Elizabeth Warren is the dumbest person you know. She wants to change capitalism in the 21st century, and she's got a plan to do it. Glenn explains why it's a good idea, and why it would benefit workers.
00:03:50.280And the idea that you're trying to make a company and its stock price benefit the workers is part of the reason we're in the problem that we're in.
00:04:19.060That's, again, every time a proposal like this happens, you have to hear it the right way, which is, you know, a new law is a new regulation.
00:04:28.420It's going to cost the business money, and they're going to have to deal with that.
00:04:32.120That is a—it's something that the left never likes to take into account.
00:04:36.420They always love to sit back and say that these things don't cost you anything.
00:05:57.140You would never be able to stop the spending.
00:06:00.040This is basically a way to backdoor reunionization.
00:06:03.460We all know that unions are getting hammered because they're terrible for the economy and because of, you know, there's also a recent Supreme Court decision you may have noticed.
00:06:12.280So instead, let's just put representatives of the workers and powers and positions of power.
00:06:18.640This is a longtime union dream that they're doing even harder than the unions did before, and they're trying to sell it as capitalism.
00:06:28.200And third, to cut down on the dark money that flows from corporations into politics, my bill would require 75% of directors and shareholders to approve of political contributions before they're spent.
00:06:46.520The left just finished swearing up and down that, you know, the Supreme Court ruling that just came out about how you can't force union members to make political donations that they don't agree with.
00:06:58.840And all those donations to unions went completely to the left.
00:07:02.680Now, now, after that stopped, now they want to stop companies from using their money to donate to politicians because half of it goes to Republicans.
00:10:12.600He's replaced by some teenager making $12,000.
00:10:15.680As boomers retire, especially as they retire in mass, it's only going to exaggerate that little quirk.
00:10:24.280So that doesn't mean that wages are actually stagnating.
00:10:27.840It means that statistically, it's sort of a function of older people retiring and younger people replacing them.
00:10:35.640There's also the idea that you're now getting paid in different ways than you did in the past.
00:10:40.660There's always been benefits associated with work, yes.
00:10:43.040But the cost of those benefits is rising a lot faster than wages.
00:10:48.740In other words, the money that should come in your paycheck, the money that you earn, instead goes to benefits that are more and more expensive.
00:10:56.720The costs to the company of health care, 401K matching, transit passes, if you get those, those have all risen about four and a half times as fast as wages.
00:11:08.020Now, to me, as a capitalist in a perfect world, as someone who believes in my ability to make decisions in my life, you'd get all your money that comes from your employer.
00:11:20.540And then you go buy what you want, including your own insurance, or you invest it as you like.
00:11:25.100But what's amazing is, the reason why that doesn't happen is because of people like Elizabeth Warren, progressives who believe that, you know, us little workers are too stupid to figure out how to spend our own money.
00:11:40.860If we trust the workers, they'll spend it all on golden corral and on shotguns and dune buggies.
00:12:05.640The other thing is, you know, the number of what you earn specifically isn't necessarily all that important.
00:12:13.360You know, to take a ridiculous example, if next year your boss offers you a dollar per year and cuts your pay to one dollar per year, but as a result of other economic changes, you're able to live the life of Leonardo DiCaprio.
00:12:34.240It's not that drastic, but I mean, in the 1930s, the amount of our disposable income we used on life's basics, think of like housing, clothing, food, gas, utilities, home furnishings, we spent 62% of our disposable income on all that stuff.
00:12:51.200It has fallen consistently at about the same rate to about 33%.
00:12:55.820So it's been cut in half, basically, the amount of money we spent on all of life's basics.
00:13:00.440And that fall has continued to go on when our wages were supposedly stagnating.
00:13:06.260As things get better and cheaper, it doesn't necessarily matter if the number's going up.
00:31:34.900By the way, it's Stu in for Glenn Beck. He's on vacation this week, back next week.
00:31:37.740888-727-BECK is our phone number, and at worldofstew on Twitter.
00:31:42.520And I saw this relationship sort of developing, and I tweeted out an observation that Trump is to Sessions as Michael Scott is to Toby Flenderson.
00:31:55.860Now, if you happen to be a fan of The Office, I think you understand that immediately.
00:32:01.640Michael Scott, the boss, literally despised Toby Flenderson and spent most of his time just torturing him about all sorts of things.
00:32:12.840He hates him with every fiber of his being at this point.
00:32:20.260And he really, like, wants him to leave under any circumstances.
00:32:24.660If he ever does leave, he'll celebrate it.
00:32:27.720And he wants him to leave, and he seems to be in charge of him, but he can't find a way to fire him.
00:32:38.180Which seems very odd in both situations.
00:32:43.660But when you really look at this, I think it plays out pretty well.
00:32:49.440First of all, you have this idea of just utter contempt.
00:32:54.120And this is a strange thing that's developed between Trump and Sessions.
00:33:00.280If you don't know, Jeff Sessions was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump.
00:33:05.740I mean, it seems like a zillion years ago, doesn't it?
00:33:08.480Steve Bannon and Sessions met together and decided that Trump would be the best vessel for what they believed America should be.
00:33:15.560They went to Trump with ideological agreement and said, let's bring this guy on board.
00:33:40.320And then, obviously, we've seen a little bit of a falling out.
00:33:44.840It's interesting because Sessions was still senator when, at the very beginning of the Trump administration, before he was confirmed and went into the cabinet.
00:33:56.340And he took 12 votes and voted with Trump on 100% of those votes.
00:34:01.000He has a perfect pro-Trump voting record for over 12 votes.
00:41:47.780But apparently not as much forest as we once had.
00:41:50.860Now, I was not aware of this, but we're working through the BBC's numbers here and the Australian
00:41:57.020Koala Foundation and trying to figure this out.
00:42:00.740If 85% of the world's forests are now gone, what does that mean historically for how much forest we had?
00:42:10.780Currently, we have about 4 billion hectares of forest.
00:42:14.700Now, I know you guys are constantly measuring things in hectares, but don't worry about it.
00:42:20.260You don't need to know what a hectare is.
00:42:21.5204 billion hectares of forest currently exist.
00:42:25.720So, to get to this number of 85%, one of the issues with that number is that for it to be true, sometime in history, all land on Earth would have to have been forests.
00:42:44.220Now, I'm pretty sure there's been different, you know, there's tundras and there's deserts and there's all sorts of different landscapes.
00:42:56.960I don't think in history all land had ever been forest.
00:43:15.540The other problem with this theory, because if 85% of our forests have disappeared, the other part of this theory is all land would have to be forest, but also all ocean would have to have been forests.
00:43:33.700Now, I'm not a historian, I'm not a geologist, but I am a thinker.
00:43:43.480And it seems to me that the oceans weren't at any point in our history covered in forest.
00:43:50.860But see, there's a problem with that too.
00:45:46.380By the way, can we say how paranoid Republicans are about illegal immigration?
00:45:51.760That being said, let's get back to the environment which is going to kill you in a few years.
00:45:55.820Your kids, they're all going to die in a giant cataclysmic wipeout that Mother Nature is going to take revenge on them for, for your actions, for your SUV.
00:46:38.460John McCain has passed away, as you likely heard, over the weekend.
00:46:44.720He had fought brain cancer and, you know, hadn't been to Washington in quite a while to be able to do what he loved.
00:46:53.940He loved being a senator, and he did it for decades.
00:46:58.820He was, as you probably are aware, a very, you know, well-decorated war hero who endured way more than I will ever do for anybody when he was tortured at Vietnam and came back to, of course, go into the government.
00:47:20.860And, you know, there's, we can get into his whole, his whole history as far as, as far as his service in government, which, you know, a lot of times, frankly, I was not a huge fan of.
00:47:34.160But just as we would mourn any, you know, soldier who took their time and, and risked their life for us, whenever someone like that passes away, it's a sad day.
00:47:45.700And John McCain, you know, was, was highly appreciated by so many when it comes to his medical, or excuse me, his military service.
00:47:54.860Even if you just look at that, it's a, it's a, you know, it's a real loss.
00:48:01.160You know, as a senator, as I said, you know, wasn't a huge fan of a lot of his policies, but he did do it for a long time.
00:48:09.320And he was there, you know, doing what he thought was right.
00:48:12.300And certainly he, he did vote, you know, a way that I liked on, on, on many occasions, just also many that he didn't.
00:48:20.240But, you know, policy is policy and politics are politics.
00:48:22.900You know, I think the best way to look at John McCain is the way his family is looking at him.
00:48:26.200And if you see the way his family is handling it as, as well as, as humanly possible and respecting, and, you know, missing their dad and, you know, their husband.
00:48:34.640It's, it's, you know, you could tell it's, it really hurts.
00:48:39.440These are situations nobody wants to deal with.
00:48:41.540And when they announced, of course, that they were going to stop treatment, it was incredibly upsetting for, for the family and for, you know, anybody who knew him.
00:48:51.660We, we of course see the ugliness pop up almost right away when something like this happens.
00:48:57.680Uh, we see it immediately from, uh, from social media now.
00:49:04.260We no longer have to wait for the dumb politician to start trashing them the next day.
00:49:09.480You get it right away on, on social media.
00:49:12.100Uh, some of the tweets, uh, in response here, John McCain heavily promoted the lies that led to the Iraq war.
00:49:18.720He championed the NATO bombing of Libya.
00:49:21.020He supported and armed the jihadists destroying Syria.
00:49:23.980He played a role in bringing neo-Nazis to power in Ukraine and backed Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen.
00:50:43.660I mean, he obviously didn't get along with McCain, you know, he recognizes that he did something for the country, but he's not a huge fan, obviously.
00:50:49.940I mean, they've had a long-time rivalry, so he tweets out something, and he puts his picture on it, and it's not really talking about a service as much.
00:50:56.120It's just like, hey, I hope his family feels better about this.
00:50:58.480And now, CNN's spending multiple segments on it this morning.
00:51:02.120What should Trump have tweeted as far as condolences?
00:51:06.580Do we live in a world where that matters at all?
00:51:08.220I mean, people telling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that she craps the bed, she doesn't know the facts, her credibility has plummeted, we know you're just controlled opposition, you, my dear, are no progressive, it would have been better if you had not said a word, John McCain is dead, one devil less on the planet, all of hell rejoices.
00:51:32.080You know, it doesn't get any worse than that.
00:51:37.140It's interesting, though, you know, because she talks about the friendship with Kennedy, and that was a real problem, you know, when it comes to his politics, in my opinion, where he did go across the aisle so much.
00:51:48.720McCain-Kennedy was a great example, that bill.
00:51:51.460McCain-Feingold, another great example.
00:51:54.660You know, things he tried to promote to, you know, move the country in a way I think was wrong.
00:52:02.980But at least we did have, you know, we did have some tributes for him.
00:52:06.840Hillary Clinton had one, and of course, obviously couldn't, this is something I found as a real theme this weekend.
00:52:13.480Listen to Hillary Clinton's eulogy, if you will, of Senator John McCain.
00:52:18.140He did believe in the institution, and he knows, he knew that the Senate couldn't work if we didn't work together.
00:52:27.300I think it was heartbreaking to him that, as he said in the speech he gave right before he voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act, that we need to cooperate.
00:52:40.360We need to learn how to trust each other again and do better to serve the people who elected us.
00:52:45.800And, you know, he was so typically John in those remarks, because he said, stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on radio and TV and the Internet to hell with them.
00:52:57.000They don't want anything done for the public good.
00:52:59.680He really understood in the marrow of his bones what it meant to be an American and how important it was for us to, yes, disagree and differ.
00:53:11.180But at the end of the day, to come together, to work together, to trust each other, to get things done.
00:53:31.580He never got along with talk radio, and people on talk radio didn't particularly like his politics all that much.
00:53:37.380But, of course, this is what they love about John McCain, right?
00:53:42.480Like, they don't love, you know, they'll talk about the military service a little bit, but when it comes to his politics, what they like about him is when he agreed with them.
00:53:53.380Hillary Clinton thinks talk radio is a problem, and the fact that John McCain agreed with Hillary Clinton is why Hillary Clinton respects John McCain.
00:54:21.720And you might say that was a great speech, and it's part of American history.
00:54:25.480It's part of the American tradition that we have politicians who will cede power, they will give up when they lose, they will concede, and those things are all great.
00:54:35.940And, you know, as far as, you know, 99% of these races end that way.
00:54:41.420And he gave a nice speech about coming together, but again, the moment they liked about John McCain was him saying, come together behind Barack Obama.
00:54:51.220Sure, we'll have our disagreements, but come together behind our president.
00:54:57.520And that's not because, they wouldn't like that.
00:55:00.480You think they're going to go back and say Hillary Clinton's best moment was, he said, come, she said, come together behind Donald Trump when she lost?
00:55:08.700You think they're going to look back at the legacy like that when Hillary Clinton passes away, God forbid?
00:55:15.060And they're going to look back at it the same way.
00:55:16.680Here's the other one they always bring up.
00:55:18.260This is the other clip that they love.
00:55:19.740This is from John McCain during his 2008 battle with Barack Obama at one of his town halls.
00:57:12.240And when you, um, 538 puts together something they called the Trump score, which is a way to combine how you vote with the president and how your demographics of the, of your voting populace should affect that.
00:57:27.660So if you're a, you know, they give, um, if you're in Maine, you're Susan Collins, right?
00:57:32.100And everybody's Democrat there and you're somehow a Republican in office, they should say, they give you a predicted percentage that you would vote with the president.
00:57:40.000Which would be lower because, you know, you're, you're, you're, you don't want to necessarily, you're a moderate, right?