June 18, 2024 • 56 mins
In episode 1694, Jack and Miles are joined by Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps and author of Usual Cruelty, Alec Karakatsanis, to discuss... Prisoners Need “Stamps” For Email? Awful Crime Reporting and more!
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This Welch's fucking cocktail ship is So it's just so
weird because you can tell like there's like a nostalgia
play here.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, it's like they can look exactly like the fucking
Welsh's ship that I used to drink in, like.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
A little fucking weird, Like when are they gonna like
I feel like we're right around the corner from Juicy Juice,
Like there's gonna be like juicy juice malt liquor. Yeah,
Capri remember that ship? Oh my god. You know if
they did a fucking Son.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Destroy with Caprice Son and trans Caprice Son vodka bone
marrow transplant.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's what we need. But I mean, like you can
just tell like they're just sort of using these like
because the Sunny Delight I think was the canary in
the coal mine. When Sunny d came out with their
vodka thing, I was like, this is I'm we're pretty squeeze.
Ites is gonna have to be next?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
And guess what vodka confused gushers? I say, Oh, like,
I mean do they have they probably have CBD gummies
that are gushers?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Right? Oh maybe probably?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I mean they go even the one that I meant
to say when I said zb I'm hip and I
do the drugs.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I mean I remember like in the early days of
like sort of like weed edibles, there would be like
the you know, Ganja, Nestley, crunch bar, like kind of
evoking these old brands and stuff like that I actually
haven't seen. Is like very specifically associated with little children. Yeah,
well just like preschool snack time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Their ads were like straight up like a kid who
couldn't pronounce all their words, being like I like grape juice,
wepe juice. Yeah, they'll be like and you won't be
able to talk either after you have five of our
vodka twenty.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Years Illo, grape juice, Way, weep juice, waste sit off,
grape juice.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Off that Welch's Vodka Transfusion. Hello the Internet, and welcome
to Season three forty three, Episode two of Dark Daily's
guys production of My Heart Radio. This is the podcast
where we take a deep dive in New American share
Couchesteni's Tuesday, June eighteenth, twenty twenty four, Happy birthday to
(02:31):
my wife. Oh okay, no time for that.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Six times we don't have time six eighteen three sixes
the devil equals eighteenth, the eighteenth day of June. Okay,
you see I'm doing here with the saches breaks up
into twenty four, which also when you turn the sixes
upside down or not or six is equal rolling in
that six folk on boom and everybody.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Everybody says riding down anyway.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's also national oh, national spurs Day, National gold fishing Day. Okay,
there's a reason we're speaking this fast, folks, don't worry,
and it's not because run that Biden crank.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Because yeah, I just got I just got that State
of the Union good good truck and.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Biden Biden back to get us real fucking amps right now.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
My name is Jack O'Brien, a here Potato's O'Brien, and
I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co
host mister Miles Bred.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yes, sin is Miles Grace.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
We get to speed to like trying to be like
Joe Biden doing the State of the Union address. It's
also the Lord of lankersam aka the Showgun with no
Gun because I got no gun problems.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Miles Gray faint.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
That was great, Thank you for being here, and Miles Gray,
we are thrilled to be joined by the executive director
of Civil Rights Corp, which is a nonprofit dedicated to
fighting systemic injustice. Has been a civil rights lawyer, a
public defender, named twenty sixteen's Trialaler of the Year by
Public Justice, author of several books, the incredibly compelling Usual Cruelty,
(03:55):
which we've had him on to talk about before. He's
got one coming mate this year. Most importantly, a great
follow on Twitter and all the social media.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Is just kidding, that's my most important.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
But please welcome back to the show. The brilliant, the
talented Alec Hurricanzone. What's up about you?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Oh, thank you for being here. And the reason we're
talking like auctioneers is because we only have you for
forty five minutes, so we wanted to get right into it.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
You all sound great, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Man, repped up man, trying just getting through it, just
getting through it.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Just some people from buying White House and they they've
got some Daddy's little helpers is.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
What they call him.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
No, it's amazing to have you back. You know, we
usually do search history underrated, overrated, but I think I
think we can just skip that unless there's something you
desperately want to get off your chest that you think
is overrated or underrated, or something from your search history.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
I don't have anything I'm dying to tell everybody. I
don't think.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Okay, okay, good, Then we'll ask the questions. We'll ask
the questions here, Alec. All right, So last time we
checked in with you, there was This was a little
over a year ago, or maybe actually a little less
than a year ago, but there was a lot of
talk in the mainstream media still about how crime was
up because everyone defunded the police. And there's been an
(05:22):
emerging story that crime has been plummeting much much less
popular story with the mainstream media. And I'm pretty sure
there hasn't been like a corresponding like the police were
never defunded, so like their theory of the case seems
to have been exposed as bullshit. So presumably the mainstream
(05:46):
media has been flooded with articles explaining what they got
wrong and taking a long hard look at their methodology.
How are you seeing these latest crime statistics where crime
has gone down?
Speaker 4 (05:59):
I think it's first to just take a step back
and understand that whether we're talking about last year or
the year before the year before that. Overall levels of
police reported crime in this country are near historic loves.
So even when there was all that frenzy about retail
theft and shoplifting or car theft or violent crime or robberies,
(06:22):
you know, we were still at a stage in history
where all of those things were were extraordinarily low relative
to you know, what they were, let's say in the
nineties or or in the early two thousands. And it's
also important to understand that when you hear about crime
statistics in the news, it's really only seven or so
(06:45):
crimes that the police track and report to the FBI.
And even then most people don't understand that, Like forty
percent of police departments don't even report that data to
the FBI. So a lot of it is just like
FBI statistical estimates based on the police reporting like a
few what they call index crimes. So what is left
out of crime statistics, Well, almost all the crimes committed
(07:08):
by police themselves, almost all the crimes committed by jail
and prison guards, almost all white collar crime. Right, So
while you hear a lot about theft in the news
and retail theft and shoplifting, what don't the police report,
and what doesn't FBI report when it's talking about crime
rates tax evasion or wage theft. You know, and wage
(07:31):
theft is about fifty billion dollars a year, So that
right there is three times all of the crime that
FBI is reporting is property crime combined. And so you
just have to understand the way the media talks about
crime stistics is really messed up on like a lot
of different levels.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, wage theft and tax evasion being two crimes that
the general populace, the readership, the intended audience of the
mainstream media are the victims of Those are the ones
that get ignored, The ones that that's not breathlessly reported,
are the ones where Procter and Gamble is, you know,
(08:06):
is the victim, and that's that that's treated as like
the more important crime.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
And I think this is really important lesson for people,
Like you can really mislead people by giving them a
few anecdotes. So for example, if you have like a
week of news stories, even if the anecdotes you're you're
giving are true, like you report on seven true examples
of shoplifting from Walgreens every night, you give the people
the impression that shoplifting is a huge problem. It might
(08:34):
be increasing even, Right. It's kind of like if I
compiled a video of every shot Michael Jordan missed in
his career and put.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Them all together.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah, you could create the impression that Michael Jordan is
a terrible basketball player just by taking all of the
shots which he actually did miss right, if you don't
show the other shots, right, And what the news is
doing is something very similar. It's not showing the public
any of the tax evasion, or any of the wage steps,
or any of the pollution violations. Right. There's one hundred
thousand violations that we know about of the Clean Water
(09:06):
Act every year. It causes enormous death, cancer, rotting teeth,
children suffering from a variety of different preventable illnesses, et cetera.
Those are not treated as urgent. And so there's this,
and they're not reported on the daily news. And so
just through through its reporting of anecdote, even if those
anecdotes are actually happening and true, the news can distort
(09:28):
our much deeper truths about like what kinds of activity
is really harmful to us? And shoplifting is a good example,
because tax evasion is about a trillion dollars a year,
so that's you know, sixty times every property crime the
FBI reports combined, And yet everyone is freaking out of
our shoplifting and nobody is thinking about tax evasion, right.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I feel like the shoplifting thing is still like vibrating
through like my childhood neighborhood. Like there are people who
like lived in the neighborhood I grow u that are
still harping about like, well, you know, there's nothing at
CBS anymore because all the shoplifting and like we need
to have like a neighborhood meeting about this. And it's like, dude,
this is like a two year old conservative take on
crime that you're like now being like it's happening, and
(10:14):
we it's the scores of our community at the moment.
But like, I'm curious for this stuff that you're talking about,
Like where is there like a centralized place where you
can see like where like DA's or something are reporting
things like wage theft or like in a centralized place
so I can be like, well, what about this stuff?
Or is that more just having to be really vigilant
about what is actually coming out of the courts and
(10:35):
things like that.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, one of the big scandals of
our time is that the agencies who are supposed to
be investigating a lot of these crimes have been completely decimated. So,
for example, the federal antitrust regulators have been completely decimated.
They're far fewer regulators even looking into whether companies are
(10:57):
doing price fixing and doing all kinds of illegal stuff
that drives up the costs of goods for consumers, et
cetera than there were forty years ago. We have fewer
people investigating that stuff now. And the same is true
with the so called War on drugs, right they shifted
a huge percentage of federal agents who were working on
things like white collar crime, fraud, corporate fraud, tax of asion,
(11:19):
et cetera, and they shifted government resources toward the drug war.
And so there's just fewer people actually even looking for
the crimes that are committed by wealthy people. And that
means that unfortunately, a lot of the crimes that are
happening just like aren't even brought into the legal system
at all, and so they're not being reported by prosecutors,
(11:40):
not being reported by the police at all, and so
we rely on nonprofit organizations really good investigative journalism. Some
times the government will will itself investigate in some ways
that shed some light on some of these things, and
you have to cobble it all together.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah it's yeah, I mean he realized just how much
of that is just to kind of emphasize what, you know,
sort of the status quo wants to even define as crime.
It's like, well, don't look at that stuff, because then
all these other people get caught up in our perception
of what criminality is, and we're absolutely don't want to
do that. It's to actually just be like, no, no, no,
it's the shoplifters. It's these kinds of things that are
(12:18):
big capital see crime that we need to worry about.
When yeah, so like everyone's saying, these are the ones,
like these other things are the things that affect the
everyday person on a much deeper level.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Were they locked up old spice at CBS? Also, we're
the victims there. I do not want to wait fifteen
extra seconds to get my old spice dewd ran out
of the plastic case.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
But it embarrassing to say I want.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
To us a victim anyway.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, oh yeah, we're just gonna pretend you didn't say that,
because what about acts? And it's a combination of acts
and old spice.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I mix it together. It's a home blend.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
The axe is the new, the old spice is the old,
and that's why I smell great to myself. Not everybody agrees,
but yeah, it's a great how what crimes we talk about,
what crimes we actually report, is a great way to
understand what our society actually values. And it seems like
(13:15):
this is yet another place where we find out that
we value corporations and corporate earning more than individual human
beings and individual human lives.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
But I think it's important to understand that the people
who tell you that they are like tough on crime,
law and order people, what those people are actually meaning
by that is they are sort of ruthlessly punishing some
crimes committed by some people some of the time and
gleefully ignoring other crimes committed by other people at other times.
(13:50):
So like in general, when you hear someone who's tough
on crime and law and order, what they mean is
like they want to enforce a lot of very minor
crimes against the worst people in our society, and they
want to create conditions under which wealthy people can violate
the law with virtual impunity. That's what law and order
actually has meant in the US political system for the
(14:11):
last fifty years.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Right right, That kind of like what you're talking about
sort of remind me another thing you posted about about
representing these kids in Flint and just sort of how
again another example of like just sort of really going
after vulnerable people in society for other people to make
a ton of money, where like these kids, and how
courts have been set up to sort of keep children
(14:34):
from visiting parents that are awaiting trial and things like that.
Can you talk a little bit about that case and
sort of what's happening there.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Yeah, so all over the country over the last ten years,
and I want to say up front, this happened well
before the COVID pandemic, but you know, over the last
ten years or so, many hundreds and maybe even thousands.
It's really hard because it's hard to count, but many
hundreds of jails at least have eliminated the ability of
children to at their parents. And we started getting complaints
(15:02):
about this from our clients all over the country, saying
I'm not able to hold my child's hand. We got
complaints from children saying I want to look into my
mom's eyes or or hug my dad. So we started
looking into what's going on, and we started looking at
the contracts that these jails are signing. It turned out
that starting a little over ten years ago, there was
(15:24):
all these contracts with jail, the jails and private equity
owned multi billion day.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
We have to have a drink because they're the scourge
of this country.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
It's really remarkable. Honestly, when I talked to even other
people in private equity, nobody can quite believe what I'm
about to tell you. But the two largest jail and
prison telecommunications companies are owned by private equity, and they've
created a situation where sheriffs get up what is essentially
(16:06):
a kickback to ban children from visiting their parents in jail.
How does this work? Well, the theory is if you
stop kids from having free in person visits with their parents,
families will be so desperate that they'll spend more money
on phone and video calls into the jail. And of course,
these companies negotiate monopoly contracts with each sheriff and each
(16:30):
jail to charge exorbitant rates per minute for phone and
video calls.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
So the rates are like those nine hundred numbers from
the eighties. They're like crazy, the amount that they just
gouge people. That's unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
And keep in mind that most people who are in
jail in the United States are awaiting trial. They're not convicted,
they're presumed innocent. And because the United States and the
Philippines are the only two countries in the world that
use a for profit commercial money bail industry tree to
determine who's in jail and who's not, in much of
the country, most of the people that we're talking about
(17:06):
in these jails are only in jail because they can't
pay a certain amount of cash bail to get released.
It not because any judge has found them to be
dangerous or risk of flight or anything like that. So
we already are taking the poorest people in our society,
and then we're taking the children of the poorest people
in our society, and we're saying to them, we're gonna
(17:28):
jail you because you're poor, and then we're gonna prevent
your children from visiting you, and prevent you from visiting
your mom and your dad for free. And if you
want to see them or or talk to them. You're
gonna have to pay exorbitant rates to do sort of
a really really shitty equivalent of FaceTime or phone call.
(17:50):
And you know, it has all these glitches, it freezes,
it's not private, it's all surveiled and recorded. So now
we've got these huge databases of the faces and voices
of hundreds of thousands of children across the country that
can be monetized. It can be AI algorithms can be
trained on these children's faces and voices that can then
(18:10):
be sold. We don't have a good sense of what
they're doing with all this, but it's all part of
a scheme to kind of profit off of family separation.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, it's like in some places too, Like aren't there
like sort of like tablets that these companies create, So
they're like, yes, if you want to download music, like
that's another fee we can collect. Like they've found a
way to sort of like monetize sort of all of
this information that goes in and out from prisoners.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
And a lot of people don't know that. You know,
people have heard of private prisons, but what people don't
realize is public jails and prisons everything in them essentially
is now privatized for profit. So there's tablets if you
want to if you want to watch something or or
read an email, you have to pay for stamps to
send an email. A lot of places they're not even
(18:55):
getting physical mail anymore, so you can't even send your
mommy or dad a card or a letter. They get
scanned and then and you have to pay to review
them on your tablet that they give you food, toilet paper, soap,
medical care. You know, you want to see a nurse
or a doctor, you've got to pay for it.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
The entire system here is, you know, they don't give
you blankets. It's very very cold. If you want an
extra blanket, you've got to pay for it. Essentially, you know,
prisons in jails are huge cash cows or local state
and county governments and for the companies that are sort
of parasitic on these governments. And so we're representing an
(19:35):
amazing group of children in Michigan who are trying to
make a very simple argument. And that argument is that
in our society, under our constitution, and given our history
as a civilization and as a country, children have the
right to hug their parents. Children have the right to
(19:57):
be around their parents. They have the right to hold
their hand, they have the right to talk to them,
and if the government wants to take away that right,
it has to have really good reasons. So maybe there
are good reasons and in any particular case, and but
the government can't just ban all children from visiting their parents,
and so exactly, and that's what these kids. These kids
(20:20):
are really courageous and it was a real honor. A
couple of weeks ago, I was in court with my
colleagues and we were arguing the case against the telecom
companies and the sheriff, and the courtroom was just packed
with kids, and packed with elderly people too, because you know,
another sort of silent thing that happens a lot in
our society is that older people who's whose own children
(20:43):
are incarcerated as adults, who depend on their children to
take care of them in their life, to you know,
who are getting who may be relatively lonely, who may
need help navigating whether it's how to sign up for
health care or how to understand things that are happening.
Like there's a lot of older people too who who
are really harmed by the inability to communicate with their
(21:06):
loved ones and they're jailed for a few months or
for years anyway. So there's a lot of older people
that showed up too, saying we have this right too.
It's not just it's not just children, it's it's families
really have the right to communicate with each other, and
if you're gonna take away that right, you better have
really good reasons.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, it's wild too, Like I was just reading that
one of the like one of the Platinum equity one
of these private equity firms that is backing another one
of these telecoms companies that deal with prisons eventive. It's
like that guy who owns that who runs that firm,
is the guy who owns the Detroit Pistons. And it's
just wild to see, like how people in our society are, like,
(21:44):
it's the it's the great owner of our beloved basketball
team who's profiting off of this like heinous industry at
the moment, it's really it's like dystopia. It's just like
so yeah, and it's just so right in front of
your face. Yeah yeah, And to the idea that it's like, yeah,
we're going to commodify the desire of families that their
need to communicate with each other through this already already
(22:06):
exploitative system that we've created to extract even more money
from people.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Let's take a quick break and we'll come back. We'll
keep talking about this. We'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
So yeah, oh yeah, So I was just saying, so alec,
I know, like there's only like a handful of states,
right that have actually done away with this system where
it's like, actually, no, we need we can't. This can't
be a thing that people are profiting off of. Like
I know, I think Minnesota was maybe one of the
more recent states to say, like, we're doing away with
this system. Is this is kind of I'm imagining that
(22:46):
is sort of the at least that is the path
towards progress, is for the states to like sort of
outlaw this practice within their own prison systems.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
I think there are a few things at different levels.
So first of all, people like that owner of the
Detroit Pistons should not be profiting off of monetizing human contact.
And it's been alarming, honestly to see the silence of
the NBA and a lot of the players around this.
I'm not sure how many of the players know about it,
and that one of the goals here is is to
(23:18):
you know, make sure that we're talking about these issues
openly and that people should be talking about these issues
so that we can make social decisions collectively about what
kind of policies we want. And so I think to
answer your question about what kind of policies we want,
like you know, I think at different levels of generality,
these policies could be Yes. Of course, companies shouldn't be
(23:42):
profiting off of monopoly priced, exorbitant phone and video calls
for people in jail in prison. So there are a
lot of cities in particular around the country that are
starting to make calls free. There are some state prison
systems that are that are making calls free. There's an
organization called Worth Rises that is leading a lot of
that advocacy and they're really great. But at a deeper level,
(24:04):
we have to be asking much more difficult questions about
how did this system of incarceration get so big? Right?
I mean, this country is putting black people in jail
cells at six times the rate of South Africa at
the height of apartheid. You know, we're jailing all people
in the US like six times more than we did
even just fifty years ago. And so when you do that,
(24:27):
there's a lot of opportunity to make money, a lot
of people's jobs start depending on it. And one of
the consequences of this is that every single year, several
million kids have a mom or a dad or a
parent who are incarcerated. And as a society, we have
not reckoned with the incredible effects that has in the short,
(24:51):
medium and long term on trauma, on child development, on
future crime, on future economic possibilities, etcetera, mental health. And
so I think a deeper reform is asking much more
profound questions like why are all these families being separated
in the first place, Are there really good reasons that
(25:13):
these parents are in jail, that these children are being jailed,
that these families are being separated, or are there other
ways that we can address underlying problems that actually don't
involve family separation. So one of our goals with our
case is not just eliminating the profit hearing and allowing
free visits, et cetera, et cetera, but it's actually thinking
about what kinds of government policies are better for families,
(25:35):
are better for public health than mass incarceration, right.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, question we're still wrestling with. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Are we seeing any positive like progressive reforms to policing
and criminal justice around the country that you feel kind
of encouraged by? I know there were, you know, some
initial ideas a Denver program that route nine to one
one calls to an unarmed response team, like when the
(26:05):
potential offense was not violent. Are you what are you
hearing that is actually kind of giving you hope in
terms of just reform to this horrific system.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
I don't want to sugarcoat it. We're at a pretty
bleak time because both the Democratic Party and Republican Party
have embraced this copaganda kind of fear mongering punishment is
the answer to everything mantra, and so as a result,
the environment for reform has become really poisoned. But I think,
(26:42):
without being too pollyannish, I think there are some really
incredible things happening that are very exciting to me. At
least Number one, you have to understand the incarceration rate
has gone down significantly in the last ten years. I
think we're at a moment where there are a lot
of people that want to start incarcerating more people again.
But you know, the incarceration rate has gotten down at
(27:02):
least ten percent overall, So that's a couple hundred thousand
people that were imprisoned who are not now. There's been
some really profound beneficial effects on poor families and black
families because of that, and we can't, you know, we
shouldn't gloss over that. Even though the rhetoric and the
(27:23):
narrative is getting a lot worse, and the Democrats and
President Biden are proposing one hundred thousand new police and
massive increases in police surveillance and border patrol and the
militarization of police, and things are getting relatively bleak. But
the movement to reduce the size and power of punishment
(27:43):
bureaucracy and the company's profiting off it over the last
ten years has had some successes. Another success is we've
seen in a number of places reforms to the cash
bail system. There are you know, cities like Los Angeles.
There are places like Californi, generally Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey,
(28:03):
New York is a great example. Dramatic increases in pre
trial release, reduction in the use of cash to determine
who's incarcerated. And so we are seeing, like, you know,
hundreds of thousands of people who would have been detained
because they're poor every year in the United States who
are now being released. And that's another thing to be
really encouraged by.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
For people who aren't familiar with the cash bail system.
I mean, the people are held because they don't have
access to money like that, that's straight up. You are
jailed because you're poor in a lot of places in
the country. And there's been a pushback against that. That
is it sounds like we're seeing some results.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So that's great.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
Yeah, and there's a lot of propaganda about it, right,
So we know from this is one of the most
rigorously studied areas in the criminal law. We know that
releasing more people prior to trial actually reduces crime because
when you jail people for even a few days or weeks,
they lose their jobs, they interrupt their mental health medication,
they sometimes lose their kids, they lose their housing, and
(29:11):
so when you destabilize someone's life, you actually make them
more likely to commit crime. So if you want to
reduce crime, you actually need to be reducing the use
of pre trial jailing. And so we're seeing that and
in some of our cases. For example, our case challenging
the misdemeanor money bail system in Houston, Texas has released
over one hundred thousand people of the lasts for seven years.
(29:31):
And researchers from around the country and Duke University, University
of Houston, and other places are studying that University of
Pennsylvania and what they're showing is remarkable. Not only has
the county saved tens of millions of dollars and the
economy has saved hundreds of millions of dollars, but crime
is going down as a result of the decision to
just stop jailing people in low level cases because they
(29:53):
can't pay one hundred and two hundred bucks.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Meanwhile, the thing that I feel like i've heard is
catch and release these li role activists DA's are, you know,
contributing to the a rise in crime. So that's great
to hear. I just wish it was being more widely reported.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
Yeah, it's like climate SciTE denial. There's a whole industry
for decades that was relatively successful, led by the petrochemical
industry that so doubt over policies to reduce emissions, and
we're seeing the same thing with the bail industry, and
police and police unions and punishment bureaucrats generally, because if
you dramatically reduce the people in incarcerated pre trial, you
(30:32):
actually do something much more profound. You take away a
lot of the leverage that the system has to get
people to plead guilty, because most of the guilty pleas
in this country are caused by people being incarcerated and
just desperate to get out right, so they come to
court and they're given a deal, like, if you plead
guilty today, you won't investigate your case, you won't get
(30:53):
a lawyer to fight it. You know, you won't you know,
get a trial in front of jurors, but you will
get out up today and you will owe us a fine.
And this is how the system turns.
Speaker 5 (31:04):
Right.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
But if you can get people out right away and
they can fight their case, a lot of people don't
want to plead guilty because it turns out that the
police and prosecutors can't prove a large percentage of the
cases that they bring, and so the people that actually
fight their cases have pretty good results. We're seeing like
if you look at Houston what used to be, you know,
(31:25):
eighty four percent of people pleading guilty in the median
of three days in misdemeanor cases. Now, in those same
low level misdemeanor cases, only about a third of people
are getting convicted after they're arrested because they're out and
they can investigate their cases and it turns out like
the cops didn't have strong evidence against them, or the
prosecutor can't possibly prosecute all these cases. So I think
(31:46):
it's just it's important to understand that there are kind
of downstream consequences to things like whether we jail people
pre trial or not.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah. Right. And I guess also, while we're talking about
copaganda in that whole the media's role in that. I
you had a really interesting thread, Like I said, we'll
have to talk about the New York Times, which is
one of your favorite topics on Twitter, and one of
my favorite things to see you tweet about was Nicholas
Christoph's really wacky column about immigration, where it's like it's
(32:16):
okay when I did it, but now I'm thinking maybe
not so much for other people. And like this is
kind of on the heels of like you're seeing articles
about like, yeah, democrats agree that something had to happen
over at the border. But like, you know what, but
the asylum thing maybe not a great not a great moment.
This Nicholas christoph like column almost makes it feel like
(32:38):
it's like, hey, liberal, it's okay if we're just a
little bit racist this time, you know, like it's that's okay,
Like have you I mean, like right now, I think
it's become such a huge issue talking about immigration, especially
with the election coming up in Biden. You know, whether
he's moving to the right or just doing what any
person in power does to maintain the status quo, that
(33:00):
it completely a different debate or observation, But like, how
do you see this conversation sort of moving given that
you have people like you know, Christoff at the New
York Times sort of writing this kind of nonsense that
just sort of obscures like what the issues are and
like maybe what America's actual role is in changing immigration
and how to create a little bit more equity outside
(33:20):
of our own borders.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Yeah, I mean, I think Christoff is obviously a very
silly person, but I think it's important to you know,
you can learn a lot by looking at what kinds
of opinions appear in the New York Times. Because the
role of the New York Times is to get educated, wealthy,
generally liberal minded people who want to think of themselves
(33:44):
as well informed and well meaning, to get them to
support stuff that is extremely violent and contrary to their
values and contrary to evidence a lot of the time,
and unjustifiable really, And so there's sort of layers and
layers of propaganda that The Times kind of spews that
I try to dissect in helpful and practical ways on
(34:08):
social media and obviously in the Copaganda book that I'm
publishing in a few months. But I think just to
start with christophin immigration, this is an area that has
been widely studied. There's a really important study that came
out last year from Oxford in the UK which showed
that when liberal and center left political parties adopt the
(34:32):
rhetoric and even the policies of the right wing on immigration,
they actually lose votes, they become less popular, they do
worse in elections. That's a really profound I think it
rings true, obviously, but they've quantified and studied this, and
you know, one of the things that this means is
(34:52):
when you've got someone like Biden who who is adopting
more and more outrageous kind of policies and immigration that
are more and more indistinguishable with the far right is advocating.
It's very disorienting and confusing for a lot of voters.
And for voters who are persuaded by all of that,
(35:14):
what the research shows is that they're gonna if they're
persuaded by that and they like that, they're going to
vote for the real thing, not the political party of
the person who they think is approximating that thing. And
also a lot of people who would be excited about
in organizing for Biden lose the energy and the momentum
to fight for him if he is trying to be
(35:37):
a bad approximation of the far right. And so this
general set of studies, which is not just studying the
US but studies center left political parties across Europe, is
a really important insight and I think it helps to
explain why the Democrats have been so unsuccessful over the
(35:59):
last couple of tamescades when they try to play into
the underlying mythologies and narratives of the far right. So
I think it's a really bad strategy for the Democrats.
If you care about Democrats winning, it's a really bad
strategy to sort of like validate the myths like immigrants
are hurting our you know, depressing our wages and and
(36:22):
costing us jobs and all these things.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Christas say, right, yeah, they're actually good for the economy
and less likely to commit crime than other people.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
But yeah, I digress.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
No, I mean, but like that's the thing, Like, by
by adopting these policies like Christoph Biden others, they they validate.
They make people think that these right wing talking points
must be true or else why would these self professed
liberals be doing this. And so it not only like
makes it harder for people to get excited about voting
for Biden and pushes people towards the right, but it
(36:56):
also validates the underlying arguments the right wing is making
in people's minds.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, this quote, in particular from your kind of thread
on Christoph you said, for many liberals, the destruction wrought
by global capitalism, it's an equality, it's starvation, it's ecological degradation,
it's war, it's authoritarian corruption, et cetera, is taken as
a given. Like that feels right, Like, it feels like
(37:22):
a lot of the so called liberal perspectives that I
hear on social media or in the mainstream media. They're
basically conceding a lot of the shit that like far
right people are saying. So like, how are you going
to get any enthusiasm or energy behind your messaging when
(37:43):
you're basically like, yeo, they what they're saying is basically right, though,
like we just like are only pretending it's not. But like,
I don't know, It's like I always talk about how
they they treat idealism and progressivism as childish essentially, like
it feels like their overall strategy.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
I think one of the most powerful forms of propaganda
is the type of propaganda that makes us feel like
a better world is not possible, right, And that's when
when you when you can achieve hopelessness in a population,
you can do a lot of things to them. And
so the theme underlying a lot of what Christoph has
(38:25):
been writing recently, which you know, unfortunately now people send
me because I've written these threats, so I've got to
read a lot of this.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Christ just dropped, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
And you know, it's like watching a small child emerge
from the wilderness having ever been you know, or having
been raised by right wing wolves. He he's just sort
of regurgitating random quotations and lines that don't make any sense.
And and and I think the core of it all
is like the world is really messed up. Global warming
(39:00):
is happening, all these other countries have these problems. We're
going to omit the part about how, you know, the
role the United States is playing and creating those problems.
But we're not going to even talk about, like what
might a different set of policies be to reduce global inequality,
to reduce global violence, to reduce global starvation, to improve
(39:22):
the environmental sustainability in other parts of the world. We're
don't even talk about any of those things. What we're
going to do is we're going to build walls and
we're going to protect our castle and everyone who made
it in before you know, November seventeenth, you know, two
thousand and eight, or you know March twenty seventh, you know,
nineteen ninety four. Depending on how how right wing you are,
(39:44):
you have different ideas of like what counts as a
pure American or what state? Yeah exactly, yeah, you see,
now India has and this is not just the United States, right,
the sort of right wing fascist ruling party in India
has a new set of laws that unless if you're Muslim,
unless you you entered India in this sitey of documents
showing that you entered prior to a particular day in
(40:06):
nineteen seventy one, then you're no longer considered Indian citizen.
You're subject to mass detention and deportation, even if you
and your parents are all born in India. The United
States is doing something similar, and the idea is, you know,
we have to close off our borders rather than work
together with other people in the world to make the
(40:28):
whole world better. And inherent in this is a deep
form of not just racism and jingoism, but a really
powerful conception that conservatives have as a center of the worldview,
and a lot of liberals don't want to acknowledge it
as being very central to their own view as well,
(40:48):
but this idea that some people's lives are worth more
than others, and that is at the core of US
foreign policy, and anybody who talks about things like open orders,
who talks about things like, you know, addressing the problems
of the world holistically, for impoverished people and vulnerable people,
for animals and plants the world over, and those people
(41:12):
are are ridiculed and pillary does sort of naive dreamers
and impractical people. And I think what Christoph is doing
here is he's giving a lot of liberal people permission
to think and believe those things because someone else who
says they're liberal is saying them right, right. It's more
(41:33):
appetizing when Christoph uses these words in the New York Times,
and it is when Trump says something like lock them up,
build the wall, right.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah, it's like kind of the difference like when Trump's
in office, like the New York Times is like racists
are people too, and then like when Biden's office, When
Biden's in office, the New York Times like, look, it's
okay if we're just a little racist as a tree,
you know what I mean, Because it's always at the
end of the day, Yeah, it's just about sort of
maintaining that sort of status quo. And I think because
like American imperialism is sort of like at the top
(42:03):
of that, like why why bother to examine what the
actions are of the United States as it relates to
like immigration. And I always think, like being someone who
grew up in la and like all the handring about
like MS thirteen. I'm like, have you gone back a
little bit to understand where like why we have MS thirteen.
It's because of the US government's intervention and backing, like
right wing groups in El Salvador during their civil war.
(42:26):
Yet we just want to treat it like as this
thing in a vacuum, like, oh my god, these people
are coming to our borders who we initially deported to
then create the gang there. But yeah, there's just this
always not wanting to sort of look at again like
what the real solutions might be because they always involve
dismantling these power structures that again the people and medium
(42:47):
power are meant to uphold. So yeah, it can be
very frustrating.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Well, like I know we're losing you now. I feel
like we could talk to you for three hours, but
where can people find you? Follow you? Here? More from you.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
I'm on Twitter at quality ALEC. Who knows how much
longer I'll be there, So I do have a newsletter
called Alex Kopaganda Newsletter. And of course our organization is
really amazing. There's over thirty people at the organization doing
incredible civil rights work. It's called Civil Rights Core Corps
(43:20):
and you can find Civil Rights Core on all the
major social media places. You can find us on our
website civil rights core dot org. And then at the
beginning of next year, I'll be out all the new
book called Copaganda, which talks about all this stuff and
much more detail. Will probably have some kind of a
book tour people can come to in different cities and
(43:42):
just deepen the conversation that we have about how the
media talks about things like safety and crime and justice.
And I'm looking forward to talking with people all over
about these important issues because we're entering a period of
rising authoritarian and this stuff is more important than ever.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, absolutely, Well, thank you for doing the work that
you're doing, and thank you so much for coming on.
And yeah, would love to have you back again as
soon as you have some free time. We are miles
and I are going to take a quick break and
then we'll come back to close it out.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
We'll be right back and we're back.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
And yeah, wow, Alec carrit cat sanis Yeah, always super enlightening. Yeah,
that had a bunch of other things we wanted to
get to that we didn't have time to, but yeah,
just that that image of the inside of jails right now,
where like you get your iPad and you get your
like little media device and then they're just like gouging
(44:54):
you for yeah paid.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
I mean it'll be stuff like, oh, you want to
listen to us, that's like two dollars and thirty cents, Yeah,
to listen to one song. You know, it's just again,
but it's also wild how how often we observe these
like again, like all of these things we observe and
these like these systems of oppression, they always eventually come
(45:17):
for us. And even in this version about like nickel
and diming prisoners for every part of their existence, like
you see, just bleed into other parts other industries where
we thought certain things were just like a given to us,
right where it's like you know, you know, like the
shitty version is like you know, an air travel where
it's like, oh, yeah, you're back, we have to charge
you for your backpack now, right. It's like fuck, I
(45:39):
thought that's part of like the whole thing. But again,
they found a way to sort of break down and
you know, find all these smaller opportunities to take more
and more money from people. And of course they're going
to start with the most vulnerable groups first, that being
people that are incarcerated. So yeah, it's that's sort of
the pattern like continues to repeat all the time. And
(46:00):
just like yeah, that that that Nicholas Crystal thing is
just so wild too, because like the whole the whole
take of that too is sort of like, well I benefited.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
He's like, I wouldn't be here if a family didn't.
You know, what's the word I'm looking for, Not endorsed,
but like sort of support like our bid to immigrate here.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Yeah, it's like but it's like, I don't know if
I can say that system still works as well, but that's.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Me and I am better somehow for some reason.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
And I'm from Europe. See my family was from Europe.
And if you notice what we're doing, it's mostly people
coming from the Global South, and that's the group that
we It's okay if we are even more discriminate, discriminatory
towards but yeah, I mean the New York Times, going
to New York Times.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, it is nice to hear some like slightly positive
news about following incarceration rates and you know, so some
of the things where we're actually making progress on cash
bail and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
YEA, well, and I think his point is I think
it was taken well at least for me, like to
look at it. How there is still there's an entire
alternate media universe built on climate change denial that the
same thing would exist for anything about you know, whether
whether or not we can improve the sort of human
caging system we have now or at least obscure any
(47:20):
progress that's been made that would sort of create additional
momentum to truly have a reckoning with our caarcial system.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
But yeah, it just takes so much more momentum to
have a reckoning than it does to like all the
exploitative capitalistic things that is driving shareholder value aka making
wealthy people more wealthy. That stuff is the stuff that
has the momentum, and even if you kill it, it
will pop back up. Like Jason Boorhies, you know, that's
(47:50):
the stuff you have to like keep your eye on
to make sure it's dead. Like and whereas like good
ideas require similarly constant vigilance just to keep alive in
this country at least at this point. But with people
like him, you know, out there, I don't know, maybe
maybe one day there'll be some changes.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, there's that. Like in that I was reading an
article about the the you know, the telecoms private equity thing,
and one of these people from this guy Paul Wright,
who's from the Human Rights Defense Center, like to your point,
he describes it about like even when you try and
address these things, he said, quote, it's kind of like
stepping on a balloon. You squeeze it down in one
place and it just bulges up somewhere else. And that's
(48:34):
the problem we've got with these companies.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Problem or solution. It sounds like private equity is making cheddar.
That's what's cool. No, it sounds private equity. Uh yeah,
that might be bad.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
We'll see.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
We'll continue to keep an eye on it.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Who's going to be like the first like celeb private
equity apologist the first.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
I'm sure like a lot of companies that are.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
But I mean in this sense to try and get
in front of it, Like it's like, well, allow me
to explain why they're charging money. You're like, what the
for real?
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yeah? I do. I do feel like private equity knows
that they're bad guys, which is why like part, like
a major part of the strategy is to be hidden
behind like fourteen shell companies, you know, yeah, and so
they're just like, yeah, nothing to see here. We did
get this endorsement from the spaceman Kevin Spacey, but we
(49:30):
think we're gonna keep our powder dry on this one.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Actually yeah, but yeah, I mean it did feel like
that thing because even when like the Walt, like the
sometimes in like those Red Lobster articles or other articles.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Like you started to see like CNB seeming like and
that's a problem with some of these private equity companies
like oh, oh, oh, well, we're going to be a
sacrificial lamb, so we can then wash our hands and
be like we got rid of the bad apple, the
tree remains.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
That's right, the Red Lobster for listeners who haven't listened
to every single epis So it was undone by, among
other things, but mainly private equity, private equity, Samuel's, j
CRWE Toys, r us KB Toys. Many brands that you
friendlies suddenly went bankrupt after being you know, five years
(50:15):
before being incredibly successful, and household names suddenly go bankrupt.
Look and see if they got taken over by private equity,
which is essentially an industry of parasitic companies that come
in charge the company just just find ways to extract
money from consumers, from employers, from the companies they take over.
(50:38):
And then when the companies go bankrupt, they're still like
it's still.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Good for them. They still do great.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yeah, So anyways, I guess I guess that's it. Miles.
Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff?
And is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Find me at Miles of Gray on Twitter and Instagram.
Find you there, thank you, thank you. And you can
also find Jack and I on the basketball Podcastles and Boostis.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
You can find me talking ninety day fiance on for
twenty Day Fiance a tweet. I haven't really been looking
at the tweets. I was just mostly her majesty and
I were just finishing Bridgerton.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Oh yeah, how do we do?
Speaker 1 (51:22):
Yeah? Yeah, it's all right. You know, like there are
a lot of times I remember the first couple of like,
oh maybe this could be a storyline, this could be
but it's it's always just very straightforward, like you know,
period era romance. So yeah, if you're a Bridgerton fan,
might as well complete it. You might as well complete it.
There you go. But oh, man, but cresta woof fucking Cresteda. Man,
(51:46):
I don't. I don't know how I feel. I don't
know if I feel bad for her. I feel like
she should have really got it worse.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
But hey, yeah, man, I'm still trying to make up
my mind.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
But cresseda kawper Man, Yeah, victim or or a villain?
I think most pressed that name. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore Obrian
A couple of things I've been enjoying on Twitter. Have
you seen this video of Elon Musk emerging? I think
wu tang is for the children retweeted it, what what
are you emerging emerging from a chrystalist? No, just emerging
at it like being announced and then he comes out
(52:24):
and like it's trying to like, uh I I'll link
off to it in the footnotes. It is Jane at
Jane ost Underscore tweeted he's being called the most juiceless
man on earth and it is a wildly earned description
of what we're saying. Wait, let me see this now.
I got to see it.
Speaker 1 (52:44):
We can't.
Speaker 6 (52:45):
I don't, I can't leave it, hang it, send it
where put it. So he emerges, Oh, ship miles away yourself?
Speaker 1 (52:58):
What was that? Flying jump? Jack? Just what is this?
Speaker 7 (53:02):
He's a marionette? Yeah, he's like doing a weird marionette thing.
Oh my god, we're fucked. I can't do it that truly,
it's so disturbing. Y'all have to watch it for yourselves.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
But yeah, he like comes out he does like a
flying jumping like jump what.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Do you call that?
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah, he doesn't jumping jack flash exactly. His shirt lifts
up over his belly. Then he lands and like does
a sort of like.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
I got no string still whole. That's like, yeah, that's
kind of he's doing like a weird puppet rogue puppet dance?
Is that because he just got his money? Is that
what that?
Speaker 2 (53:42):
I think? I think this is older than that, But
I actually, wow, maybe not, maybe maybe it is. Well,
maybe he just got his money and he's that is
how he's going to touchdown dance on all of their graves.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
Oh wow, someone someone put someone, But he's doing an
X with his body still up. Self righteous dumb ass.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
In response to the person making fun of him. Wow,
keep it, okay, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Wow, Well he should work on a mobility man, It's
all about mobility. I think you could have got those
heels further apart, but hey, who am?
Speaker 2 (54:17):
I and Harry Hill tweeted a picture of Welsh's grape
Juice like an old Welsh's grape Juice commercial next to
the new Welch's vodka transfusion drinks, and they said the
Welsh's grape Juice to Welsh's vodka transfusion pipeline is insane,
and Puck at puck Meat tweeted, pivoting from grape juice
to alcohol is actually the most sane pipeline. It literally
(54:41):
happens on its own.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Good point. I don't know if I like vodka transfusion.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
Yeah, I don't know why it needs to be transfused.
I don't know why we need like a medical procedure
to happen. You could just call it vodka.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
Wait, isn't Isn't that like mostly a medical term? Yeah,
they're just trying to be cool like about that, you
know what I mean. Yeah, I'm like, you know, it's
a vodka transfusion. I'm like, I don't know, dude, I'm
thinking blood transfusions.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Plus, man, I just got a nice transfuse from my
drinking Yello transfusion.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah, Jesus Woway.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore. Brian
you can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist, at
the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have Facebook fan page
and a website, Daily zegis dot com where we post
our episodes and our footnotes where we look off to
the information that we talked about in today's episode, The
Most Cursed Celebration You've Ever Seen by Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
We will off so be linking off.
Speaker 2 (55:45):
To that as well as a song that we think
you might enjoy. Myles, what song do you think people
might enjoy?
Speaker 1 (55:53):
There's an artist, Jessica Pratt who's a fantastic singer songwriter.
I like, I remember really with her first album, like
maybe this was like in twenty twelve, and then I
kind of like would hear about her here and there?
But then Brian the producer was like, Yo, have you
heard the new Jessica Pratt album? And I've peeped it.
She's doing like something. I don't know her. This album,
as he describes it, which is a good description, it's
(56:15):
like feels like like tracks Nancy Sinatra would have made
in her heyday but just didn't. And it has that
sort of style of production and her like she has
just such an interesting voice in the way she uses
it is really dope. So this is a track from
her new album which is called Here in the Pitch.
This track is called better Hate and this one is
by Jessica Pratt.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
All right, we will link off to that in the footnotes.
The daily guys to the production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio is the iHeartRadio Wrap
Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
That is gonna do it for us this morning. We're
back this afternoon though, to tell you what is trending,
and we will talk to you all then. Bye bye
This Welch's fucking cocktail ship is So it's just so
weird because you can tell like there's like a nostalgia
play here.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, it's like they can look exactly like the fucking
Welsh's ship that I used to drink in, like.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
A little fucking weird, Like when are they gonna like
I feel like we're right around the corner from Juicy Juice,
Like there's gonna be like juicy juice malt liquor. Yeah,
Capri remember that ship? Oh my god. You know if
they did a fucking Son.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Destroy with Caprice Son and trans Caprice Son vodka bone
marrow transplant.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's what we need. But I mean, like you can
just tell like they're just sort of using these like
because the Sunny Delight I think was the canary in
the coal mine. When Sunny d came out with their
vodka thing, I was like, this is I'm we're pretty squeeze.
Ites is gonna have to be next?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
And guess what vodka confused gushers? I say, Oh, like,
I mean do they have they probably have CBD gummies
that are gushers?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Right? Oh maybe probably?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I mean they go even the one that I meant
to say when I said zb I'm hip and I
do the drugs.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I mean I remember like in the early days of
like sort of like weed edibles, there would be like
the you know, Ganja, Nestley, crunch bar, like kind of
evoking these old brands and stuff like that I actually
haven't seen. Is like very specifically associated with little children. Yeah,
well just like preschool snack time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Their ads were like straight up like a kid who
couldn't pronounce all their words, being like I like grape juice,
wepe juice. Yeah, they'll be like and you won't be
able to talk either after you have five of our
vodka twenty.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Years Illo, grape juice, Way, weep juice, waste sit off,
grape juice.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Off that Welch's Vodka Transfusion. Hello the Internet, and welcome
to Season three forty three, Episode two of Dark Daily's
guys production of My Heart Radio. This is the podcast
where we take a deep dive in New American share
Couchesteni's Tuesday, June eighteenth, twenty twenty four, Happy birthday to
(02:31):
my wife. Oh okay, no time for that.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Six times we don't have time six eighteen three sixes
the devil equals eighteenth, the eighteenth day of June. Okay,
you see I'm doing here with the saches breaks up
into twenty four, which also when you turn the sixes
upside down or not or six is equal rolling in
that six folk on boom and everybody.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Everybody says riding down anyway.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's also national oh, national spurs Day, National gold fishing Day. Okay,
there's a reason we're speaking this fast, folks, don't worry,
and it's not because run that Biden crank.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Because yeah, I just got I just got that State
of the Union good good truck and.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Biden Biden back to get us real fucking amps right now.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
My name is Jack O'Brien, a here Potato's O'Brien, and
I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co
host mister Miles Bred.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yes, sin is Miles Grace.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
We get to speed to like trying to be like
Joe Biden doing the State of the Union address. It's
also the Lord of lankersam aka the Showgun with no
Gun because I got no gun problems.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Miles Gray faint.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
That was great, Thank you for being here, and Miles Gray,
we are thrilled to be joined by the executive director
of Civil Rights Corp, which is a nonprofit dedicated to
fighting systemic injustice. Has been a civil rights lawyer, a
public defender, named twenty sixteen's Trialaler of the Year by
Public Justice, author of several books, the incredibly compelling Usual Cruelty,
(03:55):
which we've had him on to talk about before. He's
got one coming mate this year. Most importantly, a great
follow on Twitter and all the social media.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Is just kidding, that's my most important.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
But please welcome back to the show. The brilliant, the
talented Alec Hurricanzone. What's up about you?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Oh, thank you for being here. And the reason we're
talking like auctioneers is because we only have you for
forty five minutes, so we wanted to get right into it.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
You all sound great, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Man, repped up man, trying just getting through it, just
getting through it.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Just some people from buying White House and they they've
got some Daddy's little helpers is.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
What they call him.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
No, it's amazing to have you back. You know, we
usually do search history underrated, overrated, but I think I
think we can just skip that unless there's something you
desperately want to get off your chest that you think
is overrated or underrated, or something from your search history.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
I don't have anything I'm dying to tell everybody. I
don't think.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Okay, okay, good, Then we'll ask the questions. We'll ask
the questions here, Alec. All right, So last time we
checked in with you, there was This was a little
over a year ago, or maybe actually a little less
than a year ago, but there was a lot of
talk in the mainstream media still about how crime was
up because everyone defunded the police. And there's been an
(05:22):
emerging story that crime has been plummeting much much less
popular story with the mainstream media. And I'm pretty sure
there hasn't been like a corresponding like the police were
never defunded, so like their theory of the case seems
to have been exposed as bullshit. So presumably the mainstream
(05:46):
media has been flooded with articles explaining what they got
wrong and taking a long hard look at their methodology.
How are you seeing these latest crime statistics where crime
has gone down?
Speaker 4 (05:59):
I think it's first to just take a step back
and understand that whether we're talking about last year or
the year before the year before that. Overall levels of
police reported crime in this country are near historic loves.
So even when there was all that frenzy about retail
theft and shoplifting or car theft or violent crime or robberies,
(06:22):
you know, we were still at a stage in history
where all of those things were were extraordinarily low relative
to you know, what they were, let's say in the
nineties or or in the early two thousands. And it's
also important to understand that when you hear about crime
statistics in the news, it's really only seven or so
(06:45):
crimes that the police track and report to the FBI.
And even then most people don't understand that, Like forty
percent of police departments don't even report that data to
the FBI. So a lot of it is just like
FBI statistical estimates based on the police reporting like a
few what they call index crimes. So what is left
out of crime statistics, Well, almost all the crimes committed
(07:08):
by police themselves, almost all the crimes committed by jail
and prison guards, almost all white collar crime. Right, So
while you hear a lot about theft in the news
and retail theft and shoplifting, what don't the police report,
and what doesn't FBI report when it's talking about crime
rates tax evasion or wage theft. You know, and wage
(07:31):
theft is about fifty billion dollars a year, So that
right there is three times all of the crime that
FBI is reporting is property crime combined. And so you
just have to understand the way the media talks about
crime stistics is really messed up on like a lot
of different levels.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, wage theft and tax evasion being two crimes that
the general populace, the readership, the intended audience of the
mainstream media are the victims of Those are the ones
that get ignored, The ones that that's not breathlessly reported,
are the ones where Procter and Gamble is, you know,
(08:06):
is the victim, and that's that that's treated as like
the more important crime.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
And I think this is really important lesson for people,
Like you can really mislead people by giving them a
few anecdotes. So for example, if you have like a
week of news stories, even if the anecdotes you're you're
giving are true, like you report on seven true examples
of shoplifting from Walgreens every night, you give the people
the impression that shoplifting is a huge problem. It might
(08:34):
be increasing even, Right. It's kind of like if I
compiled a video of every shot Michael Jordan missed in
his career and put.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Them all together.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah, you could create the impression that Michael Jordan is
a terrible basketball player just by taking all of the
shots which he actually did miss right, if you don't
show the other shots, right, And what the news is
doing is something very similar. It's not showing the public
any of the tax evasion, or any of the wage steps,
or any of the pollution violations. Right. There's one hundred
thousand violations that we know about of the Clean Water
(09:06):
Act every year. It causes enormous death, cancer, rotting teeth,
children suffering from a variety of different preventable illnesses, et cetera.
Those are not treated as urgent. And so there's this,
and they're not reported on the daily news. And so
just through through its reporting of anecdote, even if those
anecdotes are actually happening and true, the news can distort
(09:28):
our much deeper truths about like what kinds of activity
is really harmful to us? And shoplifting is a good example,
because tax evasion is about a trillion dollars a year,
so that's you know, sixty times every property crime the
FBI reports combined, And yet everyone is freaking out of
our shoplifting and nobody is thinking about tax evasion, right.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I feel like the shoplifting thing is still like vibrating
through like my childhood neighborhood. Like there are people who
like lived in the neighborhood I grow u that are
still harping about like, well, you know, there's nothing at
CBS anymore because all the shoplifting and like we need
to have like a neighborhood meeting about this. And it's like, dude,
this is like a two year old conservative take on
crime that you're like now being like it's happening, and
(10:14):
we it's the scores of our community at the moment.
But like, I'm curious for this stuff that you're talking about,
Like where is there like a centralized place where you
can see like where like DA's or something are reporting
things like wage theft or like in a centralized place
so I can be like, well, what about this stuff?
Or is that more just having to be really vigilant
about what is actually coming out of the courts and
(10:35):
things like that.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, one of the big scandals of
our time is that the agencies who are supposed to
be investigating a lot of these crimes have been completely decimated. So,
for example, the federal antitrust regulators have been completely decimated.
They're far fewer regulators even looking into whether companies are
(10:57):
doing price fixing and doing all kinds of illegal stuff
that drives up the costs of goods for consumers, et
cetera than there were forty years ago. We have fewer
people investigating that stuff now. And the same is true
with the so called War on drugs, right they shifted
a huge percentage of federal agents who were working on
things like white collar crime, fraud, corporate fraud, tax of asion,
(11:19):
et cetera, and they shifted government resources toward the drug war.
And so there's just fewer people actually even looking for
the crimes that are committed by wealthy people. And that
means that unfortunately, a lot of the crimes that are
happening just like aren't even brought into the legal system
at all, and so they're not being reported by prosecutors,
(11:40):
not being reported by the police at all, and so
we rely on nonprofit organizations really good investigative journalism. Some
times the government will will itself investigate in some ways
that shed some light on some of these things, and
you have to cobble it all together.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah it's yeah, I mean he realized just how much
of that is just to kind of emphasize what, you know,
sort of the status quo wants to even define as crime.
It's like, well, don't look at that stuff, because then
all these other people get caught up in our perception
of what criminality is, and we're absolutely don't want to
do that. It's to actually just be like, no, no, no,
it's the shoplifters. It's these kinds of things that are
(12:18):
big capital see crime that we need to worry about.
When yeah, so like everyone's saying, these are the ones,
like these other things are the things that affect the
everyday person on a much deeper level.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Were they locked up old spice at CBS? Also, we're
the victims there. I do not want to wait fifteen
extra seconds to get my old spice dewd ran out
of the plastic case.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
But it embarrassing to say I want.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
To us a victim anyway.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, oh yeah, we're just gonna pretend you didn't say that,
because what about acts? And it's a combination of acts
and old spice.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I mix it together. It's a home blend.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
The axe is the new, the old spice is the old,
and that's why I smell great to myself. Not everybody agrees,
but yeah, it's a great how what crimes we talk about,
what crimes we actually report, is a great way to
understand what our society actually values. And it seems like
(13:15):
this is yet another place where we find out that
we value corporations and corporate earning more than individual human
beings and individual human lives.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
But I think it's important to understand that the people
who tell you that they are like tough on crime,
law and order people, what those people are actually meaning
by that is they are sort of ruthlessly punishing some
crimes committed by some people some of the time and
gleefully ignoring other crimes committed by other people at other times.
(13:50):
So like in general, when you hear someone who's tough
on crime and law and order, what they mean is
like they want to enforce a lot of very minor
crimes against the worst people in our society, and they
want to create conditions under which wealthy people can violate
the law with virtual impunity. That's what law and order
actually has meant in the US political system for the
(14:11):
last fifty years.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Right right, That kind of like what you're talking about
sort of remind me another thing you posted about about
representing these kids in Flint and just sort of how
again another example of like just sort of really going
after vulnerable people in society for other people to make
a ton of money, where like these kids, and how
courts have been set up to sort of keep children
(14:34):
from visiting parents that are awaiting trial and things like that.
Can you talk a little bit about that case and
sort of what's happening there.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Yeah, so all over the country over the last ten years,
and I want to say up front, this happened well
before the COVID pandemic, but you know, over the last
ten years or so, many hundreds and maybe even thousands.
It's really hard because it's hard to count, but many
hundreds of jails at least have eliminated the ability of
children to at their parents. And we started getting complaints
(15:02):
about this from our clients all over the country, saying
I'm not able to hold my child's hand. We got
complaints from children saying I want to look into my
mom's eyes or or hug my dad. So we started
looking into what's going on, and we started looking at
the contracts that these jails are signing. It turned out
that starting a little over ten years ago, there was
(15:24):
all these contracts with jail, the jails and private equity
owned multi billion day.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
We have to have a drink because they're the scourge
of this country.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
It's really remarkable. Honestly, when I talked to even other
people in private equity, nobody can quite believe what I'm
about to tell you. But the two largest jail and
prison telecommunications companies are owned by private equity, and they've
created a situation where sheriffs get up what is essentially
(16:06):
a kickback to ban children from visiting their parents in jail.
How does this work? Well, the theory is if you
stop kids from having free in person visits with their parents,
families will be so desperate that they'll spend more money
on phone and video calls into the jail. And of course,
these companies negotiate monopoly contracts with each sheriff and each
(16:30):
jail to charge exorbitant rates per minute for phone and
video calls.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
So the rates are like those nine hundred numbers from
the eighties. They're like crazy, the amount that they just
gouge people. That's unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
And keep in mind that most people who are in
jail in the United States are awaiting trial. They're not convicted,
they're presumed innocent. And because the United States and the
Philippines are the only two countries in the world that
use a for profit commercial money bail industry tree to
determine who's in jail and who's not, in much of
the country, most of the people that we're talking about
(17:06):
in these jails are only in jail because they can't
pay a certain amount of cash bail to get released.
It not because any judge has found them to be
dangerous or risk of flight or anything like that. So
we already are taking the poorest people in our society,
and then we're taking the children of the poorest people
in our society, and we're saying to them, we're gonna
(17:28):
jail you because you're poor, and then we're gonna prevent
your children from visiting you, and prevent you from visiting
your mom and your dad for free. And if you
want to see them or or talk to them. You're
gonna have to pay exorbitant rates to do sort of
a really really shitty equivalent of FaceTime or phone call.
(17:50):
And you know, it has all these glitches, it freezes,
it's not private, it's all surveiled and recorded. So now
we've got these huge databases of the faces and voices
of hundreds of thousands of children across the country that
can be monetized. It can be AI algorithms can be
trained on these children's faces and voices that can then
(18:10):
be sold. We don't have a good sense of what
they're doing with all this, but it's all part of
a scheme to kind of profit off of family separation.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, it's like in some places too, Like aren't there
like sort of like tablets that these companies create, So
they're like, yes, if you want to download music, like
that's another fee we can collect. Like they've found a
way to sort of like monetize sort of all of
this information that goes in and out from prisoners.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
And a lot of people don't know that. You know,
people have heard of private prisons, but what people don't
realize is public jails and prisons everything in them essentially
is now privatized for profit. So there's tablets if you
want to if you want to watch something or or
read an email, you have to pay for stamps to
send an email. A lot of places they're not even
(18:55):
getting physical mail anymore, so you can't even send your
mommy or dad a card or a letter. They get
scanned and then and you have to pay to review
them on your tablet that they give you food, toilet paper, soap,
medical care. You know, you want to see a nurse
or a doctor, you've got to pay for it.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
The entire system here is, you know, they don't give
you blankets. It's very very cold. If you want an
extra blanket, you've got to pay for it. Essentially, you know,
prisons in jails are huge cash cows or local state
and county governments and for the companies that are sort
of parasitic on these governments. And so we're representing an
(19:35):
amazing group of children in Michigan who are trying to
make a very simple argument. And that argument is that
in our society, under our constitution, and given our history
as a civilization and as a country, children have the
right to hug their parents. Children have the right to
(19:57):
be around their parents. They have the right to hold
their hand, they have the right to talk to them,
and if the government wants to take away that right,
it has to have really good reasons. So maybe there
are good reasons and in any particular case, and but
the government can't just ban all children from visiting their parents,
and so exactly, and that's what these kids. These kids
(20:20):
are really courageous and it was a real honor. A
couple of weeks ago, I was in court with my
colleagues and we were arguing the case against the telecom
companies and the sheriff, and the courtroom was just packed
with kids, and packed with elderly people too, because you know,
another sort of silent thing that happens a lot in
our society is that older people who's whose own children
(20:43):
are incarcerated as adults, who depend on their children to
take care of them in their life, to you know,
who are getting who may be relatively lonely, who may
need help navigating whether it's how to sign up for
health care or how to understand things that are happening.
Like there's a lot of older people too who who
are really harmed by the inability to communicate with their
(21:06):
loved ones and they're jailed for a few months or
for years anyway. So there's a lot of older people
that showed up too, saying we have this right too.
It's not just it's not just children, it's it's families
really have the right to communicate with each other, and
if you're gonna take away that right, you better have
really good reasons.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, it's wild too, Like I was just reading that
one of the like one of the Platinum equity one
of these private equity firms that is backing another one
of these telecoms companies that deal with prisons eventive. It's
like that guy who owns that who runs that firm,
is the guy who owns the Detroit Pistons. And it's
just wild to see, like how people in our society are, like,
(21:44):
it's the it's the great owner of our beloved basketball
team who's profiting off of this like heinous industry at
the moment, it's really it's like dystopia. It's just like
so yeah, and it's just so right in front of
your face. Yeah yeah, And to the idea that it's like, yeah,
we're going to commodify the desire of families that their
need to communicate with each other through this already already
(22:06):
exploitative system that we've created to extract even more money
from people.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Let's take a quick break and we'll come back. We'll
keep talking about this. We'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
So yeah, oh yeah, So I was just saying, so alec,
I know, like there's only like a handful of states,
right that have actually done away with this system where
it's like, actually, no, we need we can't. This can't
be a thing that people are profiting off of. Like
I know, I think Minnesota was maybe one of the
more recent states to say, like, we're doing away with
this system. Is this is kind of I'm imagining that
(22:46):
is sort of the at least that is the path
towards progress, is for the states to like sort of
outlaw this practice within their own prison systems.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
I think there are a few things at different levels.
So first of all, people like that owner of the
Detroit Pistons should not be profiting off of monetizing human contact.
And it's been alarming, honestly to see the silence of
the NBA and a lot of the players around this.
I'm not sure how many of the players know about it,
and that one of the goals here is is to
(23:18):
you know, make sure that we're talking about these issues
openly and that people should be talking about these issues
so that we can make social decisions collectively about what
kind of policies we want. And so I think to
answer your question about what kind of policies we want,
like you know, I think at different levels of generality,
these policies could be Yes. Of course, companies shouldn't be
(23:42):
profiting off of monopoly priced, exorbitant phone and video calls
for people in jail in prison. So there are a
lot of cities in particular around the country that are
starting to make calls free. There are some state prison
systems that are that are making calls free. There's an
organization called Worth Rises that is leading a lot of
that advocacy and they're really great. But at a deeper level,
(24:04):
we have to be asking much more difficult questions about
how did this system of incarceration get so big? Right?
I mean, this country is putting black people in jail
cells at six times the rate of South Africa at
the height of apartheid. You know, we're jailing all people
in the US like six times more than we did
even just fifty years ago. And so when you do that,
(24:27):
there's a lot of opportunity to make money, a lot
of people's jobs start depending on it. And one of
the consequences of this is that every single year, several
million kids have a mom or a dad or a
parent who are incarcerated. And as a society, we have
not reckoned with the incredible effects that has in the short,
(24:51):
medium and long term on trauma, on child development, on
future crime, on future economic possibilities, etcetera, mental health. And
so I think a deeper reform is asking much more
profound questions like why are all these families being separated
in the first place, Are there really good reasons that
(25:13):
these parents are in jail, that these children are being jailed,
that these families are being separated, or are there other
ways that we can address underlying problems that actually don't
involve family separation. So one of our goals with our
case is not just eliminating the profit hearing and allowing
free visits, et cetera, et cetera, but it's actually thinking
about what kinds of government policies are better for families,
(25:35):
are better for public health than mass incarceration, right.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, question we're still wrestling with. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Are we seeing any positive like progressive reforms to policing
and criminal justice around the country that you feel kind
of encouraged by? I know there were, you know, some
initial ideas a Denver program that route nine to one
one calls to an unarmed response team, like when the
(26:05):
potential offense was not violent. Are you what are you
hearing that is actually kind of giving you hope in
terms of just reform to this horrific system.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
I don't want to sugarcoat it. We're at a pretty
bleak time because both the Democratic Party and Republican Party
have embraced this copaganda kind of fear mongering punishment is
the answer to everything mantra, and so as a result,
the environment for reform has become really poisoned. But I think,
(26:42):
without being too pollyannish, I think there are some really
incredible things happening that are very exciting to me. At
least Number one, you have to understand the incarceration rate
has gone down significantly in the last ten years. I
think we're at a moment where there are a lot
of people that want to start incarcerating more people again.
But you know, the incarceration rate has gotten down at
(27:02):
least ten percent overall, So that's a couple hundred thousand
people that were imprisoned who are not now. There's been
some really profound beneficial effects on poor families and black
families because of that, and we can't, you know, we
shouldn't gloss over that. Even though the rhetoric and the
(27:23):
narrative is getting a lot worse, and the Democrats and
President Biden are proposing one hundred thousand new police and
massive increases in police surveillance and border patrol and the
militarization of police, and things are getting relatively bleak. But
the movement to reduce the size and power of punishment
(27:43):
bureaucracy and the company's profiting off it over the last
ten years has had some successes. Another success is we've
seen in a number of places reforms to the cash
bail system. There are you know, cities like Los Angeles.
There are places like Californi, generally Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey,
(28:03):
New York is a great example. Dramatic increases in pre
trial release, reduction in the use of cash to determine
who's incarcerated. And so we are seeing, like, you know,
hundreds of thousands of people who would have been detained
because they're poor every year in the United States who
are now being released. And that's another thing to be
really encouraged by.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
For people who aren't familiar with the cash bail system.
I mean, the people are held because they don't have
access to money like that, that's straight up. You are
jailed because you're poor in a lot of places in
the country. And there's been a pushback against that. That
is it sounds like we're seeing some results.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So that's great.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
Yeah, and there's a lot of propaganda about it, right,
So we know from this is one of the most
rigorously studied areas in the criminal law. We know that
releasing more people prior to trial actually reduces crime because
when you jail people for even a few days or weeks,
they lose their jobs, they interrupt their mental health medication,
they sometimes lose their kids, they lose their housing, and
(29:11):
so when you destabilize someone's life, you actually make them
more likely to commit crime. So if you want to
reduce crime, you actually need to be reducing the use
of pre trial jailing. And so we're seeing that and
in some of our cases. For example, our case challenging
the misdemeanor money bail system in Houston, Texas has released
over one hundred thousand people of the lasts for seven years.
(29:31):
And researchers from around the country and Duke University, University
of Houston, and other places are studying that University of
Pennsylvania and what they're showing is remarkable. Not only has
the county saved tens of millions of dollars and the
economy has saved hundreds of millions of dollars, but crime
is going down as a result of the decision to
just stop jailing people in low level cases because they
(29:53):
can't pay one hundred and two hundred bucks.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Meanwhile, the thing that I feel like i've heard is
catch and release these li role activists DA's are, you know,
contributing to the a rise in crime. So that's great
to hear. I just wish it was being more widely reported.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
Yeah, it's like climate SciTE denial. There's a whole industry
for decades that was relatively successful, led by the petrochemical
industry that so doubt over policies to reduce emissions, and
we're seeing the same thing with the bail industry, and
police and police unions and punishment bureaucrats generally, because if
you dramatically reduce the people in incarcerated pre trial, you
(30:32):
actually do something much more profound. You take away a
lot of the leverage that the system has to get
people to plead guilty, because most of the guilty pleas
in this country are caused by people being incarcerated and
just desperate to get out right, so they come to
court and they're given a deal, like, if you plead
guilty today, you won't investigate your case, you won't get
(30:53):
a lawyer to fight it. You know, you won't you know,
get a trial in front of jurors, but you will
get out up today and you will owe us a fine.
And this is how the system turns.
Speaker 5 (31:04):
Right.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
But if you can get people out right away and
they can fight their case, a lot of people don't
want to plead guilty because it turns out that the
police and prosecutors can't prove a large percentage of the
cases that they bring, and so the people that actually
fight their cases have pretty good results. We're seeing like
if you look at Houston what used to be, you know,
(31:25):
eighty four percent of people pleading guilty in the median
of three days in misdemeanor cases. Now, in those same
low level misdemeanor cases, only about a third of people
are getting convicted after they're arrested because they're out and
they can investigate their cases and it turns out like
the cops didn't have strong evidence against them, or the
prosecutor can't possibly prosecute all these cases. So I think
(31:46):
it's just it's important to understand that there are kind
of downstream consequences to things like whether we jail people
pre trial or not.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah. Right. And I guess also, while we're talking about
copaganda in that whole the media's role in that. I
you had a really interesting thread, Like I said, we'll
have to talk about the New York Times, which is
one of your favorite topics on Twitter, and one of
my favorite things to see you tweet about was Nicholas
Christoph's really wacky column about immigration, where it's like it's
(32:16):
okay when I did it, but now I'm thinking maybe
not so much for other people. And like this is
kind of on the heels of like you're seeing articles
about like, yeah, democrats agree that something had to happen
over at the border. But like, you know what, but
the asylum thing maybe not a great not a great moment.
This Nicholas christoph like column almost makes it feel like
(32:38):
it's like, hey, liberal, it's okay if we're just a
little bit racist this time, you know, like it's that's okay,
Like have you I mean, like right now, I think
it's become such a huge issue talking about immigration, especially
with the election coming up in Biden. You know, whether
he's moving to the right or just doing what any
person in power does to maintain the status quo, that
(33:00):
it completely a different debate or observation, But like, how
do you see this conversation sort of moving given that
you have people like you know, Christoff at the New
York Times sort of writing this kind of nonsense that
just sort of obscures like what the issues are and
like maybe what America's actual role is in changing immigration
and how to create a little bit more equity outside
(33:20):
of our own borders.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Yeah, I mean, I think Christoff is obviously a very
silly person, but I think it's important to you know,
you can learn a lot by looking at what kinds
of opinions appear in the New York Times. Because the
role of the New York Times is to get educated, wealthy,
generally liberal minded people who want to think of themselves
(33:44):
as well informed and well meaning, to get them to
support stuff that is extremely violent and contrary to their
values and contrary to evidence a lot of the time,
and unjustifiable really, And so there's sort of layers and
layers of propaganda that The Times kind of spews that
I try to dissect in helpful and practical ways on
(34:08):
social media and obviously in the Copaganda book that I'm
publishing in a few months. But I think just to
start with christophin immigration, this is an area that has
been widely studied. There's a really important study that came
out last year from Oxford in the UK which showed
that when liberal and center left political parties adopt the
(34:32):
rhetoric and even the policies of the right wing on immigration,
they actually lose votes, they become less popular, they do
worse in elections. That's a really profound I think it
rings true, obviously, but they've quantified and studied this, and
you know, one of the things that this means is
(34:52):
when you've got someone like Biden who who is adopting
more and more outrageous kind of policies and immigration that
are more and more indistinguishable with the far right is advocating.
It's very disorienting and confusing for a lot of voters.
And for voters who are persuaded by all of that,
(35:14):
what the research shows is that they're gonna if they're
persuaded by that and they like that, they're going to
vote for the real thing, not the political party of
the person who they think is approximating that thing. And
also a lot of people who would be excited about
in organizing for Biden lose the energy and the momentum
to fight for him if he is trying to be
(35:37):
a bad approximation of the far right. And so this
general set of studies, which is not just studying the
US but studies center left political parties across Europe, is
a really important insight and I think it helps to
explain why the Democrats have been so unsuccessful over the
(35:59):
last couple of tamescades when they try to play into
the underlying mythologies and narratives of the far right. So
I think it's a really bad strategy for the Democrats.
If you care about Democrats winning, it's a really bad
strategy to sort of like validate the myths like immigrants
are hurting our you know, depressing our wages and and
(36:22):
costing us jobs and all these things.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Christas say, right, yeah, they're actually good for the economy
and less likely to commit crime than other people.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
But yeah, I digress.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
No, I mean, but like that's the thing, Like, by
by adopting these policies like Christoph Biden others, they they validate.
They make people think that these right wing talking points
must be true or else why would these self professed
liberals be doing this. And so it not only like
makes it harder for people to get excited about voting
for Biden and pushes people towards the right, but it
(36:56):
also validates the underlying arguments the right wing is making
in people's minds.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, this quote, in particular from your kind of thread
on Christoph you said, for many liberals, the destruction wrought
by global capitalism, it's an equality, it's starvation, it's ecological degradation,
it's war, it's authoritarian corruption, et cetera, is taken as
a given. Like that feels right, Like, it feels like
(37:22):
a lot of the so called liberal perspectives that I
hear on social media or in the mainstream media. They're
basically conceding a lot of the shit that like far
right people are saying. So like, how are you going
to get any enthusiasm or energy behind your messaging when
(37:43):
you're basically like, yeo, they what they're saying is basically right, though,
like we just like are only pretending it's not. But like,
I don't know, It's like I always talk about how
they they treat idealism and progressivism as childish essentially, like
it feels like their overall strategy.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
I think one of the most powerful forms of propaganda
is the type of propaganda that makes us feel like
a better world is not possible, right, And that's when
when you when you can achieve hopelessness in a population,
you can do a lot of things to them. And
so the theme underlying a lot of what Christoph has
(38:25):
been writing recently, which you know, unfortunately now people send
me because I've written these threats, so I've got to
read a lot of this.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Christ just dropped, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
And you know, it's like watching a small child emerge
from the wilderness having ever been you know, or having
been raised by right wing wolves. He he's just sort
of regurgitating random quotations and lines that don't make any sense.
And and and I think the core of it all
is like the world is really messed up. Global warming
(39:00):
is happening, all these other countries have these problems. We're
going to omit the part about how, you know, the
role the United States is playing and creating those problems.
But we're not going to even talk about, like what
might a different set of policies be to reduce global inequality,
to reduce global violence, to reduce global starvation, to improve
(39:22):
the environmental sustainability in other parts of the world. We're
don't even talk about any of those things. What we're
going to do is we're going to build walls and
we're going to protect our castle and everyone who made
it in before you know, November seventeenth, you know, two
thousand and eight, or you know March twenty seventh, you know,
nineteen ninety four. Depending on how how right wing you are,
(39:44):
you have different ideas of like what counts as a
pure American or what state? Yeah exactly, yeah, you see,
now India has and this is not just the United States, right,
the sort of right wing fascist ruling party in India
has a new set of laws that unless if you're Muslim,
unless you you entered India in this sitey of documents
showing that you entered prior to a particular day in
(40:06):
nineteen seventy one, then you're no longer considered Indian citizen.
You're subject to mass detention and deportation, even if you
and your parents are all born in India. The United
States is doing something similar, and the idea is, you know,
we have to close off our borders rather than work
together with other people in the world to make the
(40:28):
whole world better. And inherent in this is a deep
form of not just racism and jingoism, but a really
powerful conception that conservatives have as a center of the worldview,
and a lot of liberals don't want to acknowledge it
as being very central to their own view as well,
(40:48):
but this idea that some people's lives are worth more
than others, and that is at the core of US
foreign policy, and anybody who talks about things like open orders,
who talks about things like, you know, addressing the problems
of the world holistically, for impoverished people and vulnerable people,
for animals and plants the world over, and those people
(41:12):
are are ridiculed and pillary does sort of naive dreamers
and impractical people. And I think what Christoph is doing
here is he's giving a lot of liberal people permission
to think and believe those things because someone else who
says they're liberal is saying them right, right. It's more
(41:33):
appetizing when Christoph uses these words in the New York Times,
and it is when Trump says something like lock them up,
build the wall, right.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah, it's like kind of the difference like when Trump's
in office, like the New York Times is like racists
are people too, and then like when Biden's office, When
Biden's in office, the New York Times like, look, it's
okay if we're just a little racist as a tree,
you know what I mean, Because it's always at the
end of the day, Yeah, it's just about sort of
maintaining that sort of status quo. And I think because
like American imperialism is sort of like at the top
(42:03):
of that, like why why bother to examine what the
actions are of the United States as it relates to
like immigration. And I always think, like being someone who
grew up in la and like all the handring about
like MS thirteen. I'm like, have you gone back a
little bit to understand where like why we have MS thirteen.
It's because of the US government's intervention and backing, like
right wing groups in El Salvador during their civil war.
(42:26):
Yet we just want to treat it like as this
thing in a vacuum, like, oh my god, these people
are coming to our borders who we initially deported to
then create the gang there. But yeah, there's just this
always not wanting to sort of look at again like
what the real solutions might be because they always involve
dismantling these power structures that again the people and medium
(42:47):
power are meant to uphold. So yeah, it can be
very frustrating.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Well, like I know we're losing you now. I feel
like we could talk to you for three hours, but
where can people find you? Follow you? Here? More from you.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
I'm on Twitter at quality ALEC. Who knows how much
longer I'll be there, So I do have a newsletter
called Alex Kopaganda Newsletter. And of course our organization is
really amazing. There's over thirty people at the organization doing
incredible civil rights work. It's called Civil Rights Core Corps
(43:20):
and you can find Civil Rights Core on all the
major social media places. You can find us on our
website civil rights core dot org. And then at the
beginning of next year, I'll be out all the new
book called Copaganda, which talks about all this stuff and
much more detail. Will probably have some kind of a
book tour people can come to in different cities and
(43:42):
just deepen the conversation that we have about how the
media talks about things like safety and crime and justice.
And I'm looking forward to talking with people all over
about these important issues because we're entering a period of
rising authoritarian and this stuff is more important than ever.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, absolutely, Well, thank you for doing the work that
you're doing, and thank you so much for coming on.
And yeah, would love to have you back again as
soon as you have some free time. We are miles
and I are going to take a quick break and
then we'll come back to close it out.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
We'll be right back and we're back.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
And yeah, wow, Alec carrit cat sanis Yeah, always super enlightening. Yeah,
that had a bunch of other things we wanted to
get to that we didn't have time to, but yeah,
just that that image of the inside of jails right now,
where like you get your iPad and you get your
like little media device and then they're just like gouging
(44:54):
you for yeah paid.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
I mean it'll be stuff like, oh, you want to
listen to us, that's like two dollars and thirty cents, Yeah,
to listen to one song. You know, it's just again,
but it's also wild how how often we observe these
like again, like all of these things we observe and
these like these systems of oppression, they always eventually come
(45:17):
for us. And even in this version about like nickel
and diming prisoners for every part of their existence, like
you see, just bleed into other parts other industries where
we thought certain things were just like a given to us,
right where it's like you know, you know, like the
shitty version is like you know, an air travel where
it's like, oh, yeah, you're back, we have to charge
you for your backpack now, right. It's like fuck, I
(45:39):
thought that's part of like the whole thing. But again,
they found a way to sort of break down and
you know, find all these smaller opportunities to take more
and more money from people. And of course they're going
to start with the most vulnerable groups first, that being
people that are incarcerated. So yeah, it's that's sort of
the pattern like continues to repeat all the time. And
(46:00):
just like yeah, that that that Nicholas Crystal thing is
just so wild too, because like the whole the whole
take of that too is sort of like, well I benefited.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
He's like, I wouldn't be here if a family didn't.
You know, what's the word I'm looking for, Not endorsed,
but like sort of support like our bid to immigrate here.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Yeah, it's like but it's like, I don't know if
I can say that system still works as well, but that's.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Me and I am better somehow for some reason.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
And I'm from Europe. See my family was from Europe.
And if you notice what we're doing, it's mostly people
coming from the Global South, and that's the group that
we It's okay if we are even more discriminate, discriminatory
towards but yeah, I mean the New York Times, going
to New York Times.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, it is nice to hear some like slightly positive
news about following incarceration rates and you know, so some
of the things where we're actually making progress on cash
bail and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
YEA, well, and I think his point is I think
it was taken well at least for me, like to
look at it. How there is still there's an entire
alternate media universe built on climate change denial that the
same thing would exist for anything about you know, whether
whether or not we can improve the sort of human
caging system we have now or at least obscure any
(47:20):
progress that's been made that would sort of create additional
momentum to truly have a reckoning with our caarcial system.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
But yeah, it just takes so much more momentum to
have a reckoning than it does to like all the
exploitative capitalistic things that is driving shareholder value aka making
wealthy people more wealthy. That stuff is the stuff that
has the momentum, and even if you kill it, it
will pop back up. Like Jason Boorhies, you know, that's
(47:50):
the stuff you have to like keep your eye on
to make sure it's dead. Like and whereas like good
ideas require similarly constant vigilance just to keep alive in
this country at least at this point. But with people
like him, you know, out there, I don't know, maybe
maybe one day there'll be some changes.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, there's that. Like in that I was reading an
article about the the you know, the telecoms private equity thing,
and one of these people from this guy Paul Wright,
who's from the Human Rights Defense Center, like to your point,
he describes it about like even when you try and
address these things, he said, quote, it's kind of like
stepping on a balloon. You squeeze it down in one
place and it just bulges up somewhere else. And that's
(48:34):
the problem we've got with these companies.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Problem or solution. It sounds like private equity is making cheddar.
That's what's cool. No, it sounds private equity. Uh yeah,
that might be bad.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
We'll see.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
We'll continue to keep an eye on it.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Who's going to be like the first like celeb private
equity apologist the first.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
I'm sure like a lot of companies that are.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
But I mean in this sense to try and get
in front of it, Like it's like, well, allow me
to explain why they're charging money. You're like, what the
for real?
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yeah? I do. I do feel like private equity knows
that they're bad guys, which is why like part, like
a major part of the strategy is to be hidden
behind like fourteen shell companies, you know, yeah, and so
they're just like, yeah, nothing to see here. We did
get this endorsement from the spaceman Kevin Spacey, but we
(49:30):
think we're gonna keep our powder dry on this one.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Actually yeah, but yeah, I mean it did feel like
that thing because even when like the Walt, like the
sometimes in like those Red Lobster articles or other articles.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Like you started to see like CNB seeming like and
that's a problem with some of these private equity companies
like oh, oh, oh, well, we're going to be a
sacrificial lamb, so we can then wash our hands and
be like we got rid of the bad apple, the
tree remains.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
That's right, the Red Lobster for listeners who haven't listened
to every single epis So it was undone by, among
other things, but mainly private equity, private equity, Samuel's, j
CRWE Toys, r us KB Toys. Many brands that you
friendlies suddenly went bankrupt after being you know, five years
(50:15):
before being incredibly successful, and household names suddenly go bankrupt.
Look and see if they got taken over by private equity,
which is essentially an industry of parasitic companies that come
in charge the company just just find ways to extract
money from consumers, from employers, from the companies they take over.
(50:38):
And then when the companies go bankrupt, they're still like
it's still.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Good for them. They still do great.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yeah, So anyways, I guess I guess that's it. Miles.
Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff?
And is there a work of media that you've been enjoying?
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Find me at Miles of Gray on Twitter and Instagram.
Find you there, thank you, thank you. And you can
also find Jack and I on the basketball Podcastles and Boostis.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
You can find me talking ninety day fiance on for
twenty Day Fiance a tweet. I haven't really been looking
at the tweets. I was just mostly her majesty and
I were just finishing Bridgerton.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Oh yeah, how do we do?
Speaker 1 (51:22):
Yeah? Yeah, it's all right. You know, like there are
a lot of times I remember the first couple of like,
oh maybe this could be a storyline, this could be
but it's it's always just very straightforward, like you know,
period era romance. So yeah, if you're a Bridgerton fan,
might as well complete it. You might as well complete it.
There you go. But oh, man, but cresta woof fucking Cresteda. Man,
(51:46):
I don't. I don't know how I feel. I don't
know if I feel bad for her. I feel like
she should have really got it worse.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
But hey, yeah, man, I'm still trying to make up
my mind.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
But cresseda kawper Man, Yeah, victim or or a villain?
I think most pressed that name. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore Obrian
A couple of things I've been enjoying on Twitter. Have
you seen this video of Elon Musk emerging? I think
wu tang is for the children retweeted it, what what
are you emerging emerging from a chrystalist? No, just emerging
at it like being announced and then he comes out
(52:24):
and like it's trying to like, uh I I'll link
off to it in the footnotes. It is Jane at
Jane ost Underscore tweeted he's being called the most juiceless
man on earth and it is a wildly earned description
of what we're saying. Wait, let me see this now.
I got to see it.
Speaker 1 (52:44):
We can't.
Speaker 6 (52:45):
I don't, I can't leave it, hang it, send it
where put it. So he emerges, Oh, ship miles away yourself?
Speaker 1 (52:58):
What was that? Flying jump? Jack? Just what is this?
Speaker 7 (53:02):
He's a marionette? Yeah, he's like doing a weird marionette thing.
Oh my god, we're fucked. I can't do it that truly,
it's so disturbing. Y'all have to watch it for yourselves.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
But yeah, he like comes out he does like a
flying jumping like jump what.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Do you call that?
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah, he doesn't jumping jack flash exactly. His shirt lifts
up over his belly. Then he lands and like does
a sort of like.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
I got no string still whole. That's like, yeah, that's
kind of he's doing like a weird puppet rogue puppet dance?
Is that because he just got his money? Is that
what that?
Speaker 2 (53:42):
I think? I think this is older than that, But
I actually, wow, maybe not, maybe maybe it is. Well,
maybe he just got his money and he's that is
how he's going to touchdown dance on all of their graves.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
Oh wow, someone someone put someone, But he's doing an
X with his body still up. Self righteous dumb ass.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
In response to the person making fun of him. Wow,
keep it, okay, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Wow, Well he should work on a mobility man, It's
all about mobility. I think you could have got those
heels further apart, but hey, who am?
Speaker 2 (54:17):
I and Harry Hill tweeted a picture of Welsh's grape
Juice like an old Welsh's grape Juice commercial next to
the new Welch's vodka transfusion drinks, and they said the
Welsh's grape Juice to Welsh's vodka transfusion pipeline is insane,
and Puck at puck Meat tweeted, pivoting from grape juice
to alcohol is actually the most sane pipeline. It literally
(54:41):
happens on its own.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Good point. I don't know if I like vodka transfusion.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
Yeah, I don't know why it needs to be transfused.
I don't know why we need like a medical procedure
to happen. You could just call it vodka.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
Wait, isn't Isn't that like mostly a medical term? Yeah,
they're just trying to be cool like about that, you
know what I mean. Yeah, I'm like, you know, it's
a vodka transfusion. I'm like, I don't know, dude, I'm
thinking blood transfusions.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Plus, man, I just got a nice transfuse from my
drinking Yello transfusion.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah, Jesus Woway.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore. Brian
you can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist, at
the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have Facebook fan page
and a website, Daily zegis dot com where we post
our episodes and our footnotes where we look off to
the information that we talked about in today's episode, The
Most Cursed Celebration You've Ever Seen by Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
We will off so be linking off.
Speaker 2 (55:45):
To that as well as a song that we think
you might enjoy. Myles, what song do you think people
might enjoy?
Speaker 1 (55:53):
There's an artist, Jessica Pratt who's a fantastic singer songwriter.
I like, I remember really with her first album, like
maybe this was like in twenty twelve, and then I
kind of like would hear about her here and there?
But then Brian the producer was like, Yo, have you
heard the new Jessica Pratt album? And I've peeped it.
She's doing like something. I don't know her. This album,
as he describes it, which is a good description, it's
(56:15):
like feels like like tracks Nancy Sinatra would have made
in her heyday but just didn't. And it has that
sort of style of production and her like she has
just such an interesting voice in the way she uses
it is really dope. So this is a track from
her new album which is called Here in the Pitch.
This track is called better Hate and this one is
by Jessica Pratt.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
All right, we will link off to that in the footnotes.
The daily guys to the production of iHeart Radio. For
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That is gonna do it for us this morning. We're
back this afternoon though, to tell you what is trending,
and we will talk to you all then. Bye bye
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