Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm standing up, and I don't know why. You know,
I do know why. I do know why. I feel
like I sit down too much. I sit down a
lot for the radio show. I sit down at home
for hours a day doing the research for this radio show.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I think standing is better.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
And I used to chan and you know this what
I used to do for a living in Chicago, and
the trading floor be standing almost all the time.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
So when I when I.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Came out of college, When I came out of college
and I went to work at the Options Exchange in
Chicago for my job for many, many years, you almost
never sit down. Right.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Maybe you'd sit.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Briefly for lunch, but you wouldn't even have lunch for
very long because you didn't want to miss trading. You'd
go up to the you know, half decent cafeteria, eat
in ten minutes, and get back down to the trading floor.
Every once in a while in the summer, it might
get really boring, so you've seen the trading pits, probably
in news or movies. You'd maybe sit on the step
of a pit and do the crossword puzzle if it
(00:54):
was really boring, But most of the time you're standing,
so I spent most of my professional life standing and.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So I'm standing. I'm standing now, So there's that.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Oh you know, it's Friday, right, So I promise I'm
going to waste a lot of your time. Let me
tell you a fun story. This the thing I just
told you reminded me of something, and it's, as my
grandma would have said, apropos of nothing. So I mentioned
to you eating lunch. Well, so I was on the
Options Exchange in Chicago. Across the street was the Board
(01:25):
of Trade. Now, the Board of Trade had, in addition
to the bond market, the border trade also is where
the grains are traded corn, wheat, soybeans, things like that.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And that's a very old exchange.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
The Options Exchange where I was trading, I think it
was founded in the nineteen seventies and it didn't get really,
you know, big, probably until the eighties. And it was
it was big when I got there in the late eighties.
But the Border trade has been around, you know, since
eighteen hundreds. And there are a lot of guys there,
(02:00):
traders on the floor who have been there a long time. Right,
there were there when I got there. There were traders
on the floor who had been on the floor much
longer than I'd been alive. And these guys, gosh, it
was so something to watch these guys.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
A couple things I want to mention.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
So, first of all, a lot of I'm talking about
like sixty five year old guys, seventy year old guys,
seventy five year old guys on the trading floor standing
in these futures pits, and and you know, you tend
to think about him like you tend to think about
these scenarios like the movie trading places where everything's insane
and boisterous and yelling, And it's almost never like that.
(02:39):
It's very, very rarely, not even a couple times a year,
probably is it that nuts. But most of the time
you're watching things and there's there's a lot going on,
but there's more.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Of a low hum.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
And an occasional voice speaking up when people are trading
with each other. But it's not normally chaotic trading like
you see in the movies. And I'll tell you two
stories about these these older traders that really just have
stuck with me through all the year. So first, you know,
I told you I'd go eat lunch, you know, for
ten minutes to come back down. But in that border
(03:13):
trade building there was a cafe called Series c e
r Ees, named for the Greek goddess of the harvest,
because we're trading the grains there, right, and these guys,
these guys would come in, Oh check this out. How
about the best job lifestyle. You can imagine the hours
of grain trading in Chicago ready Shannon nine thirty to
(03:39):
one fifteen. That those were the hours when the exchange
was opened to trade that stuff. So these guys, apparently
that was a little too long, because they would come
in at like eleven and sit down for two or
three martini lunch and not like fan bankers though, but
(04:01):
like the way a farmer might drink, because they probably
are farmers who became traders, and they just be sitting
there drinking and then maybe go back and trade the
last half an hour or whatever. It was really something.
The other thing, I hope you don't mind these stories.
I wasn't planning on telling these. I just came to mind.
The other thing is that I normally traded, as I said,
(04:26):
on the options exchange, but in the summer of nineteen
eighty eight, there was a drought and the grain markets
went absolutely crazy. And what's interesting about some of these markets. Actually,
when you think about the stock market and you hear
the term stock market crash, everybody knows what that means.
Stocks are plunging rapidly, very few buyers. Commodity markets are different.
(04:54):
Commodity markets can go obviously up and down, and they
can go up and down quickly. But the thing when
you get a stock crash is because it's a panic.
And why do you get a panic in stocks. You
get a panic in stocks because people have this sudden
fear of an enormous economic problem, you.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Know where it could be a big war.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Whatever it might be, and that's going to cause all
these companies to earn far less money.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Into the stocks crash.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And also it's not just fundamental, it's also there's no
buyers and people are holding onto their cash, So it's
more of a fundamental thing, like even if people think
the stocks are cheap, there's nobody there to buy them,
and so the stocks plunge. But it's basically it's due
to a panic and a lack of people willing to
take the other side.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Of the trade in commodities.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
More often than not, the panic is the other way
you rarely get a panic, a true intense emotional panic
that there is too much of something that makes the
price plunge massively in a day.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Like a stock crash.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
With commodities, if you're going to get a panic, it's
the other way. It's that there's not enough of it
and there's a shortach. And so what happens in commodities
markets is the crashes are upwards, which is really interesting, right,
especially if you think about something like food. Yeah, okay,
there's too much corn. Okay, corn prices are going down,
(06:22):
and all the farmers listening to me right now, understand, right,
Mark Hillman, if you're listening Greg bro for you understand.
You know, prices can go down, and they can go
down kind of fast, but most of the time it's
not what you'd call a crash, the same way you
would call a crash in stocks. But what if some
terrible weather event comes through and destroys a crop, or
(06:43):
there's a drought like happened in nineteen eighty eight, and
now people are wondering, Ah, not just where are we
going to store the extra corn, but how are we
going to eat? How's McDonald's gonna get the wheat to
make their hamburger buns and the price is just freaking skyrocket.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It's amazing. And I will tell you I traded.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
The biggest stock market crash of the lifetime of almost
anybody who's alive right now, in nineteen eighty seven. I
traded that on the options exchange floor. And I traded
in some of the crazy days of the drought in
nineteen eighty eight on the board of trade floor trading
those grains, and the grains were scarier, grains were scarier,
(07:29):
more emotional, back to these old guys. So I'd be
standing in the trading pit and I'm watching everything, and
I'm saying, buy them. And well, actually, in that pit,
you don't say buy them. In the option side you'd
say buy them, but in the future's pit you would
say sold, whether you were buying them or selling them,
which was a little confusing. But in any case, you know,
and I'm trading. I'm not trading a lot.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
I'm new to this.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I don't know a lot about trading commodities and trying
not to lose money, trying to learn a little bit.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And I'm trading here, trading.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
There, and I see all these guys standing around me,
and for a while, I wonder, who are these guys?
They're not doing anything. They seem to be standing there.
They're wearing the badges so they can trade, but they're
not doing anything, Like, who are these people are? What's
their function? And then I and then I just start
seeing every once in a while. And there was a
guy kind of near me in his seventies probably, and
(08:19):
I think i'd been there trading for a week and
a half and I never saw him made a trade,
never saw him make a trade. And then I see
him make a trade, and there's a big trade, whatever
it was. He's like, I'll buy a thousand right, and
me I'm like I'm buying ten, and he buys a thousand,
and then I don't see him do anything else for
(08:40):
another week. I meanwhile, I'm buying and selling multiple times
a day. This dude doesn't say anything for a week,
and then the next time I hear him trade, it's like,
sell you a thousand, and I remember what price he
bought him at, And like the dude just made one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a week with two
(09:02):
trades and not saying anything to anybody the whole the
rest of the time, It's like, like, if there were
a Yoda of trading, is that dude? And I'm sure
in the meantime he was just drinking at lunch. I
bet he was getting intel from Nancy Pelosi. So the
right answer to that, actually I understand where you're going
with that. But actually, if you're going to make that
(09:24):
kind of joke, what you need to be looking at
is Hillary Clinton, not Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
You need to be a little older to know the story.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
But in the late nineteen seventies, Hillary Clinton put one
thousand dollars into some kind of commodities trading account and
that generated just short of one hundred thousand dollars of
profits for her after ten months, which, by the way,
if you converted that to today's dollars, would be over
(09:53):
four hundred thousand dollars in profits. And she doesn't know
anything about that stuff. And according to Wikipedia, there it
is suspected that the profits were allocations to her of
profits from unrelated large block trades managed by her investment advisor,
who was outside council to Tyson Foods, Arkansas's largest employer,
(10:16):
in an attempt to gain influence with her husband. So
Hillary Clinton is a commodity trader, and Nancy Pelosi is
the stock trader, so we'll just keep those things separate.
I would like to take just a couple of minutes
here to talk about two executive orders that came from
President Trump yesterday that I like very much.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
I like both of these things very much.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
And I talked about them briefly before in the sense
of these things could be coming, and I hope they
are coming, but they have now, and I would like
to share them with you. They're both related to finance,
and I think they're both a great idea.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So first you may.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Recall and I definitely talked on the show, although this
was some years ago when I was over on our
sister station before I got to KOA about something called
Project what was a project blanking on it now? It
was it was a It was a way that the
government was trying to force banks to shut down bank
(11:19):
accounts or refuse to open bank accounts for types of
businesses that the Obama administration. It was the Obama administration
at the time, types of businesses that they didn't like,
gun stores, sex workers, legal gambling. There wasn't as much
legal gambling then as there is now, But in any case,
(11:40):
it was a whole. It was it was a mess.
It was clearly really bad, and under the Biden administration
apparently it got.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Even more political.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
And I shared this with you that the Biden administration
apparently went to some banks and said, this could be
bad for your reputation, whatever that means, if you are
found to have in doing business with, for example, somebody
who was involved with the January sixth riots, or somebody
who was involved with some other thing. This presidential order
(12:09):
says the federal government suggested that banks, you know, institutions,
flag individuals who made transactions related to companies like Cabella
and Bass pro shops, or who made peer to peer
payments like one person paying another that involved terms like
trump or MAGA, even though there was no specific evidence
tying those individuals to any criminal conduct. So what this
(12:32):
particular and I think I'm going to get through this
one and then I'll have to tell you about the
other executive order, probably the next segment. But the policy
has stated here, and this is great, is that no
American should be denied access to financial services because of
their constitutionally or statutorily protected beliefs, affiliations or political views,
and to ensure that politicized and unlawful d banking is
(12:55):
not used as a tool to inhibit such beliefs, affiliations,
or political views. Making decisions must be made on the
basis of individualized, objective and risk based analysis. And one
of the things that I mentioned to the other day
is this idea of reputational risk and the idea that
somehow a banking regulator is going to say to a bank, oh,
(13:16):
it might be bad for your reputation if you do
business with with Ross, right, And what's a bank supposed
to do with that information When the regulator who has
the who has the ability to cost them a lot
of money or even shut them down. The regulator comes says,
you know, nice bank you have, There would be a
shame if something happened to it, And that could happen
(13:38):
if you, you know, if you let Ross keep having
a checking account there because we think he is not
nearly where we want him to be politically, he's bad
for your reputation. So part of this Executive Order, Section
four removing reputation risk and politicized and unlawful d banking
within one hundred and eighty days each appropriate Regulator shall,
(14:02):
to the greatest extent, remove the use of reputation risk
or equivalent concepts that could result in politicized or unlawful
d banking, as well as any other considerations that could
be used to engage in such de banking from their
guidance documents, manuals, and other materials. The removal of such
concepts shall be made clear. I'm skipping ahead. The Regulator
(14:22):
shall consider rescinding or amending existing regulations to eliminate or
amend any that could result in politicized or unlawful d banking,
and to ensure that any regulated firms or individuals reputation
is considered solely to the extent necessary to reach a
reasonable and a political risk based assessment. So that's a
(14:43):
pretty fantastic thing. One other thing, it also says, within
one hundred and twenty days of this order, the government
must identify all potential clients who were previously denied access
to financial services provided by financial situations. Actually, it's the
Small Business Administration has to tell the financial institutions that
(15:05):
the financial institutions have to identify all potential clients denied
access to financial services by that institution or any subsidiaries
through a politicized or unlawful d banking action.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I love this executive order.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
It's absolutely insane how everything has been made political, especially
and most unfortunately, things that should never be political. I
spent a bit of last segment talking you about a
new executive order from the Trump administration about fear banking
for all Americans. That's essentially about making sure that banks
(15:43):
don't turn away customers because they're afraid of government regulators
not so subtly threatening the banks by saying, oh, it
might be bad for your reputation if you work with
that guy or if you work with that company. And
the executive order says, we're not doing that stuff anymore,
and we're getting to this weird, sort of undefined concept
(16:03):
of reputational risk for banks that shouldn't be enforced by
a government regulator anyway.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Okay, so that was one.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
There's another executive order I want to tell you about
that is also related to finance, and another one that
I also like. This one's a little more subtle. But
if you've ever heard about or tried to invest in, well,
one of many things probably that might fall into a
category of an alternative investment class. And that, and these
(16:33):
generally would be investments that are managed by other people,
So not cryptocurrency, because cryptocurrency is a very democratized world
where essentially anybody can buy it if you, you know,
get the right website, the right tools, right whatever you
don't need. There's no gatekeeper there. But I'll give you
an example or a concept. So for many, many years,
(16:54):
I've been involved at a very small scale in investing
in hedge funds and venture capital or angel investing, which
are quite similar to each other, except angel investing is
usually very very small.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Right, Like producer.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Shannon wants to start a company where he's gonna buy
broken headphones and fix them and sell.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Them for a profit.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And producer Shannon wants fifty thousand dollars or one hundred
thousand dollars, not one hundred million dollars, some small amount
of money to get started. So producer Shannon will go
to what are often called friends and family and ask
for money and say, all right, I'll sell I'll sell
twenty percent of my company for one hundred thousand dollars.
(17:41):
It's like Shark Tank. Okay, yeah, everybody knows shark Tank.
It's shark Tank. Okay, and so you put up the
money or you don't.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
But if you're.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Going through a professional kind of thing, and somebody is
bringing this investment, so it's not producer Shannon coming to you,
it's somebody who works an investment firm saying I have
a client who wants to do this headphone refurbished business,
and he's raising this money.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
What they have to.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Do at that point is they put some paperwork in
front of you where you have to be what's called
an accredited investor, and sometimes, depending on the investment, you
have to be something that's called a qualified investor, which
is even a harder threshold to make, much harder threshold
to make. Now, let me look up the let me
let me do this. I'm gonna type this into the
(18:26):
Google machine. Current definition of accredited investor. All right, that
comes up, because all right, let's see, so this is
from the SEC. How can individuals qualify as accredited? Net
worth over a million dollars excluding your primary residence. Okay,
that exclusion is a big deal because a lot of
(18:49):
people have a lot of their net worth in their
primary residence, and very easy to imagine somebody who could
be worth a million dollars with their house and half
a million dollars without their house right or something like that.
Income over two hundred thousand dollars a year if you're
an individual, or three hundred thousand dollars a year if
you're married in each of the past two years and
(19:10):
reasonably expecting the same thing.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
In the current year.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
By the way, these are or these are not, and
it could be any any one of these things would
be would would qualify you if you are an investment
professional in good standing holding a Series seven license, a
Series sixty five licensees, Series eighty two license, and then
some other things.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
But for most normal people.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
You either have to have a net worth of a
million dollars excluding your house, or you have to earn
over two hundred thousand dollars a year if you're not married,
over three hundred thousand dollars a year if you are married,
And those are pretty high hurdles. So what that means
is there may be a lot of businesses out there,
small businesses that are that are starting up, that have an.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Immense amount of potential.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
And it could be you know, Shan headphones, It could
be the first days of uber. Who knows what it
could be, but under current law, it is difficult to
get access to these things, and it has been all
but forbidden to get access to these things inside your
(20:21):
retirement account, which is where a lot of people have
their free cash.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
And would be willing to take a flyer on something.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
So, let's say Shannon's going to start his headphone business,
and there's basically three ways.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
This can go. And this is not specific to Shannon's business.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
There's basically three ways startup businesses can go. They can fail,
they can succeed a little, and they can succeed wildly. Okay,
most fail, actually most small new businesses fail. When you're
doing this kind of investing, and again I've done a
lot of it, but usually for fairly small amounts of money,
(21:00):
you've got to invest in lots and lots of different
things because the odds are that any one thing is
going to fail, so you've got to hope that Let's
say you invest in ten things and maybe you lose
all of your money in seven of them, and you
break even ish in two of them, and then you
make twenty times your money.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
In the last one or something like that.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
And there are a lot of people who would love
and be perfectly willing to take.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
That kind of risk.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Now, I'm not talking specifically about Shannon's Headphones anymore or
uber I'm talking about people who have money in their
retirement accounts. Maybe you're forty years old, maybe you've got
one hundred thousand dollars in your retirement account.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
You're going to be working for many more years.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
You're putting more money into your retirement account every year,
and you're thinking, I would love to have a shot
at buying in in the early stages of some of
these companies.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I understand the risk.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
The other important thing with is there ill liquid like
the deal when you buy into Shannon's Headphone company is
is you're not getting your money back until such and
such a time, until I have sold this many and
we have this much revenue, and you're probably not gonna
(22:18):
see any return on this for at least two years,
and you have no way out. If you need the money,
then you shouldn't invest because I'm putting all the money
in headphones and tools to repair headphones, so there's gonna
be no way for you to get out. Hopefully, the
business will go big, and this business that we're saying
is worth worth half a million now will be worth
five million later, and the one hundred thousand you get
(22:40):
me now will be worth a million later.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
But if you think you might need.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
One hundred thousand real soon, you can't invest. But if
this is money in your retirement account that you can't
spend anyway, you may be thinking to yourself, I want.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
To do this, I want access to this.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
And basically this stuff has been kind of walled off
for maybe not quite the rich, but at least the
relatively well off. Right, I was fortunate enough to be
able to qualify as an incredit investor from the time
I was fairly young. And so I've done a lot
of this stuff for years and years and years. And
I will say I've lost money on way more investments
(23:16):
than I've made money on way way, way, way more.
I think I'm up money, but only a little in
the aggregate. And oh, I'll tell you one other thing,
just as a tangent, whenever you're doing these kinds of investments,
the most important thing is management. It barely matters what
the product is, right, A great, great business operator can
(23:40):
turn a profit with a mediocre product or service, and
a terrible business operator will make no money with an
amazing product or service. And I have had the misfortune
of investing in some of those latter situations before I
learned the lesson. I invested in something I won't bore
you with the details, but a physical material that had
(24:03):
incredible properties as a material to be used in industrial processes.
But the engineer was the CEO, and he was a
bad businessman, and he wouldn't get out of his own way,
and we tried to tell him, you got to stop,
but he had control and the company went to zero,
and I lost all my money. In any case, Now
back to this executive order thing. So here's the executive
(24:27):
order from Trump democratizing access to alternative assets for four
to h one k investors.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
And here's a little of what it says.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Many wealthy Americans and government workers who participate in public
pension plans can invest in or are the beneficiaries of
investment in a.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Number of alternative assets.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yet, while more than ninety million Americans participate in employer
sponsored defined contribution plans, the vast majority of these investors
don't have the opportunity to participate directly or through their
retirement plans in the potential growth and diversification opportunities associated
with alternative investment alternative asset investments, and in short, is
(25:09):
a long piece, but let me just skip ahead. It
is the policy of the United States that every American
preparing for retirement should have access to funds that include
investments in alternative assets when the relevant plan fiduciary determines
that such access provides an appropriate opportunity for planned participants
and beneficiaries to enhance the net risk adjusted returns on
(25:32):
their retirement assets. And it's a lot of wordage there,
but basically what it means is if the person who
has the responsibility to make sure that you are investing
in a way that is sensible. It's not guaranteeing anything,
but that you are investing in a way that is
sensible for your retirement, and you know you've got a
(25:54):
quote unquote fiduciary who makes those decisions on your behalf.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
If a fiduciary.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Believes that having some of these alternative investments in the
mix is appropriate for you, then it's the policy of
the United States government that you should have access to
that stuff, and you shouldn't be walled off from it
because of some.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Overly I don't want to say paranoid, but.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Overly afraid, overly cautious, overly conservative rules that are again
in a sense, keeping investment types that on the one
hand are extremely risky, but on the other hand also
have an enormous upside, keeping that away from what you
might call normal people, which you might call normal people.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
So I think I'm gonna leave that there.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
As far as the details, I'll just say one last
thing on the fiduciary. It's going to be a tricky
thing for a fiduciary to decide, because you really have
to look at is this person going to need the
money anytime sooner, how rich ski is it, how much
do I trust what's going on behind it? And I
think the adoption will be a little bit slow. But
(27:07):
what I think will probably happen is you will have
some of the biggest, most trusted firms, you know, Blackrock
and Vanguard and people like that, set up some funds
that are well managed by highly regarded people, and that
bundle together a bunch of these small investments. So actually,
(27:31):
if you're going to invest in them, you're not buying
just Shannon's headphone company, because then even if you think
it's the best company. Ever, it's really too much of
a concentrated risk. So I think what they'll do is
they'll create some funds and they'll and the fund will
buy some of Shannon's headphone company, some of Dragon's widget company,
(27:54):
some of my wife's muffin company, and the buy little
bits of lots of things, kind of the way a
mutual fund buys little bits of lots of stocks, and
then you would invest in that. And that's how I
think this thing is going to grow. All right, So
there's that. What else do I want to do here?
Let me just get a little personal for a second,
(28:15):
and I'm probably gonna come back to this on Monday.
I wasn't sure whether to talk about it on today
or Monday, so I think I'll talk about it maybe
both a little bit. And I love to get I'd
love to get your take. Oh, thank you for this text, Ross.
You're doing a damn fine job wasting my time this morning.
That does my heart good. Thank you. What about self
(28:40):
directed iras, I don't know, but I'm guessing they're going
to try to make it possible for all of that.
Self directed IRA is probably easier already in any case,
So I just feel so good that you told me
that I'm doing a good job wasting your time.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
That's really, it's my highest aspiration.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Shannon is back there just toulating is to he can
tell like he's cheering me on, like bross, you've really
you've met your goal. It's like people who who aspire
to get in ten thousand steps a day and you
just told me I got in twenty thousand steps and
it's only the morning, right, That's how good that is.
Thank you so much. So. Shannon and I are similar age.
(29:25):
But Shannon had a child before. He didn't physically birth
the child, but before I did. So Shannon's a little
bit ahead of me in this stuff. He's gonna understand
what I'm talking about here a bit.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
My oldest kid's moving away now. Shannon's kid lives around here.
Shannon can see his kid when he wants to. My
kid is moving to the West Coast. It's an interesting
thing tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning. You know, thinking back on
(30:04):
my childhood a bit, and probably the childhood of many
people listening to me right now, it never occurred to me,
and I suspect it never occurred to you that once
leaving for college, other than coming home on vacations during college.
Once I was done with college, let's say, never occurred
(30:25):
to me that I would ever live with my parents again.
Never crossed my mind and never happened. Okay, just to
be clear, never happened. I graduated from colle I should
graduated from college as semester early because I was so
excited to start working.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
I moved to Chicago. So this is what happened.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I graduated, I went back to my parents' house, I
packed up my stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
I rented a U haul, and I drove to Chicago.
And that was it.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Never looked back, never thought of looking back, never regretted anything.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
This is just what you do, and it's how I
wanted my life to be, and it's perfect. It was great.
These days, it.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Does seem like a lot of kids are going back
home and living.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
With their parents.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
And I'll say, I want to put this. My kid's
not listening right now, so I can be frank. If
my kid were having some kind of you know, difficult
time and needed to live with me for a while,
that would be okay. But I would never affirmatively invite
my kid to come live with me just because I
think it's a good idea or a good time or.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Something like that.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Really, the only thing I can think of that where
I would maybe go down that road would be if
the kid lived kind of near me anyway, and there
was a specific plan for a very specific amount of time,
like a year year and a half, where the kid
(31:52):
is working and the goal is allow the kid to
live with me to save up enough money for a
down payment on it house.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I could imagine having that conversation.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I could imagine it, but that's all in the future,
and hopefully it won't come to that anyway.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
And I actually don't think the kid ever wants to
move back here.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
My kid grew up near Nederland, just outside Boulder at
eighty three hundred feet. My kid thinks it's too hot
when it's eighty So my kid wants to move somewhere
cold and rainy. So for now, my kid is moving
to near Seattle. Can you imagine somebody who moved how
(32:37):
about this? And I don't know if this is a
sign of bad parenting or what. My Channon checked this out.
You've probably never heard this before. My kid is moving
to Seattle for the weather. Yeah, Shannon can only shake
his head. That's how I feel too. But really, I'm
(32:57):
so proud that, you know, my kids had some struggles
and I didn't know what this path would look like.
And I'm just very very proud, and I'm happy and
excited for him.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
And we'll see.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
And I I think I'm gonna miss having my kid
around a little, but only a little, right, And this
is why God created FaceTime, And we'll see how it goes, right,
We'll see how it goes.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
So on Monday, you know, on my on my next.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Show, will be the first time that Ross will be
at work on a day where one of his kids
doesn't live with him anymore. And I think that'll be
kind of an interesting thing. And then my other kid
is probably only one year behind. Because my older kid
took a gap year between high school and moving away
for further education. My younger kid will probably not take
(33:59):
a gap year, and so I'm probably a year from
being a full empty nester, which is a really weird thing.
And if you want to tell me any of your
own stories or give me any insights or any advice
at all, I would love to hear it. Text me
at five six six nine zero. We'll be right back
on KOA. Let's just talk a little about Colorado. So
(34:22):
there are a lot of things been going on in
the state of Colorado for a while. The overarching picture,
of course, is one party control. And it's a party that,
and I will put this gently, tends to be somewhat
skeptical of business, not very fond of profits, and with
a very cozy relationship with certain organizations that tend to
own and control them, such as teachers'.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Unions and trial lawyers.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
And when you get people like that in charge of everything,
what you end up with is a state that starts
developing policies that make things worse for a lot of people,
worse for businesses, for excit ample, high taxes, more regulation.
And now let's talk about the trial lawyers a little bit.
There was an interesting piece in the Denver Gazette entitled
(35:09):
and this is actually it's not an article, it's an editorial.
Lawsuit friendly Colorado gets noticed. So rather than keeping my
guests just sitting there for longer, let's bring him onto
the show. Tiger Joyce is president of the American Tort
Reform Association, and one of the things they do is
(35:30):
rank states by how likely you are to be you know,
to have at lawsuit generated against you in a particular state,
and Colorado's not doing that. Great, Hey Tiger, welcome to KOA.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Hi Ross, thanks very much, Thank you for having me
on today.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
So just elaborate a little.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Let's follow up on how I badly attempted to introduce
the topic.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Well, no, I think you actually did a pretty good job.
You know. I think one of the things that we
at the American form Association ATRA do is the highlight
and really put is part to spotlight as we possibly can,
and your you and your listeners are helping us with this, UH,
is that the legislative process UH is vital to how
(36:13):
the civil justice system works. And you know, let's face it,
we all may need you know, if you have an
injury or something happens. It should exist to resolve disputes.
It should take care of things quickly and fairly, that
that respects the interests of both sides. But I think
what we have seen in too many states, Colorado being
one of them, UH, that that the legislature seems to
(36:35):
be expanding opportunities to sue businesses for the most part,
whether it's a legislation dealing with the States Antidiscrimination Act,
you know, also the waging hour laws, you know, which
are obviously important. But our point is that that the
excesses and when you just continue to add reliability, you
(37:00):
create incentives for more litigation, and those ultimately are costs
that are passed on to consumers. And as our report highlights,
it's fairly it is a costly endeavor for the citizens
in Colorado. UH the Paramid firm which does a nationwide
analysis of the costs of lawsuit abuse. From the excesses
(37:24):
of lawsuits, you know, cost the average family in Colorado,
a family of four nearly eight thousand dollars that comes
out of your pocket. You may not actually see it
because it never gets there. And for the state as
a whole, it has an impact on jobs and the
estimate is that annually about one hundred thousand jobs are
(37:46):
not created.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Well, so diggan on that a little bit for us
when you when and this is in that that gazette editorial,
they talk about a two thousand dollars a year per
person quote unquote torte tax. So what exactly is what
exactly is that?
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Well, the analysis looks at what the what the system
would cost if it were reformed, and now that's something
that people can disagree about, but using some of the
types of reforms that my organization favors would reduce costs
and would have a positive impact for businesses and ultimately
(38:30):
for job creation and consumers. But that probably the most
important takeaway item ross I would say for your listeners
is I think there's an easy tendency to think of
litigation as for lawyers and judges and professors and politicians.
The truth is this is a vital aspect of our
(38:50):
day to day life, whether you know it or not,
and the fact is that we all have an interest
in this. The excesses that this report highlights reflects the
fact that that yes, you can continue to expand liability.
And I think the as Actress report shows, UH, there
(39:10):
were forty five bills introduced in the legislature in Colorado
this past year that sought to expand liability. UH that's
a pretty pretty significant number. But ultimately it's the consumer
that takes businesses pass on. Either businesses can't succeed or
they can't can't perform and they and they go out
(39:30):
of business, or they pass on their their excessive costs.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
UH.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
To consumers, So it ultimately really does come out of
our pockets as consumers. And that's why dealing with and
addressing this, it's just very important for anybody listening to
to to recognize that these are not just you know,
academic legal matters. These really do affect everybody as individuals
(39:56):
and as consumers.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
We're talking with Tiger Joyce, he as president into the
American Tort Reform Association in the website at r A
dot org. So Etra at r A dot org. Tiger,
I got literally about about a minute here. So we
live in a state that is reliably blue right now.
Every bit is blue as California, Illinois, Connecticut, and I
(40:21):
don't see that changing anytime soon. And the Democrats who
pass these things pass them both because they have very
little faith in their own human beings, so they think
everybody should, you know, be offended and sue everybody for everything,
and also because the trial lawyers are huge donors to
the Democratic Party. So I guess my question, without wanting
(40:42):
to sound too fatalistic, is is there any reason to
think this is going to get any better in Colorado? Well?
Speaker 3 (40:48):
I think that it starts with understanding what the problems
are and that's part a big part of what we
after are doing. There are we you know, there is
the Coloradoes that will just flakey, outstanding organization. We work
with some excellent lawyers in the state. But really from
our perspective, it begins with, you know, there is a
(41:09):
political element to this, but it's understanding that that what
the legislature is doing and when there are accesses coming
from the courts, uh that that there should be responses,
respectful and appropriate responses. But nevertheless, it begins with a
broad based understanding among businesses, certainly among businesses but also
(41:32):
among voters that these issues are important and they have
they really should be demanding of their elected officials that
they address these matters and certainly that or at the
at the very least that they understand that that addressing
lawsuit abuses a priority.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
The website is ATTRA dot org a t r A
dot org for the American Reform Association. Tiger Joyce as
the president. Thanks for your time this morning. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Ross, thank you, Thank you to you and your listeners.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
All Right, we've got an immense amount of stuff to
talk about on the show, including Dragon had a very
very good time wasting question for today that I haven't
even asked yet on the show, so we'll ask it
right after this properly spelling Mephistophales, well spell it. And
that was that was a dedication from a listener actually
(42:26):
to my to my son who's moving out tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
So thank you listener for that. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
So Dragon, you had a question yesterday and I'm trying
to remember, Oh, I know how this came up. I was,
I was talking with my wife and you overheard me
talking with my I was talking with my wife on
the phone.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
You overheard me talking with my wife on the phone.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
My wife's initials are K B and you heard because
she uses her maiden name, and you heard me call
her b K.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
Right, And then whom I was thinking was Brandon Kristal.
And I'm like, why are you speaking? I mean, not
like I wouldn't think that you wouldn't speak with Brandon Kristal,
who goes by b K.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Quite an awkward conversation, right y, yeah, and uh And
I said, no, no, that's that's my wife. And then
you asked, b kay, what the hell you call her BK?
And I said, well, when my wife was a kid,
her her friends would switch the first letter of her
(43:36):
last name with the first letter of her first name
in what's often called a spoonerism. Have you heard the
term spoonerism, spoonerism, not until I read it on the
blog this morning.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Okay, Spoonerism is a wonderful word.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And a spoonerism of my name would be Coss Raminsky,
all right, And so my initials are our K. But
if you did the spoonerism and made it costs, Raminsky
would be k R. And so my wife, because of
a spoonerism from her friends when she was in I
think elementary school or something like that, you know, went
from being KB to BK. And I just call her BK.
(44:12):
I don't even think about it anymore. It's just almost
it's not I would call it a subset of nicknames.
It's basically my nickname for her, even though it's initials.
It's my nickname for her is BK. And so then
you asked dragon, you asked the question for listeners that
you post what You're the one who's who reads the
(44:33):
freaking show sheet, and I give you the prompt and
it's right on the show sheet and you can't even
remember your own question. What are we reversing roles here?
This is supposed to me my job with the early
onset Alzheimer's not you. Let's try this again. So I said, yeah,
it's kind of a nickname for uh, for my wife,
(44:54):
you know, I call her a BK. And so Dragon said, oh,
I've got an idea.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
We wish to ask people if they're what weird odd
nicknames that they have for their spouse, so much better
how they how they came about, because you can, you know,
somebody could be in as you put it on the
blog as head, but how did that come about?
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Right?
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Right? Right?
Speaker 1 (45:17):
So what Dragon wants to know is what is your
nickname for your spouse or what is their nickname for you?
Speaker 2 (45:25):
And where did it come from?
Speaker 1 (45:27):
And I think there's gonna be way too many possibilities
that include the S word or the F word, So
let's leave those out, please, Okay, let's leave out ones
that involve swearing, even though they exist. And surely that
is one of my wife's nicknames for me. I'm not
denying that one bit. I'm just saying it's too common
(45:48):
to be interesting. So text us at five six six
nine zero and tell us what is your nickname for
your spouse or your spouse's nickname for you and where
did it come from? That seems like a pretty good question,
I think, I think, what right, Yeah, yeah, okay, all right,
it's just all right. Let me do this story in
(46:09):
less than a minute. It's gotten a lot of attention,
probably more attention than it deserves. But there was this
apparently ten year old girl somewhere on Long Island, New York,
and her phone was taken away from her and she
went absolutely crazy. And apparently, just based on the context
to one of these news stories, this has happened before.
And I guess this ten year old has a mom.
(46:31):
The ten year old also has a grandma. The grandma, guess,
is taken care of the ten year old a lot.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Maybe the mom is working, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
And so this ten year old is going so crazy
with the phone being taken away that the first responders
are called and the fire department and the ambulance shows up.
And I'll quote from Channel four Nbcnewyork dot Com, shocking
video is surface showing a Long Island first respondervouting expletives
(47:00):
at a ten year old girl's trap to a stretcher,
language that has now prompted outrage and official investigation in
the suspension of a local fire chief.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Shut the bleep up. He used the F word there,
shut the bleep up. It's like this with you every
bleeping week. Those were the words captured on cell phone
video yelled at a crying child. The video, recorded by
a concerned neighbor, shows the young girl sobbing and repeatedly
saying she wants.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
To go home.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
I don't want to go shriek the little girl. I
want to go home. The man can be heard shouting
back at her, shut your mouth.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
So.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
The man yelling was identified as a guy named Peter Altz,
the chief of the North Babylon Volunteer Fire Company, and
I guess he's been suspended. And the grandma said the
girl had become emotionally overwhelmed after having her phone taken away,
and that the daughter called the local police, who have
always been kind in the past. The grandma said she
(47:57):
needed my help, my protection, but I wasn't there when
you all for help, The cops, the fire department, they're
supposed to help you, not treat you like garbage and
curse it a child like that. So I would just
like to say, very very bad move for that fire
department dude to yell the F word at a crying
ten year old girl.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Very bad move, but it doesn't mean he was wrong.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
The first preseason game, you can catch Saturday's Broncos game
with my buddy Ben Albright at burn Down, Denver. That's
off a Broadway from six thirty to eight thirty on Saturday.
And when you're there, you can enter to win a
Broncos Raiders trip to Vegas. That's all presented by Arta Tequila,
(48:43):
the official tequila of Denver Broncos. So Ben albrighted burned Down,
Denver off a Broadway six thirty to eight thirty on Saturday.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
So how we doing Dragon with you?
Speaker 1 (48:53):
I mean, it's your question and it's your show, So
why don't you like talk a little bit here?
Speaker 4 (48:58):
I like some of these they're pretty interesting. Wait, hold on,
hold on, hold on.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Uh, let's not assume that everybody listening right now knows
what we're talking about. So tell people this is called
a reset in the radio biz.
Speaker 4 (49:12):
Don't be trying to go from semi professional radio to
professional radio.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Not quite all the way, not quite all the way,
but just I want to at least maintain semi professional.
And I don't know it's you know, you think it's
too much. You think it's a little too uppity to
It's like Pinky's up radio doing a reset, you think, because.
Speaker 4 (49:34):
If we tell people that we were we wanted their
their nicknames, for their spouses and how they came about,
that would be resetting the question once we come back
from a break, and that's far above our capabilities. All right,
then just go Okay, my wife's nickname is Meister. Her
maiden name is Yaeger. I used to call her Jaeger Meister.
(49:55):
She doesn't have any nickname for me. That's a good one.
Oh boy, my husband's nickname is Pampers. Mind you, we
are in our mid forties now with kids and drink
responsibly if at all. But in our twenties we were dating,
he got so drunk he peed the bed. So hence
(50:18):
Pampers was born. Oh my gosh, I am. I'm I'm
very glad.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
I'm sure your husband is glad as well that we
do not know your actual name nor his actual name.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
That's that's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
See, Okay, this person I'm sure is very very nice,
but is missing the point. My name is die d I.
My name is Diane. My family gave it to me.
That's just like short for your first name. That's not
the same as a nickname. So what about a nickname? Die?
(50:53):
By the way, Die is my mother in law as well,
Diane go by Die, so I wonder if that's my
mother in law. Though the texting number coming in here
doesn't look like it's from Australia.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
My wife's nickname is Sugar. Oh nope, not gonna read
that one. No kimchi kimchi because she's hot. That's a
good one. That's a good one.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
The thing is, kimchi stinks. Let me just say for
the record, I love kim chie. It's delicious. It's delicious.
It's spicy pickled Korean cabbage, and it's very delicious. But
can I tell you a brief kimchi story? Do you
mind just a brief one right ahead? In college, I
had a little refrigerator in my room and I was
(51:35):
in New York City, so there's a lot of ethnic
food available to be purchased, and I've always liked Korean food.
Is actually my single favorite ethnicity of food. I love, love,
love Korean food. It's even half a notch above Indian food.
Although I haven't found a Korean restaurant that's as good
as India's restaurant.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
So I eat a India's restaurant a lot more.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
But anyway, So I was at an Asian grocery store
in New York and I bought a little bottle of
kimchi and I brought it home to home to my
dorm room, and I ate a little kimchi and i've i've,
you know, had some, and closed it up, put it
in the fridge.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
And that was that.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
And then the next day, I left my dorm room
and went out to do whatever I was doing in
college that that day. And then I and then I
came back to my dorm room and I walk into
the dorm room.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Dragon, are you listening. You don't look like you're paying
much to the dorm room. Something room.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah. So I walk into the dorm room and and
I'm like, it's uh, something's not right here. What And
I swear to you, I checked the bottom of my
shoes to see if I stepped in anything. And then
I realized, oh, you had kimchi last night. That's uh great,
(52:52):
and I still love it. And I still love it.
And Dragon said, great story with the biggest eye roll
you have ever heard in your whole life.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Well, it's a time wasting kind of day, so it's fine.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Ross.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
It's beer. My nickname for by wife is beer.
Speaker 4 (53:08):
It started one time when I went to get her
attention and tried to say babe and deer at the
same time, So you get beer.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Ross that you're wasting the entire hour.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
Don't know Yetbly actually now probably not, because I actually
I have a serious thing I want to do in
a second, Ross, listening to your show is painful. I
don't think it's my show that's painful. I think it
is the chili pepper concentrate that you put in the
taco you just ate, and you are attributing it to
my show because it happened at the same time, But
is actually not my show that is causing your pain. Dragon,
(53:44):
you almost just said sugar on the air.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
My husband's name.
Speaker 4 (53:51):
My husband calls me mom pants, and I assume he
thinks I wear mom pants. I disagree, but I think
the nickname is funny.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
I've called my wife bucket for twenty years. I don't
know where it came from. By the way, Ross, do
you know where in town to get industrial diodes? That's
a great listener right there, and the answer is no.
I generally by have purchased my diodes online and I
don't normally buy industrial diodes. All right, keep those cards
and letters coming at five sixty six nine zero about
(54:22):
your nickname for your spouse or your spouse's nickname for
you and where.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
It came from.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
And in the meantime, I want to do something else
because this listener is chastising me for wasting too much
of your time. So I'm going to do something serious.
But actually the listener isn't getting me to do it,
because I was going to do it anyway. So you
know that I am very proudly the Mike A. Loprino
Free Enterprise Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. And the
Common Sense Institute is a non partisan organization based not
(54:48):
too far from the radio station here that does all
kinds of data intensive research about an enormous range of topics,
including crime, healthcare, atmics, all kinds of stuff going on
in the state of Colorado, and sometimes with focus on
the city of Denver or places like that. And if
you want to learn more, by the way, the easiest
(55:10):
website CSI like Common Sense Institute, CO like Colorado dot org,
CSIC dot org, and that'll get you to the website.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Now, they just did a report.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
CSI just did a report that's actually an update of
an ongoing series they do.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
And I wanted to bring it to your attention, not.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
Because I'm affiliated with them, but because it is a
topic that comes up on my show with such frequency,
because I think it's such a big deal here in
the state of Colorado, and that is fees, fee, fees.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
We in the state of Colorado are feed to death.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
And what happened was some years ago the state legislature
passed what I think most people would think of as attacks,
but they called it a fee. And the reason they
called it a fee is because under the Taxpayer Bill
of Rights, if they called it a tax, it would
have to go to a vote to the people, and
they they must have thought it wouldn't pass a vote
of the people, so they decided to call it a
(56:11):
fee instead. And Colorado, which for many years has had
one of the worst Supreme courts in the country, a
supreme court that essentially functions as a branch of the
democratic state legislature. And actually, I got to say, there's
one or two judges on the state Supreme Court right
now who are, okay, a little better than they have been.
(56:31):
But for many years our state Supreme Court has offered
no pushback whatsoever on anything the Democrats have wanted to
do to expand the size and cost of government.
Speaker 2 (56:43):
And so one of the things they did was they said, yeah,
you can call it a.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Fee and then you won't have to Yeah, I'm oversimplifying
a little bit, but basically they said, you can call
it a fee and not have to put it in
front of the people, even though the taxpayer Bill of
Rights says you had to put a tax in front
of the people. So what's happened since then is we're
getting more and more and more fees, even as our
state income tax rate is going down.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
But what we're actually being charged in fees is going up.
Speaker 1 (57:09):
Far more in total dollars than what we are saving
in the income tax rate going down.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
The fees are just absolutely going nuts.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
The other thing, and this is a little bit tangential,
is there was a there was a bill passed became
a law that says you can't create what's called an
enterprise with fees more than some amount per year without
taking that to a vote to the people. And so
what the Democrats do, instead of creating one really big enterprise,
(57:40):
they break it down into five smaller enterprises, each of
which is just small enough to get under that thing
so they don't have to send it to a vote
to the people. And then we get fees for all
of this stuff. A lot of that is in healthcare. Now,
let me just share with you this is again from
the Common Sense Institute csiico dot org again in the
easiest website snapshot of fees in Colorado twenty twenty five update,
(58:02):
and this is linked on my blog at Rosskominsky dot com.
Speaker 2 (58:05):
If you forget any of that.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
In tabor's first year of effect in nineteen ninety four,
fiscally year ninety four, fee based enterprises generated seven hundred
and forty two million dollars in Colorado. Okay, seven hundred
and forty two million. Now this is thirty years ago. Okay,
it's a long time. Seven hundred and forty two million
dollars by last year, just under you ready now twenty
(58:29):
six billion dollars, so fee revenue enterprise revenue has gone
up by almost thirty four hundred percent in the same
timeframe where the combination of population growth and inflation has
(58:50):
been under two hundred percent, just under two hundred percent
thirty four hundred percent fee in enterprise fees thirty four
hundred percent with two hundred percent population plus inflation in
nineteen ninety six. Okay, so let me back up. So
what I what I explained there was that when they
(59:10):
do it under something called fees, then they exempt all
that money from the taxpayer bill of rights, and that
money becomes what's called tabor exempt. And there are some
other aspects of that, but that's the main thing you
need to know. In nineteen ninety six, only forty six
percent of total state spending was tabor exempt, fifty two
hundred and sixty four dollars per colorad And in twenty
(59:31):
twenty four dollars in constant dollars, okay, forty six percent.
Last year that was up to seventy four percent, over
ninety two hundred dollars per Colorado. Crazy, absolutely crazy. How
about this if all of Colorado's fee enterprises so they
set up all this stuff, the hospitals and the whatever
(59:52):
else they do with the fees taking out higher education
were instead funded by state in income tax. Instead of
these quote unquote fees, the state income tax rate, which
currently four and a quarter percent, would instead be six percent.
So basically a forty percent increase in the state income
(01:00:13):
tax from four and a quarter percent to six percent.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Isn't this nuts?
Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Since twenty eighteen, voters have approved three income tax cuts,
worth a combined reduction of zero point three eight percentage
points reduction in your state income tax rate.
Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Over the same period, fee.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Based revenue and again this is excluding higher education. Fee
based revenue to state enterprises excluding higher education has increased
by the equivalent of a one and a half percentage point.
Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Increase in the state income tax four times as much.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
So they're telling you, and Governor Polis is telling you,
Look how much I love cutting the tax rates. As
a Democrat, you know, in a sense you got to
get him credit for this. He's like the one of
the only Democrats who's ever been out there cheering for
a reduction in the state.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Income tax rate. But that's because he knows that.
Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
It's the shiny object look, I'm showing you this lower
state income tax rate. Look here, your income taxes down,
you know, from four point sixty three percent to four
point two five percent. Look at that. And meanwhile, he
knows that all of these taxes, these other taxes that
are called fees so they can sneak them by the people,
(01:01:34):
are taking four times as much money from the people
of Colorado, four times as much money. A little bit
more from this report, Colorado's income tax rate is among
the lowest in the country. And I will just I
guess I will interject there. I might have put this
(01:01:55):
that i'd been editing the article. I would have said,
Colorado's income tax rate is among the lowest in the
country among states that have income tax but there are
quite a few states that don't.
Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Anyway, But that fact.
Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
Belies the state's substantial reliance on fee revenue. If all
Colorado's fee enterprises now this will include higher education, were
instead funded by the state income tax, the state income
tax would have to rise check this out to twelve
point five seven percent to equal the amount of money
(01:02:30):
the government took in in twenty twenty four from taxes
and fees combined. And as I said, earlier. A lot
of that is higher education. So without higher education, the
state income tax would still have to go to six
percent again, about forty percent more than the current rate.
Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Absolutely nuts.
Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
Now, there's more to this report, although it's not an
extremely long report. This is an update to an ongoing
series from the Common Sense Institute.
Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
But I wanted to bring it to you in part
because I like.
Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Promoting Common sentence too, because they do such good work.
It's nonprofit, it's data driven, but also because I want
you to understand that you're being shown the shiny object.
Now it's a good shiny object, right, every time they
show you the income tax rate cut, and they pass
an income tax rate cut, that's a good thing.
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
It's not a fake shiny object.
Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Right. They're showing you a silver dollar that's really a
silver dollar. The problem is that while they're showing you
the silver dollar, they're reaching into your pocket and taking
out a five dollar bill, And so you're actually losing
money because you're being distracted by thinking they're giving you money.
(01:03:44):
And of course the Democrats have done this on purpose,
with the compliance of our very very terrible State Supreme Court,
who knew exactly what they were doing. Which is to
allow the Democrats to take more and more and more
of your money intentionally, intentionally, only going around the intent
of the taxpayer Bill of Rights.
Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
So I did want to share that with you, Dragon, any.
Speaker 4 (01:04:07):
Other interesting sure, Yeah, I got a couple of more
good ones here. My husband calls me hips because I
had a full hip replacement at forty three ross. My
husband calls me wapiti. Wapiti. One of the definitions is
white rump. Early in our marriage we had gone running,
and when we returned and changed clothes, he saw my
(01:04:27):
white butt and the name stuck.
Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Here's one that probably wait, hold on, bonus points, okay,
bonus points. Do you know what wapiti is? I had
to look it up. Okay, I actually knew that one.
Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
We'll get you. Yeah, but the yeah, the white butt thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
So okay, let's just ask this as a trivia question
of listeners, and you're gonna win absolutely nothing. But this listen,
not even high five if we us okay from Dragon,
A high five from Dragon, And that is what's a
wapiti and how does it relate to white butt?
Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
Textas five six six nine zero, and tell us if
you know and then I'll tell.
Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
You the answer in a little bit, all right, keep
going to a couple more.
Speaker 4 (01:05:05):
Here's one that really doesn't need another explanation as to
why or where they came from. But Fatty mcflab and
Forty mcstink, are.
Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
You really gonna call your spouse Fatty mcflab here in
the restaurant? Hey, Fatty mcflab, what do you want for day?
By the way, what do you get? We're an actual thing?
What is the percentage chance that it is the guy
calling the girl that like?
Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Isn't that one that would have to only go the
other direction? You would think? But I don't know. Yeah,
you never know.
Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
You never know.
Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
With all this women's lib stuff, it could go the
other way.
Speaker 4 (01:05:43):
Yeah, I suppose one more before we hit ray. My
wife's name is Marilyn. About ten years ago, while we
were on a golfing trip, she tripped over a cord
and fell or injured her wrist. Weeks later, another golf trip,
she tripped again and broke her wrist. She's been affectionately
called Gracie for the last ten years, and she actually
loves it.
Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
Here's one.
Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
My wife was given the call signed the church lady
by the US Marines of MCAS Luwakuney, Japan during our
overseas tour. She was director of religious studies at the
base chapel. And a lot of Marines know the legend
of the church lady, And that is from Commander Tom.
I won't use his last name on the air, even
though he probably doesn't mind. US Navy Commander Tom up
(01:06:25):
in Thornton, very very good.
Speaker 4 (01:06:28):
Yeah, huh, all right, Hey, did they looked it up
or we got a lot of smart listeners?
Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
Maybe both?
Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
All right, So WAPEDI is another name for an elk,
and elks of course, well I shouldn't say, of course,
maybe you don't know often have white butts.
Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
And there you go, there you go.
Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
So let's see, we still have a ton of stuff
to do on today's show, although we only have an
hour left, so we'll hit a quick break here. I
think when we come back, I want to tell you
about a couple of federal cases that I've been thinking
about over the course of the week and havn't got
to one of which I think is a really close call,
and one of them not so much. We are coming
down to the deadline here for your chance to thank
(01:07:08):
a teacher with iHeartRadio powered by donors Choose, we would
like you to nominate an outstanding public school teacher has
gone above and beyond for their students.
Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
The winning teacher will win five.
Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
Thousand dollars to stock their classroom with stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
To help the students.
Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
I mentioned a few days ago a Denver teacher at
Corey Elementary named Alyssa hark Stark.
Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
She's a speech therapist and just as.
Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
An example, Alyssa works with students to communicate effectively in
and out of the classroom, and she educates other teachers,
and she educates parents on successful communication skills working with
autistic students. And for her, winning five thousand bucks would
make her therapy even more fun, even more successful, and
maybe she'll be a winner. You can nominate your favorite
(01:07:55):
teacher now at iHeartRadio dot com slash teachers. That's iHeartRadio
dot com slash teachers Dragon.
Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Do we have an update on Fatty mcflab?
Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
We do?
Speaker 4 (01:08:07):
I call my husband farty mcstink. I call myself fatty mcflab.
Do you said in a thick Irish brogue. It's funny
because I'm not fat, but he is farty, all right?
Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
Very good.
Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
All right, let me do a couple other things. Maybe
we'll come back to that, but I want to share
a couple of little stories, a couple of federal laws
until'll get to in a second that I think are
interesting and I can cover very briefly. But one thing
I want you to know here in Colorado, so the
federal government essentially administers the food stamp program, which is
now called SNAP because some people decided that there was
(01:08:47):
too much stigma attached to being on food stamps. So
now you can be on food stamps and feel better
about living off of other people's money because we call
it SNAP. So in any case, they obviously when you're
getting other people's money, can set some rules about what
you can spend the money on, and states can apply
(01:09:08):
to the US Department of Agriculture for waivers, effectively to
let the state change their own rules about what people
in this case can and cannot buy with SNAP money.
This is from our news partners at KDVR Fox thirty one.
USDA allows Colorado to exempt soda and sugary drinks from
(01:09:29):
SNAP benefits. So, in other words, with your food stamps
now you will no longer be able to buy not
just soda, but according to the Fox thirty one piece,
the waiver specifically excludes sugary drinks with at least five
grams of sweetener per twelve ounces, which is not much
(01:09:49):
just by way of comparison. And this seems almost scientifically impossible.
Take a guess, dragon, you probably know the answer. Take
a guess to how many grams of sugar in twelve ounces.
Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
Of coca cola? I want to say, like twenty or
thirty thirty nine? Yeah, thirty nine.
Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
And if you imagine a gram of sugar, let's see
how many teaspoons? How many How many grams of sugar
in a teaspoon? How many grams of sugar and teaspoon four? Four?
Think about that? So there's can you imagine even trying
to dissolve ten teaspoons of sugar in an amount of
(01:10:36):
essentially water the size of a coke? A coke, it's
not a gallon. Ten teaspoons of sugar in that stuff.
But in any case, with this waiver, it looks like
you're not going to be able to use food stamps
to buy anything that's got more than about one in
a quarter teaspoons of sugar in that twelve ounces. It
will not include milk based drinks or baby formula. They
(01:11:00):
can They're gonna have whatever whatever they're going to have.
Uh and it.
Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
And it also appears that.
Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
You won't be allowed to buy diet soda either, So
it's not just the sugary stuff. They're just trying to
get people off the soda to more healthy stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
And you know what, It's fine with me.
Speaker 4 (01:11:21):
Yeah, but you still buy a gallon of ice cream though, Yeah,
you can probably still buy a gallon of ice cream.
Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Yeah, I don't think. Yeah, But but here, this is
the main point for me, is is this. If you're
spending other people's money, the other people are going to
get to make some of the rules. And if we're
giving you money, if you're if we're giving you my
money for you to buy food, then I get to
say you don't. You can't buy mountain dew with it.
(01:11:47):
You can't buy a diet mountain dew with it, right
I'm because I'm not. I'm not having my money taken
to give you food so that you can just eat
whatever you want to eat. You don't get my money
for the purpose of enjoying your life to the whatever
degree you want to you get the money so you
can eat and not die, so you can eat and
be healthy, So you can eat and get a job,
so you can eat and raise a kid.
Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
So you can eat and do this stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
But not because you want to live a particular way
eating by spending my money. So if you want the
mountain dew, go get a job.
Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
Does that seem fair?
Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
Dragons?
Speaker 4 (01:12:23):
That seem is that harsh? I've got a difference of opinion.
Oh oh, I love it, Go ahead. I was on
food stamps, did the SNAP program. Yeah, when I was
a single father of two kids twenty years ago. My
my monthly food budget at the time was one hundred
dollars monthly monthly. That's what I would spend on grocery.
That's what That's all I had. So when I got
(01:12:43):
onto the SNAP program, they rewarded me, awarded me with
like five hundred dollars for a month, right, And yes,
I didn't go crazy, but yes I bought my kids
some soda as a treat. I bought my kids ice
cream as a treat. It wasn't the main staple of
our diet, right, but it was something that we could
get and not.
Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
You know, in enjoy and have.
Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
Do you think you should have been able to, yes,
buy diet mountain dew for your buy mountain dew, not
maybe not diet for your kids. I would with other
people's money, I wouldn't.
Speaker 4 (01:13:17):
Give them, you know, the mountain dew because that's it,
that's whatever anisota.
Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
It was.
Speaker 4 (01:13:25):
I wouldn't say as a reward, but it was definitely
something that that you know, I figured, all right, now
that we can have this. We have our meal now right,
you know, let's have you know, we can get these
cookies as a dessert, we can get these ice creams.
Assert it wasn't a main staple, like I said, we
were having the meal of cookies and ice Oh, I
get that. So it was it was just something. And
(01:13:47):
I budgeted my money so well that you know, I
even still used coupons and you know, the clippings when
I was still on that Snap program. That's interesting, So
just so that I could stretch that dollar even further.
Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Yeah, no, I get it. And I think you shouldn't
have been able to do that. And I'm not trying
to be funny, right, I don't think you know, I
don't think that's the purpose of food stamps.
Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
The purpose of.
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
Foodstamps is for you and your kids in that situation
to be able to eat and not go hungry and
not and and and to and to be healthy, but
not to be rewarded with some tasty soda from somebody
else's money.
Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
I'm it's interesting.
Speaker 4 (01:14:27):
We do have a text message that just came and
said to limit them to beans and rice and no more.
Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
There are other programs, like the Wick program.
Speaker 4 (01:14:34):
And in infants and children that only give you like
here's you know, it was literally they gave us a
check that said two gallons of milk, right, things of formula,
one block of cheese, you know, things like that.
Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
So there are programs that are like.
Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
That, right and that, but that, as you said, is
very specific for new parents and the baby, very very specific.
Speaker 4 (01:14:54):
Maybe something along those kind of lines moving forward, instead
of the snap saying that yes you can have you know,
two pounds of rice, two pounds of beans, maybe something
similar to that, rather than just a credit card that
says snap on it and you know, here's the card
and you swipe it at the register, just like you
would your debit card or credit card.
Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
I will note in response to a listener question. A
listener says, it sounds like a person couldn't use snap
to buy orange juice. That's not correct. You can still
use it to buy fruit juices. It's not really about
how much sugar occurs naturally in a thing, it's about
added sugar in a thing. I think that's how that
weaveny d, that waiver goes. Yeah, I know, I wonder
(01:15:34):
about sunny D. It's like half natural and half not right.
It's a it's an unusual and unusual product, but I
don't know. Another person says we shouldn't allow people to
buy crableggs and ribbis with their with their food stamps.
You know, that's an interesting question too. I mean, at
what point do you say you shouldn't be buying luxury
items with this? Versus say, well, as long as it's
(01:15:55):
actual food, you're gonna go buy something that's twenty seven
dollars pound and you're gonna get a third as many
pounds as something else you might buy. I guess you're
enough of an adult to make that decision as long
as it's actual food. A very very interesting, very interesting
conversation and interesting to get your perspective dragon. I want
to ponder that a little bit more. We're gonna take
(01:16:16):
a quick break. We'll be right back on Kawa.
Speaker 3 (01:16:18):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
We got Uncle Nasty filling in for Mandy, Greg Stone
filling in for Mandy coming up in a while. And
of course it's not that often you get to play
name that tune with a guy who's been like one
of the top classic rock DJs.
Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
So it's a lot of fun to play Name that
ten with a guy like that. So we're gonna do that.
Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
I'll bet you in a little bit I better get
him actually better than either of us. I'm sure, I
know I did. I have two songs because Greg's here.
I have two songs today and you've got one. So
we'll do that in the next segment of the show.
And unsurprisingly is wearing a hockey hat since I learned
last time he's a huge hockey guy. So I just
(01:16:57):
I want to follow up on this foodstamp thing we're
talking about, and I do kind of listener engagement on
the text line I do it.
Speaker 4 (01:17:03):
I would like to make a clarification, okay, I would
like to say that I am by far the minority
in that group that sits there and clips coupons while
on the Snap program. I don't think there are very
many out there that would attempt to do that and
try and save more money that way.
Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
So I had a thought as we were wrapping this
up in the last segment, and then a whole bunch
of listeners texted in the same concept, and that is,
we got to remember that money is fungible, and that
a lot of people who are on food stamps, it
doesn't mean they have no cash at all.
Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
So if they can't use the food.
Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
Stamps to buy mountain dew or whatever else might be proscribed,
what they'll do is they'll use the food stamps to
just buy everything else, and then they'll use what cash
they have to buy the mountain do or or let's
say you've got, you know, four hundred dollars in food
stamps and you want to buy three hundred and fifty
dollars of stuff, and then you want some mountain do
(01:18:00):
that you can't buy with food stamps. What's I think
what some people will do is they will tell somebody
else find a bunch of stuff that I can buy
with the food stamps. You're shaking your head, you think
they can't get away with it.
Speaker 4 (01:18:14):
I'm sure they do, but they it's one of you're
not supposed to You're not supposed.
Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
To do that, right, But they're gonna say, go, put
fifty dollars of food in my cart and get and
and give me forty dollars in cash, and I'm gonna
buy your fifty dollars in food for forty dollars in cash,
and then I'm gonna use the forty dollars in cash.
Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
To go buy the Mountain do So.
Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
I think that's probably how it always plays out to
some degree. I'm not expert on this.
Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
I have not lived in that in that world.
Speaker 4 (01:18:42):
One of the things that I don't like about that
that Snap program is that you can use your EBT
card at certain quote fast food restaurants so that you
can go to like Papa Murphy's the take and bake pizza.
Yeah it's not a cooked product, right, so you can
use your Snap benefits huh there, And I I that
makes me feel a little uneasy because you could probably
(01:19:04):
get those ingredients yourself from the store for cheaper and
make more.
Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
So I don't I'm I'm more or less against that.
Speaker 1 (01:19:12):
One of the things that I wonder about and again
I have no personal experience with this, so someone's gonna
have to tell me.
Speaker 2 (01:19:17):
But a listener asked, wouldn't this be.
Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
Difficult for the stores to enforce, like no mountain dew
or whatever? And I said, well, I'm guessing that it's
encoded in the UPC code exactly right, and that you
scan the thing and if it's not eligible, the system
will tell you you can't.
Speaker 4 (01:19:34):
You can't pay for this product with that with that
form of payment, I sick it out and give you
the remaining total. I would I would like to think
so it would say, all right, your snap benefits were
the you know, one hundred and eighty five dollars, but
your remaining you know, balance due is eight bucks for
the two packs of soda.
Speaker 1 (01:19:51):
So Dragon, when you were on this program, we're talking
about twenty years ago. Years ago, Yeah, were there restrictions
that you recall on what you were allowed to buy
with it?
Speaker 4 (01:20:01):
Nothing cooked or pre made, So you couldn't go to
the deli and have them, you know, pull out some
of the macaroni and cheese, or the fried chickens, okay,
the rotisserie chickens. You couldn't get anything like that. Could
you buy steak uncooked?
Speaker 1 (01:20:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:20:14):
Could you buy cigarettes?
Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
No?
Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
Could you buy alcohol? I do not believe so.
Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
And they didn't have alcohol in the supermarkets at that
time anyway, here drinkers twenty years ago, right, and Dragon
doesn't do that stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (01:20:26):
I think it's interesting and it to me this is
this is one of those things where you know, every
once in a while we get an immense number of
text messages without actually asking people to send us their opinion,
and a lot of people had a lot of a
lot of.
Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
Thoughts on this ross. We were on food assistance when.
Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
I was little.
Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
They wouldn't allow the purchase of soapd wash, clothes or
any other like products. So we'd buy food using physical
food stamps. They looked like monopoly money. They would give
you cash back and then we would use the cash
for other necessities. There's always a way to play the game.
But I will say I do think Colorado was on
the right page, and they're not the only one. A
bunch of other states are doing the same thing on
(01:21:03):
the right page to have some restrictions on saying, Look,
if you're spending other people's money on your food, you
got to understand that the purpose of the food is
for you to be healthy and alive and not necessarily
enjoying your your your soda or whatever as much as
you might want to if you were spending your own money.
Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
I do owe you a couple of headlines from these.
Speaker 1 (01:21:27):
Couple of federal lawsuits that I said I would talk about,
which I normally don't do late in a day on Friday,
but I will mention them when we come back because
I promised you. Those also what sounds like one of
the best car races of all time, and then name
that tune with one of the best classic rock DJs around,
so I'm sure he's going to get everything keep it
here on KOWA. So I want to do a bunch
of kind of quick stories with you.
Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
Then we're going to do some Name that tune.
Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
I'm sorry if you listen to the podcast, you don't
get to listen to name that tune on the podcast
because lawyers. I owe you a couple of stories though
that I that I mentioned and forty five minutes ago,
and I didn't get to them yet, so I feel
bad when that happens. So I want to share these
with you. I'm going to just talk about them very briefly.
Two federal cases, one of which I think is not
(01:22:13):
really a close call, but I could be wrong, and
the other one of which I think is a close call.
So the one that I think is pretty easy is
the state of Arkansas passed a law that requires, doesn't
just allow, but it requires public schools to display the
Ten Commandments, and a US district judge named Timothy Brooks.
Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
Issued a ruling a few days.
Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
Ago that said that that law is unconstitutional and blocked
that law from going into place.
Speaker 2 (01:22:46):
But here's the key what you need to understand that
I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
The suit was brought by I think four out of
the state's two hundred and thirty seven school districts.
Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
And maybe this is along the lines in his mind
of the Supreme.
Speaker 1 (01:23:03):
Court of the United States telling federal district judges don't
do nationwide injunctions. Right. Maybe this guy had that in
mind because he applied his ruling saying no, you're not
going to install the Ten Commandments in schools right now.
He only applied it to those four school districts that
filed the lawsuit and not to the rest. In his
(01:23:26):
own opinion, his own ruling, the judge wrote, why would
Arkansas pass an obviously unconstitutional law? Most likely because the
state is part of a coordinated strategy among several states
to inject Christian religious doctrine into public school classrooms. And
I will just say I think that's right. I think
(01:23:47):
that's exactly what's going on. I think there are Christian
conservatives in a lot of states who are trying to
push this stuff into the classroom. Some of the argument
in the past has been and they've been very clever
about it. Right, They're gonna say, we're doing things like
we're going to mandate putting up the Ten Commandments and
(01:24:08):
the Declaration of Independence just as an example, and a
couple other things, and they say these are all part
of the foundational documents that make the United States what
it is, and that are the fundamental underpinnings of the
core philosophies of America, right, the Ten Commandments, the Declaration,
and they're just including it like that. I don't think
(01:24:30):
they're going to get away with it. I think this
is clearly unconstitutional. Let me just say one thing on
the other side of this, though my listeners know I'm
not Christian and not religious, but I'm also well aware
that there are folks who when they talk about quote
unquote separation of church and state, they talk about that
(01:24:51):
as if it's written in the Constitution, and it's not.
Separation of church and state is a concept that came
from a letter. I think it was from Thomas Jefferson,
could have been from George Washington.
Speaker 2 (01:25:00):
I think it's from Thomas Jeffson. It doesn't matter, but
it's not in the Constitution.
Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
What's in the Constitution is that the national government shall
not establish a religion, and that has been interpreted to
mean that the federal government shall not do something that
favors the development of one religion over another in the
(01:25:25):
United States of America.
Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
Now, other people have taken that too far.
Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
Other people have taken that so far as to say
that the establishment clause you won't establish a religion, is
the same as saying that no religion is permitted in
anything to do.
Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
With a government organization. And that is not true. That
is not true.
Speaker 1 (01:25:50):
And so if you're going to say this case, you
might be a close call. For sure. The Supreme Court
is said in recent years that the established and clause
does not mean blocking any form of religion from government.
Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
It doesn't mean that.
Speaker 1 (01:26:07):
But I do think that putting the Ten Commandments, even
though the Ten Commandments theoretically represents two religions and not
just one. Right, my religion of Judaism and Christianity, which
adopts essentially Judaism.
Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
The Old Testament is the Jewish Bible.
Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
Christianity takes the Old Testament and then adds the New Testament,
so it includes my religion and then adds a bunch
of other stuff that you know, my people don't go
for the other stuff, but there's very very much in common.
But to me, when you say we are going to
insist we are going to require that.
Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
You post the Ten Commandments.
Speaker 1 (01:26:46):
To me, that actually does for me clearly cross the
line to the government establishing Christianity or Judeo Christianity in
government schools. And I think that's illegal. So next case,
this one not a religion case. I think this case
(01:27:07):
is kind of interesting. So you know, I enjoy my firearms,
and I have quite a few. I would not call
myself a gun nut, but I probably have more firearms
than most people do. I'm a very big supporter of
the Second Amendment. I am very very happy with the
changes that the Supreme Court has made in recent years
(01:27:27):
that make it more difficult for states to restrict gun rights. Now,
there's an interesting case coming out of Rhode Island, and
in the state of Rhode Island, you.
Speaker 2 (01:27:39):
Have to get a permit.
Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
For open carry, okay, and separately you can get a
permit for concealed carry. They're separate permits. Here's the difference
between the permits in Rhode Island. In order to get
a concealed carry permit, you just have to be eligible
(01:28:04):
in the sense of not having done something that makes
you ineligible. You have to be eligible to own a gun,
and you have to have not committed some kind of
crime or other thing that you would fill out on
that federal form that makes it so that you can't
own a gun or that you can't pass a background check.
But by default you can get that permit for a
concealed carry in Rhode Island. To open carry, you need
(01:28:30):
a permit for which you have to show a need.
And I think this is interesting. Look is a Second
Amendment kind of purist? I would say you can carry
what you want where you want.
Speaker 3 (01:28:43):
Lea.
Speaker 1 (01:28:44):
Again, this is a tough call because then people are
going to say what about machine guns, what about bazookas,
what about rocket propelled grenades?
Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
Where do you draw the line? And I'm not going
to get into all that stuff today.
Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
Let's just say we're talking about ordinary firearms that ordinary
people own. Should you have to have first, Should you
have to have any kind of permit? That's one question.
But when I say I think this is a close call,
I don't mean it's a close call in the sense
of philosophy. I think I mean it's a close I
mean it's a close call in the sense of law,
in the sense of whether this will be overturned, because
(01:29:17):
I suspect that courts are going to say it's not
really an important infringement on.
Speaker 2 (01:29:22):
Your Second Amendment right to keep in bare arms.
Speaker 1 (01:29:26):
If a state is saying you're perfectly welcome to carry
this pistol, let's say underneath your shirt, but not outside
your shirt, and the state will say, part of the
reason we don't want it outside your shirt is because
lots of people are afraid of guns. And actually, maybe
someone will react badly. Maybe someone who thinks he's a
good guy will see somebody else walking around with a
(01:29:47):
gun and think that person's a criminal and shoot him,
even though that person wasn't doing anything wrong, just happen
to be walking around with a gun.
Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
The state will have its reasons, again.
Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Not looking to the purest philosophy and the second of
the basics of the Second Amendment.
Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
But what I'm here to.
Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
Say is I think this case is a close call,
and I don't.
Speaker 2 (01:30:12):
Know where the Supreme Court will go on this.
Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
And if you made me bet on it, though, if
you made me bet on it, if this case gets
to a place where the and by the way, a
federal judge that ruled on it again a district judge,
so it hasn't gone to appeals court yet. A federal
district judge ruled that Rhode Island's requirement to show a
need for open caerry does not violate the Second Amendment,
(01:30:38):
that the requirement is okay, that's.
Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
What the first court ruled.
Speaker 1 (01:30:43):
I suspect that if the next court and it will
get appealed, I'm sure, But I suspect that if the
next court sides with this judge and says it's okay
to explain why you need to carry a firearm openly
as long as you don't need to explain yourself. If
you're going to carry, if you're going to carry concealed,
(01:31:06):
my guess will be that the Supreme Court will refuse
to take the case and that whatever the Appeals court
verdict is will stay in place.
Speaker 2 (01:31:15):
So that's my that's my guess on that.
Speaker 3 (01:31:17):
Greg.
Speaker 1 (01:31:17):
Can you come in. We're gonna do this in a
minute or two. I want to mention one other thing. Well,
Greg is coming in, and then we're going to get
to name that tune. I saw this awesome thing about
a car race that I wanted to that I wanted
to share with you. So you probably heard of a
very very famous car race called the twenty four Hours
of Lamont, And if you're, you know, speaking in English,
(01:31:38):
you'd pronounce it Lamon's l E m A n s
the twenty four So it's a very very famous car race.
And I don't know a lot about car racing, but
I know about that race. Oh A, Rod's coming into.
The Gang's all here. So I saw this thing that
I wanted to share with you just because I think
it is so cool. There's a car race that I
didn't know about that goes on. I think it's in Kent, Washington,
(01:32:02):
wherever that is. And actually they do it in a
few places. I think it started in Kent, Washington, but
they got it around the world now and instead of
the twenty four Hours of Lemons, it's the twenty four
Hours of Lemons. And the only rule to race in
this race is that your car had to cost less
than five hundred dollars. It's just fabulous. And somebody writing
(01:32:26):
for Axios coming out of Portland, Oregon said, I'll be
joining the A team to race in the twenty four
Hours of Lemons at Pacific Raceway in Kent, Washington.
Speaker 2 (01:32:37):
Again, the only rule of your car has to cost
less than five hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
And here's their car, a nineteen eighty eight SOB nine
hundred turbo that they Frankenstein together from two non functional sobs,
equipped with a working air intake that looks like a
DSLR camera and a mini version of a radio antenna
complete with working break light. For last year race, we
spent a lot of time covering the car in old
(01:33:02):
newspaper racing stripes and the number thirty, all of which
quickly peeled off when it started to rain. We put
in a roll cage and fire suppression system for safety.
Because they told us we had to. We weren't the
slowest car on the track, but it was close and
we did take home the Judge's Choice award.
Speaker 3 (01:33:20):
So there we go.
Speaker 2 (01:33:21):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
I love that a race where the car value has
to be under five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (01:33:27):
Wow? Hi, Greg, Well what about the roll cage and
the fire suppression?
Speaker 5 (01:33:31):
How much is that?
Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
I wonder, yeah, I wonder.
Speaker 1 (01:33:35):
If that counting the five hundred dollars, I would think
you did you ever do any cars? Are you a
car guys? I know?
Speaker 5 (01:33:41):
I used to race the train races up at Colorado
National Speedway.
Speaker 2 (01:33:45):
I've done a bunch of smashing up derbies in the past.
Oh yeah, tons of fun. Wow.
Speaker 5 (01:33:51):
Remember Pete McKay, no old old school radio guy here.
He would drive and I'd be in the caboose smashing
up everybody. Do we have you to get you back
up in one?
Speaker 6 (01:34:00):
I'm an announcer at the speedway now I am the
laste nine Yearslet's get you back up in a train.
Speaker 2 (01:34:04):
They give you some digits. Let's go. That's fabulous, great
fun for.
Speaker 1 (01:34:08):
People who don't recognize your your voice or the name
Greg Stone. Before we play the game and Greg's gonna
be in for Mandy. Who are you? So people know
who you are? Currently on the Fox three to seven.
Speaker 5 (01:34:18):
So when I'm done here, I'll be on the Fox
from three to seven and that Monday through Friday. I
worked for kbp I for twenty plus years. You know,
nasty uncle.
Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
Nasty, big time rock and roll DJ and canall nasty.
Speaker 6 (01:34:30):
If it make you.
Speaker 2 (01:34:31):
Feel old, I listened to you as a kid. You're
not the first.
Speaker 6 (01:34:34):
Yeah, yeah, you want to make me feel good? You
want to go to DJs as a child was got
back in the days. It's still gonna be one on
six seven to me. Yeah, I know it's for the
old school.
Speaker 2 (01:34:46):
That's that's ale. I go back to that.
Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
That's a whole thing. But we are twenty third floor
of the Taber Center. Yeah that's the way, but I
think that's before I lived in Colorado. So anyway, so
since we got like the music DJ here, we're going
to do a little of an extended version of name
that Tune. So for those who are listening on the podcast, again,
as I explained, because the lawyers the podcast people don't get.
Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
Named that tune.
Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
So if you're listening on the podcast, I will say
right now, have a wonderful weekend. I will talk with
you on Monday, when will be the my first work
day as a parent who's whose child has moved away,
which is happening this weekend, which is going to be
a it's going to be a big thing. Last year,
my first, my first child. You got one more who's
a year awe, But the first one is happening tomorrow,
(01:35:34):
not empty nester, but looking forward.
Speaker 2 (01:35:36):
Where they're going to school.
Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
They're going to a junior college in Everett, Washington in
order to get some good grades and then want to
wants to apply to a full college in Canada to
study forestry and conservation in Canada.
Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
So that's the goal.
Speaker 1 (01:35:51):
And as I mentioned to Dragon earlier, and you've probably
never heard this before, my kid is moving to Seattle,
Ish for the weather.
Speaker 2 (01:35:59):
Hell yeah,
I'm standing up, and I don't know why. You know,
I do know why. I do know why. I feel
like I sit down too much. I sit down a
lot for the radio show. I sit down at home
for hours a day doing the research for this radio show.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I think standing is better.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
And I used to chan and you know this what
I used to do for a living in Chicago, and
the trading floor be standing almost all the time.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
So when I when I.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Came out of college, When I came out of college
and I went to work at the Options Exchange in
Chicago for my job for many, many years, you almost
never sit down. Right.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Maybe you'd sit.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Briefly for lunch, but you wouldn't even have lunch for
very long because you didn't want to miss trading. You'd
go up to the you know, half decent cafeteria, eat
in ten minutes, and get back down to the trading floor.
Every once in a while in the summer, it might
get really boring, so you've seen the trading pits, probably
in news or movies. You'd maybe sit on the step
of a pit and do the crossword puzzle if it
(00:54):
was really boring, But most of the time you're standing,
so I spent most of my professional life standing and.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So I'm standing. I'm standing now, So there's that.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Oh you know, it's Friday, right, So I promise I'm
going to waste a lot of your time. Let me
tell you a fun story. This the thing I just
told you reminded me of something, and it's, as my
grandma would have said, apropos of nothing. So I mentioned
to you eating lunch. Well, so I was on the
Options Exchange in Chicago. Across the street was the Board
(01:25):
of Trade. Now, the Board of Trade had, in addition
to the bond market, the border trade also is where
the grains are traded corn, wheat, soybeans, things like that.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And that's a very old exchange.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
The Options Exchange where I was trading, I think it
was founded in the nineteen seventies and it didn't get really,
you know, big, probably until the eighties. And it was
it was big when I got there in the late eighties.
But the Border trade has been around, you know, since
eighteen hundreds. And there are a lot of guys there,
(02:00):
traders on the floor who have been there a long time. Right,
there were there when I got there. There were traders
on the floor who had been on the floor much
longer than I'd been alive. And these guys, gosh, it
was so something to watch these guys.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
A couple things I want to mention.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
So, first of all, a lot of I'm talking about
like sixty five year old guys, seventy year old guys,
seventy five year old guys on the trading floor standing
in these futures pits, and and you know, you tend
to think about him like you tend to think about
these scenarios like the movie trading places where everything's insane
and boisterous and yelling, And it's almost never like that.
(02:39):
It's very, very rarely, not even a couple times a year,
probably is it that nuts. But most of the time
you're watching things and there's there's a lot going on,
but there's more.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Of a low hum.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
And an occasional voice speaking up when people are trading
with each other. But it's not normally chaotic trading like
you see in the movies. And I'll tell you two
stories about these these older traders that really just have
stuck with me through all the year. So first, you know,
I told you I'd go eat lunch, you know, for
ten minutes to come back down. But in that border
(03:13):
trade building there was a cafe called Series c e
r Ees, named for the Greek goddess of the harvest,
because we're trading the grains there, right, and these guys,
these guys would come in, Oh check this out. How
about the best job lifestyle. You can imagine the hours
of grain trading in Chicago ready Shannon nine thirty to
(03:39):
one fifteen. That those were the hours when the exchange
was opened to trade that stuff. So these guys, apparently
that was a little too long, because they would come
in at like eleven and sit down for two or
three martini lunch and not like fan bankers though, but
(04:01):
like the way a farmer might drink, because they probably
are farmers who became traders, and they just be sitting
there drinking and then maybe go back and trade the
last half an hour or whatever. It was really something.
The other thing, I hope you don't mind these stories.
I wasn't planning on telling these. I just came to mind.
The other thing is that I normally traded, as I said,
(04:26):
on the options exchange, but in the summer of nineteen
eighty eight, there was a drought and the grain markets
went absolutely crazy. And what's interesting about some of these markets. Actually,
when you think about the stock market and you hear
the term stock market crash, everybody knows what that means.
Stocks are plunging rapidly, very few buyers. Commodity markets are different.
(04:54):
Commodity markets can go obviously up and down, and they
can go up and down quickly. But the thing when
you get a stock crash is because it's a panic.
And why do you get a panic in stocks. You
get a panic in stocks because people have this sudden
fear of an enormous economic problem, you.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Know where it could be a big war.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Whatever it might be, and that's going to cause all
these companies to earn far less money.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Into the stocks crash.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And also it's not just fundamental, it's also there's no
buyers and people are holding onto their cash, So it's
more of a fundamental thing, like even if people think
the stocks are cheap, there's nobody there to buy them,
and so the stocks plunge. But it's basically it's due
to a panic and a lack of people willing to
take the other side.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Of the trade in commodities.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
More often than not, the panic is the other way
you rarely get a panic, a true intense emotional panic
that there is too much of something that makes the
price plunge massively in a day.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Like a stock crash.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
With commodities, if you're going to get a panic, it's
the other way. It's that there's not enough of it
and there's a shortach. And so what happens in commodities
markets is the crashes are upwards, which is really interesting, right,
especially if you think about something like food. Yeah, okay,
there's too much corn. Okay, corn prices are going down,
(06:22):
and all the farmers listening to me right now, understand, right,
Mark Hillman, if you're listening Greg bro for you understand.
You know, prices can go down, and they can go
down kind of fast, but most of the time it's
not what you'd call a crash, the same way you
would call a crash in stocks. But what if some
terrible weather event comes through and destroys a crop, or
(06:43):
there's a drought like happened in nineteen eighty eight, and
now people are wondering, Ah, not just where are we
going to store the extra corn, but how are we
going to eat? How's McDonald's gonna get the wheat to
make their hamburger buns and the price is just freaking skyrocket.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It's amazing. And I will tell you I traded.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
The biggest stock market crash of the lifetime of almost
anybody who's alive right now, in nineteen eighty seven. I
traded that on the options exchange floor. And I traded
in some of the crazy days of the drought in
nineteen eighty eight on the board of trade floor trading
those grains, and the grains were scarier, grains were scarier,
(07:29):
more emotional, back to these old guys. So I'd be
standing in the trading pit and I'm watching everything, and
I'm saying, buy them. And well, actually, in that pit,
you don't say buy them. In the option side you'd
say buy them, but in the future's pit you would
say sold, whether you were buying them or selling them,
which was a little confusing. But in any case, you know,
and I'm trading. I'm not trading a lot.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
I'm new to this.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I don't know a lot about trading commodities and trying
not to lose money, trying to learn a little bit.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And I'm trading here, trading.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
There, and I see all these guys standing around me,
and for a while, I wonder, who are these guys?
They're not doing anything. They seem to be standing there.
They're wearing the badges so they can trade, but they're
not doing anything, Like, who are these people are? What's
their function? And then I and then I just start
seeing every once in a while. And there was a
guy kind of near me in his seventies probably, and
(08:19):
I think i'd been there trading for a week and
a half and I never saw him made a trade,
never saw him make a trade. And then I see
him make a trade, and there's a big trade, whatever
it was. He's like, I'll buy a thousand right, and
me I'm like I'm buying ten, and he buys a thousand,
and then I don't see him do anything else for
(08:40):
another week. I meanwhile, I'm buying and selling multiple times
a day. This dude doesn't say anything for a week,
and then the next time I hear him trade, it's like,
sell you a thousand, and I remember what price he
bought him at, And like the dude just made one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a week with two
(09:02):
trades and not saying anything to anybody the whole the
rest of the time, It's like, like, if there were
a Yoda of trading, is that dude? And I'm sure
in the meantime he was just drinking at lunch. I
bet he was getting intel from Nancy Pelosi. So the
right answer to that, actually I understand where you're going
with that. But actually, if you're going to make that
(09:24):
kind of joke, what you need to be looking at
is Hillary Clinton, not Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
You need to be a little older to know the story.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
But in the late nineteen seventies, Hillary Clinton put one
thousand dollars into some kind of commodities trading account and
that generated just short of one hundred thousand dollars of
profits for her after ten months, which, by the way,
if you converted that to today's dollars, would be over
(09:53):
four hundred thousand dollars in profits. And she doesn't know
anything about that stuff. And according to Wikipedia, there it
is suspected that the profits were allocations to her of
profits from unrelated large block trades managed by her investment advisor,
who was outside council to Tyson Foods, Arkansas's largest employer,
(10:16):
in an attempt to gain influence with her husband. So
Hillary Clinton is a commodity trader, and Nancy Pelosi is
the stock trader, so we'll just keep those things separate.
I would like to take just a couple of minutes
here to talk about two executive orders that came from
President Trump yesterday that I like very much.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
I like both of these things very much.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
And I talked about them briefly before in the sense
of these things could be coming, and I hope they
are coming, but they have now, and I would like
to share them with you. They're both related to finance,
and I think they're both a great idea.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So first you may.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Recall and I definitely talked on the show, although this
was some years ago when I was over on our
sister station before I got to KOA about something called
Project what was a project blanking on it now? It
was it was a It was a way that the
government was trying to force banks to shut down bank
(11:19):
accounts or refuse to open bank accounts for types of
businesses that the Obama administration. It was the Obama administration
at the time, types of businesses that they didn't like,
gun stores, sex workers, legal gambling. There wasn't as much
legal gambling then as there is now, But in any case,
(11:40):
it was a whole. It was it was a mess.
It was clearly really bad, and under the Biden administration
apparently it got.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Even more political.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
And I shared this with you that the Biden administration
apparently went to some banks and said, this could be
bad for your reputation, whatever that means, if you are
found to have in doing business with, for example, somebody
who was involved with the January sixth riots, or somebody
who was involved with some other thing. This presidential order
(12:09):
says the federal government suggested that banks, you know, institutions,
flag individuals who made transactions related to companies like Cabella
and Bass pro shops, or who made peer to peer
payments like one person paying another that involved terms like
trump or MAGA, even though there was no specific evidence
tying those individuals to any criminal conduct. So what this
(12:32):
particular and I think I'm going to get through this
one and then I'll have to tell you about the
other executive order, probably the next segment. But the policy
has stated here, and this is great, is that no
American should be denied access to financial services because of
their constitutionally or statutorily protected beliefs, affiliations or political views,
and to ensure that politicized and unlawful d banking is
(12:55):
not used as a tool to inhibit such beliefs, affiliations,
or political views. Making decisions must be made on the
basis of individualized, objective and risk based analysis. And one
of the things that I mentioned to the other day
is this idea of reputational risk and the idea that
somehow a banking regulator is going to say to a bank, oh,
(13:16):
it might be bad for your reputation if you do
business with with Ross, right, And what's a bank supposed
to do with that information When the regulator who has
the who has the ability to cost them a lot
of money or even shut them down. The regulator comes says,
you know, nice bank you have, There would be a
shame if something happened to it, And that could happen
(13:38):
if you, you know, if you let Ross keep having
a checking account there because we think he is not
nearly where we want him to be politically, he's bad
for your reputation. So part of this Executive Order, Section
four removing reputation risk and politicized and unlawful d banking
within one hundred and eighty days each appropriate Regulator shall,
(14:02):
to the greatest extent, remove the use of reputation risk
or equivalent concepts that could result in politicized or unlawful
d banking, as well as any other considerations that could
be used to engage in such de banking from their
guidance documents, manuals, and other materials. The removal of such
concepts shall be made clear. I'm skipping ahead. The Regulator
(14:22):
shall consider rescinding or amending existing regulations to eliminate or
amend any that could result in politicized or unlawful d banking,
and to ensure that any regulated firms or individuals reputation
is considered solely to the extent necessary to reach a
reasonable and a political risk based assessment. So that's a
(14:43):
pretty fantastic thing. One other thing, it also says, within
one hundred and twenty days of this order, the government
must identify all potential clients who were previously denied access
to financial services provided by financial situations. Actually, it's the
Small Business Administration has to tell the financial institutions that
(15:05):
the financial institutions have to identify all potential clients denied
access to financial services by that institution or any subsidiaries
through a politicized or unlawful d banking action.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I love this executive order.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
It's absolutely insane how everything has been made political, especially
and most unfortunately, things that should never be political. I
spent a bit of last segment talking you about a
new executive order from the Trump administration about fear banking
for all Americans. That's essentially about making sure that banks
(15:43):
don't turn away customers because they're afraid of government regulators
not so subtly threatening the banks by saying, oh, it
might be bad for your reputation if you work with
that guy or if you work with that company. And
the executive order says, we're not doing that stuff anymore,
and we're getting to this weird, sort of undefined concept
(16:03):
of reputational risk for banks that shouldn't be enforced by
a government regulator anyway.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Okay, so that was one.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
There's another executive order I want to tell you about
that is also related to finance, and another one that
I also like. This one's a little more subtle. But
if you've ever heard about or tried to invest in, well,
one of many things probably that might fall into a
category of an alternative investment class. And that, and these
(16:33):
generally would be investments that are managed by other people,
So not cryptocurrency, because cryptocurrency is a very democratized world
where essentially anybody can buy it if you, you know,
get the right website, the right tools, right whatever you
don't need. There's no gatekeeper there. But I'll give you
an example or a concept. So for many, many years,
(16:54):
I've been involved at a very small scale in investing
in hedge funds and venture capital or angel investing, which
are quite similar to each other, except angel investing is
usually very very small.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Right, Like producer.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Shannon wants to start a company where he's gonna buy
broken headphones and fix them and sell.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Them for a profit.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And producer Shannon wants fifty thousand dollars or one hundred
thousand dollars, not one hundred million dollars, some small amount
of money to get started. So producer Shannon will go
to what are often called friends and family and ask
for money and say, all right, I'll sell I'll sell
twenty percent of my company for one hundred thousand dollars.
(17:41):
It's like Shark Tank. Okay, yeah, everybody knows shark Tank.
It's shark Tank. Okay, and so you put up the
money or you don't.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
But if you're.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Going through a professional kind of thing, and somebody is
bringing this investment, so it's not producer Shannon coming to you,
it's somebody who works an investment firm saying I have
a client who wants to do this headphone refurbished business,
and he's raising this money.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
What they have to.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Do at that point is they put some paperwork in
front of you where you have to be what's called
an accredited investor, and sometimes, depending on the investment, you
have to be something that's called a qualified investor, which
is even a harder threshold to make, much harder threshold
to make. Now, let me look up the let me
let me do this. I'm gonna type this into the
(18:26):
Google machine. Current definition of accredited investor. All right, that
comes up, because all right, let's see, so this is
from the SEC. How can individuals qualify as accredited? Net
worth over a million dollars excluding your primary residence. Okay,
that exclusion is a big deal because a lot of
(18:49):
people have a lot of their net worth in their
primary residence, and very easy to imagine somebody who could
be worth a million dollars with their house and half
a million dollars without their house right or something like that.
Income over two hundred thousand dollars a year if you're
an individual, or three hundred thousand dollars a year if
you're married in each of the past two years and
(19:10):
reasonably expecting the same thing.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
In the current year.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
By the way, these are or these are not, and
it could be any any one of these things would
be would would qualify you if you are an investment
professional in good standing holding a Series seven license, a
Series sixty five licensees, Series eighty two license, and then
some other things.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
But for most normal people.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
You either have to have a net worth of a
million dollars excluding your house, or you have to earn
over two hundred thousand dollars a year if you're not married,
over three hundred thousand dollars a year if you are married,
And those are pretty high hurdles. So what that means
is there may be a lot of businesses out there,
small businesses that are that are starting up, that have an.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Immense amount of potential.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
And it could be you know, Shan headphones, It could
be the first days of uber. Who knows what it
could be, but under current law, it is difficult to
get access to these things, and it has been all
but forbidden to get access to these things inside your
(20:21):
retirement account, which is where a lot of people have
their free cash.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
And would be willing to take a flyer on something.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
So, let's say Shannon's going to start his headphone business,
and there's basically three ways.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
This can go. And this is not specific to Shannon's business.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
There's basically three ways startup businesses can go. They can fail,
they can succeed a little, and they can succeed wildly. Okay,
most fail, actually most small new businesses fail. When you're
doing this kind of investing, and again I've done a
lot of it, but usually for fairly small amounts of money,
(21:00):
you've got to invest in lots and lots of different
things because the odds are that any one thing is
going to fail, so you've got to hope that Let's
say you invest in ten things and maybe you lose
all of your money in seven of them, and you
break even ish in two of them, and then you
make twenty times your money.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
In the last one or something like that.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
And there are a lot of people who would love
and be perfectly willing to take.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
That kind of risk.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Now, I'm not talking specifically about Shannon's Headphones anymore or
uber I'm talking about people who have money in their
retirement accounts. Maybe you're forty years old, maybe you've got
one hundred thousand dollars in your retirement account.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
You're going to be working for many more years.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
You're putting more money into your retirement account every year,
and you're thinking, I would love to have a shot
at buying in in the early stages of some of
these companies.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I understand the risk.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
The other important thing with is there ill liquid like
the deal when you buy into Shannon's Headphone company is
is you're not getting your money back until such and
such a time, until I have sold this many and
we have this much revenue, and you're probably not gonna
(22:18):
see any return on this for at least two years,
and you have no way out. If you need the money,
then you shouldn't invest because I'm putting all the money
in headphones and tools to repair headphones, so there's gonna
be no way for you to get out. Hopefully, the
business will go big, and this business that we're saying
is worth worth half a million now will be worth
five million later, and the one hundred thousand you get
(22:40):
me now will be worth a million later.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
But if you think you might need.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
One hundred thousand real soon, you can't invest. But if
this is money in your retirement account that you can't
spend anyway, you may be thinking to yourself, I want.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
To do this, I want access to this.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
And basically this stuff has been kind of walled off
for maybe not quite the rich, but at least the
relatively well off. Right, I was fortunate enough to be
able to qualify as an incredit investor from the time
I was fairly young. And so I've done a lot
of this stuff for years and years and years. And
I will say I've lost money on way more investments
(23:16):
than I've made money on way way, way, way more.
I think I'm up money, but only a little in
the aggregate. And oh, I'll tell you one other thing,
just as a tangent, whenever you're doing these kinds of investments,
the most important thing is management. It barely matters what
the product is, right, A great, great business operator can
(23:40):
turn a profit with a mediocre product or service, and
a terrible business operator will make no money with an
amazing product or service. And I have had the misfortune
of investing in some of those latter situations before I
learned the lesson. I invested in something I won't bore
you with the details, but a physical material that had
(24:03):
incredible properties as a material to be used in industrial processes.
But the engineer was the CEO, and he was a
bad businessman, and he wouldn't get out of his own way,
and we tried to tell him, you got to stop,
but he had control and the company went to zero,
and I lost all my money. In any case, Now
back to this executive order thing. So here's the executive
(24:27):
order from Trump democratizing access to alternative assets for four
to h one k investors.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
And here's a little of what it says.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Many wealthy Americans and government workers who participate in public
pension plans can invest in or are the beneficiaries of
investment in a.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Number of alternative assets.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yet, while more than ninety million Americans participate in employer
sponsored defined contribution plans, the vast majority of these investors
don't have the opportunity to participate directly or through their
retirement plans in the potential growth and diversification opportunities associated
with alternative investment alternative asset investments, and in short, is
(25:09):
a long piece, but let me just skip ahead. It
is the policy of the United States that every American
preparing for retirement should have access to funds that include
investments in alternative assets when the relevant plan fiduciary determines
that such access provides an appropriate opportunity for planned participants
and beneficiaries to enhance the net risk adjusted returns on
(25:32):
their retirement assets. And it's a lot of wordage there,
but basically what it means is if the person who
has the responsibility to make sure that you are investing
in a way that is sensible. It's not guaranteeing anything,
but that you are investing in a way that is
sensible for your retirement, and you know you've got a
(25:54):
quote unquote fiduciary who makes those decisions on your behalf.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
If a fiduciary.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Believes that having some of these alternative investments in the
mix is appropriate for you, then it's the policy of
the United States government that you should have access to
that stuff, and you shouldn't be walled off from it
because of some.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Overly I don't want to say paranoid, but.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Overly afraid, overly cautious, overly conservative rules that are again
in a sense, keeping investment types that on the one
hand are extremely risky, but on the other hand also
have an enormous upside, keeping that away from what you
might call normal people, which you might call normal people.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
So I think I'm gonna leave that there.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
As far as the details, I'll just say one last
thing on the fiduciary. It's going to be a tricky
thing for a fiduciary to decide, because you really have
to look at is this person going to need the
money anytime sooner, how rich ski is it, how much
do I trust what's going on behind it? And I
think the adoption will be a little bit slow. But
(27:07):
what I think will probably happen is you will have
some of the biggest, most trusted firms, you know, Blackrock
and Vanguard and people like that, set up some funds
that are well managed by highly regarded people, and that
bundle together a bunch of these small investments. So actually,
(27:31):
if you're going to invest in them, you're not buying
just Shannon's headphone company, because then even if you think
it's the best company. Ever, it's really too much of
a concentrated risk. So I think what they'll do is
they'll create some funds and they'll and the fund will
buy some of Shannon's headphone company, some of Dragon's widget company,
(27:54):
some of my wife's muffin company, and the buy little
bits of lots of things, kind of the way a
mutual fund buys little bits of lots of stocks, and
then you would invest in that. And that's how I
think this thing is going to grow. All right, So
there's that. What else do I want to do here?
Let me just get a little personal for a second,
(28:15):
and I'm probably gonna come back to this on Monday.
I wasn't sure whether to talk about it on today
or Monday, so I think I'll talk about it maybe
both a little bit. And I love to get I'd
love to get your take. Oh, thank you for this text, Ross.
You're doing a damn fine job wasting my time this morning.
That does my heart good. Thank you. What about self
(28:40):
directed iras, I don't know, but I'm guessing they're going
to try to make it possible for all of that.
Self directed IRA is probably easier already in any case,
So I just feel so good that you told me
that I'm doing a good job wasting your time.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
That's really, it's my highest aspiration.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Shannon is back there just toulating is to he can
tell like he's cheering me on, like bross, you've really
you've met your goal. It's like people who who aspire
to get in ten thousand steps a day and you
just told me I got in twenty thousand steps and
it's only the morning, right, That's how good that is.
Thank you so much. So. Shannon and I are similar age.
(29:25):
But Shannon had a child before. He didn't physically birth
the child, but before I did. So Shannon's a little
bit ahead of me in this stuff. He's gonna understand
what I'm talking about here a bit.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
My oldest kid's moving away now. Shannon's kid lives around here.
Shannon can see his kid when he wants to. My
kid is moving to the West Coast. It's an interesting
thing tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning. You know, thinking back on
(30:04):
my childhood a bit, and probably the childhood of many
people listening to me right now, it never occurred to me,
and I suspect it never occurred to you that once
leaving for college, other than coming home on vacations during college.
Once I was done with college, let's say, never occurred
(30:25):
to me that I would ever live with my parents again.
Never crossed my mind and never happened. Okay, just to
be clear, never happened. I graduated from colle I should
graduated from college as semester early because I was so
excited to start working.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
I moved to Chicago. So this is what happened.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I graduated, I went back to my parents' house, I
packed up my stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
I rented a U haul, and I drove to Chicago.
And that was it.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Never looked back, never thought of looking back, never regretted anything.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
This is just what you do, and it's how I
wanted my life to be, and it's perfect. It was great.
These days, it.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Does seem like a lot of kids are going back
home and living.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
With their parents.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
And I'll say, I want to put this. My kid's
not listening right now, so I can be frank. If
my kid were having some kind of you know, difficult
time and needed to live with me for a while,
that would be okay. But I would never affirmatively invite
my kid to come live with me just because I
think it's a good idea or a good time or.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Something like that.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Really, the only thing I can think of that where
I would maybe go down that road would be if
the kid lived kind of near me anyway, and there
was a specific plan for a very specific amount of time,
like a year year and a half, where the kid
(31:52):
is working and the goal is allow the kid to
live with me to save up enough money for a
down payment on it house.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I could imagine having that conversation.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I could imagine it, but that's all in the future,
and hopefully it won't come to that anyway.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
And I actually don't think the kid ever wants to
move back here.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
My kid grew up near Nederland, just outside Boulder at
eighty three hundred feet. My kid thinks it's too hot
when it's eighty So my kid wants to move somewhere
cold and rainy. So for now, my kid is moving
to near Seattle. Can you imagine somebody who moved how
(32:37):
about this? And I don't know if this is a
sign of bad parenting or what. My Channon checked this out.
You've probably never heard this before. My kid is moving
to Seattle for the weather. Yeah, Shannon can only shake
his head. That's how I feel too. But really, I'm
(32:57):
so proud that, you know, my kids had some struggles
and I didn't know what this path would look like.
And I'm just very very proud, and I'm happy and
excited for him.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
And we'll see.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
And I I think I'm gonna miss having my kid
around a little, but only a little, right, And this
is why God created FaceTime, And we'll see how it goes, right,
We'll see how it goes.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
So on Monday, you know, on my on my next.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Show, will be the first time that Ross will be
at work on a day where one of his kids
doesn't live with him anymore. And I think that'll be
kind of an interesting thing. And then my other kid
is probably only one year behind. Because my older kid
took a gap year between high school and moving away
for further education. My younger kid will probably not take
(33:59):
a gap year, and so I'm probably a year from
being a full empty nester, which is a really weird thing.
And if you want to tell me any of your
own stories or give me any insights or any advice
at all, I would love to hear it. Text me
at five six six nine zero. We'll be right back
on KOA. Let's just talk a little about Colorado. So
(34:22):
there are a lot of things been going on in
the state of Colorado for a while. The overarching picture,
of course, is one party control. And it's a party that,
and I will put this gently, tends to be somewhat
skeptical of business, not very fond of profits, and with
a very cozy relationship with certain organizations that tend to
own and control them, such as teachers'.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Unions and trial lawyers.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
And when you get people like that in charge of everything,
what you end up with is a state that starts
developing policies that make things worse for a lot of people,
worse for businesses, for excit ample, high taxes, more regulation.
And now let's talk about the trial lawyers a little bit.
There was an interesting piece in the Denver Gazette entitled
(35:09):
and this is actually it's not an article, it's an editorial.
Lawsuit friendly Colorado gets noticed. So rather than keeping my
guests just sitting there for longer, let's bring him onto
the show. Tiger Joyce is president of the American Tort
Reform Association, and one of the things they do is
(35:30):
rank states by how likely you are to be you know,
to have at lawsuit generated against you in a particular state,
and Colorado's not doing that. Great, Hey Tiger, welcome to KOA.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Hi Ross, thanks very much, Thank you for having me
on today.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
So just elaborate a little.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Let's follow up on how I badly attempted to introduce
the topic.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Well, no, I think you actually did a pretty good job.
You know. I think one of the things that we
at the American form Association ATRA do is the highlight
and really put is part to spotlight as we possibly can,
and your you and your listeners are helping us with this, UH,
is that the legislative process UH is vital to how
(36:13):
the civil justice system works. And you know, let's face it,
we all may need you know, if you have an
injury or something happens. It should exist to resolve disputes.
It should take care of things quickly and fairly, that
that respects the interests of both sides. But I think
what we have seen in too many states, Colorado being
one of them, UH, that that the legislature seems to
(36:35):
be expanding opportunities to sue businesses for the most part,
whether it's a legislation dealing with the States Antidiscrimination Act,
you know, also the waging hour laws, you know, which
are obviously important. But our point is that that the
excesses and when you just continue to add reliability, you
(37:00):
create incentives for more litigation, and those ultimately are costs
that are passed on to consumers. And as our report highlights,
it's fairly it is a costly endeavor for the citizens
in Colorado. UH the Paramid firm which does a nationwide
analysis of the costs of lawsuit abuse. From the excesses
(37:24):
of lawsuits, you know, cost the average family in Colorado,
a family of four nearly eight thousand dollars that comes
out of your pocket. You may not actually see it
because it never gets there. And for the state as
a whole, it has an impact on jobs and the
estimate is that annually about one hundred thousand jobs are
(37:46):
not created.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Well, so diggan on that a little bit for us
when you when and this is in that that gazette editorial,
they talk about a two thousand dollars a year per
person quote unquote torte tax. So what exactly is what
exactly is that?
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Well, the analysis looks at what the what the system
would cost if it were reformed, and now that's something
that people can disagree about, but using some of the
types of reforms that my organization favors would reduce costs
and would have a positive impact for businesses and ultimately
(38:30):
for job creation and consumers. But that probably the most
important takeaway item ross I would say for your listeners
is I think there's an easy tendency to think of
litigation as for lawyers and judges and professors and politicians.
The truth is this is a vital aspect of our
(38:50):
day to day life, whether you know it or not,
and the fact is that we all have an interest
in this. The excesses that this report highlights reflects the
fact that that yes, you can continue to expand liability.
And I think the as Actress report shows, UH, there
(39:10):
were forty five bills introduced in the legislature in Colorado
this past year that sought to expand liability. UH that's
a pretty pretty significant number. But ultimately it's the consumer
that takes businesses pass on. Either businesses can't succeed or
they can't can't perform and they and they go out
(39:30):
of business, or they pass on their their excessive costs.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
UH.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
To consumers, So it ultimately really does come out of
our pockets as consumers. And that's why dealing with and
addressing this, it's just very important for anybody listening to
to to recognize that these are not just you know,
academic legal matters. These really do affect everybody as individuals
(39:56):
and as consumers.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
We're talking with Tiger Joyce, he as president into the
American Tort Reform Association in the website at r A
dot org. So Etra at r A dot org. Tiger,
I got literally about about a minute here. So we
live in a state that is reliably blue right now.
Every bit is blue as California, Illinois, Connecticut, and I
(40:21):
don't see that changing anytime soon. And the Democrats who
pass these things pass them both because they have very
little faith in their own human beings, so they think
everybody should, you know, be offended and sue everybody for everything,
and also because the trial lawyers are huge donors to
the Democratic Party. So I guess my question, without wanting
(40:42):
to sound too fatalistic, is is there any reason to
think this is going to get any better in Colorado? Well?
Speaker 3 (40:48):
I think that it starts with understanding what the problems
are and that's part a big part of what we
after are doing. There are we you know, there is
the Coloradoes that will just flakey, outstanding organization. We work
with some excellent lawyers in the state. But really from
our perspective, it begins with, you know, there is a
(41:09):
political element to this, but it's understanding that that what
the legislature is doing and when there are accesses coming
from the courts, uh that that there should be responses,
respectful and appropriate responses. But nevertheless, it begins with a
broad based understanding among businesses, certainly among businesses but also
(41:32):
among voters that these issues are important and they have
they really should be demanding of their elected officials that
they address these matters and certainly that or at the
at the very least that they understand that that addressing
lawsuit abuses a priority.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
The website is ATTRA dot org a t r A
dot org for the American Reform Association. Tiger Joyce as
the president. Thanks for your time this morning. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Ross, thank you, Thank you to you and your listeners.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
All Right, we've got an immense amount of stuff to
talk about on the show, including Dragon had a very
very good time wasting question for today that I haven't
even asked yet on the show, so we'll ask it
right after this properly spelling Mephistophales, well spell it. And
that was that was a dedication from a listener actually
(42:26):
to my to my son who's moving out tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
So thank you listener for that. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
So Dragon, you had a question yesterday and I'm trying
to remember, Oh, I know how this came up. I was,
I was talking with my wife and you overheard me
talking with my I was talking with my wife on
the phone.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
You overheard me talking with my wife on the phone.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
My wife's initials are K B and you heard because
she uses her maiden name, and you heard me call
her b K.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
Right, And then whom I was thinking was Brandon Kristal.
And I'm like, why are you speaking? I mean, not
like I wouldn't think that you wouldn't speak with Brandon Kristal,
who goes by b K.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Quite an awkward conversation, right y, yeah, and uh And
I said, no, no, that's that's my wife. And then
you asked, b kay, what the hell you call her BK?
And I said, well, when my wife was a kid,
her her friends would switch the first letter of her
(43:36):
last name with the first letter of her first name
in what's often called a spoonerism. Have you heard the
term spoonerism, spoonerism, not until I read it on the
blog this morning.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Okay, Spoonerism is a wonderful word.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And a spoonerism of my name would be Coss Raminsky,
all right, And so my initials are our K. But
if you did the spoonerism and made it costs, Raminsky
would be k R. And so my wife, because of
a spoonerism from her friends when she was in I
think elementary school or something like that, you know, went
from being KB to BK. And I just call her BK.
(44:12):
I don't even think about it anymore. It's just almost
it's not I would call it a subset of nicknames.
It's basically my nickname for her, even though it's initials.
It's my nickname for her is BK. And so then
you asked dragon, you asked the question for listeners that
you post what You're the one who's who reads the
(44:33):
freaking show sheet, and I give you the prompt and
it's right on the show sheet and you can't even
remember your own question. What are we reversing roles here?
This is supposed to me my job with the early
onset Alzheimer's not you. Let's try this again. So I said, yeah,
it's kind of a nickname for uh, for my wife,
(44:54):
you know, I call her a BK. And so Dragon said, oh,
I've got an idea.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
We wish to ask people if they're what weird odd
nicknames that they have for their spouse, so much better
how they how they came about, because you can, you know,
somebody could be in as you put it on the
blog as head, but how did that come about?
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Right?
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Right? Right?
Speaker 1 (45:17):
So what Dragon wants to know is what is your
nickname for your spouse or what is their nickname for you?
Speaker 2 (45:25):
And where did it come from?
Speaker 1 (45:27):
And I think there's gonna be way too many possibilities
that include the S word or the F word, So
let's leave those out, please, Okay, let's leave out ones
that involve swearing, even though they exist. And surely that
is one of my wife's nicknames for me. I'm not
denying that one bit. I'm just saying it's too common
(45:48):
to be interesting. So text us at five six six
nine zero and tell us what is your nickname for
your spouse or your spouse's nickname for you and where
did it come from? That seems like a pretty good question,
I think, I think, what right, Yeah, yeah, okay, all right,
it's just all right. Let me do this story in
(46:09):
less than a minute. It's gotten a lot of attention,
probably more attention than it deserves. But there was this
apparently ten year old girl somewhere on Long Island, New York,
and her phone was taken away from her and she
went absolutely crazy. And apparently, just based on the context
to one of these news stories, this has happened before.
And I guess this ten year old has a mom.
(46:31):
The ten year old also has a grandma. The grandma, guess,
is taken care of the ten year old a lot.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Maybe the mom is working, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
And so this ten year old is going so crazy
with the phone being taken away that the first responders
are called and the fire department and the ambulance shows up.
And I'll quote from Channel four Nbcnewyork dot Com, shocking
video is surface showing a Long Island first respondervouting expletives
(47:00):
at a ten year old girl's trap to a stretcher,
language that has now prompted outrage and official investigation in
the suspension of a local fire chief.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Shut the bleep up. He used the F word there,
shut the bleep up. It's like this with you every
bleeping week. Those were the words captured on cell phone
video yelled at a crying child. The video, recorded by
a concerned neighbor, shows the young girl sobbing and repeatedly
saying she wants.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
To go home.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
I don't want to go shriek the little girl. I
want to go home. The man can be heard shouting
back at her, shut your mouth.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
So.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
The man yelling was identified as a guy named Peter Altz,
the chief of the North Babylon Volunteer Fire Company, and
I guess he's been suspended. And the grandma said the
girl had become emotionally overwhelmed after having her phone taken away,
and that the daughter called the local police, who have
always been kind in the past. The grandma said she
(47:57):
needed my help, my protection, but I wasn't there when
you all for help, The cops, the fire department, they're
supposed to help you, not treat you like garbage and
curse it a child like that. So I would just
like to say, very very bad move for that fire
department dude to yell the F word at a crying
ten year old girl.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Very bad move, but it doesn't mean he was wrong.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
The first preseason game, you can catch Saturday's Broncos game
with my buddy Ben Albright at burn Down, Denver. That's
off a Broadway from six thirty to eight thirty on Saturday.
And when you're there, you can enter to win a
Broncos Raiders trip to Vegas. That's all presented by Arta Tequila,
(48:43):
the official tequila of Denver Broncos. So Ben albrighted burned Down,
Denver off a Broadway six thirty to eight thirty on Saturday.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
So how we doing Dragon with you?
Speaker 1 (48:53):
I mean, it's your question and it's your show, So
why don't you like talk a little bit here?
Speaker 4 (48:58):
I like some of these they're pretty interesting. Wait, hold on,
hold on, hold on.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Uh, let's not assume that everybody listening right now knows
what we're talking about. So tell people this is called
a reset in the radio biz.
Speaker 4 (49:12):
Don't be trying to go from semi professional radio to
professional radio.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Not quite all the way, not quite all the way,
but just I want to at least maintain semi professional.
And I don't know it's you know, you think it's
too much. You think it's a little too uppity to
It's like Pinky's up radio doing a reset, you think, because.
Speaker 4 (49:34):
If we tell people that we were we wanted their
their nicknames, for their spouses and how they came about,
that would be resetting the question once we come back
from a break, and that's far above our capabilities. All right,
then just go Okay, my wife's nickname is Meister. Her
maiden name is Yaeger. I used to call her Jaeger Meister.
(49:55):
She doesn't have any nickname for me. That's a good one.
Oh boy, my husband's nickname is Pampers. Mind you, we
are in our mid forties now with kids and drink
responsibly if at all. But in our twenties we were dating,
he got so drunk he peed the bed. So hence
(50:18):
Pampers was born. Oh my gosh, I am. I'm I'm
very glad.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
I'm sure your husband is glad as well that we
do not know your actual name nor his actual name.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
That's that's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
See, Okay, this person I'm sure is very very nice,
but is missing the point. My name is die d I.
My name is Diane. My family gave it to me.
That's just like short for your first name. That's not
the same as a nickname. So what about a nickname? Die?
(50:53):
By the way, Die is my mother in law as well,
Diane go by Die, so I wonder if that's my
mother in law. Though the texting number coming in here
doesn't look like it's from Australia.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
My wife's nickname is Sugar. Oh nope, not gonna read
that one. No kimchi kimchi because she's hot. That's a
good one. That's a good one.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
The thing is, kimchi stinks. Let me just say for
the record, I love kim chie. It's delicious. It's delicious.
It's spicy pickled Korean cabbage, and it's very delicious. But
can I tell you a brief kimchi story? Do you
mind just a brief one right ahead? In college, I
had a little refrigerator in my room and I was
(51:35):
in New York City, so there's a lot of ethnic
food available to be purchased, and I've always liked Korean food.
Is actually my single favorite ethnicity of food. I love, love,
love Korean food. It's even half a notch above Indian food.
Although I haven't found a Korean restaurant that's as good
as India's restaurant.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
So I eat a India's restaurant a lot more.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
But anyway, So I was at an Asian grocery store
in New York and I bought a little bottle of
kimchi and I brought it home to home to my
dorm room, and I ate a little kimchi and i've i've,
you know, had some, and closed it up, put it
in the fridge.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
And that was that.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
And then the next day, I left my dorm room
and went out to do whatever I was doing in
college that that day. And then I and then I
came back to my dorm room and I walk into
the dorm room.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Dragon, are you listening. You don't look like you're paying
much to the dorm room. Something room.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah. So I walk into the dorm room and and
I'm like, it's uh, something's not right here. What And
I swear to you, I checked the bottom of my
shoes to see if I stepped in anything. And then
I realized, oh, you had kimchi last night. That's uh great,
(52:52):
and I still love it. And I still love it.
And Dragon said, great story with the biggest eye roll
you have ever heard in your whole life.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Well, it's a time wasting kind of day, so it's fine.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Ross.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
It's beer. My nickname for by wife is beer.
Speaker 4 (53:08):
It started one time when I went to get her
attention and tried to say babe and deer at the
same time, So you get beer.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Ross that you're wasting the entire hour.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
Don't know Yetbly actually now probably not, because I actually
I have a serious thing I want to do in
a second, Ross, listening to your show is painful. I
don't think it's my show that's painful. I think it
is the chili pepper concentrate that you put in the
taco you just ate, and you are attributing it to
my show because it happened at the same time, But
is actually not my show that is causing your pain. Dragon,
(53:44):
you almost just said sugar on the air.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
My husband's name.
Speaker 4 (53:51):
My husband calls me mom pants, and I assume he
thinks I wear mom pants. I disagree, but I think
the nickname is funny.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
I've called my wife bucket for twenty years. I don't
know where it came from. By the way, Ross, do
you know where in town to get industrial diodes? That's
a great listener right there, and the answer is no.
I generally by have purchased my diodes online and I
don't normally buy industrial diodes. All right, keep those cards
and letters coming at five sixty six nine zero about
(54:22):
your nickname for your spouse or your spouse's nickname for
you and where.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
It came from.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
And in the meantime, I want to do something else
because this listener is chastising me for wasting too much
of your time. So I'm going to do something serious.
But actually the listener isn't getting me to do it,
because I was going to do it anyway. So you
know that I am very proudly the Mike A. Loprino
Free Enterprise Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. And the
Common Sense Institute is a non partisan organization based not
(54:48):
too far from the radio station here that does all
kinds of data intensive research about an enormous range of topics,
including crime, healthcare, atmics, all kinds of stuff going on
in the state of Colorado, and sometimes with focus on
the city of Denver or places like that. And if
you want to learn more, by the way, the easiest
(55:10):
website CSI like Common Sense Institute, CO like Colorado dot org,
CSIC dot org, and that'll get you to the website.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Now, they just did a report.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
CSI just did a report that's actually an update of
an ongoing series they do.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
And I wanted to bring it to your attention, not.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
Because I'm affiliated with them, but because it is a
topic that comes up on my show with such frequency,
because I think it's such a big deal here in
the state of Colorado, and that is fees, fee, fees.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
We in the state of Colorado are feed to death.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
And what happened was some years ago the state legislature
passed what I think most people would think of as attacks,
but they called it a fee. And the reason they
called it a fee is because under the Taxpayer Bill
of Rights, if they called it a tax, it would
have to go to a vote to the people, and
they they must have thought it wouldn't pass a vote
of the people, so they decided to call it a
(56:11):
fee instead. And Colorado, which for many years has had
one of the worst Supreme courts in the country, a
supreme court that essentially functions as a branch of the
democratic state legislature. And actually, I got to say, there's
one or two judges on the state Supreme Court right
now who are, okay, a little better than they have been.
(56:31):
But for many years our state Supreme Court has offered
no pushback whatsoever on anything the Democrats have wanted to
do to expand the size and cost of government.
Speaker 2 (56:43):
And so one of the things they did was they said, yeah,
you can call it a.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Fee and then you won't have to Yeah, I'm oversimplifying
a little bit, but basically they said, you can call
it a fee and not have to put it in
front of the people, even though the taxpayer Bill of
Rights says you had to put a tax in front
of the people. So what's happened since then is we're
getting more and more and more fees, even as our
state income tax rate is going down.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
But what we're actually being charged in fees is going up.
Speaker 1 (57:09):
Far more in total dollars than what we are saving
in the income tax rate going down.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
The fees are just absolutely going nuts.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
The other thing, and this is a little bit tangential,
is there was a there was a bill passed became
a law that says you can't create what's called an
enterprise with fees more than some amount per year without
taking that to a vote to the people. And so
what the Democrats do, instead of creating one really big enterprise,
(57:40):
they break it down into five smaller enterprises, each of
which is just small enough to get under that thing
so they don't have to send it to a vote
to the people. And then we get fees for all
of this stuff. A lot of that is in healthcare. Now,
let me just share with you this is again from
the Common Sense Institute csiico dot org again in the
easiest website snapshot of fees in Colorado twenty twenty five update,
(58:02):
and this is linked on my blog at Rosskominsky dot com.
Speaker 2 (58:05):
If you forget any of that.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
In tabor's first year of effect in nineteen ninety four,
fiscally year ninety four, fee based enterprises generated seven hundred
and forty two million dollars in Colorado. Okay, seven hundred
and forty two million. Now this is thirty years ago. Okay,
it's a long time. Seven hundred and forty two million
dollars by last year, just under you ready now twenty
(58:29):
six billion dollars, so fee revenue enterprise revenue has gone
up by almost thirty four hundred percent in the same
timeframe where the combination of population growth and inflation has
(58:50):
been under two hundred percent, just under two hundred percent
thirty four hundred percent fee in enterprise fees thirty four
hundred percent with two hundred percent population plus inflation in
nineteen ninety six. Okay, so let me back up. So
what I what I explained there was that when they
(59:10):
do it under something called fees, then they exempt all
that money from the taxpayer bill of rights, and that
money becomes what's called tabor exempt. And there are some
other aspects of that, but that's the main thing you
need to know. In nineteen ninety six, only forty six
percent of total state spending was tabor exempt, fifty two
hundred and sixty four dollars per colorad And in twenty
(59:31):
twenty four dollars in constant dollars, okay, forty six percent.
Last year that was up to seventy four percent, over
ninety two hundred dollars per Colorado. Crazy, absolutely crazy. How
about this if all of Colorado's fee enterprises so they
set up all this stuff, the hospitals and the whatever
(59:52):
else they do with the fees taking out higher education
were instead funded by state in income tax. Instead of
these quote unquote fees, the state income tax rate, which
currently four and a quarter percent, would instead be six percent.
So basically a forty percent increase in the state income
(01:00:13):
tax from four and a quarter percent to six percent.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Isn't this nuts?
Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Since twenty eighteen, voters have approved three income tax cuts,
worth a combined reduction of zero point three eight percentage
points reduction in your state income tax rate.
Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Over the same period, fee.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Based revenue and again this is excluding higher education. Fee
based revenue to state enterprises excluding higher education has increased
by the equivalent of a one and a half percentage point.
Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Increase in the state income tax four times as much.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
So they're telling you, and Governor Polis is telling you,
Look how much I love cutting the tax rates. As
a Democrat, you know, in a sense you got to
get him credit for this. He's like the one of
the only Democrats who's ever been out there cheering for
a reduction in the state.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Income tax rate. But that's because he knows that.
Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
It's the shiny object look, I'm showing you this lower
state income tax rate. Look here, your income taxes down,
you know, from four point sixty three percent to four
point two five percent. Look at that. And meanwhile, he
knows that all of these taxes, these other taxes that
are called fees so they can sneak them by the people,
(01:01:34):
are taking four times as much money from the people
of Colorado, four times as much money. A little bit
more from this report, Colorado's income tax rate is among
the lowest in the country. And I will just I
guess I will interject there. I might have put this
(01:01:55):
that i'd been editing the article. I would have said,
Colorado's income tax rate is among the lowest in the
country among states that have income tax but there are
quite a few states that don't.
Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Anyway, But that fact.
Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
Belies the state's substantial reliance on fee revenue. If all
Colorado's fee enterprises now this will include higher education, were
instead funded by the state income tax, the state income
tax would have to rise check this out to twelve
point five seven percent to equal the amount of money
(01:02:30):
the government took in in twenty twenty four from taxes
and fees combined. And as I said, earlier. A lot
of that is higher education. So without higher education, the
state income tax would still have to go to six
percent again, about forty percent more than the current rate.
Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Absolutely nuts.
Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
Now, there's more to this report, although it's not an
extremely long report. This is an update to an ongoing
series from the Common Sense Institute.
Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
But I wanted to bring it to you in part
because I like.
Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Promoting Common sentence too, because they do such good work.
It's nonprofit, it's data driven, but also because I want
you to understand that you're being shown the shiny object.
Now it's a good shiny object, right, every time they
show you the income tax rate cut, and they pass
an income tax rate cut, that's a good thing.
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
It's not a fake shiny object.
Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Right. They're showing you a silver dollar that's really a
silver dollar. The problem is that while they're showing you
the silver dollar, they're reaching into your pocket and taking
out a five dollar bill, And so you're actually losing
money because you're being distracted by thinking they're giving you money.
(01:03:44):
And of course the Democrats have done this on purpose,
with the compliance of our very very terrible State Supreme Court,
who knew exactly what they were doing. Which is to
allow the Democrats to take more and more and more
of your money intentionally, intentionally, only going around the intent
of the taxpayer Bill of Rights.
Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
So I did want to share that with you, Dragon, any.
Speaker 4 (01:04:07):
Other interesting sure, Yeah, I got a couple of more
good ones here. My husband calls me hips because I
had a full hip replacement at forty three ross. My
husband calls me wapiti. Wapiti. One of the definitions is
white rump. Early in our marriage we had gone running,
and when we returned and changed clothes, he saw my
(01:04:27):
white butt and the name stuck.
Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Here's one that probably wait, hold on, bonus points, okay,
bonus points. Do you know what wapiti is? I had
to look it up. Okay, I actually knew that one.
Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
We'll get you. Yeah, but the yeah, the white butt thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
So okay, let's just ask this as a trivia question
of listeners, and you're gonna win absolutely nothing. But this listen,
not even high five if we us okay from Dragon,
A high five from Dragon, And that is what's a
wapiti and how does it relate to white butt?
Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
Textas five six six nine zero, and tell us if
you know and then I'll tell.
Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
You the answer in a little bit, all right, keep
going to a couple more.
Speaker 4 (01:05:05):
Here's one that really doesn't need another explanation as to
why or where they came from. But Fatty mcflab and
Forty mcstink, are.
Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
You really gonna call your spouse Fatty mcflab here in
the restaurant? Hey, Fatty mcflab, what do you want for day?
By the way, what do you get? We're an actual thing?
What is the percentage chance that it is the guy
calling the girl that like?
Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Isn't that one that would have to only go the
other direction? You would think? But I don't know. Yeah,
you never know.
Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
You never know.
Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
With all this women's lib stuff, it could go the
other way.
Speaker 4 (01:05:43):
Yeah, I suppose one more before we hit ray. My
wife's name is Marilyn. About ten years ago, while we
were on a golfing trip, she tripped over a cord
and fell or injured her wrist. Weeks later, another golf trip,
she tripped again and broke her wrist. She's been affectionately
called Gracie for the last ten years, and she actually
loves it.
Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
Here's one.
Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
My wife was given the call signed the church lady
by the US Marines of MCAS Luwakuney, Japan during our
overseas tour. She was director of religious studies at the
base chapel. And a lot of Marines know the legend
of the church lady, And that is from Commander Tom.
I won't use his last name on the air, even
though he probably doesn't mind. US Navy Commander Tom up
(01:06:25):
in Thornton, very very good.
Speaker 4 (01:06:28):
Yeah, huh, all right, Hey, did they looked it up
or we got a lot of smart listeners?
Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
Maybe both?
Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
All right, So WAPEDI is another name for an elk,
and elks of course, well I shouldn't say, of course,
maybe you don't know often have white butts.
Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
And there you go, there you go.
Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
So let's see, we still have a ton of stuff
to do on today's show, although we only have an
hour left, so we'll hit a quick break here. I
think when we come back, I want to tell you
about a couple of federal cases that I've been thinking
about over the course of the week and havn't got
to one of which I think is a really close call,
and one of them not so much. We are coming
down to the deadline here for your chance to thank
(01:07:08):
a teacher with iHeartRadio powered by donors Choose, we would
like you to nominate an outstanding public school teacher has
gone above and beyond for their students.
Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
The winning teacher will win five.
Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
Thousand dollars to stock their classroom with stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
To help the students.
Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
I mentioned a few days ago a Denver teacher at
Corey Elementary named Alyssa hark Stark.
Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
She's a speech therapist and just as.
Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
An example, Alyssa works with students to communicate effectively in
and out of the classroom, and she educates other teachers,
and she educates parents on successful communication skills working with
autistic students. And for her, winning five thousand bucks would
make her therapy even more fun, even more successful, and
maybe she'll be a winner. You can nominate your favorite
(01:07:55):
teacher now at iHeartRadio dot com slash teachers. That's iHeartRadio
dot com slash teachers Dragon.
Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Do we have an update on Fatty mcflab?
Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
We do?
Speaker 4 (01:08:07):
I call my husband farty mcstink. I call myself fatty mcflab.
Do you said in a thick Irish brogue. It's funny
because I'm not fat, but he is farty, all right?
Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
Very good.
Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
All right, let me do a couple other things. Maybe
we'll come back to that, but I want to share
a couple of little stories, a couple of federal laws
until'll get to in a second that I think are
interesting and I can cover very briefly. But one thing
I want you to know here in Colorado, so the
federal government essentially administers the food stamp program, which is
now called SNAP because some people decided that there was
(01:08:47):
too much stigma attached to being on food stamps. So
now you can be on food stamps and feel better
about living off of other people's money because we call
it SNAP. So in any case, they obviously when you're
getting other people's money, can set some rules about what
you can spend the money on, and states can apply
(01:09:08):
to the US Department of Agriculture for waivers, effectively to
let the state change their own rules about what people
in this case can and cannot buy with SNAP money.
This is from our news partners at KDVR Fox thirty one.
USDA allows Colorado to exempt soda and sugary drinks from
(01:09:29):
SNAP benefits. So, in other words, with your food stamps
now you will no longer be able to buy not
just soda, but according to the Fox thirty one piece,
the waiver specifically excludes sugary drinks with at least five
grams of sweetener per twelve ounces, which is not much
(01:09:49):
just by way of comparison. And this seems almost scientifically impossible.
Take a guess, dragon, you probably know the answer. Take
a guess to how many grams of sugar in twelve ounces.
Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
Of coca cola? I want to say, like twenty or
thirty thirty nine? Yeah, thirty nine.
Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
And if you imagine a gram of sugar, let's see
how many teaspoons? How many How many grams of sugar
in a teaspoon? How many grams of sugar and teaspoon four? Four?
Think about that? So there's can you imagine even trying
to dissolve ten teaspoons of sugar in an amount of
(01:10:36):
essentially water the size of a coke? A coke, it's
not a gallon. Ten teaspoons of sugar in that stuff.
But in any case, with this waiver, it looks like
you're not going to be able to use food stamps
to buy anything that's got more than about one in
a quarter teaspoons of sugar in that twelve ounces. It
will not include milk based drinks or baby formula. They
(01:11:00):
can They're gonna have whatever whatever they're going to have.
Uh and it.
Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
And it also appears that.
Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
You won't be allowed to buy diet soda either, So
it's not just the sugary stuff. They're just trying to
get people off the soda to more healthy stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
And you know what, It's fine with me.
Speaker 4 (01:11:21):
Yeah, but you still buy a gallon of ice cream though, Yeah,
you can probably still buy a gallon of ice cream.
Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Yeah, I don't think. Yeah, But but here, this is
the main point for me, is is this. If you're
spending other people's money, the other people are going to
get to make some of the rules. And if we're
giving you money, if you're if we're giving you my
money for you to buy food, then I get to
say you don't. You can't buy mountain dew with it.
(01:11:47):
You can't buy a diet mountain dew with it, right
I'm because I'm not. I'm not having my money taken
to give you food so that you can just eat
whatever you want to eat. You don't get my money
for the purpose of enjoying your life to the whatever
degree you want to you get the money so you
can eat and not die, so you can eat and
be healthy, So you can eat and get a job,
so you can eat and raise a kid.
Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
So you can eat and do this stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
But not because you want to live a particular way
eating by spending my money. So if you want the
mountain dew, go get a job.
Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
Does that seem fair?
Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
Dragons?
Speaker 4 (01:12:23):
That seem is that harsh? I've got a difference of opinion.
Oh oh, I love it, Go ahead. I was on
food stamps, did the SNAP program. Yeah, when I was
a single father of two kids twenty years ago. My
my monthly food budget at the time was one hundred
dollars monthly monthly. That's what I would spend on grocery.
That's what That's all I had. So when I got
(01:12:43):
onto the SNAP program, they rewarded me, awarded me with
like five hundred dollars for a month, right, And yes,
I didn't go crazy, but yes I bought my kids
some soda as a treat. I bought my kids ice
cream as a treat. It wasn't the main staple of
our diet, right, but it was something that we could
get and not.
Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
You know, in enjoy and have.
Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
Do you think you should have been able to, yes,
buy diet mountain dew for your buy mountain dew, not
maybe not diet for your kids. I would with other
people's money, I wouldn't.
Speaker 4 (01:13:17):
Give them, you know, the mountain dew because that's it,
that's whatever anisota.
Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
It was.
Speaker 4 (01:13:25):
I wouldn't say as a reward, but it was definitely
something that that you know, I figured, all right, now
that we can have this. We have our meal now right,
you know, let's have you know, we can get these
cookies as a dessert, we can get these ice creams.
Assert it wasn't a main staple, like I said, we
were having the meal of cookies and ice Oh, I
get that. So it was it was just something. And
(01:13:47):
I budgeted my money so well that you know, I
even still used coupons and you know, the clippings when
I was still on that Snap program. That's interesting, So
just so that I could stretch that dollar even further.
Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Yeah, no, I get it. And I think you shouldn't
have been able to do that. And I'm not trying
to be funny, right, I don't think you know, I
don't think that's the purpose of food stamps.
Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
The purpose of.
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
Foodstamps is for you and your kids in that situation
to be able to eat and not go hungry and
not and and and to and to be healthy, but
not to be rewarded with some tasty soda from somebody
else's money.
Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
I'm it's interesting.
Speaker 4 (01:14:27):
We do have a text message that just came and
said to limit them to beans and rice and no more.
Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
There are other programs, like the Wick program.
Speaker 4 (01:14:34):
And in infants and children that only give you like
here's you know, it was literally they gave us a
check that said two gallons of milk, right, things of formula,
one block of cheese, you know, things like that.
Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
So there are programs that are like.
Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
That, right and that, but that, as you said, is
very specific for new parents and the baby, very very specific.
Speaker 4 (01:14:54):
Maybe something along those kind of lines moving forward, instead
of the snap saying that yes you can have you know,
two pounds of rice, two pounds of beans, maybe something
similar to that, rather than just a credit card that
says snap on it and you know, here's the card
and you swipe it at the register, just like you
would your debit card or credit card.
Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
I will note in response to a listener question. A
listener says, it sounds like a person couldn't use snap
to buy orange juice. That's not correct. You can still
use it to buy fruit juices. It's not really about
how much sugar occurs naturally in a thing, it's about
added sugar in a thing. I think that's how that
weaveny d, that waiver goes. Yeah, I know, I wonder
(01:15:34):
about sunny D. It's like half natural and half not right.
It's a it's an unusual and unusual product, but I
don't know. Another person says we shouldn't allow people to
buy crableggs and ribbis with their with their food stamps.
You know, that's an interesting question too. I mean, at
what point do you say you shouldn't be buying luxury
items with this? Versus say, well, as long as it's
(01:15:55):
actual food, you're gonna go buy something that's twenty seven
dollars pound and you're gonna get a third as many
pounds as something else you might buy. I guess you're
enough of an adult to make that decision as long
as it's actual food. A very very interesting, very interesting
conversation and interesting to get your perspective dragon. I want
to ponder that a little bit more. We're gonna take
(01:16:16):
a quick break. We'll be right back on Kawa.
Speaker 3 (01:16:18):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
We got Uncle Nasty filling in for Mandy, Greg Stone
filling in for Mandy coming up in a while. And
of course it's not that often you get to play
name that tune with a guy who's been like one
of the top classic rock DJs.
Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
So it's a lot of fun to play Name that
ten with a guy like that. So we're gonna do that.
Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
I'll bet you in a little bit I better get
him actually better than either of us. I'm sure, I
know I did. I have two songs because Greg's here.
I have two songs today and you've got one. So
we'll do that in the next segment of the show.
And unsurprisingly is wearing a hockey hat since I learned
last time he's a huge hockey guy. So I just
(01:16:57):
I want to follow up on this foodstamp thing we're
talking about, and I do kind of listener engagement on
the text line I do it.
Speaker 4 (01:17:03):
I would like to make a clarification, okay, I would
like to say that I am by far the minority
in that group that sits there and clips coupons while
on the Snap program. I don't think there are very
many out there that would attempt to do that and
try and save more money that way.
Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
So I had a thought as we were wrapping this
up in the last segment, and then a whole bunch
of listeners texted in the same concept, and that is,
we got to remember that money is fungible, and that
a lot of people who are on food stamps, it
doesn't mean they have no cash at all.
Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
So if they can't use the food.
Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
Stamps to buy mountain dew or whatever else might be proscribed,
what they'll do is they'll use the food stamps to
just buy everything else, and then they'll use what cash
they have to buy the mountain do or or let's
say you've got, you know, four hundred dollars in food
stamps and you want to buy three hundred and fifty
dollars of stuff, and then you want some mountain do
(01:18:00):
that you can't buy with food stamps. What's I think
what some people will do is they will tell somebody
else find a bunch of stuff that I can buy
with the food stamps. You're shaking your head, you think
they can't get away with it.
Speaker 4 (01:18:14):
I'm sure they do, but they it's one of you're
not supposed to You're not supposed.
Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
To do that, right, But they're gonna say, go, put
fifty dollars of food in my cart and get and
and give me forty dollars in cash, and I'm gonna
buy your fifty dollars in food for forty dollars in cash,
and then I'm gonna use the forty dollars in cash.
Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
To go buy the Mountain do So.
Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
I think that's probably how it always plays out to
some degree. I'm not expert on this.
Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
I have not lived in that in that world.
Speaker 4 (01:18:42):
One of the things that I don't like about that
that Snap program is that you can use your EBT
card at certain quote fast food restaurants so that you
can go to like Papa Murphy's the take and bake pizza.
Yeah it's not a cooked product, right, so you can
use your Snap benefits huh there, And I I that
makes me feel a little uneasy because you could probably
(01:19:04):
get those ingredients yourself from the store for cheaper and
make more.
Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
So I don't I'm I'm more or less against that.
Speaker 1 (01:19:12):
One of the things that I wonder about and again
I have no personal experience with this, so someone's gonna
have to tell me.
Speaker 2 (01:19:17):
But a listener asked, wouldn't this be.
Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
Difficult for the stores to enforce, like no mountain dew
or whatever? And I said, well, I'm guessing that it's
encoded in the UPC code exactly right, and that you
scan the thing and if it's not eligible, the system
will tell you you can't.
Speaker 4 (01:19:34):
You can't pay for this product with that with that
form of payment, I sick it out and give you
the remaining total. I would I would like to think
so it would say, all right, your snap benefits were
the you know, one hundred and eighty five dollars, but
your remaining you know, balance due is eight bucks for
the two packs of soda.
Speaker 1 (01:19:51):
So Dragon, when you were on this program, we're talking
about twenty years ago. Years ago, Yeah, were there restrictions
that you recall on what you were allowed to buy
with it?
Speaker 4 (01:20:01):
Nothing cooked or pre made, So you couldn't go to
the deli and have them, you know, pull out some
of the macaroni and cheese, or the fried chickens, okay,
the rotisserie chickens. You couldn't get anything like that. Could
you buy steak uncooked?
Speaker 1 (01:20:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:20:14):
Could you buy cigarettes?
Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
No?
Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
Could you buy alcohol? I do not believe so.
Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
And they didn't have alcohol in the supermarkets at that
time anyway, here drinkers twenty years ago, right, and Dragon
doesn't do that stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (01:20:26):
I think it's interesting and it to me this is
this is one of those things where you know, every
once in a while we get an immense number of
text messages without actually asking people to send us their opinion,
and a lot of people had a lot of a
lot of.
Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
Thoughts on this ross. We were on food assistance when.
Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
I was little.
Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
They wouldn't allow the purchase of soapd wash, clothes or
any other like products. So we'd buy food using physical
food stamps. They looked like monopoly money. They would give
you cash back and then we would use the cash
for other necessities. There's always a way to play the game.
But I will say I do think Colorado was on
the right page, and they're not the only one. A
bunch of other states are doing the same thing on
(01:21:03):
the right page to have some restrictions on saying, Look,
if you're spending other people's money on your food, you
got to understand that the purpose of the food is
for you to be healthy and alive and not necessarily
enjoying your your your soda or whatever as much as
you might want to if you were spending your own money.
Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
I do owe you a couple of headlines from these.
Speaker 1 (01:21:27):
Couple of federal lawsuits that I said I would talk about,
which I normally don't do late in a day on Friday,
but I will mention them when we come back because
I promised you. Those also what sounds like one of
the best car races of all time, and then name
that tune with one of the best classic rock DJs around,
so I'm sure he's going to get everything keep it
here on KOWA. So I want to do a bunch
of kind of quick stories with you.
Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
Then we're going to do some Name that tune.
Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
I'm sorry if you listen to the podcast, you don't
get to listen to name that tune on the podcast
because lawyers. I owe you a couple of stories though
that I that I mentioned and forty five minutes ago,
and I didn't get to them yet, so I feel
bad when that happens. So I want to share these
with you. I'm going to just talk about them very briefly.
Two federal cases, one of which I think is not
(01:22:13):
really a close call, but I could be wrong, and
the other one of which I think is a close call.
So the one that I think is pretty easy is
the state of Arkansas passed a law that requires, doesn't
just allow, but it requires public schools to display the
Ten Commandments, and a US district judge named Timothy Brooks.
Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
Issued a ruling a few days.
Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
Ago that said that that law is unconstitutional and blocked
that law from going into place.
Speaker 2 (01:22:46):
But here's the key what you need to understand that
I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
The suit was brought by I think four out of
the state's two hundred and thirty seven school districts.
Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
And maybe this is along the lines in his mind
of the Supreme.
Speaker 1 (01:23:03):
Court of the United States telling federal district judges don't
do nationwide injunctions. Right. Maybe this guy had that in
mind because he applied his ruling saying no, you're not
going to install the Ten Commandments in schools right now.
He only applied it to those four school districts that
filed the lawsuit and not to the rest. In his
(01:23:26):
own opinion, his own ruling, the judge wrote, why would
Arkansas pass an obviously unconstitutional law? Most likely because the
state is part of a coordinated strategy among several states
to inject Christian religious doctrine into public school classrooms. And
I will just say I think that's right. I think
(01:23:47):
that's exactly what's going on. I think there are Christian
conservatives in a lot of states who are trying to
push this stuff into the classroom. Some of the argument
in the past has been and they've been very clever
about it. Right, They're gonna say, we're doing things like
we're going to mandate putting up the Ten Commandments and
(01:24:08):
the Declaration of Independence just as an example, and a
couple other things, and they say these are all part
of the foundational documents that make the United States what
it is, and that are the fundamental underpinnings of the
core philosophies of America, right, the Ten Commandments, the Declaration,
and they're just including it like that. I don't think
(01:24:30):
they're going to get away with it. I think this
is clearly unconstitutional. Let me just say one thing on
the other side of this, though my listeners know I'm
not Christian and not religious, but I'm also well aware
that there are folks who when they talk about quote
unquote separation of church and state, they talk about that
(01:24:51):
as if it's written in the Constitution, and it's not.
Separation of church and state is a concept that came
from a letter. I think it was from Thomas Jefferson,
could have been from George Washington.
Speaker 2 (01:25:00):
I think it's from Thomas Jeffson. It doesn't matter, but
it's not in the Constitution.
Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
What's in the Constitution is that the national government shall
not establish a religion, and that has been interpreted to
mean that the federal government shall not do something that
favors the development of one religion over another in the
(01:25:25):
United States of America.
Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
Now, other people have taken that too far.
Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
Other people have taken that so far as to say
that the establishment clause you won't establish a religion, is
the same as saying that no religion is permitted in
anything to do.
Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
With a government organization. And that is not true. That
is not true.
Speaker 1 (01:25:50):
And so if you're going to say this case, you
might be a close call. For sure. The Supreme Court
is said in recent years that the established and clause
does not mean blocking any form of religion from government.
Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
It doesn't mean that.
Speaker 1 (01:26:07):
But I do think that putting the Ten Commandments, even
though the Ten Commandments theoretically represents two religions and not
just one. Right, my religion of Judaism and Christianity, which
adopts essentially Judaism.
Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
The Old Testament is the Jewish Bible.
Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
Christianity takes the Old Testament and then adds the New Testament,
so it includes my religion and then adds a bunch
of other stuff that you know, my people don't go
for the other stuff, but there's very very much in common.
But to me, when you say we are going to
insist we are going to require that.
Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
You post the Ten Commandments.
Speaker 1 (01:26:46):
To me, that actually does for me clearly cross the
line to the government establishing Christianity or Judeo Christianity in
government schools. And I think that's illegal. So next case,
this one not a religion case. I think this case
(01:27:07):
is kind of interesting. So you know, I enjoy my firearms,
and I have quite a few. I would not call
myself a gun nut, but I probably have more firearms
than most people do. I'm a very big supporter of
the Second Amendment. I am very very happy with the
changes that the Supreme Court has made in recent years
(01:27:27):
that make it more difficult for states to restrict gun rights. Now,
there's an interesting case coming out of Rhode Island, and
in the state of Rhode Island, you.
Speaker 2 (01:27:39):
Have to get a permit.
Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
For open carry, okay, and separately you can get a
permit for concealed carry. They're separate permits. Here's the difference
between the permits in Rhode Island. In order to get
a concealed carry permit, you just have to be eligible
(01:28:04):
in the sense of not having done something that makes
you ineligible. You have to be eligible to own a gun,
and you have to have not committed some kind of
crime or other thing that you would fill out on
that federal form that makes it so that you can't
own a gun or that you can't pass a background check.
But by default you can get that permit for a
concealed carry in Rhode Island. To open carry, you need
(01:28:30):
a permit for which you have to show a need.
And I think this is interesting. Look is a Second
Amendment kind of purist? I would say you can carry
what you want where you want.
Speaker 3 (01:28:43):
Lea.
Speaker 1 (01:28:44):
Again, this is a tough call because then people are
going to say what about machine guns, what about bazookas,
what about rocket propelled grenades?
Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
Where do you draw the line? And I'm not going
to get into all that stuff today.
Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
Let's just say we're talking about ordinary firearms that ordinary
people own. Should you have to have first, Should you
have to have any kind of permit? That's one question.
But when I say I think this is a close call,
I don't mean it's a close call in the sense
of philosophy. I think I mean it's a close I
mean it's a close call in the sense of law,
in the sense of whether this will be overturned, because
(01:29:17):
I suspect that courts are going to say it's not
really an important infringement on.
Speaker 2 (01:29:22):
Your Second Amendment right to keep in bare arms.
Speaker 1 (01:29:26):
If a state is saying you're perfectly welcome to carry
this pistol, let's say underneath your shirt, but not outside
your shirt, and the state will say, part of the
reason we don't want it outside your shirt is because
lots of people are afraid of guns. And actually, maybe
someone will react badly. Maybe someone who thinks he's a
good guy will see somebody else walking around with a
(01:29:47):
gun and think that person's a criminal and shoot him,
even though that person wasn't doing anything wrong, just happen
to be walking around with a gun.
Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
The state will have its reasons, again.
Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Not looking to the purest philosophy and the second of
the basics of the Second Amendment.
Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
But what I'm here to.
Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
Say is I think this case is a close call,
and I don't.
Speaker 2 (01:30:12):
Know where the Supreme Court will go on this.
Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
And if you made me bet on it, though, if
you made me bet on it, if this case gets
to a place where the and by the way, a
federal judge that ruled on it again a district judge,
so it hasn't gone to appeals court yet. A federal
district judge ruled that Rhode Island's requirement to show a
need for open caerry does not violate the Second Amendment,
(01:30:38):
that the requirement is okay, that's.
Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
What the first court ruled.
Speaker 1 (01:30:43):
I suspect that if the next court and it will
get appealed, I'm sure, But I suspect that if the
next court sides with this judge and says it's okay
to explain why you need to carry a firearm openly
as long as you don't need to explain yourself. If
you're going to carry, if you're going to carry concealed,
(01:31:06):
my guess will be that the Supreme Court will refuse
to take the case and that whatever the Appeals court
verdict is will stay in place.
Speaker 2 (01:31:15):
So that's my that's my guess on that.
Speaker 3 (01:31:17):
Greg.
Speaker 1 (01:31:17):
Can you come in. We're gonna do this in a
minute or two. I want to mention one other thing. Well,
Greg is coming in, and then we're going to get
to name that tune. I saw this awesome thing about
a car race that I wanted to that I wanted
to share with you. So you probably heard of a
very very famous car race called the twenty four Hours
of Lamont, And if you're, you know, speaking in English,
(01:31:38):
you'd pronounce it Lamon's l E m A n s
the twenty four So it's a very very famous car race.
And I don't know a lot about car racing, but
I know about that race. Oh A, Rod's coming into.
The Gang's all here. So I saw this thing that
I wanted to share with you just because I think
it is so cool. There's a car race that I
didn't know about that goes on. I think it's in Kent, Washington,
(01:32:02):
wherever that is. And actually they do it in a
few places. I think it started in Kent, Washington, but
they got it around the world now and instead of
the twenty four Hours of Lemons, it's the twenty four
Hours of Lemons. And the only rule to race in
this race is that your car had to cost less
than five hundred dollars. It's just fabulous. And somebody writing
(01:32:26):
for Axios coming out of Portland, Oregon said, I'll be
joining the A team to race in the twenty four
Hours of Lemons at Pacific Raceway in Kent, Washington.
Speaker 2 (01:32:37):
Again, the only rule of your car has to cost
less than five hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
And here's their car, a nineteen eighty eight SOB nine
hundred turbo that they Frankenstein together from two non functional sobs,
equipped with a working air intake that looks like a
DSLR camera and a mini version of a radio antenna
complete with working break light. For last year race, we
spent a lot of time covering the car in old
(01:33:02):
newspaper racing stripes and the number thirty, all of which
quickly peeled off when it started to rain. We put
in a roll cage and fire suppression system for safety.
Because they told us we had to. We weren't the
slowest car on the track, but it was close and
we did take home the Judge's Choice award.
Speaker 3 (01:33:20):
So there we go.
Speaker 2 (01:33:21):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
I love that a race where the car value has
to be under five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (01:33:27):
Wow? Hi, Greg, Well what about the roll cage and
the fire suppression?
Speaker 5 (01:33:31):
How much is that?
Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
I wonder, yeah, I wonder.
Speaker 1 (01:33:35):
If that counting the five hundred dollars, I would think
you did you ever do any cars? Are you a
car guys? I know?
Speaker 5 (01:33:41):
I used to race the train races up at Colorado
National Speedway.
Speaker 2 (01:33:45):
I've done a bunch of smashing up derbies in the past.
Oh yeah, tons of fun. Wow.
Speaker 5 (01:33:51):
Remember Pete McKay, no old old school radio guy here.
He would drive and I'd be in the caboose smashing
up everybody. Do we have you to get you back
up in one?
Speaker 6 (01:34:00):
I'm an announcer at the speedway now I am the
laste nine Yearslet's get you back up in a train.
Speaker 2 (01:34:04):
They give you some digits. Let's go. That's fabulous, great
fun for.
Speaker 1 (01:34:08):
People who don't recognize your your voice or the name
Greg Stone. Before we play the game and Greg's gonna
be in for Mandy. Who are you? So people know
who you are? Currently on the Fox three to seven.
Speaker 5 (01:34:18):
So when I'm done here, I'll be on the Fox
from three to seven and that Monday through Friday. I
worked for kbp I for twenty plus years. You know,
nasty uncle.
Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
Nasty, big time rock and roll DJ and canall nasty.
Speaker 6 (01:34:30):
If it make you.
Speaker 2 (01:34:31):
Feel old, I listened to you as a kid. You're
not the first.
Speaker 6 (01:34:34):
Yeah, yeah, you want to make me feel good? You
want to go to DJs as a child was got
back in the days. It's still gonna be one on
six seven to me. Yeah, I know it's for the
old school.
Speaker 2 (01:34:46):
That's that's ale. I go back to that.
Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
That's a whole thing. But we are twenty third floor
of the Taber Center. Yeah that's the way, but I
think that's before I lived in Colorado. So anyway, so
since we got like the music DJ here, we're going
to do a little of an extended version of name
that Tune. So for those who are listening on the podcast, again,
as I explained, because the lawyers the podcast people don't get.
Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
Named that tune.
Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
So if you're listening on the podcast, I will say
right now, have a wonderful weekend. I will talk with
you on Monday, when will be the my first work
day as a parent who's whose child has moved away,
which is happening this weekend, which is going to be
a it's going to be a big thing. Last year,
my first, my first child. You got one more who's
a year awe, But the first one is happening tomorrow,
(01:35:34):
not empty nester, but looking forward.
Speaker 2 (01:35:36):
Where they're going to school.
Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
They're going to a junior college in Everett, Washington in
order to get some good grades and then want to
wants to apply to a full college in Canada to
study forestry and conservation in Canada.
Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
So that's the goal.
Speaker 1 (01:35:51):
And as I mentioned to Dragon earlier, and you've probably
never heard this before, my kid is moving to Seattle,
Ish for the weather.
Speaker 2 (01:35:59):
Hell yeah,
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!