4:20 pm: Utah Congressman Mike Kennedy joins Rod and Greg to discuss his op-ed in the Deseret News where he writes the federal government should give local authorities more power and opportunity to manage federal lands against wildfire, such as prescribed burns and timber thinning.
4:38 pm: Kevin McCullough, nationally syndicated radio host and contributor to Townhall, joins the program for a conversation about the “woke” attitudes amongst coaches in the WNBA and coaches refusing to define a “woman.
”6:05 pm: JP De Gance, Founder of Communio, joins Rod and Greg for a conversation about his piece for Townhall about how reaching the American Dream – buying home, marriage, starting a family – seem an impossibility to many Americans.
6:38 pm: John Hinderaker of Powerline joins the show for a conversation about his recent piece that looks back on covid and compares mortality rates from then and now.
4:38 pm: Kevin McCullough, nationally syndicated radio host and contributor to Townhall, joins the program for a conversation about the “woke” attitudes amongst coaches in the WNBA and coaches refusing to define a “woman.
”6:05 pm: JP De Gance, Founder of Communio, joins Rod and Greg for a conversation about his piece for Townhall about how reaching the American Dream – buying home, marriage, starting a family – seem an impossibility to many Americans.
6:38 pm: John Hinderaker of Powerline joins the show for a conversation about his recent piece that looks back on covid and compares mortality rates from then and now.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's the Rod and Greg Show, starting your week right
on this Monday on Utah's Talk Radio one five nine
canter s and everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Citizen
Hughes and.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I Roder ur Kent. So good to be with you
on this Monday afternoon. We were just talking about COVID
nineteen RFK, just letting Dana Bash at CNN have it.
And then today Aaron Rodgers, I love this, the quarterback
of the your Pittsburgh Steelers, was on the ESPN today
and just rapped. I'm Anthony Fel had a field day
(00:34):
with those guys.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Some may say, well why on training camp NFL, why
are you going so political? Because you will hear it
with Aaron Rodgers. But this guy got be raped. Yeah
he did from one end to the other. There's three
athletes to stick out in my mind, it was him.
It was Dookovich, the tennis player from Australian Open. He
was just just destroyed. And then Kyrie lost millions and
(00:54):
millions of dollars because he didn't want to get the vaccine.
So you got a lot of pent up frustration from
a guy that treat like a pinata during COVID and
I think everything he said is true.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, you're hearing it today, enjoying the smoke on the outside. Yeah,
we've got a lot of thanks to those fires burning
right now. And you know, local officials have expressed you've
you've talked about this before, you've been down there, you've
seen it, the frustration they have to try and mitigate
as best they can these forest fires. Utah Center or
Utah Congressman Mike Kennedy joining us on our news Miger
(01:26):
Line right now. He's talked about that today. Congressman Kennedy,
thanks so much for joining us. Your take on what
you see going on with these western fires right now, Well,
thanks for having.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Me on, Rod and Greg. It's always a pleasure. And
this is a problem that's been fomenting for more than
fifty years. We've been preventing any kind of fires, and
with all that suppression, we've just allowed the fuel load
to grow, especially in our federal lands where there's no
maintenance at all, or there's little attempts until the past
several years that there's been some attempts to try to
(01:57):
maintain these lands, and subsequently the fuel load is an
enormous and so we get these conflagrations in the West,
and you know what frustrates me, Ron and Greg is
that when it's Utah, when it's Idaho, and it's Wyoming,
nobody seems to care. When it's California or the East
Coast or Canada's fire smoke is coming under the East
Coast all of a sudden, it's front page news. And
(02:18):
now they're even the national news are reporting more about
frances spin fires than they do about our own fires
in Utah in the United States of America. So, I mean,
we've had more than four hundred thousand acres burned just
this summer, and nobody seems to care until the smoke
wafts down into Washington, DC. Well, I'm fed up with it,
(02:39):
and a lot of our Western colleagues are fed up
with it. And the bipartisanship is united in the case
of Democrats and Republicans, but it's hard to get the
message across. So we're working on in Washington with fix
our forestac which I think is a great step in
the right direction.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
You know what I appreciate about you, Congressman, is that
I served in the arena with you and no other
mber the delegation so I know the kind of public
servant you are, and I know the kind of fights
we took on as a state in the legislature, and
we have the Utah has a state land management plan,
and we know how to do this. Maybe speak to
our listeners about this isn't an emerging problem. We used
(03:15):
to manage federal land. We used to be able to
clear the brush that was really just fire starter. There
was a great there was great management of this land,
and we saw that change in the nineties and it
actually impacted economies lumber yards in rural Utah. Maybe speak
to we used to do this, We know how to
do this. We should be continuing to do what we've
always done well.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I was just down in Beaver for the fire scar
and the flood side that have happened. I was down
in San Juan County the week before to talk with
our locals about this. We used to have timber mills
in the state of Utah. We don't have them anymore
except for one that's functioning. And part of that is
because we used to harvest our land, which to some
environmentalists means disaster is coming. When we cut down one tree,
(03:59):
let alone cut down other trees. And the answer that
Greg is just what you're talking about is we need
to care for the land and that includes some kind
of maintenance. My garden in the backyard is going to
grow weeds if I and my wife don't attend to it.
And when we just leave our federal lands obviously more
than sixty percent of our land is federal controlled in
our state, and we just leave it fallow where nobody
(04:21):
can come in and do anything without a six year
NEPA study, and you can't cut down a tree even
around power lines without NEPA studies. We end up with
these terrible disasters. So there are ways to work on that,
and that's part of the Fix our Forests Act, which
actually has passed off the house floor. It allows streamlining
of NEPA that you have a limited period of time
that you can do a NEPA study and subsequently get
(04:41):
in and cut down these trees that are getting close
to power lines and cut down the dead fall that's
in the forest, harvest that and actually use those that
timbers that we can actually build houses with it, which
is going to reduce our costs associated with housing because
we're going to have domestic instead of foreign sources for
lumber with.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Utah Congressman Mike Kennedy. Congressman Kennedy, you mentioned there is
a bipartisan effort to do something about this, but how
hard are Democrats pushing? I know the Republicans are pushing hard.
Do you feel the same sort of energy coming from
the Democratic side to do something about this?
Speaker 3 (05:16):
There's some, but it's hard for us to explain this.
So the Western Caucus, and this is where it's fascinating
because I sit on Natural Resources with Congressman Maloyan, and
we have Democrats I'm the Natural Resources Committee that understand
this issue. They're from Colorado, they're from California. They understand that.
It's just the preponderance of our legislators that are around
(05:38):
the country don't get it. Because do you see these
terrible conflagrations in North and South Carolina? Do you see that?
I mean some, there's some in other places of the country,
but particularly every year the West burns, and we just
don't have as many congressmen and women and the West.
And so there is bipartisanship with this, and I'm also
pleased to report and this is where creg will appreciate.
(05:58):
This is the House it's on its job. We've had
to fix our Fourth Act. We're just waiting for the
Senate to watch the DC is that our opponents or
the Democrats, our enemies are the Senators. Now to John
Curtis and Mike Lee, I'll just say that's the job.
But you know, it's like you guys got to pass
our bills, man, these are good bills. So so to
fix our Forest Act, which is sponsored by John Curtis,
(06:21):
it's moved out of the committee on the Senate side,
and we're waiting for Senate time on their floors that
we can get that hopefully the President's desk by the
end of the year, which is going to actually take
a lot of steps, bipartisan steps in the right direction
to help us with these terrible disasters that happen every
year for us in Utah.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
You know, one of the things I think the legislative
process brings. It's not outside baseball, it's not talking heads
on the on the news shows at night. It's the
personal relationships that you and you mentioned these that you
can build across the aisle or just with colleagues, regardless
of whether Republicans or Democrats on certain issues. Does the
wildfires in Canada that actually canceled Major League Baseball games
(06:59):
all over the Northeast, including Pittsburgh. You know, sometimes empathy
is a powerful teacher, and sometimes you know you have
a recess and everything has to get done because you've
got to get the recess, you guys. So, but my
question is can a moment like that actually bring some
empathy and with relationships with colleagues, maybe move the needle
where maybe the broader platform position won't do it.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
I believe it can. I'm an optimistic gag, Greg and
I have to be to be a watch.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yes, actually it is.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
It is.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
It is a place that it's really hard to get
things done. But Rod, you mentioned earlier that this Wall
Street Journal editorial just today showed up or yesterday, I
can't remember which, but it's in the Wall Street Journal,
and it's talking about these European fires, and one of
the statistics that's in there is thirty percent of the
land is federal in their case, this federal land, and
(07:52):
fifty five percent of the fires are in those overlays
of federal control or in this case, European control. So
that the data is out there. But the problem that
when I went to tour these fires in San Juan
County and we went to Beaver and looked at these disasters.
Is this is a problem that's been going on for decades.
(08:13):
We have not managed at all these areas. And I
talked to some of these wildfire fighters that are out
there and they admitted that sadly, in spite of our
best efforts, one of the only things that is going
to prevent this in the future is more fires that
are going to kind of take care of this terrible
deadfall and the overwhelming amount of fuel that we have
(08:34):
in these forests, which we're going to do our best
to get heading in the right direction, but we are
decades behind and it's going to take us a while
to catch back up.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Sure will Utah Congressman Mike Kennedy joining us on the
Rod and Gregg Show as we talk about the wildfires
and mitigating those wildfires here in the West. More coming
up on the Roden greg Show in Utah's Talk Radio
one five to nine knrs. The account is now up
to four. Four coaches in the w NBA have come
(09:02):
out in the last twenty four hours Greg and say
they are supportive of everyone, including men playing back trans
women playing in the w NBA. Four head coaches have
now come out and support of this effort.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, I just wish there were some guys that would
call their bluff. I just don't buy it. I think
it's a nice thing to say. It's probably it's probably comfortable,
but I don't buy it.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Well, here's the latest one. Her name is Natalie Nicosi.
She is the Golden State of Valkyrie's head coach. That's
what she said about it today.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
How I'm seeing it is if I could answer it Like,
for me, sports is about belonging. It's about inclusivity. It's
about allowing everyone to be their authentic self. You know,
I'm big on that, just because I have been criticized
for my height, for my ethnicity. I've been in those
(09:56):
you shouldn't belong here many times, and for me, I
don't want that space, especially Golden State, to ever feel
like that. So I'm all about women, little girls deserving
to play, and that includes trans women. So I'm all
about inclusivity.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
All about inclusivity, greg trans that's what the w BA is.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
A voice. Transom means boys. It's all about boys. Girl's
a chance to play by including boys in that category.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, earlier, we had a chance to talk with Kevin
and McCullough Courds, a nationally syndicated podcaster joining he joined
us on our Newsmaker line. We asked him about what
is going on in the w n b A and
all these coaches coming out of support of trans women
in basketball.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
I don't, I don't. I can't honestly answer that question, Rod.
All I can say is that when you have three
over the weekend that evidently cannot decide the matter, and
you have another one that's added to the group today.
And this is in the aftermath of a four year
push of popular culture really being turned to against by
(11:01):
the women of this country who rose up in the
election in twenty four and took their rights back. It
is really puzzling to see the positions that these coaches
are taking, especially since the league that pays their salary
signs a check that says Women's NBA in the name
(11:23):
of the organization. It's truly stunning.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So this seems like a luxury belief. I don't know
that any of them are speaking from a place where
they think that women would actually be displaced off their roster.
This is just all theory to them, would it take
men playing in their league for them to start It
might dawn on them that maybe they'd like women in
the WNBA.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
Well, it's interesting you ask that, because I come at
this from a pretty interesting perspective. I wrote a piece,
obviously for town Hall, but for a period of time
just after college, I was an assistant coach for a
women's college basketball team for about four years, and one
of my jobs as that assistant was to recruit innermural
(12:05):
level male players to come scrimmage against the girls on
game weeks so that they could be playing against someone
who was faster, stronger, and a little bit sometimes more
skilled than them at some of the positions that we
wanted them to get faster and stronger at. And if
you'll notice, I wasn't sent to go get the varsity team.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
I was sent.
Speaker 6 (12:28):
I was sent to go get the innermural usually the
lower half of the intermural guys, because for some reason,
these guys that would that would come over and help
us out. Some of them are really nice. Some of
them took it as an opportunity to be you know, uh,
you know, dominant, and you're like, come on, you're you're
playing against girls, missing the point completely that an Innermural
(12:49):
boys team could give our varsity girls team a run
for their money and most days still outperformed them. The
point is very simple. Men have denser bones, bigger muscle mass,
faster speed, they have greater lung capacity. There's all kinds
of advantages that they have, and I don't buy for
a second that any of these coaches don't understand all
(13:11):
of that. This to me, is not a luxury belief.
It is a save their backside belief. They are afraid
that they're going to be looked down upon at some
wine and cheese recruitment party for the college or the
university or wherever it is that they normally get invited to,
and they don't want to be on that bad list.
They don't want to be seen as being someone who
actually had a backbone and stood up for something normal.
(13:32):
The sad thing is they're willing to sacrifice women's futures
and safeties in order to do it.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Kevin, do you think there are players within the NBA
who are they just don't want to say anything, but
they actually agree with Sophie cunning him? Do you think
there are in THEBA who may agree with her, but
are afraid to say anything.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
Look, you could take Brittany Greyer, Lisa Leslie, Caitlin Clark,
Sophie cunning you take any of the best players possible.
None of them, not one of them, would make a
men's team. The disparity here is significant, and there's not
There's not a woman in that league that would say, yeah,
give me, give me the lighter version of Michael Jordan
(14:15):
to try to earn my spot against not gonna happen.
They're not gonna, They're not gonna want to do that,
and the point is they shouldn't have to. The entire
fight for title nine was so that men and women
could have competitive arenas to to compete and play their
best and become their best in without fear of being prejudiced.
This is exactly the opposite. This is regression. This is
(14:36):
moving men back into women's spaces when we've done a
really good job of giving women their own space and
watching them succeed wildly.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
You know, one of the ironies I'm having a hard
time digesting is I'm hearing a lot of lecturing of
Sophie Cunningham that she had no business dipping her toe
into political issues. She was asked a question, a very
straightforward question, she answered it. She didn't volunteer this on
her own. Really, she's taking a lot of criticism for
even being willing to answer that question. But on the
(15:04):
other hand, you have someone like Megan Rappino who wasn't
asked any question, but was more than willing and actually
went out of her way to push a left of
center message on the field while she played as a
player for the women's soccer team US soccer team. That
that hypocrisy where they're upset with Sophie Cunningham for answering
a question, but have never thrown any kind of critical
(15:26):
or or any condemnation Megan Rappino's way for her instigating
a political conversation on the field. What do we do
with that? I mean, it's just it's just not it
just it's there's.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
A big difference between the two of them, and one
is Megan Rappino never had she had a big mouth
her entire life, but she never advocated for men being
in the field to play with women until she had retired.
So you know, Sophie, Sophie still has a career to play.
She would like to have all of her teeth when
she retires. She's a beautiful young woman. She probably wants
(15:58):
to have a family. There's probably all kinds of, you know,
scary traditional things that she you know, feels and things
inside of her. At the end of the day, Sophie
Cunningham is exactly on point. Let the women play against women,
Let them do their very best against one another, Let
them be challenged to accomplish more and go higher and
go further. But that has no refuge. That does not
(16:21):
mean in any way that they need to have men
in their locker room, in their shower, or on the
on the field to play with them.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Kevin final question, where does the NBA go w NBA
go from here? What do you think may happen or
may not happen?
Speaker 4 (16:33):
Well, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
I mean, I think it's a league that has struggled
to find its way to begin with. I think that,
and I'm not I'm not a sexist in saying this.
The ratings ain't great, h The NBA ratings have not
been as good in recent years as they were during
the Michael and Magic and Isaiah era. So you're talking about,
you know, a sport in general that's still trying to
figure it out. But here, here's here's the bottom line.
(16:58):
If they want to see the league completely destroyed, keep
doing everything you can to tell the most important part
of what makes it distinct that it doesn't matter, and
they'll destroy it all on their own. They won't have
anyone else to blame.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Kevin McCulloch joining us on our any hour Newsmaker line,
Greg and real quick. I think more than any other league,
it has been the NBA and WNBA that have immersed
themselves in politics. It has It's not helped.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Them, and I think their ratings show it.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I think they do.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I think the blooms off the roads. I don't think
it's as popular as in sport. I don't know that
WNBA ever was popular, but the NBA is certainly losing
its popularity.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
All right.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
More coming up, Rod and Greg with you on this
Monday afternoon and Talk Radio one oh five nine kN.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
RS Compact, which I think we've learned so much since then,
and this we have a new term that we actually
talk about now and I think we understand a little
bit better called suicidal empathy. And suicidal empathy is kind
of what you're seeing play out in Spain right now,
Morocco systems emptying out there literally and emptying out their prisons.
The Moroccan king is pardoning those prisoners and then they're
(17:58):
sending them right over into Spain. They're all adults. There're
are men of military age. That's suicidal empathy when you're
of Spain, and you do nothing to stop that from happening.
If we haven't learned anything in the last fifteen years
since the twenty eleven Utah Compact, I don't know what
we're doing. Yeah, So part of that is we want
to keep these young people here. We want to see
them have careers. The American dream. Yeah, well they's already
(18:20):
a challenges it.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, they can't afford the American dream anymore. And that's
what we want to talk about in this segment. Joining
us on our news micer line is JP Degas. He
is a family economics expert. He wrote about this. You know,
we need to build homes, not just houses.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
JP.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Thank you very much for joining us. This housing affordability.
What has happened to it? Why is it on a
downward trend?
Speaker 4 (18:42):
JP? Well, you kind of have this collusion in certain ways,
whether planned or not planned, between the NIMBI crowd, where
you have a lot of local regulation and state level
actors that constrain housing supply. Right, So that's done through
either zoning or transportation policy. Not enough roads. Okay. Then
(19:06):
you also have realtors and homeowners. Right, those of us
who have a home, we want it to go up
in value. Right, So scarcity is actually good for us.
We already have a home, okay, And so there's a
certain way. You have regulators, lawmakers, and those of us
who have houses. We're not going to be thrilled if
(19:27):
if a lot of single family homes go up and
increase the supply and make things less affordable. And I'm sorry,
make it more affordable.
Speaker 7 (19:35):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So there's two ways that I've seen over the course
of time available housing show up. You have gentrification. You'll
have areas that are run down neighborhoods. People buy those homes,
they refurbish them. You know, they can buy them for
low and then they can put money into them and
make them nicer, and you'll see neighborhoods kind of change
that way. Here in Utah, we have rural communities where
the cost of living is lower and the quality of
(19:56):
life is higher. But you need some industry, you need jobs,
you need things that would feed a population growth in
some of those areas. That seems to be about the best.
Government should stay out of it as far as I'm concerned.
But those two, those two real estate realities should be
at play. How does government jam that up and make
it not the case? I mean, if you could put
(20:16):
infrastructure in rural areas, I mean.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
That's right. Look, I was ahead of meeting with the
folks in the White House a couple months ago, and
they shared that just federal policy adds about thirty seven
thousand dollars to the cost of every new home in America.
And you know, the Feds are not super involved in
(20:40):
the building homes. It's the local. It's the locals.
Speaker 7 (20:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
There's a lot of compliance costs to the construction of
a new home. The cost to bring sewer, the cost
to bring utilities oftentimes have added costs stacked on top
of the reality of constructing it. Right, So that is
a there's a lot of ways government is adding substantially
to the cost of every new home built, right, And
(21:06):
so what happens is a lot of large developers. Okay,
it doesn't make sense for them to go in and
build a lot of starter homes because starter homes have
a much lower per unit cost, and at the end
of the day, they're they're wielding or they're having to
absorb a really large cost of compliance for the building
of every new home, Okay, And so it makes more
sense to go out clearer, you go build a neighborhood
(21:30):
with new homes that draw much and command a much
higher price in order to make the building of these
new homes affordable. Right, So I think it's I'm very
sympathetical the idea. We don't want government doing a whole
bunch of stuff. But a big thing that the government
is doing is piling on a whole bunch of code
and regulations that are making it a lot more expensive
(21:50):
for houses to get built. JP.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I don't know how much of a factor this plays
into it. And Hughes is going to love this because
I'm going to bring up the baby boomers and.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Problem.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Let's get to the bottom line.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
We have a problem.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
We we as baby the process. Yes here, we as
baby boomers have homes. Many people of their homes paid off,
many people are fixing them up, Many people don't want
to move. Uh, and I'm talking about the baby boomers
who have the homes. Now, is that a factor in
this at all?
Speaker 7 (22:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (22:20):
Look, I wouldn't say look any and less so less
a factor for the of the boomers, right, if we
do have a large number, depending on how you look
at it, over the last administration, a very large number
of folks enter this country illegally. They're consuming housing. Okay,
they're consuming housing. Uh In you know where I live,
(22:42):
there's a single family home that has about four families
sharing a home in my neighborhood. Okay, So this is
a this is a real thing. And those are houses
that can't be consumed by So I think, you know,
whether it's ten million or twenty million, depending the number,
there's some number of people who are consuming houses that
(23:04):
wouldn't be there. I think the fact that a lot
of boomers aren't sitting in starter homes okay at this stage,
they're in there. They're in there, there forever home okay.
And one of the big constraints is that's driving home
ownership is if you look at it, the average age
of a first time home buyer is approaching forty Depending
(23:24):
on the survey that you're looking at, that's outrageous, right,
that we should be living in a country where the
first time home buyer is in the later twenties is
for instance, right, And that I think is that's where
I think, certainly immigration is a lot of those folks
are consuming homes that are closer to starter homes. You regulation,
(23:49):
land use restrictions that make create an artificial constriction on supply.
That's another big part of it, right, And look, I
don't want to only tell people that economics is we
should just throw up our hands. The fact is is
young people themselves have been told and encouraged frequently by
(24:09):
their parents to focus on financial security before relationships. And
so I think there's a lot of young people who
are hearing that message, focusing on getting financial security, focusing
on having that fulfilling career. Whereas that's a brand new message. Okay,
The fact is is normally people go out, they get
they actually get married first before they haven't figured everything out,
(24:29):
and that that produces greater levels of financial security, better
positions them to be a home buyer, and would also
itself help. Right, there's a both going on. There's an
and both going on. We need to get first time
houses to be more affordable. But we also actually have
to share a better message with our young people. Right
nine and ten, parents, according to Pew Research, are telling
(24:51):
them to telling their kids that financial security and independence
is the most important thing, and only one in five
of those same parents are saying being married or having
kids is important to them.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
What about the what does the lending world look like
out there? My first home in the nineties that I
bought my first home, I've paid seven and a quarter percent.
I mean we got spoiled with those three percent loans
things like that. But I don't know that the interest
rates are at seven and a quarter right now. I
think it might be a little less. But what is it?
What is the lending situation for young people looking by
their first home and what is the personal income? I mean,
(25:25):
can they afford the median income of a home or
a starter home for what the what the interest rates are,
and what people are making young people are making as
they get into their careers. Is that a barrier right
now to home ownership?
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Yeah, there's there's no doubt that that getting twenty percent
of a of a down payment is an obstacle for
most for most people in general. Right and used to have.
Right when when the housing market ran away at the
last housing bubble, you had these arms, these zero interest
arms people had to squeeze into or or tried to
(26:02):
use to get their income to fit. And that that
over excited the market, creating a bubble, right, you know,
oversimplified here, right, And and but so we don't want that.
There's enough housing regulation, I'm sorry, home loan regulation. That's
(26:22):
that's preventing that kind of activity at that kind of scale. Right,
But there's no doubt that the twenty percent out there
are first time home buyer programs that exist. The reality
is is here too, right, A lot of white collar jobs, right,
You're told millennials forty percent of millennials have had a
(26:43):
college degree, probably the most educated demographic and human history
in terms of a generational cohort. Right, And a lot
of those those jobs that early college grads would get,
they're not there. You've got you've got things like H
one B program where where employers can go and bring
(27:03):
in and overseas employee legally and compete against somebody who's
computer science grad from say TCU or or or Utah State.
And that I think is itself a factor here.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
It is a factor there. Jp Tagans. He's joining us
on our news Banker line talking about the affordability of housing.
It will continue to be an issue right up until
election day and even after that.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
And the worst thing you could do is just put
an influx of more people into Utah and they're already
here looking for jobs or taking jobs on wrong call.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah so yeah, wrong call. All right, more coming up,
Rod and Greg with you on this Monday and Utah's
Talk Radio one O five to nine. Okay, all right,
final half hour the Rod and Greg Show with you
on this Monday evening here on Utah's Talk Radio one
O five nine k n RS. A lot of fires
(28:01):
burning out there, Greg, and we need to I don't
know how these these men and women who go out
there and fight these fires. That cannot be an easy No.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
That's a tough job. And I think there's an accumul
effect going on the more that the Fara government doesn't
manage these this land well when we used to as
a state back in the nineties. But you can't go
thirty years of neglect like this and not see these
these summertimes come and it just it's going to continue
to get worse.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah, it will, it will. Well, there's certainly been a
lot of talk about COVID nineteen of late since the
uh testimony, if we want to call it, that of
Anthony Fauci before Ran Paul's committee last week, and more
and more people are talking about it again. Robert Kennedy
got into a bash Dana Bash on CNN yesterday talking
(28:47):
about constitutional rights versus public health concerns. Very good discussion.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, they should, there should be no daylight between the two.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, concepts, Yeah, according to them. Well, let's take a look.
Let's go back. Joining us on our Newsmaker line to
talk about what happened when COVID broke out the numbers
it had, the impact it had on all of us.
Joining us is John hinder Rocker. He's with Powerline.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
John.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Thanks for joining us. You've gone back, John, You've taken
a look at the numbers. What do you have found out?
Speaker 7 (29:13):
So we enough time has gone by, but I think
we've got some perspective on the overall impact of the
COVID epidemic. And let me just start by saying that
while it was going on, I thought it was an
overhyped news story. Now that doesn't mean that COVID wasn't
killing some people. It absolutely was. But what we saw
was that the people who were listed in the numbers
(29:38):
as dying from COVID number one were generally elderly. The
median age of people with COVID on the death certificate
was seventy six, and the eighty one percent of so
called COVID deaths were people aged sixty five and up.
And not only that, the people who had COVID on
(30:02):
the death certificate certificate almost always had had other things too,
including serious problems like cancer and so forth. And so
COVID generally was a contributor to somebody's demise, not the
sole cause or even the principal cause. So if you
actually go back and look at the numbers, what you
(30:23):
see is that in twenty twenty, the overall This is
what I did is I went back, I looked at
the overall mortality numbers in the United States, that is,
how many people actually died in a given year, and
then I also looked at the age adjusted mortality numbers,
which in a way that's a little bit more meaningful metric.
(30:45):
But what we see is that in twenty twenty there
was an increase in the total number of people who
died in the United States by eighteen and a half percent,
and then in twenty twenty one it rose just slightly
from that, and then it came down. And what I
thought at the time was that in most cases, what
(31:07):
COVID is doing is accelerating the demise of an elderly person.
Some exceptions, of course, but by far the largest number
of cases were in elderly people who already had serious
health problems. And so what I thought we would see
is that if once we got past the COVID epidemic,
(31:28):
we would probably see the rate of mortality actually dropping
to below what it was before, because a lot of
people who maybe would have died in twenty twenty two
or twenty twenty three or twenty twenty four, instead they
died in twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, see what
I'm saying. So I thought that when the epidemic was over,
(31:51):
we might see a drop in overall mortality of a
very significant extent. And so enough time has gone by
now that we can see the pattern, we can see
what happened. And it's very interesting because what we find
is that overall mortality again I'm not talking about cause
of death. I'm just talking about the raw number of
(32:14):
how many people died. And this is true whether you
look at just the raw numbers or if you look
at the age adjusted numbers. Same pattern. So, when the
COVID epidemic was over in twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three, and to some extent in twenty twenty four,
overall mortality remained somewhat elevated. And what's really interesting about
(32:42):
that is that you can't account for that elevated mortality
with COVID cases, because so, for example, in twenty twenty three,
there were only about seventy six thousand cases where there
were COVID or whatever you know, the synonym is on
(33:03):
the death certificate, so called COVID deaths. And yet in
twenty twenty three there was increased mortality over the pre
twenty twenty level by about two hundred and fifty thousand deaths.
So only about third to a quarter of those you know,
have got COVID on the birth certificate, on the death certificate.
(33:25):
And so it's really interesting. What that tells us is
that for some reason, overall mortality death from all causes
was somewhat elevated in the years twenty two and twenty three,
and to some extent even into twenty twenty four for
reasons that COVID does not explain. And now in twenty
(33:48):
twenty five, the last full year, if you look at
the age adjusted mortality statistics, it's the lowest number ever,
the lowest numbers ever, and in fact it is below
the pre COVID trend line. And so and so we
are now seeing to some degree, not a huge degree,
(34:12):
but to some degree when I thought we were going
to see post COVID that is fewer overall deaths because
more people died during that more elderly people died during
that epidemic period. And and so, you know, the real
question is, you know what's causing the increased mortality in
those in those you know, post epidemic years, And and
(34:35):
with the decline that I predicted that we're sort of
seeing in twenty twenty five, would that had been more
visible if some other causes of death had not intervened.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Well, let me run that through, because that's such a
fascinating way to look at it. So let's say that COVID,
if you had someone that was you know, maybe not
on desk, or they just weren't well. Once they got
COVID they died maybe sooner than later. So that's that
that that's not number growing very quickly. Maybe it's a
cowseway to save, but thinning the herd. What about the vaccine?
(35:05):
What if there was some vulnerability to some percentage of
the population that if you were going to see the
side effects, if it was going to have some even
fatal side effects, you would have run through that after
receiving it some eighteen a year, eighteen months, some period
of time after receiving the vaccine. Would that have contributed
to that number not dropping like you thought? And now
(35:27):
that it's run its course, if you were going to
be if you were going to have severe side effects
from the vaccine, you might that would have already happened.
Speaker 7 (35:35):
Well, a lot of people are going to speculate about that. Yeah,
that is a possible explanation to kind of if you
look at the charts. Too bad we can't actually show
charts on the radio right because the pattern I'm describing
it's so obvious if you have the chart in front
of you. But I think some people will speculate that
the elevated death rates in twenty twenty two and twenty
(35:59):
twenty three, and to some extend in twenty twenty four
that are not explained by COVID might have something to
do with adverse reactions to vaccines, and that would be
a little hard to tell in the data because there
would be multiple causes of death listed on death certificates.
(36:21):
You know, a heart, heart disease. So what are some
of the things that the vaccines might contribute to?
Speaker 1 (36:27):
So this rote real quick that the age adjusted is
important to me because this might be anecdotal. But I
heard this a lot. If you had a motorcycle accident
and you had COVID, that was listed because there was
a funding source. The federal government was giving money to
hospitals healthcare. But so as soon as you entered money
into the equation, it was to me, I thought it
was hard to know what you were really seeing in
(36:48):
that data. If you go age adjusted, that number of
ways you get younger must have dropped like a rock.
Speaker 7 (36:55):
Well, so you make a good point. I mean in Minnesota,
where I live. I actually bought from the State of
Minnesota the complete mortality data for the year twenty twenty
and the first half of twenty twenty one, which is
when I when I bought it and I just looked
at it. You know, it was super interesting. The amount
(37:15):
of data is unbelievable, you know how much they collect.
And one of the things that jumped out at me
is that is that if COVID or you know the
similar the synonyms for COVID run the death certificate, it
was really striking how many other things around the death certificate,
you know, that are that are very very serious health problems.
(37:35):
A lot of times you look at it and say, wow,
it's a miracle this guy lived long enough to get COVID,
you know. But we can so but we can take
that out of the equation by saying, look, overall, mortality
did increase by eighteen and a half percent in twenty
twenty and then slightly above that in twenty twenty one.
So there's no question that COVID was causing more people
(37:58):
to die.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
But older people. That's my argument has been older people
with other other challenges in their and their health. As
far as the children are concerned, why on earth do
we put our young children.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
They were the safest demographic we had. They were they
were immune from it. Now there's mobile morbidities beyond age.
There's obesity, there's smokers, there's people problems. Do you need Yeah,
there's been people that had chemo and radiation because of
cancer that lowers your immune system. There are comorbidities, but
that wasn't a all of society gets into vaccines and
(38:29):
it's just a disgrace how that rolled out.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Certainly wasn't the Black plague?
Speaker 4 (38:33):
All right?
Speaker 2 (38:33):
More coming up, final segment of The Rod and Gregg
Show on Talk Radio one O five nine can Ars
It's the Rod and Greg Show, starting your week right
on this Monday on Utah's Talk Radio one five nine
canter s and everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Citizen
Hughes and.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I Roder ur Kent. So good to be with you
on this Monday afternoon. We were just talking about COVID
nineteen RFK, just letting Dana Bash at CNN have it.
And then today Aaron Rodgers, I love this, the quarterback
of the your Pittsburgh Steelers, was on the ESPN today
and just rapped. I'm Anthony Fel had a field day
(00:34):
with those guys.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Some may say, well why on training camp NFL, why
are you going so political? Because you will hear it
with Aaron Rodgers. But this guy got be raped. Yeah
he did from one end to the other. There's three
athletes to stick out in my mind, it was him.
It was Dookovich, the tennis player from Australian Open. He
was just just destroyed. And then Kyrie lost millions and
(00:54):
millions of dollars because he didn't want to get the vaccine.
So you got a lot of pent up frustration from
a guy that treat like a pinata during COVID and
I think everything he said is true.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, you're hearing it today, enjoying the smoke on the outside. Yeah,
we've got a lot of thanks to those fires burning
right now. And you know, local officials have expressed you've
you've talked about this before, you've been down there, you've
seen it, the frustration they have to try and mitigate
as best they can these forest fires. Utah Center or
Utah Congressman Mike Kennedy joining us on our news Miger
(01:26):
Line right now. He's talked about that today. Congressman Kennedy,
thanks so much for joining us. Your take on what
you see going on with these western fires right now, Well,
thanks for having.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Me on, Rod and Greg. It's always a pleasure. And
this is a problem that's been fomenting for more than
fifty years. We've been preventing any kind of fires, and
with all that suppression, we've just allowed the fuel load
to grow, especially in our federal lands where there's no
maintenance at all, or there's little attempts until the past
several years that there's been some attempts to try to
(01:57):
maintain these lands, and subsequently the fuel load is an
enormous and so we get these conflagrations in the West,
and you know what frustrates me, Ron and Greg is
that when it's Utah, when it's Idaho, and it's Wyoming,
nobody seems to care. When it's California or the East
Coast or Canada's fire smoke is coming under the East
Coast all of a sudden, it's front page news. And
(02:18):
now they're even the national news are reporting more about
frances spin fires than they do about our own fires
in Utah in the United States of America. So, I mean,
we've had more than four hundred thousand acres burned just
this summer, and nobody seems to care until the smoke
wafts down into Washington, DC. Well, I'm fed up with it,
(02:39):
and a lot of our Western colleagues are fed up
with it. And the bipartisanship is united in the case
of Democrats and Republicans, but it's hard to get the
message across. So we're working on in Washington with fix
our forestac which I think is a great step in
the right direction.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
You know what I appreciate about you, Congressman, is that
I served in the arena with you and no other
mber the delegation so I know the kind of public
servant you are, and I know the kind of fights
we took on as a state in the legislature, and
we have the Utah has a state land management plan,
and we know how to do this. Maybe speak to
our listeners about this isn't an emerging problem. We used
(03:15):
to manage federal land. We used to be able to
clear the brush that was really just fire starter. There
was a great there was great management of this land,
and we saw that change in the nineties and it
actually impacted economies lumber yards in rural Utah. Maybe speak
to we used to do this, We know how to
do this. We should be continuing to do what we've
always done well.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I was just down in Beaver for the fire scar
and the flood side that have happened. I was down
in San Juan County the week before to talk with
our locals about this. We used to have timber mills
in the state of Utah. We don't have them anymore
except for one that's functioning. And part of that is
because we used to harvest our land, which to some
environmentalists means disaster is coming. When we cut down one tree,
(03:59):
let alone cut down other trees. And the answer that
Greg is just what you're talking about is we need
to care for the land and that includes some kind
of maintenance. My garden in the backyard is going to
grow weeds if I and my wife don't attend to it.
And when we just leave our federal lands obviously more
than sixty percent of our land is federal controlled in
our state, and we just leave it fallow where nobody
(04:21):
can come in and do anything without a six year
NEPA study, and you can't cut down a tree even
around power lines without NEPA studies. We end up with
these terrible disasters. So there are ways to work on that,
and that's part of the Fix our Forests Act, which
actually has passed off the house floor. It allows streamlining
of NEPA that you have a limited period of time
that you can do a NEPA study and subsequently get
(04:41):
in and cut down these trees that are getting close
to power lines and cut down the dead fall that's
in the forest, harvest that and actually use those that
timbers that we can actually build houses with it, which
is going to reduce our costs associated with housing because
we're going to have domestic instead of foreign sources for
lumber with.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Utah Congressman Mike Kennedy. Congressman Kennedy, you mentioned there is
a bipartisan effort to do something about this, but how
hard are Democrats pushing? I know the Republicans are pushing hard.
Do you feel the same sort of energy coming from
the Democratic side to do something about this?
Speaker 3 (05:16):
There's some, but it's hard for us to explain this.
So the Western Caucus, and this is where it's fascinating
because I sit on Natural Resources with Congressman Maloyan, and
we have Democrats I'm the Natural Resources Committee that understand
this issue. They're from Colorado, they're from California. They understand that.
It's just the preponderance of our legislators that are around
(05:38):
the country don't get it. Because do you see these
terrible conflagrations in North and South Carolina? Do you see that?
I mean some, there's some in other places of the country,
but particularly every year the West burns, and we just
don't have as many congressmen and women and the West.
And so there is bipartisanship with this, and I'm also
pleased to report and this is where creg will appreciate.
(05:58):
This is the House it's on its job. We've had
to fix our Fourth Act. We're just waiting for the
Senate to watch the DC is that our opponents or
the Democrats, our enemies are the Senators. Now to John
Curtis and Mike Lee, I'll just say that's the job.
But you know, it's like you guys got to pass
our bills, man, these are good bills. So so to
fix our Forest Act, which is sponsored by John Curtis,
(06:21):
it's moved out of the committee on the Senate side,
and we're waiting for Senate time on their floors that
we can get that hopefully the President's desk by the
end of the year, which is going to actually take
a lot of steps, bipartisan steps in the right direction
to help us with these terrible disasters that happen every
year for us in Utah.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
You know, one of the things I think the legislative
process brings. It's not outside baseball, it's not talking heads
on the on the news shows at night. It's the
personal relationships that you and you mentioned these that you
can build across the aisle or just with colleagues, regardless
of whether Republicans or Democrats on certain issues. Does the
wildfires in Canada that actually canceled Major League Baseball games
(06:59):
all over the Northeast, including Pittsburgh. You know, sometimes empathy
is a powerful teacher, and sometimes you know you have
a recess and everything has to get done because you've
got to get the recess, you guys. So, but my
question is can a moment like that actually bring some
empathy and with relationships with colleagues, maybe move the needle
where maybe the broader platform position won't do it.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
I believe it can. I'm an optimistic gag, Greg and
I have to be to be a watch.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yes, actually it is.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
It is.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
It is a place that it's really hard to get
things done. But Rod, you mentioned earlier that this Wall
Street Journal editorial just today showed up or yesterday, I
can't remember which, but it's in the Wall Street Journal,
and it's talking about these European fires, and one of
the statistics that's in there is thirty percent of the
land is federal in their case, this federal land, and
(07:52):
fifty five percent of the fires are in those overlays
of federal control or in this case, European control. So
that the data is out there. But the problem that
when I went to tour these fires in San Juan
County and we went to Beaver and looked at these disasters.
Is this is a problem that's been going on for decades.
(08:13):
We have not managed at all these areas. And I
talked to some of these wildfire fighters that are out
there and they admitted that sadly, in spite of our
best efforts, one of the only things that is going
to prevent this in the future is more fires that
are going to kind of take care of this terrible
deadfall and the overwhelming amount of fuel that we have
(08:34):
in these forests, which we're going to do our best
to get heading in the right direction, but we are
decades behind and it's going to take us a while
to catch back up.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Sure will Utah Congressman Mike Kennedy joining us on the
Rod and Gregg Show as we talk about the wildfires
and mitigating those wildfires here in the West. More coming
up on the Roden greg Show in Utah's Talk Radio
one five to nine knrs. The account is now up
to four. Four coaches in the w NBA have come
(09:02):
out in the last twenty four hours Greg and say
they are supportive of everyone, including men playing back trans
women playing in the w NBA. Four head coaches have
now come out and support of this effort.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, I just wish there were some guys that would
call their bluff. I just don't buy it. I think
it's a nice thing to say. It's probably it's probably comfortable,
but I don't buy it.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Well, here's the latest one. Her name is Natalie Nicosi.
She is the Golden State of Valkyrie's head coach. That's
what she said about it today.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
How I'm seeing it is if I could answer it Like,
for me, sports is about belonging. It's about inclusivity. It's
about allowing everyone to be their authentic self. You know,
I'm big on that, just because I have been criticized
for my height, for my ethnicity. I've been in those
(09:56):
you shouldn't belong here many times, and for me, I
don't want that space, especially Golden State, to ever feel
like that. So I'm all about women, little girls deserving
to play, and that includes trans women. So I'm all
about inclusivity.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
All about inclusivity, greg trans that's what the w BA is.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
A voice. Transom means boys. It's all about boys. Girl's
a chance to play by including boys in that category.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, earlier, we had a chance to talk with Kevin
and McCullough Courds, a nationally syndicated podcaster joining he joined
us on our Newsmaker line. We asked him about what
is going on in the w n b A and
all these coaches coming out of support of trans women
in basketball.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
I don't, I don't. I can't honestly answer that question, Rod.
All I can say is that when you have three
over the weekend that evidently cannot decide the matter, and
you have another one that's added to the group today.
And this is in the aftermath of a four year
push of popular culture really being turned to against by
(11:01):
the women of this country who rose up in the
election in twenty four and took their rights back. It
is really puzzling to see the positions that these coaches
are taking, especially since the league that pays their salary
signs a check that says Women's NBA in the name
(11:23):
of the organization. It's truly stunning.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So this seems like a luxury belief. I don't know
that any of them are speaking from a place where
they think that women would actually be displaced off their roster.
This is just all theory to them, would it take
men playing in their league for them to start It
might dawn on them that maybe they'd like women in
the WNBA.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
Well, it's interesting you ask that, because I come at
this from a pretty interesting perspective. I wrote a piece,
obviously for town Hall, but for a period of time
just after college, I was an assistant coach for a
women's college basketball team for about four years, and one
of my jobs as that assistant was to recruit innermural
(12:05):
level male players to come scrimmage against the girls on
game weeks so that they could be playing against someone
who was faster, stronger, and a little bit sometimes more
skilled than them at some of the positions that we
wanted them to get faster and stronger at. And if
you'll notice, I wasn't sent to go get the varsity team.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
I was sent.
Speaker 6 (12:28):
I was sent to go get the innermural usually the
lower half of the intermural guys, because for some reason,
these guys that would that would come over and help
us out. Some of them are really nice. Some of
them took it as an opportunity to be you know, uh,
you know, dominant, and you're like, come on, you're you're
playing against girls, missing the point completely that an Innermural
(12:49):
boys team could give our varsity girls team a run
for their money and most days still outperformed them. The
point is very simple. Men have denser bones, bigger muscle mass,
faster speed, they have greater lung capacity. There's all kinds
of advantages that they have, and I don't buy for
a second that any of these coaches don't understand all
(13:11):
of that. This to me, is not a luxury belief.
It is a save their backside belief. They are afraid
that they're going to be looked down upon at some
wine and cheese recruitment party for the college or the
university or wherever it is that they normally get invited to,
and they don't want to be on that bad list.
They don't want to be seen as being someone who
actually had a backbone and stood up for something normal.
(13:32):
The sad thing is they're willing to sacrifice women's futures
and safeties in order to do it.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Kevin, do you think there are players within the NBA
who are they just don't want to say anything, but
they actually agree with Sophie cunning him? Do you think
there are in THEBA who may agree with her, but
are afraid to say anything.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
Look, you could take Brittany Greyer, Lisa Leslie, Caitlin Clark,
Sophie cunning you take any of the best players possible.
None of them, not one of them, would make a
men's team. The disparity here is significant, and there's not
There's not a woman in that league that would say, yeah,
give me, give me the lighter version of Michael Jordan
(14:15):
to try to earn my spot against not gonna happen.
They're not gonna, They're not gonna want to do that,
and the point is they shouldn't have to. The entire
fight for title nine was so that men and women
could have competitive arenas to to compete and play their
best and become their best in without fear of being prejudiced.
This is exactly the opposite. This is regression. This is
(14:36):
moving men back into women's spaces when we've done a
really good job of giving women their own space and
watching them succeed wildly.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
You know, one of the ironies I'm having a hard
time digesting is I'm hearing a lot of lecturing of
Sophie Cunningham that she had no business dipping her toe
into political issues. She was asked a question, a very
straightforward question, she answered it. She didn't volunteer this on
her own. Really, she's taking a lot of criticism for
even being willing to answer that question. But on the
(15:04):
other hand, you have someone like Megan Rappino who wasn't
asked any question, but was more than willing and actually
went out of her way to push a left of
center message on the field while she played as a
player for the women's soccer team US soccer team. That
that hypocrisy where they're upset with Sophie Cunningham for answering
a question, but have never thrown any kind of critical
(15:26):
or or any condemnation Megan Rappino's way for her instigating
a political conversation on the field. What do we do
with that? I mean, it's just it's just not it
just it's there's.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
A big difference between the two of them, and one
is Megan Rappino never had she had a big mouth
her entire life, but she never advocated for men being
in the field to play with women until she had retired.
So you know, Sophie, Sophie still has a career to play.
She would like to have all of her teeth when
she retires. She's a beautiful young woman. She probably wants
(15:58):
to have a family. There's probably all kinds of, you know,
scary traditional things that she you know, feels and things
inside of her. At the end of the day, Sophie
Cunningham is exactly on point. Let the women play against women,
Let them do their very best against one another, Let
them be challenged to accomplish more and go higher and
go further. But that has no refuge. That does not
(16:21):
mean in any way that they need to have men
in their locker room, in their shower, or on the
on the field to play with them.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Kevin final question, where does the NBA go w NBA
go from here? What do you think may happen or
may not happen?
Speaker 4 (16:33):
Well, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
I mean, I think it's a league that has struggled
to find its way to begin with. I think that,
and I'm not I'm not a sexist in saying this.
The ratings ain't great, h The NBA ratings have not
been as good in recent years as they were during
the Michael and Magic and Isaiah era. So you're talking about,
you know, a sport in general that's still trying to
figure it out. But here, here's here's the bottom line.
(16:58):
If they want to see the league completely destroyed, keep
doing everything you can to tell the most important part
of what makes it distinct that it doesn't matter, and
they'll destroy it all on their own. They won't have
anyone else to blame.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Kevin McCulloch joining us on our any hour Newsmaker line,
Greg and real quick. I think more than any other league,
it has been the NBA and WNBA that have immersed
themselves in politics. It has It's not helped.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Them, and I think their ratings show it.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I think they do.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I think the blooms off the roads. I don't think
it's as popular as in sport. I don't know that
WNBA ever was popular, but the NBA is certainly losing
its popularity.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
All right.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
More coming up, Rod and Greg with you on this
Monday afternoon and Talk Radio one oh five nine kN.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
RS Compact, which I think we've learned so much since then,
and this we have a new term that we actually
talk about now and I think we understand a little
bit better called suicidal empathy. And suicidal empathy is kind
of what you're seeing play out in Spain right now,
Morocco systems emptying out there literally and emptying out their prisons.
The Moroccan king is pardoning those prisoners and then they're
(17:58):
sending them right over into Spain. They're all adults. There're
are men of military age. That's suicidal empathy when you're
of Spain, and you do nothing to stop that from happening.
If we haven't learned anything in the last fifteen years
since the twenty eleven Utah Compact, I don't know what
we're doing. Yeah, So part of that is we want
to keep these young people here. We want to see
them have careers. The American dream. Yeah, well they's already
(18:20):
a challenges it.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, they can't afford the American dream anymore. And that's
what we want to talk about in this segment. Joining
us on our news micer line is JP Degas. He
is a family economics expert. He wrote about this. You know,
we need to build homes, not just houses.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
JP.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Thank you very much for joining us. This housing affordability.
What has happened to it? Why is it on a
downward trend?
Speaker 4 (18:42):
JP? Well, you kind of have this collusion in certain ways,
whether planned or not planned, between the NIMBI crowd, where
you have a lot of local regulation and state level
actors that constrain housing supply. Right, So that's done through
either zoning or transportation policy. Not enough roads. Okay. Then
(19:06):
you also have realtors and homeowners. Right, those of us
who have a home, we want it to go up
in value. Right, So scarcity is actually good for us.
We already have a home, okay, And so there's a
certain way. You have regulators, lawmakers, and those of us
who have houses. We're not going to be thrilled if
(19:27):
if a lot of single family homes go up and
increase the supply and make things less affordable. And I'm sorry,
make it more affordable.
Speaker 7 (19:35):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So there's two ways that I've seen over the course
of time available housing show up. You have gentrification. You'll
have areas that are run down neighborhoods. People buy those homes,
they refurbish them. You know, they can buy them for
low and then they can put money into them and
make them nicer, and you'll see neighborhoods kind of change
that way. Here in Utah, we have rural communities where
the cost of living is lower and the quality of
(19:56):
life is higher. But you need some industry, you need jobs,
you need things that would feed a population growth in
some of those areas. That seems to be about the best.
Government should stay out of it as far as I'm concerned.
But those two, those two real estate realities should be
at play. How does government jam that up and make
it not the case? I mean, if you could put
(20:16):
infrastructure in rural areas, I mean.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
That's right. Look, I was ahead of meeting with the
folks in the White House a couple months ago, and
they shared that just federal policy adds about thirty seven
thousand dollars to the cost of every new home in America.
And you know, the Feds are not super involved in
(20:40):
the building homes. It's the local. It's the locals.
Speaker 7 (20:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
There's a lot of compliance costs to the construction of
a new home. The cost to bring sewer, the cost
to bring utilities oftentimes have added costs stacked on top
of the reality of constructing it. Right, So that is
a there's a lot of ways government is adding substantially
to the cost of every new home built, right, And
(21:06):
so what happens is a lot of large developers. Okay,
it doesn't make sense for them to go in and
build a lot of starter homes because starter homes have
a much lower per unit cost, and at the end
of the day, they're they're wielding or they're having to
absorb a really large cost of compliance for the building
of every new home, Okay, And so it makes more
sense to go out clearer, you go build a neighborhood
(21:30):
with new homes that draw much and command a much
higher price in order to make the building of these
new homes affordable. Right, So I think it's I'm very
sympathetical the idea. We don't want government doing a whole
bunch of stuff. But a big thing that the government
is doing is piling on a whole bunch of code
and regulations that are making it a lot more expensive
(21:50):
for houses to get built. JP.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I don't know how much of a factor this plays
into it. And Hughes is going to love this because
I'm going to bring up the baby boomers and.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Problem.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Let's get to the bottom line.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
We have a problem.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
We we as baby the process. Yes here, we as
baby boomers have homes. Many people of their homes paid off,
many people are fixing them up, Many people don't want
to move. Uh, and I'm talking about the baby boomers
who have the homes. Now, is that a factor in
this at all?
Speaker 7 (22:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (22:20):
Look, I wouldn't say look any and less so less
a factor for the of the boomers, right, if we
do have a large number, depending on how you look
at it, over the last administration, a very large number
of folks enter this country illegally. They're consuming housing. Okay,
they're consuming housing. Uh In you know where I live,
(22:42):
there's a single family home that has about four families
sharing a home in my neighborhood. Okay, So this is
a this is a real thing. And those are houses
that can't be consumed by So I think, you know,
whether it's ten million or twenty million, depending the number,
there's some number of people who are consuming houses that
(23:04):
wouldn't be there. I think the fact that a lot
of boomers aren't sitting in starter homes okay at this stage,
they're in there. They're in there, there forever home okay.
And one of the big constraints is that's driving home
ownership is if you look at it, the average age
of a first time home buyer is approaching forty Depending
(23:24):
on the survey that you're looking at, that's outrageous, right,
that we should be living in a country where the
first time home buyer is in the later twenties is
for instance, right, And that I think is that's where
I think, certainly immigration is a lot of those folks
are consuming homes that are closer to starter homes. You regulation,
(23:49):
land use restrictions that make create an artificial constriction on supply.
That's another big part of it, right, And look, I
don't want to only tell people that economics is we
should just throw up our hands. The fact is is
young people themselves have been told and encouraged frequently by
(24:09):
their parents to focus on financial security before relationships. And
so I think there's a lot of young people who
are hearing that message, focusing on getting financial security, focusing
on having that fulfilling career. Whereas that's a brand new message. Okay,
The fact is is normally people go out, they get
they actually get married first before they haven't figured everything out,
(24:29):
and that that produces greater levels of financial security, better
positions them to be a home buyer, and would also
itself help. Right, there's a both going on. There's an
and both going on. We need to get first time
houses to be more affordable. But we also actually have
to share a better message with our young people. Right
nine and ten, parents, according to Pew Research, are telling
(24:51):
them to telling their kids that financial security and independence
is the most important thing, and only one in five
of those same parents are saying being married or having
kids is important to them.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
What about the what does the lending world look like
out there? My first home in the nineties that I
bought my first home, I've paid seven and a quarter percent.
I mean we got spoiled with those three percent loans
things like that. But I don't know that the interest
rates are at seven and a quarter right now. I
think it might be a little less. But what is it?
What is the lending situation for young people looking by
their first home and what is the personal income? I mean,
(25:25):
can they afford the median income of a home or
a starter home for what the what the interest rates are,
and what people are making young people are making as
they get into their careers. Is that a barrier right
now to home ownership?
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Yeah, there's there's no doubt that that getting twenty percent
of a of a down payment is an obstacle for
most for most people in general. Right and used to have.
Right when when the housing market ran away at the
last housing bubble, you had these arms, these zero interest
arms people had to squeeze into or or tried to
(26:02):
use to get their income to fit. And that that
over excited the market, creating a bubble, right, you know,
oversimplified here, right, And and but so we don't want that.
There's enough housing regulation, I'm sorry, home loan regulation. That's
(26:22):
that's preventing that kind of activity at that kind of scale. Right,
But there's no doubt that the twenty percent out there
are first time home buyer programs that exist. The reality
is is here too, right, A lot of white collar jobs, right,
You're told millennials forty percent of millennials have had a
(26:43):
college degree, probably the most educated demographic and human history
in terms of a generational cohort. Right, And a lot
of those those jobs that early college grads would get,
they're not there. You've got you've got things like H
one B program where where employers can go and bring
(27:03):
in and overseas employee legally and compete against somebody who's
computer science grad from say TCU or or or Utah State.
And that I think is itself a factor here.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
It is a factor there. Jp Tagans. He's joining us
on our news Banker line talking about the affordability of housing.
It will continue to be an issue right up until
election day and even after that.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
And the worst thing you could do is just put
an influx of more people into Utah and they're already
here looking for jobs or taking jobs on wrong call.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah so yeah, wrong call. All right, more coming up,
Rod and Greg with you on this Monday and Utah's
Talk Radio one O five to nine. Okay, all right,
final half hour the Rod and Greg Show with you
on this Monday evening here on Utah's Talk Radio one
O five nine k n RS. A lot of fires
(28:01):
burning out there, Greg, and we need to I don't
know how these these men and women who go out
there and fight these fires. That cannot be an easy No.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
That's a tough job. And I think there's an accumul
effect going on the more that the Fara government doesn't
manage these this land well when we used to as
a state back in the nineties. But you can't go
thirty years of neglect like this and not see these
these summertimes come and it just it's going to continue
to get worse.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah, it will, it will. Well, there's certainly been a
lot of talk about COVID nineteen of late since the
uh testimony, if we want to call it, that of
Anthony Fauci before Ran Paul's committee last week, and more
and more people are talking about it again. Robert Kennedy
got into a bash Dana Bash on CNN yesterday talking
(28:47):
about constitutional rights versus public health concerns. Very good discussion.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, they should, there should be no daylight between the two.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, concepts, Yeah, according to them. Well, let's take a look.
Let's go back. Joining us on our Newsmaker line to
talk about what happened when COVID broke out the numbers
it had, the impact it had on all of us.
Joining us is John hinder Rocker. He's with Powerline.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
John.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Thanks for joining us. You've gone back, John, You've taken
a look at the numbers. What do you have found out?
Speaker 7 (29:13):
So we enough time has gone by, but I think
we've got some perspective on the overall impact of the
COVID epidemic. And let me just start by saying that
while it was going on, I thought it was an
overhyped news story. Now that doesn't mean that COVID wasn't
killing some people. It absolutely was. But what we saw
was that the people who were listed in the numbers
(29:38):
as dying from COVID number one were generally elderly. The
median age of people with COVID on the death certificate
was seventy six, and the eighty one percent of so
called COVID deaths were people aged sixty five and up.
And not only that, the people who had COVID on
(30:02):
the death certificate certificate almost always had had other things too,
including serious problems like cancer and so forth. And so
COVID generally was a contributor to somebody's demise, not the
sole cause or even the principal cause. So if you
actually go back and look at the numbers, what you
(30:23):
see is that in twenty twenty, the overall This is
what I did is I went back, I looked at
the overall mortality numbers in the United States, that is,
how many people actually died in a given year, and
then I also looked at the age adjusted mortality numbers,
which in a way that's a little bit more meaningful metric.
(30:45):
But what we see is that in twenty twenty there
was an increase in the total number of people who
died in the United States by eighteen and a half percent,
and then in twenty twenty one it rose just slightly
from that, and then it came down. And what I
thought at the time was that in most cases, what
(31:07):
COVID is doing is accelerating the demise of an elderly person.
Some exceptions, of course, but by far the largest number
of cases were in elderly people who already had serious
health problems. And so what I thought we would see
is that if once we got past the COVID epidemic,
(31:28):
we would probably see the rate of mortality actually dropping
to below what it was before, because a lot of
people who maybe would have died in twenty twenty two
or twenty twenty three or twenty twenty four, instead they
died in twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, see what
I'm saying. So I thought that when the epidemic was over,
(31:51):
we might see a drop in overall mortality of a
very significant extent. And so enough time has gone by
now that we can see the pattern, we can see
what happened. And it's very interesting because what we find
is that overall mortality again I'm not talking about cause
of death. I'm just talking about the raw number of
(32:14):
how many people died. And this is true whether you
look at just the raw numbers or if you look
at the age adjusted numbers. Same pattern. So, when the
COVID epidemic was over in twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three, and to some extent in twenty twenty four,
overall mortality remained somewhat elevated. And what's really interesting about
(32:42):
that is that you can't account for that elevated mortality
with COVID cases, because so, for example, in twenty twenty three,
there were only about seventy six thousand cases where there
were COVID or whatever you know, the synonym is on
(33:03):
the death certificate, so called COVID deaths. And yet in
twenty twenty three there was increased mortality over the pre
twenty twenty level by about two hundred and fifty thousand deaths.
So only about third to a quarter of those you know,
have got COVID on the birth certificate, on the death certificate.
(33:25):
And so it's really interesting. What that tells us is
that for some reason, overall mortality death from all causes
was somewhat elevated in the years twenty two and twenty three,
and to some extent even into twenty twenty four for
reasons that COVID does not explain. And now in twenty
(33:48):
twenty five, the last full year, if you look at
the age adjusted mortality statistics, it's the lowest number ever,
the lowest numbers ever, and in fact it is below
the pre COVID trend line. And so and so we
are now seeing to some degree, not a huge degree,
(34:12):
but to some degree when I thought we were going
to see post COVID that is fewer overall deaths because
more people died during that more elderly people died during
that epidemic period. And and so, you know, the real
question is, you know what's causing the increased mortality in
those in those you know, post epidemic years, And and
(34:35):
with the decline that I predicted that we're sort of
seeing in twenty twenty five, would that had been more
visible if some other causes of death had not intervened.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Well, let me run that through, because that's such a
fascinating way to look at it. So let's say that COVID,
if you had someone that was you know, maybe not
on desk, or they just weren't well. Once they got
COVID they died maybe sooner than later. So that's that
that that's not number growing very quickly. Maybe it's a
cowseway to save, but thinning the herd. What about the vaccine?
(35:05):
What if there was some vulnerability to some percentage of
the population that if you were going to see the
side effects, if it was going to have some even
fatal side effects, you would have run through that after
receiving it some eighteen a year, eighteen months, some period
of time after receiving the vaccine. Would that have contributed
to that number not dropping like you thought? And now
(35:27):
that it's run its course, if you were going to
be if you were going to have severe side effects
from the vaccine, you might that would have already happened.
Speaker 7 (35:35):
Well, a lot of people are going to speculate about that. Yeah,
that is a possible explanation to kind of if you
look at the charts. Too bad we can't actually show
charts on the radio right because the pattern I'm describing
it's so obvious if you have the chart in front
of you. But I think some people will speculate that
the elevated death rates in twenty twenty two and twenty
(35:59):
twenty three, and to some extend in twenty twenty four
that are not explained by COVID might have something to
do with adverse reactions to vaccines, and that would be
a little hard to tell in the data because there
would be multiple causes of death listed on death certificates.
(36:21):
You know, a heart, heart disease. So what are some
of the things that the vaccines might contribute to?
Speaker 1 (36:27):
So this rote real quick that the age adjusted is
important to me because this might be anecdotal. But I
heard this a lot. If you had a motorcycle accident
and you had COVID, that was listed because there was
a funding source. The federal government was giving money to
hospitals healthcare. But so as soon as you entered money
into the equation, it was to me, I thought it
was hard to know what you were really seeing in
(36:48):
that data. If you go age adjusted, that number of
ways you get younger must have dropped like a rock.
Speaker 7 (36:55):
Well, so you make a good point. I mean in Minnesota,
where I live. I actually bought from the State of
Minnesota the complete mortality data for the year twenty twenty
and the first half of twenty twenty one, which is
when I when I bought it and I just looked
at it. You know, it was super interesting. The amount
(37:15):
of data is unbelievable, you know how much they collect.
And one of the things that jumped out at me
is that is that if COVID or you know the
similar the synonyms for COVID run the death certificate, it
was really striking how many other things around the death certificate,
you know, that are that are very very serious health problems.
(37:35):
A lot of times you look at it and say, wow,
it's a miracle this guy lived long enough to get COVID,
you know. But we can so but we can take
that out of the equation by saying, look, overall, mortality
did increase by eighteen and a half percent in twenty
twenty and then slightly above that in twenty twenty one.
So there's no question that COVID was causing more people
(37:58):
to die.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
But older people. That's my argument has been older people
with other other challenges in their and their health. As
far as the children are concerned, why on earth do
we put our young children.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
They were the safest demographic we had. They were they
were immune from it. Now there's mobile morbidities beyond age.
There's obesity, there's smokers, there's people problems. Do you need Yeah,
there's been people that had chemo and radiation because of
cancer that lowers your immune system. There are comorbidities, but
that wasn't a all of society gets into vaccines and
(38:29):
it's just a disgrace how that rolled out.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Certainly wasn't the Black plague?
Speaker 4 (38:33):
All right?
Speaker 2 (38:33):
More coming up, final segment of The Rod and Gregg
Show on Talk Radio one O five nine can Ars
The Rod & Greg Show News
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