(upbeat music)
- Oh hey, I didn't hear you come in,
set up lights and a camera,
give me a microphone,
and then say action.
Because it's just me here.
Anyway, why don't you take
a seat, like and subscribe,
and I can crack open a
fresh bottle of news.
(gagging)
The news has gone bad.
It's gone bad.
Let's have a little bit of a taste, no!
It's gone bad, it's bad, it's bad news.
The news is very bad.
Well, here we are, in a pandemic,
with an unemployment rate of over 10%,
and states allowing
evictions to begin again,
while jobless COVID relief
benefits are expiring
with no current hope for
renewal as the senate
is in recess until September 8th,
apparently playing tetherball
with Mitch McConnell's jowls
while Ted Cruz helps
Mike Pence grade papers
and Rand Paul plays keep-away
with Marco Rubio's pogs,
and millions of Americans are
left in the lurch, of course.
Well I guess it couldn't get worse,
ha-ha, nope of course it
gets worse, obviously.
As there are so many people without jobs,
no way to get a job,
their COVID-relief unemployment
insurance expiring,
and evictions now resuming,
an estimated 30 to 40
million people are in peril
of being evicted in the next few months,
according to The Aspen Institute,
which would be the largest
mass eviction crisis
in American history, well,
other than the whole
genocide of Native Americans.
Remember how we did that?
It's not the same but, you get my point.
Unless something is done,
30 to 40 million people
will be left houseless.
So, hey, that seems like
bad news, yeah!
Don't worry though,
everything's apparently fine
according to Mr. President
Donald Jonald Trump,
the president who thinks
this whole COVID thing
is working out just fine, who
also gets tested for COVID
multiple times a day,
and makes sure everyone
who meets with him gets tested.
But even though us
commoners don't have access
to Whitman's sampler boxes of COVID tests,
we'll be fine.
Well, some of us.
Here he is, explaining
it's simply not a big deal
that COVID-relief is
getting cut off for people.
- So I think we've done very well.
We've had three phases,
we're into phase four,
we've gotten everything we wanted,
and we've also gotten a great economy.
All you have to do is take
a look at these charts,
our economy is doing good.
But we want different things,
and then I want money for the people,
they want money to bail
out democrat governors
and democrat mayors who,
listen to me, listen to me.
My people are doing very good,
and my people call me.
They're in the office, they call me,
they call me when it's right.
Nobody knows the deal better than I do.
When it's right, I'll meet,
but right now it's not right.
They want a trillion dollars
to bail out badly-run states.
They're democrat states.
Will something happen?
Possibly.
But I wanna tell you,
the country is doing very well right now.
We can live very happily
with it, without it.
- 30 to 40 million people facing eviction
in the coming months?
It's fine!
Many people are saying, in fact,
we're doing very well,
many people are saying it,
have you seen the charts?
Look at the charts.
Trump's just keeping money
out of the greedy hands
of democrat governors, and
everyone living in their states,
as well as all the relief money
for other states with
republican governors too,
and everyone facing evictions.
But again, look at the
charts, the economy charts,
doing very well, many people saying this.
And Trump's people are doing very good,
they call him, they're in
the office and they call him,
they call him when it's right.
Nobody knows the deal
better than Trump does.
When it's right, he'll meet.
Not now, not until September,
but when it's right.
Not before people get evicted, later,
by the way did you look at the charts?
Many people are saying
they're beautiful charts.
But let me tell you the country
is doing very well right
now, with it without it,
with 40 million people being evicted
or maybe a giant subterranean
volcanic eruption
with hot magma going everywhere,
many people saying this beautiful magma.
Doing very well, though, the
country is doing very well.
My people love the magma, they call me up,
the magma is doing very well.
(upbeat music)
So, millions of people are
getting cut off of COVID relief,
and in fact, many people
never received the relief
they were supposed to get.
Some argue, however, that
this is actually a good thing.
Because financial relief during a pandemic
makes people entitled and lazy.
- The policy that Nancy Pelosi
and the democrats are pushing
adds an additional $600 a week
of federal money to unemployment.
We have the unemployment
system, a system--
- [Reporter] Right, McConnell
Wants to take it down to 70%
of prior wages.
- Except, problem is,
for 68% of people receiving it right now,
they are being paid more on unemployment
than they made in their job.
And I'll tell you, I've spoken
to small business owners
all over the state of Texas
who are trying to reopen,
and they're calling their
waiters and waitresses,
their bus boys, and they won't come back.
And of course they won't come back,
because the federal government
is paying, in some instances,
twice as much money to stay home.
- So that was Ted Cruz
arguing that offering
COVID relief benefits of
$600 a week is excessive,
because that's more than
what low-wage earners
were earning before.
Cruz thinks it's ridiculous
we're offering more financial aid,
why can't people just live off
whatever their state
offers as unemployment?
Well, each state has its
own unemployment system,
and it turns out that not having
a universal social safety
net makes things complicated.
State bureaucracies aren't equipped
to have to suddenly respond
to mass unemployment,
sending out huge amounts
of unemployment benefits
in the midst of a pandemic.
Also, the fraction of wages replaced
by unemployment insurance
varies by state to state.
And they can't quickly change these rates
in response to mass unemployment.
Take, say, a worker in Alabama,
and they make $500 per week,
which according to Ted
Cruz is enough for them,
and they lose their job.
Under Alabama law, the maximum
unemployment compensation
they could receive is $275 per week.
But what if their rent is more than that?
Assuming they even get their
unemployment insurance payment,
they're in danger of being evicted
without the supplemental $600 relief.
So the only way to make
sure millions of people
aren't suddenly unable to
feed and house themselves
is to give nationwide
unemployment benefits.
And since state unemployment
insurance systems
are built on top of ancient pivot tables
created in Excel 95, it makes more sense
to just give everyone a standard amount.
And if calculating a specific
amount for each individual
was an option, you'd think
Ted Cruz would suggest it,
weird, wonder why he doesn't suggest that.
Of course, even the
nationwide CARES-Act relief
is not managing to reach
everyone, so that's...
It says cool, but I think
it's being sarcastic.
But hey, maybe Ted Cruz is right.
Financial aid during a pandemic
is going to spoil people,
especially if it's more
than the paltry sum
they usually earn doing lowly
jobs such as providing food
or farm labor, or sanitation,
or building things in a
factory that gets the real
hard workers like Jeff
Bezos lots of money.
Jobs for people inferior
to the Colonel over here
whose job is to tell other
people that they aren't worthy
of being paid too much money to live.
Maybe once people get a taste
of the sweet luxury life
of getting a basic amount
of money to be able to feed
and shelter themselves,
they'll just refuse
to go back to work!
Even though technically
unemployment benefits
get cut off if they refuse to take a job,
but hey, does this look
like the face of a man
who didn't do his research?
Or the face of Grandpa Munster dressing up
as a Confederate General for Halloween,
but it's at the last minute so
the fake beard is his pubes?
It's both!
It turns out that unemployment benefits
won't affect employment rates,
because there are simply
not enough jobs to be had.
Gee, weird to happen in the
middle of a deadly pandemic.
But yes, research shows
that job vacancies declined
at a rate three times faster
than job applications,
meaning that labor demand
fell faster than labor supply.
Economics!
There are simply not enough
jobs to go around right now,
and in fact, cutting off
unemployment benefits
may imperil even more jobs,
because that relief money is getting spent
on buying things like food, necessities,
and things to make life livable
while stuck inside all day.
Research has found that
CARES Act unemployment relief
actually increases spending
for recipient households,
which it turns out is actually important
to support other jobs.
Hey, remember all that jerking-off
about how important the economy is?
And it's so important that we should kill
millions of people off with COVID?
Well hey, if we give
people spending money,
that helps the economy too!
Although, I guess it is more fun
in a sort of heavy-metal
way to just murder
a bunch of people to
get the economy going.
So, what happens when we don't
give people financial relief during COVID?
Well, we don't have to guess,
because it's happening now.
As I mentioned earlier, 30 to 40 million
are facing eviction.
But to put a face to those statistics,
here are some posts from the
subreddit, sorry, unemployed.
Here's a post from someone who spent
their unemployment and relief
money on rent and utilities,
can't find a job, and so they're down
to their last $18 and 91 cents.
This person says they
now can't afford insulin,
and says that hopefully their
inability to pay for food
will at least help with their diabetes.
They write, "I never worried in my life
"about politics affecting
me so personally,
"but here it is, at my front door."
Here's another post from
someone in Kentucky,
who is out of work, can't get a job,
isn't getting the back pay they're owed,
and says their whole family
will be out on the street soon.
The poster begs readers to
pray for them and to vote.
There are many other
posts similar to these
from people who are down
to their last few dollars,
who have been completely
abandoned by their government,
both locally and nationally,
who don't know what to do.
Sorry, there's no jokes in this section,
I didn't think raw, human
misery could be punched up.
But hey, if you stick with me,
maybe I'll play a fart noise
or make fun of how Ted Cruz's beard
looks like a cat vomited
up, again, his pubes.
It really does.
So, here we are.
Millions and millions
of people face poverty,
hunger, and eviction,
because people like Ted Cruz
think that being able to
afford food and insulin
will make them spoiled.
And that means millions of people
are about to become unhoused, homeless.
So I think it's time that
we have a hard conversation
about how the US treats our homeless.
Because the callousness in
this country towards those
who are left without shelter
and food is really disturbing,
and god I could use
like, a fart sound effect
or something to just, you
know, lighten the mood?
No?
A slide whistle?
My tie?
Like I'll get a tie,
it'll go, "sproing, sproing," something?
Here we go,
time to face some of the
ugliest truths about America.
(upbeat music)
(whistling)
Wowee, we are such a
fun comedy youtube show.
Anyway, it's terrifying that so many
are facing homelessness right now,
because there are forces
in the US that not only
do their best to ignore
he plight of the unhoused,
but actively work to subjugate them.
Law enforcement,
legislation, and propaganda,
all work hand in hand to create a system
of abject cruelty towards the unhoused.
We like to call this
the anti-homeless brigade
of soulless (beep).
I'll soon go into detail
about what the brigade of
soulless (beep) actually does,
but first I want to lay out why it exists.
Why is there dehumanizing rhetoric
in corporate media against the unhoused?
Why do cops crack down on them?
Why are there attempts to try
to make being homeless literally illegal?
There are a few reasons.
First, it's to cater to
the needs of businesses.
Many businesses want to
clear away unhoused people,
so their customers don't have to look
at the yucky poor people.
So, the homeless must be cleansed.
If that sounds weirdly genocidal,
it is.
Secondly, by eroding away
empathy for the homeless,
and going with the narrative
that they deserve it,
we remove our responsibility
to improve our society.
That means hey, lawmakers don't
have to really do anything
about all the people left
out to fend for themselves
on the streets, because
they're yucky and have cooties.
And perhaps most insidiously,
this anti-homeless
brigade of soulless (beep)
creates a carrot and stick mechanism.
If you wind up homeless,
nobody will care about you,
and you certainly won't get
any help from the rest of us,
so you should feel grateful
for any miserable job
you have that's keeping
you off the streets
even at low pay or dangerous conditions.
The carrot, you see, is not
being left out on the street,
and the stick is being
left out on the street.
So that's the (speaking foreign language)
of the anti-homeless
brigade of soulless (beep),
god, I hate raisins.
But anyways, let's take
a look at some examples
of the anti-homeless brigade in action.
First, the goofy homeless
person news stories.
Here's one, from the esteemed publication,
The New York Post,
"Homeless man smashes bottle
"over his head in NYC deli."
Wow, how newsworthy!
A man who seems to be
in terrible distress!
Do they interview the unhoused man to see
why he's in such distress?
No, they just interview
the business owner,
who complains about how
much these homeless people
are disturbing his business.
"Homeless man arrested for living
"in luxury suite of Tampa
Bay soccer stadium,"
gasps another headline,
that shows a mugshot
of a man who was arrested for the crime
of finding shelter in a place currently
not being used for anything,
in the middle of a pandemic.
The news site didn't
interview the unhoused man
to see why he was left with nowhere to go
in the middle of a pandemic,
or why he might be avoiding
crowded homeless shelters,
again, in the middle of a pandemic.
Instead, they interviewed a spokeswoman
for the local police
department, who said, quote,
"He got into the merchandise store
"and was wearing a bunch
of team merchandise.
"He made himself quite at home there."
You get it, right?
He made himself at home?
What's funny is he doesn't have a home,
and he was arrested for desperately trying
to find himself a home
in an unoccupied space
otherwise not being used!
It's called being hilarious,
thank you very much.
Now you might think, hey,
what's the harm in an unhoused
person using an empty room
in an empty stadium as a shelter?
You may even ask, hey,
why aren't we using empty
rooms in empty stadiums
to help house all the
unhoused people right now,
to keep them and others
safe during the pandemic?
Well, clearly, you just
don't know how dangerous
and evil homeless people are!
I mean, just look at all these stories
about homeless people committing crimes!
See?
Dangerous!
Although, I guess it's
weird that we only ever
point out the housing
status of someone accused
of a crime when they're homeless.
We don't see headlines that
say, "Homeowner starts fire,"
or "Homeowner arrested for drunk driving."
That's weird.
It's almost as if this
media practice perpetuates
the stereotype that homeless
people are inherently violent,
or that they're homeless
because they're violent.
But when you look at actual research
instead of the extremely
trustworthy New York Post,
you'll find that not
only are homeless people
more often the victims of crime,
but providing unhoused people with homes
actually decreases crime rates.
So. (yelling)
Wait, you're telling
me, or I'm telling me,
or I'm telling you, let's be honest,
that instead of arresting homeless people
for living in stadiums,
which can lead to a cycle of homelessness
due to the difficulty
ex-cons face finding housing,
we can give people basic
shelter and necessities
and this actually improves
society, including crime rates?
What?
I pretend to ask.
What!
I shout sarcastically.
Quick, somebody call up Ted Cruz's pubes!
Wait, no, Ted's got it.
So it seems like these
fear-mongering headlines
only serve to stigmatize homelessness,
as if by making them seem like criminals,
we can blame them for all
of society's problems,
and then fix the problem by arresting them
or cleansing them away,
which just so happens
to align with the
interests of the wealthy.
But maybe I'm just being paranoid.
It's not like police and corporate media
jump to blaming unhoused people
for like natural disasters
before an investigation
even occurs, right?
(humorous trombone music)
Wait.
Why'd I get wah-wahed?
What's the wah-wah for?
Did I say something that
is immediately going
to be undermined by information
showing the exact opposite
of what I just said?
(humorous trombone music)
Right.
Wah-wah.
It turns out that during the
2018 California wildfires,
LA officials tried to blame
the Bel Air Hills fire
on homeless people, despite the fact
that a full investigation
hadn't even been completed,
and nothing had been conclusively proven.
Despite this, officials
used this as reason
to clear out homeless
encampments in the area.
Now, for those who don't live in the dry,
flammable tinderbox we call California,
multiple wildfires
happen every single year
from numerous causes,
including power lines,
sparks from vehicles, weed-whackers,
basically anything that can cause a spark.
It's as if global warming and drought
has caused mass drying of
vegetation that will inevitably
burn given the smallest spark.
Weirdly though, it seems like officials
aren't confiscating all
cars and weed-whackers,
and instead only care when
the spark is allegedly caused
by homeless people.
Because then, the homeless
need to be cleared away.
And, coincidentally, the wealthy people
who lived in the Bel Air Hills
area were, surprise surprise,
super jazzed at the opportunity
to clear away the homeless.
Nickie Miner, the vice president
of the Bel Air-Beverly
Crest Neighborhood Council,
said she wanted LA officials to focus on
Getting them out, the homeless, out.
clearing out their gear,
and keeping them out.
"I frankly don't care how they do it,
"as long as they do it.
"The homeless population needs to know
"they cannot set up in or near the Hills.
"Period."
Huh.
It almost seems like
blaming homeless people
for natural disasters that
are a yearly occurrence
all over California is just
a pretext to clean them out,
because they have poor-people
cooties and they ruin
the view from your mansion.
I hate it when the suffering
of others spoils a good vista.
But sometimes, the
anti-homeless brigade of (beep)
doesn't even bother with the pretext.
Back in 2019, Boston police
ran Operation Clean Sweep,
which involved displacing unhoused people,
and the police literally stealing
their property and throwing
it all in trash compactors,
including multiple wheelchairs.
This is a pattern of cities
using street cleaning,
backed by police, as an excuse to displace
and destroy the belongings
of unhoused people.
These street cleaning policies,
like Operation Clean Sweep,
treats and labels human
beings as if they are trash.
Not to be outdone, in some
places, such as Atlanta,
it's illegal to help feed
homeless people without a permit.
The excuse law enforcement gave
for penalizing people for
giving food to those in need,
sounds like the
justification behind a sign
that says not to feed the pigeons.
The Atlanta Police Department police chief
told The Intercept, quote,
"Our stepped up enforcement
has to do with an increase
"in the amount of and large numbers
"that congregate waiting for food.
"Fights, trash, urinating and defecating
"in the park, et cetera."
They're dirty, they
urinate, they're trash.
If this sounds vaguely genocidal
that's because it is.
This is the same language
used to justify things
like ethnic cleansing.
When you relabel a human being as filth,
you get to do things like
steal their belongings
and crush their wheelchairs
in a trash compactor,
something that literally happened.
You get to justify installing
spikes and barriers
to keep unhoused people from sheltering
from the rain under bridges or awnings,
or from sleeping on benches.
Spikes, like the way you
keep birds off of buildings.
Because apparently, as soon
as you lose your house,
you turn into a pigeon.
Although if that were
true, at least lawmakers
wouldn't try to have you
arrested for sleeping outdoors.
Then, when a pandemic hits,
you get to justify
leaving people in crowded,
unsafe conditions, out in
sweltering heat where people die
of heat stroke, even when
there are stadiums and hotels
and housing that's empty,
that could be used to house people.
But when they're labeled as trash,
you aren't pressured to do that.
You get to treat people like trash.
Which is, I'm gonna check my notes,
always checking my notes.
Morally reprehensible.
So, as millions of people are at risk
of becoming unhoused themselves,
it's critical that we stop
the anti-homeless propaganda,
policies, and police action.
But one thing to watch
out for is if people
try to argue that this
mass eviction crisis
is different from normal homelessness.
There may very well be an
attempt to differentiate,
claiming that in this case,
everyone is getting
evicted through no fault
of their own due to COVID.
And this is true!
But we should question the
claim that other unhoused people
are at fault or deserve it.
People who are left
homeless during a pandemic
deserve our empathy and help,
but why not people who are
suffering from mental illness?
Or people who are neurodivergent?
Or people who struggle with addiction,
something that the field of medicine
recognizes as a disease?
Or what about people who are
stuck in the cycle of poverty?
In a pandemic, it's very easy
to see how difficult it is
to get a job when there are
simply no jobs to be had,
but this happens all
the time in our country.
And even when people can get jobs,
sometimes wages are so low,
they can't afford housing.
There are people earning full-time
wages who are in shelters
who can't afford skyrocketing rent prices
as their wages stagnate.
By definition, a global
pandemic is an experience
we all share simultaneously,
so it's easier to empathize with people
who are in dire straits because of it.
But before the coronavirus pandemic,
people have been facing
their own personal crises,
whether it's an illness that
wipes out their bank account,
escaping an abusive
partner with no resources,
trying to get a job when you
don't have work experience,
and you can't get work experience
because you can't get a job.
The pandemic isn't a special case.
It's just one that happens to
simultaneously affect us all.
To highlight how ridiculous
it is to differentiate
between people who deserve
eviction, and those who don't,
here's a video of police eviction
right now in Los Angeles.
- [Woman] Yeah, just wanted
to know what was going on?
- [Policeman] We're doing an eviction.
- [Woman] You're evicting someone?
- [Policeman] If there's anybody in there.
- [Woman] Is that legal right now?
- [Policeman] Yes.
- [Woman] Is it?
In the middle of a pandemic?
- [Policeman] We have about 1,000 writs
that we're enforcing, roughly,
that were granted prior to
the governor's moratorium
and have nothing to do with COVID.
And we've had our county
council review 'em.
And that's what we're doing.
- [Woman] So from months ago
you're now evicting people?
- [Policeman] Yes.
- [Woman] Okay, in the
middle of a pandemic?
- [Policeman] If that's
what you wanna call it.
- I mean, if that's what you
wanna call it, Mr. Smart Guy.
So now we're calling an epidemic
that is affecting countries
pan-globally a pandemic,
nerd!
If you think it's strange
that evictions are happening
in LA even though the eviction moratorium
has not yet lifted, it
turns out if you can't prove
that the only reason
you can't pay your rent
is due to COVID, you're fair
game to kick out on the street.
And here's another real life news clip.
(people chattering)
- What is this place?
- The Sanctuary District.
- [Man] 21st Century history
is not one of my strong points.
Too depressing.
- It's been a hobby of mine.
They've made some ugly mistakes,
but they also paved the way
for a lot of things we
now take for granted.
- I assume this is one of those mistakes.
- A bad one.
By the early 2020s, there
was a place like this
in every major city in the United States.
- Why are these people in here?
Are they criminals?
- No, people with criminal records
weren't allowed in the
Sanctuary Districts.
- And what did they do to deserve this?
- Nothing.
Just people.
Without jobs or places to live.
- So they get put in here?
- Welcome to the 21st century, doctor.
No sorry, that's just "Star Trek,"
accurately predicting mass-homelessness,
in the context of, hey,
wouldn't this be completely unthinkable?
If we just punished people
who couldn't get jobs
and couldn't pay rent?
What do you think, noted
"Star Trek," fan, Ted Cruz,
who thinks Captain Kirk is a republican?
Do you have something to say
to the people being evicted?
- We are paying a whole lot of people
a lot more money to stay home and not work
than they made on their
jobs, and that is terrible.
- Cool!
Great.
We have fun here.
It's a great time.
Can we play some kind of
like a fun sound effect,
like a fart noise, a slide whistle?
A Tim Allen Grunt.
(farts hooting)
(whistling)
(whistling)
(horn hooting)
(fart hooting)
(humorous music)
(man moaning)
Now that's the
well-crafted, quality satire
that keeps people coming
back to the old Cody showing.
(gagging)
(upbeat music)
Oh god!
Oh god.
Oh god, it's so bad!
(gagging)
Why did I do that?
A prop.
Thanks for watching.
Make sure to like the video
and subscribe to the channel.
We've got a patreon.com/somemorenews
and a podcast called Even More News,
and here's to water.
(gagging)
