07-02-25 - *FULL SHOW* Now What for CO Dems; Brad Thor; Campaign Finance

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have a cup of tea or a little thermisive tea.
And again I still don't understand keeps the hot things
hot and the cold things cold? How do it know?
But I have a thermisive tea almost every single show.
You know, if I probably an average if I do

(00:20):
how many? How many shows would I do in a month? Shannon?
Twenty two? Let's say there's a maybe twenty two shows
a month, and I probably have tea during twenty one
of them or something like that. Why are you looking
so quizzical? There's just normally so much vacation time in there.
For what me, I don't take a lot. I don't
take nearly as much vacation as I would like to take.

(00:42):
Uh huh oh, that hurts all right. If there's an
average of twenty shows a month, because Shannon says I'm
a slacker, I have tea during nineteen of them. Gosh,
I like it when my producer calls me lazy. So
so here's the thing. So I've got this stuff, and
I knows Shannon has this stuff too, in fact, he
has it in the extra large size, and I have

(01:03):
just the court or something. This coffee mate, you know,
creamer kind of stuff that I like to put in
my put in my tea unless it's a if it's
an herbal tea, I don't put that stuff in. But
a black tea like Earl Gray or anything in that family,
I put it in, right, Okay, So Shannon is showing
me his now that looks like maybe a half gallon size.
He's doing the Shannon is doing the like the way

(01:26):
a gal would on a game show, holding up a
thing and moving the hand slowly up and down to
show it to demonstrate. Right, So Shannon has the half
gallon version. Anyway, my pointon So Shannon is just sniffing his.
And this is actually the point that I'm gonna make,
and I am starting the show wasting your time. Normally

(01:47):
I don't get to wasting your time until a little
bit later in the show, but I'm starting with it today.
And that is this thing that I've got, this container
that I've got that's almost empty now, and I think
it's called Italian cream Flavor, zero sugar, zero sugar Italian
cream Flavor, I think anyway, it doesn't matter IF's zero
sugar or not. The amazing thing about this creamer is

(02:09):
that it is a non dairy product. And what is
so lovely about a non dairy product, aside from the
fact that it just means I'm ingesting pretty much straight
up chemicals, is that it lasts forever. I've had this
thing open. I don't leave it open. I close the top.
But normally, once you open a container of milk, let's say,

(02:31):
you've got a fairly limited period of time before it
turns into cheese, turns into something just absolutely disgusting. But
with this coffee mate, non dairy creamer, I've no stop
showing me blue cheese. Shannon. Now he's doing the same thing,
running his hand lovingly underneath it and up and down
the side of Shannon is sniffing. He is wasting the

(02:51):
blue cheese aroma into his nostrils just to annoy me. Anyway,
I've had this for two months at least, and it's
almost done now, but it's never gone bad. And that
is the benefit of having something where the main ingredients
are like water, oil, and a bunch of chemicals I
can't pronounce, and either real or fake sugar whatever it

(03:14):
is in this one, I don't even remember. So that
is that that was my thought this morning. Gosh, it's
amazing how long this coffee mate has stayed good. So
there you go. That's what I started your show with.
Yes I did, I just did that. I really did.
Let's talk about the p Diddy thing just for a moment,
because I don't care very much, but it's also kind
of big news. So this rapper Sean Calms, Puff, Daddy,

(03:38):
Pa Diddy, all the different names, So let's just talk
about it for a moment because it is a big
cultural thing, even though it's not so much my culture,
it's a it's a cultural thing. He's a super famous dude,
and I don't know if he's a billionaire, but he's
certainly a you know, a couple hundred millionaire at least.
So let's just stipulate the guy is somewhere between living

(04:01):
a lifestyle that I don't understand. He's somewhere between that
and a complete scumback. I'm not here, he say. He's
somewhere in that spectrum, and he lives this lifestyle of
drug fueled, lubed up sex parties, and the government decided
they wanted to make an example out of him, and
they charged him with all kinds of stuff, including racketeering,

(04:27):
which is normally a charge you use for al capone
and people like that, right, And it sure does seem
today like the government massively overcharged the guy. There were
five charges against him. One was racketeering, there were a
couple of basically coercion into sex kind of thing. Those

(04:50):
were all not guilty. Those three there were two of
those latter ones one racketeering, those were all not guilty.
And then there was trafficking for not trafficking, I'm sorry,
transportation not trafficking, transportation for prostitution. So this is an
old law called the Man Act m ANN and basically

(05:11):
says it's a it's a violation of federal law to
bring somebody across state lines for an active prostitution. So
I would just want to make something two things very
clear here. First of all, the government massively overplayed their hand.
And they thought they could convince a jury that a
lifestyle that they don't understand and will never experience, and

(05:34):
don't know anything about and might find weird or offensive
or off putting, that they could somehow get the jury
to turn that into saying, yes, guilty of a crime.
And the jury was smarter than that. The jury said
just because I don't understand that lifestyle just because I
don't like it, just because I think it's gross, and
I imagine everybody on the jury thought it was gross.

(05:56):
That doesn't mean he broke the law. And that's what
the jury came back with. Now, to the extent that
he paid women for sexual stuff and the women came
from out of state, that's a pretty prime of facia
violation of the Man Act. But the government's can have
an issue here because they so massively overcharged this case.

(06:17):
And I mean now on a de facto basis, right,
the jury basically said, you massively overcharged this case. We're
gonna find him guilty on these two much lesser charges
that might that could potentially have no jail time associated
with them, a maximum of ten years on each count.
I'm guessing the jail time will be more than zero,

(06:38):
but maybe not a lot more. And if I were
if I were Sean Diddy Combs, I don't think I'd appeal.
I don't know whether I'd waste the money on that.
It depends what the sentence is. But the judge is
gonna see, gosh, the federal government just put this guy
through this, you know, six week trial plus the stuff

(06:58):
before the trial with these massive overcharges only convicted him
on the on the lowest counts. What's the judge really
gonna give the guy. I don't know, I don't know,
but it's I bet you it's gonna be the lower
end of the whatever the guidelines are, because the government
clearly took this way too far. And the one other
thing I want to say on this is that the

(07:22):
stuff that he was found guilty of right paying for.
I guess the transportation of someone across the state line
to engage in prostitution should not be a crime. That
law should simply be repealed. Now it won't be while
we've got a Republican in in well, Republicans are in charge,
and it's not really a fight Republicans are going to

(07:43):
want to take on anyway. But prostitution itself should be legal,
not trafficking of unwilling you know, people into sex slavery,
like we're gonna make you a we're gonna bring you
in from Thailand and and we're gonna make you pay
off twenty thousand dollars of this, that or the other thing,
and until then we own you. When you're gonna be

(08:05):
you know, a prostitute, sex slave. That should not be okay,
that's not okay, it's not legal, but just straight up prostitution.
A girl or a guy wants to make a living by,
you know, selling her or his body for a while
to other voluntary purchasers of such services. Why should that
be illegal? It shouldn't be. I realized a very libertarian position,

(08:30):
and probably more people than not who are listening to
me right now don't agree. But I do think it's
kind of nuts that a voluntary transaction between two willing
adults can be illegal in the United States of America.
Let's see, Wait, where did that go? A couple listener text? Ross?
Does this mean you and I should go out for
beer and hookers? I'm game. You know, I've ever I've

(08:52):
never actually bought a girl for the evening, even though
I lived in Amsterdam and it was easy and legal
and all that, I've never I've never paid for it.
So if you want to go out for beer in hookers,
you can count me out on the hooker's part. But
I'd be happy to go out for a beer with
some listeners. That would be fun. Ross he paid off
police in hotel security to get rid of video evidence.

(09:13):
If he did that, he should have been charged with it.
If he wasn't charged with it, probably means they can't
prove it. Ross, How can you say that the charges
Diddy is guilty of shouldn't be a crime, Well, how
can I not say it. I don't think prostitution should
be illegal, so of course I can. Of course I
can say that. Yeah, all right, moving on, moving on,

(09:33):
we'll see. By the way. Oh, one other, just very
quick thing on the Diddy thing. The interesting question right now,
given that he has a boat that I guess is
kind of famous in the or infamous in the way
that Epstein's Island is infamous. Right the real question for
the judge now is will he let Diddy be be
free on bond or personal recognisance or whoever that works

(09:57):
in advance of sentencing, or will he hold him as
a flight risk. So that's really the main thing they've
got to deal with right now. Let me just talk
with you, just just for three minutes here about some
changes that happened in the Senate in the Big Beautiful Bill.
The House of Representatives is debating the Big Beautiful Bill
right now. This is a very odd name for a bill.

(10:20):
Isn't it. But anyway, they're debating it right now. And
I'll tell you, these members of Congress, these conservative members
of Congress who really really want to do something about
federal spending and the debt and deficit, are in a
difficult spot right now. They're in a very difficult spot
right now because most of these people are strong Trump

(10:40):
supporters and they don't want to face a Trump supported
primary challenge to them. Actually, Trump just announced he has
something some enormous amount of money. I was announced this morning.
I don't have it in front of me. It was
like a billion dollars or something to spend. He's not
running again, so he has this money to spend on

(11:01):
other political campaigns. So I mean, if you thought Donald
Trump already had a lot of control over the Republican
Party and he does, imagine how much more it is
when he has an effectively unlimited amount of money to
spend on other campaigns. So these people are very afraid
of him, and they don't want to get on the

(11:22):
wrong side, and they're in a very tough spot because
they know that the BBB A is a bad bill.
I want to be careful with this. It's a bad bill.
Not every aspect of it is bad. There are lots
of parts of it that are good. But it increases
the deficit too much. It doesn't increase the deficit by

(11:43):
as much as the Democrats say, or by as much
as the Congressional Budget Office says, not even close, because
those assume that government would have just allowed the biggest
hacks hiking American history by going back to the twenty
sixteen tax rates, which they never would allow. Anyway, we
may get a vote on even during my show, so
we'll see because these guys, Oh so I didn't finish

(12:04):
my point. These fiscal conservatives would love to change the bill.
As a matter of practical politics, I'm not sure they can.
They might have to just vote on what the Senate
sent them, hold their nose, and be as aggressive as
they can possibly be on spending cuts when the spending
bills come around. After all, this isn't really a spending bill.

(12:27):
It's a tax bill. But it's a tax bill that
adds at least a little bit to the deficit, and
Republicans shouldn't be doing that. Now, let me just give
you a few very quick things on stuff that changed
in the bill from the House to the Senate. First,
Remember I've been spending a little time in the past
few days talking about how stupid an idea was to

(12:48):
tax the power generation from solar and wind systems, even
though I don't love solar and wind, but if they
can compete without subsidies, then awesome. Right that means we're
gonna have lower price of electricity without adding to the
national debt, then good for them. There was a provision
in there that was a really boneheaded idea to tax

(13:11):
the power generation of wind and solar systems that had
Chinese parts, which is basically all of them, almost all
of them, and certainly in solar there is no way
to do solar and not much of a way to
do wind with no Chinese parts. We should not be
taxing that stuff. If they can build the system without subsidies,

(13:35):
then awesome, build it. That tax was removed late in
the process in the Senate, so that's good. The other
thing that was removed, and this is very much in
the weeds, but there was a provision that would make
it more difficult to sue the federal government. That provision
was removed. There was a provision that would block the
ability of states to implement their own artificial intelligence regulations

(14:01):
that was removed on a ninety nine to one vote.
And then this is probably worth more time than I'm
going to give it right now. But the no tax
on social security thing is not what it appears. They
were going to do no tax on social security just
what it sounds like. The parliamentarian said you can't. So
they did this other wacky thing that's kind of an

(14:23):
additional tax deduction for people over the age of I
think it's sixty five, and depending on your income and
some other things, it kind of functions like an offset
to the tax you have to pay on social Security,
but it's not really a no tax on social security.
When we come back, if all goes according to plan,

(14:44):
I'm going to be joined in studio by Shad marieb
who is chairman of the Democratic Party of Colorado. He
thinks his party has some work they need to do,
which I think is interesting since they control everything. Coming
up in the next five minutes or so, this hour's
chance to when a thousand bucks in our keyword for
cash thanks to Colorado Joint Replacement Coloradojoint dot org. We

(15:05):
have talked one or two times on the show about
this ongoing thing between Paramount and which is a parent
company of CBS that has sixty Minutes the lawsuit by
Donald Trump against them where Trump claimed his lawyers claim
that Trump suffered mental anguish something I'm not sure he's

(15:26):
capable of feeling, but he suffered mental anguish over the
what they claim was deceptive editing of Kamala Harris's interview
on sixty Minutes and the short version is Kamala Harris
gave a long, rambling answer to a particular question, and
CBS edited it so that when they played a short
version on I think it was one of their morning

(15:48):
shows and then some other show as well, it made
it sound like she gave a short, coherent answer when
she actually gave a long, incoherent answer. And claims that
that was improper. And Trump has been winning these big
settlements from media companies. ABC paid him a lot of money.
We learned a couple of weeks ago when I mentioned
on the show that that Paramount offered fifteen million and

(16:11):
Trump turned it down. We learned today that a deal
is done at sixteen million, which is basically the same
as fifteen million. The money will go to Trump's future
presidential library not to Trump himself, and the settlement does
not involve an apology. And my quick take on this,
Paramount really wants to get this done because they are
trying to do a merger deal where they get bought

(16:33):
by somebody else, and they want to make sure they
get approval from the government. And they believe that if
they were to fight with Trump that it would interfere
with their approval, even though it shouldn't. They might not
be wrong in this particular government. I also think that
I think in almost any other situation, Paramount would have
not not have agreed to pay anything. I mean, I
do think that the editing was deceptive, but that doesn't

(16:56):
mean you get sixteen million dollars for it. Anyway. I
wanted to give you that update because it looks like
that deal is done. Now all right, let's do something
completely different. I am very pleased to be joined in
studio by Shad marieb who is chairman of the Colorado
Democratic Party. It is so good to see you here,
have you on the show in person for the first time,
So thanks for coming down. Ros.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
I'm so happy to be here, excited for your listeners
to get to know me. A bit, and this has
been a long time coming, so glad to be here.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Indeed, and I saw a press release from you as
the leader of the party, from the party and you
talking about something called a stronger Colorado, And what interested
me about it so much is that you guys run everything.
There is not a statewide elected Republican in Colorado, right,

(17:43):
So but for listeners, what I mean by that is
for any office for which every person in Colorado can
vote Senator, governor, attorney general, treasurer, Secretary of State at
large region for SeeU. I don't know if I missed
any there is not a Republican in office. So what

(18:07):
I found really fascinating, and I actually think I'll just
say up front, this strikes me as very good leadership
on your part, not just sitting back and saying, well,
we're winning, so we must be doing everything right. So
why do you think, given that the DEMS are so
dominant in Colorado that you need to do more? Well?

Speaker 2 (18:26):
You're right that we've done really well, and I'm glad
for it. We in twenty twenty four got our electoral
votes delivered by double digits. We had thirty counties, including
Republican strongholds like Mesa, Douglas, and Elpaso make meeting full
shifts to the Democrats. We counted for actually ten percent
of the entire nation's leftward shift in an election where
most of the country veered right, and so we did

(18:47):
really well, but we had a few narrow winds. We
had a few narrow losses, including in CDA. Probably the
highest profile loss that we took is the narrowest battleground
margin in the country. And when you take a look
look at this election, when you take a look at
how well we're representing everybody, we feel pretty good. In Colorado,
we were number two in voter turn out, number two
in voter performance. No other state cracks the top five

(19:09):
in both categories. This is all good news for the Democrats.
But while the Republican Party is in total crisis and
focused on things that the average person couldn't care less about,
I think we have to agree that the Democratic.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Parties in crisis as well.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
We've seen the brand plummet, We've seen a lot of
our leadership lose touch with everyday people, and I think
when you look at the people who didn't vote for us,
this the first time we've lost voters who make under
fifty thousand dollars a year. That's crazy for the Democratic Party.
We saw young people make meaningful shifts to the right,
and that's the difference between winning CD eight or winning
a couple of these state led raeses. We lost one

(19:45):
by three votes in Colorado Springs, and so to me,
I take our success as a challenge. I definitely am
not sitting here doing a victory lap. We're going to
take a look at our platform and try and make
it more meaningful for the people who are working day
to day, paycheck to paycheck concise that way they can
actually understand how we're fighting for them. And then we're
also going to modernize our organizing for the first time
since two thousand and eight. So we're trying to do

(20:07):
those two things to rebuild, redesign the party to make
sure that we can get our message out there in
a way that people feel confident in.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
All Right, I have an infinite number of follow up questions,
but before I ask you those, tell us a little
about you.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, I got elect a chair in twenty twenty three.
I started working in politics as the volunteer coordinator for
my high school for John Kerry, which I guarantee you
got me as many dates as you can imagine. It
certainly didn't help with a prom date. Love politics. My
parents moved here from Lebanon to escape the Civil War
Counot citizenship in the mid nineties, and so you know,

(20:40):
politics and patriotism was always the dinner table conversation.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
Interesting, how are we going to give back? How are
you are?

Speaker 3 (20:46):
You?

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Are your parents Muslim or Christian?

Speaker 2 (20:48):
No, Nithernie, my dad was Muslim, but you know, didn't
pray every single day. We didn't you know, celebrate the holidays,
to really go to mosque. They really wanted us to
be Americanized and they made that a point. And so
I didn't really grow up with any And what was
your mom nominally? You know, I think she would probably
say everything seems fine. Yeah, you know, taught by nuns
in a Catholic school in Lebanon, and her parents, you know,

(21:11):
didn't push her in any direction, so she I.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Think a lot of the reason I ask, I think
a lot of folks don't know that there was and
for the Middle East kind of still is a significant
Christian presence. Yeah, in Lebanon, it's more than any other country.
There at this time, I Sally, Yeah, it's incredibly diverse.
I mean, if you look at me just in you know,
you judge a book by cover, you say, well, that
guy's probably got Middle Eastern heritage. But I've got cousins

(21:33):
with blonde hair, blue eyes. It's a melting pot in
that country. Yeah. And so I grew up in Littleton.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Colorado, worked in politics, have been bouncing in and out
of government. Worked for Congressman Polis in DC, was a
senior advisor on the first governor's race as well as
for Senator Hickenlooper's race. Was a state director, and then
me and my wife live out in the Western Slope.
We were on a small cattle ranch out there and
do direct to consumer beef when we're not doing politics.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Cool, I might need to buy a quarter beef for
me or something in your and your wife's pretty into
politics as well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
She's a former state senator, ran briefly for Congress before
we got district dated back into CD two.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
She's running against Bobert. It is going to be an
exciting race.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
But she left office a couple of years ago and
you know now works on local ballot initiative.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
She helps me out quite a bit. And does you
know a lot of the ranch work and animal husbandry
with me while I'm traveling around this Okay, last question
about you in terms of the political spectrum, and I'm
going to assume that you're not conservative. So let's look
at the spectrum from center to the new mayoral nominee

(22:38):
of New York. All right, so center to really really
far left. Where are you personally?

Speaker 2 (22:44):
You know, personally, I'm pretty progressive. I also recognize that
if we're going to get big things done, we have
to build coalitions, and sometimes that means getting seventy five
eighty percent of what you want and making sure that
the other side feels comfortable with it, whether it's Republicans
or maybe a more progressive person or maybe a more
moderate person. I think the similarity there with the approach
that Mamdani has in New York is just a laser

(23:05):
focus on the actual issues that we face every day.
We get distracted by so many of the social issues
or so many of the things that you know, the
television or you know, national Democrats or national Republicans want
to focus on to divide us. Most of us aren't
making enough money to live most of us agree our
rent or our mortgage is too high. Most of us
wish that the roads were a little bit better so
that our car wasn't.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
In the shop all the time.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
I think when we talk about solutions to those types
of problems, we can actually bring more people into our community,
whether you're Democrat, Republican or unaffiliated.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
And that's where my persuasion really is. We're talking with
Sead Marie, who is chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party,
and they just released a new campaign called a Stronger Colorado.
And again when I saw that, I thought it would
be a very interesting conversation to have shot in the
studio with me. Well he's in studio with me, but
just have the conversation, because it's not always obvious that

(23:58):
you would see a leader of an organization that seems
to be winning everything say we need to do we
need to do better. And as I said, I think
that's really good leadership. So let me follow up on
some things. So Colorado has in the last election, but
for at least fifteen twenty years before, been on a
fairly steady left word drift. When I moved to Colorado

(24:19):
in two thousand and four, we had a Republican governor,
we had a republican state Senate. I don't think we
had a Republican House. I don't remember, but it was
a purple state and now it's definitely not. And I
wonder whether a simplistic answer, which is certainly at least part,
but I would like to know how much of a
factor you think it is is the immigration into Colorado

(24:43):
of particularly Californians, but also Liberals and Democrats from other
states who want to live here because of all the
things Colorado has, Is that the main driver is the
change in the population or what else explains our move left.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
I think we'd be foolish if we didn't admit that
that's probably a big part of it. And I grew
up seeing essentially branches and Barnes on the sign of
County Line Road, and now there's a target on every
sort of exit, on thirty six and on I seventy
nine to twenty five. I think the big difference that
we found, especially as a Democratic party here when I'm
looking around the country is and I think the governor

(25:16):
has done this really well. I think Senator Hickenlooper has
done this well. Is a pretty fierce love for Colorado
and trying to bring people together. We've got this liberalitarian,
independent streak in Colorado that just doesn't exist anywhere else,
and so when we were talking about progressive or democratic policies,
it's almost always rooted and how are we going to
save you money and how are we going to get
the government out of your way. That's a really different
way about going through democratic politics in most states.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
But I don't think anyone started to interrupt you. I
don't think anyone believes that of the Democratic Party. I'm
an actual libertarian lowercase sale, not a member of the party.
I don't see anything libertarian about the Colorado or the
National Democratic Party. They want to regulate everything under the
sun except for abortion in marijuana. Well, and I think

(26:00):
that's fair.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
I mean, we want to get the government out of
your life, and I want the government out of regulating
your personal life. When we're talking about these policies, though,
I have to disagree with you in that we have
a governor and a senator and a House majority and
a Senate majority in the state that really champion bipartisanship,
that try to bring Republicans into the fold, that have

(26:21):
a community that's bigger than politics. And I do think
that that's different about Colorado, and it's I think what
makes our state so special.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
How much of this state's very left leaning voting pattern
in recent years do you think is a specific reaction
to the presence of Donald Trump versus a broader left
word shift, like you do? You think, and it is

(26:50):
part of the reason you're doing what you're doing, a
mindset that you know this electorate, Yeah, it's more left
than it was, but it might not be as much
left as it looks like right now once.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Donald Trump leaves. Yeah, I mean, maybe that's true. I mean,
he's personally repugnant to a lot of people. I think
Colorado is also full of a lot of smart voters,
and whether they've gone to college or not, whether they
finish high school or not, they're pretty tuned in to win.
Politicians are actually telling them the truth. I think when
you look at this bill from the other day, two
hundred and twenty five thousand people might lose their Medicaid.
We have CEOs of rural hospitals saying our hospital is

(27:23):
going to shut down six of them when this bill
is signed into law. If it's signed into law, if
people are losing food assistance. Whether you're a Republican, whether
you're a Democrat, whether you're unaffiliated. There's something to hate
about Donald Trump's policies right now, and not a lot
to love unless you're making two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in more. And so most people here are pissed
off about the policies. They're not really pissed off about
Donald Trump or the Democrats or Republicans. They're mad that

(27:45):
doesn't look like government's actually working out for them.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
I half agree with you. I think there's a very
big picture of view by people of every political stripe
that government is working for government, and government is working
for a few. To borrow an a term, oligarchs and
stuff like that. I don't agree with you that most
people think that Trump's policies aren't working for them. I

(28:08):
think a lot of the criticisms of this so called
big beautiful bill, which is more big than beautiful, but
still the criticisms aren't really aren't really true, or at
least should be spun if I were a Republican in
a different way. They're doing a terrible job with messaging.
But like most of the people who are going to
be come off Medicaid. Our people who are working, age
able body, people without kids, and I don't want them

(28:32):
getting government health care.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Well, and I mean the other side of the argument
is we know a hospice nurse in Adams County who
is talking to their patients and helping them navigate this
fear of them losing Medicaid in the bill passes, instead
of spending the last moments of life with their loved
one actually taking care of them.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
Those people won't be this. Those are not the people
who are going to be I don't think. Just object
to this, talk to them.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
I mean, we're looking at two hundred and twenty five
thousand Colaraden's getting kicked off their Medicaid and that's from
the pen and analysis.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Yeah, And this is probably the big difference between you
and me. I see these numbers about how many people
are getting kicked off Medicaid, and my answer is, all right,
that's a good start, Like you know. So that's where
you and I very very much different.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
And maybe where you and I agree is that we
need to create a system where people can actually work
a good job, work forty hours a week and afford healthcare.
That maybe isn't government healthcare and can actually participate in
the system, and right now that's not happening.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Well, that's true. That's because we have too much government
involvement in healthcare, which forces the price of everything. I
think we need a real free market in healthcare, which
we haven't had probably since FDR.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, and you might be right. I think marketr regulations.
They're a good thing in some cases to help lower costs.
But I don't think that you're wrong. I mean, for example,
when we run this ranch, we're trying to expand it
to be able to host events because you know, no
rancher listening to the show is going to agree that
you make money on beef.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Right, And so we always try and find even now,
even with beef prices where they are.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Mean, maybe if you've got thirty thousand head, three thousand head,
you know, one of these giant, giant ranges before the
small rancher and farmer, it's still you know, marginal. Yeah,
And going through as many regulations as we had to
do to be able to just host a few events
a year to make the ends meet, it was unbelievable.
And that's a place where I think Democrats should not
be defending the government, should not be defending the system

(30:12):
we've built. In some ways, we have to be able
to acknowledge that we can do things a little bit
better and make life easier for the people who are
just kind of scraping by and trying to start something
special to bring their community around. But the government maybe
has gotten in the way, And so there's all sorts
of places where Democrats can make this argument really effectively.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
I do think that you know, you look at stuff
like our ridiculous free lunch for everybody, pre school lunch
for everybody, and the assault on the Second Amendment and
the thing that ended up getting changed. But where like
if you didn't use the pronoun your kid wanted that
they could be held against you in a custody fight.
And I think a lot of folks and maybe you yourself,

(30:51):
Like we mentioned mom Donnie a little bit ago, who's
going to be like Donald Trump's poster child for the
whole Democratic Party soon. If there are crazies in your
party and there are crazies in the other party too,
how do you navigate around that? Because in both political
parties the bases are pretty fringy right now, and we

(31:13):
have so many seats in the federal and state races
that are not competitive that the real election is the primary,
and so sometimes both sides benefit by going further out
to their sides.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
How do you deal with that? Well, so take those
issues that you just talked about. Those are policies that
a lot of Democrats are going to agree with, whether
they're progressive or moderate, because the focus is on making
a life where people can simply be happy or get by. However,
what I think the problem has happened in both the
Republican and Democratic Party, and this is a big part
of a stronger Colorado is our political platform is a
Democratic Party is fifty three pages of bullet points and

(31:49):
really small font. Nobody is actually going to read it.
It's a policy prescription list of sort of wish list items.
It doesn't actually talk about the values that you and
I care about. You and I might be different politically,
but you and I both want to have roads you
can drive on that don't you know damage your car,
That you can have a house in a safe neighborhood
where you kis king outside and play you have to
worry about it. A good school that has enough money

(32:11):
so the teachers not buying supplies out of their own pocket.
You know, these are the things that bring us together,
and these are the things where Democrats actually have a
track record of success. And if I'm able to condense
those things into a clear and concise platform, that argument
to the public is going to be in star contrast
and stuff like in this bill where whether you're a
publican or Democrat. You know, again, six rural hospital CEOs
are saying, hey, look out, we're going to shut down

(32:32):
if this bill passes. Rural call roddens should not be
excited about this bill for that because it's already hard
enough to go to the hospital and drive forty fact sin.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
It did just at the end they added fifty billion
dollars for rural hospitals. So hopefully they can take care
of that that that is a legit issue, that is
a legit issue. Hopefully they will they will solve it.
I think my trouble, and again, this is just comes
down to a fundamental viewpoint is so many of the
things that you call solutions, like the free school lunch
for everybody, thing is just to me, it's just government

(33:02):
robbing me and then redistributing it in a way that
some politicians think they'd like it redistributed, and I just
think of government in that situation as a mugger. And anyway, well,
that's a fundamental difference in philosophy. It's a difference.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
But what I will say you and I can definitely
agree on is a lot of these programs have been
created because the system right now is working against working people.
And if we can actually make sure people, when they
work they're forty hours a week can walk home with
a paycheck that can not just afford the bills, but
maybe a pizza night or a movie night for the family,
we can cut the cost of health care. If we
can actually take a look at these fundamentals for everyday life,

(33:36):
we don't need programs like that. But right now, kids
who are going hungry needs to be well fed if
they're going.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
To go with those kids who were going hungry already
got the free lunch. This was now free lunch for
middle class and upper class kids because the poor kids
already got free lunch. But anyway, dude, we could talk
for three hours. I'm just gonna have to have you,
have you back. It's really really good to meet you
in person, really good to have you in studio. Sead
marib is Chairman of the Democratic Party of Colorado. And

(34:01):
I probably shouldn't say this because I got so many
Republican friends, but I'll just say it anyway. The Republican
Party should hope and we'll see how Britta Horn, how
Britta Horn does is the new chair The Republican Party
should hope that they've got leadership as good as the
Democratic Party appears to have right now with Shad running
the running the show. We don't agree on everything, but
he's focused on the right things to win and and

(34:24):
I respect that even if I don't agree with with everything.
Thanks so much for joining me in studio. Privileged beer
with you, Ross, Thank you for having me. We'll be
right back on KOA. Hang on a second, I need
to go turn this light off.

Speaker 4 (34:34):
Trash day. Did you even put your trash out today?
I was just gonna ask you that because because of
the holiday. Well, yeah, except it's not a holiday where
I live. It's only a holiday where you live.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
It's not it's not a I live in this sort
of private neighborhood. It's got its own hoa, and the
hoa has declared that it's not a holiday. Yeah, and
so therefore my trash day is unaffected, which means that
I don't know what day to put my trash out
because I never do. But you have a holiday, So
did you put your trash out? I did, just in case, right,

(35:08):
just in case they come a day early because of
the holiday. Correct, right, Thanks for being here everyone, Dragon,
and I start off with, oh, Dragon, you'd have been
I don't even remember what it was I was talking about,
but you'd have been very You'd have been very Oh,
I remember, you'd have been very proud of me. I
started the show straight out of the gate, wasting people's time. Beautiful,

(35:31):
It was fabulous. What was wasting people's time about? We
wasted people's time with my excessively long description of how
amazing it is that the coffee mate stuff that I
put in my tea every day every day at work.

Speaker 4 (35:45):
Wait wait, wait, coffee mate, you put in your tea?

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah? Continue, Yeah that that. I brought it here to
the fridge where you have your lunchy meals at least
two two and a half months ago, and I've been
using it ever since. It's almost done now, and it
hasn't changed at all because it's a non dairy product,
and I feel like I'm basically drinking a chemical factory.

(36:15):
But it's yummy, and I love the fact that it
doesn't ever go bad, which which is and there's something
very wrong about that. I'm drinking something that doesn't.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
Ever go bad, and that is called coffee meat that
you are putting in your tea. And you've had this
in our refrigerator here on the fourth floor. Yeah, And
do you believe anybody else has used your coffee meat
for tea or coffee?

Speaker 1 (36:37):
I don't know, but I don't mind if they do,
because I have done that one or two times to
other people. Only you know, a teaspoon, right, Mac's a tablespoon.
So I've done that to another person or two, although
never never when their bottle is like close to empty.
So I've done that when I didn't have my own.
So I don't care if somebody else does take some of.

Speaker 4 (36:58):
Minds that's the perfect time to use it, because then
they can't even say if it's always the time.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, let's do some other
stuff that may not be as much time wasting. And
I you know, I've I mean, I feel like wasting
your time is my job a part of my job.
But let's do this one. I saw this over at Axios,
so you you will recall that in recent weeks we've
been talking about the tax revenue shortfall, not just to Denver,

(37:27):
but particularly to Denver, but other cities are reporting the
same thing. For Collins, Aurora, Colorado Springs, they're all reporting
the same thing. And we actually may talk with an
expert from the Common Sense Institute about this next week.
The Common Sense Institute just recently did a report about
sales tax revenue statewide, and I'll give you just one

(37:47):
top line and then we'll go into the details next week.
But but sales tax revenue on an inflation adjusted basis
has actually declined over the past couple of years. On
a nominal basis is, it's up. So let's say, you know,
it goes from you have something, goes from one hundred
dollars to one hundred and one dollars over two years.
But inflation was six percent over those two years. So

(38:11):
just to keep up with inflation, it needed to go
to one hundred and six, and instead it only went
to one hundred and one. And if you assume that
the cost of operating a government kind of sort attracts
the inflation rate a little bit. Then the cost of
government has gone up six percent whatever the number is
somewhere around there, but the income to government, at least
from sales tax is only up one percent, and that

(38:34):
means the government is going to need to cut spending somewhere.
So we're going to talk more about that with one
of the fine folks from Common Sensence two next week.
But the story sort of first made news maybe a
month and a half ago when Denver announced a rather
shocking thing. Denver announced a two hundred million dollars shortfall,

(39:00):
right and the way one of the ways that they're
gonna have to deal with that because like so many
big city governments and state governments, especially especially in blue states,
they have too many employees and they're gonna have to
do something about it. So they were talking about layoffs,

(39:20):
which are gonna have to do. There's there's no choice.
Denver is gonna have to do layoffs plus whatever else
is gonna do to try to come up with two
hundred million dollars in a year of savings. And there
were conversations early on about well, how are we gonna
do this? What are the rules going to be to
decide who gets laid off and who doesn't get laid off.
And I'm gonna share with you a little bit from

(39:40):
Axios Denver, and I actually, I actually think this outcome
is pretty good. And I think part of the reason
it's pretty good is that it basically goes around the
city council because the city council, there are a few
good members there, but mostly you know, you have examples
on the city council of a city that wants to
turn itself into Portland, right or Seattle. So let me

(40:01):
just share with you from Axios Denver. A city panel,
not the city council, yesterday approved controversial new layoff rules
for city workers, despite outcry from opponents who called the
new regulations targeted whatever that means, rushed and unfair. Well,
I guess the people who think it's unfair are the
people who don't get the exact rules that they wanted,

(40:24):
that they thought would protect them. And I will tell
you in a moment who that is. The rules will
affect thousands of Denver workers facing possible layoffs as the
city moves to shrink its workforce to close the two
hundred million dollar gap in next year's budget. So tuesday's
decision by the Career Service Board, which oversees the rules
guiding the merit system for city employees, sets criteria to

(40:48):
determine forthcoming layoffs. Determining factors include performance, skills, abilities, and
employee tenure. So part of what's going on here, just
so we're clear, then that employee tenure part. And by
the way, the vote at that Career Service Board was

(41:08):
four to one, So the employee tenure part is the issue.
Employees who have been there a long time have wanted
protection from being laid off simply because they've been there
for a long time, whether or not they are the
best workers or the most needed workers or anything like that.

(41:30):
And these rules as as passed now and I'm going
to go over to Denverwright dot com managers meaning the
people who are going to have to decide who gets
laid off, will weigh length of service at twenty five
percent and the other three criteria at between ten percent
and thirty five percent each. So basically what this means

(41:51):
is folks who have been on the job a long
time can get laid off, have a higher possibility of
getting laid off off. Then the rules they originally wanted.
So those people are pissed off. But I like this.
I don't look it's a very difficult situation. Nobody wants
to lay people off, but it's got to happen in

(42:11):
order to save this money. And frankly, some of the
most senior people may or may not be the actual
best workers, may or may not be the most productive workers,
but they probably have the highest salary, so laying at
least some of them off is a good money saver.
And it makes sense to let the managers say we're
going to look, yeah, okay, we'll look at seniority as

(42:34):
a factor, but the rest is going to be determined
by your history of job performance, your skills, and your abilities.
And I think that's great. And I think the other
people who are unhappy about this are the unions for
these government workers, because to the extent that the union

(42:55):
gets dues as a percentage of somebody's salary. And I
don't know if that's the case in this union. Maybe
someone can tell me. But if the does are a
percentage of your salary rather than a flat number, then
when the higher salary people get laid off, the union
makes less money, and of course, the union only cares
about the union. You know what a listener is asking
me to go back to something that I talked about

(43:16):
a little bit earlier in the show. So I think
I will do this quickly, kind of sort of as
a public service announcement in a way. And I'm not
kidding about that. And so this is the no tax
on social Security thing. So let me do this in
just two minutes. I don't know what percentage of my
listening audience is on social Security, but you know, some

(43:41):
percentage of you are on social Security already, and some
percentage of you will have either be there soon or
you have parents who are there who might ask you
a question. So I would just like to make sure
we all understand. So here's the thing. President Trump campaigned
on a few things that I didn't love, but whatever,
he campaigned on no tax on tips, no taxs on overtime,

(44:03):
and no tax on social Security. So the original bill,
the original big beautiful bill, included all of those things
in different formats, and I won't go through all those details.
But then when it got to the Senate, the Senate
parliamentarian ruled that under reconciliation rules, a provision saying no

(44:27):
tax on social Security would not be permitted does not
fit within what's called the Bird rule BYRD named for
a former senator regarding reconciliation. And I haven't read the
Bird rule, but I'm guessing maybe it has to do
with social Security, Like maybe social Security simply can't be
part of a reconciliation bill. So what they did instead

(44:51):
was they put in a six thousand dollars credit or
tax deduction, either tax deduction per eligible taxpayer. Actually the
House's version had that two at a four thousand dollars
they might haven't. Yeah, the House had that too, and
I think that was an addition to no tax on

(45:13):
social Security in the House. But whatever, that doesn't matter.
I'm telling you what it is now. The Senate version,
which the House is going to probably be voting on
any minute, is six thousand dollars according to CNBC, six
thousand dollars per eligible taxpayer, so eligible taxpayers would get
the full deduction if they're modified adjusted gross income is
up to seventy five thousand dollars if single, up to

(45:35):
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars if married and filing jointly.
And then the deduction phases out, So the deduction would
fully phase out for single filers at one hundred and
seventy five thousand in income and joint filers with two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars in income, and so, without

(45:57):
getting too much more in the weeds here, the bottom
line is that there isn't actually a provision in this
bill that says social Security earnings will not be taxed.
What it's said. What they've done is they've put in
this deduction that for many people who receive Social Security

(46:20):
will offset whatever the tax burden will be for Social Security.
It's imperfect. And then when you get to higher income
two hundred and fifty thousand, filing jointly one hundred and
seventy five thousand, if filing singly, then you don't get
any benefit at all. And if you're still collecting Social
Security and you've got that kind of income, you will

(46:41):
be paying tax on it. So it's somewhat complicated. But
don't go into this thinking that there is in fact
a provision that says no tax on Social Security. There isn't.
And this particular deduction that I'm talking about is only
an effect from this year through twenty twenty eight, unless
the future Congress extends it, which it probably will, but

(47:03):
it is temporary. So I hope I answered your question.
It's always so much fun and such a privilege to
have Brad Thor on the show, one of the truly
great thriller writers. And you know, listeners know, I love, love,
love the thriller genre, and I love having the best
writers on the show. And Brad has a new book out,

(47:25):
Edge of Honor. I should know, Brad exactly what publication
day is, but I don't. It's around now, so is
it coming up or is it just passed?

Speaker 5 (47:36):
It was July first, so yesterday yesterday?

Speaker 1 (47:38):
Okay, so this book was just published yesterday. And one
of the great joys of my job is I get
these books a little bit early so I can read
them and then talk with the authors on publication day
or right around it, and you know, as usual. The problem,
my problem with Brad Thor is that he costs me
sleep because I pick up the book and then I
can't put it down, and it's like three nights in

(48:00):
a row and then I'm tired. But yes, so another
great Scott Harvard book, Brad, and let me, let me there.
I got a lot of things I want to ask
you about. I don't think I've read every Scott Harveth book,
but I'm trying to think of one where essentially all
of his activity is in the United States of America.

Speaker 5 (48:24):
Well, so, first of all, thank you. That is high praise.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
Indeed, I appreciate it, and I want all the listeners
to know that. I tell people my books are like
the James Bond movies. If there is a new Bond
movie at the theater and you've never seen one of
them before, doesn't matter, go see it. Pick up the
newest Brad Thorpe book. I'm gonna get you caught up
right away. Yeah, my guy, Scott Harveth comes back again
and again again. Doesn't matter if you've ever read one,
you don't need to read him in order, that's right.

(48:48):
So it's been a while he's been globe trotting, dealing
with things around the world. So for this Fourth of July,
and the book actually takes place in the days leading
up to the fourth of July in DC and around DC,
I wanted to bring him home. I wanted to do
a big, red, white and blue patriotic thriller.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Yeah, and it's funny. It's not funny. I mean it's
intentionally and you talk, you talk about and I think
in the notes at the end, which I'm weird enough
to read, you talk about how much you love July
fourth and how much it means to you. So it's
kind of funny. I'm reading this in the lead up
to July fourth. I almost feel like I'm almost like

(49:24):
I'm reading a news story in a way, because I
feel like it's happening right now.

Speaker 5 (49:30):
That's great.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Then, you know, I call what I do faction where
you don't know where the facts end and.

Speaker 5 (49:35):
The fiction begins. So that's exactly the feeling I wanted
you to have. You can read this book after the
fourth of July two, that's fine.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
It is kind of fun because Harvard is his favorite holiday,
like me, he is fourth of July, and you've got
all the decorations, the flags that are coming out and
all that kind of stuff. So it just adds to
that feeling of anticipation for Independence Day.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
I think you know this already, but I like to
make sure I tell the authors who are on the show,
because apparently it's a rare thing that I have read
the whole book, and I guess the significant percentage of
people who interview you have read some of it or
none of it. So I just want to make sure
you know I've read all of it.

Speaker 5 (50:15):
Well.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
I appreciate that, and I actually am very lucky that
I have a handful of people very special like you
who are big fans of the books and are thrilled
to get it early and they read it cover to cover,
and I think it adds to a more substantive discussion
about the book.

Speaker 5 (50:30):
So I appreciate you being such a pro all right.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
So, as long as we're going to have a substantive
discussion on serious issues of philosophy, politics, and so on,
I would like to start that conversation by asking if
you have had a bad experience with ludifisk.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
Yeah, as a American of Scandavian descent, I have had
more than one holiday where we had.

Speaker 5 (50:52):
To eat that poison.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
Had they when everything broke about the Rendition program under
the George W. Bushetmanstration in the black sites and stuff,
have they been force feeding lutafisk to the Islamic terrorists?
I would not have been surprised.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
M Yeah, I could tell that that was really you
complaining about Luta Fisk and not just Scott Harvath. Folks,
You'll have to read the book to understand, h understand
what we're talking about. All right, So let's let's actually
get a little bit more serious here. So part of
the plot plot of the book, a big part of
the plot of the book is a threat to the
life of a former national security official in the US government,

(51:32):
and Scott Harvath and others have to figure out who
the threat is actually coming from. But one of the
things that the characters talk about in the book, and
that is, you know, obviously channeling a bit of Brad
Thor's zone thinking, is this former official not having a
secret Service protection, which has been a thing in the news,

(51:54):
so faction. But you want to talk about that a little.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
Yeah, So it's actually based on somebody that I know
from the national security community who was involved in a
lot of high level things pissed off a lot of
the right bad people around the world because he was
being a very muscular advocate for US policy under the
president that he worked for, and when that administration was up,

(52:20):
he was not able to get a security detail despite
the very serious threats against him. So I was actually
writing this books pretty much done when all that news
broke about Pompeo losing his John Bolton losing his. So
I went and planted a digital flag on Facebook to say, wow,
this headline, this is very much is very similar to

(52:41):
what Scott Harveath is dealing with.

Speaker 5 (52:42):
An Edge of Honor.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
So it was me, you know, kind of getting to
the finish line before the headlines broke once again.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
So yeah, once again for sure. So are you saying
that that particular plot line did not come from Pompeo
and Bolton. I guess the book was probably finished before that,
before that those stories hit anyway.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
Yeah, so it was it was another person in the
national security world.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
It was not Pompeiu and bolt was.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
It was that part was already done, which is why
I went and made a post on Facebook to say, Hey,
you're going to see this coming up this summer, but
I want you to know right now while this news
is breaking. I don't know that's February or when it was,
but I was like, hey, you know that I was
already working on this before it hit the news.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Okay, well just one more follow up on that. Hopefully
I won't ask something that is too far. But under
what president did the person who you will not name,
uh not get a secret Service detail.

Speaker 5 (53:41):
I'm not going to say, okay.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
You know, I want to follow up on this with
with a comment that's got Harvath made in the book
along the lines of how are you going to get
very top people to want to work in government, especially
in potentially risk and do seeing positions like national security
advisor if you're gonna take away their their protection when they're.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
Out exactly, So that is a non part is an issue.
We want the best people advising the president, whoever that
may be, doesn't matter what party they come from. You
want the president to have the best advisors and then
the best implementers to carry out their policies. So if
you if we as a nation refuse to protect those

(54:30):
people after they leave service of an administration, we refuse
to protect them against threats that they incurred during their
service to the country, we're idiots.

Speaker 5 (54:39):
You're never gonna you're not even gonna get.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
See team players to come to the White House in
the national security arena. So we should for bona fide
threats just because somebody says we're going to get you.

Speaker 5 (54:49):
It doesn't mean they're going to get you.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
But if you find out that there's really threats to
cooking for these people, we need to protect them, regardless
of what a president passed, current or.

Speaker 5 (54:58):
Future, what they think about the person.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
If they've got a bona fyte threat from a foreign
hostile actor, we need to protect them.

Speaker 5 (55:04):
It's just it's the right thing to do.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
It's like saying that you're mad at your wife and
there's a rapist in the neighborhood and you've seen.

Speaker 5 (55:08):
His car and you're not going to do anything about it.
That's just stupid. You got to protect the people that
take care of you and take care of the country.
We owe them that. We owe them that at the
very least.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
We're talking with Brad Thor, one of the world's best
thriller novelists, about his new book published yesterday called Edge
of Honor. I highly recommend that you go pick it
up and read it for your your summer read. Gosh,
if you go order it right now, it could probably
be delivered tomorrow and then you could have it to
read over the over the July fourth holiday. So, Brad,

(55:41):
the book where we get to the thread on the
former National Security advisor. Dude, he thinks that it's a
particular foreign adversary. But then, yeah, the book, And I'm
going to be careful here and let you spoil as
much of the plot as you or disclose as much
of the plot as you want. And I'm going to

(56:01):
try to not disclose too much. But obviously it's a
huge part of the book that the threat is not foreign.
Let's say that, And this part maybe drifts from faction
into like, could this actually happen? And how bad would

(56:22):
it be if this really were faction? This part right
about the domestic stuff, So tell us what you're getting at. Again,
you can disclose as much of the plot as you want.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
So the concept behind the book, I've long been fascinated
with the French Revolution, the different factions that split off there,
particularly the Jacobins, and the amount of violence that happened
during the French Revolution. So the idea from which this
thriller was born was, what if there was a cabal
of insiders in DC we elect a new super young president,

(56:55):
youngest president since JFK, super popular president, promises everything on
the campaign trail, gets into office and has to pump
the brakes on a lot of promises because realizes I
can't deliver on these things on day one because it
would actually do more harm than good. And so then
you've got this cabal that backed this young president very upset,
thinks the president is backing off of everything he promised,

(57:17):
this kind of second coming of a JFK, although it's
not Democrat or Republican. So they get upset and they decide,
you know what, screw the voters. They're not smart enough
to do the right thing. This idiot that we back.
They're very angry with them. They're like, we're going to
force them from power and we're going to get our
own person in there that's going to do the things
that we wanted to do because we can't trust the
American voters anymore. And that's the idea, this shadowy insider cabal,

(57:39):
and that turns out to be the threat that Harvad
has to deal with in the book, as does the
rest of the nation and the lead up to the
fourth of July.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
All right, last thing I want to ask you why
you again you talk about this in the book as
you separate from as Scott Harvath, Why do you treasure
July fourth? So much well.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
I think that if you were a soul up in
heaven and you were being given the choice of being born,
you could be born at any time in history, any
place on the planet, you would choose right here, right now.

Speaker 5 (58:17):
There is no better country, There's no better time to
be alive.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
Despite all the problems in the world, all the things
we've got going on in this country, this is the
best place to be, and this is the best time.

Speaker 5 (58:27):
To be alive.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
Every day we get better in this country, and so
I am so thankful.

Speaker 5 (58:33):
It reminds me real quick story of Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
He tells the story about a Cuban refugee sitting with
two people at a cafe in Miami.

Speaker 5 (58:40):
Whe's a doctor, one's a lawyer, and.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
He tells a story to these two people about how
he escaped the boat from Castro's Cuba. And the doctor
looks at the lawyer and says, boy, aren't we lucky,
And the Cuban refugee corrects him and says, no, no, no,
you two aren't lucky.

Speaker 5 (58:53):
I'm the lucky one. I had some place to go to.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
And if you're not careful, there's going to be nothing
left after the United States so that's how I feel.

Speaker 5 (59:01):
My family came here from Scandinavia.

Speaker 3 (59:02):
I'm very very honored to be an American and as
far as I'm concerned, greatest country in the history of
the world. We've done more good than any other nation.
And I'm thrilled. And it's my favorite holiday. I can't
wait for Friday and the fourth of July.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Love it. What a great answer. Brad Thor's new book
is called Edge of Honor. It was published yesterday, so
you can go wherever you buy your books and buy
it right now. Brad, tell our mutual friend David b
that you want to do an event in Denver for
your next book where I can host you.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Oh, I would be honored, and I'm long overdue in
that beautiful city, so we will definitely do it.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
Thank you, all right, Thanks so much for being here,
and thanks for entertaining me again. You're welcome.

Speaker 5 (59:47):
Have a great Fourth of July.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
All right, you too, Brad? All right, that's the great
Brad Thor. His new book is called Edge of Honor.
If you like thriller novels, his are always so much fun.
All right, Let's let's do some other things. I got
so many things still to do. What do I want
to do here? Okay, well, so let's just talk briefly
about the Safeway strike. It's funny, I used to live

(01:00:09):
kind of equidistant between a Safeway and a King Supers,
and we shop at both. Now that I've moved in
a different neighborhood, there isn't really a Safeway close to me,
so I don't notice the Safeway thing as much as
I noticed the King Supers thing. But last I checked,
there are something like thirty eight stores now, thirty eight
Safeway stores that have joined this strike. And basically I

(01:00:35):
don't have a lot more to add, just sort of
keeping an eye on it. What I think will be
the most interesting thing because the strikers are going to
do what the striker is going to do, and the
company and the union are going to go negotiate, just
like you know, all these things play out. Safeway is
trying to hire temporary workers, by the way, so they
can at least do you know, basic stuff, and they

(01:00:55):
are cutting hours at some of these stores where the
strikes are happening. But to me, what's going to be
the most interesting thing is to see whether at some
point King Supers workers go on strike at the same time,
because that would be I mean, that would be a
very very aggressive move by the uf CW Local seven,

(01:01:18):
the union that represents these workers. That would be a
very very aggressive move. And it'll be interesting to see
if that happens. It'll be interesting to see whether the
public kind of sides with the union and says, hey,
you companies, give them a better deal, give them more pay,
give them whatever, or whether the public says, I'm really
getting annoyed now you're interfering with my being able to

(01:01:40):
buy food. So we'll see what happens. And I don't
have an opinion. I just wanted to share that with you.
So one of the problems when you have a government
that is much much much to be and you have
these national systems that are insanely large, unmanageably large, is

(01:02:02):
that you get levels of fraud that simply don't exist
in the private sector. Right if you had a you know,
even a two percent rate where your company was losing
money to fraud as a private company, probably the CEO
of that company would lose their job. And I don't
know what the number is exactly in medicare, I'll have

(01:02:24):
to go look up the percentage number. But because Medicare
is so big, it's just impossible for it to be
properly managed when it comes to fraud prevention. And so
sometimes people defraud Medicare and never get caught, and sometimes
people defraud Medicare and get caught later. And the biggest takedown,

(01:02:52):
and that's the word the government uses, The biggest takedown
of healthcare fraud schemes in the history of the Justice Department.
Just happened. Just happened earlier this week. Let me share
a bit with you from the Associated Press. State and
federal prosecutors have charged more than three hundred and twenty

(01:03:12):
people and uncovered nearly fifteen billion dollars in false claims
in what they described as the largest coordinated takedown of
healthcare fraud schemes and Justice Department history. Law enforcement seized
more than two hundred and forty five million dollars in cash,
luxury vehicles, cryptocurrency, and other assets, as prosecutors warmed warned

(01:03:35):
of a growing push by transnational criminal networks. That's an
Associated Press story. Now listen to the cleverness of the fraudsters.
Among the cases is a ten billion dollar urinary catheter

(01:03:55):
scheme that authorities say highlights the increasingly sophisicate, dedicated methods
used by these criminal organizations. And I'm in let me
see if I can find this here, all right, So
now I'm switching from that news article to the Justice
Department's own press release. Listen to this. The organization allegedly

(01:04:16):
used a network of foreign straw owners, including individuals sent
into the United States from abroad, who, acting at the
direction of others using encrypted messaging and assumed identities from overseas,
strategically bought dozens of medical supply companies located across the
United States. Then they rapidly submitted ten point six billion

(01:04:42):
dollars in fraudulent healthcare claims to Medicare for urinary catheters
and other durable medical equipment by exploiting the stolen identities
of over a million Americans spanning all fifty states, and
using their confidential medical information to submit the fraudulent claims.

(01:05:04):
As alleged, the organization exploited the US financial system by
laundering the fraudulent proceeds and deploying a range of tactics
to circumvent anti money laundering controls to transfer funds into
cryptocurrency and shell companies located abroad. Isn't that unbelievable? I mean,
really clever. One of the defendants is based in Pakistan

(01:05:27):
and the UAE he owned a billing company, allegedly orchestrated
a scheme to prey on vulnerable individuals in need of
addiction treatment by conspiring with treatment center owners to fraudulently
build Arizona Medicaid about six hundred and fifty million dollars.
So to me, first of all, that the whole story

(01:05:48):
is pretty incredible. A bunch of these people are overseas,
but some of them have actually been caught somewhere in
Estonia and they have been caught and they're going to
be sent back to the United States based on cooperation
from they and government. But the other thing that is
worth noting is that it appears that something on the
order of two hundred, maybe over two hundred what are

(01:06:11):
called providers, so that usually doctors or medical clinics of
some kind were involved in the fraud. It doesn't mean
they were taken advantage of. It means they were willing participants,
like Okay, I'll work with you and we'll build all
this stuff and we'll collect all the money and I'll
split it with you. Doctors and medical clinics did that.
So it's the biggest single takedown in history. And fourteen

(01:06:34):
point six billion dollars in fraudulent claims. Now, I don't
think all all fourteen point six billion dollars were paid.
A lot of them were caught as being fraudulent at
the time, but a lot was paid. And my point,
going back to where I started, is with a system
this big, it is simply not possible to control it.
And even this fourteen point six billion dollars in bogus

(01:06:57):
claims is maybe not even the tip of the iceberg.
And I want you to text me your answer at
five sixty six nine zero. And I can't say this
question is my own idea. I heard some folks on
Fox News this morning batting around the same question, what
do you most look forward to about summer? You don't
have to answer just yet, you can ponder for a minute,
but what do you most look forward to when when

(01:07:18):
it comes to when it comes to summer? And there
were a lot of interesting answers I heard. I heard earlier.
I should have asked this question earlier, but text five
six six nine zero five six six nine zero And
let me know what what do you most look forward to?
Quick listener text and then I'll get Dragon's answer. Ross,
please be more careful when you how you use the

(01:07:40):
terms Medicare and medicaid. There is a difference, Yeah, I
there's a big difference. The programs are not actually that similar,
but the names are almost the same. So sometimes not
that difficult to say one when you when you mean
the other. But that last fraud story was about Medicare,
and when we're talking today about this stuff in the

(01:08:00):
so called big beautiful bill, that's about medicaid, Medicaid being
the program for low income folks and Medicare being the
program for the elderly. Okay, So Dragon, what comes to
mind as to what you most look forward to in
the summer? Not looking like the weird guy wearing shorts
all the time. Huh. That's interesting. That's very specific to you, right,

(01:08:25):
And of course it's nobody's fault but yours that you
wear shorts when it's minus seventeen degrees out? Comfort? Come
is that comfortable wearing shorts when it's seventeen degrees minus
seventeen degrees out? And you sit down and the part
of your leg just below the bottom of your shorts
touches the very cold car seat. Is that comfortable? Yeah,
that's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with it.

(01:08:47):
You have a problem with it? No, No, it's all
personal choice, personal choice. Okay, that's fine, that's fine. Listener text,
I like the Miller Moths. Shut up, hm, another list text.
I like summer concerts. Yeah, red rocks, red rocks, being
able to go to Red Rocks where a rod and
I just saw weird? Al was that was? That was

(01:09:09):
very cool. I think one thing I look at, although
I won't say I don't do it in the winter,
but one thing I just somehow it looked forward to
more in the summer is barbecuing. Oh answer, you know,
I really like you know, grilling steaks or burgers or
brought worst or even even like asparagus whatever, just no,

(01:09:29):
no bell, pepper. But but I really like barbecuing. I
think that's a I think that's a thing for for me.
Ross I I enjoy not paying for heat. Kids returning
to school, well that's not for a while, so that
I don't think that's really a good answer. Warm relaxed
sunsets and ice cream anytime I feel like it. Oh,

(01:09:51):
girls in skimpier clothing. There you go. Yeah, now you're
talking boat drinks. All right, I don't have boat, but
all right. I look forward to warm weather and daylight
until eight to eight thirty pm. And well, this time
of year, I think we got daylight till after nine nine. Yeah, yeah,
or some somewhere around around there. I like summer because
it's almost fall. That's not very nice thing to say

(01:10:12):
to summer.

Speaker 4 (01:10:13):
Going barefoot, m hmm, flip flops. You can do both
those things in the winter.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
The morment. Look, there's another women in skimpy clothes answer, dude,
that's the winning. So there's certainly a certain demographic listening
to us right now. The winter shorts there, what winters
are called winter shorts? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:10:33):
Do you you bring out the little thicker shorts?

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Do you have your Yeah? Yeah, I have something. Are
you wearing shorts right now?

Speaker 4 (01:10:40):
Of course, what kind of stupid question of all the
stupid time wasting questions Ross Kiminski has ever asked? You're
on KOA. That's probably the worst.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Yeah, that's like did the sunrise this morning? Do you
have shorts that you wear more often? In the winter
and less often in the summer, and vice versa. Of course,
that a real thing. Yeah, paddle boarding and going to
the mountains ross. What's your favorite barbecue joint in Colorado?
Are there any that are good? Gosh, that's a good question. Okay,
I'm gonna tell you one, but I gotta make sure.

(01:11:13):
I gotta make sure I get the name exactly right.
Let me make sure I have this right. While you're
hunting down there. Yeah, you hunt that down you tell
me what's on your mind. I'll say with the barbecue.

Speaker 4 (01:11:27):
We were good friends with the downstairs and the third
four Brothers barbecue.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
Mm hm, that's delicious stuff. Yeah, Brothers is good. But
there's a particular one and I want to I want
to find it here. I look for there. It is
one days in golf, says Steve. Okay, my favorite barbecue place.
It's called Jabbos j A b O Apostrophe s It's

(01:11:53):
it is just south of a rapa Hoe on Dayton,
which is like two blocks east to buy twenty five.
All right, so you you got a f I twenty
five at a Rappo. You go east to Dayton, turn
right and it's on your right and it's called Jabbo's.
And here's the thing, so free advertising for this dude.
So so Jabo is the dude. He got the recipe

(01:12:14):
from his dad, who literally bought the recipe fifty years
ago or sixty years ago or something like that, because
Jabbo is not a young man, and he his dad
bought the recipe from a guy I think in Oklahoma maybe.
And here's the cool thing. So I actually took doctor

(01:12:35):
Opperman to this place. You know, doctor Opperman, the best
voice doctor of the best NT in the world. So
I took Colorado Voice Clinic. By the way, if you
need help with anything related to your voice. So I
took doctor Opperman to Jabbos. So the dude comes out,
Jabbo comes out, and it's talking to us about the
various offerings on the menu. And he spends a bunch

(01:12:57):
of time talking about the available sauceage and he finds
out what you like. Do you like mild? Do you
like medium? Do you like spicy? Do you like more
of a smoky flavor? Do you like a mango flavor?
Do you like a trader a Kansas City kind of flavor,
or a Carolina's or a Texas what kind of flavor

(01:13:19):
do you like in the sauces, and then he goes
back and hand mixes the sauces for it for you.
I mean he has some already made you like, Okay,
try this, but if you say, ah, I like that,
but I wanted a little spici or I want to
and he will hand create the sauces for you for
your ribs or your brisket or your pulled pork or

(01:13:40):
whatever it else, whatever else it is that you get.
And it's just a wonderful experience where the restaurant owner
who you know, his family bought the secret recipe I
think more than fifty years ago, and it really it's
a secret recipe and it's so freaking good. Oh my gosh,
it's good. So anyway, free advertising. He didn't know I'm

(01:14:01):
talking about him on the radio. So it's Jabbo's Jabo
apostrophe S. And I will note that they are not
open late. It's because Jabo was there. As I said,
he's no spring Chicken. And so they're closed by the
way Sunday and Monday, and they're open for lunch the

(01:14:21):
other days, but and for dinner, but they close at
seven pm, all right, They closed at seven pm. So
it's not a late night thing.

Speaker 4 (01:14:29):
Right saying javo or jabo jabbo jabo apostrophe s that's
my favorite barbecue place. And we do have another favorite
thing about summer, yeah, text to camping, kayak fishing, and
of course.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
Women in some dress summer dresses. Yes, we've gotten a
lot of those women in summer dresses and I'm down
with that as well. Kayak fishing, that sounds like fun.
Why not?

Speaker 5 (01:14:53):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Why not to? Hey, mister or missus? Kayak fishing? Do
you do you catch release everything or do you keep
some of them? And if you keep some of them?
Do you have a two person kayak but only one
person sitting in it and you throw the fish you
caught up in the seat in front of you or
behind you or or or what it's trying to think

(01:15:14):
if a one person kayak would have a place to
keep a fish. Don't know. I've only done kayaking a
time or two, but I do dig it. I have
to say I dig it. Actually, Kristen went onto the
online place where you buy everything in the world and
bought an inflatable kayak, but kind of a heavy duty
inflatable kayak, and we used it last summer. Uh, and

(01:15:36):
it's great and we gotta we gotta do it again.
We gotta do it again. All right, I think that's
enough for now. We'll be right back. It's a sit
on kayak specifically made for fishing, fishing for a catch
and release. And then another person says, well, you just
keep the fish in the water on a string or
you don't need space on the on the kayak. So
that's that's very good. Ross. I love fishing in the summer,

(01:15:58):
but I can't catch fish for bleep, So I call
it river hiking. Great exercise, and forget catch and release.
You got to be able to catch before you release.
There you go, Ross, how did the fisher four hundreds work?
Are you also going to sell the st seventy? I
sold all four of those old amplifiers to one listener,
and I guess, okay, I'll just tell you the story

(01:16:19):
real quick. So a guy I know got some of
these older stereo things as a favor. He bought them
from someone he really didn't want them. He asked me
to help him sell them, and I said, I will,
but it's going to take my time. So he offered
me a percentage. He offered me twenty five percent. I'll

(01:16:41):
just tell you. He offered me twenty five percent of
whatever I sold him for so that I would do
all the work. And I said, that's fine, I'll do that.
And then I got an email from a listener who
heard me talking about it, and we were talking about
the pricing and he was what he wanted to spend
was well below what I wanted to sell them for.

(01:17:02):
And so I went to the person who wanted to
sell them and I said, I'll tell you what, how
about you just lower the price down to such and
such a number for my listener, and I will take
zero commission. We'll we'll just whatever was going to be
my commission. We'll just use that to lower the price
for the listener, so you still get what you were
going to get. And he said fine, And so the
listener came over and bought all the stuff and I

(01:17:24):
got nothing. But the listener is happy, and that's what happened.
So and it doesn't bother me at all. It's absolutely
absolutely fine. That's great, it's a great thing. Actually, let
me do a couple minutes on two other stories, and
then we've got an interesting, nerdy, but interesting interview in
the next segment of the show. So, look, I'm I'm Jewish,

(01:17:45):
and I don't know really how to understand television evangelists.
I've never really understood them. I still don't. I don't
want to say anything that offends people. I just I'll
just say I don't get it, and I don't. And
somehow sometimes I mean, I'm a capitalist, right, But sometimes

(01:18:05):
when I see the millions and millions and millions of
dollars and the incredible mansions and the Bentleys and so on,
that these people who are preaching the Word of God,
you know, accumulate for themselves, something just kind of rubs
me the wrong way about it. But what do I know, right,
Maybe maybe they're providing enough value of whatever form of spirituality, religiosity, community,

(01:18:28):
whatever that they should make all that. I don't know.
But the reason this comes to mind is that Jimmy
Swaggert just died, right, Jimmy Swaggert died at the age
of ninety. His death, that death was announced yesterday and
they didn't say why he died, although apparently he had
a heart attack last month, so he died at the
age of ninety. And actually his story is kind of

(01:18:50):
is kind of interesting. I mean, as a young kid,
he he was a very musical guy. Jerry Lee Lewis
was a cousin of his, and he would play in
bands and sing with Aria Lee Lewis and another dude,
a country singer named Mickey Gilly. And he grew up
in a small town in Louisiana. And he claimed, and
I'm looking at the Denver Gazette here he claimed to

(01:19:10):
have first heard the call of God at the age
of eight. And in the interesting time, I'm just gonna,
you know, move way up in time. He was preaching.
He was working in the oil fields until he was
twenty three years old, and then he moved full time
into being a ministry at a radio show, ere magazine,
then television. He's constantly bashing Catholicism, calling it a false religion,

(01:19:33):
and he was huge then in the late nineteen eighties,
you may remember jim Baker got kind of Baker with
two K's, got taken down by a sex scandal. Well,
not long after that, Jimmy Swagger had his own problem
where he was photographed at a hotel with a prostitute

(01:19:53):
and yeah, and she said, well, we didn't have sex,
but that the preacher had paid her to pose nude.
Now I don't believe it, but in any case, and
then she repeated the claim later when she posed nude
for Penthouse magazine. Anyway, Jimmy Swaggert was caught with her.
That was that was real bad. And actually what was
interesting is the surveillance photos that got the pictures actually

(01:20:18):
came from Swaggert having a big fight with another preacher
called Marvin Gorman, who Swaggert had said was doing wrong
sexual stuff. And so as part of their fight, Gorman
hired a photographer who took these pictures of swaggered in
that prostitute. And then a few years later, in nineteen
ninety one, police pulled Swaggert over where he was probably

(01:20:42):
driving drunk and he was driving on the wrong side
of the road in an unregistered car, and his companion,
who was a prostitute, said that Swaggert got nervous when
he saw a police car pulled up behind him and
he was weaving. So maybe he wasn't drunk. He was
weaving because he was trying to stuff point graphic magazines
under a car seat. So I don't know, man, I

(01:21:03):
don't know what to say about this. I don't know
what to say about the whole category of television evangelists.
Jimmy Swaggert died at the age of ninety. Do I
want to say, rest in peace? Eh? What do you
think of this whole thing? What do you think of
that whole genre? What do you because I just I
don't know what to make of it. You tell me
your thoughts at five six six nine zero. We'll be

(01:21:24):
right back. Thanks so much for being here. You know,
if you've been listening to me for a while, that
I am a nerd, in that I am a nerd
in multiple dimensions. You know, I'm a science nerd. You
also know I fancy myself something of a legal nerd.

(01:21:44):
I'm definitely not a lawyer, but I read and enjoy
thinking about constitutional law a lot. I read Supreme Court decisions,
some Appellate Court decisions and all that, and I find
it both fascinating and important. And these are things that
not every federal case, but many federal cases really impact
us in important ways. And one of the ways the

(01:22:08):
federal courts at federal law and then law is interpreted
by courts, affects US is through the regulation of elections.
And I saw a story the other day. Here's the
headline from the Associated Press. Supreme Court takes up a
Republican appeal to end limits on party spending in federal elections.

(01:22:31):
And this actually ties back to a case from a
couple decades ago from Colorado. Right here where we are,
so joining me to talk about it is Rick Pildus,
who is a professor of law at NYU and widely
regarded as one of the nation's true experts on constitutional law.
And I see him, hear him on YouTube and other

(01:22:54):
places talking a lot about election laws. We're very lucky
to have Rick today. Rick, thanks so much for taking
some time with us on k AWAY. I appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (01:23:04):
Very glad to be here, Ross, especially after I heard
about your interest in law and the Supreme Court.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
So let's just jump into this before we talk about
what you think might happen, Can you please explain the issue.

Speaker 6 (01:23:19):
Yes, and you know this area of law gets kind
of technical fairly quickly, but basically, Congress back in the
seventies started regulating campaign finance, and one of the things
it did is it limited how much political parties could
give to their candidates or how much they could coordinate

(01:23:41):
with their candidates how much they could spend with their candidates.
And the argument for doing this, just so people understand,
is that if without these regulations, Congress thought wealthy individuals
would be able to give lots of money to the
political parties and then the parties would just transfer that
money to the candidates. So the worry was that people

(01:24:03):
would be able to sort of buy influence by working
through the political parties. Now that's way before the era
of super PACs. Night was in the early nineteen seventies
when this was first designed by Congress.

Speaker 1 (01:24:16):
All right, and we're going to talk about law much
more than opinion here, but just for the heck of it,
I will share with you my opinion. I call McCain
fine Gold the Bipartisan Incumbent Protection Act, and I am
generally against restrictions on campaign spending and I hope that

(01:24:37):
the Supreme Court overturns this thing. So tell us so again,
one more thing before we get to Colorado. What was
before we get to the Supreme Court? Right now? What
was the Colorado case? Exactly?

Speaker 7 (01:24:51):
Yeah, So the Supreme Court had two big.

Speaker 6 (01:24:53):
Constitutional challenges to these restrictions on the role of political parties.
In one case, they said political parties, like every other actor,
have to be free to spend. That's like not give
money to candidates, but to spend whatever they want to
spend to try to get their candidates elected. But on

(01:25:13):
the other hand, the Court said it is constitutional for
Congress to limit how much parties can can work together
with their candidates on messaging.

Speaker 7 (01:25:26):
And just to make this.

Speaker 6 (01:25:27):
Concrete, right now, the laws that a party can only
give about sixty six thousand dollars to a congressional candidate
if they're working in coordination with their candidate.

Speaker 7 (01:25:38):
Now, these races are you.

Speaker 6 (01:25:40):
Know, many millions of dollars depending on how competitive they are.
So it's an incredibly you know, tight restriction on how
much money parties can spend in coordination with their candidates.
The Supreme Court did uphold that back in two thousand
and one, i think is the year, in a five
to four decision, And that's part of what's being challenged
now in this new right.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
And that just coincidentally, it's not particularly important, but that
happened to be a challenge from the Republican Party of
Colorado just coincidentally. So do you think that I'm going
to delve into opinion here. Now, actually, what do you
think about the question of whether this kind of regulation

(01:26:25):
violates the First Amendment?

Speaker 6 (01:26:29):
Well, let me talk about it a little bit more
in policy terms at least first, Okay, because I think
this is a hard thing for audiences to, you know,
kind of understand there's a lot of disaffection about the
role of money in politics. But with all the regulatory
kind of restraints we've had, what we've ended up doing

(01:26:51):
is pushing money towards these outside groups like super packs.
And in the view of many of us who work
on these issues, if it's far better to have the
money coming through the political parties and the campaigns rather
than these outside groups. So I know people are very
dissatisfied with the political parties. You know, in American history

(01:27:12):
that's a kind of a perennial theme. But it's in
my view at least, it's still better to have the
money flowing through the parties because the parties are accountable
to voters. If you don't like what a Republican candidate
is doing, or what the Publican party is doing, you
can vote them out of office. If you don't like
what some superpack is doing, you have no way of

(01:27:32):
responding to that particularly. And you know, the political parties,
for all their issues, are willing to support moderate candidates
more ideologically extreme candidates. They just want to get their
people elected. But these super packs, when the money is
encouraged to flow through them, are more ideological than the parties.

(01:27:54):
They tend to be often very single issue oriented.

Speaker 7 (01:27:57):
These super packs.

Speaker 6 (01:27:59):
You know, parties have to put together a big array
of interest You're seeing that go on in Washington right now,
as you know, the Republican Party kind of struggles to
please different factions in the party as they're trying to
enact their legislation. Parties have to try to please a
lot of different interests. Super packs can be very single
interest oriented. So what's at stake in this case as

(01:28:23):
a practical matter, is whether the political parties are going
to be given a little bit more power to play
a significant role in the election process rather than the
super packs.

Speaker 7 (01:28:35):
We've learned over fifty years of regulation.

Speaker 6 (01:28:39):
Given Supreme Court doctrine especially, you can't really drive the
money out of politics. You can just sort of encourage
it to flow through one channel or another channel, and
political parties and campaigns I think are better channels than
super packs.

Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
All right, So two, I have two responses to that,
and then I'll ask you another question. So first, I
do think it's it's really kind of dumb that we've
set up a system where now all the money and
this is basically what you're saying. I'm rewording what you're saying,
but where the money is flowing through organizations that are

(01:29:15):
purporting to or actually supporting a candidate without the candidate
having any way to influence what the message is. And
maybe the candidate has you know, three top issues and
then a few other things they care about, and a
superpack is really really focused on issue number four. The candidate, yeah,
cares a little, has a position, doesn't care that much.

(01:29:38):
And now the super pac is going to run fifteen
million dollars of advertising that's going to frame the candidate,
as you know, being all about issue four, and the
candidates like that. That's not right. I'm not even sure
I really agree with you here. And of course the
super pac can as a free speech thing, they could
say what they want. But since we're forcing all the

(01:29:58):
money to the super pac, we're forcing a system where
the candidate can't control can't control the message about the candidate,
and I think that's really dumb. Do you want to
say anything to that before my one other comment?

Speaker 6 (01:30:13):
Yeah, so, so first I'll say something in agreement that
I'll say something in addition. So, one of the issues
with super PACs is exactly what you described, which is
if they're actually acting legally. The candidates are not supposed
to be coordinating with the super PACs. They are supposed

(01:30:34):
to be independent, and that can interfere with the messaging
a candidate wants to get out. As you say, some
of the super PACs may care a lot more about
certain issues than what the campaigns care about. There have
been some recent stories about the twenty twenty four election.
There was one really massive superpack for Kamala Harris, and

(01:30:56):
there were at least reports of significant tentions between what
the campaign wanted to do and what the super pac
wanted to do, what they wanted to emphasize.

Speaker 7 (01:31:05):
So that's an issue.

Speaker 6 (01:31:06):
I think the super PACs make governance harder too, because
you know, they can sort of pull a party apart
in a sense. Now, it's also true the second thing
I was going to say is, at the same time,
there's a worry that a lot of these super PACs
are not actually independent, and you know there are ways

(01:31:27):
that campaigns kind of covertly are able to coordinate with
the super PACs.

Speaker 7 (01:31:33):
Governor Cuomo got hit with this.

Speaker 6 (01:31:35):
In the New York mayor's primary, where the campaign finance
board decided he was implicitly coordinating with his super pack.
But I should say, I don't want to mislead people,
give them the impressions that if the court, you know,
comes out in favor of the First Amendment challenge here,
it means that super PACs will somehow go away or

(01:31:55):
be dramatically diminished. I think the case will help are
the political parties to some extent, give them a little
bit more firepower, give them a little bit more of
a central role, But the super PACs will still be here.

Speaker 1 (01:32:10):
Yeah, that'll be very interesting if the Supreme Court overturns
that Colorado case. The other thing I wanted to say,
and this is coming from me as president of the
Bad Analogy Club, and that is the people who keep
passing these laws are like people who throw a medium
sized rock into the middle of a river and think

(01:32:31):
the water is going to stop. It's right, it's just
going to go a different place. It's going to keep going.
It's never slowed down the amount of spending and it's
never going to.

Speaker 6 (01:32:42):
I think that's that's true, you know, as long as
the constitutional doctrine is basically what it is. And what
I mean by that is going back to the very
first foundational campaign finance case, Buckley versus the LEO, which
was an eight to one decision that it's unconstitutional to
regulate independent spending. And once that's established, then I think

(01:33:06):
what you say is right. The money is going to
continue to flow. There's going to be a demand for it.
If you close off one channel and you think that's
going to stop the flow, that's wrong.

Speaker 7 (01:33:18):
It's going to find other channels.

Speaker 6 (01:33:20):
And in fact, when McCain Feingeld was enacted in the
early two thousands, one of the things it did is
it cut off certain kinds of money to the political parties.
Political scientists said. There were some political scientists and experts
in the process who said, don't do this, because you're
just going to make the money flow to these outside
groups away from the parties, and the system will be

(01:33:43):
worse off for that. So, you know, as you said,
if you think that cutting off the money of the
parties means that money is just going to disappear. That's
not particularly smart or sophisticated about you know, how the
political and campaign finance system is going to work. The
money will continue to flow through other routes, and that's,

(01:34:03):
you know, obviously what's happened.

Speaker 1 (01:34:05):
Speaking of smart and sophisticated, we're talking with Rick Pildus,
who is Professor of law at NYU and nationally recognized
leading expert on constitutional law. So let's just do two
more minutes here. So the Supreme Court is taking up
this case, and obviously the composition of this Supreme Court
is very different from the Supreme Court that decided the
Colorado case twenty four years ago or whatever that was.

(01:34:26):
So if you were a betting man, would what do
you think the outcome of this is going to be.

Speaker 6 (01:34:33):
I think it's more likely that the Court will strike
down this constraint on political parties on First Amendment grounds.

Speaker 7 (01:34:42):
I mean, they do have.

Speaker 6 (01:34:43):
Issues of starry decisives they'll have to confront. So I
guess the way I put it is, if they were
confronting this on a blank slate, I think it's pretty
likely this court would strike.

Speaker 7 (01:34:52):
This down on First amendment grounds.

Speaker 6 (01:34:55):
I don't know how much the starry decisives issue will
you know, play a role mentioned that the Court below
made it clear in various ways the majority of the
Court below that if they were free of the Supreme
Court President, they pretty probably would have struck this down.
But they know their hands are tied by Supreme Court President.

(01:35:17):
So I think most people assume it's more likely than
not the Court, if it reaches the merits gets past
story decisives, would would side with the with the political party,
with the Republican party.

Speaker 7 (01:35:29):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:35:29):
I agree with you, your opinion is much better informed
than mine. But I do happen to agree with you,
and I think this Court seems to care a little
bit less about story decisives than most Supreme courts of
my lifetime. I don't think they've abandoned it. But you
look like you disagree with me.

Speaker 7 (01:35:50):
No, No, I don't disagree.

Speaker 6 (01:35:50):
I was gonna actually make the point that in the
campaign finance context, we have pretty good evidence of that
because in the Citizens United case they overrule to precedents
from the Court. So in this area in particular, where
I think that there's a majority that has pretty strong
views on the constitutional issues. You know, they've already indicated

(01:36:13):
that they're willing, at least in some context to overrule
prior cases.

Speaker 7 (01:36:18):
And I mentioned the president.

Speaker 6 (01:36:19):
Here is a five to four decision which indicates it
was already you know, controversial within the court back in
early two thousands.

Speaker 1 (01:36:29):
Rick pilled this professor of law at NYU. Thank you
so much for making time for me. I know you
had no idea who I was, and probably wasn't sure
if this should be a huge waste of your time,
and I hope you don't think it was, and I'm
grateful that you joined us.

Speaker 7 (01:36:40):
No, it was a very very good discussion. I enjoyed it.

Speaker 6 (01:36:43):
And I like legal nerds as well as other science
nerds and other kind of nerds.

Speaker 7 (01:36:48):
So that's great.

Speaker 1 (01:36:49):
Thanks so much. Rick. We'll have you back, Okay, take care,
all right, you too. All Right, that was a lot
of fun and I learned a lot. And it's a
super important case, right, I mean, obviously on talk radio,
I don't do policy all the time. We live in
a fairly political time right now. But but you know,
when elections come around, there are few things that are
actually more important in elections once you get past who

(01:37:10):
the candidate is in terms of how is the money
going to be spent? And this is this, this case
that the Supreme Court said they're gonna listen, they're gonna
hear it in their next term could dramatically change the
way elections spending happened. So I realized there was a
somewhat nerdy conversation for you, but I thought you would
find it interesting. I just have a couple of minutes
left with you. Indeed, indeed, I so I mentioned that

(01:37:35):
Jimmy Swagger died, and I asked, listeners, you know, text
me any of your thoughts here, and I have to
say mostly they're quite negative. Swagger was a monitor, money
grabbing Charlotte and con artists who preyed on unwitting, vulnerable people.
Another listener, it's a grift, not hold on. I lost it.
Not always dishonest, but at least disingenuous and hypocritical. It's

(01:37:57):
not the same as churches though, or Ross. I think
I feel feel weird about it too. I remember working
at a stadium watching Benny Hinn, and he had bags
full of cash, and disabled people were showing up thinking
he was their last hope. Ross. Those TV evangelists that
failed hugely give Christianity a bad name. Yes, we all sin,

(01:38:21):
we all screw up, but some of those big name
TV pastors have done a serious amount of damage. Glad
they are in the minority, you know, because there are
some great pastors on TV today. Okay, I believe you.
It's not my scene, so I believe you, and I
will just leave that. There one other thing I want

(01:38:42):
to mention as long as we're talking about Supreme Court
except State Supreme Court. You may recall that last year
there was was it last year or two years ago?
There was a very big election in Wisconsin for State
Supreme Court and at the time there was a four

(01:39:04):
to three conservative majority. The conservative retired, so the whoever
was going to win that election was going to determine
whether the majority would be four to three conservative or
four to three liberal, and a liberal won the case
fairly dramatic, in fairly dramatic fashion. Trying to remember what

(01:39:26):
year that election was, I don't think it was last
year anyway, So a liberal won that by won the
race by ten points or something. It really wasn't close,
and much of the conversation was about abortion. So what
I wanted to let you know is that yesterday the
Wisconsin State No. Today today the Wisconsin State Supreme Court

(01:39:48):
struck down a one hundred and seventy six year old
law in Wisconsin that made it a felony to provide
an abortion. And I'm quoting from National Review unless necessary
to save the life of the pregnant woman. There's a
lot more there, but in the interested time I will
just leave it because Mandy's Fabulous show is up next.
Hello Mandy, you are all right? What you got going on?

Speaker 8 (01:40:12):
I got a bunch of stuff coming up. We got
weather Wednesday. First of all, we're gonna find out if
it's going to rain on fourth of July. Oh, we're
going to talk to a young woman. I went and
saw the Best Show Sunday night, a student production with
only high school and college kids of the musical six
basically in a theater that's inner garage. I loved it,
and I invited the director, who's like twelve, to come
on the show today. And then I have someone else.

(01:40:34):
I have one other guest. I can't remember who it is. Oh,
we're gonna talk about what's going on with mortgage rates
right now. Mortgage rates. People are trying to get a
handle on it. We got tons of houses on the market,
but everybody's kind of frozen. I got Casey Schwartzkoff from
Mfenn coming in to talk.

Speaker 1 (01:40:48):
About that awesome I love the twelve year old director.
What time is the twelve year old director?

Speaker 8 (01:40:52):
I believe she is at one. She's not twelve, but
she looks all right. I mean, to you and me,
she's twelve.

Speaker 1 (01:40:58):
What a fun thing to do. Everybody stick around for
Mandy's fabulous show. I'll talk to you tomorrow, which will
be a Thursday that feels like Friday.