Showdown
Showdown Episode 71 5-29-24
(upbeat music) - Welcome to Showdown, I'm Mark Casein, and it is Wednesday, May the 29th, and we are rapidly approaching the end of the month, and as well, the complete end of the trial. I say the complete because we have obviously ended the trial. There's no more testimony, witnesses are done, final summations have been completed. The jury's got it, and that's it. And I can tell you that I'm not going to do what everybody else is doing today, 'cause there's just no sense in it, but you've got people with a microscope looking at every inch of the trial, trying to figure out what the jury might be saying right now, or thinking, and no one has the slightest idea. So I'm just gonna say, it's a good time to back off the trial for a minute, stop thinking of something that you'll never figure out, and move on, and wait until the jury comes back and says, what I've told you, they're gonna say anyway, which is guilty. So I'm sure of that personally, not because I saw anybody act a certain way. I didn't see a juror blink their eye, which is what they're all looking for. Did somebody blink? Did somebody stretch? Did they yawn? Come on, it's not gonna help. It's not gonna tell you anything. Well, I think it's gonna tell you anything is what you already know, which is that Donald Trump is a crook. He's been a crook for 40 years, and now we've got him. So we'll see. Kason says, guilty. That's all, I've said it all along, so there's nothing more to talk about. He's going to be found guilty. Not because of what somebody said that I can't figure out that the jury thought this or that or something else. No, I'm not gonna go into all that. 'Cause I don't know. I don't know what the jury thought when they heard whatever. I know this. Donald's gonna be found guilty. Now, let me say this about trials. And I've mentioned this before. I was in a courtroom once, where we, that is Onion Horton and I, when we were broadcasting in those days, we accused our attorneys, very good friends of mine, of trying to steal our business. The radio station that we had acquired. And in the end, the jury did find that that was what happened, that they had tried to steal our business. And so we got something back and that was fine. Wasn't exactly what we were looking for, but it was found that we were correct in our assertions. And what I wanna say is that the day that we sat in that courtroom, waiting for the jury to come back with a decision, wow, that was difficult. So, you know, if that was difficult, because it was after five years of all kinds of nonsense back and forth and delays and continuances and everything that you can imagine, it was very, very tough to sit there and to wonder what are they gonna do? What's that jury gonna do? And the whole point is you wonder because the consequences can be so significant. And certainly that's where Donald Trump is right now. The consequences for him are enormous. So I don't know what the jury thinks or thought or saw or heard. I know this. Sort of like the case that I was involved in. People do wrong. In juries are able to pretty much see through everything. And they come to a very reasonable, sensible conclusion. And I think in this case, it's the same thing I've said from the beginning. They are going to conclude that Donald Trump is guilty. Now, the other thing about this is, and here's an interesting point, it was brought up this morning that you could have somebody out there that just doesn't believe that Donald Trump has done anything wrong from the beginning till now. And they might wanna take that position, but the problem is gonna be much more difficult for that person. I've said this before, there's tremendous peer pressure in that jury room. If you watch the movie, which I recommended the other day, 12 Angry Men, you will see what that peer pressure is like. It is substantial. So when you've got all that peer pressure, you might think one thing or another, but everybody's looking at you and wondering where your head has been. So it's not going to be that easy. Somebody that wants to stand up to that jury is gonna find that they would have to really take a chance and be committed to that decision. I just don't see it. I didn't see it at the beginning. I don't see it now. I don't think anybody is in any doubt about what Trump has done in this case and in his whole life. So I think that aside from what everybody sees or thinks or wonders or notices, somebody's twitching. So they twitch one way or the other. So they think that's indicative of something. I say forget it. I think this is it. Now, the other thing, and this is separate from really the trial directly, is that for the country, the consequences here could be enormous because if Trump were to be found, well, it won't be not guilty. So forget that. But if there were one person on the jury that was willing to hang the jury, I think that the country would be listening to Trump forever, screaming, yelling, hysterically, pronouncing that he was exonerated. Not true, that wouldn't be true. And that he was found to be not guilty, which would not be true because the best he could hope for is a hung jury here. And the other thing is if they find, for example, 24 counts that Donald is guilty and 10 counts, they either acquit them or the jury is hung, Donald will claim he won, but that's not gonna work 'cause he'll still be going to jail. And do I know he's going to jail? Yes and no. I know in this respect, there's no way that this judge is gonna cut Donald Trump a break. It's not gonna happen. Donald Trump has been the most disrespectful psychopath that I'm sure this judge has ever come into contact with in a courtroom. And he's just not gonna cut Donald a break and he doesn't have to. He's got four years to play with. He could say guilty, okay, fine. Two years, believe me. If Donald Trump is guilty of anything, one count and has to spend two years in jail, it's gonna be the end of Trump. So, you know, all of this is pretty straightforward. It's not an analysis of the trial because I don't think that's really serving anybody's purposes. People are doing this this afternoon on every station, trying to figure out something that they'll never figure out. Unless they just look at the overall situation and just say, okay, does he look guilty or not guilty? And the truth is, he looks very guilty. We'll see what the judge... We'll see what the jury says. That's what we'll see. And there's no sense in trying to tear it apart because it's not gonna help. Okay, I think that's all I'm gonna say about the trial, I think. But let me talk a little bit more about Donald because he was hard at work today trying to figure out a good way to destroy himself, which is what he does every day. So, for example, there is this crazy program that has been put together by the far right and it's called Project 2025. And as you know, we're in 2024. So, yeah, not good. What's happening in 2025? Yeah, you don't wanna see any of this mess, but here's what they're trying to do more than I can tell you. And let me also be honest, I haven't read the entire document. I think it's 800 pages. I have not read it, but I know enough. And, you know, if you force me to go look at the document, it's just gonna be what I'm telling you anyway. But I could do that. Why aren't I wasting the time on it? Because it's not gonna come to anything. They're not gonna get Project 25. And anyway, Donald won't be president. In any way, the House of Representatives will be Democratic and the Senate will be Democratic. So, just forget the Project 2025, but I just want you to understand what they are trying to do. So first, they've come up with this brilliant idea that they can end contraception. Now, Donald says that he personally will not support ending contraception, at least not directly. That what he wants to do instead is to make it extremely difficult for any poor people to get their hands on contraception because they would have to pay. And he wants to take that away from Medicare and he wants to stop any government spending on contraception. (mouse clicking) Is that really what he wants to do? Is that really his brilliant idea for the next step in 2024? I mean, I'm not even discussing for or against contraception. I'm not gonna have that conversation. That's ridiculous. Here's what I wanna discuss. What does he think women are going to say? He's in the middle of a disaster when it comes to women. The poll I saw a month ago was like 60 to 35 women against Trump. You don't think it's getting any better, do you? Do you think that's improving? Do you think Donald has done something out here to attract women to his position? Because I can tell you, not a chance. Not only has this guy alienated every woman in the United States and for that matter on the planet, although everybody in the planet can't vote in this election, although Trump claims that that's not true. He claims that everybody's voting illegally and that that's why he'll lose. Well, he'll lose, but it won't be because of what he says. It's gonna be because he's gonna lose. But at any rate, Trump and his friends and that includes Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas have come up with this brilliant idea to fight against contraception. Now, you know women are gonna go berserk. Men won't care, but women are gonna go berserk. And when they do, they're gonna vote in gigantic additional numbers against Trump. I've said over and over, forget abortion. It's not about abortion. It's about women's healthcare. But now let me expand it a little further 'cause it's really beyond that. It's about everybody's healthcare and especially, it's about the healthcare of older people who are on Medicare. Because if you read what they're talking about, they're trying to shut down parts of Medicare. They're trying to shut down parts of social security. They're going back to exactly what George W. Bush was doing almost 20 years ago and it almost got him in a lot of trouble. I can tell you right now, this business, of the Republican party every so often, pushing back against Medicare and Social Security is absolute lunacy. It's one thing if you wanna alienate all the women in the country, which they're doing. It's another thing. If you wanna start alienating, older people who vote in very, very large numbers, and who will find out what's being done here, they'll find out the key things that are in Project 2025. And there's more than what I've already said, but they're out to cut things beyond anybody's belief. Things that were litigated in this country years ago, resolved, law has been established. It's over. And yet these people would like to stand up and fight against everything this country has done to try to keep people from going off a cliff depending on their circumstances. Because look, elderly people will go off a cliff if they don't have Medicare. They'll also go off a cliff if they don't have Social Security and their families will go off a cliff because the families will be called to pay for things that right now are being paid through Social Security. Through the protections that we have created for people in this country, all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt. But this is the story here. How do we shut it down? I mean, it's not just Obamacare. I mean, they're even saying, oh, no, we're not gonna even play with Obamacare. They're right, they're not. They're going far beyond Obamacare. They wanna go to Social Security and Medicare. And everybody knows this. They've had plans for this in every single election. And lo and behold, Donald Trump in his brilliance, it is attempt to do what he always does, which is touch things that subsequently die. In order to accomplish that, here he is looking for a way to shut down parts of Medicare, parts of Social Security and parts of contraception as applied to the poorest people in the country. And I can't even tell you what else might be included in all of that because they're just out to get people. I can't tell you why. And I can't tell you why, especially because I know what's going to happen when the election arrives. All of these people, all of these people are signing on to these bizarre programs. They're gonna find out that the public is not buying any of it. They're gonna find out that the public sure would like their taxes lowered and sure, they would like inflation to come down and sure, they'd like the price of oil to be cheaper. Yeah, all these things that they talk about, which they have no ability to even control, tell you the truth. But what they're going to do is they're just gonna be like, like the guy that walks out of the house and takes a stick and starts swatting at a hornet's nest. Because I can tell you right now, you do that and the hornets are gonna come and get you. Guarantee you, they will. And this is what we're dealing with here. But this is the foolishness that these people clearly support. They've done it all the time. This is not a surprise. But in the case of Donald Trump, the fact that he has jumped on to the bandwagon with all of this craziness only tells you that this man does want to lose. Remember what he said to the libertarians? He said, you know, if you don't vote for Trump, if you don't support Trump, he'd just be in a bunch of losers. In fact, he said, you know, you're gonna be the same losers that you were in all previous elections. You're gonna come up with three or 4% and that's gonna be the end of it. Now, I do remind you that these people who are gonna come up with three or 4% they gave Donald Trump less than 1%. So of the three or 4%, Donald gets less than 1% of those people. Donald's not a very popular guy out here. I can promise you. He's got people who believe every last crazy thing that he brings up, but I'm promising you. It won't fly in the election. You know, 30, 35% elected Hitler in Germany, but it won't elect Donald Trump in 2024 America. It won't work. You need more than that. You come up with 30, 35%, you are not just a loser. We're starting to talk about historic landslides. So, you know, if you want to come out against Medicare and Social Security, I promise you you're gonna pay a price. And it's gonna be a big one, but it's okay with me because it's never gonna be in front of a president. No one's gonna have a pen to sign it. No one's gonna pass it in the House of Representatives or the Senate, none of this. All this is just nonsensical conversation that means nothing. I mean, you might as well, if you're gonna see if you can get that passed, you might as well go back and think about the trial and try to figure out every twitch and every yawn and every turn because you're not gonna find that out and you're also not gonna convince the people of the United States to vote against Social Security and Medicare. They're just not gonna do it. The people in this country expect that they're going to get the protections that have been promised. They expect it, especially when you're talking about old people, I promise you, they come out to vote in giant numbers and it makes a giant difference. So, Donald can play all the games that he wants, but these games aren't gonna get 'em anywhere. They're gonna get 'em into a lot of trouble, which is fine with me. In the meantime, the jury's gonna come back and say guilty and that's gonna be the end of that. You don't need all this micromanagement of evaluations. It's just gonna be guilty. It's all it is. 'Cause the guy's guilty and the people know and the people in this jury, they'll know. So, that's the story with Donald for today. He's in trouble, but he doesn't know it. He probably saw his stock go up today to $51 a share and he thinks he's getting something out of that. Trust me, he won't. So, before I start talking about getting something to eat, I'm gonna talk a little bit about what happened in the markets today and it's sort of interesting. And it's actually, as I've said, it's a problem for Joe Biden. He's gonna take a hit from all this. I guarantee you, he didn't do anything. Didn't do a thing, but he's gonna take a hit. So, for example, today the Dow Jones was down a little over 400 and a lot of this has to do with healthcare related problems in some of the big healthcare companies that are in the Dow Jones. And it's all tied to Trump issues, but it doesn't matter because believe me, Joe Biden's gonna get all the credit for everything that looks bad. Anyway, the market was down 400, the Dow. And beyond that, one thing that I've talked about now, for really a couple of weeks, and that is the interest rates spiked up again. So, this is the third upward spike in interest rates over the last two weeks. And I can tell you they're climbing back to about the highest that they've been since rates turned up over a year ago. And this rise in rates comes at a time when the so-called experts are saying that the Federal Reserve is getting ready to slash rates. Because it's true, the Fed is frightened. They're not sure what to do here because they don't wanna cause inflation by cutting rates and reigniting all the problems that existed prior to the Fed's recent efforts. But the other side is, they don't wanna keep these rates up too long and cause the economy to sink into a true recession because we're not in a recession. You got polls out here where people are saying, 50% say we're in a recession, but we're not. And then over 50% say that the stock market is going down. But it's not, it's right at the highest it's been ever. That's come off a little bit in the last two days, but these people have been saying this for months. They just live in a different universe. They see things that are just not even close to true, but they see them in their imaginations and they believe it. They're deluded, sort of like Trump because they follow Trump. That's another problem, but the fact is this, there's a danger out here. It's being caused by rising interest rates because rates go up even if the Federal Reserve tries to turn them down, rates do go up if the market perceives things that go beyond what the Federal Reserve is able to control. The Federal Reserve control rates for overnight borrowing between banks. That they can do. They can't control 10-year bonds and they can't control 30-year bonds. The markets are too big and there's just too much pressure. They just can't do it. So the result is that people think that the Fed's doing something which they're not. So at the moment, as the Fed tries to sort of ease up a little bit so as not to cause too much trouble for the economy, instead what's actually happening is that the market is tightening rates on the long end of the curve and that is very costly for everybody in the country. And when I say everybody, here's a perfect example of who everybody is. Mortgage rates, mortgage rates went above 7%. Then they came back down a little below 7% and now they're moving back up again. And in a minute, they're gonna be pushing 8.5%. And I can tell you right now that that will cause people a lot of problems. Cause the housing market a lot of problems, I promise you that. And it won't be Joe Biden who did any of it. But it will be the market that has caused this. It may be the Fed to an extent. You may be able to point some fingers at the Fed and say, well, they said this or they said that or whatever. But here's where we are. Interest rates are spiking up again. And here we are on Wednesday with everybody waiting for big news that's coming out on Friday. And this is on Friday, it's a report that's called the Personal Consumption Expenditure Index. The Fed loves that index. They think that that's a very good measure of what's really happening in inflation. And so everybody will be watching on Friday to see if rates are getting ready to turn down again. But here we are on Wednesday and the market is saying that the rates are actually ticking up. They are. They're right back almost to the high. And if there is anything in that report on Friday that gets people even slightly upset, those rates will spike even further and the markets will react. They'll react pretty dramatically. I mean, they're already reacting. I showed you a chart maybe two weeks ago of indexes that represented thousands of stocks compared to the 30 industrial index. Now the 30 industrial index rose to an all-time high just above 40,000. Now it's about 1,500 points below that right now, maybe closer to 2,000. But at any rate, these other indexes never rose with the market in the first place and they have begun to plunge even deeper than where the Dow Jones industrial average is. And that's another problem. I mean, all this can lead to some pretty dramatic news on the economic front in the short run. And I'm just saying that that's where we are. It's not looking great at the moment. People will blame Joe Biden wrongfully so, but they will. There's a company today called Salesforce. It's actually salesforce.com. The symbol is CRM. And I can tell you right now that after the close, their earnings came out, they weren't horrible, they weren't great. And the company's down over $30 a share, that's about 15%. It's a big company. It trades sort of with Microsoft. And that's creating problems today. And that's after the close. So that doesn't even include, that's not even included in the numbers from earlier today. So there's some problems cooking out here. I've been talking about them, but the more they show up, the more I think it's important for people to know about them, because people wanna sit here and worry about whether Donald Trump is going to survive this trial, and believe me, he's not. But on top of that, what people should be worried about is their wealth, their money. What's it at? Where's it going? And what can they do about it? Because there are things that they could do about it, but in order to know, they would have to have some degree of economic education, and I promise you that that's something that this country just doesn't do. We don't teach people anything, hardly anything, about how markets work, and how they affect our lives. Hardly anything at all, if any. And most people listen to this, and then their eyes just go into the back of their heads, and they just figure, what can I do? Well, what they could do is know something, but instead, they're listening to a raving maniac who wants to cut Medicare Social Security, and then look you in the eye and say, it's not me. I'm not doing it, and I didn't do it. But actually, if he could, he would. But I'm going to say he can't, because he's not going to get elected, and therefore he won't. But you want to read something, read about Project 2025. They're up to some very bad things, I promise you. Okay, but I'm up to really good things, and the first really good thing I'm going to talk about is dinner, and that's at Wenties. Wenties is at 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road in the Valley, and their food is great. First of all, everybody loves the wings. People love the smoked meats. People love the hamburgers, the cheeseburgers, the pizza. Come on, who doesn't love pizza? Everything, great food at Wenties. But my favorite baby back ribs and onion rings, but they've got everything else too, and salads, and just everything. Just a great place to go. A ban is there from time to time. You go by, you'll find him, but you never know. He might be in the other location, because now, Wenties is also in Defiance, Missouri, the same great food, the same great environment. It's all the same, it's all Wenties, and it's in Defiance, Missouri. It's just opened, it is outstanding. If you're anywhere near, Defiance, make sure you stop at Wenties. Okay. If you're looking at jewelry, if you're buying jewelry, if you're selling jewelry, and/or coins, if you're selling coins, you can buy them at 4506 Hampton. You can buy and sell there. Great prices for everybody, and that's Jules on Hampton, 4506 Hampton. Now, the owner, Al, and his son, AJ, are always there. They're just there. They're there to take care of people, they're very nice. Everybody loves Al and AJ, and all you've got to do is stop by and just take a look at everything they've got, because they've got a ton of inventory. Now, they also design jewelry. They'll design it the way you want it. They'll design it in a very creative way that they might decide, because they're good. They're very good. This is a very top flight jewelry company, and all you've got to do is stop at 4506 Hampton, go in and check out Al and AJ and all of their great inventory, Jules on Hampton, and if you've got to watch, and it's got any kind of problem, and it's a good watch, this is the place to take your excellent watches where they can be fixed, and that's at Jules on Hampton, 4506 Hampton. And finally, the St. Louis Sioux Company. They're in Clayton. I've gone there for a very long time, because I've always dressed up in suits when I go to work. It's just what I do. Why complicated, a lot of reasons, and probably just a lot of inertia behind what I've already been doing from the past. But I'm just going to say this. The St. Louis Sioux Company is a great place to shop for men's clothing, and on top of that, they've got the best buys anywhere. When it comes to ties, $5 for a tie. These are ties that are silk, beautiful patterns. They're outstanding ties. You can't beat it. They're great for gifts. The St. Louis Sioux Company is just the place to go for men's clothing, and I can also tell you that on top of all of it, they've got overcoats for the winter time, they've got straw hats for the summer time, they've got shirts, they've got shoes. As I've said many times, no chucks, sorry, but everything else, including nice shoes that look like tennis shoes, but go in and check them out. That is the St. Louis Sioux Company in Clayton, the corner of Central and Forsyth in Clayton. St. Louis Sioux Company, they've been there for 29 years. Probably be there another 29. Just a great place, and as I always say, Jay and Nick are the people to ask for there. Jay's the dad, Nick's the son, the rest of the family's all over the place too. They'll take care of you so well that St. Louis Sioux Company in Clayton. So the city of St. Louis has got a problem. Everybody's got a problem, don't they? City of St. Louis has got a problem because they've got our earnings tax, and they need the money from that earnings tax in order to operate the city. A lot of people have moved out of the city. At one time, there was almost a million, like 870,000 or something like that. And now, we're down to like 250,000 or so people in the city, and the city of St. Louis needs that earnings tax to operate. Its base of revenue is way down, and its requirements to operate are way up. I know people talk to me all the time about the roads. I can imagine, if you're a member of the Board of Alderman, and you've got people coming up to you all the time about the roads, people do expect you to fix those roads. And I guess that's the place you should go. I really don't know, but I will say that that's where everybody goes, and the roads are a mess. Now, there are a mess every year. I admit that. And it's not even just in the city. I can tell you that I'm out in Chesterfield, and when I get on Highway 40, coming from Chesterfield Village Parkway, there are holes in the road. They're so gigantic. I mean, if you don't go around them, you're going to mess up your car. So you've got to go around them, and then it slows traffic down, and people, I'm sure, do wreck their cars. I'm positive. It's just not good. Now, I don't know who to go to. People say to me, who can we go to? I don't know. I have the slightest idea. I mean, they think maybe I might know somebody, because I mouth off all the time. The truth is, I haven't got the slightest idea of where you go to get your roads fixed. But I can tell you this, if you don't have any money, you will not fix the roads, not in the county, and not in the city. So there's no question. That earnings tax is essential. Without it, the city's got problems. Now, here's how this sort of developed. You've got some people who sued the city, and they said that they worked outside the city for a company that was headquartered in the city, and that inappropriately, they were having that 1% sales tax yanked out of their income every month. So it went to trial. Court got their hands on it. You're in conservative Missouri. And they said that that's true. And they said that these people have a right to get all their taxes back. So in the first place, you can see what's going to happen. The city is going to get hit hard, because the city is going to be required to pay money back to people that they received over years because of this lawsuit that did win. Again, of course, this is our system. You know, if you lose in court, you lose. I will tell you, we are going to have a conversation about this. I believe it's like a two-carat away here. But I believe it's going to be on Friday, and it will be, if it happens, it'll be with Megan Green, Megan's out of St. Louis at the moment, and traveling back. So she couldn't do it today because of the travel, and she wasn't sure about tomorrow, but she figured that Friday looks pretty good. And so we tentatively have set it up for Megan to come in on Friday to talk about this among other problems that are affecting the city of St. Louis. And this is certainly front and center at the moment, because that tax is critical for our city. I mean, without that money, there's trouble. And there are people who are trying to cut that tax back all the time, people in the legislature, Republicans, and it's not even Donald Trump's fault. What do you know? Something is not Donald's problem. He didn't do it. He didn't start it. It's not him. I'll grant you that. This has nothing to do with Donald Trump. But it does have something to do with this Republican party. And the notion that you can get by without collecting taxes and think that you're going to have money to operate your city, because it won't work. There are so many things that we need to take care of. And one of those-- and I'm not saying this comes out of the tax money because it doesn't. It doesn't come out of the personal income tax. But also on the front page of today's post-Dispatch was a story about the St. Louis Public Schools buildings and the huge expenditure that needs to be made to bring a lot of these buildings back up to the point where anybody could actually go to school in them. So that's one thing. And then the second thing is that some of these buildings are just laying there where nobody's even in school, but they're just getting further and further beat down by just the world, conditions. And something needs to be done with these buildings. They are going to cause an enormous cost to the St. Louis Public Schools immediately, immediately and beyond. So yes, the city's got a problem with its sales tax issue because it needs that money to operate lots of different things that are being shoved aside at the moment because they now have to repay a whole bunch of that sales tax that they picked up because the courts said that they don't have any right to it. Now I can't tell you because this is beyond my knowledge level because, again, I'm no lawyer. I say this all the time. And can this be appealed somewhere? I'm not sure. And I know we're going to talk to Meghan about that. Hopefully, Friday, if it's not Friday, it'll come, but hopefully, Friday, because I do want to know what are some of the alternatives here, are we thinking about them clearly? And does our St. Louis city government have a plan? Are they really aiming to fix this mess? Because this is money that they cannot afford to lose. Now there's other money around. People are telling me all the time that there was money that was given to the city due to some of the problems, the emergency problems that came off of COVID and that that money is supposed to be given to poor people and it's not happening. So, again, we probably ought to have some idea what part of that is true because my guess is that a large part of that may not be true, that there's not necessarily money, there's just sitting around out here waiting for the city to allocate it and that the government refuses to access those funds and do anything to help people. I don't believe that for a minute, but lots of stories get told and that's one of the stories that's being told. So, you know, I hesitate to get too far into that because I don't even believe that that's what's happening, but I do believe that if we talk to Megan Green, she's gonna tell us, she's gonna have a very good idea of which part of the money out here is accessible to the city for problems the city has that need to be resolved, possibly money that could replace whatever's being taken away through the lawsuit that was just won against the city on the personal property tax. That's all things that need to be looked at. Somebody needs to figure it out because the city needs this money. All of this money that it's taking in is required to operate the city and in fact, I say this all the time. I think that the city, which I understand won't fly, but the city probably needs to increase that 1% sales tax to one and a half percent. Now, I understand nobody wants to take that on because you have all these people out here who are saying right now that they want to cut the taxes. I mean, they don't want to add, they don't want to leave it the same. They're suing all over the place to get whatever they can out of the city and then they want to cut these taxes. And in the meantime, you're looking at problems like what we saw in the post this morning that I have already mentioned, that's the St. Louis public schools that's sitting out here with buildings that are in desperate shape that need funding from somewhere to be repaired or to be knocked down. Now, if they're not going to be repaired and they're not going to be knocked down, are they in any kind of a shape to, for example, be sold? My guess is probably not. I've been in those buildings. I know what they look like. They're not good. And that's another point in all of this. You know, if you've got kids and you're in the county, they're not going to be going to these city schools, but if you've got kids in the city schools where there are all kinds of problems, behavioral problems, relationship problems between school leadership and teachers, all kinds of issues that exist in public education, not just in St. Louis, all over the country, but certainly they're in St. Louis. And, you know, what's somebody going to do to deal with these problems? I understand people will say to me, well, the Board of Alderman isn't responsible for this and they're not. And the mayor isn't responsible for this and she's not. But if you're a leader, then you're probably ought to stand up and say, this is not the area in which I have control. And yet on the other hand, for the benefit of the city, you need to come up with some solutions to problems that face these areas as an example, these city school buildings. Because I'm going to tell you right now, they're going to have a heck of a time selling these buildings and part of the reason is because what are you going to turn them into? Office space, give me a break. Maybe you should take a ride through Chesterfield. That's an interesting problem. I live in Chesterfield and I can tell you that there are buildings going up everywhere. A lot of apartments, that's for sure. And the numbers on those apartments are pretty good. I mean, the prices are high. The rents are way up there. And that's one of the complaints people have about inflation that they have to pay too much to live in these places. But here's the deal, you keep building these buildings. You're going to hit a point where you can't fill them. That's one part of the problem. The second part of the problem is office space. And I know there's a big story out here that Chesterfield can support some kind of a downtown Chesterfield project in which office space will be built for what? For people to go to work who don't go to work because you know people don't go to work. And the people who do go to work go to work two or three days a week and they don't like that. They're fighting back everywhere over this. They don't want to go to work five days a week in an office. So maybe they stop by the office and get something out of the office and then they take off. They're just not working in offices. I know I've talked to some people about Wells Fargo down in the city, beautiful campus there for Wells Fargo. They've got all kinds of things going on in that building that have been there for years, which originally of course was A.G. Edwards. Now Wells Fargo and I've been told that it's pretty empty who wants to go there. Anyway, I'm just saying this. People need to think before they come up with some of these projects. They got projects going on up here but they'll never make money. Because they're just not thinking. They're not thinking about who would populate these buildings in Chesterfield, office buildings where people don't want to go to work. I mean, you're going to have to figure that one out because I can tell you right now that people say, "Well, government is so horrible. Oh, they are so stupid." Well, this isn't government. This is private business. They're building buildings thinking they're going to fill them up and that they're going to create a new Clayton out in Chesterfield. I mean, at one time that might have been a possibility maybe but you know what they're doing to Chesterfield Mall? They're tearing it down. Now I understand they say, "Oh, we're tearing down Chesterfield Mall but we've got this other idea." I think they better be careful because I think this other idea may go up against a brick wall in a very short period of time. I would be extremely cautious. Anyway, I'm going to be cautious enough to get out of here because we've run up against the clock, brought to you by Wenties, Jules on Hampton in the St. Louis suit company. This is Showdown. I'm Mark Casein.