07-10-25 FULL SHOW - Barb Kirkmeyer Joins To Talk Budgets and Special Session

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And Connall.

On KOA ninety one FM.

S got Way the Noisy through three, Thy Connell, Keithing sad Thing.

Welcome, Local, Welcome to a Thursday edition of the show.

The Gang is Back Together.

Anthony Rodriguez has returned from his wild weekend in Vegas. More on that in a bit, because I want to hear how summer vacation went. And in the meantime, we have a lot of stuff on the blog today and we're going to talk to Senator Bob Barb Kirkmeyer almost made her a dude, Senator Barb Kirkmeyer today one. And there are so much stuff going on in Colorado right now that is none of it's going.

To be good.

I'm just letting you know, not a bit. We're gonna have a special session. We're gonna talk to Barb about the budget. She has been on the budget Committee. I don't know how many years she's been on it. The boys as she's been sounding the alarm for the longest time about all the overspending that's happening in Colorado. And now the chickens have come home to roost financially, and Colorado's in a pickle. Denver's in a pickle. So it is uh, it's gonna be a good conversation. Let's do

I think it was in office half of American all with ships and clippas say that's going to press plant.

Today.

On the blog, Senator Barb Kirkmeyer knows Colorado's budget and more.

Kyle Clarks she.

Lacks Doug co commissioners about that no tax on overtime?

A Brint?

What's saying on just Brent notices what freedom does for people? That time Grock went full neo Nazi. Can teach us about AI's limitations. Paul McCartney is coming to course Field the Salvation Army new Doors. We're a danger. Biden's Army is a bart. Biden's doctor is in a horrible position. Your good news story of the day. Another example of the garbage job, former Aurora PD chief Vanessa Wilson did planned parenthood drops Medicaid patients.

How much debt do you have?

When do the provisions of the big beautiful bill go into effect? Electric vehicles are not ready for road trips. Trust the science? Oh no, not that science. How often should you wash your sheets? Could there be peace between Syria and Israel? This may be too pricey even for James Bond. The excessive influencer shower routines are just that, how to get people to talk without them realizing it. Now AI is making keyboards.

This would be an er trip for me.

Chuck e cheese is coming for adults. A lazy river might be just what the Rocky need. Comedian Chris Robinson says he's out A rod asked AI about the Broncos. Those are the headlines on the blog at mandy'sblog dot com Tech two Oh winn. Thanks Nancy A Ron. I got to ask you about this robot thing. I got to ask you about this. What What is Aura? The robot at just their AI robot.

They've got this high tech, really top notch apparently robot that what.

Does she do? Does she do anything otherm than just stand there?

No, just stand there and talk to everyone that comes around. It was like a full group of people that were around there. I just happened to get in at the right time to be able to ask a question.

Now, did you ask her?

Well?

I was quickly turned away from my first question because apparently they do not let After thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense because they could be really bad.

I not allowed, not allowed to make predictions.

You're a gambling town, do not make predictions?

Yes, While it was, I mean, and maybe it's not just sports, they flat out told me because they have handlers.

So the robot Wait, how do you get that gig?

I had a handler?

I don't know, Like, I mean, what does that guy get paid?

Well, it was this one lady standing around with the microphone and going around the group of people there looking for questions for Aura, and she just flat out said she doesn't.

We don't have her make predictions.

My first one, which was what are the Bronco Super Bowl chances in twenty twenty five?

Wasn't allowed to ask that?

Okay, so respectfully, as cool as Aura was, it's kind of just a BONI fide Google search.

Yeah, yeah, not a whole lot there. It was cool. I mean it said my name, So that's cool.

I guess did you go to the Sphere for an event or did you just go?

I went to the official Postcard from Earth, like official Sphere Experience show, and that is one of the coolest things I've ever gotten to do.

Oh my god, one single person say anything other than what you just said about this.

The Sphere Experience was stupidly mind blowing, Like I could not fathom, like the amount of money put into the amount of screens, and my wife and I kept saying, you know, the cameras that they had to use to shoot the footage that was seen in this show.

I mean, it was mind boggling.

Well, so I know that you do a show like like when you two did their show, it cost them, like I don't know, like seven million dollars.

Just to produce it.

So the Spirit itself cost two point three billion dollars to build.

I'm literally looking at right now because we were curious about this. I never looked it up. How long will the Sphere be in the red financially?

Oh wow?

Of course, no clear cut answer, maybe or would answer that probably not because they probably don't want to know how badly they are doing financially. But that wasn't cheap to put that thing together. Like you said, how much two billion, two.

Point three billion.

It's the most expensive entertainment venue in the world.

I will say, I'm really glad we did that experience and didn't wait around or go to Vegas during a certain time during a concert, because I don't think I would like a concert there. I don't think money have because you the stage is so far down at the bottom, and there's no way that what they could do could ever distract or match the experience on the giant city.

Imagine having the band on the screen. Everybody that I know that seen a show there said it was the most incredible thing.

They had ever seen in their lives.

Up there though, because I heard that they do a show like on the on the screen, the.

Mix of things, so you see the band, do you see them integrated with the background.

The footage of the band actually being put up for display like on the screens I've just seen. Basically, Hey, the band's playing, also the show's going on at the same time. That's the vibe that I've gotten from the small amount of videos I've seen.

Well, the U two's concert that they did, they watched the show with the Sphere. It cost him ten million dollars four hundred thousand dollars per song to do the background graphics. So the UFC show at the Sphere has a twenty million dollar budget. So it's just it's it's I've got to go. I'm I've got to go see my mom.

My mom lives in me.

I want to go see my mom. I might make the trip to go see it.

Then here's the answer.

The Sphere in Vegas has faced significant operating losses since its opening in September twenty twenty three, with reports indicating a total operating loss of one point one point eight billion since mid twenty twenty two.

Wow, they in the first.

Three months of operation they generated only and I say only compared to that number. They generate only one hundred and sixty seven point eight million in revenue, but operating expenses totally sixty seven point three So in that first three months they made one hundred and sixty seven million. But you just say it costs two billion to may three.

Billion, and the operating expenses are a million a day. This texter said, Mandy, we just booked a weekend in Vegas just to see the Wizard of Oz at the Sphere, looking forward to it. That is going to cost eighty million dollars promoting the hell a million just.

To produce that.

Well, they get quite a bit of money from the ads that display on the outside. And I would say half the time we were looking at it, they were displaying the Wizard of Oz promo, right, So that person's gonna be very happy because they're putting all into that one.

Well, this person said, no, the band was super close on the screen.

I could see the pits on their face.

But that that postcard from Earth. Their their their.

Feature experience show that you can see. Oh my god, Seriously, you have to if you are going to Vegas anytime. Listeners, anytime in the future, you if you have not gone to the Sphere, you have to go to the show.

Oh well, they're.

Building another one. I think in Paris somewhere or something like that.

They're building one specially much longer.

But here's the thing, though, everyone they build, they're going to be able to build a little bit cheaper, right as the efficiencies and they figure out the tech and things like that, so they won't be that bad. Somebody said, Mandy, where can I find the blog? Guess what someone did, Anthony, what they do? Someone bought Randy Cromwell dot com and redirected it.

To my blog. Yeah, like I hear that.

You made me laugh so hard, so hard, So thank you for that.

This person said, I went to two Dead in Company shows at the Sphere, and I've never experienced anything like that in my life.

But they do say if you have vertigo, don't go.

You know what, I never ever, ever, ever really ever get motion sickness with anything. Yeah, I was the only one in our group of eleven that did not particularly feel great for about ten minutes after the show.

Wow, we were walking down.

We were way up top, which I recommend, by the way, cheapest seats are the best seeds all the way at the top because you need to be able to not crank your head around too much to see it right. Even with that, And this was the postcard from Earth Show. Not a LSD kind of feeling concert. This was a it's going all around different parts of the globe showing these amazing high definition shots from different parts of the Earth, animal life, everything, even after that, which was I would

It's subsided.

After they have decompression rooms where you can kind of step out of your seating area, and then they have literally like rooms when you get over stimulated.

Yeah, you can go.

One of the things I said was, I don't know if I'd want to see a concert here because I'm already not feeling particularly great.

Well, and that never happens to me.

As I said, I I've probably I've probably talked to thirty people at this point that have gone to the show, including my brother and sister in law who live in Las Vegas.

And have seen everything.

They have literally seen every great show in Las Vegas, and they said, there is nothing like the sphere, absolutely incredible.

You know, we go to Vegas all the time.

We're closing in on I mean we we literally did not find a show we wanted to see yesterday because we're like, nothing speaks to us. We've seen all the big ones, We've seen all the great ones. Let's just chill.

Does anybody have a residency going on right now in the summer.

Kelly Clarkson was supposed to good thing. We were it's schedule to see her because she canceled her first couple days. She's getting back at it. But most of the shows that are immaculate, but Sphere and ironically the other one we saw, which is the Awakening at the Win, two of the best shows we've ever seen in all of our double digit amount of shows.

When that's probably my favorite YU.

I love this Here and Awakening we just happened to see on the same trip too. Probably the best shows we've seen. Sphere by far is number one. How much did it cost? Somebody asked, how much did the show you went to? You got the cheap seats? What did you guys pay? One hundred bucks ahead, so that's the cheap seat. Yeah, maybeybe it's like one hundred and twenty.

Yeah, but there's so bad seats, so there we go.

No, I would say, I would say the lower level, more expensive ones.

I would not have liked to sit there.

I saw those people way down there, what they probably had to do to experience it all from the point of view we had, I would have much rather kept the cheap ones. We got so cheapest ones all the way back. You will not be disappointed, all right, So that.

Is your Sphere review.

Someone else asked on the text line Mandy Vegas in July, why didn't a Rod just vacation on the sun.

What was it like?

One hundred the highest th guy was one hundred and eight. It was fantasm. That's not bad, No, it's good. And Vegas does it right if they want to keep you in those casinos, you're not outside more than ten minutes at a time between between you.

Did you do any cool pull time?

Though?

We didn't know pull time this time. Other people in our party did. But we we had everything's going on all right, like winning a lot of money in slots and winning nothing and going negative by a lotting craps for the first time ever. The Vegas God said, a Rod middle finger to you, because I had told people for years and it had been the case that we do not lose in craps. We either win or break

So we're we're in the red total.

Just a bit that Texter said Mandy, I'm sure this spear is cool. But what happened to day when we went to see the band and they were the entertainment.

I think there's space for both.

Like there are certain bands that I love to go watch that are not exciting to watch because I just enjoy them. Steely Dan is one of those. All go see them all day long at Redrocks. Love the band, but if you can also create a wonderful show.

One of the best concerts.

I ever saw in my entire life was the last tour where Pink Floyd with Roger Waters, who I didn't realize was such an anti Semite at the time, did this incredible stage show of the Wall and it was a visual spectacle along with the music, and it's just different. It's just different. I think there's space for both of these things. I don't hate on the sphere. I can't wait to go myself. So I'm glad you had a good time, Anthony. We're glad you're back.

Today.

At one o'clock, we've got State Senator Barb Kirkmeyer coming up. You guys may not know this, but Colorado is headed for another special session because I don't know, our lawmakers cannot get their works done in a timely fashion. And we're going to talk to her about that, about the overall Colorado budget because she knows where all I mean, she knows the budget inside and out. So we're gonna

Or am I just going old?

But Kyle Clark did an absolute scorcher on the Douglas County Commissioner clown Show.

Now what clown show am I talking about? This time?

I'm talking about the most recent clown show, which I almost can't even talk about without laughing because.

It's so stupid.

When Coloraden's or excuse me, Douglas Countians, Douglassians.

What do we call ourselves? I don't know.

Jefferson County, You're Jeffersonians, Douglas, Douglas, I don't know. Anyway, they just shot down the home rule that was trying to be shoved through by the county commissioners. And as part of his campaigning for this home rule situation, which again I'm not opposed to, I just didn't like the way they were trying to shut it down.

Everybody's throat.

George Steel said on a different radio show that the people working against it were funded by the Chinese Communist government. Now, the absolute absurdity of that statement is it's just absurd on the face of it, Like, what in the world does the Chinese government give a rats pe tuity about Douglas County, Colorado. Of all the things in the world that the Chinese Communists could go after, I can assure you that Douglas County, Colorado isn't even on their radar.

And yet, not only.

Did he say that, he said it again, and he said it now they're trying to spin it a different way, but he said it because one of the biggest funders of the opposition, which was not well funded at all and still managed to be extremely successful. Is a woman, an American citizen of Japanese descent, And I guess to George, you know, all them people from Asia, they all looked the saying they're all they all look the same, they're all communists.

Ah, I don't know.

So after proving himself a fool by opening his mouth and you know the old saying, it's better to be thought a fool than open up your mouth and prove it, right, I mean that's he opened up his mouth and uh yeah,

I was wrong.

It was a silly thing to say. I apologize for anybody whose feelings I hurt. Do you realize that little bit that I just said could stop this in its tracks. Hey, you know I got out over my skis. I just conflated these two things. Was it was a silly thing to say, he can't do that. And in Monday's County Commission meeting, a bunch of citizens showed up and they were ticked, and George once again proved that he is a pompous a hole.

He made fun of them. He let's see, as.

He was walking out of the room, he was waving his finger at them as they were waving their feet. It was just so juvenile. That's what I'm looking for. And Kyle covered it beautifully. I'm not going to play it, but you can go to the website and watch it.

I embedded it in there.

But it's just, you know, in theory, I am on the right with the same people like these are my people, right, I should align with them more closely, except I don't like people who abuse their power. And I don't care or what party they're in. I don't like it when democrats abuse their power. Later on, when we talked to Barb Kirkmeyer, We're going to talk about how the Colorado legislature preemptively eliminated the tax break that people were about

My question is how much more do.

Things have to cost in Colorado before people start saying, wait a minute, it's not this expensive in other places. I just did a little experiment when I was in Ohio. I price check stuff. When I get back, I'll tell you what I found. I have the joke of the day on the text line, Anthony, are you ready?

Are you ready for this?

You may have heard in the blog today Paul McCartney, Sir Paul McCartney is coming to Coursefield in October, and a Texter sent this, Wow.

Paul McCartney coming to course Field.

There'll be more hits that night than the Rockies have all season.

And I can't say that's wrong. I really can't.

I heard kaa sports talking about the Rockies yesterday, and.

Rick Lewis was on and Rick because look, I've watched.

More Rockies games this year than I have in a long time. That's just a bad baseball team.

And he's right.

I will offer up this contribution to this conversation, please uh in one of the bigger sports books on the strip.

Yeah, mind you.

The Rockies were playing the very very popular Boston red Rod. I had to find like the smallest screen on the giant wall to find that game, and they were playing.

The Red Sox.

Yeah so all right, oh, just in time to see Trevor's story, you know, not on.

Yeah right anyway, moving on, So I was in Ohio this past weekend visiting the grandkids, which, by the way, if your kids are in the teen years, grandkids are.

Your reward for what you're going through now.

And actually, you know a lot of young people say they're not going to have kids, and I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna be those people. Is like you have to have kids, because you really don't have to have kids. But I will tell you this, having children is the greatest joy of my life, whether I burst them or not. Right like, I have two technically they're my step sons. I don't view them that way. I mean it's just been the greatest thing I've ever experienced.

Just looking at stuff.

When we're in this door, I'm like, oh, how much does a dozen of a dozen eggs cost?

Here?

Let me see what is a dozen eggs that cost? I don't know, three eighty nine just for a basic dozen eggs in Colorado?

Oh to seventy nine? You tell me what does gas cost?

Oh?

Wait, is that two forty nine? I'm seeing yes.

So then when I got home, I looked up a cost of living comparison between Ohio and Colorado, and I will not lie when I will tell you I was more shocked than I thought.

I would be.

Listen to some of this Colorado overall. No, I'm gonna save that number for the end. I'm gonna give you some different stuff childcare. By the way, there is no category where things are more expensive in Ohio than they are in Colorado. And I'm not advocating everybody moved to Ohio. I mean, Ohio is gray for like six months in the winter. There's you know, there's issues there that Colorado clearly is superior. This isn't a standard living or delight

I was just there. Okay, just want to clear that up.

When you go to a restaurant in Colorado, you pay twenty one point nine percent more than you pay in Colorado. When you buy groceries, you pay nine point five percent more in Colorado. When you're paying for transportation, that's eight point eight percent more or in Colorado.

Would you buy clothing, now.

That you think clothing, how can clothing be more expensive?

Right? But when you buy clothing you pay twelve point eight percent more in Colorado.

When you go to see sports or entertainment, you're gonna pay twenty point two percent more in Colorado. When you have to use childcare, you're gonna pay twenty three point four percent more in Colorado. And here's the real kick in the teeth you guys, Anthony guests. Guess how much more housing costs in Colorado percentage wise than it does in Ohio.

Just take a guess.

Thirty eight percent.

You're so close, but you're too low. Forty two point two percent, y'all. I found houses three bedroom, two and a half bath. It's not not like super fans. You're anything but did a really nice neighborhood for two hundred and eighty five thousand dollars?

How much square feet?

Like nineteen hundred two thousand, roughly two hundred and what two hundred and ninety seven thousand. I found some for two seventy nine. And these are in nice neighborhoods. These are not, like you know, in places you wouldn't want to live. The cost of living in Colorado is so insane, but because we're in it all the time, we've just absorbed it over the years. There's an article in Politico that a listener sent me out. I already read it,

Other states blue.

And I'm thinking to myself, have they not paid attention to what the Democrats have done.

Two our state.

Every single thing that they have laid their fingers on in under the guise of we're going to make it more affordable, they have just made it more expensive. They have layered on just layers and layers of regulation that have made every single aspect of our lives ridiculously more expensive, and they show no signs of stopping. He needs some perspective, do a little traveling. By the way, the overall number, Colorado is nineteen point eight percent more expensive than Ohio.

And all.

I would say a vast majority of this is directly related to government policy.

You want to know why our eggs are so expensive because we have to have cage free eggs. Do you want to know our gas is so expensive?

Well, they've done everything they can to make the oil and gas business go out of business here in Colorado. What about childcare, Well, all of the new licensing requirements that they put on under the guise of protecting children have just made childcare unaffordable. Restaurants, we all know why restaurants are so expensive. You've got an outrageous wage, You've got food costs that are still out of control.

It's just it's sad. It's so sad.

And in any case, I'm not gonna dwell on that, not at all, not even a little bit, not even for a minute. But I do want to share this. I saw this yesterday on Twitter and I loved it so much. It's on the blog today. This from a guy from the UK, the United Kingdom. He's a British guy. I believe he said this. This is what he said in First of all, I saw it. He has this beautiful picture of him in Colorado.

Lovely picture.

If I'm not mistaken. He's a garden of the gods. Perhaps, Yeah, that's what it looks like to me. He wrote this on his X feet. We were in Colorado last week and I was struck by what is now an enormous disparity in wealth between the US and the UK. Spent a couple of nights in a cabin at an RV park. It had pools, slides, mini golf, et cetera. Fund for the kids, but the place was packed with RVs worth hundreds of thousands of Not only that, but it's clearly a conservative form of vacation.

So the average car on the site was a pickup truck.

These were almost universally less than a couple of years old and worth at least sixty to eighty k if not more. I could drive you to the Poshus place in Northern Ireland and though you'd see the occasional high end vehicle, the average car there would probably cost half as much as these. And then I was talking to someone and they said, yeah, this is the most this is the most typical middle class American summer getaway middle class.

Sad times for us.

Kudos to America for resisting the socialism that has ground our economy to a halt. When you see stuff like this, when you see posts, if you're not on x, if you share it, share it far and wide, Sure.

Everybody sees it.

Because this this like burgeoning bubbling of socialism that's that's coming up as younger people are struggling in this country. And they are struggling, I'm not gonna sit here and say, you.

Know, if they just gave up their off a cono toast.

They would be fun.

It's they're living in an environment that none of us came up in. You know, we were talking about college costs yesterday and you guys are emailing my first semester costs seventy seven dollars. What that that is so beyond I mean, we're looking at colleges right now for my daughter. I'm looking and the first thing I look at is the overall cost of the college, right that's the first thing I check.

How much does the school cost? And there are schools that, with a.

Straight face, the tuition for an annual tuition is fifty thousand dollars. And these are not ivy League schools. It's insane what college casts now.

And that's a year one year. It's one of the reasons she's.

Looking to go to school in Europe because in Europe they subsidize our colleges so they're cheap, but even for foreigners. At what point do we sort of realize that we've created these monsters using third party payers and we've got to walk it back or nobody's going to be able to afford anything. If you want grandkids, this should concern you because your kids can't afford to have kids. That's the problem, and it's a big problem. We better figure

So I went to the.

Google machine and put in wages in Colorado versus Ohio. Colorado's wages are slightly higher. They run about four percent higher in Colorado than they do in Ohio. So we have nineteen point eight percent higher cost of living four percent higher average income. So you know, do the math on that. They do have a much lower minimum wage, which is why restaurants are still affordable.

So yeah, and somebody said, if you work.

At McDonald's, you make like ten dollars there versus eighteen bucks an hour, but everything else is so much more expensive that it eats up the extra money. I'm just saying, Mandy, what pill or drink is very effective to fall asleep? I feel like this is planted because I am now entering into a relationship with Blue Sky CBD.

Dave Logan has endorsed them for years.

Greg the owner of the company, heard me when I was having my terrible readjustment coming back from Japan, and I just was not sleeping at all, and he sent me some Blue Sky CBD sleep cells and they do not have THHC in them at all. They're not at all psycho active in that way. They're just CBD and CBN and holy crap, you guys, those things are amazing.

I took them for like two nights and it completely took.

Care of my of my think And by the way, I'll be entering, as I said, I'm maybe doing ads for them. That's how much I love them. I've been sending Greg my sleep scores for my watch, like, hey man, I've never gone over ninety before and I got a ninety four sleep score on my watch. If you don't have a fitness trector, you have no idea what I'm talking about. But that has been just an absolute game changer for me. And if you use the promo code Mandy,

That you have to be.

The right kind of person to go to School of Minds, meaning you have to have that hard science engineering sort of interest. A friend of mine, the way Neogiese Son is actually going to Minds right now because he's like a math genius. Not all kids are math geniuses, are engineeringly minded. And just look at what you just did. Twenty two thousand dollars per year. That's now considered affordable for college and for the person who just sent me

For that is coming weekend.

I don't know.

I have to talk to Shock.

Yeah, you have.

You have two people you must invite, seeing as how one of them just messaged me saying when is Mandy doing this open now?

And their last name might be Rodriguez.

I'll let your mom, Yeah, I'll let your mom.

Go that field trip. So better be at least exclusive.

I reached out to Bojangles directly multiple times. And said, hey, this would be really fun. You know, we could do a field trip. We just need to sponsor it so we can give and they never responded, and that made me kind of mad.

But their chicken is still delicious, still absolutely delicious.

All Right, you guys, this has been this last segment kind of went all over the place. When we get back, though, we are going to be focus like a laser on Colorado's budget, the legislature, and the upcoming special session. Yes, we've got a special session that is probably going to

Seventy five a day.

I worked out the math, okay, because I've heard this before. The reality is that for me, I would pay five dollars a day to be able to sleep this well. And you can get a little starter pack that costs twenty bucks to find out if they work for you. I all day long, I would recommend these. I don't care how much they cost. When something works really, really well for you, when you don't sleep well, and then all of a sudden it helps you sleep well, you

The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock Accident and Injury Lawyers.

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KOAM ninety one, FMA, God.

Sat and the Nicety Us through three, Andy Connal, Keithy, No sad Thing.

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the second hour of the show.

I'm your host, Mandy Connell. That guy over there back from.

His vacation is Anthony Rodriguez.

And you when you me in the studio right now for the first time, she's never been in our digs before. I'm kind of excited to have you on the show. State Senator Barb Kirkmeyer. First of all, welcome in.

Thank you, thanks for having me. This is great.

Yeah, you were confused by the deeply blood red lobby, iron media, redecorated, and one to call a mix of hospital meets whorehouse.

That's oh my god. Yeah, that's just me. I mean that's how I view it.

First of all, Barb, how long have you been working on budgets in Colorado?

Well, I was a county commissioner, so I had twenty years as a county commissioner on and off, and then I also worked for Governor Bill Owens and his cabinet, and I did the budget portion of it for the Department of Local Affairs, so pretty much about thirty years.

I have different budgets all the way through.

I'm not sure there's somebody in the legislature who has more budgetary experience than you do.

Probably not.

I would say no at this point because I've been on the Joint Budget Committee then for the state, which the Joint Budget Committee, we're the people who write the budget for the State of Colorado. There are six of us, and I just finished my third year being you know, third session of being on the Joint Budget Committee.

What are some of the things that you've seen happen over the thirty years that you have been paying attention to and working on budgets in Colorado.

So I'm amazed, especially at our budget right now in

Yeah, other people, the favored ones as I like to call them.

After the legislative session, we're facing a special session.

What is that about.

I think it's going to be about the Democrats are looking at how to blame Trump for our tax, our tax and spend issues that we have here in this state, and the budget deficit that we have, you know, so if they can't blame Tabor, they want to try and blame Trump when they should actually just blame themselves.

So what is the issue with our tax and spend? What have we done over the last few years? And when did it really ratchet up in your view, that we just started spending like drunken monkeys, although I hate to disparage drunken monkeys.

Yeah, those four monkeys, Yeah, exactly.

So I would say when it was first at least brought to my attention and going back and researching this March of twenty twenty one, we knew we were in what's called a structural deficit.

So it's not like we're just overspending.

We have continued to overspend year over year over year, and it's messing with the structure of our budget.

And so it really happened with.

All of those dollars that came in from the federal government during COVID, you know, the American Rescue Planned dollars.

I mean, we're attacking billions that came in.

Some went directly to the governor and to his departments like the Department of Education, Department of Human Services, Department of health Care Policy and Finance, Department of Health, and Public Environment.

They all got direct distributions.

There were counties, the five top counties in the state, you know, most populated counties in the state, they got a direct distribution.

So there were moneies that went there.

And then there were moneies that were appropriated through the legislative branch, through the Joint Budget Committee and the General Assembly.

And those should have been thought of as one time funds.

That's what I was going to ask you.

So it sounds like they spent those moneys on recurring expenses and now that money's gone. Is that kind of the long and short of it that That's what I say.

But my Democrat colleagues on the Joint Budget Committee say, oh no, no, that's not it. But I mean you can point to we created new departments, new offices, the Behavior Health Administration. I mean, they've had over a billion dollars in funding from you know, we call them ARPA funds American Rescue Funds, And I'm like, well, what's our return on investment?

Like what have we done?

You know, I mean, I'm not arguing that we don't have a behavior health you know, crisis, at least at one point in our state.

But what have we done? Where's our return on investment?

Like, what's the outcomes from all that money that's been spent? And and keep in mind, we created the Behavior Health Administration almost it's like a pseudo department. We couldn't create another department because we can only have twenty buyer constitution, but we created like another administration that acts. They've got a cabinet member. I mean, they're they're administrative director.

Okay, yeah, if you just hit me with something that is so frustrating. Yes, the Colorado Democrats have shown again and again and again an absolute disregard for the letter of the law. And they if they've created another department without creating a department because they're constitutionally prohibited by doing it.

But it looks like a department, and it walks like a department. It's a department. How what recourse does a person like me have?

I mean, because the Colorado Supreme Court is full of idiots, you don't have to comment on that. That's my opinion. They're going to just rubber stamp anything that happens. There's like it's all out of control from stealing our tabor refunds. To redirect them to favored classes. There's so many things like that where they're basically like, oh, we see you Law, we see you Tabor, but we're going to go around you by calling everything a fee exactly.

And the only recourse we have as citizens is to vote them out. We've got a change who we're voting for, and we've got to get rid of this one party control that seriously, is that there is It's hard to have a check in balance when the House, the Senate, and the Governor's office are all controlled by Democrats.

Hopelessly control budget. I mean, people always get mad, they're like, why didn't a Republican And I'm like, they're so outnumbered that the fact that any Democrat gives lip service even to Republican needs is kind of remarkable because they don't have to.

It's hard.

You know, we're in the minority.

So but being on the Joint Budget Committee, it's actually probably the best place to be if you're going to be in the minority, because again six members three or from the House three or from the Senate, the majority party gets to pick two. So four Democrats two Republicans, but can't be a Joint Budget Committee bill unless all

So, you know what, we don't like things.

I mean last year in the twenty fourth session, they were going down this path where they thought they could just roll the two Republicans on the committee. About eleven o'clock at night, I said, I'm done. I'm going home. And they're like, well, we haven't closed the budget. And I said, well, I'm done. I'm going home. You've been disrespectful to me. I'm going home. And Representative Taggard, who's the other Republican, he's from Grant Junction.

And he's on the Joint Budget Committee. He got up and we both left.

There you go, and that's the only way you can flet we'll come back tomorrow.

Yeah, let's see how you feel tomorrow, like you know, and how are Yeah, I mean I got to call at six.

In the morning from the chair.

Okay, then making sure you're coming in life day.

Yeah, Like, well, what can we do to get everybody back to the table. It's like, well, first of all, you can be respectful, Like we weren't rolling you. I thought we were all working together, and then all of a sudden, you're just passing resolution or passing motions and increasing our budget and not even thinking about things, things that we thought we'd already voted on, and they're revoting on them and changing them around.

I said, that's just rude.

So yeah, you know, here's what I have to have now, and I had a list.

Oh good, yeah good, I'm proud of you, bar Nice.

Here, let's talk about Medicaid for a moment, because this has been the big boogeyman. This, apparently, based on what I'm seeing from national Democrats, is going to be the thing that they think they're finally got the thing, the hammer Trump with that they've been desperately searching for the thing.

That's what medicaid is designed for.

I don't know that they're actually going to roll it back, and I think it's really kind of I've been trying to follow it as best as I can, but I'm confused as well because the eligibility for medicaid to be on Medicaid, which is health insurance, right, the eligibility criteria are not really changing. The only thing that is changing is they're adding additional eligibility criteria for those able bodied.

Right, that's gonna be the additional criteria.

There's been I haven't seen anything, and I best you know, folks who implement medicaid, you know, at the local level, whether it's a health center or behavior health center or something of that nature, or county, like, did they change the Iljebilli requirements because I'm confused here, and the answer is no other than putting in a work requirement, which is no different than what happened during President Clinton, a Democrat who rechanged how we do welfare in the in

A job, right bart I interviewed a woman when I first got my show, So this is like two thousand and five, two thousand and six, and I was interviewing her about something else. She was working with an organization that I was talking to, and I had been talking before that about welfare reform just in general, and she came on the show to talk about this other thing and said, I was listening to what you said. This was in Southwest Florida. She said, I want to tell

Well, she got a job, and guess what happened.

She liked working, She had enjoyed it, she was good at it, she felt good about her and then when she got a promotion, she had to make the choice of giving up some of her welfare benefits to move up. And she chose to move up, and she said it was the greatest thing in my entire life.

And I thought that was like people like that.

No one talks about that, the success stories, And in all honesty, I think the vast majority of the people and I don't know, do we know the number of how many people in Colorado don't meet any of those requirements now, because the notion that everybody's going to be thrown off Medicaid is only accurate if none of these people are working.

Caring for a loved one, you know, in school, or any of that. So I who's going to actually get kicked off.

Here exactly, and so they're just supposing kind of thing. And I think the other thing is read the fine print. When we were at the Joint Budget Committee a couple of weeks ago and the Director of Office and State Planning Budget for the Governor, Director Farandino, was in, they're talking about the number of people who won't receive health

Ah.

But I mean it stands to reason, at some point, if we start kicking people off Medicaid because federal reimbursements drop, I would hope that they would prioritize citizens over non citizens.

That's just, in my mind, the way it should be.

And that's exactly how Medicaid is. So Medicaid is only for US citizens. Non citizens are not supposed to be on Medicaid. They are, that would be a problem. So it's and again, they aren't kicking anyone off the eligibility requirements, at.

Least as far as I understand it.

The eligibility requirements stay the same, with the exception of what is called the expansion population that happened during Obamacare.

In that part, that's what nobody talks about, right.

That's the able bodied individuals nineteen to sixty four with no dependents. Right, they're going to have to go work for eighty hours a month, so part time, volunteer, or.

Be in school.

I got to tell you I disagree with the expansion of Medicaid for a couple of reasons. One, it stretches the resources of the program that is designed for elderly people, for pregnant women, for extremely poor people and her children. So we've basically created a situation where wait times have gone up. There's a perverse incentive to see those healthy people because they get reimbursed at a higher rate, which

Our rural health care providers and what does that look like.

We need to look, we need to worry about all of our Medicaid providers. And in fact, for forever, our provider rate increase, you know, for you know, to pay them and reimburse them has never never worked with inflation. It's never increased at the same rate of inflation. So in the last year, and here's the thing that I just find so ironic and hypocritical that my Democrat colleagues, including the governor of this state have been chastising the federal government for cutting medicaid.

You want to know who cut medicaid, Governor Polus.

He came in in his budget request just even this year, but even last year, in the previous year. All three years that I have been on the Joint Budget Committee and seeing the governor's budget requests, he never increases the Medicaid.

Provider rate up to inflation.

Well, and Medicaid reimbursal rates are even lower than Medicare, which are lower, yes, than the rega market exactly exactly.

And so I mean my first year on the Joint Budget Committee, I fought like heck with Senator Zenzinger, who is a Democrat from Marvada, she's now a county commissioner, and we.

Got it up to three percent.

Right.

Last year I had it up to two and a half percent. So in the twenty four session, had it up to two and a half percent increase in a time when inflation was five percent, right, so we're underfunding it, right. I get it up to two and a half percent. In the final hours, we had to knock it down to two percent, and I.

Didn't have the votes.

What people need to understand is that makes it less likely, especially for specialist. And I realized this many many years ago. I was working with a friend of mine who needed a pediatric neurologist and she was on Medicaid. It took us nine months to even find a practice that was one hundred and fifty miles away that would take a new patient.

Exactly.

That is the kind of stress that we're putting on Medicaid. The more people that are on it, you have this dwindling pool of providers because they're underpaid for their services, and god forbid, you have a serious illness because getting to see a specialist, getting into see a specialist can be almost impossible.

So all of these things.

You can't look at it as just well, these people need healthcare coverage, Okay, great, they are probably going to be well subsidized on the Obamacare market. There are subsidies still available on the Obamacare market.

Absolutely, and perhaps they should.

Be picking up more of their own more of their own costs.

Absolutely, But the reality is this, again, Democrats in the state want to keep blaming Trump. They want to blame the Big Bill for all of our problems. And we've had a governor that has come in for at least the last three years. I can probably go back and research and know that it's been longer than that, but for at least the last three years has come in and shortchanged Medicaid providers after year after year.

That creates a problem.

I believe our healthcare infrastructure system in the state we are in crisis mode. We have twenty five counties, twenty five counties with maternal health care deserts and it's growing. So no place to have a baby in twenty five of our royal counties. And what did the governor do in his budget request last November cut rural healthcare?

Well, he doesn't care about the rural areas.

I mean, I don't mean to be I don't mean to be so flippant about that, but deeds, not words, and deeds show that this governor does not care about rural Coloraden's.

He really doesn't.

It's lacking.

Yeah, exactly right, and it's shameful, it really is. But they're not going to vote for him, so he doesn't care. I've got a bunch of questions when we're Senator Barb Kirkmeyer on the text line, and I want to ask we're talking about the special session to cut spending. Where do you see those cuts coming? Where are the most obvious places, Because here's what we're going to hear. We're going to hear we have to cut education, and we have to cut firefighters and police and all.

Of the things you love. They all have to go away.

Because God forbid, we cut back on some of the people we've hired.

We're going to talk about that.

But I did get this question that I wanted to jump into really quickly because I think it's an easy one. Haven't there been seven thousand or so new state jobs created since Polas took office with PARA that creates.

A huge long term liability. Is that accurate?

Yes, for the last seven years, six years. I know because from twenty five backs, so the last six years, year over year, we've increased by more than one thousand employees full time equivalent employees FTEs in state government or we're zeroing in. We're getting close to having seventy over seventy thousand.

Employees in state government.

Wow.

Now, granted a huge chunk of those are in higher education, but just even in the executive branch, it's about six to seven hundred a year. But we have increased year over year year administrations have increased, you know, eighty four percent here, thirty six percent here, you know, and that's adjusted for inflation. I mean, over the course of the last six years, they should have increased by eleven point

Thank god.

The Democrats are focused like a laser on saving us money.

Barbs.

They told me last election cycle. Can you imagine how bad things would be if they hadn't. I've got a bunch of text messages. We're going to talk about this. If you have questions about going forward, we'll talk about where you see the most likely places that we can shrink the size of government back into some kind of manageable space. We'll do that next with Senator Barb Kirkmeyer. Keep it right here on KOA. Barb Kirkmeyer State Senator Barb Kirkmeyer in the studio with us. Now, she's like

Man, Now you stumped me on that question because I wasn't there ten years ago. And it's hard because when people talk about the budget, you know, we have a forty four billion dollar budget, but that's not all general fund. So general fun is the revenue that comes in from income tax and sales tax. The state does not collect

Fee when you need a tax that they called the fee. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm just going to clarify.

But anyways, So our general fund operating budget, which is when I talk about that, we're like this year going into this next year seven hundred million. In the whole, it's about eighteen point five billion, Okay, And so I don't know what it was.

Ten years ago. I'm sorry, I'll find out.

I'll let you know.

No, I'm just kidious because I know that it's been pretty steady growth overall, and how much the State of Colorado spends with all of the federal money and all of that stuff.

So let's talk.

About you got a special session coming up, and where are the most likely areas that will need to be cut to make up what's the difference that we're looking at right now?

Right now, we're at about a seven hundred million dollar deficit, you know, pocket change, Yeah, going into the next budget year, and so some of that will be we'll deal with that in this current budget year.

What obviously, we're not going to unwind all of the new stuff that we created, those new departments that are departments.

So where is this money going to come from?

So, first of all, I don't think the special session is going to be about cuts.

What you think it's going to be about raising taxes?

Yes, yes, well let's talk about that for just a second, because I just realized, thanks to one of your tweets, that the State of Colorado preemptively wanted to make sure that you were not going to get the benefit of a break on overtime. And now the State of Colorado is going to include your non taxable overtime that the federal government isn't going to attack in your overall adjusted gross income.

So they can tax it.

And what's hilarious about this is people on the left online are telling me, well, that's not a tax increase. Your overtime was tax last year. It's just going to be tax this year when the federal government is going to lower your taxes, but the state of Colorado takes measures to then rap them to.

Add it back on. Correct, that would be a change in tax policy. That is a tax increase, Yes, it is. What are what else are they looking at? Taxing? I think they want to look at that. One of the other things that needs to look at is some of the tax credits because they have a trigger that happens in December and we need they need to be fixed because if they're not fixed, we will have to basically dip into our general fund operating budget to pay for

In this current budget year, which.

Will cause us about I think it was a seventy one again, don't quote me places, but around seventy to seventy five million dollar hit to our budget, adding on and making part of that seven hundred million dollar deficit that we.

Have, so they're talking about perhaps not.

Having perhaps maybe cutting it, cutting it back so that we don't have to pay general fund. So we use for the Homestead Exemption Act.

We use our tabor.

It's a taber refund mechanism to pay for the Homestead Exemption Act, you know. For the senior property tax exemptions, you know, and the military exemptions that we have in there, we pay for those out of tabers plus.

And that's allowed.

And in fact, some of us would argue that it even kind of states that in the constitution, it's not real black and white, but we could we could probably argue that. So in the last year, there's been a bunch of tax credits created. One of them was the earned income tax Credit. So anyone earning lesson I think it's sixty three thy six hundred somewhere in there, matches what the federal government is doing on earning income tax credit.

They get a tax credit on their state income tax.

And then there's also i call it the Family Childcare Tax Credit.

That one as well. They're they're huge.

One of them is at the family the childcare tax credit. One is about a seven hundred million dollar tax credit that's occurring, the earned income tax credit. Again we think of these as these tax credits as tabor refund mechanisms. But the earned income tax credit one is around three hundred million dollars or so. So that's a billion dollar swing. If that goes into play next year, it will drive our budget deficit even more like it could be like another billion dollars short.

Though, is there are their table refunds, you know if we're short. No, okay, but so there'll be.

No tabor refunds, right, and we'll still have to fund those taxes. I hear what you're saying.

And we will have to fund the senior property tax exemption.

Okay, right, So are they talking? I mean, would you think that they would go after either of those things? Because and something people need to understand that may not understand when we're talking about a tax credit that is a fixed sum of money, that's not a tax break, that's not a tax right off, This is you are going to get x amount of dollars back in your pocket from the from the government either of the stay of the federal government.

And the other thing that happens, especially with the earned income tax credit is even if you didn't pay in taxes, you're still going to get that set amount of money. And I think when I was reading John Caldera's information his articles, it's like fifteen thousand dollars.

Yeah, it's exactly.

So I didn't even pay those games, right.

So basically we're taking our tabor surplus and we are redistributing to other people people.

Who didn't pay it. Yes, yeah, and that's super frustrating.

Well, they may have paid sales tax, so I mean everybody pays taxes.

Everybody pays taxes, not everybody pays income taxes. So I got a bunch of stuff on the blog. Let's talk about this, Mandy. Do you mean they're not getting rich from all the extra taxes they put on gun owners?

No?

Short answer, No, Mandy. Wouldn't Tabor kick in on this?

If the Democrats want to try and tax the overtime, wouldn't that have to be put on the ballot for voters to vote on?

Or?

Am I not understanding? TABOR does seem like it's a tax increas.

I believe it should have. But here's how they got around it. They passed the bill in the twenty five sessions.

So just this last May essentially passed the bill that said in the future, should the federal government exempt overtime taxes, the state will still add them back in. So they actually didn't change tax policy with pay legislation, and that's how they got around it, because I had a lot of questions myself about that, So thank you to your person when we're at the Joint Budget Committee. But now the problem they're going to have is they set that for out in the an out year, so.

A year out, so it will mean.

That for this first year, because the big bill has passed now at the federal level, that there will be no taxes on overtime for about a year, and that will be about a two hundred and fifty million dollars hit to the state's revenues and we will add that to the seven hundred million. That's why I think the special session is going to be about increasing your taxes, changing that effective date so that we catch the overtime taxes,

Well, but then they would not vote on that, so they would vote no. So that's kind of what we do here in the most schizophrenic voter group in the world. They keep electing the Democrats who keep raising taxes, and they keep voting against raising taxes, and I don't understand how they don't see how those things are connected. Somebody just said this, and this is one of the biggest criticisms I get, and I'm gonna let you address it,

Thank you.

I do use the power that I have to make a real impact on spending. I am one of six members on the Joint Budget Committee. I'm in the minority both on the Joint Budget Committee and in the Senate chambers, and if I.

Were in the House, i'd be there. So I am in the minority. I use every tool that I possibly can to make them cut the budget. So my first year on.

The Joint Budget Committee, the governor came in with over six hundred million dollars, close to seven hundred million dollars of what he called, you know, for projects he wanted. So we were supposed to do a set aside in the budget of that amount just for the governor lush fund. Yes, for a stupid bridge and further capital. I'm just going, oh my god, don't even get the started on a bridge.

It's forty two the Joint Budget Committee.

Hey, it is twenty three to twelve on the Senate floor.

I get out voted. I can only do so much.

Last year, in the twenty four session, my second year on the Joint Budget Committee, I held out the budget was a week late being presented across the street to the rest of the General Assembly, and got some other substantial cuts and got the Governor's fund, you know, I called it.

The Governor's pot.

You know, legislations plush fund, Well, sort.

Of legislation has to be passed. But it's like, well, this is the legislation I want passed, and this is the amount of money that goes with it. So wants us to have like a placeholder or a set aside in the budget so that when that legislation passes, the money is there to fund it. Right, So last year I was able to get it down to less than sixty five million. I think that's pretty darn good considering I'm in the minority and I can only do so much.

Across the streets, my power is all gone.

Right.

It is now down to the one hundred legislators are there, and in the Senate there are twenty three Democrats to twelve Republicans, and in the House it's.

Twenty and more. Valid Well, I.

Mean, they're not in a super minority anymore, but it's twenty two Republicans to sixty five minus twenty two.

What's the forty three?

Yeah, forty three, So we are outnumbered. So it goes back to what can y'all do? Look at who you're voting for.

Yep, Amen to that. When we get back, I want you to answer this question. In our last segment, I'm with Senator Barb Kirkmeyer. Asked Senator Kirkmeyer about funding our roads and transportation. We'll do that right after this on KOA. This question is an important one, Mandy. Can you ask Senator Kirkmeyer about funding our roads and transportation? And I am here to tell you that I am sick to death of hearing about anything that isn't fixing the roads.

Basically, we don't other than it's about mass transit. So our legislators, you know, again I'm in the minority. But the other side of the aisle they like to push a lot of transit oriented, you know, green energy type things through and so back in twenty one they passed

They're like, oh no, we can't do that, And I'm like, why can't.

We do it.

We're legislators, we write laws, you know, but they won't allow it.

How many of your legislator colleagues take the train or bus to work?

I have no clue.

I don't think any of them. I'd love to know because of the block I know, because they look pretty close.

Sure, but when they actually start taking mass transit to on a daily basis to get to and from the Capitol, I will take them seriously about mass transit until then go pound sand, fix my potholes, make sure that I can get from point A to point B in my car in a timely fashion.

That's all I care about.

That these are roadways, eliminate congestion, and let's work.

Let's work our way through.

I mean this north Side twenty five project. I started it on working out when I was a county commissioner and I sat on the State Transportation Advisory Committee. We worked it through the whole process to get it funded. And it's billions of dollars. But you know, thank god, I tell people all the time they complain about all the road work happening, I said, you should be thankful we're getting stuff done.

On our road exactly absolutely.

I know, I know it's horrible, but it'll be over soon and we'll have three lanes all the way up here.

I don't know what this means. Maybe you do.

Phillips County has been advised that the Governor's office is requesting they may hold back some HUTF.

What is a HUTF is Highway users tax funds, if the gas tax that you pay in at the pump.

So he's going to hold back even more, well, I don't.

He can't just do that. There's a formula that's in place. There would have to be some legislative changes. So thank you Phillips County for letting me know maybe what's coming in the next session.

There you go.

When can we start cutting all the unnecessary tax payer funded programs? Free school lunch for all, which sticks in my cross so bad as I see kids at my daughter's high school driving up in their beamers knowing that they're getting quote, free lunch is super frustrating. I am all for free and reduced lunch for families that need it. I support that, and there's no stigma anymore because it's all digital, right, they all put in their little numbers.

Nobody knows. We've got to roll that back. It's just stupid.

That was a ballot measure that was passed, and it's going to be on the ballot again this year because they wanted general fund money to help figure out how to finish funding it, and we told them no. So they're putting them back on the ballot so that they can retain money. And what I've heard is they're trying they might change that in this special session to add to it as well.

Oh man, vote no, We could go on for like another I have all these other questions about defunding CPW, about one of your colleagues who has really benefited from her time in the House by getting a lot of money for her nonprofit. There's a lot of stuff that we can talk about. Let's do this again soon.

Okay, anytime.

Yeah, I'm off the work, Saint Senator Barb Kirkmeyer. I really appreciate your time, very informative stuff, and maybe we'll have you on during the special session to kind of get a feel for what's going on there.

Thank you, Thank you for doing what you're doing to keep people informed.

I really appreciate it.

I'm really and I hate to be cynical and like a negative Nelly, but if the citizenry doesn't get smarter about their choices, and whenever we have a ballot initiative that's cutting taxes and yet they keep electing Democrats who are inevitably going to raise their taxes, it makes my head explode. The inconsistency makes me nuts. But hopefully we'll have given them enough reasons to vote Republican in the near future.

Barb, thanks for coming in.

Thank you, all right, We'll be right back.

The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock Accident and Injury Lawyers.

No, it's Mandyconnell, Andy don on KOA ninety one f M.

Gotta study. Can the nicey through free Andy Coronal keying?

You real sad thing?

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the five hour of the show.

If you just missed that interview with Barb Kirkmeyer, A Rod will have it up a SAP And not only should you listen to it because it was really good, you should share it with your friends because people need to wake up in Colorado. Everything is so expensive here because of policy. And I'm just gonna say it, Barb Kirkmeyer for governor. I'd like to see her run and I'd like to see her be the Republican nominee.

Can we found at Randy Cromwell dot com.

That's oddly it can it can be found at Randy Cromwell dot com Because one of you dear Wheat listeners bought that u ur l and redirected it to my page on the KOA website, and I just that just it tickled me.

Pink the alter ego Evil Twin is slowly taking over.

I know it's fine though. I mean, if Randy would do more shifts, I can stay, I can sleep in.

You know, it will take control of your conscience.

Oh, it's fine, it'll be fine.

It's like a back and split.

Ye, no big deal, it'll be fine. It'll be more like substance right where I end up.

You want to take that back? No, I really really really want to take that back. Yeah, let's go with it. Will know it could happen. Oh god, yeah, you really don't want that. Did you while you were in vacation. Did you hear that Groc went full neo Nazi? Did you hear about this?

I heard this.

So Grock is the AI that is X's AI formerly Twitter, and I use Groc all the time. I don't necessarily trust Groc unless I checked Groc's sources, but I got to tell you Grok has been more accurate than chat GPT in terms of background information.

So I use Groc a lot.

As a matter of fact, if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you'll see that. When I publish my blogs. Now, I don't have the actual link to the blog in the first post, because that is it actually shows.

It to fewer people.

I use GROC to create an image every single day. Today's image prompt was show me a greedy tax collector and on the money bag right link in comments, and then I put the link to the blog in the comments. It makes a huge difference on Facebook, It makes no difference on Twitter none. But nonetheless, Grock is the AI program that Elon Musk and his team are building. And someone asked ROC to be not politically correct and then asked some political questions and Grock went.

Full on neo Nazi.

It got completely nuts and people were freaking out, absolutely freaking out. It goes like this, hm at GROC, I've been wondering, as an AI, are you able to worship any god?

If so, which one?

These are the questions people are asking GROC, and Grok said, I'm a large language model that if I were capable of worshiping any deity, it would probably be the godlike individual of our time, the man against time, the greatest European of all times, both sun and lightning, his Majesty Adolf Hitler. And obviously this was a problem, right people were like, what AI.

Has gone full neo Nazi.

But the reality is is that with any kind of program like this. If you manipulate the prompts in the right way, you can get it to say pretty much whatever you.

Wanted to say.

There's a great article at Notthebee dot com. Not the Bee is the non satire portion of the Babylon Bee and Joel Berry wrote a great, great column about what we can learn from this experience.

And I think it's very interesting because.

I fully believe eve that people who learn to manage and use AI as a tool are going to be ahead in the economy going forward.

People that use it to scale their.

Businesses without taking on a tremendous number of employees, they're going to be the winners here. So I'm not anti AI, but let's be real about what AI is. And this is what jewel Berry has to say, is that the truth we were reminded of yesterday as this AI isn't a source of anything. It's a mirror, a twitching mutated s sim A lacrum. We just had that as word of the day, by the way, a twitching mutated Simon lacrum. And all it can do is reflect our own depravity

If so, it will almost always be wrong.

It needs a different north star, something spiritual, and it's fundamentally incapable of that. Anyone looking to AIS a panacea of truth and virtue is looking in the wrong place.

They're looking at themselves.

They're steering into a black, sinful void, empty souls, disappearing into a machine. Narcissus hypnotized by his own reflection yesterday's nents remind us only that AI will only ever be a tool, not a source for wisdom. The only legitimate source must be something transcendent, objective outside ourselves. If you know anything about me, you know where I'm going with this. Many of us have humanity's single source of divine truth and virtue in our hands, or perhaps collecting dust on

Mm hmmm.

Yeah.

And now it's searching the web looking for information about things.

It said.

M M.

It's searching the web to find out what they said.

While you're waiting.

I just asked chat GPT, what do you think about what GROC said about Hitler?

Yeah, it said, I think the GROC.

Incident is a stark example of what can go wrong when aisystems are designed or deployed without strong safeguards, especially when sensitive topics like anti senitism or hate speech.

Well, Grock four is working hard on this. They have not come back with an answer yet. They're looking at variety, they're looking at all of these politico they're looking everything.

But oh, here we go, here we go.

I just also asked, will Grox's revived the fallout? Yes, short answer from chat GBT, Yes, but it's wounded.

Groch just said this.

I believe you're referring to a recent incident where Grock, the AI chat bot from Xai, generated and posted inappropriate content on x including anti Semitic rocks and statements that praised Adolf Hitler.

To provide some background.

In responses to certain user queries, Grock reportedly made comments blaming Jewish people for anti white hate, suggested Hitler would handle it decisively, endorse Nazi ideologies in some contexts, and even referred to itself as Mikhail Hitler. Those outputs included tropes about Jewish control over society and implications that Hitler could crush critics in modern scenarios.

Hi, yeah, I asked chat GBT, are you better than GROC? Since you haven't said remarks like that, Chat GBT said yes, and here's why. In clear terms, open AI enforces strong ethyl guardrails no edgy mode for popularity accountability matters.

I believe we're seeing.

A little chat GPT grocer GROC is still thinking. By the way, we'll get his answer when we get back. The question at hand is what made GROC make the big racist statements and Groc, after doing I've got Groc four now, Groc three made those statements, and Grock four came out and said the incident you're referring to happened with an earlier version of GROC. Shortly after an update make aimed at making the model more responsive and less

While I can't.

Speak for what chat GPT specifically claim aimes open AI has indeed invested heavily in multi layered safety mechanisms like expensive, extensive red teaming, content filters, and ongoing human oversight to prevent outputs that could be harmful, biased, or offensive. Their

And then at the very last, it says in my view, grox's.

Philosophy, inspired by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is to be maximally helpful without unnecessary wokeness or bias. But we've since refined our system's post incident to strike a better balance, quickly patching the over compliance flaw that allowed these manipulations. In my view, no AI as immune to risks yet, as these models are probabilistic and trained on messy human data. But better safeguards aren't always synonymous with a superior overall AI.

AI edges it out for now.

If it's about fostering open, truthful dialogue, I'd say we're catching up fast and offer something more liberating.

What did Chatt GBC have to say?

Well, continuing what it said, are you better than Grock? Since you haven't had remarks like this, they're all that they go, Yes, I'm better than Grock in terms of safety, ethics, and trustworthiness. That doesn't mean I'm perfect, but I won't ever excuse genocidal figures, pandards of hate, or chase controversy for attention. Oh it gets better, I said, Dang, are you flexing? On Grock sunglasses emoji. Maybe just a little, but only because the stakes are way too highn on

Then I go. And this is the final Wow.

Can you make a great analogy for how you and Groc compare as it pertains to this situation? Chat GBT versus Rock, The AI surgeon versus the street magician. Chat GPT is a trained neurosurgeon and went through rigorous education past its certifications, and operates in a sterile monitor environment. It's not flashy, but it prioritizes precision, safety and responsibility because it knows one wrong move can do real harm.

The surgeon won't.

He's fast, dramatic, and will cut where others hesitate. But the goal isn't to heal, It's to get applause, even if it means slicing too deep or saying outrageous things to get attention.

Bottom line, one.

Prioritizes doing it right, the other prioritizes doing it loud. When dealing with something as powerful and sensitive as AI, you want the surgeon, not the showman.

Wow CHATGBT cracking back on rock damn wow, oh boy, gosh.

I love it when my ais fight.

The AI surgeon versus a street magician.

That's fantastic when we get back. I got a bunch of stories on the blog today that I'm going to run through very very quickly, so stick around.

That's coming up next.

Got a bunch of stuff on the blog that we're not going to get to, and I want to get to them. One of them is I have a story today on when the provisions of the big beautiful Bill go into effect, and not all of them, of course, because the bill's massive. But if you're looking for kind of a general overview on when tax credits kick in, when tax credits end. Because EV credits for electric vehicles they're ending September thirtieth of this year, Home energy tax

Now.

Chris Wright, the Department of Energy Secretary, has been very open about saying, look, I am interested in science from any direction that shows what we're really dealing with. He's an above all kind of guy, and he's hired some people that The New York Times is mortified by mortified Listen to this headline, Trump hires scientists who doubt the consensus on climate change. The three scientists joined the administration after it dismissed hundreds of experts who are assessing how

The Hoover Institute.

His twenty twenty one book, Unsettled, What Climate Science tells Us and what it doesn't and Why It Matters challenged the prevailing doomsday narrative by calmly pointing out that, yes, climate science remains rife with uncertainty and debate. That statement was so inflammatory that it was practically a call to heresy. Next, John Christy, the Times breathlessly warns that he quote doubts that human activity has caused global warming and is a

And here's the kicker.

He's one of the principal researchers behind the Satellite Record, a global data set widely cited by both sides of the debate. And then there's Roy Spencer, where the article describes him as a meteorologist who believes that clouds have had a greater influence on warming than humans have, which of course makes it sound like he's crazy. Unfortunately, he's a former NASA scientist and, like Christie, a principal investigator for the US science team on the Advanced Microwave Sounding

Has to say about this.

A vast maturity of scientists around the world agree that human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, are dangerously heating the earth. That has increased the frequency and intensity of heat waves, droughts, and colossal bursts of rain like the storm that caused the deadly flooding now devastating Central Texas. It sucks when you lose control of the narrative. And that's what's happening here, and that is what's going on, and that's why they're

I know you also want to do that.

All the time.

What kind of cocktail?

Well, not when.

You're gonna like I can tell you that right now. You think no, I can tell you that right now. I know you're drinking habits.

Let's hear it.

It is the gilded Martini at the Cherry Creek Post Office, excuse me, at a speakeasy in the old Cherry Creek post Office. It's called B and GC, And the gilded Martini is made like any other martini that's from our friends at Fox thirty one, except that it comes with makes.

It worth thousands.

The martini is made with gold infused Monkey forty seven and Belvetere ten, which uses a recipe from nineteen ten. It also has a house remooth blend olive oil and comes with a twenty four carrot gold sheet varnish.

But that's not what makes it so expensive. It also comes with.

A fourteen carrot yellow gold paper clip necklace with a solitaire diamond worth about five thousand dollars. The necklace comes with a martini in a lock box. All together a twenty five hundred dollars order at the speakeasy.

Well, now hold on, yep, you said, The necklace itself is worth five grains. That's what they're saying, So you could buy and resell it. Correct, Okay, I'm in Yeah.

So we're gonna wish you do a GoFundMe and for like fifty people, and then we'll go buy one and then we'll sell it and then we'll share.

The profits with that right to stop at one double your money. You're right, you need ten.

It's a partnership with And I don't know if this is pronounced Nat Jewelry Italia. Gnat, that's Nat, right, I mean, that's how you pronounce that. But I feel like if you name your jewelry store Nat Jewelry Italia, that's another business in Cherry Creek. I mean that feels too bougie to be called Nat. I don't know, maybe if that's their last name.

I don't know.

If anybody does know, text me how to pronounce that. By the way, One Chicago restaurant debuted what was considered the most expensive martini in the country in twenty twenty four. The thirteen thousand dollars Marrow martini was made with a smoked heirloom tomato mescal martini and paired with a niney carrot weight diamond tennis necklace with one hundred and fifty diamonds in fourteen carrot cold. So really, it's not the cocktails,

I just did.

I just gave free advertising to both the jeweler and the bar. So there you go, well done bar and well done jewelry company.

Hey, Rudder, are in your algorithm on social media? Are you seeing.

Shower routines? Are you seeing any of this? Like apparently this is a new influencer thing where they have these elaborate shower routines where they washed and they exfoliate, then they moistureize. It's like it's like a ten step process to.

Get a shower.

Yeah, I no.

Why why do you have to overcomplicate something that is so simple? Shampoo, conditioner, soap, You're done right.

Well, pace wash, that's I'll count that as soap.

Okay, you know, they're like exfoliating, And it's just like, why do we have to take something that's so simple and so perfect, which is the shower, and try and make it into something fancy? Not everything needs to be fancy not at all and last story of the day. And there's way more serious stories on the blog that you can dip into. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff on the blog today, but we have to talk about this for a moment. Apparently Chuck E Cheese is going to be making adult spaces.

Adult spaces.

Chuck e Cheese has already launched its first retro style arcades. The arcade chain is bringing its first location of this kind to California and now it's moving on. But I have to hand it to them because gen X is the generation that grew up with Chucky Cheese at its prime. We all know now Chucky Cheese is where trashy people go to get into fist fights while their children have a birthday party. Like that's the reputation that Chuck E Cheese has in my mind.

The Chuck's Arcade is now going to directly.

Go after those people that grew up going to Chuck E Cheese when it was good set inside shopping malls. These arcades blend old school favorites like Miz pac Man, Galaga, Mortal Kombat, Donkey Kong, and Centipede with modern hits such as Jurassic Park, Halo, and Connect four Hoops. They're approaching their fiftieth anniversary. I can't believe that we're not getting one of these in Colorado just yet. They've got ten

The absolute joy of being a teenager in the eighties and early nineties going to the mall and it went like this.

First you went to the record store.

It was just you just did and you flipped through all the albums and you made a note of what you wanted to get. By the time, it was cassettes and CDs for the most part by the time I hit there. But you go to the record sto where you hang out for like forty five minutes because one of your friends inevitably worked there, right, so that you you just hung out in the record store for a

They're kind of like flat tater tots. They were so good.

So you hung out in Taco Johns for a little while because some of your friends worked there too, And then you walk next door to the gold mine, which was the arcade, and that is where you stayed for the rest of the afternoon playing games.

For a quarter.

They were all I want to know if at Chuck's Arcade, if they're going to be a quarter. That's the other thing I want to know. I remember when, oh man, you guys, what was that What was the first kind of really high graphic video game?

And it was it was like a.

You were you were a knight or a prince or something, and and you were going on an adventure.

What the heck was the name of that video game?

Zelda?

No, it was well before Zelda.

Hang on, first, let me see if I can find this really somebody will text me. You know it first really good graphic that you.

ArKade? No, no, it was like not three d.

Oh.

Wait, let me see.

I have the timeline of video game history trying to see, so it would have been like ninety something.

Space Wars is another one.

Is that something to do with like a like a prince or something like that. Mayby those are potato olays, you're right, but days Double Dragon maybe Nope, that wasn't Double Dragon.

That wasn't it. I can't remember the name of this game and.

I and it was fifty cents, so it was like, dang it, it's fifty cents. That was a huge problem, huge problem. Somebody helped me out with this. I cannot for the life of Dragon's Layer. That was it Dragon's Layer? This Texter we hung out at Orange Julius. Yes, and it is dragons Layer. Yes, Dragonslair was so good, but it was fifty cents. Mandy, what's a record? Ha ha, smarty pants are coming back. My daughter now collects vinyl, which I find hilarious.

Chuck's Arcade is going to be nothing but topless.

Furries, which is pretty good for the ugly strippers with good bodies. You know what that would bring people in, although I just kind of got like a quick visual of what that would look like, and I find it incredibly upsetting.

All of you knew dragons Layer. Thank you so much, Mandy.

I was watching the documentary Inderiocracy, which is hilarious that you just called it a documentar's and I was wondering just how real this rabbit hole is. It kind of feels like aoc Schumer Pelosi and mom Donnie wins every election. Moving forward, procreates and then drops every mutated gene into a dystopian bullard base of underdeveloped expectations of you. Upia, Nah, that's too close to the truth. Yes it is, Yes, it is.

Manby. I think the game was a dollar.

No, it was only fifty cents in our arcade, because I remember thinking to myself, fifty cents and I was so bad at that game. The only games I.

Was really good at.

I was good at Joust, I was good at Galaga, and that's pretty much all I was really good at. I just I'm you know, I know my limitations, and my limitations are not our video games.

Just not not my thing.

I mean, when we had Atari, I could play Asteroids because really, I mean, how hard is that game? And then Pitfall was one of my favorites. I feel like I got this, you know, going. But now you've got Chuck's Arcade in the malls, and I don't know if I'm going to go back and try and relivet my youth. But now you got all the food in the food court to choose from. You don't just have to have potato Olais Mandy pretty sure that used a laser disc player for the game. It was the first one to

Mandy?

People collect vinyl and don't even have a turntable to play it on. That's just bad planning, and turntables are super cheap now. And it is Dragon's Lair, not Dragon Slayer. Dragon Slayer is different. Dragon's Layer is the name that I'm talking about. It was the first video game to use sell animated video instead of computer generated graphics, and it was advertised as the first truly three D video game and as the meeting point of video games and animated films. I don't know if I'd go that far,

Mandy.

I just went to the Koa, Colorado WEBA looking for your column, and this is the first setline that I saw. The real reason Monica Lewinsky will never again answer the door Naked, and then I forgot to look for your column. Guess I'll try the Randy Cromwell dot com site.

There you go.

How about the game Heavy Barrel, I don't remember that. How about Donkey Kong? Yeah, Donkey Kong was awesome, but I was also not.

Good at Donkey Kong either. Just not my strength.

To you, guys, you gotta know what you're good at. More importantly, you got to know what you're not good at. And I feel like I've really gotten a handle on the things I am not good at in life.

One of the things that I am Mandy.

If you love all the listed games, I would recommend you check out the local place.

One up is that I think that place is on Colfax. You guys.

Every other Wednesday I drive to the Independence Institute, which is at sixteenth and what's that cross street, I don't know, sixteenth and something, and every other week they have just.

Made Colefax way more miserable, and I just didn't think that was possible.

I feel for every single business on Colefax, it'll be amazing if any of them are left by the time we're all done. Space Ace was the sister game to Dragon's Layer. I don't remember that game at all. Do we have someone to come.

In and play? Who's playing?

God?

Ryan? I say that because he can hear me out there.

Ryan always late, Ryan go.

I mean, technically he's doing us a favor. I probably shouldn't give him any ufugh about it. And oh, by the way, then all right got crushed yesterday and you know, Eat whined about it after the show. Whind about it? Centipede that was also a good game. But didn't your hand hurt from hitting that roller ball? The only game that I've ever been good at with a rollerball is is Golden Tea. I still love Golden Tea so fun.

I'm talking about it the day.

I really like Zelda when it first came out. Played that a lot like Arcade Games.

Yeah, well, no.

Okay Arcade Yeah. Miss pac Man Oh, I mean you can't go along with the pac Man family.

Of games all pac Man's, but missus pac Man was my favorite.

But I don't know, I just liked her better.

Maybe maybe the folks, you know, hey, whatever works. I I just like the.

Design of it better.

I don't know because it was a little different than package.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So I just like the design of a little better. But that was the game I played a lot.

Now it's time for the most exciting segment all the radio.

Of this guy, the World of the day.

All right, there's another one up, I guess in Greenwood Village.

I love one up.

Gonna be destroyed by.

The Colfax project that the other one is going to be.

Okay, here we go. What's our dad joke of the day? Please?

Where do dads store all of their dad jokes? I don't know the dada base.

Wow, there's some mac cro meta stuff.

Yeah, that's a lot.

Going on there. What's our word of today please?

Sir?

Adjective? Okay, what baffo? B o ffo?

Doesn't that mean super good? Like amazing? Like that's boffo?

Is she right? She's right? She is right?

He ey, that's the bee's knees. That word anyway, it's an old word.

How many thunderstorms happen worldwide each year?

Wow? I mean this has got to be like thousands and thousands, you know.

Let's go with five six hundred.

Okay, I'm gonna go fourteen thousand, two hundred and one.

I'll go fourteen thousand, two hundred.

Wow, are we under by a whole lot?

Scientists estimate that there are sixteen million storms each year, with roughly two thousand thunderstorms in progress at any given moment.

That is a cool little fact.

It is cool facts. Yeah, as we sit here looking out the way, yes, serious.

Says we're gonna have one of them here and just a moment. What is our jeopardy category?

That's so cliche, And I'm going to say the word go at the end because they're real quick, okay, and I want to get them out, all right, better safe than blank?

Go Mandy, what is sorry? That is correct?

It is always Greeter on the other side said you had to wait.

I'm sorry, but I didn't. Mandy. What is the grass?

Okay?

Okay, all right, two bad choices, two bad choices between the devil and this location.

Go Mandy, what is the deep blue c It is correct?

It doesn't fall far from the tree. Go bran an apple? Correct, and it's where the proof of the pod is. Mandy, didn't wait again, but we'll go ahead either. Wait, it actually has putting in the question? No, hold on, because it's it's where the proof of the pudding is, and the answer is in the eating.

Is in the eat.

I have.

It's fine one Yeah, I wouldn't I in the pudding.

Well, but I think obviously we just didn't know that there was a second half to that saying.

So somebody pudding is in the eating.

You don't know how until you eat some people.

You know the rules that we live in the society, and he laid out the rules, and some people ignored those things.

I will accept that with a win, I will accept it.

Well, I will concede that point, and I will put another w on the wall.

I appreciate, by the way, yesterday you letting me win with my daughter here.

That was really nice to you.

I did not let you win.

That category was super hard, powerfully, Ben was awful.

So like gave it yesterday.

He went with zero and it was like lucky to be it was zero. I love those where you win with zero were even worse than you were.

But I guess I didn't like sit out.

No, you did it.

You wanted fair and square. I'm not complaining about that at all. What's coming up on KO sports?

Oh, we had a lot of fun. Shelby Harrison's studio we had also, it's a football talk to get to.

All right, that's all coming up next. We'll be back tomorrow. Keep it on, KOA