05-16-24 FULL SHOW - What Does Ranked Choice Voting Looks Like And Why We Need It

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We got a lot of stuff onthe show today, and we got a
lot of big stuff to talk about. Solicit jump right into the blog.
You can find that at mandy'sblog dotcom. That's mandy'sblog dot com. Look
for the headline that should Oh,come on, you've got to be kidding
me. I just went to updatemy blog on the thing and now it's
disappeared. Okay, if you canfind hang on one second, when this

(00:22):
is aggravating as all get out nowbecause I changed the date, I had
the wrong date on there does saythe title? Yeah, so I changed
the title I should have. Okay, here it is fixed. It just
hasn't updated yet. So go tomandy'sblog dot com. That's Mandy's blog dot
com. No apostrophe in Mandy's.I know it's not grammatically correct, but
it's just the way of the internet. So then you look for the headline

(00:45):
that either says five fifteen twenty fourblog or it should say five sixteen twenty
four blog. What does rank choicevoting look like and why we need it?
Click on that and here are theheadlines we will find within I think
Office of American all with ships andclipments and say that's going to press plat
today on the blog have you heardof ranked choice voting? May is Mental

(01:07):
health Awareness month. The left wingbillionaires funding the left wing machine. The
Democrats just gave Excel a blank checkand you will pay because of it.
Someone forgot to tell them they can'tsucceed. In Denver, the Broncos season
is out. Omg omg omg.The Rockies are having a real streak.
When did people stop letting their kidswalk home from the bus? Never forget

(01:30):
why gas prices are going up.Inflation isn't from corporate greed. Colorado drug
overdoses are moving in the wrong direction. Estes Park has gone high tech?
Will Google's Google's censor us for ourelection? Tom Brady regrets the roast Slovakia's
Prime Minister's shot, Issues and truthsabout the South. Advice from a ninety

(01:51):
five year old and an eighty nineyear old. An immigration control coalition takes
over the Netherlands to the class oftwenty twenty four, you are all disa.
Christian Toto reviews Stephan Tubb's new documentaryA Teacher Fights Back over pronouns.
One in five credit card users ismaxed out if you're gonna be stupid,
you better be tough bull. Addition, what expenses aren't worth it anymore?

(02:14):
Why are ultra processed food so bad? If you thought these gen if you
bought these genes? We need totalk. Those are the headlines on the
blog at manby'sblog dot com. AndI don't have very many videos on the
blog today because usually a rod findsthe videos, and frankly, I had
a really busy morning this morning,so I didn't have time to dig around

(02:35):
find a bunch of videos. ButI did manage to find one of a
bowl on a beach in Cabo.And the only reason I bring this up
is because the other day I mentionedthat should we reintroduce wolverines back into the
wild here in Colorado? I wasrelatively certain that I could disable a wolverine
long enough to run away, right, And isn't that what you do when

(02:57):
you're in a situation where you're beingattacked by a wild animal? You try
to get away. Now, itlooks different for each animal, right.
If you run in front of amountain lion, they're gonna chase you and
catch you, So you get reallybig until the mountain lion gets you know,
a little freaked out, and maybethey leave, but then you haul
ass in the other direction. Thiswoman, Okay, for some reason,

(03:20):
there's a bull on a beach inCope, in Cabo. Okay. Let's
just I have no clue why thebull was there, none whatsoever. I
have no clue. But he walksup to this woman and her stuff,
and the video starts with her pickingup her things and the bull is just
like, what you're supposed to berunning or something you're supposed to be doing

(03:42):
something that's, you know, otherthan and the bull kind of is looking
at her, and she's picking upher stuff, and then and then the
bull kind of you know, takesa step towards her, and she drops
her stuff and then the bull andthen instead of just continuing to walk away,
she turns around to pick up herstuff. And at this point the

(04:02):
bull is like, oh, I'vehad enough. And the bull did what
bulls do. And I hope she'snot hurt. I mean to be clear,
I hope she's not hurt from this. But my god, if there
was ever a human personification of thephrase if you're gonna be stupid, you
better be tough. This is itjust so dumb. Maybe she thought it

(04:24):
was Fernando from the Disney movie.I don't know. I don't know,
but that's on the blog today.Yeah, today, Also on the blog
in the form of a video,Stephn Tubb's new documentary Devastated Colorado's Fentonal Disaster.
The premiere started last night and nowyou can watch the film in its
entirety online and I embedded it ontoday's blog. I'm going to see it

(04:46):
on Saturday, so I don't wantto watch it yet, but I wanted
you guys who could not get ticketsto the sold out premiere to have the
opportunity to watch it. And itis free to watch, so please watch
it and send it to give givea review on YouTube. If you have
an account on YouTube, that wouldbe very helpful as well to amplify and
promote this stuff. Even if youjust make a quick comment, that is

(05:10):
very helpful when it comes to algorithmsabout what gets seen to other people.
So make sure that you engage ifyou watch it on YouTube. So there
you go. Those are the twobig videos I've got. I've got other
videos as well, but those arethe two big ones. Today at twelve
thirty I'm going to talk to aguy named Nick Troyano. Nick is the
executive director of an organization called UniteAmerica. He's got a new book out

(05:32):
called The Primary Solution, Rescuing ourDemocracy from the Fringes about ranked choice voting.
And you know, Ross and Ihave had slight, just minor conversations
in passing about you know, whatdo you think about this? And I
think we both kind of felt like, I don't have enough information to make

(05:54):
an educated, you know, opinionon this. And when I started reading
Nick's book, I would put myselfin the full blown skeptic camp because I
just didn't see how it was goingto work. I didn't understand it.
It seemed to be kind of,you know, a complicated way to mess
with our voting progress. But Nickhas done in this book the most incredible

(06:17):
job of laying out how our primarysystems have changed over the years. Because
I think we all have the perceptionthat our primaries are somehow written in the
in the annals of our history,somewhere in a duck and dusty book that
cannot be changed because of his lootof our history, that we cannot mess
with. But nothing could be furtherfrom the truth. Our primary system has

(06:41):
been has evolved multiple times since theFounding Fathers gave the right to states to
determine how elections are run, andwe've had a lot of different experiments,
and for a very long time therewere no direct primaries, so you had
to go to the caucus system.I mean, it's a fascinating history book
in and of itself. But thenhe gets into the ways that our current

(07:09):
partisan system where you have two parties, neither of which are the majority in
Colorado because the largest group of votersare unaffiliated voters in Colorado, and that
is true in many, many,many states. So you have two parties
that run things, and those partiesget tax payer dollars to run things,

(07:32):
but they set the rules and insome cases they want to decide. If
you look at the Colorado GOP rightnow, they want to decide who you're
going to vote for. They don'twant you to have input. They don't
think you're smart enough to choose theRepublican candidate that you want to vote for.
They think you're too dumb for that, but they want all the taxpayer
money to run the election. Ithink if we went to both parties in

(07:55):
Colorado and said, hey, youguys, if you don't want to get
on board with some kind of changesthat open up the system and allow more
people to participate, you guys canpay for the primary elections. Go right
ahead, feel free. But throughoutthis book he makes a great case for
changing the system and how specifically avariation of ranked choice voting with a majority

(08:20):
rules outcome could be very successful intamping down the polarization in our country.
And I'm super excited to talk toNick about that. At twelve thirty,
I've gone from a reluctant skeptic tosupporter. I'm not going to go enthusiastic
supporter because I have some questions,but the way things are going right now
in Colorado, I don't think itwould be anything worse than what we currently

(08:43):
have, which is a dysfunctional Republicanparty trying to decide for Republicans who they
should vote for, which is wrongin the primaries. It should go without
saying that when I'm talking about itbeing bad that a party supports his candidates,
it's in the primaries, not inthe general. Of course, some
people can't make that distinction. Sowe're going to talk to Nick at twelve

(09:07):
thirty, and then a little bitlater in the show. You may not
know this, but I certainly haveheard it. At this point, May
is mental Health Awareness month. We'regoing to talk to the CEO of Aurora
Mental Health, doctor Kelly Phillips Henry. Aurora's doing some really cool things with
mental health. They have a newfacility, they've got specific the specific responses
I guess to the respect to thespecific needs of their community. And I

(09:31):
think it's a really good story toknow that we're building things that are actually
serving the people in the way thatthey are needed. So we'll talk to
her at one thirty, and thenat two thirty, I've got an interview
with Scott Walter. He is thepresident of Capital Research Center and also an
expert in money in politics, andhe's got a book out called Arabella,

(09:52):
The Dark Money Network of Leftist BillionairesSecretly Transforming America. And Ross and I
were just talking about this. Whenyou hear about the incredible web of nonprofits
that are funded by the billionaire classon the left, that are used to

(10:13):
create organizations that appear to be grassroots, you are your head's gonna explode.
It's gonna pop like a grape.As a matter of fact, you may
want to get some duct tape betweennow and two thirty, just letting you
know it is absolutely insane. Anothergood video on the blog today. It's
twenty two minutes long, but Iwould tell you please please please watch it

(10:37):
because it is a video by myfriends at the Independence Institute, and it
is Amy Cook and Jake Fogelman talkingabout what just happened in the legislative session.
Because what just happened in the legislativesession is legislators gave Excel Energy a

(10:58):
completely blank check to up your powerbill whenever they feel like it without asking
permission from the UH, from thePUC. Now, currently, if Excel
wants to raise your rates in anyway, shape or form, they have
to get permission from the Public UtilitiesCommission. But this bill that was just

(11:20):
passed, and Steve Fenberg was theringleader on this, essentially said to Excel,
hey, you know what, ifyou guys need to upgrade infrastructure or
do something like that, don't botherasking go ahead and pass that on to
the rate pairs. We don't need, we don't need to give you permission
for that anymore. And this twentytwo minute video is a great explainer of
how that happened. So go andwatch that on the blog today. It's

(11:43):
very, very, very good.Now, if you were listening a couple
of days ago when I was talkingabout this new I'm calling it the Office
of Racism and gobbledygook that they justcreated a neighborhood safety gobbledygooke I don't even
know. And one of the socalled experts that was talking about the need
for this race based agency in Denversaid that Denver is a city where race

(12:09):
and other social identities predict someone's outcomesin life. That irritated the crap out
of me, and it is stuckwith me that quote, the notion that
somehow, living in Denver, ifyou're black or brown, you are you
are destined for a life of failure, for a life of misery, for
a life of whatever, while ifyou're white, everything is going to be

(12:30):
sunshine and roses. Heck, you'regonna have it all handed to you on
a platter. That's what I tookaway from that. So it was really
encouraging to see this fantastic story fromCBS News. I love stories like this.
There are triplets right now, MariahMercy and Samuel and Mariah. Mercy
and Samuel are about to graduate atthe top ten of Hinckley's class of twenty

(12:56):
twenty four while also graduating within asojociate's degree from the Community College of Aurora.
At the same time, they're alsoathletes, and they held down jobs
while continuing to excel academically. Nowwhy am I bringing up this story right
now? These young people, twogirls and a boy, three you know,
triplets. They are as black asany African American person in this city,

(13:22):
and they are truly African American.Their parents came here from Ghana before
they had children, and the childrencredit the strength of their strong family relationships
for their success. That's so weird. That's so strange that a strong family

(13:46):
with a mom and dad who pushand support their children and and and encourage
them to succeed. And I'm guessingthat they're not viewing themselves as victims.
And so now these children who aregoing to be graduating or are graduating right
now, with their high school diplomaand an associate's degree, They're all going
to different colleges. I can't waitto see what they become. You know,

(14:09):
I kind of want to stock themon social media just to see how
they turn out. But Mariah saidthis, They said, it's always been
a nice comfort to have because wecan all relate with each other. Talking
about being a triplet, she thensaid her parents always told us that education
is power. When you have education, you can do whatever you want.

(14:33):
So let's review. They live inDenver, where the quote experts in government
here in Denver should want them tobelieve that because they are black, they
are somehow destined to less than agreat life, when in contrast, their
parents immigrants to the United States fromGhana, which I'm guessing there was probably

(14:56):
an upgrade in the terms of qualityof life coming from Ghana to the United
States. I don't know that theymay have had a spectacular quality of life,
you know, in Ghana, butI'm just gonna assume they moved here
for a reason, and nobody movesto another place to have a worse lifestyle,
so I'm gonna assume it's an upgrade. They probably view everything that happens

(15:18):
here as an opportunity instead of somekind of symbol of systemic racism. And
I honestly want now see, here'sthe question for my texters on the Common
Spirit health text line. Should Iforward this article to the government expert that
made the comment about black and brownskin and you know you're pretty much resigned

(15:41):
to a certain place in Denver ifyou grew up here. Should I do
that with a little note that saysyour comment infuriated me because of stuff like
this. These people, these youngpeople who are going to absolutely reach for
the stars because their parents have toldthem their entire lives. You get your
education, and you can do anythingthat would be fantastic. But you know,

(16:07):
do I really want to be thatperson? I kind of do want
to be that person. I mean, I'll be nice about it. I'll
be as nice as I can bewhile calling someone out for saying something so
racist and incredibly stupid, because ifthat's not racist, I don't know what
is. And I know what thisperson is trying to say, Well,
it's denderous. No, it's not. It's the assumption that someone born in

(16:32):
Denver who happens to be black orhappens to be brown is somehow stuck in
a position completely beyond their own makingbecause they don't have the wherewithal to make
it better. Their parents don't havethe ability to stress education. One of
my Jewish friends told me something alittle while ago that I found really fascinating,

(16:53):
and we were talking about the factthat most Jewish people are highly educated.
It is part of the Jewish coltureto get an education, get an
advanced degree, you know, dosomething that requires a high level of education
as part of the Jewish tradition,if you will. And I said,
I've always thought that that is sucha positive in the Jewish tradition. She

(17:14):
said, Well, my grandfather,who escaped the Holocaust, told me that
they can take everything away from youin your life, but they can't take
your education. And that's the wayyou looked at it. Throughout his lifetime,
it seemed Jews stripped of everything theyowned, but they couldn't They couldn't
take their doctors' licenses away. Theycouldn't take their knowledge of architecture or being

(17:34):
an attorney. They couldn't take thataway, even though they could take all
of your stuff. This texter said, isn't it kind of interesting that people
of race can't succeed in Denver,a very democrat city. Wouldn't it be
their fault, democrats if people ofrace couldn't succeed and I made that point
the other day. It's been fiftyyears since there's been a Republican mayor in

(17:56):
Denver, fifty five zero. Sothere you go, there you go.
Okay, now you guys are encouragingme. You're telling me that you want
me to do that. I will. I'll find out the email and I
will send it. I will sendit. Mandy, you could, but

(18:17):
he will say you're cherry picking.No, I'm using the example much like
the example of Mayor Michael Hancock,Mayor Wellington Webb, Mayor Fredriko Panya,
all of those people who came upand rose up and did incredible things.
And I know you guys, Iknow all of you people who are warning
me about the wolverines. I'm notactually going to try and fight one.

(18:37):
I'm just trying to figure out aplan to get away if I have to
fight one. That's all. Whenwe get back, Nick Troiano joins us
to talk about ranked choice voting ontoour next guest, because Nick Troiano is
the executive director of an organization calledUnite America. He's written a new book
called The Primary Solution, Rescuing OurDemocracy from the Fringes about choice voting and

(19:00):
as I said in the last segment, I started this book as a pretty
solid skeptic, and I finished thisbook as a supporter. Not an overly
enthusiastic supporter yet, but a supporter. Nick, Welcome to the show.
We'll take it. Good to behere with you. So I want to

(19:21):
start kind of in the beginning,which is why is there an organization working
on changing the primary system? Well, I'm not telling you or your listeners
anything. You don't know. Ourgovernment's broken, it's dysfunctional, it's divided.
We can't seem to solve the problemsthat are impacting our daily lives and

(19:44):
that people care about. And inour view, the reason for that is
not just that we have a politicianproblem. We have an incentive problem right
now. Our political system rewards thosewho play to the base and throw the
red meat and say crazy things toraise money and get relected, and it
punishes those who want to work togetherto actually find common ground and get things

(20:07):
done. That is in large partbecause of the system of party primaries that
we have today. You have somestatistics in this book that are pretty shocking
about the tiny fraction of voters whoactually end up and we're talking about in
safe districts, And a safe districtis a district that is likely to be
won by one party or the otherwith more than ten percent of the vote,

(20:29):
right, I mean, that's theeasiest way to describe a safe district.
They're not competitive districts. And youtalk specifically about what a tiny percentage
of voters in some of these safedistricts actually end up sending a member to
Congress. And if you could,I don't know if you know those off
the top of your head. Imeant to mark them in the book that
I forgot. Can you give ussome of that information? Absolutely? And

(20:53):
I want to talk about that problemas it pertains right here in Colorado,
because Colorado's problem is pretty stark.When you look at our state House.
For example, in the last election, seventy five percent of races for the
state House were not decided in November, in the general election, when most
people vote, They were decided inthe party primary. That's because in three

(21:18):
out of four districts, the partyprimary is the whole ballgame because there's no
competition between both political parties. Sowhen you look at, well, how
many people voted in the party primary, that effectively determine the winner. The
answer is just thirteen percent. Thirteenpercent of voters cast ballots in meaningful elections
for our state house. So ourwhole argument is that it doesn't only matter

(21:42):
that people can access the ballot.It is whether that ballot actually mattered.
Do you have choice? Is therecompetition? And does who win actually represent
you? And the answer, unfortunatelyright now for most voters in Colorado is
no. The good news is theresomething that we can do about that?
Well, Nika, what sort ofthrow the out here? Because I know
that there are people the first reactionto any change this significant is always going

(22:04):
to be oh no, oh no, no, we can't do that.
It's too different. The devil Iknow is better than the devil I don't.
But you do a fantastic job inthe book of laying out the history
of primaries in the United States,and I was kind of laboring under the
illusion. I don't think i'd everreally thought about it that primaries were somehow
set up back in the founding Father'sdays and we're just following along and tradition

(22:25):
is what it is. But that'snot at all accurate. But I don't
want to spend a lot of timethere. I just want to let people
know that there's a great foundation inthe book because I want to get into
what we're actually looking at as analternative to what we have now, which
is partisan primaries. Yeah, thatalternative is if what we have today is

(22:45):
elections that are decided by thirteen percentof voters, we want to live in
a world where a majority of votersget to decide our elections. And so
the change that we're advocating for,including for a ballot measure that may appear
in this November's ballot here in Colorado, is to replace the two parties separate
primaries with a nonpartisan, all candidateprimary. And what that will do is

(23:10):
give every voter the freedom to chooseany candidate in every election. You can
vote for a Democrat for state Senateor Republican for a US Senate. You
have the freedom to choose, andthat will ensure that the top finishers go
to the general election and the personwho wins winds up representing the broadest possible
coalition of Colorados rather than just theminuscule amount that wind up voting in the

(23:36):
current party primaries. But Nick,that would mean that in certain districts,
there would never be a Republican onthe ballot. How do we know?
How do you fix that? That'svery unlikely. The system that we're advocating
for here in Colorado is a topfour primary. In many state legislative elections,
you don't even have four candidates running, or for credible candidates running.

(24:00):
So most general elections will reflect thegreat diversity we have of candidates, not
just from the two major parties.But wouldn't it be nice to have some
choices outside the two major parties thatcould be viable as well. That's what
this system will bring about, morechoice and competition, not less of it.

(24:22):
So how does ranked choice come intothis? So you've got a top
four primary that would put everybody onthe same ballot with their party affiliation to
be clear, right, it wouldhave their party affiliation, and then you
would vote for for of those people. Top four vote vote getters move on.
Then how does ranked choice come intoplay here? Yep, So you
vote for your favorite in the primary, the top four finishers go to the

(24:45):
general election. And to my pointearlier that we want elections that produce majority
winners, there's two ways of goingabout that. If you have four candidates
on the ballot. If no onegets a majority, you either ask everyone
to come back to the polls andyou do a runoff election like folks who
live in Denver, for example,familiar with in our mayoral or you can
have an instant runoff. And aninstant runoff is when voters rank their candidates

(25:10):
according to preference, so that ifno one gets a majority, then then
there's a tabulation that has done thateliminates the candidate with the least support and
retabulates based on those voters' second preferences. That process repeats until there is a
majority winner that best represents the voters. Okay, so let me just use
this. So we've got Larry,Moe, Curly, and Mandy on the

(25:30):
ballot. Those are our four topvote getters in the primary. Now in
that in the general election, Mandycomes in first because if I can't meet
the three stooges, I really needhelp. And then Larry comes in second,
Moe and Curly come in third andfourth. So we would then go
to Curly and we'd look at Curly'svoters and whoever they picked second, we
would reapportion those votes to those peopleand then If somebody gets a majority,

(25:52):
they win exactly. But if not, then we go to Moe's ticket and
if they voted Mo first, whoeverthey voted second, and distribute that to
the other candidates until someone hits themajority. Right, that's a great explanation.
And if Mandy, I believe youcan, if you want a majority
in the first round, that's it. There wouldn't necessarily be any more tabulating

(26:12):
after that. That's how the electionin Alaska, for example, where the
system was first used in twenty twentytwo worked. The governor, for example,
was re elected with the majority support. There was no need to redistribute
ballots. Can you hold on fora time out, Nick, because I
want to continue this conversation, butI got to take a break. Can
you can I have you for afew more minutes? Absolutely? All right,

(26:33):
I've got Nick Troiano. He's theexecutive director of UNIT America and the
author of The Primary Solution reaching RescuingOur Democracy from the Fringes, trying to
departisan our primary system, and inhis new book, The Primary Solution,
We're Rescuing our Democracy from the Fringes, he lays out very clearly the ways
that our current primary system rewards peoplewho cater to the fringiest part of the

(26:59):
base, because they are also themost passionate part of the base. Whether
you're on the right or the left, those people are going to turn out
to vote. And in a primarysystem, you are rewarded for behavior that
that sort of amplifies that fringey base. And I think when you look at
some of the polling data nick aboutthings like immigration, right, eighty percent

(27:19):
of Americans want something done at theborder. Why haven't we done something at
the border. Because if you areon the right, your fringe base does
not want you know, they onlywant a wall and nothing less. And
if you're on the left, theywant open borders and nothing left. So
you've got this intractability in Congress.And this is what ranked choice voting and
majority rules is designed to stop.But I want to ask a question from

(27:41):
the Texters because it's a good oneand I think a lot of people probably
have the same question. I lovethe sound of this. Oh wait a
minute, wrong one. I gotto find it here dag Navitt. It
was a question about Alaska and itsaid ranked choice voting just got a democrat
in deeper at Alaska elected, andit did. It was the Sarah Palin

(28:04):
race. Sarah Palin was running againstNick what's his last name? Bagech?
Is that how you say it?And they had a vicious, vicious primary,
I mean vicious. And when theydid rank choice voting, the people
that voted for Sarah Palin first didnot vote for him second, and his

(28:25):
voters did not vote for Sarah Palinsecond, and a Democrat ends up getting
elected. So why do you thinkthat is and why is that a good
thing? Well, let me startwith just detailing three candidates won statewide elections
in Alaska in twenty twenty two,a very conservative Republican governor, a moderate

(28:48):
Republican senator, and a moderate Democratfor US House. What this system allowed
Alaska voters to do was to pickthe person, not just the party.
Right in that US House race,quarter of voters who voted for Republican Nick
Begich ranked Mary peltolat the Democrat numbertwo. They would rather have Mary over

(29:10):
Sarah. Well, this is whatdemocracy is all about, allowing voters to
express a nuanced view. And thatwas enough to put Mary over the threshold
of winning majority support. So whatAlaska was a strong demonstration of is how
much voice and choice this winds upgiving voters it it empowers them over the

(29:30):
party bosses well. And additionally,Nick, I mean, if you are
tired of nasty primary battles, thisis going to be a situation where Republicans
cannot afford to alienate the base ofany of their competitors. So it would
it would, I mean, itwould stand a reason that you would have
a more civil process because you can'tafford to alienate anyone else's voters. You

(29:52):
wouldn't have basket of deplorable's comments becauseyou need to possibly scoop up some of
those those people in the election.I mean, isn't that the purpose of
all of this? What I reallylike about the system is when you have
general elections that have four candidates init rather than just one D and one
R. To win an election,you need to convince voters more than just

(30:18):
that the other guy is bad.You have to actually campaign on what you're
for, and the ideas that youhave a party affiliation alone is not going
to do the trick to getting intooffice. That is what will lead to
a healthier democracy. It is alsothe case, in talking to some of
the state legislators in Alaska who ranunder this system. When they campaigned for
office, they threw out the oldvoter lists that told them what doors to

(30:40):
knock on and which houses is sendmail to, and they talk to everyone
because they had a campaign for everybody'svote. I think it's about time that
we have the ability to hold ourpoliticians accountable and force them to have to
listen to all of us, notjust pandered to the far base of one
party or the other. I alsothink the Palin race happened early in the
rank choice voting system in Alaska.We'll serve as a lesson. Right,

(31:04):
if you run the wrong kind ofcampaign, you risk that kind of outcome.
So, as I said, beforeI started your book, Nick,
I was like, I don't know, But now that I've read it,
I'm like, yeah, I'm forit. So what are we hopefully going
to have a chance to vote onhere in Colorado in the fall. Well,
First, sales safer those who wantto come learn more and talk about

(31:26):
this in person. We'll be atthe Tattered Cover next Wednesday, the twenty
second on Callfax for a book discussion. Hope to see you there. And
second, we're going to start collectingtodignature soon on a ballot initiative that the
title Board has approved for the Alaskastyle system top four primary majority winner in
the general election. It has toovercome a couple last legal challenges, as

(31:48):
the party establishments are throwing everything they'vegot at this to prevent the voters from
actually being able to vote for it. But we're confident will prevail and Colorado
could make history as the second statein the Union to adopt this transformative reform.
It is a simple reform, butis a powerful one because it returns

(32:09):
a lot of power to the voters. I have all the information about United
America. I have a linked tonext book that you can buy. I
have a link to the chattered coverevent all on the blog at mandy'sblog dot
com today. Nick, I'm surethis is just the first time our many
conversations, but it is a trulyintriguing idea and if you want to have
a clear picture of what it is, go pick up Nix's book, The

(32:30):
Primary Solution, Rescuing our Democracy fromthe Fringes. And I think you,
like me will probably come away goingyou know what it is about, Time
for a change, Nick Troyana withUnited America. I appreciate your time today,
Thanks so much. All Right,we will be back. I want
to talk about some of the textmessages that came in, because a lot

(32:52):
of them are really good questions andreally good points. Okay, so I
want to address some of these.One of them said, Mandy, I
could maybe get behind ranked choice votingonly in cases where there are equal number
of candidates from each party. Otherwiseone will split the vote and let a
less likely or a less desirable candidatewin for no other reason than the math

(33:16):
that was in their favor. Now, what they're saying is, say there
was two Democrats or one Democrat andtwo Republicans. The two Republicans are going
to split the vote, and thereforethe Democrat would win. But in ranked
choice voting, if you have three, let's just say, relatively equally liked
candidates that are running, you're goingto end up with a Democrat who's got

(33:37):
something in the thirties, one Republicanthat's got something in the twenties or thirties,
and the other Republican that is thesame. Nobody has a majority.
Now the Palin race aside, becausethat I think was just a badly run
campaign. For ranked choice voting kindof demonstrates what not to do. If
you have two Republicans running and youvote for I will say Bob and Barbara,

(34:00):
Bob and Barbara, the Republicans.You voted for Bob, but your
second choice was for Barbara because you'drather have a Republican in the seat.
Even though Barbara wasn't your favorite,you'd rather have her. So when Barbara
was eliminated, all of her voteswould be distributed. And if you don't
run a nasty campaign, if youdon't alienate a bunch of Republican voters,

(34:21):
it stands to reason that whatever Republicanis on top there is going to get
the benefit of the third place person'svotes, right, And if you have
one Democrat and two Republicans and theDemocrat only gets twenty percent and the two
Republicans get thirty percent, then thatDemocrats votes are then going to be shifted
to a Republican candidate. Perhaps thatmaybe Democratic voters find a little bit better.

(34:49):
So the purpose of all of thisis to try and find people that
represent more of the constituency that theyare elect to represent, because right now
what we have is an incentive systemthat as soon as that I'm going to
use the House of Representatives because thoseare every two years. Okay, every
two years, we're going to electa new member of the House of Representatives

(35:12):
from our districts. As soon asthey get to Washington, d C.
They begin fundraising and worrying about theirnext election because I'll tell you that the
number one thing on the list ofto do for politicians is get reelected.
They don't go up there to notget reelected. So immediately they start fundraising,

(35:34):
and they know that they're going tohave to face the same small group
of passionate, passionate voters who alsotend to be the most fringy. I
mean, God knows. I toldNick this off the air, and I
didn't want to bring it up onthe air because I wanted to talk more
about the nuts and bolts of whathe was talking about. In this book.
Nick does a fantastic job. Thebook is the primary solution rescuing our

(35:57):
democracy from the fringes. He doesa fantastic I'm talking about history, and
he goes back to the way theparty bosses used to run the party system,
and essentially the party bosses would decidewho was going to run and if
you were in a safe district.Essentially, the party bosses were choosing who
was going to be in the Houseof Representatives. And all I could think
of was the parallels between the RepublicanParty in Colorado right now under the leadership

(36:22):
of Boss Tweed Dave Williams, whowants to run another Tammany Hall operation,
who is violating all previous norms byendorsing people in the primary, regardless by
the way of whether or not otherpeople in the Assembly got more votes.
They don't care. They don't care, they don't care what the people really
want. They just want to feedtheir little fringy base. That's what they're

(36:45):
doing. I want to neuter them. I want to neuter the same part
of the Democratic Party in Colorado thatappoints Tim Hernandez to the Colorado House.
I want to neuter the fringes onboth sides. And I did not think
I would like this. I wasreally ready to try and pick it apart

(37:06):
and hate it. But when youlook at what is trying to do,
and no system is perfect. Iwant to be clear about that. We're
not so naive to think is ohgosh, if we do this, everything
will be Sunshine and roses. Itwon't because human nature is human nature.
There will be people who game thesystem. Occasionally, there will be people
who figure out a way to gettheir people over the finish line somehow,
even though they shouldn't be. Butcurrently we have a ton of people who

(37:30):
fall into that category. If wejust got it down to a few,
I could live with that. Andthe concern that, look, you know
what, we would never have anotherRepublican on the ballot in Colorado is simply
not accurate when you look at someof the districts that we have, the
fourth Congressional District, the fifth Congressionaldistrict until redistricting, the third Congressional district.

(37:52):
We have a lot of staunchly Republicanareas of this state, and they
would still remain Republican. They wouldhave to run a campaign that would appeal
to more than just the hardcore Republicanbase to get elected. Dave William's strategy
would feel miserably and I think it'sgoing to fail anyway, but it would
feel miserably because he's only appealing tothe fringy people in the Republican Party who

(38:16):
want to look backwards instead of lookingforwards. So let's see here, Mandy,
why bother with math? Just votefor all candidates you like, One
vote counts as one vote. Ifperst and A votes R, and L
person B votes D and L oneperson votes D, the total would be
that's too complicated, game, Regalt. I mean, I know what you're

(38:37):
saying. I get it, Butthat's too complicated convenient to throw out one
major example of that type of election. Shame on you. There's a ton
of examples in this book. There'sa ton, So you should go read
the book. Texter, the primarysolution, get it, read it because
it's all in there in the Palinexample, says this, Texter, it

(38:58):
should have been driven that two Republicansto debate on it. Should have Ah,
there's a spelling air. It shouldhave been that the two Republicans debate
on issues and not smearing each otherand alienating each other's voting base. Exactly
right, exactly right. That's thewhole point. It disincentivizes that kind of

(39:22):
nastiness. And that's I mean,we all talk about, oh, we're
so sick of these nasty elections,and yet we keep electing the people who
are sending out nasty, lying malepieces here in Colorado, we keep allowing
people who lie about their record toget re elected. Now, my one
concern, and I didn't ask Nickabout this because I don't necessarily think this

(39:45):
is his department, but this ismy concern. My big concern about this
is we have a media, includingone here in Colorado, that is not
equal in its treatment of the twoparties. It is not equal in its
treatment of the CA It's not equalin the way that they view and cover
the candidates in this state. Andthat concerns me greatly. But Republicans can

(40:12):
still get elected here, not tostate wide office, but that's more a
function of the completely disastrous nature ofthe Republican Party. The other thing that
I really like about this, andI realized that this is blasphing made from
any party faithful. I have alwayslonged for more options. I have always
wanted to make it easier for thirdparty and fourth parties to get access to

(40:34):
the ballot. And we don't haveto let everybody on the ballot in the
primary. If we do kind ofthe you know, one sheet primary,
you can set standards. You canset standards that say you have to have
so many signatures from every district thatyou represent. You can have standards for
fundraising. You have to have xamount of donors from the state. Small
money donors, you know, youhave to have five hundred twenty dollars donations

(40:58):
to make it onto the ballot.You can restrict access to the ballot using
a reasonable measure, but this wouldallow third party candidates to get on.
And you know what, maybe Iwant to vote for the libertarian candidate this
year. Maybe the libertarian candidate isn'tcompletely crazy, and I want to cast
my ballot for the libertarian candidate.But I also don't want to quote waste
my vote. So ranked choice votingallows me to vote for that libertarian candidate,

(41:22):
and when they only get thirteen percentof the vote, then my second
place vote would be for a moremainstream candidate. More than likely, if
we're talking about me here, itwould be for a more mainstream candidate,
and that candidate would then benefit fromwinning the second place on my ranked choice
voting. So you could actually votein a general election for your passion and

(41:43):
put your money where your mouth isand don't feel like you're wasting your vote.
That is a huge plus for me, huge plus for me. Now,
let me tell you who hates thiswith the fire of a thousand sons.
The Republican Party and the Democratic Party. They hate this, and they
are gonna fight it tooth and nail, and they are gonna run these ads

(42:05):
that show a little old lady sittingin front of a ballot just going I
don't know what to do. I'mjust so confused. They're gonna demagogue this,
they are gonna try and defeat it. They are gonna spend a pantload
of money to beat it back,and that makes me want it more so.

(42:25):
Yeah, a well informed electorate wouldsolve most of our election issues.
That is adorable. Bless your littleheart. That is precious. I mean,
I can't control that. So thatsounds like a fantasy over here,
We'll put that. We're gonna putthat over there in the pen with the
unicorn and the yetti. Okay,we're just gonna put that over there.

(42:47):
But what we can do to thatend, Texter is give people a feeling
that their vote really matters, thatit's not just them having to go and
pull the lever for either Donald Trumpor Joe Biden, neither of whom they
like. You know, how manyointment or suppository elections do we have to

(43:08):
have in this state before we go? Why do we keep getting these crappy
ass candidates? Why is this isthe same hot garbage every single time?
Why are they all so nasty?Why is everything so polarized? Why can't
anybody work to get anything done inDC? All of these questions cannot be
answered. It's not going to bethat simple, because when you get right

(43:28):
down to it, the democratic processis messy. It's messy and sometimes rotten
people are going to get elected regardlessof what system you use. And at
least this is a system that allowspeople to have more of a direct say
in getting those horrible people out ofoffice and getting better people into office,

(43:52):
people that are willing to try tofigure out how to solve problems rather than
be so worried about party politics becausethey have to go through the primary system.
Again. I mean here in Colorado, now we've got people who legitimately
use a legal function of our electorallaw to get on the ballot, and

(44:12):
a party boss is telling you they'renot good enough. Think about that for
a second. If that kind ofcorruption doesn't make you long for a system
that is not absolutely run and beholdento two parties when a vast majority of
voters in Colorado are actually unaffiliated.This is your chance, unaffiliated, This
is your chance to say we matterand we deserve better candidates than the lunatic

(44:37):
fringe of both sides give us.This is your chance. Education makes Democrats
Republicans lie on the uneducated. SillyTexter, that's hilarious on so many levels,
Mandy. All you had to dowas to sell me on this rank
choice voting, was to tell meit would piss off both mainstream parts,

(45:00):
and I'm sold, let's do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway,
So I hope I answered some ofthose questions some of them, and
there's a lot of them, butI would urge you before you reject it.
Okay, And I asked Nick.I said, Nick, this book

(45:20):
is great, but there are goingto be a lot of people who don't
read books. And I'm not knockingit. I'm just saying a lot of
people don't read books, so theyactually are putting together a documentary. So
if you are more of a viewerthan a reader, you're going to have
the opportunity to get the documentary formof this book where he goes through very
very well crafting the arguments about howour current system is incentivizing the bad behavior

(45:44):
that we all say we hate.Like I said, I'm down, Mandy.
How much is a pantload? Isit more or less than a buttload
or crapload? Well, I meana pantload would imply an entire set of
pants that was full, So yes, it is better than that. I'm
opposed to parliamentary forms of government andranked choice voting is the parliamentary version of

(46:07):
voting more party choices equals a pluralisticchoice and is chaos. I don't want
to vote for a minority party orcandidate, then you don't have to.
You don't have to, but you'reessentially saying, hey, all of you
people who don't like the Democratic Partyor don't like the Republican Party in Colorado,
you can go pound sand and youdon't get to deserve to have a
say. Because even in our openprimary system, if you're an independent,

(46:30):
you only get one ballot. Youget one ballot. So what if there's
a Democrat you like, but alsoa Republican that you like, but there's
other people on the down ballot thatyou'd rather vote for, Well, then
you may not vote for the candidatethat you want to in the primary because
you needed to vote for other candidates. More So, there's issues with everything,

(46:52):
you guys, there's issues with everything. And there you go. This
person says, you do realize thealready at the party likes Trump. Right.
I have come to peace with this. But you know what they don't
like based on the voting history incompetitive races, they don't like Trump light
candidates. They don't like candidates whowant to have just let's go Brandon put

(47:15):
on their ballot because so they canpander and suck up to Trump. They
don't like those candidates. They keeplosing elections in competitive races. They may
like Trump, but they don't wantTrump light. They don't want the designer
imposter version. They just want theguy because Trump being Trump is just Trump
being Trump. But other people tryingto be Trump, well it just seems

(47:36):
like other people by trying to beTrump, and they just they're just not
getting elected. And we'll see whathappens in this election cycle. But I
think some of them are on,you know, on part point to lose
again. We shall see, weshall see. Anyway. That's all I
want to say about that. Obviously, if it's on the ballot, we'll
be talking about it more in thefuture. But uh, okay, So

(47:59):
yesterday I had a little bit ofa little bit of a stress or because
the Rockies had won six in arow after I had given up on them
for the entire season because I wasso frustrated, and I wondered aloud if
maybe if I started watching them again, if they started losing, what I'd
be the hes right good news.I listened to most of the game yesterday.

(48:22):
I listened to Jack and Jerry callthe game, and they still won
and got to shut out. Sonow I'm back, baby, I'm god
get on. Wait anyway, sothat is on the blog today. They
shut out the Padres yesterday, whichis pretty cool. Broncos fans. This
season is out and now you canplan your tailgating. You're going to the

(48:45):
game, the whatnot it is,and the guys on the afternoon show,
I'm sure going to talk about this. We don't have a lot of primetime
coverage and that's kind of a anindication of the league's expectations of our team.
And I love being the underdog.Love it because it's really fun to

(49:07):
kind of blow those expectations out ofthe water, which I'm hoping that's what's
happening with the Rockies right now.But we'll have to wait and see.
We'll have to wait and see what'sgoing on. Isn't a religious holiday today?
You know? I'm looking at TreyGoudie on one of the TVs and
he looks like he's got the palmthe ash Wednesday thing on his forehead.

(49:30):
Do you see it? Do yousee it? Jeff? I think that's
something else going on his forehead.Well, he needs to add that.
Looked at that does not look good. That looks pretty nasty. Yeah,
like, what is he doing?Got He almost looks like he's got war
paint on, which would kind ofbe fun anyway, This Texter says,

(49:53):
I am so naive. I youthink that you put your second choice on
someone you feel is more mainstream.Problem is a democratic is a democratic?
Is a Democrat? No matter howmainstream. A Democrat, they will always
vote with the party, no matterhow bad it is. Look at Hickenlooper.
Well, but the thing is,I don't have to vote for a
Democrat. If I want to votefor a Republican and nobody else, I

(50:14):
can do that too. But ifI want to vote for a Republican and
the least crazy Democrat who is likelygoing to win, then I have that
option to at least participate. I'mgoing to use the City of Denver's mayor
election as a perfect example, perfectexample. Kelly Bruff I thought was a
better candidate. I thought her policyideas were better. I thought her approach

(50:37):
to the homeless issue was better.I thought her approach on crime was better.
I thought she was a better candidate. Now, imagine if they had
ranked choice voting and all of thepeople that voted for someone else instead of
Kelly Broff had the opportunity and thenthey lost. What if they'd had the
opportunity to throw her vote, includingall of the Republicans in Denver behind Kelly

(50:59):
Bruff instead, we may have acompletely different situation in mayor right now.
Because there you go, there yougo. Somebody just texted, how about
the Avalanche, y'all? I can't. I don't hate the Avalanche at all.
I'm just not a hockey fan.It's just not something I pay attention
to. So I don't mean toleave them out, but I'm just not

(51:19):
Baseball's my jam y'all. I know, I know, I'm one of those
people. Yeah yeah, Mandy,Just like how you say that when you
endorse the candidate, they don't win. Dang it, it just updated Hang
on, Mandy. Rate choice votingin Alaska led to a liberal Democrat becoming

(51:40):
the congressional representative when the state isclearly more right leaning. With this,
Colorado proposal be different than the Alaskasystem, No, but candidates can learn
from what happened in the Alaska system, which is Sarah Palin and her Republican
opponent ripped each other to shreds,and twenty five percent of Nick Baggots voters

(52:00):
voted for the Democrat instead of SarahPalin because it was such a nasty primary.
Part of what this hopes to dois to tamp down the nastiness and
give us a more civil discourse becauseyou're not just trying to win your voters,
you're trying to win the other guys'voters too. I love it.
I love it. Not perfect,but better than what we have. I

(52:22):
got a question for parents. Soyesterday I was driving around and I was
happened to be out and about atabout the same time that school buses were
dropping kids off at their school busstop. Now, my daughter's never taken
a school bus because she went toa charter school and they don't offer you

(52:45):
know, school buses. And nowshe enrolled in a high school that is
outside of our neighborhood zone or whatever, so now she has to we have
to still give her a ride toschool because they don't have bus service,
right, So I didn't really thinkabout it until I saw it yesterday.
And so yesterday I'm in this neighborhoodand I see a bus stop and it

(53:08):
stops right by like six cars thatare stopped on the side of the road,
and the cars are there, andthe bus stops and off gets kids
off the school bus. And therewas like two little little kids, like
maybe kindergarten, you know, prettypretty small, and then the other kids

(53:29):
were like ten eleven somewhere in thatrange. And they all get off the
bus and they all get in thecars and then they drive from the bus
stop to their houses. And whendid that happen? When did we go
from you get off the bus andwalk home like it was when I was

(53:50):
a kid, And then when didit end up being oh, no,
your parents are going to meet youthere at the bus. When did this
happen and why? And I meanthis genuinely because I can't imagine in my
neighborhood where there's never been good sidewalks. I mean, my neighborhood is very
spread out, but I can't imaginethe parents there always like, oh honey,
I'll go drop you off at thebus stop. And if you're the

(54:14):
parent that does that, at whatage do you stop right because you're not
doing that with your high school kids? No? No, I didn't see
any older kids getting off buses,so I could not test my theory.
People pick up their kids in Coloradoas often as possible. After Jessica Ridgeway.

(54:35):
So, and not to you know, not to say that what happened
to Jessica Ridgeway was not terrible.But I grew up in a town where
a guy you may have heard of, Ted Bundy, when I was in
fifth grade, he kidnapped a seventhgrade girl named Kimberly Leech, sexually assaulted

(54:55):
her, and murdered her in myhometown. Ended up being put to death
for that murder. So there's alittle fun fact about Ted Bunda, you
know now. But after that,in my hometown, for like six months,
things got like people actually locked theirdoors. We did not have a
key to our house. That's howthat's how infrequently people locked their doors in

(55:17):
my hometown. We didn't have Wehad to go get a key for our
house because we didn't have one.I didn't have a key to my house
at all growing up. Ever.Ever, but even after like six months,
you're like, Okay, that wasthat was a terrible, horrible,
rotten thing, awful, horrible.But how often is that going to happen.

(55:38):
We've got a bunch of kids whoare fat, we got a bunch
of kids who don't play outside.We got a bunch of kids who don't
even walk home from the school bus. And I was reading an article the
other day about a woman. Shedoesn't live in Colorado, but she was
talking about the fact she lives approximatelyhalf a mile from the school. Right,

(55:59):
So she started letting her seven yearold walk the half a mile to
school and home every day. Halfa mile for a seven year old.
Any seven year old worth their saltshould be able to do a half a
mile easily. Her neighbors started callingher and saying, well, you know,
we can give him a ride we'rearen't it going to be in carpool
line? And she's like, no, he can walk the half mile to

(56:21):
school. Give him a sense ofindependence. And I just thought that that's
just it's crazy. Bet Ted Bundywouldn't have gotten that girl if her parents
picked her up. He picked herup during school. She was walking between
buildings and he yelled at her andasked her for help and kidnapped her during
school. So your whole theory doesn'twork. Sarasota, Florida Magnet School has

(56:45):
cluster bussing. The walk for mykids would have been a mile and a
half along a fairly busy road withno sidewalks, just ditches. It stunk,
but it was better than driving seventeenmiles to school. I hear you.
And there are roads that are notreally made for walking. I get
it. One of the neighborhoods thatI'm talking about, there's not great sidewalks

(57:05):
there. But even then, guys, back in the day when there wasn't
sidewalks, people still were like,you can walk your ass home. Mandy
is picking up children at the busstop have something to do with the attempted
abduction in Parker last week from whatI understand from my neighbor who lives near
this bus stop. No, notat all, not at all. In

(57:28):
grade school, we had to physicallypick up our kids. They couldn't even
walk to the street. I hatedit. Now you just have to sign
them up as a walker. Justhave to let them know she's a walker
and she's gonna walk home. Mandy. It's because q Andon warned us all
about the pedophiles everywhere, even inthe government. I think it has more
to do with the fact that nowwe have a twenty four hour news cycle,
So when someone is kidnapped across thecountry in Indiana, we all hear

(57:51):
about it, and it prays onour worst fears. I mean, this
is like the worst fear that aparent has is that something happens to their
child. Understand that part of it, But at what point are you going
to send your child off to beindependent and fly in what manner? How
does that look? And I wouldguess that it looks a lot like the

(58:12):
people going to college right now whosemoms are calling their professors to complain about
a grade. We're creating a wholegeneration of failure to launch. And we
all know that this generation is growingup is the most anxious generation we've ever
had, and there's a great bookby Abigail Schreyer about it. The name
just escaped me, but Abigail Schreyermakes the case that one of the reasons

(58:34):
that kids are so anxious and stressedis because we have not allowed them to
do what we did when we werekids. We faced challenges throughout our lifetime.
We face challenges throughout our days.We face challenges that we had to
manage, whether it was dealing witha schoolyard argument. You remember the games
you played when you were a kidthat you just totally made up out of
whole cloth with the neighbor kids.You had like a ball, you had

(58:59):
made, you had a hula hoop, you had these random items, and
then you and the neighborhood kids wouldall get together about and figure out a
game that had a very often complexset of rules that you argued about and
you negotiated about. We don't allowkids to play anymore unattended, so they

(59:21):
don't have the opportunities to learn thosepure social skills and negotiation and how to
convince people that your way is theright way. We didn't give them the
ability to ride far from home andget a flat tire and have to figure
that out on your bike, Sothey don't ever have the chance to have

(59:42):
these little victories in life, theselittle wins that convince them that they are
very capable of doing great things withoutmom or dad being there. Mandy,
did you walk uphill both ways toschool? No? I did not.
No, I did not, Thanksfor asking. I walked down the street
I'd say approximately a quarter of amile, and I got on a bus

(01:00:06):
starting in kindergarten. So what areyou six years old? Why don't you
think my mom walked me down thestreet. My mom was like, it's
that way, go because my momwas a teacher at a different school,
so she wasn't even there when weleft. Go get on the bus,
Mandy. Our neighbors recently purchased agolf cart so they could drive their kids
too and from school two blocks fromour house to theirs. Wow, Mandy,

(01:00:31):
my daughter was followed riding her bikethrough our neighborhood in southwest Denver when
she was in middle school. Luckily, her friend's father was home, so
she went to his house. Shenever rode her bike again. That's terrible,
and I'm sorry really terrible and I'msuper sorry about that. Mandy.
Do you realize how many kids weresnatched in the seventies. The answer is

(01:00:52):
not very many. The reality isis that stranger abduction is a teeny tiny
fraction of children that go missing.A vast majority of children who go missing
are taken by someone they know,whether it is a non custodial parent or
relative, or a friend of thefamily that they already know. So we

(01:01:15):
all talk about stranger danger and Iget it, I truly get it,
but it's not I mean, whenyour kid goes to college, are you
gonna go with them? Because doyou know how many college students disappear every
year? Do you know how manycollege students get murdered? Probably more than
children who are abducted by a strangerif you looked at the statistics. We
can't protect them forever, and walkingto school should be the first way that

(01:01:37):
they get to express their independence.Weren't you freaking out about people cleaning your
windshield at the intersection a few weeksago? Yeah, I was very unhappy
about that, very unhappy about that. You're right, if I lived in
a neighborhood where they were cleaning windshields. I would be really reticent about taking
my kids. But in the neighborhoodsI'm talking about, no one's cleaning windshields.

(01:01:58):
No one just throwing that up.Just something to think about people KOA
today. I have a fun,fun story from Colorado peak politics that I'm
not going to go into, butit's just another way to remind you that
when gas prices skyrocket, it's JaredPoulis's fault. Yep, yep, er,
yep, yep. Some places inColorado they're expecting gas prices to go

(01:02:22):
up a dollar a gallon a Dolla, and it's Jared Pulis's fault. Don't
forget Tell your friends, tell everybody. Make it happen. Here's an interesting
story that it's sort of a Idon't know, it makes me like Tom
Brady better. Did you watch theTom Brady roast? Jeff I did not

(01:02:44):
watch it because generally speaking, Idon't like roasts because it's just people being
mean to other people and it's notmy jam. Have you seen that Tom
Brady now regrets the roast. I'mvery disappointed now at the well wait hear
me out, he's not disappointed becausethey made fun of him. Right.
He thought those were very funny jokes, but he's disappointed because of the effect

(01:03:07):
that it had on his kids.And first of all, why are you
letting your kids watch that? Firstof all. Second of all, there
were some shots taken at Giselle,there were some comments made about Bridget moynihan,
who was his first baby mama,and he said it negatively affected his
children. And he has basically said, I've learned a lesson as a parent,

(01:03:30):
and I would not do it againfor that reason and that reason alone.
I saw I've talked about the fact. I saw George W. Bush
and chair and Jeb Bush speak afterw left office, and somebody asked him
a question about what it was likedealing with people being nasty about them,
and George W. Bush said,you can't pay attention to it, right,

(01:03:52):
It's like you just have to ignoreit. It's and it's really not
that hard to ignore because you haveso much other stuff on your plate.
You don't have time to there andstew about people being ugly about you on
the internet. And Jeff Bush pipedin and said, oh, but when
it's your dad or your brother,it's a lot harder, and George W.
Bush said, I would much ratherpeople say nasty things about me than

(01:04:14):
about my dad or my brother.He said, it's a lot harder.
He said, Barbara, I mean, excuse me. Laura, his wife
used to have a really hard timewith it because she'd gets super defensive about
her family. And I get that. I get that big time. So
it's just interesting to see Tom Bradysay, Wow, I wish I hadn't
done that because I hurt my kids, because the kids don't want to hear

(01:04:36):
bad stuff about their dads. Ijust I've never understood the roast concept.
I think that is a distinctly malething that goes to the heart of male
relationships that seem to be based onnothing but insulting each other. Do you
have friends like that? Jeff,Oh, definitely, Yeah, a lot
of friends. Women don't do that. Like women just generally speaking, are

(01:05:00):
like, damn, you look fattoday. That's not it's just not how
we operate, you know, likeyou're so big, you're sitting when you
sit around the house, you sitaround the How we don't do that to
each other? And if if ifwomen did that to me, I would
be like, I I'm not gonnahang out with you anymore because it's not
fine. Why is that? Doyou think? What is it psychologically that
makes men bond over insulting each other? Is it almost like a little bit

(01:05:25):
of one upsmanship in the basic biologicalurge to make everyone else just a little
bit lower than you, so you'reking of the hill. I was about
to say, it's got to belike the I'm gonna go wrestle you,
you know, let's go arm wrestletype of thing, you know, like
I'm gonna one up yond, I'mgonna get this guy. You know,
how many pushups can you do?Yeah? Exactly, give me fifty.
Yeah, let's do some pull upcompetition. Yeah, there you go,

(01:05:46):
there you go. Geez Louise gashas gone up twenty cents in one day.
The next jump will really Oh waita minute, today's the day.
Today's the day we're to have.Hang on one second, When does does
Colorado get reformulated gas? Okay?Okay, starting June first, we get

(01:06:13):
reformulated gas. So we got,you know, a couple more weeks.
We can be like that lady thatwas on the internet who was seen putting
pouring gas into a plastic grocery bag. Did you see that? I'm not
even kidding, didn't. She waspumping gas into a plastic grocery bag.
And I was like, I don'teven know. I don't I don't even

(01:06:33):
know how you could even think thatwould be a thing that you should do.
And where are you going to storethat in your car? You know
what I'm saying? Like what Idon't even like to buy coffee when I
have to drive home with the coffeesmell overwhelming me in my car. And
I like coffee, But you knowwhen you go to Costco and you buy
the big bag of coffee and youput it through the grinder and then you
got that big bound of a bagof freshly ground coffee and your literally you

(01:06:55):
smell like you would just have yourface in the middle of an espresso all
the way home. Imagine that witha bag of gas. Oh, this
person pointed out, women just doit behind your back. That is true.
Another text insults are a love languageto some of us. Yeah,
yeah, not me though, ButI actually respect Tom Moore for learning and

(01:07:18):
growing as a parent because of hisroast, which I would never subject myself
to. All Right, when weget back two minute drill and in the
next hour. There is a darkmoney operation run by left wing billionaires that
does things like creates new supposedly grassrootsorganizations like the ones that are currently protesting

(01:07:40):
at college campuses. We'll do thatat two thirty two minute drill coming up
next to anti Islam fire brand geartbuilders and three other party leaders have created
a coalition deal that, well,the AP says, veers the Netherlands towards
the hard right. This is anotherperfect example why you should never read the
American media about who's on the rightand who's on the left. Do you

(01:08:03):
know what makes them hard right?Well, they are going to introduce strict
measures on asylum seekers. They're gonnascrap family reunification for refugees and seek to
reduce the number of international students studyingin the country. This after the Netherlands,
along with many European nations, havebeen overrun by people from the Middle

(01:08:25):
East who seem to have no desireto assimilate to these various cultures, and
we're seeing people push back. It'salways funny to me to see the AP
talk about how these people are hardright, when in reality they just want
to make sure that their borders matter, and that their nation is inhabited by
people who really want to be Dutch. Doesn't seem that hard, does it?
The two drill it too. Ateacher in California has been paid three

(01:08:50):
hundred and sixty thousand dollars after shewas fired for not using her students preferred
pronouns. Teacher Jessica Tapia alleged violationsof her civil and First Amendment rights because
she refused to call students by madeup pronouns. She also pushed back on

(01:09:11):
the school's policy of not telling parentswhen students decided at school that they were
of another gender. She said thisviolates her religious beliefs because as a Christian,
she thinks God made us all perfectlythe way we need to be,
and she wasn't willing to play along, and the school fired her. Now,
the school says they fired her notjust over the pronouns, but because

(01:09:31):
she talked to the kids about theBible. Oh my god, gasp.
Now, I don't know if shewas proselytizing or maybe dropping a you know,
a Bible verse here and there.So maybe she did, maybe she
didn't. But ultimately the school settledand she is three hundred and sixty thousand
dollars richer the too. This iskind of an alarming story, but a

(01:09:56):
growing number of Americans are maxed outon credit cards, and gen Z is
leading the pack. Now, thatlast part is not super surprising because when
you're young and you're just establishing yourcredit, you don't have a very high
credit limit. So it's easy tomax out a credit limit of twenty five
hundred bucks. But it's also harderto pay off a credit card debt of

(01:10:17):
twenty five hundred bucks. Nearly onefifth of credit card borrowers are using at
least ninety percent of their available credit, and this is not good because delinquencies
have been rising steadily since late twentytwenty one. If you are utilizing ninety
percent of your credit, you aremuch more likely to be delinquent because you're

(01:10:39):
probably using your credit card because you'reshort on cash. The FED is warning
people about credit card debt. Theaverage credit card balance six three hundred and
sixty dollars at the end of twentytwenty three, but the average card carries
an interest rate of twenty one pointsix percent, an all time Now,

(01:11:00):
what I don't know is how arethey getting a twenty one point six percent
interest rate, because every credit cardI'm aware of is twenty four percent,
twenty five percent, twenty six percentunless they're counting zero percent in the average.
I don't see how they're getting thatlow number. If you are having
trouble paying your credit card, ifyou're young and you don't own a house,
figure a way out of it,because it only gets worse. And

(01:11:20):
if you ruin your credit now,it takes years to rebuild that. And
I'm saying that as a person whoruined my credit and took years to rebuild
it. Get tracked together and stopusing your credit cards to drill it too.
Now there's an article, and Idid not realize it was paywalled until
right now in the New York Timesabout ultra processed foods. Now, the

(01:11:45):
standard American diet is made up ofa lot of ultra processed foods. What
are they? They are foods thathave been so extensively manufactured that when you
look at the ingredient list, there'singredients that you cannot buy to use in
your kitchen to make food. That'sthe easiest definition. Anything that you buy
in a fast food joint, oranything that you're going to buy someplace like

(01:12:06):
that is ultra processed. Well,they're just beginning to study why it is
that ultra processed foods seem to makeus much fatter than we need to be.
They start with a story about Brazil, where Brazil as children started to
get fatter, somebody started studying thechanges to their diets. And guess what
soda cookies, crap that was ultraprocessed. And it's not just because they

(01:12:29):
have more calories. It's because theway they hit your bloodstream creates a blood
spike that leaves you hungry all daylong. The easiest way to solve this
problem eat real food with as fewingredients as possible too. And finally,
in what has to be the greatestexample of a full and his money are

(01:12:50):
soon parted. Jordan Luca, ahigh end fashion brand, sparked quite the
furor on the internet by rolling outa pair of gens released as part of
its Fall and Winter twenty twenty threetwenty twenty four collection, priced at over
eight hundred dollars. The genes appearnormally in every way except for the giant

(01:13:13):
stain across the crutch that makes itlook like you have peed your pants.
Now Couver, when was the lasttime you bought a pair of jeans for
eight hundred dollars? That would benever? And that is the correct answer,
Couver, because you're not an idiot. Now, Couver, when was
the last time you bought pants thathad a pre done peace stain across the

(01:13:34):
front? That would be never?As well? Again, another great answer
from Michael Coover, because if youbought these genes for eight hundred dollars,
you are walking around, and youare walking advertisement. That says, separate
me from my money, Just separateme for my money, because I'm too
stupid to know that buying an eighthundred pair of jeans, eight hundred dollars
pair of crotch stained jeans is adumb idea. Now, how dumb an

(01:13:58):
idea? Is it not dumb enough? Because these janes sold out? They
sold out, and I have towonder, Look, if you're the guy
walking around in these jeans, whatdid you not notice the peace stain?
Are you is rocking the peace?Nothing says I'm working super hard more than
I didn't have time to stop andpee, so I had to pee in
my jeans, which you can nowclearly see is no. It just looks

(01:14:24):
like they're wet right across the front. Uh, I mean it looks like
a Pecetain. So I hope noone in this listening audience bought the Peacetain
jeans, and if you did,we might have to ask you to stop
listening to the show. And that, my friends, is the two minute
drill. That is it. Anyway, I've got some funny stuff on the
text line, and no, Sean, I'm not crabby today at all.

(01:14:45):
I'm a delight, a delight,delight. And then a couple of year
responding to why guys pick on eachother And this is my favorite response,
Mandy. When a guy says somethingobnoxious to the other or pick on them,
they want to see if they canactually take it. If they can,
then it's possible you can be friendswith them. So I sent back,

(01:15:06):
So you're reading out the weenies,that's the easies or you know now
you just have to look for thePeace Saint jeans and you know it was
you don't want to hang out withthat guy. When we get back the
class commencement speech that every college seniorneeds to hear. When we get back,

(01:15:26):
Stay in the know every morning withColorado's Morning News sign to nine on
KOA and in the Free Press Todaythere is a commencement speech that, well,
these young schools of Mush need tohear and I just want to share
some of it with you, notall of it. You can go read
the rest if you're graduating from collegethis year, says Robert Perham, the

(01:15:47):
guy who wrote this. I suspectyou're not too familiar with George Carlin.
So before you become inflamed about theintentionally harsh title, which is to the
class of twenty twenty four, youAre All Diseased, let me tell you
I plagiarized it from Carlin, whowas one of the best American comedians of
the last one hundred years. Hisshow You Are All Diseased is available on

(01:16:11):
YouTube, and it is so goodthat I was willing to start by alienating
you a bit just to plug ithere. You're welcome. It is especially
recommended if you are in any kindof altered state of mind. Speaking of
states of mind, I'm worried aboutyours. Rates of anxiety, depression,
and suicide among people your age inthe US are skyrocketing. I myself lost

(01:16:32):
a student to suicide a few yearsago. An experience I wish on no
one. I'm here to tell youthat I think it's partly our, your
professor's fault. We, along withothers, have been feeding you a distorted
view of the world and your placein it, and I think this has
caused a considerable part of the existentialangst you all feel. But I'm not
just aiming to point fingers. Iwant to lay a vision of the present

(01:16:55):
and future which I genuinely believe andyet know many of you don't share.
After all, exposing you to unfashionableideas as a core part of healthy education.
My deeper hope in doing so isto start a conversation on changing this
sad state of affairs and to getyou on your way to a happy and
healthy life. Isn't that what commencementsare all about. Whenever I speak with

(01:17:18):
my students I teach at the Universityof Virginia, they seem deeply pessimistic about
the state of the world. Weall know the reasons. Climate change is
going to kill us all. Latestage capitalism is running amok. Inequality is
an all time high, Racism andbigotry are rampant. Gender non conforming and
queer people are under unprecedented attack.Economic anxiety has never been worse. AI

(01:17:43):
is coming for our jobs, andon and on and on. I then
pose a simple thought experiment to them. If you were given a time machine
that could take you back to anyperiod in the last twelve thousand years since
the dawn of civilization, when wouldyou rather live? You see, I
believe we currently live in the goldenage of humanity. Things have never been

(01:18:05):
better for human beings, Yet itseems we have never felt worse about our
prospects. If you're a woman,go back more than one hundred years and
you become the property of your fatherand later your husband, with your voting
rights and little protection under the law. If you're a person with above average
melanin levels like him, the sameand worse happens to you. Gender non

(01:18:27):
conforming minorities would find the past justas terrible. Based on every objective measure
of well being, safety, health, wealth. If you're a college student
in America today, you're better offand wealthier than the King of England was
three hundred years ago. You havebetter access to education, entertainment, leisure,
and health care. You have cleanerwater and more abundant food. You

(01:18:51):
have a significantly safer and longer life. You have access to all the world's
knowledge, including this piece in thepalm of your hand, and it's not
just you. Throughout recorded history,the vast majority of humans lived in what
we would today define as abject dehumanizingpoverty. Income and wealth equality were measurable

(01:19:13):
worse than they are today by ordersof magnitude. Women died during childbirth at
staggering rates, most humans didn't survivechildhood, and various forms of subjugation and
slavery were the norm in nearly allsocieties. On these in a variety of
other objective measures, humanity has madebreathtaking progress in the last three hundred years,

(01:19:34):
which then raises the question why whyis it that everything is amazing and
nobody is happy. Let's go backto comparing you with the King of England.
If you're anything like my students,I've tried that line on them too.
You felt that somebody was off withthat statement. How could it be
either you're better off than the Kingof England. We economists call this phenomenon

(01:19:56):
relative wealth concerns or keeping up withthe Joneses. These are just fancy terms
to describe a simple psychological fact.We are constantly busy comparing ourselves to our
peer group and feel bad when wefall short in that comparison. Now it
goes on from there, and I'dlove for you to read it, But
essentially it is if you're looking fora fair world that doesn't exist, you've

(01:20:18):
been lied to. You've been toldthat our world is evil, that it's
bad, that you're too racist,too greedy, too white, too privileged,
not sufficiently attuned to the plight ofthe marginalized. But ultimately it's just
making people miserable and not giving themwhat they need to succeed. It is
a great speech. It is onthe blog today and you should read it.

(01:20:40):
It appeared in the Free Press earliertoday. Now, when we get
back, I'm going to talk toa guy named Scott Walter. He has
a book out called Arabella, abouta financing operation that is used by left
wing billionaires to finance organizations that seemto be grassroots until you find out that

(01:21:00):
they are indeed not grassroots at all. We're going to do that next.
I am pleased to have my nextguest coming on the show right now.
His name is Scott Walter. Heis the president of Capital Research Center and
a very well known expert on moneyand politics. He's got a book out
called Arabella, The Dark Money Networkof Leftist billionaires Secretly Transforming America. Scott,

(01:21:21):
welcome to the show. Great tobe with you. I actually talked
to my colleague Rosskominski and he said, oh, I talked to Scott.
That book is mind blowing, andhe said it was really infuriating to have
the conversation we're about to have.So let's infuriate my listeners too. How
about that, Scott? Sounds goodto me. So what is Arabella.

(01:21:43):
Let's start at the beginning. Thebest word to understand it is it's a
network, and the twenty second versionis think of a pyramid. At the
top of the pyramid, you haveArabella Advisors, which is a for profit
pr insulting firm Beltway Bandit they callthem in DC. It creates and operates

(01:22:04):
everything below that in the pyramid.Now, in the middle of the pyramid,
you have half a dozen non profitsof different legal types, and that's
where the money comes in. Ifyou're Zuckerberg, Sorrows whatnot, you write
checks to those nonprofits. And thenat the base of the pyramid. You

(01:22:26):
have what you and your listeners see, and that's hundreds and hundreds of little
fake groups. You know, Floridiansfor a Fair Shake, Keep Iowa Healthy,
Opportunity Wisconsin. They want you tothink this is your neighbors upset about
something, when in fact it's justsome dufics in a DC office who's been
given a new accounting code and createda website and maybe bought some Facebook ads.

(01:22:53):
So basically, what you're saying isthat the alleged grassroots operations are AstroTurf
exactly. Think of this as anindustrial astro turf factory. Well, let
me ask this question. So,Arabella Advisors is at the top. Where
does their money come from? Becausethe nonprofits can't funnel the money up to

(01:23:14):
them, can they or are theypaying them for services? Kind of walk
me through where the money comes infor them and then goes down or out.
Sure the you guessed it, andthat is the nonprofits can write checks
to them as a vendor. Please, I mean this is the legal fiction

(01:23:35):
which Arabella hilariously tries to pretend thatis the reality. Oh, our clients
just hire us, they're the bosses. And of course the answer is how
many businesses create their own clients,right right, And do they have their
actual fingerprints? I mean, arethey the registered agent on these other five

(01:23:58):
O three c's or five O foursees. How do you know that connection
is there? Well, the nonprofitsare required that the middle level nonprofits are
required to file IRS disclosures each year. And so they say, oh,
well, we spent you know,twenty million dollars at Arabella Advisors for consulting

(01:24:19):
services. But is Arabella actively involvedin the creation of those middle tiers or
are they just oh yeah, okay, that's that's what I was asking.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, they create them and then legally speaking,
those nonprofits higher Arabella. That kindof sounds like a grift, Like

(01:24:42):
right out of this did the shootyou know what I mean, like,
Oh, we're going to create anonprofit to bring in money tax free and
they're going to pay ourselves out ofthat money. That does seem like a
bit of a grift. Plenty ofpeople would raise eyebrows. They're not the
they weren't the first or the onlyplace to do. And it isn't simply
crazy because you know, you canargue that it helps the nonprofit to have

(01:25:08):
this very professional PR firm, youknow, doing work for it, but
it is certainly out of the ordinary. And you know, my biggest complaint
would be the bad stuff that theyare actually doing. Right. They're supporting
all kinds of bad left wing things, right, using this elaborate organization.
Who is the they? Who arethe people, the big money people behind

(01:25:31):
all behind Arabella and therefore behind everythingelse. Well, the short answer to
almost any Arabella question is everyone oreverything, right. So it's pretty much
every lefty donor you've ever heard of. It is Soros, It's also Zuckerberg,
Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Pierreohmit yar the the eBay billionaire and

(01:25:58):
one of the ones that people needto know much better though they've probably never
heard of Hans your Vist. He'sa Swiss billionaires, a foreign national,
notice US citizen, therefore by lawnot supposed to be messing in our politics
at all. But he has givenArabella a quarter billion dollars holy almost from
the very beginning. Now, howdoes okay? So obviously, I mean

(01:26:21):
this sounds like the mob, right, there's so many levels between the top
and the bottom. But when you'retalking about political expenditures in theory, this
should be so tightly regulated that there'sno way a Swiss billionaire can drop two
hundred and fifty million into a companyin the United States that then trickles that
money down, or is the moneytrickling down? I mean, I'm I'm

(01:26:44):
a little bit confused as to wherehow the money travels here, because if
you're giving money to a five onone C three or five on one C
four and then they're giving it tosomeone else, there are rules that have
to be followed. Or there areso many levels between the Swiss billionaire and
that political donation that there's plausible deniability. Well there is, you know,

(01:27:06):
semi plausible deniability. And by theway, years ago Vise was so outrageous,
he just did the completely illegal thingof writing checks to you know,
political committees like friends of Dick Durbinor out close to you Inflee Governor Insley
when he was in Congress got moneyfrom him. One of the ud All

(01:27:27):
congressmen got money from him. Butluckily he wasn't lucky for him. Nobody
discovered this until the Statute of Limitationswas over. Now, the way it
works is he gives to a Cfour at Arabella and then the C four
gives money to a superpack which he'snot allowed to dot to. They claim,
oh, it wasn't his money,it was different money. But as

(01:27:48):
money is fungible, that doesn't meanyeah, that doesn't really matter because money
is fungible and it's you know,it's it's doesn't matter if it was directly
his check or not. If you'vegotten huge donations from foreign donors, that's
that's a huge issue. How muchare they influencing our current political process?
Where they had the most success.Wealth Buffet's money is mainly used for abortion

(01:28:14):
advocacy, and they've been one ofthe biggest doat you know, they're activists
or advocy groups in the abortion space. You one example, Another would be
you remember the Title nine regulation thatcame down this month. That's from the
Department of Education saying you have tohave women or sorry men and women's sports.
Well, that was an Arabella operation. They've done dozens of regulations like

(01:28:38):
that in this administration. They wereplotting it all the way back, starting
in twenty nineteen. Another example Iwould use is they actually put twenty five
million on top of Zuckerberg's four hundredand twenty million in the Zuckbucks operation that
happened in twenty twenty, And sadly, the group that got most of that
money, the charity that got mostof that money, is still operating and

(01:29:00):
collaborating with Arabella. Those are afew of the of the best examples I
would give. So I'm guessing there'snothing illegal about any of this in scenery,
you can manage all of this legally. Now there's a serious lawsuit by
a former employee who claims that notonly did they she's a black woman,

(01:29:21):
and not only she claims did theyillegally discriminate against her, but they also
retaliated against her when she complained thatthey were not complying with all the rules
that you have to comply with ifthis is to be kosher. So perhaps
who's going to hold them accountable?Scott? And that's the frustrating thing is
like we can talk about this,You've obviously done a town of research and

(01:29:44):
your book has all of this stufflaid out, But who's going to stop
them? We have a weaponized DOJthat's never going to go after the people
that are driving policy or are theydriving policy in such a way that is
creating an issue for democratic leadership becausethey're obviously not con controlling it. The
democratic leadership isn't controlling it, youknow, I see conflict there potentially.

(01:30:08):
Well, you're right, it's youknow, accountability is in short supply these
days. I will say, justthis morning, there was a hearing in
the House Administration Committee, which coverselection work that dealt with foreign money in
politics as well as non citizen voting, and mister VS and Arabella showed up

(01:30:28):
there. I've testified to Congress halfa dozen times about Arabella and related problems
in the last couple of years.Now. The unfortunate thing is that,
you know, the committees ought tobe having mister VS and the heads of
his organizations and the heads of Arabellacome testify and get a good at least
staphonic treatment, But that hasn't happenedyet. Is there any chance that's going

(01:30:53):
to happen in the near future ofScott? I mean, we're talking about
a level of manipulation. I'm guessingthat some sort of Arabella operation is what's
funding the pro Palestinian protests on campusesright now. I mean, there have
been some stories about these people gettingpaid. Are they part of that operation?
That are you aware of that?So far, there's not much evidence

(01:31:14):
that Arabella's network has been mixed upin those There is, however, another
dark money left wing network. It'salso been around for a long time.
You've probably heard of them, theTides Foundations, Oh yeah, and their
various network. There is evidence thatthey've given money to some of the entities
mixed up in the protests this.You know, I realize that money is

(01:31:35):
always going to be a part ofpolitics, and I guess maybe my frustration
is is that the left has figuredout how to use it better than my
team has. I mean, youknow, it's like it's frustrating that they
can have so much of an impactwhile remaining or appearing to remain at a
distance. And that is, howdo they get around campaign finance reform because

(01:32:01):
of the reason that you gave earlier. They're saying, oh, yes,
Swiss National gave this thing money,but we gave different money to a political
party. Well, you know,it's great for you in Colorado to be
asking that, because of course,Colorado pioneered a lot of the left billionaire
politics, right, the four billionairesthat took your state from Republican to Democrat

(01:32:24):
around two thousand and four to twothousand and eight are a classic example of
what billionaires can do with good leftwing infrastructure. But the you know it's
there, just isn't any substitute forfighting back. But the consolation you should
have is most people actually agree mostlywith you. They the left has to

(01:32:46):
spend all this money and build thishuge infrastructure in order to hold it bay
the opinions of most Americans. Ihope that that's it. Scott Walter.
The book Arabella the Dark Oh excuseme, The Dark Money Network of Leftist
billionaire secretly transforming America. I puta link on my blog today if you
want to buy. It's not verylong. This is an easy read,

(01:33:09):
Scott, for something that is dealingwith such a dense topic, you did
a really good job making this accessible. Well. Thanks so much, well,
Scott Walter, thank you so muchfor your time. Keep doing what
you're doing, and the next timeyou want to write more about this,
let me know. Will do allright? Thanks Scott, You know it
is. It's just frustrating that theleft has done such an amazing job creating

(01:33:32):
this nefarious network, and the ironyof the whole thing is that the Republican
Party is still seen by some asthe party of the rich, which is
hilarious because the wealthiest of the wealthyoverwhelmingly donate to Democrats overwhelmingly. I heard

(01:33:53):
a theory once, and I can'tremember who said it, so I can't
credit it properly that the reason thatbillionaires give so much money to left wing
causes is that when the people riseup in revolt for whatever their financial situation
is, the billionaires will be ableto point to their actions and say,
no, no, no, I'mone of the good ones. Don't come
after me, don't try and takemy head off. I'm one of the

(01:34:15):
good ones. Even though many ofthem have made gobs and gobs and gobs
of money doing things, legal things, I'm not accusing them of doing anything
untoured. But and now they're tryingto destroy the systems that made them wealthy.
I talk about pulling up the ladderbehind you. I mean, that's
kind of a big deal. Thatis kind of a very very big deal.

(01:34:41):
Anyway, I got a bunch ofother stuff on the blog today that
we did not get to, includingtalked about that. Ooh, there's a
good story about Colorado. I'm notabout Colorado about overdoses nationwide. I don't
want people to get too excited,but last year our drug overdoses nationwide dipped

(01:35:02):
very, very slightly. Unfortunately inColorado they are still moving in the wrong
direction. We're number ten in thenation when it comes to the increase in
drug deaths last year. And justas a point of order, if you
haven't been to Mandy's blog dot com, that's mandy'sblog dot com, look for
today's blog. And I actually embeddedthe new documentary by Stephan Tubbs that I

(01:35:26):
talked to with him about the otherday on the blog today because he made
it. He he has said itis so important that people see this that
he didn't try to pursue a lucrativedistribution deal. He wanted people in Colorado
to see this. So he's madeit available for free. So you can
watch it on the blog today orwatch it at devastatedco dot com and that

(01:35:49):
is on the blog today as well. We also, okay, did the
P jeans? If you missed theP Jeans, you miss that missed it
because it was a good story.Tom Brady regrets Google. Oh, we're
gonna talk about Google a little bit. We'll do that closer to the election,
because Google just admitted that as theEuropean Union elections are coming up in

(01:36:13):
June, they have removed thirty fivethousand YouTube videos that were well, someone
decided maybe misinformation wish elsey. It'sgonna be interesting to see how that plays
out in our election cycle as well. So who's playing of the Day with
us Cooover? I supposely Ben isBen. Ben's probably doing Newsy things.

(01:36:35):
I'm ready to go. I'm readyto play the game. Yeah, go
see where that is. He's hearinghis name right now in the other room.
He's probably like, great, late, things are going well tomorrow on
the show, We're gonna talk.It's a Friday. We might do want
to ask me anything tomorrow. Notfeeling super uh you know, it's it's
been a pretty uh intense week.So maybe do a little less things and

(01:37:03):
stuff, but I do. Iam talking to someone with a video game
company tomorrow. There's interesting statistics onhow many people in our country play video
games every day. And if Iwas the sort of person to feel left
out, it might make me feelleft out, but I'm not really that
person generally speaking. If I'm leftout, I feel like that's the best

(01:37:23):
place for me to be, justout. I'm good with that. Here
comes bed lass or private eye.Good afternoon, Good afternoon, because now
it's time for the most exciting segmenton the radio of its guy woes of the day