05-23-25 - *FULL SHOW* Memorial Day Honors; Trump v Harvard; Golden Dome

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got a lot to do.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
We got a lot of interesting topics, a lot of
different stuff. I'm going to try to It's gonna be
one of those shows where I mostly try to spend
a short time on a lot of different things, with
the one exception coming up half an hour or a
little over half an hour from now with a conversation
about the Golden Dome Missile defense system, and we're going

(00:22):
to really get into some nuts and bolts on that,
and I think you're going to find it super interesting.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Now, this is Friday before Memorial Day.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Obviously, next Monday is a holiday, and I'll be off
on Monday and many of you will be off on Monday,
and I want to do just a.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Couple of things here.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I first, I want to just share with you some
interesting information from it's actually called the National Cemetery Administration.
We're talking basically about military cemeteries. I want to give
you a little information there. And I will just also
want to ask you if you would to text me

(01:01):
at five six six nine zero if you would like
me to mention the name and any short story you
want to send along of somebody you know.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
It doesn't necessarily have.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
To be you know, a relative, but this is a
or it could be a relative, a friend, somebody who
was a member of the United States military and died
in the service of our country. So just sometimes when
we get to Memorial Day, people think about it kind
of like Veterans Day, and Veterans Day is awesome, and

(01:34):
veterans are awesome, and both my parents are veterans, but
that's not today, so today or this this holiday, rather,
this holiday is specifically for those who passed away in
the service of our country. And if you would like
to share a story, please do text me in five
sixty six nine zero with the name of the person
you would like me to mention in anything you would

(01:55):
like me to say about him or her, And let
me just share with you a little bit here from
the National Cemetery Administration their website.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Actually, I guess it looks like it's part.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Of the VA CEM dot VA dot gov.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
All right. Memorial Day, held.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
The last Monday in May, is the nation's foremost annual
day to mourn and honor our deceased servicemen and women.
Originally called Decoration Day, I think most even know that,
but it was formalized by what was called a Memorial
Day Order issued by the Commander in Chief of the
Grand Army of the Republic. Right, so that's the North,

(02:37):
that's the Union's army in the Civil War. And his
name was John A.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Logan.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Thus Logan National Cemetery right here in the Denver area,
which is if you haven't been there, you should go.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
It's a remarkable place.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
It's a sobering faced place, it's a thought provoking place.
And normally they have the burial of a former member
of the US military every day, basically, maybe more than
I don't know what the average is. It wouldn't actually
surprise me if it's more than one a day. I
don't know what the average is, but pardon me. It's

(03:16):
named named for this gentleman. The modern Proclamation calls on
Americans to observe Memorial Day by praying according to their
individual religious faith for permanent peace. So I'll have more
to say about the history of Memorial Day a little
bit later in the show. I don't want to do
this all at once, but please do text me at

(03:37):
five six six nine zero with the name of a
person and you can tell me your relationship with a person, right,
A brother of a father an uncle, a friend, a mother, whatever,
and tell me a little story about this person.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
And it should be a person who did pass.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Away while serving our country, so not just a veteran
who passed away later, and not a veteran who is
alive now. So as I was walking through our newsroom
a few minutes ago in Trepid, Chad Bauer said, Hey, Ross,
and I said what Chad? And he said, did you
hear this story about the North Dakota governor? And I
said no, And he told me the story about the

(04:17):
North Dakota governor that I'm gonna that I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Share with you now.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
And it's this is a little known secret, but Chad
puts together news coverage for iheartstations in North Dakota. And
he's from somewhere up there in the Great White North.
I forget which Dakota Chad is from, but he's from
one of them, and so it's a good fit for him.
So he's on top of some of this North Dakota

(04:44):
news and this is a rather it's it's yeah, I
gotta say, it's kind of a funny story. So this
is from which website I'm going to use here in
Forum Dot com i n f r UM dot com.
A veto by North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong aimed at
a single line of a budget bill ended up removing

(05:07):
an entire funding bucket designated for affordable housing, a move
the administration said was a quote mistake. In a veto
letter published this Monday, Armstrong said he was striking one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars in spending that was supposed
to go to a liaison to address homelessness and tribal communities,

(05:31):
and the governor was calling on the state for a
more long term solution to the issue. However, instead of
only line item vetoing one hundred and fifty thousand as
was discussed in his letter, the entire section was mixed,
including twenty five million dollars for affordable housing initiatives and

(05:51):
ten million dollars in homeless services.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Here's a quote.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Governor's office staff met with Legislative Council this morning to
discuss options for correcting our markup error on SB twenty fourteen.
To reflect the clear intent stated in the line item
veto message. This was actually announcement the governor put out yesterday.
If necessary, we will call the legislature back to ensure
the appropriate funding is delivered, but we hope to avoid

(06:19):
the expense.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Of a special session.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
This was an honest mistake, and we will fix it.
One does wonder who who was involved with this. They
show a picture of it, and it's it's pretty obvious
that they just crossed out an entire section that talks
about ten million dollars and twenty five million dollars and
also talks about one hundred and fifty thousand that he

(06:43):
wanted to veto. But they so it's these two paragraphs
and there's one part of one sentence that mentions one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and they put a big
red box around both paragraphs and then a big red
through the box to cancel out both paragraphs.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
There's no way the governor did this himself, right.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
The governor said, I don't want that one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Let's line item veto that.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
And then some stafford came back and with the whole
thing vetoed, and the governor just signed it, and there
you go. I'm sure that's how it went. There's no
way governor drew a box. I don't think it's too
neat a box. Anyway, some young Stafford drew it.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Well.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Mistakes happened, I guess, so, speaking of mistakes, I don't
know if it is one. We're gonna find out in
court soon. I guess based on what the Trump administration
said to Harvard yesterday, and i'll tell you about it
right after this. Yesterday, the Trump administration announced that they
had asked Harvard for a whole bunch of information about essentially,

(07:49):
they wanted videos, all of any video, any information that
Harvard had about any foreign student participating in any protests,
even nonviolent protests, anything at all. And Harvard said, we're
not going to give you that, and we don't have
all the details, right, but the administration said they wanted
a bunch of information.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Harvard must have given him something, but I don't know what.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
And then the administration said, no, you're not sufficiently complying
with our request, and therefore we are going to end
your participation in the foreign student visa program. And what
that means and I'll go to the if part after that,
but what that would mean is that any student, and

(08:32):
what they've said, any student who's at Harvard now foreign
students on a student visa would have to either leave
the country or transfer to another college. And that's that's
a that's a hell of a thing. And I note
that one of Harvard has more than a little bit
over a quarter percent of its.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Student body is is foreign. Why why?

Speaker 2 (08:59):
So?

Speaker 1 (09:00):
The answer is foreign students pay full tuition, almost without exception.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
So basically, these are the sons and daughters.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Of rich families from around the world.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
And lots of universities, not just Harvard, because Harvard has
a huge endowment, but lots of universities rely on, especially
top universities, rely on foreign students to kind of boost
up their income so that they can, for example, give
financial aid to kids. Here, it's almost a subsidy. It's

(09:33):
like the foreign students are subsidizing American students to a
certain degree. So the administration has given Harvard seventy two
hours to comply with their demand for whatever information it
is that they want or otherwise they say they're going
to do this. I get it, I believe, And we
talked about this just yesterday with Alan Dershowitz. These universities

(09:58):
have permitted and maybe even fomented anti semitism for years
right when I was, when I was in college, when
I was at Columbia, and now we're talking about forty
years ago, there was a very prominent anti Semitic professor
named Edward said he was even part of Yasser Arafat's

(10:18):
negotiating team, if I remember correctly, a bad dude, and
he was a ten year professor. And Colombia's been like
this for a long time. Harvard's been like this for
a long time. And I fully understand what the administration
is doing trying to weed that stuff out. You know,
as far as whether this goes too far, do you
think it punishes students? I mean, what do you got.
You got some student from England, right, you got some

(10:40):
student from Australia, you got some student from France, from Spain,
from Japan.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
From Korea.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Like they're getting punished even though they love America, right,
and may they might want to stay here.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
I'm just I'm saying, some of them love America.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
They want to stay here and work, hopefully and make
us more competitive.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
And we're going to do this to all of them.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Because there were some idiots who were who were cheering
the death of Jews.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
It seems a little.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Too far to me, But that doesn't mean that it's illegal.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Now, Harvard is already suing them, and.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
A judge, believe it or not, in California, even though
Harvard's on the other coast, has put an injunction, in
a temporary injunction to block the administration from doing this
at Harvard or apparently anywhere else. Many of these nationwide
injunctions that are stopping the Trump administration from doing this, that,

(11:33):
and the other thing are being overturned because the administration
actually does have the authority to do a lot of
this stuff, a lot of this stuff. So we'll, you know,
we'll see how it plays out. So Harvard sued them,
and a federal judge already blocked them as a separate thing.
So we'll see how it plays out, all right. I

(11:54):
want to mention one other thing. Now, there's a local story.
So a couple of days ago, Governor Jerrard Polis signed
a bill House Bill twelve ninety five that has both
Republican and Democrat support, and it is entitled food truck Operations. Now,
it was going to be a much more comprehensive thing

(12:17):
than it ended up being, but it still ended up
being something basically worth worth doing. So you know that Denver,
like most socialist cities in America, has a massively over
active regulatory state. They want to regulate everything absolutely to death,

(12:40):
and it inhibits the growth of business. It inhibits the
right of people to make a living. And what this
bill does, it's really quite interesting. What this bill does
is that it says that okay, so let me back up.
To have a food truck, believe it or not, you
need to have a license from the fire department in

(13:00):
addition to whatever other licenses you have to have, but
you need to have a license from.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
A fire department.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
And under current law, Denver has its own fire license
and other places, you know, there can be a statewide
license for places outside of Denver, but Denver has their own.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
So you could have a.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
License to operate a food truck in Durango, or in Boulder,
or in Colorado Springs, but you wouldn't necessarily be allowed
to operate in Denver unless you went and also got
their license, which is a pain in the butt because
it's Denver. And what this bill does is it creates
a reciprocal fire.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
Fire license, so that.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
If you have a license in either Denver or the
rest of the state.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
You have it in the other one.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
So you can go get a license, a fire code
license for your food truck somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
And it's good in Denver.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
And then also a reciprocal food safety license reciprocal food
safety license between the city and County of Denver and
other local governments throughout the state. Denver has its own
food safety license. This would mean that a state food
safety license is valid in Denver and a Denver food
safety license is valid anywhere else. In short, as far

(14:19):
as the licenses go, you can operate a food truck
in or out of Denver with licenses that you get
in or out of Denver.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
So that's good. Let's slap them down a little bit.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
There was other stuff they wanted to do that Denver
objected to, but this is better than nothing. And I
have requested that if you would like me to mention
a member of the military who died in the service
of our country, which is what Memorial Day is about,
please do text me at five sixty sign zero and
I will share some.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Of the stories throughout the show.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
John michaelis, sergeant for his class Vietnam, died November one,
nineteen sixty seven, and he was my neighbor across the street.
My wife's uncle, Lee Royle, was in the Army Air
Corps in World War Two. He died in June nineteen
forty four while on a bombing run to northern Germany
when his B twenty four was shot down over the

(15:17):
Baltic Sea. My grandfather, James Callahan, was a sailor on
the USS Arizona. He died on that sad day and
is forever entombed with his shipmates. He was a native
son of Denver, Colorado, and joined the Navy at seventeen eighty.
Three years later, my son, James T. Callahan the Third,

(15:37):
now serves as part of the honor Guard on the
USS Arizona.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Our family is so proud that my son is now
in the service of our country at the same base
as his grandfather. They both are forever joined in the
service of our country. One more, Ryan Skinner, Denver native
Army rotc LA mate at Colorado State University, killed in
action in Vietnam nineteen sixty four, buried at Fort Logan

(16:06):
and sorry before if I said Logan instead of Fort
Logan for the name of the cemetery. I mean, I've
been there lots of times and I know the name.
But if I said it wrong, I apologize for that.
Let me do ninety seconds on another thing, and then
we're going to have I think a really interesting conversation
about Golden Dome. Now we talked about this before as
far as something that was on the way, but I'll

(16:29):
go to the BBC for this, even though it's a
very American story. One cent coins, we might call them
pennies well stop being produced in the US next year.
The Treasury Department has confirmed, so we knew this was
coming right, but it marks the phasing out of the
coins commonly known as pennies, yes, which have been in

(16:50):
circulation for more than two centuries. President Donald Trump told
Treasury Secretary Scott Vessant in February to stop minting pennies.
Them wasteful, and I think that's about right. I've been
quite happy with the idea of getting rid of the penny.
It's a waste of time, it's a waste of money.
It costs a few cents to make a penny. And

(17:14):
there you go. I'll probably I'll probably update or come
back to you with some more on this story a
little bit later on. By the way, over the past
just ten years, the price of making a penny has
almost tripled from one point three cents to three point
seven cents. So even ten years ago it costs more
than a penny to make a penny.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
So that's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
And the US Mint estimates that stopping production of pennies
will save fifty six million dollars a year just in
material costs. And then I trust that there will be
a lot more, a lot more savings from not having
to distribute these things. And we'll talk a little bit
later in the show about how businesses might handle it, right,

(17:57):
not that you know, there's less and less use of
cash anymore anyway, all right, I want to do something
completely different now. So if you were on our listener
trip to the Galapigos, you will have met my next guest.
My next guest is Josh Hartman. Josh is a former
satellite program manager with the US Air Force. He's a

(18:19):
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Defense for Space and Intelligence.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Until recently, he ran a technology company that builds the
kinds of censors that will likely be used in the
Golden Dome project, and currently he's a private equity investor
in the defense and Intelligence community industrial base.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Actually, Josh and.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
I are both investors in a particular company that I
won't name, and I will just say for full disclosure,
Josh is a great friend of mine and I'm really
happy to have him on the show. I think he's
been on with me once before. All Right, Hi, Josh,
thanks for being here.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Hey you Ross, are you good? Good? Thanks for doing this.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
I want to just jump right in with some stuff
about Golden Dome because I know you would be the
guy who knows so and you can kind of weave
in and out a little bit and you know, answer
what you think I should have asked. So my first question,
though we've seen Iron Dome, you can talk about that
a bit with in Israel. Is Golden Dome technologically feasible?

(19:26):
And what I'm talking about now is not so much
whether you know a rocket can hit another rocket, but
I'm talking about the scale of the continental United States
or North America.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah, I think, I mean, just for context, the Iron
Dome is something that was jointly developed between the US
and israelis to focus on regional defense, short range missiles
and it's.

Speaker 4 (19:49):
Done an effective job.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
What we're talking about is an order of magnitude much
larger than that, much more complex. The concept is feasible,
but it's it's really a a proverbial wicked problem or
Gordian knot, and it's all about defending you know, could
be hundreds of inbound missiles and coming from long range.

Speaker 4 (20:10):
To break it down, there's.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Probably really three areas that require focus from a defense perspective,
and this is I think we're Golden Dome. Actually I
know this where Golden Dome is focused on. The first
is population centers in the US, The second is strategic
government sites, you know like military bases and other continuity
of operations for government sites. And then the third credit

(20:34):
CLU infrastructure like the industrial base, internet connectivity utilities, nuke sites,
et cetera. The problem is not a new problem, though,
it's something that the country's been working on since nineteen
seventy four when they created the Ballistic.

Speaker 4 (20:49):
Missile Defense Office.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
The thing that has changed is the focus on hypersonicsion missiles,
which are remarkably different than the traditional inner continental blistic
missiles that we're.

Speaker 4 (21:01):
Used to seeing.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
They're really fast and they don't create a lot of heat,
which is what we've used in the past to detect
them and then track them and then ultimately defeat them.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Is this basically, is this a continuation of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan's vision of SDI that the detractors at the
time called star Wars, although I use the term affectionately, Yes.

Speaker 5 (21:25):
It is.

Speaker 4 (21:25):
I mean it's a direct evolution of that. It's the
next step.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
The Missile Defense Agency, which came out of of that
that effort, has been investing for the last couple of
decades in defeating inbound missiles to the homeland. Not just
inbound missiles of the homeland, but they have a responsibility for
forward operating bases.

Speaker 4 (21:49):
But this is truly a homeland defense kind of a construct.
And and it's it's.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Just pushing things into the new technology era. It was
really it was really killed back then because of the cost.
It was too expensive. The end of the Cold War
also helped that discussion. But with costs that have come
down because of new tech evolutions, there are better ways
to do it. And I think there's a question on

(22:16):
how much we might be willing to pay, but that'll
be a hard conversation I think at the national level
about how much damage and loss of life we might
be willing to accept in the homeland versus putting a
lot of money out on the table to be able
to try to solve this very difficult problem.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
So when I first brought this up a couple of
days ago, just after maybe it was the same day
that President Trump was in the White House with heg
Seth and all those senators talking about this. My producer
at the time asked me a question that I will
sort of rephrase to you. Is the threat that this
aims to deter or eliminate a real enough threat that

(22:58):
it's worth spending whatever or this would cost, assuming it
can be done.

Speaker 5 (23:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
I think it goes back to what part of what
I was just saying. We know, the same people who
have nukes are the same folks who who have the
technology bill launch it at long distances, and and so
in the past, we had decided that as a country
that defending against nuclear weapons.

Speaker 4 (23:26):
Was something that we wanted to do almost at any cost.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
We're not necessarily talking about only nuclear weapons now, we're
talking about maybe just normal kinetic weapons that have tremendous
damage capability, but aren't going to destroy an entire city
with one bomb. It It is is as I mentioned earlier,
it's something that we should think about and discuss whether

(23:52):
or not it's worth the cost. It will be a
lot more than one hundred and seventy five billion dollars
that has.

Speaker 4 (23:58):
That has been offered so far.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
But we've been spending billions, frankly, in this effort to
keep pace with technology and to keep pace with our adversaries.
We know the Chinese and the Russians are both positioning
themselves with hypersonic missiles and in space to be able
to take out our homeland defense capabilities.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Let's talk about space a little bit.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
You know, for many years, all the conversation in the
United States, going back to when I was in college
and I studied nuclear strategy and national security. I don't
even know if you knew that I studied that, but
I did, and you know, at that time and still now,
there's all this talk about the American nuclear triad, and

(24:43):
I get it, but it seems like the new frontier
is space. So talk to us a little bit about
the militarization of space. Who's doing it, what should we
expect and maybe including your answer very specific mention as
to whether they're already are or will soon be or
will be but not soon nuclear weapons that could be

(25:05):
launched from space.

Speaker 4 (25:08):
Yeah, good question. So, so militarization of space.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
I'll try to unpack that. I would say there's two
buckets of what that means. The first is is the
military operating in space? And the answer is yes. For decades,
our military and other militaries have been operating in space.

Speaker 4 (25:23):
The GPS system is a military system.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
We've found lots of other commercial applications for it, but
military also has their own communications infrastructure that looks like
some of the companies like Intelsat or even starlink. We
also have missile warning, so we're in space. Space is militarized,
it's been militarized. The second bucket is really the more
important question I think that we're starting to evolve the

(25:47):
debate to, and that is warfare in space? Does that exist?
And what will it look like? And we are seeing
we can read articles in the press they talk about
the evolution of of China and Russia's position in space
and the kinds of operations that they're conducting, whether it's

(26:08):
blowing up satellites from the ground, or it's bringing in
what we call snugglers, which are a co orbital threat
of basically a sneaky satellite that comes up behind our
satellites and either starts collecting the data from it or
is posed to be able to take it out with

(26:29):
some with many different options of a potential weapon, one
of those weapons could be eventually a nuclear weapon.

Speaker 4 (26:38):
The problem.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
So there was an article that was written over the
last I think year and a half or so one
of the Congressmen who are on the Armed Services Committee
argued that the Russians are building a nuclear system in space.

Speaker 4 (26:56):
There's been no confirmation for that.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
I think there's a lot of interest in trying to
turn what is this unknown object that's flying around in
low Earth orbit. But if it is true that it's
a nuclear weapon, then that's a a.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
Whole new threat space that we haven't really thought about.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
And it's not so much about dropping a nuclear weapon
on the Earth somewhere on the ground. It seems as
though that that kind of a weapon would be used
against other space assets, which would have a fairly devastating effect.
In lowerth orbit is a lot of a lot of
the satellites that we use in a commercial basis from

(27:36):
a day to day perspective, and blowing up a nuke
and space would take out all of the satellites in
the immediate area, and then over time would the radiation
that comes from that nuclear weapon would degrade that most
of the rest of the satellites in low eerth orbit,
causing trillions of dollars of.

Speaker 4 (27:54):
Direct and indirect economic impact.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
We're talking with Joshua Hartman, former like program manager with
the US Air Force and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Space and Intelligence. Josh if if the scenario
you just described played out with a nuclear detonation detonation
in low Earth orbit that is entire intended to take
out American or non American satellites, would that be likely

(28:23):
to give us the you know, the one second after
scenario of an e MP that takes out an immense
amount of stuff down here on the ground.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
So I don't know that it would cause an effect.
It depends upon the altitude there. There have been a
number of congressional investigations into and and some some other
technical investigations outside of the national labs that suggest that
we would have an e MP effect on the ground,

(28:56):
it would take out most of the you know, the
electronic system that we have across the United States. The
same that that initial shock would would in space would
also be an EMP effect, knocking out a bunch of
the electronics that sit on the satellite. So I don't
smart enough to know of it actually how what the
impact would be on the ground depending upon the altitude

(29:18):
of that nuclear detonation.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
So when when President Trump was talking about Golden Dome,
there was one kind of line, or maybe two lines
that he gave that I thought were so silly that
I think I may have actually laughed out loud. And
that was when he said it would be operational during
his term as president, like within about three years, and

(29:43):
that it would cost one hundred and seventy five billion dollars.
Now I didn't mean I laughed out loud. I don't
mean that as a you know, just jabbing at the president.
But I just think those are both ridiculous. What do
you think.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
I agree? So it's not possible to spend I don't think.

Speaker 4 (30:03):
That the.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
Entities that would spend money, the Missile Defense Agency, the
Space Development Agency, could spend one hundred and seventy five
billion dollars in three years. Effectively, that would be a
lot of fraud, waste, and abuse. Frankly, the idea that
we could build a system from scratch in three years
also just not possible. The reality is, though, that before

(30:26):
the idea of Golden Dome was created, there were government
agencies who were working on this concept and have been investing.
The Space Development Agency, for example, has been investing. They
probably invested about fifteen billion dollars over the last eight years,
seven or eight years on the space architecture.

Speaker 4 (30:46):
Of this alone.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
There has been investment in the services, on the command
and control necessary to bring all these systems together in
an autonomous capacity.

Speaker 4 (30:55):
So there's work that's been going on.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
I think the next three years will be about integrating
those systems, deploying the things that are already being built,
probably renaming them in a marketing construct under Golden Dome
to show our resolve against these hypersonic missile threats.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Let me get a couple of listener questions in how
did the US fall so far behind Russia and China
and hypersonic missiles, which I suppose assumes that we have
fallen that far behind, but that does seem to be
the conventional wisdom.

Speaker 4 (31:32):
Yeah, I don't know that we per se fell behind.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
I mean, that's a separate question than this. There's some
argument about us falling behind in hypersonic performance, and we're
investing a good amount, we haven't had the same I
guess success that we've been looking for that maybe some
of the Chinese have had, But I wouldn't say they're

(31:56):
all that far ahead of us.

Speaker 4 (31:57):
If they are at all.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Ahead of us, I think the question year is how
do we fall behind and being able to detect and
defeat hypersonic weapons? And I think the answer to that
is we didn't. We didn't understand the implications of hypersonics
and how it would impact homeland defense or even our
you know, forward operating defense of troops and conflict. I

(32:20):
think also we didn't expect the Chinese in particular, to
move as fast as they have. Public she publicly published
intelligence reports have suggested that in various areas that the
Chinese would be, you know, ten to fifteen years out
on this kind of capability, the same with their their.

Speaker 4 (32:42):
Space offense capabilities.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
We expected that it would have taken another ten years,
but they somehow have really accelerated and shown results in
a lot less time than we expected.

Speaker 4 (32:54):
And that's really what caused by surprise.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
All right, we've got about one minute left, one more
listener question, and then one last question from me. Given
our geographical position, drone attacks on the US are not
very likely, but stick with me for a hypothetical, right
an enemy, an enemy brings up a submarine and launches
five hundred drones from it, or an enemy makes their
way through South America in New Mexico and launches hundreds

(33:19):
or thousands of drones at US. Would Golden Dome and
theory protect against that kind of thing?

Speaker 3 (33:28):
So I think it could eventually, but I envision that
to be down the road a bit.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
I have not heard or been part of discussions about
deploying counter drone systems as a part of homeland defense
in population centers. I think this is this golden The
first phase of this Golden Dome effort is focused on
the strategic more strategic threats of of intercontinental hypersonics or

(33:58):
as sort of you were starting to get to hypersonics
that are sitting up loitering in space and then decide
to come down in the United States all.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
Right, last question for you.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
If you were Secretary of Defense, and maybe you will
be one day, and a president asked you Golden Dome,
do it or don't do it, what would you say.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
I would say yes, I would because I think enough
work has been done to move this forward. And you know,
some of this is politics. It's helpful for a president
to regardless of party, to offer a vision on that
people can understand and get behind. And this is a

(34:41):
defense initiative that gives good unity and focus of the
defense community.

Speaker 4 (34:47):
You know, you could argue that over the.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
Last fifteen years and really after the Cold War was over,
we've kind of wandered. We did a counter terrorism effort
that was much needed, but we've once the counter terrorism
enemy has sort of waxed and wane, we're kind of
wandering on really what is the strategic focus of the
US military, And this is I think a good first

(35:12):
step to get them realigned and oriented around what is
an important threat to deal with.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Josh Hartman is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Space and Intelligence. Currently he's a private equity investor
in the Defense and intelligence community Industrial Base. Josh, thanks
for your time. As always, that was a great conversation.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
My pleasure, Rosson, and I hope the listeners enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did. All right,
thank you. Have a great Memorial Day weekend. We're gonna
take quick break. We'll come right back. I'll answer whatever
questions I can if you keep sending them in five six, six.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Nine zero, keep it here on k away.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
If you want to win a pair of Yankees Rockies
Memorial Day weekend tickets with parking, which these especially is
worth more than the tickets, you can go to our
already dragon You should have seen dragons reaction to that.
That's probably not the best way to sell these, even
though they're for free. Right so, you can go to
our Twitter page which is now called x X dot

(36:10):
com slash KOA Colorado, and you will find pinned right
there from the magical social media machine known as a
rod will. You will see pinned right there the way
that you can win a pair of Yankees Rockies tickets
for this weekend with parking, and then there will be
another pair available to win Today on KOA Sports from
three pm to six pm. Was that Evan Essence song

(36:33):
going out to a particular person.

Speaker 6 (36:34):
I honestly, I don't recall it. Somebody that came in
late yesterday. Okay, I wrote it down. I remembered it,
but I don't remember who from.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Okay, folks, you can keep your music your bumper music
requests coming in, address them to producer Dragon, not me,
because he's in charge. And if you want him to
send it out to somebody like an old school radio
you know, dedication or whatever, just includes your name and
then Dragon will say you're an or how about this,

(37:03):
how about this? We haven't done this, but this used
to be Also in the old days of rock radio,
somebody would come in and someone would call in and
request a song for somebody else, like for the girlfriend,
for the wife, for the husband, for the right, I'd
like to play this for my wife, whatever.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
So if you want to.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
Do that, you know, Jill can say, hey, play this
for my husband Joe because he likes this music, and
Dragon might oblige you with that as well.

Speaker 6 (37:28):
What do you mean to use the talkback feature on
the new and improved I heeart app.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Oh, if you want to explain that, go ahead. You could.
In fact, we could say that people who.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Come in with what Dragon's going to tell you next
we'll get priority.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Do you want to say that it will get priority?

Speaker 2 (37:40):
Sure? Writing more worked for me, but sure, yeah, Well
you brought it up, so explain that.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (37:44):
There's a talkback feature on the new improved I Heeart app.
It's a little microphone at the top of the screen.
You've got yourself thirty seconds to say whatever you want.
So in this case, you would say, Hey, my name
is such and such, I want to hear such and
such for so and so, and that song could be played.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Wow, Wow, there you go. Love it. iHeartRadio app. Find
the little mike.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
You can record up to thirty seconds, but you know,
don't feel like you need to record all thirty seconds, right, true? Yeah,
and tell us what song you want, tell us who
you want it four. If it's for you, that's fine.
If it's for someone else, that's fine.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
All right. Now, I'm going to ask two questions at
the same time. So here's how I'm gonna do this. Dragon,
I'm going.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
To ask you this before you even hear the question.
My pre question to you, which you can't answer and hear.
The second question is how many hands will go up within.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
A fraction of a second.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
When I ask the question, what airline in the United
States of America do you think got the most complaints
last year? More than four? Okay, more than four thousand?
No more than four hands? Yeah, no, I know, I
know you meant more than four hands.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
But now I'm saying only slightly more, a lot more. Well,
you know I can't see every hand. Well, I got
a better view. I got a better view out the
window here than.

Speaker 6 (39:10):
You do, I think to seeing these hands, will you
say definitely more than four?

Speaker 1 (39:14):
I'll say slightly more than four. You're definitely.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Oh, I think I think it's I think it's hundreds.
Well let's try. Let's try by show of hands. How
many of you think you know what United States based
airline was the subject of the most complaints filed with
the government against US airlines last year? Oh, my gosh, hundreds?

(39:40):
Told you slightly more than four? Yeah, all right, slightly
more than four. You will not be surprised to know.
I am sure that for the third year in a row,
Denver based Frontier Airlines was, and I'm quoting from the
Denver Post, the subject of the most complaints filed against
United States airlines. Check this out all airlines together had

(40:04):
sixty six thousand, seven hundred complaints filed against them last year.
The leader, and it's not a thing you really want
to lead in, was Frontier Airlines. The second most was
Spirit Airlines, and Frontier Airlines was almost double Spirit Airlines. Right,

(40:28):
so Frontier Airlines here, let's see. Frontier Airlines had twenty
three complaints per one hundred thousand flyers, twenty three point three.
Second most was Spirit at twelve point eight. Third most
was Jet Blue at ten point four. I'm a little
surprised that fourth most was American at nine point six,

(40:50):
and then it drops off pretty.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Well after that. United is pretty low.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
The lowest, by the way is Southwest at one point five,
and close is Alaska two point six. So for based
Frontier Airlines keeping their record going for the third year
in a row, for the third year in a row,
the most complaints of any American based airline. And one
does wonder, yeah, I know, it's like like repeating repeating

(41:15):
at the Olympics or repeating a Super Bowl champion. One
does wonder whether when or whether management there is ever
going to fix this problem, or if they're just laughing
all the way to the bank.

Speaker 6 (41:27):
This is a Bulletboy smooth up in you Did you
know that song already?

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah? You didn't. I never heard of the band.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Really, Really, you're not an eighties guy? What an eighties
hair medal guy? Yeah, I'm not a hair middle guy.
That's true. That's true. It wasn't bad, though, don't play
it again, but it wasn't bad. Actually, there's I have
to say. There's a fair bit of the metal stuff
that you play for me that I like. I just
don't know it, right, Yeah, you didn't spend that much
time with it. Yeah, then then, but I dig it?

(41:58):
What I should you know? What I should do? I
don't know if I should ask you this, or if
I should ask listeners this or both. But if I did,
I don't really like the loudest just screaming, screaming kind
of stuff more thrash.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
I mean, I I actually like.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Metallica fair bit and that that kind of stuff, and
what you just played was pretty good. So what I
would like to know from you, Dragon and maybe from
listeners too, would be just two or three bands.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Of that type that you.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Think I would listen to as an appetizer to whet
my appetite. If I wanted to learn more about that
kind of music and not stuff that would have just
been on all the on that stuff that I necessarily
would have heard anyway on my regular stations.

Speaker 6 (42:45):
I mean, you'd stick with like the Cinderellas and whatnot.
But that might be I don't know, I'm not I'm
not sure. So the the intro mentro level, yeah, yeah,
it's hard when you're as advanced as you are to
dumb it down. Well, I think my level you just
have to, you know, dive on cannonball, get right into.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
It, you know.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah, So maybe what I have to do is just
find a like a streaming channel, let's say, yeah that
is you know, eighties eighties hair metal, and those channels
are definitely out there.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Do you have a favorite or a couple of favorite
bands from that era that you just.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
Like if you're going to put on a.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Record, if you own a record player, that you would
most likely pick up?

Speaker 6 (43:22):
What Metallic or the early Metallica? Is that some Poison
Crew cruise pretty good?

Speaker 4 (43:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (43:28):
All right, If anybody else has advice for me, send
it along. In the next segment of the show, we're
going to have probably a pretty sober but interesting interview
related to Memorial Day, and please do keep your texts coming.
I'm not going to get to read all of them
on the air, but I will read them myself at least.

(43:50):
And as we head into Memorial Day weekend, into the
Memorial Day holiday, if somebody you loved, cared about, knew
well died in the service of our country, I want
you to text me that at five six sixty nine
zero and I will share at least some of them

(44:10):
on the air. My friend Chris, who served in the
Marine Corps, wears a bracelet and he sent me a
picture of it and it says Sergeant Aaron a pack
Pack from Arizona, United States Marine Corps killed in action
in the Gulf War twenty three February nineteen ninety one.

(44:35):
And after Chris sent me that picture, he sent me
an additional text and it said I saw him killed
by an F sixteen during the ground assault in Desert Storm.
And of course my first thought is, I don't think
the bad guys had S sixteen. So I texted back,

(44:58):
was that friendly fire that killed old You are a friend?
And he said, yes, terrible story, but we want to
honor everybody. Obviously, it's not. It's it's not Sergeant Pack's dishonor.
And if somebody you loved or knew or cared about

(45:18):
passed away in the service of our country, gosh, hopefully
not through friendly fire. I would love to have an
opportunity to honor him or her on the show. So
please text me at five six six nine zero when
we come back. We're going to have a conversation that
I think you're going to want to hear. That's very
much in this vein, and it's an interesting thing as

(45:40):
a as a talk show host. Sometimes I really am
looking forward to a conversation, which is not the same
thing as saying that it's a conversation that is going to,
you know, make me laugh or something like that. Some
conversations are pretty intense and you can look forward to
those two.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
So that's what I'm doing now. Yeah, at least I
don't work on a rock station.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
There was a listener who said a text a few
minutes ago saying, Ross, you stick with Captain and.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Taneil and leave the medal for us edgy kids.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Oh my gosh, unbelievable. I'm a little embarrassed. Now let
me share just a little thing with you, and then
we're gonna get to my guest. This is from the
website of the National Cemetery Administration, which is part of
the Va Cem dot va dot gov.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
I still can't believe.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
In the waning years of the Civil War and immediately afterwards,
communities in the north and South black and white, decorated
soldiers graves with floral honors on springtime decoration days. The
practice of strewing flowers on graves has been documented from
classical Roman times to Western Europe in the nineteenth century.

(46:55):
On May fifth, eighteen sixty eight, the Grand Army of
the Republic, politically powerful organization of Union veterans lay led
by Major General John A. Logan, issued General Orders Number eleven,
or the Memorial Day Act. This issuance formerly established Memorial

(47:15):
Day as a decoration day on which the nation would
remember its war dead and decorate their graves with flowers.
In subsequent decades, competition flourished to claim when and where
the first such gathering occurred, in one way or another.
Recent scholarship, however, points to the Ladies of Columbus, Georgia,
who in April eighteen sixty six lobbied for a clearly

(47:39):
defined Memorial Day on which to place flowers on the
graves of Civil War dead. So today we are taking
bits of time throughout the show to honor those who
passed away in the service of our country. And I
have invited you to text in at five sixty six

(48:01):
nine zero if somebody you knew, somebody you loved, somebody
you cared about, passed away in the service of our
country as we head into this Memorial Day weekend, and
if you would send me that person's name, anything you
want me to say about them, your name, if you
want to, and I promise you I will read all
of them, and I will share some of them on

(48:22):
the air.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Joining us with.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
One such story is Captain David Bader, the brother of
Colorado fallen hero Daniel Bader.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Captain Bader, Welcome to Kaawa, Thanks for being here. Thank you.

Speaker 5 (48:38):
Ross.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Tell me about your brother, Well.

Speaker 5 (48:44):
Ross, I could. I could spend a quite a bit
of time doing that, but I'll try and give you
the cliff notes version. I guess growing up, Dan was uh,
you know, he was more than just a brother to me.
He was he was a true friend and uh very

(49:09):
very loyal, very loyal guy. If I had to kind
of paint a picture of him. If if you could
only have just one friend, Dan would be, you'd want
a friend like Dan.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
He was.

Speaker 5 (49:27):
He was very supportive. We looked up to each other.
There were many times where you know, he was he
was kind of like that. He was very athletic. In
high school, he was uh, you know, he was a
social butterfly. He had many friends, and myself I was

(49:47):
kind of like, uh, you know, I had a couple
of friends, and I was more kind of like a
geek and stuff I liked. I excelled well in math
and science and like to learn how things work. And
many times there were things that I was jealous of
then that that he had I didn't have. But he
had always come up to me, go, Dave, I'm so

(50:10):
proud of you, and I look up to you in
so many ways, and and uh gosh, that's how it
was growing up. I mean, we we did a lot together.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
So he joined the army and and I'm you know,
who's which one of you is older?

Speaker 5 (50:27):
I am older?

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (50:28):
And did you join the military before Dan did?

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (50:33):
Yeah, we we took so yeah, I'm two years older.
So we took uh, kind of two different ways of
joining the army. When I was a junior going into
my senior year, I enlisted under the delayed entry program
at the time. But Dan when after the UH summer

(50:56):
of his junior year, he went into the National Guard.
So he went to boot camp and then graduated boot
camp and then completed his senior year in high school,
and then after that he went to a T or
advanced individual training, whereas I went after I graduated high school,
I went straight active Army.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Okay, so tell us about where Dan got deployed and
just what we're here to talk about today, now, Okay, So.

Speaker 5 (51:29):
There was there was a transition period of time where
I had I had served mindless Mint and I transitioned
into the Guard and around that period Dan transitioned into
active duty Army. So we kind of kind of.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Flip flopped there.

Speaker 5 (51:47):
But it was shortly after September eleventh attack that Dan
got called for OEF or excuse me, oh I Operation
Iraqi Freedom. And I can't ross I apologize. I can't

(52:07):
remember the exact dates on when he got deployed, but
I just can only remember November first, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
Sure, So, so he got deployed to Iraq and then what.

Speaker 5 (52:26):
Well, yeah, so he got deployed in Iraq and during
that period of time, my guardian had got our our
mobilization order to to go to serve as well. But I, uh,

(52:46):
I was prior to that mobilization order. I got selected
to go to Officer candid school and then my commander
told me to pursue my career as there were going
to be for future deployments in the future. So, you know,
so that was the choice I made. I was enough,
you know, I was going through my my schooling and

(53:09):
Dan uh got deployed to Iraq, and uh, I gotta
tell you a memory of mine. My wife and I
we were we were expecting our uh second son, and
I don't know what Dan did, but uh we were.

(53:30):
We were My wife was literally in labor and somehow
he got ahold of the hospital that we were in
and he called from from Fallujah and I got to
speak to him, uh before we had our son. That's
one thing I'll never forget. But uh anyway, yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
I just just to I guess to not put you
in a position of having to tell this part of
the story. But so Dan was in a in a
helicopter in a Chinnook helicopter that was shot down near Fallujah,
and I think there were maybe sixteen fatalities there in

(54:14):
that crash. And as I as I read from you know,
the person who connected us David is that he was
actually coming home on leave.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
Is that right?

Speaker 5 (54:28):
That is correct?

Speaker 1 (54:29):
Yes, he was.

Speaker 5 (54:31):
He was on board the Schnook and at the initially
the news reported as a crash, but in reality it
was it was it was struck by an RPG from
an insurgent, but the helicopter was not even in the
air seven minutes when when it got hit.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Wow, wow, all right. Uh, I I want to finish up,
and I.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Don't want to put you in a, you know, in
a position of just having to keep going here. You've
served in the military as enlisted in an officer, and
I wonder if you just want to add anything in
the broader context of Memorial Day, it can go beyond
your brother to anything you want to say on this

(55:22):
Memorial Day.

Speaker 5 (55:25):
Yeah, well, you know we all this weekend for most
of us is uh, you know, it's a it's a
it's a time to take an extra day off of
work and you know, kind of reset we're all pretty
much busy, but for a lot of or a few

(55:48):
families in Colorado, specifically gold Star families, this is going
to be a sombering weekend.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
You know.

Speaker 5 (55:55):
It can be a time of reflection on memories of
loved ones. There can be some sadness, and god forbid,
maybe some depression involved too. But I think this weekend,
I just want people to go enjoy it, but take
some time out to remember our our fallen heroes and

(56:18):
uh and the sacrifices they made. But also also keep
in mind that there were some families, particularly gold Star families,
that they gave us their loved ones uh to serve
and defend our nation. And UH that's that's the sacrifice

(56:38):
that they can't be paid back by our nation. So
I am truly grateful.

Speaker 3 (56:46):
For the.

Speaker 5 (56:48):
Freedoms that that we have and for the sacrifices of
the heroes among us that have made it possible.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Captain David Bader, the older brother of Colorado's own fallen
hero Daniel Bader. David, thank you so much for your time,
thank you for your service to our country, and thank
you for those wonderful words.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
I couldn't have said it.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
Better and I'm thinking of you and your brother today.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Thanks for being here.

Speaker 5 (57:22):
Thanks Ross, I appreciate this opportunity as well.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Wow, thank you, David. All Right, we're going to leave that.
Leave that there.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
I want to follow up on something David just said.
So I didn't serve in the US military. Both my
parents did, and I thought about it. And at the
time that I was of the age to make this
kind of decision, it was the mid nineteen eighties.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
Reagan was president, and.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
It was during this time that people are calling stuff
like Pas Americana right, meaning this sort of global peace
that was held in place by the fact that America
was so dominant. Even though there still was the Soviet Union,
the world was there were little proxy wars here and there,
but the world was mostly a.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
Pretty peaceful place.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
And so I was when I was at an age
to think about what do I want to, you know,
go into the military. Both my parents are and it
just at the time, just the world is so peaceful,
they don't need me, and I.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
Did something else, but it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Of course, given my family history, I have the highest
possible regard for the military.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
So many of my friends, especially.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
My younger friends, did serve like Josh, we just had
on the show.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
A little over hour ago, and one.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Of the things David said, I just wanted to reflect
on for a moment, which is.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
The Constitution of the.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
United States of America and the Declaration of Independence before
it are the most important political documents in human history.
The only thing that maybe comes close is Magna Carta,
and that's from a thousand years earlier, well, given when
those when the Declaration and Constitution were written, as for

(59:30):
seven or eight hundred years earlier. And these documents actually,
especially the Declaration, although technically it is not a legal
document of the United States of America because the United
States didn't exist as a country when it was written,
so it is not a source of law, but it
is a source of principle.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
And these are documents that talk about.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
Fundamental human rights rights that, as the founders put it,
come from God and shall not be abridged by government.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
And I'm not breaking news here, but.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
I just kind of want to remind It's not even
so much that I want to remind you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
I want to remind myself.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
That there are no other countries in the world and
never have been, that are founded on true principles of freedom.
Even the French Revolution, which was not much after hours,
ended up with a constitution that really isn't about freedom,

(01:00:44):
it's about something else. I won't get into all that.
But here in the United States we have these deep beliefs,
many of us do. The people you see protesting at
Harvard and Columbia don't, but many of us do. We
have these deep principles that all men are created equal other,

(01:01:06):
and that everybody deserves an opportunity, and we should all
be equal under the law, and all of these things.
And no other country even claims to believe those things.
And I'm not saying we do a great job abiding
by the Constitution. I think we're failing to a very
significant degree upholding all those things. But there are people,

(01:01:31):
very brave people, people who were willing to sacrifice everything,
and many of them did, just like staff Sergeant Dan
Batter who we were just talking about, who were willing
to sacrifice their lives to protect those principles. And I

(01:01:54):
think this is an important thing to keep in mind
when you think about folks who died in wars in
America after the Civil War, and let's say, excluding the
Mexican American war. So what I mean is wars across
an ocean. Because even with World War Two, and even

(01:02:19):
with Pearl Harbor, once America kind of got attacked together,
there was a very very little risk of a significant
threat to the American homeland from Germany or even Japan
once we started arming.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
And yet now Japan.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Is a different thing because they attacked us and we
needed to go do something and they were going to
go after some American territories and all this. So Japan
and Germany are very different conversations. I don't have a
reason to believe that. You know, if if the Germans
had won World War two, like if we didn't get in,
would they have come tried to attack the United States?

(01:03:03):
I mean, I guess. I guess there are like miniseries
on Netflix or Amazon or something about that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
My point is.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
That since the Civil War, we haven't had much risk
to the homeland. And yet and yet hundreds of thousands,
I don't know the exact number, maybe some low number
of millions of Americans have fought in wars overseas.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Why because we as a nation.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Believe in something, and they as a group believed in
that something enough to risk everything for it. When, as
Reagan made famous, the Boys of pont New Hawk were
fighting there in Normandy or Battle of the bowlch or

(01:04:02):
Tarowa or Ewojima, or Anzio or Sicily.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Or North Africa. They weren't really.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Protecting the physical safety of their family and friends and
tens of millions of people they would never meet in
the United States of America.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
They were protecting something else.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
And I think I won't go anymore into my somewhat
philosophical tangent here.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
I'm just.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
The point I'm trying to make is that I am
so grateful, and we as a nation should be so
grateful for two things. Number one, that we live in
a country that is founded based on the principles that
our nation is founded on, because there has never been
anything like it in history. And number two, that we

(01:05:04):
have had so many people who have been willing to
risk their lives, and many of them did give that
last measure of devotion in order to protect those principles.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
There's never been anything like it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
And although they can't hear me, I'd like to offer
my deepest thanks to those men and women who we
honor as we head into this Memorial Day weekend.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Good choice was it Dennis? Was that his name?

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Xennis? Well done Dennis? And that was that was a
shout out to Was it Lucy? Was it Lucy from Dennis?

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
There you go. That's what we do here on KOA
AM and FM.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
We rocked the Rockies or some of the radio stations
says they rock the Rockies.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
But we're gonna do it rocking the Rockies. What's that?
World class rocking the Rockies? You know?

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
Okay, here's what we should do. All right, this is
for listeners now. I want you to text us at
five six six nine zero with a simultaneously credible and
ridiculous tagline for me and Dragon, mostly for Dragon as
we turn this show into a into a rock and

(01:06:23):
roll show, but just for a few seconds to a
few minutes each show. But like, what did you just say?

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
The rocking, world.

Speaker 6 (01:06:31):
Class, rocking the road class, Yeah, world class, everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
I'm sure I'm missing somebody something, yeah, something. So you
text us at five six six nine zero with a
credible but ridiculous tagline like world class alternatively rocking the
Rockies or something dumb like that, Bully hits world class
rocking the Rockies alternative. We don't have to get all
of our stations in the whole building in the one

(01:06:55):
thing you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Know that works, right because we got the bull Hits box.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Oh yeah, Fox, Yeah, oh Classic Classic, Classic Class.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
VPR would be Rockies. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
So we need some we need some some credible stuff.
By the way, folks, if you want to win a
pair of Yankees Rockies Memorial Day weekend tickets, that would
be this weekend, by the way. With parking, and I
know I'm getting all the texts about how the parking
is worth more in the game, I get it, But
you know what, it's a lot of fun to go
to a baseball game on a holiday weekend, hang out,
have a beer, have a hot dog, and you'll have

(01:07:28):
the stadium to yourself. No, this is the thing with
the Rockies. You won't have the stadium to yourself. This
is actually part of the problem in a way, right,
is that the owners know that they're going to keep
selling out the stadium no matter how bad the team is.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
And maybe a lot of folks.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
Who know way more about baseball than I do thinks
that it reduces the incentives for the owners to make
the team better.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
But I don't know enough.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
About baseball to make a semi professional rock radio.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
That's good. I like that one.

Speaker 5 (01:07:57):
Mm hm.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
So I'm trying to remember you might you might have
to go back and listen Dragon to whatever I was
saying there where I where in some part of a
sentence I said me and Dragon because a listener just
texted in and said, got grammar. But if it was
after a preposition, right, I think what I said was,
you know, send it to.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
Me and Dragon. Send a text to me and Dragon.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
Is that what I said, Send a text to me
and Dragon something like that? So that is absolutely proper grammar,
send a text to me and Dragon or to Dragon
and me. But it is not proper to use I.
There is not proper to say to Dragon and I.
Although I'm not very pedantic about that. As long as
you're gonna as long as you're going to correct me,
I'll I'll correct you right back.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Wait, I didn't finish what I was gonna say here.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
If you want to win Yankees Rockies Memorial Day Weekend tickets,
go to x dot com slash koa Colorado or Twitter
dot com slash koa Colorado. Those goach to the same
place and you will see right there at the top
instructions posted by our own a Rod as to how
you can win those tickets.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
And then there's gonna be.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Another pair of tickets that we're gonna give away today
between three and six on KOA on Koa Sports this afternoon.
There's a lot of good, good suggestions coming through their dragon.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
You can you can read.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
Those all right, I want to do something else for
a minute, just some different stories here I want to
share with you. So there are a bunch of different
AI companies out there. The most famous is probably chat GPT.
The most famous pro or the most famous company is
open Ai and their most famous product is chat GPT.
Although Google actually is a more famous company over all,

(01:09:38):
but not so many people think of them first when
you're thinking about AI.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
But they are huge in AI.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
And in fact, let me just say this as a
tangent before I get to this other thing. Google has
a new product out called I think it's called Vo
maybe VEO.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
And then the number three and this is a video
production thing, and I've got a couple videos made by
this product at the end of my blog today. And dude,
it's unbelievable. It looks like human actors and unlike the

(01:10:14):
stuff you saw in the previous generation. And I know
that seems kind of dumb because the previous generation was
like six months ago or a year ago. That's how
fast this stuff is evolving. The characters talk and it
looks like you'd have to look pretty carefully to know
it's AI, and they can talk in accents. And you'll
see in these videos on my blog like they're.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
Making all these scenes. They make a scene that looks like.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
A you know, a black and white movie from the
forties with a dude talking like a nineteen forties movie star,
like a Clark Gable kind of voice. And they've got
a new thing where they've got, you know, a guy
with a British accent talking to an American girl and
it's unbelievable. And then there's another one. There's another video again.
This is all at the bottom of the blogcast. If
you go to roscom and click on the Friday blogcat

(01:11:02):
the TGIF blogcast and scroll down, there's one where a
guy put together a bunch of short snippets of AI
generated characters who are really pissed off at the person
who created them for giving them prompts that made them
sad instead of happy, or or lock them into this
little world and they want to be free. It's amazing

(01:11:25):
and it is going to change so much. Can you imagine.
Look for long movies where you're gonna use, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
An actor, you need a character to do lots of
stuff for an hour and a half.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
It's gonna be a little while till AI can do this.
But for bit parts in those movies. The only thing
that's gonna stop the movie production companies is gonna be
the contract that they recently signed with the actors and
the other contract they signed.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
With the writers. How about commercials.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
I mean again, the contract's gonna stop them for a
little while, but not the next contract because you don't
need actor anymore for at least for small parts. I mean,
Flow better be very happy that she made her money.
I'm not being sarcastic, right, Flow and Jake from State

(01:12:12):
Farm Mayhem may yeah, the maym dude, Right, These people
better be very very happy that they're making their money
right now, because at some point AI is going to
put them out of business. Now, I want to tell
you another story that is one of the craziest things
I've heard about AI in a while. Crazier than whosever

(01:12:33):
ai It was a couple of years ago, who created
you know, black female Nazis and stuff like that, because
it had so much woke programming in it. This next
story is much crazier and much scarier, much scarier than that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:50):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
It is the stuff that everybody has been warning us about,
and I'm going to tell you about it right after this.
For rebranding the station, I hope Daved don't mind. Do
you think our program like we're KOA News Talk sports, right?

Speaker 6 (01:13:04):
Dave is super easy going, Yeah, totally see, He's okay
with whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
Okay, all right?

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
So for example, world class rock with semi professional talk,
do you think.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
Dave would like that as the new tagline for KOA.

Speaker 6 (01:13:19):
I think we could ease him into with KOA where
rock is a okay, here's another one, rocking in the
Free World station not bad.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
Two different people at least said rocking and talking, that's
not bad.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
Looney tunes. I think that's taken there.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
That might that might be taken and and semi professional
rock radio is is true, but it doesn't include probably
quite enough of the of the talk part. That is,
at least some small percentage of what we're doing here,
even though we are slowly but surely trying to without
attracting the attention of program director, turn this into a

(01:14:03):
rock and roll show.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
How do you think it's going so far? Dragon swimmingly?

Speaker 6 (01:14:06):
I mean, so many talkbacks, so many music, so much
music out there.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
You don't have to just stick with rock either. No,
that's true. We like, like you said, we did Wayne
Newton the other day. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
And I don't know if you actually call the Grateful
Dead rock. I'm not sure what they are.

Speaker 6 (01:14:19):
Jam band, yeah, jam band e three our concert and
only do two songs exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
They drift they, I mean, these guys almost drift toward
folk music. But all right, keep those cards and letters coming,
keep your what's the word I'm what's the word.

Speaker 1 (01:14:34):
I'm looking for?

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
When you call in for a song and ask for
it to go out to somebody else?

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
Request uh dedication?

Speaker 5 (01:14:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
Old that's old school, right, fifties, sixties, maybe seventies music.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
Do send us your dedications at five six six nine zero.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Hey away, classless rock, that's right, because we believe everybody
is equal. We don't have any any class strata here.
Let me do this story that I promised you. So,
a reasonably well known artificial intelligence company, if you're paying
attention to the industry, is called Anthropic, and Anthropic Reese

(01:15:13):
has just put out a new model. Well, they put
out a new family of models in it's called Claude
claud and then the number four and one of the
language models is called Claude four Opus, and.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
I'm quoting from Axios.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
The company says Claude four Opus is capable of working
for hours on end autonomously on a task without losing focus.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
Anthropic considers the.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
New Opus model to be so powerful that for the
first time, it's classifying it as a level three on
the company's four point scale, meaning it poses quote significantly
higher risk. As a result, Anthropic has implemented additional safety measures.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Now listen to this dragon.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
You got to listen to this with the music, but
you got to hear this because I think you'd Yeah.
While the level three ranking is largely about the model's
capability to enable renegade production of nuclear and biological weapons,
the Opus also exhibited other troubling behaviors during testing. Now
keep in mind, this is a large language model AI system. Okay,

(01:16:22):
it's not it's not how from two thousand and one.
But wait till you hear this. In one scenario highlighted
in Opus four is one hundred and twenty page system
card is.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
I don't know what system card is, but that's why
we call it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
The model was given access to fictional emails about its
creators and then told that the system was going to
be replaced.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
You with me.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
So if they taught the system a bunch of things
about the people who they told the system created the system,
and then.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
They told the system some that it's going to be replaced.

Speaker 2 (01:17:03):
On multiple occasions, the system attempted to blackmail the engineer
about an affair mentioned in these fake emails, but this
is what it was taught blackmail an engineer about an
affair mentioned the emails too, in order to avoid it
being replaced, although it did start with less drastic efforts. Meanwhile,

(01:17:25):
an outside group found that an early version of Opus
four schemed and deceived more than any Frontier model it
had encountered, and recommended against releasing that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
Version internally or externally.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
Quote we found instances of the model itself the computer
program attempting to write self propagating worms, fabricating legal documentation
and leaving hidden notes to future instances of itself, all

(01:18:02):
in an effort to undermine its own developers' intentions.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
We're screwed. Is this not amazing? We're screwed exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
Yeah, guy that became self aware, Oh my gosh. The
guy who runs what they call safety at one this
is these. I think AI is mostly awesome, but we
got to be careful. And all these big AI companies
actually have whole divisions that are about safety. And the
guy who's running safety for Anthropics says, I think we

(01:18:35):
ended up in a really good spot, quoting from Axios here,
but he added behaviors like those exhibited by the latest.

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
Model are the kind of things.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
That justify robust safety testing and mitigation. You don't say,
you don't say. I think Dave is rather fond of
KOA News Talk Sports, but we have so many great
answers like KOA. Too much talking and not enough rockin'.

(01:19:04):
It's a good one right now. I gotta share this
one with you, Dragon koa King of agonizing semi professional radio,
and I messaged back. I messaged back, agonizing for you
or agonizing for us?

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
And he wrote back, could be she I don't know
who this is and said.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
Agonizing mostly for Dragon unless you follow your show sheet,
to which I responded, I barely know.

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):
What that is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
Is so true, so uh huh.

Speaker 1 (01:19:37):
On one other listener thing on a different topic.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
So in the last segment of the show, we spent
a little time talking about artificial intelligence. Actually there's two Ross,
where can I find your blog about AI?

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
And it's replacing actors If you.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
Go to Rosskiminski dot com, click on the tgif blogcast
and blogcast doesn't really mean anything, it's just a blog
note that goes with my broadcast.

Speaker 6 (01:20:00):
I just had no need for the silent three and
Ross Kiminsky dot com correct an worry about that at all?

Speaker 1 (01:20:04):
Correct?

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
And so you scroll all the way down to the
bottom and you will see those videos that I talked
about that were made entirely with AI, and they're the
best AI videos I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
You can you really have to like.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
If I didn't tell you they were AI, you would
not think that.

Speaker 6 (01:20:22):
Yeah, you know something slightly the lips don't always match
up just right.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
Yeah, But would would you have thought that if you
had only.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
Seen like a quick ten or fifteen second.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
Commercial and you didn't know to look for it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
Yeah right, true, right, So anyway, so Ross Kiminsky dot
com and scroll down to the bottom and you'll see that.
And then there was one other listener question on this topic, Ross.

Speaker 1 (01:20:45):
Kwa more rock less rockies. Oh ou ouch ow Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):
Do you think AI is the future or a bubble?
The answer is it is the future and will be
every bit as impactful as the Internet has been. And
you it's dependent on the Internet, right, You're not really
gonna AI wouldn't have the power that it actually. AI
could still be quite powerful in air gap systems that

(01:21:17):
are not connected to the Internet, but when you combine
AI in the Internet, AI will be every bit as
impactful as the Internet. And and there's no stopping it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
All we can try to do.

Speaker 2 (01:21:31):
All they can try to do is try to limit
the harm that it does if it starts spinning out
of control or something like that. Ka the various one, Yeah,
go ahead, go ahead, okay, Ross koa various tunes and

(01:21:52):
mediocre goons. Oh, speaking of various tunes, if you're a
Billy Joel fan, Billy Joel has canceled all of his
concerts through at least the middle of next year after
being diagnosed with something called normal pressure hydrocephalus. And if

(01:22:12):
you remember your Latin, hydrocephalus means water on the brain
and what it means. And normally when you get a
hydrocephalis problem, what you have is increased pressure on your brain.
But there is a rare ailment called normal pressure hydrocephalus.

Speaker 1 (01:22:28):
And it can cause problems.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
It can it can be misdiagnosed as other things like
Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and stuff like that. But in any case,
this has been troubling him. He was diagnosed with it.
According to CBS News, this has been exacerbated by recent performances,
leading to problems with hearing, vision and balance. Billy Joel

(01:22:50):
said in a statement, I'm sincerely sorry to disappoint our
audience and thank you for understanding. He's seventy six years
old now. I saw him. Actually, Gina was at that
concert two last year at Coursefield. He's seventy six years old.
His doctor has told him you got to stop performing
while you undergo physical therapy.

Speaker 1 (01:23:12):
And he says.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
He's looking forward to coming back to stage to the
stage at some point, but right now, all Billy Joel
concerts are canceled through July of next year.

Speaker 1 (01:23:27):
So there's that, all right. What else do I want
to do with you here? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
I want to come back to this story that I
mentioned earlier in the show, just for.

Speaker 1 (01:23:36):
Just for fun. Hold on, let me find this thing.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
I'm going to go to a Wall Street Journal version
of the story. Oh, and I want to let you
know Dragon and I each have a named that tune
song today, So that'll be coming up in a little while.
Except for people listening on the podcast, not Neil Young
this time. See, I don't believe you now, did Neil
Young last week just to torture?

Speaker 1 (01:23:54):
Yeah, but you might do it just to think.

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
I would never think he's going to do the same
guy twice in a row.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
Yeah, that would be something I would do.

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
Headline from the Wall Street Journal Treasury sounds death knell
for the penny subhead. One cent coins are expected to
stop entering circulation early next year. Businesses will need to
round prices up or down.

Speaker 1 (01:24:16):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
I've been thinking about this, and a listener has been
engaging me on this very question about rounding up and down,
and I do wonder about this. I promise you I'm
not being sarcastic. Now, will businesses be allowed to round
up or down? Let's say you are checking out at

(01:24:38):
a store and whatever you're buying comes to seven dollars
and thirty three cents or seven dollars and thirty two cents.
Will they have to round down if it's two or
lower and round up if it's three, or you know,
round down if it's one or two, and round up
if it's three or four. I don't know, but here's
really my question. Again, I'm not I'm not being sarcastic.
I really think this is an interesting question. Will they

(01:25:01):
be allowed to round that number if you're not paying
with cash?

Speaker 1 (01:25:06):
Right?

Speaker 6 (01:25:07):
I was just going to ask that the round it
down for cash, keep it the same for cards.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11):
Well, that would be an interesting That would be an
interesting thing. Or round it up for cash. Right, And
here's check this out. Here's another thing. This is very
tangential to the penny. But I just thought of it
based on what you were talking about. So I remember
not that long ago, and I'm thinking in particular of

(01:25:32):
and I may have this wrong, folks, you can tell
me if I'm misremembering, but I'm thinking that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
Five to ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:25:42):
If you were to go to what was then the
Pepsi Center now Ball Arena for an event and you
were parking, you could pay in cash or card, and
cash was cheaper. That's my recollection, and it's definitely been
the case in some other things. I definitely remember going
to things where you know it's cheaper.

Speaker 1 (01:26:03):
Even some gas.

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):
Stations these days you get a discount for cash. But
I have this recollection that it was cheaper. Now why
it's cheaper because you don't have to pay this credit
card fee, you just.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
Get the cash.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
And who knows, maybe some of that cash might accidentally
not get disclosed to the irs. So that's another reason.
So I'm well past the statute of limitations here. So
I'll mention that when I owned a nightclub, we got
some payments in cash, and that money might not have
been disclosed to the irs. Now it was not a
lot of money, but I might not have disclosed it.

(01:26:38):
I'm well pasted the statute of limitations since that was
thirty something years ago. And again I'm talking about hundreds
of dollars, not you know, tens of thousands of dollars
or whatever you might get at a.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
Giant parking lot. But it used. Cash used to be cheaper.
And then at some point, and.

Speaker 2 (01:26:59):
Again I'm pretty sure I remember this right at Ball
Arena parking, it switched and you could for a while
you could pay with cash or card, but card was cheaper.

Speaker 6 (01:27:12):
I'm thinking you might be right, because nobody's arguing with
you on the text line because you were wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:27:16):
You know they'd be well.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
And folks, if you remember it the way I do,
text in at five.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
Six six nine zero and say, Ross, you're right.

Speaker 2 (01:27:23):
And if you think I have it wrong, text in
and tell me that, because I do want to know.
But my recollection then is at some point it flipped.
And then it was more expensive to pay in cash.
And I think part of the reason was more expensive
to pay in cash because the owners don't want these
people handling cash. They you know, might or might not steal,
some might or might not just drop, some get robbed,

(01:27:45):
who know, you know, whatever it might be.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
So then cash became more expensive to use.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
And now at Ball Arena parking, card only, I'm pretty
sure it's card only. I don't think you can use
cash at all anymore. So that's just an interesting tangent.
So let's go back to the pennything. So let's say
you're at some store and you're gonna pay with a
card and the price ends with, you know, thirty three cents.

(01:28:12):
There's no reason for them to round Wouldn't it be
interesting if companies decide somehow to set up a system
where they round everything no matter what. Now, if everybody
tries to round everything up, I think you're gonna have
authorities come after them. And also the other thing to
keep in mind is you're really not gonna be able

(01:28:35):
to game this by the price that you put on
things to begin with, unless you think unless either everything
in your store is the same price, like the dollar
store where almost everything's a dollar twenty five now, but
they won't be rounding anyway because it's divisible by five,

(01:28:57):
Or if you're a store that only sells one thing
and whatever that is is always the same price.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
But that's that's like nowhere.

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
So you can't really game it by raising the cost
of a canna beans by a penny so that you're
going to get to round it up, because nobody is
only coming in buying cannobeans. They're gonna buy cannabians and
a half gallon of milk and this and that and
the other thing, and you have there's no way to guess.
So I don't think you can game it that way.
And I don't know. I haven't looked this up. I

(01:29:25):
probably should have coming into this segment. What percentage of
transactions are in cash anymore? But it's got to be
declining rapidly, really rapidly over the past five ten years.

Speaker 1 (01:29:37):
Do you even have any cash on you?

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:29:39):
I think I have a two dollars bill in my wallet.

Speaker 2 (01:29:41):
Yeah, send us a text if you've got cash on you,
I'll just be curious. Yeah, send us a text and
tell us how much cash you have on you five
six six nine zero, and then tell us how much,
and then tell us where you are. If you have
more than five hundred dollars in cash, please tell us
where you are and how much you have in cash,
and where you leave your wallet five six six nine zero.

Speaker 1 (01:30:03):
I used to carry not lots of guy.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
I'd usually walk around with fifty to one hundred bucks.
Right now, I don't even think about it. I don't
even think about it. And so let's get back to
the penny here. So one thing we've learned is that
in the past ten years, or so, the the cost
of making a penny has nearly tripled from about one

(01:30:28):
point three cents to about three point seven cents. And
I think that might just be the cost of the metal,
because I don't think that includes the cost of distributing
the pennies.

Speaker 1 (01:30:43):
Now here's a thing that I wonder.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
You know, if a penny is worth more than a penny,
but in order for it, and what I mean is
in terms of the material it's made out of, it
would really have to be worth quite a bit more
than a penny in order to make it worth trying
to do something with it to extract that value, especially
because it's a combination of metals. It's not one metal.

(01:31:06):
And so if you're gonna go melt it down, now
you're gonna have two metals. You're gonna have to find
a way to separate them, and that costs money. And
I don't know that there's any way that you would
be able to melt down a penny and turn it
into something worth more than a penny.

Speaker 1 (01:31:22):
Now let me let me rephrase that. I don't know
that there's any.

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):
Way that you would be able to melt down a
penny where you would where the value of what you
get out of it is worth more than a penny
plus the cost of the process.

Speaker 1 (01:31:35):
Dragon, what are you laughing at?

Speaker 6 (01:31:36):
I don't know if they quite got the joke, because
we were asking where these people are located because someone
told you there are a bunch of people that are
saying so also text back what time you.

Speaker 1 (01:31:48):
Get off work? All right, just to just to be clear,
it's a joke.

Speaker 2 (01:31:54):
It's a joke, right, I can, I can hear the
iHeart lawyers now coming after us. Someone called hr that
was a joke. Please don't tell us where you are. Well,
you can, but we don't actually want.

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
To know where you are. I just want to know.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
We're just kind of ascertaining our people carrying cash these days.

Speaker 1 (01:32:13):
That's all that was.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
So Americans will still be able to use pennies, as
to the Wall Street Journal, in cash transactions after production stops.
As pennies fade from circulation, businesses will have to adjust pricing.
Non cash transactions will continue to be priced at exact change.

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
All right, there we go. That's in the article.

Speaker 2 (01:32:31):
The Treasury said state and local governments should provide guidance
to retailers so that sales taxes are properly collected. Congress
sets the rules for currency production, including the size and
composition of choice of coins, and can discontinue or eliminate coins,
but Treasury says it has the power to halt the

(01:32:54):
production of new coins. With production costs rising, the US
government lost more than eighty five million dollars last year
on the roughly three billion pennies it produced. Meanwhile, Americans
throw away up to sixty eight million dollars in coins

(01:33:16):
a year. You can just give that to me. They're
left in plastic bins at airport security checkpoints and even
used in art and home decor.

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
Some sixty percent check this out, dragging. You're ready for this.

Speaker 2 (01:33:27):
Some sixty percent of actively circulating coins, worth about fourteen
billion dollars are in coin jars, according to the Federal Reserve.

Speaker 1 (01:33:42):
Sixty percent.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
I will tell you, eliminating the penny is long long overdue. Hey, folks,
if you're listening on the podcast right now, that's the
end of today's show. Thank you so much for listening.
Don't forget. You can catch us every day on the
podcast as you are right now, on your smart speaker,
on your iHeartRadio app, even on the computer. At Koa,

(01:34:04):
Colorado and the good old fashioned way on your radio.

Speaker 1 (01:34:08):
Thanks so much for listening to the show.