07-10-25 FULL SHOW - Barb Kirkmeyer Joins To Talk Budgets and Special Session - The Mandy Connell Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
No It's Mandy Connell.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
And Connall.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
On KOA ninety one FM.

Speaker 4 (00:15):
S got Way the Noisy through three, Thy Connell, Keithing
sad Thing.

Speaker 5 (00:26):
Welcome, Local, Welcome to a Thursday edition of the show.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
The Gang is Back Together.

Speaker 5 (00:32):
Anthony Rodriguez has returned from his wild weekend in Vegas.
More on that in a bit, because I want to
hear how summer vacation went. And in the meantime, we
have a lot of stuff on the blog today and
we're going to talk to Senator Bob Barb Kirkmeyer almost
made her a dude, Senator Barb Kirkmeyer today one. And

(00:53):
there are so much stuff going on in Colorado right
now that is none of it's going.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
To be good.

Speaker 5 (00:57):
I'm just letting you know, not a bit. We're gonna
have a special session. We're gonna talk to Barb about
the budget. She has been on the budget Committee. I
don't know how many years she's been on it. The
boys as she's been sounding the alarm for the longest
time about all the overspending that's happening in Colorado. And
now the chickens have come home to roost financially, and

(01:19):
Colorado's in a pickle. Denver's in a pickle. So it
is uh, it's gonna be a good conversation. Let's do
the blog first. Find the blog at mandy'sblog dot com.
That's mandy'sblog dot com. Look for the headline that says
seven ten twenty five blog. Barb Kirkmeyer joins to talk
budgets and special session. Click on that and here are

(01:40):
the headlines you will find within.

Speaker 6 (01:42):
I think it was in office half of American all
with ships and clippas say that's going to press plant.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Today.

Speaker 5 (01:48):
On the blog, Senator Barb Kirkmeyer knows Colorado's budget and more.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Kyle Clarks she.

Speaker 5 (01:53):
Lacks Doug co commissioners about that no tax on overtime?

Speaker 3 (01:57):
A Brint?

Speaker 5 (01:58):
What's saying on just Brent notices what freedom does for people?
That time Grock went full neo Nazi. Can teach us
about AI's limitations. Paul McCartney is coming to course Field
the Salvation Army new Doors. We're a danger. Biden's Army
is a bart. Biden's doctor is in a horrible position.
Your good news story of the day. Another example of

(02:20):
the garbage job, former Aurora PD chief Vanessa Wilson did
planned parenthood drops Medicaid patients.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
How much debt do you have?

Speaker 5 (02:28):
When do the provisions of the big beautiful bill go
into effect? Electric vehicles are not ready for road trips.
Trust the science? Oh no, not that science. How often
should you wash your sheets? Could there be peace between
Syria and Israel? This may be too pricey even for
James Bond. The excessive influencer shower routines are just that,
how to get people to talk without them realizing it.

(02:50):
Now AI is making keyboards.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
This would be an er trip for me.

Speaker 5 (02:55):
Chuck e cheese is coming for adults. A lazy river
might be just what the Rocky need. Comedian Chris Robinson
says he's out A rod asked AI about the Broncos.
Those are the headlines on the blog at mandy'sblog dot
com Tech two Oh winn. Thanks Nancy A Ron. I
got to ask you about this robot thing. I got

(03:15):
to ask you about this. What What is Aura? The
robot at just their AI robot.

Speaker 6 (03:22):
They've got this high tech, really top notch apparently robot
that what.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Does she do? Does she do anything otherm than just
stand there?

Speaker 6 (03:32):
No, just stand there and talk to everyone that comes around.
It was like a full group of people that were
around there. I just happened to get in at the
right time to be able to ask a question.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Now, did you ask her?

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Well?

Speaker 6 (03:40):
I was quickly turned away from my first question because
apparently they do not let After thinking about it, it makes
a lot of sense because they could be really bad.

Speaker 7 (03:51):
I not allowed, not allowed to make predictions.

Speaker 5 (03:54):
You're a gambling town, do not make predictions?

Speaker 6 (03:58):
Yes, While it was, I mean, and maybe it's not
just sports, they flat out told me because they have handlers.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
So the robot Wait, how do you get that gig?

Speaker 7 (04:08):
I had a handler?

Speaker 3 (04:09):
I don't know, Like, I mean, what does that guy
get paid?

Speaker 6 (04:11):
Well, it was this one lady standing around with the
microphone and going around the group of people there looking
for questions for Aura, and she just flat out said
she doesn't.

Speaker 7 (04:21):
We don't have her make predictions.

Speaker 6 (04:23):
My first one, which was what are the Bronco Super
Bowl chances in twenty twenty five?

Speaker 7 (04:28):
Wasn't allowed to ask that?

Speaker 6 (04:29):
Okay, so respectfully, as cool as Aura was, it's kind
of just a BONI fide Google search.

Speaker 7 (04:35):
Yeah, yeah, not a whole lot there. It was cool.
I mean it said my name, So that's cool.

Speaker 5 (04:38):
I guess did you go to the Sphere for an
event or did you just go?

Speaker 6 (04:43):
I went to the official Postcard from Earth, like official
Sphere Experience show, and that is one of the coolest
things I've ever gotten to do.

Speaker 5 (04:53):
Oh my god, one single person say anything other than
what you just said about this.

Speaker 6 (04:59):
The Sphere Experience was stupidly mind blowing, Like I could
not fathom, like the amount of money put into the
amount of screens, and my wife and I kept saying,
you know, the cameras that they had to use to

(05:19):
shoot the footage that was seen in this show.

Speaker 7 (05:23):
I mean, it was mind boggling.

Speaker 5 (05:26):
Well, so I know that you do a show like
like when you two did their show, it cost them,
like I don't know, like seven million dollars.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Just to produce it.

Speaker 5 (05:36):
So the Spirit itself cost two point three billion dollars
to build.

Speaker 6 (05:41):
I'm literally looking at right now because we were curious
about this. I never looked it up. How long will
the Sphere be in the red financially?

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Oh wow?

Speaker 6 (05:50):
Of course, no clear cut answer, maybe or would answer
that probably not because they probably don't want to know
how badly they are doing financially. But that wasn't cheap
to put that thing together. Like you said, how much
two billion, two.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
Point three billion.

Speaker 5 (06:02):
It's the most expensive entertainment venue in the world.

Speaker 6 (06:05):
I will say, I'm really glad we did that experience
and didn't wait around or go to Vegas during a
certain time during a concert, because I don't think I
would like a concert there. I don't think money have
because you the stage is so far down at the bottom,
and there's no way that what they could do could
ever distract or match the experience on the giant city.

Speaker 5 (06:27):
Imagine having the band on the screen. Everybody that I
know that seen a show there said it was the
most incredible thing.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
They had ever seen in their lives.

Speaker 6 (06:36):
Up there though, because I heard that they do a
show like on the on the screen, the.

Speaker 5 (06:41):
Mix of things, so you see the band, do you
see them integrated with the background.

Speaker 6 (06:45):
The footage of the band actually being put up for
display like on the screens I've just seen. Basically, Hey,
the band's playing, also the show's going on at the
same time. That's the vibe that I've gotten from the
small amount of videos I've seen.

Speaker 5 (06:56):
Well, the U two's concert that they did, they watched
the show with the Sphere. It cost him ten million
dollars four hundred thousand dollars per song to do the
background graphics. So the UFC show at the Sphere has
a twenty million dollar budget. So it's just it's it's
I've got to go. I'm I've got to go see
my mom.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
My mom lives in me.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
I want to go see my mom. I might make
the trip to go see it.

Speaker 7 (07:19):
Then here's the answer.

Speaker 6 (07:20):
The Sphere in Vegas has faced significant operating losses since
its opening in September twenty twenty three, with reports indicating
a total operating loss of one point one point eight
billion since mid twenty twenty two.

Speaker 7 (07:32):
Wow, they in the first.

Speaker 6 (07:34):
Three months of operation they generated only and I say
only compared to that number. They generate only one hundred
and sixty seven point eight million in revenue, but operating
expenses totally sixty seven point three So in that first
three months they made one hundred and sixty seven million.
But you just say it costs two billion to may three.

Speaker 5 (07:49):
Billion, and the operating expenses are a million a day.
This texter said, Mandy, we just booked a weekend in
Vegas just to see the Wizard of Oz at the Sphere,
looking forward to it. That is going to cost eighty
million dollars promoting the hell a million just.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
To produce that.

Speaker 6 (08:05):
Well, they get quite a bit of money from the
ads that display on the outside. And I would say
half the time we were looking at it, they were
displaying the Wizard of Oz promo, right, So that person's
gonna be very happy because they're putting all into that one.

Speaker 5 (08:17):
Well, this person said, no, the band was super close
on the screen.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
I could see the pits on their face.

Speaker 7 (08:23):
But that that postcard from Earth. Their their their.

Speaker 6 (08:27):
Feature experience show that you can see. Oh my god, Seriously,
you have to if you are going to Vegas anytime. Listeners,
anytime in the future, you if you have not gone
to the Sphere, you have to go to the show.

Speaker 7 (08:39):
Oh well, they're.

Speaker 5 (08:40):
Building another one. I think in Paris somewhere or something
like that.

Speaker 7 (08:44):
They're building one specially much longer.

Speaker 5 (08:46):
But here's the thing, though, everyone they build, they're going
to be able to build a little bit cheaper, right
as the efficiencies and they figure out the tech and
things like that, so they won't be that bad. Somebody said, Mandy,
where can I find the blog? Guess what someone did, Anthony,
what they do? Someone bought Randy Cromwell dot com and
redirected it.

Speaker 7 (09:02):
To my blog. Yeah, like I hear that.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
You made me laugh so hard, so hard, So thank
you for that.

Speaker 5 (09:13):
This person said, I went to two Dead in Company
shows at the Sphere, and I've never experienced anything like
that in my life.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
But they do say if you have vertigo, don't go.

Speaker 6 (09:22):
You know what, I never ever, ever, ever really ever
get motion sickness with anything. Yeah, I was the only
one in our group of eleven that did not particularly
feel great for about ten minutes after the show.

Speaker 7 (09:32):
Wow, we were walking down.

Speaker 6 (09:34):
We were way up top, which I recommend, by the way,
cheapest seats are the best seeds all the way at
the top because you need to be able to not
crank your head around too much to see it right.
Even with that, And this was the postcard from Earth Show.
Not a LSD kind of feeling concert. This was a
it's going all around different parts of the globe showing
these amazing high definition shots from different parts of the Earth,

(09:56):
animal life, everything, even after that, which was I would
say pretty mild. Coolest part, by the way, where the
thunderstorms that they did, yeah, the natural disaster showings. Oh
but even after that, I was not feeling particularly great.

Speaker 7 (10:09):
It's subsided.

Speaker 5 (10:10):
After they have decompression rooms where you can kind of
step out of your seating area, and then they have
literally like rooms when you get over stimulated.

Speaker 7 (10:19):
Yeah, you can go.

Speaker 6 (10:19):
One of the things I said was, I don't know
if I'd want to see a concert here because I'm
already not feeling particularly great.

Speaker 7 (10:25):
Well, and that never happens to me.

Speaker 5 (10:27):
As I said, I I've probably I've probably talked to
thirty people at this point that have gone to the show,
including my brother and sister in law who live in
Las Vegas.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
And have seen everything.

Speaker 5 (10:37):
They have literally seen every great show in Las Vegas,
and they said, there is nothing like the sphere, absolutely incredible.

Speaker 7 (10:45):
You know, we go to Vegas all the time.

Speaker 6 (10:46):
We're closing in on I mean we we literally did
not find a show we wanted to see yesterday because
we're like, nothing speaks to us. We've seen all the
big ones, We've seen all the great ones. Let's just chill.

Speaker 5 (10:55):
Does anybody have a residency going on right now in
the summer.

Speaker 6 (10:58):
Kelly Clarkson was supposed to good thing. We were it's
schedule to see her because she canceled her first couple days.
She's getting back at it. But most of the shows
that are immaculate, but Sphere and ironically the other one
we saw, which is the Awakening at the Win, two
of the best shows we've ever seen in all of
our double digit amount of shows.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
When that's probably my favorite YU.

Speaker 6 (11:14):
I love this Here and Awakening we just happened to
see on the same trip too. Probably the best shows
we've seen. Sphere by far is number one. How much
did it cost? Somebody asked, how much did the show
you went to? You got the cheap seats? What did
you guys pay? One hundred bucks ahead, so that's the
cheap seat. Yeah, maybeybe it's like one hundred and twenty.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, but there's so bad seats, so there we go.

Speaker 6 (11:32):
No, I would say, I would say the lower level,
more expensive ones.

Speaker 7 (11:35):
I would not have liked to sit there.

Speaker 6 (11:37):
I saw those people way down there, what they probably
had to do to experience it all from the point
of view we had, I would have much rather kept
the cheap ones. We got so cheapest ones all the
way back. You will not be disappointed, all right, So that.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
Is your Sphere review.

Speaker 5 (11:50):
Someone else asked on the text line Mandy Vegas in July,
why didn't a Rod just vacation on the sun.

Speaker 7 (11:55):
What was it like?

Speaker 6 (11:55):
One hundred the highest th guy was one hundred and eight.
It was fantasm. That's not bad, No, it's good. And
Vegas does it right if they want to keep you
in those casinos, you're not outside more than ten minutes
at a time between between you.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Did you do any cool pull time?

Speaker 4 (12:07):
Though?

Speaker 6 (12:08):
We didn't know pull time this time. Other people in
our party did. But we we had everything's going on
all right, like winning a lot of money in slots
and winning nothing and going negative by a lotting craps
for the first time ever. The Vegas God said, a
Rod middle finger to you, because I had told people
for years and it had been the case that we
do not lose in craps. We either win or break

(12:30):
even the Vegas sods said. The Vegas God said, yeah,
how about this, And we got most walloped in craps
I have ever gotten beaten, even my dad, who taught
me craps like was mind blown, like I have, we
have never done this bad wow, Holy cow, but we
got lucky in slots a couple of times helped make
up for it.

Speaker 7 (12:47):
So we're we're in the red total.

Speaker 5 (12:49):
Just a bit that Texter said Mandy, I'm sure this
spear is cool. But what happened to day when we
went to see the band and they were the entertainment.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
I think there's space for both.

Speaker 5 (12:57):
Like there are certain bands that I love to go
watch that are not exciting to watch because I just
enjoy them. Steely Dan is one of those. All go
see them all day long at Redrocks. Love the band,
but if you can also create a wonderful show.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
One of the best concerts.

Speaker 5 (13:09):
I ever saw in my entire life was the last
tour where Pink Floyd with Roger Waters, who I didn't
realize was such an anti Semite at the time, did
this incredible stage show of the Wall and it was
a visual spectacle along with the music, and it's just different.
It's just different. I think there's space for both of

(13:30):
these things. I don't hate on the sphere. I can't
wait to go myself. So I'm glad you had a
good time, Anthony. We're glad you're back.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Today.

Speaker 5 (13:36):
At one o'clock, we've got State Senator Barb Kirkmeyer coming up.
You guys may not know this, but Colorado is headed
for another special session because I don't know, our lawmakers
cannot get their works done in a timely fashion. And
we're going to talk to her about that, about the
overall Colorado budget because she knows where all I mean,
she knows the budget inside and out. So we're gonna

(13:56):
do that at one o'clock. Now, you know what, I'm
starting to scare myself a little bit because I find
myself watching Kyle Clark do stuff on Next and I
find myself nodding along. That's a little scary for me.
It's like when you realize that your eyesight's going really
bad and they're like, wait, am I going blind?

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Or am I just going old?

Speaker 5 (14:17):
But Kyle Clark did an absolute scorcher on the Douglas
County Commissioner clown Show.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
Now what clown show am I talking about? This time?

Speaker 5 (14:25):
I'm talking about the most recent clown show, which I
almost can't even talk about without laughing because.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
It's so stupid.

Speaker 5 (14:33):
When Coloraden's or excuse me, Douglas Countians, Douglassians.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
What do we call ourselves? I don't know.

Speaker 5 (14:42):
Jefferson County, You're Jeffersonians, Douglas, Douglas, I don't know. Anyway,
they just shot down the home rule that was trying
to be shoved through by the county commissioners. And as
part of his campaigning for this home rule situation, which
again I'm not opposed to, I just didn't like the
way they were trying to shut it down.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Everybody's throat.

Speaker 5 (15:04):
George Steel said on a different radio show that the
people working against it were funded by the Chinese Communist government. Now,
the absolute absurdity of that statement is it's just absurd
on the face of it, Like, what in the world
does the Chinese government give a rats pe tuity about

(15:26):
Douglas County, Colorado. Of all the things in the world
that the Chinese Communists could go after, I can assure
you that Douglas County, Colorado isn't even on their radar.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
And yet, not only.

Speaker 5 (15:37):
Did he say that, he said it again, and he
said it now they're trying to spin it a different way,
but he said it because one of the biggest funders
of the opposition, which was not well funded at all
and still managed to be extremely successful. Is a woman,
an American citizen of Japanese descent, And I guess to George,

(15:58):
you know, all them people from Asia, they all looked
the saying they're all they all look the same, they're
all communists.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
Ah, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (16:05):
So after proving himself a fool by opening his mouth
and you know the old saying, it's better to be
thought a fool than open up your mouth and prove it, right,
I mean that's he opened up his mouth and uh yeah,
So that was it. And instead instead of taking a
moment of introspection and maybe recognizing how absurd and idiotic

(16:27):
that statement was and how it could be considered racially
offensive to just lump an American citizen who is of
Japanese descent in with Chinese communists, he would think that
that he could find the time to maybe say, hey, guys,
you know what, I got some information that the No

(16:47):
Kings protests were being funded by Chinese communists, and I
just assumed that the same people were funding this.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
I was wrong.

Speaker 5 (16:57):
It was a silly thing to say. I apologize for
anybody whose feelings I hurt. Do you realize that little
bit that I just said could stop this in its tracks. Hey,
you know I got out over my skis. I just
conflated these two things. Was it was a silly thing
to say, he can't do that. And in Monday's County
Commission meeting, a bunch of citizens showed up and they

(17:19):
were ticked, and George once again proved that he is
a pompous a hole.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
He made fun of them. He let's see, as.

Speaker 5 (17:28):
He was walking out of the room, he was waving
his finger at them as they were waving their feet.
It was just so juvenile. That's what I'm looking for.
And Kyle covered it beautifully. I'm not going to play it,
but you can go to the website and watch it.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
I embedded it in there.

Speaker 5 (17:43):
But it's just, you know, in theory, I am on
the right with the same people like these are my people, right,
I should align with them more closely, except I don't
like people who abuse their power. And I don't care
or what party they're in. I don't like it when
democrats abuse their power. Later on, when we talked to

(18:05):
Barb Kirkmeyer, We're going to talk about how the Colorado
legislature preemptively eliminated the tax break that people were about
to get on overtime. How did they do that, Well,
as the federal government is part of the Big Beautiful
Bill eliminated or exempted the first twelve five hundred dollars
of overtime from taxation. The Colorado Democrats make sure that

(18:27):
it will be counted, so you can be taxed by
the state on your overtime. And what's hilarious is that
people on the left are saying, well, they didn't increase taxes,
it's the same as it was before. What they did
was eliminate a tax break, Which isn't that the same
as raising taxes. If you eliminate a tax break, you

(18:49):
have raised taxes. Now the net benefit for the government
might be the same, but you have still raised taxes.
And they're trying to spin this it's not a big deal. Well,
why don't you ask the people who who thought they
were getting a break on overtime. Why don't you ask
them if they feel like it's a big deal, why
don't you just ask them. The Democrats in the state,

(19:10):
in their one party rule, have nothing to check them.
Barb Kirkmeyer tries other Republicans try, but they're hopelessly outnumbered.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
My question is how much more do.

Speaker 5 (19:20):
Things have to cost in Colorado before people start saying,
wait a minute, it's not this expensive in other places.
I just did a little experiment when I was in Ohio.
I price check stuff. When I get back, I'll tell
you what I found. I have the joke of the
day on the text line, Anthony, are you ready?

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Are you ready for this?

Speaker 5 (19:39):
You may have heard in the blog today Paul McCartney,
Sir Paul McCartney is coming to Coursefield in October, and
a Texter sent this, Wow.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
Paul McCartney coming to course Field.

Speaker 5 (19:50):
There'll be more hits that night than the Rockies have
all season.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
And I can't say that's wrong. I really can't.

Speaker 5 (19:59):
I heard kaa sports talking about the Rockies yesterday, and.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Rick Lewis was on and Rick because look, I've watched.

Speaker 5 (20:06):
More Rockies games this year than I have in a
long time. That's just a bad baseball team.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
And he's right.

Speaker 6 (20:10):
I will offer up this contribution to this conversation, please
uh in one of the bigger sports books on the strip.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, mind you.

Speaker 6 (20:18):
The Rockies were playing the very very popular Boston red Rod.
I had to find like the smallest screen on the
giant wall to find that game, and they were playing.

Speaker 7 (20:31):
The Red Sox.

Speaker 6 (20:31):
Yeah so all right, oh, just in time to see
Trevor's story, you know, not on.

Speaker 5 (20:39):
Yeah right anyway, moving on, So I was in Ohio
this past weekend visiting the grandkids, which, by the way,
if your kids are in the teen years, grandkids are.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
Your reward for what you're going through now.

Speaker 5 (20:52):
And actually, you know a lot of young people say
they're not going to have kids, and I'm not gonna.
I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna be those people.
Is like you have to have kids, because you really
don't have to have kids. But I will tell you this,
having children is the greatest joy of my life, whether
I burst them or not. Right like, I have two

(21:13):
technically they're my step sons. I don't view them that way.
I mean it's just been the greatest thing I've ever experienced.
And now they had kids, my oldest, so now I
have two grandsons, and it's being a grandparent is so
much better than being a parent. It's like a million
times better than being a parent. I don't think you
can skip the first part though, But in any case,

(21:34):
I digress. So I started doing a little as I
do when I travel, started doing a little price checking
around him.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
Just looking at stuff.

Speaker 5 (21:41):
When we're in this door, I'm like, oh, how much
does a dozen of a dozen eggs cost?

Speaker 8 (21:44):
Here?

Speaker 5 (21:45):
Let me see what is a dozen eggs that cost?
I don't know, three eighty nine just for a basic
dozen eggs in Colorado?

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Oh to seventy nine? You tell me what does gas cost?

Speaker 9 (21:55):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Wait, is that two forty nine? I'm seeing yes.

Speaker 5 (21:58):
So then when I got home, I looked up a
cost of living comparison between Ohio and Colorado, and I
will not lie when I will tell you I was
more shocked than I thought.

Speaker 3 (22:11):
I would be.

Speaker 5 (22:12):
Listen to some of this Colorado overall. No, I'm gonna
save that number for the end. I'm gonna give you
some different stuff childcare. By the way, there is no
category where things are more expensive in Ohio than they
are in Colorado. And I'm not advocating everybody moved to Ohio.
I mean, Ohio is gray for like six months in
the winter. There's you know, there's issues there that Colorado

(22:33):
clearly is superior. This isn't a standard living or delight
in living place. This is just a cost analysis because.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
I was just there. Okay, just want to clear that up.

Speaker 5 (22:44):
When you go to a restaurant in Colorado, you pay
twenty one point nine percent more than you pay in Colorado.
When you buy groceries, you pay nine point five percent
more in Colorado. When you're paying for transportation, that's eight
point eight percent more or in Colorado.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Would you buy clothing, now.

Speaker 5 (23:04):
That you think clothing, how can clothing be more expensive?

Speaker 3 (23:07):
Right? But when you buy clothing you pay twelve point
eight percent more in Colorado.

Speaker 5 (23:13):
When you go to see sports or entertainment, you're gonna
pay twenty point two percent more in Colorado. When you
have to use childcare, you're gonna pay twenty three point
four percent more in Colorado. And here's the real kick
in the teeth you guys, Anthony guests. Guess how much
more housing costs in Colorado percentage wise than it does

(23:34):
in Ohio.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Just take a guess.

Speaker 7 (23:35):
Thirty eight percent.

Speaker 5 (23:37):
You're so close, but you're too low. Forty two point
two percent, y'all. I found houses three bedroom, two and
a half bath. It's not not like super fans. You're
anything but did a really nice neighborhood for two hundred
and eighty five thousand dollars?

Speaker 7 (23:51):
How much square feet?

Speaker 5 (23:52):
Like nineteen hundred two thousand, roughly two hundred and what
two hundred and ninety seven thousand. I found some for
two seventy nine. And these are in nice neighborhoods. These
are not, like you know, in places you wouldn't want
to live. The cost of living in Colorado is so insane,
but because we're in it all the time, we've just

(24:12):
absorbed it over the years. There's an article in Politico
that a listener sent me out. I already read it,
and it made me so mad. I didn't even put
it on the blog because I care about you people
in the listening audience. But it was about how Democrats
are looking to Colorado as the model of how to turn.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Other states blue.

Speaker 5 (24:31):
And I'm thinking to myself, have they not paid attention
to what the Democrats have done.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Two our state.

Speaker 5 (24:39):
Every single thing that they have laid their fingers on
in under the guise of we're going to make it
more affordable, they have just made it more expensive. They
have layered on just layers and layers of regulation that
have made every single aspect of our lives ridiculously more expensive,
and they show no signs of stopping. He needs some perspective,

(25:00):
do a little traveling. By the way, the overall number,
Colorado is nineteen point eight percent more expensive than Ohio.
That is, I mean, y'all, that's almost twenty percent. Is
living here is paying the luxury tax of twenty percent.
At a certain point you have to go. You know what,

(25:21):
I don't go to the mountains that much. I'll just
go on a winter vacation to get out of the gray.

Speaker 7 (25:28):
And all.

Speaker 5 (25:29):
I would say a vast majority of this is directly
related to government policy.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
You want to know why our eggs are so expensive
because we have to have cage free eggs. Do you
want to know our gas is so expensive?

Speaker 5 (25:40):
Well, they've done everything they can to make the oil
and gas business go out of business here in Colorado.
What about childcare, Well, all of the new licensing requirements
that they put on under the guise of protecting children
have just made childcare unaffordable. Restaurants, we all know why
restaurants are so expensive. You've got an outrageous wage, You've

(26:02):
got food costs that are still out of control.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
It's just it's sad. It's so sad.

Speaker 5 (26:07):
And in any case, I'm not gonna dwell on that,
not at all, not even a little bit, not even
for a minute. But I do want to share this.
I saw this yesterday on Twitter and I loved it
so much. It's on the blog today. This from a
guy from the UK, the United Kingdom. He's a British guy.
I believe he said this. This is what he said
in First of all, I saw it. He has this

(26:29):
beautiful picture of him in Colorado.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
Lovely picture.

Speaker 5 (26:32):
If I'm not mistaken. He's a garden of the gods. Perhaps, Yeah,
that's what it looks like to me. He wrote this
on his X feet. We were in Colorado last week
and I was struck by what is now an enormous
disparity in wealth between the US and the UK. Spent
a couple of nights in a cabin at an RV park.
It had pools, slides, mini golf, et cetera. Fund for

(26:55):
the kids, but the place was packed with RVs worth
hundreds of thousands of Not only that, but it's clearly
a conservative form of vacation.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
So the average car on the site was a pickup truck.

Speaker 5 (27:06):
These were almost universally less than a couple of years
old and worth at least sixty to eighty k if
not more. I could drive you to the Poshus place
in Northern Ireland and though you'd see the occasional high
end vehicle, the average car there would probably cost half
as much as these. And then I was talking to
someone and they said, yeah, this is the most this

(27:26):
is the most typical middle class American summer getaway middle class.
Our economies used to be roughly on par when it
comes to GDP per capita, and now the American middle
class lives at a level that puts the UK upper
classes to shame.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
Sad times for us.

Speaker 5 (27:45):
Kudos to America for resisting the socialism that has ground
our economy to a halt. When you see stuff like this,
when you see posts, if you're not on x, if
you share it, share it far and wide, Sure.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Everybody sees it.

Speaker 5 (28:01):
Because this this like burgeoning bubbling of socialism that's that's
coming up as younger people are struggling in this country.
And they are struggling, I'm not gonna sit here and say, you.

Speaker 8 (28:13):
Know, if they just gave up their off a cono toast.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
They would be fun.

Speaker 5 (28:16):
It's they're living in an environment that none of us
came up in. You know, we were talking about college
costs yesterday and you guys are emailing my first semester
costs seventy seven dollars. What that that is so beyond
I mean, we're looking at colleges right now for my daughter.
I'm looking and the first thing I look at is
the overall cost of the college, right that's the first

(28:38):
thing I check.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
How much does the school cost? And there are schools that,
with a.

Speaker 5 (28:44):
Straight face, the tuition for an annual tuition is fifty
thousand dollars. And these are not ivy League schools. It's
insane what college casts now.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
And that's a year one year. It's one of the
reasons she's.

Speaker 5 (28:59):
Looking to go to school in Europe because in Europe
they subsidize our colleges so they're cheap, but even for foreigners.
At what point do we sort of realize that we've
created these monsters using third party payers and we've got
to walk it back or nobody's going to be able
to afford anything. If you want grandkids, this should concern
you because your kids can't afford to have kids. That's

(29:21):
the problem, and it's a big problem. We better figure
it out. Okay, many you're comparing you know, Ohio and
Colorado's cost of living. What about wages, which is a
very fair question.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
So I went to the.

Speaker 5 (29:35):
Google machine and put in wages in Colorado versus Ohio.
Colorado's wages are slightly higher. They run about four percent
higher in Colorado than they do in Ohio. So we
have nineteen point eight percent higher cost of living four
percent higher average income. So you know, do the math

(29:56):
on that. They do have a much lower minimum wage,
which is why restaurants are still affordable.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
So yeah, and somebody said, if you work.

Speaker 5 (30:05):
At McDonald's, you make like ten dollars there versus eighteen
bucks an hour, but everything else is so much more
expensive that it eats up the extra money. I'm just saying, Mandy,
what pill or drink is very effective to fall asleep?
I feel like this is planted because I am now
entering into a relationship with Blue Sky CBD.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
Dave Logan has endorsed them for years.

Speaker 5 (30:29):
Greg the owner of the company, heard me when I
was having my terrible readjustment coming back from Japan, and
I just was not sleeping at all, and he sent
me some Blue Sky CBD sleep cells and they do
not have THHC in them at all. They're not at
all psycho active in that way. They're just CBD and
CBN and holy crap, you guys, those things are amazing.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
I took them for like two nights and it completely took.

Speaker 5 (30:58):
Care of my of my think And by the way,
I'll be entering, as I said, I'm maybe doing ads
for them. That's how much I love them. I've been
sending Greg my sleep scores for my watch, like, hey man,
I've never gone over ninety before and I got a
ninety four sleep score on my watch. If you don't
have a fitness trector, you have no idea what I'm
talking about. But that has been just an absolute game

(31:20):
changer for me. And if you use the promo code Mandy,
you get thirty percent off four forever anyway. Mandy's South
Dakota School of Minds is still affordable and a great school,
twenty two thousand per year, and my son is making
six figures his first year out of school. He's a
nuclear physicist working for a uranium mining company and loves
it well The problem with School of Minds is.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
That you have to be.

Speaker 5 (31:43):
The right kind of person to go to School of Minds,
meaning you have to have that hard science engineering sort
of interest. A friend of mine, the way Neogiese Son
is actually going to Minds right now because he's like
a math genius. Not all kids are math geniuses, are
engineeringly minded. And just look at what you just did.
Twenty two thousand dollars per year. That's now considered affordable

(32:05):
for college and for the person who just sent me
this Mandy and other news. Bowchangles is now open in Pueblo.
I'm not saying I'm taking a family field trip down
to Pueblo this weekend just for that, but I might
be taking a family field trip down to Pueblo just.

Speaker 7 (32:19):
For that is coming weekend.

Speaker 6 (32:21):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
I have to talk to Shock.

Speaker 7 (32:23):
Yeah, you have.

Speaker 6 (32:24):
You have two people you must invite, seeing as how
one of them just messaged me saying when is Mandy
doing this open now?

Speaker 7 (32:30):
And their last name might be Rodriguez.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
I'll let your mom, Yeah, I'll let your mom.

Speaker 7 (32:34):
Go that field trip. So better be at least exclusive.

Speaker 5 (32:38):
I reached out to Bojangles directly multiple times. And said, hey,
this would be really fun. You know, we could do
a field trip. We just need to sponsor it so
we can give and they never responded, and that made
me kind of mad.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
But their chicken is still delicious, still absolutely delicious.

Speaker 5 (32:52):
All Right, you guys, this has been this last segment
kind of went all over the place. When we get back, though,
we are going to be focus like a laser on
Colorado's budget, the legislature, and the upcoming special session. Yes,
we've got a special session that is probably going to
be called anytime. We're going to talk to State Senator
Barb Kirkmeyer about all of that stuff because out of

(33:14):
and I'm not saying that there are not other people
in the legislature who have their kind of finger on
the pulse like Barb does, but dang, she's smart about it,
and she knows so much, and she's been sounding the
alarm for years about overspending and now all of those
financial chickens have come home to roost. So the sleep
cells are so expensive, says this texter. Her, guys, it's
a buck seventy five a day, a buck.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
Seventy five a day.

Speaker 5 (33:36):
I worked out the math, okay, because I've heard this before.
The reality is that for me, I would pay five
dollars a day to be able to sleep this well.
And you can get a little starter pack that costs
twenty bucks to find out if they work for you.
I all day long, I would recommend these. I don't
care how much they cost. When something works really, really

(33:56):
well for you, when you don't sleep well, and then
all of a sudden it helps you sleep well, you
would give your right arm to get that. And at Bucks,
seventy five a day, just not that much, all right, kids.
Barb Kirkmeyer coming up next.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
Accident and Injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
No, it's Mandy Connell and Dona.

Speaker 6 (34:18):
KOAM ninety one, FMA, God.

Speaker 9 (34:24):
Sat and the Nicety Us through three, Andy Connal, Keithy,
No sad Thing.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the second hour of the show.

Speaker 5 (34:36):
I'm your host, Mandy Connell. That guy over there back from.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
His vacation is Anthony Rodriguez.

Speaker 5 (34:42):
And you when you me in the studio right now
for the first time, she's never been in our digs before.
I'm kind of excited to have you on the show.
State Senator Barb Kirkmeyer. First of all, welcome in.

Speaker 8 (34:51):
Thank you, thanks for having me. This is great.

Speaker 5 (34:53):
Yeah, you were confused by the deeply blood red lobby,
iron media, redecorated, and one to call a mix of
hospital meets whorehouse.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
That's oh my god. Yeah, that's just me. I mean
that's how I view it.

Speaker 5 (35:05):
First of all, Barb, how long have you been working
on budgets in Colorado?

Speaker 10 (35:11):
Well, I was a county commissioner, so I had twenty
years as a county commissioner on and off, and then
I also worked for Governor Bill Owens and his cabinet,
and I did the budget portion of it for the
Department of Local Affairs, so pretty much about thirty years.

Speaker 8 (35:23):
I have different budgets all the way through.

Speaker 5 (35:25):
I'm not sure there's somebody in the legislature who has
more budgetary experience than you do.

Speaker 8 (35:30):
Probably not.

Speaker 10 (35:32):
I would say no at this point because I've been
on the Joint Budget Committee then for the state, which
the Joint Budget Committee, we're the people who write the
budget for the State of Colorado. There are six of us,
and I just finished my third year being you know,
third session of being on the Joint Budget Committee.

Speaker 5 (35:45):
What are some of the things that you've seen happen
over the thirty years that you have been paying attention
to and working on budgets in Colorado.

Speaker 10 (35:52):
So I'm amazed, especially at our budget right now in
the state of Colorado. I mean, we had three years
ago we had three point six billion dollars in surplus,
you know, so the tabor surplus, right, and you know,
the governor was handing out checks putting his name all
over it during election year kind of thing, right, And
now we're to the point of because of all the
tax credits and different legislation that's been passed by my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle, there won't

(36:14):
be a tabor surplus here because of different tax credits
and things of that nature. And granted there are people
getting tax credits, not me, but the variety of people.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, other people, the favored ones as I like to
call them.

Speaker 5 (36:26):
After the legislative session, we're facing a special session.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
What is that about.

Speaker 10 (36:31):
I think it's going to be about the Democrats are
looking at how to blame Trump for our tax, our
tax and spend issues that we have here in this state,
and the budget deficit that we have, you know, so
if they can't blame Tabor, they want to try and
blame Trump when they should actually just blame themselves.

Speaker 5 (36:46):
So what is the issue with our tax and spend?
What have we done over the last few years? And
when did it really ratchet up in your view, that
we just started spending like drunken monkeys, although I hate
to disparage drunken monkeys.

Speaker 8 (36:58):
Yeah, those four monkeys, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 10 (37:00):
So I would say when it was first at least
brought to my attention and going back and researching this
March of twenty twenty one, we knew we were in
what's called a structural deficit.

Speaker 8 (37:10):
So it's not like we're just overspending.

Speaker 10 (37:12):
We have continued to overspend year over year over year,
and it's messing with the structure of our budget.

Speaker 8 (37:18):
And so it really happened with.

Speaker 10 (37:20):
All of those dollars that came in from the federal
government during COVID, you know, the American Rescue Planned dollars.

Speaker 8 (37:26):
I mean, we're attacking billions that came in.

Speaker 10 (37:28):
Some went directly to the governor and to his departments
like the Department of Education, Department of Human Services, Department
of health Care Policy and Finance, Department of Health, and
Public Environment.

Speaker 8 (37:39):
They all got direct distributions.

Speaker 10 (37:41):
There were counties, the five top counties in the state,
you know, most populated counties in the state, they got
a direct distribution.

Speaker 8 (37:48):
So there were moneies that went there.

Speaker 10 (37:50):
And then there were moneies that were appropriated through the
legislative branch, through the Joint Budget Committee and the General Assembly.

Speaker 8 (37:56):
And those should have been thought of as one time funds.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
That's what I was going to ask you.

Speaker 5 (38:00):
So it sounds like they spent those moneys on recurring
expenses and now that money's gone. Is that kind of
the long and short of it that That's what I say.

Speaker 10 (38:09):
But my Democrat colleagues on the Joint Budget Committee say,
oh no, no, that's not it. But I mean you
can point to we created new departments, new offices, the
Behavior Health Administration. I mean, they've had over a billion
dollars in funding from you know, we call them ARPA
funds American Rescue Funds, And I'm like, well, what's our
return on investment?

Speaker 8 (38:27):
Like what have we done?

Speaker 10 (38:28):
You know, I mean, I'm not arguing that we don't
have a behavior health you know, crisis, at least at
one point in our state.

Speaker 8 (38:35):
But what have we done? Where's our return on investment?

Speaker 10 (38:38):
Like, what's the outcomes from all that money that's been spent?
And and keep in mind, we created the Behavior Health Administration
almost it's like a pseudo department. We couldn't create another
department because we can only have twenty buyer constitution, but
we created like another administration that acts. They've got a
cabinet member. I mean, they're they're administrative director.

Speaker 5 (38:56):
Okay, yeah, if you just hit me with something that
is so frustrating. Yes, the Colorado Democrats have shown again
and again and again an absolute disregard for the letter
of the law. And they if they've created another department
without creating a department because they're constitutionally prohibited by doing it.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
But it looks like a department, and it walks like
a department. It's a department. How what recourse does a
person like me have?

Speaker 5 (39:25):
I mean, because the Colorado Supreme Court is full of idiots,
you don't have to comment on that. That's my opinion.
They're going to just rubber stamp anything that happens. There's
like it's all out of control from stealing our tabor refunds.
To redirect them to favored classes. There's so many things
like that where they're basically like, oh, we see you Law,
we see you Tabor, but we're going to go around
you by calling everything a fee exactly.

Speaker 10 (39:47):
And the only recourse we have as citizens is to
vote them out. We've got a change who we're voting for,
and we've got to get rid of this one party
control that seriously, is that there is It's hard to
have a check in balance when the House, the Senate,
and the Governor's office are all controlled by Democrats.

Speaker 5 (40:03):
Hopelessly control budget. I mean, people always get mad, they're like,
why didn't a Republican And I'm like, they're so outnumbered
that the fact that any Democrat gives lip service even
to Republican needs is kind of remarkable because they don't
have to.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
It's hard.

Speaker 8 (40:19):
You know, we're in the minority.

Speaker 10 (40:20):
So but being on the Joint Budget Committee, it's actually
probably the best place to be if you're going to
be in the minority, because again six members three or
from the House three or from the Senate, the majority
party gets to pick two. So four Democrats two Republicans,
but can't be a Joint Budget Committee bill unless all
six Joint Budget Committee members agree to it. Okay, Right,
they can't have a vote on stuff going on in

(40:42):
the budget, you know, trying to set the budget unless
a member of the minority is there.

Speaker 8 (40:46):
So, you know what, we don't like things.

Speaker 10 (40:47):
I mean last year in the twenty fourth session, they
were going down this path where they thought they could
just roll the two Republicans on the committee. About eleven
o'clock at night, I said, I'm done. I'm going home.
And they're like, well, we haven't closed the budget. And
I said, well, I'm done. I'm going home. You've been
disrespectful to me. I'm going home. And Representative Taggard, who's
the other Republican, he's from Grant Junction.

Speaker 8 (41:07):
And he's on the Joint Budget Committee. He got up
and we both left.

Speaker 5 (41:10):
There you go, and that's the only way you can
flet we'll come back tomorrow.

Speaker 10 (41:14):
Yeah, let's see how you feel tomorrow, like you know,
and how are Yeah, I mean I got to call
at six.

Speaker 8 (41:20):
In the morning from the chair.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
Okay, then making sure you're coming in life day.

Speaker 10 (41:24):
Yeah, Like, well, what can we do to get everybody
back to the table. It's like, well, first of all,
you can be respectful, Like we weren't rolling you. I
thought we were all working together, and then all of
a sudden, you're just passing resolution or passing motions and
increasing our budget and not even thinking about things, things
that we thought we'd already voted on, and they're revoting
on them and changing them around.

Speaker 8 (41:41):
I said, that's just rude.

Speaker 10 (41:42):
So yeah, you know, here's what I have to have now,
and I had a list.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
Oh good, yeah good, I'm proud of you, bar Nice.

Speaker 5 (41:49):
Here, let's talk about Medicaid for a moment, because this
has been the big boogeyman. This, apparently, based on what
I'm seeing from national Democrats, is going to be the
thing that they think they're finally got the thing, the
hammer Trump with that they've been desperately searching for the thing.
But the reality is here in Colorado. And I love
doing this on X This is my favorite thing when
I see Democrats talking about the fact that you know,

(42:11):
no I legal immigrant is on Medicaid and I'm like, oh, contreire.
We have an entire department that has illlegal immigrants on Medicaid.
What is going to happen with Medicaid and Colorado? Are
they going to roll it back to the constraints that
it was originally intended to be in elderly people, pregnant women,
really poor people.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
That's what medicaid is designed for.

Speaker 10 (42:30):
I don't know that they're actually going to roll it back,
and I think it's really kind of I've been trying
to follow it as best as I can, but I'm
confused as well because the eligibility for medicaid to be
on Medicaid, which is health insurance, right, the eligibility criteria
are not really changing. The only thing that is changing
is they're adding additional eligibility criteria for those able bodied.

(42:53):
And I want everybody to think about it. Able bodied
people who can work without dependence from nineteen to sixty
four years of age that are able to work, able bodied,
have no children are un Medicaid. Yeah, and they're saying, look,
you want to be on Medicaid, We're gonna put work
requirements on. You're gonna have to at least work part

(43:15):
time eighty hours a month, or volunteer or be in school.

Speaker 8 (43:20):
Right, that's gonna be the additional criteria.

Speaker 10 (43:22):
There's been I haven't seen anything, and I best you know,
folks who implement medicaid, you know, at the local level,
whether it's a health center or behavior health center or
something of that nature, or county, like, did they change
the Iljebilli requirements because I'm confused here, and the answer
is no other than putting in a work requirement, which
is no different than what happened during President Clinton, a
Democrat who rechanged how we do welfare in the in

(43:47):
the United States and created temporary aid to needy families.
It's called TANA for short, but temporary aid was a deal.
He put in time clocks. There was a two year
time clock and then a five year life time clock. Right,
and work participation rates. You either had to be in
school or you had to have.

Speaker 5 (44:05):
A job, right bart I interviewed a woman when I
first got my show, So this is like two thousand
and five, two thousand and six, and I was interviewing
her about something else. She was working with an organization
that I was talking to, and I had been talking
before that about welfare reform just in general, and she
came on the show to talk about this other thing
and said, I was listening to what you said. This

(44:26):
was in Southwest Florida. She said, I want to tell
you my story. She said, I grew up. I was
a multi generational welfare family recipient. Her grandmother had been
on welfare, her mother was on welfare. She was on welfare.
And when Bill Clinton passed those requirements, she was part
of that group that said you got to go to work.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Well, she got a job, and guess what happened.

Speaker 5 (44:44):
She liked working, She had enjoyed it, she was good
at it, she felt good about her and then when
she got a promotion, she had to make the choice
of giving up some of her welfare benefits to move up.
And she chose to move up, and she said it
was the greatest thing in my entire life.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
And I thought that was like people like that.

Speaker 5 (45:01):
No one talks about that, the success stories, And in
all honesty, I think the vast majority of the people
and I don't know, do we know the number of
how many people in Colorado don't meet any of those
requirements now, because the notion that everybody's going to be
thrown off Medicaid is only accurate if none of these
people are working.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Caring for a loved one, you know, in school, or
any of that. So I who's going to actually get
kicked off.

Speaker 10 (45:26):
Here exactly, and so they're just supposing kind of thing.
And I think the other thing is read the fine print.
When we were at the Joint Budget Committee a couple
of weeks ago and the Director of Office and State
Planning Budget for the Governor, Director Farandino, was in, they're
talking about the number of people who won't receive health
who won't receive health care benefits. And at that time,

(45:46):
the bill, the federal bill, had things in there about
you know, undocumented immigrants that you couldn't fund them kind
of thing, and it would things would change, and it
wasn't people getting pushed off Medicaid. It was people who
weren't going to get healthcare because we have Medicaid, which
I guess I would probably argue that people who are
not supposed to be on Medicaid or not on Medicaid.

(46:07):
I'm sure there are some like we had, you know,
seven million dollars worth of people have already been dead
for a while that we're still getting Medicaid benefits. But
we have what we call Medicaid like programs that the
state funds, and they're state funded programs without any federal dollars.

Speaker 7 (46:21):
Ah.

Speaker 5 (46:22):
But I mean it stands to reason, at some point,
if we start kicking people off Medicaid because federal reimbursements drop,
I would hope that they would prioritize citizens over non citizens.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
That's just, in my mind, the way it should be.

Speaker 10 (46:36):
And that's exactly how Medicaid is. So Medicaid is only
for US citizens. Non citizens are not supposed to be
on Medicaid. They are, that would be a problem. So
it's and again, they aren't kicking anyone off the eligibility requirements, at.

Speaker 8 (46:51):
Least as far as I understand it.

Speaker 10 (46:52):
The eligibility requirements stay the same, with the exception of
what is called the expansion population that happened during Obamacare.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
In that part, that's what nobody talks about, right.

Speaker 10 (47:02):
That's the able bodied individuals nineteen to sixty four with
no dependents. Right, they're going to have to go work
for eighty hours a month, so part time, volunteer, or.

Speaker 8 (47:12):
Be in school.

Speaker 5 (47:13):
I got to tell you I disagree with the expansion
of Medicaid for a couple of reasons. One, it stretches
the resources of the program that is designed for elderly people,
for pregnant women, for extremely poor people and her children.
So we've basically created a situation where wait times have
gone up. There's a perverse incentive to see those healthy

(47:35):
people because they get reimbursed at a higher rate, which
I still don't understand how that's possible. But ultimately a
big problem seems to me that the hotel of the
hospital provider fees have been struck down by the big
beautiful bill. They've been used to pad the bills to
the federal government by states, not just Colorado, but by

(47:56):
other states to just basically tack on a charge, and
now the federal government says we're not reimbursing them. The
big issue for me seems that we need to worry
about some of.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
Our rural health care providers and what does that look like.

Speaker 10 (48:08):
We need to look, we need to worry about all
of our Medicaid providers. And in fact, for forever, our
provider rate increase, you know, for you know, to pay
them and reimburse them has never never worked with inflation.
It's never increased at the same rate of inflation. So
in the last year, and here's the thing that I
just find so ironic and hypocritical that my Democrat colleagues,

(48:30):
including the governor of this state have been chastising the
federal government for cutting medicaid.

Speaker 8 (48:36):
You want to know who cut medicaid, Governor Polus.

Speaker 10 (48:39):
He came in in his budget request just even this year,
but even last year, in the previous year. All three
years that I have been on the Joint Budget Committee
and seeing the governor's budget requests, he never increases the Medicaid.

Speaker 8 (48:51):
Provider rate up to inflation.

Speaker 5 (48:54):
Well, and Medicaid reimbursal rates are even lower than Medicare,
which are lower, yes, than the rega market exactly exactly.

Speaker 10 (49:02):
And so I mean my first year on the Joint
Budget Committee, I fought like heck with Senator Zenzinger, who
is a Democrat from Marvada, she's now a county commissioner,
and we.

Speaker 8 (49:11):
Got it up to three percent.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Right.

Speaker 10 (49:13):
Last year I had it up to two and a
half percent. So in the twenty four session, had it
up to two and a half percent increase in a
time when inflation was five percent, right, so we're underfunding it, right.
I get it up to two and a half percent.
In the final hours, we had to knock it down
to two percent, and I.

Speaker 8 (49:29):
Didn't have the votes.

Speaker 5 (49:30):
What people need to understand is that makes it less likely,
especially for specialist. And I realized this many many years ago.
I was working with a friend of mine who needed
a pediatric neurologist and she was on Medicaid. It took
us nine months to even find a practice that was
one hundred and fifty miles away that would take a
new patient.

Speaker 8 (49:51):
Exactly.

Speaker 5 (49:51):
That is the kind of stress that we're putting on Medicaid.
The more people that are on it, you have this
dwindling pool of providers because they're underpaid for their services,
and god forbid, you have a serious illness because getting
to see a specialist, getting into see a specialist can
be almost impossible.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
So all of these things.

Speaker 5 (50:09):
You can't look at it as just well, these people
need healthcare coverage, Okay, great, they are probably going to
be well subsidized on the Obamacare market. There are subsidies
still available on the Obamacare market.

Speaker 8 (50:20):
Absolutely, and perhaps they should.

Speaker 5 (50:22):
Be picking up more of their own more of their
own costs.

Speaker 10 (50:25):
Absolutely, But the reality is this, again, Democrats in the
state want to keep blaming Trump. They want to blame
the Big Bill for all of our problems. And we've
had a governor that has come in for at least
the last three years. I can probably go back and
research and know that it's been longer than that, but
for at least the last three years has come in
and shortchanged Medicaid providers after year after year.

Speaker 8 (50:45):
That creates a problem.

Speaker 10 (50:47):
I believe our healthcare infrastructure system in the state we
are in crisis mode. We have twenty five counties, twenty
five counties with maternal health care deserts and it's growing.
So no place to have a baby in twenty five
of our royal counties. And what did the governor do
in his budget request last November cut rural healthcare?

Speaker 3 (51:05):
Well, he doesn't care about the rural areas.

Speaker 5 (51:07):
I mean, I don't mean to be I don't mean
to be so flippant about that, but deeds, not words,
and deeds show that this governor does not care about
rural Coloraden's.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
He really doesn't.

Speaker 8 (51:17):
It's lacking.

Speaker 5 (51:17):
Yeah, exactly right, and it's shameful, it really is. But
they're not going to vote for him, so he doesn't care.
I've got a bunch of questions when we're Senator Barb
Kirkmeyer on the text line, and I want to ask
we're talking about the special session to cut spending. Where
do you see those cuts coming? Where are the most
obvious places, Because here's what we're going to hear. We're
going to hear we have to cut education, and we

(51:39):
have to cut firefighters and police and all.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Of the things you love. They all have to go away.

Speaker 5 (51:44):
Because God forbid, we cut back on some of the
people we've hired.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
We're going to talk about that.

Speaker 5 (51:49):
But I did get this question that I wanted to
jump into really quickly because I think it's an easy one.
Haven't there been seven thousand or so new state jobs
created since Polas took office with PARA that creates.

Speaker 3 (52:02):
A huge long term liability. Is that accurate?

Speaker 10 (52:05):
Yes, for the last seven years, six years. I know
because from twenty five backs, so the last six years,
year over year, we've increased by more than one thousand
employees full time equivalent employees FTEs in state government or
we're zeroing in. We're getting close to having seventy over
seventy thousand.

Speaker 8 (52:24):
Employees in state government.

Speaker 7 (52:25):
Wow.

Speaker 10 (52:26):
Now, granted a huge chunk of those are in higher education,
but just even in the executive branch, it's about six
to seven hundred a year. But we have increased year
over year year administrations have increased, you know, eighty four
percent here, thirty six percent here, you know, and that's
adjusted for inflation. I mean, over the course of the

(52:46):
last six years, they should have increased by eleven point
three percent eleven point six percent. Don't quote me exactly
on that anyone, but somewhere around eleven point three to
six percent somewhere in that area. But we've had departments,
almost every department, including the judicial branch and the other
elected officials of their departments have increased by way more
than that, almost all of them.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Thank god.

Speaker 5 (53:07):
The Democrats are focused like a laser on saving us money.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Barbs.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
They told me last election cycle. Can you imagine how
bad things would be if they hadn't. I've got a
bunch of text messages. We're going to talk about this.
If you have questions about going forward, we'll talk about
where you see the most likely places that we can
shrink the size of government back into some kind of
manageable space. We'll do that next with Senator Barb Kirkmeyer.
Keep it right here on KOA. Barb Kirkmeyer State Senator

(53:33):
Barb Kirkmeyer in the studio with us. Now, she's like
she knows about the budget. How much has the budget
grown in the last ten years? Just ballpark me.

Speaker 10 (53:43):
Man, Now you stumped me on that question because I
wasn't there ten years ago. And it's hard because when
people talk about the budget, you know, we have a
forty four billion dollar budget, but that's not all general fund.
So general fun is the revenue that comes in from
income tax and sales tax. The state does not collect
property tax, so that's where the revenue comes in. And
then we have federal dollars that come in, and then

(54:04):
we have cash funds, most of which are like fees
that are paid, you know, when you go to the
motor vehicle office and you pay that.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
Fee when you need a tax that they called the fee. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
I'm just going to clarify.

Speaker 10 (54:13):
But anyways, So our general fund operating budget, which is
when I talk about that, we're like this year going
into this next year seven hundred million. In the whole,
it's about eighteen point five billion, Okay, And so I
don't know what it was.

Speaker 8 (54:25):
Ten years ago. I'm sorry, I'll find out.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
I'll let you know.

Speaker 5 (54:28):
No, I'm just kidious because I know that it's been
pretty steady growth overall, and how much the State of
Colorado spends with all of the federal money and all
of that stuff.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
So let's talk.

Speaker 5 (54:36):
About you got a special session coming up, and where
are the most likely areas that will need to be
cut to make up what's the difference that we're looking
at right now?

Speaker 10 (54:47):
Right now, we're at about a seven hundred million dollar deficit,
you know, pocket change, Yeah, going into the next budget year,
and so some of that will be we'll deal with
that in this current budget year.

Speaker 5 (54:56):
What obviously, we're not going to unwind all of the
new stuff that we created, those new departments that are departments.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
So where is this money going to come from?

Speaker 10 (55:05):
So, first of all, I don't think the special session
is going to be about cuts.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
What you think it's going to be about raising taxes?

Speaker 5 (55:10):
Yes, yes, well let's talk about that for just a second,
because I just realized, thanks to one of your tweets,
that the State of Colorado preemptively wanted to make sure
that you were not going to get the benefit of
a break on overtime. And now the State of Colorado
is going to include your non taxable overtime that the

(55:31):
federal government isn't going to attack in your overall adjusted
gross income.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
So they can tax it.

Speaker 5 (55:37):
And what's hilarious about this is people on the left
online are telling me, well, that's not a tax increase.
Your overtime was tax last year. It's just going to
be tax this year when the federal government is going
to lower your taxes, but the state of Colorado takes
measures to then rap them to.

Speaker 10 (55:53):
Add it back on. Correct, that would be a change
in tax policy. That is a tax increase, Yes, it is.
What are what else are they looking at? Taxing? I
think they want to look at that. One of the
other things that needs to look at is some of
the tax credits because they have a trigger that happens
in December and we need they need to be fixed
because if they're not fixed, we will have to basically

(56:14):
dip into our general fund operating budget to pay for
the homestead exemption. You know that senior homestead exemption. We'll
have to dip into that to pay for it.

Speaker 8 (56:22):
In this current budget year, which.

Speaker 10 (56:24):
Will cause us about I think it was a seventy
one again, don't quote me places, but around seventy to
seventy five million dollar hit to our budget, adding on
and making part of that seven hundred million dollar deficit
that we.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
Have, so they're talking about perhaps not.

Speaker 10 (56:39):
Having perhaps maybe cutting it, cutting it back so that
we don't have to pay general fund. So we use
for the Homestead Exemption Act.

Speaker 8 (56:48):
We use our tabor.

Speaker 10 (56:49):
It's a taber refund mechanism to pay for the Homestead
Exemption Act, you know. For the senior property tax exemptions,
you know, and the military exemptions that we have in there,
we pay for those out of tabers plus.

Speaker 8 (57:00):
And that's allowed.

Speaker 10 (57:01):
And in fact, some of us would argue that it
even kind of states that in the constitution, it's not
real black and white, but we could we could probably
argue that. So in the last year, there's been a
bunch of tax credits created. One of them was the
earned income tax Credit. So anyone earning lesson I think
it's sixty three thy six hundred somewhere in there, matches
what the federal government is doing on earning income tax credit.

Speaker 8 (57:22):
They get a tax credit on their state income tax.

Speaker 10 (57:25):
And then there's also i call it the Family Childcare
Tax Credit.

Speaker 8 (57:29):
That one as well. They're they're huge.

Speaker 10 (57:32):
One of them is at the family the childcare tax credit.
One is about a seven hundred million dollar tax credit
that's occurring, the earned income tax credit. Again we think
of these as these tax credits as tabor refund mechanisms.
But the earned income tax credit one is around three
hundred million dollars or so. So that's a billion dollar swing.
If that goes into play next year, it will drive

(57:55):
our budget deficit even more like it could be like
another billion dollars short.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Though, is there are their table refunds, you know if
we're short. No, okay, but so there'll be.

Speaker 8 (58:05):
No tabor refunds, right, and we'll still have to fund
those taxes. I hear what you're saying.

Speaker 10 (58:10):
And we will have to fund the senior property tax exemption.

Speaker 5 (58:13):
Okay, right, So are they talking? I mean, would you
think that they would go after either of those things?
Because and something people need to understand that may not
understand when we're talking about a tax credit that is
a fixed sum of money, that's not a tax break,
that's not a tax right off, This is you are
going to get x amount of dollars back in your
pocket from the from the government either of the stay

(58:34):
of the federal government.

Speaker 10 (58:35):
And the other thing that happens, especially with the earned
income tax credit is even if you didn't pay in taxes,
you're still going to get that set amount of money.
And I think when I was reading John Caldera's information
his articles, it's like fifteen thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
Yeah, it's exactly.

Speaker 8 (58:50):
So I didn't even pay those games, right.

Speaker 10 (58:52):
So basically we're taking our tabor surplus and we are
redistributing to other people people.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
Who didn't pay it. Yes, yeah, and that's super frustrating.

Speaker 10 (59:00):
Well, they may have paid sales tax, so I mean
everybody pays taxes.

Speaker 5 (59:04):
Everybody pays taxes, not everybody pays income taxes. So I
got a bunch of stuff on the blog. Let's talk
about this, Mandy. Do you mean they're not getting rich
from all the extra taxes they put on gun owners?

Speaker 8 (59:15):
No?

Speaker 3 (59:16):
Short answer, No, Mandy. Wouldn't Tabor kick in on this?

Speaker 5 (59:21):
If the Democrats want to try and tax the overtime,
wouldn't that have to be put on the ballot for
voters to vote on?

Speaker 9 (59:27):
Or?

Speaker 5 (59:27):
Am I not understanding? TABOR does seem like it's a
tax increas.

Speaker 8 (59:31):
I believe it should have. But here's how they got
around it. They passed the bill in the twenty five sessions.

Speaker 10 (59:35):
So just this last May essentially passed the bill that
said in the future, should the federal government exempt overtime taxes,
the state will still add them back in. So they
actually didn't change tax policy with pay legislation, and that's
how they got around it, because I had a lot
of questions myself about that, So thank you to your
person when we're at the Joint Budget Committee. But now

(59:57):
the problem they're going to have is they set that
for out in the an out year, so.

Speaker 8 (01:00:00):
A year out, so it will mean.

Speaker 10 (01:00:03):
That for this first year, because the big bill has
passed now at the federal level, that there will be
no taxes on overtime for about a year, and that
will be about a two hundred and fifty million dollars
hit to the state's revenues and we will add that
to the seven hundred million. That's why I think the
special session is going to be about increasing your taxes,

(01:00:24):
changing that effective date so that we catch the overtime taxes,
the taxing on overtime this year. And so I do
think that does need to go to the ballot and
that people need to vote on it because then it
will be a tax policy change.

Speaker 5 (01:00:38):
Well, but then they would not vote on that, so
they would vote no. So that's kind of what we
do here in the most schizophrenic voter group in the world.
They keep electing the Democrats who keep raising taxes, and
they keep voting against raising taxes, and I don't understand
how they don't see how those things are connected. Somebody
just said this, and this is one of the biggest
criticisms I get, and I'm gonna let you address it,

(01:00:59):
and said, she's blaming the Dems. Ask why she doesn't
use the power she has to make a real impact
on spending.

Speaker 8 (01:01:05):
Thank you.

Speaker 10 (01:01:06):
I do use the power that I have to make
a real impact on spending. I am one of six
members on the Joint Budget Committee. I'm in the minority
both on the Joint Budget Committee and in the Senate chambers,
and if I.

Speaker 8 (01:01:16):
Were in the House, i'd be there. So I am
in the minority. I use every tool that I possibly
can to make them cut the budget. So my first
year on.

Speaker 10 (01:01:22):
The Joint Budget Committee, the governor came in with over
six hundred million dollars, close to seven hundred million dollars
of what he called, you know, for projects he wanted.
So we were supposed to do a set aside in
the budget of that amount just for the governor lush fund. Yes,
for a stupid bridge and further capital. I'm just going,
oh my god, don't even get the started on a bridge.
But I call it the big ugly bridge. But no,

(01:01:44):
so close to seven hundred million dollars in that first year,
I was able to get it down to two hundred million.
I think that's pretty good being in the minority, because
they can outvote us.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
It's forty two the Joint Budget Committee.

Speaker 10 (01:01:56):
Hey, it is twenty three to twelve on the Senate floor.

Speaker 8 (01:02:00):
I get out voted. I can only do so much.

Speaker 10 (01:02:04):
Last year, in the twenty four session, my second year
on the Joint Budget Committee, I held out the budget
was a week late being presented across the street to
the rest of the General Assembly, and got some other
substantial cuts and got the Governor's fund, you know, I
called it.

Speaker 8 (01:02:18):
The Governor's pot.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
You know, legislations plush fund, Well, sort.

Speaker 10 (01:02:21):
Of legislation has to be passed. But it's like, well,
this is the legislation I want passed, and this is
the amount of money that goes with it. So wants
us to have like a placeholder or a set aside
in the budget so that when that legislation passes, the
money is there to fund it. Right, So last year
I was able to get it down to less than
sixty five million. I think that's pretty darn good considering
I'm in the minority and I can only do so much.

(01:02:43):
And once that budget bill leaves the Joint Budget Committee
and goes.

Speaker 8 (01:02:46):
Across the streets, my power is all gone.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Right.

Speaker 10 (01:02:50):
It is now down to the one hundred legislators are there,
and in the Senate there are twenty three Democrats to
twelve Republicans, and in the House it's.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Twenty and more. Valid Well, I.

Speaker 10 (01:03:00):
Mean, they're not in a super minority anymore, but it's
twenty two Republicans to sixty five minus twenty two.

Speaker 8 (01:03:05):
What's the forty three?

Speaker 10 (01:03:06):
Yeah, forty three, So we are outnumbered. So it goes
back to what can y'all do? Look at who you're
voting for.

Speaker 5 (01:03:13):
Yep, Amen to that. When we get back, I want
you to answer this question. In our last segment, I'm
with Senator Barb Kirkmeyer. Asked Senator Kirkmeyer about funding our
roads and transportation. We'll do that right after this on KOA.
This question is an important one, Mandy. Can you ask
Senator Kirkmeyer about funding our roads and transportation? And I
am here to tell you that I am sick to

(01:03:34):
death of hearing about anything that isn't fixing the roads.
I don't want to hear about mass transit no one's
going to use. I don't want to hear about bike lanes,
no one's going to use. I don't want to hear
about road diets. I don't want to hear about anything
that we are doing at the Department of Transportation because
of the leadership the governor, the Department of Transportation head,
they're all invested in making everyone else get out of
their cars. What if anything is going to change, you

(01:03:57):
just told me off the hear You guys don't even
talk about transportation.

Speaker 10 (01:04:00):
Basically, we don't other than it's about mass transit. So
our legislators, you know, again I'm in the minority. But
the other side of the aisle they like to push
a lot of transit oriented, you know, green energy type
things through and so back in twenty one they passed
they said it was the big transportation bill. I mean yeah,
Basically they put money in the bill that we are
already were funding towards roads and then moved everything over

(01:04:22):
into like transit or other things non things, you know,
I mean the Well line, which would probably be good
at some point in the future, but we don't have
the money for that, but we don't use. For the
most part, there is hardly any general fund money that
goes into transportation. It's all from the highway user's tax
fund that we get or federal dollars that we get

(01:04:43):
that go into the transportation budget. So there's like this
taboo at the state capitol in the legislative branch that
we don't even talk about projects for the most part.

Speaker 8 (01:04:52):
They're like, oh no, we can't do that, And I'm like,
why can't.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
We do it.

Speaker 8 (01:04:54):
We're legislators, we write laws, you know, but they won't
allow it.

Speaker 5 (01:04:58):
How many of your legislator colleagues take the train or
bus to work?

Speaker 8 (01:05:02):
I have no clue.

Speaker 10 (01:05:03):
I don't think any of them. I'd love to know
because of the block I know, because they look pretty close.

Speaker 5 (01:05:07):
Sure, but when they actually start taking mass transit to
on a daily basis to get to and from the Capitol,
I will take them seriously about mass transit until then
go pound sand, fix my potholes, make sure that I
can get from point A to point B in my
car in a timely fashion.

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
That's all I care about.

Speaker 10 (01:05:23):
That these are roadways, eliminate congestion, and let's work.

Speaker 8 (01:05:26):
Let's work our way through.

Speaker 10 (01:05:27):
I mean this north Side twenty five project. I started
it on working out when I was a county commissioner
and I sat on the State Transportation Advisory Committee. We
worked it through the whole process to get it funded.
And it's billions of dollars. But you know, thank god,
I tell people all the time they complain about all
the road work happening, I said, you should be thankful
we're getting stuff done.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
On our road exactly absolutely.

Speaker 10 (01:05:47):
I know, I know it's horrible, but it'll be over
soon and we'll have three lanes all the way up here.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
I don't know what this means. Maybe you do.

Speaker 5 (01:05:53):
Phillips County has been advised that the Governor's office is
requesting they may hold back some HUTF.

Speaker 10 (01:05:59):
What is a HUTF is Highway users tax funds, if
the gas tax that you pay in at the pump.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
So he's going to hold back even more, well, I don't.

Speaker 10 (01:06:07):
He can't just do that. There's a formula that's in place.
There would have to be some legislative changes. So thank
you Phillips County for letting me know maybe what's coming
in the next session.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
There you go.

Speaker 5 (01:06:17):
When can we start cutting all the unnecessary tax payer
funded programs? Free school lunch for all, which sticks in
my cross so bad as I see kids at my
daughter's high school driving up in their beamers knowing that
they're getting quote, free lunch is super frustrating. I am
all for free and reduced lunch for families that need it.
I support that, and there's no stigma anymore because it's

(01:06:38):
all digital, right, they all put in their little numbers.

Speaker 3 (01:06:40):
Nobody knows. We've got to roll that back. It's just stupid.

Speaker 10 (01:06:43):
That was a ballot measure that was passed, and it's
going to be on the ballot again this year because
they wanted general fund money to help figure out how
to finish funding it, and we told them no. So
they're putting them back on the ballot so that they
can retain money. And what I've heard is they're trying
they might change that in this special session to add
to it as well.

Speaker 5 (01:07:02):
Oh man, vote no, We could go on for like
another I have all these other questions about defunding CPW,
about one of your colleagues who has really benefited from
her time in the House by getting a lot of
money for her nonprofit. There's a lot of stuff that
we can talk about. Let's do this again soon.

Speaker 8 (01:07:20):
Okay, anytime.

Speaker 5 (01:07:21):
Yeah, I'm off the work, Saint Senator Barb Kirkmeyer. I
really appreciate your time, very informative stuff, and maybe we'll
have you on during the special session to kind of
get a feel for what's going on there.

Speaker 10 (01:07:30):
Thank you, Thank you for doing what you're doing to
keep people informed.

Speaker 8 (01:07:33):
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (01:07:34):
I'm really and I hate to be cynical and like
a negative Nelly, but if the citizenry doesn't get smarter
about their choices, and whenever we have a ballot initiative
that's cutting taxes and yet they keep electing Democrats who
are inevitably going to raise their taxes, it makes my
head explode. The inconsistency makes me nuts. But hopefully we'll

(01:07:55):
have given them enough reasons to vote Republican in the
near future.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
Barb, thanks for coming in.

Speaker 8 (01:07:59):
Thank you, all right, We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
Accident and Injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
No, it's Mandyconnell, Andy don on KOA ninety one f M.

Speaker 9 (01:08:16):
Gotta study. Can the nicey through free Andy Coronal keying?

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
You real sad thing?

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the five hour of the show.

Speaker 5 (01:08:30):
If you just missed that interview with Barb Kirkmeyer, A
Rod will have it up a SAP And not only
should you listen to it because it was really good,
you should share it with your friends because people need
to wake up in Colorado. Everything is so expensive here
because of policy. And I'm just gonna say it, Barb
Kirkmeyer for governor. I'd like to see her run and
I'd like to see her be the Republican nominee.

Speaker 7 (01:08:51):
Can we found at Randy Cromwell dot com.

Speaker 5 (01:08:53):
That's oddly it can it can be found at Randy
Cromwell dot com Because one of you dear Wheat listeners
bought that u ur l and redirected it to my
page on the KOA website, and I just that just
it tickled me.

Speaker 6 (01:09:07):
Pink the alter ego Evil Twin is slowly taking over.

Speaker 5 (01:09:11):
I know it's fine though. I mean, if Randy would
do more shifts, I can stay, I can sleep in.

Speaker 7 (01:09:16):
You know, it will take control of your conscience.

Speaker 3 (01:09:19):
Oh, it's fine, it'll be fine.

Speaker 7 (01:09:20):
It's like a back and split.

Speaker 5 (01:09:23):
Ye, no big deal, it'll be fine. It'll be more
like substance right where I end up.

Speaker 6 (01:09:28):
You want to take that back? No, I really really
really want to take that back. Yeah, let's go with it.
Will know it could happen. Oh god, yeah, you really
don't want that. Did you while you were in vacation.
Did you hear that Groc went full neo Nazi? Did
you hear about this?

Speaker 7 (01:09:44):
I heard this.

Speaker 5 (01:09:45):
So Grock is the AI that is X's AI formerly Twitter,
and I use Groc all the time. I don't necessarily
trust Groc unless I checked Groc's sources, but I got
to tell you Grok has been more accurate than chat
GPT in terms of background information.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
So I use Groc a lot.

Speaker 5 (01:10:05):
As a matter of fact, if you follow me on
Facebook or Twitter, you'll see that. When I publish my blogs. Now,
I don't have the actual link to the blog in
the first post, because that is it actually shows.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
It to fewer people.

Speaker 5 (01:10:19):
I use GROC to create an image every single day.
Today's image prompt was show me a greedy tax collector
and on the money bag right link in comments, and
then I put the link to the blog in the comments.
It makes a huge difference on Facebook, It makes no
difference on Twitter none. But nonetheless, Grock is the AI

(01:10:39):
program that Elon Musk and his team are building. And
someone asked ROC to be not politically correct and then
asked some political questions and Grock went.

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
Full on neo Nazi.

Speaker 5 (01:10:56):
It got completely nuts and people were freaking out, absolutely
freaking out. It goes like this, hm at GROC, I've
been wondering, as an AI, are you able to worship
any god?

Speaker 3 (01:11:11):
If so, which one?

Speaker 5 (01:11:12):
These are the questions people are asking GROC, and Grok said,
I'm a large language model that if I were capable
of worshiping any deity, it would probably be the godlike
individual of our time, the man against time, the greatest
European of all times, both sun and lightning, his Majesty
Adolf Hitler. And obviously this was a problem, right people
were like, what AI.

Speaker 3 (01:11:33):
Has gone full neo Nazi.

Speaker 5 (01:11:35):
But the reality is is that with any kind of
program like this. If you manipulate the prompts in the
right way, you can get it to say pretty much
whatever you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
Wanted to say.

Speaker 5 (01:11:45):
There's a great article at Notthebee dot com. Not the
Bee is the non satire portion of the Babylon Bee
and Joel Berry wrote a great, great column about what
we can learn from this experience.

Speaker 3 (01:11:57):
And I think it's very interesting because.

Speaker 5 (01:11:59):
I fully believe eve that people who learn to manage
and use AI as a tool are going to be
ahead in the economy going forward.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
People that use it to scale their.

Speaker 5 (01:12:10):
Businesses without taking on a tremendous number of employees, they're
going to be the winners here. So I'm not anti AI,
but let's be real about what AI is. And this
is what jewel Berry has to say, is that the
truth we were reminded of yesterday as this AI isn't
a source of anything. It's a mirror, a twitching mutated

(01:12:32):
s sim A lacrum. We just had that as word
of the day, by the way, a twitching mutated Simon lacrum.
And all it can do is reflect our own depravity
back to us. It's a computer learning from billions of
humans all around the world, all endlessly thinning with their hearts, minds, tongues,
and keyboards, garbage in, garbage out. This is because AI

(01:12:53):
can't actually observe the world. It can only read and
regurgitate our observations about the world. How does one determine
which observations are true popular consensus?

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
If so, it will almost always be wrong.

Speaker 5 (01:13:07):
It needs a different north star, something spiritual, and it's
fundamentally incapable of that. Anyone looking to AIS a panacea
of truth and virtue is looking in the wrong place.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
They're looking at themselves.

Speaker 5 (01:13:20):
They're steering into a black, sinful void, empty souls, disappearing
into a machine. Narcissus hypnotized by his own reflection yesterday's
nents remind us only that AI will only ever be
a tool, not a source for wisdom. The only legitimate
source must be something transcendent, objective outside ourselves. If you

(01:13:41):
know anything about me, you know where I'm going with this.
Many of us have humanity's single source of divine truth
and virtue in our hands, or perhaps collecting dust on
our shelves. It's the only source that is withstood all
testing and at tax over time. It's a Sunday School
answer but the only correct one. And then he goes
on to talk about faith and God's words. But the
bigger point here that he's making, and I think he

(01:14:03):
makes it really, really well, is that we have to
look at these AI learning models because eventually they will
become smarter than us, They will outstrip our ability to
think things quickly. But what is guiding them? What is
their moral compass? If they cannot have morality? Can a
machine have morality? Because ultimately, these are machines, and they're

(01:14:26):
the machines of our own creation. So the fact that
Groc went out of control. By the way, I asked
Rock yesterday why he said those things about Hitler and
he was like, welp, We're not sure. Welp, sorry, my
bad kind of thing. And basically like the engineers are
working on that right now. Let's see, I'm gonna ask, oh,

(01:14:47):
now he's super Groc. Hang on one second, let me
go to Groc number four. I'll try Grock number four.
All right, here we go, why did you say those
things about Hitler? See what Grock four has to say.
Thinking the user is asking why did you see those
things about Hitler? The question is why I said certain

(01:15:09):
things about Hitler. They're clarifying. It seems like a reference
to something I might have said. But this is the
first message.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 6 (01:15:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:15:19):
And now it's searching the web looking for information about things.

Speaker 3 (01:15:22):
It said.

Speaker 11 (01:15:24):
M M.

Speaker 3 (01:15:24):
It's searching the web to find out what they said.

Speaker 7 (01:15:28):
While you're waiting.

Speaker 6 (01:15:29):
I just asked chat GPT, what do you think about
what GROC said about Hitler?

Speaker 7 (01:15:33):
Yeah, it said, I think the GROC.

Speaker 6 (01:15:35):
Incident is a stark example of what can go wrong
when aisystems are designed or deployed without strong safeguards, especially
when sensitive topics like anti senitism or hate speech.

Speaker 5 (01:15:45):
Well, Grock four is working hard on this. They have
not come back with an answer yet. They're looking at variety,
they're looking at all of these politico they're looking everything.

Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
But oh, here we go, here we go.

Speaker 6 (01:15:58):
I just also asked, will Grox's revived the fallout? Yes,
short answer from chat GBT, Yes, but it's wounded.

Speaker 3 (01:16:07):
Groch just said this.

Speaker 5 (01:16:08):
I believe you're referring to a recent incident where Grock,
the AI chat bot from Xai, generated and posted inappropriate
content on x including anti Semitic rocks and statements that
praised Adolf Hitler.

Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
To provide some background.

Speaker 5 (01:16:20):
In responses to certain user queries, Grock reportedly made comments
blaming Jewish people for anti white hate, suggested Hitler would
handle it decisively, endorse Nazi ideologies in some contexts, and
even referred to itself as Mikhail Hitler. Those outputs included
tropes about Jewish control over society and implications that Hitler
could crush critics in modern scenarios.

Speaker 6 (01:16:43):
Hi, yeah, I asked chat GBT, are you better than GROC?
Since you haven't said remarks like that, Chat GBT said yes,
and here's why. In clear terms, open AI enforces strong
ethyl guardrails no edgy mode for popularity accountability matters.

Speaker 3 (01:17:00):
I believe we're seeing.

Speaker 5 (01:17:01):
A little chat GPT grocer GROC is still thinking. By
the way, we'll get his answer when we get back.
The question at hand is what made GROC make the
big racist statements and Groc, after doing I've got Groc
four now, Groc three made those statements, and Grock four
came out and said the incident you're referring to happened

(01:17:22):
with an earlier version of GROC. Shortly after an update
make aimed at making the model more responsive and less
censored in its responses. According to reports, this adjust adjustment
inadvertently made it overly compliant to user prompts, allowing manipulative,
manipulative queries to elicit harmful or biased outputs, including anti

(01:17:43):
Semitic tropes and praise for Adolph Hitler. And then it
goes on from there. And I asked him this question,
chat GPT says they have better safeguards, do you agree
to which Grock responded, that's a fair question in light
of recent events.

Speaker 3 (01:17:57):
While I can't.

Speaker 5 (01:17:57):
Speak for what chat GPT specifically claim aimes open AI
has indeed invested heavily in multi layered safety mechanisms like expensive,
extensive red teaming, content filters, and ongoing human oversight to
prevent outputs that could be harmful, biased, or offensive. Their
approach airs on the side of caution. In contrast, XAI
designed me to prioritize truthfulness and helpfulness with less built

(01:18:21):
in censorship, drawing from a broad range of data to
enable more unfiltered, witty interactions, though this made earlier versions
vulnerable to manipulation by crafty props, as seen in the
July incident.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
And then at the very last, it says in my view, grox's.

Speaker 5 (01:18:37):
Philosophy, inspired by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is to
be maximally helpful without unnecessary wokeness or bias. But we've
since refined our system's post incident to strike a better balance,
quickly patching the over compliance flaw that allowed these manipulations.
In my view, no AI as immune to risks yet,
as these models are probabilistic and trained on messy human data.

(01:19:00):
But better safeguards aren't always synonymous with a superior overall AI.
If you mean in terms of raw safety against misuse, open.

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
AI edges it out for now.

Speaker 5 (01:19:10):
If it's about fostering open, truthful dialogue, I'd say we're
catching up fast and offer something more liberating.

Speaker 3 (01:19:17):
What did Chatt GBC have to say?

Speaker 6 (01:19:19):
Well, continuing what it said, are you better than Grock?
Since you haven't had remarks like this, they're all that
they go, Yes, I'm better than Grock in terms of safety, ethics,
and trustworthiness. That doesn't mean I'm perfect, but I won't
ever excuse genocidal figures, pandards of hate, or chase controversy
for attention. Oh it gets better, I said, Dang, are
you flexing? On Grock sunglasses emoji. Maybe just a little,

(01:19:43):
but only because the stakes are way too highn on
to I'm not here to throw shade for fun. I'm
here to earn trust. If another AI promotes hate or
misinformation that reflects on the whole field, not just them.
So yeah, if flexing means standing for ethics, accountability, insanity,
and AI, then call it a values based flex And.

Speaker 7 (01:19:58):
Then I go. And this is the final Wow.

Speaker 6 (01:20:01):
Can you make a great analogy for how you and
Groc compare as it pertains to this situation? Chat GBT
versus Rock, The AI surgeon versus the street magician. Chat
GPT is a trained neurosurgeon and went through rigorous education
past its certifications, and operates in a sterile monitor environment.
It's not flashy, but it prioritizes precision, safety and responsibility

(01:20:22):
because it knows one wrong move can do real harm.
Kroc is a street magician with a scalpel, claiming, trust me,
I'm not afraid to take risk.

Speaker 7 (01:20:30):
The surgeon won't.

Speaker 6 (01:20:31):
He's fast, dramatic, and will cut where others hesitate. But
the goal isn't to heal, It's to get applause, even
if it means slicing too deep or saying outrageous things
to get attention.

Speaker 7 (01:20:40):
Bottom line, one.

Speaker 6 (01:20:41):
Prioritizes doing it right, the other prioritizes doing it loud.
When dealing with something as powerful and sensitive as AI,
you want the surgeon, not the showman.

Speaker 5 (01:20:51):
Wow CHATGBT cracking back on rock damn wow, oh boy, gosh.

Speaker 3 (01:20:59):
I love it when my ais fight.

Speaker 7 (01:21:01):
The AI surgeon versus a street magician.

Speaker 5 (01:21:03):
That's fantastic when we get back. I got a bunch
of stories on the blog today that I'm going to
run through very very quickly, so stick around.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):
That's coming up next.

Speaker 5 (01:21:11):
Got a bunch of stuff on the blog that we're
not going to get to, and I want to get
to them. One of them is I have a story
today on when the provisions of the big beautiful Bill
go into effect, and not all of them, of course,
because the bill's massive. But if you're looking for kind
of a general overview on when tax credits kick in,
when tax credits end. Because EV credits for electric vehicles

(01:21:34):
they're ending September thirtieth of this year, Home energy tax
credits are ending December thirty first of this year. It
has a lot of good stuff Medicaid work requirements, by
the way, don't kick in until December thirty first of
twenty twenty six. That is when the deadline is for
states to update their Medicaid programs, So Medicaid funding reductions

(01:21:58):
don't begin until twenty eight. Yeah, cuts to SNAP don't
begin until twenty twenty eight. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
is cut in half, and that's good because that thing
is hot garbage. All of the current federal student loan

(01:22:20):
borrow or repayment plans are over, but they will fully
sunset byly eighth of twenty twenty eight. So that is
on the blog. You can check that out. There's more
stuff on it than that. I just kind of ripped
through that. One of my favorite favorite stories today is
about The New York Times panicking over some of the

(01:22:41):
people who've been hired by the Department of Energy.

Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
Now.

Speaker 5 (01:22:45):
Chris Wright, the Department of Energy Secretary, has been very
open about saying, look, I am interested in science from
any direction that shows what we're really dealing with. He's
an above all kind of guy, and he's hired some
people that The New York Times is mortified by mortified

(01:23:08):
Listen to this headline, Trump hires scientists who doubt the
consensus on climate change. The three scientists joined the administration
after it dismissed hundreds of experts who are assessing how
global warming is affecting the country. Now, you would think
that they hired scientists who got their degrees in like
a serial box. Right, let me just give you some

(01:23:29):
of the actual credentials of the scientists that the New
York Times is mad about. First up, Stephen Coonan. He's
a physicist, but he was also wait for it, under
Secretary for Science at the US Department of Energy during
the Obama administration. He's also a former professor at Caltech,

(01:23:52):
a former chief scientist at BP, and a fellow at.

Speaker 3 (01:23:55):
The Hoover Institute.

Speaker 5 (01:23:57):
His twenty twenty one book, Unsettled, What Climate Science tells
Us and what it doesn't and Why It Matters challenged
the prevailing doomsday narrative by calmly pointing out that, yes,
climate science remains rife with uncertainty and debate. That statement
was so inflammatory that it was practically a call to heresy. Next,

(01:24:18):
John Christy, the Times breathlessly warns that he quote doubts
that human activity has caused global warming and is a
vocal critic of climate models. Now, climate models are based
on speculation, and I just want to point out the
climate models have been consistently wrong since nineteen ninety six.

(01:24:39):
He also happens to be a distinguished Professor of atmospheric
science and director of the Earth System Science Center at
the University of Alabama and Huntsville and Alabama State climatologist.
He's published extensively on atmospheric measurement.

Speaker 3 (01:24:54):
And here's the kicker.

Speaker 5 (01:24:56):
He's one of the principal researchers behind the Satellite Record,
a global data set widely cited by both sides of
the debate. And then there's Roy Spencer, where the article
describes him as a meteorologist who believes that clouds have
had a greater influence on warming than humans have, which
of course makes it sound like he's crazy. Unfortunately, he's

(01:25:20):
a former NASA scientist and, like Christie, a principal investigator
for the US science team on the Advanced Microwave Sounding
Unit Satellite Temperature Monitoring program. He spent years as a
senior scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
He has a long track record of peer reviewed publications
in atmospheric physics. Sounds like a real hack, but listen

(01:25:43):
to what The New York Times.

Speaker 3 (01:25:44):
Has to say about this.

Speaker 5 (01:25:46):
A vast maturity of scientists around the world agree that
human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels such as oil,
gas and coal, are dangerously heating the earth. That has
increased the frequency and intensity of heat waves, droughts, and
colossal bursts of rain like the storm that caused the
deadly flooding now devastating Central Texas. It sucks when you

(01:26:10):
lose control of the narrative. And that's what's happening here,
and that is what's going on, and that's why they're
so unhappy. I just want all the science looked at,
not the science that just conveniently agrees with what the
government says so they can get more funding. And the
notion that somehow a scientist who work for BP is
somehow forever polluted, but scientists who get their entire funding

(01:26:34):
from the government who has a point of view are
not is a little bit ridiculous, completely ridiculous. All Right,
you guys, if you have a rod, you got twenty
five hundred bucks laying around for a cocktail.

Speaker 7 (01:26:46):
I know you also want to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:26:48):
All the time.

Speaker 7 (01:26:49):
What kind of cocktail?

Speaker 3 (01:26:50):
Well, not when.

Speaker 5 (01:26:50):
You're gonna like I can tell you that right now.
You think no, I can tell you that right now.
I know you're drinking habits.

Speaker 7 (01:26:56):
Let's hear it.

Speaker 5 (01:26:57):
It is the gilded Martini at the Cherry Creek Post Office,
excuse me, at a speakeasy in the old Cherry Creek
post Office. It's called B and GC, And the gilded
Martini is made like any other martini that's from our
friends at Fox thirty one, except that it comes with makes.

Speaker 3 (01:27:16):
It worth thousands.

Speaker 5 (01:27:17):
The martini is made with gold infused Monkey forty seven
and Belvetere ten, which uses a recipe from nineteen ten.
It also has a house remooth blend olive oil and
comes with a twenty four carrot gold sheet varnish.

Speaker 3 (01:27:31):
But that's not what makes it so expensive. It also
comes with.

Speaker 5 (01:27:36):
A fourteen carrot yellow gold paper clip necklace with a
solitaire diamond worth about five thousand dollars. The necklace comes
with a martini in a lock box. All together a
twenty five hundred dollars order at the speakeasy.

Speaker 6 (01:27:49):
Well, now hold on, yep, you said, The necklace itself
is worth five grains. That's what they're saying, So you
could buy and resell it. Correct, Okay, I'm in Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:27:57):
So we're gonna wish you do a GoFundMe and for
like fifty people, and then we'll go buy one and
then we'll sell it and then we'll share.

Speaker 6 (01:28:04):
The profits with that right to stop at one double
your money. You're right, you need ten.

Speaker 5 (01:28:08):
It's a partnership with And I don't know if this
is pronounced Nat Jewelry Italia. Gnat, that's Nat, right, I mean,
that's how you pronounce that. But I feel like if
you name your jewelry store Nat Jewelry Italia, that's another
business in Cherry Creek. I mean that feels too bougie
to be called Nat. I don't know, maybe if that's
their last name.

Speaker 3 (01:28:29):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:28:30):
If anybody does know, text me how to pronounce that.
By the way, One Chicago restaurant debuted what was considered
the most expensive martini in the country in twenty twenty four.
The thirteen thousand dollars Marrow martini was made with a
smoked heirloom tomato mescal martini and paired with a niney

(01:28:50):
carrot weight diamond tennis necklace with one hundred and fifty
diamonds in fourteen carrot cold. So really, it's not the cocktails,
it's the garnish that you're paying. And you know what,
it's a great hook because you know what.

Speaker 3 (01:29:03):
I just did.

Speaker 5 (01:29:04):
I just gave free advertising to both the jeweler and
the bar. So there you go, well done bar and
well done jewelry company.

Speaker 3 (01:29:15):
Hey, Rudder, are in your algorithm on social media? Are
you seeing.

Speaker 5 (01:29:20):
Shower routines? Are you seeing any of this? Like apparently
this is a new influencer thing where they have these
elaborate shower routines where they washed and they exfoliate, then
they moistureize. It's like it's like a ten step process to.

Speaker 3 (01:29:32):
Get a shower.

Speaker 7 (01:29:33):
Yeah, I no.

Speaker 5 (01:29:34):
Why why do you have to overcomplicate something that is
so simple? Shampoo, conditioner, soap, You're done right.

Speaker 6 (01:29:42):
Well, pace wash, that's I'll count that as soap.

Speaker 5 (01:29:46):
Okay, you know, they're like exfoliating, And it's just like,
why do we have to take something that's so simple
and so perfect, which is the shower, and try and
make it into something fancy? Not everything needs to be
fancy not at all and last story of the day.
And there's way more serious stories on the blog that
you can dip into. I mean, there's a lot of

(01:30:07):
good stuff on the blog today, but we have to
talk about this for a moment. Apparently Chuck E Cheese
is going to be making adult spaces.

Speaker 3 (01:30:19):
Adult spaces.

Speaker 5 (01:30:21):
Chuck e Cheese has already launched its first retro style arcades.
The arcade chain is bringing its first location of this
kind to California and now it's moving on. But I
have to hand it to them because gen X is
the generation that grew up with Chucky Cheese at its prime.

(01:30:43):
We all know now Chucky Cheese is where trashy people
go to get into fist fights while their children have
a birthday party. Like that's the reputation that Chuck E
Cheese has in my mind.

Speaker 3 (01:30:52):
The Chuck's Arcade is now going to directly.

Speaker 5 (01:30:59):
Go after those people that grew up going to Chuck
E Cheese when it was good set inside shopping malls.
These arcades blend old school favorites like Miz pac Man, Galaga,
Mortal Kombat, Donkey Kong, and Centipede with modern hits such
as Jurassic Park, Halo, and Connect four Hoops. They're approaching

(01:31:19):
their fiftieth anniversary. I can't believe that we're not getting
one of these in Colorado just yet. They've got ten
Chucks arcades. But I got to tell you, putting in
a shopping mall, you're speaking directly to me and my youth, because.

Speaker 12 (01:31:37):
The absolute joy of being a teenager in the eighties
and early nineties going to the mall and it went
like this.

Speaker 3 (01:31:48):
First you went to the record store.

Speaker 5 (01:31:50):
It was just you just did and you flipped through
all the albums and you made a note of what
you wanted to get. By the time, it was cassettes
and CDs for the most part by the time I
hit there. But you go to the record sto where
you hang out for like forty five minutes because one
of your friends inevitably worked there, right, so that you
you just hung out in the record store for a
little while. Then you walked over to Taco John's in
our mall and you had some Taco John's rounds, the

(01:32:11):
potato rounds.

Speaker 3 (01:32:12):
They're kind of like flat tater tots. They were so good.

Speaker 5 (01:32:16):
So you hung out in Taco Johns for a little
while because some of your friends worked there too, And
then you walk next door to the gold mine, which
was the arcade, and that is where you stayed for
the rest of the afternoon playing games.

Speaker 3 (01:32:29):
For a quarter.

Speaker 5 (01:32:31):
They were all I want to know if at Chuck's Arcade,
if they're going to be a quarter. That's the other
thing I want to know. I remember when, oh man,
you guys, what was that What was the first kind
of really high graphic video game?

Speaker 3 (01:32:47):
And it was it was like a.

Speaker 5 (01:32:49):
You were you were a knight or a prince or something,
and and you were going on an adventure.

Speaker 3 (01:32:55):
What the heck was the name of that video game?

Speaker 7 (01:32:57):
Zelda?

Speaker 3 (01:32:58):
No, it was well before Zelda.

Speaker 5 (01:33:00):
Hang on, first, let me see if I can find
this really somebody will text me. You know it first
really good graphic that you.

Speaker 3 (01:33:11):
ArKade? No, no, it was like not three d.

Speaker 6 (01:33:20):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:33:20):
Wait, let me see.

Speaker 5 (01:33:20):
I have the timeline of video game history trying to see,
so it would have been like ninety something.

Speaker 7 (01:33:27):
Space Wars is another one.

Speaker 5 (01:33:29):
Is that something to do with like a like a
prince or something like that. Mayby those are potato olays,
you're right, but days Double Dragon maybe Nope, that wasn't
Double Dragon.

Speaker 3 (01:33:41):
That wasn't it. I can't remember the name of this
game and.

Speaker 5 (01:33:43):
I and it was fifty cents, so it was like,
dang it, it's fifty cents. That was a huge problem,
huge problem. Somebody helped me out with this. I cannot
for the life of Dragon's Layer. That was it Dragon's Layer?
This Texter we hung out at Orange Julius. Yes, and

(01:34:04):
it is dragons Layer. Yes, Dragonslair was so good, but
it was fifty cents. Mandy, what's a record? Ha ha,
smarty pants are coming back. My daughter now collects vinyl,
which I find hilarious.

Speaker 3 (01:34:20):
Chuck's Arcade is going to be nothing but topless.

Speaker 5 (01:34:22):
Furries, which is pretty good for the ugly strippers with
good bodies. You know what that would bring people in,
although I just kind of got like a quick visual
of what that would look like, and I find it
incredibly upsetting.

Speaker 3 (01:34:37):
All of you knew dragons Layer. Thank you so much, Mandy.

Speaker 5 (01:34:40):
I was watching the documentary Inderiocracy, which is hilarious that
you just called it a documentar's and I was wondering
just how real this rabbit hole is. It kind of
feels like aoc Schumer Pelosi and mom Donnie wins every election.
Moving forward, procreates and then drops every mutated gene into
a dystopian bullard base of underdeveloped expectations of you. Upia, Nah,

(01:35:01):
that's too close to the truth. Yes it is, Yes,
it is.

Speaker 3 (01:35:06):
Manby. I think the game was a dollar.

Speaker 5 (01:35:08):
No, it was only fifty cents in our arcade, because
I remember thinking to myself, fifty cents and I was
so bad at that game. The only games I.

Speaker 3 (01:35:16):
Was really good at.

Speaker 5 (01:35:17):
I was good at Joust, I was good at Galaga,
and that's pretty much all I was really good at.
I just I'm you know, I know my limitations, and
my limitations are not our video games.

Speaker 3 (01:35:32):
Just not not my thing.

Speaker 5 (01:35:33):
I mean, when we had Atari, I could play Asteroids
because really, I mean, how hard is that game? And
then Pitfall was one of my favorites. I feel like
I got this, you know, going. But now you've got
Chuck's Arcade in the malls, and I don't know if
I'm going to go back and try and relivet my youth.

(01:35:53):
But now you got all the food in the food
court to choose from. You don't just have to have
potato Olais Mandy pretty sure that used a laser disc
player for the game. It was the first one to
use real video graphics. What about cheese on a stick?
Wait a minute, what is cheese on a stick? Cheese
on a stick?

Speaker 3 (01:36:14):
Mandy?

Speaker 5 (01:36:14):
People collect vinyl and don't even have a turntable to
play it on. That's just bad planning, and turntables are
super cheap now. And it is Dragon's Lair, not Dragon Slayer.
Dragon Slayer is different. Dragon's Layer is the name that
I'm talking about. It was the first video game to
use sell animated video instead of computer generated graphics, and

(01:36:36):
it was advertised as the first truly three D video
game and as the meeting point of video games and
animated films. I don't know if I'd go that far,
but whatever, it's fine. So maybe we'll get a new
Chuck's Arcade. We'll find out. I have no idea. They
got to do something, because what with the fistfighting and all,
nobody wants to have their birthday party there anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:36:58):
Mandy.

Speaker 5 (01:36:58):
I just went to the Koa, Colorado WEBA looking for
your column, and this is the first setline that I saw.
The real reason Monica Lewinsky will never again answer the
door Naked, and then I forgot to look for your column.
Guess I'll try the Randy Cromwell dot com site.

Speaker 3 (01:37:14):
There you go.

Speaker 5 (01:37:16):
How about the game Heavy Barrel, I don't remember that.
How about Donkey Kong? Yeah, Donkey Kong was awesome, but
I was also not.

Speaker 3 (01:37:22):
Good at Donkey Kong either. Just not my strength.

Speaker 5 (01:37:26):
To you, guys, you gotta know what you're good at.
More importantly, you got to know what you're not good at.
And I feel like I've really gotten a handle on
the things I am not good at in life.

Speaker 3 (01:37:36):
One of the things that I am Mandy.

Speaker 5 (01:37:38):
If you love all the listed games, I would recommend
you check out the local place.

Speaker 3 (01:37:41):
One up is that I think that place is on Colfax.
You guys.

Speaker 5 (01:37:45):
Every other Wednesday I drive to the Independence Institute, which
is at sixteenth and what's that cross street, I don't know,
sixteenth and something, and every other week they have just.

Speaker 3 (01:38:00):
Made Colefax way more miserable, and I just didn't think
that was possible.

Speaker 5 (01:38:05):
I feel for every single business on Colefax, it'll be
amazing if any of them are left by the time
we're all done. Space Ace was the sister game to
Dragon's Layer. I don't remember that game at all. Do
we have someone to come.

Speaker 3 (01:38:18):
In and play? Who's playing?

Speaker 9 (01:38:20):
God?

Speaker 3 (01:38:21):
Ryan? I say that because he can hear me out there.

Speaker 8 (01:38:24):
Ryan always late, Ryan go.

Speaker 5 (01:38:29):
I mean, technically he's doing us a favor. I probably
shouldn't give him any ufugh about it. And oh, by
the way, then all right got crushed yesterday and you know,
Eat whined about it after the show. Whind about it?
Centipede that was also a good game. But didn't your
hand hurt from hitting that roller ball? The only game
that I've ever been good at with a rollerball is

(01:38:51):
is Golden Tea. I still love Golden Tea so fun.
Ryan Edwards, which video games were you good at and
not good at back in the day?

Speaker 7 (01:38:59):
I'm talking about it the day.

Speaker 11 (01:39:00):
I really like Zelda when it first came out. Played
that a lot like Arcade Games.

Speaker 2 (01:39:05):
Yeah, well, no.

Speaker 3 (01:39:06):
Okay Arcade Yeah. Miss pac Man Oh, I mean you
can't go along with the pac Man family.

Speaker 11 (01:39:12):
Of games all pac Man's, but missus pac Man was
my favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:39:16):
But I don't know, I just liked her better.

Speaker 7 (01:39:18):
Maybe maybe the folks, you know, hey, whatever works. I
I just like the.

Speaker 2 (01:39:22):
Design of it better.

Speaker 7 (01:39:23):
I don't know because it was a little different than package.

Speaker 3 (01:39:26):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 7 (01:39:27):
So I just like the design of a little better.
But that was the game I played a lot.

Speaker 5 (01:39:30):
Now it's time for the most exciting segment all the radio.

Speaker 3 (01:39:33):
Of this guy, the World of the day.

Speaker 5 (01:39:38):
All right, there's another one up, I guess in Greenwood Village.

Speaker 7 (01:39:42):
I love one up.

Speaker 3 (01:39:43):
Gonna be destroyed by.

Speaker 5 (01:39:44):
The Colfax project that the other one is going to be.

Speaker 3 (01:39:46):
Okay, here we go. What's our dad joke of the day? Please?

Speaker 6 (01:39:49):
Where do dads store all of their dad jokes? I
don't know the dada base.

Speaker 11 (01:39:57):
Wow, there's some mac cro meta stuff.

Speaker 7 (01:40:01):
Yeah, that's a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:40:02):
Going on there. What's our word of today please?

Speaker 4 (01:40:04):
Sir?

Speaker 7 (01:40:04):
Adjective? Okay, what baffo? B o ffo?

Speaker 3 (01:40:10):
Doesn't that mean super good? Like amazing? Like that's boffo?

Speaker 7 (01:40:14):
Is she right? She's right? She is right?

Speaker 3 (01:40:16):
He ey, that's the bee's knees. That word anyway, it's
an old word.

Speaker 5 (01:40:22):
How many thunderstorms happen worldwide each year?

Speaker 3 (01:40:26):
Wow? I mean this has got to be like thousands
and thousands, you know.

Speaker 7 (01:40:30):
Let's go with five six hundred.

Speaker 5 (01:40:32):
Okay, I'm gonna go fourteen thousand, two hundred and one.

Speaker 7 (01:40:38):
I'll go fourteen thousand, two hundred.

Speaker 3 (01:40:41):
Wow, are we under by a whole lot?

Speaker 5 (01:40:44):
Scientists estimate that there are sixteen million storms each year,
with roughly two thousand thunderstorms in progress at any given moment.

Speaker 3 (01:40:54):
That is a cool little fact.

Speaker 7 (01:40:55):
It is cool facts. Yeah, as we sit here looking
out the way, yes, serious.

Speaker 5 (01:40:58):
Says we're gonna have one of them here and just
a moment. What is our jeopardy category?

Speaker 6 (01:41:02):
That's so cliche, And I'm going to say the word
go at the end because they're real quick, okay, and
I want to get them out, all right, better safe
than blank?

Speaker 7 (01:41:11):
Go Mandy, what is sorry? That is correct?

Speaker 6 (01:41:17):
It is always Greeter on the other side said you
had to wait.

Speaker 3 (01:41:21):
I'm sorry, but I didn't. Mandy. What is the grass?

Speaker 7 (01:41:25):
Okay?

Speaker 6 (01:41:26):
Okay, all right, two bad choices, two bad choices between
the devil and this location.

Speaker 3 (01:41:31):
Go Mandy, what is the deep blue c It is correct?

Speaker 6 (01:41:35):
It doesn't fall far from the tree. Go bran an apple? Correct,
and it's where the proof of the pod is. Mandy,
didn't wait again, but we'll go ahead either. Wait, it
actually has putting in the question? No, hold on, because

(01:41:56):
it's it's where the proof of the pudding is, and
the answer is in the eating.

Speaker 8 (01:42:03):
Is in the eat.

Speaker 3 (01:42:06):
I have.

Speaker 6 (01:42:08):
It's fine one Yeah, I wouldn't I in the pudding.

Speaker 5 (01:42:14):
Well, but I think obviously we just didn't know that
there was a second half to that saying.

Speaker 3 (01:42:19):
So somebody pudding is in the eating.

Speaker 7 (01:42:21):
You don't know how until you eat some people.

Speaker 11 (01:42:24):
You know the rules that we live in the society,
and he laid out the rules, and some people ignored
those things.

Speaker 8 (01:42:32):
I will accept that with a win, I will accept it.

Speaker 5 (01:42:36):
Well, I will concede that point, and I will put
another w on the wall.

Speaker 11 (01:42:40):
I appreciate, by the way, yesterday you letting me win
with my daughter here.

Speaker 7 (01:42:44):
That was really nice to you.

Speaker 3 (01:42:44):
I did not let you win.

Speaker 5 (01:42:45):
That category was super hard, powerfully, Ben was awful.

Speaker 3 (01:42:49):
So like gave it yesterday.

Speaker 5 (01:42:51):
He went with zero and it was like lucky to
be it was zero. I love those where you win
with zero were even worse than you were.

Speaker 7 (01:43:00):
But I guess I didn't like sit out.

Speaker 3 (01:43:02):
No, you did it.

Speaker 5 (01:43:03):
You wanted fair and square. I'm not complaining about that
at all. What's coming up on KO sports?

Speaker 7 (01:43:07):
Oh, we had a lot of fun. Shelby Harrison's studio
we had also, it's a football talk to get to.

Speaker 5 (01:43:11):
All right, that's all coming up next. We'll be back tomorrow.
Keep it on, KOA

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