What could be more fun than talking about Murray Rothbard in the opening lecture at Mises University answer actually having Murray Rothbard Give the opening lecture at Mises University Which is what I got to experience as a student and all you get is this pale imitation talking about him But that's the difference between 1993 and 2017 but Murray Rothbard was one of my most significant intellectual influences and I'm always glad to have an opportunity to Talk about him. So I've been asked to talk about How he influenced me what I learned from him and in order to do that I want to in part review some of his achievements because as I do that I'm recalling indeed the things that I did Learn from him. I think some of you may have some of you know that I have a podcast that I episode I release every weekday and If you happen to live by the way in Florida you should come to my 1,000th episode live event. It's for free September 9th. Tom de Lorenzo is gonna be there Tom woods comm slash Orlando sign up and be there. We're gonna have a lot of fun cost you nothing lots of fun and The spirit of Rothbard be very much alive in that room. Well even more so here my favorite place on earth my favorite week of the year Bob don't I know I wasn't supposed to say that we Bob and I host a cruise together We now call that our favorite week of the year. So we're in in a bit of a conundrum about how to describe Mises University I don't serve but favorite week of the year on land. We'll put it that way So in fact by the way, I am gonna be referring to a lot of Rothbard books So I this is just the way my brain works. I created a page on my site Listing all these books and linking you to free copies So if any of them catch your your attention in particular, there's one of some of his previously unpublished work And I look at I think this is his unpublished work What hope is there for me like nothing? I've ever published has come close to something. He was gonna say yeah Let's just leave that in the archives forever So I put them all up at Tom woods comm slash Rothbard So all these books that I'm mentioning and and a couple of articles are already linked there Don't go there now go there later All right, so there are several ways that you could say you learn from Rothbard on the one hand You could say he taught you a lot of facts about a lot of things On another hand, you know another way you could say he was a careful conscientious scholar And so he inspires you in that way The fact that he looked all over for the truth He would learn from people he disagreed with in other areas. They had a glimmer of the truth. He was interested in finding it You know, you can also learn from him that no matter how hard you work and how carefully you look for the truth You will have enemies. It cannot be helped If you are doing anything worthwhile, you will have enemies if you don't have enemies, then you're probably a lazy bum That's just the fact. Okay, so it'll make you feel better about having them All right Now I am gonna also tell a few stories because I'm a storyteller and I can't restrain myself I did have unlike people in some of the faculty who knew him very well I had a handful of opportunities to to meet him and I first met him at Mises University 1993 and he came out and delivered the opening lecture and He started talking about the Panic of 1819 and he explained to us Rather immodestly that he was the world's foremost expert on the subject of the Panic of 1819 Because he's the only person who's ever written a book about it. Then he laughed about that Okay, we'll let him get away with that and indeed the only book about the Panic of 1819 is indeed to this day By Murray Rothbard. Why would you need to write another book on the Panic of 1819 after that? so I got to meet him there and I he was extremely generous with his time with students and I chatted with because I had a lot of questions for him I've been reading about him because I found out about him in the most bizarre way. I used to in the old days I subscribed to national review magazine Back when it wasn't nearly as bad as it is now I will say in my defense they had some literate people who could construct sentences containing both a subject and a predicate so I happened to read an Insert in one of the issues in which various people responded to a very critical essay Bill Buckley had written and one of the people responding was this guy I had never heard of before Murray Rothbard and Rothbard just lit into Buckley For being a hyper interventionist for being for big government and I thought wait a minute Bill Buckley is like my hero How can you say these things about him? Who is this Rothbard? Who's more free-market than Bill Buckley? Is that even possible? Well right around that time I also was getting ready to go to the Mises University program and I realized wait a minute I looked at the books that I had been assigned. I looked at this thing looked at the books These are written by that same guy. So I started reading them thinking all right You better have something to say for yourself after what you said about Bill Buckley and I read them and read them and I thought man This guy is great So then I thought wow, maybe Buckley is a bum You know, I I started thinking I can trust this man. You know if he tells me something. It's the truth So I came here and I had all these questions because I had read what Rothbard had written about the old right the old feisty right wing before Buckley turned it into the Cold War crusading right wing and I want to know about these people who were you know, you know who were anti-war and pro-market whatever and boy, that was like I Couldn't have asked him a question that made him happier He could not tell me enough about in fact. There was one time. I saw him reading I saw him writing about a pamphlet written by Robert LeFave called why I think No, no, no, I can't remember what it's called. But but I read it. I read about this pamphlet I thought I'd love to have this pamphlet and there's no way in the world. I'd ever be able to find it So I wrote Rothbard a letter. I Wrote him a physical letter saying I if he was any way you can tell me how I would find this pamphlet I'd love to have it He wrote me back and mailed me two copies of the pamphlet from the 1960s. He still had them and He wrote me this nice letter and I I've got it in my files I'm not going to throw away a letter from Murray Rothbard for goodness sake but he sent me this pamphlet and then when I did an anti-war anthology with basic books and One of the things we put in there was this pamphlet that would have been forgotten There was no way to Murray Rothbard had two copies in his apartment and that was it And now we got it in that book and it is you know available for everybody to read forever Because he took the time to write to some kid, you know, he barely even knew Just just unbelievable. So anyway, so I got talked to and I said now look I also heard I figured like I gotta hurry up and talk like a hundred miles an hour because I don't know how long I'm gonna have to talk to Murray Rothbard is Lou Rockwell gonna come and drag him away at some point I better hurry up and get all the questions asked. So so I asked him I heard you said that in 1952 the Eisenhower forces stole the Republican nomination from Taft Now, I mean, how do you justify like where he where's the evidence for that? He said oh you should read a book by Chesley Manley called the 20-Year Revolution So okay, so I did I went to my college library and you'll never guess no one had checked out Chesley Manley the 20-Year Revolution But I thought wait, how would you even know? How would you know about an obscure book like that? That's the tiniest tip of the iceberg of what this guy knew. I got to meet him at several other conferences as well and Oh my goodness, okay, so I'm just getting a text about one of my children, but I think everything is going to be okay Just just so you know, I'm not being rude like doing email while I'm up here giving the talk Was kind of important. Okay anyway, I Remember my one of my favorite memories though and some of you may have heard me tell this was in 1994 I had just started graduate school in New York and the Mises Institute put on a one-day event because it was 100 years since the birth of Henry Haslund So they did a one-day event in New York. I thought that's great All I have to do is hop on the subway and I'm at a Mises event So I went and Rothbard came in a little bit late during one of the presentations sits right next to me And this was the day Jeffrey Dahmer had been killed in prison Now some of you were too young. You may not even remember if Jeffrey Dahmer was this was a guy who? He ate people you know, so when they when they caught him he had like stuff in his refrigerator that you should not have and He went to prison and the prisoners apparently were of the opinion that look, you know, we may have our problems But you just don't do that So one of them killed him and so Rothbard turns to me while somebody's giving a speech He turns to me and under his breath. He says did you hear about Jeffrey Dahmer? They got him My favorite memory is from December of 1994 I get an email from Lou Rockwell. That's how old I am in 1994 I'm getting an email from Lou Rockwell and it says Murray would like to Get together with you over the the Christmas break at his apartment in New York. So here's his number. Why don't you give him a call? Yeah, here's Murray Rothbard's number. Why don't I give him a call? so I treated this like There's some girl I want to ask out on a date, but I'm afraid If I call or I'm gonna go blank and I won't remember what to say So I better write something so I wrote out a whole conversation I was ready to have and of course, he's such a warm person that that went right out the window He put me put me right at ease but then I got the terrible email at the beginning of January of 1995 From Lou announcing that that he had passed away and it was it was a terrible thing and I remember Several months later. There was a memorial service in New York and a lot of people people who had not been on good terms with Rothbard toward the end of his life Even came to this memorial service and I remember at a reception afterward talking to Walter block and You know obviously, you know Walter if you know anything about Walter block all he does is write articles all day It's incredible. I mean he recently passed 500 peer reviewed articles if you had one tenth of that that would be considered a distinguished career You could retire and feel good about yourself, but he passed 500. He's still going like he's still doing this Like that to him that is playing golf is writing peer reviewed articles So when he was at that reception He told me that after Rothbard died, you know, it's very Hard thing for a lot of people who knew him really well. He said I went out. I rented. I was going to watch some movies I went out rented a lot of movies. I'm just going to watch him. He said, you know, and I got partway through one of them and I said God I should be writing That's what Murray would want me to do. I should be writing so he Returned all the movies and he got back to work and I thought yeah, that's what we should do Just you know, just like in animal farm, you know boxer. I will work harder. That's our answer to everything All right, so let's think then about I can't even really summarize all the things that he did But when we think for example just about man economy and state his great treatise This is significant for a great many reasons, but one of which we read in Paper that Joe Salerno wrote Trying to situate Rothbard within the history of economic thought and he said that Rothbard really kept the school going at a critical point And he tells the story a bit of the the south royalton conference, which was a conference that 1974 the year hyac won the Nobel prize Basically practically all the austrians there were got together in south royalton vermont for this Very important conference and I believe we have at least two faculty members here who were at that historic event Roger were you at that? Okay, so roger garrison and joe salerno were actually there Which was amazing And joe says when you go back and look through all these people they were all influenced by by man economy and state And when you read it and when you look at the footnotes, you see that rothbard is not engaged in naval gazing He knows the mainstream literature and he's very eager to engage with it It's an incredibly impressive and systematic building Of an economic theoretical edifice from first principles And in terms of his contributions Original contributions there are many. I mean he fills in Gaps in production theory that are in mesas because mesas assumed that we're all super geniuses And we already know this and for for you know, those of us who are mortals rothbard explained it all to us But also innovations in monopoly theory in economic calculation He'd already done by 1956. He'd already done important pioneering work in welfare economics as well And and meanwhile by the way later on he winds up editing the review of austrian economics So there's a journal for austrian economics. He edits the journal of libertarian studies So he does these things. He's also Publishing newsletters of various kinds like the libertarian forum or left and right He keeps busy when you look at his correspondence You would think if all he did was write these letters that would be impressive Or if all he did was review all these movies that he reviewed that would be impressive He did all that but he also did economic history He was an economist who was also interested in history And I learned certainly from him about the great depression. He has a book called america's great depression This comes out in 1963 Significance of this book is that it helps to fill in a major gap in the kate in our case which is What do you say about the great depression? Was this not a failure Of capitalism right after all the 1920s were the roaring 20s with crazy laissez faire capitalism Just the way you crazy libertarians like it and look what went and happened Stock market crash followed by a lengthy and deep depression. Well, we can't ever test that again. Now, you know, we all heard that right Rothbard emancipates us from that terrible plantation. Okay forever Because what he shows is that the austrian theory of the business cycle applies to to america's great depression That it was not a matter of there was no intervention by the the government or the central bank They were just innocent bystanders and then out of the blue for no apparent reason The economy crashed that is not What rothbard is going to tell is he's going to say the exact opposite that you had the fed Meddling the whole time you have the new york Because at that time the head of the new york fed was really like today What we would think of as the fed chairman in terms of authority Saying in the late 20s that uh, he wanted to give a coup de whisky to the stock market, which indeed was done But like what happens in normal life when you have a coup de whisky Something happens after you've been doing that for a while and the same thing happened to the economy So rothbard very painstakingly documents this he begins his book with a theoretical exposition of different business cycle theories And if you go to amazon, you look at america's great depression. There's one review in there by some Schmuck who's saying this book is boring. This isn't what I well He wants a book about what it was like to eat ketchup sandwiches during the 1930s All right.  Okay, just imagine it imagine it You don't instead want to know Why it happened, you know, what was going on like that doesn't so I was in a particularly foul mood the day I saw that review on amazon So I commented on that and I basically said pearls before swine here, right? You have the greatest book ever on the great depression. I want more anecdotes get the heck out of what is the So it's a it's a great book and very readable book too His coverage of the monetary history of the 19th century is tremendous In fact, I remember it was at another conference. I was talking to him and I said I would love to have A history of money In the u.s. Written from a pro gold standard perspective. Do you know of anything? And he said well There's some good material on this in the minority report of the u.s. Gold commission Because in the around 1983 There was a commission set up to investigate Whether the gold standard was something desirable and of course they stacked the deck so that it would come out Well, no after careful deliberation We've decided to everyone's surprise that we don't want to do this But ron paul was on there And he you know issued you know his committee. There was the minority report You know arguing in favor of the gold center and there was a lot of historical material in there A lot going from the colonial period up through the 20th century Going through the different 19th century panics all the information you would want And it turns out rothbart had written that material, but he didn't tell me He just said yeah, there's some good material on that in this report. Now. He could have said And you know, I wrote that I mean no who's gonna it's not gonna be bragging I wrote a thing in a report no one's ever gonna read again I wouldn't have thought oh man. What an arrogant jerk this guy is But he didn't even tell me that I found that out later that basically he wrote that material And now that material can be found in the history of money and banking from colonial times to 1945 I think is the the volume that joe celerno edited of rothbart's writings on monetary history the monetary history of the us very significant Because of course for one thing the panics The different panics that occurred in the 19th century have been used as arguments against our position that well There wasn't a federal reserve in 1857 Mr. Wise guy and we had a panic then So what caused that and then they you know as bob murphy would say they run victory laps and they can't hear what you're saying at that point And rothbart takes a lot of this on and on my tom woods.com slash rothbart thing I linked to some resource some austrian resources on how to answer that whole but we had panics in the 19th century Yeah, and we have you get questions. We have answers. So we deal with that but also as a historian. It's a pure historian Rothbard was tremendous. I mean he wrote He wrote conceived in liberty which began as a four-volume history of colonial america. He started writing a fifth volume that was never finished Now the mesis institute Just I don't know to emphasize how much work this was Put took all four volumes put them into one giant book Right like like the size of Like a guy It is unbelievable And and he did this and his this was a spare time project conceived in liberty was a spare Yeah, I think I'll write a history of colonial america while i'm also doing the other thing and you think all right Well a guy like this he must have had no social life Maybe you know or he didn't have friends or or whatever But to the contrary he hosted people in his living room constantly It was like a you know enlightenment salon kind of situation people coming in and out and staying up to all hours and laughing and sharing stories and so on so somehow he balanced all this with A rather healthy social life as a matter of fact. So hard to know how that's possible, but it happened But let me share with you though Really what may be my all-time favorite Writing by Rothbard and it's one that it would not surprise me if almost nobody in this room had ever read it It can be found in a collection edited by david gordon called strictly confidential It's the private valker fund memos of murray rothbard He was hired to write a great many memos a lot of them book reviews And he wrote them they were read by a small handful of people and that was that was it So he wrote a a review And man, do I feel sorry for the it's a good thing. They never had to actually endure this review He wrote a review of a standard american history text written by George de huzzar and thomas stevensson And rothbard rakes these people over the coals not even for having an ideological bias Although he finds a little bit of that but mainly for acts of omission Or misunderstandings and confusion And his indictment of this book goes on For 100 pages Now he says so for example in the colonial period He says You know our authors say many people could vote and rothbard says this is fuzzy and imprecise They should make more use of recent voting studies of which rothbard recommends too He happened to know about what was going on in that area of scholarship He says the ordinance of 1785 was a dictatorial intrusion into the western region Which set too high a minimum land sale and price Thus restricting settlement and also enforced rectangular surveying Thus forcing the purchase of sub-marginal land within an otherwise good rectangle Instead of conforming as in the southern methods of surveying to the natural topography of the land in question Well, I bet a lot of you overlooked that when you studied the ordinance of 1785 And then he says now, okay It's bad enough. There's not enough discussion of us imperialism regarding hawaii But there's no mention at all rothbard says of the us samoan treaty for a naval base in samoa Or the us joining the madrid convention in 1880 or the berling game treaty with china And there's no mention at all of the freeling hyzens avala treaty of 1884 That could be the worst offense of all How could there be and the thing goes on like this and on and on And as I said, he he does find a Oh a slight hint of ideological bias And so I mean his main critique is there's no big picture understanding in this book. It's just a dry Chronicleing of events that just conformed to the typical textbook retelling of the story But he does find a little bias because at one point he says The authors appear to approve Of the public library movement Leave it to rothbard to dig that little gem out of there But then on top of that we have his work in philosophy like the ethics of liberty his popularizing work as well. I mean here he is a Incredible genius writing these tremendous theoretical works But he also is able to write to reach the general public in short articles in various places But also in books like for a new liberty, which was not intended for specialists It was intended to introduce libertarianism to Americans at large So then but another thing as I mentioned earlier, I learned an awful lot from rothbard about the so-called old right So it was a tremendous privilege for me some years ago to have the opportunity to be the editor and introduction writer to a previously unpublished rothbard manuscript now by the way We're going to be talking to later in the week about yet another Previously unpublished rothbard work. This is a work on the progressive era So rothbard died in early 1995 Here it is 2017 and for the past at least 20 years there have been Additional rothbard books coming out every few years is another book by rothbard And there are entire academic departments At universities in this country that have not been as productive as a dead murray rothbard So the book was called the betrayal of the american rite And it's available again. You can get the hard copy version, but you can also read it for free online And That's a book where rothbard. This is the closest we're going to get Unless there's something else in the archives. We don't know about to a rothbard memoir Because he really is going to tell you his story about how he got to be who he was He even tells you about how he came to be an anarcho capitalist. I always wondered that I I get how people become for limited government. But how do you become the one guy? Yeah, I know about gustav de molinari But I mean the one guy who's going to compose an entire intellectual edifice in defense of statelessness How do you get to be that guy? And so he talks about that in in there too But he talks about what was going on in the 40s and 50s and the different changes that took place in in American intellectual life because he says that at the time of the new deal We had a lot of people who were anti-new deal and they were they what they wanted was the jeffersonian republic They didn't want war. They didn't want intervention in the economy They wanted something kind of like what we want and we call these people the old rite But then by the late 40s things began to change for a variety of reasons Some of them being that some key figures in the old rite both literary and political Died at especially inopportune moments and left a intellectual vacuum behind But that old rite there was not much left of it. And so Rothbard himself Had to drift a bit in the late 50s He used to be able to he used to be welcomed In some, you know right of center circles, but if you're not going to be for the vietnam war I don't think that's happening anymore. So he was on his own and he did not say well Maybe I can rationalize just staying silent about the vietnam war Just so I can have an audience to talk about the other things that I believe in that are important And you could easily persuade yourself of that And he just wouldn't he just carried on he wrote newsletter. He wrote left and right for what must have been a small audience He reached out to all different sorts of groups where he thought he might see a spark of something And just carried on uncomplainingly under impossible conditions and facing impossible odds I'm so impossible That it has to make those of us in this room ask ourselves the very very Important and indeed humbling question if we had been in that situation, what would we have done? Would we have stuck to our guns and continue to forge ahead even with pretty much no audience? Because there are two you know, there's the republicans and the democrats There's the there's the conservatives and the liberals. There's no room for rothbard Why doesn't he just give it up and just take his place in one of those groups? And he just didn't and it would have been sorely tempting to do that And you never at any time in any of his writings get the sense that he was tempted to do that That's to me. That's one of the most amazing things about him That's one of the things he has in common with ron paul When you look through his career, you don't ever get the sense that well in 1982 you can see he was wavering and thinking Maybe I should jump on board this bandwagon Just doesn't occur to people like this. This is a very very rare breed So what a what a privilege it you know, it it was for those in this room who knew him to have had the chance to know A guy like this quite quite something So he tells this story. So I wrote so I wrote the introduction for this book. We released it it tells this story and There were in that manuscript There were a lot of markings that rothbart had made and there were a lot of cross outs Of things that he didn't want to say that he thought, you know on second thought I'm not sure that's quite right or I want to put it quite this way and I had somebody telling me we should Get rid of those erasures and and insert and and put them back in I mean we'll take the cross outs And and remove them so we can read what he was crossing out We'll put that in and I thought I thought that is just that's not somebody who's with the mesas institute By the way, um At this moment, but I thought that's just a betrayal of an author. You can't do that If if he crossed it out, he doesn't want it Right, I would not want my manuscripts to have my cross outs put back in I crossed him out because they're terrible, right? Don't put them back in But that was other than that the easiest thing in the world is to be the editor of a rothbart But what else did I have to do? I all I said was well My editorial job is make sure that the things he wanted crossed out stayed crossed out and that was it I you know, whatever they paid me to do that. I got it and that was done It was great What a privilege that was to to be to be involved with that all right, but beyond even that I think the thing that most affected me about his work was his idea about how we should think about the state that The state encourages us to internalize a double standard That we all understand that in our private lives There are certain behaviors that would be considered unacceptable and immoral.  So I'm going to go put you in this cage for a while And there are going to be some really really gigantic people in this cage Who might not like you that much. I mean, I can't do that I can't do that People would think I was crazy, but the state doesn't we all say well, you know, it's the sovereign Of course, of course, I can do what it wants And it was Rothbard who finally got through to me There's some screwy about that and here he's of course developing Frederick Bastiat in the law You know if if we can't do this then how does it become moral when a bunch of them do it with guns? How does that become moral? It can't be So try and think about what would happen if private people did these various things And then it really really gets you to think and that finally woke me up because man did I need to be awakened I was the worst of the worst Okay, I was a moderate republican Which means I was bad on every issue you can possibly think of I was on the wrong side It doesn't matter if it's the drug war or spending or you know war war whatever it was I was so absurdly laughably on the wrong side of it I don't know how I ever got out frankly, although actually I do know how I get out When I went off to college, I was surrounded by Okay, I'll grant you. It wasn't as crazy as the campuses are now. I'm sorry.  That is it. I'm going to be consistent I know these people are not so I can't have my I just began to examine my own philosophy and I thought it's got to be Not so ad hoc because what kind of a philosophy does a moderate republican have You know like well, we needed the interventions of the 1930s and some of the ones in the 1960s And maybe a few are the ones in the 1990s, but that is it and that's my philosophy What where would that come from? What principles could that be based on? So I thought no, no, no, there's got to be something something I can stick to hang my hat on that's consistent And then I I encountered Murray Rothbard for the first time and I man, I love this guy. I loved his economics I loved his style of writing. I loved a lot of the things he had to say But I thought this guy takes it just a little bit too far I just couldn't get out and in fact Bob Murphy was saying to me on the air the other day that when he first encountered the more radical Rothbard stuff about how we can indeed privatize everything which just means we can do it on a voluntary basis, you know These these other words even privatize is supposed to scare you because you hear private And you think like You know even private property like when you were growing up you would see signs that says, you know stay away private property So you'd think yeah private property sucks, man Don't bounce your ball against this wall. It's private property. I hate private property So instead I don't I so I just try and use things like, you know voluntary You know just volunteer don't you like voluntary things? So Bob was tell you thought I was going to forget to get back to Bob's remark. I remembered so Bob was saying that when he first encountered this stuff He said he turned to his parents and said he get a load of this guy. He thinks we can privatize everything And then he thought about it and read about it and thought wow, holy cow. The guy is right in fact Bob has written study guides to some of the major treatises in the austrian school including Rothbard's work man economy and state and at one point Bob said He's just you know, he just can't get over Rothbard's contributions and he says the older I get The smarter Rothbard becomes Because I I I glean more and more from this guy Amazing. So he got me he started to get me thinking but if it took me a while at first I thought now, you know, I can go with you up to a certain point And then for a number of years I kind of went on all different weird ideological tangents and People like to go back and dig that all out and and at none at none of that times that I call myself a libertarian I was still thinking about it. I thought I don't I'm really attracted to it But I so despise the left. I just tried all kinds of anti left things and then thanks to Hans Hoppe I got right back into libertarianism in 2001 But it was Rothbard that first got that all that stuff moving in my head And I'm really glad about that because even I don't want to think of what I would have been otherwise I mean, I sometimes think about where would I have been without my father? Who who was a forklift operator in a food warehouse who did not complete high school? But because of that, he was extremely self-conscious He felt like he had to learn everything he could he had to read voraciously had to learn learn learn to make up for that And I mean, I mean again, maybe you've heard me say this but one day I caught him reading Voltaire's Candid And I said dad, I think your education is all complete now. You do not have to put yourself through this There's no need to read that Can stop now But my father was like a sort of right of center guy Who initially gave me the right instincts about things Whether it was taxes or communism, which was still very much alive when I was a kid And he taught me about people who would make excuses for communism or or or cover up the crimes And I thought man, I am going to devote my life to fighting whoever those people are It turns out there were people like that who covered up communist crimes what dad was right doggone it. Wow So I had that foundation thanks to him. Otherwise, I am sure I would have been a leftist I'm absolutely sure of it because that I think is the default position. You're surrounded by it. It's everywhere You know, you want something pass a law and get it You know because it it it's easy. It's low IQ. It's easy. You want something pass a law and you'll get it And he got me thinking another way and then Rothbard took me, you know, I had to at one point say, uh, dad I got some books for you to read here. We're gonna be we're gonna be moving a bit a little bit ideologically so What I want to think about at the end here Is that you would think with a guy like Rothbard as intellectually curious and creative as he was As interested as he was in reaching out to other people and other schools of thought As much as he wanted to engage the mainstream of the economics profession In fact, he hardly ever in man economy and state even refers to austrian economics And even when he does it's in quotation marks Because he conceives of what he's doing as just plain vanilla economics.  He has this infectious laugh I was asking david gordon about this just the other day and david said he was an extremely friendly person And he encouraged everybody he met he encouraged students who knew like they knew one thing He would encourage them to pursue that one thing. So you would think this must be the most beloved man in the world Who in the world could be an enemy of murray rothbard? I am not going to mention names, but there are many And I'm not even going to give you my my my theory as to why they exist It's not just that they're envious losers. I mean, there are other reasons but What it goes to show is now I've already given a talk at previous meses you on the anti rothbard cult And it is powerful in the libertarian world. It's powerful. It's so powerful It barely acknowledges its existence, but you know, it's there because These are people who will say, you know as so and so as milton freedman said now milton freedman had his virtues I grant that he was not the only libertarian who ever lived As uh john stossel said now john stossel was a brave journalist I'll grant you at a time when there's nobody talking about free markets in in television news very important guy But there were other people in the libertarian movement like murray rothbard Not a word about him. He's for every hundred times milton freedman is quoted on since by some official libertarians Rothbard is quoted zero times For every hundred it's zero now. That's like that's got to be happening on purpose I mean, this is a guy who did this and this and this and this and this and this This and this and this and this and this and this You got all these people out there calling themselves anarcho capitalists who never on their own would have come up with that There hadn't been a rothbard.  We don't bow down before them We just say you know what this guy did a lot of important pioneering work You know, you don't have to like every single thing You don't have to agree with every single conclusion But wow, he was a one-man show for a long time Who had every temptation in the world to sell out who didn't mind that he was teaching at brooklyn polytechnic institute Where they didn't even have an economics major until he got an endowed chair on the out in the west In 1986 he just kept on doing it. You can't honor that I'm you know, I don't want to be mean. I'm just saying you'd have to be some kind of pathetic loser not to honor that Because I I wonder how many people would have had that that kind of courage But it makes you realize though if rothbard has enemies Among libertarians What hope is there for the rest of us the answer is there's no hope Now when I say that I don't mean there's no hope for the future and everything we do is pointless and forget about it I mean it is pointless to hope Not to make any enemies when I wrote a book in 2004 called the politically incorrect guide to american history. I genuinely thought Well, people are going to sit down and read it and they'll read it sincerely And they'll know that i'm being sincere and that i'm just trying to explain the way I look at american history because I think The historians have gotten some things wrong. I really thought that was going to happen That did not happen as it turns out that did not happen Uh, I I got savaged in all kinds of quarters. I was almost never corrected on anything It was all Man that guy I can't believe the things that he said it was never he's wrong and here's the correct thing It was always can you get over the nerve of this guy? So I really thought that But that's the way that's the way the world is in fact today You know if you even accidentally use the wrong pronoun you're like hitler You I mean the word nazi is thrown at everybody Right, I mean there are people who think bob dole is a nazi I mean bob dole has never felt that strongly about anything to be anything So it can't be helped But you you know, so there's a part of you that says I'm a good person And those people who are saying I'm a bad person I need to go answer them Because it's terrible to have my name dragged through the mud and that is how I felt I thought whatever you may think about my opinions you may even find them offensive I'm not a bad guy. You know like ask my kids ask people who know me I'm not a bad guy. So stop saying that say I wrote a crummy book if you want to But stop saying I'm a bad guy and I used to think I got to run around and correct all these people No, you don't You know what because if you're doing good work, you'll also have supporters and you have way more supporters than you have detractors In general and they will feel a lot more strongly about what you're doing than your detractors who write one blog post about you Then they forget about them even know what your name is the next day So don't worry about it if that's making you gun shy or afraid to speak out don't Everybody has enemies at one time or another, but you also have a gigantic community of supporters Including everybody in this room and all our friends and all their friends. So don't let that scare you And moreover think about the cause we're involved in here. What Rothbard was fighting for He was fighting against the state, which is the worst superstition I guess i'm quoting larkin rose here. Are they the uh, he doesn't call it the worst superstition, but But it's an outrageous superstition That we're all taught to believe in it claims to enrich us When every policy it engages in impoverishes us But it's hard to see it because it looks like they're making us richer, but they're not You have to investigate it, but we're not taught to investigate it It claims to provide stability for us for the economy, but it gives us the business cycle It pits us all against each other It pits men against women and young against old and and one region against another in another industry against another and Whatever races against each other pits us all against each other It makes people thirsty for the blood of innocents in countries. They've never even heard of We don't do that We're supposed to be the most immoral people in the world. We don't do that. That's evil Now there are some libertarians out there I will not mention names who want to focus on tame stuff.  Hey new york times I know libertarians are kind of cheeky and a little bit out of the mainstream, but We're different. You know, we're respectable libertarians. We're not like those people over there We just want to write harmless little pamphlets about tariffs Well, you know what we want to do Like rothbard, we want to debamboozle the public. We want to tell them the whole truth about the state come what may Well, of those two approaches, I know which one appeals to me And I hope it appeals to all of you too. Thank you


Welcome back to the 85 South Show Backwoods Lounge here at One Music Fest and we are sitting on the couch with the ladies of Black Girl Stuff, the hit show on Rebolt TV. Yes. You already know, and of course you know Carlos Miller, I'm Bre Renee, straight from the A. Your girl, Brick Hall, what up, though? She girl, Toy Bricks, what's up? Yeah, and today we backstage with Backwoods, but we kicking in the lounge outside of One Music Fest. Me and Lowe's been doing exclusive interviews and my girls from Black Girl Stuff were out here. So they was like, oh, we got to pull up backstage with Backwoods, vibe out with y'all, so I'm like, let's go, let's kick it. Welcome to the Trap on Wheels. This is a mobile trap. That's fire. It's a mobile, it's Trap on Wheels. And I thank you.  You know that. And we got to say thank y'all because y'all like, y'all gave us that razzle-dazzle. You know what I mean? That's, yeah, because it's like, they didn't even know that we was plugged in with y'all like that.  It's up. It's all right, bro. Backwoods situation. I see it. No, we'll show. One Music Fest is lit today. There's so many artists performing, Josie just hit the stage, but who y'all excited to see? I'm not going to lie. I'm excited to see Lil' Kim. That's my girl. NYC, Brooklyn, Big Energy. I'm excited to see my girl. Okay. Lil' Kim is a legend. I don't know if you said it, but you already know Janet Jackson. Oh, the queen. Ms. Jackson, if you next. Ms. Jackson, if you next. I'm excited to see Janet. So who you want to see most? I want to see all the legends because, you know, this is a two-day event. So we're going to have to see a lot of dope performances. I would love to see Janet Jackson, that Michael Lil's sister. And then Lil' Kim. I don't know if she's going to act a fool because she told you in the song, she's going to throw shade if she don't get paid. And she got hits and it would just be dope to see her do her Lil' Kim dance in real life. I know what's crazy is like actually, since we backstage, like we behind the main stage, so I kind of already had eyes on her, Lil' Kim in the building. So. Okay. Put up Kim. Yeah. We got the exclusives back here with Beckwood. I'm trying to see like how y'all think these artists like prepare for their show, though, because I know we got like your nerves going crazy. It's so many people. You hit a crowd already. People already performing. Like I'll be trying to get in my zone. You know what? I think it's a lot of mental preparation just like for all of us when we're backstage on our shows and we getting ready to go out and like give our energy to people. I think it's just to take that moment by yourself and just, whoo, and then go out there and just give it out. Leave it on the floor. I think it's your friends and the vibe that you got in your trailer. Cause like you already put the work in throughout the week. So at this point it's like, yo, let's pray. Let's go out there with good vibes. Let's like turn up, like take a shot. No, for sure. I was thinking that it's friend too. Roll up Beckwood. Roll up Beckwood. Roll up Beckwood. But I feel like as an artist, they might shock you though.  Cause some of these songs, they don't perform in their set list. So you might go out and you be over thinking it and then once the crowd see you and you start performing that song, it might just take you to a whole another level. Cause you're like, I'm worried about the lyrics. They know the lyrics. I don't want to sing along with you, but I definitely as an artist want to see you sing the song. But like see, no, but I was back to what you were saying about like the friends thing and the vibe and the energy.  You can't be on the weird stuff. You can't be doing too much. Like they say scan the hose. Bring the vibes to me please. Yeah and be easy. Make that day as light as possible. You know, they got to perform. Like you said, roll up. Roll up. Make yourself useful. Turn some of this noise off. Don't be asking me all them questions. Yeah. Figure it out. Yeah.  Look out. Look out. Extend yourself. Yes. I love that. Access service. We live for that. This is my phone. Now we were talking earlier right before we started this about how y'all let those guys come on the show and give bad relationship advice. When can I come on there and give some bad relationship advice? Listen y'all. I told Carlos I don't be listening to nobody. Listen, my biggest thing is show improve. So I don't care what you talk about. For show. Until you show some proof of what you actually do. Jesus could come sit right here. Let them talk so we can see what they doing wrong. I wanted to hear their side. I didn't want us to be arguing with them and telling them what they could do. Cause that's what they expected. They always expect the woman to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  You like that. Yeah. You set it up on the man's side. So they play these one point for us. Yeah. Stand up. One point. Dang it. Black girl stuff. I'll be making him watch Black girl stuff. I'll be too much. Yes. From the producer eye. From the viewer standpoint. I love it.  Now Britt, when y'all do have men on the show. Okay.  They do be on Britt. They be on me. But I got. I was going to ask you how you navigate when you know you in the right. And they still trying to put that pressure on you. Cause that don't mean nothing to me. It's all about respect. That's my number one thing. And I feel my man is securing me as long as he know that way. He got it safe. You can say whatever you want to say, bruh. I done seen it. Done it. I'm good. So it's like this background.  It's a brick wall. It's a brick wall. No, for sure.  I ain't calling you Britt no more. I'm always scared. She be so poised. Even catch it until you point it out. And then. I be like, look at Britt. I'll be like, yeah. Yeah, I love it though. That's good energy. They do be doing the most though. So yeah. I'm a new fan of Black girl stuff. Cause now it's just keep popping up every time I turn my YouTube on.  Not recorded on the DVR. That's when you know you in a relationship, babe. Come watch this. Come watch this, babe. Come roll up. Come watch this. Well, I want to ask all of y'all since y'all here. What are some of y'all favorite moments from the show? Has y'all been there from the beginning? So what are some of y'all favorite moments? Start and breathe. Or favorite episodes or things that you be like. This was crazy. Well, one monumental for me was, I thought this was really dope. Cause I'm a huge, I'm a huge Whitney Houston fan. You know that. So when we got to actually go visit new edition at a, at a, at their rehearsal and then got to interview them. And I got to sit down with the Bobby Brown as a Whitney Houston fan. I was like dope. And I ain't even mentioned Whitney. And he mentioned Whitney to me. And I was like, that was a little thing. No, for sure. Actually not anybody that's been on this show. I think it's just us, especially cause I came in on season two and I was nervous and I had never done anything with talk or TV. And they just brought like all the right energy. Cause you know, sometimes females be catty. You don't know what you're getting into. And it was just like my sister's like, oh, I love these women. They saw down earth and they felt real. And for me, that was like made the show. Oh, yeah. A show. Now that new edition for sure, that was lit. But just seeing how we're there for each other.  I think that's the best one. Yeah, I would say that. Cause it's like, you get to see, we made, we all became friends through this. You know what I mean? And you get to see them grow and transition as a woman on camera and off camera.   So it was like, it was fun to see that transition in her as a, you know, as a co-worker. It's like, okay, I see you. Let's go. But I mean, I got two beautiful women speaking life into me. We not going to get mushy on y'all. What else we talking about? Let's get spicy. Yeah.  Spicy jalapeno. Yeah. Well, we're going to do spicy on the 85 self show. We don't got spicy on the 85 self show. But I don't have like no scandalous topics. No. I don't got to be scandalous. I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be fine. Well, I want to ask y'all this. This been going crazy on social media. Like you said, y'all are all bad women. What do y'all think about the first date list? First date list. Okay. I got something to say. I feel like Shorty was tripping. You know what I'm saying? Big shout out to the Cheesecake Factory. They have never done me wrong. For real. I like their dark skinned bread that they serve in a bowl. Oh, yeah. Drinks is drinking. You know what I'm saying? It's a vibe.  We could go on a walk. We can go to the park. Like I think people, you know what it is? Add that to the list. I'm sure going on a walk would not be a good first date. You could. No, you can't. Cheesecake Factory, but you do want to go on a walk. I'll go to Cheesecake Factory. I'll go to Cheesecake Factory. You could definitely. It's not about the amount of money spent on a date. It's about the amount of thought that went into the date. That makes a good date. So I feel like if you know they don't eat seafood, then of course don't take them to a seafood restaurant. Right. But you could do little things that's not or inexpensive, that's really thoughtful and would make a vibe. For the first date? For the first date. Whenever.  Right. You can kick it in the car. It don't really matter. You got to start gauging better on how much this girl already like you. That's the determining factor. That's what it is. That's what it is. Yeah. That's it. What you think about it? I mean, you're going to have to keep this up. Absolutely. We can start off.  Now y'all got random women just walking up a grid. We didn't start it so. I didn't even see her. She was just like, mm. Right.  That's right. Now keep it simple for me. And what about you two? I don't know. Make me first impressions of everything. Smoking backwoods. Like where we went though. We could have went up to the top of LA where the lights was at. Yeah. Just like make it memorable. I don't know where the bookshelves all around us. And we got to talk. It's like wherever you can go and actually like. That's cute. You can know that person. I feel like it doesn't matter. Like I said, where you going? Cause me and Los was just talking about how we used to eat. What was y'all first date? Tell us y'all first date. The first one out, it was so long ago. Official like first date. Like we used to meet out like just being in Atlanta. And we went, it was like we already out. We might hang out. Smoking a car. Or then like. Yeah. When we were broken in. I was in college. So we eating McDonald's. That's what I was just saying. That's what I said. It was down the street. That's cool. So the date list should have an age on it. So it's like first dates for like college. Right. That makes sense. I think this. Absolutely. Absolutely. A whole lot of birthday people would just be honest. Be honest.  I'm broke.  Be honest. What you said? The guys should just say that up front. Yeah, just say it. Be honest. You beautiful. I'm not about to do all of this.  It's coming, babe. I got you. But I like you. Right. Yeah. I can't take you to buy this expensive food. Not yet. But if I didn't do it, what would you have ate today? Let me take you there. Ooh, energy. What would you was going to eat already? What would you eat? It's Wednesday. What would you buy? You knew you was going to stop and get Chipotle. Why can't you take the Chipotle? Why can't you take the Chipotle?  But sometimes I need to come and meet you on your level too. Yeah. Talk to y'all. Like you like Wendy's nuggets. Right. It don't start until I get my check. Okay. But I want to highlight you wins. Yeah. We can't go do nothing wins. Do you like that little soup from Panera? Yeah, I know.  Man, don't take advantage of the daylight.  Yeah.  Day dates. You need to go on day dates. Man, you better take that girl to the aquarium. Right. You can get way more creative but that's expensive. The aquarium is like $200 a ticket. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Whether or not your family gives gifts during the holidays, you get to define the gift you give yourself. And the holidays are a great time to do that. Taking care of yourself is the pathway to fulfillment and to high performance and work and in life. And just as importantly, it's a gift to others.  Remember to give yourself love this holiday season. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with the licensed therapists and the switched therapists at any time for no additional charge. In the season of giving, give yourself what you need with BetterHelp. com slash 85 lounge today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash 85 lounge. The gift that keeps on giving. That's right, Bluetooth. Bluetooth can increase your confidence and give you that little boost in the bedroom. You feel me? You feel me? The process is simple. Sign up at bluetooth.com. Consult with one of their licensed medical providers and once you approve, you will receive your prescription within days. Bluetooth wants to help you have better sex. So go to bluetooth.com to discover all your options. Just chew it and do it. And we got a special deal for our listeners. We got Bluetooth for free. That's right, for free. When you use promo code 85Lounge at checkout. Just pay $5 shipping. That's bluetooth.com promo code 85Lounge. That's L-O-U-N-G-E. To receive your first month free, visit bluetooth.com for more important safety information and details. And we thank Bluetooth for sponsoring the podcast. You can give some... Like a mad name. Some group puns or something. They be having a little... You gotta be a creator. Little wins that you can go when the school goes or something. They be like, yeah, they ready to see ahead. Because the key is in there. You can't take me out in the daytime because I want to go to the mall. I want to go to the aquarium. Then I want to get something to eat. And then be one stop shop. Is there such thing as a first date that's too extravagant? Like, now you're doing too much. Yeah, I don't want to meet no family on the first date. Yeah, me neither. Nobody in your family. I don't know you like that. What if we out and I just run into like my auntie or something. Y'all let the aquarium too on a Wednesday. Yeah, set it up like that. But if it's a happenstance, okay. Yeah, you can't control that. That's cool. What y'all know goes for first date?  Like he's trying to cover something. You try to do too much. He overcompensating. Like you can go out your way, but like it's almost like that love bombing. I agree. Like, okay. Yeah, that might scare me because you doing all this. Like what you trying to do? Yeah.  It's like you trying to force something. A connection. So I'm going to get scared and run. You just start doing too much. I'm going to be like, um. Yeah. When it come fast, it go fast. No thanks. I'm still taking it up. He said I'm still taking it up. Oh my God. Let me ask y'all women. Nobody ever asked y'all this. Hypothetically, in a hypothetical world, we living on the alternate reality. If you had to pay for the first date, what would be your price range? You have to pay for the first date. It can be over $3.50. Oh, really? So $3.50. Damn, I'm a trick. What would you say? Because where are we going to eat it? I was going to say five honey. I almost said five. Like for our first date. Five is a lot. But we might have drinks. That's like that. Like if we have a couple rounds of drinks, that's like $1.50. Hold up. What would you say to her? Food is another thing. I don't really got a price but I want to do something he remembered. You going to remember me. This is in girl money now. In girl money. And we just keeping the night going or we like, hey, nothing we can't do.  If you spend money, they going to spend more. Yeah, but it got to be that type of thing. Perfect solution to this conundrum. What is it? Women should start paying for them. Too fast now. Let's see. I'm going to say realistically. Yeah, you let me advance. But I'm not coming into this over. Okay, I got to ask y'all this. No, this too good. I got to ask. So like on the date are y'all like keeping up a little bit in your mind with the tab? Hell no. No. And stable like that. I'm having like 48 oysters. Is she wild out? She ate 48 oysters. Like guys, your stomach going to be towed up. I would have been looking at her. Yes, she can. He laughs. She does. That's why I'm asking y'all. Because like this is her standard. She said if she was out by herself she would have did it anyway. I ain't going to lie.  But I'm probably not going to eat as much as I normally would even eat. No.  She could have ate it. Like man my honey I can afford that. So I might, I might not even eat really all of this.  But if I'm on the first date I'm going to keep it cute.   Listen. No, I'm not going all of that. No. Now you don't have the word like I don't, I wouldn't say eat 48 oysters. But me and appreciate when a woman eat all her food.  I mean we know that it's cute and all that delay. Only eat some of it.  We bought it. Yeah. But 48 is a little while. She crazy about it. Yeah. 48 is excessive. Well we appreciate the ladies of black girl stuff stopping through here. Y'all drop y'all social media. Let them know what they can find this show. Keep up with y'all and keep the conversations going. Yeah. Thank y'all for stopping by coming and checking on me. Yeah, it's our baby girl. Yeah. Make sure y'all follow black girl stuff at black girl stuff on all social media Instagram. TikTok at Revolt TV as well. Black girl stuff airs every Tuesday night on cable. You can check us out on cable. We syndicate it. Okay. Let's go. Every Tuesday night 9 p.m. on Revolt. Yeah. And y'all want to shout out y'all first on Instagrams? At Lay Honey B, L, E, H, O, N, E, Y, the letter B. That's where you can find your girl, Britt Hall. B-R-I-X-X. All right. Back with us backstage. 85 self-show. We out of here. Thank y'all.


Then they decided to make them here in America as well. And today, CSWIN Factory in Colorado is the largest wind tower manufacturer in the entire world, in the entire world. It's over 870 employees. It's simple. As I've said for a long time, when I think climate, and I mean this sincerely, I think jobs, jobs, that's what climate's about. Not only saving lives and saving the environment, but jobs. But that's not the end of the story. I signed a historic law, the most significant investment combating existential threat of climate change ever anywhere in the world. It does many things, including providing incentives to make wind towers in America, and bonuses for clean energy projects that use those American-made wind towers to power American homes. And because of my investment in America agenda, CSWIN plans to invest an additional $200 million to expand the facility right here, another $200 million, doubling its production, and creating 850 more good jobs beyond what's going on. And because of the investment and incentive we wrote in the law, CSWIN recently announced its employees will receive an end-of-year bonuses as well. You can clap for that, man. It matters. Like I said, when I hear climate, I think jobs. Here in Colorado, the wind turbine manufacturing is investing $40 million to expand its factory and hire an additional 1,000 employees. Solar manufacturer, Meyer Burger, is building a new solar cell factory just down the road in Colorado Springs. They'll create more than 350 new jobs themselves. And all across America, instead of exporting jobs, companies both foreign and domestic are creating jobs here in America and exporting American-made products. That's what we used to do 40 years ago. Through my bipartisan infrastructure law, we're also making the most substantial investment in American infrastructure since President Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System. We're investing in roads, bridges, ports, airports, clean water, affordable high-speed internet. Already, we've announced over 40,000 projects, 4,500 communities across the nation are benefitting. And from the new Amtrak tunnel in Baltimore to the Brent Spence Bridge in Kentucky to right here in Colorado, $5.6 billion in 304 projects. We're investing $160 million on 103-mile water pipeline, known as the Arkansas Valley Conduit. It starts here in Pueblo and will bring water to 50,000 people across the Southeastern Colorado. And that's not all. We haven't forgotten tribal lands here in Colorado. We're investing over $66 million in tribal lands here to ensure underserved Native American communities have access to affordable high-speed internet. The amazing thing is, over 233,000 Colorado households already have a savings of $30 a month on their internet bills because of the Affordable Connectivity Program. You know, and as part of my commitment to conserve and restore our country's lands and waters, my administration has already conserved more than 21 million acres nationwide, including when I was here a year ago at the Camp Hale Continental Divide National Monument, a beautiful place that will never, ever, ever be built on in future generations. We're also bringing the semiconductor manufacturing back home. We invented the computer chip. We invented the semiconductor. All those computer chips smaller than the tip of your finger that affect nearly everything in our lives, from cell phones to automobiles to refrigerators to advanced weapons systems. America invented these chips. But as time went on, we went from producing 40 percent of the world's chips down to just over 10 percent. That's why I designed and signed the Chips and Science Act, because how can we remain the greatest nation in the world without leading the world in science and technology? How does that happen? We used to invest 2 percent of our gross domestic product and research and development as a nation. That's why we're leading the world. Over time, that went down to .7 percent. But we're changing that. Now all over the country, semiconductor companies are investing literally hundreds of billions of dollars to bring chip production back home to America. In Colorado Springs, the company Microchip announced it would invest $880 million to expand their manufacturing capacity, creating 400 additional good-paying jobs in the semiconductor industry. These fabs, they're called the factories they're built in. These fabs, they pay an annual salary over $100,000 a year. And guess what? You don't need a college degree to get the job. Folks, things are changing. We're also focused on growing the rural economy. Let me put this in perspective for you. Just four big corporations control more than half of the markets in beef, pork, and poultry in all of America. Because so few companies control so much of the market, if one of those processing plants goes offline, it can have a massive impact on the supply chain disruptions, slowing production, and costs of farmers real big. Under my administration, Colorado received millions of dollars to strengthen and expand access to small, mid-sized meat and poultry processors. The big guys don't like it, but guess what? You have a guaranteed access. Having facilities close by means farmers and ranchers have a better shot at getting a fair price for their product. We're also helping farmers and ranchers deploy clean energy systems like solar panels on their farms and ranchers, lowering energy costs, and increasing their incomes. When farmers and ranchers do well, when the wealth they generate stays in Colorado, when their children can stay in Colorado, it builds a stronger rural economy. New data released just today shows the investments we're making have spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act, which I wrote, which we passed, is going to communities historically left behind. Since I signed the law, 99% of clean energy investments in Colorado are in counties with average incomes below average, below medium household incomes. When I took office, I vowed I'd be present for all Americans, whether you live in a blue state or a red state, whether you live in rural or urban areas, and we're delivering on that promise. But folks, we haven't gotten a whole lot of help from some members of Congress. On the other side of the aisle, the United States Congress. The historic investments we're celebrating today is in Congressman Bober's district. She's one of the leaders of this extreme mega movement. She, along with every single Republican colleague, voted against the law that made these investments and jobs possible, and that's not hyperbole. That's a fact. And then she voted to repeal key parts of this law, and she called this law a massive failure. You all know you're part of a massive failure? Tell that to the 850 Colorado's to get new jobs in Pueblo to see us win thanks to this law. Tell that to the local economy that's going to benefit from these investments. Tell that to anyone who wants to listen. Tell them, thanks to Congress, and I think what she calls a massive failure, a solar power company that's investing $400 million here in Colorado, creating for 56,000 homes, creating 250 good-paying jobs. Light source BP is building a new solar farm just down the road from here to power an additional 53,000 homes. Across Colorado, XL Energy is investing $1.7 billion to improve the state's electric grid. And folks, none of that sounds like a massive failure to me. How about you? I mean, it's crazy. This is an incredible opportunity. I got around the plant today to those I got to talk to. You're changing America. You're changing America. It all sounds like a massive failure in thinking by the Congresswoman and her colleagues. Her Congresswoman also voted against the Chips and Science Act. And when she voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law, she called it garbage, a scam. As a matter of fact, the new Republican Speaker of the House, along with the Republican Congresswoman, was earned in Canada. Just visited Sarasota, Florida yesterday to tour the construction of a new terminal at that airport. It's going to create thousands of jobs over time. The project is funded with nearly $30 million from the bipartisan infrastructure law. And it's going to generate more than $30 million for Florida multiple times over. And guess what? Both the Speaker and the Congressmen voted against the law and spoke against the law. But now they're down there taking credit for it being built. As my mother would say, God love them. As one of my friends back home would say, that's for a good spot. That's for a good spot. Meanwhile, my predecessor wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. Over 40 million Americans today get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. His plan is to throw them off that plan. That would mean the number of uninsured African Americans would go up by 20 percent, for Latinos would go up by 15 percent. Folks, this is not your father's Republican Party. Like I said, I made a promise to be the President for every American. I'm keeping my promise. And just this morning we learned that our economy, our economy, just this new data out, our economy grew by over 5 percent in the last quarter. That's more growth. That's more than the grew under my predecessor in any quarter outside the pandemic, despite promises of massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations would be, what they said would supercharge the economy and trickle down to working folks. Not a whole lot trickled down to most kitchen tables I'm aware of. Well, I took office. Since then, the first two years, we've created over 14 million brand new jobs, good-paying jobs. And nearly 250,000 of those good-paying jobs are here in Colorado alone. We've created close to, remember we were told we're not going to be the manufacturing capital, well, how can we be the manufacturing capital world again? Well, we've created close to 800,000 manufacturing jobs, almost twice as many as the previous administration did in all four years. The unemployment rate has stayed below 4 percent for over 20 months in a row, a longer stretch in 50 years, and we've seen the highest share of working-age Americans in the workforce in 20 years. And inflation is down. We have more work to do, but inflation is down at the same time. Core inflation is the lowest level in two years that we've had the lowest inflation of any major country in the world. Let me be clear. Any corporation that's not passing these savings on to the consumers needs to stop the price gouging. And as my friend Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania calls it, greed-flation. American people are tired of being played for suckers. Look at all the hidden fees you have.  They charge you 20 bucks. I can go on and on and on. It's wrong. One thing I said after we passed all these major piece of legislation is the next big battle is going to be whether the very wealthiest among us began and the biggest corporations began to start paying their fair share. I'm not talking about 80 percent, 70 percent, 90 percent. But the highest tax rate in America is 38 percent, 36 percent. Let me be clear. The Speaker, Donald Trump and the migrant Republicans here in Congress committed to protecting their outrageous tax cuts for those at the very top. And they're going to continue to oppose investing in all those programs that help people, whether it's in education, healthcare, whatever. I have a different view. One of the ways that we pay for all those investments that we pay for, and by the way, I cut the federal deficit of over $7 billion while doing all this. But one of the ways we paid for these investments by making corporations began to pay their fair share. Some of you may remember all the publicity back in 2020. 55 of the Fortune 500 companies in America made $40 billion in profits. That's good. You know what they paid in federal taxes? Zero. Not a penny. Not one penny. Because of the law I signed, billion-dollar corporations now have to pay a minimum of 15 percent in the federal tax. That's even less than you all pay. They're paying zero before. They paid for all the work we did, and we have more work to do. Does anyone think the tax code's fair if you do? Raise your hand. I'm not joking. Even people doing well don't think it's fair. You know, we had about 750 billionaires in America before the pandemic. Now there are a thousand. You know the average rate those billionaires pay in the federal taxes? Eight percent. They make a billion dollars, and they pay eight percent. Raise your hand if you pay more than eight percent. Every one of you do. I'm serious. Think about this. Just think about it. That's less than a firefighter or a teacher. So many other people may pay. That's why I'm proposing a billionaire minimum tax. Get this. A billionaire minimum tax, not even at the highest rate, 25 percent, which is a lot of you pay if you're making a family of four making $150,000 a year. Just 25 percent is still 10 percent lower than the top rate. And it would raise $440 billion over the next 10 years. Just paying 25 percent instead of eight. Imagine what we could do if we just made these billionaires pay their taxes like everyone else. We could use it to strengthen the social security and Medicare system instead of cutting them like Congressman Trump and both would want to do. We could use it to help millionaires and millions of families afford a little help for senior care. How many of you have a mom or dad that they don't want to have to give up all the value in their home and sell it and go to a nursing home? But you know if they just had someone there at dinner time and help them with the dinner, we just had them in the morning there just a little bit. They could stay, save a lot of money and be held a lot happier. Or we could do what we do with child care. We had that child care tax cut. What happened? We had the lowest poverty rate for children in the history of America. But what it does, it generates income. All those moms and single dads who are taking care of their kids they're able to get a job, pay a tax, go to work because someone can be with their child. Child care. This is not about helping poor folks. It's about smart economics. If we had another five million women working who can't work now, it generates economic income and growth in their communities. All these ideas would be a hell of a lot better for growing American economy than letting billionaires keep paying less taxes than any middle class worker person in America. Let me close with this. My plan is based on the belief that every American willing to work hard, and some don't want to work hard, but every American willing to work hard should be able to get a job no matter where they live. In the heartland or in a small town to raise kids in a good paycheck and keep the roots where they grew up. My dad, I said God's truth, I know I apologize to Herbie say it a thousand times. My dad used to say, and I said I'm deadly earnest, he'd say Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It's about your dignity. It's about being treated with respect. It's about being able to look your kid in the eye and say honey, it's going to be okay and mean it. There are a quarter of a million more jobs in Colorado since I took office. That's a quarter of a million more people throughout this state including in this district who can look their kids in the eye and say honey it's going to be okay. That's a little about, this is not any they call socialism. My plan is rooted in what we've always worked best in this country. Investing in America. Investing in Americans. Because when we invest in our people, when we strengthen the middle class, we see strong economic growth for all Americans. Not just the middle class. Everybody grows. For real. Here's the deal. I've said this and I've said this to Deng Chao Ping and the MLA's and I've said this to every major world leader. It's never, never, never been a good bet to bet against American people. Never, never, never. And I can honestly say I mean this from the bottom of my heart I can honestly, I've never been more optimistic about America's future than I'm today. We just said remember who in God's name we are. We're the United States of America. There's nothing, nothing beyond our capacity to work together. So let's continue to work together and God bless you all and may God protect our troops. We're moving folks. We're moving and no one's going to stop us. Thank you.


Today is April the 26th. It's the second day of the CBA 10 conference and we had a lot of Sessions some very interesting gameplay in sessions that everybody enjoyed we had a Session on posters that people brought with them about the work that they're doing We give a lot of time for the posters to be shared with people so that people can find out what everybody else is doing and we also have the parallel Youth conference going on next door to us at the north-south University Where they have almost 200 young people from universities and other schools around in and around Haka city and in fact They have a couple of international participants as well, and I went over there to open it for them They have a lot of activities going on. It's a two-day conference It ended on the 27th and then the youth will come to the closing of the CBA 10 conference on the 28th