10-21-24 - *FULL SHOW* What Polls Really Mean; Ranked-Choice Voting; Homeless Sweeps

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I did go to that to the Avalanche game on Friday,
their first win of the season, and I won six
dollars betting on that game. I put together some crazy
bet with McKinnon getting this many points and mccarr getting
that many points. And there's a dude named Ross on
the Avalanche, so I thought, all right.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'll just I'll bet on him to score a goal.
He actually scored two goals, I think.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
So anyway, I was cool to be at the Avs
game for the for the first win of the year,
and I was actually there.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
With just a wonderful group.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
We had Chris Boyer in studio with me last week
with Freedom Service Dogs, so local company right here in Englewood,
and well, I say here in Englood. I'm not sitting
in Englewood, but you know what I mean. And it
was a wonderful event. That whole night at at ball
Arena was it was military appreciation night by the Avs,

(00:52):
and so there were just there were so many veterans
there and they had veterans sort of guest speaking kind
of sort of in the in the breaks between periods,
and it was it was wonderful and actually a former
ABS player Jonathan Taves came came to the the suite
that the AVS had donated to Freedom Service Dogs, and

(01:15):
it was actually two sweets. There are probably twenty twenty
something people about half vets and the rest spouses and
friends and so on. As AVS player came up and
signed stuff, and it was it was just it was
really nice and I was I loved the fact that
they did military appreciation appreciation night it there there at
ball Arena, and they won the game and I won

(01:38):
six dollars betting on the game. So yeah, Shannon, I
only bet one dollar and I won six dollars, So
that's pretty good. That was I've been doing until until this,
Until this weekend, I'd been doing pretty badly in my
football betting for a few weeks in a row. Actually
did okay this weekend, so that was my winning bed

(02:00):
in a long time. Anyway, it was a lot of fun,
and now the ABS and won a couple games in a.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Row, so that's pretty good.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
And then Saturday, Saturday night, Kristin and I went to
the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and saw Verdi's
Requiem and we had we had Dwayne Wolf. I don't
think you heard this interview, Shannon, because you weren't in
with me for that part. But we had Dwayne Wolf
in studio, who founded the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, Chorus,

(02:31):
Choir Chorus forty years ago.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
He founded it and.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
The first piece they did when he founded it was
Verdi's Requiem, and we went to Saturday night show. Then
he did a show on Sunday afternoon Mattinee.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
That was his last show.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
He retired, and they ended his forty year career there
with the same piece they started it with. How about
I'm gonna I don't don't know if my wife would
want me to mention this to you, So okay. So
requiem is commemorating somebody's life. It's a piece about death.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
It's right.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
And actually, when Kristin and I went into it, we
were just sort of half joking, kind of saying, like,
we're going to this thing in a way to remember Ruben,
our little French you just died.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
It's like a requiem for Reuben kind of.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
And about about two thirds of the way through the symphony,
I noticed a little bit of movement to my right.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Kristin is sitting to my right.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
I notice a little bit of unexpected movement to my right,
and I see my wife wiping, wiping away tears, and
I didn't and it's the middle of the symphony and
they and they did it with no intermission. I think
it was eighty four minutes this piece, no intermission, and
they didn't play anything to to any warm up pieces,
which sometimes they do with shorter classical works, but this

(04:05):
was the only thing they played, and they played it
straight through, and so I couldn't talk with Christian about.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Why she was wiping away tears.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
But afterwards, afterwards, when we were driving home, I asked
her about it, and I said, well, were you were
you thinking about Reuben? And she said no, she said,
I actually wasn't necessarily feeling any particular emotion about anything,
and suddenly just the music just made me cry. And

(04:36):
she couldn't really explain it. And you know, it sung
in what Italian and Latin, I guess, and I don't
even know I should know that, and I think it's
probably mostly Latin. And it just caused her involuntarily, without
knowing that she was feeling any emotion at all, it

(04:58):
caused her to cry. Means she wasn't bawling. She wasn't
making any noise. It was just a couple teardrops running
down her face. It was really something. It was really
interesting actually in a way, the power of the power
of music and it speaking of music, I'm I'm really
excited because years ago, I know I'm starting off slow. Right,

(05:22):
it's Monday morning. I don't like to just jump into
the heavy stuff. We gotta kind of warm up the
engine oil before we jump into politics or economics or whatever.
We gotta warm up. Just talk together a little bit
in the morning about things we did over the weekend.
And please do send me stuff you did over the
weekend at five six six nine zero.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Tell me anything interesting you did over the weekend. I'd
love to read your stories.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
So years and years ago I went to this thing
called the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, and it was a
big show that used to be at the Marriotte and
the Denver Tech Center.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Then they moved it out to the Gaylord.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
And then because it's all you know, people going from
room to room looking listening to and looking at stereo equipment,
it was closed down during COVID and then they decided
not to not to start it again. So unless somebody
does something in the future, Rocky Mountain Audio Fest is
no more, which is too bad. But anyway, maybe the

(06:15):
first one I ever went to, and again it was
at the Marriotte near I twenty five and Bellevue or
something in the Tech center, And basically what they did
was they would empty out a bunch of hotel rooms
on the first couple of floors, and then stereo companies
would rent the rooms and display their equipment and play
their equipment. And I went into this one room and

(06:38):
it had these speakers, and I was mesmerized. I was
just absolutely mesmerized. And I sat there listening for a while,
and I talked with the engineer who invented them for
a while, who actually is a German guy who came
out of Mercedes Benz and not the audio part of
Mercedes Benz, right, he said, some kind of car engineer,

(06:59):
but he liked stereo better and he's doing this.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
And I was just so mesmerized by these speakers.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
And then I kept walking around and I went to
listen to other stuff, and then I went back and
went back to that room, and it was the only
room I went back to, and I just thought I
just thought, these are just so freaking fabulous.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
And I've only ever heard one other pair.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Of speakers that ever caused me to have an emotional
reaction listening to music.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
I've only ever heard two, and this is one.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
And I thought to myself, I'll I'll never be able
to afford these, never. And then I've got this saved
search on a particular website where the stereo equipment has
bought and sold, and somebody was offering them for sale

(07:50):
at a price that I still couldn't afford, but it
was the cheapest I've ever seen them. And then I'm
reading the ad and the person says, I want to downgrade.
I'm just not listening to music enough anymore. I want
a downgrade. And he's freaking local, right, there's a national website.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
But it turns out the ad.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Was from somebody who lived fifteen minutes away from me.
So I said, well, why do you come over and
listen to my speakers that I have right now, which
are great, but they're a downgrade from what you're selling.
You want a downgrade, let's talk. He came over, he
listened to him, and we ended up trading my speakers
and both of my subwoofers, and I had to put

(08:37):
some cash in the deal, but not too much in
return for these speakers that I have at my house
now that are speakers I've been daydreaming about for ten
or twelve or fifteen years, but never thought I'd be
able to afford. And so that's pretty good. That's a
pretty good weekend for me. I hope you had a
wonderful weekend as well. We have an immense amount of
stuff to do on the show. We'll start jumping into

(08:59):
the more serious.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Stuff right after this.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
I want to make you aware that the Denver City
Council is taking up a whole bunch of stuff this evening.
Lots of money they want to spend on all kinds
of things, free food and this and that and the
other thing. But what I want to mention specifically, actually
one thing for going to be very important for Denver rights.

(09:21):
There is a bill, and I'm going to the Denver
Gazette for this. There is a bill introduced to mending
the Denver zoning Code that would allow accessory dwelling units
in all residential areas of the city. An accessory dwelling
unit is something that you might call a mother in
law suite, right, a small standalone building. And part of
the reason there's been a big push for these things,

(09:42):
including from Governor Polis, is to create not just more housing,
which is good, but also more housing that's likely to
be relatively affordable. Right, So you make a little, I
don't know, four hundred square foot thing and it's got
a little sleeping area.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Small kitchen in a bathroom, and.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
You know, a person or maybe even two people could
could live in it, and it'll be real. It'll be
much more affordable than your average thing in Denver. So anyway,
the Denver City Council is going to be looking at that.
But the other thing that I wanted to mention, there's
going to be some hearings about several bills related to

(10:24):
redeveloping the area around Ball Arena, which used to be
called Pepsi Center, across the street from the area campus.
There's a lot going on. I am not fully versed
on all the details, but they want to create something
like a significant mixed use neighborhood around there. Mixed use
means means residential and commercial, right, some businesses, some places

(10:46):
to live, some.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Restaurants and bars.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Building up this whole thing around the Pepsi Center, So
you know, of course it'll be most impactful to people who.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Live there around there, but it'll.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
Impact a lot of people in a lot of ways,
even if you don't live around there.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
And one of the things to keep an eye on is.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Going to be the debate about how tall they will
allow buildings to be, because right now buildings aren't allowed
to be over some height. I don't remember what the
number is, And so what they're proposing is, well, we'll
make some percentage of the product quote unquote affordable housing

(11:27):
and there and by which you will then give us
a waiver and allow us to build buildings that are
taller than we are allowed to build, which of course
will be very bad for the views of people who
live to the east of.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
That and currently have mountain views.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Even to people who live up a little higher can
be a little hilly, right, and you might be a
little over the Pepsi Center over Ball Arena in your view,
but they're gonna block it with these buildings, and they're
talking about, well, we'll build we'll build taller but skinny buildings.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
I don't know that would make me feel a lot better.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
In any case, I don't own property there, But I
do wonder how this is all going to go down
if you have one of the most important economic forces
in the city, right the people who own the Avs
and the Nuggets and the Mammoth and Ball Arena and
a bunch of other stuff, and they want to do

(12:25):
whatever they want to do, and it's going to negatively impact, however,
many hundreds or thousands of other people. Who's gonna win
that fight? And it's not just like the rich dude
against everybody else. There's also I mean, it's significant. You're
talking about making the city that part that area right
around Ball Arena is not that nice. It's not the

(12:47):
worst place I've ever seen, but it could be much nicer.
And if you were to put a nice development in there,
You're talking about more housing that the city needs. You're
talking about bars and restaurants and beautifying the and making
it another part of the city that tourists want to
go to. So there's a lot of upside there. So
I'm not saying I'm against this.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
In fact, I'm I'm almost certainly for it.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's just a question of how do you balance the
equities when you're going to destroy the view and therefore
at least some property value of lots of other people.
And that's what they're going to have to work out.
I'm gonna mention one other thing quickly, and then we've
got a fascinating conversation.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
In the next segment, there was apparently a leak.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
They think maybe from the National Geospatial Agency now called
I guess, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, But NNGA is
kind of what it's known as by people who are
sort of aware of some of the operations of government,
and it's not really a hidden, super secret agency, but
it's not very big, and much of what it does

(13:59):
is highly classify and it just doesn't get talked about
very much. Apparently there seems to have been a leak
from NNGA that may have been of their satellite coverage
of Israel.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
And their analysis.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Based on what they see in the satellite coverage of
what Israel might be looking to do when it comes
to retaliating against Iran with Israeli strikes against Iran. And
this thing leaked out on a pro Iranian telegram channel,
So it looks like at the moment, somebody who certainly

(14:36):
has some kind of security clearance in the United States
government leaked this highly sensitive information to a pro Iranian
media outlet or to somebody, and it ended up on
a pro Iranian media outlet. And I don't think it's
going to stop Israel from doing anything, but this is

(14:59):
a very serious thing to have this kind of leak
from the American government. And it goes exactly to why
Benjamin Netya, who doesn't talk very much anymore with Joe
Biden or anybody else in the American government about what
is real as planning, because they have learned that America
can't be trusted. And even if you're not really a

(15:20):
political nerd, when you get this close to a presidential election,
everybody's thinking about politics to some degree. We try not
to do too much politics here on the show to
kind of keep our brains fresh and all, but I mean, two.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Weeks from tomorrow, it's the election. Now.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
As we're thinking about the election, one of the main
types of data point that we keep getting told about
that we might read about voluntarily, that we might hear
about on the news is Poland you hear this poll,
that poll, and maybe you hear a few other little.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Terms likely voters, registered voters, and so on.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
And you hear a poll Trump up zero hair, US
up two points in the in the national, which isn't
really a thing. You hear all this stuff, but do
you really know what it means? Do you really know
what it's measuring? And most importantly, do you really know
how to think about poles and what they are actually

(16:20):
measuring and what they're not measuring. Really, but a lot
of people talk about him as if they are so
I realize, on the one hand, this is nerdy. On
the other hand, it's really fascinating to me. And I'm
so pleased to be joined by Carl Allen. Carl is
a data analyst and he recently wrote a book that
I read all of entitled The Polls Weren't Wrong. And so,

(16:47):
with that already too long introduction, Carl, Welcome to Koa's
good to see you, Good to have you here.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Hey, good morning, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
So I'm just gonna jump in with some questions, and folks,
if you've got questions about political polls and really like
methodology and questions about how polling works.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
Not do you believe Trump is really up or down?

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Not that kind of question, but how this stuff works,
text them to me at five six six nine zero
when I will ask Carl the good question. So this
is gonna, probably to some people sound like a dumb question,
but what is a poll actually measuring?

Speaker 3 (17:26):
You know what?

Speaker 4 (17:26):
That extremely simple question baffles even the most brilliant of
experts in the field.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
Right now, I would bet money, and I know we're not.

Speaker 4 (17:36):
I know it's it's kind of legal now, kind of not.
But I would bet money that if you ask one
hundred experts in the.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
Field, what do poles measure?

Speaker 4 (17:43):
Really, you would probably get about seventy five different answers.
And the answer, the scientifically valid answer, is that poles
are an estimate of a base of support. Poles are
an estimate or a snapshot of some current characteristic of
a population. When we think about poles, obviously, political polls

(18:04):
are the example that come to mind. Oh, you can
take polls on anything, race, gender, do you have a dog,
are you married, et cetera. But polls as a tool,
as a scientific pool, are intended to give us an
estimate of a current or the snapshot of a current
characteristic of a population.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Okay, one thing that I think baffles a lot of people,
and this is a math question now is how can
a poll with what seems like a small number of people,
let's say one thousand, eleven hundred be even close to
possibly being representative of a whole state or a whole

(18:51):
nation of three hundred million plus people.

Speaker 4 (18:57):
Beautiful question, And this gets in to the nerdy mathematical part.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
My book is not too technical on this end.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
My book is not just intended to help experts fix
the way they think about and talk about poles, but
it's also intended for people who are not experts that
want to better understand poles, to understand what they mean.
So the underpinnings of poles statistically rely on this concept
of a random sample, and it is unintuitive, but it

(19:26):
to me, it's very interesting and it's brilliant. But to
the average person it's they're very skeptical of it. The
fact is, if you can take a random sample from
a population, say a thousand people, If you take a
random sample of one thousand Americans of our what three
hundred million population? If you take a random sample of

(19:47):
one thousand Americans, you can get plus or minus three
percent of just about anything. Of just about anything, whether
they are married, whether they have a dog, at home,
how many kids.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
They have, et cetera. Can get very, very very close,
and the.

Speaker 4 (20:02):
Idea that a sample of that size could be representative
of such an enormous population is not intuitive. But in
the book I point out, hey, guys, this is why
we do science in the first place.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
This is the value of statistics.

Speaker 4 (20:15):
It helps us wrap our minds around concepts that would
otherwise be not intuitive.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
But the best part about math is that we can
prove it. We can prove it.

Speaker 4 (20:25):
Mathematically, and I encourage readers who are interested in the
more technical aspects in the book to test it themselves
because it's a very easily testable concept. The challenge when
we get into political polling is this idea of a
random sample, and and how random is that sample really?

Speaker 1 (20:43):
All Right, we'll get into that in a second. One
more question on the math. Is it accurate to say
that if I were to take a poll of a
medium sized state that has five million people, and I
wanted to get aerobars around the pole of let's say,
plus or minus about three percent, and then I wanted

(21:06):
to do the same pole of the entire country of
three hundred million people, I would.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Need almost the exact.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Same number of people in the two poles to have
the same error bars right, and or another way to
put it. If I'm taking a poll of three hundred
million people and I need a thousand to be representative,
then if I I mean I'm.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Not polling three hundred million people, I want to.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
Do a pole representing a population of three hundred million people,
and I need to poll a thousand people to get
X error bars. If I then go to a country
that has six hundred million people, I do not need
two x the number of people in the poll. It's
still actually very very close to X.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
Right, Yes, sir, that is exactly correct.

Speaker 4 (21:52):
And that is the unintuitive nature of a random sample
is that once the sample, once the random sample becomes
arbitrary or sufficiently large, the size of the population does
not matter. Which is to say, the margin of error
for a one thousand person random sample is approximately the same.

(22:12):
I'm talking within hundredths of a percent, within hundredths of
a percent, whether you're.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Talking to a population of fifty thousand or.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
Fifty million, it's within hundreds plus or minus three point
zero percent plus or minus three point oh five percent.
It is remarkably, remarkably close, and the reason. The mathematical
reason is the margin.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Of error is in verse.

Speaker 4 (22:36):
I'm probably gonna get this wrong, inversally proportional to the
sample size. The population only matters when the population is small.
The sample size is the only thing that matters when
you're dealing with a sample size of anything larger than say,
twenty to fifty thousand.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
We're talking with Carl Allen. His new book is called
The Polls Weren't Wrong.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
One last on this because a listener question came in
on it. How do pollsters know the at least theoretical
error rate error bars on their polls? And let me
just see if I've been a good student of yours, So, Sean,
I think the answer.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Is, it's straight up math.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
And as long as you believe you have a random sample,
and we will get to that in a second, as
long as you believe you have a random sample, the
answer is to the error in the bar in the
polls just comes out of the math. And it doesn't
matter what question you're asking. It doesn't nothing like that.
It's just math, and it's not even very difficult math.
Once you understand it.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Go ahead, Carl, Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 4 (23:42):
So the margin of error that is reported in every poll,
to my knowledge, ever taken, is the margin of error
based on the sample size. But as many of your
listeners may know, if you've read my book, you'll know,
and even people who don't study politics may know, the
margin of error is not the only potential source of
air in a poll, and yet it's the only source

(24:04):
of error reported. So that creates this really interesting debate
about how to capture.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
This this total error. And I talk about that some
in my book.

Speaker 4 (24:15):
But the bigger question, or the bigger answer, I guess,
is that, yes, the only number ever reported is based
on the sample size, even though even though ulsters know
that in most cases not anymore. Maybe fifty years ago,
but not anymore. Ulsters know that their samples are not
truly random. But we're getting really really deep into this

(24:39):
conflict of what is scientifically valid versus what is how
are things currently discussed right?

Speaker 1 (24:46):
So I will say to Sean, the error rate around
the around the pole is absolutely known, just based on
the math, but it assumes a random sample, and that's
not something we can assume anymore. And in particular, this
is a thing that a lot of people have one

(25:06):
particular political persuasion. Conservative Republicans MAGA Republicans have a deep
mistrust Carl in the underlying samples, and I get it. So,
without getting into conspiracy theories of intentionally non random samples,
which I really don't believe in, talk about how you

(25:29):
could get a sample that really isn't random and therefore
the error bars really aren't right.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
That's great question.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
So to answer the first question, it is remarkably easy
to get a random sample. To obtain a random sample,
all you need to do is have a list of
registered voters and you can take a random sample from it.
It's not very hard. I've done it. Most of your
listeners could probably do it. This data is public. The
challenge is contacting the random sample. Contacting the random sample

(26:09):
is where all of the statistical issues come into play.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Because we know some people.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
Will never answer their phone, some people will never respond
to a text, and those people might have something in common.
So when polsters are contacting these people, they say, well,
we need responses from this many white men, this, many
young black people, this many.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
Et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 4 (26:34):
But the people that they're talking to might not be
representative of that demographic. So what polsters have to do
on the back end is they say, Okay, we know
our sample wasn't random. To their credit, this is true.
They say, we know our sample wasn't random. If our
sample were random, what would it have shown? And therein
lies the conflict of how do we weight this data?

(26:56):
How do we weight this data one or two points
in any I've done this not that long, and there
are people out of it better, people who are better
at analyzing waiting methods than me. But I can tell
you that one or two points in any direction for
either candidate is not hard to do with a pull.

(27:17):
And this all comes back to if our sample was random.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
What would it have shown?

Speaker 4 (27:21):
And it all depends on your perception of these demographics
and who who's ultimately going to turn out to.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Thee we're talking with Carl Allen. His new book is
called The Polls Weren't Wrong. And I'll just elaborate on
this once and then we'll get onto something else. And
then again, Carl, you can kind of tell me whether
I've whether I've said this wrong. But let's just say,
as an example, say to listeners, let's just say as
an example that a significant majority of work quote unquote

(27:49):
working class white men will vote for Trump. And also
a significant percentage of working class white men have no
interest in talking to pollsters. And so if their phone
rings and they see it's a pole call, or if
they answer it and they say we want to ask
you some questions, they don't.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Answer or they hang up and they just they won't participate.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
And so let's say then the pollster asks a thousand
people and of the thousand people, maybe twenty three of
them are working class white men.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Well they have to guess then.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
And let's say seventy five percent of them.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
Say they're voting for Trump.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
Well they have to guess, is it really two point
three percent of the electorate that's going to be working
class white men or is it going to be double that?
And if it's double that, then they got to multiply
by two. But if they get that wrong, they'll get
the result wrong. And then it gets even harder than that,

(28:50):
because what if the working class white people who respond
to the poll are actually not typical working class white
people and might lean slightly less towards Trump than the
than the ones who don't, uh, who don't respond to
the bull It gets so difficult trying to guess what

(29:10):
the actual electorate is gonna gonna look like. Okay, so
give me a really quick response to that, and then
I want to get.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Onto something else for our last few minutes.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
No, you're you're exactly right.

Speaker 4 (29:23):
Polsters having a remarkably hard job. And so, as someone
who wrote a book entitled the Polls Weren't Wrong, I
have to say the fact that they are still able
to get somewhat accurate data out of this nearly impossible
task of contacting a fraction of a fraction of a
populace and only getting responses from an even smaller fraction.
The fact that they are still able to make what

(29:45):
I would consider very very good estimates really gets to
the point that these people, the good polsters, kind of
know what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
Yes, they they have to make some assumptions. Yes, they
have to make You might call them guesses.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
They're they're informed guesses, but they are, at the end
of the day, guesses. The fact that they've been able
to do so well is pretty remarkable to me.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
Okay, so we only have a few minutes left, and
this may be the most important question, but I think
we needed a lot of.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Foundation there.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Way too many people treat polls as being the same
as forecasts and and and people will look at polls
that show, you know, Trump up one percent and such
and such a state, or even betting odds showing Trump
sixty percent to win. They they and a betting odd
really is a kind of a forecast. But let's so

(30:40):
let's stick with poles. But people will look at a
poll as a as a forecast. And I want you
to just explain why a poll is not the same
as a forecast.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
And I realized you just wrote a whole book on it,
and I'm asking to do this in two minutes.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:57):
So, interpreting poll data as a prediction of election outcomes
has been around since the beginning of political polling one hundred.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Years ago Gallup Literary Digest.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
Interpreting poll data as a prediction of the election outcome
is not new. The problem is modern research, which is
much more analytical, much more scientifically based, has maintained those
unscientific standards of if the poll says this candidate is
up by let's say, up by two in the poll,

(31:29):
then therefore they must win the election by two and
or the poll was not accurate and so in order,
and it's this very simple math. In order for that
state to be maintained, two things must be true. One,
no one can change their mind between the poll and
the election. Two undecided must split evenly between these major candidates.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Well, we can test these things in science.

Speaker 4 (31:54):
When things are testable, we do not use assumptions in
their place. And yet that is no joke, no exaggeration,
no artistic liberties. That is the literal definition used by
the consensus of experts around the world about how to
analyze pole data. They analyze poles a tool not intended
to be predictive, by how well they predict election result. Again,

(32:18):
polls are an estimate of a base of support. In
the book, I use the term a simultaneous census. If
you take a survey months before the election, maybe it's
an election that not many people are aware of, a Senate,
a House race, et cetera. And it says one candidate
is at forty five percent, the other candidate is at
forty percent, and there are fifteen percent undecided. What that

(32:38):
means is, if you had taken a simultaneous census of
that population, approximately forty five percent plus or minus the
margin of error would respond with that candidate forty percent
plus or minus the margin of error would respond to
that candidate. And this is the part that is extremely important,
because I hate to say, experts do not understand this.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
Fifteen percent plus or.

Speaker 4 (33:02):
Minus the margin of error would also say they're undecided, period,
end of what the poll tells us.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
How those undecided.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
To allocate themselves how they decide can swing the election
in many swing states, in many close elections where most
polling is done, this does happen. The assumption that undecideds
must split fifty to fifty or else the poll was
wrong is the single most unscientific belief that is literally

(33:30):
held by the consensus of experts in the United States.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
And it is wrong. It's not true. We can test it.
We know it's not true.

Speaker 4 (33:39):
So my proposal is that instead of using these assumptions,
we must ask the question of how did they decide?
Because they can wing the outcome of the election to
a quote unexpected outcome.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
All right, I have literally one minute left. I want
to check your math on one thing. Let's say there's
a poll that's got it forty to forty with fifteen undecided.
In order for it to end up forty five forty
as the actual result at the end, wouldn't the undecided
had to have broken forty five to the whatever That

(34:18):
forty five to forty ratio is like not uh nine
out of seventeen to eight out of seventeen versus having
broken fifty to fifty, which is what you said before.

Speaker 4 (34:31):
They're two different standards for analysis. In the United States
experts say fifty to fifty. Non US experts stay proportional.
And there is an unspoken truce between these unscientific analysts
that they don't challenge each other because they're both wrong.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Uh huh So what.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
They make different they make different unscientific assumptions. Yeah, so
election results will always add up to one hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
We know that. I mean, that's that's just very simple,
mat Uh huh.

Speaker 4 (34:56):
So, an election result cannot be forty five, right, it
must they must add up to hundred percent, and those
that comes from how those undecided ultimately decide.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Right, And that's true because forty five forty really, as
I said, if you were to take that as the
whole electorate, then that ad then would be nine out
of seventeen and eight out of seventeen at the end,
which isn't the same as forty out one hundred and
forty five out of one hundred. Uh So, all right,
we're just about just about out of out.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Of time here. I want to follow up on one
quick thing you said.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Uh So, I read in your book that not only
should you not assume that undecided voters will break in
a particular way that matches the decided voters in percentage
or anything, but there seems to be a little bit
at least of bias among undecided voters in America that

(35:46):
when they do decide, they tend to vote for for change.
I think I read that like they they side against
the incumbents with some frequency.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
Is that what you wrote?

Speaker 4 (35:59):
That was analysis done by a man named Nick Panagakus
about twenty to thirty years ago, and his work should
have led directly into mine.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
He passed away a few years ago.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
Unfortunately I never got to meet him. His work in
a proper scientific field would have led directly into mind.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
But what ended up happening is he passed away, his.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
Work kind of was lost to journals in history, and
these unscientific analysts Silver and Morris and the other guys,
they've taken his place. Or they've taken the place of
proper analysis and grown this spread mentality of undecideds must
split evenly.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
The best quote, one of the best quotes that I
read of his.

Speaker 4 (36:40):
Was rules of analysis are necessary, rules that are not
as simple as eight points is comfortable and two points
is a close race.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
He wrote that in nineteen eighty seven.

Speaker 4 (36:50):
This is not new my work in the analysis, and
you can probably attest.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
To this having read the book. The graphics that I
showed towards the end of.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
The book kind of up right.

Speaker 4 (37:01):
And the fact that he was able to infer that
in the nineteen eighties and that work still hasn't been
built upon speaks to the problem.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Of this contaminated traditional thinking.

Speaker 4 (37:15):
The analogy that I use is is baseball analysts who
still try to figure out who the best offensive.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Player is by batting average.

Speaker 4 (37:22):
Batting average isn't the worst metric in the world, but
it is not the best way to measure offensive output.
And that's the same exact way that spread analysis is
currently contaminating.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
Carl Allen's new book is called The Polls Weren't Wrong.
I know there were a lot more listener questions if
I didn't get to your question, email it to me
at Ross and iHeartMedia and.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
I'll get all the questions.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Over to Carl and he'll answer them back to me
by email and then I will send your answer to you.
So my email is Ross at iHeartMedia dot com. Send
me your questions. I'll get you answers Carl's book, The
polls weren't wrong. Thanks for being here, Carl, really fascinating
and important conversation.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Talk to you again soon. Thanks again, Ross, we'll take
a quick break.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
We'll be right back on koa Ross atiheartmedia dot com.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Please feel free to be in touch, such as sending
me questions about.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Polling that you might have had for my last guest
that I didn't get to. I actually want to take
a couple of minutes here because I've gotten a lot
of very similar comments on the text line and I
want to address this.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
The stuff we were talking about.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Regarding polling and how to think about it is actually
it's very subtle. A lot of it is not obvious,
and I just want to go through a couple of
points kind of quickly. So first, a poll is a
snapshot in time, and let's assume for the moment that
they get a decent sample, and that they wait properly,

(38:45):
and that they really get between who actually answers and
how they weight the sample, they really get a sample
that does represent the population at that time pretty well.
But even if it's a random sample, still there are
error bars. So let's say you know, somebody has forty

(39:06):
five percent, and then the error bars are let's say
plus or minus three percent. So what does that mean
plus or minus three percent. It means that again, assuming
the sample is right, it means that ninety five percent
of the time, not one hundred percent, because you can't

(39:27):
do that. It means that ninety five percent of the
time if you did the election, if you had an
election at that moment, then the.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
People who claimed they were decided.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
This doesn't include the undecided, which is a really important point.
But if forty five percent of the people said they
had decided and they were in favor of Canada, then
if the election were held that day like that moment,
then ninety of the whole population, then ninety five percent

(40:06):
of the time, forty five percent of the of the God,
this is so complicated, it's still not even forty five percent.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
It's you would get it.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
You would get at least forty five percent of people
voting for Canada Day. And the reason I say at
least is because there's still that undecided part and then
you need to determine where they are gonna go that.
But it's also keep in mind it's ninety five percent,
So if you did the election one hundred times, five
times out of the one hundred, the result would be
more than the error bars away from forty five percent. Right.

(40:39):
It's not saying it's impossible for it to be more
than three percent. This is just the way statistics work,
standard deviations and so on.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Okay, so why is a predict Why? On the one hand,
is a poll.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Not the same as a forecast but also useful for
informing a forecast. This one listener says polls are a
waste of time and not accurate at all.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
That is just not true.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
The polling has been much better than most people think,
and especially than most Trump supporters think. The polling was
actually much closer in twenty sixteen in particular than people think.
And the reason is this. Think about this in terms
of a sports analogy. Okay, if I told you that

(41:32):
football team A is a one point favorite, and then
football team B wins by one point, you'd say, all right,
I mean there were only a one point favorite.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
That's like barely a favorite at all anyway.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
And.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
I guess actually twenty twenty is probably a better example
of this.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
And then suddenly the team that was a one point
underdog wins the game. Nobody, he's really surprised. It was
such a narrow thing anyway. And so you have all
these people who read these polls and it shows that
such and such a candidate is up by this narrow margin,

(42:15):
and they take it the same as a as a forecast.
But what they're forgetting what people forget two things, and
Carl Allen mentioned both of them.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Sometimes people will change their minds.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
By the way, that definitely happened in twenty sixteen. There
were absolutely positively people who were going to vote for
Hillary Clinton who changed their minds and either voted for
nobody or voted for a libertarian, or maybe even voted
for Donald Trump. After the Jim Comey thing where he
came out and basically said, you know, we're investigating her

(42:49):
for doing illegal stuff. Now, he came out later and
said nobody would prosecute for that, And he was that
whole thing was wrong, that second.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Thing that he did.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
But one thing that if you're gonna take a poll
as a prediction, you're assuming two things. Nobody changes their mind,
and the undecided voters break in a way that maintains
that prediction, just as it is at the equivalent of
let's say forty five to forty when there's fifteen percent undecided.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
But Americans almost never break.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
The undecideds almost never break in the same pattern that
the decideds do. They're very different kinds of people. I mean,
think about the kind of person who decided who they're
gonna vote for six months ago, or or in this
particular race, like shortly after Kamala Harris.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Came into the race.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Think about that kind of person versus the kind of
person who still doesn't know. I'm not insulting anybody. I'm
not saying one's better.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Than the other.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
They're just very, very different people. And you cannot assume
that a room full of people who are undecided right
now are gonna break in the same proportions that when
they do decide to vote as a bigger group of
people who already are decided right now. So if you're
gonna try to make a forecast out of a poll.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
You can. You can try.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
You need to understand, though, that you're making a forecast.
A poll is not a forecast, But a poll is
a tool you could use to try to make a forecast.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
But if you're gonna do that, you cannot.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Just say, so, you know, somebody is up by two
right now, and therefore my forecast is they're gonna win
by two.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
It doesn't work like that.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
You need to look at the undecided vote and try
to guess how they are gonna break.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
That's the hardest part.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
Of forecasting, and more often than not, when poles appear wrong,
it's because somebody took the decided numbers and extrapolated that
to say, well, the final number will be like that,
and completely ignored the undecided voter. And that's why. That's

(45:01):
the main reason why polling is a great place to
begin a forecast. But a pole is not a forecast.
I have all these political questions from Texters, but I
think I'll respond to them, maybe more by the text line.
I did some already, so I will do this thing
since dragon made me so. Denver Ise dot Com NFL

(45:24):
Insider is the richest former Broncos quarterback John Elway, Peyton
Manning or Hunter Ennis E Nis.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
I hope I'm pronouncing his name right. What's your guess?

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Well, I mean, I'm sure you know what to guess,
just by the fact that this question is there, right,
But I thought this was kind of a fun story
for Broncos fans and just for anybody, so let me
share some of this with you. Peyton Manning is estimated
to be worth two hundred and fifty.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Million dollars John Elwait. So Dragon, do.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
You think that John l Way is estimated to be
worth more or less than Peyton Manning?

Speaker 5 (46:05):
I would say more because just the dealerships my guess too,
and it's wrong.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
Wow, Okay, one hundred and forty five million with Peyton
at two fifty So uh yeah, I would have thought
so too. But I'm guessing the part of the reason
is that by the time Peyton Manning was playing quarterbacks,
reading paid a lot more, and then the TV commercials
and all this stuff, and plus these days you see
Peyton Manning still all over the place in commercials and

(46:30):
you don't see Lway.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
And these are days where the numbers are much bigger.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
So I guess That's probably why in any case, it
says they might have.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
To settle for second and third.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
When it comes to the richest former Broncos quarterbacks hunter,
I think it's Ennis Uh eighty seven years old. Someone
text me if I'm pronouncing his last name wrong.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
Eighty seven years old.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Got into four games Count them Dragon, Count them one, two, five, No.
Four games for the Denver Broncos in nineteen sixty two,
completing one out of two passes for eight yards, before
returning to the team as an offensive backfield coach from

(47:13):
nineteen sixty seven to seventy one under head coach lu Saban.
His later was wide receivers coach for the New York
Giants in the mid seventies. He left football after that
and became an oil and gas wildcatter in Fort Worth, Texas,
eventually forming the four to SEVENS Oil Company in nineteen
ninety with a partner named Dick low Lowe. So how

(47:36):
successful was that, they quote mister Ennis saying, we sold
our production three times. For all three times it was
well over a billion dollars. We didn't have any debt,
so we did pretty good. So did NSN low Both
get around five hundred million dollars earlier this century, well

(47:58):
close to it, yeah, he said, mister Ennis, the modest.
Mister Ennis didn't want to give any more estimates about
his wealth cracking.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
I don't miss any meals. But he's become one of.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
The most notable benefactors of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth,
where he was a star quarterback in the late nineteen fifties.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
He serves on their board of trustees.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
He played a key role in refurbishing the stadium there.
He donated in twenty twelve what was announced as a
fifteen million dollar donation to help rebuild TCU stadium. He
said that they actually donated more than that, but he
doesn't give a number. And the football program's team room
is called the four sevens.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Meeting Room, named for his oil company at the time.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
To think Ennis was an obscure backup for the Broncos,
they asked Lionel Taylor, Denver's former wide receiver Star wide
receiver Ennis, his teammate in nineteen sixty two, says yeah,
I remember him. Real nice guy from Texas. Anyway, It
goes on to talk about some of mister Ennis's football
career and other stuff he seems like a really interesting character.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
But in any case, the.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Richest former Broncos quarterback is a guy who we think
may be worth more than John Elway and Peyton Manning
put together. Am Ross, thanks for your company. Hope you
get a wonderful weekend. We're two weeks in a day
from our presidential election, and that's where a lot of
the talk is on the presidential side. But if you're

(49:29):
here with me in Colorado, that's actually not where most
of the conversation is, in part because we think we
know who's gonna win the presidential election in this state.
And it seems to me that more people are focusing
on a particular ballot issue, Proposition one thirty one, than
almost than anything else, maybe even more.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Than the congressional races.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
And I understand why Proposition one thirty one would change
our party primary.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
System into a system.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
With one large all candidate primary candidates will be identified
with their parties, but all the candidates from any party
or no party at all who find a way to
make the ballot will all be in one primary, and
then the top four we'll go to a general election
that will be done by ranked choice voting.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
And in the interest of time.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
I'm not going to explain ranked choice voting again right now,
We've done that recently. I will also note that if
this passes, it will apply to congressional races, state legislative races,
some other state level races, but not to president and
not to city and county races, although city and counties

(50:41):
could do this themselves if.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
They want to.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
So a lot of the opposition to this has been
coming from the political right, and I find some of
their arguments a little bit frustrating. And I heard a
fantastic conversation on the Cato Daily Podcast that I never
missed an episode of the Cato Institutecato dot org. They
do this daily podcast hosted by Caleb Brown, and he

(51:05):
had a conversation with with Walter Olson. And I've been
listening to Walter on an enormous range of topics, normally
legal and public policy topics for twenty years. Robert Walter
is a senior fellow at the Cato Institutes Robert A.
Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, and he did this fantastic

(51:25):
podcast about objections to ranked choice voting, and so.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
I thought i'd have him on so we could talk
about it.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
So with that much too long introduction, Walter Olsen, Welcome
to KAOA.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
It's really good to have you here for the first time.

Speaker 6 (51:39):
Well thank you for having me on.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
So first, as a sort of macro question, as you
are looking at ranked choice voting and the objections to it,
do you see more objections coming from the political right
than the political left? Or is that just the world
I happen to live in. So I'm seeing it that way,

(52:06):
you know, you're not misperceiving. Nationally, there has been a
real polarization around this in which the organized conservative movement
has been convincing itself that this is all some sort
of liberal plot I think very wrong on a number
of different levels. And of course, as soon as you
get to actual state by state flights over it, you

(52:28):
find it's much more complicated than that. In Colorado, as
in virtually every state, the Democratic party establishment is against it.
The unions in Colorado, I understand, are against it. The
very liberal groups, not the sort of mushy liberal groups,
but the sort of hard edged liberal groups I understand,
are also against it in Colorado. And so that I

(52:52):
think is an invitation to a better analysis, which is
that this is not so much a left right thing,
but a way of.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Sort of scrambling the process.

Speaker 6 (53:04):
In a way that creates new openings for sometimes people
who can put together a broader ideological coalition. And that's
a constant theme with choice voting and even more theme
of non partisan primaries. But also I call it a
revenge of the normies against the people who are extremely
well organized. If you look at the current system of

(53:27):
each party having a primary, and whoever wins that primary,
very often is a foregone winner in the general election
because most districts lean one way or the other. So
all of a sudden you see who wins party primaries
because they are better organized. Sometimes it's the base candidate,
the more extreme conservatives in Republican Party or extreme Democratic liberals,

(53:51):
but very often it's incumbents, or it's groups that have
a large political machine, like unions. Those groups, I think,
rationally see that system is going to be less reliable
in electing their people to everything, they tend to line
up against it. In Nevada, which is also having one
of these, once again, the Republican and Democratic party establishments

(54:13):
are both against it, which is getting to be the
typical pattern with this.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Yeah, for me, the fact that the leadership of both
major political parties are against it. To me, that's a
strong argument in favor of it, and I would just
amplify something Walter said. A moment ago, a listener sent
me a piece from the Aspen Times, a very interesting
piece about this, very even handed, and they noted some
of the opponents to proposition one point thirty one include

(54:43):
the teachers' unions, the Working Families Party, which is basically
a socialist party effectively, and one of the largest government
worker unions. And they're against this because they think they
get under the current system and they can install the
person they want. And I'm sure on the Republican side,

(55:04):
the corrupt Dave Williams, who still runs our state party
at this point, thinks he can install his people. So, Walter,
I'd like to just take a few minutes with you,
because more I have listeners across the political spectrum, and
I'm I'm a lowercase L libertarian or objectivist perhaps more precisely,

(55:25):
and I'm unaffiliated politically.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
I tend to lean a little bit right. I'm in favor.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
Of this because I think that our results are political
results in Colorado could hardly be any worse. Than they've been,
and I'm sort of desperate and willing to try to
try almost almost anything. But most of the objections that
I'm hearing, in part because probably of who listens to
my show are from conservatives. So I'd like to just

(55:53):
go through with you a few of what you're hearing
as our arguments against against ranked voting from conservatives in particular,
and how you respond to them. And I'll start with one,
and then you tell me other things you're hearing. But
the one that I get most often, which really annoys me,

(56:15):
but is it's too complicated?

Speaker 2 (56:18):
Can you address that one?

Speaker 6 (56:22):
I am happy to address that one. And it's really
kind of baffling, because let's start with is it too
complicated to vote a rank choice ballot? And I have
not met anyone who presented with a rank choice ballot
and given even a minute or two of explanation, expresses
any confusion or in comprehension. You simply pick your first choice,

(56:50):
check that, pick your second choice. The type of error
people can make if they've had no training at all, is, oh, well,
these are both my first choice. I'm going to pick
them both as choice. Okay, well, that won't tabulate correctly,
and so your vote won't be countered if you make
a truly rookie error like saying that two people are
both your first choice. But once you're past that, basically,

(57:15):
it could not be simpler. We've all heard the things
about you know, if you're picking ice cream or groceries
that way, it's easy to listen to your choices in order.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Now, so.

Speaker 6 (57:26):
You know, I always say, as a backup, if you
really dislike having more choices and getting to express more uh,
you know, refined preferences, just vote for your favorite. You
can go on voting under this system for your number one,
and no one is going to stop you.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (57:46):
Some people may be disappointed not to get your second
choice vote. But so that's how simple it is on voting.
A more interesting question is is it more complicated on tabulation.
You know, you don't have to worry about that as
a voter, but you might want to worry about it
if you worry that tabulation is somehow unfair or cumbersome

(58:07):
or expensive or whatever. And here you do want to
see what kind of rank choice system there is, because
there are other varieties, like I think Portland organ is
planning to use one that is more complicated, but generally
in Colorado and almost everywhere else it is plain fanilla
what I call or what is called instant runoff voting,

(58:28):
and there if you know sports runoffs, you know how
this works, which is, whatever candidate is the bottom with
fewest votes gets eliminated. When they get eliminated, their voters
have their ballots moved over to their second choices. Then
you do it again, see whether anyone's got a majority.
If still no majority, keep eliminating candidates from the bottom.

(58:51):
Many many sports events work basically that way, and it's
really easy to understand. People talk about, oh, well, what
about spoiled ballots that I mentioned The person who might
want to vote for only one person, If that person
gets eliminated, well they don't get to vote in the runoffs,
which would be exactly the same if we held a
series of runoffs, you know, like three days later and

(59:12):
then three days after that same thing, someone who didn't
want to show up because they had put all of
their hopes in one candidate, their votes would not get
to count, which is the way it's intended. So those
so called exhausted ballots are they are a feature rather
than a bug. They allow people who don't feel they
can in good conscience cast to vote for some of

(59:33):
the candidates to cast to vote for only the ones
they want.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
A lot of folks here who are conservatives and or
Republicans are afraid of ranked choice voting because of their
perception that it allowed Democrats to get elected in Alaska
to the House of Representatives. And I know you studied
this and talked about it a lot, so can you

(59:59):
please talk about it here?

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:00:03):
Yeah, Let's start by talking about Sarah Palin, because that
was the one episode that kind of radicalized a lot
of conservatives who either didn't care didn't feel they had
much of a stand on it, but they were told
in lots of different organizational mailings that rank choice voting
had prevented a Republican state from electing a Republican.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Member of the House.

Speaker 6 (01:00:26):
And having looked at that race pretty closely, I can
say that it was instead personal characteristics of Sarah Palin,
and I'll name a couple of them. One is that
she was unpopular with a lot of Republicans who felt
that she had left the state and become a national
figure and not paid enough attention to so that those

(01:00:49):
Republicans didn't want to vote for her. And the other
thing that happened in that particularly in that first race,
which is a special watching, was that Sarah Pillin thought
that she was going and to show that she was
more conservative by going around saying that people shouldn't use
a second vote, and so she didn't want her voters
to pick the other Republican named Bagach as their second choice,

(01:01:12):
and implicitly she didn't want his voters to pick her
as their second choice. Well, talk about I'm sorry he
expressed strong views, but talk about a dumb way to campaign.
Once the rules have changed, of course, you want to
collect all those second choice votes, but she was discouraging them.
And of course, you know, she runed up, although she
got a lot of them, but there was a large

(01:01:32):
drop off. Quite a few of his people simply didn't
vote for a second choice, and quite a few of
the others went over and crossed for the Democrat. And
here's another thing going on in that particular race, which
is that Mary Poultoler, running as a Democrat, had in
fact been a staffer for the Republican congressman who had
just died. She had all of these Republican contacts and friends.

(01:01:53):
She had all sorts of Republicans campaigning for And this
is not your usual liberal Democrat a losc and Pellatan
is not like that of most states. It's not as
predictably Hardistan. There's lots of stuff going on with natural resources,
and Mary Poultola happened to be an expert on the
fishery and mining and these things, and as well as

(01:02:15):
the Alaska Natives who don't predictably vote for either party
but did vote for her, even if they vote Republican
in many cases not normally. So all these different things
going on at the same time they were using Alaska
voters were using the right trut voting process to re
elect Lisa Murkowsky, who is a perfect example of the

(01:02:36):
kind of candidate who tends to do well because she
didn't get enough Republican votes to win a primary in
many cases under the old system, she is quite good
at picking up independent and Democratic votes, so she did fun.
And they were voting for the stats very very conservative
Republican governor because he's popular. But what I think is
interesting is what was going on in the legislature, which

(01:02:58):
is remained majority of Republican legislature in both houses because
Alaska is Republican state, but in fact four person ran
choice general. After the non partisan primary, a bunch of
more extreme maga arm waivers were replaced by more moderate,

(01:03:21):
business oriented Republicans, some of whom they had defeated in
Republican primaries and preceding cycles. But they came back, and
because those sort of more business oriented Republicans were good
at getting independent and democratic.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Votes, they came through.

Speaker 6 (01:03:37):
So that's the situation with the head of the Alaska Senate,
for example, Kathy Gazel, who lost her Republican primary under
the old system, came back and became the president of
the Alaskan Senate, along with a bunch of other moderates.
So here you're getting into what effect it actually has,
which is not a left right, not a Republican Democrat,
but it may indeed be helping people who.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
Kind of appeal to have broader part of the electorate.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Just one quick comment on the first thing. When I
hear when I hear Republicans say either that it's too
complicated or that it's a way for Democrats to win
more seats, I'm really stunned by that, by the mindlessness
of that statement. And the analogy that I make, Walter

(01:04:28):
is imagine that you're playing poker and suddenly whoever the
people are who make the rules of poker, have decided
to change the rules so that two pair beats three
of a kind now, right?

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
And then you have a player at.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
The poker table who says, what two pairs beats three
of a kind?

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
How am I ever going to beat a Democrat at poker?

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
Now?

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
Wait, what are you republic Are you saying that Republicans
are too stupid to either fill out a ballot or
to play the game under these new rules? And I
don't hear that argument really from from the left as much.
And I just feel like Republicans are calling themselves stupid.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
All the time.

Speaker 6 (01:05:22):
Well, it is a funny point, and let me offer
two responses. One of them is that you are absolutely right.
You know, part of politics is figuring out what the
particular rules are this time, which will typically differ at
least to a little bit. You know, what do the
district lines look like if there's been redistricting and all

(01:05:42):
the rest, And to run the campaign that is called
for by the new current set of rules, not by
the one you may have originally won on and so
the Republicans in Alaska, you know, may be learning their lesson.
One of the things that happened this time uh, now
that it's going through another cycle, is that Republicans decided

(01:06:06):
that uh, their laggard candidate's, the ones who didn't uh
come in first among the Republicans, should drop out and
help the uh the one who came first. And you know, gee,
you know, maybe they actually thought about best ways of
winnings about It has now happened with a couple of
Republicans dropping out who were not in the first two.

(01:06:27):
And although there's some controversy and some people don't like that,
they say, well, you know, we need loss of names
on the ballot.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:06:34):
The to me, UH, this is once again a future
rather than a bug the UH. It's a way in
which the UH players can learn the new rules and
perhaps uh you know, boost their friends even if they
can't win themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
Right, And one one last comment for me, and then
we gotta then we gotta go. But I had a
bunch of people saying, well, in states where there are
large Democratic majorities, this will ensure that no Republican ever
has a chance even to get on the ballot, and
then I will point you everybody who wants to say
that to me to what is happening right now in
the Senate race in the state of California.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
They have this kind of open primary, right and a.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
Republican made it to the general and they only have
top two in California. Republican actually came in second in California.
I know it's a little different. You look like you
want to say something, Walter.

Speaker 6 (01:07:26):
Yeah, I do, because top two and top four do
behave quite differently. Yea, I think it's a legitimate criticism
of top two, which is what California is saying too,
that often a party won't get on even if it's
quite popular in a cricular district. And in California, you've
got a lot of the states having like three to one,
four to one majority for Democrats. Well, you know, I

(01:07:47):
have bad news about top four, which is that if
your party it's been ground down to only getting ten
percent of the vote, then maybe one of your candidates
can't even get into top four. But top four does
a whole lot better than top two. Sure that if
your party is reasonably healthy, getting at least thirty thirty
five percent of the vote, then you get probably going
to get at least one of those four, and so
you'll have some decent choice on the final ballot. You know,

(01:08:10):
people talk about you know, I know the Green Party
in Colorado opposes this, but again, the Green Party is
not the sort of place as that is. You know,
a part of it is winning fifteen to twenty percent
of the vote. You know, they're worried they won't get
among the final four. But in the meantime, the voters
are going to get more choice, and the Greens will
be able to run on that initial party primary or
non partisan primary on all of their issues. And occasionally,

(01:08:33):
because this is the case, one of the things from
Molasco that I mentioned is that a lot of the races,
just as in Colorado, were totally uncontested because one party
didn't even put someone up in one of these lop
sided districts. Well, in those cases, good for the Libertarians,
good for the Greens. Hey, you know you can be
on that ballot in a final war.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Walter Olsen is a senior fellow at the Cato Institutes
Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies see ato dot org.
The most important libertarian organization in the world, the CATO
wins to Walter. Great to talk to you for the
first time. Thank you so much for spending time with us.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
It's my pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
All Right, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be
right back on KOA.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
By the way, folks, if you haven't voted yet and
you're interested in my analysis and or recommendations on statewide
ballot measures on the Denver ballot measures on some candidates,
my voter guide is up at Rosskominski dot com. Just
go to Rosskominsky dot com. It'll redirect you to my
KOA page, and up near the top you will see

(01:09:35):
a link for the twenty twenty four voter guide and
you can find all that stuff all that stuff there.
But let me let me actually run one other thing
by you, or just an addition. So I just this morning,
I just added a few things to my voter guide,

(01:09:55):
not the most important stuff, but I just want to
mention that I believe there are three state Supreme Court
judges who are up for retention, Okay, And I cannot
tell you the last time, if ever, that a judge
in Colorado did not win a retention vote, because most
people vote yes or they don't vote. I know there

(01:10:17):
are actually quite a few Republicans.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Out there who vote no on all of them.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
And I don't think that voting no on all of
them is any better than voting yes on all of them, right,
I mean, I get the point, like you want to say, Oh,
I'm paying attention and I'm voting no. And like, what
if there's a judge who does a fabulous job and
follows the Constitution all the time and it has never
made a ruling that you disagree with, and you're going
to vote no just because you're voting no on everybody.

(01:10:42):
I just I think that's just as mindless as as
voting yes on everybody. I think for most people, the
only honest vote is not voting on it. But I
haven't paid very close attention to every State Supreme Court
issue over the past year or couple of years. There
have been some very big ones, for sure, but I'm

(01:11:04):
I decided to make my recommendation because there are only
three State Supreme Court judge justices who are.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Up for attention this year.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
I decided to make my recommendation based on only one case,
and I realized that's probably a little bit lazy of me,
a little bit whatever, Okay, and you get and but I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
Very explicit about that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
And you can have very different reasons and make your
own decisions, okay. But I decided that based on the
on those three justices, I was gonna make my recommendation
based on the case where they were asked about whether
Donald Trump should be barred from the ballot in Colorado.
And I said throughout that whole thing that that it

(01:11:47):
was a terrible lawsuit, that the people who brought it
were wrong on the law. And in fact, though they
won in lower court in Colorado, even though it was
clear to me they were wrong on the law. Okay,
I'm not a lawyer, it was clear to me they
were wrong on the law. The problem is we have
so many judges in Colorado who are terrible, just so

(01:12:09):
partisan that they cannot see the law if the law
contradicts what they want to happen politically, or that's how.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
I see it. Maybe it's not fair, but that's how
I see it. So this case went to the State.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
Supreme Court, and the State Supreme Court, I think it was.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
A four to three vote.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
Upheld the lower court blocking Donald Trump from being on
the ballot in Colorado. It then went to the federal
Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the United States, which
overturned the state Supreme Court. And I believe it was unanimous.
I believe it was unanimous, and it was obvious to me.

(01:12:53):
And one of the plaintiffs is Christy Kaefer, who's a
friend of mine and a frequent fill in here on KOA.
And she's quite conservative. She's well to my right. She's
a former Heritage Foundation scholar. She's very smart. And I
told her, you're just wrong. You're wrong on the law,
and it has nothing to do with how I feel
about Trump. You're wrong, but because our courts are so

(01:13:15):
bad anyway. Of the three justices who are up for retention,
two of them actually were two of the three dissenters.
They got it right at the state Supreme court level.
They said, no, the state Supreme Court.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
Is wrong here.

Speaker 1 (01:13:35):
They are wrong to say that Trump can't be on
the ballot. They had slightly different reasons, but it was
Justice Birkincotter and Justice boat.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Right, the two bees.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
So the third justice who's on the ballot for retention,
her name is Monica Marquez and Marqueasy and I would
like to recommend to you that you vote no on
retaining her. I don't care whether you vote yes on
the other two. And it's possible that the other two

(01:14:06):
have made other rulings in the past that I wouldn't
agree with, and maybe I would end up with a
no on them if I went to do more research.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
But for Marquez, the fact that she voted to toss
Trump off the ballot in a ruling that was so
egregious that even Sonya so.

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
To my ore on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
So one of the most liberal justices we've had in
a long time voted to overturn the Supreme Court. It
shows she's unfit for the job. So vote no on
retention for Monica Marquez. And I know that was a
lot of time on a very small thing. That's not
even gonna matter. They're all gonna get retained. Every judge
is gonna get retained, I bet. I mean, there's a
lot of judges on all these ballots. I would be

(01:14:52):
shocked if even one.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
Judge wasn't retained.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
The other one and I mentioned this on the show
the other day, is the State Board of Education in
the eighth Congressional district, and in that one, you want
to vote for Yasmin Navarro ya Zin. Just look for
that first name, Yasmin, if you vote in CD eight.
So that'll be the place that also has a very
important congressional race with Yadira Caraveo, the Democrat against the

(01:15:19):
incumbent challenger. Gave Evans, and I hope gave Evans wins
that this State Supreme Court, I'm sorry. The State Board
of Education seat looks like it could potentially be the
difference between whether there is real support at the State
Board of Education for charter schools in school choice or
whether there isn't. It could be the swing seat on

(01:15:39):
the State Board of Education on that question. So I
added those to my voter guide and it it does
go to show you the level of detail that I
go to to try to make sure you have the
best information. All right, let me do something different here.
I spoke to you the other day about a guy
named Robert Robertson who is on death row in Texas
and was supposed to be executed last Thursday night. He

(01:16:01):
wasn't yet, and he was convicted of murdering his two
year old daughter based on an expert claim of shaken
baby syndrome. And this so there's no witnesses, there's no nothing.

(01:16:22):
Prosecutors said that he shook his daughter and it caused
internal brain hemorrhaging and that it killed her.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
And since that time, the quote unquote science that was.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Given by that expert has been disproven and shaken baby thing,
as the Associated Press puts, it, was a popular misdiagnosis
at the time that has largely been debunked, at least
according to this guy's this guy's attorneys. And so the
other thing that's interesting about this is that Texas.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
Actually has a law that theoretic allows you to come.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
Back to a case if there was junk science used
to convict someone, and yet it never seems to work,
except once in a while in cases with DNA. But
this is a case where a guy is probably not guilty.
The experts are now saying that the daughter probably died
of complications of pneumonia and is certainly not guilty beyond

(01:17:26):
a reasonable doubt. Right, if you didn't have a so
called expert giving false information to the jury, there's no
way this guy would have been convicted. So he was
not executed on Thursday night because of a subpoena ordering
him to testify in front of the state legislature. And

(01:17:50):
that's supposed to be happening today. I don't know if
it happened already or happening later.

Speaker 2 (01:17:54):
I have no idea, but.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
He's supposed to testify today and we will see what happens. Unfortunately,
the state Parole boarder or whatever they're called, they're they're
if they gave a recommendation to the governor for clemency,
then the governor could do something, but they haven't done

(01:18:16):
that yet. And it is weird how in Oklahoma and
in Texas it seems like there are so many people
who are theoretically in the justice system who seem interested
in killing people who are probably not guilty.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
He wants you to go look at the show sheet now,
because you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
Put the show sheet that's clearly not just some random
song with a catchy tune, even though Madness is catchy
both as a band and conceptually. Madness is catchy. But
all right, fine, fine, So the thing that Dragon's telling
me with that choice of music that I need to
talk about is this piece from the Colorado Sun. And

(01:18:56):
I think, actually I'm sure. I heard this mentioned on
KWA News as well a couple of days ago. But
here's the headline, Homeless camp sweeps don't cut crime long term,
says study of three hundred Denver cleanups. It was a
study by CU and shoot some medical you know folks
and researchers, And the subhead is kind of a good.

Speaker 2 (01:19:18):
Very short summary.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
Crimes including car theft and public disorder dropped after a sweep,
but only for a week, and only within a quarter
mile radius of where they clean up happened.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):
And you know, I think that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
If you've got homeless people living in a living in
a tent somewhere, They're probably not going to wander a
very long distance from their tent, So I'm not surprised
that the effects of sweeping that area might be kind
of hyper local. Interesting about how the effect is kind
of temporary.

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):
It only it only lasts a week. Let me share
a little of this with you.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
The researchers studied police reports before and after three hundre
encampment cleanups in Denver from November of twenty nineteen to
July of last year. They looked at crime reports in seven,
fourteen and twenty one days before and after city cruise.
And I'm just going to read this forced people living
in the encampments to move, disposing of tense blankets, food,

(01:20:16):
and any other items left behind. The researchers broke it
down to crimes reported within a quarter mile radius of
the encampment, a half mile and three quarters of a mile.
They found a statistically significant but modest decrease in crime
of about nine percent or one less crime report after
the encampment clean up, but only within a quarter mile
or a couple of blocks, and within about seven days.

(01:20:39):
By three weeks after this wee I don't know why
they were it this way. By by three weeks after
the sweep, the crime rate was three point nine percent
lower than before the sweep. That's still worth mentioning. So
I think that subtitle is a little bit misleading. The
rate was unchanged on average when looking further away, so
a half mile away, three quarters of a mile away.

(01:21:02):
And I have an opinion on this that I just
want to I want to share with you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
And let me just see. I'm looking for.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
A particular, a particular thing. So yeah, here's the study.
The line from the Colorado sent The latest study adds
to a myriad of others showing encampment sweeps aren't good
for the people who live there and right, so, one
of these researchers says, it was really to assess the
popular narrative that homelessness is associated with crime, and therefore
if we displace the homelessness, crime might end up going away.

(01:21:34):
And I want to take a different approach on this.
I'm not criticizing that researcher. He's got the point of
view he has. And also, this could be framed in
a particular way by the reporter based on her own biases,
and I don't know what they are, and I'm not
going to attribute any to her.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
I'm just saying you have to keep this stuff in mind.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
When you're reading these articles. But here's here's what occurred
to me as I was thinking about this story. The
question about does crime in the nearby area drop after
a homeless sweep is a relevant question. It's a relevant question,

(01:22:13):
but it's not the only question. And we shouldn't be
thinking of these homeless sweeps in terms of, well, if
crime in the area doesn't go down, then we shouldn't
do the sweeps because it's not good for the homeless.
That's not the only way to think about it, because

(01:22:34):
what about the negative impacts other than crime.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
On all the rest of us? Other than crime? This
is going to sound like a first world problem.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
But when I'm going driving through Denver, or when I'm
going to go shopping somewhere, or whatever I'm doing, I
don't want to have to walk by homeless people intent,
even if they're not committing a crime. I find that annoying.
I find it kind of dirty. I find it kind
of gross. Doesn't always smell very good. Sometimes there's needles

(01:23:10):
on the ground. Nobody's committed a crime against me, But
does that make it okay?

Speaker 2 (01:23:18):
And I think.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
When I read stories like that, Look, I do have
sympathy for some homeless people, not all, but some people
who have a real problem, would like to get help,
could be in a much better situation with help, maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
Dealing with addiction. I have some sympathy there.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
I have no sympathy for, you know, twenty seven year
olds who just feel like not working.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
And not paying rent anywhere and just want to live
on the street. No, you can take a hike.

Speaker 1 (01:23:50):
But I just wish that there would be a little
more thought given in articles and in studies and in
whatever or to the negative impacts of homelessness on the.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
Many, many, many, tens.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
Hundreds of thousands of Colorado's who have to encounter the
homeless in ways that are annoying. And does that sound petty,
like I'm annoyed and they're homeless, like their situation is
worse than mine. Yeah, their situation is worse than mine.
But does that mean that they somehow have a right

(01:24:31):
to lower our quality of life by making our cities dirtier, smellier,
less beautiful and all these things?

Speaker 2 (01:24:39):
I don't think. So, I think you did you send
me the original story on this? I think I'm sorry.
I'm having a hard time.

Speaker 5 (01:24:45):
Yeah, okay, yeah I probably did.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
Yeah, it sounds like something i'd send you away. I
think you did.

Speaker 1 (01:24:50):
And so I thought this was a joke at first
when I when I first saw the.

Speaker 2 (01:24:56):
Story, headline is this Polish firm launches potato scented perfume.
And I thought this was the.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
Onion or the Babylon b Ort or something and so,
but it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:25:14):
It's real. There's a perfume company called.

Speaker 1 (01:25:17):
Boho Boco Boho bo Coo, and they have a new
perfume called Polish Potatoes, And dude, do you see the
price on Polish potatoes?

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
I did not, I didn't get. I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (01:25:35):
I'm looking at their website right now. I'm trying to
see how big the about fifty mL bottle of perfume
one hundred and eighty five dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:25:45):
Oh, yeah, that seems reasonable. This is the high end.

Speaker 3 (01:25:48):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
Let me just say as I as I read, do
you ever wear cologne or anything like that?

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
Dragon?

Speaker 7 (01:25:56):
Really?

Speaker 2 (01:25:56):
I probably do twice a year.

Speaker 1 (01:25:58):
Like if I'm going to like a classical symphony with
my wife and she bought me cologne fifteen years ago
and the bottle is still ninety eight percent full, I'll
take a little sprits of it on my you know,
in the air in front of me, and I'll walk
into it a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
As often as I wear pants, I wear colone.

Speaker 1 (01:26:17):
Okay, yeah, once a year, Yeah, maybe twice if you're unlucky.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
So I will say though that after reading the description
of the Polish Potatoes perfume, I think it's a wacky
name on a perfume that might actually smell pretty good
because it's not really potato sented perfume particularly, so let

(01:26:47):
me just share this with you. The Polish Potatoes perfume
is a journey into the depths of childhood experiences. I
wonder if Mandy would wear this. I don't even know
if Mandy wears perfume. I don't think I've ever really
smelled her like wearing perfume.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
I'll have to ask her. She's probably listening right now.

Speaker 1 (01:27:06):
Deep accords of beetroot, golden wheat, and vibrant pine, enriched
with notes of leather and grass, evoked the atmosphere of
a bustling market at the heart of the composition, notes
of noble potato, rose, heliotrope, and carnation pulse, capturing the
beauty of market rituals. The Polish Potatoes lends this composition

(01:27:30):
a rich character that combines earthiness with a pronounced sweetness
and pays homage to the earth, which is the beginning
of everything. Deep down, catually and fertile birchand notes of
damp earth resonate, enveloping us with their warmth and reminding
us of our inseparable What does this say here?

Speaker 2 (01:27:48):
Connection with nature?

Speaker 1 (01:27:50):
Earthy accords intertwined with balsamic ood oud Oud sensual amber,
sweet manilla, golden honeywarm hay, labdnumb whatever that is, and
benzoin whatever that is, creating an.

Speaker 2 (01:28:08):
Unmistakable sensual essence. I can't stop reading this.

Speaker 1 (01:28:13):
The composition encapsulated in a crystal bottle becomes a seal
that encloses the memories of an empty market in the morning,
which was full of life just moments ago, and carries
the soul of those moments within it. The unique accords
of potato, intense wood, and sweet, earthy notes will stay
with you forever.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
Wow, you sure this isn't the onion?

Speaker 1 (01:28:36):
I know, I know, this is like beyond like orders
of magnitude, beyond the Soumelia who sniffs the wine and says,
can you smell the red current, the wood, the leather
and the licorice?

Speaker 3 (01:28:53):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
Because actually, with some a little practice, you can sniff
out a thing or two in wine and you I'm
sure you can't here too.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
But what really jumps out at me is this?

Speaker 6 (01:29:04):
All right?

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
So I'm gonna give you an analogy, dragon, kind of
sort of an analogy.

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):
Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. So I've shared
with you a.

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
Couple of a couple of muffins that my wife made,
and so Kristen made some muffins the other She's getting
into making muffins, right, she wants to maybe sell them
at farmers markets and such.

Speaker 2 (01:29:22):
And she said to me yesterday or the day.

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
Before, said, you know, Ross, I think I may be
putting too many ingredients.

Speaker 2 (01:29:28):
In the muffins.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
And yeah, it tastes good, but maybe it's overly complicated.
Maybe simplify a little bit. And then and then yesterday
she made these muffins and I'm not gonna remember them all,
but it's like all the ingredients, I mean, turmeric, ginger, carrot, cashew,
some spices, I forget, what a little bit of raspberry something.

(01:29:53):
And it's like, well, didn't you just say you were
gonna simplify?

Speaker 2 (01:29:57):
Like does it all?

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Does it?

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
Okay? So here, that's what I wonder.

Speaker 1 (01:30:01):
If you put an immense number of ingredients in a thing,
does it get to some point where they all just
get mushed together in this jumble and you can't tell
one ingredient from another. Or is that the point and
they all just blend together and you like the blend.
I don't know, but this thing, it includes every possible
scent you could have in a perfume leather, grass, pine wheat, beetroot, amber,

(01:30:26):
freaking potato, and I just it's so insane.

Speaker 2 (01:30:32):
I think I want to buy a bottle and give
it to my wife.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
But I'm not going to spend one hundred and eighty
five dollars on a bottle of perfume. So if I
find it on sale somewhere, I may buy a bottle
of Polish potatoes perfume just to give it to my wife,
just because it's so ridiculous. All right, So, speaking of
Eastern Europe, let's move from Poland to Russia. Now, I
had no idea just how accident prone Russians are. I

(01:31:03):
had no idea these people. They need to be walking
around in bubble wrap. They need to be moving around
very very carefully. Maybe they're just drunk all the time,
you know, on vodka, but these Russians are so accident prone.

Speaker 2 (01:31:20):
This is from the UK Telegraph.

Speaker 1 (01:31:24):
A former Russian oil executive has been found dead after
apparently falling from the window of his Moscow flat. Mikhail
Rogachev was found outside his tenth story apartment in Moscow
with injuries consistent with a fall. Russian media reported Russian
news agencies set authorities were treating his death as a suicide.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
Right Telegram channels close to.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
The Russian security services said that his body was discovered
by an agent of the SVR, Russia's former intelligence service.
I'm sorry, foreign intelligence service, who is walking the dog
of a senior spymaster in the building's courtyard on Saturday morning.
Imagine the coincidence of that some dude who just happens

(01:32:08):
to be like maybe a bit of an enemy of
the president accidentally falls to.

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
His death and his body just happens to.

Speaker 1 (01:32:18):
Be found by a senior dude in the CIA and
their equivalent of CIA. But imagine if this were a
US story.

Speaker 5 (01:32:25):
I'm laughing my butt off in here, because in the
Redbard household we do have a joke. He's a Russian suicide,
shocked himself in back six times and bury himself in
shadow grave.

Speaker 2 (01:32:35):
He's a Russian suicide. Russian suicide. Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
The sixty four year old was a former vice president
of Yukos, the oil giant that was broken up after
its billionaire owner, Mikhail Kotokowski was imprisoned for challenging Vladimir Putin.
The dead guy went on to work as an executive
director of some other group and then a big nickel
mining company. Uh okay, this is my favorite part, where

(01:33:01):
like I just I didn't know that there was so
much clumsiness in one country. He is the latest and
nearly a dozen Russian energy executives to die.

Speaker 2 (01:33:10):
In mysterious circumstances over the last two years. Two count
them Dragon one five.

Speaker 1 (01:33:18):
Leonid Shulman, head of the transport service at Gazprom. So
that's their big natural gas company there, and his particular
division handled investment projects for gas Prom, was found dead
in a cottage north of Saint Petersburg in January of
twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (01:33:37):
I'm sure he tripped.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
Alexander kiel Lakov, another Gazprom guy, was found dead in
his garage in February of that same year.

Speaker 2 (01:33:49):
Must have tripped.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
Later that year, Reveal Maganov, chairman of Luke Coyle. So
that's like like the Russian equivalent of Chevy or ex
I mean, is big company, died after falling out of
a window at a hospital.

Speaker 2 (01:34:10):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (01:34:11):
And then the next guy who had the job died
last October from heart failure. They're calling it. These are
the most accident prone people in the world. It's absolutely unbelievable.
You just you gotta be careful if you go to Russia.
Maybe it's the windows or maybe the construction in Russia,

(01:34:34):
like maybe the floors slant down toward the windows and
then people run around throwing banana.

Speaker 2 (01:34:43):
Peels by them.

Speaker 5 (01:34:44):
The balcony railings may be lower there because we have
a standard height. There's maybe you know, lower ankle level.

Speaker 1 (01:34:51):
Ankle level balconies right right, lower lower security. What's the word,
what's the word I'm thinking of, like the standard right.
In fact, it reminds me there's this building, I think
it's in New York that people were do you read
the story, There's a building that has steadily wider and
wider balconies as you go up, and people were going

(01:35:12):
into it and getting up on the balconies and jumping off.

Speaker 2 (01:35:14):
And killing themselves.

Speaker 5 (01:35:17):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:35:18):
So they closed it for a while, and now they
just reopened it with steel mesh enclosing all the balconies
so people can't kill themselves anymore. But I'm like, I mean,
if you're gonna do it, that's probably fine, and then
nobody has to clean up your apartment right, Nope, I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):
Isn't that sort of a public service? Just leave it? No,
why are you looking at me like that.

Speaker 7 (01:35:42):
Nobody's gonna have to clean your No, one's gonna have
to clean your apartment. Thanks, it's a public service, yeah,
sort of anyway, All right, let's move on to more
Eastern European stories, because nobody else is gonna give.

Speaker 1 (01:35:57):
You any Eastern European stories, so I better give you
all of them. So there's a tiny country called Moldova,
and Moldova has a somewhat it's very evenly divided in
terms of their political sympathies. Around half the population leans
towards the West, especially younger people, and around half the

(01:36:17):
population leads towards leans towards Russia.

Speaker 2 (01:36:20):
Especially older people.

Speaker 1 (01:36:23):
And they just had a ballot measure about whether to
join the EU. And let me see when this was updated.
This updated just a few a few hours ago, and
it looks like yes on joining the EU has fifty
point four percent or fifty point five percent. It was

(01:36:45):
actually even closer last night. It was like fifty point
one to forty nine point nine. And most of the
votes are counted already. And what's interesting about this story
actually is there are two main things. The polling in it,
and we were talking about polling earlier in the show
showed a much bigger win for Yes joining the EU,

(01:37:06):
and one wonders whether those were bad polls with a
non representative sample. Right, you probably had a lot of
young people who were yes, but maybe old people who
were no. Don't answer the phone, maybe they don't even
have phones. I'm not being sarcastic. In a relatively poor
Eastern European country, but basically this thing came out almost
to tie and it looks like it's going to pass.

Speaker 2 (01:37:28):
But the political.

Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
Leader of that country a woman whose last name is
Sandu sa n Du. Her first name is Maya m Aia,
and she was also up for reelection and she was
expected to get over fifty percent pretty easily in a
multi candidate election, but she only got forty two percent.

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):
So now there's going to.

Speaker 1 (01:37:49):
Be a runoff, and if all the people who were
against her all joined together, she could end up losing.
And she was the one who was pushing to join
the EU. No, I know, I realized you don't care
very much. It's a country you never heard of, and
you don't care about the EU. But this is part
of an overall in that part of the world conversation

(01:38:10):
about whether nations are going to become more Russia leaning
or more Western leaning.

Speaker 2 (01:38:16):
The other thing that's interesting in this story is.

Speaker 1 (01:38:19):
That apparently some Russian leaning, very rich Moldovan guy said
that he would pay money to convince what he called
as many people as possible to vote against join in
the EU. And there is a story in the BBC.

(01:38:39):
In the BBC I'm looking at the bbcpiece here, a
BBC producer heard a woman who had just dropped her
ballot in the transparent box then ask an election monitor
where she could go to get paid, and then, unbelievable,
when we asked directly whether she'd been offered cash.

Speaker 2 (01:39:00):
To vote, she admitted it without qualms.

Speaker 1 (01:39:03):
She was angry that a man who would sent her
to the polling station was no longer answering her calls.

Speaker 2 (01:39:08):
He tricked me.

Speaker 1 (01:39:09):
She said she would not reply when asked who she
had voted for. So anyway, interesting question on polling were
the polls you know, again got to be careful with
poles being quote unquote wrong, but the polling was very
different from the actual result, right, the polling was like
sixty forty in favor and it came out fifty to fifty.

Speaker 2 (01:39:32):
That's a big, big difference.

Speaker 1 (01:39:35):
But then you also have this question is of did
the Russians through Moldovan intermediaries literally by votes?

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
So I think that's a pretty interesting one.

Speaker 1 (01:39:45):
All right, move, let's move away from Eastern Europe and
let's move to Denver for a couple of minutes. The
denverwright dot com has a piece. Denver made a big
change to waste pickup. It's not quite working yet. And
this to me falls perfectly to this category of just
how tired I am of these do gooder ideas. We've

(01:40:06):
got this or that goal and this or that target,
and they never meet their targets, and they never meet
their goals, but at least they cost the people a
lot of money. In January of last year. Certainly will
recall if you live in Denver, and you might recall.

Speaker 2 (01:40:22):
Even if you don't, because I talked about it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:24):
A time or two, but Denver switched their trash collection
billing system to charging people based on how much trash
they throw away, and they also added a recycling pickup dragon.
Pay attention now, because I know you're huge into recycling.
So in Denver they pick up recycling every week now

(01:40:47):
instead of every two weeks. And I don't know if
that's enough to make you want to move to Denver,
because I know how wildly enthusiastic you are about recycling.
Everything from water bottles to beard hairs.

Speaker 5 (01:40:58):
Were every other week, so it is sometimes get rough.
Oh I better not order the Amazon stuff, but not
my dumpster is pretty full.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):
We are every other week as well.

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
And my recycling trash bin is only full if I'm
lazy enough to not break down the Amazon boxes into
the flat version.

Speaker 2 (01:41:18):
If I leave them taped so they're you know, they're still.

Speaker 1 (01:41:21):
So they're three dimensional instead of basically two dimensional, then
then it can get full. But anyway, so they're they're
doing more of this, and bottom line is it's not
really working. Before the program began, people in Denver were
recycling or composting about twenty three percent of their waist and.

Speaker 2 (01:41:42):
Today with.

Speaker 1 (01:41:45):
Charging people more for trash, but you're not charged for
recycling and composting, so you're trying to push people that way.
They've gone from twenty three percent to twenty six percent,
like a very very small move they wanted to reach
fifty percent by twenty twenty seven and seventy percent by
twenty thirty two, and they're already saying they're not gonna

(01:42:07):
meet that first goal. There's just not enough. People aren't
picking this up enough to meet their goals. The city
picks up recycling, as I said, once a week, twice
as often, but they're only picking up twenty percent more
actual stuff that is being recycled.

Speaker 2 (01:42:24):
And that makes sense, right, because.

Speaker 1 (01:42:28):
If you're only if you're already only producing enough recycling
like me and Dragon, where most of the time you
can fit two weeks of stuff in one bin if
you push it down and break down the boxes. I'm
not gonna go order twice as much stuff from Amazon
because recycling is gonna pick up twice, you know, every

(01:42:48):
week instead of every two weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:42:50):
True and so and so they're they're they've.

Speaker 1 (01:42:54):
Doubled the cost of picking up the stuff because they're
picking it up twice as often. They're probably more than
double then I'll explain why in a second. But only
had a twenty percent increase in the amount of stuff
they're picking up. But as even this article knows, these trucks, dude,
do you know the gas mileage of the trash trucks

(01:43:16):
and the recycled pickup trucks.

Speaker 5 (01:43:18):
Four gallons to the mile you wish two and a half.
I was being, wow, miles per gallon joking there are
things like you could measure like a tank in gallons
per mile, but it's still two and a half miles
per gallon, two and a half miles per gallon. And
so because they're picking up more often, they're adding an

(01:43:38):
extra one hundred and seventy thousand miles per year of
driving to pick up the recycling more often. If you
care about greenhouse gases, which I don't, but if you do,
they're adding twelve hundred tons more of greenhouse gases into
the environment.

Speaker 2 (01:43:54):
And check this out. To offset a.

Speaker 1 (01:43:56):
Single year of extra emissions just from driving the trucks
around more, you would have to plant twenty thousand trees
and maintain those trees for ten years.

Speaker 2 (01:44:06):
If just if you think in these terms, and again
I usually.

Speaker 1 (01:44:09):
Don't, the composting also hasn't grown the way they help
the way they thought. And as a result, basically all
these folks who said we're gonna do all this stuff
and we're gonna pick up the trash more often, and
we'll do more recycling. And we're gonna charge people more
for the trust and will generate less trash and recycle more.
None of it's working, but at least it's costing you

(01:44:32):
a lot more money and bad for the environment. Too crazy,
all right, we have an immense amount of stuff on
tomorrow's show. I'm gonna go prepare that show for you
right now, because I'm always thinking about what I can
do for you. Have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your Monday.
Mandy Conna up next,