Kerry Lutz, Debt, Taxes, Trust, and Technology: From the $40 Trillion Question to Colorado Rail and the AI Future

Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 – Announcer / Prerecorded Intro Voice. The episode opens with a prerecorded description of the program and its hosts.

Speaker 2 – Chuck, Co-Host. The opening identifies a male co-host named Chuck. The automated transcript renders his surname as “Bonner,” but the surname is not clear enough from the transcript alone to publish confidently, so the transcript uses “Chuck.”

Speaker 3 – Julie, Co-Host. The opening identifies a female co-host named Julie. The automated transcript renders her surname as “Hay,” but the surname is not clear enough from the transcript alone to publish confidently, so the transcript uses “Julie.”

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz, Guest. The guest is introduced as a columnist and economist and the founder of Financial Survival Network. The automated transcript alternates between “Carrie” and “Kerry”; “Kerry Lutz” is used as the most likely rendering, but the spelling should be verified against show records if absolute certainty is required.

Speaker 5 – Jacob, Contributor / Caller. A later participant is directly addressed as Jacob during the discussion of Colorado transportation and is thanked by name. No surname is provided.

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Speaker 1 – Announcer / Prerecorded Intro Voice:
Chuck and Julie, bringing you the truth straight up. An Emmy-winning former investigative reporter, a highly successful trial attorney, and publisher of a major Denver-area newspaper, they’ve been partners as talk-show hosts, in marriage, and as parents for over 10 years, providing thought-provoking information, opinion, and entertainment. Live, local, and interactive. Everyone’s voice is always welcome. The Chuck and Julie Show.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Hello, everybody. Chuck here with the kind of raspy voice.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
And Julie. This is The Chuck and Julie Show. Truth straight up.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
That’s right.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Oh, boy. Chuck is sounding worse by the day.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
By the minute.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
By the minute. There we go. We’re going in the wrong direction.

We are joined today by Kerry Lutz. He’s a columnist and economist, the founder of Financial Survival Network, and he has a great column up. It’s called “What’s $40 Trillion Among Friends?”

Kerry, thank you for your time. We appreciate it, as always.

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
I appreciate you having me on, and I love being with a fellow recovering attorney.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
That’s right.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
So, $40 trillion is the national debt. In your column, you make the point that the number is so large it’s almost ridiculous, and that almost makes it easier to dismiss. But then you point out that it doesn’t really matter until it does matter. Why don’t you explain all of that?

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
As long as they can keep printing up dollars and the world is willing to accept them in payment for goods and services, then there’s no problem. But at some point, we always say that fiat currency is a con game — I should say, it’s a confidence game — and the root of the word “confidence” is “con.”

At some point, they’re just going to decide that the dollar is not worth the paper it’s printed on anymore. I’m not saying that’s going to happen tomorrow or six months down the road. What keeps the world basically on the dollar system is that there is no alternative.

Nobody is trusting the Chinese yuan. You put $10 billion in there overnight or over the weekend from a hedge fund, and then in the morning you wake up and the Chinese government says, “No, you can’t have it.”

The reason the system keeps going here is the liquidity of the markets and the confidence that if a European hedge fund or an Asian one parks X billions of dollars here, when they go to get it, it will still be there.

When another system comes along that is feasible, that’s when we’ll see cracks in the dam. But even now, central banks are buying more gold. That’s a sure sign of gradually eroding confidence.

That’s what we’re faced with. But no politician wants to admit it. When they talk about inflation and loss of purchasing power of the dollar, they act like they can’t figure out why it’s happening. “How could this be?”

I just created an inflation calculator. If you had put a dollar, when I was born in 1957, into the stock market and basically reinvested all your dividends, it would be worth roughly $1,250. If you put it into gold, it would be worth about $130. The other way of looking at it is that a dollar today is worth about eight and a half cents compared with a dollar back in 1957.

[Brief garbled joking exchange about age.]

Speaker 3 – Julie:
In your column, you point out that one reason there may not be enough clamoring about this is that a lot of people who have big money have certain protections. It’s the average middle-class person who is really going to get hurt by inflation. Why don’t you explain that a little bit?

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
We have this proprietary index that we created called the Palm Beach Trophy Wife Index. Palm Beach — the town of Palm Beach in Palm Beach County — is the wealthiest town, at least during winter, in the United States. There are somewhere around 70 billionaires there.

The deal is that they have assets. They allocate capital. When you have assets and you have inflation, it’s not unusual to see those assets accelerate and increase more than the rate of inflation, for various reasons. The economic theories we don’t need to get into.

For instance, stocks generally appreciate in inflationary times. As the value of the dollar goes down, the assets go up. They haven’t really increased in real value, but when you’re in the right asset class — like a $35 million Palm Beach mansion — it might go up 20% in a year when the inflation rate is only 5%.

So that’s why the rich really are different than you and me, as Fitzgerald said.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Politicians talk about affordability, and young adults can’t afford as much. Are we seeing the impact of the national debt now in the inflation we’re experiencing, or is the debt a separate disaster waiting to happen?

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
Affordability is a myth. Things will never be more affordable than they are today with inflation the way it is. The idea that they’re somehow going to give a subsidy, bring down the price of oil, restrict prices, or do something like that and make life more affordable — rent control in New York City is a myth. It’s a total illusion.

Milton Friedman said it 80 or maybe 90 years ago: inflation is first and foremost always a monetary phenomenon. It’s caused by the value of the money, not by the goods and services floating around.

If there’s an oil shortage, oil could go up 50%. If there’s a shortage of tires, they could go up. Like we saw during COVID, there was a shortage of new cars and used cars, and prices went up. But what happened afterward? They came back down, because that was a market dysfunction. Then the market did what it always does: the best cure for high prices is high prices.

So affordability is nonsense. Things will never be more affordable than they are today.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
What about when this peaks? Let me back up. Common sense says — and I understand that a household budget is very different from a federal budget — that at a certain point you can keep putting things on credit cards, but common sense tells you that’s bad in the long run. Sooner or later, you have to pay.

When or how do you see us having to pay the piper?

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
I think within the next six years it’s a very real possibility. Like I said, the problem is that there’s no competing system to the dollar to take its place.

The world lives on dollars. People borrow dollars in other countries and then have to pay them back in dollars. So it’s a very difficult equation. There has to be an absolute disaster with the dollar — a massive loss of confidence — for an eventual replacement system to be contemplated and implemented.

It’s like betting on when you’re going to die. An insurance company knows roughly how many people out of thousands are going to die, but they don’t know when you’re going to die. It’s anybody’s bet, but the longer you live, the higher your chances go.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
What makes you say within six years?

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
It just seems like the cycles are getting to the point where the debt is going to increase geometrically. At $40 trillion, unless something changes —

One thing I do want to say is that AI and its potential to improve worker productivity are the great wild card here. If AI can bring down the cost of everyday goods, if it can bring down the cost of food in meaningful ways because production goes up so high and prices come down as a result of oversupply, then maybe that gives us some more time.

But at some point, if we keep going down the path we are on, I just think six years. People have been making these predictions since I was a little kid, so I don’t want to get too locked into it.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
What is the solution?

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
The solution is obvious. Our affordability problem is that we can’t afford the government. That’s the problem. It’s not that we can’t afford houses or whatever. The government takes a bigger and bigger cut, whether you know it or not, through inflation and through higher taxes.

The solution is to cut back government at all levels. California is a prime example of government doing a bunch of things it has no business doing, things it’s lousy at, and that eventually causes a collapse.

Unfortunately, if somebody were to come in and say, “We’re going to stop this now,” we would have a major depression, but it would be short-lived. We would have to re-rate everything — all the debt.

The problem is that your debt is somebody else’s asset. You can’t just say, “If we get rid of the debt, that’ll be great,” because all the people holding that debt as an asset are going to lose the value of their investment — effectively, like bonds.

Ultimately, that’s not going to happen until the peasants are at the Bastille. [Historical phrasing partially unclear.] The elites are not going to voluntarily get rid of carried interest or cut government. Historically, it took peasants taking to the streets.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Well, I hear Home Depot is having a sale on pitchforks now.

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
Yeah, not a bad idea.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
You mentioned that one of the main factors preventing this whole house of cards from falling down is that there isn’t really something to take the dollar’s place. How does China factor into this? Is there anything else out there that could become a feasible alternative?

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
China, in its current form — as bad as our rule of law is — has no rule of law, so there’s no trust. Even though things have eroded here, we still have a trust economy. Nobody in China trusts anybody, especially the government.

As long as the CCP is in existence, China is not going to ascend to the leadership of the world. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have a revolution tomorrow, become a truly capitalist country, and change. But in its present form, it’s not there.

The EU is a basket case. Besides the war, the country with the soundest economic system in certain respects is Russia because they’ve got no debt. But they’re not in a position to lead the world at this point. They’re just holding on, trying to get through this war.

So that’s what I said: there’s no alternative. We call it TINA — There Is No Alternative — to the U.S. dollar.

But that doesn’t mean there never will be, because every monetary system eventually falls. Before the U.S. dollar, it was the pound sterling. I don’t remember what was before that, because sterling went on since the 1600s.

Reserve currencies come and go. Eventually, the dollar will go too. It’s not going to be pleasant, but it might be a necessary evil.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Do you see it as a slow creep and then a fall-off-the-cliff kind of thing?

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
How did you go bankrupt? Slowly at first, and then quickly.

We’ve been in this situation for a lot of years already, at least since the government dissolved the monetary tie to gold, which meant they were almost free to print as much currency as they wanted.

The gold window closed in 1971. I actually remember it. I was a young kid then — only 14 years old — and I was interested in current events, but I didn’t understand the significance of what that meant.

The other time was when they took the silver out of the coinage. I remember that as a seven- or eight-year-old kid. My brother would drop old silver quarters on the kitchen floor and they chimed, and then drop what we called the Johnson slugs, the 1965 quarters, and they thumped. They didn’t have that musical chime that silver had.

I never thought that was going to have an effect on my life, but here I am 60-some-odd years later.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Here in Colorado, there’s before 1893 and after 1893, when the government took silver off the coinage. It almost totally destroyed [unclear reference], though luckily we had some gold deposits. It’s an amazing thing.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
It sounds like what we ought to do is have a good time while we can — party while you can — and then when it all goes under, hopefully you’ve got some food and water. We’ll be like a politician and just kick it down the road.

But to wrap it up, you’re saying that inevitably, history shows us there will come a time when it can’t be kicked down the road anymore. Something will reach a tipping point, and this will all come due.

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
I think there’s a certain inevitability to it. It’s happened over and over. It happened with Rome. It happened with the Byzantines. Their currency — the denarius, or something similar — lasted for hundreds of years.

Maybe they’ll figure something out that we never thought of.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
All right. Kerry, where can people catch up with you and read your latest work?

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
FinancialSurvivalNetwork.com. That will take you to my Substack, and you can read all of my work there — podcasts, you name it. I’ve been doing this for 15 years now, since I went into recovery from the legal profession.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Thank you for your time and your comments. I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 – Kerry Lutz:
Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Thank you.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
His column is up if you look for Financial Survival Network on Substack: “What’s $40 Trillion Among Friends?”

This from J.K.: “I heard a great line today: [name unclear] wants to make a million dollars, and he has to start with two million.”

And then he says President Johnson took the Social Security Trust Fund revenue and put it into the general fund, and here we are. Some of that went over to Vietnam.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Yeah. Sooner or later, Kerry’s right. Who knows how long it is? But common sense says we’re not going to stop it.

It used to be that Bob Dole was the tax collector for the welfare state, because the attitude was, “We must get a balanced budget.” So the Democrats would keep raising the budget, and he’d keep taxing everybody to pay for the ever-increasing welfare state.

At a certain point, people start to revolt.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Speaking of that, I want to talk about this completely ridiculous thing that’s going to be on the ballot, so we all get a chance to say not only “no,” but “hell no” to this.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Well, we get to vote.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
You may not know this, but behind the scenes there’s been a rail district working to make sure that we have a commuter rail line operating by the time [name unclear] graduates from high school, so we can get him a ticket on it.

It would go from Fort Collins to Pueblo. Everybody in Fort Collins is apparently sitting there wondering, “When am I finally going to get to Pueblo?” It’s so exciting.

They’re not even talking about how fast it’s going to be. It’s called COCO, or Colorado Connector — a stupid name — and it’s a commuter rail line.

They need to raise $300 million to pay for it. They’re proposing a tax hike for people within the Front Range taxing district — mostly the cities and communities from Fort Collins to Pueblo along the Front Range. It’s going to be a 0.333% sales tax, essentially three cents for every ten dollars.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Three cents for every ten dollars.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Yes, I’m sorry — three cents for every ten dollars.

Here’s the idiocy. It’s going to serve two million people. Let me do the math here, and I’m not great at math, but they want to raise $300 million to provide a train for two million people.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Just give us each the money and we’ll take our own cars.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Either way, spending $300 million to serve two million people is incredibly stupid.

Not only that, look at how mass transportation does in Colorado. RTD is operating at a massive deficit. They’ve had significant decreases in ridership. They can’t even give it away for free. Remember during COVID when they tried to say, “Okay, you can all ride for free,” and people were like, “No thanks. It’s too dangerous. It doesn’t go on time. It doesn’t go anywhere.”

RTD has actually had to cut service. I drive up I-25 all the time, and you see the light rail with no one around it. I drive behind RTD buses all the time and no one is ever on those.

Then you see some of those big buses — I forget what they’re called — that go up and down I-25.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
The bus lane?

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Whatever it is. No one is ever on those. So why on earth should we pay increased taxes for a train that no one will ever ride?

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of, almost as stupid as RTD.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
And Jared Polis and others are on this massive push. You know Denver voters are going to say, “Oh, that’s green.” If they could put a bike lane next to the train, it would pass with certainty.

But it goes back to what Kerry was talking about. You have these little increments: “Well, three cents every ten dollars. That doesn’t sound like that much.” But it’s three cents on top of this, on top of this, on top of everything else. It starts to add up, and that’s when you get your peasant revolt. All of a sudden people are saying, “Enough.”

I think this is something where you just say no.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
I’m for it. I want COCO.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
No.

There’s also a column opposing it. First of all, they spend a ton of money just to come up with a stupid name. Where are they getting that money? They’re already taxing us to come up with a sales tax.

What about the light rail that was supposed to go places? All of the broken promises there. The bottom line is that it won’t work. It doesn’t work in Colorado.

Even in Chicago, people still drive their cars. At one point, many years ago, I rode RTD a lot because I was poor, lived in Boulder, didn’t have any money, and didn’t have a car. But look at how long it would take you. RTD stops everywhere. It could add hours to your day.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
When I was going to law school, I clerked in Denver and lived in Boulder. I rode the bus every day until winter came. Then, whenever it snowed hard, the bus wouldn’t come and you’d be sitting downtown all day.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Right. That’s exactly what would happen.

And now, aside from all that, you don’t want to get stabbed by the homeless guy who lives on the bus. [Speaker’s hyperbolic remark preserved.]

It’s a ridiculous idea. What odds do you give it of passing?

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Ninety percent, because Denver and Boulder voters are in there, so they’ll vote for it. Adams County will vote for it. It’ll be great.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Just say no to COCO.

And then they’re only going to mess up the roads too, because I’m assuming it’s going to use the train line that’s already there, right?

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
No, they’ll buy new right-of-way. They’re going to build a whole new train track. It’s going to be supported by all the people who are going to build the stupid train.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Here’s the other thing too: there is no sunset provision on this, right?

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
They never have a sunset.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
There’s no sunset provision, so they can keep collecting these taxes long after it has been proven to be a disaster.

For the five people who ride it, eventually they’ll say, “Okay, since we don’t have the train anymore because no one is riding it, we’re not going to get rid of that tax.” Do they ever get rid of taxes they impose on us?

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
There actually have been some taxes with sunsets.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Okay, you’re right — the stadium tax. There have been some.

Jacob, you’ve traveled a lot. Would you take a train?

Speaker 5 – Jacob:
No. But when I went to work every day for 22 years, I rode the bus.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Right. A bus is one thing. It’s already there. Why do we need a train on top of a bus that no one rides?

Speaker 5 – Jacob:
I don’t know. I think the train is a bad idea.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Richard Lamm, back in 1977, was offered federal money for trains in Denver — light rail — and he said no. [Following historical detail is garbled.] He was smart.

Your fellow Denver riders are going to vote for it, so we’ll probably have a train. Of course, it will go way over budget and it won’t work.

You’re not going to have the train; you’re going to have a train project — like the Sacramento-to-San Francisco project. You’re going to have constructors, metal suppliers, and everything else, and it’ll end up finishing ten yards short of Denver or something.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Will there ever actually be a train?

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
No. There’ll be a train project.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Good point. Thank you, Jacob.

That’s just one more thing to vote no on. Just in general, vote no.

We’ll start going over these ballot issues in the next few shows once the ballot is finalized. But this one is a hard no — no on the stupid train.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Come on, everybody. That’s awesome. Our contractor friends need this.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
We don’t need train-contractor friends.

I wanted to talk about something else. It’s easy to say, “I’m over the whole Russiagate, Russia-hoax thing,” but I think it’s important to continue to talk about it and to talk about the Trump administration continuing to chase it, because of how dangerous this was.

You had what we describe as the deep state essentially trying to overthrow and take over the government. Conservative Treehouse has a detailed explanation if you want to go deep into the weeds.

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed a man by the name of Daniel Richmond. Daniel Richmond was one of James Comey’s friends when Comey was with the FBI and, according to the discussion, a professor at NYU. He was essentially Comey’s go-between.

The allegation is that Comey would leak material to him, and then he would leak it to The New York Times. Comey would then get in front of a congressional committee and deny that he had done any of that.

Now they have emails that the speakers say show that he did. The government under Biden threw the matter out, and Obama-appointed judges kept throwing it out. But obviously something is going on now because a federal grand jury is involved.

They previously tried to indict Comey on allegations of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation. Now the federal grand jury has subpoenaed Richmond.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
A grand jury doesn’t normally subpoena the target of an investigation, right?

Speaker 3 – Julie:
So they may be looking at Comey or somebody else.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
I’m sure Comey is a target. Richmond is probably part of the route to get there.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Who knows what will happen? But it’s interesting when you go back to how all of this developed.

Trump comes in and, in our view, had no idea how evil or corrupt these institutions could be. Trump had been saying, “They’ve been tapping my phone,” and people were saying, “You’re an idiot, Trump.” In our view, it turned out he was correct.

Then he has a meeting with Comey, where Comey tells him something along the lines of, “The Russians interfered with the election on your behalf.” Trump is basically dismissive. Later Comey gets fired.

The allegation discussed here is that Comey carefully wrote memos after the meetings, recording things that could be damaging to Trump. The speakers contend that he would steer the meeting, then write a memo, release it to Richmond, and Richmond would leak it to The New York Times, helping create the basis for a special counsel.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Exactly. That’s where that came in.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Some people talk about Trump’s vengeance tour. I’m glad they’re pursuing it. Will James Comey ever go to jail? I don’t know. Probably not.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
I doubt it, especially with all the jury-nullification issues going on in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
But at the very least, it tortures him, and that’s good.

Here’s the thing: Trump has to move fast because I think all of this will disappear once he’s gone. Whoever the next president is—

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
He may have a tough time after the midterms.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
He could still have his Department of Justice go after Comey.

I’m glad it’s going on. You don’t see it on ABC or MSNBC. The reporter Richmond allegedly leaked to was married to MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
She divorced him because of this?

Speaker 3 – Julie:
No, not because of his alleged corruptness.

But it’s good that this comes out because it reminds you how awful and devious we believe these people were. And, as Tulsi Gabbard pointed out before she left, they’re still there. You’re never going to get rid of all of them.

The Secret Service, in our view, was ground central for efforts against Trump. They had people — “midget women,” as Chuck puts it — guarding six-foot-four Trump and so forth. [Derogatory characterization preserved as speaker language.]

Anybody hired during prior administrations, unless hired by Trump, could still be far left and working inside the system.

There was also a second FBI guy in Newark who allegedly sent an email about “climbing into the foxhole” or similar wording. The message was reported and he was gone. [Exact phrase unclear.]

But they’re all still down there. The only thing you can do is force people to do work they really don’t want to do. Tell them, “Okay, I want you to go investigate Antifa.”

Speaking of Antifa, we really haven’t had as much of a summer of violence this year with street protests. I wonder if that is because some DOGE efforts targeted NGOs that were funding some of that.

USAID is gone as a source of money, and now they’re trying to attack the remaining sources. I think that’s great.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
They have to go after the Open Society groups connected to Soros, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and others.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
And some of the billionaires who were funding these things. I think there is a cause-and-effect relationship there.

When you see those groups, in our view, it’s not simply a bunch of volunteers saying, “I’m exercising my First Amendment rights.” There is organization and funding behind it.

The other thing I saw that was interesting — and I have mixed feelings about this — is jury nullification. I forget where I saw the article, and I’m sorry about that, but it was talking about training for Antifa-type activists on what to do if they’re jurors.

Basically, the system relies on jurors following the law even if they don’t agree with it. Jury nullification means that all the evidence may be there, but the jury says, “No, we’re not going to convict.” The O.J. Simpson case is an example people often point to in these discussions.

There are apparently efforts around the country promoting jury nullification. And that’s where I have mixed feelings, because sometimes you have corrupt prosecutors, or prosecutors who clearly overstep. What hope is there except for citizens?

So on one hand, that can be a check. On the other hand, if it becomes, “It’s against your people, so I’ll acquit; it’s against my people, so I’ll convict,” then the system breaks down.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Typically, the left is actually training and organizing people. The left is always organized and ready to go, while the rest of us are passing out pamphlets.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Here’s the thing that ties it together: people just don’t trust the government.

Before COVID, I think there was more of a generic distrust of government. It was already eroding, but COVID took the whole thing off a cliff.

In our view, people went from thinking, “I don’t trust the government because it’s too big,” to believing they could point to specific instances where government actions directly harmed people.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
You look at Dr. Fauci and [unclear phrase]. It wasn’t simply insanity or that he thought it was a good idea and wouldn’t hurt people. In my opinion, he knew how disastrous it was and still did it because squashing people was what he did.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
And so the nature of the distrust moved from generic distrust to something much more specific.

I was with my doctor, whom I love — he’s great — and he said, “This is recommended by so-and-so.” My reaction is, “Okay, but were they paid by the pharmaceutical company?” What do the studies show? Does it actually hurt people?

You feel like when you meet with your doctor, you need to bring your laptop. Every time there’s a recommendation, you want to say, “Wait, let me look at this.”

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
You also have activist judges. It goes back to your point about the peasant revolt. There’s a certain amount of peasant revolt in jury nullification.

When you have judges saying, “I know the Supreme Court said this, but screw the Supreme Court; I’m not going to do what they say,” and then you have juries doing the same thing, you have a serious concern about the system.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Right. Like Kerry Lutz said, Home Depot has a sale on pitchforks. It’s kind of funny, but kind of not funny.

Anything else you wanted to talk about today?

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Yeah. I want to talk about data centers — in particular, whether they’re a good idea or a bad idea. I need to come back after I’ve done more studying on it, but The Denver Post had a big article on data centers Sunday, and they brought out every left-wing argument they could: it’ll cause us to burn more oil and gas, and so on.

But in order to do AI — which is the future of the world, I can promise you that — you need enormous amounts of energy. If the United States does not devote that energy and produce that energy, then it will leave it up to other places like China. That’s a disaster.

So despite all the horror stories, I have a feeling data centers are a good deal. What you can’t do is let a company say, “I’ll put a data center in if you abate all the taxes.” Then you say, “Great. You’re noisy, you’re loud, you drive up energy costs, you take the water, and you pay nothing.”

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Ted Cruz had an interesting take on this in his podcast. I didn’t have time to listen to the whole thing; I only read the summary. He was trying to separate facts from myths.

For instance, people talk about how much water data centers use because they need a lot of cooling. He said they operate on a loop system and may actually use less water than a golf course.

Now, golf courses do use a lot of water, but often reclaimed water. The point is that a cooling system can recirculate water, somewhat like a car’s cooling system. A data center would not necessarily need an endless new supply of water if the cooling system recirculates it rather than allowing it all to evaporate.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
With data centers, the devil is in the details. There are already a bunch of them out there. They’ve become a political issue right now for a couple of reasons.

One is China. I think China is doing everything it can to have negative data-center propaganda out there so people here say, “Nobody wants a data center.” China can then say, “Fine, we’ll build them all here. Then we’ll control AI.”

Speaker 3 – Julie:
We’ll control the world.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Literally.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
And in the meantime, it puts Republicans in a pinch because Republicans are typically pro-business.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Not as much anymore.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Democrats hate business even more, so they don’t care. Republicans are now in this awkward position.

I think a lot of people don’t like AI data centers because they don’t like AI.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
I like AI. I’m amazed by it. On the 12th, I’m going in to begin my education process on utilizing AI. I have to learn to use it generally, and then I’ve got to go to specific applications for law.

You don’t need a law firm anymore. You just need your AI. It’s like the equivalent of five associates.

Then I’ve got to take another whole set of classes on journalism, because you could produce a paper with AI.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
People already are. I was shocked — did you guys see the thing where CNN had to apologize for using a Dolly Parton impersonator? They were doing a story about Dolly Parton, and the picture they used was of an impersonator.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
It was pretty hard to tell.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
I guarantee you AI was involved. In newsrooms now, AI can write the script, pull the video, and put the chyron together. I would bet that was an AI-generated or AI-assisted script and video-editing process.

Speaker 5 – Jacob:
I’ve got one question. Who issues the Supreme Court bar card? When somebody becomes a member of the bar of the United States federal court system, who issues that card?

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
I think the Tenth Circuit does it for the Tenth Circuit, and the Supreme Court has a separate one to be able to argue before the Supreme Court.

Speaker 5 – Jacob:
Okay, so let me ask you something. This judge on Friday who brought up the voting thing with the U.S. Post Office — can’t Roberts take away her card for not listening to the Supreme Court decision from the day before?

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
No, because you don’t understand the federal court system. The federal court system is not simply a hierarchy where a district court is here, the appeals court is above it, and the Supreme Court is above that in the sense that one judge can just fire another.

Those courts were created by Congress, and they cannot simply say, “You’re gone.”

There used to be a judge down in Utah named Ritter when I clerked on the Tenth Circuit. He would do things like [garbled anecdote involving a blacked-out basketball game, an injunction, and the Tenth Circuit]. By the time the appellate court could act, the game would be over and he had gotten the result he wanted.

There were also controversies in his personal life, including an ugly divorce and allegations about money he was spending. They tried to get rid of him and couldn’t simply remove him. They had to make it uncomfortable enough that, as I recall, he eventually resigned.

So higher courts can reverse or vacate an injunction, but they can’t just say, “You’re gone.”

Speaker 5 – Jacob:
Okay.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
We can keep doing deep dives into AI because there is so much there.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
And one final thing: like I said, the devil is in the details of each individual package. Elon Musk is saying he wants to put computing or data-center infrastructure in space and use nuclear energy. I think that’s probably coming.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Everything’s coming.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Whatever is coming, eventually it’ll turn into Skynet from The Terminator, and then we’re cooked.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Hey, I’m not happy.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
No, no. That won’t do it.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Keep that in mind. Have a great rest of your Monday — Doomsday Monday.

Speaker 2 – Chuck:
Yeah, really.

Speaker 3 – Julie:
Thank you, everybody. We will see you all on Wednesday.