Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm always looking for a way to distract myself and
you from stuff we don't want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
So as Marty and Gina were leaving, well, Marty.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Walked out, and then I was I was talking about
how my wife is going to go to Utah for
a few days because at this time of year, the
hotels are really cheap around the National Parks because it's
very off season and nobody's going this time of year.
But it's going to be in the sixties, it's gonna
be it's gonna be incredible hiking weather. So my wife
(00:29):
has just taken off for three or.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Four or five days.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And and then and then Gina, who is a big
time hiker, mentioned something about Angels something or other, so
that got the conversation started.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Angel angels what and Angel's landing in Zion and what
is it? So it's it's a hike. It's not very long.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I want to say, it's like five miles, but you
have to get a permit for it because at the
very very topic gets very very very narrow and there's
chains that you have to kind of shimmy yourself across.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
So they try to.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Not have too many people at the top of the
hike in case of, you know, anything happening. So you
have to actually apply for a permit through the National
Park Service, and it's random. They just it's a lottery
system and they pull And it was funny because my
husband and.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I both applied.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
He didn't get it and I did, and the permit
allows you to bring six people, so we were able
to we'll.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Both be able to do that in April.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Alia, you don't seem nervous at all, so I'm hoping.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I know a couple people that have done it, and
I know a couple of people who have chickened out
at the end because the.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
End is the scariest part.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
But my husband and I did Half Dome, which is
a very similar setup of that's in Yosemite, and that
was a way, way longer hike. And you're going up
the sheer part of Half Dome and there's just cables
and you just shimme yourself up by.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Pulling on the cables.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
And I actually hooked myself in with a care beiner
to the cable. But a lot of people don't do
that because when you do that, you have to unhook
yourself to then hook to the next cable, so you're
removing one hand and as you're trying to do that,
and then you're one handed on it's your cliff. Where
Like I mean, fatalities have occurred on this hike because
(02:08):
it is just very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So I'm I'm confused.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And I'm scared for you, right, Okay, so let's wait,
let's talk about both of those.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Let's go back to Angel's landing.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
I keep want to say, I keep wanting to say
angels Envy, which is a branded bourbon the Angel. So
can can you just paint a picture for me what
the top looks looks like that hike.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
All, I obviously never done it, but what I have
seen because I did the same thing with half Dome.
I watched YouTube videos because I kind of like to
psych myself out a little bit to just see what to.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Expect and imagine like maybe a.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Couple feet between your feet the chains and a cheer cliff,
so it is literally you are not really able to
shimmy around people. If somebody does chicken out on the chains,
most people actually all back up from where they started. Okay,
everyone moved back to allow this person to get all
(03:00):
because it's so narrow you can't really get around.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
You're kind of walking a ridge. Yes, yeah, chains that
are only like a.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Single chain that separates both sides of a cheer cliff
that gets you to the top.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
At least that's what I know.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Maybe maybe a texter has a better idea if someone
has done it. But and then half domes a full
shear you know, it's not like you can fall off
one side or the other.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
You would just slide slide down with half dome.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I never paid a lot of you know, I never
really studied it, but all I ever knew of it
is like professional climbers with all kinds of technical gear
and safety ropes and every you know, climbing this face.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
So if you think of half dome, you know it
as the one curved side that's really round, and then
that sheer, sheer, steep side that's what people are usually
using the equipment to climb. Yeah, so you did round
part is where the cables are, and it's another lottery system.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Where some people get it, some people don't. Somehow we did.
There's really no rhyme and reason to how they do it.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
And then that's where you use two cables to kind
of just guide yourself up.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
What are your feet like? Vertical?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Horizontal? So what angle are your feet on when you're
walking up here?
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, I'm a pretty wild photo of you are.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
If you turn around, you can't see where you just
because it is a gradual curve up.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
The further you.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Go, you're not seeing like think of like, I don't
know skin down a mountain, I guess, but you're climbing
up it and said, And so I turned around once
to check on my friend and she was.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Like, I'm stopping here and I.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Could barely see her because it is that steep of
a curve. Yeah, that you can't really and you can't
see the top until you get to the very part
where it flattens out. So it's wild. It is not
for the feet of heart by any means. And you
want to be extremely, extremely careful and experience and check
the weather and check any rain conditions because then it
gets slippery. There's so many reasons why they won't let
(05:01):
you do it. But they check your permit at the top,
and they check the forecast and they say you have
until this time until clouds start to move in and
then but you sign a whole waiver letting them know
that this is what it's.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Going to be.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
So if you're doing the half dome climb and you're
not using the carabiner, does you're then not you don't
have safety gear, then right, you could fall off and die.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, And even the carabiner is kind of a false
sense of security because you still have to unhook yourself
every once in a while to get past this little
chain that connects it to the rock. So I had
to unhook myself and rehook, and then sometimes that was
scary because now you have one hand and nothing holding
you there.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
So most people in a.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Situation of like a tragedy, most people slip and fall
outside of the cable lines and then you have nothing
else to hold on to.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And on that one, do you go down the same
way you came up? Yes?
Speaker 3 (05:56):
And then that was probably even scarier because we got
to the top, we're this is awesome, we're eating lunch,
it's beautiful up here, and then we're.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Like, how do you get back down?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
And what we decided to do, which was nuts, was
we put the cable above our heads so that way
you're holding it almost like think like a zip line.
You're like, you know, holding it and slid on our
bottoms for.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Most of the time. Wow, because it's.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
So slippery that you almost wanted to have a little
bit more grip.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So we were like, okay, we got our feet.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
On the ground and then our bottoms on the rock
and then just kind of shimmied ourselves down.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But the problem is people are also.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Coming up the same way you're going down, so every
once in a while you have to stand up, you
have to shimmy a little bit closer to the left
side as they go on the right side.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It's a it's a crazy yes, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
You have to you definitely, and it's not very eco
friendly but a lot of people leave their gloves there too,
because people forget that and it will tear up.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I mean it is.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
It is a metal wire like you. You definitely have
to wear gloves doing it. So it was fun, though
I would do it again. There was definitely a one
and done hike where it was like this was awesome,
loved it. But there's so many other awesome heights in
yo Semite. I think I tried different one.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
That's a fabulous story. Thanks thanks for sharing. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
If anyone has comments on angels landing let me know,
because I'm curious what to expect for that one.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
So, yeah, if you've done, if you do, you do
you give out an email on the air or not? Uh?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, you could do. I mean my name is so
hard to spell.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
All right, here here's what we'll do if you got
if you if you have done Angels landing and you
want to tell Gina about it, send me an email
at Ross R. O. S.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
S At iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
You don't need my last name, Ross at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
And then I'll just get it over to I'll get
it over to Gina. Cool.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Thanks thanks for sharing absolutely that it was awesome.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
That's a great way to start our Friday. We'll be
right back on KOA.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
A listener just sent me a note saying, hey, Ross,
you need to issue a correction about the thing yesterday
about the guy who missed the Wichita flight. And I
hadn't heard any kind of any kind of uh update
on this thing, but I went to I went to
look at it, and uh and and the listener's right,
(08:11):
the story has changed since since yesterday.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
This The story yesterday was that.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
This American figure skater guy named John Marravilla was not
allowed on the plane from Wichita to DC because his
dog was too big, and so his life was saved.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And and it turns out, uh that he was set
to fly out of Detroit, not Wichita. And I guess
what happened the way the story apparently developed and ended
up in you know, in American media outlets that I trusted.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I didn't make it up, but.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Apparently the way this thing spread, which says a lot
about the way the world is these days and socialists
and you know what viral that. I guess what happened
was Rush media put out a story about the guy,
saying he was supposed to be on the plane.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Because he was there with the other skaters.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And I don't know that the Russians were lying, it
would be a dumb thing to lie about, but.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Really, but they were wrong apparently.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And I guess what they did was they looked at
his Instagram posts on his personal account and misinterpreted them,
and they said that he was supposed to be on that,
you know, on the Wichitaf light, But he wasn't supposed
to be on the Wichitaf light, so that story is
not true.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And they fooled me. I mean I actually went and said, like,
all right, this is an interesting one.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I should see if I can find the story in
more than one media outlet to give me.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Some kind of sense that it's likely to be true.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
And it was on a bunch of them, and now
it still turns out still turns out not to be true.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I mean, not the biggest mistake in the world, and
it wasn't really my mistake, but I thought, you know
that listener is right, it's worth it's worth noting. So
this is going to be an interesting weekend as far
as economics and international relations because President Trump said yesterday
(10:10):
that in his mind he still really wants to go
ahead with twenty five percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
If I were Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I'd be pretty frustrated right now because he hasn't really
made clear other than wanting a little more support on
the border. He hasn't made clear just what he wants
from Canada and Mexico. And he's been saying he wants
them starting February first, which is tomorrow. Now it's it's
unclear if he's really going to do it. It's unclear
(10:41):
exactly what it will cover. He has said that he's
strongly considering not including oil, and that's fine. But the
other thing that's interesting is he's talking about twenty five
percent on our allies and biggest trading partners, Mexico and Canada,
and only ten percent on China, which is also a
(11:03):
very big trading partner, but which is like our competitor
and our enemy. It's a very strange thing. The economics
of threatening tariffs are interesting because it's like it's like saying,
if you don't do what I want, I'm going to
(11:25):
shoot both of us. You know, because tariffs are paid
for by Americans, and right, tariffs imposed by Donald Trump
were paid for by Americans. All tariffs are always paid
by the importing country, not by the exporting country. And
it's true that the exporting country can try to absorb
a little of it by lowering the price, and that
(11:46):
happened a little bit during Trump's first term, but still
Americans paid billions and billions of dollars of what was
effectively a Trump imposed sales tax that he keeps saying,
you know, the foreigners are paying it, but they're not.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
You're paying it. I'm paying it.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
But here's the thing. You didn't work around some of
this stuff. Maybe right, but there are a lot of
things that America just doesn't.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Make, and there are a lot of things that we
really do.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Rely, let's say, from Mexico and Canada on some things.
We had a lot of lumber from Canada and you
need that if you're building houses, and if you put
a twenty five percent tariff on that, then the cost
of building a house is going to go up. How
about auto parts, This is a big thing that Donald
Trump never talks about. In Americans need to understand we
have very complex supply chains and a lot of times
(12:31):
what happens is we will buy parts from some other country,
then we will assemble it here, and then sometimes we'll
even send the assembly back and they'll assemble it more there,
and then we'll import the additional assembly and then we'll
put it in a car, and it's crossed a border
three or four, you know, two, three, four times, and
(12:52):
Trump could potentially put tariffs on that every single time.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
And that means when you're buying.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
A car what you actually think of as an American
car and it's got parts that are imported from Mexico.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And use to assemble a car here.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
The price of that car is going to go up,
and you're not gonna be able to afford a car anymore.
And an immense percentage of the stuff that we import
are actually inputs, not final use products that you go
to the store and buy, but stuff that companies buy
and they use it to.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Make other things.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
There's a Wall Street Journal headline, Trump aids hunt for
eleventh hour deal to dial back Canada Mexico tariffs. It's
gonna be an interesting thing. We'll see how it plays
out with Donald Trump. It's very difficult to predict anything,
so just keep an eye on it over the weekend
and we'll see. At some point, Donald Trump's strategy of
(13:48):
using tariffs as a threat against as many countries as
he can think of to try to do something, try
to get them to do something.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
At some point, it's gonna stop working. At some point
someone's gonna call bluff.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
He's going to impose the tariff, and you and I
are going to get hurt every bit as much as
the other country will.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I am so pleased to welcome back to Koa Maggie Anders.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Maggie is the host of undoctrination and social media content
creator at the Fantastic Foundation for Economic Education. The website
is FEE dot org. Fee dot org. And before we
talk about what we're going to talk about, tell listeners
who might be econ nerds like I am what's behind you, so.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Ross, thank you for having me on again.
Speaker 6 (14:34):
I am actually at the FEE office right now, and
behind me we have the personal library of Henry Hazlett
as well as Leonard read So if you're a real
liberty lover, you'll know who reades.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So just so listeners understand.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
From time to time, because I'm a nerd, I'll ask
listeners a question and then I'll say, you know, whoever
you a listener, number whatever, who gets it right can
choose between.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Two books and I'll send you a book.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
And the books that you are allowed to choose from
are Frederick Bastiat's The Law and Henry has Let's Economics
in one lesson, and I have one hundred of them
over here under my desk, or maybe not one hundred anymore,
And so that's has Lit. And then Leonard Reid. You've
heard me mentioned from time to time. I pencil, which
(15:21):
is one of the most iconic, especially one of the
most iconic American essays in economics.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So, gosh, what a bunch of economic history around you.
I'm a little jealous as an econ.
Speaker 6 (15:31):
Nerd, right, and not to step on your territory, but
if you want to get a copy of any of those,
hit me up on Twitter or at my email, or
just go to our website and we'll send you something.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
For free, for free.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
Wow, I can make it happen.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Wow, that's powerfeed dot org, fee dot org. Okay, you
did a relatively long form for you video a couple
of days ago about Donald Trump pardoning Ross Olbricht, and.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I had mentioned this just kind of in passing on
the show.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
But it's a He's a very interesting character, and it's
a very interesting story.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And you know, depending on where you.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Are on some of this stuff, you either think of
him as a drug dealing maybe hit man hiring criminal
or a libertarian hero and crypto champion as well. And
there's a lot of overlap between crypto and the libertarian world.
(16:37):
But so before we before you tell us what you
think about this, just tell us a little about the story.
Speaker 6 (16:47):
Oh yeah, I mean, Ross Olbricht was like any other
twenty six year old, young professional, except he was running
a secretive dark web online marketplace people could buy and
sell any thing really anonymously, right, And that was a
secret that Ross was holding on too from pretty much
(17:09):
everyone in his life.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
And you know, he was a smart, nerdy kid. He
turned down on a PhD.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
From Cornell to run this marketplace and pursue entrepreneurship. And
I think he did it because he was a very
committed libertarian and wanted to show the world what like
a truly free marketplace looks like. Eventually, the federal government
caught up with him. There was a DHS agent who
(17:36):
went by the name Cirrus who infiltrated the Silk Road,
which was the website that Ross was running, and became
an employee of Ross's. And they eventually caught up to
him at this library in San Francisco while he was
still logged into the computer. Some federal agents and plane
clothing start this argument nearby and distract him while another
(18:00):
runs and grabs the laptop while it's still locked in.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
That's how they.
Speaker 6 (18:03):
Defeated a lot of these encryptions that Ross had built
into the system, and they went after him with the
whole book. They charged him with seven different charges, five
of which he was actually sentenced on, and none of
those were related to him being, you know, a killer
(18:27):
or selling drugs personally. All of them were related to
what other people were doing on his platform. But the
real kicker here is that Ross was using a tumbler
to anonymize all of these transactions, and so I think
the government went after him because they couldn't go after
everyone else.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Basically, right.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
They thought of it as money laundering, right, and the government,
and the government liked to. Part of the reason government
hates cryptos so much is they want to be able
to know, not just no, but let's start with no.
They want to be able to know as much as
possible what you're doing with your money, so that when
push comes to show, they can control what you do
(19:11):
with your money. I mean, that's where this is all
going to end up. And that's why a lot of
libertarians like crypto because it's much more difficult for government
to control.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
One little tangential question.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
You talk about Ross Olbrick in a very familiar kind
of way.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Do you know him?
Speaker 5 (19:29):
I don't.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
I don't, but I will say this, it's easy to
feel like you know him because his mother, Lynn Olbrich,
published this website with all of his letters on the website,
so you can go through and read his letters from
prison to other people, and you really get a sense
of the state of his mind while he was in
(19:51):
jail and what his motivations were. I wish I could
interview him. I know he just got released and he's
taking some time before going on the the Libertarian podcast circuit,
but hopefully one day I will be able to interview him.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
I think I relate to him to.
Speaker 6 (20:08):
A degree because he was twenty six when he launched
the Silk Road, that's how old I am currently, and
he discovered libertarianism early on into his into college and
that kind of completely derailed where his life was going,
as it did to me, and I think for me
it was really positive. The difference here being that he
(20:32):
was very entrepreneurial and clearly had some high risk tolerance
because he pursued a very different path having come to
these ideas than I did personally.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
We're talking with Maggie Anders from the Foundation for Economic
Education also known as FI.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
The website is FE dot org.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
She hosts a great video series called Undoctrination. Where's the
best place that people can watch your videos.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
By the way, I want to make sure people know.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
Go watch them on YouTube. YouTube are a great place.
I post all of my videos there. Occasionally I post
them on Twitter, so you can follow me there at magimoda.
But undoctrination on YouTube is a perfectly easy place to
find me.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Okay, so now let's go. Let's go back to the
story for a little bit. In fact, hold on, let
me look at my computer here, because I opened I
opened a web page that was a reprint. It's a
federal government archive web page about from May of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
And here's where it says.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Ross Albricht aka dread Pirate Roberts was sentenced Friday in
federal court to life in prison.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
And that's what we need to get.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
To, to life in prison in connection with his operation
and ownership of Silk Road, a hidden website designed to
enable its users to buy and sell illegal drugs and
other unlawful goods and services anonymously and beyond the reach
of law enforcement between January twenty eleven and October of
twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Uh pret bararra, who is you know?
Speaker 1 (22:02):
As part of the I guess the Obama Club.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Make no mistake. He said.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Albricht was a drug dealer in criminal profits here who
exploited people's addictions and contributed to the deaths of at
least six young people. Albrich went from hiding his cybercrime
identity to becoming the face of cybercrime. And as today's
sentence proves, no one is above the law now. So
they charged him basically with money laundering and running this
(22:29):
website where other people sold drugs, and yet he got
life in prison.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
When he didn't hurt it without pole So.
Speaker 6 (22:39):
Yeah, go ahead, Yeah, he got life in prison without parole.
They really sentenced him to two life sentences plus forty years,
which is an additional twenty more years than the.
Speaker 5 (22:54):
Prosecution even asked for in his trial.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
To me, even if you think he might have some
responsibility for the drugs being sold on his website or
what was happening.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
There, that is a huge overreach.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
That's going very very deep into cruel and unusual punishment,
and for ross he is. He's a young guy looking
at spending the rest of his life in jail.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
It's it's yeah, it's hard, it is. It is horrible
and okay, so just so again, so folks, understand, libertarians
believe that adults should be able to put any substance.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
In their body they want to.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
It's not the same as thing you should be able
to then drive under the influence, because then you're negatively
impacting somebody else. But as a matter of individual liberty,
you should be allowed to uh, treat yourself, hurt yourself
however you want to, as long as you're not hurting
anyone else. So, first of all, Maggie, are you do
Is that how you think? And then my follow up
(24:07):
question to that is, do you think that Ross Olbrick
did anything wrong?
Speaker 5 (24:15):
That's a great question.
Speaker 6 (24:16):
You know, I do believe people should be able to
do whatever they want to themselves, even though I'm actually
a libertarian that's pretty anti drug like I will, you know,
tell people all of the risks of drugs, and personally
like I wouldn't, I would not partake right, But I
(24:38):
do think people should be able to do whatever they
want to themselves as long as it's not hurting other people.
Speaker 5 (24:44):
Did Ross do anything wrong? It's an interesting question because there.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
Are claims that come up in the trial that he
hired hitman hitman to attack multiple people.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
Those claims were never so stantiated.
Speaker 6 (25:01):
But now there's this rumor that's been circulating about Ross
for the past eleven plus years that's really damaged his
reputation that he tried to kill people, never proven. He
was never charged with that crime. So personally, I don't
think he did anything wrong. Would I have taken that
(25:21):
risk calculation myself personally to run that website, Probably not,
and I wouldn't.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
Encourage other people to do it.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
But I do not think he should have been sentenced
to life in prison or even a day in prison
for what he did.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, just so I think listeners know this, But I've
never touched an illegal drug. I've never taken a puff
of a cigarette. I don't like any of that stuff.
But I do believe in individual liberty. So I'm not
a champion for drugs either, and I hope people don't
use them, but that doesn't mean I think the government
should prevent you from using them. An interesting part of
(25:59):
the story that you talk about in your video, and again,
if you're just joining we're talking with Maggie Anders, and
if you go to YouTube and search for undoctrination, so
like indoctrination but with you as the first letter instead undoctrination.
You can find your videos in the video we're talking
about regarding Ross Olbrick is one of the most recent videos.
(26:19):
In that video, you talk about a couple of corrupt
federal agents.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Do you know what I'm talking about? Can you tell
this story?
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (26:29):
Yeah, Uh, the story of Curtis Green. Probably even more
maddening than just the story about Ross Olbricht is what
they did to Curtis Green and how that totally tainted
this entire investigation. So Curtis Green was an administrator on
the Silk Road, so he worked for Ross and at
(26:52):
some point the federal government uncovered his identity.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
And so one day Curtis Green receives this at his
home many brings it inside.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
It's a kilogram of cocaine send to him by federal
agents who then arrest him for possession, bring him in
for questioning, and get so much information out of him.
I mean, he tells them everything because he's scared. And
so they get the logins to several high profile people
(27:24):
on the site.
Speaker 5 (27:25):
They steal five.
Speaker 6 (27:27):
Hundred thousand dollars worth of bitcoin crazy.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
And then one.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
So when you say they steal it, these these two
federal agents, you don't mean they impounded it to send
it to the federal Treasury.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
Right, No, No, they They end up getting arrested for
effect and corrupting this case because they committed fraud.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
This was It was weird.
Speaker 6 (27:57):
They were doing this thing where they were kind of
in the investigation but also on the side personally benefiting
from it. They tell Curtis Green that ross Olbricht, because
Curtis snitched about all of this information, ross Olbrich wants
him beat up, so they fake his.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Torture, They fake a waterboarding and.
Speaker 6 (28:16):
Sent to take pictures, and then they tell him that
ross Olbricht has put a hit out on him, and
this is where we get into the hitman allegations. So
they pretend to kill him, and Curtis Green then hides
for the next year in his home in Utah, thinking
that if he comes out of his house, he's going
(28:40):
to die because ross Olbricht will figure out that he's
alive and that the hit was fake. All of this
was done by two rogue, corrupt officers of the federal
government who then end up going to jail. But one
curious fact of this whole case is that no one
(29:00):
of this comes up during Ross's trial, they bring up
this allegation that Ross hired hitman, which they never charge
him for again or convict him of. They bring that up,
and I think it's to confuse people about the kind
of person that Ross's That.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Makes a lot of sense, all right, last thing, how
does this story end up getting in front of Donald
Trump and getting Donald Trump to pardon Ross Olbrick.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
Right, So Angela mccartal of the Libertarian Party, he makes
a deal with Trump that he can come speak at
the Libertarian National Convention, and she has a meeting with
him where she tells him, listen, we want you to
commute Ross Olverrick's sentence. So he goes to the Libertarian
National Convention and he tells them day one, I am
(30:00):
going to commute Ross olbricks sentence, and the room just
erupts in shears because Ross Olbricht is one of us. Right,
Ross Olbricks was writing to Porkfest saying I'm going to
be with you guys soon because he's a real libertarian, like,
he's deep in this community, and so all of this
(30:22):
feels very personal to the libertarian movement, and so a
lot of libertarians actually do end up breaking with the
party and going and voting for Donald Trump. And it
wasn't exactly the first day he was in office, it
was the second day. But the second day he's in office,
not only does he do a commutation of the sentence
(30:43):
which would allow Ross to get out, the next day
he fully pardons him, says what he did was not
a crime, which I personally believe some non libertarians have
an issue with that pardoning that he went a step
further for Ross.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
So I've got about I've got about a minute left,
and I want to share with you a text that
I just got from a friend of mine who's who's
listening and very smart dude by the way. He says, Uh,
life in prison was way too harsh. But Ross olbrit
is absolutely guilty and should be in jail. When you
build a system that facilitates overdose deaths and doesn't remove
(31:21):
child pornography, you share responsibility. I admire some of the
underlying principles, but the welcome tour is mind boggling to me.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
It would be like al Capone.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Getting in prison for Rico tax fraud and then pardoning him.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
I mean, I understand the perspective, I personally don't think
Ross is responsible.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
For the drugs.
Speaker 6 (31:47):
And I also haven't seen proof that that the more
extreme stuff was actually happening on the site.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, I find the whole story was moderation. Yeah, I
find the whole story fascinating. One listener said, so you
too are okay with cartels selling drugs on the internet,
and I responded to him, I said, you wouldn't have
cartels if drugs were legal, right, you wouldn't. You wouldn't
need all this this violent turf particular right infrastructure, and
(32:17):
it's not the hill I'm going to die on legalizing heroin, Okay,
you know, if I realize there's some downside there. But
I think I think this issue is more more subtle
than people think. I'll give you the last seventeen seconds.
Speaker 6 (32:33):
Yeah, yeah, and I'll just say, you know, Ross himself
was not convicted of selling any illicit substances. There was
a degree of moderation happening on the Silk Road, which
is why he had employees there to get really rid
of the really nasty stuff.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
But I do understand.
Speaker 6 (32:51):
Where people are coming from that you shouldn't get a
welcome tour. I think we can come together in agreement
on the idea that the sentence they dealt out to
him was just too much and a large injustice.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Was corrected by Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, I think the commutation would have been more appropriate
than a pardon, but it is what it is, and
in any case, it's fascinating story. Maggieanders is the host
of Undoctrination. You can watch her videos on YouTube. Just
go look for Undoctrination. She's a social media content creator
at fife dot org, a wonderful resource and great website.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Thanks as always, MAGGIEO is great, Thanks so much.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
Ross.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
All right, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be
right back on Kowa. Hi Dragon. By the way, Hi there,
so we Dragon. We just had a conversation with Maggieanders
from FEE.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
About this guy, Ross Olbrich who ran Silk Road.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
And Silk Road was this dark web website where you
could literally buy heroin, right, You could buy almost any
drug and sometimes some people put some other stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
I think some.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
People tried to sell child porn on there, but the
website took it down, but mostly they didn't take down
very much. They only took down like the worst of
the worst stuff. And you could buy almost any illegal
drug and all that, and so they caught and this
guy wasn't selling anything, he was just running the website,
and they caught.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Him and sentenced him, and he was convicted.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Essentially of money laundering and sentenced to life in prison
without parole.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
So that was that's the background, and a lot of
people are texting.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
So I want to just address a few things as
an objectivist, which is not quite the same thing as libertarian,
but similar I do believe that people should be allowed
to put whatever they want to put. Adults should be
allowed to put whatever they want to put in their
own in their own bodies. That said, as somebody who
lives in the real world, as I said to Maggie,
it's not the hill I would die on, right. I
(34:47):
don't need to run around trying to make heroin illegal.
I think it's right that marijuana is illegal. There are
probably some other things that are illegal that should probably
be legal and not create very much societal harm.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
You know, Generally, my view is.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
That it's not the government's job to protect people from themselves.
And there's a whole other but but what we've seen
in some places that have done some legalization of hard
drugs is that it hasn't worked out real well, and
they've they've criminalized them again, and it's it's a it's
a messy situation. So, you know, in my in my
(35:22):
libertarian dream world where.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Where the nation is mostly filled with.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Rational people who will are more likely than not to
make good decisions, you know, it's a lot easier to
live in a in a libertarian dream world where you
have that. When you have a country that has an
enormous number of people who will make bad decisions and
then impose their costs on other people, it's a little
bit harder. And I and I do want to live
(35:53):
you know, in my mind, I want to be in
the real world. So I'm not I'm not crucading for
heroin to be legal, even though in principle I think
it should be for adults.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Now back to the Ross.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Olbrichs thing, right, So he created this website, and he
knows what people are selling on the website, and he
created one of the only websites.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Where basically you could.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Get away with selling this stuff because the way he
did it was so encrypted and so anonymized that you
couldn't track the financial transactions. And they basically the government
basically couldn't catch the people who were actually selling the drugs,
so they caught him.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
So he knew that what he was doing was illegal
or allowing illegal activity.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
And that's why, even though I lean very libertarian, I
think he was guilty of something.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
I don't know exactly what the.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Right charge would be, but I am absolutely one hundred
percent certain that life in prison without parole was not
the right sentence for him. I think Donald Trump pardoned
him because Donald Trump goes to the extreme on absolutely
everything he does, all the time, everything he says, everything
he does.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
He is never a man of moderation in anything.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I will say he commuted the sentences rather than pardoning
the leaders of January sixth, and then he pardoned another
fifteen hundred people. But the very top guys, the guys
were running oathkeepers and proud Boys and whatever who organized
January sixth, he only commuted their sentence. And that's interesting.
He still went ahead and pardoned ross Albrich. I think
(37:40):
a commutation would have made more sense. He served some
time in prison. I think he basically served the right
amount of time in prison, maybe even a little too much,
but he probably deserves to have that criminal conviction on
his record. It's a tough call, it really is. It
(38:02):
really is a tough call, you know. And to the
listener who says, you know, that guy made it illegal,
made it possible for cartels to sell illegal drugs, I'll
say it again and again. I'm not championing this. I'm
just throwing it out there as a thought experiment. If
the drugs weren't illegal, would you have cartels? And if
(38:28):
you want to look at an American example, look at
the American alcohol industry before, during and after prohibition.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Before prohibition, there were not cartels.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
During prohibition, there were cartels al Capone and the Mob
and all these people who were because where there's a
big enough demand, there will be a supply and there.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Will be people willing to take the risk.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
And then as soon as as soon as prohibition ended,
those cartels were gone. And now you have Budweiser and
Jim Beam right in, all these enormous legal liquor companies,
alcohol producing companies that somehow don't need to run around
with machine guns and machetes killing off their competition. The
(39:14):
reason we have cartels that kill so many people and
own Mexico is because these drugs are illegal. If they
were legal, we'd have companies set up in the United
States making them in clean labs, distributing in legal ways,
(39:35):
get some kind of stamp of approval on them, the
way you do for ordinary pharmaceuticals, or the way you
do for food.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Products, or right anything that comes through the FDA.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
And again, I'm not saying we should definitely do this,
but I just want you to think about it. I
just want you to think about it. Maybe the harm
being caused by having these drugs ill legal, maybe is
greater than the harm that we would suffer.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
If the drugs were legal. Maybe the nation surely.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Decided that was the case when alcohol was made illegal.
Would it be the same with heroin?
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I don't know, cocaine, meth, these drugs are harmful. They're
very harmful. I don't know. But I just want to
throw that out there as a thought. All Right.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
I got so many other little stories I want to
share with you. Here's one that I've had all week,
and I don't know whether you've heard it on the
news anywhere. There's a war going on, not Ukraine, not Gaza,
Congo in Congo, which used to be called the Congo
(40:52):
there's a group of rebels who are coming out of Rwanda,
which is just to Congo's east. They go by the
name M three and they have taken over a fairly
large city called Goma. I think there's a couple million
people in that city. It's a pretty big city, right,
It's much bigger than Denver. And these rebels came in
(41:15):
from Rwanda. It appears they might be supported by a
limited number of actual Rwandan military troops.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
They've taken over the city. They killed some people.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I don't think they killed an immense amount of people,
mostly because the Congolese military that was there to defend Goma,
and there were also private contractors there.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
To defend Goma.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
They kind of did what the Iraqi military did when
we got there, which was they dropped their weapons.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
And ran away.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
So there hasn't really been a lot of death as
far as I can tell. The rebels are now talking
about going all the way across the country to the
capital of Kinshasa all the way on the western the
western end of the country. It's I don't know how
many hundreds of miles it is, but it's a long way.
They're talking about going in and trying to take over
(42:08):
the whole country, and we just have to keep an
eye on it.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Here's the main thing I want you to know.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
This is probably not so much about tribal warfare or
simple territorial warfare. Instead, what this is probably about is
the fact that Eastern Congo in particular has an immense
amount of mineral wealth, the kind of like cobalt that
you make your smart you need for your smartphones, and
(42:37):
all kinds of other things. And it is thought that
there are trillions with a t of dollars of minerals
in the ground there, and that is probably what this
is about. And right now the rest of the world
has no idea how to stop it. All right, I
still got a whole bunch of like short stories I
want to get to with you today. You know that
for a while I was having Chris Cuomo on the show. Lately,
(42:58):
I've been having Leland Vintord on the show every couple
of weeks, and I mention every time that that Leland
is on. And because it's true that my wife and
I are watching News Nation a lot and not watching
the other news networks nearly as much as we used
to do, there's still a couple of Fox shows that
I that I really like, but we're watching a lot
(43:20):
more News Nation and so I just wanted to share
this with you.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Let's see this.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
This is from an outlet called The Desk, but in
any case, Nextstar Media groups upstart cable news channel. News
Nation scored a major victory in January, with the network
topping MSNBC among key demographic viewers across several programs. And
then they go through all the stuff and I won't
bother you. I won't bother you with the details. And
(43:47):
just to be clear, you know, News Nation MSNBC are
way way way behind Fox. They're not close, okay, but
News Nation is quite new and they're growing and MSNBC
is terrible.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Well, so I was just very happy to see.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
The news that News Nation is now beating MSNBC in
some key demographics at key times a day, and I
wanted to share that with you. All Right, here's another story.
So for me, this falls into the category of story
that comes up from time to time where on the
one hand, I'm very glad they won and they deserved
to win. On the other hand, I'm kind of bummed
(44:23):
that the cost of the win will be borne by taxpayers.
So here's the story. This is from earlier this week.
I'll go to our news partners at KADIVR kadivr dot com.
A federal jury for the District of Colorado has awarded
over five million dollars to a Colorado sheriff and three
(44:45):
deputies in a wrongful termination case.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
So former chiefs for.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
The Adams County Sheriff's Office, Timothy Coates and Gene Claps,
along with former Captain Mark Mitchell and former Commander Kevin
Currier or Courier, brought the federal lawsuit against Adams County
and then Sheriff Richard Reganborne in twenty twenty. And so
(45:12):
let's see, this is from one of the attorneys on
the case. In twenty nineteen, then Sheriff Rick Regenborn won
the Adams County Sheriff's Office sheriff's race.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
He terminated all of.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
These individuals simply because they were supporting a different candidate,
a candidate they thought would be better.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
For public safety.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
The lawsuit says that Reaganborn, who by the way, has
since been convicted of felony forgery for faking police training records,
terminated the employees from their positions after learning that they
supported his opposition in the twenty eighteen race, who was
the incumbentent at.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
The time, Mike McIntosh.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Wow Reaganborne admitted that he looked at who donated to
the other campaigns because that's public information. Now one of
these guys just won. His last name is Claps Claps.
He is now the sheriff. He's been elected as sheriff
and was sworn in uh two years ago.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
And he said that.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Running for sheriff had nothing to.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Do with the case.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
He said, it's a separate issue that we're we're facing.
He said, this is a separate issue that we are
facing with the violation of our constitutional rights. And running
for sheriff was all about safe for communities.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
And stronger leadership.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
In any case, these for these guys, these four guys each,
you're gonna get around a million or a little over
a million dollars because the former corrupt sheriff decided to
fire all these people for having supported his opponent. And
(46:48):
so these guys deserve to win. And the former sheriff,
you know, is now convicted of a felony related to
something else. And I'm so on the one hand, I'm
glad they won. They deserved to win. They were massively
mistreated by the previous sheriff. But as I said, the
shame in all of these cases. Yes, I realized there
might be insurance to cover some of it, But the
(47:09):
bottom line is, the guy who did the wrong thing
isn't gonna be paying this fine tax insurance and taxpayers are.
And to the extent that insurance covers it and the
insurance rates go up, taxpayers will be covering the higher
insurance premium. So either way, taxpayers get the short end
of the stick because the guy who taxpayers hired was
a bad guy.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
In any case, they did deserve the win.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
I really enjoy interacting with listeners about stuff, and this
is this is a little bit heavy for a Friday,
but I'm gonna do it just based on the conversation
we were having earlier in the show where it sort
of escaped off into a conversation about about drug legalization.
And if you're just joining, the very short version of
(47:55):
what I said is that in my libertarian dream world,
drugs would be legal, I would still not use them.
And I realize that my libertarian dream world is a
little bit or more than a little bit depending on
the situation. Incompatible with a population that includes a lot
(48:18):
of people who will make bad decisions. But that's not
the only thing it's incompatible with, which is why legalizing
drugs is not something I run around championing hard drugs
in particular. Right, it's a it's kind of an intellectual principle,
but at some point intellectual principles can collide with the
real world, and I have to be honest about that now.
(48:39):
I got an email from Peter, and Peter said, you
said on your show today, you're in favor of allowing
people to put anything in their bodies they want, as
long as they don't hurt anyone else. He said, I
believe that is logically inconsistent. Here's why we have to
define what's meant by not hurting anyone else. And Peter
believes that is impos possible, as quote no man is
(49:01):
an island, as John Dunn famously wrote.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
For example, Peter says, someone who.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Ingests illegal drugs goes to the hospital and a huge
bill ends up hurting all the people in the same
insurance pool as himself. Since health insurance premiums will go
up to account for increased claims, as a result of that.
And I will add Peter didn't say this. I will
add that he could also go to the hospital and
be uninsured, and then you've got this what's called uncompensated care,
(49:28):
and that requires.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
The hospital to also raise prices.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
So whether or not the person is insured, it can
definitely have that effect. Peter says, if that person as
a family as bad actions are likely negatively affecting his family,
loss of wages, bad mood, failure to interact properly, if
the drugs hurt him physically or mentally, then society is
losing his productivity and potential positive contributions to society. If
(49:52):
drugs impair him sufficiently, then he might go on welfare,
and society has to shoulder the cost. So ultimately, it's
illogical to say if you do something stupid to yourself
that you're only hurting yourself. So it's a very good letter,
it's a very good note, and I wrote back to
Peter already, but I wanted to just take a minute
and talk about it because I just really enjoy this
(50:13):
kind of interaction. It's one of the great for me,
one of the great pleasures of my job is interacting
with you right, whether it's text or email, I realize
I really I don't take calls anymore. I find text
in email more fun and more effective and.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
More staying on point.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
So I just I'm not going to spend long on
or not very long on this, but I just did
want to respond.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
So if I'm doing this kind of analysis, I would
say that.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Things like worse family relationships, lower productivity, things like that
are are just not things that I'm willing to consider
in the calculation from a principled perspective. I'm not saying
they don't happen. I'm just saying that when I think
about the harm that might come from somebody using drugs
(51:07):
and whether there should be a government prohibition against using drugs,
I need to focus on really tangible harm. And I'm
not for me, I'm not gonna you know, I'm not
gonna consider that other stuff like is it bad for
the guy's family, Like.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
The guy needs to consider.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
That the family maybe, you know, if they find the
person on drugs, maybe they'll try to stop him for
those reasons.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
But I need to focus on really.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
Tangible harms, economic harms, harms you can harms you can see.
And I do think in Peter's note to me, the
one that I think is not just legitimate but important
is the healthcare one.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
And I'll give you an analogy and then i'll come
back to it.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Well, the analogy I want to give you is Milton
Friedman is reputed to have said Milton Freedman is very
libertarian and wanted a lot more immigration and perhaps even
what you and I might call an open border, which
is not to say anybody can come in without knowing
who they are. That's what open border means now, and
(52:19):
that's a national security risk. But rather, let's say unlimited
legal immigration, or you know.
Speaker 2 (52:25):
Who's coming in.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
You keep the criminals out, you keep terrorists out as
best you can, but people who want to just come
and work and be part of the society. To have
that unlimited is something that I think Milton Friedman would
have supported, except, and this is key now, he said,
you cannot have an open border.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Again the definition of open border I just gave you.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
You cannot have an open border and a welfare state, right,
because what you do is you will attract people who
want to come here to get other people's money, and
that becomes a burden on taxpayers. And that's a real harm,
and it means you can't have an open border in
(53:13):
a situation where the people who come here can then be,
especially in the short term, the beneficiaries of receiving other
people's money. And that's why Peter's comment about the potential
impact on the healthcare system from people using drugs is
(53:34):
a correct one. So I don't care if somebody wants
to take an illegal drug and hurt himself, and frankly,
I don't care if it also hurts his family. From
the perspective of what's the proper role of government. I
care as a normal human being who wants people to
do well and don't want people yet hurt. But when
(53:55):
you're talking about what's the proper role of government, I'm
just not going to concern myself, Well, is it bad
for that guy's family if he takes drugs. The family
can work that out, nonprofits can work someone else can
work that out.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
But I'm talking about should it be illegal.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
And if somebody takes some you know, takes heroin and
then ends up oding and going to the hospital and
costing the insurance company one hundred thousand dollars or a
million dollars or is uninsured and cost the hospital one
hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars, And in either case,
the insurance company or the hospital is going to need
(54:35):
to make that money up by raising insurance premiums or
raising prices on everybody else.
Speaker 2 (54:40):
That's a real harm to others.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
So this is where my libertarian dream world starts getting
to a place where it needs to sound pretty harsh,
because what I would say in that case is insurance
policies should be able to say we're not gonna cover
you for a drug overdose because that's not fair to
(55:05):
all of other or other policy holders. And hospitals need
to say we're not gonna take care of you unless
you can pay.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
For it, and that's not gonna happen optimally.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
Right. If I are just gonna take this a little
bit further, I would say, let there be some nonprofits
who care, who maybe set up some kind of fund
where they say, we want to help cover the cost
of people who come into the hospital with drug overdoses.
And I don't think that's the most likely nonprofit thing
to be set up, because people are gonna want to
set up nonprofits for people who aren't overdose dosing on drugs, right,
(55:45):
you're gonna want to set up nonprofits for kids who
are being hurt by something or people who are have
their homes.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
Destroyed by fires or whatever.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
But Peter's response on that one is a it's a
legit question. If you're gonna allow people to take hard drugs,
how are you going to prevent their health care costs
from being dumped on the rest of society, because that
is a cost that is very likely to occur. And
(56:16):
on that one, on that one, it is that's a
hard one. And again that's why I'm not jumping up
and down saying we should legalize everything, because I don't
think there is an answer for that in the world
we live in now. Because insurance companies will probably not
be able to say they won't cover someone for a
(56:39):
drug overdose.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
I'm not sure about that.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
I'm not an expert on that part of health insurance
and hospitals, especially because they're full of people who don't
want other people to die, that's why they're working there.
Hospitals are not going to say we're gonna turn you away,
just the same way they won't turn away illegal aliens
who won't pay for health care. Who can't pay for
health care, whatever it might be. There is this externality.
(57:02):
And by the way, it's the same externality that Joe
Biden created for us by opening the southern border to
millions of illegal aliens without any money and without health insurance,
who use emergency rooms as their primary care. And that's why,
that's why Denver Health needed to just get a new
sales tax on the ballot in Denver, and so Denver
(57:24):
Rights are going to be paying millions of dollars a
year more to cover that that same kind of externality is.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
That, okay? Is that okay?
Speaker 1 (57:37):
You know, this is what makes public policy difficult. This
is what makes the intersection of political philosophy in the
real world difficult. And you know, and so I said
to Peter, Look, I don't accept a bunch of those
things that you said as the kind of potential theoretical
(57:58):
harm should make you know, drugs or hard drugs illegal.
But the healthcare one is a legit argument. It really is.
All right, I'm gonna move on, and again, let me
just say thank you, Peter, and thanks to everybody who
emails me or texts me about everything. I try to
read everything. I respond to a lot. I don't respond
to everything, but I respond.
Speaker 2 (58:17):
To a lot. And by the way, normally, like if.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
You text in at five six six nine zero, you know,
if you're if you're saying something to Dragon or a
Rod or Shannon and you get a response, that's gonna
be from them.
Speaker 2 (58:32):
But normally, if you're.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
Texting the show and asking something about.
Speaker 2 (58:35):
Me and you get a response, normally it's me.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
Every once in a while, Dragon knows the answer to
something and he'll do it. And Dragon, when you replied,
do you always say it's.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
Dragon or yeah?
Speaker 7 (58:45):
I always tag out at the end of the text
message with either D if there's not enough space or
Dragon Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:52):
Okay, so good.
Speaker 1 (58:53):
So when when Dragon is producing for me and you
get a response, if it doesn't say D or Dragon
at the end, it is from me.
Speaker 7 (59:01):
Like right now, specifically, there is a text message that
came in five sixty six nine zero, what happened to
the live concert last night? And I am about to
respond that it was aired on our sister station one
O three five the Fox.
Speaker 2 (59:13):
Okay, there you go.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
So and if you get an email response from me,
that is one hundred percent of the time from me.
Nobody else has access to my email. I don't have staff,
I don't have producers looking through my email and answering things.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
To make my life easier.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
If you get an answer from me by email, it
is always one hundred percent of the time me that
sent you the answer.
Speaker 2 (59:34):
So you are welcome to keep in touch any of these.
Speaker 1 (59:36):
Ways five six six nine zero or by email. Easiest
is probably Rass at Koadnver dot com. R Oss at Koa,
Denver dot com. By the way, do not try to
email anybody else at iHeart using at Koadenver.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Dot com because I own at.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
Koaight, I own the url koa Denver dot com.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
It is not an iHeart owned url. I offered.
Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
I offered it to iHeart for them to buy and
use it in the way that I'm using it, and
they said no. So I bought it because I didn't
want it to get away. So Ross at iHeart Ross
at Koa, Denver dot com works, But you know, whatever
else at koa, Denver dot com doesn't work. I might
have actually set up Mandy there, I don't remember. I
(01:00:23):
can set up whatever I want, But anyway, there's that Ross.
Government has no business being in healthcare.
Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Absolutely right, absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
In my libertarian dream world, government wouldn't have anything to
do with healthcare. Oh oh, all right, as long as
you want to mention that, let me. Let me bring
up something else here, let me. I'm not even sure
if I put this on my on my web page
for or on my show sheet for today, but yeah,
actually here it is.
Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Here, it is.
Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
There is a bill in the state legislature right now,
brought to you by four Democrats, of.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Course, and it's Senate Bill forty five, and.
Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
It's entitled Healthcare Payment System Analysis.
Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
And what this.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Is this is the first step towards socialized medicine in
the state of Colorado. And the bill I'll share with
you some of the bill summary. The bill requires the
Colorado School of Public Health to analyze draft model legislation
for implementing a single payer, nonprofit, publicly financed, and privately
delivered universal health care payment system for Colorado that directly
(01:01:31):
compensates providers. The Colorado School of Public Health must submit
a report detailing its findings to the General Assembly by
December thirty one.
Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
So I was going to talk about this later in
the show, but it fits well here, So what all
that gobbledegook means is the Democrats want the University of Colorado.
Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
School of Public Health.
Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
To analyze proposed legislation that, if the legislation passed, would
eliminate private health insurance in the state of Colorado, and
all health insurance would go through the government and be
paid for by essentially instead of insurance premiums, that would
(01:02:15):
be paid for by surcharges on your payroll, taxes, income taxes,
whatever it might be. And it's hard to imagine a
worse idea than this. But of course you have to
look at who Colorado's keep electing to the state legislature, right.
I think Sonya jack has lewis maybe the key, the
lead sponsor on this. This is the state senator who's
(01:02:39):
under investigation right now for making her state Senate aids
do garden work at her house and work in her
kitchen when she has a party and like help cater
her parties. She's under investigation for that right now, and
I don't even know how much longer she's going to
be in the Senate, but it shows you her judgment.
And this is the person behind this thing. And if
(01:02:59):
you think that health care is expensive. Now just wait
till you see how much it costs when it's free.
You will not If healthcare becomes free, quote unquote free
in Colorado quote unquote publicly financed, you won't be able
to afford to live here anymore unless you're a billionaire,
and you will.
Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Lose whatever quality of health care you have right now.
Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
It will plummet. Doctors will leave, quality of health care
will plummet, It'll be harder for you to get an appointment.
The best doctors will move to other states, and this
will be an absolute disaster. Now, just to be clear again,
I want to make sure everybody understands what I'm saying
this bill does.
Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
The bill does not implement the system. What the bill
does is it gives proposed.
Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Legislation to the University of Colorado.
Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
School of Public Health.
Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
And asks them to analyze what it would mean for
the healthcare system. So we'll see how the analysis comes out.
The analysis is due at the end of next year.
But you know, a lot of times you've got academics who.
Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Like the idea of socialized.
Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Medicine because they think they're smarter than everybody else, and
they think that they can just in the same way
that people on the political left always believe that the
economy needs to be structured and ordered and planned from
above because you and I are too stupid to make
our own economic decisions.
Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
And of course that always ends up badly.
Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Just ask Cuba, right, ask China, ask Venezuela, ask every
place that lives in a socialized economy. And health care
is more, no different. Actually, healthcare is probably even worse.
It is so complicated. And also, here's the other thing
I'll mention, to the extent that you think that healthcare
is bad, now, don't let people on the political the
(01:05:00):
left convince you that it's a market failure, to the
extent that healthcare is not as good as it should be.
Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
We're aas too expensive. Now, it's a government failure.
Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Healthcare is one of the least free markets there is, healthcare, Banking,
mortgages the least free markets there are.
Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Oh and higher education. So all right, I.
Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Wasn't gonna talk about that just then, but it seemed
to fit in just then, So I'm.
Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Glad, I glad I mentioned it. All right, how about this.
Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
There's a pretty well known casino in Blackhawk, and you
know Blackhawks, central city, area called Monarch. It used to
be what did the Monarch used to.
Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Be the Riviera. Yeah, it used to be the Riviera Blackhawk.
Now it's the Monarch, all right. So I have a
question for you. They've got lots of slot machines, and.
Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Just like many casinos, they have slot machines from I
don't know if they have penny slots, but I bet
you they have nickel slots, and you know, time quarter,
a half dollar dollar. They got slots all the way
up to at least fifty dollars a poll. And they
have a thing called a progressive jackpot, a progressive jackpot.
Speaker 7 (01:06:14):
And.
Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
That can get over a million dollars. And it's actually,
you know, pretty easy for it to get for it
to get over a million dollars, because it's not that
easy to win.
Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
So here's my question for you.
Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Monarch Casino has been around twelve years as Monarch.
Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
I think, how many times in those twelve.
Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Years do you think somebody won has won the million
dollar jackpot on a slot machine?
Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
How many times in twelve years?
Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
Dragon, you got a guess how many times in twelve
years there's been a winner?
Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
Four? Four? That's a very good guess. They hang up.
Speaker 7 (01:07:00):
Posters all over place. This person won one hundred thousand.
This was one two hundred thousand, and so but the
whole million dollar price, I'm gonna go four.
Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Four times, four times in twelve years. And so the
answer is that a week ago, on January twenty third,
somebody playing slots at Monarch fifty dollars bet on slots
one a million, eighty five thousand, four hundred and thirty
(01:07:28):
five dollars and eighty nine cents. This person is unnamed,
and that is the first time anybody has ever won
seven figure jackpot at that casino.
Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
Yeah, the first time.
Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
And I would have guessed something like four Also, my
guess would have.
Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Been similar to years. And what this says to me,
and this isn't.
Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Really a comment about Monarch, because I'm sure it's the
same everywhere, is that the odds on their slot machines.
Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
Really really suck.
Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
And you know, so you might say, yeah, winning a
million dollars on a slot machine is a lot, it's
a big win, you know, I think it's not that
big a win when you're talking about fifty dollars bets, right,
winning a million dollars If you were betting a nickel
or a dollar. Okay, that's like enormous and I and
(01:08:20):
I wouldn't expect.
Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
That to happen very often at all.
Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
But winning a million dollars on when you're betting fifty,
I don't know. To me, that seems like something that
should have happened before. Now, if you don't have the
iHeartRadio app, go get it. The new version is fabulous.
If you have an older version that you know somehow,
you have an updated on your phone or tablet or whatever,
go get the updated version and then you can set
(01:08:43):
koa as a as a preset on our absolutely free
and redesigned iHeartRadio app. But the new version functions a
lot like a car radio with the scan and the
radio dial and the presets, and it is pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
And like I said, it's free, so I hope you
do that and then you can, like I said, put
but Koa there.
Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Let me respond to two different subjects on the listener
text line. So a few people have been texting in
about gambling and slot.
Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
Machines and stuff, and I want to touch on this
for a minute.
Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
So you know, one listener said, how many people play
fifty dollars slots? And I said, I have no idea,
but I bet it's more.
Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Than you think.
Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Right, when you go to casinos and you see these
expensive slot machines and more often than not, there's somebody.
Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
Playing and they are there for a reason. Yeah, that's right.
Take it up space. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
The other thing that I don't know, and I would
really like to know, so if any of you actually
knows and is not just guessing, here's what I would
like to know. So we were talking about an example
where for the first time in twelve years, somebody who
was playing fifty dollars slots at the Monarch won a
progressive jackpot of over a million dollars. And some people
(01:09:56):
have won a progressive jackpot before, but it was under
that so the first time ever that that's happened.
Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
What I don't know is whether that progressive.
Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
Jackpot is only available to people who are playing on
let's say the fifty dollars machine it right, or is
that jackpot somehow a combination of different machines where people
could be betting different amounts and then maybe you have
for some somehow higher odds of winning it if you're betting,
if you're doing to fifty dollars one instead of the
(01:10:26):
five or the one or whatever. So I don't know,
I don't know how that works. Listener asked this question.
I want to I want to address it. Ross they
have to let someone win every once in a while
so that everyone flocks back to the machines. The fact
they are digital, do you think there's a high probability
that they are rigged? And I have a very strong
(01:10:47):
opinion on this, very strong opinion. I have very high
confidence that they are not rigged. That they are not rigged.
And here's why. Couple reasons and there there are these
are these are all important reasons. They're the machines are
tested constantly by regulators, right who go in and actually
(01:11:10):
kind of check the machines and all that. That's one
thing that's probably not the most important one. Uh, the
risk of rigging the machines is really high. You're talking
about you know, if you get caught on this finds
that will put you out of business and somebody.
Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
Is going to go to jail. So I think that's important.
Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
But I actually think the most the most important reason
that these machines are not rigged is.
Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
That they don't need to be it's a digital machine.
It's computer program, and you just tell it what the
odds should be of any given thing. So in a sense,
that could mean that the.
Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Output of that aren't like spinning physical dials anymore, but
just digital versions of that. In a sense, it's rigged,
and that the program is design that such and such
a combination that will win you the progressive jackpot should
never happen more than x percent of the time. And
that's not rigging, right, that's not rigging. That's just setting
(01:12:14):
the program. And as long as they set the program
so that the odds are at least as good as
what they have agreed with the regulators, that the odds
must be right. So if the odds are one out
of one hundred thousand right, one out of one hundred
(01:12:35):
thousand pulls on that machine will win the progressive jackpot,
then if that's what they've agreed to with the government,
then they just set that in the machine and as
long as the odds are that good, then they're fine.
Is that rigging, I don't think so. I think when
you talk about rigging, I think what rigging means is
(01:12:58):
the odds are not what you expect they are right,
they're telling you the odds are one thing, but the
actual odds are another thing. And I don't think that's
I don't think that's going on.
Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
Ross. You have to play the max bed.
Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
In order to win the jackpot on any slot. Okay,
that that might be. Yeah, that's what Jason says.
Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Ross.
Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
On that slot machine, the minimum bet is twenty five. Also,
that machine has only been there about two years, not twelve.
That's interesting. I don't But did they have some form
of a million dollar progressive jackpot before then? I don't know,
but very interesting your your level of knowledge there.
Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
That's cool in any case.
Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
In any case, I don't think the machines are rigged
because I don't think they need to be, and because
the risk of doing so is too high.
Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
Here's the other thing I'll point out now.
Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
I don't know about this in the programming, but in theory.
In theory, just because something has odds of let's say,
one in one hundred thousand spins, does not mean that
it could not happen twice in a row. In theory,
I don't know about in practice. I don't know if
(01:14:10):
the way these programs are written that if somebody wins
the jackpot on a pole. It is literally impossible to
win it on the next poll. But in theory it
shouldn't be impossible. It should just be insanely unlikely. All right,
all right, there's that dragon. Did you have anything to
(01:14:30):
add there or not?
Speaker 7 (01:14:31):
Just curious and things that if they're like random number generators,
and we've talked to physicists before that say that's not
a real thing, so they must not be random randomly
generated then, right, So.
Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
What I would say to that is when the physicists
say they're not a real thing, they mean it like
out to a level of precision that is not that
important here, right, for something like you know, one in
one hundred thousand, and you're going to generate a whole
bunch of random numbers. They're random enough for these purposes.
(01:15:09):
They're just not random enough for something where you need
to you're going to try to recreate some effects in
the universe of chaos theory, right, yeah, all right, we
still have a ton of stuff to do, so just
stick with.
Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
Me here on KOA. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
I forgot to copy over the stuff for my song
for name that tune, but I'm going to do it
now and that way when we get to name that
tune and you know you're gonna do that live on
the air, right yeah, right now, right now, semi professional radio.
So while I'm doing this, let me just say a
listener has sent me a text saying, Ross, it sounds
(01:15:46):
like you don't know very much about slot machines, and
I plead no contest to that. I don't know a
lot about slot machines because I know that slot machines
have terrible odds, and therefore I basically never play them.
Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
I've played slots just you know, a.
Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Few times in my life, and it's always in the
same situation. It's always the same situation. And this was
when I was a much younger man. It's two thirty
in the morning in Vegas. I've had a few beers.
I'm don't I don't get drunk, but I've had a
few beers, and I know better than to play any
(01:16:24):
game that involves real money when I am even the
slightest bit in beer inebriated.
Speaker 2 (01:16:30):
So I would go into.
Speaker 1 (01:16:31):
A casino, and these casinos really don't exist anymore, because
the Vegas Strip now is all really kind of high
dollar stuff. But if you used to go to Vegas,
you will remember, for example, the Barbary Coast.
Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
Barbary Coast was such a cool little casino.
Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
It was a low dollar casino, but right in the
heart of everything they owe. The Barbary Coast was one
of the last places to have hand delt blackjack, where
the dealer is holding just one or maybe two decks
of cards. He's holding them and dealing from his hand
rather than from the shoe. And if you were going
to attempt to count cards, that was where you would play.
(01:17:08):
And anyway, I would go in there and I would
play penny slots or nickel slots, and I could play
for a really long time on like ten dollars, and
I would do that, and I would lose my ten dollars,
but I knew I was going to lose my ten dollars.
There was just fun goofing around, and every once in
(01:17:29):
a while, you know, you win something and it's it's fine,
it's fine.
Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
But yes, it's true.
Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
I do not know a lot about slot machines because
I don't I don't like them. In fact, I'm not
much of a gambler these days, even, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
Can I just talk about myself for a minute Dragon,
I mean it is the Ross Kaminski show. Well not really,
but so I used to be a financial markets trader, right.
Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
I used to be in Chicago waving my hands and
yelling on the options exchange floor, and people would ask me, Hey, Ross,
don't you essentially gamble for a living?
Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
And I would.
Speaker 1 (01:18:08):
Say, I gamble for a living in the same way
that Caesar's Palace gamble's for a living. Okay, And really
I mean it, so did I What did I mean
by that? You can go in and make a bed
at Caesar's Palace, but you are going to play whatever
the odds are of the game. As they set up
the game you are playing at effectively at their price.
(01:18:34):
You are going to put a dollar down on the
number seventeen on a roulette wheel, and Caesar's has told
you that if number seventeen hits, they're gonna pay you
thirty five dollars on that dollar that you wont But
there's thirty eight numbers on the roulette wheel, right one
(01:18:55):
through thirty six plus zero plus double zero. Some places
only have one zero, but in any case, so they're
going to pay you thirty five to one on something
that has odds of thirty eight to one. So every
time somebody makes a bet like that, two things are true.
The player can win and the house has the edge.
(01:19:18):
And that's the same for me. When I was an
options trader, I'm standing in the pit and if you
you wanted to buy or sell some options in something
that I was trading the or making markets in those options,
and you would, let's say, you know, go online or
call your broker or whatever it was like when I
started trading, was was in the eighties and there was
no online trading, and you want to trade these options,
(01:19:41):
you would tell your broker. The broker would come to
my pit and they would announce what option they want
to trade, and then I would tell them what the
price is.
Speaker 2 (01:19:49):
Now. You don't have to pay my price.
Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
Right You could say you're willing to pay two dollars
for this option, and I could say I'm willing to
sell them at two in an eighth and then you're
a broker would say, no, I'm not moving, I'm only
two dollars bid because you get put that order in,
or you could put an order in saying you know,
just pay whatever the price is right now, and then
I would say I'll sell them at it an eighth
and the broker would say, okay, I'll buy them at
two and an eighth. But I set the price. And
(01:20:17):
let's just say, in this example, let's say I think
the fair price is two, so i'll buy them at
one in seven eighths, which is an eighth below too,
and i'll sell them at two and an eighth, which
is an eighth above two. I think the fair price
is too. Now I could be wrong about what the
fair price is, but I think the fair price is too.
So in order to trade with you, or for you
to trade with me, you must pay my price or
(01:20:39):
sell them at my price where I believe I am
getting an advantage, or you will not make a trade.
I won't trade with you.
Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
Sorry.
Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
You can sit there and then if the stock goes
down and now I think your options are a good
sale at two where because now they're worth only one
in seven eighths and you're still they're willing to pay two, Now,
I'll sell them to you at two.
Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
I have the edge on everything.
Speaker 1 (01:21:07):
It doesn't mean I can't lose. You could come in
and buy those things at two and something could happen
five minutes later. That makes them worth five and I'm
really hosed. And that happened to me one time. I
lost one hundred thousand dollars more than my entire net
worth in one morning.
Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
I won't get into that right now.
Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
My point is I spent years being the house getting
an edge in everything, and making a really good living.
Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
In Vegas.
Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
You never have the edge unless you're a great card counter,
and that's very hard to do these days because they.
Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
Spot card counters.
Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
So I don't really like gambling very much anymore because
I used to always have the edge, and now I
feel like a sucker because the other guy has the
edge when I gamble. I like to play poker because
it's a skill game. There's luck involved too, but there's
a lot of skill involved in poker, so.
Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
I like it better.
Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
I like betting on football, but I'm not kidding when
I tell you that my average bet on you know
these apps is literally probably forty or fifty cents is
my average bet because if I lost more than that,
I'd feel like I'm moron because I know I don't
have the edge. When you grow up, I was the
(01:22:25):
youngest trader on the options exchange floor. When you grow up,
through your adult life, having the edge and then suddenly
you don't anymore.
Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
It's just not very appealing. For a couple of serious things.
Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
That I wanted to mention today and I didn't get to,
so I'm gonna do those. I'm going to do those
in a second, because Dragon and I have wasted much
of your time this morning. And and you're welcome, and
you're welcome. It's exactly what I was going to say,
You're welcome. So just I want to respond to one
listener text Ross, I'm intrigued by your man about losing
(01:23:00):
one hundred thousand dollars more than your net worth. I
assume you were employed by someone, were you training with
their money or yours at that time. I was not
employed by someone, and I lost one hundred thousand dollars
more than my net worth. So I went from being
a twenty four year old with quite a bit of
(01:23:22):
money in the bank, much more money in the bank
than a twenty four year old should normally have.
Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
To having none of that.
Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
And one hundred thousand dollars in debt and wondering how
I was going to pay my rent. I'm not going
to share any more any more of the story but
I just did want to answer that question directly. I
want to just spend a minute or two here on
a sort of serious thing. So yesterday, Telsea Gabbard, who
(01:23:52):
is President Trump's nominee to be the Director of National Intelligence,
a job she should not hold, was at a Senate hearing,
and Colorado Senator Michael Bennett, who I normally don't have
much use for what I have to say he's been
He's been pretty good in in these recent hearings, was
(01:24:14):
questioning Tulsi Gabbard and he and he did a pretty
good job in elucidating why Tulsa Gabbard should not be
anywhere near the levers of power in the American intelligence community.
Speaker 8 (01:24:32):
Is Edward snowed In a trader to the United States
of America. That is not a hard question to answer
when the stakes are this high, and.
Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
It's like the third time, chief.
Speaker 8 (01:24:43):
Someone who has your answer yes or no, is Edward
snowed In a trader to the United States of America.
Speaker 9 (01:24:52):
As someone who has on in combat, I understand how
critical our national security.
Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
So there was that, and I have to say Gabbard
had a very difficult time yesterday, including with quite a
few Republicans, and she probably created more questions than answers
in her hearing, including that her refusal to say that
Edward Snowden is a trader. And for the record, there
was some stuff that Edward Snowden disclosed that really was
(01:25:24):
illegal behavior by the United States of America.
Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
But he also disclosed a whole bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
And probably a bunch of Americans or allies of Americans
got killed because of the stuff that he disclosed.
Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
So in addition to his he was in.
Speaker 1 (01:25:38):
Part what you might call a whistleblower, but also clearly
a trader as well.
Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
There's a reason he lives in Russia. Now, okay, so
I'm going.
Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
To share with you a little more, And this clip
is quite long, and I'm not sure I'm going to
go through all of it. But again, I the reason
that I grabbed this whole clip, which is too minutes
and forty seconds, and again I might not do the
whole thing. It's just so unusual for me to say
to you, Michael Bennett did a good.
Speaker 2 (01:26:10):
Job, Like I almost never say that.
Speaker 1 (01:26:13):
It's probably not even once a year on average, but
he did.
Speaker 8 (01:26:20):
You have said on February twenty third, twenty twenty two,
at the very moment that Russian tanks were rolling across
the peaceful border of Ukraine for the first time, you
tweeted at eleven thirty pm your time. This war and
(01:26:40):
suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden administration slash
NATO had simply acknowledged Russia's legitimate, legitimate security concerns regarding
Ukraine's becoming a member of NATO.
Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
Did you say that, yes or no?
Speaker 4 (01:26:56):
I believe you're reading my tweet, Senator, Yes is the.
Speaker 8 (01:26:59):
Answer of a few months later, you set on your
podcast and I quoted it quote. But this regime changed
war against Russia that the US and NATO are waging
via their proxy in Ukraine didn't begin when Putin invaded Ukraine.
They had their eyes set on this objective long before that.
Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
Did you say that, yes or no?
Speaker 4 (01:27:23):
I believe you're reading my tweets? There is a lot answer.
Speaker 9 (01:27:27):
Yes, you're quoting a podcast that provided much to.
Speaker 8 (01:27:30):
Have a conversation with the chairman about whether I'm taking
anything out of context. I don't think I am, And
your answer is yes.
Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
All right, I'm gonna pause there, but I'm probably gonna
continue this in a second, because look, I mentioned this yesterday.
I wasn't a huge man of Pete hag Seth's I
don't think he has the skill set to do the
job of Secretary of Defense. We will find out, but
I do think I do think that Pete haig Seth
has the right goal, motivation, and a certain skill set
(01:28:04):
having served in the military that not every Secretary of
Defense has had, although recent ones have. So there is
stuff about Pete Hegseth.
Speaker 2 (01:28:14):
That I like.
Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
My main problem with him was his lack of experience
in managing a large organization and some of that stuff
in his personal background. But I didn't think he was
Trump's worst pick. I didn't think he was close to
Trump's worst worst pick. He's at least fourth. He's at
least fourth. Okay, But Telsea Gabbert and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
(01:28:38):
Those are Trump's two worst picks. I don't know if
they're in trouble. A lot of Republicans who would like
to vote no are going to vote yes just because
it's Trump and they don't want to be on the
wrong side of Trump.
Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
And again, it's a very.
Speaker 1 (01:28:51):
Difficult thing because elections have consequences, and unless somebody is
manifestly incompetent or unfit for the job, or put there
by corruption or put there by nepotism, right, you know,
Other than that, elections have consequences and you should.
Speaker 2 (01:29:06):
Get who you want.
Speaker 1 (01:29:08):
Tulsey Gabbard is manifestly unfit for this job. She supported
Russia in the Russia Ukraine War. She seemed to support
Bashar Asad in his civil war against his own people,
where he killed half a million people and used chemical
(01:29:29):
weapons against his own people. She wanted to repeal a
certain part of federal intelligence law called section seven oh two, which,
by the way, that law is worth discussing. It's worth discussing,
(01:29:50):
But just how hypocritical she is on this one is
the real problem. She when she was in Congress, sponsored
a bill to repeal this yes, and said repeatedly in
Congress and on podcasts in other places, how much she
hated section seven oh two. And then Congress passed a
(01:30:10):
couple of reforms of section seven oh two, and she
went on a podcast and said those reforms made seven
oh two worse, not better. And now in her committee
hearings she's asked about it, and she says, well, I
really didn't like seven oh two, but you guys did
some reforms, so now I support keeping it, even though
(01:30:33):
she actually said that.
Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
The reforms made it worse.
Speaker 1 (01:30:36):
So now not only does she have terrible views on
very important things related to this job, but now she's
also flip flopping in a way.
Speaker 2 (01:30:47):
That is beyond any credibility.
Speaker 8 (01:30:51):
Are you aware that your comments about proxy wars and
Russia's legitimate legitimate security concern turns to quote your own
words are in alignment with what the Russians have said
to justify their invasion of Ukraine.
Speaker 9 (01:31:14):
Yes, Senator, I don't pay attention to Russian property.
Speaker 4 (01:31:19):
The answer is reludless of whether you like it or not.
Speaker 2 (01:31:22):
I'll take it.
Speaker 8 (01:31:22):
That's fine. You said you are used to speaking truth
to power. I'm shocked to hear you now say that.
You know you are.
Speaker 2 (01:31:31):
You are agreeing. I'm not shocked because I know you
said it.
Speaker 4 (01:31:35):
You are agreeing that.
Speaker 8 (01:31:36):
You basically said that Putin was justified in rolling over
the peaceful border of Ukraine, the first time since World
War Two that a free nation had been invaded by
a totalitarian state. And you were there at eleven thirty
PM that night to say that you were with them,
(01:31:57):
not us.
Speaker 2 (01:31:58):
And let me tell you something.
Speaker 8 (01:31:59):
You say you don't know because you don't read Russian propaganda.
Russian State TV then aired your comments.
Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
Did you know that?
Speaker 4 (01:32:07):
Senator?
Speaker 9 (01:32:08):
I think you should also quote this statement that I
made criticizing Putin for his invasions.
Speaker 1 (01:32:15):
All right, that's enough. You get the idea. Telsea Gabbard
is in trouble. And this listener says his I rate
questions made Gabert look good. I understand that argument. That
can happen sometime, but that is not what happened yesterday.
Gabert looked really bad yesterday, she looked. She looked bad
(01:32:37):
to a bunch of Republicans. And it wouldn't surprise me
if Gabert doesn't get confirmed.
Speaker 2 (01:32:45):
When you I'm talking to listener here.
Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
The listener says, these committee hearings are destroying the Democrats
because they're.
Speaker 2 (01:32:50):
Just yelling at Gabbert and Kennedy. Within again, that dynamic
can happen.
Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
It happened a little bit that way with Peter hag Seth.
That happened a lot that way yesterday with Cash Battel.
They tried to go after Cash Pattel and the Dems
just look foolish. But with Gabbard and Kennedy, now now
you're the one spouting propaganda. Gabbard and Kennedy look terrible
because they don't have good answers.
Speaker 2 (01:33:16):
To the questions.
Speaker 1 (01:33:18):
Because the questions are about things that are in the
public record that they said, that are lies, anti American,
all kinds of things. Gabbard and Kennedy are both really
bad choices who are manifestly unfit.
Speaker 2 (01:33:35):
And I don't think again.
Speaker 1 (01:33:38):
I understand your point about how a committee hearing, depending
on how it goes, can make the questioners look bad,
but that's not That's not Gabbard and Kennedy. This listener
is an interesting one. Ross you've never been in the
intelligence community. We who are who aren't? Management? We want tulsy.
(01:34:00):
The senators aren't exactly the brightest minds. That's true. They're
They're definitely not. They're they're definitely not. But I it's
very I understand. Let me clarify this a little bit.
And a similar thing with Hegseeth. Maybe I understand people
who work in a particular part of government, or just
watch a particular part of government, or just citizens who
(01:34:22):
are paying taxes and you're looking at something you say,
this is no good. We need a change, we need
a revolution, we need massive, massive.
Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
Overhaul, we need everything to be different.
Speaker 1 (01:34:32):
And that's certainly a lot of the mindset that got
uh Donald Trump elected and and I get it, and
I'm with you on most of that, for most, for
most to government, and even for the intelligence community as well.
But what I would say about Telsea Gabbert is there
there's got to be someone who is a potentially credible
reformer of the of the intelligence community who hasn't sided
(01:34:57):
with Bashar Asad and Russia and Edward Snowden. She is,
She's unfit, and you know, I'm confidented that. So anyway, Hi,
Mandy good.
Speaker 10 (01:35:12):
Article on Real Clear Investigations today about what she actually
said and did not say about the sheer Ali said, yeah,
she not. She did not never said that he deserved
to stay in power or anything of that. Ilk She said,
we can't fix the conflict unless we go talk to him.
I thought it was ridiculous when she did it. To
be clear, I thought it was ridiculous when Nancy Pelosi went,
(01:35:33):
I thought it was ridiculous when John Carey went, But
you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
I to your point about like blowing stuff up.
Speaker 10 (01:35:42):
I think there is the feeling that what's been going
on for the last three decades in DC, by putting
all the quote adults in charge, has gotten us an
endless warn I rack at Afghanistan. It's gotten us to
a point where our military capabilities are degraded because of
policies that were pursued that were other than meritocratus. And
(01:36:02):
I think people are looking at this and saying, can
they do worse?
Speaker 2 (01:36:06):
There's a lot of that can they be worse? Yeah?
So I get it and I share that view.
Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
Basically, right, I want to blow up a lot of
this stuff. And that's why, of course, right, And that's
why you know, for example, again, for example, my problem
with heg Seth was his is his skill set.
Speaker 2 (01:36:24):
And experience, not his goals.
Speaker 1 (01:36:26):
I have I have no idea what Telsea Gabbard wants
to do. I have no idea if she's a reformer,
I have no idea what she actually believes. I know
what Haig Seth believes. I don't know if he has
the skill set to get it done.
Speaker 2 (01:36:39):
But Gabbard has a long history of saying insane things. Yeah,
at insane times.
Speaker 1 (01:36:45):
And if you want to get you know, a radical
in there to really shake.
Speaker 2 (01:36:49):
Things up, do it.
Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
But do it with someone who you know you can
trust to put America.
Speaker 2 (01:36:54):
I mean, don't point of phrase America first. Don't you
think that?
Speaker 10 (01:36:58):
I think in every and I said this before the
confirmation hearing started, there's always the sacrificial lamp. I thought
it was going to be Matt Gates, but he dumped
too soon, right right, Yeah, So I now believe it's
going to be RFK or Tolci, Gabertar both or both.
Speaker 2 (01:37:12):
You know, it is what it is.
Speaker 10 (01:37:13):
I'm not going to cry a river over either the
because I think the conversations that RFK has opened up
have been incredibly important. If he has the HHS secretary,
I don't really care. Those conversations have begun. Yeah, the
food industry has started responding, right, you know, so, and
see I could see.
Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
Him having some kind of role when it comes to
food safety and health.
Speaker 2 (01:37:33):
Yeah, but yeah, not running all of HHS.
Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
Hey, folks, if you're listening on the podcast right now,
that's the end of today's show.
Speaker 2 (01:37:40):
Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
Don't forget you can catch us every day on the
podcast as you are right now, on your smart speaker,
on your iHeartRadio app, even on the computer at Koa, Colorado,
and the good old fashioned way on your radio.
Speaker 2 (01:37:54):
Thanks so much for listening to the show.
I'm always looking for a way to distract myself and
you from stuff we don't want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
So as Marty and Gina were leaving, well, Marty.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Walked out, and then I was I was talking about
how my wife is going to go to Utah for
a few days because at this time of year, the
hotels are really cheap around the National Parks because it's
very off season and nobody's going this time of year.
But it's going to be in the sixties, it's gonna
be it's gonna be incredible hiking weather. So my wife
(00:29):
has just taken off for three or.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Four or five days.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And and then and then Gina, who is a big
time hiker, mentioned something about Angels something or other, so
that got the conversation started.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Angel angels what and Angel's landing in Zion and what
is it? So it's it's a hike. It's not very long.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I want to say, it's like five miles, but you
have to get a permit for it because at the
very very topic gets very very very narrow and there's
chains that you have to kind of shimmy yourself across.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
So they try to.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Not have too many people at the top of the
hike in case of, you know, anything happening. So you
have to actually apply for a permit through the National
Park Service, and it's random. They just it's a lottery
system and they pull And it was funny because my
husband and.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I both applied.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
He didn't get it and I did, and the permit
allows you to bring six people, so we were able
to we'll.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Both be able to do that in April.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Alia, you don't seem nervous at all, so I'm hoping.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I know a couple people that have done it, and
I know a couple of people who have chickened out
at the end because the.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
End is the scariest part.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
But my husband and I did Half Dome, which is
a very similar setup of that's in Yosemite, and that
was a way, way longer hike. And you're going up
the sheer part of Half Dome and there's just cables
and you just shimme yourself up by.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Pulling on the cables.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
And I actually hooked myself in with a care beiner
to the cable. But a lot of people don't do
that because when you do that, you have to unhook
yourself to then hook to the next cable, so you're
removing one hand and as you're trying to do that,
and then you're one handed on it's your cliff. Where
Like I mean, fatalities have occurred on this hike because
(02:08):
it is just very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So I'm I'm confused.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And I'm scared for you, right, Okay, so let's wait,
let's talk about both of those.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Let's go back to Angel's landing.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
I keep want to say, I keep wanting to say
angels Envy, which is a branded bourbon the Angel. So
can can you just paint a picture for me what
the top looks looks like that hike.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
All, I obviously never done it, but what I have
seen because I did the same thing with half Dome.
I watched YouTube videos because I kind of like to
psych myself out a little bit to just see what to.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Expect and imagine like maybe a.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Couple feet between your feet the chains and a cheer cliff,
so it is literally you are not really able to
shimmy around people. If somebody does chicken out on the chains,
most people actually all back up from where they started. Okay,
everyone moved back to allow this person to get all
(03:00):
because it's so narrow you can't really get around.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
You're kind of walking a ridge. Yes, yeah, chains that
are only like a.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Single chain that separates both sides of a cheer cliff
that gets you to the top.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
At least that's what I know.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Maybe maybe a texter has a better idea if someone
has done it. But and then half domes a full
shear you know, it's not like you can fall off
one side or the other.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
You would just slide slide down with half dome.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I never paid a lot of you know, I never
really studied it, but all I ever knew of it
is like professional climbers with all kinds of technical gear
and safety ropes and every you know, climbing this face.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
So if you think of half dome, you know it
as the one curved side that's really round, and then
that sheer, sheer, steep side that's what people are usually
using the equipment to climb. Yeah, so you did round
part is where the cables are, and it's another lottery system.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Where some people get it, some people don't. Somehow we did.
There's really no rhyme and reason to how they do it.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
And then that's where you use two cables to kind
of just guide yourself up.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
What are your feet like? Vertical?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Horizontal? So what angle are your feet on when you're
walking up here?
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, I'm a pretty wild photo of you are.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
If you turn around, you can't see where you just
because it is a gradual curve up.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
The further you.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Go, you're not seeing like think of like, I don't
know skin down a mountain, I guess, but you're climbing
up it and said, And so I turned around once
to check on my friend and she was.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Like, I'm stopping here and I.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Could barely see her because it is that steep of
a curve. Yeah, that you can't really and you can't
see the top until you get to the very part
where it flattens out. So it's wild. It is not
for the feet of heart by any means. And you
want to be extremely, extremely careful and experience and check
the weather and check any rain conditions because then it
gets slippery. There's so many reasons why they won't let
(05:01):
you do it. But they check your permit at the top,
and they check the forecast and they say you have
until this time until clouds start to move in and
then but you sign a whole waiver letting them know
that this is what it's.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Going to be.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
So if you're doing the half dome climb and you're
not using the carabiner, does you're then not you don't
have safety gear, then right, you could fall off and die.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, And even the carabiner is kind of a false
sense of security because you still have to unhook yourself
every once in a while to get past this little
chain that connects it to the rock. So I had
to unhook myself and rehook, and then sometimes that was
scary because now you have one hand and nothing holding
you there.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
So most people in a.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Situation of like a tragedy, most people slip and fall
outside of the cable lines and then you have nothing
else to hold on to.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And on that one, do you go down the same
way you came up? Yes?
Speaker 3 (05:56):
And then that was probably even scarier because we got
to the top, we're this is awesome, we're eating lunch,
it's beautiful up here, and then we're.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Like, how do you get back down?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
And what we decided to do, which was nuts, was
we put the cable above our heads so that way
you're holding it almost like think like a zip line.
You're like, you know, holding it and slid on our
bottoms for.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Most of the time. Wow, because it's.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
So slippery that you almost wanted to have a little
bit more grip.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So we were like, okay, we got our feet.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
On the ground and then our bottoms on the rock
and then just kind of shimmied ourselves down.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But the problem is people are also.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Coming up the same way you're going down, so every
once in a while you have to stand up, you
have to shimmy a little bit closer to the left
side as they go on the right side.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It's a it's a crazy yes, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
You have to you definitely, and it's not very eco
friendly but a lot of people leave their gloves there too,
because people forget that and it will tear up.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I mean it is.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
It is a metal wire like you. You definitely have
to wear gloves doing it. So it was fun, though
I would do it again. There was definitely a one
and done hike where it was like this was awesome,
loved it. But there's so many other awesome heights in
yo Semite. I think I tried different one.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
That's a fabulous story. Thanks thanks for sharing. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
If anyone has comments on angels landing let me know,
because I'm curious what to expect for that one.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
So, yeah, if you've done, if you do, you do
you give out an email on the air or not? Uh?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, you could do. I mean my name is so
hard to spell.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
All right, here here's what we'll do if you got
if you if you have done Angels landing and you
want to tell Gina about it, send me an email
at Ross R. O. S.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
S At iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
You don't need my last name, Ross at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
And then I'll just get it over to I'll get
it over to Gina. Cool.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Thanks thanks for sharing absolutely that it was awesome.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
That's a great way to start our Friday. We'll be
right back on KOA.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
A listener just sent me a note saying, hey, Ross,
you need to issue a correction about the thing yesterday
about the guy who missed the Wichita flight. And I
hadn't heard any kind of any kind of uh update
on this thing, but I went to I went to
look at it, and uh and and the listener's right,
(08:11):
the story has changed since since yesterday.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
This The story yesterday was that.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
This American figure skater guy named John Marravilla was not
allowed on the plane from Wichita to DC because his
dog was too big, and so his life was saved.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And and it turns out, uh that he was set
to fly out of Detroit, not Wichita. And I guess
what happened the way the story apparently developed and ended
up in you know, in American media outlets that I trusted.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I didn't make it up, but.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Apparently the way this thing spread, which says a lot
about the way the world is these days and socialists
and you know what viral that. I guess what happened
was Rush media put out a story about the guy,
saying he was supposed to be on the plane.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Because he was there with the other skaters.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And I don't know that the Russians were lying, it
would be a dumb thing to lie about, but.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Really, but they were wrong apparently.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And I guess what they did was they looked at
his Instagram posts on his personal account and misinterpreted them,
and they said that he was supposed to be on that,
you know, on the Wichitaf light, But he wasn't supposed
to be on the Wichitaf light, so that story is
not true.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And they fooled me. I mean I actually went and said, like,
all right, this is an interesting one.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I should see if I can find the story in
more than one media outlet to give me.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Some kind of sense that it's likely to be true.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
And it was on a bunch of them, and now
it still turns out still turns out not to be true.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I mean, not the biggest mistake in the world, and
it wasn't really my mistake, but I thought, you know
that listener is right, it's worth it's worth noting. So
this is going to be an interesting weekend as far
as economics and international relations because President Trump said yesterday
(10:10):
that in his mind he still really wants to go
ahead with twenty five percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
If I were Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I'd be pretty frustrated right now because he hasn't really
made clear other than wanting a little more support on
the border. He hasn't made clear just what he wants
from Canada and Mexico. And he's been saying he wants
them starting February first, which is tomorrow. Now it's it's
unclear if he's really going to do it. It's unclear
(10:41):
exactly what it will cover. He has said that he's
strongly considering not including oil, and that's fine. But the
other thing that's interesting is he's talking about twenty five
percent on our allies and biggest trading partners, Mexico and Canada,
and only ten percent on China, which is also a
(11:03):
very big trading partner, but which is like our competitor
and our enemy. It's a very strange thing. The economics
of threatening tariffs are interesting because it's like it's like saying,
if you don't do what I want, I'm going to
(11:25):
shoot both of us. You know, because tariffs are paid
for by Americans, and right, tariffs imposed by Donald Trump
were paid for by Americans. All tariffs are always paid
by the importing country, not by the exporting country. And
it's true that the exporting country can try to absorb
a little of it by lowering the price, and that
(11:46):
happened a little bit during Trump's first term, but still
Americans paid billions and billions of dollars of what was
effectively a Trump imposed sales tax that he keeps saying,
you know, the foreigners are paying it, but they're not.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
You're paying it. I'm paying it.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
But here's the thing. You didn't work around some of
this stuff. Maybe right, but there are a lot of
things that America just doesn't.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Make, and there are a lot of things that we
really do.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Rely, let's say, from Mexico and Canada on some things.
We had a lot of lumber from Canada and you
need that if you're building houses, and if you put
a twenty five percent tariff on that, then the cost
of building a house is going to go up. How
about auto parts, This is a big thing that Donald
Trump never talks about. In Americans need to understand we
have very complex supply chains and a lot of times
(12:31):
what happens is we will buy parts from some other country,
then we will assemble it here, and then sometimes we'll
even send the assembly back and they'll assemble it more there,
and then we'll import the additional assembly and then we'll
put it in a car, and it's crossed a border
three or four, you know, two, three, four times, and
(12:52):
Trump could potentially put tariffs on that every single time.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
And that means when you're buying.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
A car what you actually think of as an American
car and it's got parts that are imported from Mexico.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And use to assemble a car here.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
The price of that car is going to go up,
and you're not gonna be able to afford a car anymore.
And an immense percentage of the stuff that we import
are actually inputs, not final use products that you go
to the store and buy, but stuff that companies buy
and they use it to.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Make other things.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
There's a Wall Street Journal headline, Trump aids hunt for
eleventh hour deal to dial back Canada Mexico tariffs. It's
gonna be an interesting thing. We'll see how it plays
out with Donald Trump. It's very difficult to predict anything,
so just keep an eye on it over the weekend
and we'll see. At some point, Donald Trump's strategy of
(13:48):
using tariffs as a threat against as many countries as
he can think of to try to do something, try
to get them to do something.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
At some point, it's gonna stop working. At some point
someone's gonna call bluff.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
He's going to impose the tariff, and you and I
are going to get hurt every bit as much as
the other country will.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I am so pleased to welcome back to Koa Maggie Anders.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Maggie is the host of undoctrination and social media content
creator at the Fantastic Foundation for Economic Education. The website
is FEE dot org. Fee dot org. And before we
talk about what we're going to talk about, tell listeners
who might be econ nerds like I am what's behind you, so.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Ross, thank you for having me on again.
Speaker 6 (14:34):
I am actually at the FEE office right now, and
behind me we have the personal library of Henry Hazlett
as well as Leonard read So if you're a real
liberty lover, you'll know who reades.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So just so listeners understand.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
From time to time, because I'm a nerd, I'll ask
listeners a question and then I'll say, you know, whoever
you a listener, number whatever, who gets it right can
choose between.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Two books and I'll send you a book.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
And the books that you are allowed to choose from
are Frederick Bastiat's The Law and Henry has Let's Economics
in one lesson, and I have one hundred of them
over here under my desk, or maybe not one hundred anymore,
And so that's has Lit. And then Leonard Reid. You've
heard me mentioned from time to time. I pencil, which
(15:21):
is one of the most iconic, especially one of the
most iconic American essays in economics.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So, gosh, what a bunch of economic history around you.
I'm a little jealous as an econ.
Speaker 6 (15:31):
Nerd, right, and not to step on your territory, but
if you want to get a copy of any of those,
hit me up on Twitter or at my email, or
just go to our website and we'll send you something.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
For free, for free.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
Wow, I can make it happen.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Wow, that's powerfeed dot org, fee dot org. Okay, you
did a relatively long form for you video a couple
of days ago about Donald Trump pardoning Ross Olbricht, and.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I had mentioned this just kind of in passing on
the show.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
But it's a He's a very interesting character, and it's
a very interesting story.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And you know, depending on where you.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Are on some of this stuff, you either think of
him as a drug dealing maybe hit man hiring criminal
or a libertarian hero and crypto champion as well. And
there's a lot of overlap between crypto and the libertarian world.
(16:37):
But so before we before you tell us what you
think about this, just tell us a little about the story.
Speaker 6 (16:47):
Oh yeah, I mean, Ross Olbricht was like any other
twenty six year old, young professional, except he was running
a secretive dark web online marketplace people could buy and
sell any thing really anonymously, right, And that was a
secret that Ross was holding on too from pretty much
(17:09):
everyone in his life.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
And you know, he was a smart, nerdy kid. He
turned down on a PhD.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
From Cornell to run this marketplace and pursue entrepreneurship. And
I think he did it because he was a very
committed libertarian and wanted to show the world what like
a truly free marketplace looks like. Eventually, the federal government
caught up with him. There was a DHS agent who
(17:36):
went by the name Cirrus who infiltrated the Silk Road,
which was the website that Ross was running, and became
an employee of Ross's. And they eventually caught up to
him at this library in San Francisco while he was
still logged into the computer. Some federal agents and plane
clothing start this argument nearby and distract him while another
(18:00):
runs and grabs the laptop while it's still locked in.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
That's how they.
Speaker 6 (18:03):
Defeated a lot of these encryptions that Ross had built
into the system, and they went after him with the
whole book. They charged him with seven different charges, five
of which he was actually sentenced on, and none of
those were related to him being, you know, a killer
(18:27):
or selling drugs personally. All of them were related to
what other people were doing on his platform. But the
real kicker here is that Ross was using a tumbler
to anonymize all of these transactions, and so I think
the government went after him because they couldn't go after
everyone else.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Basically, right.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
They thought of it as money laundering, right, and the government,
and the government liked to. Part of the reason government
hates cryptos so much is they want to be able
to know, not just no, but let's start with no.
They want to be able to know as much as
possible what you're doing with your money, so that when
push comes to show, they can control what you do
(19:11):
with your money. I mean, that's where this is all
going to end up. And that's why a lot of
libertarians like crypto because it's much more difficult for government
to control.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
One little tangential question.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
You talk about Ross Olbrick in a very familiar kind
of way.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Do you know him?
Speaker 5 (19:29):
I don't.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
I don't, but I will say this, it's easy to
feel like you know him because his mother, Lynn Olbrich,
published this website with all of his letters on the website,
so you can go through and read his letters from
prison to other people, and you really get a sense
of the state of his mind while he was in
(19:51):
jail and what his motivations were. I wish I could
interview him. I know he just got released and he's
taking some time before going on the the Libertarian podcast circuit,
but hopefully one day I will be able to interview him.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
I think I relate to him to.
Speaker 6 (20:08):
A degree because he was twenty six when he launched
the Silk Road, that's how old I am currently, and
he discovered libertarianism early on into his into college and
that kind of completely derailed where his life was going,
as it did to me, and I think for me
it was really positive. The difference here being that he
(20:32):
was very entrepreneurial and clearly had some high risk tolerance
because he pursued a very different path having come to
these ideas than I did personally.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
We're talking with Maggie Anders from the Foundation for Economic
Education also known as FI.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
The website is FE dot org.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
She hosts a great video series called Undoctrination. Where's the
best place that people can watch your videos.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
By the way, I want to make sure people know.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
Go watch them on YouTube. YouTube are a great place.
I post all of my videos there. Occasionally I post
them on Twitter, so you can follow me there at magimoda.
But undoctrination on YouTube is a perfectly easy place to
find me.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Okay, so now let's go. Let's go back to the
story for a little bit. In fact, hold on, let
me look at my computer here, because I opened I
opened a web page that was a reprint. It's a
federal government archive web page about from May of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
And here's where it says.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Ross Albricht aka dread Pirate Roberts was sentenced Friday in
federal court to life in prison.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
And that's what we need to get.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
To, to life in prison in connection with his operation
and ownership of Silk Road, a hidden website designed to
enable its users to buy and sell illegal drugs and
other unlawful goods and services anonymously and beyond the reach
of law enforcement between January twenty eleven and October of
twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Uh pret bararra, who is you know?
Speaker 1 (22:02):
As part of the I guess the Obama Club.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Make no mistake. He said.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Albricht was a drug dealer in criminal profits here who
exploited people's addictions and contributed to the deaths of at
least six young people. Albrich went from hiding his cybercrime
identity to becoming the face of cybercrime. And as today's
sentence proves, no one is above the law now. So
they charged him basically with money laundering and running this
(22:29):
website where other people sold drugs, and yet he got
life in prison.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
When he didn't hurt it without pole So.
Speaker 6 (22:39):
Yeah, go ahead, Yeah, he got life in prison without parole.
They really sentenced him to two life sentences plus forty years,
which is an additional twenty more years than the.
Speaker 5 (22:54):
Prosecution even asked for in his trial.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
To me, even if you think he might have some
responsibility for the drugs being sold on his website or
what was happening.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
There, that is a huge overreach.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
That's going very very deep into cruel and unusual punishment,
and for ross he is. He's a young guy looking
at spending the rest of his life in jail.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
It's it's yeah, it's hard, it is. It is horrible
and okay, so just so again, so folks, understand, libertarians
believe that adults should be able to put any substance.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
In their body they want to.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
It's not the same as thing you should be able
to then drive under the influence, because then you're negatively
impacting somebody else. But as a matter of individual liberty,
you should be allowed to uh, treat yourself, hurt yourself
however you want to, as long as you're not hurting
anyone else. So, first of all, Maggie, are you do
Is that how you think? And then my follow up
(24:07):
question to that is, do you think that Ross Olbrick
did anything wrong?
Speaker 5 (24:15):
That's a great question.
Speaker 6 (24:16):
You know, I do believe people should be able to
do whatever they want to themselves, even though I'm actually
a libertarian that's pretty anti drug like I will, you know,
tell people all of the risks of drugs, and personally
like I wouldn't, I would not partake right, But I
(24:38):
do think people should be able to do whatever they
want to themselves as long as it's not hurting other people.
Speaker 5 (24:44):
Did Ross do anything wrong? It's an interesting question because there.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
Are claims that come up in the trial that he
hired hitman hitman to attack multiple people.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
Those claims were never so stantiated.
Speaker 6 (25:01):
But now there's this rumor that's been circulating about Ross
for the past eleven plus years that's really damaged his
reputation that he tried to kill people, never proven. He
was never charged with that crime. So personally, I don't
think he did anything wrong. Would I have taken that
(25:21):
risk calculation myself personally to run that website, Probably not,
and I wouldn't.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
Encourage other people to do it.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
But I do not think he should have been sentenced
to life in prison or even a day in prison
for what he did.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, just so I think listeners know this, But I've
never touched an illegal drug. I've never taken a puff
of a cigarette. I don't like any of that stuff.
But I do believe in individual liberty. So I'm not
a champion for drugs either, and I hope people don't
use them, but that doesn't mean I think the government
should prevent you from using them. An interesting part of
(25:59):
the story that you talk about in your video, and again,
if you're just joining we're talking with Maggie Anders, and
if you go to YouTube and search for undoctrination, so
like indoctrination but with you as the first letter instead undoctrination.
You can find your videos in the video we're talking
about regarding Ross Olbrick is one of the most recent videos.
(26:19):
In that video, you talk about a couple of corrupt
federal agents.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Do you know what I'm talking about? Can you tell
this story?
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (26:29):
Yeah, Uh, the story of Curtis Green. Probably even more
maddening than just the story about Ross Olbricht is what
they did to Curtis Green and how that totally tainted
this entire investigation. So Curtis Green was an administrator on
the Silk Road, so he worked for Ross and at
(26:52):
some point the federal government uncovered his identity.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
And so one day Curtis Green receives this at his
home many brings it inside.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
It's a kilogram of cocaine send to him by federal
agents who then arrest him for possession, bring him in
for questioning, and get so much information out of him.
I mean, he tells them everything because he's scared. And
so they get the logins to several high profile people
(27:24):
on the site.
Speaker 5 (27:25):
They steal five.
Speaker 6 (27:27):
Hundred thousand dollars worth of bitcoin crazy.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
And then one.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
So when you say they steal it, these these two
federal agents, you don't mean they impounded it to send
it to the federal Treasury.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
Right, No, No, they They end up getting arrested for
effect and corrupting this case because they committed fraud.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
This was It was weird.
Speaker 6 (27:57):
They were doing this thing where they were kind of
in the investigation but also on the side personally benefiting
from it. They tell Curtis Green that ross Olbricht, because
Curtis snitched about all of this information, ross Olbrich wants
him beat up, so they fake his.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Torture, They fake a waterboarding and.
Speaker 6 (28:16):
Sent to take pictures, and then they tell him that
ross Olbricht has put a hit out on him, and
this is where we get into the hitman allegations. So
they pretend to kill him, and Curtis Green then hides
for the next year in his home in Utah, thinking
that if he comes out of his house, he's going
(28:40):
to die because ross Olbricht will figure out that he's
alive and that the hit was fake. All of this
was done by two rogue, corrupt officers of the federal
government who then end up going to jail. But one
curious fact of this whole case is that no one
(29:00):
of this comes up during Ross's trial, they bring up
this allegation that Ross hired hitman, which they never charge
him for again or convict him of. They bring that up,
and I think it's to confuse people about the kind
of person that Ross's That.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Makes a lot of sense, all right, last thing, how
does this story end up getting in front of Donald
Trump and getting Donald Trump to pardon Ross Olbrick.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
Right, So Angela mccartal of the Libertarian Party, he makes
a deal with Trump that he can come speak at
the Libertarian National Convention, and she has a meeting with
him where she tells him, listen, we want you to
commute Ross Olverrick's sentence. So he goes to the Libertarian
National Convention and he tells them day one, I am
(30:00):
going to commute Ross olbricks sentence, and the room just
erupts in shears because Ross Olbricht is one of us. Right,
Ross Olbricks was writing to Porkfest saying I'm going to
be with you guys soon because he's a real libertarian, like,
he's deep in this community, and so all of this
(30:22):
feels very personal to the libertarian movement, and so a
lot of libertarians actually do end up breaking with the
party and going and voting for Donald Trump. And it
wasn't exactly the first day he was in office, it
was the second day. But the second day he's in office,
not only does he do a commutation of the sentence
(30:43):
which would allow Ross to get out, the next day
he fully pardons him, says what he did was not
a crime, which I personally believe some non libertarians have
an issue with that pardoning that he went a step
further for Ross.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
So I've got about I've got about a minute left,
and I want to share with you a text that
I just got from a friend of mine who's who's
listening and very smart dude by the way. He says, Uh,
life in prison was way too harsh. But Ross olbrit
is absolutely guilty and should be in jail. When you
build a system that facilitates overdose deaths and doesn't remove
(31:21):
child pornography, you share responsibility. I admire some of the
underlying principles, but the welcome tour is mind boggling to me.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
It would be like al Capone.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Getting in prison for Rico tax fraud and then pardoning him.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
I mean, I understand the perspective, I personally don't think
Ross is responsible.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
For the drugs.
Speaker 6 (31:47):
And I also haven't seen proof that that the more
extreme stuff was actually happening on the site.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, I find the whole story was moderation. Yeah, I
find the whole story fascinating. One listener said, so you
too are okay with cartels selling drugs on the internet,
and I responded to him, I said, you wouldn't have
cartels if drugs were legal, right, you wouldn't. You wouldn't
need all this this violent turf particular right infrastructure, and
(32:17):
it's not the hill I'm going to die on legalizing heroin, Okay,
you know, if I realize there's some downside there. But
I think I think this issue is more more subtle
than people think. I'll give you the last seventeen seconds.
Speaker 6 (32:33):
Yeah, yeah, and I'll just say, you know, Ross himself
was not convicted of selling any illicit substances. There was
a degree of moderation happening on the Silk Road, which
is why he had employees there to get really rid
of the really nasty stuff.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
But I do understand.
Speaker 6 (32:51):
Where people are coming from that you shouldn't get a
welcome tour. I think we can come together in agreement
on the idea that the sentence they dealt out to
him was just too much and a large injustice.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Was corrected by Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, I think the commutation would have been more appropriate
than a pardon, but it is what it is, and
in any case, it's fascinating story. Maggieanders is the host
of Undoctrination. You can watch her videos on YouTube. Just
go look for Undoctrination. She's a social media content creator
at fife dot org, a wonderful resource and great website.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Thanks as always, MAGGIEO is great, Thanks so much.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
Ross.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
All right, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be
right back on Kowa. Hi Dragon. By the way, Hi there,
so we Dragon. We just had a conversation with Maggieanders
from FEE.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
About this guy, Ross Olbrich who ran Silk Road.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
And Silk Road was this dark web website where you
could literally buy heroin, right, You could buy almost any
drug and sometimes some people put some other stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
I think some.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
People tried to sell child porn on there, but the
website took it down, but mostly they didn't take down
very much. They only took down like the worst of
the worst stuff. And you could buy almost any illegal
drug and all that, and so they caught and this
guy wasn't selling anything, he was just running the website,
and they caught.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Him and sentenced him, and he was convicted.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Essentially of money laundering and sentenced to life in prison
without parole.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
So that was that's the background, and a lot of
people are texting.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
So I want to just address a few things as
an objectivist, which is not quite the same thing as libertarian,
but similar I do believe that people should be allowed
to put whatever they want to put. Adults should be
allowed to put whatever they want to put in their
own in their own bodies. That said, as somebody who
lives in the real world, as I said to Maggie,
it's not the hill I would die on, right. I
(34:47):
don't need to run around trying to make heroin illegal.
I think it's right that marijuana is illegal. There are
probably some other things that are illegal that should probably
be legal and not create very much societal harm.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
You know, Generally, my view is.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
That it's not the government's job to protect people from themselves.
And there's a whole other but but what we've seen
in some places that have done some legalization of hard
drugs is that it hasn't worked out real well, and
they've they've criminalized them again, and it's it's a it's
a messy situation. So, you know, in my in my
(35:22):
libertarian dream world where.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Where the nation is mostly filled with.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Rational people who will are more likely than not to
make good decisions, you know, it's a lot easier to
live in a in a libertarian dream world where you
have that. When you have a country that has an
enormous number of people who will make bad decisions and
then impose their costs on other people, it's a little
bit harder. And I and I do want to live
(35:53):
you know, in my mind, I want to be in
the real world. So I'm not I'm not crucading for
heroin to be legal, even though in principle I think
it should be for adults.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Now back to the Ross.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Olbrichs thing, right, So he created this website, and he
knows what people are selling on the website, and he
created one of the only websites.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Where basically you could.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Get away with selling this stuff because the way he
did it was so encrypted and so anonymized that you
couldn't track the financial transactions. And they basically the government
basically couldn't catch the people who were actually selling the drugs,
so they caught him.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
So he knew that what he was doing was illegal
or allowing illegal activity.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
And that's why, even though I lean very libertarian, I
think he was guilty of something.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
I don't know exactly what the.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Right charge would be, but I am absolutely one hundred
percent certain that life in prison without parole was not
the right sentence for him. I think Donald Trump pardoned
him because Donald Trump goes to the extreme on absolutely
everything he does, all the time, everything he says, everything
he does.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
He is never a man of moderation in anything.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I will say he commuted the sentences rather than pardoning
the leaders of January sixth, and then he pardoned another
fifteen hundred people. But the very top guys, the guys
were running oathkeepers and proud Boys and whatever who organized
January sixth, he only commuted their sentence. And that's interesting.
He still went ahead and pardoned ross Albrich. I think
(37:40):
a commutation would have made more sense. He served some
time in prison. I think he basically served the right
amount of time in prison, maybe even a little too much,
but he probably deserves to have that criminal conviction on
his record. It's a tough call, it really is. It
(38:02):
really is a tough call, you know. And to the
listener who says, you know, that guy made it illegal,
made it possible for cartels to sell illegal drugs, I'll
say it again and again. I'm not championing this. I'm
just throwing it out there as a thought experiment. If
the drugs weren't illegal, would you have cartels? And if
(38:28):
you want to look at an American example, look at
the American alcohol industry before, during and after prohibition.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Before prohibition, there were not cartels.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
During prohibition, there were cartels al Capone and the Mob
and all these people who were because where there's a
big enough demand, there will be a supply and there.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Will be people willing to take the risk.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
And then as soon as as soon as prohibition ended,
those cartels were gone. And now you have Budweiser and
Jim Beam right in, all these enormous legal liquor companies,
alcohol producing companies that somehow don't need to run around
with machine guns and machetes killing off their competition. The
(39:14):
reason we have cartels that kill so many people and
own Mexico is because these drugs are illegal. If they
were legal, we'd have companies set up in the United
States making them in clean labs, distributing in legal ways,
(39:35):
get some kind of stamp of approval on them, the
way you do for ordinary pharmaceuticals, or the way you
do for food.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Products, or right anything that comes through the FDA.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
And again, I'm not saying we should definitely do this,
but I just want you to think about it. I
just want you to think about it. Maybe the harm
being caused by having these drugs ill legal, maybe is
greater than the harm that we would suffer.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
If the drugs were legal. Maybe the nation surely.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Decided that was the case when alcohol was made illegal.
Would it be the same with heroin?
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I don't know, cocaine, meth, these drugs are harmful. They're
very harmful. I don't know. But I just want to
throw that out there as a thought. All Right.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
I got so many other little stories I want to
share with you. Here's one that I've had all week,
and I don't know whether you've heard it on the
news anywhere. There's a war going on, not Ukraine, not Gaza,
Congo in Congo, which used to be called the Congo
(40:52):
there's a group of rebels who are coming out of Rwanda,
which is just to Congo's east. They go by the
name M three and they have taken over a fairly
large city called Goma. I think there's a couple million
people in that city. It's a pretty big city, right,
It's much bigger than Denver. And these rebels came in
(41:15):
from Rwanda. It appears they might be supported by a
limited number of actual Rwandan military troops.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
They've taken over the city. They killed some people.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I don't think they killed an immense amount of people,
mostly because the Congolese military that was there to defend Goma,
and there were also private contractors there.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
To defend Goma.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
They kind of did what the Iraqi military did when
we got there, which was they dropped their weapons.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
And ran away.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
So there hasn't really been a lot of death as
far as I can tell. The rebels are now talking
about going all the way across the country to the
capital of Kinshasa all the way on the western the
western end of the country. It's I don't know how
many hundreds of miles it is, but it's a long way.
They're talking about going in and trying to take over
(42:08):
the whole country, and we just have to keep an
eye on it.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Here's the main thing I want you to know.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
This is probably not so much about tribal warfare or
simple territorial warfare. Instead, what this is probably about is
the fact that Eastern Congo in particular has an immense
amount of mineral wealth, the kind of like cobalt that
you make your smart you need for your smartphones, and
(42:37):
all kinds of other things. And it is thought that
there are trillions with a t of dollars of minerals
in the ground there, and that is probably what this
is about. And right now the rest of the world
has no idea how to stop it. All right, I
still got a whole bunch of like short stories I
want to get to with you today. You know that
for a while I was having Chris Cuomo on the show. Lately,
(42:58):
I've been having Leland Vintord on the show every couple
of weeks, and I mention every time that that Leland
is on. And because it's true that my wife and
I are watching News Nation a lot and not watching
the other news networks nearly as much as we used
to do, there's still a couple of Fox shows that
I that I really like, but we're watching a lot
(43:20):
more News Nation and so I just wanted to share
this with you.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Let's see this.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
This is from an outlet called The Desk, but in
any case, Nextstar Media groups upstart cable news channel. News
Nation scored a major victory in January, with the network
topping MSNBC among key demographic viewers across several programs. And
then they go through all the stuff and I won't
bother you. I won't bother you with the details. And
(43:47):
just to be clear, you know, News Nation MSNBC are
way way way behind Fox. They're not close, okay, but
News Nation is quite new and they're growing and MSNBC
is terrible.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Well, so I was just very happy to see.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
The news that News Nation is now beating MSNBC in
some key demographics at key times a day, and I
wanted to share that with you. All Right, here's another story.
So for me, this falls into the category of story
that comes up from time to time where on the
one hand, I'm very glad they won and they deserved
to win. On the other hand, I'm kind of bummed
(44:23):
that the cost of the win will be borne by taxpayers.
So here's the story. This is from earlier this week.
I'll go to our news partners at KADIVR kadivr dot com.
A federal jury for the District of Colorado has awarded
over five million dollars to a Colorado sheriff and three
(44:45):
deputies in a wrongful termination case.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
So former chiefs for.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
The Adams County Sheriff's Office, Timothy Coates and Gene Claps,
along with former Captain Mark Mitchell and former Commander Kevin
Currier or Courier, brought the federal lawsuit against Adams County
and then Sheriff Richard Reganborne in twenty twenty. And so
(45:12):
let's see, this is from one of the attorneys on
the case. In twenty nineteen, then Sheriff Rick Regenborn won
the Adams County Sheriff's Office sheriff's race.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
He terminated all of.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
These individuals simply because they were supporting a different candidate,
a candidate they thought would be better.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
For public safety.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
The lawsuit says that Reaganborn, who by the way, has
since been convicted of felony forgery for faking police training records,
terminated the employees from their positions after learning that they
supported his opposition in the twenty eighteen race, who was
the incumbentent at.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
The time, Mike McIntosh.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Wow Reaganborne admitted that he looked at who donated to
the other campaigns because that's public information. Now one of
these guys just won. His last name is Claps Claps.
He is now the sheriff. He's been elected as sheriff
and was sworn in uh two years ago.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
And he said that.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Running for sheriff had nothing to.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Do with the case.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
He said, it's a separate issue that we're we're facing.
He said, this is a separate issue that we are
facing with the violation of our constitutional rights. And running
for sheriff was all about safe for communities.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
And stronger leadership.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
In any case, these for these guys, these four guys each,
you're gonna get around a million or a little over
a million dollars because the former corrupt sheriff decided to
fire all these people for having supported his opponent. And
(46:48):
so these guys deserve to win. And the former sheriff,
you know, is now convicted of a felony related to
something else. And I'm so on the one hand, I'm
glad they won. They deserved to win. They were massively
mistreated by the previous sheriff. But as I said, the
shame in all of these cases. Yes, I realized there
might be insurance to cover some of it, But the
(47:09):
bottom line is, the guy who did the wrong thing
isn't gonna be paying this fine tax insurance and taxpayers are.
And to the extent that insurance covers it and the
insurance rates go up, taxpayers will be covering the higher
insurance premium. So either way, taxpayers get the short end
of the stick because the guy who taxpayers hired was
a bad guy.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
In any case, they did deserve the win.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
I really enjoy interacting with listeners about stuff, and this
is this is a little bit heavy for a Friday,
but I'm gonna do it just based on the conversation
we were having earlier in the show where it sort
of escaped off into a conversation about about drug legalization.
And if you're just joining, the very short version of
(47:55):
what I said is that in my libertarian dream world,
drugs would be legal, I would still not use them.
And I realize that my libertarian dream world is a
little bit or more than a little bit depending on
the situation. Incompatible with a population that includes a lot
(48:18):
of people who will make bad decisions. But that's not
the only thing it's incompatible with, which is why legalizing
drugs is not something I run around championing hard drugs
in particular. Right, it's a it's kind of an intellectual principle,
but at some point intellectual principles can collide with the
real world, and I have to be honest about that now.
(48:39):
I got an email from Peter, and Peter said, you
said on your show today, you're in favor of allowing
people to put anything in their bodies they want, as
long as they don't hurt anyone else. He said, I
believe that is logically inconsistent. Here's why we have to
define what's meant by not hurting anyone else. And Peter
believes that is impos possible, as quote no man is
(49:01):
an island, as John Dunn famously wrote.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
For example, Peter says, someone who.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Ingests illegal drugs goes to the hospital and a huge
bill ends up hurting all the people in the same
insurance pool as himself. Since health insurance premiums will go
up to account for increased claims, as a result of that.
And I will add Peter didn't say this. I will
add that he could also go to the hospital and
be uninsured, and then you've got this what's called uncompensated care,
(49:28):
and that requires.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
The hospital to also raise prices.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
So whether or not the person is insured, it can
definitely have that effect. Peter says, if that person as
a family as bad actions are likely negatively affecting his family,
loss of wages, bad mood, failure to interact properly, if
the drugs hurt him physically or mentally, then society is
losing his productivity and potential positive contributions to society. If
(49:52):
drugs impair him sufficiently, then he might go on welfare,
and society has to shoulder the cost. So ultimately, it's
illogical to say if you do something stupid to yourself
that you're only hurting yourself. So it's a very good letter,
it's a very good note, and I wrote back to
Peter already, but I wanted to just take a minute
and talk about it because I just really enjoy this
(50:13):
kind of interaction. It's one of the great for me,
one of the great pleasures of my job is interacting
with you right, whether it's text or email, I realize
I really I don't take calls anymore. I find text
in email more fun and more effective and.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
More staying on point.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
So I just I'm not going to spend long on
or not very long on this, but I just did
want to respond.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
So if I'm doing this kind of analysis, I would
say that.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Things like worse family relationships, lower productivity, things like that
are are just not things that I'm willing to consider
in the calculation from a principled perspective. I'm not saying
they don't happen. I'm just saying that when I think
about the harm that might come from somebody using drugs
(51:07):
and whether there should be a government prohibition against using drugs,
I need to focus on really tangible harm. And I'm
not for me, I'm not gonna you know, I'm not
gonna consider that other stuff like is it bad for
the guy's family, Like.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
The guy needs to consider.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
That the family maybe, you know, if they find the
person on drugs, maybe they'll try to stop him for
those reasons.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
But I need to focus on really.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
Tangible harms, economic harms, harms you can harms you can see.
And I do think in Peter's note to me, the
one that I think is not just legitimate but important
is the healthcare one.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
And I'll give you an analogy and then i'll come
back to it.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Well, the analogy I want to give you is Milton
Friedman is reputed to have said Milton Freedman is very
libertarian and wanted a lot more immigration and perhaps even
what you and I might call an open border, which
is not to say anybody can come in without knowing
who they are. That's what open border means now, and
(52:19):
that's a national security risk. But rather, let's say unlimited
legal immigration, or you know.
Speaker 2 (52:25):
Who's coming in.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
You keep the criminals out, you keep terrorists out as
best you can, but people who want to just come
and work and be part of the society. To have
that unlimited is something that I think Milton Friedman would
have supported, except, and this is key now, he said,
you cannot have an open border.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Again the definition of open border I just gave you.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
You cannot have an open border and a welfare state, right,
because what you do is you will attract people who
want to come here to get other people's money, and
that becomes a burden on taxpayers. And that's a real harm,
and it means you can't have an open border in
(53:13):
a situation where the people who come here can then be,
especially in the short term, the beneficiaries of receiving other
people's money. And that's why Peter's comment about the potential
impact on the healthcare system from people using drugs is
(53:34):
a correct one. So I don't care if somebody wants
to take an illegal drug and hurt himself, and frankly,
I don't care if it also hurts his family. From
the perspective of what's the proper role of government. I
care as a normal human being who wants people to
do well and don't want people yet hurt. But when
(53:55):
you're talking about what's the proper role of government, I'm
just not going to concern myself, Well, is it bad
for that guy's family if he takes drugs. The family
can work that out, nonprofits can work someone else can
work that out.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
But I'm talking about should it be illegal.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
And if somebody takes some you know, takes heroin and
then ends up oding and going to the hospital and
costing the insurance company one hundred thousand dollars or a
million dollars or is uninsured and cost the hospital one
hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars, And in either case,
the insurance company or the hospital is going to need
(54:35):
to make that money up by raising insurance premiums or
raising prices on everybody else.
Speaker 2 (54:40):
That's a real harm to others.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
So this is where my libertarian dream world starts getting
to a place where it needs to sound pretty harsh,
because what I would say in that case is insurance
policies should be able to say we're not gonna cover
you for a drug overdose because that's not fair to
(55:05):
all of other or other policy holders. And hospitals need
to say we're not gonna take care of you unless
you can pay.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
For it, and that's not gonna happen optimally.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
Right. If I are just gonna take this a little
bit further, I would say, let there be some nonprofits
who care, who maybe set up some kind of fund
where they say, we want to help cover the cost
of people who come into the hospital with drug overdoses.
And I don't think that's the most likely nonprofit thing
to be set up, because people are gonna want to
set up nonprofits for people who aren't overdose dosing on drugs, right,
(55:45):
you're gonna want to set up nonprofits for kids who
are being hurt by something or people who are have
their homes.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
Destroyed by fires or whatever.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
But Peter's response on that one is a it's a
legit question. If you're gonna allow people to take hard drugs,
how are you going to prevent their health care costs
from being dumped on the rest of society, because that
is a cost that is very likely to occur. And
(56:16):
on that one, on that one, it is that's a
hard one. And again that's why I'm not jumping up
and down saying we should legalize everything, because I don't
think there is an answer for that in the world
we live in now. Because insurance companies will probably not
be able to say they won't cover someone for a
(56:39):
drug overdose.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
I'm not sure about that.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
I'm not an expert on that part of health insurance
and hospitals, especially because they're full of people who don't
want other people to die, that's why they're working there.
Hospitals are not going to say we're gonna turn you away,
just the same way they won't turn away illegal aliens
who won't pay for health care. Who can't pay for
health care, whatever it might be. There is this externality.
(57:02):
And by the way, it's the same externality that Joe
Biden created for us by opening the southern border to
millions of illegal aliens without any money and without health insurance,
who use emergency rooms as their primary care. And that's why,
that's why Denver Health needed to just get a new
sales tax on the ballot in Denver, and so Denver
(57:24):
Rights are going to be paying millions of dollars a
year more to cover that that same kind of externality is.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
That, okay? Is that okay?
Speaker 1 (57:37):
You know, this is what makes public policy difficult. This
is what makes the intersection of political philosophy in the
real world difficult. And you know, and so I said
to Peter, Look, I don't accept a bunch of those
things that you said as the kind of potential theoretical
(57:58):
harm should make you know, drugs or hard drugs illegal.
But the healthcare one is a legit argument. It really is.
All right, I'm gonna move on, and again, let me
just say thank you, Peter, and thanks to everybody who
emails me or texts me about everything. I try to
read everything. I respond to a lot. I don't respond
to everything, but I respond.
Speaker 2 (58:17):
To a lot. And by the way, normally, like if.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
You text in at five six six nine zero, you know,
if you're if you're saying something to Dragon or a
Rod or Shannon and you get a response, that's gonna
be from them.
Speaker 2 (58:32):
But normally, if you're.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
Texting the show and asking something about.
Speaker 2 (58:35):
Me and you get a response, normally it's me.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
Every once in a while, Dragon knows the answer to
something and he'll do it. And Dragon, when you replied,
do you always say it's.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
Dragon or yeah?
Speaker 7 (58:45):
I always tag out at the end of the text
message with either D if there's not enough space or
Dragon Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:52):
Okay, so good.
Speaker 1 (58:53):
So when when Dragon is producing for me and you
get a response, if it doesn't say D or Dragon
at the end, it is from me.
Speaker 7 (59:01):
Like right now, specifically, there is a text message that
came in five sixty six nine zero, what happened to
the live concert last night? And I am about to
respond that it was aired on our sister station one
O three five the Fox.
Speaker 2 (59:13):
Okay, there you go.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
So and if you get an email response from me,
that is one hundred percent of the time from me.
Nobody else has access to my email. I don't have staff,
I don't have producers looking through my email and answering things.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
To make my life easier.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
If you get an answer from me by email, it
is always one hundred percent of the time me that
sent you the answer.
Speaker 2 (59:34):
So you are welcome to keep in touch any of these.
Speaker 1 (59:36):
Ways five six six nine zero or by email. Easiest
is probably Rass at Koadnver dot com. R Oss at Koa,
Denver dot com. By the way, do not try to
email anybody else at iHeart using at Koadenver.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Dot com because I own at.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
Koaight, I own the url koa Denver dot com.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
It is not an iHeart owned url. I offered.
Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
I offered it to iHeart for them to buy and
use it in the way that I'm using it, and
they said no. So I bought it because I didn't
want it to get away. So Ross at iHeart Ross
at Koa, Denver dot com works, But you know, whatever
else at koa, Denver dot com doesn't work. I might
have actually set up Mandy there, I don't remember. I
(01:00:23):
can set up whatever I want, But anyway, there's that Ross.
Government has no business being in healthcare.
Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Absolutely right, absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
In my libertarian dream world, government wouldn't have anything to
do with healthcare. Oh oh, all right, as long as
you want to mention that, let me. Let me bring
up something else here, let me. I'm not even sure
if I put this on my on my web page
for or on my show sheet for today, but yeah,
actually here it is.
Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Here, it is.
Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
There is a bill in the state legislature right now,
brought to you by four Democrats, of.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Course, and it's Senate Bill forty five, and.
Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
It's entitled Healthcare Payment System Analysis.
Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
And what this.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Is this is the first step towards socialized medicine in
the state of Colorado. And the bill I'll share with
you some of the bill summary. The bill requires the
Colorado School of Public Health to analyze draft model legislation
for implementing a single payer, nonprofit, publicly financed, and privately
delivered universal health care payment system for Colorado that directly
(01:01:31):
compensates providers. The Colorado School of Public Health must submit
a report detailing its findings to the General Assembly by
December thirty one.
Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
So I was going to talk about this later in
the show, but it fits well here, So what all
that gobbledegook means is the Democrats want the University of Colorado.
Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
School of Public Health.
Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
To analyze proposed legislation that, if the legislation passed, would
eliminate private health insurance in the state of Colorado, and
all health insurance would go through the government and be
paid for by essentially instead of insurance premiums, that would
(01:02:15):
be paid for by surcharges on your payroll, taxes, income taxes,
whatever it might be. And it's hard to imagine a
worse idea than this. But of course you have to
look at who Colorado's keep electing to the state legislature, right.
I think Sonya jack has lewis maybe the key, the
lead sponsor on this. This is the state senator who's
(01:02:39):
under investigation right now for making her state Senate aids
do garden work at her house and work in her
kitchen when she has a party and like help cater
her parties. She's under investigation for that right now, and
I don't even know how much longer she's going to
be in the Senate, but it shows you her judgment.
And this is the person behind this thing. And if
(01:02:59):
you think that health care is expensive. Now just wait
till you see how much it costs when it's free.
You will not If healthcare becomes free, quote unquote free
in Colorado quote unquote publicly financed, you won't be able
to afford to live here anymore unless you're a billionaire,
and you will.
Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Lose whatever quality of health care you have right now.
Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
It will plummet. Doctors will leave, quality of health care
will plummet, It'll be harder for you to get an appointment.
The best doctors will move to other states, and this
will be an absolute disaster. Now, just to be clear again,
I want to make sure everybody understands what I'm saying
this bill does.
Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
The bill does not implement the system. What the bill
does is it gives proposed.
Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Legislation to the University of Colorado.
Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
School of Public Health.
Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
And asks them to analyze what it would mean for
the healthcare system. So we'll see how the analysis comes out.
The analysis is due at the end of next year.
But you know, a lot of times you've got academics who.
Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Like the idea of socialized.
Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Medicine because they think they're smarter than everybody else, and
they think that they can just in the same way
that people on the political left always believe that the
economy needs to be structured and ordered and planned from
above because you and I are too stupid to make
our own economic decisions.
Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
And of course that always ends up badly.
Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Just ask Cuba, right, ask China, ask Venezuela, ask every
place that lives in a socialized economy. And health care
is more, no different. Actually, healthcare is probably even worse.
It is so complicated. And also, here's the other thing
I'll mention, to the extent that you think that healthcare
is bad, now, don't let people on the political the
(01:05:00):
left convince you that it's a market failure, to the
extent that healthcare is not as good as it should be.
Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
We're aas too expensive. Now, it's a government failure.
Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Healthcare is one of the least free markets there is, healthcare, Banking,
mortgages the least free markets there are.
Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Oh and higher education. So all right, I.
Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Wasn't gonna talk about that just then, but it seemed
to fit in just then, So I'm.
Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Glad, I glad I mentioned it. All right, how about this.
Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
There's a pretty well known casino in Blackhawk, and you
know Blackhawks, central city, area called Monarch. It used to
be what did the Monarch used to.
Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Be the Riviera. Yeah, it used to be the Riviera Blackhawk.
Now it's the Monarch, all right. So I have a
question for you. They've got lots of slot machines, and.
Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Just like many casinos, they have slot machines from I
don't know if they have penny slots, but I bet
you they have nickel slots, and you know, time quarter,
a half dollar dollar. They got slots all the way
up to at least fifty dollars a poll. And they
have a thing called a progressive jackpot, a progressive jackpot.
Speaker 7 (01:06:14):
And.
Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
That can get over a million dollars. And it's actually,
you know, pretty easy for it to get for it
to get over a million dollars, because it's not that
easy to win.
Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
So here's my question for you.
Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Monarch Casino has been around twelve years as Monarch.
Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
I think, how many times in those twelve.
Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Years do you think somebody won has won the million
dollar jackpot on a slot machine?
Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
How many times in twelve years?
Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
Dragon, you got a guess how many times in twelve
years there's been a winner?
Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
Four? Four? That's a very good guess. They hang up.
Speaker 7 (01:07:00):
Posters all over place. This person won one hundred thousand.
This was one two hundred thousand, and so but the
whole million dollar price, I'm gonna go four.
Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Four times, four times in twelve years. And so the
answer is that a week ago, on January twenty third,
somebody playing slots at Monarch fifty dollars bet on slots
one a million, eighty five thousand, four hundred and thirty
(01:07:28):
five dollars and eighty nine cents. This person is unnamed,
and that is the first time anybody has ever won
seven figure jackpot at that casino.
Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
Yeah, the first time.
Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
And I would have guessed something like four Also, my
guess would have.
Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Been similar to years. And what this says to me,
and this isn't.
Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Really a comment about Monarch, because I'm sure it's the
same everywhere, is that the odds on their slot machines.
Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
Really really suck.
Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
And you know, so you might say, yeah, winning a
million dollars on a slot machine is a lot, it's
a big win, you know, I think it's not that
big a win when you're talking about fifty dollars bets, right,
winning a million dollars If you were betting a nickel
or a dollar. Okay, that's like enormous and I and
(01:08:20):
I wouldn't expect.
Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
That to happen very often at all.
Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
But winning a million dollars on when you're betting fifty,
I don't know. To me, that seems like something that
should have happened before. Now, if you don't have the
iHeartRadio app, go get it. The new version is fabulous.
If you have an older version that you know somehow,
you have an updated on your phone or tablet or whatever,
go get the updated version and then you can set
(01:08:43):
koa as a as a preset on our absolutely free
and redesigned iHeartRadio app. But the new version functions a
lot like a car radio with the scan and the
radio dial and the presets, and it is pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
And like I said, it's free, so I hope you
do that and then you can, like I said, put
but Koa there.
Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Let me respond to two different subjects on the listener
text line. So a few people have been texting in
about gambling and slot.
Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
Machines and stuff, and I want to touch on this
for a minute.
Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
So you know, one listener said, how many people play
fifty dollars slots? And I said, I have no idea,
but I bet it's more.
Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Than you think.
Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Right, when you go to casinos and you see these
expensive slot machines and more often than not, there's somebody.
Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
Playing and they are there for a reason. Yeah, that's right.
Take it up space. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
The other thing that I don't know, and I would
really like to know, so if any of you actually
knows and is not just guessing, here's what I would
like to know. So we were talking about an example
where for the first time in twelve years, somebody who
was playing fifty dollars slots at the Monarch won a
progressive jackpot of over a million dollars. And some people
(01:09:56):
have won a progressive jackpot before, but it was under
that so the first time ever that that's happened.
Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
What I don't know is whether that progressive.
Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
Jackpot is only available to people who are playing on
let's say the fifty dollars machine it right, or is
that jackpot somehow a combination of different machines where people
could be betting different amounts and then maybe you have
for some somehow higher odds of winning it if you're betting,
if you're doing to fifty dollars one instead of the
(01:10:26):
five or the one or whatever. So I don't know,
I don't know how that works. Listener asked this question.
I want to I want to address it. Ross they
have to let someone win every once in a while
so that everyone flocks back to the machines. The fact
they are digital, do you think there's a high probability
that they are rigged? And I have a very strong
(01:10:47):
opinion on this, very strong opinion. I have very high
confidence that they are not rigged. That they are not rigged.
And here's why. Couple reasons and there there are these
are these are all important reasons. They're the machines are
tested constantly by regulators, right who go in and actually
(01:11:10):
kind of check the machines and all that. That's one
thing that's probably not the most important one. Uh, the
risk of rigging the machines is really high. You're talking
about you know, if you get caught on this finds
that will put you out of business and somebody.
Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
Is going to go to jail. So I think that's important.
Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
But I actually think the most the most important reason
that these machines are not rigged is.
Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
That they don't need to be it's a digital machine.
It's computer program, and you just tell it what the
odds should be of any given thing. So in a sense,
that could mean that the.
Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Output of that aren't like spinning physical dials anymore, but
just digital versions of that. In a sense, it's rigged,
and that the program is design that such and such
a combination that will win you the progressive jackpot should
never happen more than x percent of the time. And
that's not rigging, right, that's not rigging. That's just setting
(01:12:14):
the program. And as long as they set the program
so that the odds are at least as good as
what they have agreed with the regulators, that the odds
must be right. So if the odds are one out
of one hundred thousand right, one out of one hundred
(01:12:35):
thousand pulls on that machine will win the progressive jackpot,
then if that's what they've agreed to with the government,
then they just set that in the machine and as
long as the odds are that good, then they're fine.
Is that rigging, I don't think so. I think when
you talk about rigging, I think what rigging means is
(01:12:58):
the odds are not what you expect they are right,
they're telling you the odds are one thing, but the
actual odds are another thing. And I don't think that's
I don't think that's going on.
Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
Ross. You have to play the max bed.
Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
In order to win the jackpot on any slot. Okay,
that that might be. Yeah, that's what Jason says.
Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Ross.
Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
On that slot machine, the minimum bet is twenty five. Also,
that machine has only been there about two years, not twelve.
That's interesting. I don't But did they have some form
of a million dollar progressive jackpot before then? I don't know,
but very interesting your your level of knowledge there.
Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
That's cool in any case.
Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
In any case, I don't think the machines are rigged
because I don't think they need to be, and because
the risk of doing so is too high.
Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
Here's the other thing I'll point out now.
Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
I don't know about this in the programming, but in theory.
In theory, just because something has odds of let's say,
one in one hundred thousand spins, does not mean that
it could not happen twice in a row. In theory,
I don't know about in practice. I don't know if
(01:14:10):
the way these programs are written that if somebody wins
the jackpot on a pole. It is literally impossible to
win it on the next poll. But in theory it
shouldn't be impossible. It should just be insanely unlikely. All right,
all right, there's that dragon. Did you have anything to
(01:14:30):
add there or not?
Speaker 7 (01:14:31):
Just curious and things that if they're like random number generators,
and we've talked to physicists before that say that's not
a real thing, so they must not be random randomly
generated then, right, So.
Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
What I would say to that is when the physicists
say they're not a real thing, they mean it like
out to a level of precision that is not that
important here, right, for something like you know, one in
one hundred thousand, and you're going to generate a whole
bunch of random numbers. They're random enough for these purposes.
(01:15:09):
They're just not random enough for something where you need
to you're going to try to recreate some effects in
the universe of chaos theory, right, yeah, all right, we
still have a ton of stuff to do, so just
stick with.
Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
Me here on KOA. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
I forgot to copy over the stuff for my song
for name that tune, but I'm going to do it
now and that way when we get to name that
tune and you know you're gonna do that live on
the air, right yeah, right now, right now, semi professional radio.
So while I'm doing this, let me just say a
listener has sent me a text saying, Ross, it sounds
(01:15:46):
like you don't know very much about slot machines, and
I plead no contest to that. I don't know a
lot about slot machines because I know that slot machines
have terrible odds, and therefore I basically never play them.
Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
I've played slots just you know, a.
Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Few times in my life, and it's always in the
same situation. It's always the same situation. And this was
when I was a much younger man. It's two thirty
in the morning in Vegas. I've had a few beers.
I'm don't I don't get drunk, but I've had a
few beers, and I know better than to play any
(01:16:24):
game that involves real money when I am even the
slightest bit in beer inebriated.
Speaker 2 (01:16:30):
So I would go into.
Speaker 1 (01:16:31):
A casino, and these casinos really don't exist anymore, because
the Vegas Strip now is all really kind of high
dollar stuff. But if you used to go to Vegas,
you will remember, for example, the Barbary Coast.
Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
Barbary Coast was such a cool little casino.
Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
It was a low dollar casino, but right in the
heart of everything they owe. The Barbary Coast was one
of the last places to have hand delt blackjack, where
the dealer is holding just one or maybe two decks
of cards. He's holding them and dealing from his hand
rather than from the shoe. And if you were going
to attempt to count cards, that was where you would play.
(01:17:08):
And anyway, I would go in there and I would
play penny slots or nickel slots, and I could play
for a really long time on like ten dollars, and
I would do that, and I would lose my ten dollars,
but I knew I was going to lose my ten dollars.
There was just fun goofing around, and every once in
(01:17:29):
a while, you know, you win something and it's it's fine,
it's fine.
Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
But yes, it's true.
Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
I do not know a lot about slot machines because
I don't I don't like them. In fact, I'm not
much of a gambler these days, even, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
Can I just talk about myself for a minute Dragon,
I mean it is the Ross Kaminski show. Well not really,
but so I used to be a financial markets trader, right.
Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
I used to be in Chicago waving my hands and
yelling on the options exchange floor, and people would ask me, Hey, Ross,
don't you essentially gamble for a living?
Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
And I would.
Speaker 1 (01:18:08):
Say, I gamble for a living in the same way
that Caesar's Palace gamble's for a living. Okay, And really
I mean it, so did I What did I mean
by that? You can go in and make a bed
at Caesar's Palace, but you are going to play whatever
the odds are of the game. As they set up
the game you are playing at effectively at their price.
(01:18:34):
You are going to put a dollar down on the
number seventeen on a roulette wheel, and Caesar's has told
you that if number seventeen hits, they're gonna pay you
thirty five dollars on that dollar that you wont But
there's thirty eight numbers on the roulette wheel, right one
(01:18:55):
through thirty six plus zero plus double zero. Some places
only have one zero, but in any case, so they're
going to pay you thirty five to one on something
that has odds of thirty eight to one. So every
time somebody makes a bet like that, two things are true.
The player can win and the house has the edge.
(01:19:18):
And that's the same for me. When I was an
options trader, I'm standing in the pit and if you
you wanted to buy or sell some options in something
that I was trading the or making markets in those options,
and you would, let's say, you know, go online or
call your broker or whatever it was like when I
started trading, was was in the eighties and there was
no online trading, and you want to trade these options,
(01:19:41):
you would tell your broker. The broker would come to
my pit and they would announce what option they want
to trade, and then I would tell them what the
price is.
Speaker 2 (01:19:49):
Now. You don't have to pay my price.
Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
Right You could say you're willing to pay two dollars
for this option, and I could say I'm willing to
sell them at two in an eighth and then you're
a broker would say, no, I'm not moving, I'm only
two dollars bid because you get put that order in,
or you could put an order in saying you know,
just pay whatever the price is right now, and then
I would say I'll sell them at it an eighth
and the broker would say, okay, I'll buy them at
two and an eighth. But I set the price. And
(01:20:17):
let's just say, in this example, let's say I think
the fair price is two, so i'll buy them at
one in seven eighths, which is an eighth below too,
and i'll sell them at two and an eighth, which
is an eighth above two. I think the fair price
is too. Now I could be wrong about what the
fair price is, but I think the fair price is too.
So in order to trade with you, or for you
to trade with me, you must pay my price or
(01:20:39):
sell them at my price where I believe I am
getting an advantage, or you will not make a trade.
I won't trade with you.
Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
Sorry.
Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
You can sit there and then if the stock goes
down and now I think your options are a good
sale at two where because now they're worth only one
in seven eighths and you're still they're willing to pay two, Now,
I'll sell them to you at two.
Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
I have the edge on everything.
Speaker 1 (01:21:07):
It doesn't mean I can't lose. You could come in
and buy those things at two and something could happen
five minutes later. That makes them worth five and I'm
really hosed. And that happened to me one time. I
lost one hundred thousand dollars more than my entire net
worth in one morning.
Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
I won't get into that right now.
Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
My point is I spent years being the house getting
an edge in everything, and making a really good living.
Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
In Vegas.
Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
You never have the edge unless you're a great card counter,
and that's very hard to do these days because they.
Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
Spot card counters.
Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
So I don't really like gambling very much anymore because
I used to always have the edge, and now I
feel like a sucker because the other guy has the
edge when I gamble. I like to play poker because
it's a skill game. There's luck involved too, but there's
a lot of skill involved in poker, so.
Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
I like it better.
Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
I like betting on football, but I'm not kidding when
I tell you that my average bet on you know
these apps is literally probably forty or fifty cents is
my average bet because if I lost more than that,
I'd feel like I'm moron because I know I don't
have the edge. When you grow up, I was the
(01:22:25):
youngest trader on the options exchange floor. When you grow up,
through your adult life, having the edge and then suddenly
you don't anymore.
Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
It's just not very appealing. For a couple of serious things.
Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
That I wanted to mention today and I didn't get to,
so I'm gonna do those. I'm going to do those
in a second, because Dragon and I have wasted much
of your time this morning. And and you're welcome, and
you're welcome. It's exactly what I was going to say,
You're welcome. So just I want to respond to one
listener text Ross, I'm intrigued by your man about losing
(01:23:00):
one hundred thousand dollars more than your net worth. I
assume you were employed by someone, were you training with
their money or yours at that time. I was not
employed by someone, and I lost one hundred thousand dollars
more than my net worth. So I went from being
a twenty four year old with quite a bit of
(01:23:22):
money in the bank, much more money in the bank
than a twenty four year old should normally have.
Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
To having none of that.
Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
And one hundred thousand dollars in debt and wondering how
I was going to pay my rent. I'm not going
to share any more any more of the story but
I just did want to answer that question directly. I
want to just spend a minute or two here on
a sort of serious thing. So yesterday, Telsea Gabbard, who
(01:23:52):
is President Trump's nominee to be the Director of National Intelligence,
a job she should not hold, was at a Senate hearing,
and Colorado Senator Michael Bennett, who I normally don't have
much use for what I have to say he's been
He's been pretty good in in these recent hearings, was
(01:24:14):
questioning Tulsi Gabbard and he and he did a pretty
good job in elucidating why Tulsa Gabbard should not be
anywhere near the levers of power in the American intelligence community.
Speaker 8 (01:24:32):
Is Edward snowed In a trader to the United States
of America. That is not a hard question to answer
when the stakes are this high, and.
Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
It's like the third time, chief.
Speaker 8 (01:24:43):
Someone who has your answer yes or no, is Edward
snowed In a trader to the United States of America.
Speaker 9 (01:24:52):
As someone who has on in combat, I understand how
critical our national security.
Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
So there was that, and I have to say Gabbard
had a very difficult time yesterday, including with quite a
few Republicans, and she probably created more questions than answers
in her hearing, including that her refusal to say that
Edward Snowden is a trader. And for the record, there
was some stuff that Edward Snowden disclosed that really was
(01:25:24):
illegal behavior by the United States of America.
Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
But he also disclosed a whole bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
And probably a bunch of Americans or allies of Americans
got killed because of the stuff that he disclosed.
Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
So in addition to his he was in.
Speaker 1 (01:25:38):
Part what you might call a whistleblower, but also clearly
a trader as well.
Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
There's a reason he lives in Russia. Now, okay, so
I'm going.
Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
To share with you a little more, And this clip
is quite long, and I'm not sure I'm going to
go through all of it. But again, I the reason
that I grabbed this whole clip, which is too minutes
and forty seconds, and again I might not do the
whole thing. It's just so unusual for me to say
to you, Michael Bennett did a good.
Speaker 2 (01:26:10):
Job, Like I almost never say that.
Speaker 1 (01:26:13):
It's probably not even once a year on average, but
he did.
Speaker 8 (01:26:20):
You have said on February twenty third, twenty twenty two,
at the very moment that Russian tanks were rolling across
the peaceful border of Ukraine for the first time, you
tweeted at eleven thirty pm your time. This war and
(01:26:40):
suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden administration slash
NATO had simply acknowledged Russia's legitimate, legitimate security concerns regarding
Ukraine's becoming a member of NATO.
Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
Did you say that, yes or no?
Speaker 4 (01:26:56):
I believe you're reading my tweet, Senator, Yes is the.
Speaker 8 (01:26:59):
Answer of a few months later, you set on your
podcast and I quoted it quote. But this regime changed
war against Russia that the US and NATO are waging
via their proxy in Ukraine didn't begin when Putin invaded Ukraine.
They had their eyes set on this objective long before that.
Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
Did you say that, yes or no?
Speaker 4 (01:27:23):
I believe you're reading my tweets? There is a lot answer.
Speaker 9 (01:27:27):
Yes, you're quoting a podcast that provided much to.
Speaker 8 (01:27:30):
Have a conversation with the chairman about whether I'm taking
anything out of context. I don't think I am, And
your answer is yes.
Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
All right, I'm gonna pause there, but I'm probably gonna
continue this in a second, because look, I mentioned this yesterday.
I wasn't a huge man of Pete hag Seth's I
don't think he has the skill set to do the
job of Secretary of Defense. We will find out, but
I do think I do think that Pete haig Seth
has the right goal, motivation, and a certain skill set
(01:28:04):
having served in the military that not every Secretary of
Defense has had, although recent ones have. So there is
stuff about Pete Hegseth.
Speaker 2 (01:28:14):
That I like.
Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
My main problem with him was his lack of experience
in managing a large organization and some of that stuff
in his personal background. But I didn't think he was
Trump's worst pick. I didn't think he was close to
Trump's worst worst pick. He's at least fourth. He's at
least fourth. Okay, But Telsea Gabbert and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
(01:28:38):
Those are Trump's two worst picks. I don't know if
they're in trouble. A lot of Republicans who would like
to vote no are going to vote yes just because
it's Trump and they don't want to be on the
wrong side of Trump.
Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
And again, it's a very.
Speaker 1 (01:28:51):
Difficult thing because elections have consequences, and unless somebody is
manifestly incompetent or unfit for the job, or put there
by corruption or put there by nepotism, right, you know,
Other than that, elections have consequences and you should.
Speaker 2 (01:29:06):
Get who you want.
Speaker 1 (01:29:08):
Tulsey Gabbard is manifestly unfit for this job. She supported
Russia in the Russia Ukraine War. She seemed to support
Bashar Asad in his civil war against his own people,
where he killed half a million people and used chemical
(01:29:29):
weapons against his own people. She wanted to repeal a
certain part of federal intelligence law called section seven oh two, which,
by the way, that law is worth discussing. It's worth discussing,
(01:29:50):
But just how hypocritical she is on this one is
the real problem. She when she was in Congress, sponsored
a bill to repeal this yes, and said repeatedly in
Congress and on podcasts in other places, how much she
hated section seven oh two. And then Congress passed a
(01:30:10):
couple of reforms of section seven oh two, and she
went on a podcast and said those reforms made seven
oh two worse, not better. And now in her committee
hearings she's asked about it, and she says, well, I
really didn't like seven oh two, but you guys did
some reforms, so now I support keeping it, even though
(01:30:33):
she actually said that.
Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
The reforms made it worse.
Speaker 1 (01:30:36):
So now not only does she have terrible views on
very important things related to this job, but now she's
also flip flopping in a way.
Speaker 2 (01:30:47):
That is beyond any credibility.
Speaker 8 (01:30:51):
Are you aware that your comments about proxy wars and
Russia's legitimate legitimate security concern turns to quote your own
words are in alignment with what the Russians have said
to justify their invasion of Ukraine.
Speaker 9 (01:31:14):
Yes, Senator, I don't pay attention to Russian property.
Speaker 4 (01:31:19):
The answer is reludless of whether you like it or not.
Speaker 2 (01:31:22):
I'll take it.
Speaker 8 (01:31:22):
That's fine. You said you are used to speaking truth
to power. I'm shocked to hear you now say that.
You know you are.
Speaker 2 (01:31:31):
You are agreeing. I'm not shocked because I know you
said it.
Speaker 4 (01:31:35):
You are agreeing that.
Speaker 8 (01:31:36):
You basically said that Putin was justified in rolling over
the peaceful border of Ukraine, the first time since World
War Two that a free nation had been invaded by
a totalitarian state. And you were there at eleven thirty
PM that night to say that you were with them,
(01:31:57):
not us.
Speaker 2 (01:31:58):
And let me tell you something.
Speaker 8 (01:31:59):
You say you don't know because you don't read Russian propaganda.
Russian State TV then aired your comments.
Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
Did you know that?
Speaker 4 (01:32:07):
Senator?
Speaker 9 (01:32:08):
I think you should also quote this statement that I
made criticizing Putin for his invasions.
Speaker 1 (01:32:15):
All right, that's enough. You get the idea. Telsea Gabbard
is in trouble. And this listener says his I rate
questions made Gabert look good. I understand that argument. That
can happen sometime, but that is not what happened yesterday.
Gabert looked really bad yesterday, she looked. She looked bad
(01:32:37):
to a bunch of Republicans. And it wouldn't surprise me
if Gabert doesn't get confirmed.
Speaker 2 (01:32:45):
When you I'm talking to listener here.
Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
The listener says, these committee hearings are destroying the Democrats
because they're.
Speaker 2 (01:32:50):
Just yelling at Gabbert and Kennedy. Within again, that dynamic
can happen.
Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
It happened a little bit that way with Peter hag Seth.
That happened a lot that way yesterday with Cash Battel.
They tried to go after Cash Pattel and the Dems
just look foolish. But with Gabbard and Kennedy, now now
you're the one spouting propaganda. Gabbard and Kennedy look terrible
because they don't have good answers.
Speaker 2 (01:33:16):
To the questions.
Speaker 1 (01:33:18):
Because the questions are about things that are in the
public record that they said, that are lies, anti American,
all kinds of things. Gabbard and Kennedy are both really
bad choices who are manifestly unfit.
Speaker 2 (01:33:35):
And I don't think again.
Speaker 1 (01:33:38):
I understand your point about how a committee hearing, depending
on how it goes, can make the questioners look bad,
but that's not That's not Gabbard and Kennedy. This listener
is an interesting one. Ross you've never been in the
intelligence community. We who are who aren't? Management? We want tulsy.
(01:34:00):
The senators aren't exactly the brightest minds. That's true. They're
They're definitely not. They're they're definitely not. But I it's
very I understand. Let me clarify this a little bit.
And a similar thing with Hegseeth. Maybe I understand people
who work in a particular part of government, or just
watch a particular part of government, or just citizens who
(01:34:22):
are paying taxes and you're looking at something you say,
this is no good. We need a change, we need
a revolution, we need massive, massive.
Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
Overhaul, we need everything to be different.
Speaker 1 (01:34:32):
And that's certainly a lot of the mindset that got
uh Donald Trump elected and and I get it, and
I'm with you on most of that, for most, for
most to government, and even for the intelligence community as well.
But what I would say about Telsea Gabbert is there
there's got to be someone who is a potentially credible
reformer of the of the intelligence community who hasn't sided
(01:34:57):
with Bashar Asad and Russia and Edward Snowden. She is,
She's unfit, and you know, I'm confidented that. So anyway, Hi,
Mandy good.
Speaker 10 (01:35:12):
Article on Real Clear Investigations today about what she actually
said and did not say about the sheer Ali said, yeah,
she not. She did not never said that he deserved
to stay in power or anything of that. Ilk She said,
we can't fix the conflict unless we go talk to him.
I thought it was ridiculous when she did it. To
be clear, I thought it was ridiculous when Nancy Pelosi went,
(01:35:33):
I thought it was ridiculous when John Carey went, But
you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
I to your point about like blowing stuff up.
Speaker 10 (01:35:42):
I think there is the feeling that what's been going
on for the last three decades in DC, by putting
all the quote adults in charge, has gotten us an
endless warn I rack at Afghanistan. It's gotten us to
a point where our military capabilities are degraded because of
policies that were pursued that were other than meritocratus. And
(01:36:02):
I think people are looking at this and saying, can
they do worse?
Speaker 2 (01:36:06):
There's a lot of that can they be worse? Yeah?
So I get it and I share that view.
Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
Basically, right, I want to blow up a lot of
this stuff. And that's why, of course, right, And that's
why you know, for example, again, for example, my problem
with heg Seth was his is his skill set.
Speaker 2 (01:36:24):
And experience, not his goals.
Speaker 1 (01:36:26):
I have I have no idea what Telsea Gabbard wants
to do. I have no idea if she's a reformer,
I have no idea what she actually believes. I know
what Haig Seth believes. I don't know if he has
the skill set to get it done.
Speaker 2 (01:36:39):
But Gabbard has a long history of saying insane things. Yeah,
at insane times.
Speaker 1 (01:36:45):
And if you want to get you know, a radical
in there to really shake.
Speaker 2 (01:36:49):
Things up, do it.
Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
But do it with someone who you know you can
trust to put America.
Speaker 2 (01:36:54):
I mean, don't point of phrase America first. Don't you
think that?
Speaker 10 (01:36:58):
I think in every and I said this before the
confirmation hearing started, there's always the sacrificial lamp. I thought
it was going to be Matt Gates, but he dumped
too soon, right right, Yeah, So I now believe it's
going to be RFK or Tolci, Gabertar both or both.
Speaker 2 (01:37:12):
You know, it is what it is.
Speaker 10 (01:37:13):
I'm not going to cry a river over either the
because I think the conversations that RFK has opened up
have been incredibly important. If he has the HHS secretary,
I don't really care. Those conversations have begun. Yeah, the
food industry has started responding, right, you know, so, and
see I could see.
Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
Him having some kind of role when it comes to
food safety and health.
Speaker 2 (01:37:33):
Yeah, but yeah, not running all of HHS.
Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
Hey, folks, if you're listening on the podcast right now,
that's the end of today's show.
Speaker 2 (01:37:40):
Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
Don't forget you can catch us every day on the
podcast as you are right now, on your smart speaker,
on your iHeartRadio app, even on the computer at Koa, Colorado,
and the good old fashioned way on your radio.
Speaker 2 (01:37:54):
Thanks so much for listening to the show.
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