Jen Briney | The Corporate Control Of Congress, The Federal Budget, & Privatization Propaganda

00:04 In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the Fireside Chats. His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times but we're far from 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration We offer a fresh conversation! I'm Greg Carlwood These are The Hireside Chats Here we go, Hireside Chatters. Welcome to the show Drinking a Little Drink Smoking A Little Smoke from sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood and today we're going to look at what's really going on in government What shady bills are passing? What corporate favors are getting tacked on Who is in whose pocket And all the not so good stuff with a great guest Jen Briney who runs The Congressional Dish Podcast

00:53 Where for two years she read every bill that passed the house and as you can imagine one learns a lot during that process. I think this is great show that gets back to the fundamentals These are things we can see, The evidence is right there tough to argue against And I just really wanted to throw Jen on the THC stage because she's so good at what she does and deserves some credit But before we dive into all of that today is the fifth show of the month So we do have another money bomb winner I don't talk about it all that much unless it's coming up, but for the people who don't know... ...I take half of the donations in a month and gift half back to random listeners on the fifth show. This time around winner got $384! Not bad chunk of change thanks everyone who donates. It makes this possible for me and contributes to happiness of fellow THC fan every month

01:39 So think about that, and here's a word from this month's winner. They had a pretty hot mic, apologies for that but it's only about a minute and then we're gonna get that congressional dish with Jen Briney on the other side. It was so hard to pick which favorites we love, so we all have our personal favorites. But Anthony loves the magic and false flag attacks outing and I love Bella Donna Marduk alcohol conspiracy with David Blum Robert Phoenix Tracy Twyman everything about the hollow earth Everything! We love it Thank you so much for being a place where we can go for refuge

02:26 and for inspiration, and we're trying to raise five kids. And influence the world with little things like telling the truth and loving each other. That isn't everything that comes into the life of a family. So thanks for being there for us and keeping things interesting Our five kids are so happy! Thank you! We had kind of a lean Christmas, and we're trying to keep things together through some poor times And so we'll be supplementing that with a Furby For each of our girls and some snowboarding boots And daddy's gonna get a new conspiracy t-shirt and our 12 year old is going to get his second. Thank you so much, we love it! You're such a great part of her...our existence and helping us get through these troubled times as he said thank you so much

03:25 Alright people, we have looked at UFOs, secret underground bases, ritual magic, occult secrets, hidden history, mind control and a ton of other aspects of the Puppet Master's plan all while trying to get a handle on what our government is doing. But funny enough...we haven't really looked at Congress! Thankfully for us, today's guest is one of the few people who actually has. Jennifer Briney is a host of the Congressional Dish podcast where she undertakes the daunting task of reading and summarizing every bill that passes through the House of Representatives and as result has become one of the most informed authorities on exactly what's going on in government. She does the work that every news network, political website and newspaper in the country should be doing and she does it on her own dime at her own time I for one can't wait to get schooled in the areas we should all be a little bit embarrassed if you don't know more about Jen welcome to THC Thank you very much for having me! I'm excited too talk to you

04:13 Yeah, I'm super psyched too. I think that we're going to educate the people on some real practical information it's gonna be a show anyone can feel comfortable sharing which isn't always true around here but also you know a lot of folks will think this stuff is boring right away or they'll have that preconceived notion but i think that is so wrong because this is where you find the scams and schemes and corruption And best of all, it is all documented. Well that's why I kind of chose this topic because it's all in the public domain and all the stuff is now available to anyone who wants to see on the internet you know? I'm doing all this work with a laptop and iPad and you can download the congressional record every single day so thats how I started as I just started

04:56 reading what was actually going on in Congress, because I didn't believe the news. I didn't think that they were focusing on the right things it was always about the horse race you know like who's beating who where i wanted to know how are you spending my money? It really all came from that question and now that I know Horrified, I guess is the best word to describe it. But it's all fascinating. It's interesting to see where our money actually goes too and its so different from what you hear when you turn on the television. Its so different

05:36 Yeah, I can only imagine. You're right we have more political tabloids than we have political news and i kind of did gloss over exactly what your show is about because I wanted to let you tell the people a little bit about that journey before we got really into the meat of this thing so what can you kinda tell us about your process up to this point? Well I've been doing this podcast for a little over two years So I covered 113 Congress which each congresses 2 years long I read every bill that passed the House of Representatives specifically in the 113th Congress. And the reason that became my goal is quite frankly, because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how Congress worked. I really didn't know anything about it so if you go back and listen to all episodes you can hear my progression of learning what i was actually looking at. So this show is actually morphing now because its a new congress. The 114 started last week

06:31 And in the last Congress, the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives and the Democrats controlled the Senate. Well now that Republicans have the whole thing and so I'm trying to figure out exactly how am gonna cover this new Congress because now that I know more how Congress works, I don't think I have to read every single bill anymore like I did in the last Congress. I'd really like to be able to cover the house and the senate until people What's really going on and plus there is this whole other thing that I realized which is that the hearings that happen in Congress are absolutely fascinating. And they're really long so that's the only tough part about watching a congressional hearing but that's where they call in all these witnesses that are experts and all these different fields whether it's science or finance, and they question them what

07:21 While they're under oath, you know and all of this stuff is available online and on TV and nobody's watching it It's absolutely fascinating. So I want to get the hearings into the podcast too so it's shifting a little bit but congressional dish The main point of it Is that this podcast looks at what's actually in the bills. You're not gonna hear very much about Democrats versus Republicans, I don't cover campaigns at all because i truly don't care it's more about what they're doing with our dollars once their governing you know is really frustrating me to see that people pay attention to politics only a couple times and mean really in this country we pay attention every four years for the presidential election which is baffling to me as we have

08:06 no control over who becomes president where we get to vote in an entirely new house of representatives every two years they're all available to be fired and yet we're not paying attention to what they're doing with our money during the two years in between the elections. And that's if we're paying attention to the House of Representatives than the Senate at all which For the most part i've gotta say i found that people aren't they don't know how it works they don't know who represents them and i think a lot if not all of the problems in our country. Stem from the fact that we have surrendered our representation to,

08:43 basically corrupt people, people that are corrupted by corporations and by money. And because of our negligence by not going to vote they're getting rehired time after time and so I'm focusing on what they're actually doing while they're in there so that we can approach voting as the job evaluation that it really is because they are employees and we don't look at it that way. So that's kind of how I'm trying to change the conversation Well said, you're totally right. We have a job in government as the watchdog. I mean we know that lobbyists are buying our government but it's because they don't have to make a choice between getting re-elected and being bought because they're going to get re-elected anyway because people just choose the names they know or whoever has got the most money behind them

09:31 but they'd probably be a little more cautious when choosing lobbyist money if they knew their constituency actually cared, actually paid attention. So what you're doing is really key to change in the way some of this stuff is happening? I certainly hope so though and it's... You know the podcast numbers aren't big enough. I don't have enough people paying attention just yet but this reaction that this podcast has been so positive for me Want to know what's going on and they just don't know where to get the information, you know Because that's what made me want to do this. I wanted to find out this information and had nowhere to turn there wasn't You know The Hill is probably the best source for finding out news about Congress but even The Hill

10:16 It focuses on the things that go on in a lot of the details in Washington DC, but even they get bogged down stupid campaign stuff I'm interested in government. I'm not interested in Democrats versus Republicans In fact, I think those two sides when it comes to actual you know people us population I don't know anyone that fits in either of those two categories perfectly right and You know. Yeah and also on all the important stuff they both are on the same side anyway it's really more corporations versus the people rather than left versus right or at least that's the way I see it Absolutely. Absolutely, in fact I think i've used that phrase on the show before and I think that's what's beautiful is that we are starting to have this awakening at least In my experience That had you said that 10 years ago people wouldn't really know what you're talking about And now that narrative it's just so clear and that's what I discovered by reading The Bills I started reading The Bills going okay? I just want to see what's in these things and over the course of the last two years I've discovered that within every single bill is corporate favor

11:18 That's what they're doing. And when it comes to the two parties, the Republican Party is almost completely owned by big business and they work for business and it's very crystal clear when you watch what they do and what they say that that's who they're working for. And then the Democrats are all over the place It seems like each Democrat has a couple of issues that they are bought and sold on, and then there's other issues where they'll actually vote their conscience. And I call the Democrats the party with no principles because you can't count on them for anything! Some of them are in the bag for Wall Street and some of them are for the Keystone XL pipeline, and some of them you know or just fine with dismantling pieces of Obamacare. They're all over the place So in my head when I think about Congress I'm gonna say about 75% of them are working for corporations and maybe 25

12:06 That's an optimistic number, but maybe a quarter of them are working for the people. Although I can't say a quarter because I can actually name them on my 10 fingers so no it's not even close to a quarter but that's what we need to start understanding and what we need to start fighting is the corporate influence in our government. Totally agreed, so let me ask you and were there some crimes and scams that you caught early on in your process that just really shocked you and stuck in your mind and kind of fueled you to continue? Yeah, early on in the process there was a bill and I can't remember which one it was but it was some kind of government funding bill. And attached to that with something that got nicknamed the Monsanto Protection Act

12:52 And that's when I kind of learned the process of taking something that needs to be signed or, you know, the government will shut down. Or the debt ceiling will crash our economy. You know there are these very important bills that need to be signed and then they'll attach things to them that had they been put up separately would never become law and the Monsanto Protection Act was a perfect example of this And what this did is it basically said that if you have a plant that's never existed before, so let's say you merge green beans with rat poison. And so you have this plan and someone says hey FDA this doesn't look

13:28 Normal to me can you evaluate it for its safety with the monsanto protection act said. While it's being evaluated for its safety for human consumption these companies could grow it they could sell it they could put in the food supply they can do whatever they wanted while it was being evaluated, And that one actually caught enough fire that it was repealed six months later because people noticed and cared. The good news I have for you is that its now repealed, the bad news I have for you is that for six months God only knows what was in your food but um... That was one of the eye opening things for me and then last year

14:07 You know that with them on sandal protection act was a republican thing you know it's been on there by senator roy blunt of missouri. That was one party then i saw the two parties get together and um i don't know if you remember a couple years ago sixty minutes ran a special about insider trading in congress do you remember this, i do remember that yeah Yeah, they highlighted Nancy Pelosi Democrat and John Boehner Republican arguably the two most powerful ones and showed how through the information they get in their jobs, they can then go to the stock market and make money off of the information that they get. And so this caused a big outroar and what they did is they passed something called The Stock Act. The Stock Act was supposedly going to prevent insider trading by Congress and it really didn't do that but one thing that did have teeth is it was going to require members of congress and their staff

15:09 and you know the president vice president all those people they would have to report their financial holdings. And then there would be a publicly available searchable website where we people like you and me can go in search through them and try and figure out conflicts of interest and so it wasn't so much that they couldn't insider trade but we were supposed to be given the information that would allow us to find out when they were doing it and hold accountable, So, on a Thursday afternoon Harry Reid who is the Democrat in charge of the Senate got up in front of an empty room and passed a gutting of the Stock Act. It basically took that website and made it disappear or no longer exist He passed it through unanimous consent which means that no one says no but the room was empty There to say no And then the next day on Friday Eric Cantor who was in charge of the Republicans in the house he did the same exact thing

16:03 And then a couple days later on Monday, April 15th President Obama Democrat and the president signs it into law. And then no one found out about it because two hours later two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon and there was no chance of this ever making the news. In fact I didn't even find out about it until a week later because they had been so sneaky in Congress in the way that they passed it you know? You know I was paying attention to The House at the time And they have very predictable patterns about how they do things. And there's these two guys, they get up and squabble every Friday afternoon but when you see that squabbling happen it- You know that the day is done! And they pass this after the squabbling so I know for a fact that there was no one there because every reasonable person would've assumed that the day was done an hour ago

16:51 You know and so to see the two parties get together not just the two parties but the leadership of the two parties with The help of the president in under four days gut this stock act which they had signed with a signing ceremony and cameras and journalists, and they made such a big deal out of it And then it just disappeared A year later In that manner um thats That was probably the biggest moment where I said, okay. I can't stop doing this You know someone needs to know about this Someone needs to be talking about it and the fact that I never saw anything about it on the news That was when I decided that I wanted to give this a real a real go

17:32 That is awesome. You know, I'm glad you brought up that particular Stock Act saga because that was definitely on my list of things to talk to you about when i first heard that punchline that Obama signed it just hours before the Boston bombing as a conspiracy guy I definitely perked up A lot of people would say that was just coincidence but I don't know...I don't believe in coincidence much as I used too and something so convenient is always going to seem a little suspicious to me Well, the reason that didn't seem as suspicious to me is that April 15th was also tax day and April 15th was the day that all of the staffers and congressmen in the president all them were supposed to report their financial data. And so the fact that it was signed on April 8 or on April 15 made perfect sense to me because otherwise The people that didn't turn in their financial data which they knew the whole time I guess that they weren't going to no one had a prepared

18:27 They would have been breaking the law had the president not signed it that day So I really don't think that there's a connection between the Boston bombings. I think it was Amazing for them insofar as the media was distracted so any press that it would have received Was gone, but I honestly don't think that they were worried about us finding out enough to you know put up two bombs on the I don't know it's that's taking a little far for. I do agree with you that i doesn't seem like a big enough deal but then also don't think they care about human life all that much and now there is just one of those weird things they got incredibly lucky the time is amazing yeah

19:07 So I really love your show. I think it should be required for all Americans if they listen just to that, they would have a lot of information about what's going on in Congress but it was one of the listeners who introduced me to you and your work not long ago and we set this up in a pretty interesting time because it is a new year with a new Congress and you have been undertaking the massive challenge of analyzing the new 1600 page budget which It's obviously an important piece of legislation and gives us a lot of insight into what they're doing, full of scandals I'm sure. Tell us about the budget? What should people know? Well there actually was quite a few things attached to the budget and it is a perfect example how horrible things are able to become law

19:53 by being attached to must sign legislation. The repercussions for the president not signing this into law would have been another government shutdown and nobody wanted that so what congressman did is they just took all the things that they wanted to become law, that couldn't have been become law otherwise and attach them to the budget in the two biggest scandals without a doubt is that there was a bill which I dubbed the worst bill of 113th Congress I was furious about it and that was HR 992, and what this bill would have or well does do now that it's law is it rolls back part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill. That basically said that if you're going to... If you're a giant bank and you're going to gamble, you need to do it with funds which are separate from the banking that you and I put our deposits into right so essentially they couldn't take my money that I'm just

20:48 putting there for safekeeping and then go play with it on the stock market. So this was supposed to go into effect I believe this year, and so attached to the budget was a bill that made that go away. Now the banks which crashed the financial world in 2008 by gambling with our deposits are now allowed to do that again. This is now law! This is now legally allowed. And then the other scandal Now so since citizens united that case that allows unlimited corporate spending on you know tv ads and things like that.

21:27 The political parties are feeling a little left out of the game so the Democrats and Republicans got together and slipped something into the budget that now allows a Couple to donate approximately a million dollars for every election Now the actual amount of what they're allowed to donate is very unclear in all of the different sources that I looked at To try and figure out that number They all had different numbers. So I spent about four hours yesterday really looking at it and from what I can tell an individual can contribute about half a million dollars are a quarter of a million dollars at least every single year to a political party. And that was up from, I think the old limit was like 37 thousand which is still... I mean thirty seven thousand dollars that's more than then a lot of my friends make you know? That's yearly salary Yeah! That's a lot money and now it's up to a quarter of a million so what we're just seeing is that these monied interests are doing things

22:25 that only benefit each other i don't know anyone united states who's been clamoring and saying please let these banks gamble with my money no one's written that letter but on the banks were definitely pushing for it and the heads of the political parties are pushing for that stuff so thats you know there is that's good. The great thing about my show is that i'm able to find out this stuff but the hard part is finding out about this stuff in having No way to do anything about it, you know? Right. I definitely get that frustration but just those two things alone are huge because banking regulation and getting the money out of politics are really high on people's bullet points on what we need to do to fix the system and

23:13 opposite of that. Things are not getting better at all, they're getting ten times the amount of money thrown into politics and the banking regulations are back to almost nothing and we expect them to do different things this time around? I don't know." Oh no, the thing about this congress which I'm trying to prepare myself for as much as possible is all the things that i saw passed in the house of representatives last year. I was able to say it a lot of cases that this is dead on arrival and senate well thats not true anymore alot of stuff is going to the president's desk And so a lot of it now has a chance of becoming law in the 114th Congress because this strategy of attaching it to must sign legislation, it works. It just does and you know the president is not about to start shutting down the government and he's not going to let our country default on our debt. The debt ceiling is going to be coming up but the estimates are about this summer we're gonna hit the debt ceiling again. So this strategy has been proven effective

24:11 So many times now that i just think we need to prepare ourselves in the next two years at the corporations they really right now the corporations are control of our congress which means they control. the laws and they control all our money. Which is, it's concerning. So since you have been looking at this for two years I'm sure you get a ton of insight into which industries and corporations are most active in pushing Congress around? Of course Monsanto is going to be a huge one but are there any that surprised you or what about some other big corporations who really do have their tentacles deep inside Congress

24:49 Well, I have to say that Wall Street and the banks they're number one. They get whatever they want in this new Congress has proven already that it's going to do the bank spitting on the very first thing that they did was reauthorize this terrorism insurance program i really don't know much about that but i know that they attach something to it which deregulated Wall Street again so that the first thing that became law in 114th Congress had a nugget attached that helped wall street and then there is a package of eleven bills that deregulates. I'm wall street again that just passed to the house and so that's the first thing they're going for wall street number one what surprised me

25:26 Is the extent to which fossil fuels controls this congress it that's probably the thing that blown me away the most is the number of pro fossil fuel bills i saw and how easily they passed how many democrats are on board with this. You know what seems like such a no brainer just so many of us that, first of all if you have noticed that the weather's gotten wacky and you're at all concerned about rising sea levels or anything like that and you listen to scientists and you think that the climate is actually changing The they're doing the exact opposite of what you wanna do to solve that problem even if you think the climate isn't changing and that's all bunk. You're still a human being who needs to breathe clean air and drink clean water and then you look at something like fracking which is quite literally poisoning the underground water tables,

26:17 And instead of regulating that, they keep trying to pass things that make it impossible to regulate that. Because I don't know if people know this fracking is exempted from all the laws that protect your water. It's exempted from the Clean Water Act from the Safe Drinking Water Act, from the Clean Air Act is exempted from all of that which is how fracking is possible because it does all those things. It pollutes so much and instead of trying to fix that problem for our health and our safety they wanna make sure that it's never, ever regulated. And that's the stuff that really upset me the most and also... The BP spill was so horrific and I took a road trip about eight months after that through the South. It took three months got in my car with my husband and we just drove

27:04 And I remember driving eight months after the spill and just seeing dead dolphins all over the beach. Oh no! And they were picking them up as fast as they could, but they couldn't pick him up fast enough because there were so many of them dying it was horrifying And then, attached to must-sign legislation there's this treaty with Mexico that we've now signed that's going to pave the way for deepwater drilling even deeper in the Gulf of Mexico than the Deepwater Horizon was. So these decisions that were making they go against everything that makes sense except for these policies are great for the multinational corporations, for their stock price, for their stockholders, for their profits

27:46 And that is all that seems to matter to so many people that are making these decisions in our Congress. But yeah, those two industries... Wall Street and oil and gas I mean It's amazing the power that those two alone have. Wow, yeah they seem to get everything they want it's just ridiculous but getting back to the budget a little bit obviously we always see a huge portion of that is military spending any noteworthy changes here or is it pretty much stay-the-course? Changes no but now that i'm kind of understanding the numbers a little bit better we're spending well over half our discretionary funding on the military and. I just want people to think about that for just a second because we spend one point one trillion dollars in this budget,

28:40 And over half of that is going to war so you know we spend forty billion dollars on the entire department of homeland security every year and not includes the coast guard in border patrol and. Customs in all these different things with home insecurity than secret service in the FBI fbi's justice but whatever forty billion dollars, but it costs us well over $150 billion every year just to take care of our veterans from all these different wars. And I look at how much these new war ships cost, it's just a billion here, a billion there where you'll see the same congressmen then nitpick things like food stamps which yeah feeding people costs a lot of money but it's not even close to how much we're spending

29:29 for killing people across the world for reasons that I don't think any of us are really clear or supportive of, just like oh we have to get the terrorists. Well what's a terrorist? So that number it's... That just makes me Insane to realize that when i'm paying my taxes such a giant chunk of it is going. To that and the things that were not building with that money we're not you know what i think of when i think of my safety, I want to know that the bridge between where i am in oakland and san francisco. I wanna know that things not about to fall down because twenty years ago it did like i'm living here now in these bridges fell down, and we have report after report after report telling us of the majority of our bridges are structurally

30:23 deficient. And we have one of the worst passenger rail networks in the world because we've allowed the rails to be privatized, there are so many things at home that are in dire need of repair you know? Like just cars alone like forget the bridges falling down but we lose 33 000 people every single year it's 11 9-11s every single year eliminated by giving people options other than cars for travel. Right, maglev trains all that good stuff Yeah trains and or even boats You know There's so many different ways for us to move groups of people that don't have to be in individual cars But there's entire cities like I was raised in Southern California There's entire cities like Los Angeles

31:15 where that's really the only option to get around right now is in a vehicle. And there are so many cities like that, and it doesn't have to be that way. But instead of giving ourselves these other options which are cleaner and safer we're killing people on the other side of the world and that is supposedly our safety measure. It is funny, a collapsing bridge is so much more of security threat to us than a terrorist in Afghanistan but yet it just doesn't strike fear into the hearts of Americans the same way. Yeah and where I'm sitting right now there's two threats to me really and a big earthquake we could be spending a lot of money on earthquake warning systems because we now do know that you know

32:02 You know the pressure of an earthquake it moves after an earthquake and it tends to move in certain directions so you can actually set up sensors and get warnings. And you can kind of figure out where the next were the most pressure is and try and figure out where the next epicenter's going to be weak if we funded that type of research the way we fund research into robots for killing people, We could actually warn people that an earthquake is happening, give them 10 or 20 seconds which is more than enough to get under a table or in our doorway and you could save literally thousands of people from these threats that we know 100% are coming. We don't know 100% that the terrorist is coming for you but I know 100% an earthquake's gonna get me if I sit here long enough."

32:47 And then the other one is tsunamis. You know, I'm this entire area is along the coast There's not a single tsunami warning sign there's no evacuation routes none of this stuff even though we saw exactly what happens in Japan and There are threats to each and every one of us most of them related to nature right now Which we are not paying attention to we're not fixing You know, one of the things that makes me crazy moving up here to the Bay Area is that we know certain apartment buildings. The ones that are kind of on stilts in front? Those are the ones that fall down when there's an earthquake?!

33:23 And we're not reinforcing these buildings. I don't know if we're just waiting for them to fall down, but i suspect it's because the money is not there. It's not a priority but we are building new ships and new drones um...I tweeted something the other day where we are spending our military money making robot jellyfish! The spy on god only knows under the ocean so We have money and we're buying things but it's going towards really silly things while we neglect things that could actually keep us safe in a real sense of like you don't die, the bridge stays up in when your house that your in is structurally sound. It's hard to

34:08 to deal with that every day. That reality I hear you well said if only they saw more profit in saving lives but obviously we have a lot of money and people really don't think about it because they get propagandized and they're told that we have to make all these cuts And yeah, we have to make cuts because the corporations are demanding more of our tax dollars. But we're told the problem is welfare queens food stamp abuse and illegal immigrants and not the billions that are going into corporations it's that guy who uses food stamps to buy beer when he should've only been able to buy milk. Yeah Well, and one of the things that they put in the farm bill that really got under my skin is now if you buy let's say a six pack of soda with food stamps. You can't recycle those cans for the cash

34:56 That's technically illegal now, although I think it is completely unenforceable. But it's such a horrible thing to do to pick on the homeless. Yeah kick a guy when he's down! We've made it so hard for them and um... It's all about funneling money into big business and it makes sense because these people that we're electing they are big business And they brag about it every day on the house floor. I can't tell you, at least once or twice a day someone gets up there and well, I've been in the private sector for 45 years! I never took a day off and i'm here because i'm a businessman!" So they think they're doing The right thing because their group of friends-the people that they know are other rich business owners

35:39 And when they go on vacation, they go to where rich people go. They don't hang out with us. They don't see us in the grocery store like these are not people that we interact with on a day-to-day basis. They are taking care of their own The way that we solve that is we put our own into Congress instead of them. And it's so simple how it can be fixed, and I think that's part of the frustrating part for me too, is that the answer is right there in its already set up for us. The voting system We are all guaranteed the right to vote or at least they're trying to take that away too from a good chunk of us. But if you put the effort in, you can go and vote and if we all did that this would be a very different country but 87% this is a real stat I've looked this up I'm not just flinging out a random one. 87 percent of people under the age of 30 who were eligible to vote in the last election did not do so they just

36:40 Shout it out. Man, you know I gotta say I am guilty of that because Diebold being in charge of the voting machines and it being held by a private company...I'm very skeptical about the voting process itself but yet even that said we don't have to make it easy for them if it is rigged We don't need to make it easy for him by 87% of us staying at home If everyone got out there and they had a couple hundred million extra votes to count I mean we might get our way sometimes Well, we would absolutely get our way. Here's the thing that stat pissed me off royally when I found out about it And now it's my greatest source of hope right? It's what's keeping me going every single day dealing with all this depressing stuff It's because the young people the people that are under 30 are

37:21 That's a bigger generation than the baby boomers because we're their kids. So take every baby boomer Well, they had two to three kids where a bigger group than they are point and so that means that 87% of people under 30 is an untapped voting block And one thing I do know about The younger people Is they know what's wrong? You know, convincing a baby boomer that the real sides in this country are corporations versus the rest of us. That can be a difficult conversation Explain that to someone who is 19 years old and they already know you had them at first sentence They're on the same page where we run into problems is what do we do about it

38:00 And Occupy Wall Street was a beautiful thing. And it proved to me that people actually care, I'm in Oakland right now, I've seen people marching in the street day after day after day that I just walked through a protest two hours ago. People want to do something, I just don't think they've been given the answer yet this is how we do it specifically and I am giving that answer, We Vote! And it sounds so Well, I know that we're supposed to vote but you know but it truly...I didn't understand how possible it was for us to change things until I realized how many people are sitting out. For their own misguided reasons, I understand that people feel burned by the government and they have been taught especially for the last 30 years that the government is the problem you had the president in United States saying that through my entire childhood but its not the government The government is just a thing human beings control

39:02 And if we had better human beings controlling it, they wouldn't be controlling it in this way. They wouldn't be spending all of the money on the military and they wouldn't be trying to rig the system in their own favors because they wouldn't have that power to do so if they weren't an office." So that's the thing that makes me so happy about that horrible stat is that you have all these people who care very deeply And it's such an easy answer. And if you can just convince more people to show up and vote, it's totally possible to change at all. It's possible and probable. People get so apathetic and they get out there looking for some grand sexy answer and they don't want to hear just go in there and check yes or no. They're like, No forget about that we need to change things is like oh well maybe that's the way it works. Maybe we should I'm totally with you

39:57 If that stat was flipped and it was 90% of people are out there voting, then yeah. There's not really much to be optimistic about but the people do have power and we've been kind of taught that we don't have it you know? We've been taught to ignore our own power and what your talking about is just Realizing the power that we've always had. We've just completely gotten away from it and gotten completely apathetic Whether that's can just convenience for them or by design I mean does it really matter they're definitely getting the results they want Yeah, and I don't even think its Apathy quite so much. I think it's ignorance maybe it's not ignorant. It's people who feel like

40:38 They don't want to participate in a corrupted system. And that's what I heard over and over again they're waiting for the revolution whatever the hell they think that's gonna be but they, they don't want to participate in something they think is wrong so they see their government using the money for drones and and for doing things so against everything that they believe in and they say, well I'm not gonna participate in something like that. Except you don't have a choice. Like if you were gonna sit out and not pay your taxes maybe that would make some sense but by not voting that means that you're not doing anything to change the system that you're stuck in anyway. You can't get out of this system. If you are human there's nowhere for you to go we all share this one planet and the disease that's infecting us, this whole corporate control thing

41:25 This is a global deal what's great about being an american though is that we are running the globe right now so we have enormous power of what happens over the entire world and if we can understand that in use this democracy that we still kind of have before it's too late. Change the faces better making the rules, We can change the entire world and what's beautiful is that the house of representatives controls the money and he who controls the money controls, the power i mean not just basics. The house of representatives can be voted out in full every two years it was designed that way for a reason

42:11 So that's another thing that's beautiful we don't have to wait very long we need this idea to spread for one election and with the internet ideas can spread faster than they ever have before if this spreads for one election just vote and vote for whoever is on your ballot who is. Okay. There's the other side of this and people say, well I don't really have anyone great to vote for that's a problem we do need more good people to volunteer to go to Congress and put their names on the ballot but if you just showed up at least voted for the least worst option that's a step to getting better

42:51 Amen, we could reel back some of this for sure. There's a lot of third world nations that are having their natural resources just plundered or their entire economies tanked or their governments overthrown and They're really powerless they're looking at us like they're just waiting for the first world to just stop being okay with this You're kind of looking it's like are you guys gonna? You know rain in your own government here sometime soon I got three kids that are gonna die this week It'd be nice if you you know did something well unfortunately The dirty little truth here is that a lot of times it's the first world doing it to them. Exactly, yeah right And that's... It's not that we're just sitting back and allowing horrible things to happen in a lot of cases and this is uncomfortable to say and it's uncomfortable to hear and understand

43:36 but we are not exactly seen as a force for good in this world right now because we've done some very bad things to allow multinational corporations to go into every country that they want to and take the resources and sell them for profits. And, we have overthrown governments All over the world all over south america this started in a you know sixties and seventies we start in south america we've done it in the island nations, um we recently did it in ukraine you know it. Ukraine didn't wanna sign a free trade agreement with europe

44:14 So their government was thrown out there elected government a new one installed and look at that they signed the free trade agreement with europe and now they're selling off. All of their very lucrative shale formations to multinational fossil fuel corporations in it's a very strategic place as far as pipelines are concerned because their pipelines from russia, to europe that go right through ukraine and so there's all these things going on in it's all done with our money in our name and a lot of cases with rcia so we don't really know, but it is um where funding all these things and were pissing off the entire world.

44:53 And a big reason that us Americans are sitting back and doing nothing is because we're not aware of it happening. I love it when people from Europe and other countries come here, and they turn on our news and they go oh my God! Is this what's news here? Because I was living in Germany when the Iraq war started, and I can tell you their news is different. It's actually news. You know? And so I think if the rest of the world understood that we're being lied to and propagandized even worse than they are, At least they might understand where we're coming from, but at some point the rest of the world is going to say enough. And that's the day that I'm afraid of." Right and since we are kind of talking about these smaller countries i did want to talk to you about privatization and some of the content in one of your very early episodes it was all about the free market fallacy and this kinda touches on a lot of what John Perkins talks about who wrote the book Confessions Of An Economic Hitman great book great examples of what happens to countries

45:54 follow the policies that they're trying to push here with privatization and the direction that we seem to be going, and there's plenty of examples. You mentioned a couple but can you tell us about some other things that may have happened in these other places like Chile or Indonesia or Argentina? Sure, you know Chile is a really fascinating example and it's when you look at their history. It really helps you understand what's going on here in the 1970s during the 1970 election all of the parties that ran for Chile's presidency they all said they wanted to nationalize the copper mines because that was one of their most

46:31 lucrative natural resources and they were controlled at the time by us mining corporations. And the US mining corporations went in there and yes they invested a billion dollars over fifty years into building up that industry but they sent seven point two billion dollars home, You know so they went in and they took a lot of chilean money and put it in their pockets at the same time there was a phone company which owned like seventy percent. Of chile's phone infrastructure and they wanted to nationalize that too, And so the guy that won the presidency, one on this nationalization plan and the CIA threw him out. The new government used something called The BRIC which was an economic program that was based on Milton Friedman's free market ideas. Here is a thing about free market theory it is a theory its never ever been

47:27 In existence there's never been a true free market because at some point rules need to be made you know the whole world can exist just for profit it's cuz then there is no morals calculated into it so. But that, the phrase free market has gotten to the point now that people just assume oh well we wanna free market it is good it shall be the goal so they kind of sold this to chile before even did it to us here And so these free market ideas were put forth by the new guy that was installed but a cia in his name you probably heard of him agustin peniche. What he did he privatized the banks he opened the borders to foreign imports,

48:08 He cut government spending by 10% while at the same time increasing the funding for the military and he eliminated all price control. So if the government had said, you know your phone bill can only be $5 well then that just disappeared now your phone bill can be $55 we see that here in this country with our internet! You know like there's no reason it should cable and internet should be this expensive except you only have one company to choose from So all of this stuff was made legal in chile naturally the people were pissed and so pinnacle took to murdering and torturing people to keep the population under control. And here in united states we haven't quite well we got there you know eric garner how he's doing um,

48:52 We're not quite there yet, but we do have so many people that are locked up in prisons and we have minimums of the number of people. We need to keep locked in cages So we're kind of on this track And so in so Pinochet goes murders tortures people to keep him under control and by 1975 five years after this coup He had cut public spending by 27% and by 1980 it was cut in half And the result of that or that unemployment went up from three to twenty percent here in this country you know the unemployment gonna appear and they're reading the numbers by the way so all the time but they're getting on the tv and saying oh i'm playing it's done a five percent, be s it's down to five percent what happens is if your unemployed for long enough. Can you stop looking for job you just magically don't count anymore and so thats one of the reasons its going down

49:39 So unemployment went up in Chile just as it's going here. The public schools were replaced by voucher systems and charter schools, which you'll hear a lot about in this new Congress It's a big-time goal Health care became pay as you go Which is when you hear the people in Congress saying they want to repeal Obamacare They want to make the rules go away and have you pay To stay alive because it's huge for profit. So they did that in Chile They privatized Chile social security system, which they're also going to try to do this year in our Congress and in 1982 12 years after this began chelease economy crashed and their debt exploded and their unemployment hit 30%

50:19 And by the end of the 1980s, half the population was below the poverty line. Yet the richest 10% of Chileans had seen their incomes increased by like 85%. So much of that just mirrors what's happening here. We all know that the income inequality is getting worse and worse and worse. It's because in large part to these free market economic theories you know? Yeah. Look at the clothes you're wearing right now. They are probably from China, Indonesia... You know your TV is definitely from somewhere else everything we have now none of it is made in America and this was a part of it too Detroit is a ruined city because our entire industry all those factories all those car companies they all disappeared and they went with free market permission

51:14 to go and find people that would work for pennies, you know? And so all this stuff that we did to other countries. Well, we've done this around the world now and now they're just bringing the ideas home and we're gonna suffer for this but it was never about America these people aren't working for the United States they are working for the multinationals until we understand that we're not going to change it Yeah, it drives me nuts when people actually talk about the minimum wage like we should we should get rid of the minimum wage And it's like are you crazy? What if corporations ever paid you more just because you were worth it You know obviously It's gonna be worse wages and they're like oh well these corporations would be able to hire more people sure McDonalds can hire 2,000 people at 4 cents an hour is that a good thing

51:58 unemployment will go down. Yeah, but at what cost? You know it's not like you can have a living wage like if you don't have a living wage I don't consider you employed all those people that are getting screwed over at Walmart i consider those people barely employed we've had stats where the the amount of public assistance those people need to get by is staggering so basically they don't have to pay their own employees, they have some weird nebulous state between kind-of a slave and a person that can live a respectable life on the wages they earn at their job. It's messed up! Yeah it's very messed up and that's why free market doesn't work Because of course, if there's a lot of people unemployed and they'll work for anything they can get. Well the market says pay them as little as possible that's what's best for the market that's what's best for and the market is the stock market that's what's best for the stockholders The people who sit around and wait for their checks to come in The people who make money with the money they already have But the people who actually work which are human beings In order to make sure that they have enough food on their table And they're getting compensated fairly You need to have rules

53:00 And by definition, a market with rules is not completely free. And so this whole... It's a fascinating thing the way it was able to be taught in universities not only in our country but around the world and people just buy this theory all my... The people that buy into free markets they sound religious. Right? That's true It's amazing and they can only come back with. Theoretical explanations because there isn't a single example of it ever working in all of human history but yet we're still our government right now are congress the ones making the rules they believe in this stuff wholeheartedly and its not just the republicans the democrats talk about the free market, all the time they've all

53:51 I don't know if they bought into the theories but there sure buying into the language and their using it in order to get these things passed me, do you think specifically that the free market ideas push is a government needs to remove all rules and regulations standing in the way of accumulation of profits. They need to sell off any assets that the government owns that corporations could be running for a profit and. Funding of social programs needs to be cut back dramatically those are really the three pillars and if you look at what's happening in congress through my show or through your own researcher whatever,

54:27 It makes perfect sense. Right? It all falls into place you can turn on C-SPAN right now and understand exactly what they're doing when you understand that they're trying to remove all rules and regulations that stand in the way of profits it all makes sense It does. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about the crime and corruption increased with the rise of military privatization, because when we see the privatization go specifically into the military this is a huge problem because this is life or death for people and we're outsourcing it. One thing I didn't even know about was these burn pits can you tell us about them? I learned this from your show that really pissed me off cuz had no idea that anything so blatant in so bold was going on in terms of waste

55:11 Well yeah, this went on for over 10 years. In fact I think they just stopped doing it in June of 2013 and what it was is that in Afghanistan in particular but also in Iraq Companies like KBR, KBR is a subsidiary of Halliburton which is Dick Cheney's company. KBR was given a massive contract to get rid of the trash on the bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well instead of recycling and shipping it wherever needs to go stuff like that they just put it in giant holes in the ground and set it on fire And also what they would do is, let's say the group was leaving Fallujah and going to another city in Iraq. Instead of moving all that stuff they would throw the computers and the clothes and the boots and all these things that were sometimes perfectly fine some of them perfectly new they'd throw him in the burn pits set him on fire and then they'd have to buy new ones. And so it's all this big scam in order to buy more stuff from the military industrial complex

56:14 And one of the problems we're having now, like I said we're spending well over... where is that stat? I wrote it down yesterday but we um. We're spending like $150 billion this year, which is an enormous number treating our veterans. And one of the diseases that we're finding that they have is this really nasty lung disease because they're breathing in plastic and jet fuel and all this stuff that was in the burn pits. And these burn pits were just going nonstop. And if the wind would blow you had no choice, you had to breathe it in. This wasn't just the Bush administration, this was the Obama administration too. It didn't stop until very recently

56:52 Man, yeah that's so messed up the idea that they'd even throw away good stuff It's like well if you've got a blank check if you've got an unlimited credit card from the American public Why not? Why not just burn all this stuff and buy it again. It would be great If I could go back to all the people who bought a T-shirt from me over the past three years And just destroy them and tell them all just buy another one. It's cool We're gonna keep doing this Yeah and if you google it right now you can see pictures of trucks in the burn pits. You know so oh the truck broke down well let's burn it and buy a new one, and they did! Right all because we're not paying attention Because we're not paying attention and because privatization And the making-of profits for these companies

57:33 Was the goal you know we're trying to bring freedom to iraq that's total crap where trying to bring oil to the multinationals and we were trying to make a rack into this. This free market utopia like i said never existed will they tried in iraq they try to wipe the slate clean and create this free market zone, And it just didn't work out that well. You know, you had all these companies in there with absolutely no rules. It was a market that was free and what you found is that companies took the money they were given and cut corners so we've had people in our military get electrocuted because we contracted out the building of the showers

58:14 in our military bases we contracted out everything but this is one example and they did shoddy wiring they did a bad job an electric unit or troops continues to this day so. And here's the other thing with us too from a financial standpoint not only is the work probably not gonna be done that well if there's no rules, But it's also far more expensive to privatize your military functions because we pay our military guys, some of them as low as $19,000 a year. But almost all contractors get six figures they get between 100 and 250 thousand dollars a year and I lived in Hawaii for quite awhile which is a military base basically. And I found out that these guys who were going

59:02 were the face of this war, you know going out and risking their lives every day. They were getting paid about $30,000 a year while the girl that sat all day next to their computers and turned them on was making 150 thousand dollars yet all of that comes from the same source All of that is US taxpayer money It's just a matter of where it goes And then what you find is that these people, they're not stupid these military guys. They'll say all right well screw the Marines I'm gonna go work for Blackwater and make five times as much money doing the exact same thing! And it's not just the warfighters You see this with all kinds of different things. You see it with intelligence and with cyber security. You can either work for the government

59:45 or you can work for the private sector, the only difference between the job description is that one pays a lot more money. But it's all taxpayer funded and If the goal is to increase the value of the shares that company it's a brilliant strategy if the goal is to have a functional government that collects as little in tax money as possible it's a horrible strategy and then there's also the lack of accountability which is a big deal when you talk about military privatization because. In Iraq, it was especially bad because they rigged the Iraqi laws to where no contractors could be held accountable for anything. And so you had people being raped in shipping containers, you had people being gunned down in the streets, you had all of these crimes, these outright crimes that were taking place being paid for with our tax money and no one goes to jail for this

1:00:44 And the thing is, when you have contractors instead of military people. The military has a code of conduct. The military has rules that are not rules, um... Has standards that you have to meet before you'll even be accepted. Contractors don't have any of that so a lot of the people who worked for Pinochet in Chile ended up working working in Iraq for the private contractors. So if you're Iraqi, you're seeing someone working for the American army they're not American they're Chilean their monsters but they the Iraqis don't know any different we're paying them so you have this you have the actual military and then you have the secret military

1:01:27 And the secret one is so much more dangerous on so many different levels, both financially and in real life. It doesn't help us with our reputation to have anyone do things that are lawless in our name." Well said! It's quite a mess... Before we get out of here would you like to remind the people where they can find the show again? Find you on social media and any of those plans for the future all that good stuff? Sure, and thank you for letting me. This show is called Congressional Dish and you can find it on all of the places where podcasts are found iTunes Stitcher but I also now have a Congressional Dish app and it's free so you can find that in Apple Store or in Google Play and I did that specifically for the Android users because they know getting podcasts to be really tough

1:02:13 But through that app, you can scroll and find the show notes right from the app itself. Which of course will take you to the bill passages It's pretty good I like the app And then the best way to talk to me is on Twitter In order, my Twitter feed has gotten kind of interesting because it's become where I store my articles. So if I find an article that is going to help me with an episode, I just retweet it and use my own feed. Smart! Yeah, and it works out great and I can share with people and talk to people all the time so my twitter handle is at Jen Briney. My last name B-R-I-N-E-Y And I'm very big on Twitter. And I have a Facebook page If you want to write longer stuff That's Congressional Dish

1:02:54 And then the website of course is congressionaldish.com and you can find all of this stuff from there, so... Very cool! Thank you very much Gregg this was fun Yeah and thank you keep doing what you do out there and best of luck in making a career out of podcasting without the corporate advertisers if I can do it anybody can do it So keep at it and take care yourself out there You too. Bye! How can anyone say there's not enough to go around or that a family on welfare is what's tanking the economy when military contractors are burning supplies just to buy more? If you want to build a wall, I think it needs to be between us and Halliburton. Not us and Mexico

1:03:53 But just so you know, in the Plus show we talked about legislation pertaining to GMOs and how the farming corporations have gotten their way against the people's best interest there. And we also talked about some of things to expect from the 114th Congress with charter schools and more favors for the banking world It's a great show. I hope you enjoyed it, and that enough of you go check out Congressional Dish or hit up Jen on Twitter to let her know what she does and keep up with her. The episodes aren't long, they have great production value, and I consider Congressional Dish the necessary cliff notes for congress

1:04:30 You know, the elite put a lot of time and energy into making sure you're not paying attention and that it's really really boring. And Jen puts a lot of energy into counteracting all those measures so please show her some support I also wanted to mention I was a recent guest on Marty Leeds' Math The Magical Hour along with Mike from the Midwest Real podcast we had a nice little roundtable there and I thought it was a lot of fun! And I love Marty So I will include a link to that with this episode Feel free to check it out if you might be interested. As for the state of things, man I know it's easy to think there is nothing we can do or that our change needs to be so massive and sweeping that voting isn't going to be enough. I have those days where i think that but...I also have the days when I think Jen's right The system is corrupt in a lot of ways because good people aren't participating We really should participate Because the criminals in office are way more bold about their scams when they think nobody's watching Shouldn't we at least make them jump through a few hoops?

1:05:26 groups, I think we should. You want fluoride out of your water? Go get it done. You want public lightning speed internet like Chattanooga, you can go get that too! You wanna break up the two-party monopoly? Refuse to vote for the parties make them more of a liability than an asset both of them but keep voting How about the weed laws in your state have you been getting involved or just sitting around waiting to hear some good news Just something to think about

1:06:05 I know there's a lot of major problems that we can't solve with voting or at all and probably won't change in our lifetimes. But if i can't fix fractional reserve banking, at least let me smoke a joint on the beach! And If I can end drone strikes in the middle east, At least I could push for community gardens for free public use And if I can't keep American Sniper from being made, at least I can go see Birdman or Horrible Bosses 2 in hopes that the embarrassment to humanity can get bumped off the number one spot for the sake of our image around the world. You know...the important things people! Anyway do what you do check out conspirates.net enjoy yourself break free from the chains. I'm getting out of here

1:06:47 Your move, Gastic Lee. Your fricking move. I know this pain Why do you lock yourself up in these chains? No one can change your life except for you Don't ever let anyone step Just open your heart and mind This way inside Someday somebody's gonna make you wanna turn around and say goodbye

1:07:28 Until then, baby Are you gonna let him hold you down and make you cry? Don't you know? Don't you know things could change Things'll go your way Hold on if you're hurt for one more day Hold on for one more day You can sustain Are you comfortable Your unhappiness And your worries pass you by Pass you by Don't you think it's worth the time

1:08:26 to change your mind. Someday somebody's gonna make you wanna turn around and say goodbye Until then baby, are you gonna let him hold ya down and make you cry? Don't you know don't you know things could change Things will go your way One more day If you hold on for one more day It'll be okay Hold on for one more day Someday somebodys gonna make you want to turn around and say goodbye Until then baby

1:09:05 Are you gonna let him hold you down and make you cry? Don't you know, things could change. Things will go your way. Just to know... Don't you know, things could change. Things will go your way if you hope for one more day. Hold on for one more day Things will go your way