4-3-25 - 8am - Colorado Politburo and Tariffs

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There are so many rocket scientists out there, it's unbelievable.
This is why we have labels on stuff, because people
are too smart to figure out. You can't drink gasoline,
you can't have coffee because it's too hot. You gotta
be careful. Colorado is killing everything. I'm a fourth generation
native looking at land in Wyoming because these people are

(00:20):
crazy and they've ruined my state. You guys, have a
beautiful day.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I actually think we've become We've gotten I think worse
than California. We may not have quite the budget deficit
that California has, but in terms of just driving people away,
it really has gotten out of control. And the infuriating

(00:50):
thing about it is it's all ideological and they don't
And when it's driven by ideology, you don't care about
the practical effects. You don't understand the economic you don't
understand econ one oh one, So you just don't care.
It's all about making yourself, meaning the politbureau members making

(01:14):
themselves feel good. The stupid labeling thing, what a seriously,
so someone's going to uh now on. It'll create a
job because label makers will now have to start making
labels for all these products. But that's going to drive
up the cost of whatever the labels have to be

(01:34):
put on. So whether it's the pumps at the gas station,
or it's the lighter fluid that you buy, or depending
on your interpretation of the bill, anything that you know
is fuel related, which is everything that I know of.
What about us? I mean our consumption of air. Breathing

(02:00):
in the air that we do produces CO two, which
is a greenhouse gas, which according to them, is a
pollutant which causes Now, now remember they're focused on climate heating.
No longer climate change, global cooling, global warming. It's climate heating.

(02:22):
That's the word in the bill. Now, who the scary
thing is? I could probably think of some people who's
going to change their behavior. Who's going to pull up
to Sam's, read that label and go, well, crap, I

(02:44):
got just enough gas left in the car to get
to a dealership that sells evs, and so based on
that label, I don't want to be I'm not going
to be responsible for climate heating or health hazards. I'm
gonna drive over to a car dealership and I'm gonna
buy an EV. Well, then why don't we put the

(03:08):
label on the EV chargers, because those chargers are consuming
more likely than not, natural gas or coal. The only
thing I know that we could use that perhaps because
Polus has declared that nuclear energy is cream energy, perhaps

(03:28):
we could start building nukes in the state. But the
construction of a nuclear power plant takes fossil fuels. So
put a big ass warning label that your consumption of
electricity produced by a nuclear reactor is also contributing to
pollution and to climate heating, because well, we had to

(03:50):
use fossil fuels, you know, to pour the concrete and
do all that stuff. I just sometimes the stupidity is
truly overwhelming, and then I want you to stop play
this game with me for a moment. I don't know
what you're doing at this very moment. In fact, many

(04:11):
of you, I probably don't want to know what you're
doing at this very moment. But if you're normal, which
if you are, you're probably not listening to this program.
But if you're a normal human being, you're Let's see,
you're either already at work, or you're on your way
to work, or you've gotten the kids up and the kid,

(04:32):
you've gotten the kids to school, they've gotten on that
big diesel guzzling bus and they've driven off to school,
and you're going to go about your day doing your
you know, working from home, or if you're a homemaker,
you're going to be taking care of the house. You're

(04:52):
oh my gosh, you might be doing laundry, you're running
the dishwasher. Oh my god. No, you can't escape it.
But you're going through your normal w life. You're trying
to provide you know, clothing, shelter, food, transportation, all the
things that we need to live in a modern society.

(05:13):
Yet there are people at Colfax Broadway this very well,
it's kind of early right now, so I mean maybe
they're not there yet, but they'll eventually show up today.
And this is the crap that they come up with.
So while while they're trying to figure out how to

(05:34):
strip the taxpayer bill or rights out of existence so
they can increase your taxes even more and make this
state even more unaffordable. While they're doing that, there's another
idiot over there that's saying, hey, we got to put
labels on fuel pumps, on the gas pumps or the
lighter fluid or anything else. And then there's somebody else

(05:55):
that's so stupid that they want to have a bill
that would at courts that are making child custody decisions,
and when they do so, they have to do so
based on the best interests of the child. To consider
dead naming, misgendering and then threatening to publish material related
to an individual sex change services as a type of

(06:19):
coercive control. They define dead naming misgendering all this discriminatory
acts under the Colorado Antidiscrimination Act, which means if I
just happen to misgender somebody, I mean I'm scared. I
am honestly afraid of misgendering someone, just like I would

(06:45):
never I will never walk up to Oh, I can't
even I was gonna say, I would never walk up
to a woman and say, oh, when are you do?

Speaker 3 (06:59):
I never do that because maybe they're not doing all well.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Now I'm even concerned about Oh what if they tell
me that they're having a baby and I say, oh,
you know, congratulations to you and the dad. I don't
know what can I say, because now if this is

(07:26):
subject to the color Anti Discrimination Act, Gregan, I think
you know what, here's the money making opportunity for you
and me.

Speaker 4 (07:36):
We just need Are you sure you want to say
it on the air. What if you're going to make
money off of this, you should want to give it
up publicly right now, because this.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Is internal we just need to get because you know
how some people just really like to joke around a
little bit. You need to get somebody to misgender me,
and I'll get somebody to misgender you, and then we'll
sue iHeart the Color of Anti Discrimination Act, and then
we'll sue them for I don't know, let's be reasonable.

(08:06):
We get to take into account the thirty three and
a third that the lawyers will take on the contingency.

Speaker 4 (08:12):
Case, and then we'll split it.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah. Well then, well no, because we're gonna have two
separate cases, my case in your case, So you and
I aren't going to split anything. Uh, but you know
how we can get people to say stupid stuff around here, Well,
we can probably get somebody to misgender you and me,
and then we can sue.

Speaker 4 (08:30):
Well, I'm already working on that sexual harassment from you
always calling me a bald ahole.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Right, yeah, but truth is a defense. So but then
I think, taking it to its logical conclusion, we're suing
a company that can't even afford to fix the blinds,
or that can't even afford to come in here and
clean up the health hazard that is this studio. Never

(08:57):
mind forget that it was It was a fun lot
of experience.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (09:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Oh and by the way, we just finished the first
quarter of the year, so the revenue reports, the earnings
reports should be coming out from the publicly traded companies,
and I'll see how much money the company made.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
Last quarter.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
The bill also directs public entities that require a person
to disclose their names. Now you have to change the
form so you have an option for their legal name
and their chosen name. I'm gonna go to Michelle. I
think I'm just going to Michelle, right, So that's now
my chosen name. So anybody here that doesn't refer to

(09:45):
me as Michelle, damn. I'm calling capitalists and we're gonna
sue the you know what out of them discrimination. So
the point I want to make is this, you and
I are leading rational normal I'm thinking about that one

(10:06):
rational normal lives. We're concerned about our children, our grandchildren.
We're concerned about our elderly parents. We're concerned about you know,
you might have a mortgage payment, you've got bills to pay.
Maybe the cars getting old. You really do need a
new car, but you really can't afford one right now.
You're worried about interest rates. You're looking at your four

(10:27):
oh one k the stock. I don't know what the
market's doing today. I haven't looked because I really don't
care today, because I don't think that the market is
necessarily a reflection of what Trump did yesterday with the tariffs. So,
but you might be looking at your returns today and
how much did you make. We're doing all of those things,

(10:48):
and while you and I are doing all of those things,
there are those people out at the pollit Bureau that
are trying to come up with just really stupid ask
stuff and they're really pathetic, and I do mean pathetic.
Part is, oh, I've lost I've lost money so far today,

(11:16):
the Dow is down fifteen hundred points three point six percent,
and that's DOC is down eight down eight forty seven,
which is four point eight percent, and the SMP is
down two hundred and twenty four, which is a three
point nine percent. Oh my gosh, it's the end of
the world as we know it. So while you and

(11:37):
I are doing all of this stuff, those people in
the Colorado Polleit Bureau are running around. They got their
little name tags on so you'll know that they're a
state representative, state senator, and they're you know, they're afraid
to put stickers you know that help the Constitution on
their laptop because somebody's gonna yell at them and they're

(11:59):
coming up with this bull crap. Well, you and I
the taxpayers that keep this state afloat, well except for
the one point five billion dollars they have misspent. And
that's that's how you fix the one point five billion dollars.
You look at all the places you don't need to
be spending money, and you cut that. You do a

(12:20):
doge right here in Colorado and the one point five
billion dollars. I mean, I honestly, I honestly believe that
we could take any of MINT, any MINT members that
did that interview with Brett Bhaer from the Doze team,
and put them here at the Pollup Bureau and give
them what do you think twenty four hours forty eight

(12:41):
hours and they can come up with a one point
five billion dollars.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
We'll just look at what they were doing yesterday with
the penna Boulevard. We're gonna spend.

Speaker 6 (12:49):
Fifteen million dollars to see if expanding Pennia Boulevard is
a good idea.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
And that's kind of how they probably said it too.
Let's spend fifteen million dollars this, see it's a good idea.
If I've offended anybody at the Paula Bureau, I don't
give a rat's ass. I do not care because you
are a pathetic group of people. Pathetic. You need to

(13:24):
really get out of your little bubble and you need
to quit talking to the to the yahoos that ride
their bikes in the bike lanes in Denver. You need
to get out. You need to go out on the
eastern plains. You need to go down even to a Pueblo.
Go down to the Democrats stronghold of Pueblo and see
what kind of feedback you get. Go out to the

(13:45):
western slope. Get away from the front range from Larimer
County all the way down to Douglas County. Avoid all
the counties in between. You go to all the other counties,
maybe the exception at Picton County or Route County stay
away from, you know, or Eagle County, stay away from
or tell your ride, stay away from tell your ride
aspen veil and steamboat. Go out into where the real

(14:10):
people are and tell them what you're doing and see
what the reaction is. I think people are finally gonna
get to the point where they're no longer going to
be nice. You're gonna get yelled at, You're gonna get
screamed at. People are gonna cry. People are hurting in

(14:32):
this state, and your idea is to focus on misgendering somebody,
to put labels on, to eviscerate the taxpayer Bill of rights.
Every single thing that you are currently doing harms people,

(14:53):
but it makes you feel good, and because it makes
you feel good, you just keep pursuing the same dumbass
all of these day after day after day while you
wring your hands, and rather than trying to cut spending,
you try to increase taxes, and you try to increase
taxes by taking away the taxpayer bill rights. God, I

(15:18):
truly I God forgive me, but I do have hate
in my heart for the Poloit Bureau and for Jared Poulos.
They just are ruining what was once a wonderful state,
a wonderful state.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
The whole.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
You know, take the gun control bill. Do you think
for a New York second, a New York minute, do
you think that that bill is going to reduce crime
or stops mass shootings? Was it three or more or
four or more? And I never can remember, doesn't make
any difference. Do you really believe that it's going to

(16:02):
do that.

Speaker 4 (16:03):
Well, all the bad guys that I know who obey
the law, and.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
All the bad guys that you and I know, have
never committed murder, have never engaged in a mass shooting,
have never robbed a bank with a firearm. None of
my guns have ever committed a crime.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
None.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Well, I guess maybe they are to some degree because
I've got magazines that are outlawed in the state. But
you know who cares about that. It's just it's just depressing.
The other thing that's depressing is we voted for those people,

(16:45):
the people that are doing this stupid stuff. We voted
for it. So maybe we ought to wake up. Maybe
we able to every one of us, but slap ourselves
and say, wake up out of your stupid stupor and
stop doing that.

Speaker 5 (17:04):
Mike Johnson's going to put a ten unit police force
downtown with bikes, horses, and foot traffic to control crime. Oh,
I feel so much safer now going downtown.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Mike, I'm so excited.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
I heard they're putting a ten person police force in
downtown Denver.

Speaker 5 (17:22):
I wonder if the mayor's ever heard of the expression
a daylate.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
And a dollar short. What a moron?

Speaker 3 (17:29):
What have they been doing for the last five years?
Would you like for me to make it even worse
than what you believe it is. We used to have
matted cops downtown Denver. Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
I can clearly remember along the sixteenth Street Mall in
Low Dough even what's called Rhino. Now in all of
that area, uh, horse mounted patrols, mounted cops, so they
and the motorcycle cops, all foot patrols, they all used

(18:12):
to be there. So they took them away and then
oh the crime exploded. So now they're they're bringing them back. Ecclesiastes,
there's nothing new under the sun. But you know, people,
and obviously YouTube didn't fall for it, but other people,

(18:32):
like the idiots that the idiots that elect the people
of the Polop Bureau will look, oh look, look, oh,
Mayor Johnson is really focused on crime in downtown Denver,
and that wonderful. Look what he's doing that. I don't
know which is scarier, the fact that they think we're
that stupid, but the fact that some people are that stupid. Okay,

(18:54):
let's wade into tariffs a little bit. Let's do a
little econ one O one. First. Free trade is usually
defended by an old but I think is an outdated model,

(19:17):
and that is that countries specialize in what they can
produce most efficiently, are the best at producing, They export
the surplus and they import the other things. So trade
among nations allows global output to increase, everybody gets richer,

(19:40):
and then a government interference like a teriff for a
subsidy comes up the works. That's free trade.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
A classic example comes from David Ricardo, a nineteenth century
British economist who developed this theory of and it's called
comparative advantage. He illustrated it with probably the most famous
example of comparative advantage ever. Here's what he wrote. Even

(20:11):
though Portugal can produce both wine and cloth more efficiently
than England, both countries would benefit if Portugal specialized in
wine and England specialized in in clothing, and then they traded.

(20:34):
That was the key inside about relative productivity. It wasn't
absolute efficiency, but relative productivity, according to Ricardo, is what
should guide trade among nations. Comparative advantage, not national supremacy,
made trade like that mutually beneficial and it increased total output. So,

(20:59):
in a world where production is distributed between countries according
to that theory, comparative advantage, when you do trade interventions,
a tariff, an export subsidy.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
That's what screws up.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
The theory because when you impose a tariff, or you
impose an export, or you don't impose but you utilize
an export subsidy your country. China is a great example
of this. They subsidize their exports. Well, it's also one

(21:36):
reason why the Chinese economy sucks right now because they
don't have the money to do that, but they keep
doing it because they're just printing their own money. Does
that sound familiar. Well, when you do that, the output
globally begins to drop off because countries that try to
produce everything themselves instead of specializing, end up treading their

(21:58):
surplus and using the proceed to import what they lack.
Production in modern in this modern era is not guided
by comparative advantage. Instead, it's dictated by industrial policy. You

(22:23):
take China as an example, but you could also take
Germany or South Korea. They've all embraced forms of predatory mercantilism.
What do they do? Will they use subsidies, trade barriers,
they manipulate their currency. They actually China is the worst
at this state directed capital to dominate global markets. So

(22:49):
China says, we want to dominate electric vehicles. Let's just
take electric vehicles. So what do they do. They mass
produce extraordinarily cheap evs that are not the price of
which is not reflected in the true cost of manufacturing
and distribution of those electric vehicles, because China subsidizes the

(23:12):
majority of the costs of the production of those vehicles.
So there's no free trade. Industrial policy really skews the
entire global market. They're playing an entirely different game. They're
not playing comparative advantage. They're playing industrial policy trying to

(23:32):
reach an economic advantage. Now you've got to understand that,
to understand that, all the objections that you're going to
hear about tariffs simply don't hold true today. The idea
that tariffs decrease efficiency assumes you know this comparative advantage

(23:56):
that assumes that the world's operating under the conditions of
free exchange between equal partners. But when our trading partners
are not maximizing efficiency but instead maximizing dominance, the whole
free trade logic argument completely collapses. There's not really free
trade between US and China. China's subsidizing stuff just so

(24:20):
is I mean, just to be fair, so is Japan, Germany,
South Korean a bunch of or other trading partners. When
you have predatory mercantilism and you allow free access to
our markets that can actually reduce global output. You know
why because it drives efficient domestic producers out of business

(24:45):
because they can't compete. Our domestic producers cannot compete with
the subsidized producers in those other countries. And so what
does it do? You end up having a concentration of
production and politically favorite industries abroad, and often that means

(25:05):
lower productivity or higher environmental or human costs. Again, China
is a great example of that. China doesn't give a
round test about the environment, nor do they care about humans.
So why do you think that there is such cheap
labor in China, such a huge division between the I

(25:27):
mean they're I mean there is a middle class, but
it's dwindling in China. But the wealthy get wealthy because
the government subsidizes their production, which allows them to lower
their costs, which fulfills the Chinese Communist Party idea of
domination in a particular economic sector, and e these are

(25:47):
the are the best example of that, or for that matter,
solar panels or the other all the other stuff that
we feel like, oh, we got to buy that because
we have to have. They play on our stupidity about renewables,
and then they dominate the materials necessary for solar panels
or wind turbines or evs or anything else, and that

(26:10):
allows them to dominate the market. There is no free trade,
so that ends up that predatory mercantilism. That industrial policy
ends up producing trade imbalances. And when you have a
trade imbalance, what happens all you have to do is
look at this country. It hollows out the productive base

(26:32):
of the countries that try to play by.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
The old rules.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
You know, how many times have you heard about Oh
wait a minute, you mean India is imposing I have
to go look at the charts. But India is imposing
let's just say, a ninety percent tariff on stuff from them,
but we're not. What does that do? That shifts production

(27:00):
out of our country because they're not only subsidizing it,
but then imposing huge tariffs which we pay. So instead
of trade being mutually beneficial to the parties involved in
the trade, go back to the Ricardo the economists example

(27:20):
cloth for wine, it becomes a one sided extraction of
industrial capacity and long term economic potential. We run deficits,
China run surpluses. We consume they produce. That's not comparative advantage.
That's strategic dependence. And I think the classic example of

(27:42):
that is pharmaceuticals. We went through that during COVID when suddenly, oh,
you mean we can't get these drugs? Well, why, Well,
because we don't produce them. They're produced because of this
comparative advantage idea being bastardized by the industrial policy and
the currency manipulation in China, and so there is no

(28:04):
free trade and that has huge implications for the policy makers.
It means that trade restrictions and tariffs can be used
by US to offset those industrial policies of other countries.
So far from reducing global efficiency, you can actually increase it.

(28:26):
Why or how might be a better how, because you're
going to relocate production away from the distortions they're imposed
by the bureaucrats in Beijing or Berlin or Tokyo or
New Delhi or wherever you relocate. That way, you located
away from them and back toward genuinely productive firms or

(28:50):
even other countries or regions. So Liberation Day yesterday, the
name for the launch of these new tariffs, I think
is for the uninitiated, is probably the day that we
stopped pretending that global trading systems resembles that comparative advantage

(29:12):
textbook model that everybody thought we were living by the
imposition of tariffs is not rejecting. It's not about rejecting trade.
They're about rejecting the illusion that trade under these conditions
that we live under today is fair efficient. It's not
fair and it's not efficient. So if we really want

(29:36):
to revive American manufacturing, and again I caution you, it's
not going to happen overnight. If we want to rebuild
strategic industries, look at what's happening. Well, let me explain
next about Europe, because I think Europe is a great
example of this.

Speaker 5 (29:54):
Regulations don't raise the cost of goods.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Tariffs do. Everybody knows that.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
So what do you think about Europe for a moment?
So Europe has completely just not completely, yes, hyperbole. Europe
has decimated its industrial base. Why do you think NATO's
falling apart? NATO is falling apart because they have outsourced

(30:25):
all of their arms manufacturing basically to US. Now some
other countries, yes, the Israelis and others, but primarily to US.
So they have no industrial base by which if if suddenly,
you know, if Putin decides to go into Western Europe,

(30:47):
unless we come to their defense. They don't have enough manpower,
they don't have enough equipment, and they don't have the
industrial base by which to ramp up quickly and start
producing the armaments, the missiles, the tanks, the drones, whatever
they need to counter a Putin invasion. And part of

(31:10):
that is because, much like this country, they started focusing
on social welfare programs, and then with the adoption of
NAFTA and then the subsequent free trade agreement, I forget
what it's called the North not NAFTA, but the other one.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
And I'll come to me in a minute.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
We've essentially done the same thing. We've outsourced our manufacturing
of many of the products that we could efficiently produce
in this country because we have the abundance of fuel
and energy to do so, and we have a highly educated,
trained workforce that could also do so. But you can't

(31:57):
even with what we have, we can compete against China, Germany, Japan,
South Korea and some of the others because of their
industrial policy. It's the industrial policy that is killing us.
So there is no free trade and we've actually been
in a trade war for a long time, we just

(32:20):
haven't admitted it. Now. Are the tariffs going to be disruptive?
Probably so, long term remains to be seen. Will it
have the intended effect? Who knows. And as somebody on
the text line said, there are other agendas at play
at the same time. The entire world economy everywhere, not

(32:48):
trying to be a doomsdayre here. But China's economy sucks.
Ours sucks, but not as much as China's does. But
we're in depth. Some thirty plus trillia dollar too virtually
impossible to pay off. We have entitlement programs, they're on
the verge of insolvency, and without drastic changes which we

(33:10):
don't seem to have the political will to fix, are
going to cause huge economic upheavals. Europe pretty much lost
social welfare states, the Nordic countries, the continent itself, the
United Kingdom, they're all just turning into craphole countries. And

(33:31):
they have no base by which to start changing. At
least we do. We have vacant plants, we've got facilities,
we've got the energy, we've got the human capital, we've got.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
All of that.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
But what if all of this was and don't be
turned off by the term, but what if this was
all part of a great reset of not just this ecology,
but the world becomes. By simply imposing tariff has a
negotiating to it. Wow, that's some really long strategic thinking.