Pratt vs. Bass on Homelessness

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. Delightful Memorial Day weekend. I couldn't help but consume the local news and be reminded of that essay from a couple of months ago written by John Coogler. One day, one system beaten, robbed and killed. This is at subx.news, John Coogler writes for him. And the key phrase for me in that essay, The expectation is the system. What holds the system in place? The expectation that this is the way things are and will forever be. And so teen takeovers and general lawlessness punctuated this Memorial Day weekend, that 25 shot. I mean, I know that's much lower than it's been in years past. But, you know, 25 people being shot on a weekend is still 25 people being shot. Those are real people, especially mass shooting, a little village, for example. real teenagers. Well, those four young people who were shot, they were last listed in good condition here at Mount Sinai. They are expected to recover from their injuries. Officers say around three in the morning, that's when they were in the area near 25th in Washington. That's when they did hear gunshots. Officers say they did find those four victims among those who were shot include an 18-year-old to 16-year-old girls and a 14-year-old boy. They were all taken to Mount Sinai. hospital where they are currently being treated. It's still unclear what exactly led up to the shooting. And at the scene, there were lots, there was lots of debris and also trash scattered on the ground. Officers could also be seen escorting two people in handcuffs. It's unclear if they are facing any charges. Now, investigators say the shooter ran away from the scene. Police are asking the public to come forward with any information. Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath. Mass shooting in Little Village, almost a mass killing of police officers on the Near West Side Sunday morning, 18-year-old man being charged with trying to kill five Chicago police officers by running them down with his car as they were dispersing a large crowd. The teen takeover, the large gatherings, as they're euphemistically termed by BLM Brandon. He's going to be in court today.

The guy who tried to run down five cops. And he's being charged with attempted murder. So this wasn't like, apparently prosecutors don't believe, this wasn't like lost control of the car. This was a guy saw cops trying to disperse the crowd and he thought he would intervene by trying to run them over. But the expectation is the system. The teen takeovers on 57th Street Beach. Perhaps you saw the videos of that. Apparently, at least one police officer was carted off in an ambulance. And the response, again, the expectation is the system, is exactly the response he would expect from BLM Brandon. I mean, to refer to children as like baby Al Capone's is not appropriate. No, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, I didn't say that. Okay, what I'm, okay, what I'm, okay, respectfully, these large gatherings, these large gatherings, just hold on a second, y'all, I promise you, we have time to talk. It's important that we speak of these dynamics in an appropriate way. This is not to obfuscate what has actually taken place. We have to be very careful when we use language to describe certain behavior. There's history in this city. That's right. You have the nomenclature correct before we can talk about the underlying substance of the matter. I mean, it's the same thing we saw last week. We heard last week from him talking about the same topic, which is. Because large groups of people committed illegal acts previously, and many arrests were made. And then another large group of people committed similar illegal acts, thereby making it clear that arresting people in large groups, large gatherings, for committing illegal acts doesn't work, so we should stop it. That's the mentality, and it's been the mentality since Brandon Johnson was elected and frankly since before he was elected. It was no different rhetorically, modestly different rhetorically with triple threat before BLM Brandon. And substantively, it wasn't that much different under Tiny Dancer either, despite his posturing as he's trying to make a presidential run that he's some sort of reasonable, rational solutionist. No, he's not. He's a political hack. Is he more capable and intelligent than those who followed him? Probably. But what does it matter if that's not your motivation to be capable and competent and solution-oriented? And it's not. His is to advance his political career to amass political power. That's what he cares about. So they wind up at the same destination and they bring the city to the same place. This third world mentality with first world amenities. The problem with the third world mentality is if you sustain it long enough, the first world amenities go away. And that's what we're starting to see in Chicago, as we're starting to see in every big blue city in America because it's the same program. The question is, do we have...

the prospect next year of seeing something happen in Chicago like you're seeing in L.A. this year with an insertion candidacy like Spencer Pratt. I don't know. I think there's a frustration, exasperation. Use the synonym you prefer with Brandon Johnson, clearly. I mean, he's vulnerable, clearly. But do I see somebody with an insurgents mentality in the offing of the names that are being bandied about? Not really. The interesting thing that's happened in L.A. that has not happened in Chicago. Ever, maybe. Trying to think of an example. Is... As we've discussed, the best ally of the socialist power structures that dominate big blue city America is fatalism. The expectation is the system. This is how I expect it will be. Well, Spencer Pratt has taken that ally away from Karen Bass. He is getting pragmatic people, what's left of the pragmatic portion of the electorate in L.A. to engage civically, and it's un-orchestrated. His candidacy is galvanizing people to take action, to really engage in a way that, I mean, again, no candidate jumps to mind at any level in Illinois somebody's done in the recent, in recent memory. Not in this, maybe in a particular primary election, but I'm talking about with the opportunity to actually shift the paradigm in the city or state. Nobody comes to mind. 312-642-5600 alphawealthgroup.com call and text line. I mean, this is what Brandon Johnson's program has been since the beginning. I mean, since he first, I think this was year one, he brought out his top advisors on teen takeovers and youth curfews. You remember. I just really feel like we should focus more on giving them things to do in the summertime and stuff like that to keep them busy, so they don't have to feel like they got a plan teen takeovers to have fun.

I would say I really don't know much about confusion because I wasn't one of those teens who would be outside for real. Like I wasn't raised for that. But one thing I would say is that I wouldn't think that it would because some people home, we're trying to escape home. You know, teens try to escape home. So I feel like a curfew, it might be little bit because while you're trying to keep someone in the house, they could be with a safe spaces organization. Uh, yeah. So, yeah, it was a presser he had with a couple of teenagers, alleged policy experts, apparently. Why else would they be sitting next to the mayor just in every teenager perspective? Roy and Glenellon, you're on Chicago's morning answer. Yeah, good morning, Dan. And the reporter's description in the little village shooting, the reporter was... describe the trash and debris all over the roadway and felt that was important. But when it came to finding the suspect, it was, ah, if you know something, let us know. Thanks for the call, Roy. Text from 312, zero homicides over Memorial Day weekend. Luckily, last year, Kim Fox was your culprit. What's your true motive? I don't know what you're talking about. Kim Fox was not my culprit. She's just part of the power structure. She is no longer. Have I been singing the praises of Eileen, O'Neill, O'Malley, Madigan, Daly, Collerton, Burke recently? No, I have not. The expectation is the system. And the system remains unchanged.

Yeah, that's my culprit. If you're looking for culprits, it's not a single individual or even a single administration. We're on a continuum, aren't we? And it's just, and it's the same rhetoric from Brandon Johnson. He's not going to change, just as Karen Bass isn't going to change. So if you're looking to get, um, reflection and correction from BLM Brandon. Well, that's not going to happen. You know. It's just kids being silly. They're young. Sometimes they make silly decisions. They do. And so we have to make sure that we are investing to make sure that young people know that they are supported. The stories you need to know to start your day. This is 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. 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.

Excerpting from that John Cougler piece I was just referencing. That we discussed in some detail a couple months back when he first posted it. Subx. News. All those departments, all those workers, all those budgets, nobody did the job. Everybody still got paid. You don't need a report to see it. It's sitting right there on the street. The work didn't get done. The system kept moving anyway. Westside, early evening, a robbery call at Harrison Independence ended predictably. The passenger jumps into the driver's seat as the suspect is arrested and flees in a white stolen Audi after striking a squad car. No perimeter. No containment. Just another car disappearing into the grid. Like always, they got away. The patter doesn't stay on one block, it moves. Out on the expressways, it turns into something else. A felony vehicle firing shots on the Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then running south onto the Bishop Ford. Traffic keeps moving while it happens. People boxed in with it. No way out. No warning. Later, the Dan Ryan logs a stolen green GMC Acadia out of Wisconsin, cutting south through the city. Another vehicle. Another escape route. Another way out. Every lane becomes part of the crime. This is how it runs now. City officials continue to highlight investment strategy and progress. The camera and the scanner show something else. The city where safety, basic services, and real accountability have become optional. People are expected to absorb it, rationalize it, and keep going like it's normal. That expectation is the system. 312-642-5600. AlphaWealthgroup.com, call and text line. That expectation is the system. That's what we've been talking about with respect to Chicago and the shootings, the mass shootings, the mass attack on police officers, the teen takeovers on North Avenue Beach, 57 Street Beach, and the response from the political class.

When that might come to Chicago is anybody's guess. Corey and Woodlawn. Thanks for taking a call, Dan. You know, I got two quick statements. The first statement is they're not reporting murders. I drove past Francisco and Fulton yesterday. Someone was shot to death in his car, and he was slumped over. He was already dead. So they're not reporting these murders. And number two, whoever's running got to get over voter apathy. These voters do not seem to care. They think government spending is the way out of their problem, but these guys are spending the money on themselves. So Chicago will continue to eat its own tail. And remember, all of these kids from the 80s and 90s that felt drug dealing was the way out of this, those people have now got into government. There's so many individuals I grew up with on the West Side, they're trying to get into politics. They're trying to open up non-for-profits. And they think that they're going to get, that's all they want. Right, where the real money is now, right? Yeah, and that's the problem. They think they can continue to keep using taxpayers' money. And smart people that understand sound money, they're getting out. But these people in government, they don't have classical understanding of government at all. Look at the policies that they create. They're so stupid. Thanks, Dan. Thanks, Corey. Yeah. Yeah, that's where the real mob action is, is in government. But turning to L.A. and how Spencer Pratt is, As I said, providing form and function to the frustration. Homelessness. Comparison contrast on how Spencer Pratt is tackling that issue. Versus Karen Bass. First Karen Bass on homelessness, which of course, when she ran four years ago, she promised to have. alleviated by now. But, you know, she ran into some complications. But we know this routine here very well. It's not as bad as you think. I'm working on it. And there's a lot of blame to go around. That's the three-pronged pat answer. For the failed central planner, which is a redundant term, the central planning is always going to be a failure. The three-pronged get out of political peril answer for the political hack that survives, even thrives in places like L.A. and Chicago. So when you talk to Jake Tapper in 2023, you said that your goal was to end street homelessness in L.A. by 2026. It's now 2026. And we haven't ended it. We have not ended it and we're not close to ending it. How are you so off?

Well, basically, when I said that, it was at the beginning of my term, I am very committed to achieving that goal. I didn't anticipate some of the bureaucratic barriers that I would experience, but I am prepared to take those on now. And let me just give you an example. Los Angeles made a decision probably 20, 25 years ago, to not address street homelessness, to focus solely on building. And granted, I have fast-tracked 42,000 units of affordable housing, but it still takes a couple of years. So basically the policy of LA City and LA County was we could accept street homelessness as long as we were building. We didn't anticipate the problem metastasizing. Plenty of blame to go around. I'm working on it. It's not as bad as you think. Now Spencer Pratt's turn. What are your plans for the over 40,000 homeless in Los Angeles? Yeah. Well, they're not homeless. They're drug addicts. Most of these people are addicted to fentanyl and meth. This isn't Spencer making it up. Are you saying they don't have homes? There is places for all of these people to sleep in L.A. No matter what anybody tells you. We have housing and shelter for everyone that's living on the street. They're choosing to be on the street because they want to do drugs. They don't want rules. They don't want to listen. They want to have animals to abuse. This idea that they're forced on the street right now is a lie that our city is perpetuating. We've paid $24 billion to house these 40,000 people. There are spots for all of these people. They are choosing because they're an addict and you can do... fentanyl and super meth on the sidewalk with no repercussions. These places are not as, they have to follow some rules. You can't torture a dog in some of these houses. You can't just attack people. You can't just be naked. Where are you going to move? Well, I just released a nine-minute video. So you can. I think I saw your video, yeah. Yeah, so it's very detailed. But it's going to take time to build the facility and money. No. How fast do you think you can do it? These people can, literally, I went to Washington and I saw. miles of the most insane prefabricated housing and building. I asked all the CEOs of these companies. Say, how long does this take? I met with FEMA and HUD. Three days. Three days. And all of this is cheaper than trying to take over, kick home senior citizens out of their buildings is what happens. They kick them out. And then the NGOs come in and they spend four years. This is LA. This is LA's time table. Where is this facility going to be? It's on federal, beautiful federal land property. Where in L.A. County? Well, when I'm mayor, I'll go meet with the federal government and I'll get the property. Right now, I'm just running. So I can't give you the exact address because I don't have the legal responsibility to go represent Los Angeles and say, can I have this land? But when I'm mayor... I promise you because we have the Olympics coming and everybody in the government wants L.A. to be the number one most beautiful city, they will work with me to give me the land I need. So you're going to move these 40,000 people somewhere and you're going to have this facility up in, you said, how long? Here's what you got to realize. 90 days. Let me explain something. These 40,000 people, 60% of them, city watch just announced this week, are not from.

Los Angeles. They're not from California. These people have been bust in by scam rehabs, scam NGOs, scam homeless nonprofits. These people, when I unplug them and say, we're not taking our tax money anymore. They're all going to Seattle where the mayor will welcome them. These are products to a lot of people. So the people that want to keep doing drugs and live on the sidewalk, there are a lot of these people are going to leave. The other ones, there's a lot of criminals. There's people that are getting naked. front of kids, they're going to jail. The people that are torturing animals, they're going to jail. So not everyone goes in the same box. So we have the money, we have the resources, and we have the facility. Yeah, so, I mean, the difference there is fairly stark. One is telling you a beautiful lie, and that's the member of the Pollitt Bureau named Bass. And the other is explaining to you the nuance of the issue, 40,000 homeless people. Well, they're not all similarly situated. You have different cohorts within that universe of 40,000 that need to be treated differently. Some, it's a law enforcement action. Some, it's a treatment, mental. addiction, mental health action. Some, it's an ejection. They are not here legally in this country. They're not from Los Angeles, so they're going to be sent on their way, one way or the other. Right. And by the way, I mean, Spencer Pratt got a little confused there talking by this guy, this interviewer, of course, focus, and it's always another facility. It's another organization building another facility. She just said, Bass just said, I fast tracked all these new affordable housing units that I built. Pratt said at the outset, we have all the space we need. So you don't necessarily need a prefab facility on federal land to address the problem. You need the political willpower to do so. 312-642-2-5600. AlphaWealthgroup.com answerline Mark in Oklahoma.

You know, that homelessness problem, it's all, you know, the drugs, the people that are using them, I'd say 80% of them are on drugs. And Karen Bass, with her idea of giving people pipes and needles. It's almost like giving an alcoholic a bottle of whiskey and saying, yeah, I just stop drinking now, okay? It's almost like those people that are homeless, they're Karen Bass's customers, and they don't want them to go away. As long as they're there, she can justify her existence. Her answers for solving problems are, it's ridiculous. She's done nothing. Thanks for the call, Mark. Well, again, that's the point. You can openly use illegal drugs without consequence. Well, that's got to come to an end. We're not doing open-air drug markets. We're moving people along. We're not allowing people to abuse animals, as Spencer Pratt has documented. We're arresting them. Some are going to be arrested. Some are going to be effectively institutionalized if they demonstrate a desire to get clean. And otherwise, we're going to act in furtherance of the people who play by the rules in Los Angeles to protect people and to enhance the quality of life. They're financing or they're attempting to finance. They believe they finance. And they have with the taxes you pay in LA. Sure, they have. We're going to hold up our end of the bargain is what he's saying. Michael, Southside. Dan, good morning. Thank you for my call, and I hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend. When it comes to teenagers, Brandon Johnson is talking out both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, he says that they are not fully accountable for takeovers. So it's part of a community responsibility. And yet these same teenagers apparently have enough intellectual capacity to ditch school for political protest on May Day. Yeah, with some guidance from their teachers. There's teachers union representatives. That's right. Thanks for the call, Michael. Speaking of Seattle, since he mentioned, these people go to Seattle and Katie Wilson, the neo-Marxist mayor of Seattle will welcome them. Yeah, what's going on in Seattle? Doesn't sound like it's great, according to... KOMO reporting. There's been a shooting almost every night in the last couple of weeks. It's terrifying to live here, and it's even more terrifying that the city is absolutely doing nothing to protect the citizens in this neighborhood. Which is why they're taking matters into their own hands. They put up these makeshift barriers. It was a game changer. It made it feel much more safe there. And they just put barriers basically like cul-de-sac their streets. So they're not, you can't get through. And apparently that's helped. Great. That's sort of a short-term solution, I'd say. But I understand it. So it's putting up barriers, the law-abiding, putting barriers up in their own streets. The people play by the rules in Southside communities here burning their property tax bills.

Something's going to give somewhere, and Spencer Pratt seems to be on the job. Homeless man in Seattle speaking about the homelessness and this sort of romanticized vision we have of helping the homeless rather than soberly looking at who the homeless are and what help can be provided, but also what threats are ever present, allowing these 10 cities to be erected. Homeless man in Seattle with a long record of prior arrest and warrants now stands accused of kidnapping and raping a 15-year-old girl in broad daylight. 36-year-old homeless man approached the teenager. She waited at a bus stop, coerced her into the nearby wood, sexually assaulted her in the middle of the day. He's been charged with first-degree rape and second-degree kidnapping in King County. And... His background, we're familiar with this story in Chicago, 36 years old, 28 arrests and 13 convictions, along with 46 lifetime warrants and nine active warrants. And the convictions span a range of offenses from the quote-unquote nonviolent like drug possession to assault, violating protection orders, criminal trespassing, and now rape. Thus, the need to be wide-eyed, serious about dealing with a problem like homelessness in big cities. The guy that's just down on his luck. There may be examples of that, but they are not the ones that dominate. And Chris Rufo, Manhattan Institute. did a study that confirms what Spencer Pratt was referencing in terms of all the imported homeless in L.A. because of the incentives presented. This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. This is 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. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Profft on AM 560. The answer. Top of the morning, Dan Profft here. So should Trump cut a deal, any deal that gets us out, or stay the course, finish the job.

Get out or finish the job. 312-642-2-5600 alphawealthgroup.com call and text line. Polster Mark Penn and former New York City Council President Andrew Stein writing the Wall Street Journal in favor of finishing the job. On the popularity concern and impact on the midterms. Start with the politics of this, the domestic electoral politics of this. A lot of angles. The Iran war isn't unpopular, they write. The state of the economy is unpopular, and it was almost as unpopular before the war when 53% saw the economy going in the wrong direction. In the last Harvard caps Harris poll, 54% say the strikes on Iran are justified. Two-thirds believe this is an evil regime that doesn't have the support of its own people. and MAGA voters overwhelmingly support the strikes. And to the extent that Democrats opposed the war and been spun up by their leaders to make this a partisan issue, while much has been made of Israel's Fave-Unfave rating, Iran's is 60 points worse. By a three to one margin, Americans support Israel and the United States over Iran in this fight. That includes almost every swing voter needed to win the midterm elections. They offer, Mr. President, win the war and you win your presidency. Oil prices will receive. China will retreat because you control the oil. The economy will store and provide a clear path for the midterms. Well, I don't want to necessarily get into the geopolitical chops or lack thereof of these two gentlemen, but on the polling, that provides some important context. And so does this, I mean, if you're thinking about this strictly from that perspective. If you lose the war, your presidency is in big trouble, they write. It would be a repeat of the kind of defeatism that led Joe Biden to turn Afghanistan over to the Taliban. There is no credit in history for waging half a war. As long as this regime believes it can control the world economy by charging tolls for national waterways, its threat grows bigger, even if its uranium is stuck underground. And while we were treated all weekend to... Trump's customary Norman Vincent Peel disposition of seeing the cop as three quarters full, even when it's only half full, that the framework for a deal has been achieved. We're close to finalization. And then we get word last night that, of course, defensive strikes because this is a... you know, a preemptive retaliatory de-escalation campaign, not a war, of defensive strikes because the Iranians tried to attack some of our ships. Well, this sort of begs the question then, exactly what sort of capacity do they have versus what you've been describing they have.

Hold on or pack it in. 312-642-2-5600 to give us a call or text on the topic. So that's the finish the job. And frankly, end the regime, even though it's verboten to characterize one of the objectives as regime change. Complicated. For his part, Trump. Sort of doing what he does, which is to be overly optimistic that what he wants is about to happen while making sure there's an understanding that there's no caving here. He posted on Truth Social. If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of cash and a clear and open patent nuclear weapon. Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it or knows what it is. It isn't even fully negotiated yet. So don't listen to the losers who are critical about something they know nothing about. Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don't make bad deals. Yeah, I mean, I'm not, you know, he's getting incoming from all sides, politically, you know, politically speaking, those who are worried that he's going to capitulate and do a deal that doesn't accomplish the stated must-haves possession and or confirmed destruction of Iran's enriched uranium and an end to their nuclear program. Those are just the baselines. They also wants an end to financing their terrorist proxies in the region. And finishing knocking out their ballistic missiles program while you're at it too. It's frustrating because this has gone on for four or five weeks, and it seems to be very much. running in place, if not quicksand, with a group of people that you describe as lunatics, but yet you think will have the capacity to make a good faith deal that they'll honor. I suppose if you don't believe they can make a deal that they will honor voluntarily or that you really can enforce abiding the deal, then it's a little unclear. Why so much time is being spent on a deal that you can't, that you don't believe will be consummated in reality, even if it is on paper. Now, there are some suggestions, you know, the leaking and the supposition that a deal would be, you know, they would have to specifically perform before they would. get any of the benefits. So they would need to do the quid before we give them the quo. For example, we take possession of or confirmed destruction of the enriched uranium before there would be any sanctions relief. One of the suggestions that is being bandied about. Now, this is all with the caveat that obviously the President of the United States and the Israeli Prime Minister.

have intelligence and information that very few people other than them have. So you recognize that we're working with just whatever is in the public domain for the most part. But you can still work the logic of the positions and you can still ask the questions that deserve some sort of public indication, even if you can't provide a fulsome answer for national security reasons. And so here we are. And you can also question the sort of rhetorical strategy and tactics that are being employed in advance of the geopolitical objectives here. Mike, Northwest Indiana, you're on Chicago's morning answer. Good morning. My personal opinion is that the people were negotiating with realize that once they give up, surrender, agree, whatever, they're dead. They're Butch Cassie and a Sundance kid up in the cliff looking over a river right now. And I think it's pointless negotiating with them. Get together with Israel and Musa, their intelligence, wipe these people out. That's the only way out of this. Thanks. I call, Mike. Georgia Naperville. Yeah, Dan, I know this sounds simple like most of my calls, but I think we are all waiting to see what winning looks like in Iran. Okay, thanks for the call, George. Yeah, not one yet. Northwest Side, Bill. Yes, Dan, make the best deal you can right now, get the straights back opened, get our economy roaring, and then, after the midterms in November, if you need to go back and finish the job then, go back then. But make the best deal you can right now to get things back on track for November. Okay, thanks for the call, Bill. Mike and Hammond. Hey, Dan, they take my call. Personally, Reagan's has dealt with this stuff back in the early 80s when Lebanon was done. So this is way past two, but I'm tired of hearing him talk about it. Every day is the same thing. Iran's waiting to make a deal. It's great to hear a deal. I have to turn the channel whenever I hear him talk anymore because it's like either do it or don't do it, but stop already. You're killing me. That's my take on it. Thanks for the call, Mike. Chet and Lyle. Good morning, Dan. We don't have a leverage to make a deal because we don't have the ammunition. If you've been listening to some of the people like Aaron McLean and so forth and their experts, we have exhausted so much from our munitions that we're putting ourselves at risk elsewhere. And the industrial complex doesn't have the industry industrial capacity to replenish those munitions. For example, we used eight years of production of cruise missiles during the first phase. Trump doesn't have the leverage. He was hoping for a quick knockout. We didn't get it. Now we're kind of stuck. Thanks for the call, Chet. We'll talk to Michael Rubin later in the program on this, but it's an important point that Chet brings up. It's been under-discussed, but it's starting to get more discussion. Eli Lake has a good piece in the free press about this. Now, I want to confirm that this is true, but his reporting is usually on point.

He writes, there are other factors pushing the president to cut a deal. The military is running out of precision munitions and missile interceptors. This has left the U.S. and its allies vulnerable to Iran short-range ballistic missiles. One military official telling Eli Lake, we have degraded Iran's missile stocks, but not enough where they can't threaten the Gulf. Well, again, so I feel like we need to have a revisiting with Admiral Cooper of Suncom to say, okay, so what exactly is your assessment of Iran's ballistic missile cache as well as a drone capacity? Because we've been saying this for weeks now. It doesn't seem like they have much. much in terms of ability to strike offensively or defend themselves defensively or protect themselves defensively. Yeah, there's these one-off sort of, you know, acts of piracy. Yes, we know that we're not going to take their ballistic missile capacity down to zero. Their drones down to zero, particularly when drones are relatively... cheap to produce, even as we've degraded their industrial base. But I need to have like a revisiting of this because it was characterized as at minimum most of the way there. And it feels like that's not the case. What is the state of minds and the straight? What have our minesweepers been able to accomplish? What is the state of their fleet of fastboats in addition to these short range missiles and drones? You know, what exactly is the calculus on their, I mean, I know you're not going to get exact and they're not going to telegraph strategy and tactics, but, you know, give us some sense of how close we are to. or what it would take to wrestle control of the straight away from them? What are the stumbling blocks? Well, why can't we do what was previously initiated, but then quickly set aside, which is Project Freedom to do escorts while you're continuing to degrade their other capacities and squeeze their economy? which, you know, suffering from hyperinflation and mass destruction and they can't supply, they can't store the oil. So they're going to be degrading the infrastructure that makes them money. perhaps for generations to come. So the Operation Epic Fury and Economic Fury, the combination of the two, why is that not something that we can sustain or that could turn out to be dispositive of the issue if it were sustained and what does that horizon look like? Just going back to Eli Lake on the...

military capacity, our military capacity. He writes, the challenges in restarting the war are not just offensive. The U.S. is also facing a major shortfall of standoff weapons like the Army tactical missile system, which can target military facilities along Iran's coastline well out of range of the regime's anti-missile capabilities. While the U.S. still has plenty of joint direct attack munitions, these weapons are shorter range and usually fired from low-flying aircraft. Iran's air defense systems are useless against Americas and Israel's advanced weapons, but as Iran proved in April, can still down aircraft that fly lower to the ground in terms of targeting military facilities like we allegedly did last night. Back in April, Iran fired clusters of surface-to-air missiles against U.S. aircraft using infrared as opposed to radar targeting. If Trump restarted the war to focus on Iran's force posture along the strait, then he would have to rely on those joint direct attack munitions fired by a lower-flying aircraft, which makes them potentially vulnerable to being shot down by the Iranians. Finally, Eli Lake, again, his reporting, there's the problem of Iran's coastal facilities. The drones, short-rain missiles, and speedboats Iran uses to harass and threaten international shipping are all stored in underground bunkers. To get to those targets, the U.S. would need to use the penetrator bombs like the ones dropped on Iran's nuclear facilities last June during Operation Midnight Hammer. The U.S. still has around 1,000 of these munitions, according to a military source, but many of them are needed, in their estimation, the military, to deter North Korea and China. Admiral Bradley Cooper sent com. Hinted at the need for more of these bunker buster bombs in his testimony before House Armed Services Committee last week. When he asked what additional support he needs, he said, quote, we need to invest more in hard and deeply buried targets. Everybody is going underground, unquote. And all of this points to something that Chet from Lyle said. The Pentagon has favored complex weapons systems that are expensive and difficult to produce quickly. The Iran War has exposed America's neglected defense industrial base. Now, because Eli Lake is usually balanced, which is why he's one of those who write and opine that I look to on topics like this. If this is how the war ends, then the remnants of Iran's regime can still fire drones and missiles at its neighbors and hold the global economy hostage in the strait. The president deserves credit for eliminating the threat of Iran's nuclear program, which he has largely done, writes Lake. But in doing so, he has unleashed a wounded beast that still immediately threatens America and its allies. Iran's industrial base has been severely damaged. The nuclear program, obviously, from Midnight Hammer a year ago. You know, where they were close a year ago today, that capacity of enriching uranium and developing nuclear weapons is rubble and ash. Eli Lake's words. The president deserved credit for that, but we have a wounded beast that we're trying to make a deal with.

that we can't trust. 312-642-2-5600. AlphaWealthgroup.com call on text line. Robert Bloomingdale. Good morning. is a trap. You know, we're going to be stuck there. Once we're depleted or military enough, China will just blockade Taiwan and they'll surrender. While we're still trying to figure out what to do about the Ayatollahs. This is the dumbest war Trump ever dreamed of dumb. All right, Robert. The other point here, too, General Petraeus gave an interview recently talking about this is... And we'll talk again, Michael Rubin at the bottom of the 8 o'clock hour and more detail. But are we learning lessons from modern warfare as is being fought in Eastern Europe, specifically the Ukrainians, and the tactical use of drones, which some estimates put at... 90% of Russian casualties are from Ukrainian drones. So what about that? What about our own drone technology and the ability to take out, you know, because you worry about taking out IRGC munitions facilities and, you know, other sensitive military-related facilities because you don't want to incur civilian casualties in and around Tehran. Why can't we, I mean, can we be surgical with drones to affect going after the specific individuals or sort of the individuals that comprise these key institutions like the IRGC without having to use the more complex weapon systems? Does it require special forces in conjunction with, you know, sort of lighter, more...

flexible and surgical strikes against specific targets, both individuals as well as institutions. These are all questions that I'm sure are being contemplated, mapped out between the president and his advisors. But it's hard to have It's hard to be completely confident of a position here if you don't have a better understanding of just exactly what we have the capacity to do. Essentially, you know, the SWAT analysis. What are the threats here? What are the opportunities and what are the threats to do something that we know would reshape the Middle East? would shift the paradigm. Well, we have certainly a higher level of confidence than doing a deal with these quote-unquote lunatics, and that is to take out the remnants of the Ali Khamenei regime while you take out the rest of their capacity to do harm to others. Dan Prop, Chicago's morning answer. The more you listen, the more you'll know. This is Chicago's morning answer. 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 Proff here. I'm not much of one for therapy.

But it does help some people. I know this. In fact, it really turned this L.A. couple's couple's therapy only works if you're both honest with each other. And I feel like you're holding back a little. Is there anything you're lying to each other about? Anything at all? No, nothing comes to mind. No, nothing. Really? Fine. There is one thing. I'm voting for Spencer Pratt. Sorry. I just can't take four more years of Karen Bass. Hell, I can't take four more seconds of Karen Bass. The homelessness, the needles, the crime. I'm sorry, honey. You're sorry? Don't be. I'm voting for Spencer Pratt, too. What? I thought you were all vote blue no matter who. No kings? Riding for Biden. I thought so, too. But it gets to a point when there are more needles at the park than people. Or when you go to CVS, and the allergy medicine is locked up, and the deodorant is locked up, and the freaking shampoo is locked up. Or when family doesn't want to visit anymore, because the streets are covered in shit, and they got mugged last time. It's terrible. Seems like we've made a breakthrough. Any other secrets? Nope. None. How about you? Who are you voting for? I don't think it's appropriate for me to share. And the therapist is a scrawling on her notepad. Vote Spencer Pratt. Vote Spencer Pratt. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a real breakthrough. I think those two are going to be okay. Our next guest believes America is hooked on therapy and it's left us more anxious and divided. How Do I Know This? Because that's the title of his book. Therapy Nation, How America Got Hooked on Therapy and Why It's Left Us More Anxious and Divided. The author of that book. And our guest is Jonathan, who's a psychotherapist practicing in New York and Washington. Jonathan, thanks for being with us. Appreciate it. Dan, thanks for having me. And that's a brilliant ad by Spencer Pratt, I have to admit. It's good. I mean, I still like, you know, I'm not MAGA or anything. That one is still my favorite, but that's pretty good, too. I mean, that speaks to sort of a certain demographic and mentality. There's so many aspects to this, but one I wanted you to recount, particularly in these times, is how identitarianism. has further poisoned a profession that's already dominated by the left. And you had an anecdote in a piece I read that you penned for The New York Post. Yeah, I mean, identity politics has made its way into my profession. And we have therapists who refuse to treat someone if they voted for Trump. They demonize you if you vote it for Trump. In my book, Therapy Nation, I tell the story about a patient who was seeing me, but he was also seeing a couple's therapist with his significant other.

And he had posted a picture of Trump, the iconic picture of Trump at Butler. And his partner didn't like that. It became the topic in their couples counseling. And the couples counseling... pathologized him and made him seem like he was doing something wrong and said he has to do something to make up for this and suggest that he go volunteer for Kamala Harris. And this person wasn't political at all, but she, but the therapist made it very political. Right. I'm a Trump. I'm a Trump supporter. And so obviously you're suffering from a mental illness. And what you should do is go volunteer for Kamala Harris. That's great. I don't think you're hearing me. Yeah. No, but the other one is this story you tell that I don't think it was your patient. I think it was a patient of a colleague of yours, but it was a woman who had a near miss with an 18 wheeler on the highway. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so tell that, tell that one. Yeah, so I tell the story in my book about someone who went to a therapist because she had a fear of driving. She was afraid to drive on the highway because she had an accident and a very legit reason to see a therapist. I mean, this is something that's treatable. And she went to the therapist and this therapist made it all about race and gender and... a whole host of things totally unrelated to why she went for anxiety about driving. And the patient, she was offended and she was frankly baffled as to why this therapist started talking about race and gender and I don't even know what else she was talking about. It's just craziness. But this does represent what's going on in my field. It's on article yesterday. where a therapist, actually the headline was psychotherapist says, Trump will kill more people than Hitler. And for a second, I was like, whoa, is that me? Because I often see that my name in the headlines, like a therapist. But this represents what's going on. We have licensed therapists talking about how Trump is Hitler, Trump is dangerous. And in this case, Trump is going to kill more people than Hitler. It's just baffling. And I do think that TDS has mutated, and it's taking on new forms and shapes.

affecting more people these days. But it's beyond Trump, though, too, the identitarianism, because everything is predicated, you know, with sort of the how do you feel question is, you know, how do you feel as a white woman behind the wheel and a patriarchal society? You know, I'm coming here to like get over my fear of driving and we're talking about the patriarchy. We're talking about my race and my sex, which is not really relevant to my particular. You know, my particular challenge and stuff. It just, they just sort of shoehorn it into everything, these, these leftist therapists that are essentially acting like leftist, so many leftist teachers do as political operatives. Yeah, and you have to go back to grad school where these so-called therapists are trained. They're trained to look at people through the model of you're either oppressed or you're the oppressor. And this identity politics or identity therapy is right there from the start. And in my book, I tell the story about two stories that represent this. One was of a black man, successful executive. who went to a therapist for stress related to work, and the previous therapist made it all about his race. Well, as a black man, you must feel this way. And the patient was offended, and he felt disrespect it, and he left. And then the other story that I told was similar was about a gay man who, again, was dealing with some stress, anxiety. And the therapist, well, as a gay person, you must feel this or society must treat you this way and had absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand. And he ended up leaving that therapist as well. So you can see how therapists are sorting people into these boxes. They're looking at their race or their sexual preference before they look at the actual person and what's going on psychologically. Yeah, imagine. It's a huge problem in my profession. I mean, we're not, therapists aren't being trained anymore. Instead, drag programs are turning out social justice warriors. Yeah, and imagine people that are, you know, looking for help don't like to be reduced to their, I mean, of course, they don't like to be just reduced to their race or their sex. I mean, it's just, it's immaterial. That's how most commensical people. operate and would react to that. I mean, you have to go to a university to become, you know, it's like one of the old saw that, you know, only an academic could believe something so silly. You have to go to a university to become the therapist like you're describing. Something else, too, another aspect of the cultural impact. And this, and you, um, raise the spectre of Tiger Woods, which actually is a good one. I've been wanting to address this, and you're the perfect person to do it with. So Tiger, since his DUI, a couple months ago, has been in Zurich at some center, some specialized facility where he is undergoing intensive psychological rehabilitation.

Well, whether it's Zurich or Sunny, California, I'm not sure how effective these intensive treatment programs are. My understanding is it's a whole lot of yoga, meditation, relaxation. And in some respects, that might be good. It gets the person away from some of the stress and the elements that may be contributing to their... their drug problem, but I'm not so sure these are the most effective treatments out there for addiction. No, right. But the point of characterizing it, it's not like I'm going to get away from it and I'm just going to do yoga and I'm just going to try to get in better shape and I just want to, you know, I just need some, some alone time or whatever. And just take it. This is a way to say like he doesn't, he didn't, he didn't exhibit bad behavior. he has, he has a psychological issue or you made a, you made a bad call. And actually, when in the DUI stop, he made a couple of bad calls. One was trying, one was the DUI and dumping his car over and being. on whatever prescription drugs he was on that impaired his ability to drive. The other was then trying to big foot the cops by, you know, talking to President Trump on the phone and telling the cop that he was doing so. So, I mean, you know, your boorish behavior, your bad judgment is the issue here. It's not a condition that you're experiencing. Well, there's a complete lack of accountability, and I'm afraid that my profession has created this. We've created this accommodation culture, blaming everyone else instead of taking responsibility. And we see this play out lately a lot with this grievance culture. And I like to point to Luigi Mangione is the perfect example of this. He's probably the poster boy for grievance culture. He had gripes with the health insurance industry, and he felt he could just... take matters into his own hands and gunned down the CEO. So that's the perfect example of grievance, culture, and lack of responsibility. And, you know, we do have celebrities who will blame everyone but themselves for their addictions and problems in life. And, you know, my profession is supporting that, and they're creating these irresponsible people. Everything, right, everything's a trauma. Everything's traumatic, right? I mean, this goes back to microaggressions and safe spaces on college campuses, which date back 30, 40 years, actually. Is it still, you know, we talked about this pre-COVID, the anxiety issue, the teen angst, particularly young people, depression and so forth. And of course, that. was exacerbated during the shutdowns. But we were talking about pharma as part of this conversation and over-medicating young people, in particular, Adderall and these scheduled to narcotics that were pumping into pre-adolescence to modify their behavior because they have this condition or trauma or mental health issue, all these characterizations as the predicate to...

dope up kids and young people. And I wonder if you think that's still an issue. Yeah, I do think it's a huge issue. And again, my profession is responsible for this because they're pathologizing ordinary everyday experiences. If you have a bad day or two or even a bad week or two or three, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're depressed. That means that you're having a bad day and that's how we grow and build character and persevere. get better. That doesn't mean we run to the doctor and get a prescription for Adderall or an antidepressant. Similarly, if we're late for appointment, so we forget something, that doesn't necessarily mean that we have ADHD, yet we have therapists who are quick to label their patients with this, and they go to a doctor, they get a prescription, and they're living the life as someone with ADHD, and they label themselves as such. So it's still very much a big problem in our society. And I would say probably worse than it was around COVID. Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist practicing in New York and D.C. His new book, Pick it up. Therapy Nation. Therapy Nation by Jonathan, thanks for joining us again. Appreciate it. Dan, thanks so much. I appreciate it. And he joined us on, yep, take care. And he joined us on the alphawealthgroup.com, answer line. It's like a hot, steaming cup of information. To start your day, it's Chicago's morning answer on AM 560. The answer.

That sound means it's time for in-depth history with Frank, the history teacher for Arlington Heights, because there's nothing new in this world, just the history you don't know. And Frank does. Frank, take it away. Good morning. The term fat man, although used some in Illinois politics today, is better remembered as the name given to the second atomic bomb used at Nagasaki. And when new President Harry Truman was told about the successful test at the Trinity site New Mexico, it was about the technology for the second fat man bomb. The fission processed here involved using TNT to split unstable plutonium atoms apart, essentially creating the chain reaction and nuclear explosion. This was a very important test because we had much more plutonium and could make more bombs with it, while our Oak Ridge Tennessee plan had produced only enough uranium 235 for one bomb, which wound up being little boy used at Hiroshima, which Mr. Oppenheimer knew would work. Werner Heisenberg, lead physicist for Nazi Germany's nuclear program, had the same problem in producing uranium 235, and this was known back in the 30s. So uranium 238, which was way more plentiful, would be the resource used. But that isotope was too stable and required heavy water or deuterium to create the chain reaction. And this is why Norway, which possessed the heavy water plant, was invaded by Hitler in 1940. It's also why we have the word quizling in our dictionary. And could this inside baseball or cricket about a new terrifying technology be the main reason why Churchill was so against making a deal with Hitler? Could this be, too, why FDR maneuvered us into war with the axis by embargoing Japan? In a time of technological uncertainty, ensuring that the right side controls its proliferation is critical, and all manner of military and diplomatic maneuvers may need to be executed. So it's true in 1941, and it's true today. So leeway needs to be given regarding what might seem inconsistent foreign policy in the Middle East. Certainly Iran's nuclear ambitions need to be terminated, but China, with a superior AI, and a functional Belt and road and allies in the Middle East could dominate the world. There is no doubt we have a new Trump doctrine. Hopefully, whatever it is, can maintain our geopolitical primacy as the value of the dollar depends on it. Yeah, good, Frank. I thought that was going to go in the direction of AI. And by the way, Heisenberg, it's wonderful that he was mentioned because it gives people a little bit of history on Walter White's alias in Breaking Bad, what the background is if you never looked it up, right? Oh, yes. He was the guy that came up with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Correct. Yes. And so are you a finished the job guy then, talking about providing some latitude on seeming inconsistencies and Middle East policy? I just don't think we know. It's like an unknown unknown. We as citizens don't know all the inside baseball and stuff. So we have to get leeway. And Trump sometimes seems a little off on some of the stuff all over the place.

But we don't know that info. We don't know what we don't know. We just know we don't know something. You've made the switch, and it feels so good. You switch to 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 Proft here. So Pope Leo yesterday offered up his first papal encyclical, and the topic is AI. He worries about AI's impact on human dignity, on jobs, on autonomous warfare, writing in part in... Magnifica humanitas, magnificent humanity. It's not enough to invoke ethics in the abstract. Robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users, and a political system that does not abdicate his responsibility or acquired. A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few. He goes...

exactly there. He goes on to say, a society that guarantees employment only a fraction of the population despite having a high level of technical development, risks exposing many to force an activity, lack of responsibility, and the absence of daily tasks and stimuli resulting in human and cultural impoverishment. True. I'm not sure that AI guarantees that, but you know what I know, does guarantee that? But look forward to this being addressed in a forthcoming encyclical, not the welfare state. A society that guarantees employment only a small fraction of the populations by having a high-level technical development risks exposing many to forced inactivity, a lack of responsibility, absence of daily tasks, and stimuli resulting in human and cultural impoverishment. It's not forced inactivity, I suppose, with the welfare state, but it's incentivized inactivity that produces the same. negative outcomes, lack of responsibility, absence of daily tasks and stimuli resulting in human and cultural impoverishment, isn't it? And that's one of my main problems with this encyclical is not that is sort of the... blinders that are on you know everything that government does is to be through a view through the lens of altruism and everything that is being developed outside of the central planners is to be viewed as with skepticism as some sort of dangerous cultural shock to a a western culture that is supposedly as pristine at the moment hardly and the responsibility of these key sectors that he thinks need to come together to be the solution here. For example, on the job loss matter, he urges labor unions to build political coalitions with government and corporate leaders to protect employment from the AI automation of jobs. Right. Because when a big labor gets together with big government and corporate America, nothing but good things happen. I mean, oh, boy, a very stylized and, dare I say, polyanish view of those institutions, those actors, don't you think? This is very much of the Ambrose Pierce philosophy that. Private vice somehow becomes public virtue when your neighbor goes from being a private citizen like you to a government commissar. All of a sudden, he becomes more virtuous than you. The vices that he had as private citizen, Dan, somehow magically morph into public virtue. That is a fallacy, of course. And this is why I prefer my... a Catholic theologians to stick to the catechism and avoid topics that they have a demonstrated lack of understanding of, like economic vitality. 312-4-2-5600 alphawealthgroup.com call and text line if you want to opine on the encyclical.

And there's more here because one of the more interesting developments here was the release of this encyclical was presented with commentary from Chris Ola, co-founder of Anthropic. And he was, you know, very complimentary of what Pope Leo outlined, generally speaking. I just, you know, the perspective of an actual practitioner is important too here. And we'll get to the autonomous war concerns as well. But Chris Ola, founder of Anthropic, he had this to say, sort of general commentary on AI and a framework for. moral and philosophical discussion about this burgeoning technology. Some might believe the matters of AI are best handled by computer scientists like myself. They are mistaken. The questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community, not just in their implications, but also in their nature. AI systems are not engineered the way a bridge or an airplane is engineered. We understand an airplane because we designed every part of it, and we understand the physics that act on it. AI models are not like that. They are grown on a structure roughly modeled after the brain, on an enormous inheritance of human thought and speech. And what has grown is far more subtle, odd, and beautiful than science fiction prepared us for. They are not the cold calculating robots, we were promised. They are made from us, from our words. And as the Holy Father observes, they remain in important ways, mysterious even to those of us who create them. If it helps, one way I sometimes describe this is that it's a little bit like bringing a fictional character to life. And now we're entering an extraordinary world where those fictional characters speak to us, do work, have jobs. This clearly raises questions beyond computer science. The machinery that makes this possible is the work of math and programming and science. But what character we choose, how it interacts with the world, how it ought to interact with the world. These are more clearly questions for the humanities, for religion, for philosophy, for society at large. And so he then posits three questions that... church leaders, in this case the Catholic Church, but, you know, faith leaders, philosophers, public intellectuals to the extent we still have any of those, three questions that should be contemplated with that understanding of AI and where it's at. I wish to name three questions where I think the church's voice is especially needed. The first is our duty to the global war. there is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at a very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions. This task will be difficult enough, but I worry most dialogue misses an even harder challenge. AI development is concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations. How will we ensure that the gains of AI are shared globally? We do not have a mechanism for this. It is an unsolved problem.

And it is the kind of problem the church has historically refused to let the world ignore. The second is the need for moral imagination and ambition regarding human flourishing. If AI models are going to be widespread, what does it look like for humans, families, and the world to flourish? Today, parents are already worried about their children's minds, individuals about the future of their work. These are not questions a lab can answer. But they are questions traditions like yours have carried for millennia. And we need you to keep carrying them into this new moment in history. The third is the need for discernment on the nature of AI models. I am a scientist. I lead a research team that studies the internal structure of these models. What is actually happening inside them? And I will be honest. We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states that, functionally, mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. I don't know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment. Sure. And by the way, I should mention that, you know, Anthropic and CEO there is... one of those who has been talking about, you know, the elimination of all white-collar jobs in 18 months. And that is very much in dispute. Great disagreement about that. So. which is fine. That's what should be. But it's a bold claim. And it's one that doesn't necessarily stack up to where we're at right now. Maybe he will turn out to be right. But the fear of the rise of the machines and the end of civilization as we know it and some sort of 21st century enslavement. strikes me as is a much hyperventilation right now. There's some real practical limitations just in terms of the speed of development here. Edward, Ed Dowd is a former Black Rock fund manager. And. He was, he offers sort of a slightly different and more grounded perspective on some of the challenges with AI development, real world challenges at present. This was on the Thoughtful Money podcast. You know, capacity to run these data centers. And there's not enough. water to do it. So they're running into opposition. So I'm of the opinion. CapEx is going to be scaled back as they realize they can't plug into anything. And there's somebody on X who's an analyst who's running around the country looking at all the data centers. And he said, you'd be surprised at how many of them are not completed yet. So there seems to be this, all this future CapEx announcements, but then the actual going in the ground.

getting it, getting it up and running. It's not as fast as people think. And that's the bottleneck. And that, and that, that's how you end up with like a ton of, you know, inventory of Nvidia chips and everything, you know, that you can't deploy it. So it's sitting in a warehouse. And he goes on to talk about the hype as he describes it over, you know, catastrophic for some industries or some sectors. unemployment, displacement. There's all sorts of conflicting. Is it going to really replace white collar jobs that quick? I personally believe that's hype. I don't believe it's going to happen. Because you see these weird announcements where, like, you know, Ernst & Young and other consulting companies are teaming up with Open AI to help implement the solutions in the corporations. So you need, so it's supposed to get rid of consulting in white collar, but you need them to install it. That's kind of, and then Google said they're hiring engineers to help their clients. you know, deploy. So we're hiring people to deploy something. It sounds like it's complicated and maybe not as easy as people think to get up and running. Secondly, there's all sorts of reports that people are running through their token budgets so fast that they're deciding that it's actually cheaper to keep humans. So there's all sorts of conflicting, you know, stories. So it doesn't, it's not as clean as someone might think. David Sacks, who's a tech investor, Trump's cryptocurrencies are, he posted to Mr. Dowd's point, how are job postings for software engineers rising rapidly despite AI agents automated, automating coding? The answer? Because there's far more code demanded than ever before. We're already seeing a 14x year-over-year increase in GitHub commits, and it's accelerating. AI has dramatically lowered the cost of writing code, so it's now being used across far more businesses, applications, and use cases. We're at the beginning of a massive productivity boom driven by the proliferation of bespoke software throughout the entire economy. Coding has been AI's breakout use case this year. The fact that it's increased demand for software engineers rather than decrease it should call into question the entire AI will cause mass job loss narrative. 312 642-5600 alphawealthgroup.com call and text line. John in Delray Beach, Florida. Hi, Dan. I don't see what's really different than AI than from the Industrial Revolution. My God, industry uses gallons of water. 250 years ago, 90, 95% of our employment workforce was in agriculture, and the third of it was enslaved. You know, nobody's weren't always slave now, and maybe we have one percent of our...

employment and agriculture right now, I just don't see why we're worried. I mean, I know we always fear the unknown and we don't know this and I got kids and what are they going to do and all that. But in reality, what's different? Right. Thanks for the call, John. And the kids and their anxiety is why commencement speakers are being booed at college graduation ceremonies the last couple of weeks. if they raise the specter of AI because there is so much angst over what that means for their futures. Is the degree I got in the industry I want to go into the job I want? Is that even doable? Well, Steve Wozniak took a different approach. He brought up the topic of AI, but he took a different approach that was received much better. Wozniak, of course, was the co-founder of Apple. He gave the commencement address at Grand Valley State up in Michigan. And, well, this is what he had to say. We got AI today. You all have AI. Actual intelligence. So, and.

It would take too long to go deeply into what I think about AI these days. A lot of different things. Give a lot of speeches on it. But a lot of times we've been trying to create a brain. Is there a way we can duplicate a routine a trillion times and have it worked like a brain? And that's sort of like today's AI is one of those attempts. We've created chips that are called synapse chips. Somehow in there, it may be a clue. And we haven't been able to do it. When I went back to college, you got my degree. I was a psychology major, and we don't know how the brain is wired like a circuit is. And we don't even know our memories of what we've done are in the brain. The strongest statement of correlation of what is that between the ages of six and nine, you lose two things. Your autobiographic childhood memories, and you lose your teeth. So there's nothing stronger in any book on memory. So you're going to trip with your psychology friends. Anyway, I was at a company where the engineers figured out how to make a brain. Yeah. Yeah, it takes nine months. Hi-oh. Anyway, your importance to the world, you know, is going to be how you've affected the world and all that, but it's really yourself. And you should always try to think different. Don't just follow the same steps as a million other people. Think, is there something I can do a little bit different? I used to go to sleep, dreamy. Is there a way that I can change a design of a certain mini-computer and save two chips, two parts in it? And I'd wake up with solutions in the middle of the night. But I would try using parts in ways they were not designed to be used. You just have to think there might be something better. And I want to prove myself better. And I was so shy. I couldn't talk to anyone. So I might as well go about figuring out little tricks that couldn't be in any books. You know, and what you do for good, you know, when you try things, they don't have to be for obvious money. When we started Apple, did I want to make money? Did I want to start a company? Did I want to start an industry? No, those were just steps to get my computer to the world. I wanted other engineers. or other computer people, to look at my designs and say, whoa, and appreciate me and my brilliance. How did he come up with these things? A computer I took to the Humberg Computer Club was the first time they'd ever seen a standard computer with low cost can have a keyboard and a video display. Every computer since I showed it off has had a keyboard and a video display. I just, you know, I just wanted something good for myself. The best products in the world come. when you have a good mind and you're building designing it for yourself the one you'd want to use. Tyler Cohen, econ professor at George Mason University, has a good piece over the free press. You have seven ways to avoid losing your job to AI, a couple of them that are particularly salient and straightforward. First, look for messy jobs. Look for jobs that are hard to describe and involve many components.

Maybe today you're trying to solve a personnel problem on the company floor, running a fundraiser the next day, and after that, you're helping the marketing team develop a campaign. What exactly is your job anyway? That's a messy job. The nature of what you do changes all the time, and it changes with circumstances. Much of the value you add comes from ideas and performance on the spot rather than mastering a regularized task in advance. The opposite of a messy job is when you sit at a computer terminal and repeat the same action every day. Messy jobs will be pretty well protected from AI competition. In fact, AI will enhance their productivity, in part because you need to be proficient with AI tools. That's another recommendation. You are your own enemy if you go around constantly complaining about AI, even though there are some genuine complaints you might levy. It's best to complain from a position of love and dedication. Learn how to use agents, how to prompt effectively, how to integrate AI into the workforce, into the workflows of your organization. Keep up with what is new in the AI field. And, you know, don't stop at writing this memo. It used to take me four hours. Now it takes me 10 minutes. That's fine. But of the longer haul, it will not suffice to keep your job, at least not at your current wage and working conditions. And that's the point that was being made about software engineer hiring is up because you need to integrate the tools and you need to assist customers in integrating the tools. The other, this was interesting, be wary of work from home. Work from home is tempting because you economize on your commute, your own furnish or might be more comfortable in the office, you can put out the dog when needed and so forth. A recent study looked at the job troubles experienced by young and entry-level workers in industries in which hiring has slowed both AI exposure and work from home are common factors. Yet when researchers tried to disentangle those two effects, they actually found that work from home was the more important of the two in terms of job growth. Stoppage. Work from home is more important than AI. Make sure you're showing up every day and notice. That means you'll be more trusted, easy to monitor, and people will develop a better sense of your talents. That in turn will help ensure your future. John in Evanston. Dan, thank you for taking my call. I appreciate the topic. But when you mentioned the Pope saying what he said about even getting involved to it, it reminded me of popes previously. And the best way to drive a Catholic away from Catholicism is to let a Pope speak. When Pope Francis was talking about the environment. or talking about borders, the Pope can't raise his hand and change the weather, and he sure can't raise his hand and change laws and sovereignty of nations. And this Pope talking about AI, I just want to say he should stay in his lane and take care of his congregation, his flock. You should be more concerned about children who are at threat of...

of harm from clergy like Pope Francis years ago. There was a bishop in Chicago who said Pope Francis at the time when asked about child molestation, the bishop stated that Pope Francis can't go down the rat hole and chase down every allegation. Well, buddy, that's your job. Your only job is to protect the Catholics who follow you in your clergy. As far as... As far as borders and weather and AI, and it's nothing to do with the Pope. Well, thanks for the call, John. I mean, here's what I would say to that. I mean, he is certainly within his realm to raise the questions that are rooted in the catechism, questions about human dignity, questions about impact on... a human being's natural rights. When he starts getting into prescriptions like big labor getting into bed with big government, getting into bed with corporate America to make sure there's oversight from these putative, angelic actors, you know, that's where the conversation gets a little bit outside of theology. and outside of his core competency. The stories you need to know to start your day. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM 560, the answer. Insert Democrat Socialist here. Runs the Democratic House law for 30 plus years running. He's promising this and he's stealing that. Where can you get that kind of money? He's using your house like his own piggyback, gang, gang, gang, gang, gang, you ought to know by now. You can pay off your house here in Illinois. You can never keep up with the taxes. Oh, how it's always been the plan to have a taxpayer pay, no doubt. Not a matter of if anymore but when. You're moving out. I said, when you're moving out. At the top of the morning, Dan Proft here, that theme music means it's time for our weekly confab with the wirepoints.org boys about all things Illinois policy related. And other hilarious editorial from the Chicago Tribune, which is doing a better and better job of impersonating the Babylon B with each commentary. On the... Cold War, they say, between J.B. and B.J. Very concerning. J.B. took a shot at, as we talked about last week, at B.J. over not being, you know, coming in in the 11th hour in Springfield this year like he does, trying to salvage a path for the Bears to stay in Chicago. And their relationship has been. frayed previously over J.B.'s unwillingness to push BJ's many neo-Marxist tax proposals in addition to his own.

We'll get to that in a second, how many tax and fee increases have been imposed under Jellybelly. And don't forget the attempt to graduate the state income tax was something that they both support. J.B. and B.J. are fellow travelers. BJ may be the real McCoy, but it doesn't matter if J.B. is just pantomiming. For his own political interests, the results are the same, and that's all that we should care about. One's genuine and one's disingenuous. That's a difference. It's a distinction, not a difference in outcome. The Tribune editorial board, such as this, for Chicagoans, many of whom care little precisely where the Bears play in the future, the spectacle should be caused for reflection. How can we get the city moving in the right direction? Well, by dumping J.B. and B.J., that would be one way, but that's not going to happen, especially J.B. Whoever wins Chicago's mayor election next year almost certainly will be dealing with J.B. Pritzker as governor for the vast majority of their term. A healthy, productive relationship with the governor won't be optional if Chicago is to surmount its formidable fiscal challenges. Right, when they work together, that's when good things happen. And how did we get here? How did we get to Illinois as the worst governed state in American history and Chicago is the worst governed city in the country? As I have said for many, many moons, it was when everybody worked together. Pay to play Republicans and pay to play Democrats. Republican governors, Edgar. BLM, excuse me, George Ryan, Bruce Ronner, and Dem Mayors, Daily, Tiny Dancer. Can Johnson rehabilitate such a relationship with J.B. Pritzker? Whether or not J.B. Pritzker's Bears deal survives the mayor's attacks? Nothing's impossible in politics, but it sure feels unlikely the Tribune Editorial Board is concerned. So concerned for the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois. And everybody working together to advance neo-Marxist economic policies. Wonderful. And Jelly Belly's upset because, of course, B.L.M. Brandon is running interference on the Arlington Heights deal, which is propping up chances that the Bears move to Northwest Indiana, which would be since B.L.M. Brandon's already his embarrassment of the Bears leaving Chicago is already a fate of compil. What does he care if J.B. Pritzker has to suffer the same indignity despite his presidential ambitions? That'd be a real black mark on the record, wouldn't it? J.B. Pritzker knows that. That's why he's willing to be publicly critical. Try and separate himself from the blame if that eventuality comes to pass. But if they were working together, things would be so much better, argues the Tribune hysterically. For more on this, Mark Glennon, founder of wirepoints, wirepoints.org. Joins us, Mark. Thanks for being with us. Appreciate it.

Hey, Dan. Yeah, what a honor that editorial was. You write something like that, you know, with all the dire problems that we're facing in Chicago, you write something like that, which really tells us nothing. And the last thing we want is these guys working constructively together to get things done. You know, there's nothing better that I'd like to see than some debate and strife within the... far left political establishment that we have, but I guess they don't see it that way. Well, yeah, no. I mean, when they work together, they do things like, I don't know, the combined state and city spend three and a half, four billion dollars to attract people in this country illegally to reside in the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago and get, you know, rental assistance and free health care and tuition assistance and free schooling. And that's working together. That's exactly right. And the list goes on and on. I mean, it's a long list. I loved your description of a messy job earlier, which with a lot of different job responsibilities makes you hard to replace. I guess covering Illinois is kind of a messy job. Maybe we're not going to get replaced by AI because it's just one thing after another. Yeah, it's good. Full employment for us. All right, very good, the talkers. Speaking of your messy job, this distillation you did on the tax increases and the revenue produced under... the ponderous J.B. Pritzker's tenure. This is important because I think people have short memories, and in fact, I know they do. People forget he tried to graduate the state income tax. Most many people did. So that was one tax gambit. But there have been many others where he has been successful. And they seem to, he seems to be somewhat teflonized with respect to that, probably because there's not much of an opposition party. Yeah, and what prompted this was the constant claims that you see from both Lieutenant Governor Stratton and a race for the Senate and Perchker's race for the presidency talking about how they put Illinois on the right track fiscally. And, of course, there hasn't been one reform. I mean one reform, one fiscal reform that contributed to whatever degree of stability we have. some improvement. But the overwhelming reason why that's been accomplished to the extent that it has is they soak the taxpayers and we've got to add it up. You know, it's $162 billion. You can debate that number. It's kind of a ballpark figure. It doesn't matter if it's off by $10, $20, $50 billion, but it's $162 billion additional that he's taken from taxpayers during his term. So, you know, would you expect to get a few bond upgrades? Sure. You know, and we still have the worst bond rating in the country. Well, that's what that's, that's just on the binary thing. It's like, you know, we've seen, you know, X number of upgrades in our bond rating. And we're so far behind the rest of the country in terms of being the worst governed state. All those upgrades. And we haven't moved from out of 50th place. So.

I mean, what an accomplishment? Yeah, it can't be said often enough. Still the worst in the country. And, yeah, the bonds aren't going to default in the near term. That's all the rating agencies really care about. You collect $162 billion more. They're a little more secure, a big deal. It's not the case for Chicago, by the way. And there's many other municipalities. But that's what we're looking at. And, you know, one particular element of that, you know, I think we forget the history on this is the, you know, largest tax increase we ever had came in 2017. And, you know, of course, Rauner was blamed for the budget impasse, which he did handle poorly and no doubt about that. But Democrats ended that by passing. a budget over his veto, which they could have done at any time during the impasse, along with that historic tax increased. And, you know, that added $5 billion a year. And it really kicked in. The first year, Bricker was in office. You know, he took, the election was in 2018. He was sworn in January 2019. So, you know, that was... manna from heaven for him, and he didn't accomplish anything by doing that. And you have sort of that 162 billion number, which is, you know, an estimate because information is difficult to glean from state government. It's in three buckets. One is 57 separate state tax and fee increases that have raised 77 billion since he took office in January of 2019. 57 separate state tax and fee increases. that extracted 77 billion. But, you know, and the income tax increase, which you just mentioned. But that third bucket has gone away. So that's a problem, too, which is why there isn't the largest to distribute that there has been up until this last fiscal year. Yeah, and that first one is a hard number. It's the Illinois Policy Institute that did a very thorough look at the tax increases, express tax increases with dollar amounts on them. And it's, yeah, 57 tax increases totaling 77 billion in new revenue, mostly regressive, by the way, that came expressly from the J.B. Pritzker administration. So, you know, soaked the taxpayers. And we know what the long-term consequences are. people flee, the state becomes unaffordable, and we included our IRS migration numbers that we've talked about, which don't lie, and they show the flight of our tax base, and it's only going to get worse.

Right. I mean, just again, looking at your data, and this is just through 2023. So again, working together, Republicans and Democrats working together from 2000 to 2023, what have they produced? $94 billion in total adjusted gross income lost to the state throughout migration. Yeah, and that's, you know, per year you could add it. It's actually a cumulative thing would be very difficult to do, but it is just a massive amount of money that has fled to other states. And, of course, it's fleeing other blue states as well. This is really an historic. change that is happening and the consequences are going to be cataclysmic for blue states and blue cities especially when look at the mayors these blue cities have you know Philadelphia Seattle now of course Chicago LA New York these people are crazy and it's just going to go downhill And those balanced budgets that Jelly Belly likes to brandish, that he's balanced the budget every year he's been governor, which is something we've heard from governor's Republican and Democrat too, and it's never true. That's right. You know, 10 years ago, they were saying that the pension problem was so severe that only pension reform could fix it. They said that in court filings. They said that before the Supreme Court. Now they forget about it. They won't touch it. The pension problem is twice as bad as it was then. And as you write, too, I'm just looking ahead. The governor's own budget office. projects a quarter billion dollar budget this year rising to $5.5 billion by 2031. And, you know, and those are cooked numbers. But even their cooked numbers, you know, project financial problems. And you can, you can be sure they're going to be exponentially worse than these prognostications. Yeah, that's from the governor's office of management and budget, $5.3 billion deficit they project in 2031. No wonder they're trying to talk up another income tax increase on the rich. Pritz will be gone by then, so he probably won't make it a priority. But there's no insight to this. And Chicago is the leader. It's on a... unbreakable, in my view, descent into the abyss. So if you love the 57 state tax and fee increases over the last seven years, you're really going to love the tax and fee increases over the next six to deal with the, you know, the latest cliff that we're going over the edge of.

The red states will love it because they'll get more and more of those big taxpayers fleeing to them and more congressional representation and all the rest. We wither on the vine here. Mark Lennon, founder of Wirepoints, wirepoints. Wirepoints.org, all things Illinois policy related. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Dan. Take care. And he joined us on the alphawealthgroup.com answer line. 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. This is Chicago's Morning Answer with Dan Proft on AM 560, The Answer. Top of the morning, Dan Profft here. So over the weekend, Saturday night, a man known by Secret Service who claimed he was Jesus Christ pulled out a revolver and opened fire outside of the White House near a Secret Service checkpoint. He allegedly got off three shots before he was killed by Secret Service. Who? appropriately responded to his opening fire. One bystander was injured in the gunfire. This is somebody, as I said, who was known to Secret Service. He had previously been involuntarily committed on June 26th of last year for obstructing vehicular traffic. and was arrested again on June, July 12th, July 10th, that is, for unlawful entry. He tried to bum rush security in front of the White House. Known quantity. Somebody described as having a history of mental health issues, yes, right, claiming to be Jesus Christ, sort of indicative of that. But one wonders if... This was another instance where Secret Service was not as proactive as they could or should have been, the fact that he got shots off, the fact that he was a known quantity. And maybe this is being too tough on Secret Service in this instance. But because there is this history of issues, particularly of recent memory, One has to look at incidents like this with a jaundiced eye, I think. Mike Olson is a retired Secret Service agent. He's also the co-founder and owner of 360 security services, 360 security dot services. Mike, thanks for joining us again. Appreciate it. You're welcome, Dan. Good morning. So what about this incident? Number one, as I said, known quantity. And he was, apparently before he pulled out a revolver at open fire, he was pacing up and down the sidewalk in a strange manner. So there was, he didn't just sort of pop out of nowhere and immediately open fire. He was meandering about and then open fire. And, um, uh,

And, you know, this isn't necessarily Secret Service's responsibility, but Secret Service working with law enforcement to ensure somebody who has repeatedly tried to breach security around the White House is removed from the public on a more permanent basis. Well, this is an example. Where the criminal justice system, in my opinion, fails the protection of not only the president, vice president, but citizens that live, operate, transit in the area of protected properties such as the White House complex. Ironically, I don't think we shared this last time, but I was involved in an incident many, many, many years ago, actually at the White House. correspondence dinner involving an individual that had breached uh security ended up getting into a fight with him had to go to trial there in washington dc um appear before a jury and the jury does what a lot of juries do is they decided that person wasn't guilty of violating any crimes uh that was what juries have the right to do is make that type of decision. And unfortunately, along that pathway of our criminal justice system, prosecution entities also have the ability to decide whether or not they're going to bring forward a case or hold somebody accountable to the laws of the land. In this case, somebody who's apparently repeatedly come to the attention of the Secret Service and has attempted to... you know, to engage in other inappropriate conduct or illegal conduct in the past isn't held accountable, yet shows very clear signs and indicators and signals of being somebody who's on some sort of pathway to violence. And so law enforcement, unfortunately, is left to again wait until the last minute to react. to a new situation rather than having had the opportunity to have this person, like you said, maybe proactively locked up or kept off the streets or gotten to help they may be need if they're suffering from some severe mental illness. But even if the Secret Service did everything right in this instance, is it, in your view, incumbent upon the director, Sean Curran? to offer some comment on this and call out local authorities or federal law enforcement as is, you know, the Department of Justice, I mean, as is warranted to say, you know, these are the kind of people that we're working with locals as well as federales to make sure they're removed from society. So we have somebody that presents as a consistent threat to. the president, the White House personnel, and that person needs to be removed. And we communicated about this person. We didn't communicate. What's the rest of the story? I mean, part of the problem, it seems to me, going back to Butler, is of late, we're not getting the full story from Secret Service and it creates doubt. Well, I...

It's a great question, Dan. And I think we're obviously some extremely concerning period of time here. I mean, just from my 20 plus years in the Secret Service. where these types of things happen once in a blue moon. We had threats every day all day long. We dealt with these things. We worked to identify threats, assess them, and then manage them. But you didn't have a society right now that is completely breaking down where people think violence is the answer, mentally ill or not. And I think society as a whole needs to be severely educated as to the severity of the threats that exist. right now, especially against this current administration. And that causes... To your point, to your question, I think there does need to be some more aggressive education for the public, for our political leaders to understand. I mean, in some cases, they're being threatened by the same individuals that threatened the president. That was par for the course. I mean, you know, a lot of times we saw the same people that threatened the governor or a senator were the same people that were threatening the president. So they have a vested interest in opening this dialogue up. But the problem is, And again, this is just, I don't want to get into a debate, not with you, but with the community as a whole. But we always want to focus on the gun that does the killing. And it's not. It's individuals that do killings or target people. So if we don't want to address root causes. then we constantly are focusing on the wrong thing, thinking it's going to solve the problem, and we're not solving any problems because we're not addressing root causes. But back to your original question, absolutely. I think there needs to be a more aggressive educational campaign that exists out there for behavioral threat assessment management programs and people understanding what kind of individuals are out there right now, not only making these threats, but working to carry out these threats or attacks in this current... political environment we're in. The secret service training, I mean, vetting and training issues, Jason Chaffetz, you know, former rep who was chairman of the House Oversight Committee and spent years looking at Secret Service, said after the shooting at the White House Correspondents Association dinner that there is a vetting and training problem. He said most rank-and-file agents excluding counter-snipers and members of the counter-assault team only receive an average of 30 minutes of training per year. And he also took issue with Sean Curran statements after the White House Correspondent Association dinner shooting that the dinner had been set up perfectly asking the question, well.

What if there were 12 guys with guns that decided to rush that checkpoint instead of one? How would that have gone? To his point that, you know, that person should have not, even though he wasn't, you know, quote unquote close, he shouldn't have been able to get that close. And so, I mean, so address that because there's been a lot of high profile embarrassing incidents involving secret service agents from. The woman who was involved in who missed the, allegedly is the woman who missed the elevated position at Butler and keeps getting disciplined and but stays on the job to this guy just a couple of months ago. I mean, who was arrested for masturbating in public in a hotel in Miami. It's just like, and the guy who was, was he with Jill Biden, I'm going from memory here, who accidentally shot himself with his own gun. I mean, just like these incidents do not inspire confidence. Yeah, it's, it's embarrassing being a former member of the Secret Service to see some of these incidents happen. And it's. obviously goes up without saying it's unacceptable. I am a firm advocate of you can't do enough training. You can't, and that's for any organization. I mean, even those listening out there that have companies and things like that, think about if some crisis happens in your facility. It has nothing to do with the president of the United States, but it has to do with some sort of workplace violence or things. Are you prepared? There is never a perfect security plan out there ever. Bad people. constantly work to overcome and defeat and figure out how to defeat security measures. And so you have to constantly learn and you have to constantly train. So I think the point, as far as training, is you can't fund it enough. And so if leaders of organizations or politicians who oversee these governmental entities, organizations, whether it's police departments or whatever, aren't screaming and yelling for lots and lots of training, then they're doing a disservice in general. As far as the competency, the quality, there's no question. I mean, it's not just in the Secret Service. It's happened across. government as a whole, it's happened in other entities. There is this unwillingness to hold people accountable and to have transparency and to hold ourselves to some level of standards that need to exist. And when people cross those lines in any profession, they should be held accountable and there should be repercussions. But there seems to be this apathy across society, and it has bled, you know, as I transitioned out of the government over 10 years ago, it bled severely into the government where it was, hey, we're just bringing people on. We have to give more people. And with that, you start to lower standards. You start to lower governance and accountability. And then transparency becomes a problem because now you want to try to.

you know, keep that from being visible. Unfortunately, it's with these recent incidents, it's hard to do that. So, I mean, do you, do you get the sense? I mean, even from talking to other agents that there is this lingering vetting problem. I mean, you mentioned you addressed the training issue, but the vetting problem too. I mean, because, you know, this, obviously people know this is deathly serious, but there's a story out over the weekend that Ivanka Trump. was targeted for assassination by an Iranian terrorist to avenge President Trump's killing of Soleimani, who was his mentor. This guy was arrested in Turkey recently, and the story comes out that he had Ivanka Trump on his... on his hit list. And so, you know, it's not just Trump and JD Vance. It's, you know, the extended family. You saw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking in Montgomery, Alabama last week and she's behind bulletproof glass. I mean, it's, it just, it seems like the cultural problem you described is certainly part of it. But I just wonder if there's, we could be getting a lot better from Secret Service. And. And maybe Sean Kernan should be addressing that because when we got the last time we had Secret Service address something like after Butler, it left a lot of people unsatisfied, myself included. Well, I... You know, I think you're right. I think, you know, again, the problem here is the Secret Service is one of many, you know, federal government agencies out there that have to abide by certain federal hiring standards and things like that. And yes, they have some additional things that they can put in in terms of, you know, physical standards or things that are required in order to obtain a top secret clearance. But there needs to be communication about it. And I think these leaders do have to be able to get out there and speak to the public to generate public awareness for people to get behind them in order to make the necessary change or go back. to where, you know, better standards can be put in place. And one of the frightening things right now, I don't think I'm saying anything secret here is law enforcement as a whole, as Secret Service included, is suffering greatly from a hiring deficit. They are short. Like a recruiting problem. Oh, yes. And that has happened in the post-George Floyd era with this, this, you know, whoever it's coming from, whoever's organizing it, the anti-police, you know, create chaos in the streets of the U.S. Well, you literally have people. I've talked to many younger generation that don't want to go into law enforcement now because, A, they're afraid of getting prosecuted if they make a mistake. They don't want to put up with that. You know, you have a younger generation that's in the social media. They don't want to be doxed.

and gone after. So that's a big problem. And so when you need to put numbers on the job, what is your tendency to maybe cut a corner here, cut a corner there to get bodies on the job in order to do the work? And that's a significant problem. We can all agree to. Yeah, I mean, we saw a good example of that over the weekend at that attempted blockade of the ICE detention facility in New Jersey. And even when politicians like the Senator Andy Kim were out there, it was. It was chaos because these people are, you know, unhinged. So, no, I get it's not an attractive job. So that's part of it. I mean, that's, but, you know, these are the things that need to be addressed honestly and put it out there because that's one way to turn the tide is to say, you know, get people to understand. You've got to recruitment problem getting good people and getting them trained up. And, you know, these agents of chaos out there. like we saw in New Jersey, aren't helping the matter. So maybe some people should tell them to knock it off. Mike Olson, retired Secret Service agent, co-founder of 360 security services, 360 security. Services. Mike, thank you, as always. Appreciate it. You're welcome, Dan. Have a great day. You too. And he joined us on the F-Wealthgroup.com answer lines. This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. This is Chicago's morning answer. An 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. President Trump responding on two social to all of the people who were jittery as rumors were circulating that he was going to... essentially capitulate that this deal that was near finalization, as reported, would not achieve the objectives he set forward when he decided to launch strikes against the Iranians. This is what the president said in his truth social post. I laugh at all of the Democrats, rhinos and fools who know nothing about the potential deal I'm making with Iran. Things that haven't even been negotiated yet, weak and ineffective people like failed Senator Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, who just suffered a massive primary loss, really bad Congressman Thomas Massie, major sleazebag. As usual, the colorful ad hominem from the president. These people should go home and rest. They do nothing but create division and loss. In other words, they are losers. The deal with Iran will either be a great and meaningful one or there will be no deal. It will be the exact opposite of the JCPOA disaster negotiated by the failed Obama administration, which was a direct and open path to a nuclear weapon for Iran. Okay. No uncertain terms.

And the team is responding to all of those described losers, including Mike Pompeo, former Trump CIA director, a good example of what the administration is pushing back against with. Fervor. Pompeo posted the deal being floated with Iran seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman, Robert Malley, Ben Rhodes playbook. Pay the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world. Not remotely America first. It's straightforward. Open the damn straight. Deny Iran access to money. Take out enough Iranian capability so it cannot threaten our allies in the region. Overdue. Let's go. To which White House spokesman Stephen Chung. responded, Mike Pompeo has no idea what the frack he's talking about, but he didn't use the word frack. He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He's not read into anything that's happening. So how would he know? Okay. Well. Let's see what Michael Rubin knows. Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Director of Policy Analysis for the Middle East Forum. Michael, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Hey, thanks for having me, Dan. So how did you distill all of the back and forth, speculation, caterwalling, name calling over the weekend? Well, opacity probably isn't Donald Trump's friend. If it really is a good deal, there should be some details which are known. Unfortunately, the Iranian press is now filling in those details. Nor News, which is close to Iran's Supreme National Security Council, has said the first step will be the release of $11 billion from a frozen Iranian assets in Qatar. And only then... Will there be some discussion of the nuclear issue? So again, that's like the Joint Conference of Plan of Action. And then the second point is while Trump has talked about the straight before moves being opened, the Iranian press has said that the deal is to have a quota of a number of ships going through. But the Iranians are hinting that they control that quota and that they're still allowed to charge tolls. And this is why, perhaps, so many people in the national security orbit in Washington are so worried about where this deal is going. Right. I mean, and by the way, I mean, you know, the Iranian press, the Iranian foreign ministry, I saw the Iranian foreign ministry said, no, we're not charging tolls. We're charging environmental fees. Okay, sure. But I mean, it just seems to me that those, first of all, we should discount anything coming from the Iranian press because they're just propagandizing to create, well, the response that the Trump received, which is incoming political fire from all directions, right?

That could be the case, but sometimes where there's smoke, there's fire, if the Iranians are speaking about specific details. then that is concerning when the United States isn't releasing details, because then the question becomes why? Does the United States have something to hide? Look, one of my experiences with the Trump administration in the first term was when I was talking to people in the room, but I was talking to, in this case, Afghans. And it turned out that my reporting had been so accurate that the Trump administration had launched a leak investigation against national security counsel officials. because they wanted to know how I was getting this information. The fact the matter is, when there's two people in the room, you can talk to either of them, and the Iranians are being very vocal. Trump is being quiet, and the question is why. Well, I mean, it could be, you know, maybe he's trial ballooning some of these alleged details that have been circulating. And he, and for example, that true social posts that I read is a response to the trial ballooning saying, essentially, we're not doing any of that. Oh, you're absolutely right, Dan. And there's also been rumors, for example, that Trump is after more of a grand bargain, where in order to have a settlement with Iran, he would bring Saudi Arabia, Qatar, maybe Kuwait, to join the Abraham Accords, which essentially would end the Arab-Israeli conflict. And so you might see something beyond the Joint Conference of Plan of Action, and Donald Trump is trying to get all of his ducks in a row. But if someone who has studied Iranian negotiations for 30 years, they're masters at stringing people along and then not allowing them to actually get to the finish line. Right. I mean, some other information that was leaked by people who are on a press call with somebody in the White House suggested that there's, you know, no dust for cash for dust or whatever it is. The point being. There's not going to be sanctions relief. There's not, first of all, there's not going to be any pallets of cash. Secondly, there's not going to be any sanctions relief until there's specific performance of the things that we want. For example, either obtaining the enriched uranium that the Iranians have or ensuring its destruction, they need to specifically perform on these matters before there's any, you know, they need to do the quid before they, we give the quo. Well, Dan, let me get in touch with my inner libertarian on this. Both under Secretary of State John Curry during the Obama administration and now, perhaps part of the problem is that administrations are trying to bypass the constitutional prerogative of the Senate to make treaties. And when we're more worried about passing Senate ratification than we are about our adversaries, that suggests a much broader problem in Washington's strategic culture.

Well, so, I mean, do you think that Trump is being too deferential to Pakistani mediators and Gulf State allies of convenience, some of them are, that are, you know, trying to ensure that that appear to be trying to, you know, buy time to keep the hostilities to a minimum defensive strikes like we're launched yesterday? so that we can get some kind of deal and be done with this? Is he being too deferential to them? Yeah, absolutely, Dan. Look, my rule of thumb is you never want to choose a mediator that deep down wants you to lose. And the fact of the matter is, when we look at the ideology of the Pakistanis, who remember, just 15 years ago, we're hiding Osama bin Laden. When we look at the Qatari's, when we look at the Turks, they are among the most anti-American countries on earth, and it's not just the people. It's the leadership as well. So why would we be putting all our eggs in their basket? That's beyond me, and that's what's leaving many people in the region scratching their heads. Well, I mean, to me, that's the only thing. The only thing that makes sense is that he wants this to be a collaborative affair, and so he's trying to balance all of these competing interests. Because otherwise, you know, if, as it was initially rolled out, the tandem of Epic Fury and Economic Fury was going to squeeze the Iranians into submission and they have hyperinflation and their defense industrial base and, frankly, industrial base has been significantly degraded. And their ballistic missiles and drone caches have been significantly diminished. And they don't seem to have much capacity to strike offensively. for certain or even defend themselves from American and Israeli strikes, then why wouldn't, you know, if you have your proverbial foot on your enemy's neck, why wouldn't you continue to press down until you get that submission? Well, you're right. I mean, another analogy would be when you have a wildfire, you don't contain it 95% and then go home. You don't enter into a casino playing poker with a royal flush and get out bluffed by a pair of twos. But unfortunately, it seems that's where we're going. But if we're talking historical analogies, you know, there is some hope for optimism there because in Serbia in 1999, Bill Clinton tried to bomb them into submission. It didn't lead to regime change. Slobalon Milosevic remained in power, but he couldn't pay his bills. He was embarrassed before his own base, and within a year, he was ousted. And, yeah, I mean, there was this another story that's circulating. There's so many of these, but just get your perspective. I think I heard it from Jeffrey Sachs, so I, you know, I understand his perspective on these matters. But he suggested that the original plan was to install Ahmadinejad, the former president, as president again, you know, do decapitation, install Ahmadinejad.

and, you know, and get this thing over quickly. And I guess Ahmadinejad was severely wounded in the early strikes. And so that was foreclosed. I mean, do you do you have any perspective on whether you think they had an idea about who they wanted to install and how this was going to go down? And now there's a bit of groping in the dark going on? No, no, I think this whole Ahmadinejad thing was absolute nonsense from the start. For example, people said he was under house arrest, but he was still going to meetings and so forth. And so, I mean, what it almost seems to be is some of Ahmadinejad's own adversaries within the Iranian government are playing the U.S. press for fools. And when we look at the origin of the story, the New York Times, basically they're not. naming any sources, they're essentially saying trust us. But even within Iran, just all the ducks aren't in the row. It just seems like a very silly story, which is easily disproved. Eli Lake, writing in the free press, said there may be a reason that Trump wants a deal, needs a deal. The challenges in restarting the war, not just defensive, he writes. The U.S. is facing a major shortfall of standoff weapons like the Army tactical missile system, which can target military facilities along Iran's coastline, well out of range of regime's anti-missile capabilities. While the joint direct action munitions, those weapons are shorter range, fired from lower flying aircraft that could be susceptible to being hit by the Iranians. Number one, it's sort of our conversation about what our defense industrial base is and what our capacities and the state of our weapons caches are. And number two, what exactly is the state of Iran's ability to... commit offensive acts or defend themselves? Well, I mean, first of all, what Eli Lake is writing, there's something to it. Certainly, we're depleting our resources. That's been a known problem from well before the Operation Epic Fury began. The problem is that when we self-deter, when we always look at the worst-case scenario, ultimately that... creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not clear that the Iranians have the ability to exact this sort of damage upon us. But one thing is sure, if we step back, the North Koreans, the Chinese, the Russians are going to ensure that Iranians have that ability. It's a different discussion. How do we get our stocks, our reserves back up? But that's something for the Senate Armed Services Committee to discuss. That's something for the House Armed Services Committee discussed, and we need to have a much more mature discussion than this nonsense that so often we focus on, be it the President's personal life or the opposition leader's personal life, that sort of thing, which is just the distraction from being leadership of the First World.

Well, what is the problem in reopening the straight? Do we not know how many mines are left? Is it the process of clearing the straight of those mines? Do we need to restart Project Freedom and provide escort services? Do we need to get a better handle on their fastboats and drones and what kind of damage they can inflict? I mean, what is the holdup? Okay. When you have a Hornet's Nest, you have two good options, Dan. One is to leave the loan, the others to get rid of it. Too often we find ourselves taking the middle road, sitting underneath it, lightly tapping it with a stick, the worst possible outcome. And so it goes with the straight-of-hormoos. If we were taking out the boats that are capable of laying mines, and the ordinary speed boats, the mines are too heavy for. So we're talking about some of the traditional wooden dowels or mid-range freighters and so forth. We could be doing this. If we were taking out their gasoline imports, because the Iranians need to import gasoline, we could be shutting this down. Along the Persian Gulf Coast, there's only about 10 ports. And then there's perhaps a couple dozen unofficial speedboat ports. We don't need to go after all the speedboats. We only need to go after their fuel depots. But the fact of the matter is, we're so consumed with doing things halfway. that we end up having the worst possible outcomes, stirring up that swarm of hornets without ever getting rid of the nest. With respect to the remnants of the Ali Khamenei regime, I mean, can we use drones? Is it a combination of drones and special forces to try to take these individuals out, to take out IRGC munitions posts if we wanted to? Yes, absolutely we could. Okay. So, so. So, I mean, we could take out what we need to take out. The question is, whether there's a desire to do so. And there's unresolved debates at the top of the Trump administration between trying to negotiate with Iran or trying to do this unilaterally. Sometimes it seems like we're Bolivor, and we always allow ourselves to be tied down by littleutions, whether that's the case with overseas adversaries or within our own bureaucracy. I leave it to you to answer. Yeah, I mean, it just seems like if we, if, to your point about taking the Hornets Ness out, we have, you know, superiority, air, and sea. We have the resources. We still have a lot of those bunker buster bombs. We could be hitting the targets that have been identified. We could be targeting the people who have been identified. And. And again, nothing is tidy and nothing is without peril. I'm not, you know, being naive here. But it seems like the only path when you're otherwise in these protracted discussions with people that you characterize as lunatics and you know you can't trust.

Yeah, no, I mean, you're absolutely right. It's just frustrating because it seems that with regard to the U.S. military, whenever they're engaged, they always have a lessons learned exercise. But when our diplomats are engaged, when our White House politicians are engaged, we are always winging it. We never have a lesson learned exercise, and therefore it seems that we're constantly making the same mistake two, three, four, five times. So if Trump were to make a deal that is not consistent with the stated mission of getting the enriched uranium of essentially eliminate, I mean, I think the nuclear program has been substantially eliminated, but getting some sort of acquiescence that it shall not be restarted. And some of the other issues that have been bandied about but have not been repeated as often like eliminating their ability to finance their proxies, eliminating their proxies for that matter. If there is a deal that was seen, that that was perceived as a concession. And all we got was, you know, Iran's degraded capacities for a generation or two. Then what do you think fills the void if we left? I mean, with respect to Israel, the state of the Abraham Accords, what happens in the region? Well, ultimately, it would be seen as a defeat by the United States. It would mean an empowerment of Iran, and the Iranians would probably reconstitute their proxies right away. Now that they've discovered that the Strait of Hormuz really is the Achilles heel, expected to be used repeatedly with regard to anything that Iranians may want now and in the future. But, you know, the biggest problem, Dan, is that we're talking about any deal Trump strikes as permanent. But as far as the Iranians are concerned, any deal they make with Donald Trump is only as permanent as Donald Trump. And once he leaves office, expect us going back to square one. Michael Rubin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Director of Policy Analysis for the Middle East Forum. Michael, thank you as always. Thank you. Bye-bye. Annie, join us in the AlphaWealthgroup.com, Anseline. This is Chicago's morning answer. Your show keeps me alive during the week. There's nobody I'd rather listen to between 5 and 9 in the morning than you guys. 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.

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