Join John Rush as he navigates through a whirlwind year, touching on personal hurdles while delving deep into the pressing issue of civil asset forfeiture at airports. Exploring the Department of Justice’s recent decision to end unwarranted asset seizures, John discusses its potential ramifications on both local and national levels. With listener interactions, the episode forms a compelling call for reform, highlighting the balance between necessary security and personal freedoms while offering practical advice for those carrying large sums of cash.
SPEAKER 16 :
This is Rush to Reason. 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! Get a job, Turk! You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same, and there’s a big difference.
SPEAKER 11 :
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 07 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind? It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush. Presented by High Five Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling, where every call ends with a high five.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Beautiful Monday here in Colorado. Yes, it is December the 2nd, and time flies. I’m not exaggerating. I feel like we just finished the last Christmas. Charlie and I say that every year, and it seems like it gets faster and faster every year. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that. It literally feels like, at least for me, that we just finished the last Christmas. And I get it. Personally, I’ve had a whirlwind of a year with my folks and downsizing. Then we lost my mom. My dad’s now in memory care and is having some other health issues and so on. And all of those things, you know, stack those on top of one another. And yes, it makes the year go by extremely fast. But I don’t know about the rest of you. This one in particular, 2024, just seemed like it flew by. So, all right. Speaking of flying, the DOJ has announced. that it’s going to end airport civil asset interdictions. In other words, the asset forfeitures, whereby there’s times they’ll just quote-unquote randomly, and you always wonder is it really random or not, but they’ll randomly pull somebody out and they’ll ask you questions like, how much cash do you carry? And they go through that whole rigmarole. And some people carry large sums of cash. Some don’t. Some do everything on plastic. Some people, you know, they’re going to buy. I’ve read stories where maybe they’re going to buy a car. And they’ve got X amount of cash on them because they’re going to go pay cash for the car. In fact, maybe that’s the only way that particular owner will release the car. Maybe he’s listening to drive radio too much. Because I get into that when it comes to buying and selling of cars privately on drive radio quite often. And I’m kind of one where without, you know, without but just a few exceptions, I want cash. Greenbacks. Hundreds, preferably. Because you can’t trust anything else. Yes, I know there’s some people that you can trust. And yes, even personally, I’ve sold some things where I’ve gone to the bank and the cashier check is coming right from the bank while I’m there and I’m watching it getting printed and so on. And that I feel pretty comfortable with. But would I feel comfortable with somebody just dropping off a cashier’s check? Probably not. Again, there’s some rare exceptions to that, but most times not. So in turn, you’re going out of state to buy a car, and maybe it’s a $20,000 car. This is an actual video that I actually watched not long ago. Guy had $20,000 with him. He was going to buy a car. He gets stopped. He’s got the $20,000 with him. Well, guess what? He doesn’t anymore because they seize it. That’s been their practice in the past. If they think for one moment that there’s something nefarious going on, they just seize it. And the problem is you have to sue to get that back. It’s not as easy as just asking for it back because, frankly, you have to sue to then get it back. It’s actually theft. It’s government theft is what it is. Now, are there legitimate times where they probably should stop somebody that’s dealing in drugs and so on that has that much cash and there’s some nefarious things going on? Yes, there are those times. But more often than not, it’s just somebody doing what I just mentioned a moment ago that gets caught in all of this that then somehow loses their, not somehow, they lose their 20 grand to Uncle Sam. You’re not going to get it back. And by the way, these agents, by the way, they know this. They know you’re not going to get it back. They know what it would take for you to get it back. That’s why they don’t feel bad taking it, because nothing’s going to happen to them. That money just goes into their coffers at that point. That would be interesting to know, by the way, exactly where inside of each one of these agencies, police forces, and so on, does the money actually go? You see in the movies where in a lot of cases it ends up in that particular police department or agency’s coffers, but I don’t know the exact answer to that. I’m not relying on Hollywood to tell me. Reality is the government ends up with it. So there’s been an announcement. One of you listening sent me this. Thank you, by the way, for doing that, that the DOJ has announced they’re going to end this. Now, will that stay? Because remember, this is the current DOJ. Will that continue on with somebody like a Trump appointee running the DOJ? I would probably think so. In fact, you might even see less of this happening on a state-by-state basis because this happens on the roads as well. It’s not just in the airport that this happens. This can happen at any time. So it’ll be interesting to see if some of these sorts of things change under a Trump administration, even more so than they did the last time around. I’m hopeful that you’ll see more of this. And as a side note, am I for catching the bad guys? Absolutely. Absolutely, I am. Although I will tell you that I think typically when it comes to bad guys, there’s a lot of other ways to get them besides just at the airport carrying cash. If it’s a known drug dealer and there’s stuff going on, you know, drug smuggler, et cetera, there’s typically a pattern there and there’s all sorts of ways to catch these individuals. I’m not interested in catching, you know, Joe Blow, business owner that happens to be carrying 20 grand cash because he’s going to go do something with it. Another thing, by the way, that I would love to see this administration change is This whole nonsense of if you go and take more than $10,000 in cash to the bank, it gets red flagged to the IRS, that number is way too low. There are businesses that take in that much cash on a routine basis that every time they take that much cash gets red flagged. It’s ridiculous. It shouldn’t be that. Ten grand, unfortunately, because of inflation, isn’t as much as it used to be. That ten grand limit, by the way, was established in the 70s. My feeling is they should adjust that for inflation. Whenever that was enacted, I’d have to go back and look, but I believe it was the 70s. Whatever year that was, what was a dollar worth then? So in other words, what was 10 grand worth then, 10,000, versus the rate of inflation today? What’s that same 10 grand worth today? They should be adjusting that amount according to inflation annually. They can round up, round down. I don’t care. Make it an even number. I’m okay with that. But that number should be adjusted every year for inflation, and it shouldn’t just sit at 10K. And I understand where it came from. It was to keep people from money laundering and so on and so forth. Although, has it? Did it? The reality is, no, it didn’t. There’s just as much money laundering and things like that going on today as there ever has been. Was that banking regulation that was put into play back in the 70s, has it curbed any of that? No, all that’s done is made it much harder for the legit business owner and the legit person that, let’s say you sell your car for $20,000. I’m using that same example a moment ago. The guy flies in, he buys your car, it’s $20,000 cash. You’ve got to be careful how much of that you deposit on any given day. It’s a bunch of nonsense. You ought to be able to take that $20,000, go put it in your bank and have no problems. But you can’t, because if you do, you’re now flagged. That whole policy, that regulation needs changed as far as I’m concerned. All right. Hi-Fi Plumbing is coming up next. Now, we do have plumbing problems that come up during the wintertime. 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SPEAKER 10 :
Putting reason into your afternoon drive, this is John Rush.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right. The Bank Secrecy Act was passed by Congress in 1970 to combat money laundering. It’s been amended numerous times, but for example, and I don’t know exactly when, I didn’t read to see when the $10,000 limit was put into play, but I think it was actually in that original 1970 act. Just for comparison, that same $10,000 in 1970 today is $81,356. So if you used my method and rounded down to $80,000 and that became the new trigger, $80,000 is a substantial amount of money, just like it was back in 1970 with $10,000. Remember, too, Charlie reminded me of this as well. All of the paperwork… from the bank side and so on, that has to take place. If you deposit more than $10,000, it’s ridiculous and it’s an extra amount of work that these banking institutions, frankly, shouldn’t have to mess with. And this is one of the things right now that through Doge you could reduce costs in doing and do it my way and talk about adjusting it for the cost of inflation. John and Cheyenne, you’re next.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, John. Welcome back.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you, sir.
SPEAKER 06 :
So I owe you an apology. I was wrong. I said Joe was going to pardon Hunter on December 20th, which is the Friday before Christmas. You’re off a couple weeks is all, though. Yeah, but so I’m thinking he’s going to pardon his brother sometime between now and the time he’s at office because he was involved in the shenanigans, too.
SPEAKER 04 :
Now, you can’t, though. Has he been charged with anything, Jim?
SPEAKER 06 :
Nixon was never charged anything, and Ford pardoned him for everything.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hmm.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s, you know, that’s the thing.
SPEAKER 04 :
So it’s basically, Charlie just said, it’s a preemptive pardon.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, for any crimes you may have committed from this date back.
SPEAKER 04 :
So you just say, yep, I’m going to do this for my brother Jim, and Jim, you’re good to go. Yeah, I could see him doing that.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, I could see it, too. He might even pardon his wife, because, you know, she knew everything. Oh, that’d be a good one.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’d be a good one.
SPEAKER 06 :
His reputation has been destroyed, so now he’s at the point where He doesn’t care.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, you have a good point. No, at this point, what difference does it make?
SPEAKER 06 :
Right, and the pardon powers in Article 2 are, there’s no limit to them. It’s very, very broad what the president can pardon for. Now, I’m reading all this stuff on X today about how Hunter will get prosecuted in state court. What state is going to prosecute him?
SPEAKER 04 :
None. None.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, the states that would, he probably didn’t commit any crimes in.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, you get some of the red states that might actually go after him. Yeah, there’s probably nothing there. You’re right, John. Yeah, at the end of the day, that’s not going to happen on the state level anyways.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know, yeah, so it is what it is. We’ve got to ride it out for the next 50 days and call it 49 days, I think it is now, and call it over and then see what happens. As for Doge, I followed them on X and I sent them an email. The biggest thing we have to talk about, and I don’t know, you were talking about saving money. The National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, those two agencies need to be dissolved and all that land needs to be sent back to the states.
SPEAKER 04 :
You’re not going to get an argument out of me. You’ve heard me talk about that numerous times, John.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. The biggest thing right now is the National Forest Service, which is part of the USDA. Why would the Forest Service be under the Department of Agriculture? That right there doesn’t make any sense.
SPEAKER 04 :
No. Really quick, though, John, here’s where I think you’re going to have some issues with. Maybe, maybe not. You currently have states still selling land to the feds, believe it or not.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, yeah, that’s ridiculous, too.
SPEAKER 04 :
Which, by the way, I think your state just did that, by the way.
SPEAKER 06 :
I think it was more of a trade.
SPEAKER 04 :
Was it a trade or a sale? I don’t remember.
SPEAKER 06 :
I think they traded some land to the National Park Service that was private property, but it butted up against Grand Teton, if I remember the one you’re talking about.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think that’s right, but I can’t remember. I thought there was like $100 million. They did. They got $100 million out of it.
SPEAKER 06 :
They did. The state. Yeah, the state did. Yeah, but wasn’t that land that was either butted up against or partially in Grand Teton?
SPEAKER 04 :
I think it was a portion of land within the Grand Teton National Park. Right. But I’m with you. I would rather see the feds just give that land back to Wyoming. Okay, it’s yours now. You manage it. You do whatever you want to. If you want to sell some of it off, be my guest. Do whatever you want to.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, because right now there’s a thing on YouTube. The National Fire Service has already said they don’t have the money next year. They’re not going to hire their summer part-time help. Do you know what that summer part-time help does? Maintains the trails, clears the trails, maintains the trailheads and the restrooms and all that stuff. They say there’s not going to be any money. So you know what our national forests are going to be like? Trashed. Well, they are now. So does that make you nuts if you’re walking in the wilderness area and you see trash on the ground? Yes. I’m like, really? You packed it in, you know, the signs there. Pack it in. Pack it back out. Yeah, I mean, I understand. And now they’re encouraging people in some places to even pack out They’re number two because they don’t know how to dig a cat hole, which we know how to dig.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s how you were taught.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, they’re leaving it on the side of the, you know, in the forest. I mean, come on, dig the hole. I mean, it’s not that hard.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, it’s pretty simple.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, and I carry – for backpacking, we carry a – we call it a poop kit. You know what’s in it. Well, in there is a small trowel, and it takes like – and I got one that has a serrated edge, so it takes like two seconds to dig a hole.
SPEAKER 04 :
John, we were talking. If you didn’t even have that on, you can always go find a stick to dig a hole with. It’s not that complicated.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right, or your trekking pole, if you’re like me and carry trekking poles.
SPEAKER 04 :
Not hard. You know, a sharp rock, a stick. I mean, again, we’re not talking about rocket science. Yeah, anything.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, not at all. But these people are disgusting.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, my word.
SPEAKER 06 :
And it goes back to what you were saying at the beginning of the show.
SPEAKER 04 :
It goes back to the trash thing the first hour.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, the airplanes.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
People have no respect.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, you see it. I mean, you fly like I do, John. You see these pigs. Sorry, I don’t know what other word to call it.
SPEAKER 06 :
They’re literal pigs. I don’t know. I would say slobs, you know. If they treat somebody else’s property that way, what do you think their house looks like?
SPEAKER 04 :
I don’t know, John. I can only imagine. I can only imagine.
SPEAKER 06 :
I remember some of the houses that were pretty funky when I was a meter eater, and that was almost 30-plus years ago. I can imagine what some of them were around because they just don’t have – John, does it just go back to manners?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. Good manners? Just how you were raised, how you were taught. Again, John, you were taught the same way I was. When we went to the woods, my dad, he taught us that you go to the woods and you leave it better than you found it.
SPEAKER 06 :
I will, if I see trash on the trail and it’s something like, you know, a candy bar wrapper or a cliff bar. So I’ll pick it up and stick it in my pocket and dump it at the trailhead. Cause I don’t know the last time I was at a trailhead. That didn’t have at least one trash receptacle there. But that’s going to be something else if the Forest Service doesn’t have money. Who’s going to empty those? Exactly. Who’s going to pump out the pit toilets?
SPEAKER 04 :
I know. There’s another thought on my end, John, is we’ve got so much. Government waste in some areas, and yet those areas you just mentioned have typically been underfunded. Now, I also will tell you that we own, and I’ve said this before on air, we own far too much land as a country. I mean, 40% plus of land in this nation is either state or federally owned, and that’s too much, by the way, way too much.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, absolutely. But the first thing is the Forest Service. Give it back to the states. Let the state run the national forest, you know, like, I don’t know, Mount Circle Wilderness Area en route national forest. Let the state of Colorado run that. Let the state of Wyoming run it north of the border medicine boat. You know, and just look at it. Here’s a prime example. A couple of years ago, under Trump, They were going to go in and clear one of the national forests in California, and California and the Sierra Club sued. and said, no, you can’t do that. And they were going to go in and do some forestation, which you need. That forest caught on fire a year later, and it cost a bunch of money. If the state owned that, then they would be on the hook with those fires.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right. They’d be handling it differently. And they might not be. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 06 :
The other thing that we need to get with Doge on is there was a law passed in the early 70s that places lawyers that represent, like, the Sierra Club and stuff to sue on behalf of environmental action and stuff like that, get money to sue the federal government from the federal government.
SPEAKER 04 :
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that needs changed. Well, and the whole tort law end of things, John, needs changed. And for those of you that don’t understand what that is, the reality is they need repercussions. If you bring a frivolous lawsuit, there needs to be repercussions, and you need to be on the hook for the money spent. And even the other side, whether that be feds or whoever, whatever it took for taxpayers to defend that, that needs to be handled differently. The problem, John, is the whole House of Representatives and the Senate is full of lawyers, so good luck on that one.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, that’s going to be one of the hardest things. But that law, so the Sierra Club gets money from the government to sue the federal government. Unbelievable. That makes no sense. If the Sierra Club wants to sue on behalf of the Spotted Owl, which was, you remember that one. Round up the money and do it. Get your donations because there’s a lot of people out there that may agree with you. I’m hoping for the best over the next, but with Biden, we just need to see him not start World War III before.
SPEAKER 04 :
Agreed. Absolutely. John, have a great night. Appreciate you, man. Have a good rest of your day, John. Appreciate it very much. Golden Eagle Financial is coming up next. Make sure that your future finances are all dialed in as we wind down 2024. Make sure that you’re handled in regards to 2025. Talk to Al today. Find him at klzradio.com.
SPEAKER 13 :
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SPEAKER 07 :
Now, back to Rush to Reason, presented by Hi-5 Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling, where every call ends with a high five.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. My son Richard joining us now. Richard, big game here in Denver tonight, by the way.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, big game. Not super cold, although you would argue anything below 60 is cold. Yeah, I’m getting worse as I get older.
SPEAKER 04 :
But it’ll be a nice night for the games. It’ll look great on Monday Night Football. Folks will be excited. Anytime you’re on Monday Night Football, it’s always good for the city that it plays in.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s always good. Well, you know, it’s kind of like what we talked about with CU, right, where, you know, it’s always a good thing to have the publicity, right, you know, and especially of your city. And for us, you know, they’re going to have, you know, videos of the ski resorts and pictures of the mountains. And especially I think they’re actually. kick it off Monday night countdown and stuff now, and they make it seem like the mountains are at the back door, which I guess they are. We’d maybe probably take it for granted.
SPEAKER 04 :
Compared to a lot of other places, I guess, I mean, I never have looked at it like that as a native, but I think to people outside of the state, they would probably agree that it’s very, very close anyways.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yep, I would agree. Definitely a very big game tonight. A game that they should win. Don’t get it confused here. They should absolutely beat this team, and they should beat the Browns. I’m not saying it should be a blowout, because I think the Browns, especially after they changed… Sort of changed quarterbacks by half, too, because Deshaun Watson got hurt. They should win this game. Again, I think the Browns are a professional team. They should come in. They should compete. Jameis, the quarterback for the Browns, is kind of a wild card. He can either have a really good game or a really not-so-good game. But they should win this game. The trajectory the Broncos are on, this is a game they should win. They’re going into their bye week. They need to get into it on a positive note, then come back and really kind of prepare for the stretch run for them to sort of finish off this season strong. You’re kind of where they need to be. And honestly, they’re in a great position to get into the playoffs. two-game lead on any of the teams in the lost column, including the team they play here in two weeks, which is the Colts. And so you’re coming down to where the math, if you win the game that you’re supposed to, the math just doesn’t line up for other teams. And what I mean by that is, you know, basically they’re just running out of games to catch you, right? You know, nine games or nine, I should say ten, right? So you’ve got to win three of your next, five games, because that would put you at, let me see here, 10 and 7, which is very possible for the Broncos to be, and you probably are good there. If you get to 10 and 7, you are likely in the playoffs and playing either one of the Chiefs, Bills, or Steelers. And, man, if you played either the Chiefs or the Steelers, that would be quite a drama.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, really quick, speaking of the Chiefs, was it offsides or did the refs get it right?
SPEAKER 05 :
Here’s the deal. As much as this pains me to say, by definition, the quarterback was moving towards the line, and so that is in a legal shift by the definition of the rule. Now, I haven’t seen the other – looks, views yet, but there was some rumors out there that if you see the full clip, that the offensive line moved before the quarterback did.
SPEAKER 03 :
I see. Which would then be offsides.
SPEAKER 05 :
Which would then be a false start.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Correct. And if that’s the case, it’s a false start. And for people that don’t know, a false start by the offense is a dead ball foul.
SPEAKER 03 :
It means it’s five yards to replay the down.
SPEAKER 05 :
Correct. Which means, yeah, the play didn’t happen. It’s a dead ball play, they call it. Correct. And the legal shift, the legal motion is a live ball play, which means that they let the play play out, see what happens if the defense gets a turnover, as what happened there, then the defense can decline the penalty and they receive possession of the ball. So in this case, if the offensive line moved, it was a false start. If they’re going off of what the quarterback did, it was an illegal motion. Now, here’s the other view of that. I really don’t have any confidence that the Raiders kicker, the dude who had missed several field goals earlier in the game, who’s a Colorado kid, by the way, which pains me to say, I don’t have any confidence that he was actually going to make the kick. I’ll just say that right now, especially with how the Chief luck was going and everything else. But inevitably, they didn’t. And here’s the question. the Chiefs’ luck is going to run out because you just cannot have a season that’s going like this and just continually getting it. It just never happened in history, right? Just the odds would say it’s darn near impossible to get every single bounce your way. So the question for the Chiefs is, does their luck run out in the regular season so they get a few losses out of the way and then they go into the playoffs? Or does it hold on until the playoffs and then it runs out in the playoffs? And that’s really the question to me that remains to be seen.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and again, who knows? Will their luck—I mean, eventually luck runs out, as you know, Richard. Typically things don’t continue to go on. And there have been some very close encounters, I guess you could say. And by the way, that was a 2-8— team that played them that close? In other words, the Raiders were that bad. Did the Chiefs take that for granted, not play so well? My answer to that, Richard, is it’s the NFL. Like you said tonight about the Browns. I mean, the Broncos can’t overlook the Browns. You’re still playing an NFL team.
SPEAKER 05 :
Totally agree with you. And that is the hardest thing that I think people struggle to understand at times, Dan, which is that the NFL is still the NFL. The players still get paid. It doesn’t matter if you’re 2-8 or Or 10-2, right? Or whatever it is, 8-2, right? It does not matter. They’re all getting paid millions of dollars in lots of cases, right? Most of them are. And it’s any given Sunday. And so I think the Chiefs, they actually have a pretty easy schedule the rest of the way. They should. Mostly went out. They do have a tough game against the Steelers, who with Russ have actually, which we’ll actually talk about here in just a second, come on really well. Yeah, they’ve got an easy schedule. They should. But, yeah, like you said, any given, and especially a divisional game, that, right? Anytime you have a divisional game, throw the records out the window because those guys just play a little bit harder for that.
SPEAKER 04 :
By the way, I just watched the replay while you were talking of the Oakland Chiefs game. And I tell you what, it’s extremely, extremely close on did the lineman move or did the quarterback move? You’d have to really zero in on that. And I personally feel like I get what you’re saying. Would they have kicked it? Would it have mattered? Hard to say. But bottom line, I think the Chiefs got away with one there.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and yes, I agree with you. I don’t really have any other way to say it other than I do feel like the Chiefs got away with it. And here’s the deal. If you’re a Chiefs fan, you take it because you don’t cry over anything in this league. There’s bounces. There’s missed calls all the time. The Broncos are going to get some tonight. There’s going to be some that go against them. Again, just the ultimate reality is when does luck run out? Because it’s statistically impossible. for them to go an entire season with the way that it’s gone now. The odds are in everyone else’s favor.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and they’ve had some other close games. And for those of you that maybe are listening or going to the game tonight, just be glad you’re not in Buffalo. Yeah, fair enough. Because that game, I watched it last night. I mean, I love snow and all of that, Richard, and it’s great, and it’s fun to watch football that way, but what a miserable game that would have been to sit through.
SPEAKER 05 :
Dad, again, obviously a lot of people know what we do outside of this and the snow side of things, and I will just say this. I got anxiety watching that just because of, you know, number one, like it just didn’t stop, right? You know, there’s just so much snow. You look at the forecast, they don’t get any snow, and it doesn’t go away up there, right? Like with us, you know, honestly, the snow that we got, From last week, I’m surprised that as much of it is around as it still is around in certain spots, you know, parts around the front range here.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Because usually it goes away, right? It’s one thing in Colorado. We’re not used to, you know, months, weeks even, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. Days hardly. That’s right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Snow on the ground. And then on top, and people were asking, I’ve played in snow games, Dad. As a player, it’s not terribly bad, although, and I’m not a purist by any means. I do like outdoor stadiums, and I think that weather is, Football should be played in the elements. It’s one of the few sports that they basically play in anything. I think it’s basically the only sport, even soccer. They stop for too much heavy snow, that sort of thing. At the same time, though, you wonder in a place like Buffalo, why don’t you put a roof? Because they’re building a new stadium up there. You know that, Dad, right? Why not put a roof over your head?
SPEAKER 04 :
I don’t know.
SPEAKER 05 :
And I have no idea. It is the weirdest thing in the world. But you know what? I guess we’ll roll with this. It was exciting. Josh Allen should win the MVP. That was a crazy game. Here’s another thing, Dad, because you had it happen on Thanksgiving night with the Dolphins playing the Packers. These warmer weather teams that go play cold weather is interesting, and actually it will be interesting in the college football playoff because there’s likely going to be some northern teams that are hosting some SEC teams. And those teams don’t travel north very often. They don’t play in very cold areas. You could get a South Bend storm in Notre Dame there, or maybe up in Penn State, just depending on how stuff sort of shakes out. It’ll be interesting. But weather’s always the great equalizer, Dad, right? It sort of puts… kind of everyone on equal playing field. And I say it favors the offense more than it favors the defense, but that’s just me.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, I agree with you. All right, we’ll take a quick timeout. We’ll come right back. Ridgeline Auto Brokers is next. Two locations to serve you, RidgelineAutoBrokers.com.
SPEAKER 09 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
All right, we’re going to talk to Kurt Rogers with our Monday Mortgage Minute in just a few minutes. In the meantime, if you need Kurt, call directly 720-895-0500.
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SPEAKER 04 :
We inform you. Now, back to Rush to Reason. All right, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Also, insert a little drive radio component to it as we do on Mondays with car reviews. So, Richard, you just drove a 2024 Toyota Tacoma. Give me the trim options and so on. But for those of you listening, Tacoma, this is one of their largest markets in the nation for Tacoma in this Denver area.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, it is. Well, and I’m sure so many folks are looking like, well, yeah, John, I see a gazillion of these things. You’re right, you do. You see a gazillion of these things running around here, Dad, because they do well, right? That mid-sized truck, obviously it’s not a full size. It’s not meant to be a full size, but it just does phenomenal out here. The size lets you get into tighter parking spaces, that sort of thing. But the 2024 Tacoma, Dad, has been phenomenal. One that people, I think, have been waiting for for a while, right, is all new, all redesigned for 24. If you’ve been looking for that, you know, Toyota’s generally a little bit slower to update things, but they do that for a reason, right? If something’s working.
SPEAKER 04 :
They find something reliable and they stick with it. So this model, what did you drive? What model was it?
SPEAKER 05 :
So we had a 2024 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road Edition.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
And they’ve got a gazillion different, you know, not a lot, but, you know, they’ve got an SR5, the TRD Sport, the Trail Hunter TRD, all sorts of different things, right? You can get this truck, Dad, as a Tacoma, anywhere from $35,000 all the way up to $65,000 if you opt for the TRD Pro, which includes a bunch of different, you know, not aftermarket, but kind of A bunch of off-road accessories, right, where you can basically pick that thing up and go straight up the hill with it. With the one that we had, it had the off-road premium package on it, which I’m not going to list for everyone. Basically, it gives you heated and ventilated front seats, a nice big kind of display. I think it’s a 14-inch display. It’s got a fun little option, Dad. It actually comes with a wireless Bluetooth speaker kind of in the center of the dashboard that if you’re off-road or whatever it is, you can just pop that bad boy out and pop it up as you’re camping and listen to it. It does come with a new four-cylinder engine. The one we drove, Dad, does not have the i-Force Max option, which for those of you listeners that don’t know, basically that’s the powertrain that they’re putting in a lot of their vehicles, Dad. It’s essentially a hybrid powertrain. It generates a lot more torque, a lot more power, but you’re supposed to get the same fuel economy that you get out of the I-Force engine that we drove, which was really good, Dad, because it’s still a turbocharged engine, and it works really well at our altitude. It’s got good power throughout. I actually had to haul a few parts around and stuff for the office this past week, and it did that really well. Now, I will say this. And, folks, this is not a knock on this. This is just, I’m telling you, this is not a car meant to fit four full-size adults.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, they are not. Very few of those mid-sized trucks are, by the way.
SPEAKER 05 :
Correct. And so it’s not a knock on any of them. Just know what you’re buying because you’ve read some of these reviews. It’s not meant to be bigger, right, Dad? It’s meant to serve a purpose. Two full-size adults. If you’ve got a family of four with some smaller kids, could you put them in the back seat and be able to do all the things that you’re looking for? Absolutely you could. I really like what they’ve done with the redesigned ads. So for folks who haven’t seen it, I encourage them to head to Toyota’s website. and kind of check it out, head to some dealer lots. I know that some of them are on the lots that way. But it works really well. And I know, Ed, that you’ve obviously driven Tacomas before. Like you said, we see a gazillion of them around here in Colorado, and it’s for a reason.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right. And just for you, everybody listens to that. I just looked it up to that. The I-Force Max, the hybrid powertrain is not available in that trim level is why they don’t do it. I’m guessing because of some of the off-road capabilities and so on. The other one’s going to be heavier. So they’re probably I’m assuming they’re going to lighten things up for the off-road version.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, and I will say that it’s actually a specific trim level. Like if you’re going onto Toyota’s website or wherever it is, it will say, you know, I-Force Max. And so if you’re looking for that, it increases the price by about $5,000. So the one that we had wasn’t a guy, I think it was even a later in this year, Dad. If you’re looking for that, I think they’re starting to be available, and they come in the Limited and a few of the other trim levels. But honestly, Dad, again, for what ours was – and fuel economy, by the way – about 21, 22 miles per gallon, which is right about where I was at. Yeah, not bad at all. The only thing that I wish they would do – and this is just a personal preference, just because here in Colorado we’re a little bit more spread out – I didn’t hate the fuel economy. It just got a small fuel tank. And so I actually did have to put a little bit of fuel into it. Benefit, though, is in some turbocharged engines, Dad, you’ve got to put premium fuel. Not the case in this with the Tacoma. You can just put standard, you know, whatever, I guess, unleaded gasoline into it, and you’re good to go. I enjoyed it. My kids did. One nice thing, Dad, is sometimes when you get these off-road trim levels, they ride a little bit rougher, right? And some people don’t like that. I will say with the TRD Off-Road, It rode rougher, but it did not ride so bad or was so loud or anything in that way, shape, or form that turned me off to it, right? And usually that’s kind of what you and I go off of is, okay, would this prevent me from buying the car? And the answer is no. They’ve actually done a good job at sort of blending – The street, you know, the drivability of it on your everyday drive with the capability of the off-road piece of it that I really, really like and kind of how they put that together. The price point on the one we drove, Dad, was the mid-50s, and again, that had a few different options and packages and stuff on it. We encourage folks to check that out themselves as they see fit. But honestly, the best thing for people to do that is get out, test drive these vehicles if you can. Again, they’re all new for 2024. They’re selling really well. They always do. And when you do that, let them know that John and Richard Rush from Drive Radio and Rush to Reason sent you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Awesome. And again, folks, for those of you, maybe some of you are heading out to the Bronco game tonight, have a great time. Really quick, back to the car end of things. This is something that we mention a lot, and I get a lot of you that will text in asking about certain cars, new, used. Some could even be several decades old. We’ve got reviews up on our website all the way back to, gosh, we’ve been doing these reviews since, We’ve even got some reviews up on YouTube from back in the day when we did a lot of video stuff. So if there’s something you’re interested in, by all means, send me either an email or a text message and I’ll help you with that. I do that constantly. And no, we do not charge for that. There’s a lot of buying services out there that will give you the same information that I’m going to give you guys. And they charge for that. I will help you walk through the purchase of a car and you don’t have to pay me to do it. It’s just a part of what we do with Rush to Reason.com. and drive radio. So, Richard, all these cars that we drive, yes, they do serve a purpose, and we get an opportunity to, again, we don’t know what these cars are like a decade down the road, but we get a pretty good feel of what things are like when they’re new. And, again, we’re usually a car advocate. We’re not going after the criticisms of the car. We’re looking more for the positives, and folks can find those criticisms on their own.
SPEAKER 05 :
Absolutely. And we are very much in the category, Dad, where our flavor may not be your flavor.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 05 :
And so some people out there will try to do that. And so, again, what we like, folks, you may not like. And what you like, we may not like. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, go drive it.
SPEAKER 05 :
We try to inform you the best that we know how.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s exactly right. All right, Richard, with that, I appreciate it very much. Have a great rest of your evening. I’ll let you go. Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning is coming up next. Now, when it comes to your heat right now, that’s a big deal, and it’s going to get colder. We’ve got a storm coming in again next weekend. The nights are still cold, and as we get through the winter months, it will get colder as well. So if there’s anything you need when it comes to upgrading your furnace or you’re just looking to do some tune-ups and some things along those lines, Cub Creek can handle all of that right now. And don’t forget, if you do a combo unit, there’s some great deals on that, meaning if you do AC and furnace at the same time, there’s some great deals on that as well. Find Cub Creek at klzradio.com.
SPEAKER 12 :
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SPEAKER 07 :
Now back to Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right, wrapping up this second hour. Next hour, Kurt Rogers again with our Monday Mortgage Minute. We’re going to talk to Kurt. He’s going to talk about some things regarding Christmas refinancing. Are you wanting to consolidate some debt? Is that even the right thing to look at? What’s the housing market looking like moving forward? We’ll talk to Kurt along those lines. And then as well as that, we’ve got Jake Novak joining us. We’re going to talk about Trump tariffs. jake’s take on things because the reality is i think there’s a lot of naysayers out there i’ve talked about this before most of them being globalist globalists hate tariffs because they don’t want anything that might stop things globally and tariffs change things on a global basis so yeah globalists hate tariffs any way shape or form you’ll find that consistently throughout really history when it comes to those sorts of things i’ll get jake’s take on that as soon as we come back and we’ll talk to kurt to start things off this next So don’t go anywhere. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
I’m a rich guy.
