David Livingston on Managing Arizona's Money
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Welcome to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone. My co-host Chuck Warren is on the line today and joining us also on the line, Senator, Arizona State Senator David Livingston, now running for Arizona State Treasurer. So Chuck, David, welcome to the show. Well, thank you, Sam. Appreciate that very much.

For those of you who don't know him, David, tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background, and then a little bit about the office. Because quite frankly, I don't think most people in Arizona or anywhere else know what their treasurer does. I would agree with you on that. I think most Arizonans are not even aware that they actually elect the state treasurer. But I'm happy to give you some of my background. Okay.

This is the 10th year that I've been down as an elected official in the Arizona House and in the Arizona Senate. And currently I'm Senate Finance Chair. But I've done a lot of things down in the House and Senate in my tenure there. Transportation Chair, Banking Chair, Finance Chair, Insurance Chair, Appropriation Chairman, and Republican Whip in the House also. And Chuck... I've done a lot of... Go ahead. Oh, no. I was just going to say...

David, it's an impressive resume. And I think one of the reasons your chair, chair, chair, chair, chair, Chuck, it's something you and I have talked about in any legislative body. There are really a handful of folks who do the policy, the deep dive, the dig. And frankly, the people who actually work day in, day out. That's right. And frankly, David, I've seen your colleagues recognize that and reward you for that.

I appreciate it. I love working. I'm a little bit of a workaholic. I will admit it. I'm addicted to making a difference. And I've enjoyed doing that in my tenure down there. But frankly, I'm ready for a bigger challenge. And I think running the money for the state...

is the next challenge that I want, and I have the background for it. Not everyone knows, that knows me even in the House and Senate, my tenure there, previously before I was elected, I managed money for 20 years, for over two decades. So I'm kind of going back to my roots, hopefully becoming the next treasurer in the state of Arizona. So you're saying we should actually hire someone for the job who knows what they're doing?

I mean, the treasurer is basically our chief investment officer and banker, right? I mean, that's what you are. Yes, it is. Right? That's what we're doing. Yeah. And so it's a very important position that we have someone who actually knows how to invest money, it would seem to me.

Yeah. It's invest money and manage money. It's billions of dollars that you're responsible for. And what you're really talking about, the state treasurer's primary role is working with the staff you have. We have a great staff at Arizona Treasurer's Office and managing that staff and

and making the final decision. Should we be a little more aggressive? Should we be a little less aggressive? Should we buy bonds at a shorter duration or a longer duration? I don't want to get too technical, but that's all part of it. We don't want the audience to go to sleep, but frankly, this is critically important. Right? I mean, those little changes actually add up to really big dollars.

Very big dollars. And the better that we do managing the state money, the less money we have to take from the citizens of Arizona. And for me personally, I think that's really important. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

David, why don't you tell our listeners, by the way, we're with David Livingston. He's a state senator. He is currently running for state treasurer. You can find him at David Livingston dot vote. David, tell us how what made you decide to get into this crazy business of politics and how has it changed since you first started 10 years ago?

So there has been a lot of change in the 10 years in the House and the Senate. I think the biggest change is the House and the Senate is very young and kind of immature. You know, I'm 56 today. I would be 58 by the time the job starts in January 23 for treasurer. I'm one of the older guys, which is, you know, I'm only 56. I don't feel that old, but I'm one of the older guys down there.

The reason I got involved is the banking and the insurance industry came to me about 12 years ago and said, David, you know, you have a great company. You're doing really well. You're making a difference. We think there's bigger, better things for you. And I said, well, what do you mean? I said, we want you to run for political office. And I said, hell no. Why would I do that?

And they just kept asking and asking and asking, and a position came open, and I threw my ticket in there, and I ran, and I won. And then I was like, oh, my God, what do I do now? And I've just been working really hard trying to do the job the last 10 years.

David, are they still friends? David, are they still friends or did you cut them off? I do blame a couple of those people. Every time I talk to them, I blame them for getting me elected yesterday. David, when you first ran, what was the one thing or the thing that stood out to you as, oh my goodness, I had no idea I was going to have to do this?

Well, the job of running for an office has nothing to do, in my opinion, with the job you do in office. It's two completely separate things. And some of the people that get elected don't realize that. It seems to me that some of the people that get elected every day when they're working, they're running for election.

And I didn't do it that way. I won, and I kind of took that hat off, and then I put my other hat on as a worker bee, and I just did the job, and I worked really hard at it. Not everybody does that. And I think that's one of the big things that people need to realize is how different the job is to the job of running. Enormously different. Absolutely. And that's a great lesson.

Would David, would you say that you're more equipped to be serving versus running that fits your talents, your personality?

It does. I mean, being a treasurer is a very technical job, and I'm kind of geeky technical like that. And most treasurers and people with CPAs and people that like spreadsheets and those type of things usually were not good public speakers. And I don't consider myself a great public speaker. I'm good enough to get the job done, but I'm really good on the technical side behind the scenes. That's my strength.

And that strength makes a big difference. Go ahead, Chuck. It's huge. It's huge. David, talk a little bit here. I want to talk a little bit more about the office. So the state treasurer has approximately $22 billion under management and basically stewards the cash management of Arizona's $40 billion state budget. Yes. As you go into this job, what would be your priorities? Basically-

managing $22 billion and helping provide banking services for a $40 billion state budget.

Yep. So I think the job is, the technical job is two-sided of it. One side of the coin is reaching out to the public and just giving them information about what we do. And that also, though, includes reaching out to the cities and counties. And I think one of the things I could do that some treasurers have not done is kind of bring best practices to the cities and the counties on ways of managing money.

I can't mandate anything on them, but I can say, look, this works in all these counties and you're not doing that. Can I put you in touch? Can we have a meeting? Can you consider doing it this way? Because I think it would save you money and save your taxpayer benefits.

payers money. That's one of the things I'm excited to do because I know so many different mayors and people on board of supervisors throughout the state, they don't always reach out and talk to each other. They don't always talk to the state officials. And I think there should be more of that communication going on. In that vein, David, one of the big things, you're good at managing money. Why you're going to be perfect for this job?

But we have some folks here in Arizona managing a very large amount of money who are actually horrific at that job. And I'm talking about the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System Board and their massively underfunded pensions. Is there a role for the treasurer to reach out to work with an organization like PSPRS, like the other pension group boards in the state to improve their practices? Because frankly...

They're a mess. I mean, they have not kept up with the market. Yeah. So let me approach that from two different angles. Down at the Senate and the House, my Republicans elected call me different things, but mostly positive, like the money guy or the pension guy or the insurance guy. Frankly, some of my Democrats call me other things that I can't say on your radio show, but that's OK.

So I've been the pension guy. I put together every year I've down there, I've run multiple pension bills and pension reform bills. And I think we've actually, and PSPRS, we have turned the corner and we're going in the right direction finally. But pension is about managing money for 20, 30, 40 years. So when you turn a corner and you start going the right direction, you still have to manage it, but you don't see the results instantly.

One of the things I'm very, very proud of that we did this year through my committee and my name, I had a bill. Originally, it started to put $300 million into the pension fund to pay off old debt. And then we increased it to $600 million. And then finally, it grew to a billion dollars that we put into the pension system in Arizona to pay off debt that we owe.

And that's critical. We owe that money, the state does. And we have to find ways to do that. By putting all that money in and we get another billion dollars in other debt, we actually save $370 million in annual payments. Wow. That's important. That's big. Huge. That's enormous. I mean, for all the folks looking for more money for this and that and the other thing, I think the thing they forget most often in government is managing your money properly is

And that gives you a lot more money to do all these things, for instance, the Democrats want to do. And yet they fight every good money management policy. It's insane.

It is. Now, on some of my pension reform bills, I did have Democrats on board. Unfortunately, you know, to put the billion dollars into the pension debt, the Democrats didn't join that, which doesn't make any sense to me because what we're paying, we're legally obligated. These are state employees that are either currently working or have retired. We have to pay this debt. So why?

So one of the things I'm going to do in this upcoming year, in January of 23, I'm going to introduce another bill, and I'm going to ask for another billion dollars to go in and pay down debt. Because if we do this now, we will save the state millions and millions of dollars on an ongoing basis.

You know, Chuck, one of the things you and I have talked about on that point is something I was really disappointed at the city of Phoenix this year because we had a lot of money, extra money from the federal government, from COVID and all this. We could have done the same thing with our pension debt, and we didn't. And when we come back here, we got to go to break here in just a moment. But when we come back, I want to talk about why, frankly, Democrats need to be more farsighted on these things, look at money management differently than

and look at paying down these debts because for the things they want to do, which are things that have significant recurring costs, money management, proper money management is one of the things that could free up a lot of resources to do those things. And when they don't, they put themselves in a worse position and it gets worse every single year. And that's what's been happening. Broken Potholes, coming right back. It's the new year and time for the new you.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes.

with your host sam stone and chuck warren on the line with us today david livingston arizona state senator currently running for arizona treasurer and chuck you had a question right before winter break thank you so david being a state senator being there 10 years now and being very involved in the budget process tell our audience how hard is it to actually balance a state budget i think you know people the numbers seem so big

You have different special interests reaching their hands out. Walk us through the process and what it takes to balance a budget and the difficulty in doing that because you've been intimately involved in these balanced budgets. It's one of the things I enjoy the most and also frustrates me the most at the same time working down there. We do pass a balanced budget every year and we use a three-year what we call rolling average of the budget.

But when you pass a balanced budget in government, that's a little different than running a business like I'm used to doing. A business is really clean in how you balance the budget. In government, unfortunately, they have all these gimmicks that don't make it as real as it should be.

So one of the things I try to do in my tenure is eliminate as many of these gimmicks as possible and make it as straight and clean as possible. When we're balancing budgets and we're negotiating the budget, it's the number one thing we do as a House member or a Senate member, and then the governor signs it. When we have a little bit of money, it's actually, oh, no money, it's actually easier to do a budget because not everybody has their hands out. When

When we have a lot of money like we do now, it actually is very difficult to pass a budget because we need a majority of 31 in the House, a majority of 16 in the Senate, and the governor has to sign off on it. And everybody has their hands out. We

We've done a really good job in Arizona managing money. We just passed the biggest tax cut ever, and we could afford it because we've done such a good job managing money. So as Senate Finance Chair, all of the different components of the big tax cut went through my committee, and then when we got the bills over to the House, we kind of put them all together and put one bill inside the budget that we passed.

We wish you could do that with all of our schools here in Arizona, because you guys and I want to bring up this point. David, how much money, how much additional money has the state of Arizona devoted to our schools over the last two budget cycles?

It's been billions of dollars, actually. And this particular year, we are at all-time maximum funding K-12 schools in Arizona history through the state of Arizona. But on top of that, which no one is really talking about, and I don't know why, K-12 schools received an additional $5 billion from the federal government. Right.

So they have more money than they can spend, and they have piles of it sitting on the sidelines. And what's really sad is generally the school boards who pay teachers are not giving big teacher raises with this money, the sitting on the money.

Why is that happening? Is it because the parents of these children don't realize this money is out there? I think what they all feel, well, I know this is I've talked to a lot of people. You may have a different perspective. When you talk to a school age parent, they feel the governor is the one who just determines what teachers get paid. And I explained to them in a great elevator pitch, that's not the case. The governor and the legislature approve budgets.

This gets transferred down to the school districts and the school boards decide this stuff. And the school boards give all the raises or don't give all the raises. Period. End of story. And it seems like, you know, for those who are really concerned about our public schools and we all want our public schools to be the best, that somehow there needs to be a better education campaign saying you need to understand who makes what decisions for your kids' school, including teacher salaries.

And part of the problem, you're right. And part of the big problem is for years, the Democrats have controlled K-12 and the unions and everything. And the talking point that they use is the state government doesn't allow us to do our job, doesn't pay us, doesn't do all that. And they've owned that discussion for decades.

But it's not true. We give them the money and they decide how to spend it. And they have record amount of money. So we have to do a better job communicating. But one of the things Republicans have to do that I think is really important is we have to elect better people to school boards. We do need Republicans and independents on those school boards.

sitting there voting on policies that the superintendent implements. And we have to recruit these school board members and spend more time doing that as Republicans. You know, David, I think that's a great point. One of the things I would add to that, and I'm sure you would agree, is

is that there is a certain type of person that are being looked at and promoted for school boards, and anyone who doesn't fit that bill kind of gets downgraded or pushed aside, and that is either mothers or people with teaching experience, teachers and administrators and so forth.

But running government isn't about teaching in the classroom. It's not about administering the school. It's about showing them the best ways to utilize their money. It is really a much more technical thing where having people like yourself who have experience in business and finance would benefit schools tremendously if they were on those boards.

I agree. We need more engineers and EPA and business owners on school boards to

to give them a different perspective that they're not hearing. My wife's a teacher. She's a great teacher. She's ran and won on school boards, and that's a good perspective. But it's good to have some other professionals in there so you have a better discussion. I've grown up being on school boards, I mean on boards and board of directors, and you want to sit around a table of a board and have real discussions of options.

And then you can figure out which way to go. But if everybody thinks the same way, you come up with the same answer. You don't know if it's good or bad. You need more diversity in school boards. David, would you, Sam and I have talked about this and want to know if you sort of agree with this theory we have. We all support school choice, but you're never going to have

less than 80 percent of the kids in any state attend a public school. I mean, that's just that's just the nature of it. Even if you have a vibrant school choice program. Is it because Republicans get so disgusted with unions and we push school choice that we have ignored the public schools and therefore we are paying the price for that, you know, that ignorance that, you know, ignoring it?

Well, in Arizona, we have charter schools and we need to add all the schools and private schools all together. We actually have right around 21, 22 percent of kids in non-traditional public schools, which I believe is the highest in the whole country.

Yeah, it has to be. So I don't think we've – we haven't hurt public schools by doing that. I think we've increased competition. And by increasing competition – Well, no, but what I mean on that, because of those charter schools and school choice, that we've ignored things like school boards. Republicans, we get very excited about certain things, tax cuts, judicial nominees. Those are things, if you talk to a Republican, we all love talking about.

But Sam and I have discussed because of that passion, we have simply failed and ignored school board elections, which are the one thing that you can really play a role on.

And the reason is we can make a faster change with school choice and charter schools than we can in the traditional public schools. Fighting and improving the traditional public schools takes longer. Sometimes we become impatient. But it's worth fighting it. It is. Because we will always have those kids in K-12. David, that's fantastic. I'm sorry I've got to cut you off. Broken Potholes is going to break. We'll be back in just a moment.

It's the new year and time for a new you. You've thought about running for political office but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from godaddy.com today.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us today, Arizona State Treasurer candidate David Livingston, currently Arizona State Senator David Livingston.

And David, before we go here today, I wanted you to tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background, and let people know who you are because obviously I think people do need to be paying attention to this treasurer's race. It's an important one.

I agree. So I'm 56 years old. I'm married. Tracy and I have been married for 33 years. We have one son who's 30, and we have one grandson who's three. So that's kind of the family. I love dogs. I love scuba diving. I play a little bit of tennis here and there when I make time. And I just like working. I like being active. I like thinking. I'm a Sudoku guy.

You know, it's a numbers game and just makes you think all the time. I like thinking and processing and analyzing stuff. We love nerds on the show. Yes, yes. This is a nerdy show. David, what's better, being a father or a grandfather?

Oh, they're both great, but I actually love being a grandpa even better because I get to interact with my grandson and my son. I get to see how I've influenced his life for 30 years at this point and how he is influencing

influencing Dexter's life as a little three-year-old. And I see so many similar things, but when you get that hug and a kiss and I love you from your grandson, wow, it's that special. And it changed my, it has helped me focus on life as a bigger picture also. Oh, that's fantastic. I had a friend who had his first grandchild and said, how is it? He goes, it's the only reason you have kids, Chuck, to have a grandkid. Yeah.

David, you know, you've been awarded quite a few things as a state senator, House representative, you know, you've been chairman of committees, you've been awarded school choice champion, hero of the taxpayer, champion of the taxpayer, things like that. Of these awards you get as a successful legislator, which one do you take most pride in?

That's a hard question for me because I'm not a showy type person. I have all these awards and I have them in my office, but I usually don't make a big deal about them. For me, and I've told speakers of the House and Senate presidents and the governor this, if I see you once a month, if you come and give me a pat on the back, say, you know, you're really doing a good job this month. Thanks. That's all I need. I'm really self-motivating myself.

So I like earning the awards, but for me, I just compete against myself, to tell you the truth.

You know, David, I got to tell you, I mean, not to throw in some unsolicited campaign advice, but I will. You got to put that out there more, all these accomplishments that you've had, because, you know, I've talked to a lot of people and I tell everybody, I'm not going to make any bones about this. I think you are the absolute right person to be in that treasurer's office. I think you are by far the best candidate that has come along for that office in some time. It's exactly what you did.

I will, and I take a vice. I actually was talking to a former treasurer last night. I talked to a lot of these guys because I picked their brains for a vice on good, bad, and ugly at the job. And he said, David, do you realize that you're one of the most technically qualified people ever to run for this job? And I said, that's not to disqualify me, is it? Because sometimes we do elect the wrong people for the wrong jobs.

But I think, you know, having that expertise is important. - David, real important question here. How old were you when you grew your mustache? And have you ever thought back on not doing it? - I've had it since high school.

And I've had it for a number of years. Yeah. I don't think I've actually, from high school, I would really have to go back and think about it. I don't think I've ever changed it since high school. I've trimmed it all the time, but I don't think I've ever not had it. You're the Tom Selleck of our generation. That's for sure. You're the Tom Selleck of our generation. It's a fantastic mustache. No kidding.

No beating on the stash here. Come on. But, you know, I did two years of high school in Chicago and my final two years of high school in upstate New York. And that's just part of what I've, you know, it just grows fast. So you're just a leader there. At 56, I just had this picture of David in some bell-bottom jeans and a tie-dye shirt with that mustache tearing it up in the 60s.

You take that back, David. David, as we wrap up here, David, tell us two questions. Tell us why. Why should people run for office? You can run for office for two different reasons. One, to try to make a name for yourself, or two, to try to make a difference for yourself and the community you're representing. And I hope people see that I'm the latter of. And they look at me and what I've done in the House and the Senate, and they say,

I say, wow, he's really made a difference on really hard, technical things. And we need people like that to do it. It's very rewarding when you be able to get elected and go into a school board or the House or the Senate and truly make a difference.

And you can't. But you have to work really hard and you have to be able to negotiate really well with your fellow members. And you have and you have David Livingston candidate for state treasurer. Catch him at David Livingston dot vote. Broken potholes coming right back.

And that's the sound?

that introduces the irrepressible Kylie Kipper with Broken Potholes Sunshine Moment. Kylie, take it away. I've missed the sunshine moment. I feel like we haven't had it in a couple of weeks. We haven't and everyone misses it.

I know. But with the Olympics wrapping up, there is a really cool story that came out, I think just a few days ago about an Olympic athlete, Eddie Alvarez. So a little background is there only has been 142 athletes in history across all countries that have competed in the Olympics, both in the summer Olympics and in the winter Olympics. And so our very own Eddie Alvarez, he is with the U.S. baseball team. He is one of those athletes now.

In 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, he competed in the 5,000-meter relay team in the short track speed skating and actually won silver in that. So he actually lost the gold because they were competing against Russia, and three of those members on that relay team were actually part of the doping incident. And so he says he kind of feels cheated.

but he's back in the Tokyo Olympics ready for a true second chance and he's hoping to avoid having to hear another country's national anthem being played as the gold medals are being presented. But so now he's the starting second baseman and something else that I didn't know was baseball has returned to the Summer Olympics for the first time since 2008.

Which I was kind of cool. I was really happy to see baseball back in the Olympics. But you know what I actually said at the time when both baseball and softball got taken out of the Olympic rotation? Baseball, you can understand because the major leagues don't shut down. The best players in the world can't be there.

But taking away softball at that same time was totally wrong. It was wrong. And I'm incredibly glad to see it back because it's a great sport. It's growing worldwide. It should never have been removed from the Olympics late. Yeah, so actually the baseball team is playing today, August 7th, against Japan competing for gold. And so now with that, with them even competing for gold and silver, Eddie...

has is now one of six athletes ever to have won a medal in both the summer and winter Olympics. And only two Americans ever have done that. Who are those two? Tell us. Eddie Egan. He was one boxing gold in 1920 and then bobsledding gold in 1932. And then Lauren Williams, who won silver in track in 2004, golden track in 2012, and then bobsledding silver in 2014. Nice. Yeah.

Yeah, so we actually also have another Chandler, a local baseball player named Jamie Westbrook, who's also on the U.S. team. So everyone should watch them, cheer them on. Their hardest competitor is Japan, and that's who they're playing for gold. Yeah.

Japanese Baseball League is awfully darn good. And unlike the major leagues, they shut down. I was reading a really funny piece today. Our team is made up of minor leaguers, many of them from fairly low level of the minor leagues, from A-ball, that kind of thing. And they're playing against grown professionals, 28-, 30-year-old guys who have been playing in the Japanese League for a long time. It's impressive what they've done. Yeah. Eddie made his major league debut during COVID. He said he really struggled professionally.

trying to pick a sport because he either picked skating or he had to pick baseball. His family is from Cuba, so they really were pushing him to play baseball. His older brother played in the minor leagues for the Dodgers. And so but he just he couldn't decide. He kept bouncing back and forth. So in 2014, he competed and then went actually to Salt Lake City Community College to play baseball following that.

And then finally made his debut. He's 31 years old, so he's a little bit older for baseball, but made his debut with the Marlins. Very cool. Very, very cool. Well, thank you very much. That is wonderful. I hope people have been watching the Olympics. We're not leading in gold, but we're leading in the medal count. I think one of the great disappointments of the Olympics is just U.S. track. Huge, huge disappointment.

Even Carl Lewis has called them out. He's not pleased. So that's been one of the great surprises of this Olympics. Especially because they dominated the last, you know, whatever their equivalent of the World Cup. Decades. Well, yeah, just decades, decades. I mean, what a weird time to be an Olympic athlete. You go over there, there's no crowd, though it has been really fun to watch when they go to the podium or they win, watching the...

the news or the cameras in the people's homes, the watch parties, which is fascinating. You know, Chuck, when I walked in here, Kylie, you'll get a kick out of this also on the TV was a report of a survey someone just did that said 40% of Americans think they could compete in the Olympics. Really? Yes.

People are just so insane. People are so insane. If that is .0004, I'd be not surprised in actuality. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Sam, let's talk this week. The Biden Department of Justice announced yesterday that they are opening an investigation between the Institute's department. Would you give our audience a little background on what this is about?

what the response has been, and why Phoenix residents, frankly, should be concerned about this overreach. Yeah, Phoenix residents, frankly, should be up in arms about this because this is an entirely political investigation. It's what they call a policies and practices investigation, which means they're going to come in and review every single thing the department does. And they highlighted things like

you know, not caring well enough for the belongings of the homeless. And I mean, it's really insane, these accusations. And it very clearly, for folks who don't know, this is very clearly coming from one of our council members, a very radical extremist who hates the police. I mean, personally hates the police, a guy named Carlos Garcia.

And he's been pushing for this. And frankly, I rather assume that he got it and got this investigation with the help of our mayor, who's very well connected in Washington, Kate Gallego. And

this is about defunding the police. This is not about the policies and practices. This is not about racism on the Phoenix police. This is not about the shootings we've had in four and a half years. Yeah, we've had shootings. When people pull guns on police, they're going to get shot. When you charge a cop with a knife, you're going to get shot. We've had really only three questionable use of force incidents in the four and a half years that I've been at the city. So given that,

This is not a major issue. And the department under Chief Williams has really done a lot to improve public transparency. So having this happen on the end of a really extensive process to look in and improve the operations of that department, improve transparency, is really kind of an insult.

And frankly, Phoenix residents should be furious because this is about defunding the cops. This is about finding excuses to have fewer police. And it actually ties to something we just did, which is past the 2021-22 budget, where we were already projecting the city of Phoenix would have to increase taxes by the max. There's a state limit to how much we can increase our taxes by the max every single year for a decade.

just to keep up with the increase in our pension costs and our other obligations. And we have a council full of progressives that are desperate to spend more money. And so the minute this DOJ investigation gets announced, Councilman Garcia comes out with a statement where he applauds the investigation and then immediately moves to, we spend the bulk of our money, the majority of our money on police, and there's all these, and he gives a huge list of all these other things that he then wants to do.

So what do you think this is about? This is about the money. And it is insulting to every single officer in that department. Officially, look, the department, the unions, the rest of the council is sitting there going, hey, we're going to cooperate fully with this investigation. Well, of course you are. You have no choice. And, you know, they're saying, hey, you know, either they're saying like Garcia, they think they're going to find a bunch of wrongdoing or they're just honest and they're saying, no, there's nothing here and they're not going to find anything.

Look, this is going to be another Michael Brown situation where they went in and investigated and came up with the fact that everything the officer in that case in Ferguson said was true. That Brown had assaulted him in his vehicle, tried to take his gun, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yet to this day, you have Democrats in Washington, in the U.S. Senate, in the U.S. House who call that a murder by police. Right. This is this is cover.

This is cover for them to continue their assault on law and order. And it is astounding how much the Democratic Party has become a party of lawlessness. And that's what they're promoting. Well, what's amazing is that, you know, you have President Biden's press secretary cry, basically plead that Democrats don't defend police, Republicans defend police. And say it with a straight face.

That is the amazing thing about it. And no one is pushing back on her. It's just another example of the irresponsibility of our New York corporate media. It's stunning to me. It's beyond stunning, Chuck. I mean, it is just straight up gaslighting. And she is just flat lying. And nobody in this broad media in Washington, New York, nobody will call her on it.

What should the city council, what should the Arizona legislature do about this DOJ investigation? Do they just sit back and let it happen or should they be fighting back and saying you're overreaching? What should be happening here? Well, I mean, look, they should be fighting back and saying you're overreaching. They should call this out for what it is. They should call this a witch hunt. They should call this a money grub because that's what it is.

OK, they should. But from the city perspective, an official basis, look, you can't tell the DOJ, no, you can't kick them out. So you're going to have to cooperate with the investigation. But I'd be really prepared to contest everything they may claim from it. And frankly, folks, you got to throw some of these Democrats out. Even if you kind of like them, you got to get rid of them because they're going along with all this stuff.

And you've got to get people in there who aren't going to do it, who are going to let our police do their job. And I mean, at every level, right up through Congress and the Senate. Let's talk briefly here. I want to talk about some other issues, but COVID, obviously we have a new variant that has many people concerned. You're starting to see mass mandates come up again and

What was interesting this week, Jennifer Aniston, who was Rachel on Friends, told an interview in September issue of InStyle that she has cut ties with some members of her inner circle. So this just isn't people outside. This would be like Sam Stone cutting Kylie and I off who have not disclosed that they've been vaccinated or not. And people have gone crazy on that. Other people are supportive of her on it.

Do you think, Kip and Sam, that we're going to start seeing this a little bit more in the fall and the winter where people start saying, I'm not going to associate with you, even though you've been my dear friend or family member for these many decades? Is this something that we're going to start seeing more and more of? And she's just been honest enough to admit it.

I absolutely agree that that's what we're going to see. And look, we're going to have another couple of weeks of spike here in Arizona. All these case jumps, when they happen, they follow about the same trend line, the same timeline. It may happen slightly different in different states, but we're going to have a spike that continues in this country, just like it did last year, through the fall. And the fact of the matter is COVID's endemic. It's worldwide. It's not going away. There's going to be a new variant every single year.

And people now have to start addressing how much risk they want in their life. And she's saying, look, I'm not comfortable with any risk from anyone who's not vaccinated, period. And I need proof. That's really totalitarian to me. But it's coming. There's going to be a lot more of that. It is coming. And United Airlines announced this morning that they're going to require all employees to be vaccinated.

And I you're going to see this in court real soon here in the next 30 days and probably go to the Supreme Court. And so it will be highly fascinating to see what happens on it. Do you see governments locking down again, Sam, like they did during last winter? I think they're going to be really hesitant to do that because they understand how popular it was or unpopular it was. Pardon me. But I do think some governments and governors are.

Mayors are going to try that. I think if you gave Kate Geiger the option, she would lock Phoenix down today. I think there are a lot of other governors around the country and mayors who would do the same thing. I think the problem is this is never going away. And we've really got to get to a place where we learn to live with it. And there's a lot of folks who just are not willing to do that at all.

No. Well, no, because you've been taught and, you know, when you for example, when you talk to liberals, I think the number I saw, you know, they over inflate how many people are dying from it. By like 10 times. Yeah. So you really have a fear factor. And it's a true fear factor. We shouldn't discount that's how they feel. But again, that's an education campaign that really needs to be done. It's it's much like, you know, David, let me say we talk about school boards.

Why the Republicans do not go out and do a major media campaign on this issue really decides your local neighborhood school teacher's salary is beyond me because it would solve a lot of their problems. Anyone looking to promote it, come on Broken Potholes. We're coming back next week. You can catch us Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all the fun places. Broken Potholes.

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