11-06-25 - *FULL SHOW* FAA cutting flights; Mike Nellis; CO social media law

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Been very often. Good to see you, good to see you.
I will I will let you know.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
That there's one of our colleagues in the big room
over there is wearing a Raiders shirt today, which is
a little disappointing, but you're wearing your Broncos hat. I've
got my Broncos jacket over there. And maybe we'll actually
even talk a little Broncos today at some point, because
you know a lot more than I do about football,
so it's always good to talk sports with you.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
But well, we'll see how it plays out. So look,
I was.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Going to start today's show talking about this whole FAA thing,
but I kind of feel like I feel like the
KOA News team has done the job that needs to
be done on that story already, unsurprisingly.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
I will just mention, just to remntion.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
They said this already, But I think it's interesting, really interesting,
the idea that, as the FAA says, and they're saying,
it's about safety, and maybe it is about safety. It
might be true that they're going to reduce the number
of flights, especially between major airports, reduced the number of
four lights due to potential staffing shortages. In fact, Fox

(01:04):
News right now says, airport's to see four percent cut
in flights tomorrow. My sister's supposed to come visit me
tomorrow flying from Charlotte, North Carolina, so we will see
if that gets impacted.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
The thing to me that is really interesting is this
idea from Denver International Airport offering to pay the air
traffic controllers salary out of the airport's own bank accounts
and then get reimbursed later when the government opens and

(01:38):
they need to get permission from the federal government for this. Now,
you know what, as long as I'm on this, and
as long as I don't need to spend as much
time on that particular part of the story as I
was going to, let me mention another thing that I thought.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Was quite interesting and obvious.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
And yet nobody's talking about it when comes to this,
why is it that air traffic controllers have a problem
when government shuts down? In other words, a planer version
of the question, a more straightforward version of the question,
why is air traffic control a government function? And I'm

(02:23):
by the way, I'm not throwing this out there as
some kind of wild eyed libertarian privatize everything, even though
I kind of am that guy, that's not what I'm
saying here.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
It's a much more straightforward thing.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
And actually the Wall Street Journal had a No It's
this Morning, has an op ed about it today No
last Night has an op ed entitled.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Free the air Traffic Controllers.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Actually it's an editorial, so it's written by the editorial board,
not by an outsider, Free the air Traffic Controllers.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
And I'm not gonna read it all just in the
interest of time.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
But you know, they talk about the flight delays and
the cancelations, and they talk about air traffic controllers not
showing up to work. And then a Secretary of Transportation,
uh Sean Duffy said, you know, sort of vocalizing probably
the mindset as he perceives it of air traffic controllers.
Do I go to work and not yet a paycheck

(03:25):
and not put food on the table, or do I
drive for uber or door dash or wait tables.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Now here's what the Journal says.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
This is a ludicrous way to run the air transportation
system of any country, much less the richest and most
powerful one in the history of the planet. The answer
is to hand off the job of air traffic control
to when nonprofit funded by user fees instead of taxes.
This model is already in place in Canada and elsewhere,

(03:53):
so it isn't some pie in the sky idea.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
And President Trump actually backed.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
An ideal like this during his first term, but parochial
opposition kept it grounded.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
And that's not surprising, of course.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
For example, many government bureaucrats whose jobs are regulating and
managing and controlling the air traffic control system will not
want to lose their jobs, so they will oppose it.
And perhaps certain unions would oppose it. And I don't
know who else. I didn't pay that close attention to
the conversation during Trump's first term. A non profit outfit,

(04:27):
and I'm back to the Wall Street Journal here, a
non profit outfit could be more nimble in upgrading antiquated
air traffic systems. The government could still regulate the safety
aspects of the job, but spinning off the controllers would
free them from pointless political constraints, including the fact that
they're not getting paid at the moment because sixty senators

(04:48):
can't agree to do their job of funding federal public agencies.
Government shutdowns are rarely productive, but letting them cripple national
travel is daft.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
I'm fully on board with that.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
There's no legit reason that I'm aware of to keep
air traffic control as a government thing and to have it,
you know, subject to these kinds of vicissitudes when politicians
don't do their jobs. And I think that was an
excellent use of the word vicissitude, which I have not
used on the air in a very long time. What

(05:22):
do you think, Zach, was that a fine use of vicissitude.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
I'm gonna have to check my Mariam's webster really quick,
all right, So anyway I would do that, I would
absolutely do that.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
So well, you know, we'll see, we'll see how it
plays out, and we'll see how much longer the government
shutdown goes.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
There's there's been a little movement on that.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
I'm not going to get into it too much right now,
but there's been some movement on that where it seems
like they're looking for.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
A way out.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
The way out might be because the Democrats want Republicans
to do something that Republicans should not do, which is
to extend intentionally temporary COVID Era Obamacare subsidies for people
earning over four hundred percent of the poverty level.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Republicans should not go along with that.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Democrats have demanded it one possible way out of the shutdown.
We'll see how it plays out. What one possible way
out of the shutdown would be to guarantee the Democrats
that there will be a vote on the issue, rather
than that they will get their way on the issue.
So we will see how that all plays out. Let
me mention also real quick, jush, we have a ton
of stuff to do on today show, but let mention

(06:26):
real quick. I have space left in my April trip,
our April listener trip to where we go in Vienna, Prague, Budapest,
quick Stop.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
And broad A Slava.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
It's going to be an incredible trip with culture and
great food and I feel like good deer.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
We're going to be a place with a lot of that.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
We're going to take waltz lessons in Vienna and listen
to Mozart in Vienna. Can you imagine that? And all
kinds of other things. Anyway, I've only got room for
four more couples on the trip. Trips almost sold out.
I've only got room for four more couples, so I
hope you will join me.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
You can learn more.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
At rosstrip dot com. The trip is next April. This
April fourteenth to the twenty fourth, and next year rosstrip
dot com to learn more. I would love to travel
with you.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
That did you know that tomorrow is my last day
being nine am to noon? I did crazy.

Speaker 4 (07:27):
I'm excited for the new lineup. It looks like a
good one.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
I think so too.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
I think we've got an incredibly great lineup coming for KOA.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
And if you.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Haven't heard, you know, if you've been under a radio rock,
what we're doing here on KOA starting Monday, and.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
I'm going to start at five am.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Okay, so five am to six am is Colorado's Morning News,
and that'll be Gina Gondeck and perhaps a newsroom colleague,
however they do the whole Colorado's Morning News thing. That'll
be that hour, and then from six to nine the
new show there is going to be called Ross Kaminski
on the News with Gina Gondek, and it's gonna be
very much like my current show, but there will be

(08:07):
news four times an hour, and Gina will participate in
the show.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
To some amount that we're still gonna figure out.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
We're gonna we're gonna work it out as we go
along and partly with your input, Right, what do you like?
What do you want to hear more of? We do
this for you, and we're gonna make the show show
for you. And that'll be six am to nine am weekdays,
and then nine to noon, the slot that I'm in
now will be Michael Brown, who is coming over from
KHOW Morning Drive. By the way, I came from KHOW

(08:37):
Morning Drive to nine to noon on KOA, so that
seems to be a little pattern there. And then the
rest of the schedule for the day after Michael Brown
does not change. So you've got Mandy, and you got
the sports guys and the other sports guys and all
that stuff. And we we do think it's gonna be
a great lineup, great shows, and we hope you we
hope you enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
And I'll also say, you.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Know, I know, if you're listening now, and you also
tend to listen from from five to nine, there are
folks who are gonna, you know, wonder a little bit
about change.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
KOA has done it a certain way for a long time.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
But I just want you to understand that this change
is not happening without an immense I mean immense amount
of thought and planning and research and you know, understanding
what this decision is. And we really believe, or more importantly,
the people above me who make these decisions, really believe

(09:31):
that we're going to bring you a great show that
you know, from from five to from six to nine,
that you're gonna find informative and entertaining, and we're going
to talk a lot about the news, but we'll interact
more than just a straight up news show, and we
think it'll be a little more fun for everybody.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
You look like you want to say something.

Speaker 4 (09:47):
Oh no, I'm just I'm excited to listen.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, I'm okay. What are your normal producing hours?

Speaker 4 (09:53):
Pretty typically like two to nine.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
I'll be over on k how for Ryan Shuley, maybe
some Dan Kaplis. I'll get over here a good bit too,
for KA Sports and Broncos Country Tonight. Wherever they need me.
That's that's the standard.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Excellent, excellent. Was it hard for you to wake up?
I mean, this is not that early at show. It's
not like you had to do CMN. No, that would
be rough. My girlfriend works in medicine. I'm used to
waking up early, So no problems there.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
You go, all right, let me switch gears with you.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
A couple months ago, a listener emailed me about a
restaurant owner in Castle Rock named Peter Albert who has
a restaurant that actually used to be a.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Food truck turned it into a restaurant.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Called Stacked stac k apostrophe D.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
And I saw this story over at nine News.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
There's a burger joint basically, And I saw the story
over at nine News, and I just wanted to mention
it to you because because I.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Love stories like this. I love stories.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
They talk about the goodness in people's hearts and such,
because we hear so often about bad things. You know,
if it bleeds, it leads, especially on national news, much
more than local news here and local news Kawa News.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
We're not a you know, if it bleeds, it leads kind.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Of place where our news approach. And I don't work
for the news desks, so I shouldn't speak for them,
but I will anyway. Is if it's important, it leads, right,
if it's interesting and important, especially not if it bleeds,
it leads, so you know, you get bombarded. And I
think that's why a lot of people are turning off
the news. So when I see stories like this, one.

(11:34):
I want to I want to share them with you anyway.
From nine News Stacked food truck turned restaurant in Castle
Rock wants to make sure no one goes without food.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Owner Peter Albert put up a board with a.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Few receipts of prepaid food for furloughed workers to come
take and then present it the register to get a meal.
And he said, and I'm quoting, We've been wanting to
do this board for a while. When the government shutdown started,
we just thought to ourselves, maybe this is the time.
So mister Albert took a photo of his board with

(12:08):
five tickets on it and posted it to social media
last week, and he said that within a few hours,
other business owners and people in the community would call
in and donate to the board. And it got to
the point where he, you know, he thought he would
need a bigger board, and maybe he does. And as
of the writing of this article, he said, there are
currently a few dozen tickets on his board. He says

(12:30):
he's averaged about twenty to thirty meals a day off
of board receipts, and he said, and I'm quoting, it
feels great.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
To do that and see the faces shake hands.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
You know, most time we're too busy to shake hands,
but all the same, it feels good. They talk about
another gentleman named Coroy Flieger p F l e g.
E Er of a bakery down there called Castle Doe
Castle Doug h All is one word, and he bought
ten meals for the board and he said, if we
are able to provide those means for somebody else, it

(13:02):
just makes sense to do it. He said, it's pretty
brutal for their lives, right the people who are not
getting paid because the government shut down, some of them
are on the lower tier of the government pay scale,
so losing a paycheck is really detrimental to their life.
That's rent, that's food, it's everything you can imagine that
would keep them having that normal life. And he said
he actually doesn't consider it charity. He calls it basic humanity. Anyway,

(13:27):
I love the concept. And if you want to help out,
get in touch with Stacked stac k Apostrophe D and
you know, tell them, hey, you'd like to buy a
few meals for the board.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
And hopefully the.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Government shutdown will stop soon and this won't be necessary anymore.
But basically, again, if you didn't understand it at first.
And I don't mean because you're not because because you're dumb.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
I mean because I didn't. I don't think I explained
it very well.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
So what you do is you'd call in and Sarah
and I want to buy a, you know, a five
of you know, a burger fries and a coke, And
so they will print out five receipts for a burger
fries and.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
A coke, and you pay for them, and they.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Put the receipts up on this corkboard with with the
thumbtack or whatever. And then you know, a furloughed government
worker who has no income right now can come in,
take one of those down, bring it over to the
to the register and turn it in and get a meal.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
And I just think that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
And I wanted to give a shout out to Stacked
owner Peter Albert down there in Castle Rock.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
It is not the first time I have heard.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
About this man and his community generosity.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
So a huge shout out to Peter Albert.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
And separate from this, you know what, even when the
shutdown is over, I wanted you to take care of
a business that does such good things for the community.
Stacked in Castle Rock will be right back, old enough

(15:02):
to have done that. I am so pleased to welcome
to the show for the first time Mike Nellis. I
already feel like we're friends, even though we've never talked before,
because I see him so much on my buddy Leland's
show on News Nation. Leland actually was on the show yesterday,
and I've been really looking forward to this because Mike
is an aggressive, unabashed hardcore Democrat activist fundraiser who really

(15:32):
understands the party and politics and policy. And we probably
don't agree on everything. We probably agree on some stuff,
but there's not that many people who are strong in
all of those areas. Like you'll get someone who's good
on party politics, but he's really bad on policy. But
I find Mike good at all this stuff, even if
I don't agree with him. He's a good analyst and
a good talker. So with that, it's very good to

(15:54):
have you on the show.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Mike.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Thanks for making time for us than sure nice. So
before we get into all the stuff I just said,
your Twitter profile says you have raised over a billion
dollars with a bee for Democrats and nonprofits. How do

(16:16):
you do that? And was that your profession at fundraising
like previously to being so politically active or is it
part of really the same thing.

Speaker 5 (16:30):
Yeah, I've been.

Speaker 6 (16:31):
I've been politically active since I got out of high school.
I dropped out of college to work for Barack Obama
in two thousand and seven. I grew up in Nebraska
and he was running in the Iowa caucus and I
drove out to his first event and.

Speaker 5 (16:40):
Never really looked back. So I joke, I've never had
a real job.

Speaker 6 (16:43):
But I'm one of the sort of first people that
helped build online fundraising and digital advertising for the Democratic Party,
and so in the course of doing that, I've helped
raise a ton of money for candidates, like a bunch
of candidates you're not gonna like, but Adam Schiff, Gretchen Whitmer,
Corey Booker, Lauren Underwood here in the Chicagoland area, a
bunch of others.

Speaker 5 (17:00):
I've got a great team of people that work with me.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
You're right, I don't like them at all.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
But it's not really It's not really important in the
sense that.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
I admire your success. It's much more important, like.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
You know, just the fact that you figure out how
to do something and you know, put together numbers like that. Yeah,
I mean I would, Well, I was gonna in a way,
I was going to say, I wish you were doing
it for my side, but I don't feel like I
have a side right I'm an unaffiliated libertarian and.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
I don't feel like I have a side right now. Okay, So.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
How much better were you feeling or are you feeling
this morning versus Tuesday morning before the elections?

Speaker 6 (17:40):
Yeah, well I felt pretty good Tuesday morning. I kind
of got what I expected. Tuesday night, I had a
good sense that people were really frustrated that Democrats done
a good job to set Abigail Stamberger Mikey Cheryl up
for success.

Speaker 5 (17:52):
I didn't know how good the night was going to be.

Speaker 6 (17:54):
Like, I was surprised to see Democrats defeated the super
majority in the state Senate in Mississippi. I was excited
to see and win two statewide races in Georgia by
thirty points. It was a big night for the Democrats,
and I think for me it was we get to
wash away a little bit of the SENTI of twenty
twenty four off our backs.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
I'm I'm going to make this a question great and
you implied it already, But for me, I wasn't surprised
that Democrats did well. I was surprised how well they did.
So could you just elaborate on that a little bit?
And also one specific thing.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Were you surprised that j Jones won the Attorney general's
race in Virginia?

Speaker 5 (18:34):
Yeah, I was surprised that J. Jones won.

Speaker 6 (18:36):
I really thought that that was going to be one
where Republicans were going to get But that's how big of.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
A blue wave that it was.

Speaker 5 (18:41):
And I know this something you and I are probably
gonna get into.

Speaker 6 (18:43):
This is one of the reasons I reached out to
you to do the show, because you were talking about
it with our buddy Leland last week. But I think
people are so frustrated at the Republican Party right now,
so frustrated with inflation and grocery prices and housing that
they just looked past what J Jones said and they
were like, forget.

Speaker 5 (18:56):
It, I want a Democrat in here. I'm not voting
for the.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
Republicans partly agree with that. I don't disagree with any
of it. I think I would add to it, and
I will in a second. But let me just tell
listeners because I should have said this to begin with.
You can and should follow Mike Nellis on x formerly
Twitter at Mike.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Nellis and E L.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
L I S and his substack, which has like eight
hundred billion followers or something like that, is called endless Urgency,
And you don't even need a substack link. You can
just go to endless urgency dot com. I'm just trying
to get my own substack going, and it occurs to
me I already own rosscominski dot com, So I guess

(19:39):
I could just redirect it to that kind of like
sort of what you're doing, so.

Speaker 5 (19:44):
You can do it in the back end. It's super easy.
I'll help you when we're not on the radio.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Okay, all right, that'll be good. Okay, we're gonna do
it on the radio.

Speaker 5 (19:50):
Probablyouldn't be a stump.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Listening, no, right, Okay.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
So you said that part of what happened was was
frustration about cost of living in Particul, and I think
that's exactly right. And I've said I said on the
show that, first of all, unsurprisingly the exit polls showed
cost of living and stuff kind of around that as by.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Far the most important issue to people, right, And you
have a lot.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
Of Republicans and MAGA people jumping up and down and
cheering about how happy they are with the closed border,
and I'm okay, and I'm very happy with getting immigration
under control, although I think some of the other scenes
surrounding immigration in America probably turn off some Americans. But
I'm happy with the closed border thing. But that's not
what most people care about. Most people care about can

(20:36):
they afford to put food on their family?

Speaker 1 (20:38):
As George W.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
Bush said, right, yeah, But I think what I would
add to what you said is separate from the issue.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
And the policy.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
I think in a lot of places, including here in Colorado,
there's just a ton of people, including moderate Democrats and
unaffiliated voters, who despised Donald Trump. And we saw this
in the twenty eighteen elections here in Colorado. Really really
well qualified and well liked Republican incumbents lost to Democrats

(21:14):
that nobody ever heard of, in an absolute wipeout because
people hated Trump so much that they just went through
and voted straight D. So I would I'm not disagreeing
with your explanation, but I would also add that, yeah.

Speaker 5 (21:30):
I think that that is right.

Speaker 6 (21:31):
Like people do not like Donald Trump, which, by the way,
it should be noted like he won in a last election,
won the popular vote, didn't get.

Speaker 5 (21:37):
A majority, but won the popular vote.

Speaker 6 (21:38):
I think, what does that say about the state of
the Democratic Party a year ago that people brought back
somebody that they really don't like. And if you look
at the exit polls from a year ago, people would
tell you they liked Kamala Harris more than they like
Donald Trump. They just didn't think she'd be able to
get anything done, and they were pretty frustrated with Joe
Biden his presidency.

Speaker 5 (21:53):
On the economy, Trump won last year.

Speaker 6 (21:56):
The more main promise that people paid attention to was,
and this is a quote, grocery prices will go down
on day one when I'm president.

Speaker 5 (22:03):
He said that basically every day of the campaign. They
ran TV ads on it.

Speaker 6 (22:06):
He said it on Meet the Press, like a couple
days after he got elected president re elected president, and
he hasn't done anything about that. Instead, he's made everything
a lot more expensive and then denied that it's a problem,
and that's going to drag people down. And you're right
that they're going to be highly qualified, good you know,
not bad Republicans like look I'm a partisan, but if
you put a good Republican in front, I mean I
can have a conversation with them, might even consider voting

(22:28):
for them every now and again, but you know they're
going to drag them down. I think Trump is generally
speaking a net negative to the Republican Party electorally.

Speaker 5 (22:35):
He's bad at picking candidates, and that's why.

Speaker 6 (22:38):
Like Democrats should not have John Vetterman shouldn't be in
the Senate right now. But Trump got behind doctor Oz
instead getting Bind, a normal Republican candidate. So I think
it's a real problem for them, and he drags them
down significantly.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Okay, so I will say I think Trump is much
better right now at choosing candidates to endorse than he
was in the past. He had more success, you know,
a couple of years ago than he did in the past.
But still, what I said on my show yesterday about
Trump is and again, an election is a choice, so

(23:07):
we have to get back to comparing to Democrats. But
just looking at Republicans in a sense, I feel like
Republicans can't win with Trump there, but they also can't
win without him because you know, with him, they pick
maga candidates who turn off a lot of normal people
and would and without him, Republicans don't turn out in

(23:28):
the general election like yesterday, like Tuesday.

Speaker 6 (23:32):
I actually disagree with that take. I think if they
had run Nicki Haley in the last election, she might
have won forty eight states against show Bien Norcammel Harris.
I think people were starved for a normal, relatively ENTI
Republican who had guided the country forward. She would you
guys would have won back Er, it's not you, guys said,
I want to plump people with all the Republicans. But
Republicans would have won a lot more like suburban voters
in that last election. But Trump turns them off so much,

(23:54):
so I think it's like a double edged sword. Yes,
he brings out a lot of people that don't vote,
part of the MAGA coalition, But in this last election,
in particular, Nicky Haley wins in a landslide in my opinion.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Okay, so I should clarify because I don't disagree with you.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
What I should have said was as long as Trump
is on the scene, right because I was a Nicky
Haley supporter. Actually I was a Nicky Haley supporter. I
really wanted her. I mean, she's not.

Speaker 4 (24:18):
It was my dad.

Speaker 6 (24:18):
My dad really wanted Nicky Haley. Yeah, I want Trump back.
My dad's a huge Republican.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Right and next time. I mean, we don't know who
all is going to run and whatever. But if you
you look at the at the landscape right now, if
I had to pick someone, I think I think my
guy would be probably Marco Rubio. I cannot, I cannot
fathom jd Vance. I want to play something for you now,
and this is this is something that you can imagine,

(24:45):
just just makes my just sets my teeth on edge.
And I want to talk about the direction of the
Democratic Party after you hear this from the newly elected
mayor of New York City, Okay, that there.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Is no problem too large for government to solve and
no concern to care Wow.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Okay, So in case it was hard for you to
hear Zorn, Mam, Donnie said, We're going to prove that
there is no problem too big for government to solve
or too small for government to care about. And that
scares the Bejesus out of me. What's your how do
you just your gut reaction? How do you feel about

(25:31):
what he said?

Speaker 6 (25:33):
Well, I think it's we're living through this weird moment
where I think the Republican Party believes in big government
and a lot more Democrats believe in smaller government than
you would can then.

Speaker 5 (25:43):
You would believe. Obviously, Mom, Donnie is not one of those.
My issue here is that.

Speaker 6 (25:48):
I think in the last twenty years of our politics,
government has withdrawn from solving any problems, and you don't
have enough political leaders that are trying to solve anything,
and because of that, everything's spiraling out of control. My assumption, Ross,
and I don't know you super well, is that your
expectation is community can solve it, corporations can solve it,
business and the free market can solve it.

Speaker 5 (26:04):
You correct me if I'm wrong about that. I think
it's both.

Speaker 6 (26:06):
I think it's how do you get into a place
where we started having this conversation of what can the
government actually be useful and helpful to solve and how
do we create the conditions for society, community.

Speaker 5 (26:16):
Business to actually solve those problems.

Speaker 6 (26:18):
Because don't think corporate America is solving a lot of
problems either, unless there's a ton of money to be
made in it, and that's a problem too.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
My viewpoint is more like this. I think you all
know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words
in the English language are I'm from the government and
I'm here to help.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
So that's that's how I am, right And just so
you know, I'm a lot older than you. My first
vote for president was for Reagan in his in his
re election. But do you you probably more or less
fairly characterized my viewpoint.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
I'm not an anarchist, so I do.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
I do think that there could potentially be some legitimate
role for government. For example, we were talking about food
stamps because you got all this food stamp problems with
the government shutdown, and I said, look, I would I
would eliminate food stamps if I could for most people
because right now what happens is and this sounds like

(27:16):
an argument a leftist would make in a way, but
right now what happens is a government partial subsidy of
somebody's food expenses allows businesses to pay those people less,
and I'm not down with that. So what I said
is is eliminate it. I don't mean if I were
trying to make a practical solution, i'd say, over time, eliminated.

(27:39):
But I could live with having something like food stamps
or we call it snap now for people who really
can't help themselves, really can't work, or disabled physically, mentally, whatever.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
So I'm not looking for people to starve in the streets.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
I just don't want government to even think it could
solve all the problems. But I think that's a fundamental
philosophical difference between me and you, or me and people
to my left.

Speaker 6 (28:05):
Yeah, well, I think you would be surprised that you
and I would probably agree on more because I actually
consider myself a libertarian on.

Speaker 5 (28:11):
A ton of different issues.

Speaker 6 (28:12):
Generally speaking, I want the government to leave people alone
unless there's a clear public safety issue. Now, I believe
in a really strong social safety net that supports people.
So I do believe in universal health care, make sure
everybody has access to healthcare. I'm a small business owner.
I run five small businesses myself. I make sure all
my employees self health care. I think it's ridiculous that
it's my responsibility to provide healthcare for my employees.

Speaker 5 (28:32):
I think it drags my business down, and.

Speaker 6 (28:33):
In every other major country, small businesses don't have to
do that. That's why there should be some kind of
public option or access to Medicare and Medicaid people to
be able.

Speaker 5 (28:40):
To get that on SNAP. I agree with you.

Speaker 6 (28:42):
I think the current way that the SNAP program works
is it is subsidizing companies like Walmart and McDonald's and
other businesses.

Speaker 5 (28:48):
So that they have to pay people less.

Speaker 6 (28:50):
If you got rid of food stamps to phase them
out over time, the result would be either a lot
of people would start or you would have to start
forcing companies like Walmart to pay people a living wage.
And the problem is this, first of the Republican Party,
they want to eliminate SNAP, but they don't want to
do anything about the fact that we're subsidizing low wages
for major corporations.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
So and where again, this is kind of interesting, Like
you and I'll start on the same thing, and then
we'll diverge a little at the end, because I would
not end up saying we then need to force the corporation.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Right, So a lot of people on my left would start.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
With the argument that I made that you agree with,
and then they would end up saying, and therefore we
need to increase the minimum wage. And I think I'm
against the very existence of a minimum wage, and I
do think the market will take care of it, and
I do think private people and charities will take care
of it when the when the private market doesn't.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Anyway, let's keep going.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
So if you're just joining we're talking with Mike Nellis,
you got to check out his sub stack at endless
Urgency dot com and follow him on Twitter at Mike
Nellis an e Llis. So back to party politics for
a minute. Dems did really well. I don't know that
you know the first year after a presidential site goal

(30:00):
that it necessarily presages.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
A lot for next year or three years later.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
But I'd rather, you know, I'd rather have be a
Democrat than a Republican after that. But the Democratic Party
still remains in polling more.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Unpopular than Republicans.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
So if you were advising Democrats, and you are advising Democrats,
how do you advise them to not suck so much
in public perception.

Speaker 5 (30:30):
I think it's funny that you.

Speaker 6 (30:31):
Say not sucks so much, because I say that at
every private meeting I have with my class. I've often
joked that if I stopped doing my career, if I
just didn't have my career at being an independent voter
like the next day, because the party drives.

Speaker 5 (30:43):
Me crazy too. So here's what I would say.

Speaker 6 (30:45):
I think one, Democrats have to be really careful having
looked at Tuesday's results and make the assumption that.

Speaker 5 (30:50):
We're back, right.

Speaker 6 (30:51):
I see a lot of people going the Democratic Party
is back, we got our mojo, and I'm like, no,
we did it, like we ran good quality candidates for
their districts that did better than the party brand. Abigail
Stamberger and Mikey Cheryl An sol Aron Mondani, for that matter,
ran really good campaigns that overperformed the expectations or where
Democrats are.

Speaker 5 (31:08):
The Republicans are giving us a ton.

Speaker 6 (31:10):
To work on right now. From affordability, everything's more expensive.
Donald Trump is underwater on security issues. He's underwater on crime,
He's underwater on immigration. You brought up the border earlier today.
I'm with you on keeping the border secure, one hundred
percent with you. I'm one hundred percent with you on
removing violent criminals. I think the Democratic Party's policy on
immigration has not made a lot of sense, but Donald
Trump has taken it way too far with these ice raates.

Speaker 5 (31:31):
I live in the city of Chicago.

Speaker 6 (31:32):
Yesterday there was a daycare worker who was grabbed in
front of her kids and thrown into the back of
an unmarked car by unidentified Ice agents. And I don't
think people like that. I don't think people want that.
To me, that's the definition of fascism. That's what a
fascist country does. If we heard about that happening in
another country.

Speaker 5 (31:47):
Would be really really alarmed by that.

Speaker 6 (31:49):
We should be alarmed that it's happening in major American cities.
So they're going to give us plenty of work, with
plenty to talk about. But Democrats still have to run
better candidates with better messengers. Democrats have to be smarter
about the kind of campaigns that we're running. It' to
be smarter about how we use power and get back
to delivering for people.

Speaker 5 (32:05):
And we have to be disciplined in the issues that
we talk about Democrats.

Speaker 6 (32:08):
I think, to your point about the Mom Donnie quote,
one of the things that gives me pauses, there's no
issue too small for the government to solve.

Speaker 5 (32:14):
Well, that seems to me like you're creating.

Speaker 6 (32:16):
The conditions where the government's going to be trying to
solve everybody's little problems every single day. And what I
worry about is I want the Democratic Party focus on
three things right now, I want them focus on ordability.
I want to focus on keeping people safe, and I
want them focus on rooting out corruption in the government.
If they focus on those three things, both in this
election and when we take power again in twenty twenty seven,
when we take back the House to send it, and
in twenty twenty nine when we send to the presidency,

(32:38):
hopefully if things.

Speaker 5 (32:38):
Go well, if we focus on that, we're going to
win and we're going to be in a good position.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
In my opinion, I'm tempted to bet you a beer
on the Senate thing.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
I do think you'll take that.

Speaker 5 (32:47):
I wouldn't bet senate. It's tough, Yeah, putting any money
on that.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah, Okay, you know so one last thing. I got
about a minute left here. So I like your list
of things. If I were a Democrat, I would like
your list of things there. So I think though, that
part of the problem from the Mamdanni wing is that
they think they can make things cheaper by making them free.

(33:10):
But that's when things are most expensive. Right, So when
Mamdani says, you know, I'm gonna freeze your rent, or
I'm gonna make buses free, or we're gonna have government.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Owned grocery stores.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
All of those things are either going to fail outright
or be so expensive that they're they're gonna cause either
tax increases or budget cuts in other areas because all
of that, And you were talking about this in your
conversation with John Lemon as if these are sort of
new ideas that haven't been tried, and people should be
open to bucking the establishment and trying new things. But

(33:41):
all of these things have been tried, and they almost
always fail.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Wherever they're tried. So I'll give you the last twenty
nine seconds because I like prime numbers.

Speaker 6 (33:52):
Yeah, I don't think that's a fair characterization of it,
because what I would say is, like, one, there's plenty
of cities in America that provide free transportation of people,
So I don't think free bus ideas like the worst
idea in the world, particularly for a city like New
York that has so many working class people who move
from one borough to another. So I think that's like
not the worst idea. On government run grocery stores. There's
large parts of New York that don't have a grocery

(34:12):
store right now. And if you don't like the idea
of putting a government run or a government subsidized grocery
store in that neighborhood, come up with another idea proposed it.
Andrew Cuomo and curtisly What did not have any ideas
to solve that problem. And this is part of the
problem is, Yes, you might not like Saruna Donny's ideas.

Speaker 5 (34:25):
I don't agree with all of them either. He's not
for my wing of the Democratic Party, but.

Speaker 6 (34:29):
At least he's proposing some new and different stuff relative
to what both establishments in both political parties do.

Speaker 5 (34:34):
So I'm okay if they subsidize the grocery store and
see how it does. It's okay if it fails.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Interesting. Yeah, Look, I'm really torn.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
As a guy whose son's middle name is rand I
feel like we're living through atlass shrugged, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
That mindset without giving two Randy in is kind.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Of like sometimes things need to get much much worse
than you think they can get before voters wake up
and make things better. And part of me like, I'm
trying to decide whether I wish mom Donnie's success because
it is a great city and the city where I
was born, or whether I wish him to fail so
people learn once and for all that his ideas are

(35:09):
not just wrong but reprehensible.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
So we'll see, we'll see.

Speaker 4 (35:14):
We'll see.

Speaker 6 (35:16):
Well, I want him to succeed, but I want every
politician to succeed, like I hope Donald Trump would make
grocery prices cheaper too, because I got to manage my
household budget unfortunately where we are.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, So what I will say, and I mentioned this
on the show yesterday, is very very smart of him
to campaign on that because it was a pain point
for everybody, grocery prices. But in reality, it's not a
thing a president can do almost anything about. So it
puts himself in a really tough situation. And it's smart
of you guys to say, well, Trump promised that, and

(35:44):
if he doesn't get grocery prices down, then you should
oppose him and other Republicans. It's very smart of you guys,
because Trump really doesn't have anything he can do to
get gross grocery prices down. It's the market, it's the weather,
it's all kinds of things. So anyway, look, Mike Nellison
significantly with the terroriffs.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yes, no doubt, no doubt. I hate the terroriffs, hate them.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Mike Nellis is one of the most important and influential
Democrat fundraisers. And and I don't think activist is quite
the right word consultant in the country.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
What do you call yourself about? What do you call yourself?

Speaker 5 (36:18):
I just say democratic strategist, strategist.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
There you a strategist. That's a better word. Consultant sound
is a little bit insulting. I take that back, strategist.
Mike Nellis on Twitter and endless urgency dot com. Great
to talk to you for the first time.

Speaker 5 (36:31):
Thanks Ross, I enjoyed this lot.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Okay, me too. We'll be right back on KOA.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Since I have gotten so many unsolicited texts, I didn't
ask anybody to text in with folks saying how much
you enjoyed that last conversation, the conversation I had with
Mike Nellis, and I love that conversation too, And just
as a more macro point, I just want to say,
and I think you know this if you've been listening

(37:07):
to my show for a while, and for folks who
maybe don't know me very well, because there are a
lot of people and these people would not.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Be listening right now.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
So I don't even know why I'm saying it, because
they're not hearing me, but I'm gonna say it anyway
for folks who will be listening in our new time
slot six am to nine am starting Monday, and that
show will be called Ross Kaminsky on the News with
Gina Gondeck, and Mandy decided that if you take the
Kaminsky out, call it Ross on the News with Gina Gondeck.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
You could make a you could make a it's not.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
An anagram's just see the initials and it would be
our ot N. So it would be Rotten Rotten with
Gina Gondeck, is what the show would be.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
What do you think, Zact.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
I think that's maybe more apt marketing, but maybe not
as appealing marketing.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Right right, exactly.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Any case, we're going to try to do stuff on
that show for people who maybe haven't heard this kind
of thing before because they don't have the ability to
listen from nine am to noon very often.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
And I just want to say it is I love.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Having conversations with smart people who I disagree with, who
I disagree with, and I disagree with him on a lot,
but not everything.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
And that's normally the case in human interaction, right, that's
normally the case all right, So what else do we want?
We got a ton of stuff to do on today's show.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
I want to just this is a little bit nerdy,
but I would just want to take a minute with
you talking about yesterday's oral arguments for the Supreme Court
case about Donald Trump and tariffs. All right, And during
the oral argument, and I'm not playing audio for you here,

(38:57):
but I heard Justice Gore such and he was asking
questions of the government's attorney. And of course the government's
attorney is the one arguing that the tariffs are legal
under this particular law.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
I ee Pa and Gorsic, so first Roberts. Chief Justice
Roberts said the exercise of the power to impose tariffs,
the exercise of the power is to impose tariffs, right,
And the statute doesn't use.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
The word tariffs. So I think this is a problem
for the Trump administration. And by the way, I think
the Trump administration is going to lose this case, but
I think it's going to.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Be pretty close. I could see it five to.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Four against them, I could see at sixty three against them.
I don't think I could see it being seven to.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Two against them.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
I think Trump will get at least at least three
and maybe four and five isn't impossible. But a lot
of the conversation was around whether tariffs are taxes and
whether the law, which does not use the word tariff,

(40:14):
nevertheless allows the imposition of tariffs. Now I think it doesn't,
but my opinion is irrelevant. The only opinion that matters
is those nine people in black robes. But when it
came to Justice Gorsuch and for him to ask questions
or make his own comments, he said, and I'm quoting
Congress as a practical matter, can't get this power back

(40:35):
once it's handed over to the president. It's a one
way ratchet towards the gradual but continual accretion of power
in the executive branch and a way from the people's
elected representatives. And I think that is exactly right, And
I think it's an incredibly important point because you and
I could say, and I do say, Congress has delegated way.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Too much tariff power to the president.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
The Constitution specifically grants the tariff power to Congress. It's
in writing. It's not implied, it's in writing. Congress has
that power. Now, Congress has written laws that say, well,
in this or that circumstance. By following this or that procedure,

(41:21):
the president can impose tariffs.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Without having to ask us.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
And Gorsuch raises two issues that I think are very important.
So one this law where Trump is claiming that he
can impose tariffs under it, and there are a couple
others as well, it's not likely, even if a lot
of people think that's a bad law and the president
shouldn't have that degree of power, it's very, very very
difficult to overturn that law, to repeal that law, to

(41:50):
undo that law because normally, if you're giving power to
a president, the members of that president's party in Congress
will not vote for a law that reduces the power
of a president of their of their party. Right. So
if there's a Republican in Congress, I'm sorry, in the
White House, no Republican in Congress is going to vote
to reduce his power. Not very many, right, Thomas Massey

(42:13):
Wood in the House and ran Paul Wood in the Senate.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
But there's not going to be enough.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
So the only way you get it done is if
you have massive veto override level majorities of the minority
party in both chambers of Congress, or filibuster override majority,
you know, sixty in the Senate not easy, really not easy.
And the other put thing, that point Gorsich made in

(42:39):
what I read to you actually know so there's that's
the one thing is it's a ratchet because even though
you can imagine theoretically the Congress could undo the law
that gave the president this power, in practice, they'll never
undo it. So that's the that's the point he was
making there. The other point that he made elsewhere is

(42:59):
is it actually okay for Congress, which constitutionally is explicitly
delegated the power to impose tarriffs? Is it okay at
all for Congress to delegate that to the president under
any circumstance? Or is that an excessive delegation of a
particular kind of power that is such a big power

(43:22):
that Congress cannot constitutionally authorize the president to do it.
These are some of the key questions in the case.
We will not know the answer for months, but I
wanted to share some of that thought with you.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Let me take a minute and talk to you about
a little television.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
So over the last week ish, maybe a little less
than a week, I watched this six episode mini series
on Netflix called Zero Day. And you know this, it
was borderline for me whether to watch it or not,
because because Robert de Niro has annoyed me so much

(44:07):
with his politics in the last few years. And I
don't mean he's annoyed me in the sense that his
politics are different from mine. They are, they are, but
I don't care about that. But it's that he was
just so unbelievably aggressive and abrasive and swearing in public
against you know, a at Donald Trump and at Maga

(44:29):
and all this, and it's just such a turnof but
he is a great, great actor, and.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
So I decided to give it a try.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
And the plot of Zero Day is that there is
a cyber attack in the United States and Robert de
Niro plays of a former president who.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Is brought in to head a newly.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Set up organization that has a specific mission of trying
to figure out who who committed.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
The cyber attack, how to.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Prevent it from happening again, how to punish the people
who did it, and so on. And I watched it
and it it's funny. Something woke me up.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
I don't know what. I'm a very light sleeper.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Something woke me up at like two thirty in the morning,
and I'm very bad at getting back to sleep. So
I got out of bed and I went downstairs at
two thirty in the morning, and I watched the last
episode of this thing and then I and then I
actually lay down on the couch and slept for another
hour and a half or two hours. But anyway, it's
I want to say, Zero Day is really interesting.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
It's well acted.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Look whatever you think of de Niro's politics, and I
told you what I think, he is a great actor.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
But what's so interesting about this is that, more than
any show or movie I've seen in quite.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
A long time, it raises really interesting issues of principle.
Right For example, if there is a massive cyber attack
and fear of another one, and it's a kind of
thing that is not just causing financial harm but also
costing lives, then is it okay for the federal government

(46:25):
to create an agency, let's say, although it wouldn't really
necessarily have to do with that, but is it okay
for them to create an agency and give it police
powers that normally you would think violate the Constitution. Now
put aside for a moment, you know, the question of
whether a court would say you can't do that, right,

(46:47):
that's not part of the plot of this. They create
this agency and they give it powers that normally you
would say, you can't do that, right, you know, search
without a warrant, or arrest someone without a warrant, holds
someone indefinitely because the nation, because you believe the nation

(47:09):
is facing really an existential or near existential kind of threat.
And then what do you do when you have that
kind of power? And anyway, there's a lot of implied
questions of political philosophy and ethics in that series that
I think make it much more thought provoking than your

(47:33):
typical kind of thrill political thriller. So anyway, if you can,
if you don't mind Robert de Niro's politics, or at
least you don't mind them so.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Much that you won't watch him, then I recommend it.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
It's only six episodes, and it's actually it's actually pretty good.
It's pretty good, all right. I got a bunch of
things I want to do when we come back. The
stock market is down quite a bit today. I won't
call it crash, right, but you know, the S and
P is down one and a quarter percent, and the
Nasac's down a couple of percent, and I think I
know why, and you know this, This particular story that

(48:08):
I think is the cause of the market sell off
today is something I've been wondering about for a while.
So I will just want to nerd out with you
a little bit on economics when we come back.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Keep us here on KOA Zach.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
By the way, I sent you an email that has
pictures to use for the blog. Note for the last
guests in the show, that's where that email. Okay, if
you were wondering what that was about, So all right,
I want to nerd out with you a little bit
on markets and economics. And because I see that the
Nasdaq is down about one point eight percent right now.

(48:50):
Again that's not a crash, but it's a bigger than
normal move in a day. And the Russell two thousand,
which is a lot of small stocks down a similar percentage,
is down less than percentage terms, but still almost five
hundred points. And the ten year note yield is down
a little bit. Bitcoin is down, gold is down. Most

(49:11):
things are down. Oil, I think is down as well.
And I've been I've been trying to understand the economy.
I mean, short term like what's going on right now?
And I find the data kind of confusing. So if
you look at job data, it looks okay, unemployment rate

(49:35):
hasn't gone up very much, it's barely moved at all.
But on the other hand, if you look at the
internals of the job data, the employment data rather than
the unemployment data, if you look at that stuff, what
you find is that the net new job creation.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
And what I mean by net new jobs is.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
Let's say a person gets fired and then they go
somewhere else and get hired. Net new job creation there
would be zero, right if you're counting just how many
jobs were created, but not subtracting how many other jobs
were destroyed, then that would be one.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
But with net new jobs, that's zero. Okay. So the
net new jobs in America.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
For at least the last four months, all of the increase,
more than all of the net increase, has been in
healthcare and.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Similar related services.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
If you look at the what I would call the
productive part of the private sector, and I don't put
healthcare in the productive part of the private sector, and
I don't mean that as an insult against people who
were in healthcare.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
What I mean is what I mean is you're doing
you're involved with.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
The healthcare system because something's wrong or because you want
to prevent something.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
From going wrong.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
But really the big money is spent on healthcare because
something's wrong.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Right.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
You need an MRI, you need surgery, you need expensive medicine,
you need dialysis, you need whatever you need.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
And so to the extent that the.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Healthcare system is productive in helping you get better, it's
doing it in a way or at a time that
almost by definition, you are not being productive because you
can't work, you're at the hospital, you're at the doctor.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
So I don't think of that as a growth engine.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
The more we have people involved in healthcare, the worse
it is, I think for our country in the right.
If more and more people need doctors, need healthcare.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
It's not great.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
So more than all of the net job growth in
this country for at least several months, has been in
that area. And you look at other things like manufacturing
in retail and whatever else you want to look at
for jobs, those numbers have been going down. And yet
and yet consumer spending has been pretty strong, right, And

(52:04):
you know, I know it's true in Denver in particular,
consumer spending has been a little bit weak.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
That's why their sales TEX numbers are down, and that's
why they have this two hundred or.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
Two hundred and fifty million dollars budget shortfall, and they're
you know, cutting jobs and all this stuff. But other places,
I mean, dude, have you been to Park Meadows Mall,
like on a on a Friday evening, Saturday evening?

Speaker 1 (52:28):
Have you zac you ever go to party park Meadows Mall?

Speaker 4 (52:31):
More tumble weeds than people?

Speaker 1 (52:33):
No, not at that mall? Oh really, yeah, you must
be talking about different mall.

Speaker 4 (52:37):
I don't go South Ver much, so I I was
talking from different malls.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
That mall is full all the time. The restaurants are
full all the time. Expensive restaurants are full all the time. Now,
maybe it's different from one neighborhood to another, because that's
a fairly that's a fairly well off section of Denver,
and maybe you go to other places and it's different.
But still, even in the government data they consume we're
spending has been holding up all right. And so I

(53:03):
just don't know whether to think the job numbers the
way I'm looking at them, that I'm making too much
negative out of that, or the consumer spending numbers, the
numbers that I see that I'm making too much positive
out of that, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
I'm a little nervous.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
I don't feel screamingly bearish like I did in April,
just before the market crashed, but then it rallied right
back up. But I saw a news story this morning
that just sort of reinforced me like I just feel
like there's some underlying weakness in the economy.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
This is from Reuters.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
US based employers cut more than one hundred and fifty
thousand jobs in October, marking the biggest reduction for the
month of October in more than twenty years. According to
a report by Challenger, Gray and Christmas. They're a big
time private sector employment analysts and other kinds of firm.
They do a lot of reports that people take quite seriously.

(54:02):
Tech firms led the job cuts in the private sector,
followed by retails and the services sector.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
The Global Company.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Said, actually, okay, so Global Outplacement company right there helping
people find jobs. Cost cutting was the top reason for
the layoffs in October, followed by AI, while GoJ impact
was the leading reason for job cuts this year. In
twenty twenty five. In any case, I just I really

(54:30):
wonder about this, right, there's conflicting signals, that's probably the
best way to put it. So far, this year job
cuts overall are at the highest level since twenty twenty,
and of course that was the beginning of COVID, so
that's not a year that you want to be like
at all.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
But I just wonder. And I know not everybody is
as much of.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
An econ nerd as I am, so I think i'll
I think I'll stop that topic right there, but I
just wanted to share that with you. And it's just
one and the next the next report could find that
maybe this was a little bit wrong, right, So so
we'll see, we'll see how it all plays out. But
I did think this was a little bit of a
concerning thing. The headline being US layoffs for October surge

(55:15):
to two decade high, and I think that's part of
the reason that the stock market is down and that bond.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Yields are down as well.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
So, all right, a couple other things I want to
do just quickly, and then we are going to get
to a guest on a on a on a topic
that we talked about a couple of days ago. Just
a quick lighter story actually, and then and then we'll
get to my guests.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
I love these stories.

Speaker 4 (55:43):
You hear.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
You hear these stories from.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Time to time, and they're all kind of the same,
but I like them all. And I'm going to share
this one with you, just just for fun. It's not
important story. But this is just from a couple of
days ago. Uh And this is from upi upi dot com.
A former main resident returned to the town she used
to call home so she could return a library book
that had been due back forty six years earlier. Diana Edward's,

(56:08):
a former resident of Camden, Maine, said she was packing
up her books for a move from Massachusetts to New
Hampshire when she came across a copy of Bunches and
Bunches of Bunnies written by Louise Matthews and illustrated by
Jenny Bassett.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Thank you for that information.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
The book had been checked out from the Camden Public
Library and had a due date of August tenth, nineteen
seventy nine. And Ms Edwards said, my children and I
lived on Pearls Street from the mid nineteen seventies to
around nineteen eighty four. Those bunnies have been traveling with
me since then.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
The director of youth services.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
At the library just told the story in an Instagram video,
which is kind of cool. And they did not make
her pay a late fee because they don't have late
fees anymore at that library. But even if they still
had them under the old policy late these were captive
five dollars. And in any case, this lady actually donated
which an undisclosed some to the library in gratitude for

(57:08):
the understanding and good cheer of the librarians she spoke with.
And they're going to use this book now for storytime
for kids. Bunches and bunches of bunnies. All right, there
you go, book return forty six years late. I love
that it's not an important story, but I still dig it.
All right, let's do something different now. You may recall, oh,
I forget when a week a week and a half

(57:29):
ago something like that on the show, I had a
guest on the show talking about a law that was
passed in Colorado. And the law is entitled Healthier Social
Media Use by Youth and his house built twenty four
Dash eleven thirty six. And I will note again as

(57:50):
I did then, that this is a bill that passed.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
With bipartisan support.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Rose Poglici, who has since resigned from the state House
but was the leader of Republicans in the state House,
was a sponsor of this bill.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
And then there's other Republicans and.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Democrats on it, and my guest opposed the bill. And
I got an email from some folks at Common Sense
Media saying, well, we support this bill and we'd love
to be on the show to explain our position on it.
And I said, sure, that sounds like fun, and I
always like having both sides on stuff. So joining us
talk about it is Holly Gross Huns, who is senior

(58:30):
counsel for tech policy at Common Sense Media. Their website,
by the way, CommonSenseMedia dot org.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Hi Holly, thanks for being here.

Speaker 7 (58:41):
Hi Ross, thanks so much for having me on.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
So I'm going to do this again, just because I
don't assume that everybody hearing us now heard that previous conversation.
Can you please tell us the main things that this
bill does that are the objects of some controversy.

Speaker 7 (58:59):
Sure, definitely.

Speaker 8 (59:00):
So the bill does two things, and actually we believe
the law is much more nuanced than that. Choice will
lead you to believe when they said that the law
does the first thing and it makes it requires.

Speaker 5 (59:11):
The state's career resource bank.

Speaker 7 (59:13):
While that's actually true.

Speaker 8 (59:14):
The law actually requires the Colorado Department of Education. So
you can be in a stakeholder group, and the law
is very prescriptive as to who should be in that group.
It's educators, school mental health professionals, parents, youth, technology experts,
and a representative from Technology Industry Association or technology engineer.
And the stakeholder group was has with building a resource

(59:35):
bank consisting of evidence based, research based, scholarly articles and
promising program materials and curricula. This stakeholder group actually did
what they're supposed to do.

Speaker 7 (59:45):
They could, they convened, they made this resource bank.

Speaker 8 (59:48):
The resource bank went wide on the Calendra out A
Department of Education's website in July of this year, and
that resource bank currently has over forty resources related to
social media and it's a really diverse resource bank.

Speaker 7 (01:00:00):
So it's not just a resource bank as net choice.
But we should believe that's saying that social media is bad.

Speaker 8 (01:00:05):
In fact, there is an article and that are from
Hope Lab that is called without it, I wouldn't be
here today. LGBTQ plus young people's experiences in online spaces,
so it is a very diverse resource bank.

Speaker 7 (01:00:18):
And the second thing that.

Speaker 8 (01:00:19):
The law is doing is that it requires social media
platforms to establish a function that provides underage users with
certain information. And it's very, very flexible for those companies
as to what that function is. So it's not that
the state is telling social media companies, this is the
information you have to put on your product, and you

(01:00:40):
have to slap this label on there. In fact, the
companies really have the flexibility in the language of that label.
The only requirement is that the label must be supported
by either data from peer reviewed scholarly articles or be
drawn from the sources included in the resource bank. So
this function that is required, you know, does need to

(01:01:02):
be provided to users under the age of eighteen if
they declare themselves to be under the age of eighteen,
and it does, in fact needs to provide information, but
there's a lot of flexibility in what that information is.

Speaker 7 (01:01:13):
It's not just the state saying social media is bad.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Okay, So I will just say in the conversation I
had with the net Choice guy, the first thing you
talked about with the resource bank never came up.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
I never came up at all, And at least in
the interview with.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Me, he didn't object to it, and all the conversation
was about the other thing and what the law calls
a function, and you're calling a function. But just to
make it clearer, will I will call it a message,
and I will just quote so there's no spin.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
I'm just going to quote from the summary.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
On the state legislative web page, right, So it's not
net choice, not me, it's just.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Through the legislature.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
And again I remind listeners, this is a bipartisan bill. Okay,
it's not all Dems, not all Republicans. A bipartisan bill
on or after January first, twenty twenty six. The Act
requires a social media platform, as defined by the Act,
to establish a function that provides a user who is
under the age of eighteen with information about social media
that helps the user understand the impacts of social media

(01:02:15):
use on the developing brain and the mental and physical
health of youth, or displays a notification every thirty minutes
when the user has spent one hour on social media
platforms in a twenty four hour period, or is on
a social media platform between the hours of ten pm
and six am. Okay, so I'm going to just get
a little technical here. The part after the ore is

(01:02:38):
pretty straightforward. Displays a notification every thirty minutes when the
user does when the user you know all that. What
do you think the part before the ore means. I mean,
if it's not displaying a notification, then what is a
function that provides a user.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
With information? What is that if it's not a notification
or a message.

Speaker 8 (01:03:04):
Well, the other part of that law is that the
Office of Technology is going to bring out standards that
the companies need to use.

Speaker 7 (01:03:12):
In creating this function.

Speaker 8 (01:03:13):
But really what that function is going to be is
really just going to be based on those standards, which
have not yet to my knowledge, been published. But those
standards will create kind of the guidelines that the companies
need to use. But really there might be many companies
that comply in many different ways with this law. And
that's kind of the flexibility that was given to the
companies in the drafting of this law, and it was

(01:03:34):
really I think there is flower argument regarding that flexibility
in the legislature before passing the law.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
Okay, so it sounds like what you're saying is under
the law, social media users under the age of eighteen
will have to be informed somehow with some message that
complies with these very specific things. Has spent an hour
on social media in a twenty four hour period, or
is on a social media platform between ten pm and

(01:04:02):
six am.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
Those two things are very specific.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
But separate from that, you're arguing that there's a fair
bit of flexibility in how that message gets delivered to
the user, right, and how.

Speaker 8 (01:04:15):
That message gets delivered to the user, and also what
that message is. So that message could be as long
as it's based on scholarly.

Speaker 7 (01:04:22):
Articles that you know, social media.

Speaker 8 (01:04:24):
Use are used, has its benefits and its risks.

Speaker 7 (01:04:27):
I mean, it could be that message, Okay.

Speaker 8 (01:04:30):
It just needs to be based on these scholarly articles
or that resource thing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Okay, So I think now I'm just gonna pretend to
be like net Choice's attorney here for a minute, because
so what I'll say, And by the way, for folks
just joining, we're Tallant talking with Holly Grosson's from Common
Sense Media, Senior Tech Council for Common Sense Media.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
CommonSenseMedia dot org is their website.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
All right, I'm going to play their attorney, Holly, You're
missing my point, which is a much higher point than this.
I don't care about exactly what's in the message. I
don't care how scholarly the message is. I will stipulate
that the message will contain some kind of accurate information.
My problem is that it is unconstitutional for the government

(01:05:19):
to force a private company to say anything that and
so you're making good points about why maybe we shouldn't
be so skeptical about what the message would be, but that's.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
Not really my issue.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
My issue is the government forcing a private company to
post a message.

Speaker 8 (01:05:42):
And my response to that would be that this is
actually commercial.

Speaker 5 (01:05:45):
Speech that we're talking about.

Speaker 8 (01:05:47):
So this function is commercial because it's a relationship between
the platforms and their user, and that.

Speaker 7 (01:05:53):
Relationship is truly commercial.

Speaker 8 (01:05:55):
The company provides a service to the user in exchange
for the user's attention and their data, which then is
monetized by the company. So as commercial speech, the speech
is scrutinized is.

Speaker 7 (01:06:07):
By the court at a different level than the.

Speaker 8 (01:06:09):
Strict scrutiny that that choice is asking for, or intermediate scrutiny,
which is the lower level of scrutiny, is actually reviewed
under this commercial speech standard, which is separate it's different,
and under that standard under according to Supreme Court President,
and this is from nineteen eighty five, as long as
the commercial speech is a disclosure about a compelling government interest,

(01:06:33):
which obviously the mental health of youth of Colorado is
a compelling government interest, and I don't think that choice
is disputing that piece. As long as that it's compelling
government interest, the disclosure is purely factual and noncontroversial. Again,
the only requirement is that the information is based on
facts here and as long as the disclosure is not

(01:06:53):
unduly burdensome to the companies, And again in this law,
the companies have a lot of flexibility and what that
label is going to look like according to that standard,
I think that this law would definitely pass constitutional scrutiny.

Speaker 7 (01:07:06):
By the courts, even if the courts were to.

Speaker 8 (01:07:09):
Determine that this isn't a commercial speech, that Colorado still
has a compelling interest in protecting the health and well
being of its children, and so that would really satisfy any.

Speaker 5 (01:07:18):
Level of screwen.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Well, so I'll take your word for it on the
commercial scrutiny thing, and we'll see how that plays out.
I don't think I take your word for it that
the Supreme Court of the United States would say that
a claimed or even let's say you believe it legitimate
government interest overwhelms the First Amendment. I don't think that's

(01:07:41):
as obvious as you made it sound. But that's what
judges are for, that's what trials are for. Are you
guys involved in this case in a direct participate way
or is it more like an amicust brief kind of way,
or what's your role?

Speaker 8 (01:08:00):
We supported the law healthier Colorado actually was I think
the man supporter of the law.

Speaker 7 (01:08:06):
We came in and supported the law. We supported the
law with some testimony on My colleagues from.

Speaker 8 (01:08:11):
Colorado came and testified in oral testimony.

Speaker 7 (01:08:16):
I believe that was actually live before the legislature.

Speaker 8 (01:08:19):
At this point, we have not participated or joined in
amaicis grief all right?

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Very interesting conversation and we'll see. We'll see how it
plays out. And I'm sort of torn on it because
I think I think that, especially for children, I think
social media is poison and highly addictive and terrible. That
I'm not saying there's no upside to it, but there's
lots and lots of downside. And I fully understand the

(01:08:48):
desire of politicians and parents and other folks like you
and maybe like me, to want to educate children about
that kind of risk. And I also understand the net
choice argument about government compulsion against a private enterprise. It'll
be very very interesting to see as a constitutional matter

(01:09:09):
how it plays out in court.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
Holly Gross Huns.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Is senior counsel for tech policy at Common Sense Media.
CommonSenseMedia dot org is the website. Thanks for your time,
Thanks for the great conversation.

Speaker 8 (01:09:20):
All right, thank you so much, Ross All, nice to
talk to you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
You too. We'll be right back on Kawa.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Who's out there somewhere wrecking A nineteen seventy three AMC
pacer texted to say, Ross, wiis Broncos Country tonight playing
instead of your show right now?

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
And I texted him back.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
It was a fire alarm test with mandatory evacuation, So
that's what happened. I want to take just a couple
of minutes here and talk about this business story because
I think it's very very interesting. So I started talking
about this before and then we had to walk out
because of the fire alarm, and now we're back. So
Kimberly Clark, which is a giant consumer products company, Kimberly

(01:10:06):
Clark Is has offered to buy a company called Kenview,
which is probably one of the biggest consumer products companies
that you have never heard of, right, I mean Kenview.
In fact, let me go, let me just go look

(01:10:26):
at some of the brands that Kenview owns, so I
can just share share with you, right And by the way,
raise your hands if you've heard of Kenview, and that's
what I thought, not very many hands.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
Let me just tell you some things that Kenview owns.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Tail and all a Veno and Neutrogena in skincare, Johnson's
baby products, Listerine, motron Zertech, Benadril, Rogain, and quite a
lot more.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
But time all is the thing that's been in the news.
And of course we had Donald Trump and RFK Junior
and some other people say that there's.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
An association between autism and Thailand al and I suspect
that's not true, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
Maybe it's possible.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
And in fact, even when they were talking about it,
they were talking about women who took a lot of
tailan all over the course of a pregnancy, not a
woman who had a fever with a bad virus. And
took Thailand all for a day or two, but it
was more about lots of tailan al over an extended
period of time during pregnancy. So maybe true, maybe not,
I don't know. But the point is that Thailand all

(01:11:36):
right now is under intense scrutiny and certainly already the
subject I think already the subject and definitely will be
the subject of lawsuits just because there are lawyers out
there who will chase this kind of thing and you know,
see if it hits or or see if he can

(01:11:56):
see if they can get the company to settle, just
to not go to try it, of course, and of
course they're going to have to figure out the Kenview
is going to have to figure out where they want
to settle or where they want to go to court,
because if you settle for one thing, right, you may
end up having all these other attorneys coming after you,
and you don't want.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
To set that precedent.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
So anyway, the reason I wanted to mention this to
you is Kimberly Clark another giant company.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
In fact, they're sort of close in size.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
Kimberly Clark owns Huggies diapers, they own Kleenex, they own
Scott paper towels and toilet tissue and all that stuff.
They own a bunch of industrial and professional cleaning products
that you probably wouldn't have heard of. They own adult
care stuff like depends, they own they own other other

(01:12:47):
brands of diapers like pull ups, and they have some
feminine care products and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
Okay, so they own all this stuff. So after.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
This controversy hit around Thailand Hall, Kenview stock got crushed,
right and let me, I think it's I think it's Cavue.
I think that's right. Yeah, kV u E is the
stock symbol. So if I look at a let's say
a six month chart of Kenview, six months ago, the

(01:13:19):
stock was around twenty four and now and before.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
Okay, so I don't know if I said this.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Kimberly Clark announced that they want to buy Kenview and
the deal is for every share of Kenview that you own,
you will get.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
A fraction of a share.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
I think it's point one four something point one four
something of a share of Kimberly Clark plus three dollars
and fifty cents in cash. So before that deal was announced,
and because there's been so much pressure on.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
The tail in all part of the business.

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
Kenview stock was trading, you know, between fourteen and fifteen
dollars a share after like just just this summer, like
in August, it was twenty one twenty two dollars a share,
so it was it had lost about a third of
its value just from this summer. And so Kimberly Clark,
which has been looking for ways to grow and ways

(01:14:14):
to expand because they've been pretty slow on their growth otherwise, right,
they said, well, we can buy this thing for a
third less.

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
Now, what's interesting about.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
These deals And here's a very important thing to watch
when you hear about these kinds of deals. If a
company says we're gonna buy XYZ for cash and we're
gonna pay nineteen dollars a share, then the price of
Xyz that the company that is being purchased will trade
on a variety of different factors. Normally it will trade

(01:14:48):
under nineteen dollars a share if that's the deal price
based on.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
If you were to.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
Go buy a bunch of stock and you'll have to
take that money out of the bank or you borrow
the money to buy it, you're either not earning interest
or you're paying interest on the money you borrowed to
buy it, and so it will trade below nineteen by
at least as much as the interest cost that you
would either lose or not gain by buying that stock

(01:15:15):
instead of keeping your money in the bank. Right, So,
if the deal is at nineteen, but it's not expected
to close for a year, you know, the stock might
be trading at eighteen dollars and twenty five cents, and
it might trade a little lower than that even based
on the risk if they think maybe the company that's
doing the buying might not end up completing the deal,
and so it might not even happen, So it might
trade even lower than eighteen dollars and twenty five cents.

(01:15:37):
And then the other thing that can happen. It's rare,
but it can happen. It could actually trade over nineteen
if the market thinks that another company might want this
thing and they're going to come in and pay more. Now,
that's a cash deal. Stockswap deal is a very different
animal because what happens is you're going to get shares

(01:15:57):
of the buying company in return for the shares you
own in the company that's being bought. So ABC is
buying XYZ using ABC stock, So if you own XYZ,
you're gonna end up with some amount of ABC stock.
But today that they do the deal, they think, well,
we want to make XYZ worth nineteen dollars a share,

(01:16:19):
and so given our current stock price, we're gonna give
you and I'm just gonna move away from this deal
for a second.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
We're going to give you half a share of our style.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Let's say my stock is thirty eight dollars a share,
and I want to buy your company for nineteen dollars
a share, and we're gonna give you half a share
of our stock for every share of your stock. But
what can happen is if the market thinks it's a
bad deal for the buying company and the buying company
is overpaying, what you'll find is that the buying company
stock will go down. So now let's say people don't

(01:16:53):
like that deal. They think the buying company is overpaying,
So the buying company stock drops from.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
Thirty eight to thirty four. And now that deal for.

Speaker 2 (01:17:05):
The company that is being bought, where you're getting half
a share, where it looked like at first it was
going to be nineteen, now it's seventeen. Do you still
want to do that deal. And here's the other thing.
Kimberly Clark's actually much worse than that. Kimberly Clark stock
dropped about twenty percent since they announced the deal, about

(01:17:26):
twenty percent, and it wiped about eight billion dollars off
of the value.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
Of Kimberly Clark.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
And so it's going to be very, very And so
the Kenview part is now worth a lot less than
they originally announced because Kimberly, because you're getting Kimberly Clark stock,
which is worth a lot less.

Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
So anyway, that's probably more than I needed to say
on all this. But keep an eye on it. Keep
an eye on it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
The thing is trading as if there's a decent chance
this deal will fall apart. And I'll tell you, if
I were Kimberly Clark, I'd be really concerned about continuing
with a deal that took twenty.

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
Percent off of my stock price.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Borrow evening, I'm gonna go see David Byrne in concert.
David Byrne from Talking Heads. I'm gonna go see him
in concert. My sister's coming to town. If if all
the stuff the FAA is doing doesn't mess up her flight,
coming in from Charlotte, North Carolina. My sister's coming to town,
and then we're gonna she and I'm gonna take her
to see David Byrne. I got the tickets, and nobody

(01:18:29):
else in my family wanted to go. And my sister said,
I'm thinking of coming to visit. I'm like, you want
to go to see David Byrne with me? And she
said sure, So, so there you go.

Speaker 4 (01:18:37):
That'll be an awesome concert, I hope.

Speaker 8 (01:18:39):
So.

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
I've never seen him, I've never seen talking.

Speaker 3 (01:18:41):
Heads of you, No, but I mean it seems like
a good performer. I've seen him on SNL, I guess,
and yeah all over the place there.

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
A few people have asked me for an update on
our little doggie, Agnes, so let me just give you
an update. I mentioned maybe a week ago that when
when Kristin got home from whatever she was doing some day.

Speaker 1 (01:19:02):
Not actually is more well, more than a week ago.
It's three weeks ago.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
Agnes was limping badly and couldn't put weight on her
right rear leg no visible injury, and we took Agnes
to the vet and the vet said, could be a
bad sprain, could be a could be ligament damaged, ruptured
ligament partially or torn ligament.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
So you know, the VET said, give her a little time,
give her.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):
Some anti inflammatory kind of like a doggy version of ibuprofen,
and we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:19:35):
And it just isn't getting better. So I found.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
A doggie surgeon who specializes in this stuff, who I like.

Speaker 1 (01:19:44):
There's actually quite a few of them.

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):
And I took Agnes to this VET yesterday, to the
surgeon yesterday, and the VET said, based on the X ray,
Agnes needs surgery.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
And they had a cancelation.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
So they are normally booking like two weeks out, but
actually Agnes is going to go in for the surgery tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
So that's what's going on.

Speaker 2 (01:20:07):
Oh here, let me just tell you this little nerdy
thing actually kind of interesting. So the ligament in question
is the doggy equivalent of the ACL in humans. Now,
when you rupture, when a human like an NFL.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
Player is a fairly common injury.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):
For NFL players ruptures an ACL, the surgeon goes in there.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
And fixes it, and then you do all this physical.

Speaker 2 (01:20:31):
Therapy and then you know, you come back the next
season if you can. It's usually a seasony and a
injury with dogs, they don't repair the ligament because apparently
it's some combination of difficulty, but also the ligament just
won't be strong enough in the way the dog's anatomy is.

(01:20:52):
It's just a very high chance that the ligament will
just tear again. So instead they do some kind of
surgery where they cut a particular shape out of the.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
Bottom of I think it's the bottom.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
Of the upper bone at the knee, so that it
fits slightly differently with the top of the lower bone
that would come up there, and then they attach a
piece of metal on the inside with three screws.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
On the bottom of the bottom bone.

Speaker 2 (01:21:21):
Three screws on the top bone that holds those two
bones in a place where they can then swivel like
a knee should without needing the ligament.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
So they don't repair the ligament.

Speaker 2 (01:21:33):
They change the shape of the bone and put in
some kind of metal implant that replaces the function of
the ligament. And it's actually it's pretty cool technology. And
I found what I think is the least expensive place
that I believe does a very good job based on

(01:21:54):
online reviews and based on talking to the surgeon myself,
and it's four thousand dollars, which.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
I actually, that's less than I thought it was gonna be.
Still hurts, though, still hurts a lot. Okay, let me
tell you this thing. Okay, check this out.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
Here's I'm just telling you these boring little stories because
we're friends, and it's just like we're sitting around and
you know, shooting the you know what for a few
minutes here and then I do have an interesting guest
on a completely different subject in just a couple of minutes.
So Zach, you can go for that, zoom in a
little bit, and I'll get the meeting started.

Speaker 1 (01:22:30):
But wait, what was.

Speaker 4 (01:22:31):
I talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:22:33):
I was, I was, I was going somewhere with this.

Speaker 2 (01:22:36):
I don't know, all right, So anyway we'll see how
how oh I know what I was gonna say. Okay,
So I was thinking to myself, gosh, I wish I
had pet insurance.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
Now, pet insurance is pretty expensive.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
And on the other hand, pet care is really expensive,
and pet surgery is really expensive, and and pet insurance
can easily be you know, between eighty and one hundred
and fifty dollars a month, depending on your dog. And
let's say it's even toward the low end of that range.
You're talking about one thousand dollars a year, which is kind.

Speaker 1 (01:23:12):
Of a lot, especially if your dog never gets sick.

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
And you do that for you know, a few years,
and you've spent three thousand dollars on pet insurance.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
And I was thinking to myself.

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):
Gosh, it would be awesome if I had pet insurance.

Speaker 1 (01:23:25):
Unfortunately I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
And then so Zach you you know this, like we're
in this uh open enrollment period for within iHeart, where
you choose, you know, what health insurance plan you want,
and what dental insurance plan you want, and if you
want disability insurance and life insurance and all this, and
you just go online on this particular website that's associated
with what we're doing here at iHeart, and you go

(01:23:48):
through and you make your choices. And one of the
things that iHeart offers that gets you a modest discount
over the full retail price is pet insurance. And as
I'm going through that, and I'm looking at it, and
it says something like do you want to continue with

(01:24:11):
the pet insurance you already have?

Speaker 1 (01:24:14):
And I'm like, wait, what did I say yes to
this last year?

Speaker 2 (01:24:18):
And it turns out I did, and I have pet
insurance for Agnes. And we'll see how this all plays out.
But as I look at the policy, it looks like
I have a five hundred dollars deductible and then they
pay eighty percent above that. So if that's right, and
just to make the math real easy, let's say it's
four thousand dollars, I pay the five hundred dollars deductible,

(01:24:41):
and then they they pay eighty percent of the thirty
five hundred, which is what twenty eight hundred.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
So if they pay they.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
Pay twenty eight hundred, I'll end up paying seven. I'll
end up paying twelve hundred, They'll end up paying twenty
eight hundred, and that twenty eight hundred will have covered
my cost of pet insurance for basically three years.

Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
So even if I never need to use the pet.

Speaker 2 (01:25:05):
Insurance again, right for for two more years, because I've
had it for a year, I'm at least breaking even.

Speaker 1 (01:25:11):
And so it hurts a lot less.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
Than I was expecting it to hurt, Zach, because I
forgot that I had pet insurance.

Speaker 4 (01:25:17):
That's a lifesaver, that's great to have.

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
Can you imagine if I never remembered I had pet
insurance and I just paid the four thousand dollars and
then never remembered about it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):
That's how dumb I am. That's how bad my memory is.

Speaker 4 (01:25:31):
Squirrel, I'm in a similar boat there.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
Oh man, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
All right, I'm gonna get this zoom going because I'm
looking forward to this next conversation. And now, I hope
you don't mind my wasting your time a little bit
there with that story. But we're friends, and a lot
of people have asked me, you know, I love the
fact that I love the fact that at least as
many people ask me on an ongoing basis, like if
I'm if one of my pets is having a problem,

(01:25:56):
more people will text him to say ross House, Agnes,
or before Reuben passed away, Ross House, Rubin then will
ask me, you know, what do you think about such
and such a political thing or whatever? And I love that,
you know, it's really about, like, you know, sitting here
talking with my friends in the morning, and I think
that's just a wonderful thing.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
And I hope you enjoy it too, and I hope you,
you know, keep it going with me.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
Starting next Monday, when my show moves from this time
slot to six am to nine am.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
All right, let's do something completely different.

Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
I mentioned to you that I forget when a week
ago Ish I had the chance to go to the
big annual fundraiser event for Jewish Colorado. And I've been
there a couple times now to this event. And the
reason that I mentioned it to you is it's it
Wings over the Rockies. And what a spectacular place Wings

(01:26:48):
over the Rockies is. If you have a chance to
get there, you absolutely should kind of in the Lowry
neighborhood and it's fantastic. And Wings over the Rockies, working
with Rocky Mountain PBS, has a television series called Behind
the Wings. It's been nominated for an Emmy four different times.

(01:27:09):
They're starting season seven tonight actually, and joining me to
talk about it is Kraanovic, who is the man behind
the project and the director of this series. And I
just love this stuff. So Craig, first of all, welcome
to Kaowa. Thanks so much for.

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):
Being here being here, Thanks Ross, It's great to be here.

Speaker 9 (01:27:31):
And yeah, I couldn't ask for a warmer introduction here,
and I mean it kind of goes to show Wings.

Speaker 1 (01:27:39):
Over the Rockies were more than a museum. We make
a TV show.

Speaker 9 (01:27:42):
How many air and space museums say they.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
Can do that.

Speaker 9 (01:27:44):
Yeah, it's really about telling the stories behind the airplanes.
And with this show, viewers really get to come face
to face with the technologies and the people shaping the
future of flight. And with season seven, we have four
new episodes that we're really excited to show starting tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:28:03):
Yeah, starting tonight at seven pm on Rocky Mountain PBS.
And so get for people who have never seen an episode,
just talk a little bit more about what an episode
looks like. And then I want to ask you what's
involved in making these shows? But start with the first question.

Speaker 1 (01:28:21):
Absolutely.

Speaker 9 (01:28:21):
I mean, each episode kind of pulls back the curtain
on one of the most exciting corners of aerospace.

Speaker 1 (01:28:29):
From this past year.

Speaker 9 (01:28:30):
And what I love and one of my favorite parts
in making the show is that the technology.

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
Is super cool in itself.

Speaker 9 (01:28:38):
For example, in this episode, we covered an asteroid sample
return mission that means going billions of miles to an asteroid,
landing on it, collecting a sample, bringing it back to Earth,
and really discovering some of the secrets of the biggest questions,
how did life start on Earth?

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
Where did we come from?

Speaker 9 (01:28:58):
And that's the coolest thing ever. But then you look
at the people that do it, the scientists, the engineers,
you know, the spacecraft designers, some of which, by the way,
are right here in Colorado with Lockey Martin Space, which
is pretty cool. And just these people pushing the boundaries.
It's so inspiring what people are capable of and the creativity,

(01:29:20):
the curiosity that it takes to make these really mind
blowing projects and missions happen.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):
Was that a fun trip for you going out to
an asteroid and picking up some dust off of it?

Speaker 9 (01:29:32):
Well, you know, for us, a lot of our filming
happens here on planet Earth, believe it or not, but
that since we get I mean we're inside the labs
and getting an up close look at what they call
ben ut, which is this, you know, the way they
test what's in the lab. And so whether we're inside
the lab or going into the F sixteen factory in Greenville,

(01:29:52):
South Carolina where they're still building these legendary jets, I mean,
we're not going to space, but we're taking viewers to
really inside the stories, and I think that's what's really
exciting for people to see on screen.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
For sure, for sure, we're talking with Cranovic, who is
the director of the Behind the Wings series for Wings
over the Rockies. And again, if you've never been to
Wings over the Rockies, you gotta go bring your kids.
Tell tell me a little about the partnerships the collaborations
involved in making this show.

Speaker 9 (01:30:28):
Absolutely, I mean, we can't do it without our collaborators.
They're the people who help share the stories. One example,
I have to shout out our awesome host, Tracy Latorette,
call sign Jackie. Oh, she's Colorado's first Lady Fighter pilot
flew F sixteen's right here with the Colorado.

Speaker 1 (01:30:46):
Inter National Guard.

Speaker 9 (01:30:47):
And so to have the opportunity to go to Buckley
and see these birds that first came out fifty years
ago and they're still flying. And I got to tell you, like,
the maintainers are magicians. They're redoing the code, they're restructuring
the wings and to keep a plane that is fifty
years old but it's still relevant. And so yeah, for

(01:31:10):
every episode, we really can't do it without the collaborators.
You know, NASA centers, the University of Arizona, really the
people again, the people who are making these missions happen.
That's how we tell these stories.

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):
Have you done an episode on the Harrier that you
have there in the museum, or any Harrier.

Speaker 1 (01:31:32):
It didn't have to be that one, so yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:31:36):
I mean the Harry.

Speaker 9 (01:31:37):
Of course, that's our latest aircraft here at Wings over
the Rockies, and we've done we really told the story
on YouTube. In addition to PBS, we produce a podcast
with over sixty episodes, and we do these.

Speaker 5 (01:31:49):
Monthly YouTube web series.

Speaker 9 (01:31:51):
So you know, if you're interested in that story, we
kind of showed the process of how does the military
jet become a museum exhibit and we kind of documented that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:01):
Whole story, or a whole team of marines flew.

Speaker 9 (01:32:04):
Into Buckley, took out all the sensitive stuff, put it
back together, and then made that, you know, Dirney from
Buckley on a flatbed trailer, which for the drivers out
there that day, I'm sure they were a little shocked.
What was cosmic traffic that day? Yeah, So we haven't
done that on PBS yet, but you know, we're spooling up.

(01:32:24):
And that's one of the favorite most exciting parts of
this is looking ahead at what stories are there, because
I'll tell your ust, there's no shortage of awesome things
to cover in the world of aerospace, right.

Speaker 2 (01:32:35):
And the Harrier is really unique or at least darn
close to unique airplane the way the way it operates,
So I think that could be a really cool show.
All right, I have a ridiculous question for you. So
your first name Cray cr Ay. Is that what's on
your birth certificate?

Speaker 1 (01:32:52):
Is it a nickname? Is it short for something?

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
Because I've never seen that one before and it's super interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
So what is it?

Speaker 9 (01:33:00):
So a lot of people think it's short for crazy.
I'm only crazy a little bit of the time. It
is my real name, and it was actually a family
last name that my parents kind of had the cool idea.

Speaker 5 (01:33:11):
To switch and make it a first name.

Speaker 4 (01:33:12):
So you know, if you.

Speaker 9 (01:33:14):
Look on the ID eighth, that's exactly what it is.

Speaker 8 (01:33:16):
Tom.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
Very cool. All right, one more time, tell listeners when
and how they can watch this new season of Behind
the Wings absolutely.

Speaker 9 (01:33:26):
Season seven of Behind the Wings comes out starting tonight
at seven pm. You can watch it on Rocky Mountain PBS.
You can check it out on wings over the Rockies
YouTube channel. We've got four awesome episodes, the Hurricane Hunters,
the International Space Station, fifty Years of the f sixteen,
and this amazing journey to Asteroid BNU and back. So

(01:33:50):
for the full stories, you guys will have to check
those out, and I think you're really going to enjoy what.

Speaker 1 (01:33:55):
You see there. Absolutely we will.

Speaker 2 (01:33:57):
Kraiyovic, thanks for your time, Thanks for making such a
great TV show. Congratulations on multiple Emmy nominations as well.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
That's not easy to do. Great to meet you you
as well, Ross, Thanks so much, appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:08):
Okay, glad to all right, So I got just a
few minutes left with you today, and I want.

Speaker 1 (01:34:13):
To you know, I think I.

Speaker 2 (01:34:14):
Think I may me just take the last three minutes
on just this one story rather than trying to squeeze
in two stories. There's a particular line in this story
that just made me laugh out loud that I really
really want to share with you.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
Uh so, oh, Ben just walked in.

Speaker 2 (01:34:31):
Oh yeah, because Mandy is Mandy is off today because
we've got Thursday night football coverage, of which starts right
after me. So Ben Albright wearing a sport coat with
a pocket square or a handkerchief because not really squared
off just walked in.

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
Why are you so dapper? Why are you wearing a
sport coat?

Speaker 4 (01:34:52):
I got work the game.

Speaker 1 (01:34:54):
Oh you're going to the stadium.

Speaker 2 (01:34:55):
Yeah yeah, okay, well let me do this thing and
you can go, you know, but just keep us keep listening.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
So this is about the robbery at the Louver.

Speaker 2 (01:35:07):
The password to the Louverra's video surveillance system, according to
an employee who was interviewed for this article, was Louverra. Now,
I don't think anybody hacked their system, and so it
didn't end up being a vulnerability.

Speaker 1 (01:35:21):
But how stupid is that?

Speaker 2 (01:35:23):
And then and then this is the part that I love,
my favorite part of this article. Now keep in mind, Okay,
so the Louver does not have enough security, and they've
known it for a long time and they haven't done
anything about it. And you've got this gallery that has
some of the most valuable jewels in the world, but
it's not fully covered by cameras on the inside or

(01:35:44):
the outside.

Speaker 1 (01:35:45):
Especially on the outside.

Speaker 2 (01:35:46):
There's one camera that covers like one window, but nothing
covering another window.

Speaker 1 (01:35:51):
And they went in this other window.

Speaker 2 (01:35:53):
And here's what the director of the museum told lawmakers,
the equivalent of had to testify before Congress.

Speaker 1 (01:36:01):
So that's what happened in France.

Speaker 2 (01:36:02):
And he said, and I love this the security systems
installed in the Apollo Gallery worked perfectly, and he's telling
the truth because it was just there's so little there.

Speaker 1 (01:36:18):
What little was their work? But oh my gosh, I
first of all, I gotta go back to.

Speaker 10 (01:36:22):
That Wi Fi password because that's just like the guest WiFi.

Speaker 2 (01:36:26):
I think it's to log into their video surveillance system.
I don't think it is WiFi is. In a way,
it's worse than that because always.

Speaker 10 (01:36:33):
Say she did something to get interconnectivity to the to
the local of lip you know, the local of ipeace scheme.

Speaker 4 (01:36:38):
But yeah, that's wow.

Speaker 1 (01:36:39):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:36:39):
I got like forty seconds here and Zach and I
were talking about something and I.

Speaker 1 (01:36:44):
Wanted to run it by you.

Speaker 2 (01:36:45):
Fine, I was looking at the Broncos line for tonight,
and I looked at three different apps, and I won't
bother naming them, but on one it's eight and a half,
on one it's nine, and on another it's nine and
a half.

Speaker 1 (01:36:57):
You know, you see that from time to time.

Speaker 2 (01:36:59):
But having a full point of spread between two different
two different casino was a little bit unusual. And Zach
had a theory and I wanted to ask you about
it real quick.

Speaker 4 (01:37:10):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:37:11):
Zach's theory is that perhaps one or.

Speaker 2 (01:37:14):
More of those betting apps is intentionally moving the line
away from the other guys in order to get business.

Speaker 10 (01:37:24):
Not necessarily. There's some truth to that, but not necessarily.
I would suggest, first of all, are all three on
the same juice, so they all minus one ten at
that time? No, that's the first thing to look at.
The second thing is all books operate the same, right.
What they're trying to do is balance the bets on
both sides of whatever number they come up with so
that they can rake the VIG. Sure the ten percent
that you're paying in, right, they just want to make
ten percent on everything, and then they're fine.

Speaker 1 (01:37:44):
Right, If they get too tilted to.

Speaker 10 (01:37:45):
One side or the other, they'll move the line in
an effort to encourage betting to the other side. You know,
I don't know, like I get what Zach's trying to say,
And sometimes introductory lines will be done that.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
Way to try to get you know, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 10 (01:37:56):
But I generally know they're just trying to balance the
book so they can break the VIG.

Speaker 2 (01:38:00):
So it could be that one of those sites got
a big bet on one team and so they moved
the line to try to encourage money to come in
on the other side.

Speaker 4 (01:38:07):
Entirely possible.

Speaker 10 (01:38:07):
I would say the betting is fairly split on this one,
the Broncos.

Speaker 4 (01:38:10):
The average line is minus nine.

Speaker 5 (01:38:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:38:12):
Across the book, sixty seven percent of the public is
on the Broncos minus nine, but fifty one percent of
the money is onto Broncos, meaning that there's a sixteen
percent difference there in terms of the public the number
of tickets versus the actual money.

Speaker 4 (01:38:23):
Bigger money is in on the Broncos.

Speaker 2 (01:38:25):
And if you had to bet on the game at nine,
I would still take Denver.

Speaker 4 (01:38:29):
I would take Denver at anything less than ten.

Speaker 1 (01:38:31):
Ben Albright keep it here.

Speaker 2 (01:38:32):
He's gonna kick off the coverage for as we as
we head into Broncos Thursday night Football. Go Broncos. I'll
talk to you tomorrow