Taylor Swift And Kanye West's 'Famous' Phone Call Video Leaks: Read The Transcript

(By Melody Chiu, People Magazine, 21 March 2020)

Four years after Kim Kardashian shared an edited phone call between her husband Kanye West and Taylor Swift discussing his “Famous” lyrics, extended portions of the conversation were leaked online late Friday night.  In clips posted to Twitter, the rapper, 42, is heard asking Swift, 30, to release his new song on her Twitter account. “So my next single, I wanted you to tweet it … so that’s why I’m calling you. I wanted you to put the song out,” he tells the Grammy winner on the phone.

After telling Swift he included a “very controversial line” about her in the song, the pop star nervously asks West what the lyrics are.  West then tells Swift he’s been mulling over the lyrics for eight months and warns her “it’s gonna go Eminem a little bit” and to “brace yourself for a second.”

A wary Swift asks if it’s “gonna be mean,” and West acknowledges even Kim initially felt it was “too crazy” but had come around. “It’s like my wife’s favorite f—ing line,” he says.

Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West- Kevin Mazur/WireImage

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“So it says, ‘To all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like Taylor Swift might owe me sex,” continues West with a chuckle. Responds Swift with a laugh: “That’s not mean.”

Further discussing his proposal to have her release the song, Swift — who expresses relief that the lyrics aren’t about her being “that stupid dumb bitch” — tells West she needs to “think about it because it is absolutely crazy.”


Later in the call, West tells Swift the original lyric he wrote was, “To all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex.” (The lyric that made it into the final version of the track is “For all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous”)


In another leaked portion, West asks Swift how she would feel if he included a line that said “I made her famous,” to which she warily responded: “Did you say that? Well, what am I going to do about it? It’s just kind of, like, whatever at this point. But I mean, you gotta tell the story the way it happened to you and the way that you’ve experienced it. Like, you honestly didn’t know who I was before that. Like, it doesn’t matter if I sold 7 million of that album before you did that, which is what happened. You didn’t know who I was before that. It’s fine. But um, yeah, I can’t wait to hear it.”


West also promises Swift—who encourages West to protect his relationship with Kim after he tells her his wife prefers him saying “owes me sex” instead of “might still have sex”—to send her the final version of the track.  “I’m going to send you the song and send you the exact wording and everything about it, right? And then we could sit and talk through it,” West tells Swift, who has long contended she never heard the song before its release.


After “Famous” was released in February of 2016, Swift’s rep told PEOPLE the singer “declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyrics, ‘I made that bitch famous.’” 

          Kanye West and Taylor Swift - Christopher Polk/Getty Images

In June of 2016, Kardashian West told GQ the singer had told her husband she would “laugh” and tell media she was “in on it the whole time” in a phone call. Then a month later, the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star branded Swift a snake on social media and leaked edited snippets from the call on her Snapchat account.  “If people ask me about it, look, I think it would be great for me to be like, ‘He called me and told me before it came out . . . Joke’s on you, guys. We’re fine,’” Swift is heard saying in the footage Kardashian West posted on Snapchat.  


Swift’s rep was quoted in the GQ article as saying that “much of what Kim is saying is incorrect. Taylor has never denied that conversation took place. It was on that phone call that Kanye West also asked her to release the song on her Twitter account, which she declined to do. Kanye West never told Taylor he was going to use the term ‘that bitch‘ in referring her. A song cannot be approved if it was never heard. Kanye West never played the song for Taylor Swift. Taylor heard it for the first time when everyone else did and was humiliated. Kim Kardashian’s claim that Taylor and her team were aware of being recorded is not true, and Taylor cannot understand why Kanye West, and now Kim Kardashian, will not just leave her alone.”


Moments after Kardashian West posted snippets of the call, Swift released a statement on her Instagram slamming the couple. “Where is the video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me ‘that bitch’ in his song? It doesn’t exist because it never happened. You don’t get to control someone’s emotional response to being called ‘that bitch’ in front of the entire world,” the singer wrote.

“Of course I wanted to like the song. I wanted to believe Kanye when he told me that I would love the song. I wanted us to have a friendly relationship. He promised to play the song for me, but he never did. While I wanted to be supportive of Kanye on the phone call, you cannot ‘approve’ a song you haven’t heard. Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination.”


While Swift went on to record and tour reputation, a dark album inspired by the depressive period she went through following the drama, Kanye West has remained mum about the feud while Kardashian West told Andy Cohen last January she was “over it.”


For a transcript of the newly leaked portion of Swift and West’s phone conversation, keep reading below:


KW: —old school s—, yeah. I’m doing great. I feel so awesome about the music. The album’s coming out Feb. 11. I’m doing the fashion show Feb. 11 at Madison Square Garden and dropping the album Feb. 12, that morning. It’s like …. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Aw thank you so, so much. Thank you. It feels like, real. I don’t know, just ‘Ye, Apple, Steve Jobs-type music. Like, so my next single, I wanted you to tweet it … so that’s why I’m calling you. I wanted you to put the song out.


TS: What would people … I guess it would just be, people would be like, “Why is this happening?” And I had something to do with it, probably.


KW: The reason why it would happen is because it has a very controversial line at the beginning of the song about you.


TS: What does it say? [nervous laughter]


KW: It says, and the song is so, so dope, and I literally sat with my wife, with my whole manager team, with everything, and try to rework this line. I’ve thought about this line for eight months, I’ve had this line and tried to rework it every which way, and the original way that I thought about it is the best way, but it’s the most controversial, so it’s gonna go Eminem a little bit, so can you brace yourself for a second?


TS: Yeah…


KW: Okay, alright. It says—wait a second, you sound sad.


TS: Well, is it gonna be mean?


KW: No, I don’t think it’s mean.


TS: Okay, then let me hear it.


KW: Okay, um … and the funny thing is when I first played it and my wife heard it, she was like “Huh? What? That’s too crazy, blah, blah, blah.” And when Ninja from Die Antwoord heard it, he was like, “Oh God, this is the craziest sh—! This is why I love Kanye,” that kind of thing. It’s like my wife’s favorite f—ing line. I just wanted to give you some premise of that, right?


TS: Okay.


KW: So it says, “To all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like Taylor Swift might owe me sex.” [chuckles]


TS: [chuckles] That’s not mean.


KW: Okay. Yeah, well, this is the thing why I’m calling you because you got an army. You own a country of motherf—ing two billion people, basically, that if you felt that it’s funny and cool and like hip hop and felt like, you know, just The College Dropout and the artist like, ‘Ye that you love, then I think that people would be like way into it, and that’s why I think it’s super genius to have you be the one that says, ‘Oh, I like this song a lot, like, yeah, whatever. This is cool. Whatever, it’s like, I got like s— on my album where I’m like, “I bet me and Ray J will be friends if we ain’t love the same bitch.”


TS: Oh my [laughs]. I mean, I need to think about it because you hear something for the first time, you need to think about it because it is absolutely crazy. I’m glad it’s not mean though. It doesn’t feel mean, but like, oh my God, the build-up you gave it. I thought it was gonna be like that stupid dumb bitch, like, but it’s not. Um, so I don’t know. I mean, the launch thing, I think it would be kind of confusing to people, but I definitely like, I definitely think that when I’m asked about, of course I’m gonna be like, “Yeah, I’m his biggest fan. I love that. I think it’s hilarious,” but um, I’ll think about it.


KW: Yeah, you don’t have to do—you don’t have to do the launch and retweet. That’s just an extra idea that I had, like, but if you think that that’s cool, then that’s cool. If not, we are launching the s— like on just GOOD Fridays, on Soundcloud, the site, s— like that.


TS: You know, the thing about me is like, anything that I do becomes a feminine think-piece, and if I launch it, they’re gonna be like, “Wow,” like this thing—like they’ll just turn it into something that … I think if I launch it, it honestly like, it’ll be less cool ‘cause I think if I launch it, it adds this level of criticism, ‘cause having that many followers and having that many eyeballs on me right now, people are just looking for me to do something dumb or stupid or lame, and it’s like almost … I don’t know, like I kind of feel like people would try to make it negative if it came from me. Do you know what I mean?


KW: Yeah.


TS:  I try to be super self-aware about where I am, and I feel like, I feel like right now I’m like this close to overexposure.


KW: Well, this one, I think this is a really cool thing to have.


TS: I know, it’s like a compliment [laughs].


KW: I had this line where I said—and my wife really didn’t like this one because we tried to make it nicer. So I said, “To all my Southside n— that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” and my wife was really not with that one. She was way more into “She owes you sex,” but then the owe part was the feminist group-type s— that I was like, “Ahhh.”


TS: That’s the part that I’m kind of—I mean, they’re both really edgy, but that’s the only thing about that line is that it’s like gonna … the feminists are gonna come out, but I mean, you don’t have to give a f—, so…


KW: Yeah, basically. Well, what I give a f— about is just you as a person and as a friend. I want things—


TS: That’s sweet—


KW: —that make you feel good. I don’t wanna do rap that makes people feel bad, like of course like I’m mad at Nike, so people think like, “Oh, he’s a bully. He ran on stage with Taylor. He’s bullying Nike now, this $50 billion company.”


TS: Why are people saying you’re bullying Nike?


KW: Because on “Facts” I said like, “Yeezy, Nike out here bad, they can’t give s— away.”


TS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s just what you do though.


KW: [laughs]


TS: [laughs] I mean, I wouldn’t say that it’s like possible to bully a company like Nike where—I mean, um, yeah, I mean, go with whatever line you think is better. It’s obviously very tongue-in-cheek either way, and I really appreciate you telling me about it. That’s really nice.


KW: Oh yeah. I just had a responsibility to you as a friend. I mean, thanks for being, like, so cool about it.


TS: Thanks. Yeah, I really appreciate it. The heads-up is so nice. You’d be surprised how many people just do things without even asking or seeing if I’d be okay with it, and I just really appreciate it. I never would have expected you to tell me about a line in one of your songs. That’s really nice that you did.


KW: You mean like unexpected s— like you taking the time to give someone a really, really valuable award and then they completely run for president right afterwards? Like unexpected in that kind of way? [laughs]


TS: [laughs] We have not talked about what happened.


KW: I just thought that was wavy. It was vibe-y. The funny thing is I thought about the weed and the president … both of those things I thought about in the shower the day before and just started laughing like crazy. I was like, I gotta say that I had just smoked some weed, and then say I’m gonna run for president. So those are my bases of … I knew I wanted to say the thing about going to like the Dodgers game with my daughter and like getting booed and that being scary, and I knew I wanted to say, like, me changing and thinking about people more since I had a daughter. And then I wanted to say the weed thing. And then I wanted to say the president thing. And everything else was just like off the cuff.


TS: Oh my God. It was definitely, like, it stole the show. And then the flowers that you sent me. I Instagram-ed a picture of them and it’s the most Instagram likes I’ve ever gotten. It was like 2.7 million likes on that picture of the flowers you sent me. Crazy.


KW: It’s some connection or something that I think is really important about that moment when we met on stage. There’s something that I think is really important about that, and where humanity is going, or now where me and Kim are, and having a family and just everything, the way things are landing. So it’s always—relationships are more important than punchlines, you know.


TS: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think anybody would listen to that and be like, “Oh, that’s a real diss.” Like, “She must be crying about that line.” And I think because of how crazy and strange and fateful the way we met was, I think we have to pick our moments to do stuff together and make sure it’s only really cool stuff.


KW: Yeah, exactly. We can’t have it, like, be somebody else’s idea that gets in front and they’re, like—because if you’re like a really true, creative, visceral, vibe-y type person, it’s probably hard for you to work at a corporation. So how can you give a creative—creative ideas and you’re working in a house of non-creativity? It’s like this weird … so whenever we talk directly—okay, now what if later in the song I was also to have said, uh, “I made her famous”? Is that a—


TS: [hesitant] Did you say that?


KW: Yes, it might’ve happened [laughs].


TS: Well, what am I gonna do about it?


KW: Uh, like, do the hair flip?


TS: Yeah, I mean, um, it’s just kind of like, whatever, at this point. But I mean, you’ve got to tell the story the way that it happened to you and the way that you’ve experienced it. Like, you honestly didn’t know who I was before that. Like, it doesn’t matter if I sold seven million of that album before you did that, which is what happened. You didn’t know who I was before that. It’s fine. But, um, yeah. I can’t wait to hear it.


KW: I mean, it’s fun. It’s definitely—you’re ready to trend. That’s all I can say.


TS: Uh, what’s the song called?


KW: Uh, it might be called “Hood Famous.”


TS: Oh, cool. Is it going to be like a single-single, or is it going to be a Soundcloud release? What are you doing?


KW: Oh, this one right here is like f—ing song of the year-type territory.


TS: Oh my God, amazing. That’s crazy. Oh my God. Speaking of song of the year, are you going to the Grammys?


KW: Uh, you know what? I was thinking to not do it. But I think that this song—you know what? I’m going to send you the song and send you the exact wording and everything about it, right? And then we could sit and talk through it. But if the song goes and f—ing just—


TS: …they just look at us and go … Even if we’ve made an incredible achievement, it’s harder for people to write down our names for some reason. That’s just human nature. It’s envy. It’s asking people in our industry to vote for the people who are already killing it.


KW: Yeah. It’s, like, so many people wanted Meek Mills to win because Drake was just killing it for so long, and they were just like, “We just need like Meek Mills to like—but I think, you know, okay, so that has my mind going through a lot of places to problem-solve. I was talking to Ben Horowitz. Do you know this guy? He’s a VC. Ben Horowitz out of San Fran. But he’s down with that.


TS: I know that name. I don’t know him.


KW: It’s just like the San Fran clique, you know, that type of thing. Like he stays down the street from Mark Zuckerberg and s— like that. So I was talking to him and I was like, “Bro.” Like me, I’m in personal debt. I’m in debt by a good like $20, 30 million, ever since the fashion … and still have not made it out of it. So that’s part of the reason why I had to go to Roc Nation and the touring deals evolved, and it allowed the whole town to try to feel like they could control Kanye or even talk to me like I’m regular or have agents do it, but they saw they couldn’t. It’s like even in debt, he moves around like he’s like a billionaire. I’m like, yeah, I’m a cultural trillionaire! I might have financial debts. So I told Ben Horowitz, I was like, “You guys, you, Mark Zuckerberg or whoever, Tim Cook, you guys have to clean that up.” So I’m sending Ben Horowitz my current balance. That means that l’m not up $50, not up 100 million, not up 200 million, not up 300 million. No. Negative $20 million, currently. I, Kanye West, the guy who created the genre of music that is The Weeknd, that is Drak —the guy who created—every single person that makes music right now, favorite album is The College Dropout. Every single person that makes music. 


But I’m rich enough. Like, I went into debt to my wife by $6 million working on a f—ing house, less than like a few months ago, and I was able to pay her back before Christmas and s— like that. So, you know, when I talk about Nike, the idea that they wouldn’t give me a percentage, that I could make something that was so tangible, when Drake was just rapping me into the motherf—ing trashcan, that I could have something that was tangible that showed my creativity and expressed myself, that also could be a business that I could have a five-times multiple on and actually be able to sell it for like $100 million, $200 million or a billion dollars, that was very serious. Every conversation, every time I’d scream at Charlemagne or scream at Sway, that was really, really, really serious. 


And it also was with my family. I felt like, look, if I’m just the angry black guy with some cool red shoes from Nike five years ago, I was going to be visiting my daughter, as opposed to be living with her. It would’ve been like, enough is enough. It wouldn’t have been cool anymore, because it would have been a group of people, including my wife, that all had at least like $500, 400 million in their account. And then you get the angry black man at the party talking about “I’m the one that put Kim in the dress! I’m the one that did this!” But it never realized itself. So that’s one of the things I just talked to Ben. And I talk about it on the album. Talk about personal debt and s—. Just the idea like, “Oh s—, this dude with this f—ing Maybach that makes f—ing $50 million a tour still hasn’t lined it up or came out of the point when AEG and Live Nation wouldn’t give him a deal.” The debt started after Watch the Throne, because I got no deal. But I still was doing my creative projects on my own, shooting a film, doing a fashion show, just trying to be very Disney, be very visceral, be creative. And…


TS: I mean, I’m sure you’ve thought about this up and down, but I mean, is there a way to monetize these in a way that you thought would still feel authentic but make them into a multi-billion dollar company?


KW: Well, that’s what we’re going to do. That’s what we’re in the plans of. I’m 100 percent going to be like a multi, multi, multi-billionaire. I think it’s fun that I can like be like Charlie Sheen and be like, “Hey, like, I got AIDS.” You know, like—to me, I told Drake that the other night. I was like, “Yo, Drake, I’m in personal debt.” And for me to tell Drake, the f—ing number one bachelor in the world that can f—ing rap anybody into a trashcan, that lives four blocks down the street from my wife and like basically f—s all of her friends, that I’m in personal debt, it’s such a like putting down the sword or putting down the hand or opening, showing the hand. 


That I don’t have my poker face on with any of you guys. I’m just me. I’m just a creative. You know, everything I did, even when it was mistimed, whatever it might’ve been from a—it’s always, like, from a good place, and I know that I’ll overcome it and I know that the world will overcome it. Because, like, I’m going to change the world. I’m going to make it—I’m gonna make people’s lives better on some post-Steve Jobs, Howard Hughes-type s—. Like, I’m going to do things with education. I’m going to do things that help to calm down murders in Chicago or across the globe.

Things that help to calm down police brutality, to equalize the wealth amidst the class system. Because there’s a bunch of classes of wealthy people that hate Obama because he’s more social and he wants the people who don’t have anything to have everything. And in my little way, by learning how to design, design is something that’s only given to the rich currently. The exact color palette that Hermès uses versus the color palette that Forever 21 uses—a color palette is extremely important. 

Color is important. You know, the knowledge of proportions, you know, the size of our house versus the size of someone else’s houses, and just the dynamics of that proportion. Like, I don’t want this conversation to go too, too long, but I wanted to give you a bit of where I’m at and the perspective that I’m at and the way … the fact that I am the microprocessor of our culture. 


Meaning like, I can figure out how to give Rihanna a Mary J. Blige-type album. I can figure out how to get the fashion world to accept my wife, and thus the whole family. I can figure out a lot of impossible … I can figure out how to make something that you’re wearing to the airport, five years after the entire globe was like, “Hang that n— alive and f— him, and let’s watch him die, slowly, publicly.” So, it’s a lot. I figured that out for myself, so it’s a lot of s— that we collectively, with the power that you have and your fans, the power my wife has, the power that I have, that we can do to really make it where it’s not just the rich getting richer, but you know, make it not just a f—ing charity, not singing for Africa, but change things in a way that people can experience s— themselves, a piece of the good life. You know?


TS: Yeah. I mean, they’re amazing ideas and amazing concepts, and I definitely would love to talk to you more about it. I know you have to do something right now, but I love that that’s where you’re headed. And it’s been like that. I mean, when we went to dinner, there were the rumblings of those ideas. I like that you’re always thinking outward. And over the last six, seven, eight years, however long it’s been since that happened, I haven’t always liked you, but I’ve always respected you. And I think that’s what you’re saying when you say like, you know, “I might be in debt, but I can make these things happen, and I have the ideas to do it, and I can create these things or these concepts.” Like, I’m always going to respect you. And I’m really glad that you had the respect to call me and tell me that as a friend about the song, and it’s a really cool thing to do, and a really good show of friendship. So thank you.


KW: Oh, thank you too.


TS: And you know, if people ask me about it, look, I think it would be great for me to be like, “Look, he called me and told me the line before it came out. Like, the joke’s on you guys. We’re fine.”


KW: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think that’s pretty much the switch right there.


TS: Yeah. Like, you guys want to call this a feud, you want to call this throwing shade, but you know, right after the song comes out, I’m gonna be on a Grammy red carpet, and they’re gonna ask me about it and I’ll be like, “He called me and sent me the song before it came out.” So I think we’re good.


KW: Okay. I’m gonna go lay this verse, and I’m gonna send it to you right now.


TS: Oh, you just—you haven’t recorded it yet?


KW: I recorded it. I’m nuancing the lines. Like the last version of it says, “me and Taylor might still have sex.” And then my wife was like, ”That doesn’t sound as hard!”


TS: Well, I mean, she’s saying that honestly because she’s your wife, and like, um … so I think whatever one you think is actually better. I mean, obviously do what’s best for your relationship, too. I think “owes me sex,” it says different things. It says—”owes me sex” means like, “look, I made her what she is. She actually owes me.” Which is going to split people because people who like me are going to be like, “She doesn’t owe him s—.” But then people who like thought it was badass and crazy and awesome that you’re so outspoken are going to be like, “Yeah, she does. It made her famous.” So it’s more provocative to say “still have sex,” because no one would see that coming. They’re both crazy. Do what you want. They’re both going to get every single headline in the world. “Owes me sex” is a little bit more like throwing shade, and the other one’s more flirtatious. It just depends on what you want to accomplish with it.


KW: Yeah, I feel like with my wife, that she probably didn’t like the “might still have sex” because it would be like, what if she was on a TV show and said, “Me and Tom Brady might still have sex” or something?


TS: You have to protect your relationship. Do what’s best. You just had a kid. You’re in the best place of your life. I wouldn’t ever advise you to f— with that. Just pick whatever. It’s cause and effect. One is gonna make people feel a certain way, and it’s gonna be a slightly different emotion for the other. But it’s not—it doesn’t matter to me. There’s not one that hurts my feelings and the other doesn’t.


KW: Yeah. It’s just, when I’m pointing this gun, what I tried to do differently than two years ago, is like when I shoot a gun, I try to point it away from my face. So one is a little bit more flirtatious and easier, I think, so really, that means the conversation is really—one is like a little bit better for the public and a little bit less good for the relationship. One is a little bit worse for the public and better for the relationship.


TS: Yeah. I can hear it. But it’s your goals, really. I mean, you always just go with your gut, obviously. But, um, amazing. Send it to me. I’m excited.


KW: All right, cool. Thanks so much.


TS: Awesome, I’ll talk to you later.


KW: All right, cool. Peace. Bye. [to camera] We had to get that on the record.


Cameraman: I’m sorry. The battery on this thing died.


KW: It’s just when it dies, you get some s— like Kanye talking to Taylor Swift explaining that line? There’s gotta be three cameras on that one. We can’t miss one element.


https://people.com/music/taylor-swift-kanye-west-famous-phone-call-leaks/?did=504399-20200323&utm_campaign=ppl-nonewsubs_relationship-builder&utm_source=people.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=032320&cid=504399&mid=31250606084

Stock Buybacks Enriched Companies And Their Leaders — At Everyone Else’s Expense.

(Gary Rivlin, Washington Post, 27 March)

The titanic coronavirus stimulus package, if it passes, comes with a condition for the businesses it bailed out: They can’t use taxpayer money to buy back shares of their own stock. Companies such as American Airlines, which spent $15 billion on buybacks in the past half-dozen years, and Boeing, which initiated $43 billion over the past decade, have earned notoriety for depleting their cash reserves through these moves and then telling the government they are broke and need help.

The prohibition is a popular one. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) calls this practice a “sugar high for corporations” that “boosts [stock] prices in the short run” but destroys value over the long run. Other critics call it an “accounting trick” for corporate chieftains to enrich themselves and their shareholders at the expense of workers. Even President Trump offered this admonition: “I don’t want to give a bailout to a company and then have somebody go out and use that money to buy back stock in the company,” he said Sunday. “. . . So I may be Republican, but I don’t like that.”

Even businesses not participating in the bailout will be less likely to initiate stock buybacks in the coming months. In a depression, many simply won’t have the cash. And if they do, they’ll recognize the wisdom of building their reserves in an uncertain time. AT&T, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and McDonalds are among the corporations that since the outbreak have announced they are suspending their buyback programs.

Yet that means only a temporary pause in a practice that has flourished in corporate America: U.S. companies spent $1.09 trillion on buybacks in 2018, according to Winston Chua at TrimTabs, an asset management company. That was the highest on record, Chua said. The $900 billion companies spent in 2019 was the second-highest.

And unfortunately, the practice is toxic for working Americans. Between 2003 and 2012, companies in the S&P 500 devoted 54 percent of their earnings to buying their own shares (and an additional 37 percent to paying out dividends), according to a study by William Lazonick, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. That left less than 10 percent for research and development, plant modernization, raises for workers, and other more productive uses of profits. It used to be that workers did well at corporations that did well. That’s no longer true, and buybacks are a big part of the reason.

For decades, stock buybacks were considered market manipulation and, if not quite outlawed, were strongly discouraged, says Lenore Palladino, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. That changed in the deregulation sweep of the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. In 1982, the Securities and Exchange Commission loosened its definition of stock manipulation, opening the floodgates. What had been a frowned-upon activity that put a company at risk of an SEC investigation soon became standard practice.

Today, shareholders love buybacks, in which a company spends its profits to purchase more control of itself. The maneuver pushes up share prices — not because a company is killing it in the marketplace but because there are fewer shares to trade (less supply, higher cost). It also helps a company look better: A key measure used by analysts and investors is “earnings per share.” Dividing the same revenue by fewer shares makes this metric magically rise.

Chief executives love buybacks as well. The vast majority of their pay comes in the form of stock options and stock grants. Buybacks increase the value of the shares they’ve already earned and help them earn more. And CEO compensation is tied to share price, so they have good reason to push the value up any way they can.

But buybacks have become a major driver of income inequality and help explain why members of the top 0.1 percent (which includes most high-ranking corporate executives) “reap almost all the income gains, good jobs keep disappearing, and new employment opportunities tend to be insecure and underpaid,” as Lazonick put it in a 2014 Harvard Business Review study called “Profits Without Prosperity.” He argued that American workers were no longer prospering because companies no longer shared wealth with them.

Corporate executives are twice as likely to sell their own stock during scheduled buyback periods, according to research by Palladino. Some companies even borrow money to cover the costs of a buyback. “They really are the tip of the spear of how large corporations have operated for the benefit of the wealthiest shareholders and corporate insiders at the expense of everyone else,” Palladino says.
The Trump tax cut only accelerated the practice. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the corporate tax rate fell 40 percent, from 35 percent to 21 percent. That meant a lot more cash in the coffers of the country’s biggest companies. When top executives and their political allies were selling the cut, they promised new investments in America and its people. Instead, stock buybacks reached a crescendo. Some companies didn’t even wait for Trump to sign the bill. The board of directors at Pfizer, which had already approved $6.4 billion in buybacks before the tax cut, authorized an additional $10 billion pre-signing. Also jumping the gun were Home Depot, which announced a $15 billion buyback, and Bank of America, which committed to a $5 billion buyback.

As they bought up stock, many companies failed to deliver on their promises to workers. By the end of 2018, Senate Democrats had assembled a list of companies that had put some of their tax savings toward buybacks while initiating layoffs. They included General Motors, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, which laid off hundreds of workers that year despite a $3.7 billion windfall from the tax cut. The company committed to more than $50 billion in buybacks in 2018 and 2019 before announcing that it was temporarily abandoning its repurchasing plan.

Still, it wasn’t until the country’s airlines fell on hard times this month that buybacks ignited a major public debate. The same day the news broke that the airlines had asked the federal government for more than $50 billion in loans, guarantees and cash grants, Bloomberg News reported that the major air carriers had spent 96 percent of their cash over the past decade on stock buybacks. American, for instance, went deep into debt while spending $15 billion on buybacks. All told, six of the country’s largest airlines approved roughly $47 billion in buybacks over the past decade, spurring outrage.

Members of Congress have offered a number of solutions to this problem. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Bernie Sanders have been touting an idea to bar buybacks unless companies pay their workers at least $15 an hour, provide seven days of paid sick leave, and offer health-care and retirement benefits. Another bill (the Reward Work Act, introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin last March) and its House companion (introduced by Reps. Jesús García and Ro Khanna) would ban open-market stock buybacks and require public companies to allow their workers to elect one-third of their board members. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s proposal would have companies give their workers $1 for every $1 million spent on buybacks.

For the moment, though, there’s only a temporary freeze in buybacks. American workers are about to suffer the effects of an economic depression. The eventual recovery should help them, too, not just their bosses.


This essay is published in partnership with the nonprofit newsroom Type Investigations. Nina Zweig provided research assistance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/stock-buybacks-gouged-workers-the-measure-stopping-them-comes-too-late/2020/03/27/d6170752-6fcb-11ea-b148-e4ce3fbd85b5_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines Subscriber sign in

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‘You’re A Bunch Of Dopes And Babies’: Inside Trump’s Stunning Tirade Against Generals

(By Carol Leonnig & Philip Rucker, Washington Post, 17 January 2020)

There is no more sacred room for military officers than 2E924 of the Pentagon, a windowless and secure vault where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet regularly to wrestle with classified matters. Its more common name is “the Tank.” The Tank resembles a small corporate boardroom, with a gleaming golden oak table, leather swivel armchairs and other mid-century stylings. Inside its walls, flag officers observe a reverence and decorum for the wrenching decisions that have been made there.

Hanging prominently on one of the walls is The Peacemakers, a painting that depicts an 1865 Civil War strategy session with President Abraham Lincoln and his three service chiefs — Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, and Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. One hundred fifty-​­two years after Lincoln hatched plans to preserve the Union, President Trump’s advisers staged an intervention inside the Tank to try to preserve the world order.

By that point, six months into his administration, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had grown alarmed by gaping holes in Trump’s knowledge of history, especially the key alliances forged following World War II. Trump had dismissed allies as worthless, cozied up to authoritarian regimes in Russia and elsewhere, and advocated withdrawing troops from strategic outposts and active theaters alike.

Trump organized his unorthodox worldview under the simplistic banner of “America First,” but Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely considered, and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history and, even, where countries were located. To have a useful discussion with him, the trio agreed, they had to create a basic knowledge, a shared language.

President Trump spoke about his former defense secretary at a Cabinet meeting Jan. 2, saying he was not "too happy" with how Jim Mattis handled Afghanistan. (The Washington Post)
So on July 20, 2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial. What happened inside the Tank that day crystallized the commander in chief’s berating, derisive and dismissive manner, foreshadowing decisions such as the one earlier this month that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. The Tank meeting was a turning point in Trump’s presidency. Rather than getting him to appreciate America’s traditional role and alliances, Trump began to tune out and eventually push away the experts who believed their duty was to protect the country by restraining his more dangerous impulses.

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The episode has been documented numerous times, but subsequent reporting reveals a more complete picture of the moment and the chilling effect Trump’s comments and hostility had on the nation’s military and national security leadership.

Just before 10 a.m. on a scorching summer Thursday, Trump arrived at the Pentagon. He stepped out of his motorcade, walked along a corridor with portraits honoring former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, and stepped inside the Tank. The uniformed officers greeted their commander in chief. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. sat in the seat of honor midway down the table, because this was his room, and Trump sat at the head of the table facing a projection screen. Mattis and the newly confirmed deputy defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, sat to the president’s left, with Vice President Pence and Tillerson to his right. Down the table sat the leaders of the military branches, along with Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon was in the outer ring of chairs with other staff, taking his seat just behind Mattis and directly in Trump’s line of sight.

Mattis, Cohn, and Tillerson and their aides decided to use maps, graphics, and charts to tutor the president, figuring they would help keep him from getting bored. Mattis opened with a slide show punctuated by lots of dollar signs. Mattis devised a strategy to use terms the impatient president, schooled in real estate, would appreciate to impress upon him the value of U.S. investments abroad. He sought to explain why U.S. troops were deployed in so many regions and why America’s safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances, and bases across the globe.

An opening line flashed on the screen, setting the tone: “The post-war international rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation.” Mattis then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe. Bannon thought to himself, “Not good. Trump is not going to like that one bit.” The internationalist language Mattis was using was a trigger for Trump.  “Oh, baby, this is going to be f---ing wild,” Bannon thought. “If you stood up and threatened to shoot [Trump], he couldn’t say ‘postwar rules-based international order.’ It’s just not the way he thinks.”

For the next 90 minutes, Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn took turns trying to emphasize their points, pointing to their charts and diagrams. They showed where U.S. personnel were positioned, at military bases, CIA stations, and embassies, and how U.S. deployments fended off the threats of terror cells, nuclear blasts, and destabilizing enemies in places including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the Korea Peninsula, and Syria. Cohn spoke for about 20 minutes about the value of free trade with America’s allies, emphasizing how he saw each trade agreement working together as part of an overall structure to solidify U.S. economic and national security.

Trump appeared peeved by the schoolhouse vibe but also allergic to the dynamic of his advisers talking at him. His ricocheting attention span led him to repeatedly interrupt the lesson. He heard an adviser say a word or phrase and then seized on that to interject with his take. For instance, the word “base” prompted him to launch in to say how “crazy” and “stupid” it was to pay for bases in some countries.

Trump’s first complaint was to repeat what he had vented about to his national security adviser months earlier: South Korea should pay for a $10 billion missile defense system that the United States built for it. The system was designed to shoot down any short- and medium-range ballistic missiles from North Korea to protect South Korea and American troops stationed there. But Trump argued that the South Koreans should pay for it, proposing that the administration pull U.S. troops out of the region or bill the South Koreans for their protection.  “We should charge them rent,” Trump said of South Korea. “We should make them pay for our soldiers. We should make money off of everything.”

Trump proceeded to explain that NATO, too, was worthless. U.S. generals were letting the allied member countries get away with murder, he said, and they owed the United States a lot of money after not living up to their promise of paying their dues.  “They’re in arrears,” Trump said, reverting to the language of real estate. He lifted both his arms at his sides in frustration. Then he scolded top officials for the untold millions of dollars he believed they had let slip through their fingers by allowing allies to avoid their obligations.  “We are owed money you haven’t been collecting!” Trump told them. “You would totally go bankrupt if you had to run your own business.”

Mattis wasn’t trying to convince the president of anything, only to explain and provide facts. Now things were devolving quickly. The general tried to calmly explain to the president that he was not quite right. The NATO allies didn’t owe the United States back rent, he said. The truth was more complicated. NATO had a nonbinding goal that members should pay at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their defenses. Only five of the countries currently met that goal, but it wasn’t as if they were shorting the United States on the bill.

More broadly, Mattis argued, the NATO alliance was not serving only to protect western Europe. It protected America, too. “This is what keeps us safe,” Mattis said. Cohn tried to explain to Trump that he needed to see the value of the trade deals. “These are commitments that help keep us safe,” Cohn said.

Bannon interjected. “Stop, stop, stop,” he said. “All you guys talk about all these great things, they’re all our partners, I want you to name me now one country and one company that’s going to have his back.”

Trump then repeated a threat he’d made countless times before. He wanted out of the Iran nuclear deal that President Obama had struck in 2015, which called for Iran to reduce its uranium stockpile and cut its nuclear program.

 “It’s the worst deal in history!” Trump declared.

“Well, actually . . .,” Tillerson interjected.

 “I don’t want to hear it,” Trump said, cutting off the secretary of state before he could explain some of the benefits of the agreement. “They’re cheating. They’re building. We’re getting out of it. I keep telling you, I keep giving you time, and you keep delaying me. I want out of it.”

Before they could debate the Iran deal, Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America’s longest war. He demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser war.” That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war.  “You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”

Trump questioned why the United States couldn’t get some oil as payment for the troops stationed in the Persian Gulf. “We spent $7 trillion; they’re ripping us off,” Trump boomed. “Where is the f---ing oil?”  Trump seemed to be speaking up for the voters who elected him, and several attendees thought they heard Bannon in Trump’s words. Bannon had been trying to persuade Trump to withdraw forces by telling him, “The American people are saying we can’t spend a trillion dollars a year on this. We just can’t. It’s going to bankrupt us.”

“And not just that, the deplorables don’t want their kids in the South China Sea at the 38th parallel or in Syria, in Afghanistan, in perpetuity,” Bannon would add, invoking Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” reference to Trump supporters.

Trump mused about removing General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in charge of troops in Afghanistan. “I don’t think he knows how to win,” the president said, impugning Nicholson, who was not present at the meeting.  Dunford tried to come to Nicholson’s defense, but the mild-mannered general struggled to convey his points to the irascible president.  “Mr. President, that’s just not . . .,” Dunford started. “We’ve been under different orders.”

Dunford sought to explain that he hadn’t been charged with annihilating the enemy in Afghanistan but was instead following a strategy started by the Obama administration to gradually reduce the military presence in the country in hopes of training locals to maintain a stable government so that eventually the United States could pull out. Trump shot back in more plain language.  “I want to win,” he said. “We don’t win any wars anymore . . . We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we’re not winning anymore.”

Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn’t taking many breaths. All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they have not been reported until now.  “I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.  Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

For a president known for verbiage he euphemistically called “locker room talk,” this was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred space. The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room. A few considered walking out. They tried not to reveal their revulsion on their faces, but questions raced through their minds. “How does the commander in chief say that?” one thought. “What would our worst adversaries think if they knew he said this?”

This was a president who had been labeled a “draft dodger” for avoiding service in the Vietnam War under questionable circumstances. Trump was a young man born of privilege and in seemingly perfect health: six feet two inches with a muscular build and a flawless medical record. He played several sports, including football. Then, in 1968 at age 22, he obtained a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that exempted him from military service just as the United States was drafting men his age to fulfill massive troop deployments to Vietnam.

Tillerson in particular was stunned by Trump’s diatribe and began visibly seething. For too many minutes, others in the room noticed, he had been staring straight, dumbfounded, at Mattis, who was speechless, his head bowed down toward the table. Tillerson thought to himself, “Gosh darn it, Jim, say something. Why aren’t you saying something?”  But, as he would later tell close aides, Tillerson realized in that moment that Mattis was genetically a Marine, unable to talk back to his commander in chief, no matter what nonsense came out of his mouth.

The more perplexing silence was from Pence, a leader who should have been able to stand up to Trump. Instead, one attendee thought, “He’s sitting there frozen like a statue. Why doesn’t he stop the president?” Another recalled the vice president was “a wax museum guy.” From the start of the meeting, Pence looked as if he wanted to escape and put an end to the president’s torrent. Surely, he disagreed with Trump’s characterization of military leaders as “dopes and babies,” considering his son, Michael, was a Marine first lieutenant then training for his naval aviator wings. But some surmised Pence feared getting crosswise with Trump. “A total deer in the headlights,” recalled a third attendee.

Others at the table noticed Trump’s stream of venom had taken an emotional toll. So many people in that room had gone to war and risked their lives for their country, and now they were being dressed down by a president who had not. They felt sick to their stomachs. Tillerson told others he thought he saw a woman in the room silently crying. He was furious and decided he couldn’t stand it another minute. His voice broke into Trump’s tirade, this one about trying to make money off U.S. troops.

“No, that’s just wrong,” the secretary of state said. “Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None of that is true.”

Tillerson’s father and uncle had both been combat veterans, and he was deeply proud of their service.

“The men and women who put on a uniform don’t do it to become soldiers of fortune,” Tillerson said. “That’s not why they put on a uniform and go out and die . . . They do it to protect our freedom.”

There was silence in the Tank. Several military officers in the room were grateful to the secretary of state for defending them when no one else would. The meeting soon ended and Trump walked out, saying goodbye to a group of servicemen lining the corridor as he made his way to his motorcade waiting outside. Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn were deflated. Standing in the hall with a small cluster of people he trusted, Tillerson finally let down his guard.  “He’s a f---ing moron,” the secretary of state said of the president.

The plan by Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn to train the president to appreciate the internationalist view had clearly backfired.  “We were starting to get out on the wrong path, and we really needed to have a course correction and needed to educate, to teach, to help him understand the reason and basis for a lot of these things,” said one senior official involved in the planning. “We needed to change how he thinks about this, to course correct. Everybody was on board, 100 percent agreed with that sentiment. [But] they were dismayed and in shock when not only did it not have the intended effect, but he dug in his heels and pushed it even further on the spectrum, further solidifying his views.”

A few days later, Pence’s national security adviser, Andrea Thompson, a retired Army colonel who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, reached out to thank Tillerson for speaking up on behalf of the military and the public servants who had been in the Tank. By September 2017, she would leave the White House and join Tillerson at Foggy Bottom as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs.

The Tank meeting had so thoroughly shocked the conscience of military leaders that they tried to keep it a secret. At the Aspen Security Forum two days later, longtime NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell asked Dunford how Trump had interacted during the Tank meeting. The Joint Chiefs chairman misleadingly described the meeting, skipping over the fireworks.

“He asked a lot of hard questions, and the one thing he does is question some fundamental assumptions that we make as military leaders — and he will come in and question those,” Dunford told Mitchell on July 22. “It’s a pretty energetic and an interactive dialogue.”

One victim of the Tank meeting was Trump’s relationship with Tillerson, which forever after was strained. The secretary of state came to see it as the beginning of the end. It would only worsen when news that Tillerson had called Trump a “moron” was first reported in October 2017 by NBC News.

Trump once again gathered his generals and top diplomats in December 2017 for a meeting as part of the administration’s ongoing strategy talks about troop deployments in Afghanistan in the Situation Room, a secure meeting room on the ground floor of the West Wing. Trump didn’t like the Situation Room as much as the Pentagon’s Tank, because he didn’t think it had enough gravitas. It just wasn’t impressive.

But there Trump was, struggling to come up with a new Afghanistan policy and frustrated that so many U.S. forces were deployed in so many places around the world. The conversation began to tilt in the same direction as it had in the Tank back in July.  “All these countries need to start paying us for the troops we are sending to their countries. We need to be making a profit,” Trump said. “We could turn a profit on this.”

Dunford tried to explain to the president once again, gently, that troops deployed in these regions provided stability there, which helped make America safer. Another officer chimed in that charging other countries for U.S. soldiers would be against the law.  “But it just wasn’t working,” one former Trump aide recalled. “Nothing worked.”

Following the Tank meeting, Tillerson had told his aides that he would never silently tolerate such demeaning talk from Trump about making money off the deployments of U.S. soldiers. Tillerson’s father, at the age of 17, had committed to enlist in the Navy on his next birthday, wanting so much to serve his country in World War II. His great-uncle was a career officer in the Navy as well. Both men had been on his mind, Tillerson told aides, when Trump unleashed his tirade in the Tank and again when he repeated those points in the Situation Room in December.  “We need to get our money back,” Trump told his assembled advisers.

That was it. Tillerson stood up. But when he did so, he turned his back to the president and faced the flag officers and the rest of the aides in the room. He didn’t want a repeat of the scene in the Tank.  “I’ve never put on a uniform, but I know this,” Tillerson said. “Every person who has put on a uniform, the people in this room, they don’t do it to make a buck. They did it for their country, to protect us. I want everyone to be clear about how much we as a country value their service.”

Tillerson’s rebuke made Trump angry. He got a little red in the face. But the president decided not to engage Tillerson at that moment. He would wait to take him on another day.  Later that evening, after 8:00, Tillerson was working in his office at the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters, preparing for the next day. The phone rang. It was Dunford. The Joint Chiefs chairman’s voice was unsteady with emotion.

Dunford had much earlier joked with Tillerson that in past administrations the secretaries of state and Defense Department leaders wouldn’t be caught dead walking on the same side of the street, for their rivalry was that fierce. But now, as both men served Trump, they were brothers joined against what they saw as disrespect for service members. Dunford thanked Tillerson for standing up for them in the Situation Room.  “You took the body blows for us,” Dunford said. “Punch after punch. Thank you. I will never forget it.”

Tillerson, Dunford, and Mattis would not take those body blows for much longer. They failed to rein in Trump’s impulses or to break through what they regarded as the president’s stubborn, even dangerous insistence that he knew best. Piece by piece, the guardrails that had hemmed in the chaos of Trump’s presidency crumpled.

In March 2018, Trump abruptly fired Tillerson while the secretary of state was halfway across the globe on a sensitive diplomatic mission to Africa to ease tensions caused by Trump’s demeaning insults about African countries. Trump gave Tillerson no rationale for his firing, and afterward acted as if they were buddies, inviting him to come by the Oval Office to take a picture and have the president sign it. Tillerson never went.

Mattis continued serving as the defense secretary, but the president’s sudden decision in December 2018 to withdraw troops from Syria and abandon America’s Kurdish allies there — one the president soon reversed, only to remake 10 months later — inspired him to resign. Mattis saw Trump’s desired withdrawal as an assault on a soldier’s code. “He began to feel like he was becoming complicit,” recalled one of the secretary’s confidants.

The media interpretation of Mattis’ resignation letter as a scathing rebuke of Trump’s worldview brought the president’s anger to a boiling point. Trump decided to remove Mattis two months ahead of the secretary’s chosen departure date. His treatment of Mattis upset the secretary’s staff. They decided to arrange the biggest clap out they could. The event was a tradition for all departing secretaries. They wanted a line of Pentagon personnel that stretched for a mile applauding Mattis as he left for the last time. It was going to be “yuge,” staffers joked, borrowing from Trump’s glossary.

But Mattis would not allow it.  “No, we are not doing that,” he told his aides. “You don’t understand the president. I work with him. You don’t know him like I do. He will take it out on Shanahan and Dunford.”

Dunford stayed on until September 2019, retiring at the conclusion of his four-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One of Dunford’s first public acts after leaving office was to defend a military officer attacked by Trump, Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who testified in the House impeachment inquiry about his worries over Trump’s conduct with Ukraine. Trump dismissed Vindman as a “Never Trumper,” but Dunford stepped forward to praise the Purple Heart recipient as “a professional, competent, patriotic, and loyal officer. He has made an extraordinary contribution to the security of our nation.”

By then, however, Trump had become a president entirely unrestrained. He had replaced his raft of seasoned advisers with a cast of enablers who executed his orders and engaged his obsessions. They saw their mission as telling the president yes.



This article is adapted from “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America,” which will be published on Jan. 21 by Penguin Press.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/youre-a-bunch-of-dopes-and-babies-inside-trumps-stunning-tirade-against-generals/2020/01/16/d6dbb8a6-387e-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html Subscriber sign in

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Jay-Z Didn’t ‘Sell Out’ By Dealing With The NFL. This Is Just How Activism Works.

(By Michael Eric Dyson, Washington Post, 23 August 2019)

In 1963, Malcolm X, who advocated armed self-defense of black folk in the face of white supremacy, flayed Martin Luther King Jr., who preached nonviolent resistance to social injustice. “The white man pays Rev. Martin Luther King, subsidizes Rev. Martin Luther King, so that Rev. Martin Luther King can continue to teach the Negroes to be defenseless,” Malcolm charged. He was a “modern Uncle Tom.” Elsewhere, Malcolm dubbed King “the best weapon that the white man . . . has ever gotten.”

I remembered these bitter charges as controversy dogged the announcement this month that Jay-Z’s company, Roc Nation, had signed a contract with the National Football League to advise on live music, entertainment and social justice projects. Jay had stood up for former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. He wore Kaepernick’s jersey while performing on “Saturday Night Live,” advised other performers to boycott the Super Bowl halftime show and rapped on 2018’s “Apes---,” “I said no to the Super Bowl: You need me, I don’t need you/ Every night we in the end zone, tell the NFL we in stadiums, too.” Now he’s doing business with the organization that colluded to banish Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice. Associated Press sports columnist Paul Newberry called Jay a “total sellout,” suggesting he’d buried his conscience in cash. Kaepernick’s lawyer said Jay’s “cold blooded” move “crosses the intellectual picket line.” Jay’s justification : “I think we’ve moved past kneeling. I think it’s time for action.”

Kaepernick and Jay-Z are not the modern-day equivalents of Malcom and King, but those pairs reflect an eternal tension — the outside agitators who apply pressure and the inside activators who patrol the halls of power, bringing knowledge and wisdom — in civil rights and black freedom movements. King worked with the Eisenhower, Johnson and Kennedy administrations to better conditions for black folk and to craft civil rights legislation. Jay, for his part, has advocated for social justice in his music and beyond the stage for more than two decades — by writing op-eds and creating an organization to lobby for criminal justice reform; by bailing out Black Lives Matter protesters; by supplying legal help for black victims of racism; by creating documentaries about victims like Trayvon Martin and Kalief Browder; and by speaking out about police brutality and racial injustice.

The choice between Kaep and Jay, between Malcolm and King, is a false one. We need all of them, and it is far too early to judge what Jay will make of this opportunity with the NFL.

Jay’s action fits into a tradition of social protest, forged by Jesse Jackson, that extends King’s work: You protest a company — say a shoemaker or an auto dealership — for its unjust practices; you force those involved to acknowledge their error; you negotiate for better terms of engagement; you interact with the folk you once protested in an effort to make progress. In 1996, after several Texaco executives were taped making racist comments about 1,400 black employees who had filed a class-action discrimination suit against the company, Jackson organized a picket protest, then forged connections with Texaco board members that led to a corporate mea culpa and an out-of-court settlement of more than $175 million with the company’s black workers.

This reflected a shift in civil rights strategy from street protests to suite participation. Jackson leveraged the threat of boycotts and the rhetoric of persuasion to get more blacks placed on corporate boards, compel banks and major companies to direct more business to minority-owned contractors, and help integrate more black and other minority folk into the nation’s economic power base.

It is true that the NFL did not explicitly acknowledge wrongdoing in Kaepernick’s case, though the league did settle his grievance lawsuit in February, suggesting that it recognized his claim of collusion as a real legal threat. Jay cannot make a team hire Kaepernick, and perhaps Roc Nation could have refused a contract until Kaepernick got a job, which would have been a just outcome. But it is also true that social justice doesn’t hinge exclusively on Kaepernick’s employment. The fact that many team owners support an openly racist president demands an attempt to grapple with them. And it may be a sign of progress that those same owners got into business with a rapper who calls President Trump a “superbug.” Jay’s noisy opposition to white nationalism is just as important as how his partnership may provide the league cover.

Jay did not write off protest when he said we are “past kneeling.” He simply cast Kaepernick as a runner in a relay race rather than a boxer fighting alone in the ring. The Players Coalition, for instance, was founded in 2017 by Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins and former receiver Anquan Boldin to tie kneeling to serious and thoughtful action. It promotes social justice advocacy, education and distribution of resources on the local, state and federal levels. When it accepted nearly $90 million from the NFL to advance its agenda in November 2017, then-49ers safety Eric Reid, Kaepernick’s courageous compatriot, called the thoughtful Jenkins a “sellout” and a “neocolonialist.”

But consider its efforts so far. As part of the $89 million that the players got the NFL to commit over a seven-year period, $8.5 million was allocated in 2018. Players identified key issues of racial and social inequality where they thought they could make the biggest impact, including police and community relations, criminal justice reform, and educational and economic advancement. Players led the working group that distributed millions to the Advancement Project, the Center for Policing Equity, the National Juvenile Defender Center, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, the Campaign for Black Male Achievement, the Civil Rights Corps and VOTE. After Trump canceled a White House invitation to celebrate the Eagles’ 2018 Super Bowl victory, Jenkins skipped a traditional news conference and drew attention with a series of signs clarifying that player protests weren’t about the national anthem but about social inequality.

When white institutions and individuals sincerely ask for help, it is a good thing to supply it. (That sincerity may be doubted and only later revealed to be genuine, or the request may begin as insincere but evolve with more contact and better understanding.) Malcolm X once famously rebuffed a young white student who tracked him down in New York to ask what she could do to help the cause. His response took her aback: “Nothing.” It makes for great theater and dramatic storytelling, but it was the wrong answer.

Things are never ideal, and systems of white oppression co-opt us all: teachers, leaders, advocates, athletes, organizers. Look at me. I have spent nearly five decades — in speeches, books, my courses — advocating for social justice. I also work at Georgetown University, a school that sold 272 enslaved souls, including children, to bankroll its future. This is how the world works: All of us have blood on our hands and dirt beneath our nails, and we can scarcely afford to reject every institution we encounter as irretrievably tainted.

The charge of being a sellout, and the instinct to “cancel” people indicted in this way, often comes full circle. (Malcolm was later deemed a traitor to his cause and murdered by members of his own group.) The language of betrayal cannot provide lasting moral satisfaction. Instead, we need a vocabulary of moral accountability and social responsibility that is nuanced and capacious, giving us air to breathe and room to grow.

Jay’s deal with the NFL represents a valid and potentially viable attempt to raise awareness of injustice to black folk, and to inspire the league to embrace just action for the black masses. It may fail — and it certainly should not be used to diminish Kaepernick’s noble, iconic battle — but the effort is not a repudiation of justice. It is an attempt to make justice real for black folk far beyond the elite circles in which Jay and Kaepernick travel. Jay-Z, whose résumé is suffused with activism that cost him money instead of accruing him profit, has earned the right to try this. Even if Jay stands to make a tidy sum with the NFL, his history suggests that he has put his money where his ethics are — and declined to let his capitalist instincts outweigh his ethical imagination. Alongside scolding, resisting, protesting and cajoling, there is a need for strategy, planning, listening, learning and moving forward to test the application of principles embodied by people like Kaepernick.

Jay and Kaepernick will not be the last civil rights activists who represent different poles of the movement. This history is rich: King, Rosa Parks, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Freedom Riders, the Congress of Racial Equality and a host of other organizations occasionally bickered over methods and messaging and strategy. Iconic figures got bruised (James Baldwin, iced from speaking at the 1963 March on Washington, felt wounded but still kept up the freedom fight), swept aside (Ella Baker didn’t get her due when working with King’s sexist organization) or minimized (grass-roots activist Fannie Lou Hamer wasn’t universally applauded by black elites when she lived).

It is not wrong for Kaepernick to receive every nickel he has earned from Nike and the NFL, or for Reid and Jenkins to continue to get paid for their talents in the league they push to do the right thing. And it is hardly wrong for Jay-Z to do well while doing good. They are all motivated by grand ideals and good ends. Even Malcolm X, once he freed himself from his earlier narrow views, concluded that “Dr. King wants the same thing I want — freedom!” So does Colin Kaepernick. So does Jay-Z. And so should we.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/jay-z-didnt-sell-out-by-dealing-with-the-nfl-this-is-just-how-activism-works/2019/08/23/17178210-c520-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html

PledgeMusic, Once a Crowdfunding Haven for Artists, Now Owes Them Thousands of Dollars

(By Colin Stutz, Billboard, 24 January 2019)

In 2017, the electro-industrial band ohGr began recording its fifth full-length album, TrickS, while at the same time launching a campaign on the direct-to-fan music platform PledgeMusic. The service seemed like a good way for the independent act founded by singer Nivek Ogre -- a member of the band Skinny Puppy and a cult icon -- to cover recording costs, promote the project with behind-the-scenes updates and host online sales for pre-orders and specialty items. But the largest factor in ohGr's decision to go with PledgeMusic, says producer Mark Walk, was that it would provide "a safe place for supporters’ funds to be held while the project was being produced." Now, eight months after ohGr's campaign ended, the band is still owed nearly $100,000 and struggling to access money it needs to manufacture merchandise fans have already purchased. All hope for a lucrative album cycle has gone out the window.

How ohGr's PledgeMusic campaign went from looking like a success story to a total mess is a fitting allegory for the crowdfunding startup that launched a decade ago and claims more than $100 million distributed to artists across 50,000 projects. Thanks to the following ohGr had amassed, the effort kicked off with a promising start: The project raised more than $20,000 in just the first few days, giving a strong sense that this could work -- not only to pay for TrickS, but also as a sustainable music business model where a band could reach its audience directly, symbiotically serving its top fans. But slowly, warning signs began popping up. Once the album was completed in spring 2018 and digital files were delivered to PledgeMusic, the company became unresponsive about payments. This included money to the band for operating costs, but also specifically to manufacturers for the CDs, vinyl, lyric books, T-shirts and other products fans had pre-ordered to make the campaign a financial success.

These delays pushed ohGr to release the album digitally on July 18 without any physical product and resulted in ohGr touring in support of the new album -- without the actual album to sell. While it has also compromised other plans for the release, Walk says the band is intent on prioritizing its fans on PledgeMusic to reward their early support.  When Walk threatened to go to the press with his PledgeMusic experience, he says a company employee told him, "Do you really think anyone would care?"

ohGr is far from the only band that has experienced problems with late payments from PledgeMusic, if they receive the funds at all. Last October, after reports the startup was having trouble paying some of its top artists on time, some major change-ups were announced: Former CEO Dominic Pandiscia departed, while co-founder Malcolm Dunbar's role was elevated to global president and chief operating officer, while his fellow co-founder Jayce Varden returned to the company. (Now sources tell Billboard Varden resigned on Tuesday.) A new financial team was also implemented under the leadership of Richard Vinchesi, a partner at Sword, Rowe & Company, one of PledgeMusic's larger investors.  Per a press release at the time, these moves promised "a more rigorous infrastructure to underpin the company's growth initiatives," as well as a commitment to improve its "financial resources and processes." PledgeMusic also struck a deal with leading music financing company Lyric Financial, it announced, "to help expand its working capital and improve payable processing."

But based on accounts from several artists and managers who are still struggling to receive payments from their PledgeMusic fundraising campaigns, those measures have not been enough to right the ship, leaving many feeling plundered and unsure what recourse to take. A few interviewed for this story said they were considering legal action, while most simply pledged never to work with the company again -- telling their friends and fans to do the same.  “We accept responsibility for the fact that we have been late on payments over the past year,” the company said in a statement to Billboard on Thursday (Jan. 24), noting it expects payments to be brought current within the next 90 days. “PledgeMusic is working tirelessly on this issue, and we are asking our community for their continued support and patience.”

According an anonymous former employee who wished to remain anonymous, the root of these problems is improper money management where PledgeMusic failed to hold artists' campaign funds separately and securely and instead invested it back into the company. If true, this would directly conflict with PledgeMusic's terms and conditions, which state "monies collected by PledgeMusic for a Campaign will be held on account for the Artist." The idiom "robbing Peter to pay Paul" came up in many conversations describing PledgeMusic's actions and as the company's growth slowed the situation worsened. Over the last year, according to the former employee, in effort to reduce overhead, PledgeMusic also laid off about a third of its U.S. staff and moved out of its New York offices into a WeWork shared workspace.

The stories from artists waiting for payment are plentiful, with outstanding sums ranging from $50 to $100,000. After Fastball completed a problem-free PledgeMusic campaign in 2017, the '90s pop-rockers returned to the service last summer to host a pre-order for a 20th anniversary reissue of the band's album All the Money Can Buy, featuring chart-topping hit "The Way." The sales ended on Nov. 9, having raised $22,000 from 500 pledgers. To date, the only payment the band has received is $895.24 to cover shipping costs on a guitar purchased by a fan in Australia. With a balance topping $21,000 still in limbo, manager Peter Wark says his requests have been consistently shuffled between different higher-ups at the company like "a game of hot potato" without providing any clarity.  "I was just getting really pissed off because they weren't responding," he says. "I can deal with failure, I can deal with excuses, but incompetence is just something that drives me crazy. Just tell me what the fuck's up."

Instrumental world music band Incendio finished a PledgeMusic campaign in September meeting 115 percent of their goal, totaling about $6,200. Of that, the band claims a first installment of $3,300 is now more than four months late, but requests for payment have been ignored. That money would be used to fulfill orders made on Pledge -- a requirement to release the remaining funds.

Folk rock duo HuDost, who first spoke with HypeBot last September about payment issues with the website, were able to obtain an initial payout from PledgeMusic -- but they are stilled owed about $8,000. Recently, the band wrote PledgeMusic to inform the company they would soon release a digital version of their new album to pledgers, which should unlock a second installment of funds, and asked when that new money would be issued. Their client manager replied saying the company is doing its "best to ensure payments are released as they are requested," but that with "the current backlog" of requests they could not "guarantee that payments will be released on time." The band is now planning to release its album early in order to "get in queue," as member Jemal Wade put it, to receive their earned payment.

Canadian rapper illvibe earned $500 on a campaign with all funds going to the nonprofit Charity: Water, but payment took more than five months and he is still waiting on $50 that was missing from the total. Singer-songwriter Mike Evin says he's owed $2,900 on remaining funds for a project that closed a month ago. Joanna Wallfisch has been owed $3,000 since October, with another $2,000 due when she finishes fulfilling her orders with her own money. Amanda Duncan is owed more than $3,000 for an album released on New Year's Day and hasn't been able to get a reply from PledgeMusic. And then of course there are the thousands of fans waiting on their orders, also now demanding action from PledgeMusic.

The PledgeMusic community is looking for answers, while questions persist beyond when they will get paid or when their products will arrive. Namely, why has the company continued to take on more clients, when it seems unable to pay those it already has?  "Yeah I want to get paid and I want to raise a stink about what happened to me, but I also want to raise awareness so people are not sending money to [PledgeMusic] and contributing to new projects that artist are starting with them," says Even. "They should not be taking on new business."

For some of PledgeMusic's artists who have spoken with reps from the company, some relief has been promised soon -- but at this point, after months of getting the runaround, it's unclear what to believe and some are preparing for the worst. As of Tuesday, ohGr had been promised 25 percent of its funds for operating capitol and to manufacture books on Friday. The band tells Billboard it was promised more money to come when the company receives an influx of capital in six weeks. It's not waiting around, though, and has decided to move all sales to BandCamp.

Meanwhile, though Fastball has fulfilled all fan orders, the band did so at its own cost and now owes its record label on the reissue, Omnivore Records, about $9,000 for the album costs. While the label has been understanding to the situation, says Wark, he's concerned the money may never come.  "I'm genuinely worried -- I don't know if we will get paid," he adds. "[PledgeMusic] may file bankruptcy and then it's a big middle finger to us."

 Read PledgeMusic's full statement here:

PledgeMusic has always been committed to serving artist and fan communities. It was established by artists and was born of a need to change the way in which the traditional music industry operated. It was designed to help artists and their teams at every level, and we believe that PledgeMusic has become an essential part of the evolving landscape of the music industry.

That said, we deeply regret that recently we have not lived up to the high standards to which PledgeMusic has always held itself. We acknowledge that many artists have and continue to experience payment delays. These delays to artists are unacceptable--not only to them, but to us.

Since its beginning, PledgeMusic has successfully serviced over 45K artists from emerging acts to some of the biggest names in the industry. We've supported 60 Grammy-nominated artists and helped springboard 100s of unsigned bands to successful careers. Our efforts have assisted over 375 artists with chart position on the Billboard Top 200. Our platform has provided close to $100m of revenue to its artist community.

Mid 2017, new investors came into PledgeMusic with the goal of strengthening the company and improving the value proposition for artists and fans. After substantial investments in the business over the past 18 months, we believe we have made good progress to that end, but it hasn’t been enough. That said, the company has cut its operating expenses nearly in half over the past year. We've overhauled key parts of our financial and operating systems, while adding talent to our roster and making enhancements to the platform like our Vinyl Store, D2C artist store-fronting and our data analytics.

While the company has made progress, we still haven't reached our goals. PledgeMusic has been in discussions with several strategic players in the industry who have interest in the PledgeMusic platform. We are evaluating a number of transactions with those potential partners, and we plan to announce details of this in the next 60 days. It is our expectation that payments will be brought current within the next 90 days.  

We accept responsibility for the fact that we have been late on payments over the past year. PledgeMusic is working tirelessly on this issue, and we are asking our community for their continued support and patience.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8494827/pledgemusic-crowdfunding-owes-artists-thousands-late-payments

Anonymous Sources: The Mysteries Of Journalism Everyone Should Know

By Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post, 10 December 2017)

When Houston Chronicle reporters want to use information from an unnamed source in a news story, they have to jump through a few hoops first.  A senior editor has to approve it, and know who the source is. A single unnamed source is rarely enough to go ahead with a story — there must be two sources with the same firsthand knowledge. And one of a handful of top editors must sign off on its use before publication.  “The one exception to the two-source rule is when we have a ‘golden source’ — for example, the police chief talking about an investigation,” said Nancy Barnes, the Chronicle’s executive editor. 

The vetting process is similar at many large news organizations — and it’s just one of the practices that journalists assume, perhaps incorrectly, that news consumers understand.  Anonymous sourcing is one of the least-understood of the mysteries.  “A lot of people seem to think that when we use anonymous sources, we don’t even know who they are — that they’re anonymous to us,” said Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery.

That’s definitely not the case. Anonymity is granted to known sources under tightly controlled circumstances because they can’t speak on the record with their names attached for a variety of reasons.  News organizations try to limit their use, embarking on crackdowns and then sometimes backsliding.  Peter Baker, a reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, said (to a surprised reaction) at a journalism conference last week that Times Washington reporters no longer may use “blind quotes” — direct quotations with no names attached. 

I asked a few prominent journalists to describe what they wish news consumers knew about our business, but probably don’t. I was prompted to do so after the undercover provocateurs known as Project Veritas released a video featuring a Post reporter and then crowed about their supposed exposé: The video showed him describing how harshly critical of President Trump he has found The Post’s staff-written editorials.

That’s hardly a secret — the editorials, which represent the consensus of the paper’s editorial board, are published, after all. (Last year, a group of such critical editorials was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.)  But Project Veritas was taking advantage of the fact that news consumers don’t make a distinction between news reporters and editorial writers. Inside The Post’s building, though, that split is clear. News reporters and news-side editors strive for impartiality  — they want to keep their opinions out of their work. By contrast, editorial writers and columnists are not only allowed to have an opinion, it’s in their job description.

So, what would some of these experienced news people like you to know?   Ben Smith, editor in chief of BuzzFeed, told me he wishes readers would understand that sourcing isn’t always simple. A high-profile source isn’t always a hero and may have motivations that have little to do with serving the best interests of democracy.  “I have always wished the public understood how complex and messy sourcing is, and how often sources’ motives are personal or complex. While I appreciate the romantic portrayal of reporters and sources in movies like ‘The Post’  — and while whistleblowers from Daniel Ellsberg to the #MeToo voices are truly heroes — Mark Felt is a much more typical source,” Smith said, referring to the former FBI official who became the Watergate source known as “Deep Throat,” in part because he had an ax to grind within the Nixon-era Justice Department. 

Smith added that reporting is “an ethically complicated business whose responsibility is singularly to deliver true stories to the audience.” But how journalists get there can be discomfiting, he observed. BuzzFeed’s recent exposé of alleged sexual misconduct by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) told readers that its information was supplied by Mike Cernovich, the far-right media personality who has promoted conspiracy theories.  Richard Tofel, president of the nonprofit investigative reporting organization ProPublica, told me he wishes the public would get how seriously journalists take errors.  “I don’t think people widely understand how hard journalists work to get stories right,” he said. “Accuracy is the first requirement journalists have of each other, for instance, when considering hiring or promotion. Corrections (and even uncorrected mistakes) are badges of dishonor.”

Tofel noted that even small mistakes frequently disqualify long stories from prestigious awards. Journalists do make mistakes, of course, and we’ve seen far too much of that recently. “But,” he said, “reporters these days work very hard to get stories straight, and accurate, and fair.”  Frank Sesno, director of George Washington University’s media school, told me he wishes people understood the “the vetting process, the checks and balances that viewers never see that television networks do (or should) as a matter of course.”

Sesno, a former Washington bureau chief for CNN, added: “At CNN, a whole group, the Row, exists to vet scripts, to make sure sound bites are used in context, to fact-check. They send scripts back when there is any question.”  There is far more checking, corroborating, debating, arguing, vetting than any viewer could possibly know, Sesno said.  “It belies the prevailing narrative of ‘fake’ news — because the very systems in place are there (when used and used correctly) to generate skepticism about stories and sources, to put the brakes on confirmation bias and leaps of journalistic faith.”

Of course, journalists do mess up sometimes. They can fall prey to confirmation bias, allow anonymous sources to run amok, fail to be fair and impartial. Perhaps most often and most foolishly, they can move too fast to publish in a highly competitive environment.  And then, in a business based on credibility, there’s a price to pay.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-do-you-use-an-anonymous-source-the-mysteries-of-journalism-everyone-should-know/2017/12/10/fa01863a-d9e4-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html?utm_term=.dcfdf5647657&wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1