05-6-25 - *FULL SHOW* Student Loan Collection Restarts; Union Station RTD Safety

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I was just sending a text message in the in
the show started, and I'm standing there dictating a text
into my phone and Shannon's staring at me, like, Hey, Ross,
don't you hear that music? That's that's supposed to.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Mean something to you? Ross? Why don't you.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pay a little attention to what's going on around you?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
You dim wit? Oh my gosh, you know that.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
I really like following up, especially on the first newscast
right before my show, when Pat Woodard tells a story
because Woodward in particular, of all our news people and
they're all they're all fabulous, but to me Pat and I.
And it might be because Pat has done so many
years with a lot of focus on financial press and

(00:43):
my background is finance as well. But even when we're
not talking about financial stories, I find that Pat and
I have the most similar sense of stories we want
to talk about.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Like almost every news story that Pat brings up.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Is something that I think, Yeah, that's I want to
talk about that too, or I would want to talk
about that too.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
So and usually, you.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Know, Pat does the first news broadcast going into the
or the last news broadcast of Colorado's Morning News, which
is coming into my show, and so I hear a
lot of stuff I want to react to. So I'm
gonna I'm gonna take just one moment to react to,
uh to to one thing, and I may touch on
a little bit later. But Pat talked about the thing

(01:25):
at the Denver City Council to and and it was
actually a report by with Rob Dawson as well. Actually
in they're talking about they're not expanding a pilot project
with a company that puts out these.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
License plate readers.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Now, my understanding is that what they're gonna do is
they're going to continue the program at its current scale,
but not expand it. And what this thing does, apparently
in Denver, is they have these they have these cameras
set up that can take pictures of license plates and
identify them and alert like, Okay, if a car is
stolen and you know, we need to find car with

(02:04):
license plate eight for seven b z R whatever, and
I hope that's not your license plate because I just
made that up.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Then I hope that doesn't Hope.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
I don't get your car stolen by just saying that,
But then it will report that we just saw this
license plate. It's such and such a place and you know,
they'll go try to maybe recover the stolen car.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
I think.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
I think that's the idea and for other crime fighting purposes. Now,
to me, this story kind of falls into this category
that you find from time to time of.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
They get it right for the wrong reasons.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Right. So, I don't love the surveillance state. I completely
understand the idea of one and have certain tools to
try to either prevent crime or solve crimes.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
I get that, But at some point you.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Start to feel somewhere on the continuum from you know,
Australia to England to the very worst of course being China.
And I mentioned Australia by the way, you probably don't
know what I'm talking about. So I used to live
in Australia and Australia has these incredibly aggressive speed cameras everywhere,
and they'll get you for just a few miles an

(03:08):
hour over the speed limit, and they're absolutely everywhere, and
it's just a really you know, I like driving, and
just for the record, I like driving fast. I don't
like driving recklessly, but I like driving fast. And there
are plenty of times where you can drive much faster
than the speed limit and still be quite safe. Right
on a big open stretch a highway where the speed

(03:29):
limit is sixty five or seventy, you could easily and
I'm not saying I do this, and but you could
easily drive one hundred and on a you know, on
an empty Sunday morning and be absolutely fine.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
And just to be clear, I have not done that
in a long time.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
I have done it a lot, but not since I
was in my twenties or thirties. But why you know,
when I lived in Holland, I was trading the German
financial markets and our or so we had to go
into Germany from time to time to meet with a
bank essentially some business meetings. I didn't go very often,

(04:06):
but a couple of times, I know, we'd rent a
car and drive into Germany. I could drive on the autobon.
That is an amazing thing. And I don't know if
the rules have changed since then, because this is like, gosh,
I feel old now, but they're.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Like thirty years ago.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
And you know how you're told that the left lane
is just for passing, Well, in Germany, the left lane
is really.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Just for passing. Don't forget it.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
You'd be on the autobon and Let's say most traffic
is going eighty and you could be going ninety five,
and you sure as bid Jesus better not stay in
the left lane because some AMG or BMWM series or

(04:58):
something is gonna drive right up your new you know what,
before you know what hits you. If you're going ninety five,
you better get the heck out of the left lane
and get over because you were going to see something
that looks like a SpaceX thing, right like just zooming up.
We should be able to drive like that here, dude,

(05:21):
charge people more like you know, you have to I
don't know, pass a driving test of some kind, and
then you've got to pay an extra one hundred or
five hundred. The Democrats wouldn't have liked that because then
they'll say only rich people can do it. But dollars
like per year for permission to drive in that lane,
lots of people would do it. Can you imagine how

(05:42):
much money the government would make? Right, people saying I
want to be able to drive in that lane, and
you would I'm way off on a tangent. How did
I even get.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
To this shin? And what was I talking about?

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Oh? That's right, I was talking about how great pad
is and and that was a license plate story, and
then that got me to this squirrel. Oh my gosh,
what is wrong with my brain? I'll tell you in
a moment what's wrong with my brain. But let me
finish the license plate story, because, as I say, this
license plate tracker thing and the fact that they're not
so yeah. So I went from that to Australia, to

(06:13):
the speed cameras, to everybody should drive fast. Now, of course,
the most insane surveillance state in the world is China.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
They have all but perfected it.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
It's probably as close to a perfect surveillance state as
you can have with the current level of technology.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
It is as thorough as you can imagine.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
There are cameras everywhere, facial identification recording devices absolutely everywhere,
full government control of the people, and I find it
scary as all get out, and I don't want to
even tiptoe in that direction. And these license plate readers

(06:53):
in Denver feel I don't want to overstate it, but
it's starting to feel like tiptoeing in that direction.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
And maybe I'm just too sensitive to all this.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
So I don't love that license plate reader thing, and
so in my mind it's kind of you know, when
they say they're not going to expand it, it's not
they're not actually saying they're.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Not going to do it anymore.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
They're just saying they're not going to do do it
in more places than they're already doing it. But as
I understand the news story, they're gonna keep going with
it at the scale they have it already.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
I also know that a note that Rob Dawson said.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
That that Mayor Johnston has supported this as a crime
fighting tool, and that is in fact true. But going
into yesterday's meeting where they decided not to expand the program,
Johnston actually came out against the expansion. He changed his
tone a little bit, not enough to get rid of

(07:49):
the whole thing, but enough to not expand it. And
this is where I get to write for the wrong reasons.
And you heard that in the clip that either Hat
or Rob play it. I wasn't sure whether that was
technically part of Rob's or part of Pat's report, but
it was one of the city council members talking about
due process.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
And here's what's actually going on.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Why Denver decided not to expand the license plate reader thing.
It's not because they're worried about civil liberties. It's not
because they're worried about your privacy and anything like that.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
It's not. What it is is their fear that the
data will.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Somehow be used by the federal government to find illegal aliens.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
And deport them.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Because their priority is protecting illegal aliens. I'm not saying
it's their only priority, but it's a very high priority
for them, and that is quite a remarkable thing, don't
you think. Gosh, I have so much to do to
I had a whole bunch of things I wanted to
do in this segment that I didn't even do, So
we're going to do some of that coming up next.

(09:04):
I will give you a little tease as to what's
coming up next. One of the things local politics is
really really fascinating. And when I say local, I mean
city and county politics, right, And in a way, the
more local the politics, the more interesting it is because
the issues get so narrow and nitty gritty and hyper
local focused, and I think it makes it fascinating. So

(09:28):
there's an election today somewhere in Colorado where the main
issue of the election is about well, i'll tell you
after this. Yeah, so much to do today. Oh, let
me just mention one thing real quick. In our little
crossover that I do with Marty and Gina coming into
my show at the end of Colorado's Morning News, I

(09:49):
often tell them what I have coming up on the show,
and I mentioned that I was going to have Steve
Martin Gano of the RTD, the chief of police for RTD.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
On the show.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
And I just got a note from his people that
do to something that came up, that he can't make
it today. They're definitely going to reschedule. He's not dodging me.
They told me what it was. But I'm just going
to keep that to myself. But some a real thing
came up and he's not gonna make it today, but
we will get him on. We will get him on soon.
He's definitely not dodging the show. So I just wanted

(10:21):
to share that with you, Okay. I mentioned to you
going into the break that I think that I think
local politics can be really kind of fun and interesting.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
And I say often that although we pay.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
An immense amount of attention to national politics, and especially
when Donald Trump is in office, just because there's something
about that guy that attracts media attention and partly because
he tries to attract media attention. But we spend a
lot of time on national politics, but more often than not,

(11:00):
I'm not saying always, but more often than not, state
and local politics affect your daily life more than national politics.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
And often it's a lot more.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
And sometimes the issues are interesting, and they might it
might seem a little, you know, funny, but they're interesting.
So there's an election going on today in the town
of or the city of Canyon City, Colorado.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
Down down south kind of south.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Of Ford Collins Way area with a lot of prisons
and so on, and actually a cool little area. I
have to say, that whole area from there and towards
the southwest of there has some just gorgeous land and
that you know, my wife and I are thinking about
if we can afford it at some point to buy

(11:56):
a little weekend getaway cabin. And we're thinking about that
area because we like it so much, and because it's
so much more manageable transportation wise than having to deal
with driving I seventy on a Friday or coming back
on a Sunday and all that. Anyway, So Canyon City,
there's an election today in Canyon City for the uh,

(12:17):
for the what their board majority there? So let's see
what exactly is the name of the board. It's a
particular board that runs and I'm looking at the Colorado Sun.
It's the Canyon City Area Metropolitan Recreation and Park District board.
And it's suddenly controversial this year. There are six people

(12:40):
running for three spots on that board. And wait till
I tell you what the issue is. The issue is
a swimming pool. Channon, have you heard this story. There's
no reason you should have check this out. This parks

(13:00):
and Recreation district. As all recreation districts, they run parks,
and they run trails, and they'll run after school clubs
and stuff like that. And again I'm sticking with Coloradosun
dot com.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
That's Sun, not so win.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Until a couple of years ago, they had a pool
in town, like lots of towns do, that would be
open during the summer. Now, this pool had been around
for a long time, and it had been around for
so long that they had been trying to build a
new one for thirty years.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Right.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Eventually, two years ago it was just so worn out
that they just had to shut it down. It was
fifty six years old at that point, So they shut
it down, and the question then became, do you build
and operate a new pool or do you go without
a pool. Now here's an interesting statistic. There are sixty

(13:56):
six towns and cities in the state to Colorado that
have seven thousand or more residents in them.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Of those sixty six towns in.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Cities, Canyon City is the only one that does not
have a swimming pool within three miles of the town
or city. That's kind of interesting. So they went out,
they pulled the residents. You know, do you want to pool?
Do you want you know, are you willing to do this?
You will and do that to pay for a pool.
And they settled on a very small property tax increase. No,

(14:38):
I take it back. They settled on a small sales
tax increase to fund the construction of the pool. It's
a zero point three percent sales tax increase. Well, and
you can decide for yourself if that small I shouldn't.
I shouldn't attach an adjective of an adjective to it.
You might not think it's small, but it's a zero

(14:58):
point three percent sales tax increase, and that is supposed
to pay over time to build this indoor and outdoor
aquatics facility to fund it to the tune of about
twenty five million dollars. And the tax is supposed to
sunset in twenty five years, so they will have collected
the money. So they got approval for that. They got

(15:21):
approval for that sales tax. But the structure of the
deal was, no construction is going to start unless the
voters of the town pass a different tax increase, and
this would presumably be a really small property tax increase

(15:43):
to fund the ongoing operation of the pool every year.
So right now what they have is funding in place
to build it, but not funding in place to operate it.
And now there's a big fight down there about whether
they want to go ahead with some kind of ongoing
funding stream, like you know, four mills or something on

(16:03):
your property tax in order to fund the ongoing operation
of the pool.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
And I'm not going to offer input or advice.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
I don't live there, but I will What I will
say that I love is, Wow, how about a town
in Colorado that really takes seriously the idea of maybe
we shouldn't raise taxes on ourselves. I thought I said
it was by Colorado, south of Colorado Springs.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
If I said Fort Collins. I very much apologized.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Because I wouldn't have meant that, but kind of between
the Springs and Pueblo and a little bit a little
bit west off the highway anyway. I sure hope I didn't.
I sure hope I didn't say that. I've got yeah,
I get a couple people. A couple people said that
I said Fort Collins. So I'm sorry about that. That
was just a brain cramp, you know. I mentioned earlier

(16:50):
in the show that I'm probably I'm probably susceptible to
brain cramps today, probably more than usual. Yeah, I woke
up just before one am, and and I had a
hard time falling back to sleep. And it's funny, you know, normally,
like I tell you about, you know, Rocky Mountain Men's
Clinic and how this stuff I'm doing there, you know,
helps me get back to sleep if I wake up

(17:11):
in the middle of the night.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
But it wasn't a random waking up.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
It was just I woke up and my just my
mind was racing about all these decisions that Kristin and
I have to make about this house. We're remodeling, right,
We're picking flooring and paint, colors and lights, and and
then you know, mostly Kristin.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
I hope she's not listening right now.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
So let me anybody who's been through remodeling a house,
If you're married, I promise you have all been through
exactly what I'm gonna tell you right now. And if
you're I'm gonna tell this from the from the male perspective.
And anybody who says there's no difference between men and
women is either a liar or a moron, because there's
huge differences. And I'm telling you every guy and probably

(17:48):
every woman listening right now will be we'll understand what
I'm saying. So I I only have even moderately strong
opinions when it comes to design. In the house we're
remodeling on a few things like I care where the
speakers are going to go in the ceiling, right, I

(18:11):
care where the TV is gonna go on the wall.
We're we're putting in a steam shower that we had
in the like we had in the previous house. Part
of the reason is that you know, I love it,
and I realize it's kind of a bougie thing to
have a steam shower in your in your house. But
but for me, doctor Opperman, has consistently said, over all

(18:32):
the years that I've been working with him for for
my voice, he has consistently said, the single best thing
you can do for your voice is to is just
is to steam. You know, maybe not every day, but
pretty often. So you know, for me, it's kind of
work related to do that. Although I dig it so anyway,
I don't. I don't care that much about like what

(18:54):
floor tile is going here and what wall tile is
going there, And I might have a little opinion like
and says that.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
And I think that's just disgusting. I'll say, I really
don't like that one.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
But my wife is such a good eye for design
that I think if I said nothing other than you know,
like for the electronics stuff that she doesn't know about
and doesn't care about. But if I left the big
stuff to her, like the paint colors and the floors
and the you know, the room layouts and all that,
it would end up perfect.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
But she thinks that I might, you.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Know, that she'll do something wrong and then I'll come
back later and say why'd you do that? So she
gets me involved and then we do this stuff. And
then of course this is the other thing. My wife
is an artist. My wife is an artist. Do you
know what that means. It means she changes her mind
all the time. And I don't know whether this is
an artist thing or a wife thing or both. But

(19:47):
we'll go through and we'll just you know, pick a tile,
and then I send the order over to you know,
the folks I'm doing the tile with, and then like
a day later, I'm like, sorry, I need to change this,
and then again, and then again and then again.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
And this is the thing. I'm really torn about it because.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
On the one hand, it's huge, it's a huge pain
in the and then you know what, to be changing
these orders and having to be in touch with these
with these people who are trying to help me and
and and all that. So it's it's a pain, it's
it's annoying. On the other hand, she's never wrong right
when it comes to what's going to make the house

(20:24):
as beautiful as possible. So I know that if she says, no,
you know what, I don't want to do that, let's
do this other thing instead, I know she's going to
be right, and I know the house is going to
be even nicer looking, uh, And so that that's kind
of the balance for me. And then kind of I
will say the last thing because this was going on
this morning as I was as I was emailing with
some people at you know, tile and flooring places and

(20:46):
so on. Uh, what was kind of amusing to me
is how it was so obvious in their replies to
me that everybody who is working in any kind of
design related business has this movie seventeen hundred times before
where you think you've got a plan and then the
wife changes something and it's just look, I'm not I'm

(21:10):
really not complaining. I'm just observing. This is how the
world is. Men and women are different, and it's fine.
And anyway, I woke up at like one in the
morning because I'm my mind is racing because part of
the stuff that I actually have to deal with, so
I am dealing with the low voltage wiring for the house,

(21:33):
which means Ethernet jacks, because there are some things I
do not want to rely on wireless, for for example,
my computer in my office where sometimes I may have
to do my show from home, right, I do not
want to rely on wireless for that that's gotta be wired,
and other mission critical applications like that. And this is
going to sound like a joke.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
But it's not.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
My kid's gaming computer not gonna do wireless. You know,
my kid from time to time plays professionally. He's not
really doing it anymore, as we talked about, But I mean,
the speed really matters, so stuffless. So I'm working on
that and wireless access points with so good Wi Fi
coverage the house and all this stuff. And my wife
doesn't know and doesn't care, and so I'm dealing with that.

(22:17):
And I woke up at one in the morning with
my brain racing. I need to do this, I need
to do that. I've got a question about this, I
got a question about the other thing this morning.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Just to understand what my morning is like.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
So I woke up at one thirty, tossed and turned
until no I woke up at one, tossed and turned
until one thirty, got up, went downstairs, read a book
for half an hour, went back up, got in bed,
tossed and turned until four, slept for an hour until five,
got up, sent an email to the low voltage guy,

(22:48):
sent an email to two different flooring places, and still
prepared prepared a.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Show for you. I I thinks there's a listener.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Text Ross as a residential contractor, I can tell you
we have actually considered including marital counseling in.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Our project budgets.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Wow, Ross, a smart toilet and a steam shower too,
your fancy, all right? So the smart toilet in the
master bedroom is my wife's doing. And then I thought,
I liked the idea of a toilet with a warm seat.
And how about this for the most bougie accessory of
all time. And the only reason you would get one
is because you can. And that is a toilet that

(23:34):
automatically lifts the toilet seat when you walk up to
it and closes the toilet seat when you walk away
from it. And I got this thing on such an
insane sale at I think it was Amazon. That it
was like seventy dollars more than a regular toilet, and

(23:55):
normally it would be three hundred and seventy dollars more
than a regular toilet.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
So oh yeah, Ross.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
It's not just with your wife being an artist, your
wife being a wife.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
This happens all the time with our clients.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
The husbands are generally pretty easy going with the design.
The wife calls emails, comes in the office weekly or
daily to change things until finally they either find something
or running out of money. Well, I'm doing both of
those things. I'm finding things and running out of money
at the same time. Ross, how about a smart shower.
Maybe it won't wash your legs for you. There are,
in fact smart showers, but I'm not going that far.

(24:29):
I just do not need some kind of wacky digital
control where I can with eight different shower heads, kind
of like like the car washes, you know, the car
washes that have the brushes go on every angle, like
a brush for every hubcap, and a brush for the
roof and the front and the back window, and then
another for the undercarriage.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
I don't want any of that in my shower.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Although I am doing kind of a fancy shower, if
you really want to know, I am doing kind of
a ridiculous shower, just like.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
I did in the last house.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
You know why, because my wife and I want to
fer things in shower. So why am I telling you
all this? Are we really that good of friends that
I should be telling you all this?

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (25:07):
Maybe we are, so I'll keep going. So. So what
I like is the big like at least one foot
I'm getting a little bigger diameter rain shower head that
mounts into the ceiling of the shower and you just
stand under it and the water's coming straight.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Down on you.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
That's what I like. My wife doesn't like that, Okay,
So here's here's the reason.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
I like that. I wash my hair.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
One hundred percent of the time that I take a shower.
My wife washes her hair twenty percent of the time
that she takes a shower because she's got long hair,
and I guess it's a pain. I wouldn't know. I'm
guessing it's twenty percent. By the way, I could be wrong,
but it's definitely less than fifty percent.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
So I'm doing the overhead rain shower thing, and.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
She's doing the traditional wall mounted shower head that comes
out and then comes down at a bit of an
angle and points at you from the wall so you
can get it on your body and not on your hair,
which is much more difficult to do when you're under
a rain shower.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
You need a chiropractor after doing that under a rain
shower to get your head out of the way of
the water.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
So my wife is getting the one on the wall.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
And because she's my wife, one of those hand shower
thingies that attaches to a vertically mounted bar in the shower,
so she can like take that off and like wash
her hair right with that thing.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
And so we're doing this fancy shower.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
Because I want what I want and she wants what
she wants. So there you go. Getting a b DA
is worth every penny. Now, I will say, this smart
toilet that I'm getting, I do believe it has bday functions.
I believe the odds of my using those B day
functions other than maybe just one time so I can
come report back to you just how inappropriate it felt.

(27:03):
I think the odds of that are low. So I
think what I'm getting does have the bidet functions, and
I think I likely won't be using them a listener.
Text artist is a fancy word for unemployed. Now that
is a great one, and it is usually true. But
let me tell you a story. Gosh, how did I

(27:23):
get into all this? I am off on this insane tangent,
speaking of which, speaking of which, there's a squirrel.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Squirrel.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
There's a squirrel that lives near us, And either my
kid or my wife at some point put a few
nuts out on the railing out on the balcony. The
squirrel came over and ate them. And now every morning
without fail, this squirrel, whom my wife has named Cyril Cyril,

(27:58):
and my kid has named mayonnaise Mayo for short, the
same squirrel has two different names, comes to the window.
Sometimes it's the kitchen window over the sink, where he
will put his little face an inch from the glass.
Sometimes he goes around by the rail and comes and
looks through a window or the door out to the

(28:20):
deck and yells at us and makes little squirrel, what
would it be, a high pitched barking sound, And they'll
just come and do that until he and then you
got to go get some nuts and put him out
there on the rail.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
And here's the other thing.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
As long as we're talking about Ross's bougie life, my
wife is doing a lot of baking, and she's making
muffins like fancy muffins with fancy ingredients, super bougie muffins
that she thinks she can sell for six dollars a
muffin or something like that, which I guess isn't even.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
That much these days.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
And as part of that process, if she's experiment with
a lot of different ingredients, and among those ingredients or
macedamia nuts. Now it turns out that I don't like
macadamia nuts. More importantly, it turns out my wife doesn't
like macadamia nuts. Macadamia nuts are expensive, if you're not aware,
they're rather expensive. And we had basically something like, you know,

(29:20):
the jar that would be the size of a pickle
jar that you would get in the supermarket. We had
one of those full of macedamia nuts, and nobody in
the house likes them, so we've been giving them to
Cyril the squirrel, who is getting the most bougie snacks
of all time. Some folks may wonder whether macadamia nuts
are in fact healthy for squirrels, and my answer to
that is I haven't looked it up because I don't care.

(29:43):
So what all that matters to me, just the same
way that all that matters to me when I'm eating
some sweet tarts or a piece of chocolate, is that
I like it, and not whether it's healthy.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Is whether Cyril or Mayo the squirrel.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Likes picking up these macadamia nuts and eating them, And
boy does he or she. I have no eye idea,
And it's so cute to see this little guy pick
up the pick up the macadamia nut and chew on it,
and it takes a very long time for him to
get through just one of those, just one of those nuts.
And that happened already this morning. By the way, in
case you're wondering, No, I have not ingested any methamphetamine

(30:18):
or any other chemical substance of any sort this morning.
I am not on any kind of thing that would
tend to speed me up. I've only had a little
bit of caffeine in my tea that I drink in
the morning. This insanity that you're hearing flow from my
mouth right now is nothing more than the product of
a poor night's sleep. Now to the listener question, Oh yeah,

(30:41):
listener said, good thing.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
You have dude wipes.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Indeed, and I do have them still, and I've used
a couple of them. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
If you're the guy who gave them to me, Thank you. Ross.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Why do you pronounce it b da? Have I missed
something different? People pronounce it different ways, but I speak
French pretty well and so that's how I pronounce it.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
And you know, you.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
Know, in France, you could hear b day or you
could hear bid day, but you're more likely to hear
the way I said it. What Channon, Well, I just thought,
maybe if the settings are really off, your B Day
could turn into D Day.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
It definitely could.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Now one other thing, and then I'm going to try
to be less ridiculous. Listener Tech said, artist is a
fancy word for unemployed.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
So let me tell you about when I met my wife.
I met my.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Wife when I went on vacation to Sydney, Australia with
a friend of mine. And there is a fancy outdoor
market sort of like a farmer's market, but not mostly
selling food, mostly selling items for tourists to buy who
come off the cruise ships that docked in Sydney Harbor.
That's just a five minute walk away from this market,
which is in the north end of Sydney, in a

(31:51):
neighborhood called the Rocks, right by the south end of
the Harbor Bridge. It's a beautiful historic neighborhood, just a
few minutes walk from Sydney Harbor.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
And I was walking through there and.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
I saw some spectacular ceramics being sold by uh, you know,
a young girl, and I thought, I really like these ceramics.
I would like to get some custom made for me,
And so the girl who was selling them said, well,
you need to talk to the business owner who's also
the artist, if you want to get any custom stuff done.
And so I said, fine, I got in a taxi and.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
I and I took the taxi out to.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
This neighborhood that was kind of like the Sydney equivalent
of Commerce City, by which I mean not that far
from the city, but very industrial.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
And uh.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
And I knocked on the door of this place that
was like a tin building and this and this girl
opens the door and she's covered in clay dust and
wearing overalls. And my first thought was she's hot. Anyway,
that's my wife. Now. But the reason I mentioned that
story to you in terms of this, in terms of this, uh,

(32:58):
this whole thing.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Like, uh, artist means unemployed.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
My wife did all the designs that went on these things.
She was selling to the cruise ship tourists. Things like
the main thing was coffee mugs, right, the main thing
was coffee mugs, but there were also plates and vases
and tea pots and stuff like that. And they were expensive, right,

(33:22):
they were like fifty dollars a cup, fifty dollars for
a coffee mug. Now, at the time when I was there.
At the time, the Australian dollar was only fifty cents US.
The Australian dollar was very weak. So for the American
coming off the cruise ship, it was a beautiful mug
for twenty five bucks. Yes, twenty five bucks bucks is
a lot, but it's not insane, and it's handmade, and

(33:44):
it's got beautiful painting on it in some memory of Sydney.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
And she sold lots of them.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
So when I met my wife, she had maybe five
employees and they were selling everything they would make. And
she was making seventy five thousand dollars a year after
paying her employees as an artist. So my wife is
not the uh not the unemployed artist. Oh my gosh,

(34:12):
I can't believe how much time of yours. I just
wasted so much time. All right, let me do it
if let me let me switch out of my stupid
personal life. And I am reading your text, by the way,
and thank you for pretending to care. You can text
me at five sixty six nine zero and to tell
me whatever you want to tell me.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Ross not your wife's story. Again.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
That was a different version, right, that was a different
version of my wife story. You haven't heard that part before,
and I stopped right ross. I hope now that you
shared your squirrel story, the government doesn't confiscate and behead him.
That's that's true. But given who I am in this
state right now, I'm just hoping that the government of
Colorado doesn't confiscate and behead me. Oh man, all right, So,

(34:57):
there's a there's a building in the Highlands neighborhood in
Denver called the lumber Baron Inn. I hadn't heard of
this building, but I'm looking at a picture of it
right now, and it's a gorgeous classic historic home. Shannon,
you seem to know the building somehow, well, you've been
around here a long time, longer than I have. I

(35:17):
actually did a wedding reception DJ'd a wedding reception there once,
and is it lovely? Oh, fantastic, fantastic. So, Shannon, I
don't know how you're doing with your four oh one k.
But this thing's listed for three point two mil right now,
So Shannon shook his head. No. So the lumber Baron
in in the Highlands neighborhood, this is from Axios, by

(35:39):
the way, is listed for three point two million dollars
and here's what I just wanted to share with you
about this story. The lumber Baron Inn is apparently thought
and I don't know if Shannon is aware of this,
but thought to be haunted.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Are you are you aware?

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, Shannon is well aware thought to be thought to
be haunted. So lumber magnet John Muatat built this in
the eighteen nineties for his wife and five kids, but
his ten year old son was fatally stabbed inside the
home by a grosser. According to somebody from History Colorado.

(36:13):
Then came the Panic of nineteen I'm sorry, eighteen ninety three.
Mister Mouwat's fortune went away. You know, building probably got
bought and sold a few times in the nineteen seventies.
The building actually functioned as an apartment complex.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
Did you know that, Shannon. It was an apartment building
for a while.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
And in the nineteen seventies there were two young women
who were murdered in that building and that crime remains unsolved.
So in any case, this building seems to be haunted,
and a lot of people say they, you know, experienced stuff.
It's drawn ghost hunters, it's been on a Netflix series
about paranormal stuff. And my question for you is very

(36:50):
very simple, and I want you to text me your
answer at five six six nine zero.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
My question is this, if.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
You were thinking of buying a place like this, would
you do think that these stories and the possibility of
it being haunted makes it worth more or makes it
worth less?

Speaker 2 (37:07):
Text me at five sixty six nine zero.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
So from the Everything Old Is New Again files, the
Trump administration has restarted collections of federal student loan debt.
And there's just a lot to talk about here, and
I am not an expert, so that rather than giving
you the overly worthy introduction that I usually do, I
just want to go right to my guest, Brian Walsh,

(37:30):
who is head of advice and Planning.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
For so Far.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
That's SOFI, a pretty big company doing all kinds of
online banking, and we're going to talk about the resumption
of student loans. So Brian, thanks, so thanks for spending
time with me.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah, thanks for having me today.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
So I'll ask you two things and then you can
answer to them in either order you want. So one
is just maybe elaborate a little bit on something you
said to me before we got started. How what the
administration is doing is really just sort of turning back
to how things used to be, and then tell us
what the federal government is doing right now for people
who have student loans that are that are in default,

(38:12):
which should not be confused with having been forgiven. Those
are different things. But student loans that are in default,
what's happening?

Speaker 3 (38:20):
Yeah, So I.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
Guess on the first point, kind of going back to
twenty twenty when when COVID first hit, the federal government
paused payments and interest.

Speaker 5 (38:29):
On student loans that got extended, extended, extended all the
way through late twenty twenty three, and then they basically said, hey,
you need to start making payments on these loans again.

Speaker 4 (38:40):
Along the way, forgiveness was talked about. It didn't happen.
And so going on a year and a half now,
federal student loan borrowers should have been making payments.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
If they have not been, they're in default.

Speaker 4 (38:53):
So if you haven't made a payment in more than
three hundred and sixty days, it's in default. And then
as of yesterday they basically the last piece of getting
back to the pre COVID student loan days is that
if you're in default on a federal student loan the
government has I guess extra recourse powers to get that
money back compared to private lenders.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
So for example, they can.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
Tap into tax refunds, government payments like Social Security, and
potentially garnish your wages to get back the money that
you owe from missing your.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Payments these days, are all or almost all student loans
or the debt outstanding on student loans is that all
owed to the federal government or is there still a
significant part of private student loan lending like there used
to be before Obamacare kind of nationalized the industry.

Speaker 4 (39:46):
Yeah, so there's still a good amount of private student
loan debt. And really why that happens is there's going
to be limits to how much you can borrow from
the federal government for student loans. And with the cost
to college these days, and even going back to you know,
fifteen years ago when I was in school, you borrow
the maximum amount you can with federal loans, and college
is expensive enough where you still the gap, and that's

(40:08):
where private loans come into play.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
So most people that we.

Speaker 4 (40:12):
Work with have a mixture of private and federal student loans.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
And the policy changes that we're talking about today only
apply to the federal side, right.

Speaker 4 (40:21):
Correct, private student loans, those payments, I mean some companies
pausing for a month or so, or you know, hardship
for parents and things like that. That generally speaking, borrowers
have been paying on private loans this entire time. It's
just the federal loans that had the pause, and then
they had the delaying collections, and now we're back to
involuntary collections.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
One quick follow up or clarification on something you said
a moment ago. You talked about there being limits on
student loans, and it's been so long since I've been
in college and I was fortunate enough not to have
to borrow money. But is it correct that there are
limits for how much you can borrow for undergrad but
no limits for grad school?

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Is that right?

Speaker 4 (41:03):
Yeah, there's gonna be like overall limits. The limits for
grad school are much higher than undergrad So generally speaking,
like from a federal loan perspective, for the most part,
we see like freshman year, it starts I think around
six seven grand a year, and they gradually increase, and
then once you get to grad school you can borrow
much more. But private loans definitely play a bigger role

(41:24):
in grad school and then especially at more expensive schools,
just because you know, five six seven grand a year
doesn't really go that far with expensive schools.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, So if you're talking about at least just on
the federal side, and somebody is saying they have three
hundred thousand dollars in federal student loan debt, that means
they went to grad school.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Yeah, it could mean they went to grad school.

Speaker 4 (41:49):
Or it could also mean that the parent took out
loans because you also have that for federal student loans,
you also have parent plus loans, so parents can take
out more.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
On top of the student limits.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
So we see a mixture, but generally speaking, when you're
talking two hundred and fifty three hundre thousand dollars of
student loan debt period, you're talking about grad school.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
We're talking with Brian Walsh from SOFI their website sofi
dot comsofi dot com. So we want about two minutes left,
so let's jump in right now and just focus for
those people who have not been paying on their student
loans and now suddenly the federal government is, you know,
going back to what the policy should have been all
the way along, like you better pay down your debt

(42:31):
or else. Some people are saying they didn't know, they
didn't get the letter, they didn't know this was common,
they've had hits to their credit reports. So just what
are the top few pieces of advice in ninety seconds
or so to people who have federal student loans and
maybe haven't been paying on them.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
Yeah, so either you recently got an email or should
be getting one shortly from the government and it'll outline
options that you.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
Have so you can go to, you know, contact.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
The Default Resolution Group talk through those options. You can
enroll in income driven repayment, so it's going to cap
your payments to a certain percentage your income. Like let's
say you know you don't have a job right now,
or maybe your income is low compared to your balances.
You could even look at maybe extended repayment where you
stretch out your payment from the standard ten years to
twenty plus years. So there are definitely options to make

(43:22):
your payments fit if.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
You're not paying them right now.

Speaker 4 (43:25):
It's just about proactively figuring that out rather than letting
involuntary collection kind of take its course.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Are all those programs you talked about to potentially help someone.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
Manage the cash flow.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
Are all those that are things available directly from the
federal government or does that involve getting a private entity
involved to then you know, borrow money from a private
bank on different terms from the Feds or something.

Speaker 4 (43:49):
Yeah, that's all through the federal government where you have
plenty of benefits for federal student loans. Granted, you could
use you know, private lender or refinance loans.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
It's just if you're in default, whether.

Speaker 4 (43:59):
Or not that it's an option generally speaking, getting ahead
of it where you're in good standing, it's a good
opportunity to potentially lower your interest rate, lower your payment
through refinancing if if it all works out.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
That's Brian Walsh from SOFI. He's head of advice and
Planning there so o FI dot com. Brian, thanks for
the great conversation, Super useful for lots of listeners. I
appreciate it. Awesome, Thanks for having me all right, glad
to do it.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
All right.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
That's Brian Walsh from SOFI again so FI dot com.
If you want to learn more about what they do, gosh,
I still have an immense amount of stuff to do
on today's show, so including by the way, including Mooses.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
I'll tell you about Mooses right after this.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
Owe you the Moose story in the next segment of
the show.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
I promise I'm going to get to it, and.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
I'm gonna have plenty of time in the next segment
of the show because the guest I was going to
have had something important come up and he's not going
to be able to make it today. So we'll we'll
get We'll get him when we can. So, as you know,
Donald Trump started talking about making Canada a state, and
that caused the Conservatives in Canada to lose the election.

(45:12):
So basically, Donald Trump got the Canadian equivalent of the
Democrats elected and he seems perfectly happy with that.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Actually, and right now.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
For the first time since that election, which was only
like a week ago, the newly elected Prime Minister his
name is Mark Carney. Now he was already acting as
Prime minister, but now there is an election, so who's
actually won his own term. He is actually in the
White House with President Trump right now.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Let's drop in.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
Thank you, miss President.

Speaker 6 (45:43):
I'm on the edge of my seat actually, but thank
you for your hospitality and above all for your leadership.
You're a transformational president. Focus on the economy with a
relentless focus on the American worker, secure in your borders,
providing ending the scourge of fentanyl and other opioids, and

(46:05):
and securing the world. And I've been elected uh with
with my colleagues here, with the help of my colleagues here,
I'm gonna spread spread the UH the credit UH to
transform Canada with a similar focus on the economy, securing
our borders, UH again on fentanyl, UH, much greater focus
on defense and security, securing the Arctic, and developing the Arctic.

(46:29):
And you know, the history of Canada and the US
is we're stronger when we work together. And there's many
opportunities to work together.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
And I look forward to, you.

Speaker 6 (46:36):
Know, addressing some of those issues that we have, but
also finding those areas of mutual cooperation.

Speaker 7 (46:41):
So we can go very nice, Thank you, very much,
very nice.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
All right, just pause that for a second. Are you effective?
Pause that for a second.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
So, first of all, let me just say that was
and I'm gonna come back to the audio in a second.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Re So, UH.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
It was a very good statement by Mark Carney. It
did It did two important things at the same time.
It expressed a level of respect for Donald Trump and
understanding of Donald Trump's goals, including such things as mentioning
that Canada is going to do more in terms of

(47:23):
defense spending, because one of Donald Trump's biggest critiques of
Canada is how little they spend on defense.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
And at the same time.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
It expressed it was subtle but clear, it expressed this,
we are a proud nation too. It's not only the
United States that's proud, like we're a real country.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
We're a proud country.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
We have our own goals, and we are going to
do those things that achieve our goals. And the implication
there was they might not be the same as your goals.
And then he followed it up by saying, but we
will work together wherever we can, because we are stronger

(48:06):
when we work together. So I did think that was
a really great statement, and Trump acknowledged it as a
really great statement. And then what the reporter just asked
is is USMCA dead. USMCA was the replacement for NAFTA.
And I can anticipate what Trump is going to say
about USMCA and NAFTA. So let me just give a quote,

(48:29):
not a quote, let me give analysis before hearing what
Trump says, and then we'll see how good. I am
at guessing what Trump is going to say. So what
I think Trump is going to say is that he
negotiated USMCA because NAFTA was so terrible. It was one
of the worst deals ever. It should never have happened.

(48:52):
And thank goodness that Donald Trump came on the scene
and he threw it out and negotiated USMCA instead. That's
what I think he's gonna say. And what I want
you to understand is that USMCA is almost identical to NAFTA.
It is probably eighty five or ninety percent just what
was already in NAFTA with a.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Few small changes. But most people don't know this.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
So when they hear Trump say he threw out MCA,
they they're going to believe he started over.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Let's hear what he actually says.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
And it's still very effective.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
But people have to follow it. So you know, that's
been a problem. People haven't followed it.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
But it was.

Speaker 8 (49:34):
A transitional step a little bit, and as you know,
it terminates fairly shortly, it gets renegotiated very shortly.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
But I thought it was a.

Speaker 8 (49:45):
Very positive step from NAFTA.

Speaker 7 (49:47):
NAFTA was the worst trade deal in the history of
our country probably in the history of the world. And
this was a transitional deal. And we'll see what happens,
you know, we'll whether it be starting to possibly renegotiate
that it is even necessary.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
I don't know that.

Speaker 8 (50:04):
It's necessary anymore. But it served a very good purpose,
and the biggest purpose it served as we got rid
of NAFTA. NAFTA was a very unfair deal for the
United State. It's a very very terrible deal. It should
have never been made. It was made many years ago,
but it should have never been made.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
All Right, we believe it there. I belave it there
in the interest of time.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
So again, just to understand, USMCA and NAFTA are almost
the same. There are just some very small changes. But
Trump can get away with saying that because most people
don't know that. Also, NAFTA was a very good deal. Uh,
not perfect. Every deal has flaws. But NAFTA was a
very good deal. And all the stuff that Trump is
saying about how bad it was is really wrong. So

(50:43):
there's that. But he's Trump, and he's gonna do what
he's gonna do and say what he's going to say.
The interesting thing to me that I heard there was
where he said, I don't know if renegotiating USMCA will
be necessary. And I don't know whether that means he's
saying we don't intend to have any free trade agreement
with Canada and Mexico. Whether it means he's saying us
mc A is good enough that we don't need to

(51:04):
renegotiate it and we can just extend it. I don't
know which he means, and I think it would be
important to know.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
All Right, Well, if there's.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
Any breaking news from this interesting meeting, we'll share it
with you. In the meantime, we'll take a quick break.
We'll be right back on KOA. I saw I saw
this story here. H hold on, I gotta find this website.
Me a second here, this semi professional radio and dragon
has me doing things differently, all right. So I'm looking
at a Swedish website and I don't know what this.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
I don't know what this is.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
I think it might be a television station, news station
of some kind. Anyway, the website is s V like
Victor T dot se right, so dot se is the
suffix for for Swedish websites SVT dot s E. And
I'm looking at this story and It's originally in Swedish,
but the Google machine translates it too English for me,

(51:56):
and I wanted to share it with you because it is.
It is arguebably the most important international news I've seen
I've heard in a very long time, A world a
world changing thing. So are you listening dragon, I'm just
going to read this. I'm not going to offer commentary.
I think you will fully understand without my having to
add any commentary.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Just how serious a news story this is.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
This year's edition of SVT's Elk Walk is coming to
an end after a total of four hundred and seventy
eight hours of live broadcast from the Norland Forest. Interest
has been great, and this year's broadcast has featured several
interesting natural events.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
A total of seventy moose have.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
Swum across the river, which is one of the highest
numbers in the broadcasts history. This year, the moose arrived early,
which meant that SVT's cameras immediately captured an intense start
to the migration. Another thing that distinguished this year's season
was the number of bears in the footage, often several
at the same time, which is unusual in this type

(53:01):
of coverage. It's given viewers the opportunity to follow the
bears movements in the area in a way that is.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Not always possible.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
White tailed eagles and golden eagles have also been spotted,
both in the expected locations and surprisingly also in the
area around the cameras in June Sileigh. Overall, it's been
a broadcast with great variety, where both moose and other
animals have provided insight into life in the.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Swedish spring forest.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
The moose migration is now in its final days of
this season.

Speaker 8 (53:34):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
Dragon, you being a Viking and coming from that part
of the country originally when you were born as Mephistopheles Redbeard,
somewhere up there in the great White North of Scandinavia
with your Viking fellows, what do you think of this
year's moose walk.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
It was fantastic, Absolutely fantastic. I'm just a little perturbed
that I didn't see any squirrels. M oh squirrel? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Uh with because of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Yeah yeah, I
mean usually from my childhood they've always been seen together,
but apparently not you know, so you know, one of uh,
one of our listeners when you played the Rocky and
Bullwinkle music.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Going into the previous segment.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
One of a listener texted and say, and said, the
best writing, or at least some of the best writing
in the history of cartoons were the short, fractured fairy
tales that were part of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
And I and I couldn't agree more very much. So
I absolutely couldn't agree more. You know, Dragon, this reminds me,

(54:37):
could you try to get could you try to get
my wife on the phone? Here?

Speaker 2 (54:40):
I want to I want to get her on the show.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
I don't know if you have if you have her number,
and if you do it, it might concern me a
little bit. So I'm gonna text you two numbers that
you can try and see if you can get my
lovely bride on the phone. I have no idea where
she is right now, but I'll text you that and see,
I see if you can get her at one of
those numbers. And in the meantime, I want to share
a piece with you that I had meant to get

(55:03):
to yesterday. I didn't get to it, but I said
I might come back to it today because I think
it's really good. And this was in the context of
the announcement of Warren Buffett retiring. So all right, hang on,
get me a second, all right. So this is from
the Wall Street Journal and it's a piece by Jason
Zwag and the headline is why there will never be

(55:26):
another Warren Buffett. And I just think, I just think
this is a really cool story, a really cool story.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
So I wanted to share it with you.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
And at the meantime, I'm just I'm doing one other
thing here to just make sure if we get my
wife on the phone, that we can that we can
do this. We Dragon seems to be talking to someone's
hold on, before I do the Warren Buffett thing, I
want to I want to see if my wife's gonna
my wife's gonna come on.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
She's iffy about it, right. You should see the expression on.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
Dragon's face right now he's talking to my wife. He's
doing that thing where you like put your palm out
flat to the ground and then like wiggle it left
to right, thumbed to pinky to say like maybe maybe
not so, so what's all right?

Speaker 2 (56:11):
We got her? All right, Let's do this, all right?

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Hi, Hi, Kristin, Hello, it's your lovely Yes, it's my
lovely bride. What was the other name for you? I
forget the other name that you gave yourself the other time.
Was it what was it, Wench?

Speaker 9 (56:28):
Wench?

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Was it?

Speaker 3 (56:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Wench. That's a good one too.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
All right, listen, we we have an issue, not you
and I, but we have an issue that we need
to talk about. I was telling I was telling listeners
earlier in the show about about Cyril. All right, right,
and I was telling I was telling listeners about Cyril,
and you know what's going on. And I told listeners

(56:51):
that you had, or we had, I don't know, a
fairly big jar of macadamia nuts and that you were
going to use them making your fancy but you decided
you didn't.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Like macadamia nuts.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
And I don't like them either, and they're expensive, but
Cyril's been getting them, so Cyril gets this very bougie
snack and uh and so so then a listener named
Kevin sent me an email from a website called pet
shun s h u n, meaning what foods certain animals

(57:23):
should not be given?

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Right you shun giving them?

Speaker 1 (57:26):
And what it says is that macedamia nuts are toxic
for squirrels. They can cause muscle weakness and tremors in squirrels.
They are not recommended for consumption by squirrels, even in
small amounts, and that instead squirrels can eat walnuts, pecans
and hazel nuts.

Speaker 9 (57:48):
Oh what about almonds.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
We may have to look that up. But I think
you're I think you're.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
I know you think'st He does seem to be.

Speaker 9 (57:58):
But what if we find he's been on those for
months and he's still and fine. I mean, he comes
and he brings a friend, and I have created a
dependent monster. It's sort of I feel a little bit
little bad about that. But you know he's in good health.
He's very sprightly.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
So you're not worried at all about poisoning Cyril with
the macadamia nuts.

Speaker 9 (58:19):
Well, I would initially had I have known in the beginning,
but he seems macadamia tolerant. Yeah, does bounding through the trees,
you know, frolicking around the garden. I don't know if
that doesn't look like a sick squirrel to me.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
All Right, it's a good answer, and I'm not even
sure I care. Like I told listeners that I hadn't
looked up whether macadamia nuts were bad for squirrels, but
I don't care very much what. I don't really want
to hurt a squirrel, but I don't know that it's
really worth much of my time to find out what's
good for a squirrel.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
I don't know.

Speaker 9 (58:52):
Kind of if you're going to feed the wildlife, you
want to know what's toxic and what isn't. It's a
little responsible of it. But I just assumed all nuts
good except the possibility of peanuts, which aren't nuts.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
Yeah, and our one of our kids said peanuts are
bad for squirrels.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
But I don't know if I believe that.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
But they're saying walnuts, pecans, and hazel nuts. I don't know,
like tree nuts. We have created a monster, haven't.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
We We have?

Speaker 9 (59:18):
Because I think, you know, it's more than just ceril.
Now it's a.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Little bit of a We got a reputation, you think, Kang.
Can you for people who didn't.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
Hear what I said earlier in the show, because it
was an hour ago, just describe what Cyril is like
in the mornings.

Speaker 9 (59:33):
As soon as I get up and I come down
to the kitchen to grab my coffee, he's in the window.
He's scratching and making noises, and so I'll give him
a couple of nuts and then he's back like an
hour or so later, and I won't give him more
nuts and for the rest of the day, but then
Oliver will give him nuts without like, because we don't

(59:54):
communicate about it if we're fed Cyril or not. But
all of us think Cyril is Mayo a female.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
All right, and don't don't don't say a kid's name
on the air. I'm trying to avoid that, just say
our kids.

Speaker 9 (01:00:06):
So yeah, so, yeah, so you know that's what the
story is, all right. So I think Cyril slash Mayo,
which is fine, I mean gender fluid squirrel and I
have a problem with that. And yeah, so he she
gets fed twice a day and seems very healthy.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
It seems very healthy.

Speaker 9 (01:00:30):
Other squirrels now getting involved in the scenario, and I
haven't tagged this one, so I'm not one hundred percent
whether it's the same squirrel.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Right, So that's what I was going to get to.

Speaker 9 (01:00:39):
The behavior is consistent with the one squirrel.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Yes, but what if all squirrels behave the same and
we are just killing them off one by one with
the macadamianouts and so we kill one off and.

Speaker 9 (01:00:48):
And another one shows up and be tortured by squirrels.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
Yeah yeah, I mean they might come over and they
might nibble on us, So they might just yell at
us the way Cyril or whatever his or her name
is yelling at it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Through the window.

Speaker 9 (01:01:01):
Well, it's like a little sort of funny screechy sound.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Can you can you do it? Can you can you?

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
I can't do it, but oh, come on, just gets.

Speaker 9 (01:01:09):
Involved too, and he and he she comes up to
the TV room window and yells outside of that window too.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
TV does.

Speaker 9 (01:01:22):
I don't know the sound. I can't really make it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Oh yes, you can go ahead try.

Speaker 9 (01:01:26):
No, it's a it's a funny sound. It comes from
a party my body that I don't have access.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
It is hard to do. It's like a it's hard
to describe. It's almost like a high pitch bark. It's
almost like he's barking at you. It's it is odd.
It is odd. Maybe dragon, maybe you can find a
YouTube of a squirrel noise.

Speaker 9 (01:01:43):
It's a it's adorable when they sit and eat and
they just one nut and they just sit there and
they really chill, just chewing one nut.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
At a time, one little poisonous nut at a time.

Speaker 9 (01:01:57):
Now I'm gonna feel bad, but honestly, there's not many
mac damiens left, and I'm not going to spend the
money buying mecademias.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
But no, we only got just like, we've given them
most of the rat poison already, so we might as
well just give them.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Yeah, there it is. They play that apparently.

Speaker 9 (01:02:10):
Blueberries all blueberries Apparently they like to but I don't
know if they're toxic. I haven't researched that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
Do you hear that sound? That's it? Yeah, that's it.
That's the squirrels.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
All right, Kristen, you can get back to poisoning other
small animals and I'll see you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
I'll see you a little bit later on.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
Okay, thank you bye. That's my lovely wench. Oh, she's
a good sport. She's a good sport. All right, all right,
let me get back to this. By the way, Dragon,
you didn't hear me explain this earlier in the show.
I am out of my freaking mind today with sleep deprivation,

(01:02:54):
and the first hour of the show sounded like I
was on meth.

Speaker 10 (01:02:57):
So this is perfect for the day to not look
at your show, Dude.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
I was just going on this insane, literal and figurative
squirrel tangent all morning long, and I sound like I
need a psychiatrist.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
I really do more more than yesah, okay, more than He.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
Was just about to say more than usual at the
same time that I started saying more than usual. Yeah,
why there will be another Warren Buffett. I really like
this piece. It isn't the Wall Street Journal. It was published?
Was it a couple of days ago? I guess it
was published on Friday? When no, on Saturday, the day
after Warren Buffet announced that he's going to retire at

(01:03:37):
the end of the year. And I just like this
as a human interest story. It's not it's only partly
a finance story. To me, It's more a story of.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Commitment.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Commitment, so you'll understand what I mean. I'll just I'm
probably just gonna read the whole thing. It's not that long.
If it starts feeling long, I'll skip a little bit.
So there's only one war in Buffett and there will
never be another. On May third, Buffet announced they'll step
down a CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. There are three weeks
reasons why he has no equal and never will. The person,

(01:04:13):
the period, and the package. Let's start with the person.
Buffett is not only brilliant, but has also spent nearly
his entire long lifetime obsessed with the stock market. This
is actually my favorite part of the story, especially in
his early years as an investor. His unparalleled success depended
on an unbearable sacrifice, foregoing a normal social and family life.

(01:04:34):
A later writer called the great seventeenth century philosopher Baruch
Spinoza the god intoxicated man. Buffett is the stock intoxicated man.
Ever since nineteen forty two, when he bought his first
stock at the age of eleven, he has devoured information
about companies, reading corporate reports the way most people.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Listen to music.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
As a young investment manager, Buffett would wander through his
house whi his nose in a corporate annual report, practically
bumping into the furniture, oblivious to the comings and goings
of family and friends. While his kids played an amusement park,
he'd sit on a bench and read financial statements.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Buffett was there physically.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
But mentally and emotionally, he was off in a world
of his own, fixated on tax loss carry forwards and
amortization schedules. Imagine being that obsessed and imagine enjoying it. Now.
Imagine enjoying it almost every waking moment since Harry Truman
was in the White House. That's how unusual Warren buffett

(01:05:34):
Is expertise is rooted in pattern recognition, and Buffett has
seen every conceivable pattern. Given what I know about his
work habits, I estimate conservatively, I think that Buffett has
read more than one hundred thousand financial statements in his
more than seven decade career, and his memory is almost supernatural.
Years ago, winding up a phone interview with Buffett, I

(01:05:55):
mentioned a book I was reading. He exclaimed that he
had also read it more than fifty years earlier. As
I began describing a passage, I grabbed the book, found
the page, and realized, to my astonishment, that Buffett recalled
almost every sentence verbatim. His unparalleled exposure to financial information,
combined with his prodigious memory, made Buffett into a human

(01:06:17):
form of AI. He could answer almost any query out
of his own internal database. That's given him an unparalleled
ability to identify the kernel of significance in any new
bit of information and a durable advantage over other investors.
Now that AI is universally available, a person with Buffett's
massive command of data won't even have an advantage in

(01:06:39):
the future. Then there's the period the time over which
Buffett has exercised his investing prowess. As he said many times,
he won what he calls the Ovarian lottery by being
born when he was. Had Buffett been born in Omaha
in say, eighteen eighty instead of nineteen thirty, he would
have had to invest in livestock instead of stocks.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
Had he been.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
Born in nineteen thirty in Omsk, which is in Russia,
instead of Omaha, he wouldn't have owned railways. He probably
would have worked on the Trans Siberian Railway. And Buffett
just happened to come of age just in time to
study under Benjamin Graham, the pioneer of security analysis and
one of the greatest investors of the past century. He
also began his career before trillions of dollars had poured

(01:07:21):
into the stock market from index funds and other giant
institutional investors. You know what, I'm going to skip ahead
just in the interested time. I did post this on
the website as a gift link so that you don't
need a Wall Street Journal subscription in order to read it.
Let me just jump to the end talking about his company.

(01:07:41):
Berkshire isn't a Berkshire isn't a hedge fund, mutual fund, ETF,
or any other conventional investment vehicle. By design, it charges
no management fees that would subtract from its returns and
no performance incentive fees that would encourage excessive risk taking
in pursuit of a big payday. Most investment fund operate
under a curse that economists call pro cyclicality.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
After a fund racks up.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
A streak of good returns, investors throw money at it,
forcing its managers to put the new cash to work
in a market that's likely become overpriced in that hinder's
future performance. Then, when returns falter in a falling market,
investors pull their money, making the fund managers sell just
as bargains are becoming abundant. The fund's own investors make
its performance worse, intensifying the markets ups and downs. Berkshire's

(01:08:30):
only cash flows, however, are internal money comes in from
or goes out to the assets it owns. Cash can't
come pouring in from new investors or get yanked out
by fleeing investors at the worst possible times, Because you
can invest in Berkshire only by buying shares from someone
else in the secondary market. This package has given Buffett

(01:08:52):
a structural advantage that's enabled him to pursue opportunities wherever
and whenever he has perceived them. That's a luxury almost
no other professional has, or even once. So long as
most fund managers can earn a lavish living for underperforming
the market, the real risk for them will be trying
anything different. Pigs will sprout feathers before anybody has the

(01:09:16):
daring to try truly emulating Warren Buffett.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
Now, there was a lot more in.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
The middle of that that I skipped, but I thought
that was pretty cool, so I thought I would share
it with you. Ross Just wait until that squirrel starts
bringing his friends. My grandmother one year helped a raccoon
that was stuck outside near Evergreen with no place to
keep warm. After that winter of the raccoon staying in
the shelter my grandma created for her, she brought her babies,

(01:09:42):
and she started giving them more. So the raccoon brought
her babies and the Grandma started giving them oreos every
time they came back. The year after that, a few
of her great babies brought their babies. Eventually, after several
years of giving several generations of these raccoons or she
regularly had forty plus raccoons that were friendly with her,

(01:10:04):
coming every few nights for a cookie. There's a solution
to that, give a macadamia's instead. Rass squirrels are cute,
but can be destructive on your home and property. One
attacked me and I ended up in urgent care.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Are you kidding? Sounds like the killer bunny and Monty python.
The state of.

Speaker 1 (01:10:22):
Colorado considers them a nuisance rodent and it's legal to
kill them, just not with a firearm.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
What now, I'm not saying you're wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
I just think that's weird that you're allowed to kill
them but not with a firearm.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
Wouldn't that be the best way to kill them?

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
I mean, I mean, I realize if you're in it,
you know, you're in the suburbs and there's the house
right next to you and they don't want you firing
a gun.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
But BB gun is that allowed? I mean, what are
you supposed to do? Get a baseball bat.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
I don't want to get too gruesome here, but or
do you trap them or poise? I like squirrels all
caddy shack and get the tae. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
The only what is it? The the only good Varmint rodent?
Is it ed Varmint roadent? Something like that. I forget
the exact line. That's that's Bill Bill Murray at his
best now Dragon. Earlier in the show, I mentioned that

(01:11:07):
a building called the lumber Barren Inn in the Highlands
neighborhood is for sale. And it's a gorgeous eighteen nineties building,
absolutely gorgeous old brick classic building, three stories basically, and
it's got that round almost tower kind of section on
one corner of the building. It's really really a gorgeous building.

(01:11:28):
And it's for sale for three point two million dollars.
And the question I asked listeners earlier in the show
was do you think it's worth more or less because
it's haunted?

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
And so this is a reputation that it's haunted.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
The guy who built it built it, his ten year
old son was murdered in there, and then like eighty
years later or something seventy years later there it actually
functioned as an apartment building for a while, and two
women were killed in that building and the murder remains unsolved.
And so it's been on a Netflix special about normal activity,

(01:12:01):
and there have been ghost hunters at this place, and
I was asking, do you think it's worth less or more?
And I just want to report back to you that,
based on this highly scientifically accurate sample of my listeners,
slightly slightly more people said that it's worth less being haunted,
but it was only probably sixty forty, like a good

(01:12:23):
percentage of people said it would be worth more, either
just because it's fun or because of the opportunity to
have some revenue by selling ghost tours and stuff like that.
So if you're thinking about buying this thing, and look,
it's listed for three point two million dollars, but Denver
real estate is kind of soft right now, so I
have a feeling you might be able to, you know,
get a bit of a bit of a deal. And

(01:12:44):
there was a listener who said, there's always a buyer
for this kind of historic property, right But what I
wanted to mention, and this is kind of half serious,
not that I think any of my listeners is going
to buy the place, but if you do, tell me
and I'll come over and stay there for a night
and see if I see any ghosts.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
But the building actually has.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
According to Axios, it has a transferable cabaret liquor license,
which is a valuable thing, right so you could keep
it as an inn or keep or a bed and
breakfast or whatever and be able to sell alcohol there,
and of course there's a lot of profit in selling
alcohol if you're selling a fair amount of it, and
so that's a kind of thing. It is operating as

(01:13:23):
a bed and breakfast and a place to have events
right now. Producer Shannon said he DJ'ed a wedding there,
so you're allowed. They have a liquor license, so that
makes the place worth a.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Bit of money.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
So that's up on the blog at Rosskominsky dot com
if you want to.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
Go check that out.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
So I try to be judicious in comments I make
about Donald Trump for a couple of reasons, the main
reason being the world seems to be all Trump all
the time, and I find it annoying. That said, he's
president of the United States and arguably the most important
person in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
Right now, whether you like that or not. And he's
in the news all the time because he wants to be.

Speaker 1 (01:14:03):
And sometimes he says and does, you know, things that
are good, and sometimes things are bad. And I just
try to be judicious about talking about him, especially if
I'm gonna be a little critical, but sometimes I gotta
be and and I gotta say this, this bothers me,
this thing with this Trump meme coin, I really really
don't like it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
I I really don't like that this.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Guy, that president, that that Donald Trump, like a day
or two before he became president, announced this junk coin
that you know, like like bitcoin, but but junkie, and
it became it went from like six to seventy right
after he became president. Then it then it uh sold

(01:14:48):
off a lot. And in fact, let me see if
I can find the price now, because it's gone up
in recent days for a reason that I want to
that I want to tell you about. Let me see
if I can find this. All right, so it's down
to ten dollars again. Let me see what we got
in the last Okay, in the last month, so.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
Through most of April, it was hanging around.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
A little under eight a little under eight dollars a coin,
and then Trump made an announcement that I'll tell you
about in a second, and it jumped up to around
thirteen and then eventually traded around fifteen. Has been slowly
steadily drifting back down since then over the last week
and a half or so, a little below eleven right now.

(01:15:38):
And here's here's what bothers me. First of all, I
don't like that he did that. These coins are junk
and they're just collector's items. They have no intrinsic value
at all. But here's what bothers me more than his
doing doing that, And I don't because he's president of
the United States, and I just think it's beyond unseemly.

(01:16:00):
I think it goes beyond that.

Speaker 10 (01:16:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
I'm not going to just criticize Trump for doing something
that looks a little bit bad. That's his brand, that's
what he does, it's why he wins. But this, this
firm that runs this coin, they make their money with
small fees on every transaction, and according to an Associated

(01:16:22):
press piece, since the coin was launched earlier this year,
it's generated more than three hundred and twenty million dollars
in fees for its creators. Now, I don't know if
Trump gets any of that money now, or if he
got paid everything up front for permission for them to
put his name on this stuff. But it is just
such an unbelievable grift. But that's not even what bothers

(01:16:44):
me the most. What bothers me the most is that
a week ago, I think it was I think.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
President Trump posted this thing on social media.

Speaker 1 (01:16:58):
And the short version is that the people who the
top two hundred and twenty owners of this stupid meme
coin will get to go to Trump's golf club. That's
I forget which is it's near Washington, d C. I

(01:17:18):
don't remember the name of It's not mar A Lago.
I think it's it's something else. It's something else. Oh,
it's just called Trump National. That's why I don't know.
The name is sort of a generic name. It's just
called Trump National. It's in Washington, d C. The top
two hundred and twenty holders of this coin will get
to go to dinner at that golf club, and the
top twenty five will get to a tend a reception

(01:17:42):
where Trump will be there. So I think that the
top people in this stuff own millions of dollars of
this coin.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
And I don't know whether they own it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Because they just love Trump that much, or because they
think it's going up in price, or because they think
it will give access to Trump.

Speaker 2 (01:18:01):
But I hate, hate the idea.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
That people can just get access to the President of
the United States by investing in a junk thing designed
to profit him. I understand, we got to pay for play,
pay to play government. I understand all the Key Street lobbyists.
I understand that the whole system is quite corrupt. There's

(01:18:27):
a certain level, though, at which I want the President
of the United States, even if it's Donald Trump, to
seem a bit above that. And issuing this coin, the
right term for this coin is something I can't say
on the radio, all right, the S word coin.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
That's what this whole category of coin is called.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
He issues one, he makes millions, and now he's selling
the chance to have dinner.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
To people who contribute to the grift.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
And I know that there are Trump supporters out there
who don't think he can do anything wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):
But I'm here to tell you that's wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:19:05):
So I was Dragon said just before we went on
the air, Ross, you're looking for PLEX, and I am
looking for PLEX because I got this listener text and
it concerns me a little bit. And we were talking
about squirrels, and for the squirrels are like happy, cute
looking animals with very bouncy tales. And we're talking about
squirrels squirrel and I kind of like them, right, And
my wife has been feeding this squirrel at our house

(01:19:25):
and it turns out she's you know that squirrels are
not supposed to eat Macadamian nuts, but we've been getting
rid of the macadamia nuts that we don't like, and
the squirrel keeps coming back, and I'm wondering if it's
actually the same squirrel or if my wife has been
killing squirrel after squirrel after squirrel and we're just getting
new ones. And then I get this listener text and
it says slingshot metal projectiles they're quiet and effective as
a squirrel elimination system. Now that part are okay, all right?

(01:19:50):
I mean, I'm I got to say, as as as
heartless as I intentionally sound, sometimes I I don't really
love killing small animals just for the sake of it.
And I shouldn't say I don't really love it. What
I mean is I don't like it at all, you know,
if it's not hurting me if it's not you know,
a mouse that's getting into my food and you know,

(01:20:14):
making so I have to throw food away and leaving pooh,
which can be dangerous in the houses.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
Like, I don't need to kill small animals.

Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
Small animals are fine, are fine, right, like compared to
you know, a dinosaur.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
I'm a small animal.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
So anyway, so the listener says this about slingshot metal
projectiles effective squirrel elimination system. But dragon, see, this isn't
the thing that perplexed me. What perplexed me was his
second sentence, or it could be her, but I have
a feeling this is a guy. It also works for rats, pigeons,
and cats.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
You just had the same.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
Reaction I can see by the look on your face
that I had, which.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
Is why I'm good. I'm good.

Speaker 1 (01:20:59):
I'm not.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
What I texted back was, wait, did you say cats?

Speaker 10 (01:21:05):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:21:06):
Are you like trying to kill your neighborhood cats with
a slingshot?

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
That's that's not good.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
You might need to seek some help if you're killing
neighborhood cats.

Speaker 2 (01:21:19):
We definitely made the exact same face, Yeah, we did.
We made the exact same face.

Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
Let me do one minute on a kind of state
political story. I have so much still to do on
the last segment of the show that's coming up in
a bit center. Bill three eighteen was something that had
had a pretty decent amount of support from Republicans and
Democrats alike.

Speaker 2 (01:21:43):
What this was is a bill to modify.

Speaker 1 (01:21:47):
A bill that was passed a year ago to regulate
artificial intelligence in Colorado. It was a fairly bad bill,
and Governor Paul As signed it, but he said he
didn't like it very much, but he signed it saying
that he was counting on the legislature to come back

(01:22:08):
this year and make some changes to it, because otherwise
it was going to be probably pretty harmful to the
state of Colorado. Because when it comes to regulation, Democrats
in the legislature like to follow my mom's maxim of
why just do it when you can overdo it, and

(01:22:30):
that's what they always do. Democrats overdo absolutely everything. And
I'm not going to get into all the details, but
the bottom line is that this AI regulation law goes
into effect on February first of next year. It is
far from clear that even at the very beginning of

(01:22:52):
the next session, if they started with it with this
that they'd be able to pass something that modified some
of the worst provisions of the bill. And again, I'm
not going to get into all the details of it.
It's just too much in the weeds. But the bottom
line is they waited too long to address this thing,
and now they have failed to do it, and they're

(01:23:15):
not going to get it done in this legislative session.

Speaker 2 (01:23:18):
Jennifer Waller of the Colorado.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
Bankers Association said that last year there was two hundred
and seventy five million dollars in credit card fraud and
these companies are using AI to detect credit card fraud,
which is a great use of AI. And if the
bill passed then, or as the bill did pass last year,
the thing that did pass, banks would have had to

(01:23:40):
send a customer a notification every single time a transaction
was due to fraud.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
Because any I'm not gonna get in all details.

Speaker 1 (01:23:50):
It's just massively overwrought, over expensive, overbroad, and it's a
mess and it's gonna hurt Colorado. And the bottom line
is Democrats have failed to fix it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
I'm not surprised.

Speaker 10 (01:24:03):
Oh Ross has crumbled up to a piece of paper
in a nice tight wad. The ball in his hand
right now as he doesn't. Oh no, he's standing up
out of the chair making sure, oh, taking a step
back further than he normally would for hitting the trash can. Now,
I will admit he has made the past two shots
on air off the area is absolutely terrible. He's checking
the wind from north to south today, oddly enough in

(01:24:25):
the studio, because the storm is coming from the south
going to the north.

Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
All right.

Speaker 10 (01:24:28):
He sets up the shot and he brts his arm
back and.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
Well, there we go. He missed the shot, just like usual.

Speaker 10 (01:24:36):
It actually did bounce far enough back to him that
he is able to not even move to pick up
the piece of paper and tries again.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
Missed.

Speaker 10 (01:24:42):
It just barely swishes the trash can bag on the
outside of the rim.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
To missus, that's too bad.

Speaker 10 (01:24:54):
No golf club for Roskamitsky.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
The Trump administration is continuing with their controversies combativeness with
higher education, and I want to share two stories with you.
One actually was from yesterday, but it's not the more
interesting one. The more interesting one is well, actually I
guess they're both from yesterday, but the more interesting one

(01:25:18):
is the newer story. The less interesting story perhaps, although
still interesting CNN headline is just one example of the
headlines on this Trump administration to halt new research grants
for Harvard has battle over political ideology and academic freedom flares.

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
So I'm just going to cover this very very quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
The Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent a letter to Harvard
on Monday night saying that Harvard will not be eligible
for grants from the federal government due to quote consistent
violations of its own legal duties, quoting a little more
in every way, Harvard has failed to abide by its
abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties,

(01:26:00):
it's transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor, adding
that Harvard has quote made a mockery of this country's
higher education system. So let me say one thing. Two
things on that. One, I think she's basically right. The
other is, it's not clear to me which of those
things is actually illegal.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
And to the extent that they say they're.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
Holding back money from Harvard for things that are not
actually violations of law, that might make the Trump administration's
case more difficult when it gets to court. But I
do also think that a lot of these schools have
violated federal civil rights law. I mean, I think it's
a thing that a judge or jury would decide. You
can imagine it going either way. But I think there's

(01:26:45):
a strong case to be made that the way many
of these universities allowed not just not just ugly speech,
but actual harassment of Jewish students. Right. We haven't even
talked about UCLA, where these these uh, you know, terrorist
rag wearing terrorist lovers would ask students who are trying

(01:27:06):
to go on campus, are you Jewish?

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
And if they said yes, they wouldn't let him on campus.

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
And the university waited way, way, way too long to
do anything about this. So I do think the federal
government has a legit argument that these universities have done things.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
Now is it?

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
Is it the right answer to say we're gonna withhold
all your research funding? You know, we can we can disagree,
agree or disagree about that, but you know, Trump administration
plays hardball. My guess is that the financial pressure on
Harvard at this point, especially with Trump also threatening and
I don't think he'll get this done, but threatening to

(01:27:42):
go after Harvard's tax exempt status, I think Harvard will
have to cave. But I think they'll have to do
it in a way if they're gonna get away with
it at all, with their with their donors and with
their students and with liberals, they're gonna have to do
it in a way that that makes it look like
they're just doing the right thing and it happens to

(01:28:03):
go along with what the Trump administration wants. It's gonna
be a very difficult game to play because the Trump
administration is gonna want to make it look not just
like they got Harvard to do the right thing, but
that they got Harvard to do their thing, because they're
gonna want a political victory out of this. So we
will see how it plays out. But I suspect if

(01:28:25):
I had to guess, and I wouldn't bet a lot
on this, But if I had to guess, or if
I had to bet, I would bet they work it
out before it goes to trial, because I frankly, I
don't think either side really wants a trial here, because
either side can easily imagine losing depending on the particular
point we're talking about now when it comes to education.

(01:28:46):
That's actually not the more interesting story. The more interesting
story is this one that I want to share with you.
And it's something that, as I learn and maybe you
will learn, was a apparently already part of federal law
for a long time, then went unenforced for a long time,
and now the Trump administration is getting back to it.

(01:29:08):
And I got to say on this one, I love
this one. I love this one. So have a listen.
This is from the Wall Street Journal, the Trump Administration's
latest threat to colleges and universities. Get your former students
to pay back their loans, or future students might not
get any The administration is invoking rules, so not making rules.

(01:29:31):
Invoking rules that means the rule already exists that allow
the government to shut off the federal student loan spigot
for specific schools if too many of their former students
have lapsed on payments. According to the notice the Education
Department sent on Monday, the government, Now this is the

(01:29:53):
part I did not know. The government has long had
the power to restrict federal student aid if too many
students don't pay it back, a check intended to make
sure the government isn't on the hook for degrees that
don't pay off. For graduates, losing eligibility for federal aid
is a potentially devastating blow to a school's ability to
attract students. Dragoned you have you ever heard of that

(01:30:14):
as an existing provision of law.

Speaker 2 (01:30:16):
I cannot recall. I don't think so. I haven't.

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
And of course we've heard about this as an idea
for a long time in a slightly different context. The
bigger concept being have have the schools whose students take
out the loans be on the hook for at least
a little bit of the amount of the loan, so
that they don't either award degrees that once a person

(01:30:39):
has that degree they can never pay it back, they
won't be able to make enough money to pay the
loan back, or so that they don't raise prices for
the schools so high that the borrowers can't pay the
loan back.

Speaker 2 (01:30:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:30:51):
So it has a disciplining kind of effect on the
schools if they have some financial risk tied to the
loan not being paid back. But I didn't know this
part was already in federal law that if enough of
a college or university's graduates don't pay off the loans,
then the government can say we're not giving loans anymore

(01:31:13):
to people who want to go to your school. Because
we're not going to get paid back. After all, the
federal government is protecting you and me. These federal student
loans come from the federal treasury and need to get
paid back to the federal treasury.

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):
And for every student loan that doesn't get paid.

Speaker 1 (01:31:27):
Back, that just becomes part of the national debt. That's
not a loss to a private bank. It's not a
loss to the university that already got paid It's just
a loss to the tax payer. So I love this.
Now let me give you a little more from the Journal.
A far bigger group of schools is now at risk
because so many students never resume paying back their loans

(01:31:50):
after a pandemic.

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):
Pause.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
By the way, if you were listening an hour and
a half ago, I had a guest on the show
from Sofi's name is Brian Walsh, and we were talking
about the federal government yesterday yesterday restarting collections on student
loans that were in default. This is not the same
as the relatively small number of student loans that were
actually forgiven. Okay, A forgiven loan is not a loan

(01:32:15):
that's in default. Okay, So back to this piece. Nearly
ten million borrowers are either already in default.

Speaker 2 (01:32:21):
Or on the CUSP.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
According to the Education Department, within a few months, roughly
a quarter of borrowers nationwide could be in default, meaning
they are at least.

Speaker 2 (01:32:31):
Nine months behind on payments. Think about that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:33):
Think about the incentives that Joe Biden created when he
ran for presidents saying I'm going to cancel your student loans. Now,
I don't want to pat myself on the back too much,
but let me just tell you a couple things that
I said at the time. First, that's immoral. These people
took out loans to go to college, not just college.

Speaker 2 (01:32:54):
We always talk about it as if it's.

Speaker 1 (01:32:55):
College loan, but somewhere close to half of student loan
debt is for graduate degrees, for MBAs and PhDs and
medical degrees and law degrees and MBAs and all this stuff. Right,
It's true that far fewer people get graduate degrees than
get college degrees, but at the federal level, you can

(01:33:16):
borrow a lot more when you're getting a graduate degree
than where you're getting an undergraduate degree. So you might
have taken out eighty thousand dollars for your undergrad and
then two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for your grad
school and you owe three hundred and thirty thousand dollars,
So just keep that in mind.

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
Also, right, So a lot of the money went.

Speaker 1 (01:33:34):
To people who took who went to grad school and
absolutely positively must be kept on the hook to pay
off their loans.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
Remember, you're not.

Speaker 1 (01:33:44):
You can't actually cancel a student loan. You can't cancel
the debt. You can say we're going to reassign the
debt so that the person who went and got the
loan doesn't have to pay it back, and instead we're
going to make the taxpayers pay it back because it
comes part of the national debt, which we'll have to
be paid back at some point. But that's immoral and
that's disgusting, and it's basically theft. It's theft from you

(01:34:07):
and me to buy the votes to the people who
decided to go to college and take out loans for it.
So the other thing I said at the time, beside
the fact that it was theft, is that it was huge.
And this is sort of not really relevant right now,
but I said that Joe Biden is not going to
be able to cancel student loans in the numbers that

(01:34:29):
he's claiming, and again, it's not really canceling. It's a
reassigning student loan debt from the person who got the
education to the taxpayers. That's all it is. But I
said he won't be able to do that because it's illegal.
There are some circumstances. There are some laws in place
that I actually don't like, where you can get a
student loan, you know, forgiven, meaning the rest of us
have to pay for it if you go to work

(01:34:49):
for the government or for a nonprofit.

Speaker 2 (01:34:51):
I don't like it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:51):
But that's in the law, that was already in the
law before Biden. But what I said was, Biden is
making this huge promise to all these twenty something and
thirty somethings and maybe forty somethings that hey, you're not
going to have to pay back this debt. And what
I said was Biden is going to have an immense
number of disappointed people. He made this huge promise to
all these people, Hey, we're gonna give you. But he

(01:35:13):
didn't word it this way, but effectively, we're going to
give you thirty or fifty or eighty or two hundred
and thirty seven thousand dollars of other.

Speaker 2 (01:35:23):
People's children's money.

Speaker 1 (01:35:24):
We're gonna give it to you now, you can steal
from their futures so you don't have to pay off
your debt that you voluntarily took out to go to college.
And that's what Biden was going to do, and I said,
he's not going to be able to do it, and
all these people who didn't think about the morality of it,
and I don't want to be too rough on him,
because it might not even be obvious to many people
that when the student debt gets can if you don't

(01:35:44):
think about it, it might not be obvious that it's coming
out of our children's futures. You might just think, oh good,
I don't have to pay it back, and you know,
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
Think anything more of it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:52):
And you know, for the person who didn't think anything
more of it than that, well you probably should have.

Speaker 2 (01:35:57):
But it doesn't mean you're a bad person.

Speaker 1 (01:35:58):
Where where the person who did understand that it means, oh, yeah,
we're gonna have other taxpayers pay off my college loans.
And you were happy with that, you are a bad person.
So he didn't get it done, and now you have
all these disappointed, you know, millennials and maybe some gen zers,
older gen zers, but most millennials, and I don't know

(01:36:21):
how many of them withheld their votes from Kamala Harris
because they were disappointed that their student loans didn't get canceled.
But think about the incentive that they created. Think about
what Joe Biden put in these people's minds, the idea
that they can borrow not just a little money, a
lot of money. Fifty grand is a lot, two hundred

(01:36:43):
grand is really really a lot in many places in
the country, not in Denver, right, two hundred grand or
some of these higher end amounts of student loans in
buy house for that. Now, do you think a bank
is gonna let you off the hook for your mortgage?
Do you think there would be any political support in

(01:37:03):
the United States for the government saying we're gonna make
taxpayers pay off those people's mortgages.

Speaker 2 (01:37:10):
Of course not.

Speaker 1 (01:37:12):
So he created this mindset, you don't have to pay
it back, don't worry about it, And that just persisted
because even after COVID, so a lot of these loans
were put on hold during COVID and interested into crewe
and you just didn't have to pay And that was
pretty stupid because unemployment didn't go up very much during COVID.

Speaker 2 (01:37:30):
It did it first.

Speaker 1 (01:37:31):
And then you know, especially for people who are working
office jobs and can work from home, they could keep working,
but they still put it on hold for everybody, even
these people who just kept working from home and could
have kept making the payments. And now what you've taught
them is we're gonna make it so you don't have
to make payments anymore. And now they just become used
to that. They're numb, they're addicted to that drug.

Speaker 2 (01:37:51):
And now all of a sudden.

Speaker 1 (01:37:52):
The federal government comes back and says, we're gonna do
what we should have been doing all along, and what
we were doing before COVID, And gosh, how crazy does
this sound. You got to pay back your loan. So
now you got this additional thing that I'm talking about here,
where we've got an immense number of people who are
in default. And if a lot of them come from

(01:38:15):
if many of them come from any one institution, those
institutions are now going to have.

Speaker 2 (01:38:21):
Some real trouble. They may have risk.

Speaker 1 (01:38:23):
Of the federal government saying we're not going to loan
money anymore to folks who want to go to this school,
and I think this is a great thing, and again
you can imagine the positive incentives from that. Education Department
says schools can be dropped if more than thirty percent
of their recent students have defaulted in the past three

(01:38:44):
years or forty percent of defaulted in the most recent year.
Before the pandemic, very few colleges had rates like that.
It was mostly the ones that did were mostly trade
and technical schools. But with student default rates nationally running
at historic highs, according to the Journal, it's likely that
far more schools could see their aid cut if default

(01:39:09):
rates don't get better quickly. So we'll see. I spent
probably too long on that, but I love that story.
I know I'm doing a lot of national stuff here,
but I'm going to do one more national story with you,
and that is about abortion. You know, I don't love
talking about the issue of abortion. I'm not interested in

(01:39:30):
debating with you what should government policy be, or what's
right and what's wrong or all that. That's not where
my interest is. My interest when I talk about abortion
is the politics of it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:40):
That's all.

Speaker 1 (01:39:41):
You know. The rest you can talk about with your
family or with your prest or, rabbi or whoever wants
to talk about with that with you, but I'm not
interested in that part. So there was a lawsuit that
was brought in Texas by a bunch of doctors who
were not from Texas, arguing that the government should ban
one of the two drugs that are called the abortion pill, right,

(01:40:06):
MiFi pristone is the name of this thing. So they
brought that to Texas because they brought it to a
particular federal circuit where there's only one judge, and he
is well known for being aggressively pro life, aggressively anti abortion,
and it's just forum shopping, and it's unfortunate actually that
you can go to a federal judge and know what

(01:40:27):
he's gonna say on something like that. So they brought
this case to that judge's name is Matthew Causmerick, if
you want to know, and they asked him to halt
approval of this MEFA pristone drug. And that got appealed
and it got thrown out because the Supreme Court said
that the plaintiffs didn't have the right to sue because
they hadn't actually been harmed. So they came back again
and they went back to Texas, and again the plaintiffs

(01:40:50):
aren't from Texas. They have no connection to Texas. It's
just forum shopping. And the Biden administration argued, Dude, this
case should be thrown out, and if not thrown out,
it at least.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):
Needs to move out of Texas.

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
There is no connection between this case and Texas there
and it should just be tossed out. But if it's not,
you need to change venue. It does not belong in
that case. That was the Biden administration's argument against this
case from again anti abortion doctors who filed the case
with a judge they know would be sympathetic to them
in Texas. Yesterday, the Trump administration, which is now in charge,

(01:41:34):
responded with their take on what should happen with the case,
and it was exactly the same as the Biden administrations.
They said, this case must be either thrown out or
moved to another venue. And I thought that was a
super interesting thing. And they're right as a matter of law,
they are absolutely right. I bet it might frustrate some

(01:41:56):
of their more hardcore anti abortion supporters, but as a
matter of law, is absolutely right.

Speaker 2 (01:42:02):
And I found it pretty interesting.

Speaker 11 (01:42:03):
Him Andy, Hello, Uh, you know, but they made they
made a lot of hay, and rightfully so, about immigration
and immigrants, forum shopping and getting these sweeping stays when
they had no connection to Washington, DC and ths of
that nature.

Speaker 2 (01:42:17):
So don't get me wrong.

Speaker 11 (01:42:20):
If they thought it would benefit them and they could
get away with it, maybe they would have gone into
different directions. But it is consistent with that same argument.

Speaker 2 (01:42:28):
Right, you've got it.

Speaker 11 (01:42:29):
You've got a file in a district where you actually
have a connection.

Speaker 1 (01:42:32):
Yeah, right, and forum shopping happens everywhere all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:42:35):
Is real annoying. What are you coming up?

Speaker 11 (01:42:38):
I got this clown, Ross Kaminsky.

Speaker 2 (01:42:40):
I had them on the show yesterday.

Speaker 11 (01:42:41):
Well, you know what, when you have an expert on
and they don't do the expert thing right, they have
to come back on to clarify whatever expert thing the
expert messed up.

Speaker 2 (01:42:51):
But never again with this guy.

Speaker 1 (01:42:53):
Never again.

Speaker 11 (01:42:54):
We're also going to talk to the exhibitor executive director
of the New Titanic exhibit. Oh, and a young Irish
last I believe, straight from Ireland about an Irish dance
music show that's coming fabulous, like fun show with not as.

Speaker 2 (01:43:08):
Much politics as normals. So you're happy about that?

Speaker 1 (01:43:10):
I had a very squirrel centered show today. One one
very quick exactly one very quick question for you, Mandy.
There's there's a famous eighteen nineties home for sale in
Denver with a very strong reputation for being haunted.

Speaker 2 (01:43:23):
It was a Netflix special in all this.

Speaker 1 (01:43:25):
It's for sale for I think three point two million,
and part of the reason it's that expensive is that
it has a liquor license, so you can.

Speaker 2 (01:43:32):
Actually make money there.

Speaker 1 (01:43:33):
Anyway, my question for you, if you were in the
market for such a thing, sure, would the hauntedness of
it make it more or less appealing for you?

Speaker 11 (01:43:41):
No, because I would probably annoy the crap out of
the ghost. I'd be like, hey, buddy, I'm here for
you if you need to chat whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:43:47):
Hey, just let me know. You know, you can peer
anywhere you want. I'll take a.

Speaker 11 (01:43:53):
You know, whatever ghostly appear, I'll take it all. I'll
drive them crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:43:57):
Friday not the character name, but like the title, the
job title of that that short lady in the poultry
guys whose job in Poultrygeist movie, his job was to
scare the bad the demons away.

Speaker 2 (01:44:08):
This house is clear.

Speaker 1 (01:44:11):
Yeah, so I thought she was like an exorcist, something
you could be that for this house we were just describing,
but just annoy the guests by yours.

Speaker 11 (01:44:19):
There's actually businesses in California now to get squatters out
of properties. There's a guy who squats on the squatters
and drives them so crazy they finally leave.

Speaker 1 (01:44:28):
Dude, if you decided radio wasn't a thing for you,
there's your next career.

Speaker 2 (01:44:34):
Stay tuned for Mandy