KXEL Presents: The Jacobsen Group Podcast – January 4, 2025

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

Good Saturday morning on this icy trajectory of weather racing through Iowa this weekend.

John Jacobson here, you're listening to the Jacobson Group on KXEL, America's original blow torch.

50,000 watts of truly

Clear Channel, the only 1540 in North America, a.m.

We go to 14 different states, two Canadian provinces on the a.m.

band, but also a lot of our Cedar Rapids transmitter at 100.5.

And that podcast, go to kxcl.com slash Jacobson, the old Viking Danish spelling J-A-C-O-B-S-E-N.

And do we have a great show for you today?

Of course, we have Barb, James Bryant, great.

I have a businesswoman who'll be joining us mid-show.

We will also have the free market, enterprise, economics, think, and teaching tank, the Gorton Institute Boys from Ottawa University of Kansas in the second half of the show.

And before I introduce our first two guests, a tip of the fedora to Mike Shane, our fearless engineer, neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor ice can keep him from his engineering device.

and he is recording this show.

This is John Jacobson.

Welcome to the Pro Immune Show by thebestimmunesupport.com and AirVitaChambers.com.

This is John Jacobson here featuring Joseph Casarino.

Joe is consultant to Dr. Albert B. Crumb MD and Joe is the national

Distributor Proimmune Immune Formulation 200, the groundbreaking scientific discovery by Dr. Albert B. Crum that is sweeping across America due to its ability

to reduce toxins directly inside cells and reduce inflammation utilizing principles of nature itself.

So great times, Joe, and we're looking forward to a wonderful new year to make our Americans healthier.

I'm very upbeat.

What say you, Joe?

Well, John, I want to say first and foremost, it's an honor to be on the show with you, a man of God, John, because

It is a great year.

And the work that you do and this show and all the work you do behind the scenes to help make other people healthy, including athletes, all the work that you're doing behind the scenes, it really is an honor to be on the show with you.

I'm especially excited this January 5th, this Sunday, because it's a new year.

And, you know, you don't know, but I haven't had time to tell you, I've been a little busy.

But 2024, the end of 2024, John, the month of December,

I literally delivered more promune to more people across America than any month that I've been doing this for Dr. Crumb.

It has been an explosion.

I've had customers calling up ordering six jars, 12 jars, 10 jars, 18 jars at a clip.

Wow.

Day after day, day after day.

You don't know about this because again, like I said, I didn't have time to tell you, but you know, I know a lot of my customers because I form relationships with people.

And I asked them, like, why are you buying so many?

You don't need all that.

It's just you and your husband in the house.

And they all told me the same thing.

Oh, it's not for us.

This product is so amazing.

And with all the RSV, the flu and the COVID going around, we're giving them away.

We're giving them.

Another customer bought, I think it was Christmas Eve or right around there.

She buys two six packs.

Same question.

I said, why are you buying two six packs?

She says, oh, we're putting all our grandchildren on it.

The whole family has to be on ProMune

because

these RSV viruses and the flu and the COVID, they're wreaking havoc on everybody.

And they've been listening to the radio shows.

They've been reading the science.

Many of them have been recommended to ProMune by pharmacies throughout the Midwest.

You know, you're in the Midwest, so you know that I have a lot of pharmacies in the Midwest.

You do, yes.

They tell all the patients, like I'll give an example, you may not know them, Erstfeld Pharmacy in North Dickinson, North Dakota as an example.

They buy 100 draws a month, John.

Wow, that is phenomenal.

Well, I will tell you, Joe Casserino, people at the station, at the network are very impressed.

By the way, I've got Blake Griffin, super engineer helming this one today.

got people at the station.

Those that have ordered from you that get that email from you say the email is such a treasure trove of information.

I love your website.

I think it is a phenomenal treasure trove of data and look at that map Joe Casarino of outlets and you know what?

I see a big gap in the Kansas City Metro.

And we're going to write that ship really closely.

That's one of our New Year's resolutions, isn't it?

Come to KC.

Well, I,

I made the commitment.

I spoke to my family and I already said to them, um, finding the time I have, I have to meet pharmacies in Florida first that want to enter promune.

So, uh, in a couple of weeks I have to go to Florida for about a week or so to set these, uh, pharmacies up with promune.

And then I'm going to take a flight from Tampa.

over to Kansas and I'm going to spend time I'm going to spend a few weeks with you in your neighborhood and I'm going to introduce this to the chain of 19 pharmacies that you that said they want to bring the promune into all their pharmacies to get everybody on it and you know I said to my family I have to do this because with with

you know what's going on with the RSV viruses and the COVID and the flu

and

everybody's sick and everybody's exhausted and tired and weak and brain fog and, you know, lethargic and promune wipes that out by mega-dosing the promune.

If you get these RSV or the flu or the COVID, you mega-dose like every few hours a scoop of promune,

according

to Dr. Edward Ted Foley, who brought this into the federal CARES Act as a COVID countermeasure.

He's the one who bought me.

I'm not a doctor, John.

I can't tell your audience this is going to treat cure or prevent anything.

I'm not an MD, but Dr. Fogarty taught me how to do it.

And this is Dr. Fogarty's protocols after he brought it into the federal CARES Act.

as a COVID county measure.

And now word got out around the country that he's right.

It's working because all the testimonials of people calling me up and telling me or writing me letters, telling me, you know, everybody got COVID in the house, but me, because I was the only one on commune.

These are the people, John, that are ordering six, 12, 18 at a click and giving them to all the family now, because it's proven that it's working by, by it, by it working.

This is so

true, Joe.

And I think that the word is starting to get out.

I was so heartened the other day.

You know, we talked earlier about some of these anti-Mega, anti-Trump rhinos masquerading as conservatives in the U.S.

Senate.

And I'll call them out by name.

I'm talking Joni Ernst and Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins and John Thune and Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn and Tom Tillis.

And there are others.

Lindsey Graham.

There's eight right there.

They're not so great eight as I call them.

But you know what?

The message this resonating from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

is being received favorably by

Democratic senators, I think Bobby's going to get bipartisan votes, including probably from Bernie Sanders.

So a coalition is being put together and you talk coalition.

When you look at the listenership on this radio station, KXEL, the

the ultimate original American blow torch, 50,000 Watts of clear channel out of Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Iowa, going into all the original big 10 States, 14 US States and two provinces in Canada.

Joe, this is a mighty blow torch and you are speaking truth to power right now.

Well, um, what I need when Blake and Shane are ready.

Okay.

And they give you the approval to put.

on the KXPL website when they are ready to put a banner ad of the best immune support website so people could click on and read the science and read the data and get the information about promune.

When you're ready to do that, I'll be mailing a gift pack of six jars for Blake and Shane and yourself so you guys could have the promune.

It'll be my gift to you in exchange just to get the information out there because John, you know I've already

You've met me many times.

Yes, I have.

Dr. Fogarty knows this to be true.

I came out of retirement to do this work.

You did.

I don't live with this money.

I lose money.

I don't even break even.

I spend more than I earn on the commission selling the jaws for Dr. Krum.

But I give it back to the community because, you know, we're helping the veterans and I'm helping pro bono clinics.

To me, this is not about the money.

I'm an old man at 68 years old.

I live off my investments.

I don't need the money.

I'm doing this because, John, you know, you have children.

I have children.

You know what I say on a lot of the radio shows to the audience.

It's our children that are being affected by this.

We've lived our lives.

We're in our 60s and 70s.

If we died tomorrow, we had quality of life.

We had a good life.

My 26 year old son or my 29 year old daughter or my 30 year old daughter tasted life yet.

They didn't taste life.

If we don't change these chronic illnesses right now with the help of.

Kennedy and fortunately Bobby takes the promune and you know he introduced it to Trump and you know and and and and we've got the friends now in in in in the right place okay that are going to be making changes from the top down because the level of corruption the level of toxicity can't go online well big pharma

not only is big pharma evil but it has totally co-opted most of the american media and this i think is the singular

wonder of shows like this that we are going against this media monolith of basically all these networks bought out by Big Pharma.

Big Pharma has done so many billions of dollars.

of advertising on the TV networks that these liberal news networks will never counter anything.

They will never talk about any of the evil being done by Big Pharma because Big Pharma literally, almost single-handedly, is propping up these leftist networks with their radio revenue advertising, Joe.

Oh,

I know all this, John.

You're not telling me anything I don't know.

And like I said, you know what the sad thing about this is, John?

the way they're propping it up and everyone that is complicit by doing so all this you know all the newspapers and magazines and and television networks are the complicit you know what the sad part about all this is i just said it it's their children and grandchildren that are stuck yes

Well, and a little hint cheat code here for the audience.

Obviously, I learned this from Joe Castrino.

Indeed, he does know all of this, but I did set it up as a rhetorical question just to highlight for our audience what we're up against, but how the tide is shifting.

And I congratulate Brad Howard and people of this great American patriotic mindset to get the truth out on the air.

And Blake, I want to bring you in for a second here.

break your form, break your former scholarship athlete for the university.

One thing that I have noticed is, you know, you generally think maybe, oh,

young kids are in such picture perfect health, but they're not because you guys at the university are in an incubator.

Blake, you're susceptible to everything.

You've got all these international students.

I'd never seen so many kids with cold and flu symptoms like I had last semester.

I taught 120 kids.

I had sick kids constantly from August through December, relentlessly unremitting.

And then Blake, the athletic injuries, we had so many athletic injuries.

You guys

aren't the most healthy and renewed folks out there.

You're battered and bruised and coughing and hacking, aren't you?

How important is this that we get health down to the level of

You young people in the primary lives in your 20s.

Yeah.

I mean, we're all friends.

So whatever one person has, uh, a lot of people they're going to have.

Number one, COVID broke out here.

Uh, one person sick with it.

It's often spread through multiple

teams.

Yeah.

Um, so, uh, I mean, it's, it's, it's very important to, to make sure that these, these kids are healthy and well, a lot of guys, people who, people who double double sports here as well.

So that's also important to keep them healthy and keep them safe as well.

It's, I mean,

My kids have come in with

shoulder injuries, knee injuries, wrist injuries,

hand

injuries.

They've been going through surgeries and the ones that aren't going through that have got the colds and the flus and I see

It's almost like a field hospital, Joe Castorino,

when I walked to campus.

Believe it or not, I think this was actually a down year, because I think my sophomore year, I knew several people with pneumonia, I knew several people with bronchitis.

I felt like this was actually a down year.

Yeah, back to you, Joe.

I mean, does this surprise you at the college level, Joe, at all?

Here's what's going on, and if Dr. Fogarty were on the show, or Bobby Kennedy were on the show, they would confirm one of the problems is, and Dr. Albert B. Crum would confirm this as well.

it all stems from the weakened immune system.

Every student that you just mentioned has today in the year 2025 has a weakened immune system due to toxic overload.

This is why you and Dr. Fogarty and others, Dr. David Hartsuch and all these great doctors we're working with are trying to preface to all these athletic directors, these kids should know about promune.

Why?

Because nothing built the immune system better than when you replenish glutathione

directly inside the cell as nature intended, and promune is not a glutathione because glutathione products don't work.

Promune is the all-natural glutathione precursor that induces the cell to replenish the glutathione exactly as the single cell designed it to increase or produce glutathione 3.6 billion years ago.

Let me explain this in brief in one minute.

Dr. Crum taught me unequivocally

that 3.6 billion years ago when the Big Bang occurred and civilization occurred, and there was the single cell.

Remember, that's long before humans, correct?

Long before fish and birds and animals and plants.

It was the single cell.

Listen to this carefully.

This single cell created glutathione, created it for the purpose of taking out the toxic overload so the cell could expand.

Even in the year 2025,

So we're so grossly depleted in glutathione, including these students and athletes.

And what's happening is they're getting sick because of it.

And what Dr. Crumb discovered, what this scientific breakthrough of promenu

is all

about, what he discovered is exactly how the cell is replenishing the glutathione in the minute particles.

in the precise ratio of glycine, cysteine, glutamine with a cofact of a selenium, that's how the single cell did it.

3.6 billion years ago, Dr. Crump figured it out, patented it in 40, he has 40 patents globally, right?

One for antiviral, one for heavy metal.

One for viruses and pathogens, one for an all natural statin.

The list goes on and on.

Why?

Because when you replenish glutathione this way, all naturally, and you build the immune system, the body, all the organs of the body, the cell, the brain, the skin, every part of the body becomes the healthiest state because the cell no longer has the oxidative stress or the inflammation.

Furthermore, these athletes that you talk about, what the athletic directors do not know, and Dr. Fogarty would confirm this, as would Dr. David Hotsuch, is that when they take the promune, it speeds recovery on the brakes and the trauma and the surgical operations that they have.

It speeds the recovery because it's reducing the inflammatory load.

Okay, it's leaving only the inflammation that's needed to jump-start the curing, but you're not going to be over-inflamed.

That's what this promune is doing.

That's why it's a miracle of science.

That's why it's sweeping across the country at breakneck record speed.

And if anybody wants to research all the science, thebestimmunesupport.com

you'll have a field day.

You're going to need hours to read all the science and the data, but it's working.

The testimonials confirm it.

The science proves it.

And now, thank God that Bobby Kennedy is helping get the word out.

We're going to make a change in 2025, John Jacobson, like you've never seen.

Joe, I take this product.

My wife takes it.

We love it.

My health has improved.

Ironically, where I really recommitted to

My health, doing what I can, was a year and a half ago, August of 2023 at the Iowa State Fair.

I was with Dr. David Hartsuch.

David and I were interviewing Bobby Kennedy for an Omaha radio that I was doing.

And Hartsuch and I started talking, and Deb and I have now been taking the Promune 200.

And Joe, that website is just a masterclass, a treasure trove of magnificent scientific data.

How do they find your website and how do they order Proimmune Formulation 200, Joe?

Oh, right on the website, thebestimmunesupport.com.

I'll repeat it slowly, thebestimmunesupport.com.

You're right, John.

There's so much science, so many testimonials, but I want to say one last thing.

Sure.

We have a back pit or two left.

I want to practice two things to the audience that they need to know.

This is factual and you know this to be true because Dr. David Hawks has taught you this.

There are pretty much two things that mitigate all chronic illnesses on planet Earth.

One of them is hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

That's why we work with airbetachambers.com.

The audience should be looking.

on my website.

There's a link to airbetachambers.com.

You want to get on the airbetachambers.com website, and you want to look at his in-home units.

We're buying one, by the way.

We're buying his $10,000 unit in-home, all tax and shipping included, where you sit inside the chamber an hour a day.

Do you know, John Jacobson, I don't know if you know this piece.

No disease can live in a cell that is rich in oxygen.

And do you know that the reason promune is working is because promune mimics hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

So the two things that are moving the needle on chronic illnesses and viruses and all these sort of things are the all natural things that are working on H-Bot and promune.

Fogarty knows it.

Okay, Dr. Fogarty knows it.

Dr. David Haas such knows it.

Dr. Judy Michael Bites knows it.

Bobby Kennedy knows it.

Okay, Bobby Kennedy has an HPOP machine.

Bobby Kennedy takes promune.

He knows it and they're going to be trying to get this into the medical mainstream through the powers that be over the course of the change that's coming because the change has to come because we can no longer live with chronic illnesses.

Our children, our grandchildren are chronically ill.

You could look at the Children's Health Defense website on my website, thebestimmunesupport.com, look what Bobby Kennedy put together.

He owns Children's Health Defense.

When you look at the epidemic chronic illnesses that are around America, it makes you want to cry.

So in closing, I want to say thank you for another wonderful show.

Thank you for the opportunity, John, to allow me to educate the athletic directors and the management of the sports teams and the colleges and the medical centers and the pharmacies in your part of the country.

I'm grateful to you, John, for allowing me to educate them.

And you know what?

I'm making a commitment to come out there for three to four weeks.

I'm going to be living in your town.

Okay, and I'm going to be going from pharmacy to pharmacy and I'm going to be meeting the people and educating them like I did all over the country and that's why promute is sweeping as a number one the doctors love it the pharmacies love it the medical centers love it the health food stores love it and will the chemist calm W I L L any are

biggest and oldest pharmacy in New York City on Park Avenue and 41st by Grand Central is the top seller of promune.

I'm only there a month.

They've got it on every county.

Their customers love it.

They put

a banner ad.

They put a banner ad on their website so people buy it right on their website.

I would like your radio stations to put a banner ad on your website.

We're going to get that done Joe.

John, not, not for the money, John, to get access, to get access to the information because you have an audience of thousands of people that could, could learn from this.

That's the point.

We could educate them, John.

The next six pack is a gift to your management team and your managers and your engineers.

I will send you a gift pack and that will be my gift to say thank you.

Anything I can do for you.

You let me know I'm always here for you John

ladies and gentlemen get to his website the best immune support calm and get to Jason ease his website Jason's right in the Kansas City Metro here air Vita V is in victory I D is in dog a is an apple air Vita chambers calm Take a look at his great hyperbaric therapy chambers and programs there.

It's been a wonderful

12th, 12th day of Christmas, guys, the feast of the Epiphany, the three kings, the Magi, who come from afar to recognize our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ as Messiah, Savior and King of King and Lord of Lords.

It is that most wonderful time of the year, sometimes a little inclement, and we are delighted to be with you on this Saturday morning.

from KXEL Big Blowtorch, America's original blowtorch, emanating from 1540 as well as 100.5 FM.

And you can also grab this podcast online on KXEL slash Jacobson.

We are here mid-show with the great Barbara Hames Bryant, the matriarch of Hames Holmes, beautiful, safe, affordable.

This is a great time to finance

folks.

We're going to have a revving

economy.

This is the time guys.

We've got an inauguration and

We've got American consumers already feeling better about the economy.

Barbara, there are folks that are going to be interested.

Let's show them how to fight you guys.

Let's start with our website.

Or we're open seven days a week at the corner of Wilson Avenue and West Post Roads, Southwest.

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Economics is the study of human choice in the world we live.

Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see by investigating faith in economics.

we can learn how they lead to human flourishing.

This is the Faith in Economics podcast, a presentation of the Gortney Institute at Ottawa University.

Welcome to our show today.

My name is Peter Jacobson.

I'm the Gortney Professor of Economic Education and Research.

Joining us for the podcast today, we have Dr. Russ McCullough, who is the Wayne Angel Chair of Economics at Ottawa University and also the founder of the Gortney Institute here.

And we also have Dr. Justin Clark,

our philosophy professor who is the Monard professor of philosophy and ethics.

It's good to be with you all today and I think that this episode we're going to talk predictions, right Russ?

Yeah, predictions sound good.

And when you guys first said predictions, like, well, what are we going to predict?

And I'm like, well, there's a lot of uncertainty with what the next year is going to look like with the new administration rolling in amongst other things.

So we got plenty of things to talk about.

I think I'll let one of you guys take the lead here.

I don't know, Justin, are you chomping at the bit for a prediction?

Sure.

I should say we're recording this on December 13th of 2024.

So my first prediction is that at least one of our predictions is going to be settled by the time this episode comes out, which will probably be in January.

Things are moving extremely quickly right now, it seems like.

So if we talk about like cabinet picks or something like that, I think there's going to be at least one topic we talk about, which will already be settled.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah, so I think that's the route to start with is we should talk about I think like specific things about Trump administration and cabinet picks and then maybe some more general things about what we think about the future of his administration.

I also think that we should talk some on Bitcoin like we've done in the past and also some sports, but let's start with cabinet because I think that's the most concrete like you can make the most straightforward, easily falsifiable predictions.

We talked about cabinet.

As of right now, I don't think, and I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think that Robert Kennedy or Tulsi Gabbard will be confirmed by the Senate.

Now, that doesn't mean they won't be the Cabinet officials, because there's this recess appointments thing that's been discussed.

I think Trump might try to backdoor them somehow.

Maybe not, because it seems like he had already given up on Gates, and so he at least is not doing that with everybody, so that makes me think maybe he can't.

But I don't think the Senate will confirm Kennedy.

I don't think they'll confirm Gabbard.

My straightforward reasoning for this is that I do think Trump pretty significantly controls the party now.

But I think people are just in the Republican mainstream are still a little bit too stupid to realize that.

Like I think that they still are used to politics as usual and politics as usual says that you as a Republican would not want to go against like what big farmer would want you to do.

Especially

in a way that like, you know, a lot of Kennedy's proposals for what to do the pharmaceutical industry are viewed as regulatory to a certain extent.

And so it's it's already unpopular for Republicans to support regulation amongst a certain part of their constituency.

You add in pharma on there.

So I think that's going to be enough pressure.

Similar story with Tulsi Gabbard, except with the military industrial complex instead.

So same logic.

So I don't think Trump will get them confirmed by the Senate.

That doesn't mean they won't get in their positions.

I think worst case scenario, he will keep them around as unofficial advisors.

I hope I'm wrong about this, by the way.

I hope that both of these people get in.

I think they would be better than the alternatives.

But my big fear is especially with Jay...

whose last name I forget, can't pronounce.

I'm worried that he will be touted as the reasonable one and passed through and Kennedy will be smeared as the unreasonable one and this is sort of how Republicans will try to keep their, you know, face with their base and say, oh, we're joining the anti-COVID warrior, Kennedy.

He's this environmentalist crazy.

So that's my prediction about those two.

I don't know if you all feel the same or, you know, different or have other predictions about different people.

I have no thoughts about this Pete Hegseth guy.

No idea.

don't really care about his nomination very much.

I don't think he's he's not good enough that I'm super interested in him and I don't think his replace woman would be much different.

I could be wrong but I just haven't followed that so I'll leave it up to you guys now.

I think I'll leave it with Justin on that because he's the most knowledgeable one at least for sure in the Kennedy one maybe among all of them.

I sit a little more on the outside trying to be rationally ignorant myself but...

I think I'm only knowledgeable about, like, what Kennedy thinks and wants to do.

I'm not knowledgeable about what the party wants to do with Kennedy, right?

And that's, I think, what kind of what the issue is.

I'm more optimistic than Peter about confirmation.

I think that both Kennedy and Gabber will get confirmed.

I guess, yeah, I'm more optimistic about them.

assuming the roles that they've been nominated for regardless of confirmation.

What scares me more and what I'm less optimistic about is whether or not they finish 2025 in the position because I could see both of those nominations walking if either because like they butted heads with the party and the party didn't acquiesce or you know, both of those both Tulsi and RFK kind of have

the stated aim to like attack the deep state, right?

So I could see both of them failing just because I think the deep state is designed to withstand those kinds of attacks.

So yeah, I'm more optimistic than Peter about them actually assuming their roles, but I'm where what scares me is whether or not they'll be able to succeed in those roles and finish the year out, which is.

That's a good one because it's binary.

They either do or they don't, right?

Just like accepting that getting the role is.

So I'm optimistic about accepting the role, about getting that role, those roles, and man, probably less around 50-50 for finishing the year

out.

You guys are bringing up interesting things.

So my doctor friends are definitely anti-candidate.

I just kind of bit my tongue when I had a good friend of mine who's been a doc for years.

I think the public smearing campaign with conspiracy theory and and and everything else will continue to try to discredit Kim being in that position.

I guess what I'm less clear about of what you said with the attacks is that

What exactly is their power in that position and what would they, in what ways could they be ignored, I guess, or something if they want to take it a certain direction?

So to head the HHS, Secretary of HHS, you control the CDC.

All of the health departments of the government are under your purview.

So, you could do things like direct the CDC to reevaluate the entire childhood vaccine schedule.

You could direct the NIA, the one that was in charge of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious.

Now these agencies control the majority of scientific funding that gets done and they are right now pretty much funded by the companies that they're supposed to regulate.

So you could make some really big moves there and that would change the incentive structure.

of a process that I think is broken, right?

And Kennedy thinks it's broken too, but a lot of people who are inside on that industry don't think it's broken, right?

And

think that

things are working just fine.

Can I ask a question, Justin?

Yeah.

To me, the most important issue, and I think there's lots, but the most important issue with things as they are now is the inability of individuals to sue these companies when something goes wrong, especially with vaccinations.

This is the really common one where like,

If you're injured by a vaccine for whatever reason, you're not allowed to sue the vaccine producer via government rules in a lot of these cases.

Would he have control over that or is that a congressional thing?

Do you know?

So that was passed under Reagan,

the Childhood Vaccine Act in 1987.

So it sounds like that's a congressional thing then.

Yes.

So that would... If you want to repeal that, that's...

legislation, right?

Yeah, but you are right.

And just to note, it is only vaccines that are subject to that.

There's a separate vaccine court, and it's also only for vaccines that the CDC approves to be on the childhood schedule.

Which

creates incentives.

Yeah, and it also creates incentive to never ever change a vaccine once it gets on the schedule.

Never look at it again, because once it gets on there, it's a

It's a gold mine, right?

Yeah, so so hold on let me before you go I Still am not hearing so they he puts in some let's say some radical changes and then They just don't do it or I mean what where's his power?

Can they start firing people who aren't actually following his orders?

You know, I want to know like How could he be stifled enough that he wants to step down that he just really truly doesn't have the power?

If you talk to people in Washington, they will say things like, there are, you know, GS whatever level people that are essentially unfireable.

And it's very, very tough to get rid of people who aren't doing your bidding, even when you're in charge of branches.

I think that it's more difficult to get Washington to do things that Washington doesn't want to do than people imagine it is.

Think about like Trump's built the wall thing.

That was his entire promise, the first.

Yeah.

So they drag their heels enough and one month down the road, oh, we have to wait for this approval.

You know, whatever, they come

up with lots

of barriers.

And if they get fired, they sue labor disputes, union disputes.

Can't we sick the doge on them?

I mean, that's the promise.

The Department of

Government efficiency.

Yeah, maybe that's where that kicks in.

I thought this was a predictions podcast.

There are a

million ways these can go wrong.

And let me clarify just two things.

This is a case where Justin is more in line with the betting market than me.

So the prediction market, so if you want to put money on this, as Kennedy being Trump's secretary of health and human services, so not getting the nomination, but being the actual secretary, that's at 76% right, or 74% right now.

74% Kevin Kennedy.

29% no.

I don't know exactly how that works out that this particular betting market system is a little different than the one I'm used to.

But the point is it's an overwhelming majority.

On the other hand, Gabbard, she's looking at about 67%.

So about like two-thirds chance.

Which isn't, again, it's not bad.

That is well over

a majority.

But you're actually saying they'll get in, but you're saying the confirmation thing.

You think that they'll get...

Backdoor din if they have yeah, so you're back in there.

Yeah,

so that's that's possible I'm not sure I don't know how likely the backdoor thing is because I don't have a good read on Trump and his willingness to fight dirtier than he did last time Which I think brings us to a second major area of contention with respect to predictions and this one is harder for me to Maybe one of you can formalize it a little bit better But I I think what is valuable to predict would be is Trump going to be different than Trump was before?

with respect to draining the swamp or not.

And so I think the greatest point of agreement that you could get amongst even Trump supporters is that he did not succeed to drain the swamp in 2016.

Now, a lot of his supporters will say that that wasn't his fault.

They'll say he was learning to ropes or whatever.

That's fine, regardless.

You know, maybe that's true.

Maybe it's not.

It doesn't actually matter.

The question is now, eight years later, 2024,

After he had his first four years, it didn't work out.

He believes that the election was stolen from him, and so he thinks he's been cheated.

Does he come back now with a vengeance, with a new fire?

Does he finally clean some of these places out?

Or does he sort of like rearrange chairs on the Titanic?

Like those are the two options that I could see.

Is he actually going to build a new ship, sink the Titanic, blow it up, whatever, and you know, put a new boat out to sea?

Or is he gonna rearrange chairs?

Right now, and again, I'm maybe the eternal pessimist, but I am kind of thinking the latter.

I actually wrote an article on this recently for fee, which is that if you listen to a lot of Trump statements about this stuff, like when he talks about shutting down the Department of Education, he very specifically talks about getting rid of the building and moving it out of Washington, DC.

Like this is really particular language.

And if you think I'm reading too much into it, he literally did this with the Bureau of Land Management.

He got rid of their building and he moved them to Colorado.

And then Joe Biden brought them back four years later.

And so what I'll say is I don't think Trump will succeed at draining the swamp.

I hope I'm wrong.

Don't get me wrong.

And I think he's more likely to do it than any person has been in the last like a few decades.

But I have a hard time believing he'll shut down any government departments.

Maybe the way we can make the prediction is I don't think Trump will shut down any major government.

Departments he might shut down like a project inside of a department or something like that and kudos like that's good It's better than we would have gotten otherwise, but I don't think he'll shut down the Department of Education I don't think he'll fire more than 50% of the staff of the FBI or the CIA I don't know how exactly to frame this prediction, but I don't know.

Am I too pessimistic?

What are your thoughts?

I'll jump in quickly on that and I think he is going to make significant draining happen And I think it's partly due to the Chevron case

and the Department of Government Efficiency.

I think with the general put he'll have some grassroots support if if he comes up with cutting down some department it might be projects within the department like you say I'm not I'm not as bullish that there's going to be actual full-blown departments go away but

I think there'll be significant movements if Elon Musk comes on and said, hey, we did this report.

And what do these people do?

We could do this with half the people or whatever, maybe in this particular department.

So I think the Chevron case, again, listeners, is where the Supreme Court made it so that these agencies can't create laws anymore.

And so it's going to have to go back to Congress, which means to me, right away, there's less labor needed within the agency if they can't be drumming up things

as good

as they used

to.

Maybe more leisure, too.

So, yeah, more leisure.

And that's where I'm hoping that the doge comes out barking.

So, Justin, what do you think?

Man, I don't know.

I agree with Peter that the worry is a worry about something vague.

You're like hard to specify or maybe hard to metric.

So I'm not sure what, you know, Peter says I don't think he'll cut any agencies.

And Russ says, well, I might not cut agencies, but I can see a lot of them being reduced.

And so, you know, I can see an outcome where you guys agree on what happened, but don't agree on what

counts

as a success or not,

right?

And here's one other way to measure it is I would be willing to say that I don't think the federal workforce will change by more than 20%.

So

I

don't think Trump will remove, or even replace, 20% of federal workers, which to me constitutes a failure to drain the swamp.

If you've got 80% of the swamp there, you still have the swamp.

I

agree, and I'll take that bet, because I bet it'll be over 20%.

Okay, great.

So that sounds like we got something to work from now.

Yeah.

Justin, what are your thoughts on that?

Do you think, am I too pessimistic again?

I don't know, 20% is a lot.

Yeah, exactly.

See, that's the... It

is.

That's a whole lot.

I would, I would bet against 20%.

I'd really hope to be wrong.

Well, yeah, I hope it's above 50% and not because I have any scorn for the people.

No, not because I have any scorn for the people, but we have a serious issue with our country with spending and there's no clear end in sight.

And if it doesn't get fixed now, when will it?

The

various levels of government I've dealt with, which is all of them, and maybe not in great detail, of course, but I just think there's plenty of room for efficiency gains.

So if Musk can say, oh my gosh, are you kidding me?

AI can take out and do these jobs.

And we could automate this and that.

And so maybe I'm putting too much faith in that department.

But I think if they really do get scrutinized, I think we can make over 20%.

I'm sure Doge will.

come out with a report that says you can cut 60%, right?

The problem is that

the judge

doesn't

have

any authority to make those cuts.

It's just a recommendation.

That will have to go to Congress.

Right.

And that's where I'm hoping that the grassroots thing will kick in,

right?

Yeah.

There's public awareness that, oh my gosh, well Musk knows how to run a company and, you know, that there'll be more credibility and more support for Congress people to make it.

Make it happen.

Yeah, I would hope so.

And he's the guy that owns the business that is essentially the public square.

So it's hard to think of somebody who's in a better position to actually make a recommendation that could be implemented.

I just still think that's.

really difficult, not if possible, but-

And let me give the last reason for my concern, and maybe we can go on the break and switch topics, or maybe if I say something, we can spur additional conversation.

But the last reason for my concern is this, is I think the bureaucratic administrative state is strong enough that in order to get 20, you need to aim for like 80 or 100.

And this is just like a judgment call I make.

I don't have like evidence for this belief, but like, I think that's true.

And what Trump has signaled to me is that he is maybe more skeptical of the administrative state than he used to be.

But he is still putting Marco Rubio in his cabinet, right?

Like, the guy does not have the attitude of, we need to burn it to the ground and salt the earth.

And I think to get 20%, you need to have the attitude of, like, think of Malay.

Malay says explicitly, ah, I want to destroy it.

I want to burn it to the ground.

I want to salt the earth.

And he actually got rid of agencies now.

He didn't, like, they're still a big state in Argentina.

He didn't get rid of, like, 60% of the workforce yet.

That was his attitude, though, and he actually succeeded at, like,

I don't know, I don't know what the actual percentage is.

But that's, that's my point is he seems less rhetorically fiery than Malay, less passionate than Malay.

No chainsaw.

And yeah, no chainsaw, still hangs with Marco Rubio.

So I don't think that he'll get as much success.

And Malay has had a ton of success in relative terms, but still like it, we're not talking like, you know, during the swamp levels of success, even for him.

Yeah, I

think I'm really skeptical about 20% across the board.

I would be really happy if.

any particular federal agency that decreased by 20%.

Yeah, that's fair.

All right, so we'll come back from break.

Those of you who are sick and tired of listening to politics, we'll move into sports and some other things as well.

So hang in there.

We'll be back with predictions in just a bit.

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Each of these three fields is interesting in their own right, but they intersect in ways that are important to understand, both individually and for your community.

If you find philosophy fascinating but want to make sure that your study of the subject is practical, if you enjoy economic analysis but want to see how economic laws interact with moral principles,

If you are interested in politics but want to explore how economic and ethical realities constrain our political choices, you should consider the PPE program at Ottawa University.

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We have some great high school student programs like PPE Fest.

This is an event where students get to listen to some world-renowned speakers and then participate in competition geared around philosophy, politics, and economics.

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We have a college credit microeconomics course that runs every eight weeks.

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If you know some students interested in programs like these, contact Peter, Justin, or Russ today.

Okay, so we're back.

And before we leave politics, I had to do one more.

I will bet that one agency will be cut.

And the reason is I feel like they need a sacrificial lamb to make it look like they did it.

And so they'll find, I don't know how many agencies there are.

it might be kind of a small one or somewhat insignificant.

But over the years, agencies have always kind of merged together.

That's why the National Park Service handles like historic renovation.

It's like, why does the National Park Service handle that?

Because they started an agency and then they merged them.

So anyway, that's my big prediction.

So we can merge it out.

No, it doesn't.

Well, I guess it does.

I guess it does.

I guess it does.

If you get rid of enough employees in the market, China.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're right.

I wasn't meaning it to be like, no employees are lost and we merge.

But it could be a few functions of an agency that needs to go away.

And that'll be the sacrificial lamb to show the general public that they're making progress.

Yeah.

Well, let's move into important things.

So we can talk sports.

I think usually we do football.

We could predict other things.

I have no idea.

I don't know anything about basketball.

I won't pretend like it.

I know very little about baseball.

But we can do sports.

Again, it's December 13th now.

So we're not even to the playoffs yet.

I think there's, what, three or four weeks left in the end of the season?

Yeah, they play all the way to the end of December.

A few teams have clinched playoff spots.

Go cheese.

And I think even, I think the Bills have even clinched their division because the rest of the division is so bad.

But I I think what I feel comfortable making predictions with respect to the NFL for Super Bowl this year I predict the chiefs every year I try to think of a reason it won't be them and I predict someone else and every year they win anyways So at this point like I'm never gonna bet against Andy Reed and Patrick Mahomes again I predicts the chiefs they might not win they frankly they don't look very good this year But I will say they don't look much worse than last year They win a lot of games by one score But that was actually true last year too if you look back it's a little bit more frequent this year the play is a little uglier

But that just doesn't seem to matter.

Like, it doesn't seem to matter how they win.

If they make it to the playoffs, it seems like they find a way.

I'm tired of betting against them.

The Bills look like the best team in football right now.

The Eagles look really good right now.

But to me, it's like, I think the Chiefs will win.

I'm done betting against them.

Well, my good buddy Skip Crooker, who is at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and he's a total sports nerd, econometric geek, predictor guy.

He said, don't even look at what the Chiefs did during the regular

season

because a new team is going to be out for the playoffs.

And so I'm saying they're in the Super Bowl.

I've learned to follow Skip's logic.

and don't base past experience of this year on what you're going to see when the playoffs hit.

So I'm with the Chiefs and then I got to throw the Vikings in there.

The Vikings look more solid than they have in a long time.

The Lions are going to be really tough to beat, but you know, Russ will be on cloud nine if we have a Vikings Chiefs Super Bowl.

Yeah, I think the Lions are my pick for the NFC if I had to pick one and maybe the Eagles I don't know but but I could the Vikings are looking good like there There's no denying they played really close against the Lions.

They can beat them.

So there's they're getting healthy again.

Yeah Justin, what do you got on football?

I've watched a total of zero games this season.

I just pulled up the win-loss record So I'm going chiefs Eagles with chiefs winning it.

So Chiegel Super Bowl Chiegel

Super

Bowl

So I know Justin's very interested in the NFL, but we can also move to college here.

And I would say, even though college I know even less about, I'm just going to say Georgia.

Georgia's in the playoff this year.

Kirby smarts a good coach.

No team is super impressive this year from what I can tell.

And there's obviously good teams, but it seems like every team has a bad loss here or there.

Georgia had one bad loss, but other than that, I think they've been good all season.

I'm just going to bet on them because they won last year.

I hope Indiana wins.

Indiana is my hope.

The more ridiculous the winner, the better for me in college football, but I'll take Georgia as the likely winner.

Well, this is a ridiculous prediction, but Alabama will not be national champions.

I'll throw that out there because I've seen them lose twice.

They're not the playoff, are they?

I think they're not.

They might not even be.

They've been bad this year for the first time in forever.

And I just hope everybody has a good time.

Well, let's move on then to Bitcoin.

Yeah, I think Bitcoin is a good one.

Actually, before we move on to Bitcoin, I just have to say that if listeners, you go back one year to the prediction episode, Russ said Trump was going to be in the office, and these two chumps over here said it was going to be Biden.

That's true.

I got that one

going for

me.

Yeah, I also said I don't think Biden would be replaced.

I was wrong about that, too.

So I think two for two, I was wrong on election stuff.

So I tend towards being a pessimist.

I think that's like an economist-coped way of, you know, offsetting my losses when my hopes do fail.

At least I was right about it, right?

Yeah, so...

Yeah, but Bitcoin, yeah.

Bitcoin's always the worst of these for me.

I don't have any insider information.

I have no idea where Bitcoin's going.

I've never had any idea where Bitcoin's going.

I've always been wrong about Bitcoin in every sense, direction, magnitude, whatever.

Yeah, we definitely got to let Justin go first.

Yeah.

And whatever he says, that's where my money's going to be.

So I think I was right about Bitcoin.

I think I... I think

they

were.

break in a hundred but i also had a break in a hundred the previous year right

so eventually some year you want to make this year i think it breaks a hundred broken clocks even the breaking clock is right so

you know that was always the criticism of like some economists like they've predicted

11 of the past two recessions or something like that, right?

So I think there are probably two things to bet on or to make a prediction with Bitcoin.

Next year is it higher or lower than it is right now, which is like a hundred, essentially a hundred K, right?

A hundred one or something.

Yeah.

And then the second one is like its height peak for the year.

Okay.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah,

I say higher way on the higher that was easy one.

I don't know about this peak business, but that's where we need your help

I might take the opposite.

I think it might end lower than it is right now, but I bet it peaks around like The hush goes over the side 160.

Oh, wow.

All right.

That's kind of where I was thinking you might go

Yeah, no, I think that I understand why you're saying that because of the cyclical nature of it It does seem like it like goes to high highs and then drops to like catastrophic lows never, you know Bitcoin dies again.

That's what

it seems like a catastrophic low.

Yeah, yeah, exactly Yeah, yeah, yeah a catastrophic low of only $90,000 The derivative

of the consecutive catastrophic lows is still positive.

Yeah, yeah So the record then what was the 2024 low?

Was it 18 or something?

It was pretty

low,

wasn't it?

I think it was that in 2023.

Definitely below $50,000.

I'll find out now.

Yeah, so it's $42,000.

Oh, is that all?

Okay.

I'm thinking

back to $23,000 when it had that big fall down.

Yeah, the most recent time it was below $20,000 was, looks like December 2022.

22, 23,

yeah.

Okay.

Now, time flies.

Well, I think related, unless Justin has something else on that, let's see, I think won't surprise anyone.

then Justin would probably agree.

I don't think any other cryptos will ever overtake Bitcoin.

Justin sold me on that.

I think there's not a new Bitcoin coming.

There might be a pet industry of Ethereum forever, but nothing's going to take the place.

I'm full on board with that now.

Economically, I think we also generally make economic predictions.

Talk about how things are going to go.

Last year, I had a more pessimistic view than I have this year.

Last year, I thought there was a good chance that we would have a pretty decent correction.

And I think we have had some slowdown to a certain extent, at least with respect to like

real incomes for a decent part of the year median household incomes have gone down relative to pre-pandemic because of inflation mostly.

But the big correction never came, you know, not like a large correction where a bunch of people lose their jobs.

And at this point, I think it's not going to.

I do think that there will continue to be inflation.

That's my one comment is I'm not sure we're done with inflation.

Rates are still pretty high from like the Fed's perspective, at least in recent history.

You can see at them as they drive those rates back down, you know, velocity picks up, inflation starts to go.

So I could see relatively sustained, you know, levels of like this level of inflation for a while to continue to make up for that like 40% increase in the money, spider and COVID.

I don't think we've hit 40% inflation yet since then.

And that's what chronic theory of money would predict everything else held constant.

So I expect continued inflation and I don't think it'll go up again, but I think it's just going to be sticky.

I agree with the sticky inflation, but I think economic growth, we're gonna hit 4%.

Okay, I do.

I think the biggest thing is these profit expectations.

I mean, we got a regulatory environment set to go less regulations in, I think, really across the board.

Even when Trump came in in 2016, he made a policy of eliminate three regulations for every one new one, and it turned out to be

24 were eliminated for every one new one.

And so I think the writings on the wall for all these industries to be bullish and investors to be bullish, energy to be bullish, I think it's 4% growth.

And that would be maybe give me a little bit of time, second quarter or second half of 2025.

But okay, yeah.

So just to get this right, you guys both agree essentially on inflation, but Russ, you're

more bullish on economic growth.

Inflation remaining stagnant.

I mean, like at its three to four percent level, I guess I don't know what the latest CPI was, but isn't it something 3.7 or something?

Something like that.

So I think the Fed will struggle to bring that down to its target of two because of the economic activity beefing it up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I generally agree with that.

I don't know if I'd say four percent, but I think your taste generally pretty on.

I could see there being some stresses with.

some of Trump's policies that maybe caused some negative impacts to deflate numbers, but I think generally the long-term economic health improves because of the regulation cutting, I agree.

And I think part of it's the big red wave that the general public, popular vote, blah, blah, blah.

I mean, all of that's kind of working to that prediction tip for me, that they supported it, that that guy got in and this cabinet picks and other things look like we're heading that direction for pro-growth.

It's a notable exception being those tank tariffs, which I'm still hoping is just a threat.

I don't know if we want to get into a tariff prediction, but it looks like everybody's rolling over just on the threat itself.

So Trump once again, might have did the art of the deal thing and posed a threat and got the results without having to implement them.

Yeah.

Governor Trudeau will definitely cave.

So we don't have to worry about.

Have you seen the ads running for Ontario?

We're your friend.

We've been great trading partners for that's amazing.

Yeah.

Justin, any

economic predictions?

No, my economic predictions are always just to listen to YouTube and especially when you're both in agreement, then Yeah, I think I'm probably a little bit more bullish like on the rust side of bullishness because it sounds like that might be where you guys differed a little bit on economic growth, but

Yeah, whatever you tell me on inflation, I'll believe.

So to close out the listeners, you could feel free next year.

You know, if this hasn't all come true, you can leave comments on the podcast telling us how wrong we were.

And that's, you know, in some cases, that'll be great.

In some cases, maybe not so much.

But we hope you enjoyed the podcast today.

This has been a production at the Gorton Institute at Ottawa University.

Drs.

Russ McCulloch, Justin Clark, and Peter Jacobson.

Thank you for joining us today.

As usual, be fruitful and multiply.

Thanks.

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Wow, what a fast hour that was on KXEL.

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Until next week, be safe, be smart, be good, be strong.

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Bye-bye.