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June 1, 2025 - Stew Peters Show
01:03:30
Unaccounted: The VA's $15 Billion Funding Failure
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Hey guys, check this out.
Every year, we are told by our government how much of a national treasure veterans are to this land, and they promise to take care of veterans.
They promise.
But what if I told you that they're knowingly underfunding the VA while ignoring the budget that's written by the very people and organizations that serve veterans every single day, face-to-face?
Why does the VA not use the independent budget?
What is it, first of all?
Who writes it?
And what might this compare and contrast that we're going to do today reveal about how the government really takes care of and how they really feel about veterans?
So, today we'll dive into that.
Stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
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Okay.
The independent budget.
Now, for most people who are civilians, we could say, most people have no idea what this independent budget is.
Let alone veterans.
And a lot of other people in the veteran community may not exactly know what the independent budget actually is.
So I kept some notes, so I'm going to refer over to them here and there.
The independent budget is a budget that is submitted every year to Congress by three congressionally chartered veteran service organizations.
Those are the DAV, the PVA, which is the Paralyzed Veterans for America, And the VFW.
Now DAV focuses on the, I hate to say everyday, ordinary disabled veteran, but DAV focuses on disabled veterans.
PVA advocates for paralyzed veterans and those guys and gals that have spinal cord injuries or any other serious disability, serious injury that requires extensive care like a spinal cord injury would.
And the VFW, of course, represents and advocates for combat veterans.
Now, the independent budget first came to pass in 1987 when there was year after year after year after year, every year, the VA was underfunded.
Veterans were having the same or similar experiences that they're having now when we hear of a whole bunch of wait times and poor care and facilities are dilapidated and falling down and an ill repair.
This is nothing new.
And I will say, based on the research I did, it seems that things got a whole lot better.
But we still, to this day, have a lot of things that we can improve.
We hear a lot of reports from veterans that they have negative experiences in the VA facility or trying to deal with a benefit or an entitlement or a program or a service or something like that.
And so every year, the DAV, the PVA, and the VFW get them and their people together.
And based on the current year they're sitting in, the fiscal year starts October 1st, they talk about what it is they need for funding for the next year.
And all of these numbers have projections for...
Many of them are going to need benefits.
Many of them are going to need disability benefits, things of that nature.
But they also account for a number of veterans who are probably or may die in the coming year.
So budgets fluctuate.
Based on gains and losses, right?
And so then they submit this budget to Congress every year when the legislative session starts.
And I'm sure that there's some behind-the-door meetings and conversations and lobbying and all this other stuff for the next budget.
And so they submit this independent budget to Congress, to the Veterans Affairs Committee.
And they take it and do God knows what with it.
They review it.
They talk about it.
But almost every year since 1987, the VA has been underfunded.
The independent budget has been massively underfunded.
And I think that just on its face, people probably can understand a little bit about what's going on here.
The VFW, the PVA, and the DAV, they're not government employees.
They're congressionally chartered veteran service organizations, but they're not government employees.
They're not an actual government agency.
But these are the places that veterans go to receive care, care benefits, disability benefits, education benefits.
All kinds of different services that veterans need every day.
Mental health care, housing assistance, food assistance, employment assistance, all these things.
But the Congress, the Veterans Services Committee, the VA committee has hardly ever, I think I saw maybe once, maybe twice, That the independent budget and the budget that Congress puts out are close in numbers.
I don't believe that the independent budget's ever been funded fully as requested.
And I'm sure there's some gate guarding going on here, right?
These people aren't members of Congress.
Why are they going to tell us how to fund the stuff?
Well, they're going to tell you how to fund it because they're the ones providing services.
These are the organizations that look veterans dead in their face every day and help them with the things that they come to get help with.
So, what are the key things that the independent budget covers?
Medical services, infrastructure, claims processing, research, and mental health.
Backed by on-the-ground data and real usage reports, not political compromise.
So, here's the difference.
The budget that Congress, the Veterans Affairs Committee, puts out is all based on political rhetoric, if you will.
And a lot of it, if you take the time to get on the internet, YouTube or C-SPAN or the House of Congress or whatever website, Library of Congress, you can see all these committee hearings.
They tape them all.
Most of them are put up on YouTube.
But it's always about, they talk about how important serving veterans are.
But we don't see a whole lot of talk about the things that are day-to-day, in-your-face services provided.
Which is what really we talk about.
You know, in our own circles.
What we really talk about when we're at a VA facility, when we're talking to other veterans or other soldiers or whatever, the day-to-day services and the experiences that we have are what our conversations consist of in the community.
But when you hear the House Armed Services Committee, but the Veterans Affairs Committee talk about budgeting.
None of it really has anything to do with day-to-day services.
They talk about initiatives.
They talk about departments or different things that maybe need independent funding.
And then they amass this huge budget.
And this year, by the way, it was $15 billion short of what was requested.
Congress didn't even give the Veterans Affairs Committee.
The amount of money they say they need, let alone what these organizations who make up the independent budget asked for.
It was way more than $15 billion underfunded.
And so it kind of just, to me, it gets a little murky because we hear a lot of rhetoric and we hear a lot of words from people about things like, for example, this 15% workforce reduction at the VA.
83,000 people are going to get fired.
And everyone is so up in arms about it.
Because why?
Because this is going to take away from the veteran experience.
This is going to take away from care.
This is going to take away from super important initiatives that veterans need and want to take part in.
But yet we underfund the people, knowingly underfund the people.
Who are providing the said services that these folks talk about is needed so dramatically.
And so, to add on top of that, the people on the left and anybody else, I mean, I suppose it's not just people on the left, but people in general that don't support things like Doge.
They don't support things like a little bit of restructuring to figure out where the Let's get to a baseline, right?
And then figure out what it is that we need to beef up, figure out the things that we can probably leave out moving forward, save some money, and put money where it needs to go.
And Doug Collins and Donald Trump have been roasted, continually, over and over, day after day, about this whole VA mass firing.
Bullshit that they're talking about.
And, you know, people will say things like, well, it's not fair.
It's not fair that the government has over-exerted themselves.
They've over-committed themselves and now we can't afford it.
But that shouldn't be on the people that work there.
They shouldn't have to pay the price for the government over-extending itself.
And maybe that's true.
Maybe that makes a little bit of sense.
It is not their fault.
It's not their fault that the government overextended themselves and were printing money and doing shady bullshit behind closed doors and whatever else.
Whatever else is happening, I'm sure a lot more of it will come to light as time goes by.
But to add on to that, If we don't fix it, are we even going to have a Department of Veterans Affairs in 20, 30, 40 years?
If we're just throwing shit to the wall to see if it sticks, without knowing exactly what it is we're doing, what does that mean for veterans?
And so maybe we're getting off track here.
But why would Congress not want to fund these initiatives and also fund them based on the information that's coming from the organizations that provide every single service that they talk about veterans are going to go without?
So which is it?
Are we going to do something good that might be a little bit painful at first for a little while until we get it all figured out, get some money in the bank, and maybe we invite people back who are laid off?
Clearly not all of them.
But if half of them or a third of them or 5,000 of them came back, That would be a win, right?
And now we have money in the coffers to provide services and maybe fund the independent budget?
Because these are the programs, the people that are fighting veteran suicide on the street every day that don't walk into the ivory tower and sit at some desk or some podium or wherever and just puke out bullshit all day?
And then make the decision about where all the money's going, but they have no real-world experience or knowledge of what's really happening on the front lines serving veterans and providing them the things that they need.
I mean, these places, the VFW, the PVA, they do real-life support programs.
Like we talked about, benefits help, disability, deals, suicide prevention, housing, employment.
They do all the real-world stuff.
So, what is the difference?
What is the difference between the government budget and the independent budget?
Well, I made some points here, so here we go.
I'm going to get through them quick.
The government budget is created by the Office of Management and Budget, OMB.
In partnership with the VA leadership.
It focuses on cost control fitting within broader political goals.
So like defense, tax policy, just like the things that are also required to spend money on to operate, like the cost of doing business type things.
And the government budget often underestimates things like staffing needs.
How are staffing needs going to change?
For the good or the bad.
And what is the demand for services going to be?
They say that the government budget every year doesn't really account or estimate for what services are going to be in the next fiscal year.
They just take the numbers and the data from the current fiscal year and somebody was saying they add a percentage just to account for regular growth.
More veterans getting in the system because they're getting out of the military or they finally have decided to sign up for VA services.
But also, like we were saying, the independent budget accounts for things like veterans who may die off.
The government budget, they didn't say.
I would imagine that they account for those types of things.
People who die off or people who have, maybe their living situation has changed and they have really good private insurance and they just don't use the VA system anymore, but maybe they still collect their disability benefits, but they're not going to a VA clinic or hospital every week or once or twice a month to get care.
They're going to wherever else they decide to go.
And so, they say here it's also prone to mid-year funding shortfalls, like the $15 billion shortfall in funding in 2024.
And so, just ask yourself, why all of a sudden are we $15 billion short?
Now, could this be that they were anticipating the results of the election?
Maybe, but I doubt it.
But I think it has more to do with possibly that they were throwing money at all kinds of other stuff.
All kinds of other research projects, other contracts, other services that maybe were needed, maybe not.
but maybe super expensive.
I have a sneaking suspicion that when these contract officers who work for the VA like meals on wheels for veterans, things like that.
I have a sneaking suspicion that contract officers who negotiate and grant contracts on behalf of the VA Often give them to repeat customers, or there's a list of preferred contractors.
And if we did some digging, I'm willing to bet that we would find some information about how they're all connected, either to each other or connected to somebody within.
Leadership or government or something like that.
There's just been so many of them that I would not be surprised that if we audited the contractors that are providing services or construction or whatever they were hired to do, they're connected outside of the contract some way, somehow.
Maybe that's just me being a conspiracy guy.
Maybe.
Maybe.
I think if we did the audit and we did some digging, that we would figure it out pretty quickly.
But maybe I'm wrong.
The bottom line is the independent budget is based on real demand.
It's not based on projections.
The independent budget is formulated based on veteran usage of services in the current year.
Then with a projection of how those services are going to also be used in the next year with growth or loss of clients or patients or veterans.
Um...
The recent, check this one out, the recent 2025 example.
The independent budget requested $4.2 billion more than the government for health services.
So the VA asked for a number.
The people who put the independent budget together for fiscal year 25 asked for $4.2 billion more than what Congress asked for.
It urged dedicated suicide prevention funding, and they wanted to have it, this funding for suicide prevention, they wanted to have it protected.
There was some scuttlebutt about And the fight for suicide prevention among veterans is one of the initiatives that money gets pulled from when needed, which is probably all the time since we have now been told that the budget is never funded with as much money as that has been asked for.
Where is all this money going?
The independent budget also asked for an extra $3 billion for infrastructure to address the dilapidated VA facilities around the country.
It says here that many of them are 50 to 70 years old.
some of the hospitals, the clinics, the facilities in which they put clinics in.
And what happened is,
Way more expensive than tearing it down and building a new one, or doing a full remodel before the thing got to the point of no return.
But they don't have the money to build new places.
They don't have the money to renovate all these places.
I think I was talking last week or sometime recently about the Minneapolis VA Hospital.
When I started going there in 2007, I think it was, you walk in there and it smelled like pee.
And it was mothballs, and it wasn't really ever dirty, but it stunk in there.
And it wasn't a very comfortable place to spend a whole afternoon of appointments.
They have since, over all these years, updated it and remodeled it.
It currently is pretty nice.
They've done a pretty good job.
But I reckon that it was millions and millions of dollars.
The bottom line is that the independent budget reflects reality, not projections per se, but it talks about what we've really used and what we really need to continue our work, basically, is what it says.
And in most years, the government budget falls about $7 to $15 billion short of what the independent budget has asked for.
And so I'm sure you can imagine there's some gate guarding of money and funds going on here somewhere.
But there's just no explanation for it in my mind that makes sense.
There's no explanation that really makes sense to me.
If, in fact, veterans are as important to our government as they say.
And so, we've got to take a break here.
We'll be right back.
Don't go away.
We'll be right back.
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Hey folks, welcome back from the break here.
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Okay, let's continue because we're running short on time.
The next thing I want to talk about is why the government maybe, why they maybe ignore the independent budget.
The first one is political image versus financial cost.
Usually we hear politicians say, yeah, of course, we support veterans.
Let's get them everything they need.
We should never have to look a veteran dead in their face and tell them, I'm sorry, but we can't help you.
But yet when the price tag comes out, like the independent budget, I don't know.
Man, that's expensive.
I don't know if we can fund that.
I don't know if we can afford that.
And understand this.
The independent budget calls for funding veterans like they were a defense priority.
And that is what really makes them scared, I think.
All the people in government who are like the budget hawks, right?
The people who are the penny pinchers, and they're supposed to find these things, and we need to discuss them, and we need to do away with them if it's going to be too expensive.
But you hear from them all the time, yeah, of course, of course we support our veterans.
Let's get them anything they need.
Interesting, right?
Bureaucratic egos.
I think that this is a huge one.
I think there's a lot of...
If the independent budget was to be passed, I believe that a lot of bureaucratic egos are going to be bruised and tarnished.
And it only makes sense that this would be a reason why they ignore this independent budget.
Or at least ignore it enough to not fund it.
And here we go.
VA leadership and the OMB, the office management budget, I believe that's what OMB is.
They don't want to cede control to outside organizations.
As we discussed before, the DAV and the VFW and the PVA are not government agencies.
So you can imagine that there's a lot of bureaucratic red tape when you have organizations coming in and asking for very large sums of money like this independent budget does.
And then in order for it to be funded, we got to have a number of politicians who say, hey, maybe you guys are right.
You guys are the ones out there really serving veterans face-to-face, day-to-day, boots on ground, right?
Oh, okay.
Well, I don't know.
And so like we have here, even though the DAV and VFW, they serve more veterans every day than many VA clinics do.
Let that sink in for a minute.
These veteran service organizations talk to, deal with, help, and serve more veterans on a daily basis than most VA clinics do.
But yet their knowledge, their expertise, all the things that make them a go-to, For veterans to get the things they need are, I don't know, they're scary to government.
I don't know if they're scared of it, but it never becomes, as it seems, it never becomes a conversation between the two parties, Congress and the Veterans Service Organizations, about what really is best for veterans.
And then there's lack of accountability.
Congress can ignore the independent budget without consequence.
They'll listen.
You can hand them the paperwork.
But if they don't want to read it, they're not gonna.
They don't want to talk about it.
They're not gonna.
They ignore it.
Because maybe they know better.
Maybe that's their take.
And then VA leaders can also claim, hey, we're really doing our best with what we're given.
But they don't explain anything about the difference between the government budget and the independent budget.
If the general public and the general taxpayer knew the difference between the independent budget and the government budget, I believe that most people who care enough to read a little bit about the two, Or listen to a little bit about the two.
They're going to ask, well, why wouldn't we support and fund the organizations that are actually providing the services?
It's kind of like, what would be a similar ordeal?
It's kind of like a police department.
A police department going to City Hall and going, hey.
You know, here's a few things that are becoming a little more difficult to deal with.
They're becoming out of our hands, out of control a little bit.
We need to hire more cops.
And we need to get more equipment.
Or we need to build a facility to house criminals or to train more police or whatever.
And then City Hall going, yeah.
I don't know.
Why don't I, as the mayor, get a bunch of city officials, the city council, and things like that together, and we'll discuss what we think you need, and then we'll let you know what the outcome is.
But at no time are they going to have a conversation with the police officials, the chief of police or whatever, the county sheriff or whoever, about what they need and why.
And then when the sheriff or the chief of police submits a budget request for funds, no, no, no, no, we'll figure this out.
I mean, seemingly that's how it goes between the veteran service organizations and the government.
And then there's also political distractions.
Funding debates get caught up in committee hearings.
And then larger fights about different issues either stem off of that or they interrupt this actual conversation.
Things like defense spending becomes a big counter-argument.
Government shutdowns.
And then, of course, you have what party controls.
The house.
So more bureaucratic red tape.
There's another reason, another thing standing in the way of the people who are asking for assistance to serve veterans.
But again, the general public doesn't know anything about this.
So let me ask you this.
What would you say What are the real impacts?
What are the real positives and negatives or indifferences of ignoring the independent budget?
So what I have here is, of course, the backup in claims being processed and adjudicated and either fixed or granted or whatever path it takes after adjudication.
Of course, that's going to get longer.
And apparently here it says, I'm sorry for the pause.
I was just reading this.
I didn't read this part yet.
The independent budget warned of staffing issues, especially in VBA, the Veterans Benefit Administration.
So VAs broke up to like healthcare and benefits, right?
So at some point...
And the independent budgets that were submitted in the past had accounted for hiring more people to do things like get rid of the backlog.
Get rid of that 12, 14, 16, 18, two-year wait.
I personally waited 16 months for my claim, my initial claim.
Back in 2007, I think it was.
I didn't get my benefits till well into 2008.
I think it was probably around Thanksgiving time, if I remember right.
So, if we don't ignore the budget, and we fund the VBA as the independent budget asked for, those backlogs would go away.
And also think of this.
If the VA and the VSOs were funded as requested, maybe we wouldn't have issues like needing to lay off 83,000 people because we can no longer afford it.
And I know that we said, that we went over earlier in the show, that the independent budget usually is quite a bit bigger than what the government proposes.
But here's the thing, man.
The United States government trained all of these people to do a job while wearing a uniform.
And over their heart, the name tape says U.S. Army or U.S. Marines or U.S. Navy or U.S. Air Force or U.S. Coast Guard or now U.S. Space Force.
The government trained them.
And then sent them on to do whatever job it is that they trained them to do.
And in many cases, sent them recently in the last 25 years, sent them to a forward area.
We expose young men and women to combat.
We expose them to the things that the human mind, they say, is not designed to handle and process correctly.
So mental health among veterans has become a big issue.
We send these people to forward areas to do really, really big, important jobs at very young ages.
And a lot of these men and women, as we've discussed many times, have given their youth, they've given their health, they've given their mobility, they've shed blood.
And tears and all kinds of things and left, for many people, left everything they had on the battlefield.
And now, when we talk about taking care of them, as the government told us, as they promised, keep in mind that veterans benefits, VA benefits and disability isn't necessarily something that A huge crowd of veterans one day in the very distant past got together and stood outside the White House and said,
you're going to give us medical care, you're going to give us a monthly income and disability benefits because we can't work a normal job any longer, or whatever the case is.
These were things that the government put out as a benefit for military service.
And the idea is, I think, if I understand it correctly, that the government at one time said, you chose to join this military force, whichever branch it was you picked.
And for that, as a benefit, we're going to take care of you if something happens to you.
And now we find out We can't afford it.
Since 1987.
And who knows how long before that it was an issue, I'm sure.
But the independent budget was first done in 87. So how much of a benefit is it really?
I mean, of course, there are millions of veterans who are getting their benefits and are getting the care.
But what about the ones that aren't?
What about the guys and gals that are going to come into the VA system in the next year, five years, 10 years, 15 years, 18, whatever it is?
And there's not going to be services for them.
And then I'm sure at some point in the future, we'll hit a span of years where a big chunk of veterans will die off.
Veterans of my era, you know, we'll all be between the ages of 80 and 100.
Many of us And those slowly start dying off at faster rates making it If a guy or gal who has 100% disability from the VA who's making, I don't know, like around here in Minnesota, it's about $4,000 a month.
When they die, that's $4,000 a month that the VA gets to keep.
Dead veterans are cheap veterans.
It sounds crazy.
It sounds insensitive.
It sounds fucked up.
But it's true.
And so these are the things that are a result of ignoring the people who are asking for resources to provide the services and benefits that our government told us we were going to get.
Not that we asked for.
But told us we were going to get.
I'm willing to bet that there are, maybe not enough, but there is an overwhelming amount of individuals in this country who still would have served.
Who still would have signed up.
Maybe not.
Maybe I'm wrong about that.
But I think that there are many, many people, or at least there used to be, that would have served just because somebody's got to do it.
I don't know that there's a lot of people who make the decision about joining the military based on what they're going to get from the VA when they get out, because that means then they're going to get hurt, they're going to get this, they're going to get that, and nobody's going to go into that job expecting to be so effed up that they need a lifetime of care for the rest of their lives.
We've run out of time.
I had more stuff to go over.
We just can't get to it today.
But here's what I think.
At the end of the day, we as a community of people, a culture of veterans, we need to be the ones to be boisterous about this.
We need to be the ones to contact.
Our elected officials.
We need to be the ones to talk about this type of things on platforms like this, in our circles, out in our community, whenever these types of issues come up.
We need to talk about this.
And at the end of the day, these are the kind of questions when election season comes up and some hunyuk comes knocking on my door, asking for my vote.
These are the types of things that I ask them.
What's your take on the independent budget for veterans?
And every now and then, when you talk to people who are in government roles who should know this stuff, they look at you like you have a big, veiny phallus growing out of your face.
So if the people who are asking for my vote don't know the difference between the government and independent budget for veteran funding, that's an issue for me.
And so these are the things that we should be talking about so that it is common knowledge amongst our community.
You can email them, you can call them, you can show up to their events and ask them in person.
You can talk about it with your co-workers, your family, other veterans that you may be friends with.
Other people that you know support the veterans in their community.
They should be talking too.
There's no reason, in my mind, That we don't fund the initiatives to care for the men and women who chose to sacrifice everything for this country.
Yes, they got paid for doing a job.
But they are also still a very, very small percentage of our population in this country.
So, we should take care of them.
Like we told them we were gonna.
Anyway, that's all the time we have.
I really hope that you guys have an amazing rest of your evening.
We'll see you again next week.
Bye-bye.
We have a big problem.
And this is going to continue ongoing.
This is an outrage to America.
You talked about law.
This is a travesty to law.
There is no law.
Because the information and money are completely controlled by a small group of people.
And if you say their name, you're called an anti-semi.
You're called an anti-semi.
Don't listen, boys.
Go, go.
Let's go.
Go, go.
I just don't understand how you have a country where your politicians have more allegiance to a foreign nation than they do their own.
I honestly think that we have literal treason going on right now where Israel's interests are being put before America's interests.
Is America a sovereign nation or are we being controlled by Israel?
People are always talking about they.
They are out of control.
They are killing us.
We have to identify who the real enemy is.
The satanic Jews!
They control everything and mostly everybody.
What difference does it make if it's a baby or if it's an adult?
It's the same thing.
There's one little nation state of Israel that everybody's afraid to talk about.
It'll get you nuked off the internet.
It'll scare advertisers away from doing business with you if you talk about Zionist infiltration.
Are you a Zionist?
Yes, yes.
You have to get rid of AIPAC.
have to get rid of you know the Israeli control over our country I mean there's just no I Are you part of the Jewish conspiracy?
What exactly is the...
I'm Jewish.
Those are the words that he told us that he would never use again.
The End Here on the break, folks, we're going to talk about mushrooms.
What do you know about mushrooms, specifically corn?
Well, I don't know a whole lot, but I have some friends here that do.
So I want to introduce you to Kurt and Kristen Ludlow.
Hello, folks.
How are you?
Great.
How are you doing?
Very good.
We have limited time.
I don't want you to feel rushed, but I'd like you to tell us quickly about Coriolis versicolor mushrooms and this breakthrough that seemingly not a whole lot of people have.
have been informed about or know about, but we're here to change that.
So help us out.
What do you know?
Absolutely.
Well, let me give you some background real quick on it and how we got our hands on it.
First and foremost, one of our partners here at the company, his mother was dealing with a very severe issue that affected her lung.
She was attending Sloan Kettering.
That issue ended up getting worse.
They tried everything medically they could to resolve it.
Nothing worked.
And so they gave her two months to live.
He started reaching out to friends and family regarding her circumstances.
And her cousin or her nephew out in Japan reached back and said, look, I have something.
It's just in a capsule form.
It's a mushroom.
We have our proprietary way we extract it.
He was talking to her son, his cousin, and said, why don't you have your mom try it and just see if this might help her out in any way.
And so she started taking it.
And after 30 days, she noticed quite a considerable difference in the way she's feeling.
Month two went by, more improvement.
Month three, she's feeling as if there's no issues whatsoever.
And she goes back to Sloan Kettering.
Sure enough, they run lab work on her and find that condition to no longer be there.
And so they were flabbergasted.
They wanted to know what she was doing.
And of course, she was able to reach out to her nephew and bring all the information that they requested to them.
And that's where the first clinical study started here in the United States.
And from there, MD Anderson started studying it, the American Cancer Society.
Loma Linda, Harvard.
It's been published in the Library of Medicine many times, and today there's hundreds of studies on this mushroom.
And what they've concluded was that it didn't cure, it didn't mitigate it, it didn't prevent anything, but specifically it would modulate the immune system and get it working optimally again.
And if we can get our immune system working optimally again, I think you can agree that it's the best way to resolve any type of issue that we might be dealing with, because that's what it's designed to do.
And so for years, you know, if that happened to your mother, our partner Simon could not keep from telling anyone that would listen to him about it.
And he started getting all types of reports back from different people with all kinds of different things that they were dealing with, that they were noticing some great results with it.
And it wasn't just for sick, you know, people.
It was for people.
That didn't want to get sick, that wanted to be proactive versus reactive.
And, you know, many great things that people were saying with renewed energy, feeling younger, sleeping better, things like that.
And so eight years ago, what ended up happening is one of our partners, aside from Simon, Steve, he lost a dog due to cancer.
Within two months, Gino, our other partner, also lost a dog due to cancer and two of their children.
They were sitting around looking into it and the dogs are all between the ages of four and eight.
They were young and they weren't happy about it.
And here they had this mushroom that, you know, they'd been getting out to people for years as well as us.
They thought to themselves, well, I wonder if this is safe for animals.
And sure enough, they found a study done by the University of Pennsylvania declaring that dogs that were taking this product were living three times as long as the dogs that weren't that had a very aggressive form of cancer.
And so at that point, that's where Pet Club 24/7 was born because they knew that they had an incredible strain.
And here's what they found out, Richard, is One in three allergies.
Six million new cases of diabetes are going on.
They're medicating them with human medications.
And our pets are living half as long as they used to.
In the 70s, the average age of a golden retriever was 17. Today, that average age is nine.
And they wanted to do something about it.
So they added this mushroom into incredibly, uh, You know, it's the foods, treats and toys they're eating.
The regulations are very loose and it's causing all types of issues as a result of that on top of all the other things that are going on.
And that's where the company was born and that's where we are today.
That's a beautiful story.
There are so many people that are looking for something that's not from the mainstream, not from Big Pharma, or whatever the case may be.
I mean, we all have these stories, right, about Grandma's old home remedies.
And I'll tell you what, I'm super interested in this because I have a dog.
His name is Gus.
He's a Bernadoodle.
He's five or six years old.
He was supposed to be a Mini.
He's now a 108-pound lap dog, and he does struggle with some hip issues only at five or six years old, and he also has these subdermal, almost acne-like bumps on his skin along his back and his side.
And so as you're explaining all this, I'm thinking about Gus, and I'm thinking, man, we need to get him these mushrooms.
I also, I also, And I know a few that have been through two and are on their third dog now.
And it's a real struggle for some of these guys because the training's long.
They get super attached.
They take these pets everywhere.
And so this type of product, the mushroom, I think would be perfect for the veteran community as well.
do people use them for these pets as well on top of some other supplements or anything else that might be out there on the market?
Absolutely, because regardless of what Their immune system is always going to be their first, their best bet, right?
It's intelligently designed to handle everything in the body.
Repair, recover, rebuild, regulate, renew, rebalance, everything that's happening inside of the body.
So especially therapeutic dogs or dogs that are trained to do jobs where they have to focus and they have to have stamina and endurance.
We have spent a lot of time and resources training them.
It's very important that we're We've been so blessed.
God has given us a really pure and potent strain of this mushroom, and we've perfected the extraction process.
So that's why we're seeing such positive results relatively quickly from anything that you can think of with dogs, cats, horses, even people.
It's just been absolutely amazing.
And we just want to be good stewards with what we've been given and take good care of it and be a part of restoring creation.
So especially in those conditions, we encourage you to get your pet on the Coriolis Versicolor Mushroom.
Or if you're a veteran yourself and maybe you've been through some trauma and your body's been through a lot mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, let's get this mushroom into your system so that you can get that support that you need to really be able to recover from the inside out.
Well, and it makes a lot of sense to me, right?
I mean, let's get our immune systems working as our creator intended it to, instead of feeding it all this other junk.
And God knows what they give us in pill form and in our food and all that other stuff these days.
So this is actually very refreshing.
A conversation that we're having, because it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of things out there that are holistic and are natural to help us feel better.
Explain to us, we've got a couple minutes left, why Pet Club 24-7?
Why is it put out as a club?
I think that this is an important thing to touch on.
Yeah, it was really important to us.
We feel very called to do what we're doing, and we know that we're able to offer the world a gift.
And so we never really wanted to build a company.
We want to build a community.
That's the idea behind it, is that if we stand up together and lock arms, change the way that we're doing things so that we can get different results and educate each other, make each other aware, connect each other with better solutions and better options that are going to give us better results.
It's a lot more affordable in many cases.
We believe that this community can truly change the way that pets and people are being treated, just by being a voice for those that don't have one.
Name of the company is Pet Club 24-7 is because we want to be a community of people that are solution-oriented, that do something about it, that don't wait for other people to fix our problems or solve what's going on, that we just stand up, control what we can control, and contribute how we can contribute through this community.
That's beautiful.
See, folks, here at the Stu Peters Network, we're here to help you feel better.
We're so thankful that you guys are here, Pet Club 24 /7.
Kurt and Christine, we're very happy to have you.
Thank you for everything that you've done, bringing this stuff out to people.
Let's get healthy again.
What was the movement that you talked about, Kurt?
I said, you know, we have the Maha movement.
We also have it here for our animals.
Make animals healthy again.
Absolutely.
We're invited to do so, just like on the human side.
And people can count on the fact that there's no bad ingredients in our products.
Everything made in human-grade whole food commercial kitchens, all sourced from the U.S. and made right here in the U.S. Very important.
Well, Kurt, Kristen, thank you very much for being here.
Folks, Pet Club 24-7, make sure you get there.
Get your supplies of mushrooms, not just for you, but for your pets, dog, cats, horses, all those things.
Pet Club 24-7.
Guys, thank you very much for being here.
Let's connect soon.
I'm going to get my supply, and I'm going to report back for me and Gus to make sure that...
I'm super excited to talk to you guys again.
We'll see you very soon.
Thank you.
Thank you, Richard.
All right.
Bye-bye.
There's nothing we wouldn't do for our pets.
They're like our children.
Our friends at Pet Club 24-7 have developed natural products that contain the most potent strain of a mushroom that's been used for thousands of years to help support the immune system.
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