The Problem With Jon Stewart - The Problem With War: You Break It You Buy It

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

Like the annoying guy at a party who won’t shut up about Bitcoin, we have some investment advice: America is not investing enough in our veterans, both emotionally and financially. So today, Jon sits down with some staff who are very emotionally invested, and also talks to Professor Linda Bilmes about her proposed solution for investing more financially.CREDITSHosted by: Jon StewartFeaturing, in order of appearance:Jon Stewart Chelsea Devantez Tocarra Mallard Reza RiaziAlexa Loftus Maria Randazzo Linda BilmesRob Christensen Robby SlowikKris AcimovicAlexa LoftusExecutive Produced by Jon Stewart, Brinda Adhikari, James Dixon, Chris McShane, and Richard Plepler.Lead Producer: Sophie EricksonProducers: Caity Gray, Robby SlowikAssoc. Producer: Andrea BetanzosSound Designer & Audio engineer: Miguel Carrascal Senior Digital Producer: Kwame OpamDigital Coordinator: Norma HernandezSupervising Producer: Lorrie BaranekHead Writer: Chelsea DevantezResearchers: Andy Crystal and Irene PlagianosTheme Music by: Gary Clark Jr.The Problem With Jon Stewart podcast is an Apple TV+ podcast, produced by Busboy Productions.https://apple.co/-JonStewart

isn't it in an audio form don't we have like a sound effects like box that we press and it makes like a thwing or some kind of we'll add that in welcome back to the podcast it's episode 2 Chelsea I'm here with head writer Chelsea Devantes and all around badass okay hi and we are excited it is post launch I mean it's here finally we've made it after months of development we are at episode 2 we started it was we met at live at Budakon it was a cheap it was a cheap trick concert and after some weird weed we came up with this show and 20 years later here we are and we are reveling in the exhaustion and glow and

alcohol poisoning that comes with launches but more importantly Chelsea I hope you got some sleep uh yeah I did but I got that sleep where like you wake up at 3 a.m. because your body's like you're still drunk I like that your body when it tells you you're still drunk chance it like a game show oh yeah yeah you're still drunk and then it's like should we play what's your next anxiety or should we drink some water and try and go back to sleep or drink some water and see if there's any pizza left exactly I love it I'm I'm so pleased and and relief you know that's the launches are always so stressful

and it's always so lovely to be done with them but I have to tell you the joy that I felt almost like got a little weepy mm-hmm when I came up to our luxurious office space which as you know traveling in the finest freight elevators New York City can provide I mean I've never seen a freight elevator with more dirt and I think that's something they did specifically for us I saw actually the maintenance workers in there yesterday adding another layer oh that's nice yeah they yeah so that there were certain areas that they had missed with carcinogens and and those types of things right that's good probably because

my dog has been licking it off in the elevator because it's like you know a shit and he likes human shit so he's been licking all that off and that's does Atticus really like human shit I don't want to specify human I kind of want to say it's probably all shit and I'm hoping what we're encountering on New York City sidewalks is dog shit but I'm not gonna make any I'm not gonna rule anything out hey Chelsea I just wanted to talk a little bit about how Atticus licks my face okay you know what I'm feeling I'm feeling bad for this but given that we filmed a whole segment and you let me have spinach in my teeth for

it I kind of now feel like we're even and this is my justice even Steven even Steven's okay so you came up to the office we have launched popped out of the freight elevator when I saw the whole staff dressed up and read you know because you forget they haven't seen the show you know we've assembled the different elements of it in an avid and and there was a lot that went into it and we were rushing to get it out but when I saw you and Takara in like prom dresses okay okay you know for listeners John I need to clarify something here clarify we were not in prom dress they would have worked they okay they

would have worked at a prom you're right you're right but but we would have been like the cool girls who like put their own spin on it like it wasn't classic prom there's like Lisa Kudrow Mira Sorvino prom like in whatever that movie was were they Romeo and Michelle's high school that's it okay okay you know it's harsh to hear this fashion judgment but I do accept we were in bright neon I'll give you that I'll give you that everybody was dressed up and and like so it was such a joyful morning it really really was I just loved it and it I think sometimes having done this for so long to be able to see it kind of

freshly in in their eyes and to feel it in that way so invigorating everyone came dressed to the nines and also it you know 10 in the morning 10 in the morning because that's the fun thing I found out on a streaming platform your premiere begins at 6 a.m. oh well yeah because you know in the past you're like the show drops at 8 p.m. right it comes out you're all dressed up you go have drinks this started at 8 a.m. and then the show premiered that's right and then we were ate breakfast and then we went to the bar at noon no that makes total sense and it is you know everything focuses on that and and it gets you know

that it's the stress of getting it out there and that's why I sort of explain to to the group which was this is the heaven and hell day yes launch day is the heaven and hell day it's the heaven of that thing that we've all worked so hard on over these past months finally gets out there into the world but like also everybody gets to comment on it and you got to wade through that and I was sort of trying to explain to them feel it feel every inch of whatever excitement pain disappointment anger you feel at other commenting to it and then let it go because today's the day that everybody watches it that has to watch

it but tomorrow is the day everybody watches it that wants to watch it that's a great way and and and make sure you don't make sure you allow yourself to connect with the people who are watching it out of desire and excitement and feel that feel how they're receiving it because I'm not one of those people's like I don't read the reviews I like that you admit it to a lot of pretend not to you read them I will say this I don't read all of them and I don't usually get all the way through you know what's odd I generally don't read through the positive ones that's something for your therapist for sure yeah that's definitely the

headline for that that is that is kind of the headline on this did you have a favorite review I did I did I you know when when we locked the title of the show I don't know if you remember this but I was like John we're hand we're handing critics headlines to you know and you were like who cares and also like how lazy would you have to be to use that headline well turns out I was the one who named a movie irresistible I just keep setting up shots like a pinata like it's I'm a pinata and I keep going hey hey is this a bat does anybody want to beat the shit out of this I'm filled with candy one person

wrote the headline was old man yells at cloud but turns out it's what we need and I thought that was so smart because there is a cloud in our first episode and it was the only headline that didn't have a problem play on words and I was like that's funny that is pretty funny my favorite one was I can't remember the headline on it oh I think it was one that it said does John Stewart even want to be funny no no he doesn't he wants he wants to grow old in peace like everything in this show is a choice so like you can be like I'm displeased that he took this first topic of veterans dying from cancer seriously I

wish he had had more jokes in it and we said like what's what I liked about it was so what's this show can you believe it can be both serious and funny it's almost it's almost as if it's based on the topic you really do find like a weird serenity in it all especially when you know you feel like it does connect with people when when people see it in the way that you intended it it's really more gratifying but more importantly I've learned that the way you make it is so important like the the process yeah it's the journey not the destination is that what we're saying I'm gonna but I'm about to sing the climb there's always gonna be

oh god I'm so proud you know that I'm excited you know we have this episode two of the podcast is kind of an interesting one because yes the second week it's kind of the in-between shows we're gonna talk to Takara and Reza and kind of get you know Takara's whole family worked yeah they were veterans and also she worked at the VA and her and her family worked at the VA yeah that was something Takara told me halfway through the veterans episode I was like Takara what she's like why I wasn't sure if anyone but yeah it was incredible and and her between her and Rob like we just had such a wealth of of experiences

to pull from but yeah her experiences are are nuts with that we're gonna have that conversation with with Reza and Takara about her family's experience and I found it really interesting so I hope that you guys too right introduce yourselves to the audience of the podcast I'm Takara Mallard I'm a staff writer I'm Reza Riazzi I'm a senior episode producer wow that's do you guys have business cards we don't have I thought it was in my deal that I would get some but I didn't get what you have a deal how professional are we I'm paperless for the sake of the planet so are you paperless

as well yeah strictly handshakes but but we don't do the handshake strictly paper and that includes anything that you would normally do like if I Google something I actually have to do it on paper I'm desperately trying to murder this planet I'm doing my best it's going down and I'm gonna be the cause if my children can't see dolphins because of you I'm gonna be really upset so let's talk we're talking about veterans and the episode Reza you you produced the episode and Takara you did not serve but your family is very ensconced in military lifestyle and culture I was gonna say it would be me and my little

brother who were the odd people out but he just visited a Navy recruiter the other weekend so really he's thinking of going in yeah he's thinking of going in would your sibling that has gotten out say it accomplished for me the things that I wanted it to accomplish I think in a sense yes because you know travel the world during the Navy she traveled the world been to places that you know most people will never see right but also the Navy is the reason why she's probably never gonna come to my apartment because I have a gas stove and she can't hear that pilot light ignite so really because she can't use that

light because she was in a fire in Bahrain oh my goodness yeah she went in when she was 18 I believe and came out a I don't say completely different person but different she's different in the affirmative and also in the negative I think she's more weary of things that actually go on in the world she knows a lot more she was in an intelligence officer so there are just things that she watches the news and is just like I've had enough of that and then we'll literally go in her room because she knows what's really going on she would breathe people in power about what's really going on wow but also because of

the Navy she's learned multiple languages and traveled the world and is very confident so it is that it's that strange double-edged sort of you will get to see the world before we destroy it so I'm curious so you have your youngest sibling and he has obviously seen the experience that your sisters had yeah for the positive and the negative absolutely yeah and still even within that like believes this is still a viable option for me and you have another sibling who's there right now who sees that and thinks that that I won't I will get out without the negative or that the negative is worth the package so it's

everyone's experience in totality so it's like you know what I hear what my mother went through my stepfather my father my siblings my grandparents my uncle my godmother but maybe it'll be different for me how did you to car did you ever considered an option or did you always know look I've got a creative itch to scratch and I'm gonna move in that direction I mean you've done a ton of stuff mm-hmm I don't think I actually ever considered it seriously you know it's funny because it it hung over me in a different way but I did get hit up by recruiter when I was in high school and at that point I knew I kind of want to

do something in film and he told me he's like oh there's nothing better for you than joining the army if you want to go into what yeah that's the trajectory everybody goes on kids they really tried to like send me with any sales pitch they could it was like what do you want to do and whatever you want to do the answer was kind of like well if you come here that's actually the best way to do that how honest were your parents to car about the plus minus of military service or did they both feel like this was a really solid option and whatever it whatever it took it worked out I mean now that I'm a full-fledged adult they're

a little bit more honest or my mother is about her experience the military and what that was like you know being an infantry and what that's done to her body and her quality of life but when I was younger it was like you know hey you know because of the military we all have health care because of the military we have job security because of the military you know you know where your next meal is gonna come from there is just there was a sort of gratitude and this is our way of life around that are your parents Jewish penitentiary because I've had very similar conversations to car it was just like this is not this is not

gonna be good for you they were practical I find all this really interesting because it's the difference between kind of the this episode is there's so much about the incentivized systems around military service and the government's lack of care once you're out and the way they use you but the reality of it the the real reality of service infant is a family story and not a country story yeah the recruiter didn't say that part by the way when he called he didn't mention that to you was your family supportive when you went a pretty unorthodox route clearly for your family I think they thought they were

but they were like don't major in this don't do that and actually told me to apply for government jobs like applied to the VA like there's job security in that dude go back to that because that's what else my family does if we don't we're not in the military we work for the Veterans Administration and actually my mother does work for the VA my mother does my stepfather does my sister just got a job with the VA and I used to work for the VA when I was 18 I was a human resources clerk that was my first like job I was a little GS2 and I reviewed background checks for people who wanted to get other jobs in the VA so that

military service government service like anything that felt secure and well within the boundaries of you will be taken care of you will have food on the table there will be something that will provide for you and obviously the sacrifice you make for that your mental health your physical health your hearing the fact that you can stay in an apartment with the gas stove and not freak out all seemed worth it because there was some there was a security blanket around your quality of life because that's what we've all seen the military do I mean the darker vision of this and I and I hate to say that it's

what flashed through my head is that perpetual poverty is a recruiting tool it is and it it it serves the interests of the defense of the country to make sure that there is a population that is perpetually vulnerable enough that they're willing to make that choice that security is worth the debilitating effects that you talked about as soon as you get out you thought that the military was supposed to help you not feel those feelings anymore that you were going to get out and you were going to feel secure you were going to have transferable skills the Veterans Administration would support you the DOD

would be by your side and you'll be able to navigate life with these two big security guards behind you but the reality is that's not the case I worked there when I was a kid so like 18 years old Bay Pines VA Healthcare Center and I was using a typewriter in the year of our lord 2007 it was a dog and stormy night it's where you harness your writing skills I was like they put it in front of me and I was like is this decoration how cool no use this what a stark reminder though of priorities I mean and at that very same time you're watching on TV it's the new smart missile I press a button and it can hit this

man sitting at this desk and miss this man and meanwhile the technology for taking care of veterans post-war is you know from Mickey Spelane's era like it's it's but what a stark reminder of that priority literal typewriter is on the other side I mean I can only imagine what my parents feel especially my my mother and my stepfather who work for the Veterans Administration who work in benefits they talk about the money more than anything and especially now that they're working on the benefits side just thinking of all the things and the hurdles that these veterans have to jump through just to even get someone on the

phone right can be incredibly difficult so you know more staff better technology better processes and in general just so that people don't have to feel so stupid going through this process and less scrutiny less and less scrutiny less like an auditing process you know it's it's so interesting to me how the Pentagon people be like hey man did you guys see I left a pallet with ten billion dollars I might have left it over here has anybody seen that like no all right we'll just look for it now it's down in the fun and they want to say yes they're like the military you know the VA must have this money they're

asking for money they're asking for a hundred percent disability they're asking for some assurance that they're gonna have a quality of life whatever that life looks like in the VA are like no technically no actually no tell him 50% tell him 30 and imagine having to go through that process as someone who also served yeah do d&va are not you know it's almost as though do d doesn't realize that they're making the VA's customers like it's almost as though they just don't even imagine like the VA that's just all the time when we're talking about the different budgets and I would say you know the Pentagon's got

70 billion dollar OCO slush fund that they're just doing the VA does everything well they're different different department different system they serve us a literal same people there's a Venn diagram situation going on here it's the car when you were working at at the VA and you were on your typewriter was there was your typewriter connected to any typewriters at the Pentagon did their typewriters ever talk to your typewriters no it was a very lonely typewriter situation singular and isolated because they had I can remember even ten years ago there was one had a system called Alton the other had a system called Vista

and those were the information systems that carried all of the veterans you know metrics and all those types of things and the two computer systems did not communicate to each other we were told things even as simple as that by the veterans that sometimes they need service records from the DoD at the VA when applying for things and they literally just can't get them that is correct did your family have trouble getting hold it when they needed their record paperwork in general it's like can I can I proved I was stationed here can I proved I served here and the multiple phone calls you need to make

to make that happen but it's also it really speaks to this their entire ethos of the military is we're a team yeah no man left behind we're gonna help you get over that wall and we're gonna do it and when you walk out that door you've been kicked off the team the camaraderie is gone you you have connections and things but you're no longer a part of that culture and and again just from us talking to the other veterans the financial burden that comes with it too if if you are somebody who's facing these things and needs to get outside doctor help or these assessments it it just drains you financially I don't know

if you're on the tick-tock do you take any talk I've talked okay I can't say I've ticked we'll fix that there's a disability advocate by the name of Amani Bobrin also known as crutches and spice on the internets she said something that I think of all the time that there is always something that any movement can learn from the disability movement and that is any time someone calls you a hero or an inspiration they're willing to let you die wow that was on tick-tock yeah any time I hear teachers being called a hero

right essential workers essential workers and you know they won't get paid more they're willing to let you die teachers they won't you know make mask mandates right because being a hero should be enough right that's the great because they make you a martyr if you're a hero you've already decided you mean nothing to yourself for you to be willing to put the line but it is that such an interesting phenomenon because it's a way for people to soothe their own whether it be guilt or selfishness or anything else you're a hero and they don't do they don't live the finger yeah about it I mean I I view it

differently now because sadly I was somebody who'd say thanks for your service if I saw somebody random and I really did think I was doing the right thing and then this episode was an intervention for you yeah this was the most expensive intervention yeah it was a lot it was a lot that was something that was enlightening to me of like oh shit like you can just become dismissive so quickly of it because you buy into that so quickly to think yeah that's it that'll that'll thank him for it they'll go home and feel good about all that yeah what are they you know to guard does your family have any sense of who

are the advocates or of the things that need to change that they would I mean I imagine they've got some pretty strong opinions about having been on both sides of this whether in the military or at the VA are there things that they've ever mentioned to you like if we could just do this it would alleviate some of the burdens that they're facing yes you know one of the things that they really talk about is the dignity of being a veteran kind of it is non-existent because again you have to imagine if you want to get these benefits you're essentially begging to be broken I I am please give me 100% disability like

imagine having to say that over and over again improve that you know your mind and being viewed with suspicion exactly and making it up exactly so that's terrible so one of the things that they always talk about is just giving the better the veteran the benefit of the doubt like no presumption yes exactly they gave you your six your seven their 15 their 20 their 30 years I don't give shit if they're scamming you give them what they're asking for so that's number one and then number two is pouring more money into that agency and you hit it on another level when you talked about I've never thought of it from that

perspective of feeling like you're begging to say you're broken yeah especially coming from an entire culture that you were built on being strong like you just came out of this whole thing where it's like a great point your whole identity was how strong you are and what you endured and now somebody's asking you to say no you can't take anything nothing will make you sadder than being on the phone with someone you absolutely love and saying you know hey what's new with you and then and them saying oh great news I got a hundred percent disability right congratulations and it's incredible to me that the

rhetoric in our country is so patriotic symbolically so it's so incredible to me the outrage generated by a football player taking a knee versus a veteran having to beg for disability when they are physically and emotionally broken by the system that put them there and that generates not even a mention there was an assumption to me that that there is that promise fulfilled on the other side and you just feel like oh we're not recognizing the weight of the human capital yeah that we're losing yeah that word that we're destroying completely changing them and altering who they are as people right I think is the thing that

like really just scares me again my little brother who could potentially you know be joining you know the rest of my family as a servicemen and women right we are here only to destroy you must do your part do that you know you got to do you got to go home in the Obi-Wan robe and just stand next to his room go you must go disturb be a destroyer of worlds he's a nerd too the only thing he'll do is critique by performance and I don't I myself am sensitive and I don't enjoy critique and I don't want that is such the bullshit here's here's my new mantra and this this goes to the Texas abortion situation and it goes to the VA in the

DoD and I know those things don't seem connected it's gonna make it happen why it's this if you don't have the courage to make something illegal make it impossible yes and they don't have the courage to codify what they're doing to veterans yep but they fucking make it impossible yeah and that's how they get around accountability if it takes how much for you just to be able to prove that you served to where you said you served how do you do the rest of the process trying to keep it from they don't if it service connected they have to pay or or people told us countless stories of being like well can you tell

us that you did serve near this burn pit it's like but you should know that you should always serve by the burn pit and they do by the way yeah of course yeah imagine being the richest country in the world and just wanting to hold on to the money from the people who protected that country of course and those riches I just it doesn't make any sense to me there's some sort of logic flaw in that conversation around the United States of America how can you proclaim this and then be so cheap just so cheap when it comes to supporting people who have served right yeah it's a it's a very strange disconnect we tell ourselves a

story about who America is and who we are as a people we are the defenders of freedom we are a beacon to the world we support the troops God bless America but when it comes to putting in the work yeah and the interesting thing is how upset people get that just talking about it is somehow subversive sure bringing it up as an insult to all of it and somehow that's an insult to the very people who they're not giving the benefits to when so many people have fought so hard and you want to say to the government how dare you yeah dude the dude is actually protesting that very injustice and you're telling him he's

not honoring their sacrifice you're not you're actually spitting in the face of it completely you're actually in breach of contract that is absolutely true if we want to take it a little step further I just keep thinking about what you said when we were speaking earlier about like let's get a get rid of the morality let's talk about the currency and if the currency is the business and the business is about the money you're in breach of contract I told you I would give you my body in service to this in exchange for this this that the other and you've given me none of those things guys thank you very much thank you yeah

all right this was nice and join us again coffee talk with typewriter lady well that was wow that's that's a mind-blowing conversation but at least I know now Christmas party this year when I'm getting the staff problem with John Stuart typewriters you get a typewriter you get a type I'd be like the worst Oprah the worst version of Oprah you could have so we're gonna take a quick break because that is a format you are used to on the podcast please enjoy this word from our sponsors and when we come back we got a little solution there's a solution going in this war space this veteran space that we

think is quite interesting so stick around for that hey podcast listeners so we know you're busy and you have a lot going on but you still want to thank our veterans so how do you do that the only way America knows how symbolically you already stand for the anthem put up yellow ribbons and wear flagpins on your lapel but you guys even with all this support our veterans are still suffering and we're tired of seeing it so for this American problem we have an American solution bigger flagpins we hear a bigger flagpins offer flagpins so big they cover your whole fucking face

they're lightweight functional and perfectly block the things that you don't want to see like the more than 35,000 homeless vets when you wear a bigger flagpin you're basically a human flagpole what a powerful thing to see if you're a vet on the street bigger flagpins show blind patriotism while being patriotically blind we are back and I am assuming as the podcast grows in its popularity and scope our sponsors will reflect a more sophisticated tone what do we got next the solution this is actually sort of this is a very interesting solution to

this I had obviously advocated for a tax on war profiteers but I believe we've got something that may be more doable would that be the right word more doable so take a listen to this we're talking to professor Linda Bilms who is a leading expert on budgeting and public finance at the Harvard Kennedy School professor Bilms proposed the creation of a national veterans trust fund and and that's something that we're going to get into and talk about today so professor thank you so much for joining us on the podcast to talk about this thank you so much for inviting me

professor the trust fund it's an idea of a national veterans trust fund how'd you come up with it and and what do you think it's going to accomplish so in every war there is a long lag between the when the real cost of taking care of the veterans and the war so for example the peak year for paying out veterans benefits for World War one was in 1969 and the peak year for paying for veterans benefits for World War two was in 1986 and the peak year for paying benefits for Vietnam veterans hasn't happened yet so using a very conservative estimate I'm projecting that we over the next 30 years will need to pay between two and

2.5 trillion dollars in veterans benefits and care the government right now has absolutely no clear plan for how to pay for this commitment and my feeling is that we are at risk of short changing the veterans if we don't set up some mechanisms for the long-term funding of this promise so clearly this wasn't a surprise and when you talk to people about this tale and its existence it didn't just arise in these more modern conflicts so I've been calling for a veterans trust fund along with my co-author Joe Stiglitz for more than a decade what we had suggested is that for every dollar that was set aside for

spending on the war we had a surcharge we were suggesting between five and ten percent that was set aside for paying for long-term veterans benefits and put into a veterans trust fund now a trust fund it's not like a private sector trust fund but it's like an accounting mechanism in which funds can be tracked and monitored and some receipts can be put directly into that fund and it's not novel to the US government trust funds social security trust fund many other trust funds like that are there other models so people can get a sense of the breadth of these trust funds of how the country's already done this in

other areas well we have more than a hundred trust funds for all different kinds of things financed in different ways I mean it is important to understand that a trust fund a federal trust fund is not a panacea what it is is it is a sort of stake in the ground which says we need to recognize the fact that there are at least 1.8 million Afghanistan and Iraq veterans who have already been awarded and promised this amount of funding in terms of benefits and care you know people are under the misconception that if you serve your health care is taken care of for life and it's not the case the VA really

oftentimes functions like an insurance company accepting or denying these claims of service connection so as to not be on the hook for that disability and it really gets to the heart of the entire battle for burn pit injuries and toxic exposures and things like that there's a process it's not just submitting a claim it's almost like a court procedure where the veteran is a defendant in a case about their health care and it seems like the status quo is suspicion of fraud that the cost of going through that process not just financially but stress wise it puts on the veteran and their family it's wrong

it's insane the whole system in my view is vastly over complicated what we should be doing is accepting all claims presumptive to the veteran and auditing some subset to weed out fraud it would be a much simpler system but instead the mentality is to make absolutely sure that not a single nickel is spent on a veteran who shouldn't get that nickel even if it costs millions of dollars to guarantee that that nickel is not spent so it is overly complicated and and we don't do this in other areas so what are the bottlenecks how are we gonna make this likely to happen not likely to happen how can we apply pressure in the

right places to get it to happen this is a really expensive part of war we've already spent depending on how you count it you know seven eight trillion dollars on waging these wars over the last 20 years of which only a small part so far has been taking care of veterans but it needs to be looked at holistically so I believe making the toxic exposures presumptive for the veteran is just common sense I would love to see a situation where for once we said you know what we are going to do this and we're gonna set up a system to figure out how to pay for it yes yes this has been terrific professor Linda

Bilms thank you for articulating and giving us a great big picture of this situation and hopefully they'll take your advice and use that common sense thank you so much John a trust fund for veterans when they come home for more because they are always short changed on the back end so we set up something because we will have planning we will have foresight we will be in the great fable of the ant in the grasshopper we will be the ant and we will put away or maybe that's I could be confusing this maybe that's Hansel and Gretel and one of those asops fables one of the animals definitely prepared for the

inevitable scarcity of winter and the other animal was all like I don't fucking need that I'm gonna I'm going surfing or whatever the animal was doing in it I believe I thought it was an ant in a grasshopper but it was a very long time ago the point being let's be ants and not great let's put it away for what we know that we will need we know that we will need it we've done this every war and we always balance the budget on the back of that's on the way back would an ant do that no but a grasshopper would fucking do it you can bet I mean they were they used to write stories about it so point being we should be doing this

as a country when we got next our legal and corporate overlords who we all bow down to and swear fealty to they've asked us for a sexual content disclaimer before this next segment although to be quite fair I think the whole podcast is quite sexy shit's about to get real what hi I'm alexa loftes and I'm a writer on the show while researching the veterans health care episode we learned that the Department of Defense has a budget of bazillions of dollars but they seem to be a little stingy with it because they don't always cover health care for veterans and it kind of seemed like they loved their money so much

they would definitely fuck it so I wrote a porn based on this idea and I'm going to read it for you right now buckle up a sign on an office door reads Department of Defense a man in a suit garth steel opens the door and walks in garth steel he loosens his tie it's gonna be a late night boss sultry music starts playing he does a little dance as he undresses reveal he's talking to a giant pile of money he pounces on it and starts grinding it there's a knock on the door it's Eric from HR he's received a complaint that there isn't enough fucking going on here he joins in on the erotic money grinding like my

coin purse several close-up shots of them slapping themselves in the face with the money Eric sucks on a coin roll yes garth keeps getting paper cuts but he loves it Eric comes so hard he dies last shot is a bunch of money and come falling on to a skeleton in a grave that's right Eric came so hard his skin flew off he's now just a skeleton his bony mouth gasps and that concludes my dramatic reading hope it wasn't too sexy wow I am glad we gave that sexual content disclaimer although we should have given it disclaimer that someone is gonna come so hard their skin will come off only Alexa can pull that off

only Alexa that's episode 2 everybody thank you so much for listening I do hope that you got it if you want more information on the problem head to the website the problem dot com we have a newsletter we're just fucking shooting content right into your eye holes we're just it's a we're a torrent of different content and you can always go to burn pit 360 or with any of the other toxic exposure organizations burn pit organizations we can help push for this presumption legislation and get this damn thing done and I will see you all next week see you as a metaphor or something I won't actually we'll be

hearing you'll hear me I won't hear you but I'll be I'll be thinking of you the private John Stuart podcast is an Apple TV plus podcast and a joint bus boy production