Bright Lights on Dave Chappelle, Netflix, and the Pandora Papers

Topics Discussed

Thank you for being a part of our community! We couldn't do what we do without you. To become a financial supporter of the show, please visit our Patreon page, subscribe to our Premium content on Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, purchase a copy of our book, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening), or share the word about our work in your own circles. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for our real time reactions to breaking news, GIF news threads, and personal content. To purchase Pantsuit Politics merchandise, check out our TeePublic store and our branded tumblers available in partnership with Stealth Steel Designs. To read along with us, join our Extra Credit Book Club subscription. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website.

Episode Resources

DAVE CHAPPELLE, NETFLIX, AND THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY

THE PANDORA PAPERS

Transcript

Beth [00:00:00] But I think we have this sense that anything that sounds like economic development is de facto good. And so we don't really need to understand what it means. Is it going to create some jobs? Is going to bring some money into the state? Great. Let's do it. And we don't ask, Hey, is this ethical? We're making it legal, but is it ethical? Is it the kind of world we want to live in? Is it the kind of money that we want to have in South Dakota or Alaska or Delaware? Is this how we want states to be competing with each other economically by being the friendliest place for foreign leaders to hide cash? 

Sarah [00:00:40] This is Sarah. 

Beth [00:00:41] And Beth. 

Sarah [00:00:42] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. 

Beth [00:00:44] The home of grace-filled political conversations. 

[00:01:07] Hello, and thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today we are going to discuss the walkout at Netflix in connection with transgender activism and Dave Chappelle's The Closer. Then we're going to talk about the Pandora papers, what they are and why we think they're worth your attention. Outside of politics we're already thinking about Halloween, and we have some thoughts to share about costumes. 

[00:01:28] Today is the last day of our two-week membership drive, and we are just so grateful to everyone who has joined as a new member or increased their investment in Pantsuit Politics, or has been a long time member and just shared with others why they support the show's work. As we've told you before, Pantsuit Politics exists because listeners want it to and are willing to put their dollars behind our work. 

Sarah [00:01:49] Listener support enables us to focus all of our time and energy on these episodes and our community. It has allowed us to work with professional sound engineers and to hire Alise full-time so that we can spend more time on research and preparing for episodes and interacting with listeners. Listener support has made it possible for us to bring on Maggie and Megan part-time to ensure that the extra credit book club and social media run smoothly. It's how we travel, it's how we make series. It's how we make the five things you need to know episodes. 

Beth [00:02:17] We've shared quite a bit about what we offer to listeners who become members. We are very proud of the News Brief and the Nightly Nuance. And we also know that a lot of you have limited listening time and you might be thinking, I care about Pantsuit Politics, but I can't keep up with more content and we totally understand that. We still need your support and we will still be there for you when something piques your interest. We frequently hear from people that one laugh from a morning News Brief they caught, or one particular topic covered on the Nightly Nuance is worth the price that they pay for premium access. So please don't feel like you need to keep up with every single thing we're making in order for your membership to be worth it to you or to us. 

Sarah [00:02:55] So this is our last big ask. About 10 percent of the people who regularly listen to Pantsuit Politics currently make our work possible, and we would love for that to be higher. We would love to see 15 percent of our audience support the show, and we would love for you to become a premium member today by going to Apple Podcasts subscriptions or Patreon. Links will be in the show note, and we really appreciate your support more than you will ever know. 

Beth [00:03:17] And we have so much fun with our membership community, including coming up on October 28th, our live costume party for premium members on that evening. You will not want to miss it. If you are a premium member and interested in joining us for this, we will send out information on how to join that morning. We'll post it on Patreon will send it to the list of Apple subscribers who've shared their information with us. This is important. If you are a member through Apple Podcasts subscriptions and you haven't yet filled out our form that is in the show notes to all of our episodes there to give us your email address, please make sure you do that so that we can send you information on how to join the costume party. 

Sarah [00:03:53] So thank you for sticking with us through these two weeks of the drive. Thank you for your support. Thank you for listening. It all matters. And up next, we'll talk about Dave Chappelle in The Closer. 

Beth [00:04:14] Sarah and I have both watched Dave Chappelle's The Closer after seeing a ton of media coverage about the special itself and about the reaction of Netflix employees to the special. And just to give you some information as we get into this conversation, we know a lot more about what Netflix has spent on The Closer than we typically do about Netflix shows. Bloomberg reported that The Closer cost Netflix 24.1 Million dollars. For comparison Squid Game, the biggest show Netflix has ever had, cost 21.4 Million. And another comedy special from Bo Burnham, Inside, which was just so creative and interesting. It was a three point nine million dollar show. So Netflix spent more on The Closer than it does on most things, and it spent more on The Closer than on Dave Chappelle's last special in 2019 Sticks and Stones. According to information again leaked to Bloomberg, Netflix's internal measurements of how much value a show generates showed that Sticks and Stones did less than break even. And still, they spent a lot of money on The Closer, and it is historically consistent for Netflix to be very transparent with its employees about costs and revenue. But those employees are not supposed to share financial results or performance of individual titles with the public. So just the fact that this information is out gives you an indication of how very upset some employees at Netflix are about The Closer. I think it's also important to know as we go into this discussion that this is not the first time that trans employees at Netflix have specifically talked to Netflix about concerns with Dave Chappelle's content. Mm hmm. So The Closer comes out. Sarah, do you want to summarize your takeaways of what of what the problematic content in The Closer looks like? 

Sarah [00:06:05] Well, here's the thing. Even discussing the problematic content is is fraught, right, because I'm not here to tell transgender people how to feel about Dave Chappelle's comedy special. You know, I make it my business not to be an expert in other people's experiences. And so I have never walked a day in my life on this earth as a transgender person, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. So I think that's really that's the fraught part of this conversation. And I think at the center point of what the employees of Netflix are saying, which is that this content is harmful. I was so struck when the co-CEO Ted Sarandos initially released a statement, and he's the quote was while some employees disagree, we have a strong belief that content on screen doesn't directly translate to real world harm. Now he doesn't walk. Yeah. He has since walked back that statement. But when he said that, I thought, Yeah, I bet you want to make that statement when Squid Games is the number one show streaming and they mow down like 200 people in a very violent manner in the first episode. Yeah, I bet that's your statement, but they want both sides of the coin, right? Netflix does all this stuff about like, we're out there influencing culture and we can make a difference and we put forth diverse perspectives and that makes a difference in the culture. And so you can't have it both ways, right? You can't say on one hand, we elevate voices, and that makes a difference. But we also elevate voices, and we don't think that causes any harm. And I think that's really at the center point of their conflict with their employees. And I think it started with Sticks and Stones. 

[00:07:47] Tara Field, who's the co VP of the Netflix Trans Employment Resource Group, did a Twitter thread that got really famous, and then she wrote up their sort of demands, and she talks in great detail about like when Sticks and Stones came out, in which Dave Chappelle also made jokes about trans people, that they had this really intense conversation within the company, and they felt like they made progress. And these same employees were like, Are you going to like brought concerns forth about The Closer before it came out. And she specifically listed this this document about the difference between being offended and being impacted. Like, Is it? We're not saying we're just offended. We're saying this content causes harm. And so that to me, seems like the real center point of the employees and the trans community's sort of point, conversation, debate, activism is that we are arguing that this content causes harm to people. And look, you know, Dave Chappelle is of a very particular comedic approach, a very particular comedic generation. I would argue that, you know, being a quote unquote offensive, pushing the envelope, saying things about lots of groups of people. I mean, hell, he makes a joke in the first five minutes about enjoying being molested as a child, like he has a very particular approach to comedy that he has been rewarded for handsomely. And also, I think he would argue, been attacked for, you know, he walked away from his show. He felt like he was sort of being not going to put words in his mouth. There's a lot of writing about why Dave Chappelle left his show on Comedy Central, but like to me, you know, he has a very particular form of comedy and they are saying, it's not just that we're offended by it. It's that we're impacted by it. 

Beth [00:09:29] I want to try to tell people who haven't watched it what we're talking about here, even though I agree with you that it's fraught. If you don't know Dave Chappelle's comedy at all. He is known for as Sarah said, pushing the envelope. No group is off limits. He calls women the B-word constantly. He calls black people the N-word constantly. He made jokes about poor people, about Jews. What I think really is provocative in this particular special and why you're seeing this response to this special is that a huge amount of time is centered on the LGBTQ community. A huge amount of his material involves misgendering a person who was a friend to him, involves talking about himself as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, involves him really venting about how trans people have reacted to his comedy for a long time. There is an intentional decision that he made that this special was going to be mostly a response to criticism he's received from this community over time. And that's what he did. I mean, that's that's how he ended it. 

Sarah [00:10:49] Yeah, He explicitly says his objective is to address the questions from his previous special. So especially when we're talking about Netflix, like this isn't an issue with The Closer. This is an issue that started with Sticks and Stones that they have perpetually mismanaged. It seems like. 

Beth [00:11:03] Right, and I just I'm worried that the way the headlines have rolled out about this, if you aren't really paying attention to the details, it sounds like a garden variety, cancelation kind of story, and that's just not what's going on here at all. He made a deliberate decision. Netflix made deliberate decisions, and in response, the Employee Resource Group for trans people at Netflix said, We need to have a fuller conversation about how money is spent, how the platform is used and who's making these decisions. And I think it's very important to be clear about the fact that this group has not asked for this special to be removed from Netflix. Their asks are really that Netflix spend as much money on things that are affirming to trans people as they spend on things that are harmful to trans people. And they're very specific in outlining we want you to invest in trans and non-binary talent more than one or two people. We want you to promote trans affirming content with the same amount of money that you put behind transphobic content. We want you to recruit trans people of color for leadership roles and trans people in general for leadership roles, because clearly the folks who are having a seat at the table around content decisions do not fully understand the trans experience. So the asks here are very nuanced, honestly and very direct. And not this is just not cancelation free speech like the sort of lazy talking points territory. Something much more long term specific to Netflix and specific to Dave Chappelle is is happening here. 

Sarah [00:12:48] They asked for the special to be labeled as harmful content. Again, back to that conversation of its impact versus just offense. And they pushed back hard, rightfully so by saying This isn't about us being offended is that we feel this content is harmful. And I think it was a mistake for Netflix to step out when their leadership is not representative and say, we don't think it's harmful. We don't think content can be harmful. Well, good for, you know, lots of people don't feel that way, and I don't feel that way. Now, does Dave Chappelle feel that way? Who knows. I think the central point for him is really not about offensiveness or whether the content can cause harm for him because offensiveness is his bread and butter, and it always has been. 

[00:13:30] Now I think there is a lot going on here with stand-up comedy and generational differences between stand-up comedy. I was thinking about how interesting it is that when I was growing up, it always felt like the younger generation was pushing the envelope and saying This isn't offensive. And now it feels like the opposite. Now it feels like the younger generation is often pushing back against the older generation and saying, No, this is offensive and you need to stop, which feels so different from how I grew up and the conversations about rap music, for example, that I had with my parents or even standup comedy, right? And I think when your bread and butter is offensiveness and you're getting older and you're getting more famous and it it came from a fire from being like sort of the scrappy underdog. And now you're the one getting $50 million deals. That's hard to take. That's hard for a lot of standup comics to take, and it's certainly hard to to remain funny in the face of that in the face of your increasing power. Because it feels like to me, watching the special what Dave Chappelle is mad about is this accusation that he punches down and the narrative is, I can't punch down. I'm black. I mean, he says explicitly, clearly, my problem has always been with white people. Just when I thought I had you on the ropes, you changed the rules and I thought that was so illustrative. And look, this is hard. I'm not saying I agree with Dave Chappelle. I absolutely think somebody as rich and famous and powerful within an industry, even an industry that has been historically discriminatory and has, you know, put some real burdens on Dave Chappelle himself can still punch down, but he doesn't think he can. He clearly does not think that he punches down, and he's angry about the accusation. And I think it gets to some really hard stuff about intersectionality, about what it's like to live in a multicultural democracy, what it's like inside the Democratic Coalition when you have people of color that are more conservative socially, and I think you see that playing out. You know, we have an episode planned where we're going to talk about just this. There's there's some hard stuff here. And I think that that's why any sort of cultural controversy is not about some easy narrative about cancelation or villains, but it's scratching at something that a lot of people are feeling. And I think that that part is particularly fraught and is particularly hard. 

Beth [00:15:50] Well, and I think that if you ask any sampling of humanity, anyone to watch this special and identify what crosses a line? You would get so many different answers. And if you ask which what parts of this were actually funny? You would get so many different answers and what parts of this involve him asking a really interesting question? I think you'd get a lot of different answers. And so to me, I feel less inclined to try to have some opinion about this special and each component of it. The more interesting question is, if you are a if you are any kind of tech platform where there is content just piling on top of content and you bring to that content an element of curation. What are your rights and responsibilities? I found it very, very interesting that one of the asks from the employee resource group is for people who have appeared in diversity or allyship videos for Netflix to be able to remove themselves from those videos. That tells you that this is a pervasive cultural issue. The fact that someone involved in organizing this walkout was fired because there was a suspicion that that person leaked this information to Bloomberg. The fact that three other people were suspended and then reinstated in connection with this controversy tells you that there's a lot going on here that has very little to do with Dave Chappelle. I think he is emblematic of a larger problem. I really like this statement from Ashlee Marie Preston, who is a trans advocate who's done some trainings at Netflix. She doesn't work there, but she's on trainings there. She said, "it isn't just about Netflix. It's about a corporate culture that manipulates the algorithmic sciences to distort the way we perceive ourselves and one another. It is the emergence of a hate economy, of corporations profiting and making money off of us getting at one another's throats." And I think whatever perspective you have on Dave Chappelle's comedy, somewhere you've got to have a question about how these big platforms decide what to show us. Because what they decide to show us in the midst of everything they have out there is a hard question. I'm not really mad at anybody in this situation because I think these are all really hard questions. And I think that this employee resource group was very smart to take this issue and frame it up the way they have and say we have really specific concerns and really specific requests in response to those concerns. 

Sarah [00:18:29] Yeah, I was reading from a transgender activist who is supposedly coming to Netflix soon to do like, I guess, help them deal with some of this fallout. Their name is Alok Vaid Menon, and they appeared on a podcast and the podcast host asked them, how can I help you? And their response was so powerful. It was basically, non-binary and trans people have an incredibly valuable perspective to everyone. And we don't just need your help, this will help you as well. The question is, how can you help yourself understand this? How can you free yourself from this binary understanding of gender? And I thought that was such a powerful way to respond. And I also understand the like anger frustration. I thought Hannah Gatsby. saying, Get my name out your mouth. All it brings me is death threats. All it brings me is these people who defend Dave Chappelle by calling me names and threatening my life. And like, both things are true. It's like, I just think that that's what's so heartbreaking and what's powerful about the trans activist who can stand up in the face of that violence. I was also looking at Ashley's Instagram feed, and I was so struck by a post, she wrote, where she said the life expectancy of somebody like me is thirty-five and I'm turning 36 today and how powerful that was. Just to name that and say like, this is what we're dealing with. And so when you say like, Oh, well, this content doesn't harm when the violence towards this community is so high on places like Twitter, even though his joke about Twitter not being a place is funny, it is a place where people get death threats. And so I just think exactly like you said, like, there's so much here, and there's so much interesting here. And I think it's so important for all of us, those within the community, those who want to be good allies to the communities, those who have people in their lives who just don't understand and who are really, really far behind on this issue to acknowledge that there it's not a simple narrative and there's a lot of complexity here and that we need as much understanding as we possibly can have. I was so struck by Jamie Lee Curtis, who came out with her daughter Ruby, who's just come out as transgender, and she said, I'm a grateful student and I thought, what a beautiful way to put it. And I think with stuff like this, with issues particularly surrounding the trans community, being a grateful student is about as much as you can ask for. 

Beth [00:21:09] And I just want to ask as we continue this conversation within the community of people who listen to this podcast, that we do so with a lot of kindness and gentleness. I have not with my votes, with my personal beliefs, with my questions and statements been in a loving place about this for my entire life. And I think I feel an obligation to, like, make up for that now because I have such a mother's heart for for this issue at this point. I just I, I have my heart has really been changed about this, and it is very important to me that no one get hurt as we talk about this. And to recognize exactly as you said, Sarah, there is just a present physical danger so often. And I think in conversations about transgender issues, too often the focus becomes exactly some of what Dave Chappelle did, which was act like this is all sort of Ivy League linguistic fear, radical oversensitivity. Instead of recognizing what a very difficult and dangerous path people walk when they are deviating in any way from traditional gender norms. So just be kind. Please. 

Sarah [00:22:30] Well, and I think that's what's disappointing to me about Dave Chappelle's response and his posture inside this special. I'm not a longtime fan of Dave Chappelle, I didn't watch the show. His particular form of humor is not my preferred form of humor. Not because I'm, you know, easily offended. But because I think that the type of sort of pushing the envelope comedy is just exquisitely hard to execute. But I do find him to be an interesting person. I thought his decision to leave the Comedy Central show was interesting. I think all the interviews he does since is interesting. I think the fact that he's Muslim is interesting. I think the fact that he's been married the same woman for 20 years and lives on a farm in Ohio is interesting. And I am saddened that he can't find a place to find that sensitivity that he clearly has and cross it over into his comedy. I saw glimmers of it in the special. I see glimmers of it still when he's being interviewed, and I'm just kind of disappointed and sad that he can't find a way to have that gentleness, to have that sensitivity and make it funny because I think he's a good enough comedian he could. But I feel like he's just sort of doubling down on old approaches. I think you see that a lot with standup comics because they do get rewarded in a certain way for doubling down on that offensiveness. There's a whole side of the internet, there's a whole section of the community, there's a whole part of our country that wants someone to say, forget it. I'm not even going to try. They like it, and it meets a need for them. And I guess I just I wish he'd try a little bit harder not to fall into that easy path because and I think there's a there's a reckoning happening within standup comedy overall about that, like is is offensive funny just because it's offensive. Like, is there a role here for us to push the envelope? Does it cause harm? And I think he could have been a real leader in that conversation, and I just think he missed the opportunity. 

Beth [00:24:52] I don't know how I feel about that. I'm trying to release myself from having an opinion because to be clear, I wish he hadn't done this and I wish Netflix had seen where this was headed and made some really different decisions. I also, just as I cannot imagine walking a day in the shoes of a person who is trans, I can't imagine walking through this world as a black man of Dave Chappelle's generation or of any generation. And just recognizing there are so many limitations, to my perspective around this entire conversation. I think the best that I can do is say, I wish you hadn't done this. I hope that Netflix listens to these employees who I think are making wise and reasonable demands. I hope that tech companies everywhere take a second to figure out some guiding principles around how they use algorithms to show us different content. I hope we all, as consumers are thinking about those issues. And I just recognize that there aren't any easy answers to these questions, but they are some of the most important questions that we can be thinking about. As we continue thinking about difficult and important questions, especially those that concern people who think in millions and billions of dollars, we are going to move on to discuss the Pandora papers. 

[00:26:32] It's taken me a little bit longer to get my arms around just what are we even talking about with the Pandora papers? Because it's so much so if you are new to hearing that term, we're talking about just a leak of information. It is different from past leaks of information about wealthy, powerful people, though, because it came from 14 different offshore services firms. So these are firms that manage money in places like the Cayman Islands and Switzerland and South Dakota, which we're going to talk more about in a minute. Places that managed money, leaked contracts and documents and spreadsheets and handwritten notes. Eleven point nine million records altogether to a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet, and lots of journalists from different newsrooms across the world spent a couple of years just figuring out what they had and verifying validity. And now we understand that we basically have a shadow economic system happening across the globe for affluent people, and some of them are celebrities. Sir Elton John and Shakira come up in these papers, and some of them are people like the King of Jordan and Vladimir Putin, and some of them are quietly affluent people, small business owners and physicians. But all of these people have in common the use of certain financial vehicles, most of which are perfectly legal to hide how much money they have. Some to avoid paying taxes, some to avoid creditors, some to avoid political enemies, and some to just avoid the appearance of having a lot of wealth. 

Sarah [00:28:17] And the money they are hiding is staggering in its size. Estimates range from six trillion to 36 trillion dollars of wealth held in tax havens. What we started to learn about in the Panama Papers, which is about one law firm in Panama and the Paradise Papers, has now ballooned. And look, those were already showing us that there was basically this shadow system where. Wealthy, the uber wealthy, the top one percent operate. That is hidden completely from view from the rest of us. I think what's becoming increasingly clear, particularly with the release of the Panama Papers, is that there's one country at the top of this game and the United States closely behind. But over two thirds of the 956 companies at the Pandora paper links two were set up in the British Virgin Islands. So the British government and its territories really are at the center of this worldwide concealment of cash. I was reading in New York Times editorial, and they quoted a ruling Conservative Party member as saying last week that Britain was the money laundering capital of the world, and it's followed closely behind with the United States, specifically Delaware, Nevada and South Dakota in particular. 

Beth [00:29:41] And Alaska is part of this in the United States as well. And so before we get into kind of where could this go and what are these jurisdictional issues? I just wanted to ask you, Sarah, what you thought because so many stories came out. I mean, you could like delve into particular stories about particular people in their money all day. But what are the themes that really interested you in these papers? 

Sarah [00:30:05] Yes, there's a great story will link to about Vladimir Putin's mistress and how she became wealthy overnight, despite growing up in a communal apartment building and basically Soviet Russia and having no assets to speak of. I think the revelations about the king of Jordan and the amount of wealth he has considering what a poor country this is that benefits from massive amounts of aid from the United States. What really struck me as I was listening to some podcasts about the Panama Papers and read the report is like the uber wealthy in the United States don't really need to go anywhere else. They can find all the tax havens they need right here in their own country, which is annoying and frustrating and infuriating. It's interesting to me because I was thinking back, I'm reading this book. Our amazing listener Max Santos called Humankind. That really talks a lot about not just recent history, but deep, deep history. And, you know, for so long, wealth was something to be flaunted. You wanted everyone to know how wealthy you were because it was a source of power. And I was thinking how interesting it is now that it's the opposite, right? To a certain extent, you don't want people to know how wealthy you are, especially political figures. So many political figures in this dang release were people who campaigned on anti-corruption platforms and then rolled in there and used the same tools to get wealthy or hide to hide their wealth. And I think it's so hard when looking at all this and looking at the scope of this system to not become cynical and discouraged, it just is such an erosion of trust, and it's so easy to just think, Oh, of course, of course, this is what the rich do. And not to feel just disempowered because a lot of people worked really hard to put their livelihoods at risk and journalists put their lives at risk to make sure this information gets out there. And I just think it's so important to not let the scope overwhelm you and to realize like, yes, this is a shadow system where people of enormous wealth and enormous power operate. And also. It doesn't have to be that way forever. Right? We can't let the anger and frustration and cynicism at the scope of this problem overwhelm us. 

Beth [00:32:33] I think that's such an interesting point, and I wonder if the reason wealth is no longer flaunted is because we live in a time when being relatable is such a commodity. When you said that I was thinking about, I've been listening to the Maintenance Space podcast about Rachel Hollis, and I was thinking about how they talked about her decision to pretend that she grew up as a Southerner, even though she's a Californian. And to emphasize like the way that they I can't remember exactly what it was, but put things on pillows or something and the the y'all that she kind of affected when she was coming at her new empire, really as the wife of a highly paid Disney executive. But the point that they were making is that she has gone to great lengths, including some really bizarre fabrications, to be relatable because relatable is a commodity. And that made me think about politicians who effect an accent in certain places or really emphasize cherry picked anecdotes about their upbringing to sound like they came from less affluent circumstances than they have. And I think we all have a sense of this that there is a real put on going on with our political leaderships, with certain celebrities that we're kind of being taken for a ride. But we still go on the ride pretty often is still a really effective strategy. And at the same time, as we want people to say, no, I'm just the average person just like you. We also continue to want to hear that our Supreme Court justices went to Harvard and and like value a certain level of that in-group dynamic. So I am interested in like, how did the cultural tide come to this confluence of we love the rich and famous and the elite and the powerful, and we salivate over the royal wedding and all the things at the same time as we resent wealth to the point that they hide it from us. And maybe some of that is just because the wealth difference continues to grow. I mean, maybe we haven't always had people who are this wealthy. 

Sarah [00:34:49] Well, I think the the reputational costs for the wealthy are real, and I think it's one of the main tools of these releases, right? Because something this big and vast is not going to get at. We're not going to get at it with one law and one country, even a country like Britain, even a country as important as the United States. Like this is this is the matrix. You know what I mean? Like, I'll never forget reading an article from a wealth manager. The person was like, you don't understand. They operate in a space that the rest of us cannot fathom, and that doesn't mean mansions and designer clothes and the stuff that we all salivate over. This means a world where there's no passports, where you fly around in your private jet and you are not sort of subject to the boundaries of nation states. This is a world where you again hide your wealth so that you avoid taxation. This is a world where your criminal. This hides a lot of criminal behavior from traffickers, and it just erodes the rule of law. It erodes the trust in the system. And I think as I was reading about these and just trying to stay in a mindset of like, why does this matter to the average person? You know? So often, I feel like on this show we talk about. A hot spot, a place in the world where people are really suffering and we're all concerned, want to do something about it? Think what can the United States do in particular with our foreign policy about it and we bump up against corruption, right? We talk about corruption in Guatemala. When we're talking about the refugee crisis, we talk about corruption in Afghanistan during the withdraw. We talk about corruption in Syria during the civil war. This is the corruption. This is it. It's not just wealthy people avoiding taxation, and we all kind of be like, Well, that's just what you do when you're rich and famous, like Donald Trump did, whose names were whose name was all over the Panama Papers. Like, that's what smart, rich people do is they don't pay taxes, that this is something different and that is offensive in its own way. And we all share the tax burden when they don't pay their taxes. But like this is the corruption that prevents people from flourishing, like prevents human flourishing and allows for human rights abuses because there's no system in place because these tax havens allow the people in power in these countries to be bought and paid for. So like, it's this is this affects people's lives because it prevents the free and fair functioning of governments so that there's no consequences for abuses. So there's no consequences for corruption. That's what this particular system allows for. 

Beth [00:37:54] And it's complicated because even as I think you're right, that the system prevents a lot of people from flourishing. There is real entrenchment around the system because entire industries have been built, filled with people who are not hiding money all over the world, who are just trying to live a good life. Lawyers with the that they have. Exactly. You know, when you think about, why don't we have a more straightforward tax code? Because there is an entire industry that's been created to help us navigate our very complex tax code. You know, there are people who work for health insurance companies like there are all of the problems that we identify and we say, this is bananas, why are we doing it this way? Because not just the rich are attached to the way those systems work, because lots and lots of people are. And because lots of the politicians who are in positions to do something about it either are invested themselves in that system in some way or, as I think, is shockingly often the case, completely unaware of the consequences of the decisions they make. 

[00:39:01] When I was reading about South Dakota. And how rapidly South Dakota really just adopted the recommendations of lobbyists from the trust industry to become an extremely friendly jurisdiction to hide money. I read this comment from a former Republican lawmaker who chaired one of the very important legislative committees during this process, and his quote was like, Oh, nobody really knows what any of this means for it. But I think we have this sense that anything that sounds like economic development is de facto good. And so we don't really need to understand what it means. Is it going to create some jobs? Is going to bring some money into the state? Great. Let's do it. And we don't ask, Hey, is this ethical? We're making it legal, but is it ethical? Is it the kind of world we want to live in? Is it the kind of money that we want to have in South Dakota or Alaska or Delaware? Is this how we want states to be competing with each other economically by being the friendliest place for foreign leaders to hide cash? You know, those are those are hard questions that often volunteer lawmakers are answering who also need money for their campaigns. Mm hmm. And accept these donations who often are professionals who work in industries that benefit from laws like this. It's a hard problem to even begin to unravel as much as I want to read everything about Svetlana, who had allegedly Putin's baby and ended up with this prime piece of real estate in Monte Carlo, and I do, I want to read all of that. The reason that I think this is really important is because we have to think about the downstream effects of this behavior. And for me, one of the most interesting trends is thinking about income inequality as a security issue because so much of moving money around like this is legal. If there are to be consequences, those are going to be political consequences. And we've seen some of those. But in some places, political consequences look not like losing an election. They look like a revolution or a coup. And that kind of instability across the globe is already here. And I think as information comes out like this, it's just going to fuel those fires. And even when you think, well, this person should be removed from power, that kind of instability has all these ripple effects. And so you end up kind of talking yourself into, well, like maybe we should preserve some of the system because it gets really dangerous if we don't and it gets really dangerous if we continue this system. 

Sarah [00:41:41] Well, and let's do this trickle-down even further, because I think global instability is pretty amorphous in our everyday lives. But let's talk about how this plays out in particularly the real estate market. These companies, these shell companies in which rich Russians or rich Chinese or rich Europeans or rich Americans or Saudis are looking to store their wealth often look like shell companies that either buy or build entire blocks of real estate and drive the prices up in New York and California in L.A.. I never forget talking to my friend in L.A. and he's like, I just feel like it's. Can't we just make a law that like, if you're not going to live in it, you can't buy it because you have these like ghost cities, ghost apartment complexes that that's just they're just holding the wealth they're just in. It's almost like a stock CD only it's in a Manhattan apartment complex. Well, what does that matter if you don't live in Manhattan or you don't live in Los Angeles? Well, I can tell you where I live in Paducah, Kentucky we have an influx of people from high-cost real estate areas like California coming and doing exactly what is happening there here, driving the cost of real estate up. And we already have an affordable housing crisis in this country, driven by a lot of these shell investment companies that are founded in the Cayman Islands or set up as trusts in South Dakota. And they store their money in real estate that they don't live in but that sure as hell affects the people that do live there. And so I think that's like another really important thing to consider is like, this is what happens when you have basically more money than you can spend and you need to hide it. Because you're either a politician, you don't want anybody to know about it or you're a criminal that got it from human trafficking or you're a drug cartel or you're just, you know, I don't know, from a rich family like it just that's what happens. And it has it has a trickle-down effect on all of us. 

Beth [00:43:47] The Washington Post has a really excellent illustration of how these types of financial vehicles where you just hold wealth also make it almost impossible for creditors to collect from people who have who are holding their wealth this way. Because if I put assets into a trust, I can say, Well, I don't own them anymore. The trust owns them, and the trustee of the trust says I don't own them. I can only hold them for a particular purpose. And the beneficiary of the trust says, Well, I don't have those assets. They're in trust. They haven't come to me yet where I own them. And so it's like nobody owns them and you can't get to them when nobody owns them, they're just floating out here in the ether. 

[00:44:40] My favorite thing that I read about this, though, and the thing that gave me a sense of optimism instead of taking me down some kind of dark paths where I sympathized with a lot of the conspiracy theory that's been encircling our country for a couple of years. The thing that gave me a sense of optimism was reading a statement from a woman who is part of this international organization that thinks about corporate taxation. And she said the good news, when you read stories like this and you know that this is just another piece of a much larger puzzle, we don't have anything close to full transparency on this system is that there is enough money, there is enough money to meet the challenge of climate change. There is enough money to meet the challenge of hunger, poverty and homelessness across there. There is enough money. The question is just how do we get that money directed to those problems? And I thought that that was the most encouraging note that I could find as I looked at all of this. 

Sarah [00:45:41] Well, we have to stop being so allergic to taxation because the way you end up like South Dakota, as you think anything that raises revenues without raising taxes is great, right? So we get to collect these fees from these trusts so we raise revenue without raising taxes. Well, maybe it's not always that simple. I think there's lots of reasons to be positive. I think the international consortium of investigative journalists that have been releasing these papers is amazing. It is a brilliant strategy that makes real access across the globe all at once. So that it has impact all at once, because if all these papers trickled out over here in Iceland, where their prime minister had to resign after the Panama Papers or over here in the United States, like it doesn't have the impact as much as a global story. But that took an enormous amount of coordination and it was dangerous. There was a journalist in Malta who was killed in a car bombing after the Panama Papers. And I think what you see is not only the coordination of the journalists in a way that's really impactful, but I read an editorial that said like, we've also gotten really good at maintaining the anonymity of the sources. We still don't know who John Doe was that released the Panama Papers. That's amazing. That's amazing. And it allows whistleblowers, which we're seeing more and more of the ability to key people in on what's happening without risking their lives without risking their livelihoods. The encrypted nature of these releases and the way they all work together, that's that's wonderful. That is an incredibly positive move in the right direction. And look, I think that there is a case to be made that the Panama Papers in particular and that this the beginning of all of this, these releases and the work these journalists done has led to some positive changes. There's been a lot of reporting over the last few weeks about a minimum tax rate of 15 percent across the globe. This is the organization of economic cooperation and Development that has been leading these negotiations, and they want a new minimum tax rate, so it stops being this race to the bottom. So that doesn't matter if you're in the Cayman Islands, you're not going to get out of taxation. And I think that's an incredibly positive move when we talk about how hard it is to get a coordinated global effort that will actually get at this. This will. It won't fix it overnight, but that's an incredibly positive development. 

Beth [00:47:57] And the other thing I want to say about the international consortium of Investigative Journalists is that for all of the discussion about media, especially here in the United States and a lack of trust in media, when you understand that we didn't hear about these papers for several years while they were working through this information and multiple newsrooms all over the world are working together to sift through this and to get it right before it gets released. Not to race, to be the first to publish some salacious detail, but to really sort through and understand what they had and what it meant and how they could validate it as much as possible. I think that that shows you that there are so many journalists more than not, working very hard, taking their work incredibly seriously and taking that obligation to the public seriously. Well, we will continue to watch the fallout from these papers, and the probably yearslong ramifications that they'll have as well as new developments, I heard Greg Miller talking on the podcast Skullduggery about how we're really in a golden age of leaking because of the way technology facilitates this type of activity. So I think we probably are just at the beginning of better understanding aspects of the world that previously did not have a lot of light shining on them. Up next, we'll talk about what's on our minds outside of politics. 

[00:49:34] Sarah, what are you thinking about outside of politics? 

Sarah [00:49:37] Well, we've been having an ongoing conversation about adult Halloween costumes all in fun. This is just fun. We're not saying you're a bad person if you don't want to dress up for Halloween as an adult. We're just encouraging you if you need a little push to be silly and dress up as an adult for Halloween, that it's fun and we love it and we do it every year. 

Beth [00:49:56] You know what, I think I've realized, as we've talked about this is that yes, it is time consuming and it's one more chore to think of a Halloween costume. And it's costly sometimes to find a Halloween costume. Like, I get it, I get all the barriers to dressing up. And I think that for many people, the biggest barrier is just that it feels a little bit silly and or we aren't willing to invest in fun as adults and especially in certain windows of life as adults, when you feel like my fun is not the priority. And I just again want to gently encourage, especially if you have kids who are dressing up, that investing in your own fun sends this really positive message it's fun for them. It tells them that you don't take yourself too seriously. It helps you remember not to take yourself too seriously. It's just been a really wonderful part of my life for the past few years. This I honestly give Chad all the credit, because Chad is the person who has really pushed in our family for us to dress up for us to do family costumes. And I know that's not for everyone, and I'm not saying it should be. But if you are on the fence about it, it's just been great. It's been great for us. 

Sarah [00:51:08] Yeah, we do a family costume every year. It is super fun. Nicholas and I dressed up together before we had kids. I love dressing up. I had a law school group of friends that like we just believed in costume parties, not way outside of Halloween. And it was always so much fun and I look like it's a serious world. You and I are pretty serious people. We're not the like wild and crazy gals you're going to invite to the party. It's not who we are. It's OK, we're fine with that. And so any opportunity to embrace the fun and be silly is it is it's really, really important. And it's a creative act. You know, I have a friend who just has the most amazing wardrobe, and she always says, I'm not a creative person and I'm like, That's a lie. You're get creative every morning when you get dressed up. And so to me, it's also sort of expanding the bounds of like your creativity and trying on something else and working and like putting it all together and thinking, what will be fun? I think that's a creative act. I think we need more creative acts in our lives. 

Beth [00:52:05] I totally agree with that. We also need more places to just put on different identities. And I like Halloween costumes and, like you said, costume parties at other times of year as a good analog way to do that. I think too many of us are finding that place where we get to explore different personalities all online, and that can lead to some really uncomfortable. Addictive. Just generally unhealthy patterns. And Halloween, to me, seems to be an invitation to in a really harmless fun space just try something else. And it's like a secret life of Walter Mitty moment. You know, you get to just do you get to be somebody else for an evening? And it's great. 

Sarah [00:52:52] Well, and I've always gotten the impression from the other adults around me that they're like jealous slash impressed slash awed at like how far I go out for my costume. There's always a sense of like, I wish I could do that and I want to be like, You can, what's stopping you? But there's always a sense of like, Oh, I just love your costumes. I love how your family dresses up every year. Like, there's a joy people take in our doing it that I wish they would just embrace themselves. 

Beth [00:53:21] We hear some of that, too. I could never do that, but good for you. And I just want to say you can. You just decided, like you said, I'm probably one of the most serious people that most of the folks in my life know. And I think this is the best. It's one of my favorite nights of the whole year when you all get dressed up together. So if you have the bandwidth for that, we are just here to say, have at it. Give yourself permission to spend the time, spend the money that way. Spend the evening being whoever you want to be because we think it's a really healthy outlet. 

[00:53:56] We are so grateful to all of you for having this conversation with us and for being here. We are especially grateful to everyone who supports the show or who will start supporting the show. Having you as part of our team in our community means so much to us. Listen, I do not like this time of year. I don't like asking people for anything. It's very uncomfortable for me and your support and encouragement make everything that we do possible and we are so grateful. So if you've been on the fence about joining our premium community, head over to Patreon or Apple podcast subscriptions. The links are on our show notes and join the fun with us in our costume party today. We'll be back with you on Tuesday. To discuss what's happening in public schools and cybersecurity until then, have the best weekend available to you. 

[00:54:49] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.  

Alise Napp is our managing director. 

Sarah [00:54:54] Megan Hart and Maggie Penton are our community engagement managers. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music. 

Beth [00:55:01] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.

Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:55:05] Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs.

The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, David McWilliams, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, Danny Ozment, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Karin True, Amy Whited, Emily Holladay, Katy Stigers, Nick and Alysa Vilelli.

Beth [00:55:38] Melinda Johnston, Ashley Thompson, Michelle Wood, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer, and Tim Miller. 

Alise Napp1 Comment