05-19-25 - *FULL SHOW* Gov Polis in Studio; CA Lunatic

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I hope you had a wonderful weekend. I have no
idea where my weekend went. I have no idea what
I did this weekend. Oh I know what I did.
I know one thing I did. So Christian and I
had plans to go to the Colorado Symphony Orchestra down
by the you know, Denver Performing Arts Center, Denver Center
for the Performing Arts, and Kristin got really bad allergies

(00:24):
and her nose was just running so much that she
just didn't want to go out. She just wanted to
stay in our room where her nose doesn't run as much.
And so I got in touch with a well there
was a friend of mine actually coincidentally texted me and said,
you want to go for a burger tonight? And I said,
well maybe, but I've got tickets for this Brahms and
Beethoven at you know, downtown.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Do you want to go with me? Figuring he'd say no.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Because not that many people have interested in classical music.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
These days, but he said yes.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
So my friend and I went and saw a symphony
and so that was that was what I did.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
And I think I.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Think classical music is really it's not going to replace
where I mean it for a long time. It's been
something I listened to, but only five percent of my
listening or three percent of my listening. And I might
increase it a little bit, but it's never going to
get to ten percent of my listening. But I do,

(01:21):
but I do really enjoy it, and I think it's
a worthwhile thing for people to add into their lives
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
And most people have some kind.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Of streaming service these days, so even if you don't
know anything about classical music, you should be able to
just go on Spotify or Title or Cubas or whatever
it is that you use and just type in you know, classical,
and maybe you get some kind of assortment of classical music.
And I think it's worth a try. All Right, we've
got a ton of stuff to do on today's show.

(01:48):
You heard in my conversation with Gina and Intrepid Chadbower
a few minutes ago that Governor Poulis will be joining
the show two hours from now, just after eleven am.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
I will take listener quest by text at that time.
Do not send me.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Your questions for the Governor right now, because normally what
happens is over the course of the show you get
I get enough texts that they get pushed off the
screen and then I'll lose them. So don't send me
questions for the governor until I have the governor on.
Did I put my trash out? Yes, but not today.
I did put my trash out, but I'm not telling
you when. So what else. I'm going to mention this

(02:25):
briefly now, and I'm going to go into it in
more detail later.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
The Dow is only.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Down twenty points right now. It was down three or
four hundred points this morning. The S and P is
down a little bit more than the DOO. I'm not
sure what's up in the Dow right now. The thing
with the Dow is one stock can really move it
a lot, and so often if you see the Dow
doing something quite different from other indices, it's because there's
one stock that's way up or way down.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
So I'm not sure what it is.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
But in any case, the reason that the broader market
is a little bit weak today it was weaker earlier,
come back a fair bit right now is that Moody's
downgraded US debt, so it's no longer at its highest level.
Moody's has a believe it or not a twenty one
point scale, and US debt was at its very top

(03:14):
rating and now it's at its next to highest rating.
So that puts some pressure on the stock market this morning.
It's raised bond yields a little bit. It's raised the
interest rate on US government debt, which is actually kind
of bad for US because it means that as the
US government borrows more, which it does every single day,

(03:34):
every single minute of every day, it costs taxpayers more.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
To finance that debt. It would be like imagining if you.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Had a mortgage, you had a let's say you have
a balloon mortgage and it's accruing interest at four percent,
and you're hoping that when the balloon payment comes up,
you can refinance down to three and a half percent
and save yourself.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Some money every month.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
But suddenly interest rates go up and now you're refinancing
at five percent and it's costing you more every month.
Well that's kind of like, that's kind of like this.
So the US thirty year bond is up around five
percent now, it was over five percent this morning, but
the stock market is actually hanging in there pretty well.
I'm going to talk about that more a little later.
In the show, following up on a conversation that Chad

(04:17):
and Gina had with Chris, the voice of the Nuggets.
What's Chris's last name, Marlow?

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Marlow? Right, Yeah, So.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
I did watch some of the Game seven of the
Nuggets series against Oklahoma City, and you got to say,
even though the series had been tied three to three, overall, Oklahoma.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
City did look a little bit, a little bit like.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
The stronger team through the through the series, and it
showed up.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
In spades in Game seven.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
But I just wanted to say thank you to the
Denver Nuggets for.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
A great season.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
I realized you wanted to go further than it did,
just like the Avalanche wanted their season to go further
than they did. These both seem like these both seem
like teams that are a very good and b need
to plug some holes.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
And I am not an expert on the NBA.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
You know, Mark Kisla had a story over at the
Gazette this morning and it's entitled end of an Era
Nuggets need to trade Jamal Murray or Michael Porter Junior
after being bounced from the playoffs.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
If he's right, I have absolutely no idea if he's right,
But I do think it has become clear that the
Nuggets are They're not quite a one player centric team,
but maybe a two or three player centric team. And
you just can't win in the NBA like that. I

(05:45):
remember earlier this year there was a game where Yokich
had what fifty five points or sixty some crazy number, right,
and they still lost. They lost the game. So we'll see.
I'm not an expert on basketball. Well, I'm not an
expert on the Nuggets, you know. I'm just it was
it was a guts to performance against a team that

(06:06):
was number number one seed, and and the Nuggets can
be proud of themselves, and the interim coach can be proud.
Aedelman can be proud of himself too. And we'll see,
we'll see where it goes from here. We'll see where
it goes from here. So what else, this big, beautiful bill.

(06:28):
Let's just talk about this for a second. I mentioned
to you last week that the reconciliation bill supported by
President Trump and many Republicans failed to get through the
House Budget Committee because a bunch of fiscal conservatives properly said,
this bill is no good and we're not going to
support it, and they were.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Right. Now, I don't mean there's nothing good in the bill.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
There's plenty of good in the bill, all right, there's
plenty of good in the bill.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
There's just way too much bad stuff.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
And this is a Republican budget that even if it
goes according to plan, and these things almost never do.
They almost always go worse than planned. But even if
it were to go according to plan, would raise the
budget deficit and the national debt every single year, and
it's unacceptable.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
So what happened was Speaker.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Johnson came through and they made a couple of changes.
One is they're looking to impose work requirements on Medicaid
next year rather.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Than in twenty twenty nine.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Twenty twenty nine was an utterly spineless proposal to say, well,
we're going to impose work requirements on Medicaid, which a
lot of people support, but we're not going to do
it until after the next election.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
It is typical dc.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
BS and the fiscal Conservatives said no. Now the government,
the Speaker Johnson and some others are saying, well, the
reason we wanted to delay it is that states don't
have systems in place where they can track the work requirements,
and Democrats are saying that they found that actually trying
to impose work requirements put a bigger cost on government

(08:07):
monitoring and enforcing of that provision than they saved by
kicking people off of Medicaid.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
But you know what, I don't care. I don't care.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
Unless it's like ten times as much money. If it's
a close call, you will find ways to get more
efficient in implementing the system. And I want work requirements
on Medicaid. There was another small change that they made,
and I'm having a brain cramp on as to what
it was, but in any case, what they did was
the Conservatives on the House Budget Committee yesterday they worked

(08:38):
on Sunday.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
What they did was, oh, I know what it was.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
They wanted to repeal more areas of Joe biden so
called Inflation Reduction Act and stop wasting all this money
on green energy nonsense.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
And the Speaker of the House city, all right, we'll
do more of that.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
So then these people voted present. They didn't vote yes,
they voted present, and so it ended up passing out
a committee seventeen to sixteen. And now it's going to
go to the full House of Representatives. Where they'll negotiate
and change more things and then we'll see what and
then we'll see what happens. But I wanted you to
know about that because normally you don't see this kind
of action happen over a weekend, but it did this weekend.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
All right, we got a ton.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
More stuff to do on today's show. Keep it right here.
I appreciate your company. This is KOA, you know what.
I just want to talk briefly. This has been it's
been odd to see how much Joe Biden news there
has been in recent days, considering that he's not president anymore.

(09:37):
And there have been a couple of big stories in
the past couple of days, and I could do them
in either order, but let's talk first about this cancer diagnosis.
It was announced over the weekend that Joe Biden has
been diagnosed with stage four metastatic prostate cancer that has
spread into the bone. And they say they think it's

(09:59):
hormone sensitive, but metastatic. Once a cancer has spread, I'm
not saying it's impossible to cure, but it's much much
more difficult, especially for an older person who's already obviously frail.
And I'm not saying that to pick on the guy
just an older person who's obviously frail.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
You start getting some very aggressive kinds of treatments.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Those are more difficult for an older body to withstand.
There's a lot of talk about out there about what
was this covered up?

Speaker 2 (10:25):
And so I'm of two minds on this. One is that.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
I often ask myself, why lie when the truth will do?

Speaker 2 (10:36):
And I've said this about many presidents.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
I say it about Trump, I said it about Biden
Obama as well.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Why lie when the truth will do? And this is
the thing.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
If they knew he had prostate cancer years ago, and
by the way, to get to prostate cancer this advanced,
you probably had it for a long time, most likely,
most likely, And if they were giving Joe Biden kind
of reasonable cheops every year as president and before being president,
you would think they would do.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
A PSA test, Right, It's.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
A normal thing, whether or not you got the glove
and the lube. At least in a blood test, you
could tell, right if they did it. Now, if they
checked him for markers of prostate cancer and it came
back negative, they should tell us that, which would be
a little weird, But maybe it's possible.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
If it came back positive and they didn't tell us
at the time, well, that's just one more example of
them lying to us and covering stuff up. But to me,
the weird thing is that generally, if you catch prostate
cancer fairly early, it's not that hard to treat. It's
one of the easier cancers to treat. It as a
very high survival rate if you do catch it, and
it would just be an odd thing. Now I'm not

(11:48):
saying it's too odd for that group. We know how
much they lied to us. But you know, if I
had to bet on it, I would bet that they
actually did just discover it. I wouldn't bet my life,
I'd bet a dollar, right, I wouldn't even bet one
hundred dollars. I'd bet a dollar that they did just
find it and that it wasn't a cover up. But
as I said, with low confidence, because that was a

(12:09):
crew that was clearly willing to lie about everything, which
is all too common in politics these days anyway.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
So you know, he got a lot of.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Tweets from President Trump and Speaker Johnston and lots of
Democrats as well, saying we wish him well, we wish
him full and speedy recovery and all that sort of thing,
and so do I and so do I. You know,
it seems like a lot of the talk now is
was there a cover up?

Speaker 2 (12:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
I don't think it's the most important thing, but it
is kind of an interesting question. The other thing that
came out, and now this came out I think on
Friday maybe is is that there was some there was
already going to be some kind of release of tape,
but somebody leaked it early to Axios tape of Joe
Biden during his interview with Special Counsel Robert Herr. And

(13:00):
that was when Biden was being investigated for improper handling
of classified documents. And you will recall that the special
counsel came out and said he definitely mishandled classified documents,
but we're not going to bring charges because we think
a jury will just see him as a I don't
remember the exact wording, but something like a confused old man,

(13:20):
and they will.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Not convict him.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
And the media went absolutely crazy, just bashing Robert her
who really didn't have much of a way to defend
himself because he wasn't going to release all this stuff
at that time, so he just kind of, you know,
went on with his business and let that stand.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
I think most.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Americans always believed Robert HRR that that Biden probably came
across a certain way in these interviews. That caused her
to say, Hey, Biden would have come across like I said,
as I think he said as a as a sympathetic
old man with a bad memory. That's almost an exact quote.

(13:59):
That's for my memory, but I think that's almost an
exact quote of what Robert her said, a sympathetic old man.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
With a bad memory.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
And so when we get back, I'm gonna share with
you some of the actual audio of Joe Biden in
that interview text in at five sixty six nine zero.
And even We're not a rock and roll show, but
you know we love rock music here, so I mean
I do Shannon.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Do you do.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
You consider yourself a music lover?

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Oh? Yes, absolutely, far more than a talk lover. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Okay, so we love rock music here, and Shannon, is
rock your favorite genre of music?

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yacht rock?

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yacht rock? Are you joking? Are you serious? He's serious?

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Serious? Now? Of course the name yacht rock is a joke. Yeah,
but he does define a great era of seventies and
eighties smooth rock fascinating.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
So if you would like Producer Shannon or producer Dragon
or whoever I've got at a particular time to maybe
play a song of your request for at least a
few seconds as bumper music coming into some segment of
the show, feel free to text it to us at
five six six nine zero, and we will occasionally oblige.
Let me just before I give you the Joe Biden

(15:15):
audio that I promised you, I just want to just
for a second, go back to the cancer thing, because
I said on Twitter this morning that I thought, and
I said on the air a moment ago that I
thought it was more likely than not, and I won't
go any further than that, but more likely than not
that they didn't know that Joe Biden had prosty cancer,

(15:37):
and more likely than not that there was not a
cover up, and a bunch of people yelled at me
on Twitter, including Mandy who yelled at me on Twitter
instead of course they knew, and I've got people texting
me in with stuff like that. Of course they knew,
And I just wanted to share a listener text with you.

(15:58):
This listener and I'm not going to use this, I'm
not going to use his name. Says, I have stage
four prostate cancer. I had PSA tests every six months,
and eventually the test that led to more tests came
in at a five, which is still a low score, right,

(16:18):
It depends, it depends on your age, right, but for example,
if you're sixty or older, then a five is a
score that still can be considered normal, not even necessarily
a marker for cancer, and what they call borderline levels
like where you might or might not, you know, just
potentially an indication of prostate cancer. Right as I'm reading

(16:41):
about this online, and it does sort of depend on
your age, but basically four to ten.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
So this listener had.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
Plenty of tests, okay, had plenty of tests.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
And the didn't show anything or.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Didn't show much, and then suddenly a five, which still
I guess for his age, still not really a concerning number.
And then it turns out stage four prostate cancer with
a very aggressive cancer, which appears to be what Biden
had too.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
And this listener.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Says, it does come as a surprise sometimes even though
this kind of presentation right where it's sort of sort
of slowly sneaks up and then kind of explodes is
less common. So that was my point this morning, that remains,
that remains my point. Let me see if this is
the same listener or another listener.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Okay, this is this is the same one.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
And he said, for ten years I had low PSA
and then all of a sudden a five, prompting an
MRI and a biopsy and.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
A PET scan. So so there you go.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
And that's why, Mandy, if you're listening that that. I mean,
I know the numbers when I said what I said
this morning, but just having been around enough medical stuff,
it's always seemed obvious that cancer can hide itself pretty
well sometimes right, And it's always and it seemed clear.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
To me that it was possible.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
I'm not saying for sure that it was possible that
Biden AND's people really didn't know until now. And I
think all these people who are so sure of themselves
that they must have known and it's all a cover up,
are just speculating and frankly don't understand the science very well.

(18:27):
But it's fully understandable because the Biden administration lied to
us about so many important things, including particularly Biden's health.
It's also easy to imagine them lying to us about this.
So that's why I'm only willing to bet a dollar
that it wasn't to cover up. Right, there are lots
of things I'm willing to bet a lot more than
a dollar on. I wouldn't bet more than a dollar
on this because they were a bunch of lying liars

(18:49):
in that White House. I'm just saying, you better be
pretty sure of yourself if you're saying this is a
cover up, because they had to know, because they didn't
have to know. They didn't have to know, all right,
So now I promised you this thing. And this was
sort of in the context of how odd it is
how much Biden has been in the news lately because

(19:11):
he's not president anymore, and usually once you're out, you're
usually you're not in the news that much anymore, although
that certainly wasn't the case with Donald Trump, but with
most presidents, once you're out, you're out. With Trump, partly
because of who he is, he was still in the
news a lot, and partly because a lot of people thought,
and clearly he thought he might run again. So it's
in your interest to stay in the news.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
And that's fine.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
It's not a you know, it's just an observation, not
a criticism. Normally, these guys sort of go away and
do their own thing. And yet Biden isn't isn't getting
out of the news, which, by the way, is very
bad for Democrats, really bad for Democrats.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
How much Joe Biden is still in the news.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Every day that he's in the news reminds people that
Joe Biden is a Democrat, that Democrats gave us Joe Biden,
that Democrats tried to saddle us with Joe Biden again
until at the very end they just couldn't get away
with it anymore, and then they tried to saddle us
with Kamala Harris. And there are a lot of people
who don't like Donald Trump who are now thinking of themselves,
the reason we have Donald Trump is because the Democrats

(20:07):
gave us these two people.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
And of course there are people who do like Donald
Trump who say, we're very glad that Democrats gave us
these two people, because that made it not just easier
for Trump to win, but for a Republican to win
the national popular vote for the first time in quite
a while. But in any case, it certainly was a
factor whether you're happy about it or not. Now, Robert
Herr is the special counsel who investigated Joe Biden for

(20:32):
mishandling classified information. You remember the stuff that was found
in his garage, the stuff that was found at the
University of Pennsylvania. You know, a office where he stored
stuff where he was nominally a professor at the university.
I don't know if he ever really taught anything, but whatever.
And Robert Herr said, we're not going to bring even

(20:53):
though he broke the law, we're not going to bring
charges against him because he's going to come across as
a sympathetic old man with a bad memory. And the
media went nuts, and the Biden administration went nuts, and
they said it's all lies.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
And now.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
The tape is coming out, and I just I'm just
going to give you a snippet. Axios got this audio.
I don't know if the believe or not. It's possible
that the Biden people leaked this to get ahead of it,
knowing it was coming out anyway.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
I don't know where they got it from.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
It could also be that someone who doesn't like Biden
leaked it, but it was going to come out anyway.
In a while, but some of it at least is
out now, and it just re emphasizes how much we
were lied to.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
Where did you keep peers steadily at those things that
you were actively.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
Working So that's the special counsel who just asked Biden,
where did you keep papers that related to those things
that you were working on? Right, and he's talking about
classified stuff. Now here comes Biden attempting to.

Speaker 4 (21:56):
Answer, well, I don't know, this is what.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Twenty seventeen eighteen. That period.

Speaker 3 (22:15):
Remember, in this time frame, my son is either been
deployed or is dying. And and so.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
If it was, And by the way.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
There were still a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
At the time when I got out of.

Speaker 4 (22:40):
That were.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Encouraging me to run in this period, except the president.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
I'm not not at me.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Say man, So let me just I'm going to actually
continue that in a second, but let me just interject.
He can't finish a thought. He said twenty seventeen or
twenty eighteen? He said, is this a twenty seventeen twenty
eighteen timeframe? And before he goes on to talk about well,
I was thinking about running for president, but then Obama

(23:12):
didn't really want me.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
To run for president.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Before he says that, he said, in this timeframe, my
son he's talking about Bo, not Hunter.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
He said my son was either deployed or dying. So
first of all, you would.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
Think that you would know which one it was if
it were one of those two things. But actually, as
producer Shannon knows, I can tell from his facial expression
right now, Bo Biden had died in twenty fifteen. So Bo,
I want to talk about this carefully. I mean, I'm
sensitive to the fact that Joe Biden lost his son.

(23:43):
Joe Biden has had quite a bit of tragedy in
his life. He lost a wife and a daughter in
a car accident, and then his son to cancer, and
then his other misfit son and all that stuff. But
you know, I wouldn't call it a Hunter stuff a tragedy,
but this other stuff is tragic, and I don't wish
that on anybody. But but this is several years ago now,

(24:05):
and and Joe Biden's trying to answer these questions and
he can't maintain a thought, and he doesn't know when
his son died, even though it was less than a
decade earlier. He doesn't know, and he's confusing that with
decisions about running for president.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
As senator, which he wasn't. Yes, I just thought that
she had a better shot.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
When now talking about like.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Had a better chance, at this point, you do not
have a pan.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
I hadn't walked away from the idea that I might
run for office again. I grant again if running for president,
and and so.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
What was happening though?

Speaker 4 (24:53):
Die?

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Then then then he's asking what month did bo die?
And he he says, oh, God, May thirtieth, nineteen fifteen,
and died. And then he asked, was it twenty fifteen
he died? And then they say, yeah, it was May
of twenty fifteen, he was.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
Twenty fifteen much of the months or but he goes, yeah,
that's right, suppressident. And what's happened in the meantime is
that as Hump gets elected in November of twenty seventeen, sixteen.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Twenty sixteen. All right, so why I have twenty seventeen? Ye,
that's when you left office.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
So he says, why do I have twenty seventeen here?
And then his attorney says to him, that's when you
left office. I'm not going to play anymore. It's in
a way, it's just sad right. It's sad for him,
it's sad for the country. It really is. I don't
like being backward looking. I'm just gonna mention one, just
two more things.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
One. The longer the stays.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
In the news, the worse it's gonna be for Democrats
and every Democrat who was ever out on stage, you know,
or online or anywhere in twenty twenty four telling us, oh,
Joe Biden is great, or twenty twenty three, even Joe
Biden is great. He hasn't lost his step, He's still
got his fastball. We can't keep up with him. Those
people are gonna have a lot to answer for, and

(26:31):
not just from Republicans and the media. We've talked about
this a little bit. The media lost so much of
their credibility by being so incurious about this that they
in an effort to recapture a little bit of credibility,
and it's not gonna work very well for them. But
they are gonna be really tough because about this question,

(26:53):
because they're trying to cover their own butts and make
it look like they're actual journalists who are curious about
what's going on. If Democrats, look if if Donald Trump
were having these kinds of issues they would never ask
any other question. With Joe Biden having those kinds of issues,
they almost never asked any question. And they realize they've

(27:16):
been found out and it's showing up in their ratings,
and it's by the way, and it's showing up in
many of these people either losing jobs or having to
take pay cuts, and they don't like that. So you
should expect them to be very aggressive with every Democrat
who was ever out there saying Joe Biden is fine,
and it could really be an issue maybe in the

(27:38):
midterm elections, but especially in the next presidential election, depending
on who's gonna run. The other thing that I want
to say again, I realize backward looking, but I'm gonna
say it anyway, what an absolutely disgusting, horrible thing Jill Bid,
doctor Jill Biden did to this country and to.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Her family.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
By pushing Joe Biden to run again for re election.
It was clear to me, I'll tell you exactly, so
you exactly when and how well.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
I don't know the month or the year, just like
Joe Biden doesn't know when his son died, but it
was maybe halfway through the Biden presidency. It wasn't very
late in his presidency, maybe halfway. And you remember when
Joe Biden ran, He ran talking about being abridged to normalcy,
and he strongly implied that he wouldn't run for reelection,

(28:40):
that he just wanted to beat Trump and the someone
else take cold, you know, takeover, and that was his goal.
And I remember this scene where Joe Biden and doctor
Jill Biden, who's twitter handled. By the way, is doctor
Biden give me a break? Walking to to or from?

Speaker 2 (29:03):
I don't remember. Marine won the helicopter.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
And a reporter yelled out at them, are you gonna
run for reelection?

Speaker 2 (29:11):
And he didn't answer. She did, and she.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Said, we have a lot more to accomplish.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
And I thought to myself, there it is. There it is.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
There's Madame Defarge knitting the plot behind the scenes. And
it's been clear to me ever since then. It was
clear to me ever all the way through, all the
way through every bad Biden decision, and every bad you know,
decision to run again, decision to stay in, decision to

(29:42):
get out when it was too late to make a difference.
All of that was because of Jill Biden's ambition, and
she deserves Jill Biden. Jill Biden I think deserves more
scorn than Joe Biden does. This is all that with

(30:07):
her fault, and I don't obviously I'm never gonna talk
to Joe Biden, and I can't even say I want
to talk.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
To Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
But it's been clear to me since probably before it
was clear to most people that Joe Biden didn't have
his heart in it, didn't want to run for reelection,
and his wife pushed him into it.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
All right, Moving to some other things, Let me do
a couple of local stories.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Actually, this is a completely different thing, and I found.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
It really interesting.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
This is over at Axios Denver and it was just
posted this morning. Denver's tree canopy hasn't grown in five years.
Denver's tree coverage is thinner than it's peer cities and
hasn't budged in five years. According to a new analysis,
Urban canopies I like that term contribute to cleaner air,
fewer floods, better physical and mental health, cooler temperatures, and

(31:03):
even lower mortality rates. Tree canopy in the Denver Aurora
metro area covers sixteen point seven percent of the region
compared to seventeen point nine percent in similar US cities,
according to a new Washington Post analysis.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
YadA, YadA, YadA.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Now, I did not look into this enough to determine
what they mean by similar cities. I don't know if
they just mean similar by size, or similar by geography,
or similar by amount of rainfall. But you know, I
will note that Denver is an interesting, particularly interesting area,

(31:43):
because part of the Denver metro area on the west
side has foothills. Think of think of Boulder County foothills
and Jefferson County foothills and all that, right and and
out by Morrison, all this stuff right with lots and
lots of trees.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
And then as you start moving east.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
You go from tall foothills to short foothills to barely
any hills to prairie, and prairie has very few hills,
and you get kind of prairie land even as close
as the airport.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
I don't know if about the comparison, but I do
think trees are good and useful.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
By the way, you think about East.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Coast stuff right where it's wet all the time and
they don't have prairies, right Atlanta has fifty one and
a half percent of their city has some tree coverage,
Kansas City thirty one and a half percent, Phoenix only
eight and a half percent. Anyway, the mayor of Denver,
you know, and Mike Johnston, has said he's gonna plant
forty five hundred new trees this year and he calls

(32:47):
it a push to curb carbon pollution. Just for the record,
carbon is not pollution. Carbon is plant food. But in
any case, what you do by planting trees the important
part I think of planting tree.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
There's a couple of important parts. They mentioned.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
It's not getting rid of carbon dioxide, but how about
producing oxygen.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
That's a good thing.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Also, when you put up trees in areas that would
otherwise be urban heat islands, these trees can, especially in
the summer when the trees have leaves on them, kind
of block some of the sunlight from hitting the ground,
from heating up the ground, which then turns into this
massive radiator overnight and stores a lot of heat and

(33:28):
makes your city warmer, and can in fact make it
look like there's climate change even when there isn't. In
any case, I thought it was a very interesting story.
I just think it's interesting that people are even studying that.
And I'm with the mayor on planting more trees. One
other local story I wanted to share with you. There's

(33:48):
a study that's done I think it's every year by
a group called Tasting Table.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
And one of.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
The things they, you know, study and put out or
ad on or a survey or rankings that sort of
thing is brunch buffets, right, brunch buffets.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
And there was a restaurant.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
In Denver that was named among the fourteen best brunch
buffets in the United States of America. And it is
at a restaurant called Sefta Safta at thirty three point
thirty Brighton Boulevard, and I guess that's in Rhino or

(34:32):
River North Arts District. And it's it's a Middle Eastern
Israeli Israeli in.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Middle Eastern restaurant.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
And according to Kadivr Fox thirty one, the brunch menu
includes well, I don't actually need them. I can just
go to the website. I don't need to read it
from a website from.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
A new story.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
I'll just go to Safta's restaurant menu. I'll click on brunch.
Brunch offerings include bab a ganush muhamara, which is hazel ut,
cilantro and chili oil.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
That sounds amazing.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Charred peppers with feta, cheese, soft cooked egg, hummus, smoked salmon,
whitefish salad, lux and scallion cream cheese, pastrami hash. I
definitely want some of that colla bread roasted lamb shoulder.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
You get the idea.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
A bunch of desserts and pastries and stuff as well.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
It looks like it's.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Fifty bucks a person before tax and tip, which used
to be expensive but these days is sort of normal.
So if you want to try out a new and
interesting buffet that is now rated as one of the
best in America, checkout Safta Safta. We'll be right back dragon.
Let's make sure to leave this next bit here in
the podcast.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
So, one of the things that's kind of fun about
playing that music, like the classic rock that we just
played on the air with the folks who are listening
on the air, is that because of lawyers, we can't
put that in the podcast. So I can talk how
great that song was, how I don't know what year

(36:02):
that song was, but I'm gonna guess it would be
around a nineteen seventy kind of vintage. But I don't
I don't really know, but just great song, amazing, amazing
guitar work by one of the great bands of all time.
And I uh, and you listening on the podcast right
now have no idea what I'm talking about. But you
listening over the air right now know exactly what I'm

(36:23):
talking about. So it's our little secret. So I do
love everybody who listens on the podcast, But if you
can listen over the air, you should do that. You
should do that too. And know, to the evil person
who just said more Neil young Dragon, no.

Speaker 5 (36:38):
You know what.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
We know.

Speaker 6 (36:39):
We kind of had our phil last Yeah, we did
more than our fill on Friday, so you know, at
least give it some breathing time.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Made me feel like I picked a bed week to
quit sniff and glue.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
That was really bad.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
So I one quick note and then we're gonna do
mention to talk about another listener text here for a second.
One of the things that's great about my listeners is
that it's such a diverse group of people in terms
of knowledge and experience and interest in all this. And also,

(37:13):
you know, this comes along with having a listenership as
big as koas. But when I talk about almost anything,
it could be some weird, random thing. It could be
a nerdy thing I'm interested in. It could be a
nerdy thing that I'm not particularly interested in, but I thought.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
You might be.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
And then I get all these listener texts from people
who know this stuff right or just think about this stuff.
And I mentioned in the previous segment of the show
that the mayor of Denver is looking to plant another
forty five hundred trees around town, and I said, I
like trees, and a couple of a few listeners actually
texted in about this stuff. One said, well, where are

(37:50):
they gonna get the water for all these trees, which
is a great point. You don't have to be a
super nerd to think of that. But it's actually mentioned.
I didn't mention it, but it's actually mentioned in the
article that I had shared that you know, we don't
have lots of excess water around here, so they need
to be a little careful, and they do. They need
to pick trees, and this is where you need tree experts, right.

(38:13):
For example, you would not want to pick Russian olive,
not a terrible looking tree, but it's actually an invasive
species into this area, and it uses an immense amount
of water. There are a lot of trees that, at
least once they're established, don't use much water, so you
would want to do that.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
And another listener texted in.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
About, you know, being careful about what kind of trees
or how many trees because of attracting.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Bugs or or like the emerald ash boar.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Everybody talks about the pine beetle, but the emerald ash
borer came in and did an immense amount of damage
to the trees around here as well.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Do you see what these people are requesting? I know,
aren't they great? Ah? All right?

Speaker 6 (38:54):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Are the world? No? No, we don't know. No, I'm not.
I'm not even entertaining that. So we did get.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Another listener text Dragon Ross. You often refer to Dragon
as your boss. Is he actually your boss or not?

Speaker 2 (39:09):
And I have.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
This is the message I'm about to send back to
this listener. Depends on who you ask. I don't want
to get fired by asking too many questions. You know,
the guy behind the guy behind the guy is scary,
and I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
That, so I just.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Whatever Dragon says, goes, and I just don't want to,
cause you just don't know.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
You get on the wrong side of like a.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Red bearded Viking, and you just don't know when you're
going to find a horsehead in your bed or was
it something?

Speaker 6 (39:46):
Was it the Avengers or was it one of the
gardens the Galaxy movie when Thora goes on the ship
with the Guardians of Galaxy, and like, we all know
who's the captain here is we all know who's in charge.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Yeah, we all know who's in charge, and I'm not here. Look,
it's hard to get a job these days.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
I'm glad just to have a job, hard to keep
a job, and it's hard to keep a job.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
And I'm not gonna go mess with Dragon and risk
my job.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
So I don't.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
I don't really, I don't really know, but I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna take any stupid chances. Right, I'm
gonna take only a minute or so, because the story
doesn't really need more than that. On this bombing of
an IVF clinic in Palm Springs a couple of days ago,

(40:36):
and I just want to mention a couple of quick
things you've probably seen enough on the news, but I
about about the bomber, and about is so called manifesto
and all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
And I want to admit that the.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
First thing that came to my mind when I heard
there was a bombing in an IVF clinic was ended
up being the opposite of the truth. The first thing
that came to my mind was an extremely anti abortion,
extremely quote unquote pro life person who thinks that because

(41:12):
sometimes IVF causes the destruction and throwing away of fertilized eggs,
that you know, that's why a lot of.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Very religious, in.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Particular Christian conservatives are against IVF, but not all. There
are many Christian Conservatives who are okay with IVF who
are not okay with abortions.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
There is some kind of line in there, and I'm.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Not expert about it, but the first thing into my
head was it is probably one of them. And that
was the exact opposite of what's true as far as
we can tell. As far as we can tell, the
truth is that politically a little bit hard to tell.
I see a lot of people calling him a Democrat.
I don't know if he was registered to vote. I
haven't looked into that, but it seems that his views

(41:56):
were pretty left wing, and his most important view, and
I don't know whether you would call this left wing
or just way out there insane, is that he's basically
against life, like just exactly the opposite of pro life, right.
He's against any sentient being ever being born.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
He was mad that he was born.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Because he didn't give his permission to be born.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
And this is such a fringy thing.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
That I just want to say that, you know, one
thing we should all be careful of, no matter where
we are in our politics, is don't attribute this kind
of mindset too broadly. There are people out there who
feel this way, but they are not representative of any
large group. They're not even representative of any small group,

(42:46):
because that's there because they're even too small to be
representative of a small group. And it's very brain damaged stuff.
And if there's any good news coming out of it,
it is that the only person who died was the
crazy person, and thank goodness that or I'll say thank
god even because this guy was a devout atheist, right

(43:08):
he was expressly online and atheist, So I'll say thank
god he's the only one who died. And a few
people at the IVF clinic got injured, but nobody died.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
They didn't have patience there that day.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
And believe it or not, no embryos were even damaged
in that explosion according to reports. So normally I say, look,
if you're going to go try to kill people and
then kill yourself, I suggest you do it in the
reverse order. And basically this guy did did you do
you have a good weekend? And why are you wearing
a collared shirt? Is everything dirty?

Speaker 2 (43:44):
No? But good call.

Speaker 6 (43:45):
Yeah, you just got to get the reach into the
back of the closet every now and then grab something
you haven't worn in a while. It's okay, get all
mothball dusty, all right, And yes, great weekend. Went and
saw a Book of Mormon yesterday and then took the
grand kid out to the lunch afterwards.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
Where's Book of Moran playing? It was at the bule?
I think it was quite literally just this weekend. Is
that the first time you've seen it? Correct? Did you
love it? It was great? Yeah, it's one. It was great.
There's a lot of stuff in there.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
You can't stay on the radio, right, Yeah, of course.

Speaker 6 (44:15):
Written by those two guys, Yeah, the South Park.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
Guys, Right, yeah, So all right, I'm gonna do some
stuff here. I want to let you know though, just
a couple more things coming up on the show. In
the next segment of the show, in about fifteen minutes,
less than fifteen minutes, we're gonna have Mitch Mitchum back.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
On the show.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
He was on a few months ago talking about artificial intelligence,
and I got, yeah, indeed, indeed, But this is not.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Going to be only the nerdiest part about it.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
It's going to be like how this is really changing
people's lives and how to adapt to it, and how
to adopt it within your business perhaps, and all kinds
of really practical stuff.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
It's not just gonna be the nerdy side.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
And then in the segment of the show after that,
and we're gonna make it a long segment, which we
don't normally have at the top of an hour, but
that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have Governor Jared
Polus in studio with me and I will take some
listener questions for him at that time.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Do not text me the questions right now, because I'll
lose them.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
We'll wait until the governor's here, and then you can
text me questions at that time. As always, I don't
promise to answer every question, to ask every question, but
I will ask some. So that's what's coming up over
the course of the show. Let me just do a
couple of quick things here. I found this story really interesting.
So there's a lot of conversation about housing prices in Colorado,

(45:33):
and in fact, that's definitely something that Governor Polis is
going to be talking about while he's in studio with me.
It's a big thing for him, is housing prices. And
it's not just a lot of the conversation revolves around
how young people can't afford their first homes. And I
get that, and that is important. It's a legit issue,
but it's not the only issue, right, It's not the

(45:56):
only issue. One of the other issues is workforce. What
if you need a lot of workers and probably and
let's say, relatively low wage workers, at least by Colorado standards,
because is a pretty high wage state, and they can't
afford a house. So I saw this story Cargill, which

(46:18):
is just a massive agricultural and commodity and meat processing
and all this kind of stuff company. I think it's
one of the biggest private companies in the world. They've got,
like a few other people do. They've got a meat
processing plant in Fort Morgan, and they've just announced that

(46:39):
they built workforce housing, townhouses and apartments, some of which
are open now, some of which will be open in
a few months for their employees. And I think this
is a pretty neat thing, and it took a long time,
I think, to get permits, but they built this stuff
basically over just ten months, which goes to show you,

(47:02):
by the way, the difference between a private company doing
something when they really care and government. Well, anyway, ten
houses open, This is from the Colorado Sun. Ten houses
open for tenants in April, another seventeen to open this month,
and eighty one apartments coming by late September. One of
the other things that's very interesting, And I'm trying to

(47:24):
get a guest from the company, not Cargil, but the
next company I'm gonna tell you about here.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
I'm trying to get a.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Guest to come on the show from a company called
Simple Homes, And according to Colorado Sun, they're one of
a small but growing number of prefabricated housing manufacturers that
can build houses quickly off can build houses quickly. Off
site construction helps keep building costs low and reduces waste.
They built the wall panels because these are not trailer homes, right,

(47:53):
So they built the wall panels and other parts of
the town homes in Denver and then ship them to
Fort Morgan.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
And I think that's a fascinating concept too.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
So they're gonna have studios one bedrooms, two bedrooms, even
three bedroom apartments, and the two and three bedrooms will
be between sixteen and seventeen hundred bucks a month, which
is not exactly cheap, but for Denver for two and
three bedroom nice town homes, you know, maybe a couple
families share that.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
You know, a couple couples share that.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
Anyway, I think it's pretty cool, and we'll see if
more companies follow with building their own housing for workers.
When we come back a fascinating conversation about AI. I've
got a couple friends in studio. Mitch mitcham is back.
He's the founder of Hive and you can find their
website at ahumanhive dot com. And it's basically, well, i'll

(48:44):
call it sort of elite AI consulting, kin.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
AI Enablement consulting, training.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
And Mitch was on a couple months ago, and I
thought it was such an interesting conversation, and not just
the nerdy side. I'm a nerd and I love the nerdy,
sort of in the weeds technological side. But mostly what
we're going to talk about today is actually the applicability
of AI to real world problems, solving problems, business use, education,
all this stuff. And another friend of mine showed up

(49:14):
a little bit early. He's going to be on the show,
you know, talking about his own stuff in half an hour.
But Governor Poulis is in studio with us and might
jump into the conversation. So Jared, at any point if
you want to ask a question or jump in, you
can just start talking or wave at me or whatever
you want to do.

Speaker 5 (49:30):
So, Hello, and thanks for being here. Excited to hear
about AI. This should be fun, Mitch, I'm honored to
be here. Thanks, thanks for being in the room.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
So you and I and the Governor were talking before
we went on the air about AI literacy, and you
were talking about human skills literacy and how those two relate.
So can you describe that a little bit in language
everybody can understand.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah, in simple terms.

Speaker 7 (49:52):
Over the last probably ten years, but especially since COVID,
we've lost our human ability for empathy, connection, true community building.
You can see it all across You see it in government,
you can see it in schools, you see it just
in how we treat each other. We've lost this human
edge to us, our human elements, So we're not very good.
I would argue right now at communicating in a long way,

(50:14):
or having a debate or talking about complex issues, which
is what we were talking about in the room earlier.
Humans have lost these abilities Instead. Now we're super reactive.
We communicate in one hundred and forty characters or less.
We don't really put thought or consciousness or any kind
of skill into how we interact with each other. On

(50:35):
the other hand, AI tools have been developed to be
incredibly almost like the best type of human imaginable. They're
very empathetic, they always want the best outcome. They're trying
to really hear you and understand you. They're trying to
communicate with you in a full way so they get
your result with you. I mean, imagine if humans operated
at that optimal level, we'd actually be solving problems.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
We would listen to each other. So that's what we've discovered.

Speaker 7 (50:59):
We've delivered this now for about thirty five thousand client
professionals across different industries everywhere from the Rockies all the
way through baseball, basketball and corporations like Microsoft. So what
we see though, at the human level, people who learn
the tool get better at being human, not just at
using the tool.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
All right, and let me ask you just keep your
mouth close to the microphone. Sure, And so I'm very
interested first in your claim that I don't disagree with
that we don't communicate as well or have as much
empathy as we used to. And one of the things,
and I believe you, one of the things I'm wondering about,
is what does that.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Look like across ages?

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Like For example, at my age, COVID was a very
small percentage of my lifetime and I don't feel like
it impacted me very much. But thinking about somebody who
was maybe in high school or college during COVID could
be a very a very different thing. So what are
you seeing there? Or do you find it kind of
equal across all ages?

Speaker 2 (52:00):
It's fairly equally.

Speaker 7 (52:02):
We even argue that a younger generation communicates at a
much better level than we think they do. Gen Zers,
I have three of them in my house, and they
are incredibly good at being thoughtful. All their barriers that
we all have as we age are kind of gone
around gender, race, all these ideologies that we adopt.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
They don't have those barriers.

Speaker 7 (52:21):
They tend to see people as people, so they have
they have less barriers.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Well, we have our habits and.

Speaker 7 (52:27):
If you even think about it now, like how quick
or how much time? And I'm not calling you out,
I'm saying humans in general, how much time do you
actually spend seeking understanding of others versus arguing for an opinion.
So one of the things I did on stage at
an HR conference is I said, look, we're going to
do a test, and I had the I had an
AI model live tell. First, it built a bias test

(52:48):
for me to see where my unconscious biases were, which
was terrifying. And then after it did that, I said, hey,
explain to me in a sentence why humans are so
bad at handling things.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
Like d ei or handling things like diversity.

Speaker 7 (53:02):
And it came back and said, because humans tend to
seek to fight for their opinion or their or their
or being right over fighting for understanding. If you fought
harder to understand each other, you'd solve more problems, and
the whole room went dead silent.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
I believe that. I think that. So that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 7 (53:19):
The older we get, the more anchored we are to
our opinion and we believe we're right as we age
versus Hey, what is another option here?

Speaker 2 (53:28):
What's another opinion? And that's what AI, I think unlocks.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
We're talking with Mitch Mitchum, who is founder of Hive ahuman.
Hive dot com is the website. And like I said, Jared,
and you're you're every bit as much of a nerd
as I am. So if you want got questions at
any point you want to and you want to jump in,
just go for it.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
You know I want to. I want to move a
little more macro for a second.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
So we talk a lot about AI, and we taught Okay,
it's got this interaction issue and this prompt issue, but
I want to just take it.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
A step bigger. Why does it matter?

Speaker 1 (53:58):
And what I'm getting at is I think a lot
of people when they think of AI, the only thing
that comes to mind is kids using chet GPT to
cheat on a test or do their math homework. But
I don't think many people understand just how nearly ubiquitous
AI is now and how you how absolutely ubiquitous it
will be sooner than anybody thinks. So can you just

(54:20):
talk about that a little, like, really, what is AI
and where is AI besides just chet GPT helping kids
with schoolwork?

Speaker 7 (54:27):
Yeah, so that's and schoolwork is only one part of it.
You can see it now in offices, so we'll see
it on teams. Let's just start with the business professional side.
A person using AI efficiently, effectively and on point is
hundreds of times more effective than their counterparts. So if
you have someone just refusing compare it like this. If
someone walked into an office tomorrow and said, hey, just

(54:48):
wanted you to know. They go into the governor's office,
I say, hey, governor, I'm not going to use the
internet today. I just don't feel comfortable with the internet.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
I refuse to use it.

Speaker 7 (54:58):
And by the way, I rode a horse to work
because I don't.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Feel comfortable with cars.

Speaker 7 (55:02):
The entire office would look like that person is kind
of off kilter a little bit, right, So if you think.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
About it, it's the same. It's like an accelerator tool.

Speaker 7 (55:09):
It's like an expander of what you are capable of
accomplishing as a human being. So students cheating on it
is just because that's easy for them. But every study
that's coming out now is showing that students that use
it consciously are actually learning faster and retaining more. Harvard
did a study about this last year and this was
still the infancy of where we are. And in that study,

(55:30):
one hundred ninety eight students split into two groups. The
group that could use AI as a coach with clear
direction from the professor learned and retained at twice the rate.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
So let me enter this here.

Speaker 5 (55:41):
So look, I think most people learn how to prompt
through trial and error. That's how I learned, maybe through
some coaching, you know, like to test some of the
services that you have how to do this. Is there
are we at the point where there's curriculum around this?
I mean, is there something that we should be doing
in tenth grade, should be doing in sixth grade. Let's
assume the teachers also don't know. Is is there some
professional development? Do we need to make sure that kids

(56:03):
are getting introduced towards effective use of AI in our
schools where they're traditional or other skills they'll need a life.

Speaker 7 (56:10):
Yeah, that's a great question. I totally agree that that
is exactly what should be happening. In fact, kids need
to be learning right now those human skills that make
AI work better for them, things like empathy, things like
critical thinking. They need to learn the basics of life
while they're learning the effectiveness of the tools of AI. So,
for example, if they're going to co write a paper
with AI, they need to learn what's the logic behind this?

(56:32):
Why am I writing it this way? So there needs
to be a curriculum developed for students. We've been trying
to get this into different school districts around the state
that just ignore it. They're not ready, They say they're
not ready to integrate it. Yet their teachers are knowingly
using AI to grade and to prepare lesson plans, and
their students are using it.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
So there's a gap.

Speaker 7 (56:51):
There needs to be that lesson level academic approach. And
part of it is just learning how to talk to
it like a person can communicate it with a goal
and integrate it into a learning path that also has
all of these other aspects of critical thinking.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Did that answer your question? Yeah, I would you like
this like an assignment.

Speaker 5 (57:11):
You kind of mentioned write this paper with AI or
have AIS And is that own in its own kind
of something that we should be doing or should it
be more about how they incorporated into everything that they do.

Speaker 7 (57:22):
It's I think it's a little of both, but I
think what you said first is closer to what they
should be doing now. Because the student, when you have
a technology that you know the students are already using,
you're already behind. So you have to say to them, hey, look,
I know you're going to use it. Let me show
you how to use it right, so that you're learning
while you're using it. It will make you more effective.
But here's how we're going to coach to it. Here's

(57:44):
how I'm going to teach you to use it in
a way that's reflective. So, for example, you might have
a math lesson in a high school. Let's say it's
tenth grade, and so you've got a tenth grade math
lesson and I don't know any parent, by the way,
in my peer group that could probably solve a tenth
grade math problem right now. So it's embarrassing, but it's
just factual. We all learned that during COVID. So then
what happens is you take that student and you say, hey, look,

(58:05):
work on this math problem. Use AI to help you,
not to answer it, but to guide you on why
you don't understand it. So the AI model, let's say
it's chat GPT, can then pick up on how that
student's communicating with them, and they can say, well, the
AI can detect, oh, I can tell this student's more
visual than they are auditory.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
So I'm gonna I'm going to show.

Speaker 7 (58:26):
Them diagrams and I'm going to draw it out. So
they have like a coach in their pocket. And that
has to come from an educator who says, here, how
I want you to use it? Because the kid will
take the least path of resistance, right, so they'll just
go for it. On the other hand, if the teacher's
demonstrating how, then they're using it as a coaching tool.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
And then if the teacher comes back the next day
and says, so, how.

Speaker 7 (58:47):
Did it go with AI? What did you learn? What
did you gain from it? They're having an interaction. Now
you're seeing the three things fused together, the teacher of
the student and the AI.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
So my younger kid in particular, uses chat GPS a
math coach, and it's definitely helped him a lot. And
and his math scores on tests and not they're not
tests that AI is helping him with. He's going in
the class and taking the test in the classroom. His
his grades on those have definitely gone up. What I
wonder about, kind of following up on the Governor's question,

(59:17):
what I wonder about is how do you make it
so that if kids are gonna use CHAT, GPT or
any AI anyway, how do you make it so that
they still learn? Right?

Speaker 2 (59:28):
If you're gonna say, it's one thing to say when
it teach you.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
Some math and then you go take a math test,
But do you do you see it the same way
with history?

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Do you see it the same way with English?

Speaker 1 (59:36):
Do you write are you gonna are you gonna let
it quote unquote help a kid write a history paper?

Speaker 2 (59:42):
And if so, are they are they really learning?

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Are they really getting that information into their skulls as
well as they can?

Speaker 7 (59:51):
All the studies so far show they are, if again,
coach properly. So for example, a history a history paper
is a great It's no different than someone in a
business who has to write something for the business with research,
a history paper can be as simple as I want
you to use AI first to research this topic, and
then I want you to write a draft, put it
into AI, and work together to come up with the

(01:00:13):
better solution. But you're teaching the student also they should
check and balance what AI is giving them because sometimes
still it doesn't It isn't always perfectly correct. So they
also need to learn that discernment that even though we
are going to depend on tech, how do.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
We know when tech is wrong? But we don't know
if we don't validate.

Speaker 7 (01:00:32):
So teaching a student to validate, which, by the way,
isn't that a great life lesson? So learn how to
validate each other and things and information, teaching them how
to do that, teaching them how to research, teaching them
how to use AI, maybe as an accelerator on the tactical,
but they're working on the strategic still, how are they
going to frame this?

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
And then having them present it out.

Speaker 7 (01:00:51):
Having them talk about the topic, having them talk about
what they've learned.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
And this is when I go back to the human skill.

Speaker 7 (01:00:57):
One of the things I've had teachers at private schools
tell us us what they're learning is they have to
get better at how they get one on one with
students on how they say to a student, Hey, that
was a great paper. Tell me your logic, Tell me
what you're thinking was, Tell me how you came up
with that. Tell me how you actually you even if
you used AI, what did you actually learn? And what

(01:01:17):
they're learning is what they're seeing is by that by
them getting better at that one on one approach, they're
learning that the students are actually thinking it through and
preparing for that dialogue. So they are retaining more because
as they're going through AI, they're learning more skill.

Speaker 5 (01:01:33):
So so again, let's say you know you're using AI
to write a paper appropriately and it's a learning tool.
Now you're in a scenario where you're taking a task,
you have the blue book, there's no AI. It feels
like part of yourself and your process is gone, Like,
how can you also do that that kind of piece?
Oh my god, the whole AI thing isn't here. Did

(01:01:55):
it in fact? Was it a crutch effectively or was
it something that can also prepare you to do it
when you're not connected to AI.

Speaker 7 (01:02:02):
So what we've looked now I'm a heavy user, so
I'm the third nerd in the room and I will
tell you that what it does on retention level is remarkable.
But it's because I have it constantly asking me things
for follow up, or I'll have it constantly testing me
on things.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
Now, I'm not taking tests like a student would.

Speaker 7 (01:02:20):
But if a student is using it and saying, okay,
well I have a test tomorrow, walk through this with
me like it's the test. I want to see how
much of this I get right. The AI will instantaneously
take whatever they've been talking about now turn it into
a test that they can then take live, and they're
typing in the answers and being told if they're right
or wrong. My daughter wrote an essay coming out of
high school. Chat GPT was new. She's nineteen now. When

(01:02:43):
she was coming out of high school, she wrote an essay.
She put the essay into chat GPT. She said, here's
the rubric. Grade it at a college level, and then
tell me what I did wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
If I want to get a higher grade.

Speaker 7 (01:02:55):
It's like, well, right now, you're going to get a
B plus if you change these three things.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Now.

Speaker 7 (01:02:59):
Didn't tell her what to write. It said what to change,
here's what you need to change. You didn't have enough
information whatever so she made those changes. She gets an
A and she tells her teacher what happens. Now here's
the disappointing part. She tells her teacher. Her teacher says,
this is incredible. We're going back now right when AI
was new. Her teacher tells the class, this is an
incredible use case. It's ethical, it's the right thing, it's

(01:03:20):
the right way to do it. Within a day of
her sharing this with her with her colleagues, she's told
to stop saying that, stop teaching the students, that we're
not ready for that. Well, and as a parent, I say, well,
my kids advanced because I've been teaching my child because
I'm in this industry.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
But how many kids are not getting the lesson? That's
a problem.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
All right, We have four minutes left and I want
to switch gears to another thing that I think also
is something the governor will care a lot about. We
hear a lot about how AI is going to kill
lots of jobs. And you know, I always think technology
will kill some jobs, but people just look at that
and they don't look at all these own incredible opportunities
will come aroun because of it. So how should we

(01:04:02):
think about these concepts like AI replaces jobs and things
that a governor would care about.

Speaker 7 (01:04:09):
I think AI does replace the jobs that the company
is trying to replace.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
So this is what we've seen in technology in the past.

Speaker 7 (01:04:16):
However, companies that are smart that are letting people use AI,
they're finding that the people are getting the better results.
So will it replace certain things? Most likely there will
be some jobs. But on the flip side, you take
a person who walks into a job today and they
have the capability and the knowledge to use AI properly,
they just became incredibly more valuable.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
Here's where AI misses the boat.

Speaker 7 (01:04:40):
So you'll hear a lot about AI agents sort of
being automated into oblivion, you know, so just take all
of our jobs. You'll even hear CEOs at the top
levels of a tech company say, oh, yeah, we're going
to get rid.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Of all jobs in three years.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
And Microsoft just fired a bunch of people, and I
think many of them were sort of mediocre coders who
are being replace with A.

Speaker 7 (01:05:01):
Yeah, I think the coding the world is going to change,
for sure, But you're also talking about three percent of
a workforce of one hundred and fifteen thousand people, right,
So you have to look at that at scale.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
And but I think the other.

Speaker 7 (01:05:11):
Piece of this this job problem is what am I
doing as an individual to empower myself to be more valuable?
Or am I just saying well, my job's probably gone anyway,
so why learn it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
That's not the way to do it.

Speaker 7 (01:05:23):
You have to look at it like I want to
empower myself to be super valuable, which means I'm going
to use AI as an accelerator all the time and
you'll always discover new things. And the question is what's
the company's bottom line? What is it trying to do?
That's what you have to analyze. That's what a business owner.
You've been a business owner yourself, we all have, so
we're always analyzing that. But if I can take one

(01:05:44):
person and make them better, then I'm probably going to
get better output overall as a company.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
The other piece of this, though, that is critical.

Speaker 7 (01:05:51):
The AI agents are very bad, very bad at being
actually human. So like customer service is a great example.
They're saying, oh, the AI agents are going to remove
customer are going to take over customer service.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
But are they?

Speaker 7 (01:06:04):
Because what's the first thing we all do when we
hit anybody who's had a customer service hurdle. They're talking
to an AI agent. What's the first thing you start doing? Person,
get me a person. I need a person. I want
to talk to a person. Yeah, the AI agent, as
good as they are, it just can't feel. It can't
feel the emotion through the phone. These are the skills.
This other emotional skill is what we harness that AI

(01:06:24):
just cannot do. A one minute left, Jared, you got
anything on the on the job?

Speaker 5 (01:06:29):
Technological change always leads to changes in jobs, right, So
I mean when the automobiles came about, if you made
you know, horse and buggy whips, you you were in
good shape.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
And think of all the new jobs in cars.

Speaker 5 (01:06:39):
I mean there's a lot of new jobs associated with AI,
the data centers, the hardware manufacturing directly, but also you know,
on the on the coding side of the algorithms. So
just there's a lot of happening there, including in places
like Colorado.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Data centers are coming in. But this is happening across
the country.

Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
So you know, one would hope if what is an
optimistic view of technology, you know, less mundane, mindless work
and more kind of higher paying, exciting jobs for people
is what we hope this leads to.

Speaker 7 (01:07:04):
Yeah, I think I think Colorado especially is poised for
something really big. I think we could be you know,
you go about ten years we were close, we had
a lot of tech here. I think we could actually
be in a position in the next three to five
years where Colorado could become a major tech center.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
We've got all the right parts.

Speaker 7 (01:07:20):
We've got a beautiful landscape, we've got a great state,
lots of sports teams, lots of really great places downtown.
I think we should start attracting more tech into Colorado,
especially into Denver, because I think we could actually spearhead
a lot of that innovation, a lot of that growth,
and a lot of that creativity which will actually create
those jobs you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
And some of that's clearly going on already. I mean,
Boulder is almost like another Silicon Valley. Jared knows better
than I do about about that. All Right, We're going
to leave it there. Mitch mitcham is founder of Hive.
The website is a humanhive dot com. If you forget,
it's linked on my blog today at Rosskiminski dot com.
But that's a great place to go if you want
to learn more about AI or get some consulting or

(01:08:01):
training for your employees a human hive dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Thanks again, mentioned another fabulous conversation. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks
for having me and it's great to see you, Governor.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Appreciate it all right, thanks Governor Polish for joining that conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
He'll stick around through the break and.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
We're going to talk with the governor about his daily
job and bill's going through that have gone through the
state legislature, what he signed, what he vetoed, what he
wants to do next, and so much more. Keep it
here on KOA. Good morning, Happy Monday. I am so
pleased to have still in studio with me. Governor Jared
Polis usually sits on my right, but he's on my

(01:08:34):
left today, which seems a little bit appropriate.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
And Jared, before we start.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
With legislative session and bill signing and all this, I
wanted to tell you and get your reaction to the
fact that KOA is one hundred this year.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
Happy one hundredth birthday, KOA.

Speaker 5 (01:08:49):
I cannot believe that KOA has been on the air
the voice of the Rockies one hundred years. You know,
Colorado is going to be celebrating O one hundred and
fiftieth anniversary. Next year are Sesqui Centennial twenty twenty six,
the centennial State. So a lot of big anniversaries this year.
Happy Birthday, KOA. Did you grow up listening to KOA?
Do you remember it from your I mean childhood or

(01:09:10):
young adulthood. Let's say, well, absolutely, I'm pretty sure it
was even Well, of course the Rockies didn't come until
the early nineties, but it had the Rockies the whole time,
didn't Yeah, so I absolutely listened to Rockies games in the.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
Nineties on it.

Speaker 5 (01:09:20):
But before that, you know, I can't say I'm a
huge radio guy. I don't know if too many people
of my generation are. There's probably some that are out there.
I'll listening to radio today, but absolutely, I mean AM radio.
You could get it anywhere in Colorado. Strong signal is
always fun. I used to listen to some of your
predecessors on talk radio as well.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
Yeah, I'm I'm very proud to be on a three
letter radio station that's one hundred years old. I sometimes
I sort of pinch myself, like I can't believe I'm here.
I don't know if you do that about being governor. Actually,
before we talk politics. Let me ask you one sort
of personal question, sort of personal when did you become
interested in politics? I met you before you were in Congress.

(01:10:00):
I think I met you during your first run for Congress.
But were you someone who as a young person was
maybe interested or did that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Show up later for you? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:10:09):
You know, I always knew in some abstract sense for
us that I wanted to give back and make a difference.
It didn't necessarily mean full time. I mean I was
focused on business, love, starting and growing businesses. I knew
I wanted to be civically involved. I mean, it wasn't
in my mind that I had to, for instance, you know,
run for office. Maybe it was a point of positions,
maybe it was serving on public boards. But you know,

(01:10:29):
I was sold, as you know, I sold the company
in two thousand and seven. Was upset with a lot
going on nationally, like the Iraq War at that time,
and that was coupled with the fact that my Congressman
Mark Udol was running for Senate, so the seat was open,
was available, and I made the decision to go into
it full time at that point.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
I will note to folks, if you have a question
for the governor, you can text it to me at
five six six nine zero. I will also note I
never promised to ask every question, and usually when the
governor is here, I get a lot of questions. You know,
I'll ask what I can. I already have listener questions
on a bill that on a bill that I want

(01:11:06):
to ask you about anyway, the ride shared thing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
That you've I think you've stated publicly that you have concerns.
I don't know that you've stated anything more publicly. Do
you want to, you know, tell us anything more here today?

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:11:19):
I mean, you know, usually you could look to the
position we take while a bill is in the process.
I mean, our Colorado Department of Transportation testified against this
bill during the process. This is the bill for your
listeners by the way, that it has to do with
safety in ride shares, but effectively it has you know,
video taping of passengers and a number of protocols which

(01:11:42):
are so difficult that, for instance, Lift and Uber both
said that they would likely have to leave the state
if this were to become lost. So it's one that
again our Department Transportation was opposed to during the process.
There were things that we said, Hey, this could make
it workable. Lift to Doberre agreed. A few of those
things might have been included, most of them weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
Like anything.

Speaker 5 (01:11:59):
We're analyzed the bill. I'm not about to give you
a big scoop today about announcing any vetos or signings.
I did veto a few bills last week, but obviously
there's a few more ahead and then the remaining two
weeks that I have.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
Yeah, so just reading between the lines there, I'm gonna
I'm going to say you're a little better than fifty
to fifty or maybe a lot better to veto it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Well, we'll see. I'm not asking you to respond to that.

Speaker 5 (01:12:21):
You know, on every bill that passes, and I think
there's something like three hundred more that I haven't taken
action on, Yeah, we do. I do a full analysis,
so we get the legal analysis, the policy analysis, make
a decision, sign or veto. And so we've done that
on about two hundred bills roughly, there's about five hundred
that came to me, about three hundred more to go.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
Well, and I have until I think, what is it
June and six that get all those done.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
Wow, and you read all those analyses yourself, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:12:46):
Look, by the way, as you know, some bills are
just clerical and very minor, and it's very simple and
they pass unanimously. But you know, of those five hundred bills,
let's say there's probably one hundred and fifty two hundred
that are you know, interesting intellectually and had some ups
and might be worth really looking at and examining. I
don't pay attention to every single bill, but I did
see one that struck me because it's not very often

(01:13:09):
that I see votes that are unanimous in both chambers,
and it was this wacky bill about very small Japanese cars.

Speaker 2 (01:13:16):
Do you remember this bill? I love it. We legalized
K cars Ai pronounced K.

Speaker 5 (01:13:23):
They're great little mini trucks basically by PAB They were
not considered street legal in Colorado, and I think thirty
two states they were. And thanks to William Linstad are
represented from Broomfield. This is his second year trying. He
got it done and it's a great bill. We helped
them crafted and supported it, and I was thrilled to
sign it. So Colorado's can now drive their key cars

(01:13:44):
K cars on surface roads.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
They're not for highway use. They go up to you know,
fifty sixty miles an hour. That was a fun bill.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
I do want to go back in a few minutes
to some stuff that you vetoed, including Senate Bill five.
But before we do that, just tell us a little
bit about what you think are a couple of the
most interesting and important bills that you have already signed.
And first of all, I want to give a quick
shout out with the tornadoes in eastern Rapo and Adams
County and destroyed over a dozen homes and are we're

(01:14:12):
watching that closely. I was on the phone over the
weekend and we're working closely with those counties. So I
just want to highlight that's that's going on right now
as we speak. Look a big focus for me Ross
and for our state, and you know the fact that
it's the pain point for the state.

Speaker 5 (01:14:26):
Is what drives me is housing costs. And Colorado is
a great place to live, but that artificial constraints on
supply have driven housing costs up, up, up and up.
And so we have really been looking at this over
the last three years and trying how can we prevent
government from stopping housing reduced paperwork, speed up approval. Just
in the last couple of weeks, I signed two significant bills.

(01:14:48):
One is for modular and prefab housing. So this is
housing that's made in factories. It's very much the new
way we are doing housing. It can cost twenty thirty
percent last and great quality year round construction.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
You don't have to close for winter.

Speaker 5 (01:15:00):
But what we said is, you know, rather than have
hundreds of different codes across our state, we're going to
have one, you know, statewide building code, so that you
can benefit, we can benefit from those economies of scale.
They don't have to turn out a different version in
Parker than Colorado Springs and Boulder, so we're very excited
about that. The second one that we did is called
smart stare Reform. This basically gives a lot more flexibility,

(01:15:21):
and this one primarily affects cities Colorado Springs, Denver, Pueblo,
Boulder for Collins, where you have a lot more flexibility
about how and where you design the fire escape staircase,
for example, to maximize safety, but also free up more
room for actual usable space. So those are two examples
of things we did here just in the last couple
of weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
You know, it's funny I actually talked about the stair
thing on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
Okay, it's a fun one, really exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
Yeah, And I used it as an example of a
concept that I tell listeners from time to time. You know,
the federal government, especially with Trump in office, sucks up
a lot of the oxygen as far as news coverage.
But really state and local governments are more likely to
have important day to day effects on your life.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
And I use that as an example.

Speaker 5 (01:16:08):
Certainly a lot more nimble, a lot more quick, even
on somebody like housing. I mean, the big thing the
federal government does is their policies affect interest rates, right, So,
and I'm worried about just interest rates and crew in
going up with Trump's crazy spending plans and his tariffs
and all that stuff, big deficits.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
But we don't control that.

Speaker 5 (01:16:25):
So we focus on what we control here, which is
basically the process of allowing things to be built and
the regulatory structure around things being built, and if we
can save time and money and get more approval. For instance,
we did multifamily zoning near transit. We got rid of
this is last session art parking requirements. We had municipal
governments imposing state for every two thousand square feet you

(01:16:46):
have to have two parkings, you know, squats. Let the
market determine that, right, who's to say, maybe somebody only
once won, maybe they want three. But you shouldn't have
these minimums in law about parking. You should let the
market determine that because nothing's worse than an unused parking spot.
It adds about forty thousand dollars to the cost of
a condo or a home. And if nobody's using it,

(01:17:06):
why did we use that space for that?

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
Tell me a little.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
Bit, because I probably didn't pay as much attention to
details as I should have. But about the construction defect
reform that passed, that's a huge one to russ. So
basically in our state, people have been building things over
the last decade, lots of new inventory coming and housing
inventory coming on board. But with regards to multifamily, it's
mostly been apartments for rent rather than condos for sale.

(01:17:30):
And you look at you know, usually for many people,
that first home they're going to buy needs to be
in that two hundred and fifty three hundred thousand dollars
price point right, and very few people can afford a
six hundred thousand dollars five hundre thosand and seve hundred
thousand dollars home right off the bat, and those are
often condos because of construction defects liability, nobody has really
been building condos and slowed to a near halt in

(01:17:52):
our state. People are building apartments for rent instead, which
are great, we need them, but we want people to
be able to build.

Speaker 5 (01:17:57):
Equity and wealth. This reforms the condoliability in several ways.
You can get into the details, but higher consent for lawsuits,
the money asked to actually to be used to correct
the defect. There's a limited kind of right to repay
ability to repair it. So there's a number of different
things that basically we hope will kickstart condo construction in
our state and bring more homes online that people can buy.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
Two hundred three hundred thousands.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
So I actually have a bunch of listeners texting in
with a similar question to something I wanted to ask
you about as well, and I'll just read a headline.
This is from CBS Colorado. Colorado governor threatens to withhold
grants from cities that don't comply with housing laws.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
What's going on here? So these are some.

Speaker 5 (01:18:37):
Of the laws we just talked about parking requirements is
an example. So if a city tries to impose now
it's illegal for them to do this. If they try
to impose parking requirements, we then for one of our
enforcement mechanisms, will not provide some of our discretionary grant
base funding to a.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
City that's in violation of the law.

Speaker 5 (01:18:55):
There are other ways to address it, right, somebody could sue,
example saying you know an individual because say you are
forcing me to build parking.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
I don't want I am suing you.

Speaker 5 (01:19:02):
But as we know, that puts a large burden on
the individual, it takes a long time, it's very costly.
We are directly trying to get make sure that people
are following the pro housing laws, to get government out
of the way by tying our state discretionary grants to
making sure that our cities and counties are partners in
building more housing now.

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
So, one thing that comes up a lot from in
Colorado in particular, more than other places I've been is
local control. And you talk a lot about local control
on certain issues. This seems to be the opposite of
local control. So how do we square that circle?

Speaker 5 (01:19:37):
So there's absolutely a local control piece to how we build.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
I give several examples. One is height limits.

Speaker 5 (01:19:42):
You know, some cities want to have three stories four
stories tops.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
Some don't want to, you know, someone higher.

Speaker 5 (01:19:47):
Another thing that's sometimes even more local, sometimes in an HLA,
but it could be in a city, is, for instance,
we want all the homes in this neighborhood to be
in this color palette. Right, you have to be one
of these five colors, because we don't want a hot
pink one. It hurts the value of the neighboring. The
state is no business. We don't get involved with that stuff.
But for instance, something like accessory dwelling units by right,
that's another law we pass. You can now build in Colorado.

(01:20:09):
You know, yes, it got water done a little. So
it's not everywhere, but in most of our cities, most
of our medium sized towns, you can build.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
And that's a mother in law flat, like.

Speaker 5 (01:20:16):
A separate detached unit on your property. You can build.
They can't turn you down. Again, it can be involved
the city in ha in terms of it doesn't have
to be a certain color, it doesn't have to have
a certain look, all those things, but they no longer
can say no to preventing you from building. So we
have a statewide interest in housing costs and providing more housing.

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
We found out the want of the barriers.

Speaker 5 (01:20:40):
There's others we talked about the course through the liability
for condos, but one of the barriers where local governments
has said we're not letting you build, and we have
been trying to reduce the ability of them to do that,
while of course maintaining of course their land use authority.
In terms of determining the things that really affect the
shape and color of the community, like building size and
height and all of those important things we don't get

(01:21:02):
into device like commercial versus residential, and no one's telling them,
you know where each of those are. They have commercial zones,
they have residential zones, but if you have a residential zone,
we want to make sure that multifamily is allowed.

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
At least some of that you mentioned in passing the
federal budget. I want to talk about state budget a
little bit. There was some significant effort that had to
be made this year to get government to a size
where well, we have to have a balanced budget here right,
and there is a talk of something like a one
point two billion dollar quote unquote shortfall, even though the
budget was six hundred and fifty million dollars bigger than

(01:21:33):
last year, or whatever the number is. So what actually
I want to ask you about now? I hear a
lot of chatter about how next year may be more
difficult than this year, and that maybe there was some
stuff this year that they found a way not.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
To touch, like perhaps Medicaid or some other things.

Speaker 1 (01:21:51):
Like that that the budget writers might not be able
to avoid touching next year. So what are your thoughts
about next year's state budget?

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
At this point? We absolutely in our budget we submitted.

Speaker 5 (01:22:03):
The governor submits a budget, it's never passed as is,
of course, it's up to the Joint Budget Committee legislature.
We included several cuts to Medicaid, which the legislature rejected.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
They did not make those cuts. But you know, I
think your framing is right.

Speaker 5 (01:22:15):
I get frustrated because there were years where people said
a Pulse is a big spender. Now this is the
year they say Polus is cutting all this. We just
follow the formula of inflation plus growth. Every year I've
been governor, the budget goes up by the amount of
inflation plus growth.

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
That's the Taber formula, right.

Speaker 5 (01:22:27):
So the reason the budget went up less this year
is because inflation was a lot lower and it came
down significantly.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
Now, yes, there were also healthcare costs.

Speaker 5 (01:22:35):
Some of that was because of the roll off of
the pandemic era Medicaid expansion that added to the state piece.
But fundamentally, in my time as governor, the state budget
has grown every year at the rate of inflation plus
population growth, which was something like one point five percent
population growth. That will continue. It's hard to predictab what
to happen next year. Will inflation further come down, we'll

(01:22:55):
go up. Now, obviously, if there's a recession, we could
be below that tabor limit.

Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
Those are be real cuts.

Speaker 5 (01:23:01):
That means you are actually cutting the budget, not just
the rate of increase.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
That is not a Colorado thing. That's more of a
national thing.

Speaker 5 (01:23:08):
I worry about headwinds with the tariffs, as we talked about,
I'm very concerned about that. On the upside, obviously, you know,
if there's positive tax or regulatory form, it could help growth.
But your guess is good of mine about that. But
as long as we're above the tabor level and we
have refunds going out to people, basically the state budget
will grow according to that formula.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
You've always been very clear in public and in private
with me that you like TABOR, but you hate.

Speaker 2 (01:23:34):
The refund mechanism.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
And then it just feels so cluegey and maybe it
just means we're taxing too much and let's lower tax rates.
But the legislature has in recent years done a bunch
of stuff to basically reduce the TABOR refund by just
spending the money, and you signed that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
So how do you feel about TABOR now.

Speaker 5 (01:23:56):
Well, they can't spend the money, to be clear, it
has to be a tax refund mechanism. But that leaves
it up to so a couple of things on that.
First of all, there's part of taber that says voters
should get to approve any tax increase. I totally agree
with you, know, full stop. So I don't think the
legislature should have that authority. I think you go to
the voters, you ask that's munissible, it's county at state.

(01:24:17):
I totally agree with that. Do you get into kind
of what happens with this surplus?

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
Right?

Speaker 5 (01:24:21):
And for decades Republican and Democratic administrations have selected different
tax refunds that they consider worthy. And I'll give you one,
and yes I've supported it, but it started long before me.
It's a political third rail, the senior homestead tax exemption.
Right now, we made that portable, which is great. So
now senior can down size without losing that because if
you're going to have that distortion in the marketplace in

(01:24:41):
the first place, the last thing you want to do
is say, if somebody's downsizing from a seven hundred thousand
dollars home to a six hundred thousand dollars home, they're
going to pay more in property tax. Does that makes
no sense? That was what was the case before. We
now have it portable. Did that reduce the tabor surplus?

Speaker 2 (01:24:55):
Sure? It was a tax refund mechanism.

Speaker 5 (01:24:56):
The one I'm most proud of is we cut the
income tax so twice at the ballot, once through the legislature,
depending on the surplus. When I came in, the income
tax was four point six three percent, reduced permanently to
four point five percent, reduced permanently to four point four
and now depending on the level of the surplus, and
for this current year that people are paying taxes on
file in April or October, it was four point two

(01:25:17):
five percent. Now it could we might not get that
full reduction next year because the surplus will probably be
lowered depending on whether there's a recession or on.

Speaker 1 (01:25:24):
So one very quick thing, and then I want to
ask you about some vetos. Is the family leave, the
paid family and medical leaf program. Do you know anything
right now? And I wasn't even thinking of asking this question.
And if you don't know the answer, just say I
don't know the answer right now. But how's that doing
as far as the cash flows there? Because I've been

(01:25:44):
I've been worried that lots of people would come for
that benefit and that the whoever's running at is going
to have to raise the tax rate.

Speaker 5 (01:25:51):
It has, so this is one to be clear passed
by the voters. Not related to Tabor. I just want
to I want to make sure we're talking about this.
So good news, very good news. It has been doing
so well actually that the payroll tax will be reduced
coming here so marginally, but it will be reduced. So
it's holding it. So again, not the way that I
would have done it. I did not, you know, support

(01:26:12):
that ballot Iniue, but the voters overwhelmingly passed it. I
implemented in good faith. It's gone a lot better than
I thought. Yeah, and that's I'm very glad to hear that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:19):
All right, So we have about three minutes left, and
I just want to talk about a couple of things
that you vetoed and I want to start with Senate
Bill five, which you always made clear that you were
going to veto if there wasn't a compromise between business
and labor, and there wasn't. But can you just kind
of give us, you know, thirty to sixty seconds on
what was in your mind as you're signing that veto?

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
Sure, give me like a.

Speaker 5 (01:26:39):
Minute I have to do because people hear about this
is okay. So here you have the right in all
fifty states under federal guidance to former union National Labor's
relation boards.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
It's a majority vote.

Speaker 5 (01:26:49):
What this bill was about is, after you justformed, how
do you get the permission to negotiate for bandatory dues
seduction from all people that are members, not just once
you want and join and pay, which is the default.
The unions wanted to make it easier to do that.
There's a process under current law to do that. In
some states there's no process to do that. Those are

(01:27:09):
called open shop or right to work states. So you know,
it was a matter of what that compromise would be.
So currently there's a super majority required up to seventy
five percent of the vote of the workers in a
second election to be able to negotiate for union dues.
There was a broad consensus and even people in business
community agree that that could be a lower number. It
could be more reasonable. Look at turnout requirements. We wanted

(01:27:31):
something that was stable. The Labor Peace Act in Colorado
has been a law for eighty three years. I'm not
a big fan of uncertainty. It discourages an investment, it's
bad for workers, and it's bad for business. So if
we were going to replace it, we wanted something that
would have staying power. I mean, it had enough buy
in from business and labor that it wasn't likely to
be thrown out at a ballot box a year later,
that it wasn't even likely to be swept away three
years late. We wanted the last, if not eighty three years,

(01:27:52):
we wanted the last ten years, twenty years, thirty years.
That was what we did were not able to reach
in an agreement, and so I did have to veto that.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
Do you think there will likely be a ballot measure,
either to do what that bill would have done, or
from John keldera perhaps to make us a right to
work state.

Speaker 5 (01:28:09):
I don't have a crystal ball ross. I don't know
what else these are. To be clear, this is not
the legislature referring when you're talking about are there people
gathering cigarets?

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
Right?

Speaker 5 (01:28:17):
Not the legislature. Yeah, and I don't know. I could
say that efforts at a compromise will continue. I mean, I
think it's both business and labor unions have an interest
in achieving a compromise. That's predictable because honestly, neither side
is thrilled to have to spend tens of millions of
dollars in ballot fights and maybe lose. I mean, that's
that's kind of a powerful incentive to negotiate.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
I mean my position is close to yours. I would
prefer us to be a right to work state. I'm
actually kind of sickened that there is a state where
you can anywhere in the US, where you can be
forced to have to pay money to a union.

Speaker 2 (01:28:52):
That's a whole different thing.

Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
But as long as we have the overall situation that
we have this is working fine for us, and I
don't see a good reason to blow.

Speaker 5 (01:29:01):
It up, and I would have There's many unions and
this doesn't even affect so like you think, when people
think unions in our state, they often think public unions
like CEA that's an educator's Association or WINS.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
These are actually not even under this.

Speaker 5 (01:29:12):
There is no mandatory way that you could force a
teacher to join it. Only the teachers that want to
join the union join it. This does not affect them,
to be clear, it's really about private sector unions, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:29:22):
Last week things is, I got five listener texts in
a row, and it came into my mind too. Just
going back to the previous topic of TABOR and all that.
One of the things that's happened in this state, as
you know, is the massive explosion in the number of fees.
And the state Supreme Court said fees aren't taxes and
therefore we're not going to put them through TABOR. But
at this point, like based on research from the Common
Sense Institute, if you counted, even if you excluded the

(01:29:44):
fees for higher education and just look at other fees,
our effective tax rate is somewhere in the high sevens
rather than someone somewhere in the low fours. Does this
trouble you at all that we keep getting these new taxes,
but we call them fees so people don't have to
vote on them, don't get to vote on them.

Speaker 5 (01:30:01):
Well, so you know, Taber set up a process for fees,
and again many of them have been there forever. I mean,
I'll give you an example Colorado Parks and Wildlife. You
pay your hunting license, that's that's a fee. We reduce
some this session. We cut vehicle registration fees by about
three dollars and seventy cents per vehicle. For the last
two years, every session I've come in with a fee cutting,

(01:30:22):
you know, agenda.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
At the same time, You're right, there's been some of
the legislature has approved.

Speaker 5 (01:30:25):
And I'll give you the example of one of the
larger ones was around oil and gas. We're both the
oil and gas industry and environmentalists entered in negotiation last
year and said, you know what we are going to agree.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
Oil and gas was going to agree.

Speaker 5 (01:30:36):
Hey, it's I think it's you know, thirty forty cents
per barrel, if you will, it depends on the price
of oil. That goes to then conservation and environmental mitigation,
and they like that better than kind of the regulatory
uncertainty they were facing with, you know, onerous provisions that
could have really hurt their business. So they have their role.
The key thing is is that they're not They don't

(01:30:56):
go to government. They go back out by law under
benefit kind of the same areas collected.

Speaker 2 (01:31:02):
They can't just be spent as a slush fund.

Speaker 5 (01:31:03):
So if you're getting a fee, for instance, on your
motor vehicle registration, that has to go then to something
like roads or something like that. The administrative piece would
be deminimous, like a couple percent, but it has to
go out for something that's directly related to what generates
the fee, and so that's that's the way that they work.
We've always tried to cut some of the significant ones

(01:31:24):
people pay, but there's been a few others that have
come along as well.

Speaker 1 (01:31:27):
Governor Jared Polus, thanks for making time, Thanks for joining
us in studio. Congratulations on surviving another legislative session, and
we'll see what they try to do to us next year.
And thank you for vetoing Senate Pill five in particular.
I'm you know, I send you messages from time to
time on what I hope you'll veto, but in any

(01:31:49):
case I do. I'm very grateful for that veto in particular,
and thank you and happy one hundred birthday, Happy.

Speaker 2 (01:31:56):
One hundred koa. We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (01:31:59):
I got to what you know, which questions I could?
I got one hundred listener questions like I always do.
And it's difficult because there's you know, there's a lot
to talk about. Also, I understand that you know a
lot of listeners send in stuff like what you know, ross,
how do you keep a straight face when you're talking
with him or he's lying or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:32:19):
Look, I.

Speaker 1 (01:32:23):
Think that as liberal Democrats go, Jared's pretty good, and
I think that ore That doesn't it doesn't mean I
agree with him on everything. It doesn't even mean I
agree with him on much. It means that I appreciate
that he, for example, vetoed Senate Bill five, the thing

(01:32:43):
where unions are trying to make it much easier to
force private sector workers to have to pay dues to
a union that they're not a member of, don't want
to be a member of as a condition of having
a job, and Jared that and there's lots of stuff
that I wish he would veto that he didn't the

(01:33:04):
the outrageous firearms anti firearms stuff, the the bill thirteen
twelve about you know, if you if you use the
wrong gender for your kid, your kid, and other stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
There's lots and lots of stuff. What do you want
me to do?

Speaker 1 (01:33:21):
We live in a blue state with Democrats in control
of absolutely everything.

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
Did you there is not.

Speaker 1 (01:33:29):
One statewide elected Republican in the state of Colorado. Did
you know that there used to at least be a
an at large or whatever the proper term is, see you, regent.

Speaker 2 (01:33:40):
I think out large is the proper term. See you, regent.

Speaker 1 (01:33:44):
There used to be a state treasurer or something, a senator.
Not for a while. Now nothing. We are in a
blue state, So what do you want me to do?
As far as like badgering our democratic governor about not
doing more stuff that Republicans and libertarians want. The dude'es

(01:34:04):
a Democrat and the next one's probably going to be
quite a bit worse for those like me and many
of you who would prefer smaller and more limited and
less expensive government. So it's it's it's a challenge, it's
it's definitely a challenge, and for sure, you know, I

(01:34:25):
actually will say Governor Polis actually answered my questions more
than usual this time.

Speaker 2 (01:34:30):
He didn't really dodge.

Speaker 1 (01:34:32):
On the other hand, I probably didn't ask him quite
as hard of some questions as I as I've asked
in the past. You know you can you can call
me on that. I suppose, Yes, Dragons, I've got.

Speaker 6 (01:34:44):
My application for the Bad Analogy Club. Okay, So you
saying Polus isn't that bad? Is that similar to saying,
you know, hey, I'd rather step on a lego than
a rusty nail.

Speaker 1 (01:34:54):
Yeah, okay, I mean I feel like our state has
turned into a whole bunch of leg on the floor
and that it's hard to do anything without stepping on
one when it comes to politics, because it look at
the people who are like, you.

Speaker 2 (01:35:08):
Know, the legs then mail.

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
Yeah, and our next governor is going to be a
rusty nail that we're going to be stepping on. Think
I think I fear listener request last DJ by Tom
Petty as Bumper Music producer Dragon. Of course up to you.
You're the boss and you can do you can do
whatever whatever you want. Ross, Why didn't you ask him
if you won't go on Mandy's show.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
I mean, why he won't go on Mandy show? Are
you Mandy's producer? I'm not Mandy's producer.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
And there's no point in bringing that up in public
on the air, trying to embarrass the guy in public.
And I will say I have tried in private. I
have tried in private. I've gotten him to go on
the air when Mandy and I are on at the
same time, so he knows he'll be talking to Mandy.
I've done, and Mandy knows I've tried. Mandy knows I've tried,

(01:35:57):
and Mandy tried by the way Mandy, Mandy has tried.
When when Michael Hancock was in office, Mandy tried to
help me get Michael Hancock on my show when when
Hancock was mayor of Denver and I and I didn't.
I didn't get him. And we don't control these people.
And you know, I like I tell Paulice and I

(01:36:18):
are friends, and I talked to him like on the
phone from time to time, and we text a fair bit.
And I will tell him, for example, I really think
you should veto this, and he basically almost never does.

Speaker 2 (01:36:31):
It's not like I don't. I don't have I don't
know that anybody has significant amount of influence.

Speaker 1 (01:36:36):
And and by the way, with Jared in particular, right,
he's he's a very successful guy. He's one of the
richest politicians in America.

Speaker 2 (01:36:45):
Right, He's made hundreds of million. I don't know how many.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
I don't think the number is public, but I'd be
shocked if he's worth less than three hundred million, one thousand, right, shocked.
So who's gonna he has what we used to call
f you money? Right, he can he can tell anybody
take a hike, and what does he can? He can

(01:37:10):
do anything he wants, So I don't have much influence
over him.

Speaker 2 (01:37:13):
He's not running for.

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):
Governor again, I decided, and I made the intentional decision
not to ask him if he's running for president, because
you're always going to get a boring answer, and I
didn't want to take any We already went a little
bit too long with him, and you're always going to
get a boring answer.

Speaker 2 (01:37:30):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
Oh, I'm focused on my job as governor of Colorado
right now, and I'll think about that stuff later when
I'm not governor anymore. There, I asked him there's your answer.
There's your answer. So yeah, Ross, at least she got
the mayor. That's right, that's right, And that's you just
never know in this game. And sometimes it's you know,

(01:37:51):
there's personalities. It's a very strange game, and politicians are people,
and people have personalities, and sometimes they're just you know,
politicians just feel like they don't get along well on
a particular show, or or they get along great.

Speaker 2 (01:38:03):
On a particular show, like I haven't.

Speaker 1 (01:38:07):
I haven't been able to get Jason Crowe on the
show for a long time. I had him once or
twice and I thought the conversations were really good, but
I haven't been able to get him back. I who knows.
And with It's not like I can get every Republican easily, too,
although that's easier, I guess I can. I guess I
can get every Republican who's in Congress in Colorado. I
can get any of them, and Mandy Canto Democrats are harder.

Speaker 2 (01:38:30):
What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
You know, Ross will take the rusty nail and the
lego over having these clowns taking my money for their
pet projects. It would be less painful and less expensive.
You know what, Let me stick with that for a second.
Then we're gonna hit a break, and then we'll come
back for our last few minutes together.

Speaker 2 (01:38:46):
Day. Let me just do one moment on this. These
things tend to be self limiting.

Speaker 1 (01:38:51):
And I mean that in the sense of as a
guy who grew up trading financial markets.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
When stock prices get too high, they go down until
they get down to a point where people want to
buy them again. When housing prices get too high, they
don't tend to go down a lot, but they'll stop
going up for a while, at least until incomes catch
up and then they become affordable again. That kind of thing.
And I think that this is happening to Colorado. Colorado,

(01:39:18):
and Jared said, Look, we had like one and a
half percent population growth every year for a while, plus
whatever inflation was, and our state budget kept growing. I
wouldn't be surprised if Colorado has somewhere around zero net
population growth this year next year.

Speaker 2 (01:39:32):
In fact, it would I haven't looked.

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
At any data, but it wouldn't shock me if we
had negative population growth. In other words, if more people
moved out of Colorado, then in I'm not predicting that,
but it wouldn't shock me because Colorado has gotten so expensive.
You got these crime things that are not inherent in
a bigger population, but just inherent with bad governments.

Speaker 2 (01:39:52):
Right, but you got all that crime.

Speaker 1 (01:39:54):
It's declining, but there's still something of a reputation there now.

Speaker 2 (01:39:57):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:39:57):
How many times have Aurora and Denver I've been in
the news now for gang crime and illegal aliens. That's
turning people off, housing prices, traffic. So I think that
some of this is going to be self limiting, and
I think people will move out. I think housing prices
will either go down or at least stop going up

(01:40:21):
until such point as people can afford it. People want
to live here again based on the whole combination of
stuff I think Colorado has is still it's a wonderful
place to live, but it's kind of overshot temporarily on growth.

Speaker 2 (01:40:38):
We'll see it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:39):
I don't know whether I hope I'm right or whether
I hope I'm wrong. Oh wow, And I don't mind
if you tell them what you told me that I
should have done well.

Speaker 8 (01:40:48):
In full disclosure, I have been where you are right now,
where I had a politician on that I really liked
personally that I had a good relationship with personally, and
I did not ask about difficult things because personally I
like them. But the audience expect you to be their mouthpiece.
They expect you to be the one because you have
access to the Governor that they don't have to be

(01:41:10):
the one to say, what the blank about the Kelly
Loving Act?

Speaker 2 (01:41:13):
What did you do with SB three? What are you?

Speaker 8 (01:41:16):
I mean, maybe not that aggressively, yeah, but they want
their voice to be heard and they're looking at you
to do that, and that's why they're all mad at you.

Speaker 2 (01:41:22):
On the text line, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:41:23):
Fair and not everybody's mad, but that's fair, I will
say with I think I should have asked.

Speaker 2 (01:41:27):
About the Kelly Loving Act. Part of the issue there was.

Speaker 1 (01:41:31):
Once they took out the worst stuff, I kind of
stopped paying attention, and I shouldn't have.

Speaker 2 (01:41:36):
You didn't. It's still not good represented.

Speaker 8 (01:41:39):
Brandy Bradley coming on today, she's been very vocal about
what's been left in it right, and they've criminalized speech.

Speaker 2 (01:41:45):
And SB three.

Speaker 1 (01:41:47):
Just in my own defense on SB three, I talked
a lot about that one already after talking to the governor.
Not today, I mean and I came on the show
and I said, he's going to sign it, and this
is why. And I didn't feel a great need to
have him repeat all that stuff I already said on
the show. But I get it. I fully, I fully
get your point. I didn't intentionally dodge asking him anything.

(01:42:09):
I never intentionally dodge asking him anything. It's just that
stuff just wasn't at the top of my mind.

Speaker 2 (01:42:15):
It was it was for the audience.

Speaker 8 (01:42:17):
So that's that's why they And like I said, I've
been in that position before. It's why, generally speaking, I'm
not friendly with politicians, and I'm I have politicians I
genuinely like. I genuinely like Thomas Massey as a human being.
I love the guy, I love Rand Paul because I've
gotten to know them on a personal level. Sure, but
I would not be afraid to hold either of them.
I'll hold their feet to the fire all day a long. Personally,

(01:42:38):
they're not in my state. That that helps, because I'm
not in Kentucky anymore. But you know, befriending politicians puts
you in a difficult position on days like today, and
it's challenging. And because some of these people you do
genuinely like.

Speaker 1 (01:42:52):
Yeah, But I will also say knowing him or even
liking him a little, we're sort of friends. We're not
close friends, friendly for friendly. It didn't change anything I
did today. Yeah, and I don't think it does. I
ask hard questions. If Phil Weiser asked hard questions of
Republicans who are in so I don't. I mean, I
think you're implying that I just gave them softballs, because

(01:43:13):
I know.

Speaker 2 (01:43:15):
But I did.

Speaker 8 (01:43:16):
You didn't ask about the things that your listening audience
wanted you to be their voice on.

Speaker 2 (01:43:21):
That's what I said. That's a much different thing than yes, okay,
you know that's fair and I did.

Speaker 1 (01:43:26):
I got, you know, one hundred something texts and there
are a few on that.

Speaker 8 (01:43:31):
Yeah, and I've done it, so I know exactly what
it's like. But you know, just I also know that
the audience will never have access to Jared Pollis.

Speaker 2 (01:43:38):
Yeah, fair enough.

Speaker 1 (01:43:39):
Well, if I get him, if I get him back
anytime reasonably soon and those things are still on people's minds,
or or if there's a legal challenge to Kelly loving act,
that would be a good opportunity if I can get
him back on the show to say Why didn't you
know this when you suck for somebody.

Speaker 8 (01:43:56):
To go to Jack Phillips so he can miss gender
gap so they can.

Speaker 2 (01:43:58):
File and know wouldn't that be something? Thank you many ideas,
they'll do it. What do you have coming up?

Speaker 8 (01:44:04):
I've got Brian Blaze from the Paragon Health Institute, their
free market policy think tank on health issues, and he's
got a whole new paper out on how the states
have been drifting off of Medicaid and why these medicaid
cuts are not only doable, they are necessary in order
to rein in the state's abuse of federal tax dollars.
Represented Brandy Bradley on a little bit late.

Speaker 2 (01:44:24):
All right, what time is the Healthcare one? Healthcare is
at one and Brian is great. He is a great guest.
I'm going to make sure to listen.

Speaker 1 (01:44:30):
Everybody stick around for Mandy's fabulous show. Talk to you
tomorrow