The Todd Herman Show
The Chainsaw Guy Is Getting It Done in Argentina. Zach Abraham joins Ep-1688
Zach Abraham joins. He's been following Javier Mallet and what he's been doing with and to the government in Argentina. There's an important fact about this, an economic fact we'll discuss with Zach. We'll also talk about in our country, where we would take the chainsaws to organizations, but not necessarily to just completely destroy them or undo them. We need to look at which parts of government are most inflationary to the economy. Which ones should we change? Zach and I agreed on one particular department of government that we could change in pretty dramatic ways. We also made a promise to speak in the future about a scam that's going around online. It's about banking on yourself. Zach shared his thoughts on this and he simply wants you to get in touch if you're even considering such a thing.
What does God’s Word say?
Matthew 5:43-48
Love for Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[i] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Episode 1,688 Links:
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- Duration:
- 50m
- Broadcast on:
- 28 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
Is your vehicle stopping like it should? Does it squeal or grind when you break? Don't miss out on summer break deals at O'Reilly Auto Parts. ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ O'Reilly Auto Parts ♪ [squeals] It's Wise Council Day, but it's also summer. With summers out, sun's out, the guns are out. That's what my friend John Crowley used to say. So hey, I'm wearing a T-shirt on Wise Council Day. I hope Zach will forgive me. I need to talk about some things tangentially related to the economy, such as the debate. Zach and I are sitting down to record this before the debate. So we might make some predictions, but really just about what would we do if we were in Donald Trump's shoes or figurehead Biden's shoes. Plus Javier Malay has done something extraordinary in Argentina. This hasn't happened there in 30 years. That's to do with inflation. So we'll talk about this all with the help of God Almighty and, and KnowYourRiskRadio.com. [explosion] The Todd Herman Show is 100% disapproved by big pharma technocrats and tyrants everywhere. Now, from the high mountains of free America, here's the Emerald City exile. Todd Herman. [upbeat rock music] - Today is the day the Lord has made and these are the times to which God has decided we should live. My brother, Zach Cabraham joins me, friend and brother, chief investment officer, bulwark capital management, Zach. So good to see you, man. And I know we're getting you over here. Finally got the trip scheduled. - Yes, sir. And I've got a, I know there's some listeners over there in your neck of the woods that are gonna hear this. And you will be getting reached out to by my wife, probably today, to book some stuff. So we're not blowing you off. - And you're being careful about the stuff, and I know why, because I know exactly the people you're talking about, I think. And there's some stuff that we're finally gonna get to do at a place they built. And it sounds like it's fun for us to go engage in this thing that we won't mention because our tools for this are lost. - Yeah, I just, I'm, I hope, I hope they have spares, you know, because I don't know, yeah. - Right. - And just so people wanna know, these people, they're contractor enthusiasts. And so we all get together, you know, frame, frame little houses, you know, stuff like that. So I lost my, I lost my level and my hammer. So that's what we're talking about. - Yeah, right. - You had that, didn't you have one of those semi-auto drills? - Yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep. It's, yeah, semi-allegedly. - Yeah, I had that 5.62 bit on it. Yeah. - 5.62, 5.65 voltage. - Okay, guys. - Yeah, 5.65 voltage. - I wanted to make sure, right? And they, I also had that nine millimeter hammer, but that was the, that was the semi-auto hammer. And that can hit like, that can hit 10,000 times in a second. - Yeah, so it can, it can, and I, yeah, and I had this really long range 7.62 gauge screwdriver. - Yeah, yeah, those are solid. Yeah, but that strap, you've already run your chest. Yeah. - Yeah, you can get, you can get any screw from almost a mile away. (laughs) - Good, we made that a big mystery for people. Back in the day, you still, from time to time, go into the building with Cairo Radio and KTTH over in Seattle, right? - You know what, I, I haven't been up there and recorded a show up there in like a year, I wanna say. - Okay, all right. Well, I was in there once, and this is unrelated to what we were talking about, 'cause you and I were talking about making mini houses, but I was in there doing radio one day, and on that team show that everyone wants to come back, the canyon, I can touch you. Do you remember the fever for that? I don't know about you, but everywhere I went, people are like, more can, the canyon, I can talk. - Yeah, no, I didn't, I don't think I ever heard that. Actually, I did quite the opposite. I heard a lot of complaints. And I'm not just pumping sunshine here, but I heard a lot of complaints, they're like, why are they doing that? Todd was better on his own. - Right, yeah, well, anyway. So we were doing the show one day, and the news lady came in and she ran a quote, and I'm trying to remember the liberal congresswoman who was complaining about AR-15s. These have bullets the size of footballs, and they can shoot 100 of them in half a second. And she ran the sound bites during the news, and she gets into the news and I go, okay, hold on a second, you know that's not true, right? Well, she's an elected representative. But, that's not true. I actually went and showed her. I went home and took a picture of a shell out of my AR-15, put it in my hand, brought it back and said, this is it. Well, she's an elected official. You're sticking by the size of a football thing. - That's how bad things got back there, man. I know, I know, and she continued to run the sound bite. - Well, yeah, yeah. So she's, the rounds are a size of a football, but that's also why she won't travel to Guam. She's afraid of that size. I don't really even care, I mean, I do, but I don't even really care what your political persuasion is. If you think that being a public official means that you know more or are smarter or more well-informed than anybody else. - Yeah. - That to me is willful ignorance. If you want to believe that, you're, again, and you may be on the left, you may be on the right. But one thing we should all agree on is that the vast majority of our public officials are self-serving idiots, like just regardless of party affiliation. And if you can't agree with it, like if we can't agree on that, we're not gonna be able to agree on the weather. - Right. - Right, like, because I don't know what to tell you. - Well, and it's profoundly disturbing when people will let that title rule things. I was, you know, that she's an elected official. You had the same look on my face, which was, wait, is there an end to that sentence? You've made an observation, right? - Which means what? Which means that she's more likely to be lying to you? - Right. - Okay, then I agree with that. - Right, and I'm holding in my hand the thing that she was talking about, and you're gonna deny this. We gotta dig into the debate. You and I recording this before the debate, so we're gonna have to be, I guess, smart about how we do this, but what I wanted to get into is what you would do, and you get to choose if you're the figurehead or Trump first. So, we'll get into this with Zach Abraham. I was down, Zach, I went back to Mexico. You know this, right? Port of Arta, Renew Healthcare. You should look into these guys, man. I'm telling you, I know you talked about wanting to get down there. My ankle, which was preventing me from running in any serious sense, sprinting, is back. I did a full kit Murph that's with the weight vest. I did that Saturday. Yesterday, this week, I did, now two days after that, I did Fran. I'm running again. My ankle is so solid. This is two and a half weeks. After I went and got these stem cells injected, these are ethically gathered. They have nothing to do with abortion. They wouldn't do this. This comes from placentas. It comes from umbilical cords. They get into the business and getting into your ankle, or where everybody needs it. First thing they do is destroy the inflammation. The next thing they do is they assign themselves a role. In this case, the role they assign themselves was build tissue for Todd's left ankle. And it is absolutely fixed. And the doctor told me, it was good you're here because you were building up to an Achilles heel tower. You were going to have an Achilles tendon tear, because this is how they start. He's a Harvard-certified surgeon who did this injection. And I am so thankful for this. If you've been told you're facing surgery, stop. Stop. Please let the people at Renew look at your MRIs. They'll know how to do that for you. Simply go to r-e-n-u-e. Renew, r-e-n-u-e. Renew.healthcare. Tell them that you know about this through the Todd Herman show. They'll take care of you. It's Renew.healthcare in part of our town, Mexico. 'Cause they are not allowed to do that up here 'cause the government won't let them. All right, the debate, Zach. I could ask this like the mockingbird, B.D. What are the keys to success here, Zach? But let me just do it open then in question. What would you do if you were Donald Trump, knowing that we're recording this before the debate, what would you do, how would you open, how would you treat this night? Yeah, he's not gonna take my advice for anybody else's, but if I took it from the standpoint, easiest way for me to do it is think about it, okay, if I was sitting there in a room with him, what advice would I give him? Yeah. I would say first of all, avoid personal attacks, okay? And the reason I would say that is, look at his approval numbers, right? Biden speaks. Yeah, yeah, you don't, just all night long, the theme should be no, no, no, stand on your record, okay? I had my four years, you had your four years, who's did you like better, right? Explain the border, explain inflation, explain, you know, the budget, deficits, all that kind of stuff, right? And just keep pivoting back to that. Make him do not let this turn into a personal mud-slinging event, right? Like just don't let it do it. If I'm Biden, that's exactly what I wanna do, right? Because I think the only way that this debate changes anything in my mind is, I think Trump actually comes into this debate, and from my point of view, with more to lose than Biden. You know, and you can judge it off the polls, you can judge it off just, you know, whatever you want. But, you know, I think if you had the election today, my feel is that Trump would win. Now, again, I could be wrong, I'm not a political analyst, or anything like that. But I would just say, make him stand on his record, right? I'm a big believer in the old adage when your enemy is defeating himself, don't interrupt him. - Yeah. - Right? So just don't get into a mud-slinging thing, it makes you less attractive. Just keep pivoting back and just go, hey, Joe, at the end of the day, we can get into personal attacks here. But I stand by my four years, do you stand by yours? - Yep, I think that's sound advice. And I would say this from the perspective of the figurehead, he's gotta make this about insurrection. So he, right off the bat, has to get Donald Trump upset about, look, you know, folks, I'm standing here against an insurrectionist. I'm standing here against a guy who caused an attack at our Capitol, the bloodiest attack, three dead cops, and I can't even believe I'm saying, a felon. I'm standing next to a man convicted of 36, I mean, the choice is very clear, a 36, a felon of 36 convictions facing endless court problems who's an insurrectionist who led an assault on the United States Capitol, or me, Joe Biden. And what have we done? We've taken the American people, we put them first. We are now, our economy was fixed, it was in ruins. People were out of work under this man. Unemployment was at 18%, it's at four today because he was so focused on insurrection. And that's what they're gonna have fed the figurehead. And I'll tell you the line, I'll tell you the line that I would love to see Trump deliver. Which would be this, you really rehearsed that well. - Yeah, yeah, well, and then immediately can, because I agree with you, 100%. - Right, it's a compliment. - Yeah, and there's no question, Biden's gonna throw that at him. And so what I would do is the very next thing I would say is I would say you rehearsed it well, and then I would go to actually reading the quote and go, here's what I really said. Now, of course, this didn't get reported in the media, and I knew you'd try to pull this trick, Joe. So I brought the transcript. Here's what I really said, both in Charlottesville and the day of the year. Here's what I really said, okay? - Right, yeah, and I would say it's a pause in the breath. Wow, you really rehearsed that well. - Yeah. - Joe, you know what's sad is it's unfair. And I'll tell you why it's unfair, is you making this charge now after lying for the past two years, and it's just very simple, Joe. It's just very simple. In fact, I've got the transcript. Here's what I said, proceed peacefully, Joe. In Charlottesville, even Snopes had to admit Joe. I criticized the white supremacists, but Joe, this isn't about January 6. This is about an open border. You destroyed my 37, my 37 executive orders that secured the border. You undid them on day one, Joe. Just put them back. Just my question, first, why don't I just put them back? They were working. We were fair. - And to me, Joe, that's the only real insurrection that's happened over the last four or five years. - That's a great line. - Right. - You wanna talk about insurrection? Let's talk about 10 to 15 million illegals that have flooded over the border, since-- - Right. - You don't talk about usurping the constitution. Let's talk about that. - Right, and let's talk about the fact that they are being registered to vote, that you have an effort to register to them to vote. You put out an executive order, that all federal agencies have to do this. We know that people who are here legally. And Joe, why is that fair to them? Because if they vote, it's a felony. Joe, they could be in even big trouble. Why are you using these people this way? Why are you using immigrants for political power? How sad is that, Joe, that you would do that? And the sex trafficking of your children, there's so much for President Trump to get on. Then this, on the economy, where would you hit? What would be the biggest hit on Biden on the economy that people feel in your mind? - Well, I think inflation number one. - Right. - Right and go, well, yeah, Joe, you can talk about, and weave it into the employment discussion. You can talk about the employment, which is funny, because we shut the economy down. So of course there was high, and you're taking credit for all the, all the, but I think the biggest one is a dynamic booming economy at what cost? Look at the deficits we're running. Okay, well, meaning, just getting that through, and the reason I say that is, I have this conversation with people frequently, and I do it for a living, so I think I assume that other people are looking at things the same way. And then I realize people's eyes light up and kind of get big whenever I bring this up, and they're like, really? They're not aware of how big the deficit is historically, and the impact that's having on the economy. And it's taking any credit economically for any type of growth or employment numbers out there, when you're running six and a half to 7% deficits? - Right. - It's ridiculous, because we're paying twice as much as the utility of those jobs actually delivers, right? So you're going backwards. - And I would be very, if you want to talk about rehearsing, if Trump were to rehearse one or two things, it would be this. Joe, you know what, Independence Day in the Trumpian. Independence, a beautiful day, Joe. I know you like to call it the 4th of July. We like to call it Independence Day, because we got independence from Britain to Joe, from a King Joe, and the Price is Joe. The Price is, gas was this when I was in office. When we had gas, we were producing Joe. Did you know that Russia is now sending more, more energy to Europe than we are, Joe, for the first time? The cost for a family of four to travel in a car, Joe, to the 4th of July part of the Independence Day party would have been $20. It's 40. Joe, a pack of hot dogs was $5.95. Right now, it's $10.95, Joe. The chips, Joe, the chips, the American people and the potato chips, and then the drive home. My 4th of July weekend, my Independence Day weekend, cost the Americans $20, yours costs them 60. Joe, and that's just one weekend. Joe, are you willing to apologize? And I'm glad the unemployment rate's really low. It's the only way anybody can afford to feed themselves. Yeah, if you want a second job, which you're probably going to need, if you want to eat and fuel your car, the good news is, is you can probably find a second job. Yeah, I think there's some great questions that he can put out there, too, such as this. Joe, why do you think that Putin didn't attack Ukraine when I was president? Oh, I think that's a great one. A great one. A great one. Why was that? And Joe, by the way, why are we funding Hamas? I stand with Israel, why are you funding Hamas? Why have we spent exponentially more money trying to protect the sovereignty and the borders of Ukraine than we do our own southern border? Right, right. And Joe, I was looking at the citizens of Maui with that terrible, terrible fire and that decision to not thin the jungle up there and to allow this infrastructure to, under Democrat policies to rot, you're giving them $700, Joe. People burned out of their homes, their kids burned to death. $700, every legal immigrant gets $2,200 a month. Joe, just explain how that's caring and fair. Just explain to the American people right now how that's caring and fair, $700 for hurting grieving American families in Hawaii, $2,200 a month for legal immigrants. I just want you to explain how that's caring and fair. And start putting them on notice that way during the conversation. I think there's a lot that could be done there. I know you did, but did you-- Trump challenged them to a drug test? I was begging for this. I have been saying this for the longest time. He should press that. Hey, I took my drug test. Did she take yours? Yeah, did you see that I was laughing so hard to dismiss all the Biden campaign? Yeah, this is just below. This is classic Trump. We're going to avoid it. And I'm sitting there going, and everybody's going to be like, there are a lot of people out there who are going to buy that line. And I'm sitting there going, if he wasn't taking it, who would do that? Like most people running for president would go, hey, this is ridiculous, but OK, if you want me to pee in a cup, I'll pee in a cup. Whatever it takes to prove to the American people that I am, what I say I am, fine, I'll do it, right? And the Democrats and the Muckerman media, same thing, are out there just saying, there's a Newsweek headline, Trump accused of waving to people who aren't there. No, he's waving at cameras. He's waving to the American people by waving to the cameras. He's waving at the American people. It's so, so sad. There's this other, though, guy in Argentina, Javier Malay, and you've been sitting him. I want to talk about something he's achieved here in a second. And Javier Malay came in with a chainsaw. He said, I'm going to eliminate this department and that department. He held a meeting with his staff, all the cabinet members, and said, we're going to do a corruption review, because some of you are probably corrupt. I'm not going to have it in my administration. He, on day one, announced the end of this department, that department, this department. Now, he can do things there that presidents have trouble getting done here because of the, you know, so we still kind of try to stick by the checks and balances when it's convenient. But for the first time in 30 years, they had no inflation, you know, when one week, one week with no inflation, the first time in 30 years, I mean, that's a very, very big deal in that country. - It's a huge deal because, and if you know anything about his past, one of the reasons that he's taken the line that he has is he endured, at some point in his childhood, he went through the hyperinflationary stages of Argentine. Argentine has a long history of this, right? You can go back to the Perones, right? You had, you had out of control spending, inflationary pressures there. What is, I believe Argentina has now defaulted on its sovereign debt, either four or five times in the last hundred years. And so he lived through some of these, you know, these issues, and those issues are what drove him into a career in economics. So he was an economics professor. And then the thing I like about it is he didn't just stay in academia. He actually was head of economics for a financial management company. So he's got private sector knowledge, and he understands full well. I think that he's proven a couple of things. A, he understands full well, you know, the role of government spending and inflation. He's proven that his story sort of reminds me a little bit of the, well, is it the Ecuadorian president took over? Well, I don't think it was Ecuador. Anyway, one of the other Latin American countries, really small, had the highest murder rate in the world, right? He reminds me of him in a lot of ways, meaning very quick, concise of action, or decisive action, you know, concise, they know what they're doing, and they know what they want to get done. And the other thing that I like about him is he illustrates, in my opinion, so far, we'll have to see the way it plays out, but he's really blowing away the myth that, well, if we cut government spending, there's a direct feedback to the economy, right? Wait, you can't do that, you'll kill the economy. You cannot act, look, are there benefits that come from government spending, sure, okay? But like anything else, there's a point of diminishing returns. And when government gets out of the way, and that creates lower government spending, we like to act as if there's no other ancillary benefits, right? One of the other ancillary benefits right out of the gate is less cost of doing business, right? Less regulations, less politicians. We don't need as much tax revenue. We get out of the way, we make things easier. You know, so they want to look at everything like in a vacuum and go, well, we can't grow the economy if government embraces austerity. And you're like, well, if they embrace it correctly, yes, you can't, right? Yeah, productivity can fill in the gaps. Doesn't mean there won't be some pain. But the question is then, what pain is worse, right? Like, you know, we act in America, we can't cut government spending, that would bring down economic growth. And you're like, that'd bring down inflation too though, wouldn't it? You know what I mean? So you're like, well, what are we talking about here? And I think it's interesting that, you know, every economist and every politician only wants to focus on the downsides of austerity and the downsides of bringing down government spending as a percentage of GDP. Well, of course that's what they want to focus on, 'cause they want a bottomless checkbook, right? They just want to keep writing checks. Spending is power. So let me ask you this, in our government, if you were to think about efficiencies and you could go in and shave or significantly diminish the impact of one or two federal agencies to help the economy, are there one or two federal agencies that you think would do the best job if you could shave them down or even eliminate them from, you know, hindering our economy. And I can think of some kind of right off the bat. I think labor and industries is duplicative because they exist within the states. All states have safety groups, right? They all have government safety groups. L and I at a federal level, there's so much to cause paperwork, to cause, right, this constant review of things, that's one. The other is anything to do with health regulations in businesses and how people are treated in businesses in health regulations, in hospitals, et cetera. Any and all of that top-down medical regulation. And I spent some time with some legendary doctors when I was in Mexico. They told me flat out. The reason that they left the insurance-based medicine is they said I spent, it was talking about his practice. He had an 18-person practice, so he had himself and four other doctors. He said 80% of our time as an administrative staff was government. So we had meetings, 80% of which had to do with government, not patients. So if we did away with those two things, I think you could see a freeing of the economy in ways that would blow people's minds because finally then medical profession could begin to invest in medicine again. And labor and industries, you could still have safety at the state level, but they wouldn't be constantly responding to this and that federal agency showing up and saying, "You need to change this and that," or move this bolt. I mean, those don't seem like sexy things, but they can have a huge impact on the economy. - Oh, they can have a huge impact. And I think that you could do that. There may be one of the problems about discussing this is there's probably something, regardless of how defunct or how stupid we think a certain department is, there's probably maybe at least one or two things they do that is somewhat crucial. So obviously, I wouldn't say just go through there and just start axing them right and left. You'd have to do it in a concise and educated manner. But for instance, you could probably make one agency that costs one-tenth or one-fifth at the very of several agencies and get that one agency to do those one or two important things that all these other agencies do. - You know, a perfect example would be the EPA. - Yeah. - That's a huge one. - Huge. - Huge, they have too much power. - Way too much power. The other thing too is that it's, you know, with the EPA, I think the federal government would be so much or we'd all be better off and it just makes more sense. The EPA should be a state function, right? And meaning there should be federal standards, okay? You should have a baseline federal standard and then get rid of the EPA because think of how much money you waste and just administration, right? - Like this, I was when I lived in D.C. I was jogging to work one morning. I jogged past this building and they had all their lights on and then the sprinklers were on and it was raining. It was the EPA. - Oh, of course, of course. Yeah, yeah, always the worst effect, right? So, but think about this, you know, just, and for people to know that I'm not just, you know, saying this shooting from the hip, I bet at the very least, I mean, and this is me being extraordinarily generous because you and I both know. You could, the EPA, just in unneeded administrative costs, you could probably cut at least fit the budget by 50%, take the other 50% and administer it to the states based on the acreage of national forests they have, based on the percentage of lands that they have that are environmentally sensitive, you know, things like that. You could define rivers and waterways as being environmentally sensitive areas, but allocate out the money to the individual states with a mandate that they have to use it for their own internal state EPA. And you just can't convince me that that isn't infinitely more impactful. And why, we know this, right? The more local spending and legislation is the better it works. And think of the blanket rules that you have in the EPA that people have to adhere to that are these catch-all rules that in probably most states, they don't even apply. - Right. - Right, it's not even an issue. So, hey, you know, and I think there's so many things that you could do, the FDA, you could do a similar thing, maybe not make it the states, but I mean, you could streamline the FDA and probably cut their budget by 50% to 60% and probably get better results. I'm not an expert in that. - The fact is that most food companies don't wanna be sued for poisoning people. And the FDA is a former company, guys. It's 40% of its funding through pharma. There's one we haven't mentioned and there's a meme. And I'll share this meme with you, Zach, because it is so, so spot on. There's one agency we haven't mentioned. And I think this could be done away with legitimately. And I don't wanna get back into the fair tax discussion 'cause you know, I've had this. But I think legitimately, yep, because there's a meme when you could explain things with a meme that's like six lines long, then you know something is either really, really simple or has been made way, way too complicated. So I'll share this in just a second. In this studio, we have a pretty complicated system. Niana is back there running things. So she'll pick this like camera one. So if I do that and I do camera one and then I go camera two, then it's over here and look at there, there's camera three and she could do crazy things on the screen, like bring Zach back and just press a magic button and boom, you see Zach et cetera. And then Zach's gone and now it's just me. We have this intense studio, we use God's money for this. We also have in this studio, plugged in over there that you can't see the OXI Leaf 2 Thunderstorm from Edenpurdeals, Edenpurdeals.com. This is the, it's not the lights, it's not the camera, it's not the microphone, but it makes it livable in here because we cannot have windows open. We cannot have doors open. We've got to have sound quality because most people still listen to the show rather than watch it. We can't have an air filter running 'cause it's too loud. I don't want to write a check. Every time we have to replace the stink and air filters. Secondly, we're not blowing dust up around here, we don't need an air filter, so we use the air purifier. It purifies the air, not by what it sucks in, by what it emits. It emits O3, ozone. Those molecules are floating around in here, they smell like the air after a thunderstorm. Magically, they bond to the molecules that produce bad smells and boom, they chemically negate them. That includes, by the way, viruses, negated, and it's sound free, you can't hear it, it's almost completely silent. Every once in a while, couple times a year, if you've got cats or dogs, wipe the thing off with a cloth, that's it. And speaking of pets, they give you a pet stink guarantee. If this does not remove the odor from your pets, you get your money back and you don't spend the bunch. I'm gonna save you $200 on whole home coverage, three of these devices. Just go to edunpurdeals.com, use code TOD3 to get this special deal, whole home coverage for under 200 bucks, it's a 200 dollar savings. edunpurdeals.com, enter code TOD3. So here's the meme, Zach, and this is the big one for me that you could do away with this department and you could have a magical turnaround in our economy. Got a name, Samuel Fisher, wrote this and posted it. White House. We're unable to track $6.2 billion since the Ukraine, California. We're unable to track $24 billion spent to combat homelessness, the Pentagon. We're unable to track $2.3 trillion of military spending. US Treasury, we're unable to track $5 trillion of pandemic spending, the IRS. We know exactly who you sent $601.57 to. You better report it or you're going to jail. I mean, that's sort of spot on, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, the other, and I mean, I think we're talking about the IRS. Yes. We're preaching to a pretty accepting congregation, meaning I don't think anybody's going to race to go defend these guys, but just to give you an idea, I feel like if you want to understand, if I want to explain the idiocy of the way that tax policy in this country is handled, and to be fair to the IRS, right, they are just a figment or a creation of legislators. So, you know, I'm not, no personal shots at those guys. But having said that, if you look at, just look at Social Security and the way it interacts with the IRS, right? Social Security is a tax that we all pay into, okay? And then when it's time to collect on that tax, we get our check and then have to pay federal taxes on it. Think about the amount of time that is wasted, as opposed to just factoring that in to Social Security one way or the other. And, you know, think about the time and money that's wasted processing tax returns on Social Security. It's ridiculous. It is so archaic and ridiculous, it's mind-blowing. And the amount we waste on it is incredible. And I think that you would need the IRS in some shape or form. And this might tick some people off, listeners off. But I don't selfishly, if somebody was to go, "Hey, well, how do you think taxes should work?" Selfishly, I'd say I think it should be a flat tax or a fair tax based on consumption, okay? - Agreed. - Now, when I look at a country, first of all, I think that when we're having a discussion about taxes, I think that we all have to acknowledge that there is no solution that's gonna be great for everybody, right? It's taxes. They stink, whatever tax we're left with, no one's gonna like it. But I do think that some sort of, I hate using this word, some sort of progressive income tax is warranted because I think as a guy that makes what I make, I find it repugnant that somebody that makes, you know, $50,000 to $100,000 a year pays the same income tax that I do. Now, I pay more, but I'm okay with that. Because I think we should have a tax policy and bear with me when I say this because I'm not a progressive when it comes to this at all. But I just think that we should have a tax policy that is designed to help build wealth, right? To help build capital, right? As a, like, and if you think about that, I just think it's a big twist to put on the way that we look at it and it could be something that would be incredibly beneficial for everybody, right? If you were gonna tell me that you weren't gonna nickel and dye me every time I turned around and that I wasn't gonna have to be double taxed, would I be okay with a 35% income tax? Yeah, selfishly, I'd like it to be less. I don't enjoy paying taxes. But I would pay 35 if it meant that that guy making 100 grand a year was only paying 10. I'm okay with that. - Okay, and I get that. And I think that that is a righteous view and I understand it, but here's where I would be. Is I would do everything to shift over to taking guys like you and frankly me. I'm not as well rewarded as I've been in some periods of my life, you know? You make a million bucks a year. That's a pretty hefty paycheck. And I look at that reward and I would do something else, Zach. I would do much, much more to encourage charitable giving and wealth building. So the wealth building, like, it's insane to me that we do a bunch of taxation of subsistence savings. So if you're making 50 grand a year and you're able to put away five grand a year that should not be taxed. In fact, it should never be taxed. The money you earn that goes into a subsistence based account when you're in that building life stage that should not be taxed, that should be rewarded. For guys like you or guys like me when we're at the top of our earning, you know, we should be able to give a bunch of that to charity and have much more of that written off. If the charities are providing core needs, not ideological needs, charities that feed people, charities that provide education to people, charities that provide healthcare to people, you take core need charities and you get, say, 100% write off for a core need charity. And of course, every charity's gonna get in there and say, we're core need. So say, no, what are core needs? Let's be biological, food, water, healthcare. Those are core needs. Now you have this argument, well, it's healthcare. Okay, so what are we gonna say? It's life sustaining never ending. It's not about ending life, it's about sustaining life. If you do those things and you get 100% write off for that, you'd have to be a pretty cold snake-like, you know, reptilian person to not take advantage of that. Everything else to me, I would shift over into consumption tax, I know we've had this discussion, but the reason I say that is because the amount of time that's wasted and it's somewhere around, if you're a business, it's somewhere around 120 hours a year dealing with tax issues. You know that the amount of paperwork you guys have to do given the money that you steward for other people as a fiduciary, just based on that. So I think if we incentivize savings and we incentivize charity to core needs, all of a sudden we don't have any argument for a welfare system, we don't have any argument for that other than, well, we want the government to do it because we hate churches or we hate private charities. That to me is a fundamental shift. Pushing everything else down to the States, I totally, totally agree with. But to me, the IRS with this comparison, to me, it means you've got a lot of busy work that you choose to do on us and not on other people. That's all I'm saying. - Yeah, no, I'm with you, I'm with you. And I agree with virtually everything you said. Like I said, I would be willing to pay more, but no, there's so many things you can do. I mean, there's, you know, for instance, working into tax policy, you know, you can, there was a gentleman that was, I got to know, he wasn't a client but he was an associate, he was a professor at University of Washington legal department, really successful lawyer that I got to know. And he ran his tax policy plan by me or it was a, it was a feature where he said, "Basically, you incentivize people, "you basically treat the investing in small business, "investing, not purchasing a majority ownership, "but investing in small businesses, "you give them a similar tax policy or tax consequence "for economic opportunity zones." Right, so where you sit there and go, "Look, if you make an investment of this size "into a business this big, "and you make the biggest benefits "for those smaller businesses, right, "then any gains, if you keep that investment in place "for five years or more, "any gains you make on that money are non-taxable." - I love it, right? - Those incentives make sense to me. If we're going to have anything other than the fair tax, which is my preference, consumption-based fair tax, get the government out of picking winners and losers, get that all done. If we can't have that, then yes, incentivize those actions that way. One thing I wanna close off today with Zach is you guys focus so much on energy because energy is the economy. One of the core things I've learned from you is you cannot divorce any economy from energy. And this is really to me the purest form of harnessing that which God creates. Sun, petrol, rights, nuclear, we're harnessing that which God creates, the common blessing in everybody, the sun falls in everybody. So I ask you this question in just a second. There's another blessing that God gives us and sometimes it's difficult to look at as a blessing, honestly, as your body is a blessing. Okay, your body's a temple. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it. I know that. You're hungry, you're hurt, you're sick. Sometimes it feels like, "Man, I've got to drag this body around." Well, short of our glorified bodies that we get when we are committed to the Lord Jesus, we're changed by Him, we accept them as our Lord and Savior. Eventually we have these glorified bodies, not yet. But the body is a blessing, are you treating it as such or is it hurting you? If you are constantly making noise when you stand up and in constant pain, I'm gonna guess, I'm gonna guess it's inflammation. So number of things can cause inflammation. One of the big ones is sugar. The more refined sugar you eat, the more you're going to hurt. And this can add up over the years. If you're like the average American, the average American consumes, I think it's 80 pounds of refined sugar a year. Think of 80 pounds of sugar. That doesn't count sugars from fruits and vegetables and honeys. I'm talking about refined sugar, the white stuff. If you've been doing that for a long time, you probably have inflammation all over your body. So let me guess about something. You've chosen to use ibuprofen or some of those derivatives, Advil, right? Right? So you're probably doing this in high amounts, am I right? Because you can't sleep without it and I bet. You take a bunch of ibuprofen at night, you wake up and oh man, the inflammation's gone. It's not, it's shifted, it's time shifted. What's happened is ibuprofen's gotten in and destroyed the lining to your gut. So now when you go eat just any food, particles from that food are ending up in your bloodstream and they don't belong there, guess what happens? It goes after your joints, your endocrine system. It goes after your heart, right? It does not belong in your bloodstream. So but what do you do? Are you telling me Herman, I just need to hurt? No, I'm telling you supercharge this with the omega threes from native path krill. Krill are not fish, they're crustaceans. They're not from waters with a bunch of heavy metals and they only come from the Antarctic, the purest possible waters we have. These are 60% more potent than vitamin C for helping the immune system. They're twice to three times as absorbable as fish based oils. They're bioavailable, much more bioavailable meaning more of it goes to work in your body meaning it saves you money and it fights inflammation. My testimony to you is, I was an ibuprofen addict. I convinced myself I needed it. I do not take it anymore, it is not in our house. I wouldn't look for some of the other day just curious if someone's there. There's none, I will not have it near me. I no longer need it. You can have the same thing, don't be in pain and don't make the inflammation worse and don't reward farmers bad behavior. Go to nativepathkrill.com/todd go see the specials they have for you there today. That's nativepathkrill.com/todd. Krill's with a K by the way, nativepathkrill.com/todd. Couple of headlines drew my attention, Zach. This is, well Russia, June 17, 2024. Russia overtakes U.S. in gas supplies for the first time in two years. Wait a minute, what happened to the pipeline that we didn't blow up because our CIA would never do that with our Navy SEALs? And what happened to all that magic things we were doing with sequestering their economy? How in the world did this happen? - I think this is another really good picture of the ineptitude of the current administration meaning, and this is the idiocy of it. And this is also one of the byproducts of ideological capture of a political party, right? Which is, when ideology takes over reality, this is what you end up with. Meaning, when you talk about curtailing and to be fair, U.S. oil production has bounced back to pre-COVID levels and I believe it's hit a record, but it's done it in spite of this administration. I don't think the administration is done like anything like permanent damage or anything like that, but they have not helped. And this whole idea of whenever you say we're gonna limit production or we're gonna do this or we're gonna do that, all you're saying is we're gonna send that money somewhere else, right? Because the amount of energy that's needed is gonna get needed and that's why you're so frustrating to hear these, oh, it's good that the Biden administration is cracking down. And you go, good, what do you mean? It's a liquid market, meaning whatever you don't produce, it just means somebody else's and they're getting paid instead of you, right? It's just, it's a ridiculous approach to take because what you do here in the United States regarding energy policy is gonna have little to no effect or what anybody else around the world decides to do. And any other leader of a country who's sitting there looking at a situation where he can affordably provide his constituents, the citizens of his country with affordable, effective electricity or go down some ideological path with you. In 98% of those countries, they can't afford to make the decision you're making, right? So what are they gonna do? Somebody else, like Russia, who you're currently fighting, right, your energy policy has helped them backfill the financial hole that the war has caused them, right? That's my exact point is, here we are saying, we're putting the toughest sanctions on Russia in a decade since before they were franchise by Ray Crock. When Crock created the country Russia with my son, Bose, opposite CFO and went on a bat and now we've sanctioned their monies and they can't... And right, we have, and then guess what? We've sanctioned their monies and we stop producing energy and stop selling it and Russia says, "Oh, the sanctions hurting us very bad. Now what can we do but sell gas and energy to the countries attacking us?" - Well, yeah, and look, and if you go look at the data and I'm not an expert on this, but I've talked to people that are, but if you go look at the energy storage data, those sanctions did virtually nothing to impact Russia financially. That oil was still out on the open market. They were selling it through back channels. Countries like India didn't even pay attention, they just bought it from Russia anyway. And so again, and then at the same time, you're not doing anything to help and you're demonizing producers here in the United States. And it's just idiocy and it's something... What irritates me the most? No, I don't know about him now because I don't think that he's making policy. But if you go back to like 2016 and pre Joe Biden and if you gave him the truth serum, I think that he would acknowledge this. I think he would know that this isn't, but A, I think he's effectively incapacitated and B, it's that ideological capture where you're doing this simply to pacify your base. - And you have to, right, you've trapped yourself, you have to do these things. One thing, and we're short on time, is can we spend some time next week or maybe the new week after? 'Cause next week is an independence day and I think we're both gonna be taking some time off. The small modular nuclear, I'm looking at this Westinghouse has these plants that they have planned. I mean, to me, I don't know that it gets more simple than this and you had talked to me that this is very, very different. I wanna dig into it on a future show, but this is really, really different from the big nuclear plants with those big huge cylinders and everything. I mean, how promising is this stuff from your perspective as an investor? - It's extraordinarily promising because if you think about it, is there risk to nuclear? Yeah, there is, there's risk to every form of energy. The data will prove, and I think people are starting to get past this, at least it seems that way, the data will prove that nuclear is the least dangerous, right? It just is, there have been no deaths attributed to nuclear energy in the United States period. Okay, none. You cannot say that about any other form of energy, okay? So that is what it is. But what's really interesting is if you think about it just by breaking these up into much smaller reactors, you lower the risk even more, right? Because if something did go wrong, it would impact such a smaller area, right? And it would be so much less disruptive to the area around it, and the other thing people need to understand is the way the technology has changed. And I think this gets glanced over, but it's probably not the best. It's probably not the best. But look at that nuclear, what was that nuclear plant? Wasn't that in Ukraine, actually? Where was the last couple of years, where it was taking direct hits from cruise missiles and no leaks on-- - Right, right, right. And the employees could stay in. - Yeah, what other power plant in the world could take direct hits from nuclear missiles and not have some kind of catastrophic issue? - Right, and there's the Chernobyl lesson that we learned and we saw that, we saw the thing with the nuclear actor in Japan. But to your point, I was in San Francisco, I wasn't where this happened, but I remember when the gas lines blew up, remember the natural gas lines, people sitting in their homes doing nothing to pull up. - Yeah, yeah. - But all energy is by nature potential power. Therefore, it all has this potential downside. I would love to dig into that economically, and next time we record again, we'll figure it out, 'cause I know Independence Day's coming up. I'm seeing these ads on Facebook for a company that says they're gonna set you up as your own bank. And I've had friends who've, yeah, there's a lot of ads that sound so, so good. So I see the look on your face. So let's spend some time at that. And when you get over here, we gotta have our chart of Palooza Day, where we just sit and you bring just crazy charts. - Yeah, you bet, I'll just say one thing really quick. Guys, if you're looking into that whole bank on yourself thing, call us. I'm not gonna try to sell you any, you just need to understand what it actually is, because it doesn't work anywhere close to the way that it's sold. So just call us and we'll walk you through it. - Okay, cool, 866-779 risk. I hope I don't have to do this claimer now. (laughing) - I don't think you do. I didn't give any advice. I just said, "Hey, it works a lot differently." - That's true, right, so I could say it again. I could say again, 866-779 risk. All right, Zach, appreciate you. Well, it's canceled. They always fun. Appreciate you, and we'll see you over it, brother. - All right, man, looking forward to it. Thanks for having me. - Lord, thank you for reminding us that you reign the common blessings down on people who, well, a lot of us would think, don't deserve it, but then again, you made them. You love them equally to how you love us. This is the Todd Herman Show, please. Go be well, be strong, be kind, and please make every effort to walk in the light of Christ. 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