Phony In, Phony Out, Graham Platner.

Thanks for listening to Chicago's Morning Answer podcast sponsored by Signature Bank. Signature Bank takes pride in helping customers grow their business and provide unmatched banking expertise, custom financial solutions, and the industry's best technology. So whether you're a business looking for a deposit relationship or needs a ready source of financing, Signature Bank is the right bank for you. Call today at 773-467. 5600 to hear how signature bank can help your business grow and thrive. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. I want to spend a lot of time on this, and it works out well because I don't have a lot of time to spend on it. But the preliminary hearing in the Tyler Robinson case, the accused assassin of Charlie Kirk, a lot of conspiracy theorists, Candace Owens at the top of the list that have, for some reason, sizable audiences, sad commentary on our times. And also those that sort of middle for them have in the past, like Megyn Kelly, looking silly as the evidence the prosecution has in its possession is presented in this preliminary hearing. Bill Malusian, Fox News, and Fox legal contributor, former prosecutor, and criminal defense attorney, Josh Ritter.

Very strong, and the defense sounded very weak. The defense is... It shows Robinson on campus at UVU four separate times, even though he wasn't a student there. And the consensus I've been saying is that that video has been pretty damning for the defense. Your thoughts? It has been. We were aware that video existed, and we had seen some surveillance video of the suspect leaving the rooftop, now who prosecutors believe is Tyler Robinson. But we didn't realize how much video they in fact had. The video that was revealed in court over the last couple of days is remarkable because it can track his steps nearly on a minute-by-minute basis. Any argument that the defense may have had that somebody else could have been involved, I think, was really cut in half by this videotape because they are able to, through different angles, track him nearly from the time he parks his vehicle to the time he makes it to the rooftop, the time that he runs off of that rooftop, and then they believe to disposing of the rifle and the wooded area behind the campus. So it was really powerful evidence. What do you think of the job the prosecution has done so far? Again, this is like a five-day mini-trial. The standard is just probable cause. The defense is trying to delay, delay, delay. Prosecutors say they've got upwards of 60 exhibits they want to introduce. What do you think of where they are right now on day number three? I think they are doing a very good job. They're being very thorough. Sean Davis, providing more color here. It is not a big leap to be like, oh, this guy whose DNA is on everything. The guy whose text messages were everywhere. The guy who's he's accounted for all over the campus. His parents recognized him. They turned him in. They confessed it. They have all of it in black and white. He was angry over Charlie's belief that boys can't become girls and girls can't become boys. This isn't a particularly difficult case. This isn't something where we're having to go plumb the depths of the internet and look at this document and that document to figure out what go on. The dots basically connect themselves. It's not a revolutionary theory. This is yet one more example of left-wing transgender terroristic violence. It has to stop. We have to crack down on it. The dots basically connect themselves. Please share with the... Black helicopter conspiracy theorists in your life. Donald Trump Jr. was present and accounted for on the first day of the preliminary hearing. To see the actual facts laid out, Bill, because there was so much stuff that, you know, amidst the noise and the internet chatter that was laid out that, you know, I had never heard and makes this case very cut and dry to me. Very cut and dry. So do what a good... prosecutor will do and go where the facts lead. There's only one radio show in Chicago talking about today's biggest stories and telling you what they really mean. That show is this one. Chicago's morning answer on AM 560, The Answer.

Hey, business owners, is your business and money in good hands? Does your bank invest in your success? Hi, Mike Gallagher here, letting you know that when you need a relationship bank, signature bank makes commercial banking personal. I love these guys. Not only do they have expansive industry experience, a strong financial track record, but they're also highly capitalized for strategic growth. That's so important. That's why signature bank is my bank. They know what it means to grow a business by designing solutions that are right for you and only. you. These are real people. They're ready to help. So reach out to my friends at Signature Bank. Make the call today. 773-467-5630. Or visit them online at SignatureBank.Bank. Bank. That's SignatureBank. Bank. Your business could be Signature Bank's next success story. Go online. SignatureBank. Bank, Equal Housing Lender, Signature Bank. Only the biggest stories. Only the biggest guests. And only the biggest opinions. This is AM 560. The answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. Boy, I did not see that coming. I did not see that coming. Graham Platner.

Crocogeoia's kind of dude. That's my kind of man. That's right. He is out of the Senate race in Maine. Still don't know why he dropped out. I mean, he gives an explanation, which you'll hear momentarily. But what other play is there? What's the downside of staying in? You've already been humiliated. There are probably more humiliations to come. There are already more stories. There were stories circulating about more stories to come along the lines of his problems peacefully coexisting with the distaff side. But why not just stay in? Particularly stay in if you're this sort of defiant anti-establishment guy who's not going to let corporate PACs and DC insiders push you around and tell you what to do. But it turns out that Graham Platner was just cosplaying a Senate candidate and that he's typical of a politician who if he doesn't have the infrastructure behind them that others have built. He just collapses like a dying star. And so you have to come up with a unified theory of what really happened here. Who really loses and make generic appeals to these dark forces that are allied against you. And that's what Graham Platner did in his painful 11-minute fare-of-the-well video, whether he thinks it's a fairly well video or not. That's what it is. Hey, everyone. It's Cram Graham Platner here. I think as many of you know, over the past couple days, I have faced some very serious allegations, and I just want to make it clear. This is all false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It's not real.

It is placed an immense amount of weight. Including me. On me. As I think about what needs to happen now. Amy and I are regular people. We were not looking for this experience. We were not looking to get into politics. Politics just happened to us. To run for office. I just want you to think about what you would do as a regular person in a position where a much larger world, large forces. There it is. We're working against you personally to accuse you of the worst thing that a person could do, and it was not remotely true. I learned about this through press inquiries with no time to truly respond, no time for investigations before a corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury, and executioner. The story here is that Graham Platner, of course, is the victim of these large forces and the corporate media that plays judge during executioner. He's just a regular guy. He didn't understand politics. He didn't want to run for office. Somehow it happened. He didn't want to do it. Amy and him, too, his doting wife. They're just regular, regular people. Up against larger forces. The large forces. What do you mean? Like ex-girlfriends? I mean, I guess those can be larger forces. Sure. Your own self-inflicted wounds and blind drunkenness for the seems like the better part of your adult life. Uh-huh. Those large forces? Large forces in corporate media, the political establishment. It's the whole system. They're out to get me. Everybody, you there. It's the fact that they are being used by the political establishment to put structural pressure on us. Who, me? Us. We live in a political system that is not built for normal people. It is a system that is built structurally to make sure that movements like ours cannot flourish. that if they begin to succeed, they can be crushed. And what is that movement? You get plucked out of obscurity by some androgynous DSA candidate recruiter slash political consultant. And you shoot the gap against sort of the stale septuagenarian. Socialists in Maine. Stephen King takes a liking to you. And so you win a primary election with 150,000 votes in a little state. But it's a big stage because you're in a swing district that, you know, upon which control of the Senate could turn. What's the movement? What's the Graham Platner movement? He's just an apparatchik. And sort of a, you know.

a mess, a confused one. I mean, this guy is, he is a barnyard animal. He really is. When Trump said, this guy's a pig, whatever Trump's failings, whatever, you know, the thickness of the glass house that he lives in, I get it. But he is. He's just a dirty, filthy animal. As I said yesterday, appetites. That's it. man without a chest. There's no reflection. There's no consideration. And there's certainly nothing even resembling accountability. When he wasn't blaming it on these dark forces after the New York Times expose, he was blaming on Republican operatives. But here's the brutal political reality. And remember, keep what he's about to say here in mind when he's wailing about the establishment and the larger forces and the people that he eschewed. I'm not taking your corporate money. His whole shtick, and that's what it was. I'm not going to some wine cave fundraisers for the Democrat senatorial campaign committee. Oh, but I can't run because the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee won't fund me anymore. But the brutal political reality is that they are going to take everything away from us. Us. Those in power who have the ability to do so are using these allegations as an excuse to take away all of the things that we need to run a campaign. We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function. Larger organizations, the national level party. The bigger donor networks, they have all committed to spending no money in this race if I'm in it. They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine. Yeah, they just want to distance themselves from your stink. The larger donor networks, I thought you didn't need any stinking donors. This is a movement of the people. This is grassroots. voter file, voter data and all these things. You can't go back to mom and dad and have them put some more money in your bank account so that you can run a little Senate race in Maine. You can buy a voter file. If there's this groundswell of communist apparatchic grassroots, I guess, if you want to call it that support, then you've got people power. You don't need money. So now because the establishment won't support you, the establishment that you're running against, now you're like, oh, I can't, I can't run anymore. Well, it's inspired. Phony in, phony out, Graham Platner. Chris, Rogers Park.

Yeah, definitely phony, but really, really good at it. I mean, the way he looks into the camera with his eyes, like I could see myself as a woman thinking I could, even if he was some kind of a prude, I could change him. Do you think of yourself as a woman often, Chris? Yes, I know. I got lost in his eyes, too, because he's got such great political charisma. That's what I've been told to believe until recently. Now he doesn't anymore. Yeah, exactly. But he is right. There are some dark forces out there. They have really high-hitched voices, and they say, we found a guy, and we put a lot of money, and we paid, and we didn't vet the Nazi tattoo. I guess we didn't pay enough for that, but anyway. Yeah, very good. You do a great sort of Valley Girl-style impression of a DSA recruiter, and that's not off. I'm not saying that's wrong. And speaking of the... heritans of the left you know they all got together uh they put together one of those covens that they platform and so now and you know what they think now You know what? He was kind of, like, insulting to the working class. Oh, when did that happen? When did he become insulting as opposed to working class hero? I think it's also a little bit denigrating to people who are working class. Just feel like, oh, they all have Nazi tattoos. They all have these, like, gross. And they would overlook it, you know. Yeah. He was an insult to the people that we routinely insult by caricaturing them, even though we need their votes, particularly in Maine. Ray and Barrington. Senator Pocahontas was fine with him. He was her kind of man when it was only a Republican woman that he raped. Thanks for the call, Ray. That's my kind of man. Yeah, we know. Corey Woodlawn. You know, Dan, this whole thing stinks. That guy stink. He's sleazy. What the Democrats did is stinky and sleazy. It's just like Kamala Harris. Let's get this guy out and plug somebody else in. But if this guy had a political compass, he would take his message to the people. You don't need a party. If you feel that strong about it, gas up your corolla and hit the streets of Maine and tell the voters what your ideas are and try to get them to elect you. Because at the end of the day, those are the people that matter. Those are the people that count. He can spend his own money if you felt that strong about his political ideas. Thanks, Dan. Thanks for the call, Corey. Well, absolutely right. Not to mention he's an innocent man. I mean, he starts the fairly well speech with the I'm an innocent man. Well, don't you want to be vindicated? Don't you want to make your case to the people over the next four months to convince them that you are an innocent man wrongly accused? What a heroic story that would be. I'm an innocent man who's going to just skulk away because the establishment that I'm running against won't give me money. Wow. That's a real movement you got there. Roger and DeKalb.

Hey, Dan, good morning. So two quick points. So knowing a couple of, having known a couple of narcissists like Graham Platner, narcissists, people ask, why did women date them? Well, that's their whole thing. They are all about themselves. So do anything to impress a woman at first, and it doesn't take long until it all unravels. I've seen that a lot. But point two is, I bet you there's a lot of racism in that guy's past because he, not just besides Jews, I bet he threw the N-word alone, like N-WA. and two live crew and a little rat battle, because that's the kind of guys those guys are. They think they can get away with anything. And Democrats are the worst about keeping those kinds of secrets because I'll tell you, I'll let you know a little secret. Good union, hardcore teachers, some of the most racist people you'll ever find. I'm talking about white people. They use the end word like you couldn't believe. Have a great one. Thanks for the call. Well, I mean, he, you know, part of his, uh, musings on Reddit including included tropes about black people but that didn't matter that didn't upset the MS now covens no no the story about the story the New York Times story that didn't the Nazi tattoo the bizarre rape fantasies the bizarre interest in masturbating and porta I mean it's on and on and on and on The lying about your oyster farming business, the lying about how you acquired your home, the denigration of people who serve this country with honor and were injured in so doing. We haven't even talked much about that. The sort of the stolen valor aspect, which is one of the most grotesque things you can do. suggesting that people who acted heroically on the battlefield, his ostensible brothers in arms, did not. All of that. And it's all chalked up to, you know, youthful indiscretions of a guy in his 30s to early 40s who, you know, is still wrestling with who he is. And now it's the dark forces are after him. Boy. The good news is, I mean, he is a walking full employment plan for full employment plan for at least one, if not a team of therapists. I assume that will continue. I wonder if his marriage will. I wonder how long Amy will be the dutiful wife as all of this world. They didn't ask for this. In fact, they literally asked for this. When you put yourself out as a candidate. You're asking for it. You're asking, and you should know you're asking for, the full proctological exam. You know everything that is, you know, the things that are failings of yours in the course of your life are going to come out. And then it's how you deal with them. How do you think he's dealing with them? Is it inspiring a movement? George in Naperville. And he's a victim of circumstances. Yeah. Thanks for the call, George. Hear about the big stories of the day.

Then talk about them right here on Chicago's morning answer. On AM 560, the answer. Business owners, now's the time for your business to make the move to a locally owned business bank. Hi, Mike Gallagher here to let you know that you don't have to look far. Signature Bank was founded in Chicago with a simple mission to help companies like yours grow, succeed, and thrive. Their decisions are made locally by a terrific team that knows your name, cares about your business, and invests in your success. That's why Signature Bank is my bank. I'm a customer. As business owners, they knew that local family-owned businesses were not getting the help they needed or deserved. So, I invite you to reach out to my friends at Signature Bank today. Write the number down. Remember this phone number. Signature Bank, 773-467.5630. Or visit them online at SignatureBank. Signature Bank. Bank makes commercial banking personal. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender. This is Chicago's Morning Answer with Dan Proft, an AM 560, The Answer.

Top of the morning, Dan Profft here. Earlier in the week, we talked a bit about America 250, and the conversation was oriented towards the next 250 years, if this is going to be, continued to be a going concern. It starts in the classroom. The next 250 years for America starts in the classroom. How far we have allowed the... K through 12, really pre-K through post-secondary educational system to deteriorate over the last, well, 250 years, particularly the last 50. And it's a problem and you see it manifested in so many ways. One is with respect to our sort of institutions that preserve the nation's history. talking about 250 years of the nation's history, and how historically, culturally, and almost in every other way, illiterate so many Americans are, how politicized everything has become because these institutions have been infiltrated by the left, and conservatives basically ceded the territory. and then have just spent the last 50 years complaining about it. Some people doing some things about it, that material, including this administration, but so much more to do. And this was evidence, or another exhibit, to enter into evidence, is the president's restoring truth and sanity to American history order. which prompted a report on the Smithsonian Institute and the National Museum of American History and how radicalized it has been or it has become due to purposefulness by the left when they've been in charge and poor stewardship by conservatives and Republican presidential administrations when they have been in charge. This 162 page report, that's something. There's some interesting features here. Among the worst examples of how the National Museum for American History has been radicalized by the left into just another institution to churn out propaganda. A museum supposedly for families and children has displays including a sadomasochistic crotch harness. A trans non-binary person's chest binder. Because that is so integral to our history. Pages from a six-year-old girl's diary in which she prays, quote, every night for my penis to grow. This is not, you know, some sort of sick iteration of the Babylon B. This is what you're paying for to preserve as part of our American heritage. Museum featured video clips of drag queens, images of nude women, magazine promoting female masturbation. A Mickey Mouse.

is characterized as a vestige of longstanding traditions of blackface, minstrel, the minstrel sea. The ukulele is a product of U.S. imperialism. Don't tell Tiny Tim. Wild West shows turning the subjugation of indigenous people into theater. Christopher Columbus, of course, is a murderer. He's a slaver. He's a thief. The way Columbus is referred to. In an unsettling the continent feature, 1492 to 1776, the run-up to the founding. Columbus, murderer, slaver, thief. Christian pilgrims are colonizers. Thanksgiving, National Day of Morning. In the Benjamin Netanyahu Franklin space, they devoted 20% of the space to enslave people and asked visitors whether Franklin conducted electric shock experiments on slaves with zero evidence that he did. And I know, you know, regular people not paying attention. I mean, didn't we just have a black woman when the Ben Franklin look alike context in Philadelphia over the weekend? You know, which I know some people made an issue of it. It's fine. I mean, she was, she was, I saw an interviewer. She was having fun and she took it in stride. She's like, I thought I was going to get together with some of my geek friends who were cosplay. I didn't think I was actually going to win. It's fine. You know, participatory. That's all fine. But what this is, I don't know. I mean, it reads like an Kay Ivey League school, humanities curriculum. Because this was put together probably by over the years a lot of Kay Ivey League academics and other deep thinkers from our elite institutions. The American, the National Museum of American History also, of course, has a toolkit for museum professionals that lists rational thinking and hard work as. vestiges of white supremacy culture. Anti-white racism, meaning anti-racism, is official museum guidance. Angela Davis, communist, is featured as some sort of...

redeemable social justice warrior. Angela Davis, you know, back before it was all the rage on the left, she called for abolishing the police in jails. She, like Brandon Johnson, believes law enforcement and jails are a sickness. She was also on the FBI's most wanted list for a while after an armed courtroom takeover that resulted in the murder of a judge celebrated at the museum. 162 pages of this. And good for the Trump administration for trying to save America's story and actually being a good steward of institutions like this that have cultural impact. I mean, not just because of the visitors, but because what it represents about those who are acting as custodians of our history, whether we want them to or not. 312-4-2-5600. AlphaWealthgroup.com call and text line. A bit concerning. And equally concerning, we were talking about this before a little bit with an OECD study earlier in the week, OECD study about Western nations and just how weak the academic skills, the intellectual development has been for a significant percentage of American college students. This is a piece by Rose Horowitz in The Atlantic. The end of reading is here. It's a cover story in the Atlantic. The Atlantic is a left-wing rag generally, but they do some pretty good thing pieces. This is one of them. Listen to some of this. The share of Americans who read for pleasure declined by 43% between 2004 and 2023. Less than half of Americans read books. The average sentence in New York Times bestsellers are one-third shorter than a century ago. The attention span, the reading comp skills, the... cognitive atrophy, and it's probably only going to worsen in the age of AI. Now, you know, there are qualifiers here, for example, people that are listening to audiobooks rather than reading, listening while you're driving around or something. I mean, that's still intellectual nourishment, depending on what you're listening to. But so, you know, there's some, as I said, qualifiers, but the overriding data is concerning and it is again manifest itself in all sorts of ways that we see every day or we would if we were looking uh one of the other takeaways from this piece by horowitz Americans can swallow words and sentences, but they're losing the ability to think deeply about writing that's longer than an Instagram post. Nearly 30% of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multi-page text. In 2017, that number was less than 20% according to these studies that do this sort of testing representative of the demographics.

And it's getting worse. Fourth and eighth grade reading scores have slid in the past decade. You know what we need to do, spend more money in government schools. Isn't that what I'm just hearing from the Chicago Teachers Union this week, even as student enrollment continues to decline? Fourth and eighth grade reading scores have slid for the past decade from 1984 to 2025. The percentage of 13-year-olds who say they rarely or never read for front rose from 8% to 29%. And what's happening is every year older a child gets, the less they read, because this is where the cultural slide is. Most high schoolers reading for pleasure, consider reading for pleasure in alien practice. Margaret Renix, Harvard's assistant director for humanities and social sciences support. So some of the students view reading as an unnecessarily burdensome way of acquiring knowledge. By asking them to read, she said, it's as if professors are arbitrarily withholding information from students by forcing them to get it through this more difficult medium. Just tell me or let me Google it. Or grok it. 312-4-2-5600 AlphaWealthgroup.com. Call and text line.

The Atlantic story also documents a Harvard student who complained that he had to read a book written in Old English. It's very difficult to read books in Old English. He must be talking about Shakespeare or the Canterbury Tales or something, right? He was talking about a clockwork orange. Old English from five minutes ago. A clockwork orange is old English. He used chat GBT to translate a clockwork orange into new English, whatever that is. It sounds like, I, I mean, Clockwork Orange was written in like the early 60s. Old English. Bob and Buffalo Grove. Good morning, Dan, and thanks for reading my letter yesterday. Oh, yes. So your dad, David. By the way. You got to tell me, as a quick aside, because I just found it so funny, the way that you wrote about your dad, this part of it is very poignant, but the way this part. So when your mom died, he went into a depression and he gave up golf. Yeah. He got remarried. And when his second wife, unfortunately, passed away, he did not get depressed. He did not give up golf instead. In fact, he started playing more, you said. Yeah. It was kind of a different, a different relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Just interesting. Yeah. You know, I got a golf joke around that sort of thing. But I don't know if it's too soon. I don't want to offend you. And then go ahead. So this is an old one. People probably heard it. But guys playing golf with his wife, he slices it. behind a barn. And he's like, well, I'm going to have to just punch out and take effectively a penalty shot. And his wife said, no, look, the two barn doors, you can open them. So there's, and through the, if you hit it through the barn doors when they're open, you know, you've got a straight line to the green. So she opens the barn door on the front and the back. And he hits it and he hits the side of the barn. sort of shanks it, ricochets her in the head, kills her instantly. A few years later, he's remarried. On the same course, on the same hole, he slices it again. He's blocked by the barn again. His new wife. says the same thing. It's like, you know, look if I, you've got an angle to the green if I just open the front and the back of this, the barn here, and you can shoot it right through the barn, and, you know, you still got a shot and you don't have to punch out and, you know, try and get up and down. And he says, well, and then, and then he, what, no, I'm messing up. And he says, he says, no, I'm not doing that. The last time I did that, I had to take a double.

Okay, anyway, I'm sorry, Bob. Go ahead. You wanted to talk about the topic. Okay. Yeah. You talked about the Smithsonian. I've been to D.C. number of times because my granddaughter lives there. And a couple of years ago, we visited the African-American History Museum. Yes, looking for the Clarence Thomas exhibit, I'm sure. And... As an engineer, I wanted to see how they recognize inventors, scientists, and engineers. There was hardly any reference to them in their major contributions to American culture, society, development. There was nothing there. I told the people there. Where's your exhibit on the hidden figures? Yeah, right. They had nothing on the hidden figures. It's just amazing how the Smithsonian or the African American History Museum are totally ignoring certain aspects of American culture or, as you're seeing, they're trying to rewrite it. Thanks for the call, Bob. Appreciate it. Lou, Chicago Heights, the Heights. Mike, I got a way to take back to our schools. We have to explain to the parents how dangerous to send their kids to school. Look at the sexual predication that's happening in schools by teachers today. It's far greater than we even know. You know, I'm on the TikTok all the time. It's amazing how many teachers, administrators are abusing our kids. And I mean, I think that's the way you know. If you tell parents while your kids aren't getting educated, they don't care. If you tell parents, your kids are not safe, no, it's a truth, though. We got kids that can't spell cats if you gave them the K and a T. You know, so if you go out there, you tell parents it is. She gave him the kid. I caught that. You tell parents your kids are unsafe going to school, they're going to take more understanding. And we had a teacher at Bloom last year that got arrested for decisions happening all the time. I got there's cops that I know. They investigate teachers all the time. And the administrations block all this stuff. I mean, if you tell parents, you know, parents are oblivious to what's going on in their school system. And believe me, I deal with a lot of kids. Yeah. And since I'm a deal with kids. It's 88. And the kids that I have today are far more intellectually undermanned than they need to be. I can't get kids. You deal with them because you've got a gym and you do athletic stuff, right? That's right. Yeah. And it's far worse than we eat. Most people even know because we don't see this stuff. You know, so I think you have to attack it from the point that...

You know, your kids are unsafe going to school because this thing is really huge with what's happening with teachers and children. Thanks. It just used to be to men, but now it's all the girls, women, too. Thanks for the call, Lou. Appreciate it. Well, I mean, I just say, yeah, I mean, we've talked about that before, the Shake Shaft report and the incidents of sexual abuse of children in the school system. That's true. But, I mean, you can't. Harvard student complaining he had to read a book in Old English, and he's talking about Anthony Burgess's Clockwork Orange. It's rather ironic because one of the reasons that we have so many Clockwork Orange droogs, to borrow the term from Clockwork Orange, roaming around the streets, is because they think Clockwork Orange is Old English and it needs to be translated. It's news, opinion, insight. This is Chicago's morning answer. An AM-560, The Answer. Just another anecdote or two from that report on the Smithsonian, the National Museum, American History.

They hold regular meetings for staff members to meet, discuss, and read, quote, museums as a site for social action toolkit, which is a 200-page three-year roadmap, co-authored by a half a dozen current and former Smithsonian employees, on how to transform the museum space that, quote, privileges dominant Western ideas of race, class, and gender. And is linked, quote, with white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, abusive labor, colonization, imperialist theft of art and artifacts, destruction or absencing of alternative ways of interpreting or representing art and artifacts, structural racism, and other oppressions. That's why we're on the slide to Gomorrah, or slouching towards Gamora, to borrow from Robert Bork's book. Really interesting report, and I think it's nicely twinned with that Atlantic piece. I was mentioning the cover story, the end of reading is here. Lots to think about there, if you're so inclined. The stories you need to know to start your day. This is Chicago's morning answer. On AM 560, The Answer. If you're looking for the latest news, insight into what it means, and the sharpest opinion. There's only one station in Chicago where you can turn, and it's this one. We're AM 560. The answer.

And he talked about what he thinks the future of consensus thought on economic policy will be in the Republican Party. And it won't be the laissez-faire of Milton Friedman popularized by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Not that anything approximating what Friedman proposed has ever been achieved. So there's a little bit of a straw man there. Here's what bands had to say, and I want to see if there's agreement on that. I mean, even things like when the president said a few weeks ago that, you know, yeah, he absolutely wanted to like seize the equity of the AI companies. And, you know, you're not supposed to say that. And it's like, guys, he's the president and he sets the agenda and he just said it. And by the way, nobody really even protested. Yeah. So like. The president has already, and obviously I biased I'm as vice president, but the president has already like completely reordered the conversation towards what you might call an American developmentalist approach. Like American economic policy on the right is now much more Alexander Hamilton than it is Milton Friedman. Yeah. I think that's obviously a good thing. You might disagree, but that's just a normative statement. Notice, though, what you've just said, because for the people who say that betraying some nostalgic retconning of a caricature of the 1980s, that to change that in any way would be abandoning American history in the tradition, you said, hold on, I just went from Milton Friedman. To Hamilton. Exactly. And to some degree, George Washington. Right. 200 years backwards in history, actually. That's very much a foundation of American developmental economics and economic policy. And I do think, you know. I don't want to say you can go back to the future or, you know, forward to the past. But I do think fundamentally that Hamiltonian tradition is going to be what we see on the American right and will dominate American conservative economic thinking for the future. Yeah. Which is not laissez-faire. It's actually much more about, you know, building the kind of tools, building the kind of infrastructure that allow human beings to flourish. Yeah. that allow national and native industries to flourish at the expense of a hyper-globalized economy. And I think those are the basic principles that are going to carry us into the future. But to me, it's fundamentally about the dignity of the human person.

The economy is a tool to service the dignity of the human person. If a set of economic policies make it easier for a person to raise a family, to earn a living wage, to give back to their community, to maybe go to church on Sunday, or to actually spend some leisure time building the kind of life that matters, like that is the sort of thing that we want to be supportive of. Now, obviously, to do those things, you do need economic development. Yeah. But if you turn economic development into a sort of idol, then you end up sacrificing a lot of the things that matter most. And I do think that, you know, for our friends who are sort of on the more laissez-faire side of the American right, in hindsight, Part of why Milton Friedman's ideas made more sense in the 1980s is because they were being advocated in a country that still had a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity. And so, like, being laissez-faire in a world where there are Christian guardrails on everything is a much different proposition than being laissez-faire in a world where globalized liberalism has become... the sort of status quo of American elites. 312-642-5600 alphawealthgroup.com call and text line. Do you concur? I mean, first of all, the idea of even suggesting seizing, seizing equity of AI companies, that's not a laugh line. That's concerning, especially since President Trump has already taken equity stakes. in companies like Intel on behalf of the federal government. And basically men of the left like Sam Altman, as we talked about yesterday, are proposing that the government take a stake in, for example, open AI. But this is to try to get in bed with the government so that. Sam Altman and Open AI can use the government as a sword against its competitors as a shield to protect itself from said competitors and government, which is what rent seekers do. I mean, it's the oldest trick in the book. You really want expanded government interventions and manipulations of the market. Fingers on more scales in the private sector, the private economy. 312642-4-2-5600 alphawealthgroup.com call and text line he's also got the Hamiltonian reference it's a little bit of a stretch more than a little bit actually yes Hamilton proposed tariffs and subsidies in the infancy of America's construction of America's industrial base But in part, that's because it was at its infancy. Are we in our infancy now? So if you want to say, well, the Hamiltonian or the developmental economic perspective that JD Vance is articulating there, it's because we're not as much of a Christian nation as we were 40 years ago. Well, I mean, if you want to talk about economic policy as derivative of the time,

Well, we're not in the same place economically that we were when Hamilton was proposing tariffs and subsidies to spur American industrial production. Additionally, there are some departures. Hamilton was not concerned about trade deficits. He saw the infusion of foreign capital is a good thing. Now, to be fair, so does Trump, but he has this weird obsession with trade deficits, which don't matter, as I've tried to explain before on the show. The idea here, though, is that this is all just about sort of driving the right outcomes. And this is very much of the central planner's disposition. We have certain things that we want to achieve for certain cohorts of the population. And so we're going to manipulate the private economy in order to achieve those things for those preferred constituents. That's what we should do. The thing it fails on, and JD Vance continues to fail on in my estimation. is that the argument on behalf of laissez-faire policies or markets, which, by the way, it's just people freely exchanging goods and services, that's what a market is, that's what a free market is, without government interventions or limited government rules of the game, not picking winners and losers. looters before you can slip there uh the argument is that free markets is the most fair the most moral morality of the market it's not perfect it's not a religion it's not uh it's you know it's it's it's individuals flawed individuals freely exchanging goods and services So, you know, flawed individuals doing things will expose some flaws among the individuals and the outcomes, you know, because it's imperfect. It's not the almighty. And I certainly not suggesting that it is. It's just the most fair moral way to organize a private economy. It's rooted in persuasion rather than coercion. free exchange rather than manipulated exchange where the monopoly of force in society, that would be the state, has a seat at the table. I don't want, you know, to the extent that there is government intervention, you want it to be limited. And it all starts from the premise that government can be this force for good, which I reject.

dangerous servant and fearful master speaking of Washington since Michael Knowles brought him up inappropriately I might add yeah fearful dangerous servant fearful master it's not a force for good it's a restraint on other regarding activities so that everyone's rights are protected and people can operate freely so long as they're respectful of other people's equally realized God-given rights. I don't like where this is going. And, you know, this manifested itself in the debate with Walls. Now, of course, JD Vance wiped the floor with Tim Walz because he is a buffoonish Bolshevik. I mean, he is completely outclassed by JD Vance intellectually. And just in terms of policy knowledge, maturity level. I mean, you know, pick a trait, any trait. And so some of what JD Vance had to say was just, you know, was sort of passed along because it was in the context of mopping the floor with both walls as well as those two Daffy moderators, Brennan and O'Donnell. I had to, you know, fight to give fulsome answers. But if you go back and look, I mean, for example, on the discussion back in, and obviously everybody's focused on making sure we derail the Kamala Harris Wall's ticket. I got it. But now that we're removed and we're sort of midterm and we're with an eye towards 28 past the midterms. And there's a lot of discussion about JD Vance versus Marco Rubio and, frankly, who's the best choice to go up against whatever Neil Bolshevik or Neil Bolshevik stooge they put up. It's time to start thinking about these things, I would think. This was... The discussion about climate change between the two back in October of 24. Norah, you asked about climate change. I think this is a very important issue. Look, a lot of people are justifiably worried about all these crazy weathering patterns. I think it's important for us, first of all, to say. Donald Trump and I support clean air, clean water. We want the environment to be cleaner and safer. But one of the things that I've noticed, some of our Democratic friends talking a lot about, is a concern about carbon emissions, this idea that carbon emissions drives all of the climate change. Well, let's just say that's true. Just for the sake of arguments that we're not arguing about weird science, let's just say that's true. Well, if you believe that, what would you want to do? The answer is that you'd want to reshore as much American manufacturing as possible, and you'd want to produce as much energy as possible. in the United States of America because we're the cleanest economy in the entire world. What have Kamala Harris's policies actually led to? More energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas, more doing business in some of the dirtiest parts of the entire world. And when I say that, I mean...

the amount of carbon emissions they're doing per unit of economic output. So if we actually care about getting cleaner air and cleaner water, the best thing to do is to double down and invest in American workers and the American people. And unfortunately, Kamala Harris has done exactly the opposite. Governor Walls, you have two minutes to respond. Well, we're close to an agreement because all those things are happening. Yeah, we're close to an agreement. That was the problem. Van said I agree with Tim Walz 10 times in that debate. About what? You just heard it there. It sounds like a good answer. But what's the premise of it? The premise of it is JD Vance's criticism there wasn't the Green New Deal, wasn't that it was inflationary cronyism, which is what it was. Invest in our workers, invest our manufacturing. He's talking about government. So his criticism wasn't that the Green New Deal is fundamentally something the government shouldn't be involved in doing and that it was inflationary cronyism, but only that taxpayer-funded solar panel manufacturing should be done in the U.S. and not China. On paid family leave in that debate, JD Vance did not suggest that that was a private employer-employee matter. He agreed with balls that paid family leave should be mandated and funded by the federal government. On child care, JD Vance did not suggest dramatically reducing taxes as well as government subsidies to grow families' disposable incomes while reducing the cost of care. He agreed with walls that it should be further subsized by the federal government and that a Trump-JD Vance administration would use revenues derived from taxing imports to finance those increased subsidies for mandatory daycare provisions. On Obamacare, if you remember the debate, He didn't push for repeal. He congratulated Trump for saving it. Greg and Schaumburg. Morning, Dan. To the extent that JD Vance is anti-freedman, I wonder what he would advocate relative to two issues that are really being determined by the free market right now. Number one, the AI model. It seems like any given week right now. The AI model that they seemed to be superior last week is being replaced by an advance this week. So that's a case in point. Who should government invest in? And the other one, it's even perhaps bigger in my estimation, is what's going on with Windows right now versus Linux because of the way Microsoft displayed the computer industry and resistance of people wanting to upgrade from Windows 10.

greater acceptance of Linux by the OEMs. So in other words, take just those two instances that are really on everybody's mind right now. Who should the government be investing in following JD Vance's theories? Thanks. Thanks for the call. I mean, both of them, both Trump and JD Vance, are comfortable with all sorts of market interventions that I would oppose. I do oppose. But I'm much more of a free market kind of guy than they are. And this is the debate. Chet, Lyle. Good morning, Dan. I basically shut down, listening to what JD Vance says for his comments regarding Iran in the face of 47 years hard data. I think the more he talks, the deeper he digs his own gray for 2028 and notice the silence of Marco Rubio on such topics. And lastly, he just, well, I think I'm done. That's my comment. Thanks for the call, Chad. Brian in Evansville, Indiana. Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I just want to push out. Unlike the 80s, if you piggyback 40 years later to the date, you only got two political ideologies that are drawn people to the polls. On the left, you got the socialist movement because a lot of young people are coming out of universities and high schools. They're not 9 to 5 workers anymore. They, they, that's why you see open borders, soft on crime. Most of your established Democrats are gone. Now, they're being kicked out of the party. And when you look on the right, you got the MAGA movement who basically America first. And you know the JD Vance talk about manufacturing and some jobs that young people don't really want to go to anymore. One thing about the baby boomer generation, we did get off our button go to work every day. Thanks for hand. Thanks for the call, Brian. Appreciate it. A lot to think about there. You know, I know we focus on Trump and JD Vance and all of the good that is being done by the administration, and that's fair. Should be a balanced look, but a balanced look. That means addressing things that we're uncomfortable with too and having discussions about big topics like, you know, what should the foundational prevailing thought on economics be that informs the policy choices that are made, the positions taken and the policy choices made. politicians as the means to policy ends, lest we forget. There's only one radio show in Chicago talking about today's biggest stories and telling you what they really mean. That show is this one. Chicago's Morning Answer, an AM-560, The Answer. This is Chicago's Morning Answer with Dan Proft, an AM-560, The Answer.

Top of the morning, Dan Propt here, CENTCOM, U.S. Central Command, reporting yesterday on the additional strikes, approximately 90 Iranian military targets, including air defense systems, coastal surveillance assets, missile and drone storage sites, naval capabilities, and military logistics infrastructure along Iran's coastline were struck. The latest strikes follow successful execution of offensive strikes in Iran the night before. To what end? Well, it's unclear, but certainly Trump's position and decisions have made a marked change in direction from the last couple of months in the last couple of days. And he has at least in terms of rhetorical positioning decided to express his... displeasure and cynicism with the prospect of a peace deal with the Iranians. He's also recast his characterization of the remnants of that regime as not reasonable potential partners in peace, but as scumbags and crazy people. And we understand that Trump's rhetorical choices oscillate based on his... perceived opportunities consistent with what he's trying to achieve. But, you know, there is an ad hoc nature to this, too. It's not sort of all strategic genius, you know, multi-dimensional chess and so on and so forth. Now, to be fair, there is a... necessarily an ad hoc feature to prosecuting a war. You can't predict everything. But here's what Trump had to say while in Turkey for that NATO summit about the MOU and ceasefire, both of which he described as currently deceased. Have any questions? Mr. President, is the ceasefire over? Is the ceasefire done? Is the MOU dead? It's a very interesting question. To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people. And they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon that use it, as far as I'm concerned, it's over. I'll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They're good people. Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner. But they have to come back to me. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars. We make a deal. And if I make a deal with him, we have a deal. And he goes out, he talks. We make a deal. Everyone's agreed. No nuclear weapon. We make a deal. They go outside and talk to the press. They say, we never even talked about it. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. They're cuckoo. Mamadoff is a member of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and non-resident Felt at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He joins us now. Aldar, thanks for being with us. Appreciate it. Pleasure to be with you. So they were turning over New Leaf and recognizing that the 47 years of their posture towards America was a big mistake. That's what J.D. Van said a few weeks ago. And now they're cuckoo.

Where do you assess the possibility of a lasting cessation of hostilities to be? Well, I think that there is still a chance that the two sides still stick to memorandum of understanding, despite the rhetoric used by President Trump, simply because none of the two sides is really interested in the alternative. What is the most likely alternative? It's again a relapse to a full-scale war. And even when Trump says, that the MOU is over and American military strikes and intensifies its strikes on military targets in Iran. The question is, will this bend the Iranian will? Will it change the Iranian position on key issues such as Hormuz trade? So far, nothing suggests that that could be the case. If the United States failed to achieve its objectives during... the 40 days of intense strikes and warfare, it's very unlikely that it would succeed by again doing what it already was doing and failed to achieve its objectives. Furthermore, President Trump is talking about Iran not having nuclear weapon, but that's not the matter of discussion right now. The latest strikes... are all about Hormuz trade. There's nothing about nuclear weapons there. These questions on the Iranian nuclear program, safeguards, verification, etc., that was supposed to be discussed in the 60 days period after the MOU was signed. So that kind of rhetoric shows to me that there is no consistent strategy on the side of this administration to deal with the Iranian challenge. And there seems to be a consistent rhetorical position, at least, from the Iranians, including Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former mayor of Tehran, is part of this negotiation team, we're told. He posted, America still hasn't learned that bullying and breaking promises are no longer cost free. Let me put it plainly. If you strike, you'll get hit. Don't flail around pointlessly or you'll sink even deeper. The Strait of Hormuz will only open with Iranian arrangements, not American threats. So, you know, the rhetoric is ratcheting up here, too. And if you're right and the Iranians don't want full-scale war, then they're feeling like they're in a position to saber-rattle and, you know, and poke their finger in the eyes of... you know, big, bad America. And part of that, to me, it seems like it's to paper over the real problems that have been inflicted on the Iranians by these military strikes, as well as the economic tourniquet that is now being reapplied. So, I mean, the Iranians are engaged in quite a bit of puffery as well, but we should have known this over the last two months, too. I mean, part of my issue with Trump is.

this hand-wringing that he did in Ankara the other day is well i mean what did you think they were doing over the last two months the same thing they've been doing for 50 years well essentially it all boils down to the question of leverage. For Iranians, the control for Moos, the arrangement that has been accepted within the framework of MOU, namely the Dolechips passing through the Rousse, that they have to coordinate their passage with Iranians, this is non-negotiable because that's not a technical matter for them. That's a matter of sovereignty. That's a matter of leverage. The American side reads, that point, the relevant point of the MOU, differently. It reads it as establishing the free passage to all ships unconditionally. So that's the core of the dispute. Now, the question is, do you have to risk the whole edifice that has been constructed with such difficulties? and with Vice President JD Vance playing a leading role, is it worth to let it all collapse just because the two sides cannot agree on one point of the MOU? So I'm not claiming that this would have been an easy undertaking or that the Iranians are acting completely rational on this matter, but I still think that given the bigger stakes, and that is a relapse to full-fledged war. A better path would have been to try to keep negotiating, perhaps with the help of mediators such as Qatar or Pakistan, which played a very important role in getting to the memorandum of understanding and iron out. those differences and agree on the models of Pherande, also critically involving the maritime authorities from GCC countries, from Gulf Cooperation Council, basically creating a regional stake in the escalation. Yeah, I mean, but, you know, the... I think there's something missing from this discussion, too, where it's, you know, we've got to invasion and Trump dismissed the idea of boots on the ground or some sort of land invasion or even military force with respect to the strait. Because there are economic, the economic fury piece of this is real, too. I mean, Iran has a collapsing currency. They have chronic capital flight. They've got an energy sector that needs one-off U.S. licenses just to breathe. That's not exactly a sustainable position either. And Zenebrabuah, scholar at the Hudson Institute, commenting on this news that Iraq has agreed to U.S. demands to halt dollar flows to Iranian-backed militias. She said that's a big deal in the shadow banking and illegal transfer system that the IRGC established. If it happens, it has approximately the same level of negative effects for Iran as losing Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

And, you know, there are other options on the economic fury front, too, that are being argued, including at a former U.S. Treasury official who said, look, the U.S. should sanction begs that enable Iran, not just the front companies they serve. During economic fury, when it has high treasury warned regulators in China, Hong Kong, Oman, and the UAE, even sent warning letters to two Chinese banks, but those warnings were never followed by sanctions. And he talks about specific banks in China in particular that the U.S. could go after. So my point is to say that you have the economic noose tightening again, and there are more tools economically that... put the Iranians in even more precarious position economically, which, you know, frankly, is something that you could have this sort of faux stasis that we've had over the last several weeks while these negotiations were going on for months while and really wait out the Iranian regime and see if you create the economic conditions for what, you see if you can do through. economic sanctions, what you don't want to do through a military force? Well, the revoking of the waiver for oil sales for Iran. was implemented just because the strikes started or in package with the strikes, so to say. So that exactly a kind of step that lessens the incentives on the Iranian side to come to a deal with the United States. Because if the sanctions, if the waivers for the sanctions can be revoked so expeditiously, then what leverage does the United States have? If you have no trust in that the sanctions relief will be permanent and sustainable and viable, then you also remove incentive for the other side. Well, well, if we don't respond to them striking commercial ships in the strait and continuing to promote this idea that they're going to have a tolling system set up with which the world is going to have to comply, except for nations they may favor and exempt from some of the tolls like China. Well, I mean, if you don't respond to that, then what kind of leverage do you have to? Then you're sending the signal that you can do whatever you want. No, essentially then we're back to the discussion of, military force versus diplomatic engagement. I think that the military force, that's the point that I made from the outset, that has been tried. And it clearly didn't achieve its objective. Well, it's been tried. It's been tried in a limited fashion through air strikes and a blockade. But what's what's left? The ground troops, ground troops in Iran. I don't think there is particularly.

high appetite in the United States. No, no, I agree. ...invading country four times Iraq's size. And how did Iraq work out? So my point is that, of course, I'm not saying that what Iran is doing is okay, no. It's clearly a violation of international law and some sort of response. would be warranted. But this is not the first violation since MOU came into force. And the first time, the response was quite limited. It was sending the message. Right. This time, it's far bigger and coupled with the revoking of the sanctions waiver and the statement by President Trump that the MOU... is over as far as he's concerned. This is far more serious situation and it has far more potential. For escalation, that's what I'm worried about. And then we are back to the drawing board. Well, I mean, I agree with that concern. But I guess my point is to say, okay, so not military invasion, which I agree, that seems to be off the table and probably should be. But you're suggesting the economic sanctions that I was just discussing that de-leverages America. There needs to be, but you say there needs to be some sort of policy response to violation of the international law like the violations Iran is committing in the strait. So if it's not military and it's not economic, then what should be the response to those violations that's not deleverging? I think that the first reaction, when the first violations happened, that was enough. There's no need to escalate farther. And the core issue is the lack of trust. Why Iranians are doing these things? Not just because they are completely irrational. They're doing this because they care about establishing a principle that whichever vessel passes through those waters. They coordinate it with Tehran. This is the way they interpret MOU. I'm not saying this is the only possible interpretation. It's just I'm reflecting their thinking. And for them, having that leverage, that perceived leverage today in their hands is apparently much more valuable than a promise of future American sanctions relief, investment, what have you. in the future. And frankly, again, I'm not saying I completely agree with that position. It's not my place to agree or not, but the experience of their dealings with the United States for the past 50 years.

doesn't invite too much optimism and too much trust in terms of U.S. fulfilling his commitments. I understand that the American side also has very legitimate, very valid concerns regarding Iranian policies over the past 50 years almost. But those grievances are mutual. Both sides have a lot to call out the other one on. And that's the crux of the matter. There's no trust, and therefore both sides, they just stick to their leverage. And does the response we saw this week from the Saudis, since one of their carriers was one of the ones targeted by the Iranians. You know, the Saudis and... some of the other Gulf states that are not spoiling for continued hostilities, but maybe, maybe. getting sufficiently annoyed by the Iranians that they want to participate in more substantial ways, including militarily, including with things like the blockade or dealing with tolling in the strait, if that's the path that the Iranians attempt to take. Does that change the dynamic at all the possible Gulf states deciding that we really need to do something? more substantial than we're doing in conjunction with the United States here because this, this dynamic is not something that we want to persist for an extended period of time. And so it's necessarily going to require our further engagement. Well, the experience of the war has certainly shown that the GCC countries, they are not very eager to be playing for one of the sides. What Saudi Arabia and other countries most care about is stability and security. And what they need is... You know, proper conditions for their own economic development and reforms. They have very ambitious plans in their regard, which is why all of these countries, and some of them actually, such as Saudi Arabia until recently and United Arab Emirates, they have very complicated relationship with Tehran. They're not friends of Iranian regime at all. And yet they were fully cognizant of the destructive potential this war. bring up to them. And this is the reason why they were so actively lobbying the Trump administration to desist from that plan. So now they are in the situation when they are subjected to Iranian retaliatory strikes.

And it's not that the United States is standing by them. So they're caught in the middle. They no longer have confidence that the United States will protect them against Iranian retaliation. But they're also very well aware that Iran is a neighbor that, like it or not, it's not going to go away. And therefore, you have to find a model of coexistence. coexistence with this neighbor, which is why there is this idea of joint management of the remote strait between Iran and whatever maritime authority, the GCC Council would appoint. Like Oman, or that that would be the Iranians choice. That would be, no, I mean, Iranians don't have a choice on that. No, I mean, that would be their desire, I should, maybe I should say. Well, it could be, could be a man, could be Qatar. The point is that there is certainly a stake on both sides of the Gulf to stabilize the situation, and that you can only do when you forge the sense of co-ownership of the region between. The regional powers, which actually was the theme of my article in the American Conservative that I published a week ago. Eldar Memdav is a member of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Eldar, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be with you. Thank you. And he joined us on theoffwealthgroup.com, insulin. The stories you need to know to start your day. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM 560, the answer. Only the biggest stories. Only the biggest guests. And only the biggest opinions. This is AM 560, the answer.

Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. I love stories like this. This is right up there with the Trump account story this week. Sensuate some of the positives of the private economy since it's under such assault. Tony Barzar is a six-year-old cashier at Costco and a millionaire. Profiled in the Wall Street Journal. Tony Barsar unloaded his lunch in the break room, clocked in, headed for the checkout, just as he has for much of the past four decades. The 60-year-old Barsar was assigned to the self-checkout area, a cluster of six registers. Right here, ma'am, Barsar said, gesturing for a customer to line up to move to an open register. How you doing today, sir? Find everything all right. He said to another, he circled registers with the scanning gun. Long-tenured workers like Barsar are Costco's secret weapon. They're reliable and experienced, able to speed shoppers through checkout line and serve as mentors to new workers passing down the company's unique culture, according to Costco executives. Barsar's pay and benefits reflect his value to the company. He earns $32.90 an hour. I think this is today is going to be my last day. I'm going to be a cashier manager at Costco. The holdings in his 401K have boosted his retirement savings to more than a million bucks. His Costco-sponsored health care has a regular visit copay of $15 and a specialty visit co-pay of $25, well below the national average. Back almost 20 years ago, Barzar's family bought a three-bedroom, two-bath house with a pool, and they have been able to travel to Europe twice over the past decade. As a younger person, I didn't think me and my family would reach where we sit now, said Barsar. I could retire, but what would I do? Costco has been good to me. Costco has long paid more than most used retailers to help keep turnover low, a strategy that companies founders believe would reduce costs associated with training, new hires, and lead to better customer service. Turnover after one year of employment at Costco is around 7%, which is a fraction of industry averages. According to a McKinsey report, losing frontline retail employees cost an average of $10,000 per worker, and Costco did the math. So would you rather have Costco figure that out, or Zohran Mamdani and Brandon Johnson, guys that want to run city-owned supermarkets? For more on this and other matters, economic. Please be joined by Steve Moore, economist, author of The Trump Economic Miracle, and the plan to unleash prosperity again. Steve, thanks as always. Hey, Dan, good morning. By the way, what a coincidence. I literally was just reading that article in the Wall Street Journal before it came on. And it's amazing, only in America. Yeah. And Costco could become a million. But a million dollars is there what it used to be. Well, but I mean, and he's obviously supervisory level. But, but I mean, it doesn't matter to me. But he started out. He started out as a cashier. Yes. Yes.

But this doesn't matter to me. What that proves is, sorry to interrupt, but what that proves is I've always hated, hated, hated this notion the left talks about dead-end jobs. The only dead-end job is not having a job. Right. Yeah. And by the way, Tony Barsar is a black gentleman, too. So here's a guy started at Costco four decades ago, 60 years old now. And he's built this life for himself and his family in Tucson by... working hard, being reliable, and taking advantage of the benefits from a company that's smart enough to want to keep guys like Tony Bazaar around. So that's the model. And it's against the backdrop, not just of the BLM Brandons and the Mondanis of the world. But, and this is a conversation we're having before you joined us a little bit earlier in the program. You know, there's a lot of people on the right that believe in this sort of paternalistic policies, too, or we need to manipulate the markets to make sure certain cohorts of people or industries are protected. And this is something where, you know, we need to draw bright lines. And there are some, you know, in Trump world that are blurring those lines. Well, that's right. And incidentally, of course, this story, this Costco story comes on top of the SpaceX story where you literally have, you know, engineers and, you know, secretaries at SpaceX that are now millionaires because of, because they join this incredible company. So, you know, capitalism, wonderful thing. It also shows having a job is important. Also, you know, investing is important because. These, we have so many $100 billion and trillion dollar companies now, and the way you get ahead is making smart investments. So this is a country that has so much, so much wealth and so much opportunity. Now, the one thing that worries me, Dan, I don't know if you saw earlier this week in our hotline. We took a little bit of a shot at JD Vance, who wants to, you know, you were in my, you know, Saint is an economics. And he said, we have to move beyond Milton Friedman. Right. No, no, he was yesterday. His ideas are old-fashioned. We need to move towards more centralized government to provide a safety net, et cetera, which I'm really nervous because, you know, JD Vance is probably next, he's sort of the era parent to Trump at this point. Yeah, that's exactly, well, yeah, perhaps. I mean, that's exactly what I was talking about earlier in the show, that clip from the, has sit down with Michael Knowles and some of the things he said. But it's not inconsistent with what he and others believe. And they sort of characterize it as, you know, return to Hamiltonian economics, which is a bit of a misnomer. There's some there, but it's also. But there's also some real distinctions. In addition to that, the argument that he made that because we're a more secular nation today than we were 40 years ago, free markets don't work as well. I don't understand that. I mean, it's not. Yeah. Yeah. He is a, for people who haven't been following this, JD is a convert to Catholicism. I grew up.

I went to faith, hope, and charity grade school, and when that's going. I grew up, so I grew up Catholic. And privileged. It was going to be hard to believe, but I wasn't off the way. But the idea that somehow being Catholic interferes with free markets is absurd. I mean, John Paul II, who was maybe our greatest pope ever, you know, always contradicted that. notion that somehow if you're in favor of freedom, you're not a good Catholic. That's ridiculous. No, I mean, I'm Catholic, and I'm a, you know, a freedman acolyte, too. And, and, and, um, Yeah, I mean, part of though, to me, and that's what I was discussing earlier, is it's our failure to be consistent in arguing that, yes, well, the market is just a free people exchanging goods and services through persuasion rather than coercion. That's all it is. It's imperfect because we're imperfect. It's not a God, but it is the most moral, fair, dare I say, equitable way to organize society. And JD Vance is no better at, you know, managing or interfering in the affairs, the private transactions of 350 million people than is Zohran Mamdani or Brandon Johnson. Yeah, one of the things that, and I know J.D. a bit, I don't know him very well, but, you know, he's a smart guy. I think he's been misguided. I think he's getting some really bad economic advice. But he had this line in that, in that interview where he said, you know, we need an economy that, you know, provides, you know, roof over people's heads. And we need, you know, that puts, you know, chicken on every pot and so on. I'm like. Well, we do have a system like that. It's called capitalism. It doesn't work in Cuba. You know, Cuba doesn't provide people with a roof of their head and a good job, et cetera. So it's, but this is worrisome because there's this new movement in the Republican Party, Dan. And we've talked about this in weeks and months past called national conservatism, which is we just need fewer, we need less free markets and we need more government intervention. And I just wrote a column on this too. You know, Hamilton is misunderstood. I mean, he's considered like a saint today because, of course, the Broadway musical, which became a huge success. And there was a debate that goes back, as students of history know, goes back 250 years in this country between Hamiltonianism, which is more centralized government power, and Jeffersonianism, which is more power to the people and to the states. And that debate has raged for 250 years, and here we are again. And my point is, wait a minute. The Jeffersonianism, first of all, when Hamilton was, you know, at the time of Hamilton, do you know what percentage of the U.S. economy was federal government? Like 4%. Well, and there was no income tax. And also there was no industrial base, too. Exactly. Yes, right. And now look, he did a lot to.

you know, to protect interstate commerce and so on to help build the country. But my point is that, well, you know, Hamilton was for bigger government. Yeah, when we had 4%. Now it's 24%. Yeah. And if anything, we should be. And the other point is, as we've talked about so many times, one of the virtues of federalism. is that the Republican states are winning. I hate to tell my friends in Illinois that. But where are people moving to? Where are business moving to? Where is money moving to? Oh, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Idaho. Where is it leaving? New York, California, Illinois. So why would we want to have more power put into the states and the people? I mean, this is the Constitution, right? All powers that are not explicitly... granted that the federal government rests with, this is the 9th and 10th amendment, folks, rests with the states and the people. And I believe we should maintain the 9th and 10th amendments. Well, here's the other thing too. Mark Perry retired econ professor for University of Michigan. Great guy. Yeah, he is good. You just posted this. Price changes January of 2000 to December of 2025. So last 25 years. Last 25 years, average hourly wages have gone up in real terms, 131%. The things that have gone up at a much less of a percentage than hourly wages... New cars, household furnishings, clothing, cell phone services, computer software, toys, TVs. The things that are market-oriented, you're doing fine relative to the affordability question. Things that have exceeded the increase in average hourly wages, hospital services, college tuition, college textbooks, childcare, medical care services, right? You know, does that tell you something? All the stuff, yeah, all the stuff subsidized by government. is more expensive and all this stuff where we have a free market. And it's funny because when I asked my liberal friends, you know, gee, why do we have the government play such a big role in health care and education? Because, you know, you could make the case. Those are our two most important industries. You need your health and you need an educated workforce. And my little, oh, we need government to make it more affordable. Yeah. They're doing a wonderful job of it. Right. And you mentioned investments and obviously we had the big Trump accounts roll out this week. But I like something else you posted, too, you know, just again for those fearful of the CHICOM's superior economic prowess and so forth. You posted an unleash prosperity, a comparison between the Shanghai Composite and the S&P 500 over the last 15 years. Yeah, so this is important because there's a lot of, you know, even some of my free market friends and Republican friends are saying, well, you know, we need more industrial policy. We need the government to direct the investment into whether it's AI or data centers or the next big thing, whatever it might be.

And I'm like, well, wait a minute. If you look at, first of all, you know, I think, I think I'm a little older than you, Dan, but I remember when in the 80s, in the, everybody's talking about early 80s. So, oh, we need to follow the Japan model. Remember Japan? Yes. Take over the world. Right. Because we were, you know, because they bought Rockefeller Center. Yeah, right. Exactly. And Japan stock market in the next 40 years was basically flat while ours went up tenfold. So that Japan. Industrial policy model didn't work too well. And then, of course, that, oh, no, no, China. No, no, the China model, that's the one that works. Well, China, you know, in the last, China, when they went into the free market phase in the 80s, early 2000s, they were rocket ship, and then they moved back towards centralized government control of the economy. And their stock market has been basically flat for 10 years, and ours has gone through the roof. So my point, the stock market isn't everything, but if you want to add value, You do it through the private sector. One of the reasons America is rich is because we have incredibly sophisticated financial markets. And what financial markets do, and I'll have people to understand this, what are people on Wall Street do? They direct. capital and money allocation resources. Yeah. You know, industries. Yeah. And that's not solar and wind industry, which is what the government has. Well, right. So that's the whole thing. It's like you're talking about insurance companies. They ration. So do you want the private economy to ration or do you want the government to do it? Do you have the private economy to allocate capital or do you want the government to do it? Just to put a fine point on it, S&P 500, up 200% in value since 2010. The Shanghai composite is up 20%, 10x. 20% fairly. It's pretty amazing. So we got to stick with it. We can win this next phase. The biggest issue to me as an economist right now is whether we need to ensure that the United States dominates the AI age because it's coming. And I know a lot of your listeners, I don't know. We don't want AI. Well, AI is here. It's already happening. And we need to make sure that this is dominated by the United States. not China, because the race is on right now. And that's the reason. Better one, are you seeing any, you know, hearing about all these resistance now to data centers? No, we want data centers. We can't have those. It's like, that's like saying, no, I don't want my cell phone. Do people understand your cell phone doesn't work without data centers? Yeah, well, I mean, again, it's that economic populism that can cut a lot of different ways, most of them unproductive. Stephen Moore, economist, author of the Trump Economic Miracle, Steve, thanks as always, appreciate it. Okay, Dan, have a great week. You too, and you join us on the alphawealthgroup.com, answerline. The more you listen, the more you'll know, this is Chicago's morning answer. Morning answer on AM 560, The Answer. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer.

Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. So yesterday, an innocent Nazi was forced from a Senate race because the people he ran against will no longer fund him. Graham Platner announcing his fare thee well. Hey, everyone. It's Graham Platner here. I think as many of you know, over the past couple days, I have faced some very serious allegations. And I just want to make it clear. This is all false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It's not real. It is placed an immense amount of weight on me as I think about what needs to happen now. Amy and I are regular people. We were not looking for this experience. We were not looking to get into politics. We had no desire to run for office. I just want you to think about like what you would do as a regular person in a position where a much larger world, large forces. Large forces were working against you personally to accuse you of the worst thing that a person could do. And it was not remotely true. Large forces. I learned about this. Through press inquiries. Vast right wing conspiracy or just ex-girlfriends that were treated badly. Large forces. And so because of those large forces. The individuals with large checkbooks on the left have abdicated, and so he's got to call it a day. But the brutal political reality is that they are going to take everything away from us. Those in power who have the ability to do so are using these allegations as an excuse to take away all of the things that we need to run a campaign. We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function. Larger organizations, the national level party. The bigger donor networks, they have all committed to spending no money in this race if I'm in it. They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine. But wait a second. You're the man Diogenes was looking for. And you've got this movement that you're a part of. You can't, you and your movement, you and Amy, regular people, and this movement of regular people in a small state in Maine can't put together a few bucks. Maybe call mom and dad and have them up your weekly allowance. And you put together enough resources to buy a voter file and get out there and do that retail campaigning. You and this movement you're a part of.

You didn't need to go dollar for dollar with Susan Collins, not in a small state like Maine. You're an innocent man. Don't you want to vindicate yourself over the next four months? Ed Morrissey's the managing editor for Hotair.com. Ed, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Good morning. Great to be on with you. It's a real sad story how Graham Platner has been victimized by the system, Ed. talking about domestic violence and rape is about as arrogant, I think, a statement as I've ever heard or seen. I was amazed at the tenor of this. And this was clearly written for him. I mean, I think he was reading it off a screen while he was doing this. This did not sound like it was just an off-the-cuff sort of thing. But this is who this guy is. I mean, this guy's a phony from the... He doesn't work. He's mooching off his parents. He spent the last decade mooching off his parents and on disability from his time in the service, I believe for PTSD. And they're trying to package him as the voice of the working class male when he hasn't done hardly any work at all for the last decade. Yeah, he, you know, he didn't want to do that. It's like Judge Schmael sending a kid to the electric chair. He didn't want to do it, felt he owed it to them. He felt he owed it to the people who decided that he was the leader of this movement in Maine that he describes in generic terms, just as he talks about larger forces in generic terms. When in point of fact, he's just recruited by some... androgynous DSA consultant who thought they could flim-flam their way past Susan Collins because he's got a goatee and, you know, and a resume that reads working class. And it didn't work out. There's no, there's a movement there. This is not about Graham Platner. And the idea that. He seems to be intimating that he's somehow going to make a comeback when he takes the time he and Amy to combat these larger forces in private, that he'll be back because the movement demands it. I mean, the whole thing is so put upon. It's so self-reveral. I mean, the whole idea that it's a movement, first off, is...

that they happened to run across, and they thought he... yesterday, the Wall Street Journal this morning. Oh, look, look what Democrats overlooked in Graham Platner without once mentioning the fact that they didn't bother reporting on it either. It was places like the free beacon that we're reporting on it, main local outlets like the main wire reporting on these things, just by going to public records, right? Yeah, and it's interesting because the disturbing thing about this, I mean, Graham Platner is a disturbing individual. I mean, he's just a filthy animal is what he is. But the disturbing thing is you can just rinse and repeat phrases like no kings and stop oligarchy and be a viable candidate on that side for statewide office. And we see this happening. or federal office at the congressional level. And we see this happening across the country. And again, my particular focus is the Midwest because you have candidates that are more polished than Graham Platner that have less obvious baggage in places like Wisconsin and Michigan and throughout the Midwest that are ascendant as well.

up, you have to understand the context of primaries in, this doesn't apply to Senate races, by the way. We haven't really gone through a Senate race except in Maine yet with these types of dynamics. But in the House races that the DSA is winning, these are primaries in districts that are very solidly blue, almost, you know, boringly blue. And as such, they don't really get good turnout in primaries because the voters there know that they're going to get. same flavor of blue no matter what. It's not contentious. So voters don't tend to turn out in those races. And that's what the DSA is counting on. They're going after low turnout, high Democrat districts and challenging incumbents in those districts because they know it won't take much of a boost in turnout for them to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used when she was, I forget the name of the guy that they can come at that she beat Joe something or other.

Yeah, it's springing the upset, yeah, right. Yeah, it's bringing an upset, which is a better way of putting it. But, you know, go see. But I mean, just to just, I mean, I get what you're saying there. But, you know, let's say in a month we're looking at El Sayed as the Senate nominee in Michigan. Let's say in a month we're looking at Francesca Hong as the nominee for governor in Wisconsin, you know, which are which are two things that are more likely than not to happen. And then what's, you know, what's our threat assessment? Yes. The seats that the DSA won, especially in New York, but also the one in Colorado, those are not going to be competitive elections than general election. They've basically won those seats. Those candidates will be in the house. Adam Homoie in New Jersey is almost certainly going to be in the house. I think that's a D plus 13 district. I think that's the most competitive of all of those districts that we've just mentioned. Michigan, on the other hand, that's a statewide election, and it's a very competitive state. Donald Trump won it two years ago. Mike Rogers is...

in the U.S. Senate. And I think that that's where you start seeing this strategy fail for the DSA. flags, Graham Platner had a shot at that. And now I think that that's, I think that they pretty much screwed that up entirely. Whoever they, whoever they pick is still going to be carrying Plattenor's baggage. Susan Collins is going to make sure of that, you know, saying, oh, well, you know, this was, you know, Well, what if they get Dr. McDreamy from Gray's Anatomy, Patrick Dempsey? He already said no. He came out this morning and said, no, I'm not doing that. He's a lot of work. Hey, he's a smart guy. Yeah. Patrick Dempsey's a smart guy, and he's like, yeah, do I want to be in the Senate? No. Yeah, right, exactly. Maybe Stephen King. Oh, yeah, well, there you go. Yeah.

He's smarter than that, too. He's not going to run. And the DSA candidate, Troy Jackson, that they've already endorsed, it looks like we're not done having fun because, you know, Troy Jackson, Maynard, Lager, labor champion. Here we go again, except there's also reports that he admitted to mortgage fraud, and he's had some problems playing nicely with the female side as well. Well, I guess he chucked the water bottle at a staffer and hit her in the head, which is not exactly. No Nazi tattoos so far as we know. No Nazi tattoo, no, that's a pretty low bar. Yeah. Graham Platner couldn't even clear that. Yeah, I mean, Jackson's going to have a problem there, too. I don't know how far out that mortgage thing was adjudicated. I don't know if he admitted to it or if it's still. looking at Democrats and wondering, you know, what they can trust now from Democrats. At least Susan Collins is a known quantity. Well, and then it's, and it has a Biden redux feel to it, which is we, you know, I voted for him and now the party insiders pushed him out and they're putting in their guy. Well, not only that, but just the whole fake narrative thing. You know, this guy's a working class hero. He's actually an upper class mooch off his parents.

trying to Now, all that said, I mean, we talked about, for example, the Wisconsin governor's race, the Michigan Senate race, and those are competitive races. But that means Republicans could lose. I mean, in fact, you know, right now the odds are that even El-Sayed and Francesca Hong would be the favorites in a general election, which is saying something about the Midwest. And so what concerns you? from the perspective of Republican candidates, including in competitive races that are holds like Ken Paxton versus James Talarico in Texas. What is it? Do you have specific things you think Republicans need to either do a better job on this or they need to address that in order to position themselves more solidly? Well, I think they need to be aggressive on these issues with the DSA. I think that they need to be very aggressive about the fact that these are communists. the Democrat Party and take it over, that these are not, you know, working class deaths, that these are people who are coming out of academia, this hard left communist strain of academia that are being set up to full voters into thinking that they're moderates when they are actually radicals. And I think that Republicans really need to heavily lean into that. I know that people are worried about Texas. I don't think that there's a lot to worry about Texas. The other thing that's going on in Texas is that the Democrat Party is basically in a civil war with Jasmine Crockett and Colin Allred on one side and James Talarico and the other. And I am very convinced that that is going to sap their enthusiasm for turning out in November, for James Talarico specifically.

and explicitly saying this, right? This was just a few days ago. So Democrats have huge problems down here in Texas, and I think it's going to bleed into the general election here in terms of voter turnout and enthusiasm for James Talarico, whereas I think Republicans are going to be pretty fired up by the time you get around to November, but Republicans have to be pressing on this. They have to. that they're running because the DSA is trying to do this, trying to do this set of Oce. The more you talk about it, for the DSA. Well, the other thing, though, too, is it's not just the defend races. It's also, I mean, this is a defend race, too, technically, the TILA seat in North Carolina, for example. But also the- That one's going to be tougher. Roy Cooper's a good candidate, and that one's going to be tougher to win. Well, but here's the, so here's my point. That as well as Jon Ossoff in Georgia, and Georgia's getting tougher to win, just generally speaking. But the point is to say, Look at what we're seeing with the Senate caucus right now and the SAVE Act, for example, but that's just one example, and the need to get more conservative fighters, for lack of a better description, in that caucus to displace the Lisa Murkowski's, or at least the power of the Lisa Murkowski's and the Thom Tillis and the Bill Cassidy's and so forth. I know Katz. Callis is gone. Cassie's gone until this is gone. But you know what I'm saying? That strain, Mitch McConnell, that strain there. And these are opportunities where we're on the wrong side. And we need to be thinking, too, like, why can't we defeat Roy Cooper in North Carolina? Why can't we defeat Jon Ossoff in Georgia? What is it that we need to do in those states? Because that's with an eye towards 282, where those states are going to be important. Well, I think...

North Carolina is a close-run state. You know, if you're running somebody who's hard to the right in North Carolina, it's going to make it more difficult for you to win. You can do that in Texas. You can probably do that in Louisiana. But North Carolina is different. So is Georgia. You have to find somebody who can appeal. You know, that's the thing about Mike Rogers in Michigan. Mike Rogers is a pretty solidly conservative guy, but he's not a fire breeder. He's actually a pretty smart. somebody who doesn't make centrist nervous. Now, I don't know if he's going to win, but he's the kind of guy that you wouldn't want to run in Michigan, right? I think that a lot of times we're looking at this. We've had the same issue. We've had the same conversation about Susan Collins in the past, too, is that, well, Susan Collins isn't reliable. We need somebody in there who's a fighter. Susan Collins is about the best you're going to get out of Maine, and I'm surprised he's still. stage. Yeah, but you know, but... The fire breathing thing in Texas. You believe... We can't do it in North Carolina. Yeah, but the electorate's, you know, but there's some countervailing examples, too. I mean, think Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. Ron Johnson is the same state that elects Tammy Baldwin. Think in Georgia, Raphael Warnock, who is a, who is an inveterate race hustling demagogue. Jon Ossoff is this little soy boy who's a little bit more buttoned down. So I can see how Jon Ossoff gets away with being non-threatening. Raphael Warnock doesn't. So, and, you know, so I mean, it's like there's, there's. Yeah, but how do we get? How did we get there? I remember. I remember. I remember. We ran fire breathers in a state that didn't support him. Well, well. We ran lousy candidates against those two, and we basically handed those two seats.

Yeah, I mean, what's his name that? Crystal Walker? No, no, no, no, no. Who lost to Raphael Warnock in the runoff when Trump, you know, was making his claim that the election was stolen and you shouldn't turn out in the runoff. That was part of that, too. Yeah, right. So, I mean, there's always these, you know, sort of unique dynamics too. But I take your point. Always a good conversation. Ed Morrissey, managing editor for Hotair. Hotair.com, of course. Ed. Thanks for joining us, as always. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. And join us on the alphawealthgroup.com insulin. It's like a hot, steaming cup of information. To start your day, it's Chicago's morning answer on AM 560, the answer. If you're looking for the latest news, insight into what it means, and the sharpest opinion, there's only one station in Chicago where you can turn, and it's this one. We're AM 560, The Answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. A piece in Crane, Chicago business. So that's the anti-business business magazine pro-runseeker rag in Chicago. I mean, let's just call things what they are, which I do. Peace in Cranes. Here's an aggressive proposition. AI has a trust problem. Chicago can help solve it. Since one is Chicago in the business of solving trust problems or any sorts of problems. But maybe there's a point here. The author of this piece argues, what AI lacks today is what financial markets, credit markets, and countless other sectors have long relied upon. Independent standards, objective evaluation, and meaningful accountability at the deployment level, not at the developer level. And the comparison is made to underwriters' laboratories and the Chicago Board of Trade, underwriters' laboratories helping establish independent testing standards for electrical technologies, the Board of Trade helping pioneer standardized gradient and inspection systems to bring confidence to commodities markets. That's what we need for AI. to develop that argument. Pleased to be joined by the author of that piece, James Malikowski, who is the chairman and founding director of AIQA Global, that is, AIQA Global, that is, AIQA Global. And Chase Malikowski, the global co-founder, a managing director of AIQA Global. James, Chase, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. No, our pleasure. And good morning. Morning. Morning. So Chicago can help solve an AI problem. I got the underwrite, you know, I mentioned the Underwriters Laboratory and Chicago Border Trade comparisons, but develop that for us a little bit if you would. Either one. Yeah, I appreciate your comment of just getting straight to it. And Chicago has demonstrated leadership over the years. And, you know, the UL example goes all the way back to 1894 where folks were concerned about this new thing called electricity and whether it would start the barn on fire. It repeated that in 1848 with the Board of Trade and then again with more recently Morningstar. So.

There is real leadership potential here. And we're seeing that in AI, not only by the new legislation, which we'll talk about, but frankly, the enthusiasm of the governor and the legislature that supported it. Yeah. Well, I mean, when the political power structure in this state gets enthusiastic about something, I get very concerned. So why should I be excited that J.B. Pritzker and his posse are excited? I think one primary reason is what they are doing is a modest innovation over what California and New York have done, and it's in the spirit of full disclosure. If you look at the Illinois Act, what it really does new is require the large AI developers to publish what they're going to do for safety and then live up to it with an independent audit. And Illinois is the first to advance that audit principle. And that should give us all some comfort that there's somebody watching over this new technology. When you say safety, though, AI safety, what does that mean? So what the Illinois law specifically covers is how a company is going to respond to what is, quote, unquote, catastrophic risk. And they're defining catastrophic risk as. potentially a billion dollars or more in damages caused by the AI system. What this really covers is those very large AI model providers. Think the open AI, the Anthropics, the Googles, the metas of the world. And that is a great start on how to independently verify and monitor these types of systems. And to your point, Dan, this law doesn't impose any obligations on you, me, or the average Illinois resident. It imposes the obligations on these large companies. From my perspective, it's all good for the citizens. Does, dude, are these, are the AI companies, are they welcoming this as a way to standardize and enhance trust, you know, consistent with those historical examples you provided? So, yes, both Anthropic and Open AI have been very forthcoming in saying that they welcome this. They think this is a good idea and a comfortable way to begin assuring users that these systems are well governed. Yeah, we'll add a footnote. Those are two leading companies. All of them have not joined in the same voice. So it's yet to be determined if they get on board. But isn't this different, like the UL, the Chicago Border Trade examples? I mean, they're talking about sort of testing standards that are, you know, for like electrical technologies. I mean, that's just, that's the science. And the science says that this is, you know, this is safe or it's not safe or this.

this contraption works as advertiser doesn't work. There's no in between. With AI, isn't it a little bit more gooey when it comes to that sort of standard setting? Well, it's a very perceptive question because it is more gooey. And the way it's more gooey is what this act requires is that these large models set forth their own plan of governance and it's simply test against their plan. It's not an independent standard of quality or governance that everyone must comply with. But that said, it's really the first step in bringing some sort of guidance to this industry. And we would expect that over time something less gooey will develop. The key question is, who's going to do it? Is it going to be the state legislator, the federal government, or in our view, hopefully it will be independent market response like UL laboratories, like the Board of Trade? And so when it comes to the governance standards, are we talking strictly with respect to? market impact from a from a financial perspective or are we talking about with respect to content moderation too so When we're talking about standards, where do you look at this from a governance deployment and documentation standpoint? We're not necessarily looking at moderating content or really looking into the underlying technology behind an AI model. I think the industry standard... for AI governance is going to be tool agnostic, technology agnostic, model agnostic, so that every AI system can be compared on a governance framework level playing field. You know, Dan, what most people don't realize is this is an active conversation globally for various governments and non-government organizations, all who are just establishing the recommended framework for use of AI. So think of it this light. building the foundation that is well prepared so that when you plug an AI tool into your business, it's not going to have an unexpected consequence. It's not... provisions for does it cut cost does it improve revenue and from the the the the private sector perspective better that we self-regulate and develop this good housekeeping seal or this uL label that became a good housekeeping seal then um have this patchwork of laws around the 50 states or even a one size fits all federal law just though those interventions much better that we uh get to um um

setting the best practices within our sector before the state does it effectively. Absolutely right. That's the AIQA Global Vision, and it's really, I think, hard to argue against. If the private market can address this problem, the government does not need to, and that's what we're hoping that we'll find. And this isn't like just in terms of governance standards. You know, you think governance standards and you think, oh, what are we talking about like the next iteration of ESG? Are we talking about, if it's federalized, are we talking about like a Sarbanes-Oxley, things that, you know, were. not only controversial, we're detrimental in many respects. But those are the sorts of things you want to avoid is what I'm guessing. Was that what I'm hearing? Yes, for sure. A lot of these, you know, early governance frameworks fell into the same pitfall, which was that they weren't comparable, they weren't quantifiable, and that there was a discrepancy between execution. An analyst A could complete a company overview for their governance with their ESG score and reach one conclusion, and analyst B would reach something completely different. So that's really where that model broke down. AIQA is building a... quantifiable, repeatable, auditable system to measure AI governance in an industry agnostic fashion. And at the very surface level of that are what we call the Chicago principles. Those are the motherhood and apple pie of AI governance. That is that AI auditing and AI governance should be independent. It should be measurable. It should be auditable and repeatable. It should be comparable across industries and across corporations. It should be continuously updated and that it should be accountable. And so then it, like, just using the Chicago Border Trade example, but feel free to give me more detail on that. It's like, look, this is. Again, it provides confidence in terms of the commodities market. And then for people that are trading at the board, you can choose your trading strategy, but everybody is working off imperfect but reliable information. That's exactly right. That when you're trading number two corn, you know exactly what that means because there's a defined set of standards that someone can objectively review and you can take comfort in that. You don't have to worry about trading based upon, again, using Chase's example, what analyst A said versus analyst B. And that same degree of rigor needs to come to the AI marketplace. And we think that will give everyone who uses it, whether they be an individual or a business enterprise, a much...

better degree of confidence that they are using it safely. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you take a, you talk about agnosticism here? What about in terms of corporate structure? For example, Sam Altman, OpenAI, has filed paperwork with the SEC in advance of an IPO for OpenAI that wants to leave a 5% equity stake for basically the federal government. Do you take a position on? on the essentially cap table of these companies as it pertains to governance? No, we do not take a position on their cap table. We believe that the... Brainwork that will prevail with regards to AI governance is one that is completely industry and business agnostic. I should be able to compare a manufacturing company from rural Illinois to a tech startup that's in Chicago. The way that they develop and... utilize AI is less important in a comparable standard to how they're actually governing and documenting those systems. So the analogy I use is there are certain safety standards for your car that should apply whether you use that once in a while to take the kids to school or every day to commute or use it for your business. And the same thing with AI. We need that basic foundation. Chase mentioned the Chicago principles was what we call sort of our gift to the public. Those are not proprietary to us. We think it's the motherhood and apple pie that everyone should follow. You can find them on the AIQA global website. And we just hope that that becomes. a momentum for the state and others to begin to get their arms around this issue. Okay. Very interesting. No, I mean, I think it makes sense. And I suppose the pushback you're getting, I'm just assuming if there's any pushback being given, but or reticence maybe, is from people that rather engage in that rent-seeking behavior, companies that have rather engaged that rent-seeking behavior, curry favor with the government. and use the government as a sort or shield where this is just, look, this is, this is the self-regulation essentially creates an even playing field, but not everybody wants to play on an even playing field. You know, Dan, I know the political element is something you're very insightful on, and that's what's going to play out over the next year. AI is a global issue. So is it best regulated by the federal government? Is it regulated at a more local level as Illinois, California, New York, and others have done at the state level, or is it best left a private enterprise? We don't know where that's going to happen, and we don't have an opinion on that. Our view is regardless of who ultimately regulates it.

It has to be done in an objective and measurable way. He is James Malikowski, chairman and founding director of AIQA Global. And Chase Malikowski also joining us, AIQA Global's co-founder and managing director. James and Chase, very interesting stuff. Thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Appreciate your time. And they joined us in the Alfawealth Group.com, Insulin. There's only one radio show in Chicago talking about today's biggest stories and telling you what they really mean. That show is this one. Chicago's Morning Answer on AM 560, The Answer. Thanks for listening to Chicago's Morning Answer podcast sponsored by Signature Bank. Signature Bank takes pride in helping customers grow their business and provide unmatched banking expertise, custom financial solutions, and the industry's best technology. So whether you're a business looking for a deposit relationship or needs a ready source of financing, Signature Bank is the right bank for you. Call today at 773-467-500 to hear how Signature Bank can help your business grow and thrive. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender.