The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show. Good morning to some of you. Good afternoon to others. Good evening to still others. I see we've got London. We've got the West Coast. We've got much of the country covered today. All right, let's jump in. I'll just remind you there will be a show tonight. 8 p.m. I'll have the topic and everything up online soon, but there will be a show today. Sorry, 7 p.m. East Coast time. Jonathan, thank you for the support. Let's jump in with some of the highlights of the news today. I thought given that we talked a little bit about the debt ceiling, and since there are going to be a lot of discussions in the weeks and months to come about debt ceiling, about government spending, about everything that's going on for a physical and about taxes from a physical perspective, there would be good to basically just review a little bit about government spending, about where the money goes, and so on, so that you guys just have a context for all those debates and all those discussions. They're going to be coming down the Republicans' supposed attempt. We'll see if it's a real attempt to reduce government spending. All of that, I think, is going to dominate the news cycle in the, again, weeks and months to come. So I thought today would be a good opportunity since it's not a huge amount of news out there, other than the stories we've already covered, like more tanks, more tanks, you know, to kind of go over where we are with regard to all of that, and then, well, and with the discussion of Musk's day in court, or two days in court, he testified yesterday and testified today, we'll go over the court case and whether a little bit and whether any of it makes any sense. Let's see, so let's start with this issue, this question about Social Security. So when we discuss government spending, I think it's crucial to realize that 19% of the money the government spends, 19% of all government expenditures, are spent on Social Security. That's more than health, which that's going to shift, but I think health will dominate that number within a few years. Social Security's 19%, health is 15%, all other, oh, wait a minute, all right, so separate that. Social Security's 19%, health is 15%, that does not include Medicare, Medicare is 12%. Income security, that's welfare generally. Income security's 14%, national defense is 12%. So Social Security's significantly more than the national defense. Medicare is 12%, but if you add Medicare with health, those together are 27%, 27%, Medicare, I assume under health there's Medicare, Medicaid, I assume there's everything else that the government does vis-a-vis healthcare. Together, Medicare and health generally, 27% of the government, that's over a quarter, right? So when Trump says the other day, whatever the Republicans do, whatever the Republicans do in the House, Social Security and Medicare should be off the table. Social Security and Medicare should be off the table. If you just take Medicare out of the health, and Social Security, that's 29%, that's basically 30% of the budget is off the table. And that's a growing percent, that is the amount of Medicare, the percent of a Medicare in the total budget is only gonna increase, it's only gonna grow. And indeed, I expect Social Security to grow because baby boomers are retiring. And I'm at the edge of the baby boomers, right? I haven't started drawing Social Security. And so within a few years, when I start drawing Social Security, that's probably close to the peak. So Social Security's only gonna increase. So if you take out Social Security and Medicare, what are you gonna cut? You can't cut net interest on the government debt. That's a contractual agreement with bondholders. You can't cut that. You can cut national defense. You can cut other health expenditures. You can cut education, training, employment, so services, and welfare, how much? Are they really willing to cut any of those? But all of that is penny change if you're not willing to touch 30% and 30% that's actually growing and it's gonna be much bigger in the future. So Trump wants to take Medicare and Social Security off the table. I think another example of the fact that Trump is harmful to the Republican Party. The fact is that the Republican Party should be the party suggesting new ways in to restructure Social Security and Medicare. He made it to protect current retirees at the expense of younger people who are younger. I mean, there has to be reform and the Republican Party should be at the forefront. It should be thinking and devoting energy and focus on trying to figure out how to do exactly that. And it looks like they are not. So it looks like Trump is preventing that from happening. If the Republicans propose any kind of reform to Medicare and Social Security, Trump will call them, I don't know, traders. Trump will advocate against them to the Republican base. To the Republican base. And of course, part of the issue is that Social Security is a bust, right? So Social Security, the pretense of Social Security today is, well, there's all the money that's being saved. There's the trust fund that pays out Social Security. Well, remember what's in that trust fund? There's no money in that trust fund. What's in that trust fund is IOUs from the federal government. The federal government spends every dime that you put into Social Security. Every dime that you're taxed, Social Security tax, is spent immediately by the government. And so all you have is IOUs there by the government. So there is no trust fund. But whatever IOUs are in there will be ground down to zero by 2033. So by 2033, Social Security will be the pool, whatever IOUs are in there is all negative and will start having to massively increase the amount of money going into Social Security. So the CBO, this is the Congressional Budget Offices, without legislative actions, CBO estimates that benefits would be automatically cut by 23% across the board upon insolvency. Over 75 years, CBO projects or Social Security will face a shortfall equal to 5% of taxable payroll or 1.7% of gross domestic product GDP. This means restoring solvency would require the equivalent of reducing projected benefits immediately and permanently by 26% or increasing dedicated taxes by 40%. So you're gonna permanently decrease benefits by 26%, which I'm not against, or increase taxes by 40%, the payroll tax. Now this is around the corner. So by ignoring this, Republicans are just playing into the hand of future massive increases in taxes. Surprise, surprise, but this is of course what they've taken off the table, off the table. Now I've told you, such a great as 19%, as I said, National Defense is 12, NAND interest payment on the debt is 8%, that's probably going up, given interest rates are higher right now, so any bonds the government is issuing right now are significantly more expensive to it in terms of interest payments than they were in the past. So the situation of the federal spending is only going to get worse. Just to give you a kind of a quick overview, and I'm not gonna go way in depth on this because that'll take us a long time, but just in terms of taxes and spending by the US government in 1929, in 1929, US government receipts as a percentage of gross domestic products. So the amount of money the federal government took in from all the different programs as a percent of the size of the economy, gross domestic product was 3.7%. I mean, even as late as 1932, before the election of FDR, government receipts were 3.23%. So the government in the 19th century and early 20th century ran basically on 3% of the size of the economy. Now, given the new deal, that rose to just under 8%, but the numbers pre-war like six, eight, seven, so seven, eight percent of the economy in the pre-war era, pre-World War II. Today, that number is, this is in terms of taxes, the money coming in, we'll get to the money going out in a minute. That has grown since then to about 17% as of 2021, it peaked. The highest it's ever been since World War II, well, it's about the same as what it was in World War II, was in 2000, 2019.8. And the reason tax receipts were so high in 2000s was because in 2000 was because stock market had done phenomenally well, massive amounts of capital gains, incomes have risen, and we had huge tax revenues. So tax revenues were about almost just under 20% in 2000. They were also at 20%, guess when? At the peak of World War II, 1945 was the highest gross receipts. And this is, that's not a consequence of capital gains, that's not a consequence of people making more money, that's pure consequence of tax rates going through the roof. So the government has gone from taking about, I don't know, three, four percent of the size of the economy every year to taking 20% of the size of the economy, or really 17% today of the size of the economy. Taxes, tax receipts are very sensitive to recessions. Tax rates, but more to recessions. If you actually look at the graph, it's been at around 17, 18%. So like everybody says in 1953, 52, 53, remember marginal tax rates on income were 80, 90%? Tax receipts were 18% of GDP. In 1969, during the Vietnam War, and during the Great Society, tax income was 18.4%. They peak again in 1981, tax receipts are 18.7%, probably as a consequence of adjustments for inflation.  The fact is the amount of money coming into government doesn't seem to change that much based on tax rates, income tax rates, or based on any of these parameters, it's mostly based on the amount of economic activity, based on how well the economy is doing. So you see a decline during the dot com bubble bursting and a decline during that recession and then an increase after 2004 and then a decrease during the Great Recession in 2008, 2009 and then a slow increase up until 2015 and then slight decreases in the beginning of the Trump administration and then up flat basically during the rest of Trump, probably caused by the capital, by the copatax decrease that caused the percent of revenue received by the government to decrease. So 18%, 16 to 18% is what the government takes from the economy pretty much every single year. What does it spend? Well, going back again to 1929, it spent 3% of the economy. So in 1929, the federal government spent 3% of GDP, total expenditures, everything. It peaked highest it's ever been is during World War II and basically much of the economy was nationalized and basically huge expenditures for the war. It peaked around just under 41%. But then since about 1953, the government has been spending somewhere between 15 to 20% slowly increasing, slowly increasing, but basically stabilizing just over 20%. And then in the 1990s, remember I've told you in 1990s we're a pretty good era, decreasing government spending as a percent of GDP decreases every single year and it bottoms in 2000 where the government spent 17, 17.4%, something like that. Then it starts to increase again under George W. Bush, George Bush Jr., the spender with the war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan with all the other government spending associated with him and it goes up to like 19% of GDP. All the Clinton years by every measure were some of the best years economically the US in modern times since World War II has seen. Clinton years spending decline, income actually went up whether you consider income a good thing or not, but income actually went up during that period primarily because of the stock market but spending actually declined. Now it actually starts with 1990, spending peaks at 21.5 in 1991 and then declines as a percent of GDP every single year. Now that continues after 1994 when Republicans take Congress but it starts declining in 1992. It starts declining even before Republican state Congress and then it keeps going. Now part of that, a big chunk of that by the way, a big chunk of that is what was called then the peace dividend. A big chunk of that is a reduction that George Bush Sr. started in 1991 because of the fall of the Berlin Wall. So reduction in defense spending, substantial reduction in defense spending during the 1990s. So the 1990s saw reduction in defense spending and caps on other spending primarily after 1984 when Republicans took over Congress but you basically see a declining government spending through 2000 again as a percentage of GDP, not in absolute terms. GDP is increasing every year as a percentage of GDP and then you see it increasing from 2001 under Bush basically from 17.6 to 19 really. Then spiking during the Great Recession under Bush and then under Obama to 25, 24% then again declining under Obama. I know this is a shock to your system but primarily after the Republican state Congress but once Republicans take Congress, government spending as a percentage of GDP declines from a high of 24, really probably 23 post stimulus package to a low in 2014, 2015 of 19.97, so 20%. It stays like that under Trump. It stays at just over 20%. Basically it doesn't change and then in 2019 it goes up under Trump to 21% and then in 2020 which I will remind you 2020 is a Trump year, 2020 was Trump spending the government spent 31% of GDP, 31% of GDP. So government spending has gone up from about 20% to over 30% to 31% during the COVID year which is Trump's year, which is stimulus, all the nonsense that the government was doing during the COVID year, sending everybody checks and money. Since then it's been declining slowly but slowly. I saw somewhere, let me just see if I can find 2022 number. Yeah, 2022 number is down to 25%, so coming down more. Yeah, don't blame the boss, don't blame the guy who's in charge of everything.  But yes, don't blame the boss, blame the underlings, always blame the underlings, there's no boss. No, there wasn't, there wasn't any, there wasn't anybody at the top, there wasn't anybody in charge.  We've gone from 3% GDP spending to 30% GDP spending in, you know, during COVID to 20% of GDP spending during normal years, you know, I mean, we have gone from, again, a government that's tiny, 3% of GDP to a government that's massive, 20% of GDP. And of course, tax revenue, flat, 17, 18%, and that's how you get the deficits every year. And when you go to 30% of tax revenue stays at 17, 18%, you get a massive increase and you keep getting these bumps, like the great financial crisis, big deficit. COVID, big, big, big, big deficit. And those just add to the national debt and this is kind of the national debt exploding is a direct consequence, a direct consequence of that. America's debt today is six times what it was in 2000. Six times. Most of that is a consequence of stimulus packages doing 0809 and during 2020 and 2021 to blame for this. And of course, let's not forget the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost the US anywhere between $2 to $6 trillion, who knows how to come. If you wanna blame anybody for it, you should blame Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. Nobody gets off the hook here. Everybody spent like crazy. And nobody cared, nobody cared about a balance of money. Nobody cared about a balanced budget. The last time we had a balanced budget, 99, 99, 2000 under Clinton. We had a small surplus because tax revenue were going up, they peaked then and spending would actually gone down as a percentage of GDP and a percentage of GDP, good money coming in. So you've got six times greater and then it's, we're expecting a debt to increase about 1.3 trillion a year for the next decade. So we've got 31 trillion of debt right now. It's gonna increase by about 13 trillion over the next 10 years. We're heading towards 50. National debt is now as a percentage of GDP, as a percentage of the size of the economy. It's never been higher other than maybe in World War II, but in World War II it was easy to cut back because you basically brought the troops home. You had two effects. One is you cut spending on war. Second is people came back and the economy became dramatically more productive because people started working again.  Particularly if you follow Trump and you refuse to touch Social Security Medicaid. Total GDP is about 21, 22 trillion dollars. All right, I know a bunch of numbers about your economy, but just a sense that the economy, our government spending, our government in general, it's out of control and it's out of control and nobody, there's nobody, not a single person out there is actually offering a plan of how to start shrinking significantly government spending. A total complete reform of Social Security Medicaid. The last person to suggest reforming Social Security Medicaid was Paul Ryan. And Paul Ryan today is considered a Republican by name only, a rhino, but he's the last person to actually suggest reforming these things. What Trump did was take that off the table completely and he's doubling up on that. And I would be shocked if DeSantis, if you ran against Trump, would suggest anything, anything close to reforming Social Security Medicaid. I think that's off the table now completely. All right, let's see. Quick story about pay increases. This is just, you know, who got the highest pay increases last year? Low income wages. So if you look by educational status, the highest increases last year were for people with less than a high school degree. So low income jobs got a real boost, a significant boost to income. I hate these kind of graphs, but you know, the Wall Street Journal publishes them. So, you know, I'll report it. Blacks saw the largest increase in wages of any quote race, bigger than Asian whites overall, Hispanics, Latinos, in 2022 in terms of wages for blacks was one of the best years ever. Not one of the best years ever, but best year in, they did better than anybody else, put it that way. They also did well in 2020, by the way. And low income have done pretty well. They did well in 2018. They did well during COVID in 2019. Sorry, in, they did well in 2018 and 2019. And they did well relatively speaking during COVID, highest, and then, you know, they actually sort of decline in wages post COVID. And then last year, there's so significant increase. And then finally, if you look by age, the people who got the highest raises last year were young people, 16 to 24, right? And the bottom 10% of wage owners, so the highest raises. And this is, I think, to some extent, a consequence of the labor shortage, the fact that a lot of people are not going back to work, that if you remember all those wanted signs and restaurants and all kinds of places, and most of those were for relatively low paying jobs. And I think that, as you know, if supply and demand, the only way employers could attract people to come and take those jobs was by paying them more money, by paying them more. In the short run, this is probably also an impact of all the restrictions in immigration, even though immigration over the long run and across the entire economy raises wages. In the short run, if you, in the short run and for manual laborers, it is possible that a restriction in immigration, restriction of people coming in and increasing the supply of labor would actually cause wages to increase. All right, let's see, Bonnie, thank you, Gail, thank you. Wes, thank you, Adam, thanks. And Jonathan, again, thank you. Thank you for all of you guys. Yeah, we're still at a point where everybody watching would have to put in two bucks for us to get to where we need to be. Okay, so wages have increased, increased relatively quite a lot last year. Most of them didn't keep up with inflation. Low income wages did keep up with inflation. So one group that saw wages exceed, wage increases exceed the official inflation rate was low income, low income people. So again, interesting fact, I mean, all of this, yeah, anyway, interesting fact, let me just see if there's anything else on the wages. But yes, low income wages generally have done well over the last, I'd say five, six years. Parts of that is the cutting corporate taxes. I said at the time when corporate taxes were cut, one of the great people, the people who benefit from cutting corporate taxes are customers, prices go down, and wage earners, employees, wages go up. And indeed, since the corporate tax cut, wages are generally trended upwards. All right, let's see, oops, what did I, I didn't intend to close that. All right, all right, some of you might know, Trump, Elon Musk is under trial today, yesterday and today, he testified yesterday, he's testifying today, in a trial brought against him by shareholders of Tesla, who claim that a tweet he made in 2018, God, I closed the window where I had the tweet lined up for you guys, so I could read you the exact tweet that Elon Musk sent, but there it is, I got it. All right, so this is the tweet Elon Musk tweeted in 2018. All right, come on, open, there we go, all right. Quote, I'm considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share, funding secured. Now, at the time, Tesla stock was trading at significantly below $420 a share, about 20% below. This is gonna be a 20% premium over the price. So again, I'm considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share, funding secured. Now, it turned out days later, that he was not gonna take Tesla private and that the funding was not secured in the sense that he was still negotiating with the Saudis, the Saudis were gonna provide the money to buy Tesla and he was negotiating with them, it turned out that they backed off the deal to buy Tesla, help him buy Tesla at $420 a share. So the question is, did he mislead investors here? Did this cause investors to lose money? Did this tweet, tweet, remember, this was a tweet, that this tweet was, you know, cause people to buy Tesla in anticipation that the stock would go up to $420, did this lead people to, I don't know, cover positions, change positions, did it change their behavior? And the answer to that is, I think, yeah, it must have. I mean, this is real information. Remember at the time Elon Musk was both chairman of the board and the CEO of Tesla? So there's no question that a tweet like this, which provides new vital information, important information, significant information to your investment, would change your behavior as an investor. But then the question is, okay, but was this, was this a, you know, just providing information to investors and then it turned out the information didn't come true and tough, or is this constitute deception? And the deception, again, and a lot of this is gonna go down to the way the law is written, but deception I think has to do with, partially with intent and partially with, did Elon Musk actually consider taking Tesla private? Or was he lying? And the second question was, is was funding secured or at least was Elon Musk convinced that funding was secured? Now, this is a case that's already been decided by the SEC in a sense. The SEC decided that this was, this was an inappropriate communication by the CEO. It decided that this hurt investors, that this was a violation of Elon Musk's fiduciary responsibility to Tesla shareholders. And they have found, they have massively fine Tesla for this and they find Elon Musk. So all of that is already done. And, you know, there, I think you would know my position. My position is, SEC shouldn't exist. This is not the purview of the SEC. The SEC should be looking for fraud. There's no reason to believe this is fraud. The SEC should be budding out of this. On the other hand, this lawsuit is completely appropriate. The lawsuit actually makes sense.  This is the forum in which these kind of issues should be discussed. Now, let me just say that if any CEO out there had said this about his company and it turned out not to be true, they would have been fined by the SEC. Indeed, my guess is that Elon Musk, because of the high profile that he has, probably got off easy from the SEC. I think another CEO would have been, you know, would have just been destroyed by something like this by the SEC. All right, so, but remember this is not, okay, put that aside. Okay, so this is, so this is Tesla 2018, I think this tweet was put out in 2018. So the real issue here is a legal issue. Did Elon Musk know what did he have reasonable reason to think when he said funding secured, did he have reason to think so? Now, Musk is saying, look, I actually did intend to take Tesla private or I was considering it. He doesn't say here is a done deal. And I actually thought the funding was secured.  I had talked to another people who said they would probably back the deal. I mean, my guess here is that funding secured is inaccurate and wrong and he shouldn't have said it because the funding wasn't secured. My guess is that legally funding secured means something. You have a contract, you have a real commitment. It's clear that he didn't. I think this is why one shouldn't communicate by tweet, important issues because tweets tend to be loose. I mean, but that's what he's testifying. He testified yesterday. He actually thought he was doing the right thing. He said that he made this announcement in order to let all investors know because the next day there was gonna be a story in the Financial Times that suggested this is a possibility. By the way, if he just let the Financial Times, article come out the next day, he would have spared himself all this legal trouble, all these fines, anybody with a little sensibility with regard to the SEC, anybody with a little sensibility with regard to shareholders and what, shareholder lawsuits, you don't make these kind of public statements. You just don't. So this is a little bit of Elon Musk being impulsive. This is a little bit of Elon Musk, not talking to lawyers before making an announcement, which any other CEO would have done. Maybe this is inevitable. If you get Elon Musk as a CEO, he's gonna do things like that. He has testified in the court case that he believed he absolutely had the funding secured. And he also said that he was definitely considering taking Tesla private, but was not committing to doing it. My guess is that he is gonna be exonerated here, but it really is hard to tell.  Elon Musk is lying, and then he gets found guilty. So this is gonna rely on, this is not some, I mean, this is not a crazy case. This is not some witch hunt. Although again, I reject the idea that the SEC should be doing this, but this is in the court, this makes complete sense. If you're gonna be a CEO in a modern corporation and you don't wanna destroy your company because it's in a heavily regulated business, if you wanna accept government money and by implication of accepted the SEC's role in regulating you and everything else and the framework of corporate law that exists today, you better have lawyers, you better have lawyers. And if you don't, then don't be surprised by what happens. So exactly what happens, we will see. I think Elon is presenting the defense basically, I thought it was a done deal and I had every positive intention and I did say consider, I think the burden of proof here is fairly high that he didn't. I think that you're gonna have to get somebody saying, no, we never promised anything. I don't know if the Saudis are gonna be testifying, but it will be interesting if they do and if they do what they say. But this is one of the usually class action lawsuits like this are completely nuts and completely devout of any merit. Here there's at least some merit. You can understand why people who may be bought on that assumption or sold in that assumption if they were holding options are pissed off and feel like they were manipulated. All right, that is in the news. We will see what happens to Elon Musk. I'll fill you in once there's a verdict and when there's a decision actually made. All right, that is it. This went way too long. Again, we're about, we need about a couple of bucks again from everybody who's listening live to make our numbers. But let's thank you, Vladimir, thank you, Scott. Thank you, Paul, thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Bonnie. All right, let's take some questions. Jeff, he says we need to talk about the end of this season of Fowder. I haven't seen the end, so don't say anything. I'll see it tonight. I didn't think this season was heading in a good direction. It's got all the positive elements. It's a suspense, intensity. It's got big plot holes, but it really keeps you on the edge of your seat.  So we'll see what the final is and how it all plays out. I'm sure I'll comment on it after I watch it. Michael says, thanks for being the only teacher I ever had who made sense of the world to me. Oh, I appreciate that, Michael. That's a huge compliment. Thank you. All right, last question from Michael. So time is running out. If you want to support the runbook show, Morning Shows, Michael says, do you think if they cat NASA, we will see a lot more innovation in private space travel? If SpaceX gets the first man to Mars, will there change your view of Elon Musk? No, I mean, I don't think if they cat NASA, we'll see a lot more innovation in private space travel. It's not clear that NASA's holding back or prompting space travel. NASA is providing a lot of money to SpaceX. It's not clear that SpaceX is viable without NASA or any of the other, Blue Origins or the others. So it's quite reasonable to think that NASA will be one of the reasons and one of the inspirations to pushing man to Mars. The question is, what is the value of getting man to Mars? And if you cannot do it without government support, is it worth doing? And is it worth doing now versus in 2030, 40, 50 years? I mean, I find the idea of going to Mars inspirational. I find it amazing, good for Elon Musk. I'm a fan of the idea of going to Mars. But don't be out of the illusion that without the government support, this would happen. It's not clear that it would. But that also should tell you that it's not clear how much of a real value it constitutes. So without NASA, would we have gone to the moon? Probably not where we went. Maybe at some point, but not where we went. And not without some real changes. Not without some real changes to the structure of all, to the incentive structures around going to space. For example, the United States is signing on to a treaty that basically says there's no private property in space. Well, that is not gonna encourage people to go to space. You'd have to get out of that treaty and you'd have to change the entire incentive structure around it. You have to make private property the means that the engine to drive going to space. All right, ooh, we got a bunch of super chats made our goal. Thank you guys. Ashton is here. Can you be an historian and be an objectivist as well? What is the purpose the historian has to impact on society? Yes, absolutely. You've got a number of objectivists, the starians, and there's no reason you can't. You can be an objectivist and pretty much be any, participate in any field.  History is the laboratory from which we learn about what works and what doesn't, what is possible and what is not.  We know by knowing history and inducing from our knowledge of history. It's only through the knowledge of history do we know, not just in theory, but in practice, that capitalism works. We know that, you know, the history of capitalism. We know the consequence of war because we study history. We know the consequence of being weak because we study history. We know what socialism does, not just in theory, but even theory wouldn't make any sense without, you can't have a theory without empirical evidence. So it provides the empirical evidence for human action, provides the empirical evidence for human understanding. History is one of the most important fields there is and it's one of the things that is most important to teach children because it's how they know about the world. But the only way you can test hypothesis about human behavior is by evaluating it historically. So you're studying human action, human action through our time. And then of course, how do we know, which is the objective theory of history? Objectivism actually has a theory of history. That ideas shape history. Well, you can trace ideas and events and you can see the relationship between ideas and events, but you couldn't do that unless you had a deep understanding of the events throughout history. So the relationship between ideas and events is crucial. So absolutely, you know, we've had, John David Lewis was an objectivist historian and unfortunately, he passed away a few years ago, a great loss, Steve Jolivet is an objectivist historian. They have been others in the past and they will be more in the future. So absolutely, not only can you be, but we need objectivist historians. We need to understand history in order to understand the present and in order to be able to make any kind of sense to be able to predict the future. Thank you, Ashton. $100, really, really appreciate the support. Thanks for being here. Richard says, will you be in Austin in the second half of April? If so, any public appearances? No, I do not expect to be in Austin, second half of April. I'm gonna be in Austin tomorrow for a few days, but not then. John, thank you for the support, really appreciate it. Michael, do you foresee social security being partially privatized in the next few decades or will they just increase the age of 75? I think it's much, much more likely that they increase the age first to 70 and then 70 too and then ultimately 75, then that it'd be privatized. I think privatizing social security or dramatic reforming social security is way in our future. It's, you know, you would have to have a real fundamental shift in the culture for that to happen and probably have most of the baby boomers dead by then. Karen asks, what is your view on the doomsday clock that was adjusted today? I think it's just a scam mongering technique. It's just a way to, again, another millennial cult about the end of the world.  So for example, climate change causes the doomsday clock to increase. Risk of nuclear war causes it to increase. But if the fact that we can survive climate change because of human ingenuity and changing technology, would that make any difference? So no, this doomsday clock is a clock that tells us how close we are to the end of human race. I think it's completely bogus. I don't trust the people who do it. I don't trust the analysis that they have. None of it. All right, thank you guys. Really appreciate it. Really appreciate us getting to our goal a second time this week. And let's see, tomorrow there'll be no shows but tonight there will be a show, 7 p.m. East Coast time. I'll post the topic later on. And then I will try to do some shows from Austin. Morning show is probably, so we'll see it'll be earlier than these shows typically are. There'll probably be 8 a.m. or 8.30 a.m. Austin time because I have a seminar I'm attending starting at 10 a.m. So I will try to get those done in the morning early. So that's probably good for those of you in Europe and those of you in the East Coast, not so good for those of you in the West Coast. All right, everybody, Capitalism 101, Rob says, not tonight, but I will return to Capitalism 101, don't worry. And tonight might be on the media, on mainstream media and media in general. And there's a number of good articles about the media, interesting articles about the media that have come out recently that I think are worth discussing. All right, thanks everybody. I will see you all hopefully tonight. If not...


Festive loud this is era coming away from Vancouver, Washington, and she was saying that as she came here She'd been having problems some thyroid and some neck pain something like was choking her and during prayers prayer was offered She started like coughing up things and things started coming out and now she feels like everything's light Like nothing is choking me Sickness flee the sickness ran You got it you got delivered that's what happened you got delivered Yeah, I did and praise all Jesus. I actually was expecting but I sometimes I have more faith on other people's feeling but I Was waiting and then God came through amen. Come on. Thank you. Jesus. God bless you This is Mac right over here. He's from Salem, Oregon and he had some problems with his intestines and his back It was all out of alignment and he couldn't move He had a hard time breathing and now it's all gone after prayer. Wow It's just been this thing where I can't really I haven't been able to list up without a lot of pain in my back Just after it got all pushed out because my intestines got inflamed The doctors didn't know was up I didn't really think anything would happen, but so you have to pray today you feel that everything's gone First prayer it is gone. Come on. Thank you. Jesus. Are you all the way from Florida? Salem of Salem, Oregon. Okay, so you're town. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you Praise be to God this Jason and he came here having the knee pain some it happened few years back And then today two years back and then today after prayer. He feels no pain at all. He's healed. Come on Jason. How do you feel? I feel good. I had Irreversible for two years two years. Yeah, so sometimes when I walk, I like come on. Thank you Jason for serving God bless you So this is Betty for about six months She says she pulled like a muscle in her arm and she had some pain in her hip and she testified that all the pain left Wow, what are you coming from? How long did you have that problem for? Six months with the shoulder Yeah, it's like I pulled something and it's like something Kind of broke or something. So sometimes at night I can lie on that side Pain a lot when I touch it. How do you feel right now? Nothing is there even when I talk Thank you Jesus This is your first time Come on Thank you Jesus. Thank you so much. God bless you. Thank you This is Elizabeth from super can she came here said lower back problems and after prayer all the back problem is gone And now she feels great. Wow. How do you feel pretty good? How long did you have the problem for? Come on. We thank God for your life. Thank you Jesus. Amen. Amen. Come on church So this is neither she struggles with struggled with severe migrant headaches So she came here with the migrant headache and even throw up on a way to church. So she could not even bear Loud sound or even look up to the bright lights and she wouldn't be able to work She said when she has those migrant headaches and during the first prayer She felt like the Lord healed her and she was looking up to the light and there was no more headaches whatsoever What do you what are you coming from so can you're coming from Spokane and you feel that Jesus touched you You feel that Jesus touched you. Oh, yes Especially with these lights and the sound here. Well, actually when we were coming here I told the girls that I'm staying in the hotel was like maybe I should like I thought maybe I should just not go Because that worship gonna be loud It's gonna be lots of lights like that what I could never be able to do that and so I Just sat there and I during you know your sermon I just had to lay my head down because I could not even sit upright and then I came out here and to Really nice girls that were just standing next to me I don't know who they are prayed for me and from the first prayer I looked up straight into the light stream and I feel totally fine. That's so incredible Thank you so much. God bless you. God bless you. Thank you Jesus This is Erica from Yakema She said she came here this morning with a very large pain in her hands in her arm And then as you started praying from she started feeling heat going through her arm And after that some other girls came up to continue to pray for her and all the pain is gone. Come on praise God praise God Thank you. Erica. Thank you. God bless you. Thank you Pastor Vlad, this is Olga and she came with neuralgia, which is a pain in her neck That causes migraines and pounding in the headache. She added all the yesterday came here with it today And when you said to put your hand on the part of the body that's hurting She put her hand on the back she felt heat and now she feels the headache is gone. She feels healed She was straight. Wow. What are you coming from Olga? You're from Vancouver, Washington. Is this your first time at the conference? Yes Wow, and you felt Jesus touch you and you don't have that pain no more When I was praying I started seeing tons and that doesn't happen very often I know Holy Spirit feel me and I know heal me. Wow. Wow praise God. Thank you Thank you Olga. Thank you for your testimony This is dawn. He drove all the way from Idaho He's saying that for 40 years he had chronic back pain for 40 years And after the second prayer completely left You don't have that back pain no more. Hey man, it's gone And he did a spiritual work in me too And I think a lot of a lot of things was hindering my healing and I got freed by just shaking that stuff off That the devil's been trying to put on me and I believe he's calling me to preach his word and even to the nation So his plans bigger than mine. Amen. We thank you. Thank you for your life. God bless you Keep your healing in Jesus name. Amen Hey pastor, this is love from tri cities here two weeks ago She fell down and she sprained her ankle really bad She went to the hospital and they told her that she shouldn't walk at all for six weeks in order to recover fully She came here with faith today believing that Jesus Christ would touch her and already during the first prayer She felt the anointing stream through her body and the pain immediately went completely away from her ankle. How do you feel? I feel very good. I feel so good right now. That is so good. That's so awesome. And also my stomach I had a lot of pain for about a week and it's gone. Wow It's just gone. That is so incredible. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your testimony.  That's right. This is Casey and god did another miracle for her today. Amen She wasn't able uh since may wasn't able to eat like losing the hunger for it She's just having some stomach stomach problems and and today as we prayed for her now. She just says she's hungry It's awesome I haven't been able to keep food down since the end of may and I've been in and out of the hospital about five times Because of that because of it like fluids because I can't keep fluid It's kind of normal to come to hunger generation and to be hungry So, well, good bless you. We thank we thank god for your life.  Jesus. Thank you. Amen That's holy spirit, how do you feel? I believe it. Thank you It's the first time that happened to you something like that Praise god. Praise god. God bless you. Thank you for coming. Thank you for sharing. Amen This is timothy from california two weeks ago He torn his ACL and he couldn't bend it He said he said he felt something he go through his legs And right now he can bend it. He can put pressure on it and all the pain. He says it's gone Come on, how do you feel? I thank god because he took away the pain. You were a lot of pain I couldn't really walk on it without this. Wow. And right now I can like bend my knee like this That is so incredible. Praise be to god Thank you. Thank you. Praise god. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Thank you Pastor, this is one of our staff here. Omar and he's been Serving without ever telling anyone that he's been having a knee pain and he has never Complained to god. He's been believing the god of might was going to hit him and today was his day after the prayer When people prayed for him immediately the pain in his knees completely went away and this is an injury they have had for years Wow. Wow Omar is the man that helped me not to quit fasting during that week Thank you. Omar. How do you feel? Bend it So awesome. So awesome. Praise be to god. Amen. Amen. This is this is elva. She came here today She's had a lot of uh knee pain Even caused her to quit her job because there's a lot of tightness and a lot of pain But today she said after the prayer all the pain is gone. She's planning going back to work. Amen. Come on How do you feel elva? Yeah, I feel better because sometimes I can't walk My knee was so tight in my job because it was so much too much pain. So now I feel better God bless you. Go back to work and make good living in jesus name. Amen. Just a few more testimonies and we're gonna wrap it up This is svet And he was saying that he felt nauseous And during the prayer of deliverance, he felt a fire within and he started coughing And it just left Well, how do you feel right now? I feel great. I feel lazy. I feel like god delivered you today What was that? I feel like god delivered you today. Yeah, I knew right away Before I came here. I've had a sense that today he told me today is my freedom I don't know what and my wife was praying for me to pray for healing for my sickness Like I don't I feel like I should be praying for this like come to the front Like okay, I'll go and then I start praying and I started coughing I felt the The heat and the fire and then right away just went away. So it's good to receive that and jesus by today God bless you. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you one more and we're gonna be done She's uh came here today and she suffered so much abuse heartbreak Physical emotionally in her heart and today as you were offering prayer She felt like that like there's fire happening in her heart and all the things that people have done to her in the past Abused the rape and all that stuff today.  San Antonio, texas. San Antonio. San Antonio, texas. Yes, you fly all the way from san Antonio, texas. Yes wow You feel that jesus touched you today. He did it. I felt fire in my chest I don't know who that man is but he knew everything that had ever happened to me And my jesus healed my heart right now. I feel whole Praise god. Praise god. God bless you. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching this content I hope this was a blessing to you if you're like me and you like to click on things Click on this subscribe to our channel and the content will come to you every time we post it and remember The best is yet to come


Three phase three clinical trials were conducted to assess the safety, reactogenicity, immunogenicity, and persistence of immune responses to the combined dipheria, tetanus, pertussis, poliomyelitis, and hemophilus influenza type B vaccine, DT-PAIPV, HIV, in Chinese infants and toddlers. The pilot study demonstrated non-inferiority of three-dose primary vaccination with DT-PAIPV, HIV over separately administered DT-PA, HIV and IPV, while the booster study showed similar antibody concentrations in all groups except for antipolyribosylribotor phosphate and antipolyovirus types 1-3. The three-dose vaccination with DT-PAIPV, HIV had a clinically acceptable safety profile. This article was authored by Yang Ping Li, Rong Cheng Li, Zhong Yi, and others.


Welcome to the back story. In this case, the back story on a major addition to long months economic environment and economic base retail environment and economic base. This is your opportunity long monitors to learn the back story, the story behind the story on a decision of a major significant US corporation to expand the long month. This is this is going to show up on a city council agenda on Tuesday, November 17, we're recording this in advance of that and we'll get into the reasons why in just a few minutes. But this is a big story and one that we want to make certain that all long monitors have a chance to come along and learn all you need to learn about what's going to be before the city council. My name is Tim Waters. And while I do where city council at in this setting I'm a volunteer for long month public media. And as the moderator of the back story, I have the good fortune of interviewing experts, elected officials, city officials, economic development experts policymakers from time to time on topics of interest and relevance to long months. This is a big topic of interest and relevance to long matters and I've got a great panel for this interview. Harold Dominguez city manager and has been city manager since Harold 2012. This is Jim Bagley. In his second term, Jessica Erickson who is the president and CEO of the Longmont Economic Development Partnership. The Arata maker who is the deputy city manager, and Jim Golden who everyone knows as long months long serving chief financial officer. So thanks to the five of you for for clearing your schedules to be part of this conversation. Just by clarifying that we're recording priority counseling, which is unusual, but we want to make certain that this story is available to the public. At the same time, Council materials are available so there's some risk of doing that, because it's something Council could decide to do something different than what we're reporting here today. But I'd like Mayor Bagley for you to start with, why is it we would be confident enough in in what's going to be in front of the Council to start telling the story in the days prior to the Council. Well, first of all, because even though we haven't made a public decision, there have been private discussions among Council about this economic development opportunity. It started well over a year ago when, and I know we talked a little bit about about whether or not we should, we should share this but it started over a year ago when there was a there was an original location in Longmont, where the developers mistakenly thought that that was the only location that was available for Costco. And so, knowing the importance of this specific retail location, or that this this specific retailer they approached the city city staff and city Council, and basically we're saying, we want economic incentives. I think the cost was immense. It was close to it did somewhere between 18 and 20 million. And at that time, we were concerned, because a it seemed like a lot of money, but the strategic significance of Costco coming to Longmont cannot be overstated. Because the other location they were looking at was Frederick off I 25. And if they were to have built Costco out there in Frederick, what that meant was our retail corridor, rather than becoming an epicenter, which it would become with Costco, it now would be cut off, had it been located in Firestone or Sam's Club would have been hurt, our retail stores would have been hurt or downtown would have been hurt. So it's not about whether or not we allow Costco to come or not, it was coming. The question, the question is, what is Longmont, or was Longmont going to be able to participate in the tax revenue. And so, at that time, we tried to negotiate with those particular group of developers. And when it became apparent that we a needed to have Costco in order to survive at work and be it became apparent that this location was not going to work. We then set our sights to finding a second location, which at the time, many thought were impossible, but thanks to the hard work of people like Jessica Erickson and Jim Golden and Dale Rademaker and Harold Dominguez the people you see on this, this back story. We were able to speak to the Goldman family, and they were able to find a location over there on 119, just in the eastern portion of Longmont. And we were able to come to terms that allowed us to come to an agreement with Costco that was vastly cheaper for the city, had far less risk, and allowed us to solidify the agreement with Costco the corporation that led to hopefully what will be the city council and the partnership. And again, we've had executive sessions, we didn't vote, but we certainly were able to speak our minds. And I have not seen a vote, but I have not heard any, any council member voice any opposition to this. So, just to just to drill down on one aspect of what you just said, yeah, over the arc of time as this opportunity has been under consideration. The city council and it really brought to the council by the staff has entertained proposals with various costs associated with them as incentives to put together a deal with Costco. Right. And the, the, the ultimate, and we'll get to what the ultimate package looks like just a minute. What I hear what I what I know is going to be those conversations, but whatever you say is the ultimate cost that cities investment here is substantially less at the end of a year of negotiations, and it might have been had this been a deal closed quickly a year ago. Absolutely. It's immensely cheaper. And there's clawbacks in it, which I'm sure that our city staff can mention.  Yeah, and we'll get to all those details here as we go through this conversation. Thanks for getting this started. Jessica, you have been, you're the pro here in terms of economic development. You've been in these conversations repeatedly over in not just in this community and multiple communities. So, from your perspective, that have an economic development expert. Why should long month as a city and long month residents care about Costco's decision to come to an invest in one month. Yeah, happy to answer that question but if I may respectfully clarify something that Mayor Bagley alluded to which was the initial kind of incentive package that was being looked at at the original site, because I think it's a distinction that will be given to long month residents that it was not Costco seeking 18 to $20 million in order for them to come here. They had, and they have an amount in mind that works with them to pencil a project in any community. So, I would like to look to the community to basically come to the table to help them get to that from a land price and cost of building the project in that community perspective so it wasn't Costco trying to get 18 to $20 million out of the city they were just trying to pencil their project to meet their needs to perform us. So, those costs had more to do with the property owners and the deal they needed infrastructure costs and all that was related to this Costco's been pretty consistent. Yep, they yeah they've been consistent from this is where we need to be, whatever it takes to get there and so I think where we ended up as has also been suggested is a much better deal for the city as well. But to answer your question about the importance of Costco as an economic development project for the city. This is a bit unique in terms of and the mayor spoke to this a little bit in terms of not only looking at from, are we going to incentivize this project based on what we gain as a community, but also based on what we have the potential to lose as a community, because they were going to go somewhere that either in Longmont or just outside of Longmont that would have had the same impacts on traffic and some of the other things that might be seen as negatives about the project without the benefit of the significant fiscal and economic impacts that a project, a Costco project bring to a community. It wouldn't be unusual is it is this fair to say that a corporation like Costco large retailer any large retailer deciding that there's a region, a general area in which they want to locate would consider multiple options. I might have options a through BCD. And, and would not resolve or decide finally on one of those without considering considering all the possible. So, so if those positions or locations BCD or outside of Longmont, we are then competing with other communities. If indeed we want this asset in our community. Absolutely. And in this case, like I said both competing for that what we had the potential to gain and competing to not lose what we would have the potential to lose. Yes, any project of this size and scope is going to have multiple options available to it and go a certain distance with every single one of those options. Kind of deselecting some of those as they go along as others rise to the top. I don't speak for Costco but in my experience and I've been doing this for quite a long time. They likely still have a plan B on on the table so until, yeah until the things are signed and there's a shovel in the ground, and they will likely still have an alternative plan B. So they're, they're, they're in our some risks which we're going to come to in just a minute and I'm going to be able to talk about those. But before I do that I'm going to turn to Harold. Harold a city manager. You've been in these conversations over a period of years, opportunities that rise and fall, big and small. And there's always a commentary right. And then, or not, or how big a win was it for the community. From your perspective as city manager. Why should long monitors care about this what's the, what's the significance, both in terms of the economics, but the timing of this decision, and what it means to go short term along. So a couple of things I think one, when you start evaluating the fact that they were looking in this general area. I think that a says a lot about Longmont where we stand in the broader world of economic development and how people are looking at our community so this. There's a lot of conversations with them about this this ties to other decisions that council have has made on the economic development front, whether it's smuckers or whether it's a vexus but then also some of the other businesses that we've worked with in our community so they're in tune to that they're in tune to rooftops they're in tune to our sales tax performance. So that's what we do. And to Jessica's point, I think. So they were looking at this broader geographic area to say, we're interested in this, but they weren't beholden to Longmont within our city limits and to be frank you see us all touching on this. They very well could have just located just outside of Longmont city limits and we've heard different things through different pieces of Intel. So it should have been an option up to the intersection of the interstate and in 119 where you see American furniture and some of those other locations because if you really look at where they typically go. They're typically on interstates us 36 major highways and so that was something that we had to take into account so the fact that they were interested says a lot about where we are as a community. Another thing that's really important about this is that it also really helps redefine our retail trade area. There's not a lot of businesses today that you would really go we need to go after this, especially in the retail world. Because we all know how it's operating but when you look at redefining a retail trade area that's what Costco does. They are a destination retailer.  And it brings people in. And so that then starts helping the other businesses that were then are within Longmont as well.  Obviously Jim will talk about the economics on this and but I can't understate it enough.  And if you win you get this. There was another component into this conversation, and you've heard us all touch on this. If it doesn't go to Longmont and it goes just east of us. We actually stand to lose a lot in this conversation and that's really for me. One of the first times in my career where it's not just what you can gain it's really evaluating what you can potentially lose it if you don't get them to locate in our community. So those that's a big piece and then generally what I will say is I think it does say a lot about Longmont where we are today and the confidence that Costco which is one of the best performing retailers in the world and how they feel about Longmont. So I think that says a lot about our community. And I think it really positions us for other retail opportunities in the future, even in a world that's somewhat chaotic.   And if I can add to that I think it's really important so you know we're in a time right now and in this coven 19 world, where we've done. You know, as we if we look at how we're performing versus other communities. You know, we've done better than we've projected. But it's related to businesses like Costco and so if you didn't have that and you have people traveling to those locations. Then it just starts exacerbating, you know the different issues you have to deal with and. And so that's for us why it's important we know people travel to Costco and you'll hear Jim talk about leakage. I know that's part of our conversation. Yeah, it is a destination for Tim and Jane waters. Harold, can you talk about the location where in Longmont we're going to see this. And I know there's, there's more involved in land acquisition. Just the site for Costco can you talk about that. Yeah, I can and and I will point out that so I started on the front end of this conversation with Jessica. And then as our world changed Jim Dale, Dale's really Jim and Dale have assumed the bulk of this with Eugene. So they can jump in on this but may our city attorney Eugene mayor city attorney but I want to kind of go back a little bit so we all know about this other location. And I think this point. We really have to emphasize it as well. We were really in some ways, trying to identify any possible location we could just to keep Costco and Longmont and it was, and I've got to thank Reggie golden because a he took a call from me. And at the end of the day, when we were, we showed him multiple locations. And at the end of the day they go this is the one we like. And so we had Reggie to jump in when he did and move as fast as he did in partnership on this, without that community connection. And, you know, they're there long term community connection I don't know for having this conversation. So I've really got to reinforce that piece so it is just east of harvest junction but what was also good about the conversation is we were trying to really work the broader financial package. He was talking to me about his interest in providing affordable housing opportunities in Longmont and something that he was interested in. And that actually led to us also purchasing nine acres of property with our affordable housing fund for affordable housing in our community. And, and that was in terms of the price for land that was actually a really good price for affordable housing. I'm excited about that. Obviously it was part of making the whole deal work. But the fact that you can do something like this and bring a Costco and and get nine acres of affordable housing is a pretty big deal for our community. The other thing that's really important is we know that there was a lot of consternation about the mining occurring immediately adjacent to some neighborhoods. That actually also pushes that mining further east and we have a buffer between what we have more of a land buffer between where the mining will occur in those neighborhoods. It isn't because I've been in this conversation with you I know the answer to the question, but I'm going to ask it that nine acres, which would be south of the Costco site. It's potentially a site that the city could sell for multiples of what it paid and use whatever those proceeds are to build or invest in affordable housing elsewhere in the city. We will have both of those options right. Yeah, we have a number of options on the affordable housing front I'll let Dale kind of jump in on this one because he's been more active in that conversation over the last few months. Let's then let's invite Dale into this conversation Dale. You've been in the middle you and Jim really been in the middle of negotiations for almost a year. And, and as you go through these, there are agreements that get made their concessions that made the corporations going to do what it needs you to protect its interest. Your task is to protect the city's interest and keep the deal moving forward. So, what can you share about kind of the background information on those negotiations over the last year. And, and what risks might the city be subjected to and, and how do you mitigate those risks how will you mitigate those risks in the contract that the council is going to have a chance to consider. I'll start with just the, the initial premise of bringing the parties together so between the landowner, the golden family, Costco as the company and the city as the partner this has really been sort of a three way negotiation. The good thing about that is each of those parties can see a, a reason to be part of this and a benefit that's involved. And I think the, the other thing I would say is that in working both both with the property owner as well as with Costco. There have been few with any surprises along the way. In other words, we had initial discussions, we set the initial framework of what each party was sort of willing to bring to the table, and people have held with that. There's obviously nuances and things that we've had to negotiate through, but at the end of the day. And my impression is that we've been working with people with really good integrity, and, and, and people whose whose word in these days still mean something. And the attorneys all got involved. So, I find that refreshing just to be able to have, have a relationship whereby, if you give your word in a discussion, you can know that they're not going to turn on you. You know when when something gets a little tight or something so I'll start out with that. What I would say is that the, as Harold was mentioning the city had multiple objectives that we were wanting to accomplish in this, in this arrangement. First and foremost, of course, getting Costco to Longmont, and frankly getting them to open here in Longmont as soon as we can. That's our first and foremost issue. You know, right behind that was certainly a desire of the community to try to also advance our affordable housing opportunities and needs and as you appropriately noted, the city has, you know, the full ability to do with those nine acres as they believe to be most useful in their pursuit of affordable housing in the community. Harold also mentioned the, the shifting of the impact of some of the mining. You know we were, we were certainly hearing that from some of the residential neighborhoods close in of concern about mining and that's a very reasonable thing. When you, when you move to your new house, you're not really anticipating a gravel mine on the other side of your fence. And so also being able to shift that over has been helpful so no aggregate industries as a, another party to the overall arrangement that we're working to resolve in that they hold the gravel lease on the property. And as part of this overall process, we needed to also keep aggregate industries whole, because what was essentially happening with development of the properties you're removing it from gravel mining. And that's a loss of resource for for aggregate. So, again, that was part of the negotiation. You know, whenever we come to the tables of city with public dollars we have to be very cautious, very conservative. And I rely on, you know, Jim is great at making sure we're, we're being very cautious with expenditures of city dollars. In this case the city's probably largest expenditures are the some of the costs to provide the land, both for Costco as well as for the affordable housing so those 26 acres of ground. The city, by, by coming to sort of being in control of those 26 acres, we then are also now sharing in the prorata costs of the, of the public improvements that are going to be necessary. In order for this, it's currently in alfalfa field. And for that alfalfa field to go from its current condition to one that is ready to be developed. And so that's the, the design and construction of all the rows and utilities, traffic lights and so forth. So that has been an integral part of the negotiation as well that the city is a partner by virtue of our percentage ownership of the overall. It's about 48.66 acres. So, we are very closely looking at and running our own estimates on the costs of those public improvements and offsetting those with some of the costs of the land that we're also bringing into the picture. So, you know, the city's financial investment is is is significant, but it also is one that is predominantly going into the prorata share of those public improvements, as well as the property that's involved. And in doing that, we had to also sort of backstop the city's risk. In other words, everybody hopes these projects go goes go smoothly right. They start they get built. They have the ribbon cutting yay, it's all a good day. We spent a lot of time focusing on, well what happens if it doesn't go so good, right. And so there are there are about four different clawback scenarios embedded in the agreement. We try to the level of infrastructure, for instance, that has been installed when things go south. And so, at the end of the day. And in each of those scenarios, by the way, the city is explicitly made whole in the event that the Costco store does not open. As far as if you open your doors, but you don't stay open long enough for us to recoup to fully recoup through sales tax, our investment that you will pay us back that difference as well. And so we try to be very thoughtful, as we were doing this negotiation and working through any number of different scenarios that can come up. And again, from the city's perspective, looking to protect our investment, obviously to the best that we can. You know, I think at the end of the day. This, this has the potential to really be a showcase development for the city on our entrance coming in from the east. And I think it's going to be impressive. I think the community is going to look at that and be very proud of it. And at the end of the day, I'm looking forward to this the integration of this new development within the larger harvest junction retail, as well as the residential development to the south. I don't remember all the details on the clawbacks, but that was the, that was the premise that was the goal was, if things go south. Now what happens, how, how can we best secure the city's investment so as to protect those public dollars. So, at the end of the day, there's an investment on which we hope to get a return I'm going to turn to Jim in just a second. But, but we've negotiated to the contract protections for the city. Yes, so that while we it's going to take time to earn the return. We're not, we're really not exposed for the cost to the city for infrastructure and in the preparation of that site. That's, I would say that's a fair statement and in addition to the clawbacks that we have in in the in the P3 agreement. When we get to the stage of issuing the public improvement agreements. We're also going to have additional securities that will be issued once again as an additional backup to the city so that this is one that we probably have as much protection on this project as we as we likely do any capital project that the city goes out and to build. And we you made reference to 48 plus acres, and you made reference to harvest junction but we haven't been explicit about where this will, or this development will occur south of 119. East of housing development on the east side of harvest junction south of 119. Yeah, the 48 acres, it butts up against Kim Pratt Boulevard State Highway 119 on the north. And it butts up on the west to both the harvest junction retail as well as the harvest junction residential areas and extends to the to the to the east. I don't know the exact distance but it's to an area that is a natural location for the stoplight to be installed on Ken Pratt Boulevard which is also a constraint that we're working around because there is an access control plan on that highway. There are only certain points where we are allowed to get access to the highway. And so that defined at some level, the eastern edge of the project and the main access road into the development off of the highway. Very good. Jim, we made reference to investments and, you know, kind of broad statements about about costs and in returns on investment. Let's drill down on some of the numbers. People will be curious how big the investment we heard numbers earlier from from the mayor and from Jessica. What kind of investment is the city making. What have you forecasted in terms of in terms of sales tax receipts. What's the over the arc of time what does it look like in terms of returns on that investment and what does it mean the city long. First, let me clarify a couple of things first that first of all, no relation to the owners. I should say. Second thing, and I'm really not been involved in negotiations like Dale and Eugene have a really deserve all the credit they sure put in a lot of time over the last forever it seems like. For the numbers so the investment in the project for the total project that we've we've referred to here, including the affordable housing is 12 and a half million dollars. That's the investment for the city of that amount though 2.9 million dollars is for the affordable housing portion of it. And 6 million dollars is for the Costco project and what's related to to having that be accomplished. We've made estimates of the amount of revenue that can be generated by this development Costco has provided us with their estimate of the first year facilities sales tax per square footage. Based on that we are projecting that the facility would generate 4.06 million dollars in the first full year of operations. Now Costco, they use for some pretty aggressive growth projections after year one and as if you know me I don't like to get to optimistic with that and so I'm a little bit more conservative so we we've used 2% growth projections after the first year and I will tell you that the Costco is is is telling us it could be as high as 10% in the second year and for the first few years afterwards. But all of our projection we're using is based on a 2% growth over 20 years that would generate 98.6 million dollars of sales tax revenue to the city at its current rate of 3.5 8% So property tax on this is also going to be generated it's not certainly nowhere in the neighborhood of what we're talking about in sales tax but the city would probably get my estimate is around $60,000 per year should also point out though as well that that it'll generate about a quarter million dollars for the school district and $100,000 or so for for Boulder County. So at the rate that that we're projecting at the $4.06 million per year 2% growth, we would recover that 9.5 or $6 million in less than two and a third years, and that's just the gross revenue sales tax revenue that would be generated. Now we do realize that not all the sales tax that's going to be generated by the Costco will be new to the city. We do project that they'll be cannibalization which would be the loss of existing sales in existing groceries or discount stores that already exist in the city. We're projecting that to be about 26% of the sales tax generated by the Costco. So we are really looking at a net sales tax. And when we're trying to identify the benefit to the city. And that's still that net sales tax projects to a total net sales tax revenue of at least $73 million over 20 years. That's your conservative estimate. That's at my 2% growth. That's correct. And I won't even ask you to comment on the, the projection, the projections or forecast the Costco does, because it's way north of that $73 million I know. But I would point out, I would point out though that that even though that that would also probably increase my cannibalization estimate as well so I think that these are still realistic estimates. And the, and I want to reiterate the return on investment. We even we recovered that 9.6 million did you say in less than three years. Yeah, two and a third years we would get at least that much sales tax revenue within that period of time and at their projections, probably less than two years. So, I'm going to come back to Jessica. There will be residents when they read about this in the newspaper and in which they'll be able to do soon. And they'll listen to this presentation or listen to the council meeting. There'll be plenty of folks will be critical of the city of Longmont once again, providing some kind of financial incentive to a major US corporation to expand to Longmont. Municipalities. Why, why is it this municipality would participate in that whole process scenario of making incentives available. Why, why do we do it. What are the implications if we don't. Yeah. So, thank you for that question. And I think it would probably come as a surprise to many that people in my position and most economic development professionals are not huge fans of incentives ourselves. We prefer the idea of as any for projects and economic development investment to be able to compete on the merits of our community because we have the right infrastructure the right talent the right culture and quality of life for a company to make that kind of impact in our community. But there are times that an investment and I'm glad we've been referring to it as an investment and investment in a project on behalf of the municipality just makes sense because of the potential for return and the potential to mitigate in this to the community. And we look at it from the perspective of not just those direct fiscal impacts that Jim has talked about which hopefully people understand how impactful that will be to to the fiscal health of our community, but we also look at the economic impacts, but economic impacts are job creation and wages and then the induced induced and indirect benefits of that that job creation and wages. And so we look at a company like Costco and the types of jobs that they're creating the wages that they're paying the benefits that they're providing and how how those spread throughout the community into places like our downtown into places like our other retail and and service areas in the community and and the return on this investment is undeniable, and both from a fiscal and economic perspective Costco pays well above average wages for the types of jobs that they hire. They're actually in the neighborhood of average annual citywide average annual wages when you get into employees that they've had for a number of years on their payroll. There are company that promotes from within and is very focused on creating opportunities for all of its employees within its organization, not just in the local store that somebody might start in but throughout the corporation. There are companies that invest heavily in benefits for every single employee on their staff, and they're going to be creating 200 jobs so we typically look at at a company like Costco retailer like Costco is more of a locally serving business which has significantly less of a multi multiplier effect than what we would see from a primary industry employer like a manufacturer technology company. But in the case of Costco because of the wages that they pay and because of the trade area that they create the act from an economic perspective more like a primary industry employer. And so both from that direct fiscal impact perspective that Jim talked about, as well as the broader economic impact potential for our community, and then add to that potential the potential loss to our community if they were to relocate in particular, just on the other side of the county line. Again it's a no brainer for the city of long want to make this investment in this company at this time. I'm not going to put you on the spot, but I know you calculate multiples. When you do these analyses. Have you done that on this one by any chance. I have. I don't remember off the top of my head but it's near a two X multiplier, which again is something that we would typically see 1.9 something on on jobs and I think 1.7 something on wages which is something that we would more likely see with primary strike primary industry employer to translate what 1.7 or 1.9 means in terms of economic impact. So, 1.9 multiply jobs multiplier means that for every job that Costco creates there will actually be 1.9 jobs created in our community, a 1.7 wage multiplier means that for every dollar that Costco pays in wages there will be 1.1 dollar and 70 cents in wages generated throughout the community. So, in addition to what Jim talked about, just the benefits to the city as well as to consumers, in terms of the overall economic impact in the, in the larger community, this is pretty substantial. It is absolute. So Mayor Bagley. That sounds like good news. Yeah, I wait here some I suspect about the bad news. And you made reference to some of this earlier traffic and more activity, more people more traffic on 119 coming across town. What say you to the to the to our friends and neighbors. Those who's interested. Why this remains a good idea. A sound investment for lawnmower. It's a sound investment because it will continue to provide jobs and opportunities for people who live in my mind. It will provide a source of employment. It will provide a source of sales tax revenue. It will provide something to do on the weekend to go shop with your kids at Walmart. So in addition to Walmart and Sam's Club, but and any time you develop anything, there will be more traffic and more people. And I would like nothing more than a wave of magic wand and go back in time to when long had 60,000 people and when I moved in I could have just closed the door behind me and said that's it no more. Unfortunately, Longmont and northern Colorado and Colorado in general is a beautiful place to live and people are coming. They need food, they need clothing, they need stores. And so unfortunately we can't lock the door and in order to continue long months ability to generate sales tax to be able to fill our potholes. We need to be able to provide sites, pay our police officers and just make sure that our city gets paid and continues to progress and prosper. We need to continue looking for economic opportunities and development such as this so we can move forward into the future, comfortably, happily, and united, and I would be very upset. And so I might as well put this now, we had on three different occasions, asked members of the city council, if you have any doubts or pushback, or if you are opposed to this speak now, because we are going to be going through a lot of effort, a lot of expense, a lot of stress. A lot of people relying on this, and not not to mention our reputation in the development community with Costco and the landowner. But if we say no now, no one has opposed this. And so I will be very curious to see how this vote goes. Oh, we won't have long to wait. I want to give you one more chance to put an exclamation point on this in two ways. You made reference to the commentary. This makes about long month from a corporate perspective in a, especially in a time where there's probably more economic uncertainty than ever. I mean, given, given what we've been managing with this pandemic. Go back to that just for a moment say repeat or expand on what's what is this say about long month number one. And then number two, what should people know about timing. If the council approves this on Tuesday night which the mayor is confident they are and I would join you mayor vaguely in that confidence. What should people expect to see over what period of time. So I'm actually going to, I'm going to answer the first question and then add some information to this then I got to turn it over to Dale for timing. Because, again, a lot of work recently on all of those issues. So what was interesting is we actually started this conversation, obviously before the pandemic kit. And there was concern. When we started moving into this world of what does it mean to this project or you know as everyone's still committed to this, are we still moving forward. The answer was yes, obviously, we're still moving in this direction. And so I think that really says a lot about our community and their confidence in the retail trade area that they've identified to touch on something that. You and Mayor Bagley talked about when we talk about traffic and these types of issues. That's one of the reasons we actually like this location because it is further to the east you don't necessarily have all of that traffic moving deeper through the community. But the other side of it is, obviously the retail trade area is pretty big and so you can guess what they're looking at. And if they move east of Longmont, we're still probably going to have a lot of that traffic moving through our community, we just don't have the revenue coming in. So that's another piece of the conversation. But one of the things I want to bring up is I think I would be remiss if I didn't talk about how this is how Costco operates. And what we're going through is not any different than what other communities go through when Costco wants to locate in their communities and so when this started. I started doing some research and came across Oh, City of Dallas had to have a similar agreement. I can't remember if it was Jim Dell or Eugene that provided me with a presentation. Actually, we knew there was another location being considered within the front range and there was an action taken by the City of Denver. And the City of Denver actually had a very similar agreement to the agreement that we've put together. And specifically and this will be included in the council column. The City of Denver improved an incentive agreement for development in Northeast Denver called the flyway. And that includes a Costco warehouse. In that agreement, Denver committed to share back 9.5 million of sales tax from that facility. So when you look at the numbers, Jim just talked to you about and said ours is 9.6 and you look at Denver doing 9.5. I think that also says a lot about our community because, you know, larger population based more home more rooftops those types of things. And actually the deals pretty similar in terms of what Denver put together and what we put together and I wanted to point that out because I think that gives a framework of it's not just long. It's Denver, it's other large communities throughout the nation that all go through the same process. Because Costco is one of the most highly desired retailers in any community. And I would look to Jessica and others to say if I'm wrong on that statement. It's a pretty powerful statement of confidence and long run from from major American corporation. I'd like to add to Harold statements there I think the, you know the city's deal that that we've been able to pull together, not only gets the Costco project here for a similar amount of money. But also opens up for additional retail and other development, the balance of the 48 acres. And so we are coming forth with a similar amount of money for a much larger potential development area that also includes as we mentioned the affordable housing as well as additional housing on the south side and so there's a whole benefits coming in. And I think the other thing that made long mod a strong candidate for Costco. It is some of our very core services that we provide things like our water and our sewer and our power and next light. Those are all very attractive to a corporation like Costco they understand that value. But they pay for water and water taps and other communities, as opposed to here in Longmont and so all of that comes together and sort of the overall package that really helps us to compete and and to, you know, be able to pull together these kinds of deals where we're able to bring this kind of a retailer into the into the community. Well, I want to talk about timeline but before you do. Does anybody in this conversation want to speculate about the other kinds of development Costco typically stimulates around Costco's. No, no one wants to speculate. Okay, well I'm not going to put you on the spot. But I think you will say the viewers of this program stay tuned, because Costco typically draws other kinds of development around Costco's. Most people would like to see. They'll tell us about timelines. And timelines. Again, if the council moves forward with this item on first reading and then it will come back for second reading because it is in the form of an ordinance on December 1. That then will initiate the public land review process. And then there are a number of land entitlement processes that the 48 acres will go through everything from a comprehensive plan amendment to an amendment of the PUD for the mining plan. And then ultimately ending up with the plotting and final planning of the property. And that's expected to be about a six to seven month time period. And so we would fast forward now into about, say, July or so of 21. At that point, where we are anticipating to go to closing, because at that point you'll actually have platted legal lots that can be, you know, sold from from one owner to the next. You'll have the all the final designs done for all the public improvements at closing. The parties will come together will close and you know typical type of closing Costco will then also initiate what's called the notice of commencement to begin work. And that began work begin the construction of the public improvements. We have timed out to be anywhere from a 12 to 18 month timeline, you know, depending on winter and depending on you know, can you are you able to keep working through the through the cold and snow seasons or not. All ending with a are the goal that we have in mind is to have the pad ready site available to turn over to Costco, such that they are in a position to open their store and what they refer to as their fiscal year 23. They'll be somewhere in the timeframe of a mid year, say, July to September of 2023. The agreement provides for them an additional year in the event that there are delays and those types of things but what we're being told at this point by Costco is, they see this as a very attractive site. I think there is interested in getting their, their warehouse opened as we are in making that possible so that's the timeline, and a lot of work will happen between now and ribbon cutting for the for the warehouse. So long miners are going to want to have their kids back in school by the fall of September 23. I hope so. So, let Costco know we'd like to buy our school supplies. We're going to buy it by August or September 2023. Listen, any other final thoughts comments anybody in this group wants to make. Yeah, just one quick thing, Tim. This is the first time the Council is going to be implementing some of the raw water policy, both economic incentive options with our raw water policy as well as implementing and the raw water policy for affordable housing. And so you're going to be acting on on those particular issues as well. And it'll be the first time that we are implementing those particular policies. Again, for the benefit of both economic development and affordable housing in the community. Just a few moving parts to this one. Yes, just a few. If I add. Oh, sorry.  So I just want to also add that the, you know, knock on wood that this ends in a successful ribbon cutting for a Costco warehouse here in Longmont. It really is a true testament to the work that we've done over the last several years to operate as a cohesive collective unit and pursuing these types of projects I have worked in multiple communities I've worked at the state level, and never experienced a group, a diverse set of perspectives approaching a project and really working and step with the same goal in mind and contributing each the expertise that each of us brings to the table and letting each other at contribute the expertise that the others bring to the table without stepping on each other's feet. So it's been, it was a really good process to be a part of with this group and I'm excited that we've finally gotten here. A good process I'd say that's fairly remarkable what you just described. And that is a positive comments are Harold. I said you get last word actually I'm going to have the last word but before I take my closing comments. Give you a chance to offer your last words. I wanted to touch on what Jessica talked about really the team that came together on this one to have this conversation was great teamwork people were moving in and out, you know we were managing many things during this time. So for the folks that were on this those that are great teamwork. I just wanted to say I think I've you know I've been through a number of these conversations, and Dale touched on this earlier, all the partners, Oscar the property owner, really, you know, saying what you mean and meaning what you say was, there throughout this process. And I want to commend everyone in Costco for this because they're great organization to deal with through these processes, even when you disagree with each other. Well, a lot of times, go ahead, I'm sorry. A lot of times you know we look at this it's it's interesting to watch how we approach the conversations and we go through this and, and at times I joke to the team about this, you know Jim and I would be on different sides of this conversation. And we go back and forth on this but you know, when Jim golden comes to you and says we need to really find a way to make this happen because it's that impactful to the community. For me, that then makes the conversation much easier because because his perspective and his judgment just means a lot. And when he says that to you, it's like okay we all know what we need to do now. And, and so I, you know we've kind of talked about the financials on this but I really want to reinforce the perspective that Jim brought to this, and how he brought clarity to me, in terms of where we need to go. And when your CFO does that, you need to listen. So you tell me as we're going through this. Well, Jim golden is the EF Hutton of long month. When he speaks, everybody listens. He's talking about when we're looking at $18 million. Tim, I can barely remember that commercial barely. Well, that's a baby boomer thing. It's just the old people in this conversation Jessica doesn't you know what we're talking about. Hi, folks I want to say on behalf of of your residents, having been one for 25 years. How much I appreciate, not just the time you gave today but what you do every day. I'm going to lose on this one. I just know how hard you work on behalf of my residents selfless selflessly selfishly selflessly day in and day out under right now really unusual difficult circumstances so thanks to each of you for what you do every day. And thanks again for what you've done this afternoon, and we'll look forward to back to school shopping or Christmas shopping. In 2023 like 2023 in Costco, and you can, and we maybe we can share this link with Costco, let them know how much we appreciate their role in this as partners, long modders. That is the backstory on Costco, coming along. Thanks.