At one point, the Department of Homeland Security created something they called a disinformation governance board. Its boss posted this video.
Speaker 6: They're laundering the symbol when we really should take notes and not support their lives with our wallet. We provide Halloween for
Speaker 0: That was a step too far for the public.
Speaker 1: The Biden administration is facing fierce backlash for convening a group called the Disinformation Governance Board.
Speaker 0: Homeland Security terminated the board. Still, lots of government agencies wanted to control what you read and heard. Often, they protected us from the truth. And when they got caught, the White House casually brushed off Twitter's revelations.
Speaker 2: Twitter also haphazardly pushed this distraction. That is a that is a full of, old news.
Speaker 0: Old news only because they concealed it for so long. At least today, finally, we can discuss those things we weren't allowed to say.
Speaker 2: COVID 19 likely came from a lab leak.
Speaker 3: The masks don't work very well.
Speaker 2: The laptop data we had analyzed showed no evidence it was fake.
Speaker 0: Eventually, the truth does come out. But let's not let anyone in government or out say, we'll be the gatekeepers. We know what's true. They don't.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
In schools, students are now taught that Native Americans were peaceful. Then uniquely evil Europeans arrived. Political Science professor (@wil_da_beast630) says it’s Marxism’s fault! Karl Marx IS the most assigned economist in today’s colleges. https://t.co/lFemYr3Hta
Video Transcript AI Summary
Political science professor Wilfred Riley's new book, "Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me," challenges the romanticized view of Native Americans as peaceful stewards of the environment. He argues that government guides and textbooks falsely portray natives as living in harmony with nature, not killing anything they couldn't use. Riley claims this is untrue, citing examples of buffalo hunts, intertribal warfare, and even cannibalism.
The transcript asserts that natives manipulated their environment through practices like setting large forest fires. It also claims that some tribes practiced slavery. The speaker suggests that the myth of peaceful natives persists due to Marxism and critical race theory, which allegedly promote the idea that Western values are inherently bad.
The speaker concludes that while white people committed atrocities against Native Americans, such behavior was not unique. They state that nearly every society had slavery, cruel wars, and environmental destruction. They also state that the West led the world in making things better, citing the Geneva Convention and capitalist countries lifting people out of poverty and protecting the environment.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country.
Speaker 1: Americans are taught that the people who once lived in what we now call America were stewards of the environment. They had An ancient respect and connection to the land and water. Disney movies made that their message. I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has
Speaker 0: a name. No.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't think native American hunters gave names to every rabbit in the woods around them. No. That's not that's not a real thing that happened.
Speaker 1: Political science professor Wilfred Riley's new book is Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me.
Speaker 2: We've gone into almost this cult like romanticization of the natives who were great warriors and poets, but, I mean, who hunted buffalo by driving herds of them off of 100 foot tall cliffs.
Speaker 1: Yet government guides for teachers say Native Americans lived in harmony with nature. There was love of every form of life. They didn't kill anything they couldn't use.
Speaker 2: That's just objectively untrue. I mean, that would mean no young male warrior, no brave ever killed for sport. I mean, that's we just know that's false.
Speaker 1: I heard that. I believed it.
Speaker 2: Well, I believed it too because I was 8.
Speaker 1: The best selling book, Lies My Teacher Told Taught Me, loved by teachers and students alike. Riley's new book is a response to this hugely popular book. It correctly points out that American textbooks and media portrayed Columbus simply as a hero.
Speaker 0: Let go. Let go. Arrive for admiral Columbus.
Speaker 1: Textbooks ignored Columbus's brutality and enslavement of Indians. Columbus himself wrote about his slaves saying, Indians make all our food, extract gold from the mines, and perform all other labors. The book was valid, right, with the kids were being taught at Columbus. It's wonderful.
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily think your focus should be white and native atrocities against one another in a 6th grade class.
Speaker 1: Today, students are rarely taught that natives also took slaves and considered them objects of wealth.
Speaker 2: The morality of today didn't exist anywhere in the world until about 60 years ago.
Speaker 1: White people did murder the natives cruelly. What what's the harm in sending a counter message?
Speaker 2: You don't need a counter message. No one denies that whites and native Americans killed each other. Sure. In 1970, in some southern schools, people might have been taught a jingoistic view of American history, but the the reverse has been true for 40 years.
Speaker 1: He says the old myths don't justify nuance like the one spread by today's social media influencers.
Speaker 2: We know firsthand how to live in harmony with the natural world. In fact, we did so since time in memorial.
Speaker 1: In reality, natives manipulated their environment. To make farming easier, they set big forest fires to clear land.
Speaker 2: Giant forest fires. You're you're burning alive hundreds of thousands of small animals, slower running deer. You're probably killing members of other tribes. You're you're modifying the environment more bluntly. US government curriculum guides also claimed There was no prejudice, no major wars.
Nonsensical. In the Aztec capital, there were 90 foot towers of human skulls that were brought back from their defeated enemies.
Speaker 1: Some tribes even practiced cannibalism, eating enemies they killed. But still I cannot see if the savage one is me. Yet the myth of peaceful natives lives on. You don't know.
Speaker 2: You're looking at people saying the absolute opposite of reality. When myths persist despite obvious objective reality, that's an indicator of a kind of brain virus among people who want the myth to be real.
Speaker 1: Why does the myth of peaceful, harmonious living among Indians versus uniquely evil oppression by Europeans live on? All this to me is just downstream from Marxism. Marxism? Well, it is true that at colleges today, the most assigned economist, is Karl Marx. Students are taught that western values are bad.
Critical race theory amplifies that.
Speaker 2: White Americans have more because of racism. Critical race theory is communist theory with the rich man replaced by the white man.
Speaker 1: Westerners and white people being so evil. Why is it so popular?
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of rich people don't like their father. There is a lot of dislike for our society among people who are pretty near the leadership class.
Speaker 1: I think the people who teach these myths mean well. They want minorities to feel included, but teachers should at least also teach that America's sins were not unique, that just about every society had slavery, cruel wars, and environmental destruction. The seldom taught good news is that in the last century, the West led the world in making things better.
Speaker 2: The Geneva Convention saying that you can't abuse prisoners of war who tried to kill you, The last of those was signed in, I believe, 1949.
Speaker 1: Most of the world is getting better, and the much maligned capitalist countries now are largely responsible for lifting people out of poverty and protecting the environment. They ought to teach that.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Tawanda Hall owed $22,000 in property taxes. So her town took her $308,000 home! The politicians didn’t give back any of the excess money. The Supreme Court now says government can’t take more than it’s owed. But her county STILL hasn’t paid her: https://t.co/H2Olm8XN7D
Video Transcript AI Summary
Some American towns seize homes for missed property tax payments, keeping the profits. Tawanda Hall lost her $300,000 home over a $900 tax debt, with the county keeping the $286,000 difference. The county lawyer argues it's unfair to tax payers if they subsidize those who don't pay. Pacific Legal Foundation's Christina Martin argues this is unconstitutional, as the government shouldn't take more than owed.
A prior case involved an $8 debt. The government argued they inform property owners and allow them to make an informed choice. Martin says the government benefits from unclear notifications and not working with people trying to pay. In Tawanda's case, a judge dismissed it because the town gave the home to a private company run by the mayor and city administrator, who made millions selling foreclosed houses.
In 11 states, local governments can seize homes for tax debts and keep the excess. One woman was evicted and her home sold for $242,000 within days. The Pacific Legal Foundation successfully appealed similar cases to the Supreme Court, which ruled such actions unconstitutional. While some progress has been made, loopholes persist in some states.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Did you know that some towns in America are basically stealing people's homes?
Speaker 1: One missed property tax payment, and the government can take your home, sell it, and keep all of the profits.
Speaker 0: You heard that right. People lose their homes over one missed tax payment. It's hard to believe this happens in America, but it does. I reported on the practice a couple years ago. And at the end of this video, I'll cover what's new.
But first, let's recap.
Speaker 2: I'm just still in shock.
Speaker 0: Tawanda Hall was behind on her property taxes. She was on a payment plan, but she'd missed $900. She didn't expect to lose her entire $300,000 home.
Speaker 2: They took my whole house, my whole family's livelihood.
Speaker 0: And they didn't give you change. They kept it all. $286,000 more than what she owed. The county's lawyer says this practice may sound unfair, but it's also unfair to force those who pay their taxes to subsidize those who don't.
Speaker 2: I pay taxes.
Speaker 0: She's a nurse assistant.
Speaker 2: I'm on a brain trauma unit. I lift people. I bathe people. I work hard.
Speaker 0: When she found out she was gonna lose her home, she wanted to pay off the debt.
Speaker 2: I went to the mayor's office. I went down to the city county building. They didn't want our money. They said no.
Speaker 0: They wanted your house.
Speaker 2: They wanted the house.
Speaker 0: $1,000 house rather than your tax payment.
Speaker 2: They stole our home from us and from our family, and it was a shock to all of us.
Speaker 0: Why isn't this illegal?
Speaker 3: I think it is illegal. I think it's unconstitutional.
Speaker 0: Christina Martin of the Pacific Legal Foundation.
Speaker 3: The government can't take more than it's owed. This is unjust, and it is unconstitutional.
Speaker 0: Martin won a similar case when a county took an entire home
Speaker 1: Over, get this, an $8 debt.
Speaker 0: The government argued There couldn't
Speaker 4: be anything more fair than informing property owners of what is going to happen, giving them time to act, and then letting them make an informed choice.
Speaker 3: Do you think if he knew he owed $8 he would have paid it? Of course. He didn't know, and there wasn't a proper incentive to let him know.
Speaker 0: So the government has an incentive to notify them in legalese so they can't understand it?
Speaker 3: Yes. And then they also have an incentive not to work with people when they are honestly trying to pay. Like, Tawanda Hall,
Speaker 2: we did not receive anything other than get out.
Speaker 0: A judge dismissed Tawanda's case because the government itself in her case did not make a profit. The town gave her home to this private company. It got the money.
Speaker 3: The government shouldn't be able to steal from its own people and then to give it over to their friends is just How
Speaker 0: do you know that they're their friends?
Speaker 3: The company is literally run by the mayor and the city administrator.
Speaker 0: Southfield mayor Ken Seiber acknowledges the company made $10,000,000 selling foreclosed houses. I'm getting paid. I'm getting paid.
Speaker 1: The mayor of Cyber, I told him if I bring the money in today, could I get my property back? He told me point blankly, no. If you bring the money in, I'll take your money and take your house too.
Speaker 0: I wanted to ask him if he personally profited, but he wouldn't agree to an interview. I didn't think I was going to lose my house over $39100. In 11 states, local governments, if you're behind on your taxes, can grab your home and keep much more than what you owed. Some guy comes in and says, how long will it take for you to get out?
Speaker 3: We have a client who's sleeping in her car right now. The city took her property, turned around and sold it within days of evicting her for $242,000.
Speaker 0: You have gotten 3 states to stop doing this.
Speaker 3: Yes. We're asking the government to stop stealing people's life savings.
Speaker 0: Good. It often destroys lives. After Tawanda's home was taken, her husband did construction work to try to recover their losses. He got sick, but then kept working. He died shortly after.
Speaker 2: It was terrible just to know that he struggled trying to make it right.
Speaker 0: The Pacific Legal Foundation appealed home thefts like that to the Supreme Court, and the court ruled 9 to nothing that that kind of theft is unconstitutional. As justice Gorsuch put it
Speaker 1: Everybody else has to abide by the usual rule, that you only take what you're owed.
Speaker 0: Finally. So now has the county that stole Towanda's house returned the excess money they took? No. Now they're spending even more taxpayer money on legal fees, forcing her to prove the house's value in court. But at least that grandmother who was living in her car has now received $85,000.
And I wish I could say such abuses were finally over, but a handful of states still use loopholes to get around the Supreme Court ruling. The Pacific Legal Foundation says they'll continue to fight those cases until they end this practice for good.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
The media treat Republicans and Democrats differently. Probably because for every Republican in a newsroom, there are TEN Democrats. https://t.co/VVDMtLJtAP
Video Transcript AI Summary
The media treats Republicans differently, with examples including CNN cutting away from Trump's speech after the Iowa caucus and MSNBC showing none of it. Rachel Maddow said it's not responsible to broadcast Trump live because he lies so much. Both Trump and Biden lie, but the media focuses more on Republican lies. Newsrooms have ten times more Democrats than Republicans, and NPR's new CEO tweeted that Trump is a racist and defended looting during BLM.
The media criticizes Texas for refusing to remove a fence after the feds told them to, but they don't criticize sanctuary cities for not following federal immigration laws. Argentina's new president, a libertarian, is labeled "far right" and "Trump-like" despite his policies differing from Trump's. When he threatened to cut welfare benefits for protesters blocking streets, the protests stopped.
More people are ignoring leftist media and getting their news from independent journalists on platforms like Substack and YouTube.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Have you noticed how some in the media just suck up to some politicians?
Speaker 1: I'm struck just in your presence.
Speaker 0: Struck in her presence.
Speaker 1: Looking you in the eye with your passion that you are displaying.
Speaker 0: Republicans are treated differently.
Speaker 1: If if
Speaker 0: let me finish this answer, because this is this is really important. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and interrupt you here. On the deal, Kaye. With that, sir. Let's just just just my question, though, governor. Excuse me.
Speaker 0: Aggressive interviews are easy to notice, but some bias is more subtle. For example What a great campaign. The media have always covered Iowa caucus victory speeches.
Speaker 1: We're gonna wanna listen in very, very closely. Thank you, Iowa.
Speaker 0: But this year, when Trump won
Speaker 1: Thank you. We love you all.
Speaker 0: CNN cut away from his speech.
Speaker 1: Here he is right now under under my voice. You hear him repeating his anti immigrant rhetoric.
Speaker 0: Actually, no, Jake. You hear him. We don't. CNN wouldn't let us actually listen to Trump and decide for ourselves. MSNBC showed none of Trump's speech.
Rachel Maddow said We will let you know if there's any news made. Maddow says it's not responsible to broadcast Trump live because he lies so much. But we reporters can point that out instead of cutting away when he talks. I've repeatedly reported on Trump's lies. Trump lies even about unimportant things like the crowd at his inauguration, the ratings of his TV show, but Biden lies too.
Here he lies about doing well in law school.
Speaker 1: Ended up in the top half of my class. Biden now concedes he did not graduate in the top half of his law school class.
Speaker 0: He also lied when he said
Speaker 2: I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their businesses, period.
Speaker 0: I shouldn't be surprised that the media treat Republicans differently. For every Republican in newsrooms, there are ten Democrats. And now NPR has actually hired this woman to be its new CEO. She not only tweeted, Trump's a racist. But during BLM, looting said, sure, looting is counterproductive, but it's fine because what they're looting comes from a system of oppression.
She's now the boss of government funded radio? Yes. Here's another example.
Speaker 1: The governor of Texas refuses to give in to federal law.
Speaker 0: Recently, reporters suddenly got very upset about rule of law.
Speaker 1: The governor of Texas refuses to give in to federal law.
Speaker 0: The media can't believe that Texas politicians put up a fence and won't remove it even after the feds told them to. But when it comes to sanctuary cities, the tone is very different.
Speaker 1: Communities that shield undocumented immigrants by not reporting offenses to immigration enforcement.
Speaker 3: They choose not to follow federal immigration laws.
Speaker 0: They simply choose not to follow the law. They don't refuse like Texas does.
Speaker 1: The governor of Texas refuses to give in to federal law.
Speaker 0: Finally, the way the media labels politicians is just biased. Argentina's new president is a libertarian who promises to take a chainsaw to big government, so the media call him far right. Far right radical.
Speaker 1: Far right Javier Millet. Far right Javier Millet.
Speaker 3: Far right libertarian Javier Millet.
Speaker 0: At least she calls him libertarian, but libertarians aren't far right. Most of us support ending wars, free trade, gay marriage, and all sorts of things far from far right. The late supports legalizing the sale of human organs. Maybe you oppose organ markets, but it's not far right. Conservatives are more likely to oppose organ sales.
The shallow media just label anyone who doesn't agree with them right wing.
Speaker 1: Argentina elected a right wing former TV host.
Speaker 0: Far right. Far right and Trump like.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump of Argentina.
Speaker 0: He makes Trump almost look like a conventional political candidate.
Speaker 3: He is nothing like Trump.
Speaker 0: Economist Daniel DiMartino points out that Malay's policies are very different from Trump's.
Speaker 3: The only thing that's similar to Trump is that he went against the establishment. He's funny in his speeches. He's charismatic. He has crazy hair, but that's it. I mean, this is a guy who's for free trade.
This is a guy with very set on principles, who's very smart on on economics.
Speaker 0: The media eagerly cover protesters who oppose malaise cutting the size of government.
Speaker 1: Thousands are attending demonstrations opposing his drastic cuts to public spending.
Speaker 0: Media call most any budget cut drastic, slash and burn, astronomical, draconian. But at least in Argentina, the proposed cuts are big. A lot of people don't like this. Unions are protesting.
Speaker 3: In Argentina, it's very popular to protest on block streets.
Speaker 1: It's the second protest against him this month.
Speaker 0: But president Malay did something different because some union members get welfare payments.
Speaker 3: He said that anybody who blocks a street illegally will lose all welfare benefits. Guess what happened? No streets were blocked.
Speaker 0: Who knew that protesters blocking streets could be stopped by threatening their government handouts? You won't hear it from the leftist media. Libertarians get trashed. Republicans get interrupted and their speeches cut off, but Democrats largely get a pass even if you can't tell what they say.
Speaker 1: Beer brewed here. It is used
Speaker 4: to make the brew beer in
Speaker 1: this department. Oh, earth rider. Thanks for the great legs.
Speaker 0: But there is some good news. Today, more people ignore leftist media. CNN's prime time viewership fell behind the history channels recently. More people now get their news from independent journalists who publish in places like Substack and YouTube like us. It's a good trend because we're more thoughtful than the silly people on TV.
Speaker 1: Mister president, how do you do that? Chaka chaka chip. Oh, yeah.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
Hollywood portrays civilian gun owners as fools, more likely to do harm than good. The FBI confirms defensive gun use is rare. But researcher @JohnRLottJr says the FBI data is wrong, that civilians SAVE lives all the time. https://t.co/PSTaRIVQxp
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
A new law in Scotland threatens you with seven years in JAIL if you misgender someone. GLAD @jk_rowling calls this a threat to free speech. Here is how she protested: https://t.co/hIbZby4OVX
Video Transcript AI Summary
The chant "from the river to the sea" is considered by some as a call for genocide and the end of Israel. A proposed bill aims to make saying it illegal discrimination at universities. Most countries have hate speech laws, and Canada may imprison people for life for advocating genocide.
Some view misgendering a transgender person as a hate crime, punishable by jail time in places like Scotland, but only if deemed threatening or abusive. JK Rowling intentionally broke Scotland's misgendering law and dared police to arrest her, but they did not.
In Britain, people have been arrested for criticizing marginalized groups, such as retweeting an image of progress pride flags forming a swastika. Some argue that policing speech increases hate, while others support rules against hate speech.
Ezra Levant was prosecuted in Canada for a book critical of Justin Trudeau. Levant argues that free speech is a safety valve that prevents violence and terrorism. He believes that countries restricting speech may see an increase in violent terrorism.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Many people say that chant is a call for genocide.
Speaker 1: Erasing the state of Israel. It's a call for the end of the world's only Jewish state and its people.
Speaker 0: If they are advocating genocide, should that chant then be illegal? The first amendment says congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, but there are exceptions. Laws forbid speech that incites imminent lawless action. Now Democrats and Republicans in the house have approved a bill making saying, from the river to the sea, illegal discrimination at universities. If it becomes law, that would be something new for America.
Here, even hateful speech has been legal. That's not true with most of the rest of the world. Most countries now have laws against what they call hate speech. And Canada is about to pass a law that would imprison people for life if they advocate genocide.
Speaker 2: We stand with the Palestinian resistance under heroic and breathe action on October 7th.
Speaker 1: Who's gonna be the determinant determiner of who's gonna be prosecuted?
Speaker 0: Canadian Ezra Levant, founder of the media outlet Rebel News, fights for free speech. Life in prison for saying the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: I'm worried about a law like that that gives a politician the chance to criminalize his peaceful opponent.
Speaker 0: Some countries criminalize their opponents now. A Brazilian judge recently ordered Twitter to block popular accounts that support the former Brazilian president.
Speaker 1: This crusading judge says take the accounts down. I'm not gonna tell you why.
Speaker 0: Elon Musk said no. We will lose revenue, but principles matter more. He called the judge Brazil's Darth Vader, and he does resemble Vader.
Speaker 2: You believe misgendering a transgender person is a hate crime. Why?
Speaker 0: Scotland recently banned misgendering.
Speaker 2: Well, gender is a protected characteristic just as much as race.
Speaker 0: Calling her a man could get you 7 years in jail. The politician who pushed the law says, don't worry.
Speaker 2: Unless your behavior is threatening or abusive and intends to start a hatred, then you have nothing to worry about.
Speaker 0: Nothing to worry about unless a reasonable person views the speech as insulting and likely to result in hatred.
Speaker 1: Do you have any idea how serious this is?
Speaker 0: Harry Potter's creator sees the problem.
Speaker 2: JK Rowling says Scotland's new anti hate crime law is a threat to free speech.
Speaker 0: She wrote, if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal, freedom of speech and belief are at an end. This made her enemies slit her throat, says one.
Speaker 2: JK Rowling, not a good person.
Speaker 0: But Rowling won't back down. The day Scotland's new law took effect, she intentionally broke it by misgendering some trans people on Twitter. She said, these aren't women, but men. I look forward to being arrested.
Speaker 1: JK Rowling has the wealth to fight a strong defense. She said, anyone who's charged under this, I'm gonna repeat their words. Let them come after me.
Speaker 0: Scottish police chose not to.
Speaker 2: If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand alongside tyrants.
Speaker 1: She and Elon Musk are the 2 people in the world who have done more to stop cancel culture.
Speaker 0: In Britain, police enforce cancel culture. Police there arrest people who criticize so called marginalized groups.
Speaker 2: Remind me again why I'm being arrested.
Speaker 0: This man was arrested just for retweeting this image. Four progress pride flags put together so they form a swastika. He wasn't supporting Nazis, just arguing that the woke movement is totalitarian.
Speaker 2: You should not be doing this to me. I expect my freedom of speech.
Speaker 1: They handcuffed him. Why did they handcuff him? Was he some physical menace? I don't think you're reducing the hate when you police it in that way.
Speaker 0: But polls show. Most people say, yeah, we should have rules against spreading hate.
Speaker 1: But every once in a while, the ability to speak the truth is a more pressing value. Even if we're gonna hurt a feeling, even if we're gonna upset the apple cart. That's what freedom of speech means. It means it trumps those other values.
Speaker 0: Canada's laws now give politicians power over people's speech. LeVanc's been charged multiple times.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about Justin Trudeau, a knockoff of The Sopranos. I called it the libranos because he's with the liberal party. Oh, he hated that book. He hated the cover art, which looked like he was a mafioso. And so I was prosecuted.
What was your marketing plan?
Speaker 0: LeVanc was called before investigators working for Elections Canada.
Speaker 2: Was it political advertising?
Speaker 0: Canada has laws against unregistered political ads. But LeVitt asked the investigators.
Speaker 1: Is anyone in your office investigating any other books about Justin Trudeau or just the book that's critical of them? They convicted me. They fined me. 5 years later, I'm still in court over a book that criticized Justin Trudeau.
Speaker 0: Organizations like yours continue to spread misinformation and disinformation. Now Trudeau was pushing that law, imposing life in prison for hate speech. Canadians must like this. He gets reelected.
Speaker 1: A lot of Canadians and Americans and Brits want
Speaker 0: the a net nanny, but for the other guy. It's important that everyone have free speech.
Speaker 1: Give people that peaceful outlet for their grievance. You need that, in case of fire, break glass, freedom of speech when there's a crisis, when you just need to speak the truth. If you cork them up, if you don't let them have the safety valve of free speech, they'll explode in another way, possibly including violence. I think there's a correlation between the countries that have the least freedom of speech and countries that have violent terrorism. Free speech is a preventive mechanism that prevents an escalation of problems.
Speaker 0: Canada's punishing certain speech with life in prison will discourage some from speaking their truth.
Speaker 1: We're a lab laboratory of bad ideas.
Speaker 0: It's good that so far, our American police, when they make arrests, say the arrests are for trespassing or property damage, not speech. I don't agree with what these people say, but I'll defend everyone's right to say it.
@JohnStossel - John Stossel
A new law in Scotland threatens you with seven years in JAIL if you misgender someone. GLAD @jk_rowling calls this a threat to free speech. Here is how she protested: https://t.co/hIbZby4OVX
Video Transcript AI Summary
Many believe that certain chants call for genocide and advocate for the end of Israel. A proposed bill in the U.S. could make such chants illegal at universities, a significant shift in free speech laws. In contrast, countries like Canada are moving towards stricter hate speech laws, potentially imprisoning individuals for life for advocating genocide. Critics warn that such laws could be misused to silence political opponents. Instances of arrests for speech in the UK highlight the risks of policing expression. Advocates argue that free speech is essential to prevent violence and allow grievances to be aired. The ongoing debate emphasizes the need for a balance between protecting free speech and addressing hate speech, with concerns about the implications of restricting expression.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Many people say that chant is a call for genocide.
Speaker 1: Erasing the state of Israel. It's a call for the end of the world's only Jewish state and its people.
Speaker 0: If they are advocating genocide, should that chant then be illegal? The first amendment says congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, but there are exceptions. Laws forbid speech that incites imminent lawless action. Now Democrats and Republicans in the house have approved a bill making saying, from the river to the sea, illegal discrimination at universities. If it becomes law, that would be something new for America.
Here, even hateful speech has been legal. That's not true with most of the rest of the world. Most countries now have laws against what they call hate speech. And Canada is about to pass a law that would imprison people for life if they advocate genocide.
Speaker 2: We stand with the Palestinian resistance under heroic and breathe action on October 7th.
Speaker 1: Who's gonna be the determinant determiner of who's gonna be prosecuted?
Speaker 0: Canadian Ezra Levant, founder of the media outlet Rebel News, fights for free speech. Life in prison for saying the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: I'm worried about a law like that that gives a politician the chance to criminalize his peaceful opponent.
Speaker 0: Some countries criminalize their opponents now. A Brazilian judge recently ordered Twitter to block popular accounts that support the former Brazilian president.
Speaker 1: This crusading judge says take the accounts down. I'm not gonna tell you why.
Speaker 0: Elon Musk said no. We will lose revenue, but principles matter more. He called the judge Brazil's Darth Vader, and he does resemble Vader.
Speaker 2: You believe misgendering a transgender person is a hate crime. Why?
Speaker 0: Scotland recently banned misgendering.
Speaker 2: Well, gender is a protected characteristic just as much as race.
Speaker 0: Calling her a man could get you 7 years in jail. The politician who pushed the law says, don't worry.
Speaker 2: Unless your behavior is threatening or abusive and intends to start a hatred, then you have nothing to worry about.
Speaker 0: Nothing to worry about unless a reasonable person views the speech as insulting and likely to result in hatred.
Speaker 1: Do you have any idea how serious this is?
Speaker 0: Harry Potter's creator sees the problem.
Speaker 2: JK Rowling says Scotland's new anti hate crime law is a threat to free speech.
Speaker 0: She wrote, if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal, freedom of speech and belief are at an end. This made her enemies slit her throat, says one.
Speaker 2: JK Rowling, not a good person.
Speaker 0: But Rowling won't back down. The day Scotland's new law took effect, she intentionally broke it by misgendering some trans people on Twitter. She said, these aren't women, but men. I look forward to being arrested.
Speaker 1: JK Rowling has the wealth to fight a strong defense. She said, anyone who's charged under this, I'm gonna repeat their words. Let them come after me.
Speaker 0: Scottish police chose not to.
Speaker 2: If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand alongside tyrants.
Speaker 1: She and Elon Musk are the 2 people in the world who have done more to stop cancel culture.
Speaker 0: In Britain, police enforce cancel culture. Police there arrest people who criticize so called marginalized groups.
Speaker 2: Remind me again why I'm being arrested.
Speaker 0: This man was arrested just for retweeting this image. Four progress pride flags put together so they form a swastika. He wasn't supporting Nazis, just arguing that the woke movement is totalitarian.
Speaker 2: You should not be doing this to me. I expect my freedom of speech.
Speaker 1: They handcuffed him. Why did they handcuff him? Was he some physical menace? I don't think you're reducing the hate when you police it in that way.
Speaker 0: But polls show. Most people say, yeah, we should have rules against spreading hate.
Speaker 1: But every once in a while, the ability to speak the truth is a more pressing value. Even if we're gonna hurt a feeling, even if we're gonna upset the apple cart. That's what freedom of speech means. It means it trumps those other values.
Speaker 0: Canada's laws now give politicians power over people's speech. LeVanc's been charged multiple times.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about Justin Trudeau, a knockoff of The Sopranos. I called it the libranos because he's with the liberal party. Oh, he hated that book. He hated the cover art, which looked like he was a mafioso. And so I was prosecuted.
What was your marketing plan?
Speaker 0: LeVanc was called before investigators working for Elections Canada.
Speaker 2: Was it political advertising?
Speaker 0: Canada has laws against unregistered political ads. But LeVitt asked the investigators.
Speaker 1: Is anyone in your office investigating any other books about Justin Trudeau or just the book that's critical of them? They convicted me. They fined me. 5 years later, I'm still in court over a book that criticized Justin Trudeau.
Speaker 0: Organizations like yours continue to spread misinformation and disinformation. Now Trudeau was pushing that law, imposing life in prison for hate speech. Canadians must like this. He gets reelected.
Speaker 1: A lot of Canadians and Americans and Brits want
Speaker 0: the a net nanny, but for the other guy. It's important that everyone have free speech.
Speaker 1: Give people that peaceful outlet for their grievance. You need that, in case of fire, break glass, freedom of speech when there's a crisis, when you just need to speak the truth. If you cork them up, if you don't let them have the safety valve of free speech, they'll explode in another way, possibly including violence. I think there's a correlation between the countries that have the least freedom of speech and countries that have violent terrorism. Free speech is a preventive mechanism that prevents an escalation of problems.
Speaker 0: Canada's punishing certain speech with life in prison will discourage some from speaking their truth.
Speaker 1: We're a lab laboratory of bad ideas.
Speaker 0: It's good that so far, our American police, when they make arrests, say the arrests are for trespassing or property damage, not speech. I don't agree with what these people say, but I'll defend everyone's right to say it.