June 10, 2026 • 33 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
What it's that time time, time, time, Luck and load.
The Michael Verie Show is on the air, and a
federal jury in Florida convicts the CEO of a healthcare
software company for a one billion that's a bee Medicare
(00:23):
fraud conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We keep getting more of these Medicare fraud conspiracies. Why
don't Maybe maybe the system is broken.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
CBS News with the.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Story, Here's a billion dollar Medicare fraud scheme that involves
your stolen tax dollars. That's what the Department of Justice
says went down in a massive Medicare fraud scheme. To
Brett Blackman, the owner and CEO of a healthcare software
company called health Splash, well, he was just convicted for
generating fake, fraudulent doctor's orders for durable medical equipment like orthotics, braces,
(00:54):
as well as prescriptions for other items. Now, the company
used foreign call centers to call elderly Americans get their
Medicare beneficiary numbers. Then they take those fake doctors' orders
and coordinate illegal kickbacks with doctors and pharmacies to fraudentally
build Medicare for things that no one actually ever needed.
He and others built a billion dollars and were reimbursed
(01:16):
four hundred and fifty million. This guy shows off his
wealth in a music video featuring his large waterfront property,
and there are also photos of him posing with gold jewelry,
including this necklace with a large dollar sign. Now he
faces a maximum penalty of twenty five years in prison
on the charges of healthcare and wire fraud, and he's
(01:37):
set to be sentenced in late August. This is just
one more example of the hundreds of millions of dollars
being stolen from American taxpayers through the medical system every year.
It's been a key priority of the Trump administration. The
DOJ created a fraud division, and Vice President JD. Vance
heads up a task force has focused on eliminating fraud.
(01:59):
We've really ohoned in on home and hospice healthcare in
our investigations. We've been doing this for months. One investigation
examined the business and financial records of every hospice operating
in La County, and we found that over seven hundred
of the roughly eighteen hundred hospices in the county triggered
multiple red flags for fraud. We also found one hospice
(02:21):
physician's name, doctor Raji Buva on Medicare claims for nearly
twenty eight hundred patients across one hundred and twenty six
hospices in twenty twenty four. All of this led to
a Congressional committee hearing where two of the people that
we spoke to in our reporting were called to testify.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
A Long Island high school has a record breaking twenty
one valedictorians. I thought you could really only have one valedictorian.
Seems odd. Not all of them can make speeches at
the graduation.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Surprising.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Jericho High School has so many that they can't all
make How are they creating?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
How do they This doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
The New York Post says the Nassau County school turned
out multiple valedictorians because they grade on a letter system,
which means a ninety seven or higher average earned students
in a plus in a class. They didn't take an
easy route. They packed their schedules. AP valedictorian does not
mean you had a certain GPA.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It means that you.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Are the top student in the class. You can't have
twenty one top students. This is goofy.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
It's one of twenty one students at Jericho High School.
With one shared title, Valedictorian.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I think it's so amazing.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
A staggering twenty one seniors graduating with top honors this year.
Setting a school record at.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
A plus in every class shows a lot of success.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Twenty one students pulled off the same extraordinary feat straight
a pluses in every class for all four years of
high school.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
APE Economics, AP Physics, C Multi Variable.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Conciness, IPI Economics, IPE Literature, HIPI Statistics, APE Spanish, and
APE Government.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
It wasn't easy, but these students were committed to doing
their best.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
It was definitely very difficult, especially as the years went on,
because that also meant that the classes got harder.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
As a calculty C and that was one of those
hardest gasses I've ever taken from high.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
School, and I was a little concerned about losing it
this year.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
Parnor Joe Naja locked in and maintained her average of
ninety seven and above. Being valedictorian usually comes with a
speech at graduation, but with twenty one of them, that's
going to be very difficult this year. Instead, they're going
to make a video that they're going to show.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
These students are going to be wearing sashes that say
Valutorian twenty twenty six. So we're trying to create other
other opportunities to celebrate this incredible accomplishment.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
The price for perfection missing some social events along the way,
But these kids knew they were working for a greater.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
Goal despite what a competitive and there's still a lot
of cloud collaboration, and we're all trying to bring each
other as.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
We go, and the school wants to recognize those students
who went the extra mile all four years at Jericho.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Celebrate as many as we can who's showing that they
care about what they're doing.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
And their hard work has paid off. All twenty one
now headed to college to continue chasing academic excellence.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
By the way, the point made by Chad Aconi Nakanishi,
our half Asian executive producer, is every one of them
looks Asian or Asian American.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Does anybody.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Does anybody care that Asians come to this country and
dominate academically. I don't mean to sound like vivek Ramaswami,
but does anybody do we actually care about academic performance?
Let me ask you that. Well, I ask because the
assumption is, yeah, of course we care, But maybe we
(06:06):
don't and hear me out as someone who was good
in school by the metrics that they use, and someone
who enjoyed the positive feedback of being a good student,
because you're a good kid, if you're a good student. Right,
that's the presumption. But what if not everyone cares about
(06:26):
academic performance as a measure of talent, future skill intelligence.
Oh he's smart, he's got a high GPA. What if
that's not true. I've known several billionaires in my life
and they weren't good students. In fact, far from it.
(06:51):
They dropped out, didn't go to college. What do we
make of that? What do we make of the number
of people who are entrepreneurial and very sharp but didn't
do well in school. There are lots of labs across
the country chop full of somebody with a beaker, you know,
(07:15):
moving water from here or banging on a keyboard who
were brilliant. There are also a lot of people who
are very good in coding who weren't good students. Google
had a policy for a while of not hiring college graduates.
Maybe this whole academic performance thing is just a way
of measuring a certain mindset. People who are good at
(07:36):
playing by this set of rules, because great artists are
never good students. Great entrepreneurs never good students. Why is that? Huh?
It's almost as if the whole academic system is measuring
something that is not necessarily related to success in life.
(08:00):
What if a lot of people, what if you just
went to school without regard to making good grades, which
is a way of measuring yourself against the next guy
to learn? What if we actually just went to learn
and we didn't worry about grades.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
You're listening to the Michael Berry Show. I have alluded
to a little bit of the audio when we played
a fact.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I think we played one of these earlier. But the
CEO of Amazon, Jeff bso serbsos, I'm really never sure
how I hear it pronounced both ways doesn't matter to me.
Recently sat down with the sat down with the network
CNBC Business Network, and he was talking about AOC criticizing billionaires,
(08:45):
and he said, look, if his company does their job well,
they will provide more value to society than all of
the charitable giving that he gives. And you know, you
could say this about Bill Gates and a charity does
and safe society. Successful companies give jobs and change lives.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
But anyway, here's what reason.
Speaker 7 (09:05):
If I do my job right right, the value to
society and civilization from my for profit companies will be
much much larger, right than the good that I do
with my showbile giving. And I think this is an
important point to make because people forget where they sometimes
(09:28):
don't see that when you know, when you create something
like Amazon, and you're saying I get letters from new
mothers all the time, Let's say, like, I have no
idea what I would be doing right now if I
didn't have Amazon, thank you, or what we did in
the pandemic when people could really see what an essential
service we provided to them. And so you know, this
is uh, Amazon creates Tromsoe. And by the way, all
(09:52):
companies are creating value of some kind.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And then he was asked about the casting call Congressman
Alexandria Cassio Cortes and her fellow Democrats demonization of billionaires.
And by the way, it's kind of interesting these guys
are you know, they flirt with liberalism and flirt with
Democrats until they realize the Democrats hate them, and then
(10:15):
all of a sudden they realize, oh, maybe I ought
to knocked that off.
Speaker 8 (10:19):
There seems to be anger, at least from certain political
sides of this, and AOC recently said in a podcast
and mister curious, how you think about this? He says,
there's a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned.
She says, you can't earn a billion dollars. You just
can't earn that.
Speaker 6 (10:37):
She says.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
You can get market power, you can break rules, you
can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than
what they're worth, but you can't earn that. Yeah, by
the way, you've earned extraordinary amount of money. You employ
marget employer, if not one of them from the whole country.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
When you read that, what do.
Speaker 7 (10:57):
You think, Well, it's not cracked on its face.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Let's give you let me give you a simple example.
Speaker 7 (11:02):
Let's say you start a burger joint and you have
ten employees and you make a little bit of money
until you have this is this one one outlet and
by the way, these are the most delicious burgers in
the world. People love your burgers, Andrew. And so then
you open a second outlet, right, and now you're making
a little bit more money, and you have twenty employees,
(11:24):
and you open a third outlet. By the time you've
opened a thousand outlets, you are a billionaire.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
And by the way, this is a real life story.
It happens all the time in an out burger. It's
you know, raising Cain's chicken.
Speaker 7 (11:37):
At what point did that money all of a sudden
become unethical.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Or it didn't.
Speaker 7 (11:43):
There was one outlet, and then there were two, and
then there were three. What you're doing the way you
make a billion dollars or one hundred million dollars or
ten million dollars or anything, is you create a service
that people love, and if millions of people choose your service,
you're going to end up with a billion dollars. And
you can, you know, just try it with a chicken franchise.
(12:06):
Do you think vote your chicken has to be good?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Democrats like Pocahontas crazy Bernie AOC constantly calling for billionaires
to quote pay their share. Well, the billionaires don't want
to just give money away so the Democrats can buy votes.
Beso says that revenue is not the problem in this country.
Spending is the problem.
Speaker 7 (12:28):
Quote it all the time is you know, the wealthy
should pay their fair share. And we can argue about
what the fair share is. That's a policy debate, that's okay,
But the vilification is the thing that system distraction. And
by the way, if you really are being honest about it,
we don't have a revenue problem in this country. We
are to have the most progressive tax system in the world.
(12:52):
The top one percent of taxpayers pay forty percent of
all the tax revenue. The bottom half pay only three percent.
We have already, and it should be zero. I don't
think it should be three percent. I think it should
be zero. So we'd be making more progressive that way.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
We actually have a spending problem.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Bezos went on to say that the bottom half of
earners shouldn't have to.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Pay income tax.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Not only that, but the government should offer them an
apology for taxing them in the first place.
Speaker 7 (13:19):
The nurse and queens who makes seventy five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
A year.
Speaker 7 (13:25):
Pays twelve more than twelve thousand dollars a year in taxes.
Does that really make sense? So people talk about making
the tax system more progressive, how about we start by
having the nurse and queens not pay taxes.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Why are somebody at all?
Speaker 7 (13:43):
Why is the nurse and queens who make seventy five
thousand dollars a year, paying more than a thousand dollars
a month in taxes. That's one thousand dollars a month
that could help with rent or groceries or anything. And
so and by the way, do you know what that
all adds up to the bottom half of income earners
in this country pay only three percent of the taxes.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
It's only three percent.
Speaker 7 (14:07):
We can find three percent, so we don't have It's
a small amount of money for the government.
Speaker 6 (14:12):
And you know that.
Speaker 7 (14:13):
And really it's the more I thought about it, to me,
it's kind of absurd that we're doing this. You know,
we shouldn't be asking this nurse and Queen's to send
money to Washington. They should be sending her an apology.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
It really makes no sense.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And finally, he was asked about laying off the staff
thirty percent of the staff at the Washington Post, noting
if people won't pay for our product, it's not a
good enough product.
Speaker 8 (14:40):
Well said, talking about markets, I wasn answering about the
news market. Yeah, because you're.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Onn the Washington Post. Yes.
Speaker 8 (14:48):
And one of the critiques, by the way, and this
is this is maybe the wealth critique and everything else
is you know, we just have the company laid off
about thirty percent of its staff.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
And there's a lot of people out there.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
We said, that's super wealthy.
Speaker 8 (15:01):
He's talked about this being a public trust and something
when he bought early on. How much you care about that.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Piece of it?
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Why way people off? Why fire people? Why you stumpsonize
the business?
Speaker 7 (15:13):
If in fact, the Post needs to be a profitable
enterprise that stands on its own.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Two feet, And that's yes, it's a qction be able
to say.
Speaker 7 (15:23):
And let me tell you why, because it's a measure
of its relevance. If people won't pay for our product,
we're not doing it.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
It's not good enough product.
Speaker 7 (15:33):
It's like, you know, doing it would be like poetry
without rhyming.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
It's too easy.
Speaker 7 (15:39):
So we want it's got to be something that people
will pay for because that's a signal, right, it's a
signal that we're providing a relevant service.
Speaker 6 (15:48):
Your pay for The New York Times.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
You guys make a ton of money.
Speaker 7 (15:51):
You guys are doing very well financially, and you're providing
a service that people are willing to pay for.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
We can do that too. I guess what I told them.
Speaker 7 (15:58):
You know, when we were planning those layoffs, right, I
didn't pick who was going it laid off for which departments.
I said, follow the data, follow the data, and I said,
there's one exception to this, what k don't follow the
data on investigative reporting. The heart of the post is
investigative reporting. And guess what our newsman today, even after
(16:19):
the layoffs, is still larger.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Than what we did Watergate.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
In the pentagonicable they are telling what's called onesies, these
little things clothing for babies.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Like Mada Barry sh you're support of all these onesies.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Before this next conversation, let me say that I have
a different view than many people, and you have to
understand this view to be able to hang around our show,
otherwise it'll make you crazy. I am a believer. It
goes back to my days in debate, and I still
(16:56):
believe in debate. I still believe in the scientific method.
Look if this is how we made tires for seventy
years and somebody says, hey, I have a new way.
I'm looking at considering making tires that they could last forever,
because I've heard that it's been done before, but because
(17:17):
planned obso lescence was more profitable. They threw out that
mix and they never did it again. I'd like to
experiment with making it forever tire, and you could say, no,
no forever tires. We've always made tires that run out,
that you know, fall apart in this amount of time.
(17:38):
We don't want anybody to consider making a tire that
might last forever. We like our tire exactly the way
things are. You're a bad person for considering a new
way to make a tire. So for me, it is
interesting to undertake conversations about things that I may.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Not be there yet.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
But I want to hear people's argument, partly out of
respect for the fact that maybe they've figured out something
I haven't, partly out of respect for if what I
believe to be true is true, then exposure to falsity
will not affect my truth. I find that people are
(18:25):
afraid of new ideas, different ideas when they're not sure
that they came to their conclusion because they actually do anything.
I mean, can you imagine thinking spaghetti and meatballs is
the best thing to eat in the whole wide world.
There's nothing else that would be better. What ifs have
you eaten only that, but I decided it's my favorite.
(18:48):
But you never tried anything else. No, No, I don't
want to, and neither should. You don't try to tempt me. Well,
I find that intellectually destria. So we're gonna talk about
the issue of marijuana for a moment. This aired nearly
sixty years ago on Dragnet Joe Friday and his partner,
(19:12):
officer Bill Gannon. We're talking to a young man about marijuana. Now,
this was in.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Take a listen, and whether you think it's a good
thing or a bad thing. What this young man said
turned out to be true. Again, you don't have to
agree with it, but it did turn out to be true.
Speaker 6 (19:37):
You have been smoking marijuana.
Speaker 9 (19:39):
Marijuana is a legal I know that that's right for now.
In a couple of years, things may change, when all
the kids grow up and start wearing ties and go
into the polls. Marijuana is going to be like liquor,
packaged and tax and sold right off the shelf.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
I doubt it, mister Shipley.
Speaker 9 (19:53):
Look, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it seems
to me there must be better things for cops to
do than chase down wild rumors about something as.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
And as marijuana.
Speaker 9 (20:01):
Why don't you go after the big bad guys, the
heroin peddlers.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
I won't argue with you about them. They should be.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
Stopped, that's right. We'd like to put them out of business.
That's why we're here. What do you mean we're trying
to keep them from getting a new customer.
Speaker 9 (20:12):
There's a big difference between marijuana and hard narcotics.
Speaker 6 (20:16):
Yeah, but it's only a small step.
Speaker 9 (20:18):
And everybody who takes a drink is going to be
an alcoholic.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
We know that's not true, don't we. Let's face it, we're.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
On opposite sides of the fence, and there's nothing we
can do about it for you. If there's a log
against it, it's.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Wrong, black and white. I just don't see things that way.
That's all.
Speaker 6 (20:31):
Well, you ought to give it a try, fella. It
might keep you out of jail maybe. But we'll change
the laws.
Speaker 9 (20:35):
And even though your friend here thinks we won't believe me,
it's a new world.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Your laws is outdated as bustles.
Speaker 9 (20:41):
Laws are going to have to be changed to keep
pace with a new morality. They'll change or we'll have
to break them.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that subject.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
I grew up.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
With a very very terrified fear, you know, reafer madness.
Marijuana led people to commit murder. It made you crazy,
It was highly addictive. You'd run away from your family
and join a cult and kill everybody. Charlie Manson and
(21:20):
my mother would refer to someone who had begun smoking marijuana,
He's eat up.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
With the dope.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
And it was sort of like tattoos. The only people
who smoked marijuana were filthy, dirty dropouts, and I didn't
want to be that. And over a period of time
I was exposed to more people who I realized were
smoking marijuana or taking gummies or vaping as the technologies advanced,
(21:53):
and I found that, unlike with the smoking thing, I
found some of them to be admirable people in every
other aspect of their lives. I found them to be upstanding,
successful people. And I thought, well, how do I reconcile
that these are people that I respect and admire, and
(22:16):
yet they do this awful, evil thing that is going
to be the end of our society. And yet even
though I didn't drink till I was twenty nine, I
didn't judge anyone who drank at legally. I did judge
you if you drank under twenty one. I didn't drink,
and I judge other people who did because it's illegal,
because if there's a law, then you're supposed to follow it,
(22:40):
and if you don't follow it, you're a bad person.
Well over a period of time, I began noticing, and
that wasn't in my twenties or probably even my thirties,
maybe well into my forties that I started saying, you know,
are these these guys that smoke? I don't know that.
(23:00):
I mean, I'm sure there's some bad people who smoke pot.
I'm certain of it. And I'm sure there are some
people who use heroin that started with pot. There's also
some people use heroin started with alcohol. And one thing
I've noticed is and people in the industry tell me
that liquor companies, in liquor retailers and on premise sellers,
(23:27):
which is a bar, tell me young people don't drink
to the extent that people do today. I saw a
statistic a few days ago that said the number of people,
a number of young people who've had a drink when
they graduate one drink per week or more was for
(23:47):
the first time ever well below fifty percent, and that
in nineteen eighty it was ninety two percent. Wow, that
was a shocking statistic to me, which means I think
the number was forty seven percent and it was ninety two,
So it's almost half. The number's almost been cut in half.
(24:09):
And there are a lot of reasons for that. Young
people who said my dad died of liver cancer or
liver disease or cirrhosis, or my mom got really sick
because she drank, or somebody my family was killed with
a DWI. It's just interesting to me how it seems
(24:33):
to be the case among young people that more of
them use a marijuana product than alcohol. It doesn't do
anything for me.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
I don't like it. I don't care for it. I
don't care.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Somebody wants to do it, that's their own business. But
I do find this to be very very interesting. And
this is coming from a guy who enjoys his alcohol.
I love a beer, I love a bourbon, I love
a red wine. It's an interesting cultural shift that happens
seemingly over what a maroon.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Michael about a month ago, I told you that my
concern with the Iran conflict.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Is that most Americans don't understand why we're there. I understand, Michael,
as I said, how about every time I say most Americans,
you just automatically assume I'm not talking about you.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Everyone but you.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
The polls show it, my conversations show it. You have
to be careful that you both retain a confidence in
your own judgment but also recognize that in many ways
you have a very different judgment than other people. If
you're the millionaire next door, you drive a paid off
vehicle fifteen to twenty years old, you have savings six
(25:59):
or more time your annual salary, you have zero debt.
You're not typical. That's not a judgment call, it's a compliment.
Just understand that your assessment of what other people think
is going to be very different than how you process things,
(26:20):
for better or for worse.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
That's just a fact.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
I made the statement that the problem with Iran is
I don't think it makes the president more popular at
the polls show that.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
If you just.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Randomly ask people, and I've had people conduct this exercise,
that it goes like this. All right, so I ask
ask one of your employees, Paul, Bobby, come here, what
do you think about Iran war. You know, the President
took us in there so that Iran wouldn't get nuclear
weapons and to protect us. You think that's a good idea. Okay,
that's leading the witness. If you were to ask the
(26:53):
follow up question, just undertake this and I'd love to
hear your feedback.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
What are your.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Thoughts on the war in Iran? Just ask someone that
would know that. Most people say, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (27:05):
All right.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
The President has expended more political capital on this this
year presently than anything else, which means he is using
all the capital that he had built up from a
solid economy closing the border. Remember did anybody remember all
(27:27):
those executive orders and how popular he was. I'm not
talking about asking democrats. I'm talking about asking people that
would vote for Trump, even if they don't consider themselves Revelicans.
He has extended all of that. Now your answer might be,
I know, well, do you want to deal with the
nuclear weaponry or not? Do you want Iran to have
nuclear weapons? I want you to stop repeating the talking points,
(27:51):
and I want you to ask, if if you buy
the talking points, why doesn't anyone else? Why don't most people?
You can't ask the eight people that you have coffee
with that watch Fox News from the moment they get
home to the moment they fall asleep, get up and
do it again. That's not an accurate assessment. That's not
enough votes to win. But I have said again and
(28:12):
again that my concern is that with the president focused
on that, he's not been able to focus on domestic affairs,
which is where he is particularly good. He was perceived
as an isolationist, which made him popular with isolationists, and
he was perceived as a guy who was concerned with
the average everyday American and our plight and not sending
(28:34):
that's what dose was about. Why why was wasting all
his money? This is ridiculous, And there is the perception
that he has forgotten. Whether you like it or not,
I believe that is a perception. And I said, of
the things that people care about, one of them is
the absolute fear that AI is going to replace their
very existence. And people said government can't do anything about that.
(28:58):
Morning Brew from Wall Street Journal, He says Trump signed
a scaled back executive order on AI after weeks of
Willier won't he President Trump quietly issued an executive order
that calls for some oversight of the AI industry amid
concerns over cybersecurity threats, Politico reported. Originally Trump planned to
sign an order directing the government to review new AI
models ninety days before they released to the public, but
(29:19):
he reportedly changed his mind at the last minute, concerned
that the order would give China a competitive advantage and
demanded too much regulation after he had made deregulation a
policy priority. The order Trump signed yesterday reduces the voluntary
government review to thirty days before public release, but is
otherwise largely the same as the version he nixed last month.
The other problem we're seeing in the rapid acceleration of
(29:45):
technological advancement LI likes of which we've never seen. This thing,
this lion. Nobody can ride this thing.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Is it is.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Out there, the genies out of the bottle. Is that
with it happening so fast, any attempt to protect the technology, Well,
patents take too long. But the Patent Office, it is
now being reported again and again, has been infiltrated by
Chinese espionage. Surprise, China is spying on every aspect of
(30:18):
our daily lives, our national security, our technology, are manufacturing
our healthcare. China is not our friend China is our
outright enemy. When Fang Bang was sent to have sex
with Eric Swalwell, and by the way, some other elected
officials as well. That is yet another in a long
line of examples of where they've been caught Chinese graduate
(30:41):
students stealing technology. Here in Houston, when they stole all
the documents from the Texas Medical Center over how we
were treating COVID, and that was when they had the
fire in the internal courtyard as they locked all the
doors so they couldn't be checked to see all the
papers that they had stolen from our medical center to
(31:02):
steal our medical technology. If you make a business trip
to China, it's a widely known fact.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
If friend of.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Mine is a partner at one of the major downtown
law firms and they do business in China, and when
they go there, you have to check out a computer
that you take to China with you. You're not allowed
to take your own computer or a firm computer, because
you're allowed to VPN to the firm's database of information
and all of the contracts and everything that goes into that.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
So what do they do.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
They give you a checkout computer that's basically a dummy
computer that just works, absolutely cleaned, because they know when
you get there, they know for a fact that you're
going to be spied upon, that your technology is going
to be stolen. It's not even open for discussion. They
don't worry about that when they come here. We don't
have that worry going to any other country. Ask anybody
(31:51):
who travels around the world, and the one place that
you have to be super careful. You do have to
be concerned with Russia, but the one place that you
have to be super careful is China because it's not
whether it is when they are going to steal your technology.
They're going to counterfeit your technology. And we know this,
and yet we have allowed ourselves to become too reliant
(32:12):
on their cheap technology because what do we love but cheap.
We absolutely positively love cheap. We will sell our souls
for something cheap without any regard for the long term effects.
That's why they dump products on our market at a
loss to get us hooked on it and kill off
the local manufacturer. And then what do they do. They
(32:33):
drive the price up and people can't stop because they're
so addicted to cheap. We have a mindset as consumers
of the cheapest still possible, so that I can acquire
the most. I'm always amused when people say, my grandparents
they owned on one paycheck. We can't afford to rent
(32:56):
on two. Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole piece written about this.
It's gone viral. I see if I can find it.
That's because Grandma didn't go for sixty dollars brunches. Grandma
didn't door dash a thirty eight dollars burger to her
house last night. Grandma didn't have a twelve dollars latte
at Starbucks every afternoon and maybe one in the morning. Yeah,
there's a reason, because the only thing they spent on
(33:18):
was their house and one automobile for the entire family.
All of these things that are built in that add
up to be more than the house. Note that are
things that you just take for granted. Subscriptions. There's actually
an app now that advertises that we will go into
all your subscriptions, show you what they are, and help
(33:39):
you get out of them. Imagine that we've allowed ourselves
to get into so many subscriptions that we pay every
month that we can't seep.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Up with what they all are. Yeah, Grandma didn't do
that help us. Last, good thank you, I mean good night.
What it's that time time, time, time, Luck and load.
The Michael Verie Show is on the air, and a
federal jury in Florida convicts the CEO of a healthcare
software company for a one billion that's a bee Medicare
(00:23):
fraud conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We keep getting more of these Medicare fraud conspiracies. Why
don't Maybe maybe the system is broken.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
CBS News with the.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Story, Here's a billion dollar Medicare fraud scheme that involves
your stolen tax dollars. That's what the Department of Justice
says went down in a massive Medicare fraud scheme. To
Brett Blackman, the owner and CEO of a healthcare software
company called health Splash, well, he was just convicted for
generating fake, fraudulent doctor's orders for durable medical equipment like orthotics, braces,
(00:54):
as well as prescriptions for other items. Now, the company
used foreign call centers to call elderly Americans get their
Medicare beneficiary numbers. Then they take those fake doctors' orders
and coordinate illegal kickbacks with doctors and pharmacies to fraudentally
build Medicare for things that no one actually ever needed.
He and others built a billion dollars and were reimbursed
(01:16):
four hundred and fifty million. This guy shows off his
wealth in a music video featuring his large waterfront property,
and there are also photos of him posing with gold jewelry,
including this necklace with a large dollar sign. Now he
faces a maximum penalty of twenty five years in prison
on the charges of healthcare and wire fraud, and he's
(01:37):
set to be sentenced in late August. This is just
one more example of the hundreds of millions of dollars
being stolen from American taxpayers through the medical system every year.
It's been a key priority of the Trump administration. The
DOJ created a fraud division, and Vice President JD. Vance
heads up a task force has focused on eliminating fraud.
(01:59):
We've really ohoned in on home and hospice healthcare in
our investigations. We've been doing this for months. One investigation
examined the business and financial records of every hospice operating
in La County, and we found that over seven hundred
of the roughly eighteen hundred hospices in the county triggered
multiple red flags for fraud. We also found one hospice
(02:21):
physician's name, doctor Raji Buva on Medicare claims for nearly
twenty eight hundred patients across one hundred and twenty six
hospices in twenty twenty four. All of this led to
a Congressional committee hearing where two of the people that
we spoke to in our reporting were called to testify.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
A Long Island high school has a record breaking twenty
one valedictorians. I thought you could really only have one valedictorian.
Seems odd. Not all of them can make speeches at
the graduation.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Surprising.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Jericho High School has so many that they can't all
make How are they creating?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
How do they This doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
The New York Post says the Nassau County school turned
out multiple valedictorians because they grade on a letter system,
which means a ninety seven or higher average earned students
in a plus in a class. They didn't take an
easy route. They packed their schedules. AP valedictorian does not
mean you had a certain GPA.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It means that you.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Are the top student in the class. You can't have
twenty one top students. This is goofy.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
It's one of twenty one students at Jericho High School.
With one shared title, Valedictorian.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I think it's so amazing.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
A staggering twenty one seniors graduating with top honors this year.
Setting a school record at.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
A plus in every class shows a lot of success.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Twenty one students pulled off the same extraordinary feat straight
a pluses in every class for all four years of
high school.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
APE Economics, AP Physics, C Multi Variable.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Conciness, IPI Economics, IPE Literature, HIPI Statistics, APE Spanish, and
APE Government.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
It wasn't easy, but these students were committed to doing
their best.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
It was definitely very difficult, especially as the years went on,
because that also meant that the classes got harder.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
As a calculty C and that was one of those
hardest gasses I've ever taken from high.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
School, and I was a little concerned about losing it
this year.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
Parnor Joe Naja locked in and maintained her average of
ninety seven and above. Being valedictorian usually comes with a
speech at graduation, but with twenty one of them, that's
going to be very difficult this year. Instead, they're going
to make a video that they're going to show.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
These students are going to be wearing sashes that say
Valutorian twenty twenty six. So we're trying to create other
other opportunities to celebrate this incredible accomplishment.
Speaker 5 (04:57):
The price for perfection missing some social events along the way,
But these kids knew they were working for a greater.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
Goal despite what a competitive and there's still a lot
of cloud collaboration, and we're all trying to bring each
other as.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
We go, and the school wants to recognize those students
who went the extra mile all four years at Jericho.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Celebrate as many as we can who's showing that they
care about what they're doing.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
And their hard work has paid off. All twenty one
now headed to college to continue chasing academic excellence.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
By the way, the point made by Chad Aconi Nakanishi,
our half Asian executive producer, is every one of them
looks Asian or Asian American.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Does anybody.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Does anybody care that Asians come to this country and
dominate academically. I don't mean to sound like vivek Ramaswami,
but does anybody do we actually care about academic performance?
Let me ask you that. Well, I ask because the
assumption is, yeah, of course we care, But maybe we
(06:06):
don't and hear me out as someone who was good
in school by the metrics that they use, and someone
who enjoyed the positive feedback of being a good student,
because you're a good kid, if you're a good student. Right,
that's the presumption. But what if not everyone cares about
(06:26):
academic performance as a measure of talent, future skill intelligence.
Oh he's smart, he's got a high GPA. What if
that's not true. I've known several billionaires in my life
and they weren't good students. In fact, far from it.
(06:51):
They dropped out, didn't go to college. What do we
make of that? What do we make of the number
of people who are entrepreneurial and very sharp but didn't
do well in school. There are lots of labs across
the country chop full of somebody with a beaker, you know,
(07:15):
moving water from here or banging on a keyboard who
were brilliant. There are also a lot of people who
are very good in coding who weren't good students. Google
had a policy for a while of not hiring college graduates.
Maybe this whole academic performance thing is just a way
of measuring a certain mindset. People who are good at
(07:36):
playing by this set of rules, because great artists are
never good students. Great entrepreneurs never good students. Why is that? Huh?
It's almost as if the whole academic system is measuring
something that is not necessarily related to success in life.
(08:00):
What if a lot of people, what if you just
went to school without regard to making good grades, which
is a way of measuring yourself against the next guy
to learn? What if we actually just went to learn
and we didn't worry about grades.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
You're listening to the Michael Berry Show. I have alluded
to a little bit of the audio when we played
a fact.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I think we played one of these earlier. But the
CEO of Amazon, Jeff bso serbsos, I'm really never sure
how I hear it pronounced both ways doesn't matter to me.
Recently sat down with the sat down with the network
CNBC Business Network, and he was talking about AOC criticizing billionaires,
(08:45):
and he said, look, if his company does their job well,
they will provide more value to society than all of
the charitable giving that he gives. And you know, you
could say this about Bill Gates and a charity does
and safe society. Successful companies give jobs and change lives.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
But anyway, here's what reason.
Speaker 7 (09:05):
If I do my job right right, the value to
society and civilization from my for profit companies will be
much much larger, right than the good that I do
with my showbile giving. And I think this is an
important point to make because people forget where they sometimes
(09:28):
don't see that when you know, when you create something
like Amazon, and you're saying I get letters from new
mothers all the time, Let's say, like, I have no
idea what I would be doing right now if I
didn't have Amazon, thank you, or what we did in
the pandemic when people could really see what an essential
service we provided to them. And so you know, this
is uh, Amazon creates Tromsoe. And by the way, all
(09:52):
companies are creating value of some kind.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And then he was asked about the casting call Congressman
Alexandria Cassio Cortes and her fellow Democrats demonization of billionaires.
And by the way, it's kind of interesting these guys
are you know, they flirt with liberalism and flirt with
Democrats until they realize the Democrats hate them, and then
(10:15):
all of a sudden they realize, oh, maybe I ought
to knocked that off.
Speaker 8 (10:19):
There seems to be anger, at least from certain political
sides of this, and AOC recently said in a podcast
and mister curious, how you think about this? He says,
there's a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned.
She says, you can't earn a billion dollars. You just
can't earn that.
Speaker 6 (10:37):
She says.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
You can get market power, you can break rules, you
can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than
what they're worth, but you can't earn that. Yeah, by
the way, you've earned extraordinary amount of money. You employ
marget employer, if not one of them from the whole country.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
When you read that, what do.
Speaker 7 (10:57):
You think, Well, it's not cracked on its face.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Let's give you let me give you a simple example.
Speaker 7 (11:02):
Let's say you start a burger joint and you have
ten employees and you make a little bit of money
until you have this is this one one outlet and
by the way, these are the most delicious burgers in
the world. People love your burgers, Andrew. And so then
you open a second outlet, right, and now you're making
a little bit more money, and you have twenty employees,
(11:24):
and you open a third outlet. By the time you've
opened a thousand outlets, you are a billionaire.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
And by the way, this is a real life story.
It happens all the time in an out burger. It's
you know, raising Cain's chicken.
Speaker 7 (11:37):
At what point did that money all of a sudden
become unethical.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Or it didn't.
Speaker 7 (11:43):
There was one outlet, and then there were two, and
then there were three. What you're doing the way you
make a billion dollars or one hundred million dollars or
ten million dollars or anything, is you create a service
that people love, and if millions of people choose your service,
you're going to end up with a billion dollars. And
you can, you know, just try it with a chicken franchise.
(12:06):
Do you think vote your chicken has to be good?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Democrats like Pocahontas crazy Bernie AOC constantly calling for billionaires
to quote pay their share. Well, the billionaires don't want
to just give money away so the Democrats can buy votes.
Beso says that revenue is not the problem in this country.
Spending is the problem.
Speaker 7 (12:28):
Quote it all the time is you know, the wealthy
should pay their fair share. And we can argue about
what the fair share is. That's a policy debate, that's okay,
But the vilification is the thing that system distraction. And
by the way, if you really are being honest about it,
we don't have a revenue problem in this country. We
are to have the most progressive tax system in the world.
(12:52):
The top one percent of taxpayers pay forty percent of
all the tax revenue. The bottom half pay only three percent.
We have already, and it should be zero. I don't
think it should be three percent. I think it should
be zero. So we'd be making more progressive that way.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
We actually have a spending problem.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Bezos went on to say that the bottom half of
earners shouldn't have to.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Pay income tax.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Not only that, but the government should offer them an
apology for taxing them in the first place.
Speaker 7 (13:19):
The nurse and queens who makes seventy five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
A year.
Speaker 7 (13:25):
Pays twelve more than twelve thousand dollars a year in taxes.
Does that really make sense? So people talk about making
the tax system more progressive, how about we start by
having the nurse and queens not pay taxes.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Why are somebody at all?
Speaker 7 (13:43):
Why is the nurse and queens who make seventy five
thousand dollars a year, paying more than a thousand dollars
a month in taxes. That's one thousand dollars a month
that could help with rent or groceries or anything. And
so and by the way, do you know what that
all adds up to the bottom half of income earners
in this country pay only three percent of the taxes.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
It's only three percent.
Speaker 7 (14:07):
We can find three percent, so we don't have It's
a small amount of money for the government.
Speaker 6 (14:12):
And you know that.
Speaker 7 (14:13):
And really it's the more I thought about it, to me,
it's kind of absurd that we're doing this. You know,
we shouldn't be asking this nurse and Queen's to send
money to Washington. They should be sending her an apology.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
It really makes no sense.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And finally, he was asked about laying off the staff
thirty percent of the staff at the Washington Post, noting
if people won't pay for our product, it's not a
good enough product.
Speaker 8 (14:40):
Well said, talking about markets, I wasn answering about the
news market. Yeah, because you're.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Onn the Washington Post. Yes.
Speaker 8 (14:48):
And one of the critiques, by the way, and this
is this is maybe the wealth critique and everything else
is you know, we just have the company laid off
about thirty percent of its staff.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
And there's a lot of people out there.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
We said, that's super wealthy.
Speaker 8 (15:01):
He's talked about this being a public trust and something
when he bought early on. How much you care about that.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Piece of it?
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Why way people off? Why fire people? Why you stumpsonize
the business?
Speaker 7 (15:13):
If in fact, the Post needs to be a profitable
enterprise that stands on its own.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Two feet, And that's yes, it's a qction be able
to say.
Speaker 7 (15:23):
And let me tell you why, because it's a measure
of its relevance. If people won't pay for our product,
we're not doing it.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
It's not good enough product.
Speaker 7 (15:33):
It's like, you know, doing it would be like poetry
without rhyming.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
It's too easy.
Speaker 7 (15:39):
So we want it's got to be something that people
will pay for because that's a signal, right, it's a
signal that we're providing a relevant service.
Speaker 6 (15:48):
Your pay for The New York Times.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
You guys make a ton of money.
Speaker 7 (15:51):
You guys are doing very well financially, and you're providing
a service that people are willing to pay for.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
We can do that too. I guess what I told them.
Speaker 7 (15:58):
You know, when we were planning those layoffs, right, I
didn't pick who was going it laid off for which departments.
I said, follow the data, follow the data, and I said,
there's one exception to this, what k don't follow the
data on investigative reporting. The heart of the post is
investigative reporting. And guess what our newsman today, even after
(16:19):
the layoffs, is still larger.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Than what we did Watergate.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
In the pentagonicable they are telling what's called onesies, these
little things clothing for babies.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Like Mada Barry sh you're support of all these onesies.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Before this next conversation, let me say that I have
a different view than many people, and you have to
understand this view to be able to hang around our show,
otherwise it'll make you crazy. I am a believer. It
goes back to my days in debate, and I still
(16:56):
believe in debate. I still believe in the scientific method.
Look if this is how we made tires for seventy
years and somebody says, hey, I have a new way.
I'm looking at considering making tires that they could last forever,
because I've heard that it's been done before, but because
(17:17):
planned obso lescence was more profitable. They threw out that
mix and they never did it again. I'd like to
experiment with making it forever tire, and you could say, no,
no forever tires. We've always made tires that run out,
that you know, fall apart in this amount of time.
(17:38):
We don't want anybody to consider making a tire that
might last forever. We like our tire exactly the way
things are. You're a bad person for considering a new
way to make a tire. So for me, it is
interesting to undertake conversations about things that I may.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Not be there yet.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
But I want to hear people's argument, partly out of
respect for the fact that maybe they've figured out something
I haven't, partly out of respect for if what I
believe to be true is true, then exposure to falsity
will not affect my truth. I find that people are
(18:25):
afraid of new ideas, different ideas when they're not sure
that they came to their conclusion because they actually do anything.
I mean, can you imagine thinking spaghetti and meatballs is
the best thing to eat in the whole wide world.
There's nothing else that would be better. What ifs have
you eaten only that, but I decided it's my favorite.
(18:48):
But you never tried anything else. No, No, I don't
want to, and neither should. You don't try to tempt me. Well,
I find that intellectually destria. So we're gonna talk about
the issue of marijuana for a moment. This aired nearly
sixty years ago on Dragnet Joe Friday and his partner,
(19:12):
officer Bill Gannon. We're talking to a young man about marijuana. Now,
this was in.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Take a listen, and whether you think it's a good
thing or a bad thing. What this young man said
turned out to be true. Again, you don't have to
agree with it, but it did turn out to be true.
Speaker 6 (19:37):
You have been smoking marijuana.
Speaker 9 (19:39):
Marijuana is a legal I know that that's right for now.
In a couple of years, things may change, when all
the kids grow up and start wearing ties and go
into the polls. Marijuana is going to be like liquor,
packaged and tax and sold right off the shelf.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
I doubt it, mister Shipley.
Speaker 9 (19:53):
Look, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it seems
to me there must be better things for cops to
do than chase down wild rumors about something as.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
And as marijuana.
Speaker 9 (20:01):
Why don't you go after the big bad guys, the
heroin peddlers.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
I won't argue with you about them. They should be.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
Stopped, that's right. We'd like to put them out of business.
That's why we're here. What do you mean we're trying
to keep them from getting a new customer.
Speaker 9 (20:12):
There's a big difference between marijuana and hard narcotics.
Speaker 6 (20:16):
Yeah, but it's only a small step.
Speaker 9 (20:18):
And everybody who takes a drink is going to be
an alcoholic.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
We know that's not true, don't we. Let's face it, we're.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
On opposite sides of the fence, and there's nothing we
can do about it for you. If there's a log
against it, it's.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Wrong, black and white. I just don't see things that way.
That's all.
Speaker 6 (20:31):
Well, you ought to give it a try, fella. It
might keep you out of jail maybe. But we'll change
the laws.
Speaker 9 (20:35):
And even though your friend here thinks we won't believe me,
it's a new world.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Your laws is outdated as bustles.
Speaker 9 (20:41):
Laws are going to have to be changed to keep
pace with a new morality. They'll change or we'll have
to break them.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that subject.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
I grew up.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
With a very very terrified fear, you know, reafer madness.
Marijuana led people to commit murder. It made you crazy,
It was highly addictive. You'd run away from your family
and join a cult and kill everybody. Charlie Manson and
(21:20):
my mother would refer to someone who had begun smoking marijuana,
He's eat up.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
With the dope.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
And it was sort of like tattoos. The only people
who smoked marijuana were filthy, dirty dropouts, and I didn't
want to be that. And over a period of time
I was exposed to more people who I realized were
smoking marijuana or taking gummies or vaping as the technologies advanced,
(21:53):
and I found that, unlike with the smoking thing, I
found some of them to be admirable people in every
other aspect of their lives. I found them to be upstanding,
successful people. And I thought, well, how do I reconcile
that these are people that I respect and admire, and
(22:16):
yet they do this awful, evil thing that is going
to be the end of our society. And yet even
though I didn't drink till I was twenty nine, I
didn't judge anyone who drank at legally. I did judge
you if you drank under twenty one. I didn't drink,
and I judge other people who did because it's illegal,
because if there's a law, then you're supposed to follow it,
(22:40):
and if you don't follow it, you're a bad person.
Well over a period of time, I began noticing, and
that wasn't in my twenties or probably even my thirties,
maybe well into my forties that I started saying, you know,
are these these guys that smoke? I don't know that.
(23:00):
I mean, I'm sure there's some bad people who smoke pot.
I'm certain of it. And I'm sure there are some
people who use heroin that started with pot. There's also
some people use heroin started with alcohol. And one thing
I've noticed is and people in the industry tell me
that liquor companies, in liquor retailers and on premise sellers,
(23:27):
which is a bar, tell me young people don't drink
to the extent that people do today. I saw a
statistic a few days ago that said the number of people,
a number of young people who've had a drink when
they graduate one drink per week or more was for
(23:47):
the first time ever well below fifty percent, and that
in nineteen eighty it was ninety two percent. Wow, that
was a shocking statistic to me, which means I think
the number was forty seven percent and it was ninety two,
So it's almost half. The number's almost been cut in half.
(24:09):
And there are a lot of reasons for that. Young
people who said my dad died of liver cancer or
liver disease or cirrhosis, or my mom got really sick
because she drank, or somebody my family was killed with
a DWI. It's just interesting to me how it seems
(24:33):
to be the case among young people that more of
them use a marijuana product than alcohol. It doesn't do
anything for me.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
I don't like it. I don't care for it. I
don't care.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Somebody wants to do it, that's their own business. But
I do find this to be very very interesting. And
this is coming from a guy who enjoys his alcohol.
I love a beer, I love a bourbon, I love
a red wine. It's an interesting cultural shift that happens
seemingly over what a maroon.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Michael about a month ago, I told you that my
concern with the Iran conflict.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Is that most Americans don't understand why we're there. I understand, Michael,
as I said, how about every time I say most Americans,
you just automatically assume I'm not talking about you.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Everyone but you.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
The polls show it, my conversations show it. You have
to be careful that you both retain a confidence in
your own judgment but also recognize that in many ways
you have a very different judgment than other people. If
you're the millionaire next door, you drive a paid off
vehicle fifteen to twenty years old, you have savings six
(25:59):
or more time your annual salary, you have zero debt.
You're not typical. That's not a judgment call, it's a compliment.
Just understand that your assessment of what other people think
is going to be very different than how you process things,
(26:20):
for better or for worse.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
That's just a fact.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
I made the statement that the problem with Iran is
I don't think it makes the president more popular at
the polls show that.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
If you just.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Randomly ask people, and I've had people conduct this exercise,
that it goes like this. All right, so I ask
ask one of your employees, Paul, Bobby, come here, what
do you think about Iran war. You know, the President
took us in there so that Iran wouldn't get nuclear
weapons and to protect us. You think that's a good idea. Okay,
that's leading the witness. If you were to ask the
(26:53):
follow up question, just undertake this and I'd love to
hear your feedback.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
What are your.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Thoughts on the war in Iran? Just ask someone that
would know that. Most people say, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (27:05):
All right.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
The President has expended more political capital on this this
year presently than anything else, which means he is using
all the capital that he had built up from a
solid economy closing the border. Remember did anybody remember all
(27:27):
those executive orders and how popular he was. I'm not
talking about asking democrats. I'm talking about asking people that
would vote for Trump, even if they don't consider themselves Revelicans.
He has extended all of that. Now your answer might be,
I know, well, do you want to deal with the
nuclear weaponry or not? Do you want Iran to have
nuclear weapons? I want you to stop repeating the talking points,
(27:51):
and I want you to ask, if if you buy
the talking points, why doesn't anyone else? Why don't most people?
You can't ask the eight people that you have coffee
with that watch Fox News from the moment they get
home to the moment they fall asleep, get up and
do it again. That's not an accurate assessment. That's not
enough votes to win. But I have said again and
(28:12):
again that my concern is that with the president focused
on that, he's not been able to focus on domestic affairs,
which is where he is particularly good. He was perceived
as an isolationist, which made him popular with isolationists, and
he was perceived as a guy who was concerned with
the average everyday American and our plight and not sending
(28:34):
that's what dose was about. Why why was wasting all
his money? This is ridiculous, And there is the perception
that he has forgotten. Whether you like it or not,
I believe that is a perception. And I said, of
the things that people care about, one of them is
the absolute fear that AI is going to replace their
very existence. And people said government can't do anything about that.
(28:58):
Morning Brew from Wall Street Journal, He says Trump signed
a scaled back executive order on AI after weeks of
Willier won't he President Trump quietly issued an executive order
that calls for some oversight of the AI industry amid
concerns over cybersecurity threats, Politico reported. Originally Trump planned to
sign an order directing the government to review new AI
models ninety days before they released to the public, but
(29:19):
he reportedly changed his mind at the last minute, concerned
that the order would give China a competitive advantage and
demanded too much regulation after he had made deregulation a
policy priority. The order Trump signed yesterday reduces the voluntary
government review to thirty days before public release, but is
otherwise largely the same as the version he nixed last month.
The other problem we're seeing in the rapid acceleration of
(29:45):
technological advancement LI likes of which we've never seen. This thing,
this lion. Nobody can ride this thing.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Is it is.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Out there, the genies out of the bottle. Is that
with it happening so fast, any attempt to protect the technology, Well,
patents take too long. But the Patent Office, it is
now being reported again and again, has been infiltrated by
Chinese espionage. Surprise, China is spying on every aspect of
(30:18):
our daily lives, our national security, our technology, are manufacturing
our healthcare. China is not our friend China is our
outright enemy. When Fang Bang was sent to have sex
with Eric Swalwell, and by the way, some other elected
officials as well. That is yet another in a long
line of examples of where they've been caught Chinese graduate
(30:41):
students stealing technology. Here in Houston, when they stole all
the documents from the Texas Medical Center over how we
were treating COVID, and that was when they had the
fire in the internal courtyard as they locked all the
doors so they couldn't be checked to see all the
papers that they had stolen from our medical center to
(31:02):
steal our medical technology. If you make a business trip
to China, it's a widely known fact.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
If friend of.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Mine is a partner at one of the major downtown
law firms and they do business in China, and when
they go there, you have to check out a computer
that you take to China with you. You're not allowed
to take your own computer or a firm computer, because
you're allowed to VPN to the firm's database of information
and all of the contracts and everything that goes into that.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
So what do they do.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
They give you a checkout computer that's basically a dummy
computer that just works, absolutely cleaned, because they know when
you get there, they know for a fact that you're
going to be spied upon, that your technology is going
to be stolen. It's not even open for discussion. They
don't worry about that when they come here. We don't
have that worry going to any other country. Ask anybody
(31:51):
who travels around the world, and the one place that
you have to be super careful. You do have to
be concerned with Russia, but the one place that you
have to be super careful is China because it's not
whether it is when they are going to steal your technology.
They're going to counterfeit your technology. And we know this,
and yet we have allowed ourselves to become too reliant
(32:12):
on their cheap technology because what do we love but cheap.
We absolutely positively love cheap. We will sell our souls
for something cheap without any regard for the long term effects.
That's why they dump products on our market at a
loss to get us hooked on it and kill off
the local manufacturer. And then what do they do. They
(32:33):
drive the price up and people can't stop because they're
so addicted to cheap. We have a mindset as consumers
of the cheapest still possible, so that I can acquire
the most. I'm always amused when people say, my grandparents
they owned on one paycheck. We can't afford to rent
(32:56):
on two. Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole piece written about this.
It's gone viral. I see if I can find it.
That's because Grandma didn't go for sixty dollars brunches. Grandma
didn't door dash a thirty eight dollars burger to her
house last night. Grandma didn't have a twelve dollars latte
at Starbucks every afternoon and maybe one in the morning. Yeah,
there's a reason, because the only thing they spent on
(33:18):
was their house and one automobile for the entire family.
All of these things that are built in that add
up to be more than the house. Note that are
things that you just take for granted. Subscriptions. There's actually
an app now that advertises that we will go into
all your subscriptions, show you what they are, and help
(33:39):
you get out of them. Imagine that we've allowed ourselves
to get into so many subscriptions that we pay every
month that we can't seep.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Up with what they all are. Yeah, Grandma didn't do
that help us. Last, good thank you, I mean good night.
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