10-01-25 - *FULL SHOW* Welcome, Shutdown; Rockies GM Out; Government & Pfizer

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Producer Shannon, Ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Due to the ongoing government shutdown, Ross Komenski will not
be heard today. Instead, there will be three hours of
speaker tests, beginning with A thousand Killer.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hurts left channel stand by. I'm waiting for the tone.
I'm waiting for the thousand killer hurts. Actually, a thousand
killer hurts. We wouldn't be able to hear that. I
was thinking one killer hurts. All right, I'm ross. Yes,

(00:35):
due to the government shutdown, I'm not supposed to be
here today. But like Congressman Gabe Evans, I'm working without pay. Well,
I work for iHeart, so it's kind of like I
work without pay anyway.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Sorry, couldn't help myself. It's not really true either anyway.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yes, there is a government shut We do have a
we do have a bathroom shut down here on this
floor of our of our radio station building. We do
have a bathroom shutdown. I don't know if that's gonna,
you know, get going again whenever the National Park reopen
or whatever is going to be close. Here's the thing
with the government shutdown. I don't know how many people

(01:11):
really care, you know. I part of me thinks the
politicians and people who want to make, you know, and
make something of it politically care a little bit more
than many Americans do.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
It'll inconvenience a.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Few people in a few ways, and there are some
people who won't get paid for a while. I'm not
gonna spend a lot of time on the whole shutdown
thing right now. In about half an hour, we're gonna
have a guest on to talk about it in some
some more great detail. I do want to say that
I listened a little bit to Gina and Marty's conversation
with Congressman Gabe Evans, and and I'm gonna have some

(01:44):
audio for you later in the show. But Republicans are
trying to make a big thing about claiming the Democrats
want as a condition of owned opening the government, Democrats
want federal funding for healthcare for illegal aliens.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
And I think that's not true.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Now, apparently Gabe said to Marty and Gina, like, go
look at page fifty seven of the legislature of the legislation.
Rather so I did. I did text Gabe just now
and asked him what's the page fifty seven thing? And
I will try if I have time to find the legislation.
I think what he's talking about is the bill that

(02:20):
already passed the House that will not pass the Senate
until they get some Democrats, enough Democrats to vote for it.
So I want to see what the page fifty seventh
thing is, because it is already illegal under federal law
for the federal taxpayers subsidized.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Healthcare for illegal aliens.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
That said, they do get taxpayer subsidies at the health
at the state level, including here in Colorado, and maybe
some of that money is fungible. Maybe they're trying to
make an argument like that, like some some COVID money
went to something that then got funneled into subsidies or

(02:57):
free health care for illegal aliens.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
I don't no, but it's not true that they.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Want to put in a bill something along the lines of,
you know, we're in a fun healthcare for illegal aliens.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
They can't do it, and they're not trying to do it.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
So I'm not sure just exactly what is what is
going on there. So we'll try to sort through. We'll
try to sort through all that. In any case, we'll
try to figure out what the page fifty seven thing means.
All right, let me do something completely different, not politics,
not economics. So I don't know whether you've seen this actress,
as she hadn't been around much.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
She's got a YouTube thing called what is It?

Speaker 1 (03:34):
AI Commissioner, I think, and this young woman, her name
is Tillie Norwood, his British accent, and she's she I
would say, mid twenties and really good looking. You might
even say she's hot, really really good looking girl. And

(03:54):
boy is she drawing a lot of negative attention from
actors and actresses in Hollywood because because Tilly Norwood, who
I imagine you will find a bunch of sixteen year
old boys falling in love with when they see and
hear her with her lovely British accent, Tillie Norwood isn't real.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Tilly Norwood is a creation of AI.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
And I have up on my blog today at Rosskominsky
dot com a bunch of Instagram videos of Tilly Norwood
doing this or that in whatever she in air quotes
acts in. But she is entirely AI created and that
and I have that video I embedded as well, this
AI Commissioner video, and it's a whole thing. It's got

(04:43):
probably a dozen ish different characters, men, women, black, white, older, younger, skinny, fat,
everything just talking about different things. And then there's a
brief cut to Tilly Norwood and that whole thing. It's
not long, it's a and a half or something like that.
The entire thing is AI generated, all the scenes, all

(05:07):
the people, it's all digital. There was no camera involved.
It is all AI generated. And the script was written
by AI as well. Everything was AI generated, but for
the prompts that a human put into AI to say,
create this skit and here's what I want you to
make it about, and YadA, YadA, YadA, and so anyway,

(05:28):
it's quite an interesting story actually, the way the world
is developing. Here's the headline from Variety, which is one
of the top publications in Hollywood. AI actress Tilly Norwood
draws backlash from and then they named some people I
never heard of and more Hollywood names as creator defends
her as a new tool and not a replacement for

(05:48):
a human being. Now, I think that this thing from
the creator of Tilly Norwood, I don't think it's going
to assuage anybody who's mad.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
And this person writes.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
On Instagram to those who have expressed anger over the
creation of our AI character Tillie Norwood. She's not a
replacement for a human being, but a creative work, a
piece of art. Like many forms of art before her,
she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power
of creativity. I see AI not as a replacement for people,

(06:22):
but as a new tool, a new paintbrush. Just as animation,
puppetry or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from
live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories.
I'm an actor myself, and nothing, certainly not an AI
character can take away the craft or joy of human performance,

(06:43):
and it goes on from there. In the interest of time,
I won't read more. Now, let me just opine on
this for a few seconds.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
You know how.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Ten years ago there was this meme if somebody were
kind of struggling, a little bit lost in life, didn't
really know how to make a living. You know, a
man beun thirty one year old barista at Starbucks, like,
what are you doing? The line was always learned to code,

(07:15):
somewhat sarcastically.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
Learned to code.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
But the idea there was if you wanted something that
was kind of sort of a sure thing, you wanted
to know, you had a job, learned to be a
computer programmer, and then you'll have a job. And just
in the past six to twelve months, that's gone. Like
these ais can write computer programs. Now, they're not flawless,

(07:39):
and they definitely need human guidance, but they're getting better
and better and better, and pretty soon there will be
almost no jobs, I think for mediocre computer programmers. There
will always be jobs for people who are great at anything,
but there will be no jobs for mediocre programmers. And
I wonder, coming back to Tilly Norwood, right, what are

(08:03):
these big what are these big studios gonna do when
you could hire an actor for one hundred thousand or
a million or ten million, depending on the actor, or
license some AI software and have Tilly Norwood, who's as
good looking as any Hollywood actress, and have that for

(08:24):
close to free. Also, well, the viewing public want. I
bet a lot of the public will want human actors
and will want.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
To support that.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
The way and this not sarcasm, the way people like
to buy local and go to farmers' markets and do
all this stuff to support the local people, to support
local businesses. And you might see movie studios putting into
a trailer for a movie something like these are human actors,

(08:53):
it wouldn't surprise me one bit. In the meantime, there's
gonna be a lot more Tilly Norwood's and this industry
is gonna have a lot to figure out. Although I
will note that in their recent contract with the studios
they did negotiate about this, and the studios are not
supposed to be using AI to replace actors. But we'll
see how it actually plays out. Furloughed because of the

(09:15):
government shutdown, but here anyway, taking one for the team.
By the way, I will actually not be here tomorrow,
not because the government shutdown, but Yom Kipor starts tonight,
goes through tomorrow night, and I do not work on
Yom Kipor. In case you're wondering why you didn't hear
me say that last year, it's because Yom Kipor was
on a Saturday last year, so I wasn't working anyway.

(09:37):
So I'm not very religious, but I take Yom Kipor
quite quite.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
Seriously as a holiday.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
It's the most important Jewish holiday, and it's again my
I think if you're not Jewish, you won't really understand
what I'm about to say. My take on it is
not primarily religious, as it is for sort of day
of self improvement. I feel like I'm not a very
disciplined person. I like to have at least one day
of discipline in my life. And I also like to

(10:03):
have a day where I intentionally take some time to
think about things that are important. So on Yom kipor,
I don't from sundown to the following sundown. I don't eat,
I don't drink, not even water. I don't use any
electronics and I use a computer.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
I don't use my phone. I don't drive a car.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
I don't work, I don't I read, maybe, I walk,
I think, and not much else.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
And that's what I'll be doing tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
What else? I would love for you to travel with
me and my wife next April. We've got a handful
of spots left on this incredible trip to Vienna, Prague, Budapest,
brought a Slava and probably a couple of other small towns,
and it is just going to be an amazing trip
with history and culture and food and fun, and you're
gonna make all kinds of new friends. Get to travel

(11:00):
with me and my wife, and sometimes people ask, well, hey, Ross.
Sometimes I hear about these listener trips, not Kowa trips,
but you know, other trips with some other hosts, and
like they say they're on the trip, but you never
see them. Is it like that. No, it's not like that.
We're gonna be hanging out all the time. You know,
all the tours and stuff will be on with you,
many many meals I'll eat with you, and so we're

(11:21):
really hanging out together. So you get to know me,
and I get to know you, and we all get
to know other k away people and it's great. And
this trip offers incredible value as well when you see
what's included in this pricing.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
So I hope you will take.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
A look at rosstrip dot com, r O, S S,
T R I P dot com and we'd love to
travel with you, absolutely love to. I saw a piece
on Axios. I guess it was yesterday, yesterday morning. Maybe
RTD so the Rapid Transit here in the Denver metro
or Front Range area to vote on major cuts to

(11:55):
disability ride program. So I guess RTD directors actually they
probably voted last night, and I didn't see a result
of the vote yet, So maybe I should look that up.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
But I imagine that they passed it, but I'll go check.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
But here's what it's about anyway, which is important to
talk about, regardless whether it passed this time or not.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
They're looking at changes to.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
What's called the Access on Demand service, which, as Axios describes,
provides curb to curb rides for people with disabilities. Now,
Advocates for people with disabilities and lots of state lawmakers
as well have said that the changes would gut what
many of them call a lifeline and not a luxury.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
Now the proposal and if, by.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
The way, if anybody listening right now knows how this
vote went, and you can tell me, please text me
at five sixty six nine zero. You could even go
online to the Google machine right now and look it up,
and then you can text me at five sixty six
nine zero and tell me. And if nobody does, I'll
go look it up myself during the break. But the proposal,
which has been oh intrepid Chad Power is here.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
This sounds like something he's prepared to.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Talk about in the news or already talked about in
the news.

Speaker 4 (13:03):
YEP.

Speaker 5 (13:04):
The original proposal was to go to add a base
fee of six dollars and fifty cents. Yes, they voted
on four dollars and fifty cents. Okay, excellent, Yes, And
they also voted to change the maximum subsidy or from
twenty five to twenty dollars.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Got it? Okay? Thank you? Did you talk about that
already or is that coming up in your news podcast?
You already had it? Yes?

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Okay, okay, great, thank you?

Speaker 1 (13:32):
All right. So the fundamental point I want to make
absolutely stay is that's so good having a news desk
like thirty feet from me where intrepid Chad Bauer can
run in when I'm talking about something in the news
and wondering, you know, what happened overnight, and he can say,
here's what happened. Gosh, what an amazing thing about being
on Koa. Right where else are you going to get that?

(13:54):
I don't think you're gonna get that anywhere in Colorado
except right here on Koa.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
So listen.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
The idea here is they were going to go from
a zero dollar fare. The original proposal was six fifty,
as Chad said, they settled on four fifty, and they
lowered the maximum subsidy per ride from twenty five dollars
to twenty dollars, and I don't know what they did
on this one, but they were also talking about eliminating

(14:19):
twenty four to seven service, so it wouldn't quite be
available all day every day. Now, Access on Demand provides
users with sixty monthly rides from Uber and left and
the head of RTD, Deborah Johnson says, and this is
the point I want to make, the economic point I

(14:40):
want to make, she said, Subsidizing the entire cost of
the fair.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Created great demand. Of course it does.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
When you take something that people want and that does
cost money to provide, and especially more than a little
bit of money to provide, and you make it not
free but apparently free to the user, they're going to
consume too much of it. Just like when the Democrats
passed well, they send it to a vote to the people,

(15:08):
I guess. And the Democrat people passed free school lunches
for rich kids or middle class kids, right because poor
kids already got free school lunch, So they wanted free
school lunch for people who work poor, and they passed it,
and they miss underestimated by a lot the number of
people who would go get the free school lunch because
it's not free right, it's quite expensive. But if I

(15:29):
can make someone else pay for my kids lunch, well yeah,
I want that quote unquote free lunch. And so the
same thing is happening with this, and I think that
the economic point is correct that adding even a modest
fare will significantly reduce demand.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
And that's good. We've got Yes, I know.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
We want to help these folks who need help, but
we must protect the taxpayer.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
And lowering the maximum.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Subsidy means that if the date or the City and
County of Denver, no it's not that it's URTD won't
cover more than twenty dollars per ride, right, so you're
going to have a four dollars and fifty cent fare
if the trip is more than twenty four dollars and
fifty cents. And I don't know this part. It either
means you can't take it as part of that program,

(16:17):
or it means you'll have to pay four dollars and
fifty cents, then RTD pays the next twenty and then
you pay the rest on top of that. I'm not
sure which it is, but I understand that some folks
will be upset about this, but I think it's the
right move. Republicans are doing their best to blame Democrats
for the shutdown, and for the record, I do think
that's pretty much where the blame lies. There are a

(16:40):
lot of other things to talk about, not just blame,
but does it matter? Who really cares what happens next?
Joining us to talk about all of this, Kurt Couchman.
Kurt is a senior Fellow in fiscal policy for Americans
for Prosperity, and he's got a long resume of policy
work for think tanks and for members of Congress. And
the dude is what he's talking about. So Kurt, welcome

(17:02):
to KOA. It's good to have you here.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Hey, Ross, I'm excited to be here with you today.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
I want to just deal with one thing that they
was mentioned at the very end of that ad, and
Republicans keep saying it over and over and over, and
Democrats keep saying that's not right. And that is Republicans
claiming the Democrats what they want to open the government
again is health care for illegal aliens. And we actually
had a Congressman on the show before mine who referenced

(17:29):
to a particular part of It's very intricate, you know,
in the weed stuff of what Democrats want, and I
basically think Republicans.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Are lying about this, but I would like to know
what you think.

Speaker 6 (17:45):
Well, I'm my understanding, and I'm not a healthcare expert,
but my understanding is that Medicaid, there's like a portion
of the state Medicaid programs where they have the discretion
over that, and the Democrats are holding out for reversing
some of the good reforms to healthcare programs that were
in the Reconciliation Bill, and those programs without the reforms

(18:08):
did allow certain states to provide health insurance coverage for
illegal aliens in those.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
States got it.

Speaker 6 (18:15):
So my understanding is that that is correct, but there's
a whole lot more the Democrats are pushing for that
is also bad policy, right, And I.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Was just to add one thing, and in a way,
I think, you know, Republicans are picking on a thing
here because free healthcare for illegal aliens is very, very
unpopular among much of the country. But what the Democrats
want is, as you alluded to, is a repeal of
an entire big section of the One Big Beautiful Bill
Act that includes all kinds of stuff that I would

(18:44):
think that most people would be in favor of keeping
in place, like making sure you're not signed up for
medicaid in two states and making sure that you're not
still somehow signed up for medicaid in some fraudulent kind
of way when you're actually dead and maybe somebody else
is getting that money or whatever. There's lots and lots
of reforms in there, and the Democrats want to repeal

(19:06):
that entire section and only one small part of it
even mentions illegal aliens. And I do think you're right
that to the extent there may be anything going on,
it has to do with state programs, not federal programs,
because illegal aliens are barred from federal programs under a
different law. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 6 (19:25):
There is a whole lot that they are proposing repealing.
They know they're not going to get that. I mean,
this is sort of similar to when Republicans tried to
repeal Obamacare and twenty thirteen when President Obama was still president, Like,
they're not going to take big chunks out of President
Trump's signature policy victory of this year. What they're really
aiming at is extending the Biden COVID pandemic tax credit increases,

(19:51):
which were add ons to the original Obamacare tax credits
for people that are buying their health insurance through the exchanges,
and most people who are using the exchanges have the vast,
vast majority of their premiums covered by taxpayers at this point,
And so Republicans are just saying this should sunset. The
pandemic's over. Any additional relief that was needed during that

(20:14):
time doesn't need to exist anymore. And Democrats are saying, no,
we want to keep moving closer to single payer healthcare
and any step backwards from their perspective is something they
can't accept.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
So that's what they're really after, right.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
And I'll just tell listeners later in the show, I'm
going to have Michael Cannon, healthcare expert from the Cato
Institute on the show, and we're going to talk about
some of.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
That stuff a little bit more in the weeds.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
But when you hear some of the numbers about how
much health insurance premiums might go up if Democrats don't
get their way, the first thing that occurs to my
mind is not, oh, poor so and so who's going
to have to pay more for their health insurance?

Speaker 3 (20:53):
But how on.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
God's green Earth could health insurance cost this much? And
to me, it's the same way that college costs so much.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
The college and healthcare are the.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Two areas where inflation has been so much higher than
overall inflation for decades, because those are the two areas
where the government makes people feel like other people are
paying for it. I know it's a little off topic,
but do you want to say anything to that, Kurt.

Speaker 6 (21:22):
It's actually perfectly on topic. You know, we had this
period of time during the pandemic where people didn't have
to pay their student loans and then oh my gosh,
you have to start paying again, and it's like an
infinite increase in your student loan payments. But no, you're
just returning to normal, right, and so that's exactly what's
going on with these premium tax credits.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
All right, we're talking with Kirk Couchman from Americans for Prosperity.
All right, let's get out of the weeds a little bit.
On a very practical level. I would like you to
tell me and my listeners what impact on our lives
we might see while there's a government shut down, and
particular if we are not employees of.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
The federal government.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah. Absolutely, so.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
You know, I commute to work in the DC area.

Speaker 6 (22:05):
And I thought my traffic was going to be a
little bit lighter today than normal, but no, it was
the same terrible commute as normal. So I in Maryland
or Virginia, Northern Virginia, right, yeah, yeah, from one part
of northern Virginia to another. But there are a number
of activities that are continuing on defense, veteran services, homeland security,

(22:28):
border enforcement, a lot of medical care is still continuing, uh,
And the administration has a lot of flexibility about which
things continue in which things don't. And they so there
are a lot of people that are are not working
right now. They're not allowed to work during furloughs, and
so there's a component of federal activities where there is

(22:48):
actually stuff for the benefit of the American people that
is being paused right now. But then there's also some
nonsense that isn't continuing, and some of that is grants
and some of that is regulatory activities. Not so bad
under this administration, but under other administrations it's been much
worse in terms of, you know, tightening the regulatory screws.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
And actually that was understating it.

Speaker 6 (23:07):
This administration has been really great on reducing regulations, reducing
red tape, removing barriers to people living their American dreams.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, they have been, and I wish that President Trump
were has committed to spending cuts as he is to
regulatory cuts. He's still better than any Democrat, but he's
not as good as as a Republican should be. So
one of the things that I'm old enough to remember,
and you are too, because you got even more gray

(23:37):
hair than I do, is that during the Obama government shutdown,
Obama went out of his way to make it as
painful for the American people as possible. I remember when
he closed down like the World War Two memorial, right,
these memorials in DC that don't have gates, They don't

(23:57):
need federal employees, You just walk in, and in order
to make it painful for people, he fenced them off
to keep people from going in and trying to make
Republicans look bad. Now it's a slightly different angle, but
there's been a bunch of talk from Trump and from Russbaut,
who you probably know who, and they're talking about, well,
what can we do during the shutdown to make it

(24:19):
as politically painful for Democrats as possible? And while normally
I don't love these games this time. I just think
Democrats have earned whatever comes their way, and I would
like to know what you think might be done during
the shutdown that would have impacts, let's say, on the
federal workforce after the shutdown.

Speaker 6 (24:44):
Well, Director Vote put out a memo last week encouraging
agencies to look at permanent reductions in force during a
shutdown period, and so that's up to each agency to
decide which staff they don't need in order to continue
doing the their jobs.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
So we'll see how that plays out.

Speaker 6 (25:02):
I mean, this is the first day of the shutdown,
so there's a lot that we still don't know about
how things are ultimately going to play out. I did
see a post on X this morning from Director Vote
talking about how grants to major transit projects in New
York City have been paused, like eighteen billion dollars worth.
There's a brig a tunnel under the Hudson River linking

(25:23):
New Jersey to Manhattan, and then there's a Second Street
subway or Second Avenue subway project that is being paused.
So that's clearly directly aimed at Senator Schumer. I guess
we'll have to see how the courts respond to some
of the actions that may be taken. They've been all
over the place, and we'll see if there are some

(25:45):
reductions in force, if the courts decide that that's permissible
or not.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
But we just have no way of knowing.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
How that will right now.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Certainly they've been threatening to use the shutdown to fire people,
right And again, look, I don't root for people to
lose their jobs, but I do root for the federal
government to get smaller.

Speaker 6 (26:05):
So the point of the federal government is to serve
the American people. And if the federal government is doing
stuff that adds value, then great, and if it's not,
then knock it off, right.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
And so, you know, it just depends.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yeah, that's oddly sensible for somebody sitting in or near DC.
You don't hear that much common sense these days, something
like that. So does anybody really care about this? Who
isn't within ten miles of where you're sitting right now?
Well we should.

Speaker 6 (26:37):
I mean, the dysfunction with federal budgeting, both between shutdowns
and det limit brinksmanship, has been part of the reason
why the federal debt or you know, bond rating is
lower than it should be and why the outlook is
lower than it should be.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
We are piling up a debt at an enormous rate.

Speaker 6 (26:56):
Most of that is not driven by the appropriations. The
distresary spending that is related to the shutdown. Appropriations are
only a quarter of spending, they're none of the revenue.
And so that means that there's a relative handful of
members of Congress that are even able to participate in
this conversation, which means a lot of Americans aren't really represented.

(27:17):
Their members are on committees that don't get to participate
in this appropriations process. And so we have not enough
fiscal democracy in America, which incidentally is the title of
my new book. And so we're not solving as many
problems as we should. We have a sclerotic federal budget
system that doesn't work and it's letting the debt pile up.

(27:41):
There's all these opportunities for bipartisan problem solving that are
just left on the table, and so things keep getting
worse and worse.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
Politics keep keeps.

Speaker 6 (27:50):
Getting nastier and nast year, and at some point there's
going to be a breaking point, and if we don't
fix the system, then we're going to experience that, and
it's going to be really really ugly, so that people
should care about this. This is the symptom of deeper dysfunction.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, I mean will I mean we can we can
print our own currency, and actually that may end up
hurting us quite a bit when they do a lot
more of that one day. But you know, other than
that difference, we could end up being grease with a
couple extra zeros, and it could be it could be
real ugly. Now you I've just just got about ninety

(28:23):
seconds here, and some of that stuff you you said
inspired me to ask you a more fundamental question about
what's going on here? Right?

Speaker 3 (28:31):
So what is this?

Speaker 1 (28:33):
What is it that Republicans want to pass that Democrats
don't want to let pass. It's it's not a budget,
and and it's a thing that in itself seems like
a form of dysfunction. Like I'm with Rand Paul on this,
So can you please explain what this thing is that
passed the House, that Republicans want to pass in the

(28:54):
Senate and why it's maybe better than nothing, but not
much may be worse than nothing because of the spending levels.

Speaker 6 (29:03):
So I think it's better than a shutdown for sure,
And that's why House Republicans unanimously approved it, and Senate
Republicans except for mister Paul voted for it as well.
But it is part of the underlying dysfunction. According to
the Budget Act, the twelve separate appropriations bills are supposed
to be passed actually in July, not by the end

(29:25):
of September, so the agencies have a little time to plan.
But that doesn't happen because there's not enough members invested
in making that happen. There's not enough benefits to be
worth whatever costs there are. So that's the symptom. And
then the continuing Resolution is just sort of keeping things
at the same level of funding. And then the problem

(29:46):
is that we could end up with a really ugly
omnibus Appropriations Act in November December when it ultimately gets done,
which is also a function of a broken process. The
issue with an omnibus is it tends to get cooked
up behind closed by just a handful of members, top leadership,
top Appropriations Leadership, and the White House, and so there

(30:07):
are problems that are not being solved because people don't
really have a chance to go after them.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
There's bloat that continues.

Speaker 6 (30:12):
Because you know, if you don't have a stake in it,
then you're kind of on the fence about whether you're
going to vote for it or not. But then you
start cutting some interest groups thing and they start screaming
about it, then maybe that tips your calculus into not
voting for it.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
So there's a lot of work that needs to be
done to fix this. Yes, the cr is a symptom,
but there's a lot more that needs to be done
with I mean.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Are we ever going to get back to pre COVID
spending levels or even or even pre COVID but adjusted
up for inflation. Are we ever going to get back
to that? I mean, Republicans should be. That should be.
That's the only thing I need Republicans to do. I
don't give a rats behind about anything else that Republicans
care about except that we need to control spending. There's

(30:53):
a lot of work to be done.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
It's not going to happen without better institutions. But yeah,
I mean, if we get the right and seide those
in place, then we could have the wrong people doing
the right things for whatever reason right, And that's the goal.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
Kurt Couchman is Senior Fellow in Fiscal Policy for Americans
for prosperity.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Give us the book title again.

Speaker 6 (31:12):
It is fiscal democracy in America, How a balanced budget
amendment can restore sound governance.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Already published, ready to go.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
It is published. It's available wherever you can find books.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Awesome, Thanks so much, Kirk. Great conversation. Will definitely have
you back. Sounds good.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Thanks for Ross. All right, good to see you. All Right,
there you go.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Most of what you need to know about the government shutdown,
or at least some of what you need to know
about the government shutdown. All right, let me lighten it
up a little bit. So I saw this at the
Babylon b and this is so out of context from
anything else I've talked about. I just want to set
a little bit of context. You know how we hear
from time to time that movies, TV shows, books aren't

(31:55):
representative enough of this or that part of the American culture.
And therefore, since it's not representative enough of pick a group, gays, Hispanics,
blacks like, they won't watch the movie or there's nothing
in it for them because there's not people who look
just like them or something. So here's a piece in
the Babylon Bee, and here's the title. Actually, I'm gonna

(32:18):
skip the title. I'm just gonna jump into the article.
Sources close to local man Javon Willis say that the
twenty eight year old was tragically deprived of the opportunity
to be moved by Virgil's Aeneid because the classical masterpiece
did not contain a character of exactly his race, sex,
and socioeconomic class. According to Willis, the Enead, a classic

(32:41):
of Roman literature which has instrumentally shaped the entire world,
culture and history of the world. Willis in habits, simply
has quote nothing to say to him and quote because
it has no characters for him to identify with based
on his skin tone and annual income.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
Quote. I mean, it might be fine for an ancient.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
Roman affluent male, but I simply can't find myself in
the Eneid, Willis said, dubiously eyeing Virgil's Magnum Opus as
he sipped on a Venti Mocha with skim and six
pumps Mocha X Mocha Drizzle with whip and half Prelleen
Crumble xx dark chalk curls, two pumps toasted white Moca

(33:20):
X sugar cookie topping, four pumps dark Carmel crunch double
blended and cardamom power powder quote. I mean, it's like,
there's just no way for me to be moved by
literature with characters who don't precisely map onto my exact intersexual,
no intersectional individuality.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
That would be kind.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Of like authorially oppressive normativity or whatever. Willis admitted that
the story was a little bit interesting, but clarified that
it was quote not as good as Percy Jackson, continuing
the quote, It's just hard for me to even understand
why Virgil would have wanted to exclude the lived experiences

(34:02):
of people like me if he actually wanted to write
a universal epic, Willis said, sadly, how can I see
myself represented in the class struggle to overturn the dictatorship
of the patrician bourgeoisie by the Roman proletariat. If there
isn't even a browner skin toned person of modest means
playing the pivotal role in the founding of Rome, it

(34:22):
just seems kind of exclusionary, that's all. At publishing time,
Willis finally found a character he could identify with in
a Latino fan fic reimagining of Stephen King's It, and
there you go quite a commentary on the world we
live in. This story about a young man who could

(34:43):
not find anything meaningful or anything that spoke to him
in the classic of Roman literature, the Eneid by Virgil,
because there weren't characters in it just like him, which
is to say, like lower middle class black people. So
he thought the book just didn't really appeal to him,
and based on a few of the texts I got,

(35:05):
I think there are some folks who didn't realize that
the Babylon Bee is a satire website.

Speaker 3 (35:11):
It's not a news website.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
So that was just a made up story about just
how silly it can get when folks say that there's
no value in art if the art doesn't include, let's say,
a character just like them. In other words, there are
some things that probably have a universal message no matter

(35:34):
what your let's say, race is versus the race of
the people in the art, and by the way, it
doesn't have to just it's not a unidirectional thing.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
Right, So obviously.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
That's implying that a black guy should be able to
find meaning in art that was written by and almost
entirely about white people. Right. There's very very little important
presence of non white people in ancient Roman history.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
But it can.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Also be that there might be a great work of
art that involves black people, Hispanics, Asians that a Caucasian
could find a universal lesson in. This is sort of
a hybrid. But think about Hamilton. Obviously the real characters
are mostly white, but the play nobody in the famous musical,

(36:24):
I think everybody's black and Hispanic.

Speaker 3 (36:26):
Right, That's an.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Interesting hybrid in a way, because I think that guy
is trying to balance this thing. Right, what's his name,
Luke Manuel Miranda is his last name?

Speaker 3 (36:38):
What's his first name?

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Anyway, And I think he's actually trying to kind of
balance that to say, look, this story is really about
white people. I want non white people to have a
little more interest in learning about it because it's such
a fascinating story, the story of the American founding, and
so that I'm going to put characters in it, who
are you know, Alexander Hamilton, let's say, is not going
to be a white guy in my version. I actually

(37:00):
think it's kind of an interesting discussion, but I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna go any further with it. I
just wanted to let listeners know that that thing I
shared with you was satire, wasn't an actual news article.
So there's there's that, all right. What else, Oh, this
is an interesting thing. So Sean Combs, otherwise known as

(37:21):
puff Daddy, otherwise known as p Diddy, otherwise known just
as Diddy, was arrested and faced a whole bunch of
federal charges on all kinds of things prostitution and sex
trafficking and racketeering and and and stuff like that. And
he was acquitted of all the most serious charges against him,

(37:48):
basically that stuff that I just mentioned, right, racketeering and
sex trafficking.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
He was acquitted on that stuff. And I saw this piece.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
This is from Reuters, where federal prosecutors are asking a
judge to sentence Sean Combs to more than eleven years
in prison.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
On prostitution related charges.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Now, the prosecutors sought at least one hundred and thirty
five months in prison and asked the court to find
Combs half a million dollars. And the sentencing hearing, I
think is coming up at the end of this week.
And all right, this next thing I'm going to read
to you is, you know, if you're a sensitive person,

(38:33):
you won't enjoy hearing it.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
It's not R rated, but it's in that direction.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
So if you don't want to hear something sexually explicit,
plug your ears for twelve, no eleven seconds while I
read this to you from Reuters. Colmb's fifty five years old,
faces up to twenty years behind bars after a jury
on July second found him guilty following a two month
trial on two counts of transporting male prostitutes across state

(38:59):
lines to engage in drug fueled sexual performances with his
girlfriends while he watched recorded videos and masturbated. So that's
straight out of the Reuters News report. I'm not adding
any words there at all.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
So okay, now.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
I'm done with saying any of the sensitive stuff. If
you want to unplug your ears, you can keep listening.
And what's interesting to me about this is it seems
like the prosecutors are asking the judge to impose a
sentence on Sean Combs, who, by the way, I think
is a bad, bad dude, all right, but he was

(39:34):
acquitted of the serious stuff, and it sounds like the
prosecutors are trying to get the judge to massively increase
the sentence that most people would get if convicted of
the thing he was convicted of, based on the sort
of the prejudice of the things that he was charged
with but acquitted of, And I think that's not great.

(40:01):
The defense lawyers asked the judge to impose a fourteen
month sentence, arguing that the judge should not consider evidence
of abuse by Calms of his former girlfriends because jurors
acquitted him of coercing them into sex. And the bottom
line is, and I'm not I don't pay all that
much attention to this case, really, but I think it's

(40:24):
really important as a matter of rule of law that
the judges sentenced people based on what they were convicted
of and not based on what they were accused of
but were not found guilty of, just in the interest
of having a criminal justice system that really is fair,

(40:46):
that really is fair. We have a ton of stuff
still to do on today's show. Got very interesting guests,
no more just in this hour. In the next hour,
we'll have DJ Summers from the Common Sense Institute about
how Denver spends their money.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
At the end of the next hour, eleven.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Thirty something, we're gonna have Michael Cannon from the Cato
Institute talking about the news that happened yesterday was actually
during my show, but we were busy talking about other things,
talking about the shutdown, talking about some other stuff. But
yesterday President Trump held a press conference at the White
House with the head of Pfizer and with some muckety
MUCKs from the Trump administration in the health area, like

(41:23):
doctor Marty McCarey and so on. And it was about
an agreement that Pfiser made with the federal government to
offer direct to consumer pricing on certain drugs and to
change how other drugs are priced based.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
On pressure from the federal government.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
And we're going to talk about whether that is a
good idea or a bad idea. Lots and lots of
other stuff to talk about, including the government the TSA
having spied on Tulsey Gabbard. It's not exactly a new story,
but there is new information to add to the story.
I'll share all of that with you after this and

(41:58):
don't forget. Coming up in the next five minutes or
so is this hour's chance to win one thousand dollars
in our keyword for cash thanks to Mercedes Bens of Littleton.
That's Mercedesoflyttleton dot com. For those paying close attention to
President Trump's effort to fire Federal Open Market Committee member
Lisa Cook, who one of Trump's lackeys, has claimed has

(42:20):
engaged in mortgage fraud, although somehow, or at least I
should say, so far, the couple of states involved. He
says that she claimed homes in two different states to
be her primary residence in order to get better rates
on mortgages at both places. So far, those states have
said that at least one of them, that the residence

(42:42):
is not registered with their state as primary residence but
as something else, so we don't really know what's true
and what's not. Anyway, the Supreme Court has ruled that
they will take up the case and for now she
can keep her job. Which is interesting because in several
other similar cases where President Trump was trying to fire
people where it was not clear whether he had the

(43:04):
authority to fire the person, and I think all or
almost all of the previous cases, the Supreme Court has said, well,
we'll talk about the case later, but for now Trump
can fire the person. In this case, they said Trump
can't fire the person, all right. I promised you a
little update on this story, and I haven't actually talked

(43:25):
about the underlying story very much, not because I don't
care about it, but because it sort of came out
in bits and pieces over the years.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
But there was seemingly.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
Some significant, significant abuse during the Biden years by the
TSA of a program called Quiet Skies, and Senator Ran
Paul says quiet Skies was an unconstitutional dystopian nightmare masquerading
as a security tool, and Quiet skis at a two

(44:01):
hundred million dollars annual budget, if you can believe that.
And so here, let me just share a little from
the Washington Times. Keep in mind the Washington Times is
quite a conservative leaning newspaper. The TSA and federal air
marshals retaliated against adversaries of President Trump by sticking them
on secret scrutiny lists and tracking their air travels. Homeland
Security said Tuesday, that's yesterday, admitting to widespread abuses during

(44:26):
the previous president's term. Now, what's new about this story
is that the TSA themselves put out a press release
DHS Department of Homeland Security, TSA Transportation Security Administration. They
put out their own press release yesterday, and I'm gonna
share a little of this today. The Department of Homeland

(44:47):
Security announced the results of an internal investigation uncovering widespread
abuses committed by Biden administration officials who weaponized the TSA
against innocent American citizens. These officials, under the direction and
leadership of former Biden TSA administrator David Pikowski, systematically watch
listed and denied boarding to those who exercised their individual

(45:11):
rights and resisted mask mandates on airplanes, nearly six months
after the CDC relaxed its indoor mask mandate.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
So there's a lot of things here.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
There are a lot of things here that where they
talk about what TSA did during that time.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
Biden TSA, and I'm quoting now.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
From the TSA's press release, used the January January sixth,
twenty twenty one protests as an excuse to target several
dozen US citizens.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
These Americans were.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Watchlisted in harassed despite there being no evidence of wrongdoing
or illegal behavior. The targeted campaign of harassment continued through
June of twenty twenty one, six months after the events
in question, despite no clear or immediate threat to aviation security.
I would also note that it hears that there were
a few people where the TSA were not even sure

(46:05):
whether those people had traveled to Washington, DC for January sixth,
and put them on these watch lists anyway.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
That could have made it difficult or impossible for people
to travel.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
The other thing that they did was what they did
to Telsea Gabbard.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
So this is back to the Washington Times current.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
What's her title, Director of National Intelligence d and I,
Telsea Gabbard. She was tracked after criticizing Biden. Surveillance began
the day after Gabbard delivered a high profile critique of
Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
And that was last summer.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Gabbard, who's now d and I, was surveiled on at
least five flights last year under what was known as
the Quiet Sky's program. Wow, they like followed her around
and I don't know, I don't know exactly what all
what all they did, but it definitely sounds bad. The
other thing that comes out tangentially to this is apparently

(47:09):
what they did. There's a the husband of a Democratic
senator who traveled two or three times with somebody who
is I don't and I don't know. They don't give
a name, they don't give anything. So I don't want
to overstate this. I'm just telling you what's in the
press releases. Somebody who is suspected of potentially being a

(47:30):
terrorist or suspected of potentially having ties to terrorism. And
I don't know if there's anything serious there, but anyway,
what they did was they put that senator's husband, who
was traveling with this person that they had suspicions about,
not on the watch list but on the do not
watch list, on the excluded list. So like, even if

(47:51):
we think there's something going on there, we're gonna leave
that guy alone. The husband of a Democratic senator, Wow,
the Biden or a TSA. These actions demonstrate clear political bias.
For example, these officials chose not to flag individuals who
attacked law enforcement, burned down cities, and destroyed property during
the George Floyd protests and so on.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
So what has the TSA done.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
They have referred the matter to the DOJ Civil Rights
Division in Congress for further investigation. They've removed five senior
leaders of the TSA from their jobs. These are people,
the TSA says, betrayed the trust of the American people,
including the Executive Assistant Administrator for Operation Support and the
Deputy Assistant Administrator for Intelligence and Analysis. TSA says they're

(48:38):
working with policymakers on Capitol Hill to make sure this
doesn't happen again. They are updating internal policies and procedures
for better oversight, and they are reorganizing the Intelligence and
Analysis Office to hold senior officials accountable. This is a
remarkable thing if it's true, and I bet it is true.
I bet it is true, and it's disgusting, absolutely discussed.

(49:00):
The more and more we learn about the way the
Biden administration operated, the more sickened many you know, all
Americans should be. And please don't text me to say
what about Trump doing this?

Speaker 3 (49:12):
And what about Trump doing that?

Speaker 1 (49:14):
When I tell you Biden, Biden's people, the Biden administration
did something wrong and you should be upset about it,
the proper answer is not, but what about Trump?

Speaker 3 (49:23):
The proper answer is Wow.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
What a failure, What an incredible, massive failure of people
who we entrust to run our country. Good to see you,
not even a smile? Yeah? Wait, did you read the blog? Wait?
What read your blog? Your note above the note at
ten thirty three?

Speaker 3 (49:44):
Oh is that a europe reference?

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Yeah? Uh huh? One hit wonder trying to help you out. Yeah, yeah,
thank you very thank you very much, or thank you
very little or something. All right, Dragon wants me to
talk about Europe. If you would like to travel with
me and my wife and a bunch of other KOA
listeners to Europe next April, Vienna, Prague, Budapest.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
I mean, we're gonna, we're gonna drink good beer.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
We're gonna we're gonna take a waltz lesson in Vienna,
believe it or not. We're gonna have great food. We're
all gonna hang out, make friends. It's gonna be an
amazing trip. And there is so much that I cannot believe. Seriously,
I cannot believe how low the price is on this trip.
When I saw the price, I was pretty surprised because
it includes airfare and all your hotels and lots of tours,
and not every meal but many meals. The reason it's

(50:25):
not every meal is that normally, when you have meals
on your own in a city where it might just
be you and your wife, or you and your you know,
you and your spouse and a couple other KOA friends
going out for dinner, right, that's just you're on your
own for that, and that's not including the trip, but
includes so many things, and it's just it's really inexpensive.
And if you want to learn more, it's rosstrip dot com.
R O, S, S, t R I P dot com.

(50:47):
My wife and I would absolutely love to travel with you,
so please go check that out. We're about two thirds
sold out at this point. Rosstrip dot com r O, S, S,
t R I p dot com. Well, now, I just
want to mention this. I think there's some folks a
little concerned or a little upset or a little something

(51:08):
about this. And the story doesn't bother me as much
as it might bother some others, or at least when
you first see the headline. This is from Channel seven news,
But the news is all over the place downtown and
this Denver Tax District plans to buy the Denver Pavilions
Mall for thirty seven million dollars.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
So you may have been there.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
It's this kind of open air mall that's got what's
that Italian restaurant in there? Do you remember dragging the
Italian restaurant in that starts with an M? Anyway, there's
a restaurant in there, and there's the Bowling Alley upstairs
and a bunch of clothing and whatever. So this place
isn't doing very well though. They've got quite a few

(51:50):
vacancies in their Maggianos Magianas. That's a restaurant, and there's
a movie theater, and there's an H and M as well,
and the site just isn't doing that great. They've got
some vacancies, and then they're kind of dealing with this
macro problem of what's happened with downtown with not very
many people coming back to work in the offices, and

(52:12):
Sixteenth Street Mall having been closed for a long time,
lost a lot of business that way, And then you've
got a chicken an egg or a horse and cart
problem with downtown. Right If downtown isn't really strong with
people coming to the offices, then is the Sixteenth Street
Mall going to be strong or is it the other
way around? And people will come back to downtown once

(52:33):
Sixteenth Street Mall seems better. And by the way, Sixteenth
Street Mall does seem a lot better. Sixteenth Street Mall
seems really nice these days. But in any case, this mall,
the Denver Pavilions, has been really struggling. Now. One of
the things that I thought was very interesting in this
and again this is from Denver seven dot com. The property,
which opened in nineteen ninety eight on two blocks along

(52:56):
the sixteenth Street Mall and was valued at one hundred
and forty million dollars ten years ago, had a major
loan set to come do in July, and I think
they were going to default on this, like eighty five
million dollar loan and Denver or at least the Special

(53:16):
City taxing District, so it's not coming out of the
general fund the taxes that you're you know, ordinary taxes
paying to. It's this separate kind of infrastructure fund. They're
buying it for thirty seven million dollars, and as I
understand the goal, I think what the goal is is
to try to fix up the site a little bit

(53:38):
to own it so they can put in requirements on
the property for what may and may not be allowed
to go in there, because part of what they want
to see when this thing is done is not some
you know, sort of chain stuff that doesn't have any
local appeal, Like they don't want a seven.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
To eleven in there.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
They want something more interesting, more local, little more whatever.
So they want to own it. They want to define
what it can be and and they want to then,
as I understand it, flip this thing to somebody else
who would then further develop it, but based on the

(54:17):
conditions that they put in place.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
So that's what's going on.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
And I just want you to understand it's not coming from
the from Denver's General Fund, you know where we're here,
like we hear they need to cut salaries because they're
two hundred or two hundred and fifty million dollars short.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
It's not coming from that.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
It's coming from this other fund that's already funded and
as you know, limited spending power, and they can pick
and choose what they want to spend it on. And
again my understanding is that they don't want to buy
and operate this thing for a long time, but rather
they want to buy and use it for a while
or nothing, to buy and stabilize it, put some rules
in place about it, and then sell it to a

(55:02):
developer who will manage it from there. So there's that
for you. I just wanted to wanted to talk about
that a little a little bit. So here's a story.
So I don't talk too much about stuff from other states,
but I want to do probably a couple of things
from other states. Briefly here so one I saw this

(55:24):
piece CBS about Florida, and there's a guy named Victor Jones,
sixty four years old. He was executed in Florida a
couple of days ago. And this was the thirteenth execution
in the state of Florida this year, which is a

(55:45):
record for him, a record for Florida, rather a record
for Florida. And here's what struck me about this story.
And just so you know this guy, it seems like
they got him dead to rights. I don't think there's
a question about who did it. And he was trying
to rob a couple of people, a woman and her husband,

(56:08):
and he stabbed the woman in the neck. He stabbed
the husband in the chest, and the husband didn't die
right away. He managed to kind of crawl back to
his office and he found or he got a twenty
two caliber pistol and he fired at this guy, Jones,
and he actually hit Jones, believe it or not.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
He hit him in the forehead but didn't kill him.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
And the cops, the cops found, the cops found.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
That's not great. The cops found him and.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
Long story short, he was convicted and given the deacents
and the reason this story struck me or again. So
this guy was executed yesterday, day before yesterday.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
Now yesterday yesterday.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
He committed this crime in nineteen ninety he was convicted
in nineteen ninety three, nineteen ninety three, thirty two years,
thirty two years after a conviction, he finally gets a descence,

(57:24):
and it just makes me wonder, like, what are we
doing here? This is separate from my usual discussion about
why I do or don't like the des sentence, and
I've said over and over I've gone through that enough.
I'm not going to go through all all that again.
I kind of have mixed feelings about it. I do
think there are people who need killing, and this guy's
probably one of them. Right, But can you imagine how

(57:49):
much money the State of Florida must.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Have spent in order to put this guy to death.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
Thirty two years on death row, and probably probably the
state paying for attorneys on both sides, right, paying for
the prosecution obviously, but probably also paying for his defense.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
And this is just a thing.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
This is put aside my usual questions about whether they
get the right guy or not. I stipulate this is
the right guy. Here's one of the things I wonder
is it Is it enough of a gain in the
sense of justice or closure or whatever other term you

(58:42):
want to use for society generally or the families of
the victims.

Speaker 3 (58:50):
Is it enough of a sense of justice.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
To know that that guy got what was coming to
him death, which was coming to him, he deserved it.
But is it enough of a sense of justice for
the state to have paid the costs of whatever.

Speaker 3 (59:12):
That took.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
For thirty two years before putting him to death, Because
keeping him in prison for the rest of his life
probably would cost a quarter as much or a third
as much as that whole process. I'm guessing on that, Okay,

(59:40):
I'm guessing. But just the fact that it took so long,
I would bet any amount of money, I would bet
all of my money that it would be cheaper. It
would have been cheaper to just sentence him to life
in prison without the possibil possibility parole, then.

Speaker 3 (59:56):
To go through that process.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
And I just I wonder about that. And I'm not
saying there's a right answer here. This is very very
much a value judgment, very much of value judgment. I
am not.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
I struggle with it if if I knew to a
metaphysical certainty that absolutely positively, with one hundred percent certainty,
not ninety nine point ninety nine, but with one hundred
percent certainty, the government has the right guy, and the
guy committed a crime or gal. But it's usually a
guy committed a crime that deserves the death penalty. So

(01:00:37):
let's just assume that it's absolutely positively the right guy
and no chance, it isn't zero chance, and he deserves
to die.

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
Is it worth.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Going through all that for the taxpayer and maybe the
back and forth for whoever has to go to trials
and go to sentences and do all this stuff over
thirty two years? Is it worth it to achieve that
karmic justice of the death penalty? To go through that
incredible insane process. And again, I don't know the answer.

(01:01:14):
I'm raising the question.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
I think, you know, if I knew for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
It's the right guy, and we can get the process
done in let's say, less than eight years.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Which doesn't see that well.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
I mean, I'm sorry, that doesn't seem too short a time.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Eight years.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
I realize these are complicated cases, but eight years to
put someone on trial, go through an appeal, go through
in another appeal. Even if each appeal is more than
a year, you should be able to be done in
eight years. And if you could be, then kill them.
But thirty two years? Are you kidding? I just I'm

(01:01:54):
leaning towards thinking that it's not worth it. I really
am again, just one thing, And I told you I
would share one other story with you about another state.
And actually a listener messaged me about this today. I
already had it as a thing to talk about to
a certain degree.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
And that is this guy in Iowa.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
And let's see, I want to get his whole name,
Ian Andre Roberts. And you probably heard the story, depending
on where you consume your news. Ian Andre Roberts was
the superintendent of the largest school district in in Iowa,

(01:02:36):
Right was it Iowa? I think it is. Yeah, the
largest school district in Iowa. And he was an illegal
alien with previous orders of removal against.

Speaker 7 (01:02:48):
Him, and nobody knew no, and he got job after job,
and then he eventually gets this job as the head.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Of the largest school of three hundred thousand dollars a
year job. Now, the federal government put out a press
release on him. Today, Ice Des Moines to the Des
Moines Office of Ice arrested Ian Andre Roberts, a criminal
illegal alien from Guyana, in possession of a loaded handgun,
three thousand dollars in cash, and a fixed blade hunting knife.

(01:03:21):
At the time of his arrest, he was working as
the superintendent of the Des Moines Public Schools despite being
an illegal alien with a final order of removal and
no work authorization WOW during a targeted enforcement operation this
is just last week.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
Officers approached him in.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
His vehicle after he identified himself, but he sped away.
Then they found his vehicle abandoned near a wooded area.
They eventually found him. He has existing weapon possession charges
against him from February fifth of twenty twenty. He entered
the US in nineteen ninety nine on a student visa
and was given a final order of removal by an
immigration judge in.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
May of last year.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Because illegal aliens are or actually, you know, nonse, I'm
trying to illegal aliens for sure. I don't remember about
green card folks. I should know the answer to this,
but I don't. But illegal aliens are not allowed to
possess firearms in the United States, and he did, and
he was caught, and he was and he was sentenced
or he was given a final order of removal. But

(01:04:21):
here's the more interesting part. How did he have that job?
How did he have that job? Because as part of
his story, and this guy's obviously an incredible con man,
as part of his story he claimed all kinds of things.

(01:04:42):
The Spectator and that's the Spectator dot com wrote an
interesting piece called was doctor Roberts the school Board's magical Negro?
And magical negro is a phrase that Spike Lee invented,
right and the subhead of this article. Spike Lee coined
the phrase magical negro to mock Hollywood's fondness for the

(01:05:04):
saintly black character who redeems white protagonists. But anyway, but anyway,
let me just share a little of this with you
from The Spectator on Ian Andre Roberts life reads less
like a CV than a pitch for a Hollywood script
in the classic tradition of the charming con man. He
worked hard at his presentation. He cultivated a flamboyant look,

(01:05:25):
tight suits in loud colors and patterns, topped with his
signature cloth flower in the lapel and flashy sneakers. His
social media feeds feature professional portraits, sometimes shirtless, sometimes in
trousers so tight they left little to the imagination. He
spoke in smooth cliches, delivered with a Caribbean accent that
lent a whiff of exoticism to Iowan ears. And then

(01:05:48):
there's his quote unquote life story, or his competing life stories.
All reliable evidence points to Guyana as his birthplace, where
he was schooled. Until the early nineteen nineties interviews, he
sometimes claimed to have been born and raised in Brooklyn,
the child of a single mother. That contradicts his own
statement that she immigrated only in the two thousands, by

(01:06:10):
which time he was already in his thirties.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
Even his aide shifts.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Legal records say nineteen seventy, while Roberts himself has variously
given nineteen seventy three or nineteen seventy eight. Ironically, the
most colorful elements of his tail appear to be true.
A retired police commissioner in Guyana confirmed that Roberts did
graduate from officer training and joined the country's police force.

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
He was a.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
Standout runner in college in the United States, and even
represented Guyana in the two thousand Sydney Olympics.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
That stuff is.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
True, but once you reach other aspects of his life,
the truth goes Hazier. On LinkedIn, he lists seven universities
that he attended, but doesn't mention any degrees Elsewhere. He
claims some master's degrees and a doctorate in education from
Morgan State University in two thousand and seven. He began

(01:07:04):
styling himself as doctor in early twenty twelve, but records
show that he did not actually receive a doctorate in
education until twenty twenty one from an online institution widely.

Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
Regarded as a diploma mill.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
His official des Moines biography boasted of being named Principal
of the Year by George Washington University and award.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
The university says it's never.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
Given and it's only a sampling of the inconsistencies. So
why did no one bother to check before offering him
a three hundred thousand dollars a year job. Why did
no one even question the contradictions? And the honest answer
is race and ideology. Again, this is from the Spectator.
In the current climate pressing a man with a Caribbean

(01:07:48):
lilt about where he was born is deemed a microaggression.
Any when schooled in the catechism of diversity, equity, and inclusion,
knows better than to question the lived experience of someone
like Roberts, and Roberts, to his credit as a con man,
gave them exactly what they craved.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
He embodied the Dei narrative, a.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Black immigrant who rose from poverty to academic brilliance.

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
To Olympic heights, to leadership.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
And education in Iowa, one of the whitest states in America,
the all female school board glowed with pride when they
announced his appointment in twenty twenty three, and now that
he's exposed, he's still defended. I think. Actually he resigned
in the last day or two finally, but rather than
express outrage at being deceived, his supporters rally. Some protests

(01:08:34):
bare the fingerprints of unions and activists, but much of
the outcry looks organic.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
People insist that he.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
Was kind, inspiring and a role model, But the essence
of a successful con is that people fall for the
charismatic con man and cling to the illusion. Mark Twain's
old adage still holds true. It's easier to fool people
than to convince them that they've been fooled. There's a
lot more to this piece, but I'm going to leave
it there. When we come back, we're going to be

(01:09:01):
joined by Voice of the Rockies, Jack Corrigan, to talk
about the news from the Colorado Colorado Rockies today that
general manager Bill Schmidt will no longer be in that job.

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
We'll be right back on KOA.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
You know, we are the home of the Colorado Rockies,
and of course the voice most associated with the Colorado
Rockies my good friend Jack Corrigan, who along with his
partner in crime, Jerry Shimmei'll call every Rockies game. Jack
joins us right now to talk about the news from
today that general manager Bill Schmidt has resigned or been

(01:09:34):
fired or something. Hi. Jack, thanks for being here on
short notice. I appreciate it.

Speaker 8 (01:09:40):
No problem, Ross.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
Good morning. So the Rockies got swept in twenty one
season series. They set a new league high record for
the highest ERA in a season, and the most amazing
statistic to me was they got outscored by something like
four hundred and thirty five runs over the course of
the season. Are some number like that, and the previous

(01:10:02):
record was nearly ninety runs less, and that was almost
one hundred years ago, so something had to change.

Speaker 8 (01:10:09):
Yeah, I think there was no question. I mean, to
focus just on this year is a little bit of
kind of overkill, if you will. I mean, this has
been building over the last three four years, if you will,
almost since it's not that there's a direct connection, but

(01:10:33):
in my opinion, baseball changed after the pandemic. Not only
was some of the rules changes, but some of the
philosophical approaches. And I think the Rockies have been late
to the table, if you will, in that regard, and
now it's an opportunity to try and catch up.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
How does a philosophical approach by team A cause Team
B to lose more games?

Speaker 8 (01:11:03):
It's in the approach of all the phases of the game,
if you will, pitching, hitting, movie runners, base stealing, playing defense.
If you look at a number of the teams that
are in the postseason now, for the big market sluggers

(01:11:26):
like the Yankees and the Dodgers, that's one thing. But
Cleveland and Detroit and Milwaukee, and even to a degree
San Diego and Chicago changed as the game changed in
terms of how it was officiated, if you will, And

(01:11:46):
so you needed to have more walks out of your
hitters and fewer strikeouts, and you needed the reverse for
your pitchers to really analyze deeply. With the Rockies this
year in particular, and some of that because of all
the young players they had, they were terrible at drawing

(01:12:09):
walks and struck out too much, and they walked too
many people. It didn't strike.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Out enough people.

Speaker 8 (01:12:17):
Okay, so when you're going against yeah, when you're going
against the grain, it's not gonna.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Go well, right, Okay, I'm just going to stick with
this for one second, then we'll get back to the
big picture. We got about five minutes left, so and again,
you know, I don't know very much about baseball. So
when when you talk about, let's stick with the hitting side,
we'll just put aside the pitching side for now. Talk
about the hitting side. When you say that they didn't
get enough walks and they struck out too much, how

(01:12:42):
much of that is because we don't have good enough players,
And how much of that is because the coach that
you know down the first base line or down the
first or third base line, who's giving signals to the
hitter telling them what to do, are telling them to swing.
When based on how you're describing the changes in the game,
they should have been telling them not to swing.

Speaker 8 (01:13:05):
Well, I don't think there's there within the game very
often except in certain very strategic points that a hitter
is directly told not to swing or to swing. That's
based on the preparation beforehand as to what that picture's

(01:13:26):
throwing to them, what their strengths and weaknesses are. I
think it's more to the point of where the game
changed on the Rockies is that historically, from a philosophical perspective,
we tried to or they tried to. Be more specific,
they tried to swap because of playing avas and that

(01:13:55):
worked for a time, but it never translated out on
the road when they were playing at sea level. And
really the approach to teams like Milwaukee and San Diego
and Cleveland and Detroit to an extent, are doing is
if we put the ball in play. Coursefield has the

(01:14:18):
most square footage in their outfield of any ballpark in baseball.
They don't get beat by teams matching six home runs
in a game. The Rockies get beat too often when
guys are hitting the ball out past the infield and

(01:14:38):
with the outfield playing beat because it is so big,
it's hit after hit. Good example, Yeah, a good example
was there was a game, even though it was at Phoenix,
the Diamondbacks scored nine runs in an inning with two
outs and had one your base hit.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
Oh my gosh. Okay, so let me let me jump
in because you just have a couple minutes left now.
So the general manager, Bill Schmidt is gone. And I
wonder just in the bigger picture, right we've got whether
or not we have good enough players. The reason we
have the players that we have is because of management

(01:15:23):
and ownership, and a lot of people feel like management
and ownership of the Rockies have just not done what
they need to do.

Speaker 3 (01:15:31):
And perhaps part of that is because the fans keep
going to the games.

Speaker 1 (01:15:35):
And I'm I'm wondering whether you think there's more that
needs to be done here or whether there's more that
will be done here in terms of change of management,
and is there any hint of change in ownership? Well,
ownership is not gonna stand as far as.

Speaker 8 (01:15:55):
True hope for as rock These in my case covers
the ball club, is you hope Again, as I said
at the outset, there's a philosophical change in how you
build your ball club, how you draft people. I think
the Rockies. You're not going to sign free agent pitchers

(01:16:19):
until they're better. You're not going to sign a big
time free agent slugger. So spend your money on ten
twenty more scouts. Spend your money on ten twenty more
developed coaches at the minor league level teaching a philosophy

(01:16:39):
that will work at Coorsfield. Spend the money on your
analytics department to be on top of all the latest things,
whether it's physical you know, kinesiology, or it's mental in
the approach to the game. But that's where they can

(01:17:00):
spend the money. That's where they get better. That's a
philosophy change, that's not a dollars and cents change in
big numbers.

Speaker 3 (01:17:10):
Okay, last question for you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
The the interim manager, that's that Warren Warren is that
Warren Shaffer? Is that right?

Speaker 4 (01:17:20):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
If you were a betting man, would you bet that
he's the manager next year?

Speaker 8 (01:17:29):
That's really hard to say. I think, based on the
circumstances and how Warren approaches the job, I think he
deserves consideration. But and this is all caps butt in
the biggest spons you can find, whoever you bring in.
If you are going to make that philosophical change as

(01:17:51):
your head of baseball operations. They should have the people
they want in the most important places. And if that
new guy comes in and says, hey, I like what
Warren did based on his circumstances, I'm going to give
him another shot. I think that'd be fine. But it
very well could be and probably more likely going to

(01:18:14):
be that the guy's got somebody in mind who he
wants in that role.

Speaker 1 (01:18:18):
That makes sense. You know what I lied when I
said that was the last question. I've actually have two more,
but I want to ask him really really fast. One
do you think that with a change in philosophy as
you have been describing, if they did the things that
you think they should do, is the talent of our
players enough to make the playoffs.

Speaker 8 (01:18:41):
As it is constituted now based on the lack of experience?
I'd say no. But is it a found Do they
have foundation pieces? Yes, it's the question of how many
more can they get?

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
Okay, last question for you, how excited you to see
that historic collapse of the Detroit Tigers allowing the Cleveland
former Indians now Guardians to win that division again? Well,
it just.

Speaker 8 (01:19:11):
Shows you our good friend the former Rockies manager Bud
Black always used to say one something wouldn't make you
scratch your head. He'd just grin and say, Hey, that's baseball,
and really that's it's it's so crazy how the game
can change. The hottest team in September were the Yankees

(01:19:33):
playing at home against their art rivals. They lost last night.
That's baseball.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
Jack Carrigan, Voice of the Rockies, Thanks so much for
making time for us. Appreciate it, all right, Roll, it's anytime,
my friend. All right, we'll take a quick break. We'll
be right back quickly because it's awesome. I don't know
whether I'm gonna go because I do have work the
next day. But coming up on November two, at the
Paramount Theater in Denver, they are going to screen a

(01:20:03):
director's cut that's never been screened before outside of this
tour of the movie Airplane, and the director or co
director and co writer David Zucker and Robert Hayes, who
played Ted Striker in Airplane, are going to be there
and answer questions and have a conversation. And I just
wanted to share it with you. I I it's a

(01:20:24):
very much of a long shot, but I'm going to
see if I can get one or both of those
guys onto the show to help promote the event, because
Airplane is probably my second favorite comedy of all time
after Monty Python and The Holy Grail. I've seen Airplane
so many times. I can quote so many lines from

(01:20:44):
that movie, and I just think it is one of
the greatest and most iconic American comedies of all time.
And yeah, it's kind of slapstick, but it is just amazing.
I mean, you hear me all the time on this
show say the you know the foots on the other hand,
and I just just endless. There's a thousand quotable lines
from that movie. So anyway, November second, and you can

(01:21:06):
buy tickets if you want to go. You can buy
tickets at ticketmaster dot com to see that November second
at the Paramount Theater in Denver.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
I haven't spent much.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
Time on today's show talking about this shutdown that we're
in down. I just want to spend a little bit
more time, just briefly, and then in the next segment
of the show, we're going to talk with Michael Cannon
from the Cato Institute about this very interesting deal that
giant drug company Pfizer made with the Trump administration yesterday.
But let me talk about the shutdown. So we're in
the shutdown now. We don't exactly even know what it means,

(01:21:37):
what all is going to shut down, what's going to
stay open, Who's going to be defined as accepted right
ex ceped which kind of we used to use the
term essential, like, so you're an essential employee, You're going
to keep working. So that applies for sure to the
military and TSA and air traffic control and people like that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:55):
We're not sure.

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
Within the rest of the government, you know who's going
to be shut down who's not. One thing we know
is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics that puts out
the jobs reports and things like that, they are definitely
shut down. So we won't get jobs report this Friday
that we would normally get, but we'll see a couple
listeners have asked by text whether federal employees who don't

(01:22:19):
work during this time will nevertheless be paid for their
work during this time, and the answer is yes, they
will not be get A certain part of the federal
government that processes paychecks will be closed. So if you're working,
you will get paid, but you might not get paid
on time. If you're not working, you will also be paid,
but not on time. And this really bothers me. Now,

(01:22:42):
this is from a federal law that's only something like
six years old that says that federal workers will earn
their paychecks, will earn will get paid for the time off.
So basically they get a paid paid vacation. And I'm
really torn on this because in a sense, even though
you could look at it as paid vacation, in a

(01:23:04):
certain sense, the federal workers aren't responsible for this. They
didn't ask for it. They didn't ask for a paid
vacation to they are either the benefactors or victims or
something of the fact that we have an incompetent Congress
that said, I don't think that folks should get paid
vacation paid for by taxpayers, and I would like to

(01:23:27):
repeal the law that says that that guarantees them that
they will be fully paid even for time they didn't work. Now,
what about in the past before the law that was
passed in twenty nineteen, because we did have government shutdowns
a few of them before that. Well, what happened in
previous times was Congress always added something to a law

(01:23:48):
that they were going to pass or passed a standalone
law that gave the people back pay for that particular shutdown,
not for all shutdowns going forward. There has been a
law passed for all shutdowns going forward. I would like
to repeal it now in the interest of trying to
not make the government workers victims too much of it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:10):
I could live with something that says.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
They get half pay, because that would be some you know,
a pain for them. And the reason I want pain
for them is not because I want pain for federal
government workers, just like I don't. I don't root for
federal government workers to lose their jobs because I have
something against them. I don't, but I do work. I
do root in the abstract for federal workers to lose

(01:24:34):
their jobs in the context of our government is too big,
it does too much, and it costs too much, and
we need to slim it down. So the other thing,
though specifically with shutdowns, is this, federal workers mostly vote Democrat,
and as long as they are fully protected as far
as their back pay goes, you lose the incentive whatever

(01:24:57):
incentive Democrats might have to stop or prevent a shutdown
right to end or prevent a shutdown because they know
that their voters are going to get all their paychecks.
If government workers were going to suffer even modestly financially,
Democrats would have a lot more incentive to get on

(01:25:17):
board and not cause a shutdown like they are. Right now,
We'll be right back. They still have plenty of stuff
to talk about. One other just quick thing I want
to mention on this shutdown. We don't and what could
be very interesting about it is we don't yet know
whether or how the Trump administration will try to make

(01:25:38):
this very politically painful for Democrats. I talked about in
the last segment of the show. Oh I've got him,
I've got him here. Dragon talked about in the last
segment of the show, how they're You know, the Democrats
have very little incentive or or at least, let's say,
less incentive than they otherwise would have to come to

(01:25:59):
the trade and try to do anything about a shutdown
as long as federal workers don't have any financial price
to pay from there being a shutdown. And you know,
just for the record, shutdown doesn't bother me. You know,
if I'm not quite an anarchist, but I'm probably a

(01:26:19):
little more in that direction as compared to whatever it
is that we have now anyway, and my next guest
probably shares that viewpoint given that he works at the
libertarian Cato Institute, one of my favorite organizations. But we're
not here to talk about shutdown so much today because
Michael Cannon is not their tax and budget guy. He's
the director of health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute,

(01:26:41):
and he joins us once again. And yesterday during my show,
there was a whole prece event going on at the
White House that I did not cover because there were
other things going on yesterday where the President and some
of his big shots in the health space where they're
with I think this CEO of Pfeiser talking about some

(01:27:03):
agreement that Peiser has made with the federal government. And
I will note just one thing before jumping into the
conversation with Michael Cannon, and that is pfeiserstock went up
a lot on yesterday's news a lot and then and
now it's it's up a bunch more today. Right. So

(01:27:24):
just this week, so Pfiser was trading around just under
twenty four dollars for most of the week, and right
now it's over twenty seven dollars. So it's up something
like I don't know, eleven percent or some number like
that since they announced this thing, and if that were
the case. If that's the case, then it's very hard

(01:27:46):
to see this as some kind of big win for
the American taxpayer, or the American drug buyer, or the
American anything, although I suspect that we will hear Donald
Trump talking about it as the greatest deal ever. All Right,
Michael Cannon, welcome back to Kowa. It's good to see you.

Speaker 4 (01:28:06):
Great to be back. How are you.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
I'm all right. Why don't we start with the high
level thing? And that is what was announced yesterday. What
do we need to know?

Speaker 9 (01:28:16):
So for some time, what the President has been saying is,
ever since the executive order earlier this year, that he's
going to get dark prices down, not by being a
smarter negotiator through the Medicare, the Medicaid program, which would
be welcome because if we get those programs to pay
lower prices, it would redevice the tax burden of those programs.

(01:28:39):
And federal health spending is the largest category of federal
spending in the budget. So when you say I'm the
healthcare guy, that means I am the Tax and Budget guy.
And it's also the only category of federal spending that
is growing as a share of GDP other than the debt.

Speaker 4 (01:28:56):
But that's just mostly because of healthcare.

Speaker 9 (01:28:59):
So so it would be great and actually supported the
provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that say that medical
care can set lower bids for the prices that for
the drugs that ad buyse.

Speaker 4 (01:29:13):
But that's not what the President did the other day.

Speaker 9 (01:29:15):
What he's been saying ever since that the executive order
is we are going to use the full force of
the federal government to bully private companies drug companies into
offering not just the United States government, but all US
purchasers the lowest price that they offer anybody. What they're
talking about there is not the government offering a lower

(01:29:39):
bid to opening bid to drug companies, but the government
using force, government force to set the prices not just
in government programs, but in the private sector as well.

Speaker 4 (01:29:53):
And.

Speaker 9 (01:29:55):
Using the FDA and the FTC and the Department of
Justice and every other branch of the federal government that
the Trump president could think of against companies that don't
agree to play ball. This is the uggish behavior. This
is the government. I mean that Donald Trump doesn't have
any authority to set prices in the private sector, much

(01:30:16):
less to use all these government agencies in order to
bully drug companies into doing it.

Speaker 4 (01:30:21):
But that's what he's doing.

Speaker 9 (01:30:23):
And this is why people are worrying about authoritarianism, because
we have an executive branch that is totally run amok.
Congress is sitting on the sidelines, pretending it has nothing
to do with govern Instead of all, Congress could be
cutting off funding for all of these illegal activities that
the President is and on constitutional activities that the President

(01:30:45):
is engaging in.

Speaker 4 (01:30:46):
They're not doing it.

Speaker 9 (01:30:48):
And the folks at Pfizer and other drug companies are thinking, look,
you know, the President is slapping us with one hundred
percent tariff on drug imports.

Speaker 4 (01:30:58):
The President has threat he's going to use other branches.

Speaker 9 (01:31:01):
Of the federal government against us and tie us up
in court for years, if not decades, spending millions and
millions of dollars. Of course, they're going to show up
at a press conference with the President to make an
announcement if that's what the President wants. And you'll notice
that the President did back off of the one hundred
percent tariffs on prescription drugs.

Speaker 4 (01:31:19):
That's because he's using them.

Speaker 9 (01:31:20):
As coercive leverage over private companies to do something that
the president has no.

Speaker 4 (01:31:24):
Authority to do.

Speaker 9 (01:31:25):
Okay, Now, as for Pfizer's stock price, that tells us
that this might all be window dressing, that this might
all be nonsense, and that the president is not getting
lower prices out of out of Pfizer, that the president
did that Trump did chicken out in this case, and
that all that he wanted was the press conference. That

(01:31:47):
would be not a I wouldn't call it a best
case scenario, but maybe the best of all of these
awful case scenarios that I could envision, And note that
that would mean that the president is also not doing
anything constructive on the prices that Medicare and Medicaid pay
for prescription drugs. Otherwise Pfizer's stock would not be headed upward.

Speaker 1 (01:32:10):
Okay, So you said a lot of stuff there. Let
me address a couple of things. So two things that
were talked about yesterday was this what they're calling Trump RX.
And by the way, I really don't like it when
the Trump administration creates these new federal programs and names
them after Trump rather than something American or something generic

(01:32:30):
or something whatever. I really really despise that sort of
personalization of new federal programs, whether you are for or
against the federal program in the name of a particular president.

Speaker 3 (01:32:41):
That is just way too much.

Speaker 1 (01:32:43):
Narcissism, and that is not what this country is supposed
to be about.

Speaker 3 (01:32:45):
But anyway, Trump.

Speaker 1 (01:32:46):
R X is going to be this thing that at
first when I read about it, I thought that trump
our X was going to be selling drugs directly to consumers.
But all it seems like it's actually going to be
is a website that you can go to and if
you want to try to buy a particular drug directly
from the drug manufacturer at some kind of discount, it
will link you to that drug manufacturer's own web page
where you can go do that.

Speaker 3 (01:33:07):
So it seems like it's really not very much at all.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
And and Michael, you will know better than I do,
but what percentage of American drug buyers would be open
to buying their drugs directly rather than being in medicare,
being in medicaid, or being on health insurance where you're
going to go through some kind of pharmacy benefit manager
or something to buy drugs. So I don't even know

(01:33:30):
how many people are going to benefit from this, you know,
even hypothetically.

Speaker 4 (01:33:37):
You know, how's it on on?

Speaker 9 (01:33:38):
Donnie got all this, this is the Democratic candidate for
mayor in New York got and all sorts of criticism
from Republicans because you want to government run grocery stores
there going to compete with the private stores and make
food more affordable or something.

Speaker 4 (01:33:55):
They all mock them for that. And yet when President
Trump goes out there and.

Speaker 9 (01:33:58):
Says I'm gonna create my own website that's going to
compete with good RX and Mark Cuban's website and so forth,
they all hail him. They hail the dearior leader as
if he's brilliant. But this is a totally dumb idea,
because the government, if those sorts of websites provide value,

(01:34:22):
then the private sector will provide them, or if they
don't provide and if they don't provide value, the government
shouldn't subsidize them. And there's some policy reason why, you know,
they would provide value but the private sector can't do
it because there's some regulatory barrier, then the government should
eliminate that regulatory barrier. In no case should the government

(01:34:42):
be offering this sort of service, creating this sort of
website itself.

Speaker 4 (01:34:46):
It's just nonsense. But to be clear, it is.

Speaker 9 (01:34:50):
Regular garden variety within normal parameters.

Speaker 4 (01:34:54):
Nonsense.

Speaker 9 (01:34:55):
And so I don't want to put this anywhere near
on a par with what the President is doing in
terms of bullying private companies by slapping them with terrorists,
sticking the FTAC and DOJ on them and pulling their
you know, peaceful productive workers off the streets and out
of factories using armed government agents.

Speaker 3 (01:35:17):
Okay, so you know, I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:35:21):
I share your libertarian sensibilities generally, although I think of
myself more as objectivist than libertarian. And my son's middle
name is Rand, so that's kind of where I'm where
I'm coming from on this.

Speaker 3 (01:35:32):
But I am going to push back on you a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:35:35):
So I'm not down with government telling private companies what
to do, and I am always exceptionally hesitant, and I'm
going to sort of play devil's advocate here, maybe more
aggressively than I actually feel. But still, we are in
a situation where other governments of other nations imposed price caps,

(01:35:56):
and that definitely has a an effect of where they're
lowering the prices that everybody in Canada or England or
France or wherever is going to pay for a drug,
and the pharmaceutical companies need some ROI in order to
justify the work for inventing this drug and going through

(01:36:18):
the approval process, and so that tends to lever up
the prices of pharmaceuticals that Americans pay and don't. And
I don't think that's right. I don't think we should
tolerate that. And I think maybe it's a legitimate function
of our government to say to these drug companies, if

(01:36:41):
you're going to give preferential pricing to every other company,
then we expect you to give that same price to us.
I don't hate that as much as you do. And
I'm trying, and I'm trying to understand. So you said,
if these websites would offer value, then the drug company
would do it anyway. That's not true, and it's especially

(01:37:03):
not true because many drugs, not every drug, but many
drugs are either their own monopoly, or at least a
small oligopoly that operates in a way where you would
have for many years, let's say airlines, if there's only
one or two airlines servicing a market, they wouldn't price
cut and they didn't have to agree to it, they

(01:37:24):
just wouldn't. And so I think that the American drug
purchaser pharmaceutical purchaser is getting completely screwed by the operations
of the drug companies in cahoots with foreign governments. And
based on the way you talk about it, I you
leave me feeling like a libertarian would say, there is

(01:37:47):
no solution, and I would like to know what your
solution is, because I do not buy your argument that
the drug companies themselves will offer something that offers value
to consumers.

Speaker 9 (01:38:01):
Why I didn't say that the drug companies would offer
that website, I said someone would. And I think you'd
agree with me more if you understood all the ways
that the government is creating the very problems that you're
complaining about. And the government is the only reason that
the drug companies are able to gouge US patients charge

(01:38:22):
so much higher prices here than elsewhere.

Speaker 4 (01:38:25):
Let me ask you this, If the drug companies.

Speaker 9 (01:38:28):
Are charging a much lower price in Denmark or wherever,
why can't you just buy a drug from Denmark.

Speaker 4 (01:38:33):
It's because your government prevents you from doing that.

Speaker 9 (01:38:36):
Government sets up a trade barrier that says you cannot
buy drugs from foreign countries.

Speaker 4 (01:38:41):
It also sets up regulatory barriers that say the drug has.

Speaker 9 (01:38:47):
To be approved by the FDA, it can't be if
it's the European Medicines Agency.

Speaker 4 (01:38:52):
That's not good enough.

Speaker 9 (01:38:53):
The government does other things to drive up drug prices
here in the United States.

Speaker 4 (01:38:58):
Everything from the tax code.

Speaker 9 (01:38:59):
To the care and Medicaid programs, to various regulations including Obamacare,
drive up drug prices in the United States. And the
only way that drug companies end up with a monopoly
is if the government issues them a monopoly through the
patent system. Now, we can maybe have a debate about
whether that's valid or not, and we can certainly adjust
the patent system even if we agree that one should exist.

(01:39:23):
But in every case, everything that you're complaining about is
a problem that the government created or makes worse. And
so the appropriate response here is not for the government
to beat up on the drug companies. The appropriate responses
for the government to remove the regulatory barriers and other
steps that it is putting in the way of more
affordable medicines, let US residents buy drugs from other countries

(01:39:45):
at lower prices. Then the drug companies will not be
able to price discriminate.

Speaker 4 (01:39:49):
It is only that.

Speaker 9 (01:39:49):
Trade barrier that allows the drug companies to price discriminate
the way that they are.

Speaker 3 (01:39:54):
That's a good point.

Speaker 1 (01:39:56):
And let me also say, I don't need this drug
so much as I used to. But so many years
ago there was a very very well known drug called
viox and it got pulled off the market after a
bunch of lawsuits. Yox was a game changer for me.
It was the only drug that kept me out of
pain at the time, and it was pulled off the
market because, well, it is true that Merk lied about

(01:40:17):
and hid some of the statistics about modestly increase heart
attack risk that I was absolutely willing to take. I
was willing to take that risk to keep me out
of pain. Merk created another drug to replace biox that
has a slightly better cardiovascular risk profile. It's called Arcoxia.
The generic is called Etora cocib, and it has approved

(01:40:39):
around the world except in the US. And I buy
mine from India and I have it mailed to me,
so I can't buy that in the US even if
I want to.

Speaker 3 (01:40:48):
But I do like your idea.

Speaker 1 (01:40:49):
Let's say there is a drug that is approved in
the US and elsewhere. We should absolutely positively to be
able to buy it wherever we want. And that is
a website that probably already exists. Any other people would
would do and kind of like, uh, like you can
go on Trivago the way they advertise, We're gonna scour
all the hotel webs all the travel agency websites to

(01:41:10):
find you the best price per night on that hotel room.
Someone would would say, I'm going to scour England, Denmark, Mexico,
Canada and find the best price on drug X y Z.
And I do think that's a great idea. I'm almost
out of time here, but I mean, is there anything
that happened yesterday that you think was okay?

Speaker 4 (01:41:33):
No, I mean the governments shut down. The government shut down, which.

Speaker 9 (01:41:38):
Is fine, uh huh. But and I say that with
half of my hushold income comes from the government. My
wife words for the government. And by the way, she
had her action drug similar to biox becks drug gave
her one of the rashes that comes with that porteler
Cox to inhibit her.

Speaker 4 (01:41:55):
But theox I talk about biox in my book.

Speaker 9 (01:41:58):
Because it's not only illustrative of the dynamic you mentioned,
but that case also shows why we don't need government
regulation like the FDA. It was the private sector that
detected the problems that bios created, the elevated risk of
heart attack. It was a private health plan, Kaiser Permanente,

(01:42:19):
that provided the FDA data that the FDA itself could
not generate, and so the private sector Kaiser Permanente was
doing the FDA's job.

Speaker 4 (01:42:26):
Better than the FDA was.

Speaker 9 (01:42:28):
We don't need these regulations, we don't need these trade barriers.
They are protecting drug companies at the expense of consumer.

Speaker 1 (01:42:36):
And I think we've gotten to the heart of it there.
I mean to the extent that you are very much
against what Pfizer and the government did yesterday. I think
really the big takeaway from this conversation is that they
are creating this massive Rube Goldberg machine and using the
federal government to leverage private companies to do what they
want in response to a problem that the federal governments
themselves created. I literally have fifteen seconds for you here

(01:42:59):
to wrap up.

Speaker 9 (01:43:02):
Trump did drop his threat of terrorists against pharmaceuticals, but
we don't give him credit for fogush behavior. I'm glad
that those terrorists are not going to be in place,
but Congress should strip him of this power immediately.

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):
Michael Cannons, director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.
Thanks as always, Michael, appreciate it anytime. All right, Hi
may an.

Speaker 8 (01:43:24):
Easy ra.

Speaker 3 (01:43:26):
All right, weather Wednesday, and what else.

Speaker 10 (01:43:29):
We're going to talk to Jack Corgan Dick changes at
the Rockies front office. And you know, baseball is my
favorite sport, so I'm feeling a little hopeful right now.
And then of course we've got to talk about the
government shut down. I want to talk about my conversation
with truck driver Chad. Yes, I spoke at the South
Metro Republican breakfast this morning, and on the way out,
this guy unloading stuff at Magianis is like, I try

(01:43:51):
to listen to.

Speaker 1 (01:43:52):
You and Ross, but I just can't.

Speaker 3 (01:43:54):
I'm on the left.

Speaker 10 (01:43:55):
And I stopped and we had a great conversation about
good about what he things are important to him, and
it's amazing they're the same things that.

Speaker 4 (01:44:02):
Are important to us.

Speaker 1 (01:44:04):
Yeah, you know, you know what I'll just say to that,
A lot of people.

Speaker 3 (01:44:07):
Who think they're on the left and might.

Speaker 1 (01:44:09):
Be somewhat left of center, and a lot of people
who think they're on the right and are somewhat right
of center have a lot more in common.

Speaker 3 (01:44:16):
Correct, then a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:44:17):
Of these like cable news outlets and such, people that
are sucking up all the osages.

Speaker 3 (01:44:22):
Somebody use the term there.

Speaker 1 (01:44:24):
There are a lot of conflict entrepreneurs out there, correct,
And and you know those there are a lot of
people who are not that far from me and from Mandy,
And and probably I have a lot more common with
someone who is let's say, truly center left than with
someone who is let's say, far right right. And all right,

(01:44:45):
I'm looking forward to all that. Everybody stick around for Mandy.
I am out tomorrow for Yom Kapoor. I will talk
to you again on Friday.