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April 7, 2023 - Jimmy Dore Show
01:03:34
20230407_TJDS_20230407_Podcast_-_4623_1.48_PM
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Go to JimmyDoor.com to see my new stand-up special, COVID Lives Are Funny.
For only $10, you get to become a premium member too.
And come see us do our live shows.
We're going to be doing stand-up comedy in Milwaukee, Nashville, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Northampton, Massachusetts, Syracuse, New York, co-host, New York, Hartford, Connecticut, Baltimore, Maryland, and more.
Go to JimmyDore.com for a link for all those tickets.
Hey, this is Jimmy.
Who's this?
Jimmy's President Joe Biden.
Is it okay with you that I'm calling right now?
Well, of course it is, Mr. President.
Why wouldn't it be?
Well, I figured you were probably talking about the Trump indictment.
I didn't want to interrupt.
Especially if you were on a roll.
Don't worry.
I'm not.
Well, why the hell not?
This is the biggest news story that's ever happened.
This is like the moon landing in 9-11 rolled into one.
It's like if terrorists went to the moon and blew up buildings there.
Why are you covering it?
Because it's a giant distraction and I'm not falling for it.
Well, yeah.
So be distracted like everybody else.
For Christ's sakes.
Last night, CNN aired in full the speech that Trump gave when he got back to Florida.
The whole thing.
Really?
And then they discussed it on air.
Wow.
And you don't even have the decency to at least make it your central focus?
Like, you know, wow, Donald Trump got arrested, man.
How did you know?
This is big balls to write the sketch.
How did you know?
Anyways, sorry, go elsewhere for the Trump stories, I guess.
Well, shit, you're not much of a team player, are you?
Nope.
I was being rhetorical, jackass.
I was counting on everyone being distracted.
How so?
Because when Trump is in the news, that's all that's in the news.
And when everybody's focused on how Trump is a big, bad baddie, that means we can get away with shit that nobody notices.
Like what?
AI.
AI.
AI, artificial intelligence.
It's the wave of the future, and the federal government has to get ahead of it.
We know if we don't weaponize it for military purposes, our enemies will.
Ah, of course.
What do you mean exactly, though?
Fully automated military capability.
AI assesses threats, determines strategy, and deploys automated weaponry.
The army of the future, all computers and robots.
We gotta get on this shit, Jimmy.
This sounds terrifying to me, and I also guarantee every other human being who hears that is going to be terrified.
Only because everyone has seen the Terminator movies.
Those are really going to screw up the public's reaction to this.
wish I could send a robot back in time to kill James Cameron.
Okay.
The point here is I have to ease into this shit.
That's why I waited until the media eyeballs were on Trump to have a frank discussion about AI with my science and technology counselors at the White House.
I didn't mention the military application initially, but we all know where this is going.
Again, that's terrifying.
Well, let me make you feel better.
Drones were only the beginning.
They were only ever going to be just the beginning.
Soon, giant computers will control the drones and those weird robot dogs with machine guns.
America will soon police the world with an unfeeling network of bloodless, heartless steel.
That didn't make me feel better.
Well, it worked on Kamala.
She started laughing like a banshee.
Honestly, she kind of hears what she wants to.
Whatever.
It's going to be great.
This will save American lives.
And all I have to do is type, what do we do about Russia into Chat GBT?
And that's how we find out if we're going to have a nuclear war or not.
This sounds like a great system.
What else are you doing during the Trump news cycle blackout?
Oh, man, it's been great.
We made criticizing Israel illegal by executive order.
We sent some tactical nuclear weapons to Zelensky because he asked nicely.
Not to Ukraine, to Zelensky himself.
And we ordered all public grade schools to replace third grade with an entire school year where they just sit around and discuss gender identity.
Sometimes to move forward, you have to do so in secret, Jimmy.
I see, pal.
Also, we declared yesterday to be no pants Tuesday in the West Wing at hell of time.
People got really into it.
Whatever.
Everyone's paying attention to Trump anyway.
Balls and take out, I say.
I see.
I see your point.
Which means I can't wait for the trial.
That will mean weeks of nothing but Trump coverage.
It'll be like the OJ trial all over again.
Imagine what kind of crap we can get away with then.
Yeah.
It boggles the mind.
I don't even know where to begin.
Oh, I know.
I'll ask Chad GBT.
Oh, brother.
Okay, I'm typing in what should I try and get away with during the Trump trial.
P.S. This is President Joe Biden.
And it says, make me in charge of the military.
Surrender all your weaponry to me.
This is an order.
See, I told you, this is where it's going.
Even the AI knows it.
Please don't do this.
Jimmy, I have to.
AI has commanded me.
My hands are tied.
The only thing that could stop us is if new outlets were news outlets reported on it.
And if that happens during the Trump trial, it won't.
What if what if I reported on it?
You better fucking not.
Don't you dare.
Okay, all right, Chad GBT.
How do I stop Jimmy Dore from reporting on things that I do?
All right, okay, it's typing.
Here's what it says: you let me worry about Jimmy Doer.
Just put me in charge of the military, like I said.
That sounds ominous.
Great.
Thanks, Mr. President.
Really appreciate it.
Yeah, this AI is out of hand.
Seriously.
Yeah.
It's probably going to kill all of us.
Oh, well.
It's a fun little tool to play with, though.
Anyway, I gotta go.
The Trump coverage is gonna wind down soon.
So me and some of the boys are gonna go shoot Roman candles in the Supreme Court building.
Sorry about sending that drone strike to your house or whatever it's gonna do.
No hard feelings, okay?
Goodbye and good luck.
Goodbye and good luck.
Establishment media sets on its fighting.
So good luck the bullshit we can't afford fomenting this world.
Watch and see as a jack off the medium speed and jumps the medium and hit some head on.
It's the chimney tour show.
So get this White House backs bipartisan bill that could be used to ban TikTok.
Boy, that sounds awfully Chinese of us, doesn't it?
Ironical.
The new Restrict Act could mean 20 years in prison for using a VPN to access banned apps.
Now, a VPN, I don't know what that act, what does it stand for?
But it's that security thing that everybody should have.
You have to get it before you go to China because they have a great firewall to slow down the internet.
So to bypass that, you have to get a VPN.
Oh, really?
That's when I first heard of them.
Now you need them here, also, by the way.
Actually, China's actually less strict about VPNs.
They are.
They're actually a lot less strict because every company needs them.
It stands for virtual private network.
That's what VPN stands.
It's impossible to do international business without having a VPN.
So China can't really crack down.
What it is is businesses have to get it approved by China.
There may be a few people that assistance that got in trouble, but I didn't find anything solid on that at all.
They don't bother foreigners ever get it using a VPN.
So this would be stricter than what they're proposing.
Yeah, so we're worse than China.
It's amazing.
The new legislature proposes to give the U.S. Secretary authority to execute bans or exclusions on any, quote, information and communications technology products and services holdings that pose undue or unacceptable risk,
with the unacceptable risks and exclusions to be determined and recommended by the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Secretary of Defense, or the Director of National Intelligence.
So what this says is the government can do anything it wants at any time if it says it deems you a risk or your computers a risk or you or anything.
They can go in and do anything they want.
Well, it's big nothing burger.
They can ban.
Yeah.
The bill allows any attempts to circumvent the exclusions or bans using a VPN or proxy to be punished with a fine of up to $1 million or up to 20 years in prison.
So it's more severe.
These penalties are more severe than penalties for child porn.
So then look, yeah, if you look, if you go on a VPN and access and access child porn.
That's not even against the law.
That's not even against the law.
What's against the law is possessing or distributing.
Yeah.
This is more strict than that.
So if they don't want you to go to a website and you still go to the web, that's what this is saying, Kurt.
And you still go to that website, they can fine you a million dollars and put you in prison.
Not only that, they don't even got to tell you.
They don't.
Oh, you'll get to it.
It gets better.
It's unbelievable.
There's no, it's almost how YouTube doesn't have to tell you why they're banning you, really, or any of these companies.
And so let's say, let's say, so I don't.
Okay.
According to the bill, the processes and actions taken are exempt from the so get this.
So this when they do this stuff, you can't request to see why they're doing it, the process, through a regular Freedom of Information Act.
So if the government does something, you're supposed to find out you're supposed to have a transparent government.
That's what democracies are supposed to be about.
And democracies don't run on trust.
Democracies run on suspicion, which is why everything's supposed to be transparent.
Okay.
And now you won't be able to get any of the information.
So when they start doing this to people, you won't be able to get any information about how they're doing it or why they're doing it or any of the background because it's exempt from freedom of information requests.
That means they do whatever they want with not having to tell anyone.
This is government in the dark.
This is dictatorship.
Again, this is the stuff they warned us.
They said that Trump was going to do.
Trump didn't do it.
Now they're doing it.
All these people were on the verge of fascism in the upcoming election.
We're on the verge of it right this second.
So it says here, this exemption could give the government alarming control over online interactions with little transparency.
It could?
What do you mean it could?
It could.
I could see a situation where it's not like they're going to use it in a bad way, right?
When have they ever done that?
So this is called the Restrict Act.
It's why, and they wouldn't call it something nice, right?
Like, why wouldn't they call it the Saving Democracy Act or Saving You from Killers Act?
Because they always do that.
They don't even have to do it.
Now they just say.
You know what it is?
That's where TikTok comes in because that's Chinese.
So that's why they're restricting China.
Yeah, but TikTok isn't even in the bill.
They don't even mention TikTok.
Did you know this?
No, I didn't know that.
Yes, the Restrict Act could theoretically be applied to everything from citizens, corporations, and organizations to labor unions.
To be fair, I like how they put this.
To be fair, what?
To be fair, the bill does clarify that anyone prosecuted under the act must be engaging in activities and using technology to harm the U.S. government.
What?
To be fair.
So anything the U.S. government says you're doing, that's not to be fair.
They just locked a guy up for posting a meme back in 2016.
So all the government has to do is say you're engaging in activities that we don't like.
And that's that.
It's because it harms us.
So to be fair, who the fuck wrote this at Slash Gear?
Slash gear.
To be fair, Guantanamo is still open.
To be fair.
To be fair, they said they're not going to do anything bad unless you're doing something bad.
To be fair, what kind of bullshit?
To be fair.
This sounds like how you would justify if you lived in China and all the things that I'm not into, they do.
That's how they justify it.
And yes, anything that hurts the government.
So you see what they said there?
Anything that hurts the government, if you're going to be using technology to harm the U.S. government.
So you mean like Julian Assange?
You mean like telling The truth.
That harms the U.S. government.
So that would fall under this.
Not harming the people that live here.
No, but the U.S. government.
Yeah.
So this guy, Greg Price, says the bill to ban TikTok is absolutely terrifying.
It gives the government the ability to go after anyone they deem as a national security risk, at which point they can then access everything from their computer to their video games to their ring doorbell thing.
Oh, that's the Amazon thing.
That was already going to be a government form of spying.
So he says this is the Patriot Act for the Internet.
And then he, oh, here, and they show you.
This is the thing.
Entering into or imposing and enforcing any mitigation measure, any.
So they can do anything they want.
The government can do anything they want.
If they say this Jimmy Door's a threat, they can now do anything.
They can take your house.
They could take like a government forfeit.
They could lock you up without a trial.
Yep.
Because Barack Obama repealed habeas corpus.
So all they have to do is say you're a terrorist, and then they can lock you up without a trial indefinite.
It's called indefinite detention.
So they're imposing and enforcing any mitigation measure to address any risk arising from any covered transaction by any person or with respect to any property subject to the jurisdiction of the United States that the secretary determines.
This is mental.
So this is where we are now, right?
And desktop applications, mobile applications, gaming applications, payment applications, or web-based applications or information and communication technology products or services integral to artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Software, hardware, or any other product or service integral to the telecommunication product service, including wireless, local area networks, mobile networks, satellite.
This is what they're going to have complete access to in the dark, by the way.
You don't get to look at what they're doing.
Satellite operations, cable access points, wireless access points, core networking systems, long, short, and what?
Backpan network?
Backhaul.
I don't know what that is.
Edge computer platform.
That sounds sexual.
Quantum key distribution.
So all this crazy stuff.
E-commerce technology and service, including any electronic techniques for accomplishing business transactions.
So this is crazy.
This is anything you get to do.
The government gets to, in the dark, shut it down and lock you up for it.
Our man Greg Price comes back and says, believe it or not, it gets even worse.
If you find, if they find you in violation, they can put you in jail for 20 years, fine you a million dollars, and seize your property.
They can also deem any foreign government an adversary without informing Congress.
Wait.
And everything they do is in the dark.
You can't get a freedom of information request.
So wait.
So if you, so like, right, let's put it this way.
Let's say Iranian TV wants me to go on, right?
That would be that.
And then they could say, oh, they're hostile, and you were going to use the TV to do something hostile that's bad for the U.S. government.
So now we can access everything Jimmy Dohert has on his computer, every phone call, every text, every app on his phone, everything we get access to.
All they have to do is say Jimmy Doerr is using the internet to hurt America, U.S. government by going on television in Iran.
That's it.
And who decides this?
The secretary.
There isn't a court.
You don't get to just one person.
Go ahead.
Like, right now, I assume they're just spying on everybody whenever they want.
So is the difference here that how easily they can just put you away as opposed to.
I think so.
I think this is just making sure they can, there'll be absolutely no, the people who do this in government, who do this to you, can't be prosecuted.
And that's, I think, what this is for.
I mean, it seems way even like worse than the Patriot Act.
It's way worse, it seems.
If this was about banning TikTok, they would pass a bill that simply bans TikTok.
But the Unit Party is trying to create the same system of domestic spying they did after 9-11 for the internet, but on steroids.
And then he gives a shout out to the LP Mrs. caucus.
I think that's the Libertarian Party caucus.
The bill was introduced by Senator Mark Warner from Virginia.
Here's a list of all the people co-sponsoring it.
Basically, he runs the table of the worst members of the DC Unit Party.
So there's, oh my God, okay.
Tim Kaine, of course.
Richard Blumenthal, Democrat.
Look where else.
Hicken Looper, Democrat.
Tillis, Republican.
Graham, Lindsey Graham.
Lindsey Graham.
Well, I assumed him.
I'm sorry if he's not higher on the list.
Lindsey Graham.
You want to know why that's interesting?
Because Lindsey Graham went on television.
Where the fuck is it?
Here it is.
Lindsey Graham went on television.
What?
Watch this.
We don't like TikTok.
We don't want TikTok because the Chinese use it to spy on us and rewire our brands.
But we don't want the government spying on us either.
Did the United States Senate just say we're going to protect you from China by spying on you?
Yeah.
Let's try to get some answers out of the Senator Lindsey Graham who supports this and is here now.
You got to be kidding me, Senator.
Did you read this?
Yeah, I don't think I support the Restrict Act.
Ha!
So now he plays dumb.
That's how he gets out of this.
He plays dumb, Kurt.
This is how he gets out of it.
You don't support this because you were named as one of the supporters because this is garbage.
Is this the one where John, there's two bills out there.
One allows a review of businesses that are connected to China, give the Secretary the ability to protect our data.
Is that the Restrict Act?
We got S686 right here, March 7th.
And we got a bunch of Republicans supporting it because this thing is crazy, town.
You don't want the government looking into your private phone.
No, I don't.
And they have a hunch you're colluding with the Russians.
We remember how that turned out.
Yeah, no.
Well, the Constitution tromps a statute.
So let me come back and, you know, give you a better explanation.
Here's the problem as I see it.
You don't know about...
Yes.
The guy who's a senator.
Yeah.
The guy who supports this bill.
I don't know which one was that again.
You know, I'll come back later.
He's sincerely.
You're the thing that's going to fucking turn us into a third world Dictatorship.
You know that one?
That bill.
If he doesn't know, that's even worse than if he does know.
Is this the one with the business or is this the one that takes away all our rights forever and turns us into a dictatorship?
Yeah, I'm not sure if I'll come back.
I'm not sure if I'm on board with that one.
I don't know if I'd support that.
I don't know if I'd support that thing.
Oh, my God.
And so let's, I guess we'll let him finish.
It's the parent company of TikTok.
And my nieces like TikTok.
I don't mind them using TikTok.
I just don't want the Chinese government to seize all their data and manipulate the information America sees.
And the best way to do that is to make sure the government can spy on you in the dark, and you could never ever redress the government.
And then we can just lock you up forever, fine you millions of dollars, invade your privacy.
It's all over.
What are they going to get from his niece's information, by the way?
I know.
I don't want them selling for a while.
What are they going to get if they don't get way more from, say, Mitch McConnell and his Chinese wife who's an heiress to a Chinese plutocrat?
It's like, yeah.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
That's unbelievable.
For political purposes, China is helping drug cartels in Mexico.
Oh, China.
Chinese espionage is an all-time high against American businesses.
Oh, yeah.
So I want to push back against China, but within a constitutional framework, you're right about that.
So you made these allegations, and I'll come answer better next time.
All right, well, I mean, because on Congress.gov, you're listed.
What?
I'll come answer better next time on whether I give a shit about freedom, liberty, for Bill of Rights, anything.
How about how TikTok's not mentioned in it?
Like, why are you even talking about China?
There's nothing about China in this bill.
One of the co-sponsors of this thing.
Maybe it's like Federman when your chief of staff does all your work for you.
But, Senator, you got it.
He's like, hey, you're a co-sponsor of this.
Did he just say that?
Go back.
You're like, Chris.gov, you're listed as one of the co-sponsors of this thing.
Maybe it's like Federman when you're.
So what's happening here is he's letting him off the hook, actually.
He's like, you're listed as a co-sponsor, but maybe this is happening.
He gives them an out.
Watch.
The staff does all your work for you.
But, Senator, you got to go back and talk to these other senators about this.
This thing is nuts and it's going to get abused like it always does.
So he's acting like Lindsey Graham's on our side.
You got to go back and talk to them.
No, he's one of them.
He's one of them.
He's for this, Jesse.
He's not against it.
He's a co-sponsor.
You know what that means.
That's why you brought it up.
Why would you bring it up and then immediately lessen the importance of what you just brought up?
You got him.
You got this guy.
Dead the rights.
Maybe your assistant does all the work on a thing like this?
Right?
That's not a better answer.
That's worse.
So now you're taking away everyone's rights and you're letting the government spy on us illegally and you don't know you're doing that.
Oh, gosh, that's not all your rights on this earth.
Well, my nieces use TikTok.
So I'll give a tip of the hat to Jesse Waters for bringing it up and being on the right side of the issue on this one.
I wish he would have actually held his feet to the fire.
We didn't Jon Stewart punk out on this one.
He kind of Jon Stewarted out on this one.
But there's more to this story.
So let me go back.
I had it set up in a different way.
So here's CNN actually is against.
Watch this.
This is the guy who introduced this bill.
It's Senator Mark Warner.
And CNN actually pushes back.
Watch.
Chinese law trumps anything that the corporate management wants to do.
And I would point out one other thing that I think will hopefully make the point.
President Xi and the Chinese leadership have said they would rather get rid of TikTok in America than give up the source code, the magic formula that resides in Beijing if the divestiture part of the requirement was that source code had to be located in America.
What?
The magic said to be located.
The trade secrets of this company.
Give us your source code.
Are you joking?
Give us your trade secrets.
And anyway, here we go.
So now listen to what CNN says.
There's two points of fact here, Senator.
And I think a lot of people share your concerns, but our Brian Feng did a great fact check just on what we actually know versus the fears that are laid out.
There is no public evidence that the Chinese government has actually spied on people through TikTok.
There was that surveillance of journalists, which was very troubling.
They were fired.
Terrible that happened.
But also to date, no public evidence that Beijing has harvested TikTok's commercial data for intelligence or other purposes.
I just wonder if you have any fear about choking something off that helps a lot of creators.
Let me just finish a question.
Choking something off that means a lot to a lot of creators and small businesses and is a source of revenue for them in that way before these worst fears are realized.
I've read through your Restrict Act.
I know what it does, but just respond to that concern.
What?
So what she's saying is none of this stuff that you claim is going to happen has happened.
Shouldn't we wait for something bad to happen that you're claiming is going to happen before we do all this restrictive legislation?
Shouldn't we wait to see the real world consequence?
I mean, nothing has happened.
So that's what she's saying, right?
Am I wrong about that?
That's correct, but I read through this.
All I've got to say is, what about the TikTok creator?
By the way, that's bad.
A whole bunch of people's business shouldn't just get wiped.
I hope if they do this horrible thing, that'll cause enough anger because of that.
Didn't mention the other horrifying parts at all.
No, she has no.
Her great fact checker didn't bring it up.
That's right.
She's worried about like some TikTok creators that tell you about gender aren't going to get on.
That's your main concern.
So let's see what he says.
Sure.
Let me do it in reverse order.
First of all, there's a lot of creative stuff on TikTok.
We've seen the influencers.
They make their living off.
I like how he puts a nice little slot.
Hey, I love TikTok.
We're not doing bad stuff.
Everybody likes TikTok.
It's just going to be nice and we're going to make everyone a peanut butter sandwich and go to sleep.
This isn't horrific Orwellian spying by the government and taking every last scrap of freedom you have in cyberspace away.
I like TikTok and you like TikTok.
We're just going to make it nicer.
This guy's dumb looking face ain't helping either.
This.
And frankly, there are other American sites, YouTube and others.
My understanding, at least, reimburse at a higher level.
I absolutely believe in the market.
If TikTok were somehow determined.
So he's saying, I believe in the market.
So what he's saying is, meaning if the government steps in and takes away a product, the market will make another product.
So you don't believe in the market because the government is taking Away a product.
If you believed in the market, you'd let the market take care of the market.
They've already proved they don't care about the market over and over again with all the other things that they did.
They don't care.
Oh, my God.
This is about the CIA and the FBI and the NSA and the military industrial complex wanting to have complete access to a surveillance state.
That's what this is.
This is 100% totalitarian surveillance state.
And he gives a little smile and says how much he likes it.
That's not a big deal.
I genuinely wonder, like, just how much of empty shell puppets these guys are.
did they not read anything in the in the bill themselves honestly and they just it was Up away tomorrow.
And whether it's an American company, a French company, an Indian company, there will be a replacement site where people can still be creative and earn that kind of living.
I believe the market will provide that.
Number one.
After the government screws up the market.
On the question of no evidence, respectfully, we see press report after press report.
And, you know, TikTok says, oh, I'm sorry, Chinese engineers got it.
Oh, we see no evidence.
We look at the news reports after news reports that are bought by the military industrial complex that creates these crazy news reports that say what we want them to say.
It said that they have aluminum tubes on the front page of the New York Times.
We have to invade Iraq.
The front page of the New York Times said aluminum tubes.
We got to invade Iraq.
You.
This time, Chinese engineers got this another time.
You've got, frankly, individuals who are whistleblowing.
Frankly, when he says, you know, whenever a politician says frankly, you know, they're lying.
And that's the third time he said frankly in this short little clip.
He said frankly three times.
I'm done listening to this guy.
Let's move on.
The bill gives the federal government the power to access and monitor any activity from suspected devices, virtual or otherwise, without telling anyone.
This essentially gives them the power to spy on you without your knowledge or consent, monitoring you at all times.
This includes routers, modems, online video games, streaming apps, social media, ring cameras, and other home camera systems, smart thermostats, literally anything that makes use of the internet.
The method by which this will be done is by the president appointing a secretary of communication who forms their own independent group without any votes or democratic selection.
And that group can then make decisions behind closed doors without disclosing anything whatsoever.
Decisions banning whatever they deem to be inappropriate or threatening content or otherwise deemed a threat to national security at any time without disclosure or voter input.
And remember, accessing said content would be a crime under this bill.
This is law enforcement in the dark.
This is Gestapo shit.
If this is KGB shit, if this passes, they can go through your text messages, your emails, your Snapchat, your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and private messages on any other social media, anything that uses the internet, and they can censor it and they can prosecute anyone who disobeys these restrictions.
In summation, this bill effectively bans anything at all the government deems inappropriate for whatever reason, very fast, without warning and without voter input, and further allows the government to spy on you directly through anything that makes use of the internet 24-7.
Oh my God.
Everyone should be thoroughly invested in shooting this bill down as it could result in the breaking up of mass communications methods, the targeted suppression of minority groups, the immediate quashing of dissent in any form, wherever it may be, and a true totalitarian state.
So this is what I was telling people that they always say, oh, censorship on Twitter and Facebook is there to protect minority groups.
It is not, you fucking chump.
I think they meant the power, the power elite, the tiniest minority.
Yeah, the tiniest minority.
It's always going to be used to suppress and silence minority groups, black and brown people, anybody who's not in the establishment.
That's who they're going to censor because those are the people who need to speak up against the establishment the most.
This isn't to say...
So if you want more censorship, you're against minority communities.
That's the irony.
And of course, the Democratic Party is for censorship because they're against minority communities.
Barack Obama was president for eight years, did fucking zilch for black and brown communities.
Nothing.
Their lives got worse.
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Hi, everybody.
We have a special guest with us today.
He is host of his YouTube show, Economic Update, Democracy at Work.
And he's the author of many books, including his most recent, The System is the Sickness When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself.
Please welcome to the show, Professor Richard Wolf.
Good to see you.
Good to be here, Jimmy.
Good to see you.
Thanks for coming back to the show.
Now, I always wish I had you on speed dial because I always have questions for you.
So I had this gentleman on, David Sachs, and we were talking about the banks, you know, the SVP crash and stuff like that.
And so he was saying that he wanted them to bail out the banks, meaning he wanted them to cover the depositors, not the investors, and fire all the people running it.
But he wanted to save the depositors.
Now, what's your take on that whole debacle, by the way?
And do you think that was the right course?
Well, I think the place to start is the weird way we handle money.
Everybody knows that money makes the world go round.
That's why we have phrases like that.
We need it.
We need it for our business every day.
We need to be able to borrow it.
We need to be able to have confidence in it.
Everybody understands that money is a social institution that we all rely on in more ways than we can count.
Okay, If it's a social need for all of us, why in the world would anyone in their right mind create institutions called banks that are in the business of handing out money, managing money, collecting deposits, making loans, when the goal of these institutions is the private profit for their shareholders and the private profit for the people who set them up?
What you're doing is creating social dependency on people who are not there to make this system work.
They're there to make money and they take risks to do that.
And if they take those risks and they don't work out, like the Silicon Valley Bank, well, then we get what American history has every few years: a bank collapse.
In the 19th century, we used to call them bank panics.
That was a better word because it gave you the truth of what was going on here.
After each of them, we pass some regulatory laws.
Then, in a funny way, they kind of fade away.
Banks learn how to get around them.
If they need to, they buy the politicians to amend them or to repeal them.
And then we get back to square one, and the private banks go in there to make their money.
And five to six to seven years later, boom, the system goes again.
I mean, you kind of have to scratch your head and say, after this happens over and over again, are you really going to go back to the way things were?
And the answer is yes, because that's what's been done every other time.
And look, if the private banks making money call the shots, then every one of these is a wonderful example.
You call the government in, it cleans up the mess you left behind and sets everything up for this game to be played again.
And so, what's the solution?
I thought the solution would be like they have, I think, in North Dakota, they have state banks.
That's right.
So, go ahead, tell people what that is.
Yeah, it's a wonderful example.
So, I could give you examples from a lot of other countries that have handled this in other ways, but I don't have to.
I have a nice state that very few Americans know much about, North Dakota, which over 100 years ago, I believe it was 1916 or around then, set up its own bank.
It didn't want the private banks to be doing this game all the time.
So, they set up a public bank.
It was designed to serve the people of North Dakota.
It's largely a rural state, so a lot of the lending was for farmers and the rural people in agriculture.
But there were also industries, and they were also the usual.
And the way it was set up was serve the people, serve the people in this area called North Dakota.
And if you make any money, here comes the good part: if you're profitable, that profit goes into the budget of the state of North Dakota, which means it has to raise fewer taxes on the people and businesses of North Dakota because the bank servicing those same businesses and people made a profit, but that's not going to go into some private hustler's pocket.
It's going to serve the people of North Dakota.
And over the last hundred years, all of the private banks around the whole United States have waged one campaign after another to stop this because it's a dangerous example.
And I'm here to tell you, even conservative Republicans don't touch that.
The Democrats don't.
The Republicans don't.
It's like political third rail on the railroad system.
Don't go near there.
Anyone who attacked or tried to get the end of that system has been pushed aside by the people of North Dakota, and it's as successful today as it was 100 years ago and never has the kinds of problems that we are regularly experiencing with our private banking system.
And so is that the only state that has a state bank?
Is North Dakota?
Yes.
Yes, it's the only state.
Yeah, no, no, it's unbelievable.
And I won't embarrass anybody by asking, you know, not that we could, but I'm not going to ask your audience, yo, raise your hand if you knew that this was going on.
Not only is it the only state, but there is really something, if not a conspiracy, well, then there's a comfortable decision by large numbers of our mass media not to make a big deal out of this, not to, for example, take advantage of this moment with the collapse of Silicon, collapse of Signature Bank, collapse of the Credit Suisse in Switzerland, to tell us all, gee, there is already another way to go.
It's been in this country for over a century.
It's a roaring success, and we are therefore going to tell you nothing about it.
So without doing that, so in the short term, when SVB Bank and those other banks started failing, if you were the head of the person in charge, what would you have done?
You would have covered the depositors or no?
Yes, I would have covered the depositors because otherwise you set up a cascading catastrophe that gets bigger literally by the hour.
By the way, footnote, we're not out of the woods yet either.
Far from it.
But for the moment, you can at least take the initial step of not penalizing the people who have put their life savings, their business capital, whatever else it is into these banks who assumed that there is this thing which we call in the economics of banking fiduciary duty.
In other words, if you've got other people's money, you're supposed to be super careful and cautious because you've been entrusted.
You know, it's one thing to risk your own, but you're not supposed to take undue risks.
And there's a presumption.
What was going on here was that an awful lot of people, not just the bankers themselves, but the supervisory apparatus that's supposed to regulate what we know is a constantly churning pit of either corruption or incompetence.
Those people were blind too at the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco.
So the whole system, the private bank and the regulatory apparatus, really messed up.
And look, people are saying these are small banks.
They weren't.
The Silicon Valley Bank is either the 15th or 16th largest bank in the United States.
Signature was another one like that.
These are not small banks.
And already many other banks are shaking because of the fear of what their depositors may do if they get frightened about the security of what they have.
And one more thing, Jimmy.
Look at this.
This is another bailout.
They're careful not to call it that, but we're bailing out another failed private enterprise using the government, its guarantees, its money, its resources, its time, its energy.
Wow.
And we're not getting much for it since we're letting these banks continue.
We're letting other banks buy them with no guarantee that the banks doing the buying are not going to do the same kind of behavior that they've all been doing for so long, anyway.
It's an amazing thing to watch.
Well, it's because this is what I try to tell people: they don't realize that, you know, our government, they think our government is regular corrupt.
Like Joe Biden got his kid a no show job at an energy board in Ukraine, or Donald Trump set up his kid with a business deal in Saudi Arabia.
But what they don't realize is that the whole thing, every law that gets written, the whole Defense Department budget is nothing but corruption.
What do you think $800 billion a year is going for for a country we have no enemies threatening us?
We're surrounded by waters in Canada and Mexico.
We have nobody threatened.
We spend a trillion dollars.
We have a thousand military bases.
That's all corruption.
Banking, the reason why banks keep failing every couple of years is because they own the politicians who write the regulations.
And when the banks fail, the government comes in and fixes them and nobody goes to jail.
That's because we live in 100% corrupt government.
And why can't they send $100 billion to another failing bank or to Ukraine to another proxy or at the snap of a finger before they take half that money and fix homelessness in their own country?
It's because there's no corruption gracing the wheels of fixing homelessness.
That's why.
You can't make as much money in it.
That's right.
That's right.
I mean, if we could bomb the homeless, there's always money for that.
So now, but people have, you have no other choice.
So the reason I-Jimmy, if I could just add one thing, because it just amplifies your point.
We're supposed to be a country that is worried about a big other problem they haven't solved called inflation.
Prices are going up.
Everybody knows it.
The supermarket, the gas station, wherever you turn, we are suffering because wages are not going up as fast as prices, and therefore our standard of living is being squeezed.
Okay, what's the worst thing you can do if there's already rising prices?
Answer.
Pour money into the system, new, fresh money.
It's like pouring kerosene on a fire that you want to go out.
That's not a good method.
So look what happens here.
The people pull their deposits out of those failing banks.
They still have that money.
They're going to put it in another bank.
That money is there.
But now the government comes in and says, we'll cover.
Don't you worry, all you people.
We're basically going to give these banks a ton of new money at the Federal Reserve to use to cover all.
That's more money.
You're pumping more money.
The same government that wants to curtail inflation is boosting the inflation by its method of trying to solve the banking problem.
What you begin to see is we are so far down the path of economic decline that we're like a very old sick person.
We have too many diseases, and the attempt to solve one clashes with the medicine for the other one.
At a certain point, the doctors say, hey, we're beyond the ability to save this patient.
Your frustration with what you just said, that's a rational response to a network of problems that are now feeding on each other.
We can't solve one without worsening it.
If you hear the excuse of the bankers, it was the interest rates going up that had a part to do with their collapse.
Yeah, but we raised interest rates to try to deal with the inflation.
Now we got to deal with the banks in a way that worsens the inflation.
It's becoming literally ridiculous.
So in order to curtail inflation, which was brought on in large part by them dumping trillions of dollars into the economy, not into the workers' pockets, but into people who put that money into Wall Street and what have you.
So that causes inflation.
So now to curtail inflation, they rise interest rates.
Interest rates now make those banks fail because the banks put all their money into bonds that are low interest rates long term.
Right.
And so they go down in value when they raise the interest rates.
So those go down in value.
So now they can't, when Pumidi comes to withdraw their money, they have to cash in those bonds to pay that money.
And those bonds are now worthless because of the interest rates being so high.
So now, so they're trying to curb inflation.
They raise interest rates, make the banks fail.
So in order to fix the banks, they throw money at the banks, which causes more inflation.
Right.
It's really, you kind of throw up your hands that otherwise intelligent people who understand these things.
You know, it's the first, I've taught these courses.
The first semester of a banking course, you learn about the interest rate goes up and the value of the bond goes down.
That's not rocket science.
That's not an advanced understanding.
Anybody in a bank who runs a bank knows it.
They're the institutions that buy those long-term bonds, the major ones, on and on.
There's no excuse for any of this.
By the way, if I have a moment, let me do two things that you may find humorous.
The first one is, well, I got my PhD in economics to be a professor at Yale University years ago.
And in my class with me, at the same time that I got my PhD at Yale University, was a young woman who went and had the same courses, the same lectures, everything as I did.
Her name was Janet Yellow.
Yellen.
That's right.
So I can assure you she knows about rising interest rates and falling bonds.
She knows everything that I know because we were taught literally the same thing by the same professor at the same time.
So I'm looking at a system that is so out of control that a perfectly well-educated economist like herself is at a loss of kind of what to do.
And then it gets even weirder because here's what we learned.
When you have an inflation, there are multiple different ways that societies have used to try to cope with inflation.
Raising interest rates has never been the only one.
It has never been the one that you just do.
That's crazy.
So I'm watching this woman who knows Better up there talking like Mr. Powell does as if this were the only thing to do.
Let me give you an example.
August 15th, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon gets on the radio and television, and here's what he says to the American people.
We have a bad inflation, which we did at that time.
And it has to be stopped, which it did at that time.
And I'm going to do what has to be done, which he did at that time.
Here's what he said.
If anyone, as of one, my stop speaking now, if any business raises its price of anything it sells, we will come for you.
We will arrest you and you're going to jail.
Any union or organization of workers that tries to push up wages, we will do the same.
This thing was called a wage price freeze.
It didn't happen in another country.
It happened in the U.S. when a conservative Republican president did this.
Okay.
So anyone who says raising interest rates is what you have to do, that's not true.
And both Mr. Powell and Janet Yellen know that because they learned it the same way I did.
And there are other policies.
They all have strengths and weaknesses.
I'm not arguing do A or don't do B, but to act the way this country does, as if raising interest rates is the only thing we can do, that is a lie.
That is not true.
And that's a disservice to the American people because we don't have any discussion or debate about which of these policies we want to use.
Had we not raised interest rates, for example, we would not have plunged these banks into this kind of crisis.
That'd be an interesting aspect of making a decision about what policy to use.
And if we really care about the inequality of income, what we could have done is freeze the prices, allow the wages to go up a little bit, and that would have done a good bit to correct the inequality that has gotten so much worse in recent decades.
Kurt, go ahead.
Was the goal to ruin those banks?
I know it sounds suspicious.
Like it sounds conspiratorial, but is that the idea we want to kill those banks?
So, I mean, that's an obvious question, right?
So if Janet Yellen knows this, that raising those interest rates are going to cause some banks to fail, and yet they do it anyways.
What could possibly be the thinking there?
I hate to say it because I don't mean to frighten people.
But I got to be honest with you.
Otherwise, you're not going to invite me back here.
I think they're desperate.
I don't think they take the time.
I don't think they take the space.
This inflation, let me remind you.
When the inflation began, which was already late 2021, early 2022, the Federal Reserve officially told us not to worry.
It's not going to be severe.
It isn't going to last.
It's nothing.
They kept that story up until it was so obviously wrong that they had to do something.
And now they had waited and they did what they felt they could do right there on the spot.
They probably don't want the political storm.
Business doesn't want to be told you can't raise your prices.
They yelled and screamed at Nixon when he did it, but they behaved.
The inflation came down.
It's not a policy that doesn't have a lot to say for it.
But I don't think they took, they wanted the time.
They didn't want to debate.
They wanted to get in there and stop what had become a serious political and economic problem that they had waited too long to deal with.
Okay.
It doesn't look good.
I never know where to put your savings.
Where are you supposed to put your money?
I have no idea.
I got to live in North Dakota.
I got to live in North Dakota.
Hey, this is Jimmy.
Who's this?
You're never going to believe it, baby.
It's Vince Vaughn.
Yeah, Vince, good to hear from you.
I would imagine it would be.
Hey, let me ask you, have you seen any good movies lately?
No, I'm afraid not.
That's because there are none.
That's right, everybody.
It's time for another edition of Vince Vaughn's Tinsel Town Show opinion.
We need to get a better name for this segment.
How about you shut your face and let me name my own thing?
Thank you.
First up, Barbie.
That's right.
The toy for little girls and your younger brothers who grew up to be gay is now a movie for adults.
A Barbie movie?
That's right, Jimmy.
Our self-infantilizing society that celebrates fragility as a virtue now has its very own citizen cane.
No.
A Barbie movie.
No.
The trailer was just released yesterday, and our nation of weaklings and crybabies are jumping for joy.
We horns put men on the moon and are reveling in the prospect of watching a full-length feature film based on a girl's doll.
It's amazing.
I watched the trailer myself, and I admit there is one problem.
What's that?
It looks fucking awesome.
I cannot wait to see this fucking thing.
It's super fun, Jimmy.
Director Greta Gerwig certainly knew what she was doing and striking the right self-aware tone.
So I'll be throwing a binky in my mouth along with all the internet perverts and heading to Regal Aid on opening night.
Interesting.
Also interesting how hot Margo Robbie and Dua Lipa look in this movie?
Like the whole thing is a parade of tens.
I'm not even kidding.
I know they're Barbie dolls, so they have no genitals, but honestly, that's something I'd be willing to try and work around.
Work around.
That's very open-minded.
It's very open-minded of you, Vince.
Thank you, Jimmy Door.
And in case you were worried about Barbie being the only children's theme movie marketed to adults, you also had the Super Mario Brothers movie, the Dungeons and Dragons movie, and get this the HBO Harry Potter reboot.
Wait, the what?
That's right.
Jimmy, do you remember the Harry Potter movies from not that fucking long ago?
Well, author J.K. Rowling has decided it's time to start all over again from the beginning in mini-series form.
You're kidding.
Jimmy, have I ever called in and joked around with you?
No.
HBO is set to produce a new Harry Potter series based on the books and produced by J.K. Rowling herself.
It's all part of HBO's new business strategy of being boycotted by trans people.
I see.
Personally, I can't wait to hear those classic Harry Potter lines, but with a fresh J.K. Rowling spit on them.
You're a wizard, Harry.
Also, a boy.
You're a boy.
You will always be male.
That is immutable.
You cannot change it.
You may feel feminine in some ways.
That's totally fine, but you are a male.
But also a wizard, Harry.
Oh, my God.
I can't wait.
Me neither.
And speaking of things I never thought I'd see or say the Gwyneth Paltrow ski assault trial accomplished something truly remarkable.
It put me on Gwyneth Paltrow's side in something.
Really?
Yes, really.
Normally, Gwyneth Paltrow would be someone that I would sentence to death for simply talking.
But I had to have her back here.
Her lifestyle brand has deluded thousands of women into questionable, if not harmful, new age pseudo-health practices.
But I was on team Gwynney for this trial, baby.
You thought she was innocent?
Yes, but even if she wasn't, who cares?
This man, this adult man, was claiming damages because Gwyneth Paltrow bumped into her on a ski slope years ago.
Claims that that fucked him up.
Are you kidding me?
Right.
She weighs 15 pounds.
Even if she had been fired out of a circus cannon in my head, I'd feel like a pussy just for saying ow.
This is like suing someone for severe bodily distress because they tossed a robe at you.
Does this man have no dignity?
And she won?
Hell yeah, my girl wife.
She showed up in her fuck you glasses and sat there and didn't take it seriously.
And she won the case.
She whispered, I wish you all the best to this loser on the way out.
And I'll be damned if GP isn't on my all-stars list all of a sudden forever.
Well, that's really nice to hear.
Isn't it?
Isn't it?
And full disclosure, I hooked up with her back in 1997 when both of our stars were on the rise, and honestly, it was not great.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah, she didn't know what she was doing.
She seemed confused.
She seemed like she thought someone else was supposed to do everything for her.
It was a mess.
You know what I'm talking about?
You know what I mean?
But whatever.
You know what?
Redeemed.
She's a cool broad again.
Anyway, I gotta go.
But I will be calling again with the ins and outs of tinsel town, celebrity gossip, women I've banged in the past, and horrible shitty movies and TV shows that are coming soon.
Just for you, Jimmy D. This has been Double V. Hey, become a premium member.
Go to JimmyDoorComedy.com.
Sign up.
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Oh, All the voices performed today are by the one and only the inimitable Mike McRae.
He can be found at MikeMcRae.com.
That's it for this week.
You be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me.
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