School shootings in America have now hit their highest numbers in over 20 years. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Also, the Supreme Court says that Bayer can’t escape liability for the people injured by the popular weedkiller Round Up. Mike Papantonio is joined by journalist & podcast host, Rick Outzen, to discuss.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: School shootings in America have now hit their highest number in over 20 years. Wow, no surprise here. But this was a startling kind of number. This was done, this was done by the National Center of Education and Statistics. What did they find, Farron?
Farron Cousins: 93 incidents in the 2020, 21 school year, 43 resulted in fatalities, 50 involved injuries. But 93 shootings at schools here in the United States, public and private, which means on a typical 180 day school year, every other day, every other school day in this country, somebody’s getting shot in one of our schools.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and the, the, the problem with it is the statistics speak for themselves. I mean, you can’t hide these statistics. These numbers have gone, I mean, they’re startling numbers. This is the highest total in the history of keeping up with these kind of statistics. And you can only hope that look, maybe, maybe some good comes out of the, the, out of the effort to do something. I mean, the red flag law, I love it. You know, can, I love the idea of enhanced background check for people that are under 21. The idea of if you’ve been convicted of abuse of any kind, of spousal abuse, you can’t get a gun and without having to jump through some hoops. The, this is all good stuff that the, the idea of having youth mental health facilities that are, that are improved and expanded.
Farron Cousins: And, and I think the more I think about it, especially after seeing these numbers, that may be the big one.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Because yeah, we understand we, we got more guns than anybody else. You and I have talked about that. But we also, we gotta get to the root of why this is even happening.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: You know, we have to get really into that psyche, talk to these people, try to figure out, avert problems before they happen, because, because it is as, as you and I have again talked about in recent weeks, it’s not just that we have the guns. What is making these people want to use them against children? That’s what we have to get to the heart of.
Mike Papantonio: I think we’ve talked about this on other shows where the, the expansion of social media has also enhanced and almost put on steroid, steroids, the enhancement of bullying.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: If you look at every one of these shooters, you go back, you take a look, they’ve been it’s, it’s the same pattern. You know, they, they’ve been called losers and they, they’re the folks that sit up in their room all day long at home, eight hours a day on, you know, whatever they do. They’re isolated. They’re not really involved in what’s going on around the school or whatever. And so it’s that, in that bullying aspect of social media is now coming to the forefront. Matter of fact, some good friends of mine are bringing some, bringing some cases that I think are going to prevail here. And that it is has, how does social media enhance the ability and, and, and actually promote this notion of bullying? I think there’s, I think there’s something to this and the best article I’ve seen about this overall picture talks about that with each one of these people, each one of these kids that have been involved in this, there’s been some history of that.
Farron Cousins: Well, and you know, another part of that too, the other side of it really is that not only are these people experiencing more bullying because of, you know, the online presence, they also have their own communities of people who, you know, kind of have the same issues where they talk about violence.
Mike Papantonio: Ah.
Farron Cousins: Where they all, you know, kind of feed off one another.
Mike Papantonio: You’re talking about blog. I mean, a blog or message boards.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Message boards and things like that. And, and so you get these people who hype up these feelings of hate that you have. So that’s another big part of it, you know, that’s the second half after.
Mike Papantonio: But that’s the, but that’s the social media vehicle.
Farron Cousins: Right, right, right.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And so again, with the mental health screenings and things like that, we, we have to start teaching parents like, look for these signs.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, right.
Farron Cousins: Because it’s not just the kids, the parents, be an active.
Mike Papantonio: Be a.
Farron Cousins: Parent.
Mike Papantonio: Be a leader, a parent.
Farron Cousins: Really.
Mike Papantonio: Walk into their room and say, what the hell are you doing, kid?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You know what, let me, let me read what you’ve done on this computer. I mean, it doesn’t take a lot to do that. And you go.
Farron Cousins: I, I mean, sometimes it really is as simple as saying, turn that, come on, we’re gonna, let’s play monopoly.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: Let, let’s play a board game. Let’s play Scrabble. And I’m not kidding. I mean, look, I, I, I have a 19 year old who, who has moved outta the house and he calls us every now and then he says, hey.
Mike Papantonio: Let’s play Scrabble.
Farron Cousins: Can I come over? We’ll do like a game night.
Mike Papantonio: Oh that’s great. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Because those little things like that.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Do have such an impact. And that falls on the parents.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That’s not on the kid. That’s on the parents
Mike Papantonio: I mean, what’s wrong with walking through the door and saying, you know, Mary, Joe, I wanna see what you’re doing. Let me take a look at your history on com, I wanna see what you’re up to. What’s wrong with that?
Mike Papantonio: The Supreme Court says that Bayer can’t escape liability for the people injured by Roundup. Now this first of all, to begin with this is a company, this is Monsanto that was sold to, to Bayer.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Who, whoever the numb nut was who bought this company. I mean, I hope that person’s been fired and ever, they never worked for the corporation again. They were advised, Bayer was advised to go in and buy Roundup. That was after three major lawsuits had determined that A, the folks, that Monsanto had been lying and phoning up rat studies. They knew that the, they knew that the, the product would cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: The information was overwhelming and some, you know, some CEO says, hey, looks like a good idea. We’ll go buy this company.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Take it from there.
Rick Outzen: Well, I think it had to be the attorneys that are representing them. The, you know, the defending attorneys, because they’re, this is a strategy here. They keep losing, $25 million case in California. They want to, they, they tried to go to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court says we’re not gonna listen to it. But this isn’t the first time they’ve tried to take a settlement all the way up to the Supreme Court, is it, Mike?
Mike Papantonio: Right. Let me give a shout out for Biden on this. Biden got in the way of them doing this.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: He actually had his attorney general do something real significant, which is go before the Supreme Court and say, you know, you should not accept this review. We have all the information we need to understand this is bad, bad stuff. We know glyphosate is killing people all over the world. And, and, and I’m gonna send my attorney general to say, this is a bad idea. Now, Trump, just the opposite. Trump said, no, we oughta, you need to hear this. We need to protect Monsanto. We need to protect Bayer. Now listen, W H O had come out in, 10 years ago now, came out and said, this is bad stuff that’s killing people all over the world in third world countries because we were telling the world, hey, without Roundup, without glyphosate, we’re gonna have a food, food shortage. W H O came out and said, that’s a lie.
Rick Outzen: Well, and, and, but our EPA approved it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Rick Outzen: And that’s what’s used in the cases against, against your firm, against all the firms that are representing the victims of this. That’s what’s used against them. The other thing that we, we found, and I started looking at this story for a while ago, you got the state of Mississippi, they actually recommend Roundup.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Rick Outzen: To kill all the weeds as, before you prepare for the crops.
Mike Papantonio: There’s a reason for it. When I, I took depositions in this case.
Rick Outzen: Okay.
Mike Papantonio: I took five major depositions before, even before the, the first one went to trial. And what we saw was that the, they’re masters of putting their people in important political positions. Matter of fact, they were so good at it that they had, they had three people that were basically running the EPA. They had people in the White House that had come up through the ranks and now were advising Trump about this and that dealing with the product. They were masters of doing that all the way down to the state level. So it doesn’t surprise me. It wasn’t just Mississippi that did that, by the way, there’s about, there’s about 14 states that jumped on the Monsanto bandwagon and said, hey, this is a great idea. That all the information showed that this company knew, knew 50 years before they were selling it, that it was killing rats with and they understood the science. It was non Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: They phonied it up, they covered it up. And here’s where it really gets ugly. The EPA knew it and they bought into it anyway.
Rick Outzen: Well, and they have, I mean, they have settled. There’s been a, you know, a couple of, you know, what a, let’s see what $11.6 billion settlement.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Rick Outzen: But they didn’t decide about the future cases. And that’s what’s biting ’em in the butt. Continue it.
Mike Papantonio: The future cases are gonna be a disaster because it’s a, it’s a slow process.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: It’s a latent cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. You may be exposed year one and may not have any symptoms for five or six years beyond that.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: So that’s what they, they need to be worried about it. They shouldn’t put the product on. The people who did it should be prosecuted.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: They should be perp walked. And unfortunately, we don’t do that to people that are dressed up in suits.
