It’s Hump Day! Sam and Emma speak with Joshua Kaplan, reporter at ProPublica, to discuss recent reporting surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas’s finances. Then, they speak with Roge Karma, staff writer at The Atlantic, to discuss his recent piece entitled “The Secretive Industry Devouring the U.S. Economy.” First, Sam and Emma run through updates on DT getting DQ’ed from CO’s ballot, the US vetoing another UN ceasefire resolution, dropping US housing aid, environmental policy, Tennessee fascism, EU immigration policies, 2023’s precipitous drop in crime, and US-China relations, before diving into Trump’s active embrace of Nazi rhetoric. Josh Kaplan then joins, diving right into the new revelations that document Clarence Thomas’ pleas to sitting GOP officials to boost SCOTUS Justice pay in the years before the takeoff of his relationships with billionaire benefactors Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow. Expanding on this, Kaplan walks Sam and Emma through the shady details of these “requests,” alongside the shady execution of payments to both Justice Thomas and his wife, and how these elements helped keep this budding (and blatantly corrupt) relationship behind a curtain. Finally, they wrap up the interview by looking at the next steps the Senate must take, and what lingering questions remain. Roge Karma then brings Sam and Emma through the evolution of Private Equity’s takeover of the US economy over the last few decades, the role of the financial crisis in driving their proliferation, and the particular issue of their privatization – and thus the obscuring – of the operations of so much of our economy. Next, Karma explores how Private Equity systematically buys up massive public companies and entire private industries only to kill their services and sell them off for a profit – a tactic that extends to lifesaving services like nursing homes, which has resulted in some 20 thousand deaths – alongside taking up the “shadier” operations of legitimate companies and removing any kind of oversight. He also explores the potential of a collapse of the Private Equity industry and what shockwaves that could have on the rest of the US economy, before wrapping up with ongoing FTC challenges to the industry, and what the ideal financial reform would be.

And in the Fun Half: Sam and Emma reflect on Sam’s infamous “War on Christmas” bit, walk through another exposé on the myth of the retail crime wave, and do a deep dive into Krystal Ball’s deconstruction of RFK’s insane claims about Israel and Palestine. Jason Whitlock argues against his own rights in a particularly specific manner, plus, your calls and IMs!

Check out the reporting Josh contributed to here: https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-money-complaints-sparked-resignation-fears-scotus

Check out Roge’s piece here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/private-equity-publicly-traded-companies/675788/

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