Some More News - SMN: Robocalls, The Freakin’ Post Office, And Other Forgotten Stories

Episode Date: July 31, 2022

Hi. Today we're looking back on some stories that slipped through the cracks over the last several seasons of "Some More News," the fictional show that details events in the fantasy world of "The United States of America." Cody talks about robocalls, the Post Office, sex work, that whole "crime wave" thing, and we'll check in with one of the show's most despised villains: John Krasinski. Get your MAYBE COPS SHOULDN'T HAVE GUNS merch here: https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/254... Check out our new compilation series, CODY COMPS here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/ Check out our new series SOME THIS! - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/some... SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqego... Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-mo... Secure your online data TODAY by visiting http://expressvpn.com/somenews. That's http://expressvpn.com/somenews and you can get an extra three months FREE. Athletic Greens will give you an immune-supporting FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit http://athleticgreens.com/morenews today. Source list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lxg-7W7PMD9pEn8OFxmo_2q4wbz23tY8YIdmSAGwuwk/edit  Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, news fans. I'm Smokey Giselle, the actor behind the Cody Johnston character on the hit YouTube show Some More News. You know, being the star of a streamy nominated series can get pretty overwhelming at times. I'm always moving from one episode to the next, attending overnight A-list sex parties, and spreading the good word of Jesus Christ. And so it's hard to keep up with all the previous stories we've introduced in the show. Our writers have woven quite a tangled web as we've explored the fantastical and fictional world we call the United States.

And while a lot of our plot lines have been accused of, to put it lightly, being less than realistic, perhaps in an over the top cynical, can't fucking believe this could be happening type of way, well despite that, we've also prided ourselves on a consistent narrative, no matter how many moving parts we involve or how ridiculous certain character threads got.

Seemed like we were never gonna get past that whole Trump arc, but of course, perhaps we're still not done. Stay tuned. But alas, sometimes there's just too much plot for even us and certain storylines or topics get dropped for the sake of time. I can't tell you how many times our fans write to us

wondering what happened to characters like Jared Kushner or Mike Pence. And while those two vanilla devils might pop up in a future episode, this is exactly what today's show is all about. Today, we're going to bring you through some of our favorite plot lines that we didn't have time to continue

in a brand new, some more new special called Following Up on Forgotten Stories. Get ready to witness never before seen footage completing or extending some of your favorite Some More News storylines taking place in the wacky world of America. We're gonna start with an oldie. You may recall the brief misadventure

where the United States was being flooded with unwanted spam calls that for some reason, no one could do anything about. According to a study conducted by a caller ID company in Arkansas, nearly half of all phone calls will be scams by the year 2019. Wild stuff. Some people thought it was unrealistic that an entire country could be so poorly designed so that people's privacy could be invaded so easily with no end in sight.

Well, too bad for them because there's actually a thrilling second part of our robocall saga. Let's watch. Robocalls continue to be terrible. So get this, here's some news. Can you believe it? According to one survey, over half of the calls that people received in 2020 were unwanted spam.

If you recall, this aligns perfectly with previous estimates that automated calls are very swiftly invading our daily lives like the laziest version of a robot apocalypse, the matrix relaxations. In 2021, Americans received over 80 billion with a big old B, robocalls, and lost nearly 30 billion with another honkin' B to telephone fraud.

A 10 billion, that's another B, increase from the year before another B. Last time I will draw attention to which words I say that start with B. But it sure as heck seems that this situation, something we once identified as being super broken, has continued to deteriorate like an old backyard shed America won't do anything about.

It's infested with termites and Clostridium tetani, but gosh darn it, you got your first hand job in there and can't destroy the memories. Best to just not look at it. Or in this case of this analogy, simply refuse to answer any phone call from a number you don't recognize or your good friend scam likely, which according to a TNS survey is exactly what 77% of consumers actually do. We've allowed the robocalls to win,

accepting that these small rectangular devices we all purchased and own to make our lives easier will occasionally bother us at random times in an attempt to steal our money. And the only course of action is to apparently just ignore this like the weird guy on a bus. Like in one, albeit unlikely example, a Colorado hiker made the news for getting lost

for 24 hours and never answering calls from rescue teams because he assumed they were a robo call. And reading the story, you can't really blame him. He found his own way back, didn't think he was in danger, and likely didn't realize that people were searching for him. And so the most logical conclusion he reached about getting spammed by the same number is that it was a scam call,

which statistically it would have been. This is even more likely in states like Texas and California, the best states, or I don't know, the worst states, one or the other, where people are targeted the most for robocalls. Back in the height of the coronavirus pandemic, you remember that? Remember how that happened and is still happening or is over, but also the president has it? No, not that current president. Wait, yes, the current president, not the last one. The one now. The one now has it. Anyway, back in the pandemic, one particularly insidious type of robocall was offering COVID at-home testing

long before commercial tests were a thing. The pandemic was very lucrative for robocallers who didn't give a fuck if they were selling misinformation to vulnerable people. This is, of course, very common. Some kind of national crisis happens and all the scam calls will be related to exactly that. And yes, I am counting Democrats seeking donations after the Roe v. Wade decision the scam calls will be related to exactly that. And yes, I am counting

Democrats seeking donations after the Roe v. Wade decision as scam calls. Of course, this isn't exclusive to one party and robocalls in general are not a partisan issue, which really makes you wonder why it's still such a problem. And again, California and Texas have this problem and they are blood enemies. And to make matters worse, spam texts have officially surpassed robocalls for the first time in history. According to one report, scam text messages were sent an estimated 86 billion times with a butthole of a B, I'm sorry, another B, in 2021,

which is an increase of freaking 55% from the year before. So like, shit, man, what is happening here? Who do we go to for help? It's certainly not encouraging from the year before. So like, shit, man, what is happening here? Who do we go to for help? It's certainly not encouraging that our last two presidents both seem like due to fall for a phone scam every other day, probably for some kind of dick pill or I don't know,

a fake crude oil giveaway, where if you buy 1,000 barrels, they throw in a free shower chair. Ignore human rights violations and get a matching loofah set. So like what the fuck is happening? I'm sure we talked about it a bit in that last video we did. I'm not gonna watch and check,

but let's look at the situation as it stands right now. We have robo-dialers in other countries making millions of calls per hour. Since they are international, it's very hard for law enforcement to crack down on them. And even if they did, they can simply move to another location. Those calls get sent to the US through phone carriers who, you could argue, are obligated

not to screen calls. After all, some of the big issues is that some robocalls are perfectly legal, even if they still suck. And phone companies don't have the ability to figure out which is which. Additionally, as decided in the Supreme Court ruling for 2016 Spokio Inc. v. Robbins, the basis for suing an illegal telemarketer in court needs to be rooted in a provable injury. And being annoyed doesn't count for that. And so it's nearly impossible to sue a robocaller or a company working with robocallers unless

you can prove some kind of real harm. Since that ruling, the risk of telemarketing penalties have significantly dropped, causing a noticeable rise in robocalls. So there's no legal avenue for an individual to fight back against annoying calls, nor has the efforts from the FCC really helped either. One of the most common elements of these scams is something called caller ID spoofing, which is when a robocall falsifies the incoming phone number to appear local to the person getting the call. Because again, these calls are very often coming not from inside the house, but from outside of the country.

And so to combat this, the FCC has recently begun to implement a technology called Stir Shaken. What Stir Shaken does is require all calls traveling through a phone network to have the caller ID validated by that carrier before reaching the consumer. And that's certainly a fine idea, but even if it's adopted worldwide, we're already seeing scammers get past this

by simply purchasing actual local phone numbers and using them. And so instead of simulating the caller ID through spoofing, they're actually, or rather technically, calling you locally. That isn't to say this stir shaken technology doesn't help. And by using real numbers, they can now track scammers more easily. But largely speaking, it hasn't made much of a dent.

Along with these flaccid efforts, Congress has at least introduced legislation designed to either increase criminal penalties for scammers or provide liability protection for efforts to trace scam calls. But most of these laws have brought down robocalls only a tad bit. And so when we're dealing with this problem

on such a massive scale, this is but a mouse's jizz in a sea of whale spunk, as the Bible says. And so I guess we just have to learn to live with it, pretend it's not there? You know, like the hand job shed I mentioned before. I really wish I could reveal some obvious answer here, but the fact is that there will always be robocalls as long as we have phones.

It's an impossible little problem created from a system that we've deemed the most convenient. And by we, I mean the people in power, because I lied about how we can't do anything about it. After all, we could just make any and all automated calls illegal and hold every company that uses them responsible. And yes, that would mean that politicians can't spam you with legal texts and banks can't spam you

with automated messages about credit card debt. But you know, where's the tragedy there? They will just have to like hire people to call and text you or maybe just stop bothering people so much. Because again, the root of this problem is that phone companies don't know the difference between legal robocalls and spam ones,

nor do we, the people falling for these scams, know the difference. But we would if they were all illegal. So let's just do that. I mean, I'm sure there are cases where automated calls are extremely helpful, like when you need to know about a doctor's appointment or when your weed delivery is coming,

but we can opt into those, right? And by opt in, I mean making the conscious choice to receive them as opposed to hitting a checkbox next to a 10,000 word long user agreement. Or I guess second choice, we do what the one hiker did and wander into the forest and start a new life. I'm good with either option. Just let me know through text.

Don't fucking call me. What a twist. I especially liked the part where I said a cum word. I love those lines. Of course, you can see why these scenes were ultimately cut from our RoboCall storyline as it was deemed incredibly frustrating. But of course, one could argue that this fits perfectly

with our other plot lines, as they are all incredibly frustrating as well. Cinema. Some might say we have a sick fetish for introducing villainous characters without giving them any satisfying comeuppance. And that of course includes a certain plot line around the United States post office from back in 2020.

A little hint of what's next for you all, but of course we first have to kick it over to our sponsors. And here's a little Some More News quiz to get you through it. In which episode did the character of Katie become fully CGI? What's up, my throat holes? You know how, when you think about it, we're all just fleshy throat plants? Plants with throats and brains where you pour nutrients into the hole? That's just like us.

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Trick question. Katie Stoll has and will always be animatronic. And we are back. And as promised, it's time to revisit our episode about the United States Postal Service, which if you recall, was written into our ongoing pandemic storyline, as well as the lead in to our election season finale. Now that I've established the mail-in voting

and the post office and how they're extremely helpful, popular and perfect for the pandemic, it's only natural to talk about how Trump and the GOP absolutely hate it and want it to stop existing because they always seem to do the wrong thing. It's very cute of them to keep doing that. Remember all that? What a fucking depressing mess that was.

We talked about how the GOP were going after mail-in voting and how there was no evidence of fraud and how despite that, Trump was clearly getting ready to claim there was fraud if he lost. We have to admit that was a little on the nose of us in terms of foreshadowing, but most of you still seem surprised

when it actually happened in the show. We also talked about the long history of politicians trying to defund the post office and replace it with some kind of private entity, as well as our bizarre expectations for the USPS to make a profit. And finally, we introduced Louis DeJoy, the villainous postmaster general

who sure seemed to want to carry out the GOP's fantasy to destroy the Post Office once and for all. And like every good villain with an ironic name, it seemed like there was no way to get rid of him. Even after we completed the Trump election arc. He's a complex character, in that his efforts to turn the Post Office into a business was a symptom of a bigger problem that existed long before him. So let's check back in and see just where we stand

on this extremely angering plot line involving an extremely popular service being extremely systematically disassembled for the purposes of upholding capitalism. What's new with the post office? Until it finally popped its goo on all the cats. And speaking of things getting bigger, stamp prices have begun to rise thanks to postmaster until it finally popped its goo on all the cats. And speaking of things getting bigger,

stamp prices have begun to rise thanks to Postmaster Louis DeJoy's quest to make the USPS self-sustaining as a business. This is all part of the 10-year Delivering for America plan that boasts various improvements to the Postal Service as well as a promise to build an electric vehicle delivery fleet. DeJoy is, of course, the Trump-appointed business dude who made headlines for having ties to his old company, XPO Logistics, of which he still owns a $30 million stake.

If you recall, XPO is a freight transportation company with about 100 contracts with the Postal Service. And so at the time, it sure seemed like yet another case of Trump appointing one of his ghoul friends to make a few extra bucks carving out a government institution in the name of privatization. The reality, as we talked about in our last video on it, is that the post office has long been in a twilight between a private entity and government service. Of course, it really seems that, logically speaking, we should be working toward the latter.

So many Americans rely on the USPS, and so trying to make it financially compete with the digital age as a company seems like you're setting this vital service up to fail. Shouldn't the goal be to simply try and bring this crumbling institution into the modern age? Those electric vehicles seem like a good start, except it turns out that DeJoy has opted to make the new fleet only 10% electric, while making the rest not only gas-powered trucks, but trucks that only get 8.6 miles per gallon. I'm not sure if you can tell, but this appears to be the exact opposite of what we all expected

for a new sustainable fleet. And now several states are even suing the post office over this decision. It seems like DeJoy is purposefully waging a direct war on Mother Nature as if he caught her fucking his wife or something. But the reality is far more depressing and far less erotic. As the simple reason for this change is that DeJoy found that buying all electric trucks was far too expensive for the USPS budget. Because again, he's been tasked with trying to make a profit. And so as a business ghoul,

he is doing exactly what he should be doing with that task. It's like asking a great white shark to euthanize your pet and then getting mad that it doesn't do it humanely, you know? You want the capitalism guy to do a capitalism on the post office. Well, guess what capitalism isn't good for? The goddamn environment.

Also lots of other stuff. You can't spell life killing global catastrophe without ka-ching. So what is the Biden of it all? Surely that old moose has a finger or two to point into DeJoy's chest. Perhaps he'll even say, listen here, Buster Bubby, and put him in an old guy headlock.

Then they'll kiss. My point being that while Biden can't directly fire DeJoy, he can bring on new members to the board of governors that oversees the USPS. And of course he can vocalize his displeasure for the course laid out by this Trump appointee. Do a little bullying perhaps, call him a jack faced horse fucked bee diddler

or one of his other classics. After all, he's probably not at all happy about, duh, what's that? Do I even need to relay what the ear spider is telling me? Okay, fine. So it turns out that Biden did indeed replace a few board members, but those new members voted in a guy named Roman Martinez, a retired investment banker who was picked by Trump as the new board chair.

In fact, it sure seems that Biden himself has backed DeJoy, having just signed legislation that will give him financial freedom to reform the USPS any way he sees fit. So what happened? Could it be that we are all a bunch of lib-faced horse cucks who got triggered when daddy Trump hired a perfectly capable postmaster general? And is DeJoy actually a positive force for the post office? Well, it's not not that, but also it's not that. Or is it?

No. What it comes down to is this. If you truly believe that the post office should be a for-profit business that competes with Amazon and other delivery companies, then Louis DeJoy isn't doing a half bad job at accomplishing that goal. While some of his more irritating tactics

are to raise stamp prices and slow delivery times, he's also implementing ideas that are, to be frank, good. Nevermind whether or not they are designed to make a profit. For example, since 2010, the USPS has relied on contractors and other non-permanent employees to save costs on things like benefits. This has actually resulted in a very high turnover rate, which DeJoy is now looking to change by converting thousands of non-career employees into permanent positions. He also created an online USPS dashboard showing delivery times,

and wants to modernize the current facilities and focus a portion of them on package processing in order to compete with Amazon. Packages are, after all, the main thing we use the mail for now, but probably the most important of all. Well, do you recall this section from our previous video? And instead of creating a way to keep it afloat

during the age of electro-Ms, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act served as a way to step even harder on the post office's neck, specifically by requiring the postal service to prepay retiree health benefits, the cost of which adding up to roughly $5 billion a year. Now, to be clear, this is something that no other federal agency is required to do.

And by 2012, caused the USPS to begin defaulting on the payments, the grand total of which has grown to $47.2 billion. That's old innocent me talking about when the GOP and George Bush used the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act to make the USPS prepay health benefits and how no other agency had to do that and how it completely fucked the post office

in an age of electro-Ms, which we now of course call zappy mailies. It put the USPS into debt to be specific. In that video, we also highlighted how postmasters under Obama also seemed to hate the post office and stressed how Louis DeJoy, to his credit at the time, told Congress that perhaps they should change the legislation forcing the post office to make money. We built a real solid case that DeJoy was simply part of a larger pattern of our government

trying to kill the post office by forcing it to be profitable. And anyone in charge of that task really had no choice but to do terrible things. But the reason I brought up this healthcare clip is that wouldn't you know it, part of this new reform act DeJoy spearheaded has relieved the USPS of all that past debt. Plus, required postal retirees to enroll in Medicare in order to avoid additional debt. That's like a good thing. Something I quite frankly did not expect anyone to fix. So to recap this, the modern USPS has always been founded on the terrible notion that it needs to turn a profit

through its postage sales and has a rich history of doing shitty things the same way a shitty business might. And since the age of zappy mailies, it has not only struggled, but been deliberately attacked by the GOP. And once Trump showed up, he clearly took a specialized interest in mail-in votes,

making everyone rightfully assume he was going to seriously fuck with the USPS and hired DeJoy specifically to help with that. Then that election stuff happened and we got Biden in charge and DeJoy didn't go anywhere, nor did Biden raise a stink about him. And that's probably because Biden is essentially a Republican in that he fucking loves the status quo and maintaining it.

And part of that status quo is the fantasy that the post office should make money and be operated like a business. And so while there still are Democrats pissed off about this, specifically the price increases and delivery time extensions that are, like everything bad, going to affect lower income areas and elderly people the most, while some are still mad at that, Biden clearly isn't one of those people. And to his, let's say, credit, DeJoy appears to be just another boring cog in that status

quo machine, not at all beholden to his previous boss. Is he good? I don't know. Not really. But he also wasn't a complete disaster and has actually done some things to help, things that even the American Postal Workers Union has praised him for.

It actually seems like this could be some kind of redemption arc if we were all secretly in a TV show, which of course we are not. All right, we really got fucked by that clip. As the kids say, step on me harder, clip daddy. And speaking of daddies, it would be downright demonic of ol' Smokey, which is me, Smokey Giselle, if I didn't check in with one of my co-stars and say hello. You might know him as Wormbo, but please welcome Canadian superstar Alphonso Rib eye. Uh, Mr. Cody, I'm not sure what-

Thanks, Alphonso, you're too kind. You mentioned sex work just a moment ago, which actually reminds me of a previous storyline we wrote for the show, one that, once again, originated from our unforgettable Trump saga. Let's watch the clip. A lot of states are banning abortion before women even know they're pregnant.

Maybe even more states by the time this video comes out. And we'll be talking about that at a later date because it's very important. Oh, oops, that's the wrong part of the clip. Although you probably recall that we pay off the GOP banning abortions plotline in a big way. If this was a real news show and like some dystopian hellhole universe, us talking about future abortion bans back in 2019 could perhaps help show that we weren't being alarmist about that subject after all. And maybe more people should listen to us and people like us when we point out red flags about attacks on human rights and clear signs of fascism and so on. If this was a real news show, which of course it is not. I'm an actor. My name is...

Smokey Chazelle. Hey, we haven't cut to an ad in a while. Let's do that before we get into the correct part of that clip and our next forgotten news story follow up. Be right back. How many directors have died while making the show? Look here! We've all had it with big tech, eh?

Stealing our precious information, monopolizing the internet, building rockets, transforming from a series of small vehicles into one large mechanical man that feeds off of our Earth's molten core. We must stop this big tech! How, you ask? By hitting them at their wallets, their big steel wallets. And we can do that by cutting off their access to our information using ExpressVPN.

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That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash more news to get three extra months free with my exclusive link. Go to it. Expressvpn.com slash more news right now to learn more about it. ExpressVPN.com slash more news right now to learn more about it. 28 directors have died while making the show. Wow, we've lost 28 directors making this show. Fun fact, every one of them died by blunt force trauma. And speaking of sex, before we went to ads,

I was trying to motherfucking tell you about one of our previous episodes before we went to ads, I was trying to motherfucking tell you about one of our previous episodes surrounding sex work and the Trump era decision to pass one of the worst anti-trafficking laws despite everyone explicitly pointing out it was one of the worst anti-trafficking laws. Let's watch. The government's attempt to curb sex trafficking in the form of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act

and Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, AKA FOSTA and SESTA, pissed a lot of people off last year. But despite this, it was indeed made into law, as signed by our commander and totally never contributed to sex trafficking or abused his power to victimize women in chief, Donald Trump. Remember that? Remember our plot line about how the SESTA-FOSTA law

was not only bad at catching sex traffickers, to the point that police were speaking up about how it made their job harder, but also really bad for sex workers. SESTA-FOSTA basically made it illegal to assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking. And while that sounds good, what it actually did was prevent most websites from advertising all forms of sex work because they didn't want to risk accidentally promoting sex trafficking.

This essentially banned sex workers from advertising online, forcing them back into shadier means of getting clients. It also took away the power to screen clients, further endangering sex workers and pushing them back to an abusive system where they might have to rely on pimps. Meanwhile, sites that used to offer sex work were actually really good at also flagging any signs of trafficking and reporting that to the police. But by forcing this extremely old profession back into the shadows, so did it hide any evidence of trafficking. It was a law seemingly designed to make everything worse.

In this fictional universe we made because I'm actually an actor. And then we sort of stopped hearing about it after that. So let's check in with the sex trafficking law that everyone loved to hate. Sester Foster Badster. Oh, oh, oh, here is some sex news. that everyone loved to hate. SESTA FOSTA BADSTA. Oh, oh, oh, here is some sex news. We are now roughly four years into the signing

of SESTA FOSTA by Donald can't even do a coup right Trump. If you recall, sex workers had claimed that the new law would make their jobs considerably worse. And this just in, they were correct. According to one survey, getting rid of online-based sex work has created an increase in economic instability for 72% of the sex workers polled. It also caused a near 34% increase in reported violence from clients, which is exactly what we feared would happen.

Of the online platforms that do still exist, sex workers have reported a drastic rise in prices for advertising due to the fact that they now hold a monopoly on the market thanks to SESTA-FOSTA eliminating these smaller sites that couldn't deal with the new restrictions. It's just worse all around now. According to one legal analysis by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, FOSTA has not only forced many sex workers back

to less safe environments such as bars and clubs and taken away access to methods for blacklisting especially dangerous clients, but it also has done absolutely nothing to stop sex trafficking. The thing it was written to do. In fact, since SESTA FOSTA has been enacted, it has resulted in exactly one federal prosecution. That's one as in a single finger right up the ass, but not in a fun way, in a bad way. As noted by the government accountability office and this show, the last time we covered this, FOSTA is most likely making prosecution of sex trafficking more difficult

due to many of these online platforms either shutting down or moving overseas, making it impossible to collect evidence or track payment systems. But shucks, and wait, did I say the sites were moving? I thought SESTA-FOSTA at least got rid of those sex trafficking sites. SESTA-FOSTA at least got rid of those sex trafficking sites. We have shut down nearly 90% of the online sex trafficking business and ads. See, the government lady said so. Except it turns out that not long after FOSTA was passed,

online sex trafficking sites rebounded to about 75% of their original figure. And so, wow, let's just take a moment to recap this. SESTA-FOSTA not only made sex work more dangerous for consenting adults, failed to stop any non-consenting sex trafficking, but also didn't shut down sex trafficking sites. And so all it did was get rid of the good sites and leave the bad sites, eliminating any options for people looking for a sex worker that isn't being trafficked.

Did sex trafficking write this law? I have to assume that since this obvious disaster, many lawmakers have publicly apologized and are now working to reverse the, what's that? Right, I suppose you wanna know what the spider said, but then again, you probably already know. It turns out that the Senate actually is doubling down on their weird make-believe strategy

for fighting sex predators and are now creating something called the EARN IT Act, something that Congress has been kicking around for a while now. And much like SESTA-FOSTA, this plan sounds oh so very on the side of good that it's hard to imagine a problem with it, you know, until you actually read the thing.

The EARN IT Act claims to help prevent sexual abuse of children on the internet. This is obviously a good goal. The same way wanting to stop sex trafficking is a good goal. But the way the EARN IT Act proposes to do this is to take away very long standing protections for tech companies under the section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Those protections state, quote, "'No provider or user of an interactive computer service "'shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. Basically, if someone harasses a person on Twitter, section 230 prevents that person from suing Twitter directly.

Now that's a whole other debate about whether or not we need to hold sites like Twitter to higher standards. But what the EARN IT Act specifically does is require major social media sites to, as the name implies, earn those protections by proving they are combating child sexual exploitation. And that sounds okay, right? Except the way they would prove this is by following a set guide laid out by a yet-to-be-compiled commission of 16 lawmakers. And hey, here's a question.

Who will be on that commission? Because I don't know if you've noticed this, but lately there's a whole group of extremely bigoted people who have decided that any and all mention of being gay constitutes as child grooming. And so you see exactly why a lot of people are very worried about the direction this is going. On top of the clear implications of passing a law that could make it illegal to post about LGBTQ issues, this would also be an act on encryption services, as these websites would undoubtedly need to provide law enforcement access to private messages. You can already see the future here, can't you?

If passed, this law will make the internet less safe for LGBTQ people, chip away at our online privacy, and most likely do absolutely nothing to actually stop child pornography. This is on top of SESTA-FOSTA. And oh boy, hey, remember that whole thing where the Supreme Court eliminated Roe v. Wade

and certain states are now quickly taking away women's rights to abortions and contraception and what is a clear attack by religious fanatics to force their beliefs on the rest of the country? And how more than ever, we need online resources to help women who are now trapped in these extremely backward states? Well, guess what these online laws can easily lead to?

Now that Roe is overturned, there's literally nothing to stop the forced pregnancy politicians from introducing some five-star dick-brained law forcing online services to ban all mentions of abortion access for people in certain states. It's hauntingly possible. In America, anything is hauntingly possible.

Here's what it all comes down to. Anyone who has even a fraction of a fucking clue can tell you that sex work, much like abortion, should just be available. Studies like this one show that laws criminalizing sex work ultimately do extensive harm. On the flip side, online services such as Craigslist's erotic section

have led to noticeable decreases in violence against sex workers. According to that study, Craigslist actually reduced the female homicide rate by 17.4%. This isn't like hard. And what it comes down to is that any law meant to ban or eliminate something terrible like sex trafficking

or child pornography that uses sweeping censorship measures ultimately takes that terrible thing and simply moves it into the shadows where law enforcement can't get to it. While in turn banning completely innocent things. And maybe that's what they want. Maybe they just don't like normalizing sex work or LGBTQ people and see this as a win-win.

Even if it doesn't do the thing they said it would do. It allows them to punish the people they simply don't like. You know, they don't actually care about the innocent people it'll harm, just like they don't care about the children who are now forced to carry pregnancies if they are raped. Luckily, there are people who do care about such things. The Hacking Slash Hustling Collective is a group formed

in response to measures such as SESTA-FOSTA. It is run by both researchers and sex workers looking to get accurate data on the occupation. Because one of the more frustrating things about the situation is that we really don't have any good data because more often than not, that data is collected by people like law enforcement or others who don't fully understand

what it means to be a sex worker and the nuance between people doing the job consensually and people who are there against their will. In fact, some of the information we've relayed to you has come from their research. Meanwhile, a handful of representatives have introduced the Safe Sex Workers Study Act, which would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct the first federal

study on the impacts of SESTA-FOSTA. So progress! And I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but we are seeing a notable change in both the public perception of sex work, and more incredibly, some politicians' efforts to accurately study it. That's good! I mean, unless you remember that we're talking about one of the oldest professions ever,

because on that scale, it's pretty fucking amazing. We're still stigmatizing it. Like imagine if sex work was like any other occupation, just readily available and how much safer that would be for everyone. And how by doing that, it would draw a very clear line between sex work and sex trafficking. I'm sure there's more nuance here

and problems we're not discussing. And like, I don't know if we need a sex kiosk at Walmart or anything like that, or wait, is that what we want? The way they have like eyeglass huts at the mall, but for fucking little fuck dens at the mall, or I guess it would be online now. Damn internet ruining fuck huts. Where am I?

What were we talking about? My thoughts cry. Ah, yes, I remember. We had that brain worm subplot that week. Folks, we're almost nearing the end of this behind the scenes, some more news special, which means we're close to announcing the winner of our online raffle.

Did I? I didn't mention the raffle. There's totally a raffle for this half-drank beer bottle. I mean, Cody's morning juice. Smokey Giselle's morning juice. But first, our final, but not final final, so not our final story to revisit,

is a fairly recent one involving a crime wave that brought a nation to its knees, which was odd because nonviolent crime is actually down in the country. And so all the reports of property-related crime have been largely fueled by corporate and police propaganda in the fictional world of the show, is what I meant. And in the case of the great Walgreens shoplifting crisis

of the 2020s, supposedly going on in San Francisco right now, Walgreens is blaming their store closures on rampant theft and local law enforcement is blaming Prop 47, a law which charges petty theft under $950 with a misdemeanor as opposed to a felony. This is despite at least one study showing that the proposition is not responsible for an uptick in crime.

Oh yeah, those store closures we were just talking about, like literally seconds ago. It turns out that there are probably a bunch of other reasons Walgreens decided to do that. Like the fact that the city is oversaturated with pharmacies and that the corporation had already laid out a plan in 2019 to close a bunch of stores across the nation in order to save money.

Because it's kind of hard to believe that rampant theft is the reason you are closing five stores when two of those stores only had seven and three reported retail thefts in 2021. Yet this is somehow one of the things that prompted San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who was elected on a platform of police reform and had initially pushed back against the narrative promoted by Walgreens

to pivot towards a policy of being more aggressive with law enforcement. In one of our more frustrating and impossible seeming plot lines, America was collectively gaslit by the media into thinking that there was a sudden rise in all crime, despite the fact that there was not that thing. And in places like the fictional San Francisco,

crime has actually been on a steady decline since the 80s. But thanks to the pandemic plot line, as well as our writers giving all of America's characters unregulated access to firearms, there was an uptick in some crime, specifically homicides and shooting. But instead of realizing that this was clearly related to the deadly virus and its obvious ensuing impact

on the economy and mental health, this bump in violent crime was hilariously blamed on progressive politics, even though cities with conservative district attorneys also saw a rise in violent crime. So with this combination of a fake shoplifting and theft crime wave and a real rise in violent crime, we saw yet another attempt by corporations,

police and politicians to use our fear of crime to enact and support bad policies designed to step on the necks of the downtrodden. You can watch the whole episode about it. It explains it better. But going back to that clip and putting the blame on progressive DAs, well, we thought we should check in

with that wacky world of wonder we call San Francisco. Take a look. Oh, hey, hello. wow, here is some news. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Budin has been booted in a recent recall election with nearly 60% of voters in favor of ousting the progressive DA. That is quite a statement against the recent

left-leaning policies concerning crime, but also the result of a $7 million campaign against Budin, 650,000 of which was paid for by Republican billionaire William Oberndorf, as well as half a million from the California Association of Realtors. In fact, the high roller list is basically a bunch of very rich people, hotels, and property owners. Oh, also, coincidentally, the neighborhoods most in favor of the recall also happen to be the wealthiest neighborhoods. That is odd.

I thought this was a grassroots effort led by sensible Democrats. The safety of San Francisco is dependent upon Chesa being recalled as soon as possible. I didn't support the Newsom recall, but this is different. Chesa takes a very radical perspective and approach to criminal justice reform, which is having a negative impact on communities of color.

That's an ad from the Safer SF Without Putin featuring interviews of concerned citizens, members of their own staff, who apparently make a monthly salary of $16,000. Hey, who is funding this Democrat group anyway? Oh, it turns out it's that William Oberndorf guy again. Wait, but isn't he a Republican? I don't understand how that could be.

It's a conundrum. So yeah, it sure seems like in this case, the GOP using fear of crime to make rich liberal yuppies vote against progressives absolutely worked. Good work, you fucking ghouls. Boone is now being temporarily replaced by Brooke Jenkins, who wouldn't you know it, is the other person we showed you in that video.

What a strange coincidence. Now, depending on the articles you read, Jenkins is either a progressive criminal prosecutor who quit under Budin because of poor management, or a corrupt opportunist who helped a girl lie on the stand in order to win a case. Honestly, I don't know. I feel like people who live in this area

probably have their finger better on the pulse. I also don't know what kind of bastard Buden was. And personally, I think all politicians and law enforcement officials are bad and we should just live in yurts and fuck all day, unprotected. But what I'm getting at here is that despite an overall reduction in crime since the 80s,

San Francisco, like the rest of the world, was hit with a pandemic. And that pandemic did create a slight rise in some crime, as well as hate crimes, specifically against Asian Americans, apparently half of which were carried out by a single guy. That sucks and is bad. And criminologists attribute this to a variety of factors.

But instead of working to repair the situation, this rise was instead leveraged by a lot of politicians to attack their opposition, specifically to attack progressive leaders for being soft on crime. Despite the fact that this problem had nothing to do with who is in charge on a local level, much like blaming Biden for gas prices

that are up around the world, blaming local progressives for crime is the most baseline disingenuous political maneuvering, something a child should be able to see through. And yet in this case, it actually worked. People blamed Buden for everything from homelessness to mental illness issues, despite the DA having no control over those things.

Then a bunch of people funded by conservative billionaires use this to leverage themselves into power. And again, I don't know if Brooke Jenkins is any good. She could be great or terrible. Actually, it's probably the latter, considering that she said she wants to use prosecutorial discretion when it comes to charging kids as adults.

So that's, I think she's terrible. And despite her promises, she probably won't do any better of a job as Budin in fixing the recent crime bump. And I would argue that's because the problems people are talking about here, rising gun violence, homelessness, mental health, et cetera, that isn't something a fucking DA can solve.

That's a systemic failure that needs to be addressed with policies and not simply trying to get someone who is tougher on crime or whatever. But again, they don't actually care about solving the issue so much as leveraging it. And if it makes you feel any better, San Francisco is the only place that this happened in that so far, a lot of other progressive DAs in California

have held onto their positions during primary challenges. So you could argue that what happened to Budin was a highly coordinated ousting and not part of a larger trend. You know, at least until other ghouls pick up on how successful it was. Or heck, maybe we can look at this as a cautionary tale, but probably not.

It seems like it's just so hard for people to not be afraid, especially right now. And we generally operate on this principle of, well, better safe than sorry for a reason. Because it is better to be safe than sorry. Generally speaking, that's true. That's why using fear to leverage power is so effective. Like when you threaten that bad things will happen,

unless people do what you want, most people will do that thing, especially if it's not too hard to do. And I feel like we had a name for that. Like war on that concept at one point. What was that name? We were supposed to avoid negotiating with it. Children?

Close, but not that. Stop! Terrorism. Seems like using fear of crime to leverage power is a terrorism. So I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm not for crime. I don't want crime. I think we should build a society where less crime happens,

depending on the crime, because crimes are defined and decided by people, but that should be the goal. And from what I can tell by looking at history and statistics and consulting the Oracle is that the way we try to prevent crime right now isn't so great. Our prison and justice system suck.

We have done videos about it. And so ramping up those same tactics isn't going great. Our prison and justice system suck. We have done videos about it. And so ramping up those same tactics isn't going to help. And trying to scare people into having more cops and worse punishments really isn't going to help. What would help is to perhaps explore methods of rehabilitation and alleviate the conditions in which crime increases through yurts and fucking unprotected.

Yes, I remember my character was doing a lot of raw-dogging intense during that season. Well, looks like we're nearing the end of our special. Soon we can all go home, drink a glass of scotch, several glasses of bourbon, three glasses of wine, and several glasses of scotch, and call it an evening. I'd like to thank you all for coming on this journey with me and do a behind-the-scenes look

at some of the wild plot lines We have explored on this completely fictional show and the imaginary world of the United States and thank goodness for that Thank goodness. We don't have to deal with any of these problems and can just live free in our yurts and fuck Unprotected and so until next time Cody warm bow just texted me. What's going on, man? Oh Look, it's it's the animatronic creature that plays Katie Stoll. It must have malfunctioned and is going on yet another rampage. Oh, shit. He's doing Smokey Chazelle again. Cody! What have I told you about trying to escape reality? No one escapes, Cody. No one escapes. Command! Off! Backslash! Kill switch! Command! Alt! Escape! Tab! Tab harder!

Okay, well clearly there's no getting through to you. Hey, Chazelle! What is it, you... metal contraption you? Do you remember that time on the fictional show where we cover John Krasinski and his Some Good News show? Do we have a clip of that? John, you sold your Some Good News show. Wow!

Congratulations there, John! Who would have thought that a YouTube show hosted by the star of one of the most successful comedy series ever, featuring cameos by other actors from that comedy series and also Brad Pitt would have been so immediately successful and would then be sold after a bidding war to a major network that at the exact same time went ahead and laid off a bunch of people, like a lot of people, including many reporters, because I guess they couldn't afford them because they were too busy buying a fake news show about optimism in a time where people are getting laid off. Remember that from our fictional show that you're just an actor on?

Well, why don't you talk about that for a minute while we wrap things up, huh? How about that? Okay. Beep, beep. Katie bot. Shutting down. Or whatever. I don't know.

Uh, yeah. Thanks, Katie. Robot. Right. So in the fictional show, we had a brief storyline with a character of John Krasinski, a man best known for playing Jim on The Office, followed by a bunch of what sure seemed like CIA propaganda. Well, during the peak of the pandemic, this John Krasinski in the show

began a YouTube series called Some Good News. And while that sounds like a perfectly fine thing to do, the show was actually just an aggregate of other people's videos and stories retold with a bunch of celebrity cameos. The Good News being peddled were extremely superficial stories like nurses getting applauded on their way to go die

fighting a deadly virus, or sick kids starting a lemonade stand to pay for their teacher's school supplies or whatever. The whole thing from the very start felt both exploitative and designed to pacify the masses during an extremely dark time. It never advocated for anything, stayed extremely apolitical and absolutely avoided talking about

or encouraging systemic improvements. It was hollow and felt cynical and perhaps also sure seemed like it ripped off a segment we do on our own show, the fictional show that I act in, I mean. It was just gross and obviously got tons of views because it featured celebrities and unchallenging narratives.

I hate it. Cody hated it, not Smokey. Cody hates. And then, you know, in the fake show I'm Cody in, we learned that John Krasinski not only sold off the show as in the broad concept of reporting good news, like he sold off the extremely unoriginal idea of aggregating good news,

something that plenty of sites already do and have done for years. Anyway, motherfucking John sold that off, probably for a lot of money, considering there was a fucking bidding war, before announcing that he wasn't even going to host the new version. Then he just vanished because it was

and always will be a fucking grift. Wasn't it, John? And then we just never heard about it again. Currently, the SomeGoodNews Twitter account continues to post other people's videos it stole from Reddit or some shit. Like this video of a selfie swing. Here's a teacher getting applauded.

Ooh, good for them. Maybe you should pay them more and the GOP should stop attacking them and they should stop getting shot in their classrooms. Oh, oh, oh. And here's the last thing it appears John did, which was a video where he declared, movies are back, conveniently plugging his own film at the same time.

All right, so here's the deal. I said that I was gonna bring out A Quiet Place Part Two when we could all go see it together. Well, guess what? It's time and it's Miami. Let's go. Come back to the theaters. Let's watch movies together. Let's be together. back to the theaters. Let's watch movies together.

Let's be together. Let's do it. Thank you all so much. Oh, how nice of you to plug your own film and tell everyone to go back to the theaters in a video from May 2021. The year that COVID was the third leading cause of death. Very fucking responsible of you, John. Anyway, there are murmurs that some good news is still going to come back with Krasinski as the producer, but nothing has been confirmed. And in an interview with the New York Times, John said of the project, quote, ViacomCBS and I were trying to figure out a way to make it into

an actual weekly news show, but in the end, we both agreed not to move forward and keep it in its original format. So like, what the fuck does that mean? You mean you're not going to make a show? Is the grift complete then? You sold it off for a bunch of money and ran off before the company realized that you didn't actually sell them anything? Because you didn't, John. You made a broad concept popular because you hosted it and put your office friends on there and then sold that broad concept. And Cody said you would do that, didn't he? Cody saw right through you, John. I'm Cody. It's me, Cody, who was right about you. I remember now. Get me out of these yurt clothes. I am Cody Johnston and I have a news to do.

You're doing it, Cody. You're doing it! Here's some news. Oh, the show's over. Damn. Here's some news. Now the show's over. Thanks for watching, everybody. Hope you enjoyed these behind-the-scenes look of a show that doesn't exist, but could in some other hellscape. So make sure to like and subscribe to the channel that is the behind-the-scenes channel, the fake show or whatever. I don't know.

Anyway, we've got a podcast called Even More News. We've got another podcast called Some More News, which is the thing you just watched but with your ear holes and we've got merch at a store for merch stuff and patreon.com slash some more news and the winner of the raffle that we talked about is smoky Giselle. Morning juice.