Mike Rowe from ‘Dirty Jobs’ talks victimhood and the value of hard work



After testing shark suits, cleaning out sewers, and wrangling venomous snakes, Mike Rowe from “Dirty Jobs” knows firsthand what a hard day’s work looks like.

And he’s grateful for it.

“‘Dirty Jobs,’ in so many ways, reconnected me to some things that I kind of lost sight of in my life — things I'd become disconnected from ... like where my food comes from and where my energy comes from,” he tells Stu Burguiere.

However, the show also taught him about “job satisfaction” and “the dignity of work.”

After a few seasons of the show, Mike began asking himself questions like, “What do [dirty jobs workers] know that I don't? And how come they're having so much fun covered in other people's crap? And why is my idea of success being turned inside out?”

The answer he found was that these “dirty jobbers” just “didn’t [have] a lot of self pity.” Rather, they had “an awareness” of the reality of their jobs, which were “often out of sight ... out of mind and seen by many as nonglamorous.”

“But rather than accept all of those stigmas and stereotypes as victims,” there was a camaraderie among them and a sense of pride in their respective vocations.

They knew what would “happen if [they] all [called] in sick for a week,” says Mike.

This mentality of finding dignity in your work, however, seems to be dying in modern society, as victimhood has become the new "it" label.

“It's not only that people claim victimization all the time,” says Stu. “It's like the pinnacle of our society if you can paint yourself into a victim.”

To hear more of Mike’s take on the value of hard work, the victim mentality, and what he calls “infatuation with innovation vs. imitation,” watch the clip below.


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Mike Rowe from ‘Dirty Jobs’ reveals the only job he WON’T do: 'You can’t wash that stink off'



After eight seasons of “Dirty Jobs,” TV host Mark Rowe has seen it all — well, almost.

He’s wrangled venomous snakes, cleaned up roadkill, tested shark suits, inspected sewers, embalmed corpses, and inseminated horses, among other atrocious gigs, but there’s one job he just won’t do.

Many of the dirty jobs Mike has experienced are no doubt “disgusting, vile, putrid, soul-deadening, [and] horrific,” but they don’t compare to the dirtiest job of them all — being a politician.

“Why didn't you ever go and do the dirtiest job, which is being a politician?” asks Alex Stein.

After inspecting a sewer, for example, “You can go home and take a shower, and you’re all shiny and new,” Mike explains. “And then there’s politics.”

“You can’t wash that stink off,” laughs Alex.

“That gets on the inside,” Mike says.

To hear more of the conversation (and learn what soap Mike says gets “anything off your body”), watch the clip below.


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'Dirty Jobs' host Mike Rowe sounds the alarm on the government's blatant attack on freelancers



As more and more Americans find ways to work for themselves, the government is doing everything in its power to make that nearly impossible.

Under the Corporate Transparency Act, small-business owners with fewer than 20 employees and less than $5 million in revenue will be forced to register with FinCEN — or face fines and potential jail time.

In addition to the new act, the U.S. Department of Labor has issued a final rule that will force companies to treat some workers as employees rather than less expensive independent contractors.

The rule is expected to increase labor costs, which would put more than 70 million American freelancers' work in serious jeopardy.

“It’s a big country, and there’s exceptions to every rule, but the number of people who were adversely affected prior to this versus the number of people who have now lost the freedom to work the way they want is mind boggling,” Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" tells Glenn Beck.

“You want to set your own schedule? Forget it. You want to eat what you kill? Forget it,” he adds.

Glenn is infuriated.

“There’s no opportunity, none, to actually become something because the government has you so pigeonholed, and people just accept it,” Glenn says, adding, “I don’t want to live in that kind of country.”

To hear more, watch the clip below.


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Only Spiritual Brotherhood Can Save Men In The Job Crisis

America’s young men are in crisis, and the answer to this problem is spiritual, not economic or political.

New York company hires high school grads for up to $75K annually, plus pension, no college degree required



Who says you need a college degree to get a good-paying job?

Not Chris DiStefano, the owner and COO of a New York construction company that is providing good-paying jobs with full benefits to teens straight out of high school.

His company, Harrison & Burrowes Bridge Constructors, works with the Questar III BOCES program to offer summer apprenticeships for high school students that can translate to a full-time position after graduation. Laborers can be paid between $65,000-$75,000 annually and put as much as $30,000 away per year in a pension.

DiStefano spoke to Fox & Friends Thursday morning about the opportunities available for teens and young adults who don't want to take on debt to go to college.

"We've been able to take in high school students that are juniors going into their senior year and give them 200 hours' worth of work at our main office in Albany," DiStefano explained. "They get some hands-on experience and there's opportunity for them to come on with us full-time after graduation."

"College isn't for everybody," DiStefano said. "With the rising cost of tuition, we can provide a great opportunity for those folks that may not, you know, the path to college may not be the best path for them."

Harrison & Burrowes works to build, maintain, and repair bridges. DiStefano said that it can be a challenge to find qualified workers, but that his company takes the apprenticeship program "very seriously."

"We’re taking it very seriously and doing all the things on our end to make a sustainable future," he said.

A good-paying job for non-college-graduates can save some people tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

The average tuition cost to attend a public four-year college or university in the United States was $9,400 in 2020-21, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Over four years, students are expected to pay an average of $37,600 for a bachelor's degree at a public institution. Tuition costs at private or for-profit schools were nearly double on average.

Many Americans take on loans to cover those costs. Of the class of 2019, 62% graduated with student debt, according to the most recent data available from the Institute for College Access & Success. Those students owe an average of $28,950. A total of 45 million Americans currently hold a collective $1.75 trillion in federal and private student loan debt, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

But for some, the benefits of a college degree may outweigh the costs. Americans with a high school diploma or GED made an average of $39,000 in 2020, while those who went to college and graduated with a bachelor's degree made $73,000 on average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The government has also set an expectation that some federal student loan debt may be canceled. President Joe Biden last month announced a plan to unilaterally forgive $10,000 of student loan debt for federal borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year. However, the plan was criticized by some who argue student loan forgiveness incentivizes colleges and universities to increase tuition rates and borrowers to take out higher loans to cover those costs.

Watch:

Mike Rowe: America will take 'another pie to the face' if Biden's Inflation Reduction Act doesn't reduce inflation



Former "Dirty Jobs" host Mike Rowe criticized the rhetoric used by Democrats to describe their multi-billion dollar climate spending and tax bill, dubbed the "Inflation Reduction Act," saying Americans will see past the bill title and judge it based on whether it improves the economy.

"Can we have bills that actually do what they say in their title?" Rowe asked on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday morning.

He continued, "Now, if the Inflation Reduction Act truly reduces inflation, then we can start with a conversation about the nuts and bolts of the bill. But we've come to the point where nothing actually means what it says. And that gets us into an emperor's new clothes kind of mentality, where it's not one kid in the crowd going, 'Hey, that guy's naked.' It's the whole country going, 'Wait. Again with this? Again with the name of a thing that doesn't seem to reflect the thing?' And so we got to peel back the layers and we have to look at it. And then we have to have the conversation: How does this impact the middle class?

"What the heck do I know? If it lives up to its name, it'll impact them in a positive way. If it doesn't, it's another pie in the face," Rowe said.

The Inflation Reduction Act has been lauded by Democrats as a historic investment in green energy to save the climate and in policies that will force the wealthy to "pay their fair share" in taxes and reduce the deficit to fight inflation. The bill imposes a 15% minimum tax on corporations with profits over $1 billion, spends about $80 billion to ramp up Internal Revenue Service enforcement, and spends more than $360 billion on tax credits and subsidies to boost the green energy industry.

However, some economists have warned that the Inflation Reduction Act will have a negligible impact on inflation. Analysis from the Tax Foundation estimates the bill will reduce long-run economic output by about 0.2% and eliminate 29,000 full-time jobs in the United States.

Fox News co-host Peter Doocy pointed out that while unemployment is at historically low levels, fewer Americans are participating in the economy now compared to before the pandemic, and people are still feeling squeezed by inflation.

"It's almost impossible to have a rational conversation about this because it just flies past people," Rowe lamented.

"Years ago, when I started Mike Rowe Works, the skills gap consisted of 2.3 million jobs. But the headlines every day were the number of people who were unemployed. That's what we were fixated on, 10 million people out of work. So it became impossible to talk about a few million open jobs. Today, you have 7.5 million open jobs and super-low unemployment," he said.

"And we still can't get it into our heads that the existence of all of that opportunity must mean something. It must say something about who we are as a people and what we're elevating in terms of work. And I'm afraid what it says is not really good."

Watch:

Mike Rowe says US gov't revoked permits to film 'Dirty Jobs' episode at last minute — allegedly over Rowe's 'personal politics'



Mike Rowe, beloved host of TV show "Dirty Jobs," said the federal government revoked permits to film an episode of his show at the last minute — allegedly over Rowe's "personal politics."

What are the details?

Rowe on Monday outlined the issue in detail on Facebook, saying the Government Services Administration "suddenly revoked our permit" as the agency "oversees the location" where the episode on boilermakers was to be filmed.

The host said "Dirty Jobs" was required to apply for permits "months ago," and after receiving them, "we were assured several times over the last few months that everything was still good to go."

Then suddenly they weren't.

Rowe said that "just two days before I was scheduled to arrive, we received a phone call from a woman at the GSA who informed us that our permits were being revoked. When we asked for an explanation, she said, 'security concerns.' When we asked her what kind of security concerns, she said she didn’t know. She only told us that the decision had come down from 'the very highest levels within the GSA.'"

The host said the surprising permit revocation was a "first."

"Over the last twenty years, Dirty Jobs has filmed in many sensitive environments under government control. We’ve received permits from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Seabees, Coast Guard, NASA, and The Army Corps of Engineers," he noted. "We’ve gotten permission to film inside the Capitol and a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. We even got a permit to film inside the National Security Agency! In all cases, we worked closely and in good faith with the government and scrupulously avoided any areas that were deemed sensitive or secure. Never once in twenty years has the government revoked a permit — much less at the last minute, and with no plausible explanation."

Rowe also wondered why the boilermaker employees were still working at the location in question a week after the permits were revoked "if the building is under some sort of security threat."

'Personal politics'

The host added that his production team also received a phone call from someone at the highest levels of the GSA who claimed the decision had "nothing to do with security, and everything to do with politics." The caller — apparently also a GSA higher-up — said someone in the agency “doesn’t like Mike Rowe’s personal politics" and deliberately set out to "string us along until the last possible second, for the express purpose of 'yanking my chain.'"

Rowe acknowledged it's "possible this person might be mistaken or lying. But I don’t think so. This individual sounded credible, and frankly, their explanation makes a lot more sense than some last minute 'security concern,' especially in these divided times."

Rowe added that his "personal politics are not a matter of public record, and Dirty Jobs has no political agenda whatsoever. I’ve never publicly endorsed a candidate, or encouraged any of the six million people on this page to vote one way or the other. Likewise, my foundation is aggressively non-partisan and provides scholarships for liberals and conservatives alike."

But then again, he said "not everybody is happy" with his TV show "How America Works" — likely because it airs on Fox Business: "These days that’s enough to upset certain people. For those people, where I appear matters far more than what I say. For those people, politics are the only thing they can see, no matter what they’re looking at. Of course, those same people seem to forget about the show I hosted on CNN for three years, or the countless appearances I’ve made on PBS, NPR, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, and thirty years of programming on Discovery — but whatever."

Rowe noted to whoever may have tried to frustrate him that it didn't work — however, the permit revocation did hurt production company members who "spent their time and money preparing for a shoot you encouraged them to prepare for. Dirty Jobs is a challenging show to produce, and my team works their collective ass off. You made their job a lot harder and wasted a lot of their time. You also hurt my film crew, who freelance for a living, and suddenly found themselves with a day off they didn’t anticipate, with no time to replace the lost work with another gig. And of course, you disappointed some boilermakers who work VERY hard to keep people like you cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Those men were looking forward to sharing their trade with America. You kept that from happening."

The Daily Wire said it reached out to the GSA for comment but didn't immediately receive a response.

Mike Rowe Just Utterly Emasculated An Internet Troll In The Nicest Way Possible

Add 'brutalizing shut-in NeverTrump beta male' to the list of Dirty Jobs worked by Mike Rowe. He just destroyed The Bulwark on Facebook — nicely, of course.

Mike Rowe Is Right: A Higher Minimum Wage Takes Away Stepping-Stone Jobs

'Dirty Jobs' and 'Six Degrees' host Mike Rowe is correct about the negative economic and social effects of the minimum wage.

Mike Rowe exposes the student debt cancellation scam



In another articulate and insightful Facebook post, Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" fame explained why he doesn't support student loan forgiveness and why he pities those who were "possibly sold a bill of goods" by going into debt for a four-year college degree.

"Lots of people on this page have asked me to comment on the various proposals to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt. Many it seems, suspect that I'll be supportive of these efforts, since I've written at length about the outrageous rise of college tuition, and the scandalous ways in which hundreds of thousands of students have been conned into borrowing ridiculous sums of money to purchase degrees that never lead to an actual job," Rowe wrote. "Well, for the record, I do not support student loan forgiveness."

Democratic politicians such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have recently championed the idea of canceling up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt for each individual with government loans. Rowe argues that such a policy is fundamentally unfair, "especially to the millions of Americans who have paid their college debts, and sacrificed much to do so." He also says that American colleges and universities will be incentivized to increase their already skyrocketing tuition rates because now the government is sending a signal that it will pay off student loan bills even if students can't.

"Tuition will never come back to earth, if we bail out those who borrowed more than they could repay," Rowe wrote.

He cited an article by National Review's Kevin Williamson that pointed out how canceling student debt is a boon to the wealthiest and most privileged Americans, not to the poorest.

"The majority of student debt is held by relatively high-income people, poor people mostly are not college graduates, and those who attended college but did not graduate hold relatively little college-loan debt, etc. As the New York Times puts it, 'Debt relief overall would disproportionately benefit middle- to upper-class college graduates.' Which ones? 'Especially those who attended elite and expensive institutions, and people with lucrative professional credentials like law and medical degrees,'" Williamson wrote.

Rowe concluded by expressing sympathy for those struggling with student loan debt.

"You were quite possibly sold a bill of goods," he wrote. "You were very likely pressured by your friends, your parents, or your guidance counselor, to attend the 'right' school. You were perhaps a victim of this persistent, pernicious, and preposterous push to peddle a four-year degree to every person with a pulse, and for that, you have my sympathy."

"But that's not my fault. Nor is it the fault of the American people," he added. "The fault belongs to you, and so does the debt."

That's why, Rowe explains, he has worked for more than a decade to encourage people to pursue alternate career paths to obtaining a four-year college degree and why his foundation, Mike Rowe Works, funds work-ethic scholarships to help people get training for skilled jobs.

"I don't want to see more people borrow money they can't afford to pay back," Rowe wrote. "But nor do I wish to pay it back for you. I will however, encourage you to apply for a work-ethic scholarship, and wish you every success in the future."