America’s Lawyer E108: President Biden is calling for massive reforms to the United States Supreme Court – reforms that are long overdue but face a tremendous uphill climb before they can become reality. A corporate front group has started creating anti-tax propaganda for teachers to use in their classrooms. Their goal is to teach children that corporations shouldn’t ever have to pay taxes. And Republicans aren’t happy with Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, and they are pushing for a change in the Republican ticket. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Hi, I’m Mike Papantonio, and this is America’s Lawyer. President Biden’s calling for a massive reform to the United States Supreme Court, reforms that are long overdue, but face an almost impossible uphill climb before they can ever become reality. A corporate front group has started creating anti-tax propaganda for teachers to use in their classrooms. Their goal is to teach children that corporations are good and should never have to pay taxes. And Republicans, well, they aren’t happy with Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, and they’re pushing for a change in the Republican ticket. We’ll see if that happens. All that and more. It’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
In an op-ed published on Monday, president Biden called for sweeping reforms for the Supreme Court, including term limits and code of ethics. The court definitely needs to be fixed, but it’ll take more than an op-ed to make that happen. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about it. Yeah. This is an election issue. This is just being put out there so we can have people get mad about the Supreme Court, and the problem is that they’re really, they’re kinda really missing the big picture. This isn’t gonna, I mean, people who really believe this is gonna happen, it ain’t gonna happen. Okay. But anyway, let’s pick it up and talk about it.
Farron Cousins: But I do agree with what he says in this op-ed, and I think honestly, most people probably do, because term limits for the Supreme Court has obviously been something for many years, the public says, yes, overwhelmingly, let’s not give these weirdos a job for life. That’s not a good idea no matter what industry you’re in, but especially a situation like this where they can essentially overturn the executive branch, the legislative branch. Let’s make sure that these people don’t stay in there until their brains turn into pudding.
Mike Papantonio: Well, Ginsburg, my God, they hauled her out of there in a wheelchair, on a gurney.
Farron Cousins: And people were upset when everybody said, hey, if you resign, we could actually not, and then.
Mike Papantonio: And then she didn’t.
Farron Cousins: There’s always the fights saying, how dare you?
Mike Papantonio: Well, this has zero chances of being approved. You’ve got a divisive Congress, they’re not gonna allow for this kind of thing. The idea of saying now that there’s something so different about 200 years of history, you see, it kind of, as I was reading this article, I got to think about the Warren Court. The conservatives went crazy with the Warren Court, if you think about it. It was all about separation of church and state. It was all about, everything was about civil rights, voting rights. They struck down segregation, police arrests. These were all good things, but the right went crazy about it. And what if they had raised it then? They knew then it wasn’t even a possibility. Matter of fact, the last time that there’s even been any, I think it was 30 years ago, Congress, they passed a bill changing their pay rate. The last time there was any kind of amendment to the Constitution. They changed it for themselves and then they said, we can’t do anything else. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it really is difficult. I don’t think people fully appreciate how difficult it is to get those amendments passed. The process you have to go through, and like you pointed out, because of the division with our elected leaders, much less division as we’ve talked about with actual people, the division is in Washington. The division is in the state legislatures. And because of that, you’re never gonna get your two thirds or three quarters that you need to agree on this because for conservatives right now, that means two of your justices are out the door, bye. You gotta go. And of course, they’re not gonna do that. And the Democrats wouldn’t do it if it was in their position. But again, term limits are good. And the code of ethics, this is the only court in the country.
Mike Papantonio: I agree, I agree.
Farron Cousins: That doesn’t have to abide by a code of ethics.
Mike Papantonio: I agree with both of those points.
Farron Cousins: That’s crazy.
Mike Papantonio: There’s no problem with term limits. I think the proposal was that every two years, a president would appoint a Supreme Court judge who would sit for 18 years. I think is what it was. And that’s not unreasonable and it certainly isn’t unreasonable to say you have to have your own code of ethics that you have to follow, and you gotta play the same game everybody else does. But, I guess this is purely an election talking point.
Farron Cousins: I think so.
Mike Papantonio: You know, we’re gonna change the Supreme Court. It’s BS. They’re not. There’s no way. I give this zero, maybe even less than zero of happening. But I guess you can stand up and talk about, I want to do something about the Supreme Court.
Farron Cousins: Right. Because you know that your side is energized about how much they dislike the Supreme Court for obvious reasons. But listen, here’s what I tell you makes me mad about this. When Biden came into office, the big issue at the time was you’ve gotta expand the Supreme Court, which is something Congress actually has the authority to do without going through the Constitution. Biden sat on it for a year, and then he said, okay, you guys are still yelling at me. I’ll create a commission and they’re gonna look into it, and then we’ll see what our options are. The commission came back quietly months and months later and said, don’t touch the court. So Biden had the opportunity, he had the public by his side to actually do something and just didn’t do it. He made the decision just not to do it. So this is hollow for me.
Mike Papantonio: But, Farron, it wouldn’t be anything. I mean, honestly, Biden has never, ever pointed towards the need to change the Constitution. He just hasn’t. He’s been very conservative on that issue. And I think what they’re doing, saying to him now, look, you’re a lame duck. You got a speech you can make, you can get everybody jazzed up about this. But the pitiful thing is there are really people that are gonna hear this and say, yeah, this is a real possibility. And if we elect Kamala Harris and we put Democrats, this is gonna happen. It’s just la la land thinking. And I just get, I think maybe some of it has to do with the way the corporate media talks about these issues. Like, this really is a possibility. This is not even a close possibility.
The Federal Trade Commission announced last week that they’re gonna conduct a study of corporations using surveillance pricing to gouge consumers based on their location, their search of histories. How much money does that person have? Can we get more money from that person than this person? We’ve done a couple stories on this. This is outrageous. It is that we’re gonna know so much about you. We’re gonna know, what do you watch on television? Where do you buy your clothes? Where do you shop? What are the big purchases that you’ve made? Have you made purchases that their AI system says, wow, he’s really willing to pay more money than what it’s worth. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And finally, after all of these reports, Federal Trade Commission says last week, okay, we’re gonna look into this, but we’re not really gonna look into it as much as you would think we are. What we’re gonna do, we’re gonna commission a study and of course, that is what it always is. We’re not actually launching an investigation. We are reaching out to all the corporations that are doing this and asking them, well, how are you doing it? Is this okay for you to be doing? Give us your answers corporations so that we can then go to the public and say everything’s okay.
Mike Papantonio: They’re already doing it. Go online today. Okay. Put in information that might, well, a lot of it has to do with zip code. Where are you doing it? What is the computer? What kind of computer are you using even? If it’s an old beat up computer, they’re gonna know that, well, they probably don’t have a lot of money. But you can actually put in the fact that you’re looking for an airplane ticket, for example. You could put it in one computer in a pricey zip code with maybe material with somebody that really might have plenty of money to spend. And then see what that price does compared to comparing the price in another zip code. This is not being done for anything except greed. This is being done so corporations can squeeze every dime. They’re already teaching these concepts in MBA school. They’re already talking about, this is the new thing. This whole pricing scam to where we can squeeze, we can find out how far can we push this person. And when they push you, one time, that information goes out there and everybody says, oh, it’s like vultures. He did it one time. Probably, he’s gonna do it with us too.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Because the FTC has already identified MasterCard, JP Morgan, McKinsey & Co, Accenture, Pros Holdings, Revionics, Bloomreach, Task Software, those are all the groups engaging in this right now using AI to figure out who’s willing to pay more. Who can we overcharge? Who can’t pay it? And again, like you said, it all goes back to greed. There is is no business reason to do this other than if we can squeeze a couple more bucks out of these people, we’re gonna do it because we can.
Mike Papantonio: Corporate America is horrified that it’s called, surveillance pricing. They want it to be called personalized pricing because it sounds more humane.
Farron Cousins: It does. I mean, look, this is your personal price. And people think, wow. So I’m getting a price nobody else is getting.
Mike Papantonio: They’re thinking about me. Right. Wow. There is no bottom, there is absolutely no bottom.
A pro business front group is creating classroom materials for teachers across the country, but these materials won’t teach about civics or math. They’re teaching the corporation lingo, the corporation talking points about why high taxes on corporations are so bad for everybody. How it’s gonna affect mommy and daddy and children. And they’re teaching this in school K through, K one through 12. They’re creating this agenda, actually teaching this to kids. Don’t tax corporations, it’s gonna hurt you.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You know, look, I have the utmost respect for teachers in the country. My wife is an educator. I’ve got other members of my family that are educators. But at the same time, and I know this from them, there’s also plenty of other educators out there that are lazy. And that is exactly what the Tax Foundation is taking advantage of.
Mike Papantonio: Explain that.
Farron Cousins: So, this group, the Tax Foundation, which of course is funded by all the usual suspects, Chamber of Commerce, big soda, big fossil fuel companies, every.
Mike Papantonio: Pharma companies.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Who’s who of corporations. They create these lesson plans that teach businesses do better when there are lower taxes. The consumers can pay higher taxes, but the businesses need lower taxes.
Mike Papantonio: Well, give ’em the reasons. I mean, what is it actually saying? What is the logic of why don’t let corporations pay taxes?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. If the corporation pays higher taxes, we’re gonna have to cut jobs, and then that’s gonna hurt the overall economy. You don’t want to be unemployed, high school senior entering a job market. No. So you need corporations to have lower taxes. And the problem is, as I said, these are actual lesson plans that they are prepackaged. They hand them to the teachers. And these teachers who don’t have, shouldn’t be educators to begin with. They’re not doing their own homework. And they say, oh, wow. I don’t have to make a lesson plan for the next three weeks because the Tax Foundation just handed it to me. Hell yeah, I’m gonna do this.
Mike Papantonio: Well, more over, there’s teachers out there that are gonna agree with this.
Farron Cousins: Oh, that’s true too. But it’s propaganda. It’s pro-business propaganda from the US Chamber of Commerce.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s nothing but propaganda. The advocates say that we should slash all the taxes on investors where it comes to capital gains. We need to really cut that in half or make it disappear. That a flat tax is a better idea. Make everybody pay the same tax. Do away with estate taxes. Do away with companies that are buying their stock back. You can’t, right now, we can tax that. They want to do away with a company’s right to even buy their stock back. But what’s so amazing is they’re having some success with this. And this is an organization that’s been around a very long time, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. About a hundred years almost the Tax Foundation.
Mike Papantonio: But this is, I guess as far as I know, this is their first foray into trying to teach our kids that taxes are bad if you tax corporations.
Farron Cousins: In the last school year, which, we’re coming up on a new one very soon, but in the last school year, more than 1500 classrooms in this country taught tax EDU lessons in their classroom. And these kids don’t know that they’re getting propaganda at all. They just think, oh, if I’m being taught this, this is obviously the unbiased truth, because that’s what students believe. That’s what they should be getting is an unbiased truth.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Get ’em when they’re young. Make ’em into little conservatives when they’re young.
Farron Cousins: A bunch of little libertarians, unfortunately.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, exactly.
Farron Cousins: It’s even worse.
Mike Papantonio: President Biden might be out of the presidential race, but there are still lingering questions about his health. And more importantly, why so many Democrats stuck with him all the way to the end, even when it was obvious. I mean, it was obvious he should have dropped out. We got so much criticism. We were talking about it for two months, weren’t we? And oh my God, you would’ve thought we’re trying to undermine the entire country. But they stuck, Bernie stuck with him and the squad stuck with him. Explain why. What are the underpinnings of that?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is a really very weird thing to say the least. Obviously, Bernie Sanders was never the biggest fan of Joe Biden. AOC has not been a huge fan. The squad has not. But they were some of the loudest voices saying, we gotta keep Biden. He is the best chance to win. When obviously he was not. And everybody else under the sun said, you guys are nuts too now, Biden’s gotta go. But this wonderful article from Truth Out kind of explains it in a way that says, listen, they actually have the most invested in this Biden administration because they were the ones who did secure some concessions. Not a ton, but.
Mike Papantonio: Not many at all.
Farron Cousins: Right. But they were the ones who truly believed at this point, we’ve kind of got him where we want him, and now we can keep pushing him to the left. It didn’t work out so well, but they thought, well, this is our guy. We know how to get to him now. And so it’s, again, just a very awkward and weird situation where these people that I have a ton of respect for making a horrible decision to stick by Biden when everybody else in the world said, this guy has to go.
Mike Papantonio: Well, there were some things that they just couldn’t agree on, and there was some split. Again, you talk about the squad and you go, oh my God, this is, they’re largely ineffective. If you look at what they have accomplished with legislation.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean, on paper, yeah, it’s not good.
Mike Papantonio: Now, it’s great for a newspaper headline. AOC says this, or whoever might say, it’s great for a headline. But if you look at their effectiveness on their domestic side in their, in their jurisdiction, or their districts, they’re able to accomplish things. Which is what they should be doing in their district. But on a national scale, they’ve just accomplished almost zero where it comes right down to it.
Farron Cousins: Well, you know what’s funny too, though, is the Biden Supreme Court recommendations. He actually came to that, a week and a half before he wrote his op-ed, he had a call with progressive lawmakers, not just your regular old Democrats, but the progressives and got their input. So that is something and AOC has been leading the charge against the Supreme Court for months now, and that is one of those things, unfortunately for this, it’s a little too little too late. But that is one of the things where they had his ear, I guess I should say. But again, it’s not going to be fruitful. But I think they still thought maybe, maybe we can keep pushing him, but there would’ve been nobody to push because he wasn’t gonna win.
Mike Papantonio: They’re having trouble with the concept of progressive genocide. That’s where everything starts falling apart. And that is where you start seeing the split with the AOC squad.
Donald Trump thought he could pick a winner when he selected Senator JD Vance as his running mate. But Republicans, they disagree with his choice. Vance has had a rough start to his campaign and now many in the GOP are second guessing decision making by Trump. Well, it’s never, if it really got that bad, you know what? He just gets another vp. It’s not like there’s this big investment into the future of JD Vance. But, I think when I’m reading about JD Vance and the people that are critical of him, you know where most of it comes from is the war pimps. The war whores, the Republican war whores hate this guy because he has a tendency to talk about isolationism. He would shut down Ukraine, he’d be glad to shut down Ukraine in a second. He’s hugely anti-war. And so the missile industry, the defense industry hates a guy like this and that’s where a lot of this is being generated.
Farron Cousins: See, I think for me, it’s JD Vance, his past comments, not just about Donald Trump, which he’s clumsily tried to defend and say, well, I bought into the media. No, you cashed in on it.
Mike Papantonio: I didn’t mean to say that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. But, it’s the comments about women that are giving the Republican so many headaches right now, the childless cat ladies, when you’re talking about the demographic where your ticket was already suffering the most. And in these polls that we see where you’ve got these swing state voters, if women flip away from Trump, just a small percentage of them, they lose. And he is not attracting anybody new right now.
Mike Papantonio: Why would he make statements like, liberal cat lady women? I mean, where does that, in his mind, where does that move him? Doesn’t that just, the MAGA group, he’s going to shore up the MAGA voters. The question is, is he there to incite them? Is he there to excite ’em? Is he there to get him to the polls? Is he there to be another mouthpiece for Trump? Because that’s what he’s become. So what do you do with that?
Farron Cousins: Well, the reason he makes comments like that, just like the reason he made comments about hating Donald Trump and Trump being America’s Hitler back in 2016 is because at the time, that’s where the money was. Now, look, you got a lot of these macho male influencers who make a lot of money going out there on social media, talking about how much they hate women. Women, you belong in the kitchen. And I think.
Mike Papantonio: But, how do you do that and win an election? I mean, when your wife hears that, my God. How does that win an election? Is what I’m trying to say.
Farron Cousins: Well, right. But a lot of these comments were from 2021 and 2022 before he announced he was running for Senate.
Mike Papantonio: Even back then, how did it win an election? That’s what I’m trying to get to.
Farron Cousins: It was more quiet back then. Nobody, well, his was a very popular race, but he was still running off the high of his book and his reformation. And now, oh, I’ve seen the light. I love Trump. But he to me is like so many other folks. He is the political chameleon. If it’s more expedient for me to be this today, I’ll be this. If tomorrow it’s different, I’ll be that thing. Charlie Crist, I think is one of the best examples of that.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Farron Cousins: And this guy is a Charlie Crist.
Mike Papantonio: That’s well put, that’s very well put.
Farron Cousins: Like, I’m a Republican and by God I do Republican things. Oh, it’s okay. No, today I’m a Democrat by God, and I’m the best Democrat there is.
Mike Papantonio: Doesn’t it sound like Joe Brzezinski?
Farron Cousins: Scarborough, he’s another great example too. I mean, the guy used to go to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago for parties.
Mike Papantonio: I know.
Farron Cousins: But it’s.
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay. I don’t care. I honestly don’t care. If I were Trump, I’d be looking at the guy saying, why do I have any criticism? Why don’t I have a ghost that just disappears? Doesn’t say anything. Let me say all the stupid stuff I say every day. Why do you get another guy in there to talk about liberal catlike women? It’s just crazy to me.
Farron Cousins: Well, and Trump is the guy who wants the spotlight and I think Vance is not a guy who’s gonna usurp that because he’s not as charismatic.
Mike Papantonio: He’s a good speaker.
Farron Cousins: He’s a good speaker.
Mike Papantonio: Now, you know, we’d be foolish not to admit that.
Farron Cousins: But he’s not like, hey, here I am. Because there are plenty of people Trump was considering that are also attention hogs.
Mike Papantonio: Who else would you have put up there besides?
Farron Cousins: I think the smartest thing Trump could have done would’ve been Nikki Haley. I think if he picked Nikki Haley, it’s over already.
Mike Papantonio: I think you’re right.
Farron Cousins: Polls already showed, by the way, that Haley alone, as the actual nominee would’ve beaten Biden by nine points. Nine.
Mike Papantonio: Wow. Right now there’s this sugar, I call it a sugar high for Harris. That’s what’s going on. It’s a sugar high.
Farron Cousins: I saw it referred to as the Harris honeymoon.
Mike Papantonio: It’s the Harris honeymoon and it happens all the time. What people aren’t looking at, and the Democrats really need to pay attention to this. Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million votes. Okay. And the media kept saying, it’s done, it’s done, it’s done. Look at these polls. They were looking at general polls. She lost in the electoral college and if they’re not careful, that’s where Harris is gonna lose too because the numbers are not changing that much in the electoral college. As if this morning, now maybe they’ve, something’s happened, but I haven’t seen it. The numbers are holding pretty tight in the swing states.
Farron Cousins: Her approval has gone way up, eight points in a week, and obviously $200 million. But I think, if we’re getting into that, focus on North Carolina, focus on Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, don’t be fooled by the flashy things of Texas and Florida. Can we flip ’em?
Mike Papantonio: What is that?
Farron Cousins: It’s not gonna happen.
Mike Papantonio: We talk about, you actually see columnists talking about how Florida is getting ready, BS. There’s a million more Republican registered voters in Florida. And they say, as you were pointing out earlier, there’s this, what is the community?
Farron Cousins: The Villages.
Mike Papantonio: The Villages. There’s 50% of them are going, who cares? There’s no way they’re gonna cover.
Farron Cousins: It’s a tiny little spot in the middle of Florida that outside the Villages nobody actually cares about.
Mike Papantonio: Right. They’re not gonna carry Florida. They’re not gonna carry Texas.
Farron Cousins: And it’s in the most liberal part of Florida to begin with. So chill out.
Mike Papantonio: Go to where you can win. And I agree, Arizona, North Carolina, those swing states they ought to pay attention to. But this is lulling, probably people even watching this program, they look at the polls and they say, oh, Harris is pulling ahead in polling. Well, there’s two things. It’s a sugar high for one thing. Secondly, those general polls don’t mean anything and we’ve talked, we do polls all the time and we say this all the time. The polls you gotta look at in this kind situation are gonna be the swing state polls. And there’s just not that much happening for Harris.
Farron Cousins: This is gonna come down to four or five states and it’s a tight one.
Mike Papantonio: Your idea, concentrate on two of those states you think you can pull together and go after it. Thanks for joining me.Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all the time we have, but all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. So make sure you’re subscribed. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer where we tell you stories every week that corporate media aren’t allowed to tell you. They won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em tell you the stories or from a political standpoint, some sides are just so, just so tribal. If you color outside the lines for Democrat, then you’re not accepted. If you color outside the line for Republican, you’re not accepted. We don’t have that problem on this program, as you’ve probably figured out. Thanks.
Suspicious Activity: That it had helped dirty money flow through its branches around the world, including at least 800. Plaintiffs allege that the defendants provided money and medical goods to terrorist groups, Hezbollah and Jaysh al-Adl. This is a well organized business for these individuals that carry out these attacks. Terrorism is a business and they run it like a business. They knew about what was going on for a decade. They absolutely, absolutely no question about it knew that HSBC was washing money. They had every reason to understand it was for terrorism and it was for drug cartels. Took no action whatsoever.
These banks are involved, their accounts are connected, and they’re using them to mask the transactions. The more complicated they can make the transactions, the more distance they could put between the bad guys and a seemingly legitimate purpose of these funds. They pay $1.9 billion, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what they’ve made. And nobody goes to prison. These CEOs, these bankers that made this decision, they’re safe at home. They know what they’ve done. They know it’s resulted in the death of Americans, contractors and soldiers, not just hundreds but thousands. And we look the other way because they don’t look like criminals. The die cast, the people that are responsible for it, are on Wall Street. And they don’t look like criminals. It’s almost a suspension of disbelief. Sometimes I’ll have people call me and say, is this, is this real? Do they really get away with this? Yeah, they do.
