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We also engage in a thought-provoking discussion on the taxpayer bill of rights and its role in Colorado’s fiscal framework. With insights on the implications of Tabor and its contentious status, this episode casts a critical look at state budgeting, spending priorities, and what leadership can do to pivot Colorado towards a prosperous future. Special focus is given to the need for a business-minded approach to governance as emphasized by our caller, Susan. Listen in as we unravel the financial complexities that shape our state.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, we are back. Hour number two. Thanks for listening to us. Had several text messages from the last hour, and I appreciate those as well. But we’ve got two more hours headed your way. Dr. Gilda Carl joining us now. Dr. Gilda, welcome. How are you?
SPEAKER 03 :
Hi, how are you?
SPEAKER 05 :
I’m doing very well. Spokesperson for the International Council of Men and Boys and author of Real Men Don’t Go Woke. Our title of today’s topic was Where Did Bill Belichick’s Masculinity Go?,
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Which I have to laugh at that because as I’ve been watching, and I have a lot of respect for the man. You know, he’s been one of probably the best football coaches ever. But of late, I just have to question some of his decision making.
SPEAKER 03 :
Which kinds of decisions are you talking about?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, a lot of it having to do with letting his young girlfriend basically do all of his talking.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, exactly. And you wonder, what happened to this guy? He was known as focused, disciplined, stoic. He was, I mean, nobody messed with him. And yet, you know, he was pushed out of the Patriots after 24 years, and he had this time on his hands. And he was probably pretty depressed after, you know, two and more decades of being with an organization and reaching a certain age. Yeah, I can understand the depression. But he took a full year off, and then he became head coach at University of North Carolina. The problem is that his whole history… involved a marriage and that was 29 years. And then he had a relationship for 16 years long term. And as that was winding down, he found this young girlfriend, Jordan Hudson. So while he was with her, he did the same thing as he did with the woman before her. He made her CEO of his foundation. And with that came all the talking points. So he was probably, at that point, depressed and tired. And, you know, being an alpha male for any length of time is exhausting. And, you know, many men… And we’ve seen this time and time again. They go off and find other distractions and even dominatrixes because they don’t want to deal. They just don’t want to deal. They’re doing their best work during the day and at nighttime. Just take care of me. You just take care of all the incidentals. And I think this was what has happened to him. Interesting. However, when he had the woman for 16 years, that girlfriend, she was older and she was much more equipped to handle media things. And now the new girlfriend is not.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, not at all.
SPEAKER 03 :
And not at all. And she’s not the statistic. And she comes across sort of…
SPEAKER 05 :
class sometimes and dealing with the media you know well yeah yeah no i i think you’re correct on that i i would say you know anything from you know by the way immature crass not knowing what she’s talking about jealous maybe even a little narcissistic at times even though you wouldn’t think that of somebody of you know her age and so on but that that’s my depiction of her i could be wrong don’t know her personally and i don’t want to you don’t want to say something out of out of turn there at all Dr. Gilda, but that’s my impression.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, from all the reports, she’s pushed herself. That’s the word that the reports are using. She’s pushed herself into various situations, like advertisements and things that he’s supposed to be in alone.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right, interviews, things along those lines.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, so if you call that narcissistic, I have to agree with you. It’s me, me, me. And yet he was very supportive of her when she was entering the Miss Maine contest. He was by her side, and he looks like he is very supportive of everything that she is doing. So I just worry. You know, I posted an article, a blog post, that I had written on this topic, and everybody was talking about the age difference. You know, younger women, older men, this is nothing new. I’m not interested in the age. I’m interested in what has happened to this man in terms of his masculinity because I wrote the book, Real Men Don’t Go Woke, because I wrote about real men, strong men, men who are not going to wuss out for whatever happens. And I am very concerned because I see what’s happening in the news with our men committing suicide when they have awful situations that they can’t control anymore. So, I mean, if this young woman prevents Belichick from depression and suicide, well, all the more credit to her. However… I mean, he’s got to, at one point or another, look in the mirror and say, who am I? What am I doing here? What am I doing? What am I doing?
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, so for, you know, there’s, and by the way, we have a vast audience. We cover several states, lots of different age groups of individuals listening to us, and I’m sure because kind of like attracts like, I hate to say that, but lots of alpha males out there also listening. How do those particular individuals keep from having happen to them what happened to Bill Belichick?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, if you’re talking about going out with a younger woman.
SPEAKER 05 :
Just in general, getting to that point where you’re tired, you’ve fought the fight, you really don’t know what’s next. In Bill’s case, he probably ran the Patriots position as head coach probably a few years longer than he should have. He should have bowed out earlier when he was on top. So how do these guys recognize that and make the proper adjustments?
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s very difficult because you’re dealing with a man’s ego. You’re dealing with a man’s tremendous accreditation over time. You’re dealing with people fawning all over him for having achieved what he has achieved.
SPEAKER 02 :
True, true.
SPEAKER 03 :
And for him to then look in the mirror and say, I’m not what I used to be, is very hard to take. It’s not unlike…
SPEAKER 05 :
beautiful and everything you’re saying i i can’t disagree with but on the same token dr gilda i’m 60 i’m not 50 i’m not 40 i’m not 30 i mean i can look in the mirror and recognize that i’m not the same person i was even at 55 not that i can’t do those same things but i think for all of us myself included you do have to look in the mirror and say you know what i i am not that same person I once was. Yes, I’m still, you know, maybe I can add wisdom and do other things along those lines. But physically speaking, I’m not that same person. And yet for me personally, I’m not going to go woke. I’m not going to lose my manhood over that. I’m not going to go off the deep end. How do other men, you know, keep that positive attitude even when they know they’re not the same person?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that’s a big question for every single person, man and woman, who is aging. How do we try to get back what we used to have? And the best way is to forget, I mean, understand what you’ve had and forget about the fact that you had that. Accept that. Mm-hmm. And now it’s time to talk about the things that you can do today that you were unable to do before. And maybe it is attracting a younger woman. But you know as well as I do, as soon as his money runs out, as soon as he’s no longer in it.
SPEAKER 05 :
I hear you there, absolutely. You’re 100% correct.
SPEAKER 03 :
Dot, dot, dot. You know she’s going to pack it in and say, adios to you, honey. And how is he going to feel then? I am concerned about this.
SPEAKER 05 :
And I agree with you because you are spot on. And I see this in other situations. And I’m not going to point anybody out on air or anything along those lines. But you see this in other situations. And the first thing you think of is, okay, when the money train ends, You know, what’s going to happen next? Because in that case, that particular individual, that man in this case, is going to be even more depressed than they once were.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it’s an age-old problem, if you want to call it a problem. Men want honey. Women want money. What happens when both of those things disappear? Mm-hmm. And for the older men who have had these young, beautiful sirens on their arm, which gives them a boost to their ego, and then suddenly the siren gets a little old, and she is suddenly dumped. And I worked with her. I coached one of these people. And she was depressed as could be. She couldn’t believe it. And this is not unlike what happens when a man gets dumped because he no longer has the money that he used. Maybe he realized he was doing it. Maybe he didn’t. But he used that as the hook to find partners. You know, you want to be loved for who you are.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, that’s exactly right. Author of Real Men Don’t Go Woke. I always ask Dr. Gilda, where do folks get the book?
SPEAKER 03 :
On Amazon is the easiest. Come to my website, drgilda.com, and see the real letters that real men have said about this. It’s scary how many men are near suicide. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. And again, not good. We want to avoid that. We want to help out these men as much as we possibly can. And again, I appreciate I appreciate what you’re doing. This is a real problem. It isn’t something we should take lightly at all. And I know there’s folks out there that probably look at Bill and sort of chuckle at times. But it’s a great example of what’s happening in a lot of men’s lives, not just his.
SPEAKER 03 :
Exactly. And that’s why I’m part of the International Council for Men and Boys and the spokesperson for that organization, because we have got to stop this spiraling increase in suicide among men.
SPEAKER 05 :
Can’t disagree with you at all. Dr. Gilda, thank you for your great work that you’re doing. I appreciate it very much.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you so much. You bet.
SPEAKER 05 :
Have a great evening. And yeah, we make fun of guys like Bill on a pretty routine basis. I know a lot of people do. It’s natural. It’s what’s going to happen. But again, everything she just said, very true. Things going on there that a lot of folks may not, people even around him that are close to him, They may be thinking it, but they have no idea what he’s actually thinking in his own mind. Golden Eagle Financial. Normally, we would have a nice little interview right now from Al Smith. But again, as I said earlier, and if you didn’t hear me in the first hour, we’ve got some technical difficulties today. So you’ll hear me talk through some of our commercials. Normally, there would be commercials playing. But I will handle them instead. And I know Al well enough to take this on. Al Smith, Golden Eagle Financial. And I know I say it a lot, but he really wants to help people not only get to retirement, but then stay there. And Al’s real mission is sitting down and asking you on the front side, what are you going to do in retirement? What are your goals? Kind of going back to even the last interview that I just did a moment ago about Bill Belichick. what are you going to do later on? When you get to that point in life where you just know that, you know what, I can’t do what I once was. I can’t even work the amount of hours I once was working. I still would like to be active and do some things. I’d like to volunteer. I’d like to do some things in my church or for a nonprofit or whatever the case might be. Okay, what is that going to be? What’s that going to look like? And then financially speaking, how are you going to make all that work? Do you have a plan in place to actually get there and stay there, knowing that these are the things that you want to do on down the road? These are the things that, I will just tell you straight up, other financial planners typically don’t sit and do that. They’ll sit down and say, you need this much money to retire at X if you’re going to live here, in whatever state that is, whatever city that is. How do I know this? Because I’ve talked to these individuals in the past. And that’s typically the way this works. Where do you want to retire to? At what age? And I’ll build the formula for how much money you need to put away to do that. Well, there’s more to it than that. And there’s other factors that come into play, not just inflation, but things like health. What if one spouse passes away? What if one spouse needs long-term care? What if one of your kids has to move back and needs long-term care? All sorts of other things that can come into play that, frankly, most financial advisors don’t ask you that Al Smith says. Does. So again, if you really want to have somebody sit down and go through your financial, your portfolio, knowing where are you headed, what are you doing, what is it going to take to actually do those things you want to do later on in life, that’s where Al comes into play. Find him at klzradio.com, or you can call Al directly at 303-744-4000. 1128. And again, you are listening to Rush to Reason. This is Denver’s Afternoon Rush. I’m your host, John Rush. If you’re listening for the first time, I appreciate it very much. You can always listen to us, by the way, on the radio dial at KLZ. We’re the first station on the dial here in the Denver Metro Colorado area. And even beyond that, by the way, because our signal goes a long way. I get text messages from folks. that are in multiple states around us that can still hear us over terrestrial radio. On the same token, you can listen to us through the 560 KLZ app. You can go find that on the Google Play Store. I think that’s what they call it, Charlie, Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. Either one of those, you can actually find our app as well. We’ve got another guest joining us here at the bottom of the hour. But in the meantime, I talked about this yesterday. And I thought, well, here’s another article about it. So I’m going to dovetail back into it. And that was Tabor. Spent some time yesterday talking about Tabor. And the fact that you’re going to hear Tabor talked about a lot in this next upcoming election on the Democrat side. You might hear about it some on the Republican side, but you’re going to hear the Democrats, the folks running for governor. And there will be a primary right now. Michael Bennett has thrown his hat into the ring. We’ve got Phil Weiser. There’s other folks that may be joining that party as well. Who knows? But you’re going to hear some of these folks talk about Tabor. and what they think needs done with it. And for those of you, again, maybe listening for the first time, Tabor in Colorado is our taxpayer bill of rights. What it does is it limits the growth of government and the spending thereof based upon our population as a state, in other words, how much does it increase, and the inflation index. Those two things alone. That’s it. Nothing else. And what you’re going to hear from the Democrats is that’s not enough. We need more money. We have budget shortfalls, and we’re taking money away from certain things to be able to do other things, and we need more money. We need to figure out a way to take the cap off of Tabor. In fact, there are certain Democrats that would love to just see Tabor go completely away, meaning that if there’s a budget shortfall and they need to raise taxes, they just will. See, Tabor doesn’t allow that. Tabor keeps that in check. As I said yesterday, Tabor is the one thing in the state of Colorado that keeps us financially sound. We do have runaway spending, but it’s capped through Tabor. And when I say runaway spending, what I mean is we spend money on pet projects all the time that, frankly, we don’t need to. I’m going to give you a list of some of those in a moment. And I’ll stand by this as well. And I’ll say this to anybody out there listening, including our own governor and all of the crony politicians that are on his side of the aisle. I could cut Colorado’s budget by 10% overnight. Minimum 10%, maybe more, but a minimum of 10%. And oh, by the way, I will fund more in roads and bridges and so on than what’s being done right now. I can do it overnight. No problem. Easy. I’ll get into some of that in a moment. That’s some of the things that we spend money on as a state. And it’s ludicrous some of the things that we spend money on. You could make simple changes in the state of Colorado to adjust for things and never, ever, ever have to worry about a Tabor cap. Have plenty of money to do what needs to be done. But my point is, you’re going to hear a lot of talk about Tabor and the fact that, you know, we stingy, you know, we stingy Republicans. That’s what they’re going to call us. For example, I’m going to read to you the first paragraph out of the Colorado Sun that’s talking about this very subject. Colorado Democrats have been trying for more than 30 years to dismantle the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, TABOR. But seven consecutive years into their universal control of state government, that’s how long the Democrats have been in charge, by the way, universally, both sides of the House and the Senate, the party has barely made a dent in In the conservative fiscal policy, this is the key sentence here, the key end of the sentence, I should say, the key words. A relic of a different political universe. That’s what the Democrats think of Tabor. It’s a relic from a different political universe because they have no idea how to handle spending and control it. Democrats don’t care. They want more, more, more, more, more so they can buy, buy, buy, buy, buy more votes. That’s how it works on their side. The more we can give away, the more votes we get. That’s how they look at it. The problem is they’re giving away other people’s money, yours and mine, not theirs. Tabor caps that. Tabor keeps that from happening. And that’s why you’re going to see a lot of talk about Tabor in the coming months, this next year especially. As we get towards the end, the last quarter of 2025, and we start heading down the road into 2026, you’re going to hear these candidates talk about that a lot. Trust me when I say that, because it’s already starting to be talked about right now, and we’re just not even into June yet of 2025. There’s seven months of this year left, and you’ve got, what, 10 months, basically, of 2026 before the election, and you’re already now starting to hear it talked about. So I went ahead, just for grins, and wanted to look at what’s in the 2026 budget. What’s in the 2026 budget? And there is all sorts of things in our budget regarding public safety, K-12 education, higher education even, health care, of course, preschool, and so on. And I look at these things that are in our current budget, and as I said earlier, could I cut budget overnight in Colorado by 10%? Easy. Easy. Maybe even as much as 20%, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that. It wouldn’t be that hard to do. Susan, what’s up? Hello, Susan. How are you?
SPEAKER 04 :
How are you? I’m great. How are you?
SPEAKER 05 :
I’m good.
SPEAKER 04 :
Good. So I heard you talking about Tabor and taxes and all of that. You know, quite a few years ago, we were sold a bunch of BS about how legalizing marijuana was going to solve all of these issues.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good point.
SPEAKER 04 :
It was going to pay for roads and infrastructure and school. and all of this.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good point.
SPEAKER 04 :
And it didn’t. Obviously, that’s not happening.
SPEAKER 05 :
Nope, it is not. Not at all.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I’m going to make just one short comment, and I know I’ve heard you say that you would never do this, but talking about who’s running for governor… Colorado needs a disruptor Colorado needs a businessman, just like the United States needed a businessman to get in there and disrupt and look at things and get us back on track and. I think you’re the one to do just that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I appreciate those kind words, Susan. I mean that you’re, I know you’re not the only one that feels that way. And I, I get that from other folk and even family members at time. And I appreciate that greatly. Trust me, I do. And I don’t take that lightly, but I do appreciate it very much.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, it’s, it’s not because you’re my friend. It’s, Because I know you and I know what you can do. And that’s really what we need in Colorado. I mean, you and I both grew up here. Yes. And we’re in a mess.
SPEAKER 05 :
We are. We are. And it’s fixable. It really is. It’s fixable. It’s just a matter of getting somebody in that can get elected and make that happen. And I guess that’s the biggest question is, Susan, are there enough independents, not just Republicans, but enough independents out there to recognize what you’re saying and then vote for somebody like myself? That’s the biggest question.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe so if they heard the message.
SPEAKER 05 :
Maybe. Maybe. I’ll take that. I mean, again, I’m always thinking, so I appreciate that very much, Susan. I mean that sincerely.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. All right. Thank you. Have a great day. You too.
SPEAKER 05 :
Have a great night. Appreciate your friendship as well. And I mean that sincerely. And again, as I go through it, I look at some of the budget items that are on here. And Susan’s right. It is going to take somebody. I’ll never say never. I can’t say it’s going to be me. But what I will say is somebody like me, yes, needs to get involved. Really figure out where we head as a state. A lot of the things that we spend money on as a state, frankly, just need to be cut. Period. Period. Just cut it. We don’t need free kindergarten, for example, or free preschool. We don’t need that. That doesn’t need to happen. We need a school voucher system, by the way. That’s something we drastically need. The amount of money that we spend and set aside for kindergarten through 12 education, you could cut that amount of funding back by just offering vouchers. Let people choose where they want to send their kids to school, and or if they want to homeschool them, they get the same voucher to offset their costs in homeschooling. And at the end of the day, you could fix… Some of the budgetary issues we’ve got in this state very easily and never, ever, ever touch Tabor. Now, everything I just said, by the way, the teachers unions would have an absolute fit. They would come down so hard on me and try to dig up as much dirt as they possibly could on me to say that I’m a looney tune and I have no idea what I’m talking about. But that one thing alone I just mentioned, outside of everything else, you could literally take that one item and cut our budget significantly. Because the reality is there are far too many schools, public schools being run that don’t need to be, that you could literally eliminate and shut down. Those parents around there would figure out other ways to have their kids schooled. You could minimize the cost of the infrastructure side of the public school system here in Colorado overnight and literally save – Hundreds of millions, if not billion dollars plus. Keep in mind, our budget as a state, I believe, is about 47 billion. I need to look that up. But it’s around 50 billion, if I’m not mistaken. 46.4 billion. So I wasn’t too far off. Almost 47 billion. So could you save a billion dollars or so just in the school sides of things? Yeah. Yes. Yes. It’s not that hard, folks. I’ll go through maybe a little bit more of this budget as we go through the rest of the program. Let me do this, though. Mile High Coin is coming up next. As I said last hour, if you’ve got a collection of stuff, things that are kicking around your house, Whether that be coins, jewelry, watches even. In fact, David’s really big on watches. You might have an old vintage whatever. Pocket watches even. Some of you may have pocket watches that have been handed down from grandfather to your dad to now you. And in some cases, they can be extremely valuable. You may look at it and just think, well, it’s an heirloom and it’s been passed down. It could have tremendous value. And here’s my point. If you’re not using it and you’re not even taking it as looking at it as an investment, why not? Sell that to a David Gonzalez at Mile High Coin. Let him find a really great home for that where somebody is going to, in some cases, use it, refurbish it, do whatever. If you just have it stuck in a drawer someplace, you’re not doing anything with it. Let somebody else enjoy that piece is where I’m going with this. Find out what it’s worth, by the way. All KLZ listers can get a free appraisal of these items, and you may have a bunch of them kicking around. Just go to David Gonzalez, Mile High Coin. He’ll do that for you. 720-370-3400. Again, 720-370-3400. Then if you need a place to store those items, by the way, Safe Box Deposits can do all of that for you. Now, that is a system whereby it’s not a bank. It’s better than a bank. You’ve heard me say that numerous times. It’s better than a bank because they make an appointment. There’s a security guard that will meet you. You will take your valuables in. It’s very secure, way more than what a bank would be, and the chances of somebody else getting into your box are slim to none, whereby at a bank… Is there a risk of that? Absolutely there is. They can get boxes for you starting at just $15 a month. They can customize boxes, by the way, to fit you specifically, including firearms and things like that, that you’ll never be able to get your bank to take, by the way. Walk into the bank with a gun to put in your safety deposit box and tell me how that works out for you. You can do that at Safebox Deposits. Go to safeboxdeposits.com. You can also call directly 303-771-8000. 303-771-8000. Charlie, why don’t you get our next guest rounded up here, and we’ll talk to him. It’s also going to be on the topic of how fiscally irresponsible are we on a national level. And again, as I said… I will do my very best throughout the rest of the show. We’ve got Jersey Joe joining us at 5 o’clock as well. But I’ll highlight some of these budget things that we have in Colorado because the other thing you’re going to hear from the other side as we go through this gubernatorial race up in 2026 is there’s not enough money. We need to raise a Tabor cap. We don’t have enough money to do this. We don’t have enough money to do that. Well, it’s funny that we always have enough money for their pet projects. We don’t have enough money to fix roads and bridges and do the things necessary that CDOT needs. But we seem to have enough money for all of their other little pet projects. So once again, you’re going to be lied to. I’ll just be straight up honest. You’re going to be lied to by the other side on where we are as a state, fiscally speaking. And these particular candidates are going to fill you full of all sorts of nonsense that frankly just isn’t real. It’s not true. And I’m not sure, and this is where I hope that our side has some individuals that will counter that in a very honest, distinct way and show how wrong they actually are. And I’ll just tell you straight up, if we don’t do that, we’re not going to win. The only chance of winning we have is to do what I just said. Jeremy, joining us now, Jeremy Portnoy. How are you, sir? Welcome. Open the books.
SPEAKER 01 :
I’m doing great, John. How are you?
SPEAKER 05 :
I’m great, and it’s always good to hear from you guys. Talk to us about the Social Security zombie data problem.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right, so we’ve been looking into this for a few months now, since Trump’s State of the Union address, when he was talking about millions of people receiving Social Security who are over 100 years old, up to, he claimed, 360 years old. So we filed an open records request with the Social Security Administration trying to get a breakdown of just how many checks are sent to people by age groups. They just got back to us. They told us those records don’t exist. So either they’re not keeping track or they’re just withholding it from us. Either way, it’s not a good thing. This is something taxpayers deserve to know. They should be more transparent about.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, so the excuse is, we don’t know. Okay, so I guess I have a really dumb question, Jeremy. If they don’t know, then where is this data on, you know, what did Doge find when it comes to some of these payments and things that have been made? And, you know, why are some of these folks still on the rolls that now Social Security is saying we don’t have records of?
SPEAKER 01 :
Exactly. Doge has access to a lot of data we can’t see. What we’re assuming is that Social Security Administration, which a lot of federal agencies will do, is they’ll claim the records don’t exist because they don’t exist in the exact form that you requested it. Maybe they have it spread across a few documents so they can get off on some technicality to withhold the information from us. Or it’s possibly we don’t have records and no one is keeping track. Either way, not so great.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, this is disturbing because, as you and I both know, and you’ve talked about some of this stuff for years, OpenTheBooks.com, those of you listening, go check out the website. I mean, you guys, Jeremy, have been uncovering things like what Doge has gone through here in the past, I don’t know, five months or so. You guys have been doing this now for a long time. I’ve been interviewing you guys for a very, very long time, and the reality is you guys continue to uncover waste, fraud, and abuse on a daily basis. Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right. We’ve been around for about 15 years now. We’re still filing about 60,000 Freedom of Information requests every single year. So we capture every single dime that gets spent at the federal level, state level, local level. So we were here before Doze. We’ll be here after them. We’re very excited about the work they’ve been doing and the fact that this is really entering the mainstream and you’re seeing people talk about it more and more, all this waste that needs to be cleaned up in Washington.
SPEAKER 05 :
I was talking about that last hour a little bit, Jeremy. And while there are, I think, a lot of people that are concerned, we’ve got roughly about, oh, and you would know the numbers of this better than I, but there’s about 55% of Americans that are net taxpayers. There’s about 45% that are net tax receivers or they pay no income tax. And so my theory is you’ve only got about 55% of the people that really have stake in the game. 45% of the people could care less if anything happens because, in fact, it might actually affect their gimme, their particular government payroll check they have coming. So some cases, they’re actually incentivized to not care at the end of the day. The question I have is, is that 55%, and are there enough of them in that 55% to care to actually make a difference when it’s all said and done?
SPEAKER 01 :
I mean, that’s the hope. That’s our belief, that transparency really changes everything. I think if everyone in the country saw every dollar that was being spent in real time, You’ll see a lot of people start to care more and wake up to it. So what we’ve been advocating for, we’re calling America’s checkbook, which we do exactly that. We want Congress to pass a bill that makes it so that every dime that gets spent is online in real time. The same way you can go on your phone and check what’s in your checking account, savings account. you should be able to see how your tax dollars are being spent as well.
SPEAKER 05 :
I agree. Now that one, I’ll just say straight up, I would venture to guess that not all politicians, because there are some, some, I’m putting, you know, I’m using my fingers here and I don’t have much of a gap between my index finger and my thumb. So some politicians I think would be for that. Unfortunately, Jeremy, you’ve got a boatload that would never want you seeing that info.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right. It’s absolutely not going to be an easy fight. We have some, uh, Allies in the House and the Senate that we’re working on some legislation with that we’ll see introduced later this year, hopefully. But, of course, that won’t be an easy battle, right? Our CEO, John Hart, he helped draft the bill that created USAspending.gov, which posts spending online 45 to 90 days after the money has already been spent. So that was a start. At least we have that now. We really need to see it getting spent the minute it goes out the door so we can keep track of all this waste and so on.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, you’re right. We need live updates on what’s getting spent. And by the way, I think part of that tool should include some sort of a search with a notification message to where if there’s a particular individual that’s watching a particular program, and they want to know exactly when checks are sent, I think there should be push notifications that get sent out to those particular individuals that want to see that in live action.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, tying it back to Social Security, right? If a check really gets sent out to someone who’s 250 years old, 300 years old, People should be able to see in real time, wait, this doesn’t look right. Something needs to change here.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. And to your point, these – and I always say, I remind people of this constantly. Our last guest in the first hour did as well. Government has no money, Jeremy, as you know. The only money they get is what we as taxpayers give them through income tax. Yes, they collect some through other types of things on – land leases and different things. So yes, there’s other income that comes in. But by the way, that’s all still taxpayer money when it’s all said and done because we as taxpayers own all of that that they’re creating these funds from. And the only other way government gets money is by borrowing it. And again, they’re doing it on our back. So the reality is all government money is ours.
SPEAKER 01 :
Exactly. And like you mentioned, they can’t even stick to the money. We’re funding them through taxes, right? They’re constantly running deficits. We haven’t had a balanced budget since Bill Clinton was president. And we’re looking like we’re about to pass another hugely unbalanced budget for the next fiscal year.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, and I keep saying, and I know I’m stuttering because it’s so frustrating to me, Jeremy, that there are ways to balance this. It’s called tightening your belt like any other family would. It’s called not spending more than you take in. There’s all sorts of ways to make that happen. There is still a huge amount of government waste and things that we fund here. And there’s just things on the table, Jeremy, that unfortunately no politicians, Trump included, want to talk about. And what I mean by that is we have certain entitlements, Social Security, for example, that will not continue to run at the pace they’re running without some sort of adjustment in it. And even though I’m 60 years of age and know this could very well affect me, the reality is things need to be changed or it won’t last.
SPEAKER 01 :
Exactly. Every year the Treasury comes out with a report that projects Social Security and Medicare over what they call the infinite horizon, so about 100 years or so. And they’re saying those programs are underfunded in that time by $175 trillion, which is just a mind-blowing amount of money. It’s really not realistic to raise. So we’re going to need some reform at some point. And the longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. And the problem is that is political taboo. No politician on any level wants to run on anything I just said, Jeremy. And in turn, they continue to, quote, unquote, you know bamboozle the public they continue to lie to the public you know don’t look over here there’s no issues that’s nothing you know we’ve got other ways we can fix things you know look over here we’ll do this instead the reality is as you just said a moment ago there’s no fix for this without real solid policy adjustments when it comes to some of those programs right those original goals to cut two trillion dollars in spending which would have required digging into some of that mandatory spending like social security and medicare
SPEAKER 01 :
But, of course, we didn’t get anywhere close to that goal. The budget that’s going through Congress now doesn’t reduce spending at all.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, and you guys, to your point, I mean, you do a great job of exposing these things, which we need to continue to do. And, I mean, I guess all I can say, Jeremy, is folks need to follow you. We need to reach out, continue to talk to those people that are representing us, letting them know our frustrations. I mean, other than that, Jeremy, as far as a single citizen in the United States of America, there’s not much else they can do.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, and make your voice heard, right? The fact that Doge existed is a step in the right direction, definitely, and during the national conversation more than it was in the past few years. You can follow along with us at OpenTheBooks.com. We’re constantly monitoring the situation, coming out with new reports every single day.
SPEAKER 05 :
Jeremy, I always appreciate you guys joining us. Anything else that comes up you want to bring to our attention, please let me know.
SPEAKER 01 :
You got it. Thanks for having me. You bet, Jeremy.
SPEAKER 05 :
Appreciate it very much. That’s Jeremy Portnoy. It’s P-O-R-T-N-O-Y, OpenTheBooks.com. And as he said, they’ve been around for about a decade and a half. I’ve been interviewing them for quite some time, by the way, and they continue to bring things to light. And they were doing this, not to take anything away from Doge, but they were doing things like this long before Doge came along. Doge has done nothing but just… signify some of these problems, what’s going on, and some of the things Open the Books continues to find. And to Jeremy’s point, all we can do is continue to rattle the cages of a lot of those particular politicians that are out there that, by the way, even when they go to run for office, we should be asking some of these questions. Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning coming up next, folks. And again, as I say, Cub Creek is there to help you. This is a family that I have known for 40-plus years, and I mean that sincerely. They are great individuals. They talk about their second opinions and the fact that they will come out, look at whatever you have going on, give you a real honest opinion of what you need. In some cases, it may be completely the opposite of the last particular company that came out and told you what was needed. In other cases, they may come out and say, you know what? Yep, they were right on the money. You need to do X, Y, Z. Here’s how we can do that on our end. Here’s what our prices would be. You take a peek, decide what you exactly want to do. One thing that’s big right now, too, that you need to be talking to Cub Creek about is if you’ve got an AC unit that’s struggling, it’s kind of on its last leg. There are some great rebates on… on units that replace that that also act as a not act as but they’re a heat pump they they will how should i say this they coincide with your existing furnace hunter talks about how they can even dial in with your thermostat where the heat pump works to a certain temperature when it gets down to certain temperature and then anything below that your furnace kicks in point being in some cases you can replace your existing ac unit and with the rebates that are available through xl energy for those of you that are xl customers you may very well find yourself being able to do that for the same price as what you had just done with a regular AC unit, therefore saving you a lot of money when it’s all said and done, and giving you a backup heat source at the same time. Because when I mean save money, these particular higher-end units will save money in how they operate versus the other standard unit. That’s one of those things you need to talk to Hunter at Cub Creek about as well. 303-656-5467. 303-656-5467. Michael Bailey Law, Mobile Estate Planning. I talked to Michael, interviewed him, by the way, yesterday. And one of the questions I asked Michael is, explain probate. Because there’s a lot of confusion over how probate works. And people think, well, you know, if I die and I don’t have things all dialed in, you know, my family will figure it out. Well, technically… The family has to go through interstate probate, meaning that because you didn’t have any will or any estate plan, the state now is going to decide where do your things go. If you’ve got kids, if you’ve got any other types of assets and so on, the state is deciding on those things. You aren’t. You’re dead. You’re gone. You left nothing for the rest of the folks behind you to decipher what to do. And because of that, it’s now going to the state, and they’re going to figure it out here in the state of Colorado. Don’t let that happen to you. Have Michael. Again, he is mobile. He is our mobile estate planner. He’ll come to you. He’ll figure out exactly what you need to do. And one of the advisements that I have for a lot of you that are going to talk to Michael is just put a little checklist together on the front side. These are some of the things that I want done. I want these things in my will. This is where I want this to go. This is who I want to be watching over my kids and blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. Write all those things out. Have a little list for Michael. It speeds up his time frame, saves you money, by the way, at the end of the day because he doesn’t have to ask as many questions, and then off you go. Call him today, 720-394-6887, 720-394-6887. And then Ridgeline Auto Brokers, of course, I talked to Josh today, the owner of Josh and Justin. 50-plus cars in stock right now. They’ve got a good inventory of vehicles. And one thing I don’t mention enough is if you’re looking to sell a vehicle, so you’ve got a vehicle where maybe it’s a spare, maybe you’re looking to do an upgrade, maybe you’re not getting a very good deal at whatever the new car dealership is that you’re trying to trade that vehicle in on. you may very well find a better deal and a better price paid at Ridgeline. All you have to do is go to RidgelineAutobrokers.com, click there, find the phone number, give them a call, let them know exactly what you’ve got going on, what you’re trying to do, what you’re trying to accomplish. And for those of you even looking to buy a new car, they can assist you with that as well, and you don’t have to dink around with the dealership if that’s something you want to do. So again, RidgelineAutobrokers.com. Ask for Justin or Josh, either one. RidgelineAutobrokers.com. All right, getting back to the budget. And Colorado budget, I should say. Not national, but Colorado. Because you’re going to hear a lot about the budget as we go through this gubernatorial election in 2026. Now, it’ll be interesting to see how the first part of the year with Governor Polis still being in charge and will determine, you know, what people are actually there putting the budget together and so on. But it’s probably not going to be a lot different than what it is right now. And you’re going to hear them complaining and whining about not having enough money. There’s not enough money. And while Colorado right now is fiscally sound, we’ve got, I think, a couple of billion in reserves, which is good. We as a state should have that for whatever kind of a rainy day might come along. But some of the things that we spend money on, I’ll just be straight up honest, we don’t need to. For example… Provide funds to crime prevention through safer streets programs to enable local governments and law enforcement entities to make physical infrastructure and security improvements. That’s not the job of the state, by the way. That is not the proper role of government. Those cities should be doing that. And cities should be competing to see who’s safest, therefore competing for residents who want to come and be in their safe city. And that should be up to the city. They should be handling that through whatever they need to do, whatever means possible, raising funds, sales tax, whatever. Every city has the ability to raise money on their own. We as a state, my state income taxes don’t need to be supporting that. That’s one area I would cut completely. Doesn’t need to be in there. Invest funds in the Youth Delinquency Prevention and Intervention Program that supports the collaborative work of community-based organizations and local governments to reduce crime among youth. Now, again, I put this back onto the level of cities. Now, can the state have some participation in this? Maybe. Although I will tell you that there’s ways to do this even through private organizations. Don’t require anything from us as state taxpayers. This is another area where I struggle with this. I want to help delinquency with kids and things along those lines. Absolutely. But do my tax dollars need to be doing so? Personally, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I talked about education, K-12. It increases funding. This year’s budget increases funding for K-12 education to preserve a significant balance in the state education fund. I don’t know what that fund is. I don’t know how much money is in it. I would have to take a peek at that to see. I’m sure that’s public. I’ll have to go find that out. But I already explained how I would handle education in the state of Colorado. Vouchers. Easy. Put a voucher system in Colorado. Figure out, I’ve done this math so many times on this program, figure out what our actual per pupil spending in Colorado is, which I believe is, I’d have to do the math again, but several years ago was about $13,000 a pupil. Yes, you need some overhead money to handle even the vouchers and the program and the monitoring of and so on. So let’s say we’re going to give 80%. of that dollar amount out as a voucher per pupil in the state of Colorado. Fine. Figure out what the formula is, 75%, 80%, whatever you think you need for overhead. I think most people even would be happy if they got 70% of that money. Keep 30% for overhead. Whatever you decide the magic number needs to be, there’s a way to make that happen, by the way. No, it doesn’t take a committee a year to figure that out. It’s not that hard to sit down and figure out what that should be. You could do it in a week. Get some good mathematicians together and figure out exactly how that needs to work, what your overhead’s going to be, and figure it out. And then the rest of that money goes to each individual… Student, family, if they’ve got, you know, let’s say, for example, that dollar amounts 10 grand, we’ll make it a round number. Let’s say it’s 10 grand per pupil that they can get as a voucher, and they have two kids, they get 20 grand a year. Spend it accordingly. If they want to send them to, you know, private school that costs 40 grand a year, then they’ve got 20K to offset that. If they want to figure out a way to where maybe they can send their kids to school for a little less than that, you know what? More power to them. If they want to homeschool and do it for even less than that, but they want to use some of that money to take their kids to D.C. to see how things actually work, how the sausage is made, if you would, in Washington, D.C., they’d have the ability to do some of those things. They can do it however they want to, providing it’s on their kids’ education. Easy. Not that hard to do. So many ways to get this handled. And no, we do not need to continue to fund a universal preschool program. No. That that’s basically a universal indoctrination slash babysitting program is what they should call that. That’s Marxism. We do not need that. That needs to be eliminated tomorrow. Yes, I know Governor Polis ran on that. Shame on him, by the way. Well, he’s a Marxist, so he knows exactly what he’s doing. And yes, I don’t use that term loosely. He is a Marxist. Look at his policies. Look at what he does. He’s a Marxist through and through. Universal preschool is a Marxist program. It’s an indoctrination of very young kids. That’s what that is. It’s not to help offset families with costs and so on. That’s how that crap is always sold. That’s how they try to get you. And even conservatives will buy into that garbage at times. And that’s all it is, is garbage. You do not need the state indoctrinating your preschoolers. Period. Higher education. Don’t get me started on this one. You guys already know my feelings on this. We don’t need to fund higher education, period. Period. Every single higher education campus, school, should do its own fundraising. Take some money out of its own endowments. Figure out how to get more endowments in. I mean, there’s all sorts of ways for colleges and public colleges and public campuses to raise money. Easy. Figure it out. Figure it out. Not that hard. Again, we as taxpayers do not need to be handling any type of funding for higher education at all. And I know I’ll get people that would argue with me on that one, especially from the left, but prove to me why we need that. Every one of these colleges has the ability to get huge monies in, in endowments and so on, and probably already do, and yet we as taxpayers are still funding them. Wrong. Shouldn’t be. We should not be doing that. Not the proper role of government. Period. And by the way, that’s one of the things that if I were governor, I would actually constantly ask people that would be bringing things to me or bringing ideas to me. Is this the proper role of state government? Because that’s what I would be in charge of is the state government. Is this the proper role of state government? Is it the state’s role to make sure that every preschooler has some sort of education? No, it is not. It is not. Not the proper role of government. Is it the role of the state to make sure that we have higher education? No, it is not. It is up to those institutions to make sure that they are self-funded. Especially now, as long as they’ve been around, it’s up to them to be self-funded. If they can’t figure it out, they can’t compete, they can’t have the correct type of programs and competition and so on, that’s on them. If they can’t do it, maybe you shouldn’t exist. And then as a state, you sell off that campus, put that money back into the coffers, and away we go. The other thing that I would be looking at as governor when it comes to raising money to offset the budget is what type of assets do we as a state have we no longer need? What type of assets as a state do we have that we no longer need? And I would look at everything. Parks, recreation, different things that are out there that we as a state own, do we need those, or can we save money by not having them and put that money back into our coffers? These are things, by the way, that you do not ever hear about anybody in politics, including those on the right, talk about. I would. If I was running for governor, I’d talk about this stuff. I’d be open about it. And I would make a lot of people mad because some of what I just said even ticks off conservatives because they don’t want to sell off any assets we have. I would be looking at it as a businessman saying, what do we have we don’t need that we are not using, that we are not getting our full potential out of, and how can we actually utilize that better? And that’s how we should be looking at it. That is the proper role of government. Unfortunately, we have politicians on both sides of the aisle that don’t do what I just said. They don’t put quotations around, is this the proper role of government on every single thing that comes to them? And they should be. Because government does far too many things that it should be doing that is not their proper role. Roof Savers of Colorado. We talked to Dave Hart yesterday, by the way, when it comes to the storm chasers that are out there that, frankly, a lot of folks might not even know are storm chasers. They’ll knock on your door. We call them door knockers. And they’ll say something to the effect of, hey, you know, there’s a big storm that came through. We’re running around checking homes and we’d love to check out your roof for you. We’re happy to do that for you. I need you to sign this before I can get up on your roof. I just did the spiel, by the way. And a lot of unbeknown, you know, homeowners will sign that and they get up on the roof and they do their thing. And what you just signed is you’re now in a contract with them that whatever your roof needs, you’re going through them. Period. Period. And that’s not how this is supposed to work. Before you do anything, give Dave Hart a call. Don’t even call your insurance company if you’ve had any kind of storm damage at all. Don’t call them. Call Dave first. Get him out. Have him look at your roof. Get your policy out, by the way. Have that waiting for him. Have him take a peek at it to see exactly what your coverage is, what your deductibles are, and so on. And then you can sit down and determine what’s our next steps. Don’t let the storm chasers do that for you. Let Dave Hart at Roof Savers of Colorado do that for you instead. 303-710-6916. Again, 303-710-6916. And as I always say, make sure that you tell Dave from Roof Savers that you heard him here, that you hear me talk about him. And I’ll say this again about Dave. He is one of the, not one. He is the most honest roofer I think I’ve ever met in my entire life, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that. He will tell you straight up what needs to be done on your roof. Nothing more, no gimmicks, no nothing. Here’s what it’s going to take to get your roof back in shape. And oh, by the way, we’ve got options if we move ahead on how we’re going to handle things. All right, one last thing before I go to break, before we do our top-of-the-hour break, is General Motors and their next-generation V8 proving that gas engines are not dead. EVs have not taken over. GM has put almost a billion dollars into this next endeavor on this particular engine format, if you would. It’s just a continuation of their current V8 engine. It’ll be their sixth generation of the small-block Chevy, by the way. and they are putting a lot of money into that, again, saying that gas engines are not dead. Hour 3 is next. Don’t go anywhere. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
I’m a rich guy.
