12-29-25 FULL SHOW - Benjamin Allbright Fills In For Mandy

Benjamin Allbright fills in for Mandy!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Mandy Connall Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and Injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
No, it's Mandy Connell on ka n M got way.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
There and keeping no sad thing. Welcome to it, Bandy
Condall Show. Benjamin Olbright filling in for Mandy Connall again today.
Mandy should be back. That's the first thing. Ye're taking
a well deserved break, decompress, Know how it is Anthony

(00:40):
Rodriguez back.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
There behind me.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Taking yourself a well deserved break. How was your your holiday?
Your Christmas? Delightful?

Speaker 5 (00:48):
Glorious family time and turning the brain off outside of
Thursday and the Broncos got it done, they did.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
How hard did you did you celebrate that?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well?

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Specifically, I guess Saturday when it was official.

Speaker 5 (00:59):
Many of that many a beverage was had and definitely
the result I did not expect getting on Saturday was
a nice little bonus cherry on top.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Yeah. I didn't either. It was kind of funny. I mean,
the Texans jumped out to that lead early and I
was like, oh okay, and then the Chargers, in typical
Charger fashion, battle their way back only to Charger in
the end. Dicker the Kicker he's human. I was sitting
there next and next to a buddy mine I was asking.
I was like, all right, is this guy like does
he have a pub? And he owed money or something

(01:28):
like the kicker from the replacements because he missed some
pretty easy kicks in that one, and uh that was yeah. Anyway,
in Champs that is the Broncos are the AFC West Champs.
They will be uh continuing their quest to get the
number one overall seat in a first round by this
coming weekend and we'll see if they're able to do

(01:48):
it against the aforementioned Chargers. But this is going to
be not much of a sports show as Maddy Coddle show.
And again I'm Benjamin Albright filling in. I appreciate you
guys who were listening Friday, and we talked to a
little bit about fraud and I'm going to get more
into that at the bottom of this hour. We'll get
into a lot of the stuff that's going on in Minneapolis.
There's some you know, some stuff that's out there. This

(02:09):
YouTube thing that went viral and I want to get
into I want to get into that stuff. I get
a little bit of stuff on AI early on here,
some some tech stuff I want to get into. For
those of you who don't know, I come from a
very tech heavy background, and so some of these stories
that come out may may only interest me. We'll find out.
But I want to get some of you guys thoughts
on that. Kathy Walker, I think is going to join

(02:30):
us at one thirty because I want to talk about
I kind of want to talk about the state of
journalism today, and I think a lot of this is
brought on by the virality of the YouTube video that
went from Nick Shirley, you know, and I want to
get into some of the minutia here at how you know,
a lot of places there's been an erosion of trust

(02:51):
between the populace at large and establishment journalism and why
that is. I have some of my own theories. I've
talked about those before, but it'll be good to get
an actual journyst in here in Kathy Walker, who I
respect very much, and I think that can can provide
some answers to some of the questions that I may
have on that. What do you know? What are journalists
oh the populace at large when we think about biased

(03:14):
journalism things like that, And I have some perspectives on that.
I want to share with you, but I want to
get her perspective on that as well. Five six six
nine zero is the text line. You guys want to
get involved in conversation, I know, I said it. Open
up the phone lines on Friday. We will probably do
that in the back half of the show, so you
guys will have the opportunity to react. We've got New

(03:36):
Year's coming up here with Wednesday. You got, you know,
New Year's Plan? Do we make New Year's plans anymore?
Like it's it's I'm so I feel like I've gotten
so old and curmudgeonly that that I don't so much
do like I hate I hate being out there in
the crowds. I used to love it, you know, I
used to love that kind of thing, and anymore, I
just don't. I don't want to be out there in

(03:59):
the crowd. I don't want to fight the mad house.
I don't want to fight all the the drivers who've
been drinking and should have been taking an uber. I don't.
I don't want to go into an establishment and have
to deal with, you know, the attitudes of others and
all that kind of stuff. The spillover from the from
all that, and it's you know, most people out there,
I just want to have a good time. It seems

(04:21):
like anywhere you go nowadays, you get past a certain
point in the evening and somebody's got to ruin it
for everybody, you know. And I don't know. I don't
know if that's just me growing up and seeing it more.
I don't know if that's actually a thing. I don't
know if there's a you know, there's a confirmation bias
in there in that. But these days, I don't know.
I don't even like getting out for that kind of stuff,

(04:44):
you know, anymore. And I used to be that guy.
I used to be the the guy who enjoyed that
sort of revelry. I enjoyed those those kinds of things
getting out. I used to be a late night guy.
I mean I still I still have, to a degree,
but a lot of that is more insomnia than it
is anything else these days. And you know, I don't
I guess there comes a point where in the evening

(05:07):
you start looking around and you start saying, Okay, well
I should be getting on home because this situation offers
nothing in terms of continuing fun for the evening. But
offers all kinds of return in the negative department as
you start to look around and see people get more
and more intoxicated. Five six six nine zero. Again, he

(05:27):
is the the text line, and we're getting several texts
in about a bomb threat that's going on, an active
bomb threat that's going on right now. KOA. I'm sure
we'll update you here from the news department more during
the news break at the about of the hour, so
you want to stay tuned for that. And of course
if we need to break in with anything, I know

(05:48):
Kathy is here and we'll we'll break into whatever it
is that I'm doing for updated stuff on that. I
said I had several tech things I want to get
to and I apologie in advance if this kind of
stuff bores you, guys, it's it's stuff that fascinates me,
and I you know, I firmly have my eye on
a lot of what people call AI right now, which

(06:10):
isn't actually artificial intelligence at all, but just evolves search
engineing in a lot of cases. But the practices and
what is going on with a lot of this AI
stuff is starting to present more and more problems. There's
a guy who used to work for Pallenteer, which I

(06:33):
have my own problems with them, but that's that's an
entirely different story. Who is a politician now and he's
actually running as a Democrat and a Republican. But Alex Boris,
who is running for Congress in Manhattan's twelfth district, he
believes that a lot of these AI deep fakes that
are out there right now are a solvable problem with

(06:56):
a very simple solution. And he thinks we can bring back,
you know, a free decades old technique that we used
to use to help solve some of this AI deep
fake stuff. And so he's one of the most alarming
uses these days of what we're calling AI. And again
I'm gonna use that term, even though I think most

(07:17):
people misuse it. Is are these highly realistic deep fakes,
and we we nerd out about that kind of stuff.
Some of it's funny, some of it's fun to see.
You know, you got these deep fake videos of you know,
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln having a conversation or whatever, or

(07:37):
you know, things that are anachartistic that are kind of
fun or funny. But some of this stuff is an issue,
and it has become an issue. I think it's something
most people are missing, the missing the boat on and
rather than sitting here trying to educate or train people
to spot visual glitches in fake images or audio, which

(07:59):
is an incredibly difficult task, Boris said that policymakers in
the tech industry should lean on well established cryptographic approaches
similar to what made online banking possible back in the
nineteen nineties. Back in the if you remember, back in
the nineties, skeptics doubted that consumers would ever trust financial

(08:20):
transactions over the Internet. It was it was an ongoing,
raging debate, and late it was the hottest debate in
the late nineties that the Americans would ever use the
Internet for banking because you couldn't trust it. Well, then
we had the widespread adoption of hdps, and if you've
ever looked at a web browser type in the attP,
the ACPs used digital certificates and we could verify that

(08:45):
websites were authentic, and that basically changed it. That was
the trust mechanism that allowed people to get to the
point where online banking was something they were willing to adopt.
Solveable problem, and so Boras has pointed to a free,
open or metadata standard known as c TWOPA, which is
short for the Coalition of Content Providence with Authenticity and

(09:06):
that allows creators, platforms, whatever to attach tamper evident credentials
to files and the standard can cryptographically record whether a
piece of content was captured on a real device or
generator by AI and how it has been edited over time.
And so, in his view, the goals of the world where

(09:27):
most legitimate media carries this kind of providence data and
you should you see an image and it doesn't have
that kind of that certificate attached to it, and you
should be skeptical, right, it gives you something to base
that on. And so he said that thanks to the
shift from ADDOP to ACPs, consumers now instinctively know to
distrust a banking site that lacks a secure connection. If

(09:51):
you go to the banking site and only loads AHDP,
you'd instantly be suspect, and you know and go from there,
and you know. AI has become a central political and
even economic issue, with deep fakes emerging. His particular concern
for elections, online harassment, financial fraud, and Boris has said
some of the most damaging cases involved non consensual sexual images,

(10:14):
including those targeting school age girls, where a clearly labeled
fake can have real world consequences. So he's argued that
that state level laws banning deep fake pornography, like in
New York now risk being constrained by a new federal
push to pre up state AI rules, and his broader

(10:34):
AI agenda has already drawn industry fire. He's the same
guy who authored the Raise Act, which is a bill
that aims to impose safety and reporting requirements on a
small group of you know, so called frontier AI labs
that includes Meta, Google, OPENII, Anthropic who will be talking
about later at XAI, which was just signed to a

(10:56):
law last Friday. Now, the Raise Act requires those companies
to publish safety play, disclose critical safety incidents, and refrain
from releasing models that fail their own internal tests, which
you would think would be something that would be self evident,
but apparently is not. The measure passed to New York
State Assembly by Partisans support, but it's sort of triggered

(11:17):
a backlash from pro AI super PACs backed by some
of these prominent tech investors and executives which have pledged
tons of money to defeat Boris. And whether you like
Boris or don't like Boris is sort of irrelevant here
in terms of his election stuff. Boris, who had previously
worked as a data scientist and federal civilian business lead

(11:38):
at Pallanteer. He says his position is an anti industry
but rather an attempt to systemize protections that target large
AI labs have already endorsed in voluntary commitments with the
White House at the International AI Summits, and compliance with
the Rais Act for a company like Google or Meta
would amount to hiring one extra, you know, full time employee,

(12:00):
and you can you can check out. There was a
podcast he was on recently called The Odd Lots, and
you could delve deeper into that if you if you
really want to get into that. But he basically said
that cryptographic content authentication should anchor any policy response to
two deep fakes, and that technical labels are only one
piece of the puzzle. So you have to have laws
that explicitly ban harmful use such as deep fake child

(12:24):
sexual abuse material, and he says that those are those
are vital because Congress has yet to enact any comprehensive
federal standards. I'll get more into what that means, as
well as some other stuff that I want to get
into here on the on the technology front five six
six nine zeros. The text line, you guys want to
get involved in the conversation. You got any questions. We're

(12:46):
going to get into the Minneapolis fraud stuff at the
bottom of this hour. I just wanted to length of
your segment to be able to do that. I think
we got to hit a break here, but when we
come back, we'll get we're going all the way to
twenty before well, I never know, with the traffic and
the updates and everything else. I fill in for Mandy,
and I never know. Okay, we'll get into a little

(13:07):
bit more of that as we go along. And I
understand some of this tech stuff maybe maybe bores people,
or people are intimidated by looking into that because they
don't have a tech background, and so they don't understand
maybe some of this stuff. So I'm here to help
explain that I have a tech background. I worked tech

(13:29):
the United States military, I got out, I worked as
a civilian for the government in technology. I owned my
own technology company which I sold. I have a background
in this stuff, and I can help try to relate
any questions that you have to make it easier. The
gist of what he was trying to say is that

(13:50):
we need something to help identify things that are AI
generated and are false. And if you have been on
Facebook point in the last three months, you know Facebook
is borderline unusable at this point because all these AI
deep fake stories that come out. I was over the
course of the summer combating a lot of these. When

(14:10):
you had fake stories about the Walton Penner group or
Sean Payton, different Broncos players. There was a fake story
about Steve Atwater going to join the coaching staff. You know,
fake stories about the Walton Penner groups saying derogatory things
about Pride Week, or or you know, Sean Payton saying
woke or anti woke style. It's it was all nonsense.

(14:33):
All of it was completely made up, AI generated, absolute garbage.
And these are things that typically these stories are targeted
at conservatives. They want conservatives to spread them, so they
use headlines that are appealing to conservatives, because data shows

(14:54):
that conservatives are more willing to on social media pass
a long story without verifying them. That doesn't mean that
conservatives are better or worse or whatever. It just means
they're easier to target and these types of things. So
we've got data on that just because of the spread
off them. And so what you get is people designing

(15:16):
content to spin up conservatives, whether it's something they agree
with or something they disagree with. The design is to
try to spin them up because they are more heavily
invested places like Facebook, and it gets them to share
these things. And when you share them, then it or
interact with them, if you put a comment down below them,
it helps them and their algorithmic approach to spread, gain virality,

(15:39):
and then gain gain money off these things. And so
what Morris has tried to do is say we need
certificates on stories that the point to things that are
AI generated obviously deep fake. So there's a trust mechanism because,
and as we'll get into a little bit later on
some things, the true trust in American news and journalism

(16:03):
is so eroded these days that anymore it's tough and
you know, being here and seeing actual journalism being done
and people you know, instantly trying to discredit that. Well,
I don't trust the media, I don't trust this, I
don't trust that I trust some guy on YouTube. It's frustrating,

(16:24):
it's frustrating. For people that do this for a living,
that are just trying to bring you facts. Their whole
life revolves around the pursuit of truth and the American
public at large. And don't get me wrong, the journalism
field has plenty of blame to share in that specifically
an access journalism, but it's frustrating to see people actually
do the work and that get discarded. We're going to

(16:45):
talk about the Minneapolis thing, which is enjoying a moment
of rality right now, but it's funny to me because
they already prosecuted this case. It's not that it didn't
get covered, it's that it already happened like a year ago.
Amy Bach has already been found guilty of the fraud,
and so, you know, I'm going to get into all
that kind of stuff in the next segment, but it's

(17:06):
fascinating to me how we're getting a lot of stuff
right now saying well, the media won't cover this, when
I could literally pull up dozens and dozens of articles
from the New York Times or CNN or the Washington
Post or Fox News or whomever, from you know, last year,

(17:26):
from last October to March of this year. And so
it's fascinating to me how those types of things get
put out there. Well, the media is not covering this,
and now you've got the vice president and the president's
son weighing in on that. I'm like, well, wait a minute, okay,
I mean good that that fraud is being brought to line.
I'm absolutely for that. I'm all for citizens getting involved

(17:47):
in the process. I am absolutely for spotting and removing
any fraud. But this isn't even new. This isn't something
that wasn't covered. It was. I don't know if everybody
collectively forgot that didn't notice it at the time. Does
that speak to journalism now and an ineffectual this in

(18:11):
being able to market oneself in terms of getting the
story out there? Does it speak to the audience not
paying attention? I you know, I don't know the answers
to that, and we'll get into more of that here
in the next segments. I've got I've got a bunch
of that Minneapolis stuff I want to I want to
get to I got a story a little bit later on. Uh.
People who hate AI, which you know, again you can

(18:33):
lump me into that category, building things into their websites,
tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore the
robots stocks text file that for those of you who
don't know what that is, the robots dot text file is, uh,
you know, in a web page. It's it's sort of

(18:54):
it's it's a file on a website that it gives
instructions to web crawlers, which you know, search engines like
Google or whatever you use, uh, in order they send
these crawlers out there to comb pages and then they
take that deta they bring it back and then they
put your page into Google, you know that kind of thing.
And so there's constantly crawling the Internet to pick all
the new stuff up. And that's how these search engines work, right. Well,

(19:14):
websites have a little file in them called robots dot
t x T. It's a text file and it's sort
of it gives instructions to those crawlers what they're allowed
access to, what they're allowed to index, and it helps
it helps web pages managed server load, honestly. But what

(19:35):
you have is these new AI crawlers that are out
there are ignoring that, and so they're they're spamming these
web pages with millions of hits a year and making
the web you know, the web pages bogged down, making
them less usable, and and it's it's creating a problem.
And so you have uh, some enterprising people out there
that are creating things. Uh we're calling up tarpets here.

(20:00):
But if you want to picture like a venus fly
trap and it sort of catches these crawlers and puts
them in an endless loop where they can't get out,
they can't report back, they can't do this kind of stuff,
and created an anti spam defense. And so I'll get
into a little bit of that later as well. We
come back, we're gonna get into a lot of this
Minneapolis stuff. We're gonna get it into fraud. We're gonna
get into the reporting on this situation. You listen to

(20:21):
Mandy Cottle Show and Benjamin A'll Brighte filling it. We'll
be back after this. Appreciate you guys on the text
line five sixty six nine zero, everybody texting in, even
Will who has a personal problem with me and has
been texting for years making things up about me. Appreciate
you too. Will in Colorado sprints looking at some of

(20:41):
these texts here. Let's see Ben always a great change
of pace when you guest host really like your point
of view. That's from the seven to appreciate it' see
nine seven. The liberals get their fake news from the
mainstream media. See this is part of the problem, you know.
I again, and we'll get into that a little bit
when Kathy Walker joints the show here in about an hour.

(21:02):
I want to get into why there's such a trust erosion,
and I again, I've talked about this before and I
part of that is the journalism field is all access.
Journalism has has killed confidence people that cozy up to
people for access has killed some of the confidence in
you know, in the field. But my problem here is

(21:24):
that people are willing to trust YouTube guys with no oversight,
no editorial review, no nothing over people that actually have
to be accountable for what they say. And that's sort
of a problem for me. Uh said one nine. Where
were you when the fraud originally came out. I was
hosting a sports show. I haven't gotten to do this

(21:45):
very much until till recently. There's been an overwhelmingly positive
response to it, so they let me do it a
little bit more. And I appreciate that you guys have
been so supportive and allowing me to maybe spread my
wings a little bit and you know'll bring you a
different uh or at least my perspective on on some
of this stuff. Uh nin be four believe that, Uh,
well we'll get into that. Let's let's get into this

(22:07):
Minneapolis thing, because I really this is this is a
fascinating case study, I think in a lot of different
aspects of journalism. And for those of you who don't
know Nick Shirley, who claims to be an independent journalist,
which in the sense that he's not employed by anybody
would be true, Uh, he is not independent. Now Nick

(22:28):
is a very very right wing partisan hack. And I
say hack in a in the loving sense. I'm not
trying to disparage him, and I'm fine with that. I
am absolutely fine with uh biased and I say biased
journalism that has filtered through the lens of political identity.

Speaker 6 (22:46):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
You see it on on the right, you see it
on the left. I'm okay with that as long as
you know what that is up front, because I believe that, uh,
they have a single minded sort of goal of trying
to get at the other political party and in a
sense keep them honest. Now, some of them do it dishonestly,

(23:09):
but I'm okay with that. Like I'm okay in the
sense that I'm okay with knowing that Fox News filters
everything through a white or a right wing lens, and
MSNBC filters everything through a very left wing lens. I'm
okay with that, as long as you know that going in,
I'm okay with that. I don't stop to get news
from just one place, and maybe you guys do. I

(23:31):
don't know, but I tend to peruse the pantheon because I,
you know, I know that it's going to be filtered
to one lens, and so I need to kind of
get another perspective to round this out. I'm one of
those people that kind of goes down the rabbit hole
on some of these stories. But that's just that's just
who I am. I see a loose threat and I
start wanting to want to pull that. Nick Sureley, though,
who's a right wing influencer whatever you want to call it,

(23:54):
had a viral video alleging fraud in Minnesota against Daycares
with a history of violations, and this video has somehow
caught the attention of everybody. The Vice President has has
commented on it, Donald Trump Junior has commented on it.
People all over have commented on it, and for its part,

(24:15):
he is entertaining. It does and I'm glad that people
are taking it upon themselves to look into government fraud.
I am so here for that, and I'm here for this.
This kid doing it, I say, kid young man doing
it as well. And there are things in this video
that are absolutely hilarious. I cannot one of the businesses

(24:41):
that he goes to in Minnesota, You'll pardon me for laughing.
It's called it's supposed to be the Quality Learning Center, right,
except the banner over the door at this quality learning
center left out the end in learning, and so it's
a daycare. This is quality Leering center, which is hilarious,

(25:03):
objectively hilarious on multiple levels, least of all the quality
of education and the current climate. But anyway, and he
goes into a lot of stuff, confronts a lot of
people that very obviously don't want to talk about it,
and on that front, I applaud him. I am here

(25:27):
to applaud anybody that does real investigation or really tries
to get to the bottom of something. Now, I think
mister Shirley pretty obviously is after the governor of Minnesota.
They're a pretty easy punching target. Tim Walls, I think
everybody remembers his ill fated run as vice president, and

(25:48):
in that respect, I'm kind of like, Okay, this thing
sort of starts venturing into you're just out to get
Tim Walls rather than maybe get to the fraud. Maybe
maybe you could have framed a few things a little
different here, but that's that's nitpicking at this point. The
fact that he had it upon himself to go out
there and do this, I love that. My problem is
is that he skipped over several steps in this, and

(26:09):
I know that because I went out and did the
legwork in a matter of two hours last night. Quality
Learning Center a place where the doors were locked and
there was nobody present that it. Nick Sureley described as
a fraudulent business which may well have been taking fraudulent money,
had its doors locked because of complaints about it, and
it had been shut down for quite some Time's standing

(26:35):
there in front of it and jingling the door for
effect or whatever, I mean, that's funny, but I mean
it has had violate. You can look this up for yourself.
By the way, it has had violation after violate. It's
been on a licensing review since May ninth of twenty
twenty two. It had more than twenty five violations, ranging

(26:56):
from not complying with first training CPR requirements staff to
child RACI not being maintained, which by the way, suggested
they were short on staff and not children, not having
a policy to prevent and respond to allergies and crib mattresses,
and not meeting safety requirements. The space was not clean,
hazardous objects that children were found, repeated violations that continued

(27:17):
to come up in subsequent conditional license reviews. They had
a license review at August and December of that year
March of twenty twenty three, and it had had violation
after violation after violation in twenty three, twenty four to
twenty five. The most recent licensing review from this past
June had ten violations. So the fact that this place

(27:41):
was still in business up until a few months ago
is in and of itself suspect. And that's where if
I were Tock Sureley, That's where I would have put
my focus a little bit more rather than there's nobody
home when you tried to jingle the door. I think
you could have gone more in depth on that and
I think people that that were watching that felt that,
you know, this was just taking money from the gun.
It wasn't there. This place is, I mean, this place

(28:03):
has been whether or not it's taking fraudulent money from
the government, and if it is, they need to get
that back. This place was horrible to be given. What
kind of daycare? What kind of daycare stays in business
after four years of dozens of repeated violations. The other
part of this is is you've got a lot of

(28:24):
politicians out there saying, or people out they're saying right
now that you know, he's doing journalism that nobody else
would do. And that part I'm kind of like, well,
wait a minute, this is this is weird. Maybe there
are accusations in there that go beyond the previous coverage,

(28:46):
but I can pull up dozens of articles showing that
this was covered for years. As a matter of fact,
the the person who defrauded the Defeating our futures, person
who defrauded two hundred and fifty million dollars from the

(29:06):
federal meals program was charged back in September of twenty
twenty two, over three years ago. And you've got I'm
looking at this, you've got CNN, New York Times, Fox
News One America, You've got all kinds of coverage on this,
and so I want to get more into this week

(29:28):
come back, because if there is real, if there he
is really and now it's being alleged, there's nine billion
dollars worth of fraudy, if there really is this kind
of fraud, send him in. We got to get we
got to get this stuff. But the problem with the
investigation up front here is is head scratching to me,
and I'm still trying to wrap my head around how
something that happened years ago is going viral is new.
Now we'll get bored to that. We come back, Maddy

(29:49):
Conna sho Kew. I want to get to some of
your texts five six six Nimes here, you guys want
to get involved in conversation three oh three, Ben, that's hilarious.
No doubt there is fraud. But I think he did
a terrible job. I think he's referring to Nick Shirley,
the guy who did this. He should have used a
hidden camera and not have two guys dressed like militia
going door to door. I mean, most people would be
hesitant to opening the door to someone who's holding a camera,

(30:09):
two guys dressed like ice. Also, they didn't really post
their sources. They were just using screenshots that guy's spreadsheet.
Even though he was creating exposure of this fraud, it
sort of seems more like what right ring trolling the
way he went about it, that was sort of my problem.
I mean, there's an opportunity here for him to really
get some stuff. But out on one side he's got
the other guy on the video's name Escape Smith, the
moment at Quebec, and he's talking about well, my sources

(30:32):
have said, but they don't provide anything to back that up.
That's an anecdotal claim from somebody, which is the equivalent
of trust me, bro. And the thing about it is
is I believe they're onto something here. I believe there
is probably more fraud here. I mean, you could go
back and look, you know, at this stuff, and I
will tell you. Tim Walls was warned about the Housing

(31:00):
Stabilization Services program. It's funded by Medicaid. He was warned
about He was worried about that a while back. In fact,
they shut it down in October. The federal investigators said
it was extremely vulnerable to fraud. When they looked at
that and this isn't the first thing. And I you know,
whatever your opinion of Tim Walls is, and I'm you know,
I think he's a bit of a goofball, But like,

(31:23):
whatever your opinion to Tim Walls is. US attorney Joe
Thompson has come out and said he believes the total
amount defrauded from fourteen medicaid programs in Minnesota could surpass
nine billion. Now we're tossing around that nine billion numbers.
If it's fact, that's what they believe, the ceiling could
be right, So it's possible.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
We know of.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
Three hundred and fifty million dollars in fraud. Most of
it was tied to the Feeding our Future School meal scandal,
which was not which was Amy Bach, and it was
the one who who had founded that and did the defrauding.
If you read up on that, I mean, it was
absurd what they were. They were not even trying to
high they were submitting receipts for feeding like five thousand

(32:03):
kids a day in these meals. And then finally people
started being like, Okay, this is an absurd amount of
children that you're you know, you're claiming you're feeding here
and they would submit fake signature sheets and all that
kind of stuff. And this is why in some cases
government needs to be bureaucratic, because if you're going to
do stuff like this, and again I think there are better,

(32:23):
more efficient ways to do it, but if you're going
to do stuff like this, you have to have a
check in balast to make sure people aren't scamming it.
And these people clearly worth three hundred and fifty million
dollars in fraud on that alone, and said to get
back to Nick surely on this. Like I like the
fact that this is going on. I'm a I am
in a sense a fan of citizen journalism. My problem,

(32:43):
or my my problem with citizen journalism is there's no
accountability for the things you get wrong. There's no accountability,
no fact check, no nothing. It's just some person purporting
something and then you just kind of either have to
trust them on it or you don't. And to me,
it's a it's a fascinating dichotomy when you compare the

(33:06):
trust that that gets versus for instance, and we'll use
the term mainstream media here, but I would rather use
established media. If you establishment media, which has editorial process,
a review board, people you are accountable to and if
you get it wrong, you're going to get fired. You're
going to there's any there is incentive to be fact based.

(33:31):
I don't mind coming out it through a bias lens.
I don't mind Fox News, I don't mind MSNBC. I
don't mind that. As long as your responsibility is to
the facts, I don't care the lens that you put
it through. I'll be able to figure that out when I, uh,
when I get there, I know what you are when
I get there to look at your at your stuff.
That to me and I want to ask Kathy Walker

(33:52):
this question. I will a bottom the next hour or
bottom of this coming hour. Excuse me, what is the
journalist's responsibility to the audience, to the public, Because I
think the journalist responsibility to just to facts, whereas I
get told a lot that the responsibility is to fairness.
And I don't believe a journalist is required to be fair.

(34:14):
For instance, if you're doing a report on child molestation,
I don't need to give equal column time or equal
camera time to child molesters to get a balanced perspective.
That's fairness. I don't think you need to. I don't
think you give responsibility to that. I think you give
responsibility to the facts, and so I want to get
Kathy Walker, you know, a long time, actual, credentialed and

(34:35):
credible journalist, and we'll do that at the bottom of
the hour her thoughts on that. As far as fraud,
I applaud Nick Shirley for being out forefront and the
virality of this moment in whatever it is that he's
doing here, even if he's covering a year's old story
and maybe scratching some new ground. I hope that there's
I hope there's not fraud, but I hope that if
there is fraud, that this report helps scratch new ground

(34:56):
on it. But for whatever reason, this is going viral now,
even though you know, the state of Minnesota's convicted over
fifty people so far in the past few years on this.
So the idea that the media isn't covering it or
the government isn't doing anything about it, I'm like, well,

(35:17):
that's that's not exactly true. That you know, maybe not
doing enough. If you want to say not doing enough, Hey,
I'm here for that conversation. Sure as heck, looks like
they're not doing enough. There's some reporting out there that
half of the eighteen billion dollars in federal funds for
Minnesota run programs may have been defrauded. And it's going

(35:39):
to be it's going to be interesting to see, you know,
what the numbers are on this when it all comes out.
Assistant US Attorney Joe Thompson was the one who put
out that at nine billion number, and so we'll see,
we'll see how that goes. I am here for eliminating fraud.
Fraud is fraud across party lines. If it fraud happening,
it doesn't matter what you identify as your tax is
paying for it. So let's get this stuff saltd. We

(36:03):
got to take a break. We'll be back.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
The Mandy Connall Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and Injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
No, it's Mandy connellyn on KOA AM ninety four one m.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
Song got way study can the nicety.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Three many donald you sad thing?

Speaker 3 (36:31):
The one said I hear that I get jealous that
I don't have my own theme music. I'm m used
with Mandy Connall. She has her own theme music, her
own theme song song. It is a voice you're hearing?
Is is Kathy Walker joining us here, I want to
talk about the state of journalism. I'm Benjamin Albart filling
in for Mandy Coddle here on KOA. We got a
lot of good texts coming in at five six six
nine zero, and I do want to get into some
of that stuff here in just a little bit. But

(36:53):
right now I wanted to talk you know, Casy. I've
had a lot of questions come up about this. Is
this now this YouTuber Nick surely went out there and
did uh an expose I guess on the possibility of
fraud existing at certain levels in Minnesota. Now, part of
this bothered me because a lot of this is already well,
it's been adjudicated. You know, there's they've charged with fifty

(37:14):
five fifty to fifty five people are already in prison,
fibre or and trial, you know, as far as that goes.
The ringleader, Amy bach is is you know jail Dan
find And I guess I kind of want to get
into the state of journalism a little bit. You are
a journalist by trade and training, yes, correct, And I
am not I you know, I come from a tech background.
I have no no training in journalism whatsoever. I'm a

(37:36):
I'm an opinion Dorc on the radio, you know, as
far as that stuff goes. But I I it fascinates
me because the state of journalism today from the audience perspective,
seems to be at a low. It seems to be
that there is so much less trust in from the
audience tour journalists than at any point that I certainly remember,

(37:58):
and I'm sure we could go. I can figure out
whether it's been at a lower state, you know, in
the last one hundred years or whatever.

Speaker 4 (38:05):
It's very low.

Speaker 6 (38:06):
And it concerns me as someone who's trained as a
journalist that people aren't really believing what I view to
be vetted sources, and that anybody with a TikTok or
an Instagram is suddenly someone they believe more than someone
who actually has to be accountable for the stories they.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Published well right, And I think I think part of
that is that the audience doesn't recognize that there is
an accountability through a lot of you know, to journal
they do have to go in front of this thing.
And even me, as and I call myself an opinion Dorc,
I still have to be accountable for the things I
say as a Broncos insider on which I hate that term,
but I still have to be accountable for those things
I say, and I think there is I think people

(38:45):
don't recognize that. And judging by the text line here,
I will say that there are a lot of people
that feel like that the editorial process behind that is biased.
In a lot of cases, they feel like the people
at Fox are not going to screen out right wing stuff.
The people at the see you're only going to screen
things left wing, you know, things like that. They feel
like that the editorial process behind that is biased.

Speaker 6 (39:06):
And I guess I just have seen the deterioration of
editorial process over the years within the ranks of journalism,
and go man, most journalists are moving so quickly. There's
no time for talking points. I mean, no one's We're
not having lunch with people just to get their opinions
on what we should be covering.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
Like that's not happening anymore.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
Is part of that? Okay, Well, it's part of the
because I've positive or my hypothesis is that part of
the erosion of trust has been the advancement of access journalism. Right,
we have so much and I don't get me wrong,
I am the guiltiest of the guilty when it comes
to access journalism, because that's that's what I need. In
order to do what I do. I have to talk
to people and basically get what they say and then

(39:51):
relay it almost in a way anonymously from the sports perspective.
And I do that in sports. But if I were
in politics or something, I don't believe I could do that,
Like ethically, I would that would be a problem. And
yet it feels like we get a lot of that
out there today. People are hired because they worked in
an administration. They're hired because of who they know, and
those people are set front on camera and we view

(40:12):
these opinion shows which are again basically this on TV
versus actual journalism.

Speaker 6 (40:19):
Right, And I guess, just having worked in local journalism
my entire career, I am not responsible or can't shed
light on what someone inside the Washington DC Beltway says
on a day and day out basis based on who
they know or don't know. It's my job to hold

(40:39):
people here in Colorado accountable, and so it's I'm hopeful
that the people I know and talk to on a
routine basis that people understand that that's my area of expertise.
So I think that's what gets really scary about listening
to different journalists.

Speaker 4 (40:55):
It's like, well, who do they know? What do they know?

Speaker 6 (40:58):
What do they have the capability and the access to
tell you about. It's why KOA has a network affiliation
both with Fox and with ABC News. We do not
have an affiliation with AP News, and that's our choice.

Speaker 4 (41:18):
We're making that.

Speaker 6 (41:18):
Choice to try and give people a shot at getting
some different perspectives, but that that perspective isn't always driven
by just one voice.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
There's a great quote it's often attributed to George Orwello,
though it probably was never said by him, and that
is the journalism is printing what someone else does not
want printed. Everything else's public relations, right. I love that,
But it suggests that the true journalism uncovers uncomfortable truths
or inconvenient facts. And I feel like, and I said
this earlier, like I don't have a problem with Fox
or MSNBC. I don't have a problem with them being

(41:51):
left or right wing biased because I believe that they're
trying to find the things on the other side and
hold them accountable. And as long as we have systems
that do both, will be okay. I said earlier that
I believe is in my opinion that the journalist has
a responsibility to the facts, not necessarily to fairness. And

(42:11):
my example would be, if you were doing a story
on sexual predators, you don't have to devote half the
airtime to giving the sexual predators perspective on things which
would be fair, right correct? You have responsibility to the facts.
Would Do you agree with that or disagree with that?

Speaker 6 (42:24):
I very much agree with that, especially in a broadcast
environment where my time is very limited to tell you
a story. It may be thirty seconds or less, and
so the only latitude I have in my opinion is
to share facts as I know them, And I would
also say this not to repeat lies as I know them.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
Well right, yes, And so in that vein, what is
your biggest frustration with the state of journalism today? Because
it feels like that obviously with addition to the erosion
of trust on the audience side, to me, it feels
like that journalists are more beholden to the corporate side
than ever before. There is a pressure to We've got

(43:07):
to monetize this. We got to find a way to
make money on this. We have to find way, if
this isn't making money, then what are we doing covering
it is losing money? And so what we wind up with,
and maybe not necessarily here, but in general, is a
pivot towards micro content, clickbaity headline type stuff that doesn't
necessarily delve into holding people accountable. It's not profitable to
do that.

Speaker 6 (43:28):
And I would say the metrics that you're talking about
are so interesting because I guess my whole career I've
been accused of you're only covering that story.

Speaker 4 (43:37):
Because it makes you money, you know, And I'm.

Speaker 6 (43:39):
Like, there is no direct correlation between the stories that
make us money versus the stories that don't. Maybe digital
in the example you just gave, changes that to some degree,
but I still think we're in the business of reputation reliability.
The reason that we're here on a week in which
nobody wants to work is that we believe KOA is

(44:02):
a valuable resource for our community and the reliability of
being here on a quiet week is important. We've seen
the Marshall fire happen in our Denver metro area in
this particular week. You know, there's a reason why you
and I are sitting here and on some level that reliability.

Speaker 4 (44:22):
Is very, very very important. May mean that doesn't answer your.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Question, no, but I mean it's it.

Speaker 4 (44:27):
But it's not about making money.

Speaker 6 (44:29):
It's about being a reliable, trusted, local.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
Vetted Would you say.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
You know, I mean I have to say. The popular
quote is all politics is local. But then when you
say that all news is local, all journalism is local.

Speaker 6 (44:44):
I mean I think it should be. I think we
should care about our community. I mean, it's not that
to the detriment of caring about our country.

Speaker 4 (44:51):
It's not that.

Speaker 6 (44:51):
But it's like, wow, if you haven't been paying attention
to local politics from everything from your tax valuation on
your house to you know, why they want to change
a street near my house to have no traffic on it,
and as a neighbor, I'm going, oh my god, everyone's
going to be parking in my driveway, you know, like
that's what's going to happen. You know, that's part of

(45:13):
our responsibility is being good informed citizens.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
I mean that more in the and bringing it full circle.
I guess here back to Nick Shirley, who did this
video on YouTube that's racked up over a million views
in three days. It is in a sense he is
local community where you know, and we have some of that.
We've seen some of that, for better or worse. Here
in Colorado. We have some quality. We have some that
you know, you kind of raise an eyebrow and look

(45:37):
at funny. There was the controversy with the do Better
Denver thing, who well that person continues to I know
who they are, but it continues to try to remain anonymous,
you know, on those kinds of things there are. To me,
I feel like that there's a mechanism there where people
want to get involved and improve things in the community.
But how how do we balance that with what is

(45:57):
journalism versus what is opinion? And let me be very clear,
what I do is opinion.

Speaker 6 (46:02):
Right, and I think the devil is in the detail spend.

Speaker 4 (46:05):
That's always it.

Speaker 6 (46:06):
I wish more journalists had a background in math and
finance and reading budgets and documents and doing the math associated.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Catching this stuff, not having education to be able to
do it.

Speaker 6 (46:21):
Yes, I mean, when we even look at this Minnesota case,
Newsweek could not find any disbursements to this particular group
right that you know, the journalist the YouTuber was standing
outside and saying, this building's practically empty.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
And they're getting millions of dollars.

Speaker 6 (46:40):
Well, Newsweek couldn't find that disbursements had been made to
this particular organization. So it's, you know, the devil is
in the details. Can you find the check and the chechbook?
Can you find the disbursement and can't? Does that line
up with what is or is not happening at a

(47:03):
viewpoint at a just a place.

Speaker 4 (47:04):
Where you're point a camera.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
Okay, well let's go further with that. Then as we
look at that, is that a problem of education on
the journalist side and not being able to find it?
Or is it a problem of a lack of government transparency,
transparency and being able to show the people this is
where your money is going.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
Maybe it's all of the above.

Speaker 6 (47:25):
I think it's the lack of ability of people to
ask the right questions.

Speaker 4 (47:30):
Isn't that what it's really about?

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Ben?

Speaker 6 (47:31):
You have to ask the right question in order to
get the right answer. There have been many times in
my journalistic career where I was poking around the right
question but just flat out did not ask the right question,
and so therefore I didn't get the answer that in
my heart of hearts kind of knew. Now I knew
that there had to be something suspicious about this, and

(47:54):
I kept asking questions, but I either didn't ask the
right person or didn't ask the right question, request the
correct document through a Quora release that every citizen has
the right to do well.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
And that's and that's the thing I think a lot
of people. I think a lot of people. And I
say this from the limited investigative stuff that I've ever done,
which is stuff to satisfy my own curiosity or you know,
in the past where there was a time five six
years ago where people came after me and they were like,
this guy has made up everything about his life, and

(48:25):
so that I had to post all these records about
my past, you know, and I'm like, I don't know
where you guys are coming from, but here, here's my
military records or education all that kind of stuff. I
think people don't know where to look. Because the people
that were accusing me of that were like, I can't
find this stuff, therefore it must not exist. And I'm like,
you're you're laboring under a false supposition there maybe you
don't know where to find.

Speaker 6 (48:43):
It correct And it's the knowing where to ask and
just because you or I may not choose to put
every minor detail about her life or even a major
one on a LinkedIn page or something to that effect.
Doesn't mean it doesn't exist or it is not true.

Speaker 3 (48:59):
Is that a failing on the education system to give
aspiring journalists the tools to be able to find those things,
or is that the convoluted process by which you have to,
you know, ease the process to convoluted for the layman
to be able to do that.

Speaker 6 (49:17):
It's the tools and the time. You know, if I
really sit here and be honest, you know, KOA has
influence in twenty of Colorado sixty four counties.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
Let's just start there. Maybe you know that.

Speaker 6 (49:33):
I don't have the time to go to twenty county
commissioners meetings monthly. I can't then cover how many multitude
of cities within those twenty counties, how many fire districts
within those countries.

Speaker 4 (49:48):
I mean, it just goes on and on and on.

Speaker 6 (49:50):
I laugh because I probably do have every coroner's email
among those twenty counties, right and you know, so it's
hilarious to me that you know, I probably know the
name of your coroner, but I may not know the
name of your county.

Speaker 4 (50:02):
Commissioners.

Speaker 6 (50:04):
Does that make me a bad journalist or a good
journalist because I don't have the time.

Speaker 4 (50:08):
To do all that.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
No, But it goes back to my other point. If
it's not profitable, if we're not able to hire enough
people to be able to do that, doesn't that then
harken back to a little bit less here because of
what we do does not require clicks. There's not a
measurable number of clicks, for instance, for a print based
journalist thing. But speaking to print based and having been
involved in print based publications before, I will say that

(50:30):
there is something to that they do tailor to this,
the search engines, they do tailor to what is going
to drive clicks, and so stories get left behind on
that kind of stuff. It's interesting to me that a
lot of this reporting in Minnesota and the fraud with
feed our futures, I mean, she was convicted in twenty
twenty two, right, this is a long time ago for
a lot of this stuff. Charge in twenty two, those

(50:51):
stories have been out there forever, generated no outrage whatsoever
on those stories, and there were headlines. There were headlines
on CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, Won America.
I mean it was all. So it's both both aisles
that this was out there, generated no outrage, and now
all of a sudden, Now is that on the YouTuber's presence?
Is it on the way that he packaged that thing
for virality? Is it? And I guess I'm I'm fascinated

(51:13):
by the minutia of this into how in this moment
that went viral when this is something that's been out
there for quite some time.

Speaker 6 (51:20):
And I think that is all about the packaging. It's
it's it is a lot of what drives television, news,
print journalism, and maybe to some degree, radio news. You know,
what's your candy for you to listen to? What do
you like to listen to, versus what you find harsh?

Speaker 3 (51:39):
Yeah, And it's not like clickbaiting is new. I mean,
in the eighteen hundreds, Headlight, you know, the headliner rattling
the coming year, all about it, the scandalous Installationi's headlines
were while they sold nickel copy, you know, newsprint sheets
and things like that back in the day. So it's
not like that's a new premise, but his established journalism,
establishment journalism lost the plot in being able to package

(52:00):
and stories like this in a manner that's going to
get through to the collective psyche of the audience.

Speaker 4 (52:06):
Wow, that is the question. Ben.

Speaker 6 (52:10):
Maybe you're right, and it pains me to say that,
but that is the question. How do we get legit
stories in front of people in a way in which
they find them consumable?

Speaker 3 (52:23):
And that is again I see threads and I want
to pull on. I thank you for humoring me, Kathy Walker,
a personal hero of mine in terms of what you do.
I love your own integrity in this business stance, head
and shoulders above everything, and so I wanted to have
you in here to maybe answer some of these questions
and provide a little background for my own edification, and
hopefully the listeners got little some out of it.

Speaker 6 (52:44):
I think it's just good to keep asking the questions.
I don't think the answers are as evident, but I
think anytime that you're analytic about what you consume in
terms of media, that's a good thing.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
Well, good advice, sage, advice from someone who has seen
it and heard it. Kathy Walker. I appreciate you, and
we'll be listening for your bottom of the hour news
break right here as always on KOA five six six
nine zero is the text line you guys want to
get involved in the conversation. A lot of great texts
coming in. Let's see here. There's one that I want
to get to because several of you have texted in

(53:18):
that somehow MSNBC is saying that the Somali fraud is
made up, which is also nonsense. So if that's on MSNBC,
if somebody could link me to that or whatever, I
am absolutely happy to make fun of them for whatever
that is. It's not made up. I mean, there have
already been fifty five people charged, fifty prosecuted in this.

(53:39):
So the idea that it's made up is now the
number may be made up, that nine billion number, which
is a potential ceiling, but the idea that that's made
up is is frankly ludicrous. So five six six nine
zero three h three. Media line about Biden for four
years those zero trust, Hey, you know what that's that
is a fair That is a fair assessment. There was

(54:00):
I don't know that the media lied per se, but
they specifically did not cover what looked like especially in
those final two years, because when he got into office,
you know, he was he was still lucid, but those
final two years where uh, that administration began hiding him
a little bit. And then, of course I think all
of America saw it in the debate against Donald Trump

(54:21):
there and you know, Trump's not a not exactly a
world class debater, but uh, you see, you could see
that Joe Biden was clearly clearly not didn't have a fastball,
might not have had much of a change up anymore either,
and and that debate caused ultimately him to get pushed out.
And then they rolled out you know, Kamala Harris and

(54:42):
all that and that we all saw how that went.
But the the yeah, there is as far as an
erosion of trust, uh, the media not covering what appeared
to be Joe Biden. I don't say losing his faculties
because I'm not sure that's exactly accurate, but certainly the
degrad of his capabilities and not covering that, you have

(55:03):
a point, You have an absolute point there. So you know,
I agree. I've talked about the erosion of trust from
the access journalism side, and I wonder if the lack
of coverage on that had to do with access that
people had and not covering that scarec being afraid that
they would lose access when it comes to that kind

(55:23):
of stuff. Three or three. So the nine billion dollars
stolen all ended in twenty two, That makes no sense. No,
that's not the claim. We don't know that nine billion
dollars was stolen, you know the what's his face? The
assistant US Attorney Joe Thompson said, what was it on
the eighteenth that he believes the total amount could be

(55:47):
nine billion. They don't have a full accounting for that yet,
So that number that we're working with is a hypothetical ceiling.
We do know that, you know, five hundred million dollars
of fraud was caught and adjudicated in. The ring leader
of that was a woman named Amy Bach. It's a
I M E E B O c K. You can
look that up. You guys can google that. Look that up.

(56:09):
She was, uh, the ring leader in that. So I
want to get to more into this because it seems
to be something that you guys are on about. Certainly,
we've got another one here, the three or three and
Mandy show. When democrats are caught with corruption, everybody skips
on by. Well, we've been doing this the whole show, Bud.
We're not skipping on by it at all. Then it
doesn't matter if it's Democrat, Republican or independent. I'm gonna
cover it here. So I do have some AI stuff

(56:31):
I want to get to. We'll get to that in
the third hour. I want to get back to more
of this this this fraud, corruption, and specifically the state
of journalism with regard to this Minneapolis situation. We got
to hit a break. We'll be back on KWA five
six six, nine zeros of text on. A lot of
great texts coming in. I'm gonna get to those here
in just a second. We may open up the phone
lines a little bit too here in the two o'clock hour.
If you guys want to get involved in the conversation,

(56:52):
let me know what you think we should, if we
should or not. Don't think I want to get to
on this again. We'll get back to this Minnesota stuff.
I was. I was talking with Kathy during the break,
and I appreciate Kathy Walker coming in and being able
to talk about that. She was trained in journalism, she
was school for that. She's been a journalist her whole life,
and I think having that perspective is somebody who's been

(57:13):
in the field that long is inherently valuable. That's not
what I am. I am not a journalist, even on
the sports side, which is probably where men of you
know me from. I have no training in journalism whatsoever,
and I never have. I just I see loose threads
and I want to pick out them. I see something
done that up to me, I want to pick out
it a little bit, and I guess that makes me

(57:34):
a decent investigator when it comes to that. But I
have no training in journalism, and so trying to navigate
that in these days is surely fascinating. You look at
the history Gallop Pew. They've got some interesting polling out
there about the state of journalism. You can look in
the audience confidence in journalism was at at all time

(57:57):
high between nineteen seventy five and nineteen seventy six, was
about a seventy five percent confidence. And if you had
to guess where that number is today, I venture you
probably wouldn't guess low enough. It's at twenty eight. It had.
Journalism in and of itself has been on a steady
decline in terms of consumer confidence basically since nineteen seventy

(58:20):
six seventy eight, somewhere in there, and it had a
brief resurgence in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, and the coverage
of that election and then that cycle it had a
brief resurgence there where it went back up and had
a high, it had a multi decade high, and then
it went right back down again. But it fent almost

(58:41):
a straight line down outside of that outlier for quite
some time. And the reasons for that, I, you know,
I tend to disagree with some of these text line
things for the reasons for that, but I certainly want
to hear your reasons for that. We were talking about
the Minnesota situation, and it's fascinating because people are like, well,

(59:01):
we need YouTubers like Nick Shirtley to point this stuff out.
The mainstream media won't cover it. The whole reason this
stuff came out is because local journalism and mainstream media
covered it. Back in twenty nineteen. You could go, you
can go look on this guy at this stuff. It's
it's all out there. It's it's been out there for
a while. At amy Bach, like I said, charged in

(59:24):
twenty twenty two, she's the ringleader behind you know, all
this other stuff. I don't know if the current surge
has something to do with the Somalian stuff that gets
tagged to it. But Amy Bach was the was the
ringleader of the Feeding our futures, which is dissolved now,
and she's obviously been convicted along with something like forty
eight other co conspirators. But you know, I don't know,

(59:48):
I don't know some of the answers behind some of
that stuff, but it certainly intrigues me from that point
of view, and I think I don't know if fraud
is suddenly topical. I don't know if this is just
something to get at politically or whatever. I was talking
with Kathy during the break and one of my one

(01:00:10):
of the lines I've used over the years that I
that I hate has become this way, but it is
sort of a maximum that's true, is that you know,
the politicians won when they convinced the public that their
watchdogs were the bad guy. And really that's a reference
to media. So many people are vitriolic towards what we
call mainstream establishment media today, claiming that you know, they

(01:00:33):
lie or this, that and the other. And and by
the way, for the texture that sent me that thing,
if you could send me the link, I really want
to see that where MSNBC is saying this thing is
made up because I really want to see that that
would be a lie. But in a lot of cases
where I see people accusing the media of lying, and
then you go look at the story and I'm like, well,
the media isn't lying here. They're just telling you something

(01:00:55):
you don't want to hear. Just because somebody is telling
you something you don't want to hear doesn't mean it's
not true true. You know, I'm sure there are plenty
of people that didn't want to hear that Joe Biden's
mental faculties were in decline. Doesn't mean it wasn't true.
I'm sure there are people that don't want to hear
that Donald Trump is selling pardons and using his crypto

(01:01:17):
venture to do it. Just because you don't want to
hear it doesn't mean it's not true. And so I
think that there are I think that there is you know,
a lot of I don't want to hear that, so
I'm going to pretend it's not true. And I think
that's part of the problem. You know, political parties are
inherently corrupt. The idea behind a political party is is

(01:01:40):
that it is a group of people that make it
easier to keep power and accumulate power, and so political parties,
by their very definition of their very nature, are designed
to be inherently dishonest in an attempt to cling to
and keep power. And so that's you know, I have

(01:02:02):
problems with that. I've got problems with this, with the
finances and the money that we allow on politics and
especially dark money. You know, maybe, and hopefully, and I
am not a populist by any means, but maybe there
can be some positivity coming out for the populace surge
over the last twenty years in America that that can
demand more transparency both in government and in election finance

(01:02:26):
and those kinds of things. I think we as a
public deserve it. I think we as the public it
deserves to know where that money is coming from, how
it's being spent, and you know that that goes to
not just elections, that goes to governmental spending. And if
these disbursements are being made in Minnesota, maybe there needs
to be a greater transparency in Minnesota on so that

(01:02:50):
people can see where their tax money is going. I
think they deserve that, and so you know, that's where
we That's where I stand on five six six nine
zero is the text line. Somebody from the three or
three says, you do lie and you should feel guilt
for it. I don't, and I don't because I don't.

(01:03:10):
So you fabricating out of thin air that I do
won't suddenly mean that I do. Let's see here the
three or three. The media doesn't lie. They just don't
tell the truth that actually might be smarter than you
planned for it to be, because there's a difference between
truth and fact. I think that journalism owes you the facts.

(01:03:31):
I don't think they owe you the truth. I think
they owe you the facts and that you determine the truth.
But that's philosophical for me, and that's you know, that's
where you go. Your opinion is not fact. I never
claimed that it was. Facts are facts. My opinion is not.
And that's that's where we go. Let's see Knights of it, Oh, Mandy.
But who is today, Benjamin? I am curious why there's

(01:03:54):
not a whole lot of reporting on why the dark
Horse is being closed and torn down and the People's
Republic of Bolder. For what I've heard, there's some bogus
shenanigans regarding a town ordinance that is making them have
to be torn down instead of giving the option of
time to move an iconic business. Thanks for filling in today.
I don't know anything about that, but I tell you what,
if you want to text me anything you've got on that.

(01:04:14):
What is a business called the dark Horse? I'll look
into it. I'm always certainly interested in things like that,
and I don't I don't know anything about that personally,
but I would love to educate myself, and I am
not ashamed to say that I I don't know. And
so we'll go from there. Seven two oh. People like
Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow is viewing their hate for

(01:04:35):
Trump daily really should really show those outlets biased. Well,
that's that's sort of what I was getting at earlier
with with with Kathy, is that Joy Reid specifically, although
Rachel Maddow kind of straddles both fences, Joy Reid is
not a journalist. She's a talk show personality. And so

(01:04:56):
you know, until we as a public stop watching talk shows,
until we stop spreading them virally, those will continue to
dominate those kinds of things, and that kind of stuff
will be out there. You have to this is the
attention economy. Your attention is currency. Your click, your attention.
The time you spend on things is currency. The time

(01:05:17):
you spend listening to the show is a currency. And
if you want things to change, you have to stop
spending your currency, whether that's time or money, on those
kinds of things. If you don't like something that's on TV,
spending an hour ranting about it on social media only
gives it more attention. The only way to put out

(01:05:42):
the fire in those in those type situations is to
remove the oxygen from it. It's like I was talking
about earlier on Facebook and how Facebook is completely unusable
now because you get all these AI generated nonsensical things
out there. And the problem is our first instinct, and
that's the people creating these things relied on, is to
comment below it, telling everybody it's fake. Well, when you

(01:06:03):
do that, it adds an interaction to it and creates it,
pushes it up in the algorithm. The only way to
stop these things is to take the oxygen away from
the fire. Stop giving it attention, quit talking about it,
quite watching it, quit commenting on it. And then what
happens as the flame loses oxygen, It just withers out
and goes away. Three h three. Why didn't you say

(01:06:27):
anying about corruption and the Bidenmistry administration that's been proven. Sure, well,
if you've got a specification of that'd love to talk
about it. In fact, we could talk about it. We
get back, we got hit a break. Okay, Wait, hope
today has been as good for you guys as it
has been for me. Five six six' nine zero is
the text, line you've got anything you want to talk?
ABOUT I i got a LOT i want to get,

(01:06:49):
into get back into on the fraud, Point Nick, sureley,
journalism that kind of, stuff and we will in just a.
Second but it kind of a short segment here some
of the squeaz and some SOME ai. STUFF i don't
know if you Guys i've talked about this, before but WITH,
ai these these crawlers that they, use and Again i'm
USING ai in quotes because a lot of what we

(01:07:10):
call our official intelligence is. Anything BUT i don't know
how much you guys know about, this but they used
crawler bots to crawl the, web just a similar the
Way google does to defeed its search engine to acquire
information and put stuff into it's it's. Learning last, Summer
anthropic got a bunch of backlash because it's. Claude Bot

(01:07:34):
ai crawler was accused of hammering websites a million or
more times in a, day and it wasn't the only
artificial intelligence company making headlines for ignoring instructions in the
in the robots txt file to avoid scraping web content
on certain. Sites The REDDITS ceo called out basically EVERY

(01:07:55):
ai company was. Crawlers he, Said we're a pain in
the ass to, block and the tech industry had otherwise
agreed to respect the no scraping rules in robots. Txt
for those of you who don't know, again robots txt
is a text file in most web pages that tells
crawlers where to, go what the, grab what not to
to kind of keep the load off the website so

(01:08:15):
that regular users can use the. Website and watching the
controversy unfold was a software developer Named, aaron and shortly
after he Noticed Facebook scrawler exceeding thirty million hits on
his own, Website aaron began plotting a new kind of

(01:08:39):
remedy to keep crawlers from clobbering websites and was hoping
to give teeth back to the robots txt file. Again
the file in the web page that tells crawlers where
to go and, so building on an anti spam cybersecurity
tactic known as tar, pitting he Created, nepenthes which is

(01:09:01):
milicious software named after a carnivorous, plant like a pitcher.
PLANT a picture plant goes in and it just sort
of eats, it you know how the bugs like dissolve,
right And Aaron glinder warns anybody who wants, this which
he deployed for, free that it is aggressive. Malware it's
not to be deployed by site owners who are uncomfortable
with TRAPPING ai crawlers and sending them in an infinite

(01:09:25):
maze of static files with no exit links where they
get stuck and they thrash around for. Months crawlers get
fed jibbish, data which if you have a tech background
you know about the mark up. BUBBLE i it's not,
important but it's designed to POISON ai, models and that's
likely an appealing bonus for any site owners Like aaron

(01:09:48):
who are fed up with paying their own money FOR ai.
SCRAPING i just want to WATCH ai. Burn tar pits
were visually invented to waste spammers time and, resources but
these can effectively trap all major web. Crawlers as a
matter of, fact the only one right now that seems
to have a workaround for that is open ais, crawler

(01:10:10):
which has managed to escape. This it's unclear that the
long term damage you how MUCH ai attacks can ultimately
do to. Websites Last, May Lacksmi, kurata Who's Microsoft director
Of Partner, technology publish a report detailing how LEADING ai
companies are coping with this sort of, poisoning which is

(01:10:32):
one of the EARLIEST ai defense tactics that's being. Deployed
but in twenty twenty, five tar pitting represents a new
threat TO, ai potentially increasing the cost of fresh data
at a moment WHEN ai companies are heavily investing in
competing to try to innovate quickly and not turning profits

(01:10:54):
despite the fact that they are having significant investments wellowed into.
THEM ai is OPEN ai is the uh the only
company being public about, this and they are, said they,
said we're aware of the efforts to disrupt our. Crawlers
we design our systems to be resilient while respecting, ROBOTS

(01:11:15):
txt and standard web. Practices and for those of you
who don't understand why this is. Important these these learning
modules are scraping websites for their, data getting it for,
free hammering their website with a ton of, traffic rendering them,
unusable using up a ton of resources on the back.
End and you can look that up for yourself in
terms of what the what it takes to power these

(01:11:36):
THINGS uh and and to create what essentially is glorified
more powerful search engines and raking in investment cash with
nothing in. Return so everybody from the website side of
the house is upset about, this while you've GOT uh

(01:11:59):
investors and you, know people who are creating these things
that love it because they're getting a ton of stuff
for free and making you pay For AND i can
get more into that a little bit. Later by the,
way somebody, asked somebody had asked, earlier what what the
best anti viral for their computer. IS i, mean everybody's

(01:12:20):
got a different. OPINION i would suggest that e set
makes a very good. Product Hit man pro makes a
pretty good lightweight product if you like. That so if
you're looking for anti viral, stuff those two are probably my.
Favorites we'll get back into The minneapolis stuff. Here we
come back on The Mandy cottle. Show we got to
take a break here on Kiawe.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
The Mandy Connell show is sponsored By belle And Pollock
accident and Injury.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Lawyers, no It's Mandy connell.

Speaker 3 (01:12:46):
On m got.

Speaker 4 (01:12:54):
The nice.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
Sad babe.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
Again still jealous that she has the, music BUT i love.
It many will be back after the new. Year take
it so much deserved. Time I'm, benjamin all, right fill it.
In hope you guys have enjoyed the show so far
as much As i've definitely enjoyed reading what you have
to say. Here on the text, line we've been talking
a lot about this This minneapolis thing and this young

(01:13:28):
gentleman who had the viral, Video Nick. Shirley and it's
fascinating me BECAUSE i hope well going. WRONG i hope
there's not more, fraud BUT i hope that he has uncovered,
something some new things here if they need to be.
Uncovered if there is, FRAUD i hope that he's pointed

(01:13:50):
a light on that you get into some of this. Stuff,
Now Nick sureley is not a. Reporter he's not an independent.
Reporter he is very clearly a right wing you know
operative everything he does is through that lens that doesn't
discredit anything that he's. Done but you, know it needs
to be said that if you're going to if you're

(01:14:12):
going to maintain a veneer of detached, independence you need
to be honest about. That there were some things that
he has, said some things he's published before that were,
false and so that's sort of where my gripe came in.
HERE i, mean like he he claimed The minnesota state

(01:14:33):
flag was recently changed to resemble the some alien, flag
which is hilariously. Stupid it's. Not but, this for whatever,
reason has gotten, traction despite the fact that a large
portion of this has already been. Adjudicated feeding our future
scheme which began unraveling with federal investigations late in twenty

(01:14:58):
twenty two after it is brought to life by mainstream
media back in twenty, nineteen and it did lead to
two hundred and fifty million dollars pandemic era fraud targeting
children's nutrition. FUNDS a lot of this stuff was uncovered
back in twenty. Nineteen federal agencies like THE, fbi THE,
rs THE, uspis they were all investigating claims of inflated

(01:15:22):
meal counts and misuse. Funds back in twenty twenty, one
the first. Indictments the first major indictments came In september
of twenty twenty, two with charges against forty seven individuals
at the, time including the nonprofits founder who Was Amy,
bach WHICH i mentioned before Spelled, aimee and they got

(01:15:42):
them for two hundred and fifty million. Dollars now key
figures began pleading guilty earlier this. Year that Includes Sam Sam,
Shama Asha, Jama Mostafa, jama and several. Others back In
february of this. Year the first federal trial for the
mastermise of, this Like Amy, bach concluded with guilty verdicts

(01:16:05):
back In march of this. Year back In march of
twenty twenty five and more defendants have been, charged with
this scope of the fraud being seen as larger and
larger throughout the. Year, again that doesn't My my thing
with this isn't that it's old news That Nick shirley is.

(01:16:26):
Recirculating my thing about it is why did it take
that YouTube video to get into the public? Zeitgeist why
you know this is something that's been going on and
been reported on extensively for the better part of five.
Years as one of the textures pointed out that he

(01:16:47):
said THAT msnbc was saying the whole thing was. Fake
well that's not. True that's that IF msnbc is saying,
that AND i have yet to have anybody linked me to.
That but if they are saying, that then they are being.
Disingenuous this is something that's been ongoing for five. Years
the idea that this is new is not. Correct but you,

(01:17:10):
know the scope of it is still being delved. Into AND,
i for, one we talked about This friday WHEN i
was talking about. Fraud for, WHAT i am all for
finding all forms of fraud and eliminating, them getting these people,
arrested getting the money back to the taxpayers that were
owed for all kinds of this kind of. Stuff SO,

(01:17:32):
i on the one, HAND i Appreciate Nick sureley's bringing
it to the public's, attention and that was part of
the REASON i Had Kathy, Walker And i'm, like why
is it that the mainstream media who's getting lamb basted
for not covering, it when in, actuality they were the
ones that brought it to attention to be investigated in
the first, place are seen as the enemies. Here reporting

(01:17:58):
on this from established media back in twenty nineteen is
what got THE fbi involved in the first. Place why
is it that we have a disparity between our trust
in establishment media and our opinion of them and what
is actually. Happening i'm not aware of anything That Nick

(01:18:21):
sureley brought in that video that's, new but it certainly
brought it to the public's. Attention is it a problem
with establishment media in packaging things so that people can
understand this is. Happening or has the trust eroded so
low that people simply sit here and ignore it when
it comes through and then they see it in this

(01:18:42):
other vein and then they pick it back. UP i
don't know the answers to, that and that's the part
that maybe the part of it that fascinates. ME i,
mean don't be, WRONG i am absolutely here for every
investigation into. FRAUD i think every one of those is
money will. Spent but at the same, TIME i like
the disconnect for me is wondering, why despite the fact

(01:19:05):
that this is all been out there for half a,
decade that it didn't get any traction until this past
weekend in a YouTube, Video and it starts to make
me wonder if newsrooms couldn't use better social, media you,
know could use better social media presenters to put this
stuff together in a way that that entices the public

(01:19:25):
to get on board with. It five six six Nine
zeros text line three oh three is surely. Simple iPhone
investigation is incredible that man became the most popular name
at the dinner. Table can you imagine If waltz had
been THE? Vp, Yeah and that's What i'm getting. AT i,
mean like what he, did none of it's really. Investigative

(01:19:49):
it just sort of picked up on the things that were,
THERE i, mean AND i had problems with some of.
It it's difficult for me because on one side of
my on my, Mind i'm sitting here, like thank, god
this guy this to people's attention to where the public
is now ginned up about. It and then on the other,
Side i'm, like this dude skipped a whole bunch of
steps along the, way did some disingenuous. Stuff and then you,

(01:20:09):
know is reporting stuff that's already been reported for five.
Years and so there's there's those parts of it THAT
i can't reconcile right like out of the. One on
the one side of, It i'm, like, yes finally this
is getting brought to the public's, attention and then on
the Other i'm, like, well, dude you're you're you're kind
of taking work a credit for work other people, did

(01:20:32):
and so that's you, know that's sort of my that's
sort of my my. Thing uh three h, Three let's
start with all the deceptive measures The democrats pulled on
The american public with hiding the mental health Of Joe,
biden along with the rest of the illegal activities The democrats,
pulled like controlling free, speech lies and laptop from. Hell

(01:20:55):
never heard a word from you on any as. WELL
i wasn't on the air for that, stuff so it
would be difficult to heard from me on. THAT i
literally just talked about the declining health Of Joe biden
what last, segment segment before last whatever it, Was so
that's not. True and controlling free, Speech i'm gonna need
some clarification on. That so if you want to text
back and tell me what you means specifically by, that we.

(01:21:16):
Can we can get into. That we got to hit a,
break we come. Back we'll continue to get more appreciate
you guys being along for the. Ride Ko it's been
asked If i'm HOSTING bct any days this week what
Definitely i'm. Tomorrow so there you, go several of you talking,
here they are standing. IN i didn't SAY cnn broke

(01:21:38):
the story About minnesota's. CHILDCARE i said establishment media did
well for fraud back in twenty. Nineteen and you can
go THE ola has a report out From march of
twenty nineteen about. This it's still up on The minnesota state.
Website you can find. This you can very easily see.
IT i don't need to sit here and make the
case for it because it's. There, obviously those these elements

(01:22:01):
were establishment media and local news at the time with
boots on the ground. Reporting so LIKE i said again twenty,
nineteen when they started now twenty twenty, two when it
came to THE fbi and everybody else in their investigations
leading to, charges that's when you saw these national outlets COVERED, MSNBC, Cnn,

(01:22:23):
Fox and you can go out there and see this
in twenty twenty, two that every establishment media out that
covered this fraud back in twenty twenty, two especially with
The feeding Our future, scandal and you can see reporting
on that out there over the innit you can just google,

(01:22:44):
it you can find. It so the idea that that
media hasn't covered this is wrong and it's. Fascinating that's
that's WHY i said it's so fascinating to, me is you,
know you get a lot of people land basing traditional
media for not covering something that they covered years ago
when this, started when the investigations for this. Started and

(01:23:08):
so that's the part THAT i guess that fascinates me
in looking at these he's the collective narrative that it
took a. YouTuber, well it definitely took a YouTuber to
make this part of the public. Zeitgeist it definitely took that,
kid that young man. Too AND i don't mean to

(01:23:28):
use the word kid, disparagingly so please don't pretend That
i'm doing. THAT i it took him to foist this
into the public. Spotlight it took him to make it
dinner table. Conversation and so what does that say about
how legacy media packages itself when they've already done the
investigative work years ago and it went, nowhere, nobody nobody
picked up on, it nobody. Cared it fell on deaf. Ears,

(01:23:50):
now all of a, sudden you get this kid on
YouTube who comes out and puts this thing out and it's.
Everywhere it's, ubiquitous AND i don't know that that's the
part that that floors, me And i'm trying to wrap
my head around, that because, again you, know legacy media
is not as bad as everybody pretends it. Is it's
it's just. Not. Uh there are certainly bones to pick with.

(01:24:11):
It there are certainly bones to pick with the bias through, which,
uh you, know people do. Things if you're, me you've
just accepted the bias and you you, know you understand
that you've got to uh source multiple outlets in a
lot of, cases you. KNOW i, again in talking With Kathy,
WALKER i believe that journalism owes you the, facts, right that's.

(01:24:33):
It the rest of it is is on. Them and
you see people with a right lean framing things to the,
right people the left limbs use the. Left once you
understand that that's that's a part of the, process and
you go from. THERE i hate the way some outlets
that are neutral get framed as, not you, know and

(01:24:56):
so that's that's frustrating on. Part but that's my, FRUSTRATION i,
think is the state of opinion on journalism gallup head
the state of opinion on journalism in The United states
at an all time high back in nineteen seventy, six
and it's currently at an all time. Low the confidence
interval or the number assigned to the confidence Of american

(01:25:17):
journalism at nineteen seventy, eight was it seventy, five currently
is at twenty. Eight and you know part of that
is the twenty four Hour you, know cable news didn't,
exist now it. Does The internet technology has made stories
not stick with us as long the like you, KNOW
i talk about the attention, economy there's also a fleeting

(01:25:39):
attentivity to a lot of. Things and you, know those
are things that these, outlets which are for profit outlets
and in the business of making, money have to account.
For what is it that our audience. Wants, well for whatever,
reason people will continue to tune into these debate shows
between pundits that aren't journalists screaming at each. Other they

(01:26:00):
are about. Things and as long as people continue to
tune into, that as long as people continue to comment on,
that share the, clips, virally complain about, it, whatever as
long as it is in the, conversation they will continue
to run those out. There we got to hit a.

(01:26:20):
Break more of this would come back five, six, six
nine zero is the text line and tech support there,
being of Course Ryan edwards sitting. There he's handing me
all kinds of equipment and. Software we've got some apparently
some very antiquated phone software. Here, anyway back to THE u,
stuff and we'll take some calls here to THEN i

(01:26:40):
get somebody, saying take a phone call. Lefty, Well i'm
not a. Lefty i'm what you'd call libertarian, centrist BUT
i certainly appreciate, it and we do have if you're
A broncos, fan the breaking news here as A chargers
head Coach Jim harbaugh says they are not going to
Start Justin herbert against The broncos On. Sunday should make

(01:27:02):
it a lot easier for The Denver broncos to win that.
Game and if they, do of course they get the
number one. Seed so there you. Go that is a
rarity For, harball who normally does not rest players like.
That certainly certainly interesting stuff. There we'll get more on, that,
obviously wouldn kaoaite sports cranks up here at three o'clock
AND i WILL i will take phone calls here in

(01:27:24):
just a little, bit so give me just a moment.
Here i'm still trying to get all some of this
other stuff out, there he said to. Us as for
my libertarian friends out, THERE i just picked up a grenade.
LAUNCHER i don't get the. Reference, sorry, SORRY i. DON'T
a lot of you guys talking about you know, this
This minneapolis fraud, thing and a lot of you are, like,

(01:27:46):
yeah for it being out there for. Years so sure was.
Hidden that's the. Thing it wasn't. Hidden and that's the
thing that fascinates me about all. This it took some
YouTuber to dredge something up that's three years old for
everybody to be upset. About why weren't we upset about
it a few years? Ago what happened with? That because
it wasn't like this stuff was. Hidden this was all out.
There it was covered by every major outlet out. There

(01:28:12):
SO i don't know the three zero. THREE i watched
both left and right leaning, outlets and this is news to.
ME i, mean that's the Point i'm trying to make
is the memory hole, here BECAUSE i play attention to
a lot of this stuff AND i didn't remember this. Existing.
Now it took, me you, know LIKE i, said WHEN
i was doing prep for this last, night about two
hours down the rabbit. Hole i'm, like, well wait a,

(01:28:33):
minute this all existed for. Years this was out there for,
years and THEN i started going down the rabbit. HOLE
i made a couple of. CALLS i found out that
the daycare the funny date was at The Leering center
or whatever had already been shut. Down that's why nobody
was there to answer the. Door they had twenty something
that that particular instance had had twenty something plus, complaints

(01:28:53):
and investigate lodged against it and looked at, this And
i'm a bit frustrated Because i'm, Like, Okay, one this
has already been reported on and no one cared at the.
Time now they. Do, two the person who's doing this
on the YouTube stuff could have done a lot more

(01:29:16):
here and. Didn't and SO i GUESS i just have
frustration all the way. Around and if you guys want
to want a weigh in on, This i'll ahead and
open up the fall line three oh three seven, one
three eight five eighty. Five if you guys want to
uh to call it and give me your thoughts on,
it or if you Think i'm out left field or,
SOMETHING i am definitely interested in hearing your perspectives on. This,

(01:29:39):
situation how he gets, fascinating how it's it's gripped the, public,
though LIKE i, said it took a YouTuber for it
to grip the. Public is that in his? Presentation is
it just that now we're more ready to be outraged
by fraud that doesn't seem, likely whatever the case may.

(01:30:01):
Be three oh, three, seven three eighty, five eighty, five
And I'm i'm certainly interested to hear you guys. Perspective
the seven to two zero, SAID i think we all
just felt so duped by THE covid experience with the.
Press it forces our minds to start looking back on
things like, quote weapons of mass, destruction al, gore and the.
CLIMATE i get these last two examples or exampts the

(01:30:22):
politician who was let, us but, uh it's all. TOGETHER
i started to roll. Together and that's why mainstream media
and politicians are not trusted as much. More, well that's the.
Thing politicians are trusted more at this, point which is
problem for. Me the watchdog that politicians have is the,
media and that's part of the reason WHY i let
off with this SAYING i don't REALLY i don't mind

(01:30:43):
that you have left wing and right and right wing
news outlets BECAUSE i think they'll hold the other group
of politicians. Accountable that's what they're supposed to. Do that
goes back to WHAT i was talking about When Kathy
walker was on, here that there's a popular quoteut. There it's,
popular popularly Attributed George, orwell ALTHOUGH i very much doubt

(01:31:03):
that he's the one that said, it and there's no
substantive evidence to suggest that he did say. It and
that is that journalism is printing that which someone does
not want. Printed everything else's public. Relations AND i think
that there is value to. THAT i think that that

(01:31:24):
statement has value BECAUSE i think that's what journalism should. Be.
INVESTIGATIVE i think that the idea is that journalism should
be the. Watchdog that's what it's supposed to. Be but
the problem is is that watchdog journalism isn't inherently profitable anymore,

(01:31:46):
either coming from the sports. World long form sports journalism
is almost non existent. Anymore and you know, why because
that's not. Profitable it's not profitable for people Like Right
thompson to sit there and write out these, lengthy, lengthy,

(01:32:07):
prosaic almost pastoral approaches to sports pieces. Anymore people don't
have the attention to read things like that. Anymore so
much of what things are now is passive, consumption background.
Noise we talk about certain mediums passing away or, dying

(01:32:32):
and it's because the attention economy now is on people
go to clickbait. Headlines it's funny to me to see
so many people frustrated with the amount of attention that
media pays to The, kardashians and yet you are the
ones that click on those, Articles you're the ones that
comment under, them you're the ones that talk about. Them

(01:32:54):
if we want stuff like that to go, away you
have to resist to the rage. Bait and for those
of you unfamiliar with that, term that is what outlets use.
Anymore that rage bait is deliberately designed to either anger

(01:33:18):
you or outrage you or frustrate you with something that
is either inherently wrong or deliberately off putting in an
effort to do, that and it manipulates users into interacting with.
It and what that does is when you interact with,
it it ups it in the. Algorithm and that's part

(01:33:40):
of the REASON i hate these. Algorithms i'd LIKE i
change my settings On twitter And facebook and everything THAT
i can to not do the, algorithm just do the
THINGS i. Follow but it's frustrating for the average user
to have to do, that especially when they roll out
an update and it reverts all your settings. Back you
are in the attention. Economy you are in the troll,

(01:34:00):
economy whether you want to be or. Not we are
in the post truth. Era, well the reality is people
don't like things that challenge the way they think they
want to be, affirmed and so there are more willing
to believe things that follow along the lines of what they,
want whether they're true or. Not five six nine zero nine.

(01:34:28):
Seven if you're not frustrated with, fraud you're part of the.
Problem you should be. Furious nothing happened three years, Ago,
well something did. Happen fifty people were arrested in a
three hundred million dollar fraud. Investigation fifty. People it's not
that nothing was. Done something was. Done the frustration for,
years the frustration with, fraud it's the frustration that nobody

(01:34:49):
cared about it at the, time and, now all of a,
sudden we do care about. It that doesn't mean that
three hundred and fifty million was all of. It and
maybe there's a tip of the sphere as far as
that kind of stuff. Go BUT i have textures texting
in right. Now like the three h three here Said
Nick shirley showed us with an. iPhone the fraud mainstream

(01:35:10):
did nothing of the, Such yeah they. Did it all still.
Exists you can google. This it all still. Exists The
state Of minnesota has reports out that local media there
had generated from as far back as twenty. Nineteen you
can pretend all you, want but at the end of the,
day like this was reported, on the state did do

(01:35:34):
something about? It did they do? Enough that's a real.
Question did they get it? All those are real. Questions
but for the three or three to sit here and
Say nick knocked on doors and showed The american people on.
Video the mainstream didn't do any of, This yeah they.
Did all this reporting, exists that's my. Point so how
did we let that go and memory hold? That and

(01:35:54):
why are we frustrated? Now we should have always been
frustrated with the fraud five six six nine. Zero i'm
trying to get to all these there's a lot of you,
texting and SO i apologize IF i skip over. This somebody's, asking,
uh this Says Hi BEN i appreciate your, insights SO
i hope you get answered question for. Me many months,
Ago mandy had an author that's written many books NINETEEN i,

(01:36:17):
think and you were a big fan of his books
when you served in the. Military who is this? Author
thanks and happy Safe New. Year, well first of, all
happy safe new year to. You the author That mandy
had on was a guy Named Jim butcher who wrote
a series Called The Dresden. Files and So Jim butcher
is the audience that excuse, me the author that you're
you're looking for, There that was Whom mandy had on
and a guy whose BOOKS i read WHILE i was.

(01:36:38):
Deployed some people are saying that the, difference And i've
had several, texts but the three h three is saying
this right. Now the difference is the. Video maybe maybe
that is the. Difference maybe that is maybe having somebody
go up with a video and getting those those. Reactions

(01:37:00):
maybe maybe that is the. Difference it's entirely it's it
is entirely possible that the video presentation added dimension to
it that that captured the. Public seven To, Zho you're completely.
RIGHT i was In Minneapolis Saint, paul some college friends

(01:37:23):
in twenty, twenty and they talked about how the news
stations knew all about the money leaving the state and
had it all recorded and. Reported, then, YEAH i, mean
this stuff's all out. There it's not you, KNOW i,
mean it is what it. Is several people have asked
about deportations To Amy bach is A u as a
WHITE us, Citizen, like there's nobody to deport some of
these people Were, somalian but some of them Are somalian my,

(01:37:45):
descent but ARE us, Citizens, like maybe that's the portion of.
It that's because it's politically advantageous to certain people to suggest.
Deportations although there's nobody HERE i haven't seen so far
that would would be. Deported the ringleader of, this LIKE i,

(01:38:05):
said Was Amy, bach who was found guilty back In.
Marsha she's a citizen Of, minnesota The United. STATES c.
Three facebook has been forcibly changing my algorithm in the
last ten. Days i'm mostly an independent, liberal an, atheist

(01:38:26):
and not much of A trump, fan But i've been
a steady diet OF, Maga Charlie, kirk And Evangelical christianity
in the last week or. SO i keep blocking and, hiding, blocking, hiding,
well you know that's the. THING a lot of these
things change the algorithm to, whatever and if you. Respond
this is WHAT i talked about earlier with the rage.
Bait not only does it push it up in your,
algorithm you respond to, it the algorithm, says this is

(01:38:48):
what you, want and they put it more on your.
Timeline the key to making a lot of these social
media whether you're a, liberal whether you're a, conservative a, populist,
libertarian whatever you, are the key to make social media
usable again is to not rage respond to. Things it's
basically to ignore those. Things AND i know that runs

(01:39:09):
counter to our. Thinking because we see, something we want
to respond to. It and social media by design is
designed for us all to have a. Conversation but what
you have a conversation, about what you respond, to even
if it's to say this is, stupid puts more of
that into your. Feet and so it's the idea of you,
Know i'm gonna tell these guys what's up with this. Quippisinger,

(01:39:30):
well you're not gonna stop. It all you do is
make it more. Prevalent every time you click a link
on A kardashian, story it puts more of. That it,
says this is what you. Want every time you respond
to something that you, say, well you're an, idiot the algorithm, Says,
okay this is more of what they want that we
got an. Interaction the interaction is your. Currency the attention

(01:39:50):
is your. Currency three h Three who at door to
door For FOX? Msbc, WELL i MEAN i don't know that.
Anybody that's the. THING i don't know that many went
door to, door although the reporting on that at the
time didn't require door to. DOOR i mean you could
just see the disbursements and you knew their. Fraudulent nobody
was feeding five thousand kids a day In. Minnesota they

(01:40:15):
got caught from their own, greed and they got caught
from inflating the numbers to the point where everybody was, Like,
okay this can't be, real and then they started doing. Investigations. Nine, so,
no we probably. Know we probably care more about it
now because nothing has changed even when it was. Exposed, well,

(01:40:38):
again LIKE i, said fifty people had been convicted so.
Far that doesn't mean they got all of. It AND
i am absolutely like the. Cash betel said that THE
fbi is surging resources To minnesota to continue to investigate
GOOD i support that. Investigated if we find, something so be.
It if we find, nothing so be. It but investigated

(01:41:04):
nine oh four posits that it's the. Scope it's the
difference between a murder and thirty murders given the multiplier
of nine billion versus three. Minutes, well, again we don't
know that there's nine billion dollars worth of. Fraud the
person who came out and stated that was from about

(01:41:26):
a week, ago and That's ASSISTANT Us Attorney Joe. Thompson
and what he said was he didn't say there's nine
billion in. Fraud he said he believed the total amount
could be as high as nine. Billion and, so you,
know that's the. Thing, typically you, know they investigate these
things and they're able to prove you, know a percentage
of it or, whatever but the number could be as

(01:41:46):
high as nine. BILLION i don't know that it's nine.
BILLION i don't know that it's not nine, billion but
that's the that's the potential for. It so, far they've
basically they've caught about five hundred, million that's what they've
caught and. Convicted and there's more investigations and you, know
things like that that are in place on this the

(01:42:11):
three or three says it's one thousand percent the. Video
human attention spans are five seconds anymore with social. Media
who reads? Video? Proof is why the story is so
large right? Now, hey you know, What i'm coming. Around
i'm coming around to your side on. THAT i believe
that could be part of. It maybe the video component
of it made it resonate more than just words on

(01:42:32):
a white page On fox OR msnbc OR. Cnn seven To,
ozho we need to Deport Amy, Bach, WELL i mean you.
Can't she's A us, citizen she. Writes just because she
is a, criminal which she is guilty of and has
been found guilty, of it doesn't mean you could just deport.

(01:42:52):
Somebody you can't just deport people you don't. Like she's
A us. Citizen where you deporting her? Too? WHY i
get the, sentiment but the reality, is you know we.
Can't three h three. Bajam what was the conviction rate
for the fifty? Arrested from WHAT i, understand at least
forty eight were, convicted and that's a fifty. Five, NOW

(01:43:15):
i don't know that the other seven. WEREN'T i think
some of those are still. Ongoing as far as all the,
SENTENCES i couldn't tell. You they range from jail time
and significant finds to just, fines and again those are
you'd have to. Go you can look that. Up those
are things you can look. UP i just don't have
all that in front of me right, now AND i
don't have the time to list out all fifty here
in the time we have remaining seven to? Us is

(01:43:39):
when are they Arresting Tim? Walls, WELL i don't know
That Tim walls is guilty of. Anything if you want
to say That Tim walls is incompetent or didn't do,
enough probably have an argument. There as far as Arresting,
Walls i'm not sure that he's guilty of any thing

(01:44:02):
when it was brought TO i can tell you when
when In, october when certain things were brought to his,
attention he shut, down immediately shut down the agency that
they said was at risk of. That, now should he
have known? Before should he have known based on some
of the other, Things, yeah probably if you want to
say that that you know his leadership is is lacking, Here,

(01:44:26):
Okay i'm here for that. Conversation BUT i don't know
what you're gonna arrest him. For he's not you, know
as far AS i know at this, point not suspected
of any, wrongdoing just suspected of, allowing just just suspected
of uh not doing everything that he could to keep

(01:44:49):
fraud from. Occurring and that's for the voters Of. Minnesota
uh see you three or. THREE i asked to pull
a clip Of Rachel maddow reporting On minnesota. Fraud nothing came.
UP i don't know that she specifically did or. DIDN'T
i know THAT msnbc. DID i don't know if she
did or. Didn't she's made from THAT i was a
pundit though she's not a. Journalist so you, know there's

(01:45:10):
there's that someone. Nine EITHER i get suckered into rage
bait or the single pages On facebook has got. ME i.
Can't i'm not gonna read all this, out but that's that's. Certainly. Yeah, Anyway,

(01:45:30):
Yes facebook dating has got your algum though wrong a,
man you know that that's what happens these ALGORITHM i
think the algorithms are. Terrible seven too OS Cbs news
says On november twenty, fourth seventy eighth person has been,
Charged so it's even more than. Fifty, yeah the fifty
Five i'm referring to has more to do with feeding our.
Families the, broader the broader investigation here into additional, corruption

(01:45:58):
including autism center which hasn't been. Mentioned and you guys
can look at. That there's some great reporting by The
Minnesota Star tribute on fake autism, centers the fake, daycare
that kind of. Stuff, yes it's more than the fifty five.
People the fifty five people was specific to the feeding
our future and SO i guess that's on me for
not clarifying. That SO i apologize for. That the three

(01:46:23):
h three says The Nick sureley report was. Recently New
York times reported In november it was Mainly, medicare not. Childcare,
well the childcare has to do With medicare. Fraud and
again this stuff has been reported on by every major
outlet since at least two thousand and. Two local on
the ground there In minnesota since twenty nineteen. Seven two

(01:46:44):
Ol ben people have been stealing from THE us government
for as long as we've been a. Country so why
the constitution gives the federal government limited and enumerated. Powers
the founder saw how The british government was rob By
parliament and wanted to curtail. It scale In minnesota is
just the tip of the. Iceberg hundreds of millions of,
dollars laws to fraud homelessness and denver millions that accounted.
For that's Why i'm against doing anything but the most

(01:47:06):
basic public safety in. Road, well, YEAH i, mean my
particular stance on government is to make it as small
as possible to do the effective jobs that we need
it to. Do and we need to delineate what those
necessary jobs. Are and then the rest of, it you,
know get get that money, back allow allow for people

(01:47:27):
to contribute to. Charities you know there are the free
market is great at finding the gaps in things that
are being provided and creating either, nonprofits charities or businesses around.
That AND i think if if we if we were
to lead more into, THAT i think we would probably
be more effective and efficient. Personally and so that's that's

(01:47:53):
where we. Go there's somebody who's talking about py jurors
two hudred thousand AND, i you, KNOW i don't know anything about.
That you'd have to provide some evidence to. THAT i
certainly haven't seen any this. Far doesn't mean it doesn't,
exist But i'm not going to get into speculation here
on that kind of. Stuff But i'm with. YOU i
think people ARE i think people are frustrated. OVERALL i

(01:48:16):
think people are, frustrated and that's a part of the
reason that this is coming back around now. Too people
are frustrated with, government and they're frustrated with the. Fraud
they're frustrated with the exorbitant. Spending they're wondering where their
their labor provides this tax revenue and where it's. Going
AND i tend to. AGREE i appreciate you guys being

(01:48:37):
along for the ride. TODAY Kai sports is. Next