Overtime - Episode #470: Tipped Wages, Constitutional Convention, Reality Winner

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Ah, we're back?

Don't I ever get a break?

Okay, do you agree with, this is Dio, with Senator Ron Wyden's statement that there should be consequences for platforms that don't remove people like Alex Jones?

I don't know if consequences are, but I think the internet companies are going to be regulated on some level of how they're operating.

And so he did that interview with me, actually.

And I think probably a lot of people worry about that idea of

doing that.

But companies should be able to do whatever they want, I think, in lots of ways.

In that regard.

I'm a free speech person myself.

Saro, should we get rid of tipped wages?

Yeah, nice softball.

Well, if you want to maintain a legacy of slavery and keep sexual harassment, keep the $2 wage in this country.

Otherwise, give people a full wage, let them actually live.

And you know what?

If you put it on the ballot, they'll actually go out to vote, and maybe we'll change all the stuff that we've been talking about.

Right.

It is changing to a degree, is it not?

I see more and more places where it's

absolutely.

And we actually just won in D.C.

on June 19th.

We raised the wage from $3 to $15.

We're on the ballot in Michigan if the Republicans don't take us off.

Do you think it's time we had a constitutional convention to alter some of the fundamental problems with America?

I do.

I've been saying it for 20 years.

Problem is, they're the ones now who want a constitutional convention.

I saw this in Nancy McLean's book, that this is the Koch brothers thing.

Yeah, it's a constitutional convention can be very damaging and dangerous.

Could be, yes.

You want to go back to Dred Scott's say that's what you want to do.

That's how you do it.

And so you open that door.

And it's interesting, progressives and liberals have been fighting this for years, and the Koch brothers and conservatives want to open that and attack you.

They want to go back to appointed senators.

I worry about right now in this country where we've got 40% of the people who say that the president should be able to shut down a news organization.

Right.

He's not happy.

I worry that we'll get into a very deep mire if we go into a constitutional convention.

You know, I know the operating system has some flaws and some bugs in it, but we may be replacing it with like guys who want to hit rocks with hammers.

I really worry about that.

There is a long-term problem though.

You know, we've talked about the Electoral College and how lousy that is.

We have gerrymandering, but also as the population becomes more urbanized,

rural states have more power in the Senate.

So we have a democracy crisis that's growing in this country, and I don't know how you get around that.

Get rid of the electoral college.

When you do that, that's a good question.

Look, if somebody wants to do a constitutional amendment to strike the Electoral College, that's one thing.

Going into a constitutional convention, remember, that reboots us from zero.

We rewrite at that point.

How likely is that to happen?

It's really unlikely.

It's super difficult.

We're going to agree on lunch and get it.

Right, right.

It's really unlikely.

It's really far-reaching.

I keep saying you have to take a baby step, and the baby step is

not two Dakotas.

One would be plenty.

It was good enough for Deadwood, right?

They had one Dakota, right?

Exactly.

Okay.

Well, Tip Wages, we asked that.

How about what do you think David Korn of Reality Winner, the NSA translator who leaked the Russian hacking report, being sentenced to over five years in prison?

Well, as a journalist, we count on

it.

You don't want to hear it.

As a journalist, we count on people to leak us information that's vital for our democracy to function.

Knowing what happened with a Russian hack was a very important thing.

Now, she did violate the rules of her employment, but this penalty that she's gotten five years is exceedingly long, one of the longest penalties, and it's obviously there to create a

chilling effect, right, so that other people don't do this and we stay in the dark.

And if we have an administration and a Congress who won't tell us what happened fully, the 2016 hacking, then we need people like Reality Winner.

We need more of them, and now we're going to get less of them because we still don't have the full story because Trump and the Republicans don't want us to.

I worry about the fact that we've got a president who goes in private meetings, the Oval Office with Russian spies and ambassadors, and goes behind closed doors and God knows what he and Putin are talking about.

No one will tell us.

And he's been hip deep with the Russians

since he was a young post-STD avoiding veteran of New York.

And so I worry, and yes, you know what?

She broke the law.

And the sentence was harsh, but it was within the bounds of what the guidelines were and set the journalism thing aside.

She broke the law, but we've got an administration that's more fundamentally compromised our security on so many different levels than she ever could have dreamed of doing.

To be fair, the Russians will tell us, right?

Yeah,

the Russians or the Chinese will.

We'll get there.

That's why we indict them.

They'll just turn themselves in.

We think of this Maria Butina.

Funky Cool Butina?

What is her?

I'm making a LO Cool J joke, but

it's a rap dad joke.

Look, she was absolutely perfect bait for

the DC conservative nerd crowd.

They're like, ooh, hot Russian girl who likes guns?

It's like guns and church.

I think it's very interesting that she targeted, I love guns and I go to prayer breakfast.

Who wouldn't love me?

I like what you like.

She wasn't a tragedy.

She was a guided weapon.

It's amazing that she's

shows that they're into our psyche or the conservative psyche.

She's clinging to guns and Jesus.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm still stuck on your purring.

Could you just say that?

I'll give you a ring regulator.

Okay, I gotta go.

Thank you very much.

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