05-29-25 - *FULL SHOW* Court Spikes Tariffs; Comic Monty Franklin; What's a CBDC

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you were on my listener trip to Washington, d C,
would have met my guest in person. Dan Hoffman, is
a former multi location CIA station chief, including Moscow, and
I think the best person anybody could talk to about
what's going on in and near Russia, perhaps in the

(00:22):
mind of Putin and people who surround Putin and so on. Dan,
thanks for making time for us. I know you're a
very busy guy. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Well, happy to do it, Ron.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
So let's let's there's so many different aspects. I want
to start with Trump and Putin. You obviously pay attention
to this stuff every day. Just a week ago, Trump
was on a phone call with Putin and he seemed
to be doing the same old stuff of kind of
playing nice with Putin and saying I get along with him. Well,
within just a couple of days they were going going

(00:52):
back and forth at each other. And now yesterday Trump
gave something like what appears to be a two week deadline,
but we don't know to what.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
So tell us what you think of all this.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well, look, President Trump sit on the campaign trail that
he would end the war in a day, and so
Putin heard that, and Putin also knows that President Trump
has talked about trying to engage Russia commercially and enticing
Putin to the negotiating table with the promise of some

(01:27):
commercial deals that might be a benefit to both countries,
and Putin is hearing that as well. And so one
of the things that I've been emphasizing all along is
that it's important for us to see the world through
the eyes of Putin. That's what I did at CIA
for decades. It's also important to see ourselves through Putin's eyes.
And what Putin I think is seeing right now. Look
this war is I don't see any indication there's anything

(01:50):
we can do to get him to stop.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Fighting in Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
He invaded Ukraine and his strategic goal was to topple
the government, and I haven't seen any indicattion that he's
going to let up now. We haven't tried using all
the leverage we have, specifically secondary sanctions and more weapons
to Ukraine. And remember the Biden administration failed to give
Ukraine what they needed when they needed that failed to

(02:15):
deter the war in the first place. But that's going
to be the question for the Trump administration and for
President Trump to ask his Director of CIA, John Ratcliffe.
Is Putin ever going to be interested in making a deal,
and if so, what do we need to do about it?
That's the hard one. Ross. Vladimir Putin is a KGB guy,
and he hates the United States of America. We are

(02:37):
Russia's main enemy, that's what they call us. So he
doesn't want to see President Trump succeed on the world stage,
doesn't want the United States to look like the strong
superpower that we are in the world stage. And there's
the challenge that we face.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Right. I actually laughed, I literally laughed out loud when
I heard Trump say, I don't know what's happened to
this guy? He's changed, right, I mean there's I don't
think Putin has changed since, not only while he's been
in politics, but as you say, he's an old school KGB.
What was his highest ranked colonel? Maybe?

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, I don't think the dude has ever changed, right,
That's it.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Look, he came to power and immediately launched a brutal
war on Czechnia, and there were all sorts of questions
about the origin of that war and buildings that came down.
Was it the FSB that did it? There wasn't any
definitive evidence that the FSB was responsible for the explosions
in a number of buildings that Putin used as a

(03:37):
pretext to launch a war on Czechnia, which violated massive
human rights. But then he went on to invade Georgia
and still holds Georgian territory. A massive cyber attack on
a stony had taken down a Malaysian airliner using a
banned chemical nerve agent novichok to try to kill a
former defector. Killing a defector with polonium two ten turned

(03:59):
him into a you know, a human dirty bomb in
the streets of London. And then of course invading Ukraine
illegally annexing Crimea in twenty fourteen, and then this war,
which is couldn't have been responsible for hundreds of thousands
of casualties, and it's been a complete failure for him.
He's not winning. Finland and Sweden are NAO members, has
been a brain drain of a million or so Russians

(04:20):
that have fled the country, and Ukraine has cut his
army down the sides. It doesn't look too good and
his own military and zone intelligence officers know it all right.
So war and he almost can't. He can't get out
of it. If he does, it's just grave risk to
his regime security. I think that's probably all that matters
to him.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Frankly, all right, we've got three or four minutes left.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
I'm going to reassign you from from CIA to National
Security Council. You are now national Security Advisor. President Trump
comes to you and says, what should I do that
might have some actual effect in terms of leveraging Putin
to stop the fight.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Well, President Trump gave Putin another two weeks, and I
just don't think there's going to be That's what.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Putin wants to do.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
He wants to play for time, and I would.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Have this has got to be it.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
So you know, they can meet. Now US national security
officials can meet and decide what we're going to do.
But it's got to be secondary sanctions and the President
can authorize those, and it'll take some time in the Congress,
but it'll deliver that message to Putin that we're serious
about hurting him and hurting his economy. And then we
should just deliver to Ukraine what they need. Let them

(05:38):
pay for it. Europeans will pay for it. Yeah, and
give them more weapons so that they can defend themselves
from a future Russian attack, not just stop this one.
But I am sorry to say, and I didn't ever
serve with the National Security Council, and you used to
just telling leadership what they need to know, and especially
when it's not what they want to hear. I don't

(05:58):
know that this is war is going to end and
until unless ladymer Putin is out of the Kremlin, that's
just probably the way it is. So you need to
deter him or to defend yourself at the point of attack,
and that's what it's going to take.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
It's a long haul.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
I couldn't agree with you more, especially on the weapons.
And we did see this story that Germany said they
were going to help Ukraine develop their own Ukrainian missiles,
long range missiles that will since they'll be Ukrainian, will
not have the Western imposed restrictions on targets and distances
that they can shoot these things, so that would be good.

(06:34):
I'm a little a little hesitant on the secondary sanctions
because I just don't think they're going to work. And
I think one of the big ones if we're going
to talk about sanctioning people buying Russian oil would be India,
and I don't think the US wants to get into
that with India. And I actually don't think Trump wants
to get into more of a fight with China either.
So I just I don't know about the sanctions, man.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, well, I think you blame those on the guy
who's respond Well, that's Vladimir Putin. Yeah, and I'm not
sure there's another answer here. India happens to be Russia's ally. Well, okay,
then figure it out and find some other way. But
you can't be allied with the country that has invaded
its sovereign neighbor and tried to change the border by force,

(07:19):
Like that's what we're supposed to end at the end
of the Second World War, And no surprise, this is
the most devastating land war since then.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
So I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
That's the world.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
That policy is all about making the best decision among
a bunch.

Speaker 4 (07:34):
Of bad ones.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, and that's the challenge we face, man. I mean,
we'll be on talking about this in a few more
months and we'll see where we're at.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Then we got about forty five seconds left.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
I saw a really.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Interesting piece over at the Wall Street Journal. I don't
remember if I sent it to you, but it's about
US marines showing up on a Swedish island called Gutland.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
And I'm sure you're well aware.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Of this Baltic Sea, and it seems like we are
fortifying natives north against potential Russian aggression or just to
show Russia that we're paying attention.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Well what do you think about this?

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Well, this is where you know, we've got to collect
intelligence on the threat and then be prepared to do
something about it. And Russia has been mounting all sorts
of hybrid operations in that part of the world.

Speaker 5 (08:21):
So it's it's a case where.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
We got to work really closely with our allies and
beyond on alert to detect these in these operations and
do something about it. Again, he's this is what he does.
He mounts, you know, cloak and dagg or espionage Operations's
what he's been doing his whole life, and he's not
going to stop.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
It's part of why your previous career must have been
one of the most interesting jobs ever. And I wish
you could talk about it more, but I know better
than to ask. Dan Hoffman, former CIA station chief and
multiple locations including Moscow. Thanks so much for your time
and your expertise, Dan, and we'll talk again.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Soon, all right, take care so you all right, all right, We're.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back on kaway,
all right. So I woke up very early this morning.
I don't know why. I got out of bed around
four am, which is not early for Shannon, but it
is early for me. And just because I'm trying to
be very, very healthy these days, I had almond milk

(09:21):
instead of regular milk, and I don't actually know if
that's healthier, and it probably isn't in my bowl of
lucky charms, and then feeling like I hadn't quite finished
out the food pyramid adequately.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
When I got here, my colleague.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Joel, who has a whole like little supermarket by his
area there had one and a half donuts left over
from yesterday, so I ate the half a donut that
was left over from yesterday. And then he also had
some peanut m and ms there on the desk. I
reached in and grabbed a small handful, which turned out

(09:59):
to be four of them, which kind of bums me
out because three would have been a prime number and
five would have been a prime number, but four isn't.
But I didn't put my hand back in to either
take another one or drop one out, and I ended
up eating four. I hope you will forgive me for that.
But in any case, I am feeling pretty good. So

(10:20):
I'm going to talk briefly now about what's really the
biggest story of the day, and then we're going to
talk about it in more detail in forty five minutes.
And that is the ruling by the Federal Trade Court
that almost all, not quite all, of the tariffs that

(10:44):
have been imposed by President Trump, like the ten percent
on everybody, for example, and most other things, are illegal.
It's called the Court of International Trade. And on yesterday's show,
believe it or not, I had an attorney who is
bringing almost this exact same case in this exact same court,

(11:07):
but they are a couple weeks behind, and there's a
couple things different in the.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
Case, so their case isn't gonna end.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
But it turns out I did have a guest on
the show yesterday talking about this court, this kind of case,
and these very issues, And yesterday, in what's called a
per curium p u R c r IAM decision, a
percurium decision is one that is not signed by anyone judge.
They are often but do not have to be unanimous.

(11:35):
The three judges on this panel, there was one judge
appointed by Obama, one appointed by Reagan, and one appointed
by Trump, if you know, if you're curious, And what
they said is the same thing that the attorney who
was on the show yesterday said, And that is the

(11:56):
law that the president is claiming gives him the ae
authority to impose tariffs absolutely does not give him that authority.
I think it's very clear reading the law, he does
not have the authority under that law to impose tariffs. Now,
there are other laws that allow the imposition of some
tariffs in some circumstances, and as you heard Pat Woodard

(12:19):
say in our news broadcast, probably the tariffs on metals
and aluminum and maybe automobiles might stand up under other law.
But still that's not much compared to all this other
stuff that Trump wants to do. And I'll tell you what,
I'm just gonna stop on this for now. There's a

(12:39):
lot more to say about it, but I'm gonna stop
on this for now because coming up just about forty
minutes from now we're.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Actually going to talk with.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
One of the attorneys who was on yesterday's case, who
won yesterday's case, So we'll get into that in a
little bit more detail. I also just wanted to take
a moment to follow up on something else that I
heard Pat Woodard talk about in the news, and that
is this toddler don't know the age, I just see
under the age of five. I don't see any other

(13:11):
detail in this particular story, which is from our news
partners at KADIVR Fox thirty one. An unvaccinated child under
the age of five who recently traveled to multiple international
locations has a confirmed case of measles. And Pat did
mention various places that this kid apparently had traveled before
they knew he had measles, of course, and I mean

(13:33):
after he got home from international travel, and so measles
being one of the most highly contagious illnesses there is. Right,
if you're not vaccinated and you're around someone with measles,
the data that I've seen suggests an over ninety percent
chance that you're gonna catch it, right, It's incredibly transmissible.

(13:54):
So he actually went at some point to when it
was a week ago today went to the emergency department
a Children's.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Hospital and then I guess they sent him home.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
And then he went to Walgreens, and then another Walgreens,
and then a Sam's Club and then a natural grocer's.
All this stuff is in Aurora. This kid must live
in Aurora. And then this Monday he was back at
Children's hospital in the emergency room Monday through Tuesday. And
you can go look this stuff. Actually, I have a
link to it in my blog and you could just
look it up yourself if you want to type in,

(14:28):
you know, a rapa Hoe County toddler measles you'll you'll
find it if you want to go see which Walgreens
they were in, and which Sam's Club they were in
and all that. But the message that I want to
bring to you today, please put aside whatever you think
about COVID vaccines. Okay, COVID vaccine, especially for children, is
an entirely different conversation that I am excluding from what

(14:50):
I'm saying right now. Please do not abuse your child
by not vaccinating him or her, And please do not
abuse use other people's children by not vaccinating your own child.
Because even though the measles vaccine is very effective. No
vaccine is one hundred percent effective. So if your kid

(15:12):
gets measles and is around the you know, one of
the kids who is a you know is vaccinated, but
is one of the one or two percent of people
maybe three percent, for whom the vaccine doesn't work, then
you could cause that other kid to get measles too.
Measles is a bad illness. It's not often fatal, but
it can be fatal. And it has been in the

(15:33):
United States a time.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Or two this year.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
And I submit to you that refusing to vaccinate your
child is a form of child abuse, and I encourage
you not to commit child abuse.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
Bross, Lucky Charms, what are you three?

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Well? I mean I had to switch to Lucky Charms
because the previous day I had cinnamon to host crunch, right,
so you got to switch up. I don't understand what
the confusion is. One day I will have I will
have centurios, and then you will maybe feel better about

(16:10):
feel better about my diet.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
And let's see what else.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
How was the pizza get together yesterday? Thank you to
the folks who showed up to have a slice or
two or three slices with me over at DTC Slice,
and thanks for the folks at to the folks at
DTC Slice for making such freaking good pizza, and.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah it was. It was great.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
A lot of good conversation, a lot of people. I
could give shout outs too, but I just don't want
to go through all that. I will say a hello
to to Carol, who is a flight attendant from United Airlines.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
But she's been off the.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
Job for a little while because she broke her shoulder.
So Carol, get well soon and maybe I'll see you
on a flight one day.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
So there's that. Ross.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
I had measless chicken pops, chicken pox, and momps. I
remember momps were the worst of the three. Wow, that
doesn't that doesn't sound great. So here's a story, a
local story that I wanted to share with you because
I'm I'm trying to get a little more clarity from
the people at the airport about this.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
And so here's the headline. This is from nine News.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Denver International Airport City employees face furloughs despite not saving
the city any money.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
Okay, So here's the concept.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
And we've talked about this a bit on the show,
and you've heard, you've heard our news team talk about
it as well. So Denver is facing a very large
shortfall in sales tax revenue in particular, and I'm going
to talk later in the show about another story that
where it looks like Denver is not alone.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Okay, Denver is not alone.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Lots of cities in the Denver metro area, lots of
cities and Colorado appear to be generating less sales tax
revenue than they thought. Right, it feels a little bit
like the recession, if you're going to.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Measure it that way.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
So the mayor announced that all city employees, fifteen thousand
of them, are going to take between two and seven
unpaid furlough days.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
This calendar year.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
I don't know if it's the calendar year of the
fiscal year actually, but whatever, the number of days that
they're going to have to take depends on how much
money they make and Denver, as I understand it, Denver
Airport employees, not all of them, but some of them

(18:47):
are on the one hand, city employees, but on the
other hand, they are not paid out of the city's
general fund budget. Denver Airport has its own budget, So
having Denver Airport employees go on furlough could well reduce
the level of efficiency at the airport without actually saving

(19:09):
Denver any money. Now again, I've been emailing with a
spokesperson for Denver International Airport trying to clarify this. But
nine News did a thing on it a couple of
days ago. I guess it was. Maybe it was yesterday.
Marshall Zellinger did a thing and they've got DIA employees

(19:30):
messages to DIA management and they're not happy. The employees
are not happy.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
Now.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Phil Washington is the CEO of the airport, and here's
what he wrote. While our budget is not tied to
the city's general fund, we have historically stood in solidarity
with our city and County of Denver colleagues downtown when
belts need to be tied. Heightened, the hiring freeze, nor

(20:03):
the layoffs apply to Denver. I mean, I'm sorry Denver
International Airport, but we will be following suit with furloughs
for the.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Remainder of the year.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Huh. One employee wrote, Dear Den Den all in capital letters, right,
so the code for the airport and that's how they
address management at the airport.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
Dear Den.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
The quote standing in solidarity with our downtown colleagues is
a load of and then put some word there that
they didn't reproduce in the article. So here's a response
from den to that this comment is very close to
not meeting the guidelines of deer Den.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
However, we have.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Sent it to the executive office for a response. We
strongly believe in deer Dan and want to ensure you
are able to receive a response in the future. We
ask you avoid using or implying the use of profanity
in your feedback. So, actually, the person didn't even put
I said they put a square word which was deleted
in the article. But I think that's wrong. I think
the person only said this is a load of How

(21:12):
how hypersensitive is the person over at Denver International Airport
who said, well, we almost didn't send that to management
because you imply to swear word at the end of
your sentence.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Are you kidding?

Speaker 1 (21:23):
I mean, that does sound like the kind of people
who would make their people take an unpaid day off.
They've got more to say on this, right, but take
an unpaid day off just to be in solidarity with
city employees who have to take an unplay unpaid day off.
That sounds really dumb. Doesn't it. Now, here's the other thing.

(21:45):
Here's the other thing. For the city of Denver. This
makes a lot of sense as far as at least
the first two or the two unpaid days off that
everybody's gonna take, and then some people will need to
take more than two, and they will take other days.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
But the two that everybody's gonna take is.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Are, I should say, are Friday August twenty ninth, which
is the friday before.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
Labor Day, so that turns into a four day weekend.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
And Friday November twenty eighth, the day after Thanksgiving, so
that'll be a four day weekend there too. Now, when
I ask you, what do you tend to think of
when it comes to airports and holiday weekends, three day
holiday weekends, what do.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
You tend to think of? Maybe a little busy.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
So if there is any day, any days in which
you would generally not want to furlough airport employees, it's
those days.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Oh my gosh, thanks I.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Realized the day after Thanksgiving is not the biggest day
right around Thanksgiving, but it's close and Thanksgiving is often
the biggest travel holiday.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
And of course you're talking.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
They add in the friday before labor day like that.
That's just not very smart to remove people from the
airport on the airport's busiest days. Kind of nuts, huh.
I'll be very interested to see, now that nine News
has covered this, now that I've mentioned it as well,

(23:24):
whether some of these, whether these airport furloughs still happen
that day. By the way, nine News wonders, who are
actually the city employees there who would be furloughed. So
it's not the people who check you in for your flight,
they work for the airlines.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Then there are.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Outside contractors who are also not city employees, and they
would be you know, the people keeping the place clean, right,
the janitors and the people who are making sure the
elevators and escalators are working, that kind of thing. So again,
according to nine News, city employees include information staff who've
guide travelers, along with workers and operations, maintenance, finance it

(24:03):
and marketing, and certainly the ones who are responsible for
responding to the deer den entrees. So again, I don't
know of the city employees. You know, operations and maintenance
sound to me like people who probably should be there
on what are likely to be some of the busiest
days of travel. I don't care whether finance and IT

(24:24):
or marketing are there on those days. But overall, the
idea that we are just blindly going to furlough our
people on the same days that the city does is
really not very bright. And I hope that the airport
comes back to me with a better answer than they've
given so far. So we'll see, I will. I will
keep you posting on all that for sure. All right, So, yesterday,

(24:50):
I think it was during the last news broadcasts during
my show here on KOWA, the eleven thirty broadcast, I
think it was, Chad played some audio from Elon Musk
and I thought it was really good, so I went
and found the audio and I want to share this
with you. This is an interview that Elon Musk was
doing with I want to say it with CBS. I

(25:12):
hope I didn't get that wrong CBS, I think. And
they're talking about the work of DOGE to cut government
spending and so called waste, fraud and abuse, and how
that ties in to this so called big beautiful bill
that Mandy and I have both aggressively criticized on the show,

(25:34):
which is not to say that there's nothing good in it,
but there's a lot of stuff in it. There's way
too much stuff in it that's not good and Republicans
should do better. Here's what Elon Musk had to say.

Speaker 6 (25:46):
So you know, I was like, we're disappointed to see
the massive spending bill frankly, which increases the budge depsit
not doesn't decrease it, and that reminds the work that
the Noch team is doing.

Speaker 7 (25:59):
I actually thought that when this big beautiful bill came along.

Speaker 8 (26:01):
I mean, like everything he's done on dose gets wiped
out in the first year.

Speaker 6 (26:06):
I think a bill can be big or it can
be beautiful, but I don't know if it could be both.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Hellallujah to that a bill can be big or a
bill can be beautiful, but it can't be both. I
couldn't agree more. I think I said something like that
the other day. In fact, I know what I said
the other day. I said that most Republicans who were
in Congress campaigned against exactly this kind of bill. They
campaigned against all of this omnibus nonsense. You may recall,

(26:35):
if you were listening, I used the term that might
be not as well. I might not be as well
known outside of people who talk about politics a lot
but it's often called a Christmas tree. Right, you take
these bills and you just hang ornaments all over him,
just shiny little things for members of Congress to be
able to tell Eric and Stiff show and say, I
voted for this bad bill, but don't worry about it,
because I got this thing for you, right, I got

(26:57):
this new park or I got this new whatever whatever.
And so it's it's it's all the same. It's all.
This bill is something like a thousand pages, I think,
and it's ridiculous. I haven't I could be confusing that
with another bill anyway. It's it's just insanely large, and
it's everything that Republicans have campaigned against it, right.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
It's more spending, more.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Deficit, more debt, and just another bill that falls into
this category that Nancy Pelosi made famous some years ago
with we need to pass it to find out what's
in it. It's ridiculous, ridiculous. Now, I want to stick
with the Elon Musk thing for a minute because because

(27:40):
there's a interesting thing going on now with Musk and politics,
and that is in fact, I'll go to the New
York Times headline, A disillusioned Musk distanced from Trump says
he's exiting Washington, now, do kie. It's the New York Times,

(28:01):
So they're going to try to make it sound like
there's as much discord in Republican circles as possible, and
they will play that up more than what probably exists.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
But let me just share a little with you with
that caveat Elon.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Musk took a swipe at President Trump's signature domestic policy legislation,
saying it would add to the national deficit. He complained
to administration officials about a lucrative deal that went to
a rival company to build an artificial intelligence data center
in the Middle East, and he has yet to make
good on a one hundred million dollar pledge to Trump's
political operation. Mister Musk, who once called himself the President's

(28:38):
first buddy, is now operating with some distance from mister Trump,
as he says he is ending his government work to
spend more time on his companies. Mister Musk remains on
good terms with President Trump, according to White House officials,
but he has also made it clear that he is
disillusioned with Washington and frustrated with the obstacles he encountered

(29:01):
as he upended the federal bureaucracy, raising questions about the
strength of the alliance between the president and the world's
richest man. Now there's a lot here, okay, So there's
stuff to talk about here regarding the size of government
and DOGE and all these cuts and what's going to

(29:21):
be durable and what's not durable.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
And we will see.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Actually there is something that's coming down the road, and
we'll have to see how it plays out, but it
could be very good. And that is that the administration
is supposed to send to Congress their recision package, okay,
their recision package, And what that means is the spending
items that Congress previously authorized that the administration would like

(29:48):
Congress to de authorize so the money doesn't get spent.
And so the Trump administration, the White House is going
to send this list to Congress, and congres this is
going to try to pass it, and that'll be great.
And so what that'll do is it'll put at least
some of the DOGE cuts into law.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Because this is the thing.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
Anything that's done purely by the executive branch, purely through
executive order, purely, you know, anything that the president or
his people do without an Act of Congress, the next
president and the next president's people can undo without an
Act of Congress. And that's why it's really important to
get as much of this stuff as possible into an

(30:33):
actual law, so that to undo it there will need
to be another actual law.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
So that's that side of it. Now.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
The political side is interesting. Quoting again from the New
York Times, mister Musk has said in recent days that
he spent too much time focused on politics, and here's
a direct quote. I think I probably did spend a
bit too much time on politics, and then he added
it was just relative time allocation, and that probably was
a little too high on the government side, and I've

(31:03):
reduced that significantly in recent weeks. So something else I
mentioned to you just after the election, Tesla stock started
going up dramatically when it became clear that Elon Musk
was going to be closely involved with President Trump in
the administration, and a lot of people took that as
some kind of sign that Musk thought, or just even

(31:25):
if Musk didn't, investors thought that Trump would do something
to benefit Musk. And I actually didn't think that was
very likely, and as far as I can tell, it
didn't happen. But instead what did happen was Elon Musk
started getting very very very unpopular with American liberals, who

(31:49):
were the primary buyers of his cars. Not I mean
lots of people of all stripes by Teslas, but in
general liberals like electric cars for the virtue say so,
there are a lot of big buyers of liberal buyers
of Tesla's And then Elon Musk also unwisely made some
comments about European politics and turned off lots and lots

(32:12):
of European buyers of Tesla. And so from the top
of Tesla's stock price, I don't know, that was probably
December or January until maybe a month ago, the price
of Tesla got cut in half. Okay, And after it
got cut in half, I mean it had gone up

(32:33):
and then it went down a lot, but it was
it was down below where it was when Trump got elected,
and not looking good for Musk, even though obviously still
he was still I think the richest man.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
In the world, even at that lower price.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Then what happened he stepped away from this politics stuff.
He kind of vanished. He's mostly been off of television
and not doing that much politics on Twitter either.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
And lo and behold what's happened.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Stock has gone up quite a bit since he basically
took himself out of the spotlight a month or two ago.
And I don't know if this is still true because
I haven't looked, but a month or two ago, you
could go on to Facebook, Marketplace or autotrader or cars
dot Com or one of these and find an immense
number of Teslas for sale by liberals who were virtue

(33:25):
signaling by selling after they were virtue signaling by buying before.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
And I'm not very interested in it.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
I probably would consider owning a Tesla one day, but
I'm not very interested right now. So I wasn't really
looking to buy one. But they were all over the
place and prices came down hard. And Musk is primarily
a businessman, he's not really a politician.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
And he does Tesla, and he does the Solar, and
he does the.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
SpaceX and he does the uh oh neuralink, the one
where you know, the chip in people's brains so that
so that you know, quadriplegics can do things, move, you know,
and speak all this. It's amazing. He's an amazing guy.
He's an odd guy, but an amazing guy. I should
like to meet him, and uh, he's going back to that,
and he should.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
But on the political.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Side, the fact that he said I spent too much
time on politics, and he's also signaled that he spent
more too much money on politics should be.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
A worrying a worrying thing for Republicans A little bit.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Musk spent enough money last time around to move the needle.
Unclear to me whether President Trump would be president today
if not for Elon Musk. There's a good argument to
make that he wouldn't be, and not just because of
the money, but because he was so aggressively championing him
on Twitter, and then.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
That message is being multiplied out.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
I mean, Elon Musk already has, however, many millions and millions.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
Of followers, but.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
Also a lot of sort of younger people follow Musk
and and love the technological vision and all that. And
so I also think Musk kind of connected Trump with
people who are often low propensity voters and got them,
got younger people, got people who are spend more of
their time you know, on a screen playing video games

(35:13):
or dealing with cryptocurrency or AI, and got those people
to vote for Trump. So I do think if I
were Republicans. I'm not saying I'd be panicking, but I
do think it is a very significant negative for them
that Elon Musk has said he's going to be a
lot less involved in politics when.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
We come back.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
You know that the biggest news of the day is
that a federal court in Manhattan ruled that almost all
of President Trump's tariffs are illegal. When we come back,
we're going to talk with the lawyer who won that case.
When you send in your requests to producer Dragon, please
include at least your name and somebody else's name if
you want it dedicated. And that's what we do here

(35:51):
on KOA Rock Radio. I don't know what we are anymore.
I know what I want to do right now, So listen.
When I saw the news yesterday that a federal court
in I think it's in Manhattan struck down almost all
of President Trump's tariffs, I think I literally cheered out
loud and joining us to talk about it.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
He probably cheered out loud.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Well, he probably wanted to cheer out loud, but maybe
did after he got out of the courtroom.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Maybe it wasn't in the courtroom.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Jeff Schwab is senior counsel at Liberty Justice Center and
it was the lead attorney on the case.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
So Jeff won this case. What an exciting day.

Speaker 8 (36:28):
Jeff, congratulations, thanks very much, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Did you cheer out loud?

Speaker 4 (36:36):
I did cheer out loud?

Speaker 8 (36:37):
And I had to double The way that I received
it was via email, which is how we received our
court filings, and I did a double take because I
was like, is that say what I think it says?

Speaker 4 (36:50):
So it was very exciting.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
So give us just get it. Be a little bit
legally nerdy with us here. What was your prime argument
or primary couple of arguments regarding your assertion that President
Trump did not have the authority to impose most of
his tariffs.

Speaker 8 (37:11):
We had, I think we had six independent arguments that
we made, but basically they were that the AIFA, which
is what the statute that the administration relied on, either
doesn't authorize tariffs at all or it doesn't authorize the
unilateral authority by the president to impose any tariffs that

(37:32):
he wants at any rate, at any time on any country.
So that that was one, and then the other sort
of aspect of it was that if the administration was
correct that this interpretation, with this interpretation of a EPA,
then that would create constitutional problems with separation of powers,

(37:53):
because Congress can't just delegate all of its authority, and
of course Congress has the authority to impose Harris under
the Constitution.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
As I read the opinion, and I actually did read
most of it, it sounded to me as if the
current law that President Trump is using as the basis
for this stuff replaced an older law that might have
given previous presidents more authority than the current law gives.
Is that true and if so, do you think that

(38:22):
that adds to your case in the sense of clearly
they intended with the newer law to restrain the president
a little bit.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (38:33):
In fact, there was a series of reform laws by
Congress in the seventies, is in the wake of the
Nixon administration, but also that many other presidents prior to
that were using the emergency powers to do basically whatever
they wanted, and so the Congress passed the series of
laws to restrain that, and they passed AIPA in part

(38:57):
to restrain the president's power or issuing tariffs whenever he wanted,
whatever rate he wanted. And so I think the court
recognized that that was the intent of Congress when interpreting AIPA.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
It was a bit strange for them to rely on
AIPA anyway, because in the things that it expressly allows
the president to do, tariffs are not among them. So
it seems like they must have known this was a stretch.

Speaker 8 (39:29):
Yeah, there's no there's nothing in the statutes specifically that
authorizes the president.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
To impost Harris.

Speaker 8 (39:36):
In contrast, other statutes do specifically allow the president to
impose Harris's, but I think the administration didn't want to
use those because those statutes have other limitations and procedures
that the president has to follow, and under AIPA, the
president thought that it could just simply declare an emergency
and then immediately imposed Harriff.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
One of the other things that I found interesting about
this because I had I had Molly Nixon from Pacific
Legal Foundation yesterday talking about her case, which is very
much like yours, uh, And one of the one of
the things that came up is that courts usually hesitate
to get involved in the question of what's an emergency,

(40:20):
But it seemed like this court did a little bit,
you know, I could it seemed like they said, Trump
is claiming things that are emergencies that really can't be
called emergencies.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
Am I misinterpreting that?

Speaker 1 (40:33):
No?

Speaker 5 (40:33):
I think that.

Speaker 8 (40:34):
I think the Court was extremely skeptical of the government's
broad claim of power here, including the assertion and oral
argument and in their brief that the Court can't even
address the question of what is an emergency. I told
the Court at oral arguments that this case was more
like a wild pitch, and then the question was whether

(40:58):
it was a ball or strike. We don't need to
debate whether the strikes down vat the knees are slightly
below when the when the ball hit the backs up
and was on the wrong side of the batter.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
I am president of the Bad Analogy Club. You might
not know that, and I think you are close to
achieving membership with that one.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Very very good. All right, last question for you.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Tariffs are among the very very few things that Donald
Trump actually believes in. So he's not going to give up.
His people aren't going to give up, and they're going
to try to find a way to keep doing exactly
what they're doing despite this ruling, just the same way
that Joe Biden kept trying to reassign student loan debt

(41:44):
to tax payers, even after the Supreme.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
Court said you can't.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Are you already preparing, you know, sort of red teaming
what you think the administration will do as far as
they're trying to shoehorn these tariffsy in under some other authority.

Speaker 8 (42:00):
We haven't looked at it specifically because we've been so
focused on stopping these tariffs under AIVA, and of course
we still have that fight left to go because the
administration has appealed to the Federal Circuit and in fact
also asked for a stay of the injunction. So we're
highly focused on that. But you know, if the President

(42:23):
did try to adopt a different justification to try to
do the same thing, we'd obviously look at that and
see whether we thought that was legitimate, and if not,
we would challenge it.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Jeff Wab is senior counsel at Liberty Justice Center. The
website is Liberty Justicecenter dot org. He is the lead
attorney who won the case at the Trade Court yesterday
and hopefully we'll keep winning all the way through. Thank
you for your time, Jeff, and congratulations again.

Speaker 4 (42:55):
Thanks so much.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
We're going to take quick break, We'll be right back
with the hilarious Australian comedian Monty Franklin. Keep those cards
and letters coming to producer Dragon and he'll he'll do
a song for you. Just text us at five six
six nine zero.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
I am so happy, I should say, Struth, I am
so happy to have my Australian friend Bonnie Franklin back
in uh, back in studio with me and I went
to see Monty at Comedy Works last time he was
in town. I'm not sure about the time before, because
I think I've seen you more than once and uh
and and Monty's playing Comedy Works out at the Landmark

(43:31):
tonight Tomorrow night, Saturday night one show tonight too, Friday
to Saturday. I'll give you all the time details later,
but just hi, it's good to see you again.

Speaker 9 (43:38):
Cracky, crusty kiss.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
That's not enough.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
This is enough.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
That's all I do.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
Real off.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
My wife has thought she should go get a job
at out Back like she just get the biggest tips
because she's legit Australian.

Speaker 9 (43:51):
She got the free food when we go in there,
I should go get I hey guy and I go
right ways.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Right just then they serve you up a kangaroo steak?

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (44:01):
Yeah, good, pretty good?

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, this is so when I lived in Did you
know why I lived in Australia? I did so. When
I lived in Australia, I'd go over to the supermarket
and sometimes I'd buy a kangaroo steak and my wife
would look at me like, isn't it like are you
a homeless person?

Speaker 3 (44:15):
Why are you eating that?

Speaker 9 (44:16):
It's like if you go to the supermarket here and
there's the turkey section of the chicken and stuff, and
there's a full kangaroo section in Australian supermarkets. But it's
really really good meat, Like it's I mean, it's kind
of like eating deer at venison, right, sure, that's very
lean meat. And yeah we'll have kangaroo burgers and kangaroo
spaghetti and all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
Do you what are you up to these days? I
haven't seen you in a year ish? What are you doing?

Speaker 9 (44:41):
Just eating kangaroos. I'm doing a big tour. This is
the second weekend I did San Diego, started at last
weekend and then here and from here I go all
around the US, I do Canada, I do about thirty
shows in Europe, I do about fifteen shows in Asia,
then I do New Zealand and Australia. It takes me

(45:02):
all the way to February. This is the biggest tour
I've ever done. So if you want to see the
start of the tour and I haven't figured it out,
probably no, I've got the show.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
So how do you how do you handle doing a
show in a place where people don't speak great English,
like Rome or New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
I did that in Berlin.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Everyone's catching that show.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
It was.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
And I just.

Speaker 9 (45:26):
You just take your time. You realize that people are
there to enjoy the show, so I slow it down.
I asked some questions. I didn't talk about anything too
detailed or slang words and stuff. But they love it
so they're there to enjoy it. And yeah, a lot
of these places I did, Zurich, I've done. I'm doing
Paris for the first time.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
Wow. I don't know how that's going to go, but
we'll see.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Well.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Plus you also get a sense like how many Europeans
speak English, which is exactly you know, not very many
Americans speak other stuff.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
How many Australians speak others.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
I don't speak another language.

Speaker 9 (46:01):
I can speak a little bit of Indonesian, which helps
really nowhere anywhere.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
Actually, I told you that I had listened to at
least some of your podcast with Rogan and you were
talking about Bali and all this.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
So what's your connection. Well, Bali's for us.

Speaker 9 (46:17):
So for Americans, Mexico and Hawaii is your beach destination
place to go to, right And for us it's Bali
and Thailand because they're you know, they're the six hour
flight away. And so if you go to Bali or
Thailand you will see what I like to call bogans
in the wild. So bogans are somewhere between a cowboy

(46:38):
and a redneck. I'm not really sure where they sit,
but they're very fun to watch. So if you're ever there,
you'll know what I'm talking about. You'll see them immediately.
They're in singlets and flip flops and no pants. They're
drinking beer at nine in the morning at the pool
bar in the pool and they don't leave all day
and they have to go to the toilet at some stage,
but they don't. And so Barley and Thailand's filled with

(47:01):
Australian bogans. But they're actually really fun. Bogans are great
were you ever one. I'm kind of a Bogana in Australia.
If you're a if you're about like fifty percent Bogan,
it's pretty good. Just means you're down to earth and
fun like. That's the difference. It's not like a redneck.
Then there's not necessarily a full Bogain. That's the problem.
But if you like half Bogan, it's all right.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Are full Bogans from like Inland or do they exist?

Speaker 3 (47:27):
No?

Speaker 1 (47:28):
No, there's like a dozen people there. There's like six, yeah,
but no.

Speaker 9 (47:32):
Full Bogans just present themselves when you least expect it,
and you'll be like at the train station they go.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
Oh, I hate yeah, like it's a get away from
the oh my gosh. All right, one other thing, just
in case anybody else is going to New York, tell
tell my listeners about your friend's.

Speaker 9 (47:52):
Bar Old Mates Pub in New York if you're ever there. So,
they've just built this new, massive, three story Australian in
New York called Old Mates, and it's all Australian themed.
They've got all Australian food, they've got all Australian beer.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
Australian people run it.

Speaker 9 (48:09):
If you want to go and get drunk with a
bunch of Australians. But you can't get to Australia, go
to old mates because it's happening on a daily basis.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
That sounds awesome.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
It's so much fun.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
Good Australian food too.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
I'm part of this, like like a meat pie. They
got meat pies, they got sausage rus.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
If you want a sausage role.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:32):
They play all Australian music.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
They've got Australian.

Speaker 9 (48:35):
Bands, Dom Dollar, Big.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
DJ was there, Oh my god, yeah.

Speaker 9 (48:39):
All sorts of people. I'm doing my Australian my New
York shows there. Actually I got like a residential there. Yeah,
that's amazing. It's just so much fun. That's absolutely amazing.
But no chicken Parmesana is Australia's national dish, sole from
the Italians because we're criminals, how dare we?

Speaker 1 (48:55):
All Right, Money's got to get going, so we're gonna
let him get going. But Money is playing tonight at
seven thirty, and then Friday seven and nine thirty, and
then Saturday because it's the Suburbs at six thirty and nine.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Because we can't stay up very later on, let's all
go to bit let's go to Bitter Folks. You can
get tickets at comedyworks dot com.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Great to see them, Ony, So I'm not gonna be
able to get to the show this time because I'm
going out of town.

Speaker 9 (49:19):
But it's great to see you now. Iris get to
that Oldnight's public. You'll dish one.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
Enjoy the rest of your tour. Thanks mine, Thanks having me.
All right, We'll be right back on KOA. One of
the only.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
I'll say, one of the few comedy songs that I remember,
uh that I remember getting quite a bit of airplay
on actual rock radio, and I think we did it
as a name that tune.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
I think you'd think you did it, yep.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
As named that tune one time, and I and I
did think it qualified because it was on the radio
a lot.

Speaker 5 (49:48):
I was very surprised that you actually got it too,
because I just did something.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
So, yeah, can you play? Can you do the first note?

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Are you gonna have to take all this out of
the podcast? Yeah? I did see Believe it or not,
And I'm talking about maybe in the eighties. I saw
Steve Martin in concert in Vegas when he was still
fairly young and I was still fairly young and we
saw King Tut and we saw King Tut you and

(50:17):
I actually saw King Touch's mummy in the Valley of
the Kings, in his tomb. And but you know, almost
everything from his tomb is out now. And we saw
that stuff too in the Cairo Museum. But almost all
the stuff is out except that little dude is lying
there under some under some glass. You know, he's it

(50:38):
looks like got a little too much son, you know,
a little bit like crisp, slightly crisp.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
A little bit of a crispy critter there.

Speaker 5 (50:44):
But it is Egypt, So I mean, you know, and
I don't know how much you shrink.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
You I'm sure you shrink a fair bit when you're
a mummy compared to what you were before. But he definitely,
even with shrinkage, he would have been a little.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Dude, right, he was still a kid.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Yeah, what was he like, teenager or early twenties maybe, yeah,
something like that. So, I mean, I mean, we didn't
we didn't talk to him.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
Correct you'd lie in there.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
We didn't want to disturb him, right, We didn't knock
on the glass and wake him, like you know how
you're not you go to an aquarium like a big
public aquarium. You're not supposed to knock on the glass
and disturb the fish or anything. And we didn't want
to disturb him, so we didn't knock on the glass
or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
That was for Chris. That was for Chris. Chris.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
All right, well done, Chris. That's a good choice. Now
I do have some tickets to give away thanks to
thanks to Comedy Works. Monti Franklin was just in here
for a few minutes with me. He's a very funny dude.
I saw him last time he was in town. He's
and he If you don't know Monty Franklin, I mean
he's he's really funny and he's he's been on with

(51:50):
Rogan and he does tours with Rob Schneider, and he'd
done some stuff with John Cleese and Jamie Lisso from
The Gutfeld Show who was in studio with me recently,
and just a really really funny guy. And he actually
we didn't talk about this, but he is. He's about
to have a movie come out that he co wrote
with Rob Schneider called The Great Emia War with Rob

(52:13):
Schneider and John Cleaese. Imagine, by the way, imagine being comedian.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
Who gets to work with John Cleese.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
I just cannot imagine anything better.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
I really can't.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
I wish Monty had a little more time to stick
around with me, but he needed to get going so
we could talk about that a little more. Anyway, I've
got two pairs of tickets to give away, and I
will tell you right now what your choices are going
to be, and then we will tell you. Dragon will
tell you how you can win, because he will be.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
In charge of that.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
But your choices, are you ready dragging you writing this
down tonight at seven thirty tomorrow, which is Friday night
at nine to thirty or Saturday at nine.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
Those are your choices.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
And let me just give you a couple other things,
and then Dragon will tell you how you can win.
So if you are a winner, you will get a
pair of tickets that means two And you do not
have to go to the come to the radio station,
nor do you have to look for an email. Dragon

(53:19):
will need some of your information that he will tell
you about. But all you do is you go to
Comedy Work South at the Landmark some amount of time
before the show starts, go to the will call window
and they will have your name and give you tickets. Okay, Dragon,
how do folks win a pair of tickets to see Monty.

Speaker 5 (53:38):
Frank Not at all, because I'm feeling lazy right now,
and i don't want to do a whole lot of
work because I'm feeling generous. We're very generous right here
on the Roskaminski Show. Be Texter nine and ten with
your first and last name and your email address, and
the show that you want to go to Texter nine

(54:00):
and ten at what number nine and ten at ten
forty three seventeen.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Okay, and at five six six nine zero okay, So
at ten forty three seventeen. And that's so people who
are listening on the stream have a chance to play
as well, Texters number nine and ten at or straight
or after ten forty three seventeen. And you have to
have your first name, your last name, your email address,

(54:25):
and which show you won.

Speaker 5 (54:27):
Those show options are tonight at seven thirty, Tomorrow at
nine thirty, or Saturday at nine.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
So all you have to put in for the show
that you want is which day, Just say Thursday, Friday
or Saturday, first name, last name, email address, and which
night and then just and then just go to comedy works,
and they'll have it.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
They'll have it for you.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
So I spent a little bit of time earlier in
the show talking about what's going on with Denver Airport,
who has announced that they are going to furlough their
employees for at least a couple of days, on the
same couple of days that Denver is furlowing its city employees,

(55:12):
even though and some employees at Denver Airport are city employees,
but Denver Airport has its own budget, so Denver Airport
furlowing its employees, including its city employees, does not actually
save the City of Denver any money. But the CEO

(55:33):
of Denver International Airport has said publicly, we're going to
furlow people anyway in solidarity with the city. Now, on
the one hand, I kind of sort of get it,
and I and I don't entirely hate the idea of
let's say, Denver Airport saving a little money by saying
you're going to take a couple of days off. You know,

(55:55):
I don't love it either. They but here's the worst
part of it, right And by the way, these employees,
they have a salary, they have a job, So these furloughs,
it's not just a day off. It's an unpaid day off.
It's an unpaid day off for people who have a
job at a place that is not having a budget
crunch right now, and you're gonna make them take unpaid

(56:17):
days because another place that is having a budget crunch
is making their people take unpaid days to save money.
So again, if the CEO of Denver Airport, we're gonna say,
you know what, we want to do it because which
saves us money too, and we're okay with it.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
Make that argument, okay.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
But you do have your employees who are there because
they got a job, and they want a job, and
they probably want to get paid, and you're gonna tell
them they have to take an unpaid day, an unpaid
day off, not because your organization needs to save the money,
but because some other organization does.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
And that's not the worst of it.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
I know I'm repeating myself if you were listening an
hour ago, but I don't.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Think dragon heard it.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
So the other thing they're doing, the Denver City employees
are going to have to take at least two furlough days,
maybe more if they make more money.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
But everybody's gonna have to take at.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Least two, and those two are the Friday before Labor
Day and the friday the day after Thanksgiving, so these
are both holiday weekends. These are the types of times
when you would expect.

Speaker 3 (57:26):
The airport to be busiest right now.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
Of course, some Denver airport employees to who are the
city employee.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
Like the people who check you in.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
They work for unit Head, and they worked for Southwest,
and they worked for American, right, they're not city employees.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
But there are city.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Employees who work in the airport and operations and maintenance
and stuff like that. There are also city employees who
work in marketing and accounting and it. They probably don't
need to work those two days. If you're going to
force them to take a day off, I guess it
could be. Though it could be those days. It would
be fine for them. I'm sure they wouldn't mind a
four day weekend, although they probably rather have two three

(58:02):
day weekends.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
I don't know. They can make their own decision.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
But for the people who work at the airport, who
do stuff that potentially can impact travel, it's really dumb
to say you're gonna do that on days that are
likely to be heavy travel days, which is anything around
a holiday weekend. So if I were Phil Washington, the
CEO at the airport, first of all, I probably wouldn't

(58:26):
do this. But I understand there's some political sensitivity there.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
He's running a big Denver thing and he.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Wants to be and appear in solidarity with the mayor.
I get it, Okay, I get it. But at the
very least he could say, for those employees who are
doing things that could actually impact travel that day, that moment,
we're not going to furlow them on holiday weekends. We'll

(58:57):
furlow them at times that are typically low travel times.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
That's what I would do.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
Now.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
I didn't really.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
Mean to go through all that again, But the reason
that came up anyway is because Denver is facing what
they say, they say they're facing a two hundred and
fifty million dollars budget shortfall because of low sales tax revenue.
I mean, if they're gonna be two hundred and fifteen

(59:25):
million dollars short, they're gonna have to cut back on
at least a modest fraction of all the money they're
giving away to illegal aliens. I feel so bad for
the illegal aliens. But seriously, an interesting piece over at
nine News. Colorado's largest cities grapple with budget shortfalls at
mid falling sales tax revenue, so it's not just Denver.

(59:48):
And when this thing first came up, I wondered aloud
about this on the radio. I wondered aloud, you may
recall whether Denver is kind of alone in having this shortfall,
which would represent a particular problem for Denver, or whether
Denver is not alone, in which case you're talking about

(01:00:08):
something that feels more like a small recession statewide, or
maybe not fully statewide, but in some significant part of
the state. So that's why I found this story so
interesting and I wanted to share this with you.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
This is from nine News.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
Aurora faces similar challenges to Denver, predicting a twenty to
thirty million dollar budget shortfall, but that is only somewhere
like one in three quarters or something percent of its budget.
Aurora is a pretty big city, so twenty to thirty
million dollar is actually a pretty small percentage of their budget.
But still still it's twenty to thirty million dollars and

(01:00:44):
that's real money, and it's unexpected, just the same way
Denver is unexpected. And again from nine News, Colorado's five
largest cities in addition to Denver, of course, Colorado Springs, Aurora,
Fort Collins, and Lakewood plus Denver right all said that

(01:01:07):
they are seeing declining sales tax revenue fueled by economic
uncertainty on the national level.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
The mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston, said the city faces
structural financial challenges. And that's a whole separate thing with
Denver because they, just like the federal Congress, just keeps
raising spending. They can't stop themselves. They keep raising spending,
and they raise spending beyond they raise spending at a
rate that exceeds the rate of increase of their revenue.

(01:01:36):
The federal government can get away with it by burying
our children in debt. Cities and states can't get away
with it because they got a pass balanced budgets, So
that means when they spend too much, they and it
catches up with them, they've got to cut back. Now
Denver is looking at something like a four and a
half percent shortfall. That's a pretty big deal, right, Maybe

(01:01:59):
twenty five million in Aurora, also a pretty big deal.
Fort Collins having these troubles again. Lakewood, as I mentioned,
and I don't have the numbers, but I just wanted
to throw that out there. In fact, all right, let
me do a little tangent with you. I had State

(01:02:21):
Senator Jeff Bridges on the show a couple of days
ago in studio with me, and he's a Democrat who
this year was chairman of the Joint Budget Committee, which
is the most important committee at the state legislature. It
is a bipartisan committee of both the House and Senate
members Republicans and Democrats, who sit together to figure out
how to put together a budget. It's a very important committee,

(01:02:42):
and it functions pretty well for a bipartisan com I mean,
all of the committees are bipartisan, but this one is
sort of equal in terms or almost equal in terms
of the sway that each party has. And he was
talking about Jeff Bridges was talking about how one of
the things he is and he's running for state treasurer,

(01:03:03):
and he said one of the things he would do
would be considered looking at investing in Colorado Colorado's stuff
rather than treasury bonds and stocks and put some of
this excess revenue if we're in a like a tabor
surplus situation and the state has some excess revenue that's
going to go into a rainy day fund or whatever,
put it into Colorado.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
And I said, well, I don't really trust.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
That. I think you need to get a return, and
I really don't necessarily trust that putting stuff into Colorado
is going to get a return, especially when the stuff
is picked by government, because government is really really bad
at picking stuff to invest in. In part, it's not
because the people are dumb, but it's because the incentives
are wrong. And so Jeff gave me two answers. I
think this is really interesting. I'm gonna stick with this.

(01:03:51):
Jeff gave me two answers. He said, first of all,
if he were treasurer and he were running some kind
of program like this, he would not invest every single
thing that God invested in with state money, would be
alongside for profit private sector investors, so they would have

(01:04:11):
that level of.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
Control or a check, a.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Sanity check, like, Okay, this doesn't guarantee it's going to
be profitable, but if we're investing alongside of people who
are professional investors, who are investing for profit, then that,
you know, makes me feel a little better about the
likelihood of not doing the next Cylindra or something like that.

(01:04:37):
If you remember, if you remember that name. But the
other thing that Jeff said, and he was only half joking,
he said, what do you mean, Ross, don't you have
confidence in Colorado's economy? And I thought about it. Actually
sent that to me in a text, and I thought
about it, and I texted back to him and I

(01:04:59):
said no, no, And I said, I'm not trying to be
overly negative. But your people, meaning the Democrats, are in
charge of everything right now. And that's part of the
reason that Colorado has been declining in terms of its
rankings as a business friendly state. Too many taxes, too
many fees, too many regulations, too much uncertainty about how

(01:05:24):
much of all of those things will still be coming
because we are a single party state, and a single
party state is generally bad. But when you're talking about
when you're talking about favorability, is a place to set
up a business. If I were going to have a
single party state, I'd much rather have a single republic

(01:05:47):
single party republican state just on that dimension right, more
likely to be more favorable for business based on policy choices,
because so many Democrats either don't understand economics or don't
care or beholden to other interests and beholden to radical
environmentalists who want to raise costs on people who are
doing important things. And so I said to Jeff, no,

(01:06:09):
I actually don't have that much faith in Colorado's economy.
And I said, I don't. I'm not saying I think
we're gonna have some kind of big recession here or
some kind of crash here or some That's not what
I'm saying. What I'm saying is I think the salad
days are done for a while. I think that between
the massive number amounts of fees that more than offset

(01:06:29):
the nomenal decreases in sale in income tax rates, we
have very high sales tax.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
Our property tax is still quite good.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
Actually, property taxes are good in terms of a percentage
of the value of the property.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
It's quite a bit lower.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
Than almost anything you know in the eastern half of
the country. But so many fees, so many regulations, and
now really high property values. Traffic pollution not as bad
as it used to be, but not great. And my
sense is that, and looking at recent demographic data with

(01:07:08):
people moving in and out of the state, we used
to have significant inflows into Colorado every year for a
long time. And now we don't, and it would not
surprise me at all to see a year with net outflows. Now,
I don't think it's mean massive. I don't think it's
gonna be like the number of people leaving California or
New York. But I do think that the growth in Colorado,

(01:07:30):
it has plateaued and is going to stay plateaued and
might even go negative for a little while. And then
we'll see how it all plays out. What's gonna happen
with real estate values, what's gonna happen with traffic, what's
gonna happen with pollution? Will it change our politics at all?

Speaker 3 (01:07:45):
Probably not.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
But to tie this back to what I started talking about,
with Colorado's five largest cities now all saying that they
are having shortfalls in sales tax revenue that are going
to cut what these cities are allowed to spend. First
of all, you know, unless it's really a significant, significant
recession with people losing jobs, right, whenever I hear about

(01:08:09):
government having to cut stuff, my answer is great, cheer.
I'm cheering cut more. Even at the federal level too.
You hear Democrats saying, oh, we're cutting Medicaid, My answer.

Speaker 3 (01:08:19):
Is not enough. And cutting this other thing.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Not there is no government program that's getting cut enough
anywhere anywhere. So we'll see, we'll see how it plays out.
But I did think this was interesting, and I thought
you'd like to know. With all of these cities reporting
this stuff, it really does seem like a statewide or

(01:08:43):
even national phenomenon. I haven't looked at I haven't looked
at predictions for sales tax revenue in other states, but
it wouldn't surprise me if what we're looking at here
is the leading edge of the economic uncertainty caused by
the Trump tariffs that a federal court just ruled were illegal,
although the Trump administed station has already appealed.

Speaker 5 (01:09:02):
Just want to give a congratulations to our good friends
Kevin and good friends Jessica.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
They won the Monty tickets.

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
All right, well done Kevin and Jessica. I'm just curious
which nights did they pick?

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
One was Friday, one was Saturday. Excellent, have a lot
of fun.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
I think my so, my Australian mother in law just
arrived in town yesterday and and so my Australian wife
and my Australian mother in law are going to be
at one of these shows to see Monty.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
I'll be out of town, but I kind of wish
I were going.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
All right, well, uh, I don't know what we'll do next,
but whatever it is, I promise it will be fun.

Speaker 3 (01:09:33):
Keep it here on Kawai.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
Thank you Tom for thinking so kindly of Peter, Paul
and Mary. One of those one of those people, not Mary,
Peter or Paul died like within the past year.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
I forget which one do you remember with feels like
not long ago?

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, six months ago something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
Yeah, all right, very good.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
So I put this up on the blog and I
used a gift link so you can go check it
out without needing Wall Street Journal subscriptions. Is super interesting
and the headline is we made a film with Ai.
You'll be blown away and freaked out. Now I'm gonna
just summarize a little bit because I want you to
just go watch it yourself. But the reporter, her name

(01:10:16):
is Joanna Stern. She made a movie that is about
a robot doing stuff with a woman in her in
her daily life, exercising with her and and and cooking
meals and all this stuff. And so it's got a
robot character at some point there's actually a mad scientist

(01:10:38):
character who looks a little bit like like, uh, what's
his face from from.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
Back to the Future said, give me some clean back
in the future.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
It helps you, Yeah, you know, but like Doc from
Back to the Future and.

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
And looks a lot like him.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
And and so they made this video and and it's remarkable.
Mostly you can easily imagine the robot being, you know,
like a robot that Elon Musk inventives, and it's actual, real,
it's real somewhere and here it is and we're playing
with it. And the picture the people in it look
absolutely real and their movements look real. And so she

(01:11:18):
has the video and then she explains how they make it.
They use multiple AI tools and I'll give you an
example again, I'm just gonna sort of describe it. They
use one AI tool where they describe a scene, for example,
a woman doing push ups with a robot standing next

(01:11:40):
to her watching her do push ups. Okay, so they
use one tool to create what the robot looks like.
Then they use another tool to create that a still picture,
a still picture of that robot that they designed in
another tool standing over a woman.

Speaker 3 (01:11:56):
While the woman is doing a push up.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
But it's a still picture in one AI, and then
they take that picture and use that as like the
seed for a different AI that makes videos, and say,
make a video scene of this, and they put it
all together and make it a movie. And on the
one hand, it's a little bit complicated and it costs

(01:12:21):
some money to have access to these tools, but on
the other hand, it's freaking amazing, and the fact that
they're able to do it at all, to make a
movie that looks like a robot driving, with exercising, with
serving a meal to a human woman, with no actual actors,

(01:12:44):
including for the voice.

Speaker 3 (01:12:46):
By the way the AI did it all is amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:12:50):
And we're gonna spend some time, probably not today but
maybe tomorrow talking about some new thoughts about and new
data even about the the impact of AI on the
job market.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
And there's a lot to say about that. But I
wanted to share.

Speaker 1 (01:13:06):
This with you, and you can just go to Rosskaminsky
dot com and.

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
Find it and check it out yourself. All right now.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
The other thing, I've got like five, maybe five or
six stories that are basically all the same kind of story,
and so I'm going to do all of them in
two minutes. And I think it was yesterday that I
said the thing with Donald Trump is you sometimes see

(01:13:35):
him and his policies at his very best, and you
sometimes see him and his policies at his very worst.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
And there's not that much in between, right.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
It's it's like a pendulum that swings so fast, and
it's like swings all the way one side and hangs
out there for a second, and swings all the way
to the other side and hang There's this very very
little middle ground with Trump, and that goes along with
being a populist, but even more it goes along with
being Trump.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
And so.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
You know, I spent some time a couple of days
ago talking about how much I love the nuclear power
executive orders and what Trump is doing there. But now
I have to say, I am and I'm disappointed, isn't
the right word. I'm a little bit pissed off at
some of the stuff that Trump is doing, while noting
at the same time that so many people seem to

(01:14:31):
be completely numb to the stuff that Trump is doing,
and I actually think the administration wants it that way.
It is so much activity, is so frenetic that you
can't keep up even if you try, so you can't
keep up. And even if you're not really trying to
keep up, just by virtue of putting on the news,

(01:14:51):
you feel a little overwhelmed by all this stuff coming
out of Washington, DC, And so people are nut and
Trump can do stuff that I think a lot of
people would say this isn't right, and they're still numb
to it. And even a lot of the people who
you would normally expect to be pretty significant critics aren't

(01:15:12):
even bothering anymore. And I wish that weren't the case,
because to me, this stuff is really bad.

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
And I am talking.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
About the Trump's and the Trump commutations and especially pardons
in recent days. So he issued a federal pardon for
a guy named Larry Hoover who was a big time gangster,
a founder of a gang called Gangster Disciples. And it's

(01:15:41):
unknown how many people he killed, but a lot. And
he is actually here in Colorado with the supermacs in Florence.

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
And Trump pardoned him.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
The good news on that is he still has this
very large state court.

Speaker 3 (01:16:02):
Conviction for a murder.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
So all that will happen to this guy is he'll
move from the federal prison to a state prison, and
I don't know whether that's better for him or not.
The Denver Gazette says federal prosecutors have vehemently opposed any
breaks for Hoover, who's now seventy three, arguing he did
untold damage to communities across Chicago during his reign on

(01:16:24):
the streets, and that he has continued to hold sway
over the gang's hierarchy while in prison, even promoting an
underling he had secretly communicated with through coded messages hidden
in a dictionary. And Trump gives this guy a pardon?
Are you kidding me? Insane? Trump just commuted a sentence

(01:16:45):
of a guy named Imad Zuberry, who used to be
a huge donor to Democrats and then turned to be
a big donor of Trump, but made illegal contributions from foreigners,
funneling them through him. He pleaded guilty to obstructing a
federal investigation into the origins of money for a nine

(01:17:07):
hundred thousand dollars donation he made to Trump's inauguration some
years earlier in twenty sixteen. Trump just commuted this guy sentences.
He's corrupt. The guy. I don't mean Trump, but what
Trump is doing is really corrupt too. Why would you
commute that guy's sentence? Why would you give a full
pardon to a sheriff from Virginia who was convicted of

(01:17:30):
accepting more than seventy thousand dollars in bribes I'm quoting
from the Hill dot com in exchange for appointing local
businessmen as auxiliary deputy sheriffs in his office. Seventy thousand
dollars in bribes. And I don't think there's any real
question that he did it, and Trump pardoned him. And
then there are these terrible, uh social media reality TV

(01:17:55):
fraud people, Todd and Julie Crisly committed fraud, tax fraud,
tax evasion. And then the daughter of these people goes
on Laura Trump's TV show, has some kind of sob
story about her parents, and Trump pardons the parents because
he loves everybody who's been on TV. I think this

(01:18:15):
stuff is reprehensible. I think this stuff is corrupt, and
I don't care. You know, Trump supporters don't like it
whenever I criticize him. You know what, sometimes you just
gotta be honest, you gotta call it what it is.

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
This stuff is really bad.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
I'm going to my niece's bought Mitzvah just after tomorrow's show,
so I will be here tomorrow. You don't get rid
of me that easily. But thank you for that dedication.
That was very, very nice of you.

Speaker 3 (01:18:38):
Dragon.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
Do you remember when I had Sarah Brightman.

Speaker 3 (01:18:40):
On the show due It was amazing, It was pretty good.
It was pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
Do you remember what happened after was so funny.

Speaker 3 (01:18:47):
She said you were hot?

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
Yeah, she told her publicist that guy, that guy was sexy.
I went home and told my wife that story. So
I got a message just following up on the story
that I have told twice today now about out Denver
International Airport furlowing employees in solidarity with the City of
Denver furlowing their own employees. I got a message from

(01:19:12):
somebody who is in a position to know, and I
won't say who this person is, but that Denver International
Airport is actually looking to do what we were just suggesting,
which is to say that if they are going to
furlough people, to at least not furlough people whose jobs
are in things like operations and maintenance that could affect

(01:19:34):
actual transportation and actual use of the airport on any
given day on days that are associated with major holidays
where there could be a lot of travel. So it
looks like at least for those employees, they will look
at alternate furlough days.

Speaker 3 (01:19:53):
So that's probably.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
Not as good as not furlowing them, but it still
is better than nothing. And I do want to give
them that credit for, you know, taking those steps. I'm
not saying they took those steps because of because of me.
I'm not saying they took those steps because of any
media coverage. They might have been doing it anyway. Partly,
I'm sure they would have had airport personnel saying this

(01:20:17):
is dumb. So I think they're they're working on fixing that.
One other very quick story and then we're gonna have
a super interesting guest in the next segment. But you
may recall that Vandamir Speedway shut down what a little
less than a year ago, maybe over by kind of
by Morrison, right on the on the west side of
C four seventy or near Morrison, and they'd been there

(01:20:39):
for many They've been there for decades, and Willie b
was over there all the time with his car shows
and you know, all the drag racing and stuff, and
we just didn't know what was gonna happen, and they
had been talking about wanting to set up somewhere else,
and I wanted to make sure that you know that
it's now been announced that they bought a piece of land,
not a big enough piece of land to do everything

(01:21:00):
I want to do, but I'll just give you their
their what what they've announced is they have bought a
piece of land near Hudson in Welld County, and it
looks like their hope. And here I'll quote from our
news partners at KATVR, Mister Vandermir said this is the
first piece of a complex puzzle to negotiate for other

(01:21:22):
properties in the area. He said zoning, an and annexation
will now be taking place, with the exact timing not
really sure, and we're not really clear as to how
it will all work out. The new location was not
announced in the Facebook video, but was named at some
other point as the previous Rockies Auto site off of

(01:21:46):
the Interstate seventy six frontage Road. So we'll see in
any case, that's cool. It's kind of a Denver area
legendary thing, Vandermere Speedway, and I've only been a few times,
but it's fun. And I look forward to seeing whatever
they can do when they get a new dragstrip going
in Welld County.

Speaker 3 (01:22:06):
All right, we got a really.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
Interesting guest on a really interesting topic right after this,
keep it here on KOA.

Speaker 3 (01:22:10):
Very pleased to welcome to KOA. Christian Briggs.

Speaker 1 (01:22:13):
He is an economist, and we were talking off the air.

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
He studied physics as well.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
There's actually a lot of interesting overlap between understanding that
kind of stuff and derivatives in particular. He's also CEO
of Hard Asset Management, and you see him on TV
and see him published in various places about financial issues.

Speaker 3 (01:22:38):
And I thought we'd have.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
Christian on today to talk about something that I have
probably only talked about one or two times in all
my years on radio, even though it deserves more time
than that, and that is Central bank digital currencies. They
are called CBDC for short, and some people have a
lot of interest to them. They concerned me quite a

(01:23:02):
bit for reasons that we will probably get into now.

Speaker 3 (01:23:05):
So Christian, welcome to KOA. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 4 (01:23:09):
Hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:23:10):
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
Let's do it. Why don't we start with the basics.
What is the CBDC and maybe in your answer you
can talk about how it's different from bitcoin or something
like bitcoin. Okay.

Speaker 10 (01:23:22):
So in physics you have what they call intra and
inter so it's kind of the basis of how Internet works.
You've got intro, which is closed in loop systems.

Speaker 4 (01:23:34):
Right, So you might have where you have.

Speaker 10 (01:23:38):
An isolated environment where you're testing let's say protons at
nearly light speed. They cannot leave a centralized centrifuge, okay,
So which means is they're closed. They cannot leave an
environment or a almost kind of like a centralized systems
that's central bank. Digital currency. Bitcoin is like the Internet.

(01:24:02):
It means it has everywhere.

Speaker 4 (01:24:04):
It can go.

Speaker 10 (01:24:05):
So you don't have closed in loop systems or environments
that would otherwise be limited to whatever the powers that
be would give access for anybody that wanted to transact.
So bitcoin is a decentralized system where centralized digital currency
centralized is centralized, which means centralizing power in order for
a handful of people to control the masses. Where bitcoin

(01:24:29):
the masses control. And there really is other than just
maybe some some oversight within custodial asset holdings like wallets,
there is some oversight there, but otherwise you're free to
move around the world and transact at will with the
same kind of safety, convenience and efficiency you would have.
But centralized systems are all about programmable money. So a

(01:24:51):
centralized digital currency. The old saying is how do you
control the masses? You centralized power to a few. So
that's exactly the difference. Once permission based where you're going
to need to understand that there are people that will
either give you permission to transact and one is where
you're feely able to transact with no permission base.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
So you just based on your description there, I get
the sense that you're not a big fan of CBDC,
and neither am I, and we will get into that
for a second in a moment, But what I would.

Speaker 3 (01:25:20):
Like to do is for you to tell us.

Speaker 1 (01:25:23):
For the people who do promote CBDC central bank digital
currencies and think we should at least talk about it,
or maybe some of them are more aggressive and think
we should adopt one, what's their argument as for why
we should have one.

Speaker 10 (01:25:39):
Well, it's a three words, efficiency, ease of use, convenience
pretty much. Those three words when you hear those things
coming out of the government, is giving you the opportunity
to do something, but your rights or you're going to
have limitations on the freedom or access to whatever that is.

Speaker 4 (01:26:00):
Being talked about.

Speaker 10 (01:26:01):
You know, they say that nobody is smart enough to
be custodials of their own assets. So if you look
at what Central Bank Digital Currency CBDCs are is their
third party custodial accounts, which means you're not under self
custody or self custodial. So like a four h one,
you have self directed IRA is very simple. Self directed

(01:26:22):
means that you are you are the determination of where
those things end up.

Speaker 4 (01:26:26):
You determine whether you.

Speaker 10 (01:26:27):
Want it over here at Schwab or Mari Lanes or
any number of different places. But you're still self custodial.
When you have CBDC, you're using a third party. You're
using usually a government or in some cases a license.

Speaker 4 (01:26:41):
Think take take Finra.

Speaker 10 (01:26:43):
Finra is a private corporation that monitors, obviously and and
watches over the securities industries from borca dealer standpoints. It's
still a private agency, but it is it is a
government oversight. So when you start to talk about what
we're about to happen, there's legislation that's pending that would
limit our rights for self custody. You might have domestic

(01:27:04):
self custody, but international. As we start to become a
globalized system of payment and we move from the antiquated
systems of yesterday to the more modern ones of tomorrow,
which is all digital algorithms, which is really just.

Speaker 4 (01:27:18):
You're you're, you're, you're removing cash.

Speaker 10 (01:27:20):
From society, You're removing the ability in which a private
transaction can take place, to more of a system where
you're going to have always have surveillance, control, containment. That's
your centralized systems. Decentralized again are where you can still
have anonymity, autonomous, as well as freedom to transact on

(01:27:41):
a global basis.

Speaker 1 (01:27:43):
We're talking with Christian Briggs from Hard Money Asset Management
and uh and did I say that right? Did I
say your company name right now?

Speaker 10 (01:27:52):
On Heart Heart Asset, hard Asset man work, hard Assets,
Precious Metals and select uh uh type portfolio for individuals.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
Hard Asset Management. So I want to try to paint
a picture. What We'll start with what the proponents would
argue it will look like, and then we'll talk about
or you can talk about what you think it'll actually
look like. But what I can imagine the people who
are proponents of these things is they'll say, well, it'll
just look like what you're used to right now with
PayPal or Venmo or any of these things, and it'll

(01:28:22):
just be you know, it'll just be a government version
of that, and you can pay anything you want to pay,
and there won't and there won't really be anything. I mean,
are they going to try to sell it like that
or are they going to try to sell before you
talk about what you don't like? Is that how they're
going to sell it? And if so, even if they
were going to try to sell it like that, why
do I need that instead of zell or Venmo?

Speaker 4 (01:28:48):
Okay, so go back.

Speaker 10 (01:28:49):
To two thousand and nine when bitcoin first debuted. Everybody
has to realize at this point that in order to
be able to create the complexity of what bitcoin was
able to do on a global basis and the system
of which that it would ultimately get to today, there's
no way anybody but governments could have been involved because

(01:29:10):
the cost structure and the planning of this and the
adoption by governments, there's no pushback. Yeah, they've had some
interesting times where they've said, oh, we're not so sure.
But but in the day, bitcoin and crypto in general
bcause would be the leading one. Was an experiment. Okay,
it was an experiment, and so what you do is

(01:29:31):
you start to think about it. Having a software company
where we built hundreds and hundreds of patents and early
stage AI that I did back in six all the
way through sixteen, and we continued a lot of those
continuations of IP all the way through today.

Speaker 4 (01:29:43):
It took me hundreds of millions of dollars and.

Speaker 10 (01:29:45):
I was a small, small scale compared to what Bitcoin accomplished.
What bitcoin was was a It was a system to
condition us that something of nothing, because relatively there is
no there is nothing to bitcoin.

Speaker 4 (01:29:59):
If the power goes, it doesn't exist.

Speaker 10 (01:30:01):
And then after they conditioned us to program us to
use it as a means of value. So something that
relatively zero value has none other than the perception of
what people would want to be able to utilize it.

Speaker 4 (01:30:15):
For next thing.

Speaker 10 (01:30:17):
You know, all the times forward that we've ever tried
to push back on it, governments have now started to
embrace it. So it was a way to which to
program people to go from cash lists society into a
full blown digital environment, and not just like Venmo or
cash apps. See, those things are peer to peer systems,
but they're not centralized, not in the same way that

(01:30:39):
you would have a government oversight centralized system. Because remember
with Venmo, even though there are limitations and regulations and
all that kind of stuff, you know, you still have
somewhat of a free access you can transact anywhere. But
at the end of the day, those two were get
to get us to go from an adoption of cash

(01:31:00):
checks to an adoption and consumption of digital payments.

Speaker 4 (01:31:06):
Basically algorithms, that's all it is.

Speaker 10 (01:31:08):
It's algorithms than the tokens that we would use when
you authenticate tokens within a point of sale system, within
a gateway for credit card processing online or in used
to be before apps came, it was online processing, you know,
gateways and those things would authenticate the token that was
going from a cardival or to the quary bank to
create the transaction in the merchant base. That's the same

(01:31:29):
thing we have today. That's cash app, that's Venmos. It's
a more sophisticated system. It's peer to peer like Napster was.
Now we're talking about something a whole different thing. Now
you're in a closed in loop where governments are able
to watch in real time and within certain perimeters can
limit you to what you can spend on. And I'll
give you a real scary example of the dozens and

(01:31:53):
dozens of providences in China which are basically states, there's
like fifty or sixty, about ninety percent now are only
allowed to transact in the digital you want, which is
a CBDC. The only exception our taxis that can take cash. Still,
the majority of all problemence, not all of them, but
close are now only allowed.

Speaker 4 (01:32:15):
To transact on an app.

Speaker 10 (01:32:18):
And that app is a centralized way of which to
buy and sell goods.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
Yeah, I mean, folks, and we're we don't have a
lot of time left Christians, so I want to keep going,
but maybe give me just some slight and shorter answers,
but just for so listeners understand what Christian is saying here. Right,
So proponents of CBDC are going to are going to
try to sell this to us as something like more
modern version of a debit card, an online debit card,

(01:32:43):
something like that kind of sort of. But really, since
it is a central bank digital currency, it means the
central bank will be able not only to see everything
you're doing, but they could even set up categories. So,
for example, let's say they will put in this perfectly
I think credible hypothetical, they'll create a category for gun stores,

(01:33:06):
and they'll say, you know what, we're not going to
let you spend your money at a gun store.

Speaker 3 (01:33:11):
And then you are trying to send money.

Speaker 1 (01:33:12):
To something, to a business that is this particular category,
and they're going to say no, or they're gonna say
we think you drink too much, you can't buy any
more wine or or whatever it is. And I mean,
is that Christian? You think I'm you think that's far
fetched or about right or what?

Speaker 3 (01:33:30):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:33:30):
I think I think you're right.

Speaker 10 (01:33:32):
I think what they're gonna do is say, yeah, you
can have a gun, but good luck and ammunition. We
don't want to prohibit your Second Amendment rights. Yeah, so
we'll just make sure that you don't have any bullets
to put in there. And then you can use them
as well. I guess you can use them as doorstops
and maybe the door will will stop just.

Speaker 4 (01:33:46):
In time for the bad guy coming into your house
to kill you.

Speaker 10 (01:33:49):
See, you got to look at it as they're very
clever and Marxist communist agenda, which is that which is
atheist by definition, because you're taking away all rights of
an individual. There's only three areas of which a society
can be sustainable, and that is healthcare, transportation, and money.
If you centralize all three of those, what DoD Obama

(01:34:10):
try to do. Affordable Care Act, socialized medicine. What are
we doing with electric vehicles? Turn on, turn off? That's
now centralized systems, so centralized power grid. Third thing is
loved is just centralize the money. Once you centralize all
of that, you can have all the guns you want,
there are no bullets. You can have all the freedom
of what you want, but you can't go more than
two hundred miles from your house.

Speaker 4 (01:34:31):
Oh, you can have all the money you want, but
you can't buy certain things.

Speaker 10 (01:34:34):
So they're centralizing everything under the pretense of efficiency, safety, convenience.

Speaker 4 (01:34:41):
None of that is true.

Speaker 10 (01:34:42):
It's all about the containment of the individual to create
a dependency on government. No different than why we increase
entitlements like welfare, snap, Medicare, and medicaid. We increase those
benefits in order to create a dependency.

Speaker 4 (01:34:56):
Why Well, because it's called buying boats.

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):
We're talking with Briggs from hard Asset Management just a
minute or so left here. Did you say that you
think bitcoin is an you said an experiment. But did
you say that you think it's an experiment that was
run by government?

Speaker 4 (01:35:18):
No, it's built by government. This is impossible.

Speaker 10 (01:35:21):
Can think about the connectivity value of what bitcoin did
when it launched globally. Think about that for a second.
How many countries bought into it are allowed it to
to pliferate throughout their economies.

Speaker 4 (01:35:32):
I want you to think about that.

Speaker 10 (01:35:34):
It wasn't like two servers cooked together and all of
a sudden they started writing scripts for period of peer environments.
It's impossible. I'm telling you it's impossible. So you had
to have billions and billions of dollars, but you had
to have buy in. There are three agencies are the
only agencies that could have made this possible with their
outside dark money budgets, CIA I six and MUSSAD. If

(01:35:56):
you go online and start to look deep into the
rabbit holes, you also to see that there's evidence of it.
In fact, there's a lot of politicians that have now
come to the conclusion the value of which bitcoin represents
was not a value of monetary policy.

Speaker 4 (01:36:10):
It was used for one reason.

Speaker 10 (01:36:12):
To program people to use digital case in point twenty
twenty three, twenty seven percent of all transactions were digital
twenty four, fifty percent this year, seventy percent, next year
one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (01:36:26):
It's ober right, But right now, it's true that a
lot of a lot more people, including me, using digital
payments when I can. But so far it's not a CBDC.
It's not government controlled, which probably doesn't make you, especially
in your business of managing you know, true hard assets
probably doesn't make you feel a lot better, but maybe

(01:36:48):
not quite as bad as a CBDC.

Speaker 10 (01:36:51):
So if you go ahead and try to do something
on VENMO that looks for let's just say, less than kosher,
watch what happenapons they'll shut you down. The digital systems
have it on and off system. That's the power. So
you think that you're not in a centralized system, it's quasi,
it's hybrid, But you are in a centralized system. The

(01:37:13):
more we transact in a digital environment, the more control
you give up, the more rights of freedom and access
to privatization of cash. Think about this, if we get
rid of cash, how many people still know that you
do a transaction, all of them, everybody, but the most
important people are the ones who control the flow of
that of that algorithm, because that's all it is.

Speaker 4 (01:37:34):
It's a token with a unique serial number.

Speaker 10 (01:37:36):
And if you really want to know, go to the
Federal Reserves website and put in CBDC. Look at how
many articles there are and how many architectural understandings and
first to market. It's not even summaries, are briefs, but
actual understandings of actions that they're taking place.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
Christian Briggs, economist, he is CEO at hard Asset Management.

Speaker 3 (01:37:59):
Fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for your time, you
got it.

Speaker 4 (01:38:03):
Thank you having me appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:04):
All right, glad to do it. Hmm, that's an interesting take.
I don't know, all right. I'm gonna comment on that
a little bit, because there are probably quite a few
people listening right now who have some real thoughts about
cryptocurrency and all this stuff. I didn't know what to
expect from from him. He's actually the guy. Remember I

(01:38:26):
told you a couple of days ago that there was
a guy who was on TV who claimed that we
lost eight We lost.

Speaker 3 (01:38:32):
However, I forget the number.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
Some number of millions of manufacturing jobs in the eight
years after NAFTA. This was this guy, right, And what
he didn't say was actually, we were up in manufacturing
jobs seven years after NAFTA, and then we had a
recession and we lost jobs. And he tried to make
it sound like NAFTA did it even though NAFTA didn't. Anyway,
I had decided to have him on anyway, and I

(01:38:55):
didn't know.

Speaker 3 (01:38:55):
What to expect.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
Boy, he's out there like bitcoin is a government mint
experiment designed to program us to be willing to do
all our transactions electronically. Well duh, I mean, and come on,
everybody knows that, uh huh. Yeah. I don't know how
much of this is it is. I don't know if
he's in the business that he's in, like you know,
gold and stuff like that, because he believes all that stuff,

(01:39:20):
or if he's saying all that stuff because he's trying
to sell gold and hard asset, you know, management services.
But that was a that was an interesting conversation he has.
His answers were too long, but it was interesting. Hi, Mandy.

Speaker 11 (01:39:34):
Generally people are a crazy filibuster, Yeah, you know, and
you can't get a word in it.

Speaker 7 (01:39:39):
Yeah, I know, absolutely rude.

Speaker 3 (01:39:40):
Those are a little bit frustrating.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
What you got coming up?

Speaker 7 (01:39:43):
No, No, I'm just kidding. I got a lot of stuff.

Speaker 11 (01:39:45):
I've got a guy, actually a sad but inspirational story,
a twenty three year old kid. He's got du Shane's
muscular dystrophy, and now he's an advocate for Right to Try,
which is the government basically getting out of the way
and letting people who are terminally ill try whatever treatments
and medications are available that might be able to help them.
I'm a big fan of that. We're also going to

(01:40:06):
talk about glowing the dark petunias.

Speaker 3 (01:40:09):
What.

Speaker 7 (01:40:09):
Yeah, glow in the dark petunias. It's the thing.

Speaker 5 (01:40:11):
Does your wife know about this ross I've got Kristen needs.

Speaker 3 (01:40:15):
To know about it.

Speaker 11 (01:40:16):
Well, she can go to plumb Creek Garden Center, garden Market. Yeah,
and they have glow in the dark petunias. They have bioluminescence.
So I got them on and I've got somebody else
to oh Rich googenhand from Gays against groomers. Lucky for them,
they've now been named a hate group. And it gets
even better. An organization made entirely of gay lesbian and
transgender people is now an anti LGBTQ group, according to

(01:40:40):
the Southern Poverty Law Center, which they are the real hate.

Speaker 3 (01:40:43):
They're the real hate groups. All right, let's do this
real quick.

Speaker 7 (01:40:45):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
Woman catches cheating husband with Wait, woman catches cheating husband
with electric toothbrush? Wait?

Speaker 7 (01:40:53):
Is he cheating with the electrics?

Speaker 3 (01:40:54):
They don't even know what that means.

Speaker 7 (01:40:56):
That's weird.

Speaker 1 (01:40:56):
Virginia Aquarium hosting adult only sleep over pigeons create a
wildlife situation on board flight. History goes full circle as
as high schoolers start new trend of ditching group chats
and passing physical notes instead.

Speaker 11 (01:41:14):
I hope that four is real. So I'm going to
say that number one is fake because it's not even
clear whether the husband was cheating with the toothbrush or
the wife found out because of a toothbrush. Where's either
very poorly written or fake.

Speaker 1 (01:41:29):
All right, and I will I will mention that my
older kid wants to get rid of his iPhone and
get a flip punk. Sure, and apparently that's a thing.
Now my daughter is not there yet. Yeah, all right,
well that is that is the thing. Now the actual
fake headline is History goes full circle. As high schoolers
start new trend of ditching group chats and passing paper notes.

Speaker 7 (01:41:50):
That makes me sad.

Speaker 3 (01:41:51):
Makes me sad too.

Speaker 7 (01:41:52):
I wish that was real.

Speaker 3 (01:41:53):
Have a wonderful show.