09-25-25 - *FULL SHOW* GOP Rep Jeff Hurd; Indicting Comey?; Oh, that's nice

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is gonna be one of those days, I think,
where I've got an immense number of smaller topics. And
I am actually a little bit later in the show
going to talk about what Pat Ward was just talking
about regarding the Marshall fire settlement from Excel. I heard
that Starbucks story Pat just mentioned as well, and that
raises for me a story I wanted to bring to

(00:21):
you a little bit ago but didn't get around to.
And it's short, so I'll just do this now. But
there's a lawsuit being brought against Starbucks by workers from
Colorado and also workers from Illinois, I think, and I
think maybe there's something going on in California as well,
but suing Starbucks over their new dress code. And it's

(00:43):
kind of an interesting story, right. So it's not so
much that the workers object to the existence of a
new dress code, but rather they are saying that by
making them wear different things than the clothes they had
already bought to come to work, Starbucks is giving their
workers expenses and not giving them money to cover the expenses.

(01:05):
And in particular here let me just let me just
find what this here. This is from Insurance Journal dot Com.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Believe it or not.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Employees must wear khaki, black or blue denim, khaki, black
or blue denim bottoms without patterns or frayed hems, or
solid black dresses that are not more than four inches
above the knee. The dress code also requires workers to
wear black, gray, dark blue, brown, tan, or white shoes

(01:34):
made from a waterproof material, and sucks and hosiery. There's
a good word must be subdued. The dress code prohibits
employees from having face tattoos or more than one facial piercing.
It also prohibits tongue piercings and theatrical makeup. And the

(01:57):
employees are suing essentially, oh, let's see, where's also they
have to wear a solid black shirt with shorter long
sleeves under their green aprons, and shirts can but don't
have to have collars, but they must cover the middriff
and the armpits, all right, So there you go.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
There.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
So Starbucks says, as part of this change, partners, that's
their word for their employees received two shirts at no cost.
But the workers are suing to say you, essentially, you
either need to give us more clothes or more money
to buy clothes, because they say, well, we already don't
make a lot of money. They quote this, or they

(02:37):
talk about an employee named.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Brooke Allen, who is a student who.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Also works at a Starbucks in California, who was told
by a manager.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
That she couldn't wear the CROs that she.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Was wearing and that she would have to wear different
shoes if she wanted to work the following day, she
went to three different stores to find a compliant pair
of shoes that cost her sixty dollars and nine cents,
and she has spent an additional eighty six dollars and
ninety five cents on clothes for work, including black shirts
and jeans, and she says it's extremely tone deaf on
the company's part to expect their employees to completely redesign

(03:12):
their wardrobe without any compensation. A lot of us are
already living paycheck to paycheck, so anyway.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Oh. She also says she.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Used to express herself through color for shirts and her
facial piercings. By the way, and she said it looks
sad now that everyone is wearing black. So look, I
don't care. I don't go to Starbucks. I don't like coffee.
It's not a moral thing. I just don't like how
it tastes, so I don't go to Starbucks. But I
actually think it's kind of an interesting lawsuit from the
perspective of what rights if any? I don't know who's

(03:44):
right here. I'm not taking a side. What rights if any?
Does an employer have to impose a dress code on workers,
and especially we're talking about low wage workers without giving
them some kind of compensation toward acquiring the clothes that

(04:05):
they need, and especially the shoes that they need.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
I mean, not.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Everybody has shoes that would counts as waterproof, right, so
without giving them money to buy those clothes. Again, I'm
not taking a side, but I just wanted to share
that with you. So we talked a little bit the
other day when Donald Trump was speaking at the United Nations,
and then after that he met with Volodimir Zelenski, the
president of Ukraine, and they talked about some things.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
And then afterwards President Trump.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Put out a long post on social media that I read.
I'm not going to read it again now, but he
put out a long post on social media, and the
main takeaway from it was there were a couple of
points in this long note where Trump made noises about
Ukraine potentially taking back the territory that Russia had captured,
and I talked about the Overton Window. By the way,
I put a really cool short video, two minute video

(04:55):
about the Overton Window on the blog today, so.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
I hope you will go.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
To Rosskominsky dot com and check out the blog. Note
I also put a link to my appearance yesterday evening
on Next with Kyle Clark on Channel nine, so you
can watch me and Kyle talk about free speech and
journalism and.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Stuff like that. Anyway, that's up on the blog.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
So when Trump talked about Ukraine taking back land that
Russia has captured, that's well outside of what I described
yesterday the Overton Window of how the conversation has been
so far, the conversation has been so far, including from
Trump until now, that there should be peace and Ukraine

(05:35):
should expect that they will not get back the land
that Russia has captured.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Well, Trump changed, Trump changed, and I.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Think he's trying to put pressure on Russia to seek peace.
So then Zelenski has a conversation with different people. Yesterday,
I think he met with a few reporters because he's
really trying to get the word out that Ukraine is
now pushing up the rhetoric too. And this is a
little bit hard to understan and with his thick accent,
but I'll try to kind of not exactly translate but

(06:04):
reiterate a bit as we go along. So you're gonna
hear Zelenski. Then there will be a reporter in Zelenski again.

Speaker 4 (06:10):
If we will have such long business weapon from the
United States, we will use.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
It, he says.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
If we had a long distance weapon supplied by the
United States, we would use it against Moscow.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
And by the way, it's from Axios.

Speaker 4 (06:28):
Even we our people for today they hate Russians.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Our people hate rush to begin the war and they
kill us.

Speaker 4 (06:36):
All our people understand that we we don't need to
attack Civillians.

Speaker 5 (06:41):
And they attacked the Prime Minister's office.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah, they attacked.

Speaker 5 (06:47):
So if what would you tell somebody who works at
the Kremlin today, would you tell him to make sure
he knows where the nearest bomb shelter.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
Is first of all, they have to know, Yeah, the
bomb shelters something.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
They have to know.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
He's talking about people in Moscow now right, not the civilians,
but the peap government. People in Moscow. He says, they
better know where the bomb shelters are.

Speaker 5 (07:12):
If they will not stop the war, they will need it.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
In any case, if they won't stop the war, they
will need to know where the bomb shelters are. That
is quite a statement, quite a ratcheting up of a
rhetoric by Ukraine and the United States. Clearly they are
both trying to put pressure on Vladimir Putin to start
talking about peace. I have no idea if it's going

(07:38):
to work. I suspect that it won't for reasons that
we've talked about in the past, and I won't get
to now. It's very That's.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
How I want to put this.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
This kind of escalation is quite dangerous, but that doesn't
mean it's wrong. Interested in learning more about traveling with
me and my wife and maybe thirty KOA listeners, we're
gonna go on a wonderful trip next April to Vienna, Prague, Budapest,
brought a Slava, probably a couple other small towns as well,

(08:08):
and it's just going to be a remarkable trip with
food and culture and history and fun and making new friends.
And if you would like to learn more, go to
rosstrip dot com. Rosstrip dot com. I got a surprising
number of texts on this little not exactly an afterthought,
because it wasn't a thought at all, but just something
I brought up regarding Starbucks and the lawsuit against them

(08:31):
for their new dress code. And that was kind of
following up on a Starbucks story that Pat Woodard had
in the news earlier, and I got a.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Whole bunch of texts about it.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Our son had a job in Arvada and a golf course,
paid five cents over minimum wage. They issued him two
Polo uniform shirts and a lightweight pullover long sleeve, and
required that he wear either black or taki pants. I
bought him two pairs of pants to get him started.
His first paycheck had seventy five dollars deducted for or
the uniform. He said he wasn't told ahead of time

(09:03):
that he had to pay for it. Ross I worked
at Starbucks from twenty ten to twenty twelve, but they
had stricter dress codes then, and they gave us nothing.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
We had to buy it all ourselves.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
None of us bad it an I it's an interesting lawsuit.
So a listener sent me a link to a fact
sheet from the Colorado Department of Labor and employment.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
And this is.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Colorado minimum Wage Order number twenty six, if you want
to be very precise about what I'm looking at.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
And on this.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
One pager there is a section called uniforms that probably
will inform the outcome of this lawsuit. And I would say,
based on what's in this document, I would say the
employees are likely to lose the lawsuit and Starbucks is
likely to win. But you never know what happens in court.
In any case, Here's what it says. The employer just

(10:00):
pay the cost of an employee uniform if the uniform
requires a specific make, logo or material that does not
That is not the case with the Starbucks dress code,
so that doesn't apply.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Number two.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Clothing that is considered ordinary street wear does not constitute
a uniform. That does seem to apply to the Starbucks
dress code.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
And then this other thing.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Is if there's an actual uniform, employers may require a
depositive up to fifty percent of the cost of the uniform,
which would be refunded to the employee upon return.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
That doesn't apply to Starbucks either.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
So number one and number three is about if there
is an actual uniform, if it's just street clothing, something
you would. You know, it doesn't say Starbucks. They're not
trying to require a particular material that it be made
out of or a particular logo, and Starbucks.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Isn't doing any of that. Then it's not a uniform.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
And it seems to me just based on this, and
there could be other aspects of law that I don't
know about, but just based on this, it seems to
me that the employees are likely to lose. All right,
let me do just a very quick business story here.
This is pretty cool, and we've talked quite a lot
and I'm sure we will talk a heck of a
lot more about how AI is going to change so

(11:15):
many things going to be utterly transformational. So I read
this story about a company.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Called Light Table.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
The word light and then table with a capital T,
but all is one word. And just to be clear,
I have never heard of this company until I saw
this article. I don't think I know anybody involved in it.
I have no financial tie to it. It's just a
business story that I saw and that I'm sharing with you.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
I'm not trying to promote anything.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
So they put out a press release that got picked
up in the news that the company raised six million
dollars in venture capital funding, and I think what they
do is really interesting.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
I'm going to quote from Business Den.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
The co founder said his software helps developers, meaning people
developing property, clean up errors, by which he means errors
in the plans more quickly and accurately than the current process,
which entails sending construction plans out.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
To third party reviewers.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Paul Zexer is the guy's name CEO of light Table.
He says the peer review process takes weeks and weeks,
sometimes more than a month.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
We can do it in thirty minutes.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
It's faster and better, and we can deliver this at
a lower cost. So again from the Denver post and
their Business Den subsidiary, I guess developers upload their site
plans and light Table's AI agent does the rest. The
software currently catches between sixty and sixty five percent of
all errors, which include anything from discrepancies to mismeasurements. A

(12:50):
year from now, he said it'll catch around ninety percent
of errors. He says it's a big difference from where
the market is today. If a developer plugs plans into
chat GPT or other similar chatbots, it might catch fifteen
to one five percent of the problems.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
With the current peer review where it.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
Actually goes to humans, it's about fifty percent of the problems.
And he says his exper says it's not a function
of expertise, it's a function of how voluminous, how massive
these construction documents are. They could be a couple of
thousand pages filled with hundreds and hundreds of drawings, with

(13:30):
weeks or months to review everything. It's just impossible. So far,
their software is analyzed two and a half million square
feet across fifty projects.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Including apartment buildings and.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Retail, and he expects the number to be more like
ten million square feet that his software will have analyzed,
including hospitals, data centers, and other things added.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Anyway, I just thought this was a cool story.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
It's a business story, it's an AI story, it's a
local story, and it shows you some of the potential applications,
things you and I might ever have thought of.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
But there are people out there who are cleverer than
I am. We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
I feel like the show has been very national lately, right,
lots of stuff going on regarding Trump and even some
of the Ukraine stuff and the United Nations stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
And whatever.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
So there's just a lot of local things I want
to get to because you know, that's what we do
with KOA. We want to make sure you know what's
going on around you, right in our neighborhoods right here.
And so I saw the story at the Denver Post
a couple of days ago, and it's actually an issue
that's been going on for some time, but it's bubbling
up even more now. And the headline is Kingsburg's Wild

(14:38):
Animal Sanctuary Sue's developer over homes slated for the animal
Haven's door step. And what this is about is a
long running issue between the Wild Animal Sanctuary out there
in Keensburg and they've got I don't know what the
number is, they've got like.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
A thousand.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Animals that you wouldn't necessarily want to run into in
a dark alley and you wouldn't, but lions and bears, tigers.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Things like that.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
And they've had an agreement for some time with a
group called the wig Guard Smith Estates, and I think
that's like the last names of two different people, Wiggard
and Smith. And they own this property that they own
a big piece of land that's right near the animal
sanctuary and they're.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Looking to subdivide it and.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Build homes and.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
The animal sanctuary.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
And these developers signed an agreement fifteen years ago, I'm
going to quote from the Denver Post, an agreement that
required the construction of an eight foot privacy fence and
a provision of an eight foot protective buffer between the sanctuary.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
And new homes.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
It also gave the sanctuary a seat on the homeowners
association so that potential impacts could be clearly communicated with
future homeowners who would be living in a medium density
residential sub division in the middle of a rural area
with a sanctuary on three sides and a farm on
the other. And so what they're worried about, what the

(16:12):
Wild Animal Sanctuary is worried about, is that people who
think they're moving into something like the suburbs, you might
call it more like the exxerbs, right, It's it's kind
of sort of suburban, but it's a lot.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Farther from the city.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
So the exerbs and who you know, want a nice
life and they want property they can afford. Right, it's
obviously much cheaper to be, you know, buying out there
than buying in Centennial or Cherry Hills Village or whatever.
You get the idea, and the issue and issue is

(16:47):
if they start, if they build houses right near this sanctuary,
there's going to be all kinds of issues here. And
when this first really came up like this, this fight
was really brewing maybe four or five months ago, they
talked about some of the issues that could be involved here.

(17:10):
And I'll just give you a couple of examples. So
mister Craig, who I guess is involved with with the
Wild Animal Sanctuary, says he's leery of new neighbors based
on past behavior of folks who move next door to
the animal sanctuary and then complained about things like lions

(17:30):
roaring at two am, or offensive smells of animal waste,
and lots of birds attracted to the scraps of meat
set out for meals.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
He said in an interview.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
We have twenty one bald eagles that live here full time,
and they can fly down and pick up a little
fruit frough dog people are terrified the eagles are gonna eat.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Their dogs or cats.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
And then we probably have checked this out ten to
fifteen thousand seagulls. We've had people at other properties whould
throw parties and cans wind up in the bear exhibit.
Our concern is for the animals and the future of
the animals. So there's this argument now, these the developers
say that the Wild Animal Sanctuary is getting a little

(18:13):
too invasive with their efforts to develop the property. And
according to the agreement, at least according to how the
Wild Animal Sanctuary describes the agreement, anyone who buys the
house has to sign or buys property there with an
intent to build a house has to sign a disclaimer
stating they're fully aware and in complete acceptance of the sound, smells, dangers,

(18:36):
and other potential issues that may exist. And also they're
supposed to be allowed to interview any potential buyers to
make sure that the buyers know.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
The attorneys for the developers are saying that allowing that
guy to interview the buyers would be discriminatory.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
But the buyers do have to sign a document stating
that they're aware of the sanctuary right and the consequences
that could come with living by that. The lawyer said,
I know that's enough. I think I'll leave it there.
But it's an interesting fight. I have no idea how
it's going to play out. I understand both sides, right.
I mean, you've got this animal saying, Suey, you've got
a thousand animals.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
It's big, it's got its issues.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
The way you have to feed these animals, the smells
and the noises that might come from it are and
that it's fine. I don't object to smells and no.
I mean that's what you're going to get when you're
doing that kind of when you're on that kind of mission,
which is a great mission to save these animals. And
I also understand people who want to move to an
area where they can afford a decent house and live
a lifestyle that they want to live, and you know,

(19:41):
they are going to have to sort it out. To me,
the interesting thing is the existence of this agreement, and
that's going to be the part that's going to be
very very interesting to find out how this all plays out.
A few listeners have emailed me about a story that
I think either Pad or Chad mentioned this morning, and
there was a guy who was spotted with a firearm

(20:06):
and then arrested or I should say re arrested at
unc at University of Northern Colorado a few days ago,
or I guess it was.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Maybe it was last last Wednesday, was it, Yes, I
don't know whatever.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
And so this is a guy who had been arrested
in the past, and he was arrested for.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Okay, this is what it was. He was arrested yesterday.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
He was released from jail two weeks ago. And the
issue here, and I'm not saying these folks are exactly right,
but the issue as it is claimed by Republicans, including
three of the four members Republican members of the Colorado
House Delegation, I mean the House of Representatives in Congress,

(20:53):
not the state legislature. Three of the four of the Republicans,
Jeff Crank, Lauren Bobert, and Gabe Evans, sent.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
A letter to Jerry Police thing you.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Should have a special session to fix this particular bill,
and it's House Bill ten thirty four, which I.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Would note to you passed the state Senate.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Unanimously, unanimously and got many Republican votes in the state House.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
It didn't get them all, but it got many.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
So I don't know, as I explained to you here,
what the argument is about this thing. I don't know
whether the problems that are alleged to be caused by
this bill really are caused by the bill, and the
bill really is that bad and Republicans just missed it
and then they voted for it in large numbers in
the legislature, or whether the claims about the bad things

(21:38):
in the bill are overstated.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
I don't know the answer to that. I'm going to
try to find the.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Answer to that, but I'm not gonna find it before
I tell you my next couple of sentences.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
So the argument is.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
That under that bill, if somebody who was arrested is
determined to be incompetent to stand trial, which basically means
psychological issues but.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
Not some kind of.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Overwhelming, obvious present danger to society, what the bill says is,
by default, unless there is clear and convincing proof of
a reason to do something else, this person who was
arrested for something will just be released back out into
the community. He was arrested in April in Greeley on

(22:28):
suspicion of criminal attempt to commit second degree murder, first
degree assault with serious bodily injury, and engaging in a riot,
according the Sheriff's office and the reason he was arrested
by the police. But the sheriff's office is giving the
statement because the sheriff's office had to arrest him again
and then is going to have to let him go.
He received additional charges from another incident later that same

(22:50):
month while in custody, including menacing.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
With a weapon and first degree burglary.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Some of the charges stem from an incident in downtown
Greeley when he was accused of knocking out a victim
and continuing to strike him while he was unresponsive on
the ground. He was found not competent to stand trial.
This is from nine News. By the way, because there
were no services available.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
At the Colorado Mental Health.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Hospital in Pueblo, he was released into the public earlier
this month.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
The sheriff's office said.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Weld County Sheriff Captain Matt Turner said, we're releasing someone
that we don't think should be released. We're releasing someone
who is a danger to the community. So that's what's
going on. Just wanted to kind of understand the story
with a little bit more context. House Bill ten thirty
four is the thing people are concerned about, and it

(23:39):
doesn't seem like Governor Poulis is all that concerned about it.
He signed the bill. We'll see how it all plays out,
all right. I want to do something completely different here.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
I mentioned to you a couple of days ago that
I was going to go have.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Lunch with a listener, which I do from time to time,
and David and I went to have lunch over at
DTC Slice.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
I want some good pizza.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
I suggest you go check out DTC Slice And we
were just talking about this, that and the other ding
and David mentioned to me that he drives for Uber
and or Lyft, and he sent me some stuff about
doing that job that I thought was really interesting because
I'm always fascinated by the nuts and bolts, the nitty

(24:22):
gritty of lots of different professions, things that I don't
know about, things that I wouldn't think of, but that
a lot of people have interest in.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
And so I asked.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
David to join me on the show to talk about
a couple of things regarding driving for Uber and Lyft.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
So, David, welcome to the show. It's good to talk
to you again.

Speaker 6 (24:37):
Thanks Ross, glad to be here.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
So one of the.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
Things you mentioned to me is that tips have gone
down for Uber and Lyft. So I have two questions
for you. One is, on average, what percentage of an
Uber or Lyft driver's income comes from the tips, and
then why are tips going down?

Speaker 6 (25:01):
I don't know that I have a complete answer to
the second question, but I can tell you the answer
or my answer to the first one. So I keep
some stats on I'm a stat guy, and I keep
some interesting stats on the percentage of tips, or the
percentage of rides with a tip. And back in twenty
twenty four, I was consistently averaging let's call it between

(25:25):
thirty five and forty five percent of rides that included
a tip, thirty five to forty five as what as
high as fifty percent? I guess I must have been
having a really good week that week. Today I am
lucky to be getting between twenty and thirty five. It

(25:48):
generally averages between twenty five and thirty five percent, So
that accounts for twenty five to thirty five percent of
the earnings that I'm not not quite twenty five to
thirty so probably more like ten to twelve percent of
what I make as a driver.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Okay, And.

Speaker 6 (26:08):
Those stats clearly came down. You can see right at
the end of probably three quarters of the way through
last year, call it October one ish, September one ish,
those percentages started going from that upper range to the
lower range.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Okay, so why do you think tips are going down?

Speaker 6 (26:36):
Well, it's going to be one of your favorite topics.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Ross.

Speaker 6 (26:40):
I believe that the percentage of tips are dropping because
the rates are going up for riders, and writers will
not tip if the ride costs too much. And I
don't know I don't take Uber frequently enough personally to
say how those increase. But our friends at the legislature

(27:04):
have decided to impose sees and taxes on those rides
that have caused the rates to go up air go,
the percentage of tips have gone down.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
You know.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
I would just want to ask listeners to jump in here.
Text me at five six six nine zero, and I
would like to know from listeners whether when you take
one of these ride sharing services, Uber and Lyft being
the big ones. Obviously, I don't know if even our others,
whether you're whether you are tipping less because the price

(27:39):
of the rides has gone up.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
I would I would like to know.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
I would like to know if if that's a dynamic
that you notice as a rider, text me at five
sixty six nine zero. I would I would like to know,
And I suspect. I suspect that's right. I find the
same thing by the way, David, I find.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
The same thing for me personally. I find the same
thing at restaurants.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
The percentage that I tip on a bill at a
restaurant is definitely declining, right. It used to be twenty
Now it's probably more like fifteen or sixteen.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
The tip amount. The tip amount is.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Still higher than it used to be, but because the
meals have gotten so much more expensive, you know, I,
you know, if I feel sometimes like if I were
to keep tipping twenty percent, I would probably or at
least sometimes I just wouldn't go out to dinner and
start feeling like the whole thing is just too much,
and then that would probably be worse for everybody.

Speaker 6 (28:37):
I don't know, makes sense, makes sense?

Speaker 1 (28:40):
So the other thing you said to me in email
is that you found some ways that you think are
pretty effective at increasing or optimizing your income.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
And you said to me an email, a.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Lot of drivers don't know how to maximize their earnings,
and that you've got some ideas about that. And I
asked you if you'd be willing to share your ideas
or if they were proprietary and you said you'd be
happy to share them. So let's just take them a
minute or two here. And why don't you talk to
people who do drive for Uber and Lyft and you know,
give any thoughts based on your experience.

Speaker 6 (29:18):
Okay, sure, Well, without impugning our friends over at Uber,
I will tell you for a fact that lift pays more.
I was on a ride this morning, for example, it
was an Uber ride. I asked the rider how much
they paid was a ride to the airport, and they

(29:39):
said about seventy five dollars for that same ride. I
was getting paid thirty one, So well less than half
of the of the total percentage of the ride. Can
trast that? Contrast that with a ride that I did
probably about a month ago. I picked up a young

(30:00):
women and I drove her from Denver to Loveland, and
that ride for her costs that same seventy five dollars
on Lyft, and for me I made fifty.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Is that consistent or can that change on a ride
by ride basis?

Speaker 5 (30:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (30:20):
I mean they change on a ride by ride basis
ross and they will for shorter rides they're going to
be it could be closer to fifty to fifty. I
rarely make more than fifty percent on any ride that
I that I do with Uber. And by the way,
those fees now have to be completely disclosed y Uber drivers,

(30:43):
so there's no obfuscation there.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Right, And I forget I use both Uber and Lyft
from time to time. I have a recollection that on
at least on one of them, that the app actually
says how much money the driver is making.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
I think.

Speaker 6 (31:00):
If it discloses it to the driver, I'm assuming it
discloses it to the customers. Yeah, so you're probably right.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
So okay, So one of your pieces of advice is
you think Lift pays more, so people might be able
to make more money driving driving for Lyft.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
What else?

Speaker 6 (31:19):
The only drawback to that is that Lift has a
lower market share here, so I tend to have to
wait longer or Lift rides to q in. So that's
the only caveat I'd put to it.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
I'm guessing, Sorry to interrupt you, David, I'm guessing you
could have both of your driver side apps for both
of those rides share companies at the same time and
then take you just take whichever one comes along that
fits your your your overall needs of income and time, best.

Speaker 6 (31:49):
Right, Yes, Yeah, So when I first get in the
car in the morning, I turn on both apps. Nine
times out of ten, I'll get a ride with Uper
first thing in the morning. They tend to have better
coverage there just tend to be more users. I used
to think that that market share for Uber was like

(32:12):
ninety ten here. But when I when in the middle
of the day, more like around rush hour, if I
turn on both apps, I will get rides with both,
and I will opt for Lift primarily first, because I
know they pay better, and that means that they're if

(32:36):
all other things being equal here Ross, their market share
should go up as a result of this discussion.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Okay, I'm just about out of time, David, I want
you to give me very fast answers to a few
listener questions.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
All right, as quick as you can.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
What types of fees is the state adding to these rides?

Speaker 3 (32:55):
You know, I wish I knew the answer to that, Ross,
I have.

Speaker 6 (32:58):
Not done any investigations.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Okay, there definitely are fees, though to the listener who
asked that question, I don't know the details either, but
there there definitely are, and there's also fees for delivery.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
Okay, here's another question.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
If you get as a driver, you pick up someone
and the route in the map says to take the
toll road, but the driver doesn't take the toll road.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Does the driver.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Still somehow collect what might have been an anticipated toll
for the road from the passenger and then just keep it? No, okay,
good enough? And what's the other thing? The percentage of
the ride that the pa Anyway, All right, now, this

(33:43):
next one's too confusing, David, I appreciate the insight, and
I actually have quite a lot of listener comments and
questions I got. I got half of people saying I
just keep tipping regardless, and I've got other and I've
got half of people saying the driver has to be
exceptional to get much of a tip because of the
cost of the rides has gone up so much. So
all of that makes sense, you know, different strokes for

(34:03):
different folks, I guess.

Speaker 6 (34:05):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
So David is a show listener.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
He and I had lunch at DTC Slice the other
day and he drives for.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Uber and left and mentioned this stuff.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
I thought it would be fun to talk about it
on the show.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
And it was so thanks for doing this, David, appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (34:19):
You bet. Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Ron.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
All right, we'll take a quick break. We'll be right
back on KOA. Got a couple hours left with you today.
We do have Congressman Jeff Heard coming up an hour
from now to talk about free speech and politics and
things like that. I also would like to let you
know if you go to my blog, if you go
to Rosskominsky dot com, and that does just redirect to
my KOA page, but it's just the easiest way to

(34:41):
get there.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Okay, So if you.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
Type in Rosskominsky dot com and then you see an
iHeart page, that is where you're supposed to be, and
then you click on the Thursday blogcast and in today's
Thursday blogcast, actually I have to put the word blogcast
in there. I left that out. I just wrote Thursday. Anyway,
I've got a video. I've got an embedded YouTube video

(35:03):
of my appearance on Next with Kyle Clark on nine
News last night.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
If you want to check that out.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
I put a little video about the overten windows, just
a two minute video about the overten windows. Is this
wonderful political concept that I talked about.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
On the show yesterday.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
I won't describe it again, I got a just an
immense amount of stuff, And normally I spend a lot
of time on this blog, probably more than I should,
but I hope that it is something that you find interesting, informative, entertaining.
There's almost always at least one video at the end. Actually,

(35:37):
today I've got a Saturday Night Live skit that I
thought was pretty funny. Usually I put videos at the
end that are just entertaining. But anyway, go to Rosscomminsky
dot com and check that out. So let's see what
do I want to do here. Okay, here's I'm gonna
try to do this one quickly. So there was a
piece at the Free Press a couple days back, a
few days ago by a guy named Jonas do Du

(35:59):
and I thought it was a fascinating story and a
lot of different angles entitled American soldiers don't wear American
combat boots.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
And here's the subhead. There's so many angles to this story.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Right, There's the manufacturing side, the political side, the military
readiness side. The subtitle of the article is US made
boots often cost too much and deliver too little, but
Congress may require them anyway.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
And the political part, as far as this author is.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
Concerned is maybe not the biggest part of the story,
but for me, it probably is. And it's the kind
of thing that should really cause you to feel anger
at American politicians who insist on things that benefit them
very narrowly, you know, just some small thing for their district,

(36:52):
while punishing the rest of the country, or in this case,
even worse, punishing our military. And I hope that this
article actually shame memes member of Members of Congress out
of supporting this thing. So let me just hear hear
what I'm talking about. So, America has a combat boot problem.
We have the world's mightiest military force, yet most of

(37:13):
the soldiers, most of the boots that soldiers wear aren't
made in America. And how to solve that problem? As
a raging battle in one corner are American boot makers
who say that all combat boots should be made in
American And by the way, I get that conceptually.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
I get it.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
You want American soldiers to wear American product boots, clothes.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Anything, I get it. And I want that.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
Too, but not at any cost, whether it's in price
or functionality. Right, there's got to be some line, you know,
and once you cross that line, you say, yeah, I
prefer to buy American, but no, right, And so the
American boot makers, first of all, they're pretty small, and
they couldn't possibly keep up with demand. And in fact,

(37:55):
the Pentagon says that American companies aren't up to the job.
And this now going to Congress, where there's an amendment
to next year's defense spending bill that would require that
all military members war combat boots were where combat boots
made in the United States from material source in the
United States.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
And that amendment was.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Included in a bill passed by the House. The Senate
may consider it. I sure hope the Senate torpedoes this thing.
And look, I understand, and this writer notes it's hard
to think of a more patriotic business than outfitting the military.
The Pentagon bought over one point two million pairs million
pairs of combat boots in twenty twenty three. But the

(38:38):
battleover combat boots is an extraordinary example of the difficulty
in making President Trump's dream of reshoring manufacturing jobs a reality.
So a senior supply chain official in the Pentagon said,
we have a potential wartime scenario on the near horizon,
and right now there is no way that US factories

(38:58):
can get us there, and that's for anything ordinance, which
means bullets and bombs, microchips, vehicles. We should we should
be trying to buy whatever the hell we can and
improve our defense industrial base. In other words, buy whatever
you need from wherever you need to get it to
make sure that the military is ready.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
While at the same time trying to build.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
Up what we can make in the United States at
least where it makes sense, so that we're a little
bit more self sufficient. By the way, we should not
try to be entirely self sufficient. US employment and footwear
manufacturing in nineteen eighty there were over.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Seventy six thousand jobs.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Now it's less than eleven thousand jobs, and military veterans
say that a lack of innovation, combined with higher costs
in the US make it infeasible to domestically manufacture top
performing boots. Troops risk blisters, infections, even chronic injuries if
their boots don't fit exactly right, and if they can't
perform under the weight.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
Of hundreds of pounds.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Then when that happens, the consequences include medical and retention
expenses for the military. American made boots don't cover the
full range of extreme conditions in which soldiers train and serve.
According to a retired marine who was quoted in this article,
he says, this is not he's talking about the American things.

(40:14):
This is not performance footwear. It's a flat bottom sole
with a swayed outside gramits in the islet, and that's it.
An ideal pair of boots would have the right weight, waterproofing, support,
and breatheability for a particular operating environment, but American boots don't.
So many members of the military go to ARII and
buy actual boots that actually.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Perform in extreme environments.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
So, in the interested time, and there's a lot more
to this article, but in the interested time'm just going
to kind of wrap this up quickly. A bunch of politicians,
being lobbyists by American boot makers in their districts are
trying to get Congress to pass a law that says
American soldiers have to buy American boots. And again, you
probably like the idea of American soldiers in American boots
and all else being equal. I like that idea too,

(41:00):
but all else is not equal. And I hope that
when you hear about this story, I hope that you
will understand that the actual likely outcome of forcing American
soldiers to wear American boots is problems of various sorts
for American soldiers, and this is not something we should tolerate,
and the politicians who are supporting this bill should be ashamed.

(41:21):
I'm not sure I should even share this with you,
but I will, just a little bit of insight into one.
It's not an important aspect of my life. It's just
a thing that pops up from time to time.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
And I've had on my mind that.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
You have talking a little bit about social media. I've
had a story that I wanted to talk about for
a while and just keep not getting too about how
many members of Congress are simultaneously on social media but
say that they hate it and it's a terrible place,
and it's full of the worst people.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Twitter is especially bad, by the way.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
I assume Blue Sky is just the left wing version
of Twitter these days, full of angry, hateful people who
just insult everybody all the time.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
And if I.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Didn't have to be on social media for my job,
I wouldn't be. It's it's poison Twitter, in particular, It's
it's pure poison, and the stuff that people can say.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
I like I have. I have a pretty thick skin,
all right.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
I'm used to being insulted. And it's fine. It goes
with the territory, it goes with the job. It's absolutely fine.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Every once in a.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
While someone says something that is so outrageous that you know,
you know, once a two or three times a year,
I may report an account to Twitter saying that that's
just not that's not right, and and I always get
a message back, No, they didn't violate any rules.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
And let me just give you an example.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
And this is actually fairly tame compared to the ones
that I tend to report, which tend which which are
actually worse than this.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
So there was a there was.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
A post about Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who I think is
probably the worst member of Congress.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
But the story was.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
About how somebody who worked for her was charged with
a crime or convicted of a crime.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
I don't know what. But it wasn't her.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
It was somebody who worked for her, and there wasn't,
at least in that article that I saw, there wasn't
a suggestion that she was involved in any way. So
it was somebody who had a connection to her who
worked maybe in her congressional office and did something wrong
and got arrested. And then somebody posted something on Twitter
saying that she should be removed from office, and I said, so,

(43:35):
I think Ilhan Omar is the worst member of Congress,
though Rashida Talieb is right there with her, But are
you really asking if she should be removed because of
something someone else did? So that was my post, which
I thought was perfectly reasonable. Right, if you run a company,
you run whatever you run, and somebody who works for
you does something wrong and not something that's related to

(43:58):
your business, just some other thing wrong, Like are you
supposed to get canceled for that? So then so I
posted that andre's here's what I got. Here's what I
got back, one of the things I got back. And
I really hesitate to share this with you, but I
just want to make sure folks understand what's really out there.
All right, here's what this guy says. And I don't

(44:20):
know if you know he goes by Dave Hanson. I
don't know if that's his real name, and and he says,
I don't even know if I want to read this,
he says, and like clockwork, here is a jew to
tell us how we should continue degrading ourselves and satisfy

(44:41):
their twisted agenda of destroying every last white country. Wow. Wow,
I don't think I need to add a lot of
commentary to that. I think my listeners are smart enough
to understand what I think and what you probably think
of that. The one piece of commentary that I will
add is not so much about.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
That directly, because it speaks for itself. Is that people
who think that way used to keep it to.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Themselves except when they were in their meeting with their
hoods on but now, especially on Twitter, they are absolutely
out and open about it, and they are outright Nazis
on Twitter it's called x now who say stuff much
worse than that, and their accounts get to stay there.
And what I want to say about that is, of course,

(45:32):
there is no law that says their accounts need to
be taken down, and it's a private platform, and Elon
Musk can make any decision he wants about the kinds
of accounts that can stay and the kinds of accounts
that he can take down. And I completely understand the
concept of not wanting to be in the business of
drawing lines. You know this kind of language is acceptable,

(45:53):
and this kind of language isn't. I'm sure even X
has language that they will take down. Like if somebody says,
let's go attack gross physically, right, I'm sure they would
take that down.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
But the fact that.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
So many actual Nazis, I don't mean they wear a swastika,
but everything about their mindset, their philosophy, and the things
they believe truly Nazi are allowed to stay.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
On that platform.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
From a business decision, I think it's a very difficult
one because on the one hand, you want to be
a free speech place, and on the other hand, you
are creating you are turning your platform into a sewer,
into an absolute sewer with that kind of talk from
people who are some terrible combination of stupid and evil.

(46:41):
And I don't know if Elon Musk will ever try
to clean it up. I mentioned in the last segment
of the show a very kind of a hateful anti
Semitic thing that was sent my way, and I've seen
this stuff before. I just the reason I want to
share it with listeners is not to make you, you know,
feel sorry for me or something, but just to let
you know the kind of stuff that's out there at
and listener says, here, hold me, let me find this ross.

(47:03):
I agree that the post that you mentioned is horrible,
but free speech laws protect speech that we hate and abhor.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
And then he says or she, I don't know if
there's a man or woman.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
We saw what happened during COVID when the government pressured Facebook, Twitter,
and Google to silence speech and suspend accounts espousing views
that were in no way hateful. We can't go back.
You can just mute and block the account. In fact,
yes I am blocking that account. But I just want
to make one thing really clear. And it might seem
like kind of a pedantic point, but I just want
to make sure everybody understands this because it's so so

(47:43):
important in the context of what Twitter or Facebook or
Google or anybody can do.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
As far as a platform can do, as far.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
As limiting the speech on their platform, free speech laws
don't apply as long as it's not the government pushing
them to do it, which is what happened in the
Biden administration. And by the way, the Supreme Court had
a very very bad decision that essentially let the Biden
administration get away with pressuring Facebook and let Facebook get

(48:20):
away with having cave to the pressure. And I won't
get into all that, but I think the Supreme Court
got that one wrong. It was on a technicality. But
I just want to make something really really clear. The
First Amendment, it simply doesn't apply in a conversation about
a private company making their own decisions about what kind

(48:41):
of speech they will allow on their platform. So Twitter
can say we won't allow people who espouse a certain
point of view, and it would be it would be legal.
The First Amendment would not apply. I'm not saying it
would be good. I'm not arguing for it. I just
want to make really clear this concept that all of
this First Amendment stuff, the freedom of speech, the free

(49:04):
exercise of a religion, and all that, all of those
things in the Constitution are protections for the people against
the government infringing on those rights. So when you read
the Constitution, it says Congress shall pass no law.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Infringing on the freedom of speech.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
It does not say that no organization, no private company,
no whatever, can infringe on freedom of speech because you can,
because you can't. Sorry, So I'm gonna move on from there.
I just wanted to share that with you all.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Right, I just saw.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
Let me see, I just saw a headline pop up
on a story that I thought looked really interesting and
I wanted to share it with you, and let.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Me just see if I can get this going here,
All right, here we go.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
So this is from the New York Times, and oh gosh.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
It wants me to log in. Okay, hold on, I
know how to get around this. Give me a second.
So here's the concept. Here's what I'm gonna talk out
in a second, as soon as I get the article.
As soon as I get the article going.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
And it is that Amazon has agreed to pay a
lot of money to settle charges that it misled people.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
So okay, So here's the New York Times piece.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Amazon to pay two and a half billion dollars to
settle claims that tricked Prime customers. To settlement is one
of the largest in the history of the Federal Trade Commission,
which sued Amazon two years ago.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Again, this is from.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Karen wise weis, writing for The New York Times.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Amazon has agreed to pay two.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
And a half billion dollars to settle claims that a
tricked tens of millions of people into signing up for
its Prime membership program and then made it hard for
customers to cancel.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
When they wanted out. This is an ongoing.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
Thing, not just with Amazon, but with lots and lots
and lots of online businesses, and Congress has I trying
to remember if Congress did something. I'm quite sure there
was an executive order done about this. I don't know
how enforceable it is, but the idea is that if
you can sign sign up for something online the company
that you had, the company has to make it equally

(51:05):
easy to cancel online. The gym memberships an example. Gym memberships,
they're notorious for saying you can sign up online, but
if you want to cancel, you have to come in.
And you know the government's trying to prevent that sort
of thing. The settlement came days into a jury trial
that began in Seattle this week over the issue, which
stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission

(51:27):
a couple of years ago. The settlement includes a billion
dollars in penalties and a billion and a half dollars
in payouts to customers, who could get fifty one dollars
each if they qualified. By the way, check that out,
two and a half billion dollars and you only get
fifty one dollars each of you qualify that. That shows

(51:47):
you how freaking enormous Amazon Prime is. The agency said
it's one of the largest settlements in history. Amazon admitted
no wrong doing and agreeing to settle not surprising, and
estimated two hundred million billion people.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Two hundred million.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
People in the United States use Prime to shop on Amazon.
That's more than half the population.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Subscriptions primarily Prime brought in more than forty four billion
dollars just last year. But the value to Amazon goes
way beyond the monthly fees. Prime customers are their best customers.
They buy more things, they buy more frequently than people
who are not signed up for the service.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
And I'm living proof of that. My household is living
proof of that. We buy stuff from Amazon. We're on Prime.
We buy stuff from Amazon all the time. And I
can tell you.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Absolutely positively, for sure that the fact that if I
buy something that is within the Prime umbrella on Amazon,
which means I get free fast chipping, is a huge
huge factor versus buying it almost anywhere else. Now you
can go to Walmart and you can get Walmart Plus,
and they're trying to compete in a very similar way,

(52:57):
and I wish them well and I am a member
of that as well.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
I don't use it as often.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
I just find Amazon so convenient, and I'm you know,
I won't say I'm what's the What's I'm not.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
Addicted to Amazon. It's not like I'm shopping every day,
but I'm I'm.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
I guess I'm a loyal customer in the sense that
if I want to buy, you know, almost anything other
than food, and you can actually buy food there too
because they own whole foods, but almost anything other than food,
my first look will be to Amazon. I just bought
some what did I buy? Customized license plate frame? We

(53:34):
were talking about this the other day and a listener
said to do something. We're regarding bad Analogy Club as
a custom license plate frame. So I did, and I
ordered it on Amazon. Actually, that was an interesting thing.
I didn't notice when I ordered it ordered it on Amazon.
I did not notice that it was coming from China
some of theirs, because that one wasn't under prime.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
It was.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
But I bought it because it was the cheapest price.
And I'm following the tracking now, so it was made
in China and then was transferred to somewhere in China,
and then it was brought to the airport in China,
and then it cleared customs, and then it came to
the United States, and then it cleared customs here and
now it's like been given to some other company that
will do the American side of the delivery. Anyway, that's
probably too much talk about Amazon, but it is incredible

(54:14):
how dominant it is, and I thought I.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Would share that with you.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
They're paying, they are paying two and a half billion
dollars to settle accusations that they that they cheated people.
I want to share a little bit of audio with
you that I've had for a couple of days and
I hadn't gotten around to playing. And this is in
the context of the whole Jimmy Kimmel thing. And I'm
not looking to relitigate the whole Jimmy Kimmel and free

(54:39):
speech thing right now, although we will talk about it
in a bit about twenty minutes from now, when Congressman
Jeff Heard joins the show. But if you've listened to
my show for a while, you know, especially going back
into the cancel culture years you know, several years ago
I spoke pretty often about how I realized there was

(55:03):
a difference in generations and people sort of let's say
over forty might have my view, and people maybe under
forty might have the opposite view. My view being that
it's a mistake for most companies to get involved in politics.
It's a mistake for most companies to put out a
public statement.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
On X or anywhere else saying here's what.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
We think about this particular government policy or this thing
the president did or whatever, because you just you don't
need it.

Speaker 4 (55:33):
Now.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
Look if your audience, if your market is young, woke people, right,
if you're a market I'm trying to think of a
company that might be like that where their audience might
tend to be a little bit younger, right, maybe maybe
a place like Hot Topic or maybe Lululemon or I
don't know, whatever, And and you feel like you're going
to tie your customers closer to you by saying political stuff,

(55:58):
maybe it's worth it try, But gosh, I've thought the
whole time that the risk was very, very high, and
that's come back to be the case, and so many
companies now are just saying we're not gonna say anything
about politics anymore. And I always thought that was the
right idea. Now where am I going with that? Where
I'm going with that is as the years have gone by,

(56:18):
especially in the past, I'd say, especially since Obama and
not a Trump, it's accelerated under Trump, but it's not
exclusively under Trump that our nation has gotten much more
tribal and much more division, and much more thinking about
somebody who has a different political position from you as
not just wrong but bad. It's really accelerated a lot.

(56:42):
And at first almost all of the acceleration was on
the left, but now the right is catching up and
they've got a lot of that same mindset, and that
can then extend into not just shopping, but entertainment.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
And here's an example.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
I frequently have comics on the show show, comedians on
the show from comedy Works, and they're usually you know,
they'll be playing the Greenwood Village Club or they'll be
playing the Downtown club, and some of them do a.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Fair bit of political stuff, but I'd.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Say these days most of them stay away from it.
And it's obvious why they stay away from it. Right,
you're going to fill a room in Greenwood village, or
you're going to fill a room in Denver, And actually
those two rooms could be very different. The room you
fill in Greenwood Village is likely to be a little
more conservative leaning than the room you fill in Denver.
But why would you want to piss off anybody? I

(57:38):
remember a line I think it was attributed to Rush Limbaugh.
I think it was Limbaugh, and I apologize if it wasn't,
But we were talking about way back when, when when
Nike was doing some of its earliest woke stuff, and
the line was Republicans by sneakers too, And I think
that's useful from a business perspective. I'm not making a

(58:01):
political point here, I'm making a business point. And so
I thought when Jimmy Kimmel and especially Stephen Colbert, Actually
I think Stephen Colbert did it first and it worked
so well for him that Jimmy Kimmel kind of followed,
And that was Stephen Colbert made his entire show that

(58:21):
will be.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Ending soon on CBS.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
I think he made his show about bashing Trump all
the time, and in the first Trump administration and in
the Biden administration, you could kind of get or at
least the first part of the Biden administration.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
You could get away with that.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
A lot of people despised Trump, and a lot of
people didn't think much about the alternative, right, They didn't
think much about the Democrats. And again, I've spent a
lot of time on this before, so I'm just gonna
do this part very quickly now. And once people got
a taste of what the alternative was that was being
offered by the Democrats, right, Harris and Biden, in all
this nonsense and the terrible withdrawal from Afghanistan and their

(59:00):
censorship and all this, right, people started thinking, all right,
I don't like Trump, but the alternative, you know, is
not very good, so.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Maybe I need to be open to Trump.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
And what that meant was that these people who built
their brands on bashing Trump all the time, we were
building a brand on a foundation that was slowly getting
eaten away as fewer and fewer people were saying that
they just wanted to hear attacks on Trump all the time.
And so now you have a show that's built on
a very very weak foundation, and then you get canceled, right,

(59:31):
Your ratings go down and down.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
Stephen Colbert got canceled.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
I don't know if Jimmy Kimmel will get canceled as
a business decision, right, I'm putting aside the whole Brendan
Carr government stuff. Now it's a different conversation. I don't
know what will happen with Jimmy Kimmel. It was an
interesting piece by Charlie Gasperino in The New York Post
the other day saying, yes, the show is very expensive
and on the top line, would appear to lose a
little money, or maybe more than a little. But ABC

(59:57):
leverages that show to make a lot of money in
a lot of other ways. It's not so clear that
the show is as big a financial loser as.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
You would think.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
But still, if you were running a business, Republicans buy
sneakers too, and you would think Republicans watch television two.
Republicans might watch late night television two.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
And I just thought it was I thought it was
a bad business decision.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
From a long term perspective for these guys to go
just all in on bashing Trump all the time. Okay,
So that was a much too long introduction to this
next thing that I wanted to share with you. So
what I'm gonna share with you here is some audio
from nineteen seventy nine of Johnny Carson, arguably the greatest

(01:00:50):
late night talk show host, at least in America.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Of all time, in interview.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
With Mike Wallace, and I think this was on I
think this was on sixty minutes. It wasn't on Carson's show.
And I think Carson has it right.

Speaker 7 (01:01:12):
People say he'll never take a serious controversy. Well, I
have an answer to that. I said, no, tell me
the last time that Jack Benny red Skelton, Benny comedian
used his show to do serious issues.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
That's not what I'm there for. Can't they see that?

Speaker 7 (01:01:29):
But you're I do they think that just because you
have it tonight's show, that you must deal in serious issues.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
That's a danger.

Speaker 7 (01:01:37):
It's a real danger. Once you start that, do you
start to forget that self important feeling. That's what you
say has great import And you know, strangely enough, you
could use that show as a form you could sway people,
and I don't think you should. As an entertainer.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
I absolutely love that, and I realize that that was
however many years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
It was forty five years ago, forty six years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
I get it all right, and times have changed, and
the and the population generally is more political than it
used to be. But I still think there are words
of wisdom there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Johnny Carson appealed to almost everybody almost all the time,
and that's why he had the greatest late night talk
show of all time. Jay Leno, by the way, very similar.
Jay Leno learned from Carson. Jay Leno stayed away from
controversy and away from top you know that that kind
of topic.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
And I think that's wise. And if you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Decide otherwise as a as a late night TV host
or as a radio host, by the way, you just
need to be sure that the foundation that you're building
your brand on will hold up over time.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
And it can, right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
There's certainly plenty of radio and TV people I think
of very political radio hosts that I won't use names.
I think of you know, Sean Hannity on television, for example,
and their brand is all conservative all the time, and
there is enough of a market.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
For it there is.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
It's not my brand. I don't object to their brand.
Whatever works for them, as long as they're telling the truth.
Whatever works for them is fine. It's not my brand.
I don't want to be all political all the time,
and I don't want to cheer for a team. But
what I'm trying to do here on my own show
is to do something that I think there's a market for.

Speaker 3 (01:03:20):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
I'm not pandering to you. I'm doing what's in my heart.
I'm doing what I think is right. I'm telling you
what I think is true and interesting and fun and
entertaining and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
But I'm very glad that it feels like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
There's a market for something that isn't just all one
side all the time, Because for me, I personally would
feel like I was doing something fake if I were
to try to be, let's say, all.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
Conservative all the time. It's just not me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
Listeners could tell it's not me, and it's not what
I want to do, and it's not what I want
to be, and so I'm not. In any case, I
really appreciate Johnny Carson's words of wisdom. Let me do
a local issue story for just minutes here. There's been
a fight going on for a while between the city
of Manitou Springs and the COG Railway, the official name

(01:04:10):
of which is the broad More Manitou and Pike's Peak
cog Railway and that's owned by the Anshoots Corporation which
owns the broad More. And I forget what year they
bought it, but the railway itself goes all the way
back to eighteen ninety one. This fight between the city
and the railway started in twenty seventeen. And you may
recall that the Cog Railway shut down for quite a

(01:04:32):
long time. There were some rumors that it would never
open again, but it closed down to be renovated, to
be repaired, and so on. And this is from the
Denver Post. The city and the railway negotiated a tax
incentive deal. Then the fifty year agreement required the railway
to make payments in lieu of taxes while the railway
was undergoing its renovation, which was almost one hundred million

(01:04:54):
dollars and took.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
Three years, at least three years.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
In exchange, the city would reimburse any annual amusement taxes
paid by the railway in excess of half a million
dollars a year between twenty twenty one and twenty seventy
and that would save the railway and estimated eight million
to thirty six million over fifty years. Now the city
is saying, and I quote, the city was pressured and

(01:05:17):
induced to enter into the tax in set of program
under duress. And what their argument is that the people
who owned the railway told the city that if they
didn't do a deal that they would never that they
would just keep the railway closed, and the city didn't
want that. So based on that threat, the city agreed
to this tax deal. And now the city is saying, well,

(01:05:37):
they never actually planned to close the railway, and therefore
we want this whole agreement thrown out. The other thing
that happened is that Anchootz had said that the ride
on the railway would cost about thirty dollars, but when
they opened it, they made the tickets more like sixty dollars,
and then they've gone up since then. And what that

(01:05:58):
means is there's an immensemnt of amusement taxes is being
collected and the city has to give it all back.
And the city is also saying, so, if we knew
how high their prices were would go, we might have said,
all right, we'll refund amusement taxes after a million a
year instead of after half a.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Million a year.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
In any case, this is a big fight going.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
On right now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
Late last year they voted against sending a reimbursement of
the twenty twenty four taxes. The railway says that's a
breach of contract. It's suing. We'll see how the whole
thing plays out. I hope that they come to some
kind of agreement that works for everybody. On the one hand,
I wouldn't be surprised if the railway people kind of

(01:06:41):
misled the city.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
It wouldn't surprise me. My main takeaway from this is.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
That the city probably just didn't negotiate very well. But
still I hope they work it out. I told you
yesterday about a note I wrote on my substack about
free speech, and in that I called on our Republican
members of Congress here in Colorado to stand up for
free speech, to stand up for the First Amendment, even
if that meant taking the other side of many other

(01:07:07):
Republicans or even criticizing Republicans. And my next guest is
doing that, and I'm proud of them for doing it.
Jeff Hurd is the Republican member of Congress who represents
Colorado's third Congressional District, which is much of western and
southern Colorado and almost half of the of the land

(01:07:27):
mass of the state of Colorado. Jeff, it's been too
long since we've spoken. Welcome back to the show. It's
good to talk to you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
Thanks ros great to join you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
A whole bunch of listeners wanted me because I told
them that you were coming on the show. A whole
bunch of listeners wanted me to ask you about your
vote against censuring ilhan Omar. You were one of four
Republicans who voted not to censure him, and because of
you and the three others, the censure failed by one vote.

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
So my listeners would like to know you why you
voted that way. Sure, you're right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
Nancy Mays from South Carolina brought a Central Resolution in
the House last week. It would have condemned ilhan Omar
for comments she made in an interview about Charlie Kirk,
and she also retweeted some bile comments from somebody else
about Kirk's assassination. The resolution the Center would have stripped
ilhan Omar of her House committee. That would have forced
her to stand in silence in the House while the

(01:08:20):
center was read. And my view is ilhan Omar's comments
were reprehensible. I condemned them there they were evil and wrong.
But I voted against the Center because I don't think
Congress should use his power to punish speech, even if
it's speech we despise. Now, the First Amendment means protecting
the right to speak and letting the voters hold this accountable,
not weaponizing the House or its procedures to silence members.

(01:08:43):
So that's why I voted the way I did. I
stand by it. I know it was not popular, among
it was not an easy political vote, but I didn't
go to DC to make easy political votes. I went
there to do the right thing, and I felt like
I did that in this case and standing up for
free speech.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
So again I applaud you for that, and I admire
your courage, and I like to think I would have
voted the same way you did, even though I share
your view that what she said is reprehensible, and in
fact I find her reprehensible. I would note, just as
a parallel, when Alvin Bragg did his law fair lawsuit
against Donald Trump, it did immense good to Donald Trump's

(01:09:17):
political fortunes. When Brendan Carr said the easy way or
the hard way about Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel was suspended for
a few days and then came back to four times
or six times his normal audience, So that helped. Now
you've got the Trump administration potentially looking to indict James Comey,
who nobody cares about, but they're going to make him
a hero of the left. And now I feel like

(01:09:39):
this kind of censure, if it had passed, would have
just been an enormous fundraising opportunity and sort of making
not quite a martyr but something a victim of ilhan
Omar when she's the perpetrator and not the victim. So
I think, I think politically.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
You're on the right side as well.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
Why do you think so many Republicans just seem to
go along with Nancy Mace, who, by the way, used
to be very interesting and is now crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
Rust Listen, that's a great point that you're making that politically,
something like this only empowers ilhan Omar, and we're sort
of inadvertently making her a star and boosting her profile
in a way that she otherwise wouldn't have. Look. The
way to address a terrible wrong referencible speech like what
ilhan omer is doing is either ignore her or to

(01:10:26):
beat her in the realm of ideas, which is what
I think we're doing, and her talking the way that
she does is self discrediting, and when we try to
silence her and censure her and remove her from committees,
it only heightens her profile in a way that I
think undermines the point that we're trying to get, which
is she's wrong, and we lose sight of that when
we engage in these theatrics and do things like this.

(01:10:48):
And that's why that's a great point. And I agree
with you. It's not why I voted for this, but
you're right it would empower her if we had passed
the Central Resolution.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
Also, I mentioned on the show yesterday that the political
rarely even claims to care about the Constitution, and when
they do make the claim, it's usually just because they
think there's a political advantage that can hurt Republicans by
claiming it. Going back more than a century to at
least to Woodrow Wilson, the progressives have despised the Constitution,

(01:11:16):
but the Conservatives and the Republicans have claimed to revere it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
And I would like to know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
I want to be careful because I don't like asking
a politician of one party to explain and defend every
other member of their party or even the president. But
I would like you to help me understand why you
think so many Republicans have been okay with what Brendan
Carr said. Too many Republicans were okay with what Pat Bond,

(01:11:43):
what Pam BONDI said, and so on. It just feels
like folks are abandoning the Constitution out of some short
term anger or some other thing that I hope you
can help me understand.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):
Well, look, what happened with Charlie Kirk was a national tragedy,
and this assassination, I mean it cuts at the heart
of free speech and the principles that we hold as
a country. And I think a lot of people, Look,
it's a lot of people were close to him, to him,
I met him once. He was very impressive in person.
I think a lot of people are emotionally. It is
a tough issue, and we're in the immediate aftermath of it.

(01:12:16):
I understand why people are angry and upset. But for me,
this is the time for us to stand up and
have the political courage as conservatives that people, as people
that swore oath to the Constitution to say things like,
you know, look the easy way or the hard Way
comment that came from the SEC chairman, that is that
is especially troubling because it suggests the government pressuring broadcasters

(01:12:37):
based on viewpoint. You know, that runs headlong into the
first First Amendment, and the government should never punish or
threaten threatened to punish broadcasters because of the content of
their political speech. It's something that is conservatives as Republicans
that we've seen happen to us and weaponized against us
in the past. It's wrong when it happens then, and
it's wrong for us to do it on the other side.

(01:12:58):
And I worry about the precedent that we beset ross
If we don't stand up and speak out against this.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
Well, how much of the could put you off the air?
I mean right right, There.

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
Could be a future administration where they're not happy with
you and and somebody calls you out, and that would
be a detriment to the First Amendment. It would be
the wrong thing. And that's why it's important for you know,
libertarians like yourself, for conservatives, for liberal for everyone to
stand up and say, hey, look, no matter where this
is coming from, it's the wrong thing to silence speech.
And this is core political speech. It's not like you're

(01:13:29):
threatening violence to somebody. It's not like you're, you know,
advancing pornography or indecency or something like. This is core
political speech. If we disagree with it, if it's wrong,
we need to beat it in the realm of ideas.
We should not use the government to pressure broadcaster to
take this speech off the air.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
We have about a minute left here, Jeff, and for
those just joining, we're talking with Congressman Jeff Hurd, who
represents Colorado's third Congressional district, which is most of western
Colorado and most of southern Colorado. I suspect that there's
an immense number of Republicans who you work with, who privately,
in conversations with you or just in their own brains,

(01:14:05):
are very upset with what Brendan Carr did, and maybe
with what Pam Bondi said as well, but haven't said
it in public.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
And I wonder how you see the dynamic there.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
It seems to me that many Republican members of Congress,
House and Senate are deeply afraid of the wrath of
Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
And you seem not to be.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
And I wonder how you are able as a Republican
in a Republican district. You're not immune from a primary challenge,
and yet you seem to be playing this differently, more
independently from Trump.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
How are you able to do that? And why?

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
Well, look, I've got my principles that I ran on.
I've never been in politics before. I'm not a career politician.
I'm not afraid to lose my job. I do the
right thing. That said, Look, I understand it's tough for
a lot of my colleagues. And the trick part when
you're in Congress, when you're an elected official, is having
the courage group principles and standing up for them, but
also being wise and figuring out when and how to

(01:15:09):
express those views. And you know, another member of Congressman's
put it really wisely, ROSSI said, you can't make everything Alamo,
and so I hesitate. You know a lot of these Republicans,
they are friends, their colleagues, and they.

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
Are good people.

Speaker 3 (01:15:23):
They disagree with what's happening, but how and when they
voice that disagreement sometimes it's more effective behind the scenes, also, Ross,
And so I don't fault any of my colleagues for
handling it differently than I do. But I do what's right,
bye bye, by what I think is best, and the
consequences will come. But fundamentally, I believe this is an
issue that I'm going to stand on, and if it
results in my losing a primary or getting blasted, it's

(01:15:47):
it's a good principle to stand on. And I'm and
I'm okay with that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
Jeff Heard is Colorado's third congressional district Congressman Republican from
Grand Junction. Thank you, Jeff, Thank you for your time,
Thank you for the courageous votes, and and and keep
it up.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
I feel like you and I are a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
In the minority of our own sides right now on
some of this stuff. And but but in the long run,
I think people will look back and say, you know what,
Jeff was right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
I hope it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:16:17):
Thanks. Thank you Ross. Thank you also for fighting for
the First Amendment as well.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
Good talking to you, Jeff. All right, Congressman Jeff Heard,
We're going to take quick break. We'll be right back
on Teawa. A wide range of opinions about the conversation
that I just had with Congressman Jeff Heard about free speech,
and not everybody is responding directly to the issues we heard,
but I just want to take a few minutes here
and and respond to some listener texts. So one listener says,

(01:16:44):
I don't understand why you keep saying it's speech. We
don't like it's speech. And then, and this is all caps.
Now we're talking about speech that are lies. Why aren't
people who lie held accountable? And it's it's an absolutely
fair question. And what I'd say is, first of all,
the government is not in the business of defining and

(01:17:07):
punishing people who lie. With a couple of caveats to that,
So if you lie in the commission of fraud, so
to steal somebody's money, then you can be held. You
can be held criminally or civilly liable for that. The
other area where you're not allowed to lie is defamation, Right,

(01:17:31):
you are not allowed to say something that is knowingly
false and intended to hurt somebody else and you know
one particular particular person. And you might say that some
of these comments from some of these leftists about Charlie
Kirk get at least close to that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:47):
I think mostly they don't.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
Because you could lie, You could say terrible things, terrible things,
but if you're saying them about a big group of
people rather than a particular person.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
You're really not going to get anywhere with kind of
a defamation.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
But that's a little bit too legalistic, though for the
point that I want to make, I think everybody who
is saying we need to hold them accountable. If you
mean that the government should be involved, should be really
careful with this slippery slope thing, which is to say,
who's going to determine whether it's a lie?

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
I realize there are some things that you can just
you just know.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
If it's a lie, right, Like somebody says the sun
rises in the west, right, or somebody says that blue
cheese is good food.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
These are things you just know anybody knows it's a lie.
But there most things, or at least many things that
a person might say anywhere, that somebody else thinks is wrong,
might be wrong, might not be wrong, might be a lie,
but might also just be an error. And how are
you going to try to hold somebody criminally liable for

(01:18:55):
an error rather than a knowing lie.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
These are just very very difficult questions.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
And the point that I'm trying to make is not
that these things that ilhan Omar said or Jimmy Kimmel said,
are okay, They're not okay, They're terrible, and these people
should be held to account. So how do you hold
them into account without violating the constitution and without setting
a precedent that will be used against you later. And

(01:19:21):
the way you hold them to account is by not
watching their TV show, or by not voting for them
in the next election, or by contributing a few dollars
to somebody who's running against them in the next election.
That's the thing, that's what you do. I have a
couple of other folks saying who are upset with me
for saying that the progressive left doesn't believe in the Constitution.

(01:19:43):
And one listener said, there are millions of people who
lean left. We believe in support the Constitution. I'm an
Air Force veteran, I love my country and I fought
for the Constitution. The Left is not one person and
only one belief. Please acknowledge that. Thank you, Ross, I
do acknowledge that. I thank you very much for the note,
and I thank you very much for your service. And

(01:20:05):
I would like to just take one moment to be
slightly more precise. Although I kind of did this, but
I need apparently I need to do it a little
bit more. I'm talking about specifically the progressive left and
the Capital P.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
The Capital P.

Speaker 1 (01:20:19):
Progressive movement, they from the founding of their movement in
the late eighteen hundreds or early nineteen hundreds, specifically opposed
the existence of the United States Constitution because they opposed
its restraints on the power of government. That was the
point I was trying to make. So I'm gonna take
a quick break. We'll be right back. I told you

(01:20:39):
about a place I think it's called handles Han de
l Apostrophe, Yes, and nu ice cream place opening up
in the Southlands area in Aurora, and I asked you
to tell me what are your favorite ice cream places.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
And I didn't get around.

Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
To talking about some of your listener texts on the
show because it just got away from me a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:20:59):
But I I love ice cream, and I love.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
Good ice cream stores, and I thought I would just
go back and check some of them out and you know,
share them with other people as well. And so I
just want to take just just a minute or so
here and mention some of the ice cream stores that
you mentioned to me yesterday. So Roster's an ice cream
shop called McGill's World of ice Cream on West harehold On,
I need to hit the pause button on this.

Speaker 2 (01:21:21):
Thing so it doesn't keep changing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:23):
So it Jewel just west of Wadsworth, near the Blue
Core shooting Range.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
They have a flavor called.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
Sleepless in Seattle, but just as good as their Bailey's
Irish cream and their Guinness Stout.

Speaker 2 (01:21:35):
Those both sound.

Speaker 1 (01:21:36):
Really good, and yes they are actually made with the
liquor R and D Sweets and Old Town Eerie Sundays
in Edwards, the ice cream farm that is attached to
the GQ Barbecue at Park Meadows.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
All right, what else?

Speaker 1 (01:21:51):
Josh and John's in Loveland or Fort Collins Sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:21:55):
Cow in Lewisville.

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
I think I've seen Sweet Sweet col location. Few different locations, Yeah,
around Ross, I always loved Swinson's. Their chocolate fudge truffle
was divine a lass. There are none left around here.
I remember that. I remember Swinston as a kid when
I was growing up in California. Willy, Oh, this is funny. Yeah,

(01:22:17):
I actually responded to this one, Ross. I love Willie's
House of Frozen Blue Cheese. Right, thank you, thank you?

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
What else? Brahms b R A U MS.

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
I don't know if it's one person who said that
or two m's ice cream and wheat Ridge. And then
someone says, I know this is gonna sound blasphemous, but
Dairy Queen and Culver's are my favorite. I like them both.
I'm a big fan of the Peanut Buster par fay.
I'm a big fan of the Culver's Frozen Custard in general,
I love frozen custard, Absolutely love frozen custard. And then

(01:22:51):
in the middle of all these texts about ice cream,
I got another listener text yesterday that I wanted to
address on the air. So, Ross, You're getting a spiral staircase,
a hot tub, and three fireplaces at your newly remodeled home,
and you still insist on buying all your groceries on sale.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
So two things. First, I already owned the hot tub.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
It's my wind River Spa that I absolutely love, and
I didn't want to get rid of it because it's tremendous,
so I put it in storage while we are remodeling
the house. So I'm not buying a new wind River
spot because I already got one. So yes, I'm getting
a spiral staircase, and yes, I'm getting three fireplaces.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
So and then so, the.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
Listener says, and you still insist on buying all your
groceries on sale, to which I think my answer is obvious.

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
I bet you're all I bet you're all yelling at
the radio like you know what the answer is, right,
Just just say it out loud.

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
Just say it out loud.

Speaker 1 (01:23:46):
What's what's the proper answer to that listener comment? We
all know what it is, Okay, I'll say it anyway.
The proper listener answer to that comment is the reason
I can afford three fireplaces is because I buy my.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
Groceries on sale.

Speaker 1 (01:24:00):
I tell my kids this all the time. They like, Dad,
why are you trying to save a dollar? Why are
you trying to save fifty cents? Why are you trying
to save four bucks? Right? And I said, like, we're
in a fairly nice car right now, right? How do
you think I can afford that by not wasting money?
I'm careful where I can, and then I spend where.

Speaker 2 (01:24:18):
I need to.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):
And I think that that's that's how I live. That's
how I'm not looking to either praise myself or apologize
for it. I'm just telling you that's how I live.
I always, always, always, always save money where I can,
but not at the expense of getting something terrible, right,
But I save money where I can. If I can

(01:24:41):
buy the steak that's on sale for eleven bucks instead
of the steak that's not on sale for eighteen, well,
first of all, I won't buy the stake that's not
on sale for eighteen I just simply won't buy it.
If I can get it on that sale, then fine,
and I will have saved some money, and I save that,
and then I use that to buy something that I
need to buy that I just can't get on sale
when I'm remodeling the house.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
And all that. So there you go. There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
So let me move on to a couple other things here. Okay,
a listener sent me this is an interesting story that
in a way, in a way relates to this bigger
free speech conversation. Not perfectly, but you'll understand a minute.
So this is from National Review, and again a listener
sent this to me. Inside British billionaire Christopher Hone Hohn

(01:25:26):
Christopher Hone's efforts to bankroll social justice and climate radicalism
on US soil Now I haven't heard of this guy,
but I have heard of things like this at First
Blush again Nationalreview dot Com At first Blush. The Children's
Investment Fund Foundation looks like an uncontroversial philanthropic organization whose
mission is to promote children's health, prevent HIV, and fight

(01:25:48):
climate change.

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
But a review of.

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
Its tax records, nonprofit reports, and the group's geopolitical ties
suggests that the foundation is not what it seems. Over
the past decade, organization, founded by British billionaire and activist
hedge fund manager Christopher Hone, has funneled more than half
a billion dollars into US activist organizations as part of

(01:26:11):
a broader effort to push radical and DEI policy on
United States soil.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
CIFF also has ties.

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):
To the Chinese Communist Party, raising questions about the motive
behind the decade long philanthropic I guess that should be
in quotes influence campaign in the American nonprofit and policy world.
Between twenty fourteen and twenty twenty three, this group, CIFF
poured more than five hundred and fifty three million dollars

(01:26:39):
into nearly forty US based groups as part of a
broader scheme to push DEI and radical environmentalist policies in America,
according to a new report compiled by a group called
Americans for Public Trust.

Speaker 2 (01:26:53):
I don't know who that group is.

Speaker 1 (01:26:54):
They're described here as a nonpartisan watchdog group that investigates
nonprofit malfeasance. Now, US laws prohibit foreign nationals from contributing
to American political candidates and from influencing US elections, and
yet this huge, multi multimillion dollar effort to bankroll these
contributions to a web of left wing groups demonstrates how

(01:27:17):
foreign national use financial loopholes to push their own ideological
agendas on US soil to get around the Foreign Agents
Registration Act that's called pharah FAI financial disclosure requirements for
foreign entities and individuals. This report that I described says,
because there's little oversight and few restrictions on foreign giving

(01:27:38):
to US organizations, the Holmes hoans actions via CIFF.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
Are questionable and murky.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
More investigations, both on the state and federal levels are
needed to determine to what extent any foreign giving laws
and regulations may have been violated. So this is a
tricky thing because we don't know if they broke any rules,
and by the way. This guy is not alone. This
guy is not alone. There's a there's a well known
especially on the left, a Swiss, a Swiss billionaire named

(01:28:08):
Hans Jorg Vis w Y s S And he's sort
of a Soros type of guy. Lo Soros is an
American citizen, but this guy isn't. And this guy has
been funneling immense numbers of money to the so called
dark money groups, and in particular groups associated with Arabella Advisors,

(01:28:30):
who I talked about this on the show sometime sometime back.
And and what Arabella does is they take in a
bunch of money, and I assume that a lot of
it is actually not legally allowed to be used in
American politics, and they kind of launder it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:45):
They they anonymize it, and.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
Then they redistribute it to some group, who redistributes it
to some group who redistributes it to some group, and
and and fund all this very very left wing stuff.
Now I have I have no idea you know, whether
this guy, Christopher Holme, what his motivation is, right, Maybe
he's just a leftist. But it is interesting how in

(01:29:10):
this article they at least claim that there is a
tie to China.

Speaker 2 (01:29:16):
And I'll give you a little more on that.

Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
I see here the group's tie to the CCP created
Belton Rove Belt and Road Initiative Climate initiatives suggest that
the British nonprofits founders and investors view the project as worthwhile.
There's a particular guy or no gal named Kate Hampton
who is the CEO of this group that's donated over

(01:29:41):
five hundred million dollars, and she's a member of a
group called the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment
and Development, and that is a group associated with the
Chinese Communist Party, and they give awards to foreigners who
contribute to Chinese success in this thing or that thing.
And just in the interested time, I'll skip some of

(01:30:03):
the other things, but they show other ways in which
they believe that this CIFF group is associated with China.

Speaker 2 (01:30:10):
So here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):
If they're not contributing to a political candidate, and if
they're not in a convincing way trying to influence American elections,
and all they're trying to do is influence public opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
And let me be really clear about this.

Speaker 1 (01:30:25):
Influencing public opinion does influence elections. But I mean what
I mean is in a very specific, legalistic kind of way.
They're not donating money to add campaigns to vote this
way or vote that way. What they're doing might be legal,
and it's you know, it's it's very very troubling.

Speaker 2 (01:30:44):
And this is one of those things.

Speaker 1 (01:30:47):
And there's a maximum in there's a maxim in law
where bad cases or bad situations make bad law, and
the concept there is something really bad happens, people are
offended by it, people are angered by it, and they respond.
Politicians respond by making laws, and often, especially when it's

(01:31:08):
very emotional, they will make laws that go too far.

Speaker 2 (01:31:11):
I mean, look at what Brendan Carr just did.

Speaker 1 (01:31:13):
He didn't make a law, but look at the utterance
that came out of his mouth in the understandably understandably
very emotional aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination and some
of the terrible things that people on the left said
about it, including Jimmy Kimmel and Brendan Carr, who was
right to understand that what Jimmy Kimmel said was bad,

(01:31:35):
went much too far, saying we can do this the
easy way, and we can do or we can do
this the hard way, threatening government action against a private company, And.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
That's an example of where a very.

Speaker 1 (01:31:46):
Bad emotional situation caused a government person to say something
that really it was implying illegal activity. So we really
need to be careful because we got to protect our
own free speech rights as much as we possibly can,
and we need to default toward protecting those free speech
rights at the risk of some bad stuff happening on

(01:32:09):
the margins, rather than trying to eliminate every bad thing
that could possibly happen at the expense of our free
speech right. So I don't know whether what this group
is doing is illegal. What I think is most important
is what's happening right now, which is to say that
National Review article and then me telling you about it,

(01:32:30):
and hopefully other people reading the article and other people
telling other people.

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
About it, so that we can tell everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:32:36):
Every group that receives money from what's called the Children's
Investment Fund Foundation, we can go dig into them, and
if necessary, we can out them and shame them publicly
saying you guys are pawns of the Chinese Communist Party
and if you don't know it, then you should stop
taking money from these people. And if you do know it,

(01:32:58):
then we're gonna make sure everyone knows that you know it,
and we're gonna try to shame you publicly and make
sure that.

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):
You are ineffective. Because I want to add one other thing.
When you look at these groups that are.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
Spending money to spread climate or kind of radical climate
activism and DEI, what you're really looking at is groups
that are intent on shredding the fabric of the United
States of America. There are some groups probably who legitimately
think DEI is a good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
I'm sure there are some of those people there, and.

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
I'm sure there are some groups who legitimately think that
climate activism is a good thing. And you're welcome to
those opinions. Right, You're you're wrong, but you're.

Speaker 2 (01:33:39):
Welcome to them.

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
But if I were trying to harm and destabilize the
United States of America, if I were trying to rend
the fabric of the lowercase D democracy are our republican democracy?
Lowercase are lowercase D in the United States of America.
What I would do if I had an unlimited amount

(01:34:01):
of money or some immense amount of money and I
wanted to hurt America is I would give lots of
money to so called nonprofits who try to push DEI
and radical climate activism, because they're both terrible for the country.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
They're both really divisive.

Speaker 1 (01:34:17):
They both caused the country to tear itself apart, to
make bad economic decisions, to dislike one another, to be
unable to cooperate. It's a really big thing. And so
I've probably gone too long on this, but let's just
keep an eye out, all of us.

Speaker 2 (01:34:33):
When we see these groups pushing these things.

Speaker 1 (01:34:36):
Ask yourself, if you've got a little time, if you
can do a little research, ask yourself, who's really spending
that money, who's really spending that money, And maybe if
it's coming from a place that looks like it shouldn't be,
maybe we should talk.

Speaker 2 (01:34:50):
About it with everybody. All right, So here's a crazy story.

Speaker 1 (01:34:55):
We were talking just the other day with a guest
from the Department of Homeland Security about human trafficking.

Speaker 2 (01:35:03):
Was this yesterday day before yesterday. I don't know one
of them, and we.

Speaker 1 (01:35:07):
Were talking with the Homeland Security person about human trafficking
and then and then one of the things I asked,
I asked her her name was Erica Reid. I asked her,
how do you know what do you look for? And
the answers were pretty interesting. And then and then, just
after I saw this piece at the Denver Post, a

(01:35:27):
thirty one year old Colorado man has been charged with
human trafficking and for sexual servitude and pimping. Maybe that's
actually a term of art in law.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:39):
After Jefferson County Sheriff's Office investigators say he threatened, assaulted,
and forced women into prostitution, the Sheriff's office launched Operation
Rescue Rodeo Wow, Operation Rescue Rodeo check this out in
connection with the National Western Stock Show in January. Because

(01:35:59):
major events, they're often linked to an increase in illicited activity,
including commercial sex work and forced prostitution.

Speaker 2 (01:36:06):
Investigators wrote in an arrest effidavit.

Speaker 1 (01:36:08):
And I suppose what they're saying there is, you got
lots of people coming in from out of town, right,
They're gonna want to have a good time, and they're
gonna pay for sex if they can get it. Not everybody,
but more than if there's no big event. I guess
that's what they're saying. An undercover officer set up a
meeting through an ad on a website called Secret Hostess.
Two women showed up to the meeting at a house

(01:36:30):
in the sixteen hundred block of South Golden Road on
January twenty second, and were met by sheriff's officials and
victim advocates. And they identified somebody named Cortes who goes
by tes DiAngelo Dennis as their pimp.

Speaker 2 (01:36:46):
Wow. I thought that was a word that went out
in the seventies or eighties, but I guess not.

Speaker 1 (01:36:51):
Investigators found that the women drove there in a car
registered to mister Dennis's romantic partner, although she is not
a suspect in the case. One of the women told
investigators that she was recruited into prostitution when she was fourteen.
The two victims described an environment of coercion and abuse
where they were required to earn at least one thousand

(01:37:12):
dollars a day through sex work or be quote traded
out to another pimp.

Speaker 2 (01:37:18):
If they asked.

Speaker 1 (01:37:19):
Questions are talked back, Dennis would physically or sexually assault them.
One of the women told investigators she was afraid that
if she didn't go to the meetup with the undercover officer,
Dennis would beat her up, refuse to let her ead,
or stop paying for the hotel room in Aurora, where
she lives. Mister Dennis also used other tactics to control

(01:37:39):
the women, including taking their clothes, belongings, and phones so
they couldn't leave. One of the women said she was
afraid Dennis knew where her family lived and would hurt
them if she tried to leave. Threatening the women was
his favorite sport, one of the victims told investigators, including
threatening to cut out their tongues or to shoot them

(01:38:00):
in the face.

Speaker 2 (01:38:01):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:38:04):
Sheriff's officials identified a house in the forty five hundred
block of South jib jebbel j e b e L
Court in Centennial as a base for mister Dennis's prostitution
and drug operations, and the address was linked to his
Venmo account. According to the affidavit. He was arrested two
weeks ago, being held on half a million dollars cash bail,
said to appear October eighth for a preliminary hearing. This

(01:38:26):
is just absolutely nuts. I'm you know, I'm kind of
old school on this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:38:31):
You know. I say that if somebody is doing.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
This shoplifting, maybe not first offense, but you keep going
with the choplifting, which yould cut off a finger and
then maybe cut off a hand.

Speaker 2 (01:38:40):
And I just want to make.

Speaker 1 (01:38:41):
Very clear that if it weren't unconstitutional, I would I
would truly be all for it. That is the only
way you stop this these people. And if it's true
that this guy who's pimping out teenage girls that in
order to get them to stay in line, that he
was threatening to cut out their tongues, then I think
that's what we should do to him, right And I

(01:39:03):
think in literally and figuratively, that you keep him quiet
for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):
Hi, Mandy, Helloa, m And I asked you last time
if you got that in Japan, but you didn't.

Speaker 8 (01:39:15):
It was made in China. I'm sure for someone at
Walmart I did purchase it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:20):
Uh huh.

Speaker 8 (01:39:20):
So if you're if you think it's a good idea
to make people pay, then why are you so blase
about the James Comy thing.

Speaker 1 (01:39:27):
Well, so the James Comy thing is a little bit tricky.
So first of all, what it looks like they're going
after him for is something he said to Congress, right.
I don't know whether he lied to Congress or not,
but it sure does feel like they're rushing to get
in before next Tuesday's Statute of Limitations is up.

Speaker 2 (01:39:44):
Well, they have to, and now they have to. They
have to if they're really.

Speaker 1 (01:39:48):
Convinced they've got him dead to rights and he lied
to Congress on something they can absolutely prove, then maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:39:54):
But here's why I'm lukewarm about it.

Speaker 4 (01:39:56):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:39:57):
I don't need to explain to you how good it
was for Donald Trump politically when Alvin Bragg did all
that hush money stuff. Oh, I know, I owed you
talking to Jeff Jeffers, right, and then Kimmel just got
boosted by it and all this, and I just I
don't understand why you would go after a guy that
probably nobody cares about anymore. You know, again, if you

(01:40:19):
really got him dead to rights, and depending on what
the punishment would be, maybe bigger fish than this clown.

Speaker 9 (01:40:28):
He lied to Congress. He lied over and over again.

Speaker 8 (01:40:31):
I mean, we already know that he knew the entire
Russigate thing was fabricated based on political opposition research.

Speaker 9 (01:40:36):
In my mind, he was treason us if you.

Speaker 1 (01:40:38):
Can, if you can prove that he knew it, I've
got some sympathy for it. I actually think Brennan is
a much worse actor than Komy but they're both bad.
The horrible they're they're horrible and treason. Yeah maybe maybe.

Speaker 8 (01:40:51):
I'm so tired of people getting away with stuff when
they're in powerful positions.

Speaker 9 (01:40:56):
I want to throw everyone in jail.

Speaker 1 (01:40:59):
So I'm I'm fine with that as long as they've
really got him, and as long as it's something that
the public will believe was a really significant misdeed, because
what Alvin bragged is what he went after Trump for
something that nobody thought was important, right, and and what
Brendan Carr said was far too much. Anyway, if they've
got called me for something that the public will say

(01:41:21):
he really needs to be punished for this, I think
that I'm then I'm then I'm there for that with you.

Speaker 9 (01:41:26):
I think they do, and that's why I'm excited about it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:28):
I actually kind of hope they do, because these guys
were so so bad. All Right, We're we're we're running late,
so I'm just gonna leave it here. Mandy's coming up next.
I'll talk to you tomorrow