[Music] Hitler ah [ __ ] that's not how to introduce a podcast oh boy that went bad uh not a great start uh I just said Hitler that was just that's the worst introduction yet maybe you're talking about Gary Hitler yeah who's that Todd Hitler I don't know this guy is Jerry Hitler like the the the clone of Gerald Ford and Adolf Hitler In the country with another fortunate name [Music] I've invented a whole Cannon for the Gerald Ford Hitler hybrid in my head yeah I mean uh that's the uh that's what the the cutscenes
from um the new Star Wars film yeah it Adolf Hitler brought us World War II Gerald Ford brought us the pardon of Richard Nixon and Jerry Hitler brought us the Dodge Dart So who's the real monster so I know I'm gonna go with Hitler listeners we're not even the first time pardon what this episode's not about you just got people so upset I know I know I know this is about Hitler guys okay this is the worst introduction yet I'm Robert Evans this is behind the bastards the podcast where we talk about terrible people my
ghost today is Cody Johnston Cody how are you doing oh yeah you called him your ghost it's a spoon the Ghost the ghost in the room is Katie Stoll who is is not completing our triumvirate as per usual yeah it's weird I feel really good it is very weird it is odd yeah it's really I keep looking I keep looking there for Katie and she's not I love you Katie she's taking a well-deserved day off while Cody and I slog through this story which has nothing to do with Hitler nothing to do with Hitler not
even a little bit a little bit oh God all right Cody hi what do you know about Hobby Lobby they did Isis yes this is the story about how Hobby Lobby literally invented Isis no no I mean kind of no all right a little bit but not that much okay well yeah I mean you've got a lot of work to do because I've been convinced over the years that they did Isis so that Hobby Lobby did in Isis yeah you got to deprogram me from my way of thinking now yeah but look at these cute
glasses Anderson wore from Hobby Lobby for her RBG costume yeah she helped Isis Anderson we all we've all found ourselves needing a Hobby Lobby at one point or another maybe you needed some decorative glass jars or yarn and a felt needle at 7 30 at night and if you need those things the only place to go is a Hobby Lobby uh that was gonna be my example too yeah yeah it's just like the store you go for weird little crafty things that no one else is going to carry and the kind of knickknacks that You
put in your home when you don't really know what else to put there like eyeglasses that fit a dog like like eyeglasses that fit the dog for an RBG costume for a dog it's ironic that you keep bringing up Ruth Bader Ginsburg because this is the story about a group of people who want to make it impossible for people like her to sit on the Supreme Court that's the tale of Hobby Lobby so that's what I thought you were talking about I mean you know you know you have probably heard as Cody has been constantly
referring I can't I can't stop thinking about it yeah that Hobby Lobby got in some trouble from maybe funding Isis uh uh and yeah that's not technically true um Hobby Lobby did not exactly fund like the Islamic State uh itself um but it did they did help to fund some other Islamic Extremist organizations that were precursors to Isis and more to the point you can make a strong case that they're working to set up a Christian equivalent to Isis right here in the US of a oh that's the story we're going to talk about God
dad Robert yeah you wish they were just funding Isis I do now good old wholesome Isis uh starting near rock bottom but don't worry it gets a little lower it'll keep getting lower but before we Talk about how everything that I just talked about winds up happening we have to go back in time a little bit to talk about the beginning of Hobby Lobby Cody could you give me some mood setting time machine noises no [Laughter] perfect Anderson really did not like that I'm just gonna put it out there it's a new model it's a
new model all right some some of the scientists listening can Graph the differences between your time machine noises when Katie is and is not present um that one was much more like a tyrannosaurus or perhaps a a pterodactyl yeah pterodactyl some like some like really really old bird yeah so David Green was born on November 13th 1941 in Emporia Kansas his father was a preacher and not a particularly big deal within that world he wasn't like a big time preacher he moved around from like Congregation to congregation in tiny little towns in Kansas uh and
eventually escaping the hellish wastes of Kansas for the hellish wastes of Oklahoma uh the family settled in a town called Altus where David's father preached to a flock of 35 people who were vastly outnumbered by the cows on their Farms so he's got humble beginnings you could say now David grew up in Altus which is about five hours away from the Tiny Town In Oklahoma where I grew up it was as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get and they were very poor David would have worn nothing but secondhand clothing and eaten
primarily food donated to his family by the congregation the Green family could go weeks at a time without eating meat so they are the kind of poor where like you just don't even money's not even a factor in your life right um but still his mom found way is to Give what little they had to other families in Altus in interviews today David remembers his mother and father sacrificing their tiny Comforts and even their Necessities for the good of the community religion was the very air he breathed as a child and all five of David's
brothers and sisters grew up to be either pastors or pastors wives but a life of preaching and poverty was not for David he struggled at school and had to repeat The seventh grade but he had no desire to focus on the Bible for a living instead he started working in the business world as soon as he could during his junior year of high school David got involved in a work study program and landed a gig as a stock boy in the town General Store he only made 60 cents an hour but he became aware of
the basics of how capitalism Works watching his boss buy products for 10 cents and sell them for 20. so that's Like his uh his his yeah he falls in love with with this idea it's like transubstantiation but with pennies yeah yeah um I'm I look forward to finding out what he does with this information yeah now New World View um and so while David's mom gave until it hurt and while his siblings committed themselves to serving their communities David found himself more enthralled with The idea of profiting from his fellow man and over the course
of his early and mid-20s David served in the Air Force Reserve and married a woman named Barbara who we'd met while working at the General Store he turned his work experience into a job as a manager at tgny a five and dime shop that sold odds and ends by the time he was 29 he decided he'd learned enough working at these businesses to do a better job starting his own so he borrowed 600 to Buy up equipment and inventory and teamed up with another manager from his store to create his first business selling miniature picture
frames to stores like tgny where he'd worked so like too small to really like put pictures in just like the kind of knickknacks you stick up around the house for no reason yeah yeah like a slightly slightly bigger than wallet size yeah all right okay okay yeah tiny little picture frames that are basically Just knickknacks for like old women to turn into craft projects like that's the business he decides to go into reason really specific very specific but you know there's a market you got you yeah you Corner that he had a very weird specific
dream and it turned out to work very well really well yeah yeah uh so his wife and sons uh assembled these tiny picture frames on their kitchen table and received seven cents a piece from Dad for their Labor uh the whole Enterprise was profitable for reasons that I cannot understand and by 1972 green had enough money to open his first actual store a 300 square foot Hobby Lobby in Oklahoma City okay okay so it was like the inventory it was wasn't just picture frames at that point it was like all right it's just like when
he opens his first Hobby Lobby yeah he he expands Beyond shitty picture frames yeah yeah to shitty other stuff it's a shitty other stuff yeah There's a whole wide variety of shitty things for sale yeah do you like next we got them all right great we got NYX we got next we have the Knicks uh which is as useless a sports team we have a tiny picture frame you get The Knack yeah I don't know what the Knack is it's a album Robert just said like a sports disc like I liked it yes yeah we
will not go into any more detail about why the Knicks are terrible but terrible Long time listeners will know wow all right waiting for that episode to drop oh it has now uh there are different opinions on why Hobby Lobby became a huge success the CFO John Cargill credits David Green's Brilliance at merchandising uh he says that green basically realized the cheap crap like Styrofoam roosters and fake books and plastic plants could be produced for pennies overseas and then sold for Dollars to American Customers uh and there turned out to be an endless appetite among
Realtors setting up show homes hotels looking to decorate on the cheap and little old ladies with a love of knickknacks and so David's business exploded from selling cheap poorly made decorative crap in Mass so that's I mean yeah that's what that yeah there you go that explains it all you go that's all oh wow what a good idea I I think at times about out like how when the world is like dying and I'm Like sitting upon one of the last bits of land that like Peaks above the the boiling oceans choking the last remaining
life on the surface how I will explain to Children why we let this happen and I am excited to talk with them about Hobby Lobby yes all right here's the first thing well the oceans had to die because we needed styrofoam roosters to put up in corners of the house that didn't have decorations um and Yeah uh I'd like to uh I'd like to see that scene gathering around the fire that you actually don't need because like you said the boiling oceans yeah the oceans are boiling covered in soot yeah treating treating wounds uh arguing
wounds with styrofoam roosters arguing over who's gonna eat who first like who's the first to go oh it's gonna be good but then um the tale of Hobby Lobby yeah So one major reason for the success of Hobby Lobby came down to luck and good timing right around the time his first store opened uh the hippies of the United States became enthralled with beads the bead buying craze started right at the same time that green began expanding his business and it fueled Hobby Lobby spread to a second 6 000 square foot location green was able
to quit his job at tgny and he recalls that his wife was not happy with this she was Real comfortable with me working at tgny they were doing 2 billion a year in sales we did a hundred thousand dollars of course they're gone now and we're making 3 billion it's not wrong yeah he's not wrong wait are they still married oh yeah okay so this isn't just like a resentful like uh she said this but actually we're it's billions of dollars now no no no it's more like a uh my my my wife you know
this is why the man has The business sense in the family because my wife would have had us yeah working for a doom dinner prize instead of selling styrofoam roosters to all in Sundry yeah yeah and now we're doing great because of the good work that we do because of the good work that we do Hobby Lobby today is one of the largest businesses of its kind in the world operating 520 stores in 32 states David green and his family are the sole owners of the business and over the course of His career Green's net
worth has soared to more than four and a half billion I think it's even more than that now uh because there are no shareholders or co-owners David gets to run Hobby Lobby exactly the way he wants and since he is an Evangelical Christian that's been woven into the character of the business sometimes this manifests itself in wacky ways for example products in Hobby Lobby do not have bark codes what yeah um there's two explanations for this When interviewed yeah too many it should be one the the official explanation from David Green is that computerized point-of-sale
systems make his employees less knowledgeable about their inventory because they rely on a computer to tell them where things go and what things cost and while it costs more money for the business to have employees like updating prices by hand it leads to better staff because they know where Everything is and what it costs and they have an understanding that's deeper of the inventory which it makes sense yeah yeah like that's not an illogical um Theory yeah I'm ready for you to bum me out but that's actually a good answer yeah that's a very good
answer however some suggest this hard line against barcodes has more to do with the fact that large chunks of the Evangelical Christian population believe that barcodes are the mark of the beast this Rumor is largely perpetuated by folks and blogs just like barcode conspiracies and I really have no idea what the truth is but Hobby Lobby employees regularly talk about the idea that the barcodes there are no barcodes in the business because it's the mark of the devil there's a whole like like that you could find in the era of VHS like whole VHS tapes
explaining how like the barcode is the mark of the beast and like all of the different dashes really stand for 666 and it's the devil's way of getting into capitalism yeah so okay so the the conspiracy stuff like the blogs that are talking about this aren't people being like making up a wild accusation it's based off of people who evolve huge numbers of people yeah and believe that barcodes are evil so it is a belief yes and it's just the conspiracy is that that's why they don't do it at Hobby Lobby specifically but it is
yeah exactly it is yeah that belief Is a thing that at least a couple of million Americans believe oh that's too many David said David has a reasonable explanation for why Hobby Lobby doesn't use barcodes but there's a lot of people that are like come on oh no his first answer was so good yeah it's a really good answer yeah it's one of those things where it's like oh that makes complete sense yeah of course you would yeah they'd know the point over there like oh yeah it's this amount it used to Be this amount
because I did it in my hand yeah oh no exactly okay so um yeah now David Green's choice to not use barcodes uh is is fine regardless of why he does it you know he has that right he's the sole proprietor of the business what's less fine in my opinion are the ways in which he's chosen to spend his fortune in interviews David will frequently claim that God is the Real manager of his three billion dollar per year Empire he told Forbes this if you have anything or I have anything it's because it's been given
to us by our creator so I've learned to say look this is yours God it's all yours I'm going to give it to you and when he talks about how he uses his wealth in interviews David tends to say things like this I want to know that I have affected people for eternity I believe I am I believe once someone Knows Christ as their personal savior I've affected eternity I matter 10 billion years from now yeah this is see we're going in I just yeah it's a little too much I don't care for that you
don't affect people for eternity by selling them colored mirrors and bookends um also just like the phrasing like affect people yeah it's like we're unsettling yeah it's unsettling it's like weirdly clinical and like it Doesn't specify what you mean it's not it's not great it's not great it's not great billions of years though that's billions 10 billion years that is power that's some Scientology yes it is delusions right there yeah so David Green is currently the largest individual donor to Evangelical causes in the United States in 1999 he bought an old VA hospital in Little
Rock Arkansas and turned it into a church This proved to be the start of more than 300 million dollars in donations to established churches on 50 different properties other Christian leaders have come to see green as something of a venture capital fund for their religion he receives proposals on a daily basis for churches and religious schools that need his support in 2004 he gave a 10 million dollar building to Jerry falwell's Liberty University a few years later he paid off Yeah oh this is going in so much worse of a direction a few years later
he paid off the numerous debts for Oral Roberts University he has founded numerous Christian foundations through which he has distributed 1.4 billion copies of Christian literature in more than a hundred countries the one Hope Foundation focuses on providing scripture to children aged 4 to 14 the every home for Christ Foundation sends Missionaries with Bible booklets door to door in the global South when people suggest that maybe delivering food or medicine might be more useful than Bibles in many of these countries green has a prepared response it's not like you give them that but don't give
them food you give both but green insists if I die without food or without Eternal salvation I want to die without food can't argue with that can't Target those Are the two options those are the two real options that are definitely on the table yeah that's a good point good stuff huh ah I wish I could do it good stuff wish I could work at Hobby Lobby now oh you can Cody you can oh I shouldn't have said that out loud I have good news for all of us yeah because this podcast is now sponsored
and owned entirely by The Hobby Lobby Corporation oh thank goodness yeah and speaking of Hobby Lobby Cody have you considered all the different things that styrofoam roosters could do to improve your life most of them but probably not all of them I think there are some I probably haven't thought of that I would buy if I if I were told about them yes with styrofoam roosters you don't need for example single-payer healthcare just Jam a rooster in it yes that's the Hobby Lobby message shove a fake [ __ ] in whatever ails you And your
problems will be solved Hobby Lobby I'm selling fake [ __ ] yeah on December 28 2012 Hobby Lobby made an irrevocable donation of an entire campus in Northfield Massachusetts to the National Christian Foundation or ncf both Hobby Lobby the business and David Green the billionaire have made and continued to make numerous donations to the ncf totaling Millions upon millions of dollars the ncf is on its face a non-profit that supports a variety of Christian causes but of course because this is my podcast the ncf primarily exists as a vehicle to viciously attack people Christian extremist
hate all around the world and I'm going to quote now from sludge a website that analyzes the way evil pieces of [ __ ] pump their money out across the world quote according to the three most recent available tax filings which cover 2015-2017 it has donated 56.1 million dollars on behalf of its clients to 23 Non-profits identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center is hate groups I certainly don't know of any public disclosures of funds to hate groups at levels anywhere near this Heidi Burek uh director of the intelligence project at the splc told it's
pretty astounding and certainly concerning according to a 2017 inside philanthropy article ncf is probably the single largest source of money fueling the pro-life and anti-lgbt movements over the past 15 years in 2017 Ncf's donation to anti-lgbt anti-muslim and anti-immigrant hate groups Rose to over 19 million dollars it's a lot of money it's good good stuff good stuff 10 billion years Cody it's called salvation yeah yeah the ncf pours money into the alliance defending Freedom a network of Christian lawyers who want transgender people to be mandatorily sterilized and when homosexuality to be made a literal crime
the alliance defense that's how you Defend Freedom by putting people in prison nothing says Freedom like enforced sterilization Jesus oh God the alliance defending freedom is currently opposing the equality act which would ban discrimination against lgbtq Americans David Green doesn't ever really say hateful things but this is where he puts his money in fact since ncf donations make up more than one-third of the adf's budget it's Likely green has put quite a lot of money into this group if we want an idea of how the United States would look if green and his friends got
their way we can hop over to Uganda and Cody that's what we're gonna do right after these ads for products and services I can't wait yeah yeah you know what won't turn our nation into uh hate-filled religious theocracy delivery deliverables deliverables pudding pudding will not also turn our Nation into a a fundamentalist hellhole energy drinks it is well known that fundamentalists cannot drink pudding or eat energy drinks off we go goodbye [Music] we're back Cody yes you enjoying this fun tale of the man who sold styrofoam roosters where the world I like it to fund
bigots yeah he's uh I like his answers for stuff yeah they're Good and I'm glad dude yeah his answers are uh uh uh he's up front he's fourth right and uh there's nothing behind it uh nothing it's he's speaking from his heart about uh his what he wants to do and why he's doing it I like it in 2008 the ncf gave 817 thousand dollars to Ed silvoso an Evangelical Minister from California who works directly with Julius oyet the Ugandan Bishop who led the charge against that nation's 2014 anti-homosexuality Bill here's how Human Rights Watch
describes it quote the law permits sentences of life in prison for some sexual acts between consenting adults it criminalizes the undefined promotion of homosexuality a provision that threatens human rights advocacy work and prompted a police raid on a joint U.S government McCary University HIV research and Intervention Program though I also criminalizes a person who keeps a house room set of rooms replace of any kind for purposes of Homosexuality a provision that has been used to justify evicting lgbti tenants numerous gay people have been rendered homeless by the law since its Inception Human Rights Watch talked
to one of them a lesbian woman named hanifa who showed them her eviction papers quote you have been nice to me in paying me very well but due to the existing situation in the country plus your behavior with your friends forgive me to suspect you of being indecent I cannot allow you to Rent my house I cannot fight the government yeah and it's hard to know exactly how much of Hobby Lobby money went up in these efforts but the ncf sent millions of dollars to different groups in Uganda pushing these laws and like you know
obviously part of the goal of having organizations like this is so a guy named David Green can claim none of his money directly went to it exactly millions of his dollars go to this group Which spends millions of dollars doing this [ __ ] yeah smart smart I mean smart to find smart I mean smart Cody is providing me with the place to buy both uh paint brushes and uh uh those fake books that I can put up on my counter to make it look like I read you're a reader yeah yeah and and uh
clay for which people can make I don't know crucifixes out of you can make anything out of class yeah Larger crucifix Elijah smaller ones a smaller one yeah crucifix yeah oh oh yeah uh there's uh we'll get into it there are laws uh like that that are being introduced in uh various States this year um there sure are Cody yeah there sure are probably do an episode about that on our other show but yeah yeah and if you trace back the money behind those laws I bet they go to the same place as these do
I would believe That yeah yeah the ncf is also one of the groups that uh Chick-fil-A for example gets like lambasted for supporting but like for whatever reason Hobby Lobby has not acquired the same amount of ire interesting until now in the first few months after the Bill's passage at least 17 LGBT people were arrested Under Suspicion of homosexuality in Uganda three transgender individuals were sexually Assaulted in police custody charity organizations that provided contraceptives and AIDS medication were forcibly shut down under the new law even doctors were allowed to deny basic treatment to gay people
Human Rights Watch talk to One transgender man who went to his doctor with a fever he said the doctor asked him but are you a man or a woman I said that doesn't matter but what I can tell you is I'm a trans man he said what's a trans man we don't Offer services to gay people here you people are not even supposed to be in our community I can call the police and report you you're not even supposed to be in the country this is kind of the world that David Green wants to the
United States yeah uh yeah yeah through his donations to instance if David Green has supported all this he has also supported a number of anti-muslim and anti-immigrant hate Groups the ncf gives money to act for America the American Freedom Law Center and the David Horowitz Freedom Center I love freedom you love freedom I know and it always is good things yeah I like organizations with freedom and liberty in their name because that means it's good that means that means it's good yeah it never means the freedom to oppress broad swaths of the population no no
no no no no no no no no no how dare you how dare you how dare you no Freedom is good whatever you said is bad but not my freedom or Liberty yeah uh yeah so yeah so the Horwitz of the David Horowitz Freedom Center uh believes that quote the whole Muslim world is pursuing a final solution to Jews and that American Muslims represent the real Neo-Nazi movement in America it's not those Nazis they literally say that they're neo-nazis yeah it's amazing come on oh no they say I think Horowitz is an All of them
kind of guy yeah yeah yeah yeah they use the word yeah the alliance defending Freedom uh is an anti-lgbt group currently lobbying to make U.S law as much like uganda's as possible uh they provided a Hobby Lobby and David green with free lawyers in 2014 when the billionaire Hobby Lobby owner decided to strike a blow against birth control and the Affordable Care Act This whole thing stemmed from the fact that the ACA required company health insurance plans to provide access to contraceptives crucially the Green family insisted they did not object to paying for all kinds
of contraceptives just the morning after pill which they believe violated Heavenly law for reasons I think are dumb pregnancy actually begins when a fertilized egg attaches itself to the wall of the uterus and the morning after pills are Meant to prevent this but the greens argued that any action taken to prevent implantation once the egg is fertilized is the same thing as an abortion the greens also argued that paying for iuds would violate their deeply held religious beliefs in 2012 when the series of lawsuits began green insisted we simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to
comply with this mandate in 2014 the case made its way to the Supreme Court which was probably David Green's goal from the beginning Hobby Lobby won its suit which established that corporations with religious objections could opt out of providing mandatory coverage to their employees this marked the first time in American history that the Supreme Court declared businesses were capable of holding religious most of the coverage of this event portrayed it a simple moral consistency on behalf of David as he told the Independent you can't have a belief system on Sunday and not live it the
other six days however when you actually dig into how David runs his company he seems notably less consistent about for example the sanctity of young life when that young life might actually cost him some money and I'm going to coat now from an article in rewire news quote when a very pregnant Felicia Allen applied for medical leave from her job at Hobby Lobby three years ago one might Think that the company best known for denying its employees insurance coverage of certain contraceptives on the false grounds that they cause abortions would show equal concern for helping
one of its employees when she learned that she was pregnant instead Alan says the self-professed Evangelical Christian arts and crafts chain fired her and then tried to prevent her from accessing unemployment benefits they didn't even want me to come back after having my Baby to provide for it she said Allen had been hired as a part-time cashier in July 2010 not long after she started the job she found out she was four months pregnant she had not been working long enough to qualify for Parental leave under the Family Medical Leave Act Allen went to her
supervisor I asked her would I lose my job due to me being four months and only having five months before having my child she told me no I felt like everything was okay I had Talked to my boss she let me know that everything would be okay I would still have my job but when she actually had to give birth and take her leave of absence her supervisor told her that she would be fired for doing so she tried to reapply to her job after coming back but was not hired when she applied for unemployment
benefits she claimed Hobby Lobby lawyers lied to the unemployment agency and said that she had chosen not to take parental leave and quit the Court eventually agreed with Allen's version of events and she won her claim for benefits she sued Hobby Lobby in February 2012 the same year that the company started its battle with the ACA but that case was dropped immediately because it turned out she'd signed away her right to sue the company without knowing all Hobby Lobby employees are required to resolve legal disputes through arbitration which heavily favors the corporation yeah And Cody
would you feel if I told you that Hobby Lobby's arbitration wasn't a normal arbitration agreement wasn't the yeah I would feel wholly unsurprised by that statement yeah um I don't I don't I don't like to get political you don't you're famous for that yes but um what if we didn't tie uh Health Care to our employers I mean Cody it's that's a nice dream but you know it like can you point out I Don't know for example a couple of dozen Nations on the planet with higher standards of living in longer lifespans in the United
States that do something like that I've actually never heard of a second country oh okay so uh and our education system's working yeah yeah so I I think uh whatever whatever comparison You're Gonna Make Or Point you're gonna make would have been lost on me I would have been like what's what's Canada I don't know even if That's a reference to a nation so no no it's actually a gas station uh somewhere up past Tacoma um okay so uh yeah I'm in a quote rewire news again discussing the the peculiarities of Hobby Lobby's arbitrary because
like even like even before you get here it's like yeah companies prefer arbitration because uh oh God all right go ahead it benefits the message yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah all right okay here we go one thing That sets Hobby Lobby's arbitration policy from most corporations is its allowance for Christian influenced arbitration but the mutual arbitration agreement Allen signed gives employees the option of choosing to find an arbitrator either through the non-profit American Arbitration Association the largest dispute resolution service provider in the United States or the institute for Christian conciliation the company Hobby Lobby uses
for their Christian arbitration is called Peacemaker Ministries whose principles include the idea that Christians are not allowed to sue other Christians this is incredibly convenient for the Christian owner of a Christian company who [ __ ] over his Christian employees now Hobby Lobby okay all right Hobby Lobby insists that its owner's beliefs are not forced on employees aside from the fact that they won't pay for your birth control because Of their beliefs which is kind of forcing their beliefs on you but Hobby Lobby won't force you to be Christian although they do actively evangelize their
employees David Green has hired three chaplains to minister to his employees he claims that hundreds of employees have been converted to Christianity this way including 15 managers in a single year as David told the independent we prayed a prayer with them and we did have 15 managers come to Know Christ in the business place that seems good that's above board that's above board because once they know Christ they can't sue you yeah yeah I I wonder how many have have been like yeah sure I'm Christian now yeah knowing that like they'll be in the good
graces a little more I mean I had to join Jack's weird Buddhist set which I I still have trouble believing that MMA is a critical Aspect of Buddhism but Jack says so yeah or um I'm sorry [Laughter] I'm gonna do an MDM that rewire article quotes Alex Colvin a professor at Cornell an employment arbitration expert uh he said this of Hobby Lobby's arbitration policies I think it's an interesting Confluence here with Hobby Lobby being in the news with that big case but if that were an employment case Where an employee wanted to make a claim
we would never see that case at the Supreme Court because it would be stated in arbitration so ironically Hobby Lobby gets to go to the Supreme Court because they want to challenge this but their own employees don't get to go to court that is ironic isn't it I would I was going to use the word Fair but um very fair I guess very fair and cool morally consistent too uh and speaking of moral consistency Well the craft store chain apparently considers the morning after pill a clear and present danger to their faith they did not
have the same issue with supporting the Chinese government the vast majority of Hobby Lobby's products are made in China they spend billions of dollars a year importing from that country and up until 2016 the Chinese government enforced their one child policy by in part mandatory abortions for pregnant women David Green decided This mattered less than maximizing the profit margins on his knickknacks by having them made in China so it just it like the these beliefs are only Ironclad up until they're not as profitable yeah then they don't matter yeah I mean that's again it's totally
unsurprising yeah um but at least they can deny their employees care that seems good yes they're employees that they make memorize all the prices because the Barcodes are the devil of course Cody of course yeah we can understand in our society how you might have to deny employees access to certain medicines because the way that they deal with eggs and stuff is against your poorly understood religious beliefs while also being like but we're still gonna you know buy a bunch of stuff from China because that's just the only way to get enough styrofoam roosters yeah
yeah but I can we can guarantee Hobby Lobby wouldn't do something like invest millions of dollars in the same drug firms that produce the pills that they say are against their religious beliefs that would have of course be a massive violation of what they believe right yeah um I agree and I choose to um leave this podcast before you uh make your next point Hobby Lobby's 401k plan for employees includes some 73 million dollars in Mutual funds that are heavily invested in the very same drug firms that produce emergency contraceptive pills intrauterine devices and drugs
commonly used in abortions it's also worth noting that prior to the ACA Hobby Lobby's health insurance plan covered all these devices it's almost as if what really matters to David was establishing the legal precedent that corporations could discriminate against employees based on religious beliefs it is almost exactly Like that it is almost exactly like that that's wild again wholly unsurprising wholly cool and unsurprising and boy howdy have their implications of the Hobby Lobby decision been vast and terrifying in her descent to the 2014 ruling Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg declared the court I fear has ventured
into a Minefield two years later in 2016 the Los Angeles Times evaluated the impact of the ruling so far like this Quote the Minefield Ginsburg warned about has now detonated on Thursday U.S district attorney Sean F Cox of Detroit ruled that a local Funeral Home was well within its rights to fire a transgender employee because its owner had a religious belief that gender transition violated biblical teachings Cox's ruling puts the lie to Justice Samuel alito's denial and his majority opinion in Hobby Lobby that the ruling would provide a shield for a wide range of Discriminatory
practices by allowing them to masquerade as religious Scruples our decision today provides no such Shield Alito wrote Ginsburg who was on the short end of the 5-4 decision knew better she said there could be little doubt that religious claims would proliferate because the Court's expansion of religious freedom to corporations invites for-profit entities to seek religious-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their Faith she asked why where is the stopping point suppose an employer sincerely held religious belief is offended by a health coverage of vaccines or paying the minimum wage or according women equal pay
for substantially similar work within days of the ruling there were already 49 cases from for-profit organizations claiming religious objections to the ACA and the ruling is increasingly used to cloak illegal discrimination in the Robes of religion Wheaton College even argued that the ruling meant they could refuse to fill out medical paperwork stating that they would not pay for contraceptive coverage because doing so was one step in a process that would lead to other entities paying for that coverage so they were well within their rights to [ __ ] with employees private lives even if their
money wasn't on the line that's awesome huh cool stuff so sneaky gross oh my God Uh uh it's still too early to say precisely what the long-term impact of the Hobby Lobby ruling will be but it is clear that it has fundamentally changed the game as regards religious freedom of speech there is now established legal precedent to protect wealthy individual religious extremists from abusing people they disagree with in almost any conceivable manner you might note that this is basically a slower less bloody But ultimately just as violent a way of achieving the same basic goal
that Isis set a state completely dominated by extreme religious law with no Freedom or ability to dissent because I just wanted to talk about Isis Roberts well Cody sucks I have some good news for you [Laughter] because now we're going to get to the part of the story where Hobby Lobby Helps to fund the precursors to Isis I guess that's lighter is that is that lighter Cody looks really sad you guys it's bumming me out it's a good story everybody loves a happy story yeah everybody does love a happy story a happy happy Cody yes
you know what won't lead to the establishment of a theocracy in the United States that strips people of very basic fundamental human rights in order to maximize corporate profits Is it products and services it's exactly right yes I knew it yeah I knew how to save the Republic it's products and services that's the problem there just weren't enough products and services in 2014. well Hobby Lobby has products they don't have Services exactly and this is why podcasts will save the Republic is the sheer the sheer Deluge of products and services that we can bring in
to to to Rescue our fellow Americans from this encroaching nightmare exactly this is a revolution the heroes this is the beaches at Normandy and we are fighting bigotry with products promo code save the world ad break [Music] we're back so Cody we just talked about how David Green's goal is basically the establishment of a religious uh State Along the same lines as Isis but slower and more profitable yeah speaking of Islamic terrorists David Green helped to put piles of money in the pockets of Islamic terrorists so he could have a fancy Museum oh right around
the same time Hobby Lobby won its case in the Supreme Court stories on the company started spreading the word that David Green was creating a Bible museum in Washington DC Politico reported that the museum would likely cost a family More than 800 million dollars and involve a repository of tens of thousands of biblical Antiquities the family had recently acquired the mission of the Bible Museum was at first to inspire confidence in the absolute Authority and reliability of the Bible green later modified the slightly to invite people to engage with them yeah he knows what he's
doing yeah he really does Smart Cookie in 2010 Hobby Lobby president and David's son Steve Green visited the United Arab Emirates with an Antiquities consultant there they inspected 5548 artifacts these objects according to a later legal complaint were displayed informally spread on the floor arranged in layers on a coffee table and packed Loosely in cardboard boxes in many instances with little or no protective material between them that's how you're supposed to do it can take you to the garage Here's the Antiquities there's a quarter over there we sell heroin too yeah but you now these
Antiquities mostly consisted of cuneiform tablets and balls of clay imprinted with ancient seals the whole situation seemed very shady and it was but the dealers provided what's called a statement of provenance see Antiquities theft is a major problem particularly in the Middle East since the early 1990s between 200 and 500 000 Objects have been looted from archaeological sites in Iraq alone cylinder seals and cuneiform tablets the same kind of objects that this were displayed by Steve Green in the UAE are the most frequently looted items since 1990 cultural objects from Iraq carry special import restrictions
that include criminal penalties that's not just because the U.S government wants to stop these items from being looted in fact it has much More to do with the worry that these items are being looted by terrorist organizations and used to fund violent attacks across the world during the height of the Islamic State illegal Antiquities looted within its lands were estimated to have been evaluated between 4 billion and 7 billion dollars which is obviously an incredibly wide possible range isis's Department of Natural Resources Antiquities division charged a 20 tax on salable Antiquities and most Experts seem
to think the group probably didn't make more than a few million dollars from its looting program but that is plenty of money to carry out horrific attacks the November 2015 Paris attacks for example killed 130 people and cost roughly ten thousand dollars it is worth noting of course that in 2010 and 11 Isis was not really a thing but its precursors did exist and so did other extremist groups like Al Qaeda who profited from the sale of Antiquities in Iraq the simple reality of the situation is that people who buy Antiquities in Iraq have at
that and at that point had no way of knowing that who they would support with their purchases most experts simply advise people not to make these kind of purchases since it's impossible to do so in not fun terrorists in the illegal theft and destruction of cultural artifacts but the Green family didn't care about any of that they wanted fancy old Bible [ __ ] For their Bible Museum yeah as I mentioned earlier Steve Green traveled to that UAE meeting with an Antiquities expert she advised him not to purchase any of the clearly Shady artifacts on
offer her exact quote was I would regard the Acquisitions of any artifact likely from Iraq as carrying considerable risk and I found an interview with this expert conducted later on a Blog dedicated to Antiquities research and study here's how she described the Reaction to her warning I can't say they reacted one way or the other they didn't seem surprised or upset which in hindsight is kind of surprising the impression I had at the time is that they were only considering buying Antiquities I had no idea until I read the complaint release later last week that
this was already in process they had already earlier in July before I talked to them looked at cuneiform tablets you would think if I'm talking About you have to do this and that and they're already in negotiations they would have had some reaction to what I said I'm pretty mystified as to why they bothered to have me do this for them why do you think they had her do this for them reason just like they're interested they like history and they like history yeah the Y became clear later Hobby Lobby wired 1.6 million dollars to
seven different bank accounts associated with Five separate people to buy the items they had the artifacts shipped to the United States in numerous packages with fake labels identifying them as tile samples the packages were also shipped to multiple locations in doing so Hobby Lobby and the Green family followed well-established procedures for smuggling illegally obtained cultural Antiquities in that interview with the Antiquities expert I quoted from earlier the interviewer asks her if she thinks The greens might have just consulted her to learn how the legal process for importing artifacts works so they could more easily devise
a scheme to break the law here's her response I suppose one can't rule that out which would be very upsetting to me I can't rule that out my goal was to discourage them from doing the wrong thing by telling them all the wrong things they could do I thought they would not want to do those things I can't rule out it was all the opposite That they used my advice to evade the law as opposed to follow the law can't rule it out Christians it's this is great we're religious we believe in Morality yeah they
have very consistent morality yeah which is that all that matters is what they think of the Bible and not preserving historical Antiquities or avoiding funding terrorism in foreign countries because that has nothing to do with Christianity in America there's Nothing to do which is all that matters to them yeah which is like it's discussed like one like there were a lot of like groups like The free Burma Rangers which are like a heavily Christian organization dedicated to providing like emergency medical care and War zones and stuff and so these are like very religious people who
would like go get shot at in order to provide emergency first aid to people fighting and dying in mosul at the same time as These billionaires who call themselves Christians are like funding violence around the world in order to have a fancy Museum yeah it's it's sickening yeah um I like that first part we talked about it seems like a real Christian thing to do yeah yeah it's providing emergency medical care to vulnerable people that does seem more Christian than funding Al Qaeda by Stealing artifacts it seems like it but maybe it's not I'm not
you know I'm not but you know we're forgetting uh Mark 23 30 when Jesus stole the Statue of Liberty uh in order to hide it in his underground lair I thought that you actually had a Bible verse in the in your head that you were quoting that's the one that's right next to his giant coin and uh yeah his giant coin and uh his Mona Lisa he has the original of course of course yeah It's got that uh that one painting that got uh cleaned wrong and now it works all smeared yeah that's his that's
that's his piece that like the the center yeah that's his whole his whole life has been leading up to getting that yeah the Gnostic versions are just about Jesus stealing art that's why the church had to suppress them yeah I'm I'm well uh well-versed in history and religion so I know exactly What you're talking about now fortunately the greens were worse at smuggling artifacts than they are at imposing religious law on the United States right got them and in January of 2011 uh border patrol began seizing objects roughly 3 450 in total that Hobby Lobby
had illegally imported the resulting civil asset forfeiture case bore a hilarious name the United States of America versus Approximately 450 ancient cuneiform tablets in approximately 3 000 ancient clay bulai that's amazing that was written down yeah that's the name of the case oh yeah oh that is oh yeah it's good stuff now Hobby Lobby was caught red-handed and they didn't even really try all that hard to defend themselves the chase was that obvious I mean yeah the company claims to have accepted responsibility for its past conduct and promised to Revise its internal procedures which is
meaningless because their employees were warned by an expert not to do what they did before the acquisition process began but David Green lied and claimed that this was all the result of Hobby Lobby being new to the Antiquities business and making rookie mistakes on the Hobby Lobby website he wrote this we should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the Acquisitions were handled Hobby Lobby Has cooperated with the government throughout its investigation and with the announcement of today's settlement program it is pleased that the matter has been resolved the settlement involving Hobby Lobby returning
all the ill-gotten artifacts and paying a fine but they are left in possession of more than forty thousand ancient relics some of which will be displayed in their Bible Museum and only a small fraction of which will ever be Made available for serious Scholars to study I spent a lot of time reading the blogs of different archaeologists and Antiquities researchers and they all seemed pretty uniformly to agree that the green collection basically kept important historical objects hidden from everyone but a small cotery of experts that the Green family personally likes there were also in agreement
about the fact that the Bible Museum and the green collection is almost certainly filled With other stolen and looted items and I'm in a quote now from one of the more prominent blogs in that ecosystem Anonymous Swiss collector quote you can't collect Antiquities without risking buying looted ones every purchase is a risk best just not to do it you can't collect Antiquities on the scale of the greens massive scale without certainly buying a lot of loot this is common knowledge held by everyone in the trade the Antiquity Business runs on layers of plausible deniability not
asking too many questions leaving things implied but not said opaque business practices lack of Regulation claims of not understanding the law are not an excuse for breaking it don't be fooled by this in this case the greens had advisors and independent experts who told them flat out that these purchases were wrong they did it anyway why do it then well we have a lot of research on the topic basically the Greens were probably able to neutralize their actions by convincing themselves that they were Above the Law because they were buying the Antiquities for Magical Evangelical
purposes saving them from the darkness of obscurity in a non-Christian country I mean that is speculation their neutralization technique might be a bit different but it'll be something along those lines it always is yes I do think there are looted Antiquities in the Museum of the Bible I think there are lots and lots of looted Antiquities in there I can't prove it to an extent that would let some country make a return claim But please understand there is no legitimate source of these kind of artifacts not on that scale looting is the source and lack
of providence is the proof but Counterpoint uh the magic stuff the magic stuff that is a good Counterpoint you know and he does not Disprove magic in this blog post there go exactly Hobby Lobby's good so that's should he should have talked to me because clearly he hasn't considered all sides to this yeah he did not he did not you consider all things yes much like a radio show that I've forgotten the name of all of the everyone every little bit of uh the information is being thought of yeah yeah this is important to see
both sides of an issue both a side that says literally the only way to have Gotten these objects is massive theft in the funding of international terrorist organizations and the side that says but Jesus yeah imagine that magic and you sort of Trail off so yeah the trail off and that's really how you know you've won the argument when you sort of Trail off I love trailing yeah yeah it's like hiking you know trails are good exactly uh you pick one doesn't matter uh and you just keep going and going and Then you slow down
and then you sort of you swim off and then you win yes and then you win how do you feel about Hobby Lobby after all this they're not my favorite place uh aroused if I were to get uh I mean I'm always aroused so thank you not really you know that's why we have you on the show exactly that's when it's like that's why I come on the show um bam damn I did it Um I uh if I were to get a knick-knack if I were to like be in the business of knickknacks I
probably would go to a different place the business of knickknacks I would just paddy whack and then give a dog a bone but I mean you know yeah Different Strokes you know Different Strokes for different old men who come rolling home yep who are constantly aroused on podcasts yes yes I I some fan out there needs to Graph the amount of times we make [ __ ] jokes uh when it's just you and I and and when we have our third person here um I think we make less call her by her name I might
I might make more actually because I know that she hates the word come so I say he does hate the word gum yeah and now we are upping our come quotient at the end of the episode exactly and earlier when we were talking about I almost referenced uh the uh come and Go mm-hmm that chain of uh gas station oh yes yes but I I held back um but here we are saying it now I love it when regions have a thing that is clearly like everyone outside of that region knows that the name is
hilarious like come and go or like the game cornholing which is played in certain parts of this country that just are like no it's just this game that we all play what is what is funny and everyone else is like butt sex so what if you go up to Something else oh yeah we all we all miss Katie this would not be happening with no Katie we're here no and we would have just we would have figured out a solution to the Hobby Lobby problem Katie would have like ridden into their offices on a sea
of blood with a sword made out of cultural Antiquities and beheaded David Green in order to bring peace and Tranquility to the kingdom once again Yeah she would have put she's not here and so we just have [ __ ] jokes yeah just voices in the air instead of feet on the ground that's the difference that's the case I know when does the museum open uh that's a good question Cody let us ask the almighty El GOOG no you didn't like that all right [Music] not an El goog fan It opens 10 a.m Saturday it's
open now yeah the grand opening is tomorrow it's still around okay it's open it's open right now 430 000 square feet that's really big that's really big it's got a great view it's got a beautiful view of Capitol Hill which they seek to dominate it's a big uh that's a big step up from that uh 300 by 300 original uh I'm sad tiny picture frame do you think They sell tiny picture frames in the Museum of the Bible they'd better they'd better have tiny picture frames in that gift shop a bunch of Styrofoam [ __
] and stuff I mean one of the things that is at least amusing to me is that on the Museum of the Bible's page their logo is clearly supposed to be like it's a B on its back so it also kind of looks like the Ten Commandments or an open book but more than anything it looks like a butt Hell yeah yeah so that's good that's good I think we're gonna win yeah yeah we're yes yes we have all the power now yeah before I realized their logo kind of resembles a button yeah and now
I realize that Victory is inevitable yeah days from now days from now this is going on too long sir you know what's not going on too long Cody's plugables that's true they go very short hi uh check out worst earpod Which is a show that we all do um also some more news uh it's on Twitter and it's on patreon it's on YouTube uh my Twitter is Dr Mr Cody uh d-r-m-i-s-drcy and uh uh check out uh Katie Stoll on Twitter as well who's not here but it's in spirit here is in spirit we're missing
much like the Holy Spirit and just like the Holy Spirit she's telling us to steal Antiquities from Iraq exactly exactly and we will uh even more news is the name of our Podcast uh plugable over I'm Robert Evans [Music] that's true the episode's done don't follow him on Twitter just kidding don't do it no Robert I can find us Robert's a great I feel like you're great on Twitter just just to give you a compliment thank you thank you thank you Sophie I am great on Twitter and uh you Can find me on uh you
can find the website of this podcast behindthebastards.com and we also have another podcast worst year ever about the election and you can find your neighborhood Hobby Lobby if you need to buy a styrofoam rooster and further choke the oceans with the detrius of uh civilization tight tight all right we're done we're done [Applause] Foreign [Music]
