The Dan Bongino Show - Ep. 489 The Media is Ignoring These Important Developments

Episode Date: June 26, 2017

In this episode I address the problems with the GOP Obamacare replacement bill and some economically sensible fixes.    I also discuss some serious allegations against Bernie Sanders and his wife that the media is ignoring.  https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/06/24/bernie-sanders-and-his-wife-reportedly-lawyer-up-amid-fbi-probe.html   Finally, I address the exploding fake news scandal at CNN and its impact on their coverage of the Trump administration. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/25/very-fake-news-scandal-cnn-jeff-zucker-network-flack-refuse-to-comment-russia-retraction/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dan Bongino. I have an obligation to come on the air with data and material and research. I can't just say trade stinks. Thanks for tuning in. The Dan Bongino Show. Let's jump right in because we have no time for nonsense. Get ready to hear the truth about America. When I was a young man, I don't remember it being sexy to want to allow a nanny state to control my life.

On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino. All right. Welcome to the Renegade Republic with Dan Bongino. Producer Joe, how are you today? Man, I'm doing well. All set. Ready to go. I got to move this mic. I don't know what's going on here. I'm a uh discombobulated today got my uh my stuff all over i was doing a uh an interesting skype call i had a fascinating proposal that was sent to me over the weekend so yeah things just taken off going uh going crazy for me lately but a lot of news over the weekend and uh thank you for all the emails about the friday show which i had asked you for feedback on because it was slightly uh i was slightly irritated about the Obamacare thing and it was kind of all over, but I thought I put some salient points

out there, but there was one thing I forgot, which I want to address today about the Obamacare repeal or lack of repeal and the replacement plan that I want to address today, because what I don't like to do, Joe, on the show is to leave people without solutions. So a couple of things I wanted to get to on that. All right. Today's show brought to you by our buddies at Birch Gold. Hey, I just read a story. It's up on Drudge now about the Bank of International Settlements, the B-I-S, giving a big warning out there. And folks, take this very seriously. I brought this up quite a

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guide today. Okay, on how to move your money into an IRA backed by precious metals. So one of the things i forgot to mention on uh on the friday show about obamacare one of the biggest problems i have with this entire thing this replacement plan by the way people call it's really annoying if i don't pick up the second time stop calling me i'm doing my show sheesh this is like the second time this guy i don't even know this number it's's driving me crazy. The income-related subsidies, which were a bedrock of Obamacare. So Obamacare, Joe, pre-Obamacare, if you were in the individual market, so you understand how this works.

And when I mean the individual market, I mean you're not on Medicaid. You're not a child on S-CHIP, the Child Health Insurance Program. You're not employer-based. Do you have employer-based coverage where you work? Yes, I do. So Joe has a plan where he works at the radio station. If you were not under one of those things, you were in what's called the individual market, meaning you were an American citizen, Joe, without insurance from the government or for a job,

and you were buying insurance on your own. You were going to a website, whatever it may be, Blue Cross and saying, I'm Joey Bag of Donuts, I need insurance, okay? Yep. The way Obamacare, well, let me give you pre-Obamacare, you were on your own. You had to just go get insurance and pay for it.

Now, post-Obamacare, what Obamacare instituted was an income-related subsidy where the government would give you money, which is ironic because it's your money. It's taxpayer money, to buy. Oh, my gosh. This is the third time. This is going to drive me crazy. You know what? They got the wrong time.

I knew it. I'm supposed to do a radio interview, and I got the wrong time. I know, and I know that's who this is. Sorry, folks. I'm sorry to get a radio interview, and I got the wrong time. I know, and I know that's who this is. Sorry, folks. I'm sorry to get distracted here, but this is driving me crazy. If you're going to tell me a time, it's Eastern time. I live on the Northeast. So what the Obamacare thing did is Obamacare gave an income-related subsidy to people who

were buying insurance in the individual market. All right. You would get a subsidy based on how much income you made. Now, personally, I think there was a better way to do this because we already had programs for the poor. And this is driving me crazy. This is driving me... Joe, don't cut this out because this is my life, folks. This is why on the Friday show I ask you for feedback.

This goes on all day with me. And by the way, this is why I had to like for those of you who've seen me I say this with no air of pretension at all. For those of you who've seen me do TV and Fox and stuff like that, this is one of the reasons I've had to like cut down outside of cable and some other stuff

because you have no life. No, I'm not kidding. You have, right? Joe, why don't I call and complain? You have no life at all there's got to be 500 radio stations and 60 000 bloggers in the country whatever it is and you if you agree to every single thing you will literally never have a second on your own as you can tell right now by the fact that i can't even do my own show without the phone going it's driving me nuts this is my show all. All right. Put the gun away.

Yeah, seriously. 40 seconds wasted. I'm sorry, folks. But again, this is a conversational show. And unfortunately, a conversation sometimes takes Dan's life takes over. Now, the problem with this replacement bill, to get to the point, is rather than fixing these income-related subsidies, Joe, rather than – this is ridiculous. This is driving me crazy.

Rather than fixing – I'm turning my phone over so I can't even see it. Fixing these income-related subsidies, what it's adding, the Senate replacement bill, is it's adding age-related subsidies as well. So now it's not just that you're getting a subsidy, your own taxpayer money back in the form of, say, you made $20,000 a year, you get X amount of money, 30,000 X and minus a little more. You know what I'm saying, Joe? It's also adding age-related subsidies as well. So if you're older and you would require more healthcare because you're older and people who are older generally tend to be sicker just as a result of wear and tear and age. I mean, I'm figuring that now at 42 years old. It adds age related subsidies, too. So whereas the House bill focused almost exclusively on age related subsidies, Joe, the Senate

bill adds age related subsidies to income related subsidies, which is eventually going to cost more. I didn't bring that up last week, and I should have because that's a real problem, folks, because it's when the government gives people money through a third party payer system. In other words, you pay money to the government in the form of taxes and the government gives that money back to you to buy something else. It only inflates the cost of what you're in essence buying because it disconnects the consumer from the producer of the product.

Third party payer systems I've explained over and over are always a mess because if you're, let's say you're paying into a tax pool, a pool of taxpayer funds into the federal government, into the treasury, and then the treasury is dispersing those funds as a third-party payer to doctors. So when you go to the doctor, they're paying, Joe, not you in some form, even though the subsidies are a little different, but this is the way Medicaid would work. They're paying the doctor. Logically, your take on the whole matter is a pretty simple one, right? Your take on the matter is, hey, I already paid to the treasury, so I'm going to take as much as

I can back. So it incentivizes you to go to the doctor more, even if you may not have gone to it if it was your own money coming out of your own pocket. All right. So that's a big problem with the bill. The age-related subsidies are getting tacked on to the income-related subsidies, which eventually are going to cost the American taxpayers a fortune. What is it? The Milton Friedman joke I say all the time on the show is that the whole joke of government spending is you think your neighbors are paying for it, but your neighbors think the same thing. You're all paying for everybody else's stuff, but you're paying for your stuff too. This is never going to lead to any kind of cost control.

So here's a couple of solutions. I've mentioned some of these before, but solutions to the healthcare debacle we have in the country right now that I think would genuinely bend the cost curve down and institute more control over the market. Here's number one, full tax credit for doctors and hospitals that provide charity care. Full, not a tax deduction, a tax credit. Remember, the difference between a deduction and a credit is this. If I make $100,000 a year and I have a $10,000 tax deduction, Joe, I deduct that from my income and I only pay taxes on 90,000. Okay.

Make sense? Yeah. So Joe made 100,000 a year working for a conservative review. Wouldn't that be nice? Maybe we should- Yeah, it would be. Everybody lobby conservative. So Joe is making $100,000 a year and Joe gets a tax deduction. Let's say he makes a $10,000 donation to charity and he gets a tax deduction. Joe is only paying at that point income taxes on

90,000. Now, the difference with a tax credit and why you want a tax credit, not a tax deduction, is if Joe has a $10,000 tax credit, will we fully credit him for it? Joe pays the taxes on 100,000 and let's say his tax bill was $20,000. a tax credit means Joe gets to wipe a $10,000 tax credit. Joe gets to wipe 10,000 of that off. Gotcha. So listen, that's a big deal because some tax deductions you're not going to get once you make a certain amount of money. Does that make sense, Joe? Yeah. You're not going to get that because after a lot of these things like the AMT and a lot of this stuff goes away. So you want a tax credit because you want to be able to wipe that out.

Now, why not give doctors and hospitals a full tax credit for their charity care? This doesn't make any sense. I mean, think about the system we have now, which is absurd. Now, I know why the left is going to say, oh my gosh, doctors and hospitals, these are really super rich people and we're going to give them money. What do you mean you're going to give them money? You're just going to let them keep their own money. But the irony, Joe, is you're giving them money now.

You're giving them money now. You, the taxpayer, make no mistake, are giving those, and I say this with horrible sarcasm, but to emphasize the silliness of the left, those evil rich doctors and hospitals, you're giving them your money now. The government pays for about 40% of healthcare. If the government pays, Joe, who's paying? You. We are.

You're paying. The government doesn't own a business. They just take. They're taking money from you and they're giving it to doctors and hospitals. So I got, here's a newsflash for you. Why not just let the doctors and hospitals keep their I got, here's a newsflash for you. Why not just let the doctors and hospitals keep their own money rather than you taking money from me to give to them? This is the dumbest system ever. Here's how it could work. And there's a number of different ways to implement this, but just a simple suggestion. You're a doctor, you're a perinatologist, like my brother-in-law is. You do high-risk pregnancy delivery. So a woman who's lower income walks in, she's got cancer or whatever it may be,

and God forbid, and she needs to deliver a baby, and it's going to be a high-risk delivery, right? She doesn't have the money to pay. You're a really high-profile perinatologist. Your rates are pretty high. The perinatologist gets a full tax credit for that service. Let's say this perinatologist, right? This high risk OBGYN doctor has a tax bill every year of like $200,000.

I don't know what my brother-in-law pays in taxes, but I'll tell you right now, it's a lot. Say it's 200. Say he gets a tax credit for that. And that's a $10,000 delivery. That's the market price when he would charge everyone else, right? He gets to write off $10,000 delivery. That's the market price when he would charge everyone else, right? He gets to write off $10,000. Joe, I'll tell you right now, I'm out recruiting low income folks to literally give them free stuff. Wouldn't you? Yeah. I mean, that makes sense.

Sure. Seriously, if your tax bill, say you're making 100K a year and you're at the high end tax bracket, say you're in the 39.6 tax bracket and state, federal, local, forget deductions for a minute to make the math simple. You're paying $40,000 in taxes, right? So you're in the 39.6 tax bracket and state, federal, local, forget deductions for a minute to make the math simple. You're paying $40,000 in taxes, right? So you're in the 40% tax rate. Again, I'm making the math really simple. Forget deductions for a minute. Joe makes 100Ks, paying 40,000. If someone said to you, Joe, you have a very good grasp of the podcasting arena, the audio sphere, we're going to cut a deal with you. The market value of your services, if you choose to give lower income people some audio engineering, you get their podcasts on the air as like a social good, we'll let you get

a tax credit for the full value services. Now, Joe doesn't come cheap, but Joe's not overly expensive. But Joe, one, Joe's a nice guy. He goes to church. He sings in church. He's a volunteer for stuff. Joe's a nice guy. He goes to church. He sings in church. He's a volunteer for stuff. Joe's a good dude. But if you could volunteer and get an economic benefit out of it, even better.

I mean, it doesn't make Joe any worse of a guy because he gets some money back of his own money. By the way, the government's not giving him anything to let him keep his own money. If you could do that and cut your tax bill by like 10 or 20 grand a year, wouldn't you do that? Sure. It's very helpful. But liberals would say, oh, my God you're giving joe a tax cut no what the liberals would rather do is tax everybody else steal their money then give that money to joe through a social program for podcasters where tax money is given to people like joe to give quote joe free services to other

people do you see the stupidity of this? Imagine if you did this for hospitals and doctors, full tax credits. Now, folks, I'm not naive here at all to the ramifications of this. There are going to be millionaire doctors, oh, God forbid, millionaire doctors and hospitals that are going to pay very little in taxes. But folks, you understand that right now you're paying more in taxes to give them your money when they could just keep their money themselves and let you off the hook? You may say, oh gosh, then the doctors and hospitals wouldn't pay in for services like the military and roads and bridges. Guys, they're paying in now and then they're taking more from us so if they're paying in ten dollars they're getting geometrically more money from us given to the treasury to give to them

they're paying in say 10 they're probably getting 20 from us how does that make sense that actually takes 10 from the military does that make any sense to you but you know liberals are obsessed with gaslighting. You remember gaslighting. I covered this on a number of different shows where gaslighting comes from the movie Gaslight. And it's the premise that if you repeat a lie often enough and you repeat it confidently, that people will start to believe the lie is fact, but you have to isolate people from the truth.

Now, the liberal media does this for the left, the isolation part. The left does the lying and the media, but the media isolates people from the truth by guaranteeing exclusive coverage to leftist narratives. I mean, you need any proof of this? They just had a thing on Fox a few minutes ago. I was watching the Loretta Lynch scandal

that's developing now, this Senate investigation into Loretta Lynch's role in the Hillary email thing. Loretta Lynch was the former attorney general under Obama. Many of you know that. And there's an investigation brewing and a lot of word behind the scenes that she's in a world of trouble for some of the action she took to make the Hillary email investigation go away. Yeah.

There was just a thing on Fox. Zero minutes of coverage on some of the major networks. Zero. No coverage at all. Yet they'll cover the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, X-Files, David Duchovny fairy tale. They'll cover that over and over.

Again, gaslighting. It shows it isolates people from the truth. And you'll bring up gaslighting because the leftist narrative will win the day if something like this would happen. The leftist narrative will be this rich millionaire doctors and hospitals.

You're taking from the American citizen, not paying any taxes. Meanwhile, they'll never tell you the actual truth, which is, yes, now they're paying taxes and they're taking more of your money in taxes because you're paying the government to pay them. you're paying the government to pay them. But just because the liberals use the narrative, the gaslighting process to instill a narrative into the American public doesn't mean it's true. And we should fight back. And every time I bring this up, I get a lot of feedback from doctors and hospitals and people who work at hospitals who say, Dan, that's a great idea. I mean, I always give credit where credit is due, folks. I'm not trying to be like, hey, this is all originated in the mind of Dan Bongino, but I haven't heard anyone else talk about this. I haven't. And please, I'm begging you, correct me if I'm wrong. If you've seen any other

think tanks or conservative thought leaders, send it over. I'm not trying to take credit for it. I just think it's a really common sense idea, Joe. Yeah, it sounds good to me. So yeah, full tax credit for charity. Okay, that's number one. Number two, this one's been discussed often by a ton of different people, full portability across state lines. It's just silly. We don't have a national market for insurance. If you could sell an insurance plan in West Virginia, you should be able to sell it in California. It's just ridiculous. That would create more competition. Competition always brings down prices for obvious reasons. If Pepsi had a monopoly on the cola market, they could basically charge whatever they wanted, but they don't. They have

to compete with Coca-Cola. Joe, one of the things about competition I think people frequently misunderstand from economic terms is you don't need 6,000 competitors in a market to bring down prices. The more competition can mean the better, but it doesn't always. Sometimes you just need two. And I remember when I worked in Key Food in Forest Hills, New York, and sometimes I would help out in the soda aisle. They'd be like, Danny, soda aisle. And no one ever called me Danny, but those guys.

My mom calls me Danny. That's about it. Sometimes my wife calls me by my last name, which is hysterical. Bongino, my mom calls me Danny. That's about it. Sometimes my wife calls me by my last name, which is hysterical. Bongino, which is kind of funny. But in the soda aisle, they used to have these sales. The Pepsi would go one week and Coke the next week, and they would compete with each other. So the point I'm trying to make is literally, you only need one other competitor to at least assist in driving down prices. Now, it can be helpful to get other ones in there. You can get RC Cola and other ones who come in and undercut, but Pepsi

would do like 99 cents a bottle. Coke would do like 98 cents a bottle. And then you'd see, you know what I'm saying? So you don't need a ton of people. So portability across state lines, even if you introduce one more competitor into a market, can do a lot to bring down prices. Third cash equivalent. All right. So number one is full tax credit for charity, for doctors and hospitals. Two, full portability across state lines. Number three, a cash equivalent voucher for the poor. Right now, we don't have that. We have a third party payer system, which I covered a little bit in the beginning of the show. Right now, you have a system where, let me be crystal clear on what I mean by this. You, the taxpayer, pay money to the United States Treasury.

The United States Treasury then in turn takes that money and pays the doctors and hospitals. They are the third party. Who are the first two parties? You going to the doctor and the doctor providing the services to you. You go to the doctor for a sore throat and you're on Medicaid, you don't pay. The third party pays, the government. Folks, if you've listened to all, what are we, 489, Joe? 489 episodes of the Dan Bongino show and what was later called and now called the Renegade Republican, you will see that almost every economic problem in our society you can pin down is due to some third-party payer effect. And that third-party payer is typically the government. When third-party payers get involved and pay bills for people

rather than the people paying themselves, I know what you're thinking too. A lot of you think, well, what about private? I'll get to that in a second. But when a third-party payer, the government takes over, you will always see explosive cost growth. Because again, I just described it. People pay their money into the treasury and they think, well, I already paid. I want some of that money back. So I'm just going to go to the doctor. And it was interesting because I got an email last week about this and he didn't give me permission to use his name. So I'm not going to do it, but it was a great email. And was he an ophthalmologist or a doctor? I'm not sure what he, I'm sorry. I can't remember the exact details, but if you wrote it, you know

who you are. And he said that he was given an example of this person that came in for this service that really he thought was kind of unnecessary. But the person would come in all the time for the service because why, Joe? It was covered by our government plan. And he's like, listen, I'm the doctor here. I can tell you right now that it's not made up the problem, but it was not necessary to seek medical treatment for this once a month. You get what I'm saying? Yeah. But because it was a third party pay, it was like, oh seek medical treatment for this once a month. You get what I'm saying? Yeah.

But because it was a third-party pay, it was like, oh, let's just go. I mean, I already paid in my taxpayer dollars, so I might as well do it. So point is, solution number three, if we had a cash equivalent voucher for people who are lower income, and we said, here's the market value of an insurance plan right now. Let's say it's $5,000 a year. I'm not giving you exact numbers, obviously. We're just trying to make it easy. Say it's $5,000 a year. I'm not giving you exact numbers, obviously. We're just trying to make it easy. Say it was $5,000 a year. That's the market value for an average insurance plan in whatever state it may be, in New York. You could say to people who are lower income, we will give you a cash equivalent voucher for $5,000. If you choose to buy a Cadillac plan,

Joe, that has everything. it covers hair transplants, vasectomies, eyeglass care, whatever, contact lenses, gym memberships, that's great. But if that plan costs 7,000, the other 2,000 is on you. Or say you choose to go with a lower end plan, super high deductible, only covers catastrophic care, we'll let you keep the change. Now, I get it. Many of you right now are probably saying, dude, I thought you were a conservatarian. Now you're talking about letting people keep taxpayer money. Folks, in contrast to what? In contrast to what we have now, which is the third party payer system where taxpayers are paying anything all the time for everyone. We have to start somewhere. And a nice way to do it would be to

do an income-related subsidy. By the way, here's my change, though. This is where the wrinkle comes in with me. These things have to be phased out over time. No one should be allowed access unless you're a completely indigent, handicapped, or a child. You have no way of earning money. If you are a healthy, working-age human being, man or woman, you should not be given unlimited access to Medicaid and government benefits. And this nonsense that, oh my gosh, what are we going to let people die in the streets? Stop. Just stop. You're just making that up, okay? It is already illegal to not serve people in an emergency room in America. You didn't know that? If you're on Medicaid for five years and you're an able-bodied working adult and you choose

not to get a job and get insurance, that's on you. So the difference with my, the Dan Bongino plan is, again, tax credits, portability. Number three, you give poor people at a certain income level a cash equivalent voucher. They keep the change if they buy something cheaper. Now, why would we do that? We would do that to incentivize them, Joe, to do what? To shop for pricing, to shop around. Because if you give them a $5,000 voucher and you say to them, you have to buy $5,000 worth of insurance with this voucher, well, what are they going to do?

They're going to buy $5,000 worth of insurance. What you want to do is give them a cash equivalent voucher where they'll actually do some price shopping, which will do what, Joe? It'll force the insurance companies to offer a cheaper product, which will then spill over into the general market as well. Make sense? That's the reason we do that. And I know it doesn't sound great, folks. And I know off the top of your heads many of you are like that's insane to let people keep the change if you limit it to say

five years or even three years able-bodied working adults then you will see this cost curve come down automatically because even in the market you're wiping out the third party payer joe you see what i'm saying yeah the government well you're not totally i mean the government's still giving the cash equivalent voucher. But the point I'm trying to make is you are now paying for insurance. Now, you may say, well, is an insurance company a third party payer? No, because you're not buying health care. You're buying insurance.

Remember, even with health care now in my system now, like I had a procedure done not that long ago. I can't say what, but I've had some real significant health issues, man. I haven't addressed, but there's been some stuff that's gone on with me. I had to pay for one of these procedures in cash. It cost me $1,750. It was not covered by insurance. But it was interesting because, you know, remember, I'm not buying medicine. I was buying insurance.

I never expected that in my plan. You know what I'm saying, Joe? I was buying insurance if, God forbid, I were to come down with cancer or have a massive heart attack. I was not buying an oil change. I was buying car insurance if my car got in a wreck. So yes, insurance companies are third-party payers, but you're paying for a service. It's not a third-party payer when they're paying for actual healthcare because you still have to buy healthcare in some respects. You're just insuring against the catastrophic event. I know that's kind of hard to understand, but a third party payer system in the government is an exclusive thing.

The government has a monopoly on force. When the government takes over the payment of your healthcare and you have no other option, like when you're in Medicare and you're 65 or older, they have full monopoly control over this. They have nobody to compete against. This is maybe a better way to say it, Joe. Even when you're buying the service in the private insurance arena, Joe, there's still competitors. Now I ask you this, who's the competitor for social security? Who's the competitor for Medicare? There are none. There are Medicare supplements, but there are none. So that's

probably a better way to say it, make it a little more, you're buying one a service, you're not buying healthcare. And number two, there are no competitors to government. So you give them a cash equivalent voucher and you make people, you say to them, oh, keep the change. If you do it and you limit it to a few years, you'll see all of a sudden people are going to get really cost conscious and that's what we need. All right, here's one more thing. Lifelong tax-free HSAs. I think this is a terrific idea.

I read, and forgive me, I think it was a Friedman book and the book was dated. I think it was Capitalism and Freedom. So the book is, the data is not exactly up to date. The book was written decades ago, but it's still a great book by Milton Friedman. The book was written decades ago, but it's still a great book by Milton Friedman. And he talks about underspending as a country on education and on healthcare. So the United States does not spend, and we're not talking about taxpayer money, Joe. I'm talking about the people, the citizens of the United States, that we tend to underspend on education and healthcare.

And I remember never letting that point get away from me. And contrary to the assertion where people say, oh, we spend too much on healthcare, maybe we spend inefficiently, but we should be taking better care of ourselves throughout our lives. So one of the ways to encourage and incentivize people to ensure proper healthcare throughout their lives, in other words, things like regular checkups, so if you could check for pre-diabetes because if you catch pre-diabetes soon enough and you lose weight joe you're literally saving yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars of insulin injections over your entire life so think of it

as joe as an investment in your health care that's going to save you from catastrophic costs later we don't do enough of that what we wind up doing is we spend too much money on aftercare later on problems that could have been prevented right right? Heart disease, diabetes, things where if we just would have lost weight and gotten on a treadmill, we would have been fine. So one of the ways to incentivize that is lifelong tax-free HSAs. You can set them up for your kids when they're born because obviously they can't do that themselves. They're not going to be financially secure enough until they're 18 or 21 or gosh, with the nanny state society now, 51, whatever, who knows. But it would be nice to be able to set up an account for my daughter where all of the money

I put in there, all of it is completely taken off my tax bill. So if I want to put, say, $10,000, $15,000, and you can put a reasonable cap on it. You don't want people hiding, because you know what will happen. Some investment vehicle will do a $40 trillion health care. I'm not going to spend that much, but you put a reasonable cap on it. But that money is either tax deductible or it's a tax credit for the parent. And that money can be spent tax-free as well. It's never taxed. Now, again, I know the liberals will go crazy because they think the government should get their mitts on every dollar of your money. But it would be fascinating if you had a $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 account by the time you were 21 years old and that money could be used for a cash payment for any medical procedure.

And you may not need insurance at all at that point, Joe. I mean, that may be enough, $30,000, $40,000 to cover you for some acute catastrophic event. So it's just another idea there. And I like to give solutions and not just problems. What'd you think, Joe? We wrapped that up pretty good? Yeah, that was good. Yeah, because a guy, an email, a listener complained.

He said, listen, you didn't say what we should do. You just said what the problems were. It's fair enough. I appreciate that criticism. I do read your emails, folks. And by the way, I know we're having problems with the show notes. I'm going to try to get the show notes up today at Bongino.com too.

It'll be a simple tab, show notes, but please, you can still go to conservative review. It's under the podcast tab. I know they're a little difficult to find. We're working on it, but I'm going to try to get them up today at Bongino.com too, until we can figure out a better system. I get a lot of complaints about trying to find the show notes, which I link articles in there. Hey, today's show is also brought to you by our buddies at My Patriot Supply. Big fan of these guys. Being a secret service agent, former secret service agent, I'm really into preparedness. I know that drives that one guy nuts. He says, we get it. You worked at the secret service, but it's a part of who I am. And it really lends to my preparedness as well. I like to keep some cash.

I like to keep a couple of my firearms in the house. I mean, for safety reasons. I'm not John J. Rambo, folks. But it pays to be prepared. But one of the things you should have, it's crazy not to insure your food supply. You got to have a food supply insurance. It's just crazy not to. You insure your health care. We just talked about all this.

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Okay. A couple other stories I saw, which I found mildly amusing and i know i shouldn't it's not a christian thing to do but i saw a story this weekend which you know you got to bring up because it just harkens back to one of my favorite topics which is bernie sanders did you see this one joe which one the sanders story yeah uh. Yeah, Bank Fraud Bernie. So Bernie Sanders. No, I didn't see it. Yeah, unlike the Trump family, is actually under FBI investigation. Now, I had hinted at this a little while ago.

Bernie's wife, Jane, was the president of a college called Burlington College in Vermont. Now, they needed a loan for a campus expansion. And the allegations, I'm going to be clear on that because I do want to be fair, unlike the left-wing media is to Trump with the Trump-Russia X-Files story. The allegations are that Ms. Sanders, Bernie's wife, was trying to get a loan from the bank for a campus expansion. She inflated the value of her donor base, basically engaged in the form of financial fraud. That's the allegation. And a corresponding allegation against Bernie is that Bernie as a senator may have pressured the bank to give her the loan. The college is now defunct, Joe.

This is kind of a big deal, okay? This is a very big deal. This is really bad. So this is an active FBI investigation right now. and i just thought i'd bring this up not to pile on bernie you know it's kind of a kind of a jerk thing to do but i just find it interesting that this is a guy who talks frequently about income inequality yet has owns two homes has purchased three uh these are very expensive homes. He drives around in expensive cars. He lives an expensive lifestyle, got a really huge book deal. And now his wife and him are being accused of bank fraud for bilking investors and a bank out of potential money. I mean, I just think that's a little interesting. The media insists that Trump is being investigated,

even when Trump is not being investigated and refuses to let that go so again you won't see that on the news um that bernie's out there doing his thing uh but uh that story's out there i'll put that link in the show notes to that story you can check that out all right uh another story by the way the supreme court today just so you know for daily news updates the two big cases we should hear something on today the trump 90-day travel ban supreme court allows partial enforcement of trump travel okay just now that's great all right so they will review the travel ban and the supreme court will allow portions of it to go ahead the 90-day travel ban by trump so that's interesting we also have the school the case that could relate to school vouchers.

There was a case in, was it Missouri, where a Christian school applied for a state grant for a playground show to have a safe surface put on a playground. And they were denied because the state had, they don't have it anymore, a rule that no state money could go to a religious institution. And the religious institution sued saying, listen, this is for a secular purpose. It's a playground.

It's not for religious education. And this is discrimination. So this is an important case, folks. I know you may say like, well, who cares about a playground surface in Missouri? Well, it's a big deal because if that law, which doesn't exist anymore, but is nationwide in the Supreme Court, is struck down and declared unconstitutional, then it really opens the doors for a lot of charter schools to get money. And also for a lot of parochial, a lot of religious institution affiliated schools, Catholic schools and otherwise, to get money from the state if parents choose to go there in a school choice program. So it's really important. All right. Oh, all right. Oh, the Bank of International Settlements.

I'm sorry. I'm going to get through because these are really important stories I want you to hear about. So I brought this up at the beginning of the show in the Birch Gold ad, and it fit perfectly because I'm really terrified about inflation. But the Bank for International Settlements, which is like a bank for international banks, they're putting out a warning. It's up on Drudge today, and they're saying saying, hey folks, there's a lot of money sitting out there and

they're using a number, the credit to GDP indicator, which is basically how much debt the world has compared to the growth levels. And they're worried. They're worried about the amount of debt because the amount of debt is the amount of, talking about government debt, is the amount of money that's been created. For government to to create debt government has to print money and go buy stuff that's how government debt basically works i mean if you you know when you buy a government bond then the government pays you back for the bond they're basically printing money to give you that back especially when they're when they're running in the red as often as our government is so they're saying hey there's a lot of debt out there the problem with that is that money that's been created

doesn't go anywhere it doesn't get. So when the government creates money to buy its own assets, like has happened all over the world with quantitative easing, so the government issues a government banjo and the Federal Reserve, which is a government, quasi-government bank, supposed to be independent, but it's not, prints money to buy a government asset, the taxpayer's on the hook. That printed money still exists. You can't just burn it later on. So what they're worried about is all this money is going to start seeping into the economy and eventually to dry that money supply up to prevent more money from chasing fewer products. I always give the example of a chair. If there's $100 in

an island and there's 100 chairs, then each chair can basically fetch a dollar using simple numbers. If you print another $100 and throw it on the island through a helicopter and you drop it down, each chair can now fetch $2. That's an extremely simplistic way of looking at inflation, right, Joe? So the way you dry up that money supply is international banks and central banks typically raise interest rates. Raising interest rates makes loans harder to get because it costs more money. If a loan is 5% per year, Joe, and then they double it to 10%, that loan is going to be a lot more expensive for you. And a lot of people aren't going to take loans, which is going to lead to a drying up of money into the economy, which will pull some of that 100 extra helicopter money off the island out

of circulation. Okay. In effect, kind of keeping it in storage until the economy can catch up. So the gist of the story is that the Bank of International Settlements is worried that we have so much debt out there that we're going to have to raise interest rates significantly to dry up that money. And once those interest rates go up high enough, if the interest rates are higher than the growth rates in the economy, we're going to have a big problem. So you may have some kind of a world recession soon. I'm not trying to be Captain Apocalypse here, but it is something you need to worry about.

We have to make sure our growth rates are high enough that they supersede a lot of our interest rates. We don't want interest rates like they were in the 80s for a mortgage. It was at 12% for some mortgages back in the 80s. It was horrible. And then all of a sudden, growth rates in the economy are only 2% and 3%. If that, the economy will be smothered.

So just something to worry about there with inflation coming ahead. If the inflation numbers really spike, we're going to be in big trouble. Hey, one more story. And I want to get to maybe in detail tomorrow some other stuff about this backfiring Trump-Russia thing, which is really blowing up in their face. CNN is in crisis right now for more fake news.

CNN's had a big fake news problem, but I don't know if you saw this story, Joe. They ran a story that Anthony Scaramucci, an advisor to Trump, and Steve Schwarzman were under investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Treasury for their dealings with a Russian investment firm. And everybody was like, oh my gosh, we finally got it, the smoking gun. Well, it turned out the story was totally false. It's completely made up. And the allegation is that Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, Democratic Senator from California, the allegation is that, which hasn't been denied, by the way, by Warren's staff, at least, is that they leaked this story to CNN. The problem, Joe, is that the story is completely false. And sources within the Senate Intelligence Committee have said, quote,

the story is without merit at all. So CNN had to completely retract the story and apologize to Scaramucci. And they're in a world of trouble right now, folks, because now they're starting to realize that their credibility is on the line because of the Trump-Russia fairy tale blowing up in their faces. And with that, and the New York Times being called out by Jim Comey at the hearing for getting the Trump-Russia story completely wrong, I want to leave you with this point for the day. Folks, be very, very careful. Whatever you read from the Washington Post, very, very careful. Whatever you read from the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC, they are letting their editorial standards lapse in favor of advancing the X-Files Trump-Russia story. And they're starting to admit now that a lot of what they told you

was completely wrong. They had to retract the story in a very embarrassing moment. All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in. I really appreciate it. I'll see you all tomorrow.