TikTok is currently facing off against the federal government in court as they fight to keep their platform operational after the Biden administration forced them to either sell or shut down. Also, a pro-business front group is creating classroom materials for teachers across the country – teaching them that corporations shouldn’t have to pay taxes. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: TikTok is currently facing off against the federal government in court as they fight to keep their platform operational after the Biden administration forced them to either sell or shut down. Pick this up. We’ve told this, we’ve gone through this story again and again. You know what struck me is that we’re talking about TikTok and their foreign ownership, headline buddy, Politico, foreign owned. Politico, we gonna do the same thing to Politico? Spotify, foreign owned. Are we gonna do the same thing to Spotify? This has just gotten so cranked out of control to where these people actually believe they can do this. And any federal judges are gonna say, wait a second. You’re anticipating that TikTok is gonna do something wrong. At this point, they’ve said there hadn’t been anything done wrong. But we’re anticipating that it might be. We’re anticipating that they’re gonna take all this information that they’re scraping off, the same stuff that Facebook scrapes off, the same stuff that Instagram scrapes off and somehow the Chinese are gonna use it. That’s their argument.
Farron Cousins: Well, and the argument from the lawyers for the government is it’s okay when American companies take your data because they can sell it. We use it for targeted advertisements and things like that. But they said, the problem is that same data is extremely valuable to a foreign adversary trying to compromise the security of the United States.
Mike Papantonio: They can buy it right now.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: China can buy every bit that Facebook has scraped away from everybody watching this program or Instagram. You don’t think these folks are doing the same thing? They’re taking everything they can. All China’s gotta do is get on the phone. Hello Instagram, I’d like to buy all your data. They’d have exactly the same thing.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. But I think it’s just so insane that the federal government’s lawyers have walked into this court in front of this three judge panel and said, listen, it’s okay when we do it. There’s no problem with that. And to their credit, the lawyers working for TikTok and the plaintiffs, the other plaintiffs, because there’s other people that are involved in this lawsuit, but those lawyers pointed out, okay, well Politico, that’s owned by a foreign country, Spotify, as you said, it’s owned by a foreign country. Why are you targeting us? Is this about really working for national security or is this just because you don’t like this company or this country? Because you cannot legislate based on your animosity towards one country.
Mike Papantonio: You know who’s really trying to put ’em out of business is corporate media. Okay. Now you know why that is, right? We talk about this all the time. We have come up, you and I have come up for 20 plus years doing stories that corporate media refuses to do because their corporate advertisers wouldn’t let ’em do it. Whether it’s a drug that’s killing people. Whether its mom and pop having all their money stolen from banks in New York. Whether it’s a company like DuPont or 3M destroying entire ecosystems. We would try to go on the air and tell those stories. I can’t even count the number of times that we were stopped. Matter of fact, I got a call from Washington Post doing a story about the threat of Russia speech, and asking me, well, what was your experience with that? And I said, you know, here’s my experience. The only time I’ve been censored by trying to tell a story about corporate malfeasance is on MSNBC or any of the cable stations. You can’t tell those stories. I remember one story we did on, do you remember the Yellowwood story?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So the Yellowwood story, I’m trying to tell the story about a company that has arsenic all over their wood, and that they want to take that wood and they want to make into children’s playground equipment. So I go on, do the story. They want me to come back and apologize the next day. They almost fired Joe Scarborough over it because he was doing the interview and I said, hell no. I’m not gonna come back and apologize. Are you kidding me? But that’s corporate media. So they hate that we can tell these stories through TikTok or YouTube or wherever it may be. They’re really want to accomplish the demise of TikTok, but they’re not paying much attention to Facebook or Instagram.
Farron Cousins: Right. And to be honest, even with TikTok, we have run into situations where our stories.
Mike Papantonio: Good point.
Farron Cousins: Johnson & Johnson, the most recent one we did.
Mike Papantonio: Tell that story.
Farron Cousins: We put it on TikTok and then TikTok comes back and says, hey, this violated community guidelines. Very vague. So our guys dig in more with them and they say, can you give us specifics? What is wrong about this story? And they said, well, it’s not true. And there was another one too, about another lawsuit, the baby formula lawsuit as well.
Mike Papantonio: Baby formula killing kids all over the country. Preemie children dying from baby formula and whoever the nutjobs are with TikTok and all of ’em.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, Facebook did the same thing.
Mike Papantonio: Facebook, we can’t let you tell that story. Really?
Farron Cousins: They say, oh, it’s not true. And we, you personally, you’ve got the documents showing how true it is.
Mike Papantonio: Well, not only, there’s verdicts in court on Johnson & Johnson, there’s jury verdicts against the baby formula companies.
Farron Cousins: So these same outlets, unfortunately, are moving more towards that corporate model.
Mike Papantonio: That scares me.
Farron Cousins: But right now they are far more free. We do have more leeway to say what we need to say on these platforms than we would on corporate media. But who knows how long that’ll last?
Mike Papantonio: Well, corporate is ahead of it now. Corporate media, the way they got the Johnson & Johnson story pulled, it’s where the talc is killing women with cancer, horrible deaths. And they got their people to call in and say, this isn’t true. This isn’t true. Well, nobody took a minute to say, hell yes, it’s true. It’s all over the media. Trials have proven it. And yes, this is true. Instead they just pull the story and say, this is out of line.
Farron Cousins: And you guys got a strike and if you get two more, we kick you off the platform.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Well, I’ve got something planned for it if they do it again. I’ve got a little bit of surprise for TikTok. But the point is, you don’t shut ’em down.
Farron Cousins: Right. They do not deserve that.
Mike Papantonio: 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.
