06-18-25 - *FULL SHOW* Suing Denver; Fentanyl in CO; Trump & Iran; Jell-O colors - The Ross Kaminsky Show

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
President Trump was talking just a little bit ago when
he said Iran has reached out about coming to the
White House.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
That's interesting, very interesting.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
We're going to talk about the Iran Israel US thing
over the course of.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
The show today multiple times.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
It's clearly the biggest thing going on in the world
right now, and the and the question there's so much
there's the actual what does.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
It mean for Iran?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
What does it mean for the world, What does it
mean for American politics? So much of this stuff is
incredibly interesting. In a minute, I'll share with you a
note that jd Vance posted yesterday, and you got to
keep in mind who Jade Vance's audience is, as he
is not only Donald Trump's vice president, but probably also
somebody who would like to be president, and trying to
think about who his likely voters are.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Remember keep in mind when.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
We get to that that anything you hear a presidential
hopeful say right now is not about the general election,
and you need to keep that frame in mind. Everything
Gavin Newsom says, everything jd Vance says, and everything who
knows Kamala Harris and plenty of other Republicans too. It's
going to be an open seat right there. Won't be

(01:10):
an incumbent running in twenty twenty eight. They only care
right now about winning their party's nomination, and they'll deal
with the general election later. They can recalibrate, triangulate, move
to the center, whatever they need to do. It's all
about winning the base. So I'll get to that in
a minute. Let me do two other quick things. First,
congratulations to the Florida Panthers for winning their second Stanley

(01:30):
Cup in a row. I was rooting for the Edmonton
Oilers because I'm rooting for Canada a little bit lately,
for reasons I need not explain.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
But if you watched, and.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
I have no particular affection for Florida, if it had
been a different American team, I might have been rooting
for him, And certainly if it had been the Avalanche
of the Capitals, I would have been rooting for them.
But Florida, I don't care, and I don't know. I've
always liked Edmonton. Edmonton's one of those towns, just like
or their sports teams. How can you not like them?
It's like it's like not liking the Green Bay Packers.

(02:01):
How can you not like the Green Bay Packers? They're
so harmless? They seem so friendly. Anyway, Congratulations to the Panthers,
I will say, even though I was rooting for the Oilers,
the Panthers were clearly the better team and they definitely
deserved the win. The other thing I wanted to mention,
we're in that time of the year where over the
course of the next few weeks, and actually this started

(02:23):
a week or two ago, usually on Wednesdays and Thursdays,
but they can do whatever they want. The Supreme Court
will release some opinions, and they tend to release the
most controversial ones toward the end of this period of
opinion releases, which will probably be end of this month
or beginning.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Of next month. In any case, they did release one.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
They might have released more than one today, but what
they released today is one of the ones they released
today was a case about a law in Tennessee that
prevents so called gender affirming metadical care for transgender miners,

(03:03):
and the Supreme Court ruled sixty three all six conservatives
against all three.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Liberals, that the law is permissible.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Reuters says the Supreme Court back to Republican backed ban
on in Tennessee on gender affirming medical care in a
setback for transgender rights that could bolster efforts by states
to defend other measures targeting transgender people. The Court and
a sixty three ruling, powered by its conservative justices, decided
that the band does not violate the Constitution's fourteenth Amendment

(03:35):
promise of equal protection. They upheld a lower court's decision
which upheld Tennessee's law barring medical treatments like puberty blockers
and hormones for people under the age of eighteen experiencing
gender dysphoria. The Supreme Court's three liberal judges dissented. I'm
only going to take a few seconds to offer my
own commentary on this. Number one is that I think

(04:01):
the Supreme Court is correct that the law is not unconstitutional.
That's my I'm not a lawyer, right, but I think
they are correct that the law is not unconstitutional. However,
I am very, very frustrated with conservatives who for years,
for decades, for my entire life, have been correctly saying

(04:25):
that the government should not be a replacement for the
judgment of parents, or parents and doctors, right, and now
they say, well, the government shouldn't substitute its judgment for
that of parents and doctors, except in this one case
where we don't like the whole transgender thing.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
It offends our sense of something, don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
What, and therefore, just in this case, we think government
should be able to override what parents and doctors think
are our best for children and patients. And it kind
of makes me sick even though I think the law
is legal, right, I think the law is legal. So

(05:08):
this is, by the way, also why we have a
federal system. If you don't like it, leave the state,
move somewhere else. This is the reason actually that these
kinds of laws, when they are written, should properly be
within states and not at the federal level, just like
with abortion. All right, now, let me go to the JD.
Vance thing that I told you about. So jd Vance, obviously,

(05:33):
Donald Trump's vice president has long had a rather isolationist streak,
even more than Donald Trump's, and JD. Vance is almost
certainly running for president. So he needs to walk a
line here between supporting the boss, which is the number
one job, and making sure that the people who he

(05:55):
hopes will push him over the line when it comes
to getting a Republican nomination for president, making sure that
those folks will stick.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
With him and not think that he's abandoning them.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
And when I say them, I mean the isolationist wing
of MAGA. MAGA has a very significant isolationist wing. It
might be a majority, it's not all, but it's a lot.
So let me just share this with you. Hopefully I
have time for this here. This is from jd Vance yesterday.
He says, Look, I'm seeing this from the inside, and
I'm admittedly biased towards our president and my friend, but

(06:28):
there's a lot of crazy stuff on social media. So
I wanted to address some things directly on the Iran issue. First,
the President has been amazingly consistent over ten years that
Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and I think in
the interesting time, I'm just going to kind of skip
through this a little bit. Second, I've seen a lot
of confusion over the issue of civilian nuclear power and
uranium enrichment. These are distinct issues. Iran could have civilian

(06:52):
nuclear power without enrichment, but Iran rejected that. So what
he's getting at there is, if you want a nuclear reactor,
you can just buy enriched uranium of the proper level
of enrichment that you need to feed that reactor.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
You don't need to do domestic enrichment, So.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
That's what he's talking about there, He says, I have
yet to see a good argument for why Iran would
need to enrich uranium well above the threshold for civilian use.
Skipping ahead, meanwhile, the President has shown remarkable restraint in
keeping our military's focus on protecting our troops and our citizens.
He may decide he needs to take further action to

(07:27):
end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president.
And of course people are right to be worried about
foreign entanglement after the last twenty five years of idiotic
foreign policy. And let me just interject here I agree
with jd Vance on that statement. And then he concludes
with this, but I believe the President has earned some
trust on this issue, and having seen this close up
and personal, I can assure you that he is only

(07:48):
interested in using the American military to accomplish the American
people's goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus. So
I actually think that's a very good note. I think
it's right on target. I don't know if I'm say
that about JD. Vance these days, but I think that
is right on target. I couldn't find anything in that
entire note to disagree with, and it raises a lot
more interesting political questions that we will talk about a

(08:11):
little bit later in the show. Keep it here on KOA.
This is from entrepreneur dot com, although you can find
the article and lots of the history and lots of places.
The colors of Jello might look different on store shelves
in a few years as craft Hinds makes a sweeping
change to remove artificial dyes from its product. They announced
yesterday that they will discontinue using artificial dyes in the

(08:34):
formulation of its products by the end of twenty twenty seven.
In addition to Jello, craft hines as removing artificial colors
from Crystal Light cool Aid, their flavored water brand called
Miomi Capital O, and Marshmallow Jet puffed products. I wonder
what color is? I wonder what artificial color is in

(08:57):
a white thing? Whatever? There you go. The company said
the change would only affect about ten percent of their
products by net sales. They say the vast majority of
our products use either natural colors or no colors at all.
For example, Hind's Tomato ketchup has never had artificial colors. Obviously,
that red color comes from tomatoes. Well, I shouldn't say obviously,

(09:18):
because there are things where you would think the color
would be natural and it turns out not to be.
Craft has assembled a team to remove artificial colors where
they're not needed, and again, they're going to replace artificial
colors with natural colors, or if there aren't natural colors
that exist already that meet their color needs, they will
look to formulate new natural colors. So quick comment on this,

(09:43):
I have not seen any science that convinces me that
the artificial colors are actually harmful. That doesn't mean I'm
in a great hurry to ingest them or for my
kids to ingest them.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
So it doesn't break my heart that they're going to
do this.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
And I think if I grew up as a little
kid with fruit loops that are were slightly less brightly colored,
then it wouldn't bother me, right, it's all. It's all
what you're used to, and there are a lot of
other countries that don't use these artificial colors that we
use now. Kind of became something of a famous story
in the past six months or or a year maybe

(10:20):
with RFK sort of showing up on the scene about
all this stuff. I think Canada for example, Right, so
you get fruit loops there and they look different there.
The colors are a little duller, and you know, maybe
the brighter colors are supposed to look happier and get
you more excited to buy the cereal or something.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
I'm sure it's all a marketing thing, it must be.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
But I also think that if you grew up without
the super bright colors, then you wouldn't really miss them.
And I think that's probably the way this is going
to go. And and and it's fine, you know, I
just I want I want folks to be careful on
the on the science. There are a lot of claims
about it, and we need to be very very careful
with the difference between causation and correlation. A lot of

(10:59):
people talk about, well, since the advent of these colors,
you know, kids have this, that and the other thing,
you know, more ADHD for example, And they try to
attribute it somehow to the science of to science regarding
the chemical structure of the colorings themselves and how those
chemicals interact with the body.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
And I'm not saying that's impossible, okay.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
But what I am saying is it might be correlation
rather than causation.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
It might be that.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Kids are eating a lot of things that have these
colors in them, stuff with, for example, a lot of
sugar or a lot of highly processed food, which is
another thing that's a big subject of conversation right now,
And maybe they're getting these bad effects the ADHD from
some other ingredient in foods that also contain the colors,

(11:55):
rather than from the color themselves.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
So, just as a science nerd, I do want to
be careful of that.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
But I go back to what I was saying before,
I don't really see a benefit to ingesting these colors,
and therefore, all else being equal, it doesn't break my
heart that they're going away. This is probably one of
the few upsides of RFK junior. And there isn't actually
a law that is pushing craft hinds to do this. Yes,

(12:23):
a few colors are going away as a matter of
government mandate, but lots of them aren't. And so you know,
craft HNS is getting rid of all of them anyway,
And so what that says to me, and I think
this is interesting and positive, But what that says to
me is that there's consumer demand now and this is

(12:43):
this goes along in a way with a line I
like to use, and I didn't make it up. Leaders
don't follow polls, they change them. And I think that's
what's happening here. I don't know that RFK is really
a leader, but in this issue he actually could well be.
And but by him raising this and other people picking
it up, and you know, the Maha movement and all

(13:05):
this stuff, now you actually have customers, consumers letting these
food companies know, hey, we want food products without these things.
And these food companies are thinking they're going to be
able to sell this stuff without the artificial colors. And
you know what, I bet they're right. Quite an interesting

(13:25):
time we live in right now. I said that before.
Just so much going on in the world to you know,
three wars at least right Israel, Iran, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Israel, Gaza.
One quick comment on that and they're gonna get to
my special guests. Part of the reason the Israel Iran
thing is happening now is because since Hamas attacked Israel,

(13:50):
that caused Israel to destroy Hamas and Hezbelah right, and
then Trump kind of sort of took who Thi's out
of play. And then there was a revolution in Syria
that took out the pro Aranian government there, which was
made possible by Israel taking out Hesbelah. And therefore Iran's

(14:14):
main proxies that they could use as threats against Israel
are gone. And so now if Israel's going to take
on Iran, they're basically only taking on Iran. Yeah, there's
some scattered militias around and stuff like that, but that's
part of the reason that this is happening now. And
it just goes to show what an incredible disaster it

(14:36):
was for Hamas and their backers in Iran, for Hamas
to have done that October seventh, horrendous, murderous attack. All right,
let's do something completely different. I am so happy to
welcome back to the show the chief economist of the
Ross Kominski Show. His name is Steve Moore. He is
the founder of the Club for Growth, which is when

(14:57):
we first met. He is koff founder of the Committee
to Unleashed Prosperity, which is one of his current projects.
He's been at Heritage, he's been at CATO, and he's
an all around good guy. Oh and he's also an
occasional economic advisor to President Trump.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Hi, Steve, it's good to be with you. Thanks for
having me. It's been a long time.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, it's been way it's been way too long.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
I saw your I get your daily emails from the
committee to Unleashed Prosperity, and I love those daily emails
and I should probably have you on more often.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
People know that they your listeners to sign up and
just go to Unleash Prosperity dot com. And it is
absolutely free, so and thanks for saying that. We have
a good time putting it together, and it's just a
free little update on what's going with the economy and
finances and politics.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Unleash Prosperity prosperity dot com. So folks, you should definitely
go there and sign up. It's a great short daily
email that that distills sometimes complex economic policy and data into.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Plain English that anybody can understand. And it's really good.
All right. So, Steve, before we get to the.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Senate version of the big Beautiful Bill, let me just
tell you what I've said about a little bit on
the radio, and I want to know what you've said
about the House version. But what I've said is there's
a lot of good stuff in it. But for me,
the increase in the salt deduction, the note, the unlimited
it and we'll talk. I put that word in there
for a reason when we get to the Senate thing.
But the no tax on tips, the unlimited, no tax

(16:28):
on overtime, no tax on social Security, and not enough
cuts in spending had me saying that, you know, in
my ideal world, if I were not motivated as a
member of Congress by having to please leadership or something
like that, i'd vote against it. So before we get
to the Senate updates, which I mostly liked, what's your
take on the House version?

Speaker 3 (16:51):
So listen, I would give the House bill about a
b By the way, it has to pass a pass bill,
because if we don't pass this bill, then we're looking
at a four trillion dollar tax increase on Jenifer. So
it will pass. They are going to pass this tax bill.
Shame on every Democrat in the House who voted against

(17:13):
that bill. I don't understand the logic of that, because
the middle class will get crushed by the tax burden
that would be imposed if we do allow this to expire.
Now are the things I don't like about the House bill? Yes,
but I would certainly have voted for it. Notwithstanding you
make some very good points. Does it cut spending it up? No,

(17:33):
But I want to remind people there this is the
first of potentially three reconciliation bills. So what I'm thinking
is that instead of one beautiful bill, we may have
two or three beautiful bills. Get the tax cut done now,
because it has to get done, and then let's take
a real chainsaw to some of these programs that are
my god, there's five hundred billion dollars of erroneous payments

(17:58):
by these programs every year, one hundred billion dollars, So
we can easily cut more. And to your point, you
know this from reading the hotline. If you look at
the ten year baseline for what Congress is expected to spend, well,
you know, through your two thousand and thirty seven or
two and thirty six, it's something like eighty five trillion,

(18:18):
and under the Republican budget it's eighty three point five trillion. Yeah,
that's not a lot of savings over ten years.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
I'm sure you remember. I'm sure you remember and probably
knew personally. An interesting I will say journalists named Robert
or Bob Novak.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
You must have known him. I knew out very well
and and well, and Bob used.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
To say that God put Republicans on earth to cut taxes,
and if they don't do that, they have no other purpose.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Right, That's right.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
That was him.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
I was there when he said it.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
That's awesome. Okay.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
So my new version of that is God put Republicans
on earth to cut spending, right, right?

Speaker 2 (19:02):
I mean, are you there with me?

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Well? I do think you know, we first of all,
we have got to grow the economy, and you do that.
You know, these tax cuts, and I think it's you know,
I'm just looking at the tax portion of the bill
right now. I think that's good. I think it's sensible
for the economy, sensible for families and businesses. Now do
I think we should dramatically cut spending? Of course? I mean,
you know, I'm out of my whole life to that.

(19:26):
For forty years, I've been in Washington trying to get
that done. Does this bill deliver on that? Not so much.
He has some minor cuts, but even things like work
requirements for Medicaid and food stamps, which are no brainers.
I mean, seventy five percent of American degree that if
you're going to get, you know, free food from the
government and free healthcare. You should at least have to
be working or if looking for a job, if that is,

(19:47):
if you're able by either if you're in the hospital
or you're in a wheelchair or mental deficiency that you
can't work, of course, but you know, there's there's millions
of people on Medicaid that could be and should be working,
and they're just getting the free healthcare saying well, you
got to work to get it. And then we have
to do something about the fact that the total government
is reimbursing states in California gets ninety cents for every

(20:11):
dollar they spend on Medicaid, so they're actually balancing their
budget by putting more and more people on Medicaid. It's
a scam. So we got to do something about that
as well.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Okay, so all right, let's keep going. I keep not
getting to the Senate amendment, but we will. But I
want to stick with the thing you just said about
that scam, and I want to also tie into it.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
The salt deduction.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
To me, the salt there are many galling things in
the tax code, and there are probably a million galling
things in the tax code that I don't know about that.
We're snuck in there for special interest, so I'd never
even learned about them. But the salt deduction is just
a way for upper middle class and upper class people
who live in high tax states to force the rest

(20:54):
of us to subsidize their state tax bill. And the
proper salt deduction amount is zero. So I can't imagine
you would disagree with me on that. So what's do
you agree with me on that?

Speaker 4 (21:06):
Of course?

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, yet written that, I mean I was the one.
You know, what we wrote is you know Larry cutnoh
and I wrote sort of the first version of the
Trump tax bill back in early twenty sixteen with Trump,
And you know, I always tell you that should be
in a Sithonian because we just is on a legal path.
Is that it should have the fifteen percent rate, should
do this and that, and a lot of what we
put on that notepad ended up into law. And one

(21:27):
of the things I always insisted on when we do
this bill is we should get rid of the state
and local tax deduction because I mean, you summarize it
very well, it just allows very wealthy people in New
York and New Jersey and California to export their tax
to people living in lower tax states. That doesn't mean
it's not good economics. You never want to subsidize states
for raising their taxes, and that's what we do. So

(21:51):
the House bill has a forty thousand dollars deduction. You
could detect up to forty thousand, which is outrageous. Instantly,
I want to step back from Russ because this is
an important point for your listeners. Do you know what
percentage of Americans itemize their deductions today?

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Well, with the new like super high standard deduction, I
bet it's under twenty percent.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
Yeah, a lot on Earth it's nine.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
So think about this. I mean, you know, this is
what I'm trying to tell these senators. I met with
a bunch of the senators this morning. I said, look,
only nine percent of Americans itemized their deductions. The other
ninety one percent they just check the box matter deduction,
You take the center and you're done, which was, by
the way, one of the great simplification measures ever. It
made filling out taxes much easier because you just checked

(22:37):
the box. Yes, now here's where I'm going with this.
Who do you think the nine percent who itemize their
deductions rich people, Yes, rich people. So let's get rid
of all the deductions. You want to make the text
coute there. Just get rid of all the deductions. The
lower everybody's rate.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
I'm with you, I'm right there with you, man.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
I mean, so that's what I'm trying to tell these
I mean, we're actually very close to about lax. Get
rid of all the deductions for millionaires and billionaires. I
mean there's Bill Gates need charitable deduction, or there's you know,
you need a deduction for his healthcare benefits, that kind
of thing. Obviously not So you get rid of all
that stuff, and uh, and then what you do is
lower rates and you get to a very efficient tax system. Uh.

(23:18):
You can bet maybe get the top right down to
the twenty five percent maybe lower. Can you imagine how
our economy would like be on rocket fuel with that
kind of a system. And so, you know, I'm kind
of frustrated. My line is, go for the gold here,
let's do it. Let's let's let's really finally fix this
tax system. You should this would be no deductions. The
only deduction should be for yourself and your kids. Period.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
We're talking with Steve Moore, who among other things, is
co founder of the Committee to Unleashed Prosperity Unleash Prosperity
dot com.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
And uh, when when you get.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
To that homepage at Unleashed Prosperity dot com over toward
the right side, you'll see a little red box with
white writing that says, get the hotline every day. I
want you to click on that and sign up. It's
absolutely free and it's an invaluable resource. All right, So Steve,
let's stick with this for a second. Okay, so you've
got all these crazy deductions. You've got the salt deduction,

(24:10):
You've got the Medicare or Medicaid scam, whichever one it
is that you were just talking about. Yeah, okay, so
you've got all these things that almost every Republican would
say should go away. And yet when you look at
the so called big beautiful bill, because the Republican majority
in the House is so small, you've got Republicans, you know,

(24:31):
Mike Lawler famously from New York, you got other New
York Republicans in California Republicans who are saying they won't
vote for the bill unless the salt deduction goes up.
But then you've also like, why is that scam still there?
Why is all this other stuff still there?

Speaker 2 (24:44):
So I'm asking you.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
This question more as a political analyst, which you are
the best at among economists because of what you've been
doing for so long. So as a political question, why
can't we get this done? You could pick salt as
an example without having to bend over for these people.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
Well, I'm of the mind that, you know, Look, let's
take somebody like Mike Waller, who's from New York and
I think he's from Long Island.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
It's a very wealthy Westchester.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
He's from Westchester, Westchester, Okay, so that's a wealthy area.
So he has a lot of high income voters who
got not you know, whacked by losing the self deduction.
So he's sort of quote standing up for his voters here,
but he's not really doing that because I just looked
at the numbers. Eighty five percent of the voters in
this district got a tax cut from the from the

(25:36):
the twenty seventeen bill. So what he's basically saying is
I'm willing to I mean, this is not an exaggeration,
and we're going to rerunning ads in his district to
say this Mike Waller is willing to raise tax on
eighty five percent of the tax payers in Westchester County
so that the five percent of the richest people can
get a big tax cut.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
You know, this is a thing. All right. Let me
back up.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
I don't know President Trump's position on the salt deduction.
I think he sort of likes the sault deduction. But
you would know better than I do.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah, I haven't really directly. I mean I think he may,
you know, because he's from New York. Yeah, he lives
in Florida.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Now I think, yeah, yeah, he does.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
You live in Florida, you don't have to worry about
because they don't have an income text. But I don't
know where he is, but you know.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
But my point is, I would, like I said earlier
in the show Steve in a different context, that leaders
don't follow polls. They change them. And Donald Trump is
certainly capable of this. And I mean the best example
is probably immigration. He made immigration the issue, and then
he won the presidency on that issue in twenty sixteen,

(26:46):
and kind of again in twenty twenty four. There was
economic stuff in twenty twenty four as well.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Why isn't Trump.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Out there castigating or if he needs to threatening Mike
Lawler and these other people.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
Well, at the end of the day, I want to
make sure your listeners understand this. We're going to pass
this bill. It's going to pass, no doubt. I mean,
because as I said it, thus that failure is not
an option. If Republicans don't pass this bill, they're going
to get completely wiped out in the the term elections
and the economy is going to go into recession and
be a disaster. So they will pass it. And I'm
my job, in your job is to make sure we

(27:22):
pass the best bill we possibly can't. Now the Senate bill,
the Senate bill that we you know, haven't really discussed yet.
I think it's an improvement over the House bill. Is
thus reduce the amount over the state and local tax douction,
and it does other things that I think are And
I also put the cap on the no tax on
tips and no tax on overtime. I mean, it's fine
for lower middle income people, but you know, if you're

(27:43):
somebody who's you know, you know, upper middle income, you
don't need to get no tax on your tips. So
those kinds of things are good changes to the bill.
And we're going to we're going to get it done. Then.
You know, we may get it done before fourth of July,
but I don't think so. I think it'll probably take
into you know, the month of July to get the
House and Senate together on this.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
I think the worst change in the Senate bill is
cutting back on the aggressiveness of raining in the Green
New Deal Nonsense.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
Yeah, yes, yes, yes, because here's the problem with that stuff.
You know, you got the subsidies for the batteries and
the solar panels and the wind and all this stuff.
And you know, I go back a long time. We
first started with these subsidies back in the late late
late nineteen seventies, which Jimmy Carter was president, and every
one of them was a five year program. And here
we are, forty years later, we still have them. So

(28:38):
the problem is if you don't get rid of these now,
there's just going to be permanent, you know credit. By
the way, tax credits are bad things. Just get rid
of all the tax credits. I hate tax credits. Lose
revenue for the government. So I'm hoping that we get
rid of as much of these green energy subsidies as
possible and let's have a level playing field. I mean,
everydy says, oh, solar is so cheap and so efficient,

(28:59):
and when great, okay, great, what do you need tax breaks?

Speaker 4 (29:02):
Then?

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Right, exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
We're talking with Steve Moore, one of the most interesting
and important and influential economists in the United States and
a very old friend of mine.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
And I do mean old.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
I'm fifty five, you're sixty five. I'm going to be
getting self security.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Then wow, all right, working, I want to go back
and I want to do one more minute with you
on what I asked you before.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
And again this is more of a political question.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Why after so many years or decades of I think
most of the public opposing, let's put it very generally
opposing the complexity of the tax code, why does it
never ever get simplified.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Because the you know, when we talk about draining the
swamp and the swamp creatures, the epicenter of the power
structure in Washington, d C. Is the tax code. That's
what politicians buy and sell favors for. Hey, give me,
you know, a big contribution, and I'll get you a
tax break for this. That's the other thing, you know,
And so it's taking power away from Washington. You want

(30:10):
to drain the swamp. Then you want a flat tax
because there's nothing to buy and sell. Right, Just you know,
here's how much money as you make, you get the
tax deduction for yourself and your kids, and then you
pay whatever the grade is. Eighteen percent. I mean, it's
so so disarmingly simple that it's just any sensible person
would say that that would be a good tax system.
But you have to you know, what's the old thing.

(30:32):
Put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
That's Howard, all right, last last thing. And it's not economic.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
And I didn't realize this data point, and I learned
it through your hotline. The last seven NBA MVP awards
go ahead.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
Oh yeah, it's an astonishing statistic. We just did a
big study on the economic benefits of legal immigration, which
are humongous. If we want to get to three percent quotes,
we're going to need more immigration, no quoe, legal immigration.
And so the last seven n b A n b
A Most Valuable Player Awards. And by the way, if
you win the NBA Most Valuable Player, you are the

(31:11):
greatest basketball player in the world. The last seven were foreigners, immigrants.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Including including Nicola Jokids from here in Denver. But that's unbelievable,
isn't it from Serbia?

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
And then you got the Canadian.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Guy in Oklahoma City right now.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, I was from Yeah. And then uh the big
center from the Philadelphia he's from like one of the Africans.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
The Cameroon. Yeah, mbb he's from Cameroon.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
And Gianni's long last long Greek last name is from Greece,
and Joki from here the last seven that's amazing.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
Yeah. And then before that you had, you know, the
big guy from the Dallas Mavericks.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Visk Yeah in German, I think, yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
And uh so anyway, it's a it's amazing. Oh and
of course hakem Olajawan is from from Africa, so I
mean it's I made the point that this is why,
you know, it's so important that we get immigrants, because
we get the best, the brightest, the most talented people
in the world. I mean, Elon Musk is from West
South Africa.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
So uh, I think three or four of the seven
founders of the Magnificent Seven companies which have a greater
net worth and all the all the companies in Europe
combined are immigrants.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
I hope your message gets out to the part of
the magabase that isn't just against illegal immigration, but is
against all immigration. Those those people need a little education,
and you're the guy to do it. Steve Moore is
co founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. Unleash Prosperity
dot com. Click on the link to sign up for
the hotline. It'll make you smarter and it's a quick,

(32:55):
easy read every morning. Thanks for doing this, Steve. Always
great to talk to you.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Okay, Thanks, Ross, I have a great day.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Okay, see yeah, all right, we'll take a quick break.
We'll be right back on KOWA to talk about real
estate developed commercial real estate developers suing Denver over Denver's
insane new energy standards for buildings.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
With all the news going on in the world, it's.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Probably understandable that I end up spending a fair bit
of time talking about international things and Trump and national things.
But we're Koa and we want to make sure. I
want to make sure that we've got you covered here
in Colorado and Denver and all that, and so the
next thing we're going to talk about here is a
local Denver story. It's a big deal with national implications.

(33:38):
And I'll just share with you the title of an
editorial from the Denver Gazette and it's addressed to a
federal national attorney General, the US Attorney General, Pambondi, please
stop Colorado from eating itself. And then a news article
from the same publication, Colorado Commercial Building Owners refile loss

(34:00):
suit to quash energy regulations.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Joining us to talk about it.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
My friend Kathy Barstnara, fellow graduate of the Leadership Program
of the Rockies, and she is executive director of NAIOP,
which is a big association of commercial real estate developers.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Hi, Kathy, good morning, Ross.

Speaker 5 (34:17):
How are you good.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
It's good to talk to you. It's been a while.
Thanks for being here. We only got about six five
or six minutes. So let's jump in with what are
the Denver regulations that you object to?

Speaker 5 (34:32):
Well, let me back up this a little bit ross.
The lawsuit not only impacts Denver's the Energized Denver Program,
but it also would impact the Colorado Energy Office Regulation
twenty eight, which seeks to implement the same sort of
building performance energy efficiency standards that Denver has across the state.

(34:58):
So the lawsuit was filed by the Apartment Association of
that Denver Colora Apartment Association Hotel Lodging Association, and NAYOP
seeks to stop both of those.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Let me just let me just interject for one second.
I had Will I had Will Tour who runs the
Colorado Energy Office on the show about a week and
a half ago, and he made a comment. He said, well,
we're not a regulatory agency and we don't make the
rules or make, you know, regulations. We just enforced the
regulations other people make. But now you're telling me that's
not true.

Speaker 5 (35:33):
Well, the the Energy Office drafted and put Regulation twenty
eight through the Air Quality Control Commission, So I would
argue that he might.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Be misleading a little bit. Uh, okay, a little bit,
a little bit. Yeah, So what are the key objectionable
provisions of the Denver law that's some other foe or
regulation that's some other folks may be trying to apply
to the whole state.

Speaker 5 (36:03):
Right, So the problem is that Denver and the state
are trying to reduce Colorado's greenhouse gas emissions by limiting
the amount of energy that commercial buildings and which include
multi family housing. They want to limit the amount that

(36:26):
you can use. What they're trying to do is require
all of these commercial buildings to reduce their energy use intensity.
They really are wanting to eliminate, or at least Denver
is because I sat on the Energized Denver task Force
and they made it clear that they want to eliminate

(36:46):
the use of natural gas in the city and County
of Denver. So they really want you to electrify all
of these buildings and multi family housing units, and it's
just not practical and even if we were able to
do it, it would make no impact on global greenhouse

(37:07):
gas emissions. It would make a very minimal impact on
Colorado greenhouse gas emissions. And so what we're contending in
the lawsuit is that these policies violate the Energy Policy
and Conservation APPS, which is a federal policy that is
meant to standardize energy use and equipment throughout the country.

(37:32):
And because these requirements are going to force buildings to
replace heating and plumbing and air conditioning units that are
perfectly good and working but work off natural gas, and
they want to replace them with electricity.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yes, so that was a question I was going to
ask you, is do the regulations apply only to new
construction or do they want you to retrofit?

Speaker 2 (37:54):
And you just said they do they want you to retrofit?

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Right?

Speaker 5 (37:58):
Yes, yes, primarily what we're talking about now. We could
get into the new construction discussion, but I think that's
a separate discussion about whether or not the grid could
handle a completely net zero building stock across the state.

(38:21):
And I think we all know the answer to that, right.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Okay, so we got we got about two minutes left here,
so let me just dig in a little bit more
on the retrofitting. I have no idea how much it
would cost to remove all the natural gas heating for
let's say, a large apartment building or an office building
or whatever, but it wouldn't be cheap. And I wonder

(38:43):
possibly two different ways to ask the same question. And
it depends on the quality of the building and all this,
But I wonder what percentage of the value of a building,
the whole building, that you would have to spend just
a retrofit its energy. And I wonder if in some
cases the cost of retrofitting the energy might be maybe
close to as much as the.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Whole building is worth.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
And another way to ask the question would be how
much would rents go up. If you had to do this,
we got about a minute go ahead.

Speaker 5 (39:09):
Yeah, rent would absolutely go up. And honestly, Ross, I've
heard some anecdotal reports from people who own businesses or
build a commercial buildings downtown, and it would be cheaper
for them to shutter the building, i e. Eliminate all
of their tenants, move them all out, and close down

(39:29):
the building. It would be cheaper for them to do
that than to absorb the cost of the retrofit. And
you have to layer all of this over the top
of the fact that commercial buildings are already in financial trouble.
Downtown Denver Post article a couple of weeks ago that
three and ten commercial mortgages are delinquent for office buildings

(39:51):
in Denver. So even if they wanted to do all
of this, they can't possibly get the funding. We don't
have the labor to be able to to install it,
even if you could get the equipment. So and as
you said before, all of this would result in higher
housing costs. So at the time when you know nearly

(40:12):
every elected official you speak to, you know points out
the fact that we're not affordable. You know, we have
a housing crisis. These types of programs which really aren't
going to have a significant benefit, will do nothing that
increase the cost of housing. It'll increase the cost of
lease rents for businesses downtown who are already struggling. So

(40:37):
I just don't see how it accomplishes really what they want.
There's a breakdown between the aspiration and the actual implementation
of these policies.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
And there always is when it comes to so called
climate related policy. Kathy Barsnar is the executive director of Niopnaiop,
which is a big association of commercial real estate developers
and owners. Kathy, let's keep in touch on this as
the lawsuit progresses.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
I appreciate your time, well do thanks so much. Ross,
thank you.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
We'll take a quick break.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
We'll be right back on the Iran Israel war thing.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
There's, as I said earlier in the show, there are
so many aspects to this and one thing I want
to talk about right now, and a Rod, I'm gonna
ask you to put my audio up here and give
me one second to make sure I don't mess this up.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
A Rod, So all right, go ahead, you can put
my audio up.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
So one of the questions here, and there are many,
is why now and I shared with you earlier in
the show. That part of the and I mean, why now,
why is Israel attacking Iran now? So part of the
reason it becomes more possible for Israel now is that
Iran's major proxies, primarily Hesba, lah Hamas and the former

(41:54):
Assad regime in Syria are gone or effectively gone. The
AD regime is gone, and Hamas and Hezbollah are no
longer effective fighting forces, and the Houthis have been somewhat
defanged by President Trump. You know, if we got into
it with Iran, what do they have left? They've got
only their own missiles. They do have their own army,
but boy, it's sure hard to see them trying to use,

(42:16):
you know, ground troops. They what they might do is
lob some missiles and order some Sheeite Iranian Iranian leaning
militias in Iraq and potentially even in Bahrain or elsewhere

(42:36):
in the Gulf Arab States to try to go after
military bases there are military personnel. I think that'd be
a pretty dumb thing of them to do. But at
some point that regime might feel like they have nothing
left to lose, so who knows. But the other question
is the other why now, question is why did Israel
think it's important now? And Benjamin Netanyah, who says, well,
we have intelligence that says they're very close to you know,

(43:00):
but they're moving secretly and getting very close to being
able to have a nuclear weapon. Now, what's interesting about
this question is that it's it's unclear, at least unclear
that the United States agrees with that intelligence assessment. I'm
gonna see if I can get this to work, if
I get this to play for you. But what we're

(43:21):
going to try to listen to here is CNN reporter
Caitlin Collins asking Donald Trump about the United States intelligence
communities assessment of whether Iran is very close to or
even trying to get right now, trying to get a
nuclear bomb. They've always said that you don't believe ron
should be able to have a nuclear weapon, But how

(43:43):
close to you personally think that they were to getting one?
Because okay, so she says, she says, how her question
is how close do you think Iran is to getting
a nuclear weapon? Because now this is the key part.
Telsea Gabbard, our director of National Intelligence tell.

Speaker 6 (44:01):
Efforts, in March, said that the intelligence community said Iran
wasn't building a nuclear by.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
So she's saying.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Tulsa Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community believes
Iran is not that close to.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Getting a nuclear weapon, and here's Trump's answer.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
The ICY continues to assess that Iran is not building
a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Kamani has not authorized
the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in two thousand
and three.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Okay, what she said, I think it was very pleas
to happen, And that was Trump's saying, and I quote,
I don't care what she said. I think they were
very close to having one. So that could mean a
few different things. So, first of all, to be very clear,
Israel has much better intelligence in Iran than the United
States does.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
We might have decent, maybe not even decent.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
Israel has better sources and better methods.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
In Iran than we do, and it's not even close.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
That doesn't necessarily mean that Israel is right or telling
the truth. It could that Benjamin Netanyahu knows that Iran's
air defenses were down, knows that Hamas and Hezbollah are
no longer effective fighting forces, and Benjamin Netanyah, who may
have been thinking to himself, there will never be a
better time than right now to go take this stuff out.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
And so if I have to exaggerate.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
A little bit on just how immediate we think the
threat is, I'll exaggerate. I don't know. And with Trump saying,
you know, I believe it, it either means he believes
Netanyaho that they're closer than American intelligence thinks. And again
that could be right, because Israel does have better intelligence
than we do. So it either means he believes it
or it means he thinks the mission and the goal

(45:38):
of making sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon
is so important that he's willing to say whatever he
wants to say to justify it, which does at some
point start getting to feel like the Iraq WMD's, although
I don't think we're gonna get dragged into a big
thing like we did with Iraq. All Right, we'll talk
about that more in a bit. Keep it here on KOA.
Two are the same person or no, two different people?

(46:01):
Listener texts about the Iran Israel thing. Just gonna do
that for a minute and then move on to some
other stuff. So one text and they're related to each other,
So I'll read both texts and then I'll one reply
right in the middle of peace talks, Israel is drawing
us into a war, and the other text says Israel
is lying to draw us into this and if the
US is that naive, then it's the old saying fool

(46:22):
me wants shame on you.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Fool me twice, shame on me.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
One of the listeners also asked where do you think
the US is getting the intelligence as to where the
Ayatola is And I said they're almost certainly getting it
from Israel. And this person said we should only rely
on US intelligence, which is not quite right.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
But anyway, so.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
There are a couple of just key points I want
to make on this.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
First to the in the middle.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Of peace talks, well, are you actually having peace talks
when you are negotiating with a fanatical apocalypse Ayahtola who
wants to kill every Jew, destroy Israel and would attack
the United States if they could. Is that a real
peace talk? Was it?

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Was it a real peace talk?

Speaker 1 (47:11):
When Nevill Chamberlain had a peace talk with Adolf Hitler
and let him off the hook for his initial expansionist
aggressive activities?

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Was that was that an actual peace talk? Would it?

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Would it have been better if actually the war had
started then, right, So I think it's a huge mistake
to say that well just because there were these theoretical
talks going on, that somehow that's a reason not to
attack Iran. If Iran needs attacking, don't let the peace
talks fool you because they're not real. And then you

(47:44):
know the Israel is lying to draw us into this.
The I said I was going to do one response
and now I'm doing two. But Israel is lying to
draw us into this. Maybe maybe not, I mean there
they might be exaggerating, but this is the this is
the difference. This is a big difference we know as
an absolute fact, and this is quite different from the

(48:04):
Saddam Hussein WMD nonsense.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
There's a lot to say about that, but.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
We know as an absolute fact that Iran has a
goal of destroying Israel, and so they want to destroy
the country that they call the little Satan. So what
do you think that means they want to do to
the big Satan, which is us? Of course they want

(48:33):
they can't destroy America, but they would want to hurt
America as much as possible. And don't forget, these are
the same people.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Who have the.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Blood of hundreds of Americans or even thousands. But going
all the way back to the bombing of the US
barracks in Lebanon in whatever year that was, nineteen eighty three,
I think these are the same people. We should have
taken them out a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
Now.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
I am not a warmonger. I am not interested in
being in a big war. I'm not interested in nation
building at all. But if we could create the conditions
on the ground for the Iranian people to overthrow their
own regime, that's worth a try. And there's very little
downside for the United States. Now, I actually think it

(49:28):
would be better, marginally better, not massively better, if the
United States did not use its own airplanes and pilots
to drop a bomb on Flodo and other places like Florida.
If there are others, by which I mean deeply hardened
underground nuclear installations that cannot be destroyed with the kind

(49:50):
of weaponry that Israel has, the kind of weaponry that
it's basically only the US.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
That has this.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
And by the way, don't confuse this with another thing
that's called the Mother of All bombs, that's a different one.
This one is called a mop massive ordnance penetrator and
this thing, it's almost like a drill bit and it'll
just it can go like a couple hundred feet into
the ground before it explodes. It's a pretty incredible thing.
And it's thirty thousand pounds and only we have it. Now,

(50:19):
what I would prefer to see is lease or sell
to Israel a plane that can deliver this bomb.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
And let them fly it.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Let them have the plane, let them have the pilot,
sell them the bomb or bombs you might need two
or three, and let them do it.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
And so that would be fine.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
But I think that this is I I don't think
that this should be compared to the Iraq or Afghanistan situation. Also, remember,
unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is a very sophisticated society,
very sophisticated economy, lots of smart people, lots of engineers.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
It's not what.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
It used to be because the Islamic Revolution caused a
lot of brain drain, a lot of smart people to
leave the country, right, Lots of doctors left, lots of
engineers left. There used to be a pretty big Jewish
population in Iran, believe it or not, lots of them left,
but still, Iran is not a country that would need
nation building, and also there would be no tolerance in

(51:28):
the United States of America, either at the level of
the president or among the population to do any nation
building in Iran.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
But like I said, I think it wouldn't be necessary.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
So I think there are a lot of people out there
right now who keep who have a very isolationist mindset.
And I think some of those people got the mindset
because Donald Trump talked in an isolationist way, and these
people are big Trump supporters, and they were convinced by
his argument, And I'm not overly at least downplaying their

(51:59):
point of I think excessive isolationism is dangerous, but I
also think excessive willingness to get involved in everything around
the world is dangerous. And I've said for many years
that one of the things that has fascinated me so
much about the Democrats is that they have seemed, and
I'm thinking now about Bosnia and Somalia and some other things,

(52:20):
they have seemed to have plenty of interest in getting
America involved in wars where the United States does not
have a strategic interest, but not getting us involved in
wars where we do. For example, they were against, mostly
against I shouldn't overstate that somewhere against attacking Afghanistan even

(52:40):
after nine to eleven. Now we shouldn't have stayed in
Afghanistan for all that time. But that's a different thing.
That's a different thing, And I just want to be
clear that this Iran thing is a situation where there
is real strategic national interest for the United States of America.

(53:02):
And one other point, and then I'll come back to
this in another hour because there is more to say.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
One other point.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Almost every time I have heard an Israeli official quoted,
including the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Etniahu, but other
lesser officials as well, an ambassador or this or that,
they all say the same thing.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
And it's very interesting.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
They're all pandering to Trump, which I would do as
well if I were in their position. You do what
you got to do to get what you need done, right,
and what they say and it's not wrong, it's pandering,
but it doesn't mean it's wrong. What they say is
Donald Trump is always going to do what's best in
the best interest to the United States of America, and

(53:50):
this is Israeli's saying this. So they're doing two things. One,
they're appealing to Trump's ego, which is smart. Two they're
giving Trump the defense. Essentially, they're giving Trump a defense
against people who say or ask, why is Donald Trump

(54:12):
doing this stuff to benefit Israel. What they are saying is, no,
whatever Trump is doing that happens to help Israel's mission
in this war is because Trump knows that it's good
for the United States. Trump is not doing stuff just
for the benefit of Israel. It might overlap, but he's

(54:34):
not making decisions because he's looking out for Israel's best interest,
at least not primarily. He's looking out for America's best interest.
So I think that's very interesting. And what Trump is
gonna have to do is to convince some part of

(54:56):
his magabase or maybe he won't care, but he's gonna
have to convey vince enough of them, probably that this
is worth doing, that that he deeply believes we will
not get dragged into some ongoing thing, that there.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Will be no nation building.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
And he needs to explain why this is in the
American strategic interest. And it's going to be an interesting
challenge for him because some of the people who object
to any US involvement in this are honestly opposed to
US entanglement with anything, and they are committed isolationists. And

(55:39):
while I disagree with them, I respect that their position
is a matter of principle. There are some others who
don't want America to get involved because they are anti Semites,
and they pretend to be isolationists to give themselves cover.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
But Trump will ever convince those people.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
But as I said on Twitter yesterday, there are a
lot of anti Semites out there.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
But on this question of should America.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Have any involvement, including a secondary question of should America
or Israel target commine, and by the way, I think
the answer is no.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Maybe I'll get to that later.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
It just it seems clear to me that Trump's focus
is on the United States and that he's going to
need to be able to convince his base that that's
where his focus is because he doesn't want to lose
political capital with such a big part of his base.
Right now, all right, let's do some other things. Again,
this is the biggest thing going on in the world

(56:43):
right now. But I just wanted to share that with you.
Sticking with Trump, but an entirely different way. I mentioned
briefly the other day the Trump phone, Trump Mobile, And
I think I actually mentioned the part that I want
to say again, but it's just been nagging at me.
So even if I said it before, I want to
say it again. So the Trump organization's really the Trump kids.

(57:08):
I don't know that the President himself has much of
anything to do about do with it. But the Trump
kids have done a licensing deal where they are renting
the name Trump to a company that is creating its
own mobile phone company. It's a kind of mobile phone
company that uses the big company's towers. And that's fine.
It's a fine kind of business. And it's called Trump

(57:30):
Mobile and Trump Mobile. You can bring your own phone,
or you can buy their phone. And I think their phone.
They're going to sell it for five hundred dollars. And
I don't care what price they sell it for, but
they're going to sell it for five hundred dollars. And
the thing that's been pissing me off is that Eric
Trump has been saying this phone is made in America.

(57:51):
And I did talk about this the other day, but
I'm going to say it again. It's not possible that
this phone is made in America. It's all not even possible.
That the phone would be entirely assembled in America. They
could probably get a few assemblies and do the last
couple of steps in America. This thing is almost certainly

(58:13):
made in China. There were and an update since the
last time I talked about it. Somebody did a little
research trying to figure out just what this phone is,
and they think they figured out what it is. And
they think they figured out it is. It is a
slightly modified version of a phone that is usually it

(58:33):
is sold for two Tea Mobile subscribers, and it's called
the revel r EVVL seven Pro five G and it's
not exactly the same. But as this person says, the
specifications of the display and the strange camera resolutions non
standard camera resolutions match up with that Tea Mobile device

(58:56):
along with some others. And that phone is made by
a company called wing Tech, which is owned by a
bigger Chinese company called lux Share, and is built in China.
And what folks are saying who have researched this is
that the Trump Phone appears to be a reskinned version

(59:18):
in a new enclosure and with slightly moved around cameras.
So this phone they're going to sell for four hundred
and ninety nine dollars. But if you go to Amazon
to you know what they think is the same phone,
but for use with with Tea mobile.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
And you probably still could use it on on.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
Trump Mobile is right now one hundred and sixty nine
dollars and Trump's going to sell it for four hundred
ninety nine dollars. Again, I don't care if because there
are people who actually want to give Trump their money.
He's a billionaire, but they love him and they're perfectly
happy giving them giving him their money.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
And that's okay. You spend your money however you want.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
And if you want Trump to have an extra couple
hundred dollars, well, actually Trump won't get that money.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Trump doesn't own any of this company.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
By the way, the Trump organization doesn't own any of
the company.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
It's a licensing deal.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
So they probably will get some revenue share, so they
will get some money, but just they don't own any
of it. And if you want to give them your money,
it's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
I don't care. But I just want people to understand
what's going on.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
And if you want to go for it, even though
you know what's going on, good for you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Again, like I said, I don't care.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
I don't care, but I do very much care that
these people are saying the phone is made in America.
It's not, and it can't possibly be made in America.
For example, the screen, which is a big part of
a phone, is a type that is not made in
America period. No American company makes it. And there are

(01:00:50):
a couple of other parts in this phone at least
and probably all of them that are not made by
anybody in America. So that Eric Trump saying stuff like, well,
it could be made in America, and it will be
made in America one day when we bring all the
manufacturing back, and the answer to that is no.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
It won't be.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
We will never make fully make smartphones in America because
you wouldn't be able to afford the phone. All right,
what else? What else do I want to do here? Okay,
this is a national story that I wanted to share.
I think it was yesterday I mentioned that Colorado lawmakers

(01:01:29):
are It was thirty one at the time. I don't
know how many now have gone to the division of
the state government that maintains the tracer database, which is
the campaign finance database, and many candidates for office in
the state of Colorado actually have their own home addresses
and phone numbers in the TRACER database, and especially candidates

(01:01:50):
running for smaller offices, for local office, maybe even for
state house. And maybe these are folks who are not
going to spend the money on an agent. They're filing
their own paperwork. So you're your own agent, and you
have to put address and phone number, and that's a
public document. So now they're working on stripping that stuff out,
the identifiable information because of the attack, the murder and

(01:02:13):
attempted murder of politicians in Minnesota by an unhinged kind
of lunatic. So I saw this story at Semaphore this morning.
Bid to protect lawmakers data gains momentum, and this is
a federal story now.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
So there's a bill that was sponsored.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
A couple of years ago by Democratic Senator Amy Kloboshar
of Minnesota, co sponsored with Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas,
and they tried to attach this to defense legislation in
twenty twenty three, but it failed. They think they're getting
a little more support now. And I'll quote from semaphore

(01:02:51):
long stalled legislation that would allow lawmakers to remove their
personal data from the Internet is again gathering speed on
the hill after two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses were
shot at their homes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
So what this bill would do?

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
I read it quickly, but basically what it would do
is it would allow these politicians first to tell branches
of the government, hey, make sure you don't have my
personally identifiable information in.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Anything you post online.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
And then it would also allow them or it would
require private companies that host websites to strip the information,
the personal information about these candidates out of anything that
would be available on the internet within I think seventy

(01:03:37):
two hours of getting a request from the politician.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
And you know what, it's fine with me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
I think it's sad that these people think it's necessary,
but I think if I were in elected office, i'd
probably think it's necessary too. Heck, I'm not in elected office,
and I think it sounds like a good idea when
we live in this unhinged kind of world where you
don't know who's going to show up with an intention
to do harm. You don't know, and I don't even
care about the motivations. We just live in a time

(01:04:04):
where there seems to be not much filter on people's
speech or people's behavior or anything, and we need to
be careful. And it's an absolutely positively legitimate thing. All right,
One other quick story I want to do here. I
saw this at Axios and the headline says tariffs drive

(01:04:25):
some health plans to hike premiums.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
And I was reading this story expecting it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
To be about just what that says, how much Donald
Trump's tariffs are going to cause your health insurance to
go on? And they will, they definitely will. But to
me that ended up being secondary from what I took
from the article. And I think if I just share
a bit of this with you, you'll understand why. Independent

(01:04:51):
Health Benefits Corporation told New York regulators in a filing
last month that about three percent that it it intends
to raise health insurance premiums for its individual market employees,
and about three percent will be directly due to tariffs.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
But see, that was what I expected to read.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
But they plan to raise their premiums thirty eight point
four percent, Okay, three percent from tariffs is stupid, wasted money,
and it's the tariffs are a dumb policy. But what
thirty eight point four percent? Now, this is these are
all kind of state in local markets. Right, this is
New York, it's not Colorado. We'll see what happens in Colorado.

(01:05:36):
United Healthcare of Oregon said in a filing that about
three percent of its planned premium increase for small group
enrollies next year is due to what they call uncertainty
around tariffs, especially on how they will affect pharmaceutical prices.
But the total proposed increase in rates is nineteen point
eight percent. So, yes, the three percent is bad and unnecessary,

(01:05:59):
and tariffs do impoverish Americans.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
But I think there's a bigger issue here.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
When you're talking about health plans during a time where
we are being told that inflation is tame, When you're
talking about at least some health plans raising premiums twenty
or thirty percent, there's a bigger conversation to be had.
It's not exactly a secret that fentanyl has been a
scourge of the United States and a scourge here in
Colorado for quite a few years now, got quite a

(01:06:28):
bit worse during the years of the Joe Biden open border.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
But how are things going now?

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
My friends at the Common Sense Institute, where I am
a free market fellow as well, have some great crime researchers,
and one of them is my friend John Kellner, who
was until recently the eighteenth Judicial District DA. He's a
lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves. He currently works with

(01:06:58):
Dan Kaplis's law firm, and Mitch Morrissey and a really
smart dude at Commons ins Insitut named Stephen Byers have
put together a report that was just released in the
last few hours entitled Colorado's Fentanyl Problem and the Economic Costs,
and you can find that at the Common Sense Institute's
website Commonsense Institute us dot org.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
John, Welcome back to Kowa. It's good to talk to you.

Speaker 6 (01:07:24):
Hey, Ross, thanks for having me on. One small correction
to that introduction, I'm a lieutenant colonel in the United
States Marines.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Oh my gosh, that's it.

Speaker 6 (01:07:32):
Back to my good friends that's in the Army in
their two in earth afty birthday.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
But that's an unforgivable error. I have to say. I
have to say, that's one of the biggest errors I've
ever made. I apologize for that. So uh and I
had lived on Camp Pendleton. I love the Marines. Okay,
So what do we need to know about what's going
on in Colorado with fentanyl right now? Is there something
that we should be hopeful about after so many years

(01:07:59):
of just bad news?

Speaker 6 (01:08:02):
Yeah, I would say there is, you know, hope on
the horizon, but still quite a bit of work to do.
And so, as you mentioned about the Common Sense Institute,
you know, we are interested in evaluating the policies things
that are being implemented at the local and state level
throughout Colorado to determine what's working and what is the

(01:08:22):
cost ultimately to the people in Colorado. And so, you know,
when I started out as the district attorney, obviously we
were dealing with a tremendous influx of fentanyl in that
twenty twenty to twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four range.
And you know, in twenty twenty one, you really would

(01:08:43):
struggle to open up your news app or newspaper and
not see something in the headline on a weekly basis
about another fentanyl overdose death, you know, tragic poisoning. You know,
perhaps a juvenile somebody who ingested ventanyl didn't know it
was there.

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:09:00):
So, fortunately the legislature took some steps in twenty twenty
two passed a law that strengthened some of the penalties
associated with sentinel. So it was a bit of a reversal,
as you may recall, because a few years earlier, they
had decriminalized the possession of you know, you know, really
minute amounts of fentanyl and made it a misdemeanor and

(01:09:23):
also other drugs, and that really coincided with it all
of a sudden, a big influx into our community resulting
in a tremendous amount of overdose deaths. They tightened up
that law in twenty twenty two, and we're starting to
see some of the benefits from that. And so you know,
overview heres, we still have a tremendous number of deaths
associated fentanyl in the state of Colorado, but we've seen

(01:09:45):
about a thirty percent reduction year over year from twenty
twenty three to twenty twenty four.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
Can you put that in actual numbers for me, like,
how many deaths rather than percentages?

Speaker 6 (01:09:55):
Yeah, so, oney, one hundred and eighty four deaths from
ventyl through twenty twenty three, and it's eight hundred and
one through twenty twenty four, so it's about a thirty
two percent production. And that's great news. The problem is
that as compared to other states, and common sentence to

(01:10:16):
created a competitiveness index and really looking at, okay, how
are we doing in relation to other states in their
approaches to the sentinel epidemic, And unfortunately, we're lagging in
the state of Colorado. We're thirtieth in the country on
that metric, meaning that we're not making as much progress
as some of our surrounding states and other states throughout

(01:10:39):
the country. So we make some a variety of recommendations saying, look,
we can't keep the eye off the ball here. There's
been some good done on a policy level, but we
do recommend continuing to strengthen those penalties associated with the
possession of fentanyl, making possession of any amount of fentanyl
a low level peony offense. And what that does, as

(01:11:02):
a former prosecutor I can tell you is it really
opens up the aperture of potential resources to get people
into treatment, into rehabilitation, provides some measure of accountability.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
In other words, are you saying, if the crime that
could be charged were a misdemeanor, you really have no
leverage over the kind of person who'd be selling fentanyl.
But if it's a felony with potential serious or buying
fentyl and if it's a felony with potential serious ramifications,
you could say, all right, you won't go to jail
if you go to treatment where you wouldn't have that
leverage with a misdemeanor.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Is that the point you're making.

Speaker 6 (01:11:36):
That's exactly right, and it's not just you won't go
to jail. And you know, you know, in our state
we don't typically start with jail with a lot of offenses,
to include drug possession. We want to incentivize people to
get into treatment, be productive members of society, kick whatever
habit it is, help deal with an underlying issue. You know,
when we used to be able to charge that low

(01:11:57):
level felony offense it with some more restrictions and the
leverage of saying, look, you can avoid this felony. All
you gotta do is you know, work with us on treatment.

Speaker 2 (01:12:09):
Okay, we recommend go ahead, finish your sentence.

Speaker 6 (01:12:13):
I was just gonna say, we recommend, you know, going
back to the pre twenty nineteen framework of laws that
made possession of any amount of fentanyl and any amount
of other drugs like you know, heroin, math, cocaine, that
low level felony offense, because one thing you'll find with
these spentinyl related deaths is that they generally coincide with

(01:12:34):
the use of other substances too.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Okay, So two and two quick questions for you, one
of the more serious than the other, and I'll let
you decide which one is the more serious question.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
I'll start with this one.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
If you're if you get involved with drafting a bill
saying possession of any amount of certain substances should come
with some penalty or particular level of crime, can you
please include blue cheese among those substances.

Speaker 6 (01:13:01):
Yeah, I'd vote for that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
Okay, good.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
Now, the other question I have for you, and I
only have about a minute here, and you may object
along the lines of calls for speculation, your honor, but
I'm going to ask you anyway, how much of the
decline in fentinyl use and fentyl deaths in Colorado do
you attribute to the change in the law that makes
it a tougher punishment again or felony versus closing the border?

(01:13:28):
And I wish I realized is that is a more
recent thing, although lead in the Biden administration they started
doing a little more border enforcement.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
How do you see those things interacting.

Speaker 6 (01:13:39):
In our report, we actually do talk about that. We
see that, as you know, coinciding with this tremendous reduction
in overdose death is the reduction in the free flow
of fennel across the southern border. With more enforcement, now
we're seeing actually reduction in seizures at the southern border
because there's also a reduction in the number of people
trying to make their way across the border. I see

(01:14:02):
that as a great success, and honestly, just going back
to twenty twenty one, as a new district attorney, I
remember holding up a rifle that we seized along with
hand grenade to several other guns from a drug trafficking
organization that was working with fentanyl and saying what really
needed to happen was more federal enforcement at that southern

(01:14:24):
border to help clamp down on that just free flow
that we were seeing. So I think that there's been
tremendous progress made. How much is attributed to the change
of the law in the state of Colorado, how much
is attributed to more enforcement at the southern border. I
think we'll have to wait and see how that plays
out a little bit longer before I can give you
a firm answer. But another part of this about the

(01:14:45):
law that was good is it did include access to
testing strips, access to unlock zone, and things that are
helping to prevent more overdoses. That obviously needs to continue
as well.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
John Kilner is a Criminal Justice Fellow at the Common
Sense Institute Commonsense Institute.

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
US dot org. If you can't remember that, just go search.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Common Sense Institute and the brand new report just released
this morning, Colorado's Fentanyl problem and the economic costs.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
John, thanks for your time this morning.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
Very interesting report, and I hope that the better trend
continues for our state.

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
Thanks so much, Russ.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back
on Kiawa.

Speaker 1 (01:15:23):
You know, one of my new morning show partners is flatirons,
fire and fireplaces and fire pits and all that. And
just gonna let you know, over the course of the
month of July, we're gonna be doing some stuff during
my show and then a Rod's gonna be handling some
stuff on social media where over the course of the

(01:15:44):
month you will have the chance to win an entrance
into a giveaway, and we're not gonna have too many
people enter, so that if you get one of those
entrance tickets, you'll have a pretty decent chance of winning.
And they are gonna give away a forty five hundred
dollars just absolutely gorgeous outdoor fire pit. It's made of

(01:16:06):
a sort of texturized concrete looking material. Might actually be concrete,
I'm not sure, and it's just it's gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
It's worth forty.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Five hundred bucks and my friends at Flat Irons Fire
are going to give it away. We'll be doing that
over the course of the month of July, so I
just wanted to share that with you. Boy, this show
is going fast. I just can't believe how I mean,
there's just still so much to talk about, so much
to talk about. What do I want to do here.
Let's let's talk immigration a little bit, and I'm going

(01:16:37):
to tie tie it in somewhat but not entirely, to
the Trump immigration immigration crackdown. Obviously that's a big part
of what's going on. But there are a few a
couple very specific points related to what's going on now
that I want.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
To make sure you understand.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
And then there's some macro things that I wanted to
share so that the short term point is that there
are a lot of industries and we've talked about many
of them that are reliant, even dependent on the labor
of immigrants, including illegal immigrants. And as I've said, I
know that there are listeners to my show. There are
plenty of people I interact with on Twitter who say,

(01:17:18):
if you're an illegal immigrant and the government contacts you,
need to go and the government should try to contact you.
Even if you've been here for fifteen years and never
committed a crime and your working and all that, they
should still throw you out. And I know there are
people who think that way and I don't, but that's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
We can agree to disagree.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
Here's a headline from Axios the immigrants caring for the
nations elderly are losing their jobs. The White House immigration
crackdown is hitting the long term healthcare industry as nursing
homes and care providers lose foreign born employees and struggle
to hire.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
And I think I don't need to elaborate.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
There's a lot more in the article, but they note
that foreign born workers make up about a third of
the housekeeping and maintenance workforce at nursing homes, which is,
you know, fifty percent more, it's like nineteen percent in
the workforce. Overall, more than forty one percent of home
health aids in the US were foreign born, twenty two

(01:18:16):
percent of nursing assistants, twenty eight percent of personal care aids.
So my point is, whether it's this the right the
nursing homes, whether it's the cost of your fruits and vegetables,
whether it's the cost of.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
Building house, whether it's restaurants.

Speaker 1 (01:18:30):
That have to close for lunch now they can't do
lunch anymore because they're losing employees. There's gonna be some
true negative impacts to you, you know, to you, whether
you're an American citizen, a legal immigrant, and illegal immigrant,
there's gonna be some negative impacts to you from this
that I want to make sure you are aware of. Now,
some of the bigger picture stuff, I'll tell you what.

(01:18:52):
I've got a few in the interest of time, I'm
gonna mention one thing right now, and I'm coming back
into a little bit more this, But I also have
a ton of other topics I still need to do.
The Washington Post put up a note a few days
ago US could lose more immigrants than it gains for
the first time in fifty years, net migration that means

(01:19:13):
the number of people moving into the United States from
overseas minus the number of people moving out, net migration
could turn negative. Some economists warn weighing on economic growth
and fueling inflation. And the reason that they at least theorize,

(01:19:33):
and I think the theory is reasonable that losing a
lot of immigrants, legal or non would fuel inflation and
slow economic growth is for what I said, we don't
have the employees, the potential employees to fill all these jobs.
If we are kicking out three thousand people a day,
we just don't have the people. So these businesses will

(01:19:55):
not be able to operate. Businesses will slow down. Other
employees will probably lose jobs. Actually, even though you would
think these places would be hiring, if they can't and
they have to close.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
Then those people will lose their jobs.

Speaker 1 (01:20:08):
And also if you have to start bidding up the
cost of labor because you're kicking out hundreds of thousands
of workers, so you need to pay more, then you're
going to generate inflation that way. So there's a lot
of negative economic consequences. All right, I do have more
I want to say on this stuff, and a lot
of other stuff. We're gonna hit a quick break. Keep
it here on KOA. I'm Ross, thanks for being here

(01:20:28):
on KOA. I want to mention just two other things
about immigration and immigrants and that are really sort of
backing away from the specifics of the current Trump administration policy,
and just a couple of things that I want to
make sure people understand because I think there are some
folks out there who have a misunderstanding of the on average,

(01:20:53):
on average impact of immigrants on the United States in
a couple of areas. One isomically and earnings, and one
is crime. So first I want to start with a
piece that was posted on Axios a day or two ago.
Foreign students out earn their native born peers. And let
me skip ahead here a little bit. Workers with college

(01:21:16):
degrees who come to the US on student visas I
would earn their native born peers, but also do more
of the research and development work critical to the economy
according to a new analysis. So this isn't surprising. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
When I actually mentioned.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
On the show not long ago, I had a guest
on I don't remember what it was a science thing,
and this gal was a researcher and she was Chinese.
And I mentioned after that interview, how because I read
more science than probably a lot of radio hosts do.
When I look at scientific papers and all, and it's incredible.

(01:21:54):
What an enormous percentage of the names of the authors
on so many scientific pay papers are are Asian of
some sort, Okay, And it could be East Asian, could
be Central Asian, it could be Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Pakistani,
that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
So many And why is that?

Speaker 1 (01:22:14):
Because the best and the brightest from those countries and
the people who want to work hard they come here.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
And they work hard and they study hard.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
And there of course there's plenty of smart Americans too,
but the disproportionality of the number of top researchers doing
the most interesting work who are not American is something
you cannot mistake if you get into reading science at all.
And I'm not offering a judgment, I'm just I'm just

(01:22:46):
telling you, like if if Polka dotted people were three
percent of the American population, but twenty percent of the
top scientists in America.

Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
You would you would notice that it's like that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:03):
I mean don't know so anyway, as of twenty twenty three,
there were about two point one million year round, full
time workers in the US with bachelor's degrees who first
came to the US on a student visa. According to
this group that did the research, they're called the Economic
Innovation Group, those people earned a median salary of one

(01:23:28):
hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. Okay, so these are foreigners
who earned their bachelor's degrees in the United States median
salary of one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. Native born
Americans who earned their bachelor degrees in the United States,
their median income is eighty seven thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:23:48):
That's a massive difference.

Speaker 1 (01:23:51):
That's a massive difference. Now, I'm not saying that the
foreigners are smarter. What I'm saying is that you should
understand and that so much of the conversation around immigration,
and it's even getting more specific now because of all
the stuff going on with Harvard and Columbia and all

(01:24:11):
these places where there's now focus on foreign students as well.
But so much of the conversation about immigration, when you
lump it all into one word, imagines an illegal immigrant
from Mexico or Central America mowing your lawn or washing dishes,
or cleaning your hotel room or cutting up a cow.

(01:24:34):
But that's far from a complete picture. Now, it is
absolutely true that during the Biden administration, in particular, when
he opened the border, an enormous percentage of the illegal
aliens who came in were people with little or no education.
So I'm not saying that, you know, we had this
massive influx of engineers and doctors and so on during

(01:24:57):
that I'm not making that claim at all.

Speaker 2 (01:25:00):
What I am saying is I hope you will.

Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
Understand that there's a bigger view to be had of immigration,
and it includes people that frankly, the United States probably
can't do without and certainly should not want to do without.
And this is part of the reason that Donald Trump's
announcement that, for example, he was going to try to
stop Harvard from being able to have any foreign.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
Students is.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):
In the top three dumbest Trump policies of all time.
And that's saying something, isn't it, And so I just
wanted to be aware of that. Now.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):
The other thing is.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
In part because President Trump in his campaign ran on
deporting criminal, illegal aliens, and in his first campaign he
talked about they're sending us rapists and murderers, and they're
certainly not sending us their best to remember that that
was what Trump said about Mexico in particular with illegal immigration.

(01:26:03):
A lot of people who don't pay much attention to
the data, and that's not a criticism because for most
normal people, it would be a massive waste of your
time to pay any attention to the data, and there's
no real reason you should. But I do because I'm
interested in because of what.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
I do for a living.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
I think a lot of people will be surprised, and
I think there may be some people.

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):
Who think, well, they committed.

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):
A crime crossing the border, so they probably commit crimes
when they're here too, because maybe they're just criminally oriented.

Speaker 2 (01:26:33):
But it's actually the opposite of the case.

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
And I'm going to share with you a piece from
just earlier this year from the Cato Institute Cato dot
organ I will say upfront that the Cato Institute is
an extremely pro immigration organization and is close to an
open border organization.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
I just want to be clear about that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
But I also want to make sure we understand that
the data I'm going to share with you here has
been frequently replicated by study after study by a wide
variety of groups, not just the Cato Institute. So the
evidence is overwhelming that immigrants in the United States have

(01:27:15):
had a lower crime rate than native born Americans since
at least the nineteenth century.

Speaker 2 (01:27:25):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):
When people learn that fact, they're not surprised that legal
immigrants have a lower crime rate than native born Americans,
but they are surprised that it's also true for illegal immigrants.
And the follow up question people ask is why do
illegal immigrants have low crime rates. It's a good question.
After all, illegal immigrants broke immigration laws when they entered

(01:27:49):
or over state, and they tend to be younger, male,
less educated, at lower wages, and are members of ethnic
or racial groups that tend to have higher crime rates
among native born Americans.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
So let me just make sure we're clear there what
they're saying.

Speaker 1 (01:28:04):
So they're saying a disproportionate percentage of illegal immigrants are
young men with low educations and in relatively low wage jobs,
and are part of ethnic or racial groups. Let's say
Central Americans that among people who are here legally but

(01:28:24):
part of those ethnic groups, have high crime rates. Okay,
Thus it's understandable why people are perplexed about why illegal
immigrants have a lower crime rate, and that's where theories
of crime come in. I think this is fascinating, by
the way, because the data is very clear that illegal
immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native born Americans do,

(01:28:47):
and legal immigrants commit crimes at rates even lower than that.
But let's just talk about some of these theories a bit,
as they do in this interesting Cato Institute U document.
Theories can help interpret or explain results, they can help
make predictions. They're going they show some theories here, and

(01:29:09):
they note right up front that some of the theories
contradict each other and some are likely entirely false, but
some could have partial explanations, and there certainly needs to
be more research to.

Speaker 2 (01:29:19):
Figure out what's what.

Speaker 1 (01:29:22):
And I'm not going to spend a ton of time
on all of these things, but let me just share
a couple.

Speaker 2 (01:29:28):
One is called comparison group effects.

Speaker 1 (01:29:31):
Native born Americans commit more crime than residents of any
other developed country and several less developed countries.

Speaker 2 (01:29:40):
Now that is probably also.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
Not evenly spread out among all racial and ethnic groups
in the United States. Right There probably are racial and
ethnic groups of native born Americans now not immigrants of
native born Americans.

Speaker 2 (01:29:52):
There are probably certain.

Speaker 1 (01:29:54):
Groups within society that commit more crime than other groups.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
I want to a law on that. You can do
that in your own brain.

Speaker 1 (01:30:02):
But in the aggregate, native born Americans commit more crime
than residents of any other developed country and several less
developed countries. That probably surprised you the first time I
said it, but probably doesn't surprise you as you think
about it a little bit more. Illegal immigrants who come
here are much less crime prone by comparison. Even immigrants

(01:30:24):
in Europe, where immigrants tend to have a higher crime
rate than native born Europeans, would have a lower crime
rate than native born Americans if they came here. Instead,
illegal immigrants are just law abiding by comparison selection effects.
Legal and illegal immigrants tend to think about the future,
which is why they incurred a large cost to immigrate

(01:30:46):
in the first place. The present value of work in
the United States is greater than work in another countries,
so they made the investment to come here. People who
tend to think about the future commit fewer crimes and
have more self contry. That's why Mexican Americans commit much
less murder than Mexicans in Mexico, or generally than other

(01:31:09):
people from countries that send many immigrants and have higher
crime rates. If immigrants to the US by their region
and country of birth had the exact same homicide offending
rates in the US as in the countries they came from,
the homicide rate in the US would be about seventeen
percent higher than it actually is, and the number of
people murdered each year in the United States would be

(01:31:29):
higher by about three thousand, seven hundred and fifty people
a year, according to a back of the envelope estimate.

Speaker 2 (01:31:38):
So I'm going to add one more thing to this.

Speaker 1 (01:31:43):
The risk of committing a crime as an illegal immigrant
and as a legal immigrant, but certainly as an illegal immigrant,
the risk of committing a crime and being caught is
being deported. That's a risk again. As a legal immigrant,
you could also potentially be deported. It's somewhat less likely.
It depends on the crime. If you are someone who

(01:32:08):
is willing to go through what so many illegal immigrants
have been willing to go through to get here. This
ties into what I said in that last theory. You're
going to be very careful about doing anything that's going
to put you in contact with law enforcement.

Speaker 2 (01:32:25):
And potentially get you thrown out of the country.

Speaker 1 (01:32:27):
A low wage job here is probably a mid wage
job at least where you came from. A low wage
job here is enough for you to be able to
rent a place to live and own a car, and
have a television and air conditioning and maybe a nice
pair of shoes, and perhaps still have a little bit
money left over to send your family in Guatemala or
wherever you're from.

Speaker 2 (01:32:49):
And a person like that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
Is not I think it stands to reason, is not
very likely to commit a crime because of the loss
if they get deported. So I think that's enough on
those things. I just wanted to share that with you.
I'm a huge supporter of immigration.

Speaker 2 (01:33:11):
We need more immigration into this country, not less.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
We need approximately zero illegal immigration, though, and I want
our border controlled, and it is being controlled, and that's great,
and throwing out illegal aliens who have committed crimes in
the country is great. But it's an enormous mistake for
the Trump administration to be doing workplace enforcement on places

(01:33:40):
that simply won't be able to find workers nursing homes, restaurants, hotels,
and so on. It's a huge mistake and again I've
said this frequently. I know that among my listeners there
are people who disagree with me, and we're I don't
know what the motivation is. You might think, well, there's
a law, and therefore it has to be obeyed by everybody.
Therefore we got to kick him out. I get that mindset.

(01:34:02):
I disagree with it because there are bad laws. I
get it, though, And I also get the point that
if we don't enforce the laws, then we create an
incentive for other people to come here illegally because they'll
think we won't enforce the laws. And these are very
very complex problems, and I don't mind. I don't think
that somebody who says throw them all out is necessarily

(01:34:24):
a bad person, unless the motivation is simply xenophobia and
hatred of foreign people. And I don't think that's most
but I do think we got to be really, really
careful about it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:34):
Truly. Let me switch gears.

Speaker 1 (01:34:38):
Another sort of intersection of international and domestic story, and
I thought this is really interesting. So the FBI Director
Cash Ptel recently released a report that apparently had been
made some years earlier, but sort of withdrawn so it
didn't reach the public. And I want to be really

(01:35:01):
careful with this because it could be a lot of things,
you know, and this is one of those one of
those stories where the framing by the first person you
hear it from could have a lot to do with
how you interpret the story. Now, the headline at the
Washington Times, which you have to keep in mind, not
the Washington Post, the Washington Times, which is quite a

(01:35:22):
conservative newspaper, one of just a very small number of
overtly conservative newspapers in this country. The headline is FBI
report alleges China mass produced fake US driver's licenses for
purpose of voting fraud. And as I go through this,
I'm just gonna do a couple of minutes and then
I'm gonna have to head out for the day. And

(01:35:43):
you can come see me at Regen Revolution starting at
two o'clock today regenrev dot com. If you want to
find the address and come see me at I'll be
there two pm to four pm today. The part that
I find particularly interesting is the very last five words
for purpose of voting fraud. FBI Director Cash Pttel announced

(01:36:03):
the declassification of documents alleging Chinese involvement in producing fraudulent
driver's licenses intended for fake mail in ballots supporting President
Biden in the twenty twenty presidential election. Patel made the
announcement on Accent immediately turned the documents over to Senate
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley for review. The intelligence report,

(01:36:25):
originally from the Albany, New York Field Office and dated
September twenty fifth, twenty twenty, detailed concerns that Beijing mass
produced fake American driver's licenses to influence the election through
phony mail in ballots. The report was subsequently recalled with
instructions to destroy all copies and remove it from computer systems,

(01:36:46):
reportedly to reinterview the source. So again, in the interest
of time, I'm not going to go through this whole thing,
but it seems like there was some question as to
whether the person who made this claim about the driver's
licenses with the intent of the driver's licenses being voter fraud.

Speaker 2 (01:37:01):
It seems like they had.

Speaker 1 (01:37:02):
Some question about whether that source was telling the truth
or was either lying or wrong. Now I don't know
whether the source was lying or wrong, or was the
source telling the truth and correct. I don't know, but
it seems to me that that was probably what the
question was. Also, there's no allegation here that the driver's
licenses were actually used to get fake mail in ballots

(01:37:26):
that were voted for Trump.

Speaker 2 (01:37:27):
And there's also no explanation.

Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
Of how one would use a fake driver's license to
successfully get around the other security like signature verification that
surrounds elections. Now, I want to share something with you.
I want you to have a just a listen. I'm
not gonna play this whole thing, just a bit of

(01:37:51):
it to maybe help us keep this a little.

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):
Bit in context.

Speaker 1 (01:37:56):
This is from CBS News in cargo.

Speaker 6 (01:38:01):
Fake driver's licenses like you've never seen before.

Speaker 3 (01:38:04):
They are flooding the Chicago market and could pose a
real threat.

Speaker 4 (01:38:08):
CBS to investigative reporter Dave Savini is live at O'Hare
tonight for US with this original report. Dave, these bogus
driver's licenses are produced overseas by high tech counterfeiters, and
they're so good homeland security could be at stake. So
we're looking at one shipment two thousand dollars worth.

Speaker 1 (01:38:26):
Of fake IDs.

Speaker 2 (01:38:27):
Exactly. They are incredible fake driver's licenses. There we go,
Illinois driver's license.

Speaker 4 (01:38:32):
Smuggled into this country by high tech forgery rings that
have mastered the details so well it could lead to
critical security threats and everything.

Speaker 2 (01:38:41):
Yep, one of these is fake, the other is real.
These are very very good.

Speaker 4 (01:38:45):
Brian Bell is with US Customs and Border Protection.

Speaker 2 (01:38:48):
We have hundreds of boxes of these.

Speaker 3 (01:38:51):
They're all containing counterfeit driver's licenses.

Speaker 4 (01:38:54):
The IDs cost about one hundred and fifty dollars smuggled
inside boxes of tea sets and jewelry from China.

Speaker 2 (01:39:00):
All right, I'm gonna leave it there in the interest
of time.

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):
They go on to talk about how most of these
things that they've caught appear to be going to college
students who want to drink and they're getting these.

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):
And this is an old story, right, I mean when.

Speaker 1 (01:39:10):
I was in college, which is a long time ago,
people would get fake id's and use them to go
out to bars. When I was in college in New York.

Speaker 2 (01:39:18):
This is an all But here's what I so.

Speaker 1 (01:39:20):
This is why I just want to be careful with
this whole FBI cash Betel thing. I don't think we
know that these are or were intended to be used
for some kind of election fraud. That doesn't mean we
shouldn't be careful about it. But what I wanted to
tell you about that report you just heard out of
Chicago with these incredibly high tech, highly realistic driver's licenses.

(01:39:42):
That news report is ten years old. Ten years old.
This has been going on for a long long time,
and thus far I am unaware of evidence that people
have been using these to vote. That said, we need
to do everything we can to make make sure that
our elections are secure, and it is worth considering this question.

(01:40:05):
If the Chinese wanted to use fake driver's licenses to
manipulate our elections somehow, what could we do to defend
against that. The one and only Jimmy Sangenberger, my harmonica
play and friend in for Mandy Connell next keep it
here on Kowai

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