Overtime – Episode #598: Fran Lebowitz, Ali Velshi, Doug Jones (D-AL)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Thank you.

Boy,

this could be good judge.

All right.

Here are the overtime questions.

For Ali, as a business and economics reporter, do you think it's wise for corporations to take stances on divisive issues that can possibly cause financial blowback?

Oh, well, that's certainly much in the news these days.

Yeah, look, I think there's a couple issues here.

We have a

you were talking about immigration earlier.

Immigration is an imperative because

we have a worker problem in this country.

We are short of workers.

We were short of workers before the pandemic.

So what you find with companies, despite the Gen Z

students with whom, the young people with whom you have some concerns,

they don't have loyalty to their companies.

So companies find that they have to do things that satisfy these employees in order to keep them and not keep churning through them.

And one of the things, one of the biggest things that polling and surveys by companies show that workers want right now is their companies to take positions on matters that are important to them.

So the bottom line is there's an imperative by employers, by consumers, for companies to take positions.

The other part of it is that, as we've talked about, Congress isn't getting a lot of this right.

They're not figuring out, nor are state governments figuring out where these lines are on complicated socio-political and socioeconomic issues.

So I actually think companies are a good place right now to see some of this leadership.

It's going to be complicated.

They're going to make mistakes.

They're going to get in trouble by the public and they're going to get in trouble by Ron DeSantis and a bunch of governors.

But the bottom line is, I think it's a good development that companies are wading their way into politics.

They were always there anyway with their paychecks, with their donation checks.

Now they're getting there and actually talking directly to what the problems are.

Holy green.

Do you know

anyone who actually runs a company?

Because I don't know anyone who runs a company who doesn't fucking hate the Gen Z and millennials in their office

Whether you like them or not you have to employ them.

No, I'm just saying.

I'm just saying

not this one.

We have the fantastic kids here.

No, really

We do but that's because we don't hire assholes, you know

And we don't need we don't need we don't need many, you know, it's only a few people But I'm telling you it is a subject that is often comes up at dinner in this town, you know privately.

You know, people would not say it out loud.

But they think it's just a nightmare.

They're too sensitive.

You know, they don't want to come to work anymore because of COVID.

The people who are least likely to die from it are still the most afraid of it.

I don't know.

I don't think it's just the Gen Z, though.

It's just the employees.

I mean, look,

corporate America should be leaders.

They really should be leaders.

And if that means taking a difficult stand, then don't go on it.

They want their congressman, they want their senator, they want their governor to take courageous stands.

They need to step up and do the same thing.

I'm just saying, they hate working with people who don't have a sense of humor.

Everything is a subject for, you know, I can't believe you said that, I'm offended, HR, how dare you, a tremendous sense of entitlement about where they should be in the company.

It's like, you just started Tuesday.

Yes.

Sometimes you just have to get the coffee for a while.

I'm just saying, again,

this is not my life, but I hear it all the time.

I'm just a reporter.

Just a humble reporter.

Okay,

according to the Pentagon report, the U.S.

left behind $7 billion in military equipment in Afghanistan.

That's low for us

when we leave after a loss.

I don't know what the numbers are for Iraq and Vietnam.

I think this is an improvement.

I'm not sure.

I do.

$7 billion, billion, that seems pretty good for us.

Who or what do you blame for this?

Well, okay.

Who or what do you blame for this?

Who or what do you blame for this?

I guess the one obvious answer would be the Pentagon.

You know, look,

we fought that war for 20 years.

Yeah.

And equipment is going and going every year, and they continue to throw money at it.

And no one would cut it off.

So

I think there is blame to go across numbers of administrations.

Congress, the same way.

I mean,

this is not one person.

This is not Joe Biden's fault.

This is a combination of things that have gone on for more than 20 years.

And

pursuant to the thing I was just doing about the money that went out the door for COVID and the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.

This is $7 billion.

I mean, we lose that in the couch.

I mean, you know, the Pentagon, are you kidding?

I mean, the biggest boondoggle of all.

The biggest problem here is where it goes, right?

As the senator said,

well, that's the problem, right?

I know who got it.

Bagram Air Base was full of everything you can imagine, trucks and every kind of vehicle you need.

Of course.

And the Taliban's quite grateful for it at the moment.

I'm sure they are.

Absolutely.

And by the way, there's a flip side to your monologue about the fraud in the COVID packages.

There is a flip side, because I did a lot of that.

The fraud is good?

No, no, no.

But there is a flip side.

What you didn't talk about when the thief was going around, how much was still left on the shelves in that Walmart?

No.

Look.

Wow.

That is a different way to look at it.

No, no.

Well, here's another.

I'm not sure that that is a winning strategy for a Democratic Senator.

No, no, no.

How much is still that wasn't

still on the shelves?

You're missing the point.

I guess I am.

All right, so here's the thing.

Now, here's the thing.

First of all, I totally agree with you that Democrats and Republicans ought to be screaming about the fraud that's occurred and demanding that the

Attorney General, demanding that the Inspector General really go after that quick.

There's no question about that.

But this came up like that.

And Congress was trying to figure out ways to pass things that would save this economy.

And they did.

You cannot get around it.

I mean, during World War II, that came up pretty fast, too.

No, no, no, no, it didn't.

We had been watching World War II develop.

There was, even though it was Pearl Harbor,

we had been watching.

But we didn't believe it.

When World War II started, we were incredibly unprepared.

That's why Pearl Harbor happened, because they were sleeping.

They didn't think it was possible.

They had to start a new army.

They closed the car factories just so they could turn them up.

Build up?

They didn't make any cars, except for cars for generals to ride around in for like three years.

So, you know, when people do want to sacrifice, and they had a commission that prosecuted war profiteering,

people didn't get away with any of this shit back then.

It's about will.

It's not about that it came up fast.

And you're assuming that there's not going to be any prosecutions, and I just disagree with that.

Of this amount of money, of hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.

I don't know where it will be, but there will be a no-commission.

Why did it happen in the first place?

It's like, you know, nobody can do anything in the first place.

Because people to some extent are just no damn good.

You're going to get criminals.

I know, but where are the people watching it?

Isn't there someone in a government office who says, oh, look, I see we're sending out a farm check to a state that has no farms?

That kind of thing.

Oh, I see these people are dead.

We maybe shouldn't send.

You know, it's not impossible to do that, I assume.

The problem that I had with the PP program was the way it went through banks.

The banks were, and SBA was supposed to be looking at that.

The banks, all of those loans did not come directly from Secretary Mnuchin.

They came through a bank.

They came through a bank.

And

they were using their underwriting.

They did the same thing.

The same problem we had in 2008.

That's still our system.

Exactly.

And in certain other countries, including in Northern Europe, where they have systems where they can get money directly from the government to either employers or employees, they used a system, the airlines did it instead of the PPP.

They used a program where if you continue to pay your employees, we'll give you the same amount of money.

So

there was no opportunity for fraud in some industries.

Tax credit or

there are better ways to do it.

There are better ways to do it.

And the government looks after banks now a lot.

Yeah, we just have to get out of the mindset that everything we do has to go through banks.

Exactly.

Yes.

All right.

We'll end it there.

Thank you, gentlemen.

That was the record.

Thank you.

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