What happens when a grieving mother dares to question her local school district—and ends up accused of stalking? In this powerful episode, attorney Parker Jackson from the Goldwater Institute reveals how one Wyoming mom’s courage sparked a First Amendment showdown. Could this landmark ruling reshape how far schools can go to silence parents? And what does it mean for free speech and parental rights across America? https://www.GoldwaterInstitute.org/ https://RushToReason.com
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This is Rush to Reason.
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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.
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With your host, John Rush.
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My advice to you is to do what your parents did.
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Get a job, sir. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same, and there’s a big difference.
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Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
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Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
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It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush. Presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, we are back. Hour 3, Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Several of you texting in, by the way. Thank you. I appreciate your text messages, and a lot of you resonating with the stories that are the story I was telling about, you know, my childhood and background and business ownership and so on, and a lot of you relating very directly to what I was talking about, giving me your own stories, which, by the way, I appreciate. And, yep, I can relate to almost every story that you guys share fully. So thank you, by the way, for that. I appreciate that, and And I’m right there with you. Parker Jackson joining us now, staff attorney at the Goldwater Institute. Parker, welcome. How are you? I’m doing great. How are you? I’m doing great. Talk to us about what’s going on in Wyoming. There’s a powerful case that you guys have just been through, or a mom, a parent, basically faced retaliation from a school district simply for speaking up, and that’s in our neighboring state, Wyoming.
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah, that’s exactly right. should go without saying that no one should be hauled into court simply for criticizing government officials, especially when it comes to parents and school officials. And yet, as you mentioned, that’s exactly what happened to one mom in Rock Springs, Wyoming, which is a little railroad town just off of Interstate 80.
SPEAKER 12 :
Right. So give us the background. This is a story that, frankly, I’ve not followed, so give us the background on it.
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah. So the mom’s name is Kari Cochran. And Kari, unfortunately, has just endured some very terrible tragedy in her life. Her son, teenage son, committed suicide just after he graduated from high school there in the Sweetwater County School District No.
SPEAKER 1 :
1.
SPEAKER 17 :
And there were some events that led up to that, some bullying and some sexual harassment, and he had some academic challenges resulting from that. As any reasonable, attentive parent would do, Kari began asking some tough questions of the school district about their sexual harassment, entitled mind policies, their grading, and some other issues. She also has another daughter in the school district that she was advocating for as well. And after her son died, she also tried to get copies of his academic records. She ran into some issues there. And while that was being sorted out, she was served with not just one but two lawsuits from the assistant superintendent and from the superintendent’s wife, which was on behalf of herself and the superintendent, accusing her of stalking because of some comments she made criticizing them at school board meetings and online.
SPEAKER 12 :
OK, so a lot to unpack there. And just to your point, just because you speak up at these meetings and you don’t like the way something’s being run, which, by the way, is your right as an American, especially a taxpayer that’s in that area to do, especially when your kids are still in the school, as in her case. Really, every parent has a right to do that, whether they have kids in the school district or not, because they’re all right in the checks when it’s all said and done. I’m confused as to why she now, you know, you know where the where this whole stocking thing comes from.
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah, so as you alluded to, there’s several different rights at issue here. There’s obviously the speech implications. Kari also has parental rights. There’s a constitutional right of parents to direct and control the education and upbringing of their kids. There’s rights as taxpayers. All of that is kind of implicated here. And unfortunately, what we’ve seen is school districts and school officials all over the country saying, have been overreaching to try and silence parents that criticize them, to hide information, to ban them from school property. And that really, I think, is what the goal was here. I mean, both of the judges that ended up seeing these cases reached the same conclusion, that there was no stalking. And the first judge went out of his way to note that Kari had rights under both the First Amendment but also under the broader protections of the Wyoming state constitution to engage in this type of political speech that’s protected. even if it was critical of some of the school officials and even if she engaged in, you know, Facebook comments and whatever else.
SPEAKER 12 :
That’s her right to do so. Who cares? So here’s a dumb question on my part. This is something that you’re an attorney, so I feel like I can ask you more than I can other guests. Why don’t our elected officials, in this case, these are school board members and they are elected. In some cases, there might be city managers that are appointed. But in most cases, we’re talking about elected officials. Do these people not understand the law, Parker?
SPEAKER 17 :
Well, some of them do and some of them don’t.
SPEAKER 12 :
Or really quick, do they feel above the law? Maybe that’s a better question for me to ask.
SPEAKER 17 :
I’m sure there’s some of that. I think really what is going on is some people think that they can abuse the legal process to try and silence other people. And they’re trying to impose… these litigation costs and this intimidation of the court system to try and get people, especially parents, to be quiet and sit down and let them do whatever they want.
SPEAKER 12 :
You know what? Great. That’s probably one of the better explanations I think I’ve I have heard yet, because I think, yeah, I do think at times, Parker, there’s some ignorance that goes on with some of this where they just don’t really they don’t even understand the oath that they took and what that oath is pledged to when it’s all said and done. So I do think there’s some ignorance, although I think when it gets to some of the higher ups, it really is. You know what? I know the law. I know what it says, but I’m going to use this intimidation end of things to silence these people so we can go do whatever we want to.
SPEAKER 17 :
Well, and most states, including Colorado, have recognized this threat and have enacted what lawyers call anti-SLAPP laws. And SLAPP stands for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation, which is exactly what happened here. These were strategically filed lawsuits to oppose Kari’s public participation. And Colorado, as I mentioned, has a pretty good anti-SLAPP law. The Institute for Free Speech gives Colorado an A. But Wyoming is one of 12 states that receives an F grade because we don’t have those extra statutory protections. And that was unavailable to Kari in this case. You know, we’re very grateful that the judges recognized these constitutional issues and dismissed the case’s both for lack of evidence and also because of the constitutional speech issues. But had there been an anti-SLAPP law in place, the judges would have been alerted to this more quickly. Kari would have had an easier time finding legal counsel. She attended the initial hearing by herself without legal representation. And you can imagine, as a mom, going through that, having to file all your own legal paperwork and sitting there in court. And so these laws are designed to prevent that and also designed to provide some recourse on the back end so that she could recover potentially attorney fees or damages or court costs or anything else. And she didn’t get any of that in this case. Fortunately, we were able to step in and help with some of that. But not everybody can, and we can’t be everywhere either. So these laws really are important.
SPEAKER 12 :
Talk to us about the Goldwater Institute, the website for all of you listening, goldwaterinstitute.org. What is it you guys all do? How can we help?
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah, so we’re a public interest litigation and public policy organization. It’s founded and based in Phoenix, Arizona, named after the late, great Senator Barry Goldwater. And basically what that means is there’s a group of us, like myself, that are attorneys, and we litigate these issues in court and we connect people with other attorneys. In this case, we were able to connect Kari with a Wyoming attorney by the name of Cassie Craven, who’s part of our American Freedom Network of pro bono attorneys. And so that’s kind of half of what we do. And then the other half is we try and go into state houses as well and get some of these policies that need fixed change so that they don’t negatively affect other parents or taxpayers or other people.
SPEAKER 12 :
Awesome. Any other stories that you want to highlight down the road, please let me know. Love to have you back on, Parker. This is great. Thank you for the information. And I’ve got more to say on this as soon as I come back. So I appreciate your time, Parker, very much. Yep, thanks for having me. You’re very welcome. And I got a couple things I want to mention about Wyoming from some of you that have texted in here that I’ll mention as soon as we come back. Flesh Law, speaking of attorneys and all that’s involved there, and if you need any representation in the legal end of things, civil, criminal, you name it, that’s what Kevin’s there for, 303-806-8886.
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All right, up next, it is Dr. Scott Faulkner. He’s my doctor, wants to be your doctor as well. He’s on the wellness sides of things, not the crisis care, but he wants to make sure that you are taken care of and that you stay well. And by the way, live as healthy a life as possible. 303-663-6990.
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This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, this wasn’t in my notes either, but every time we talk about Wyoming, I have had no less than about six text messages that have just come in here through those two breaks, basically talking about how corrupt Wyoming is, and especially the school districts. Every single time I talk about something along these lines, several of you will chime in. And one person in particular said it was so awful they finally left and went to Arizona. So everybody that thinks Wyoming is great, and yes, there’s a lot of conservatives and Republicans and so on. Fiscally, they do well. Sounds to me like there’s a lot of corruption up there that needs to be weeded out. And some of you up there listening, or some of you listening that are up there, that are a part of the system, you need to be involved in weeding it out. Sounds like there are corrupt not only sheriffs, but mayors and council people and so on, and they need to go. I’m going to say it straight up. And I know our signal goes up there, and some of those— Shame on you, by the way. You are not above the law. If you’re in the school districts and you’ve got some sort of authority and you serve on some sort of an elected capacity and you think you can abuse your power, shame on you. You need to go. You need to just step down. And I’m going to start calling this out more. So those of you that are in Wyoming, you continue to keep texting me things. And if you want to even text me certain stories of things that come up, I won’t name any names. By the way, all of you that text, I have no idea who each one of you is. Sometimes you’ll give me your name. But in most cases, we’ve become friends just through the messaging end of things. But I wouldn’t know you if I saw you on the street because I’ve never met you in person. So there’s no way that I can out anybody on this because I don’t know who you are anyways. But what I’m going to say is if there’s things going on and I need to start mentioning them, I’m here. I’ll do it. I hate corruption of any kind. It’s a bunch of nonsense. And I hate the buddy system that happens inside of government on a routine basis. And it sounds like there’s a lot of that in Wyoming. Shouldn’t happen. Bunch of garbage. I have heard from some of you that are in the business community that it’s actually harder to do business in Cheyenne than it is in Fort Collins. That’s a bunch of garbage as well. So if you’re up in Cheyenne and you’re some sort of an authority and you work for one of those agencies I just got done talking about, you want to call in to defend yourself, be my guest. You can text me as well. I’m not sure some of you can, though. And here’s what I can assure those of you that live in Wyoming. I’m going to keep talking about this. I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I’m going to start rooting some of these people out. So, folks, I want names. I want names of individuals that are corrupt, that are not doing things correctly. I want mayors. I want sheriffs. Whatever it is, if you know that there’s something going on that shouldn’t be, I want to know. I’ll talk about it. I am not fearful of that at all. You guys all know me. I could care less. Come after me if you want, Wyoming. What a bunch of crap, by the way. You would think in a state like Wyoming where people actually go to, in a lot of ways, get away from that, you would think that it would be better than that. You would think that you guys could do better. And from the sounds of it, it’s worse. Somebody says there’s too many rhinos in Wyoming, especially the governor. Mayor of Cheyenne is a clown. Okay, well, there’s an example of a name. So, Mr. Mayor of Cheyenne, I’d love to meet you and talk to you in person, find out exactly what you’re doing and what you’re doing in Cheyenne and why you are the way you are. And I know people listen from all over. Most likely, some of these individuals I’m talking about are listening. I’m going to start calling you out. You’re on notice. There’s a bunch of nonsense. I’ll do it here in my home state of Colorado as well, and I do that on a continual basis. But this nonsense in Wyoming, it’s got to stop. That’s a bunch of garbage. Here’s the next question. Why do all of you put up with that? Direct question. Why do you put up with it? Is it just because you have to or you don’t have any way to fight it or what? Why is it that way? Is it such a buddy system that there’s just no way to fight it? Well, I’ve got a voice and a microphone. I can fight it. I can call these people out. That’s a bunch of nonsense that that’s going on up there in Cheyenne and other areas of Wyoming. In this case that we just talked about, what a bunch of utter nonsense. This particular lady starts asking the school district and the school board as to what’s going on in certain areas, and she ends up being prosecuted by them for stalking. What a load of garbage. Every one of those members needs to resign, as far as I’m concerned. So Rock Springs, school board, those of you that probably are listening right now, shame on you. I’ll call you out. I have no problem doing that. What a bunch of utter nonsense. No one is above the law, by the way. And every parent has the right to say whatever they want to about how their district’s being run. And like I said earlier, you don’t need to be a parent. You’re a taxpayer. You have a right to say something. You’re writing the checks. That’s something that I cannot seem to get through enough. These elected officials think that they’re somehow above the law. They can do whatever they want to with the money that they didn’t even earn and bring in. It came in automatically from their taxpayers. It’s a bunch of nonsense. And these people think that, you know, anytime they want, they can just go fleece you for more by raising the mill levy or doing this or doing that or raising property taxes and running this initiative. It’s a bunch of utter nonsense. It’s high time it stopped. These school districts especially have got unlimited power in a lot of ways, and it needs to be reined in. We need some solid legislation, especially in states like Colorado, to rein some of this in. If I was running for governor, one of the things I would be running on is a cap on property taxes. You can’t run on eliminating because that’s not going to happen, but you could sure run on capping them. Now, I get it. The governor doesn’t control everything legislatively, but you have a lot of influence on what does happen. And you can agree to sign or not sign things. So if I was running for governor right now, and those of you that are candidates, I would be taking a really hard look at running on a platform of not only reducing property taxes but capping them as well, meaning that school districts are going to figure out ways to make ends meet better than they do right now. And frankly, why is it that we hear this past week that places like Amazon and UPS are laying off executives and yet school districts aren’t? Like school districts are growing? They’re not. They’re shrinking, actually. They have less students now than they did a year or two ago. Every year, in some cases, they diminish. So why is it they keep getting more funding instead of less when there’s less kids? These are hard questions, by the way, that frankly, no one’s asking enough of, and Democrats won’t answer. The Marxist left won’t answer these because they think, again, they think that they’re above the law. They think that their school system is above the law, that there’s no accountability. And I’m here to tell you, we’ve got to start putting some of that back in. publicly, not just some of you going out and running for the school board and so on, which I get. Some of you can do that. Lord bless you. I’m glad that you do. I can’t. I don’t have time for that. I’m here. I’ve got this voice. But it’s high time we started calling some of these things back in like they need to be, you know, reining some of these things back in, I guess, is the word I’m looking for, because they’re out of control. Literally, these school districts are out of control. And there’s no accountability. That’s part of the problem is legislatively even there’s no accountability because all we ever hear about is, oh, it’s for the kids. Oh, it’s for the children. Oh, they need more money for this. Oh, they need more money for that. Hogwash. No, they don’t. No, they don’t. They actually need to budget better, get rid of some of their fat, literally some of their executive fat that’s there, figure out how to use more systems, AI, things like that to their benefit and let some people go. Fire them. Make them retire. Do whatever. But get rid of them. You don’t need them. I guarantee you I could go to every single school and school district and cut 10% of our staff out tonight. In one night, literally. Would not take me long to do that. And most of you listening that have any kind of business acumen like me, you could do the exact same thing. I’m not saying I can do that just because I’m smarter than everybody else. No, this isn’t that complicated. Where’s the fat? Cut it. It’s that simple. What schools need closed down? How many students are there? How many of those students could move somewhere else? How many of those properties could be sold off and that money gets put back into the coffers? Folks, I have got so many examples of things you could go in and do, but nobody wants to talk about what I just said. Especially the left, because the teachers unions have a fit. But even our side, we don’t talk about some of this stuff. Even candidates for school boards, how many of them do you hear talking about shutting a school down because there’s not enough attendance? We don’t do that. Even our side doesn’t do that. Why? Why don’t we? And you guys all know me. I’m no fan of public school anyway, so I’d be as hard on them as anybody because I don’t like them. They are inefficient, bloated, waste of time, and do nothing more than brainwash kids at the end of the day. They’re awful. They need a complete revamp. And anybody that doesn’t think what I just said, you’re part of the problem because that’s exactly what those institutions are from coast to coast. Frankly, I don’t know that there’s a good one out there. Doesn’t mean there’s not some good teachers. Doesn’t mean there’s not some good administrators. I didn’t say that. But in general, there isn’t a good one. They’re all awful because they’re all heavily, heavily, heavily influenced by the teachers unions. And as I said yesterday, any candidate running for office that is backed by the teachers’ union, that’s an automatic no, it should be for everybody else. You shouldn’t even vote for them, period, no matter how bad the other candidate is. Because any candidate’s better than one that is endorsed by the teachers’ union. So those of you where you’re trying to figure out who to vote for, instead of asking me, you know, what about this person, what about that person, all you have to do is do a little bit of homework, find out which, if there’s two candidates there, which one’s backed by the teachers’ union, vote for the other one. It’s that easy. This isn’t rocket science. If they’re backed by the teachers union, it’s a no-go for me. It’s a done deal. So, again, Wyoming, Rock Springs, places like that, you’re on notice. I’m not pussyfooting around anymore. This is a bunch of nonsense. Mayor of Cheyenne, if you guys are doing things that you shouldn’t be, I’m going to start calling you out. And I’m inviting every single listener out there to start texting me examples of things that go on, and I’ll start bringing it up and talking about it. I know I don’t live in Wyoming or Cheyenne, but I’ll still talk about it, so… All right, Roof Savers of Colorado coming up next, Dave Hart. And Dave is here to help you with the extension, or I should say extending the life of your roof. He can rejuvenate your roof through the RoofMax product. It’s a great product. It’ll help you with your insurance in a lot of cases. He can replace the roof if necessary, but have him out and look at it first before you do anything. 303-710-6916. Gil, what was your experience like working with RoofMax?
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The best export we have is Common Sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, we are back and continuing on with Hour 3 here. Scott Garlis will be joining us here in one moment. Somebody texted in, too, and said, man, great question, John, that you asked when it comes to why do we see layoffs in a lot of other places? A lot of places. Amazon, UPS, and so on. But yet, you never see that in a school district. Well, that’s the million-dollar question. All right, Scott Garlis joining us now. Scott, welcome. How are you? Hey, John, I’m well. How are you? Quarter point. That’s all we got today.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I mean, look.
SPEAKER 12 :
Not shocked?
SPEAKER 04 :
No.
SPEAKER 12 :
Predictable?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, yes. And sort of the ridiculous thing that came out of it is the first reporter to ask a question in the press conference immediately said, well, you know, are you going to cut at the next meeting? And, of course, the Fed chairman is not going to tell people that they’re going to cut against the next meeting. And he said, well, it’ll depend on the data. We’ll see what happens. He said the exact same thing back in September. So what did everybody walk away from that meeting saying?
SPEAKER 12 :
He’s not going to cut again.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yep, exactly.
SPEAKER 12 :
Which again, I watched it as well. And no, that’s to your point, Scott. No, that’s not really what was said. He has to, you know, he can’t say, well, yeah, of course we’re going to cut, you know, in December. No, Scott, you just said it. He can’t say that. Come on, people. Give me a break.
SPEAKER 04 :
And the guy who asked it, I guarantee you the thing was he already had his story teed up for the Wall Street Journal. He wanted him to say that so that he could just be like, that’s my story. So this guy walks away and he typically says very negative things after every press conference. It’s whatever because, look, he’s just looking for clicks and he just wants people.
SPEAKER 12 :
But, yes, he did not.
SPEAKER 04 :
He was just being the Fed chairman. He’s being cautious. I think they’re going to cut again in December, and I think there’s a good shot they cut again in January.
SPEAKER 12 :
I think so, too.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. I mean, look, so what happened earlier this week on Monday that really told me it was a lock this time, it’s probably going to be a lock next time, is Federal Reserve Bank Chicago has started running real-time employment data. sort of what they’re seeing and they’re putting numbers together. What they said Monday was that the unemployment rate has now ticked up to 4.35%. Well, you’re kind of getting picky when you do that. You really want to do a single digit. So you round up, you know, five and above, give it a shove is the old rule you learned in school, right? So it’s really at 4.4%. You know, and for the Fed, that means, hey, we have to do more to support the job market.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
So… They cut, and they’re going to cut. And now the thing that a lot of these reporters, I guess they didn’t look at that number because they all basically hung on this comment that, you know, back when we looked at unemployment in August, it was lower. But that’s foolish. You have one of the Federal Reserve banks, the one in Chicago, who happens to have a very hawkish president who supported the rate cut today because the data he’s looking at has told him that, you know, the labor market’s got some issues and we need to do more to support it because, again, as Powell and others have said, if we don’t do anything now, we’re going to have bigger problems down the road.
SPEAKER 12 :
Right. Right. No, great point. And really quick on the reporters. And, you know, I could be wrong. I mean, I don’t know these people individually, but my gut feeling with typically reporters, the same is true in the automotive journalistic or automotive journalism end of things. I’ve been to plenty of events and met plenty of auto journalists that frankly don’t know a lug nut from a tire. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that, meaning I got to wonder how many of these reporters there on the financial end of things really understand finances is my point.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I guarantee most of them have never worked on Wall Street and have never seen how this works in practical moves. Right. Never in a payroll check. Yeah. So it’s a lot of theory. And it’s just – so they miss some of the really nuanced stuff. I will give you a prime example. Yesterday, basically, it’s like the AI Super Bowl event every year. It’s going on in D.C., is it? GTC conference from NVIDIA. And of all the things that Jensen Wang said at the SIG, he said right now our two high-end GPU chips, the Blackwell one and the new one they’re coming out with, I can’t remember the name off the top of my head, but he said over the next five quarters through the end of 2026, we now have $500 billion worth of backlog demand for these chips.
SPEAKER 14 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 04 :
I was like, I bet I’ve never heard anything like that before.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, and I’m guessing, does that play into why today they’ve all of a sudden become the most, what should I say, the highest valued company at $5 trillion?
SPEAKER 04 :
It totally does. $500 billion in backlog is amazing. The expectation going in on the high end was $280 billion. It was double.
SPEAKER 08 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, and that’s, So I think that’s like three times almost what the company did in fiscal year 25. It maybe did $190 billion in revenue. But the reporters, I turned on CNBC after this because I was talking with some of my tech hedge fund buddies about it. This was happening. And so the reporters on CNBC who were in there, not a single one of them mentioned that backlog number.
SPEAKER 12 :
Interesting.
SPEAKER 04 :
Which, yeah, so sorry, I didn’t mean to belabor. No, you’re fine. The point, but these reporters that go into these events, they just miss these things are really important. The other really big thing that the Fed did today was they said quantitative tightening ends December 1st. And what quantitative tightening is, is when the Fed is shrinking its balance sheet. And how it shrinks its balance sheet is when a bond holding, say, for instance, a Treasury bond, that holds when it expires, or it basically is a matured, they keep all the proceeds they’ve got gotten from that, which means the principal and the dividend payments, and they don’t reinvest it in the market. They just keep they keep the cash. Well, now, they’re ending qt. So they’re going to be reinvesting all that cash. And what they’re going to be doing is they said, they’re going to be buying more short term treasuries with that. And so why that’s a big deal is because the world’s biggest buyer of treasuries is going back into the treasury market to be the world’s biggest buyer. And their size is increasing again. So what you’ll see is they will bid treasury prices up and they’ll put cash back into the financial system. And that means yields will come down, which will affect borrowing costs or make borrowing costs lower. And because cash becomes more plentiful in the banking system.
SPEAKER 12 :
It’s easier to give out.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, it’s easier to give out, and they’ll charge less for it because it’s more plentiful. And so that will help businesses, and that will help households. Now, the crazy thing is, as they were cutting rates, they were still doing quantitative tightening, which is you’re fighting yourself. It doesn’t make any sense. So now by doing this, Policy gets in line, and that should be more beneficial for the economy.
SPEAKER 12 :
Nice. Okay, talk to us about, again, the whole AI thing is big. I talked about NVIDIA a moment ago, which is, by the way, a huge push. But, you know, the AI thing just continues to move forward. How does all of that play into the talk that, you know, Trump and, you know, China are having?
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, so one really big thing going on here is, Trump met with Jensen Wang today, the CEO of NVIDIA. And part of this rarer thing, some of the fights that’s been going on, the escalating trade tensions lately, is Trump told NVIDIA they could sell some of their really low-end GPUs to China. And China has pushed back, and they’re saying, no, we want access to Blackwell.
SPEAKER 12 :
Not the good ones.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, which are some of the better chips. And Jensen Wang’s argument has been like, hey, look, if we’re going to do this, you know, instead of don’t force them to make their own technology, let’s sell them ours and have them build it on the American stack. So we know what kind of technology they have, what they’re capable of, what it can do instead of having China, you know, build the equivalent of what we’ve already built or what we’re building right now. And then we don’t know what it’s capable of. We My guess would be the reason that Trump was meeting with Jensen Wang today is because I was talking to a couple of guys about yesterday. He’s probably going to use this as a leverage point to get what he wants in a trade deal, and they’ll probably get a trade deal. And then he made a comment last night saying, you know, I might let China have access to black web chips. So hearing and seeing those things and knowing China has been pushing for this, Makes me think they’ve got some stuff lined up that a deal’s going to get done when Trump and Xi meet tomorrow.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay. What does that do to everything we’re talking about?
SPEAKER 04 :
I think that’s going to be really good for the economy. I think that’s going to chip away at some of the inflation case. I think a big part of that is going to be tying their feet down to $50 billion worth of annual agricultural purchases. Soybeans in particular are going to be a big deal because Trump wants to help out the farmers. It’s been very contested whether or not that will happen lately. Yeah, I just look… he wants supply chains to be okay. And I realize he wants to see American manufacturing take place, and he’s pushing to get as much of that here as he can. But he probably is also looking at industries. We talked about this recently. There’s a story out about it. The White House realizes we can’t do everything here. And they’re probably looking at areas where, you know, okay, it doesn’t even make sense for us to do this. Let’s try to do it. And so let’s Let’s get rid of some of this trade fight and see where there are areas that we can do things that help growth and keep inflation low. And I think that’s a big part of what we’re looking at.
SPEAKER 12 :
Talk about OpenAI, you know, ChatGPT, embedding PayPal’s wallet now into chat.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, so this is another really interesting thing to me as well from a treasury demand and a yield perspective. So ChatGPT has about 800 million users. uh, weekly users that are doing searches. Um, I think they do like 2 billion searches a day or something like that. Uh, and what they did the other, it was, I think it was yesterday morning, they announced a deal to embed PayPal’s wallet for people using chat GPT to purchase things when they, when they do a search and they find something. Um, so why I think that’s a big deal, uh, that expands the user base. So, you know, you have PayPal’s got 400 million consumers or customers. And ChatGPT is $800 million. So you could say, okay, well, PayPal’s potential audience just went to 3x, more or less. But so like 10% to 15% of PayPal wallet users have PayPal stablecoin. It’s P-Y-U-S-D, I believe is its symbol. And so that stablecoin buys short-term U.S. treasuries. So it’s pegged one-to-one for a dollar, and it’s backed by U.S. treasuries. So if we see now this 800 million user base have a similar style of migration, that is going to drive up demand for U.S. treasuries. And so, again, it does what we were just talking about with the Fed ending quantitative tightening and buying more treasuries. It creates even more treasury demand, which would drive up treasury prices and drive down yields. And that plays out for households and businesses. It makes borrowing costs cheaper. That’s a good thing.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yep, absolutely. Oh, solid stuff. And, again, we’ll always see how things roll. No Fed meeting in November, of course. Next Fed meeting is December. I’m assuming by then, you know, pretty good chance that government will be back at it. We’ll have numbers coming in and so on. It’ll be a little different. atmosphere, I guess you could say, Scott, along those lines. Maybe that’s the last question I’ll ask you. What are the thoughts on government reopening? What’s the scuttlebutt around that?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, so I keep hearing the policy guys, I talk to different stuff, but the latest is they’re waiting to see, the Democrats want to wait to see what happens in this Virginia governor’s race. I don’t know when that’s coming up soon, I think. Is that something like in the next week or two?
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, it’ll be next week. The elections are next week.
SPEAKER 04 :
Tuesday. So I think the Democratic candidate had a very big gap in that race at one point, and that’s closed very recently, and it’s all of a sudden tightened way up. But my policy buddies are saying, you know, what’s really going to be the big test for the Democrats is when these insurance costs – projections start going out to people. That starts to happen to me in November. They’ve been saying they think they’re going to cave. I don’t know. Either way, I mean, they feel we’re getting closer to getting a deal done to reopen the government.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay. All right. Good to know. Scott, how do folks find you? Ben Pine Capital.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, sure. Twitter, LinkedIn, or Substack. See Scott Garlis.
SPEAKER 12 :
Awesome. Scott, as always, I appreciate your time, sir.
SPEAKER 04 :
John, thank you. You bet.
SPEAKER 12 :
Have a great evening. Scott Garlis, again, I appreciate his time. Golden Eagle Financial coming up next, Al Smith. And again, Al, you can talk to directly anything you need when it comes to your future finances and everything that’s designed around them. And what about your IRAs and when should you take Social Security and all those things? Al can help you with all of that. Talk to him today, 303-744-1128 or find him at klzradio.com.
SPEAKER 05 :
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SPEAKER 12 :
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SPEAKER 07 :
This isn’t Rage Radio. This is Real Relatable Radio. Back to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, closing out today, and Charlie might be familiar with this. I’m not. I got a text message from one of you early this morning saying, hey, have you seen what’s going on with this particular device and some of the commercials surrounding it? A, I don’t watch much TV and definitely don’t watch commercials. And even if I’m watching a football game or something like that, I’ll tune out commercials and do something else during that time. And I don’t see commercials. So there’s a device called the Hatch. You know what that is, Charlie? Some sort of sleep device? Charlie does not know. Wow, I’m surprised. It’s some sort of device that essentially helps you sleep better at night. And, again, I don’t know much about this. I should actually maybe look into this because of health and wellness. But there’s a recent Halloween ad from this sleep device company. And it’s – I watch the ad. It’s super demonic. I don’t know how else to say it. It’s just creepy. And to the point – that there’s a lot of people that own these devices that are literally scrapping them, taking them out, throwing away, running over them. It’s just become like this thing, I guess, on social media, whereby they’re worried they might actually get possessed by the device that’s in their house. Now, let me say this. That can’t happen. That’s not how this works. But I think people have so much fear over this particular ad, and this company now has even put out some counter social media things to go against the ad, basically trying to calm the fears around ads. This particular ad and what’s happening and so on. And there’s an article somebody sent me in Christianity.com. And even this ad talks or this particular article talks about how it’s just freaky. So Hatch is a brand known for creating devices that help people sleep better at night. And it struck a chord. Now, the way it struck a chord, by the way, is it just shows people in all states of fear and anxiety and really being possessed. I don’t know how else to say it. And this device is supposed to calm all of this. It’s weird. Now, I talk about this a lot, so does Andy and I. You need to know your market. And evidently, Hatch and the folks that run the marketing campaign doesn’t know its market. Because I’m guessing there’s a lot of people out there, Christians included, that own one of these devices. And I guess it’s sort of like a white noise device. I guess, think of it that way. I don’t have anything like this, so I don’t know how to describe it because I don’t have one. But it’s a device that is designed to help you sleep through noise and things like that. Some, and I’m not saying this is the case, so please, nobody put words in my mouth because I don’t know. Again, I don’t own a device, but some have claimed, and this is where they start throwing the devices away, that they’ll hear chants at night coming out of the device and weird voices and murmurs and just Charlie’s in there freaking out. It’s just weird stuff that goes on. And in turn, they’re tossing the device. Now, here’s my take on that. Is that really coming from the device? I don’t know. People’s imaginations can run wild, especially at night. You know, is it because of the ad they watch that now they’re, you know, there’s some subliminal things happening? Folks, I don’t know. I’m not an expert in that, and I don’t know. Okay. This article talks about how scientifically fear captivates the brain faster than peace, and there’s a fight-or-flight mechanism. And so people seeing the ad might actually have that sort of response given the nature of the ad. And I’ll say this. It’s a freaky ad. I watched it. It’s freaky. It’s just creepy. It’s weird. I mean, truthfully, I wouldn’t buy it based upon the ad. Stupid marketing, by the way, on their part. Really stupid marketing. Now, they’re getting a lot of press because of me now even talking about it, and I had no idea what a hatch, H-A-T-C-H, what a hatch was prior to this. So whoever you were that sent me this this morning, thank you, because frankly, I wouldn’t have known about this. I don’t follow enough of this sort of thing to have this probably even come across any of my feeds or inboxes or anything along those lines. And again, this whole Christianity.com thing is, you know, it’s an interesting take on what’s going on. And, you know, I don’t have any opinions on this one way or the other other than the ad I watched. And again, like I said, the ad I watched is enough for me to write, yeah, I’m not buying any from you. That was really stupid on your part. But I’m also somebody that I don’t need something to sleep. And you guys all know I don’t sleep a ton. I’m kind of a seven-hour-a-night guy, sometimes eight, but usually six and a half, seven, somewhere in that neighborhood is really where I’m at on sleep. And I’m okay with that. I can live with that all day long. I’m fine. So I don’t go out and investigate and look for these devices. I don’t have apps on my phone to help me sleep. I don’t track my sleep. I don’t do those things to see how many times do I wake up, how many times do I turn over, how many times do I do this. I don’t do any of that. To me, what difference does it make? How am I going to fix that? I’m not going to take drugs to help me sleep better, so I’m not doing that. So I am what I am. And I’m fine. I function just fine. You guys all know that. You hear me every day. I function fine. I don’t have any issues. I’m not yawning all the way through the show. You know, I don’t go home and crash because I’m so dead tired that I just can’t do anything else after. No, typically I do other things after the show. A, I have to drive home. B, I’ve got other things I do even after that. It’s just what I do. So bottom line, this is strange. If you have one of these devices, you might want to investigate the company. And I’m not saying you need to take your device and go throw it away. That’s not at all what I’m saying. You’ve got to do what you want to do. But I just found it was very interesting that, once again, after all the things that we talk about, even Andy and I and other radio shows do, these people that do marketing, you would think by now with some of the faux pas they’ve had, Bud Light and others, you would think by now these companies would look a little bit harder and closer at their market and understand who buys their products, and, oh, if we put this ad out, it may not actually end well. You would think by now, after everything some of these companies go through, and it hasn’t just been one bad ad campaign. There’s been numerous ones. Jaguar was the other one. So you look at Bud Light, Jaguar, who, by the way, still hasn’t recovered. Not sure they ever will. But you look at all of this, and you just wonder, what are they thinking? And evidently, no one there in the marketing department does. They don’t have a brain, I guess. Folks, this stuff, as far as the business end of things, just frustrates the life out of me because it’s like, listen, people, you can’t be that stupid. But yet they are. And I’m sorry I’ve got to dovetail this back into politics. We on our side do some of the same dumb things. We don’t even know our market at times, and we make the same stupid mistakes that some of these companies do because we feel like we’re smarter than the market. And we’re not. So all of you that are on the far right that listen to me, please heed my warning. You’ve got to know your market. And I’m afraid most of you in Colorado that are in that particular end of things, you don’t know Colorado, you don’t know the market. And you really need to learn Colorado and the market or we’re not going to win elections moving forward. So dovetail it back into that. Veteran Windows and Doors up next. Dave Bancroft, who is the owner there, would love to save you money. He does that, by the way, by taking the middleman out of Windows and Doors. Provia Windows and Doors, they go directly to you. He takes out all of that overhead that normally you would find in other window and door companies, and that’s how you save money in the end. Find him today at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 07 :
Suck it up, buttercup. Back to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, and we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Again, thank you, by the way, for all the text messages that not only come in during the show but come in afterwards as well. And again, that article that I just talked about a moment ago, I wouldn’t have known anything about that device, the commercial. Nothing had one of you not let me know. So even though I might see something and you might think, oh, yeah, he’s had to have seen this, send it anyways because you never know. There’s a lot of things out there, and no, I cannot keep up on all of it. Thank you again, guys. Have a great rest of your evening. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
