The Most Corrupt Political Scandals Nobody Talks About | Zach Foust

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If I'm remembering that one correctly. We got it. The Telecommunications Act of 1995 was a sweeping legislative effort that set the stage for modern telecommunications. While introduced and heavily debated throughout 1995, it ultimately passed and was signed into law in 1996. The core goals of the bill, the primary objective of the legislation, was to foster competition and reduce government regulation. Key elements included market integration, allowing long-distance carriers like AT&T, local phone companies, and cable operators to compete in each other's markets. De-regulation, removing federal controls on cable TV pricing. To my understanding, the reason that this was controversial is because AT&T figured out if they could break themselves into three different companies, but still manage those three companies, that they'll bypass the law. It's my understanding of it. Yeah, if you're looking, September 21st, 1995, AT&T announced it would voluntarily break itself into three independent companies, communications slash wireless, equipment manufacturing, and computers. They said we. Voluntarily. Yeah. We investigated ourselves, and here's what we're going to do. Hey, Mena, can you tell me how many senators that voted for this bill were donated to by AT&T? Like, holy shit, bro. Yeah, actually, you know what? Let's see. What's AT&T? How many senators voted for this bill? A big pre-Citizens United donator. Were accepted campaign contributions. Accepted campaign contributions at the time. From AT&T. All right, let's test Google AI how fast you are. It's thinking. See how it can. It's searching. I don't even know. Did we track lobbying in the 90s? All right, an exact comprehensive headcount linking every individual senator's vote, specifically the AT&T campaign contribution, is not available in a single public data. How convenient. How can. It's not available in a single public data repository. However, extensive analysis by campaign finance watchdogs from that era provides deep confidence. It provides deep context on how the widespread the funding was. Ubiquitous industry support. During the 1996 election cycle, the telecommunications industry as a whole contributed more than $4.1 million to federal campaigns. Open secrets records indicate that AT&T was one of the largest corporate spenders of the era. Nailed it. Watchdog groups like FAIR highlighted that during a crucial six-month negotiation window in late 1995, the telecom industry gave $640,000 specifically to the 45 lawmakers. The total number of lawmakers serving on the joint conference committee tasked with hammering on the bill's final text. Kind of like Howard Lutnick giving $5 million to the GOP fucking super PAC right before testifying that he lied like a dog. And got to testify behind closed doors, too. Well, this was the first one. That was the first one. That was in front of closed doors. But then he just went about his job. But he continues to serve the American people out of the goodness of his heart today. I was so mad to see him at the NBA finals game. You know what? I told people. I'm like, first of all, don't give these people away. What they want. Don't don't cut. Don't invade his space. Don't touch him physically. Don't do anything that could involve law enforcement coming in there. Yeah. But practice your First Amendment right. And instead of yelling at fucking Victor Wembin Yama, yell at him. That was the part that he's just sitting there next to. I think it was DJ Khaled texting the whole time. You don't have this guy. Is the person that makes me double double think when it comes to like we should not promote violence. But I'll I'll air with what you're saying. Yeah, for YouTube purposes, it's just it's concerning to me that he is so like my dad. We play this game because he gets the boomer algorithm. And so he'll send me shit he's seeing. And he sent me this Howard Lutnick post the other day. Let me see if I can even pull it up. I got to I got to talk to my dad, too. I think he's getting that algorithm as well. Yeah, he's in the sauce. And he's just post about Howard Lutnick and all the money he raised for the 9-11 victims. And all the comments are just like, wow, what an incredible man. I remember when he did this. Wow. So he made it all the way to the White House. Just thousands and thousands of comments. And then you see him at the NBA finals sitting next to no security front and center live right there. This is a man who's committed egregious crimes against the country. And he doesn't even need a bodyguard. That's a little weak hair. Yeah. New York City is ready to light itself on fire over a basketball win, which I'm a huge. Fan of basketball. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of all sports. Yeah, but we're much more willing to go ape shit over a fancy trophy for a team. You're not getting paid by, you know, it's funny, man. This is why I crashed out on him so hard when all this stuff broke. He was a guy and I don't think I ever did this publicly, but I can I can tell you like my many phone calls over the years with my buddy, Danny Jones. He's got a great show in Florida and some other people when Howard Lutnick would come up over the years. And in like a suspicious way, like, ah, this guy kind of smells, I would defend him because I had known I had known of him to be somewhat of a sounds crazy to say this now, but somewhat of like a legend in the sense that, yeah, he's definitely like kind of an elitist and a billionaire and all that. But this was a guy who lost 646 people in one day, including his brother, Gary, which is a very famous story. His brother really did die in there, which is obviously horrible. You know, had built himself up. He lost both his parents, I think, when he was 18, had to basically like at that point take care of his brother, Gary. He got some help to be able to go to Haverford College and like actually pay for himself to go through. So he was like orphaned at at the first stage of legalization when his siblings were not and had built this whole career. And then everything comes down in a day and somehow he had saved this company. And so that just general story was always like, wow, guy's kind of a legend. And I think that's the thing that's really interesting about this story. Without knowing all the details, some of the things we know now. So that's on me. But when I saw those emails in January, on January 30th, when when those came out, that took that famous clip from Pod Horse one from Pod Force one last summer where he knew this was like a thing that the files might be coming out. And he went out of his way to concoct this amazing story about how disgusting this individual like step by step, bar by bar. Like a iambic pentameter almost. And then even like, like, you know, when people are lying and they're so scared about lying that they end up saying the very things that they didn't have to lie about that are the actual things they did. Then he goes, so I didn't associate with this guy for business, philanthropy or personally. And you go through the emails and you find example after example of business. Yep. You find example, example after philanthropy. You find example and example of. And associate with the personally drinks with Howard Lutnick in the years. Yeah, we got that email in the so-called story. And when we first were reacting to and going through the early files and like that came up, I just fucking lost it because I'm like, you know, fuck. It made me feel like an idiot. And that's fair. You felt tricked. I was, of course. But like, it's like, fuck these people. How did the the the audacity and then he goes in front of that hearing and he doesn't have the decency to resign to say nothing of the fact Trump. Doesn't fucking fire him. He still stands next to him for everything. Since when is Donald Trump loyal to anyone that gives him even like a modicum of bad press? Fucking Scaramucci got ten days. You know what I mean? And he's a billionaire, too, by the way. It's like you look at that and go, Hmm, that's interesting. You know what? Now, what am I looking at here? Oh, just the comment section sentiment. No, I just I just accidentally got rid of it. But I know what you're talking about. It's like when you see. That and you're supposed to see someone that at least had something you can be like, well, that's kind of cool. Saved his company, whatever, when they all died one day. And then it's like, well, that wasn't exactly what we thought it was either. It just it makes you very, very more cynical than I was at the top end of the system. And it drives home, by the way, a theme you've been hitting all day that I couldn't agree with you more about, which is that they've been throwing this left right divided us since the beginning of fucking time. And especially at this stage in the quote unquote. Empire. This is not a left right thing. This is up down. And it never had been like just starting at that 1910 meeting of Jekyll Island. That came from a 1907 bank panic where JP Morgan bailed out our entire country. Can you explain what happened there? Yeah, that we we had a famine. There was a famine. This was a big issue all throughout the 1800s famines. We had a big locust problem at one point. Locust problem. Locust. I think it was like the 1870s was like a big locust problem. We were an agricultural economy. No, I don't think that ain't glyphosate for me. You know, my brother does a really good RFK that's up there with it. That's up there with it. They, uh, they were an agricultural economy and we're also a state bank economy because we did not have a federal bank. We now have a central bank. So the rule was if like you operate in New Jersey, you bank in New Jersey, you operate with a bank out of New Jersey. There was no crossing state lines. And so you can't cross state lines. You just got to pack the money and cash in a suit in a suitcase. So imagine when all of Idaho making up a state, I don't know which state actually was at the heart of it. You know, all the state of Idaho gets hit by a famine and locusts. What happens to all these loans, all this credit that's been put out by these farmers in an agriculture economy? They don't pay them, right? It's an off crop. And so we had these crises that would happen a lot since, uh, once the civil war would close out. It's, it seems like when the civil war closed out, we were going through a lot of, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of economic, like, how do we, how do we shake through this? And then it was 1896 that we go through one of our largest crises he's on record. There's articles you can find at the time saying we might go insolvent. We might go bankrupt as a country and JP Morgan steps up there. And then again, 10 years later, 1907 steps up again. So you're watching private bailouts of our entire country. Our entire country is hanging by its balls and this one dude can save it. This was funded basically the entirety of world war one as he was leaving life and leaving it to his son, Jack. This is, this is a financial Titan that doesn't get talked about enough. I know I'll talk about the Rothschilds day and night Rockefellers. JP does not get talked about enough. One of, if not the most common DMS I get on Instagram are many of you asking me what my favorite books are. Well, today's your lucky day because if you use the link in my description below to join my newsletter, I'm going to give you my top 10 book recommendations right now. Also, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make money producing content from you can do so via the discord link in my description below. And finally, you can join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes via the Patreon link in my description below. As always, please take one second to hit that subscribe button. If you haven't already, I really appreciate that. Also the like buttons, a big help. And you can join my newsletter via the link in the description below. And you walked from 1913, then you get into FDR's new deal. Then you get to the Bretton woods agreement in 1944. We try to globalize the dollar a couple of decades past. What happened with the globalizing the dollar in 44 Bretton woods agreement was basically we saw world war two was waning the economic situation of Europe. Not good. They were in heavy debt infrastructure blown to pieces in a lot of areas. And so we had to restructure the world economy. America stepped in and said, we're going to be the world reserve currency. I believe there was like 120 something diplomats from across the country there stepped in and said, we're going to tie our dollar to gold. And that's going to allow you all to hold dollars and build your infrastructure with the backing, knowing that if anything were to hit the fan, you can turn in what I believe was $35 and you would get an ounce of gold. So from there, that agreement allowed for us to move forward as a, as a world post-world war two, where we globalized ourselves financially amongst the entire world. This was when we really became the captain of the planet. And we lied about how much gold we had. We started spending money on wars like the Vietnam war. We'd go through what's famously under Lyndon B. Johnson, I believe was called the guns and butter, uh, economic crisis where we're funding a lot of social issues and war. We couldn't do both, but we did. You got to do both. You got to have a little war. You have to live a little war. You got to bomb somebody. Yes. The issue that came was France and other countries started sniffing that we didn't have as much gold as maybe we said we were to the point France actually sent a battleship to one of the harbors in New York, demanding their gold. What year? It's a real story. Uh, I think it was either, I think it was 1971. I think it was the same year. I don't have a good French accent. Otherwise I'd say something. Sacre bleu. Yeah. A hundred percent. Give us your good. We need all 35 pounds. That's what Dave's here for. What in the ratatouille was that? No, no, he's, he's good, bro. That was great. He didn't even speak a word of French when we were in Paris, but he did the accent and those motherfuckers thought he was speaking French. Right. Like it was like one of those where he's like speaking in rap. Or if you were even to just speak. English in that accent, I would think that you originally speak French. Excuse me. Can I get a pack of cigarettes in there? Baguette, please. Merci. Yeah. Merci. That's right. What do we got thief? Yeah. France made its famous gold demands. Oh, this was, this was like the height of the nuclear scare for gold between 63 and 65. President Charles de Gaulle actively began cashing in us dollars for physical gold to undermine us financial dominance, launching a secret operation to repatriate French reserves from the federal reserve in New York. All right, hold on a minute. Let's yeah, that's something completely different. Cause this isn't even about the battleship. Okay. But can we find the battleship while I'm reading this thief? Perfect. So the 1960s demand and repatriation in 63 de Gaulle demanded all foreign held French gold to be returned to Paris to protect its leverage between 63 and 66. France exchanges dollar reserve for physical gold and transported hundreds of tons for the New York fed back to France using air floor air France plant. Imagine someone just shoots down there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine someone just shoots down those planes. It's all gone. France further aggressively redeemed dollars for gold leading up to the 1971 correct collapse of the Bretton woods system. In 1971, France sent a warship to New York to aggressively exchange us dollars for gold from the federal reserve. This dramatic move rooted in a broader push by president Charles de Gaulle to undermine the us dollars global supremacy ultimately forced president Richard Nixon, to abandon the gold standard. Wait a minute. And it was a French warship in the harbors of Manhattan that officially made Nixon go, you know what? Fuck it. What month was that into? Because I think the official decision was actually made August, 1971, France sent a warship to New York Harbor. So this is why they officially made the announcement. They started looking into it. August 15th, 1971, Nixon closed the gold window in April. Do you know? Okay. So this is another one. You know, Blackstone, right? Oh yeah. Okay. It's like, it's like you've heard of McDonald's, right? So Blackstone birthed BlackRock. Blackstone originally was in, I believe, found in the eighties by Schwarzman and Peter G. Peterson. And then BlackRock came out. Yes. BlackRock. Yes. There's a funded BlackRock. I think it was early nineties for Larry Fink to go 50, 50. Yes, that is exactly right. 88 co-founder Steven Schwarzman, Peter. Yeah. To Larry Fink. And then they would go public in the early nineties. So Peter G. Peterson, founder of Blackstone was on basically hiatus from his, yeah, let's get over his CEO. He was, uh, I think a CEO in the film industry doing some shit like in the sixties. And then obviously in the eighties, nineties Blackstone, and there was another company. But I, there was this gap in the early seventies, late sixties. I was like, what was this guy doing? It was like a two year gap. Early seventies, late sixties. Yeah. He was in the white house. He was, and you can actually find this on Peter G. Peterson's wiki, I think. Was he planting them tapes? He was a part of the economics team that advised Richard Nixon around global trade. And it was actually Peter G. Peterson's report that he gave him in April that convinced him that we needed to get off the gold standard. So the founder of all of the, all of the bullshit we know as private equity today was the main reason that the inflation breaks were taken off of this economy, which I find to be interesting. And for people out there, what is the, what makes that so interesting that it was able to, what about that was able to birth private equities power, so to speak, uh, the weakness of the dollar. When we remember that, when we remember because there'll be a lot of speculation around this, Oh, well, we couldn't be on the gold standard. We were expanding too fast in the amount of gold. FDR did the buyback FDR did the buyback thing. JFK wanted us to have a gold silver back dollar. You can go into the logistics of it. We couldn't do it today. There's not enough gold on the planet. Um, can we do it in other ways with Bitcoin silver? Sure. But the, the reason this was such a big deal is at that point, we could not create more dollars unless we got more gold. When you remove the backing of the gold from the dollar, you're now saying the certificate I have given you, which at one point was, if you had 35 of these certificates, these dollars, if you had 35 of these, I could give you an ounce of gold, which meant the dollar had a real true back value. When you remove that backing, you're creating a currency known as a Fiat currency, which puts it in the same category as monopoly money. It only holds value when we agree to it. It only holds value when we're all playing by the rules of the game. Like when I land on boardwalk and you have a hotel there, I don't give a shit if I'm not playing the game and I'm a bystander, but if I'm playing the game and I'm about to run out of money and assets, it matters a shit ton to me. It's the same with the dollar. As long as, as long as we all accept it, that's the value. And when we remove the gold, now it's all up to government trust for the value of the dollar, the world reserve currency. And we've seen ourselves, and this is the biggest issue because that in and of itself isn't the economic issue. The economic issue comes with, we now have undisciplined unfettered government spending that anytime we hit a deficit and we say, we can just print. And we have slowly but surely been inflating not just America, the entire world's economy, because 60 percent of the world's reserves are held in the dollar. We are ripping the entire world a new one financially every time we print money. And we couldn't have done it the way that we're doing it now if we had a gold backing. Was that a reason why Peter G. Peterson presented that? Because he said, I'm going to make a private equity company and I'm going to make a bunch of money off this. Probably not. Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. We don't just alert. We help stop crime before it starts. 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Do they take full advantage of the fact that we have an ever-inflating debt-based economy that favors macro corporations over people? Yes. It's like if I leave out fruit in the air, mold forms. Peas just mold that found an opportunity on something like this. That tracks. That would make sense. I mean, it's also, you know, this is before the internet era that this happens, but it's in the rapid post-World War II expansion of technology in an interconnected world. And therefore, as the long-term would turn out and continues to turn out even worse every single day, more and more of a winner-take-all society. Right. You know, socialism, I don't know. I don't like it as a system. It doesn't work. It's just been proven again and again. And I've always said capitalism is the best system, but I've always said it has its flaws. And we are seeing its flaws magnified more than ever right now because, you know, we're living in a world where, you know, the 50% of Americans don't have $500 in emergency funding, but we just printed a trillionaire. Now, if I say Elon Musk, therefore, is not allowed to be a trillionaire, that means legislation has to come in from fucking people in the government. That says he's not allowed to be a trillionaire. And they set the bar at 500 billion or whatever number. And then later they get pissed off. And now they set the bar at 100 billion and all the way down. And suddenly it creates a worse problem on the other side. That said, it doesn't change the fact that the semantics and symbolism of being able to have people who have that much wealth at a time where so much of the world doesn't and is struggling and the basic evolutionary needs of continuing the fucking human race to where people can't even afford to have kids anymore. It's a financial decision is now being affected. It's like maybe something's a little off-kilter. You know, our capitalist system changed in 2008. It to your point, I think capitalism has has a lot of pros has a lot of cons. The socialism angle, though, I think with the pushback that people would give you on it doesn't work is what clearly works for the elites. Anytime the economy wobbles, they get bought out or they get bailouts, they get subsidies, they get government payouts, PPP loans, we know that the elites were taking full advantage of that and not going to the actual people that needed it on Main Street. Money printing quantitative easing. If we didn't open that can of worms. I mean, I'll say we we were supposed to have a much worse crash in 2008. It was supposed to be much worse. The economy was supposed to flip on its head. And those big titans were supposed to fall so that new could rise up. That's how capitalism works is supposed to go in those waves, dominoes. But now we've created a world where we're not allowing it to fall. And it's it's it's almost like a game of Jenga. It keeps getting wobbly or wobbler wobbler but they keep putting their hands on it to keep it up it's like how long can y'all keep this up because the whole point of jenga for those who've never seen the game classic game the point of the game is to take one piece at a time a foundational pillar from this block tower extract it from the bottom or middle and put it on the top that's right in fact there's a specific rule in jenga that says you cannot take from the top percent top three rows you can't touch so it is the job of the players to slowly but surely extract from the bottom in the middle put it onto the top and keep playing the game until it inevitably falls apart and right now i believe we're at the part of the game where everyone knows it's going to inevitably fall apart and they're trying to profit while they can that's why we see spacex ipos going and making trillionaires it's like you know how they used to start a game of baseball like i used to play backyard baseball and we start with the little the little hand thing sanchez yeah oh my god dude pete wheeler hell yeah dude it would start with the little hand thing right they go up the baseball and whoever's at the top gets to start that's right it feels like everyone's kind of playing that in ai right now it's just one hand after next let me see if i can cash out okay cool i'm safe i got my money we all know this is going to fall apart at some point at some point we're going to reach the top and there's going to be nothing left but as long as i can profit while it's happening i'm going to do it does that make sense yeah don't don't be the last one stuck on the ship don't don't be left holding the bag exactly um and i think you're right and i think a lot of people see that coming in the speculation around the ai bubble i'm not going to sit here and say i think it's going to pop in at this specific amount of time but i do think we will have some form of like dot com bubble like crash exactly yeah for every amazon there's 10 pets dot coms yeah amen and there's just too much speculation too many giant promises based around profitless companies on promises that are just at this point folklore until the ai can do what they want it to do till we get agentic systems and fucking quantum computing and robots shooting space lasers at us i don't know well that that's interesting that the way you put that and it's it's a fair point that like the socialism works for the elites because of what they do laundering the system the difference is they pay into that system ahead of time to actually decide who they get in there so the socialism is controlled by them and then that same thing bleeds into our accountability around crime uh-huh because it's socialism for that and that and that's why people brother people hit me up like you're a real estate agent why are you talking about epstein because it's the same fucking thing it's the same people that are being protected by this whatever it is that's protecting them is the same exact reason you can't afford a house and it doesn't take too many connections to get there the same people benefiting from this ever-inflating debt-based use refocused economy that only wants macro corporate capitalism to survival the normal working class has to just figure it out has been around for decades it's exacerbated right now in this k-shaped economy post-covid and it sucks to watch simultaneously them getting away with real life crimes real actual crimes simultaneously they're also just sifting away all the wealth from not just america the entire world it does feel like when you talk about someone's just gonna be left holding the bag and they're all just trying to profit on the on on the way there i try to zoom out to thirty thousand feet in the air and look at this and see all these sectors like you did with those five bubbles there that we'll talk about a little bit with looking at it from five different angles to put it all together and then you go in and you see all the nodes within but when i see on one hand you know the republicans and democrats and dc all inside are trading and making all this money and being worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars when they're operating on 174 000 salary and then also you have the symbolism of like mike johnson the speaker of the house saying yeah we should be allowed to trade stocks because we're making a great sacrifice to have 174 000 dollars and we're not making a great sacrifice to have 174 000 salary a year when the average constituent they claim to represent isn't even sniffing anywhere close that that's interesting but you know i see something like that then i see something like printing trillionaires with ipos then i see something like doug rushkoff talking about these billionaires he was advising about an end of the year world event so they can build their bunkers the best to survive then i see like the epstein class so openly saying yeah no we did it but what the fuck are you going to do about it like i see all these things that are so blatantly in your face you watch the outsider donald trump go in there and become the prototypical insider in so many ways and just do the opposite of all his campaign promises and look at you and say what are you going to do yeah you know it feels like it's either a really really fucking warped nightmare simulation or like they know whatever it is is coming and they don't care about what not that they ever cared what people thought but the optics they always tried to button up they actually tried to cover things up in the past now they just do it out in the open and they're like what are you going to do about it because it almost speaks it makes my brain go are they just thinking we're all not going to be here sometime soon you know like whatever that looks like whatever that is i can't help but think that when i look at the actions of all these people and the brazenness the openness of those actions you know why does why does benjamin netanyahu go on tv every day and say the worst possible thing from a pr perspective you could possibly say is it because suddenly he's a really dumb guy he's a lot of things the guy's never been dumb you know like doesn't it doesn't make sense to me and i and i don't know what to make of it Do you think that here in America, there's a reason, a cautionary thought that, you know, like people like me, people like you, you know, you have a huge platform here and you talk about risque topics, you know, government corruption, finite, like big wig stuff. You know, we talked about John Kiriakou. He's running around talking about crazy stuff like this happened in the CIA. And do you think there's a part of it where they want us divided to the now? And that's, that's obvious. That's probably the wrong question, but that they want us to almost know about the corruption that they, they want us to see it. They want us to be angry that they, maybe they want a larger January six, so they can have a reason to put these people behind bars, get them on. They want a database, control their social media, but they need that moment. They need that moment. And they know they can fuel that moment if they just get them angry. If we keep the money out of their pockets and make them angry. So it's a great question. And I think there's three doors here. Okay. You're Wayne Brady. Let's make a deal. One door, one door is as bad as all this shit is. Whatever's way worse is so bad that no. One can ever find out about that. So they're cool to just take this L on all this objectively bad shit, whether it's like cheating the people out of, you know, a future fucking Epstein stuff. And what is that? Every politician is as fucked a kid and now they don't want to, or aliens are running everything like something insane. It's something insane. Yeah. Okay. Door number one. Door two. I'm trying to remember if I can remember the doors now. I was, I was cooking them. I'm locked in. All right. Door number two is that. They've already. Already lost control of it. And they genuinely actually for the first time, because we're in this open internet age where the average person can't just be, you know, quietly muffled in the corner of the public square and taken into the fucking sewers without anyone noticing. They can't do that anymore. They were trying to do that in the 2010s and in early COVID sensor people off the internet. And then that kind of went away, which is also interesting because like Elon Musk was at the middle of making that go away and he's got some interesting facts. Right. And then door number three is, yeah, it's something like what you're saying, where they want to piss people off so much that they cause something to happen that will create fears so that they can instill the opposite of sacrifice, a little safety for liberty, neither deserving safety nor liberty and say, no, actually, that's how you deserve it. You got to sacrifice it to get it. You have the fucking president of the United States arguing for 702. If I see 702 publicly. Yeah. Literally doing the meme and saying the opposite of the Franklin line, like as the president of the United States, when he was the guy that was supposed to stand up against all this. And it's like, my only thing on that third one is I don't know how that'll work at this point. Yes. You'll talk to some of your friends who are still completely asleep at the wheel and don't know shit. And yes, that's more than one or two people out there in America for sure. But there is such a large percentage of the population. I don't know what the percentage is, but it's not 5%. It's better than that. Right before this, I was driving on a road in Maryland, right outside of DC. I'd never seen this before, but it was a speed limit sign that had a, like a green kicker on the top. It said digitally enforced at all times. And you could see the cameras lining. It's like for a good two miles. I'd never seen it. Maybe they're testing it. But the one thing I could see immediately was not a soul was going more than two miles over the speed limit. Yeah. Yep. It just seems like it's very easy to get to that point with us at this point. Because they have something to lose. Those people that are still driving below the, at the speed limit because they don't want to get the ticket. Yeah. They, even if they don't own homes anymore, some of those people, because there's less of that. Yeah. They still have a place that they rent that they go home to. They have running water, a place to take a shit and a roof over their head. And when they turn on their TV, they have Netflix. And it's just good enough to distract them from actually wanting to do something about the life that they clearly hate because they have a job they don't like, debt they're never going to get out of, and a home that they're never actually going to own. Sign me up. But they have. Just enough. When they no longer care if they get a speeding ticket because they can't fucking pay it anyway, or God forbid, maybe they're at a point where they can't even get a speeding ticket because they can't afford a car. People won't go two miles per hour there. It's like the road to, and I, and I, I advocate against this. I want to, I want to be an optimist. I want to figure this out. I want to have a better future. I do too, by the way, just for clarity. Oh, yeah. Just for clarity. You and I were talking about this. I believe you, but it's like the road to revolution isn't necessarily this straight up line of like, everything's good to it's a little less good to it's a little less good. Now people are pissed. It's less good. People are more pissed. It's less good. Revolution. It can happen like that emotionally to where people get more and more pissed, but it can have lulls in there where, where people get apathetic. They're getting more pissed, but they've been pissed for so long. That they're like, fuck these people. They never change. What am I going to do about it? And they go home and they jerk off to fucking go to sleep and they forget about it. And they wake up the next day and do it all over again. Eventually, then it gets a little bit worse and it gets worse to the point that it feels like someone's taking a fucking lighter and bringing it a little too close to their skin. But now they can't sit here being apathetic and ignore it. And at that point, if enough people come together, well, you got a problem, my friend. Do you think that's why the muzzle velocity news is so in our face? Constant new headline, new breakthrough. Breaking news, new thing to be angry at. Do you think it's to force that apathy? Ooh. By drowning, by drowning everyone in noise. Yeah. Drowning you in things to care about. You don't even know what to put your effort into. You could just as easily pour your effort into Gaza as you could the Epstein list. You could, you could easily listen to the Maria farmers of the world and be like, why the hell is no one listening? As you are watching, you know, oil shorts get profited on by tweets. That's right. It's like, there's nothing. And now there's a tweet, a truth premium. You hear about this truth print? Oh yeah. I don't know what it's called. It's true. Social. They're selling a, no, this is real. They're selling access to Trump's market, moving tweets to banks and institutions before they go out so they can come on. Seconds heads up doing this. No, it's a real thing. What? Our buddies go out, go, go at it. Oh, wait. So Kish was calling out John on this one. John was like, this is capitalism, dude. Oh no. No, this is insider trading. This is insider trading. We'll work on them. Tweets are moving markets and now they're monetizing it. All right. Trump media pitched $100,000 monthly fee for fastest feed of U.S. president's post. Sources say, this is what I meant when I said they're just throwing it. You're just throwing it in your face so much that you're, I don't know if you meant to do that, but this is, this is case a exactly. What do you get mad at? There's, there's so, and it's not just Trump. Biden's economy fucking sucked, got torn apart, mishandled, mishandled all the inflation that came from COVID mishandled the supply chain breakdowns, uh, immigration, corporate regulation, all of that. But you can look at Trump's first term and there's not a lot of glowing remarks. You can look at Obama's term. There's not a lot of glowing remarks. You really go all the way back to Clinton. And then there's some people who will be Reagan apologists. I'll be on the side of Reagan fueled all the things that broke in the seventies deregulation, the deregulation, the work, uh, workers unions, the new tax bracket system. We got so far away from the top marginal tax in the fifties. It was 90%. Did many people pay it? No, because they got away with it through tax loopholes the same way they do today. But just in real estate, like little simple things that aren't illegal, like 1031 exchanges that keep you from being able to pay taxes. As long as you buy another investment property or being able to avoid capital gains in other ways, like there's so many loopholes that exist in investing in, uh, just this, this corporate economic sphere that I'm not even privy to. Hell, Jeffrey Epstein might've had his entire prowess around his ability to avoid taxes. It might very well be the case. Uh, and we haven't fixed any of it. Trump, even in his Hillary, uh, the Hillary Clinton debates went on and said, you know, I have avoided my taxes. A lot of them because I play by the same system that's already been created. That's right. But it's been a decade and none of that's been shifted or changed, which again gets me to the point with housing, which is of course where I'm based. And really the only thing I would consider myself even close to an expert in, in real estate. i don't see any legislation currently in place that would make a house more affordable make rent more possible create more supply lower the regulation costs lower the regulatory costs make it cheaper for builders to build smaller homes or be able to be more creative with container homes tiny homes 3d printed homes building more vertically than horizontally big problem in delaware we have so many core issues with one of the core economic platforms of being an american owning a home having some dirt having a little dog that can run around your pick fence on a property you own and could paint pink if you'd like to is the american dream and we've ripped it from the entire generation coming up next to us all while they don't have jobs all while they don't know if robots are going to have their job all while we don't even know if we're going to be the hegemonic leader of the world in the next 10 years you're creating a beast that's got nothing to lose yes i mean just the one stat that gets me dude i don't you could probably pull this up we don't have to but uh i think it was 2016 maybe 2012 more than 50 of under 30 year olds were married and had a house it was like 51 yep married and as today it's 12 and dropping dramatically dropping we've gone from one out of two to one out of eight still waiting in line again that's time you'll never get back save time and money with stamps.com over four million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com join them to save up to 90 off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now print postage for certified mail registered mail and packages in seconds then schedule a pickup right from your home or office for a limited time go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift taxes and fees apply observe the north american dad 50s great polo collection he enters his vehicle information on carvana an offer appears in minutes remarkable he squints reads it again smiles and says dang that's a good offer the highest form of approval no haggling no hassle no one called him boss he's still on the couch astonishing sell your car today on carvana.com pickup fees may apply so just like you said you're building a childless well they must not be working spouseless bunch of fucking lazy stupid gen yeah because gen z is honestly probably the dumbest generations ever existed right they're not the most educated they don't pull themselves up by the bootstraps they don't they're clearly not the most physically uh physically fit generation that currently exists they're of no threat to the future uh construct of america if they're not properly fed or sheltered so why care about them unbelievable it's just like i when i hear those talking points yeah it was 2012 from boomers i'm like do you walk outside the statistic reflects a past era rather than a recent one historically about 52 percent of america of americans under 30 were both married and owned a home in 1960 that figure dropped to 25 percent by 2012 the recent data shows it has plummeted to around 12 percent to 15 percent there it is yeah i mean that's just like see but that though says it was 25 percent in 2012 i had another graph that showed it was higher regardless it's still a steep drop it's still a steep drop i just like to be spot on with my stats no that's all right but like that's why that's why dave's here like so we can get it and no one can get all that but like point remains i mean it's it's a steep steep decline and like generationally speaking average age of our first marriage now 32 years old i know that one generationally speaking man you look at society you ever read the fourth turning yes okay so you know and i'll have to explain in four people because i do that all the time but like you look at these you look at these it's an amazing book you look at these four different generations that repeat again and again on the same 21 to 25 year cycle and they always exist in the same eras of a problem whether it's everything from a good era all the way to like the crisis era and you know the millennial generation of which i'm on the farthest back end of it was is supposed to be like the hero generation there's the last time this generation happened in the cycle it was the greatest generation the one who fought world war ii and yet when i look at the generations i think if i were planning social collapse i would have foreseen that cycle and i would have made sure that i did everything i can to neuter the generation that's supposed to be heroic and when i look at millennials especially like the top half of millennials they're kind of in like no man's land to me because the system happened as it did when they were young they knew a world with without technology and if they're older millennials they knew it almost all their childhood and then suddenly they were given these shiny fucking crazy tools with social media and stuff when they're 17 18 years old and they bought into it all the way and now they're 39 40 years old and they kind of accepted the world that was set up for them through the through that you know tech system and they're realizing oh shit is all wrong like i still don't own a home maybe maybe i'm i don't have kids and now my future is more behind me in some ways as far as like trying to get started than it is in front of me and so they've been neutered whereas you look at like what the next generation was supposed to be the generation that grows up as children during the crisis that's gen z and they're young enough to have grown up in those times and be really fucking see the malaise and be like fuck this and they actually have some strength to them the question is have they already been sidelined enough from having any potential in the real world i hope this is making sense to you that like yeah they don't have the economic or collective meat leverage to do something about it i think about that a lot because if you were to get the gen x boomers on the same page of some form of let's say like financial strike you know they have enough money through their corporations investment portfolios real estate holdings that they could actually make a sizable footprint in any type of revolt yeah but if gen z were to say we're just not going to come into work like okay yeah we'll get ai to figure that out in a year still here yeah so no that's a great point that's a great point i don't know how like not a white pill one but a great point i don't know how you fix that it's so i i agree dude i won't be i mean i get people that want to leave the country like i i truthfully and honestly understand like people that are single and make a decent enough amount of money doing something digitally that won't go to greece like i get it i and that's a something i never would have talked about growing up you know dual military household as military brat did the same thing myself and also really benefited from capitalism like i am in the top 10 i'm not going to pretend i'm not i really benefited from capitalism but there's this this this weird sociopathic tendency of this american version of of corporate capitalism that breeds us to not worry about those that are not even ever finishing one economic race like no one ever gets to the finish line and turns around it's like you caught you were describing this earlier like you caught the last fucking jump yeah yeah it's like the action start the action movie where you have the four or five people robbing the vault the guys in the van like i hacked the system but they're getting in like blah blah and then boom the alarm goes off yeah you're the star of the movie you get out of the vault first you get out in fact actually you get out second because you grab someone who's not paying attention and throw them out that's right and then you go out that's right i'm the guy who's kind of losable in the plot kind of losable you don't know i'm kind of the nerdy guy you gotta got a little little cheering on for him that i slide right under that vault door as it's shutting that titanium door you think it might smash me but this is a pg-13 movie so probably not going to see guts but you think about it and then i make it but you know amanda's dead but amanda's on the other side i hope she's on the other side screaming banging on the vault not smashed underneath she's already burned to death done okay god right so you're underneath the bank vault yes that's how i imagine it was fast it was really quick it was she didn't scream much you couldn't hear over the alarm actually no it was screeching in our ears yeah yeah we had to get out of there or we all would have gotten caught i don't know what to tell gen z because i feel like they're on the other side of the vault door that's you're picking up what i'm putting down so it's like are there going to be people to succeed yeah are there going to be successful businesses yes are they going to be people who literally pick themselves up by absolutely nothing and nothing they're going to be people who literally pick themselves up by absolutely nothing and nothing yes will there be a such a smaller percentage of them that do that now versus 10 years ago 100 it was going to be such a smaller fraction that were able to actually do that yes i still think i think america's i'd say probably by far the best country on earth to exist in if you have a major talent and or you want to you want to sacrifice everything to win the game you want to win the game whatever the game is right but if you want to live the good wholesome life work at a good job maybe working for someone else but like have something stable have a family at home with the white picket fence and know that you're living clean it is now maybe it happened sooner in my life and i just didn't realize it but for the first time in my life i am realizing there are better better places potentially to do that than here i'm not saying it's a lot of places but there are some when I was over in Italy, I made friends with this kid, Lorenzo, who's like 23 business guy, self-starter, you know, has big aspirations and dreams and he wants to come to America and he's absolutely right. It's a way better for what he wants to do and the things he wants to get into way better opportunity. But he and I were having this conversation about like, if you're just kind of, you know, want to open up just the family restaurant and do that and live a decent life, you know, I was telling him, I'm like, it's not the way, like he's explaining the system to me. I'm like, it's not the worst thing here. Like that, that you, that could work and it could be a lower key lifestyle and nicer here in some ways for you. And that we got to fix because America was always the place everybody wanted to come to. In fact, they still do from a lot of places. We see people pouring across our border who in those respects, yeah, it's way better here, even in the lower class than where they're coming from. I'm talking about across like other first world countries, you'd call it. The fact that some of them for a certain class of people could have some maybe better lifestyle opportunities is wild. And we, we, we got to fix that. You, you, you're right. Because I walked through my own life and I think like where I'm at now, I got a little homestead. I got my daughter, got my wife, 10 years. 10 years. Good for you, man. Early military marriage. That's, that's how it goes. Yeah. I just want that. I just want to wake up to my wife every day. I want to teach my daughter about life and what's good, what's bad and let her decide what she's going to go after and watch that bloom. I want to watch her lead the Federal Reserve. Yes. I want her to one day be the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. That's right. That or a mortgage officer. The, the, the beauty and simplicity of, of not, having to worry about bills being paid for me while simultaneously getting to live out of the dirt, plant seeds, have rain barrels, collecting my water slowly, but surely get it off, off grid so that I'm self-sustainable learning how to build fences and sheds. And, and actually feel like I have a skillset has been much more fulfilling than really anything else I've ever done. And I, I wish that we lived in a world where like, I'll shout out Sean, my longtime video guy. He just wants to live a simple life. Yeah. He doesn't, he doesn't want to run a business. He doesn't want to be an entrepreneur. He doesn't want to hustle. He wants to travel and climb mountains with his, with his girlfriend. He, he wants to go on trails and camp and, and learn about different cultures. And I think that there was a time in the American lifestyle where he could have chosen to have done that without needing to grind, just exist, just have a decent job, save some pennies. And that's for you. Just doesn't exist. Now. And I might sound like a, a puss for saying that. And you're like, Oh, you're a little hippie, but like, what is this capitalistic world? We're just grinding our lives away for paper so that one day we can be really old and maybe not have to grind away for paper. Yeah. It's, it's kind of weird. Uh, the, the lifestyle and opportunity that can come from it is obviously there, but when we're in the richest country on the planet, there's more, there's more wealth than, than the world's ever known at one point in time, like for us to still have a growing homeless population amongst our veterans. For us to have a growing wealth gap, the seemingly pricing Gen Z out of ever being able to have a house that's not economically in any form good, but yet we'll look at the GDP and we'll tout the stock market or Pam Bonnie. We'll talk about the Dow Jones being over 50,000. Meanwhile, we're talking about pedophilia. I can't stand the rhetoric or rhetoric around the economy constantly just being this inflating asset that is stocks, that is homes, that is our GDP. Oh, while the normal everyday citizen does not feel that economic stability or wealth in their own pockets. In fact, it is being ripped from their pockets without them knowing because instead of taking the dollars out of their pocket physically, they're just slowly taking the power away from the dollar in their pocket with inflation. And we're getting lied to about it. And I hate that. Yes. It's a resource allocation game. Yeah. That's a good way of still wealthy, but like the wealth is it's, you know, it's like oil and water. Something's got to rise there. And so it's rising to a smaller percentage while the distribution changes overall, but the amount stays the same. It's just fewer people enjoy it. Now, how do we, you know, it's not a great time right now, but you got a big book there with a lot of numbers and a lot of ideas. Right. At the ground level, you know, everything, let's say everything's burned and we're in the ashes and we got to, we got to figure out how to grow a whole new beautiful farm here. Where, what kind of seeds do we start with here? What are, what are the first things that we can do from a systemic level outside of, cause I do think this is a big deal, but outside of like, well, let's prosecute the people who have been controlling things and maybe, you know, a part of the Epstein class and stuff. What are some things for the average American that we can do to start to flip this switch a little better? I'd start with number five on the page you got right there. Guys, just notes, just notes, just notes. All right. Government reform. It would have to start with the lawmakers. It has to start with legislation. If we do not get insider trading out of Congress, if we do not enforce age limits in Congress, term limits in Congress. And I think that their pay should be tied to the median pay of the constituents they represent, which would mean they're all getting paid something different, but they would actually share a benefit in getting that income up for their constituents because then they would get paid more. Right. I think that's a good point. And getting back to the original setting of our lawmaking, it was supposed to be a normal individual comes into Congress having originally worked a normal job within the community. They serve their country and then they go back into the community. Now we have lifetime politicians, which is completely different than what's actually going to create results. Can I read off? Oh, please. If you can read it right here, please. Yeah. Listen, I got horrible handwriting. This is way better than mine. 10, four balance. So under just a government reform section, you were just referencing balanced budget every five to 10 years, as opposed to over a term. We'll come back to that because also we have 40 trillion in debt right now and stock buyback and board positions for any lawmaker for 10 years post term tie executive pay to medium workers wages. You explain that lobbying will be grandfathered out for all future terms. I love that. Good luck as well. Well, that force and go ahead. No, I was gonna say if we grant and that's a Vivek Ramaswamy idea. Yeah. If we grandfather, you get the opportunity to make heroes out of the people currently in and allow them to keep taking their money. But the moment they bounce, whoever fills their position wouldn't get to wait, say that again. So if they were to vote it in to say, we're going to go ahead and grandfather out future terms or future people who hold this position in Congress from taking either corporate or foreign spend lobbying, you could make it so that like, let's say Nancy, Pelosi, you can still take money from all these lobbyists. But the moment Nancy Pelosi is out and someone takes her position, that person will not be allowed to got it. So they would be the hero for the future. But simultaneously, it's kind of realistic because I don't think you're going to and like you just said, the the ashes are on the ground. So maybe we don't have to do that. But if the ashes weren't on the ground, and we needed to get these people to actually do something, we couldn't take the money directly out of their pockets at this point, unfortunately. All right, this next one, antitrust laws to dismantle corporate monopolies. The oligarchy is obviously in control. We have to have a world where there's at least open and honest communication around like the Federal Reserve is a good example. We need to have more open, transparent. Where are you getting the numbers from? How are you calculating the data? What data are you working off of? Because it moves the markets by trillions. We need to have more authenticity in our lawmaking as a whole. We shouldn't have these omnibus bills. We shouldn't have legislators that are not even reading the bills. Their team reads the bills and gives them summaries. We need to have people in there that care. And if those people actually were to care, we could create laws, create committees that hold these monopolies accountable. We need to reinstate Glass-Steagall. We need to actually create antitrust laws that work. And that starts at the ground level of legislation. There's nothing the common man can do to stop a monopoly. It's supposed to be the law that does that. And the law is not doing that. Let me add a part A to that. Based on something you said, I would make a limit on how long a bill can be. In terms of how long you can sit on the voting floor? No, no, no. Sometimes, a lot of times, these lawmakers will be handed a bill this thick. Oh, how long they physically are. Got it. At two hours before they got a vote. Yes. Ain't nobody knows what's in there. All you need is one little sentence in the middle. It's got, it's like you're reading a story like the little girl was going to the river and then she saw a fox and then she went and, you know, played with a deer. And then, by the way- She got a billion from Israel. By the way, we're going to print $7 billion and send it to Israel. And then she went home and had dinner with her grandma. It was porridge. No one sees that sentence. It was like the housing bill had a bunch of stuff in it. It had nothing to do with housing. Nothing to do with it. So getting rid of those omnibus bills and creating single issue bills too, I think is a big part. Next, I didn't even see that. Your next one right here, single issue bills, on all legislation. Love it. So six year term limits for all senators and representatives. I agree. remove corporate influence from elections by enforcing strict limits on campaign contributions and implementing publicly funded elections the other thing is dude now that we're in a full-blown social media society where even like a lot of boomers are on there it's never been easier to if you have the chops get attention for free why do you need to fund a campaign if you if you're any good get on there and use your charisma even if that's for the worst because you're just a charismatic liar but like let the market speak for itself right you know like now's the time all right all those things are fucking great man you know but the other problem is all the people that have to vote on these are the people in the system who are incentivized to vote against it because it votes against their future interest to be able to have power or be close to it because it's all about power and money that's why i get away from the political discourse of red versus blue it is two sides of the same coin it is two wings of the same bird and if it's about more power more security more affirmation more potential at a future job position like an executive board position for one of these lobbyists they're gonna do it they're gonna do they're gonna do it because it's well within their rights to be able to do so unfortunately as un-american as that sounds 100 all right let me go to the bathroom real quick and then we got some shit to talk about oh yeah all right we'll be right back thank you guys for checking out this clip if you haven't already subscribed please subscribe and hit the like button on this video it is a huge huge help if you'd like to check out this clip's full podcast episode that link is in the description below or right here and finally you can follow me on instagram and x by using the links in my description below still wearing those old cargo shorts if your wardrobe's due for an upgrade but you don't know where to start you need stitch fix your stylist learns your size your style and your budget then sends a box pick just for you you always nail the fit no store no hassle no subscription required get started today at stitchfix.com that's stitchfix.com observe the north american dad 50s great polo collection he enters his vehicle information on carvana an offer appears in minutes remarkable he squints reads it again smiles and says dang that's a good offer the highest form of approval no haggling no hassle no one called him boss he's still on the couch astonishing sell your car today on carvana.com pickup fees may apply shipping billing admin payroll marketing you're managing all the things so why waste time sending important documents the old-fashioned way mail and ship when you want how you want with stamps.com print postage on demand 24 7 and schedule pickups from your office or home save up to 90 with automated rate shopping that's why over 1 million small businesses trust stamps.com go to stamps.com and use code podcast to try stamps.com risk-free for 60 days think glp1s are too expensive on row you can access fda approved glp1 weight loss treatment at your lowest possible price if you're covered start with rose free insurance checker just upload your insurance card to see if you're covered for certain glp1 shots whether you use insurance or pay cash row helps you find an option that works best for you plus rose membership plans help you save even more see if you qualify at row.co slash health rx only for side effects of glp1 medications including boxed warning go to row.co slash safety additional row membership be required prize picks packs are here rip digital packs and get real basketball football and pokemon cards sell cards instantly for cash or ship them home prize picks packs gives everyone the opportunity to pull the one of one cooper flag rookie card worth million dollars and the pikachu illustrator card worth 2.8 million dollars in packs as low as just one dollar download prize picks and use code spotify to get 25 instantly and bonus packs when you buy your first five dollar pack prize picks run your game 18 plus eligible areas terms apply collect responsibly