04-17-25 - *FULL SHOW* What's Next for Abrego Garcia; CO Budget; Harvard vs Trump

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just give me a minute, because this is semi professional
radio here, just to finish the thing that I'm doing.
So we have this thing where you can open what's
called a loosely unofficially called a trouble ticket. So I'm
just finishing this right now, So just stay with me
for a second. KOA studio and control room are hot
exclamation point broadcasting right now with studio door open, as

(00:27):
room is around eighty degrees, Okay, So then I can
hit ad request and then sometime in the middle of
next month somebody will we'll come and fix this, all right,
So there we go. If you hear any if you
hear any funny sounds during the show, we will just

(00:49):
blame that on the studio door being open because it's
eighty degrees in here, even though the thermostat is set
to seventy one and a half. So many things to
talk about today. Uh, where do I want to start?
Let me I'm not I'm not actually sure I want
to share this story with you because it's gonna make
me look really bad, but I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
I'm gonna. I'm gonna do it anyway, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
So the vehicle that I'm driving right now I haven't
driven very much, not as familiar with the dash layout
as I might be with a vehicle that i'd driven
for longer. And as soon as I say this next part,
you're gonna know where the story is going. And the
gasoline engage is not really where I'm used to seeing

(01:35):
gasoline engage, and it's not very prominent, and the vehicle
doesn't beep at least not so that I can notice
when we get low on gas.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
So I went to meet a guy yesterday.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
To buy some stuff off of that I that I
saw on Facebook marketplace, including if you are a nerd,
you are welcome to go look up Sendcore sn Core.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
LC one zero two, Go look it up.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Even if you're not a nerd, Sendcore LC one zero
two with no space between the LC and the one
zero two, just go look it up. I went to
buy one of those I'm not even gonna tell you
what it is. You can look it up or not.
I don't care. And also a B and K Precision
DC power supply. So I went to buy these things,

(02:26):
and then I'm driving home on I twenty five at
about four pm when I twenty five is a little
bit busy and the car starts sputtering, and I'm like,
uh oh, and I look at the gas at the
gauge and look around, like sure enough, there's a little
low gas indicator.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
And I got off to the side.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
I got off of I twenty five, not not off
the highway, but out of the traffic lanes, got over
onto I guess you'd call it the shoulder on the
left side though, on the left side, and it's it's
basically rush hour, and I'm out of gas, but I'm
I'm out of traffic. I'm out of traffic, so that's good.
It's a tight shoulder. There's probably maybe a foot fourteen

(03:11):
inches maybe between the right side of my car and
the yellow line marking.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
The beginning of the lanes of traffic.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
So I'm sitting there, you know, like figuratively, with my
butt hanging out right, just in rush hour with car.
The good news, in a way is that it was
rush hour, right. The downside is lots of cars are
driving by me, and if anybody's not paying attention, they
could easily hit me. The upside is because there's so
many cars that are going slower than they otherwise might be,

(03:42):
and I was trying to decide whether to get out
of my vehicle or not.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
So I then I did. Then I did three things.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
I called my insurance company that has roadside support, and
I went through the process with them, and they said,
all right, well keep you posted by tech message going forward.
So then the next text message I get says, you
know someone's on their way and like great estimated time
of arrival ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Not great.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
So then I called the state Police and they said, well,
normally we might be able to help you directly, but
we can't because you're in Denver and it's out of
our jurisdiction.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
It's only Denver.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
But we can contact c DOT for you and see
if maybe their courtesy patrol could come to you. I'm like, okay,
please do that, Please contact them, Thank you, and so
and then and then I contacted Then then state Patrol
said you should contact Denver police. So I contacted Denver

(04:52):
police as well, and Denver Police said we'll send somebody.
I wasn't quite sure who they were talking about to you.
So at that point then I had three people heading
my way and as far as I'm concerned, like I'm
just sitting there in kind of a risky position. It's
probably not as risky as actually being in a lane

(05:12):
of traffic, but I'm only a foot away from traffic,
and you know people. I mean, just yesterday we had
the conversation on the show about distracted driving, and so
many people are doing.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Distracted driving these days.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
I can't be the only person who does wordle while
I'm driving. There's got to be a lot of other people.
And that's not actually true. I don't do wordle while
I'm driving, but I'm not saying I never drive distracted.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
I'm not a saint when it comes to that.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
But it also means I know lots of other people are,
and so I'm a little nervous and I just want
whoever can get there first. So after about half an
hour or so, I see sort of a large pickup
pull up.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Behind me, and I can tell.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
By looking carefully at what's going on that it's the
it's the ce Dot Courtesy Patrol. And a dude got out. Yeah,
his name's Tyler, I'm guessing twenty five year old African
American dude, big dude, and boy, he was so friendly,

(06:19):
so helpful, had maybe a two gallon container of gas,
and I was a little nervous because the dude came
over and was standing next to my car, and the
gas tank on this vehicle is on the right side,
so he was basically like his butt, let's say, was
into the lane of traffic. And I kept saying to him, dude,
I'm worried about you.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Can you move?

Speaker 1 (06:40):
He said, don't worry. I got my head on a swivel,
but he really didn't. First of all, I didn't see
any swivels, and second of all, he was kind of.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Looking the other way.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
He wasn't looking at the traffic that was coming at him,
and I was pretty nervous. He put a gallon ish
gallon and half a gas in my vehicle. I actually
actually tried to give him twenty bucks and he refused
to take it. And he said, you know what you
can do for me if you want to do something

(07:08):
for me, he said, text in a positive review, Shannon,
how do you know this? Shannon is anticipating everything I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
How do you know?

Speaker 1 (07:14):
How did you know when I said that I was
going to give him a tip? You shook your head?
How did you know he wouldn't take it?

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Kind of in the strata of life where I live.
I encounter things like that often. Have you ever needed
their help? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, Well Shannon drives and like more than anybody because
he handles almost all of the remotes, not just for KOA,
like for everybody in this building. So if there's a
KBCO remote or a Willie b remote, right, you know,
Shannon's outwere And then all the stuff at Boulder with
all this, you know, the coaches interviews and all that.
So Shannon's on the road all the time.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
We'll be together this weekend. You and Code, well, you
and I tomorrow? Oh, you and I tomorrow?

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, yeah, you and I and Mandy Tomorrow we're gonna
be broadcasting from Winter Park from the house that people
can win in the Children's hospital, mighty millions, raffle. You
should go buy your tickets at mightymillions dot com. I
bought mine already, but that's where we're going to be
broadcasting from.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
And then so that he saved me, I got the
car started. I then called everybody else and waved them
off so that you know, they didn't come and find
it empty. Whatever. So I waved everybody else off, but
a big shout if any of you knows Tyler, And
again I wouldn't mention Tyler's race. But the reason that

(08:30):
I'm mentioning that Tyler is a pretty good sized black dude.
The reason I'm mentioning it is I don't know his
last name right, and there might be more than one Tyler.
So if any of you is involved with the c
DOT Courtesy Patrol and you know Tyler, please tell him.
I said a huge thank you for saving my day yesterday,

(08:52):
and I have never run out of gas before in
my life, and I felt like a bit of a moron.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
I still feel like a bit of a moron. But
we're all.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Friends, so I shared the story with you. But I
got a couple of listener responses on that last topic,
and I'm just gonna do this quickly.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
So first, you know.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
One listener says that Colorado State Patrol has jurisdiction on
any part of I twenty five, and then another listener
says State Patrol only has jurisdiction on state highways. And
this may sound I'm just gonna read the text, don't
attribute it to me. This is just what a listener says.
And this listener maybe is in law enforcement, listener says,

(09:30):
other cops call troopers, troopers or state patrol members triple
A with a gun.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
They might be triple A with a gun.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
But I see them out and about like giving tickets,
which triple A doesn't normally do. And I'm pretty sure
I've seen state patrol giving speeding tickets and such on
interstate highways.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Am Am, I wrong?

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Does anybody know for sure where Colorado State Patrol has
your stiction and ability to do that kind of that
kind of thing. So the other thing that I want
to mention, A leather listener said, Ross, welcome to the
I'm Out of Gas Club. It is a meritorious organization
and its members are to be saluted as collective bone heads.

(10:17):
Welcome to the club, Channon just saluted. I would just
like to say to that, I appreciate the offer of membership.
I don't know if it's just an offer, right. I
don't know if you are automatically enrolled into it, right
like your company's four oh one k, and maybe you

(10:39):
can't even opt out.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
The thing is, as president of the Bad Analogy Club,
I don't know that I have time for the I'm
Out of Gas Club, as well, But I guess, I
guess I'll take it. I'm a bonehead. Let me share
this story with you. Gosh, I have so many things
I'm not going to get to today. Oh wait, before

(11:02):
I do this, if you're watching the stock markets today,
you may seem something see something rather interesting going on.
The Dow Jones is down four hundred and fifty points,
which is a little less than a percent, eight tenths
of a percent or something like that. But the S
and P five hundred is up almost half a percent, right,

(11:25):
and the Russell two thousand is up point four of
a percent, and the Nasdaq is having an okay day
as well. Actually, no, the NASDAK is. NASDAK is maybe
around flat. But in any case, you don't often see
the Dow down big and the S and P up
by some decent amount. Right, you can see the Dow

(11:48):
down a little and the S and P up a little.
But I wanted to mention this to you in case
you're wondering why the Dow Jones industrial average is down
so much and everything else is kind of flat or
up a little bit. And the reason let's just actually
let's nerd out for a second and I'll get to
the Google thing at some point. The Dow Jones Industrial

(12:08):
Average is made up of only thirty stocks, and unlike
the S and P and the Nasdaq they are they
are equally weighted, so it doesn't matter what the actual
value of the company is, Whereas in the S and
P five hundred, if a company is worth a trillion
dollars like Apple, whatever Apple's worth these days, but I

(12:30):
think it's north of a trillion. If a company is
worth a trillion dollars, which is a thousand billion, if
you can imagine such a thing, so then a one
percent move in that stock would move the S and
P five hundred by a thousand times as much as

(12:53):
a move in a one billion dollar company in the
S and P five hundred would move it. I don't
think there are any companies in the SNP that are
worth as little as a billion. But my point is
the S and P measures the S and P measures
the change in the actual value of the stocks in
the index.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (13:14):
So if a stock is ten times bigger than another stock,
and that definitely occurs in the S and P, then
if the bigger one moves by one percent, it'll cause
the s and P to move by ten times as
much as if the smaller one that's a tenth to
size move by one percent.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Does that make sense, Jennon or I just confusing? That's sensible.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
The Dow Jones does not work like that, right, The
Dow Jones does not work like that.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
It doesn't matter the total value of the company.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
It doesn't even matter the price per share of the company.
And in that sense, it's kind of an old school
archaic index. But imagine that you had in the Dow
a trillion dollar company that trades at one hundred dollars
per share, and one hundred billion dollar company so worth
a tenth as much that trades also what one hundred

(14:02):
dollars a share? Here, there are all kinds of permutations
you can put on this. If either stock moves a dollar,
the Dow will move just as much. Right, a dollar
or an eighth of a dollar or whatever. In any
Dow stock is worth the same amount in the index,
whether it's a ten dollars stock, one hundred dollars stock,

(14:22):
or one thousand dollars stock per share, or whether it's
a ten billion dollar company, one hundred billion dollar company,
or a trillion dollar company, So it's a very weird
index like that. Anyway, the reason that DOO is getting
destroyed today is basically one company, United Healthcare, the biggest
health insurance company in America, is down somewhere between twenty

(14:44):
and twenty five percent today on bad earnings and and
bad forecast for future earnings. It's getting absolutely destroyed. That's
why the Dow is down so much more than anything else.
All Right, that's your finance lesson for the day. I
hope you found it interesting. We'll be so please to
welcome back to the show. Josh Blackman. Josh has been

(15:04):
on the show a few times in the past, and
he's just one of my go to guys for constitutional law.
Josh is a professor of law and Centennial Chair of
Constitutional Law at the South Texas College of Law. Oh okay,
hang on, hang on, this is not working right. Let
me try that. Let's try that one more time, all right,

(15:27):
and let's try that again. You got me now, Josh?
Still no, You're I mute? I can't okay, can you
hear me now? Are we good?

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Shannon? Josh? Can you hear me?

Speaker 1 (15:42):
No?

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Still no, I'm I don't know what's going on?

Speaker 1 (15:46):
There, all right, Yes, okay, got me now, all right,
all right, that's the joys of live radio, folks.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
All right.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
So, as I said, Josh Blackman teaches law and constitutional
law at the South Texas College of Law in Houston
and just one of my go to sources for understanding
constitutional law on things that are that are going on
in that area. And as I am kind of a
constitutional law nerd even though I'm not a lawyer, I
really love these conversations. And there's a lot going on

(16:14):
right now within the Trump administration, things that you can
like or not like the policy. But I'm not really
looking to talk policy so much these days as I
am about the legalities of the policies, because whether I
whether or not I like a policy isn't the only

(16:35):
thing that is a factor for me in terms of
whether I support it. Right, if there's if there's an
outcome that I prefer, but you have to do something
illegal to get there, then I won't support it. Not
just because I'm you know, extra prim and proper about
obeying the law, although probably one should be, but also

(16:56):
because if you allow a politician to break the law
to get to an outcome that you like, then four
years later or eight years later, a politician is going
to break the law and get to an outcome that
you don't like, and what are you going to say
against it? When you said, well my guy could break
the law, just not your guy, that's not going to
go over very well. All right, So Josh, welcome back

(17:17):
to KOA. It's good to have you here.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
I want to dig in with.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
You a little bit on this whole kill mar Abrago
Garcia thing. And it's interesting in that since I booked
you on the show, the story is, it changes, and
it changes and it changes, and it just keeps evolving.
So before I ask you a specific question, why don't
you like if you were teaching a class where you

(17:43):
were going to talk about this thing, you were going
to set it up first and then ask questions of
your students. Set it up for us. What do we
need to know about the situation right now? How do
you frame it?

Speaker 3 (17:56):
So this is an unusual case. So we had a
number of aliens who were removed to this El Salvadorian prison,
most of them Trump has said should have been removed.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Right.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
There were members of MS thirteen, members of Trenderragua's mother
or some other gang. The government has conceded that Garcia
should not have been removed. There was a court order
saying do not remove him because he faces persecution in
his home country, Hill Salvador. But once he was removed,
now Trump says we can't get him back because he's

(18:30):
in the custody of the Salvadorian government, and the president
of El Salvador, Bukeli, said, we're not gonna give him
back now, of course, you know, and I know that
Trump asked him he would, but Trump's not gonna make
the request. What's weird is that a judge in Maryland
basically ordered Trump to bring him home, and the government said,
you are a judge, you cannot dictate foreign policy. This

(18:54):
case goes the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court basically says.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Well, words can't require or.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Trump to do this, but Trump should facilitate. That's where
these facilitate the return of Garcia. Now Trump has said,
all right, We've done everything we can. We can't do
anything else, and that's it.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
He stuck there.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
So this is a unusual case, and he gets a
separate Number one should have been removed and number two
to the courts, of the power to dictate foreign policy
to the executive Those are these two sort of issues
that collide in this case.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Okay, let's talk about the second one first. So I
don't know if you happen to read the article by
my friend Andy McCarthy on this question of control of
the prisoner. What Andy basically argues is and this is
I guess a legal term, but a Bailey Baylor and
Bailee something like that.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
I'm sure you know these terms. I don't.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
And what Andy argues and I would like to know
whether you agree or disagree.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
And in either case, why is that?

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Because the US is paying L. Salvador to hold these people.
In effect, Al Salvador is functioning as an arm of
the American government in this situation, and they must do
whatever we tell them to do with the prisoners. And
that the Trump administrations claim that they can't control it,

(20:17):
and the L. Salvadorian government decides is wrong. What's your take?

Speaker 3 (20:22):
So I am hesitant to the scrip Andy, he knows
this stuff quite well. I'll just mix a slightly related point,
even assuming that's correct, right, even assuming that this foreign
country is basically a contractor fueld the US government, there's
still an aspect of foreign policy that's not being discussed.

(20:42):
When the president engages in diplomacy, he's considered the sole
organ the one voice of the United States government. There
are many many factors that go into that. And perhaps, yes,
they could say please release this alien, but that might
affect other aspects of American foreign policy, which at courts
are not privy to. I think what the Supreme Court
based we said in that case is the lower courts

(21:04):
are not considering how this affects international relations. Now. To
be sure, Trump is trying to push envelope. He wants
to push this issue, but I'm not sure this is
the same thing as saying that you know that that
Trump contracts with some private contractor the whole prisoners. I
think when there's a foreign government involved than avacs are
just a little bit different. Right, if there was a contractor,

(21:24):
Trump could actually order them to do it. If it's
a foreign president, I don't know that the same leverage exists.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
So the lower court ordered the Trump administration to effectuate
in facilitate the return of mister Abrago Garcia. The Supreme
Court took out the word effectuate and just said facilitate.
And this gets kind of deep in the weeds here,
but I think probably most of my listeners understand that

(21:53):
the Supreme Court is very very careful how they choose
their words.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
So what does that word mean and what does it
not mean? Right?

Speaker 3 (22:00):
So that's that's the one hundred million dollar question, right,
What does facilitate mean? The way I understood it is
that the government must take whatever steps it can domestically
to permit the return of Garcia. I think they can,
you know, make the request. They can arrange transportation from

(22:21):
El Salvador back to the United States, they can bryor
whatever transports are needed within El Salvador from the prison.
What I don't think they can do is issue in
order to Buketli saying you must release him again, I think,
and I appreciate your point a few minutes ago. Whatever
you do, now, imagine what happens in four years. I mean,

(22:42):
you know, imagine in fort years for pressing Kamala Harris
or Tim Waltz anyone else, and you know, a court
issues in order sing that you must you know, negotiate
with some foreign power over some matter that's within your discretion.
It gets a little bit dicey, and so there's an
expression bad case to make law. This is a very
bad case, and the centric's a really really really bad law.

(23:05):
And whatever sympathy you have, Regarcie, I think has to
be tempered by the source of presence are being set
on a day by day basis.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
My gut instinct on this, and this is not talking
as a wanna be lawyer, just talking as a citizen.
My gut instinct is that the Trump administration overreached and did.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Something they probably shouldn't have done with the.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Not necessarily deporting him, but deporting him to El salvad
Or in particular. And the judges, who are not the
Supreme Court but the lower courts, are also overreaching in
their response to the Trump administration.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
That's kind of my gut feel on it. You are correct.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
Trump has a bad tendency to make judges of react,
and in turning, the judges overreact against Trump.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
It's this terrible vicious cycle.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
And in this process, so much is being done so quickly.
I mean, just in the apps. Would you ever imagine
that a federal judge would tell the present to turn
out a military plane? That would be fathomable but it
happened like a couple weeks into the administration. So Trump, yes, overreaches,
tried to set new precedents, and the courts in turn
reach even further. The latest incident is that the judge

(24:17):
in DC, Judge Boseburg, wants to see hold the entire
Trump administration and contempt and it's appoint a special prosecutor
if there any criminal charges are appropriate, so you might,
you know, try to have the Attorney General dieted. Right,
we are uncharted waters and no pun intended. We are
really going out where we've both never gone before.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
We're talking with Josh Blackman, professor of law at South
Texas College of Law in Houston. So the Boseburg thing
is about he ordered the administration not to deport a
bunch of people, and it wasn't so much that they
weren't deportable, but his take was they hadn't gotten the
due process yet that they needed to be deported. And
then there's this fight about well was the plane already

(24:57):
in the air and the judge seems to think that
the Trump administration defied.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
His order to keep those people here for now.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
And what I feel like we're drifting toward Josh, is
that famous Andrew Jackson thing.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
About John Marshall.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
Right, Justice Marshall has made his ruling, now let him
enforce it, and I think that would be kind of
bad for everybody.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
So just I'll give you guys a update that never
actually happened. It's this common myth that never happened. John
Marshall never said it. And the reason why John Marshall
never said is that Andrew I'm sorry that Andrew.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Jackson never said it. Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
I didn't say it because John Marshall never actually ordered
issue an order.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Against the government. Oh my gosh, I love it.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
Actually, Yeah, the case called Workshy Service is Georgia. Those
case against Georgia, not the US government, So the US
was a party. There's nothing for Jackson to ignore.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
But it's still a great concept, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
It really is. I think the better example is actually
President Lincoln. People don't know this, so you've never heard
the dread Scott decision. Right, dred Scott said that people
of African descent con nephew citizens. Okay, what did Lincoln do?
He issued passports to black citizens. He took an action
that was in consistent with dread Scott. Now what was

(26:16):
his argue as well, dred Scott by Sanford? The US
government wasn't a party to the case. I'm not bound
by it.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
So President done that before.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
What's a little bit different here is now there's an
order running directly against Trump. I think, look, we went
through this with Muller. Can you indict the president? I
think we're have a special prosecute and investigate Trump the
next four years We're gonna basically Muller all over again.
It's like nothing changed.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
Donald Trump has suggested, although I suspect he may be
trolling people, but it's hard to tell these days, that
he wouldn't mind with some of our very worst criminals,
American citizen criminals, sending them to El Salvador or somewhere
else to serve prison time. Now, of course, the first

(27:01):
thought into my head was, what do we have a
big problem with prisoners escaping from our prisons here that
somehow we need to send them somewhere else. But in
any case, my question for you is do you think
that would be legal? No?

Speaker 3 (27:15):
I mean again, I think Trump trolls quite a bit,
but then sometimes his trolls become real. I think there's
a huge problem deporting in American citizens too.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Feign first.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
Now, the other issue is denaturalization, which I think has
to be viewed in this context. I think Trump actually
wants to denaturalize certain people who obtain immigration staff through
fraud and then deport them to these prisons. Right, that's
actually a slightly different issue. You're no longer a citizen,
and there's actually a statute that says if you obtain
your citizenship by fraud, you can denaturalize. So you know,

(27:50):
if you lie on your paperwork, you get false information,
you know, sham marriages or lodge and ways you get citizenship.
So again, it's hard to separate the trolls from the
non trolls. But I think just straight up sending US
citizen it's a foreign prisons.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Is not going to fly.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Okay, Later for listeners, I'm going to play some audio.
I'm not going to take Josh's time with it now,
But yesterday Press Secretary Caroline Levitt gave a press conference,
the second half of which was an absolutely heartrending comments
by the mother of Rachel mourn talking about how an
illegal alien, not the one we're talking about today, but

(28:26):
brutally raped and murdered and just savaged her daughter.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
It was really moving.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
In fact, the White House Press Court in the room
afterwards was they were almost speechless and they were saying
to her you could hear when the microphone was still on,
like We're so sorry for your loss.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
They weren't even asking questions. It was amazing.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
But before that, Josh Caroline Levitt dumped an entire fifty
five gallon bucket of derogatory information on the head of
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, right, this and that information where they
think he's a gang member, with a little more evidence
than they gave before, not proof, more circumstantial evidence than
the game before. Two different filings with state or local

(29:05):
police in the state of Maryland where his I guess
common law wife I don't know that they're married, filed
for orders of protection against him, and just some other
stuff that was again almost evidence, but it was an
immense amount of stuff.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
That sure does it shor did a lot to diminish.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
Let's say, the way the media is trying to talk
about Abrago Garcia, as you know, a father from Maryland.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
So here's my legal question for you.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
I suspect that the Trump administration didn't know any of
that when they deported him. I suspect somebody went to
try to find bad information about him so they could
cover their collective asses.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Since they sent him to El Salvador.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Does it matter if they knew that already or if
they found it later when it comes as to how
a judge would rule as to whether the administration really
does need to bring him back.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
Uh, you're probably right about this. I doubt they knew
any of this. I think when they removed him it
wasn't because of any domestic situation. It was because they
thought he was a member of a gang. Maybe asked
the follow up question doesn't matter. That might matter one
day if he's ever returned to the United States soil
and they can see that his removal was unlawful. But

(30:29):
until his return to a soil, I know there's much
that can be done right again. This is sort of
this underlying issue.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
There was a wrong.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
The government's basically said there was a wrong, and people
might not like to hear this, but there's not always
a remedy for wrong. In other words, people look to
the courts fix any problem in the world. I don't
think that's a correct view of the world. Courts have
limited power and jurisdiction. Sometimes the government does stuff that's
wrong and the courts are powerless to help this. Of

(30:59):
courts think they have the power, but I think there's
there's an aspect of humility here that has to be
said aloud. Not every wrong can be remedied by a court.
I think that's a great place to leave it.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Josh Blackman is Professor of Law and Centennial Chair of
Constitutional Law at the South Texas College of Law in Houston.
Always loved talking to you, Josh. Thanks for making time
for us. Thank you, Sar, talk soon, all right, you
got it?

Speaker 4 (31:24):
Well, how about how about that for you know, just
a concept, right, Not everything can be can be solved
by a court, not every governmental Not every wrong committed
by government can be solved, even by a court telling
the part of government that did it wrong to fix it.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
That's very very interesting, very interesting. All right?

Speaker 1 (31:46):
What do I want to Oh, I know what I
wanted to do. I wanted to tell you about this,
this Google ruling this morning. So let me find I
had a Reuter's article.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, here it is.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
So this this just came out like an hour or
ago or so, and I'll share the Reuters headline, but
this is all over the place, and I'll note Google,
which called alphabet. Now the stock is down a bit.
It's not down massively, it's down a percent and a
half or something. US judge finds Google holds illegal online

(32:20):
ad tech monopolies. Now, this is a lawsuit that actually
Colorado's Attorney General, Phil Wiser jumped in on this one,
suing Google over all this stuff. And I mean the
federal government brought it and some states joined in, and
it kind of bipartisan, but I think mostly Democrats and
certainly Colorado did.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Now let me just share this with you.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Google illegally dominated two markets for online advertising technology, a
federal judge said today, dealing another blow to the tech titan.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
In an anti trust case.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Brought by the US US District judge Leoni Brinkema and
Alexandria Virginia ruled that Google unlawfully monopolized markets for publisher
and servers and the market for ad exchanges, which sit
between buyers and sellers.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Antitrust enforcers failed to show.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
The company had a monopoly in advertiser ad networks.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
She wrote.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
The ruling could allow prosecutors to argue for a breakup
of Google's advertising products. The US Department of Justice has
said that Google should have to sell off at least
its Google Ad Manager, which includes the company's publisher ad server,
and its ad exchange. Google will now face the possibility

(33:41):
of two different US course ordering it to sell assets
or change its business practices. A judge in Washington will
hold a trial next week on DOJ's request to make
Google sell its Chrome browser and take other measures to
end its dominance in online search. Google has previous explored
selling off its ad Exchange to appeal European anti trust regulators,

(34:04):
Reuters reported last year. So anyway, there's a lot more
obviously as an enormous business story. We will see how
it plays out. But I will I will add one
last more macro comment here. So this was brought by
the Biden administration, just Justice Apartment, and you might think

(34:24):
that there would be a big change when you get
to the Trump administration, but there isn't.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
There isn't.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
So the Trump administration generally has no love for Google
or any big tech companies because they think all these
companies remember Google owns YouTube and YouTube censored. You know,
all the COVID stuff that turned out to be correct,
and and all the you know pro trumps are like Google,
YouTube was terrible. Everybody talks about Facebook and Twitter, but

(34:53):
YouTube was just as bad. And they're owned by Google,
So there's no love for Google in this administration. And
then on the Federal Trade Commission side, even though they're
probably a little bit better on antitrust than the Biden
people were, probably not when it comes to big tech.
So I do not think you or big tech should
assume that they're gonna get nicer or easier treatment from

(35:16):
the Trump administration's DOJ NFTC.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Then they got under Biden.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Joined in studio by DJ Summers, who's director of Communications
and Research Operations at the Common Sense Institute, where I
have the privilege of being this year's Mike A. Loprino
Free Enterprise Fellow. Quite a privilege for me.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Dj. It's good to see you in studio here. Thanks
for being here.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Hey, it's a privilege to be here, and it's a
privilege to have you working with us. So the light
on both ends, you know what, Let's do one thing
very quickly and then we'll do the big topic. Just
mention briefly what you've got going on this afternoon in Aurora. Oh,
this afternoon is going to be quite an event. We
are holding a press conference to release the findings of
our most recent homelessness reports. This is with our homelessness fellow,

(35:58):
Dustin Zevonik and Mayor Mike Kaufman from Aurora. We're going
to be holding that at the site of the Aurora
Regional Navigation Campus up on fortieth Avenue in Aurora. That
starts at three point thirty. It's going to be a
very good event. We're going to go over the findings
of our most recent study. Dust and Mayor Kaufman are

(36:20):
going to say a few words. Should be a good turnout.
Give us if you can one highlight one finding from
the study. One finding from the study. Well, if I
can preview this just a little bit for it, just briefly,
because we're only gonna have about five more minutes talk
about this other thing. Between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four,
Colorado's homelessness rate grew at one of the fastest in

(36:44):
the nation. And there's a lot of smaller items in
there about municipal and localities and how they've grown, and
there's a lot of difference between some of them here
in the Denver metro and her there South. There's a
lot of difference in a proach and how those approaches
have worked. All right, so over at common Sense Institute

(37:06):
US dot org.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
And this is all, by the way, it's all up
on my blog.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
So you can just go to Rosskominsky dot com and
find this all in my guest section in case you
don't remember any of the links. You just published a report,
the budget forecast one point two billion dollars could very
well be the tip of the iceberg. That one point
two billion relates to what we were told over and
over that the budgeteers for the state needed to find
in terms of savings in order to balance the budget.

(37:33):
And then I've heard anecdotally and then this is what
you're going to get into here that next year could
be a lot more than that.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Next year could be a lot more than that.

Speaker 5 (37:41):
Honestly, what we're looking at here is maybe too rosy
of a picture that got painted by the Joint Budget Committee.
You know, they make these they make these predictions based
on a certain set of scenarios. When my economists look
into it, they actually found that it might not be
the case. We might be going through a little bit

(38:03):
worse economic scenarios than originally planned by that Joint Budget Committee.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
You take some of that into consideration.

Speaker 5 (38:10):
We're looking at orders of magnitude greater budget gaps down
the line.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
If the revenue to the state is limited by TABOR,
and if we reached the limit, then why wouldn't they
have known what the maximum was that they were allowed
to spend or they say in there, we're not going
to reach the Tabor limit this year.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
How does the math work?

Speaker 5 (38:31):
The math works there because TABOR has some flexibility. You know,
they're able to generate fees in excess of the Tabor limits.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
You know, that's some previous research that we came out with.

Speaker 5 (38:45):
There's a lot of money that the state is able
to generate through TABOR exempt fees, and those don't need
to go to the ballots as per Tabor restrictions. You know,
Taber requires that any new tax goes to the ballot
that voters approve it.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Not so with fees.

Speaker 5 (39:05):
So the state is able to generate more revenue in
excess of that Taber cap.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
I see in the summary of your report here, and
this is what really just galls me, not about your report,
but about our government. Over the period twenty ten to
twenty twenty five, populate in Colorado, population is up nineteen percent.
Consumer inflation over that period is up forty eight percent,

(39:33):
but general fund spending is up one hundred and thirty
four percent.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, we don't have a revenue problem.

Speaker 5 (39:39):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's a real feature of this
report that we've come out to a lot of people
want to paint this as a revenue issue.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
They want to paint it as we just don't have
enough money coming in.

Speaker 5 (39:51):
Taber is you know, in this narrative a big part
of that rationale, that's a big part of the reasoning
there that taper just gets the way of getting new
money in the door. But there's a serious money outflow
issue that has gone on as well. Like you said,
your general fund spending has more than doubled since twenty ten.

(40:14):
It's more than doubled, and that isn't consistent with what's
happened with inflation and with population. You look into certain
subcategories of that spending and it has tripled, even quadrupled.
Are big three spending areas healthcare higher ed They far
outpaced population and inflation. Healthcare spending more than quadrupled from

(40:38):
general fund spending since since twenty ten. A lot of
that's just Medicaid cost Higher education increased two hundred eighty
eight percent from general funds, more than doubled from all sources. So,
you know, when we talk about this as being just
a revenue problem and also kind of fails to address
that we've been just spending more and more and more.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
I think it's not a revenue problem at all. It's
just a spending problem. When Obamacare happened, a bunch of
states took advantage of that to massively expand Medicaid, and now.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Those chickens are coming home to roost.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
You have education fellows, you have experts at Common Sense
ins toot who can understand the cost drivers for the
blow up in higher ed costs you know, around the country.
One of the reasons for that is that so many
colleges and universities have just massively bloated their bureaucracies. And
you've got the vice dean of this and the associate

(41:33):
provost of that, and you've got this bureaucracy a number
of staffers that it's you know, like maybe the number
of them would double. Well, the number of students goes
up five percent and the number of professors goes up
five percent.

Speaker 5 (41:45):
I mean, you even see that in Colorado at the
K through twelve level. In previous reports, we have narrowed
that trend down. We really nailed that trend down here
in most districts. You can see that declining enrollment has
been ongoing in the state of Colorado over the last
five ten years. But in that they are developing more

(42:07):
administrative positions, and a lot of those positions are expensive.
They're spending more on education at the K through twelve level,
but it's not really making its way into the classroom,
especially with declining enrollments. I mean, just in the last
couple of months, there's been some closures due to declining
enrollment at DPS in Aurora, in Douglas County, all over

(42:30):
the place, but the administrative roles in those schools are
in those districts anyway, has continued to climb.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
So you see that same echo from higher ed in
K through twelve. Folks, I want you to go read
this report. It's linked on my blog if you go
to Rosskominsky dot com, or you can just search on
your favorite search engine for Common Sense Institute Colorado and
you can find the report. It's a very important report.

(43:00):
This is one of the most important things going on
in the state. Actually is our state budget. And as
much as you heard them complaining about having to quote
unquote cut one point two billion dollars, even though the
budget is actually six hundred and fifty or so million
dollars more than last year, next year is going to
be a lot harder and Democrats may in fact be
forced to really cut things they don't.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
Want to cut, like medicaid. But we will see.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
But the politics of it are going to be are
going to be absolutely fascinating. DJ Summers is director of
Communications and Research Operations.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
At the commons Ens Institute. Thanks for coming in. Good
to see you, Ross. I was delighted. Thank you for
having me.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
We'll be right back on KOA sports fan, I don't
actually really think of myself in that broader term. I
love the NFL, and I'm something of a fan, at
least of the NHL.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Hockey. Love hockey.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
I don't know as much about the NHL as I
know about the NFL, and I don't watch as many
hockey games as I watch football games.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
I I typically will not miss a Broncos game. I
don't mean I go to them all.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
I mean typically I'll go to one or two and
then I'll watch the rest at DVR.

Speaker 6 (44:07):
I'm and watch them when I can, but I watch
them all. Okay, so that's seventeen eighteen games. So then
do you think you watched seventeen or eighteen games of hockey?

Speaker 1 (44:15):
No, even though there's a lot more hockey games, a
lot more. There's I think eighty plus playoffs, So no,
I don't. I don't watch as many. But anyway, where
I'm going with this is I'm not much of a
fan of Major League Baseball, and I really don't care
about the NBA, although of course, you know, we got

(44:35):
the Nuggets and I'll cheer for the home team, but
and I don't really care about college sports. Again, We've
got CU and it is kind of fun to watch
the hometown team team win, and coach Prime is kind of,
you know, a charismatic guy. Fun to watch him and
fun to cheer for him, and I like that. But
I'm not a college sports fan. So what I share

(44:57):
with you this next little thing. You know, keep in mind,
I'm not an overall college sports fan and some folks
who are just true sports fans and like you, love
to watch every sport. You don't care what sport it is,
you will watch it. You will watch golf. You will
is golf a sport? Can you please text me at
five six six nine zero and tell me if golf

(45:18):
is a sport. I think of golf as a skill
rather than a sport.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yeah, what was that?

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Was that?

Speaker 2 (45:25):
Darts? Darts?

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Yeah, darts darts sport. No, it's not, it's it's a skill.
It's very much a skill. It's not a sport.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
What was that bowling?

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Oh? I guess, I guess you'd have to put bowling
in the same category as golf. Whatever category you put
golf in, you probably have to put bowling in the
same thing. So skill rather than sport, I'll say. Anyway,
I found this piece over at Axio is kind of interesting.
Women's sports coverage goes mainstream. I've never been particularly interested

(45:58):
in women's sports. It's not because I don't need to
explain myself. I've just never been particularly interested in women's sports.
I have noticed around me the increase in interest in
women's sports, and especially the WNBA.

Speaker 2 (46:14):
Now right with what's her face from Iowa? What's her name?
Caitlin Clark?

Speaker 1 (46:18):
With Kitlyn, Caitlyn, that's her name, right, yes, yeah, yes,
And so Caitlin Clark has brought a whole new level
of fame and attention to the WNBA, and good for them.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
And the reason what I wanted to mention here is so.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
USA Today is launching some new thing that's it's called
like Studio nine or USA Today Studio nine that's going
to be about women's sports.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
What else?

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Sports Illustrated is doing a thing. CNBC is doing a
women's sports thing. Roku is doing a women's sports thing.
What be Goldberg launched a network called All Women's Sports Network.
The Bleacher Report is doing a social brand based on
women's sports. The Athletic and Yahoo Sports are doing launching
what they call a hub for women's sports. The Associated

(47:06):
Press is doing a thing. iHeartMedia and a group called
Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment created the Women's Sports Audio Network,
the first audio platform dedicated to women's sports.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
You get the idea, on and on and on, where
was this thing?

Speaker 1 (47:24):
Ad spending on women's sports more than doubled last year,
according to Marketing Analytics firm edo. So now doubling from
last year. On the one hand, on a percentage basis,
that's amazing. On the other hand, the baseline was probably
pretty low. And I'm not intending to be sarcastic here, right,
I'm just saying there's not an immense amount of dollars

(47:45):
being spent advertising on women's sports. But now, especially with
Caitlin Clark and lots of other stuff going on too,
although she's the biggest name, you double it now. What
will be interesting is can they double it again next year?
And can they double it again the year after that?
Can they double on top of a high baseline?

Speaker 2 (48:00):
And I don't know.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
And here's my take on this as somebody who it's
not that I'm eighty women's sports. I'm just not a
big enough sports fan that I will just go watch
any sport. And I'm certainly not a person who's gonna
go watch women's sports just because it's women's sports. But
I also don't avoid it because I just don't care, right,

(48:23):
I just don't care. But here's my take as a capitalist.
If there's a market for it, then great for them,
Great for them, go for it.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
And you know what, I hope the market grows. I
hope they succeed. I hope they make lots of money.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
I hope lots more women can make a living playing sports,
just like guys do. I got nothing against it at all.
I just don't have time to watch it all. But
you know what, if there's a market for it, I
think that's absolutely fabulous and I wish them well.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
I wear my I wear my nerd cape or nerd
hat or nerd something very p So I'm very.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Happy to welcome to the show our second constitutional lawyer
guest of the day. Zach Greenberg is legal counsel at
the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. That's their relatively
new name, Fire the Fire THG fire dot Org, a
fantastic organization that for many years has unflinchingly stood up

(49:27):
for free speech rights. Zach, welcome to Kowa. It's good
to have you here.

Speaker 7 (49:32):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
I want to talk about the Trump administration versus Harvard,
or more broadly, the Trump astration versus the universities mostly
elite slash ivy league universities at this point that it
seems to want to pick a fight with and before
we get into the legalities of it. I just want

(49:54):
to sit an overall frame and just see if we
agree on some stuff. I think that the I think
that the stuff that the administration complains about at these universities,
and by the way, I went to one of them.
As far as you know, DEI, restricting free speech, not
protecting Jewish students are like pretty much every even to

(50:15):
the point where Trump says they're run by woke left idiots,
depending on how you describe how you want to define idiots.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
I think it's all true.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
I think they've earned everything that's coming at them right now,
which doesn't mean it's all right when we'll get to that,
but I think they've made themselves a ripe target.

Speaker 7 (50:32):
What do you think These universities certainly don't have clean hands.
They've had free speech problems going back for decades now.
And Trump is right when he says that there are
issues these universities not following their own polity, not following
federal law, and really being a hostile environment for free speech.
That doesn't mean his means of going at these universities,

(50:53):
his process is going to be right. There's certainly wame
to go around here.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
One of the things that comes up frequently, not always
with higher education, and in fact usually not with higher
education usually you know, K through twelve or other things.
Is well, if you take any federal money, even if
you take a little, you're gonna end up having to
play by all the federal rules. So maybe you shouldn't
take any federal money. And that seems like that's at
play here. Although they get more than a little, they.

Speaker 7 (51:22):
Do, they certainly get a lot. There's a process for
when the federal government provides university with money and be
taken away. In this case, the process was not followed here.
And it's truly a matter of the universities following their
own policies, their own free speech commitments, for example, holding
their own students free speech rights, and when it comes
to federal government funding, the university should have at least

(51:45):
a chance to show the universe so the federal government
what they're doing is correct and following all the law.
And that just wasn't the process that was followed here.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
So what all, right, what would just briefly on this part,
what would the proper process be for the federal government
to say we're going to restrict let's say you're funding
for science research.

Speaker 7 (52:08):
Yeah, there would be a hearing, there would be an
opportunity for the university to show the federal government that
it was in fact following its policies and doing everything right.
They'd be more of a give and take, more of
a negotiation about what exact university is doing wrong and
how it can come back and comply with all of
its own policies. And part of the issue here is

(52:30):
that many of the federal government's requirements of the university
are in fact not okay with tect freedom and that
free speech limiting what professors can teach, what students can
be a mid to university, what groups can exist, these
all pose free speech restrictions. So though some of the
problems the federal government identified are in fact serious, it's

(52:51):
truly a matter of looking at the mutaalently of a
circumstances here and seeing what can be fixed and.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
What should be revised effectively.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
The federal government is arguing that these universities are violating
civil rights laws, right, yeah, that's correct. So if they're
arguing that they're violating civil rights laws, why don't they
just indict them for violating civil rights laws rather than saying,
you know, we're gonna cut your funding for you know,
physics research.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Exactly right.

Speaker 7 (53:19):
They can launch the investigation, they can bring a core case,
they can go through the proper channels and formally accuse
university of violating these laws, which allows the university to
come back and say no, we're not, and that starts
the process. But simply that's freezing the funds about any
sort of process at all, unless the university tentially becomes
a vassal institution under the entire control on preederal bureaucrats.

(53:41):
That's not the way to go about this.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
So why all right?

Speaker 1 (53:46):
So there's more probably of a contractual question than a
constitutional question. Are these universities actually entitled to the money?
I mean, if the government signs a contract with them
for this particular research project and says, you know, we're
gonna we're gonna pay for this funding for this I
don't know, a new battery that might be used for
electric cars, and we're gonna we're gonna pay two million dollars.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
For the research.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
Okay, Now there's a contract and that's got to be enforceable.
But why, why does or why should a university ever
have any ongoing claim to any federal.

Speaker 7 (54:19):
Money yeah, you're right. It is a contract. Is a
contract that as long as the university follows the applicable rules,
follows government policies, and follows the law, they can have
this kind of money. And when the university is violate
these policies or don't rise the terms of the contract,
for example, then the government can come in and say, look,
you know you're not fining terms of your contract, or

(54:40):
send them money away. That's not what's happening here, though.
What's happening here is federal governments come in and say
we're going to freeze all your funds.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
The whole thing.

Speaker 7 (54:48):
We're also with the contracts are filed or not unless
you've become under our control attention, unless you make widespread
revisions to what you can teach and what students you
can admit, and what groups can think. This one campus
and posed its own academic freedom issues the university's right
to control these instances.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
So it seemed on the surface that Columbia and Harvard
had very different reactions right the early stories where Columbia
basically gave in and said they were going to do
you know what the government wanted him to do, and
Harvard said, go pound sand I don't know how much
on the list of what they told Columbia to do
is the same as what's on the list of what

(55:25):
they told Harvard to do. So that that's one one question,
I suppose, and and and the other question is, let's
let's do that first. Let's do that first. Did Harvard
say we're not going to do the same stuff that
Columbia said we will do?

Speaker 7 (55:42):
Yeah, Columbia essentially cave when it comes to adopting speech codes,
rising its policies. They essentially gave Trump what he wanted
when it comes to, you know, the demands that he
put on the university. But now by coming back and saying, oh, actually,
we're not going to do those kind of things, dispute
over whether what they're doing that actually say they're doing.
It's a bit complicated there. And Harvard unequivocally rejected Trump's demands.

(56:05):
They said, we're not doing this. This is our institution.
We're not going to become a basketball institution. If you
want to come and restrict our don't have money, you
can do so, or grant money, you can do so
in proper channels. Here And the thing about these institutions
is that when they speak, others listen that they are
lead institutions, they are Ivy League schools. They sit the
tone for the rest of higher education. So in the way,

(56:25):
it's good to have universities like Harvard turned up to
these these demands from this administration, with universities like Columbia
may now follow suit.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
I really, I really struggle with this because, on the
one hand, I don't think that this is I think
the federal government is massively overreaching, right. I think they've
got some legit points. I think they probably I think
they could win. I'm not saying I'm certain they would win,
but I think they could win a case against some of.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
These universities for civil rights violations.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
And I say that as a Jew who went to Columbia,
and even though there were lots of other Jews there
with me, it felt to me like kind of an
anti Semitic place even when I was there.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
And that's forty years ago. But so.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
I'm torn in the sense that I don't think it's
right for the government to be telling the universities who
they can hire, who they can admit all this stuff.
And as I mentioned earlier in the show, in a
different context, imagine what happens when you get President Kamala
Harris who decides she wants to do the same thing
to the universities, right and just in the other direction.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
So it's very dangerous, and so at the end.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
Of the day, I'm probably siding with Harvard for those reasons.
But the reason I'm torn about it is almost everything,
and maybe everything, but almost everything that the government is
telling Harvard to do is stuff that if I were
on the Board of Regents or I think they call

(57:55):
it the Harvard Corporation there, I would tell them we
need to do this. Harvard is access pool and Columbia
is a cesspool of woke, anti intellectualism, anti free speech,
anti everything that I think colleges should stand for there
against it.

Speaker 7 (58:13):
Yeah, and I think I would I fully agree when
it comes to we want Harvard to polish litmus tasks.
We want Harvard to allow students to fully tresh themselves.
We want Harvard to have student groups on campus and
espress and wide of reviews. They are all good things,
but the means matter. And like you said, to give
the government the power to essentially make these universities and
to subserving institutions to have this kind of control. Who

(58:35):
knows how it's going to be abused not only with
this administration, but also against other administration in the future.
Against universities might be Harvard in Columbia, but schools that
have similar issues. And so yeah, we're concerned about federal
government overreach here, and we do hope that the Harvard
University Corporation and its leadership understands its own problems about

(58:56):
free speech, about the academic freedom issues at stake here
self cracks without neither federal government to come in and
bigfoot all over them.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
Right, and again, I'm not trying to make excuses here
like saying that what the government is doing is okay
as a matter of law. But you and I both
know because you work at FIRE and for those just joining,
we're talking with Zach Greenberg, legal counsel at the Foundation
for Individual Rights and Expression. The website is thefire dot org.
You know from your work there that unless massively pressured

(59:26):
with lawsuits, they know who they're gonna lose. All of
these universities will continue to restrict free free speech.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
How many of these how many of these places have.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
Had free speech zones right one percent of the campus
where you're allowed to go say just what you want
to say and only with an appointment.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
I mean, it's disgusting.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
And so they they won't make any of these changes
unless they think they're going to lose money.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
They don't care about anything else.

Speaker 7 (59:54):
Your one silver lining here is that this could be
a wake up call universities like Harvard and Columbia, maybe
even the Yales and Cornells of the world, that their
current course of action is unsustainable. They cannot continue to
violence student free speech rights and become these hostile places
for minority views without getting the attention of journalists, organations

(01:00:14):
like fire in the federal government. And so we're hoping
the course crack were hoping they make their university a
better place to a free speech and if they do,
Buyer is here to support them and help them do so.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
Last question for you or last topic for you. There's
been a few reports out there that the Trump administration
is pushing their own irs to consider revoking Harvard's tax
exempt status. And all these big universities, or not just big,
their nonprofits. Some of them have amazingly large endowments. Harvard's

(01:00:47):
is over fifty billion dollars. They earn income tax free
and So my question for you is do you think
the IRS can legally revoke Harvard's tax status.

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
I'd have to say, I'm.

Speaker 7 (01:01:01):
Not a tax tax for just a mere First Amendment lawyer.
This does look like retaliation for Harvard rejecting Trump's previous demands.
And I think the larger question is do we want
the IRS to be targeting political enemies? Do you want
the IRS to be trying to look into taxical statuses
of university's nonprofits other businesses, maybe because they if the president.
That sounds like a weaponization of the tax code, and

(01:01:24):
I would have want that any free countries, especially in America.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
Yeah, I mean who was it?

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Was it? Maybe Janet Reno or whoever was whoever was
running well, I guess that was DOJ. There was the
whole thing where the IRS was being weaponized against true
the Vote and some other groups, against conservative groups. And
I'm blanking on who was running the show at the time,
but you know, conservatives were really pissed off.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
And this goes back to the thing I said before.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Right, everything Trump wants Harvard to do Harvard should be doing,
but to tell what's to have the government force them
to do it? And then you get President Kamala Harris
or President I don't know, Bernie Sanders or Tim Waltz
or whoever, and they're going to go through and tell
all these people you have way too many conservatives. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:02:15):
Yeah, a lot of conservative organizations out there are definitely
benefit from the nonprofit pass, religious group, sports organizations. I
don't think this is a proper role faire as to take.
Of course, the IRRIS wants to look institutions and see
if they do comply it with the tax go and
do actually have their status? Sure, go for it based
on this with the selective political enforcement, and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
That's not good for anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
Last, very quick question, do you think this is going
to go to some kind of trial or do you
think Harvard and the government are going to sort it out?

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
And if it does go to trial, who do you
think wins?

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Even though we don't exactly know what the issues at
trial would be, we don't know all you know which
ones that'll take to trial.

Speaker 7 (01:02:52):
Wou do you believe it will bill be litigation here
getting the lawyers involved. We do think that these universities
may sue to get their federal funding back, and the
lawsuit might just simply require the government to go to
the process to have the hearing, have the notice, give
university a chance to get their funding back, and so
they are complying with the law. If they do lossus

(01:03:12):
kind of lawsuits, it'll be difficult to put up the
government to depend against that. I think it'll be a
good case. Well, you know, we'll see no one goes
as halple litigation, but a lot of money at stake,
and we do ex second, there'd be some core cases.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Into lawsuits about this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
Zach Greenberg, legal counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights
and Expression the Fire t h g FIRI dot org.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Thank you, Zach, great conversation, appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 7 (01:03:35):
How would aspect you too?

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
All right, that's my second constitutional lawyer on the show today.
What A?

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
What A? What's the word? I'm looking forward? Yeah, yeah,
that's the word. That's the word. I'm going to mention
this very briefly.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
I mentioned it earlier in the show, but for financial nerds,
I'm going to do this very quickly here because I
did a long version of it earlier. If you notice
today that the Dow is down four hundred points, are
about one percent, and all the other stock indices are
up pretty decent amounts. The S and P is up
half a percent, the Rustle is up more than that. Actually,

(01:04:10):
the Nasdaq is around unchanged. But the reason the Dow
is down so much and the other indices are, you know,
anywhere from flat to upmodestly, is because there's one stock
in the Dow, United Healthcare, that is getting absolutely destroyed.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
And it's a very expensive stock.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
I forget how many hundreds of dollars a share it is,
but it's a very expensive stock. It's down twenty two
or twenty three percent, and that's I haven't gone to look,
but that's probably driving almost all of the current three
hundred and sixty point loss in the Dow. So without that,
without that one stock, the DAO would probably be around

(01:04:49):
flat and the S and P would probably be would
be up more. So I just wanted to share that
with you in case you're wondering why those indices look
so different. All right, let's do a local story here,
this over at the Denver Post. So you may recall
because a few years ago, Denver voters, who just Denver voters,

(01:05:11):
remind me of like Lucy in the.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Football that whole thing, right, you know, like every time.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Some kind of ability to tax themselves comes through. That.
That was a really bad analogy, by the way, And
you'll understand why it's such a bad analogy when I
continue with this. And this is why I am president
of the Bad Analogy Club, because it's really not like
Lucy in the football at all. But I'm going to
say it's like Lucy in the football because the Denver
voters whenever they have a chance to punish themselves financially,

(01:05:36):
they have a chance to run up to the ballot
and kick that ball.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
By marking no.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
But instead they mark yes and they tax the big
Jesus out of themselves. I know, really bad, right, absolutely terrible.
Thank you, I'm proud, thank you, thank you very much.
And I think Denver sales tax. I think it's over
nine percent now in the sales tax. So anyway, they
did a thing a few years ago in yeah, it
was twenty twenty two, and some activist group put a

(01:06:01):
thing on the ballot to put a tax on every
house in Denver, or maybe every building in Denver, based
on the number of square feet of sidewalk that you had,
and they're going to put that money into a fund
and use that money to repair and add sidewalks, And
you know I was against it at the time, but

(01:06:23):
I also said, look, I don't live in Denver, I
don't vote in Denver. I don't take generally very strong
opinions on local issues in places where I don't live.
But I thought it seemed a little silly. But more
important than what I thought was that the part of
government that would be in charge of running the project said,
we absolutely do not have the bandwidth, the infrastructure, the

(01:06:45):
ability to implement this the way it's written.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
We can't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
They didn't want it to pass, right, the part of
the government that was going to get more money didn't
want it to pass. But it passed because Denver it's
like flogging themselves financially. So this was approved in twenty
twenty two, and the city council delayed and delayed and
delayed it because at one point the fees seemed unfair,

(01:07:11):
like if you happen to live on a corner, you
would get massively punished because you had, you know, some
extra square footage, even though your house might have been
the same size as the next guy's house. And they
ended up changing from a square footage based thing to
a flat fee, or mostly a flat fee.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
It's one hundred and fifty bucks a year.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
But if you have more than two hundred and thirty
linear feet a sidewalk, then you pay an extra three
and a half dollars a foot beyond the two hundred
and thirty linear feet of sidewalk.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
And the city began collecting that money. They put it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
Off, put it off, put it off because they just
didn't know how.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
To handle it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
They put together a plan, they started collecting the money.
Actually they collect the money through your stormwater bill, believe
it or not, started collecting it earlier this year. According
to Denver Post, they expect to bring in about forty
million dollars annually. And what I wanted to share with
you today from the Denver Post, Denver is one step
closer to improving its sidewalks after the city approved a

(01:08:08):
fifteen million dollar contract to begin implementing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
A voter approved program.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
And it sounds like what they're gonna do with this money,
much of this money is actually to do a plan
and some kind of engineering plans and what they're calling
program management services, whatever that means.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
And then they say within about nine years, the city.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
Plans to build more than three hundred and fifty miles
of new sidewalks, and it will make improvements on twelve
hundred miles of existing sidewalks, according to a recent council presentation. Look,
I hope they get it done. It seems like a
long time, but it is a long time. But whatever
timeframe they say they're gonna get it done in, I
bet they won't.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
I hope they do.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
I asked you a question yesterday and I didn't really
share very many of the answer. And I think I
might have done this early in the show, and I
don't know if Dragon heard my question. I don't remember
what time I did this yesterday because it might have
been at the very beginning of the show. So Dragon,
this is my quandary. Let me just share this with
you because I don't think you heard it, and maybe
some listeners didn't hear this part yesterday. So you know

(01:09:17):
that I have tea during the show every day. I
know you're very jealous of that, and you would like
to You would prefer if I made you some as well.
So justus and I keep in our iHeart refrigerator over here,
a bottle of coffee, Mate sugar free Italian cream or

(01:09:39):
something creamer, right, the liquid version, not the powder version.
And I put a little bit in. I like the creaminess,
and I liked the sweetness in my tea. So a
few days ago I finished the bottle, I ran out.
I bought another one, but I forgot to bring.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
It in from home. Gasp.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
And somebody else had a bottle of not exactly the
same thing, but almost the same thing. I have no
idea whose it is. And I used about one and
a half or two teaspoons of it. And I asked
listeners if I was going straight to hell or straight
to jail, or or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
And before I tell you what, they said, Uh, what's
what's your reaction?

Speaker 1 (01:10:22):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Was how how?

Speaker 6 (01:10:24):
How bad was that? It depends on how long it's
been in there? No, not how bad was it for me? No, No,
I know, I know, but just how bad it is
to use something like that? No, what I mean is
morally how bad was it that I used? New it's
more morally wrong because that person just bought it. But
if it's been in there for four months and nobody's
touched it, oh, it's still not expired, but it's in there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
First of all, I will say that I have no
idea what's in coffee, mate, and I certainly have no
idea what's in sugar free coffee, maate.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
But I doubt it has an expiration date.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
The expiration dates for stuff that artificial are probably measured
in geological eras rather than a date stamped on the
carbon dated carbon dated.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Yeah, I gotta send this to the lab and carbon
date it before I can find out if it's still
safe to use. And I anyway, that's interesting. You actually
brought up an angle that nobody else brought up. How
long has it been in there?

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
You're welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
Yeah, So what I wanted to mention is a few
people sent me a particular take on it that I
hadn't thought of that I thought was quite interesting, and
that was it depends how much is left in it,
which is to say, it's much worse if you take
some near the end and you and risk leaving that

(01:11:46):
other person without enough when they come to use it
the next time. Right, If you like, use not the
very last, but even close to last, that would be
morally worse than using, you know, just some amount near
the beginning or near the middle of the bottle because
you're not putting the other person at risk of running out.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
I thought that was an interesting take, And in a sense.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
It's the offset of yours, because you're saying that using
it early would be worse, and these people are saying
that using it late would be worse.

Speaker 6 (01:12:17):
I'm saying using it later would be worse. No, no, no,
excuse me, No, no, you are correct. My Yeah, so
I'm still sorting this out.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
I did. I do want everybody to know that I
brought my bottle in today, my bottle of you know,
whatever chemicals are in this thing that pretends to be creamer,
and it is in my tea right now.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
Dragon. Would you like some? No, thank you, I appreciate
the thought. How much? How much do you appreciate the thought?
Very little? Thank you? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Let me do two quick stories with you here, and
then I'm gonna do the nerdy thing in the next story.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
There was a piece over at zero hedge.

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
By the way, I think zero hedge is a mediocre
website that occasionally has some interesting insights, but also has
some wacky conspiracy theorists and people who think they know
more about economics than they actually do, although that's probably
most people these days, and.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
It used to be multiple people.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
I don't know if it's still more than one, but
there's at least one who writes over at zero Hedge
under the pen name Tyler Diurten. Who's one of the
characters from fight Club. Is that Brad Pitt? Yeah, Brad
Pitt and fight Club, both of them? Yeah, right, right, right, sorry, right,
nobody's seen it before he writes. This guy writes as
Tyler Dirton. Anyway, I just want to share with you

(01:13:35):
just a little bit from this and we will just
assume that it's true, and it probably it is.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
It is true.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
I don't know if it'll stay true, but I want
to share this with you just for the purposes of
getting the gears in your brain going when it comes
to how to think about economics, this particular economics with
all the tariff stuff going on. So the headline is
US import prices tumble despite China tariffs, and so this

(01:14:01):
person says, Sony decided not to hike prices on US
consumers while putting price hikes on select markets in Europe,
Middle East and Africa, Australia and New Zealand. A tough decision,
apparently for management. But it's the first anecdotal evidence that
Trump's view may be right. Firms won't scupper their market

(01:14:22):
share or biggest customer demand unless they really have to.
So what's he saying here? And this is definitely true
on the margin, and that on the margin part matters,
and I'll explain in a minute. So if they're relatively
small tariffs, maybe you know, ten percent or less, it's

(01:14:45):
possible that if the manufacturer has a good enough profit
margin in them, they can absorb most or maybe even
all of the tariffs just by lowering their price. Right,
So if they were selling something into the United States
at ten dollars then and now let's say a ten

(01:15:07):
percent tariff is put on, and they want to keep
the final price to the American and don't forget the
American is paying the tariff, they want to keep the
final price the same.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
They would lower their price to.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Nine dollars and nine cents or something like that, and
then you add the ten percent tariff on there, and
you're at I'm gonna use round numbers, you're at ten dollars.
And if they're willing to take that hitten margin, then
they can not change their price and presumably keep markets here.
Now at twenty percent, you're probably not going to be
able to do that, And certainly with the tariffs on
China now one hundred and forty five percent, certainly they

(01:15:43):
can't do that, and probably not probably for sure, with
the tariff levels that Trump has proposed in the reciprocal
tariffs on so many of our trading partners, they might
be able to absorb a little, but definitely not close
to all. And if the price is going to go
up a lot anyway, I don't know if you would
even bother trying to absorb a little.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
But still, let's stick with what this guy is saying.

Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
For now, Let's just assume that import prices went down
by the amount or even or almost the amount of
the tariff, so that the final price to Americans didn't change,
or at least didn't change much. So the ten dollars
thing didn't go to eleven with the ten percent tariff.

(01:16:26):
The ten dollars thing stayed to ten or went to
ten dollars and ten cents, but not to eleven dollars.
And you could look at that and you can say, oh,
that's great. Just like we said that they would eat it.
But here's the problem with that. When you think about
it from the Trump perspective, what's the claimed goal of
Donald Trump's tariffs. It is to force manufacturing to come

(01:16:49):
back into the United States of America. Right, It's it's
to get rid of trade with those foreign countries, so
that we get rid of the trade deficit with those
foreign countries.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
So that we build more factories here. And therefore, if
it ends.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
Up being true that at some tariff level, the manufacturers
will eat it and it will feel to the American
consumer like there's very little price increase, and so consumer
shopping patterns don't change, then manufacturing patterns won't change, and
Trump will not achieve his goal.

Speaker 2 (01:17:23):
He will achieve a goal of collecting.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
A bunch of money, right, because the Americans pay that
basically a sales tax, and it indirectly. Indirectly the manufacturer
is eating that. Really the American is paying it. But
what he claims is his main goal making companies move
here cannot succeed if this dynamic continues, and that would

(01:17:45):
mean he would have to raise tariffs even higher. And
that's why unless something forces him.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
Not to, he will raise tariff's higher. Are you a
Fleetwood Mac fan.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Yes, all right, yeah, I got no problem through Mac.
It's not going to voice only now, not talking about looks. Uh,
Stevie Nicks or Christine McVie.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
Let me ask listeners that question too. Stevie Nicks or
Christine McVie. You gotta answer the last question you asked
the listeners. What was the last one? Is golf a sport? Oh?
Oh my gosh, I haven't gotten questions.

Speaker 6 (01:18:17):
You're going to ask these people and not even squirrel.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
It's a good thing you have me to keep you
on track. All right, I complete?

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
Okay, listener said, and kai wait so I probably have
to go back here because I got so many listener textins.

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
I asked the golf thing, do you have it in
front of you? What? People said?

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
Okay, okay, here we go, Here we go. Yes, golf
is a sport. Another one, Yes, golf is a sport.
But cheerleading is not. Come on, wow, that's not right.
That is cheerleading is I mean the real I never
did any of this, but my sister did the real
cheerleading with the gymnastics.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
And standing on top of other people.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
Like those people do cartwheels even better than I do,
and you haven't done yours yet.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
Nobody asked me to. What do you mean nobody asked
you to. We asked you one hundred times.

Speaker 1 (01:19:05):
Text me at five six six nine zero with with
Stevie Nicks or Christine McVie. That's what I want to know. Yes,
golf is this. Golf is the only game that you
have where you have to beat yourself. Bowling is not
a sport. Golf is definitely a sport. No, they're the same.
It will either they're both a sport or neither one's
a sport. Golf and NASCAR are competitions, but are not sports.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):
Now that's a tough one. Nascar. Look, I'm not an
expert at this, but just and I and I don't
watch a lot of NASCAR, But.

Speaker 1 (01:19:37):
My understanding is that is very physically grueling, requires significant
physical conditioning, mental conditioning well.

Speaker 2 (01:19:49):
Like concentration focus. Squirrel.

Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
Uh so I couldn't be a NASCAR driver for reasons
like squirrel.

Speaker 6 (01:19:58):
It's another good squirrel. I challenge you to name give
the name of Edwards. Edward Norton's character in Fight Club.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
I saw that movie when it came out. I don't
remember any I don't remember anything except Tyler Jorgey on
a monthly basis. Okay, did you ever watch it after
it came out? Did you watch it again later? Yeah?
I mean, I'm not saying it's unworthy. It is a
good enough movie to watch again later. Maybe I should
watch it with my kids. Yeah, they're old enough. Yeah yeah,

(01:20:29):
Wait where what did you just ask me? No? I
can't name Edward Norton's character, can you? I'm pretty sure
that I can. All right, if anybody can name Edward
Norton's character, and fight Club texts to us at five
six six nine zero, I think I know what it says.
We're gonna ask it. Okay, this is what we're gonna do.
Any questions, We're gonna ask so many questions, and then
we're going to confuse the answers. So we're going to

(01:20:50):
ask is golf a sport? And then we're going to
ask Stevie Nick's or Christy McVie, and then we're going
to ask Edward Norton's name. And then what we're to
do is we're going to tell people that listeners are
saying that Edward Norton's name in Fight Club.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
Was Christine McVie.

Speaker 1 (01:21:07):
It's perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
Send me professional radio and its best.

Speaker 1 (01:21:13):
All right, let me do this other thing real quick
while you send us all of your smart answers to
my stupid questions. And they, I know, don't think that
I don't know that my questions are often stupid. In fact,
that's probably not even a fair. That's probably not fair
to stupid questions to call my question stupid. But it's

(01:21:35):
fun and that's what I'm here for. From the Colorado
Springs Gazette. BUCkies is back on the table in Palmer
Lake with a new nnexation request. After pulling back last month.
Developers have resubmitted a controversial request that would pave the
way for the state's second BUCkies And.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
They're talking about annexing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
Thirty acres or so at least the last one was
about thirty acres at County Line Road in interstate twenty
five last year to put this massive BUCkies thing. And
some people love the idea, some people hate the idea.
You'd have to create this really really long, skinny annexation.
I think they call a flagpole annexation right where you'd
have a big thing at the end that looks like

(01:22:19):
the flag and then the skinny thing that looks like
the flag pole going away from the highway to actually get.

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
To the town of Palmer Lake.

Speaker 1 (01:22:28):
And I suspect the I'm not an expert on their stuff,
but I suspect that if this happened, it would massively,
almost infinitely on a percentage basis, increase the tax base
of Palmer Lake. It's part of the reason they probably
want to do it. In any case, I just I'm
not getting get in. There's actually a lot of technical
details of why they backed out last time and what
they want to do this time and all that, and

(01:22:49):
there's a lot of politics around it. Very excited people
for it and against it. I'm not going to really
pick a side here. I don't live there and I
don't know the details, but I just wanted you to
know that it's back ross. We live east of the proposal.
We live, yeah, but is it a sport and it's fun?
We live just east of the proposed BUCkies location. The

(01:23:10):
idea is roundly detested by the residents here.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
We do not want it. H let's see how we doing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:16):
As far as Christine McVie versus Stevie Nicks, I'm gonna say.

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):
I'm gonna say it's about.

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):
Fifty to fifty except for the listener who said Tom Sawyer,
who always says Tom Sawyer, thank you. Uh, Christine McVeigh
way over Stevie. Stevie sounds like a goat. See the
south Park episode about Stevie Nicks.

Speaker 7 (01:23:38):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
Okay, so do we have an answer? We had a few,
We had a couple of people. Okay, Uh? Is it
ed ed Norton?

Speaker 1 (01:23:49):
No name? He is every man split personality? Is Tyler Dirden?
What what do you have to say about this? Have you?

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
Have you done your homework?

Speaker 6 (01:23:57):
I have not done any research on this whatsoever, but
I'm fairly certain that I do recall, as the credits
are rolling, it names Edward Norton's.

Speaker 1 (01:24:06):
Character as the narrator. Really, yes, all right, pretty sure?
And then this person has probably the best answer of
the day. Edward Norton was the best sport in Fleetwood.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
Mac. Yes, there we go.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
All right, thank you for all of your great answers
to my stupid questions. I've read them. I'm not going
to read them all one more. I'm gonna read Ross.
I've been in the racing industry for more than fifteen years,
it's definitely a sport as you spend most of your
time at the anaerobic threshold.

Speaker 2 (01:24:40):
I would also consider pool like.

Speaker 1 (01:24:43):
Billiards and golf a sport because of the precision that's required.
See now with the second half of that, you ruined
your credibility on the first half of.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
That, because then it's a skill.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
Yeah, right, if it's about precision, that doesn't necessarily make
it a sport. And for example, and I'm not going
to be president of the bad Analogy Club here, I'm
just gonna be a nerd here, all right when I seriously,
now seriously, stick with me on this. I like repairing
and messing around with old electronics, and oftentimes what you

(01:25:15):
have to do with old electronics is you have to
use a soldering iron and de solder an old part.

Speaker 2 (01:25:21):
Careful ross you're coming up on a good hour.

Speaker 1 (01:25:23):
I know, I know, I got to pretend I'm not me.
I have to de solder an old part and then
maybe replace it with a new part. Can be very
very careful with both of those that I don't either
damage another part that I'm not trying to work on
or accidentally solder the connections between two parts together that

(01:25:46):
are not supposed to be connected and then cause a shorter,
cause some other failure in the electronics. So it requires
a lot of precision, a lot of precision. As I'm
sitting there at my bench moving slowly off, I will
sometimes wear a thing kind of like a dentist wears,
like either on your head with a magnifying glass that

(01:26:07):
comes down, so I can be really precise about that.
Anybody gonna tell me that's a sport and he hands
out there by how many hands is repairing old two
amplifiers a sport? One?

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
Two, five?

Speaker 1 (01:26:19):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:26:19):
None? Maybe if it was not timed, yeah, three minutes go.
What about shooting?

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
It's about precision, but it's literally called shooting sports. And
this is a borderline one because if you're really gonna
be good at shooting sports, it's it's precision, but it's precision.
For example, when you're talking about sporting clays, you're you're
moving right, and I guess golf is golf is moving.

Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
But yeah, that's a tough one.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
Uh. I was gonna say, I have some sympathy for
calling sporting clays a sport, but now that I think
about it, it's just golf with guns. And for the record,
I love sporting clays, and if I had more time
and lived near a place that had sporting clays, I

(01:27:09):
would go a lot. As it is, I only go
probably once a year. When I retire, whenever that'll be,
I will probably do sporting clays a lot. It's one
of the greatest things. It's just so much fun. You
can go out to like Colorado Clays or Kiowa. I'm
usually at Kiowa. I'm usually at Kiowa Creek for the
Independence Institute Alcohol Tobacco on firearms party. I usually go

(01:27:32):
to Colorado Clays, which is sort of near the airport
for other things. And you can actually do a thing
where you could be by yourself, and so instead of
telling someone you know pull and have that other person
hit the button to launch the clay pigeon, you can
set the pigeon thrower the clay thrower on a delay,

(01:27:56):
so you can hit the button yourself and then go
wait for it and take the shot. It's pretty cool.
Ross just being a competition doesn't make it a sport.

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
I agree.

Speaker 1 (01:28:06):
If you watch the Netflix show Full Swing, you'll see
how much athletics golfers at least pro golfers do I
would consider that very much a sport. Yes, A lot
of it is mental. My grandfather was a really good
golfer in Colorado and New Mexico, and I grew up
watching golf depending on who's playing. I enjoy watching it
to this day. All right, all right, I'm I'm still.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:28:34):
I don't want to get too fanatic about this because
I've only played golf twice. The second time I played golf,
I got a five on a par five, and I said,
that will never happen to me again as long as
I live. Even if I played golf for the next

(01:28:55):
twenty years, I will never again get a five on
a par five.

Speaker 2 (01:29:00):
And so I quit. That's a true story, true story.

Speaker 1 (01:29:05):
I also didn't want to take that much time away
from away from my family. I just I so is
golf a skill or a sport?

Speaker 2 (01:29:15):
Moving on?

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):
Moving on, Let's nerd out a little bit. My friend
Dan Hannon. He's been on the show a time or two.
Daniel Hannon is a member of the British House of Lords.
He is one of the smartest and most interesting people
I've ever met in my entire life. He was in
Colorado a couple months ago for the leadership program of
the Rockies Annual Retreat, and I took him for a
hike in some of the foothills around Cheyenne Mountain down

(01:29:36):
in Colorado Springs. And he thoroughly enjoyed his hike in
Colorado with a bunch of snow and stuff. And I
just this guy is just a fabulous, true intellectual, majored
in history at Oxford and just one of the most
interesting people ever. Now, there was an author who recently
passed away named Mario Vargas Josa l l Osa, and

(01:29:59):
I've never read his work, and now after this note
from Dan Hannon about him, I need to read his work.
Here's the headline or the title of the article, Mario
Vargas Yosa. I thought it was pronounced losa, but it's
l l osa, So I'm gonna say yosa because I
think that's how it would be.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
I think that I don't know Lisa.

Speaker 1 (01:30:23):
I don't speak Spanish, speak French and some Dutch, so
I don't really know. Was that rare thing a freedom
loving literary genius of the right.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
Dragon?

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
Can you look up for me how to pronounce l
l osa? I know I sound like a moron.

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
But what can I tell you? I speak other languages.
I never.

Speaker 1 (01:30:44):
I've always thought of two l's as sounding like a
y in Spanish, but I don't know if that's true
at the beginning of a word.

Speaker 2 (01:30:52):
But I don't know. I don't know, And can someone
tell me? L l Osa?

Speaker 1 (01:30:56):
Would you pronounce the two l's like an L or
would you pronounce the two l's like a y? Can
someone who speaks Spanish please tell me so I stop
sounding like a freaking moron.

Speaker 2 (01:31:05):
Five sixty six nines A Rod, A Rod, you got.

Speaker 1 (01:31:08):
A Spanish last name, which must mean that you speak
Spanish really well, because I'm generalizing what you got something?
One more time, Losa Losa? Okay, ay, Rod had the
answer anyway? That was so borderline racist of me saying
that since A Rod has last name Rodriguez, he must

(01:31:31):
know how to pronounce it, and I bet he does,
all right, So it's Losa, Mario vargus Losa.

Speaker 2 (01:31:36):
Let me read this. Gosh, I'm a moron.

Speaker 1 (01:31:38):
Sometimes it was Mario Vargus Losa who first drew me
into politics.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
This is Dan Hannon talking now.

Speaker 1 (01:31:43):
Before Bregsit, before Mastricht, before the coop against Margaret Thatcher.
I had marched alongside the ingenious novelist against the nationalization
of Peru's banks. It was nineteen eighty seven, and I
burned with the righteous certainty of a sixteen year old.
Let me just note Dan Hannon, although he lives in
England as a member of the British House of Lords,
he was born in Peru. That's why he was there

(01:32:05):
as a kid. Vargus Losa was already a Titanic figure
in his native country, the winner of all manner of awards,
though the Nobel Prize for Literature was still in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
He was eloquent and handsome, and he was right.

Speaker 1 (01:32:18):
The leftist government against which he was protesting ran Peru
into the ground. He had had a dose of the
socialist basillis himself, and it gave him a lifelong immunity.
In the nineteen sixties, like every self respecting Latin American intellectual,
he had railed against US imperialism. But when he saw
what revolutions meant in practice, he was especially stung by

(01:32:40):
the treatment of dissidents in Cuba.

Speaker 2 (01:32:42):
He was big enough to change his mind.

Speaker 1 (01:32:44):
Vargus Losa turned out to be better at literature than
at politics. After his successful campaign against the bank seizures,
he entered Peru's nineteen ninety presidential election with an apparently
unassailable lead, but lost in the second round to Alberto
Fujimori in a roonomus who had come from nowhere, backed
by leftists who are terrified of Vargus Los's neoliberalism.

Speaker 2 (01:33:06):
By the way, let me mention.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):
In case you're, you know, haven't paid a lot of
attention to South American politics, and you hear that name,
Alberto Fujimori sounds like Japanese name. We're talking about Peru.
There are a lot of Japanese immigrants. I don't know why,
but there was a major Japanese immigration to Peru, and
so you will frequently hear Japanese sounding last names among Peruvians,

(01:33:30):
which I think is I don't know the origin of it,
but I just wanted to share that with you, all right,
continuing hilariously, the leftists ended up getting the neoliberalism from
Fujimori with an added dose of dictatorship, a dislike of dictatorship,
or more accurately, a dislike of bullying, and the abusive
office was Vargus Los's ruling principle. He hated when people

(01:33:52):
made excuses for tyrants who happened to be on their side.

Speaker 2 (01:33:58):
Hmmm, the applicability today.

Speaker 1 (01:34:00):
His humane and liberal spirit infused his novels from the beginning.
His first work, The Time of the Hero nineteen sixty three,
was set among cadets at a Lima military academy and
based on his own experiences. Sure enough, it's a story
about bullying and the abusive power, of how hierarchies among
the boys end up in a murder, and of how

(01:34:23):
the school covers it up. The Peruvian military authorities hated
the book, sensing that their values were being undermined, though they.

Speaker 2 (01:34:30):
Couldn't put their finger on how.

Speaker 1 (01:34:33):
His subsequent works veered in every direction, historically, geographically, thematically.
He wrote in French and English, almost as well as
in Spanish. He may have been the finest Peruvian writer
to lift a pen, but you don't have to be
Peruvian to appreciate his work. You are drawn rather by
his largeness of spirit, his insistence on the dignity of

(01:34:55):
the individual. After losing in nineteen ninety, Vargus Losa moved
to Spain, where he became a favorite in conservative circles,
a perceptive bullfight officionado. He ended up being given a
hereditary marquist, you know, a title by King Juan Carlos.
But he was always a liberal in the fullest sense
of that word. Curious, broad minded, intellectually generous. If you

(01:35:20):
want to mark his death by reading one of his novels,
I recommend The Feast of the Goat from two thousand
and one, a story about the end of the true
Heeo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. Never have I seen
the fears and petty humiliations intrinsic and authoritarian rule so
beautifully captured on a page. In a world where liberal

(01:35:41):
democracy has been in retreat for over a decade, we
could all do with reminding ourselves of what the alternative is.
That's a note about the passing of Mario Vargus Losa,
written by my friend Dan Hannon.

Speaker 2 (01:35:53):
It's in the UK Telegraph.

Speaker 1 (01:35:55):
I've had that up on the blog for a couple
of days, just having gotten around to sharing it with you.
I hope you, I hope if you have found that worthwhile.
All right, let's do something very different here.

Speaker 2 (01:36:05):
First. Let me say I am an environmentalist.

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
The way most normal people, most conservatives and libertarians are environmentalists,
which is to say, we love nature, we want to
preserve it as best we can, although we're not necessarily
willing to kneel at the altar of Gaia and prevent
any kind of growth or human development, or capitalistic or

(01:36:32):
even recreational activity if it might disturb an animal.

Speaker 2 (01:36:36):
There's a balance there, and most people are with me.

Speaker 1 (01:36:40):
There are a few people out there, or maybe more
than a few, who are really radical environmentalists, like the
lady who used to live near me when I first
moved to Colorado, who said that I've told this story,
but I haven't told this story in quite a few years.

Speaker 2 (01:36:56):
Let me just mention it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:57):
This is when I used to live up in the
foothills near Netherlands. So I lived on a sort of
well known road called Magnolia Road, and it's well known
because of how steep it is, and people who are
training for the Tour de France will come train on
Magnolia and other people do sports training there because of
the steepness and because of the altitude, so you get,

(01:37:18):
you know, all that stuff, and it's a dirt road
for part of it. At least, and there was some
debate about whether to pave it, and this lady who
lived near me said, I don't want to pave the
road because if we pave the road, people will drive faster,
and more small animals will be killed when they're crossing
the road. She's not wrong about that, but I said,

(01:37:42):
just for fun, I said, well, what about the fact
that if we pave the road and a lot of
people start driving faster, more people will drive off the road.
This is a narrow, curvy mountain road. There are a
couple places where you could kind of go off the side, right.
I said, well, what if I understand you want to
save the animals by not paving it. What if by

(01:38:02):
paving it we're risking human lives not just animal lives.
And her response was her response was I don't care
about human lives. She said humans are doing so much
damage to the animals that if we're up to me,
humans would go extinct. And I thought, but didn't say, hey,

(01:38:27):
you first, but I also knew that she had a grandchild.
It was the most immoral thing I've heard from a person,
one of the most immoral things I've ever heard of.
That But so there are people like that, And then
there are a very small number of people who will
just throw trash anywhere and they don't care about anything.
But they're not too many of those, Okay. So that's

(01:38:48):
kind of setting the framework here. So you know that
we have the Endangered Species Act, and we know that
people like that lady I just described to you and
her friends. They abuse the Endangered Species Act all the time,
and they claim that almost any activity in any place
that has more than three trees is a threat to

(01:39:09):
some animal, and therefore you can't cut a tree, or
take a hike, or build a road or do anything
in that area. So that's what the radicals do. Mandy,
I told you it was hot in here. It's cooler
than it used to be, all right. So the Endangered
Species Act prevents direct and indirect harm to animals. Right,

(01:39:32):
So if there's a species that's endangered, obviously you can't
kill it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:36):
But let's say it's a species of owl that's endangered
and only lives in one forest.

Speaker 1 (01:39:41):
Under this law, you can't go cut down that forest
that's the only place that owl lives. And you know what,
I'm okay with that as long as it's not abused.
The Trump administration is proposing a change to the Endangered
Species Act that would remove protection from any in direct harm,

(01:40:02):
so that the only thing the Endangered Species Act would
protect is an overt killing of the animal. So, in
the example I gave, if a particular kind of owl
only lives in one forest, under the new interpretation, if
they made this, somebody could go in and cut down
the forest and not be in violation of the Endangered

(01:40:24):
Species Act. And I know it puts me at risk
of sounding like a I don't know what, but I'm
not okay with that. And in this sense, if you're
gonna have an Endangered Species Act, then it should actually
protect the species. Yes, we should put aside the abuses
and stop all that nonsense. But I think this is
going way too far. Hi, Mandy, you're gonna be warm

(01:40:44):
in here today.

Speaker 5 (01:40:48):
Good thing.

Speaker 8 (01:40:48):
I wore a sweater rod. We're driving up to Winter
Park after the show today.

Speaker 2 (01:40:53):
I was too late telling you what time do you
normally leave your house so that I can Traffic is
so weird.

Speaker 8 (01:41:00):
Yeah, that I could leave at eleven and get here
at eleven fifty, or leave here at eleven and get
here at eleven thirty.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):
Have you ever left it? Have you ever left at
eleven and been late for your show? Has it ever
been that bad?

Speaker 8 (01:41:10):
I have I don't think I've started this show on
the phone here.

Speaker 1 (01:41:16):
I don't.

Speaker 8 (01:41:16):
I have done that in the past. Yeah, I have
been very very close to being late. I have walked
in afternoon before, and I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:41:23):
I don't do that. What are you guys? Coming up?
Very excited? Bretna Horn is.

Speaker 8 (01:41:27):
Going to be on the show today and I'm going
to ask my listeners to come up with a list
of priorities for the Colorado Republican Party. And then We're
going to talk to Greg Lopez, who is once again
running for governor, and I'm going to ask him why
he thinks this time is going to be different, because
I like Greg, I have no ill will. But I mean,
come on, at what point do you just become the

(01:41:47):
Ron Paul of the field.

Speaker 1 (01:41:49):
You know, well, Ron Paul won, he didn't get anything
done when he was in went for a president.

Speaker 2 (01:41:54):
No, if you never went for he just ran and
over Ralph Nadering.

Speaker 1 (01:41:58):
Yeah, tell Britta, my goal for the Republican Party is
to be sane. That's kind of all I need you
know what.

Speaker 2 (01:42:04):
That's a sorry, poor low bar.

Speaker 8 (01:42:06):
But I think we'll see if we can limp over it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
But you never know, You never know, all right, Everybody,
stick around for Mandy's fabulous show. And remember Mandy and
I will each be doing our shows from Winter Park tomorrow.
I told you something about it. Mandy will tell you
more about it later. And Mandy's going to ruin the
last half hour of my show tomorrow, and I'm going
to ruin the first half hour of her show tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:42:28):
So we're gonna gross over in the Mandy verse.

Speaker 1 (01:42:32):
Love me all right, Mandy's gonna sit here in this
hot room and try not to cranky for the next
sweat for the next few hours.