KXEL Presents: The Jacobsen Group Podcast – February 7, 2026

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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.

Hi, and welcome to our show.

I'm Justin Clark, the Menard Family Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, and I'm joined by Dr. Peter Jacobson, the Guartney Professor of Economic Education and Research, and Dr. Russ McCullough, the Wayne Angel Distinguished Chair of Economics and founder of the Guartney Institute.

All right, so it's time for our annual prediction show.

So we thought it's time.

There's some new things going on.

I guess there's a

number of areas we can get into, but we thought we'd let Dr. Jacobson lead us off.

Peter, what do you got to say on predictions this year?

Yeah, so we try to do every year a list of predictions, and I don't remember what mine were for last year.

That's

because none of

them

were right.

Yeah, so I think it's always fun to do that, and so we should do it again this year.

And usually we separate these out into different categories.

And so we could think about political predictions, sports prediction.

We usually have predictions about Bitcoin.

I don't remember what it was last year.

Justin is usually the one I listen to.

So I'm going to mortgage my house on this year's prediction.

So I hope he gets it right.

So yeah, that's generally I think the the route to go probably the one that makes the most sense start with is the political predictions just because those are the most maybe hot button you know interesting to the average Joe sort of predictions either that are sports so

I

guess when you say political instead of like people who's going to get into office it could be like what policy changes do we think are coming up or what's going to happen to Maduro or whatever that could go we can go a lot of places with that

so yeah yeah and the big two would be what's going to happen with the House and the Senate because it's midterm elections this year and so November there's going to be elections for US House and US Senate and so in theory there will be

some sort of result on who owns the house, who owns the Senate, maybe it stays the same, maybe it doesn't.

Republicans, I think, barely have the edge in the house right now and have a few seeded edge in the Senate currently.

So we can start off with those and I'll go ahead and start off.

I'm not going to say anything interesting on this, actually.

I'm going to stick with what most people are saying, which is that I think Republicans will keep the Senate and that's just based on the math.

So every year only a third of the Senate goes up for reelection.

And so it does not turn over very often.

And my understanding is the math works out such that the seats that are up for reelection this year are not ones that are likely going to flip the Composition of the Senate.

So ultimately, I think Republicans will keep the Senate But I do think that they'll lose the house and so this might be controversial among some Republicans But then it is what the current polling suggests.

It's what the betting markets are showing and it's also historically my

assumption is always that a president will lose the House in their midterm election.

And the reason for that is I think that Americans are generally energized when their side is out of control.

And so when Republicans are in control, Trump's in office, Republicans are not going to show up to vote at the midterms.

This actually has been documented in the ballot.

In fact, I saw some comments that Trump made that he was going to have like his name somehow be on the ballot still.

So that way people could vote for him in some way at the midterms even though he's not running for anything just to get the turnout up didn't make any sense, but So overall I think that the house will flip I think it'll be a divided Legislature don't know if that'll have much impact on Trump because he's not really going through the legislature for much right now But I don't know what do you guys think?

Well, I guess I want to clarify in question.

I thought

There was a term like with even the war thing here that moved power back to Congress so that Trump couldn't do quite the same level.

I don't know if you were just in whatever passed like within the last week or so that put the power back to Congress.

Does that resonate with you guys at all?

I think I saw some stuff about that.

I just don't know what changed.

I mean, it seems like Trump did everything you wanted to do and nothing he didn't want to do as far as I know.

Yeah, this came after the Maduro thing, like whether that's kind of like more declaration or to the extent to what we can do.

Yeah, I think Congress just said we're not declaring war on Venezuela.

Like, I think that's kind of what happens, which like, that's fine.

But the problem is it doesn't matter anymore.

You know, it'd be nice if it did.

But

You know, if you can't say we're doing too much in Venezuela when we spent the last 20 years in Afghanistan, then I rack in the Congress and do anything about it.

So yeah, yeah.

And there what I did see something where I think the Supreme Court said Trump's not allowed to mobilize the National Guard in in a certain way.

But in the decision, it also said he is allowed to mobilize federal troops.

So.

My take on a lot of these decisions is that where they there's always this great fanfare of like, oh, we've decided we can stop Trump from doing this thing.

It's actually like just a little Dutch boy with his fingers in the dam.

No, you just you've just post factoed.

You're allowed to say that that was wrong and he can't do it like that again.

And that's my take

on where we had on Greenland.

I think Greenland is settled.

I think we'll get nothing more than we have right now, which is the concept of a deal.

So the other question prediction, which it's harder to have a hard line on this one in terms of like whether you're right or wrong, but who the front runners will be.

Because by the end of this year, I think we're going to start to see sub talks of presidential campaigns for 2028.

And so my view, and again, I'm being boring on all of this, but my view is it'll be advanced and new some.

I don't see any

significant challengers, maybe the Democrats will shuffle Newsome out of there.

But it seems like anybody who has tried has kind of failed.

So I don't know, either of you have any different opinions on the midterms or the heirs of parents?

I think a lot of people are trying to make the case for possibly a Rubio or a, and then on the other side, like booty judge, again, seems like he's, you know,

got a new goatee or whatever that he's driving around, that he's trying to do a new presidential nomination.

I'm actually pretty skeptical that we'll know who the front runners are this year.

I'm always shocked with how late in the game things seem to actually come together in the past couple of years.

Like at midterms during the Biden administration, I was very confident that it would have been DeSantis and not Trump in 2024.

And of course, I would have thought there was absolutely no way that Camelot would have been there.

And that's its own unique situation, of course.

And

now DeSantis isn't, we're not even talking about him, which is kind of funny, because he's still out there.

I would throw a wild card of Amy Klobuchar from Minneapolis.

So she's talking about throwing her hat in the race for Wall's position.

So she's a senator now.

And she said in the past she didn't want to.

If somehow she takes governorship and somewhat makes things better in Minneapolis, I think there'd be national attention because of what's gone on to say, gosh, look at what she did for Minneapolis.

And she had her hat in the ring before.

So I think that that's an outsider.

I certainly not making that prediction.

I think the Newsom is the safe bet.

But I think there's a chance that she could be an up and comer.

Yeah, should we be radioactive or rising star?

Yeah.

Okay.

Go

ahead, Justin.

It seems like I've noticed a lot of people complaining that the time has been alone for doing things like passing legislation about voter ID and securing like making

eliminating a bunch of the mail and ballot stuff that kind of went wild during COVID and I've heard a lot of people on the right say like this was time that was wasted.

At least the Trump administration spent a lot of time doing

big stuff via executive order that can easily just be repealed by the next person instead of doing things like fixing these systemic issues which the argument goes enable a kind of electoral fraud and fixing that would have been the more important thing to do.

Do you see any progress being or any changes being made on like a national voter ID act or anything before the midterm?

No, I don't think so.

I think both chambers are too close, especially Trump's alienation of some of the Republicans in the Senate, like going after Rand Paul or, you know, Massey's in the house, but Massey, I think

he's

alienated enough of his people or MTG being another one that he's going to have a hard time pushing through anything as closely divided as those are.

So yeah, I

mostly agree that it seems like the time for that sort of thing is gone.

But, you know, you never know, in politics.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

I wanted to circle by real quick to the Vance versus Rubio.

I think Vance by a long shot because I don't think Rubio resonates with people like Trump resonated, but I think he speaks more cleanly and better.

They might be thinking we get that, whereas Rubio, I think under different circumstances, I like Marco Rubio, but

But with Vance and the current Trump movement, I think Vance wins by quite a bit over Rubio.

Vance is really savvy on online.

Like they made all these weird memes about him, you know, like the chubby face and the big like Jerry Curl hairdo.

And then he's savvy enough to like repost that.

And he plays into

trolling in a way that kind of helped Trump in 2016.

And you're right, I don't see Rubio doing that at all.

And that can, I mean, for better or worse, he does seem to be arousing the kind of the same passion that helped Trump get rid of a bunch of the old hat GOP, the Jebs of the

world.

Okay, Peter kind of shut me down on Greenland, but I'm here to say on public prediction, we own Greenland.

It's coming.

Now, I say that when I say own, it might not become a state or something, but some sort of more direct control is my prediction on Greenland.

And whether it's a territory, whether it's something, but something different than what it is today.

It will not be under Denmark's control.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think it's coming our way.

And the reason I think that is I think the people of Greenland would support that.

And

I don't even know that really.

I'm kind of mostly making things up and I remember.

I remember hearing that before.

What is their population, 55,000 or something?

And so I kind of feel like we can sweeten the pot much better than what Denmark ever could.

And so I think that'll eventually come to some sort of vote.

And again, it'll escalate our relationship with them away from Denmark.

Okay.

I bet it's going to be some kind of weird NATO protectorate.

And Peter, you're saying status quo more or less?

Yeah, we'll get some treaty of, like, we can have some number of troops or yada yada, but it'll be under Denmark.

That's my expectation.

Okay.

All right.

Well, this looks like a good spot for our break.

So when we come back, we got to hit some sports, some Bitcoin updates, and a few other areas.

So we'll be back in just a

bit.

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Otto University has an exciting new major, PPE, which stands for philosophy, politics, and economics.

Each of these 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 more 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.

This spring, Ottawa University is organizing a PPE League competition or Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

Students in this competition will compete leveraging the ideas of philosophy, politics and economics in various events.

If you're a professor or an advisor of college students and you're interested in your school competing in PPE League this spring, contact Peter, Justin or Russ today.

By 2030, the Gorton Institute will be known for its alumni, supporters, and participants who incorporate economic understanding with their faith in their careers, vocations, communities, and personal lives.

We have some great programming going on for high school students.

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All right, so we're back and I thought Bitcoin might be a good spot to start.

I really don't even pay attention to it very closely, even though I am a proud owner of Bitcoin because I listened to Dr. Clark's advice and did a little bit of thinking on my own.

I'm not a believer in just taking what other people say.

But nonetheless, what's Bitcoin predictions this year, Justin?

uh let's see well last year um i think our question was whether or not it would hit 100k yes i believe you're

right

yeah and i predicted it would but i had also been predicting that

every year prior to that if we go back to four years yeah every year but

i i think i could be wrong about this but i actually think that your prediction was spot on i think you predicted it would go to 100k but then it would create a back down which is exactly what has happened

so

i could be wrong maybe i'm giving you more credit in my head than i should but i think i remember you saying that

yeah no i and i did say that if it

The way it usually goes is it goes to some new high and then craters back down to right around the previous high, right?

And the previous high was like 67K before this big run up.

And so I think that did have, I mean, not right to 67, but it dipped into like the 80s and stuff.

I think I actually stopped paying attention when it was doing its drop back down because I don't think it's good for my mental health to be watching that all the time.

But I just looked actually yesterday, I think for the first time in maybe a month and a half.

And it's in the 90s, high to mid 90s.

And it's high last year was I think 127.

And so I guess my question this year, my question is, is it whether or not it will break 100K?

I think it's hovering around that anyway now.

So it's kind of trivial if it does and it's not 100K, it wouldn't be an all-time higher any ceiling.

I think the question is like, is 200K?

And so there's a big...

divide I think in the Bitcoin community now about whether or not we're in the actual like four year trough or whether this was just a blip and we're still in the rise that led it to 127 and I don't know anymore.

And I guess there's probably a lot of listeners that they might think it goes from 90 to back to 20.

So another way of thinking about this prediction is you're not thinking that at all.

Right.

What's the, here's a good one.

What do you think would be the lowest it will go in the upcoming year?

Like is it there now or do you think it might even get down to 80 or who knows, something else?

Low 80s.

Yeah.

So low 80s would be the floor in your opinion, your prediction.

Yeah.

If it dropped below low 80s, I'd be surprised.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And ceiling, I'd be absolutely shocked if it went above 250.

In this coming year, but you wouldn't,

Rule that out.

No, I think 250.

5% chance, 1% chance, half a percent chance, 20% chance.

Five.

I mean, five.

It seems like to me those are the two options, whether or not we're in a bliff on the rise that led it to 127, in which case the bull case for the max.

There is something around 250.

Or we are already in the trough in between peaks, in which case a low of 80 seems like it makes sense.

And I have no idea which one of those we're in.

I will say having made a successful prediction last year.

I'm virtually guaranteed to have a wrong prediction this year.

But what's interesting, listeners, if Justin knows the most about Bitcoin of anybody I know, and that's the volatility he's thinking of, even though he knows the stuff very good.

So it is not a get in and get out and get rich.

I'm in it for the long term, and you have to make your own decisions.

But there's no guarantee and a lot of uncertainty.

Yeah, and I was saying, you know, the set it and forget it plan is best not only for your portfolio, but all but more for your personal sanity.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that we could go kind of on a similar I don't have any Bitcoin thoughts.

I no idea could go up could go down could stay the same long term.

I think it'll be out.

But I don't know what long term means.

But economically, I think that there's room for some other predictions.

I think this is going to be a year of returning inflation.

and I don't say that happily but you know the Fed's easing off on rates and we've had you know most of the the dollar creation during the COVID era has been accounted for with inflation but I think there's still some outstanding so I expect inflation this year that's my economic prediction I don't think recession or anything like that could be wrong no idea you know

The first thing in economists will tell you is we can't actually predict those things.

If we could, then you could be rich off that.

But I do expect inflation to pick up because of the Fed's actions.

I don't think that we're... I don't think the fundamentals have changed in any way that warrants us to cut rates and not have inflation.

So if the Fed explicitly targets like 2% inflation, then when you say you expect inflation, what kind of floors and ceilings are you thinking of?

Yeah, so like, I don't know, back in the four to six range, probably, rather than 2%.

I mean, that's not that bold of a prediction, because I think we're still hovering around 3.5% or something like that, Russ, you could correct me if I'm wrong.

But yeah, I see it taking back up to what it was, you know, a year or two ago.

And that honestly wouldn't be that hard.

I mean, a lot of what's driving inflation is just a few things like gas is real low right now, energy prices in general are pretty low.

Certain grocery store items like eggs are very low.

I don't think it'll take very much for those to creep back up.

And I think the lower rates and Trump, you know, pumping money in to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and all that stuff, he is, he aspires to centrally plan.

And so I do think that the inflation is going to be the way that that manifests.

Well, and we don't want to forget the economy is just running really well hot right now, maybe, maybe too hot, maybe, but a part of it.

There's still this mystery of, is it AI?

Is AI feeling, I heard, I don't know, the, you know, the experts like Elon Musk saying, you know, this AI is doing stuff that we weren't even thinking about again.

And we heard, we've been hearing this, you know, that it's just exponential.

And so is that part of this, I think the last I heard from the six months ago or whatever, is 4.4% GDP growth.

And so if

That's all humming along.

And it's true AI growth and not due to either monetary policy or fluffy fiscal policy.

I also think we shouldn't underestimate the regulatory on energy environment.

I think that's, you know, energy touches so many things.

And so the regulations that were lowered and encouraged for American drilling and other things, that can be a big spike too.

Yeah, I'm always a little bit bearish on the impact of deregulation on inflation overall because like MVPY, the only way you're going to lower or the only way that inflation is going to come down is by increasing Y, which deregulation would do.

But like, are you going to improve the GDP by more than 1% growth?

That's actually asking a lot.

Like 1% increases a lot.

So do I think deregulation will lead to a 1% increase in economic growth?

maybe, but that's a 1% change in inflation, which is not nothing.

So you're right that that could have an impact.

I'm a little more bearish on AI, but I'm not willing to make that into a prediction.

I sort of think AI is going to have a rough year, but I don't feel confident enough to actually say that that's going to happen.

So that's my intuition, but not a prediction.

I'm bearish on AI.

The easy prediction for me is like, we're not going to get a fully automated luxury communism via AI this year.

And Russ, you laugh, but that's a phrase people actually

use.

That's the first time I've heard it, but I

love it.

Yeah, fully

automated luxury communism.

Luxury communism.

Wow.

Yeah.

That

is scary, but funny at the same time.

Yeah.

So I don't think that's going to happen.

I actually think that

Yeah, like Peter, I'm bearish on it.

I guess I'm willing to make predictions, but I just don't know how to couch them,

I

guess, more than being averse to making them.

I think that you're going to have a big uptick in people using AI for kind of trivial purposes like making

like my buddy making videos of him winning the billion-dollar lottery where he's shaking hands, getting a big check for 1.6 billion.

Yeah, everyone's going to be an expert in Photoshop, but I'll sound like Paul Krugman here.

Like I don't, I think it's not going to have as, you know, Paul Krugman famously said the internet's going to have about as much impact on the economy as the fax machine.

And he was wrong about that.

So I realize I might be setting myself up here, but I don't think that

AI is going to be autonomously doing things in the way that people who think fully automated luxury communism comes about think it will be.

I think it's it will be a nice tool that people use in certain niches.

Well, I am bullish, so I guess I'll go against both of you.

I think AI is having some real impacts and they're they're so subtle and helping relatively mundane tasks that they never hit the headlines.

But I think

We're still a long ways from people fully utilizing and understanding.

and putting it into play.

I think we'll continue to find new ways like, oh gosh, I could let AI do this or whatever.

So I guess I'm a little more on the the bullish side, but I'm also at the same time, that's why I was laughing about the communist, luxury communism.

I agree, I don't think it's heading that direction.

I'd be more fearful of it killing us than leading to awesome central planning with it.

I think it can be done in such a way that there's still competition and it's being a productive asset for companies and otherwise.

And the fun factor with the making videos is out there too, but that only helps people learn the power of it so that then they're like, oh, I could see doing this at my company.

Even though it was fun to just create this video, now it could be more productive.

So I think we've hit a lot.

We've still got sports.

We're getting close

to the end

of time.

I don't really have, I don't follow enough sports to be a good predictor for sports.

The only sports I follow are football, and we already had the college national championship.

I would have picked Indiana, but I can't prove that, of course.

I predict that for college football next year, Nebraska will be very disappointing, as usual.

Oh, okay, that's

easy.

I'm going to predict that Nebraska wins the basketball national championship, not because I want them to, but because it will further disappoint me that we become a basketball school.

And so that's going to be my prediction for the NCAA.

And for sports, I've got Seahawks for the Super Bowl.

I

think Minnesota is going to be, their shame is going to be, be complete when Sam Darnold wins the Super Bowl.

forever regret that decision.

So

yep, another nail in my coffin.

Yeah, that's my suspicion.

But I'd be happy if the Patriots did you since the Chiefs don't get to win.

I hope it's somebody that nobody likes.

The Seahawks are so dominant on defense.

Yeah, that was just that I really hadn't watched them much this year.

But yeah, I would also concur Seahawks are champs.

Yeah, by the way, we didn't say this, but we're podcasting on the first or the

the 23rd of January.

Before the even the the championships are this weekend so yes well before we don't even know the final the final two at this point.

And I predict the NBA will have the winner will be whoever shaves points the most effectively.

That's my prediction for the NBA winner since that that league is one big gambling ring and there's really nothing else to it.

Yeah.

Yeah and that I guess leads me a little bit to the to the betting market on whether new laws will be passed to either govern or sanction or take away the things that are going on in the betting markets where there's no house take is my understanding the ones that you've been following Peter and so will they now be allowed to enter into this sports thing?

All right let's do it!

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This

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Guys, the Jacobson report this morning on Saturday.

As always, we do our business salute and again, the great people at Hames.

back with us for an encore, part of that multi-generational family of leaders who bring us safe, affordable, beautiful.

homes in our community manufactured homes.

Clint, you're back for an encore.

Thank you for having me back.

I'm looking forward to talking with you.

Absolutely.

Well, Clint, Summit View and Grant View, it's almost like two little cities in the beautiful southwest part of Cedar Rapids, a pastoral setting with farm landscapes of the background and yet close to the airport, close to retail.

How ideally are you guys situated for these nice little communities?

Well, we're close

to all the shopping centers.

So we've got Walmart, Target, Menards.

Everything is really close by.

Fairway, all the amenities.

Cedar Rapids is building a beautiful library.

Just a couple blocks from us here.

So there's access to about anything you can think of.

Guys, these are beautiful manufactured homes.

When I drive through your two communities, Clint, these look like

you know, regular homes.

We've come a long, long way from the beginning of the industry when these were referred to as mobile homes.

These are such fine quality craftsmen construction and sturdiness that when Cedar Rapids was hit by that horrific derecho half a decade ago, your unit stayed completely intact.

That's right.

I mean, homeowners

had some of the traditional stuff like siding, shingles, maybe a couple windows here and there, but nothing different than what you would have had in a real estate home elsewhere in town.

You know, you've got this wonderful website, hamshomes.com, H-A-M-E-S, H-O-M-E-S.com, Hams, the Homes People, and your listings, there's something for everybody here, Clint.

You've got for $37,000, a nice three bed, two bath,

just under 1,000 square feet, mid-range for just under 90,000 at 89.9.

You've got a four-bed two-bath, 1,200 plus square feet, and then you've also got, for 160.99, a four-bed two-bath, almost 2,500 square feet.

These are spacious, beautiful, comfortable homes and on nice lots.

Absolutely.

There's plenty of space for a garage.

If you want to add a garage, some home sites already have a garage on them.

There's usually a utility shed that comes with the home.

a big deck on a lot of the homes.

I mean, there's a little bit of something for everyone, whether you're downsizing or you're just getting started in life.

There's just a lot to like with our current inventory.

Yeah, guys, we love Hames Homes.

Spacious, attractive, manufactured home communities.

You're gonna find old fashioned community spirit there.

Quiet, safe neighborhoods where folks have a quick friendly smile and wave and also you guys do so much

for the community and so much for your residential areas there.

You've got dog parks, Frisbee, golf in the area.

You've got a pantry.

You guys really are community stewards, Clint Hames.

Yeah, most certainly are.

We have a couple senior groups that get together.

We've got a Friday morning breakfast, walking trails, playgrounds for the kids, the school bus.

picks all the kids up throughout both communities.

Again, just like the homes you have available, our communities have a lot to offer as well.

Well, they talk about the triple option football.

You guys have the triple option for lifestyle.

You've got beautiful units there for 55 plus aged people like my wife, Deborah and me.

You've got homes for down signers.

You've got homes for young families.

And, you know, Deb and I have been downsizing.

It's just great.

And you're close to even Iowa City if you want to be there.

Let's talk brass tacks about the money.

You know, sometimes buying a home is a hassle, but Clint, with you guys, you guys are ready to even work out financing and insurance.

Most certainly we've got a financing application on our website.

You can make an appointment to me with myself or Curtis here in our office and we have lending partners that we work with every day that would be ready to take on many new applicants.

And you guys also

buy homes.

People can sell their manufactured or mobile homes.

That's right.

Right now, we are a little limited because both of our communities are completely full.

But the homeowners, yeah.

But the homeowners that live here, they've got a couple of different options on selling their home and selling it back to us is certainly one of them.

You know, what really amazes me is how loyal your folks are.

in terms of what they say about you guys on the website.

Let's talk about how folks can get in touch with you by website, by phone, by Facebook, and by driving by, Clint.

Absolutely.

We'd love to hear from anyone.

Our phone number here is 319-377-4863.

You can find all of our inventory, tons of information about our communities at hemshomes.com.

We can be reached by email by sales at hemshomes.com or you can come visit us here at the office.

We're located at 5410 Wabash.

and see if you're happy with Iowa.

And guys, people just swear by the great folks at Hames.

Tara Tudine says, one of my biggest dreams for my family was to own my own home and have a yard for my kids and just let loose and be kids.

Thanks to Hames, that is all coming true.

Terrence and Patricia say, we would be honored to recommend Hames to...

anyone.

And Jim Hunt says, I've received nothing but great help and advice from Kelly and Becky.

You can tell they love their jobs.

And the Zons say, Grandview is a clean, well-kept and safe community.

Problems that may arise or handle promptly, courageously and efficiently.

Management has always been very helpful and polite.

I mean, these accolades go on and on.

Zachary, mind you, Grandview is a nice, clean place.

And the Balmers

Chris and Mickey, we really are enjoying our new home.

Thanks to Hames for making it all possible for us.

You know, that's a testimonial when your people there say such good things about you guys.

Oh, most certainly is.

And we just have a fabulous staff.

Everybody's been here a long time.

So they've spent that time getting to know our homeowners.

And we're still one of the locally owned communities.

And so we're able to give back and reach out to people.

Well, as John and Bobby O'Brien say, you can tell that people care about their homes.

And Gabby Galloway says, great community and a great place to live.

And so guys, go over and see these folks here in Southwest Cedar Rapids.

Clint is always great talking to you as well as to Barbara and Curtis.

You guys really are a multi-generational family that

It's hard to believe you can continue to improve upon the legacy of Founders Kurt Norma Hames, but you guys have taken it to yet another higher level.

Yes, they certainly set us up for success here and we're going to carry on that mission.

Alright guys, we'll get ahold of our friends at Hames Homes guys.

Every week here we are delighted.

to have them on our program.

Go see them there at 5410 Wabash in Cedar Rapids on the corner of Wilson and West Post Road.

Go to their website, hamshomes.com.

Call them at that great Marion Legacy number at 319-377-4863 or catch them on Facebook.

And when you call, they can ask for the man.

They can ask for you right away.

They can talk to Clint Hames, right Clint?

I hope you

do.

All right, guys, well, we'll have Clint back soon along with Barbara and Curtis.

Thanks again for joining us today, Clint.

And stay warm.

Winter is only got six weeks left.

We've had a fairly mild winter.

We can grind out these last six weeks and then we're into March.

Cannot wait.

And go Hawks.

Clint Haymes, ladies and gentlemen.

And we will be back on the mighty blowtorch KXEL.

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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 Gorton Institute at Ottawa University.

Welcome to our show today.

My name is Peter Jacobson.

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

Joining us today, we have Dr. Russ Mathola, the Wayne Angel Chair of Economics, also founder of the Courtney Institute, and also Dr. Justin Clark, the Monara Family Professor of Philosophy and Ethics.

All right.

So we've talked a little bit about this before, maybe not directly, and I think things have changed.

Dr. Clark wanted to lead us and start us off with ice and ice, ice, baby.

It's not as good as the song is apparently.

So Justin, what do you got to say about Ice?

Hey, let's scrap that and start over.

Probably a good

idea.

Hopefully a few listeners got a chuckle.

Yeah.

So I think it'd be good to kind of talk about what's been going on, especially in Minneapolis and with Ice Enforcement and this kind of

came to a boil a couple weeks ago when Renee Goode was shot by an ICE officer.

Renee and her partner were engaged in like civilian disruption of ICE activities and she was fatally shot.

And in the wake of that, there's been even more protest against ICE enforcement in Minnesota.

And I feel like generally people are kind of

up in arms about it or applauding it, but it would probably be useful to get in the context about where this is coming from, why is this happening in Minneapolis, and not in other areas, and what do we think about it?

Is it super dangerous, potentially dangerous, good, bad, et cetera?

Well, I'll just say I was in Minneapolis.

I can't remember if I said this on a couple podcasts ago, but I was there the morning it happened.

I was visiting my parents and so I saw it kind of right on the front end.

Some of the things that have been happening since then have kind of made me think twice.

I felt like when I reviewed the tapes many times that morning because it was on in Minneapolis more times than just, you know, seeing it two or three days later on.

video clip.

So, you know, she made a movement forward and I thought it looked mostly justified at that point.

The more I get into it and the training of officers and kind of the heat of the moment, it seemed like there's maybe mistakes on both sides.

I think we had Renee Goode who's, let's just say, probably more of a, maybe novice isn't the right word, but inexperienced at protesting and how far you can push and whether she thought, you know, fatal violence would

potentially result from it.

And maybe the same thing from the ICE officer's standpoint of, you know, heat of the moment.

There's a car coming at me.

I've been trained to, you know, if that's assault with a deadly weapon under those circumstances.

And, you know, maybe I don't know if he has any regrets or not, but that just happened all kind of heat of the moment.

I think her wife was saying, go, go, go, and she's going and maybe she shouldn't have.

And then that all happened.

So I see a lot of it as a

unfortunate circumstances and heat of the moment that led to this and that's why I think a lot of people are up in arms with it is that these things can happen when when these protests are going on and people have a lack of understanding of the law on yes bullets can be used under certain circumstances when maybe they just thought I'm just protesting you know so that's my two cents there.

In terms of the specific incident I pretty much agree with Russ that

You know, people were saying, oh, she turned her wheel.

She wasn't trying to hit him or whatever.

But of course, like, she did hit him based on the video.

But B, if a car is coming towards you, you don't necessarily think about that sort of thing.

And so it may just happen to be the case that, like, yeah, she didn't intend to hurt the guy.

And he thought she did.

And maybe he was reasonable for thinking so.

So I tend to agree with your assessment of the incident itself for us.

It's not necessarily like there was a right side and a wrong side, but rather like two people who were making mistakes.

Now I am a little reluctant whenever we talk about law enforcement to embrace like the shoot first, ask questions later thing, but.

Again, you know, if you put yourself in the position of a car coming towards you, it's hard to imagine otherwise.

But in general, Justin, I don't know, it's you can give your assessment too.

But my impression is that Minneapolis and Minnesota in general have become a hotbed because of a lot of the migrant resettlement that's happens there, which seems to have like created a network that's attracting both legal and illegal immigrants from certain places.

So Somalia being like the one that everybody's aware of.

So kind of my

view of the situation is it kind of seems like what has happened is there was that guy who went around exposing the federal government fraud that was the fraud was not part of the government but the fraud in getting federal funds from a lot of these so-called daycare centers that either didn't have any kids in them or they were health centers too that weren't seeing patients but they were just collecting these federal you know benefits there was a guy going along and checking and he uncovered all this fraud

that seemed to be in a large part being done by a lot of the Somali immigrants there.

And this, I think, kind of tipped off the Trump admin, not really a tip-off, more of, like, it emboldened the Trump admin to step up enforcement, which has led us to where we are today.

I think that's my impression of the circumstance.

So, Justin, I don't know if you had more to say about why you think here, rather than, because you don't think Minnesota, when you think illegal immigrants, you think of, like,

You know, Arizona, right?

You think of like border states where people are crossing, but that's not what's going on here.

Yeah.

So I'll give my two cents on the shooting too and then do the same thing and back way out.

I think that it's really important to realize that there are a bunch of situations in life.

And I think I stole this from somebody.

I can't remember who that consists of essentially pulling the lever on a slot machine where there's a chance you're going to die.

And.

it's knowable going into those situations.

And aggravating a law enforcement officer is one of those situations.

If you try to flee law enforcement, that's that kind of situation.

What every parent needs to tell their kids is when a law enforcement officer asks you to stop, you just have to follow directions and see if you think you're wrong, right?

If you think they're wrong.

just seed, internally seed, and then go fight it in the court or whatever later.

But there's no possible way, or 99.99% of the time, it's not going to turn out in your favor if you don't follow law enforcement's orders.

And when you point this out, and you point out that, yeah, being shot is a predictable outcome of not obeying a law enforcement officer, people think you are saying that people deserve to be shot for not...

obeying law enforcement officers orders.

And that's not what we're saying, right?

We're saying that you shouldn't pull that lever because there's a chance you're going to die.

Not that since you pulled the lever, you deserve to die, right?

Those are two different things.

And I think that it's reasonable to point out that this is a situation where if you are interfering with a law enforcement officer, there's a

there's a chance you're gonna die.

And I think too many people have this kind of Marvel movie brain where they think that since I'm indignant and I think that I am morally correct, nothing bad can happen to me.

And actually the police have to follow my orders because I think that I'm in the right.

And that's kind of insane, but

The reason they have that attitude, I think, is because during the George Floyd riots of 2020, protesters were treated with kid gloves and were not, for the most part, charged when they burned down a bunch of cities across America.

And I think you can contrast this with the way that, for instance, the January 6th protesters were treated, who I think

expected to be treated like George Floyd protesters were, where instead, if you marched into the Capitol after being waved in by officers, you were thrown in solitary confinement for three years or whatever.

So I think we just have this large group of our citizenry that think that somehow they have sensed they believe that they're morally in the right, that they have carte blanche to just

do whatever they want and not obey law enforcement's orders.

And that's turning out the way that I would have predicted that it would turn out.

And it's also important to note that, you know, when I've heard a lot of people say, well, the officer shouldn't have shot.

Maybe he was that was too quick.

That same officer, I think nine months before was in a stop where somebody grabbed him and dragged him over 300 yards in an automobile.

So not only

do automobiles get used as weapons against police officers?

I mean, under the law, they're a deadly weapon.

But that same officer had had one used against him very recently.

He had to get an enormous amount of stitches because, you know, he almost died.

So I just think that this was predictable and understandable.

And I think that Renee Good and her partner made some really, really terrible decisions.

And so I can stop there before I

pull way back and say kind of what I think is going on in Minnesota too.

Yeah, and this might be a good spot for a break.

So I ended up having a discussion with students in Arizona when I was down there about this.

We started with Venezuela and then we gravitated over to ICE, but...

I was a little bit surprised.

The student was very respectful, by the way, and I really appreciated that.

I hope he'll join some of our other Gortney events.

And he was from London, and he hadn't actually watched the video, but he had heard a woman got...

you know killed and so he was kind of taking a stance he wasn't taking a strong stance but a stance kind of against ice and and then the other student we were with like you haven't seen the video here let me show you and and then it's like for the first time he's like seeing the car you know moving towards that it wasn't just ice killed a woman so boy that just opened my eyes that even on such a big event we can have these misperceptions because people aren't even really evaluating all of the evidence so so when we come back

I definitely want to hit the number of arrests.

But at the same time, there's been some people that have been harmed that I don't think should have been harmed with some of these ICE raids.

And so that's the part that's been bothering me a little bit more lately.

We should get into some good topics.

We'll be back in just a bit.

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OK, so we're back.

And Justin, you want to give us kind of your big picture view of how things are shaking down, especially up in Minneapolis.

Yeah.

So I think that this all, you know, this is downstream from.

the kind of battle over immigration and border enforcement that's actually been going on for the past 15 years.

And this goes, I mean, there were fights in both the Republican and the Democratic Party about whether or not we should have an open border policy.

Famously, a lot of neocons who switched to the Democratic Party were big fans of having a more permissive border.

And if you look at the Democratic side,

you can pull up a quote from Bernie Sanders in 2016, where he goes, no, no, no, open borders.

They're terrible.

They're a Koch brothers invention to

try to keep laser costs

low, right?

And for whatever reason, now Republicans have pretty, for the most part, settled on a, if not closed, secure the border position.

And Democrats seem to have more of a any border enforcement is a moral crime position.

Now, the way that has played out since then is that there have been at least two cases, one in Arizona and one in Texas, where the Arizona governor wanted to enforce border security more stringently.

under Obama.

And the Obama administration told them that they couldn't do that, that border enforcement was a federal prerogative.

You are not allowed to enforce it at the state level.

And if we tell you not to enforce it, you can't do it.

And the same thing happened under Biden in Texas.

And we have those pictures where the feds are lifting up

barbed wire fences that the Texas troops had put out to try to secure the border.

And the Biden administration not only didn't help them, but actually cut through the wires and stuff like this and said, and with I believe the Supreme Court's approval, that no, no, no, this is the federal government's purview.

We are the ones in charge of border immigration.

Now, it seems to me that the left is kind of trying to play this both ways, where when the left has the executive branch, they say, ha, ha, ha.

We're going to prevent states from doing border enforcement.

I mean, the left doesn't have the executive branch.

What they say is we are actually going to institute sanctuary cities.

And what we are going to do here is, you know, people think a sanction sounds like just a nice city.

But what that means in practice is that when somebody who has a order of deportation and they get arrested,

that the police do not report that to the feds and do not hold them long enough for the feds to come and get them and deport them.

And this is an explicit policy in sanctuary cities.

Now, that's all going on in the background.

So that is when Biden's in office, he prevents Republican states from enforcing the border security.

When Trump is in office, the blue states prevent federal law enforcement from picking up, not just people who are here illegally, people

who are here illegally and have been arrested for another crime, right?

Now, in the wake of that, in the fall, in like November-ish, my favorite periodical county highway had a really long story about fraud in Venezuela, it was fraud in Minneapolis.

It was called like the shame of our cities.

And it pointed out that there's between one and $9 billion in fraud.

going on in specifically in the Twin Cities where there's a large Somali diaspora and in fact it seemed something like those Somali and Somalis were between one or two percent of the population, more than 90 percent of people convicted of fraud in the state.

have had the Somali connection.

And something like $700 million in cash has gone through the Somali airport back to Somalia in the past two years.

That's $1 million in cash every single day, essentially.

And they have had a bunch of whistleblowers try to step forward and say, I think there's something going wrong with the way these funds are being distributed because, for instance,

there's the rates of autism claimants in Minneapolis was way higher than the national average.

And if you know me, you know that I'm very crazy about the autism rate being super high anyway.

What a lot of these whistleblowers pointed out was that

Families who were signing up for these were also in on it, and were receiving sometimes between $11,000 and $18,000 a year.

And Waltz was not only turning a blind eye to this, but was actually punishing the whistleblowers up until right about the end of November when this started to come to a boil.

After all this...

kind of came out in November, then you had, I can't remember his first name, his last name's Shirley.

It's Nick Shirley, maybe.

Do his video where he's walking around going to all of these daycare centers.

Famously, there's the Leering Center, right?

The Learning Center that misspelled learning.

So there's no end in it.

It just says Leering Center.

And it seems like these are just obvious cases of fraud.

And so there was this gigantic backlash to, hey, how come all

there's this enormous amount of fraud again between one and nine billion dollars worth, which is an astounding amount of money.

You know, that's, as I like to point out, that's more money than I make in a year.

And people were very angry and saying, why is this happening?

And then there was this push from the Trump administration saying, we're going to do something about it.

And the way they decided to do something about it was to at least do some kind of immigration crackdown.

And that's why you saw this, I think, arise in Minnesota, because

Minnesota was on the hot seat for the amount of fraud.

And when the federal troops went in to even investigate, they were essentially got pushed back, not just from the citizens, but from the actual law enforcement agencies up there, too, who would refuse to cooperate with ICE.

So that's all going on in the back burner.

When you have the Renee Good situation, you erupt, where Renee Good was not just driving through,

She was part of a group.

You can hear all the whistles going off in the background.

That's because citizens are on this kind of ice watch where they all get together and they start blowing whistles whenever they would see an ice vehicle.

And then they would take their own vehicles and try to box these people in to make sure they couldn't move.

That's a really stupid game to play.

And it seems like, again, I think this is this kind of Marvel movie mind scenario where people don't understand because

protesters have been essentially treated with kid gloves that if you actually want to protest against the status quo, you know, these people, I think the view is often like, I'm just like the civil rights marchers.

Look back and look at what those civil rights marches were like.

People were getting attacked by dogs and hit with fire, fire hoses.

You need to know that if, you know, whether or not your cause is just if you're actually protesting real power, there's an enormous amount of risk involved there.

Well, this has been a production of the Gorton Institute here at Ottawa University.

I'd like to thank you all for listening.

Bios star rating helps other people find us.

Otherwise, just pass this along to friends and family that might like to take a listen.

Other than that, be fruitful and multiply.

Thanks.

Thanks again, guys.

Tell your friends about the podcast, kxel.com slash Jacobson, J-A-C-O-B-S-E-N.

In the meantime, listen to all the wisdom of Jeff Stein during his weekday news and commentary.

And folks, always remember and never forget to be safe, be smart, be good, be strong, love Jesus Christ, and God blesses everyone.

Until we meet again, have a great weekend and bye-bye!