singing songs for everyone.
Back to the Erlingham show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.
That's 855-752-4842.
Text us at that same number.
It's two, it's Friday.
That means Friday's my call.
I'll send you the music.
Well, the music's about the environment, how important it is to us and how much it's a local consequence of a federal effective federal regulation.
effective federal regulation protects us and protects our environment, and we don't want it to turn back into what it was when it was unprotected, which was the case up until about 1972 when the Federal Clean Water Act and the Federal Clean Air Act were passed.
I was just looking at some details about federal employees and a couple of interesting facts.
The number of federal employees hasn't really changed much since 1990.
And it peaked in 1990 at 3.4 million total.
It's not at 3.4 million now.
It's just barely above 3 million before Donald Trump took office.
Number one, number two, the average number of people departing the federal government every year quitting or retiring is in the 177 to 200,000 range.
Okay.
And the number of retirements approaches 100,000 every year.
So.
These so-called buyouts that have supposedly created a bunch of retirements that would otherwise maybe not have happened might not be the case.
It might just be that Elon Musk has paid eight months leave for a whole bunch of people who are already going to retire.
And the number of retirements hasn't yet matched the number that is average for our workforce.
And our workforce, the discussion by the incoming administration is that the federal workforce has bloated far bigger than it's ever been.
That's not the case.
Our population has increased substantially since 1990.
And the federal workforce is actually smaller today than it was in 1990.
You know Sandy, before we go to the phone lines.
the government is responsible for.
And so I looked this up during the break because, like you said, the government doesn't tell the people what it's responsible for.
Bear with me for a couple of minutes.
The government is responsible for governing a community of people making laws and providing services.
Governance.
Making laws, the government creates laws that define how people can interact with each other and with the government.
Implementing laws, the government puts laws into action.
Interpreting laws, the government determines the meaning of laws and applies them to specific cases.
Services, public services, the government provides services like police, fire and mail delivery.
economic services the government manages the economy by setting taxes spending money and redistributing income social services
The government provides social services like welfare benefits and public education, stability, maintaining order.
The government works to keep people safe and productive, protecting rights.
The government protects individual rights to liberty, protecting citizens.
The government protects citizens from outside attack, regulations, regulating access to common goods.
The government regulates access to public land, correcting.
for, uh, externalities.
The government works to address negative externalities.
Representation.
Last one, Sandy, providing a way for people to voice their opinions.
The government provides a way for people to make their needs and opinions known to the public officials.
Man, what is
I mean, come on, man.
Well, you know, the discussion now suggests that somehow it's the number of employees that is what's causing our national deficit to increase, that our annual deficits are the result of too many federal employees, and that our national debt is the result of that.
First of all, we are not growing the number of employees, but the level at which we're experiencing debt is growing materially.
Well, what has changed since 1990?
Well, we've cut our tax revenue materially since 1990.
We had a big tax cut in the early 2000s.
We had another tax cut in 2017.
So we've eroded the revenue we collect materially.
We haven't expanded the number of employees at all.
our population has increased materially.
So I think anybody looking at this would say, you know, we ought to go back and examine our tax structure because we've created deficits by foregoing taxes and we've spent money irresponsibly only because we're spending money without taxing for it.
All right, let's go to Brendan.
Hey, good morning to you, Brendan.
You say what?
Yeah, I just wanted to say that, like I mentioned in my comments, you know, the free press is gone.
We're leaning into an authoritarian governance over us.
It makes me sad.
I try to get up every morning and I know there's so many American, hardworking Americans out there.
who now realize that a class war is on.
This is a class war, billionaires against hardworking Americans.
And, you know, how incredible was it back in the day when Republicans believed in small government staying out of your life, just less giveaways and things like that?
And we thought we were a two party system.
If you look back and you look at what Germany did with Elon Musk when he tried to revive the Nazi party in Germany, just this in the last couple of months, they have a thing called the firewall that they created after Hitler, and they don't have a two-party system.
They have several democratic parties and a couple of very right-needing parties.
But once Elon lost,
With their firewall, they were able to keep the extreme right out of the government, their over and all national government.
And I hope that we come to the day before I go and before I end my chapter on this earth, where I see a firewall built where the American people will believe in just what the government's supposed to be instead of what it's become.
Very well said, Brendan Sandy.
Well, I do fear that that we are all playing our violins while Rome burns because what's ongoing now is an is an extreme change to the American system and it seems to be a willing transfer of power to an individual.
for him to do with it as he chooses, and to break down all the checks and balances, and to give that person power in the nature of a mafia boss able to extort everyone by the expression of that power.
You know, the American president...
has a great deal of power, and if he's allowed to use it unilaterally, he can bring other countries to their knees if he indeed is speaking on behalf of America, but he can also bring corporate America to its knees because corporate America doesn't want to be the subject of an antitrust lawsuit, doesn't want to have its business closed down, doesn't want to have prohibitive tariffs imposed that would make its business more difficult, et cetera.
You
know, Sandy, you can watch, you know,
I mean, you can just see things developing.
I was just reading where, right now, the highest unemployment, you know, people are filing for unemployment higher than any time in the last six months.
All of these things are coming to pass, Sandy.
You mentioned people weren't even thinking recession or any of those things.
But can you imagine a recession hitting at a time that they're gutting government Sandy?
And it could happen, right?
I mean, oh, yeah I mean I do predict that we will have a recession during these early Trump years and that we will have inflation as well and that we that it will smell a lot like stagflation which is a Extremely difficult thing to solve for and meanwhile I also believe that we're watching something that looks an awful lot like the Russian playbook in terms of the oligarchs
the mutual admiration society between an autocrat and those who are supplicants to the autocrat in terms of getting a free pass.
So the large corporations and the wealthy individuals who abide by Donald Trump are going to get a free pass from him.
They're going to get a free pass with respect to...
criminal enforcement, they're going to get a free pass with respect to antitrust enforcement, they're going to get a free pass with respect to regulatory enforcements.
I mean, the power of unilateral power, if it's handed to a president, is very substantial, and it will indeed change the whole nature of our society.
So people who don't know you like I know you, Sandy, you just let the word recession roll off your lips.
You're not a guy who says that.
Right, I mean
guy,
but you said it easily this time Yeah, because you know the Sun the moon and the stars are lined up with somebody Pushing a lever who are who is going to affect policy and if those policies are in fact adopted and it looks increasingly likely that they will be those policies are inevitable in terms of their outcome
and so people who may not remember recession Sandy and the pain
that goes along with them and what you taught me long ago were the levers that were available to address coming out of recessions or prevent recessions, where those levers at.
Yeah, we spend them and you can't read you can't reduce taxes Without being inflationary if you have an inflationary stagflation You know that all the tools that could help won't help With respect to stagflation the way we got out of the last stagflation was monstrously high interest rates which increased the pain for this for the near term in order to solve a problem and You know they solve the problem for 50 years, but apparently our memory is short 8
5 5 7 5 2 4 8 42 guys
Hang on, uh, come right to you.
It's, uh, Friday.
That means Friday's my coach, Sandy
Williams and you.
Send it really good music selection by the way Yeah, Michael Jackson, no,
of it.
Yeah All right eight five five seven five two forty eight forty two
is the number you can text us at that same number.
It's Friday, it means Friday's Michael, Sandy Williams, and let's go to the phone lines, Tim from McClare.
Hey, good morning to you, Tim.
You say what?
Yeah, thanks for taking my call.
I want to make a prediction here.
I think in the not too distant future here, the way things are going with Trump and Putin, we're going to wake up some day and we're going to be watching the news and Trump's going to come on and he's going to say that.
We've had an announcement to make that We are merging Russia Hey
Tim leave the humor up to Sandy and I but no no man.
It's really a man.
It's really it's really It's well thought out man
I thought that we ought to re-measure our international affairs and drop the temperature of it so that we could reduce our defense expenditures because we're sort of off the charts and have been for a long time in terms of a disproportionate amount of attention to arming ourselves for what are enemies that maybe are self-created by us and our definition of who's for us and who's against us.
and depolarize the world and maybe repolarize it.
So I'm not all together against a reordering of our international affairs, but the way we're doing it right now is extremely disturbing.
It's creating a disequilibrium that is going to be very hard to rebalance.
And we're turning our backs on people that are our allies.
This could have been done.
differently in a more orderly fashion.
And it could have been done in a manner that doesn't destroy the world order like what is going to happen.
But not by this man being
well, you know, the problem is that if America says that everything with us is a transaction, which comes with a price, then people are going to start finding someone to compete with us so that they can make sure that our price is competitive, right?
And who is there for nations to, to line up against us to compete with us?
But China.
This is playing into China's hands in a very direct way.
And even though we think what we're doing is neutralizing China, we're playing into their hands internationally in a very direct fashion.
All right, let's go to Richard.
Good morning to you, Richard.
Thank you for the call.
You say what?
Hey, thank you for answering here.
I got a question for Sandy about this signed agreement for mineral rights.
Is this a contract that could be sold to a private company or another country?
That's
Well, the contract is very interesting.
Number one, it's not much of a contract.
Number one, it creates a fund that would receive the profits from the operations.
I think what's contemplated here is that the United States businesses would move into Ukraine and start being the businesses that would be extracting these minerals.
And that therefore the extraction process would involve American businesses and American people and you know We should understand that this idea was initially hatched by Vladimir Zolinsky And I think that Donald Trump has simply walked into Zolinsky's arms with this Zolinsky's notion was let's get let's get at the United States pregnant by getting them very involved in our economy So that therefore they'll be very involved with this our security and and so he's got this agreement now
Now, Vladimir Putin saw this agreement and understood exactly what it was, which was a card being played not by Trump, but by Zelensky.
And so Trump, I mean, Putin immediately said, hey.
United States and Mr. Trump, you can come to Russia and get our minerals too.
And so what he's really saying is that he would honor this agreement that Zelensky has offered us if he takes over Ukraine.
And so we, the United States, don't have to be worried about defending Ukraine in order to defend our mineral right interest in Ukraine, because Vladimir Putin and Russia will honor that agreement as well.
It is, and he is a man.
Who in Donald Trump who just called Zelensky a bunch of horrible dirty names?
And now today he's saying I have a lot of respect for So Sandy I mean
man
You know, he called the head of North Korea a rocket man and had all kinds of nasty nicknames for him until they exchanged bromance love letters.
You know, this is Donald Trump's style is, I guess, to turn his back on you until he turns around and embraces you.
And he thinks then you're going to trust him.
Look, the business world of America learned not to do business with Donald Trump.
All they had to do is do business with him once.
and they got burned.
All you had to be is a law firm that didn't work for him once and didn't get paid.
And, you know, we all watched Donald Trump run around the country trying to find lawyers who would defend him four years ago for this very reason.
This is not a businessman for whom a handshake is a deal.
You know, Sandy, he is, well, what else can you say about him?
He is who he is.
We know who he is and so he can't change he can't change spots, you know It doesn't matter what position you put him in he can only be who he is Because he's the president doesn't mean he somehow changes
No, and you know and if you've been in business long enough and if you intend to be in business in an honest manner You learn very early that your handshake is your word and your word is is is the most important thing you have to sell in business and Donald Trump never learned that lesson and and the United he's now taking the United States down the same road that he took his businesses which is a path
towards a real problem.
All right, 8-5-5-7-5-2-4-2-8-4-2, you're tuning into the Arlingham Show.
And I saw the knights in armor come and say in something about a queen that were peasants singing and drummers drumming and the archers with the tree.
Welcome back to the early from show as always you can join us at 855-752-4842 855-752-4842 text us at that same number It's Friday.
That means Friday's with my co-host Sandy.
We're sending I want to go through the phone lines again quickly Cindy.
Thank you for hanging on Cindy.
You say what?
Hello,
yes
Yes, I have two things first of all, I want to say that I definitely am predicting a recession
And I'm going to better you one, Sandy, because if the fellow states put a stop or cut Social Security and Medicare, I think we'll go into a severe depression.
And I also wanted to say that the government employees have become the scapegoats, like the teachers became the scapegoats of Wisconsin.
Cindy, I'll let Sandy respond.
Thank you very much.
what this deflection is all about is finding targets to deflect interest so that what can happen will happen, which is this consolidation of power into the hands of a president, so an imperial president, and then a conduct of government that gets out of the way of anyone that the president wants to give a free reign to.
And that includes the very wealthy.
It includes individuals who
provide him with the support he wants and needs.
You know, Sandy, if you're talking that dreaded our word recession, that we haven't seen in a long time as a young man, I knew the pain of recessions.
You know, when I was working at A.L.
Smith as a young man, I didn't know what they were and things were rolling around.
for me pretty well and money was coming in and I was not saving any.
I was spending it as fast as I was making it.
And I was a young guy and new cars and all those kind of things.
And all of a sudden, somebody said a recession is coming.
And and Sandy, that job that I was working and the money that was coming in every week, all of a sudden stopped.
Yeah.
and I wound up on something called unemployment.
I didn't know what that was.
I'm like 20 years old, 21 years old, never had to deal with it.
And now all of a sudden, so I saw, I've learned to respect recession and what it means and the damage that it does not only to the psyche, but to a family Sandy.
And then willing to.
communities.
And so last thing before you chime in is at the same time, this is coming.
They're cutting the safety nets that would help people through those harsh times, Sandy.
You know, I don't know if people really understand the pain.
Look, Sandy, the food stamps, those things.
that went to churches and other places, food pantries.
They're cutting all of that, Sandy.
What do they think people are going to do?
Well, that's, you know, apparently Elon Musk's idea is you cut everything and then you find out what was important by how much damage is experienced out there, which is a pretty hard, that's called the School of Hard Knocks.
And people have to hurt in order to learn the lesson.
You know, the problem we have with recession is recessions are all about consumer confidence.
Our economy is premised on consumption.
And so what is measured by economists very regularly is consumer confidence.
Because when we're confident, we spend money.
We buy the car.
We buy the refrigerator.
We buy the durable goods.
We buy the things that promote a strong economy.
When we lack confidence,
We pull in our horns.
We don't spend money.
And that lack of confidence becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that causes the recession.
And what's happening right now is that...
there is a substantial and material reduction in consumer confidence that has started since this process that Donald Trump has initiated with our government of playing with and essentially trying to demolish the government as we know it.
And it's destroying consumer confidence along with bringing into effect tariffs and other things which are going to be necessarily inflationary.
So we have not only
material reasons for consumers to lose confidence but we also have the intangible reasons that they lose confidence and they are in fact losing confidence and that's what careful economists look at and worry about.
You know Sandy and then where do you turn?
Because this is not just something and so the things I've learned from you over the years, this is not just a recession that's going to impact our nation.
This could lead to global recession.
Our country is the most important economy.
We learned that lesson when we had our financial crisis in 2007.
We didn't just sneeze, we convulsed, and the rest of the world convulsed as well.
And the expression has always been when the United States sneezes, the rest of the world has a recession.
And so everyone is interlaced with us in a very material way.
And they're trying, actually, the more we flex our muscles in a manner that is...
Painful to them the more they try and disentangle from us and that's what Donald Trump is setting the motion for in motion right now with his tariff policies and his His turning his back on all of the old friends is all of these people are gonna try and find ways to live without the United States and that will include living without the dollar Okay, and as I've said before the dollar as the net as the world reserve currency is fundamental to our well-being
You know, Sandy, I told you about a conversation I had with a pretty prominent person yesterday.
And that person, we talked about AI.
And she's pretty prominent in Washington.
And she was telling me about the upheaval that's going on in government right now in Washington, DC.
She's connected, interconnected to all of that.
And Sandy, she told me that AI
They're looking long term at AI to replace You know government workers.
that artificial intelligence is being employed by the 19-year-old whiz kids who are employed by Doge, who are moving into these agencies with algorithms and with computers that are deploying AI to try and figure out who's expendable and who isn't.
And the problem with artificial intelligence is it's only as good as what it knows and what you put into it.
And so what we're finding out is that AI is rife with potential.
errors in this infant state.
AI is in a state of infancy right now.
And if we turn our government over to AI, we're gonna learn how well AI works through the school of hard knocks, which is we're gonna fire people and then find out we have to try and coax them back into government.
You know, Sandy, Brendan says, hardworking Americans will come together to fight this administration.
We need to heal the divide.
So I also, in my conversation with her yesterday, she was saying to me,
that the people are gonna have to be the ones who are going to fix this.
I said, well, you know, we got 45% of the American people who don't vote.
The other 50% of the American people, I split down the middle.
We don't seem to be positioned as the people to overtake this Sandy.
I mean, if we had some unity,
I could feel comfortable that maybe we could overwrite it, but we like unity as a group of American people, and people have divided us, and they've divided us.
Now you see why they divided us, because it's given them the opportunity to do what they're doing.
Well, apparently, I mean, this is maybe more preconceived than I've ever given people credit for being, but there's no doubt that when I read Project 2025.
I didn't really have the conception at the time when I read it six months ago that there really was this army of people prepared to, and a small army, it's not an army, it's a cadre, it's Russell Vought and a small number of people who understand government, Vought being the head of the office of budget, and therefore he understands all the levers of government, and he is I think in many respects the captain of this whole process, and then to turn Elon Musk
which is like taking a gaffling gun and chasing rats.
You know, it's doing a lot of damage.
A gaffling gun chasing rats.
I had to write that one down Sunday.
But, you know, it's just so frightening, right?
I mean, it's so frightening because there are Americans, people who...
are looking for someone to come and save them.
Right?
I mean, they're looking for somebody to bring the prices of food down, Sandy.
But there's none of that forthcoming.
I think there's people who are concerned about that.
And then there is the establishment that's very worried about the national debt and how big our national debt is.
And those people are getting false hopes from this whole doge prospect.
program when, in fact, if you look at the data that I just recited, the number of workers over a 50-year period, the size of our budget, the federal budget over a 50-year period, it isn't the growth of federal workers or the growth of the budget that's the problem.
It's the tax reductions and the loss of revenue and the expenditure problems and the loophole problems associated with the way we administer our government that are the problems.
And so it's the elected officials we need to be paying attention to.
And they're the ones who are busily pointing their finger at the so-called deep state, the workers.
So Sandy, Mark says, recessions are part of a normal business cycle.
And recessions create, they say something horrible too, because, you know, can't
create opportunities for lots of common people.
Recessions, no, there's no question that recessions are.
that we experience recessions over time and they are a normal part of the cycle.
The question is whether the recession is the result of us shooting our toes off or the recession is just a normal part of the business cycle.
And in this particular circumstance, the kind of recession that we're looking at potentially having is one that's a self-inflicted wound that might be very difficult for us to resolve.
You know, again, you and I talked about the tools.
long, long time ago.
Some, I think somehow we've forgotten 2007, Sandy.
It seems so long ago and, and how much pain was wrought in 2007.
There are various kinds of recessions, and deep recessions, sudden recessions, is the most likely type.
And many of them, like I said at the time in 2007, you don't get hit by the truck that you saw.
You get hit by the truck you didn't see when you step off the curb.
A government's job is to try to moderate the business cycle, to try and bring it within a range that doesn't involve the deep troughs.
Going all the way back to the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have had either we've had recessions and we've had very deep troughs.
We had the depression of the 30s.
We had the depression in the 1890s.
We had a near depression in 2007.
And so government's job is to try and avoid.
depressions and it's and it's to try to moderate the business cycle in a manner that makes it more tolerable for Tom Dick and Mary because who is it that realizes the pain of a recession but Tom Dick and
Mary?
8-5-5-7-5-2 uh 48-42 it's Friday Friday's Michael Sandy Williams
and you
was.
Like I said, Sandy, great music selection.
8-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2, Texas, that same number.
Let's go to Gary from Gary.
You're
up.
Gary from Sussex.
Earl, how can you forget?
Does it matter?
Hey, listen.
Okay, go ahead, man.
What's up?
What's up,
man?
My heart was going up for you yesterday.
I heard you on Dom's show yesterday.
Filling in for a half hour or so and you were saying how sad you were and you know what it makes me sad that you're sad because I do like you as a person I don't agree with you, but I'd like you as a person Well, thank
you.
Okay, so what's
up?
The thing is this if you were a Republican and Sandy was a Republican you guys would be actually very happy and excited So if you switched parties
your whole attitude would change.
Excited about what,
man?
The future of our country and trying to pay off the interest on our debt, which is our trillions of dollars, possibly giving rebate checks back to people that could really use that money, maybe five or $6,000.
Yes, the rich are going to get richer.
That's the way things are, but they're going to create jobs for everybody.
for you and me and well, Sandy's retired.
I'm still working, but for you and me, you know, they'll create jobs for our friends.
I think that you need to, if you just embrace what's going on.
Hey,
Gary, so we owe all this debt and they're going to give everybody $5,000 checks.
How was that going to address the debt?
I'm against giving the check.
No, you just said, man.
No, no, no, no, Earl.
I said, they're good.
They're going to do that.
I'm against it.
But I think Donald Trump wants people to love him and by paying them money, they're going to get, they're going to be happy.
They should be responsible and pay off the interest on our debt.
Pay that off.
Because that's ridiculous.
Okay.
Okay.
Let's
let, let me, let's say, let me let Sandy respond.
Hang on.
Sandy.
Well, you know, the prognosis for the budget that's being passed by the Republicans in the house and the Senate.
are continued trillion-dollar deficits.
So they're not paying off debt even with the level of cost reductions that they're trying to describe they're having.
The so-called transparent wall of evidence that's being put up by Elon Musk with respect to savings demonstrate actually very small savings as compared to anything that would be required to both reduce the annual deficits or to get a surplus such that they would reduce the national debt over time.
And so that's a pipe dream, unless they work on increasing taxes and increasing revenues.
Number one, number two, I was a Republican for a long time in my life as a youth, and I'd been a nonpartisan for an awfully long time.
And what makes me unhappy about today is somewhat the policies, but much more the process, the loss.
of our balances of power.
The creation of an imperial presidency is not something that should make any Republican happy.
Republicans, in fact, used to stand for the processes of keeping government small and making government not too powerful.
And what we're in the process of doing is creating the very most powerful kind of federal government you can imagine, which is the one that's capable of not just regulation, but repression.
So Tony says that's not the way things are that is the fundamental problem the rich getting richer You know So let me Gary only spun quickly to what Sandy just said
Yeah, well, let me just say George Clooney the guy who was probably one of the top guys to get Biden not to run Said that I hope that Donald Trump does well because if he does well, it's gonna be good for America
So when the Democrats start to change and start embracing what's going on and instead of calling them a Nazi and a dictator, don't you think that together we're going to make
what's going on is not what's going on is not good,
Gary, you're ideologically a Republican.
Do you think it's a good idea for the president to have such unilateral powers that he can threaten to wield, for instance, the anti-trust laws against corporations that disagree with him?
Do you think it's good that he has the power with respect to U.S.
attorney's offices to call off the police in order to get people to agree with his policies and to sick the police on the people who don't?
Is that...?
Is that a government that you're interested in having?
He wants to change our government.
And I think that he has a little bit of animosity towards certain people.
And I would not want to be the person that broke into his house and went through his wife's dresser and her underwear.
Those people, he's going to get after him.
Yes, he has.
He's getting after people and he's using it as, like he says, he's the king.
you totally... Well,
in.
I
the problem
It isn't the policies of making our government more efficient.
It isn't the policies of trying to pay down our national debt to the extent that we can.
It's the consolidation of power in an individual who, when it's exercised by somebody against you, has no recourse.
There is no recourse if the police are under the control of the president
of the United States.
Hey, Gary, thank you for the call.
Sandy, you heard him.
He's the king.
Yeah, yeah, you know Gary Gary's not alone Sandy 8 5 5 7 5 2 48 42 side Brenda couldn't get you in Sandy we'll talk soon up next Jane mad Ned Greg by Matt near on there.
Enjoy the weekend.
See you on Monday
We are
