The Dan Bongino Show - Ep. 505 A Stunning Admission That Confirms Conservative Economics

Episode Date: July 18, 2017

In this episode I address some misinformation about the role of the Secret Service in the Trump Jr. meeting.  http://reut.rs/2t4ZmEZ   I also discuss a stunning admission by the often liberal-leaning IMF about tax cuts.  https://www.cato.org/blog/international-monetary-fund-accidentally-provides-strong-evidence-laffer-curve?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=a3c475d05e-Cato_at_Liberty_RSS&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_395878584c-a3c475d05e-143016961&goal=0_395878584c-a3c475d05e-143016961&mc_cid=a3c475d05e&mc_eid=3fd7404a34   I discuss big data, facial recognition, and policing technology, and why you should be concerned.  http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/07/facial-recognition-coming-police-body-cameras/139472/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dan Bongino. They've been tweeting to me, Bongino's a nut, Bongino's a blanker, blanker. The Dan Bongino Show. Everywhere big government gets bigger, corruption grows bigger, and these liberals just keep going on and on and on about how great big government is, and they can't prove to you any examples of how wonderful big government is almost anywhere. Get ready to hear the truth about America. Young kids, you are too stupid to figure out your health insurances, so we're going to

hammer your cabooses to death until you figure out that the government knows what's best and you're an idiot. 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? Hey, man, ready to go. Let's go. Yeah.

I got about eight stories I saw of interest today. Hey, by the way, I still haven't picked the winner of the contest. I'm still working on that. I saw so many good entries on Twitter. So thank you for everyone who did that. But I'll get to that this week. I'll tweet you. I'll mention it on the show.

Get me your address. I'll send you a book. And then I will email you a code for a free year of CRTV. So thanks to everyone who entered the contest. We had some outstanding new democratic party slogans. I really appreciate it. Hey, one thing I didn't address yesterday on the show, a news story that producer Joe brought up that I should have brought up because it's relevant to my work history. And I had planned on it and we just, there was just so much to discuss yesterday. You can probably tell by the length of yesterday's show, a little longer than i typically do the trump jr j seculo u.s secret

service story now for those of you did not see the story busy weekend vacation whatever it may be i'll give you a quick synopsis of what happened so you're probably familiar uh with the the trump jr russian lawyer meeting story. He's a Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. under the premise from a third party that she had some kind of information on Hillary. She didn't. Meeting was a waste of time. As I've said repeatedly, meeting was a bad idea, but bad ideas are made or happen all the time in politics. Dano, I'll answer for the audience. Yes, we heard about it ad nauseum. Thank you. People get sick of it. I know. I got an email from a guy. This is not about the Trump Russia thing, I promise, because I get people are totally tired of it. Me, too. This is but a different angle. Something came up this weekend and I've been getting a ton of questions on it. Joe brought it up.

legal representative for the administration, Sekulow had said on one of the Sunday shows, he's a very good guy, by the way, and this is a very common mistake. I'm not throwing him under the bus. He had said, well, you know, if this meeting basically was that big of a deal and this woman was some high-level intelligence operative from the Russians,

well, wouldn't the Secret Service have stopped her from meeting with Don Jr. anyway? Is that accurately sum it up, Joe? Yeah, pretty much. Pretty good. Yeah, the secular was as a representative for the president. He said that. And again, I'm not throwing him under the bus.

No, this is a common mistake, though. He's saying, why did the Secret Service stop this woman if she was such a danger to the country, I guess, is the best way to say it. Yeah. Well, folks, this is a common mistake. And from a Secret Service agent's perspective, and the Secret Service immediately had to put something out saying that at the time of the meeting, Don Jr. was not a Secret Service protectee. He did not have a detail. Trump was not the formal nominee yet, and he did not have a protection detail,

Donald Trump Jr. at the time. But I'd make the case to you that that's irrelevant, and here's why. And this is a common thing people mix up when it comes to Secret Service protection. The Secret Service does not tell protectees who they can meet or not meet with. I know that's surprising to a lot of people, but that's not the way it works, ladies and gentlemen. We secure who comes in the room. We can put them through a magnetometer. Sorry, I just had some green tea.

I love green tea. You can put them through a magnetometer. You can frisk them. Matter of fact, I remember the night Hillary Clinton won her Senate seat. I may have told this story before. Guy comes up the stairs. It was at the Grand Hyatt in New York. And I'm at this back entrance to this room.

She's having this party in. And I see he looks familiar, but he stops the magnetometer, the wand, the handheld magnetometer we had broke. Like, sir, you got to put your hands on the wall and frisk him. It was Ben Affleck. I was like, ah, this is crazy. I went home like, I think I just frisked Ben Affleck.

Back then he wasn't as famous as he is now, but he's still pretty famous. So it's kind of funny. But the point I'm trying to make by that stupid story is we'll frisk you. We'll put you through a magnetometer. We'll background check you if you're going to get within arm's length of the president. But we don't tell the president who to meet with. Folks, think about this. Let me just explain to you why this is logical. Joe, wouldn't it be a pretty easy case for me to make the case to you that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is probably a really dangerous person? Yeah. Yeah. The president could meet with him, though. Sure. Do you think the The president could meet with him, though. Sure.

Do you think the Secret Service is going to go, no, no, we ran this guy. He's got associations with Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. We think he's an international terrorist. And the fact that he was a head of state in Iran doesn't matter. We don't want you to meet with him. Folks, the Secret Service does not tell anybody who to meet with. They don't. I know that sounds crazy, but here's another example. And although this is hyperbolic, it's not unheard of to a lesser degree. Say you've got a president who is anti-death penalty.

And that's another thing I want to get to in a second. I had an interesting email. Say you've got a president who's anti-death penalty and he wants to go to a prison to meet with a guy uh on on death row or woman whatever it may be who is a serial murderer but who claims to be reformed and is and has found the lord and really doesn't want to die we could that's certainly a bad idea from the secret Service perspective Joe the guy's a killer or the woman's a killer I mean it's a convicted killer on death row we cannot tell the president not to go we can request

to be in the room we obviously are going to put them through a metal detector although it's a prison so it's probably not that part of it's probably irrelevant but you get my point yeah we don't tell the protectees who to meet with. Almost ever.

Now, I can tell you from a behind-the-scenes perspective, I'm not giving up any secrets here, folks. This is not mysterious. Anyone who, you can figure this out on your own. There are stories about this in any media outlet that's covered the Secret Service ever. We can pass that information on to the president, and it usually goes through the staff, or the deputy chief of staff where we say,

hey, Mr. President, this guy, you know, Joey Bag of Donuts you want to meet with. This guy's like, you know, he meets with Tommy two times all the time. And these guys got some mob ties. This may not look good for you. We're not politicians, but we're just telling you this guy could be dangerous. Now, we'll frisk him. We'll toss him. We'll put him to a metal detector and all that stuff.

We'll sit in a room with you but this guy could have you know a background that may you know not look so good you get what i'm saying joe a little unsavory a little unsavory is the right way to say it the staffer may say okay thanks guys bad idea but that's totally up to them ladies and gentlemen totally up to them so now that this story is kind of back in the news, and again, forgive me for not mentioning it yesterday, I just want to dispel that myth because it's really important and critical to understanding the functioning of our government. It's not a nuanced issue. Oh, who cares who the Secret Service says they can meet with or not? No, no, it's important because there are people in the press who actually believe that.

There are the Secret Service says who can come in and out. We don't. Now, you come in the room with a gun, it's a whole different story. I'll be honest with you. Even if the President of the United States, if he was going to meet with some former terrorist and a guy walked in the room with a.38 snubby in his pocket, I'm telling you right now, no one even cares what the President says. They're going to be like, hey, got to lose the peace, amigo. Got to go. Put it in a lockbox or something, right?

Assuming you had it legally. But I hope I, did I, you think I cleared that up? Because it's important. All right, good. Trump Jr. does not matter, even if he wasn't, which he wasn't, he was not a protectee. But even if he was, I'm telling you, it doesn't matter. That woman could have been, say Trump had a detail. Here's how it would have went down. Let's say the worst case scenario. Let's say Trump Jr. had a detail at the time, which he didn't. And the Russian lawyer who came in the room

was the head of the Russian FSB. Which now used to be the KGB now the FSB. We still can't stop her from going in there and meeting with Trump Jr. We can pass on the info, but that's it. All right. So I just want to be sure you guys and ladies understood that. All right. Today's show brought to you by our friends at My Patriot Supply. You know,

I love these guys. They're really a great company. I'm really into preparedness. As I get older, I worry more and more about what are seemingly small things. But let me tell you something. You get a natural disaster, you get some unexpected event, and I don't even want to go in because I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm just a guy who believes that sadly bad things can and do happen. Folks, you have to be prepared. You have to have an emergency food supply. It's critical to do that. We ensure everything in our lives that matter. Not having at least a one-month supply of emergency food is really, that's an insane decision. We ensure everything that matters.

Go pick up a one-month supply of emergency food today. My Patriot Supply. These guys are great. They've been sponsors from the beginning. They keep the show free for you all. I really appreciate you listening. I really appreciate them sponsoring the show. It's available at preparewithdan.com.

That's preparewithdan.com. They will send you a month's supply of emergency food, super slim plastic case, $99. That's preparewithdan.com. They will send you a month's supply of emergency food, super slim plastic case, $99. That's it. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You only need water to prepare it. It's super simple. It stays good, folks, for 25 years, 25 years. I will be a shell of my former self by the time it goes bad. I used to say I'd be gone, but people would send me emails saying, don't be such a pessimist, because I'll only be 67. But with the jujitsu, I don't know if I'm going to make it that long. But 25 years at last.

Go pick it up today. Preparewithdan.com. It's only $99. Go pick it up. Okay. Second story. So a guy sent me an email yesterday. I really appreciate the listener feedback.

My email is danielatbongino.com. And he said, hey, you know, you keep talking about population control and all these pro-abortion stories and how the left doesn't celebrate death, but certainly doesn't mind it. But if the left doesn't mind death in the achievement of their goals. last show and the show before that quickly summed up again is that the left doesn't celebrate abortion and euthanasia and the fact that we should give grandma the pill rather than the hip surgery as barack obama once said health care rationing and things like that they don't celebrate that they just don't mind death and i know you know when we want to take shots we're like ah you know the left they it's a death cult folks it's really not if it was again they'd all be killing themselves which thankfully they're not i mean that we don't you know let's not exacerbate an already bad problem with leftist ideology but i do think it's bad enough that again they don't mind that like the fact that abortion

results in death doesn't bother them at all or else they wouldn't celebrate it so they just don't mind that so a guy said to me and it was a fair enough question he said well why did they so object to the death penalty sorry got a little head itch there and i thought that's a great question and maybe i should have explained that well folks the left is always about a triaging of priorities remember to them death isn't a big deal because the bigger priority to them is population control, population control through the state and literally population control, keeping our numbers low because they view the human being as a virus on the earth,

based on their green, their relentless pursuit of the green agenda, which is guaranteed to bankrupt humanity. They don't care. They don't mind poverty. They don't mind bankruptcy and they don't mind death. But the reason they advocate against the death penalty is because leftist ideology has always been centered around the idea that evil is not individual. Evil is not real. That evil is a result of institutions. Now, please follow me on this. I'm not going to get too deep into it because I got a lot of news to get to as well. But, you know, we talk a lot on the show about the anti-anti-communist, how that's what leftism is. They're against us.

They're against everything that's against us because they believe in raw power. What you call that power is irrelevant to them. Socialism, communism, they just believe in concentrated state power that they control. They don't believe in concentrated state power when Trump's in charge, only when they control. How they get there is irrelevant. That's where the line, the ends will justify the means. Meaning, whatever means they have to get to that power at the end, where they have to take control of the economy, of healthcare, of everything, they don't care.

Now, in the triaging of priorities, you can't have a belief in individual good and individual human evil, because that doesn't let you label institutions as bad. I hope I'm not confused. If I am, forgive me, folks. But I think this is really critical stuff. And I think that's what makes our show different. It's critical you understand that. The left believes that institutions, collections of people, governing systems are evil, not people. And Thomas Sowell, in his brilliant book, Conflict of Visions, wrote an entire book about this. I cannot recommend the book highly enough. It's one of those books you could read in a week, but you shouldn't. You should read it in a year because it's that good. Read two,

three pages a day and digest every bit of it. Because he talks about how conservative ideology, what we used to call old school liberalism, believes that evil is a real thing and that people can be evil. And the idea of government is that we should always respect God-given big R rights, rights given to us by God, human liberty, human freedom that we're born with. But government is a necessity. You know, Federalist 51, if men were angels, we wouldn't need government, basically. But the government, Joe, is a necessity

to control some of the natural evil tendencies of men. Okay. But it's never meant to override the big R rights given to us by God. They're given to us by God. They're not given to us by the state. The state, liberals don't see it that way, folks. And I promise I'll tie this up for you with the death penalty in a second. They see institutions as evil, ideologies as evil, that people can't possibly be evil, that it's the corrupting force of bad ideas that have to be stopped. And what, what,

what's the big culprit there? Capitalism, freedom, that capitalism is nature is naturally exploitative, that it takes from those who don't have and gives to those who do, which is amazing because if they don't have it, how did we take it? But they believe that institutions are evil.

You know, governments run by Republicans are evil and the way they, they can't get you to believe that if you put the evil squarely on the human being. Because then you can just say, well, it's not institutions that are evil. It's people who are evil when they run institutions. You see how we turn it on them? We say, no, no, people are evil. And therefore, people should not have concentrated government power. not all people. I'm saying evil's a real thing is a better way to say it.

That people have the tendency to evil, so conservatives are of the general mindset, ideologically speaking, that we should never concentrate power in the hands of men because they have a tendency to lapse towards evil. Lord Acton, absolute power corrupts absolutely, right, Joe? But the left doesn't believe that. They believe society's perfectible if we just had better systems. You get what I'm saying? So the left

believes the system, capitalism, is evil and it corrupts people, and it's not that they're evil, it's that the system did it. That's why the left doesn't believe in the death penalty. Because if they acknowledge the death penalty that some people, you have to accept the fact that at some point, I believe in the death penalty. Because if they acknowledge the death penalty that some people, you have to accept the fact at some point, I'm not a death penalty

supporter by the way, it may surprise some of you, but I'm not. It's a whole other show. for them to accept the death penalty, they would have to accept that some people are not redeemable. And some people are not perfectible. I know you think I'm making this up. Okay, got that. If the left accepts that,

they have to accept the basic tenets of conservative ideology that if they were to accept the death penalty, that some people, Joe, are just evil and not redeemable. Therefore, evil is an individual thing, not a systems thing. Yeah, it makes sense. Okay. So, I mean, I know it's a little bit confusing, but it was a fair question. And so that's why the death penalty gets subordinated to their larger goal of making governments look like an apparition to perfect society. In other words, you have to believe society is perfectible and people aren't evil. Governments will do that.

And we can't acknowledge people are evil. So that's what we do. We fight against the death penalty because it requires them to accept that. It was a good question. And I know it was a little deep, but it's Thomas Sowell's book is just amazing. It goes into that. them. I love them. Somewhere between, I like, love them, but I never really go crazy over them. Sometimes I read pieces, I'm like, yes, yes, there it is. So I was looking at Kato's email list the other day and Daniel Mitchell, who writes some outstanding stuff over there, has a piece. It's going to be in the show notes. It's also available on my email list. I'll email them to you. Go to Bongino.com, sign up for my email. I will send it right to your inbox.

But it's a great piece and Mitchell does really good work. I suggest you follow him. And he critiques the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, which he rightly so says is largely, not all, but largely, Joe, filled with people who are big government economists looking for a reason to justify high taxes and the state and the growing power of the state. Mitchell is not. Mitchell's a freedom loving guy. He's also an economist who, strangely enough, believes in facts and data.

I said that sarcastically. So he's constantly going after the IMF for what he sees as biased research. So he's laughing his butt off in this piece he put out because the piece, again, inadvertently admits what we already know is true, that the Laffer curve exists. Now, what's the Laffer curve and why is this important to you? The Laffer curve, we talk about it all the time in the show. It's not the laughter curve. It's not a measure of a clown's effectiveness. It's Laffer, L-A-F-F-E-R, eponymously named after Art Laffer, who was an advisor to Ronald Reagan on economics. And it's a very simple curve.

It basically says as tax rates go up, you'll hit a certain sweet spot. And as they go up even higher, you'll begin to lose money. That's the simplest way I can sum it up. Yeah. And one of the reasons Laffer proposed that that happened, and there's a ton of data to support this, you have to believe this, by the way, if you're a conservative. If not, their entire credo on tax policy falls apart. But one of the reasons this happens is tax rates go up higher and higher and higher.

It is worth more to people to avoid paying those taxes than it is to just pay them. So if Joe owes $10,000 in taxes at one tax rate and then $20,000 under another tax rate, that's a $10,000 difference. If Joe can pay a tax lawyer $2,000 to get him out of the additional $10,000 tax rate, that's a $10,000 difference. If Joe can pay a tax lawyer $2,000 to get him out of the additional $10,000 tax liability, newsflash, Joe's going to do it. He saves eight grand. Again, I know this is tough for liberals. We don't even need Jay's abacus for this one, Joe. This is even simple for Jay's abacus. I mean, if you're going to pay 10,000 more in taxes and a tax attorney says, hey, it's not illegal, but I will show you a tax avoidance, not tax evasion, a tax avoidance strategy to avoid the $10,000 liability under the new tax rate, and it's only going to cost you $2,000 to pay me, what are you going to do?

You're going to pay the accountant. Of course, it happens all the time. Now, again, it's only mysterious to liberals but again back to like the death penalty in the ideology and how the why matters and the bigger theories of why the left does what it does just like the left can never acknowledge the presence of individual evil they can see only see institutions as evil and hence improving those institutions will fix society the left will never ever acknowledge the presence of the Laffer curve, ever. It is a complex argument that I've summed up, I think, to make it digestible for you.

But the Laffer curve, if they acknowledge the presence of the Laffer curve, the entire ecosystem of far-left economics falls apart, Joe, because think about it. If the Laffer curve is correct, and tax rates as they get higher and higher, it's almost funny to say because leftists are so dumb. As tax rates go higher and higher, it not only doesn't raise more tax revenue, but it actually raises less tax revenue. Do you understand how the whole far left economics ecosystem collapses?

Because what they say then joe if you believe that i'm sorry to get excited folks but that's why i love this piece it just makes no sense your leftist friends are arguing to you right now i know many of you listening have these liberal friends you've been at thanksgiving dinners with liberal uncle tony and liberal uncle tony's like hey you don't know what you're talking about, little Joey Armacost, nephew. You're like, little, I'm 50-plus years old, Uncle Tony. Doesn't matter.

You don't know squat. I know you're the producer for that crappy show, The Renegade Republican, and that dope Dan's always talking about economics, but we have to raise tax rates because we got to get more money from those damn rich people. And little Joey Armacost is sitting there and he's protecting his... You ever see old school Vince Vaughn's earmuffs? He puts the earmuffs around

his kid when people curse around his kid. So Joe's got little Joe next to him, his son. He's earmuffing his kid's ears, little Joe, even though Joe's probably bigger than Joe right now from his lifting. But he's earmuffing him because he doesn't want to hear Uncle Tony saying really dumb stuff about the tax rates. But once he puts the earmuffs off, he starts, you know what, Joe, let's, his little Joe's smart. He says, little Joe, go back to Uncle Tony and tell him why he's crazy. Well, Uncle Tony, there's this thing called the Laffer curve, which has indicated using rather large data sets over history that as tax rates go up over time, people engage in tax avoidance strategies. And the government actually loses revenue, Uncle Tony. Uncle Tony's like, you're crazy, Little Joe.

And he does what every liberal does. He starts throwing wine bottles at him. And Little Joe's like, ah! And Big Joe jumps in, gets him in a Kesagatami three-quarter mount thing, locks him in an arm... All right, we're getting a little out of control here. But... Sorry, I just love economic... There goes the turkey.

The turkey bones are flying. It's a bad MC. But I say that because having run for office three times and having been a conservative activist for, gosh, 10 years now maybe, I've had this debate with liberals so many times and it just gets nasty every time. They will never acknowledge that. They will never acknowledge that as tax rates go up past a certain point, tax revenue goes down, despite the fact that the data is almost conclusive on it. We have the Ronald Reagan tax cuts, tax rates went down, tax revenue went up. We have the Calvin Coolidge tax cuts, tax rates went down, revenue went up. We have the Bill Clinton capital gains tax cut, tax rates went down, tax revenue went up. We have the John F. Kennedy tax cuts, big tax cuts, by the way, tax rates went down, tax revenue went up. We have the John F.

Kennedy tax cuts, big tax cuts, by the way, tax rates went down, tax revenue went up. This happens over and over and over again. Now, what does this have to do with the Daniel Mitchell piece? Well, there's a couple of points here. Let me just read to you. I take screenshots so I can read this stuff direct so I get you the most accurate information. But first takeaway is, one, in the piece, in the IMF research, which keep in mind, the International Monetary Fund is a big globalist joint chock full of far left economists who want you to believe that tax rates should be as high as humanly possible. OK, so they admit, number one in the piece.

That multinationals will global shop for lower tax rates. What? What now, Joe, again, to normal people listening, you're like, Dan, does this even require repeating? That's like the dumbest point ever. But to liberals listening, this is a shocker to them, Joe, that multinational companies, Joe, get ready, will locate in places where they have to pay less taxes.

Amazing. Wait, hold on. I'm running out of air to suck it. What? But they, you know what's amazing? That they admitted it in the piece. That's what's amazing. They admitted in their IMF research,

and Mitchell's like blown away by this too. Number one, that multinationals will go where the taxes are. Again, to the conservatives listening, you're like, this is like hand meet face, face meet desk. You're like, this is it? No, it gets better. There's an actual point. They admit even more.

Sorry, I'm making myself laugh, which is never fine. You should never make yourself laugh. That's not cool. Good comedians. Actually, sometimes I do see laugh, which is never fine. You should never make yourself laugh. That's not cool. Good comedians. Actually, sometimes I do see them laughing at their own jokes. Oh, yeah. That Kevin Hart, I see. That guy's hysterical.

Kevin Hart's so funny. I see him laughing at his own jokes all the time. So this is a quote from the piece that Daniel Mitchell quotes. And again, it's all in the Cato piece if you want to read it all yourself. But headline corporate income tax rates have plummeted since 1980 by an average of almost 20%. It is a telling sign

of international tax competition at work, which closer empirical work tends to confirm. Okay, that's the setup. This is from the IMF piece. Now, they got this wrong, by the way. Mitchell acknowledged it. It's not corporate tax rates

haven't plummeted by 20%. What they meant to say is 20 percentage points. There's a difference. But needless to say, the IMF is acknowledging in the setup here that global corporate tax rates, the taxes on business have gone down. So liberals, follow me. I know this is hard. I don't want to have to get Jay's abacus out.

We got it out twice last week because the liberals were having such a tough time with the math. Okay? So try to follow me without the help of the abacus this time. We got it out twice last week because the liberals were having such a tough time with the math. Okay. So try to follow me without the help of the abacus this time. Corporate tax rates have gone down all over the globe. Okay. So now this is Dan Mitchell talking. He says, but here's the accidental admission that immediately caught my eye.

The authors admit that lower tax rates have not resulted in lower revenue. Here's the quote from the IMF piece. But revenues have remained steady so far in developing countries and increased in advanced economies. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I mean, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

I will put the link. I will email this to you. You join my email list. It will be emailed to you. It'll be at the show notes at Bongino.com. It's at Kato now. I've tweeted it. I tweeted it yesterday.

You can look it up. And this doesn't matter. Joe, it doesn't. Look at me. Listen. Look me in the eyes, man. I'm going to get this straight to you. I'm going to beam this in your head, do like an ESP thing, and we're going to get verbal

too as well. It doesn't matter. Liberals don't care. Facts and data. They are immune to facts and data. It doesn't matter. Liberals will argue to you tomorrow morning without a hiccup in their step that we should hike corporate tax rates because businesses should pay more, even though the IMF, chock full of libs, just acknowledged in their piece that

despite the fact that corporate tax rates have dropped all over the globe, revenues have remained steady, Joe, and even advanced in advanced economies and increased. Now, I don't have time to beat the snot out of this piece even more, but it's so good. It's short, too. It's not even like in complex economic wonky talk. Go in there and look. There are charts in there, incredibly easy to read. These are not complicated econometric data analysis that we're like, oh my God, here's what the chart shows. And you can see the chart in the piece by Mitchell. What is the chart show? Chart shows, not chart chose. All right, folks, I had to actually cut out two minutes of the show and start over because I swear I even confused myself because the liberals have got me so, so messed up in the head.

And I was talking about the liberal liberal Uncle Tony is even in my head now. I was talking about the charts with Joe and I even screwed Joe up. The charts in the piece are amazing because they're so simple to read, like even liberals can figure them out. So, Joe, remember the X and Y axis? Yeah. So you have the X and Y axis. Get ready for this. You have corporate tax rates going up in the chart.

So okay, there's one data set of corporate tax rates going up. What do you think happens to the corporate tax revenue? Goes down. Yes! We got it! After finally cutting out two minutes of the show because we screwed it up ourselves because we even i wish maybe we'll put that in outcuts one day even when i screwed up even joe and joe was like what are you doing huh well come again i almost screwed it up again

the revenue i know because it's so stupid like we're like this can't possibly be right it is corporate tax rates go up and you're like, you're so believed like, oh, tax rates went up. Even I'm like, well, tax revenue must've went up. No, it didn't.

It goes down. One up, one down. X, Y axis. One goes up. You got to look at the charts. That was really funny, by the way. I'm telling you, you missed two minutes of the show

that could be classic material because I'm like arguing to Joe in the two lost minutes, like that show Lost. Remember Lost? Like they're gone. They're on that Lost. I don't even know what happened there. But in that, even Joe's like, wait, really?

Because even I'm screwed up with it. Corporate tax rates go up. Corporate revenue went down. Look at the charts. They're not even hard to understand. Anybody can look at them. Folks, it doesn't matter. This is what is so darn frustrating about arguing with liberals. They argue for things that don't even benefit their own cause.

Oh, your goal is to raise tax revenue? Well, why are you raising corporate tax rates? Because it's going to raise revenue. What evidence do you have of that? Oh, I don't have any. Matter of fact, it's actually going to do the opposite, but I'm arguing for it anyway because I'm an idiot. Folks, please read this piece. I'm begging you. If you never read the show notes, just go today to Bongino.com. I don't even sell abs on my site, folks, yet. So it's not yet, because I may do it in the future, but I don't get anything from this. I just beg you to read the piece or go to Cato and look it up or go to my Twitter. It's a really good piece. Show it to your liberal friends, and I guarantee you, absolutely none of this will matter. All right. Today's show also

brought to you by our friends at BrickHouse Nutrition. Now, I'm a huge fan of these guys. I love Miles and Adam. They're one of my original sponsors. They are one of the best young, fresh, hot upcoming nutrition product companies out there on the market now. I love these guys. They came to me at the beginning with a product called Foundation. And I have a really busy lifestyle. I've been kind of stressed out the last couple days. Truth be told, Joe knows I got a thousand things going on and I'll be in for Levin tonight. So I'm juggling chainsaws right now. But I really mean this. I could not get through the two-a-day workouts, the jitsu, as I tell my daughter, I call it Brazilian jitso, jitso. The podcasting, the writing, the book promotion, the CRTV show, we're working on everything

without this stuff. It's amazing. It is like having two gas tanks in the gym. It's a creatine ATP blend. And I'm telling you, if you live an active lifestyle and you are physically out there, you're a CrossFitter, you're a cop, you're a fireman, you need that energy to get through the day. This will give your muscles a store. It's like having an extra gas tank in the muscles whenever you're engaged in exercise

that requires you to really push it. CrossFit, whatever you do, it's great for CrossFitters, great for MMA guys, boxers, even recreational folks working out, people who take yoga. It'll help you. It'll give your muscles that extra gas tank. It gives you a nice firm look to your muscles. And I always ask people, do me a favor. I'm so convinced this product's going to work for you. Take the mirror test. Look at yourself in the mirror. Take a mental snapshot of what you look like. Go try foundation. It takes about seven days to load. Take a mental snapshot of yourself seven days later. You're going to be very happy with the looks. I'm telling you, I promise you. Give it

a look. Brickhousenutrition.com slash Dan. That's brickhousenutrition.com slash Dan. Pick up foundation today. Okay. One final story I saw, Joe, which we just discussed this on yesterday's show and boom, something magically appears on Drudge. I didn't set it up. I wasn't trying to be slick about it. But there's an article, defense1.com. I've never heard of the website, but they're probably going to get a lot of clicks

now that they have a Drudge link. And remember yesterday we were talking about the dangers of big data, a topic that if you're a regular listener to the show, you know I'm fascinated by because I really think it has the potential to do both magical and very dangerous things at the same time if it's not handled with an appropriate degree of respect. Nassim Taleb, who wrote the book The Black Swan, which Joe used to want to choke me over

because I used to bring it up all the time. You know, he brings up a great point about artificial systems that human beings create, that nature has firewalls that prevent random events from destroying the entire world. In other words, Joe, like a cyclone, no matter how devastating, or a hurricane, or an earthquake, these are all isolated events that nature has its own firewalls. Even forest fires are limited by lakes or mountains. Nature has its own firewalls. I believe a lot of it was intelligent design by God, but you can believe whatever you want. There was some kind of selective process, whatever it may be. But when human beings are involved those firewalls disappear and one of the examples he

always gives about the difference between artificial systems and natural systems is if you were to put say a thousand people in the room joe and you wanted to get a measure so you can use big data right joe you wanted to use big data to measure the average weight in the room. It wouldn't be hard. You just weigh everybody in the room and whatever, divide it by 1,000, and you'd get some semblance of central tendency, mean, median, or mode, whatever you're looking at. Medium would be the 50th percentile, mode would be the weight that appears most often, and the median would be the average. Not the mean, excuse me, it would be the 50th percentile. Mode would be the weight that appears most often. And the median would be the average. Not the median, excuse me, would be the average of the weights.

So pretty simple stuff. But he says, you know, it's interesting. If you were to put the heaviest human being alive in that room and you had 1,000 people, so it's a big data set. It's not 10 people. It's 1,000 people. It would barely move the average of the weights. I mean, it would go up, but it wouldn't go up so much that it would basically destroy

the validity of the whole data set. You get what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. Human beings, and that's a natural thing. Weight, it's not a man-created, well, I mean, you could argue eating, but you know what I'm saying. It's nature and will limit how heavy people can be. It's a good example he uses.

But he says, think about a human created phenomenon like wealth. Excuse me, like a measure of wealth. Let's use the same example. You put a thousand people in a room. Just the randomly selected people. And you want to measure the average wealth. You know, what do you figure the average salary would be in a room, Joe? $50,000?

I don't know. I mean, what's the average salary in the United States? Yeah, 50, 60, right? Now you take Bill Gates worth whatever, 9, 10 billion, and you stick them in a room. All of a sudden, in an artificial system, wealth is not natural. There's nothing natural about wealth other than it's a man-made system of accumulation of assets. natural about wealth other than it's a man-made system of accumulation of assets.

All of a sudden, the average salary in a room, Joe, is what? $200,000, $300,000? In other words, the average, what's meant to be a number indicative of what most people in the room earn is now not reflective at all of what nearly anybody in the room earns because human beings got involved. I'm not falling into the leftist tendency to blame human beings for all our problems, but it is a fascinating proposition by Taleb that when you aggregate big data in human systems, that human error can be introduced and the data can become non-reflective of exactly what the data was trying to anticipate.

In other words, if no one told you Gates was in the room and you're using that data to make a bunch of educated decisions about your company, Joe, what do you think the average salary is? You think it's $200,000. Right. Even though it's not. It's only $200,000 because Bill Gates is in the room. You get what I'm saying? Sure. So now you're making a product.

You're making Fabergé eggs for people who are having trouble affording steak dinners every Friday night because they're struggling, some of them. You see how the big data can mess up everything? So we were talking about in yesterday's show how the dangerous part about big data is the leftist tendency to want the government to control big data. And in yesterday's show, I addressed the story in The Guardian, a left-leaning outlet, where a University of Maryland professor is proposing a National Algorithm Safety Board, a government agency to monitor big data. I was like, no, no, it never ends. It never stops with the left. They cannot get enough control ever. So, bing, bing, bing, there there we go i see it today i'm looking on george i'm like this is it this is perfect bing that was a from microsoft big the search engine right yeah motorola is on

defense1.com motorola is working with an ai company artificial intelligence called nurala sorry if i'm saying it wrong n-e-u-r-a-l-a quote, Joe, real-time learning for a person of interest search. Now, what the heck does that mean to you? Motorola is working on a technology for police departments. And you know I'm not anti-police. I'm just, I'm very careful about our liberties. And police do have a monopoly on the use of force and control. So I think good cops, most of them, understand that too.

Real-time learning for a person of interest, basically facial recognition for police cameras they can wear on themselves. Now, listen, Joe, that can be very good. I mean, that can be, and that is a tool. And I'll make the point in a second. It's not the equipment. It's the rules of engagement that matter. But I'm just telling you, be very careful about big data where it's going because what happens with that data? In other words, let's say a cop has a camera on

his shoulder that's measuring facial recognition. And all of a sudden there's an algorithm going on behind the scene that learns something you don't want it to learn. Remember, with artificial intelligence, you don't know what it's going to learn or else it wouldn't be artificially intelligent. You'd be telling it what to learn. The whole idea of artificial intelligence is eventually it doesn't need as many inputs from human beings. It can take the input and do it itself. That's the whole point, Joe. Right. So what if it starts figuring out that people who come into contact with the cops more often and therefore their face appears as more often in front of the police camera, that these people are dangerous. And next time someone comes up to you,

that same person, you know, to ask the cop, the cop gets a signal that, hey, this person may be dangerous. And you don't know where the AI got that from. And it's told on whatever, say the cop has a Bluetooth earpiece in, or it doesn't matter,

he's fed information, this person could be dangerous. And let's say the person just approached cops a lot because he just wanted directions and he gets lost often. Folks, again, I know you may say, well, there's, they may be a little bit of a stretch. Are they? Are they a little bit of a stretch?

I mean, we thought it was a little bit of a stretch to say that, oh, housing. Remember how, Joe, remember housing? It never goes down. Remember that? Housing never goes down. We've got 50 years of data. House prices go up always, all the time. Wrong. They don't. Big data told you that. Big data, big error. You had Bill Gates in the room and you didn't know about it.

That's the problem. And Bill Gates in the room with the housing crisis was the government paying people's mortgages through a subsidy known as Fannie and Freddie. I'm just saying, be very careful with this stuff. It can be a tremendous tool for cops say you have a missing kid joe you know i remember a thousand times this stuff would happen and they'd say they'd say you get a bolo be on lookout and they'd hand you a printed picture of a missing kid or a wanted fugitive i'll be honest with you joe nine out of ten times if you saw the person you'd never know you just wouldn't't know. They grow a beard. They put a hat on.

The kids, they put clothing on the kid that's different. Now, with facial recognition, none of that matters. It measures like cheekbones, the distance to the ear, stuff you can't hide. Wouldn't it be nice for cops? You're walking down the street in Times Square, and there's a missing kid. All of a sudden, you get a notification in your Bluetooth earpiece. That missing child is 22 degrees to your right, 50 feet away. Please go apprehend. That's a great tool. But I'm just urging you to be very cautious. And I'll leave you with this. It's not the equipment. It's the rules of engagement that matter. In other words,

you may say, well, cops shouldn't have that equipment. Ladies and gentlemen, forget that. Forget it. I'm telling you, I am as hardcore a liberty lover on this issue as humanly possible. The equipment is out there. It is not going to stop. This equipment, this AI is out there and it's going to be in the hands of law enforcement. It's going to. The only question you should be asking is what are we doing with the rules of engagement to make sure that it is, they are written rules, they are documented rules, they are

enforceable rules where your civil liberties, civil liberties are protected. You can file a complaint. If it's used to say, again, you go to ask the cops for directions a lot, all of a sudden you pop up in a computer as a dangerous person. It's maybe a bit of a stretch, but I just want you to understand that that could be the potential in the future. And it could be used as a pretext to pull you over if that stuff gets very serious. And read the article yourself in Defense One. They're working on it now. And remember, just so you know, you may say, well, they shouldn't have the equipment. Ladies and gentlemen, it isn't the equipment. The equipment is... Countries have nuclear weapons. Why aren't you afraid of them?

No, I'm serious. Why don't you live in fear every day? Russia and China have nuclear weapons. Because folks, it's not the equipment. You understand that the rules of engagement matter more. You generally understand that however bad the Russians and Chinese have acted towards the United States, that they're not interested in mutually assured destruction. You're not going to stop the proliferation of the equipment. A constitutional republic, freedom-loving society, you focus more on rules of engagement, not stopping the equipment. It's a futile endeavor. Make sense, Joe? Yeah. Focus on protecting the rules of engagement. When I say rules of engagement, when they can

use the product and why. That's what matters. That's absolutely what matters. All right, folks. Thanks again for tuning in. I really appreciate it. I will see you all tomorrow. You just heard the Dan Bongino Show. Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com. You can also get Dan's podcasts on iTunes or SoundCloud. And follow Dan on Twitter 24-7 at DBonGino.