05-28-25 - *FULL SHOW* Mignon Houston; Suing re Tariffs; Denver Bridge

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
But every morning I do I do a few games.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
I do the Word, I do a couple other New
York Times games that you can do without having to
have a New York Times subscription, because I don't want
to pay those people any money even though I enjoy
the game. So I do another one called Connections, and
I do a mini crossword. And then there's this other
stupid game that I've been getting kind of addicted to
that that Josh, who you would know if you were

(00:23):
on the Goopago's trip, showed me. It's called word Scapes,
and I, on the other I simultaneously recommended and don't
because it's highly addictive and they give you a bunch
of jumbled letters and you've got to make a bunch
of words out of them. And I'm at I don't
know some stupid number of words now that I've done
because because I I don't know why, I've never been

(00:45):
addicted to drugs, like I feel like sometimes I do
stuff and then I just can't sort of can't stop
doing it. And it's like that with this game. I'm
I'm at level fifteen and forty eight, like each each
word is is a level. What I can't decide if
doing this stuff is a good use of my time,

(01:07):
or if it you know, like in the sense of
putting off Alzheimer's that I'm sure to get one day,
or some other sort of dementia.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
They used to talk about pseudoku that way, and crosswords
actually a big one, and things you can do to
make sure to keep your mind sharp as you get older.
And I'm not exactly old, but I'm not exactly young,
and I wonder if doing this stuff keeps my mind sharp,
although what I do for a living every day should
theoretically keep my mind sharp. So part of me thinks
it's a good use of time that way, and part
of me thinks it's just a massive use of a

(01:38):
massive waste of time, only only slightly better than candy Crush,
which I actually had to tell someone else to delete
from my phone for me so that I would stop
playing it. All right, that's my rant for the morning.
Let me tell you another thing.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
I am.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
I'm slightly jealous right now this very moment of my
older kid. My older kid and a friend of his
who just graduated from high school are on a road
trip right now, and yesterday they were in Banff, Canada,
and they they've outfitted the back of my kid's car,
which is the large I guess it's the largest Subaru, right.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
So it looks like.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
It's called in a scent, you know, it looks like
an outback, but it's bigger.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
So I worked with my kids. It's a three row car.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
I worked with my kid to take out the entire
third row and half of the.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Second row and so and then my kid, using.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Power tools and going to home depot and buying wooden
nails and all this or screws not nails, built a
collapsible horizontally collapsible bed so that when not in use,
it's pretty narrow, it's like a foot and a half wide,
but when in use it can expand quite wide.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
And so the kids sleep in the back of this car.
And there they.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Just slept somewhere in the forest in Alberta, Canada, yesterday.
And in recent days, my kid has seen bighorns, mountain goats,
multiple grizzly bears, I don't know, I don't know what else.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
And just they stop at.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
A supermarket and they have a little car refrigerator and
a little car camping stove and they're just mostly not
eating in restaurants. Every once in a while they get
a snack of the gas station, and they're just having
a tremendous time at actually fairly low cost, not having
to pay for hotels and like I said, mostly not

(03:30):
paying for restaurants, And I just think that's fantastic. I
think it's absolutely fantastic. And I'm a little jealous. I
could do that if I had more vacation, but I
don't work for myself anymore, so I don't get all
the vacation that I want.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
I used to when I work for.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Myself, I could have all the vacation I wanted, but
that's not how it is now. And I look back
on those days of being sort of young and care
free and even you know, maybe before I had a job,
after I had a job, but was you know, had
no other real responsibilities, And I just think it's a
fantastic time for them, and I'm I'm I'm a little jealous,

(04:07):
but I'm not.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Mostly I'm just excited for my kid having this time.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Let's see, I'm gonna mention this to you just briefly.
And the reason I'm only gonna mention it briefly when
it's probably worth a little bit more than briefly. Is
that I'm gonna have a guest on the show on
I think it's Friday, could be Thursday, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
I'll have to but anyway, I'm gonna have a guest
on the show later in the week to talk about it.
I should be able to tell you right now, though
I'm pretty sure it's Friday.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yes, it's Friday.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
So but the story that we're gonna have a guest
on to talk about is and here's the headline from
Denver Gazette, Historic Denver. That's the name of an organization,
and we're gonna have a guest from that organization on Friday.
Historic Denver opposes proposed Lincoln Street walkway. And I have
a bunch of this stuff on my blog, so you
can go look at it.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
But there is this I don't know whether you I
guess you'd call it.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Planned already, this bridge, this really long, windy bridge that's
supposed to give you the sense of a wind like
the Platte River or something winding through Denver. And Jared
Poulus had this commission. Some out of state group designed
it and it's not ugly, but historic. Denver thinks it

(05:19):
does not fit and it's basically aiming to go here.
I'll quote from nine News winding from the Colorado State Capitol,
winding around Lincoln Street to Lincoln Veterans Memorial Park. The
bridge would stop short of Civic Center Park, and early
feedback on the project is coming.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Up well short of positive.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
The state announced last year that had planned to build
a bridge for between eighteen and twenty million dollars with
both private and public public funding, but last week the
state released renderings of the bridge, and the project now
faces strong opposition. So again, you know, I don't think
it's an ugly bridge. But every once in a while,
do you see these bridges that are built, let's say,

(06:00):
over a highway or over a big road or something,
and you drive by it every day or a few
times a week when you're going wherever you go, or
you're going to work, and you never see a person
on the bridge, and you just think to yourself, this
is just another well intended government boondoggle bridge to nowhere.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Right.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
I wonder if that's this because one of the things
about this bridge is it's gonna be in places where
people could still just walk across the street the regular
way in a much shorter line, and I wonder if
that's what's gonna happen. Anyway, We're gonna have a guest
to talk about that later in the week. So I
wanted to mention one other thing to you, and I'm
going to and I would like you to text me

(06:43):
at five six six nine zero if you plan to attend,
so that I can just get a sense of how.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Many people are gonna show up.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
So I would like to meet today to get some
pizza for whoever wants to join me at a place
called DTC Slice. Okay, DTC Slice. It is a little
less than a quarter mile I guess, east of I
twenty five, on the south side of Bellevue, in the

(07:15):
same shopping center kind of area that has the original
Pancake House and the Ocean Prime restaurant. It's on the
what the west end of that shopping area, next to
the Starbucks. All right, It's called DTC Slice. And let's
plan on meeting there at let's say twelve thirteen pm.

(07:38):
That's a good prime number, twelve thirteen. Let's meet there
at twelve thirteen pm. And I would like you to
text me at five six six nine zero if you
think you're coming.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
It's not a commitment. You don't have to show up.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
I just want to be able to give the owner
in advance a little bit of a sense of who's
going to show, how many people are gonna show up,
And I'm gonna try to work out something that's kind
of easy for folks to deal with, Like maybe we'll
just have a you know, a price like a slice
and a drink, two slices and a drink, and maybe
we'll just order several different pizzas and you can choose

(08:14):
among them to get the pizza flavors that you that
you want. I've been to this place a few times.
I think it's fabulous pizza. All right, DTS sorry DTC
slice at twelve thirteen pm today. If you think you're coming,
text me at five six six nine zero and tell
me so I can get.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
An approximate count.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
It is Dutch. I am not buying your pizza. I
am not buying your pizza. I think I made that
sort of clear when I said I was going to
try to work out a pricing just so everybody has
an easy and easy price. No, I am not buying
your pizza. Let's make that clear. If you're only coming
to lunch because you want me to buy your pizza,
you are going to be disappointed.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
I think you you.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
I mean, maybe you won't be Maybe you'll come and
you'll buy your own pizza and you still won't be disappointed.
But anyway, DTC Slice at twelve thirteen PM.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
All right, Ross, the station.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Should pay for your family to come on the trip
to at least for your wife we're talking about. A
listener said, Ross, you already take too much vacation, and
I said, no, My listener trips count against my vacation time,
so that doesn't.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Leave that much vacation time for me and my family.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
So the listener is saying, the station should pay for
my family to go on the trip too, at least
for your wife. The station doesn't pay for any of that.
And so, yeah, what was the other thing, Oh, Marty
and Gina we're talking about I before E and a
listener sent this just at the beginning of my show,
even though it was referencing something that Marty and Gina

(09:43):
had talked about. So I don't know if Marty's still
out there listening right now. He might or might not be.
Sometimes he's still here at this time, but it's a
little late. And the listener says, I before e axcept
hold on, I lost it when they're feisty, beige reindeer
nays at your heinous neighbors. Weird sleigh, very impressive. Those

(10:08):
are all words where it's E before I and not
after a seat. Fantastic work, very very good. All right,
what else are we doing here?

Speaker 1 (10:20):
You know what? I'm just gonna move away from.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Something I was going to talk about and just do
a nerdy thing if I can with you for a minute,
all right. So, and the point I'm going to tell
you a little bit of an economic story here, but
the point of my story is not the economics.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
So I'm actually having a guest on the show later
in the week to talk about a particular thing that
doesn't have.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
To do with trade.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
And I was looking up his name and I saw
a TV appearance that he made on News Nation, which
is my favorite cable TV network these days, although there
are still quite a lot of Fox shows that I
that I enjoy as well.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Well.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
But this guy made an appearance on News Nation and
they asked him about tariffs, and he was talking about
general sort of trade policy. He expanded it into trade policy,
and then he was talking about NAFTA. Now you know
that our current president describes NAFTA as not only a

(11:24):
bad deal, but one of the worst deals of all time,
and then describes USMCA that he did in.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
His first term as a great deal.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
And I think you know, if you listen to the
show or even just generally pay attention to this kind
of thing, USMCA is ninety something percent identical to NAFTA.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
It's just cut and paste.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
It's NAFTA with a few small changes, probably ninety five
percent NAFTA. Trump talks about it as if it's a
whole different thing because he knows that most people will
never check him on it. So he talked about NAFTA
as if it's terrible and USMCA as if it's even
though they're almost identical.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
But that's not even my main point.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
So he and others talk about NAFTA as if it
was a bad deal, and they talk about killing manufacturing
jobs in the United States of America. And so this guy, who,
like I say, is going to be a guest on
the show on a different topic, was on TV set
and he said, over the eight years following NAFTA, America

(12:26):
loss and I forget the number, but some number of
millions of manufacturing jobs. And I'm thinking to myself, so
I understand this data, and I'm thinking to myself when
he says that that is so misleading as to effectively
be a lie. And I just want to make one

(12:47):
economic point and then one data point. It is true
that eight years after NAFTA we had fewer manufacturing jobs
in America than.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
We did just before the implementation of NAFTA.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
What is also true, though, is that seven years after NAFTA,
we had more manufacturing jobs in America than we did
just before the implementation of NAFTA. So all more than all, actually,
because we had an increase in the number of manufacturing

(13:22):
jobs in America after NAFTA, a pretty consistent increase for
about seven years. It was implemented in the beginning of
two of nineteen ninety four. What happened in two thousand
and one we had a recession. Recessions kill manufacturing jobs

(13:42):
and other jobs too. So it is true that eight
years after the implementation of NAFTA, we had fewer manufacturing
jobs than before NAFTA. But when you say it that way,
it makes it sound like there was a steady decline
in the number of manufacturing jobs after NAFTA.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
That that is not true.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
There was a steady increase and then a plateauing at
a higher level than before NAFTA.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Until the recession.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Then manufacturing jobs went down, and after that China joined
the WTO, which did cost manufacturing jobs, not just in
America but in a bunch of but in the entire
industrialized West.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
And this guy made it.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Sound like NAFTA cost manufacturing jobs. And my point is twofold.
Number one, don't believe the lies that NAFTA cost manufacturing jobs.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Because it didn't.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
And number two, and this is my main point, be
very very careful when people are describing data series to
you with particular end points and particular beginning points. You
need to go check that they didn't cherry pick the
starting and ending time frames to make a point that
would otherwise be invalid. He said eight years, and we

(14:56):
did lose jobs eight years after NAFTA. But if he
had picked seven, maybe even seven and a half years,
this story would have been exactly the opposite. His cherry
picking of data was so misleading as to make his
claim an outright lie. Producer, Shannon, I need you to
get ready to introduce yourself with roach, because this just

(15:21):
keeps happening every single day. And I think it's not
fair that I'm the only one whose mind.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Has been so utterly corrupted.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
By a joke that whenever I hear a particular word,
I think of a particular thing, and I think I
shouldn't be the only one to have to suffer through this.
And what I'm talking about is in the traffic reports,
like you just heard from Jonathan Steele, he often uses
the word sluggish, and whenever I hear him use the

(15:59):
word sluggish, a particular thing comes to mind. I cannot help.
I cannot prevent it from coming to mind. It just
does every time, every single time. And it's the fault
of the man sitting in front of.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Me right now.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
And so I would like him to do to you
what he did to me by telling you a story.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Well, it's a little tragic. I feel bad. Go ahead,
Should I press on and ruin people's yes?

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yes? Press on?

Speaker 3 (16:38):
Well, as a child, I had a pet snail, and
obviously he would move around his little glass cage fairly slowly, and.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
I thought that he would speed up a.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Bit if I removed his shell, and uh, actually it
just made him more sluggish.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Producer Shannon.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
Mm hmm, it just made him more sluggish.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
So that's what I think of every single time I
hear a traffic report that uses the word sluggish, and
that happens much of the time, probably more days than not.
I hear Jonathan Steele say the word sluggish, and every
single time I hear it, I picture a d shelled
snail trying to make its way around a little terrarium

(17:32):
or on the ground. If I forget that Shannon's that
Shannon's pet was in it was in a terrarium, it
could be just trying to go across the sidewalk. Either way,
that's what I picture, and I did not I did
not want to go through the rest of my life
being the only person who pictured that. So I wanted
to damage your brain, or have Shannon damage your brain

(17:53):
the same way that he damaged mine. Okay, so now,
I mean, we're all friends, we should all be in
this together. So there we go, there we go. All right,
let me do a few kind of random stories for
you here What was this one that I was trying
to get. I don't know, all right, So we talked

(18:14):
a little bit earlier. We're gonna have a guest on
the show later later in the week, rather not later today,
about this proposed bridge through Denver. Now here's a story
from the Denver Gazette that I like a little better.
Downtown Denver looks to convert its one way streets. This
is interesting one again, Denver Gazette dot com. One way

(18:36):
streets took over during a time when Downtown's became less residential.
Now efforts to transform into a central neighborhood district are
making leaders reconsider their use.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
This is quite interesting, don't you think?

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Many of downtown Denver streets are designated for one way traffic.
City planners have been looking into converting several downtown.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Streets to allow cars to drive both ways.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
According to preliminary findings for Downtown's master plan shown at
a public meeting when was this last Tuesday?

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Last Tuesday?

Speaker 2 (19:11):
The hope is it could help slow down traffic, encourage
more economic activity. That's good and reflect how downtown is
becoming more residential. Denver has been working on updating its
downtown area Plan, a master document meant to shape policies
and developments in the city center for the next twenty years.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
During the presentation, a map showed.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
That the city is considering converting one way streets including
Tremont Place, Welton, Champa, Rappa, Ho, Larimer, and Blake streets. So,
if you've driven around you know, Low Dough at all,
near Coursefield at all, any of this stuff, you've been
around all of these streets. Basically, I guess what we're

(19:56):
really talking about roughly is an area kind of between
ball Arena and Core's Field, and then going a little
bit further, I guess east from there on the outskirts
of downtown. The map shows Spirit Boulevard, which is undergoing
its own reconfiguration plan. Broadway and Lincoln are also being

(20:18):
considered for conversion into two way streets. They recommend turning
Broadway into a two way what they call transit Greenway. Now,
this is where it starts getting a little iffy to
connect Upper Downtown with the Golden Triangle neighborhood with major
bike editions, extending transit like Metro Ride or the Sixteenth
Street shuttle.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
YadA, YadA, YadA.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
So I'm going to stop there, because I don't even
live in Denver, But I will say the thing that
always concerns me is whenever these people start talking about
adding bike lanes, because I just I don't see enough.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
People in bike lanes.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
We live in a place that has winter and all
but the most hardcore people don't really want to ride
their bikes to work in winter, and even a fairly
hardcore person is gonna have challenge doing that when it's
snowing or this time of year, could be raining, could
be hailing when this when the fore Even so, even
if the temperature is nice, if the forecast is thunderstorms
in the afternoon, are you gonna ride your bike to

(21:15):
work in the morning knowing that I don't know, you know,
maybe not. And in the meantime that takes away a
lane for cars, or they add bus lanes and take
away a lane for cars to try to anyway, they're
just doing everything they can to force more people out
of cars, and I'm more than sick of it. But
the stuff about one way streets turning into possibly two
way streets, I do think that's interesting. I don't have

(21:37):
a strong opinion about it, but I just thought I
would let you know about it, all right, What's another
thing I want to do here?

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Okay, So remember that.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
There has not been a worse president on economics than
Joe Biden. Since I don't know FDR maybe, and people
talk about FDR as a great president, he wasn't right FDR.
FDR eventually got us into World War Two, and basically

(22:10):
he eventually handled that, okay, But almost everything else about
FDR was bad. He was, especially when he came to economics.
He's really really an idiot. And his concept with economics
was I have no idea what's good and what's not good,
So we're just gonna try a bunch of things and
hopefully some of it will work. But of course much
of what he tried was really bad. Much of it

(22:32):
was unconstitutional. Much of the stuff that was unconstitutional was
going to get thrown out by the court, by the
Supreme Court.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
So we had to threaten the Supreme.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
Court in order to get them to uphold some of
this stuff, which is part of the reason we have
right now a country that I describe as a Ponzi
scheme with a military. So, in any case, Joe Biden's
terrible and he's a moron. The guy's really a moron.
I don't know whether Joe Biden was famously described as

(23:01):
for by former Defense Secretary Bob Gates, a very very
highly respected man who worked for presidents of both political parties,
as having been wrong about every important foreign policy question
for the previous forty years. And that was ten years
ago or fifteen years ago or something like that. Right,
So Biden's wrong about everything, almost everything for fifty years.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
You know.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Maybe the only thing he got right, and he only
got it partly right, was to support Ukraine over Russia.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
But he even screwed that up by not delivering.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Weapons quickly enough and letting Russia get more of a foothole.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
So he screwed that up too.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
He's the worst now one of Joe Biden's positions. And
I don't know why he thought this was a good idea,
because even Steele unions didn't necessarily side with him. But
he opposed the purchase of US steel by Nippon Steel.

(24:01):
It was an excellent deal for the United States of America.
Joe Biden opposed it. Donald Trump, who in his usual
kind of chaotic populist way, gets some thing's right and
something's wrong. Initially sided with Biden, which you know is

(24:24):
a bad idea. Right, if Biden was for it, by default,
you should assume the correct position would be to be
against it. Or if Biden was against it, you should
assume by default that the correct position it would be
to be for it.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
That doesn't mean that's the end of your analysis, right.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
You should go on and look into it more and
make get your own information and do your own homework.
You don't just say if Biden was against it, then
I'm for it.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
But it's a fine starting place.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
So Trump, for some reason began his presidency and I
know what the reason is, but he began his presidency
opposing Nippon Steele's takeover of US Steel.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Now there's an.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
American steel company called Cleveland Cliffs that wanted to buy
US Steel but was outbid by Nippon Steel. So the
Nippon Steel deal was better for US Steel shareholders. And
also Nippon Steele as Japanese Nippon or something like that.
Niphon is Japanese for Japan, So Nippon Steel is to

(25:27):
Japan what US.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Steel is to to the US.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Basically, Nippon Steele has a lot more money to invest
to make us steal a bigger, better, more efficient, more
profitable company. Cleveland Cliffs didn't. So Cleveland Cliffs started this
whole thing to say, oh, you can't have a foreign
company by this. But really want what Cleveland Cliffs wanted

(25:50):
was they wanted to buy US steel so they could
create this oligopoly of US steel makers and raise prices
in the United States to people who consume steel.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
And Donald Trump went along with it to begin with.
And that was the wrong thing.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
And I told you that at the very beginning of
the Trump administration, when Trump said he was going to
block Nippon Steele's takeover of US Steel, I said, first
of all, I don't really think he is the authority
to block it, but in any case, he shouldn't because
it's a good deal for America. Okay, so let me
just share this with you from the Wall Street Journal.

(26:28):
The headline is Trump takes a US Steel Mulligan, and
I'll share with you a little bit from the story.
President Trump hinted last Friday that he plans to approve
a refurbished bid.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
By Japan's Nippon Steel to buy US steel. Good call.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
The deal is a win for US workers and will
do more to strengthen America's steel industry than the president's
tariffs will do.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Trump wrote on truth Social on Friday. This will be
a planned.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
Partnership between the United States and Nippon Steele, which will
create at least seventy thousand jobs and add fourteen billion
dollars to the US economy. Now, let me just interject
here for a reason, I don't think it'll add anything
like seventy thousand jobs. But I also don't care and
I have no idea how much it will add to
the US economy. It will add something, for sure, because
the alternative could well be US steel just going out

(27:20):
of business. Okay, back to the Wall Street Journal, The
deals details are murky and not finalized, but investors cheered
the news as US steel stock price jumped twenty two
percent on Friday. Biden did the bidding of United Steel
Workers boss David McCall and Cleveland Cliff's CEO Lorenzo Gonsalvates

(27:41):
by Nixon Nippon's fifteen billion dollar acquisition based on bogus
national security concerns. Rather, Cleveland Cliffs had been out bid
by Nippon and wanted to block the deal, and try
to buy US steel on the cheap.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
I'm going to skip ahead a little bit.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
US Steel warned it might have to close factories in
Indiana and Slovania if the Nippon Steel deal failed. Trump
opposed the deal during the campaign, but he has reconsidered
and now appears inclined to take Nippon up on the
deal that Biden refused. Nippon has pledged to honor its
collective bargaining agreement with the union and not reduced production

(28:17):
capacity for ten years at US steel mills, not at
least not without government approval. It also committed to appoint
US citizens to top management jobs and do a majority
of board seats plus a quote full time board observer
to ensure compliance with its promises. The Japanese steel maker
recently sweetened its offered by pledging to invest fourteen billion

(28:39):
dollars in US steel operations, including four billion for a
new mill. While it would be better if the administration
weren't trying to play deal maker, Nippon's concessions appear to
have given mister Trump the political cover he wants to
bless what he calls the partnership. So what Trump has
been saying is it'll be controlled by the US.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
That's the word he's using. Controlled, all right.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
There will be American members on the board of directors,
but it will be owned by a Japanese company, and
that is just fine. It is not a Chinese company,
it is not a Russian company, it's not an Iranian company.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Japan is a very very close ally.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Since we had to teach them what was what back
in the nineteen forties, they have been a very very
close ally since then.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
And having a Japanese company.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Own US steel is a far better thing than having
US Steel go out of business, and especially because Nippon
Steele is gonna bring all kinds of modernization, not just money,
but modernization that will let US steel factories be more productive,
and that is a very very good thing. All right,

(29:52):
let me share with you a story that's kind of sad,
and I'll start with something interesting and then i'll get
to the sad story. So there's a lady here in
the Denver metro area, and I don't think she listens
to my show, but that's okay, and she is apparently
a subscriber. You're going to enjoy this story, Shannon. She

(30:13):
apparently is a subscriber to Bill O'Reilly's kind of premium
service that lets you message O'Reilly from time to time.
And this lady emailed O'Reilly to ask O'Reilly if he
could get any information about the death of a CU

(30:36):
student named Megan Trussell truss l She was eighteen years
old when her body was found.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
In a cold winter this past February.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
So this lady emailed O'Reilly saying, asking, can you please
help me get information The Boulder County Sheriff's office is
not telling us anything about cause of death, and you
know some of us are wondering if there is a
safety thread at see you. Bill O'Reilly responded to this

(31:10):
lady saying, your best source of information about things going
on in Colorado is Ross Kaminski.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
A KOA radio, which was kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Thank you very much for that big compliment, mister O'Reilly, Seriously,
I appreciate that. So she got in touch with me.
I did a little bit of digging, and I'm not
going to tell you who I contacted, but I got
in touch with a couple of my contacts who are
at least on the edges of law enforcement in Boulder,

(31:45):
and they said, we just haven't finished our investigation yet.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
We don't know.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
We don't think there was foul play. But we're not
hiding anything. They're not hiding anything. We just don't know. Now,
let me go to the gazette and just tell you
a little bit what happened. Meghan Tressel was found near
mile marker forty of Boulder Canyon Drive, an unincorporated Boulder County,
on February fifteenth. She was reported missing to see You

(32:12):
Boulder officials three days earlier. She had last been seen
on surveillance camera footage leaving her dorm on February ninth.
On February ninth, there was also an odd bit of
a small twist to the story here. According to the

(32:32):
Sheriff's Office timeline, she left her dorm alone at nine
thirty six pm on February ninth. Cell phone records showed
that she traveled west toward Boulder Canyon Drive, where her
last phone signal was recorded near the forty mile marker.
The phone stopped connecting to networks on February twelfth and
was not found again until March second, when it pinged.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
To a Boulder grocery store.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
A homeless guy a fifty year old homeless guy sold
the phone. He claimed he got it from another homeless guy,
but the homeless guy who sold the phone was arrested
on May fourteenth on suspicion of theft and a false
declaration to a pawnbrokery has since been released on bond.

(33:17):
So now getting back to the newest story. The latest
part in the story, the Boulder County Sheriff's Office and
coroner coroner ruled yesterday that the February death of the
eighteen year old University of Colorado student was a suicide. Now,
that is not exactly the same as saying she tried

(33:39):
to kill herself as you read the story, They believe
that she took a bunch of meth and then went
out and died in the cold. So it means essentially
she killed herself, which is not the same as thing
she intentionally killed herself. But she took a bunch of drugs,

(34:01):
apparently went out, maybe wasn't feeling the effects of the drug,
but of course your body is going to get cold and.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Died. Now.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
A couple of things that also had people a little
concerned is there was a shoe, There was a missing shoe,
which I think was eventually found, but not very near her.
And also her purse was found a little bit torn apart,
also not very near her, and there are homeless people kind.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Of in that area.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
And so her dad on Tuesday basically expressed lack of
satisfaction with the government's conclusion that she essentially killed herself. Right,
the family thinks there may have been foul play at
this point.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
My guess, and it's only a guess, is that.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
The sheriff's office and coroner are probably right, even though
it it's an unsatisfactory answer to a sad story.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
If you want to join me for lunch today, I'm
not buying your lunch. By the way, come.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
To DTC Slice. DTC Slice It is about a quarter
mile or a little less east of I twenty five
on the south side of Bellevue. We'll meet there at
about twelve thirteen and a half pizza you're buying your own.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
We'll be right back. And my next guest, if you.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
Will pardon the obvious pun, is a cut above not
just because her name is Mignon Houston and she is
deputy spokesperson for the US Department of State, and she's
been all around the world and has a one of
the few, one of the few jobs and one of
the few careers that I might be just a little
bit jealous of with all of this travel and fascinating stuff.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
And it's just such a pleasure to have her on
the show.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Mignon, Welcome to Koa. Thanks so much for being here.

Speaker 5 (35:53):
Thank you Ros so much for having me.

Speaker 6 (35:55):
And to your listeners, you know you can come join
us as a US diplomat foreign Service officer any time.

Speaker 5 (36:01):
We would love to have you.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
All right, I got a lot of things I want
to get through with you when we only have six
or seven minutes to do it. I would like to
start with the State Department announcement yesterday about security alert
travel alert regarding Venezuela.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
What do we need to know?

Speaker 5 (36:18):
Absolutely? You know this is serious ross.

Speaker 6 (36:20):
We are seeing just wrongful detentions in Venezuela. More Americans
have been wrongfully detained in any other country. We are
warning US citizens, whether they're dual nationals, are US citizens,
legal permanent residents, do not travel to Venezuela.

Speaker 5 (36:35):
There's no trip that's worth the price of your freedom.

Speaker 6 (36:39):
We do not have the ability to support you if
you are in Venezuela, and so our security alert went
out to just make sure in this summer travel season
that Americans do not travel to Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
So when you say your freedom does your research isn't
the right word intelligence suggest that Americans are at risk
of being detained, taken, captive, held as you know, for
ransom or prisoner transfer, something that you know dictatorships do
from time to time.

Speaker 5 (37:11):
All of the above.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Ross.

Speaker 6 (37:12):
I mean, we've seen wrongful detentions, kidnappings, we've seen harassment.
It is just not worth it, right, and the horror
stories that we hear from detainees that we have been
able to help get released. This administration has helped release
over forty wrongfully detained US citizens, not just from Venezuela
but from around the world. It's an incredible leadership that

(37:35):
we're seeing. But we don't want to have to add
another name to that list, right, And so we're asking
folks not to travel to Venezuela. It is too dangerous.
It's risky, and you'd be safe for all traveling somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
All right, So folks, you've got that warning now, and
you can read more of the details of it on
my blog at Rosskaminski dot com, where I've got.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Links to the State Department announcement. So, all right, Minya.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
On the other thing I want to ask you about,
and it's kind of a big story just in the
last twenty four hours hours or so, specifically regarding the
State Department.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
And I'll just read the Reuter's headline.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Trump administration halts scheduling of new student visa appointments.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
Tell us what this is about, right.

Speaker 6 (38:14):
And so, look, this administration has been very serious from
the beginning that we are focused on US national security
and protecting American citizens.

Speaker 5 (38:23):
We are looking at all the tools that.

Speaker 6 (38:25):
Our disposal to ensure that when foreign students are selected
they get this visa, that they have the right ideas
in mind, that they're going to use the visa correctly.
And so we're just really taking a closer look at
how we're processing these applications.

Speaker 5 (38:40):
And this is what this is. This is an opportunity
for us to take a.

Speaker 6 (38:43):
Closer look to ensure we're using all of the tools
at our disposal.

Speaker 5 (38:47):
And that's what that announcement was about.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
One of the things that I read and maybe you
can either confirm or elaborate or whatever is that one
of the things you're looking to do, given the age
in which we live, is to make sure that the
vetting process for people aiming to get student visas includes
more of a detailed look into their social media postings.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Is that true? And can you say anything more? Yes?

Speaker 6 (39:11):
And actually we've always sort of looked at social media,
but we want an expand it look. We want to
we want to make sure we are doing, as you mentioned,
the best vetting we can possible to keep our border safe,
our national security in mind.

Speaker 5 (39:24):
And to keep American citizens safe. I think every American
citizen would want that, and that's what we're doing.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
How do you think you guys will draw the line
between seeing a social media post that is objectionable, you know,
something you and I might not like. For example, I'm
Jewish and let's say somebody posts something that's at least
a little bit anti Semitic but not necessarily calling for
violence versus you know, if somebody calls for violence and
is you know, doing globalized the Intifada on Facebook, obviously

(39:53):
they shouldn't come to the United States. But where do
you draw that line?

Speaker 3 (39:58):
Right?

Speaker 6 (39:58):
And you know, that's a question for the ex experts
Department of Homeland Security and our agencies who are working
together with the Department of State to make those determinations. Really,
what we are most focused on is ensuring that if
you get this student visa that you are coming with
the purpose of studying, that you are really going to
come to the universities here of higher learning. Some of

(40:18):
the best universities in the world, hands down, use the facilities,
not prohibit students from using the laboratories and the libraries
and going to campus and using the resources that we
have in the United States that are so critical to
higher learning. And we want to make sure that when
you come up for that visa interview that that is
exactly what you're going to do, and that your history

(40:40):
represents that.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
All right, I think I've got time for one more
with you, and.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
I want to ask this question almost as more of
a personal question, but I know you're here in your
official capacity and you'll have to kind of answer that way.
But I noticed in your biography that one of your
postings has been South Africa. I've been to South Africa
three times myself. It's a spectacular country with so much
potential that has so many problems right now and I'm

(41:09):
not looking to get into the whole, you know, white
genocide debate. I'm wondering, you know, what do you think?
What does the State Department think? Again, I don't know
if you're allowed to give a personal answer here, but
about South Africa, about US relations with South Africa, about
your thoughts and hopes for that country, because it is
such a beautiful place with the nicest people I've ever met,

(41:30):
and yet maybe the worst crime in the world.

Speaker 6 (41:35):
That's right, Ross, I mean, I served at the US
consulate in Cape Town, South Africa. Is it is beautiful,
hands down, but the crime, and we've heard it is
is horrendous. You know what we're seeing here is with
the expropriation law, with the physical threats, the farms that
have been set on fire, the assaults, the death threats,

(41:55):
and the verbal attacks that are coming out as well,
you really have a recipe that is causing Africaners to
not feel safe.

Speaker 5 (42:04):
And that's the reality.

Speaker 6 (42:05):
I think there is sometimes a misconception, if I may,
that recognizing Africana concerns means denying the history of a
part time and that's that's false. You know, you can
acknowledge today's risk without erasing yesterday's injustices. Both truths can
be possible, and so I think what this administration is

(42:26):
focused on is really looking at the attacks, taking them seriously,
taking the concerns and the worries seriously, because they're they're founded,
they've been vetted, they meet the threshold or refugee status here.
And then the bigger issue is looking at South Africa's
you know, global politics. They are coosing up to Iran.
They how they've been talking about Israel and our and

(42:48):
our and our partner and our allies, and we need
to reset this relationship with South Africa, and this is
this is a reset. We need to focus on where
we can work together on issues that are aligned and
move forward in a way that allows us to have
a strong relationship because what we have currently isn't where
we want to be.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Mignon Houston is Deputy spokesperson for the US Department of State.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
It's been a pleasure having you on. I hope you'll
come back.

Speaker 5 (43:14):
Thank you so much, Ros and I look forward to
seeing you in DC as well.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
All Right, you got it, you will see me there. Okay,
that's Minyon Houston. We're going to take a quick break
We'll be right back, one of Rick Derringer's biggest hits.
The other huge hit which was done under a band
name rather than his name, was Hang On Sloopy, which
he did with the McCoys back in nineteen sixty five.
That rock and roll hu Chiku is from nineteen seventy three,

(43:38):
and we played that over Dragon's objection, just so that.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
We could say rest in peace.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Rick Deringer, who passed away actually a couple of days ago, but.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
The news came out yesterday.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
I think he passed away at the age of seventy seven.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
This guy actually produced, according.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
To the Washington Post, reduced a bunch of songs for
Weird al which is which was kind of interesting. He
wrote a theme song for a Hulk, Hogan and so on.
I'm not going to spend more more time on.

Speaker 7 (44:10):
It, but uh to spend some time giving your apologies
to who wanted this other the Mexican radio, which I
had planned playing, but well.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Maybe maybe you could play it going out of the segment.
I mean, I'll play it, you play it next, Okay,
all right. I already told him, hey, you're oh geez,
then you come in, so I made you.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
Break your promise.

Speaker 7 (44:31):
Yes, you better apologize.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Sorry, who do we have a name? No name?

Speaker 3 (44:36):
All right?

Speaker 2 (44:36):
I'm sorry for making Dragon break his break his promise
to you.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
I hope you forgive me.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
I didn't realize that, or I might not have because
I don't want to get fired, right, I don't want
to get fired. Let me tell you one story that
troubles me a little bit. I know that they're at
least in among a certain segment of the population these days,
is extremely little sympathy for illegal aliens. I don't like

(45:04):
illegal immigration, although I don't have anything personally against the
illegal aliens who aren't committing crimes while they are here.
Don't bother texting at me saying they committed a crime
crossing the border.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
I don't care.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
I mean, I do care, but that's not the purpose
of this conversation. I want our border under control, and
I want more immigration, but I want it to be
legal anyway.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
That's not my point.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
There isn't a lot of sympathy for illegal immigrants, but
there's all different kinds of illegal immigrants, and I think
many or most Americans have sympathy or more than sympathy
for folks you might call dreamers, people who are brought
here as children by illegal alien parents and have grown

(45:45):
up here and really.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
Don't know anything else, and go to school.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
Here and so on, and are on a path to
become productive, valuable members of society. A young woman in Georgia,
and her name is Kamena Crystabal, and it looks like

(46:08):
she's about to be deported. She's a nineteen year old,
she's a college student. She's an illegal alien. I don't
know at what age she was brought here. She is
an illegal alien, though, but she is in college. Just
based on reading between the lines and some of this story,
I think she's first person in her family to ever
go to college, trying to finish college so that she
can then get a good job and help support her

(46:30):
family financially. And it seems like she's doing everything right
and she's about to be deported now. Just as a
general matter, I would say that's not the kind of
person who should be deported from the United States. We
have much much higher priorities than that, So I object
to her being deported at all, even though she's not
here illegally. But here's what really pisss me off about

(46:54):
this story. A police officer named Leslie Allen O'Neill. Reason,
and this girl is about to be deported? Is this
police officer pulled over Miss Christobaul on May fifth and
gave her a ticket for making an illegal U turn?

(47:15):
And then I guess she didn't have a driver's license,
which isn't great, but it's not a deportable offense as
far as I know, shouldn't be in any case, he
gave her a ticket, he pulled her over for making
an illegal U turn, and his department went and reviewed
his dash cam footage and sure enough, the car made

(47:40):
an illegal U turn in front of him, but not
the car he pulled over.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
He pulled over the wrong car.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Gave her a ticket for an illegal U turn that
she did not make, And now she has been put
in jail, well just before college finals, and at least
as of the date of writing that article, she is
on a path to be deported.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
And I think that's a shame.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
And I think Donald Trump should get involved and do
whatever he can, but I don't think he will. I
don't think he will. It would be very very out
of character for him to do something nice for an
illegal alien who does not deserve this treatment, who is
only in the position that she's in because a stupid
cop couldn't do a simple thing like pull over the

(48:33):
right car. By the way, that cop is now resigned
from the department.

Speaker 7 (48:37):
Tom Sawyer guy has a song request and I'll play
that coming up next hour. Okay, I wonder what it is.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
I wonder what it is too, Rick says, with regard to.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
The wrong car pulled over from making an illegal U turn.
I understand your point, but please tell your listeners you're
not opposed to police pulling over people for minor infractions.
As any patrol officer will tell you, this is one
of their top sources of finding illegal guns, drugs, outstanding warrants,
and so on. And the collateral damage of an illegal
U turn, like maybe another driver perhaps swerving and killing

(49:09):
someone is common these days. Don't get me going on
speeders going over one hundred miles an hour on the
I two two five International Speedway. I'm I'm not quite
as far as you there, Rick. I'm not saying I'm
against police officers pulling people over for small things, but
I don't love it either.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
I guess it depends how small you know. To me,
I wasn't planning on talking about this. I mean it
is very very quickly.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
I I think that the purpose of most traffic enforcement
is revenue, and therefore I oppose it. Now. I don't
oppose all traffic enforcement. I oppose much of traffic enforcement.
I oppose, for example, I oppose the enforcement of a
speed limit when someone is not that much over and

(49:59):
let's say twelve miles an hour over on an open
road on a dry day with no other cars around.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
You gotta let's say you got a segment.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Of highway that's fifty five and someone's going sixty seven
on a early on a Sunday morning.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
With nobody else around.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
And by the way, I have not that has not
happened to me getting that getting that ticket I've got,
I've gotten a ticket in something kind of kind of
like that.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
I do object to that.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
I think I think that traffic enforcement should be about safety,
and I think it's mostly about money.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
And as far as whether it's true.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
That, you know, pulling somebody over for something minor often
turns into a way to find something bigger, like illegal
guns or drugs or so on, I don't know. I
don't know that that justifies I don't know that that
justifies it. You know, is that a pretext for going
to search somebody you wanted to search?

Speaker 1 (50:57):
I don't know. I don't like your argument very much.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
So look, I think there are so called small things
that maybe you should pull somebody over for because they
really have implications for safety. For example, for example, I
have very very very low tolerance. I have no tolerance
for running red lights. Running red lights is exceedingly dangerous, okay.

Speaker 7 (51:23):
And seems to be getting worse. It is.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
It is more dangerous than speeding. In my opinion, I
don't even know if you're a police officer, Rick, but
my non law enforcement opinion is that, on average, running
a red light is more dangerous than speeding. I'm not
talking about driving one hundred and twenty five miles an

(51:46):
hour on two two five or whatever.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
I'm talking about the kind of speeding.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
That ordinary people do over the ordinary course of an
ordinary day, like I do every single day. Not dangerous stuff.
But you've got some road that's two lanes in each direction,
and they decided to set the speed limit at thirty
five so they could take your money. You know, that's
what it's for. And I'm going and I'm going, yeah,

(52:10):
looking at you Morrison, not just Morrison.

Speaker 7 (52:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Actually, one of the first things that happened to me
when I moved to Colorado, I got a ticket on
what's that road called Foothill Foothills Parkway at the south
end of Boulder. Oh my gosh, I was so angry.
I was so angry here.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
I had my wife in the passenger seat. And the
reason we were down there was my wife was quite
sick and we were just going to some place on
a Sunday to look for some help or at least
gets because we lived up in the mountains and there
wasn't really any kind of healthcare, good shopping or whatever.
So we were down there trying to get her anti
nausea medicine and some pepto bismol and stuff. And I

(52:51):
was driving really slowly and really carefully because my wife
was in the seat next to me nauseous, nauseated.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
So I was going really slow.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
And this a whole cop pulls me over and h
incites me for speeding and I wasn't. I wasn't. And
I took it to court and I said to the
I the cop was showed up, because if the cops

(53:22):
don't show up. Then the citizen wins. The cop was there,
and I and I and the cop. I want to
say the cop answered my questions honestly.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
I asked the cop two questions.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
I said, Sir, is it true that there was a
big gap between me and the next.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
Car in front of me?

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Implying at least it doesn't necessarily prove that I wasn't speeding,
but it implies at least that all the cars in
front of me were going faster than I was. I
asked him, was there a big gap and it grew
gap between me and the car.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
In front of me? He said yes.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
Then I said, is it also true that there were
quite a few cars and an increasing number kind of
up close behind me, implying they were all going faster
than I was until they caught up with me and
had to slow down. And therefore, while I maybe didn't

(54:28):
prove that I wasn't speeding, although I wasn't, I did
prove that essentially everybody else on the road was going
faster than I was, which at least implies I probably
wasn't speeding. And the officer answered yes to that question too, Yes,
there were a lot of cars behind you close up
behind you and more because they were catching up to you.

(54:51):
He answered yes to that, So we answered the questions truthfully,
and the judge said, Minsky, you are a very compelling witness,
and therefore I'm going to lower your court fee from
twenty five dollars to ten dollars, but you still have
to pay the ticket. So even though I came as

(55:14):
close to proving my case because I couldn't quite prove
I wasn't speeding, even though I wasn't, it still ended
up costing me ten dollars more than going to court
would have because it's all about the money. And I
I know, I know not be out of data, but

(55:36):
I know in my heart that many members of law
enforcement agree with me that they are put to traffic
enforcement tasks that are about money and not safety. And
I'm not angry with them about it.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
They have to do it.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
The bosses make them do it, and the boss's bosses
make the bosses do it because it's all about the money.
But when you say that, Rick, when you say that
I should be supportive of cops pulling over people for
small things, I'm mostly not unless there's an implication for safety.

(56:23):
Another person just texted in who might be a law
enforcement officer, but didn't say, and says I'm wrong about
it being about revenue. With a few exceptions, he says
it's or she it's more about safety and an opportunity
for police to contact drivers, educate them, and it often
leads to detecting other crimes.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
Eh.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Yeah, I don't know, and I admit I do take
it a little bit personally. That cop with that cop
did to me. He lied when he said I was speeding.
He probably had the laser or radar or whatever pointed
just slightly wrong, and it picked up a car that
was that was going faster than I was catching up

(57:07):
with me from behind, and he pulled me over with
my sick wife, My near you, nearly vomiting wife sitting
there as I am driving much slower than usual, just.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
As she doesn't get sick. I had one.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
About a year ago in another town, and I was speeding.
It's an area where the speed limit is too low.
It goes from a higher speed limit to a lower
speed limit, but the road looks the same and.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
So the speed limit is too low. But I was it.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
It goes from thirty five to thirty and I was
going forty two on a three day weekend.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
I forget what holiday it was.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
On the Sunday on the morning, and there was nobody
else on the road, and I had just come from
my other house and I had been working on my beehive.
And I got stung two or three times on my hands.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
Uh, and I was in quite a bit of pain.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
And I have to say, normally one beasting doesn't bother
me at all. Once I get to two or three
beastings at a time, my body reacts a little bit worse.
It's not just two or three times the pain of
one beasting. It's a lot more than that. Like my
body is having a bigger allergic reaction. My hand is
swelling up a bit. And I got to say, I
wasn't very focused. I was just trying to get home
and get something on my hand. And this jackwagon cop

(58:30):
pulls me over. I'm like, dude, it's a holiday weekend.
There isn't another car on the road. I wasn't driving erratically.
The speed limit is higher just over there, and it
drops here, even though the road looks the same.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Can't you just give me a warning?

Speaker 2 (58:48):
And I will do my very best not to make
this mistake again, and he said, no, I was three
blocks from my house to see my swollen hand. And
so I have to say, I'm I'm pretty negative about
a lot of traffic enforcement. It's got to be about safety,

(59:11):
it really does. And I've got multiple people, including one
retired cop says uh.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
He says, I agree with you.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
The majority of traffic enforcement is revenue generation.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
Okay, so there's a twenty year cop saying that.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
He says, I'm also in agreement with the person who
said that small things lead to bigger things. And I
would also often pull people over for small offenses only
to search for larger offenses, and if I couldn't find any,
I would let them go with a warning.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
I wouldn't write tickets for small offenses. You know. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah,
it's true. Laser is target specific.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
I'm thinking radar, and I don't remember if he had
laser or radar, although that was probably written on the.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Ticket, I don't remember. I don't remember. So that's a
tough call.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
Actually, Now put aside me for a second, put aside
what I think of, you know, generally, revenue or not.
That's a really interesting question as a matter of civil liberties.
Is it reasonable for a cop to pull somebody over
for a minor thing. I'll give you an example of

(01:00:20):
a potentially minor thing. And let's say, especially if there
aren't other people around.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
But this is a minor thing that could potentially.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Have safety implication in some circumstance. Let's say you are
in the left lane turning left into a road that
has two lanes, and so you should stay in the
left lane and turn into the left lane. Sometimes people
drift a little and turn left into the right lane,

(01:00:50):
and that's not great, and that's potentially a safety risk
at some point if you were to drift into another car.
You could also imagine it was a situation where they
knew nobody else was there and they were gonna turn
right a block later, and they did it on purpose,
and YadA, YadA, YadA. Should a cop pull somebody over
for that?

Speaker 8 (01:01:06):
Eh?

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Borderline? But now let's just go with this situation.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
I'm actually finding this a really interesting topic.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
You're giving me a funny look.

Speaker 7 (01:01:15):
Oh yeah, you only said you'd spend a couple of times.
I know, here we go.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
You lied before, I'm lying. Now are you saying you
want me to finish up.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
And move on. No, no, no, this is great.

Speaker 7 (01:01:25):
No, keep going.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Should a cop pull the person over for that? If
the cop knows in his heart, in his head that
actually the only reason he's pulling the person over is
to look for something else. The car just doesn't look
quite right to him. The driver just doesn't look quite
right to him. Hold on one second, drag, and I'm

(01:01:49):
not saying this is a racial thing, okay, for whatever
it could be. The cop has a little bit of
a sense of suspicion about that car, that driver, and
so he's gonna pull the person over for a minor
thing as a pretext to look for something else, knowing
that he will not give the person a ticket for
the minor thing if he doesn't find the bigger thing.

Speaker 5 (01:02:09):
Is that?

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Okay, I think that's a very difficult question that I'm
not gonna opine on anymore, because Dragon is already saying,
I'm going too long and I don't want to get fired.

Speaker 7 (01:02:18):
Well, I do have this text message that came in
says Timothy McVay was pulled over for a minor traffic.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
Indeed, he was, He absolutely was, And I'm trying to
remember just what the traffic infraction was but I did
somebody yeah, maybe it was a tailight. I did just
see a really interesting video about all that. That was
an incredible story. They had Timothy McVeigh in jail like
the day over, the day after or something the bombing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
For a traffic.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Infraction, and he ended up getting stuck there over the weekend.
Like I think he was maybe booked in on a
Thursday or Friday, but they didn't have a judge the
next day, and he ended up being there over the weekend.
If they had booked him in on TWODA, he would
have been out and gone right, And so.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
They pooked him in.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
There wasn't a judge or they were busy, whatever it was,
and so we got delayed, delayed, delayed.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
Then they figured out that, hey, this.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Guy McVeigh is a person of interest, and he was
actually in the courtroom doing the hearing for the traffic infraction,
after which he would.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Absolutely would have been released.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
He was already in the courtroom, the hearing was already
going on and halfway done when the FBI got there
and took him so close to that guy getting away,
And it was because of some fairly minor traffic I
forget what it was, but but that was that was interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
That was interesting. Hmm Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
So you used the overused used excuse of the beast
things made me do it, not exause I didn't play
that up much. I'd just said when that cop pulled
me over, I just said, look, man, you know I
got hurt a little bit. It's a Sunday morning, nobody
else is around, just like to get home. I didn't
really play up anything if the conversation wasn't really much

(01:04:07):
more than that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
And he said and he said no.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
And I probably made a snide comment to him after
he wrote the ticket.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
I don't I didn't swear at him.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
I might. I might have just thought it. Might have
kept it to myself. I usually wouldn't. I normally wouldn't
say anything to a cop who, even if I don't
like what they're doing, I do have I do have
respect for law enforcement officers who every day go out
there and take risks that I'm not willing to take. Seriously, right,

(01:04:37):
I can separate these things, like I wish you didn't
have to do traffic enforcement for revenue, and I can
separate that from I am so grateful that you are
willing to go out there with a gun and potentially
be shot at and potentially pull somebody over who maybe
is a bad dude with a gun who might want

(01:04:58):
to hurt you or run you, you know something. And
I'm very very grateful we're a law enforcement for doing
what you do. I'm just that's that one small subset
bothers me. But it doesn't mean I'm anti cop. I
am very much not anti cop. And and I think
it's not just valid. I think it's an honorable profession,

(01:05:22):
and I honor people who do it. And I really
don't blame the street cop for doing what the politicians
and so on tell them they need to do.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
Yes, Dragon, we're not likely.

Speaker 7 (01:05:32):
To get shot, injured or killed the doing our job
on a daily basis, No, And I don't want to
take that risk. And this texture says expired plate. I
think and he also had a handgun. I cannot confirm
just reading the text message.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Yes, saying pulled someone over for an expired plate in
the person had a handgun.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
You think that's what it means.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
I think the McVeigh thing, Oh right, right, right, okay, yeah,
all right, So I did lie when I said I
was going to talk about that for very long. But
sometimes you know, you just like you pull my string
and you let me go, and that's that's what you got.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
The upside of this.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
Can I give you a little inside baseball into the
mind of a fundamentally lazy talk show host. So I
spend hours I spend. I spend much longer preparing for
a show than I do talking during a show, probably
twice as long.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
I do an immense amount of work.

Speaker 7 (01:06:26):
Too, because I create a show sheet that you don't I.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Don't follow it, but there's a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
On it there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
There's a lot there, and I am I try to
be prepared. Sometimes it means I'm over prepared, which is
probably a bad use of my time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
But I don't want.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
My listeners to think that I'm phoning it in, because
I almost never phone it in, like once or twice
a year, like the day before we're leaving on vacation.
Then you got to phone it in a little. But
even then I'm kind of prepared. But one of the
lovely things about doing what just happened there is I've
got all these topics that I was supposed to do
during this segment that now I can either do a

(01:07:03):
little later in the show or whatever and replace other topics.
But now I have them for tomorrow, and that means
I can spend half an hour less preparing tomorrow's show,
which is great for a fundamentally lazy person.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
What Dragon way, I think you quote your mom for this.

Speaker 7 (01:07:19):
Yes, why put off today what you can put off tomorrow?

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
Why put off until tomorrow? What you can put off
until the day after tomorrow? Fabulous? Okay, if you would
like to have lunch with me, but not paid for
by me, you're buying your own pizza. Meet me at
twelve thirteen pm today at DTC Slice. Okay, twelve thirteen

(01:07:43):
pm today at DTC Slice. It's a little less than
a quarter mile east of I twenty five, on the
south side of Bellevue, in that kind of big shopping
area that's got Ocean Prime and it's got the original
Pancake House, and over on the west end of that
shopping center there's a Starbucks and I think the pizza place.

(01:08:05):
I think it's right next door to the Starbucks. Okay,
so it's on the east end of that shopping center.
It's DTC Slice. Let's meet there at twelve thirteen you're
buying your own pizza. But we'll hang out, we'll chat,
we'll have a little fun.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
I'm wearing a black shirt with an iHeart logo on it.

Speaker 7 (01:08:20):
If you don't know what I look like, is that
the woman's shirt?

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
It's no, it looks like the woman's shirt.

Speaker 7 (01:08:25):
But it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
It's not.

Speaker 7 (01:08:26):
OK.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
This is a This is a men's large.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
I think the other one was a women's medium, apparently,
which I didn't know at the time. So this is
not my blouse. Now, d TC Slice at twelve thirteen
pm today, I'll see you there. She'll probably get a
lawyer on this case. Luckily, I've got a lawyer. Actually,
I've got a lawyer right now. We've got Molly Nixon
from Pacific Legal Foundation. And those folks who listen to

(01:08:50):
my show know very well what I think of President
Trump's tariffs and so on. But really, when it comes
to tariffs in particular, there are two questions that are
very separate from each other, and we're mostly going to
just talk about one of them with Molly.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
The two questions are should he impose tariffs? We're not
going to talk about that so much. The economic question.
The second question is can he imposed tariffs? Does the
president have the legal authority to impose the kind of
broad tariffs on anything and everything that he is imposing

(01:09:30):
right now? And Molly again is at Pacific Legal Foundation
and they have brought a lawsuit about this question.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
Molly, welcome to KOA.

Speaker 8 (01:09:41):
Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
Yeah, I'm very glad to have you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
So tell us a little bit about your clients and
about the argument you're making here. And we only have
about four or five minutes, so let's jump.

Speaker 8 (01:09:53):
In, okay, I will give you quick as you I
Josey likely know the presid as an imposed terriffs on
a number of countries starting in February and then to
more in April. He's relying on a statue called the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the President the
authority to take certain actions when he's declared a national

(01:10:15):
emergency with respect to an unusual and extraordinary threat. And
so the president's declared to national emergencies here in February
were based on fencetyl coming across the border and an
impigration and in April, a persistent annual goods trade deficit
and lack of reciproperty.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
Is his argument.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
Does his claim of having the authority to impose tariffs
rest on the ability to claim an emergency?

Speaker 7 (01:10:51):
That's correct.

Speaker 8 (01:10:52):
Yes, he's relying on this Act, which is based which
requires a national emergency declaration. He yet asserted a wholly
independent authority to impose tariffs. And I think that's an
important question, and it goes to the authority issue, because
there really is no question that the Constitution gives Congress

(01:11:12):
the power to impose tariffs. So from that premise, which
with I think everyone agrees with, you have two options.
Either the president is taking that power without statutory authorities,
or Congress gave the president the power to impose tariff,
any tariff he wants, on any imports from any country,
for virtually any reason and for any length of time,

(01:11:37):
and that that's not a constitutional delegation. Congress can't do that.
They can't they can't just enterily advocate legislative power to
impose tariff, right. So I think this is arguments in
our case.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Right, So I think this is excessive delegation. I also
think that even beyond the excessive delegation, that Trump is
doing more than he's allowed to do. But I think
the I think the interesting legal question and where I
think you might lose, I hope you win. Where I
think the hardest part is going to be it is
a federal court is going to say we are not

(01:12:10):
going to overrule the judgment of the president on what's
an emergency and what's not.

Speaker 8 (01:12:16):
So I think you're very likely correct there, and we
have not actually challenged whether there is or is not
an emergency emergency. You're right there that courts don't look
into that. They consider it a political question. The statute
that authorizes sclaring an emergency provides note standards for how
to judge that, for a court to judge that, which

(01:12:36):
is one of the reasons that we're arguing that there's
been if the statute, if a court finds its statute
allows the president to impose tariffs amongst all of us
other powers, then Congress has kind of given away the
game there, because under that theory, why couldn't they say
the president can decreate an emergency.

Speaker 7 (01:12:54):
If he does, he can.

Speaker 8 (01:12:55):
Exercise all of Congress's power, and they'll go home declare
an emergency wants and in Congress has no for their
policy making power.

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
All right, we got about ninety seconds here, tell me
just a little bit about your your clients.

Speaker 8 (01:13:10):
Sure, So we represent eleven businesses, different different types of businesses,
all of whom important least some of their products or
materials from abroad, most of whom I've actually already paid
at least at least some tariffs based on this uh,
based on the President's orders under this Act. So they

(01:13:30):
have we're taking their case to court. We're asking for
the court to find out the tariff are a lawful
for either of those two reasons that I give and
order refunds. And I think one of the the effects
on our clients and then everyone really is, you know,
obviously higher costs when you pay the import tariff at
the border. They're paying that cost. But there's also a

(01:13:52):
lot of uncertainty. There's destructions and supply chains, markets, there's
relationships our allies, and I think the issue underlying all
of the effects is that the President has made this
decision is not Congress. That's where the uncertainty lies. Congress
could have imposed these tariff we would not be suing,
at least specific legal foundation might not be suing over

(01:14:13):
this if Congress had done the exact same thing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
So are you are you arguing, Sorry to interrupt, you
were almost out of time.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
Are you are you arguing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
That the that the law that allows the president to
impose tariffs in some situations is an inherently unconstitutional delegation
of congressional authority to the executive.

Speaker 8 (01:14:35):
Well, we're are you in the first instance, that the
law that he relies on here does not allow him
to quote, impose any tariffs. It does give him a
lot of authorities, but tariff is not one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
Okay, So this is the law that you're saying. He's
basing this on. The i ee PA allows him and
this is from your website to investigate regulator prohibit transactions
in foreign exchange, but it doesn't even mention tariff's. You're
saying that the law that he is relying on doesn't
permit teriffs at all.

Speaker 8 (01:15:05):
That's correct, and there are lots of other laws that
do that. Congress has passed.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
Okay, very quickly. What's the next step in terms of
time frame here?

Speaker 8 (01:15:14):
So we filed a motion to expedite and for summary
judgment the government reply. They file their opposition brief on Friday,
and our reply brief is due this coming Friday. Wow,
and then I may expect a decision, hopefully fairly quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
Molly Knicks is an attorney a Pacific Legal Foundation. The
website is Pacific Legal dot org. Thanks for being here.
I'm really glad you've taken this case. I hope you
win and we'll keep in touch. Thanks for having me,
glad to We'll.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Take a quick break. We'll be right back on Kowa.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
I think someone probably sent that in because I was talking.

Speaker 1 (01:15:47):
About driving fast. That sounds accurate.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
Yeah, okay, I do like driving fast anyway. At the
risk of free advertising, I'm not even gonna mention company names,
but I just want to let you know because a
lot of people need what I need. So you know,
DHD is building my house.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
But there are a couple of things where.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
I specifically told them that I want to handle this
stuff myself, Like normally they would do it, but I said,
I want to do this stuff myself. So I told
them on h back, I wanted to handle that myself
and coordinate with them.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
And then also on the.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
What's called low voltage right, so doing internet all kinds
of internet stuff for the house, built in stuff for
like putting speakers in ceilings and all that and running
new stuff for cable TV if you're going to do that,
and I just wanted to let you know, I have
tremendous companies for both of the two different companies for
both of those things, for h back and for all

(01:16:43):
the low voltage stuff. And so if you're gonna do
I'm not gonna mention them on the air. Okay, they're not,
you know, paying advertise on my show. But if you
if you need some help in either of those areas
heating and air conditioning or wiring internet and other stuff
for your house, just email me at rosset Koa, Denver,
and I will let you know the names of those companies.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
They have not asked me to do this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:05):
I'm not getting anything for it at Just if I
can help my listeners with something I would I like
to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
So what else?

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
If you want to meet up with me for lunch
today in less than an hour, come meet me at
a place called DTC Slice. DTC Slice, It's some of
the best pizza I've had in a really, really long time.
It is just maybe a quarter mile east of I

(01:17:36):
twenty five on the south side of Bellevue. In that
same shopping area that has the original Pancake House and
Ocean Prime restaurant. But it's at the It's at the
west end of that shopping center, next to the Starbucks.
So come meet me there at twelve thirteen pm and
we'll hang out and.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Chat and have some pizza.

Speaker 7 (01:17:57):
What what if we're running a little late and only
can get there by twelve seven.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
Twelve seventeen is fine. That is the next prime number. Okay,
that is the next prime number after twelve thirteen. It's
lucky that there are two that are that close. The
other one that's kind of nice is if you're trying
to set an appointment with someone who suggests twelve thirty,
which of course you're not allowed to do. Twelve twenty
nine and twelve thirty one are both prime by And
what I mean is the four digit number is a

(01:18:21):
prime number, not just the twenty nine part or the
thirty one part. The four digit number is prime. So
twelve thirteen is fine, twelve seventeen is prime. And I'll
tell you what if you're not as ridiculous about this
as I am, And let's say you show up at
twelve fifteen, which is distinctly not prime. Because it is
obviously not only divisible by five, it's also obviously divisible

(01:18:45):
by three.

Speaker 1 (01:18:46):
How is it obvious? Dragon?

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):
Do you know how it's obvious that that number is
divisible by three?

Speaker 7 (01:18:51):
So obvious I don't even need to need to explain.

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
Okay, all right? Do you think I should in case
other people don't?

Speaker 7 (01:18:57):
Just in case? Yeah? There are probably a few are
Our audience is incredibly smart, but.

Speaker 1 (01:19:02):
There are there are a few. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
If you have a number and you want to know
if it's divisible by three, you add up all the
numbers in the number, and if that's divisible by three,
then the number is divisible by three. So twelve fifteen
adds up to nine, nine is divisible by three, which
means twelve fifteen is divisible by three.

Speaker 7 (01:19:23):
So I told you it was obvious.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
Yeah, right, Dragon said it was actually so obvious that
we actually think it didn't even need to be mentioned.
And you you, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to talk
down to you. I definitely didn't mean to be condescending.

Speaker 1 (01:19:35):
So what was I going to say?

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
Oh, if you show up at twelve fifteen, all you
got to do is tell me sorry. I was supposed
to be here at twelve thirteen, and I'm two minutes late.
I apologize, or I was aiming for twelve seventeen. I'm
two minutes early. I apologize. That's fine too, that's fine too.
So again, DTC slice today. Now we do still have
a whole bunch of stuff that I want to get to.

(01:19:59):
And I'll tell you I'm gonna set this one up
and then come back and talk about it in the
next segment.

Speaker 1 (01:20:03):
And I'm gonna set it up this way.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):
Do they really think they have a claim on our money?

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
I'm also I was never a big Charlie Brown fan.
I find.

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):
This is gonna sound as bad as saying I don't
like Elton John right.

Speaker 3 (01:20:23):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:20:24):
I find Charlie Brown in particular annoying.

Speaker 7 (01:20:28):
Well, this isn't bad as bad as you saying you
don't like Winnie the Pooh, though, So that's Winnie the
See that was that was pretty bad you You've even
even our boss was like, what.

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
That's a great question. Let's ask this question of listeners.
Text us at five six, six nine zero and tell
us who's more annoying Charlie, Charlie Brown or Winnie the Pooh,
Which one?

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
Which one is more annoying.

Speaker 7 (01:20:58):
I like Linus. Oh brother, wait bother, Yes, that would
be pooh. But doesn't Charlie say, I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
I don't know. I like Linus, I like pig Pen.

Speaker 7 (01:21:08):
Everybody loves Snoopy.

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
Snoopy's all right? What sneer is just?

Speaker 7 (01:21:13):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
Snoopy's just alright. Isn't there a song with that title
or something? Baron, come on, the red Baron's cool. The
red Baron stuff is good. See that's the red all.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
That Red Baron Flight of Fancy was the best stuff
about the Charlie Brown cartoon for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
All Right. Now, I don't know. I don't know why
we do any of this. Uh so I just called
the pizza place.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
He knows We're coming twelve thirteen pm today at DTC
slice if you want to come join me twelve thirteen
at DTC Slice. Yes, sir, seen or twelve seventeen, that's right,
either one, they're both prime. So I I did a
little quote unquote tease to use the radio jargon going

(01:21:59):
into this segment. I said, do they really think they
have a claim on your money? And here's the story
I wanted to share with you, NPR, And this is
from the Denver Gazette. NPR and Colorado's NPR stations are
suing the Trump administration for withholding funds. Now this story,

(01:22:23):
that particular story up at Denver Gazette, and I'll share
a little bit. NPR and three of its stations in
Colorado sued Donald Trump yesterday, arguing that his executive order
cutting funding to the two hundred and forty six station
network violates their free speech and relies on an authority
he does not have. Earlier this month, Trump instructed the

(01:22:44):
Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal agencies to cease funding
for NPR and PBS directly or indirectly. The president and
his supporters argue their news reporting promotes liberal bias and
shouldn't be supported by taxpayers. Okay, a whole bunch of
things I want to say about this first, In a way,
it ties in with the conversation we had at the

(01:23:06):
top of this hour with Molly Nixon from Pacific Legal Foundation,
where she is suing over Donald Trump's use of a
particular law to impose tariffs. She argues, and I think
she's right, that the law does not allow Trump to
impose tariffs, that that law does not allow Trump to
impose tariffs. So it's not a question of what should

(01:23:28):
he do, it's a question of what can he do?
And as I've said in other contexts recently, I believe
that in I'm gonna say most, I'm not gonna say all,
and maybe not even close to all, but I'm gonna
say most. Situations where either the Trump administration is being

(01:23:50):
sued for something they've done, or a federal district judge
has put an injunction in place saying you can't do that,
I think more often than not, the higher level of
appeals court or the Supreme Court will say yes, in fact,
they can do that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
Just because you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):
Don't want a president to do something doesn't mean he can't,
And just because you do want a president to do
something doesn't mean he can. And these things eventually will
get into technical matters of law. Does the law say
he can if not, did it imply he can?

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
If it implied he can't.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
How much can he extrapolate to do tariffs when it
doesn't say it. Or on the spending side, if Congress
appropriated money to let's say, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
then does the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or whatever level

(01:24:48):
of government we're dealing with here, have to send the
money to where it was sending it as far as
like NPR and PBS, quoting again from the Denver Gazette.

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
The lawsuit alleges.

Speaker 2 (01:25:02):
That Trump is acting to contravene the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
a private, nonprofit corporation set up to distribute federal funding
the NPR and PBS, which is intended to insulate the
system from political interference. Congress has appropriated five hundred and
thirty five million dollars each year for the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting for this current fiscal year and the next two.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
The president and CEO.

Speaker 2 (01:25:30):
Of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting said, and I quote,
Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private,
nonprofit wholly independent of the federal government.

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
So this is the question, is that right? Is her
argument right?

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
That the President does not have the authority to cut
off spending that Congress authorized. Another way to put it,
would the only way to cut off that spending be
for Congress to unauthorize spending that it previously authorized, and
it can definitely do that. Congress does not have to

(01:26:12):
be bound by anything it already did. You may get
into some issues of contract, but like for the money
for next year, No, they could absolutely rescind all that
they could.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
Now let me go.

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):
Okay, one more thing I want to react to from
the gazette thing, and then I'm gonna go to a
piece at the Free Press on the same topic. So
as I shared with you, I'm gonna give this quote again.
The President and his supporters argue that NPR and PBS's
reporting promotes liberal bias and shouldn't be supported by taxpayers. So,

(01:26:49):
on the one hand, I believe that's true that it
promotes liberal bias. I also believe it shouldn't be supported
by taxpayers. But I don't think that the best reason
it shouldn't be supported by taxpayers is because of the
liberal bias.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
After all, you're going to get a liberal bias.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
At least to the extent that liberal means supporting bigger
government and supporting government spending on more things that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:15):
Sense of liberal.

Speaker 2 (01:27:17):
Of course, you're going to have liberal bias from people
who work for the government, even if they work indirectly
for the government, even if only fifteen percent of their
funding comes from the government, and eighty five percent of
their funding comes from other places, only fifteen percent of
PBS revenue at least and PBS isn't everything in this conversation,

(01:27:38):
but only fifteen percent of their revenue comes from the
Corporation of Public Broadcasting, and then most of that goes
to their local stations. But they do their own, you know,
telethons and raise money from viewers like you, and from
foundations and from corporations and from rich people. So it's

(01:27:58):
not all federally funded, even you know, five hundred and
thirty five million dollars a year to the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting.

Speaker 1 (01:28:05):
Okay, five hundred and thirty five million dollars a year
is a lot, but is that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):
Really money they couldn't make up by just doing another
telethon and telling their liberal viewers and liberal listeners, Hey,
the government just cut us off. Can you please send
us another hundred bucks? Or go to the rich people?
Can you please give us another million bucks? They can
raise that money. My my issue is not okay, I

(01:28:34):
want to worry this carefully. I don't like the liberal bias,
but that's not the right argument for why it shouldn't
be taxpayer funded. It shouldn't be taxpayer funded even if
it had conservative bias.

Speaker 1 (01:28:53):
And I'll take it one step further.

Speaker 2 (01:28:55):
It shouldn't be taxpayer funded even and I realized this
is purely subjective and there's really no such thing, but
just bear with me. Hypothetically, it shouldn't be taxpayer funded
even if there were no bias. We should not have
taxpayer funded media, period.

Speaker 1 (01:29:17):
That's the principle.

Speaker 2 (01:29:19):
The principle is not I don't want government to fund
it because because it disagrees with me.

Speaker 1 (01:29:25):
You have got to be willing.

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):
To say I wouldn't want government to fund it even
if it did agree with me.

Speaker 1 (01:29:35):
The Free Press.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):
THEFP dot com is a cool piece by a guy
named Jeb no jed with a DM. Sorry Rubenfeld, and
I'm gonna share a little. National Public Radio is suing
the Trump administration for cutting off its federal funds.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
I'm gonna skip ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:29:49):
And PR seems to have forgotten some free speech basics,
as the District of Columbia Court, the court were NPR
filed suit stated just a few weeks go, the government
there is a quote. Now, the government does not abridge
the right to free speech by choosing not to subsidize it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:10):
Great line, right, great line.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
Hold on, I need a little I need a little
tea here semi professional radio.

Speaker 1 (01:30:17):
Mm hm on me.

Speaker 2 (01:30:19):
First of this year, Trump issued another of his innumerable
executive orders, this one telling the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
that disperses about five hundred million dollars a year to
public radio and TV to stop giving any more federal
money to NPR and PBS. The executive order said funding
will be withheld because quote, neither entity presents a fair, accurate,
or unbiased portrayal of curt events to tax paying citizens.

(01:30:43):
Now again, I think that's the wrong argument. Imagine a
liberal president coming in and making that same argument about
some conservative leaning outlet that happens to get government funding.
I know there might not be such a thing, but
there might be. I just don't know about it. They're
gonna say, oh, this has a different bias. We're gonna

(01:31:03):
defund that because of the bias. That's not the right answer,
all right, Continuing, NPR denies its biased, but in these pages,
he means in the Free Press a year ago, you
may recall this. Actually, so there's a senior dude, or
was a senior dude an NPR named Yuri Berliner.

Speaker 1 (01:31:22):
You are I Berliner, and he wrote.

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):
A piece for The Free Press talking about how NPR
explicitly tried to damage or topple Trump's presidency.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
Those are his words.

Speaker 2 (01:31:36):
He also talked about how people in NPR basically bragged
about refusing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story. Berliner
said during a meeting with colleagues I listened as one
of NPR's best and most fair minded journalists said that
it was good we weren't following the laptop story because it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:55):
Could help Trump. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:31:59):
Given the ideological diversity among NPR journalists, such bias would
hardly be surprising, As Berliner wrote, quote in DC, where
NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found
eighty seven registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans.

(01:32:19):
But NPR and its complaint says, the government can't defund
public radio or TV for being biased. It's an egregious
form of content discrimination that those are their words, NPR's words,
not mine, forbidden by the First Amendment. NPR's right the
taking action against the news organization because of biased political
news coverage is what the First Amendment or First Amendment jurisprudence,

(01:32:43):
meaning legal cases already decided about the First Amendment call
a content based distinction, and that usually would be flat
out unconstitutional.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
But again some free speech basics.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
When the government is subsidizing speech, the normal rule against
content based discrimination doesn't apply. As the Supreme Court held
in two thousand and seven, quote, it is well established
that the government can make content based distinctions when it
subsidizes speech.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
End quote.

Speaker 2 (01:33:18):
Back to the article, No broadcaster has a right to
taxpayer funding. The government is not constitutionally obliged to subsidize
any activity it doesn't want to fund, even if that
activity itself is constitutionally protected. To quote the Supreme Court again, quote,
the refusal to fund protected activity without more meaning, without

(01:33:42):
trying to ban it or something like that, cannot be
equated with the imposition of a penalty on that activity,
which is why the typical recourse for a party that
objects to a condition on the receipt of federal funding
is to decline the funds. But Trump is not merely
engaging in content discs rimination, says NPR. He's engaging in
viewpoint discrimination. And that's possible. But the executive order is

(01:34:05):
carefully drafted to avoid that. The order says which viewpoints
in PR and PBS promote does not matter. If the
administration is defunding in PR and PBS because their coverage
is slanted and inaccurate, and not because of the particular
viewpoints they espouse, then that's not viewpoint discrimination as a

(01:34:28):
legal matter, and it is consonant with CBP's statutory mandate
to maintain quote strict adherence to objectivity and balance in
the programming it funds. There's more, but an interested time,
I'm going to stop there. So I think NPR loses
this case, and I hope NPR loses this case. But

(01:34:49):
I want to be really clear about this. I don't
know a lot of NPR people. I've met one or two.
They seem like very nice people, smart people, and from
time to time I enjoy their product, but a lot
less than I used to many years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:35:05):
Don't listen to it very much. Frankly, I don't want.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
Them to lose their government funding, which by the way,
is not the same as shutting them down.

Speaker 1 (01:35:14):
Right, Like I said, I think it's fifteen percent of
their funding. They'll be fine.

Speaker 2 (01:35:18):
The reason I want them to be quote unquote defunded.
Just the government part is because there should not be
any government funded media, with the possible exception of some
US government broadcast outlet that is aiming at the former
Soviet Union, Cuba, Rightdio Free Europe. Stuff that is part

(01:35:40):
of American foreign policy, aimed at foreigners, with a specific
mission that relates to American foreign policy goals, not tied
to supporting or opposing policies of a particular administration.

Speaker 1 (01:35:55):
I can imagine that being okay.

Speaker 2 (01:35:58):
But government funded media inside the United States for the
consumption of Americans is just not okay. This Friday, I'm
taking a flight on United Airlines or as a friend
of mine, you used to call.

Speaker 1 (01:36:15):
Them unit ted United.

Speaker 2 (01:36:17):
Airlines, and I'm going to my niece's bot mitzvah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:24):
Now I'm not.

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):
Traveling with just carry on luggage because I'm gonna have
to bring more and that so it's gonna be bigger
than a carry on, so I'm gonna have to check luggage.

Speaker 1 (01:36:33):
But I wanted to.

Speaker 2 (01:36:33):
Share this story with you because it relates to people
who are gonna be traveling on United with carry ons.
This is from the Associated Press, and obviously United is
a massive airline. Here in Denver, the biggest airline here
in Denver. Again from the ap stragglers, beware, US Travelers
flying with United will have to check into domestic flights

(01:36:55):
a little earlier starting next week if they're only taking
carry on bags, effective June third, So when is that?

Speaker 1 (01:37:02):
Next Tuesday?

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
United's check in cut off for most United flights will
be forty five minutes before departure. That is the same
deadline as it already is for people who are checking luggage,
but it's fifteen minutes earlier than the current deadline for
people who are not checking in luggage.

Speaker 1 (01:37:22):
In an email to the.

Speaker 2 (01:37:23):
Associated Press, a United spokesperson said.

Speaker 1 (01:37:26):
The charge the change, I'm sorry to.

Speaker 2 (01:37:28):
A single cut off quote brings greater consistency for our
customers and conforms with the policies of many other airlines
checking in for a flight. Let's see if there's anything
else I need to read there? Eh no, not really,
I think the rest is not all that important.

Speaker 1 (01:37:49):
There are other airlines.

Speaker 2 (01:37:50):
By the way, that have different guidelines for their own stuff,
and you can check, like Emirates airlines, and a lot
of that is you know, obviously the international if you're
going from here, but they closed online check ins ninety
minutes before departure. Ryanair, which is an Irish airline, you
can check in online up to two hours before a flight.

(01:38:10):
You can check in at an airport forty minutes before
a flight, although there's a fee if you're around anyway,
You get the idea different airlines will set their own stuff.
But I wanted to mention the United one to you
because United is so big here in Denver, and if
you are a business traveler used to go in with
carry on only and checking in let's say forty minutes
before a flight, You're not gonna be able to do

(01:38:31):
that anymore.

Speaker 7 (01:38:32):
Yes, dragon, have you checked out the text line? And
now Charlie Brown or winning the poop?

Speaker 1 (01:38:35):
Oh? No, what do they say? Let's do this quickly?

Speaker 7 (01:38:37):
Honest, it looks like it's about fifty to fifty. I
can't quite tell if there's a clear winner or not
or tayer loser you mean, because they're both annoying. But
you did piss off Mike from a roy Yeah, what
you say? Request Neil Young tomorrow? Oh, oh my gosh,
he left his name. Ask for a bit of request.

Speaker 2 (01:38:56):
Every time you play Neil Young, make little mark somewhere,
and every little mark represents a Miller Moth. I'm gonna
bring to the control room for you.

Speaker 1 (01:39:08):
You think I'm kidding, don't you. I'm not.

Speaker 7 (01:39:10):
Is it alive?

Speaker 1 (01:39:11):
Yeah? Alive?

Speaker 2 (01:39:12):
Oh, every time you play Neil Young, I'm bringing you
a live Miller Moth. And if we get out of
Miller Moth season, I will go somewhere put on or
maybe my own house and put on a light at
night and get some other moth and I'll bring that
to you if we're out of Miller Moth season. It's
it's only fair. It's only fair. So let's do take

(01:39:36):
a quick look here. Yeah, it's about fifty to fifty
between whether Poo or Charlie Brown is more annoying, and
one person says e or is also very annoying.

Speaker 7 (01:39:46):
I think with Snoopy, I think Charlie Brown wins barely.
But I think everybody loves Snoopy, love Snoopy, or think
Snoopy is annoying him.

Speaker 4 (01:39:56):
Yeah, all right, so that Charlie Brown would win. That's weird,
all right. Charlie's annoying, Charlie's annoying. Who's annoying? But you
know what's good is pizza. If you want to have
pizza with me.

Speaker 2 (01:40:11):
Eighteen minutes from now, Okay, well you could be listening
on the stream, so it'll probably be sixteen minutes from
when you hear it. DTC Slice, DTC slice. I will
see you there at twelve thirteen pm, and I am
not buying your pizza, but let's go hang out if
you want to, If you want to join me, talk
to you tomorrow.