10-13-25 - 9am - Jon Caldara Filling In - Prop LL & MM and The Shutdown

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
John as Balls with three ten is besides there, Yes,
I'm protecting the kids.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
The issue is is that if.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You own a liquor, if you own a store in
Denver and you have someone who owns a store in Aurora,
those profits are going into Aurora. This is not helping
the revenue, says some in Denver.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
You're asking for financial sense from our city council in Denver,
it can't happen. They're just emotionalistic socialists. So they are
going to close down these smoke shops that sell Swisher
sweets and other flavored tobacco. Yes, old Grandpa's Swisher sweets.

(00:48):
I believe there was a law when I was a
kid that every grandfather had to smoke a Swish or
sweet cigar so that he could smell like a grandfather.
I think that's it was a federal law. If I'm
not mistaken, well, Grandpa's won't be able to buy those
Swisser suites in in Denver if this thing passes.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
That's why you need to vote know on three to ten.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
But here we have a city where they are laying
off city workers, where they're spending money on illegal immigrants.
So what is the most important thing they could do
close down small businesses and send that business to Aurora
or other places where you can where adults can buy

(01:36):
their products. Insane. I'm John Calderian for the big Man.
I just want to make it clear that it's already
illegal for kids to buy these products. And I fully
concede these products can find their way into young adults' hands,

(02:00):
no doubt. But so does marijuana, So does liquor, So
does mushrooms. So flavored liquor, flavored marijuana, mushrooms also find
their their way into the hands of youngsters. Then why

(02:21):
doesn't the city council bar the sale of those items
to adults like they're trying to do with flavored nicotine,
like swiss or sweets. Why where's the consistency? Of course
there is none. The difference is more people use pot,

(02:43):
more people use booze, and they're not going to stop
that percentage of people. The left hates minorities. Let me
make it really clear, they hate minorities. No, I'm not
talking about racial minority. I'm talking about political minorities. There

(03:04):
was a law that was considered to be anti gay,
anti homosexual. The city council would be like, oh, you
can't do that. You cannot. You cannot discriminate against people
on their lifestyle, on who they are, unless, of course,
they smoke Swiss or sweets, in which case screw them.

(03:25):
So in one level, it's you know, we want to,
we want to. We had to protect those those people
in the political minority. That's why we protect gay relationships. Okay, great,
I'm down for that. Why not the same logic for
Grandpa who smokes a Swiss or Sweet because that would

(03:50):
require some sort of logical consistency and they don't have it.
They just want what they want. They want people to
live the way they live. That's it, maybe really clear.
What's on the ballot has nothing to do with children,
no matter how much Michael Bloomberg will put kids in

(04:12):
the front of his ads. It has everything to do
with adults. Should adults be allowed to buy a Swiss
or sweet cigar? If you say no, then why should
an adult be allowed to have a white claw, which
is a flavored alcoholic beverage.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
What is the difference.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Why should an adult be able to buy cherry infused
marijuana or an edible marijuana that's flavored but not not
a Swiss or Sweet? If you can answer that for me.
I would love to hear it. Three h three seven

(05:03):
one three eight two five five. I would welcome somebody
who could seriously tell me the difference. And the difference is, well,
fewer people smoke swiss or sweets today then drink white claw,
so we're going to keep those things legal.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Insane, So ballots are already going out.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Colorado has an election month that does not have an
election day.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
You will not get your ballot today.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
Because it's Columbus, Indigenous people whatever, whatever victimhood. We're celebrating
day off today and so the government isn't working, so
that means tomorrow you might get your ballot. There is
really only one statewide issue that you need to decide on.

(05:54):
It's broken into two different questions l L and m M.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
It's my hope you vote against both of them.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
This has to do with our failed free school lunch program,
which is underwater. What a surprise. I support free school
lunches for kids of poor families. Little brains cannot learn

(06:26):
if there's no food in their tummies. I think we
all can agree on this, and that's why we provide
free lunch for poorer kids. I'll go a little farther.
Maybe that program should be expanded. Maybe we double the
amount of kids raised at the level by which your

(06:49):
kid can get a free meal. Terrific, awesome, spectacular, let's
do that.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Let's go ahead and do that. But wait, we didn't
do that.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
We passed a program that gives every kid a free meal.
I'm using finger quotes when I say free. Every kid
gets a free meal.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Wonderful. No, it's not wonderful at all.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
And instead of taxing all of us to give all
of our kids a free meal, we tax those people
who make over three hundred grand a year. Gets to
tax the wealthy scam, and therefore we have wealthy people
being taxed so that just slightly less wealthy people can

(07:47):
get free lunches for their kids. Let me say that again,
because it's really important. Under this program, people who make
over one hundred thousand dollars a year pay more in
taxes so that.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
People who make two hundred and ninety nine.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Thousand dollars a year their kids can get free meals.
There's a real moral hazard with this program. That moral
hazard is that we get to keep ourselves a benefit
from rich guys. We get to enjoy class welfare. We

(08:33):
get to buy the middle class things at the expense
of those who are more successful. So a guy named
Alexander Fraser Tyler made this statement once. He said that
democracy cannot exist. Democracy is doomed. What he said was

(08:54):
a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government
can only exist until the voters discover that they can
vote themselves largess from the public treasury. We have hit
that point in America that we keep getting more and

(09:15):
more benefits for ourselves. Yes, social Security benefits for people
who haven't earned and put that money in there, Medicaid
benefits or Obamacare, and it's going to break us. So

(09:37):
in a microscope we get a look at this here
in Colorado, propositions LLL and MM say we're going to
give everybody free stuff at the cost of just a
few So really, what's on the ballot this fall beyond
free lunches is class w or flair class envy. Who

(10:07):
who are we to take somebody else's money. So basically,
wherever you live, you can tax that guy with a
nicer house down the street, and he can buy your
kids food. What's really dangerous about this is that not

(10:30):
only does it mess up our incentives. It punishes people
for being successful, but something much much more. It treats
us like children. It assumes that middle class families, families
earning two hundred and ninety nine thousand dollars a year
unless simply don't have the skills it takes to make

(10:54):
their kids a sandwich, or the money it takes to
let them buy a hot line at school.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
That's the problem.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
If only if only government were here to tell us
where our kids should eat and make those decisions for us,
then we wouldn't have to do so. What this free
lunch program is is really an attack on family autonomy.
It's a creeping bit of socialism where government elites decide
what your kids should and should not eat.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Your kids go to school to.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Be indoctrinated, but programs like this indoctrinate the adults. It's
the kids who go to school to be re educated,
but really it's the parents now who are being re educated.
That buying themselves little benefits at the cost of the
wealthy is okay, that's a huge danger.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
I think it warps your mind.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
It creates this class welfare that what that guy has,
I can just take it as long as I get
fifty plus one percent of my neighbors to agree with me.
I can take that guy's stuff and use it for
my family. There's also a danger to kids. And yeah,

(12:29):
I'm gonna sound conspiratorial here, but something magical happens in
the lunch room. You remember this, don't you. Parents would
feed their kids well, very different things. Every lunch was
a little different. It had some individuality to it. And

(12:52):
what happened during that time of lunch. What happened during
that period? Potato chips exactly? I got an apple here?
Who will trade me for this apple? Oh you got
an orange? I prefer oranges. Oh you have grapes. I'll
make a trade. And then you find out how valuable

(13:13):
what the real worth is of a twinkie.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
Ain't nobody touching the almond joy though, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
You could have the I hate almond joys. Coconuts, give
me a break. But if you had those Oreo cookies,
yeah you could. You could get a peanut butter sandwich.
You can make it a trade. What did what did you trade?
Looking at you draggon.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
Anything and everything to get something sweet or some you know,
some cookies or something. The peanut butter and jelly. I
got all right, anybody, it's grape, any bit grape, jelly,
crunch and jelly. It's not even the butt end of
the bread. It's it's you know, it's it's the good stuff.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
So economists have this term called spontaneous order. Basically, he says,
you can't stop markets. You can drive under right, which
can't stop markets, And the lunch room was a perfect
example of that. Nobody had to educate kids.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
On how to make market trades.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
Nobody said, all right, now, here's how the market works
in the lunch room. When you get there, don't mean
these people want no, You just start doing it. And
at the end of the day, kids got more of
what they wanted. Everybody got more of what they wanted.
If you traded your oreo for an apple, it means
you wanted an apple more than an oreo, and the

(14:31):
guy with the oreo wanted or the guy with the
apple wanted the oreo, and you're both better off. You're
both happier. It taught market economics.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
The beauty from.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
A socialist point of view of this free lunch program
is that there's no trading. Why because every kid gets
to eat the same bland crap. Here's your slop, the
same slop as the guy. The net guy gets that,
the next guy gets the next guy. It's like going
shopping at a Soviet grocery store. Everybody gets the same thing.

(15:11):
There's no market training. Part of me for being conspiratorial,
but I am convinced this is a big part of
what they do. They want the elites to decide what
your kids should eat and take away the opportunity for
them to experience the marketplace, and take away your responsibility

(15:35):
to feed your own kids, because good god, we know
you won't do a good job. We the state will
do a much better job at feeding our kids. One
of the prime jobs of parenthood is feeding your kid.
That is your responsibility. And so many coloraden's over fifty

(15:57):
percent of them, we're happy to force fit that authority
over to the state and let the state decide what
my kid should eat. There's also a broken promise. They
said the food would be locally sourced, because you know
suburbanites are into that. That's never happened. Right out of

(16:19):
the gate, this program was underwater. Why because when you
give people free crap, they take it, and they take
it in droves. Why would anybody make their kid a
sandwich now that the school's going to feed everybody. Therefore,
it went right into the red. The state had to

(16:42):
bail it out, meaning there's less money for roads, less
money for anything. I'm very worried.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
That LLL and MM will pass.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
It is it's a barometer on how we feel about
taxing people who have something better than us and not
even giving the benefit to the poor. This benefit doesn't
go to the poor, It goes to everyone, so it's
not even targeted. Well, we're gonna steal from the rich
and give to the poor. No, you're gonna steal from

(17:17):
the rich and give it to me. Everybody gets free lunch.
Why does that teach our kids? And teaches our kids
the government, not your parents, are responsible for your upbringing.
And when you become a parent, well it will be
your job to forfeit your authority to the state, just

(17:41):
like mom and dad did.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
And I hope you get everyone to vote against.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
L L and MM. What happened to our beautiful stage?
I'm John Calderic. Keep it here six point thirty.

Speaker 5 (17:55):
Kow, Hey, John, don't you think the real problem is
our definition of what is rich? Somebody making three hundred
thousand dollars a year, or the couple that does. They're
usually the ones that start a small business which keeps
us employed, or they spend money at places that do

(18:17):
employ us. They are not the Rockefellers.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
They're not the Rockefellers. You know, small business is still
the backbone of our economy. Small businesses grow into large businesses,
or they fail. Large businesses grow into larger businesses, or
they shrink and sometimes fail. There was a time when

(18:44):
Sears Roebuck was the dominant retailer. There was nobody who
was going to knock over Sears. Well, not so much now. Kmart. Yeah,
today it's Target and Walmart. It's a competitive world out there.

(19:05):
What a shame that businesses in Denver have to compete
with regulation. They have to go out there and try
to make a living with a hand tied behind their back.
Have you noticed how many restaurants are going under in
Denver for a variety of reasons, Inflation, which is all

(19:26):
government controlled. MA get very clear, inflation is a monetary
issue more than it is anything else. The other disruptions
and supply lines and different things. But when the government
doubles the amount of money out there.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
It means the price of things doubles. Again. Let me
give you the.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
The the quick monetary lesson. When we had a go
old standard, when our money was limited by how much
gold and silver there was, we had incredible wealth and
people earned more. They saved more because when they saved something,

(20:13):
the value of that went up. Now, because money is
printed anywhere, just printed and printed, you have an incentive
to spend your money. You even have an incentive to
go into debt because thanks to inflation, you will be
paying that debt back with less money. That is, when

(20:38):
you go into debt and you buy something well in
the future, with inflation, you should be making more money,
making whatever you're paying off cost relatively less.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
If you were nineteen.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Sixty four and you had a nineteen sixty four quarter,
you could buy a gallon of gasoline with that. That
quarter is a is a silver quarter. It has zero
point one seven percent of an ounce. That's worth almost
ten dollars today. Do you realize that what was something

(21:20):
you could buy one gallon of gas with today you
could buy three gallons of gas. That's called deflation. That's
what happens when your your money is fixed. But instead
we went off. We went off that gold standard and
turn on the printing presses.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
The banks love it, the economy loves it.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
We all feel like we're wealthy because our four oh
one k's go up, but really they're not going up.
It's just inflation. And so now we spend not a quarter,
but you know, three dollars a gallon for gasoline. You

(22:04):
have an incentive to spend now, and that's that's going
to be terrible. It is going to break us. So
restaurants now have really expensive food costs.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Ah, but it's Denver.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
So we also have one of the highest minimum wages
in the country.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
It's nineteen dollars an hour.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Have you noticed that service in Denver restaurants just isn't
as good as it used to be because they can't
afford to hire anyone. Oh it's more than that. Now
they have to pay for the Family Leave Act. The
Family Leave Act is another nearly one percent wage tax

(22:51):
or it's split between employer and employee, but doesn't matter.
It's the employer that pays it, and so it makes
employment even more expensive. So you got the minimum wage,
you've got insurance costs in Denver going skyrocketing. Partly because
of all the crime. You've got property taxes going up.

(23:13):
You have the Family Leave Act, which means not only
do you pay more for your employee you have, but
when that employee's gone, you got to hire somebody to
fill his shoes, so you're paying twice. It's just spectacular.
Businesses are going under. How many restaurants have you seen

(23:35):
go under? Now? Some of the bigger chains can move
things around, they have some economics of scale, but they're
not immune either. They will be closing up shop as well.
More and more restaurants are closing down. It's too expensive

(23:56):
and they're certainly not in the how to put it
more pedestrian areas. At a business lunch in Cherry Creek
the other day, the place was jammed. I'm looking around, going,
how is this jammed when just a few blocks away
in downtown Denver the restaurants are wide open and empty. Well,

(24:17):
I guess people feel safer in Cherry Creek and they're
willing to spend more money to feel safe. But more
and more businesses are going under. Denver's response to that
is to speed it up. Let's put smoke shops and
vape shops out of business. By outlawing flavored tobacco products

(24:42):
like swiss or sweets. Or we'll keep the liquor stores open.
That's a white claw, which is a flavored liquor or
peach and fused vodka. We'll keep them. The marijuana shops open,
you know, the ones that have flavor edibles, but flavored

(25:02):
tobacco or flavored nicotine products to help you get off
the tobacco.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
No, can't have that. You can't have that.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
Anyways, this is a good year to vote no on well,
just about everything. Let's take a quicker look at the shutdown.
How bad has the shutdown been for you?

Speaker 2 (25:28):
You know, the government shut down.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
It's day ten. Now day ten. You got Trump flying
all over the world putting out wars, but we can't
get our government to work. The media is starting to
tune into the horror stories. Oh, the horror. No, it's
not so bad that the government is shut down. I

(25:52):
wish Congress could be shut down. How about this story
from a website called the Travel Before the governor shutdown
became official, former National Park Service employees were begging officials
to close national parks in the event of a closure.

(26:12):
That's just terrible, writing their primary concern was visitor behavior
causing irreversible damage to the fragile ecosystems.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Given the lack of staff. Dun, dun, dung.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Unfortunately, the National Park Service contingency plan dictated that parks
were to remain as accessible as possible during the shutdown.
Heaven forbid the people's land be open to the people.
Across the country, they write, national parks are feeling the effects,

(26:50):
with Redwood National State Parks dealing with stolen items, and
Rocky Mountain National Park's latest conservation project in jeopardy. Now
you can hear them, hear the emotional music in the back.
Now Yosemite National Park in California is getting its turn,

(27:11):
with unruly visitors taking advantage of reduced staff. Base jumpers
have been spotted jumping off El Capitan, and visitors without
permits are making their way up the cables of Half Dome. Meanwhile,
visitors in the campgrounds are overstaying the reservations, becoming squatters

(27:34):
in one of America's most iconic parks. Hmm, So, therefore,
what exactly what is it you want us to do?
And the shutdown? Okay, go tell the Democrats to vote

(27:55):
for a bill that has less spending in it on.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
All of that comes down to Obamacare.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Remember Obamacare, Obamacare that was supposed to save us money. Obamacare,
which was supposed to allow us to keep our health
care plan if we want to do You remember Obamacare
where we could keep our doctor if we liked our doctor.
You remember Obama. Well, Obamacare is breaking the bank again.

(28:28):
Just like free lunches, when you give out free stuff,
people take it. And here they're giving out free healthcare,
free healthcare. Isn't that great stuff? And so the scare
of the government shutdown, I don't think is as bad

(28:51):
as it used to be day ten and Trump is
using this, hopefully to fire a bunch of government employees. Now,
it's sad when you're the government employee getting laid off,
but somehow the world survives without you. Why is it

(29:21):
that this, this shutdown just doesn't feel that bad. Is
there a reason about that?

Speaker 2 (29:35):
Let me read something for you.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
Here's here's a few of the broken promises of the
Affordability Act, you know Obamacare, the ACA.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
The promise Do you remember this?

Speaker 3 (29:51):
The ACA will cut the deficit, will cut the deficit
including its student loan provisions. Hmm. Interesting. Our federal debt
is at an all time high, including these costly student loans.
The ACA would quote bend the cost curve, saving two thousand,

(30:15):
five hundred dollars a year per family.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
Do you remember this promise?

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Instead, individual market premiums doubled between thirteen and twenty seventeen.
And remember they started the Cadillac Tax to tax nicer,
better healthcare plans.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Remember the ACA would save.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Lives, although life expectancy has fallen for three years in
a row. That the ACA would only be for US citizens.
Remember that promise. Yep, many unauthorized immigrants on on healthcare.

(31:02):
The ACA would take this stress out of shopping for
health insurance. Of course, the portal was one of the
most unreliable websites ever launched. OH, penalties on employers that
failed to provide coverage would provide massive revenue, while the
actual revenue collected from these employers less than five percent

(31:27):
of what was projected. The ACA was going to increase
economic growth, right, Medicaid would be an efficient way to
increase coverage. Nope, I loved it. If you liked your
plan and doctor, you could keep them. I couldn't keep them,

(31:48):
could you? Is this shut down? Destroying your life. The
Democrats want to continue funding at high levels the AC Obamacare.
Is this the hill they want to die on? Is
it possible that for once Republicans can win the PR

(32:08):
battle on a government shutdown? That breaks my number one
rule that whenever there's a shutdown, Republicans naturally get blamed
three h three seven one three eight two five five
in for Michael Brown, I'm John Kelderrek keep it right
here six point thirty k out. I don't care about
what happens in Denver anymore.

Speaker 6 (32:29):
The business owner is there, don't figure out that Denver
is a mess and the only way out is to
close shop and go somewhere else. To show Denver a
lesson in what business revenue does for a city, then
I don't have any sympathy.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
Sorry, I have sympathy.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
I absolutely have sympathy.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
I've never seen a city that has.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Gone wrong make a really good comeback.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
I guess you could argue New York City under Juliana
made a terrific comeback. I'm not looking forward to seeing
Denver fail. It hurts me. It hurts me to think
that all these businesses that tried so hard just couldn't
get it done, and that it's government that has made

(33:25):
this invasion of homelessness crime, putting.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Small businesses out of business. Yeah, part of me says,
you voted for it. This is what you're gonna get.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
What a shame.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
We can save Colorado.