In this explosive episode of Rush to Reason, guest host Andy Peth welcomes back the always incisive Jersey Joe for a deep dive into the decline of major American cities. The conversation kicks off with a look at Baltimore, where nearly half the working-age population is unemployed and businesses are fleeing under the weight of sky-high taxes. Joe details the policies that have turned Baltimore into a cautionary tale—and how other cities like San Francisco, New York, and even Denver are following in its footsteps.
The two explore the disastrous impact of progressive governance, the stranglehold of teachers’ unions in
SPEAKER 05 :
This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 07 :
You are going to shut your damn yapper and listen for a change because I got you pegged, sweetheart. You want to take the easy way out because you’re scared. And you’re scared because if you try and fail, there’s only you to blame. Let me break this down for you. Life is scary. Get used to it. There are no magical fixes.
SPEAKER 04 :
With your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 15 :
My advice to you is to do what your parents did.
SPEAKER 04 :
Get a job, sir. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same, and there’s a big difference.
SPEAKER 18 :
Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
SPEAKER 05 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 22 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush. Presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 05 :
Filling in is Andy Pate, party of choice.
SPEAKER 12 :
And welcome to hour number three here on Rush to Reason. I’m Andy Pate, filling in for John Rush. On the line right now, we’ve got Jersey Joe Joe. How’s it going this week?
SPEAKER 10 :
Andy, it’s going fantastic. How about yourself? I’m doing all right. Belated happy birthday, by the way.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, thank you very much, sir. You know, I’m 62, but I don’t look it. I look at least 70. But that’s okay. Hey, quick question. If New York decides to throw itself off a cliff and elect a Jew-hating Muslim communist to run their entire economy into the ground, are they just… You know, a lot of people are talking that they’re going to be sending all kinds of people to Texas and Florida. What about New Jersey? Might you get a… I’m serious. Might you get a number of people move there?
SPEAKER 10 :
Oh, no doubt. In fact, I was going to talk about How to Kill a City, and we might as well talk about it now. And by the way, I’m resending a clip that Charlie said wouldn’t work. You know, a while back I talked about how to kill a city, and I used Baltimore as an example.
SPEAKER 12 :
Ooh, good example.
SPEAKER 10 :
So, you know, so let me go back, and this is about a little age. So Baltimore, when I wrote this about two years ago, Baltimore is a dying city, has been for more than a decade. In the past year, during the dubious title of America’s most dangerous city with a homicide rate of 55.6 per 100,000, which is 12 times that of the U.S. average, 12 times deadlier than the U.S. average. Wow. So what are the problems is Baltimore trying? And by the way, I’m going to bring this all back to New York City and San Francisco and then the rest of the country. So what are the problems that Baltimore trying to deal with unsuccessfully? Well, in Baltimore, 46 percent of the adult population between the ages of 16 and 64 are don’t have a job. What?
SPEAKER 12 :
Wait, say that again.
SPEAKER 10 :
46% of the adult population between the ages of 16 and 64 are unemployed.
SPEAKER 1 :
46?
SPEAKER 10 :
46% of the adult population. What are they living on? Welfare and drug dealings and sticking up groceries.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay, so you’re totally wrong because drug dealing is a job. So they’re gainfully employed. I mean, come on, Joe. I mean, come on.
SPEAKER 10 :
I’m going to bring this all back to New York City. So why are there no jobs in Baltimore? And again, I’m reading this from a couple of years. Simple. Ridiculous tax rates passed by the Democrat liberal politicians who have run the city for the past 50 years in a counterproductive attempt to pay for all the social programs they put in place. However, instead of generating more tax revenues, they generated far less tax. as businesses literally stampeded to move out of the city to avoid those ridiculously high tax rates. And here’s a summary of those tax rates. Real property taxes of $2.25 per $100 of assessed value. That’s $2.25 for every $100. Oh, my. 300% higher than the $0.73 tax. rate charged by nearberg gaithersburg you know you could look at if you had an office building in in uh baltimore you could look out the window say you know if i move four miles over there i cut my property taxes by two-thirds personal property taxes which is paid on vehicles inventory computers machinery even your p you own a piece of parlor your piece of and you own a liquor store every liquor bottle on your shelf once per year five dollars and sixty two cents per hundred dollars versus $1.83 per hundred in nearby towns.
SPEAKER 12 :
Joe, before you keep going, I’ve got to ask you, how do the Ravens and Orioles even survive there? And I’m serious. I mean, is it just because of the surrounding, greater surrounding area, there are enough big-time fans who pour in no matter what?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, from the Surbirds. Oh, and one more. High school, you want to take a guess what their high school graduation rate is?
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh, in Baltimore, I hear it’s horrible.
SPEAKER 10 :
What is it? Less than 40%. So now any business owner would have to be insane to consider opening a business or even continuing to operate a business with those ridiculous tax rates and a limited access to an educated workforce. And to make things worse, while the population of the United States has grown, this is a stunning stat, has grown 58% since 1970, the population of Baltimore has decreased by more than 30% over that same time. It went from 900,000 down to 600,000. Because the majority of businesses and taxpayers had already left me first of all the businesses leave and, by the way, the city of baltimore in implemented a city income tax. So let’s say you work for those businesses just left town and move five miles away and you look out the window and you see another apartment building. That you can literally see from where you’re currently living in you don’t have to move over there I don’t have to pay these taxes. and I don’t have to live in a city that has one of the highest murder rates in the country, wouldn’t you leave town? Yes, I would. And if you were a business owner, would you even consider moving back into Baltimore?
SPEAKER 12 :
No. Now, is it going to be different? I mean, is there a different dynamic with New York because of the bridges and the access to the island and all this? Or is it going to be the same flood out?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, it already happened back during COVID, and we saw… If it wasn’t for people fleeing New York City into New Jersey, New Jersey would have suffered a net population decline. But New Jersey managed to hang on to a net population increase because of the influx of New Yorkers.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, how can New Jersey be moving, not heavily, but it’s drifting rightward politically from where it was? I mean, New Jersey used to be bluer than a deep blue lake. And now I think it’s becoming a little bit redder, a little bit redder. How can that be when you have so many New Yorkers moving there? I mean, here in Colorado, we have all these Californians moving in and they just made us deep blue.
SPEAKER 10 :
You know, and I don’t know, maybe the people had enough of the, maybe people moving here from New York had enough of that. Or maybe the people here are getting sick of the, uh, you know, the property taxes. Uh, I won’t even tell you how ridiculous my, by the way, my, uh, I won’t give out absolute numbers. But the house I’m living in now in New Jersey is only… I have a small horse ranch in Colorado. So the house I’m living in now, nice house, but it’s only one-third the cost of the house I was living in in Colorado. My taxes here on one-third the value are three times what I was paying in Colorado. Oh, my. Three times I’m on one-third of the cost. Property taxes are ridiculous, Andy.
SPEAKER 12 :
Wow. I had no idea.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right. So… Anyway, so that’s how Baltimore killed itself. I mean, literally committed suicide. By the way, have you ever been to Baltimore?
SPEAKER 12 :
No, I have not. I am too frightened. Hey, really quick, one second. Before you go on, when they talk about state and local taxes being written off your federal taxes, that doesn’t include property, does it, or does it?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yes, it does.
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh, so it does include property taxes.
SPEAKER 10 :
State and city income taxes, property taxes, and even sales taxes.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay, so how do you write off sales taxes?
SPEAKER 10 :
If you have some big items like you bought a car or whatever.
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh, I see, large items.
SPEAKER 10 :
But there’s also an equation that says there’s a default equation. You take your income, so many percent of your income times 6%, and they figure that’s what you spend on taxable goods. But if you want to itemize, say you bought yourself a Porsche or something, you can itemize your sales taxes if you want.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay, I understand. Keep going. Sorry about that.
SPEAKER 10 :
Anyway, so Baltimore today should be had their population. Let me back up. I used to go to Baltimore a lot on business back in the 90s. It’s a harbor town. there was a harbor district, you know, restaurants, the waterfront, it was just, you could walk around. It was just a magnificent place. Say you take your life in your hands. So, I mean, temperate climate, not too hot in the summer, not too cold in the winter. It rarely snowed there. Beautiful harbor, scenic, easy to get to from Washington or Philadelphia or New Jersey. Today, it’s a death trap. So they’ve committed suicide. Now, We talked last year extensively about how San Francisco is now dealing with 30% office vacancy rates, crime through the roof, people fleeing the city of San Francisco, businesses, you name it, movie theaters, The Gap, Old Navy, restaurants. And by the way, the 30% vacancy rate in the city offices, all those restaurants, they need the lunch crowd. When 30% of your office buildings are vacant, That means your lunch crowd goes down.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, Joe, this is happening in downtown Denver as well. The restaurants in downtown Denver have been suffering. A good number of them have gone under. The big reason is it’s twofold. First of all, we’re starting to have more of the crime and the homelessness that’s driving people out. But also, during COVID, so many people learned to telecommute and work from home. And so now a lot of people who work downtown, even if they still have office places, they get to work one, two, three days at home. Well, that pulls a lot of people away from those restaurants.
SPEAKER 10 :
It’s a hybrid, and you’ll bring your lunch because it’s not safe to go out to the 16th Street Mall.
SPEAKER 12 :
No.
SPEAKER 10 :
So I say that all as a backdrop, and I heard you talk about New York City in the previous hour, and I just re-sent a clip. Do you want to see if you can bring up that clip? It’s a parody about… The city owned and operated grocery stores at Mondami has promised.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, but we can do it. But tell you what, this would be an ideal time. Let’s take a break. And when we come back, can we play that? Sure can. Okay, let’s take a break first. Up next is Flesh Law. Kevin Flesh, that’s F-L-E-S-H. He’s my lawyer. He can be yours too. No one’s better than Kevin. So call Flesh Law at 303-806-8886 or go to FleshLawFirm.com.
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SPEAKER 15 :
This is TJ with KLZ Radio, and I’ve got Al Smith from Golden Eagle Financial here in the studio with me. Al and I were just talking about how in retirement he helps his clients to stretch the time in their retirement. Al, what do you mean by that? Tell us a little bit more about how time works in retirement.
SPEAKER 21 :
Well, when you think about leaving the working world, you think about, well, it’s still going to take money to live on once I’m retired. And that nest egg, whatever that is, that’s going to permit you to do what you want to do with the time that you have sort of earned for yourself. So the nest egg is not only in dollars, but it’s also in the time that you have to do the things that you believe will be fulfilling in retirement. And when I have a conversation with people, I think it’s equally important to think about how they’re going to be spending their time as it is to accumulate a nest egg.
SPEAKER 15 :
You’ve got to have some pretty good examples of things that people do in retirement. So open the door for us. What sort of things can we expect?
SPEAKER 21 :
Well, sure. I have one gentleman who is very much into aviation. He owns his own small plane. He actually works on that small plane. He’s within a few years of retirement. He’s retirement age. But right now, while he’s working, he takes his small aircraft, flies to locations where he investigates air disasters. I also have some people who spend a lot of time with their grandkids, some of whom live nearby and some are a little farther away. I have some who are incredibly involved with their churches and go on missionary trips and so forth.
SPEAKER 15 :
How do people get in touch with you if they want to stretch that time out in their retirement?
SPEAKER 21 :
They can reach me at 303-744-1128. And if they’re driving when they hear this, you can contact KLZ and they’ll put them in touch with me.
SPEAKER 15 :
Of course, as always, you can find Golden Eagle Financial on klzradio.com slash advertisers and get right in touch with Al if you’re driving and can’t write that number down. Al, thank you so much for joining us today.
SPEAKER 21 :
You’re welcome.
SPEAKER 14 :
This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 12 :
And welcome back to Rush to Reason. Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Andy Pate filling in for John Rush on the line right now. We’ve got Jersey Joe. Joe, do we have a clip or are you going to play one from your end? What’s happening? Hello, Joe.
SPEAKER 10 :
Here we go. And this is a parody of Mondami’s promise to create, to own, a city-owned and operated grocery store. Here we go. Hang on. I got to. Get the volume up. It helps if I turn the volume up.
SPEAKER 12 :
Turn the crank on the side of your computer there.
SPEAKER 10 :
Here we go.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. To a neighborhood near you, Comrade Grocer. Comrade Grocer is a triumph of decolonized supply chain.
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s not just a supermarket. It’s a lifestyle. It’s part of the New York City Government Bureau of Equitable Rationing.
SPEAKER 09 :
We’re open four days a week from 9 to 4. I lost 30 pounds just waiting in line. This store saved my elf and my marriage. Comrade Grocer gave me a reusable bag, a can of meat, and a sense of shared despair. Dismantling systemic food privilege, one meal at a time. There’s no fruit.
SPEAKER 02 :
But there’s also no expectations.
SPEAKER 09 :
Some call it scarcity. I call it mindful consumption. Is this all we get for the week?
SPEAKER 02 :
Sure, the shelves are mostly empty, but so is my heart before Comrade Grocer.
SPEAKER 17 :
I finally feel seen.
SPEAKER 10 :
Comrade Grocer, coming soon to a store near you.
SPEAKER 12 :
I got a can of meat.
SPEAKER 11 :
I just think, you know, I was saying at hour one with the guys, I was saying, yeah, that’s what we need is a grocery store with no competitor. That’s what America has really been looking forward to. He wants a $30 an hour minimum wage.
SPEAKER 10 :
By the way, and let me talk about, you know, my travels to Moscow. I was in, you know, Moscow, you know, right after, you know, it went from being the Soviet Union to being Russia. Yeah. Okay. And prior, back when it was the Soviet Union, people would have to line up outside of us. They started lining up outside bakeries like at 6 o’clock in the morning. And the bakery would close by 2 because they had sold all the bread because they only had limited amounts of flour. They can only make so many loaves a day. And by 2 o’clock, they were sold out. And you couldn’t get a loaf of bread after 2 o’clock. Now, after the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia became Russia again and they embraced capitalism… On one of my trips there, I asked several people, would you want to go back? And the answer was no. And the reason was today in Russia, you can walk into any, even a grocery, you don’t have to go to a bakery, you can walk into a grocery store at 10 o’clock at night and walk out three minutes later with a loaf of bread under your arm. When it was the Soviet Union, you had to stand in line for hours to maybe buy a loaf of bread. And that’s the difference. So nobody in what is Russia today ever wants to go back to the days of the Soviet Union when it was communist.
SPEAKER 12 :
All I want to say is this. The very people who would be running these government-run grocery stores, that’s the same government that in Baltimore is giving you 40%. uh rates of yeah graduation rates in the school graduation rates right okay i mean because look it’s all the same government right it’s all the same people it’s a bunch of liberals getting together saying we know how to run things we don’t care about the market we don’t care about what parents want and we don’t care what the customer wants at a grocery store and so we’re going to run it our way and so if they’re going to give if those same people are going to give you 40 you know um graduation rates over here and wreck your kids’ future, why would you want them running your grocery store?
SPEAKER 10 :
Obviously, the answer is obviously you wouldn’t. Right. And, you know, this has been tried over and over and over again, and it’s failed every single time. But, you know, you have to wonder, you know, I forget who said that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. This is the same, you know, promise that’s been made countless times and resulted in millions of deaths and starvation and, you know, and collapsed economies. Look at Venezuela. Look at Cuba. It’s just Somalia, it just goes on and on and on. Now, I want to… Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
SPEAKER 12 :
You got to let me jump in. Got to let me jump in. That was too good. Joe, you know what really gets me, what really burns me is all the people who say, how can you guys in America who have so much, you have so much… And then you want to actually shut your borders and not be willing to take in people around the world from these impoverished nations that have so little. And my answer to them is this. They don’t have so little. They’re forcing themselves to have so little. If you go to Venezuela and you look at for the size of that country, you look at their natural resources that they have there. They should all be millionaires. Okay. They’ve got oil galore. They’ve got gorgeous mountains. They’ve got, they’ve got, you know, wooded areas. They’ve got plenty of wood. They’ve got everything. Beautiful soil. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous area.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. Great, great crop growing lands. They’ve got, they’ve got mining. You got great fishing. They’ve got mineral rights.
SPEAKER 12 :
They have everything, and yet we should be allowing them all to come here because they’re impoverished. And I’m like, guys, on average, if you look at the size of their land versus ours, right, they have far better natural resources than we do. We’re the ones who are impoverished by comparison here in America. Okay. And we have good stuff, but not like not all compressed into one area like that. And this is true of many places. This is true of the Congo. Okay. This is true of Ecuador. This is true of many places. And so this idea that we won’t let people come from impoverished nations, I want to look at them and just say, you know, guys, those nations, we should be exporting capitalism. Those nations should be thriving. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 10 :
And by the way, at one point, I think Venezuela was the fifth richest country in the world. per capita in terms of their income. And by the way, talk about exporting capitalism. My quote of the week for the Jersey Joe podcast last week, we all remember my favorite economist, Milton Friedman. Yeah. So here’s my quote of the week. This was from last week. And here’s a quote from the, he’s been dead for about a decade now. He says, but here’s his quote. He said, so that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that There is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free enterprise system. Unleashed by the free enterprise. And if you need any examples, you look at North Korea, South Korea. Same dirt, same ocean, same climate. You look at, you know, you go South Korea, you’ve got Samsung, Apple. All the different, you know, they make the car companies, the appliance companies, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Seoul. I have, you know, thousands of restaurants. And you go 50 miles north and the place, people are literally 20,000 people a year are starving to death in North Korea. There’s no electricity in the vast parts of the country. And the only difference is the form of government and the form of their economic.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, what about Haiti and the Dominican Republic?
SPEAKER 10 :
Same story, same island. They share the island. It’s an island paradise. Half of the island is the Dominican Republic, which, by the way, has numerous U.S.-based companies have opened manufacturing plants there. So it’s not just local. You’ve got U.S. companies have opened everything from clothing to electric motors to electronic controls. And U.S. companies are not only not afraid, they’re eager to open manufacturing facilities in the Dominican Republic. On the other side of the island, again, same ocean, same climate, same dirt. Haiti’s a hellhole. It’s a failed state.
SPEAKER 12 :
You see, the reason I mention that is because Trump just revoked over a half a million Haitians’ right to continue staying here. Their visas were going to be extended and extended and extended by the Biden administration. Why? Because it all goes back to an earthquake that happened in 2010. Here it is 15 years later and they’re supposed to be kept here through perpetuity because it’s so horrible back there. And I’m like, guys, it’s only horrible back there because you make it that way.
SPEAKER 10 :
And we can’t living in poverty and violence because of government, because of government and the economic system that they’ve adopted. And again, it’s it’s failed over.
SPEAKER 12 :
And again, Joe, can we take in people from the entire all over the world wherever they’ve wrecked their countries?
SPEAKER 10 :
Have you ever seen, there’s a guy, this clip goes back 10 years ago, a guy does a demonstration with jars and gumballs. Have you ever seen that?
SPEAKER 12 :
I think so, yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
And for those who haven’t seen it, I’ll try to find it and put it up on the Jersey Joe website. A guy has a bunch of big glass jars, and these are like two-foot-all glass jars. And in one glass jar, he’s got like 310 gumballs. And he said each gumball represents a million people, and this is the population of the United States in this jar. And then he says, and then he takes a handful of gumballs and he says, and here’s how many people Congress have said can come in. So he adds a handful of gumballs to, to this one jar. And then he’s got this, this array of like six or seven other three foot tall jars of gumballs. And he said, and these are, remember there’s 7 billion people on the earth, right? And he says, and these other four, and these are three foot tall jars, you know, five inches in diameter. And he said, these are all the people that live in impoverished companies, Bangladesh, Somalia, North Korea. He goes down the laundry list. And he says, so, and here’s the United States. And he says, so if we want to start taking them in, and he starts taking the first big jar, which is twice as tall as the first jar, pours in, and of course, 80% of the gumballs go on the floor. And then the next one, then the next one, and the next one. It is physically impossible for the United States to take in three-and-a-half billion people from impoverished nations around the world the only way to solve that problem is going back to your point andy is to get them to understand how to uh… take it to uh… take advantage of the natural resources they can all left himself itself vietnam has taken has lifted themselves out of poverty south vietnam wealth it’s all vietnam now but you’ve now got all sorts of clothing and stairs right entering they’re thriving they’re thriving cambodia’s thriving So the key is to unleash the spirit of capitalism in these countries. Somalia is another mineral-rich country. If they weren’t run by warlords, the people over there would be thriving.
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh, yeah. Well, with Trump coming down with because this happened right after the recent Supreme Court ruling and Trump can actually do his job now and not have lower courts shut him down every time he turns around. So what does he do? He says, OK, these over half a million Haitians, they’ve basically got until I forget. I think it’s October to leave. OK. And what did a number of Democrats came out and basically said this? That’s not fair because Haiti is dangerous and impoverished. It’s dangerous and poor there. To send them back there is unfair. It’s inhumane. And I’m like, guys, compared to the United States, Joe, how much of the world is dangerous and impoverished compared to the United States?
SPEAKER 10 :
By a factor of 10, again, we’re 225 million people. There’s more than Three billion people who live in dangerous and impoverished people.
SPEAKER 12 :
OK, so by that measure, by that standard, by what the Democrats are saying right now, going after Donald Trump, we’d have to take in the world.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, half the world, half the world. You know what I mean? We wouldn’t have to take in Europe and we wouldn’t have to take in large parts, portions.
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh, good. Only half the world. Only half the world. Yeah, I mean, it’s ridiculous. You can’t say because every place that is dangerous and impoverished, it’s the United States job to take their people. I mean, I’m sorry, but that’s crazy. At some point, at some point, the best thing we can do is show the way with capitalism, be the shining city on the hill, as Reagan said, and show them the way because I got news for you. They’ve got great natural resources and they got wonderful people.
SPEAKER 10 :
Just need to export capitalism. But, you know, you have to overcome the local governments and in some cases the warlords.
SPEAKER 12 :
Right.
SPEAKER 10 :
But, you know, exporting capitalism. By the way, I’m glad you mentioned justices. Can we go over to district court justices?
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, let me take a break first. Then we’ll come back and go do that, okay?
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 12 :
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SPEAKER 06 :
The best export we have is common sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 12 :
And welcome back to Rush to Reason. Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Okay, Joe, what do you got next?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, actually, I want to backtrack. I distracted myself. I want to talk more about dead and dying cities, and I want to get your take on a disturbing trend. I think the other day I copied you on an analysis of the 50 largest cities in the United States. Yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
By the way, it was haunting, but go ahead.
SPEAKER 10 :
And that’s what I want to talk about. For those who are not aware, list of the 50 largest cities in the United States. Of those 50, only seven have a Republican mayor. The other 43 either have a Democrat mayor or an independent socialist mayor. So, and let me give you some stats. We talked about the national homicide rate being around 5 for 100,000. Here’s a stat, Chicago, these are homicide rates per 100,000 population.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay, so once again, the national average is, what was it, 5.4?
SPEAKER 10 :
5 for 100,000. Which means in a city like Castle Rock, which I think is around 50,000, even if they had one murder per year in Castle Rock, that’d be a homicide rate of 2. Okay, the national average is 5. All right. So I just want to put that in perspective. So Chicago, 21.5. Philadelphia, 22.8. Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas. Kansas City, Missouri, 28. Detroit, 32. We already talked about Baltimore at 55. Washington, D.C., 41. St. Louis, 48. And New Orleans at 54. Now, what is it – why do all these big cities – turn blue because none of them have ever turned back red. Once they turn blue, they stay blue. Why do big cities almost universally, are they already blue or why are they turning blue? Because if you can’t stop it, I don’t see it as how this ends well. Why do big cities turn blue?
SPEAKER 12 :
Or are you asking me? I thought you were going to say. No, I’m asking you. They turn blue largely because, well, I hate to say it, but a lot of it is demographic destiny. Okay. Various demographics have come together that tend to vote Democrat. And also in the big city, you have very liberal values. Okay. Very liberal values about moral issues and so forth. And so they’re able to rally those groups around and basically overwhelm the ballot box. Yep.
SPEAKER 10 :
And it’s sad because I see no.
SPEAKER 12 :
And by the way, they give away a lot of freebies in the interstate.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, it’s free. And I think that’s what attracts people. You know, hey, come to New York. We’ll give you, you know, you go to a small city, you know, you’re not going to find things like Section 8 housing or, you know. No. But you go to, oh, yeah, we’ll give you heating assistance. We’ll give you Section 8 housing. You know, we’ll hand out SNAP food benefits. Medicaid expansion. By the way. People think Medicaid is a uniform federal program. It isn’t. Medicaid is administered by each and every state. They get to sit through. And more than half the states have said, hey, oh, you’re a married couple with no kids? You have a household income that’s under $69,000? Yeah, you can come on our Medicaid program. Even though your employer is offering you an employer-subsidized health insurance plan, sure, you can come on to our no-cost, taxpayer-funded So let’s say you work at Walmart and you have the option of going on Walmart’s plan. But Walmart says, hey, we’re going to take 80 bucks a month out of your paycheck. And if you go for an office visit, there’s a $20 copay.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right.
SPEAKER 10 :
If you get hospitalized, there’s a $2,000 deductible. Or you can come on the state of Colorado’s Medicaid program, which has no copays, no payroll deduction, no office, no deductibles for hospitals. Which are you going to pick, Andy? Right. Medicaid. You’re going to pick Medicaid. So and I think that’s what happens to these blue cities that I just mentioned are all in blue states. So I think the allure of free stuff is what draws people who need or want the free stuff the most. I migrate to those cities and once they migrate there. They want to vote to keep all this stuff. They’re not going to put in a Republican who says, we’re going to cut this, cut that, take this away from you.
SPEAKER 12 :
And here’s the thing. As around them, the quality of life falls apart and goes lower and lower and lower. You look at Baltimore, it’s like living in hell. And the educational standards go lower and lower and lower. And the bang for the buck goes lower and lower and lower. They simply grow to think that this is just the way it is.
SPEAKER 10 :
This is life.
SPEAKER 12 :
It becomes normalized for them. And it’s really bad. By the way, I think another thing that leads into it is the absolute domination of the teachers’ unions in the schools in urban areas. Because it is like, look, teachers’ unions are in charge everywhere. I get it. But in the urban areas, it’s godlike. Mm-hmm. They are absolutely, it is an iron hand, an iron fist. And they push the furthest left ideology they possibly can. So it’s only a matter of time. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 10 :
And I don’t know if you remember, but I think last week I sent you where San Francisco has now lowered their standards where if you get a 21% score on a test, you still pass. 21% out of 100, that’s a passing grade. It’s a D, but it’s a passing grade.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, and that’s on an all-true-false test. I’m kidding. All right.
SPEAKER 10 :
Anyway, so now we can move on to Supreme Court justices. Okay. You want to guess how many district judges there are in the United States, federal district judges?
SPEAKER 12 :
You know, I forget. I know it’s several hundred. What is it?
SPEAKER 10 :
It’s 677, and they’re divided into 94 judicial districts, which means there’s about six or seven district judges for each one of those 94 districts. And what happened in the Supreme Court last week is that the Supreme Court came out and said, hey, you district judges, you can’t keep issuing injunctions that apply to the entire world or entire country. If you want to issue a ruling, it’s going to apply to your district territory and your district. And the liberals, they’ve gone crazy, the Democrats. And even Sotomayor and Kagan in their dissent, they wrote these scathing dissents of the majority opinion. And what’s really hypocritical is Kagan herself, when she was giving a speech at the Northwestern University in 2022, she railed against these nationwide injunctions.
SPEAKER 12 :
Because they were being done to Biden.
SPEAKER 10 :
Being done to Biden. She said, you know, this is not, I’m trying to find a quote.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, and the thing that makes it worse, Joe, is that far, far, far, far more are being done to Trump than Biden. She doesn’t care. OK, the fact that any were being done to Biden, she threw a fit and came out and said, this is wrong. You know, judges, a low, a lowly judge should not be able to control the whole country. This is not an elected person, yada, yada. She sounded like a conservative. Now her side has done an absolute avalanche of these rulings to shut down the Trump administration. She thinks it’s OK.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, let me I’ve actually found the quote from her in 2022. She said it’s happened in the Trump administration, and she’s talking about the prior Trump administration, Trump 40. But it happened in the Trump administration. It also happened in the Biden administration. So this has no political tilt to it. But some district courts have, you know, very quickly issued nationwide injunctions to stop a policy in its track that the president and or Congress has determined should be national policy. And if just one district court stops it, then you combine that with the ability of people to forum shop and go to a particular district court where they think that will be the result. And you look at something like that and you think this can’t be right, that one district court, whether it’s, you know, in the Trump years or the Biden years, where they used to go to the Northern District of California or Texas in the Biden years, it just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process. Yet last week, she came out ranting and raving about how wrong it was for the Supreme Court to do exactly what she was pleading to happen in 2022.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, total hypocrite.
SPEAKER 10 :
Total hypocrite. A year award to Elena Kagan.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah. And I mean, total hypocrite. Of course, at least she doesn’t come off as idiotic as Ketanji. No.
SPEAKER 10 :
By the way, we won’t go into it, but did you see Amy Cohen Barrett’s review?
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh, we talked about it in Hour One when she just slapped her down. I mean, basically saying we won’t even bother with this. We won’t even discuss this. It’s so idiotic.
SPEAKER 10 :
We won’t.
SPEAKER 12 :
I’ve never seen that before.
SPEAKER 10 :
All right. Hey, a couple other little questions I want to get to. Let’s play the Doge was testifying before Congress about some of the things they found. And they went to the U.S. Institute for Peace, which is an official government agency, and they talked about what they found and what happened just prior to getting there. By the way, we already talked about last week about how the U.S. Agency for African Development literally locked the doors and they had to get the U.S. Marshals to let them in. We talked about that already, right?
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, here’s Doe saying what happened when they went to the U.S. Institute for Peace. Can we play that clip? We can.
SPEAKER 17 :
Just a few hours after we got into their headquarters, we found that their chief accountant had actually deleted over a terabyte of accounting records from several years. So you’d have to ask the question, well, why would somebody do that? The Doge team, fortunately, was able to recover that data with the help of a few great employees at the Institute of Peace. I think the most troubling thing was they received $55 million a year from Congress and any money that went unspent, instead of returning that to Congress, they would sweep it into a private bank account, which had no congressional oversight. And that’s what they would use to fund things like events at their headquarters and the private jets. And so I think it’s a great example because most Americans don’t know what’s going on at a lot of these smaller agencies. And this is, I think, the most extreme case of some of the wasteful spend that we’re finding.
SPEAKER 14 :
So the agencies are hiding money from you. They’re sending it to the Taliban. They have loaded weapons in the department buildings.
SPEAKER 17 :
At the Institute of Peace.
SPEAKER 14 :
At the Institute of Peace.
SPEAKER 17 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 14 :
So this is a cover-up when you guys roll in? This one, yes, a cover-up. It’s a cover-up.
SPEAKER 15 :
They did delete a vast amount of financial information. That’s really a definition of a cover-up.
SPEAKER 14 :
Isn’t that illegal to delete evidence?
SPEAKER 17 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 14 :
Shred documents?
SPEAKER 17 :
It is. It’s certainly illegal to delete accounting records that Congress would certainly want to know where the congressionally appropriated funds are going from taxpayers.
SPEAKER 12 :
Joe, how did these people stay out of prison?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and the good news is there was a story last week, I think I played it with John, is that the DOJ has gotten guilty pleas from a bunch of people from USAID, you know, for $550 million of fraud and kickbacks.
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh, have they? They’ve gotten guilty pleas?
SPEAKER 10 :
Guilty pleas, yes. $550 million multi-year fraud. And by the way, very clever, the contractors… would give money to a third party who didn’t have any relationship with the agency. And that guy would, you know, buy the plane tickets, pay for their weddings. One official of USAID, he had like a $50,000 country club wedding for his daughter. And this third party contractor paid for his wedding with money he got from the people who were getting these $100 million contracts from USAID. And they all pleaded guilty in turn for reduced sentences. So You know, the corruption is deep. It’s ingrained. I’m sure they only touch the surface. But, yes, people are starting to go to jail as they should.
SPEAKER 12 :
Good. Very, very good. Okay. Hey, tell you what. Why don’t we take a break? We’ll come back and finish up with Jersey Joe. Sound good? Great. Okay. Up next is Mile High Coin. Hey, coins, stamps, jewelry, if it’s small and you collect it, Dave Gonzalez can probably appraise it. Call Dave at Mile High Coin. That’s 720-370-3400.
SPEAKER 16 :
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SPEAKER 01 :
We’ll be right back. Call 303-423-0162, extension 100, or go online to e-gia.com.
SPEAKER 05 :
This isn’t Rage Radio. This is Real Relatable Radio. Back to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 12 :
And welcome back to Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560, Andy Pate filling in for John Rush, along with Jersey Joe, who’s on the line. Joe, how do people reach you?
SPEAKER 10 :
If they want to see my weekly podcast, it’s a weekly podcast, 30 minutes. You can find it at jerseyjoe.com and jersey spelled J-E-R as in Robert, Z as in zebra, E-E-J-E-R-Z-E-E, jerseyjoe.com. Or you can find my podcast, just Google Jersey Joe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can find it on your favorite podcast platform. If you go to the website, you’ll actually be able to see some of the clips there. because I talk about a lot of clips and you’ll, while you can hear them on the podcast platforms, you won’t be able to find the links. So if you want to actually download the links, you got to go to Jersey, Joe.com. And I do do a weekly distribution list. So if you want to get on my distribution list, so you don’t have to hunt for it, just send me an email to Joe at Jersey, Joe.com and asked to be put on my weekly distribution list. Just remember to spell Jersey, J E R Z E E. And I’ll send you the podcast direct to your inbox.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right. Sounds good. What do you got for us?
SPEAKER 10 :
Let’s go to Ben Shapiro. Um, giving some commentary on how the L.A. news media characterized the riots. We’re talking about failed cities, and I’ve got a question. This clip will go in a loop, so right after the ABC7 newscaster finishes, you can end it. It’ll just go back to Ben Shapiro.
SPEAKER 12 :
Charlie’s already got it edited. We’re good to go.
SPEAKER 10 :
All right, let’s play the Ben Shapiro, and he’s talking about the ABC7 in L.A.
SPEAKER 23 :
It could turn very volatile if you move law enforcement in there in the wrong way and turn what is just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn into a massive confrontation and altercation between officers and demonstrators.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s all just people having fun watching cars burn, you know, like you used to do when you were a kid. apparently over on local news there was believe it or not a reporter who was watching the footage of all of this go down and this reporter suggested this is not violent all these burning cars this is not violent burning cars is just fun you see i don’t know about you i don’t have fun by setting cars on fire but according to this reporter at abc7 this is not violent joe do you have fun by setting cars on fire no not unless i i also do what they were doing they were on the overpassed
SPEAKER 10 :
throwing boulders down onto police cars that were on fire, stuck under the underpass. Ah, kids will be kids. So, yeah, kids will be kids. So, you know, throwing, you know, brick-sized rocks onto police cars, smashing windshields, and setting cars on fire. That’s my idea of a fun time.
SPEAKER 12 :
Every one of them should be in prison.
SPEAKER 10 :
You got it. But, you know, the hypocrisy of the media is saying just people having fun, and that’s why you shouldn’t send the law enforcement in because you’ll just make it turn violent. It’s already violent.
SPEAKER 12 :
You know, I think it is unbelievably insulting to Americans for Democrats to say sending in ICE or sending in law enforcement or sending in the National Guard. That’s going to make it worse. That’s going to exasperate the situation. It’s like you have got to be kidding. I got news for you, folks. I got news for Democrats and anyone who’s listening right now. If you’re a Democrat, I got news for you. I trust ICE. I trust the National Guard. I trust the cops. I trust these people. It’s you I don’t trust, okay? Because your people are overrunning streets and overrunning highways, and they are dangerous. Go ahead, Joe.
SPEAKER 10 :
Couldn’t agree more, Andy. So, you know, obviously the media, you know, you have to ask, are they delusional? Do they know that they’re lying? It just boggles my mind how a report can come on show pictures of cars being burned, rocks being thrown onto police cars, and say this is just people having fun. It boggles my mind. Let’s see, how much time we got, Andy?
SPEAKER 12 :
We got about five, six minutes.
SPEAKER 10 :
I sent you a clip of a Senate hearing, and there’s a guy named David R. Cush, and it’s about a minute 30, it’s about an hour 30 into two hours. We have it. So again, this is a Democratic witness. He’s a climate activist. He’s been called as a witness by, I believe, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of, I think, Rhode Island, to talk about, you know, how, well, the terrible things that are happening with climate. His name is David R. Cush, A-R-K-U-S-H, if you want to Google him. Okay. And here’s what he has to say about some of the things he’s written in the past. So let’s play this.
SPEAKER 08 :
One final bit of questioning for you, Mr. R. Cush.
SPEAKER 11 :
The number one food for regular BMs, huh?
SPEAKER 12 :
Just a second. He’s having to edit that out. I wonder what is the number one food for regular people.
SPEAKER 08 :
Define for this committee what homicide means.
SPEAKER 19 :
Sure. So homicide is a legal term that refers to, it’s essentially a blanket term for any form of unlawful killing. And an unlawful killing is causing death with a culpable mental state. Causing a death means substantially contributing to it or accelerating it. And a culpable mental state could be negligence, knowledge, recklessness.
SPEAKER 08 :
So you wrote an article in 2023 entitled, quote, Climate Homicide, Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Deaths. In that article, you argue that oil and gas executives could be prosecuted, not just sued, but criminally prosecuted for homicide, for murder based on climate change. Is that right?
SPEAKER 19 :
That’s right. I mean, I would be careful with the wording because murder, again, is a technical term. And definitely we’re not arguing that they could be prosecuted for first-degree murder. That’s killing with intent.
SPEAKER 08 :
But you want to put them in prison for homicide, lock them up, treat them as criminals, put them in – murderers get put – people who commit homicide get put in jails with violent criminals. And your position is this is a reasonable and rational thing that we should put – The people leading the energy companies in America producing 8.5 million jobs, we should arrest them and throw them in jail. Is that correct?
SPEAKER 19 :
It could be the case that some executives should be prosecuted in that way. Of course, you can’t put a corporation in jail, so there are other remedies in that situation.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay, I’ve heard enough. This guy’s nuts. These people are providing a product, Joe, that we want, that we freely choose whether or not we want to use it. And this guy wants them in prison.
SPEAKER 10 :
I don’t know if you could, I couldn’t hear you, but so yes, he’s advocating that the producer, the oil company, should be tried, convicted, and sent to jail for homicide. Now, my question is, if in fact he is correct that fossil fuels, you know, the burning of fossil fuels, you know, are killing people, the production of fossil fuels really doesn’t create a lot of greenhouse gases. It’s minimal. What creates the greenhouse gases is the use of fossil fuels, not the production. Right. And so like, you know, the state of California, as an example, state of California is suing all the oil companies over, you know, climate change. Well, how many, by the way, the state of California is the largest operator of internal combustion engine vehicles in the state of California. So shouldn’t the state of California be naming themselves in their lawsuit, their climate change lawsuit? Sure. I think they should. I think that’d be a great idea. No, but seriously, think about how warped this is. It is not the production of fossil fuels. It’s the use and consumption of fossil fuels.
SPEAKER 12 :
No, I totally understand. I love your point. That’s what I’m saying. I think it would be a great idea. They should sue themselves because here they have a product that, guess what? Californians want to use. And they’re using it.
SPEAKER 10 :
And they’re driving. And the state of California wants to use it. The California needs it. Yes. You can’t have a battery-powered snowplow. Yes. It just doesn’t work, Andy.
SPEAKER 12 :
I want one. I’m kidding. You know, the thing is, and I always talk about this, Joe, the thing that makes me angry about California is that they’ve got all this oil and gas off their coastline. It is unbelievable what a goldmine of oil and gas they have, and they deny it to the whole country because they won’t drill. And then they whine about it. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 10 :
Oh, better. So last year, Phillips 66, by the way, California has mandated oil a special blend of gas that’s only used in California. And it was being produced by two refineries, one by Phillips 66 and one by Valero. Well, last December, Phillips 66 said next year is it. We’re out of here. We’re shutting it down. We’re not going to try to refine gas in California anymore. Last month, Valero, the only other refinery in the state of California, announced we’ve had it as well. We’re shutting down. We’ll be out of here at the end of the first quarter of 2026.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, I saw that.
SPEAKER 10 :
So the two biggest and the only two refineries in the state that were refining this special blend of gas that California mandates be used, our boss said, see you, we’re gone. We don’t have to, because we’re not going to be located in your state anymore, we don’t have to make this crap. So at a minimum, because that refinery capacity has been removed and they’re going to have to import their gas… from other refineries in other states. What do you think is going to happen to the price of gas in California?
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh, it’s going to skyrocket even more, Joe. And it’s already the highest in the country. California is a mess. They’re going to go down. And I just wonder if anybody there is going to finally vote red. But anyway, tell you what, I got to let you go, Joe. It was wonderful. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 10 :
Anytime, Annie. My pleasure. Thank you.
SPEAKER 12 :
You take care. Folks, that’s it for today. Hour 1 replays next. Dr. Scott is in tomorrow, and I’ll be back on Wednesday with Luke and Tanner for movie reviews. And here we go. What are your favorite TV sitcoms? That’ll be our Hour 2 topic. Until then, drive safe, God bless, and thanks for joining us at Rush to Reason, KLZ 560.
