Mister secretary, could you go ahead and finish your research on where the ten cent.
Bag fee goes for the useless paper.
Bag that doesn't even get used once because it rips on your way in the house.
Yep. Oh, and I'll go ahead and take that latte double tall, thanks.
Honest way, I need your name, but I need your name to write it on the cop what's your name?
Misspell it?
Try misspell it or just spell it fanatically. I don't care. Maybe I'll do the bag fee today because I really am. I've got enough done on that I can probably do the bag fee today. If let me describe the bag fee research this way, it's a black hole because it is deliberately that program is designed deliberately so that you really can't find out how much it's costing, where the
money's going, what they're using it for. It would take and actually I talked to my friend Kathleen Chandler over at the Independence Institute about trying to get my other friend, Corey Gaines that does the Colorado Accountability Project to kind of dig into it. And Corey may or may not be digging into it also, But what Corey's going to run into But he's got more resources in time than
I do. To find it is that on the bag fee, the things that it's supposed to go to in terms of the localities that collect the money are so ephemeral, are so amorphous, are so kind of vague that it's really going to be difficult to tie down any sort of numbers. But I do have some preliminary numbers, and maybe I'll.
Do that today. It's not a bad idea, but I want.
To get back to the wolves because the reason the story is important is because this is a grand example of how stupid Colorado is. And while while the numbers may not be huge, that's in material that the issue is this the numbers are about double what they expected. I know you're shocked. Actually nobody should be shocked by this.
And it's another example of it's totally feel good. And then and and I just want to say to someone on the text line, you your text, which I'm not going to read yet, gets to the point that I ultimately want to make about this program in general, because it's it is about the money. It is about the time, the energy, the resources, everything that is being spent on this feel good program that does not really accomplish anything other than making Marlon Ree feel good and keeping Jared
Pouls happy in the bed, I guess. And it actually is detrimental to the wolves. So the very animals that all these yahoos think they're helping are actually hurting. We'll get to that at the end. So let's go to you know, I went through these depredation claims. I just love the use of the word depredation. When you do, I have to pull down here depth hang on a second. Depard dation I think I always spell it wrong. An act of attacking or plundering. That's the official first definition
of depredation. I always have a hard time finding it because I want to spell d E p r A, and it's d E p r E depradation an act of attacking or plummeting. So the fund is comprised of monies paid to farmers and ranchers, or I suppose to anyone. You're right, a child gets killed, Yeah, well that's going
to be more than a depredation fund. That's going to be a wrongful death lawsuit probably, Or it's for the killing of the livestock, and not just the killing, but also the loss of weight because of the stress that you have.
You know, one thing that I don't.
Think showed up in my research was the cost that you know, we've now hired. We've now hired cowboys to go out and basically do the job of keeping the wolves away.
From the cattle.
I mean, thinking, how stupid that is. Why do you need to hire cowboys to keep the wolves away from the cattle when all you had to do was not bring the wolves here in the first place. But again, it's all about feeling good. It's all about making Marlon Reeves happy. It's about making all of the of the animal rights advocates, with Marlin Reeves right there on top, all happy about this. So let's go to the depredation
fund itself. The Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund, that's the official title of it.
Was in twenty.
Twenty three for fiscally your twenty twenty three twenty twenty four, the legislature allocated one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars for it. In the fiscal year twenty four to twenty twenty five, they allocated or appropriated three hundred and fifty thousand, so we doubled it. But claims have nearly depleted the fund. As of March, there was less than three thousand dollars in the fund, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and
you have less than three thousand dollars left and it's June. Yeah, we're in the sixth month of the year. The company that this fund covers confirmed kills, So that pays up to fifteen thousand dollars per animal. It pays for missing livestock, It pays, as I said earlier, for red conception rates. It pays for weight loss because of the stress caused
by the wolves. And guess what, whether you think that is a good thing that we be paying for or not, Colorado is unique in compensating for those indirect losses, like you know, missing because you don't really know for sure, reduced conception rates, that's an indirect cost. Weight loss because of stress, that's an indirect cost. We pay for those,
and we're unique in doing that. So then I started trying to figure out what's the what's the total cost per wolf we haul these wolves in from Oregon or British Columbia. The total wolves released so far as twenty five ten released in twenty twenty three, fifteen, This year. So all I could come up with is a rough estimate. If you divide the four point eight million dollar total cost by twenty five wolves, you get about one hundred and ninety two thousand.
Dollars per wolf for the entire program.
That and when I say the entire program, that would include things like you first have to go cat you have to go to you know, Oregon or BC, and you have to capture the damn things, and then you have to transport them back here. You have to outfit them with GPS, and then you have to monitor the GPS, and then of course you have the compensation, the depredation fund,
and you have the bureaucrats that are administering the program. Now, I grant you that's a very crude estimate because the costs include the fixed overhead that's not directly tied.
To individual wolves. But let's think.
About the depredation cost per wolf. You have nineteen confirm that predation events involving nineteen cattle, nine sheep, and one loma. That's paid out three hundred and forty eighty nine hundred and six dollars. So the average compensation per per depredation event is coming out to eighteen thousand, three hundred and sixty three dollars. Now, if you assume that every event involves just one wolf, although they're you know, a pack
of wolves may attack. That doesn't account for the total program costs, but at least gives you a rough estimate of you know, just the total cost divided by per wolf comes out to almost two hundred thousand dollars per wolf. What's what's improved in Colorado? I'm not joking. I want you to think seriously about what has improved in Colorado? What has made this state better in terms of your life,
your business, your family, your general welfare. What is better that we have taken almost two hundred thousand dollars per wolf to put.
In this state? Let me it?
Tell us three three one zero three tell me what? Tell me how your life is improved. And I'm not kidding. If you think your life is improved, now, I will warn you. I'll probably mock you, But I'd like to
know how your life is improved. Because isn't the purpose of the Public Bureau to make it easier for us to live, make a living, raise children, get an education, you know, find work, you know, care for ourselves, take care, you know, support ourselves and our family to do all, you know, to live, to live a full and complete life. How's it helped you? Because you're paying for it. You're paying for it because Colorado taxpayers pay for this through
four mechanisms. The General Fund, So just the colareld state income tax that you pay that goes into the general fund. That covers most of the costs. That's the depredation compensation program, the administrative costs of the program. All that comes out of the General Fund. Then you have the Species Conservation Trust Fund that's a fund that supports non gain species programs. You have the Colorado Non Gain Conservation and Wildlife Restoration
Cash Fund that's used specifically for walth management. Then you have the Wildlife Cash Fund that excludes money from hunting and fishing license as mandated by law. So other people doing other things pay all of these fees for things other than the general fund in order to support this program. Now, I found in one article, and I highlighted this line because I can't find any information that will tell me how much this is. It says that Colorada Parks and
Wildlife may solicit grants gifts. Well, let's go back up to grants. That could be a government grant, it could be a money laundering grant from a non government organization. It could be a grant from a foundation or something like the Nature Conservancy gifts. They can solicit gifts, sponsorships, donations, and of course federal funds, so they can slicit all of those things. So what have we what have we appropriated?
What have the what's the Pull Up Bureau appropriated for this fiscal year twenty one twenty two one point one million dollars for planning and management to get the program started. Then in twenty three FY twenty three twenty four one hundred seventy five thousand dollars for the depredation fund, and then twenty four to twenty five three hundred fifty thousand dollars for the depredation Fund and any excess fund. But
there's not going to be. They're already down to less than three thousand dollars is supposed to be redirected to the Wolf Management Plan. Now Proposition one fourteen that these yahoo's passed on the Front Range. I mean everybody voted for it, but he got passed because of the yaho's in the Front Range Proposition one fourteen and subsequent measures by the legislature require the costs do not come from
hunting or fishing license revenues. And that's because all of the hunters and anglers in this state said, you know, wait a minute, we don't want we want our fees that we pay on a hunting license or a fishing license to go to hunting and fishing conservation. So you can't use those fees to do it. So in summary, where are we total wolves released? Twenty five wolves killed or died ten. One wolf died in April twenty four, probably killed by.
A mountain lion. Two others are unaccounted for.
Presumed dad is only seven of the original ten we're alive as of early twenty twenty five. No death are reported among the fifteen wolves released in January twenty twenty five, except I think it would include the one in Picton County that in the past couple of weeks. So the current population maybe maybe thirty wolves roam Colorado, including twenty eight that are colored. Twenty five released minus three dead plus from others one uncolored wolf from Wyoming, possibly pups
from the Copper Creek pack, just not sure. In captivity. One female wolf four of her five pups from the Copper Creek pac or curly in captivity, and they do plan to release them, so they will be released, and then their odds of not surviving increased dramatically. So costs have exceeded the estimates because sourcing the wolves from the different locations obviously cost money. High depredation claims have pretty much depleted the compensation fun down to less than three
thousand dollars. And then you have the intangible of public sentiment. Now, the rural communities, especially farmers and ranchers, are really frustrated because of the costs and the impacts, and there is a push right now for a ballot measure in twenty twenty six to halt further reintroductions. I just want to read you a sentence that popped up up in one of the stories I found. Urban voters who largely supported Proposition one fourteen benefit from ecological quote warm glow close
quote without bearing any direct costs. The warm glow, in other words, the feel good. The story claims that urban voters feel.
Good about this.
That shows you how divorce from reality they are about what's really going on. But then I want to get to this text from Rchelle. The wolf repopulation project in Colorado is crue to is cruel to the wolves as well. You take the animals from British Columbia, the natural home. It appears that the wolves aren't trained to read the leaving color for Colorado signs, so they wander outside of Colorado borders and then are killed in states that don't
want them in their states. And the wolves are probably following their inner gps to get back to their homes in BC. You can't remove that instinct out of the wolves. It is cruel to take these wild animals from their natural home.
Michael Dragon Goober's to me, it sounds like these gray wolves are a lot like illegal aliens. We capture them, we release them into our country. They do amazing and terrible things, and we pay for it as taxpayers.
I don't understand.
Well, here's how this will help you understand.
I couldn't.
It sounds like you might be driving if you're stuck in traffic, just you know, when you come to a stop, put your hands on the steering wheel at ten and two, and then just bang your head on the steering wheel as hard as you can for about thirty seconds.
You know you'll feel a lot better. Yeah, you'll feel feel much better.
I think this country right now faces one of the most well not right now, it has for some time. But I think we're reaching kind of a pinnacle. And it's not just because of our country, it's because of the entire world. It's a challenge that I think affects every single person. If you're a worker that's just striving to make ends meet, if you're a retiree that's counting on you know, social Security or any kind of a secure future doesn't matter. If I don't care whether you're
just relying on Social Security. You get a great four old one K, you got a pension plan. Imagine that. What am I talking about. I think it's the federal debt, and that federal debt is a crisis that threatens not just our economy, but I think it threatens this idea that America is a place of shared prosperity, where you know, everyone can come pursue the American dream. Doesn't necessarily mean you're going to achieve it, but that you can pursue it.
Well.
As we stand right now at the beginning of this summer, I think the question is really stark, and it's now become unavoidable. Can we balance the books? And if we can balance the books, If we can balance the books, how can we balance the books? I want you to think about some numbers. By the close of last year, the federal debt had climbed to an astonishing thirty six trillion dollars. That is now one hundred and twenty five
percent of the gross domestic product. In other words, if you took everything that we measure a value in this country, the gross domestic product, what do we produce, the wealth, the value of everything we produce, the debt is one hundred and twenty five percent of that. Our debt is
more than the value of everything that we produce. It's as if every dollar that our economy produces, whether that's at a factory or or a farm, or a ranch, two tech centers, whatever it might be, is overshadowed by a debt that is one and a quarter times as big as that. And you know, I talk about, like when I do American financing, about servicing debt, the cost of servicing that debt.
Which means just paying the interest.
That's that's where people get in trouble with credit cards, you you get a balance that now all you're doing is you're just paying the interest to stop the default. And the credit card companies are happy for that. As long as you're paying the interest, they're making money because that principle that you're charge on that credit card they've longed for. They've long forgotten about that, They've long already paid that off. They've long that's the appeared. You're paying interest,
and they're just making pure profit. At this point, the cost of servicing our debt now consumes nearly one point two trillion dollars every single year. That's more than we spend on defense, more than we spend on medicare, and it means that there's less money to spend on And I'm not talking necessarily at the federal level. I'm talking about everywhere on education, infrastructure, innovation, whatever it is that
makes this country really hum as the world's economic superpower. Now, the Congressional Budget Office projects that by twenty thirty five, you know the year that we want to be net zero, Well, by twenty thirty five, the CBO says, the debt will soar to fifty trillion dollars, and our annual interest payments will become two trillion dollars a year. So that's two trillion dollars that we can't spend in the private sector.
Or if you're focused on government, that's two trillion dollars that you can't spend on building roads, improving the interstate highway system, fixing bridges, or you know, NASA contracting out to do some sort of space adventure. And it's certainly two trillion dollars that we can't allocate over to Medicare or Medicaid, or social security, or border security or anything else for that matter. That two trillion dollars not for schools, not for hospitals, not for roads. It's just to keep
our creditors at bay. So how how do we get to this precipice. Well, it's decades in the making, and I want to emphasize this choice is made by both parties. This is not just a Democrat thing. You can't just bang this on the Marxist and quite frankly, even some conservative Republicans, but it's leaders that prioritize short term gains over long term stability. Now, Republicans rightfully so champion tax
cuts because tax cuts do in my opinion. In fact, I think we can empirically prove this, empirically prove it that tax cuts actually increase revenues. Any growth policy is going to increase revenues. But we may have reached the point where you're going to have to have unachievable growth in order to have enough revenues that you can actually not just service the debt but actually start paying it down. Now, the Social Security Trust Fund is projected to run dry
by twenty thirty five. Manicares hospital insurance fund that will run dry shortly after. And without reform, now I'm not talking about necessarily cuts, but without reform, just accept the word reform. In general, without just some reform, benefits are going to face automatic cuts. And that means that the dignity, the security, the lifestyle, everything, and millions of Americans are going to be affected by that. In fact, they some of them will become impoverished, which will further add to
the complication. Or we'll just what maybe by that time, we'll just have you know, nationwide youth in nation and we'll be like, well, you know what, you can't live on the reduced benefits, Well, here, come over here.
We'll give you the juice, and we'll just put you down like a dog.
I want to emphasize something else, because we tend because so all the entitlement programs are such that they're dynamite, and people's brains just shut down when you talk about entitlements. So let's set those aside for just a minute. Because discretionary spending on everything from education, to infrastructure to scientific research, all of that, all of that's being squeezed at the breaking point. Bridges are crumbling, the schools are lagging behind.
Our competitiveness is beginning to wane a little bit, all because we're diverting resources to pay for interest to bondholders. Now, consider this, every dollar we spend on interest is a dollar that we can't spend on something that we think is worthwhile, veterans' healthcare or small business growth. I mean programs that even I might personally object to. Nonetheless, those dollars we can't spend on any of those things. You might say it's a dollar stolen from the American dream.
It's a dollar stolen from the government doing what it actually should be doing those inherently governmental purposes. I guess to put it in a in a more succinct way. The larger this interest, the servicing of the interest grows.
Those are dollars that we cannot spend on things that you and I would agree as fiscal conservatives, the federal government ought to be spending money on, oh, I don't know, things like national defense, the State Department doing things like you know, approving visas and then tracking those visas, or Homeland Security doing the things that they actually should be doing, like you know, deporting people, and border patrol and immigrations
and customs enforcement, all of that. Those are less dollars we have for that. And if we want to keep spending the same amount of more money on that, that means we keep borrowing more money. It's a death spial that we're in, and the consequences of the debt are not abstract. And I'll explain why.
How has my life improved in Colorado? Um?
Huh, come on, come on, you can do it.
We're with you. Come on, you're Oh he gave up too soon, time ran out.
Yeah, he gave up way too soon. I want to have the guy that I suggested. He bang his head against the steering wheel. I wonder how he's doing unconscious. We should check the traffic department. See there's some you know, backup somewhere. Yeah, we found some guy unconscious in his car, head six thirty k hell blaring and he's just laying there. So the consequences of the debt are going to be felt in your daily life. Inflation is fueled in part
beat somewhat objective here. Inflation is fueled in part by deficit spending, and that erods the value of your paycheck, and then higher interest rates driven by are borrowing make it harder to afford a home, a car, a college degree, or a trade school certification of degree. This country's credit rating has already been downgraded twice in the past fifteen years. Now, you may say, well, who cares about that? Well, do you ever check your credit score? Do you even know
what your credit score is? Because I guarante an to you that if your credit score is blow up, mine is and mine's pretty damn high. Uh, it's shockingly high. Actually, I don't. I don't get it. I mean, I get it because I pay my bills in time and you know everything, But I don't have really have any much of any debt. You're paying more interest. It's gonna cost you more to go get a car, a home, your your credit card, interest rate's gonna be higher, You're gonna
have more difficulty getting a credit card. It's just a fact of life. Internationally, our creditors, China, Japan, they hold about eight trillion dollars of our debt, and that gives them a lot of leverage over our economic sovereignty. And perhaps probably most alarmingly, that burden falls falls heaviest on the next generation and the generation after that, our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren. Well, not just this debt, but a diminished country, one less able to invest in
the future, less capable of leading the world. We had dinner with our granddaughter last night and it was just, you know, her parents are out of town. She's no, no, I don't like the idea she's staying anyway. I'm sitting across the table from her, and I'm looking at She's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous young lady. She's really maturing and growing to be beautiful. And that's an objective. That's an objective evaluation,
that's not a grandfather of evaluation. And she's talking about college and she's doing her the extracurricular things that she does, and poor old Grandpoo's sitting there thinking, Chimney Christmas. We've really effed up things for you, meaning us, all of us, and by all of us, I mean like, for example, Colorado. I know that in this audience, ninety nine point nine percent of you cannot be blamed for the state that Colorado is currently in because you don't vote for those yahoos.
But for all the people that do vote for those yahoos, you're destroying it for the rest of us. And what's happening in Colorado is happening, you know, in the country writ large.
Now I know.
Trump's don't get me wrong. Trump's trying to reverse all of this, and I get that he's focused. If I had to point out three things that I think that Trump's focused on, it is number one, trying to end all the endless wars. He's trying to bring bring peace to the world's He's he's trying to I don't want to get mired down in these details, but he is. For example, in the Middle East, I'd bet you bottom dollar that he's told nat and Yahu looked, you're free to bomb the you know what. The s word out
of the Iranians and destroy their nuclear capability. But give me some time to try to negotiate a deal, and if I can't, I'll give you the wink in the nod and have at it. And I think that's part of what he had discussions with NBS and the and the people and Cutter and where else, Oh, the and
the UAE. I'm sure that's part of the discussion. He started to do the same thing between Russia and Ukraine, and I think he's reached the point where he may he may say it, and I don't think NATO can do it, but he may say in a week in a nod to NATO, yeah, cut your leapse, go do what you want to do. I've tried everything I can't. And in terms of the economy, he really is trying to put us on a path to where maybe down the road, we could eliminate the income tax.