3-28-25 - 6am - RTD Spending Plan and Bret Baier with the DOGE Team

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good Friday morning, Michael and Dragon. Michael, I hope the
girls are looking forward to that walk an hour earlier today,
because I'm looking forward to having Dragon Ragbeard do taxpay
relief shots again.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Well, I am too, and he he's such a whimp. Oh.
I was really nervous about it last week, you know,
because I really didn't have you to lean on in
case you I'm bumbled around somewhere. I said, let's find
you can you can do it again today and and
he absolutely refuses to do so, just such a whimp.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
I did save one from last week because one of
the officers was getting sued who had shot one of
the bad guys. So I was just curious as to
your thoughts on that.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Oh what you were curious about my thoughts on something?
Only because you who never pays any attention to anything
I say in the first place, Suddenly you're interested in
my thoughts on something.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Just because you're a lawyer. Not one of the good ones,
but just because you're a lawyer.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
And then, of course I wake up to this text
message good number twenty eight fourteen, Mike, did you load
the podcast again today? Because the talkbacks are first?

Speaker 3 (01:15):
I forgot to hit publish on the talkbacks. So thankfully
Alexa did send me an email going there's no talkbacks.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
It's like, oh oops.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
So then I just hit published and that's just how
it orders itself, because that was the last one that
I hit publish on.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
So and in Dragon's defense, that's an easy thing to do,
is to for it to hit publish. And two it
is a pain in the ass on that particular platform
to then you you just simply cannot gol rearrange them correct.
I mean, there is a way to do it, but
you have to in essence delete everything correct and then

(01:49):
to do it all over again correct. And it's not
worth it. And if and if you're life, let me
just say this, let me just let me just goea
and piss off the audience at six o' eight in
the morning.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
That's the worst thing to happen to you, exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Bill number twenty eight fourteen. If your life is so
pathetic that the fact that the talk backs loaded first
when you downloaded the podcast, and that threw your entire
day off at when was this at five twenty eight yesterday,
get a life.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
I might start uploading them out of hou because now
huh must start uploading them out of order just because now.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
No, don't do that. Don't do it because because I
find it. Some of the podcasts I occasionally listen to
they do the same thing, and I'll be because they'll
have them divided up into like we do, you know,
we do, we do ours hour by.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Hour, right, They're very easily labeled.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
You know, it's the date, the hour, and then the
topic or topics.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Right. But when you like when I had mindset up
automatically download, huh, Like the one the International when I
listen to all the time, is automatically downloads every day. Well,
sometimes he will do a series of four episodes on
one topic, but it will accidentally get mixed up, and
so I'll get episode two, four, three and one downloaded,

(03:11):
you know, in that order, and I'll start and I'm
listening to the first one thinking that's the first one,
and then I'm listening to the second one. Then I
have to go look at my phone and realize, oh crap,
these are these are completely out of order.

Speaker 4 (03:22):
First world problem.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
And you know what we have. We have men and
women that have fought and died for this country so
that we can have first world problems and because and
we need to respect them and they expect us. I
watched some old fart. I forget, he's over one hundred

(03:45):
years old. He's a World War two vet, and excuse me,
I assume as for this this season he was he
was throwing out the first pitch and it almost brought
tears in my eyes. So some of the team members.
I think this was maybe in San Francisco. I forget
where it was, but uh, he was in a wheelchair

(04:08):
and they walked over to get him. Uh the picture
I forget who the picture, Strumensky or somebody. I forget
who the picture was. And they walk over and uh,
you know, they they're leaning down talking to him, and
he's talking about he makes some comment which was so cute.
He goes, you know, I've been to Europe. And I'm thinking,

(04:28):
I bet you had been to Europe. I bet you've
been all over the world. And the picture goes, you know,
I've never been to Europe, and the old fart's like,
you know, you really need to go sometime. I think
I'm going again, you know, And I'm thinking he's one
hundred and two years old and he's going back to Europe.
And then he's talking. He's just just a sweet old
man and talking about he really doesn't want to flub

(04:51):
the pitch. And I'm thinking, you're one hundred and two
years old. We don't care if you just.

Speaker 4 (04:56):
Drop the ball, the ball leaves your hands.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah, we got chair. You're there's no way you can
flub this unless you just refuse to even drop the
ball out of your hand. It's not gonna be a flub.
And then they take him and I'm not quite sure.
Are they gonna roll him out in the wheelchair? Is
he gonna pitch it from the wheelchair? No, he wants
to walk, dude. It's seriously, get him up out of

(05:20):
the wheelchair. And they walk him over, and of course
they got him as they got him about as close
to the pitchers mound as you can get without actually
getting onto the pitcher pitchers mound, and they they're holding
him and he takes the ball and he does he
launches the ball and it, I mean, it doesn't go
that far, but at least it flies through the air

(05:42):
a little ways before it, you know, hits the ground.
So all all I can think about is that guy's
got so many stories. That guy has watched and said,
what do you think he thinks about what's going on
in the world today? And then I thought, maybe he's
not paying any attention to what's going on in the

(06:02):
world today, because if he's paying attention to what's going
on in the world today, he may not he might
have been able to throw that pitch even further and
probably hit the picture and be fouled out an RT.
This happened Tuesday. I I held off on this story

(06:27):
for a while because I wanted to see if anything
else broke about it, and I can't really find anything
else about it. So here it goes. This is the
story I read. Came from the Denver Gazette or somewhere
dragging hand me this one yesterday. This one comes from
the Denver Post. Colorado Public Transit advocates so self interested

(06:48):
People NGOs the Colorado Public Interest Research Group, which is
a left leaning, you know, think tank. I have decided
that we've got to do more to get you out
of your cars. We just can't have you driving around.
We can't have you exercising that kind of independence of

(07:11):
going where you want to go, when you want to go,
staying as long or as little as you want to
stay and then getting up and getting your car and leaving.
We can't have that. And you're you're destroying I mean,
you're probably you know, today, you will probably emit some
CO two. You will probably emit some other carbon monoxide

(07:34):
in addition to CO two. You'll do horrible things to
the environment. And we got to stop it. We got
to get you into electric buses so that we can push,
you know, so we can push all the emissions off
onto the eastern Plains of Colorado somewhere, because you know,
the only thing out there are rabbits, pheasant, quail, and
a bunch of dumb ass farmers. So we'll just we'll

(07:55):
push all the emissions out there to them, because nobody
cares about them. They don't do anything productive. I mean,
tell me what a farmer does that's productive, you know,
I mean they grow wheat, soybean, cattle, you know, pigs,
chickens or whatever. But who cares Because I get my
stuff at the grocery store, so I don't need no
damn farmer to produce a cattle for me, because you know,

(08:17):
I tell every one of the real steaks last night,
and so I ran the whole paycheck because I knew
it was getting paid today, so I thought, well, I'll
blow my whole paycheck on a steak from Whole Foods.
Oh maget, it was so good. So see, I got
mine the whole paycheck. I don't need some damn ranch
or farmer to provide me because I can just go
to the grocery store. Colorado Public Transit Advocates on Tuesday

(08:39):
and veiled a plan requiring four point two billion dollars
because the goal is to get this done by twenty
thirty five, ten years from now. Four point two billion dollars.
The story I read had it calculated out was going
to cost US four hundred and twenty five million dollars
a year. Four hundred and twenty million dollars a years.

(09:00):
That story, he said, frequency they want to change. They
want to boost the ridership of Metro Denver's RTD buses
based on a simple principle. Run them every fifteen minutes. Now,
just let me tell you what they say.

Speaker 4 (09:21):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Frequency is the thing people want that brings ridership. This
is the best strategy if we want more people using
RTD services. It's all about not needing a schedule. Once
you have service, every fifteen minutes. You're in a situation
where people know there will be a train or bus

(09:42):
coming soon. Now, they're not running trains or buses every
fifteen minutes now, and they can't even meet the goal
now of having listen to it again once you have
service every fifteen minutes. If you're in a situation where
people know there will be a train or bus coming

(10:06):
soon every fifteen minutes, how often does the a line
break down going out to the airport. How long does
the line you know, going to and from the Federal
Center breakdown? How many stories do we hear about people
that are commuting from up north who have to get up,

(10:26):
you know, at you know, three thirty or four thirty
in the morning in order to be at work at
eight am because they can't rely on the bus or
the train or anything else. The Alliance to Transform Transportation,
you think they got any invested interest here. You think
that the Alliance to Transform Transportation might have some people involved,

(10:48):
you know, have some relationship to some consulting firms, maybe
some engineering firms, or somebody else that you know they
might make some money off this. Always follow them up.
They want Colorado lawmakers to embrace the plan. Now. Remember,
right now, Colorado is struggling, and I do mean struggling

(11:11):
in every horrible sense of that word, trying to fill
a one point five billion dollar budget deficit because everything
that they plan to spend money on, they spent more
money than they planned. And all the freebies they gave out,
you know, to illegal aliens, or to subsidize housing, or
to whatever it was that we give away in Colorado,

(11:32):
it turned out that, hmmm, the principle that you subsidize something,
you get more demand for it because people think it's free,
so they come and get it. They can't they can't
fill a one point five billion dollar budget hole. Yet
here are these a holes wanting to spend four hundred
and twenty million dollars a year to enable RTD to
meet a target that would more than double the number

(11:54):
of routes where buses arrive at a fifteen minute frequency.
The coalition includes environmental, civil rights, disability rights, energy efficiency, bicycling,
and union worker groups. RTD directors of the past year
committed to restoring fifteen minute frequencies on thirty four routes

(12:17):
by next year, part of the agency's efforts to regain
writer's laws since the pandemic, RTD's overall ridership has decreased
from one hundred and five million in twenty nineteen to
sixty five million currently. It would increase the number of
miles robuses run frequently from four hundred ninety miles to

(12:39):
more than eleven hundred miles, and extend the fifteen minute
frequency for early morning, evening and weekend service, so not
all day long, just you know, early morning and then
in the evening and the weekend service. You know, the
one problem this does not solve other than how you
go to finance and how are you going to pay
for it? What kind of rates are you going to
have to charge? What are the fayirs going to be
to to cover four hundred and twenty million dollars a

(13:02):
year plus the capital investment? How long do you think?
How long do you think I was thinking about? They
were showing the the Franciscott Key Bridge in Baltimore. How
long has it been since that bridge collapsed? Do you
know that the wreckage of the collapsed bridge is still
in the harbor. They hadn't gotten they hadn't even demolished

(13:25):
the bridge yet. They haven't even started construction yet, and
as somebody was pointing out, And I'm not advocating that
we do this, but you know, the Communist would have
built ten bridges by now, and we can't even tear
down the one that's already collapsed. How long do you
think it would take OURTD to capitalize and then you know,

(13:46):
get manufactured, purchased, delivered service, hire the drivers and then
actually implement this. They couldn't do it to save their butts.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Not to mention the damage that would cause the roads
themselves is bus is they're heavy and running, then that
frequently is going to damage the road much more quickly.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
And I'm sure because they'll want to be environmental friendly,
they'll either be a electric or run on clean burning
fossil fuel called natural gas. So we'll need more natural
gas in the state too. But Excel Energy is taking
up all the natural gas right now and shutting down
coal plants. So have you seen your electric bill lately?

(14:28):
Now here's where you finally get to the end of
the story, and the first sentence of the last paragraph
says funding is the challenge. RTD's record high one point
two billion dollar budget primarily relies on sales tax collected

(14:49):
from Metro Denver residents in the service area. So you
know as well as I do, because I see it
on the on the receipts, you know, RTD tax, you know,
two percent or whatever happen happens to be. And it
irritates me every time I see it, because one, I
don't use it, and I don't care if you use it.
I don't want to pay for it. But here's the

(15:10):
one problem that everyone seems to ignore. Let's say that
they actually could get to a bus running to every
bus stop within fifteen minutes, you still have the last
mile of service. You still have getting me from the
bus stop to this front door. I don't know where

(15:36):
the nearest. In fact, Dragon, I don't know that I've
ever seen a an RTD bus. I've seen them go
down Bellevue, I've never seen an RTD bus come up
and down Monaco.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
And there is stop on the bridge on Union, but
on oh that's.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Right on the bridge on Union, which is even further
away than the train station. It's to the east of
the train station. Yeah, so I could get off the train,
take the bus to Union, or walk over to Union
and then take the bus that would probably take me

(16:15):
over to Oh I don't know university, and then I
could hike back, or I could just jump off the
bus when it gets near Monaco and Bellevue. Jimminy, that's right,
Tuck n' roll. Raising taxes, if voters decide they want
better transit, could be an option, said Jill, looking toward

(16:36):
director of the Denver Streets Partnership, who helped conduct the study.
When we can't count on federal funding, being able to
generate local revenue sources that we can count on is
that much more important. It'll take time to increase service
to this level. That's why it's important that we start
investing today, that we start spending today. I saw the

(16:57):
most fascinating interview last night. I'm not that big of
a fan of Brett Bear. I don't think he's all that.
Does that irritate you when I do that up the
paper like that? Oh that's awesome. It's it's you know,
it's it's ambient noise. You gotta give you the feeling
of what's going around the studio.

Speaker 4 (17:17):
And why didn't we give you the When I was downstairs.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
One of the really fun things was they would tell
a joke or say something funny.

Speaker 4 (17:25):
They would throw a pen at the blinds, and.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
The noise that the blinds make was it was a
very satisfying noise. As he hunts down a pen, dah Ittbert.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
Just throw it at the blind Yeah, just as hard
as I can.

Speaker 4 (17:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Will they be able to hear it?

Speaker 4 (17:45):
You could downstairs.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
It was a much smaller studio than what we got here,
so you may have to angle your mic slightly.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
How's how's that ure?

Speaker 4 (17:53):
Sure? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (17:57):
Is that it?

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (17:58):
That's a satisfying noise.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
And that's what makes you and Rick and Kathy happy.

Speaker 4 (18:01):
Hey, we did it for years.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
You guys are very easily satisfied. True, very easily satisfied.
Pass how many times the people who run this out
of fit have took a train or a bus or etc.

Speaker 5 (18:25):
And did they get stabbed while.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
They were on it? Yeah? Some people point out that
they won't They certainly won't ride it because of safety
concerns in addition to all the other concerns. So, as
I said yesterday, I I'm down in my office and
I'm doing show prepp and putting around doing stuff, and

(18:47):
I come upstairs and Tamers Scott Fox News On and
Brett Bear Special Reports coming on and they're going to
interview Elon Musk. Brett Bear is Elon Musk and members
of the Doge team. The I would say the what

(19:10):
would I call them the management team for lack of
a better phrase, it's the most amazing thirty minutes of television.
And I'm not a huge fan of Brett Bear, but
nonetheless it's some of the it's some of the most
amazing television that I've watched. Because here is a group

(19:31):
of and I forget exactly how many let me see
if I can find a screenshot here real quickly of
how many people.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
See there were eight of them, including Elon? How many
eight including Elon?

Speaker 2 (19:45):
Including Elon in which they're discussing what they're doing, and
to Brett Bear's credit and to the credit of the team,
the Doge team, they answer the questions in such a
way that it should be clear who those who want

(20:06):
to hear that what they're doing is simply well, it's
mind boggling, and it's mind boggling. Now I'm not surprised
by what they're finding. Yes, occasionally there will be something
that I'm like, wow, that's probably bizarre. That one of
the most bizarre things I've heard but understanding, for example,

(20:30):
that when the Department of Hoole mand Security was created,
it was supposed to be budget neutral. Now I remember
laughing out loud of that you cannot combine twenty two
different departments and agencies into one and try to do
a consolidation that is not going to cost you additional
money to simply do the consolidation. Or you can't create

(20:55):
out of whole cloth an entirely new subdivision, in this case,
the Transportation Security Administration the TSA, and somehow expect that
to be budget neutral unless in order to if you're
going to enforce the budget neutrality mantra the standard, then

(21:16):
that means you have to take the budgets of all
the other twenty two departments and agencies and you have
to strip some money out of them in order to
create this new subdivision called the TSA. So many of
the things that they talked about, I'm not surprised that

(21:36):
they're finding the kinds of things they're finding, because even
within my little corner of DHS, there was duplication, There
was waste, there was fraud, there was abuse, and we
tried to correct it every time that we could. I
would often run up to Capitol Hill and point out
that listen, this program that you're having us doing is
completely ineffective. Even the Inspector General has pointed out that

(21:59):
it's any affective. We want to eliminate it, and I
would get Mitch Daniels over at OMB, the director of
the OMB in the White House, to help me kill
the program. Sometimes we succeeded, sometimes we didn't. Sometimes even
conservative members of Congress would be objecting, No, it's to
you know, I can't be seen cutting that well, you know,

(22:20):
then you're then you're a whimp. You're not. You don't
care about the country. You care more about getting elected
and getting power than you do about actually caring for
the country, which is what you're mouth to be doing.
I want to work our way through this interview because
I know many of you were probably at work. Many
of you haven't seen it. Even if you have, it's

(22:42):
worth hearing again.

Speaker 5 (22:44):
How much do you think you've achieved so far?

Speaker 6 (22:47):
Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars,
so from a nominal deficit of two trillion to track
cut desit in half two one trillion, or looked at
it in toilet. Federal spanning to drop Thattle spending from
seven trillion to six trillion. If you want to reduce
the now.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
That is a worthy goal. And I will say something
critical here. We're trying to cut from Biden levels spendings
post COVID, which threw on additional three or four trillion dollars.
We ought to just boom whatever that was, including the

(23:28):
Inflation Reduction Act all those other programs. Trump should just
challenge Congress while we have majorities. I know in some
cases in the Senate in particular, might be difficult to do,
but do the effort. You can't cheer on your football
team if your team's not playing, if if if your foot,

(23:52):
you know, yeah, you can go buy a jersey, you
can go. You can go, buy a Maga hat, you
can go, do whatever. But if your team's not on
the field, you're not. Are you really cheery? I mean,
you're supporting your team. I support the team, but I
want the team to be on the field. And in
this case, it's not just Donald Trump, it's not just

(24:13):
the White House. That is not just doge. I want
Congress involved in this too. And one thing Congress could
be doing to help the president is rescinding, revoting on
things like the Inflation Reduction Act and eliminating them. That

(24:34):
would help Elon Musk cut even.

Speaker 6 (24:37):
Deeper spending by eliminating waste, and Ford reduced to spending
by fifteen percent, which.

Speaker 4 (24:42):
Seems really quite achievable.

Speaker 6 (24:44):
The government is not efficient and there's a lot of
wasting forward, so I feel confident that fifteen percent reduction
can can be done without affecting any.

Speaker 4 (24:57):
Of the critical government services.

Speaker 7 (24:59):
I'm going to talk all they can it better and
talk to all the guys here about the specifics. But
for you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found out
in this process?

Speaker 4 (25:08):
The share amount of waste and for it in the government.
It is astonishing, it's mind blowing.

Speaker 6 (25:13):
Just we routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars a
more casually.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
We casually come across waste of just a billion dollars
or more. Just just skimming the surface, we find tranches
of billions of dollars that are just a complete waste.
And the other thing that you'll notice as we go

(25:40):
through this is these are really smart, rich, successful businessmen.

Speaker 4 (25:51):
Volunteering their time.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Volunteering their time. One guy in particular you'll hear about
in a minute. Left Houston running three or four businesses,
and of course, infamously, his wife told him much like
my wife told me one time, Oh, this is a
fantastic opportunity. You got to You've got to go do this.
And so he did. He packed up and went to

(26:14):
DC to help Elon do this. I have to confess
I get a little I get a little fanboy action
going on here. I watched these gentlemen and I was like, this,
this is when they represent the epitome of success. They

(26:38):
are a bunch of nerds. They're truly nerds. They look
like nerds, they talk like nerds, they are nerds. But
yet they're doing something incredibly patriotic, and they're doing something
that we've all bitched and moaned about and now they're
actually doing something. So I'm a little reticent to complain

(27:01):
about the lack of congressional involvement. I'm a little hesitant
to even complain about Trump doing even more in terms
of slashing and you know, cutting and doing everything. But
this is more than we've ever gotten before. So let's
savor this moment, yet recognize that they still have a

(27:23):
huge hill to climb.

Speaker 4 (27:24):
Too okay.

Speaker 6 (27:27):
For example, like the simple survey that was literally ten
questions survey that you could do it with survey monkey rush
about ten thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
A ten question survey that you could go on to
SurveyMonkey dot com and you could do this for about
the same survey they did, considering the number of surveys
that went out, would cost you about ten thousand dollars
on survey monkey and you will get exactly the same
information from survey monkey that they got.

Speaker 6 (27:57):
Was the comment was being charged almost a billion dollars
for that for just to survey a billion dollars for
a simple online survey do you like the National Park?
And then they've pitched me no feedback loop for what
would be done with that survey, so that so we're
just going to nothing because they can say.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Don't cost over that. So they did. They spent a
billion dollars on something that they could have done for
ten thousand dollars, but then it was a closed loop.
They got the information, did nothing with the information. You know,
I see that sometimes in this business. They do all

(28:35):
of this survey and analysis and we get Nielsen and
everything else, and they hide it. They keep it close
to their vest It's like, you know, it would be
helpful for the people who are making the product to
be able to see the metrics so that we can
adjust and do things that would help improve the achievement

(28:59):
of the metrics or surpass the metrics. But no, it's
just a closed loop. And so what they're pointing out here,
I think it oftentimes exists in corporate America too.

Speaker 7 (29:10):
You technically are a special government employee and you're supposed
to be one hundred and thirty days. Are you going
to continue past that or do you think that's what
you're going to do or I think.

Speaker 6 (29:23):
We will accomplish most of the work required to reduce
the def sit by a trillion dollars within that time frame.

Speaker 7 (29:29):
So in that timeframe, one hundred and thirty days, and
the process is a report at some point at one
hundred days.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
Not really a report.

Speaker 6 (29:37):
We are cutting the waste and PROD in real time,
So every day that passes, our goal is to reduce
the waste and prode by four billion dollars a day
every day, seven days.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
A week, four billion dollars a day, every day, seven
days a week, and get to a trillion dollars within
that one hundred and thirty day period. You know, just
the fact that they have a roadmap of and a
metric by which they judge what they're doing is more
than's ever been done before. One thousand percent more that's

(30:08):
ever been done before.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
So, Michael, now you wonder why those blinds in your
office are broken.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
It's because people like you are throwing stupid pens at
it to stop it.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
They won't fix it if you keep breaking it.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
If it's already broken, baby, if it's already broken, what's
the difference, Well, what's the difference. And the good news
is the engineer came in and measured you know, at
this rate, at this rate, I'll be dead and buried
or cremated. But by the time they actually get the
blinds placed, he did.

Speaker 4 (30:45):
Say it's an unusual size.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
So they can't just go to the home depot and
get one off the shelf. So they've got to talk
with Herbie and get approval.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Do you know that maybe this has changed? But there
was a time when you could go to home depot
and you could they have a little machine and that
you could pick out your blinds and they would trim
them to the exact size. That you need, Oh, no charge.
They'd open the box, take it out, you show them
the measurements, and they would trim both in so that

(31:13):
Matt just watched.

Speaker 4 (31:14):
Even the mechanism up top yep. Huh yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Well, I mean you couldn't take, you know, a six
foot wide blind and narrow it down to two feet,
but you could trim a couple of inches off each
side to make it for an odd for an odd
sized window. As he stares at the window.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Well I could see that the little plastic slats. Yeah,
that's pretty damn easy. But that the whole mechanism up too.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Yeah, they sliced right through the mechanism. Huh yeah, right, yeah.
I don't know if they still do that or not,
but there were there was some brand of blinds, you know,
generic blinds that you could buy that could go do
that because and the reason I know this is because
we had an odd sized window at the end, disclosed
lope that we can never find, and the guy was like,
well here, let me just trim it for you. Neat yeah,

(32:05):
and boom, but right in there, In fact, that blind's
still there. Still, in fact, that blind has been there
for at least ten years now, Granted, we're not there
every single day, and we don't have people like Mark
Meger and Dan Kaplis and you know Ryan Shuling always
grabbing at things and just you know, tearing them apart.
But you know not that those guys would ever do

(32:26):
anything like that. No, they would never do anything back
to Doge, that's.

Speaker 4 (32:31):
How fall we are succeeding.

Speaker 7 (32:33):
And I'm going to talk to the specifics, but there
obviously are Doge critics who are reading all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 5 (32:39):
Obviously lawmakers on the.

Speaker 7 (32:41):
Other side of the aisle are attacking you, and they
characterize the approach is this fire ready and then aim,
and how do you approach that?

Speaker 5 (32:52):
How do you respond to that?

Speaker 6 (32:55):
Well, I do agree that we actually want to be
careful in the cuts. So we want to measure twice
if not thrice.

Speaker 4 (33:01):
And cut once. And actually that is our approach.

Speaker 6 (33:07):
They may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but
it is anything about that which is not saying that
we don't make mistakes. If we were to approach this
with the standard of making no mistakes at all, I
would be like saying someone in baseball's going to bat
a thousand as impossible. So when we do make mistakes,
we correct them quickly and we move on.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Some people say, you know, there was just something about that.
This struck me as that needs to be the attitude
of more of us. We're doing the best we can.
We're working under intense pressure, intense criticism from people that
astonishingly don't want waste, fraud and abuse cut and sometimes

(33:51):
we make mistakes. We correct them as soon as we
discover them, and then we move on. We fix it,
we move on. Who's going to bitch about that? Oh, Democrats?
Of course I.

Speaker 7 (34:04):
Shouldn't take a rocket scientist, Steve Davis.

Speaker 5 (34:07):
You are a rocket scientist.

Speaker 7 (34:10):
It used to be yeah, and now essentially you're the
chief operating officer of doche day to day operations. Fair
to say, yeah, part of part of the dose team.
So how did you end up here? What's the biggest challenge?

Speaker 5 (34:23):
You see?

Speaker 2 (34:24):
There was something about that that I want to comment
on too, So bears trying to, you know, get him
to admit that he's the CEO of this team, and
he's like, yeah, well, I'm a member of the team.
This is the most flat one of the most flattest organizations,
which is why it's successful, because oh, I'm sure all

(34:45):
of these guys have egos. Don't get me wrong, they're billionaires,
but and they and they've been very successful that they're
mission orient totally mission orient, something you rarely see in
the government.