Speaker 1: Mister secretary, could you go ahead and finish your research
Speaker 1: on where the ten cent.
Speaker 2: Bag fee goes for the useless paper.
Speaker 1: Bag that doesn't even get used once because it rips
Speaker 1: on your way in the house.
Speaker 2: Yep. Oh, and I'll go ahead and take that latte
Speaker 2: double tall, thanks.
Speaker 3: Honest way, I need your name, but I need your
Speaker 3: name to write it on the cop what's your name?
Speaker 2: Misspell it?
Speaker 3: Try misspell it or just spell it fanatically. I don't care.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll do the bag fee today because I really am.
Speaker 3: I've got enough done on that I can probably do
Speaker 3: the bag fee today. If let me describe the bag
Speaker 3: fee research this way, it's a black hole because it
Speaker 3: is deliberately that program is designed deliberately so that you
Speaker 3: really can't find out how much it's costing, where the
Speaker 3: money's going, what they're using it for. It would take
Speaker 3: and actually I talked to my friend Kathleen Chandler over
Speaker 3: at the Independence Institute about trying to get my other friend,
Speaker 3: Corey Gaines that does the Colorado Accountability Project to kind
Speaker 3: of dig into it. And Corey may or may not
Speaker 3: be digging into it also, But what Corey's going to
Speaker 3: run into But he's got more resources in time than
Speaker 3: I do. To find it is that on the bag fee,
Speaker 3: the things that it's supposed to go to in terms
Speaker 3: of the localities that collect the money are so ephemeral,
Speaker 3: are so amorphous, are so kind of vague that it's
Speaker 3: really going to be difficult to tie down any sort
Speaker 3: of numbers. But I do have some preliminary numbers, and
Speaker 3: maybe I'll.
Speaker 2: Do that today. It's not a bad idea, but I want.
Speaker 3: To get back to the wolves because the reason the
Speaker 3: story is important is because this is a grand example
Speaker 3: of how stupid Colorado is. And while while the numbers
Speaker 3: may not be huge, that's in material that the issue
Speaker 3: is this the numbers are about double what they expected.
Speaker 3: I know you're shocked. Actually nobody should be shocked by this.
Speaker 3: And it's another example of it's totally feel good. And
Speaker 3: then and and I just want to say to someone
Speaker 3: on the text line, you your text, which I'm not
Speaker 3: going to read yet, gets to the point that I
Speaker 3: ultimately want to make about this program in general, because
Speaker 3: it's it is about the money. It is about the time,
Speaker 3: the energy, the resources, everything that is being spent on
Speaker 3: this feel good program that does not really accomplish anything
Speaker 3: other than making Marlon Ree feel good and keeping Jared
Speaker 3: Pouls happy in the bed, I guess. And it actually
Speaker 3: is detrimental to the wolves. So the very animals that
Speaker 3: all these yahoos think they're helping are actually hurting. We'll
Speaker 3: get to that at the end. So let's go to
Speaker 3: you know, I went through these depredation claims. I just
Speaker 3: love the use of the word depredation. When you do,
Speaker 3: I have to pull down here depth hang on a second.
Speaker 3: Depard dation I think I always spell it wrong. An
Speaker 3: act of attacking or plundering. That's the official first definition
Speaker 3: of depredation. I always have a hard time finding it
Speaker 3: because I want to spell d E p r A,
Speaker 3: and it's d E p r E depradation an act
Speaker 3: of attacking or plummeting. So the fund is comprised of
Speaker 3: monies paid to farmers and ranchers, or I suppose to anyone.
Speaker 3: You're right, a child gets killed, Yeah, well that's going
Speaker 3: to be more than a depredation fund. That's going to
Speaker 3: be a wrongful death lawsuit probably, Or it's for the
Speaker 3: killing of the livestock, and not just the killing, but
Speaker 3: also the loss of weight because of the stress that
Speaker 3: you have.
Speaker 2: You know, one thing that I don't.
Speaker 3: Think showed up in my research was the cost that
Speaker 3: you know, we've now hired. We've now hired cowboys to
Speaker 3: go out and basically do the job of keeping the
Speaker 3: wolves away.
Speaker 2: From the cattle.
Speaker 3: I mean, thinking, how stupid that is. Why do you
Speaker 3: need to hire cowboys to keep the wolves away from
Speaker 3: the cattle when all you had to do was not
Speaker 3: bring the wolves here in the first place. But again,
Speaker 3: it's all about feeling good. It's all about making Marlon
Speaker 3: Reeves happy. It's about making all of the of the
Speaker 3: animal rights advocates, with Marlin Reeves right there on top,
Speaker 3: all happy about this. So let's go to the depredation
Speaker 3: fund itself. The Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund, that's the official
Speaker 3: title of it.
Speaker 2: Was in twenty.
Speaker 3: Twenty three for fiscally your twenty twenty three twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: the legislature allocated one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars
Speaker 3: for it. In the fiscal year twenty four to twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, they allocated or appropriated three hundred and fifty thousand,
Speaker 3: so we doubled it. But claims have nearly depleted the fund.
Speaker 3: As of March, there was less than three thousand dollars
Speaker 3: in the fund, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and
Speaker 3: you have less than three thousand dollars left and it's June. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're in the sixth month of the year. The company
Speaker 3: that this fund covers confirmed kills, So that pays up
Speaker 3: to fifteen thousand dollars per animal. It pays for missing livestock,
Speaker 3: It pays, as I said earlier, for red conception rates.
Speaker 3: It pays for weight loss because of the stress caused
Speaker 3: by the wolves. And guess what, whether you think that
Speaker 3: is a good thing that we be paying for or not,
Speaker 3: Colorado is unique in compensating for those indirect losses, like
Speaker 3: you know, missing because you don't really know for sure,
Speaker 3: reduced conception rates, that's an indirect cost. Weight loss because
Speaker 3: of stress, that's an indirect cost. We pay for those,
Speaker 3: and we're unique in doing that. So then I started
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what's the what's the total cost
Speaker 3: per wolf we haul these wolves in from Oregon or
Speaker 3: British Columbia. The total wolves released so far as twenty
Speaker 3: five ten released in twenty twenty three, fifteen, This year.
Speaker 3: So all I could come up with is a rough estimate.
Speaker 3: If you divide the four point eight million dollar total
Speaker 3: cost by twenty five wolves, you get about one hundred
Speaker 3: and ninety two thousand.
Speaker 2: Dollars per wolf for the entire program.
Speaker 3: That and when I say the entire program, that would
Speaker 3: include things like you first have to go cat you
Speaker 3: have to go to you know, Oregon or BC, and
Speaker 3: you have to capture the damn things, and then you
Speaker 3: have to transport them back here. You have to outfit
Speaker 3: them with GPS, and then you have to monitor the GPS,
Speaker 3: and then of course you have the compensation, the depredation fund,
Speaker 3: and you have the bureaucrats that are administering the program. Now,
Speaker 3: I grant you that's a very crude estimate because the
Speaker 3: costs include the fixed overhead that's not directly tied.
Speaker 2: To individual wolves. But let's think.
Speaker 3: About the depredation cost per wolf. You have nineteen confirm
Speaker 3: that predation events involving nineteen cattle, nine sheep, and one loma.
Speaker 3: That's paid out three hundred and forty eighty nine hundred
Speaker 3: and six dollars. So the average compensation per per depredation
Speaker 3: event is coming out to eighteen thousand, three hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty three dollars. Now, if you assume that every event
Speaker 3: involves just one wolf, although they're you know, a pack
Speaker 3: of wolves may attack. That doesn't account for the total
Speaker 3: program costs, but at least gives you a rough estimate
Speaker 3: of you know, just the total cost divided by per
Speaker 3: wolf comes out to almost two hundred thousand dollars per wolf.
Speaker 3: What's what's improved in Colorado? I'm not joking. I want
Speaker 3: you to think seriously about what has improved in Colorado?
Speaker 3: What has made this state better in terms of your life,
Speaker 3: your business, your family, your general welfare. What is better
Speaker 3: that we have taken almost two hundred thousand dollars per
Speaker 3: wolf to put.
Speaker 2: In this state? Let me it?
Speaker 3: Tell us three three one zero three tell me what?
Speaker 3: Tell me how your life is improved. And I'm not kidding.
Speaker 3: If you think your life is improved, now, I will
Speaker 3: warn you. I'll probably mock you, But I'd like to
Speaker 3: know how your life is improved. Because isn't the purpose
Speaker 3: of the Public Bureau to make it easier for us
Speaker 3: to live, make a living, raise children, get an education,
Speaker 3: you know, find work, you know, care for ourselves, take care,
Speaker 3: you know, support ourselves and our family to do all,
Speaker 3: you know, to live, to live a full and complete life.
Speaker 3: How's it helped you? Because you're paying for it. You're
Speaker 3: paying for it because Colorado taxpayers pay for this through
Speaker 3: four mechanisms. The General Fund, So just the colareld state
Speaker 3: income tax that you pay that goes into the general fund.
Speaker 3: That covers most of the costs. That's the depredation compensation program,
Speaker 3: the administrative costs of the program. All that comes out
Speaker 3: of the General Fund. Then you have the Species Conservation
Speaker 3: Trust Fund that's a fund that supports non gain species programs.
Speaker 3: You have the Colorado Non Gain Conservation and Wildlife Restoration
Speaker 3: Cash Fund that's used specifically for walth management. Then you
Speaker 3: have the Wildlife Cash Fund that excludes money from hunting
Speaker 3: and fishing license as mandated by law. So other people
Speaker 3: doing other things pay all of these fees for things
Speaker 3: other than the general fund in order to support this program. Now,
Speaker 3: I found in one article, and I highlighted this line
Speaker 3: because I can't find any information that will tell me
Speaker 3: how much this is. It says that Colorada Parks and
Speaker 3: Wildlife may solicit grants gifts. Well, let's go back up
Speaker 3: to grants. That could be a government grant, it could
Speaker 3: be a money laundering grant from a non government organization.
Speaker 3: It could be a grant from a foundation or something
Speaker 3: like the Nature Conservancy gifts. They can solicit gifts, sponsorships, donations,
Speaker 3: and of course federal funds, so they can slicit all
Speaker 3: of those things. So what have we what have we appropriated?
Speaker 3: What have the what's the Pull Up Bureau appropriated for
Speaker 3: this fiscal year twenty one twenty two one point one
Speaker 3: million dollars for planning and management to get the program started.
Speaker 3: Then in twenty three FY twenty three twenty four one
Speaker 3: hundred seventy five thousand dollars for the depredation fund, and
Speaker 3: then twenty four to twenty five three hundred fifty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars for the depredation Fund and any excess fund. But
Speaker 3: there's not going to be. They're already down to less
Speaker 3: than three thousand dollars is supposed to be redirected to
Speaker 3: the Wolf Management Plan. Now Proposition one fourteen that these
Speaker 3: yahoo's passed on the Front Range. I mean everybody voted
Speaker 3: for it, but he got passed because of the yaho's
Speaker 3: in the Front Range Proposition one fourteen and subsequent measures
Speaker 3: by the legislature require the costs do not come from
Speaker 3: hunting or fishing license revenues. And that's because all of
Speaker 3: the hunters and anglers in this state said, you know,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, we don't want we want our fees
Speaker 3: that we pay on a hunting license or a fishing
Speaker 3: license to go to hunting and fishing conservation. So you
Speaker 3: can't use those fees to do it. So in summary,
Speaker 3: where are we total wolves released? Twenty five wolves killed
Speaker 3: or died ten. One wolf died in April twenty four,
Speaker 3: probably killed by.
Speaker 2: A mountain lion. Two others are unaccounted for.
Speaker 3: Presumed dad is only seven of the original ten we're
Speaker 3: alive as of early twenty twenty five. No death are
Speaker 3: reported among the fifteen wolves released in January twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: except I think it would include the one in Picton
Speaker 3: County that in the past couple of weeks. So the
Speaker 3: current population maybe maybe thirty wolves roam Colorado, including twenty
Speaker 3: eight that are colored. Twenty five released minus three dead
Speaker 3: plus from others one uncolored wolf from Wyoming, possibly pups
Speaker 3: from the Copper Creek pack, just not sure. In captivity.
Speaker 3: One female wolf four of her five pups from the
Speaker 3: Copper Creek pac or curly in captivity, and they do
Speaker 3: plan to release them, so they will be released, and
Speaker 3: then their odds of not surviving increased dramatically. So costs
Speaker 3: have exceeded the estimates because sourcing the wolves from the
Speaker 3: different locations obviously cost money. High depredation claims have pretty
Speaker 3: much depleted the compensation fun down to less than three
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. And then you have the intangible of public sentiment. Now,
Speaker 3: the rural communities, especially farmers and ranchers, are really frustrated
Speaker 3: because of the costs and the impacts, and there is
Speaker 3: a push right now for a ballot measure in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty six to halt further reintroductions. I just want to
Speaker 3: read you a sentence that popped up up in one
Speaker 3: of the stories I found. Urban voters who largely supported
Speaker 3: Proposition one fourteen benefit from ecological quote warm glow close
Speaker 3: quote without bearing any direct costs. The warm glow, in
Speaker 3: other words, the feel good. The story claims that urban
Speaker 3: voters feel.
Speaker 2: Good about this.
Speaker 3: That shows you how divorce from reality they are about
Speaker 3: what's really going on. But then I want to get
Speaker 3: to this text from Rchelle. The wolf repopulation project in
Speaker 3: Colorado is crue to is cruel to the wolves as well.
Speaker 3: You take the animals from British Columbia, the natural home.
Speaker 3: It appears that the wolves aren't trained to read the
Speaker 3: leaving color for Colorado signs, so they wander outside of
Speaker 3: Colorado borders and then are killed in states that don't
Speaker 3: want them in their states. And the wolves are probably
Speaker 3: following their inner gps to get back to their homes
Speaker 3: in BC. You can't remove that instinct out of the wolves.
Speaker 3: It is cruel to take these wild animals from their
Speaker 3: natural home.
Speaker 1: Michael Dragon Goober's to me, it sounds like these gray
Speaker 1: wolves are a lot like illegal aliens. We capture them,
Speaker 1: we release them into our country. They do amazing and
Speaker 1: terrible things, and we pay for it as taxpayers.
Speaker 2: I don't understand.
Speaker 3: Well, here's how this will help you understand.
Speaker 2: I couldn't.
Speaker 3: It sounds like you might be driving if you're stuck
Speaker 3: in traffic, just you know, when you come to a stop,
Speaker 3: put your hands on the steering wheel at ten and two,
Speaker 3: and then just bang your head on the steering wheel
Speaker 3: as hard as you can for about thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: You know you'll feel a lot better. Yeah, you'll feel
Speaker 2: feel much better.
Speaker 3: I think this country right now faces one of the
Speaker 3: most well not right now, it has for some time.
Speaker 3: But I think we're reaching kind of a pinnacle. And
Speaker 3: it's not just because of our country, it's because of
Speaker 3: the entire world. It's a challenge that I think affects
Speaker 3: every single person. If you're a worker that's just striving
Speaker 3: to make ends meet, if you're a retiree that's counting
Speaker 3: on you know, social Security or any kind of a
Speaker 3: secure future doesn't matter. If I don't care whether you're
Speaker 3: just relying on Social Security. You get a great four
Speaker 3: old one K, you got a pension plan. Imagine that.
Speaker 3: What am I talking about. I think it's the federal debt,
Speaker 3: and that federal debt is a crisis that threatens not
Speaker 3: just our economy, but I think it threatens this idea
Speaker 3: that America is a place of shared prosperity, where you know,
Speaker 3: everyone can come pursue the American dream. Doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 3: you're going to achieve it, but that you can pursue it.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: As we stand right now at the beginning of this summer,
Speaker 3: I think the question is really stark, and it's now
Speaker 3: become unavoidable. Can we balance the books? And if we
Speaker 3: can balance the books, If we can balance the books,
Speaker 3: how can we balance the books? I want you to
Speaker 3: think about some numbers. By the close of last year,
Speaker 3: the federal debt had climbed to an astonishing thirty six
Speaker 3: trillion dollars. That is now one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 3: percent of the gross domestic product. In other words, if
Speaker 3: you took everything that we measure a value in this country,
Speaker 3: the gross domestic product, what do we produce, the wealth,
Speaker 3: the value of everything we produce, the debt is one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty five percent of that. Our debt is
Speaker 3: more than the value of everything that we produce. It's
Speaker 3: as if every dollar that our economy produces, whether that's
Speaker 3: at a factory or or a farm, or a ranch,
Speaker 3: two tech centers, whatever it might be, is overshadowed by
Speaker 3: a debt that is one and a quarter times as
Speaker 3: big as that. And you know, I talk about, like
Speaker 3: when I do American financing, about servicing debt, the cost
Speaker 3: of servicing that debt.
Speaker 2: Which means just paying the interest.
Speaker 3: That's that's where people get in trouble with credit cards,
Speaker 3: you you get a balance that now all you're doing
Speaker 3: is you're just paying the interest to stop the default.
Speaker 3: And the credit card companies are happy for that. As
Speaker 3: long as you're paying the interest, they're making money because
Speaker 3: that principle that you're charge on that credit card they've
Speaker 3: longed for. They've long forgotten about that, They've long already
Speaker 3: paid that off. They've long that's the appeared. You're paying interest,
Speaker 3: and they're just making pure profit. At this point, the
Speaker 3: cost of servicing our debt now consumes nearly one point
Speaker 3: two trillion dollars every single year. That's more than we
Speaker 3: spend on defense, more than we spend on medicare, and
Speaker 3: it means that there's less money to spend on And
Speaker 3: I'm not talking necessarily at the federal level. I'm talking
Speaker 3: about everywhere on education, infrastructure, innovation, whatever it is that
Speaker 3: makes this country really hum as the world's economic superpower. Now,
Speaker 3: the Congressional Budget Office projects that by twenty thirty five,
Speaker 3: you know the year that we want to be net zero, Well,
Speaker 3: by twenty thirty five, the CBO says, the debt will
Speaker 3: soar to fifty trillion dollars, and our annual interest payments
Speaker 3: will become two trillion dollars a year. So that's two
Speaker 3: trillion dollars that we can't spend in the private sector.
Speaker 3: Or if you're focused on government, that's two trillion dollars
Speaker 3: that you can't spend on building roads, improving the interstate
Speaker 3: highway system, fixing bridges, or you know, NASA contracting out
Speaker 3: to do some sort of space adventure. And it's certainly
Speaker 3: two trillion dollars that we can't allocate over to Medicare
Speaker 3: or Medicaid, or social security, or border security or anything
Speaker 3: else for that matter. That two trillion dollars not for schools,
Speaker 3: not for hospitals, not for roads. It's just to keep
Speaker 3: our creditors at bay. So how how do we get
Speaker 3: to this precipice. Well, it's decades in the making, and
Speaker 3: I want to emphasize this choice is made by both parties.
Speaker 3: This is not just a Democrat thing. You can't just
Speaker 3: bang this on the Marxist and quite frankly, even some
Speaker 3: conservative Republicans, but it's leaders that prioritize short term gains
Speaker 3: over long term stability. Now, Republicans rightfully so champion tax
Speaker 3: cuts because tax cuts do in my opinion. In fact,
Speaker 3: I think we can empirically prove this, empirically prove it
Speaker 3: that tax cuts actually increase revenues. Any growth policy is
Speaker 3: going to increase revenues. But we may have reached the
Speaker 3: point where you're going to have to have unachievable growth
Speaker 3: in order to have enough revenues that you can actually
Speaker 3: not just service the debt but actually start paying it down. Now,
Speaker 3: the Social Security Trust Fund is projected to run dry
Speaker 3: by twenty thirty five. Manicares hospital insurance fund that will
Speaker 3: run dry shortly after. And without reform, now I'm not
Speaker 3: talking about necessarily cuts, but without reform, just accept the
Speaker 3: word reform. In general, without just some reform, benefits are
Speaker 3: going to face automatic cuts. And that means that the dignity,
Speaker 3: the security, the lifestyle, everything, and millions of Americans are
Speaker 3: going to be affected by that. In fact, they some
Speaker 3: of them will become impoverished, which will further add to
Speaker 3: the complication. Or we'll just what maybe by that time,
Speaker 3: we'll just have you know, nationwide youth in nation and
Speaker 3: we'll be like, well, you know what, you can't live
Speaker 3: on the reduced benefits, Well, here, come over here.
Speaker 2: We'll give you the juice, and we'll just put you
Speaker 2: down like a dog.
Speaker 3: I want to emphasize something else, because we tend because
Speaker 3: so all the entitlement programs are such that they're dynamite,
Speaker 3: and people's brains just shut down when you talk about entitlements.
Speaker 3: So let's set those aside for just a minute. Because
Speaker 3: discretionary spending on everything from education, to infrastructure to scientific research,
Speaker 3: all of that, all of that's being squeezed at the
Speaker 3: breaking point. Bridges are crumbling, the schools are lagging behind.
Speaker 3: Our competitiveness is beginning to wane a little bit, all
Speaker 3: because we're diverting resources to pay for interest to bondholders. Now,
Speaker 3: consider this, every dollar we spend on interest is a
Speaker 3: dollar that we can't spend on something that we think
Speaker 3: is worthwhile, veterans' healthcare or small business growth. I mean
Speaker 3: programs that even I might personally object to. Nonetheless, those
Speaker 3: dollars we can't spend on any of those things. You
Speaker 3: might say it's a dollar stolen from the American dream.
Speaker 3: It's a dollar stolen from the government doing what it
Speaker 3: actually should be doing those inherently governmental purposes. I guess
Speaker 3: to put it in a in a more succinct way.
Speaker 3: The larger this interest, the servicing of the interest grows.
Speaker 3: Those are dollars that we cannot spend on things that
Speaker 3: you and I would agree as fiscal conservatives, the federal
Speaker 3: government ought to be spending money on, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 3: things like national defense, the State Department doing things like
Speaker 3: you know, approving visas and then tracking those visas, or
Speaker 3: Homeland Security doing the things that they actually should be doing,
Speaker 3: like you know, deporting people, and border patrol and immigrations
Speaker 3: and customs enforcement, all of that. Those are less dollars
Speaker 3: we have for that. And if we want to keep
Speaker 3: spending the same amount of more money on that, that
Speaker 3: means we keep borrowing more money. It's a death spial
Speaker 3: that we're in, and the consequences of the debt are
Speaker 3: not abstract. And I'll explain why.
Speaker 2: How has my life improved in Colorado? Um?
Speaker 3: Huh, come on, come on, you can do it.
Speaker 2: We're with you. Come on, you're Oh he gave up
Speaker 2: too soon, time ran out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he gave up way too soon. I want to
Speaker 3: have the guy that I suggested. He bang his head
Speaker 3: against the steering wheel. I wonder how he's doing unconscious. We
Speaker 3: should check the traffic department. See there's some you know,
Speaker 3: backup somewhere. Yeah, we found some guy unconscious in his car,
Speaker 3: head six thirty k hell blaring and he's just laying there.
Speaker 3: So the consequences of the debt are going to be
Speaker 3: felt in your daily life. Inflation is fueled in part
Speaker 3: beat somewhat objective here. Inflation is fueled in part by
Speaker 3: deficit spending, and that erods the value of your paycheck,
Speaker 3: and then higher interest rates driven by are borrowing make
Speaker 3: it harder to afford a home, a car, a college degree,
Speaker 3: or a trade school certification of degree. This country's credit
Speaker 3: rating has already been downgraded twice in the past fifteen years. Now,
Speaker 3: you may say, well, who cares about that? Well, do
Speaker 3: you ever check your credit score? Do you even know
Speaker 3: what your credit score is? Because I guarante an to
Speaker 3: you that if your credit score is blow up, mine
Speaker 3: is and mine's pretty damn high. Uh, it's shockingly high. Actually,
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't get it. I mean, I get
Speaker 3: it because I pay my bills in time and you
Speaker 3: know everything, But I don't have really have any much
Speaker 3: of any debt. You're paying more interest. It's gonna cost
Speaker 3: you more to go get a car, a home, your
Speaker 3: your credit card, interest rate's gonna be higher, You're gonna
Speaker 3: have more difficulty getting a credit card. It's just a
Speaker 3: fact of life. Internationally, our creditors, China, Japan, they hold
Speaker 3: about eight trillion dollars of our debt, and that gives
Speaker 3: them a lot of leverage over our economic sovereignty. And
Speaker 3: perhaps probably most alarmingly, that burden falls falls heaviest on
Speaker 3: the next generation and the generation after that, our children,
Speaker 3: our grandchildren, our great grandchildren. Well, not just this debt,
Speaker 3: but a diminished country, one less able to invest in
Speaker 3: the future, less capable of leading the world. We had
Speaker 3: dinner with our granddaughter last night and it was just,
Speaker 3: you know, her parents are out of town. She's no, no,
Speaker 3: I don't like the idea she's staying anyway. I'm sitting
Speaker 3: across the table from her, and I'm looking at She's gorgeous,
Speaker 3: absolutely gorgeous young lady. She's really maturing and growing to
Speaker 3: be beautiful. And that's an objective. That's an objective evaluation,
Speaker 3: that's not a grandfather of evaluation. And she's talking about
Speaker 3: college and she's doing her the extracurricular things that she does,
Speaker 3: and poor old Grandpoo's sitting there thinking, Chimney Christmas. We've
Speaker 3: really effed up things for you, meaning us, all of us,
Speaker 3: and by all of us, I mean like, for example, Colorado.
Speaker 3: I know that in this audience, ninety nine point nine
Speaker 3: percent of you cannot be blamed for the state that
Speaker 3: Colorado is currently in because you don't vote for those yahoos.
Speaker 3: But for all the people that do vote for those yahoos,
Speaker 3: you're destroying it for the rest of us. And what's
Speaker 3: happening in Colorado is happening, you know, in the country
Speaker 3: writ large.
Speaker 2: Now I know.
Speaker 3: Trump's don't get me wrong. Trump's trying to reverse all
Speaker 3: of this, and I get that he's focused. If I
Speaker 3: had to point out three things that I think that
Speaker 3: Trump's focused on, it is number one, trying to end
Speaker 3: all the endless wars. He's trying to bring bring peace
Speaker 3: to the world's He's he's trying to I don't want
Speaker 3: to get mired down in these details, but he is.
Speaker 3: For example, in the Middle East, I'd bet you bottom
Speaker 3: dollar that he's told nat and Yahu looked, you're free
Speaker 3: to bomb the you know what. The s word out
Speaker 3: of the Iranians and destroy their nuclear capability. But give
Speaker 3: me some time to try to negotiate a deal, and
Speaker 3: if I can't, I'll give you the wink in the
Speaker 3: nod and have at it. And I think that's part
Speaker 3: of what he had discussions with NBS and the and
Speaker 3: the people and Cutter and where else, Oh, the and
Speaker 3: the UAE. I'm sure that's part of the discussion. He
Speaker 3: started to do the same thing between Russia and Ukraine,
Speaker 3: and I think he's reached the point where he may
Speaker 3: he may say it, and I don't think NATO can
Speaker 3: do it, but he may say in a week in
Speaker 3: a nod to NATO, yeah, cut your leapse, go do
Speaker 3: what you want to do. I've tried everything I can't.
Speaker 3: And in terms of the economy, he really is trying
Speaker 3: to put us on a path to where maybe down
Speaker 3: the road, we could eliminate the income tax.