Thoughts on prison abolitionism
Long time fan, followed y'all over from The Hill and now you are the ONLY news I watch (besides Kyle Kulinski's Secular Talk and Krystal Kyle and Friends). Keep doing the awesome fearless work you do. Angela Davis writes: "...the great majority of people have been tricked into believing in the efficacy of imprisonment, even though the historical record clearly demonstrates that prisons do not work." Her work in founding Critical Resistance (1997) and writing "Are Prisons Obsolete?" (2003) have been influential on many leftys who now seek to replace the punitive carceral system (based on retributive justice) with new approaches, for example centering harm reduction for drug users, funding medical/rehab/psychiatric treatment, distributive justice (to make the distribution of resources more equitable, reducing the material conditions leading to crime), restorative justice (to heal communities and reduce reoffending), and transformative justice (to change inequitable systems to challenge structures of exclusion). I would like to hear your take on prison abolitionism, as prisoners may not be a key voting block due to felon disenfranchisement, but the research is clear that prisons do not rehabilitate, but instead actually encourage recidivism. Beyond the issues of human rights violations and the privatization of prisons, prison as an institution probably needs to be rethought even if it does not poll high enough to be a "winning issue." Thoughts on this?
Doctors and nurses on strike
What do you think of doctors and nurses going on strike? Obviously they should have the right to protest if something's wrong, but is striking the best option because it may cost lives? Once in a while they go on strike here in Portugal, but lately something even worse is happening: doctors in public hospitals are mass quitting because they're being overworked (I imagine they have a job in the private sector or their own practice, though). This is happening because of lack of investment in our NHS. It doesn't help that our supposedly socialist government keeps injecting money into a bank during a pandemic.
Civil unrest leading up to next two elections
I am an avid listener and love your much needed and transparent reporting and discussion, and am a premium subscriber to Breaking Points. And I spread the word about you to my boomer friends. Collapsing social systems caused by corrupt and degenerative political systems are largely to blame for much dysfunction. Recent interviews with Chris Hedges and Charles Jaco, on Useful Idiots, layout the probability of intensified civil unrest around the next midterms, and a possible Civil War of sorts by 2024 election time. My question then, is how do we convince all of the working class, politics aside (an intentional divider), that the elite and corrupt ruling class should be the target of civil unrest and anger? The push for this knowledge should be done in haste, that’s not very far away. There’s a lot of suffering and tragedy in the hang.
IRS
Greetings! Can you talk about the new information coming out regarding the BBB bill and the 87,000 new IRS agents hired to go after auditing taxpayers? People are arguing they will be targeting middle to lower income earners and not targeting the wealthy because the wealthy are harder to go after due to their ability to hire expensive lawyers, etc. As a self employed sole proprietor business owner, this concerns me. Do we lower to middle income earners, mainly self employed, contractors, and gig workers, need to be concerned about getting audited?