04-23-25 - *FULL SHOW* ADM Stavridis; Lauren Boebert; Let Them Opt Out

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Start the show with something I hadn't been planning on
talking about based on what I hear Pat Woodard mentioned
in the newscast.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
So let me just there. It's always interesting.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Pat's very good at picking what news stories to cover,
in my opinion, or maybe that's just because he and
I are interested in similar things.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
But I'll mention one thing, and that is this.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
This story about the federal judge here in Denver that
has ordered the Trump administration to give potential deportees three weeks,
you know, three weeks notice before deportation proceedings so they
can try to fight him in court. And the whole
case is very interesting, it's very lawyerly, there's a lot

(00:39):
of there's a lot of legal ees involved.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
In the whole thing, and.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
So I just want to I want to see two
quick things about it.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
One is, the federal government has to have.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
A way to get illegal aliens and especially illegal alien criminals.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Out of the country.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
The other side of that coin is they have to
do it legally. And I've been a little frustrated in
the past day or two and.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
I underst me. Let me just say this one part.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I also know that we have had repeated democratic presidents,
by which I mean at least Obama and Biden, who knowingly.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Broke the law right.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Obama said he didn't have the authority to do dhaka,
Congress had to do it, and then he did it
by executive order.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
He knew he was breaking the law.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Nancy Pelosi even said he didn't have the authority to
do that.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
And then Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
The most obvious example was the many after the Supreme
Court told Joe Biden you may not forgive student loans,
and I mean there are a couple of provisions in
existing federal law that allow a little bit of that,
but Joe Biden tried to do an insane amount of it.
He said, they said you can't, and he kept on
going every single way he could think of to do

(02:00):
it despite the Supreme Court. So we have had lawless
presidents that should scare everybody. And I'm very frustrated by
reading so many people on the political right who were
correctly outraged by what Biden did, by what Obama did

(02:21):
now saying on Twitter, you know, the Trump administration should ignore.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Court orders and ignore court rulings. Absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
What has to have This is the thing that people
forget all the time, people act like our government is
only these days, they act like our government is only
the president and that the opposition to our government is
only the courts or something like that. But really, even
though we have three so called co equal branches of government,
one is a little more co equal than the others,

(02:49):
and that's Congress. And if there are problems and things
that need to be changed, Congress has to do it.
And so on the one hand, the federal government must
be able to deport illegal aliens, especially illegal alien criminals,
but they got to do it within the law. And
I think that the law they're using right now, the
Alien Enemies Act, And I'm not going to get into

(03:12):
the details of it right now, but I think they
are using the law illegally.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
And it would not surprise me.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
At all if the Supreme Court says you may not
use that law as your basis to deport people. The
other thing that I'm you know, that's all I'm going
to do on that.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
I may come back to it later. What else do
I want to mention?

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Huge rune up in the stock market yesterday, Another huge
run up in the stock market this morning. Right, so
the market, depending which index you're looking at you know,
up somewhere between four and five percent, maybe closer to
five actually depending on the index over the last couple
of days. Yesterday yesterday, it was because earlier the Treasury

(03:53):
Secretary Scott Besen said he thought we were going.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
To be able to do a deal with.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
And then yesterday evening Donald Trump came out, well, he
was giving a press conference and he said, we're gonna
be very nice to China and the and the tariff
rates are gonna drop a lot.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
They're not gonna end up here.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
And the other thing that happened, uh yet it was
either early yesterday or late the day before, is that
President Trump said, you know, don't worry, I'm not going
to fire I'm not gonna uh fire fed Share Jerome Powell.
The market was very worried about that, and rightfully so
if he had, if he actually did fire Jerome Powell, uh,

(04:35):
the market would you'd see one of the worst days
in the market that you've seen, even though you've seen
a lot of really bad days.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
And so somebody said.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
To him, look, you you got to back off a
little bit here. You can't threaten Powell, right, and we've
got to act like we're working to make some kind
of deal here on this trade stuff, because you're causing
the economy to seize up. Now, my guess, and it's
only a guess, is that the market run up here

(05:04):
is actually a bit overdone. I think there were a
lot of people who were short the market expecting a
further crash. You know, market things don't go up or
down forever in a straight line. I think there are
some people who were short who needed to cover now
that the news looks a little better. But if you
listened to Donald to the entire press conference in which

(05:28):
Donald Trump said we're going to be nice to China
and the rates are going to be a lot lower
than here. The whole rest of the press conference, well,
when they were talking about tariffs and trade, Trump didn't
back off any of his core fundamental beliefs about any
of that.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
He kept talking about how we're going to bring all
the manufacturing back to America, and he didn't say tarif's
are going to go away. He just said they'll be
lower than you know where they are right now. That
doesn't mean very much to me. So we don't really
know where this is going to end up. And I
suspect I don't think it's gonna.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
End up with economic disaster, right.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
I think it will end up with an economy that's
weaker than it needs to be, weaker than it otherwise
would have been. I think we'll end up with somewhat
higher unemployment than we would have seen otherwise. And I
think Republicans will probably pay a price in the elections
in twenty twenty six and twenty twenty eight. But we'll
say so much so so much depends on what the

(06:29):
administration actually does.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
And I don't know. They don't know. They change their
tune all the time. Here's one other thing.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
A lot of people are talking about this on television
and on social media.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
And I don't mean liberals, right, I mean moderates.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Even some conservatives are talking about what Trump said yesterday,
We're gonna be nice to China and the rates are
going to be lower. As as Trump backing down or
caving in, now, I think there is a little.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Bit of that, but he.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Didn't really say he's going to back all the way down.
He said We're going to have a negotiation, So you know, yeah,
it's it is backing down a little, right, He's he's
toning down the rhetoric a little.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
But what I wonder about.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Is, you know, Trump looks at social media a lot
and watches a lot of TV. And to the extent
that Donald Trump's brand is strength, to the extent that
he sees people talking about this as him backing down
or him caving in, you could imagine that encouraging him
to not go too far or not go, as I

(07:33):
would put it, as far as he should in normalizing
trade relations with lots of countries around the world. All Right,
So that's the update I still have. There's just so
much to do on the show today. We've got Admiral
Stavritez coming up at nine thirty nine am. We've got
Lauren Bobert at eleven thirty three am. By the way,
coming up in this break is this Hour's chance to
win a thousand bucks that's coming up in the next

(07:54):
several minutes thanks to Maverick.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Keep it here on KOA. Let's do a bit of
a local story.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
Remember one of my maxims, and it's partly to make
fun of democrats, but it's also partly just because it's true,
is that there's no amount of your money that democrats
in any legislature will be satisfied with. And again I

(08:20):
say half joking that if the Democrats could be fully
in charge of tax policy, the ten forty tax form
would be an extremely simple thing. It would be like
a small postcard line one, how much money did you
make last year? And then a little blank where you

(08:42):
put in the number, and then just under that it
says send it in. That would be it. There's never
enough and they're always looking for more creative ways here
in Colorado. Obviously, one of the things.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
One of the things they do is to call new
taxes fees disgusting. In fact, the Common Sense Institute that
I am a free market fellow of the Common Sensence too,
but before I was involved, they've done this research that
if you were to count all these crazy fees as taxes,

(09:20):
our effective tax rate in this state, which nominally is
somewhere around or I think just under four and a
half percent. It's been changing a couple of years in
a row, so I don't know the exact number, but
neighborhood of four and a half percent, our actual tax
rate if you called these new fees taxes would be
in the sevens. There's never enough money.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
So this story caught my eye in part because I
very much enjoy, especially during football season.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
I very much enjoy betting on sports.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Now, as you know, I do not bet a lot
of money because I hate to lose. I enjoy winning
much less than I hate lose, and I am not
alone in that. It is a common psychological phenomenon. I
really love betting on NFL games, on Broncos games, on
all this stuff. My average bet size, I kid you not,

(10:13):
is probably forty or fifty cents per bet, and I'll.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Do eight of them.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
There's something you know, on any given day, if I'm
risking ten dollars, that's a lot, and that's over like
eight different games that.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
I bet on or whatever.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
So because I'm just goofing around, I'm not trying to
make money, but I'm also not trying to lose. Now,
if you've been paying attention to online sports gambling at
all or these apps, right, I use you know the FanDuel,
but there's DraftKings and there's bet MGM, and they're all
these things. Often one of the ways they get people
to try it out is they say, you know, deposit

(10:49):
five dollars, make your first bet and win or lose.
We'll give you one hundred and fifty dollars in free bets,
and it's kind of how they hook you.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
And by the way it works, it worked for me,
and I'm grateful for it.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
I used their free bets and I made a bunch
of money, so that was awesome for me.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
I'm great.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
I like the free bets. Now, listen to this from
the Colorado Sun. Colorado lawmakers on the hunt for more
cash for water programs.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Right, it's always got to be about something like that.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
It's got to be for the veterans or the kids,
or for water, or for the unicorns or for the
puppies or whatever. It is always got to be something
like that. Now that you say it's water programs are
proposing that sports gaming companies paying new taxes on free bets,
a move that could boost the amount of money the
gambling activity now generates for water projects by roughly thirty percent. Right,

(11:39):
because there is this dedicated tax in sports gambling that
nominally is supposed to go to water projects, but of
course money is fungible, so who really cares. If approved,
this bill would generate nearly twelve million dollars in cash
next year for water planning conservation efforts and such things
as irrigation system repair and the purchase of water rights.
That's in addition to the thirty million dollars. The program

(12:00):
is already on track to produce. According to Senator Dylan Roberts,
a Democrat from Frisco, and Sue and Speaker Julie McCluskey,
a Democrat from Boulder, there is actually a Republican on
the bill, Matt Soper from Delta.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
Bad idea, Matt.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
If you're on a bill with two Democrats, it's probably
a mistake. Now, this is the thing that these people
seem not to understand. Do you really think that the
betting platforms where if if government implements a new tax
on free bets, so they're gonna give you, you know,

(12:38):
let's just use a number. Let's say you're gonna they're
gonna give you one hundred dollars in free bets and
then the government.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
So that's not actual cash.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
You can't withdraw that, right if you win, you can
withdraw the winnings and so on, but you can't just
withdraw your free bets, so it's not really cash to you.
You could turn it into cash if you make if
you win some bets, but they're then the government wants
to tax, and I don't know what the tax.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Rate is, but let's just pick a number, ten percent.
I don't know what the rate is. I should have
gone to look it up, but I didn't.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
They're gonna want the government's gonna want ten dollars in
actual cash. And now you're talking negative cash flow from
the gaming platforms. Do you really think the gaming platforms
won't change how they do business.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
They're gonna change something.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
They'll reduce the amount of bets, or they will change
the odds. It's a tiny, tiny bit on the margin
in order to make back that money, or at least
some of it. So my point is there is no
way that the bill will generate the amount of money
they claim it will generate, because tax hikes never generate

(13:47):
the amount of money that the people who support them
claim they will.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
Because the people.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Who support the tax hikes forget that the people they're
imposing them on are not you know, Amiba, who are
just gonna sit there and not react. Actually, even in
Amieba would react, and sports betting websites certainly.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Will react in any case.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
You know, Colorado lawmakers want to tax free sports bets
to raise more money because the amount of money they
take from you, however much.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
It is, is never ever enough.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
My laptop computer this morning because the keyboard on it
is not working. And this is a tricky thing because,
for example, I do I do some interviews on Zoom
and on my.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Laptop is part of the process.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
The good news is, I think I can make everything
work to get the Zoom meeting going in a few
minutes with admiral stritis without needing.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Any keyboard to actually be working.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
But if anybody has advice, you can text it to
me at five six six nine zero. I'm usually pretty
good at being my own tech support, but I'm not
exactly sure what to do what to do with this.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
So there's there's that. So okay, let's do it. Let's
do it. Goofy sports thing for a minute. So I
was reading an article I actually believe it or not.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
It was an article about that Shannon Sharp story that
you heard mentioned in the news. And I'm gonna come
back to that story in a bit a little later
because I do have some thoughts about it.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
But I was.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Reading a note from in an email that I get
every morning from a guy you know, I subscribe to
one of the email blasts, and he was covering the
story and he put a link in it to something
related to the Shannon Sharp story. But he put the
wrong link and it went to this other story. And
it's just actually kind of amusing. I'm not really much
of an NBA guy, but there's a poll that I

(15:37):
that I didn't know about that it's really kind of funny.
It's really so let's see who has this story is?

Speaker 2 (15:44):
This is Yahoo Sports.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Tyreese Halliburton really took his career to another level following
a trade to the Indiana Pacers. Since joining Indiana, he's
averaged nineteen point seven and points and ten point two
assist per game. That foreman's earned him All Star appearances
in two of his three seasons with the team, cementing
him as one of the best players in the league.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
But some NBA players don't see it that way. This
is the part that I find amusing.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Halliburton was named the NBA's most overrated player.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
I didn't know that was a thing. I didn't know
that was a thing.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
He got that honor yesterday in an anonymous poll conducted
by The Athletic which I think is part of.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
The New York Times, I remember correctly, and he got
fourteen point four percent of the vote vote, beating out Ruby,
Rudy Gobert, and Trey Young.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
And what's kind of funny about this is it's actually
a pole of NBA players. It's not a pole of
writers or a pole of fans. It's a poll of
NBA players. So there are one hundred and fifty eight players.
At least one player from all thirty teams took part
in the pole. But these are these are actual NBA
players who named this guy ty Reece Halibert and the

(17:01):
most overrated, the most overrated player.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
And I think that's actually I think that's kind of funny.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
That's really all I have to say about it, But
I do think I do think it's kind of funny.
So what else did I want to mention to you? Oh,
I'm going to do this one just briefly. I don't
have I don't have a ton to say about it.
But these things pop up from.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Time to time.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
So you might have heard that among the various things
that Trump administration is working on right now, there are
a lot of things that deal with policy around transgender
right So they're trying to stop biological males from participating
in women's sports.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
I'm in favor of that effort.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
They are trying to ban transgender personnel from the military.
I am mostly not in favor of that effort. There
are some areas where I think that could be a
problem right very close quarters and so on. But if
you've got a transgender person, you know, part of a
motor pool or working in an intel or you know,

(17:59):
flying an I really don't see any reason that that
such a person who if they if they want to
serve the country, I don't see any reason that they
that they shouldn't be able to serve the country.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
So there's that. So in line with that, one of.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
The other things that Trump administration has done is to
promulgate new rules about passports that would ban the use
of a like a gender marker other than male or female.
I think they have something now where you like put
an X for you know what quote unquote non binary

(18:35):
people put on their passports and that kind of thing.
And also they have said that you have to put
on your passport whatever or your gender was at birth.
So I just want you to know that a US District.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Judge has caused the Biden administration's enforcement of that, And
I'll just.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Give you my very quick take on it, and then
we're going to get to my guests. So my quick
take on this is, I don't see what the federal
government's legitimate purpose is. I don't care whether you like
or don't like transgender this or transgender that.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
It makes no difference to me as a libertarian.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
I want adults, in particular, go live your best life.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Do what makes you happy.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
You know, if you were born you know, male, but
you deeply believe you are a woman, why.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Do I care? It doesn't make any difference to me.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
You want to go live as a woman, you want
to appear as a woman, you want to identify as
a woman, Go do that.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
I truly don't care.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Now, if you are identifying as a woman so well
that if anybody saw you would they would think you
are a woman, then I actually think that this government
policy making you put male on the.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Passport will actually cause confusion. Imagine somebody comes through named,
you know, Joe something or other, and the passport says female,
but Joke looks like a man, and now the passport
agent thinks or maybe it's Chris right, it's not a
name that's identifiably male or female.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Now the passport agent thinks, what that might be a
stolen passport.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
That says female. This is a man.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Now, imagine all the confusion from that, all the other
people waiting in line for an extra half an hour
because this guy had to go do something.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Else, all in service of what. I just don't know.
So I think the judge is probably right that the
federal government will have a hard time proving that they
have a legitimate interest here, and instead this change is
coming from discrimination. That's my guess.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
We will see a best selling author in both fiction
and nonfiction, and I recommend them.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
All these days.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
By the way, with what's going on in the world,
you really gotta go by and read twenty thirty four. Anyway,
we have a lot of stuff to talk about. Admiral,
thanks so much for spending time. And did I get
it right this time?

Speaker 2 (21:00):
South Tom, I.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Don't want to screw up again because I'll get demoted
or thrown in the brig.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
One hundred percent correct, easy way to remember it, south com.
It's everything south of the United States, Latin America, Caribbean,
South America.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
We've got a ton of stuff to talk about.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
I'm going to do this in no particular order, but
I want to start with a couple of your recent articles,
maybe in reverse order. Tell us about the uss berries
motto and what's going on with that.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
I commissioned this destroyers as the second captain of the
ship back in the mid nineties and sailed her around
the world, took her into combat. And the ship's motto
from its commissioning in nineteen ninety two, so this is
over forty years ago. It's motto, which is on the

(21:53):
crest of the ship, has always been strength and diversity.
Now here's an important point. When that motto was coined,
the diversity referred to the lethal diversity of the ship.
It could shoot down targets in the air, it could
sink submarines under the water, it could attack ships, it
could attack cities with its land attack missile. So strength

(22:17):
and diversity of offensive capability. So that was quite happily
the motto. So I followed the ship as the second
commanding officer. And by the way, this ship won the
award as the top ship in the Atlantic Fleet, not once,
not twice, three times.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
It's a storied ship.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
And so I follow it, and I was quite surprised
to see on the website the other day the motto
is no longer strength and diversity. The motto is now
strength and so I think unfortunately my old ship and
its motto got caught up in this Dei purge. But

(22:56):
the diversity involved had nothing to do with racial diversity.
It was about the letality of the ship in all dimensions.
I think it's an example of how sometimes policy can
run way ahead of common sense.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
We see a lot of that right now. In particular.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
One quick follow up, Just tell us one if there
was I don't know if there's more than one combat
you were involved with on that ship.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
I'll give you three combat or quasi combat operations. The
first mission was an arms embargo around the island of Haiti.
You remember at that time Haiti was going through massive
civil wars. This was in the fall of ninety three.
Then we deployed the ship forward and we were in
combat operations off the coast of the Balkans during the

(23:47):
time of the invasion but the Serbs of Kosovo, so
this would have been ninety four. And then we were
ordered to steam at maximum speed through the Suez Canal
and up to the Arabian Gulf because Saddam Hussein was
looking for a second bite at the Apple of Kuwait.

(24:08):
So it was the three ring circus of combat or
near combat operations Haiti, the Balkans in the Mediterranean, and
the Arabian Golf.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
I saw a great picture of you in your article
as a commander. I don't know if you. It looked
like maybe you were on the bridge. A little hard
to tell I was.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
I'll tell you where that photo was taken. It's so
good I can't not do that. It was taken in
June of ninety four, on the fortieth anniversary of D Day,
and the ship was anchored with warships from all the
countries that participated on the beaches of Normandy. We were
honored to be anchored directly across from the punt to Hak,

(24:50):
the place where the rangers climbed, the place where Reagan
gave the iconic speech about the boys of Punt to' Hak.
These young eighteen year olds, you know, scaled that cliff
in withering German fire and where the spearhead for the invasion.
My ship, the Verry, was honored to be anchored to

(25:12):
commemorate that fortieth anniversary day.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Now, I've been to multiple military cemeteries. I'm sure you know.
Fort Logan here in the Denver area is very big.
I've been to Arlington, I don't know how many times,
many times, and I have to say I've never quite
had the same the same feelings as I've had at

(25:37):
the American Military Cemetery in Normandy. And it's it's not
nearly as big as these other places that I just mentioned,
but maybe the fact that it's essentially overlooking the beach
where so many of these young men and they almost
are all men, but where they died, it's just a

(25:58):
different It was an credible feeling that I really didn't
expect because I had.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Been to Arlington so many times, in Fort Logan and
so on. Yeah, these are different.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
These are called the American Battlefield Cemeteries.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
They're all around the world.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
There are dozens of them, and many, many of our
young men and women in more subsequent combat are buried
in these American battlefield cemeteries. The most beautiful one I've
ever seen is on the north coast of Africa, where
many fell in the initial days of World War Two,

(26:33):
in and around Tunis and is the old site of Carthage,
and it overlooks from high high bluffs the Mediterranean Sea.
And you're right, the one at Normandy is of course
utterly iconic, and if folks want to get a tiny
feel for it, go back and watch the movies Saving
Private Ryan, which opens and closes quite movingly in that cemetery.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
You wrote a piece for Bloomberg that was published I
think a week ago today five signs that the US
end China will go to war. And I do note
that part of the reason the stock market was up
so much yesterday and more today is that the administration
seems to be softening their tone a bit. I don't
think they're softening it as much as the market seems

(27:20):
to think they are about China. But I got some
concerns and they were only exacerbated by reading your article,
especially in combination with your novel twenty thirty four, which
you note is a cautionary tale that everybody should go read.
Tell us what some of these warning signs are that
have you that have you concerned? And maybe also you

(27:43):
know from one to six and a half, really, how
concerned are you?

Speaker 3 (27:49):
From one to six and a half, Okay, I'd say
I'm at about a four. And if you wanted me
to put up percentage on what are the answers that
US China actually go to war, I'd say it's between
five and ten percent, which is uncomfortably high because, as
I unfold in the novel twenty thirty four, the year

(28:13):
that's the title is the year twenty thirty four. It's
how the US and China stumble into a war that
is a disaster for both countries. So I think another
way to put at ross is over the last ten
twenty years, I think it's the highest possibility of conflict
with China. And by the way, the conflict could be

(28:34):
smaller than a global nuclear exchange. It could be a
conflict over Taiwan most obviously, or about ownership of the
South China Sea that involves the Philippines. But the chances
of some kind of conflict between the two nations, I
would put it five to ten percent. Right now. What
the article does is kind of think about a dashboard

(28:57):
with warning lights on it. A couple of the key
ones are air intrusions around Taiwan. Those doubled from about
fifteen hundred a year ago to three thousand in twenty
twenty four, So Chinese jets flying all around Taiwan. That
indicator is blinking yellow and going up. Another one is

(29:20):
the one you mentioned a moment ago, trading tariffs. When
you have a tariff of one hundred and fifty percent
one hundred and twenty five percent back and forth. At
least until today, we didn't see any indication of anybody
back and down. I hope you're right that the administration
will soften its tone, but high high tariffs are another

(29:44):
blinking yellow light. And don't forget when was the last
time two great powers went to war in the Pacific? Well,
that would be nineteen forty one, the Empire of Japan
and the United States of America.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
What was the root cause of that war?

Speaker 3 (30:01):
It was trade tariffs, sanctions the United States effectively choking
off the Japanese economy. So that's a second indicator to
really focus on. And I'll give you a third one
that is kind of invisible. But I'll tell you what
else is blinking yellow, if not red, and that's cyber
and cyber attacks, typhoon vault, typhoon salt. These are Chinese intrusions.

(30:26):
And I assure you. The US is, let's just say,
pretty good at this stuff. Also, there's a lot of
cyber conflict that's frankly already occurring. There's three indicators that
are blinking yellow, if not close to blinking red.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Ross We're talking with Admiral James Tavritis, former NATO Supreme
Allied Commander, among other things. These days, he's a partner
and vice chairman for Global affairs at the Carlisle Group.
We just have a couple of minutes left at Admiral,
I want to come back to China to tie it
in with this next thing. So there are supposed to

(31:02):
be conversations going on right now regarding the Ukraine Russia ceasefire.
Secretary of State Rubio was gonna go now, he says
he's not.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Keith Kellogg will be handling that.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
I know better than to ask you your opinion about
other military former military officers, so I'm not going to.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Ask you what you think of him.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
It seems to me that Trump has been putting way
too much pressure on Ukraine and not enough pressure on Russia.
I would like to know what you think about the
status of these negotiations and whether you think Donald Trump's
claim that he will just walk away from a peace

(31:39):
process is a negotiating tactic or something he might really
do as if you can read his mind.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Let's start with Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg and two thumbs up.
He's solid, he's extremely knowledgeable. He's in his late seventies,
He's seen a lot of the world. He understands or
he understands Europe very well. I think he's a very
good choice to lead the Ukrainian side of the negotiation.

(32:07):
Number two, I want to commend the Trump administration for
pursuing a peace process. Number three. Your point. To make
it successful, you have to put equal amounts of pressure
both on Ukraine and on Russia. At the moment, from
all I can see by reporting and my own contacts,

(32:28):
I think Russia is just playing ropidope in there. They
want to see how far they can push to get
more concessions extracted. They're really not interested in stopping the
combat operation. So point four and final point, I think
your supposition is correct that this is a negotiating tactic

(32:52):
to put pressure, frankly on both sides, and you know,
the Ukrainians are going to have to make some concessions.
But the Russians are going to have to make some concessions. Also,
it's too soon to predict the shape of the final deal,
but I think that saying to both sides, Russia, you know,
if you don't come to the table, your chances of
the sanctions will lieve zero, and saying to Ukraine, Ukraine,

(33:17):
if you don't come to the table, your chances of
continued military support from the United States zero or very low.
So I think it's an appropriate moment. Put pressure on
both sides, bring them to the table, get a seazfire
in place. I think you can negotiate a deal here,
and I think it would be one that roughly looks

(33:38):
like what you see now. Putin unfortunately ends up with
Crimea and the land Bridge twenty percent of Ukraine, but
the eighty percent of Ukraine sales on democratic free path
to the European Union probably not a path to NATO
at the moment, continued support from Europe. That's probably how
this comes out toward the end of the year.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah, with you. Unsurprisingly, I do think Ukraine may.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
End up having to just throw their hands up and
walk away from Crimea. But I think I think they
won't and shouldn't walk away from you know, Karkiev, don
Boss and that stuff.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
No, right, so one very very quick thing.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
We're just about out of time, and I would like
you to I would like to know whether you think
I am overly concerned here. My concern is that if
Trump actually does walk away and leaves Ukraine, even if
the Europeans keep supporting Ukraine, I think that that would
massively increase Xi Jinping's incentive to try to take Taiwan

(34:41):
while Trump is in office.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
Is that is that paranoid?

Speaker 3 (34:46):
No, No, it's accurate. And believe me, Shi Jinping wakes
up every morning and when he has this morning tea,
he says, how are things going in Ukraine? He's watching
that very closely, has been for three years. I think
that's one of a handful of important reasons, one of
the very most important reasons that we need to not

(35:07):
simply walk away from this. It'll leave Taiwan out there dangling.
And here's the news flash. Taiwan is the center of
the manufacturer of the most high end semiconductor chips. If
that falls, is destroyed, or falls into Chinese hands, the
least of our worries are going to be terrorff barriers.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
Admiral James Staveritaz's website Admiral stab stav dot com. You
should buy and read any and all of his books,
but given where we are in the world right now,
i'd start actually with the novel twenty thirty four. Anyway,
Admiral Steveritaz, it's so good to have you here as
always look forward to talking to you the next time.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Thanks a lot, talk soon. All right, all right, all right,
we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back.
I did. I did.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Take a few people said the same thing, like grab
a USB keyboard from somewhere else and plug it in.
And I did that, and it does and it does
work to do that. What I'm trying right now is
I'm doing I'm doing a version of a Windows reinstall
that doesn't delete my old settings and apps and files.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
And all that.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
It's in the settings part of Windows where it's like
a repair version of a Windows reinstalled.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
So so we will just maybe we'll see what happens.

Speaker 4 (36:22):
So I just got here, Yes, did you turn it
off and turn it back on again?

Speaker 1 (36:27):
So I did the things that I always do with
electronics that I've done since the nineteen eighties, with my
first computer, which was an Apple two plus. The things
that always work, you turn it off and turn it
on again. If that doesn't help you hit it, that's
about right, right.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
I swear to God, how many times pounding on the
side of my Apple two plus back in.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
The day, and I'm talking about in the eighties, right,
I'm kind of an early adopter of some of this stuff.
How many times that would get something something working?

Speaker 2 (36:55):
Again? Let me do just a few minutes on this story.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
I'm going to share with you a piece for George
Will in the Washington Post that came out several days ago,
and then yesterday there were oral arguments in this particular case.
Let me just share a little of this George Will piece,
or maybe more than a little. It's not very long
and it is very good, so well, I might not
share all in this centennial year of two memorable events

(37:18):
in the fraud history of public K through twelve education,
Montgomery County, a progressive Washington suburb. By the way, I
kind of grew up in Montgomery County, right, I grew
up in Bethesda. I mean I moved around a lot
as a kid, but from the middle of high school
through the end of college. That's where I lived. You
know I would come back there for college breaks. So

(37:40):
Montgomery County has kindled another controversy about government power and
parental rights. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will here and
now they have heard oral argument concerning whether children can
be exempted from instruction that their parents consider contrary to
their religious beliefs.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
The parents say this compulsory.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Instruction violates their First Amendment right to the free exercise
of religion. In November of twenty twenty two, the county's
Board of Education mandated for elementary school pupils quote LGBTQ
inclusive storybooks featuring gender transitions, same sex playground romance, and

(38:18):
questioning CIS, normativity, and power hierarchies. The picture book Pride
Puppy asked students to search a Pride.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Parade for underwear, leather, and a lip ring.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Another picture book invites kindergarten through fifth grade readers to
ponder what it means to be non binary and asks
what pronouns fit you. Parents were promised school adherents to
Maryland's policy of parental notification and the right to opt
their children out when the storybooks were read, but the
day after the board reaffirmed this policy in March of

(38:54):
twenty twenty three, it reversed, saying there would be no
parental notice or opt outs concerning.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
The story books. Let me just skip ahead a little.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
The plaintiffs are arguing only for notification and opt out rights,
saying parents should not be sidelined about a sidelined in
order to facilitate government telling children how they're supposed to think.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
So it seems like they're not trying to get the
books removed.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
They're just trying to say, as parents, we want to
be able to opt out from our kids.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Being exposed to these books.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
Forty seven states have parental opt in or opt out rights,
three are silent on this.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
No state bars opt in or opt out rights.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
Montgomery County does this by bureaucratic sleight of hand, saying
that the controversial part of the saying that the controversial
material is just part of a curriculum and opt outs
are not permitted. And board members, of course, you understand
who these people are, denounced the parents who are concerned

(39:59):
about this as being hateful, as being white supremacists, as
being xenophobes. Now, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, I
think made a pretty big mistake in this case. The
Fourth Circuit upheld Montgomery County's practices, offering the strained argument
that they do not compel the children of the aggrieved
parents to change their religious belief or conduct. This even

(40:22):
though the Supreme Court has hitherto applauded the traditional reluctance
of government to directly force instruction of children quote in
opposition to the will of the parent.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
As George Will says, it's insufferable.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
That Montgomery County can coerce parents, as a price.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Of access to public education.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
That they are paying for, to accept government efforts to
control their children's thinking about sensitive matters. To live their faith,
the parents must forego a public benefit. The Fourth Circuit's
deference to Montgomery County's policy is a dereliction of judicial
duty to police government excesses. There's more there, but in

(40:59):
the interesting time, I'm gonna skip it. Let me just
tell you just a little bit about what happened yesterday. Yesterday, Unsurprisingly,
there were a couple of the left leaning Supreme Court
judges who seem to be arguing that it's no burden
to the parents religious freedoms if the kids, you know,
have to read or hear these things.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
I think that's nonsense, but.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
It does seem that a majority of the court appears
likely to say that Montgomery County must allow parents to
opt out from having their kids. As my friend Leland Vitter,
who you hear on the show from time to time,
as as Leland noted in his brilliant War Notes yesterday,
go to warnoes dot com to subscribe for free. As

(41:39):
Leland noted, this should be the easiest case of the year,
right and there, I just it should be.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
But nothing's easy these days.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
And what's odd is there really are people out there
who will say, you know a parent who doesn't want
their seven year old reading a book that tells them
to go to a pride parade and look for underwear
and leather and a lip ring, that somehow that parent

(42:08):
is wrong. There are people actually crazy enough to make
that argument. But and there may even be one or
two of them on the Supreme Court. I'm highly confident
Montgomery County is gonna lose. I think you may even
see perhaps one liberal justice go along with saying parents

(42:29):
have to have the ability to up their kids out
of that stuff. So if I were going to take
a guess at the final vote on this thing, I
will say seven to two. I don't know just which two,
So to my OAR will almost certainly be one. We'll
see what happens with Jackson. We'll see, We'll see what
happens in any case. Anyway, I wanted to share that

(42:50):
with you. It's these people need to be slapped down.
And what I would really like to see is a
line in a Supreme Court ruling about that says explicitly
that public school children are not the property of government.
I just see a headline a story from the New

(43:12):
York Times of Vance, meaning Vice President Jade Vance, outlines
US plan for Ukraine that sharply favors Russia. Vice President
Vance on Wednesday that would be today called on Ukraine
to accept an American peace proposal that closely mirrors long
standing Russian demands, including a so called freeze of territory

(43:33):
alliance in the three year War, acceptance of the annexation
of Crimea by Russia, and a prohibition on Ukraine becoming
part of.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
The NATO Alliance.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Now, as I said when I was talking with the Admiral,
I do think there's a real chance that in order
to end this thing, Ukraine is going to have to
accept Russia having taken over Crimea. I just don't see
how Ukraine gets that back. And it is true that

(44:01):
a very big percent of the population there are ethnic Russians. Yes,
there are some issues there as far as sea access
and ports and all this stuff, but I just don't
think there's anything Ukraine's going to be able to do
about that. And as part of a peace deal, if
they need to sort of uncomfortably agree to something that
really they know they can't do anything about anyway, you know,

(44:23):
that's not a bad negotiating chip for them.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
But if the Trump administration is.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Also proposing that Russia gets to keep a bunch of
eastern Ukraine that it took in the more recent invasion,
you'd have to think that that's a.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Non starter for Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
And think about the domestic politics of this, right, I mean,
what if there isn't really a good example for US
here because the United States is so much stronger than
its neighbors. But let's imagine that we had a neighbor
that was very strong. Let's imagine that Mexico was very strong,
and let's imagine that Mexico invaded and took the bottom,

(45:02):
the lowest ten miles along the southern border of Texas
and said, you know, that's their historic territory and most
people in here speak Spanish.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
And let's say it's true. Just bear with me for
a minute, okay.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
And then let's say they further invaded and went up
into you know, Oklahoma, right, and a little bit of Arkansas,
and this took some of that.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
And now America wants.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
A you know, a peace treaty, and someone else is
negotiating this, and they say, well, not only do you
have to accept that Mexico took back those you know,
historically Mexican you could argue, you know, a few miles
along the Texas border where a huge percent of the
population is native Spanish speaking, but you also have to
let them keep all of this other stuff that they

(45:51):
took more in, you know, further into the country.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
No way, how could you do that? And remember, this
is the other.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
Thing that people seem to forget and that Donald Trump
seems to forget all the time, and that is there
are domestic politics in these countries.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Right.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Zelenski doesn't primarily answer to Donald Trump, even though Donald
Trump would like him to. He primarily answers to the
people of Ukraine. Do you think the people of Ukraine
will tolerate that? I realize that they're tired of war
as well they should be, but they won't and can't
tolerate that. And meanwhile, you've got the President of the
United States siding openly, even though he wouldn't put it

(46:28):
that way. But what the administration is siding with a murderous,
brutal dictator who invaded not a great country, but essentially
a democratic country that was steadily moving towards Europe. This
guy Putin is an enemy of the West, an enemy
of America, an enemy of everything that you and I

(46:51):
hold to be good and true. It doesn't matter how
much or how little you like Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is
the enemy, and Donald Trump is basically siding with him. Now,
remember that Trump said, Hey, I'm going to end this
war within twenty four hours of taking office. Now it
looks like what he's gonna he's realizing that, well he

(47:13):
knew that was a lie anyway, but he doesn't care.
And he is realizing now that he doesn't have as
much influence as he thinks, especially.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Not over Putin. So what his tactic right now.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Is is to propose something that probably won't get done
and then walk away and say it wasn't me, it
was them. I think that's what's happening here. I realize
that it's not a very charitable approach, but it seems
to me that's what's going what's going on here because
Trump has put essentially no pressure on Russia even though

(47:47):
they number one are the invader and the aggressor and
number two are our enemy. I think part of what's
going on is that Trump is still really mad at
Ukraine for Ukraine's involvement with Joe Biden's son, and I
think Donald Trump is willing to take it out on Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Also, Trump has this.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
Weird kind of fanboy man crush on any dictator he
can find, including Putin and Shijin Ping and Kim Jong
un and so on. And I think it's remarkable that
a guy whose primary brand is strength is doing so
very much to weaken our country. I did get I
should note I did get a lot of listener texts

(48:28):
about my little rant there regarding foreign policy in the
war in Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Let me just very briefly.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Take on a couple of them and then get to
the Motley Crue theme. So one listener says, One listener says, well,
if you think that ross, why don't we just go
to war with Russia. So that's kind of a dumb comment.
I didn't say we should go to war with Russia.
Ukraine is in a war with Russia. We should continue
to provide Ukraine with weapons. I am absolutely fine and

(48:57):
more than fine wrongly support the United States doing a
deal with Ukraine, which appears to have some pretty significant
resources of valuable minerals towards the eastern part of the country,
and the geography is important because Russia is in the
eastern part of the country, so we'd have to get
Russia out of a lot of that, and a deal

(49:18):
where the US gets either minerals or a cash flow
from the sales of minerals to pay the United States
back for what we are what we're spending on the war.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
So we should not go to war with Russia. And
by the way, Russia doesn't want to go to war
with us. We're much, much, much stronger than Russia. So
it's a bit of a silly concept. But I don't
want Americans shooting at Russians I want us to use
whatever economic power we have to try to hurt Russia.

(49:52):
And I want to support Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
With weapons, systems and intelligence and let them hurt Russia
militarily until such a time. Look, they're not gonna beat Russia,
but they might be able to cause enough pain to
Russia that Putin says, all right, I'm willing to negotiate something,
because right now Putin is just pretending to negotiate because
he knows that Trump is on his side, and Putin

(50:16):
is not somebody you can trust even with a deal.
Putin breaks every deal he's ever made. He is a
liar and a dictator and a thug and a killer.
So the right answer would be do something that causes
Russia to relinquish the territory it's taken recently. Probably let

(50:38):
him keep crimea There's probably nothing you can do about that.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
And then, to use a commonly used.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Phrase in military strategy, you turn Ukraine into a porcupine, right,
You build up military defenses in Ukraine that are so
strong that Russia would not dare attack them again. That's
the only way to get Putin to under the deal,
because otherwise Putin will attack again. Given given the opportunity.

(51:05):
He absolutely, he absolutely will. So you know, when a
listener says, how much more money should we give to Ukraine, Look,
I think that most people I get that question a lot.
It's a bit of a silly question because I never
said we should give Ukraine money. And the vast majority
of American expense on the war in Ukraine is actually
buying American weapons and sending him to Ukraine. It is

(51:28):
still an American expense, though, and I'm not making an
excuse for that, And that's why I'm saying we should
do a deal with Ukraine where we get paid back
anywhere from some to most to all to more than all,
depending on how this works out of what we spend
supporting Ukraine. But one one should understand that this, you know,

(51:49):
using this excuse about sending money to Ukraine, which we're
mostly not doing anyway, is really generally coming from people
who are just looking for any reason to back Trump,
even if even if the policy is bad, even if
it's worse for the US in the long run. So
I think we need to be very very careful here,
and I think way too much of the analysis of

(52:11):
the war just comes down to people who want to
agree with Trump on everything, or want to disagree with
Trump on everything, rather than looking at the pros and cons.
And I think that Trump is right to be trying
to solve it. I think he's wrong in terms of
the balance of putting way too much pressure on Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
And not enough on Russia.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
All of this is complicated, but so many people just
want to spend all their time, you know, acting as
if Trump can never be right on anything, or acting
as if Trump can never be wrong on anything. And
he Look, he's just a guy, right, So any guy
can be wrong on some things and right on some things.
And he's a populist, which means he doesn't really act

(52:52):
out of principle, right, he acts out of expedients. And
maybe there are a few things that he believes, but
he doesn't have very strong beliefs in And a person
like that is going to be right half the time
and wrong half the time, and it's almost always going
to be by accident anyway. So this isn't to me.
It's not about whether you like or don't like Trump.

(53:12):
It's about what's good for the United States.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
And it would be very very bad for the United States,
very bad for the United States.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
If if Russia ends up with something that appears like
a clear win. Right, So there's that. A listener says
Neville Chamberlain was the poster boy of making a deal
with Hitler. If Zelensky were to make a bad deal
with Putin, history will remember Zelensky is a latter day Chamberlain.

(53:40):
That's not exactly right, because at the time that Chamberlain
did what he did, which has made him, i'd say infamous,
England was not being attacked, right, He essentially gave an
approval to Germany invading somebody else.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
So it's it's a little bit different than that.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
And as far as Ukraine into NATO, that's just not
that's just not gonna happen soon. And I think, as
a matter of reality, just the same way that I said,
Ukraine is gonna have to accept Russian control or even
ownership of Crimea. They're they're also gonna have to accept
the reality that they are not going to get into

(54:27):
NATO anytime soon. Maybe they'll get into the European Union,
but that is not a military alliance. So so we'll
we'll see, we'll see. Dragon is the is the admirals
to Rita's stuff up on the blog yet or not
quite yet.

Speaker 4 (54:42):
I published a few moments ago. It should take a
little bit of cash out so everybody can go see it.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
Okay, yeah, a listener was who didn't hear the conversation
was was asking about that.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
If you missed the conversation with admirals to Rita's earlier
go check it out. Uh.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
It is at Rosskominsky dot com. And if you if
you subscribe.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
To the Ross Kaminski Show podcast, which you can do
on any podcast platform, you will get all of the.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Podcasts that producer Dragon. It's usually Dragon Posts, and what
that includes is the whole show with fewer ads, which.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Makes it nice. But the other thing that I like
when I listen to podcasts, especially if the primary person
speaking has a somewhat low voice, it doesn't work very well,
for example, if it's a female or someone with a
very high voice, is to play it back at a
faster speed so you can listen to the whole show
in seventy five percent of the time, or fifty fifty

(55:39):
would be pretty fast. To go at double speed is
very hard to listen to.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
But you know, in let's say seventy five percent of time,
so I like listening to podcasts myself, but the podcast
feed includes the whole show and pretty much every interview
we do as a standalone thing, and I think it's
good value for you.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
So what good ow? Oh my gosh, can you imagine if.

Speaker 5 (56:05):
I speak slowly when someone listens at one point.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
Two five speed? I have no idea what would happen.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
And I think that maybe someone should go experiment and
listen to a podcast that really high speed and then
see how well they understand you and how well they
understand what I'm saying right now.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
What do you think, Dragon?

Speaker 6 (56:32):
That sounds like a fantastic expirament.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
That's what You're welcome. That's one of the best things
we've ever done on this show.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Thank you for that. Dragon said you're welcome before I
even said thank you. That's I could see it in
your eyes. He knew how he knew how good it was.
That's like a mic drop. I think we should go
home now. Mandy, can you come? Uh, we we've done
all we can do here.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
Come in hour and fifteen minutes early, please.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Mandy, can you come in an hour and fifteen minutes early.
We've just broken We've just broken radio or or we
what's you know, like when you get a video game
of some kind that you don't even realize has an
end and you play it and play a play and
then and then you win it and it's done.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
That's what I feel like we just did with radio
right there. Till you did what you did. It's almost
as fun as a Hey, Sirie, what time is it?

Speaker 2 (57:42):
What did did you say? Hey, Alexa? What time is it?
What did you say? A Hey, Siri? What time is it? Wait?

Speaker 4 (57:48):
I get my headphones are Hey Alexa? Hey set an
alarm for ten minutes? That's what I thought. Yeah, that's
what That's what I thought.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
You said. All right, so I guess we have to
keep working.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
Dragon played the crew and it was a cruise song
about home Sweet Hall that I didn't know. I don't
feel bad for not knowing, but this is what he's referencing.
And it's actually something I mentioned just in passing earlier
in the show real estate in the Denver metro area.
So you know, I'm fascinated by markets generally, I'm fascinated
by real estate market specific In addition, I mean, obviously,

(58:22):
you know.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
I love stocking options in futures.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
And commodities markets and all that, because that's what I
did for a living before I did radio. I was
a trader for many years. If you're new to the show,
you might not know that. But I used to be
in Chicago waving my hands and yelling. And I traded
in Europe as well, although that was on a computer,
not in a trading pit.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
I wish I had traded in the trading pit in Amsterdam.
Can I just share with you one of my regrets
in life?

Speaker 1 (58:46):
So all right, I'll tell you the story, and then
I'll come back to the housing thing. So when Bill
Clinton got elected, he passed, Congress passed and he signed
an increase in individual income tax rate, and I said,
I don't want to pay income taxes to this so
and so and so I found a trading company that

(59:09):
wanted to set up in Europe because.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
I wanted someone else to pay the cost.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Of moving me, and also would make it easier to
get a work visa if I were working for a
real company. So I found a trading company that was
doing that, setting up in Amsterdam, and we moved to Amsterdam.
But we traded the German market, which was already all electronic,
so you didn't need to be in Germany to trade it.

(59:34):
So we lived in Amsterdam and that was a wonderful
place to live.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
We lived in Amsterdam and traded the German market.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
I wish I had traded the Dutch market, which is
in Amsterdam. And the reason that I wish I had
traded the Dutch market is it was actually set up
by staff from the Chicago Board Options Exchange, where I
was a trader, with the same rule, and they traded
in English Dutch. Pretty much all speak English, and I

(01:00:09):
sure wish I had traded in those pits, and I
think I would have made a lot more money. Also
because trading the German markets, I made very little money
because I was sitting there with some very very primitive technology,
and the big German banks like Deutsche Bank that I
was competing against, had these dedicated computer systems that had
automated processes to do everything that I had to do manually.
Like I would literally be sitting there typing in bid

(01:00:31):
prices and offer prices and quantities, and you could only
do a few options at a time because if the
stock is moving, you could get run over on those things.
If you don't change your market in time, whereas the
German banks had computers doing hundreds at a time, all automated,
and the company I was working for never provided the
technology they said they were going to provide. So I

(01:00:52):
quit after about a year and a half. I was
the only person who had a profit when they quit.
A few other people quit, They all had losses. I
had a profit, but it was not an enough of one,
and I came and I came back to the US.
But that's why I regret. I regret not trading in
the pits in Amsterdam. Very few people know this, and
why would you? But it was an open outcrime market
that was set up by the people from Chicago using

(01:01:13):
the rules from Chicago, and boy, that would have been great,
all right back, How did we.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Get onto that? How did that topic come up? Reasons? Reasons?

Speaker 4 (01:01:24):
Andy?

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
What does Andy say?

Speaker 4 (01:01:26):
Andy?

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Dragon?

Speaker 4 (01:01:28):
I dare you to say, Hey, Siri, I see a
little silhouette.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Of a man scaramouse, sciaamoosh, can you do the fandango?

Speaker 7 (01:01:38):
Will you do the fandango? Thunderbolt and lightning?

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Very very frightening me.

Speaker 7 (01:01:42):
Galileo Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Figaro Magnifico, I'm just a
poor assistant. Nobody loves me. It's just a poor assistant
from a poor family. Spirit its life from this monstrosity.
Easy come, easy go. Will you let me go? Mismila, No,
we will not let you go. Let it go.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
This smella, we will not let you go.

Speaker 8 (01:02:03):
Let it go, Smella.

Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
We will not let you go, let me go, will
not let.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
You This is the best radio ever. I just can't
believe what's happened in this segment.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
We need to use this segment for every awards show
entreat ever. That was fast. So you you just sit yep.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
You just said to Siri what Andy told you to
say to Siri, and Siri just went on with the
rest of the songs from there. That's amazing, beautiful. Thank
you Andy, Mandy, get in here. We need to go
from the Denver Post. Denver, long known for having a
tight supply of homes available for sale, is now a

(01:02:42):
leader among metro areas nationwide for how quickly it's building
a backlog of unsold inventory. The number of homes for
sale nationally jumped twenty eight and a half percent in
March compared to the same month a year ago, according
to a report from realtur dot com. All of the
fifty largest metro areas experience it's an increase over the
past year, with new listings outpacing sales. San Jose, Las Vegas,

(01:03:05):
and Denver all had increases of over sixty seven percent,
almost two and a half times faster than the nationwide
average increase. Denver technically at the third largest increase, but
the difference amounts to a rounding error. They're all sixty
seven point something percent among San Jose, Las Vegas, and Denver.

(01:03:28):
A chief economist at realtor dot com said these cities
experienced significant gains year over year. They are part of
the group of eighteen metro levels where inventory levels now
exceed pre pandemic levels. So there are more homes for
sale in the Denver metro area now than there were
before COVID. Now, just to be clear, that doesn't mean
we're at the national average over forty years. So right

(01:03:51):
now we're just under about ten thousand homes for sale
in metro Denver. The forty year average is about thirteen
thousand homes for sale at any given time in Denver,
the record is twenty seven thousand homes in March of
two thousand and six, the record high, right, the record
low nineteen hundred homes in March of twenty twenty one.

(01:04:16):
That was, you know, kind of in the heart of
COVID where nobody was moving and nobody was doing anything.
Now here's the other thing that I find really interesting
about this story. So that's interesting enough, right, And if
you're trying to sell a home, it's going to be
more difficult now than it has been for a while
because there's more competition. It's still not a terrible market,
but it's not the kind of thing where you can
put a home on the market and demand almost anything,

(01:04:37):
and demand any terms and they're just going to have
to buy it. Those days are gone. But here's the
other interesting thing. There's an enormous difference in the state
of the market between single family homes and condos.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
Are town homes no, you know, townhomes attached homes, right,
they share a wall or they share a flo with
somebody else. Now, among town homes.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
And condos, there were thirty five hundred and sixty seven
listings at the end of March, compared to nineteen hundred
a year earlier, an increase of eighty seven percent for
detached homes, the increase was fifty seven percent, from thirty

(01:05:25):
nine hundred to sixty two hundred.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
All right, so condos and town homes are really, really,
really struggling. Why what's going on right now, not in
every condo, but in lots of them, is that you
have a lot of deferred maintenance and deferred maintenance meaning

(01:05:48):
you need to fix the elevator. You got these expensive
projects that they've been putting off, and maybe they're doing
some other things as well. But what's going on is
significantly rising eight SHOA fees, you know, building condo fees.
You know, maybe you need a new roof, maybe the
building needs a new exterior, right, costs for things like shoveling, snow, taking, trash,

(01:06:12):
all these things are going up. Insurance costs going.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Up a lot, and these get passed through not in
your monthly rent all the time, but in these HOA fees.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
So check this out.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Although median condo prices are down six point two percent
over the past year, that's a big number. It is
not enough to offset higher HOA fees. Given that a
long way to drop in mortgage rates has not emerged.
Some buyers are doing the math and realizing that they
can actually buy a newer standalone home for just a

(01:06:48):
little bit more each month than what they would have
to pay in in one time assessments and higher h
for repair costs, and higher HOA fees to live in
an older condo.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
So the costs of maintaining.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
And repairing and all these services for condos and town
homes that are structured financially as condos driving up that
side of the cost of ownership and living there so
much that it's driving down the value of condos and
the demand for condos, because bottom line is, you know,

(01:07:29):
maybe you're willing to pay twenty five hundred dollars a
month to live somewhere. You don't care that much whether
it's twenty five hundred a month and no other fees
or fifteen hundred a month and one thousand.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
In other fees.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
But if you get to twenty five hundred a month
and then they want a thousand in other fees, right,
or it's two thousand a month, but they want a
thousand and.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Other fees, so that's three thousand, Like you know what,
I'm just gonna go buy a house. So it's very
very interesting seeing the dynamics in this market. We'll be
right back. Thanks for spending a little time with us
here on Kowa.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
By the way, iHeart has just been named the twenty
twenty five Podcast Company of the Year by the Webby Awards.
I guess I'm not very surprised. iHeart is the biggest
name in podcasts, and if you know anything about the
podcast world, iHeart does.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
An incredible job.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
So basically, we just won the Oscars of the Internet,
fourteen wins in these awards, and if you want to
check out our award winning podcasts and a lot more,
go to the free iHeartRadio app.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
We've told you a lot about the iHeart Radio app, but.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
I'm not sure that I've mentioned enough that you can
access all our iHeart podcasts there. And like I said,
we're the biggest podcasting company in the world as far
as I know, and now we've got awards to prove
we're the best as well, So go go check that out.
I'm proud to be associated with the company like that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
This is.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
This is a story I didn't get to yesterday and
I wanted to. It's an important and interesting story. So actually,
to start with, before going to a news particular news coverage.
I'm just going to share with you a press release
from two days ago from the United States Department of Education. Right,

(01:09:13):
so this is not somebody interpreting something through a filter,
but just the release from the department. The US Department
of Education today announced its Office of Federal Student Aid
FSA will resume collections of its defaulted federal student loan
portfolio on Monday May fifth, So that's coming up just

(01:09:35):
a couple weeks from now. The department is not collected
on defaulted loans since March of twenty twenty. Resuming collections
protects taxpayers from shouldering the cost of federal student loans
that borrowers willingly undertook to finance their post secondary education.
This initiative will be paired with a comprehensive communications and
outreach campaign to ensure that borrowers understand how to return

(01:09:58):
to repayment or get out of default.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
So what I what I.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Want to just emphasize here, because somebody mentioned this to
me on on Twitter, Well, if Biden forgave the loans,
then how can the Department of Education restart collection?

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
So that is a misunderstanding of the situation.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
Any loans that were actually forgiven and not just talked
about being forgiven and then overturned by a court before
they could implement it. But any loans that were actually
forgiven are forgiven, and the Department of Education would would
not be recollecting collecting on those. So this is a

(01:10:45):
this is a different thing, all right. So imagine imagine
you go buy a home and you got a mortgage
payment that' to do, and you chose to buy by
buy the home. It's your home, you wanted it, and
so you go take out this loan and something happens
and you lose your job and you can't make your
mortgage payments right now, and your bank doesn't foreclose on

(01:11:07):
you right away, but you are in default.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
You are in default.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
They could foreclose, but they're being nice for a little while,
giving you a little chance to see if you can,
you know, get a new job and get back to
making payments.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
But you are in default. Would anybody say that the
bank doesn't have a right to try to collect at
that point? Now?

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Of course, the bank thing is different because they have
your home as collateral than they could take it. It's
not the same. It's not like the Department of Education
can come take your education from you. Right, So there
is a little difference there, but the moral point is
the same. You decided to buy the house, you decided
to get the education. In either case, you decided to
borrow the money, and you owe it back. And don't

(01:11:47):
let anybody ever tell you that there's such a thing
as actually forgiving alan, especially not when it comes from
the government. Right, And actually not even in the world
of private mortgages, to the extent that they are government backed,
there is no actual such thing as true loan forgiveness.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
Loan forgiveness would be.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Right if if Dragon loans me five bucks and then
later for some reason, says, don't worry about it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
Ross, You know you don't have to pay me back.
Dragon has voluntarily decided to lose the five bucks.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
And this is the key. Dragon made the decision on
his behalf. Dragon loaned me the five bucks and decided
he's willing to not yet repaid.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
He is making decision about his own money. Are you
gonna say.

Speaker 4 (01:12:30):
Something, Hey, Ross, you remember that five bucks you owed me?

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Yeah? I do, okay, do I need to pay you back?

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Now?

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
I don't worry about it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
So that would be loan forgiveness, right, there, that's an
example of loan forgiveness. Now, Dragon, what would be an
example of something that isn't loan forgiveness. Let's play that
out again, like maybe the default thing?

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
So start again.

Speaker 4 (01:12:53):
Hey, Ross, you remember that five bucks you owed me?

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Yeah, but man, I just I can't afford to pay
you back.

Speaker 4 (01:12:58):
For a while. All right, that's fine. Albright says, you
don't have to pay me until when November?

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
All right? Fine, November good enough? All right.

Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
So in that case, Dragon has given me a waiver
until November. But he's absolutely within his rights when November
comes to say, pay me back or else, pay me
back or else, I'm gonna make you dress the way
Ben Albright dresses and come to work that way.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
That will be your punishment. And I would.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
Say, gosh, I'd much rather pay you back the five
dollars than have to wear pants as tight as what
Ben Albright wears.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
So did Ben hear that he had just stepped out?
So he may be in the I was really really
hoping Ben heard that. Let's hope. Let's hope.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
Okay, So anyway, let's back away from the bad analogy
club now, So what really jumps out at me about
all this right, So these people took out their loans
and oh one other things. It's not just college loans
we all talk about it is if it's college loans.
Remember college loans, I don't remember the number, but college
loans actually have a limit as to the maximumount you
can borrow. The amount you can borrow for postgraduate work,

(01:14:10):
law school, medical school, MBA, anything with PhD, anything like
that is unlimited. So when you hear about these people
who have three hundred thousand dollars in student loans, that's
not college.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Okay. I mean, some of it might be college, a
quarter of it might be colleged, but that's law school,
that's medical school.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
These are people who finished college and went on to
get advanced degrees. And the idea that remember, okay, I
didn't finish my other point. Gosh, I'm just so all
over the place today. When Dragon says Ross, you don't
have to pay me back, he's deciding about his own money.
When Joe Biden tried to say that students don't have

(01:14:52):
to pay the government back for money that has already
been spent, the universities have already been paid. Okay, the
universities have gotten their money What that's doing then is
they are so and that money is just now part
of the federal debt. So what that's doing is saying,
we are going to assign the debt that you took
on for your own benefit to get a college degree,

(01:15:14):
a PhD, a master's degree, a law degree. You took
on these things to benefit yourself and to improve your
life and your income, and we're.

Speaker 2 (01:15:23):
Gonna make other people pay it back.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
There is no such thing as loan forgiveness in this context.
There is only loan reassignment making other people pay for it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
And that's disgusting and immoral. And it's about time.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
That the Department of Education is gonna make people who
took out these loans for their own benefit pay them back. Now,
listen to some of this. Listen to some of this.
Kelly wants to know, did Dragon ever do is cartwheel? No,
I've never been asked to do one. Oh God, all right, Kelly,
you need to text Dragon directly. You have his number,
and ask him to do a cartwheel. Actually text me

(01:16:03):
at the same time, and then nobody will be able
to say he won't be able to say nobody has
asked him for today forty two point seven million borrowers,
oh more than one point six trillion dollars in student debt.
Listen to this now, more than five million borrowers have
not made a monthly payment in a year or more
and are in default, many for more than seven years.

(01:16:26):
And then another four million borrowers are between ninety one
and one hundred and eighty days late. As a result,
there could be almost ten million borrowers in.

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):
Default in a few months.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
And when this happens, almost twenty five percent of the
federal student loan portfolio will be in default. Now, listen
to this one, Only thirty eight percent of borrowers are
in repayment and current on their student loans. This, my friends,
is the fault primarily of the Biden administration, who ran
trying to buy votes by telling young people, hey, if

(01:16:58):
you elect us, we'll make sure you don't have to
pay off your college loans. We'll make sure other people
have to pay off your college loans and your grad
school loans. That was always disgusting and immoral and illegal,
and now they've convinced those people, hey, if I just
wait long enough, I may never have to pay this back.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
Someone else will pay it back.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
For me, and the Trump administration is saying absolutely not
times up.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
You start paying again. And by the way, by the way.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
What they're gonna do is they're gonna garnish wages. They're
gonna garnish tax refunds. This is not just gonna be oh, pretty,
please send us a check. They are gonna get aggressive
and they are gonna make sure that people start paying back.
And as I said, it's about time the down or
of the topic, but I feel like I need to
talk about it. And this is, you know, local stuff.

(01:17:47):
Here is teenagers committing crimes. And I'm just gonna do
two quick stories on this, and then I want you
to know that coming up in the next segment of
the show, we're gonna have Congresswoman Lauren Boberts on to
talk about her request for DOGE to look into front
Range passenger rail as a massive waste of money, which

(01:18:08):
it is, and then we're going to talk about a
couple other things as well. I haven't had Lauren on
this show in a three months probably, so I'm looking
forward to the conversation. All right, So this story, actually
both these stories are from katiev R Fox thirty one
and the reason that Dragon played that music. So there's
a dude. He's eighteen. Now, I'm not even gonna bother

(01:18:30):
with his name, although you know, eighteen and older, you
can use names, and the names.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
Are generally in articles.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
Now, generally news stories won't put names of miners, and
they will put names of adults. Anyway, this eighteen year
old kid is I won't use his name.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
He's been charged.

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
He was charged a week ago with twelve counts of
first degree attempted murder, first degree assault, thirteen counts of
crime of violence, possession of a dangerous weapon, in possession
of a weapon by a previous offender, criminal mischief. At
around ten pm on April fourth, Aurora police were called

(01:19:07):
to a gas station in the thirty two hundred block
of North.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
Peoria Street for a shooting. The victims said, now this
is why Dragon played that song. The victims said.

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
They were filming a music video when several rounds were
fired from a white suv driving south on Peoria Street.
The victims released the music video to the police, where
the rapid fire shots can be heard. A male teenager
was injured taken to a local hospital with serious injuries.
Aurora police that he survived.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
This guy who had, by the way, a sixteen year
old with him, were arrested later after a brittef foot
pursuit with Aurora police and then this police believed that
the shooter did not know the victims and targeted them randomly.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
According to the Aurora Police Department, this guy has an
extensive violent criminal history, including a prior weapons conviction and
an active right now active attempted murder case. Oh my gosh.
In fact, in twenty twenty three, he was convicted of
possession of a weapon by a prior juvenile offender.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
So when he was convicted in twenty twenty three, it
was of.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
A crime that you had to have previously been convicted
of a crime in order to be convicted of that one.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
So when he.

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
Did this gas station shooting, he was out on bail,
a eighty thousand dollars bond.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
He was out. So there's one teenager.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
So I think the lesson there is if you're going
to do a drive by, don't do it on video.
That's that's probably the main lesson there. And then the
other one that I wanted to share with you also
from KATIEVR. I'm just going to do this quickly, man
pleads guilty to shooting and killing a fourteen year old
during a gun sale. In twenty twenty two, a man

(01:21:00):
pleaded guilty to second degree murder for shooting and killing
a fourteen year old. The guy is nineteen now, but
he was sixteen the shooter, the killer was sixteen at
the time, but he was charged as an adult. And
this was in a neighbor in a neighborhood called Marston
in Denver. And what's nuts about this story? So this guy,

(01:21:24):
this killer, beat and shot and killed his victim while
he was there meeting with the victim to buy a
gun from the victim. So all that's bad enough, right,
You got someone selling a gun illegally, and this guy
is beating and shooting and murdering the guy that he's
buying a gun from. But the guy that he was

(01:21:47):
buying the gun from was fourteen.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
So this is what's going on in Denver.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
You got fourteen year old selling guns to sixteen year
olds who then murder the fourteen year old.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):
Denver's got a lot of work to do. I look, I.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
Don't think this has escape from New York. I don't
think we need snake pliskin. I think things actually are
getting a little bit better, because after all, this story
is from a few years ago when things were kind
of at their worst. But Denver still isn't what it
should be. I think the mayor knows it. I think
Aurora still has plenty of work to do as well.

(01:22:26):
And I'll tell you these stories of teenagers committing these
heinous crimes.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
Are are really tragic and infuriating. One ring eating e too,
ring eating e. I hope Lauren knew this was for today.
In the meantime, I do want people to know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
And this is not yet up on our social media,
but I'm sure it will be and probably on my
blog tomorrow, that after much cajoling by people he cares
about more than he cares about me. Producer Dragon did
in fact do a cartwheel. I videoed the whole thing
and I sent it to a Rod bullied. Yes, I

(01:23:05):
feel as well, you should, uh and a Rod will
post it somewhere and you will see it if you
go if you follow us on Twitter, he might post
it on you know, some other Koa social media, but
we're at Koa, Colorado. Uh, pretty much pretty much everywhere
on social media and in our department.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
Dragon Dragon did a fine job. Dragon did a fine,
fine job with his UH, with his with his cartwheel
again expecting hoping UH to have Lauren Bobert today. You
never know with these Congress critters, when stuff, stuff pops
up that they have to do, and then they get
dragged aside and then they don't make these things. But

(01:23:42):
we'll keep trying and hopefully either we'll get her. She'll
call us in the next few minutes. If not, I guess,
and she'll reschedule for tomorrow. But but we'll we'll see.
In the meantime, let me talk about something else while
while Dragon is seeing if he can round her up. So,
you know, on the one hand, I'm not much of
a fan of RFK Junior. But on the other hand,

(01:24:05):
as I've said about well, I say this about almost
every politician, including Donald Trump. They've got their ups and
they've got their downs.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
There's good stuff and not so good stuff on a
policy basis for just about everybody. Now, I would be
hard pressed to find a good policy from Joe Biden,
but he's an outlier. Normally, even with Democrats, normally there's
some policy that they support or they implement that where
I could say, you know, that's actually pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
I can't think of one with Biden.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
There's actually lots with Trump, Believe it or not, there's
very many with Trump. It's just the couple that could
be a problem for him are very big and they're
dominating the news.

Speaker 2 (01:24:44):
But he probably has you.

Speaker 1 (01:24:46):
Know, he probably has five policies I don't like and
forty policies I do like.

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
So it's like that with everything.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
So RFK right, I don't like his vaccine nonsense and
all that. But one of the areas where I think
he could be useful is talk about what's in food
and what should be in food. Now, I want to
be very clear about something here. I think the science
on some of this is equivocal. There's not I haven't seen.
I haven't seen proof that the stuff that RFK doesn't

(01:25:15):
like in food is actually harmful. I know there have
been studies on rats that suggest that some of this
stuff may be harmful. I guess the bottom line for
this is a close call for me, right, I'm a libertarian.
I think people should basically be able to eat what
they want to eat. But you're talking about, like, you know,
our massive food supply and everything that you buy in

(01:25:38):
the supermarket, and you've got this, you know, FDNC red
number this, and yellow number that and blue number that.
You know, to the extent that you're putting stuff in
your body that is just straight up chemicals, if maybe
you could replace it with something that is, let's say,

(01:25:59):
less likely to be harmful, because again I want to
emphasize that we don't know that these food dies are harmful.

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):
We don't know. Is that a risk worth taking? Eh?

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
You know, a lot of these food dies are banned
in a lot of other places around the world.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
Again, I want to be careful with this because I
don't think we need.

Speaker 1 (01:26:16):
To follow Europe around in their you know, hyperregulatory state.
But let me share the headline with you from ABC News.
RFK Junior unveils plan to phase out eight artificial food
dies in the US.

Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
Let me skip.

Speaker 1 (01:26:31):
Ahead a little bit and see if I can find
the the actual list of the dies here. Federal officials
are taking steps to pull the authorization for two pardon me,
rarely used synthetic food coverings.

Speaker 2 (01:26:43):
One is called.

Speaker 1 (01:26:44):
Citrus red number two I've never heard of that, and
orange B I've never heard of that either.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
Within coming months.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
In addition, six other petroleum based dies that federal agencies
are seeking to eliminate by the end of next year
are green number three, red number forty, yellow number five,
yellow number six, blue number one, and blue number two. Now, again,
I don't want to sound like a squishy whatever or

(01:27:13):
like a like a boulder crunchy granola person, But I
don't know somehow like having all of having these things
in my food and my cereal and my kids cereal
that are like a color followed by a number that's
just from a lab and right, this is red number forty.

(01:27:35):
Does that actually mean there were thirty nine other chemical reds?

Speaker 2 (01:27:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:27:39):
Probably, And again not really afraid of them. But I
don't know, can we do something different? I would really
like there to be more scientific research funded by somebody
who we really trust to be to coin a phrase.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
Fair imbalanced, right.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
A lot of times in a lot of different scientific areas,
you get scientific research by people who have an ax
to grind right for something against something, whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):
It may be. I mean, there's a reason that you know,
some of the.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
Biggest studies or the biggest study that that said that
breakfast is the most important meal of the day was
funded by Kellogg's Okay, I'm not kidding. So we need
and and I'm I'm guessing that a lot of the
research on this stuff is, you know, funded by the
companies that make these food dyes, and they're they're they're

(01:28:38):
seeking results that say these things are fine.

Speaker 2 (01:28:41):
So what the what HHS.

Speaker 1 (01:28:43):
And FDA are hoping to do is to so get
get companies to voluntarily pull these colors rather than having
to do new laws or new regulations.

Speaker 2 (01:28:56):
We'll we'll we'll see. So oh my gosh, all right,
look of that. Hang on one second, guys, this is
this is live TV. What is what is Lauren saying?
We got her? I think I think we got one
ring eating here? So yes, maybe dragon says maybe. All right.

Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
So they're talking about hoping to voluntary compliance, voluntary compliance
and then maybe replacing these with natural food dies. So
we will see what happens. All right, we will see
what happens. I just wanted you to be kind of
aware that this is coming and they're they're kind of
speeding this this stuff up there. They're looking to get

(01:29:41):
these food dies out sooner than they were going to before.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
And again, I think, just broadly speaking, the.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
Conversation about thinking a little bit more about what's in
our food and should we really be eating. That is
an area where RFK Junior could potentially be quite helpful. Right,
I'm not with him on everything, but this is a
conversation worth having, all right, Better late than never. It's

(01:30:11):
my pleasure to welcome back to Koa Lauren Bobert, Republican
congresswoman representing Colorado's fourth congressional district. I think I haven't
had Lauren on the show for maybe three months, so
it's good to have you back.

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
Lauren. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 1 (01:30:24):
Ross.

Speaker 8 (01:30:25):
It is great to be with you again, and sorry
about the delay. As I'm playing Granny today and my grandson,
who I stepped away from my phone for a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
That's more important actually, So thank you for taking time
away from your grandson to be with us. If I
were you, I probably would have told Ross to like,
take a hike.

Speaker 2 (01:30:44):
I got my grandkid today, But thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:30:47):
So, before we get into issues, you are several months
now into representing CD four. You did several years in
CD three. What are you finding as the main differences,
if any, in your job between representing four versus three?

Speaker 8 (01:31:11):
Yes, well, I would say the biggest difference other than
the terrain from mountains to the plains is really a
lot of us talk about this rural urban divide, which
is very real, but I've come to find there's even
more of an east west divide in Colorado, and some
of us would call that the Continental divide. We have

(01:31:33):
ninety percent of Colorado's water west of the Continental Divide
and ninety percent of the population approximately east of the divide,
and so there is a continuous water struggle. So water
remains a top issue for me.

Speaker 2 (01:31:47):
It's just the way I.

Speaker 8 (01:31:48):
Go about delivering those results to my constituents is much different.
Before I was really battling the federal agencies fear of
land management all of these public lands in the third
district for more water storage, more access, more multiple use
options for federal lands. And now here and where it's

(01:32:10):
the majority of the fourth District is privately owned, there's
different strategies to go about water storage projects on these
private lands. I've been working with five different counties in
the fourth District for the Parker Water Project, and this
is something that I'm hoping to get a direct community
project funding for. Hopefully we can get several million dollars

(01:32:34):
of that so we can have an abundance of water,
keep water that Nebraska wants to take from us, and
other than that, you know, I mean, this is a
slightly more diverse district in terms of rural and those
suburban areas like Larimer County, parts of Weald County, and
of course Douglas County, and so balancing those those needs

(01:32:57):
and representing their specific issues is something that I focus
on each and every day.

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):
Very interesting answer. I love. I love the water answer.

Speaker 1 (01:33:06):
And I know you've been focused on water for well
your whole time in Congress, and it's I will say water.
You've heard the old line a thousand times, right, whiskeys
for drinking and waters for fighting. And water is arguably
the most or one of the most complex political issues.

Speaker 2 (01:33:28):
And that's all I really know, right. I haven't studied it.

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
I just know the law and the politics and the
emotions around water. And if you never thought of it,
then you wouldn't think of it. But it is just
one of the most difficult issues. It pits people against
people and state against state and humans against nature, and
it's it's tough, yes.

Speaker 8 (01:33:46):
And every local government has some level of authority with
the water as well, and we're even taking on Mexico
for the water that they're taking from Colorado, so even
other countries are getting involved.

Speaker 2 (01:33:58):
Okay, one other quick thing.

Speaker 1 (01:34:00):
Last time when you were on or maybe the time
before that, we talked about your bill that I think
passed or you said it was going to pass, dealing
with like zip code stuff, so you wouldn't have all
these towns that showed up in the mail as other
towns and had and it caused sales tax problems.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
What's the what's the status of all that?

Speaker 8 (01:34:19):
Yeah, So that bill passed the House, and we were
in the last two hours of the congressional session last
year and one senator put a hold on it at
the very end and killed it in the Senate. But
we are reintroducing this.

Speaker 2 (01:34:31):
We have more.

Speaker 8 (01:34:31):
Communities that are added to this year's legislation once again.
It is bipartisanate is by cameral and in fact I
just spoke with Chairman Comer of the Oversight Committee where
we have jurisdiction over these zip code issues, and this
is one of our more recent priorities to get this
passed out of the House once again. And I'm Senator
Bennett is co sponsoring in the Senate. It will be

(01:34:54):
bipartisan by cameral and it'll give these towns not only
an identity, but it'll help with sales, text revenue, you
homeowner and insurance rate, first responders, response times and accuracy,
and of course mail delivery.

Speaker 2 (01:35:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35:08):
I love the fact that you're taking on this issue
and I commend you for it. Last question on it,
do you happen to remember which senator it was who
put the hold on it? And have you spoken with
that person?

Speaker 8 (01:35:19):
Well? The Senate's a tricky animal there, and it is anonymous.
What senator I was given a hint that it was
a Democrat. There were actually several holes put on it
for different reason and I was able to track down
most of them and get the holds listed, but that
very last one that went signed on to it would
not allow me to know who they were.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):
Remarkable.

Speaker 1 (01:35:43):
Well, okay, this is from Denver seven dot com, our
ABC News affiliate here, quoting from a news article. Representative
Lauren Bolbert wants to hold federal funding for a state
funded project that would bring passenger rail service to Colorado's
front Range.

Speaker 2 (01:35:57):
All right, I won't read anymore. Tell us what your
thing and doing here?

Speaker 8 (01:36:02):
Yeah, So this is an issue that has certainly come
up a lot here in the fourth District. This is
a massive money pit. This is a project that will
take years and years to even begin, and it will
take spend billions of dollars on a system that is
rarely used. And so I am working with Elon Musk

(01:36:23):
and Secretary Duffy to halt the federal funding for the
Front Range passenger rail project in Colorado. This is going
to cost way too much money, money that we should
not spend. And I mean it's starting estimate is at
fourteen billion dollars. So this certainly flies in the face

(01:36:45):
of any DOGE efforts to save the taxpayers money. But
the project, it's been advertised as a solution to transportation
needs in Colorado's Front Range Corridor. However, an honest assessment
reveals that this project is absolutely irresponsible. It's fiscally irresponsible,
it's impracticable, and the benefits in the special interests. It

(01:37:10):
benefits special interest groups rather than the American citizens. And
you know a lot of folks with that rail service
that is already in place. If you look at the carts,
they're mainly empty. Those who are riding it are writing
it for either nothing or very little, and at some
points it's really just a traveling homeless center. And so

(01:37:31):
there are more efficient ways that we can be using money.
We all know that Colorado's roads need to be fixed.
We're somewhere around forty seven in the nation for road quality,
and I think that we can invest more in our
actual roads rather than use imminent domain to seize private
property from the constituents in Colorado. I think that it's

(01:37:52):
an absolute unacceptable overreach by the federal government. And I've
heard directly from the local and constituents who live in
the projected railway who have absolute grave concerns over this.
So we want to stop this. And you know, even
if you look at RTD's funding, I believe that their
budget is more than c DOT. RTD's budget is more

(01:38:17):
than c DOT, and only a very small percentage. I
think it's four percent. If I'm wrong, I'll get that
number to you. Of their budget only comes from fair
rate and others. It's from sales tax. It's about sixty
percent from sales tax from the communities that fund our TD.

(01:38:37):
And you know, this is just another one of those examples,
another extension of that funding where their fair rates don't
even cover the actual projects itself. It can't stand on
its own, then it shouldn't it shouldn't be projected.

Speaker 1 (01:38:53):
Well, what I like to say about basically all passenger
rail in the US, and these are always kind of
fever dream of the of the left.

Speaker 2 (01:39:01):
Of people like Gavin Newsom.

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):
But what I like to say about projects like this is, yes,
they tend to take years longer than they're planned to
take to build them, and yes they tend to be
billions of dollars over budget by the time they're done.
But at least they will run huge losses every year
while they're operating.

Speaker 8 (01:39:22):
Yes, that is exactly right. You know, we have a
we have a Republican club, I guess in Washington, d C.
The Capitol Hill Club, And you know, I tell people
all the time, you know that the food is overpriced,
but at least it's mediocre. And they're kind of theme
the same concepts there, and it will run deficits and

(01:39:42):
the taxpayers, not only in Colorado but Nathan wide will
pay for it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:47):
Unbelievable. All right, let's do one more thing.

Speaker 1 (01:39:50):
We have just just a couple of minutes here, So
the federal budget is a very big deal, and the
House has to pass a budget. There's been some debate
about one big beautiful bill, which Donald Trump talks about
a lot, you know, or break it up into two bills.
And there's a lot of stuff between the House and
Senate that I don't entirely understand.

Speaker 2 (01:40:09):
But what are you seeing?

Speaker 1 (01:40:10):
So I have two questions, what are you seeing as
the you know, likely path of the budget process here?
And do you think that fiscal conservatives, and I consider
you among them who really want to be aggressive in
cutting government spending. Do you think you're going to get
your way or do you think that, you know, Republicans
squishes in the House are going to minimize spending cuts.

Speaker 8 (01:40:34):
Well, there are many of those Republicans squishes. Unfortunately we
are out numbered there.

Speaker 2 (01:40:39):
I meant the Senate. If I said the House, well.

Speaker 8 (01:40:42):
They're in the House too, don't don't think they aren't.
And I battled them and debates every single day I'm
in Washington, d C. We've sent over one point five
trillion dollars in spending cuts for this budget reconciliation, the
Big Beautiful Bill, and the Senate sent us back for
billion dollars and cuts. We sent one point five trillion,

(01:41:03):
they sent back four billion dollars and cuts absolutely insulting.
And so we do have a verbal agreement with Senate
Leader John Soon and our speaker and many Republicans in
the House saying that our baseline will be one point
five trillion dollars in cuts. We are still spending at

(01:41:23):
pre COVID pandemic levels. If there's nothing closer to eternity
here on Earth than a government program, everyone wants to
justify the spending, but we have got to get this over.
Almost thirty seven trillion dollars in debt. It is in moral, unsustainable, unjustifiable,
and unreasonable.

Speaker 1 (01:41:42):
Okay, So just one quick follow up because we only
got about a minute. So you know, I talked about
the budget cutters, the fiscal hawks, and again I'd say,
I think that includes you. You can correct me if
you think it doesn't. But I wonder then on the
other side of the Republican Party, and usually Mike Lawler
is the poster boy for this, and I don't dislike
the guy, but Mike Lawler is a Republican from New

(01:42:05):
York who is in a swing district or even a
light blue district. And there's a few people like this
Republicans who are in districts that maybe Biden won the
first time and when Biden ran, and they're going to
have a hard time going along with as much spending
cutting as you want. So if they won't go along,
I mean, you guys can't be in a position where

(01:42:26):
you need Democratic votes because then we're all totally hosed.

Speaker 8 (01:42:30):
Correct, Democrats are not going to sign on to this,
and America is about to get a crash course on
budget reconciliation. The beautiful part of it is we can
do budget reconciliation as many times.

Speaker 2 (01:42:41):
As we need.

Speaker 8 (01:42:42):
If we need seven beautiful bills, we can do seven
of them. It's the only thing that does not require
the filibuster in the Senate, where it only takes a
simple majority to pass the legislation and have President Trump
sign that into law. So it may be one big,
beautiful bill, but there's a chance that we could up
with several before we get to actual agreement. We've got

(01:43:03):
to have border fundings, we've got to have cuts, and
President Trump has a promised significant tax cuts. No tax
on tips, no tax on social security, no tax on
overtime and we have got to find a way to
balance that and reconcile that so we aren't going further
into debt. This is our number one priority and it's

(01:43:26):
going to get really exciting when we go back to
DC next week. Is this is the thing we will
be working on until it passes, and maybe even more
if we pass more budget reconciliation.

Speaker 2 (01:43:38):
I will ask you to just check with your staff.

Speaker 1 (01:43:41):
I believe that it is not correct to say you
can pass as many reconciliation bills as you want. I'm
pretty sure there is a limit on the number of
reconciliation bills that can go through in any one year,
So go check that.

Speaker 2 (01:43:53):
But I agree with you on everything else.

Speaker 8 (01:43:55):
You're talking with the speaker on that, and it's highly debated,
and yes, there is an avenue and a mechanism to
pass multiple We don't want to pass seven. We would
like to tep it down to two, maybe even three,
or if we get it right in the first round,
just the one.

Speaker 1 (01:44:11):
Lauren Bilbert is a good Republican congresswoman representing the fourth
Congressional District. Thanks for your time as always, Lauren, appreciate it.
Thanks ros all.

Speaker 2 (01:44:19):
Right, A lot of stuff there covered a lot. Hi Mandy,
Hi ros you got coming up Weather Wednesday.

Speaker 9 (01:44:24):
I got Weather Wednesday coming up. We're also going to
talk to Joshua Griffin. He's trying to be governor of Colorado.
He's a Republican. A lot of monuments, so we're going
to talk to him.

Speaker 2 (01:44:32):
At one o'clock.

Speaker 9 (01:44:32):
See what he's about. Yeah, I like some of his ideas.
I really hate some of the other ones.

Speaker 2 (01:44:36):
Oh well, cowach of that late.

Speaker 1 (01:44:38):
So it usually goes with politicians, folks, keep it here
for Mandy