Gather round.

@NYGovCuomo recently thanked @Blackstone, the financial firm, for a $10 million donation to medical workers.

Blackstone was, at that moment, cutting the pay of medical workers.

Tonight we bust the scam of "giving" to lubricate taking.

This is a game at least as old as the papal indulgence.

But what is so brazen in this case is that @blackstone is literally screwing the very people it is allegedly helping, at the very same time. It's almost brilliant. Malevolently brilliant.

In this video -- which I insisted that we put online and free to all -- we break down how @Blackstone, like other PE firms, has acquired a medical staffing company, which supplies doctors and nurses to hospitals and urgent care.

In normal times, Blackstone and KKR and other firms that own these staffing companies have been linked to awful practices that you've probably heard about. Most famously, surprise billing.

Which is like a surprise party but the opposite of one.

Now, last time you got a colonscopy, you may have had no idea it was actually Wall Street up your ass. But it's true.

Well, here is something even wilder.

As this plague gathered steam, some private-equity-owned staffing companies decided -- this is real what I'm about to say -- to cut back the pay of doctors and nurses, including those working on the front lines.

That's right. Pay them less.

We reached out to dozens and dozens of workers at TeamHealth and Envision and other companies. Most were afraid they'd be fired for even talking to us. One sent me documents. We also had the excellent reporting of @iarnsdorf at @propublica in hand.

The bottom line: Blackstone and KKR and Onex and other firms that own these medical staffing companies are profiting, right now, from cuts being imposed on doctors and nurses.

And then what happens?

THEY GIVE BACK. ALWAYS THE GIVING.

So they donate to New York's fund.

And what happens then?

Cuomo gives the giver the gift for which the giver gives: a shout-out.

And if you're shafting medical workers at this moment, the shout-out is valuable.

It is, in fact, more valuable than $10 million. The giving is the lubricant in the machinery of continued taking. No giving, no political space to take. At some point, without the giving, even the governor is going to come for you. But you give back a little, and: poof!

At the moment he was on TV thanking Blackstone, @NYGovCuomo should have been announcing an investigation into Blackstone.

While journalists were chronicling the gift, they should have been digging into surprise billing.

Those roads not taken were worth more than $10 million.

Let me break it down this way.

@Blackstone's gift to New York was like those flowers your spouse bought you after she slept with your best friend, while letting him wear your socks.

Your socks.

The flowers weren't atonement. They were a way to keep having the affair.

Except in this case, the people being screwed are us. All of us. And doctors and nurses fighting Covid especially.

And @NYGovCuomo should be ashamed of himself for turning a villain into a hero for a cheap donation.

When @Blackstone and firms like it operate this way, giving back becomes the wingman of taking too much. Doing good becomes the wingman of doing harm. Making a difference becomes the wingman of making a killing. And "changing the world" becomes the wingman of keeping it the same.

They are screwing medical workers by giving back to them. It is the reductio ad absurdum of an age of record-breaking philanthropy juxtaposed with historic inequality. See through it.

Giving is the lubricant of taking. It's time to wake up to who's being screwed.

Please watch and share.