Ben Shapiro talks about Joe Biden's COID policy, the scandal in Virginia's Loudoun County Public Schools, and the White House's response to inflation and supply chain bottlenecks. Plus, PureTalk USA is giving you killer 5G coverage on the same 5G network as one of the big guys for about half the cost, and you can get it for about HALF the price of the average family is saving over $800 a year. Plus, a father who was made the face of the domestic terror movement by the national media turns out his daughter was raped in a public school bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt, and that the school board refused to acknowledge the sexual assault, despite a state law that requires public schools to report them on public sex assault incidents. And more! Ben Shapiro is the host of the Daily Wire podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show" and founder of The Ben Shapiro Project, where he exposes the deep-rooted corruption and dysfunction within the Democratic Party infrastructure in Washington, D.C. and its attempts to hold the country s most powerful elected officials accountable for their actions and the crimes they commit on behalf of the people they're supposed to protect. The Daily Wire is a labor union, and is dedicated to fighting for equal pay for women and girls in public schools. Today's guest is Luke Rosiak of the National School Board Union, a union representing teachers and parents across the country, and his reporting on the scandal-plagued school board in Loudoun, Virginia's Fairfax County, Virginia. Subscribe to Daily Wire to learn more about what's going on in our local schools and public schools, and how they're doing their part to protect girls and boys in the public education in the fight for equal access to education and access to the education system. and why they should be held accountable for the education and sexual safety in public education. Learn more about the latest in this week's newest episode of the show, "The Daily Wire's newest podcast, "Shake It Out." and much more. - Subscribe to the show on all things education, safety, crime, and culture, crime and politics! Subscribe today using the hashtag on social media, including our new podcast CRYTSHAPPY BONUS CONTENT: to find out who's getting it all the best deals on the best coffee and tips on how to be safe in the workplace and at work!
00:01:31.000The Daily Wire has been all over the situation in Loudoun County, which has national implications because obviously it's going to be very important for this Virginia gubernatorial race.
00:01:39.000And should Terry McAuliffe lose the gubernatorial race in Virginia, basically that's the end of Joe Biden's agenda.
00:01:44.000Because a bunch of moderate Democrats across the country are going to look at their seats and think, if Terry McAuliffe loses in Relatively blue Virginia.
00:01:52.000That means that the American public are not happy with the agenda that we are currently pushing.
00:01:56.000And at that point, Joe Biden's agenda is basically dead until after the midterms and probably beyond that.
00:02:00.000The midterms don't look like they're shaping up well for him.
00:02:02.000So everyone is focusing in on Loudoun County.
00:02:05.000Our reporter Luke Rosiak over in Loudoun County has been doing an unbelievable job of uncovering the predations of the school board in Loudoun County and the Democratic Party infrastructure In places like Virginia and Loudoun County with regard to school boards.
00:02:20.000By the way, the kind of work that Luke is doing, that's really expensive and difficult work that can only happen because of our Daily Wire members.
00:02:26.000If you're already a member, thank you for making that happen because honestly, your membership helped pay for Luke.
00:02:30.000But if you're not a member, you really should join up and help our reporters do the kind of work that Luke is doing.
00:02:34.000It's making a huge difference out there.
00:02:36.000Head on over to Daily Wire right now and grab a membership.
00:02:38.000Obviously, this has become a flashpoint Because the National School Board Union came out and basically requested that the FBI and DOJ investigate people who are going to school board meetings and sounding off on how the school boards were not doing their job in terms of educating and protecting their kids.
00:02:56.000Well, The biggest story of the last couple of months came out via Luke a little bit earlier this week.
00:03:02.000That was the story surrounding a father who was made the face of the quote unquote domestic terror movement by the national media.
00:03:09.000It turns out that that father was royally ticked off at one of these meetings, not because he was a domestic terrorist, but because As it turns out, there's fairly good evidence, and he alleges, that his daughter was raped in a public school bathroom by a bisexual boy wearing a skirt, and that the Loudoun County School Board refused to acknowledge that the sexual assault had even taken place, which might piss off even the best of us.
00:03:34.000Well, now it turns out there is even more.
00:03:36.000According to Luke Rosiak this morning, Loudoun County Public Schools did not record multiple known incidents of alleged sexual assault in schools dating back several years, despite a law that requires statistics about school safety incidents to be reported to the public, and which includes provisions holding school superintendents personally liable for violations, a Daily Wire review of public records found.
00:03:55.000After the Daily Wire raised the discrepancy with the Virginia Department of Education, the VDOE spokesman Charles Pyle said, VDOE is reviewing the discipline, crime and violence data submissions of Loudoun County Public Schools and is in communication with LCPS to determine whether the division's reporting is accurate and whether the division is in compliance with state and federal law. The same law could have implications for Loudoun County Superintendent or Principal in the wake of a May 28th alleged sexual assault in a bathroom, an incident first reported by the Daily Wire on Monday.
00:04:24.000On June 22nd, Superintendent Scott Ziegler told the public, quote, Virginia law requires that reports shall be made to the division superintendent and to the principal or his designee on all incidents involving sexual assault.
00:04:38.000The Daily Wire asked LCPS questions last week, including, quote, has Stonebridge ever reported the may allege sexual assault in any statistics or made anyone aware of it? LCPS hid behind state law with Director of Communications Joan Salgren replying, quote, any information related to student information is confidential under state and federal laws regarding student privacy. However, state law actually requires statistics on assault and other incidents in schools to be reported to the public in the form of annually updated statistics available on a public database called Safe Schools Information Resource
00:05:07.000administered by the Virginia Department of Education.
00:05:10.000In other words, the school board and the school does not have to report to the public the name of the people involved, the juveniles involved, but they do have to report the numbers.
00:05:18.000LCPS reported to the state that Stonebridge had zero sexual assaults for the 2020-2021 school year, which includes May 28, 2021.
00:05:26.000Virginia law says the division superintendent shall annually report all such incidents to the DOE for the purpose of recording the frequency of such incidents on forms that shall be provided to the department and shall make such information available to the public.
00:05:40.000The issue with missing sex assault statistics in Loudoun is not limited to the latest case, raising the prospect that untold numbers of sexual assaults and other infractions have gone unreported.
00:05:48.000In October 2018, in a case that was widely reported by the media at the time, three football players at Tuscarora High were arrested and charged with sexual assault.
00:05:57.000A source told local media, it's believed a younger player was held down by teammates who inserted objects into the victim in a locker room.
00:06:04.000As a spokesperson for LCPS said at the time, the case will be subject to disciplinary action.
00:06:09.000The annual report for Tuscarora that year reported zero instances of sexual offenses against students.
00:06:15.000LCPS provided no response at all to the Daily Wire's questions about the reason for the zero figures despite having two days to do so.
00:06:21.000While the suspect in the May 28th alleged assault was not arrested until July 8th, following the conclusion of an investigation, police officers were present at the school that day, law enforcement was notified, and a police report was filed, though it was not clear who filed the report.
00:06:34.000Pyle, the state spokesman, said that the SSSR's mandatory reporting is not contingent on the filing of charges by law enforcement or subsequent convictions.
00:06:42.000In other words, if this was reported to the cops, that just means that it has to be reported in the stats.
00:06:50.000Additionally, the safety stats for that school year were not due to the state until July 16th.
00:06:54.000And in the case of Tuscarora, the school year did not end until months after the incident and arrest, yet the district still reported zero and has for every single year since.
00:07:03.000On Wednesday, LCPS put out a statement.
00:07:06.000it said, quote, Loudoun County Sheriff's Office was contacted within minutes of receiving the initial report on May 28th. Once a matter has been reported to law enforcement, LCPS does not begin its investigation until law enforcement advises LCPS it has completed the criminal investigation.
00:07:19.000Furthermore, we can't discipline any student without following Title IX grievance processes.
00:07:23.000But an email from Stonebridge Principal Tim Flynn, which was sent to the entire community at 448 the day of the alleged rape, told students and parents that, quote, there was an incident in the main office area today that required the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office to dispatch deputies to Stonebridge. This corresponds to the story offered by Scott Smith, the victim's father, who said the police arrived because the school called them on him for making a scene about his impression it was not treating the incident seriously.
00:07:49.000So this is a disaster area for Loudoun County.
00:07:51.000If it turns out that the Loudoun County schools have not been reporting these stats on sexual assault to the public, just another indicator that when you have institutions that are very powerful, they have every incentive to cover up all of the bad things happening within those institutions.
00:08:08.000People develop institutional loyalty when they work for those institutions.
00:08:12.000They don't want to report the bad stuff happening inside the institutions.
00:08:16.000And that's how you end up with children being put in danger.
00:08:19.000Now, for the left, they don't care, apparently, if those children are put in danger by the public schools.
00:08:24.000There are a wide variety of cases in which teachers have made prey out of their students in public schools across the country.
00:08:32.000Those statistics are, in fact, somewhat available.
00:08:35.000It's a national story when it's the Catholic Church.
00:08:37.000It's not a national story when it turns out that it's the public school system, obviously, even though there are many, many more members of the public school system in the United States than there are members of the Catholic Church who are subject to priest predation.
00:08:49.000There's certainly an ideological component here.
00:08:53.000And meanwhile, the family of that girl who was allegedly raped in her school bathroom is now pursuing civil action against the Loudoun County Public Schools under Title IX.
00:09:05.000The parents of the young girl stated, quote, subsequent to the sexual assault on our daughter, Loudoun County Public Schools formalized the policy regarding restroom use that was easily exploitable by a potential sexual assailant.
00:09:14.000Because of poor planning and misguided policies, Loudoun Schools failed to institute even minimal safeguards to protect students from sexual assault.
00:09:21.000The lawyer for the family says the conduct of Loudoun County Schools and the Loudoun School Board directly resulted in the brutal rape of Smith's daughter at Stonebridge High.
00:09:28.000It only takes an instant to see how Loudoun County Schools have adversely affected this family and have harmed their daughter.
00:09:35.000So, all of this has resulted in some pretty bad...
00:09:40.000News for Terry McAuliffe, who's running for governor of Virginia and who is completely in hock to the teachers unions in the state of Virginia.
00:09:47.000He was asked yesterday about whether parents should be in charge of education.
00:09:51.000And this, of course, remains a major issue right across the country.
00:09:54.000Parents would like to be in charge of their children's education.
00:09:57.000Public schools are delegated your kids to educate them in the ways that you see fit.
00:10:01.000They are not delegated to the power to educate them solely as they see fit.
00:10:07.000Because, frankly, they are not qualified to do so nor empowered to do so.
00:10:11.000That is not the purpose of local public schools.
00:10:14.000And the federalization of the process has made this worse.
00:10:16.000It's created a massive disconnect between the bureaucrats who are supposed to educate your children and you.
00:10:21.000This is why, increasingly, parents are taking their kids out of the public schools, putting them in private schools, homeschooling them, trying to find charter schools, doing anything they can to remove the monopoly on indoctrination now provided by liberal teachers' unions and the state-run schooling system.
00:10:39.000So Terry McAuliffe was asked about all of this because he had said in open debate with Glenn Youngkin in Virginia that parents essentially have no interest in the education of their kids.
00:10:47.000It's really the state's job to educate the kids.
00:10:49.000Here's Terry McAuliffe erupting when asked about it.
00:10:51.000Who do you think should be in control of education if not Virginia parents?
00:10:55.000vaccinated yet. That's the question I want to know. Do you think you're in control of education? If not Virginia parents, I'll build education.
00:11:05.000That's why Fox News has me leading when you'll destroy Virginia's education system. What a joke. Terry McAuliffe is.
00:11:14.000So he's asked whether parents should be in control of education.
00:11:37.000The Virginia The political map has been turning blue for quite a while right now.
00:11:43.000The results in Virginia in the 2020 election were heavily in favor, of course, of Hillary, in favor of Joe Biden.
00:11:51.000Joe Biden won the state by 10 points in 2020.
00:11:54.000Right now, Youngkin is running, who's a relative no-name, is running neck and neck with Terry McAuliffe, a former Virginia governor.
00:12:00.000It's the fact that this is even close.
00:12:01.000It's a referendum on how bad people think democratic governance is, even in democratic states.
00:12:07.000This has relegated Terry McAuliffe to basically trying to treat Glenn Youngkin as though he is Donald Trump and also Greg Abbott, which of course is not true.
00:12:15.000Here is Terry McAuliffe trying to say that Glenn Youngkin is going to ban abortion in the state of Virginia, which of course is not going to happen.
00:12:20.000I mean, unfortunately from my point of view, but that's not what's going to happen in the state of Virginia.
00:12:49.000They're not coming to a state that discriminates.
00:12:51.000He's having a really tough time, McAuliffe, putting a target on Junkin's back because McAuliffe is the issue here, not Trump and not Junkin.
00:12:58.000And when it comes to education, Americans have very simple questions to ask, like, why are you guys doing an unbelievably crappy job?
00:13:04.000Brand new report out says the nation's 13 year olds are less proficient in math and reading than they were almost a decade ago.
00:13:10.000That is not because of the COVID pandemic.
00:13:12.000That was data collected before the start of the pandemic and released on Thursday according to the National Assessment of Education Progress, this is Politico reporting.
00:13:19.000This is the first time these scores have dropped in either subject in the 50-year history of the test.
00:13:26.000The students who struggled the most with the exam have fallen further behind.
00:13:29.000A worrisome result that suggests learning loss exacerbated by the pandemic could be catastrophic.
00:13:33.000Math scores fell furthest among students whose performance ranked in the 10th and 25th percentiles, meaning test-takers with the lowest math scores in 2020 did worse than students who struggled the most when the test was last administered in 2012.
00:13:45.000The data also shows the achievement gap between white and black test-takers widened.
00:13:49.000Nationally, math scores for 13-year-olds fell on average by 5 points.
00:13:52.000Reading scores declined on average 3 points.
00:13:55.000None of these results are impressive, said the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.
00:14:01.000The math results were particularly daunting.
00:14:05.000So basically, your schools are failing to educate kids, particularly the kids who are at the lowest end of the spectrum.
00:14:11.000And meanwhile, they're indoctrinating them in all the worst values and not protecting them.
00:14:15.000And you wonder why we have a schools crisis right now?
00:14:17.000You wonder why so many parents are interested in pulling their kids out of school?
00:14:20.000And you wonder why so many people are looking askance at democratic administrations who seem solely concerned with pleasing teachers unions?
00:14:27.000You wanna know why so many Americans are upset with maybe the FBI and the DOJ doing the bidding of the very people who are failing to educate their kids and then claiming complete plenary authority over those children?
00:14:38.000None of this is good news for Democrats.
00:14:41.000Meanwhile, as the cascade of bad headlines is just swamping the Democrats right now, the Biden administration is struggling for a narrative.
00:14:52.000The narrative that they are now coming up with is that they have defeated COVID.
00:15:01.000So yesterday, Joe Biden wandered out to a microphone and he spoke for a grand total of seven minutes and then he turned around and then he left.
00:15:09.000Okay, so, I mean, that's all he can be expected to do.
00:15:12.000He shows up every day, he talks for like 37 seconds, and then he sort of collapses out of the room and is dragged back to his casket where they perform some sort of resuscitory action upon him.
00:15:26.000And then he breathes lightly until the next day when they pull him out of the casket again and wheel him out.
00:15:30.000So, President Biden yesterday, he came out and he said, our plan is working.
00:16:23.000In fact, Ron DeSantis has been fighting vaccine mandates pretty much every step of the way and has vaccination rates that are about the same as the vaccination rates in California, for example.
00:16:34.000Hey, Joe Biden is suggesting that it is him yelling about vaccines that has caused the pandemic to wane, that old man shouting at clouds made the pandemic wane.
00:16:43.000All that happened is that the pandemic hits populations who spend lots of time indoors, and then it wanes because it passes through the population.
00:17:45.000It is also worthy of noting at this point that all the vaccine mandates that he supposedly used in order to get the vaccine rates up, the only one that has actually been implemented to this point is the federal contractor mandate.
00:17:55.000There is still no rule from it's been like almost two months now.
00:17:58.000There is still no rule from OSHA that actually mandates that employers over 100 employees have to have to vax their people.
00:18:06.000So to credit his vaccine mandates with the uptick in vaccination rates is a stretch in and of itself.
00:18:13.000It is quite possible that one of the reasons you saw an uptick in vaccination rates is specifically because people looked at the Delta variant.
00:20:14.000At the head of the pilot, the head of the pilot's union and its CEO, dismissed critics who claim vaccination mandates contributed to flight disruptions.
00:20:23.000Joe Biden about the vaccine mandates contributing to flight disruptions?
00:20:26.000Or your own lying eyes, which demonstrate that there was really no weather problem in the United States and Southwest was the only airline that had been significantly affected?
00:20:34.000Who are you going to believe about that?
00:20:35.000Or the Southwest employees we've been talking to here at Daily Wire, who are explaining exactly why people are sicking out?
00:20:41.000Okay, so there is such an authoritarian streak in this guy.
00:21:25.000There's that president of the United States just sort of, he came out for a moment and then he went back down into his hole, which means I believe six more weeks of winter.
00:21:35.000It is pretty obvious that whatever surge we had and waning we had had nothing to do with Joe Biden.
00:21:41.000According to the New York Times, after a brutal summer surge driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, the coronavirus is again in retreat.
00:21:47.000The United States is recording roughly 90,000 new infections a day, down more than 40% since August.
00:21:52.000Hospitalizations and deaths are falling, too.
00:21:56.000The situation in Alaska is particularly dire.
00:21:58.000But nationally, the trend is clear, and hopes are rising that the worst is finally behind us again.
00:22:02.000Over the past two years, the pandemic has crashed over the country in waves, inundating hospitals and then receding, only to return after Americans let their guard down.
00:22:09.000I love how the New York Times puts that.
00:22:12.000So it's that Americans let their guard down that causes the pandemic to spike.
00:22:16.000Except that it's spiking in blue areas too.
00:22:19.000It is all about, are you in proximity to other people?
00:22:22.000When it's cold outside, people go inside and then they get infected.
00:22:24.000When it's really hot outside, people go inside and then they get infected.
00:22:40.000The New York Times says it's difficult to tease apart the reasons the virus ebbs and flows in this way and harder still to predict the future.
00:22:47.000No, it's actually not all that difficult to explain.
00:22:50.000As winter looms, there are real reasons for optimism.
00:22:52.000Nearly 70% of adults are fully vaccinated.
00:22:55.000Many children under 12 are likely to be eligible for their shots in a matter of weeks.
00:22:58.000Federal regulators could soon authorize the first antiviral pill for COVID-19.
00:23:02.000By the way, Joe Biden said yesterday that parents are going to sleep more solidly at night knowing that their children won't be in danger because of the vaccine.
00:23:11.000Those of us who've been watching the stats have been sleeping solidly at night about our kids for a long time.
00:23:14.000I wasn't sleeping solidly about my parents.
00:23:17.000I've been sleeping very solidly about my 7, 5, and 1 year old because kids aren't dying of this in anything remotely like significant numbers.
00:23:27.000Hey, that is not morally significant numbers.
00:23:28.000Every kid who dies is a morally significant life.
00:23:31.000But if you're talking about statistical significance, the grand total number of kids who have died in the United States from COVID-19 without serious pre-existing conditions, according to Dr. Martin McCary of Johns Hopkins University, is currently between 10 and 20.
00:23:48.000Hey, that is not the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night.
00:23:53.000I am not kept awake at night by the fact that my child is in significant danger if 10 to 20 kids across a country of 330 million people have died of COVID without pre-existing conditions.
00:24:06.000Okay, but again, you must be cudgeled into the belief that these people have solved the problem as opposed to, you know, the virus just doing what the virus does.
00:24:18.000And my favorite thing about all of this is that we're supposed to believe all these folks, right?
00:24:21.000You heard Joe Biden a moment ago talking about how, you know, none of this should be divisive.
00:24:25.000We should just be listening to our authorities.
00:24:27.000We should be listening to our institutions.
00:24:28.000Except that our institutions have routinely lied to us.
00:24:31.000Aside from Dr. Anthony Fauci, who shifts his opinion every 5.3 seconds, depending on whatever Joe Biden wants from him that day.
00:24:39.000So, honestly, one of the funniest things that I've seen in the past couple of months, Joe Rogan did a segment with Sanjay Gupta of CNN, and honestly, flowered Gupta's widow because Rogan just destroyed him.
00:25:01.000Your entire network claimed that it was a horse dewormer.
00:25:04.000Why don't you tell the members of your network it is not a horse dewormer and tell them to stop lying to people?
00:25:09.000So then Sanjay Gupta went back on TV on CNN and he had his chance and he said nothing because he's getting paid by CNN.
00:25:16.000So here is Don Lemon trying to explain it's fine to call Ivermectin a horse dewormer even though that is not the form of Ivermectin that Joe Rogan was taking.
00:25:24.000I know it's in large part a tongue-in-cheek interview, you know, because it's Joe Rogan and there's lots of you jockeying back and forth, but he did say something about ivermectin that I think wasn't actually correct, about CNN and lying, okay?
00:25:38.000Ivermectin is a drug that is commonly used as a horse dewormer.
00:25:45.000So it is not a lie to say that the drug is used as a horse dewormer.
00:25:49.000I think that's important and it is not Approved for COVID.
00:25:59.000It's not approved for COVID by the FDA.
00:26:02.000But the notion that ivermectin, which comes in a variety of forms, that Joe Rogan was like taking a tube of horse paste and then ingesting it is insane.
00:26:11.000And Sanjay Gupta admitted that to Joe Rogan.
00:26:14.000And then he went on CNN and then he nodded along while Don Lemon continues to lie about it.
00:27:16.000That's how important Pete Buttigieg is.
00:27:18.000I mean, while he was waxing philosophic about the beauty of the smells of the airport, Pete Buttigieg was actually spending the last two months, this brilliant young mind from South Bend, Indiana, who couldn't fill a damn pothole over there.
00:27:29.000Pete Buttigieg has been home with his husband, Chasen, and their two children.
00:27:59.000How long do you think you would keep your job?
00:28:01.000This means that your job is more vital than people to judges.
00:28:05.000By the way, according to internal Democratic polling, he's second only to Kamala Harris in terms of who the Democrats want to see run for president again.
00:28:11.000A man so useless that he took two months off in the middle of a shipping crisis as the head of the Department of Transportation to be home with two babies.
00:28:20.000That's... Again, nothing against paternity leave, although I will say I think two months is a very long time for paternity leave, especially when there's no physical recovery involved.
00:28:29.000But with that said, If you're going to take paternity leave and you're in a real important job and you're a public servant, shouldn't somebody know about it?
00:28:40.000According to Politico, they didn't previously announce it, but Buttigieg's office told West Wing Playbook the secretary has actually been on paid leave since mid-August to spend time with his husband, Jason, and their two newborn babies.
00:28:52.000A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation said, quote, Amazing.
00:28:55.000These are the people we need in charge.
00:28:56.000for major agency decisions and matters that could not be delegated.
00:29:00.000He's been ramping up activities since then.
00:29:02.000As he does that, Buttigieg will continue to take some time over the coming weeks to support his husband and take care of his new children, the spokesperson added.
00:29:40.000So, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Larry Summers, who's the Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, he points out that we are now in a very serious economic position.
00:29:49.000We have massive inflation, it is now permanent, or semi-permanent.
00:29:53.000We have a serious shipping bottleneck that is not going to be solved anytime soon.
00:29:56.000We have millions of workers who are quitting the workforce.
00:30:00.0004.3 million workers left the workforce last month.
00:30:03.000And here is Larry Summers pointing out this is all kind of serious, is it not?
00:30:07.000In the 60s, we saw, before there were any adverse supply shocks, we saw inflation move from having a one handle in 1966 to having a six handle by 1969.
00:30:21.000And we've got much larger budget deficits today than we did then.
00:30:25.000We've got much more in the way of supply bottlenecks emerging much sooner than we did then.
00:30:34.000So I think we're looking at a very serious kind of situation.
00:30:42.000Meanwhile, the CEO of Morgan Stanley says, remember all those times they kept telling you over and over that inflation was transitory, it was going to go away soon?
00:30:49.000Joe Biden's been saying that for months.
00:30:51.000James Gorman, the CEO and chairman of Morgan Stanley's like, yeah, not so much.
00:30:56.000I'm not a buyer of this story that it's all transitory, the inflation story.
00:31:01.000I mean, wage inflation is real, and the supply chain interruptions, and you were talking about some of the natural gas and other things, have clearly been real.
00:31:09.000Some of that is temporary, but not all of it.
00:31:11.000So I think we're in a period where inflation is going to tick up.
00:32:38.000So Jason Furman, of course, is more than capable of speaking or tweeting for himself, obviously, and providing any additional context.
00:32:44.000But what the point is here is that we are at this point because we've made progress in the economy.
00:32:51.000And what would be worse, in our view, is if the unemployment rate was at 10%, people were out of work, hundreds of thousands of people were still dying of COVID, and people weren't able to lose their homes.
00:33:08.000I'm so glad that she's now provided the full context.
00:33:10.000It turns out that Democrats can always claim that the alternative is complete destruction of all that is good, as opposed to, you know, the mostly destruction of all that is good that is happening right now.
00:33:20.000In a second, I want to get to the underlying rationale for why so many Democrats seem pretty sanguine about all this.
00:33:25.000Because for most people who are out there, it makes a difference if they're paying higher bills.
00:33:28.000For most people who are out there, it makes a difference if they are losing in terms of real wages.
00:33:32.000For most people out there, it matters if they can get Christmas presents for their kids.
00:34:49.000We're going to get to more in a moment, including the real question as to why Democrats seem so sanguine about all of this.
00:34:55.000First, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Dailyware member.
00:34:58.000Today, it's David Burnett on Instagram, who knows what it takes to excel during the long hospital work hours.
00:35:04.000In this picture, David and his wife are in an operating room, dressed in their scrubs and proudly displaying the world's most elite tumbler.
00:35:09.000The caption reads, quote, whether she's delivering babies or he's an ICU nurse that's now practicing healthcare law, we both fuel our day and satisfy our thirst with the tears of our ideological opponents in the leftist tears tumbler, the greatest of all beverage vessels.
00:35:21.000Look out world, you can't flee the truth forever.
00:35:26.000Thanks for the pic, and for being a Daily Wire member.
00:35:29.000Also, we had a lot of exciting announcements to make at our showing of Backstage at the Ryman this past Tuesday, because the Daily Wire is fulfilling our promise of bringing you even more non-woke content you literally will not find anywhere else.
00:35:39.000A very special guest helped us deliver one of those announcements, our good friend Adam Carolla, comedian and host of The Adam Carolla Show.
00:36:19.000It has been an exciting week for The Daily Wire.
00:36:21.000This weekend's Sunday special is only making it better.
00:36:23.000I'm joined by none other than Barry Weiss, the iconoclastic writer, journalist, and now the voice of her own excellent podcast called Honestly with Barry Weiss.
00:36:31.000We sat down to make sense of all that is going on today.
00:36:38.000There's one word that sums up how we've gotten to this insane pass, and it's cowardice.
00:36:43.000The number one ingredient that, if it were present, would change the outcome of almost all of these stories, all of the smearing of good people for maybe at worst making a mistake, is courage.
00:36:56.000It's a story of cowardice and courage, the moment that we're in.
00:37:44.000Scarce labor is becoming a fixture of the U.S.
00:37:45.000economy, reshaping the workforce, prodding firms to adapt by raising wages, reinventing services, and investing in automation.
00:37:51.000More than a year and a half into the pandemic, the U.S.
00:37:53.000is still missing around 4.3 million workers.
00:37:55.000That's how much bigger the labor force would be if the participation rate, the share of the population 16 or older, either working or looking for work, returned to its February 2020 level of 63.3%.
00:38:09.000employers are struggling to fill more than 10 million job openings and meet soaring consumer demand.
00:38:15.000In another sign of how tight the labor market is, jobless claims fell to 293,000 last week, the first time since the pandemic began that they fell below 300,000, according to the Labor Department.
00:38:24.000Workers are quitting at or near the highest rates on record in sectors such as manufacturing, retail, trade, transportation, and utilities, as well as professional and business services.
00:38:33.000Participation has fallen broadly across demographic groups and career fields, but has dropped particularly fast among women, workers without a college degree, and those in low-paying service industries like hotels, restaurants, and childcare.
00:38:44.000Many economists expected that people would come back to work, but some economists are concerned that worsening worker shortages reflect longer-term shifts, such as the pandemic-driven acceleration of retirements that will not reverse.
00:38:55.000Many expect the labor shortage to last at least several more years.
00:39:00.000Of the 52 economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal, 22 predicted participation would never return to its pre-pandemic levels.
00:39:07.000So where exactly are all of these people going?
00:39:11.000Well, many of them are either going back home.
00:39:14.000If you're married, if you're a married couple, maybe mom is going back home and dad is picking up some extra hours, which is fine.
00:39:20.000Or maybe people are just, you know, staying out of jobs because they think the government's going to pay for them.
00:39:25.000Goldman Sachs said in a note this month that enhanced unemployment benefits have likely contributed to the shortage.
00:39:31.000When the pandemic began, Jesse Stromlich was a senior engineering manager at a small software firm in Portland, Oregon, supervising a couple dozen employees.
00:39:38.000In the pandemic, there were a lot of challenges in our business I was called upon to deal with, said Stromlich.
00:39:42.000Just tapping that button all the time is really tiring.
00:39:44.000The birth of his son last November added to his doubts about whether the job's rewards were worth the sacrifices.
00:39:49.000He initially looked for other opportunities.
00:39:50.000When a friend suggested he take time off entirely, Stromlich was intrigued.
00:39:54.000Is that even a thing you can do in capitalism, he recalls thinking?
00:39:57.000His wife, a nurse midwife, supported the move.
00:39:59.000The federal government has allowed borrowers like his wife to suspend student loan payments through January 2022.
00:40:04.000The couple also refied their mortgage at a lower interest rate.
00:40:06.000Okay, so this is all government policy now, right?
00:40:09.000The government has prevented people from having to pay back their student loans and they're artificially lowering the mortgage rates.
00:40:15.000Those adjustments have saved around $2,000 a month.
00:40:18.000Stromlich's planned three months off has now stretched to five months and might last until the end of the year.
00:40:23.000Two years ago, I was thinking I want to get as high as I can on the corporate ladder, he said.
00:40:26.000It just interests me less now if it comes with the sacrifice to my mental health and my connection with my family.
00:40:33.000Employers are overhauling their business models to adjust for the labor shortages.
00:40:38.000People look at the way the Democrats are running things and they believe In their heart of hearts, apparently, that there will never be a cost to this.
00:40:46.000They can stay out of the workforce and people will just take care of them.
00:40:49.000There will be programs that are designed to artificially either boost wages for one of the people or that will pay them just to stay home.
00:40:58.000Paul Krugman, for one, is celebrating this as the Keynesian he is.
00:41:02.000He says, It's not surprising many workers are either quitting or reluctant to return to their old jobs.
00:41:14.000Well, it's only speculation, but it seems quite possible the pandemic, by upending many Americans' lives, also caused some of them to reconsider their life choices.
00:41:21.000Not everyone can afford to quit a hated job, but a significant number of workers seem ready to accept the risk of trying something different.
00:41:26.000Except that, if you look statistically, the people who are not going back to work are people who are at the lower end of the economic spectrum, not people who are middle class and upper end.
00:41:34.000It is people who are more likely to end up on the dole.
00:41:38.000But according to Krugman, this is a good thing.
00:41:39.000He says, while this new choosiness by workers who feel empowered is making consumers and business owners' lives more difficult, let's be clear.
00:42:22.000There's a fascinating article in The Nation, which of course is a far-left source, My guy named Aaron Benavev, Ben and Av, called Making a Living, the history of what we call work.
00:42:31.000And he really kind of spills the beans on what it is that the left would like here.
00:42:35.000What the left would like is to change your consuming habits so you are satisfied with less and so we can redistribute everything in the way that the left would like.
00:42:43.000What they want is economic stagnation and redistribution.
00:42:46.000That is the goal of the left at this point.
00:42:51.000And there's a belief in the minds of the left about human nature.
00:42:54.000And that belief is that if you are freed from the predations of work, all work being a form of exploitation, if you are freed from the predations of work, you will become a poet and an artist.
00:43:02.000You remember Nancy Pelosi actually said this.
00:43:04.000Nancy Pelosi at one point said that she wanted to free people from job lock through Obamacare, right?
00:43:09.000You wouldn't be locked to your job because you need healthcare.
00:43:11.000And then maybe you'd be able to wander around and create art and poetry because that's exactly what people typically on welfare do.
00:43:17.000I mean, if you've ever looked at the crowd of people creating great art, great poetry in this country, it is predominantly coming from people who are requiring government benefits.
00:43:25.000Those are the people who are just the heart and soul of creativity and innovation in the United States.
00:43:32.000So according to this author in The Nation, he's writing about a book called Work!
00:43:36.000A Deep History from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots by an anthropologist named James Sussman.
00:43:45.000And the basic idea of this book is that for the vast majority of human history, human beings have lived as hunter-gatherers on diets consisting of fruits, vegetables, nuts, insects, fish, and game.
00:43:56.000The idea behind this book is that while the myth goes that people live in scarcity when they're hunter-gatherers, that they're living in relative privation on the edge of starvation or death, that's not actually true.
00:44:08.000According to the book, fire predigests food.
00:44:11.000When you roast the flesh of a woolly mammoth, the process yields significantly more calories than if the food was left uncooked.
00:44:15.000Mastering fire thus made for a radical increase in humanity's free time because early humans were able to get more out of the food that they had and therefore they had a lot of free time.
00:44:25.000According to that author, free time subsequently shaped our species' cultural evolution.
00:44:29.000Leisure afforded long periods of hanging around with others which led to the development of language, storytelling, and the arts.
00:44:34.000Human beings also gained the capacity to care for those who were too old to feed for themselves, a trait we share with few other species.
00:44:41.000So again, the idea is that we should be more like the hunter-gatherers.
00:44:46.000We should abandon the way that we see production entirely and instead we should aim for a system in which we basically do the subsistence minimum and we can spend the rest of our time hanging out and partying and having ourselves a good time.
00:45:04.000Now, the question is why that hasn't happened, right?
00:45:06.000So one of the questions is why, if that's true, if human beings just want to basically cover their basic needs and then move on with their lives and hang out and party, why aren't more humans doing this?
00:45:15.000The answer for the left is that you have all been corrupted by the capitalist system, which makes you want things.
00:45:20.000And because you want things, this leads you to the chaining of yourself to the machine.
00:45:27.000According to this author for The Nation, John Kenneth Galbraith provided one plausible answer in The Affluent Society.
00:45:32.000In it, he suggested that John Maynard Keynes had underestimated the degree to which we can manipulate it into seeing our relative wants as absolute needs, meaning stuff that's marginal to us, we can see them as absolute needs.
00:45:41.000Now, most economists on the right will say there's no such thing, really, as a prioritization of need that is absolute.
00:45:50.000Beyond, like, full-on basic necessities, like you have to have enough food and water to live, aside from that, we all prioritize our needs differently, and we get to make those choices subjectively.
00:45:58.000But what the left would like to do is force you to prioritize your needs in the way that the left wants you to prioritize your needs, and then redistribute all income to create a new kind of human being, a new kind of altruistic, wondrous human being, who's more like the hunter-gatherers.
00:46:12.000Now, never mind that hunter-gatherer societies tend to have life expectancies that are really, really low.
00:46:18.000Like in the middle of this article, the author cites the Coon-Bushmen.
00:46:20.000Okay, the Coon-Bushmen have an average life expectancy of somewhere between 40 and 50 years old.
00:46:25.000Also, it turns out that prosperity comes with low infant mortality rates and being able to keep your elderly alive for longer.
00:46:30.000But all of this doesn't matter because obviously work is the bad.
00:46:34.000At the end of this article, in The Nation, the author comes to the conclusion.
00:46:38.000He says, we should set the course not to Mars for vacationing with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, but rather to a post-scarcity planet Earth on which their wealth has been confiscated and put to better ends.
00:46:50.000Getting there will require that we overcome the endemic insecurity that continues to plague nine-tenths of humanity, while also reducing and transforming the work we do.
00:46:57.000Achieving those ends will in turn require that we transform the investment function, as Keynes suggested, but in ways that make investment not only public, but democratically controlled.
00:47:05.000Freed from the constraints of scarcity economics, we will then serve the trickster god entropy.
00:47:10.000What he's talking about there is the idea that human beings like to work, and you're gonna have extra energy, so you just go make stuff.
00:47:14.000So instead of you going and working and innovating and making life better for other people, instead, I don't think this article in The Nation is far off the thinking of many people in the Democratic Party.
00:47:24.000Not only in the hunt for efficiency gains or in making whatever hand acts as our engineers dream up next, but also in the service of a variety of other ends, such as justice and sustainability, science and culture, and throwing parties to a new, better humanity will be ushered in through the collective is the idea here.
00:47:39.000I don't think this article in the nation is far off the thinking of many people in the Democratic Party.
00:48:10.000But the left sees work as a bad thing.
00:48:11.000They believe that if you had more leisure time, what you would really be spending that doing is stuff that doesn't... You wouldn't take drugs.
00:48:28.000So, that is why so many people seem pretty sanguine about the high rates of people dropping out of the economy.
00:48:33.000It's actually creating the utopia they seek, which is some people work a lot of hours and really hard to produce for everybody else, and then we redistribute all the gains.
00:48:44.000Now, some people see that as a violation of liberty principles.
00:48:46.000Some people see that, as I do, as a violation of basic human nature, which is that people need to work.
00:48:55.000And the notion that people expend extra leisure time in the most glorious of pursuits is generally untrue.
00:49:02.000There is truth to the old saying that idle hands are the devil's workshop.
00:49:07.000But according to the left, that's not right.
00:49:09.000Capitalism is bad because work is bad.
00:49:12.000And therefore, what we really need to do is grab the gains of capitalism and redistribute them across society so we should be cheering when people drop out of the workforce.
00:49:21.000And if you're feeling a little bit bad because inflation is up and because you have to pay a little bit more, understand that this is all in pursuit of a higher goal.
00:49:27.000This is all in pursuit of a higher end.
00:49:30.000And that higher end is a utopian system in which all of our basic needs are provided for and we can sit around the campfire and hang out with one another.
00:50:12.000All it's gonna cost you is a worse lifestyle in the here and now, fewer choices for your family, and a complete monopoly on how you live your life by the people who know best.
00:50:20.000Who, by the way, are so useless that they can go on vacation for two months and nobody even notices.
00:50:24.000Alrighty, before we wrap up the week, you know our friends over at Birchgold.
00:50:27.000They're some of our best sponsors and we really appreciate their advertising.
00:50:31.000They also have some interesting perspectives on the nature of the economic situation right now.
00:50:34.000Philip Patrick, a precious metal specialist over there, stopped by a little bit earlier this week.
00:50:54.000Thanks for having me. So let's talk about the situation with the economy right now. The Democrats are looking to blow an enormous amount of money into the economy. They're debating over whether they want to spend, you know, five trillion or four trillion or three trillion dollars.
00:51:05.000They've not addressed the debt ceiling. It's a precarious economic time for sure. And inflation is obviously headed the wrong way. What's going on? Yeah, lots going on in that respect.
00:51:16.000I mean, right now, with regards to the debt ceiling, it's pretty much deadlock.
00:51:20.000McConnell insists the Democrats right now take the hardest possible path to raising the debt ceiling, or the debt limit rather, and to do it by themselves.
00:51:32.000Last week they settled essentially on a short-term hike to keep the government limping along until December 3rd.
00:51:38.000And then we're going to go through the whole thing again, it appears.
00:51:42.000There's a simple explanation for the gridlock, I think.
00:51:44.000Republicans are refusing to sign a blank check for ongoing government and essentially Democratic spending.
00:51:52.000They're demanding some form of responsibility, and the Democrats aren't interested in collaborating on a responsible budget.
00:51:59.000Instead, they're demanding total control, and it's the essence of a standoff.
00:52:03.000To be clear, I don't expect the US to actually default.
00:52:08.000That would be the financial equivalent of Chernobyl.
00:52:11.000And I think eventually the Democrats will break down and raise the debt ceiling via budget reconciliation, essentially without a single Republican vote, which is what McConnell has been telling them to do since July.
00:52:24.000The big issue, I think, is one that you touched upon, right?
00:52:29.000Normally when the debt ceiling comes up, there's a negotiation, there's a balancing of fiscal responsibility and agreed upon necessary spending.
00:52:39.000This time we're talking about raising the debt ceiling and at the same time, massive amounts of spending, which is unsustainable and ultimately fuels inflation.
00:52:49.000The inflation that we are seeing right now is extraordinary.
00:52:51.000The August CPI report came in at 5.3%.
00:52:54.000Is it likely to get better or likely to get worse?
00:52:56.000Because we keep hearing from the Fed that it's temporary and then the temporary turns into not-so-temporary.
00:53:00.000And so they're in sort of not-so-temporary territory.
00:53:29.000The 5.3% number that the Fed throw at us, Wolf Richter calls it the lowest of global inflation measures.
00:53:37.000And even at this 5.3 that they're suggesting, that's a 30-year high.
00:53:43.000Most of us weren't making our own financial decisions 30 years ago.
00:53:47.000We have no comprehension of how this affects our finances.
00:53:51.000Remember this preferred measuring stick that the Fed use, it's the lowest of global because it gives essentially the least frightening results.
00:54:00.000If you measure inflation in the same way that the Federal Reserve did back in the 90s, the way that John Williams at Shadow Stats does, we look at 9% inflation today.
00:54:12.000And that's just factoring in things like food, energy, healthcare costs, things that used to be factored in.
00:54:18.000Because the Fed are keeping rates artificially low while continuing to pump money into the system, almost nothing today is offering a positive after-inflation yield, not even junk bonds.
00:54:31.000Investors are so desperate for some kind of safe haven for their money, so they're piling into riskier and riskier investments.
00:54:40.000Subsequently, we're seeing colossal asset bubbles, and some of them in strange places.
00:54:45.000Obviously, we're seeing in the stock market Uh, which is, uh, double the historic average.
00:54:51.000We have proud house prices up 20% in the last year.
00:54:54.000Um, even treasury bonds are trading, uh, three times their historic average.
00:55:00.000So people are going crazy spending millions of dollars on non fungible tokens on, on, on the blockchain pictures of rocks and images of, uh, of gorillas essentially is any escape valve from, from, from the dollar and currency.
00:55:14.000So, Philip, it doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon.
00:55:16.000Obviously, you've got the Biden administration that is essentially paying people to stay home while telling the vaxxed that they shouldn't go to work because they should be living in fear.
00:55:23.000And the unvaxxed, they can't go to work because if they go to work, then they'll be violating vaccine mandates.
00:55:27.000And so you have massive supply chain bottlenecks as well that makes it really difficult to see the prices decreasing on any of this stuff just naturally anytime over the course of the next few months.
00:56:39.000I think the key is to understand the issues in the climate and try and find an asset that's conducive for that climate and something with the ability to weather the storm.
00:56:49.000And that's where I think precious metals really come into play, right?
00:56:52.000They're very conducive for the problems that we have, right?
00:56:56.000Corrections in the markets, inflation, issues with currency.
00:57:00.000These problems, a big issue for anyone holding stocks and bonds in this climate, actually very conducive for safe haven assets like gold and silver.