Coins for Cops and an Update from Blake Masters
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Welcome to Broken Potholes. This is your host, Chuck Warren, with my co-host, Sam Stone, who is participating with us from New York. And today we have Rachel L. She is the founder of Coins for Cops. Rachel, thank you for coming in the studio. Thank you so much for having me. So Rachel, tell us, you came up with this great idea. Tell us what the mission is of the organization and what sparked your fiery passion for it. How did you get involved?

Well, I'll start with the mission first. The mission for Coins for Cops is to basically thank every police officer in the nation for their service.

Um, and where that all started from was about a year, year and a half ago now. Um, I just saw the, the villainization, uh, demonization of police everywhere. Um, and I saw the demoralization of police in my area. I have, um, one police officer friend, um, and I just saw, you know, his demeanor go down, his, um,

It was just really sad to see. And then what I noticed is a lot of the police officers that, you know, you would encounter just walking into a coffee shop or whatever. They just looked sad. And so I started it all started with going up to them and just saying, hey, thank you. And I would go out of my way to go up and shake their hand and say thank you. And to see them.

their body language change and just a smile well through a mask but you can tell when somebody's smiling when a smile emerged it was amazing and I said oh I got to do more I got to do more and so it it slowly progressed into I was going to just start handing out cards myself and then I was like well that's not going to get to enough let's make this on a bigger scale I originally started with coffee cards and then I was like that just seemed so I just didn't I didn't like it personally and

And so I said, well, what else can I do? And so I came up with challenge coins because I used to be a firefighter. My dad was ex-military and challenge coins were a very big morale booster. I mean, we change them all the time, exchange them all the time. Let me stop you there. What is it for our audience? What is a challenge coin?

A challenge coin is like, it's a morale booster. Basically, it started with the military. And they're a large, normally like one and a half to two inch thick coin. And it's something that you can give to your buddies. There was other things where like if you would go to get drinks, if somebody would slam the coin down, if you were the last one to put it down, you would have to buy the round. I mean, for waters, of course, but...

Yes, hydrate. It's warm out there, folks. Hydrate. But, you know, like all military departments have it. And oftentimes different units have it. Firefighters will have it. Different units will have it. Departments. And actually what's interesting, I didn't know this was going to happen.

But out of some of the departments I've given to already, I get their challenge coins. So now it's become this thing where like, ooh, now I want to collect them because it's so much. It's just a little. It's really fun. So Rachel L., for our audience, used to be a former school teacher, a science teacher, a fireman, fireperson. Sorry, we just found out. And now she's a business executive. And you are inspired here to do this. Tell me. Let's talk briefly here. I want to talk more about this program. But Rachel.

Your friend who's a cop, how did you see his demeanor change? I mean, is it just – I mean, there was a great quote Sam and I were talking about earlier this morning by Malcolm Gladwell. And he was talking on a podcast with Adam Grant that he's for police reform. But the one thing no one ever wants to talk about is being a cop is hard. He goes – it's just – he goes it's amazing to him that this is simply ignored in the conversation. Yes, we all want to do things differently.

You know, everything can be refined, right? And things can be better. But he just said the fact that we just don't realize this or talk about it makes this conversation nonsensical. You're absolutely right. Which I agree. So what did you see – how did his mood change? What did you see being someone that had this friend who every day goes out, really puts his life on the line? I know people think that sounds dramatic, but the reality is when you carry a gun for a living, there's a reason you carry a gun. Yeah. Okay? Yeah.

And then all of a sudden you've got a bunch of yahoos just saying you guys are all bad people. What did you see? What did you see in him? You know, I'm really glad you brought that up. And before I answer that question, if you don't mind if I elaborate. Yeah. Okay. So on...

You know, what you said about the danger of the job and people don't know, there's actually a beautiful poem on my website that I really encourage everybody to read. And what is that website, by the way? It's coinsforcops.net and it's F-O-R, so coinsforcops.net. Oh, you spelled it the right way. I spelled it the correct way. No number four on that stupid thing.

All right, go ahead. But it's on the homepage. Scroll down to the bottom and it's there. And basically it encompasses what you just said.

It talks about, you know, I entitled, I don't know who wrote the poem. I kind of, but it talks about, you don't know. You don't know that I didn't like, you know, pulling over your daughter while she was going to college. You didn't know that I had to pull your son out of a ditch after a car accident. And the list goes on and on. And it's such a beautiful poem. And it really stops and makes you think.

you don't understand or the majority of people don't understand what police officers go through. It's not just eating donuts and coffee as the, you know, mainstream media showcases them as. They have real, you know, and if we didn't have our police officers, I mean, we can already see what's happening in the defunding cities. If we didn't have our police officers,

We would just be in chaos. They do so much for us. We have real-life examples right now. Yeah. I mean, this is not theory anymore. Is that right, Sam? This is not theory. No. You defund police. You take cops off the streets. We're seeing it. It's not a theory anymore. You're seeing a direct correlation between violent crime, between murders and the defunding of police, whether it is in Minnesota or –

New York. Philadelphia. Atlanta's a bad example. Atlanta's a New York. Well, Atlanta, we probably need to have someone from the Atlanta Constitution Journal on. Atlanta's example A of just the number of cops retiring and leaving and the murder rate there's gone up. But continue. Sorry about that, Rachel. Yeah. Oh, no. And, you know, as a firefighter, I worked, I worked.

I worked with police all the time. And you know what? Police, we joke, the firefighters and police always like, you know, pick on each other. But in the reality, the police officers were our protection and they protected us before we, they were always the ones that went in first if there was a dangerous situation. And, you know, I really held them in a lot of respect because of that. So on your second question about

My friend, you know, at first he tried to play tough, you know, oh, I can handle this. This is OK. The spitting on and the the profanities and all that kind of stuff. It's not going to get to me. And then slowly or not that slowly, I did see it start to get to him. And he actually did have to take action.

some time off um it gets sort of a mental break a sabbatical mental break to re you know and it was just sad it was really sad to see and not only that but there's departments everywhere um that they're so overworked because um for a multitude of reasons not only defunding which obviously loses officers but officers are retiring and quitting at an alarming rate which

By the way, as a result... And no one wants to be a cop. Right. Thank you. And recruiting is bad, too. Why do you want to do a job where you say, I'm going to protect people, but no one wants me to... I get accosted all the time, right? And these retirements, people can say, for example...

mayors can say, well, we haven't defunded anything. Well, the fact that you keep talking about this over and over and over and make them the bad guy, they're not retiring for no reason, right? They're just like, they see sort of the writing on the wall. Do you see that in the city of Phoenix? Absolutely. And you can do too. They can say, we're not defunding the police the way Phoenix says we're not defunding the police, but there's a lot of ways to defund the police that aren't directly taking away salary or taking away positions that

So like here in Phoenix, we simply stopped bonding for police. We stopped buying them police cars. We stopped, you know, rebuilding the stations, the equipment they have to use. And so they're having to cover for that out of their budget, which means fewer officers.

And you talked about the strain. It means we have fewer and fewer officers, means more overtime, means the cops that are out there are under more and more stress. And Rachel, I wanted to touch on something. How long were you a firefighter? I was, to be clear, I was a volunteer firefighter. I was trying to go career with it, but it was in 2010-ish when things were going down. So it never happened. But for two years I was there and I did everything the...

paid guys did you went on the calls and things like that yeah yeah you know i have a very good friend of mine really my best friend uh growing up who became a firefighter about 15 20 years ago now and when he first got started i don't i don't know if you've had a similar experience but he kept calling me very early in the morning when he was on the way home from work and kind of unloading and telling me all these really awful things that he had experienced during his shift

And I don't think people understand how wearing that is. I realized after a while it was a mechanism for him to let go of that before he went home to his family. Yeah, you were his visit to the bar, basically. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly. No, you're absolutely right on that. And it does become wearing. And I mean, what it's the saying, you never call a police officer when you're having a good thing happen, right? They're only called during negative times. And so you have people have to understand that, like, every call they go to is going to be stressful. And as I'm sure as they're driving up to a call, they're like,

oh, God, how am I going to get treated this time? And, you know, it's just got to be very stressful. Well, I remember talking to a gentleman two or three years ago here who was a fireman. And I imagine this story translates to being a law enforcement. And he had done it for 20 years. And then he retired. And I said, you know, what was the reason? And he just said, well, you know, my back, mentioned the back. But he goes, but I just couldn't go do one more kid who drowned in the pool in the summer.

And, you know, I never even thought about that. I don't think most people think about that with a fireman. But I said, how many did you get? Somebody goes, oh, you know, get two or three. You see, he goes, I just it takes a toll on you emotionally. And I think that's the same thing with law enforcement. Even more so because, like I said, they are often the first ones in. Firefighters are often secondary in after the police have cleared a situation.

We're with Rachel L. here for coinsforcops.net. Remember that. Don't do .com. Rachel L., we're about ready to end this one segment. We want to come back. But how many, since you started this...

How many cops and law enforcement have you met and been able to give a coin to? So far, 270. But on Tuesday, I'm actually adopting the entire surprises on a police department, which is 245. So and then. Yeah. And then by August 5th, I will have delivered to 900. So in the next week, I will be delivering a bunch. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic. How long did it take you to arrange that adoption? Go on the website because she needs some help with this, folks. I definitely need help. It does cost some... The challenge coins, you know, cost a challenge coin. What do the challenge coins cost? So you can go on the website and buy a challenge coin for $15. But for every challenge coin you buy, an officer also gets one. And so...

Yeah, we can talk about that. This is Broken Potholes. We're with Rachel L. and Sam Stone from New York. This is Chuck Warren, and we'll be right back. You know what they say. Politics is just show business for ugly people. Well, that's not the case. So get your face on your official .vote campaign web address. Jokes are funny. Politics are not. Get your .vote web address from 101domain.com or godaddy.com today.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I am your host, Chuck Warren, with my co-host Sam Stone. And today with us is Rachel L., the founder and the passion behind Coins for Cops. You can find them at coinsforcops.net. Don't be cheap. Go buy a coin. Help out here.

We were talking earlier about, Rachel, how many cops you have met, how many you've given coins to. We've just found out you adopted a big family in Surprise, Arizona. Was it 245 cops in Surprise? Yeah. I would love to get Phoenix next. Hey. Come on, Sam. Get with it. She's doing the heavy lifting, Sam. Let's get with it. Coins for cops. We'll make some intros. Rachel, thanks.

How has the response been from police officers you have met with? I'm really glad you asked that. I was so nervous. So let me start with when I started calling departments to tell them what I was doing. I'm not going to lie. I got who?

who are you? Why are you doing this? Sure, sure. That kind of thing. It was very skeptical, which was kind of sad too, not on them. It's just sad that the whole environment has been, you know, so downplayed that they couldn't believe somebody was actually just wanting to say thank you. So that was kind of the first thing. And then,

I mean, some of the stories that I have had, I was actually so nervous because I was like, oh, a little thank you card and a challenge coin. This is nothing, right? And I literally had, I mean, some officers just almost looked like they were going to be in tears. I have actually had a mother of an officer call me in tears, happy tears, not sad tears, happy tears, because they were just blown away emotionally.

People don't realize just a small gesture makes such a big difference. And I've actually befriended an officer right now that I could never have even imagined. And we've had a great friendship because of this. And then a really cool story. I ran into an officer I had given to.

previously just on the street during a little music thing and I was like oh hey and he's like oh my gosh you're the coins for cops lady he's like hold on right there and he undid his his pocket and he's like I keep it with me every single day and I was like fantastic what a day

Yeah, it made me feel so good. That's wonderful. So it really does. I want people to know this really, really does mean something to them. It means more than you can know. When you're told bad things on a regular basis and then all of a sudden somebody takes the effort to write you a card and give you this coin and deliver it to you, it's amazing.

It's really been amazing. So I've been very fortunate to see how happy the officers are. Do you share these stories on your website? I should. I have a gallery on my website. Yes, you should. You should. Those are great stories. Sam, you had a question for her? Well, first, I want to let our audience know, Rachel, her last name is not L. It's something slightly longer, but L.

This current environment is so bad that she has to keep a level of anonymity just to protect herself. And that is a really sad statement. She has adopted about 500 cops though now, so I'm feeling pretty good about her safety and welfare. But continue, Sam. It's getting better by the minute. She's getting safer by the minute. Exactly. Absolutely. But as you're going around and talking to these officers, Rachel,

I want to thank you as someone who works with the city of Phoenix and has seen what's happened to our cops first. Let me just say thank you for what you're doing. And I'm definitely going to introduce you to some folks there that hopefully can get you in there because I think our officers need this. But, you know, I guess my question would be beyond just seeing this, what drives you to keep doing this? Because this is obviously a big commitment of your time. You've got a lot going on.

You know, that's not something that is normal. Frankly, I wish it was, but it's not. And you have made a big commitment to this. And what is it personally that's really driving you to do this? I think that's just a level of humanity. It's just it's your fellow person. You know, like cops are people.

I think when people put uniforms on and give titles to things, they kind of dehumanize them. It takes the humanity out of them. And they're just regular men and women. That is such an amazing insight. I mean, we see it with Olympic athletes. As all the couch pitchers say, well, I could have done this. Or professional athletes, like they're not human, right? They don't have feelings. My question for you is,

what was the moment you just said, I'm doing this? Were you in the shower singing a song? Were you walking the dog? I mean, what's the moment you just say, you know what? This is a great idea. I'm going to do this. I was at a gas station, actually. And two police officers came in to, I'm sure, go get a drink or something. And

The looks on their faces was horrible. And this was at the height of like the and and I couldn't get to them. The distance was too much before they went into the store. And I was like, oh, I have a missed opportunity. I should have done more. I should have done more. And then it just blossomed and blossomed.

Yeah. So you always you know, I've noticed in my life as I've gotten older that I drive by certain spots. I remember when I had an epiphany on something. Will you always remember that spot at that gas station saying this is where I came up with this idea? Yeah. And then, you know, I have a wonderful co-worker that lets me bounce ideas off of her. So I just started bouncing them off. And then I came up with the challenge coin and it was fantastic.

That was it. And then I literally that night went and designed it, found a coin manufacturer and that was it. Do you have like a Twitter or Facebook handle as well? I do have a Facebook. Not on Twitter. That's OK. It's just vitriol. You don't need to be on Twitter. Good for your sanity. Good for your soul. What about Facebook? Where can they find you on Facebook? Same thing. Coins for Cops. At Coins for Cops on Facebook as well.

What do you want people to know? What do you want our audience to know about this program? This is a positive program. Everything about this is just positive. On my website, on the news section of my website, it's all stories of heroism. Everything is showing the positive side of police officers, which are many and many and many. I mean,

And so everything is positive. Everything's putting things in perspective. I do have a facts page on the website as well. I want people to be informed with the facts, right?

So and then I want this to be a community thing, too. So not only do you you can buy coins for yourself or for whoever you want, but you can also just donate. And then I happen to choose the department at the time. Or the other way you can do it is you can actually call me. And I've actually had this happen. We're working on a big one in Las Vegas right now because Las Vegas is 3200 people.

which is a huge, I think they're like ninth or 10th in the nation. And so when the lady first said, hey, I want to adopt the Las Vegas department and I called back and I was like, well, we might have to start a campaign. And this is another way of like getting your community involved too. Because if you really want to adopt your department, then I can have you, you guys can call me or email me and,

And so you want to do this and then I can help you through the process of how you can do it in your community, raise some funds to adopt. And it feels so good with you can have community members go in. Well, that's fantastic. Sam, we have one minute left here. Do you have a final comment for our guest before she departs us for the day? I really just want to thank her. And I want to tell everyone to go to that website at coinsforcops.net, you know, make, make that donation or make the purchase and get, you know, get yourself a coin and give a cop a coin because it's,

with what I've seen and I deal with our police officers in person every single day in Phoenix, what they've gone through in the last year and a half is just incredible.

It's incredibly draining and it is desperately needed. This kind of thing is desperately needed. So folks, don't be cheap. Get on, buy a coin. We want to thank Rachel L. She is here, the founder, the visionary for coinsforcops.net. If you see a police officer today, thank him for the hard work because it's really a crappy job. This is Chuck Warren, Sam Stone with the famous Rachel L. Broken potholes. We'll be back.

The 2020 election is over. Now it's time for you to get ready to run for 2022. First step, getting your .vote campaign web address with your first and last name. Say your name is Janet Jones. A web address like www.janetjones.vote is the perfect way to get voters to remember your name

All the while reminding them to vote. Visit GoDaddy today to kick off your 2022 campaign right. Welcome to Broken Potholes. I am Chuck Warren with my co-host Sam Stone. And today we have with us Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Blake Masters, who is touring our state.

Blake, by the way, how do you like driving around all over Arizona? Hey, so far, so good. I'm logging lots of miles on the car. I was just up in Yavapai County, Prescott and Prescott Valley, and just absolutely beautiful up there, of course. Great people. So far, I'm having a blast. Oh, that's great. It is wonderful to meet people who have an optimism about the future, isn't it? Who want to get things done and they're involved.

Absolutely. People are really activated. I think we're on track to have a great 2022. So today it was reported that there's billions of rental aid that the federal government's appropriated that's remained unspent and evictions are poised to resume. In this article, they talked about there's $46 billion that the federal government's

allocated to the states and cities, and the money's not getting out to people to help them with the rent. That's the whole purpose of it, which, you know, it's just not the renters. This is also for the landlords that have mortgages, which then affects banking. It's a really horrible trickle effect. Blake, is government ever going to get it right?

Well, that is the I guess that's the twenty eight trillion dollar question or whatever our national debt is right now. Right. Seem to be past 30, no doubt. I don't know. You know, it's frustrating, too. Obviously, the government has become just so incompetent. Right. It's become a meme for decades now on the right. You know, Reagan said, what was the line? Right. I'm if you ever hear I'm from the government and I'm here to help, you

you know, run for your life or something like this. And that's, it's funny, but it's also, it's also sad. And I don't want to see conservatives just, um,

be fatalistic about it and just conclude, you know, because government is incompetent, because we know it doesn't work as well as a private business, that it can never do anything at all. And therefore it can't exist. I mean, government does have a role to play and where it has a role to play. It should be really good. It should be efficient. And we need to remember, you know, 60, 70 years ago,

when serious people were in charge before the bureaucracy had been built up, government could actually get things done. You know, like we did the Apollo project. We did the Manhattan project. We used to be able to get stuff done. Now we can't. And it's kind of interesting to think about why. And in this whole thing to Blake and Chuck, there there's a level of personal irresponsibility that's coming into play. There was you spoke of memes. There was a great meme I saw this morning about

with a series of larger and larger dominoes. The first domino was bought PS5 instead of paying rent, leading to end of moratorium, got evicted, then slowly getting to the point where it takes down the whole economy. And we are facing a really significant economic crisis because of this and potentially an individual crisis.

And government didn't have to do any of this. I mean, why have an eviction moratorium? We had monies we were handing people. We did that effectively, right, through the PPP assistance and all that. Why didn't we just increase that amount a little bit more and leave this entire rental issue aside?

Right. I mean, well said. It's a huge mess. And, you know, it kind of points back to this huge problem where no one wants to take responsibility anymore. And this is, you know, this is not something you can fix with one piece of legislation. But I do think it's a cultural problem. There's the personal responsibility level where people...

You know, it's it's it just feels retrograde to say, no, you actually are in charge of your life and you're not a victim, even if you've been dealt a bad hand or even if you're literally a victim in some sense, like you can't think that way because you will just, you know, expect things to be done for you because things are being done to you. It's just passive.

right and i think that's a bad cultural shift then people in government you know and as the civil service and the bureaucracy swells no one uh in government no politicians seem to actually want to take responsibility i think this is one of the biggest things that we've seen

Certainly my generation, millennials, this is a horrible shift towards this lack of agency. And I think, you know, people in the past, individuals, business leaders, community leaders, but also politicians and actual government leaders, they just felt like they were in charge. You know, there were some privileges that came with that power. There was also a sense of responsibility.

And I think we've just totally lost that, or at least it's vanishingly rare today. That's a fantastic point, Blank. We're about ready to go here for a quick commercial break. But when we come back, I want to talk about something you tweeted today and something I'm quite aware of about there is a push now to allow non-citizens to vote. This is something Sam and I worked on two years ago and passed some initiatives. And Washington Post, New York Times reporters told us we were crazy about.

to think that this would even be pushed in America. And I think now you have an editorial from the New York Times saying there's no good reason why, there's no good reason you should have to be a citizen to vote. This is insane. And I just think this shows really a cultural divide in our country. And so we're with Blake Masters, U.S. Senate candidate in Arizona, Republican. And we'll be right back. This is Broken Potholes. ♪

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I am your host, Chuck Warren, with my co-host Sam Stone. Today we are honored to have with us Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, Blake Masters. You can find him at BlakeMasters.com, also on Twitter and Facebook. We were talking before the break, Blake, a couple years ago, a good friend of Sam and I, Tim Mooney, started this podcast.

which passed in Florida and I forget the Alabama, a couple other states where it would prevent non-citizens from voting in elections. We saw, I saw something three years ago, which I emailed him.

and said that they're trying to allow them to vote in school election boards and so forth in San Francisco and some Northeast cities. And so when we pushed this in Florida, they claimed it was some right-wing conspiracy. I remember Tim being badgered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others saying, you're just making this up. No one's pushing this. Well, now this is a thing, right? So I don't know if they were in on it or what, but what are your thoughts about allowing non-citizens to be voters? It just does not seem to pass the common sense system.

It really doesn't. But this is how it works, right? They put it out here and we all get to sort of laugh at it because it really is crazy, this idea that nonfiction

non-citizens ought to be able to vote in our elections. But they'll try to normalize it. This is my prediction here. And I'm not really going out on a limb. What we'll do is we'll see in coming weeks, in coming months, this conversation, this idea, this crazy idea will be normalized. We'll see it more and more. And my guess is in two or three years,

this is where the center of the democratic party will be on this issue hey there's many stakeholders in society citizens are only one of them you know who are you to deny uh voting rights voting rights chuck to you know this visa holder or this tourist who stay overstayed their visa this is how they think there's no real coherent concept of citizenship it means very little to the left

And unfortunately, I think this crazy idea is going to get normalized. Well, and what they do is they simply do feed the people we all 20 years ago or 10 years ago said they were nuts that, you know, there's this one world order and so forth. And when they do these things like this, it makes people believe that. I remember...

talking to a Washington Post reporter about this issue. And she was just really hammering, well, you know, look, they work in the community, they pay local taxes and things. And I said, well, based on that nature then, and I use Florida's example, there's 300,000 people that have second homes in Florida. So based on that nature, since they pay property tax and add value to the community, they should be able to vote in school board in

in city council races, right? Because it affects their ownership, right? If you're based on that. She could not get around that. She could not even answer that. She just thought, well, that's just snobby. Well, no, you're just telling me you should be able to vote because you have an economic impact. That was their whole line. And then you bring this up. Well, then based on that, if I have a business here, so let's go and say, Blake, all these venture capital companies you've done and they have offices, well, then the ownership should be able to vote on city elections where they have brick and mortar, right? Because it affects them based on that logic.

Based on that logic, I ought to be able to vote in Nigerian elections because I make money. I contribute to world GDP. Nigeria is part of the world.

And therefore, I have a stake. You know, I mean, it's and it really is funny. I got a smile on my face. But my gosh, this is what they think. No. And they were sure. Exactly right there. They're going to normalize this. And you mentioned school boards. Chuck, that's where they're going to start. Yes. Yes. They're going to start with this on school boards and local elections.

and normalize it there and then try to move it up the ladder. It's unbelievable. Blake, as you have toured the state, we're with Blake Masters, Republican candidate for Senate. You can find him at BlakeMasters.com. Also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He's quite proficient on Twitter. And Blake, as you've traveled the state, what has surprised you about issues that are really concerning people or have you not been surprised?

Well, I haven't been surprised at many of the issues which are, you know, have people really upset, like critical race theory in schools. Everybody is up in arms about that in these rooms that I'm in. They want to talk about that. They want to talk about big tech censorship of conservatives. That's all great. Those are super important. What surprises me, though, is still how much people...

just care about the bread and butter issues. And everybody talks about gas prices. Everybody, you know, whether they're relatively affluent, they're still really annoyed. Maybe they manage a business that has a fleet of trucks. Right. This impacts the bottom line. Or if, you know, just their household budget is really kind of in a precarious spot.

you know, when the price of gas goes up 25 or 30%, people want to talk about that. People want to talk about inflation. They'll talk to restaurant owners that,

can't find, uh, workers, you know, line cooks and hostesses, and they're trying to pay them 13, 14, 15 bucks an hour. And people still, uh, you know, maybe they're making more in unemployment benefits or something like that. It's, it's these economic issues, these kitchen table bread and butter issues that, uh, that ultimately I think are, are going to drive Republicans out to vote in 2022. Well, if you live in rural Arizona, which you've been traveling a lot based on this time of year, um,

you know, when your gas prices go up a dollar plus, that's a real issue, right? Um, you know, these aren't a lot of effects, rural work, work, you know, people way more than people in the cities. And of course the, the opinion making apparatus, the journalist class, they all live in cities and they work and they work from home. And by the way, they work from home. I mean, you know, you talk to reporters, they haven't been in the office for a year plus. So, you know, they, you know, they, they're, they're like in the cheap seats on these issues. Um,

Whereas other people have to go out and work. And if you're a contractor and you repair air conditioning systems, that price matters a lot, right? And then at the same time, you really don't want to raise your prices because your competitor is not raising them. It's a vicious cycle for those who don't have the benefit of being a reporter and just staying at home in front of a laptop and making calls all day.

Yeah, absolutely it is. But, you know, it's I think it's a combination of cultural issues. I think the Democrats are just moving way too far and going to crazy places like, hey, non-citizens ought to be able to vote, but also just the economics aren't working. And that's why we need economic policies that help working class and middle class Americans. And until people find a political party that's willing to deliver democracy,

Exactly that. You know, I think people still be really jaded. Blake, what is what are we not support the Biden administration? Blake, what are some economic policies that if you're in the Senate and you could pass it, what are some what are some tax or economic policies you think that just need to be done immediately?

There's defense and offense. So, you know, when I'm elected in 2022, I'll be in the Senate in 2023. You know, we're still going to have a Democratic president then. And I think the Biden Harris regime will still try to push their crazy tax hikes. So sort of step one is to play defense. I think Republicans are OK at playing defense. We're not so good at going on offense, though, in terms of

affirmative economic policies we ought to pass. I care a lot about onshore, re-onshore, bringing back to America the industrial base, the manufacturing capacity that over the last few decades we sort of pushed abroad, mostly to Southeast Asia. One thing that I'm really excited about that I want to do a lot more of, you know, TSMC and Intel, they're bringing semiconductor plants back to Arizona. I think that's

extremely good. There's sort of a national security problem with manufacturing all these computer chips in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. We ought to be able to do that here at home just so that we can be independent and not be reliant on China. But it's also good. It's high paying manufacturing jobs that we can bring back. And if you imagine the infrastructure that we're going to build around these multibillion dollar plants up in Phoenix,

that itself is going to be a huge economic boon and a huge growth opportunity. So I'd look for ways to get more industries back in America, get more people actually making stuff with their brains, but also with their hands. And I think good things happen when we

adopt that kind of attitude towards economic policy, not just, hey, where can we make stuff the cheapest and we'll deal with the consequences years down the road. Do we do that with not only a change of tax policy for manufacturing? Do we do it with job training for specific trades? We've talked time and again, I mean, all of us here are college graduates, but we would all agree that

A college education is not needed for a lot of professions out there now, right? And, you know, two-thirds of the Americans do not finish college if they even start it. What would be your policy regarding trade, your training for, you know, various manufacturing jobs, trades, piping, things of that nature?

Yeah, absolutely. We should be investing in that. And there's maybe a split here in the Republican Party. Some people don't subsidize other people. But no, we shouldn't have that attitude. It should absolutely be free or low cost.

for a young person, maybe of college age, to go and learn the trades, to go and learn to weld. Maybe we subsidize some apprentice programs, things of this nature. We got to be thinking a lot more in that direction instead of pretending you need to funnel everybody through this four-year bachelor's degree system where they come out with no skills and actually maybe just indoctrinate it. That makes no sense at all.

We pour a lot of resources into that kind of education. You know, Blake and Chuck, one of the things that I learned working in Oklahoma a few years ago, which obviously is kind of the center of the oil industry, the pipeline industry, you have a lot of shipping and manufacturing companies.

Oklahoma has invested a lot of resources in a very extensive series of technical training centers in a whole variety of areas from welding to pipe fitting and everything in between to technical manufacturing, all that kind of thing. You want to look at a state with one of the consistent lowest unemployment rates in the country, it's right there. Absolutely. Yeah, we have these experiments that work really well. I don't know why there's no more political will involved.

to learn from them and implement them other places. Well, we have sold the lie that you need a college degree to have a successful career. And look, I want people to obtain as much education as possible. But that doesn't mean you need to go to a public or private university to do that, right? And maybe if we go and start pushing more this type of training, this alternative, then

Maybe we'll see college prices start leveling out and maybe decreasing because right now it's basically a scam in a lot of ways how much tuition increases and how much they spend on things.

It is. And if you look at like software engineering, right, like who pays to educate Facebook and Google's employees? Well, often these kids are going to say UC Cal, you know, Berkeley. Well, the taxpayers are paying for their computer science education and Facebook and Google who, you know, could afford to pay for it themselves. They get a free ride. But it's like

who pays for the education for like an HVAC, you know, contractors company, his employees or a welder or a plumber, electrician, the trades, those companies actually have to pay for that. Right. You have to take on someone and the employees are inefficient while they learn the ropes. So why can't we even it out a little bit? Well, I've said for years, we ought to make colleges and universities be the ones that secure their loans.

And then you're going to look real hard at return on investment if you're those universities. I mean, you're not going to charge 300 grand for an English degree. Well, that's a great point. You can almost use the ROTC model. You know, Facebook, if you want an engineer and someone, you know, after the first year or so, you find out they have the capacity to do it, you pay for it.

Right now for that in return, they have to work for you for four years so they can go do something else. But maybe we need to start having some of these industries sort of take the ROTC model. We're going to help pay for your undergrad or whatever the case may be. In return, you you are committing X years. I mean, that's your investment in us. We're investing in you. And maybe that is something we need to push more.

Yeah, both those examples are good. And I definitely agree with putting colleges on the hook for the debt that their that their students take out. You know, in the United States, I think thanks to Joe Biden, student debt is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. You cannot get rid of it. It will follow you. And so if you are unwise and look, we ask 18 and 19 year olds to make these decisions. You know, like we won't let them do plenty of stuff until they're 21.

But at 18 or 19, apparently, you're allowed to go and get into $200,000 in debt. You can't even get a house. Most of these seniors can't even get a house. They can't apply for a mortgage. But we're saying, here, we're going to sign you up. You're going to commit to $200,000 or $300,000 at 18.

And you can't just charge it. And so I think, you know, if that happens, no, you ought to be able to send the college the bill, you know, when the kid defaults and can't pay it. And Sam, you're so right. Those colleges would immediately start reforming their predatory student loan practices. We're with Blake Masters. We have one minute left here. You can find Blake at BlakeMasters.com. He's running for U.S. Senate as a Republican candidate. Blake, is there anything you want message you want to leave with our audience before we end here?

Well, gosh, we could go in any number of directions, you know, I'm I mean, just just reading the CDC sort of, you know, the news about the CDC this morning. Right. Which apparently they based this new mask mandate and the sort of new I think we're going to see a push to lock things down again on COVID.

I won't say fake science exactly, but on very problematic science, right? On a paper from India that didn't even pass peer review. That seems to be the case. And it's just sad. It really is sad. You know, the CDC has a long record of getting things wrong. But I really think people deserve to live in a country where, okay, you don't blindly trust the government, but you have some sort of faith in the integrity of our institutions. And unfortunately, we just don't have it. So, you know, I'll try to figure out every which way to...

to reverse course and make, make the government actually work again. Well, thank you. You actually had slate an op-ed and slate yesterday that praised Fauci and the CDC for lying because it benefited. Well, Blake, dangerous logic, the greater, horrible logic, Blake. Thanks a million for joining us today. This is broken potholes. We appreciate it. Have a great weekend folks. We'll be back with you soon. Thanks.

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