Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
The Space Command Battle: Relocation, Rights, and Politics
The political chess game over Space Command's headquarters has far-reaching consequences beyond simple geography. Trump's push to relocate operations from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama represents a troubling intersection of political vendettas, military readiness, and the fundamental rights of service members and their families.
When military personnel receive orders to relocate, they often have little choice but to comply, regardless of how the move might impact their rights and wellbeing. For women in uniform and military spouses, being forced to move to states with restrictive abortion laws creates dangerous situations where medical care may be compromised or inaccessible. This fundamental disparity in rights based on duty station assignment raises profound questions about fairness and the true cost of service.
The economic impact extends far beyond military families. Building an entirely new headquarters facility in Alabama would cost taxpayers billions while disrupting established operations—a textbook case of the fraud, waste, and abuse that service members are trained to identify. Meanwhile, Colorado's representative on the House Armed Services Committee remains conspicuously silent while Alabama's representative aggressively promotes the move.
This controversy connects to broader concerns about the administration's governance approach, including the potential invocation of the Insurrection Act against sanctuary cities and immigration enforcement policies that could devastate industries reliant on immigrant labor. When workers fear deportation to El Salvador detention facilities, entire sectors of the economy—from construction to agriculture—face disruption, affecting all Americans regardless of immigration status.
Have you been affected by military relocations that compromised your rights? Are you concerned about how Space Command's potential move might impact your family or business? Share your story with us—we're gathering real experiences to share with lawmakers who can make a difference.
https://bsky.app/profile/leftfaceco.bsky.social
https://www.facebook.com/epccpv
www.EPCCPV.org or info@epccpv.org
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Left Face. I am your co-host, dick Wilkinson, and I'm joined this morning with Adam Gillard Good morning Dick.
Speaker 2:How are you?
Speaker 1:doing, doing well For everyone. This is the podcast for veterans issues in the Pikes Peak region, where we cover the national, local and international news topics with a veteran's lens. Adam and I are both retired, so we're technically old guys that like to complain about things. So we're going to do that this morning and I'm going to start with a local topic that we have mentioned on the show a couple of times. We've also heard a lot of people kind of poo-poo this idea away and be like, oh no, there's nothing to it, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:But Space Command currently a lot of the footprint for all things US space and specifically military space operations exists here in Colorado Springs, and there has been political wrangling over the years since Trump first created the Space Force about where headquarters of the Space Force, the branch and Space Command, the combatant command, where are these things going to sit.
Speaker 1:So for now, colorado Springs is the seat for a lot of that, but there's been a contentious effort to move that to Huntsville, alabama. So we know that Senator Tommy Tuberville is a friend of Donald Trump and that there's some what feels like some favors on the line there that you know Trump has offered him, but there's also a representative, a congressman, from that same region and he's on the House Armed Services Committee. His name is Mike Rogers, republican from Alabama, new air force secretary that, basically, just like donald trump, has signed all these executive orders. You know, the day he got elected, that the new air force secretary is going to sit down and have a ceremonious signing to hand over the space command to alabama and that this has all been prescribed and and that congressman is locked in. Yeah, what? What? You know there's a lot of layers to that onion, no kidding.
Speaker 2:Uh, so I believe believe it was Rogers that he was. He's been on that committee for a long time because he was on it when Lamborn was on it and he would always steamroll Lamborn.
Speaker 1:Yep, it is. It's Mike Rogers, yeah.
Speaker 2:And now you know, like you mentioned to me earlier, it's been crickets from crank. Nothing heard from here and he's on the same committee. Yes, nothing I've heard from him here and he's on the same committee. He is, yes, you know he's on that committee, so he should be like he is part of that conversation.
Speaker 1:There's no excuse to not have the mouthpiece there. Yeah, yeah, so like we need answers on that, is he just standing by and like watching the favor?
Speaker 2:happen. You know he's going to stand behind whoever the new secretary is and watch him sign it probably Like absolutely spineless and not have any.
Speaker 1:you know apologies or you know no.
Speaker 2:He'll say you know it's for the betterment of something. A healthy Space Force is a healthy America. That's it. Yeah, get in line, lick the boot, you know yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know, cost of living is cheaper in Alabama. So if some of my constituents move to Alabama, I guess we'll see them later. Right, that's his mindset right? Oh, that's his mindset right. He's like oh well, good riddance.
Speaker 2:And then when you look at the larger picture and some of the fights that we've had in the last couple of years about, we start moving more women into Alabama where they have stricter abortion laws, oh sure, and if they need to use funds to travel outside, they can't. You know, that's Tuberville's big thing. There is the not allowing that Not allowing funds to be used or things like that, so like we're endangering women's lives just by having the most progressive branch.
Speaker 1:Both service members and spouses that feel like they're compelled to be assigned there. Right, what are they going to do about it? Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So now they have to go live somewhere that they may not align with and their rights have been stripped away. So that's a huge, huge issue for a lot of folks that serve. You know, like are we going to lose a lot of our good folks that are serving because they want to stay safe, and I would not blame them, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know I think that's something that when I was serving there wasn't. At the time there was not as much of a push. There was more interest in federal statutes being the law of the land and broad applicability across all 50 states. That's no longer the case as far as Donald Trump and the new Republican regime in general. The whole party is all about states' rights and pushing things back down to the state level, especially these social hot button issues. They see a fantasy where certain states become super ultra, like utopia for conservatives, right, and that's what they're talking about here is creating these types of little pockets where there's these conservative utopias.
Speaker 1:My general statement to that is I as a citizen, I like states rights, I like competition in certain ways, even in social ways, from state to state, like. I kind of like those things. But there is a whole population of people that you know the military being one example, but I'm sure there are other industries or other examples where you basically are compelled and your, your right to choose where you're going to live, to be able to make a living is is taken away from you. In some of these situations I usually would say an average citizen, if you don't like it. Find a job somewhere else, move your family, you know like find the environment where you do want to live You'll still be an American citizen, but cross the border and live to in another state, you know. But there's a couple million people that don't have that choice and so it brings the stakes around each state not being dressed right dress and not having the same level set of baseline of rights and regulations.
Speaker 2:There's harm there that I did never real. I never realized that, I never even thought about it when I was in the military. Well cause, I mean, we spent so long fighting for these rights, we had these rights locked down and now they're just being stripped away and taken away In pockets right. Yeah, we thought that we had women's rights locked down. We had civil rights like voting rights. We thought that was I agree. Yeah and they just keep repealing it.
Speaker 1:What do you mean? Change the right to vote, right, yeah, so now we have to go back and like re-talk about this shit, like come on man like that's true, and and sometimes we're fighting our grandfather's fights, you know.
Speaker 1:I mean, he's like how's this not settled business? You know, like this was done a couple generations ago, yeah, and that I guess that's part of the catch is, yeah, that was a couple of generations ago. Like we're, we're the new, we're the new team in town and this is what should have always been happening. Right, that's the mentality there. But it's just such a strange situation to set up where someone who's serving their country can be put in a situation where they might be persecuted and they would have avoided that in any other circumstance and now they're just there dealing with it, right. So the impact of that not even just around sexual reproduction rights or any of those things, but there's many different layers that just keep kind of getting laid into that mindset hard for recruitment, right.
Speaker 1:That can't be a good thing for recruitment If it's like, oh, you might get you know the biggest base that does your job. You want to join the military, you know what job you want to do. A lot of times you're going to end up at a certain base, like for me, fort Meade, maryland. Basically guaranteed you're going to do a tour there at some point. You know if I was in that situation where I was a young person and I was like, wait a minute, they do crazy stuff out there, man, like I don't think I ever want to live in whatever state fill in the blank, right that could easily deter a young person who's not like totally set on joining the military. They go wait, wait, you can send me to one of these places. I don't want to go there.
Speaker 2:Well, and the school systems you know, like outside of Huntsville, like the school systems aren't great Sure.
Speaker 1:You know Alabama is not high on the list of, you know, child welfare outcomes.
Speaker 2:So now if I have my kids in schools here and they're like well, you got to move over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know step backwards for a lot of families on that. Yeah, so you're right. The level of you know quality of life has always been different from one place to another, but it's becoming more drastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And then just the whole operational like moving it there you're signing off on a headquarters. It's probably going to cost a billion dollars just for the headquarters, sure, and then all the extra ancillary stuff that goes around it and things like that. And yeah, being operational out here already it makes no sense. It's just for all the money that we're trying to save. It's a big paycheck for nothing.
Speaker 1:It's a waste. Yeah, I agree, and it's got to be, man. Classic case of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. What's wrong with where it's at?
Speaker 2:It's like what we look for when we were trained about fraud, waste and abuse. Like this is it? Yes, this would be an example.
Speaker 1:Yes, you're right. If you're teaching a young, you know E5 how to spot fraud, waste and abuse. This is it. Yeah, this would be the case study. You know, perfectly fine operation that's less than five years old. You know everything's going fine, no problems. Hey, I got an idea, you know. Let's stop doing it, let's move, let's upset everything for about two years and then we'll see how we're going three or four years from now.
Speaker 2:Check back in with me. Well, it all kind of stems from Colorado. Just not voting for him in 2016.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and you know so it's just petty BS. The attempt for Colorado to keep him off the ballot, and them being the first state.
Speaker 1:There's also that too that is the more recent stick in the eye for him. And man, if I mean, he cannot stand most of what goes on out here as far as, like, the governor and the house you know this, the state level legislature typetype movements he just thinks this place is as crazy as California in his mind. As far as, like, oh, those are the supermost ultra-liberal people. So, yeah, he'll take a chance to kick some dust in our faces every chance he gets. And I mean proof of that yesterday slight tangent, but related to the behavior Christopher Krebs, the old information security director.
Speaker 1:So what a critical infrastructure security agency CISA. They were in charge of the election security back when Donald Trump in 2020, this man was hired by Donald Trump to lead this organization and then he testified and said the 2020 election was the most secure and best run election we'd ever had, right? Well, of course, that's the antithesis of what Donald Trump exists to say now, right. And so yesterday Donald Trump signed an executive order going after that man in particular and and saying we are going to investigate his testimony from back in 2020, when he said that I lost and we're coming at, we're coming to get you. That's yesterday, when he said that I lost and we're coming to get you.
Speaker 2:That's horrifying. Yesterday, that's absolutely horrifying.
Speaker 1:And so he's willing to pick up those old grievances, right? So there's no doubt that he'll find plenty of grievances to kick our way in Colorado, because we're the first state to try and put him off the ballot, right? So he's like I have a bone to pick with you, yeah, and we have not settled it yet, right? And I'll pick up a five-year-old grievance now that I have the power of the pen and I will abuse you with it.
Speaker 2:I will. So he's going to try and force this guy to admit to perjury, or something.
Speaker 1:They're going to fabricate perjury charges against him is what I see happening right now they're not even going to talk to this guy. He already did his testimony. They're just going to go back fact find, write some kind of document and say this dude is committing treason basically.
Speaker 2:So I mean, this kind of takes me to what I wanted to talk about a little bit today. You know, when Trump was inaugurated, you know he set forth Christie, noam and Hegseth, you know, to kind of figure out what's going on with the borders, the border crises? Sure, because Canada's border crisis is now a real thing too.
Speaker 1:Sure Maple shipments. Fentanyl-laced maple shipments yeah.
Speaker 2:So he gives them 90 days from his inauguration and that day lands on 420 this year.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess it would be 90 days after yeah, I didn't realize, yeah, I do kind of like that I want now I want 420 to take on a different element to it. I want it to be I don't know what, instead of the first 100 days of office? Yeah, the first 90 days, yeah.
Speaker 2:But so it happens on 420 this year and a lot of folks are kind of starting to talk about the Insurrection Act and that's where the president can authorize the use of military forces on American civilians and so in a scenario where somebody is protecting somebody who's here illegally, they could be charged, deported off to El Salvador, one step closer to martial law and the authoritarianism that I hear when you tell me about that guy. The vendetta from five years ago, yeah, like in trying to get somebody to for perjury, that's the things that you know. Saddam Hussein's cleansing when he took over, sure, yeah, where it's just like you stand up, you go get executed. Yeah, like that's like we're goose-stepping down that barrier.
Speaker 1:We're staring at it. Yeah, right there. Yeah, I agree that the concern there, as far as you know, not just the old grievances and everything but this insurrection act thing and everything but this insurrection, insurrection act thing I've seen in the news a lot lately about sanctuary cities and sanctuary policies of cities and states where they won't interact with ice no-transcript, and I've never been a fan of that from its like, at face value, especially, I don't know, 10 years ago when it became politically popular for a mayor to declare that they were a sanctuary city. It was a trend, it was an obvious political trend that wasn't really rooted in what I saw as thoughtful solutions. Yeah, as you can imagine, the president who wants to deport everyone, um, doesn't like sanctuary cities, and so I could see the insurrection act being something, uh, where you know the national guard could potentially you know usually we say martial, martial law type things, right Um, that that would be where I think I see sanctuary cities or places that have, um, immigration friendly policies, being the first places that get any kind of influence, like push, saying, hey, stop doing this or we're going to arrest your mayor, we're going to arrest your police chief, like people that are telling this, saying this policy needs to be an act, we're going to get them for treason right.
Speaker 1:We're going to say, if you are enforcing this policy, allowing immigrants to be in your city, that's treason. I don't see. I mean, there's almost no legal boundary between here and there If they really do invoke the Insurrection Act. There's no, there's no, there's no brick wall in between saying that out loud I invoke the Insurrection Act and then arresting all those mayors. There's nothing, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean, like the dominoes touch each other you know, yeah, and it's really uncharted waters that I mean. We've been kind of screaming about it for a bit here, but he's still pushing it as far as he can go. We're not going to talk about the terrorists. But he did it with that shit where he talks about it and then he pulls back. Going to talk about the terrorists. But he did it with that shit where you know he talks about it and then he pulls back. You know, and like how much of this you know juvenile tactics. Is the world going to?
Speaker 1:tolerate. It's your teen. I have a teenager. I have had many teenagers at this point now in my, in my life.
Speaker 1:I have four kids and you know, even but little kids do it. Teenagers just do it any grander fashion. Yeah, they push their boundaries right. They try and find what's the limit, what can I get away with, right, what's what's really going to cause a consequence that I don't want to deal with? And then how do I get right back to the just this side of whatever that is right, you know. Oh, if I'm 10 minutes late for curfew, I don't mind being 10 minutes late.
Speaker 1:That's up to me, like I've given myself allowance to do that right. Well, that's how he is doing. A lot of this policy movement is sort of how hard can I push it? And then, if something bites me, I'll step back just a little bit and then I'll come back in just a day or two and push even harder and see if it bites me again. You know, and it's that testing right?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, he's been. He's never been held accountable for anything. Well, that's true. So, like you, look at the courts, all of his personal cases and things like that, I mean he's still the president.
Speaker 1:There's no accountability. There's been no consequence for any of that stuff.
Speaker 2:You know multiple felons, but you know where do you when he starts pushing and keep coming back like how do we get him to? I don't know. I don't know what the question is.
Speaker 1:There I'm just so confused by the whole situation right now. There you go, there you go, that's it. That's as we always say confusion is the goal, right, yeah, you start to get lost in these mental rabbit holes of like what? Exactly because you're. I think the problem that we, that any regular average citizen, regardless of, like, partisan affiliation, the problem that we have is that we're trying our best to understand what is the strategy, what's the next step, what do we think would be the obvious next thing? And then we'll feel better if the obvious next thing actually happens, right, and so that's why we're all guessing on his strategy of like when, how long will the terrorists last or not? Laughs, will he actually arrest 5 million immigrants or not? Right, like we're, we're waiting to see what we think the next outcome would be. And he blows it up so far out of what we could expect the next step to be that we never. We get less stable and less stable. Every time we think we get our heads wrapped around like what's going on, it gets blown up again.
Speaker 2:Because still on immigration, but I think it's been forgotten in the last day is that the Supreme Court put a stay or is not making him bring back that guy that got sent to prison for nothing? Yeah, like the Supreme Court like stopped them bringing him back, like and it just has a kind of a stay, but they haven't said anything about it. They haven't, they didn't say shit about it.
Speaker 1:Yesterday they said we need more time to consider this right. Why, yeah, the administration already said this guy is not didn't do anything wrong. This was an administrative error. That's their own words. Right, administrative?
Speaker 1:error that's their own words Then you need to administratively bring him back, right, and and nevermind that the the argument that they have for this one individual is well, he was always here, technically, illegally, right, all right, and if that's the standard of justice that we're carrying out and you want to say that, like, establish it and say it, right. But if you but they don't, they go. Well, he was with gang members, okay, that's not a reason to arrest anybody, right? Well, he has a tattoo that looks like a gang tattoo. Okay, that's not a reason to. That's not a crime, that's a coincidence, not a crime, right? I? I mean, the first lady was here illegally with pedophiles. So I do agree that knowingly crossing a border and entering someplace that requires some kind of documentation. You know you're doing something wrong, right, or that you could have a consequence for that.
Speaker 1:But the idea that a judge had said that one individual has proven that, even though he came into the country illegally, is not a threat to anybody and has already had that hearing and has had annual updates since that hearing to say you're still allowed to stay here, and then the administration says that it was an administrative error, there's, it's an open and shut case, right, there's nothing else to consider If the prosecutors themselves say oh yeah, wrong guy. The judge doesn't keep the case open. The judge lets that guy go and he says go find the right guy. That's it. Immediate release.
Speaker 2:Right, but the Supreme court just sits and waits for the check to cash and it's crazy man.
Speaker 1:And then the also the legal, this, this. You know international law, it's all squishy. We've got all these treaties and stuff, but if we want to go get some, if we sent somebody somewhere and then we wanted to retrieve them, there are ten different ways to legally do that and there's about five different ways to do it extra legally. And so the excuse of well, we gave them to El Salvador, so like we just have absolutely no legal authority ever again over this person's destiny, BS. The stupidest legal, the lowest bar of a legal argument. I feel like that was the litmus test to see if the judge was even reading the paperwork.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying? Right, and then back to the Insurrection Act. If he can start deporting, because he has already told reporters that he'd like the idea of sending american citizens to these prisons also, sure, um?
Speaker 1:as a deterrence method, right like to scare the shit out.
Speaker 2:Well, he says like, oh, if they're the worst of the worst, if they're the bad of the bad, you know let's, you know, send them down there and let them deal with. Let them deal with them at a cheaper cost yeah type of thing. Um, but like, with this insurrection act like like you think they're gonna have a real good quality control on who they're sending down there?
Speaker 2:no, no, no they're gonna be rounding people up and it's gonna be a gross abuse of power that I mean grosser than what it already is it's already pretty bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, what's crazy to me is um extradition. Let's talk about extradition and how. But you know, a criminal does get moved from one country to another based on a legal request, right? So so many countries will and I mean, I'm not, I don't really ascribe to this, but they're ultra liberal countries that will not send a prisoner out for extradition to any place. That's even slightly more conservative than them, because they say, oh, you're not going to treat them fairly, right, and so their standard of fairness in whatever country says, hey, this is how we treat prisoners and this is how we do our judicial system. And if your country is not, you know, not in parity with this, we'll never send you a criminal suspect, right, we just won't because we think that you'll politically prosecute them or you'll abuse them, torture them, whatever. That's usually the case is like we're not going to send people down to prison in Egypt because we're pretty sure you're just going to torture them to death right.
Speaker 2:It's a human rights violation.
Speaker 1:There are countries that won't send people to the United States because of their concern about our prison system and our legal system and due process. That's one. A big one usually is that if we send him to America, you're not going to have a trial for like three years, right, Like you've. He's already been here for five years, your prosecutors have already been mounting evidence for years, but it's still going to take three years before the trial even happens. No, like, that's just not. Just we're not going to put somebody in jail for three years If they could be proven innocent at the end, we're not going to send them to you, right, and so even at the level of what we consider human rights compliant I guess you could say prison system here in America we're still too regressive for some other countries to send people here.
Speaker 1:Now our policy, as Donald Trump sees it, is we're too nice to prisoners. We need to send them to another country that doesn't have the human rights laws that we have so they can get abused. Right, Because I want prisoners to get abused, and instead of just abusing people here in America, I want to send them somewhere else to get them abused. Right, Because it's cheaper to abuse them somewhere else.
Speaker 2:Well, and just did that overall message of keep your mouth shut and stay working.
Speaker 1:Yeah, stay in line, or you're going to El Salvador.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the street.
Speaker 1:Chris Krebs from the CISA is going down. Once they find him guilty of perjury, he's going to get his head shaved, yeah.
Speaker 2:I hate drawing easy lines to 1984, but this is straight up out of the doublespeak, changing what people said and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well and Christy Noem when she goes down. She apparently has like a monthly visit down at that prison. Now Right, where's, I don't know, hanging out with the warrant.
Speaker 1:We're warden, yeah, and so. And look look at this, you know, and they're making again making more of those TV commercials that I was talking about. She and her thing was you will come here, right, and that was the the. I think that was the statement of baselining that threat to say it doesn't matter why you come to America, if you're a criminal or not, we don't care, right, if you're a farm laborer that crosses the border and you go back and forth seasonally and we find you picking fruit and you're not supposed to be here, we're sending you to El Salvador, right, just like a hardened gang member, right, like that's the threat. That's what she said Do not come to America or you will get shipped to here.
Speaker 1:And trying to make it that very clear threat of you know, self-deportation even, right, that's another one that people are talking about a lot now that people are so afraid to go to work because they're afraid they'll get picked up at their job by ICE. Ice is about to start doing workplace enforcement, right, and so if ICE starts rolling up vans on all the construction sites around America, it's going to take about a month before most of those people stop going to work, find some other job or just go back, leave America. I understand that's the intention of the policy, but that's not going to be realistic or sustainable.
Speaker 2:Right. It just kills all growth and all jobs for everybody else too, because a lot of these for doing unskilled labor. It's pretty damn skilled.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:It takes a lot of work to be quick and good at anything.
Speaker 1:Get efficient and good at it, yeah, so our economy.
Speaker 2:There's been so many studies on the trillions of dollars that immigrants-.
Speaker 1:Based off of that type of labor?
Speaker 2:Yeah, provide to our economy and that's all just going to disappear and we don't have the people that are going to go out there and do these things. No, and when you talk about the construction sites and things like that, so now all the growth for big businesses and things like that, the sprawl that the city wants, it's just going to grind to a halt or become exponentially more expensive to execute.
Speaker 1:And so a project, now that you're going to get by with paying a lot of your labor, just right above minimum wage. If you add a couple dollars you know an hour to that to try and recruit other type of workers, you know your cost goes up 20% on that project, right, yeah. And you know you're already leveraging, you're maxing out whatever you can to try and build. You know you're going to get $20 million investment to build this building. And then all of a sudden somebody goes well, it's actually gonna be 27. You're like well, we're halfway through, you know. And they're like go find seven more million dollars, you know? Or?
Speaker 1:we're going to leave half the building built, you know. So, yeah, and that's, that's a reality. That's only a few weeks away at the most. You know where, where that impact on the labor force of all kinds of different industries is coming through? Um is coming through.
Speaker 2:One of the tariffs that he left out was with China, though. Yes, you get a lot of, you know net like resources and things like that from them, still so like a lot of those increases.
Speaker 1:Supply chain costs yeah.
Speaker 2:Like those are still going up.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Like they're our biggest thing, Like I think everything else was a distraction. To keep that on China? Yeah, Because nobody said anything about China keeping their, or we kept our 150%, whatever it is on them now that's going to kill us.
Speaker 1:Until tomorrow when he removes it. Right the thing, if we stick with the labor piece of it. I saw a Trump admin official I can't remember who it was because they're all blending together at this point the stupidity of what they're saying. Most of the time I can't pay attention right? So he said, okay, we're going to reshore manufacturing and we're going to have all these great jobs, and so what we all assume is that that means there's going to be a lot of humans touching products inside these facilities, right, but we also know that that's not really the case anymore. There's a lot of automation, a lot of robotics, a lot of mechanical systems that build all this stuff.
Speaker 1:So the guy admitted. He said, oh yeah, we're going to fleece China for all these jobs. We're going to rehome everything back to America. We're going to have robots building products and we're going to have Americans maintaining the robots. Okay, you understand what you just described. There is, instead of there being 10 jobs to do the work, there's going to be one job to do the work of 10 people, or even more watered and diluted down, it could be 1 to 50, yeah, if, if you know, depending on the type of work, right, and so you're saying instead, we're going to have one moderate paying job to maintain this equipment instead of 50 just slightly less paying jobs that are really putting money into the local economy.
Speaker 2:Right? Well, it's the same thing when they're talking about building the Keystone pipeline. You know, make you know thousands and thousands of jobs, but once it's built it's like 50. Yes, to maintain the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Same thing down in. They would do that down in New Mexico. Facebook would, uh, was building all these data centers and warehouses and like there's cheap, cheap power in certain parts out there. So they were just loading in infrastructure down in New Mexico, right and acreage, I mean you can get a hundred acres for like 20 bucks, right. And so Facebook took advantage of that. And same thing headlines and you know it's. It's kind of sad in a low economy state because you see politicians and even other people get really excited about those kind of headlines and they're like oh man, the amazon factory or the facebook facility is going to build, you know it's going to have the same thing 500 jobs but it's only for the construction, right. The facebook data center same thing. It takes 10 people, including all the shift workers, to keep that thing humming like that's it right, you know it takes 500 people to build it for two years and then 10 people for the ever after.
Speaker 1:That, you know. So it's an illusion, right, it's an illusion, and that's that's frustrating to see that, and that's the same thing with all the messaging that we're getting right now. Is this illusion that if we reshore everything, the system will reset itself, that parts of the equation will just move around across one side to the other of the equal sign and it'll all rebalance right, and that's absolutely. Nobody knows if that could even happen much less that there's a strategy to make it happen.
Speaker 2:That's what's upsetting is there's no strategy to deliver that no, there's no like natural equilibrium to the chaos that humans bring to the universe no no, like there's always somebody with their foot on the scale that's tilting all the resources to them. Yes, and you know, right now you know, we have billionaires that are just raking in cash, and I mean they lost $200 billion or whatever in the last week. Well, trillions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, went away from the stock market. Yeah, right, right.
Speaker 2:You know, like their lives haven't changed at all, People who worked every day for their lives and for their 401ks and can't retire now their lives are destroyed.
Speaker 1:Those people are severely impacted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you have to work for three more years when you're already 67, it's a big deal. Come on, it's just gross how, when we saw Trump make a statement yesterday about, oh, it's a good time to buy, then all this trading happened and so a lot of people made a lot of money off of him saying that and then pausing the tariffs. Yeah, so these things that are happening that are just killing our working class, while millionaires, billionaires, that top 1% is just raking it in, they're buying the dips because their guy is working the dips right now. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, that is true. If you get a telegram that says the dip is coming, a signal, excuse me, you get a signal, message that says buy now.
Speaker 2:That's how we do business now, buy now.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know where we're at on time, but we've covered our topics. I think that for us, we will go out and buy the dips if we can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, start listening closer to what he says, start listening. But if you're here locally and if you think you're going to be impacted by the movement of Space Command or any of the other military headquarter reassignment whether you're a family member or you know business owner, and you see this having some kind of impact on you, reach out to us, we. You know business owner and you see this having some kind of impact on you, reach out to us. We'd like to hear how, if space command or any of the military footprint here in Colorado Springs went away, if you can see a direct impact, we'd like to know more about it. We know what we see and we know what we're going to experience, but we want to hear from the community. How are these things going to matter? Because when we get the chance to talk to people like Senator Hickenlooper or Senator Bennett, then we want to be able to say, hey, this is the real impact, right, and we want to speak on your behalf if we get that chance. So please let us know and maybe we'll have you on the show if you've got something to talk about. So we'll remind everybody.
Speaker 1:We do have social media. Blue Sky is our primary and then, of course, you can always send Adam an email. Our email is in our website here when you load up the podcast, so just look for our contact info and please get in touch with us. We'd love to have some guests on the show Right on. All right, we'll catch you next week.
