In this fiery episode of Rush to Reason, John Rush tears into the latest absurdities from Colorado politics — starting with Democratic Rep. Manny Rutinel’s campaign to push plant-based agriculture in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District. Rush calls him out as a “Marxist” with zero real-world farming experience, ridiculing the idea that anyone who’s never stepped in a cow pie should be lecturing ranchers on meat production. From there, John shifts gears into a sharp conversation with Americans for Public Safety’s Justin Keener about violent crime, defunding the police, and how conservative leadership in states like Texas and Nebraska is
SPEAKER 04 :
This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 15 :
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. With your host, John Rush. My advice to you is to do what your parents did.
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Get a job, sir. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same and there’s a big difference.
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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 04 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush. Presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 14 :
And we are back. Hour number three, Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Okay, continuing on. In hour three. And this caught my eye today. I read the Colorado Sun periodically, and there’s a lot of articles in there that are definitely from the left. This is a leftist website. Publication maybe is not the right word because they don’t necessarily print out articles. To my knowledge, anyways, I don’t think they do any printed materials. It’s all on the website. They publish it, I guess, in a way where they’ve got different writers that write in and some of their own on staff, and they’ve got opinion pieces and so on. At any rate, Colorado Sun today, Manny Rutanel, I think I’m saying that right, Rutanel, Rutanel, it’s R-U-T-I-N-E-L, has said a lot about the meat and dairy industries. Now he wants to represent Colorado’s ag capital in Congress. So the Democratic state representative’s advocacy in the animal agricultural arena dates back to at least his time as a undergraduate student, and he has pushed for a transition to plant-based foods. So he’s a Democrat state representative running in Colorado’s highly competitive 8th Congressional District, which is Gabe Evans. which is one of the state’s ranching and agricultural centers. It has a long history of raising questions about the production and consumption of meat and dairy products. Not in my book, it doesn’t raise any questions. And frankly, I don’t think in most people’s books, it doesn’t raise any questions. Maybe all of you lefties at the Colorado Sun, it raises questions. But I don’t think to the average Coloradan, it raises any questions. People like to eat and they like to eat meat and other things that are farmed, by the way, not just cattle and sheep and pigs and so on, but other things that come out of the ag industry. So his activism dates back to at least his days as an undergraduate student in Florida. where he posed shirtless on campus, draped in a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals banner to illustrate the amount of water used in beef production measured in showers. As a student at Yale Law School, he was quoted in a campus publication saying, animal agriculture is horrific, exploitive industry. It is a horrific, exploitive industry. I’m fixing their grammar. They didn’t have that in there, but… Farmers are polluting a lot in animal agriculture, and if they switch to plant agriculture, they would emit much less while still producing great products, he said, explaining a proposal he supported to use carbon offset credits to pay farmers to transition from animal agriculture to plant agriculture. In other words, Manny is a Marxist. Let’s get this straight out there right off the bat. Manny is a Marxist. Now, I looked up a little bit of Manny’s history here. So he was born December 20th, 1994, as an American attorney and politician serving as a member of the Colorado House of Representatives for the 32nd District. He assumed office in 2023. So he announced his candidacy for the Colorado 8th District just for next year. So he’s announced his candidacy. He was born… in the United States and raised by a single mother in the Dominican Republic until he was six years old. They immigrated to the United States and lived in California and Florida. He attended schools in Florida. He worked at McDonald’s while attending high school and regularly gave blood at a plasma center, blah, blah, blah. He earned an associate’s degree from Pasco Hermando State College, a Bachelor of Arts in Economic and Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of Florida, a Master’s of Science in Applied Economics from Johns Hopkins University, and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. I’m getting to the part where does he have any agricultural experience? Okay, that’s where I’m going with this, so bear with me here. From 2016 to 2018, he served as an economist for the United States Army Corps of Engineers in upstate New York. After graduating from law school, he worked as an associate attorney for Earth Justice since 2021, which, by the way, is only a few years ago. He has worked as CEO of Climate ReFarm, a nonprofit organization. So let me make sure you’re all hearing me correctly here. He has not won… ounce, not one day of experience working a farm, knowing exactly what farmers and ranchers do. He hasn’t had zero experience in that area. Unless he did something as a youngster where he was out in the fields picking and doing things and running a tractor and helping out on the farm and so on. I don’t see that anywhere. And believe you me. If he did, it would be in this Wikipedia page. That I can guarantee you. Somebody on that side of the aisle would have put all of that in there because it looks much better for his bio if he actually spent time out in the field. Right, Charlie? Somebody would put that in Wikipedia. Believe me. Because they know that gives him more credibility if he actually did. He didn’t. So he’s claiming to be an expert in agriculture, and I’m guessing probably never has had mud on his shoes. He’s probably had mud, but not that kind. You guys that are farmers and ranchers, you know what I’m talking about. This guy’s never been in slop in his whole life. He’s probably never even stepped in a cow pie. Highly doubt he’s ever been around that. So active in the Democrat Party in 2023, was selected to fill the former seat of Daphna Michelson-Jeanet in the Colorado House of Representatives. She has been selected for a vacant state Senate seat. So he didn’t even get elected. He was appointed. And now, of course, he’s running. Now, given the fact that the left is a machine, And they do extremely well at propping their people up. I don’t think I’m wrong in saying this. He’d probably do fairly well in that 8th District. Because they’ll prop him up. And the one that was running there, who was a complete disaster, is it Yarovara? Am I saying that right, Charlie Yarovara? She’s no longer running. So they have basically found somebody else, the Democrat Party has. And trust me when I say this. He didn’t do this on his own. He didn’t figure out to run on his own. He has been selected by the Democrats to run. Trust me when I say that. This isn’t something that he just decided all on his own to go do. He’s young. He’s vibrant. Keep in mind his age. At 94, what is he, 32 years of age? So he’s young, vibrant. I don’t know. He’s a nice-looking young man, by the way. I’m guessing he probably speaks fairly well. I won’t know until I hear some things along those lines. But I’ll come back and maybe talk a little bit more about that. But that’s what the Democrat machine does, frankly, better than us. Flesh law coming up next. Speaking of lawyers and the legal end of things and all of that, flesh law, criminal, civil, Kevin does both sides of the aisle. The one thing Kevin doesn’t do that I need to mention is he does not do family law. So if you need family law, he’ll give you a recommendation, but he does criminal, civil cases. Talk to Kevin today, 303-806-8886.
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This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 14 :
All right, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Appreciate you all joining us. And again, going back to our last article that I was reading to you in the candidacy of, I’ll be talking more about that, believe me, as we get into more of CD8 and what’s going to be happening there and Gave’s rerun. We’re going to have to make sure that he gets reelected and all of that. And yes, we’re going to have to be behind him in all ways because, believe me, the other side will be behind. a machine. And they will do every single thing they possibly can to talk about, you know, all of what I just mentioned in that article, how bad this is, how bad that is. He wants to clean this up. He wants to clean that up. And they’re going to go down that list. Trust me when I say that. And it will be a well-oiled machine when it’s all said and done. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that. And I could read a lot of that, even out of that article that I just read coming out of the Colorado Sun, they’re in a way already propping him up to get that part of it going. And believe me, they will make him a contender in CD8. And as I said, they are a machine. They convinced the old candidate that was there, which she was a disaster. I guarantee you, she didn’t, again, she didn’t leave that campaign on her own. She left that campaign because she was instructed to do to make way for a person like this, because that is one situation where Gabe probably would have had an easy time winning like he did once. Didn’t have an easy time the last time around, but it would have been easier this time around. This is a different game now. This particular person, this particular candidate that they’re going to run, even though that’s a huge ag area, they’re going to present him as, quote-unquote, the savior of that area. Trust me when I say that. Meaning… Again, we on our side are going to have to do everything we possibly can to make sure that we keep Gabe out front and even talking about him now and the things that he’s doing and so on. And those of you that are able to even help with, you know, campaign funds and so on, we’re going to make sure that we do that because there are certain members of our party here. that quite honestly, I’ll just say it this way, they’re not fans of Gabe. They just aren’t. So at any rate, we’ve got a guest joining us now. Justin Keener joining us. Justin, welcome. How are you?
SPEAKER 06 :
I’m doing wonderful. Thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER 14 :
I appreciate it. Americans for Public Safety. And I appreciate you joining us today. So talk to us. You just wrote an opinion piece in Fox News. Talk to us about that opinion piece. And, you know, the National Guard isn’t the only way to shut down violent crime in our cities. Talk to us about that.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, you’re hearing a lot of grumbling from certain liberal mayors and governors. Correct. Don’t bring the National Guard. Well, it’s real simple. If you want to solve violent crime, well, then stop defunding the police. Stop disrespecting police. And if you don’t want the National Guard there, do your job. We have examples all over this country of mayors and governors doing the hard work, working with law enforcement, supporting them, and driving their violent crime down. So you don’t want the National Guard? Fine. Do your job. We provide several examples.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay. So give us those examples, by the way.
SPEAKER 06 :
Sure. Well, let’s take a look at Nebraska. Passed a law which allowed law enforcement officers to obtain credit for full tuition at in-state colleges.
SPEAKER 14 :
Nice.
SPEAKER 06 :
The State Patrol had its largest recruiting class in five years. Alabama allocated an extra $16 million for recruitment and retention. They’ve hired 202 officers and expect to be fully staffed. Now, the reason this is so important is because if you go back to around 2000, we had some of the highest crime in our nation’s history. And you saw law enforcement morale just drop. And the numbers in terms of police officers became very low. And that’s when crime started going up. And so now you have efforts to improve recruitment, improve retention. And that’s what’s needed right now. You know, it’s shown that when you focus law enforcement in high crime areas, crime will drop. It’s really not that complicated. It’s just rocket science, is it? It’s not. But when you have people like New York’s leading candidate for mayor leading the defund the police effort, what results do you expect to have? It’s like, imagine you have a sports team and they have low morale, and then you have Have a team with high morale. Which one is going to perform better?
SPEAKER 14 :
No, you’re exactly right. It’s funny you’re talking about Mondami. I was just talking about that in one of our previous segments. And, again, everything you’re saying is spot on. And, again, not that we are against getting crime down, having the National Guard come in and do what’s needed. But I agree with you. That’s not the only way. In fact, that should be the last resort. We have many other ways to handle this besides that.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, you’re absolutely right. And, you know, I do have to give Donald Trump, you know, our president credit for bringing a very hyper focus on the need to address violent crime. And the National Guard is obviously just a very short-term type of thing to come in and help support.
SPEAKER 14 :
It’s a wake-up call is what that is, right?
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. But you have – let’s look in my home state of Texas. Governor Abbott just announced a task force of state and local law enforcement to address violent crime in the city of Houston. Now, this is an area of Texas where we have rogue judges releasing very dangerous offenders on bail who then go on to commit further murders and rapes. And so this is an area where I’m sure they’ll coordinate at some point with federal authorities. But this is a great example. It’s a state leader and local leaders working together to address violent crime.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay. And I already know my answer to my question, which is, you know, why can’t we get some of these cities and leaders to actually do this? And, of course, Justin, I know, and I’ve talked about this throughout even today’s program, when you’ve got – and I’m sorry, I’m going to say it just like this because I mean this – when you’ve got Marxists at the helm – And they know that by creating chaos, letting law enforcement not do what it needs to do, in fact, pulling back law enforcement, or in the case of Antifa in Portland, having the police actually help them out at the end of the day, that’s all part of their master plan. So they know that. They’ll mask it as, oh, no, it’s not that bad. Oh, crime isn’t that bad. Oh, no, the president can’t do this. We’re going to fight him in court. The reality is they know exactly what they’re doing, Justin.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, and even if they’re trying to help, sometimes they’ll do these social justice experiments and say, well, this is how we’ll reduce crime. We’ll do these experiments with violent offenders. And what we say at Americans for Public Safety is that public safety is a moral obligation. It’s not a political experiment. We have every single day law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and others fighting to keep our community safe, a great personal risk. And then when you have politicians who want to say, oh, let’s try and – coddle these incredibly violent offenders well the results are real and the victims are very real and it’s time to just respect law enforcement let them do their job pay them what they are worth the respect not that not that they should just receive but that they’ve earned and that’s what we’re here to provide we’re going to support the candidates and policies that support law enforcement by the way can’t uh can’t argue with any of that very well said uh before we go any further how do folks get a hold of you justin Well, our website is A4PublicSafety.com. A, the number four, PublicSafety.com.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay, so given all of that, now, I’m a solutions kind of a guy, and your opinion piece, of course, is one way to generate some solutions, get people talking about things that maybe they wouldn’t even talk about, even our side talking about things. And again, I’m not saying that there’s, not to burst the bubble of the article, nothing here that you’re saying, there’s other folks out there like myself that have thought about this, but we need people like you that actually bring this to the forefront, write opinion pieces, do some things that other people might think, Oh, wait a minute. Yeah, you know what? That’s not a bad solution. We could be doing this instead of X. And you know what? We’d have to be spending tax dollars on the National Guard if we did these other things instead.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, that’s so true. And let’s look at 2025 crime data. We have some limited data available already for this year. And without passing a single new national law, crime started to drop just a little bit at the beginning of the year. Now, why do you think that is? That’s probably, we suppose, it’s because the president came into office and he made it clear he is going to support law enforcement. And not only do we think that helped increase morale, but what do you think it does to would-be offenders who may know that now there’s a higher likelihood they’re going to be held accountable? And so a lot of politicians will come in and they’ll want to get really – come up with these oddball ideas. Let’s go do these crazy new programs. It’s like, you know what? It really is basic. More cops, less crime. Yeah, and focus and area.
SPEAKER 14 :
Huge still have, by the way, huge. We were number one in the country for car thefts in this Denver metro area, Justin. And the reality is because these guys were stealing cars, they would go to jail maybe overnight, maybe, and most likely be out the next day. And the reality is there was no punishment for the crime. So they just kept doing it. Some of these guys had been three, four time offenders. And it’s why cars kept getting stolen. The reality is there was no punishment for the crime.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, we’re seeing that across the country. I mean, everyone remembers in North Carolina that poor Ukrainian refugee murdered on a subway tram by an individual who had been arrested for multiple violent offenses, yet was allowed to wander the streets rather than being kept behind bars. My own home state of Texas, there was a woman named Rosalie Cook. She was murdered by an individual who had been arrested 67 times for multiple violent offenses. and had been released on two PR bonds rather than being locked up before trial. We’re seeing this across the country, and the president’s right to put a focus on it. You know, bail is very important because it ensures that public safety is addressed. And, you know, if someone is a threat to public safety or not showing up for trial, they need to be held. Now, there are other individuals who will show up for trial, and so, you know, we need to make sure and accommodate that as the Constitution outlines, correct? But that’s the job of courts is delivering justice. It’s not to play favorites. It’s to deliver justice, not politics. And we have three areas. You have three areas if we’re looking at public safety. Cops get the bad guys off the streets. Courts deliver justice. And then we have our prisons. You said punishment fitting the crime. We need to make sure when those individuals go in that they are less of a threat when they come out because nearly 95 percent of people will be released from prison. Our President Trump during his first term passed a thing called the First Step Act, and it helped provide programming to people within federal prisons. And individuals who went through President Trump’s program, when they came out of prison, they’re less likely to reoffend. So we have tools at our disposal that we can do for all three areas, but it just takes common sense in removing politics from the game.
SPEAKER 14 :
Absolutely. Justin, again, I appreciate it. One more time, how do folks find you?
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you. It’s americansforpublicsafety at a4publicsafety.com. A, the number four, publicsafety.com.
SPEAKER 14 :
All right. Next time you want to come on, let me know. You know how to get a hold of me now. We’ll just do it on an ongoing basis. This has been fun. I appreciate it, Justin.
SPEAKER 06 :
I appreciate you. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER 14 :
You’re very welcome. Have a great night. And I apologize, Justin, kind of a little bit in the dark there. We’ve been texting back and forth a little bit earlier today, and somehow with text messages, something got crossed, and I wasn’t sure that he was totally confirmed. But we made it all work, and he will be welcome back. I enjoy talking to him, and we’ve had him on in the past, so I enjoyed that. Roof Savers of Colorado coming up next. And again, Dave is looking for a salesperson, somebody that can help him when it comes to meeting with some of you that are even checking in. Dave is a one-man band right now. He needs some help in that area. So give Dave a call if you’re looking for a job. On top of that, it’s one-stop shopping when it comes to your roof, commercial, residential. You can rejuvenate, extend the life of your roof, save some money on insurance. You can replace your entire roof. You name it. Dave does it all, and he works with all insurance companies as well. 303-710-6916. Gil, what was your experience like working with RoofMax?
SPEAKER 03 :
Very good. With Dave Hart, we right away connected. You know, he was a very nice person to talk to, very accommodating. He even came over to my location when I asked him that I couldn’t go to him. He came to me and he walked the roof and he said, there’s just a couple of minor repairs needed. A few shingles needed to be replaced. And that was the start of our, you know, my conversation to go with him. I said, well, give me a bid and we’ll go from there.
SPEAKER 13 :
That’s great to hear. And how long did the process take from your first call to the final treatment?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it was an excellent experience. They were very accommodating with my time. Dave was very willing to meet my needs. And so it gave me an idea of what it would take to repair it. It wasn’t very much. And so I think it was maybe he came over one day and then maybe two days afterwards and got it all done. All in one day. It was awesome.
SPEAKER 13 :
Find Roof Savers of Colorado at klzradio.com today.
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SPEAKER 12 :
The best export we have is common sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 14 :
And we are back, Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Again, appreciate you all joining us today. Scott Garlis joining us now. Scott, welcome. How are you today? Hey, John, I’m okay.
SPEAKER 07 :
How are you doing, man?
SPEAKER 14 :
I’m doing good. I appreciate you joining us. Thanks for being kind last week on what I had going on, and I appreciate your generosity, believe me.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, man, any time. I’ve been there.
SPEAKER 14 :
All right. Well, that I did know, so thank you very much. I appreciate that. All right. What’s going on on Wall Street, and what can we expect moving forward with the Fed next week?
SPEAKER 07 :
Just earnings are sort of kicking into high gear, so we’re going to chop around a lot over the next week or two. Just one day it’s going to be great, the next day it’s going to be bad. But ultimately, I think the bigger thing people should be focusing on From an investing standpoint, I think earnings numbers are going to be good. We’re going to see more of that from the big tech companies when they report next week. And once they’re over, tech companies are the biggest, they’re serial buyers of their own stock. They spend the most money on that. The other group that spends a lot is the financial companies, the big banks. They’ve all reported. So, once you get next week’s earnings numbers out of the way, you’ve probably had about two-thirds of the S&P 500 report. And so all those guys can start buying back their stock, and that’s likely going to push stocks higher into the end of the year.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay. All right. So you might see some ups and downs for people, and this is me. It’s like, okay, yeah, so it’s down one day, it’s up next. I mean, at the end of the day, that’s just the swing that you’re going to have, and that’s pretty normal. And as we know, Scott, in the past, and, you know, there’s been some dark, cloudy days in October. I don’t see any of those coming, frankly, unless some major thing is on the horizon I don’t know about. But I don’t see that. In other words, I don’t see some, you know – dark October day like we’ve had in the past. Yeah, it’s that time of the year where you can see some ups and downs. I think personally, maybe I’m wrong in this, but I think what could be the light at the end of the tunnel is what does the Fed do next week?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I mean, there’s actually a confluence of events that’s interesting. The Fed next week, plus you have the APEC summit that takes place at the end of October, so that’s the end of next week as well. And the way things from what I’ve been seeing, reading, There’s a report out late yesterday overnight that India looks like they’re coming back to the table. They’re going to get beyond this GMO holdup they’ve had, and they’re probably going to announce a deal next week that’s going to drop the tariff rate from 50% down to 15%. You’ve also got South Korea. They were over here again today. They were in talks with the U.S. They met with Ludnick again. It sounds like they’re getting down to the nitty-gritty and You could have an announcement with South Korea coming out of the APEC summit as well. And then Canada. Canada’s been going back and forth. Maybe not a broader trade deal, but something on steel and aluminum, certainly. That’s the scuttlebutt I’ve been reading. And again, that could come on the sidelines of the APEC summit. And then the big one that Wall Street’s really watching and waiting to see if it happens or not is if Trump and Xi really wind up meeting there. And if they do, you know, the reason they would meet is because they’re going to announce some sort of a deal. So it could be interesting because, like you said, you’re going to get the Fed, which is a big deal. But, I mean, you could wind up with four important trade deals that potentially happen, bam, bam, bam. And a lot of people are going to look at that as positive for global economic growth, certainly in the U.S. The bigger thing would be If you get a China deal, that’s going to back down inflation concerns moving forward. The other thing I would pay attention to, though, is if there is a deal with India. The U.S. originally, coming into this in the beginning of the year and looking to work things out with India, India was looked at as a lot of businesses as sort of a replacement hub for what they’ve been doing with China. You know, Apple being one in particular. So that could be a really big deal, too, because that could be less dependence on China. Look, there’s still the rare earth stuff going on, but, you know, something that has not gotten a lot of press. I don’t know if you saw the deal that the U.S. just announced with Australia the other night.
SPEAKER 14 :
I did not. No, what is that?
SPEAKER 07 :
We just announced a rare earth deal. Oh, OK.
SPEAKER 14 :
No, I did. I missed that. I did not see that, Scott.
SPEAKER 07 :
So the media has kind of pushed that aside.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, that is one. Granted, I’ve had a few things going on, so I haven’t really been able to dedicate some of the news finding, because that’s really what you have to do. What you’re talking about, you’re not going to find that on the front page of things. But no, in all of the, even some of the things that filter into my inbox, I missed that one. I did not see that at all.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes. So it’s really interesting because the Export-Import Bank is going to invest or they have lines of interest, I believe it is open, worth $2.2 billion for these Australian companies. And I went and looked up the 17 rare earths that are out there, and basically every single one of them is in the U.S. and Australia. Also, almost all of them are in China, too. But one of the big hang-ups is processing. Well, these Australian companies already have processing capabilities. So it’s not just getting the rare earths. The big thing is, so what China’s game has been is, you know, China took it over from, the U.S. used to be the main producer. I believe China bought the technology from GE back in the 90s. And then they had to sign a five-year agreement, I believe it was. And once that five, it said you can’t take this technology out of the U.S. until the agreement’s up. So in like 1995, the deal was done. Guess what happened? China took everything back to China.
SPEAKER 09 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, since then, what we’ve seen is when another country starts to build out new earth processing and mining, China starts flooding the world with rare earths.
SPEAKER 14 :
I did see a big article on that the other day. I can’t remember where I watched it. It was a New York – Wall Street Journal. I can’t remember. New York Times, whatever. I don’t remember where I saw that, but I did read a big article on the very thing. that you’re talking about. And I didn’t know a lot of that. I mean, it makes sense now that I read through the article and figured out exactly what you’re saying is essentially, you know, they would put deals together. They would move some of those plants from here to there. Because at one point in time, we did do rare earth mining in the United States. In fact, we had a pretty good foothold on things until we let them get involved. We let them buy some of our companies out. They moved all that technology, you know, back over to China. And then what they did is anytime somebody tried to get things started back up again, they’d flood the market with rare earth minerals, making it where it wasn’t cost effective to even get into it. And that’s how they’ve controlled the market.
SPEAKER 07 :
Correct. And just so I just was building some charts on this stuff earlier. And so in terms of rare earth processing in 1990, the U.S. was 57 percent of global rare earth processing and 55 percent of production. China was 40 and 34, 40 percent of production, 34 percent of processing. So now, yes. And then in 95, like I said, they were allowed to take that technology to China. It’s gone the other way. But what they do is they flood the world. And this is what the U.S. is griped about for a bunch of years now. They flooded the world with these rare earth minerals. And then what they do is these companies that they drive into bankruptcy, they go buy them. That’s right.
SPEAKER 14 :
That’s exactly right. Yeah, that article said exactly the same thing as well. They go buy them for pennies on the dollar. And then they control and hoard more of it at the end of the day.
SPEAKER 07 :
So now because of – so I went through some USGS survey data and some IEA survey data. And so what it looks like now is like just global reserves. China is currently around – I don’t know, 45%, and that’s going to start dropping because the rest of the world is going to pick up processing and production. But looking by 2030, the U.S. and Australia alone, they’re going to be about 15% of global processing versus right now they’re around 5%. So that’s a big deal.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, that’s significant. I mean, the more we – the farther we take that, the higher that number gets, the more leverage we have against folks like China. That’s the one thing that – I think Trump understands this, Scott, but we’ve got to get this – we’ve got to get the average person on the street to understand this, meaning that sometimes this mining stuff doesn’t look so great. Sometimes the environmentalists and so on, they hate these things. But if you’re going to have what you need to keep things moving forward – You’re going to have to have them here on U.S. soil, period.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s correct. And so this has been whipsawing the market around, too. But so if Trump can get – I mean, Trump and Xi sit down and they talk, and this is one of the big problems that will go away for a little bit, but it’s not something the U.S. can just brush aside and be like, it’s taken care of. And that’s why they signed this deal with Australia. They’re going to put a lot of money into these – companies to pump up processing and mining. And look, the estimates for 2030, when I was talking about 15% production, that was before this deal got signed. So those numbers could jump a lot.
SPEAKER 14 :
And they need to. And by the way, they need to. And I think, too, Scott, and you know this, as we get more and more, there’s a lot more out there. I guess that’s maybe the thing I was trying to say. There’s a lot more rare earth minerals out there than most people think. China’s just been able to corner the market on it because of the simple fact of everything you just stated. And again, I think that’s something that… Frankly, these are campaign trail things that some of the candidates right now need to be using as their ammo, if you would, because these things we have allowed to have happen and we never should have in the first place.
SPEAKER 07 :
And the other really big thing here that happened, I think we talked about this in the summer, it happened in July, and people have forgotten about this, but the Department of Defense took, I believe it’s MP Minerals, the ticker symbol might be MP Minerals, They took a stake in this company, and they said they’re going to start guaranteeing prices on rare earth minerals moving forward. And when the price, MP makes sales over that guaranteed price, the U.S. is going to share in the profits. Okay, perfect. But that stops China from being able to flood the world with cheaper rare earths. And there are a bunch of European companies that have said, hey, if you guys are going to do this, we’d love to get in this. We’ll ramp up production, too. So the game is about to change. But I think that Australia deal is really important because that just really changed it a lot.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay, that’s awesome. That’s huge. Okay, one other thing I want to talk about, which is the whole beef end of things. So that’s one thing I want to cover. The other thing I wanted to cover, maybe we go backwards here, is what is Trump and what’s the U.S. right now trying to do when it comes to Argentina? Because the way I read it is they’re trying to basically supplant China. China has got a habit of going to countries that are struggling. They invest heavily into their infrastructure and so on. And, of course, it’s the golden rule, the guy with the gold rules, meaning at that point China rules that particular country. They’re indebted to them. They have no choice. And at the end of the day, we, I believe at times, we should be doing some of those same things and be able to be more capitalistic in the approach. And it looks like in Argentina that’s what we’re doing, and China’s not happy. Am I right in my thought process?
SPEAKER 07 :
From what I’ve seen and read, yes. Look, I don’t know China’s exact strategy, but I mean, you can see it with Africa. I mean, a lot of what China has done there is they’ve made loans to these countries in Africa because they see there’s an opportunity to get a lot of natural resources. And China, you know, the same thing they did with rare earths in the 1990s. They wanted to corner that market. And now, finally, we’ve been waking up to it. These are important things. So, yeah, I think what’s going on is that the U.S. is doing exactly that. I mean, if China controls all the commodities in these different countries, say, where we resource stuff – They can be like, well, you can’t ship them to the U.S. That’s right.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, no, like I said, it’s a golden rule. They decide what’s going to happen. At the end of the day, those countries are pretty hamstrung because they’re indebted so much to the Chinese that they don’t have any choice but to say, yes, okay, I get it. We’ll do what you want us to.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s correct. And so if you think about it this way, too, if you do these things and – You know, China’s definitely using financial warfare. I mean, look at what’s going on with gold. The People’s Bank of China has been buying up gold, and they’ve been selling off their holdings in U.S. bonds. And what they’re doing is they’re trying to convince…
SPEAKER 14 :
other countries to come store their gold in shanghai because they want gold to be priced and quoted in one terms right and that way people start doing more more transactions and you’re answering my next question which is china has to have something besides what it’s had in the past to prop up its currency meaning you just answered my question part of what i think they’ve struggled with and even some of the world has struggled with is okay they’re going to come in and do x y and z but their currency is always propped up by them, not necessarily by hard assets behind it. If they can do what you’re just saying, they eliminate that problem, don’t they?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, and look, China forever has been pushing for, man, they want the yuan to become a more important currency in the globe, but the U.S. dollar still dominates, and if you go look at the transactions in dollars, they’ve actually been rising contrary to some of the stories about how they’re falling. Right. Yeah, I mean, so what China is, If you look at it and step back and look at some of these things, you could argue, you know, this is a long-term plan for financial warfare. And think about it. If you controlled… all of the commodities or the resources, you know, you choked off the U.S.’ ‘s supply and they only had to rely on what they had internally, you could potentially drive prices up on them and, you know, create inflation.
SPEAKER 14 :
Which, now we’re going to talk about the beef sides of things because this is also where, you know, Trump is trying to put some deals together with some of our other countries, Argentina being one of those, bring some Argentinian beef in, maybe reduce some of the pressure that we’ve got on the beef industry here. in the U.S. Now, the one thing that and I’m sure Trump understands this, but I’m not sure exactly how he fixes this part of the beef problem we have in our country today and the prices of for all of you listening and those of you that are ranchers know exactly what I’m going to say next. But we’ve got, what, four or five packing plants across the country. that literally, Scott, control probably 85%, 90% of the market, meaning if you’re a small operator and you’re trying to do some things on your own, good luck, because those big guys literally control the market. And I’m not for government interfering and getting in the middle of things and so on, but this is one area where I think we’ve let too much consolidation over the years happen, and we’ve shut out a lot of the little guys, and now people are paying three times as much for a hamburger as they should be.
SPEAKER 07 :
A good friend of ours… The guy who works in our yard, his dad, said he’s hunting a whole lot more these days, taking down more deer because he’s tired of paying $10 a pound for hamburger meat. Great point.
SPEAKER 14 :
Great point. And by the way, it doesn’t have to be that high. And for all of you listening, it’s not the ranchers that are making this money, by the way. It’s the meatpacking places. It’s the JCBs and such of the world that are actually making all the money. The ranchers themselves, Scott, at the end of the day, they’re not making a whole lot more money. It’s the packers that are making the money right now.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, and if the ranchers have less outlets in which to sell their beef. That’s exactly right.
SPEAKER 14 :
There’s less competition, basically. When there’s consolidation, there’s less competition, and that’s what’s happened in the beef industry.
SPEAKER 07 :
And the ranchers get squeezed.
SPEAKER 14 :
That’s right. And so this is another one that I don’t think the left ever wants to mention when it comes to numbers. The beef and the inflation of has nothing to do with the rest of inflation in the country. It’s its own animal. Pardon the pun, but it is.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes, yes, yes. No, totally.
SPEAKER 14 :
That didn’t come from the rest of what we’ve, you know, tariffs and some of the other things which everybody wants to blame on and so on. Last but not least, that’s the other thing I wanted to end with. Despite all of the tariffs and so on and the fact that all the naysayers said things would just go crazy and inflation would just be sky high, Scott, it hasn’t happened. It’s not there.
SPEAKER 07 :
It’s not. There’s another thing I was reading about recently. The White House is actually dialing back some of their tariff policies in industries where they realize, look, there’s not a competitive edge here in the U.S., and there’s nothing to really protect. they’ve been walking back some of the onerous tariffs with other countries. So they’re basically saying, hey, look, if it’s an industry we care about, we want here, we’re going to do things to keep it that way and not let it walk out of here. So, you know, it sounds like this strategy continues to evolve and is getting hopefully a bit smarter. You know, we’ll see where it goes. But yeah, there’s just we’re not seeing inflation skyrocket.
SPEAKER 14 :
Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. As always, Scott, I appreciate it. Ben Pine, how do folks find you?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, sure. LinkedIn, Twitter, Substack, C. Scott Garlis.
SPEAKER 14 :
All right. Appreciate you, Scott, as always, and thanks for your graciousness last week.
SPEAKER 07 :
Anytime, John. Thanks so much for your time.
SPEAKER 14 :
You betcha, man. Have a great evening. Again, Scott Garlis, appreciate him and his insight. Golden Eagle Financial, if you want to talk to somebody directly, sit down face-to-face, find out what you need to do with your own portfolio, your own retirement plan. Where are you headed? How are you going to get there? Talk to Al Smith today. Find him at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 12 :
This isn’t rage radio. This is real, relatable radio.
SPEAKER 14 :
Back to Rush to Reason. All right. A few months or sorry, a few months, a few minutes left of today’s program. And thanks for all the text messages and so on. And somebody was talking, you know, again, a lot of ranchers and folks that listen to me. And, yeah, I realize there’s a lot of things that coincide with the whole beef end of things. But I do know this. And most of you would agree. And I’ve even got some good friends in the industry that would agree with me. the whole packer end of things and that consolidation and what it did to really change the whole industry. Again, I’m not a big one for government interference. I think things should just let it run until it gets to the point that you squeeze out everyone else and now only a few people control the market. That’s exactly what’s happened recently. in the beef industry and there’s been a lot of small ranches that can’t make it any longer because of what i just said all right this is sent to me from joe might talk about this a little bit more tomorrow by the way when he comes on with his jersey joe from the common sense institute rtd My wife calls RTD Reason to Drive, by the way. Not Regional Tax District, which is its real name, but Reason to Drive. It’s currently $2.7 billion, with a B, in debt. Fair revenues have fallen to just 4.4% of operating costs, and they want to borrow another $539 million. To buy more diesel-powered buses after the vendor they were going to purchase electric hybrid buses from advised that they would no longer be building them. Surprise. Shocker. Yeah, RTD has a problem. Just like CDOT has a problem. Utter mismanagement. No idea what they’re doing. And case in point with CDOT, I wasn’t necessarily going to talk about this today, but this is a good reminder of this. Whoever, and I don’t know if it’s CDOT, if they’ve put it out to a contractor, I haven’t paid attention. The controlling of the traffic and what they’re doing with construction on I-225 is definitely by a third party, not by CDOT. But I don’t know who’s actually doing the work. But let me just say this. If you’re with the company that’s doing the work, you suck, right? Whoever’s doing that work and what they’re doing along 225 is they’re trying to change the roadway where the bridges are because the asphalt and or the concrete and the bridge, things have gotten uneven and there’s some dips and people have to slow way down. It’s a problem with traffic and so on. But I’m going to tell you straight up, whoever’s fixing that right now hasn’t the foggiest idea. what they’re doing. And if you’re working for one of those companies and you can prove the company and you can prove to me that what you’re doing is effective, please tell me. I do know a little bit about road construction and how this stuff works because I’m sort of in that to an extent. You have no idea what you’re doing. You suck. I mean that sincerely. I drove past there. I mean, I do it every single day, but I don’t know what you guys all did last night, but whatever you did, it ain’t working. It’s awful. Any of you that have driven along 225 northbound, southbound, across some of the areas that I’m talking about will know exactly what I mean. It’s awful. And I’m not saying a little awful. It’s almost, it’s worse than it was before. You’d have been better off leaving it alone. And that I mean sincerely. It’s terrible. Now, who am I blaming this on? There’s an old saying, John Maxwell always says, everything rises and falls on leadership. So who’s leading CDOT? An appointee from Governor Polis, who, by the way, has no idea how to run a state the size of Colorado. We’re the eighth largest state in the country, and she doesn’t have any idea what she’s doing, i.e., I-225 and what they’re trying to do there to fix things. So you can look at CDOT, you can look at RTD, which their budgets, by the way, are fairly similar. Believe it or not, RTD has a higher annual budget by about a half a billion dollars. I’m not exaggerating when I say that. I think CDOT’s, it used to be about 2.3, 2.4 billion a year. It might be a little higher than that by now, but RTD’s is about 2.8. So literally, they’re about a half a billion dollars, 500 million apart from one another. And I’ll just tell you straight up, neither one of them had leaders. This whole idea of putting any kind of electric buses on the road in Colorado, given the winters and things that we have here, that’s a moronic decision. Whoever thought that was a good idea, it wasn’t. And you guys all know me. I like EVs. I drive one. So I’m not against EVs by any way, shape, or form. But on large-scale vehicles, they’re awful. They’re worthless. Don’t even go down that path. It’s not worth writing that check. And evidently I’m correct because as we’re talking, the particular company they’re actually going to buy these buses from is basically saying, yeah, that’s nice, but we can’t produce them. There’s been school buses, by the way, around the country where certain school districts have gotten severely burned, not physically, but burned financially speaking because of the same thing other than they’ve actually given large sums of money to these companies that then go broke and can’t deliver product and then they’re out all that money for the buses that they have bought. stupidest idea that ever came across is trying to build any kind of an electric bus. I saw an electric trash truck running around the other day with the city of Denver’s name on the side of it. That’s another whole dumb idea. Stupid. That’s a feel-good measure, by the way, by the city of Denver, who, by the way, is also way behind when it comes to their budgetary needs, and yet they’re doing stupid things like that. So bottom line, not good leadership when it comes to these things. That’s why those decisions get made in the first place. All right, that’s it for today. We’ll be back tomorrow. Dr. Kelly Victory will join us at 3 o’clock. Have a great evening. Be safe out there. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
