9/2/24: Introducing Master Plan: Legalizing Corruption
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This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's hip-hop beat station. Imagine a world where big bags of dirty anonymous money buy elections, politicians, and the laws that govern our whole society. Spoiler alert, it's the current reality in the United States.

Hey, everyone. It's me, David Sirota. I'm thrilled to share this clip of the inaugural episode of Masterplan, the Lever's new investigative podcast series that was recently named a must-listen by The Guardian and Apple Podcasts. In each episode of Masterplan, we expose the secret scheme first hatched in the 1970s that's been methodically legalizing corruption for the wealthy.

With the help of never-before-reported documents, we'll look back at how it all began, how this plan was executed over decades, how it's still being implemented today, and how we can stop it.

You'll learn things you never knew about icons like President Richard Nixon, Senator Mitch McConnell, Fox News founder Roger Ailes, and Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. You'll learn how their master plan to legalize corruption affects you and your family and undermines American democracy today. In this special preview, we go back to 1971, a time when hot pants were hot, bell bottoms were swinging,

and campaign cash flowed like milk. Without further ado, here's a short clip from Masterplan.

This is corruption. This is bribery. Don't let it stand. This corruption is an American issue. We live in a corrupt nation, a nation corrupt to its bones. We have reached a saturation point of corruption at the federal level. It is corrosive on society because nobody has any trust or belief or puts any legitimacy in our institutions anymore.

When I say the word corrupt, what jumps into your mind? Maybe you think about a file on your computer's hard drive not working or the blue screen of death. The file has been corrupted.

Maybe you think of some faraway regime on the other side of the world, where government officials get rich while everyone else starves. Somalia has held the title of being one of the world's most corrupt countries for the past decade. Maybe you think of something from pop culture, like the Nevada senator in The Godfather demanding a bribe from the Corleone family. Or maybe you think of The Wire's walking bribery machine, Clay Davis.

- Shit. - If you're a Republican political junkie, this is probably what comes to mind. - Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company, paid Hunter Biden millions of dollars to serve on its board of directors. - And if you're a Democratic political junkie, I'm guessing you think of stuff like this. - Trump told the group that they should donate a billion dollars to his presidential campaign because if elected, he would roll back environmental rules that he said hamper their industry. - Corruption in politics is the process of using money,

to break the machine of government so that the machine no longer benefits the public. It only benefits the wealthy and powerful. Now, there's the corruption of, say, a cop taking a bribe to rip up a speeding ticket or a government official diverting public highway funds into their own pocket. This kind of petty corruption is bad.

But greedy individuals will always exist, which makes this kind of small-time graft inevitable, even in the best-run governments. But then there's systemic corruption, the kind of corruption that's become so pervasive and so common that you start to assume, oh, well, that's not even corruption. That's just how things work.

Deep down, you sense that there's a glitch, but it's hard to pinpoint the problem when you see it everywhere. It is all around us. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.

This is the deep systemic corruption that now pervades America. And you get a glimpse of it every time you hear about how much money is flooding into politics and elections. Morgan, billionaires spending a record $880 million in the midterms. Spending projected to reach, get this, nearly $11 billion. Judy, we are seeing a storm of campaign spending. An ultra-secretive Chicago industrial mogul.

has quietly given $1.6 billion to the architect of the right-wing takeover of the courts. This kind of all-consuming corruption does not occur naturally. It's not inevitable. It is created by people who want to trap us inside a system of bribery, graft, and dishonesty because that serves them.

So who exactly designed this dystopia we're now immersed in? The Lever's team of investigative journalists has spent the last two years digging into archives and lost audio, searching for that answer. And we've finally found it. I'm David Sirota, and this is Masterplan. ♪

In this first episode, we'll eventually go back 50 years to start exposing the epic story of how corruption was legalized in America. But first...

Let me tell you where this story started for me. Can you pinpoint the exact moment when you realized how corrupt and foobar everything was? I can. It was after a pre-dawn bus trip to Canada. Sarah Kanji joins us live now from the U.S.-Canadian border in Highgate with more... Hey, everyone. It's Sarota again. I hope you enjoyed this preview of the first episode of our new series, Master Plan. If you liked what you heard, head over to the Master Plan feed for new episodes every

Thanks for listening. Rock on.

Rock the boat. This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.