Latest / The Jon Justice Show: Presented by Center of the American Experiment / August 18, 2026 | The Jon Justice Show

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August 18, 2026 | The Jon Justice Show · The Jon Justice Show: Presented by Center of the American Experiment

0:00
SPEAKER_08: Very good, very good.
0:23
SPEAKER_05: Man, I almost got so busted this morning.
0:28
SPEAKER_05: It was it was so close.
0:30
SPEAKER_05: So I'm driving in, and uh there was a there was a car coming down 100 and making my way to the American Experiment offices and of course the studio uh this morning over here in in Minnetonka.
0:44
SPEAKER_05: And there was a car that was with me like almost the entirety of the way.
0:48
SPEAKER_05: And we're kind of matching speed back and forth.
0:50
SPEAKER_05: And there were some moments when he was riding up behind me super close, and I just kind of moved over a different lane.
0:56
SPEAKER_05: I'm trying to be better.
0:57
SPEAKER_05: I'm trying to be better as I'm driving, right?
1:00
SPEAKER_05: Not getting upset.
1:02
SPEAKER_05: When people are tailgating, especially at 4 30 in the morning, it makes no logical sense whatsoever.
1:07
SPEAKER_05: You have a whole open road.
1:07
SPEAKER_05: Why do you got to be right behind me?
1:09
SPEAKER_05: Anyway, we're making the uh transition to 62 West, and the guy's in front of me.
1:15
SPEAKER_05: So he had passed me and he got in front of me and he was going the same direction I was.
1:18
SPEAKER_05: And for some reason, when he got on 62, like he just slowed dramatically, just way down.
1:24
SPEAKER_05: I was like, what in the world?
1:26
SPEAKER_05: Right?
1:27
SPEAKER_05: So I just, you know, I took Monty and I got in the left-hand lane and I zoomed right past him, right?
1:33
SPEAKER_05: And there's a moment, like right after you make that transition, the um the freeway kind of kind of banks and turns.
1:42
SPEAKER_05: So it's a bit of a blind spot.
1:43
SPEAKER_05: There's kind of a little tiny hill there, right?
1:46
SPEAKER_05: And uh I, you know, I kept picking up speed after I passed this guy.
1:52
SPEAKER_05: And they come, I just come right up around the bend.
1:54
SPEAKER_05: And the moment that I do, I can see the glare off to the side of the road of a uh of a police SUV, right?
2:03
SPEAKER_05: Got all those lights off.
2:04
SPEAKER_05: I'm like, gosh, darn it.
2:06
SPEAKER_05: So I just I did this, I didn't I didn't slam on the brakes, I just laid on him just enough to back off and slow down and got, you know, like whoa, horsey kind of thing.
2:15
SPEAKER_05: So as I'm passing him, I can see his brake lights tick on.
2:19
SPEAKER_05: I'm like, gosh, darn it.
2:21
SPEAKER_05: Go, well, you know what?
2:23
SPEAKER_05: I've had the car for almost a year.
2:25
SPEAKER_05: You know, I did my road trip at the beginning of June, some 5,000 miles, didn't get pulled over once.
2:30
SPEAKER_05: It's bound to happen, right?
2:32
SPEAKER_05: To the point.
2:34
SPEAKER_05: I thought I I I thought I was I thought I was so busted that I actually went so far as to pull the wallet out of my pants and set it on the console.
2:45
SPEAKER_05: So I'm gonna need it.
2:46
SPEAKER_05: I'm just I'm gonna need it.
2:48
SPEAKER_05: And in my mind, I'm going, well, maybe he'll ask me where I'm going.
2:51
SPEAKER_05: You know, where are you going?
2:52
SPEAKER_05: Oh, I'm you know, I'm I'm going to Center of the American Experiment.
2:56
SPEAKER_05: I host a I host a weekly, a weekly show.
2:59
SPEAKER_05: Love police officers, by the way.
3:01
SPEAKER_05: So I just I kind of watched in my rearview mirror, and uh, yeah, he didn't, he didn't end up, he didn't end up catching up.
3:06
SPEAKER_05: Man, I lucked out.
3:08
SPEAKER_05: It wasn't so much like the ticket would have sucked.
3:10
SPEAKER_05: I'm not gonna lie, the ticket, that would have been awful, right?
3:13
SPEAKER_05: And I haven't had a ticket in a long time, so I'm like not necessarily worried about rising insurance rates and all that.
3:18
SPEAKER_05: Uh, but then to have to have the conversation with Melinda, that would be the worst part whatsoever.
3:22
SPEAKER_05: See, and I can tell this story right now because she doesn't wake up until 6:30, so she's not gonna hear it.
3:27
SPEAKER_05: And she doesn't go and get caught up on the show until a lot later.
3:31
SPEAKER_05: Welcome to Tuesday.
3:32
SPEAKER_05: It has a feel.
3:33
SPEAKER_05: It is the John Justice show presented by American Experiment.
3:36
SPEAKER_05: Thank you to all the early arisers uh this morning for uh joining us.
3:40
SPEAKER_05: I greatly appreciate it.
3:41
SPEAKER_05: We have David Gartenstein Ross, your AI analyst and expert.
3:45
SPEAKER_05: He'll be coming up uh at 6 30 this morning.
3:48
SPEAKER_05: Get your artificial intelligence related questions in right now to either John.justice at AmericanExperiment.org.
3:57
SPEAKER_05: And that's J-O-N, by the way.
3:58
SPEAKER_05: If you're watching online, you can see it on the sign.
4:01
SPEAKER_05: That's why we have a sign.
4:02
SPEAKER_05: We have a sign that way people can see.
4:04
SPEAKER_05: It's J-O-N.
4:05
SPEAKER_05: That way people know.
4:06
SPEAKER_05: I didn't get confused, you know.
4:07
SPEAKER_05: Um, also, leave us a blast.
4:09
SPEAKER_05: We already have comments that are rolling in this morning.
4:11
SPEAKER_05: 612-584-4565.
4:15
SPEAKER_05: And I'll uh sneak one of these in that's kind of off topic since I haven't gotten into any material as of late.
4:20
SPEAKER_05: But speaking of content on the show this morning, we have an update on the Vandals and Blaine.
4:27
SPEAKER_05: Apparently, it was not politically motivated.
4:29
SPEAKER_05: It would like legitimately was cowardly juveniles, as I was describing yesterday.
4:35
SPEAKER_05: And I don't know if I buy into that.
4:38
SPEAKER_05: We talked about this at length yesterday where Leslie Larson, the council member and also running for the House, uh, she had her sedan was covered in um photocopies of middle fingers scotch taped all over the vehicle.
4:52
SPEAKER_05: And it turns out, according to police, it wasn't politically motivated and this was a bunch of juveniles.
4:57
SPEAKER_05: But I question all of that.
4:58
SPEAKER_05: So hopefully Leslie will kind of provide some clarity on that.
5:01
SPEAKER_05: I just would be curious, can you know, considering this is my neck of the woods because I live in Blaine and she's my, you know, my council member.
5:09
SPEAKER_05: So we'll give you an update on that coming up after 7 o'clock.
5:12
SPEAKER_05: Also, um, new fraud stories and an update on the Anoka assistant attorney in the sex trafficking ring.
5:18
SPEAKER_05: Uh, there was a press conference yesterday regarding this with further uh details of uh these, of these charges.
5:24
SPEAKER_05: And on top of that, I had to do a little digging to make sure these were two separate stories, but there's another story.
5:29
SPEAKER_05: Uh, this one from Bill Glaun, policy fellow here at American Experiment, talking about another layer of fraud involving uh sex scandal and uh services not provided, the state being billed for Medicaid dollars, again, for services uh not provided.
5:50
SPEAKER_05: So now we've just reached a level where sex is fraudulent here in the state of Minnesota, and I did not have that on my bingo card uh this morning.
5:59
SPEAKER_05: Later on in the show, we will have John Phelan, uh economist and policy fellow, also here at American Experiment.
6:05
SPEAKER_05: Uh Amy Klobishar and the local media has been quick to go and push this out to everybody.
6:11
SPEAKER_05: She's put forward what she says is this plan to reduce healthcare costs.
6:15
SPEAKER_05: Um, John Phelan in a piece today argues that she's not even really capable of doing this anymore.
6:20
SPEAKER_05: Or at least she wouldn't be in the position of governor if she were to win.
6:24
SPEAKER_05: So he'll be joining us on the American Experiment Studio uh sofas coming up at uh 830.
6:30
SPEAKER_05: And of course, throughout the show this morning, we'll get to your comments on the blaster line uh 612-584-4565.
6:37
SPEAKER_05: And as I mentioned, you can email john.justice at AmericanExperiment.org.
6:41
SPEAKER_05: You can watch at MN Think Tank on X, also on Facebook and on uh YouTube on X as American Experiment as well and my personal um Facebook and YouTube pages.
6:55
SPEAKER_05: You can watch there too.
6:56
SPEAKER_05: Uh so speaking of blasts, let's go ahead and get to uh some thoughts this morning from friend of the show Brandon.
7:26
SPEAKER_24: I worked with the original lioness.
7:29
SPEAKER_24: I won't get into it right now, but I will send you an email explaining what they did while we were over there in 2006.
7:38
SPEAKER_24: Have a great Tuesday show.
7:42
SPEAKER_05: Uh thank you, Brandon.
7:43
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, my wife and I enjoy Lioness quite a bit on uh Paramount.
7:47
SPEAKER_05: Uh it's uh written and I believe directed by Taylor Sheridan, who also stars on occasion uh in the uh in the show.
7:53
SPEAKER_05: I don't recommend it because again, this is I don't typically go and recommend um shows because you know everybody has different tastes, and a lot of these shows have explicit content, and so you have to go and decide for yourself if there's something that I think is sort of universal for everybody to love, like a Project Hail Mary, I'll do a recommendation.
8:13
SPEAKER_05: But no, I'm very much enjoying um this season of uh Lioness.
8:17
SPEAKER_05: I I tend to agree with you.
8:18
SPEAKER_05: I think it's one of the best seasons of uh of Lioness.
8:21
SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, Taylor Sheridan sort of dives into a bit of the of the wokeness political correctness, but he surrounds it with such uh quality storytelling that you're able to sort of shove it, uh shove it aside.
8:34
SPEAKER_05: But again, because of that, um I don't do a recommendation on that show because of some of the more um explicit content.
8:41
SPEAKER_05: And it's interesting to me because I've actually seen some conservative pushback on uh Lioness recently, um sort of going the girl boss route.
8:51
SPEAKER_05: And I was talking with Melinda about this uh last night, and um she and I both completely uh didn't disagree.
8:56
SPEAKER_05: I think a lot of times when people go looking for that, they just end up finding it, where if they didn't have that mentality when they were going to watch a show, they could be, you know, they would be more easily entertained and less annoyed by what they think is the injection of um, you know, woke ideologies.
9:13
SPEAKER_05: But uh thank you for the uh comment, Brandon, and I'm right there, uh right there with you.
9:16
SPEAKER_05: So let's go uh let's go here to kick things off.
9:18
SPEAKER_05: Again, if you want to get your questions in for David Gartenstein Ross, you can do that now, talk on artificial intelligence.
9:23
SPEAKER_05: I have a handful of stories that I've uh that I've grabbed for our discussion today.
9:28
SPEAKER_05: But one of the things that David and I love to do the most um is do a bit of a, you know, and ask him anything.
9:34
SPEAKER_05: You know, he's the expert on artificial intelligence and he loves to be put on, he does, he loves to be put on the spot and and to answer your questions.
9:41
SPEAKER_05: So uh John.justice, J O N and AmericanExperiment.org or again 612-584-45065.
9:48
SPEAKER_05: So Rosie O'Donnell, for those that weren't aware, um, she's guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live.
9:54
SPEAKER_05: And this was a part of her opening monologue, and it's just one of these, one of these things that Trump derangement syndrome sufferers do that I simply cannot relate to, and I do not understand the mentality.
10:15
SPEAKER_36: It's great to be back.
10:16
SPEAKER_36: They said you can't come home again, but here I am to have hated Jimmy Kimmel live when it was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.
10:37
SPEAKER_36: If you're wondering.
10:40
SPEAKER_05: This desire or this belief that you know Donald Trump hates them and oh, he hates Jimmy Kimmel's show, and he's really gonna hate me.
10:48
SPEAKER_05: I that's just the aspect of Trump derangement syndrome that I I just I cannot relate to.
10:54
SPEAKER_05: The mentality of an individual who is desperate to have somebody hate them and goes out of their way to make the individual who was their target hate them.
11:05
SPEAKER_05: I just, I don't, I don't get it.
11:08
SPEAKER_05: I mean, there's been circumstances with people that, you know, I don't like or don't appreciate or have, you know, treated me inappropriately, but never have I thought I want to go out of my way to make them, you know, hate me.
11:20
SPEAKER_05: I I just I just I just don't I don't get it.
11:23
SPEAKER_05: Uh the sidebar to that, by the way, is that she just seemed awkward.
11:26
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I guess she hasn't hosted in a long, long time.
11:28
SPEAKER_05: So it's probably an unfair um argument to uh to lob at Rosie O'Donnell, but she just seemed a little uh a little a little awkward, a little rusty in terms of her uh monologue uh yesterday, albeit I didn't watch much more uh much more than that because I can't stand Rosie O'Donnell as much as of anybody else.
11:45
SPEAKER_05: So I just do what normal people do, and I do not consume any of her content.
11:49
SPEAKER_05: But speaking of President Donald Trump, there was a press conference yesterday, and I have a couple of clips I want to share with you.
11:54
SPEAKER_05: Um he announced in the Oval Office that he's giving a personal recommendation for a 16-year-old uh lifeguard, Ryder Williams, to become a firefighter, a firefighter, which is apparently his dream job.
12:06
SPEAKER_05: So they're in the Oval Office, and this right this lifeguard, uh, Ryder Williams is there, and there's some other young individuals that are there as well.
12:14
SPEAKER_05: I think they were the, I think it was the brother and the and the mom and the dad of this particular uh individual, considering he was 16 years old.
12:23
SPEAKER_05: So um, first off, here's a bit of what Trump had to say uh to this young, uh to this young lifeguard uh hero.
12:30
SPEAKER_05: And I play this in, you know, in in comparison to Rosie O'Donnell and the left Trump derangement syndrome, because everything that I've heard from individuals who have spent time with Donald Trump, they talk about what a genuine quality person and how much he actually cares.
12:46
SPEAKER_05: That's not to say that he can't be caustic.
12:48
SPEAKER_05: That's not to say that he hasn't spoken in ways that I don't even appreciate, right?
12:53
SPEAKER_05: But it is to say that genuinely, you know, generally speaking, Trump is genuinely a good person.
12:59
SPEAKER_05: And it's something that the left will never go and give him credit for.
13:02
SPEAKER_08: They're gonna look up to Ryder, they're gonna look up to Nathaniel, the way Nathaniel handled it.
13:07
SPEAKER_08: He was he was cool considering the problems he I was watching.
13:11
SPEAKER_08: It was you were very cool.
13:13
SPEAKER_08: And uh they're gonna gain respect.
13:16
SPEAKER_08: I think, you know, very importantly, they're gonna gain respect for what these people do, having to do with lifeguards and like having to do with safety.
13:24
SPEAKER_08: Uh this was an unbelievable uh experience.
13:28
SPEAKER_08: Anybody watching, like it's not my world, but I I respect that world I always had, but never maybe so much as I do now.
13:36
SPEAKER_08: So I thought you bring uh you know to your profession, to what you do, and what you do so well, you brought tremendous uh grace and experience, really tremendous grace, uh tremendous uh a feeling that it's so amazing to see this happen, to see it before your eyes.
13:56
SPEAKER_08: And I don't think any other I've seen surfs, I've seen rescues before.
14:01
SPEAKER_08: I've never seen anything quite like this.
14:03
SPEAKER_08: It's been a great thing for your profession, and people are gonna respect it even more, respect you even more.
14:09
SPEAKER_08: So I just thought it was really a very worthwhile event to have it at the Oval Office.
14:14
SPEAKER_08: So congratulations.
14:16
SPEAKER_05: So after this uh brief announcement, um, President Donald Trump started taking questions from uh reporters and just ended up ripping this CNN reporter a new one as she was trying, she was screaming out trying to get Trump's um attention.
14:34
SPEAKER_05: Here was that exchange.
14:42
SPEAKER_08: Okay?
14:43
SPEAKER_08: Don't you find her disrespectful?
14:46
SPEAKER_08: Quiet.
14:47
SPEAKER_08: Who are you with?
14:48
SPEAKER_33: I was the end.
14:50
SPEAKER_08: Fake news.
14:51
SPEAKER_08: You're fake news.
14:52
SPEAKER_08: You're loud, you're a loud, boisterous person.
14:55
SPEAKER_08: You're fake news.
14:56
SPEAKER_08: Be quiet.
14:57
SPEAKER_08: Be quiet.
14:58
SPEAKER_08: Be quiet.
15:00
SPEAKER_08: You're a fake reporter and you report fake news.
15:04
SPEAKER_08: Go ahead.
15:04
SPEAKER_08: Mr.
15:05
SPEAKER_08: President is the first time.
15:07
SPEAKER_05: I gotta hand it to the um to the reporter uh in that moment because she kind of just pushed forward.
15:14
SPEAKER_05: I imagine that the White House press corps, especially those working for MS Now or NBC or CNN, they've got to be used to the president um making comments like that to where they just print's probably just white noise to them.
15:29
SPEAKER_05: But it doesn't mean it's any less entertaining when it ends up happening.
15:33
SPEAKER_05: Coming up on the show, uh Minnesota voter rolls staying private after court rejects Trump fishing expedition, according to the judge.
15:42
SPEAKER_05: Well, yeah, it's a fishing expedition.
15:44
SPEAKER_05: I mean, when you go to fish, you want to catch, you want to catch fish.
15:48
SPEAKER_05: I mean, he's using it as a negative, and it's usually used as a negative.
15:51
SPEAKER_05: I get that.
15:52
SPEAKER_05: But in reality, that's what Trump is doing.
15:54
SPEAKER_05: He wants to see what the voter rolls would expose about what's happening here in our Minnesota elections.
16:00
SPEAKER_05: And to that point, there's a lengthy piece from the Federalist uh Federalists that I'll share with you.
16:05
SPEAKER_05: Uh, California admits it doesn't track non-citizens on voter rolls as the federal law requires.
16:11
SPEAKER_05: And you can pretty much take the details of what the Federalist investigated in California and apply it here to Minnesota because California's uh voting uh lack of voter integrity laws pretty much mirrors, or vice versa.
16:25
SPEAKER_05: Minnesota's election laws mirror California's election laws that make them susceptible to fraud and lack integrity.
16:33
SPEAKER_05: So I'll give you details on that.
16:35
SPEAKER_05: Coming up in just a moment uh on the uh on the show, you know, Melinda and I were out on um on Friday.
16:41
SPEAKER_05: We were doing our weekly uh Costco trip and made a quick uh stop into uh into Target, had to do some ancillary shopping.
16:48
SPEAKER_05: And uh it was it was in a it was in that moment as we're walking into the store, and I told her, and this was this conversation totally happened.
16:57
SPEAKER_05: I told her, I go, man, ever since I lost the weight that I lost, it is so much easier to go out and do just the daily things that one does.
17:08
SPEAKER_05: You know, when you're carrying around an extra 25 pounds, it makes a huge difference.
17:12
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17:14
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17:22
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17:32
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17:35
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17:39
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17:42
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17:50
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17:53
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17:57
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18:08
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18:08
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18:12
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18:16
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18:21
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18:23
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18:25
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18:26
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18:28
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18:35
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18:38
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18:43
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18:48
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18:54
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18:58
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18:59
SPEAKER_31: Think about it.
19:00
SPEAKER_31: Now that school's back in session, how are Minnesota students doing?
19:04
SPEAKER_31: Not very well.
19:05
SPEAKER_31: Minnesota ACT scores fell again last year and are the lowest they've been in 10 years.
19:11
SPEAKER_31: In fact, fewer than half of Minnesota students can either read or do math at grade level.
19:16
SPEAKER_31: Think about it.
19:17
SPEAKER_31: We used to brag about our schools.
19:19
SPEAKER_31: Now we're losing to states like Mississippi.
19:21
SPEAKER_31: Visit AmericanExperiment.org for more information.
19:24
SPEAKER_31: Think about it is brought to you by Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota's think tank.
19:29
SPEAKER_29: And now, here's commentary on the latest issues facing Minnesotans from the host, Policy Fellows, and Guests of American Experiment.
19:45
SPEAKER_06: Now, you might be wondering, is it just because these are, you know, maybe underprivileged schools?
19:49
SPEAKER_06: They don't have the funding or the resources necessary to support these kids?
19:53
SPEAKER_06: No.
19:54
SPEAKER_06: No is the answer, uh, because their average per pupil spending was$19,600, nearly$20,000 per student, which is also much higher than the state.
20:03
SPEAKER_07: Support the John Justice show, become an advertiser.
20:06
SPEAKER_07: Competitive rates for both personal endorsements and standard ads are available.
20:10
SPEAKER_07: For more details, email John.justice at AmericanExperiment.org.
20:16
SPEAKER_06: There's three things to note here on this story.
20:18
SPEAKER_06: Number one, these findings came straight from data from the Minnesota Department of Education.
20:23
SPEAKER_06: Number two, the 11 schools include traditional public, magnet, and charter schools.
20:28
SPEAKER_06: And number three, grade level mathematics proficiency is measured by the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment, the MCAs.
20:34
SPEAKER_06: I'm sure you've heard us talk about them before on this show, and they are taken by a majority of Minnesota students.
20:40
SPEAKER_06: Worth noting that almost every school on this list of 11 is in the Twin Cities metro area.
20:45
SPEAKER_06: Five of the 11 schools have had zero students per proficient in math for at least two years in a row.
20:52
SPEAKER_06: Think about it.
20:53
SPEAKER_31: Black and Hispanic students in Mississippi perform better in reading and math than black and Hispanic students in Minnesota.
21:00
SPEAKER_31: And Mississippi spends thousands of dollars less per student than Minnesota.
21:04
SPEAKER_31: Mississippi spends less money, gets better results, and their achievement gaps are closing, while ours are getting worse.
21:11
SPEAKER_31: Think about it.
21:12
SPEAKER_31: It's time for real education reform so Minnesota can catch up to Mississippi.
21:17
SPEAKER_31: Think about it is brought to you by Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota's think tank.
21:21
SPEAKER_06: People of all ages are leaving Minnesota for other states.
21:26
SPEAKER_33: Yeah, and that pushes back on that narrative that it's just, you know, retirees that are leaving Minnesota because it's too cold here when what we see are people in every single age category are leaving, even under 26 year olds, even people in their middle age.
21:43
SPEAKER_33: It's not just the weather that's driving people out of our state, it's the bad policies.
21:48
SPEAKER_31: Think about it.
21:49
SPEAKER_31: Minnesota has always been a low crime state.
21:52
SPEAKER_31: But according to the most recent Bureau of Criminal Apprehension data, we are now above the national average when it comes to part one crimes.
22:00
SPEAKER_31: A category that includes crimes like murder, assault, rape, and carjackings.
22:05
SPEAKER_31: Think about it.
22:06
SPEAKER_31: Minnesota is now a high crime state.
22:10
SPEAKER_31: Visit highcrime.com to learn more.
22:13
SPEAKER_31: Think about it is brought to you by Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota's Think Tank.
22:18
SPEAKER_05: It's the John Justice show presented by American Experiment.
22:21
SPEAKER_05: You can watch live at MN Think Tank on X, YouTube, and Facebook at Center of the American Experiment.
22:27
SPEAKER_05: Listen live at American Experimented.org and download the free Mix L R app, M I X L R app.
22:33
SPEAKER_05: The podcasts are loaded there on the app.
22:35
SPEAKER_05: It's also where you can listen live at 6 until 9 a.m.
22:38
SPEAKER_05: And of course the podcasts after the show are also uploaded across all the podcast platforms.
22:44
SPEAKER_05: And the videos are available for a we uh rewatch on those platforms and rumble included.
22:49
SPEAKER_05: I see comments rolling in for David Garton Steinross, our AI analyst and uh expert, the CEO at Expert Theory.
22:55
SPEAKER_05: He'll be joining us uh right around uh 6:30.
22:58
SPEAKER_05: A federal judge yesterday dismissed the Trump administration's lawsuit seeking Minnesota's voter rolls, calling it a fishing expedition.
23:08
SPEAKER_05: Because it was, but not in a negative way.
23:11
SPEAKER_05: The Trump administration wants to get to the bottom of what's happening here in Minnesota and with what I'm about to detail of what's happening in California for good reason.
23:19
SPEAKER_05: The ruling protects voter privacy as the administration had no basis to demand the unredacted voter in uh information.
23:28
SPEAKER_05: And yet we have other states that have been more than happy to go and turn over the voter rolls, and there's been no compromising of voters' privacy.
23:38
SPEAKER_05: The Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon appeared on Fox 9 all day yesterday, called uh A.
23:44
SPEAKER_05: G.
23:44
SPEAKER_05: Pam Bondi's request to turn over the voter rolls bizarre and disturbing, because of course he would.
23:50
SPEAKER_05: What are they trying to hide?
23:51
SPEAKER_05: I mean, that's the question.
23:52
SPEAKER_05: The U.S.
23:53
SPEAKER_05: District Court for the District of Minnesota dismissed the 2025 lawsuit from the Trump administration that sought the state's entire voter registration list.
24:01
SPEAKER_05: The court found that the federal government had no basis under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 or the Help America Vote Act to demand the voter list, calling it an effort, uh calling the effort a fishing expedition.
24:14
SPEAKER_05: Well, okay.
24:16
SPEAKER_05: Fact-finding mission, choose whatever description you want.
24:19
SPEAKER_05: The court's decision means officials will not have to turn over the underredacted voter information to the federal government.
24:25
SPEAKER_05: The Trump administration has filed similar 23 lawsuits, excuse me, similar lawsuits in 23 states.
24:32
SPEAKER_05: So Attorney General Thief Ellison said that Minnesota runs the highest turnout, most secure, and frankly, the best elections in America.
24:42
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, for Democrats.
24:55
SPEAKER_05: Give me a break.
24:56
SPEAKER_05: I don't buy that for a second.
24:57
SPEAKER_05: Um, I have to assume that this was the expectation coming from the administration, and that more than likely this will end up in the hands of the Supreme Court.
25:08
SPEAKER_05: At least that's what my expectation is.
25:10
SPEAKER_05: Uh, let's go back to the uh blaster line.
25:12
SPEAKER_05: Uh friend of the show has a comment regarding uh voter roles and uh voting through their experience.
25:18
SPEAKER_15: Hey John, I'm in the team, and I'm an election judge in the Washington County where we do have to take a certain amount of courses or training reality work to be able to be an election judge.
25:32
SPEAKER_15: I'm pretty sure the information about the election.
26:23
SPEAKER_15: There's no way to trace those ballots, the ballot are numbered.
26:28
SPEAKER_15: So it's uh there's a lot of room for fraud in there.
26:32
SPEAKER_05: With that, uh, thank you so much um for the um for the blast this morning at 612-584-4565.
26:40
SPEAKER_05: Uh, with that, before we talk with David Gartnstein Ross, let me get in into this story from the federalist because as I mentioned, um, what I'm about to share with you in many ways is applicable to what we're dealing with here in Minnesota.
26:53
SPEAKER_05: California has now actually told the country that it doesn't know how many non-citizens have been removed from its voter rolls, and that it has no formal policy for investigating illegal voting when it's reported.
27:05
SPEAKER_05: And this was the concern that we talked about yesterday regarding all the controversy, doing nothing with my fingers, over the James O'Keefe uh vouching, uh voter vouching stunt that he did last week on the primary.
27:20
SPEAKER_05: It's this, okay, if there are all these safeguards in place to identify whether or not these vouched individuals are actually registered to vote, able to vote, legally capable of voting, is there going to be any follow-up?
27:34
SPEAKER_05: And are those votes then removed if it turns out that these individuals are not legally allowed to vote?
27:42
SPEAKER_05: Now, Jordan Sekolo at the Federalist writes, for years Americans have been told that concerns about non-citizens voting are a myth.
27:50
SPEAKER_05: A right-wing talking point unworthy of serious attention.
27:54
SPEAKER_05: California's own Secretary of State and Attorney General have proven otherwise, however, not admitting the state, not by admitting that the state has no idea whether or how often it's even happening, but indicating that the state isn't bothering to track it.
28:12
SPEAKER_05: So a few weeks ago, the ACLJ submitted two California Public Records Act requests, one to the California Secretary of State and the other to the Attorney General.
28:24
SPEAKER_05: They were seeking records on how the state maintains integrity of its voter rolls.
28:28
SPEAKER_05: The Attorney General's office took an extension, ultimately responding on August 10th.
28:32
SPEAKER_05: Now, I'll provide you details on this coming up after my conversation with David Gartenstein-Ross.
28:37
SPEAKER_05: But as I mentioned, California basically admitted it does not track non-voting uh citizens on voter rolls as the federal law requires.
28:46
SPEAKER_05: And once again, this morning, you're going to see this and hear this sort of theme.
28:51
SPEAKER_05: You know, these themes emerge as I'm going through and doing prep for the show.
28:56
SPEAKER_05: And this morning it's going to be the fact that those on the left simply don't care.
29:00
SPEAKER_05: They either feel like they're above the law, they feel justified in their illegal actions, or they simply just do not care at all regarding the rules that they're supposed to be following.
29:13
SPEAKER_05: And unless there's any sort of prosecutorial follow-up, you know, or any outrage, they're going to continue to be able to get away with what it is that they've been getting away with.
29:23
SPEAKER_05: And I have examples of this on numerous uh levels that again we'll dive into coming up um later on in the show.
29:30
SPEAKER_05: Right now, I am very pleased uh to welcome in to the show uh once again, AI analyst and expert and CEO at Expert Theory, David uh Garton Steinross.
29:41
SPEAKER_05: Good morning, David.
29:42
SPEAKER_05: Fantastic to see you this morning.
29:43
SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much for joining the show.
29:45
SPEAKER_04: Good morning, John.
29:46
SPEAKER_04: Great to join you, and I'm finally on camera here.
29:48
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, no, man, is so uh thank you so much once again for the time.
29:51
SPEAKER_05: I know uh how much the uh the listeners appreciate your insight, and I do too.
29:55
SPEAKER_05: And speaking with that, before we dive into some of the material that I uh shared with you yesterday, let's get into some of the listeners' uh questions this morning.
30:03
SPEAKER_05: Uh, first one comes uh via email, John.justice at AmericanExperiment.org.
30:08
SPEAKER_05: Uh Tom of the Elder writes, what uh excuse me, will data centers be overbuilt with many later closed or absorbed by larger companies, much like with what happened during many of the technology high growth cycles.
30:23
SPEAKER_05: Things like wind generator manufacturing, cell phone explosion, and electric cars all had peak cycles that crashed.
30:31
SPEAKER_05: So, David, do you see something similar happening when it comes to the emerging uh data centers regarding artificial intelligence?
30:37
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Tommy the Elder's question is a really interesting one.
30:40
SPEAKER_04: Uh ultimately, it's it's hard for me to forecast.
30:42
SPEAKER_04: If I were betting, I would bet that they're not overbuilt.
30:46
SPEAKER_04: Um, right on the whole.
30:49
SPEAKER_04: Um, there's a huge need to store data based on the explosion of data that we have.
30:54
SPEAKER_04: Uh, number one.
30:55
SPEAKER_04: Number two, as we've talked about, um, there's a lot of political opposition at a local level to data centers being built in a variety of places.
31:04
SPEAKER_04: So um, regardless of the future of data centers, right now, what you're seeing is like multiple attempts to get them up and running to provide the infrastructure that's needed for the AI boom and um where they emerge and in what amount is something that we don't really know right now.
31:21
SPEAKER_04: Right?
31:21
SPEAKER_04: It's not being built as a system, it's a series of individual uh products.
31:25
SPEAKER_04: But my guess is that there's just going to be more and more need for data storage, not less need for data storage.
31:31
SPEAKER_04: So if I were betting, I would bet that it is not a boom, which is then going to go into a bust cycle.
31:38
SPEAKER_04: But it's hard to have a crystal ball on that one.
31:40
SPEAKER_04: It's uh actually a very thought-provoking question.
31:43
SPEAKER_05: Do you have insight, David, into um the needed, the needed storage for artificial intelligence as we would typically compare it to, say, you know, what we store up in the cloud or just documents or or information?
32:04
SPEAKER_05: Um because I was curious, when it comes to artificial intelligence, um, you know, what what are those storage, those storage needs?
32:12
SPEAKER_05: Is it the generating power?
32:14
SPEAKER_05: Is it things that are created and those items created need to be secured at a at a at a specific location?
32:20
SPEAKER_05: Can you give us some insight as to why there is such this massive need for these data centers and what they would be storing?
32:26
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the answer is all of the above.
32:28
SPEAKER_04: Um data centers are needed to both store the underlying data that goes into large language models.
32:34
SPEAKER_04: So part of an LLM is uh taking in as much information as possible, then training the model on basically the corpus of human activity.
32:47
SPEAKER_04: Uh the reason being then it's able to um smoothly um go from um taking you know 2026 um text um or dialogue in Minneapolis to suddenly generating a 14th-century um English manuscript.
33:07
SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, these are the kinds of things that LLMs are trained on and so are able to do.
33:12
SPEAKER_04: So A, it's the underlying data, B, it's everything that's created.
33:15
SPEAKER_04: If you look at um, you know, in the past, what have data centers been needed for?
33:20
SPEAKER_04: Um, it's been you know everything that goes into data that we need to be able to pull.
33:26
SPEAKER_04: So for a company, it will include all of their internal documents, images that they've generated, uh, video, uh, which is very important that they've generated, which is very um, you know, memory intensive.
33:38
SPEAKER_04: Um, it'll include all customer information, you know, databases driving sales, things like that.
33:43
SPEAKER_04: With the AI explosion, there's both an increasing amount of data that LLMs need to pull from, number one, and then number two, uh the outputs are just greater.
33:53
SPEAKER_04: You can see this if you look at compare an AI to, for example, Google or Bing or whatever um search engine you prefer.
34:03
SPEAKER_04: Um, if you look at a Google search, it generates a number of hits, but that's very low data, right?
34:08
SPEAKER_04: The data is basically uh number one, what did you search for?
34:12
SPEAKER_04: Number two, what search results did you click on?
34:15
SPEAKER_04: Now you ask a simple question to ChatGPT or even to you know Google if it's in AI mode, and you get like a page of responses.
34:24
SPEAKER_04: Um suddenly we go from um there being kind of low data usage uh in each and every interaction with a computer to much more extended data usage on both sides of the conversation.
34:36
SPEAKER_05: Talking with David Gartenstein Ross, uh the CEO at uh Expert Theory and our AI analyst and expert, we talked about this briefly last week.
34:44
SPEAKER_05: Let's go ahead and uh have uh a slightly longer conversation about the data centers in something that I was reading um uh last week uh regarding these data centers.
34:53
SPEAKER_05: You know, this it's obviously been politicized.
34:55
SPEAKER_05: Um, and uh and there's people from both sides of the of the political spectrum that are critical of these data centers, depending on where it is that they are going to be uh going to be built.
35:05
SPEAKER_05: But um one thing that I wasn't anticipating, but it makes sense, is that some of these data centers are actually going up in towns that have basically turned into ghost towns.
35:14
SPEAKER_05: They're areas where people still live, but they used to be, you know, bustling, um, you know, bustling towns in the middle of America, but industries, you know, collapsed and went away and the jobs went away, and so only leaving a handful of people there.
35:28
SPEAKER_05: But now they're looking at these data centers potentially being built in these areas, which could bring back a lot of individuals and actually revitalize a lot of these towns.
35:37
SPEAKER_05: And this is an aspect of it that I don't think uh a lot of people are talking about, but it could um, you know, it could end up being uh a major boon for um for these towns across America.
35:47
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I agree entirely.
35:48
SPEAKER_04: Um and you had uh Anthropics uh CEO come out with a fairly long post about how AI companies have failed to you know earn the trust of the public.
35:58
SPEAKER_04: Um really interesting post for a variety of reasons.
36:01
SPEAKER_04: But it's thinking through things like this, you know, when we step back and look at the promise versus the peril of AI, um, which feeds into your question, but I want to go one level higher.
36:13
SPEAKER_04: So the promise is suddenly we have this superintelligence that enables humanity to do things it never could before.
36:21
SPEAKER_04: That's an awesome thing to have.
36:23
SPEAKER_04: Um, it's gonna generate an enormous amount of wealth when you think about wealth comprehensively, both in terms of things that have built, been built.
36:31
SPEAKER_04: Um, you think about wealth as being richness in hours and richness in time.
36:36
SPEAKER_04: AI is one of the most tremendous leaps forward in human history.
36:40
SPEAKER_04: It also creates some of the biggest dangers that we've seen in human history.
36:45
SPEAKER_04: And that's even before we start talking about AI turning evil and turning us all into uh slaves to a machine.
36:52
SPEAKER_04: Um, job disruption, I know, is something that we may talk about today.
36:56
SPEAKER_04: Um the AI assisting people in killing or taking or creating biological weapons and the like.
37:04
SPEAKER_04: And this kind of lack of trust that AI companies have engendered extends even to data centers, where uh they've often been very disruptive to communities.
37:14
SPEAKER_04: There are communities that are water stressed and the like, which suddenly have a data center which promises to take up a large number of resources.
37:22
SPEAKER_04: The economic, the positive economic benefit is unclear.
37:26
SPEAKER_04: Um, this is a way that trust has been eroded.
37:28
SPEAKER_04: Ghost towns, that's a really great way to think about it.
37:32
SPEAKER_04: I mean, ultimately, given the promise and peril, like the promise is that the system, however we define the system, will do a good job of integrating all of this new wealth so we all benefit.
37:45
SPEAKER_04: The idea that this is dangerous stems from a lot of different reasons, but the main one is that the benefits will be concentrated in the hands of the few.
37:53
SPEAKER_04: Most people will lose.
37:55
SPEAKER_04: That is the critique of AI from an economic front.
37:58
SPEAKER_04: And among other things, if data centers go up in areas where communities are helped and not hurt, that's a way to regain trust and it's a way for AI companies and those that are associated with them to show that um, you know, in some way, um, benefits from uh AI and everything that comes with it will extend to many people and not just a few.
38:25
SPEAKER_05: Uh, not that I want to go too deep on this, but just a question that popped into my mind.
38:29
SPEAKER_05: And and uh David, you may or may not have an answer, but I would be curious, you know, what kind of workforce that they would need for this facility?
38:38
SPEAKER_05: You know, how much of it would be automated, you know, utilizing AI and and and again, that would that would certainly, you know, make a big difference when it comes to whether or not these particular data centers would be um enough to go and revitalize a small town.
38:52
SPEAKER_05: It would be the the number of people that would be necessary to go and operate it.
38:55
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I was just trying to do a back of the napkin uh for the same reasons.
39:00
SPEAKER_04: Um I know that in the past when when we've looked at different um ways that energy would be generated, that uh traditional fossil fuel-based plants tend to generate many more jobs than uh what we can describe as clean energy, you know, solar, wind, and the like.
39:17
SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, it's an interesting question.
39:21
SPEAKER_04: I mean, the the way that regardless of you know, the the workforce would be for a data center, you know, again, back of the napkin, if it's of sufficient size, it would be um at least, you know, probably 52 50 plus jobs in a data center would be my guess.
39:36
SPEAKER_04: Um you know, and if you extend it to contractors, it would be a bit more than that.
39:40
SPEAKER_04: It might not be enough jobs slash people coming in to fully revitalize the community, but that's where we get into the secondary things that often come with big projects.
39:49
SPEAKER_04: Um of them may come with building you know different community infrastructure, whether it's a park or a recreation center or the like.
39:58
SPEAKER_04: Um, like done correctly, the data centers could be a tool of um community revitalization.
40:06
SPEAKER_04: But who knows if they'll be done correctly?
40:08
SPEAKER_04: But like I like that story because I like uh there to be uh some optimistic things against kind of the general push of doom and gloom that we seem to see everywhere these days.
40:19
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I you know, I David, I wish there was a, I mean, I I guess this is this is an evergreen statement that I could apply to so much of what I talk about on a daily basis.
40:27
SPEAKER_05: But you know, I I just it's one of those circumstances where I wish there was coverage of both aspects, you know.
40:32
SPEAKER_05: I mean, we should be concerned about it.
40:34
SPEAKER_05: We should be looking at the concerns of AI and what can what kind of impact it'll have on society, but also the the benefits of artificial intelligence as well.
40:42
SPEAKER_05: And unfortunately, with the uh with the media being what it is, we just we don't see the positive, you know, the potential you know positive sides of it, and we don't talk about that nearly enough.
40:50
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I agree entirely.
40:52
SPEAKER_04: And it you know, it gets into a lot of other issues as well.
40:55
SPEAKER_04: I mean, one of the the those that we haven't spent, I think, a great deal of time on is is where is China in all of this, right?
41:01
SPEAKER_04: President Trump has explicitly uh figured China as being a hand um behind uh anti-data center protests, which I think is is undoubtedly correct, right?
41:11
SPEAKER_04: Not that they are the hand, but anytime we look at uh current political debates, you know, division, polarization, um, and certain issues with you know much more tremendous uh consequence, uh I think that looking at foreign actors and foreign interference is going to uh, for the foreseeable future, be a part of how we understand these debates of this discourse.
41:35
SPEAKER_05: Uh before we get into some of the listener questions, let's keep with the theme here.
41:38
SPEAKER_05: And I found this to be a really interesting um piece coming out of the New York Times, an opinion piece published on Friday.
41:45
SPEAKER_05: Um, artificial intelligence could displace 18% of the current U.S.
41:49
SPEAKER_05: jobs within the next five years.
41:51
SPEAKER_05: Uh, this is according to internal analysis by uh Bridgewater Associates.
41:56
SPEAKER_05: Um and there's a couple of points in here that I thought were really interesting, David, that I wanted to get your thoughts on.
42:01
SPEAKER_05: Um, the writers of the opinion piece, uh, two senior executives at the investment firm, they contend that AI could produce a productivity miracle uh miracle capable of substantially improving living standards, is kind of what you and we're talking about.
42:15
SPEAKER_05: But only if the governments establish policies that distribute the gains broadly and limit its danger.
42:22
SPEAKER_05: Now, Bridgewater has a$102 billion investment firm that they lead, and they've invested heavily in artificial intelligence.
42:31
SPEAKER_05: That position, the article that I have from the Daily Wire says, um, gives them uh an argument in an unusual dimension.
42:38
SPEAKER_05: The policies that they recommend could impose costs on their own company and the investment interest that they represent.
42:46
SPEAKER_05: But clearly, with a you know$102 billion background, you know, they could have afforded to absorb some of this.
42:53
SPEAKER_05: But we've had conversations like this in the past, and I know you've talked about uh a universal basic income potentially.
42:59
SPEAKER_05: I don't know if it factors into this.
43:01
SPEAKER_05: But what are your thoughts on what these two executives at uh Bridgewater had to say about job displacement?
43:06
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think I think it's absolutely correct.
43:09
SPEAKER_04: Um you and I have um talked about this uh before and go going back years, and you mentioned universal basic income, and and I think it's it's worth taking a second just to um uh unpack uh the reference there, what it means to you and I.
43:25
SPEAKER_04: Um so a number of years ago, I mean I think I think this must have been um you know a good like 15 years ago, um maybe maybe 12 years ago, um I mentioned um on the show that I support universal basic income.
43:39
SPEAKER_04: And I made clear it wasn't it wasn't just then, right?
43:42
SPEAKER_04: Um but that it was something it was a policy which I think that ultimately um we are going to have to and should implement.
43:49
SPEAKER_04: Um and at the time, you know, you and I are both uh kind of old school conservative, and and um you know at the time like I just got filleted for it.
43:58
SPEAKER_04: And you know, I I I mentioned At the time, what I had in mind, which is exactly this moment that we're in currently, that there's going to be technology will reach the point where it's so disruptive that you need some sort of system to um handle the displacement, right?
44:15
SPEAKER_04: That ultimately, if you have a technology that over five years is displacing 18% of US jobs.
44:21
SPEAKER_04: And like if you look in the longer term, that displacement will probably become greater, right?
44:26
SPEAKER_04: We have a technology that can make entire skill sets irrelevant and cause reskilling of large sections of the workforce almost instantaneously.
44:36
SPEAKER_04: That's a really hard thing to deal with.
44:39
SPEAKER_04: And so um so anyway, we don't need to unpack that.
44:43
SPEAKER_04: And I you know, even at the time, I wasn't trying to really make an argument.
44:46
SPEAKER_04: I was just trying to stake out the position that I have, which I tend to do.
44:50
SPEAKER_04: I find most of my ideas people disagree with um until they don't.
44:55
SPEAKER_04: But in this particular case, they're correct, right?
44:57
SPEAKER_04: We need we with this much disruptiveness, we absolutely have to show that benefits will accrue widely and not just um have narrow benefits and widespread disruption.
45:13
SPEAKER_04: Like nobody wants a technology that benefits a very few people who effectively have won the AI lottery while you know 18 plus percentage of people risk job loss and absolute devastation.
45:27
SPEAKER_04: That is not an attractive future.
45:30
SPEAKER_04: So I think that they're 100% correct.
45:33
SPEAKER_04: And um, you know, uh maybe like six months ago or a year ago, there was an interesting article that you had uh from a conservative publication about how you know Reagan-era conservative doesn't cut it, Reagan-era conservatism uh doesn't cut it in the age of AI.
45:48
SPEAKER_04: Now, um ultimately, again, like I have a very uh favorable view of Reagan-era conservatism, so I I think that's not exactly correct.
45:55
SPEAKER_04: It's you know, any sort of political philosophy has to adapt to the background that it confronts.
46:01
SPEAKER_04: And we are in the most disruptive time, uh perhaps in human history.
46:06
SPEAKER_04: Um, so are the authors correct?
46:08
SPEAKER_04: Yes, they're correct.
46:09
SPEAKER_04: And I don't even think that they're arguing against their investment interests.
46:14
SPEAKER_04: Maybe they're arguing against their immediate investment interests, but I think when you look at kind of disruption then producing backlash, I know that on your show you've talked about like Democratic Socialists of America and that whole movement, right?
46:26
SPEAKER_04: Like part of what you have to have in mind when you're looking at this dynamic system is there also can be just the election of leaders who are you know completely hostile to um hostile to AI, completely hostile to uh private property on the whole, or the like.
46:42
SPEAKER_04: And that political risk also factors in to a long-term economic calculus that a company like Bridgewater would have to take into account.
46:52
SPEAKER_05: Talking with David Gartenstein Ross, he is the CEO at uh Expert Theory and our AI analyst and expert.
46:57
SPEAKER_05: If you have any questions for him, John.justice at AmericanExperiment.org, or you can leave us a blast at uh 612-584-4565.
47:05
SPEAKER_05: And with that, David, let's go ahead and get to uh some of the questions uh from the friends of the show uh this morning here on the John Justice show.
47:13
SPEAKER_25: Good morning, John.
47:14
SPEAKER_25: Mike from Minnesota.
47:15
SPEAKER_25: Hey, calling back with a clarification for my question last week.
47:20
SPEAKER_25: Making an inquiry with Furi, it's asking me if I want to use Chat GPT.
47:29
SPEAKER_25: I didn't have that information last week.
47:31
SPEAKER_25: So it's a AI asking permission, if that's the right word, to use a different AI to do an internet search.
47:42
SPEAKER_25: If you could ask David why it would do that, I would appreciate it.
47:46
SPEAKER_25: Thank you.
47:47
SPEAKER_05: Uh David, your uh your thoughts on uh on Michael's follow-up question?
47:52
SPEAKER_04: It's a great follow-up question.
47:54
SPEAKER_04: Why don't we uh talk about that next week?
47:56
SPEAKER_04: Because I would just be guessing off the top of my head.
47:59
SPEAKER_04: There's gonna be an actual answer, and I want to get the answer for Mike.
48:03
SPEAKER_05: Gotcha.
48:03
SPEAKER_05: Um, let me ask you this.
48:04
SPEAKER_05: And since we're since we're on here, we were having a discussion here at uh Center of the American Experiment uh yesterday.
48:11
SPEAKER_05: We have the policy fellows that write the articles here that you can find at AmericanExperiment.org.
48:16
SPEAKER_05: I encourage everybody to head on over there, especially go and check out the wrong track Minnesota uh list.
48:22
SPEAKER_05: That's a must list of items for every single Minnesotan.
48:25
SPEAKER_05: But we were discussing um, you know, artificial intelligence in the in the policy field of the economists and healthcare experts and housing and crime experts here.
48:35
SPEAKER_05: And we were having a bit of a debate over, not even a debate, a discussion over, you know, which programs to use, you know, Perplexity, uh, Claude, uh, Chat GPT.
48:45
SPEAKER_05: Um these are all you know different large language models that that kind of they kind of have their own expertise, right?
48:54
SPEAKER_05: Or is there one that is superior over another?
48:57
SPEAKER_05: I'd just be curious to get your uh to get your quick thoughts on that.
49:00
SPEAKER_04: My preference is Chat GPT.
49:03
SPEAKER_04: Um the reason is it it has um you know much higher token limits than the others, meaning that you can do more extended and more interesting work on chat.
49:16
SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, I I know people who prefer other models.
49:19
SPEAKER_04: I think it's a very individual thing.
49:21
SPEAKER_04: Um, but you know, relatively recently I upgraded uh to a pro to um a pro subscription on chat, um, which has like been uh transformative.
49:33
SPEAKER_04: Um you know the amount like the amount of intelligence at like higher paid tiers that's available is like even greater than than I had assumed would be commercially available.
49:48
SPEAKER_05: Let's go uh back to the blaster line at 612-584-4565, and we'll hear from Friend of the Show, Rich.
49:55
SPEAKER_18: Good morning, it's Rich.
49:56
SPEAKER_18: And I got a question for DeVee.
49:59
SPEAKER_24: Recently I've seen the use of AI on interviewing techniques in which they do questionnaire and you do a video online.
50:08
SPEAKER_24: I'm wondering if they are combining that with like the V technique that criminal investigators use for involuntary uh movement when a person is untruthful.
50:20
SPEAKER_24: Is that being integrated with AI and are companies using that and or law enforcement?
50:26
SPEAKER_05: Uh David, do you have any insight on uh on Rich's uh comment?
50:30
SPEAKER_04: Um I'm certain that that that's happening, yeah.
50:32
SPEAKER_04: Right.
50:33
SPEAKER_04: Like, I mean, when you when you look at the the usage of AI, and I I had trouble hearing the first part of his question.
50:39
SPEAKER_04: So I I believe that what Rich was asking about was um interviews of criminal suspects, correct?
50:45
SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes, um, and whether AI is used for tells.
50:49
SPEAKER_04: Like, yeah, I'm I'm 100% certain that that's the case, right?
50:52
SPEAKER_04: Like um I I'm also certain uh entirely certain that it has no probative value, um, meaning that they can't introduce the AI results in court at all.
51:07
SPEAKER_04: Um I think that that as I think that you know and your listeners know that uh lie detector test results cannot be introduced in court.
51:17
SPEAKER_04: Right?
51:18
SPEAKER_04: They're not considered to be reliable enough for a wide variety of reasons.
51:22
SPEAKER_04: Um so like a lie detector can be used to um you know to try to clear a suspect or kind of establish a baseline with investigators, but it's not of um it's not probative in a way that it's considered to be court evidence in and of itself.
51:42
SPEAKER_04: Um same thing with respect to to AI.
51:45
SPEAKER_04: I I'm certain that this is a true, that that at the very least, um in an experimental way, this is being used right now.
51:52
SPEAKER_04: Um the reason why I'm certain of that is both you know, number one, other uses of AI, but number two, um, you know, this is basic pattern recognition.
52:01
SPEAKER_04: When you look at different patterns like um, you know, eyes going up and to the left versus up and to the right, when you look at patterns like that, AI is very good at catching them.
52:10
SPEAKER_04: Um and you know, also um you know pinpointing the exact moment where it happens, going back, rewatching it, uh, to compare against other hypotheses.
52:19
SPEAKER_04: AI is great at that.
52:20
SPEAKER_04: Um so yes, speaking is this way.
52:22
SPEAKER_04: I'm certain of it.
52:23
SPEAKER_05: David Gartenstein Ross, let's wrap on this.
52:26
SPEAKER_05: Um I'm just curious to get your to get your thoughts.
52:28
SPEAKER_05: It stuck out to me.
52:29
SPEAKER_05: There's a lengthy uh Wall Street Journal story.
52:32
SPEAKER_05: Um shortly after scoring a multi-million dollar book deal for a debut author, the novelist's agents pulled the plug.
52:41
SPEAKER_05: They could no longer support the project, they said, because they couldn't verify that the work, that the book had been wholly written by their client.
52:49
SPEAKER_05: Um one of the uh individuals, the crime novelist, has said this raises so many questions about authorship, what uh AI means for the uh for the industry.
53:00
SPEAKER_05: Um goes on to say, uh, with the new AI scandal engulfing publishing seemingly every month, it's become more difficult to punt questions about its impact into some distant future.
53:13
SPEAKER_05: The spectacular implosions of big book deals over suspected AI use and the fears who might be next are forcing a reckoning over the nature of authorship.
53:24
SPEAKER_05: And I know you've had some interesting takes on this regarding, you know, whether or not it is or isn't appropriate to, you know, write a book utilizing uh AI, or as we talked about before, using it in the classroom.
53:36
SPEAKER_05: But what was your gut reaction to the story from the Wall Street Journal?
53:39
SPEAKER_04: It's a really interesting story.
53:41
SPEAKER_04: Um I actually think that that underlying all of this is a single question, which is copyright.
53:50
SPEAKER_04: Right?
53:51
SPEAKER_04: Like something that's not settled is you know, to what extent can you copyright material that is written with AI?
54:00
SPEAKER_04: Um, and there's a there's a spectrum, right?
54:02
SPEAKER_04: On one end of the spectrum, there is something that is wholly AI generated.
54:06
SPEAKER_04: Like uh build me a 90,000 uh word um thriller about you know about John Justice.
54:16
SPEAKER_04: Um like with that as a prompt, like that there's no real claim to copyright or human authorship.
54:22
SPEAKER_04: That's just AI writing something that you ask it to write.
54:25
SPEAKER_04: Then on the other end of the spectrum, like let's not use kind of the other end being no AI was involved, but let's use it this way: that an author queries AI to critique the manuscript, uses it as a line editor, um, and like uses it to ask about prose.
54:42
SPEAKER_04: Um that would be human authorship with AI serving the function of you know a dialogue partner.
54:48
SPEAKER_04: That's all that's sort of is should be 0% controversial.
54:53
SPEAKER_04: Then there's a gradation in between.
54:55
SPEAKER_04: Uh what if some scenes are written by AI?
54:58
SPEAKER_04: What if AI is being used to um clean up passages or sentences or the like?
55:03
SPEAKER_04: So I know that one of the um major um one of the major associations um has a um has the idea of a 5% uh de minimis usage.
55:17
SPEAKER_04: Um this is so this the the the authors guild is like this powerful body within the publishing industry.
55:24
SPEAKER_04: And um like their guidance is that spelling slash grammar tools, uh background research, sounding board use are unproblematic.
55:32
SPEAKER_04: AI-generated prose to them being put directly into a book and being presented as human-written is problematic.
55:39
SPEAKER_04: And so they have a model contract language that suggests disclosure of AI generated text and negotiated limits such as de minimis use, um, like 5% of it can be coming from AI.
55:52
SPEAKER_04: Ultimately, I think that when at some point there's going to be a copyright suit about a book that was generated, uh, that was written with AI generated text as a part of the book.
56:06
SPEAKER_04: That will, I think, actually settle out the issue and establish the baseline as to where it lies.
56:14
SPEAKER_04: But within the publishing industry, nobody wants to take that financial risk, especially if you're putting you know millions of dollars behind a book and it's possible that copyright can't hold.
56:25
SPEAKER_04: That is a huge, huge issue.
56:28
SPEAKER_04: Um, in terms of where I come down, like I I think that once when copyright is settled, um, I don't have a problem with AI as a writing tool.
56:41
SPEAKER_04: If it's used poorly, it will create bad books.
56:44
SPEAKER_04: Um like to me, we should use AI as an opportunity to elevate as opposed to an opportunity to try to you know push out on the whole.
56:57
SPEAKER_04: If AI can do something better than me, I want it to do that rather than me.
57:01
SPEAKER_04: Um and I think that that's the way that's the way like not just we should approach it, in the longer term, I think that that's the way that we will approach it.
57:09
SPEAKER_04: That ultimately, if this amazing transformative technology brings out the best of us, then we will prosper as um as a species, as humanity.
57:18
SPEAKER_04: Um, if instead it can produce a race to the bottom with only a few people benefiting, that is not what any of us should want.
57:27
SPEAKER_04: And as all of the threads through all the articles point to, this is a critical time in determining which way we're going to go with respect to this amazing and extraordinarily disruptive technology.
57:39
SPEAKER_05: If you have any uh questions uh for David, I'm happy to go and forward those uh along to our AI expert and analyst and the CEO at Expert Theory, just email me, John.tejustice at AmericanExperiment.org.
57:50
SPEAKER_05: That's J-O-N.
57:51
SPEAKER_05: Uh David, I I I so enjoyed these conversations, and thank you so much for the time this morning.
57:56
SPEAKER_05: And if we can, let's do it, uh let's do it again next week.
57:59
SPEAKER_04: I look forward to it, Chuck.
58:00
SPEAKER_05: Thanks, David.
58:02
SPEAKER_05: All right, coming up, we're gonna get back into the issue of uh voting and uh and voter rolls, as we were talking about, and we have some talkbacks that rolled in from the conversation earlier this hour, and I'll get you um reset up.
58:14
SPEAKER_05: I'll reintroduce you to the story we were covering, including this Federalist article that might as well have been written about the concerns that we have of voter integrity here in Minnesota.
58:24
SPEAKER_05: Also an update on the vandals in Blaine as well.
58:27
SPEAKER_05: I want to take a quick moment and just remind you that if you are having difficulty getting a good night's sleep, do what I did and simply try out the night gummies at Mini Leaf, M-I-N-N-E-L-E-A-F.com.
58:39
SPEAKER_05: You take one right before you go to bed, you sleep soundly, and even if you get up, like I do, because I do, I get up multiple times a night, but as soon as I hit the sheets, I am uh passed back out.
58:49
SPEAKER_05: That's what the night gummies do.
58:51
SPEAKER_05: When I wake up feeling refreshed, ready to hit the road, and come in to do the show uh every single Monday through Friday.
58:58
SPEAKER_05: Head on over to M-I-N-N-E-L-E-A-F.com.
59:01
SPEAKER_05: The mission of Eric and his wife at Mini Leaf is for you to live a better life through their products, and I'm a testament to that.
59:06
SPEAKER_05: You can check out their fun gummies, their spooky mini leaf uh tonics.
59:10
SPEAKER_05: Also, they have really effective triple diamond pain cream, but as I've said many times, the night gummies, the absolute game changer in getting my sleep back on track, and they'll do the same for you.
59:21
SPEAKER_05: Head on over to M-I-N-N-E-L-E-A-F.com, and you'll taste happy at minileaf.com.
59:48
SPEAKER_05: Heading into the second hour for a Tuesday here on the John Justice Show, presented by American Experiment, head on over to AmericanExperiment.org.
59:55
SPEAKER_05: Check out all of the fantastic articles written by the policy fellows here at American Experiment, one of which, our economist John Phelan, will be joining us talking Amy Klobuchar and uh her ideas to help decrease healthcare costs and whether or not she would even be capable of doing that as a governor.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_05: There's a brand new piece available at AmericanExperiment.org, and we'll have John on the Couch coming up at 8:30 here at the Center of the American Experiment Studios.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_05: Also remember at the website, if you want to make a donation to American Experiment, you can get yourself a free embroidered John Justice Show hat.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_05: Just hit the link to my page on the pop-up window on the homepage at AmericanExperiment.org and scroll on down to the bottom, and you can hit the link and make a donation and get one of the official John Justice Show embroidered uh hats.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_05: Also, all the details uh and information regarding the show are available right there on uh my webpage at americanexperiment uh.org.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_05: We kicked off the show talking about one of the big stories of the morning.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_05: A federal judge dismissed the Trump's uh administration's lawsuit, seeking the Minnesota voter rolls, calling it a fishing expedition.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_05: The ruling protects voter privacy as the administration had no legal basis to demand the unredacted voter information according to this leftist judge.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_05: As I mentioned when I was uh talking about the story at the top of the show in the first hour, my expectation is that the administration probably expected that this was the ruling they were going to get.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_05: And as so many of these types of issues go when it comes to these judges pushing back against the administration, usually it's a means, it's a first step to get it up to the Supreme Court.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_05: And so I expect that that will be something similar that happens here.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_05: Now, a few of you left comments on the blaster line on the first hour of the show regarding this story and the story we're about to get into.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_05: California admitting it doesn't track non-citizens on voter rolls as federal law requires.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_05: But let's get to some of your thoughts from the blaster line here on the John Justice show presented by American Experiment.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_17: How in the heck would a judge say you can't see the names of the people who are voting?
1:02:17
SPEAKER_17: Well, the problem is you got people voting who shouldn't be voting.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_17: You don't know if they're dead or illegal or otherwise prohibited unless you know who's voting.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_05: So there's a legal basis for it, but let me get to the heart of what you're saying.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_05: And let me let me add an element to this.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_05: Here's the part of it that drives me nuts.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_05: This isn't about voter privacy at all.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_05: You know, campaigns, parties have access to voter roles.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_05: Do you think that they're caring about the issue of privacy?
1:02:54
SPEAKER_05: I mean, comp I mean corporations, nonprofits have access to voter roles.
1:02:58
SPEAKER_05: There's way more people that have access to these voter roles, right, than most people I think even realize.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_05: So the last place that you should ever be worried about in terms of your voter integrity, right?
1:03:10
SPEAKER_05: It's on the list.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_05: Don't don't don't misunderstand.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_05: But when it comes to the an actual state, this isn't what it's about.
1:03:16
SPEAKER_05: It's about hiding whatever it is that they don't want people to see.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_05: And this is the point that I wanted to make.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_05: If you have nothing to hide, why share it?
1:03:23
SPEAKER_05: If you have a bunch of other states who did share their information, then the arguments coming from the Secretary of State Steve Simon aren't worth anything.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_05: What are they trying to hide?
1:03:35
SPEAKER_05: And why wouldn't you more specifically, why wouldn't you want to make sure that there wasn't any shenanigans, for lack of a better way to describe going on?
1:03:45
SPEAKER_05: Why wouldn't you want to make sure that everybody who is voting is actually legal to vote?
1:03:52
SPEAKER_05: We know the answers to that.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_05: But the reality is, if you're interested in voter integrity, none of these none of none of what the Trump administration is doing is any sort of problem whatsoever.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_05: If you're interested in making sure that we have secure elections and that people who are not legally able to go and vote aren't voting, but they don't because they want to be able to gain the system.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_05: They wanted to invite that fraud.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_05: It benefits those on the left and those that seek to hide these voter roles.
1:04:27
SPEAKER_05: Let's go and hear from a friend of the show up from uh my neighborhood in Blaine.
1:04:31
SPEAKER_19: Hey John, this is a show up in Blaine.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_19: The AV claiming that we can't give them the voter data because of Minnesota's privacy.
1:04:42
SPEAKER_19: They don't want the government to have all this information.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_19: Umbers and our characters and work reports and other happy goodness stuff like that.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_19: Any information?
1:05:00
SPEAKER_19: What information does the Minnesota the state of Minnesota have that the government doesn't already have or can't get really easily?
1:05:07
SPEAKER_27: Yeah.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_19: Oh yeah.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_19: Have a great day.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_05: Thank you, Joe, and you made the point.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_05: But we don't have access to the voter rolls, so we can't go and determine whether or not there is a level of security and integrity within our elections.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_05: And look at what's happening in California.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_05: So um a few weeks ago, the ACLJ, right, and this comes from the from the Federalist, submitted two Public Records Act requests.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_05: They were seeking records on how the state maintains the integrity of its voter rolls.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_05: The Attorney General's office in California took an extension and ultimately responded on August 10th.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_05: The Secretary of State's office responded first, but refused to provide any records responsive to the request from the Federalist.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_05: According to its answer, the statewide voter registration system simply doesn't.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_05: Does not contain a specific cancellation reason for non-citizenship.
1:06:05
SPEAKER_05: In other words, the state cannot tell them how many non citizens have ever been removed from its voter rolls because it doesn't keep that information at all.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_05: Now, first they asked for the number of voter registrations that were canceled because the registrant didn't meet citizenship requirements.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_05: California said its system does not contain the voter status reason for cancellation due to non-citizenship.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_05: So here's the question that I have.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_05: Going back to James O'Keefe and his voter vouching stunt on primary day, we were told, rightfully so, with accurate information from multiple individuals' experts, that there are safeguards in place when you go and voucher somebody.
1:06:48
SPEAKER_05: There's a sort of a chain of identifying ways to go and identify whether or not this person that's been vouched for by a random individual is actually legally able to go and vote.
1:07:02
SPEAKER_05: Well, are we dealing with the same situation as California?
1:07:05
SPEAKER_05: Because California was asked something very, very similar, and they said they basically don't even look at the data.
1:07:09
SPEAKER_05: They don't even have the data.
1:07:12
SPEAKER_05: Does not contain a voter status reason for cancellation due to non-citizenship.
1:07:17
SPEAKER_05: Now they went and also asked for records on programs the state uses to keep its voter rolls accurate and current.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_05: California pointed to training manuals that new registrants are checked against death records, felony records from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and DMV change of address records, but not citizenship.
1:07:40
SPEAKER_05: Third, they went and asked for records on how the state handles complaints submitted through the election voter complaint form.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_05: Rather than treat this as a records request, California treated it as a question, provided no records, and said that complaints are forwarded to the elections division staff for further review and investigation.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_05: So they basically said, Oh, they take care of it over here, and then they didn't get an answer.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_05: Fourth, they asked for the outcomes of investigations into specific illegal voting.
1:08:11
SPEAKER_05: California said it simply does not maintain those statistics.
1:08:15
SPEAKER_05: On the second records request, the response they received doesn't inspire any more confidence than the Secretary of State did.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_05: They asked California's Department of Justice for three things: records on the programs and activities the state uses to keep its voter rolls accurate and current, records on the state's policies for handling investigative referrals of illegal voting, records of the outcomes of those illegal voting referrals with private information about the individuals involved excluded.
1:08:48
SPEAKER_05: The answer to the second request was blunt.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_05: The California DOJ responded to the Freedom of Information Act stating that it has no records containing or addressing policies that are specific to handling investigative referrals for illegal voting.
1:09:06
SPEAKER_05: California's own Department of Justice has no written policy for what happens when someone reports illegal voting.
1:09:12
SPEAKER_05: Not redacted, not withheld, non-existent.
1:09:16
SPEAKER_05: So what does this all mean?
1:09:17
SPEAKER_05: It means that they simply do not care if individuals are illegal aliens and voting in their elections.
1:09:26
SPEAKER_05: And they are showing this through the fact that there is no official means for the officials in California to even track it.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_05: So that raises the question in my mind: do we have it here?
1:09:39
SPEAKER_05: Do we have the ability here to go and track illegals, or are we in the same boat as California?
1:09:46
SPEAKER_05: Let me get into more of this, though, because there's more similarities here.
1:09:50
SPEAKER_05: Despite the fact that the California Secretary of State promised that referrals were made for prosecution, though it keeps no record of them, the California DOJ says they have no policy regarding such investigative referrals for illegal voting.
1:10:05
SPEAKER_05: As for the two other requests, the DOJ found records that could be responsive, but needs more time to review them for redactions and exemptions.
1:10:14
SPEAKER_05: And they're now told to expect that response at the end of the month.
1:10:17
SPEAKER_05: So they're basically being stolenwalled on the other issues.
1:10:20
SPEAKER_05: The problem for California is that federal law requires every state to maintain records showing how it safeguards the accuracy of its voter rolls and to make sure that those records are available to the public.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_05: But California's Secretary of State just admitted in writing that it keeps no such records regarding the removal of non-citizens from its roles.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_05: That's convenient, but it's also awful.
1:10:41
SPEAKER_05: This isn't a case of simply lacking a category for record keeping in general.
1:10:47
SPEAKER_05: California's own system does track cancellations for other reasons.
1:10:52
SPEAKER_05: Death, moving out of state, felony, convictions.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_05: Those all strip voting rights from an individual.
1:10:58
SPEAKER_05: Those categories exist and are documented.
1:11:01
SPEAKER_05: The one category missing is citizenship.
1:11:03
SPEAKER_05: It's not an oversight, it's a choice.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_05: And here's where the state goes and undermines itself.
1:11:11
SPEAKER_05: In that same response from the Secretary of State, California pointed out that voters must attest under penalty of perjury, that they meet every eligibility requirement, including citizenship, and that the state clearly bars non-citizens from registering.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_05: Doesn't all this sound familiar?
1:11:26
SPEAKER_05: The little oath that we take before we go and vote?
1:11:30
SPEAKER_05: Translation, don't worry, everybody, it's totally legal.
1:11:34
SPEAKER_05: And anybody in the case of James O'Keefe that would go to potentially undermine the state's view that it's illegal is going to have to deal with the consequences of the law.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_05: And yet, in the case of California, individuals who are voting in the elections illegally, there's no way to even go and handle it because they have no official process to do so.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_05: The article goes on to say: but if the state isn't tracking when the law gets broken and someone removed for violating it, and the attorney general potentially isn't keeping records of investigative referrals of illegal voting, the reassurance that it's all legal is hollow.
1:12:12
SPEAKER_05: You can't claim a safeguard is working if you have no records showing whether it's been triggered or how it's been investigated.
1:12:18
SPEAKER_05: And I would use that same line towards Secretary of State Steve Simon in this court victory against the Trump administration to get our voter rolls here.
1:12:30
SPEAKER_05: You cannot sit back and claim that we have this voter integrity as Attorney General Keith, uh, Thief Ellison did, as Steve Simon did, and still in the same breath go, but I'm not going to go and prove my work by turning over the voter rolls to the Trump administration to prove to them that all of our elections are the most secure and on the up and up.
1:12:49
SPEAKER_05: You can't have it both ways.
1:12:51
SPEAKER_05: They are, courtesy of our local Minnesota media, but they shouldn't be allowed to.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_05: It's also worth noting that California doesn't require proof of citizenship or lawful presence for certain categories of driver's licenses, again, to which I say, doesn't that sound familiar?
1:13:07
SPEAKER_05: It's the same kind of licensing pathway that triggered New Jersey's non-citizen voter roll problem, and driver's licenses are used to establish identity.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_05: The California Secretary of State's office now has told the country that it doesn't know how many non-citizens have been removed from its voter rolls.
1:13:25
SPEAKER_05: The Attorney General's office admitted it has no formal policy for investigating illegal voting when it's reported.
1:13:31
SPEAKER_05: It's not a technicality, that's a transparency failure in need of further investigation.
1:13:36
SPEAKER_05: To which I'm going to email Jordan Sekalu and tell them, hey, you should go and do the same thing here for Minnesota, because I think it's going to be a real easy article to write, because you pretty much need to take all the details you found in here and just go and switch California for Minnesota, and you're probably going to find that it's mostly all the same information.
1:13:56
SPEAKER_05: And going back to the previous comment that I made from the blast that we got, why wouldn't you want integrity in our elections?
1:14:05
SPEAKER_05: Everyone should.
1:14:08
SPEAKER_05: But unfortunately, we have a party that banks on individuals who are not legally able to go and vote to be involved in our elections.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_05: They go and encourage it.
1:14:21
SPEAKER_05: Let's get to some of your thoughts from the blaster line at 612-584-4565.
1:14:27
SPEAKER_05: Again, 612-584-4565 here on the John Justice Show.
1:14:31
SPEAKER_24: Yeah, follow-up to the uh voter issues.
1:14:33
SPEAKER_24: I'm kind of wondering why the administration hasn't already utilized the five force with the exact situation there.
1:14:47
SPEAKER_24: Um, it is a legitimate security risk.
1:14:51
SPEAKER_24: So maybe after forensic auditors, they can make everything admissible in court.
1:14:57
SPEAKER_24: I don't know why they've not used it.
1:15:01
SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much uh for the comment.
1:15:02
SPEAKER_05: If you would like to leave a blast to 612-584-4565, and just uh a word to those leaving the blast, we're looking for um ways to provide better auto qual um uh audio quality uh from the blaster comments.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_05: So when you leave a blast, uh be sure you just you speak as clearly as possible and speak up as well.
1:15:21
SPEAKER_05: Um it's better than it was.
1:15:22
SPEAKER_05: We've gotten some of the bugs worked out, but I, you know, I fully admit that the audio quality isn't where we would like it to be, and I'm still searching for another alternative to that.
1:15:30
SPEAKER_05: So if you go and leave a uh blast, just be sure that you're uh you're speaking loudly enough for everybody to uh to hear.
1:15:36
SPEAKER_05: Before I get you updated on the Blaine um police department saying that the vandalism of a council member's car wasn't political.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_05: And if anybody has any further information on this, I would love um to hear it uh because it seems as if this was juveniles as I was describing it yesterday.
1:15:52
SPEAKER_05: I still personally, though, have a hard time believing there wasn't some sort of politics in play based off of Leslie Lars Larson being on the city council, her specific car targeted over the other vehicles that were in her driveway as well.
1:16:07
SPEAKER_05: So if you have anything to add, uh you can email me, John.justice at AmericanExperiment.org.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_05: That's J-O-N, or uh drop a blast at 612-584-4565.
1:16:18
SPEAKER_05: Before we go there, though, I want to share with you this chunk of audio.
1:16:22
SPEAKER_05: Um found it yesterday as I was prepping for the uh for the show.
1:16:26
SPEAKER_05: Everything that we assumed about the Biden administration is turning out to be accurate.
1:16:34
SPEAKER_05: Much in the same way, everything that we thought about how the COVID pandemic was exploited to benefit the progressive agenda has also turned out in large part to be true.
1:16:46
SPEAKER_05: The same thing absolutely rings true when it comes to Joe Biden, his lack of mental acuity, the concerns about his health.
1:16:54
SPEAKER_05: This is all being exposed in a new interview.
1:16:57
SPEAKER_05: Uh, Barry Weiss sat down with lead anchor at CNN, Jake Tapper, and he flat out admits that they all knew that Joe Biden wasn't really the president and calling the shots, even going so far as to talk about what they described within the Biden administration as a Politburo, a point that was not lost on Barry Weiss in this interview with Jake Tapper.
1:17:21
SPEAKER_05: Listen to this here on the John Justice Show, presented by American Experience.
1:17:25
SPEAKER_01: I would say the right-wing meme about Joe Biden was that Dr.
1:17:29
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden was sort of the shadow president, sort of running the country.
1:17:33
SPEAKER_01: What your book shows is that that's not totally far off.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_01: It's not Joe Biden, though.
1:17:38
SPEAKER_01: It's this group, this group of tight advisors around Joe Biden who I want you to talk about that you call the Politburo, which is an interesting word choice.
1:17:45
SPEAKER_01: Tell me about the word choice, and then tell me about those people who were really calling the shots around the president.
1:17:52
SPEAKER_37: So the Politburo, not a term we came up with, it's a term from within the Biden administration, uh, as the name would suggest, uh, is a tightly held group of senior advisors.
1:18:03
SPEAKER_37: Mike Donlin and Steve Raschetti, foremost among them.
1:18:06
SPEAKER_37: Uh you also have individuals floating in and out, Ron Klain, who's chief of staff for the first couple years of the president's term, um Anita Dunn, some uh senior uh individuals on the staff of Jill Biden, um, the the first lady, uh Anthony Bernal, the chief of staff, perhaps the most pop uh powerful First Lady Chief of Staff ever.
1:18:27
SPEAKER_37: Uh, and then another woman named Annie Tomasini.
1:18:30
SPEAKER_37: And so I we would assess that it's basically the Bidens, uh Joe, Jill, and Hunter, and this tight group of aides.
1:18:37
SPEAKER_37: And they weren't like a star chamber, they weren't like all friends or allies, they all just had their different portfolios and did what they did.
1:18:44
SPEAKER_37: And these were the individuals that helped steer the government.
1:18:48
SPEAKER_37: Now, is that different from any other president?
1:18:52
SPEAKER_37: On one level, no.
1:18:53
SPEAKER_37: On one level, obviously, a first family has its priorities and every president has aides.
1:19:00
SPEAKER_37: But on another level, yes, definitely.
1:19:02
SPEAKER_37: Uh there was more power vested in these individuals, according to cabinet secretaries that we spoke with, who said um that at best Joe Biden was the senior member of a board, um, and that the the Politburo was cordoning him off starting basically in 2023, 2024.
1:19:20
SPEAKER_12: All right, so in this clip, Jake Tapor is saying that they all knew that Biden wasn't really in charge.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_12: He wasn't really the one that was running the country, him being a lead anchor at CNN, everyone else must have known too.
1:19:32
SPEAKER_05: But that is and I'll stop it here.
1:19:34
SPEAKER_05: This was further commentary from a Wall Street apes that originally went and posted this um this audio clip.
1:19:41
SPEAKER_05: But as I mentioned before, uh everything that we assumed was true to the point where they actually had a name for the group of individuals that were tasked with making sure that you know they kept a tight lid around Joe Biden and didn't allow the commentary around his mental health and grow to a point where it couldn't be handled.
1:20:07
SPEAKER_05: They had a group that was there to deal with the issue.
1:20:09
SPEAKER_05: Well we all assumed all along.
1:20:13
SPEAKER_05: You know, it is not a shock as to why people do not trust the media or the government when in, you know, you get on a long enough timeline and suddenly all of these individuals are more than willing to go and admit what we assumed all along.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_05: Well, where were you when this was all happening?
1:20:29
SPEAKER_05: Why wasn't somebody you I you know the answer.
1:20:32
SPEAKER_05: I'm speaking hypothetically.
1:20:33
SPEAKER_05: You know the left goes and protects their own.
1:20:35
SPEAKER_05: It's just how this works.
1:20:38
SPEAKER_05: But it's the quintessential they knew and they let it happen.
1:20:43
SPEAKER_05: And that's what Jake Tapper was laying out there to Barry Weiss.
1:20:46
SPEAKER_05: Not a huge surprise, but just confirmation of something that we all saw with our own eyes and guessed that there would be a group that was tasked with making sure that they were hiding Biden's cognitive decline as best as they possibly could.
1:21:00
SPEAKER_05: All right, coming up.
1:21:02
SPEAKER_05: Blame police department says the vandalism of a city council member who's running for the Minnesota House of Representatives as a Republican was not related to her political campaign.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_05: I'm not sure that I buy that.
1:21:12
SPEAKER_05: I'll give you details, and then we're gonna dive into sex enters into the mix relating to fraud.
1:21:19
SPEAKER_05: $2.5 million Medicaid fraud tied to Minneapolis sex trafficking ring involving an ex-county prosecutor.
1:21:27
SPEAKER_05: I have two different uh versions of the story on this, one uh coming from Channel 5, and the other coming from Bill Glaun, Policy Fellow here, an American experiment.
1:21:36
SPEAKER_05: And I have a couple of clips from our local media that I will share with you as well coming up on the show.
1:21:41
SPEAKER_05: Uh, first off, I want to mention that, listen, be honest.
1:21:45
SPEAKER_05: Uh, your old self might be disappointed in how you are right now, right?
1:21:51
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1:21:55
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1:21:59
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1:22:09
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1:22:13
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1:22:16
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1:22:27
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1:22:28
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1:22:29
SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna go through another round on the program so that I can get down to the weight that I'm supposed to be a weight that I haven't been since I was, you know, back in my early, you know, early 30s, late 20s for crying out loud.
1:22:40
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1:23:48
SPEAKER_07: If you would like to support the John Justice show, become an advertiser.
1:23:52
SPEAKER_07: Competitive rates for both personal endorsements and standard ads are available.
1:23:56
SPEAKER_07: For more details, email John.justice at AmericaneExperiment.org.
1:24:02
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1:24:32
SPEAKER_29: And now, here's commentary on the latest issues facing Minnesotans from the host, policy fellows, and guests of American Experiment.
1:24:39
SPEAKER_29: For more content, head on over to the center of the American Experiment.org.
1:24:44
SPEAKER_06: We break it down piece by piece again at AmericaneExperiment.org.
1:24:47
SPEAKER_06: But for example, when the FBI first raided Feeding Your Futures offices, she that week was calling for protected status for immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
1:24:57
SPEAKER_06: When the Department of Justice indicted Amy Bach and 46 others, which was the largest fraud indictment in Minnesota history at the time, she was releasing a statement on resuming full immigrant visa services in Havana.
1:25:11
SPEAKER_06: And when Amy Bach was found guilty, she was calling on Trump to reverse the illegal firing of FTC commissioners.
1:25:18
SPEAKER_06: Think about it.
1:25:19
SPEAKER_31: Minnesota has always been a low crime state.
1:25:22
SPEAKER_31: But according to the most recent Bureau of Criminal Apprehension data, we are now above the national average when it comes to part one crimes, a category that includes crimes like murder, assault, rape, and carjackings.
1:25:35
SPEAKER_31: Think about it.
1:25:36
SPEAKER_31: Minnesota is now a high crime state.
1:25:40
SPEAKER_31: Visit highcrime.com to learn more.
1:25:43
SPEAKER_31: Think about it is brought to you by Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota's Think Tank.
1:25:48
SPEAKER_06: Between January 20th, 2022, so that was when the FBI first raided Feeding Our Futures offices, between then and then December 31st, 2025, right before she launched her campaign for governor, Amy Klobichar issued over a thousand press releases, one thousand eighty-five, and not a single one of them addressed the Minnesota fraud scandal.
1:26:08
SPEAKER_29: If you would like to support the John Justice show, become an advertiser.
1:26:12
SPEAKER_29: For more details, email John.justice at American Experiment dot O R G.
1:26:18
SPEAKER_05: It's John Justice, and be honest, your old self would be disappointed in you right now.
1:26:23
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1:27:23
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1:27:25
SPEAKER_31: Think about it.
1:27:26
SPEAKER_31: A famous politician once said, you're entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
1:27:32
SPEAKER_31: But in a world full of AI and fake news, where can Minnesotans find the facts?
1:27:36
SPEAKER_31: Center of the American Experiment is Minnesota's go to source for fact based analysis and common sense solutions for taxes, energy, public safety, and our kids' education.
1:27:47
SPEAKER_31: Visit AmericanExperiment.org for more information.
1:27:50
SPEAKER_31: Think about it is brought to you by Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota's think tank.
1:27:55
SPEAKER_34: Wayne police say the vandalization of a city council member's car on Saturday morning is Not connected to her political campaign.
1:28:02
SPEAKER_34: Emily Bowdy with Five Eyewitness News here.
1:28:04
SPEAKER_34: Leslie Larson, who's running for the Minnesota House, reported the incident early Saturday morning around 1 30 a.m.
1:28:11
SPEAKER_34: You can see in the video here, four masked individuals are seen putting printouts of a hand displaying the middle finger on Larson's car.
1:28:18
SPEAKER_34: Now Larson reported the incident on Saturday, saying she feared it was connected to her campaign.
1:28:24
SPEAKER_34: On Monday, Blaine police said they've chalked the incident up to quote, juvenile activity, adding there's been no arrests or citations.
1:28:31
SPEAKER_34: Now, Larson says she's quote relieved to learn there's no threat to my family.
1:28:36
SPEAKER_34: You can read her full statement and more information about the incident online at kstp.com.
1:28:42
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
1:28:43
SPEAKER_05: So what happened?
1:28:45
SPEAKER_05: It's the John Justice show presented by American Experiment.
1:28:48
SPEAKER_05: So we have this coverage on the story, okay, because it's relevant.
1:28:53
SPEAKER_05: I think the concerns that this was politically motivated are also incredibly relevant, considering this is an individual who's running for a higher uh office currently sitting on the board of the city council in Blaine.
1:29:10
SPEAKER_05: Her specific car was targeted with these ridiculous middle fingers.
1:29:13
SPEAKER_05: So what's the story?
1:29:16
SPEAKER_05: Like, do we deserve to know at this point?
1:29:18
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I kind of feel like we do.
1:29:19
SPEAKER_05: Like you we've covered it at this point.
1:29:21
SPEAKER_05: And listen, I like Leslie.
1:29:23
SPEAKER_05: Leslie's great.
1:29:24
SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
1:29:25
SPEAKER_05: She's fantastic.
1:29:26
SPEAKER_05: Uh, I just would like to know, okay, if it wasn't politically motivated and this was just juveniles doing juvenile things, that's a very specific thing to do.
1:29:37
SPEAKER_05: Like, and I made the analogy yesterday of TPing somebody's home.
1:29:41
SPEAKER_05: Okay, that's just you TP somebody's home, it gives you a visual, it's a pain in the butt for the person to clean up, whatever, it's a prank.
1:29:47
SPEAKER_05: But to go and photocopy a bunch of middle fingers and put them on a car, I mean, obviously they were upset at something.
1:29:53
SPEAKER_05: What were they upset about?
1:29:55
SPEAKER_05: So I just I personally hope that we get more details on this based off the fact that that just doesn't, that just doesn't happen.
1:30:03
SPEAKER_05: Why did they go?
1:30:04
SPEAKER_05: If you like I said, if you have insight, feel free.
1:30:07
SPEAKER_05: You can um you can drop me a uh uh a post on X at John Justice J-O-N.
1:30:13
SPEAKER_05: You can leave us a blast at 612-584-4565, or uh email me and I'll keep you anonymous, john.justice at american experiment.org.
1:30:22
SPEAKER_05: But it's something motivated these cowardly, and they are, they are cowardly, these cowardly juvenile teens to go and photograph middle fingers and then make photocopies and put them on her car.
1:30:34
SPEAKER_05: I would just like to know what the reason was for it, because that does not make a lot of sense to me.
1:30:41
SPEAKER_05: All right, let's go here.
1:30:43
SPEAKER_05: From Fox Nine, a sex and trafficking ring in Hennepin County, allegedly led by Frank Reeves and involving Andrea Sampson, who we talked about yesterday on the show, is facing additional Medicaid fraud charges.
1:30:57
SPEAKER_05: So now you can bring, you know, sex trafficking, sex crimes into the issue of rampant fraud here in Minnesota.
1:31:10
SPEAKER_05: I did not predict that.
1:31:13
SPEAKER_05: And at this point, what other parts of society of these Medicaid funded services should we be going and examining?
1:31:25
SPEAKER_05: I've made reference to this line on the show many times throughout the years, but it rings true.
1:31:30
SPEAKER_05: One of my favorite moments from Ed Harris in Apollo 13 is he's playing the director of NASA, is everybody's arguing about what's happened with the space capsule.
1:31:41
SPEAKER_05: And he tells everybody in the room to shut up, to stop.
1:31:44
SPEAKER_05: He's like, Can we look at this from an angle of status?
1:31:49
SPEAKER_05: What do we have left on the ship that's good?
1:31:52
SPEAKER_05: Every single one of the programs wherein taxpayer dollars through Medicaid funding, providing services for individuals, every single place where that is happening, regardless of the business healthcare sector, needs to be examined top to bottom.
1:32:12
SPEAKER_05: Because it seems like as we go on the timeline, there's another element that even those individuals like myself couldn't have predicted, and this is one of them.
1:32:21
SPEAKER_05: Investigators allege the group used shell companies to hide profits from the trafficking operation and build Medicaid for the fraudulent services, totaling approximately 2.5 million.
1:32:31
SPEAKER_05: Samson, a former county prosecutor, is accused of providing locations for the trafficking and helping to maintain the shell companies.
1:32:38
SPEAKER_05: I suppose as a prosecutor, she has a little bit of insight into exactly what she would be what she would end up facing regarding these allegations.
1:32:48
SPEAKER_05: Uh, let's bring you some more uh coverage of this particular uh story coming from our uh local news outlets on.
1:32:56
SPEAKER_05: Again, 2.5 million in fraud tied to the Minneapolis sex trafficking ring involving this ex uh Noka County uh prosecutor.
1:33:04
SPEAKER_00: No one wants to be involved in a sex trafficking ring.
1:33:08
SPEAKER_00: It is something that happens to you.
1:33:10
SPEAKER_00: The 13 victims and others are victims and suffered great harm.
1:33:16
SPEAKER_30: A former assistant Anoka County attorney is a Let me pause it real quick.
1:33:20
SPEAKER_05: That was a Hennepin County attorney, Scary Moriarty.
1:33:22
SPEAKER_05: I'll jump to a comment that I made within my notes.
1:33:27
SPEAKER_05: So when it comes to all of the accused in this story, suddenly now Scary Moriarty and her, you know, her religious zealotry over social justice is gone.
1:33:40
SPEAKER_05: I'm not saying that it should be there, but it's interesting that I don't hear any calls for restorative justice.
1:33:46
SPEAKER_05: You won't hear any calls for restorative justice when it comes to these individuals, because Scary Moriarty, the Hennepin County attorney, she's a biased individual.
1:33:56
SPEAKER_05: And so she specifically selects only that which is most expedient to the left to go and deploy her social justice views.
1:34:08
SPEAKER_05: These individuals will not be looked at typically as you see other individuals accused of crimes within the Hennepin County Attorney's Office.
1:34:15
SPEAKER_05: She's handling this the way that all of them should be held.
1:34:19
SPEAKER_05: That's my point.
1:34:20
SPEAKER_05: I'm not saying there should be any restorative justice here for these alleged criminals at all.
1:34:26
SPEAKER_05: I mean, how stupid do you have to be to work, as I mentioned yesterday?
1:34:29
SPEAKER_05: How stupid do you have to be to work as hard as one would have to work to become a county prosecutor just to go and completely throw it away because you already weren't getting enough money and you had to get involved in a year, in a multi-year-long sex trafficking operation?
1:34:44
SPEAKER_05: No.
1:34:45
SPEAKER_05: If these individuals are found guilty, you throw the book at them.
1:34:49
SPEAKER_05: Accountability.
1:34:50
SPEAKER_05: I just find it amusing.
1:34:51
SPEAKER_05: The scary Moriarty suddenly is sounding like, you know, an individual like myself or you would sound in the wake of this situation where typically, no, she's more about her social justice zealotry.
1:35:01
SPEAKER_05: There's no consistency.
1:35:03
SPEAKER_05: It's an easy way to say it.
1:35:04
SPEAKER_05: Let's get back to the story.
1:35:24
SPEAKER_35: All this while working as an assistant county attorney.
1:35:32
SPEAKER_35: Those documents also say that Samson was alleged to have been part of operating an assisted living andor autism site.
1:35:39
SPEAKER_35: Moriarty would not elaborate on that today, instead, just focusing on the charges.
1:35:45
SPEAKER_23: This was a scheme that was designed not only to exploit the victims in these cases and take advantage of them, but also structured to hide the money and the proceeds that was done with multiple individuals, including building out shelling companies.
1:35:57
SPEAKER_12: One thing you learn when you see these stories, especially in Democratic, is when you have people that are involved in crimes like this, they are always involved in war crimes, and they're always involved in things like autism centers, home health care.
1:36:11
SPEAKER_12: And wouldn't you know it?
1:36:12
SPEAKER_12: They are these same criminals right here, the three that are involved in the sex trafficking case, wouldn't you know it?
1:36:19
SPEAKER_12: They are also billing Medicaid for huge amounts of money.
1:36:23
SPEAKER_05: Yep.
1:36:24
SPEAKER_05: Uh the initial story there coming from uh local uh CBS uh news with further commentary provided by Wall Street uh apes as they pulled this clip from uh X.
1:36:33
SPEAKER_05: Investigators, as was mentioned, say the 13 victims described being forced to pay for online ads and leave$100 in envelopes at homes in Minneapolis, St.
1:36:43
SPEAKER_05: Louis Park, Bloomington, many owned by Andrea Simpson.
1:36:48
SPEAKER_05: And again, I I just evil.
1:36:50
SPEAKER_05: I can't I've used evil more when describing individuals recently than I ever have in my radio uh career.
1:37:00
SPEAKER_05: Drew Evans, a superintendent at the BCA, said this was a complicated scheme, and a scheme that was designed not only to exploit the victims in these cases, take advantage of them, but also structured to hide the money in the proceeds that was done with multiple individuals, including building out shell companies.
1:37:17
SPEAKER_05: Scary Moriarty, the Hennepin County attorney, said Miss Sampson, who was at the time working as an attorney in Anoka County attorney's office, secured and provided locations for commercial sex transactions, also assisted in maintaining the shell companies to hide and funnel profits from the sex trafficking ring.
1:37:34
SPEAKER_05: Samson, who started working as an Anoka County prosecutor in 2017, arrested in February, and is no longer employed there, according to Morty Ardy.
1:37:42
SPEAKER_05: It's disappointing.
1:37:43
SPEAKER_05: And all the kinds of things I could comment on, I think at this point, because we are in the prostitution stage of this, excuse me, prosecution stage of this.
1:37:52
SPEAKER_05: Appropriate slip of the tongue there, by the way.
1:37:55
SPEAKER_05: It's not appropriate for me to comment on that, and I know that she is no longer working there as well.
1:38:01
SPEAKER_05: As I mentioned before, do not expect any sort of calls for social justice to be deployed for these individuals because it's not politically expedient for Hennepin County attorney, Scary Moriarty.
1:38:16
SPEAKER_05: The suspects also allegedly used some sex trafficking victims to recruit fake Medicaid patients.
1:38:22
SPEAKER_05: Three suspects appeared in court, had bail set in a million dollars with the possibility of lower bail under certain conditions, they're due back in court uh next month.
1:38:31
SPEAKER_05: Investigators credit the victims for helping bring the operation down.
1:38:36
SPEAKER_05: During the press conference, it was stated that coming forward with uh individuals that exploited them on an ongoing basis, threatened them at different times, takes true bravery and courage.
1:38:46
SPEAKER_05: While the women involved with Reeves were all romantically linked to him, investigators believe that Samson went from being one of Reeves' sex workers to a co-conspirator.
1:39:00
SPEAKER_05: However, it's unclear whether that happened before or after she joined the Anoka County Attorney's Office.
1:39:07
SPEAKER_05: The group's alleged scheme spanned several years with businesses conducted at multiple homes and millions in Medicaid building tied to fraudulent services.
1:39:17
SPEAKER_05: It's still unclear how and when Samson transitioned from being a sex worker to a co-conspirator and whether this occurred before or after she became a prosecutor in Anoka County.
1:39:31
SPEAKER_05: It's an angle on the fraud that I simply did not expect.
1:39:36
SPEAKER_05: John.justice at AmericanExperiment.org.
1:39:40
SPEAKER_05: If you want to leave me an email, you can also go and uh leave a comment on the blaster line, 612-584-4565.
1:39:50
SPEAKER_24: John, I'm with you.
1:39:52
SPEAKER_05: I believe that uh this person was This is going back to the uh Vandals uh story that uh we were talking about a moment ago here on the show.
1:40:00
SPEAKER_24: Because a Republican.
1:40:02
SPEAKER_24: But we can't have that narrative.
1:40:04
SPEAKER_24: Now, if it was about the Democrats, we'd be talking flashbacks about the horse murder and how it's a threat to these people for public office.
1:40:13
SPEAKER_24: But you're telling me this woman just was singled out for no reason.
1:40:19
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and listen, and like I said before, just to put a period on that, you know, I I trust Leslie Larson's comments on it.
1:40:26
SPEAKER_05: If she says that it wasn't politically motivated, it wasn't politically motivated.
1:40:29
SPEAKER_05: I would just be very um curious as to, you know, what exactly had uh transpired there.
1:40:37
SPEAKER_05: Uh getting back to the uh further evidence of fraud, this time involving sex trafficking, Bill Glau has a piece up this morning at American uh Experiment.
1:40:48
SPEAKER_05: Uh Salman Ahmed Elamine, a 2021 outstanding refugee award recipient, has been charged with eight felony counts of Medicaid fraud linked to the sex trafficking uh ring.
1:41:04
SPEAKER_05: The three co-conspirators appeared in court for bail hearings with the fourth defendant uh defendant's hearing scheduled uh for today.
1:41:12
SPEAKER_05: So Kara Levin's Lou Raguse reported on this yesterday.
1:41:16
SPEAKER_05: Here's a bit of his reporting here on the John Justice Show presented by American Experiment.
1:41:39
SPEAKER_02: Elmy owns a home health care company called Reva Health with the top defendant in the trafficking case, Frank Reeves, that is billed for$2.5 million in taxpayer money for mental health services that investigators say were not provided.
1:41:53
SPEAKER_02: Trafficking suspect Andrea Sampson owns an autism center, an assisted living center, and a housing stabilization services business that also billed for a total of more than two million dollars.
1:42:03
SPEAKER_02: Ailmy was a celebrated Minnesota entrepreneur getting an award from the Minnesota Department of Human Services as an outstanding refugee.
1:42:12
SPEAKER_02: His website says Mr.
1:42:13
SPEAKER_02: Wonderful, Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank, gave him a million dollar investment for an app that he came up with.
1:42:19
SPEAKER_02: Back to the Medicaid fraud.
1:42:20
SPEAKER_02: The criminal complaint says the defendants gave one victim the job title mental health worker, another autism provider for kids, in order to scam the state.
1:42:30
SPEAKER_02: Lots more still to come on this case.
1:42:32
SPEAKER_02: I'm Lou Raguse.
1:42:34
SPEAKER_02: Follow for more news.
1:42:36
SPEAKER_05: You know, the the amount of money, we're never gonna know.
1:42:39
SPEAKER_05: We're never gonna know.
1:42:41
SPEAKER_05: We have our estimates.
1:42:44
SPEAKER_05: The leftists push back on those estimates, only going by the official numbers that get released, not bothering to look at just simple extrapolation from the number of stories that we talk about regarding fraud on a weekly uh basis here in Minnesota.
1:43:01
SPEAKER_05: But you look at this story here, we've now reached, you know, systemic sex fraud involving Medicaid service providers.
1:43:08
SPEAKER_05: And again, I didn't, I couldn't even have predicted this, which just raises the question of where haven't we looked and where haven't we seen the fraud yet?
1:43:16
SPEAKER_05: If there's any program that's billing for Medicaid services, it's pretty easy to just assume that it's going to be filled with some massive level of fraud.
1:43:26
SPEAKER_05: And to go back to what I was just saying, we're never going to know how much money has left the state.
1:43:31
SPEAKER_05: What kind of state could this be if it wasn't for all of this fraud money?
1:43:36
SPEAKER_05: And where is it going?
1:43:38
SPEAKER_05: It's not all going overseas.
1:43:41
SPEAKER_05: Not by a long shot.
1:43:43
SPEAKER_05: Now, I know many of you have, you know, have speculated, and there's a lot of informed speculation, that a lot of this money goes right back into potentially and allegedly campaigns.
1:43:53
SPEAKER_05: Individuals running for office, which all raises a really, really interesting hypothetical question.
1:43:59
SPEAKER_05: So I was listening to um the Tim Pool podcast.
1:44:03
SPEAKER_05: It was either this morning or yesterday.
1:44:05
SPEAKER_05: And they've been on this uh this particular topic for a while now, and it's really, really interesting.
1:44:11
SPEAKER_05: I'm waiting to see further details come out.
1:44:14
SPEAKER_05: But what's fascinating is the unintended consequences that many people believe, some that have more than just anecdotal evidence of this, that with the removal of the USAID funds, suddenly now we are seeing this correlating drop in viewership across the board on multiple outlets.
1:44:42
SPEAKER_05: You're talking about television shows streaming, you're talking about individuals' YouTube shows, to the point where YouTube has actually gone so far as to change their algorithm because there's been such a massive drop in viewership across so many of these once popular platforms.
1:45:03
SPEAKER_05: So, why do I bring this up regarding USAID?
1:45:06
SPEAKER_05: There's another aspect of this because also there's been fewer on-the-street protests during the summer than we've seen over the course of the past 10 years.
1:45:15
SPEAKER_05: And there's evidence relating to how USAID was propping up artificially all of these different sectors of society.
1:45:23
SPEAKER_05: And since Donald Trump came in, and partly because of what Elon Musk did with Doge and removed the USAID funding, that suddenly now the mechanisms that were in place to prop up artificially left-wing-leaning television shows, left-wing-leaning commentary on social media and on YouTube, it's all evaporated.
1:45:42
SPEAKER_05: And there seems been there's been this massive just plummeting in viewership.
1:45:47
SPEAKER_05: And the same thing rings true when it comes to the on the street protests that have been taking place.
1:45:52
SPEAKER_05: I bring all of this up because we still have yet to really stop all the fraud.
1:46:00
SPEAKER_05: Like there's still fraud taking place right now.
1:46:02
SPEAKER_05: I mean, this story that I was just discussing regarding the sex trafficking fraud is evidence of that.
1:46:07
SPEAKER_05: There were individuals up until not all that long ago, a handful of months, that were still conducting acts of fraud.
1:46:12
SPEAKER_05: It was only a few months ago that Governor Dim Walls was put into a position where it became so publicly well known that the fraud was taking place that even his hand was forced to go and shut down some 14 different service providers that ended up being all fraudulent, the housing stabilization services.
1:46:32
SPEAKER_05: So, what kind of impact is this going to potentially have here in Minnesota?
1:46:37
SPEAKER_05: What was being artificially propped up because of the billions of dollars in fraud that was being stolen from you and from me and from producer Devin this morning, of which I apologize because I don't think I introduced you yet today.
1:46:54
SPEAKER_05: So my apologies for that.
1:46:57
SPEAKER_05: It's good to see you though, sir.
1:46:59
SPEAKER_05: Good morning.
1:47:00
SPEAKER_05: Sorry about that.
1:47:01
SPEAKER_05: Better late than never, right?
1:47:03
SPEAKER_05: I've enjoyed your company since you override this morning.
1:47:06
SPEAKER_05: So my apologies for not introducing you earlier.
1:47:08
SPEAKER_05: I got swept up in my own story when I kicked off the show today.
1:47:12
SPEAKER_05: Just wait.
1:47:13
SPEAKER_05: Just wait.
1:47:13
SPEAKER_05: This is going to be an angle on this issue that over the course of probably the next year and certainly heading into the 2028 presidential election, that I firmly believe is going to see some exposure.
1:47:25
SPEAKER_05: What was and what has this fraud to the tune of billions of dollars?
1:47:31
SPEAKER_05: Where has that money been going?
1:47:33
SPEAKER_05: Where has it been funneled to?
1:47:34
SPEAKER_05: And if we stop the fraud, what are the unintended consequences of that?
1:47:39
SPEAKER_05: What are we going to see here in Minnesota?
1:47:44
SPEAKER_05: Stay tuned.
1:47:45
SPEAKER_05: Let's get back to some of your thoughts.
1:47:46
SPEAKER_05: From the blaster line, 612-584-4565.
1:47:51
SPEAKER_05: Let your voice be heard.
1:47:52
SPEAKER_22: Hey, John, great show.
1:47:53
SPEAKER_22: Okay, so Hennepton County, we're against sex trafficking.
1:47:57
SPEAKER_22: Also, Minneapolis and Hennepin County, we need a bathhouse.
1:48:01
SPEAKER_22: Make it make sense.
1:48:02
SPEAKER_05: No, it makes no sense.
1:48:03
SPEAKER_05: And I thought about exactly the same thing, Wade, and thank you so much for bringing it up.
1:48:09
SPEAKER_05: Like I get, look, the individuals that are involved in the sex trafficking ring, right?
1:48:13
SPEAKER_05: It's no joke.
1:48:14
SPEAKER_05: It's no joke.
1:48:15
SPEAKER_05: If they have actually, if they are prosecuted and found guilty of these crimes, then the book should be throw it thrown at them.
1:48:22
SPEAKER_05: These are evil, vile individuals if they are convicted of these particular crimes, of which there seems to be an abundance of evidence.
1:48:31
SPEAKER_05: But the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis City Council is going to exacerbate issues like this when it comes to their decriminalization of bathhouses.
1:48:42
SPEAKER_05: Oh, it's not going to happen for a long time, guys.
1:48:44
SPEAKER_05: No, you're just going to open up the door for more of this type of corruption.
1:48:50
SPEAKER_05: Just wait.
1:48:51
SPEAKER_05: It runs completely counter to the concern that people have in the middle of prosecutions like this sex trafficking ring.
1:48:59
SPEAKER_05: We're going to get back to more of your thoughts here in just a moment because while you have all of this news about new fraud here in Minnesota, what are the leaders here in Minnesota more concerned about?
1:49:10
SPEAKER_05: They're more concerned and focused on continuing to try to exploit Operation Metro Surge.
1:49:16
SPEAKER_05: I have an update on that story.
1:49:17
SPEAKER_05: Feds went undercover in probe of Minnesota Anti-ICE network.
1:49:21
SPEAKER_05: I love all of this, by the way.
1:49:23
SPEAKER_05: These on-the-street insurrectionists, they needed to be examined.
1:49:27
SPEAKER_05: They needed to be identified.
1:49:29
SPEAKER_05: These are dangerous individuals encouraged by our leadership to take to the streets to obstruct lawful law enforcement.
1:49:36
SPEAKER_05: So I say hat tip to our federal law enforcement officers for posing as anti deportation activists, infiltrating left wing meetings as Homeland Security investigated Antifa linked networks here in Minnesota.
1:49:53
SPEAKER_05: This is exactly what needs to happen because these are dangerous individuals.
1:49:57
SPEAKER_05: So we'll dive into that and we'll get back to more of your thoughts.
1:50:00
SPEAKER_05: From the blaster line here in just a moment.
1:50:02
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1:50:11
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1:50:31
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1:50:34
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1:50:38
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1:50:51
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1:50:53
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1:51:04
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1:51:16
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1:51:18
SPEAKER_05: Go there uh today.
1:51:20
SPEAKER_05: Right now, we're gonna go back to the blaster line that's 612-584-4565.
1:51:24
SPEAKER_05: Uh, friend of the show, Scott, wants to comment on the Blaine vandals, and this just being some juveniles involved in photocopying these middle fingers and putting it on the Blaine uh City Council woman.
1:51:37
SPEAKER_05: So um we have to figure out whether or not he's gonna be um incredibly excited today or not on our Scott Con level.
1:51:45
SPEAKER_05: One being the least excited, five being the most excited.
1:51:48
SPEAKER_05: What do you think, uh, Devin?
1:51:49
SPEAKER_05: I'm feeling a two.
1:51:50
SPEAKER_05: You're feeling a two.
1:51:51
SPEAKER_05: Oh, okay.
1:51:52
SPEAKER_05: You're going with the two?
1:51:53
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
1:51:53
SPEAKER_05: Uh I'm gonna say four.
1:51:55
SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna go with a four for Scott this morning.
1:51:57
SPEAKER_05: Let's find out.
1:51:59
SPEAKER_21: Good morning, John.
1:52:00
SPEAKER_21: Anybody that believes the police story believes in the Easter bunny as well.
1:52:06
SPEAKER_21: Let me these kids have parents who are left of center zealots who put them up to this, or at least have been ranting at their home about how terrible this woman is, and these kids went out and did something to show that they're on their side and they're part of the cause.
1:52:26
SPEAKER_21: We're a bunch of garbage.
1:52:27
SPEAKER_21: I'm sorry, officers.
1:52:29
SPEAKER_21: Let's do a little bit better job of looking into what's really going on.
1:52:32
SPEAKER_21: It's because she's a right of center politician, and then that makes it okay.
1:52:37
SPEAKER_21: So just look the other way.
1:52:38
SPEAKER_21: Bogus.
1:52:40
SPEAKER_05: So I say he actually started as a two, but I think he arised to like a three and a half in there.
1:52:44
SPEAKER_05: He's been doing that as of late.
1:52:47
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I was definitely wrong.
1:52:48
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, his his enthusiasm, it kind of ebbs and it ebbs and flows.
1:52:52
SPEAKER_05: Uh, thank you for the call our and the uh and the blast there, Scott.
1:52:56
SPEAKER_05: Always I appreciate it.
1:52:57
SPEAKER_05: I'm defaulting.
1:52:58
SPEAKER_05: Listen, if Leslie, uh the city uh councilwoman, you know, says that it was just juveniles doing something, you know, I trust her, I you know, I trust her comments on that.
1:53:06
SPEAKER_05: I believe in what she says.
1:53:07
SPEAKER_05: I would just be curious if they actually know what the motivation was based off the coverage on this.
1:53:13
SPEAKER_05: Because I'm with Scott.
1:53:14
SPEAKER_05: It seems, you know, very, very suspect to think that this wasn't motivated politically in some way, shape, or form.
1:53:20
SPEAKER_05: So hopefully we get an answer to that soon.
1:53:21
SPEAKER_05: Let's go back to the blaster line, 612-584-4565 here on the John Justice Show.
1:53:28
SPEAKER_24: Hey John, I think the most insidious part about our state government is that they steal our tax money under the guise of helping the less fortunate.
1:53:41
SPEAKER_24: And that's the left, the Democrat.
1:53:44
SPEAKER_24: And then they have the audacity, after we've discovered their feelings, to tax us more under the same guise.
1:53:52
SPEAKER_24: And then people vote for them.
1:53:56
SPEAKER_24: This is why I think we're lost, and I don't think we can come back.
1:53:59
SPEAKER_24: Have a good day.
1:54:01
SPEAKER_05: I absolutely believe that we can come back.
1:54:04
SPEAKER_05: And I think the Republican Party, um, as I mentioned last week, I think the Republican Party is um in the best position that they've been in in a long time, certainly um since the 10 years that I have been uh covering politics here in Minnesota, uh, to make some significant uh gains.
1:54:23
SPEAKER_05: I really, really do.
1:54:25
SPEAKER_05: And I think that's evidenced, uh, that's evidenced in the way that the left has been responding, including uh Amy Klobuchar coming out with her proposed ideas to go and cut healthcare costs.
1:54:36
SPEAKER_05: But the question arises of whether or not she can actually go and do that.
1:54:39
SPEAKER_05: We'll be talking in a little over a half hour from now.
1:54:42
SPEAKER_05: Uh John Phelan, uh, the policy fellow economist here at American Experiment has a brand new piece uh up this morning.
1:54:49
SPEAKER_05: Klobuchar's a health plan would hike taxes and lower no costs, according to John Phelan.
1:54:56
SPEAKER_05: So we'll get his take on that coming up at 8 30 uh this morning.
1:55:00
SPEAKER_05: Let's get back to some of your thoughts from the blaster line here on the John Justice Show.
1:55:04
SPEAKER_09: Hey, good morning, then where's the money going?
1:55:06
SPEAKER_09: Check with uh there's a few real estate agents that are making a lot of money as well, selling homes for cash for these people, and then they're turning around and renting it to their people.
1:55:18
SPEAKER_09: I have seen plenty of them.
1:55:21
SPEAKER_09: There's plenty of them out there.
1:55:23
SPEAKER_09: So I think that should be the next step is check out the real estate agents that are doing a lot of cash jobs.
1:55:30
SPEAKER_05: You know, we're in one of those circumstances where we get better leadership here in Minnesota, and these all of these different aspects of society need to be re-examined, the rules need to be looked at, tweaked if necessary during the uh legislative uh session.
1:55:54
SPEAKER_05: Um, these are all the possibilities going back to the previous uh comment of the ways that we can go and get the state back on track.
1:56:01
SPEAKER_05: Whether we're looking at voter vouching rules that should never have been in place, the lack of oversight when it comes to individuals who are committing acts of fraud, not turning a blind eye when there's dramatic increases in Medicaid funding and requests to coming from service providers.
1:56:19
SPEAKER_05: Um, the list goes on and on and on.
1:56:22
SPEAKER_05: There are ways to go and tackle all of these problems that we talk about on the show on a daily basis.
1:56:28
SPEAKER_05: Everything that's listed in the wrong track, Minnesota list at americanexperiment.org.
1:56:33
SPEAKER_05: There are ways to, through the legislative process and through proper leadership, to address each and every one of these.
1:56:40
SPEAKER_05: But again, it's going to require individuals serving in positions of power that actually care about going and tackling the problem.
1:56:47
SPEAKER_05: Because right now we have the opposite taking place.
1:56:50
SPEAKER_05: We don't have people in positions of power that want to go and tackle the problem because they're exploiting these problems to their own benefit.
1:57:00
SPEAKER_05: 612-584-4565.
1:57:03
SPEAKER_05: Again, 612-584-4565.
1:57:06
SPEAKER_05: I want to dive into this.
1:57:07
SPEAKER_05: Feds went undercover in probe of Minnesota Anti-ICE network.
1:57:10
SPEAKER_05: As we close out this hour, though, let me play for you this audio clip.
1:57:14
SPEAKER_05: Because it um it aligns with this story here, and it's basically the approach of Democrats right now.
1:57:21
SPEAKER_05: The Democrats, for a fairly decent amount of time, have not been able to argue and articulate their issues anymore because the issues that they're focused on are widely unpopular among the American people.
1:57:36
SPEAKER_05: So they've had to lie when they're running their campaigns.
1:57:42
SPEAKER_05: And even then, these self-avowed Democrat socialists are being open regarding what they would actually do if they get into office.
1:57:49
SPEAKER_05: And the left has done such a great job of convincing those within their party that, hey, the further you are from uh a Republican, a conservatist point of view, the the better, which has led to this Democrat Socialist and really communist takeover of the Democrat Party.
1:58:06
SPEAKER_05: So, Speaker Johnson, during an interview uh yesterday up on uh Capitol Bill uh Capitol Hill had this to say regarding what's happening within the Democrat Party right now.
1:58:17
SPEAKER_00: No one wants to be involved in a sex trafficking.
1:58:22
SPEAKER_05: Oh, my uh I'm sorry, I have the wrong uh clip labeled here, so I'll have to go and uh I'll have to go track that down in the next segment.
1:58:28
SPEAKER_05: That was 100% on 100% on me.
1:58:31
SPEAKER_05: That was more scary Moriarty, not Speaker Mike Johnson.
1:58:34
SPEAKER_05: I can tell you what he said though.
1:58:35
SPEAKER_05: I have the transcript here.
1:58:37
SPEAKER_05: He says, we are now in the middle of an open civil war.
1:58:40
SPEAKER_05: You have open Marxists who are winning primaries, they want to abolish the border, they want to abolish all prisons, the takeaway and assume uh takeaway and assume the means of production.
1:58:52
SPEAKER_05: And that means no more private property.
1:58:54
SPEAKER_05: He's absolutely right.
1:58:57
SPEAKER_05: He's absolutely right.
1:58:58
SPEAKER_05: And if these Democrat socialists are not stopped at the ballot box, that's what's coming next.
1:59:03
SPEAKER_05: That's what's at the take.
1:59:06
SPEAKER_05: We need to have a huge turnout later on this year, especially here in Minnesota, in order to get the uh the state back on track.
1:59:14
SPEAKER_05: It's you know, that's the that's that's just the game.
1:59:18
SPEAKER_05: And um just one more point on that.
1:59:19
SPEAKER_05: And I mentioned it yesterday.
1:59:21
SPEAKER_05: Those that continue to be concerned about the the voter turnout during the primary don't be.
1:59:26
SPEAKER_05: There's no correlation between uh primary voter turnout and general election voter turnout.
1:59:31
SPEAKER_05: And as we demonstrated on the show, we had a record number of Republicans turning out in these elections, and it was really uh the Democrats who saw fewer individuals, even though they had more and they always do, voting on the primary day than Republicans.
1:59:46
SPEAKER_05: It was the Republicans who had more people turn out in these elections.
1:59:49
SPEAKER_05: That is a positive move forward and something that, you know, a good takeaway as we move forward towards the uh towards a general election.
1:59:58
SPEAKER_05: All right, let's go ahead and officially usher in the third hour of the show.
2:00:22
SPEAKER_05: It is a John Justice show presented by American Experiment, and you can watch live at Facebook and YouTube at Center of the American Experiments uh pages, also at MN Think Tank on X, and of course you can listen live on the Mixa LR app where the podcasts are posted after the show.
2:00:37
SPEAKER_05: It's a completely free app available in your app store right now.
2:00:41
SPEAKER_05: Once you download it, just search for American Experiment and John Justice, and you'll find both the live stream and the podcasts from previous shows and today's show once we wrap up.
2:00:50
SPEAKER_05: And those podcasts are available across all the podcast uh platforms and the videos are reposted after the show, including Rumble as well, for those that don't go on uh YouTube.
2:01:00
SPEAKER_05: So we made sure to give you an option to go and watch on uh Rumble.
2:01:04
SPEAKER_05: Head on over to AmericanExperiment.org.
2:01:06
SPEAKER_05: As we were talking about last hour, you need to check out that wrong track Minnesota list of what we are faced with here in Minnesota, the biggest issues that are solvable issues here in Minnesota, and they're all backed up with the facts and figures necessary to basically show our work at American uh Experiment.
2:01:26
SPEAKER_05: Also, while you're there at the website, if you head on over to the John Justice Show page, you can make a donation and get yourself an embroidered John Justice Show hat.
2:01:34
SPEAKER_05: There's a pop-up on the homepage.
2:01:35
SPEAKER_05: Just click it and go to my page and scroll to the bottom and you'll find it there.
2:01:38
SPEAKER_05: We were talking about fraud in the previous hour, including sex trafficking also being tied to Medicaid billing fraud here in Minnesota, and several comments have rolled into the blaster line regarding our previous instruction here on the show.
2:01:52
SPEAKER_05: 612-584-4565 is the number if you want to let your voice be heard.
2:01:58
SPEAKER_18: Yeah, I gone.
2:01:59
SPEAKER_18: Jason Lightfell say we're focused on the Medicaid fraud, the$209 to$18 billion, and we are forgetting that we have an$18 billion state surplus.
2:02:10
SPEAKER_18: So we while focusing on the federal money now, they're not focused on the state money.
2:02:14
SPEAKER_18: We should be focused on both of those things right now to really press the image that we have a$20 to$30 to$40 billion financial issue in this state that needs to be remedied.
2:02:24
SPEAKER_05: Uh, thank you so much uh for the comment.
2:02:26
SPEAKER_05: I appreciate it.
2:02:27
SPEAKER_05: For those that want to uh continue uh to uh let your voice be heard uh on the show.
2:02:32
SPEAKER_05: You can do that.
2:02:33
SPEAKER_05: John.justice at americanexperiment.org or go and leave us a blast at 612-584-45065 alike, uh, this friend of the show.
2:02:46
SPEAKER_10: Good morning, John.
2:02:47
SPEAKER_10: I'm telling about the person who got their car banalized with the middle finger.
2:02:51
SPEAKER_10: Five dollars says it was her kid.
2:02:54
SPEAKER_10: We already know she has a teenage child who's of driving age in her household because their car was not touched.
2:03:01
SPEAKER_10: So five dollars is it was a kid with some internal family dispute, and then there's an air debat.
2:03:07
SPEAKER_10: Have a good day.
2:03:08
SPEAKER_05: Uh, I don't know.
2:03:09
SPEAKER_05: You know, listen, without evidence, I'm uh hard pressed to believe it was something um it was something along those lines.
2:03:16
SPEAKER_05: If it turns out to be true, okay, but I have no evidence whatsoever that that would have been the case regarding um this uh this alleged uh vandalism.
2:03:26
SPEAKER_05: I did get an email um that uh rolled into john.justice at americanexperiment.org.
2:03:33
SPEAKER_05: And they're, you know, talking about something very uh very similar.
2:03:36
SPEAKER_05: So I guess um we'll have to wait to uh to see.
2:03:40
SPEAKER_05: There are a lot of theories uh out there, and I guess I opened up the door to theories, didn't I?
2:03:44
SPEAKER_05: So I'll wait for official word before I uh go and entertain any more conspiracy theory um accusations over what had happened uh with the uh vehicle.
2:03:54
SPEAKER_05: But thank you so much for uh leaving the comments this morning on the uh on the blaster line.
2:03:59
SPEAKER_05: Again, 612-584-4565.
2:04:02
SPEAKER_05: Speaking of fraud, let's go um let's go here to the blaster line.
2:04:05
SPEAKER_05: Share this one with you from a friend of the show.
2:04:15
SPEAKER_14: You know, I guess I grew up really naive because I thought people were generally good and that the bad people were too much party.
2:04:26
SPEAKER_14: I thought people generally did the right thing.
2:04:29
SPEAKER_14: Um, but the more and more I hear about the way government works and how it's dry, I realize that that's the norm, and those of us who try to follow the rules and try to do the right thing are maybe not in the majority.
2:04:47
SPEAKER_14: And badly as I'm getting to work, and I know that uh portion of what I'm learning is gonna go for you know the government are gonna use my money fraudulently or allow it to be used fraudulently is infuriating.
2:05:06
SPEAKER_14: I feel and the colour too, which is allowed to say something about you know, kind of what has always kind of been a haven for criminals, and I think about you know the cage that and the gangsters came to Tall, it's it's been going on for a long time, I think.
2:05:28
SPEAKER_14: It's just the way it is here.
2:05:30
SPEAKER_05: Thank you for the comments.
2:05:31
SPEAKER_05: And you look at who has been in charge here in Minnesota and when the DFL had the trifecta, and the fact that the last legislative session, even though you had a tiority in the House, you still had the DFL with a slight majority in the Senate, which means there wasn't any opportunity to change course during the last legislative session.
2:05:55
SPEAKER_05: It was so funny.
2:05:56
SPEAKER_05: I had a leftist that tried to challenge me on this.
2:05:58
SPEAKER_05: I had posted a comment regarding uh Amy Klobishar on a line when she was talking about being a transformative uh governor and how she was going to do things uh differently.
2:06:09
SPEAKER_05: And I, you know, I called that to question by saying, okay, but it's her party that's been in charge.
2:06:18
SPEAKER_05: So what exactly are you going to change and do differently?
2:06:21
SPEAKER_05: And do you not endorse what her party has done here in the state?
2:06:28
SPEAKER_05: And somebody tried to push back on me and they go, Well, you know, the the Democrats didn't have all the power during the last legislative session, to which I responded, which is exactly what I just told you.
2:06:37
SPEAKER_05: The amount of devastation that the DFL inflicted upon the state during the trifecta, we're still feeling today.
2:06:43
SPEAKER_05: And the last legislative session, the GOP wasn't capable of really going and enacting any real change because of the power dynamic, even though the GOP had gains during the during the election leading into the last legislative session.
2:06:59
SPEAKER_05: So again, my point rings true.
2:07:00
SPEAKER_05: If Amy Clobuchar is going to be this transformational governor, a transformation from what?
2:07:06
SPEAKER_05: From what the DFL did?
2:07:08
SPEAKER_05: From what Governor Dim Walls is doing?
2:07:10
SPEAKER_05: No, there's it's just lip service.
2:07:12
SPEAKER_05: Just like her cost-cutting measures relating to healthcare, which we'll get into coming up in just a moment here on the show.
2:07:18
SPEAKER_05: But the point that I wanted to pull from Heather's comments here was uh we could see over the course of the past 10 years what's happened to the state.
2:07:26
SPEAKER_05: There were inklings of it before COVID hit.
2:07:29
SPEAKER_05: COVID exacerbated the problem, and then the DFL trifecta just went and exacerbated the issues that we were already facing because of COVID and used it to their advantage.
2:07:41
SPEAKER_05: With just their massive spending spree and their lack of concern over the rising evidence of fraud here in Minnesota.
2:07:50
SPEAKER_05: All of that is to say that just because we went one direction, there's nothing to say that we can't go back and go the other way.
2:07:56
SPEAKER_05: You just need the right leadership in office to go and do the right thing to turn things around.
2:08:01
SPEAKER_05: Will it be a slow turn?
2:08:02
SPEAKER_05: Absolutely be a slow turn.
2:08:04
SPEAKER_05: It was a slow turn to get us to where we are today, and it'll be just the same going the other way.
2:08:11
SPEAKER_05: Posing as anti-deportation activists, federal agents infiltrated the left-wing meetings at Minnesota Union Halls as Homeland Security investigated the alleged antifa-linked network accused of targeting ICE operations.
2:08:23
SPEAKER_05: The undercover agents secretly recorded anti-ICE meetings around Minneapolis.
2:08:28
SPEAKER_05: They scrutinized union finances for possible domestic uh terrorist financing.
2:08:34
SPEAKER_05: According to the Homeland Security investigators, and this was all posted by the Washington Examiner in a piece that I pulled from Newsmax, the effort was part of Project Whipple Shield, an investigation aimed at tracing the money, the organization behind the activists targeting the federal Whipple building in Minneapolis amid the Trump's administration crackdown, according to the examiner.
2:08:54
SPEAKER_05: Listen, this was all so far within the legal purview of what the Trump administration could do, to the point where Attorney General Thief Ellison came out and just said he was concerned about this.
2:09:07
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's because he knows that the Trump administration had more than likely the legal standing to go and conduct these particular operations, and they were right to go and do so.
2:09:16
SPEAKER_05: The left has no exclusivity on calling out the right over the federal government going and using their investigative powers to look into potential criminal activity of on the street agitators.
2:09:29
SPEAKER_05: The Biden administration did it to Republicans, but of course we know who they were targeting back then.
2:09:35
SPEAKER_05: Right?
2:09:36
SPEAKER_05: There's a complete double standard taking place.
2:09:38
SPEAKER_05: This was, in my view, completely legitimate for ICE to go and take care of, considering the mounting opposition that they were faced with on a daily basis during Operation Metro Surge.
2:09:51
SPEAKER_05: And as we've demonstrated on the show, and as we said back then, if there were no on the street agitators, if there were no on-the-street insurrectionists, you probably would not have even heard about what was taking place.
2:10:04
SPEAKER_05: Just like you didn't hear about the mass arrests and deportations during the month of July, which hit a record since Trump got in on his second term.
2:10:13
SPEAKER_05: You didn't hear about it because there was no controversy.
2:10:17
SPEAKER_05: There was no, you know, pushback from people on the streets garnering news outlets.
2:10:24
SPEAKER_05: News outlets didn't bother to go and cover it.
2:10:27
SPEAKER_05: They didn't care.
2:10:27
SPEAKER_05: And why would they?
2:10:30
SPEAKER_05: Why would they?
2:10:31
SPEAKER_05: Because it was just as if law enforcement does on a daily basis to go and arrest individuals for other crimes.
2:10:36
SPEAKER_05: ICE was out going and doing the same thing.
2:10:38
SPEAKER_05: They weren't disrupting neighborhoods, they weren't tearing up communities, they were just going and conducting their lawful arrest actions.
2:10:46
SPEAKER_05: And no one even knew until after July was over and the report was released.
2:10:50
SPEAKER_05: Just like in the four years of Joe Biden, that there was a record number of individuals that were arrested under Joe Biden's ice at the time, more than what Trump had done during Operation Metro Surge, but you'd never hear that talked about by the uh by the left or the left-wing media.
2:11:08
SPEAKER_05: All right, coming up ahead of my conversation with uh economist and policy fellow here at American Experiment, John uh Phelan, I want to go here.
2:11:17
SPEAKER_05: A story out of Alpha News.
2:11:18
SPEAKER_05: Teachers' unions have become the Democrat Party's laundering machine.
2:11:24
SPEAKER_05: I'll give you details on this coming up in just a moment here on the John Justice show and some really interesting correlating um uh audio from uh Democrat candidate James Tallerico that I will uh share with you as well here on the show.
2:11:37
SPEAKER_05: Get your comments into 612-584-4565.
2:11:41
SPEAKER_05: In the meantime, I want to remind you that if you've gone through the yo-yo dieting, I've certainly done that, right?
2:11:46
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2:11:51
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2:12:00
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2:12:04
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2:12:06
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2:12:25
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2:12:28
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2:12:39
SPEAKER_05: No joke at all.
2:12:40
SPEAKER_05: I mentioned it earlier in the show.
2:12:41
SPEAKER_05: Melinda and I were out running errands, and I was just, I just took a moment and I stopped and realized just how much easier it was to do my daily routines and daily tasks and going out with my wife and just enjoying life.
2:12:54
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2:13:01
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2:13:07
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2:13:13
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2:13:14
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2:13:15
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2:13:18
SPEAKER_07: If you would like to support the John Justice show, become an advertiser.
2:13:22
SPEAKER_07: Competitive rates for both personal endorsements and standard ads are available.
2:13:26
SPEAKER_07: For more details, email John.justice at AmericaneExperiment.org.
2:13:32
SPEAKER_05: It's John Justice, and after discovering Minnie Leaf's night gummies, it's no longer a challenge getting a restful night's sleep.
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2:14:02
SPEAKER_29: And now, here's commentary on the latest issues facing Minnesotans from the host, policy fellows, and guests of American Experiment.
2:14:09
SPEAKER_29: For more content, head on over to the center of the American Experiment.org.
2:14:14
SPEAKER_06: We break it down piece by piece again at AmericanExperiment.org.
2:14:17
SPEAKER_06: For example, when the FBI first rated Feeding Your Futures offices, she that week was calling for a protected status for immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
2:14:27
SPEAKER_06: When the Department of Justice indicted Amy Bach and 46 others, which was the largest fraud indictment in Minnesota history at the time, she was releasing a statement on resuming full immigrant visa services in Havana.
2:14:41
SPEAKER_06: And when Amy Bach was found guilty, she was calling on Trump to reverse the illegal firing of FTC commissioners.
2:14:48
SPEAKER_06: Think about it.
2:14:49
SPEAKER_31: Minnesota has always been a low crime state.
2:14:52
SPEAKER_31: But according to the most recent Bureau of Criminal Apprehension data, we are now above the national average when it comes to part one crimes, a category that includes crimes like murder, assault, rape, and carjackings.
2:15:05
SPEAKER_31: Think about it.
2:15:07
SPEAKER_31: Minnesota is now a high crime state.
2:15:10
SPEAKER_31: Visit highcrime.com to learn more.
2:15:13
SPEAKER_31: Think about it is brought to you by Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota's Think Tank.
2:15:18
SPEAKER_05: It's the John Justice show presented by American Experiment.
2:15:22
SPEAKER_05: You can listen at AmericanExperiment.org and check out the articles written by the policy fellows.
2:15:27
SPEAKER_05: John Fielen will be joining us coming up in just a few minutes here on the show.
2:15:31
SPEAKER_05: I want to go back to the uh blaster line this morning, 612-584-4565.
2:15:37
SPEAKER_05: I always know I'm on the mark when the foes of the show get incredibly confused over the commentary and then have to go and concoct these made-up things that they hear in order to try to make a cogent point.
2:15:53
SPEAKER_05: This is nothing but a word salad with no substance.
2:15:56
SPEAKER_05: That being said, if you're a foe of the show, I do like to give you the opportunity to let your voice be heard as well.
2:16:01
SPEAKER_05: For as foolish as it might be, listen to this from Eric in Brainerd, potentially on a voice disguise.
2:16:14
SPEAKER_16: I thought this election was the election about the buttons.
2:16:26
SPEAKER_16: When everyone knows that Damus and anyone that runs solely on fraud is on the actual solutions or, you know, ways to solve our problems is going to lose this election.
2:16:38
SPEAKER_05: So and again, it's so funny to me because you could be in opposition to the commentary on the show, but also provide a little intellectual integrity and address specifically what, say, in this case, Lisa Damath has said regarding what she would do with fraud.
2:16:58
SPEAKER_05: She has plenty of solutions to fraud.
2:17:01
SPEAKER_05: She went through every single one of the items on the wrong Minnesota list, including the fraud issue, and laid out all of which she would do as governor to go and tackle the issue of fraud here in Minnesota.
2:17:15
SPEAKER_05: But there's no intellectual honesty going on here.
2:17:19
SPEAKER_05: I'm sharing this with you because it's ridiculous.
2:17:21
SPEAKER_05: I'm sharing this with you because here on the show, I've always taken a stance that if you disagree with what I say, you'll get put to the head of the line.
2:17:29
SPEAKER_05: That changes on occasion because often I just get garbage nonsense like this.
2:17:35
SPEAKER_05: Right?
2:17:35
SPEAKER_05: This this idea that because I was talking about the fraud and dealing with the fraud and the ramifications of the fraud down the line, suddenly this means that this election isn't about fraud.
2:17:45
SPEAKER_05: It's going to be the presidential election.
2:17:46
SPEAKER_05: This issue of fraud is going to be going on for a long, long time.
2:17:52
SPEAKER_05: And the point that I was trying to make is when we go and tackle the fraud, and if we stop the fraud on a large enough level, we could potentially see unintended consequences like what is being said regarding the stopping of the USAID funds.
2:18:09
SPEAKER_05: And suddenly now certain sectors that may have been attached to that funding have now fundamentally changed in the midst of not receiving the funding that they might have been getting from USAID, fraudulently taken from the taxpayers.
2:18:23
SPEAKER_05: Artificially propping up different left-wing TV and streaming outlets.
2:18:29
SPEAKER_05: The fact that you don't see as many funded on-the-street protests over the summer that you typically do.
2:18:35
SPEAKER_05: There's a number of different examples pointing to that.
2:18:37
SPEAKER_05: That's what I was talking about.
2:18:39
SPEAKER_05: Intellectual honesty and pushing back on the show and debating what it is that I'm talking about is one thing.
2:18:46
SPEAKER_05: But acting ignorant or just not paying close enough attention.
2:18:49
SPEAKER_05: I mean, go ahead, waste your time.
2:18:50
SPEAKER_05: I'll play your comments for everybody to hear because you just sound like a fool.
2:18:54
SPEAKER_16: Wonder why we're going to be talking about this for the next couple years when the price of gas is shot up 30 cents and we're still in the Iran War, which is our Trump's Vietnam, aka your Vietnam.
2:19:07
SPEAKER_16: Can't believe we lost.
2:19:08
SPEAKER_16: We can't believe we entered it.
2:19:10
SPEAKER_16: Have a great day, Ron.
2:19:11
SPEAKER_05: They're just they're they're just stuck on stupid.
2:19:15
SPEAKER_05: You want to have a conversation about what's going on with Iran?
2:19:18
SPEAKER_05: Go for it.
2:19:18
SPEAKER_05: You want to have a conversation about the gas prices tied to what's going on with Iran?
2:19:22
SPEAKER_05: Go for it.
2:19:22
SPEAKER_05: I'm not happy about it either, but I also respect what it is the president is attempting to do with that.
2:19:28
SPEAKER_05: So I just, is it too much to ask for a little bit of intellectual honesty when it comes to the foes of the show leaving comments?
2:19:33
SPEAKER_05: I don't think it is, but I'm also uh sitting here not holding my breath here on the show because the last thing I think anybody wants to watch is me pass out live on camera.
2:19:42
SPEAKER_05: I don't know, maybe some of the foes of the shows do, but Moms for Liberty CEO, Tina uh Deskovich, claims that teachers' unions like the NEA and the AFT misuse dues to push a political agenda instead of addressing failing education.
2:19:58
SPEAKER_05: She argues that unions prioritize divisive issues over education, citing resolutions on gender ideologies and support for abolishing ICE.
2:20:09
SPEAKER_05: Descovich advocates for federal oversight, supporting a bill to repeal the NEA's congressional charter, and criticizes the union's political donations to Democrats.
2:20:21
SPEAKER_05: There's some really interesting points to be made in this in the story from Alpha News.
2:20:25
SPEAKER_05: The Department of Education's 2025 National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that a record 32% of high schoolers cannot read proficiently.
2:20:35
SPEAKER_05: Almost half cannot do basic math.
2:20:37
SPEAKER_05: This is one of the items on the wrong track, Minnesota list available at AmericanExperiment.org.
2:20:42
SPEAKER_05: Fourth and eighth grade math and reading scores also fell, continuing a collapse that began before the COVID-19 school closures.
2:20:50
SPEAKER_05: Teachers' unions are the reason public education is failing in America, Descovic said, adding that they focus on everything but education.
2:21:00
SPEAKER_05: Listen, it's confirmation of what we already, what we already knew that was going on within our education system, right?
2:21:06
SPEAKER_05: They're trying to divide the children from their families, and they are actively trying to turn them into radical activists at an age before they can form their own political opinions, Deskovich stated.
2:21:18
SPEAKER_05: For example, she noted that one resolution that was advanced and approved by a union was to keep secrets from parents when it comes to gender ideologies.
2:21:27
SPEAKER_05: You know, these are issues like this where I remember when they first came up, we would talk about them and go, oh my gosh, I can't believe this.
2:21:35
SPEAKER_05: And there would be some addressing of the issue at the ground level.
2:21:37
SPEAKER_05: And then on a long enough, you know, over a long enough period of time, it suddenly just became commonplace.
2:21:42
SPEAKER_05: To where Democrats would go and argue that it's good and that we should be keeping this information from parents, as if parents didn't have the total authority over their children.
2:21:53
SPEAKER_05: No, that happened within the schools.
2:21:56
SPEAKER_05: Ultimately, the government, that's their belief.
2:21:58
SPEAKER_05: Other resolutions uh supported teachers who refuse to tell children when children want to change their name or pronouns, which bathroom they use, which sexual orientation they claim, and other sensitive information parents need to know about their own kids.
2:22:13
SPEAKER_05: They're just evil groomers.
2:22:16
SPEAKER_05: That's it.
2:22:16
SPEAKER_05: That's the best way to go and describe these vile individuals.
2:22:20
SPEAKER_05: According to a deskovic, unions take hundreds of millions of dollars out of hardworking uh teachers' pockets, and yet those same teachers don't even know that this is what they're doing with their funding.
2:22:33
SPEAKER_05: Teachers' unions are legally allowed to donate to political candidates across the country.
2:22:38
SPEAKER_05: And while individual teachers may be Democrats or Republican uh Republicans, Descovich says 99% of their political donations go to Democrats.
2:22:50
SPEAKER_05: They don't agree with their hard-earned money going to support Democrat candidates that are diametrically opposed to what they believe in and what they value, but teachers feel forced to pay their dues to the unions, she explained, adding that teachers are coerced into intimidating or intimidated into joining a union and paying the dues.
2:23:11
SPEAKER_05: And what's happened here is this turnover of teachers, good quality teachers, who simply want to go and teach the basics to children, but yet don't want to see their money go to what I'm just laying out here, and they've left.
2:23:25
SPEAKER_05: And they've been replaced by the radical leftists.
2:23:30
SPEAKER_05: Those individuals who are more concerned, more focused on indoctrinating the students than they are providing them a quality uh education, which is evident in the lack of a quality uh education that students are getting here in Minnesota.
2:23:45
SPEAKER_05: Representative Mark Harris, a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, introduced a bill in July to repeal the NEA's congressional charter.
2:23:53
SPEAKER_05: The bill was co-sponsored by Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican out of Tennessee.
2:23:58
SPEAKER_05: Since the NEA is clearly not prioritizing students and parents or even teachers, it's time to remove the Congress seal of approval from this rogue organization.
2:24:08
SPEAKER_05: This is one of the things that I wish Trump would have done, and I guess there's still time, but just we need to just a top-to-bottom redo of the education system here in America.
2:24:19
SPEAKER_05: It should be a focus.
2:24:22
SPEAKER_05: Deskovic stated that while the effort is a step in the right direction, it faces a long row ahead.
2:24:27
SPEAKER_05: So you know that's an easy, that's a step one.
2:24:29
SPEAKER_05: However, the legislation has yet to be voted on by the committee.
2:24:33
SPEAKER_05: She concluded that money talks in Washington, especially when it comes to unions, Democrats are never going to go against what the teachers' unions want because they are funded by them, she continued.
2:24:45
SPEAKER_05: Saying that the situation ends up being a money laundering scheme for political corruption.
2:24:51
SPEAKER_05: I wanted to include this clip, Texas Democrat James Tallerico talking about school choice.
2:24:57
SPEAKER_05: Right?
2:24:57
SPEAKER_05: Helps kids from lower income households leave failing schools.
2:25:01
SPEAKER_05: Listen to what he has to say, who what he equates right school choice to in this clip.
2:25:09
SPEAKER_03: And then I led the fight against this private school voucher bill, which has its roots in school segregation.
2:25:14
SPEAKER_03: The first voucher bill was proposed in Texas in in 1957, which was just a few years after Brown v.
2:25:20
SPEAKER_03: Board.
2:25:21
SPEAKER_03: And it was a deliberate attempt to allow white parents to take their kids out of newly integrated public schools and send their kids to white-only private schools.
2:25:30
SPEAKER_03: And and so I fought tooth and nail um to prevent that voucher bill from passing because it would hurt our students, but it would particularly hurt our black students across the state because we know that public education is underfunded in Texas.
2:25:45
SPEAKER_05: No accounting whatsoever to the dramatic decrease in the quality of education in these schools.
2:25:51
SPEAKER_05: That's the motivating factor for parents, regardless of the skin color of the students or themselves, to remove their kids from those schools.
2:26:00
SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
2:26:02
SPEAKER_05: There is no consideration to that whatsoever.
2:26:05
SPEAKER_05: And I'm not surprised of this coming from uh James uh Tallerico uh by any uh by any stretch.
2:26:10
SPEAKER_05: 612-584-4565.
2:26:13
SPEAKER_05: Let's get back to some of your thoughts here on the John Justice show, courtesy of the blaster line.
2:26:18
SPEAKER_05: And again, if you want to email john.justice at AmericanExperiment dot org.
2:26:24
SPEAKER_26: When government doesn't stick to a budget, they have to print more money.
2:26:28
SPEAKER_26: That money that's printed is inflation.
2:26:31
SPEAKER_26: It's money that should not be circulating and it's making more dollars worth.
2:26:35
SPEAKER_26: So when you complain for who cares about fraud, every time that money gets printed and the government doesn't pay in the budget, and more product committed and nothing can more money printed that gets circulated to profit whatever agenda that the government has.
2:26:54
SPEAKER_26: So for people like Eric and Breed, you can exercise just a little bit more common sense and focusing on things that we could all agree on are a problem.
2:27:04
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I completely agree.
2:27:06
SPEAKER_05: And as I mentioned before, I just wish I wish that we would get some quality uh commentary and some you know some intellectual honesty coming from some of the foes of the show.
2:27:15
SPEAKER_05: Let's get back to some more of your thoughts on the blaster line uh this morning.
2:27:24
SPEAKER_24: I don't understand why he would mock what happened in our case.
2:27:28
SPEAKER_24: They're literally stealing money from your pocket, Eric.
2:27:32
SPEAKER_24: Don't you care about that?
2:27:35
SPEAKER_24: I don't I I just don't understand the level of stupidity in the left brain.
2:27:41
SPEAKER_24: I just don't care.
2:27:42
SPEAKER_24: That's a huge issue.
2:27:44
SPEAKER_24: You need to clean it up.
2:27:46
SPEAKER_24: Every time I write my cat bill, my cat payment off, I get more and more angry that it's not going where it should go, Eric.
2:27:56
SPEAKER_05: But they don't care.
2:27:58
SPEAKER_05: And Eric and Brainerd on the voice disguiser doesn't care.
2:28:01
SPEAKER_05: They only care about winning elections.
2:28:03
SPEAKER_05: That's it.
2:28:04
SPEAKER_05: Getting to the truth, seeking the truth, and that was evidenced in the original comment that he made regarding Lisa Damath not offering up any solutions to fraud.
2:28:12
SPEAKER_05: I mean, Amy Klobuchar is in the same thing, and we'll talk with John Feelin in just a moment, um, not about the fraud issue, but about her plans when it comes to lowering healthcare costs and whether or not she can actually go and uh and do that.
2:28:23
SPEAKER_05: But the all the candidates are putting up their own ideas as to how they want to go and tackle um the issues that are laid out, as I've mentioned, in AmericanExperiment.org, courtesy of the wrong track, Minnesota.
2:28:34
SPEAKER_05: So talk about which issues that you want to discuss and the solutions being proposed by the candidates.
2:28:39
SPEAKER_05: But instead, what do you get?
2:28:40
SPEAKER_05: You just get the they're not offering up any solutions.
2:28:43
SPEAKER_05: That's just not true from anybody, regardless of the of which aisle that they're on.
2:28:48
SPEAKER_05: Let's go back to another uh comment from the blaster line this morning here on the John Justice show presented by American Experiment.
2:28:54
SPEAKER_20: Hey, good morning, John.
2:28:57
SPEAKER_20: So I think the reason there's a couple reasons you probably didn't be able to protest the boat.
2:29:18
SPEAKER_20: Things like that.
2:29:20
SPEAKER_20: So weather effective.
2:29:23
SPEAKER_20: And also it's probably the Democrats realized it's not exactly as popular as they think it is.
2:29:29
SPEAKER_05: There you go.
2:29:30
SPEAKER_05: And we talked about this uh tomorrow.
2:29:32
SPEAKER_05: Thank you for the comment.
2:29:33
SPEAKER_05: First off, I don't really buy into the weather argument.
2:29:35
SPEAKER_05: There were plenty of the on-the-street uh insurrectionists that were more than happy to go out in the freezing cold temperatures during Operation Metro Surge, and so the heat that we were experiencing, I mean, maybe on the smoky days I'd give it to you.
2:29:46
SPEAKER_05: But it's also not as politically expedient right now for the left to be encouraging individuals to go out and get in the way of uh of ice and their continued deportation efforts as we get closer to the general election coming up uh in November.
2:29:59
SPEAKER_05: But I definitely appreciate your leaving a comment, and we'll get to some more of those before we wrap up the show this morning.
2:30:05
SPEAKER_05: And as we get ready to invite uh and uh welcome our guest onto the show, I just want to mention that the fall briefing with Byron York, you can get tickets for now, the battle for Congress, an insider's look at the midterm elections.
2:30:16
SPEAKER_05: It's happening on September 19th.
2:30:18
SPEAKER_05: And if you want more details, head on over to AmericanExperiment.org to get more details about how you can attend the 2026 fall briefing with Byron York again, a battle for Congress and insiders' look at the uh midterm elections.
2:30:33
SPEAKER_05: With that, I'm very pleased to welcome into the uh Center of the American Experiment uh studios this morning, sitting comfy on the soda, economist and uh policy fellow here at American Experiment, John Feeling.
2:30:44
SPEAKER_05: Good morning, John.
2:30:45
SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much for coming in this morning.
2:30:46
SPEAKER_32: Thanks for having me on.
2:30:47
SPEAKER_05: So I just real quick, let's um let's uh back up a little bit for those that are unfamiliar with a bit of your uh background.
2:30:53
SPEAKER_05: You and I have uh chance to speak a few times in the previous iteration of the show.
2:30:58
SPEAKER_05: But how long have you been here with American Experiment and uh what brought you uh here to the center?
2:31:03
SPEAKER_32: Uh well I'm coming up uh in the past nine years, so I'm coming up for 10 years here now.
2:31:08
SPEAKER_32: And um I'm here for the same reason lots of people come to Minnesota.
2:31:11
SPEAKER_32: My wife's from here.
2:31:12
SPEAKER_32: Um so uh yeah, I'm originally from England and um I, you know, lived there for most of my life, and um, yeah, 10 years ago moved over here.
2:31:22
SPEAKER_32: And um I, you know, at that time, if you've asked me, you know, what do you know about Minnesota?
2:31:26
SPEAKER_32: Uh I when I first started talking to my wife, I said to my dad, I'm talking to this girl from Minnesota, and he listed everything he knew about the state, which was Lutherans and Hubert Humphrey.
2:31:35
SPEAKER_32: Um, and I said, Well, they elected Jesse Ventura governor, the guy from Predator.
2:31:39
SPEAKER_32: So, and that's all we knew.
2:31:40
SPEAKER_32: Um, and you know, Minnesota's reputation has changed a lot in 10 years.
2:31:44
SPEAKER_05: You and I will have to have a conversation outside of the show on uh your musical taste, because most of the bands that I love come from uh from England and the Manchester area.
2:31:55
SPEAKER_05: So this is a conversation you and I'll have to have at some point in time because I'm wondering if there's any sort of any sort of crossover with your musical taste versus mine, since the majority of my bands came from that I love came from England.
2:32:05
SPEAKER_32: So possibly the only interesting thing that I could say about that is that I many years ago I dated a girl who went to school with the daughter of the lead singer of Joy Division.
2:32:14
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
2:32:14
SPEAKER_05: All right.
2:32:15
SPEAKER_05: So I'm already impressed.
2:32:16
SPEAKER_05: You know, we didn't even need to have a discussion now.
2:32:19
SPEAKER_05: That was enough to sort of satisfy my uh my curiosity.
2:32:23
SPEAKER_05: Before we get into some of your recent articles, and I do want to talk about one that um we didn't mention prior to our discussion, and it was the 2023 Trifecta blew so much money so fast the state government couldn't keep track.
2:32:34
SPEAKER_05: I really feel like we should add this to the list of the wrong track Minnesota items that were that are currently available on the website because that's a that's a pretty uh that's a pretty big one.
2:32:43
SPEAKER_05: Before we get to that though, I know you were you were traveling.
2:32:46
SPEAKER_05: There was a couple of uh moments when I wanted to invite you on the show, but you were traveling recently.
2:32:49
SPEAKER_05: Where did you where did you go to again?
2:32:51
SPEAKER_05: You had a there was a funny anecdote you shared yesterday that I uh I was hoping you'd repeat on the show.
2:32:55
SPEAKER_05: But where did you uh where were you visiting over the course of the past week?
2:32:58
SPEAKER_32: Uh well there's an organization called the American Institute of Economic Research, and they're based in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
2:33:05
SPEAKER_32: And um I'm doing some work on kind of economic growth at the state.
2:33:09
SPEAKER_32: It's not the most interesting, perhaps to the lay audience, but it's you know, you construct measures of physical capital per worker per state, and then you look to try and identify state government policies that can drive that or increase uh physical capital growth.
2:33:24
SPEAKER_32: And I got invited out to AIER in Great Barrington to present on that, do a kind of seminar and get feedback on it.
2:33:31
SPEAKER_32: Um, it was really, really helpful.
2:33:33
SPEAKER_32: A project that was kind of a little bit stalled, has now got kind of a new lease of life.
2:33:37
SPEAKER_32: Um, it's a very prestigious organization, it's really flattering um to be brought out there.
2:33:42
SPEAKER_32: Um and I was I was invited to apply, and I think it speaks well of the center's uh reputation amongst kind of peer organizations.
2:33:50
SPEAKER_32: Um we do have a very, very high reputation amongst them.
2:33:54
SPEAKER_05: Um I were you seeing or were you hearing any sort of uh commonalities with um What other states are dealing with um compared to what we've been dealing with here in Minnesota?
2:34:04
SPEAKER_05: Did you have any conversations regarding, you know, what um what other economists were looking at in their particular region and were there any sort of comparisons to what's happening here?
2:34:12
SPEAKER_32: Well that the things what it's interesting, I think, with America, it's such a regional country, and I'm not sure Americans quite understand that about themselves.
2:34:21
SPEAKER_32: Um you travel to New England and it's very different.
2:34:23
SPEAKER_32: Um a few things that struck me.
2:34:25
SPEAKER_32: One is that there, I mean, there were wall-to-wall political ads on the TV, and this was for the areas New York and Massachusetts and Connecticut.
2:34:33
SPEAKER_32: And every ad was, you know, Democrat for Congress, Democrat for Senate, Democrat for the House, Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.
2:34:39
SPEAKER_32: And then you come to Minnesota and every ad for a Democrat, none of them tell you they're Democrats.
2:34:44
SPEAKER_32: Um, so there's there's obviously a perception here amongst the Democrats that putting Democrat on is not a good thing.
2:34:52
SPEAKER_32: Um so that's one thing that that really that really kind of struck me about that.
2:34:56
SPEAKER_32: Another thing as well, and this goes back to something that um Michelle Tefoy has been getting some heat for saying that you know you you when you go out of America, when you get out of Minnesota, you're afraid to say that you're ashamed to say that you you're from there.
2:35:08
SPEAKER_32: Um and it's interesting.
2:35:09
SPEAKER_32: I I when I was up there, I was talking to uh somebody from uh New Hampshire, uh, and then I spoke to somebody from Massachusetts and somebody from somewhere else, and they're all like, you know, Minnesota, you know.
2:35:21
SPEAKER_32: Um like I said just earlier, you know, the reputation of the state is not Lutherans and Hubert Humphrey anymore.
2:35:26
SPEAKER_32: Um and uh I had a similar thing.
2:35:28
SPEAKER_32: I was at an academic conference in Chicago in March, and the audience was entirely academics um from different parts of the US, most of them actually were not Americans.
2:35:40
SPEAKER_32: And so we sat there and I presented my paper, you know, talk about it as human capital measurements, it was.
2:35:46
SPEAKER_32: Um, and at the end of it, someone says to me, one of the other one of the academics says, Do you think that some of the results in your paper come from the fact that um you're from Minnesota?
2:35:57
SPEAKER_32: And then she does it, and this isn't an exact thing, and I can't just quote, I have to do the face as well.
2:36:02
SPEAKER_32: She goes, because Minnesota is kind of like that.
2:36:05
SPEAKER_32: And this is somebody she teaches at a university, I think it was in Alabama, um, and she's Indian herself.
2:36:11
SPEAKER_32: And like I say, that the this notion that people have of us when you go out around the country, it's very, very different to what it was.
2:36:17
SPEAKER_05: Well, and there's no desire from the current leadership to change any of that.
2:36:23
SPEAKER_05: It's like they they lean into that controversy.
2:36:27
SPEAKER_05: You're absolutely right, though.
2:36:28
SPEAKER_05: There was um yesterday one of the other uh it was it was Bill, I'll just Bill Walsh.
2:36:33
SPEAKER_05: I was talking with Bill Walsh and he snapped a photograph of somebody who had you seen the wooden sign photograph?
2:36:38
SPEAKER_32: No.
2:36:38
SPEAKER_05: Okay, so he was it was he was traveling, and I believe it was just outside state lines.
2:36:43
SPEAKER_05: And somebody had taken a wooden sign and they had burned on very nicely a message saying, Yeah, I would leave that state too.
2:36:50
SPEAKER_05: So it was somebody in Wisconsin with the sign as you were traveling out of the state.
2:36:54
SPEAKER_05: I used to joke as we talk with John Phelan here from Center of the American Experiment, when I was doing well, a couple of things based off of what you said.
2:37:01
SPEAKER_05: One, you're absolutely right about the about the country being regional.
2:37:04
SPEAKER_05: Um having worked in in different in different states, I can tell you that the mentality on certain issues is just a mat dramatically different.
2:37:12
SPEAKER_05: It used to be when I was in um Southern Arizona that, you know, it was a much, much different view of say illegal immigration there than it was anywhere else when I would go and travel around the country doing, you know, different talk radio rows in different states.
2:37:24
SPEAKER_05: They had just a completely, complete disconnect from the illegal immigration issue.
2:37:28
SPEAKER_05: Of course, that's not the case anymore because of how wide, um, how wide uh widespread it is.
2:37:33
SPEAKER_05: But I remember when I was doing radio in in Arizona, I would joke, I wonder what it would be like to be a conservative talk radio show host in San Francisco.
2:37:44
SPEAKER_05: It wasn't Minnesota, it was San Francisco because that's where all the stories were coming out of.
2:37:48
SPEAKER_05: Well, we've been now I know.
2:37:50
SPEAKER_05: Now I know because I do radio here and I have for the past 10 years here in Minnesota what it would have been like.
2:37:54
SPEAKER_05: So it's and it was not that way for the longest time.
2:37:57
SPEAKER_05: It wasn't when you started here, and it wasn't when I started here almost 10 10 years ago.
2:38:02
SPEAKER_05: I'm curious on that, and we'll get to these stories as we talk with with John Phelan, but um, you know, you've obviously watched the transition over the course of the past uh 10 years in terms of our of our economy and and and just examining what's been what's been taking taking place.
2:38:18
SPEAKER_05: Um and I'm just curious, it's a general question.
2:38:20
SPEAKER_05: Uh having that length of time covering um the economy here in Minnesota, are there is there anything that sort of immediately sticks out in your mind when I when I talk about the 10 years that you've been here and what you've noticed in the changes of what we've dealt with here in the state?
2:38:34
SPEAKER_32: I think the the big thing is that you have a very common idea, most common amongst, you know, perhaps one political tradition, that there is no limit to the amount of money that the government should be spending and should be taking from its citizens.
2:38:50
SPEAKER_32: And that the government should just provide an ever-lengthening list of goodies paid for by somebody else.
2:38:58
SPEAKER_32: And we have this ludicrous notion that politics is this kind of uh you know, emboldening, enhancing, uplifting process.
2:39:08
SPEAKER_32: Politics is the what we do together or something like that.
2:39:11
SPEAKER_32: And actually, politics is just a hustle, it's just a shakedown.
2:39:15
SPEAKER_32: Um, and all you see is it's just it's just one group of people trying to get another group of people to pay for their stuff.
2:39:20
SPEAKER_32: There's nothing really noble about that.
2:39:22
SPEAKER_32: You know, this is not uh, you know, Lincoln at Gettysburg.
2:39:26
SPEAKER_32: This is not, you know, Solon in Athens.
2:39:29
SPEAKER_32: This is just a shakedown.
2:39:30
SPEAKER_32: It's just people trying to grab money off each other.
2:39:32
SPEAKER_32: And it's kind of grubby and depressing.
2:39:35
SPEAKER_05: It and I don't see, and I hate to be um, you know, I hate to be so doom laden in this comment, but I also don't see that changing anytime soon.
2:39:43
SPEAKER_05: I mean, when you have when you have the leadership that we have that's had this mentality that you just laid out for a long enough period of time, in order to have that change, you need new leadership coming up from behind that's going to have a wholesale change in attitude.
2:39:55
SPEAKER_05: And there may be individuals that feel that it shouldn't be this way, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the crop of the younger generations now coming up through the ranks, you know, of politics.
2:40:06
SPEAKER_05: It seems as if more of the same, if not even worse, if you go and bring in sort of the Democrat Socialist agenda and the Democrat Party, because I agree with you.
2:40:15
SPEAKER_05: And the, you know, the sad part is I think this is kind of just the way it's going to be, at least for the foreseeable future.
2:40:21
SPEAKER_05: Do you see it the same way, John?
2:40:22
SPEAKER_32: To a degree, but at the end of the day, you know, there are laws of economics, and the laws of economics will be pursued with the doggedness of Inspector Javert and the merciless brutality of Harry Callahan.
2:40:35
SPEAKER_32: Um and ultimately, if you look at the federal government, the federal government is borrowing$2 trillion a year.
2:40:41
SPEAKER_32: Um, it's going to borrow, according to the Congressional Budget Office,$2 trillion every year from now on, you know, out to as far as the forecasts go.
2:40:49
SPEAKER_32: Um, I think the national federal debt just uh passed 100% of national income for the first time since World War II.
2:40:55
SPEAKER_32: And this is apparently while the economy is growing.
2:40:58
SPEAKER_32: Um this can't continue.
2:41:00
SPEAKER_32: Um if you look now, federal treasury yields are up above uh 5%.
2:41:05
SPEAKER_32: Uh I think the 30-year or the 10-year, I can't remember which, just hit the highest level of yield since 2007 yesterday.
2:41:12
SPEAKER_32: Now, you can't pay those interest rates on the debt we have without something going very, very wrong.
2:41:18
SPEAKER_32: So this idea that, you know, money is just going to come flying at us, whether it's the form of entitlement payments or anything else, it's you know, the rubber's meeting the road.
2:41:27
SPEAKER_32: This is the crisis that the Tea Partiers and the Paul Ryan people and the Ron Paul people from 2012 and 2008 were warning us about.
2:41:36
SPEAKER_05: Were they ahead of the curve?
2:41:37
SPEAKER_05: Yes.
2:41:38
SPEAKER_32: And look at look at poor old Paul Ryan.
2:41:40
SPEAKER_32: I mean, he was the last sensible policy guy at the federal level talking about the federal debt.
2:41:45
SPEAKER_32: And now that guy can't hang his hat anywhere in America.
2:41:48
SPEAKER_05: Well, it's almost as if, I mean, it seems like what you're saying is, um, and you know, let me know uh whether or not you think this is true or not.
2:41:55
SPEAKER_05: It it seems almost as if there's more of a reason for a full, uh full force um move towards what the Tea Party movement was now than there was back when it initially started.
2:42:09
SPEAKER_05: Well, going back to 2008, right?
2:42:10
SPEAKER_05: And I think that's when the when it when the whole thing erupted.
2:42:12
SPEAKER_05: I mean, it seems like there's more justification for it now, is the word that I was looking for.
2:42:16
SPEAKER_05: Would you agree with that?
2:42:17
SPEAKER_32: Yeah, and it's absolutely bizarre that back then, I can't remember exactly what federal debt was then, maybe let's say 50% of GDP.
2:42:23
SPEAKER_32: And the debt was this huge issue.
2:42:26
SPEAKER_32: Um, whereas now it's 100% and we're borrowing$2 trillion a year, and nobody cares.
2:42:30
SPEAKER_32: Right.
2:42:30
SPEAKER_32: I mean, if you watch the presidential election debates last cycle, uh, you know, Trump, Biden, Trump, Harris, there was almost no discussion of the federal debt.
2:42:39
SPEAKER_32: Almost no discussion of deficits.
2:42:41
SPEAKER_32: Nobody's the what's possibly the biggest issue in American politics, and nobody talks about it.
2:42:46
SPEAKER_32: Nobody thinks about it.
2:42:48
SPEAKER_32: Instead, we just have endless new prescriptions for for spending.
2:42:51
SPEAKER_32: It's terrible.
2:42:52
SPEAKER_05: Well, and you want, you know, it's it's it mirrors, unfortunately, it mirrors a lot of what we cover in terms of just the the local issues here in Minnesota, where if there's if there isn't an outrage over it, a lot of times, you know, um egregious issues just go, there's no accountability, there's no coverage on it, if there's no voices speaking up to go and call out a particular infraction, for lack of a better way to describe it, then that just is able to continue.
2:43:18
SPEAKER_05: And it's something very similar happening at the federal level.
2:43:21
SPEAKER_05: Like I wonder if it, if the chorus were to begin to grow loud regarding the national debt, if it's something that, you know, President Donald Trump would want to go and address, and he simply doesn't because you're, like you said, no one's no one's talking about it.
2:43:34
SPEAKER_05: I'm not trying to give the president a free pass.
2:43:36
SPEAKER_05: I'm just extrapolating on the fact that you're right, nobody is talking about this issue, and it's not an issue because no one's talking about it.
2:43:43
SPEAKER_32: Yeah.
2:43:43
SPEAKER_32: Uh I mean, I mean, the the the pref the president is not a fiscal conservative.
2:43:48
SPEAKER_32: There's nothing in his record as a politician or as a businessman that suggests that.
2:43:52
SPEAKER_32: Um and so if you have to think to yourself, you know, what is it that's gonna make people worry about this?
2:43:59
SPEAKER_32: Right.
2:43:59
SPEAKER_32: It's gonna be um, well, in 2032, the Social Security Trust Fund runs out of money.
2:44:05
SPEAKER_32: And you're looking at an automatic, this is as the law stands.
2:44:09
SPEAKER_32: Nothing changes for this to happen.
2:44:11
SPEAKER_32: This is as the law currently stands.
2:44:13
SPEAKER_32: You're looking at I think something like in Minnesota, a$500 a month cut to social security checks on average.
2:44:19
SPEAKER_32: It's about a quarter, I think.
2:44:20
SPEAKER_32: So it's huge.
2:44:21
SPEAKER_32: Now that and that that's gonna happen.
2:44:23
SPEAKER_32: The law has to change for that not to happen.
2:44:27
SPEAKER_32: And the only way that doesn't happen is uh, I mean, there's a few things.
2:44:30
SPEAKER_32: You can massively hike the payroll tax, the social security payroll tax, but I mean you're gonna stamp on the economy if you do that.
2:44:37
SPEAKER_32: Uh, you can massively cut payments.
2:44:39
SPEAKER_32: I mean, people aren't gonna like that because seniors vote.
2:44:43
SPEAKER_32: Um, you can tidd about, you know, so one thing, popular thing, is raise the cap.
2:44:48
SPEAKER_32: So you're so you know, you at the moment you pay social security contributions up to 11, then you don't, and they want to remove that cap.
2:44:54
SPEAKER_32: What people often miss when they talk about that is that the payouts are capped as well.
2:44:57
SPEAKER_32: So if you're gonna move the cap on the contributions, you're also gonna move the cap on the payments.
2:45:02
SPEAKER_32: And the issue you've got there is people always talk in the terms of, well, it's my money, I want it back.
2:45:07
SPEAKER_32: Well, if it's your money, don't talk about raising the cap.
2:45:09
SPEAKER_32: If you want to blow the top off the cap, you're you're admitting that what you want is someone else to pay for the promises you made yourself.
2:45:16
SPEAKER_32: So we've got a huge problem there in terms of entitlements.
2:45:19
SPEAKER_32: And it will only get serious uh when that happens in 2032, possibly before that, because when the federal treasury yield goes up, that drags up interest rates across the country.
2:45:28
SPEAKER_32: Look at mortgage rates, look at credit car rates, look at uh car finance rates, all of these things are gonna get dragged up because the cost of financing the federal debt uh goes up.
2:45:39
SPEAKER_32: So you're gonna see uh a you know a period of higher interest rates, tighter credit, squeezed living standards.
2:45:46
SPEAKER_32: Uh that might be something that brings the pitchforks out again.
2:45:48
SPEAKER_05: So what you're saying is um uh policy fellow here at American Experiment, John Phelan, that when I go to look at retirement, I should automatically just start deducting about what$500 a grand a month from what I what what what myself and my wife should end up be, should end up getting back in our in our social security retirement?
2:46:07
SPEAKER_32: Uh I'm not a financial investment guy, you know, should say that.
2:46:11
SPEAKER_32: But look, I mean, if you if you can't pay for something, you can't pay for something.
2:46:14
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
2:46:15
SPEAKER_05: Of of what we've been discussing, and then we'll dive into, and I'll kind of let you choose your own adventure.
2:46:20
SPEAKER_05: I want to touch upon all of these here and the time that we have left.
2:46:23
SPEAKER_05: But in what you do here at American Experiment and with everything that we've been talking about this morning, what are you most focused on or concerned about?
2:46:33
SPEAKER_05: I mean, if they're two different things.
2:46:34
SPEAKER_05: But what is what is it that John Phelan is looking at as thinking, you know, this is, you know, this is something that is of tremendous concern or focus for me?
2:46:42
SPEAKER_05: Is this something you already mentioned or is it something else?
2:46:45
SPEAKER_32: Uh well, at the state level, um, I think it it's actually the budget deficit.
2:46:49
SPEAKER_32: Um the state government has spent more money than it's collected in every year since 2024.
2:46:55
SPEAKER_32: It's forecast to do that every year to 2029, and the only reason it's not forecast to do it after 2029 is because the forecasts stop in 2029.
2:47:03
SPEAKER_32: Um so basically we're looking at red ink as far out as the eye as the eye can see.
2:47:08
SPEAKER_32: Um, and that's a big problem because, you know, this is not the federal government.
2:47:13
SPEAKER_32: Uh, we can't borrow the money, we can't add the Federal Reserve print the money, the money has to come from taxes or spending cuts.
2:47:20
SPEAKER_32: So it's a real question of which path Minnesota is going to take.
2:47:24
SPEAKER_32: Are we going to keep on hiking taxes, which are already some of the highest uh in America, even on your average earning Minnesotan?
2:47:30
SPEAKER_32: Uh, Minnesota doesn't just tax the rich heavily, we tax everybody heavily here, um, apart from a section at the very bottom, which I can talk about at some length.
2:47:39
SPEAKER_32: But even the average Minnesotan is already very heavily taxed.
2:47:42
SPEAKER_32: And the only way that all these extra uh that this reddink gets covered by tax hikes is if we hike taxes even further on the middle class.
2:47:51
SPEAKER_32: Um, and that's the great myth of all this current, you know, tax and spend thing is that there's three guys somewhere, and if we just tax them hard, they'll pay for everything.
2:48:00
SPEAKER_32: It's crazy, it's not true.
2:48:01
SPEAKER_32: Uh the model is always Sweden, for example.
2:48:04
SPEAKER_32: You know, people, oh Sweden's a socialist country.
2:48:07
SPEAKER_32: Sweden is not a socialist country, Sweden is a very free market country, has a lower rate of corporate income tax than we do, has no minimum wage.
2:48:13
SPEAKER_32: Um what Sweden does do is it has a sales tax.
2:48:16
SPEAKER_32: So Sweden does tax and spend more as a share of its national income, but it does it because it clobbers the middle class harbor the sales tax.
2:48:23
SPEAKER_32: So if people want Swedish uh spending, they need to have Swedish taxes and they'll never go for that, which is why we persist in this myth that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are going to pay for everything.
2:48:33
SPEAKER_32: Um so I think the deficit is the big thing that I would focus on uh at Minnesota because it really is a question of which way this state goes.
2:48:41
SPEAKER_32: Do we keep on you know higher taxes, higher spending all the time, pushing people out of the state?
2:48:46
SPEAKER_32: Or do we think, look, enough is enough, everyone else has got to live within their means, the state government should too.
2:48:52
SPEAKER_05: How much does uh just a quick question on Sweden, because I've heard this argument before, and I think I've even you know mentioned it on the show, um, population size of uh of a region like Sweden, how much does that play into what you're what you're mentioning?
2:49:03
SPEAKER_05: Because I've heard pushback on that when people go look at their policies and think, well, this is a much smaller country, they don't have as you know many people as we do, so it's not really applicable to what we're dealing with here in the United States.
2:49:12
SPEAKER_05: Do you have any thoughts on that?
2:49:13
SPEAKER_32: Um I don't agree.
2:49:14
SPEAKER_32: I think as long as the kind of demographic profile is broadly similar, which I think it is, um, then it it doesn't the size doesn't really matter because it's the per capita numbers that are important, I think.
2:49:25
SPEAKER_05: Let's touch upon the uh the 2023 Trifecta blew so much money so fast the state government couldn't keep track.
2:49:31
SPEAKER_05: I this falls in line quite a bit with what you were just mentioning.
2:49:34
SPEAKER_05: Uh um correct.
2:49:35
SPEAKER_05: Is there anything else you want to uh you want to mention regarding this uh this piece and what you uncovered in this article?
2:49:40
SPEAKER_32: Uh yeah, I mean it was so there's this business that uh got I think it was$1.5 million out of this$100 million Promise Act fund.
2:49:48
SPEAKER_32: Uh I mean back in if you go back to 2023, the state government had an$18.5 billion budget surplus.
2:49:55
SPEAKER_32: Um, the Democrat trifecta, and they were going to spend every last penny of this and more.
2:50:01
SPEAKER_32: Um and they did, they blew the lot, blew through the whole lot.
2:50:04
SPEAKER_32: Um, and so this is a situation that we're we're kind of dealing with now.
2:50:08
SPEAKER_32: All these spending commitments that we undertook back then, and the revenue is just not there because all that uh surplus was COVID-era funny money from the federal government, uh, one-off payments that we should never have assumed ongoing commitments on the basis of.
2:50:23
SPEAKER_32: And the Promise Act was one of these things.
2:50:25
SPEAKER_32: Businesses could come and apply uh for grants from the state government, and they had to meet various reporting requirements.
2:50:32
SPEAKER_32: One business was identified which hadn't met these reporting requirements.
2:50:35
SPEAKER_32: And even if you look at the money it's received and divide it by the number of jobs created, it's something like is it 250 or it's a huge number of hundreds of thousands of dollars per job created.
2:50:46
SPEAKER_32: Um, and it's essentially a bit of a boondoggle, you know.
2:50:49
SPEAKER_32: But what it was is this business didn't meet reporting requirements.
2:50:52
SPEAKER_32: And it turns out there's a story from last night on KSTP that it turns out maybe there's a bunch of other Promise Act recipients that didn't meet these reporting requirements.
2:51:01
SPEAKER_32: So again, you know, money just flying out the door.
2:51:04
SPEAKER_32: And one of the things that really struck me in the KSTP coverage of this first business is that they had spoken to somebody at Deed who said back in 2023, we were spending so much money that we didn't have the staff to keep track of it.
2:51:16
SPEAKER_32: And this ties in a with what I saw myself when I was up at the Capitol during that period.
2:51:21
SPEAKER_32: I sat in committee hearings and I told the story, the State and Local Government Finance Committee.
2:51:27
SPEAKER_32: Right?
2:51:28
SPEAKER_32: So it's the committee that's charged with overseeing state and local government finances.
2:51:34
SPEAKER_32: Right.
2:51:34
SPEAKER_32: Now, the Paid Family Medical Leave Act sailed through its fifth committee hearing in that in that uh that committee without a fiscal note, without any estimate of what the fiscal cost of this would be.
2:51:47
SPEAKER_32: Now remember, state and local government finance committee, and it passed that committee without a fiscal note.
2:51:54
SPEAKER_32: And the reason it did that is because, as a uh committee chair, uh Democrat rep Ginny Cleavorn said, we're overwhelmed.
2:52:01
SPEAKER_32: There is so much legislation, so much spending going on that we can't possibly wait for fiscal notes for all this.
2:52:07
SPEAKER_32: And so if you want to know why we've got this huge amount of red ink uh bearing down on us, like blood out of that elevator in the shining, uh, or if you want to know why uh, you know, we've got guys in East Africa driving around in taxpayer-funded cars and living in taxpayer-funded apartments, this is part of the reason.
2:52:26
SPEAKER_32: The fact that the whole point under the trifecta was spent as much as quickly as possible and damn the consequences.
2:52:34
SPEAKER_05: Uh, how much of what you just described plays into?
2:52:39
SPEAKER_05: You have another piece recently up at AmericanExperiment.org as we talk with policy fellow John Phelan.
2:52:45
SPEAKER_05: Uh, property taxes are surging again, hammering affordability.
2:52:49
SPEAKER_05: Uh, it's time for Minnesotans to say uh taxed enough already.
2:52:53
SPEAKER_05: I mean, how much of what you just mentioned is, you know, in in this article plays into what you were just talking about via the DFL trifecta?
2:53:01
SPEAKER_32: It's a good amount, actually, because people like to say, you know, well, local government is not state government, it's a different thing.
2:53:06
SPEAKER_32: Well, there's a thing called unfunded mandates.
2:53:09
SPEAKER_32: And what these unfounded mandates are, and it's like uh kind of seasonal unemployment insurance, um paid family medical leave is another big one.
2:53:17
SPEAKER_32: So it's when the state government passes a law that says local governments must do X, but the state government doesn't give those local governments the money to do it.
2:53:27
SPEAKER_32: So local governments have to go out and finance this commitment somebody's given them themselves.
2:53:32
SPEAKER_32: And so you see this across Minnesota now, these unfunded mandates.
2:53:36
SPEAKER_32: They are pushing up, uh and I feel sorry, you know, I've got problems with local government when it comes to the property tax thing.
2:53:42
SPEAKER_32: But to some extent I have sympathy with them as well.
2:53:45
SPEAKER_32: Because you've got these politicians in St.
2:53:47
SPEAKER_32: Paul swanning around saying, Oh, hey, look at all the cool stuff we did, look at all the cool freebies we've given you.
2:53:52
SPEAKER_32: And there's some poor man or woman out in some county office somewhere thinking, I've got to pay for this now.
2:53:58
SPEAKER_32: Yep.
2:53:58
SPEAKER_32: How am I gonna admit?
2:54:00
SPEAKER_32: And so they have to put your property taxes up.
2:54:01
SPEAKER_32: And paid for medical paid for any medical leave is a great example of that.
2:54:05
SPEAKER_32: You know, all these people patting themselves on the back at the Capitol, they're not the ones who have to pay for this.
2:54:10
SPEAKER_32: Somebody else somewhere else has to figure that out.
2:54:12
SPEAKER_32: And that's one of the things that's pushing up people's property taxes.
2:54:16
SPEAKER_32: That's how the state government and the 2023 trifecta in particular is behind so much of this big hike in property taxes that's going on across the state.
2:54:25
SPEAKER_05: Before we wrap on uh the initial reason why I invited you on the show, and that is Amy Klobishar in her uh her uh health uh her health plan uh uh regarding taxes and potentially lowering costs.
2:54:37
SPEAKER_05: Let me ask you this just based off of our conversation about the economy.
2:54:40
SPEAKER_05: And I've really enjoyed this, and thank you for the time this morning, uh, again, talking with John Phelan.
2:54:44
SPEAKER_05: Uh, because I had I had some comments this morning to the blaster line asking the same thing on a host of other issues.
2:54:52
SPEAKER_05: Can we turn this around if we if there was a wholesale changeover in leadership that came in with a different mentality?
2:55:00
SPEAKER_05: One say more aligned with with you.
2:55:02
SPEAKER_05: Or let's just say, hypothetically speaking, you you end up being in charge for some reason and you know you're you're put into a position of government where you can make some decisions.
2:55:10
SPEAKER_05: How quickly would it be to, for lack of a better way to describe it, you know, write write the ship?
2:55:15
SPEAKER_05: Um is this something that can be done over the course of years, or are we looking at, you know, a decades-long effort to get things back on track here in Minnesota?
2:55:22
SPEAKER_32: Uh I think you need a couple of sessions, so something like four years to kind of get things back on a firm footing.
2:55:29
SPEAKER_32: Um, and that's I mean, it's a heavy lift because there's so much that's kind of baked in now.
2:55:35
SPEAKER_32: Um, but it's it's doable.
2:55:37
SPEAKER_32: I mean, this is a great state, you know.
2:55:39
SPEAKER_32: I mean, sometimes you sound like you dunk on the place all the time.
2:55:42
SPEAKER_32: I moved 4,000 miles to live here, you know.
2:55:44
SPEAKER_32: Um, and I think it's a wonderful place and it's full of wonderful people, wonderful places.
2:55:49
SPEAKER_32: It's got a wonderful history.
2:55:51
SPEAKER_32: Um, sports teams, I'd say less about that.
2:55:54
SPEAKER_32: Um, but but you know, uh, but uh, you know, it's a great place in the because you We do this because we want it to keep being a great.
2:56:03
SPEAKER_32: And so you have to believe it can be saved.
2:56:06
SPEAKER_32: Um, otherwise you might as well just pack up and move to somewhere else.
2:56:09
SPEAKER_32: Yeah.
2:56:09
SPEAKER_05: And a lot of people have.
2:56:10
SPEAKER_05: But I, you know, I I echo your your sentiments, you know.
2:56:13
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I went through a an undesirable situation and landed in a much better situation here at Center of the American Experiment.
2:56:19
SPEAKER_05: But the larger takeaway is that my wife and I, you know, with our kids, you know, who'll be out of the house soon enough, but are still living with us.
2:56:25
SPEAKER_05: I mean, we've still decided to go in and stay here for all the reasons that you said.
2:56:29
SPEAKER_05: And I think the state can be saved and it's the state worth worth saving.
2:56:33
SPEAKER_05: Um, is uh Senator Amy Clobichar going to be the person to do that?
2:56:36
SPEAKER_05: So, with that, um I so I saw the headline, the same headline that you did, uh, which is why I wanted to bring you in this morning.
2:56:42
SPEAKER_05: Um, because it wasn't the Minnesota reformer had it talking about her tax cutting uh health, her health uh plan that she wants to you know hike taxes and lower no costs.
2:56:52
SPEAKER_05: Uh I also saw this up on a couple of different outlets as well.
2:56:55
SPEAKER_05: So um Amy Klobuchar's idea, um, what is it and can she actually do this if she were elected as governor?
2:57:04
SPEAKER_32: Well, some background on this is that one of the you've we've got uh a problem with you know healthcare spending.
2:57:11
SPEAKER_32: It's across America.
2:57:12
SPEAKER_32: Sure.
2:57:12
SPEAKER_32: Um, it's happening in Minnesota as well.
2:57:15
SPEAKER_32: Um, and you've got these subsidies which are set to expire or are expiring.
2:57:21
SPEAKER_32: Um and apparently the the expiration of these subsidies is a crisis of the first economic order, we're told.
2:57:27
SPEAKER_32: Now, these subsidies, they go the long story of these subsidies is that the Affordable Care Act, it became very obvious very quickly, it was not going to provide affordable care.
2:57:38
SPEAKER_32: So these subsidies were voted in.
2:57:40
SPEAKER_32: So people could use these subsidies that will help them buy healthcare policies in the marketplace.
2:57:46
SPEAKER_32: The Inflation Reduction Act in 2021, so these subsidies are not that old, they're five years old.
2:57:52
SPEAKER_32: Uh these subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act were expanded and eligibility was expanded.
2:57:57
SPEAKER_32: So people on much higher incomes were now eligible for these subsidies as well.
2:58:01
SPEAKER_32: Just as a quick thing, the inflation, just as the same as the Affordable Care Act did not provide affordable care, the Inflation Reduction Act did not reduce inflation.
2:58:10
SPEAKER_32: So if ever you want to know what these congressional bills do, look at what they say they do and think of the opposite.
2:58:17
SPEAKER_32: Okay.
2:58:17
SPEAKER_32: So the inflation reduction reduction acts massively expanded these credits to uh include all sorts of people on higher incomes which had never been covered before.
2:58:27
SPEAKER_32: Uh when these subsidies were put in place, these tax credits, they were voted for specifically, and you can look at the legislation to expire in 2025.
2:58:38
SPEAKER_32: It was understood these were temporary expansions.
2:58:41
SPEAKER_32: And that was voted for by Senator Amy Klobishaw and Senator Tinian Smith.
2:58:46
SPEAKER_32: Not one single Republican voted for that bill that established these subsidies with an expiration date of 2025.
2:58:54
SPEAKER_32: So when Senator Clobisha now says, Oh, it's terrible that these bills are that these tax credits are going to expire, that's what you voted for back in 2021.
2:59:03
SPEAKER_32: Specifically, it's right there in the bill you voted for.
2:59:06
SPEAKER_32: And so the plan now is that if these federal tax credits expire, these federal subsidies, that we will enact some kind of state version.
2:59:15
SPEAKER_32: Um the problem is, and and I wrote in the article, I think perhaps Senator Clobichau has been in DC too long.
2:59:22
SPEAKER_32: Uh when she went to DC in 2007, the federal budget deficit was something like$9 trillion.
2:59:28
SPEAKER_32: Uh, it's now up over$37 trillion.
2:59:31
SPEAKER_32: And she seems to have the mindset that we can just throw money at this problem and not really worry about where it comes from because the Treasury will finance it with borrowing or the Federal Reserve will finance it with money printing.
2:59:43
SPEAKER_32: When you're in the state government, you can't do that.
2:59:45
SPEAKER_32: And she needs to learn that quick because you have to balance the budget.
2:59:49
SPEAKER_32: So if you're gonna start throwing all this money at tax credits, you've got to find that money somewhere.
2:59:53
SPEAKER_32: Yeah.
2:59:53
SPEAKER_32: Where's it gonna come from?
2:59:55
SPEAKER_32: The reporter article, which is actually very good, says that she's gonna find it with efficiency savings.
3:00:00
SPEAKER_32: You know, I mean, if government can be massively more efficient, why not just do that now?
3:00:04
SPEAKER_32: Right?
3:00:04
SPEAKER_32: Right.
3:00:05
SPEAKER_32: I mean, I I I'm always being told by politicians we're gonna pay for all this new stuff.
3:00:09
SPEAKER_32: We don't need to raise your taxes, but just be more efficient.
3:00:11
SPEAKER_32: Just be more efficient.
3:00:12
SPEAKER_32: Yeah.
3:00:13
SPEAKER_32: Right?
3:00:13
SPEAKER_32: Yeah.
3:00:13
SPEAKER_05: And so stopping you.
3:00:15
SPEAKER_32: Exactly.
3:00:15
SPEAKER_32: Um, and I look, I I think government is inefficient.
3:00:19
SPEAKER_32: I I don't think that's because it's run particularly badly.
3:00:22
SPEAKER_32: I think it's just the nature of the beast.
3:00:24
SPEAKER_32: So I'm very, very skeptical that you will generate very much in terms of efficiency savings.
3:00:29
SPEAKER_32: I think it's kind of, you know, this it's a bit like the magic money tree.
3:00:35
SPEAKER_32: Um, you know, in the same way, and and in fairness, the way people on the right very often say, you know, we're gonna cut everyone's taxes, we won't cut spending because economic growth will take off.
3:00:44
SPEAKER_32: Maybe.
3:00:44
SPEAKER_32: All right.
3:00:45
SPEAKER_32: I'm I'm I'm actually a bit of a fan of static scoring.
3:00:48
SPEAKER_32: Um, and I think we've got to stop appealing to these money trees, you know.
3:00:52
SPEAKER_32: You've got to balance a state budget, it's not like the federal budget.
3:00:55
SPEAKER_32: You've got to balance a state budget.
3:00:57
SPEAKER_32: And so when we talk about these tax credits, you're talking about tax hikes.
3:01:01
SPEAKER_32: Simple as that.
3:01:02
SPEAKER_32: Yeah.
3:01:02
SPEAKER_32: And the thing is, when you start throwing money at these issues, you're not lowering the cost.
3:01:07
SPEAKER_32: You're not lowering the price.
3:01:08
SPEAKER_32: You're just transferring that cost to the taxpayer.
3:01:11
SPEAKER_32: So that's why I wrote that Senator Klobichar's plan.
3:01:14
SPEAKER_32: It will lower no costs, it will lower no prices.
3:01:17
SPEAKER_32: All it will do is transfer those costs to the Minnesota taxpayer and hike their taxes.
3:01:23
SPEAKER_05: Do you think it's uh do you think they're just banking on the fact that there won't be a lot of a lot of opposition to you mentioned the Minnesota Reformer article did a decent job of sort of covering this.
3:01:32
SPEAKER_05: I mean, did they go so far as to what you what you said?
3:01:36
SPEAKER_05: And if she's proposing this, I mean, do you think she's just banking on not getting a lot of pushback on it?
3:01:40
SPEAKER_05: Or in speculation territory, but I'm curious your thoughts.
3:01:42
SPEAKER_32: I think she went about I think the the reformer went about as far as it reasonably could.
3:01:46
SPEAKER_32: I thought it was a good piece.
3:01:47
SPEAKER_32: But I I think to some extent, and I see people on social media, you know, DFL-aligned people, uh saying, you know, oh, Amy Klobishaw's released another plan, she's released another plan that shows how, you know, serious a candidate she is.
3:02:00
SPEAKER_32: I mean, you know, look, if plans won wars, you know, Hitler would have captured London in 1940, right?
3:02:08
SPEAKER_32: Having a plan doesn't have a plan doesn't mean it's a good plan.
3:02:11
SPEAKER_32: And this plan, you I mean, Amy Klobishaw can now point to this health plan and say, hey, look, I've got a plan, but it's it's rubbish.
3:02:18
SPEAKER_32: I mean, it's nonsense, it's just a tax hike.
3:02:20
SPEAKER_32: You know, and I don't I I don't know that she maybe she will get away with that because the state's media is how it is.
3:02:28
SPEAKER_32: Um and you've seen that the last couple of years, that Minnesotans, Minnesota Democrats like Tim Waltz, Ken Martin, who have been promoted to the national level, have kind of flamed out because they don't have that firewall of media protection anymore.
3:02:44
SPEAKER_32: Um and so the Minnesota model is not really reproducible at the at the national level.
3:02:49
SPEAKER_32: And I think if you look at Amy Klobisha, she's coming the other way.
3:02:53
SPEAKER_32: Um so maybe it will work a bit for her.
3:02:55
SPEAKER_32: I don't know.
3:02:55
SPEAKER_32: I mean, the the the local media, there are still questions that Keith Ellison has about pardoning a child rapist, right?
3:03:01
SPEAKER_32: Which, as far as I can see, the local media have not followed up on.
3:03:04
SPEAKER_32: Now that issue is just kind of oh, it's all gone now.
3:03:07
SPEAKER_32: Yesterday's news.
3:03:08
SPEAKER_32: But of course it's yesterday's news if you stop reporting that.
3:03:10
SPEAKER_05: Well, and with Amy Klobuchar, too, you're absolutely right.
3:03:12
SPEAKER_05: It's kind of an interesting dynamic, and I completely agree with you when you've seen those individuals get elevated to the national stage.
3:03:18
SPEAKER_05: As you, you know, as you mentioned, you're right.
3:03:20
SPEAKER_05: They flame out.
3:03:21
SPEAKER_05: What's interesting about Amy Clobishar too is I think there's also, while she is heading the other direction, she also doesn't hasn't done a lot publicly, you know, and now she's gonna have to.
3:03:30
SPEAKER_05: And in my view, she doesn't play uh very well, you know, on the, you know, in in the interviews, you know, up on stage.
3:03:38
SPEAKER_05: So we'll see how she actually ends up doing because I think she also has her own difficulties based on the fact that, you know, she's made herself a bit sparse when it comes to to media coverage.
3:03:47
SPEAKER_05: And now she's not gonna be able to do that.
3:03:49
SPEAKER_05: She was up until the primary, but now we're into the general, we're all gonna have to endure her commentary and her ideas, poor or not.
3:03:56
SPEAKER_05: So uh John Phelan, policy fellow here at American Experiment, really enjoyed the conversation.
3:04:01
SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much for coming in uh early.
3:04:02
SPEAKER_05: I encourage everybody to head on over to AmericanExperiment.org and check out John's uh writings.
3:04:07
SPEAKER_05: Uh, anything uh you'd like to say before I cut you loose and let you get to uh to work this morning?
3:04:11
SPEAKER_32: Um just that I've enjoyed being on here enormously.
3:04:13
SPEAKER_32: I think it's uh wonderful having you here.
3:04:15
SPEAKER_32: It's um a real strength to the organization.
3:04:18
SPEAKER_32: And um yeah, I look forward to doing this again.
3:04:20
SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much.
3:04:21
SPEAKER_05: I appreciate the kind words.
3:04:22
SPEAKER_05: And uh and again, thanks for coming on this morning.
3:04:24
SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
3:04:24
SPEAKER_05: All right, listen, that wraps up the show uh for the uh for this morning.
3:04:27
SPEAKER_05: If you missed any portion of today's broadcast, you can check out the podcast.
3:04:30
SPEAKER_05: That'll be available shortly, as Devin will get to work on it as soon as we conclude things today.
3:04:35
SPEAKER_05: It'll be up on the MixLR app, also across all the major podcast uh platforms, and you can do a rewatch of the show live on Facebook and uh YouTube at Center of the American Experiment and also my personal uh Facebook pages as uh as well.
3:04:50
SPEAKER_05: Remember, head on over to AmericanExperiment.org, uh, support the John Justice show.
3:04:55
SPEAKER_05: Uh, you can make a donation, get an embroidered uh John Justice show hat.
3:04:58
SPEAKER_05: We also have logoed mugs available on the merchandises site and more merchandise uh coming very, very soon uh for uh for the show that I'm really um excited about.
3:05:08
SPEAKER_05: So I hope you have a fantastic uh rest of your day.
3:05:11
SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much for spending time with us this morning.
3:05:13
SPEAKER_05: If you want to reach out between now and tomorrow morning, you can do so.
3:05:16
SPEAKER_05: John.justice at americanexperiment uh.org, or you can leave a blast overnight on 612-584-4565, 612-584-4565.
3:05:27
SPEAKER_05: And to everybody who's left comments in the middle of uh my conversation with uh John Phelan, um, be listening tomorrow morning starting at 6 a.m.
3:05:35
SPEAKER_05: We'll play some of those uh back and do a bit of a recap of of our um of our discussion.
3:05:40
SPEAKER_05: So be sure you're listening in early tomorrow.
3:05:43
SPEAKER_05: Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday.
3:05:45
SPEAKER_05: Uh God bless, and I'll talk to you guys on uh Wednesday morning.
3:05:48
SPEAKER_05: Bye.