KXEL Presents: The Jacobsen Group Podcast - May 20, 2023

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Hello,

this is John Jacobson, and welcome to this podcast of The Jacobson Group.

We're on the radio on News Talk 1540KXEL each weekend, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of the podcasts of the program.

Prepare to be informed, entertained and amazed right after this.

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and Alexa knows how to find us too.

It's where Iowa comes to talk.

News Talk 1540 KXEL.

Kings John Jacobson here on the Jacobson group with Scott Corey, Mike Shane, 50,000 watt, Clear Channel Blow, Torch KXEL, 1540 and 106.7.

What a great show!

Dr. Jeff Stein, Barbara Hames Bryant, Dr. Ted Fogarty, Robert Schulte on Energy 101.

Let's roll!

Scott Corey, when you hear that sounder, you know we're in for some serious business.

That means Mike Shane is at the engineering controls, bringing the marvels of American technology to the fore.

And we're better than KXEL, the nation's premier 50,000 watt blow torts, the Western hemispheres premier into the second century.

And now the the the great

custodian of that fortress, Dr. Jeff Stein.

Back with some more tremendous cutting-edge news.

It's time for Stein.

Dr. Jeff, what can you tell us?

You're cooking up something pretty special.

Well, good day to all of you.

And yes, we're really excited that we are partnering with some friends cross-platform.

So we're talking about radio, we're talking about online, we're talking about streaming video, print,

everywhere that people get information.

We are working together on a new project called Iowa Talking Points.

And Iowa Talking Points is the name for what's going to look like a television program, but it's going to be live streamed.

It's going to be video on demand.

We'll air the audio here on the blowtorch.

And it's a chance to talk to people about issues and things that are important.

This time of year, that means presidential candidates, but not exclusively.

We'll talk about other topics and we're partnering with some great folks, including Mud Advertising.

They have such a great facility in Cedar Falls, Studio 5 at Mud is where we'll be.

And John, what's going to be great is I get to moderate them.

It's a great privilege for me.

You're the Lawrence Spivak.

You're the Lawrence Spivak for crying out loud.

I aspired to be Lawrence Spivak when I grew up and it's taken this long but we'll have a live studio audience as well and our first event is actually coming up on Friday going into Memorial Day weekend.

Presidential candidate Vivek Rama Swami will be in person and so I'll be moderating.

We'll have a panel to do some questioning.

We'll take questions from the audience and it's a great way to get Memorial Day off to a unique start.

Jeff I'm really excited for you kudos on this.

You know we carry your programming with business almanac and with The great Iowa almanac here on some of our other networks in Western Iowa and Eastern Nebraska and Jeff this is fascinating because it sounds like

We can even help out in this proposition as you know yesterday was the big announcement of Dennis Kucinich heading up Bobby Kennedy juniors campaign He talked to me yesterday as he was boarding that plane for Florida for the announcement tour there, but Bobby's confirmed he is coming

to Omaha, Western Iowa.

I know that Tim Grover wants to get him over there.

And Grover told me yesterday, we got to get him in front of Stein.

And this is before we knew about your enterprise.

There's gonna be some great synergies with this, isn't there, Jeff?

Well, that's true.

And we had been working to have Mr. Kennedy, for example, on my program on KXCL.

And so one of the good things is that this is allowing

the audiences that are most interested to have multiple outlets.

So for example,

uh... when you decide that you want to visit every pizza ranch in iowa and you throw your hat in the ring to run for president twenty twenty four i don't know what the time frame is but once it happens

probably before i'm sure you know i want to get that favorites on iowa you know hawkeye cawkeye

clearly so i'm figuring by labor day it's uh... jake twenty twenty four but uh... we would have you on my program on kxcl earlier in the week

to promote the in-person event, then we have the in-person event with an audience of Iowans that care deeply about issues.

That gets you the web stream, that gets you the video on demand, and then the full town forum that can be on the radio and then an audio podcast.

And so again, I've talked to, I think, four candidates about it already.

and uh... they they're very excited about the opportunity because so much of the time these days you either have a gotcha situation where the person doing the interviewing is trying to make a national headline and or or you have uh... thirty seconds to make your point and that's the problem

we

don't need

to

govern by sound bite exactly govern with ideas and policy and hopefully through iowa talking points

We'll be able to have a series of programs where people come away and say, yes, that was worth my time.

Here with Dr. Jeff Stein.

Yeah, here with Dr. Jeff Stein, the czar of KXEL.

Jeff, if people are interested, where do they continue to look for this?

Yes, sir, it's IowaTalkingPoints.com, Talking Points Plural.

IowaTalkingPoints.com, that's the main website, and we'll be streaming these and having them as video on demand at IowaTalkingPoints.tv.

But if you're interested in attending the first event, hey, first come, first served, go to IowaTalkingPoints.com.

Tickets are free, but in order to make sure we have enough seats for folks, you do have to have a ticket.

Jeff I'll close with this one reason for bringing up Bobby Kennedy, Jr.

Is you used to work with Dennis Kucinich when he was Running and when he was writing books and going on tour.

I'm sure he'll remember you but also this is emblematic This is not just a Republican Talking Points tour.

This is bipartisan and objective.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean the concept here is

We have a unique opportunity because of the First of the Nation status to have these people talking to regular Iowans, but we would be wasting the opportunity if we did not use it to continue in the future to talk about all manner of issues that are of importance to Iowans and if people like what we're doing with this, that's what we intend to do.

Guys, Dr. Jeff Stein, listen to that Henry Mancini theme.

Dr. Jeff Stein.

is always great to have you on.

And congratulations on sharing that IB&A award with us for best election night political coverage.

It is my duty to carry you We'll

have to do it again soon Jeff

stein ladies and gentlemen Thanks for joining us now get back to that microphone and blow torch all of Iowa for us

It is a privilege to do so.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Jeff stein ladies gentlemen Scotty.

This is an exciting Adventure and we we hope to help out in that process,

you know absolutely and one of the great things about the Iowa caucuses is that you know the average citizen

gets that opportunity to meet and talk and look in the eye of these candidates.

And the program that Jeff Stein has put in together with Iowa Talking Points is going to be one of those transcending events, I think, in Iowa political history.

And it's going to bypass a lot of the old dead media and allow these candidates to take their message straight to the people.

It will be part of it.

Scotty, it feels like we are just at the crest of that Memorial Day weekend.

It's felt like summer this week, especially toward the end of the week, Thursday, Friday, with beautiful fair days.

you got that summer zeitgeist and I do a lot of traveling and business across Iowa as you know Scott and I had the chance the other day to do a drive through summit view and grand view Barbara Hames Bryant's cities that she is de facto mayor of these beautiful

these beautiful homes, these manufactured homes in these wonderful communities.

Barbara Haynes Bryant, welcome back to the show.

It looks beautiful out there.

Thank you, John.

We love this time of year.

Everything's greening up and the trees are busting forth and the grass is green and the tulips have arrived.

It just takes my breath away.

You know, Barbara, we are in that time of year where, you know, there's a little bit of change in the air.

The farmers are wrapping up the planting season.

Seniors in high school and college are graduating.

Talk to us a little bit about the fresh start that people can make at your communities because you have all kinds of amenities.

You have dog parks.

You have playgrounds.

You have almost everything that anybody would ever want.

We like to think so.

This is a great time of year for our residents too, because they can take use of our dog park, which by the way is open all year round.

We have two parks in each community, two playgrounds in each grand view and summit view.

And we also have a disc golf course at summit view and we have basketball courts at summit view.

And anyone from either grand view or summit view is welcome to use all the amenities in all the Haines communities.

You know, Scotty and Barbara,

The real testimony is from the people that live there.

I want to read a few comments on the website for what people have said.

We are very grateful to the Hames family for making our life happier in our golden years.

Another one.

Boo for my apartment into a home with my elderly mother wanted to move to a safe area so I wouldn't worry when mom would be home alone.

We have enjoyed living there.

Another one, you have great caring hearts.

You are greatly appreciated.

Another one, outstanding company, Hames Homes.

Another one, extremely well kept in quiet community.

When selling our home, Hames was very professional and nice to deal with.

Highly recommend.

Another one, one of the best decisions we made in our life was to buy a new home.

from hams scottie none of us get reviews like that that's phenomenal you

know it's almost when mrs. Jacobson actually is that happy when you leave this the studio so i mean i just chose how much uh a joy people have in your uh in your homes barba and if people want to look at the inventory and take a tour of kind of what's going on is there a website that they could go to

the best website to go to is hamshomes.com that's h a m e s

H-O-M-E-S dot com.

We have the full list of our inventory of homes for sale, including sizes and prices.

We're very transparent about that, but we're also open seven days a week.

We are at the corner of Wilson Avenue and West Post Road Southwest in Cedar Rapids.

Wilson Avenue, West Post Road, we're on the southwest corner.

open seven days a week and our sales staff would love to show you or your friends and your family and your cousins and co-workers.

all the kind of amenities that we have in the homes we have for sales.

You know, one thing about one of your homes there, Barbara, is that once you make that purchase, you have insured value because, John, we know with inflationary rates right now, things are getting out of control, but you have that tangible asset right there that will never lose value.

Yeah, real estate, real property always appreciates in value.

And Barbara, one thing that impressed me so much when I

toured the other day.

That area of Southwest Cedar Rapids looks so healthy, so affluent, so vibrant.

The retail, the commercial, the rural landscape, it is a beautiful area of Cedar Rapids.

Cedar Rapids is new again in Southwest Cedar Rapids.

Cedar Rapids is

New again in its southwest sector.

I can't believe the building and the growth down there Barbara.

Oh It's amazing ever since highway 100 was built and it now connects Marion to highway 30 here in the southwest side We have had a lot of growth, but not bad growth.

It's good growth people still feel like they're living in the country out here

But Westdale Mall has been popping up with new shops and new restaurants and the city of Cedar Rapids is going to be building a brand new library on Wiley Boulevard just north of Wilson Avenue.

That'll take a couple years to complete but I got to see the plans for it and it is spectacular.

Plus it will have a city park right there.

So there's even more amenities on the southwest side of Cedar Rapids.

I know Wiley well you're only three minutes away from your communities.

Barbara one other thing I know a couple people with the list of the mainstream media get a little concerned they think interest rates are almost getting too high with what the Fed's done but that's not the case.

There are some outstanding finance rates

available and just because the Fed increased rates by 25 basis points a couple weeks ago, mortgage rates actually went down after that.

You've still got some great financing pricing through your entity.

We do.

Not only do we have our own in-house financing company called Circle Finance, we have been partnering with Green State Credit Union.

They have a great new manufactured housing lending program for both new and used homes.

and their rates are very competitive.

So, Barbara, how can they get in touch with you one more time if they want to look into a home as well as look at some of those rates moving forward?

To check out the homes?

Yes.

www.hameshomes.com.

The best way to find out about rates is to contact us at 319.

I'll repeat that.

319-377-4863.

Ask to speak to Clint or Curtis and they can tell you all about the options for financing.

I love that phone number.

That's a very old Marian phone number.

That's music to my ears when I hear 319377.

Barbara Hames Bryant, the studio audience is on their feet.

Once again, a stellar performance.

I so enjoyed seeing your wonderful communities.

I hope to be back soon to see the Rapids.

Thank you, Barbara.

Again, have a blessed weekend.

Thank you, guys.

You too.

Have a wonderful day.

Barbara Hames Bryant get over there guys safe beautiful affordable housing in ever-expanding south

West Cedar Rapids.

The most exhilarating and at the same time comforting radio sounder.

It means we mean business but all as well.

Mike Shane that's his sounder at the control deck of engineering.

John Jacobs with Scott Corey here and we are delighted to bring back to the show frequent contributor Dr. Edward

Fogarty, Ted Fogarty, and that's a pretty good sounder.

That sounder resonates with you, Ted Fogarty.

Absolutely.

I mean, the Mike Shane, I mean, is there anyone you'd rather hear weather warnings from than Mike Shane and Mobile Unit 2?

No.

It's totally my childhood, my teen years, and growing up in Omaha, that's an iconic audio file.

Yep, that's how we got

Mike Shane.

Nothing but the best for us, right, Scotty?

You know, absolutely.

And Mike, you need to work on a little bit on your weather reporting because it's pretty dry over in Western Iowa.

We need some storms.

That is so true.

How's your arid desert of Ogallal and North Dakota, Doc?

It is

like an oasis out here.

It's all green.

I feel like I'm in Scotland now.

Ah, my goodness.

So you were in the plaid kilts when you golf out there?

Yes, of course.

And the South Platte River, which is usually sucked dry by the Denverites, is full of water now.

Well, you know, Fogarty, you're a big Irishman, and aren't you the one that told me that

the irish gave the scottish the bagpipes and the scottes didn't realize it was a joke

i don't think i told you that but i'll i'll take credit

well doc we've been talking today about a lot of things going on politically hey hawkeye cawkeye this station kxl as you know uh belts out to all the big ten states and all of iowa so this is the blowtorch here but

You and I are zeroing in on some news this week.

I spoke with Dennis Kucinich the other day.

He was just rolled out Thursday with great fanfare, even on Fox as the national campaign manager for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Esquire and Bobby's gonna come on this show.

He's coming to Omaha.

He's coming to Western Iowa.

He's also trying to set up events in eastern Iowa Ted, how how is this for the country?

Is this a good thing for the country and can Bobby resonate?

I'd like your take because Bobby and you have intersected your areas of interest on medical freedom and helping the courageous doctors of conscience through this COVID debacle talk to us doc.

Yeah

Yeah, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

and I go back at least 10 years in the vaccine safety crowd of America and I may have been his first standing chair of any department in any U.S.

medical school to join his team on that endeavor.

He is by far the only person I see in the field for the most important office in the land with integrity.

resonating back to the real pulse of the people in Iowa, especially John, with your HSB647 subcommittee hearing, which was the most heard watch, listened to subcommittee hearing in the history of the Great State of Iowa.

People are yearning, yearning for

Somebody who's going to stand up for their health freedom, and Bobby Kennedy Jr.

clearly that person.

And, you know, literally we have my profession and the healthcare apparatus and the billionaire complexes have literally taken over our government all the way up to the top, even the White House.

And there's no other person in the world that I think is really going to be able to save America.

other than Bobby Kennedy Jr.

and he's going to make America great like JFK did, his uncle.

He's that kind of changemaker person.

He has literally locked horns with all of the biggest complexes in the world from a commerce standpoint.

The oil faction and with the last 15 years of what he's been doing to root out the

true evil in the CDC and the

NIH.

His book on Anthony Fauci was a watershed moment.

That is so well documented.

I think it pivoted.

I think public opinion began to pivot the day that that book was published and disseminated.

I really think that was a bellwether.

Yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

And, you know, even back when Trump was getting inaugurated on January of 2017, and Bobby Kennedy went to Trump Tower and basically pitched being a czar of, so to speak, a czar of vaccine safety and to

root

out the

with the CDC and the NIH back then.

And so when I look at what his impact in Iowa has already been, you know, you tried to get him to actually come to some of your subcommittee hearing and there were some shenanigans going on that prevented that.

But he did have a good stand-in in Kevin Barry Esquire.

from out in the northeast quadrants of our great nation.

And carrying that banner, I think we have really planted a lot of seeds for the ultimate health freedom candidate.

for the presidency.

You bring up a great point.

I want to intersect with this here.

I recall that in Scotty.

I couldn't believe that some of my Democratic colleagues were trying to procedurally tonight, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

from testifying at that committee.

The scion of one of the great Democratic families in our nation's history being basically blacklisted

by Democratic members of the Iowa House of Representatives.

This is the pretzel that these people have twisted themselves into, Scott

Corey.

You know, based on everything that I've seen in Des Moines over the last 15 years, I'm not surprised because it doesn't matter if you're a Republican or Democrat, all they really care about is what reception am I invited to?

And am I, am I a part of the so-called in crowd

of both caucuses?

And with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

and his, uh, uh, call it holy war against what's going on.

with big pharma and things like that.

Doctor, I find it very interesting that here we are with Kennedy, again, leading an insurgent campaign against a sitting Democrat president.

It's kind of similar to what his uncle Ted did in 1980 against then Jimmy Carter, as well as what his father did, taking on the establishment right after Lyndon Johnson bailed on the Democrat nomination in 68.

Absolutely.

And I'm just going to pitch a donor

Don't tell policy for all of those great Republican conservatives in Iowa who want to vote for Bobby Kennedy junior here in the Democratic primaries Iowa has a state law that is a virtual open primary You can switch your party affiliation at the pole.

Yeah, don't tell anybody Well,

I look forward to seeing John with that like you sent it's RFK junior bumper sticker on his car driving around

of the Vapors and I've got Rob Sand

and

Keynoting the Veterans Concert.

We're a little concerned about you right now, John.

We're going to have a talk.

I think they've gotten to you.

Here with Dr. Ted Fogarty.

Doc, here's the deal.

Everything that they ostracize RFK Junior 4 in 2020

in 2021, in part of 2022, looks like he's now been vindicated.

RFK Jr.

was vindicated on lockdowns.

on masks, on ivermectin, on hydroxychloroquine, on the problems with remdesvir, on the problems with the ventilators.

I would say RFK Jr.

now, based on all the studies that have come in, and you know, he was concerned too about the cardio issues that affected some with the Myrna and the gynecological issues, he's been vindicated on every front, as have you been.

What does that make you feel like, Doc?

to see that in four years, three years actually, you've been vindicated after having been pilloried, although you did break through that by winning CARES grants because of your

therapies.

Well, what's the Fogarty, John?

It's wonderful to be vindicated, but I'm about saving lives.

And I just think we need to go further and repackage that this really is the most politically important presidential election in the history of America because we are going to lose America in five years if Bobby Kennedy Jr.

isn't the one getting inaugurated in January of 2025.

The problem we have in American politics is that people are too swayed by the media bandwidth and money and power and greed, of course, and we are in an election cycle where it is truly, it is truly the average American person against these billion-dollar complexes of the GOP and the DNC and Big Pharma and all of these largeses.

that Big Pharma has employed, even through our own state public health department, they're paying for ads for the vaccine.

And Bobby Kennedy Jr., he's literally, he's the only one on the stage here that has the intelligence, the track record, and the ability to bring America back to its people.

Here with Dr. Ted Fogarty, Scott Curry, I want to bring you in on this because you did some sleuthing for us in Mobile Unit 3.

last weekend when you were up there meeting personally.

You basically had a personal one-on-one meeting with Governor DeSantis, his wife Casey.

DeSantis, as far as governors, has probably been the most in your face going up against some of the medical tyranny and he's made some other enemies.

I think Bob Iger in Disney may be trying to

hit back hard against DeSantis for what he's tried to do vis-a-vis the Disney operation there in Florida.

Scott, when he talked to you, did he address in public or in private any of the loss of civil liberties that we've had in his fight against the lockdowns?

He was one that opened up his state.

You know pretty radically quickly and was severely criticized I think even by some other Republican governors for reopening things up early But it seems like a good idea is followed He won a huge reelection victory by running on opening up Florida Scott what were your takes on the GOP side?

Trump is somewhat saddled with the Myrna and not having ditched

Fauci and Pence is saddled with that too, because Pence was in charge of the, you know, the COVID task force.

You had some one-on-one time with DeSantis.

Scott, talk about that.

Yeah, he really didn't mention specifically any of his battles with the, I call it the pharmaceutical complex out there.

He did mainly focus his discussion on the economic policies as well as, you know, threats that China and Russia oppose strategically to the United States as well as economically.

But he did

make a few veiled references in his speech, though, to the crowd, where he talked about opening, keeping Florida open for business.

And let's be very honest, John, the federal government has gone ahead and ended the national emergency with the COVID virus, but yet in Iowa, the legislature and Governor Reynolds, they are still operating under the emergency powers.

And so there's going to be a huge discussion,

I

think, in the Republican circles.

moving forward, especially amongst caucus goers, is why does the executive branch in Iowa still have these executive powers that were either never sunsetted or revoked by the legislature?

And I think that's going to be a huge issue moving forward with the Republican base.

Scotty,

I love you for continuing to hammer this because it is a burr in my saddle hide.

It really is what we've done there.

Ted, what's going on in some of these other states in the Midwest?

Are we really

the last bastion of freedom.

I mean, the census does get props for Florida, but if you were to ask me where America was freest, I would tell you Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa.

Am I wrong there?

I think you're right on.

You know, outside of Sarpy County, Douglas County, and Lancaster County, the rest of the 90 counties of Nebraska were extremely free under Ricketts' governorship.

And, you know, of course, I'm just going to go back to the law here, but the Attorney General of Nebraska was the pioneer

who

basically stated that it is perfectly within the Hippocratic Oath and privilege of all physicians, not just Nebraska physicians, to write for Ibermectin and hydroxychloro...

when in a pandemic and you know that's the greatest thing that's happened in this in this pandemic from out of Nebraska in my personal opinion in the North Dakota legislature.

about three weeks after that had a special session which basically protected all practitioners in North Dakota for writing for Evermectin as well, specifically Evermectin.

So, yeah, the rural counties of the heartland and the upper plains truly were the most free and because of our close-knit communities and also our close-knit connections to our state legislators.

You know, it wasn't really Christie Noam who stopped the lockdown of

of her state.

It was 22 legislators who basically put forth that she shouldn't do it.

If only our Iowa legislature had the desire to flex

their constitutional muscles.

They could rein in that dreadful board of medicine and pharmacy in Iowa.

They could take back their constitutional powers.

I still say made a grievous mistake by fleeing at the governor's orders in March of 2020.

Scott, not support that.

Yeah, I agree with that 100%.

And I also think too, one of the underlying issues in Iowa, especially in the last election, was that Iowa, you know, you

brought up what happened with the Attorney General in Nebraska.

Iowa replaced its Attorney

General

of 40 plus

years.

He was

soundly defeated by Brenna Byrd, Republican, who didn't necessarily run on medical freedom overly in her campaign, but she made a lot of overtures out there that you could tell where she was at.

And I hope, you know, in our conversations with Attorney General Byrd, and I know John, you've had the same, that she is in the process of starting to rein in a little bit more of the bureaucracy and try to come

Make that heal a little bit more especially when it comes to medical freedom and I think I think we'll have to give her a little bit more time But keep the pressure up on her.

Well, I just I had a tender moment actually with with Attorney General Brenda Bird in the back hallway when I was in Des Moines at the State Capitol back in January former senator Dr. David Hart such and I and I related to Attorney General Bird the the brave

And yet tragic story of my colleague Bradley Russell Meyer up in Spirit Lake.

And that name's been heard on this program multiple times.

But I told her about how he was fired for saving the life of a local resident in the Okuboji area with some things that I taught him, IBNAC in particular.

And she really kind of took that to heart.

And I also said, it's time for us to go after some

people outside of the state of South Dakota like a very health care system for racketeering against the practices of the great Bradley Myers.

This is great stuff.

Doc will have you back on the studio audience roaring its approval.

Doc keep fighting the good fight.

You probably

We'll be joining a medical panel with RFK when he comes to Omaha.

Dave Overholster is working on getting the Omaha Press Club for us.

Some Fogarties have been there at OPC in prior history, if I'm not mistaken.

Absolutely.

My great-uncle Frank Fogarty was actually recognized as part of the Hall of Fame for the Nebraska Broadcasters Association.

My great-uncle Hugh Fogarty, who lived two

Two houses down from where I grew up was Oman World's Herald Editor for many decades and his son Jimmy Fogarty was one of the more recent past presidents of the Oman Press Club.

So yeah, I got it in my blood to be on this broadcast with you, John.

Ted Fogarty, Doctor MD.

Great to have you with us.

We'll have you back again next week, Doc.

Thanks for joining us.

All right.

Thanks, guys.

You bet.

Doctor Ted Fogarty, ladies and gentlemen.

A courageous doctor of conscience.

If you're enjoying this KXEL podcast, then we invite you to listen to KXEL's great programming in real time too.

You can hear us on the radio statewide at AM 1540 and in the Cedar Valley at FM 100.5.

We stream live on the web, not only through KXEL.com, but also through our free KXEL mobile app.

and Alexa knows how to find us too.

It's where Iowa comes to talk, News Talk 1540, KXEL.

Oh, that great Lalo Schiffern scores little kid in the 60s.

I watched MI Mission Possible with...

Peter Graves, James Arnes' brother, boy, those two brothers, Gunsmoke and Mission Impossible, Saturday Nights For Me, and Linda George Peter Lupus, Leonard Nimoy for a year, Greg Morris.

Well, this mission is actually a possible mission.

The mission that Robert H. Schulte, Bob Schulte, is going to visit with us about today on the program.

We're Iowans and this signal on KXEL, Scotty, goes all the big 10 states, this 50,000 watt blowtorch first in the Western Hemisphere and only 1540 signal that carams with 50,000 watts plus our FM transmitter.

Bob, we're talking about power.

Let's do some energy 101 today.

When I walk into the studio,

And I flipped on the light switch today.

I had power.

Bob, where does that come from?

The power that lights our homes, charges our car batteries, provides energy security for our country.

It comes from a wide variety of sources in the upper Midwest.

It could come from nuclear energy.

It could come from coal energy.

It could come from natural gas.

It could come from oil.

Any upper Midwest, increasingly it comes from wind energy, wind machines.

It comes from some solar panels and from hydro, small hydro across the Midwest and Des Moines River or on the Missouri River in South Dakota, for example.

So it's a really wide variety of original energy sources, but originally it's arriving at your lights there at the studio.

So, Bob, what I hear, you are part of a consortium trying to bring together, you're like the great mediators, you're trying to bring together these utility companies.

You know, we've got investor owned, like Mid-America, Alliant, we've got municipal utility companies like the Ames folks.

Also, we've got the folks who make the power.

You know, that's those guys, the coal, the natural gas, the wind, the solar.

But you've also got the government.

You've got the federal and state government bodies.

You've got the Indian tribes.

They're sovereign nations.

You've got the environmental groups, the trade environmental groups that are watching for the environment.

So, here you go.

You've got all these players, the electric companies, both investor and municipal.

You've got the states, the feds, the tribes, the environmental lobby.

How are you pulling all these guys together?

If everybody rows in the same direction, we've got a win-win set up here.

How is that going to help our power situation?

Talk to me about that.

What we're proposing is a transmission line, a high voltage transmission line that would go from Wyoming wind fields to the Iowa wind fields and it would cross either South Dakota or Nebraska along the way.

And that line would essentially be a high capacity, it's a super highway of electric transmission line that would collect renewable energy and other energies, renewables, wind, solar, hydro.

and coal and others and be able to move energy back and forth across the area.

For Iowa, for example, that has a lot of wind machines, it would provide an export market for the surplus.

So Iowa doesn't use all of the electricity that it produces from its wind machines in every hour.

And so much like corn and soybeans, Iowa customers don't eat all the corn and soybeans that is produced in Iowa.

They export it via highways and railroads and things like that.

What we're proposing and just using Iowa as an example is one of the states that are involved in what we're doing.

What we're doing is we're collecting the renewable energy, largely wind energy in Iowa and the US.

And when local customers don't need that energy on an hourly basis, then we ship it on the transmission line to someplace else.

And what that does is it makes renewable energy more reliable.

And it makes it more constant because what you're able to do is someone at the other end, say in California, when they're overproducing with their solar, Iowa can get that energy, which is worthless in California, but they can get it cost effectively in Iowa over this transmission line.

So it enables a swapping of renewable energy back and forth, which is really new.

Now, in direct response to your question, how do you bring together all

these

diverse groups?

That is the question.

to do something basically amazing like this that's why we start with uh... you know mission impossible thing uh... you gotta bring together that very diverse group of of entities but you're talking about states tribes investor on your totally public power and bring them together in order to work together and they're not used to doing that uh... that much uh... we've all been very insular utilities pretty much operate their own service territories

uh... and uh... so the question is not technology this is not a research and development effort this is a geopolitical effort of getting all the people to cooperate and work together toward a mutual goal which is lower costs overall uh... and uh... provide more clean energy availability and make it more uh... more reliable

here with bob schulte from schulte associates bob this is huge so the infrastructure is already built so it's not like

We're going to be coming in and grabbing all this land from the farmers.

I know that's a concern that Scott had.

You're talking about a transmission highway, but the infrastructure is built.

You're just trying to, like on the highway, transmit it to the off-ramp, a substation that then is a distribution line from that off-ramp to the city streets, essentially.

Well, it depends on your perspective when you say the infrastructure is already built.

The kind of mixer line we're talking about is not built, but the alternating current system, the grid, as we know it, is largely alternating current structure.

That's largely built.

And wind machines in Iowa are largely built.

Iowa has done a great job, for example, using them as an example.

I've done a great job of building wind machines.

They're going to build a few more, but they've got that largely built.

But if you go westerly in the South Dakota where there's very little transmission to accommodate works like that, there'd be a lot of infrastructure, renewables infrastructure that needs to be built.

And the transmission line itself is about 750 miles long going from Iowa to Wyoming.

So there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built and a lot of investment that needs to.

happen in order to make these things come alive.

I think of the Creighton brothers Scotty running that telegraph line from Omaha over to San Francisco back in the middle of the 19th century.

I've heard Bob that there's even some safety

pluses involved in this.

You can run some of this underground, correct?

And because right now some of our energy supplies are vulnerable to targets, but some of this DC can run underground.

Is that correct?

Oh, that's a great question, particularly these days.

For purposes of reliability, keeping the lights on and resiliency, being able to take on a

weather events, a storm, or gosh, God forbid, but a terrorist attack, even a domestic terrorist.

A direct current line that we're talking about, I'll talk about why we're doing direct current, can be put underground.

We can put the whole 750 miles of this line underground, so it's out of sight, out of mind, no towers involved.

It costs more.

but we can make it resilient by burying it underground, going under rivers, going under lakes with a submarine cable.

So the technology is there to do that with direct current.

And why are we doing direct current?

What's the difference?

Well, direct current as the name implies is the electrons, the electricity is moving one way on a constant over time.

It's moving one direction on one cable and it's coming back on another cable and it's constant.

direct current as opposed to alternating current, which is what's in your homes and in your commercial buildings now, where the electricity alternates up and down, the voltage alternates up and down.

So we use direct and current for several reasons.

One is it's more efficient over long distances, so we have less losses.

It doesn't warm the, it doesn't warm the little birdie speed as they sit on the cable that much or less.

So that's the essence of that.

It's throttleable.

That is, we can turn it up and down on the transmission line so we can direct the energy where we want to go versus alternating current.

You put the alternating current signal generation on a line, and it goes by path of least resistance.

So you can estimate and model where it's going to go, but you can't throttle it.

And more importantly, to go where we're going, the two systems, electric systems in the United States, called the Western Interconnection.

which kind of starts at the black heroes and goes westward and then the entire eastern part of the country.

Those are two separate electric systems and they're alternating current systems that don't operate in coordination.

So you got to convert it from alternating current to direct current and then back to alternating current to get across that seam between those two interconnections.

If you don't do that, you'd have

As my teacher in the Air Force used to say, you get Boku sparks.

So Bob, an unsfiscated guy like me, this is just, I've done some studying on this.

We now, without getting in the weeds here on the science, we'll do that some other program, but we have the capacity now to do what

We've overcome the threshold issue.

The wrap on solar and wind was always, but you can't store it.

But we have the technology to store this energy and to transmit it, correct?

Yes, we do.

In a couple of different ways, it's pretty interesting.

One is we can do physical storage.

That is, you take the electricity and you put it into a, you put it in the equivalent of a grain bin, into a big battery, say, part of our project.

would include the Gregory County Pump Storage Project in South Dakota.

That's where, if you have too much wind energy compared to what customers are using, then you start up some big pumps and you pump water uphill to a reservoir, or a tank that's up high on the hill, and then later when you need that energy, and they say the wind machines aren't operating, then you bring that water back down the hill, run it through a turbine, and put it back in a grid.

So that's storage.

The other

The other really neat thing in a large transmission line that we're talking about is what we call virtual storage, without getting too technical.

What is storage?

You have excess of a commodity, be it soybeans or corn or electricity, and you have too much of that over a period of time compared to what you need, and so you send it away to some place.

My brother-in-law in South Dakota puts his soybeans in a bin.

in the fall when he produces and everybody's got too many soybeans but later he brings it out of the soybean bin silo and takes it off the market the same thing can happen with the transmission line if someone is over generating with their renewable energy say Los Angeles is producing too much solar energy during the day and they can just ship it off in this transmission line off toward Iowa and South Dakota and Illinois on our transmission line okay and later later they get renewable energy back

And did physical storage actually happen in the meantime?

No.

That could be the over generation from Iowa or Nebraska or South Dakota, wind energy coming back to them over the same transmission line.

So it goes back and forth like a super highway.

So that's what we call virtual storage.

You're not really storing it except it looks like storage to the users on the line.

California is going to be over-generating, is already over-generating with their solar in a number of hours during the year.

The Midwest is over-generating with its wind compared to its customers' needs in certain hours of the year.

These kids need to get together, and that's what we're proposing.

Their needs are time diversified from each other.

That is, they happen in different times.

Solar during the day is too much in California, coming East.

Wind, which often most of it operates at night.

could be over-generating coming back at California.

So that's a swapping of renewable energy as part of the excitement of what we're talking about.

So Scotty's going to ask a question about the tough political maneuvering here, but just to frame this.

So why I'm interested in this, our Midwestern states, we can be revenue receptors.

This can be money into the coffers of our great states, can't it?

Yes, one of the great questions.

that we receive in talking with legislators or citizens in the various Midwest states is they might say, why would we send our valuable wind energy to another state?

Why would we do that?

What's our incentive?

That's our natural resource.

And the response to that is, do your citizens eat all the corn and soybeans that you make every year?

And the response of course is, of course not.

If we produce more corn and soybeans than our citizens and our state,

consume, we ship it out on railroads and highways.

And then suddenly they realize, oh, that's what you're talking about for renewable energy.

If you produce more in the state than you consume, you export it.

And what we're proposing is to put the Midwest states, not only using renewable energy in their own territory, but put them in the energy export business to other states.

They can't consume all the renewables they're making.

So Bob, I drive I-80 all the time.

I go through Atlantic, I go through a dare, I go through a vogue on my way to the morning back.

Wind turbines everywhere.

Put this into something that I can understand.

That one wind turbine, let's just say one wind turbine that I go by.

How much juice is that generating for how many homes?

Oh, okay.

Great question.

The most recent machines are installed on I-80.

My grandfather grew up in Westphalia, living in Westphalia, Iowa.

They're on near off I-80.

The later machines are installed are 2 million watts, 2 megawatts, 2 million watts.

So translate that to homes for me.

I'm a simple man.

Yeah, I'm going to do the conversion here for you in a second.

So 2 million watts and homes.

in a large neighborhood, for example, on average, use a thousand watts.

Holy cow.

One kilowatt.

So you're talking, you're talking about, well, let's say two, two men, and on one hand and 2,000.

On the other hand, you're talking about two, like 2,000 homes.

Incredible Scotty.

Each one of those towers could supply 2,000 homes on a hot day.

Unbelievable.

I had no idea, Scotty.

That's astounding.

So you've always got resistance of people saying, it's a great idea, but not on my land.

Scotty, talk about this political...

uh barrier we might

have to face here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Could you explain to maybe the our listeners a little bit more about this going forward because you know in Iowa right now there are some fights going on with the CO2 pipelines throughout everything.

You know we had the issue in the Midwest with the with the Balkan pipeline that the Biden administration killed the oil line that came out of Canada.

Are we using the the grid now as the grip and we also hear a lot of conversations about how

Aging our electrical grid is is that they cannot keep up basically moving forward especially with more electric vehicles coming online Are you proposing to basically redo that or can you kind of revamp that a little bit kind of go into the weeds just a little bit more on that?

Oh, thanks your question.

That's a great one The grid a lot of the grid the transmission grid is decades old and it's going to need upgrading and

As we add electric vehicles per your question is the need and requirements on it are going to get bigger.

For example, one electric vehicle is equivalent to about one house in electric need over here.

So you put in two electric vehicles that's like adding a house in terms of electric needs.

So what we're talking about is largely we're not proposing to change the alternating current system that says we're going to do an overlay of the DC line.

which enables a lot more of the energy to be moved around.

And for example, if we put it underground, you're not going to see it very much.

But it will enable a lot of states, a lot of cities now have very high clean energy goals.

And they can't get there on their own using their own local resources because they're not running all the time, as you know.

But if you have an inter-regional transmission line like we're proposing,

that'd be 4,000 megawatts of capacity that would serve 4 million homes at peak times.

It's going to take a lot of burden off the existing alternating current system.

And the question will be, do we need to put it underground?

It's going to cost more.

But perhaps for the considerations that you're suggesting,

NIMBY or whatever, perhaps that needs to be underground and that would be more amenable and has less of a visual impact.

It's just not there.

Once you vary it, it's gone and you can't see it.

So this is not a technology issue.

This is a geopolitical and customer acceptance issue if we want to get to the clean energy transition that we want.

We need transmission and we need these high capacity direct current lines.

And a

lot

of them.

I mean, we're dropping the bucket.

The Department of Energy has just done a study on what the needs are.

And across the span of what we're talking about, their needs study shows that we need like 16 gigawatts, 16 billion watts of transmission capacity.

And our line is only four gigawatts, 4,000 megawatts.

We would be a first installment of what needs to happen as far as the transmission system.

And yes, there needs to be a lot of interaction with the public in advance rather than we're proposing a public-private partnership with the states and tribes and Department of Energy and the utilities that are involved with us in a unique approach that recognizes that the people have to have input from the beginning rather than just have a proposal.

uh... talk about them and say what do you think they need to have their input at the beginning and that's what we're starting to do

well front end with the stakeholders what a concept scotties some of our other folks should pay attention to that

you know absolutely you know what you bring up a a great uh... point to because it seems like in our dealings that john you've been in the legislature i've been on other uh... renewable fuels uh... type

situations right

where the people that are the biggest proponents of renewable fuels and and solar energy wind energy things along those lines

They were the same people that will fight you tooth and nail because they're afraid of the habitat of some stupid mouse or some dumb bird or the pallet sturgeon.

And they'll block that proposal.

So how do you bring those people on board 100% of the time?

Because they're the ones at the end of the day that will really gum up the works.

Great question, Bob.

You want to take a shot at that?

Oh, yeah, I'm happy to do that.

Yes, that is the big challenge.

I have great confidence in the reasonableness of the people the upper Midwest.

And in spite of some of the stories we might tell of opposition, I'll give you an example.

Many years ago when I was an officer at Northern States Power Company in Minneapolis, we were going to do the first integrated resource plan in the state of Minnesota and an integrated resource plan is a utilities plan of generation, transmission, energy conservation, all the states all together in one place.

And for the first time ever, we proposed to have customer input before we did the plan.

So that was a little stormy.

We'd never done it before, but we brought together a group.

We called the Resource Planning Advisor Group, and we brought together a group, a very diverse group, academics, commercial folks, like the 3M company was involved, residential customers, low-income customers, senior citizens, and we brought them together.

And over a process of six months, we briefed them, took them through the whole planning process.

And we were taking a little bit of risk here because everybody knew we were doing this planning.

And what were they going to say?

And you know what we found out?

The environmentalists had, when it got right down to it, the environmental people on the planning committee had a sense of business and keeping costs low.

And the business people had an environmental streak.

And after a lot of discussion and talking things back and forth, and this was a high wire act, they gave a presentation in front of the officers of the company one day and they said, this is what we want you to do.

And including back then, this is, gosh, this is 30 years ago, they said, don't build any more coal plants.

I

mean, this was before climate change became a big at the time.

Don't build any more coal plants.

Anyway, they had like 10 recommendations and we adopted every one of them.

Guys your list of the great Bob Schulte with our our installment of energy 101 What a tremendous conversation Scotty I'm intrigued because this is money to the Iowa revenue coffers and these other Midwestern states coffers I like it because it's green energy.

It's clean and Scotty it also is

helps secure the grid from a national security standpoint.

This DC can be underground.

I think it's worth exploring.

I look forward to continuing to explore this with Robert Schulte and some ongoing vignettes here.

You know, absolutely, John.

Go ahead.

Yeah,

Bob.

I'm sorry.

I probably just got power from the ferry.

How appropriate.

And I'd welcome an opportunity that we could play, again, play Stump the Bob, if you will, with additional questions you've got.

And give those, there's some great website resources.

Again, where can they get delved deeply into this?

The websites, the papers, the studies, maybe there's just one you want them to focus on, but I've been on a couple of these sites are very informative.

Yeah, it's the basic website is power from the prairie all one word dot com and It tells all about what we're doing who's on our team who's been involved and on part from the prairie dot com slash the CDS that's concept development study it provides a download for free of Our study initial study that we've done for this project that will be about nine billion dollars before it's done

power from the prairie

Dot com check it out guys It's really it maybe it isn't mission impossible.

We'll play that theme song, but you know the fuse is lit But that might be the fuse lighting up all of our homes and charging our cars Scott Corey,

you know I

got

it

Absolutely.

We appreciate you joining us today.

And I know we're going to have a lot more discussion moving forward because energy independence is one of those most important issues that face not only Iowa, but the entire country.

And Scotty, the concern that I am loves the irony of Iowa cashing in on the left coast and making them pay for our energy.

I find that deliciously appropriate.

Yeah, I think if we could find a way to wrap it in bacon to, you know, really stick a tool

for that Supreme Court ruling on Prop 12.

Anything we can do to bring California to the bear would be great.

That would be great.

Bob Schulte, your great American and a stand up guy for entering Energy 101.

Great to visit with you.

We'll have you back again soon on The Blow

Torch.

Thanks, gentlemen.

Caroming across every state in the Big Ten of the founding Big Ten states on this monster.

50,000 watt clear channel will be back in a moment What a great show thanks for listening on kxl the blowtorch 1540 and 1067 50,000 watt clear channel John Jacobson for Scott Corey and Mike Shane be safe be smart be good be strong

Love Jesus Christ as we celebrate His ascension.

Until next week, bye-bye.

For more about the show, go to kxel.com slash Jacobson, J-A-C-O-B-S-E-N.

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