In this episode of The Kim Monson Show, delve deep into the themes of government control and individual freedom. Kim discusses the growing influence of government regulations on transportation, education, energy, housing, and water. Listeners are encouraged to consider whether these controls represent freedom or force, as Kim emphasizes the importance of addressing these crucial issues.
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It’s the Kim Monson Show, analyzing the most important stories.
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The socialization of transportation, education, energy, housing, and water, what it means is that government controls it through rules and regulations.
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The latest in politics and world affairs.
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Under this guise of bipartisanship and nonpartisanship, it’s actually tapping down the truth.
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Today’s current opinions and ideas.
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On an equal field in the battle of ideas, mistruths and misconceptions is getting us into a world of hurt.
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Is it freedom or is it force? Let’s have a conversation.
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Indeed, let’s have a conversation, and welcome to the Kim Monson Show. Thank you so much for joining us. You each are treasured, you’re valued, you have purpose. Today’s drive for excellence, take care of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body. My friends, we were made for this moment in history. Thank you to the team, that’s Producer Joe, Luke, Rachel, Zach, Echo, Charlie, Mike, Amanda, and all the people here at Crawford Broadcasting. Happy Monday, Producer Joe. Happy Monday, Kim. And fasten your seatbelts. We’ve got a jam-packed show planned for you today. But check out the website. That is Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. While you’re there, make sure that you go to newsletter. And already, if you are signed up and you’re receiving our weekly newsletter, sign up to get our… Daily Digest as well. And that will be coming out. I think it’s actually probably going to be next week, Monday through Friday, where we will be in the afternoon sending you the Daily Digest on news on that. So make sure you’re signed up for both of them. Even if you’re signed up for the newsletter, we will not automatically sign you up for the Daily Digest because we want to have your permission to be sending something out so often. So you can do that at the website. That’s KimMonson.com. While you’re there, we are rolling out our Kim Monson community in addition to our Kim Monson newsroom. And join us. This is a place where we are connecting and conversing. And communicating about these ideas, contemplating them. And what we’re building is something just amazing. And so join us. There’s three different levels. $50 a year, $100 a year, or $200 a year. So check that out. And all that is at our website. You can email me at kim at kimMonson.com. The text line I do want to hear from you is 720-605-0647. And thank you to all of you who support us. We are an independent voice on an independent station, and we search for truth and clarity by looking at these issues through the lens of freedom versus force, force versus freedom. If something’s a good idea, you should not have to use force to implement it. And it’s never compassionate to take other people’s stuff, whether or not it’s their rights, their property, freedom, livelihood, opportunity, childhood, or lives via force and control. And that can be a weapon, policy, an unpredictable and excessive taxation, fees, fear, coercion, government-induced inflation, the agenda of the World Economic Forum and globalist elites and their tools with the United Nations. But you see it playing out in these state legislatures, this Colorado governor, And also county, local, school district, and special district levels. And that’s why we have to understand what’s going on. And that’s why we focus on the issues. We’ll mention the people pushing those issues. But we stay out of all the personality fighting. Let’s see. Our word of the day is embody. And this is from Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. And I’d really recommend that you have a number of hard copy books. dictionaries in your home. And this is one that I have. And the word is embody is E-M-B-O-D-Y. And it could be number one, to give a concrete form to personify or exemplify. Number two, to provide with a body incarnate. Number three, to collect into a body organized. Number four, to embrace or comprise. And we see that so much happening in the political realm embodies more and more control, which embodies the Marxist ideals of the state controls everything. And there’s the elites that make those decisions. And there’s just then the rest of the rest of the minions, the peasants. And that’s why the American idea is so unique is that that the founders realized that, no, it’s not minions. We’re not peasants. We are individuals that are created by God with these rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. And there is no way that Marxism and the American idea can exist in the same spot, just as there’s no way that Sharia law exists And the American idea, the Constitution, can exist in the same spot either. So we are in this huge battle of ideas that is raging in our country today. So that is our word of the day, which is embody. Our quote of the day, I was looking for elections, and I found this from John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in April of 1796. And he said this, he said, corruption in elections has heretofore destroyed all elective governments. what regulations or precautions may be devised to prevent it in the future, I’m content with you to leave posterity to consider. You and I shall go to the kingdom of the just, or at least shall be released from the republic of the unjust, with hearts pure and hands clean of all corruption in elections, so much I firmly believe. And I chose that quote because we’ll be talking with Harry Howry in segments two, three, and four. He is the CEO of Unite for Freedom. And we’ll be talking about HAVA, which is a Help America Vote Act complaint that was recently filed here in Colorado. They have had success with a HAVA complaint in Missouri and also an update on our lawsuit that we raised the money for for them to file recently. And so I chose that regarding elections. John Adams was born in 1735. He died in 1826. He was a founding father and the second president of the United States before his presidency. He was a leader in the American Revolution that achieved our independence from Great Britain during the latter part of the Revolutionary War. And in the early years of the new nation, he served the Continental Congress of the United States as a senior diplomat in Europe. He was the first person to hold the office of Vice President of the United States. He was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded. with important contemporaries, including his wife and advisor, Abigail Adams, and his friend and rival, Thomas Jefferson. And what is so amazing is that it’s a divine thing that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was signed. And so the quote again was from John Adams saying, Our bill of the day is House Bill 261310. It’s titled Wildlife Resiliency Grant Money. There’s that word, grant. That means it’s taking from somebody to give to somebody else. The prime sponsor on this is Representative Tammy Story. CUT, the Colorado Union taxpayer, is a no on this. And that team has worked diligently all weekend long to look at these bills. is Steve Dorman, Greg Golianski, Russ Haas, Bill Hamill, Rob Knuth, John Nelson, Wendy Warner, Marty Nielsen, Ramey Johnson, Mary Jansen, David Evans, Corey Onizorg, Paula Beard, and Ray Beard. And these are all volunteers that are looking at legislation that is scheduled for hearing for the next week. As of right now, per Bill Track 50, there’s been 523 volunteers bills or resolutions that have been proposed and cut after today. We’ll probably have taken positions on 120 of those. This is monumental work. And if you would like to receive that email that we will be sending out later this morning to legislators and the governor regarding these bill positions, join us. It’s only $25 and you can do that by going to coloradotaxpayer.org. That’s coloradotaxpayer.org. And this is our commentary on it. It says this bill shifts money from different funds with the end result to mitigate wildlife mitigation for income qualified homes living in the mountains. This creates winners and losers. CUT believes it is the responsibility of the individual homeowner who chooses to live in the mountains to do their own fire mitigation, not the taxpayer. CUT soundly believes that this money could be best utilized to address better forest management and supporting the timber industry to perform selective harvesting. And again, that is House Bill 261310. And these discussions happen because we have many great sponsors. One of those is Hooters Restaurants. And Hooters Restaurants has locations in Loveland, Westminster, and in Aurora. And on Mondays, wait a second, I got to make sure that it’s on Mondays. You know what? I think that’s Little Richie’s. So there’s a happy hour and lunch specials Monday through Friday. And be sure and check that out. I got to know Hooters restaurants. It’s this this this big question about freedom and free markets and capitalism and those PBIs, politicians and bureaucrats and interested parties that are trying to control our lives. You see it at the local level. We see it at the national level. and also at the state level and so i really appreciate their sponsorship of both the kim Monson show and america’s veterans stories and they do have world famous wings at hooters restaurants and take a look at all of my sponsors on the website where you can find them is go down to the bottom it says sponsors we’re going to have a tab at the top here shortly we’ve revamped everything and it all takes time to make it all work but down at the bottom is all of our sponsors click on that and I am blessed to work with so many amazing people And I’m talking with Roger Mangan with the Roger Mangan State Farm Insurance Team. And, Roger, it is close to springtime, and that means that it’s getting close to hail season, right? Good old hail season, yes, ma’am. And Colorado is one, in all of our conversations, I’ve learned that Colorado is one of the hail capitals of the world. Yes.
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That is for sure. It’s amazing to me. Let me regurgitate a few statistics from the Rocky Mountain. Insurance Information Association. I have to give them credit. They do a great job. Before I give them credit, however, Kim, I want to give my team credit. I saw them this morning before I came in, and kudos to them. When we were talking this morning, we were adding up the years of experience, including mine, to about 150 years of insurance experience. If you took me out of there, it would be 100 years of experience. And that means a lot. When you call in, they know the ins and outs and the subtleties. So Amanda, Stacy, Michelle, Kathy, they are amazing. So if you call and you want to quote, you’re going to get some really solid, rock solid professionals when you talk to them.
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Roger, I can attest to that in working with you and working. Normally I talk with Stacy and she has been so helpful on a number of different things that I’ve done. And I know that you and your team indeed strive for excellence. Thank you, Kim. That means a lot to us and to them as well. And also, I know that you are saving some people money as well. We need to mention that, that State Farm had lowered the vehicle insurance rates or auto insurance rates for both new customers and existing customers, which as people are really getting squeezed, this has been great. And I’ve heard from some of my listeners that, in fact, one of our listeners said that you saved him $3,000. Wow. Very good.
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You know, it’s interesting. State Farm is a mutual company. I think that’s important for you to know. We’re not a stock company, so we don’t have stockholders to speak to for a profit. If we are charging too much in the marketplace, good old capitalism is at work. Competition will drive rates down. That’s the case with State Farm. We when we increase the rate, we anticipate based on previous years experience or six months in the case of auto insurance that we’re going to need more premium to cover losses. And those losses, of course, are parts for cars, body shop rates, inflation that takes place. So it’s a guessing game. So if we increase rates and we’re wrong, we’re going to reverse those rates. Well, we’ve been kind of in the woods, most insurance companies, I think, for the last year and a half, especially with COVID and supply line problems. Those are all evened out now to 80 percent anyway. So basically what State Farm did was revise the rates for new business. So if you’re a new listener out there, we took a 16% rate reduction effective about a month ago. And for our existing business, we took a 9% reduction. So State Farm is very conscientious in terms of rates and the open market and the impact. We don’t want to lose business, obviously, and we want to write business, so we’re putting ourselves in that position. Give us a call.
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Well, and one other thing is if people bundle their insurance together, they might be able to save some additional money as well, right? Absolutely, absolutely. And that number to call Roger Mangan and his team is 303-795-8855. Like a good neighbor, the Roger Mangan team is there. I know that we teased that it’s hail season. I think that we will talk about that next week. Again, that number is 303-795-8855.
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Do you strive for excellence as you work with your clients and customers? Does it make sense for you to add a unique and focused branding opportunity to your marketing portfolio? Would you like to access a broad customer base that loves our country and wants to make life better for ourselves, our neighbors, our colleagues, our children and our grandchildren? Then you may be a perfect fit as a sponsor or partner of The Kim Monson Show. To learn more, reach out to Kim at Kim at Kim Monson dot com. Kim would love to talk with you again. That’s Kim at Kim Monson dot com.
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Welcome back to the Kim Monson Show. Be sure and check out our website. That is KimMonson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. And I want to say thank you to Laramie Energy for their gold sponsorship of the show. It is reliable, efficient, affordable, and abundant power from naturally occurring hydrocarbons, such as oil, natural gas, and coal that powers our lives. fuels our hopes and dreams, and empowers us to change our own personal climate. And if you’re having any challenges with your own personal climate, being warm in the winter or cool in the summer, reach out to Ben’s Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling. That number is 303-995-1636. On the line with me is Harry Howry. He is the CEO of Unite for Freedom. Formerly, it was United Sovereign Americans. And it’s the group that we raised the money for one of the lawsuits that we filed back in 2024 regarding our elections. And Unite for Freedom is very busy. Harry Howry, welcome to the show.
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Welcome. Nice to be here again.
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Well, it is great to have you. And for those people that don’t know your history, tell us just a little bit about yourself.
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I get this question often. I don’t always know where to start, but I’m a former contractor, I guess would be the right way to say it. I wasn’t actually employed, but I worked across federal government, DITRA, CIA, NSA, CIA. As a cybersecurity expert, I also happen to just coincidentally be an election expert, having helped redesign the St. Louis County election system many decades ago. I ended up out of the country for a while working on some things for the government, and I came back in 2019. just in time to see the COVID nonsense strike. And then I got from there, I got involved in, you know, a number of things that happened to have some inside knowledge of the Hunter Biden laptop. And that got me sucked into a number of discussions with people in the war room and, and others about, you know, what may or may not be real on the laptop. And, uh, particularly with, uh, an ex CIA, uh, person that I knew, uh, former station chief. And, uh, at the time, Jack Maxey, who was on a war room, uh, we started exploring that. Then the election started going in a weird way. And, uh, I was called in, uh, by some people I had gotten to know and those other items, the COVID, uh, nonsense and, uh, and the, uh, Hunter Biden laptop got called in by, uh, Wilson Powell and Andrew Giuliani and, uh, Christos McCready is to, uh, see if I could help with some of my statistical background and mathematics background to figure out what happened or just happened in the election, spent the next two weeks or two months in Washington, DC, uh, left just before new year’s, uh, Otherwise, I probably would have been rotting in jail with the rest of the Chase Sixers, to tell you the truth. But the fact of the matter is that I couldn’t let go of the election fraud that was in plain sight that the judges, the politicians, the election officials, bureaucrats, and half of the country couldn’t admit existed. Obviously, Colorado is one of the focal points we have for election problems, partly because of the Tina Peters charade and partly because of seeing, witnessing in real time government corruption turning a red state purple and then blue. We’ve seen this in other states. And once, just like other communist countries, just, you know, when they take over control of a country, the democratic elections go away. Same thing with deep blue states. And actually, I’m not leveling this accusation that Democrats per se, many of them live in kind of a world of non-reality. They don’t believe anything that the right says. They’ve spent so much time demonizing our thoughts and our words that they just dismiss what we say. And because of my background in doing cyber forensic investigations and other types of investigations, and after seeing the disaster of the of the election disputes, the lawsuits, and the lawfare against people bringing lawsuits, I decided to try to get an organization going focused on finding evidence, not the anecdotal examples we have in the thousands. I mean, not inconsequential, but the judges, for a variety of reasons, were dismissing a lot of suits because of false belief that materiality was required before you could sue for noncompliance with election law.
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So, Harry, what does that mean, materiality? What does that mean exactly?
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Materiality means that you have enough of a problem that you justifiably are concerned that it affected the outcome of the election. Okay. And that That requires a number that is big enough that it could have swung the election one way or another, easily swung the election. So what we did from the very beginning, and then, you know, we started building a national organization. But, you know, I had been working with Through the Vote. I was also involved in the arrest of Eugene Yu, serving the warrant officer. in East Lansing, Michigan, seizing evidence of CONIC, you know, having connections to the CCP. And, you know, the rest is kind of history. Our group expanded quite rapidly. We were focused, you know, we focused on, initially we focused on a limited number of states, And we wanted to look at this objectively, not be guilty of blind partisanship. So we’ve looked at blue states. We’ve looked at red states. We’ve looked at purple states. And we were analyzing essentially the information we have access to, which is information about who’s on the voter rolls and who voted on the voter rolls. and what the vote counts are by precinct and county across the United States. What we saw immediately were massive problems. We didn’t really know who was voting. The voting registration rules are so corrupt that in some states, 30% or more of the registrations are not compliant with their own state laws, meaning that they’re invalid. It doesn’t mean that people are invalid. It means that some mistake that disqualifies the voter without some sort of adjudication or provisional reconciliation process should deny that voter a vote. Again, I’m not advocating disenfranchisement. I’m advocating that we know who the voters are. The second piece was that these people that were on the voter rolls at very large numbers that were not legal registrations, not compliant registrations, we’re voting. And most people don’t know this, but election fraud is a phrase, and we try not to use it too much anymore because everybody’s so caught up in financial crimes when they talk about fraud that they don’t understand election fraud is something totally different. One of the examples of election fraud is giving a ballot to someone you don’t know. So if you have 20% registrations that are not compliant in California, and the people are voting, you’re giving them a ballot, and you cannot ask for any meaningful ID under state law. Under federal law, that is defined as election fraud. It’s not ambiguous. It’s not a question. The act of giving a ballot to someone you don’t know is an eligible US citizen is election fraud. It’s against the law. But we didn’t argue this correctly. In 2020, we argued that, you know, President Trump won the election and it was stolen instead of arguing about whether or not the election was won in a valid fashion and whether or not, you know, something had to be done to fix it before certification would have been a better way to argue.
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Okay. And we’re learning from all this. What about the SAVE Act? The headlines look like this is going to be, something’s going to happen this weekend in Congress regarding the SAVE Act. I think that I saw a headline that the Senate is going to do something necessary to get this approved over the line. What do you think about the SAVE Act? And my understanding is in that it requires voter ID, but I think there’s other stuff in there as well, right?
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Yes, there’s a lot of things in there that are good, actually. Technically, they’re already required by law, but sometimes elevating that from a legal and structural and force perspective is good, and it would apply… uh, directly apply criminal law to certain violations of the voting process, which arguably is already applicable, but a lot of that law is kind of stale. Um, you know, most, the body of our election law was mostly determined in the late 1800s. Um, we of course have the national voting rights act. We have the motor voter or NIVRA, uh, act. We’ve got, um, the health America vote act or HABA, uh, those are new, but, but the genesis of election law in terms of criminal behavior actually stems from the period of 1867 to roughly 1888. And, and it’s still good law, but, but for some reason, the prosecutors don’t seem to want to prosecute people on, you know, statutes that are over a hundred years old. So, um, I won’t go into that discussion right now, but the SAVE Act does some things that are very important. And so when people hear me talk, they sometimes believe I’m equivocating in some way. I mean, we need to know who the voters are. So the provisions and the discussions of auditing the voter rolls or purging the voter rolls of illegal registrations, that needs to be done. We need to prevent people that are not the person that’s registered, you know, or are not eligible U.S. citizens. We need to prevent them from voting. And so that requires an actual ID that ties to something material that proves the person is an eligible U.S. citizen. And people say, well, we’re going to disenfranchise people. I would say, first of all, we can accommodate those few people that don’t have IDs, you know, and few, maybe 100,000 or 200,000 across the United States, let them do the purple thumbprint like they do in Iraq. I mean, there are ways of accommodating individuals with peculiar circumstances without throwing our election laws out on the trashy, which is what we’ve done. In the name of not disenfranchising one person, we’ve completely neutered election law. The mail-in ballots are atrocious. People don’t understand this, but they’re illegal. And the framework for the illegality of them is defined in the Help America Vote Act itself. There are only three types of ballots defined in HAVA. One is in-person voting, or voting, I should say, in-person voting. The absentee ballots, and then there’s an ambiguous… reference to mail-in, but without any specificity around it. Most people interpret that as being a reference to absentee ballots. It’s certainly not a defined term in Harvard. So my point is this. There are all sorts of restrictions on in-person voting, all sorts of restrictions on absentee ballots, and then suddenly They decide to open the floodgates with mail-in ballots with the excuse of COVID, right?
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And Colorado was one of the first on that. We’re talking with Harry Howry. He is the CEO of Unite for Freedom regarding our elections. We’re going to go to break. We’ll be right back. And all these discussions happen because of our sponsors. And talk to Karen Levine if you are wanting to change your address.
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April 26th, 1777. Colonel, the British are raiding Danbury and burning the town. I’ll go tell them. Sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington mounted her horse and rode 40 miles through night and pouring rain. That’s twice the distance of Paul Revere to sound the alarm.
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Quickly, assemble at my father’s house.
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The Kim Monson Show is our modern-day Sybil Ludington, bringing us the latest breaking news in the battle for truth and freedom. Ben’s Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling is proud to stand with Kim. Will you stand with us? Get engaged with the issue that keeps you up at night so that you can influence your school and community with truth and justice. And for quality craftsmanship at a fair price, call or text Ben’s Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling at 303-995-1636. That number again is 303-995-1636.
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All Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmonson.com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
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And welcome back to the Kim Monson Show. Be sure and check out our website. That is Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. And check out the website for the Center for American Values. That is AmericanValuesCenter.org. And co-founder Drew Dix, who is a Medal of Honor recipient, will be presenting a webinar. for students today at 3 25 p.m and the team is down in tombstone arizona in fact president henry jones um texted me a picture of him and drew cowboy hats pressed jeans and all all down while they’re in tombstone getting ready for this great webinar with students down there in person and then uh uh Register your kids and your grandkids for this. The subject is living valor, and you can do that by going to AmericanValueCenter.org. We’re talking with the CEO of Unite for Freedom, Harry Howry. And Harry, I had one other question on this SAVE Act, which is basically requiring ID. But I’ve seen that there are some people concerned about this national ID. And I go back to my memory of the Patriot Act. I remember when that was being proposed, my gut feeling was, gosh, this seems like this could be a problem. But I thought, oh, okay, in order to keep Americans safe, okay. But what’s ended up is we’ve had surveillance on American citizens. Is there some sticky wicket on the SAVE Act that we should be concerned about?
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Well, I’m certainly not an advocate of national ID or the expanded use of national ID. It’s already a problem, frankly, in controlling the movement of people in the United States. It used to be that freedom of association and freedom of movement were considered very strong civil rights, and you couldn’t question somebody on the sidewalk. about who they were without some sort of compliance of habeas corpus or probable cause for stopping them in the middle of a daily walk. We never wanted our government to be able to intrude on our lives, but under the Patriot Act, as an example, we decided we needed to have identity to get onto an airplane. whether that was true or not. I don’t want to get into that controversy particularly, but we have seen that the Patriot Act has been abused considerably. It was used, you know, the standing and increased power of the FISA courts under the Patriot Act were used to spy on President Trump and many of his administration. It’s been used to spy on whistleblowers illegally, I might add. I mean, if you’re a registered whistleblower, the FBI can’t be wiretapping you to find out what you’re going to talk about. I have a business partner that is a registered whistleblower and was harassed by the FBI for years under the Obama and Biden administrations. leading eventually to the culmination of losing his security clearances, which was an atrocious retaliation. So we have the risks of the same thing. The more we push people into quote IDs, then what happens is it’s expanded beyond all reason. And, you know, we used to see this with, you know, with, places demanding Social Security numbers on checks to catch them, as an example, that was finally ruled to be illegal because it was an overt intrusion for a purpose not anticipated by the Social Security Act to begin with. You’re going to have the same kinds of issues here, creeping, you know, intrusions on identity, you know, and what’s going to stop the, you know, the phone company from demanding that they see your real ID before they give you a cell phone. Well, it’s going to stop, you know, and this is what happens. It looks okay to begin with. We see this with the IRS, right? We, we passed an amendment that allows income tax and, and, and inquisition about your financial condition without probable cause, which was originally ruled to be illegal, non-constitutional, but, but then in the amendment, that allows the IRS and the promise that it would all stay anonymous, you know, it allowed the IRS to proceed. But now we see IRS records used as political weapons all the time. The original promise to the American people was that these would never be seen by anybody except revenue collection officers that needed to know how much money you were making. So we’ll see the same thing with expansion of ID. The other issue that everybody’s raising, which is actually a non-issue under the law, is that we’ll disenfranchise voters that somehow can’t get an ID. My argument would be that proving identification for the purposes of voting and eligibility as a U.S. citizen isn’t an onerous thing. Sure, I think that you need two things. You need to guarantee legally that that requirement for ID won’t be expanded in its use anywhere and has to be kept confidential, reasonably confidential. And there has to be some sort of accommodation of the few people nationwide that can’t get IDs. But it’s insulting, frankly, to hear the politicians talk about disenfranchisement. I mean, how many people don’t have credit cards? How many people don’t have an ATM card? How many people don’t have a driver’s license? Asking them to go through some similar process to prove up their citizenship doesn’t seem particularly burdensome. But I do believe I do believe the encroachment on our civil rights, the freedom of association, freedom of speech, these are dangerous. And we see increasing evidence of abuse of these things. So I’m not saying we shouldn’t pass the SAVE Act, but we should put guardrails into it to protect against abuse. The other thing that you need that is not being allowed for is the SAVE Act only does a partial cure. We have problems with our registration process. We have problems determining whether people are eligible U.S. citizens to vote. We have problems maintaining control of the ballot from the voters’ hands to the ballot box. We have an extreme problem with proving whether or not the systems count the ballots correctly. And then we’ve decided that we simply don’t care about the Help America Vote Act requirements that all auditable items be maintained to allow you to prove the system works. They’ve now made it into a black box that you can no longer investigate. But we have proof with our, you know, United for Freedom data. We have proof that the inputs and the outputs don’t add up. And as soon as you have a black box that doesn’t add up, you know, it’s broken. It’s proof that it’s broken. How badly broken? Can’t tell without opening up the covers. But, you know, every time someone wants to open the covers of the left, you know. reacts and tries to put those people in prison or into bankruptcy or both, as has happened to Tina Peters, obviously, in Colorado.
SPEAKER 16 :
Well, and Harry, with that, it’s not just Democrats. It’s also that we’ve seen Republicans that are stonewalling on this as well. I’d like to go to break early so that I don’t interrupt you because I want to talk with you about this recent… Let’s see, was it the HAVA complaint that was filed here in Colorado? Is that what it was?
SPEAKER 05 :
Correct, by Peter Berninger. Well, Peter Berninger was helping Mike Cahoon, who’s a volunteer for Unite for Freedom and has been associated with other election integrity groups. I think you know Mike already.
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah, I know Mike. And Peter is the other group with his group, Wisconsin Center for Election Justice, that we raised the money for that other lawsuit that was filed. And So we’re working with really great people on this with Harry Howery and Unite for Freedom and with Peter Berninger with Center for Election Justice. And then they’ve come together. And Mike Cahoon is the Colorado director of Unite for Freedom. So we’re going to go to break. We’re talking with Harry Howery. These discussions are so important. They happen because of all of our great sponsors. And one of those is Lauren Levy for Everything Mortgages.
SPEAKER 14 :
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SPEAKER 10 :
The Kim Monson Show is expanding and augmenting our voice and reach. In addition to the Kim Monson Show broadcast, we have created the Kim Monson Newsroom and the Kim Monson Community. We call them the three presses and they are foundational to free speech and engaging in responsible self-governance. Go to kimMonson.com, click on the newsletter tab, and sign up for the weekly email newsletter and the daily digest. And join the Kim Monson community, which is a modern salon where you can contemplate, connect, and converse around the principles we cover daily. Sign up today at kimMonson.com.
SPEAKER 15 :
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SPEAKER 09 :
With all the chaos and confusion in our world, how can you plant yourself on a foundation based on truth and clarity? The Kim Monson Show is here to help. Kim examines news, politics, and opinion through the lens of freedom versus force, force versus freedom, and shares human interest stories that will inspire you and make you smile. Tune in to The Kim Monson Show each weekday, 6 to 8 a.m., with encores 1 to 2 p.m., and 10 to 11 p.m. on KLZ 560 AM, KLZ 100.7 FM, the KLZ website, and the KLZ app. Shows can also be found at kimMonson.com, Spotify, and iTunes.
SPEAKER 16 :
And welcome back to the Kim Monson Show. Check out our website. That is KimMonson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. And your financial freedom is shaped by more than numbers. It’s shaped by planning for the realities of your life. At Mint Financial Strategies, Jodi Hensey and her team help you assess your current reality while planning for your future. Additionally, Mint Financial Strategies helps you navigate through your emotions regarding the economy, your career, and the market. and encouraging you to evaluate family dynamics that could influence your financial well-being. So give them a call for that wealth plan that will make you financially free. That number is 303-285-3080, 303-285-3080. And I also wanted to mention the USMC Memorial Foundation, Paula Sarles, did her birthday challenge on Saturday. She’s 77 years old, and so… encourages us to make a contribution with the number seven in that. And so you can go to usmcmemorialfoundation.org to make that contribution. We’re talking with Harry Howry. He is the CEO of Unite for Freedom. And we’re talking about the Help America Vote Act, also known as HAVA. And it was passed in 2002 by Congress in response to challenges in the 2000 election. And Harry and the team at Unite for Freedom have partnered with Peter Berneger to bring a HAVA complaint forward here in Colorado. So tell us what this is based on, Harry Howry.
SPEAKER 05 :
So from the very beginning of Unite for Freedom’s history, we focused on gathering evidence of and quantifying the degree of openness in our election system. So quantifying how many false registrations we have, how many voters that voted that shouldn’t have been allowed to vote, quantifying the magnitude of the vote-to-voter discrepancy that exists in every state in the country. And recently, we’ve looked at… A couple of other very powerful issues with regard to what appears to be manipulation of the vote during the voting process and immediately after the voting process is over. Millions of votes have been changed. And there’s just no explanation for this that is either not gross incompetence to the point of of this whole system is so broken we can’t trust it, or actual evidence of manipulation of the vote. Regardless, we have problems in the system that mean literally that we can’t use it as it exists today. I mean, from the machines, the voter rolls, to the mail-in ballots, to the lack of auditability, this has to all be fixed. So the AVA lawsuits direct toward our scorecards, and the vote tampering reports that we’ve created that measure the degree of illegality in the system. And what they start with and what you saw in Colorado is basically a lawsuit about the HAVA violations that are rampant across the system. And that does include NIBRA as well, the National Voter Registration Act. but never is subsumed into HAVA by reference. So I just call it HAVA. So we’re looking at HAVA violations and suing to get those pieces of evidence reviewed and explained. Now, the states are fussing about it, but fortunately, A few legal groups across the country, Peter Berger’s, Greg Stenskrim and Leah Hoops’ efforts in Pennsylvania, Andy Thompson in Nevada and Arizona, have started getting some headway. And so what we’ve done is we’ve recrafted our strategy to leverage the extensive work that our 100-plus data analysts have done to document the size of the problem And then we’ve worked with Peter and we’re working as well with Greg and Leah and others to open up lawsuits that are directed toward the evidence that we’ve gathered and doing it in an orderly fashion using existing explorations. So the first level are HAVA challenges, you know, complaints, which should result in an open hearing, but the states have been refusing to have the required open hearing. The first one that we filed was in Missouri, and we actually won that case in federal court against the Secretary of State here, and they are ordered to proceed with a hearing. The reason the hearing is important is it gives us a mechanism of questioning the officials about why they aren’t taking the actual data of malfeasance and error seriously. And it allows us to get things onto the record quickly without the usual kind of delays and difficulty of a lawsuit challenging some particular legal aspect of the election. We believe that those will then end up in lawsuits directing the states to behave differently by 2026. We think this is the only route, one of only two routes that are available to us, getting to the TRO stage in states with civil suits and helping the Department of Justice with our data as well, which we have been doing, giving them all of the HAVA violations that exist and the other violations that we’re finding that just look like patent illegality. to try to get them armed with strong data to challenge. And we talk about MIA all the time. I know you’ve heard this before, but we don’t care if it’s malice, ignorance, or apathy. We need to change it. It’s illegal. So we’re going to force that to be reconciled, but we intend to force it on all fronts, the registration rules, the mail-in balloting, the fact that people are being allowed to vote that can’t prove that they’re eligible u.s citizens the use of machines are clearly broken and and should not be being used and then the destruction of auditable records that that our state officials have been allowed to get away with for years i mean gretchen whitmer for instance and the secretary of state at that time in 2020 orders records destroyed. We know in Pennsylvania… And that was Michigan, wasn’t it?
SPEAKER 16 :
That was Michigan, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
That was Michigan? Yes, Michigan. But we have this in Pennsylvania. We also know it in Colorado, that there’s significant evidence. But unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, the lawsuits haven’t been conducted in a way that can navigate the challenges the courts put up to standing. Through the work of Centrum in Pennsylvania and Berninger up in Wisconsin and Michigan and Colorado, we’ve gotten through standing, or they’ve gotten through standing. We are enlisting their help to get through standing. We intend to file these HABA challenges all over the country. So the first thing I would ask is, If any state, and it doesn’t have to be U4F volunteers currently, although we want to have a cooperation agreement, but we intend to sue states and counties all over the country for HAVA hearings. And you have a built-in cybersecurity expert that can talk about election systems and computers. And in my form, I’m willing to support them directly. But Peter’s got a lot of background in this. Greg Stenstrom is a high-level computer scientist himself. So the fact is that we have the resources and we invite others to participate as well. But we’re going to challenge all of the aspects of the law that are being broken that are causing our elections to be completely untrustworthy. So we anticipate hundreds of lawsuits by well before the beginning of the summer. Of course, we need plaintiffs and we can use Unite for Freedom volunteers for plaintiffs where applicable, but sometimes in some places, We don’t have those plaintiffs and we can produce our scorecards for statewide activities or counties or house races or however it is somebody wants to approach the matter. We will support them with our data analytics. We have the capacity and ability to generate the evidence sorted for whatever the lawsuit, you know, jurisdictional scope would be. And, uh, Okay, a couple of questions. Go ahead, please.
SPEAKER 16 :
Oh, I think that was, I think you just answered my question. That is, so if somebody decides that they want to do this HAVA complaint, let’s say it’s a candidate on a local county level, but then the next thing is attorneys. So you have attorneys that can help them with that, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
We do. I would say this. I mean, we don’t have the money to support attorneys over the whole country. But we do have the ability to template these lawsuits. I mean, HAVA is HAVA. The regulations are the regulations. All we have to do is print out our scorecard, and they can modify our template lawsuits and file pro se if they want to. If they don’t, we’re going to need help raising money to hire lawyers. Obviously, we can’t, you know, Unite for Freedom per se doesn’t give legal advice, but lawyers do, and pro se litigants can use our templates, you know, as background for their own work. But we will help them get through that process. We know how to file these lawsuits, and the things that block pro se litigants, I think we can effectively remove with a minimum amount of
SPEAKER 16 :
legal overhead so okay so unite for freedom we still need money well that was the next thing i was going to say we’re just about out of time that website is unite the number for freedom.com and you can contribute there you can get more information and uh i guess 30 seconds i guess It looks like, Harry, what you and the team, Peter, Mike, are putting in place, particularly here for Colorado, is if we get to this hearing, which will speed things up, what we’ve seen with these lawsuits is they slow walk that legal side of it. And so this would speed things up so that we can have things in place to work towards a free, fair, honest, and transparent election in 2026. Is that the bottom line?
SPEAKER 05 :
If we don’t fix it in 2026, I believe we’re going to lose our country. Period. So I don’t think there’s any coming back if we allow the level of cheating and mischief that we’ve allowed for the last 12 to 16 years. So we have to do something.
SPEAKER 16 :
Okay, go to unite4freedom.com for more information. Harry, thank you so much. We’ll stay in touch. Great work. And John Adams said this. He said, always stand on principle, even if you stand alone. So today, be grateful, read great books, think good thoughts, listen to beautiful music, communicate and listen well, live honestly and authentically, strive for high ideals, and like Superman, stand for truth, justice, and the American way. My friends, you are not alone. God bless you. God bless America. Stay tuned for hour number two.
SPEAKER 12 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
SPEAKER 17 :
It’s the Kim Monson Show, analyzing the most important stories.
SPEAKER 16 :
The socialization of transportation, education, energy, housing, and water, what it means is that government controls it through rules and regulations.
SPEAKER 17 :
The latest in politics and world affairs.
SPEAKER 16 :
Under this guise of bipartisanship and nonpartisanship, it’s actually tapping down the truth.
SPEAKER 17 :
Today’s current opinions and ideas.
SPEAKER 16 :
On an equal field in the battle of ideas, mistruths and misconceptions is getting us into a world of hurt.
SPEAKER 17 :
Is it freedom or is it force? Let’s have a conversation.
SPEAKER 16 :
Indeed. Let’s have a conversation. And welcome to our number two of the Kim Monson Show. Thank you so much for listening. You each are treasured. You’re valued. You have purpose. Today, strive for excellence. Take care of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body. My friends, we were made for this moment in history. Thank you to the team. That’s Producer Joe, Luke, Rachel, Zach, Echo, Charlie, Mike, Amanda, and all the people here at Crawford Broadcasting. Happy Monday, Producer Joe. Happy Monday, Kim. And a great first hour. If you missed that, that will rebroadcast today in the one to two hour. And check out our website. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com. And make sure that you are signed up. Go to newsletter at the top that you are signed up for our weekly newsletter that goes out on Sundays. But also we have created our newsroom. And we will be sending out a daily digest. I think that’s going to start next week. It’ll be in the afternoon with news stories. And we are focusing on great journalistic integrity, showing both sides of the issue, sourcing all of the things that we’re citing in these articles. And then we will have the editorial comment by me in a different box so you can understand that we’re trying not to editorialize the actual article. But I will give commentary based on the article. And so be sure you get signed up for that. We will not automatically sign you up if you are on the newsletter email list because we want your permission if we’re going to be sending you more than that normal one. email that we send out each week. You can email me at Kim at KimMonson.com. And the text line is 720-605-0647. And we thank all of you and all of our sponsors for your support because we are an independent voice on an independent station searching for truth and clarity as we look at these issues through the lens of freedom versus force, force versus freedom. Remember, if something’s a good idea, you shouldn’t have to use force to implement it. And on the show, we focus on the issues. We’ll mention people involved in the issues, but we really work to stay out of the personality stuff, the eighth-grade girl fighting, all the passion and emotion. We want to stay over here on common sense and reason. And I did want to say thank you to LearnMe Energy for their goal sponsorship of the show because it’s reliable, efficient, affordable, and abundant power from naturally occurring hydrocarbons such as oil, natural gas, and coal that powers our lives, fuels our hopes and dreams. and empowers us to change our own personal climate. Our word of the day is embody. It’s spelled E-M-B-O-D-Y. And number one, it could be to give a concrete form to personify or exemplify. Number two, to provide with a body incarnate. Number three, to collect into a body or organize. or four to embrace or comprise. And this is from Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. And I’d highly recommend that you have some hard copy dictionaries at your home. You might even try to get some older ones to see what maybe how the definitions of words have maybe changed a little bit. But your challenge is to use the word embody in a sentence today. And because we talked with Harry Howery with Unite for Freedom and talked a bit about the HAVA complaint, that’s a Help America Vote Act complaint that’s been filed here in Colorado with Peter Bernager and Mike Cahoon as the plaintiffs on that. It’s about elections. So I went to John Adams. So this was a letter to Thomas Jefferson, April 1796. And John Adams was born in 1735. He died July 4th. 1826. And you don’t think that the divine provider has his hand on things. It’s remarkable that John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, both died on July 4, 1826, 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But this was regarding elections. He said, corruption in elections has heretofore destroyed all elective governments. What regulations or precautions may devise to prevent it in the future, I’m content with you to leave posterity to consider. You and I shall go to the kingdom of the just, or at least shall be released from the republic of the unjust, with hearts pure and hands clean of all corruption in elections. So much I firmly believe. And then our bill of the day is House Bill 261310, wildfire resiliency grant money. Our primary sponsor on this is Representative Tammy Story, Democrat. And this is the Colorado Union of Taxpayers position on this. And we take positions on bills that are scheduled for hearing. We try to look at these bills through the context of how it affects the taxpayer, how it affects TABOR, Colorado’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights, parental rights in education, parental rights, and property rights. So this cut votes no. He said this bill shifts money from different funds with the end result to mitigate wildfire mitigation for income-qualified homes living in the mountains. This creates winners and losers. Cutt believes it is the responsibility of the individual homeowner who chooses to live in the mountains to do their own fire mitigation, not the taxpayer. Cutt soundly believes that this money could be used best utilized to address better forest management and supporting the timber industry to perform selective harvesting. And that is our bill of the day. And if you would like to get the email that we will be sending out a little bit later, in the morning that goes to all of the legislators and the governor regarding the bills that we’re taking positions on, join us at coloradotaxpayer.org. It’s only $25 a year. That’s less than a cup of coffee a month so that you can know what’s going on. As Pam Long says, cut is your shortcut to know what’s happening down at the state legislature. And as you know, we are an independent voice. We’re independent because we work with amazing people. And I have one of those amazing people on the line with me, and that is Jody Hinzey with Mint Financial Strategies, a great sponsor of the show. Jody, welcome. Thank you, Kim. Always good to be here. And a lot’s happened since we last talked. We do these biweekly updates, and a lot has happened in our world, Jody Hinzey.
SPEAKER 19 :
Yes, it has. Yes, it has.
SPEAKER 16 :
And that is why it is important during tumultuous times that people have a plan for their financial freedom and they have discipline. And that is what you specialize in.
SPEAKER 19 :
It is. In fact, when we meet with new clients, the very first thing that we do is we put together a financial strategy. I do not make any recommendations for any client without a financial plan because that’s the blueprint. How can I tell somebody what to invest in if we do not have a financial plan? So we will not work with a client that doesn’t have one.
SPEAKER 16 :
And that is so important because, and I mentioned it when I say on the show that we focus on the issues and we’ll talk about the people regarding those issues, but we try to stay out of that personality, emotion, passion side of things. The founders also realized that They tried to temper passion with reason. But emotion, passion, when people get scared or fearful, they tend to make not great decisions.
SPEAKER 19 :
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, Warren Buffett is famous for saying, you know, when people are fearful, that’s when you should invest. And fear is the number one driver for panic selling. And so you wanna avoid making those emotional decisions when it comes to investing. And one of the best ways that you can avoid that is by having that financial plan because that financial plan is gonna help you stay disciplined because you know what you have and why you have it. And so I had a lot of people over the last week or two you know, just asking me, oh, I bet your phone is ringing all the time. I bet your investors are freaking out. And I’m like, honestly, nobody, nobody, Kim, has called me over the last two weeks to panic or to freak out or to get out of their investment. And people are surprised about that. And I’m like, I’m not surprised because my clients know that this is just a temporary thing. And again, they have a plan. We’ve talked about these types of things and they just don’t freak out.
SPEAKER 16 :
Well, I think that is so important. And ultimately, it gets people to their own personal financial freedom. And that is something that people are hungry for. Of course, on the show, we talk about these issues. I was talking with someone out in California the other day, and they’re feeling squeezed. And I said, one of the reasons that you are is because of all of these terrible public policies out in California that take more and more from the everyday middle class through taxes and fees and regulations. And so to have that plan with you is important. And then also what we’re working on on the show is to try to unshackle these things that are really making it difficult for the American middle class.
SPEAKER 19 :
Oh, absolutely. We talk about that all the time too. And when it comes to investing, oftentimes some of the best days cluster with some of the worst days. And again, that kind of goes to not trying to time the market because, again, famous quotes, it’s not timing the market, it’s time in the market. So you want to make sure that you’re not again, having those fearful emotional decisions when it comes to investing. But yeah, I mean, you and I talk about that all the time about, you know, taxation, regulation, the middle class. So I completely agree.
SPEAKER 16 :
Well, and if people would like to sit down with you for a complimentary appointment, that first appointment to go through everything, what’s the best way for people to reach you?
SPEAKER 19 :
Yeah, either email or phone or text. So you can email me at Jody at MintFS.com. That’s Jody with a Y. So J-O-D-Y at MintFS.com. Or you can call or text. My direct line is 303-285-3080. Again, that’s 303-285-3080.
SPEAKER 16 :
And so that you can sleep at night, reach out to Jody Henze and put together that financial plan for your financial freedom and success. Jody, we’ll talk to you in a couple of weeks. Have a great day. You too, Kim. Thanks. And I was thinking, Jody really embodies the focus of discipline in these tumultuous times. So there I am working to get that word of the day in with all that Jody Henze does at Mint Financial Strategies. Another great sponsor of the show is the Roger Mangan State Farm Insurance Team. And they want you to feel safe and well-served. And so they will respond to your caller text 24 hours a day. So for that 24-hour peace of mind, give them a call. That number is 303-795-8855. Like a good neighbor, the Roger Mangan Team is there.
SPEAKER 08 :
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SPEAKER 07 :
Homeownership isn’t just about securing a place to live. It’s about anchoring dreams and sheltering from the storms of life. Plus, homeownership has helped Americans create wealth for themselves and their families for decades. New opportunities in the metro real estate market materialize every day. Working with trusted realtor Karen Levine will help you successfully navigate new real estate opportunities, whether buying a new home, selling your home, considering a new build, or pursuing investment properties. If you’re considering changing your address, call Karen Levine today at 303-877-7516. That’s 303-877-7516.
SPEAKER 20 :
Thank you. Kim would love to talk with you. Again, that’s Kim at KimMonson.com.
SPEAKER 16 :
And welcome back to the Kim Monson Show. Be sure and check out our website. That is KimMonson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. And Little Richie’s in Parker and Golden is your neighborhood spot where you can get authentic New York-style pizza and pasta. It’s the place where teams celebrate and families meet up. And at Little Richie’s, Tuesdays are for families. Kids eat free after 4 p.m. And Monday night might be the best-kept secret. You buy one pizza, you get the second pizza half off. And that is at Little Richie’s. That’s L-I-L… R-I-C-C-I-S in Parker and Golden. And they’re also pouring half price bottles of wine. And thank you to Little Richies. They do have, I think, the best calzones I’ve ever had. So be sure and check that out. We have on the line with us Bill Kirpin. He is the president of American Commitment. And we’re going to be talking about the Trump administration’s war on credit cards. He recently had a piece published at the Washington Examiner regarding this. show.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey Kim, my pleasure.
SPEAKER 16 :
It’s good to have you. And before we get into the article, if you are new to some of our listeners, tell us about American Commitment.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’re a national free market advocacy group. We work really on all the fiscal, economic, and regulatory issues, but we try to At any given point in time, focus on the fights where the outcome is a little bit in doubt. And if we can get citizens more information and more engagement, we might make a difference and tip the outcome in a more free market direction. So we do a lot of letters into Congress or into regulatory agencies, things like that. Everything is on our website, AmericanCommitment.org.
SPEAKER 16 :
Okay. And you’ve written an important piece. And this is regarding the Trump administration’s war on credit cards. This is at the Washington Examiner. And you begin with it. You said bank bashing is one of America’s oldest and most cherished traditions. And then reading the article, it looks like Trump is talking with far left radical activists politicians such as Elizabeth Warren regarding this war on credit cards. So set this up for us, Bill Kirpin.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, this is an idea that’s generally been identified with the far left government setting the interest rates on credit cards. So this is something that AOC and Bernie Sanders have been trying to do for years and that they always had said they wanted a 15% annual interest rate cap, which is interesting because we actually used to have a 15% annual interest rate cap on federal credit union issued credit cards. And they said they couldn’t make the business work and they actually got that increased. But anyway, they want that to be the cap for all credit cards, banks and credit unions, all credit cards. And then President Trump decided back during the campaign to go even lower than that but as a temporary measure you might remember he said we wanted to have a 10 percent interest rate cap for one year to dig people out of the hole that they’re in because of all the inflation under biden and prices went up so much faster than incomes and people built up these big credit card balances just trying to maintain their standard of living so we’re going to have this one time you know, reduction in credit card interest for a year of 10%. And he said it a couple of times on the campaign trail, and then we never heard about it again until about six weeks ago, he put it out on Truth Social. He said, we’re going to do it one year, 10% cap. And, you know, what’s, and reportedly this came out of a phone call he had with Elizabeth Warren, which who reminded him that he was for this. And then he went on Truth and wrote this. And I really think, first of all, anytime you’ve got a Republican that’s jumping on an idea that’s generally identified with the far left, it makes me very concerned because it means that the idea is suddenly bipartisan and it might actually pass. And all the reasons we’re skeptical of price controls, we’re skeptical of this. But also, even though the president’s temporary proposal has a little bit of logic to it. And maybe in theory, if you really did this only temporarily, it wouldn’t cause the harms of dramatically reducing the availability of credit and all the things, all the shortages that are associated with price controls. But you can’t play this game of government price controls, regulatory interventions against the left when the left doesn’t care if they destroy a private industry and they can therefore always outbid you on things like this and just you know i would say a couple of days i think it was after the president said let’s do a 10 interest rate cap just for one year bernie sanders said oh this is great i’m going to introduce the bill to do this and then i looked at the bill and it did it for six years and i said no wait a second the president said one year but bernie was already thinking you know i’ll just outbid him i’ll do the same thing but for six years and of course you know then they would try to extend it and make it permanent And it’s a losing game. It’s a losing game for conservatives to try to bid against the left in this kind of thing, because they don’t care if they destroy a private industry, as I said. And Kim, I remember a few years ago when they introduced a version of the 15% bill, AOC and Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. And one of the reporters asked, you know, what if this destroys consumer lending? What if the banks can’t make it work at this rate and you destroy the industry? And I don’t remember which one of them it was. I think it was Warren, but it might have been Bernie. I don’t know. One of them said, well, that’s fine. We’ll replace it with a government program. We can do consumer lending from the post office. We don’t need banks. If they can’t do it at the rate that we think is fair, then we’ll just do it ourselves. And I think that’s ultimately where this leads if you go down this path. And you don’t have to look further than the student loan debacle to know that government taking over lending makes it political and makes it operate at huge losses to taxpayers. And so I really think that we should not impose price controls on credit cards and particularly not at a 10 percent rate. You know, 18 percent is the there is regulation on credit cards issued by federal credit unions. And they can kind of make the business work at 18%. They could not make it work at 15%, which is why they got it increased. 10% is totally impossible because at 10%, just the cost of capital plus administrative and overhead costs basically will use up the total amount of income that you can get from interest. And then you’ve got your bad loans to worry about. And so what happens at 10% is Basically, only people with perfect credit would have credit cards. 80% or so of Americans would have their credit cards canceled at a 10% interest rate cap. And so it would be really destructive for the availability of credit.
SPEAKER 16 :
Well, and to that point, I know, and I talked with Lauren Levy and Karen Levine. We were talking a little bit about this on Friday on the show. And Lauren’s in the mortgage business is ultimately what will happen. Well, backing up, I think probably the president is concerned about the reports that we are at an all-time high of credit card debt. And people are hurting if they are carrying these balances on credit cards with high interest and people are hurting. I think that may be his catalyst. I don’t know for sure, but that may be the catalyst for him talking about this. And the implication is, is that people are living beyond their means. They’re buying big screen TVs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that there may be some truth in that. But there’s also the truth that they may have some car repairs that they must get done. And why are people being so squeezed? I think that is the question. And they’re getting squeezed because of taxes and fees and and then rules and regulations that make housing more expensive, all of these things. And so it’s a lot easier to come out Elizabeth Warren and say, oh, we just want to put a cap on credit card fees instead of looking at the root of why people are getting squeezed. And the reason is, is because government is way out of its lane, Phil Kirpin.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I think that’s a very good point. I mean, look, the main motivation, I think, for the president proposing this is he knows that prices went up a lot faster than incomes under Biden. And we had a couple of years there under Biden where people were losing literally thousands of dollars of purchasing power on an annual basis, hundreds of dollars on a monthly basis. And for a lot of families, that meant unless you wanted your kid to go without, you know, without whatever the sports thing is or the music lessons or whatever it might be, you had to make a tough decision at the end of the month. You know, do I do I carry a debt burden on my credit cards or do I make my family go without something we used to be able to afford? And I think a lot of families said, you know what? It’s not a great financial decision, but for my family, I’ve got to go ahead and put this on the card. And so we did see those balances rise quite a lot. And I think what the president’s after is like, you know, let’s give people a way to catch up to get out of that hole. And, you know, that’s not a bad impulse. But when you do it by regulation, when you do it by government intervention, you disrupt the calculations that underlie the industry in terms of people being, the non-repayment risk and all the other cost structures. And so you actually will cause a big contraction of consumer credit. A lot of people who have balances will be told, look, your card’s closed. You have to pay the balance on the original payment terms, but you can’t charge anything else. And it’s It’s not a great solution. Now, the solution, which the president has also made a lot of progress on this front, is we need to get wages rising faster than prices again. If incomes rise faster than prices, then people are able to get out of that hole. They’re able to raise their standard of living and so forth. year back in office, incomes rose a couple of thousand dollars faster than prices. And so a lot of people who are out of the hole are almost all the way out of the hole they were in in the Biden era. But then you’ve got to be far enough out of the hole that you can pay off those debts and start feeling better about having higher standards of living again. So I think that The most important thing that the president can do to help those families he wants to help is keep the elements of strong economic policy in place. We’ve got a very good tax policy now from the big, beautiful bill. We’ve had a lot of good deregulation. We had very good energy policy. Now we’re dealing with a price shock from the war, so that’s a challenge on that front. But, you know, the most difficult element has been having any kind of limitation on government spending. And if we could get government spending down or at least contain it somewhat, I think that would really reduce the inflation outlook. And that would be a huge positive for keeping prices down as incomes are rising. If we could do those things, we would help people a lot more than trying to do a regulatory intervention that’s likely to backfire.
SPEAKER 16 :
Well, you’re absolutely correct. We’re talking with Phil Kirpin, who is president of American Commitment. And we’re going to continue the discussion about this really war on credit cards, which this is not the proper role of government to intervene here. And the other thing Phil said that. Trump would like this temporary, but there’s no government program that is ever temporary. At least I can’t think of one. I’ll let Phil think about that. And when we come back from break, I’ll ask him if there’s ever been a temporary program. government program. And we have these important discussions because of our sponsors. And if you have any concerns about your own personal climate, whether to be warm in the winter or cool in the summer, be sure and reach out to Ben’s Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling. And that phone number is, I had it right here. It’s, I think I should have it memorized, but it’s 303-795- I don’t have the rest of it. Oh, here we go. No, it’s 303-995-1636. That’s Ben’s Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling.
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SPEAKER 01 :
All Kim’s sponsors are in inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmonson.com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com.
SPEAKER 16 :
Welcome back to The Kim Monson Show. Be sure and check out our website. That is kimmonson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. And go over to the… website for the USMC Memorial Foundation and contribute something with the number seven in it because Paula Sarles, president of the foundation, Gold Star Wife, did her birthday challenge this last Saturday out of the memorial and it was for her 77th birthday. So make a contribution to support all of the great work that they’re doing so we can remember and honor Those that have given their lives have been willing to give their lives for our liberty. We’re talking with Bill Kirpin. He is the president of American Commitment regarding Trump’s war on credit cards. And there would be a lot of, I think, detrimental effects to this. It seems like when government gets involved, I remember a friend of mine said, when government gets involved, the supply becomes limited, the price goes up, and the quality goes down. And would you agree with that assessment, Phil Kirpin?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it happens every time. If government sets the price of something below the market price, that’s really the only thing that can happen. You have reduced supply or reduced quality or some combination of both. And I think the clearest example is probably with price control, which has destroyed the housing stock of a lot of great cities. But, you know, you’ve got a lot of politicians that don’t care to learn these lessons because they know that the voters will prefer the, you know, I’m going to make this less expensive just by lowering the price by government dictate over the refutation of it, which takes a few more steps. And so we keep finding ourselves explaining these things over and over again.
SPEAKER 16 :
Well, and we have to keep explaining them. My question before we went to break is that Trump has said that he would like this to be a temporary one-year reduction on credit card interest rates. Have you ever seen a temporary government program? There may be one out there, but there’s not very many if there are.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mean, once in a while, something temporary finally ends. Like you remember, we had the… the payroll tax holiday that we had around there for a few years, and then it actually ended. Things tend to end when them ending benefits government, when it means more money coming in, that kind of thing. They tend not to end when it means government having more power, more regulatory control, and so forth. I think Reagan said something along the lines of the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a government program, and that’s generally the case. There are a few exceptions.
SPEAKER 16 :
I think that’s true, and I think that Trump is dancing with fire if he continues down the road of this temporary reduction. I can understand why he’s concerned and would like to get some relief to Americans because of the high inflation under the Biden administration, but this is not the correct answer. A question from one of our listeners was if, in fact, this interest rate was set and you mentioned people without really good credit ratings, what might happen is that the credit card companies would close their credit cards and ask that their balances be paid off and people would be in a difficult situation, may default, then that’s going to affect their credit rating. It seems like it could be a snowball down the hill kind of effect on this, Phil Kirpin.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. At 10% rate, the best estimate I’ve seen at a 10% rate cap is that anyone without a credit score of 740 or higher would lose access to credit cards. Their cards would get canceled and they wouldn’t be able to get new ones. I think that In practical terms, what most of the banks would do with people who are sort of below the credit where they cut off under that kind of a rate cap regime wouldn’t be to demand immediate payment, which I’m not sure they can do under their terms and conditions anyway. But what they would probably do is they would just cut your credit limit essentially to zero or to some token, very small limit. And so you’d still have your balance and you’d be, you know, you’d continue to, you know, you’d be able to pay it over time and so forth, you know, with that 10% cap on, but you wouldn’t be able to charge anything else. You wouldn’t be able to ever use the card again. You’d just have to, you know, figure out how to pay it off. And so I think that would happen for something like 75 or 80% of people, basically anyone who’s below a 740 credit score would no longer really have access to credit cards. And so, yeah, And I know some people will say, well, that’s great because people will save up for things before they buy them and they’ll be more responsible and they’ll actually be better off financially. And that’s a theory. But real life doesn’t always work that way. You often have expenses that you can’t plan for. And just by your best efforts to save, you do need sometimes to have access to credit. And even just the simple, if you have an expense that comes up and you’re a week away from payday and you need to, with a credit card, you’d pay nothing because you’d be able to pay it off when it comes to without a credit card. and you’ve got to find a payday loan, or if your state’s already banned them, you really sort of write a check and hope it doesn’t get cash before you get paid, which people used to do, and it’s a fraught exercise, or go to an illegal lender of some kind. I mean, just being in a lot of people without good options, we know what the Democrat answer is. They’ll say, oh, well, we’ll do consumer lending through the government. We’ll make every post office a lending center, and I don’t want to explain what a disaster that would be. It should be obvious to people who are listening to your show. But it’s a very bad path to go down. It would be a big mistake. And I think that You know, let’s say you don’t believe those estimates. You don’t think it’s going to be 740. Maybe it’s 700 or something like that. But, you know, the bottom line is a credit card is an unsecured loan. There’s no home to repossess. There’s no car to repossess. It’s not like a secured loan where there’s collateral. And so if the interest rate you can charge doesn’t cover the risk of non-repayment, as well as your own cost of capital, as well as your administrative costs, you can’t make that loan. And at a 10% cap, you need to be almost certain that you’re going to be repaid. The score is going to have to be very, very high. So credit would contract dramatically under that kind of regime.
SPEAKER 16 :
which that is going to make it very difficult for people. And I think it would contract the economy probably as well. Don’t you, Phil?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, the effect on consumer spending would be pretty profound because you’ve got a lot of people who are accustomed to using credit cards for a lot of their purchasing. And if their cards are essentially frozen because of government regulation, it makes it not economic to lend to them anymore. You’re going to have a major adjustment. You’re going to have a major, major adjustment. And in the near term, you’re going to have a big decline in consumer spending. So I don’t think this could be done without tipping us into recession.
SPEAKER 16 :
Is the president getting this message, Phil? No.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, maybe he is. In the original truth, I think he said they better do it by January 20th or else. And, you know, we’re almost two months past that and there was nowhere else. And so I’m hoping it was just the trial balloon. But what really worries me is, you know, you’re going to see legislation at some point. The Senate’s going to actually do work on something at some point. And someone’s going to put an amendment up. And if all the Democrats vote for it and enough Republicans say, hey, the president’s for this, then it could actually pass. And so I think he’s backed off somewhat, or at least he hasn’t mentioned it lately. But any time a bad idea becomes bipartisan, I become much more worried about it.
SPEAKER 16 :
Right. In your article at the Washington Examiner, you said for 80% plus of Americans left without access to credit cards, and you mentioned this, that there may be very few good options left. If none, you could float a bad check or maybe get a payday loan if you could find one they haven’t banned. So it would be a make loan sharks great again plan. And that ultimately really hurts people, Phil Kirpin.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, the worst thing you could do to try to help people would be to send them to criminal lending syndicates, because not only are the interest rates going to be much, much higher than what they’re paying in credit cards right now, but non-repayment risk means you could get your legs broken. I mean, you don’t want to go down that road before credit cards are widely available. People in tough circumstances did regularly have to turn to criminal lenders, and I would hate to see a go back to that kind of a scenario. And by the way, this is, I think, critical for people to understand. When we talk about a 10% interest rate cap, or when we talk about current interest rates being 24% or whatever, we’re talking about annual rates. If you’re only carrying a balance for a month or two, you’re only going to have to divide that by 12 for what it costs you in a month. So a 24% annual interest rate is a 2% monthly interest rate. A 10% cap means you can’t charge more than 0.8% on a monthly basis. And how do you make a business work at lending where you can only get 0.8% if somebody borrows for a month? If somebody borrows $1,000, you can only charge them $8 if they pay it back a month later. It’s very hard to see how that works as a business. And I guarantee you that somebody who’s lending to you for a month privately or even if they’re a nice person, not a criminal, they’re going to charge you a lot more than that. because they’re not going to think in annualized terms.
SPEAKER 16 :
Right, right. This came in, this last comment, then Phil Kirpin, this comment was, the federal government who can print money out of thin air, having the ability to lend money, what could go wrong with that picture, Phil Kirpin?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, it would ultimately be massively inflationary because what will happen is they’ll make lots of loans and then they will intentionally forgive them for political advantage come election time, the same as we saw them try to do with student loans under Biden. And, you know, if you put lots of money out that is not backed by anything and then you don’t get it paid back, you’re going to, you know, it’s going to be hugely inflationary. So I think it’s Very important to keep the government out of the consumer lending business. And it’s very important not to have regulations that would undermine the private consumer loan industry.
SPEAKER 16 :
That seems to be the bottom line on all of that, Phil Kirpin. As always, Phil Kirpin, thank you so much. We always learn a lot. And thank you for your good work at American Commitment. That website is AmericanCommitment.org. Phil, we’ll talk again very soon.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thanks, Kim. Have a good one.
SPEAKER 16 :
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SPEAKER 10 :
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SPEAKER 09 :
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SPEAKER 16 :
Welcome back to the Kim Monson Show. Check out our website. That is Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. And today at the Center for American Values, and that website is AmericanValuesCenter.org, Drew Dix, Medal of Honor recipient and co-founder, is in Tombstone, Arizona, and will be presenting to students in Tombstone this afternoon regarding living valor. But it is also a webinar. And I’d highly recommend that you have encouraged your children or grandchildren to sign up for this. And you can do that by going to AmericanValueCenter.org. That’s AmericanValueCenter.org. Starts at 325 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. And it should be very interesting. It’ll be live from Tombstone, Arizona. So check that out. And again, encourage your children or grandchildren to become involved with that. On the line with us is Colonel Bill Rutledge. You know him. He is a fan favorite of the Kim Monson Show. He’s 97 years young and has this great curiosity for people and places in history. He’s traveled the world. And he and I talked this week and he said, Kim, I think it’s really important regarding the next leader in Iran that there be a separation of church and state. So Colonel Rutledge, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, good morning, Kim. Yes, I did say that. And I actually sent the recommendation to Washington last week, both verbally and in writing, recommending that they consider the model that Turkey pursued after the First World War. Turkey was a very, for decades, for hundreds of years, was a part of the Ottoman Empire. And it was ruled by really the religious side of the house. And he had learned that that was not very effective. So at the end of the war, he was elected to become the first leader of an independent Turkey. And in so doing, he wanted to break all ties with the traditions of the Ottoman Empire. where the capital was in Istanbul. And before that had been called Constantinople. And he wanted to move it, which he did, to Ankara to be more central. But the most important decision he made was that the leadership in a new republic should have a complete separation between church and state. That way the people are involved in electing their political leaders But the religious aspect can be more general. And for example, in Iran, which was for thousands of years, Persia, you could go there up until 1978 and 79, and you could practice Christianity. the religion of your choice. You might be Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and then Muslims. Muslims were the largest, probably, single group. But as far as the heritage of the people in Iran, it is mostly Persian. Well over a majority of the people there consider themselves Persian. And this separation would be very very important. One of the oddities is that the Persians in their history actually had a faith that was somewhat similar to Christianity or Judeo-Christian, and it was called Zoroastria. And I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember it was very distinct. And the Persians are not Arabs. They have their own distinct lineage. And what’s really ironic is that they are often thought of as being the source of the Aryan race. This is a term that was used very much in the 30s and 40s by Adolf Hitler. And another rather bizarre situation is that the last Shah His first wife was German. So there was a very cosmopolitan environment there up until 1978 when President Carter sent a general directly to tell the Shah to abdicate. And everything went downhill from there.
SPEAKER 16 :
So we talk about separation of church and state, and of course, St. Jefferson, in the letter to the Baptists, he assured them that there would be a separation of church and state, which that has been used to say that we should not have any religious influences whatsoever in government. However, the founders realized that it was important that we have men and women of high virtue and high morals serving in our uh, in our country. And of course the Judeo Christian, um, message is one of virtue, uh, whether or not you believe or not, the 10 commandments, uh, are pretty good, good, um, suggestions for how to live a life at Colonel Rutledge.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, realistically, um, that’s why the pilgrims came to America too. They, they had left England. They’d gone to, uh, the Netherlands, Holland, and been there for a generation or two. And they found that, um, they did not have a freedom to express their religion as they desired. And not only that, their children in the educational program were becoming more Dutch than English. So they came and, um, brought their religion with them to Massachusetts and, um, Certainly, the vast majority of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence and subsequently the Constitution declared themselves to be Christians.
SPEAKER 16 :
So the real question was, in the founding of America, there would be no state church, no state-mandated church, right? However, Colonel Rutledge, in a way, I think that we’ve got religion that is in our government now. In fact, I had posed this question to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia when he was in Colorado, obviously before his death. And I was asked this question. I said, if we agree that religion is a belief in a certain belief system, Would we not and that and that we’re supposed to have a separation of church and state, that government will not establish any religion. But we say that, for example, climate change is important. It’s a belief system and we’re seeing in public policy money and money. laws and regulations instituting that, is that not actually unconstitutional in the guise of it’s a religion that’s being forced through government? And his response to me was cute. And that was when I was on city council and I mentioned it to the city attorney. And he said, well, I think that Scalia probably Probably, he said, normally, if he didn’t like a question, he’d throw you out on your keister. And so I’ve always thought that that was interesting, that in a way we’re using religion here in our country, I think, now.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, we’ve gotten to where we actually use the term about that as a religious belief of some individuals. And certainly the climate change has become a religious viewpoint. and has taken precedent over common sense for millions of Americans because they have been so indoctrinated. And all the religions really basically require some degree of educational background to appreciate and to emulate their predecessors. And it’s very rare that someone suddenly is going to have an immediate change in their personality or their values. It’s possible. But most of the religious aspects are a part of the heritage of their families. But we’ve gotten away from a lot of it because of, unfortunately, the way we have merged things in our schools which do not actually condone freedom of religion. So we’re in a transitional period and we need to go backwards instead of forwards in some of these areas.
SPEAKER 16 :
Right. We need to reclaim this separation of church and state. And the founders knew that was so important. And you are highly recommending that as the new leader is put in place in Iran, that there not be a cleric, that there be a separation of church and state there as well. And your final thought on this, Colonel Rutledge.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think this is one of the most important decisions that the president can make when he talks about unconditional freedom. that is very significant. Now, they keep denying, some people keep denying their unconditional surrender. This is exactly what we had in Japan in 1945. And one of the things that was very important was that General MacArthur argued with our president and our government and said that we must continue to have the emperor. that the emperor is such an important part of Japanese society and almost a religion. It really, truly was a religion in some respects. And it provided stability and continuity for the people in Japan, and it worked out very well. But it also was a time when the political part of Japan separated itself from the emperor.
SPEAKER 16 :
Okay, Colonel Rutledge, we’re out of time. Thank you for this late-breaking perspective regarding Iran. And our quote for the end of the show is from John Adams. He said, always stand on principle, even if you stand alone. So today, be grateful, read great books, think good thoughts, listen to beautiful music, communicate and listen well, live honestly and authentically, strive for high ideals, and like Superman, stand for truth, justice, and the American way. My friends, you are not alone. God bless you, and God bless America.
SPEAKER 12 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
