Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Deportation Crisis & Government Accountability
The constitutional crisis unfolding through mass deportations takes center stage as veteran hosts Dick Wilkinson and Adam Gillard deliver a powerful examination of government accountability in their latest Left Face podcast episode.
From the ongoing situation with Kilmar, now separated from his family for 57 days, to the disturbing immigration raid in Colorado Springs where over 100 people were taken with minimal transparency, the hosts expose a pattern of due process violations that should concern all Americans regardless of political affiliation. "If you don't have due process on the other side of the law, you have tyranny," Dick observes, cutting to the heart of why these operations represent a fundamental threat to constitutional governance.
The conversation pivots to their recent meeting with Representative Jeff Crank's office, where they advocated for greater veteran representation in congressional staff. When a staff member dismissively questioned whether a "tank driver" could handle constituent services, it revealed a profound misunderstanding of the leadership skills veterans develop. As Adam eloquently explains, "It doesn't matter if you were a cook or an intelligence officer - it's the service, mentality, training, and leadership that matter." Their proposal for a fellowship program to place veterans in these roles highlights a practical solution that would benefit both veterans and the communities they serve.
Dick and Adam bring their military expertise to bear on budget priorities as well, contrasting the billions spent on troubled weapons systems with inadequate support for service members. Their perspective illuminates how small, innovative businesses deliver exponentially more value per dollar than massive defense contractors who operate with "blank check mentality." This veteran-focused analysis provides listeners with a unique window into how military experience shapes views on constitutional rights, government accountability, and effective resource allocation during these challenging times.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Left Face. This is the Pikes Peak Region podcast for veterans, where we talk about political issues from the local to the national level. I am your host. Dick Wilkinson joined this morning with my co-host, adam Gillard.
Speaker 2:Good morning Dick. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:I'm doing well and we are still, unfortunately, in the era of deportations and people disappearing. And we're going to get right into our Kilmar count 57 days now since Kilmar was taken from his family and in the last week there's really been no progress on the case or much in the story that I've heard. He's still there.
Speaker 2:I've actually heard from the spouse that I can't remember what interviewer where she was speaking, but she she's been receiving like death threats and things like that.
Speaker 1:OK, well, she did get exposed because the administration listed the court documents where they had had a restraining order, documents where they had had a restraining order, the spouse you know uh, the wife who's?
Speaker 1:here. You know, yeah, yeah, when they were trying to put evidence out to say that he's a bad guy, uh, they put out her real address, because those court documents had still you know where she lives now, right, like it's the same place, even though it was two years ago. And so they, they doxed her, right, that's just like is it intentional or just carelessness?
Speaker 2:Like, I think Self-deport.
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah, hey, he's in El Salvador. You know. We got a plane ticket for you anytime you want it. Well, and you?
Speaker 2:heard he said he's offering them $1,000 now to self-deport. Oh really. Yeah, he's offering people $1,000. To you know, come, get your $1,000 and a plane ticket dang yeah.
Speaker 1:It cost you more than a thousand dollars to get here, even if you walked from venezuela you know what I'm saying you spend a thousand dollars along the way.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying like and you're going back to. You're still going back to the same problems and and like, yeah, you know a lot of those coups that happen in the you know mid-aughts and things like that. Like that was all like american sponsored cia going on there. We backed people and destroyed countries. Sure. And now people are coming up here like just looking for jobs.
Speaker 2:They're not even like they're not trying to like inflict their culture and heritage on everybody. They're just trying to hold onto their culture and heritage where they are and work shitty, meaningless jobs that nobody else wants to work and send some money back home to their families to help them out. Like these are not like the rapists and criminals. These are hardworking people.
Speaker 1:I heard they emptied the jails and sent them all, told them all to walk north.
Speaker 2:Right, they kept going straight to the White House. All the criminals are in the White House now.
Speaker 1:Well, this is unfortunate, but yeah, kilmar is still gone and we have our own count and now we have a new count we've added. So, as we talked about last week Colorado Springs, we had a law enforcement activity. That has now clearly come to light that it was more of an immigration enforcement thing than it was a crime enforcement or like let's clean up the drugs. It was, let's arrest some folks, right, right. So what's, uh, what's going on with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so last number I heard was like 105 or something. People were still kind of unaccounted for and like like gone missing, yep, because they took 114. Uh, some of them have a few outstanding warrants.
Speaker 1:So they caught local charges and got put into local detention Right.
Speaker 2:So there were some of those and then some fallout where you know the staff sergeant a few days later got arrested and things like that. We have heard from the Mexican consulate that at least I can't remember the exact number 40 to 50 of the of the detainees were Mexican citizens, but we still don't really know names, locations where these folks are and again, at the end of the day, they were just kidnapped by the government. Like, if you don't have due process on the other side of the law, you have tyranny and that's a kidnapping and people need to start, like, being honest with these conversations and what is actually going on. Like this is so disgusting that we still have our representatives silent on this and there's no list of names.
Speaker 1:That's credible, right as far as who was picked up. Even you know, uh, citizens or not, right, like at some point the law enforcement people have to say who they have.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, you know and you and I've reached out to the senator's office, senator Hickenlooper's office, and they sent us a resource to pass out to the community. If you're on my newsletter, which I'll probably try to put in these notes too to go look for your family in ICE detention, you have to go put in some like biological factors and things like that. But you know, my pushback to them is always like, why are we putting more work on the victims of this? You know, we're asking the victims of this who just had, who just you know lost family members because the federal government came in and seized them without you know due process and all that stuff, and now we're asking them to put their names down, their locations down, their contact information into a database so that they can hopefully find these folks and not get picked up themselves, like we're asking traumatized people to trust the people that just traumatize them.
Speaker 1:Yes and and uh, you know, not only it's a a logic uh loop that you know breaks itself quickly, um, but this, you know, in general, the people who I think would there's, there's already been, even without this event, I guess I should say there's already been that healthy distrust of those types of resources, right, and and sort of an ins insulated community, anyway, right. And so, you know, even without this type of event and more of a present threat, there was already a distrust in a lot of situations there. So you know that that's just been heightened. Yeah, I could see why, you know, a family member is not really going to, they're going to try and find other ways to locate their person, right, they're going to.
Speaker 1:You know, talk to whatever, whatever, whatever kind of, I say, underground network of communication, really, right, you know, just social, social networking of sorts, to figure out what's going on. And, like we, we have an indicator that an airplane may have transported these folks out of Colorado Springs, right, um, but who knows? I mean we, really. You know there's there was some eyewitness of buses that transported people to an airplane, but we don't really know what happened and the timeline fits. But the airplane went to Oklahoma, maybe, and then what?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're just gone has no reason to believe they're still in Oklahoma. That was a week ago that the airplane left here and so far all the deport, detention stuff. That's been the game. They move people three or four times quickly so that nobody can keep track of them, even people that aren't on this like mystery list. We're not just talking about the people from Colorado Springs, but college students with. You know, publicized arrests still get shuffled around to the point where people can't track them down right and they are on the national news and they disappear inside the United States.
Speaker 2:Fort Carson. There's a soldier out of Fort Carson that got sent back to I can't remember which country, maybe Honduras, but they didn't take them. So he came back here. But along that process he jumped around to like three or four different States and then just kind of got dropped back here and like just back, yeah, yeah. So like it's funny how much this when people push back on this administration and on this stuff like they keep losing, but when he finds other wannabe dictators, like Power man, like El Salvador there, they're letting him get away with anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know, he's encouraging him to build more prisons, because so they're going to export this Holocaust as much as they can Like. That's all they're doing.
Speaker 1:The Libya thing came back up on the news again this morning, as we'd mentioned in the show maybe two episodes ago, that Donald Trump was talking about sending people to Africa and trying to find places in Africa to send people, and a judge who's already been involved in some of the deportation cases other stuff that's been going on to El Salvador, shipments of people. He said sending people, deporting them to a country that is not their country of origin, is against his rulings that he's recently made about what the administration is doing. So he's, like you know, precedent alone. That's not necessary. I gave you instructions on how to deport people legally under my guidance. Basically and you don't understand you don't have a plane full of Libyans to send to Libya. So I call shenanigans right. And that's what the judge said was like why are you trying to do this? And here's the real trick Libya doesn't want to participate in this. Donald Trump wants to send a military aircraft to Tripoli and just open the tailgate and let the people out and fly away.
Speaker 2:But this is the tactics that they've used in the past. Look at what they did in Texas, busing immigrants up to New Yorkork yeah new york or maryland, chicago in the winter time yeah, you know with. They have no clue where they're going. There's, hey, people will take care of you when?
Speaker 1:yeah, there'll be some people waiting for you there, yeah yeah, they're like they're just expanding.
Speaker 2:They're like I said they're exporting yeah that's true, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, governor greg abbott just probably, you know know, set that blueprint. He's like watch, this is how you do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, I don't care if they're not from New York, we're sending them to New York and you know, we just heard the clip of Trump saying he wasn't sure if he had to follow the Constitution because he has all these great lawyers. Yeah, how are these people on the bar still?
Speaker 1:Like how does he still have people?
Speaker 1:giving him these types of advice and still be on any bar. Well, you know, let's look at Giuliani. He's not an advisor to Trump really anymore, right, he's not in the orbit anymore, but he lost his bar association with any state that he was capable of practicing law and he lost all that right. So we got to remember and Giuliani is actually the perfect example Went from respected person that, would you know, someone would hire to represent them in court or that would want his advice, right, and then the more he got worked on, if you will, by Donald Trump. That's when you saw the shift over to more the you know, sinister cryptkeeper type of like we're going to. We're going to get them all. You know, more the sinister cryptkeeper type of like we're going to get them all. And the difference there is Donald Trump is the factor that I think makes that happen.
Speaker 1:And you can't be Donald Trump's employee for more than a few weeks if you tell him what he can't do. And so he says I have a lot of smart lawyers. What he really means is I have a lot of lawyers who have been groomed and trained to figure out how I can do whatever I want. That's their job, not to tell me what the law is right now, but to tell me how I can get around the precedent. Right yeah, how can I sidestep this precedent? What conspiracy theory string from 1790 can we go look up and say, aha right, congress said one time you know that the ships can all go up river. You know, and that means I can deport people. Blah, blah, blah you know, and it's like what?
Speaker 1:Like he's got lawyers that are doing that right now. They're reading law books from 1800, trying to decide which one he can use right, and probably not even that many people.
Speaker 2:They probably are all using AI and just saying hey, hey, it's generating.
Speaker 1:you know court cases for them. You know, yeah, ferguson versus you know Mississippi. And you look it up and it's like that's not real Right. Have you ever?
Speaker 2:had chat GPT. Be like disappointed in you.
Speaker 1:Like no, I don't use it. Oh, I love you Cause.
Speaker 2:I wanted a plan for like plant and stuff, and like I was like, well, what if I wanted to do something else? It's like hey, if you want to do something else, do something else. But here's the science behind it Do it this way, yeah.
Speaker 1:You said you wanted to grow healthy plants.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I definitely felt the score.
Speaker 2:Yeah, gpt real fast, right, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:He'd teach it how to talk to him, and so that's really. You know, we're talking about losing your bar, so it doesn't matter, right, and that's the thing you get inside of his orbit, and it's like I'll just pay for you to do whatever, whether you have law you know whether you have good standing or not.
Speaker 1:You know you'll be my crony right, and we've seen people that are. That's exactly what happened. Michael Cohen right, like that was his thing Again. He at some point in time had a real law practice and then turned into just a joke of a person like doing stuff for Donald Trump right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:and how long do you sell your soul like that? He sold his house for Donald Trump, right?
Speaker 1:He had to get a house on a HELOC to pay off Donald the Stormy Daniels money right, he sold his house to do that man, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then to just uh, yeah, be caught up in all that, and go to jail and, like you, discredit yourself by being a shady person for so long. So now, when he's like no, I get it, I was shady, but he's way worse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh no, yeah, who cares? Yeah?
Speaker 2:exactly, yeah, yeah, that uh, immediate discredit. You know himself. Yeah, it just kind of frustrates me that he's not taken more seriously when he said some things. But so you know, when we talk about, you know, these lawyers that are not qualified, we still have our representative here. He goes to a weekly meeting like Great Men or something like that, where they go and talk about themselves and how great they are. And he talked about law and order pretty early on in his speech last week.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And I think it's pretty disgusting that we've had a law and order show for like 20 years on NBC. People should know law and order. Yeah, like it's a disgusting that you know we've had a Law Order show for like 20 years on NBC. Like people should know law and order. Yeah, like it's a two-step process. Yeah, the people who arrest and then the people who prosecute yeah, so for them to sit there and still it's in the title of the show, right? Yeah, like plenty of case law they can study.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, just sit there and still parrot misinformation like they're executing law and order. You're not. Once you get rid of that Fifth Amendment that says that all persons are afforded these rights Justice Scalia has said that, yeah, once you get rid of that, that's tyranny, sure, and if we're living under tyranny?
Speaker 1:You can have laws but not order right, or you can have order but not laws. One or the other right, like the person in charge, is going to decide which one are we going to have right.
Speaker 2:So we still have people parroting this? Just blatant misinformation that we had people disappear. They're gone. We don't know where they are. We don't know their charges other than that original Suspected Suspected.
Speaker 1:Of being illegally in the country, right? Nope, still no proof of that right Exactly.
Speaker 2:And so, like I said, there's 40 to 50 of them were probably Mexican citizens, yeah, but that still leaves 60-ish or so that could be US citizens, sure, and still wrapped up in all this Sure. And you know not to just that could be US citizens, sure, and still wrapped up in all this Sure, and not to just care about the US citizens. I think all those Mexican citizens that are sitting in detention right now don't deserve that either. They should have been given their due process Right, so we need to fight for them too.
Speaker 1:But if you're a MAGA Republican, how can you be okay with US citizens being wrapped up?
Speaker 2:in these sweeps and just gone. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:I have some answers for that, but I don't want to speak too ill of these people, but I have some answers for that.
Speaker 2:That's what's frustrating me a lot is that it's coming down to like their intentions are clear, yeah, like the pain and the misery is at the point, like they're not here to it's a form of very gross deterrence in their mind.
Speaker 1:Right Of like abuse the population. And then you know we continue to drive down the interest of coming to the country. Right, even for people who want to do it legally, that you know and want to come and contribute at a at a higher level, would reconsider it and say I'm not safe there. Right Like it doesn't matter if you want to come here and be, you know, a banker, you know, or be a insurance salesman or even a medical professional. You could get six months down the road and just like you start to look around and go. They're busting us up and we're disappearing.
Speaker 2:Right Like I don't feel safe right, and that's exactly why I think we really need to change the conversation from like asking people to like have empathy. Like these people have empathy, they can easily put themselves in these people's shoes and like understand what they're going through. Yeah, they're choosing the misery and the pain and the suffering. Show compassion.
Speaker 1:The humanity? Yeah, you dehumanize, right. There's an aspect of dehumanizing Right.
Speaker 2:And if we want to call ourselves a Christian nation act with compassion, yeah, you.
Speaker 1:And if we want to call ourselves a Christian nation, act with compassion, yeah, you.
Speaker 2:can't dehumanize Christians, can't dehumanize period, right, like that's, you know so you know, stop with, you know, pretending that the empathy is going to matter. Yeah, like we've talked about, empathy is they don't care. Yeah, we need to get back to talking to them.
Speaker 1:Be pointed.
Speaker 2:And with like you need to show compassion, like we get it, like it may be tough for you too, but it's tough for them. We're all in this like show compassion, yeah.
Speaker 1:Man, I don't know, it's sort of a. You know I can hear the argument. We'll be compassionate when they stop, you know, flooding our borders, when they stop invading us.
Speaker 2:As Jesus commanded us, right yeah.
Speaker 1:We'll do our part when they do their part right I hear a lot of jesus was the carpenter.
Speaker 2:He like building walls, yeah right he built the wall around jerusalem out of wood, right yeah ridiculous that we have people that are are not um living the values that they like are projecting on to this community that's, you know, yeah, and know I'm assuming the great men thing that you're talking about.
Speaker 1:I haven't attended it, but I assume that it is affiliated with some Christian organization. So, yeah, that would be. That would be really. I would be uncomfortable in that space if they were basically, you know, promoting a message like let's dehumanize all these people that we're arresting, because that'll keep our kids safe. What are we teaching our kids by?
Speaker 2:that, but this is a space that they don't get any kind of pushback.
Speaker 1:Correct. Well, it's the clapping spot. I've decided now that's my political term for the clapping spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you're feeling a little low, just go to the clapping spot, go down to the clapping spot.
Speaker 1:Every politician needs a couple of them, right? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So he hits us every Sunday and he's got a rapt audience. They love hearing it, oh sure, and they think that they're accomplishing things. It's like I don't know if I said it last week, but it's just really a facade of safety and security for, you know, those folks north of Platt here here in Colorado Springs that north side, that you know predominantly white side of the town, sure, and there's still stuff going on there. You know there's still like a Tesla bomb came out of, you know, colorado Springs that drove to the Trump Tower.
Speaker 1:That was on the north side of town, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, like their fears of this community down here are self-driven, like they're creating a problem and solving it out of the air. Yeah, and then solving it and thinking that they did.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the donald trump method right, break it as hard as you want, and then you know, once you fix it a little bit, you're like check it out, I fixed it, yeah, so yeah, yeah, but even in this community there was never really a problem with illegal immigration or just like. Some rampant cesspool of crime because of or taking a lot of our resources and things like that Sure.
Speaker 2:There was never that problem yeah. It's pretty spread out evenly. They're all kind of messed up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, sure.
Speaker 2:So it's evenly spread. That's how it works.
Speaker 1:Fair.
Speaker 2:But yeah. So that safety net that they have or that they feel now, because 100 people that were missing from their jobs the next day are gone now. Yeah, it's just ridiculous that community is being forced into compliance right now. They're being told to shut up, sit down. If you do get a job, be happy that I'm giving you $7 an hour.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. Be happy I didn't call the immigration guys, right yeah.
Speaker 2:There's more fear, there's more intimidation. I hope they leave man, not because I want them to go, but because, just for their safety, the lack of response from our community and our elected leaders like they are not safe here, wow, like it's disgusting.
Speaker 1:Well, like you said, this is not a sanctuary city right.
Speaker 2:That's what the mayor wants everybody to know right, because, like people ask for help from the church. Yeah yeah, the goal of the church is to help the people, the poor folks, and like they would show up and ask for help and we're like hey, hey, hey, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a bridge up in Denver with your name on it, right yeah.
Speaker 2:So so we, you know we have all these issues and obviously we don't get, you know, represented real well, you know, here at the federal level. So you know, me and some friends went down to Jeff Crank's office. Somebody got a call back so she was allowed to bring like seven other folks, so we had eight of us around the table and we didn't get to talk to Crank because he doesn't do that stuff. But our goal here was to get to him, like have a conversation.
Speaker 1:Have a message with his administration.
Speaker 2:And more sort of build a relationship with them. Yeah, like you know, we can go in there and we can bitch and moan and cry Like you get nothing done, like you might feel a little bit better. And then there was definitely some of that yesterday we definitely took some steps.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, yeah, and I won't say that I had, I'll just let our listeners know why didn't Dick go? I had work to do and I had a doctor's appointment. But then there was some little thing in the back of my brain that was like I know that there, that this is a veterans folks, they're going to be professional, they understand kind of the gravitas of where they're at. But if passions get inflamed or if someone says some offhanded, you know, crazy Republican type sideways comment, right that it could get kind of goofy in there, you know that's. I was like I don't know if I want to be around when that happens, you know yeah, uh.
Speaker 2:So it was funny because in our kind of um introductions with them, uh, one of the vets was like don't treat me like I'm stupid. Yeah, like he kind of laid that ground just got straight up with it, yeah yeah, like, like, don't talk around stuff, don't.
Speaker 2:Don't like we're educated people, yeah, we know what's going on, yeah, um. So yeah, like, it is always nice being in a conversation with vets because it's a little more straightened to the point, you know, cut through some of the fat, um. But so, yeah, we went there and, uh, a funny story was, you know, we kind of pre-gamed the night before just to kind of make sure that we stayed on topic and we made Hit some goals Right and had an agenda yeah.
Speaker 2:And have questions and deliverables and requests from them. Yeah, to keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we do have a follow-up meeting in two weeks too. Okay, so our initial goal of we want a relationship where we keep going, keep doing it, so we do got that. But we rallied up the day before and talked about it and one of the folks that was going with me she had gone there the day before and so she was talking with they, were going through their spiel with the representative that was meeting with us, with the representative that was meeting with us, yeah, and somebody came into the room that they were sitting in to pick up some artwork and they got sidetracked onto like a 20-minute conversation of the artwork and stuff like that Beautiful artwork. It was local and she told us about that and we were all kind of like, well, let's watch out for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so the next day, yeah, they tried it again. She came in and tried to start moving artwork and he tried to have some conversations and we were like, no, we're good on the art.
Speaker 1:These are the things that we want to talk about, and we shut them down and we stayed on topic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but going into these things with a level mind and a plan, it helps you be able to stay focused and, like, hopefully, get some results Right. One of the biggest things that we're going to work for now, or work towards, is that they don't have any veterans in their office. Oh, okay, so he says like they've had some like cycle through and he has like a veteran representative.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, focus point yeah.
Speaker 2:Liaison and he's like you know that person's real good with social work, blah, blah, blah. And he's like you know that person's real good with social work, blah, blah, blah. And he's like well, you know, do you want a tank driver or do you want somebody who's good at the work? And like. I didn't have a response at the time, Okay, but it pissed me off. Yeah, Because that tank driver has like four soldiers underneath them. Yeah, Each one has like their own, like opposite ends of the spectrum, crazy shit going on in their lives, you know, from being suicidal to having births, to losing people. If there's anybody qualified to do any kind of constituency work and social work, it's that tank driver. Sure, you know he knows people.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't downgrade, I mean being a veteran. It doesn't matter what you did right, it's the service, it's the mentality, it's the training, it's the leadership. Those are the service. It's the mentality, it's the training, it's the leadership, those are the values. It doesn't matter if you were a cook or an intelligence officer or a plane pilot like that shit doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So like that alone was kind of insulting.
Speaker 1:That's why they don't have a veteran in their office, right like you know that. You know he's that dude's like they're all the same or they're not. You know like whatever, not. You know he didn't get it.
Speaker 2:That's just a tank driver to him. It's nothing more than somebody that can go catch a bullet when he needs him to go catch a bullet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but we narrow view of what the military is or what a veteran is Right, yeah, so so you know, we didn't really hit that, but we hot washed afterwards and we were talking there's actually programs out there that do fellowships to get veterans into politics and stuff like that, and so we could get a veteran into their office without them having to pay anything Sure, anything Sure. And you know, what I'm going to propose to him next time we talk to him is that you know, we vet folks, you know three or four. Obviously we're going to pick a Republican, or maybe a, or a libertarian, or a libertarian.
Speaker 1:I'm hearing something. I'm really getting really interested in doing something here. So yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we could get somebody that kind of aligns with. You know some of the Republicans, but we'll still be open to communicating with us and come to our events and come to do things with vets as a whole and not as a Republican or a Democrat. Sure, you know somebody that actually represents our community of. You know 15% vets here, yeah, and it wouldn't cost anything to the office. So we're going to look into that and we're going to present that and that's the part that should be a hook right Is this person will volunteer.
Speaker 1:But, man, I've been in situations like that where I've personally volunteered to do pretty significant duties for free or had helped other people try to do that, and the organization, the, the freeness, still didn't matter because of some other unspoken thing about what their agenda was or what was good. You know, there was a some background thing where they were like they'd kind of, you know, just just uh, smoke, smoking mirrors you out of the conversation. So the fellowships.
Speaker 2:I think they're paid okay, so so we can actually get somebody paid in there to do this, so they actually have accountability. Yeah, the committee that we're talking about trying to find somebody that would get through their wickets, that would be volunteers.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Gotcha, but yeah, I think that's a workable solution, sure, and I think it's something that if we present it and they say no, why Tell me why you don't want help.
Speaker 1:What do you not want from us? What is bad about this plan? But like tell me.
Speaker 2:Because I was on one of my tirades and I was like, hey, if you want the monarchy, just let me know and we'll change the conversation. But you know we're here to talk about, like, your oath to the Constitution. But we're here to talk about your oath to the Constitution, the way that you are reading the rule of law and not executing the due process.
Speaker 1:I was just on one of my tirades. I want to get in my little magic ball time machine here. If there was a monarchy, what would the Congress become? Would they be lords? The House of Lords?
Speaker 2:They'd be the House of Lords.
Speaker 1:House of Lords and House of Commons like parliament. Type set up, yeah, their little land, yeah yeah, governors become um, whatever, uh, like dukes, right instead of you know you could give the governors like a duke ship well, they feel like governors, like didn't they have?
Speaker 1:governors. Well, I mean it would be. You know you had counts and dukes, and that's what a governor was right. They had counties. That's why you were a count, because you were in charge of a county right and that you were literally the monarchical head of that region, and that's what that meant. And then a duke was like someone who had more than a couple counties as their estate.
Speaker 2:And then it all falls under bloodlines too. Yes right, you got to hope that your congressman didn't raise some jackasses.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah that's true, yeah, yeah. What if the governors all get the right to like they can decide, if their senators or congresspeople get a status, you know, like a lordship, you know, but the governors get the preemptive choice. You know I'm like, hey, this monarchy time sounds like fun man.
Speaker 2:I want to get some land and you know, a crest. It's crazy that we're having the conversation Like it would just be so much easier to fight for our Constitution.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, you know what I heard there? I heard this is the way we've always done it.
Speaker 2:And I don't like that, you know.
Speaker 1:Don't we fight on that in the military right Like this is the way we've always done it. Don't say that We've got to innovate, we've got to come up with better ways to do things. It's bad unit culture if someone says, well, this is just the way we've always done it. That should be the NCO's efficient work, that kind of stuff, right?
Speaker 2:So this whole democracy thing, man this is the way we've always done it you know 200 years. You know I was also giving him a lot of grief over the budget and like the cuts to the social security safety networks and the raise in like the military industrial complex money. And it's not so much that you know we're funding the military that pisses me off, it's the fact that we're not funding the people we're funding, which we talked about a week or two ago. Yeah, and like I mean the F 35 program.
Speaker 1:What a like absolute like doge it garbage fire. Yeah, yeah, cause that thing, everything broke.
Speaker 2:So you, it was so you know.
Speaker 1:The prime contractor had everything subbed out and nothing really talked and like there's just so many problems. It was a technical nightmare, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so we're going to keep funding programs like that, new programs like that. We got the new.
Speaker 1:F-49. After Donald Trump, we're naming it Trump.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, trump fighter, yeah, so you know, we're going to put all these things in. And to your point a second ago, equipment isn't innovative.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like you give me an iPhone I can send, I can call, I can text, but you give it to like a qualified person and they can do some amazing things with this. Sure, you know it's the people that are innovative, not the equipment. Yeah Right, correct. So when we continue to fund equipment that's not engineered properly is engineered too fastly or quickly, I guess?
Speaker 2:yeah, proper word or bigly but but it's not going through the proper steps. There's not enough communication internally, blah, blah, blah. Fund the people that could solve those problems to make your processes better, so that when you want to fund or build something new it's not a complete garbage fire every time, every time, like the Pentagon Wars. That movie about the Bradley fighting machine it's funny. It's Kelsey Grammer's? Yeah, it's funny, but it is so damn realistic and it's like based on a true story. Yeah, but it is so realistic where we don't define requirements. We don't do this. Like every step of project management is just by the seat of their pants and chaos from beginning to end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the? You know, there's this idea that the government has been on and we're going to get super in the worm. You know dirt on this one, contracts versus variable price contracting, and the big primes have had this blank check mentality for the last 20 plus years 30 years probably that like, hey, we can build you that fighter, it'll cut, it'll take, you know, a hundred million dollars and three years. And what that really means is in the next three years we'll do a hundred million dollars worth of work and then we'll all just regroup and decide how far we've come. Not, we'll have an airplane in three years. And they knew that. And they said, well, well then, let's tack on three more and maybe by year 10, we'll have an airplane. And you're like what? But you're already three years deep, you're already a hundred million dollars deep.
Speaker 1:And so that has been the game for big contracting in the government and now it's shifting to more of the hey. If you can deliver on time and on price, or we're going to buy it somewhere else, right, that needs to happen right, well, and a lot of the push or the sliding of timelines comes because we don't define that requirement up front. We say we want a fighter.
Speaker 2:So they start building a fighter. Oh wait, we want missiles on that. Yeah, okay, so we'll build missiles now, yeah, and then.
Speaker 1:So they keep, and then they say, hey, there's going to be this new navigation network, like 10 years from now. How's it be capable of talking to that? Well, it doesn't even exist yet. Right, build the equipment. It's like what? So, yes, that's true, and you know that couples back to the. They ask for a certain set of requirements and then, by the time that three years is up, you know it's grown legs, just like in the Pentagon Wars thing. Right. And then, even if that doesn't happen, just the.
Speaker 1:The other benefit from a political perspective is if the big primes came to you and and told you the truth it's going to cost $40 billion to make that thing. Instead of saying, oh, $5 billion, $5 billion means we can get you some blueprints, right. And instead of being honest, because no politician wants to sign up for a program, that's the most expensive thing ever in history, right. If someone gave them the real bid and said it's $40, no one could justify paying for that. But they can justify bits and pieces and then, like you say, the sunk cost piece of like well, we didn't want to throw 20 billion in the trash. We're going to put 20 more billion on top. But if someone said 40 billion on day one, it would never get made right, and so there's a catch-22 there that politicians can't bite off on the truth, so the prime contractors can't give them the truth Right, but still need a new aircraft. That didn't stop. The need for a new jet Didn't stop happening.
Speaker 1:Right, you know so yeah, man, I hate that and you know I don't want to toot my own horn, but I live in the small business space and I live in the you know small contractor space and you know you give us a group like mine and I'm not the only one, but small companies like us you give us a million dollars. Dude, we're out here like breaking the laws of physics with a million dollars. You know what I'm saying. And you give a prime a million dollars.
Speaker 2:They can't even stock the toilet paper. You're the person that we're talking about controlling space, and time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for a million dollars. Right, but, like Raytheon, spends a million dollars on toilet paper at the headquarters every year.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:There's no innovation bought for a million dollars. With a prime, you don't even get the whole team to show up on time for a million dollars, right.
Speaker 2:So I was going to wrap it up with that. That's. Another good point that I've been hearing lately, too is that I think we really need to delineate the difference between small business and big business, Like so much of the time, like when people start talking about you know increasing taxes on businesses small business is like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1:No, I'm not talking about you man, you guys are cool.
Speaker 2:Like, if you're making millions of dollars a year, though we're going to kick it back a little bit here. Sure, you know what I mean, and I think we really need to do a better job of being very specific when we say Raytheon doesn't need this money.
Speaker 1:but Proof Labs does yeah sure.
Speaker 2:Make sure that we're talking about those small businesses here locally, especially with Spaceman leaving and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the innovation bang for the buck out of the small business community is just exponentially higher than the innovation bang for the buck out of the big prime community. And I'm not hating on the big primes because they can deliver certain levels of manufacturing and consistency that no small company could ever do, right. So there's a need for that, right. But if you want that same kind of cog maker to really do cutting edge work, that's not what they're built and designed to do, right, and but the trust is there, uh, but you know, they also know how to spend a lot of money, right, so it's a chicken and egg situation for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, all right. Well, hey, thanks for joining us this week. Uh, covered a lot of stuff here. Didn't even get into half of the list, so I guess we'll have another episode next week.
Speaker 1:Yep, well, thanks Adam. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll catch you next time.
