Ep. 493 The Media was Busy Imploding Over Trump's Tweets When This Happened
In this episode I address the curious timing of Trump's tweet yesterday. While the media was obsessing over the tweet the House was busy passing Kate's Law and the travel ban was enacted. I also discuss the political climate behind Obamacare repeal and where Republicans are going wrong on the messaging. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-simplicity-of-a-health-deal-1498776293 I also address the troubling case of Charlie Gard and the liberal focus on the devaluing of human life. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449079/charlie-gard-united-kingdom-court-defies-parents-wishes-rare-disease-die?utm_content=buffered931&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer Finally, I address the broken economics of public financing for sports stadiums. https://www.cato.org/blog/stadium-boondoggles-spread-minor-leagues?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=59228b900c-Cato_at_Liberty_RSS&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_395878584c-59228b900c-143016961&goal=0_395878584c-59228b900c-143016961&mc_cid=59228b900c&mc_eid=3fd7404a34
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On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Get in the car and let's get out of here, man.
Friday.
Fine Friday?
Yeah.
Hey, thank you again for another great week of listenership.
We blew past... Conservative Review sent out a press release yesterday.
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Thank you for all the feedback and thank you for spreading the word on the show.
5 million downloads, so what a...
What a milestone for a show that started in my basement a couple years ago with producer Joe.
Thank you all very much.
Yeah, we appreciate it.
Hey, a lot going on again.
Trump's tweets, as I've repeatedly said on the show, you may like them, you may dislike them, you may hate them, you may love them.
But I think the left, the liberals and the establishmentarian class are completely misreading what's going on.
And the tweet war yesterday with Joe and Mika from Morning Joe and MSNBC.
For those of you who missed the story, where, you know, the Morning Joe show, where they go after Trump all the time at every opportunity, Trump fired back and said some things on Twitter about Mika and Joe asking him to stay at Mar-a-Lago, his place in Florida, and he said no, and he said Mika had a facelift and was bleeding terribly or something.
So, you know, listen, the smartest way to frame the tweet?
Probably not.
Again, as I've said repeatedly, But the media, this story was just all over yesterday, Joe.
It was everywhere.
Did you guys talk about it on CBM this morning?
Yes, we did.
Yeah, I mean, it was the Trump, again, he hates women.
Trump, look, he's out of control.
He's deranged.
He's mentally unfit.
He's a lunatic.
They're again talking about the 25th Amendment, which for those of you who are unaware, it's when the cabinet gets together and declares the president unfit for office.
Yeah, that's going to happen.
I mean, that's totally insane.
So the liberals want to invoke the 25th amendment to get rid of Trump, get him out of office.
I mean, the coverage of these tweets has been crazy.
So, you know, I want to talk about that a little bit today and get a couple things out of the way.
Before we get into that, today's show brought to you by our buddies at My Patriot Supply.
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Okay.
So, we had done that show a couple days ago, Joe, about how Trump's tweets, people think they're megalomaniacal, they think he's crazy, and I think it's tactical genius.
Again, I'm not saying the content of it is always phrased appropriately.
I think there's probably a way to dial it back a little bit content-wise.
While the liberals were screaming Twitter, Twitter, Twitter yesterday, what was Trump screaming, Joe?
Kate's Law!
Travel ban!
EPA!
Every time you guys are... And the funny thing is, Mika Brzezinski from Morning Joe this morning, fired back again.
She's like, he's so easily triggered by a tweet, he doesn't get it.
Um, I don't know there, Mika.
Is it Mika?
Mika, I don't even know.
She's the big new Brzezinski's daughter, who is the national security advisor in the 80s.
Folks, I think Mika doesn't get it.
The travel ban yesterday, everybody knew the travel ban was going to go into effect yesterday due to the Supreme Court ruling.
Anybody who knows anything about politics or follows politics at a basic level, okay?
They also knew there was going to be a vote on what could be considered the controversial Cate's Law.
And I mean controversial by liberals, not by me.
Cate's Law, which enacts new penalties for illegal immigrants who enter the country repeatedly and commit crimes.
These were both controversial things that were going to happen yesterday.
Yesterday, out of the blue, air quotes Joe, out of the blue, a Trump tweet appears in the morning going after the morning Joe MSNBC show.
About Mika Brzezinski, her facelift, and them going after him, and he's upset about it.
And the liberals, the entire day, spend the whole day, Trump, he's so dumb, he's out of control, he can't control himself.
And my take on this, I don't want to beat this horse to death here, but let the poor horse go after a while, but I can't say to you enough, you may disagree with him, but it was It was an act of tactical genius and morally questionable, okay?
But tactical genius?
Joe, who the hell was talking about the travel ban?
Nobody!
And you may say like, oh my gosh, doesn't the Republicans, don't they want to celebrate that?
No, no, be careful here.
The last time the travel ban was on the front page, remember we had all the airport nonsense going on with these groups shutting down the airports.
Remember that?
Yeah.
These left-leaning groups were at airports and they were, you know, shutting down the airports.
It caused all this chaos.
They had Kate's Law yesterday.
They didn't want a lot of attention on that.
So what does Trump do?
He sends out this tweet and all of a sudden all the stuff passes while the liberals, again, are just not paying attention.
I don't know, guys.
Again, I'm not here to give anybody advice.
One guy sent me an email.
Why do you keep giving Democrats advice?
I'm not giving them advice.
I'm telling you this is a fact, Joe.
One, it doesn't matter what I say or anyone else.
They can't control themselves.
Don't you see the point?
They are so embedded.
In the emotions of anti-Trump hatred, it doesn't matter!
For the guy who emailed me the other day, he goes, man, I can't listen anymore.
You give Democrats too much advice.
I don't listen.
I don't know what to tell you, buddy.
They're not taking my advice, number one.
They're not taking any advice.
The whole purpose to me advertising this is how the Democrats are totally lost.
They are embedded in emotion right now and completely divorced from reality.
They don't care!
Do you understand they don't care?
Do you really believe, to the guy that emailed me the other day, that the Democrats and their media buddies, because it's the same thing, didn't know the travel ban was going to go into effect yesterday and there was going to be a vote on Kate's Law?
Do you really think they didn't know that?
Of course they made a conscious decision.
To let their emotions take over and avoid covering what really mattered, which was the travel ban and Kate's Law.
They're not listening to anybody's advice.
They are emotionally overwhelmed.
What, are we not supposed to talk about it because the Democrats are dumb?
Well, they're drunk on lemonade.
You're darn right they are!
You know?
To our t-shirt collection.
They totally lost their mind.
They're inebriated.
Burracho.
For those who speak Spanish there, they have no control over themselves.
So I don't get it.
We're supposed to ignore it and just sit around and not discuss what's going on because the Democrats are tactically stupid?
It's not advice.
It doesn't matter.
I brought up to you a couple of shows ago my background in psychology and how this really bright instructor who is in the graduate program I was in used to talk about how emotion-focused problem solving versus problem-focused problem solving.
And a lot of people who have emotional problems, not necessarily biochemical psychopathological disorders, but just have adjustment problems, have adjustment problems because they focus on the wrong thing.
When someone dies a year later, they're still focused on emotions, not the problem, which is you- the person's dead!
There are problems to be solved.
It was a spouse.
You have financial issues.
Grieve, okay, but a year later, something's got to be fixed.
You have to stop focusing on the emotions.
This is what's going on with the Dems.
They are absolutely embedded in the emotions, the pain of the election loss, and they can't get out of it.
They cannot get out.
It doesn't matter.
Limbaugh's been talking about this.
Levin's been talking about this.
Hannity, by the way, I'll be in for Sean Hannity today on radio, so if you want to tune in, please listen.
All right.
But yeah, to be on Joe's station at CBM, they play Hannity Live.
They've all been, I'm not the only one.
It doesn't matter.
The whole point of this obsessive focus on emotions rather than actual problems is it's obsessive.
It's like people who have a legitimate OCD type disorder, when you have hand washers and people that can't stop washing their hands and they're ritualistic.
You know, I don't mean to diminish that.
It's a very serious problem.
But they literally can't control what they're doing.
It takes really, really intensive therapy and sometimes medication.
Democrats can't control anything right now.
They are just so obsessed with Trump that they are losing their minds.
And you know what?
It's going to continue.
And let me just wrap it up this way, because I didn't want to spend this much time on this.
One of the reasons I'm bringing this up is because it's kind of a dog whistle to Republicans out there.
It's time to double down now.
Eventually, this anger is going to subside a little bit.
Not a lot.
There's still going to be, you know, borderline psychopathological, the Democrats over this loss.
But we've got about three years to go here, okay?
Not three and a half, but three years to go to get things done before we're in really intense election season and everything shuts down.
I strongly suggest right now that you stop the nonsense with Trump.
All these Republicans are always focused on Trump.
The Republicans, oh, Trump with the tweets.
Let it go.
Just come out with a public statement, whoever you may be, Joe, and say, hey, guys, I can't control the guy on Twitter.
It's his bag of doughnuts.
I'm good to go.
I'm focused on this.
That should be every Republican statement right now.
And double down.
Major tax cuts.
Get the hell out of Obamacare.
Repeal this thing tomorrow.
School choice.
Massive regulatory reform.
Massive government reorganization.
Let's start focusing on real things.
Let's get business people in there.
Six Sigma.
All this stuff.
To get the efficiency of government going.
Let's do it now!
Because the Democrats are not paying attention!
They're not!
They're focused on Trump is, uh, you know, uh, what was I sort of saying?
Something like if Trump isn't Hitler, I'm a moron.
It was probably a fake meme, but either way, it's not that much different.
That was seriously, that's what I saw.
It was probably a fake meme, but they're so obsessed with anti-Trump rallies that they're not paying attention to actual legislative proposals.
All right.
Another story I saw, the Project Veritas, James O'Keefe videos have been coming out fast and furious.
Have you seen these things, Joe?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, there's another one today.
This is a bad one.
They have a CNN producer on tape, this guy.
Jonathan something or Jimmy Carr or something like that.
And he's on tape saying that the American voters really stupid.
Trump's an idiot.
Everybody knows he's an idiot.
Everybody at CNN knows he's an idiot.
And I'm a little bit unsure how CNN is going to cover for this one.
I mean, they are really in a world of trouble.
They're now on tape talking about Russia being a huge nothing burger.
Did I say that?
Did I cuss before?
They're there.
They got Van Jones, a commentator on tape saying there's nothing to Russia.
They got a guy on tape saying that management is pushing the Russia story.
And now they got a guy on tape released today, the Project Veritas thing saying that voters
are stupid as, you know, and that, did I say that?
Did I cuss before?
No.
Okay.
Voters are stupid as S-H-I-T and this is just really a black eye for CNN.
I don't want to beat this thing to death.
I'm not crazy about pylons and you can probably get it on either show.
The bottom line is CNN is a real problem.
I mean, if your entire business is supposed to be journalism and a reporting of the facts and a strict reporting of the facts outside of editorial content, then listen, you're in a world of trouble.
I don't know how they're going to recover from any of this.
I mean, this looks really, really bad for them.
Great piece I saw in the Wall Street Journal this morning from Kimberly Strassel, which I'll put in the show notes at bongino.com, and they're also available at conservativereview.com as well on their podcast.
But if you're having a hard time finding them, you can go to my site, bongino.com, and there's a tab called Show Notes.
Very scientific, isn't it?
You like that?
It's crazy, right?
Strassel has a really good piece this morning in the Wall Street Journal.
I like her work.
I disagree with her conclusion from it, but one of the things, the argument she makes in the piece is that the political tides have changed in America and that Republicans have to wake up to the new political reality that pre-existing conditions and basically community rating are now the new baseline level from which we're negotiating.
In other words, Not to put words in her mouth, but we should throw free market medicine out the window and start from the premise that government has a significant role in medicine.
Now, she makes a convincing argument that the politics have in fact changed based on some polling and what people think and how some, you know, even Republican senators aren't even talking about free markets anymore.
So I don't disagree with what she's saying that the polling's changed.
But here's my problem with the piece.
About accepting, just so we're clear Joe, about accepting from a baseline level of negotiation that the government should have an enormous role in medicine.
I don't agree we should accept that, even if the polling says it.
Because the reason polling says it is because we haven't done a good job as conservatives and Republicans out there explaining to people why free market medicine is the better solution.
So it's kind of like a downward spiral, Joe.
You see where I'm going with this?
It's like Republicans have done a really poor job of explaining the benefits of free markets and healthcare freedom and liberty to people.
So because we failed to do that, the Democrats have kind of won the day on the political argument about Obamacare, that government should have a heavy role in medicine, and therefore we should continue to not make that argument because the politics have changed.
But the politics changed because we failed to make that argument.
Reagan, forgive me, I'm not getting the quote exactly right.
I know everybody quotes Reagan all the time.
But he really had some bits of wisdom and some pearls there that should never be forgotten.
And one of them, it's not an exact quote, but he said it's something like, it's not about moving towards the polls, it's about moving the polls towards being right.
In other words, if the polls say something that's generally wrong, that means we've done a bad idea of explaining it, not that we should move our political positions to where the polls are now.
And you're seeing that in Obamacare.
And Strassel, in the piece, says there are two things that Americans are just not willing to forego anymore, and this is what they associate Obamacare with, and this is why Obamacare right now is showing some level of at least decent public approval.
Well, it's twofold.
They associate these two things primarily with Obamacare, and it's due to a lack of familiarity with the law.
The two things, Joe, are pre-existing condition protection and children on the policy to age 26.
So here's a quote from Strassel, and I'm going to go into this in a little more detail on Hannity later when I have three hours.
She says, my handwriting is so bad, by the way, folks.
This is so bad.
I write like a doctor.
I wish I thought like one.
Things would be great.
She says, few Americans even understood the stunningly complex means by which Obamacare screwed up the individual insurance market or the wider economy.
To this day, most Americans haven't intimately interacted with the law As they will receive their healthcare from an employer or Medicare.
She's absolutely right.
Bingo.
She springs up the problem we brought up during yesterday's show, in case you missed it.
The problem is, folks, Obamacare, as we know it, impacted the wider healthcare market and the economy, but was actually only directed at a very small sliver of Americans.
This is a key point you absolutely have to understand if you're to engage in a rigorous debate with your left-leaning friends, okay?
The original purpose of Obamacare, folks, was not to upend the employer market, in other words, people who have insurance through their jobs, which is the majority of Americans, or Medicare, which is nearly everyone in their late 60s in America.
That was not the purpose.
The original purpose of Obamacare, I'm not saying it didn't affect those markets, Joe, I want to be clear, but I'm saying what the original stated purpose of Obamacare was and how they marketed it was to help people in the individual market.
Those, say, 10, 20 million Americans, whatever the number was at the time, who did not have insurance, who were not 65 or older, either had a job that didn't provide an insurance plan, or they just didn't have a job and didn't have insurance at all, but had assets that didn't make them eligible for Medicaid.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
That was the original Obamacare market.
Not Medicaid, in other words, not poor people, although Medicaid did expand.
It wasn't poor folks.
It wasn't people who had employer insurance.
It wasn't people who had Medicare.
It was people who had assets who were in their, whatever, 20 to, well, kids up to 64, 65, who didn't have insurance.
This is where it gets confusing.
Because most of the people who have employer-based insurance now, the only changes they really saw from this whole plan were they saw their premiums go up, and people are very risk-averse.
So right now, Joe, if you work for whatever, WCBM Radio, like Joe does, Joe's premiums may have went up as a result of having employer-based coverage through the radio station, but Joe was never in any real danger of losing his insurance, and people are inherently risk-averse.
Right, you're correct.
People will People do not like it.
The fear of loss overrides the power of gain.
I talked about this before.
There's a great book by Greg Ip out there that I read a long time ago.
I forget the name of it, but it's a really good book talking about the financial crisis and how there's a confusion amongst people when they think about economics that people have an equal interest in gain and loss.
Here's what I mean, Joe.
They think if you rationally average out the chance of loss with the percentage of gain that people will make rational decisions and the fact of the matter is they don't.
People's fear of loss overrides people's hopes of a gain.
So you have to give people, so let's say you say to folks, Here's what we're going to do, we're going to flip a coin and if you hit this amount of heads or this amount of tails, you know, you're going to win this amount of money.
But if you don't, you're going to lose this amount of money.
If it's a penny more, the chances by playing the game, let's say, you know, a hundred tails, if you hit 50-50, you have to make it, where I'm going with this is, you have to make it Unbelievably more rewarding to play the game financially.
Like, we'll give you $20 for every, say, $10 you lose on the game to play this game.
You can't make it, in other words, Joe, that if you win the game, we'll give you $10.01, and if you lose, we'll take $10 from you.
Even though rationally, if it's, you know, if you're playing a game 50-50, that makes sense.
Well, I'll get 50-50, I'll gain a penny.
You get what I'm saying?
It's not the way it works.
People's fear of losing that $10 if they lose the game.
What do you mean, I gotta give you money if I lose the game?
Overrides the rational mathematics of it that you'll win almost no matter what.
Well, we've all grown up with a bird in hand.
A bird, yes.
It's a good way to see.
And he gives better examples in the book, especially coin flipping examples where they can actually numerically quantify how much more you have to pay people to win to override their fear of a loss.
So, I bring that up in relationship, and Joe's burden of hand example's a good one.
People have the burden of hand right now, which is crap rules.
Their premiums went up through employers, right?
Right.
And even though Obamacare wasn't directed at them in the employer market, right now they're like, gosh, after what we just went through with Obamacare, do we really want to upend the market again?
So even though there's a significant chance that your premiums over time are going to go down with any fix, Almost any fix to the insurance markets now, given that Obamacare was so bad.
Understandably, Obamacare's polling well in some cases, and we shouldn't run from that.
Not because people like it, but because people are afraid of change at this point.
But Strassel's point here is a good one, that people are afraid of change because they don't understand what's going on.
They think Obamacare is these two things, pre-existing conditions and children on their insurance policies to the age of 26, Joe, but that's not what you should be concerned about.
What you need to be concerned about is the community rating and the guaranteed issue provisions, which I've, I mean, I don't know how many times I can say this on the show.
That is the core and essence of Obamacare.
Community rating, guaranteed issue, and to throw a little salt in the wound, the regulations.
Obamacare's community rating Is the principle that government can dictate to insurance companies what they can charge to people regardless of their health condition.
Folks, that just doesn't make sense!
If you are healthy, you don't smoke and you don't drink, and you have no pre-existing conditions, you should not be paying the same premium as someone who smokes, someone who drinks, they're overweight, and they haven't had insurance their entire life.
That's not insurance.
I'm not talking about the morals or ethics of it.
That is not insurance.
That's an entitlement program.
That's what community rating is.
It said to these insurers, you cannot charge people health insurance premiums based on their health, which is insane!
Of course your premiums were going to go up.
Because you're paying for someone else who's not paying what their health care costs.
Guaranteed Issue made it worse because this is all in Obamacare.
Because it enshrined into law that health insurance companies not only can't charge people for what their cost of care is going to be, but you have to guarantee them the issue of a policy almost at any time.
So Joe, what do smart people do?
They just waited until they got to the hospital and called the insurance company and said, hey, I need insurance now.
Again, that's not insurance.
That is an entitlement program.
That's a welfare program.
That's not insurance.
You don't wait until you get into a car accident to call the company and say, hey, I need my car insurance.
That's not the way it works.
Folks, this is easily explainable to any of your leftist friends.
Now, combine that with the regulations that Obamacare instituted into the market to be part of the exchanges, the idea that you have to cover hair transplants, vasectomies, you know, wellness visits.
Well, I mean, what does that mean?
Like, you go to the hospital when you're sick, if you want to check up or if you want to go do something.
I mean, these are things that should be negotiated between the patient and the insurance company.
Vasectomies, hair transplants, I mean, everyone lobbied to get their service, hair transplants, whatever it may be.
Everyone lobbied to get their stuff included in the Obamacare deal, Joe.
Why?
Because they wanted the government to pay for it!
So to sum this up here, the point Strassel's making is everybody's forgetting that.
Community rating, meaning you're paying for your neighbor's health care.
Whether they take care of themselves or not.
Guaranteed issue.
You're paying for your neighbor, even if your neighbor doesn't get healthcare until they go to the hospital.
And regulations.
You're paying for your neighbor's vasectomy and hair transplants.
And then you're wondering why your premiums went up?
People don't know!
They don't know!
They think it's pre-existing conditions and kids on their healthcare until they're 26.
These are all minute portions of Obamacare.
Folks, newsflash.
People with pre-existing conditions who were having trouble getting insurance, most of them were already being covered in the state markets.
And as I said to you in a prior show, when a pre-existing condition stipulation was made available to the Obamacare exchanges... Joe, do you remember the number of how many people took advantage of this?
No.
It was 100,000!
Remember that show?
We did that?
How there's this perception out there that pre-existing conditions is all about Obamacare.
Obamacare was so great because of pre-existing conditions.
Folks, this affected 100,000 people!
That's it!
You could have bought them a house, a car, and a health insurance plan for the- and saved trillions of dollars on Obamacare.
That's the- 100,000 people took advantage of the pre-existing condition stuff on Obamacare out of a country of 330 billion.
Yeah, I forgot that.
Yeah.
Yeah, we did that- it was a while ago.
We did that show about a month ago.
But we could have bought them a house and an insurance plan for all the chaos it's caused.
So, again, to land the plane here to steal my buddy Chris's line, It is not about pre-existing conditions and children under the age of 26 being on your insurance plan.
You can already buy your kids an insurance plan if they're under 26.
There's no ban on insurance for children or adults 26 and under.
There never was.
All it did was mandate insurance companies to cover them under a family plan.
You could have bought them insurance.
And a pre-existing condition mandate which only affected 100,000 people!
The stuff that really matters is the community rating guaranteed issue in the regulations, and Americans don't want to talk about it because they're afraid of loss right now.
Folks, we gotta do our homework.
We gotta do our homework.
And I'm really happy that Trump is finally talking about a repeal plan.
Remember, every Republican in the country ran on this.
If you don't keep this promise, forget it.
You're gonna lose the trust of voters forever.
All right, a couple more stories I saw.
Hey, this one is really disturbing.
I tweeted this out today, and I will put the story in the show notes from National Review.
I think Ian Tuttle wrote it.
Did you hear about this Charlie Gard case, Joe, in London?
Uh, yes.
I always throw Joe on the spot with this, because I never talk to him about the content before the show.
I like to hear his reaction.
That was a child they wanted to bring to the States, but- Yes!
Yes, good.
Yeah, Charlie Gard.
This is an unbelievable story, folks.
Awful.
Yeah, awful.
I talk about the why matters a lot.
And one of the reasons I've always been against assisted suicide, and I'm obviously, you know, pro-life conception to natural death, is because when you start down the slippery slope of devaluing human life, and we start to say things like, well, you know, someone's in a vegetative state, and I mean, let's just do them a favor and whack them!
You're like, wait, what?
Once we start down that slippery slope, there's no stopping that boulder rolling downhill.
And if you don't believe me, you better read up about this Charlie Gard case.
It's G-A-R-D.
I will put the story in the show notes today.
Check it out at Bongino.com.
But let me sum up for you what happened here, and you will be deeply disturbed.
So Charlie was born last August with a disease called MDDS.
It's a mitochondrial DNA deficiency syndrome.
It's severe.
He has some brain damage.
Oh, it's a lot of brain damage.
He's had a problem breathing on his own.
He needs to be on a ventilator, but there's an experimental treatment in the United States that I'm not a physician, obviously, but, and they're very candid in the piece that the chances of it working are maybe slim, but it's an option.
Now, Charlie is not in the United States.
Charlie is in London right now, in a hospital in London.
The doctors in the hospital in London have concluded that Charlie is beyond help and that Charlie should be taken off the ventilator and allowed to, quote, die with dignity.
Interesting decision, considering that, you know, nearly one-year-old Charlie isn't making that decision himself, nor are his parents.
Now, being a parent myself, Charlie's parents were rightly horrified by this decision to allow their child to, quote, die with dignity.
So they took the case to court.
The courts in the UK went all the way up to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court said, no, the doctors are right.
We should let the child die with dignity.
They then took it to the European Court of Human Rights, which deferred back to the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom and concurred with the doctor's decision.
Now, they have raised enough money, the family, to take Charlie, young Charlie, over here to the United States to try this experimental treatment.
And the doctors right now and the court system in the UK are prohibiting the decision.
And any day now, the doctors can pull this child off the ventilator and essentially kill him, even though the parents obviously love this child and do not want him to die and want to take a shot at this.
You know folks, this story speaks for itself, but I want to leave you with this on this one because this is just a disgusting, I tweeted out with the story a little subtext there and I said, this is the most disturbing story I've read in a long time.
I cannot believe what's going on in the world right now with the devaluing of human life.
You know, partial birth, abortion, assisted suicides, how we as moral and ethical human beings supposedly have allowed human life to be devalued to a simple mathematical equation.
Well, there's not much we can do for Charlie, so let's whack him!
What?
You know, I'm a believer.
I'm a sinner.
But you've been given one life.
There's no second chances.
There's no let's do it over.
There's no try agains.
There's no let's flip the coin the second time.
When you kill this kid, you've killed him.
And God doesn't make mistakes.
God didn't put him here and, oh man, I missed something.
God doesn't do that.
There's a reason young Charlie's here.
And just because that reason isn't transparent to a bunch of doctors in London, Who, by the way, may be the smartest doctors in the world and the planet, but they may have no idea what a Glenn Davis baseball card is worth.
They may have never attended a church a day in their lives.
Just because these doctors think it's a good idea that Charlie should die, does not mean Charlie or God thinks it's a good idea that Charlie should die.
The story's a disgrace.
I mean, it's an international embarrassment.
It's a stain on our collective humanity.
If you support this, you should all be embarrassed.
I don't care if the... The sad thing is, Joe, that they had to even mention that, oh, well, Charlie's parents raised enough money for... Who cares?
It's not even about the money.
It's about the idea that Charlie deserves to live.
Gosh, I hate stories like that.
They get me really, like... Sometimes I hesitate to bring them up because I, you know, I know I get lost in them.
But it means a lot to me, folks.
I mean, we... If you really believe in the afterlife, if you believe in the Almighty, in my case, in the power of Jesus Christ to save you, and you believe that there's a second creation, that this is all... You're here, you're... I really, genuinely believe this is your test.
Are we really committed to cutting that test short for people when they've been given challenges by God, like Charlie's been given, just because, what, we're going to save a few bucks?
Let's just whack a few people because we're, you know, we're wasting precious resources.
As Obama said once about Obamacare, we'll just tell grandma to take the pill.
Yeah.
Crazy.
Really freaking crazy stuff.
All right.
Let me just give you one last story that I probably should have finished with that one because it's always tough for me to get into like a new story after that.
But I did see it and I thought it was interesting.
And I will put this story in the show notes as well today.
So Cato, which I really, I really enjoy their email.
They have a really good email list.
They have great articles.
If you're into economic wonkery like I am, Cato has some really, really good stuff.
So check them out.
C-A-T-O.
They have a piece up by David Boaz today, which is great, about these stadiums, and Joe, you are probably intimately familiar with this, with Baltimore and the convention centers and the stadiums and everything, and public financing of stadiums is always a big issue up there.
Yes, it is.
Folks, I can't sum up the whole piece.
It's a little wonky, but it's a really good piece, and it talks about the economic research, and this is a huge deal in Florida, because now the idea that building a stadium for a professional sports team is going to lead to economic growth is now translating into the minor leagues too.
It's a huge, trust me, it is a huge issue down here in Florida.
I mean, every spring training team and their affiliate is down here in Florida.
So there's always this, well, we got to attract the Mets and the Cardinals and the Astros.
So we're going to do some County money and state money because it's going to bring all this economic growth.
Folks, Outside of the minimum wage, there are a few ideas that have been debunked so thoroughly.
I'm not suggesting it's a bad idea to bring sports teams to your area.
I'm suggesting it's a bad idea for the public to pay for it!
This idea that public financing is going to lead to some geometric rate of economic growth that's going to benefit the taxpayer more than they put in has been debunked so thoroughly it should never be brought up in polite company again.
Now, I will put the Boas story, and you can read it, it's not very long, but he cites the economic research.
This is all you have to remember when this argument comes up with your leftists and frankly some of your right-leaning friends who think this is a good idea.
The economic growth that comes as a result Of an entertainment thing, like a baseball facility.
Let's say a spring training facility.
Comes from other places, folks.
It's not the money fairy.
There's a significant substitution effect.
And what the research shows over... Just rubbed my lips on the microphone.
That was gross.
Thank you.
Yeah.
You know, your microphone's always a mess because you're always talking, screaming into it.
You never know what, you know, spitting on it and everything.
Grotesque.
Seriously.
What the research shows, folks, Is twofold.
Number one, people's entertainment budgets are relatively fixed.
So, let's say, like, for me, we have a pretty intense summer with my kids.
We don't do it often, but, you know, I want to get my kids around and show them a little history and travel a bit.
We have a pretty fixed budget, my wife and I. We know what we want to spend.
Okay?
So let's say that budget for a summer vacation is $5,000, right?
Pretty decent sum of money.
Yeah.
That budget's fixed, folks.
So point number two, so point number one is entertainment budgets are typically relatively fixed.
Point number two is there's a significant substitution effect here.
Meaning, the economic growth that comes from putting the Joey Bagadonitz Rockstars minor league team in your backyard, that is not money fairy money that's created.
The amount you spend on the tickets to the Joey Bagadonitz Rockstars comes from Your other entertainment, whatever, desires and wishes.
You're not going to the movies as much.
You're not eating out at Bonefish at the Outback as much.
You see what I'm saying, Joe?
Yeah.
Your entertainment budget is relatively fixed.
It's not new money.
It just comes from other entities in the area.
Folks, the research on this is rock solid and decades long.
So I'm just begging you as a conservative, and as a liberty-minded individual, Argue for baseball teams in your area passionately.
I love having the St.
Lucie Mets up north of me.
I love it.
Tim Tebow's up there now.
I really enjoy it.
But let's be principled, unlike our left-leaning friends, and admit the truth.
That these are private entities, the Mets organization, that will benefit private money.
They're not sharing the stock holdings with you, right Joe?
Right.
They're not sharing them with me.
These are private baseball players.
They have personal salaries.
They're not sharing their money with me.
And they should finance the construction of their own stadiums.
I don't understand why taxpayers, I'm supposed to work to finance the salary of a minor league baseball player in a park.
This is insane.
I love having it there.
That's great.
But you know what?
They're here for a reason in Florida.
You know why, Joe?
It's hot.
All the time.
Every time.
That's why they're in Florida and Arizona.
You want to play in the cold in Minnesota?
Go ahead.
I have no problem.
I have no problem with Minnesotans trying to attract the St.
Lucie Mets.
Go ahead.
The bottom line is Florida.
It's the greatest place on earth to play baseball.
You have to come here!
Why are we paying for this?
This is crazy!
So read the paper, uh, not the paper, read the article.
It's really good.
And it's important because, you know, I know it's a small issue, baseball stadiums and stuff, but again, it speaks to the economic realities we have to be aware of when we start arguing larger issues as well.
Because once you understand the fundamental economic core of substitution effects, taxpayer-funded
stadiums, all of those principles, Joe, are related to higher economic principles as well.
Things like sugar tariffs and everything like that as well.
Once you understand that people don't have to pay for stuff, they don't have to pay for
a movie, they can go to a baseball game, that the money's fixed, all the larger economic
principles start to make sense as well.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
And listen, if you haven't subscribed yet to CRTV, please do so.
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