Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. I got the bun sign from Jason and thank you very much. And welcome back to megatrends with, uh, with your host and producer, Patrick. Soon to be your favorite mandolinist. You know, my assistant Jason Francisco will post the artwork of my upcoming CD, red violin to Berlin and Bach. Uh, And there it is. That's the new CD. There it is. That's Stradivarius Mandolin. And that is so phenomenal. And I'm just returning from a getaway in Mexico, just out of the U.S. during the horrific and embarrassing America 250 that Trump ruined in a myriad of ways. And it just gave me a headache. So I got a flight to Puerto Vallarta and got to hang out with folks and you know, ask them about, you know, what their thoughts were, you know, about, you know, on the street. And people were actually, you know, cab drivers and various people were happy with their national healthcare system. One young cab driver had a six-month-old baby and was happy that his wife was on, you know, eight weeks of paid leave and that his baby was healthy and that they didn't have to pay anything, you know, that, you know, everything was covered. And that there's no such thing as medical bankruptcy, you know. So today's show starts out with some rock'em, rock'em, sock'em comedy from the Larry David show with Rob Reiner, his final appearance before his death. And then subsequently, we may even play that twice. It's so funny, it's worth just playing it twice so that you're... And then we travel in a time machine to undo reverse racism with the hilarious storyteller, Amer Rahman. Amer Rahman, check this guy out, very, very sharp. And then after that, we have Stacey Abrams giving a postdoctoral analysis of oligarchy and authoritarian regimes, how they come about, how they grow, and how they can be defeated using the Viktor Orban model. But I start out with a question. How many billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money came back in the form of APAC and related network funding of American political campaigns, which in combination with widespread Epstein file to blackmail American corporate and political leaders? That was the compromise that he had available to Putin and Netanyahu and all those. And that's why they had something. That's what they had on Trump. And so that affected U.S. policy and decisions that the president of the United States made. One of the reasons we went to the senseless war in Iran. And that is the subject of a video in the later part of today's show and a major theme for us to consider. and do our own research after megatrends. So how did these two initiatives by Israeli intelligence, which have been ongoing for decades, bring us to a place where Republicans in Congress in lockstep with the president of the United States agree without debate to start this war in Iran? So there's a lot more in the e-files than pedophiles. Epstein actively sought contact with an Intel agencies all over the world, Israel, us, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and any country interested in honey trap videos of corporate and political leaders, you know, uh, um, having sex with underage children, uh, all for blackmail. And that's what's, that's, what's in the emails. And that's what's really freaking, uh, the, President Frankenstein these days. But let's get right to these, this very first, that you'll really love this. Some of you may have seen this originally. This is from the Larry David show. And guess who's playing George Washington? Rob Reiner. So here we start. Can we start that? Let me start that in the very beginning.

Okay. that no man should serve more than two terms as president. And I hope that future presidents will follow my lead.

What if some future president doesn't follow your lead? And, uh... runs for a third term.

There are remedies for that. The Congress can pass a constitutional amendment that would prohibit that.

Well, what if there's some asshole in office, some narcissistic prick who doesn't follow the Constitution?

But rest assured... Even if this future president violated the Constitution, then the Congress of the United States and the United States Supreme Court would not allow it.

But what if the Supreme Court is a bunch of yes-men and Congress is a bunch of pussies who care more about party than country?

Huh?

I can't even fathom the existence of such men. But to further ensure the success of this grand experiment, I would suggest that after every presidential election, there be a peaceful... transfer of power. The loser accepts the results of the election and full-throatedly endorses the victor.

Anyone who wouldn't accept the results of a free and fair election? is a sociopath. A man like that can even foment an insurrection rather than just admit that he lost. He could use the presidency to enrich himself and his family. No, no. He can send troops into American cities to terrorize and even kill American citizens, all to distract from the fact that he's friends with a pedophile! He can attack universities, even the free press, silencing anyone! Who dares to criticize him? Ah, come on. That could never happen.

That's what you think. Are you suggesting that the president would take the time to challenge anyone who dare make fun of him as if he were a big baby? A big baby! I don't see it. In order to ensure the success of our fledgling democracy, I believe that no man

should serve more than two terms as president okay so i just hope you get a chance to watch that when you uh check that out on the larry david show with a rob reiner uh we're gonna go right nick right to this uh uh this one on reverse racism it just gets demolished it did um amen uh rama a brilliant storyteller i mean he just and he talks about the ridiculousness of reverse racism and then how to undo it takes us on an imaginary history using a time machine. And so, you know, maybe we'll even play this one later on, but let's definitely listen to Eamon Raman.

Check this out. Amar Rahman does a brilliant job of showing the ridiculousness of the idea of reverse racism.

A lot of people don't like my comedy. A lot of white people don't like my comedy. A lot of white people say this to me.

Hey, Amar.

Hey. You get on stage. You make your jokes about white people. You say white people this, white people that. What if I did something like that, huh? What if I got on stage and I said, yeah, black people are like this. Muslims are like that. You'd probably call me a racist, wouldn't you? And I say, yeah, yeah, I would. You should never do that. That's bad for your health.

They're like, well, you do that.

You do that. You get on stage, make jokes about white people. Don't you think that's the kind of racism? Don't you think that's reverse racism?" I said, no, I don't think that's reverse racism. Not because I think reverse racism doesn't exist, right? If you ask some black and brown people, they'll tell you flat out there is no such thing as reverse racism. I don't agree with that. I think there is such a thing as reverse racism. And I could be a reverse racist if I wanted to. All I would need would be a... time machine, right? And what I'd do is I'd get in my time machine, I'd go back in time to before Europe colonized the world, right? And I'd convince the leaders of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America to invade and colonize Europe, right? Just occupy them, steal their land and resources, set up some kind of like, I don't know, trans-Asian slave trade where we exported white people to work on giant rice plantations in China. Just ruin Europe over the course of a couple of centuries so all their descendants would want to migrate out and live in the places where black and brown people come from. Of course, in that time, I'd make sure I set up systems that privilege black and brown people at every conceivable social, political and economic opportunity. White people would never have any hope of real self-determination. Does every couple of decades make up some fake war as an excuse to go and bomb them back to the Stone Age and say it's for their own good because their culture is inferior? Just for kicks. Subject white people to colored people's standards of beauties and they end up hating the color of their own skin, eyes, and hair. If after hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of that, I got on stage at a comedy show and said, hey, what's the deal with white people? Why can't they dance? That would be reverse racism.

Well, there you are. I hope you enjoyed that. Amon Rahman, just a really a brilliant storyteller. That was one of the great, great, great stories. So we're going to transition right on over to, well, the ABCs of autocracy. uh, historical review, um, some commentary, you know, like Stacey Abrams. And she gives this postdoc analysis of autocracies, um, uh, and authoritarian coups. They're using the, primarily the Orban model. That's the one that, uh, is most relevant to us. And I'll have a little commentary after that. But, uh, but, you know, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Orban, uh, Fortunately, this guy, Peter Magyar, M-A-G-Y-A-R, he's the new Hungarian president. You should see what he did. What he did was a model for how we could use here in the United States in the next several months leading up to this election. Things are very dangerous here, but we'll see. Anyway, let's go to Stacey Abrams. who our favorite professor.

You went viral for laying out 10 steps to autocracy. Run us through those steps so we all know.

OK, so this happens in every nation that has become an autocracy having been a democracy. So whether we're talking about Brazil with Bolsonaro, or India, or Putin and Russia, the Philippines with Duarte. So start with winning an election. Usually the last one you're going to get to have for real. Number two, you have an expansion of executive power. The president decides he wants more than he's supposed to have. Number three, you start to make the Congress complicit. So you weaken them and you neutralize or neuter the judiciary. Like, oh, I don't know, the Supreme Court giving you unfettered power and saying we don't have the ability to stop things. Then you move on to firing all the people who know how to make government work. So you gut the civil service. And you do that because you want to break democracy so people forget the stuff that used to get done. So you can't get your Social Security check. So the CDC doesn't know what diseases are anymore. Then you put in place these loyalists, people who are only responsive to you. You put them in charge of the FBI so they go after your enemies. You put them in charge of the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, so they can signal to their friends and tell them all about the evil plans that you have. Then you make certain that you break how we communicate. So you criticize the media and you create your own echo chamber of propaganda. You call it truth, even though you know you're lying. Then you go to the next step. And I call that step seven. is that step seven, you have to blame someone. You have to blame people for the broken government, for the broken promises. So you go after DEI. You go after the vulnerable, the dispossessed. You go after any community that doesn't look like what you think power should be. While you're doing that, you make certain that you, in step eight, you eliminate anybody who could help them. So you sue law firms that do pro bono cases. You go after philanthropies and accuse them of giving money to the wrong people. You go after colleges and universities that can teach people possibly what else they should know. You get to step nine and you start to encourage and incentivize private violence. You send the U.S. Marines into spaces they should not be. You send the National Guard in. You kidnap people off of the streets and pretend that's normal because that's how you quiet dissent because you make everyone afraid that if they don't do what you want, they might be next. And once you've done those nine steps, step 10 is easy. That's when you decide there won't be new elections because everyone's either afraid, poor, broken, or complicit. Okay. Wow.

I think that continues, does it? Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, that was super. So anyway, just the second part of this is going to be Stacey Abrams giving details about, you know, what's next and how it reflects on here in the United States. And so let's listen to this next little part. But I wanted to separate these two because they Start out with a really great question. Great question by Anthony Anderson.

While you have the ear of the people right now and on their television sets, what is it that they can do to help avoid this and make a change in this?

Thank you. So I want to give credit to Kim Sheppel, who is a professor at Princeton. She came up with the framework. I've adapted it and potentially editorialized it more than she did. But I also want to give credit to the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, not the lesser successor, but the real guy. We can fight back. We can remember that we do have power. They don't want dissent, so protest. They want us to forget that before we had power, we had each other. So when they break democracy, when they break the Social Security system, when they slash SNAP benefits and Medicaid, make sure you're checking on your neighbors. Make sure we're using mutual aid. But also tell the truth. Do not let the propaganda win. Too often they tell a lie. They will tell a lie so often it sounds like the truth. We say the truth one time, and when people don't applaud, we stop talking. We've got to keep telling the truth, not only to push back against them, but to remind us that we are entitled to the truth. We have to believe that freedom of assembly means it's more than just going to protest. It's the ability to be friends with people who aren't like you. And we have to stop believing that we are in this alone. the most effective thing they do is isolate us. They convince us that you and I don't have any common cause and we certainly don't have common cause with someone who has a different history than we do. When we hold to our truth, when we actually believe in ourselves and our people, when we believe in democracy as something that must deliver, that's when we start to fight back and that's when they lose because they win when we are too numb or too afraid to act. All right.

So, you know, what if it came to pass, you know, given the situation that we have now, very, very dangerous. You know, we have to take, consider the full pie chart. And there's a lot of large slices of the pie chart, which represent, you know, larger, more hopeful pie. outcomes, probabilities that we're hoping like maybe 50% to 70, 50, 50% to two thirds is that we're going to be able to avoid the, for the most part, the worst excesses of this president. We can, that's not a guarantee. You know, so what if things really got so bad that the president was able to declare an emergency and with his powers given to him by the Supreme Court to act with impunity and illegally, he got his wish, you know, that this was the last election in the United States. And then it just became a police state. In such a country, such a future possible dark America, There would be a person who would have to go in disguise in order to shoot a clandestine film to report out to the rest of the world how bad things are getting in the Fourth Reich America. Because the word couldn't get out. And so... That was actually the situation in Pinochet's Chile when Chilean dictator Pinochet had taken over. And this individual named Miguel Litin, he was an internationally acclaimed film director, who was permanently exiled by Chile's dictator Pinochet. Just like Trump is going to be sure to exile or arrest people that are in the United States who are journalists and so on to tell what's going on. And this guy, Miguel Etienne, returns to his native country disguised as a Uruguayan public relations agent to shoot this clandestine film. So he's an actor playing a role that requires perfection. Anything less spells exposure. And the consequences of exposure are unthinkable in this. And they were in Pinochet's Chile. And it would be unthinkable if things go very bad in America. And so that's what Littin's adventure takes on another level of meaning in the brilliant prose of Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who himself assumed a new identity in his masterful work. first-person account. And García Márquez draws on Letín's dangerous journey to examine the perfidity of Pinochet's dictatorship while also analyzing what happened to a man who changes identities and then rebels against his own determination to change. And so this was this, this is the The book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is called A Clandestine in Chile. And I actually have it in English and in Spanish. So I'm actually reading this in both languages to help for my upcoming trip to Spain. I'm doing a labor study in Mondragon at the University of Mondragon with a delegation from the Praxis Peace Institute in October. So, um, uh, so anyway, we're going to go to the, in that vein, we're going to go to the next, uh, what w what is happening that's bad and what we can do about it, uh, from, uh, Senator Elizabeth Warren. And, um, uh, it's just, um, fascism from an economic view. a takeover of the administrative state by private wealth oligarchs for whom democracy is a bother. We're talking about Peter Thiel and David Sachs and Russell Vought and the Project 2025 folks. So this is Elizabeth Warren talking about private equity and military DOD contracting. Let's listen to what's going on.

Can you guess how much the U.S. military was charged for a half-inch metal pen that looks kind of like this? Here's your hint. The pen should cost $46. So how much did a defense contractor charge the U.S. military? $50? Nah. $100? Nope. $400? Uh-uh. $4,361. Yeah, the Department of Defense agreed to pay $4,361 for a $46 drive pin like this. That's 9,400% in excess profits for the defense contractor that overcharged us. And I say us because it's your tax dollars that are paying for this. Now, you might have a few questions about how this happened. One, who did this? The military contractor, Transdime, and you guessed it, tied to private equity. Two, was this just a mistake, you know, like a boo-boo? Nope. A Transdime official reportedly described its behavior of upcharging the government to be like taking candy from a baby. Three, how many deals does private equity have with the government? Well, by mid-October 2025, private equity and venture capital dealmaking in the defense and aerospace sectors reached a record $17.7 billion. So the answer is a lot. And the biggie, number four, is the government trying to crack down here? Nope. In fact, Pete Hegseth and the Department of Defense are trying to increase private equity's involvement in the companies that we rely on for national security. The department wants to establish a team of its own bankers to service private equity firms and pitch $200 billion worth of defense deals. And it doesn't stop there. The Trump administration is even implanting private equity guys directly into the Department of Defense. Don't believe me? Just take Pete Hegseth's number two, Steven Feinberg. Feinberg, the Deputy Secretary of Defense under Trump, is also the co-founder of a private equity firm called Cerebus Capital Management. I used to talk about Cerberus a lot because that's the PE firm that stomped its way into Massachusetts and states all around the country, bought up hospitals, squeezed out hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from them, and then left only the empty shells of these hospitals behind, leaving patients out to dry and the hospital systems to declare bankruptcy. Yeah, those are the guys running and now working in our Department of Defense. And it's a one-two punch for Americans. First, PE-backed defense contractors are basically looting the government. now with the support of the Trump administration. And second, they're harming our national security. First, they employ their standard PE predatory playbook, as they did with Red Lobster's, Joanne's Fabrics, and Claire's. They buy these companies using debt and then extract every penny they can out of the company to pay out their investors. Next up is the price gouging. Private equity backed defense contractors have a history of price gouging, and that's where the $4,000 half inch drive pin comes from. These PE companies are incentivized to do everything they can to maximize profits, even when it means overcharging taxpayers by thousands and thousands of dollars. And because these private equity companies have increasingly bought out a lot of the competition in the industry through what are called roll-ups, There's nowhere else for the government to go. We have to shell out the cash. Look, it's Econ 101. We have fewer contractors facing less competition, which means they're innovating less and driving prices higher. And understand this, it's not just that private equity-backed defense contractors are ripping us off. They're creating a national security risk. The more expensive it is to buy defense materials, the more difficult it is for the Department of Defense to secure the materials it needs to build and maintain defense systems, especially as these companies consolidate and there are fewer other places for the DoD to go. But the threats to our national security, they don't stop there. Since private equity is inherently private, the very nature of the firms means that they aren't required to file public financial reports. Look, we don't know who their investors are. We don't know where their money is coming from. Could they be influenced by China? Sure. Saudi Arabia? Maybe. And are those countries able to gain access to classified information when they acquire or control these defense contractors? We just don't know. And this problem isn't just hypothetical. Just last year, a private equity backed defense contractor gave access to sensitive defense information to a software company based in Egypt. And yeah, they ultimately paid the Department of Justice a $1.75 million fine for knowingly failing to comply with requirements. But for a big company like that, shoot, this is just a slap on the wrist. And our information is now out there. I know, what's going on in the defense industry is truly stunning. And I'll be clear that this has been a problem under both Democratic and Republican presidents. But despite the national security threats and despite the high costs, the Trump administration is doubling down harder than ever before. Pete Hegseth and his team are doing their best to court private equity bankers into making even more deals with the Department of Defense, which, if you will recall, is no surprise since the people in charge come from private equity and are friends of private equity. The new technology chief for the Department of Defense is reportedly turning the Pentagon into a venture capital firm. But this is wrong. And that's why I worked with Senator Richard Blumenthal and Representative Ro Khanna to introduce a bill to take on private equity in defense contracting. It is long past time that we put some limits on the ability of private equity to squeeze the Department of Defense to boost prices at the expense of taxpayer dollars and at the expense of our national security. It's time for us to make some real changes.

Okay, there you jolly well have it. I'm sending a song over to Jason right now called I Ain't Your Antichrist, I'm Your Uncle Sam off of this album. This is the one that's now available on Apple Music and all the places where you find great music. So this is that song, and I don't know if we can hear it loud enough, but...

Been in Korea and Vietnam since 1954. CIA in Nicaragua and in El Salvador. Got a million refugees in jail and I don't give a damn. I ain't your age to graduate.

I'm your Uncle Sam.

Okay, so there's a little... little tidbit of that, uh, uh, that, that tune, it goes on and on at the end, the very end, it actually says our lives are getting obvious. The weapons are laid bare. The truth is getting out enough and people are getting scared, but the threat of peace is on the move and people still have a choice to stick their heads way up their asses or really raise their voices. Well, I ain't your auntie Christ. I'm your uncle Sam. So, uh, In that theme, we're going to continue on with this. This next piece I have is on AI automated micro sniper bots. This is technology that Trump and Hegseth want to deploy. Recently, you may have heard that when Anthropic denied Trump and Hegseth their demand as DoD contractors due to regulatory laws against AI autonomous kill bots. Trump tried to drive them into bankruptcy. So this short film demonstrates how swarms of AI microbots fly themselves. They have cameras and sensors. And this short film is a simulation now. Dr. Stuart Russell from the Department of Computer Science at UC Berkeley explains, you know, we're not here yet, but the window is closing fast and it's up to us to say no. to make noise. So Megatrend is putting that out there for you to help scare you a little bit. So let's check this out.

Customer pilots directed almost 3,000 precision strikes last year. We're super proud of it. It allows you to separate the bad guys from the good. It's a big deal. But we have something much bigger. Your kids probably have one of these, right? Not quite. Hell of a pilot? No. That skill is all AI. It's flying itself. Its processor can react a hundred times faster than a human. The stochastic motion is an anti-sniper feature. Just like any mobile device these days, it has cameras and sensors, and just like your phones and social media apps, it does facial recognition. Inside here is three grams of shaped explosive. This is how it works. Did you see that? That little bang is enough to penetrate the skull and destroy the contents. They used to say guns don't kill people. People do. Well, people don't. They get emotional, disobey orders, aim high. Let's watch the weapons make the decisions. And trust me, these were all bad guys. Now, that is an airstrike of surgical precision. It's one of a range of products. Trained as a team, they can penetrate buildings, cars, trains, evade people, bullets, pretty much any countermeasure. They cannot be stopped. Now, I said this was big. Why? Because we are thinking big. Watch. A 25 million dollar order now buys this. Enough to kill half a city. The bad half. Nuclear is obsolete. Take out your entire enemy, virtually risk free. Just characterize him, release the swarm, and rest easy. These are available today. We have a distribution network taking orders from military, law enforcement, and specialist clients.

The nation is still recovering from yesterday's incident, which officials are describing as some kind of automated attack, which killed 11 US senators at the Capitol building.

They flew in from everywhere but attacked just one side of the aisle. It was chaos.

People were screaming. You can see high windows, very small, precisely punctured to gain entry to the building. What did you do today?

I just did what I could for him. Things weren't even interested in me. They're just buzzing.

Government sources admit the intelligence community has no idea who perpetrated the attack, nor whether it was a state, group, or even a single individual.

So if we can't defend ourselves, then we strike back.

We are investing very heavily in classified defense projects.

We make it our deterrent like our nuclear deterrent. We stockpile in the millions, the billions.

At key facilities.

the White House, the New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street.

Well, we wish we had boots on the ground in every community in this country, but we don't. Ollie? Ollie, oh, hi.

Hi, Ollie, honey. How's Edinburgh today? How are all your studies going, huh? Good. Great. Hey, aren't we doing a video call today?

I'm kind of with people, so... Oh. Well, come on, Oliver, put her on. Oh, no, it's not like that. Listen, I see some photos here with somebody and I can see lots of likes. What is this video right here?

Oh.

No, I'm not going to click on that. Oh, it's just this, uh, human rights thing about, uh, oppression. Oh, whatever.

Honey, honey, you're not going into politics, are you?

I mean, no, you're not. Pay fear, just like you said it would be. Heavy traffic approaching the A720 this morning due to police...

Police are not saying this morning what prompted the alert.

Claim relaxing firearm legislation would be useless against the so-called slaughter bots.

As to stay away from crowds. When indoors, keep windows covered with shutters. Protect your family. Stay inside.

Thank you.

Oliver, can you hear me? Listen to me.

I can hear it.

I can hear it. I can hear it.

authorities are still struggling to make sense of an attack on university campuses worldwide, which targeted some students and not others. The search for a motive is apparently turning to social media and a video shared by the victims exposing corruption at the high. It's far from surprising.

The weapons took away the expense, danger and risk of waging war. And now we can't afford to challenge anyone, really. It's not even the smallest fringe group or a crank.

Who could have done this?

Anyone.

Dumb weapons drop where you point them. Smart weapons consume data. When you can find your enemy using data, even by a hashtag, You can target an evil ideology right where it starts.

Okay. Now, I just want to remind people that that was just a simulation. But, you know, we have to decide what kind of country we want. What you just saw, again, was a simulation. Uh, but it was intended to, uh, basically, um, uh, say, in fact, uh, that's what the, the, um, uh, that Dr. Stuart Russell from the department of computer science at UC Berkeley explains. We are not here yet, but the window is closing fast. It's up to us to say no. the manufacturing funding with our tax dollars so um anyway so let's take a deep breath and and let's get on it after this show you know we there's we have to do our homework and we have to pull together the next uh well four months before this election comes up that can happen uh this next one is uh the truth about epstein you know it's uh what There's a lot more, as I said, than child porn rape crimes in the e-files. Epstein sought connection with four national intelligence agencies, U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Putin specifically. Meeting with Putin specifically covered nothing more than a meeting. offering honey trap videos of corporate and political men for blackmail and extortion. And that's what Trump meant to Margie Taylor Greene when she said on his telephone with her, she said, a lot of my friends would get hurt, but he meant himself. And that's what losing this election means. All of that gets exposed. For him to lose this election, all that gets exposed. So he's, you know, the honey trap, corn, Epstein's intel connections, who he gave the videos to, Netanyahu and Putin, who routinely reminded Trump or suggested to him that they have compromise on him. So all of that is coming. In 2027, you think you've seen anything. You have seen nothing yet. But this is some comedy covering that. This is by Sam Obeid. This guy, he's really hilarious. Let's check this guy out.

That's the work for intelligence. And I'm not going to say who it was, but it was Mossad. I can't say it too much. I don't want to get into legal trouble. Let's just say he enjoyed massages. He was not good to women. He was a misogynist. Don't hate me for delivering the massage, okay? I'm gonna prove it formally tonight. I had the privilege of taking an accounting class in college. Anybody here take an accounting class? Oh, equal number of people on both sides. You got the debits on the left, credits on the right. You learn about this thing called the accounting equation. Very creative name. Assets equals liabilities plus equities. The total assets of a person or a company is equal to the sum of all the liabilities they have, the debt plus the equity they have, the stock. That's a little life hack if you wanna increase your net worth. Rack up a ton of debt and sell stock in yourself. Epstein, he got rich all of a sudden after his teaching job, because it doesn't pay, apparently. And he became a consultant, which is not a real job. I'm sorry, guys. That offends any consultants in here. Let's talk after the show. You can bill me after. Great business model you have. This is when he started to be introduced to very high profile people. One person he notably worked with, Adnan Khashoggi, a figure in Saudi Arabia, worked together to finance the Iran-Contra affair, where Israel was funneling weapons into Iran to stir up a regime change, which is not relevant to now at all. He had to work directly with Israeli intelligence, so clearly he was introduced to Mossad. He got even richer when he met Leslie Wexner, the CEO of Victoria's Secret, which a perv would want to work with. Leslie Wexner had a lot of stock with Israel and Israel's economy. When Epstein started to work with him, he suddenly got a lot richer. Then Epstein was introduced to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's accomplice in the whole sex trafficking scandal. And they say Ghislaine's in jail. I don't even think Ghislaine's in jail. I actually bumped into her at the store last week. She was like, pardon me. I was like, no, thank you. Helene Maxwell, who was the daughter of Robert Maxwell, a known Mossad asset, died of natural causes, mysteriously fell off his yacht one day, and suddenly Epstein got very rich shortly after. So again, nothing to see here. We know that the money he used for this operation was leveraged by Israel. At the same time, he became acquainted with a lot of very powerful people who were associated with Israel. For instance, former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, not Ehud Barack Obama, that's a different. He's actually seen many times on camera approaching Epstein's apartment and walking in, and he would always wear a mask. This was pre-COVID. This was what he was trying to hide. This guy got caught on camera going into Epstein's house only to be recorded on more cameras. Also, Bill Clinton. A lot of pictures of Clinton with Epstein. It's not a good look. Clinton, obviously, very tied to Israel. He was brokering all those deals in the 90s. Alan Dershowitz, who's Israel's lawyer, also Epstein's lawyer. All of these people, as soon as they started hanging out with Epstein, Israel started to distance themselves. Because these people pose a reputational risk for Israel, which says a lot. They're threatening Israel's reputation. You've really f***ed up. Here's why we know that Epstein was an Israeli asset. Epstein got all of his money having stock in Israel. And he knew all these people who are liabilities to Israel. And liabilities plus equity equals assets. Epstein was an Israeli asset. I know. There's a lot of information I'm accounting for.

Right. So this next little clip was, you know, 7 out of 10 people support forcing AI firms to transfer half of their stock to a public sovereign wealth fund that would, in theory, pour AI profits back into the economy and even provide direct payments to Americans. Sovereign wealth funds are a major policy platform item by, well, Bernie Sanders as one of the ways to fund a national health care system in the US and Medicare for all universal health care. That includes dental, vision, and hearing at the end of medical bankruptcy. So let's check this out. This is a little audio clip here. Let me just click that. And so we'll listen to that.

Companies that build AI are changing the way Americans live, and most Americans want to share in the wealth. According to a new national survey of 1,690 adults from research firm Verisight, 69% said they support forcing AI firms to transfer half their stock to a public sovereign wealth fund that would, in theory, pour AI profits back into the economy and even provide direct payments to Americans. The poll comes after Elon Musk's space and AI company, SpaceX, just pulled off the largest ever initial public offering, and as AI giants like Anthropic and OpenAI have been planning IPOs of their own. Likewise, tech giants that are already publicly traded, like Meta Platforms and Google Parent Alphabet, have made major AI forward expenditures and seen their stocks rise as a result. Americans also broadly want more guardrails for AI companies. Per the survey, 89% say they support making it a requirement for AI companies to disclose the results of all internal safety testing to the public, and 81% said they support giving the federal government the authority to block AI systems that are deemed unsafe. the findings from our latest survey demonstrate a rare instance of bipartisan agreement ben leff ceo and co-founder of verisite said in a press release must not be decided behind closed doors the idea for a public sovereign wealth fund comes from senator bernie sanders of vermont who last month introduced legislation to create such a fund which he said could generate seven trillion dollars in an outline of the proposal sanders said the fund would do three key things Create an independent commission for democratic AI to manage the fund. Require companies to break up their AI and non-AI businesses. Funnel profits from AI back to the economy. Sanders said in the proposal that the principle is simple. When a public resource generates wealth, the public should share in that wealth. He continued, the future of AI and the fate of humanity must not be decided behind closed doors in Silicon Valley by billionaires seeking to maximize their power and profit. It must be decided by workers, parents, teachers, artists, scientists, communities, and the American people. While the idea is new for America, it's not new worldwide. More than 100 countries have sovereign wealth funds and so do around 20 US states. For example, Alaska's permanent fund is funded by oil and mining royalties, and a portion of the funds are used to pay Alaskans annual dividends. Texas has a permanent school fund that comes from mineral rights and state lands and supports the state's K-12 public education system. Interestingly, while Sanders might not agree much with President Trump, last February, Trump announced an executive order that directed the Treasury and Commerce Department to develop a plan to create a sovereign wealth fund. The order said the fund would promote fiscal sustainability, lessen the burden of taxes on American families and small businesses, establish economic security for future generations, and promote United States economic and strategic leadership internationally. Last month, Trump said he is in talks with AI leaders about how the public can participate in AI's continued exposure.

Okay, so of course there's been no, that's all a canard. That is absolutely, that was just written for him to tell you. He has no interest whatsoever in regulating AI for public safety. He's made that very clear. And so... Anyway, this is also about manufactured doubt. This is manufactured doubt, the impact of corporate propaganda playing down human causes and hence human solutions. And again, this is Jesse Nurick, doctor, given the what, telling us what it's all about. So let's go with her right now quickly.

Did you know that 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change? NASA's own website says, quote, there is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause. There is global scientific consensus on this. Does that surprise you? If it does, that's likely because there's been a decades-long effort to make the public think the science is more uncertain than it actually is. And that manufactured doubt is now being used to benefit polluting industries and dismantle health protections. In February, Trump's EPA repealed the endangerment finding, the agency's evidence-based determination that greenhouse gas pollution endangers human health and welfare by heating the planet and causing dangerous climate change. Basically, it said climate pollution harms people, so the Environmental Protection Agency has a responsibility to limit it. But by repealing it, they're making it harder for the EPA to regulate the industries creating that pollution, and that will have real consequences for our health, because more climate pollution means more extreme weather, worse air quality, more asthma attacks, and more days when kids can't safely play outside. There's an organization called Moms Clean Air Force that's fighting back against the EPA's decision to repeal the endangerment finding. They're working to help parents and communities understand what this rollback means for our kids' health and how to speak up against it by contacting lawmakers, joining action alerts, or supporting other efforts to hold EPA accountable. You can learn more and take action at momscleanairforce.org because right now we need as many voices as possible pushing back on this and making sure our government is focused on protecting people, not polluting industries.

Okay, so that's momscleanairforce.org. Check that out. Let's go right to Erica Jordan giving her four-dimensional look at the 11th murder by Trump's ICE and DHS Gestapo in the 16 months.

We got the wrong guys, the new thoughts and prayers. Yesterday, federal agents shot Juan Sebastian Guerrero, 26, a food delivery driver, legally authorized to work here social security number and all four bullets through his windshield in front of his wife and his three-year-old daughter still in her bluey pajamas he was not the target we know this because the dhs secretary told a senator he was then called back three hours later to say oops wrong guy the correction took three hours Guerrero's body lay handcuffed in the street for five. Handcuffed, as if a corpse might sprint off. But the procedure must be performed for the body cameras the agents conveniently weren't wearing. Second wrong person unaliving this week. at least the 11th of this administration. And within hours, influencers were smirking into their phones, explaining why actually this was fine. The smirk is the story. Here's what's genuinely new in human history. Perpetrators used to hide atrocity. The Nazis built the camps in secret. because being seen still carried a cost. We are the first society where they broadcast it, where doing evil on HD on camera no longer costs you anything. Being witnessed used to be a deterrent. Now it's the reward. We tell ourselves a bedtime story, slavery, then Lincoln, then civil rights, then ta-da, equality. In reality, we built a few paper guardrails, and now we're driving an unmarked Ford Explorer straight through them. And some of the same communities in the crosshairs are out here defending the people aiming. If you give a frightened person a villain, they'll trade their own safety for the warmth of belonging and the sugar rush of revenge. So the system devours them and they applaud the chewing. This is an architecture that treats certain lives as an acceptable margin of error and then convinces those lives they're lucky to be inside the building.

Donald Trump has perfected.

All right. So then there it is. So last but not least, we're going to round off the show with Dave Lippman as shooting from the hip. Number 87. Thank you, David. Dave Lippman. So here we go.

Not content with a war on the entire Middle East, War King Don continues his war on U.S. history via the Smithsonian. That rogue institution's failure to celebrate or at least excuse slavery is compounded by their accusation that Christianity engaged in world conquest. The very notion, and how dare they imply that the party of Lincoln became the party of Bull Connor, also a great patriot in a diverse sort of a way, before writing itself and becoming the party of the man who will save the Trumpsonian from itself. He has also attacked the head of the Museum of American History, Anthea Hartig, for saying history is a tool of civic engagement and social justice.

There are cases in my files showing where involvement has led to social change. which, as we know, is not strictly necessary at this time, nor is it strictly permitted.

Meanwhile, exciting news for ethnic unity fans. A new law in China makes it mandatory. Recalcitrant Uyghurs and Tibetans and others among the 56 ethnicities who persist in existing at home and abroad will be pursued and persuaded to assimilate, which in the U.S. is a bad thing. But in China, it's good. Or from another point of view, in the U.S., it's good. In China, it's bad. There's a third point of view, but I can't imagine what it might be. And now, some snippets from the vault. Federal Judge Trina Thompson said a while back that the Trump cabal's deporting of helpless refugees as the worst of the worst amounts to asking them to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. Meanwhile, the Party of Family Values has found a new way to split families. They can either leave together or have their child removed for safekeeping. Or anyway, sheltering. Or fostering. It's an innovative combination of blackmail, kidnapping, hostage-taking, and modernized Sophie's Choicing. The policy is divisive. especially to families. If the parents choose separation, it proves they are Palestinians in that they don't love their children. The admin is, of course, acting on the traditional conservative belief that the government knows better than parents. Let us journey deep into the past, into last week, or even the last 500 years, to try to unravel why so many refugees, impoverished if not persecuted, want to come to wealthy countries. Can one imagine why anyone would do such a thing? Either perhaps because of economic imbalances in the world, perhaps even grand theft by some countries from others that might help cause this. And then we have the question of whether we can actually live in an unequal world. Should we build walls or seek justice? Tough call. Maybe build an ark that bends towards justice. Justice is great, but it's so much work. So perhaps we could separate families, uproot people from countries they've lived in for decades, and send them to places where they have nothing and no one. No hope, perhaps no life, especially if they are killed. But we must do something because they are taking all the jobs that we don't want, providing food for us and shelter, and mostly not eating our pets. Without these people here, we might have to toughen up and become great again without any help from immigrants. Imagine America without immigrants. Reality, anyone?

There's absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force, and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories. Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined. 25 of whom are allies.

When Trump ordered the Treasury to cease production of pennies, he insisted it is in the national interest for Americans to have no sense. At the same time, he also ordered the abolition of energy-saving light bulbs and toilets, along with paper straws, since they are all DEI and also violate the right to profit from ending the planet. He added that the woke Marxist anti-plastic movement is the biggest disgrace in history and dishonors the sacred invention of plastic by God's little helper. Also, he said, maligning the ocean's island of plastic the size of Texas also maligns Texas, which maligns Jesus.

By the Islamic Republic of Japan,

It turns out the decision about what's fit to print is often made by terrorists. That is, New York Times staffers who have participated in Israel's crusade against its indigenous people. Natan Odenheimer was an Israeli commando for four years. Isabel Kirchner's husband and two sons served in the Obliteration Forces as well. Exec. Editor Max Frankel said he was expected to stand up for Israel, right or wrong, and did. Ditto A. M. Rosenthal. There are no known Palestinian staffers with ties to the anti-occupation resistance, as they would be biased.

I posted that I want a ceasefire. This guy commented, oh, you want a ceasefire? So then you're just for taking hostages?

What?

Tariffs work because the United States has the largest, most reliable consumer market for the world's products. And also because everything Mr. Trump does works. Because if the president does it, it works. Vietnam, for example, has agreed to give the U.S. total access to their markets, once again ending the Vietnam War, this time in the Americans' favor. The Pentagon has condemned the evil of globalism and hatred for the president. The brass also had the brass to promise to increase the lethality of our warfighters and revitalize the warrior ethos. This begs for some unpacking as it puts on display four types of escalation. Globalism has been promoted from un-American to evil. People who dislike the president may now be labeled haters and deported. The purpose of war has been altered from winning to killing. And the nation has adopted, through its likable leader, an official ethos, that of the warrior. Sparta much?

Well, that's it. Thank you for tuning in. That's Megatrends for this year. I want to thank Jason Francisco and also just want to remind you to pick up a Nuclear Free Orchestra CD with some powerful stories. including some classified testimony and music, and introing and extroing it. So anyway, thanks for tuning in. This is Pat Fahey signing off this week, and I'll see you next Thursday, 2 to 3, right here from Pacific Coast TV.