I know everybody wants to know who is the secret caller that’s gonna tell all about Marvin and Mary and the scandal going on in Detroit, but we’re not gonna do that this week. I’m gonna do that after the election, all right, because a lot of stuff piling up. And so we’re not gonna have any go-get-em, rough-and-tumble, heavy-swinging, inner-city black people here as a guest today.

No, we’re gonna mix it up, and we’re going to have a vanilla wafer from the suburbs. Jay DeBoer, who’s running for lieutenant governor, we’re not gonna talk about that, because remember, I told you we won’t. We’re gonna talk about his job as an actual representative, head of the oversight committee in the unfinished business, because whichever way this goes, Jay, you’re done with the House of Representatives.

That’s right, Charles. Yep, okay. All right, but here’s a little follow-up to the super micro donor that gives a lot to El Sayed and lots of people she doesn’t even know across the country.

Let’s roll that. We’re back here deep in the Michigan countryside to visit Elizabeth Waffle, the Abdul El Sayed super micro donor. $150,000? $150,000? Hell no.

I don’t have that kind of money. We thought we’d check up on her. Remember, no computer, no internet.

Wonder if she’s got running water, finally. Hi, Elizabeth. Hi.

How you been? Oh, you guys. Yeah, how are you? You look much better. I’m seeing the house is getting built, so that’s nice.

Well, finally. Last time we were here, remember, we tried to make a donation. Come on.

Internet. This thing hates me. I’m not on the internet right at the moment.

You tried to see if I could do the donation. Yeah, and we couldn’t because we couldn’t connect, right? Yeah. In those six weeks since we last met, they have you making 564 transactions for a total of more than $4,000.

That’s an awful lot in six weeks. Let me sit down. Get off my knees.

Do you have running water? No, because we just haven’t put it back in. You would remember $0.72? You earmarked that? The $0.72? No. That may be something where… It wasn’t a processing fee.

It’s a donation, specifically. I don’t remember anything like that. Do you remember donating 48 times on August 11th? Or 65 times on July 31st? $2? $3? I seldom do anything in the way of a $2 donation.

That’s what I’m saying. As far as I’m concerned… That’s what I’m saying. No, because I’m broke.

The two accounts that I usually use for this are both used up. And when I was here, you were scraping to pay the guys to mow your lawn. They did a good job, by the way.

They really did. That was a thicket. They did a great job.

Yes, I’m concerned for you. I’m concerned for the process. I’m concerned about the money.

How’s the money getting in and who’s doing it? I think it’s a hard wash. But if they’re cheating on the other side… Fight fire with fire? Yeah, exactly. F**k it then.

I do care if somebody is fudging and putting stuff in. So don’t you want me to continue to look? Yeah, if they are… Then you want to know? Yes. Then I give you my word, I’ll keep going.

Okay. See you later. Okay, take it easy.

Good luck with the house. Really good lady, real believer in things. You shouldn’t be doing this to her.

Live from downtown Detroit, it’s the No Bullshit News Hour with my main man, Charlie LeDuc. No, no, no, no, no, no, no bullshit… All right, what you just saw was Elizabeth Waffle, the 88 year retiree who found internet fame as the unwitting political super donor. She’s still living in that squalid trailer, deep in the Michigan countryside as you just saw.

and Waffle still has no electricity, no running water, no Wi-Fi, and no computer. But being a true believer in liberal causes and having no family beyond Georgie the arthritic hound, Waffle continues to donate a small portion of her modest retirement check to ActBlue, the online donation platform for Democratic candidates and causes. But even Waffle herself, as you saw, was surprised to learn last July about the extent of her supposed giving.

According to FEC filings, there were more than 13,000 transactions attributed to her, totaling more than $130,000 over the past five years. And she told me she thought something was off, she didn’t have that kind of money, and something continues to be off, Jay, something continues to be off. Since our last visit in July, another 562 transactions, totaling nearly $4,500, have been credited to Waffle in just six weeks.

Now let’s just think, let’s say these amended filings, I hate to get into weeds, folks, but ActBlue made a mistake and they refiled. Even if 100% of those were mistakes and they refiled, you’re still talking 270 transactions in six weeks. Now among those transactions were four, four transactions, totaling $22 on the very day we visited back then when she had no internet, despite the fact that it’s earmarked on the FEC filings.

Now among the recipients of Waffle’s alleged largesse over those 45 days is Abdul El-Sayed, the king of the Michigan micro donors who clocked in with a cool 51 bucks. But he don’t talk about being the king recipient of micro donations anymore, does he, since that last story came. We got a problem, man.

Now this visit, as you clearly heard, Elizabeth has no money in the account she used to donate. So you can bet your ass, fucking 100% sure, Jay, that I’m going to check the donations in a couple of months when, what month are we in, October? It’ll take about November, December for October to show up. You can bet your ass I’m going to see if there was a donation made while we were there.

And if there is, it’s an easy subpoena. Our videos are timestamped. Now you just pull when those donations were made.

And if they match up with when we were sitting there, you got a world of fucking hurt coming. Now that’s more than enough evidence, I would think, to shut that shit down. Leave our old people alone.

Take it to break. Is this the hole-in-one? It’s a hole-in-one, $50,000 if you hit it. Luke Nowacki, financial wealth management.

What is 50 grand after tax? 37,750. What about state tax? Yeah, that’s, I’m throwing both in there. What about sales tax? There’s no sales tax.

Well, you’re buying the beer. That’s income. You’re buying the beer.

Eh, we write that off. Luke Nowacki, financial wealth management. Expense allowance.

Well, when it rains, the power goes out. And when the power goes out, the internet goes out. When the internet goes out, I call my friend Matt and Bernie at XG Service Group.

Look at Bernie here on his hands and knees, giving it everything he’s got. Look at that man crack. So busy, he forgot to wear a belt.

There’s Matt right there getting the board together. That’s 734-245-4100. If you need Matt and Bernie to come take care of your voiceover internet, your security cameras, off-campus access control, Wi-Fi and cameras for homes and business, they’ll design it for you.

You got restaurants, they do drive-through systems, railroad cameras for public safety, total wireless camera systems for your home and business. Yeah, that’s right. Call XG Services at 734-245-4100.

Are we back? We are. Oh, do you hear that buzz out there? I do. Yeah.

You know how I am at driving up a wall. They’re vacuuming out the sewers. Yeah.

Apparently looking for Jay’s political career. Perfect. How’s it going? How’s the campaign stump? It’s busy.

It’s good. Positive responses. Interesting.

Yeah, it’s very interesting. Okay, we’ll leave it at that because I made my audience a promise. For sure.

Both candidates, the main parties, the ones that actually have a chance to win, the Democrats, Republicans for governor, United States Senate, and the Attorney General’s office. Now, interestingly enough, I said, we’re not doing it if they all don’t agree to come on. All the Republicans agreed to come on.

Isn’t that funny? Yeah. My whole life, you’d call me a Democrat. Mm hmm.

So if I was a Democrat my whole life and I never moved, what am I now? This is so fucking weird. Yeah. I believe in what Elizabeth is a retired biology professor.

So she cares about the forest, cares about the food source. She cares about the spawning grounds for salmon. She cares about a fair day’s wage for people.

She cares about the cost of medicine. Everything I believe in. Chicken shits.

All right. Jay DeBoer, the chairman of the Michigan House of Representatives Oversight Committee. That’s right.

Yep. Unfinished business before you go. Yeah.

Now, should we just prime the audience with a little video before we? Yeah, probably. Remind everybody what’s been going on that we’re to solve over there, I guess. Let’s take a look at Tracy Kordach, the former treasurer of the Democratic State Party.

Besties with Dana Nassau, besties with Gretchen Whitmer. For years, for years of doing jumping jacks, I think she’s embezzling from a brain damaged old lady who sees what is a conservator. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. There’s two.

Let’s not get in. OK, so this is we finally got a court. This was the first.

This was January. What do you think this ranks in terms of skullduggery, pedophiles, puppy abusers and people who steal old people’s money? Tracy Kordach, the former treasurer of the Michigan Democratic Party, was held in the court this week suspected of embezzling from her ward a brain damaged old lady. Well, now the old woman is dead and the probate judge has ordered a full blown forensic investigation going back a decade.

And here comes the suspect. Ms. Kordach, sounds to me like the judge thinks you embezzled from a brain damaged old lady. You have any comment on that? Can you tell me what happened to me? OK, so I’m right here.

Give us space. Don’t you think you don’t you think you shouldn’t have touched the woman’s money? Default reaction. Did you collude with the attorney general to make this case go away? Do you think she should think that you should co-cost me? What happened to the woman? Stop touching me.

I think it’s llama hair. Stop touching me. Excellent.

Stop touching me. So what do you think this ranks in terms of skullduggery, pedophiles, puppy abusers and people who steal old people’s money? The sheriff of Kent County’s investigated June is recommending 20 years in prison for identity theft and embezzlement. Any comment on that? Who was using the old woman’s debit card the day after she died? Was that you? Do you regret this? Are you a misogynist, ma’am? Do you think you can do the time? You think she can do the time going down? Well, what do we hear in here, brother? I’ll tell you what.

It’s it’s pretty disappointing to see that the system has failed. Miss Bird the way that it did. It’s very clear, in my opinion, based on the evidence that the system that was supposed to protect her, that was supposed to provide, you know, some governing over her affairs and finances, was actually the conduit to, you know, stealing most of her darn money.

Allegedly. Allegedly. Correct.

Well, then she also had a schizophrenic son who was apparently a lack of better word. I’m not a lawyer. A ward also of Kornak.

And they had to dig that up, find him and peel her off of them. That’s right. Feasting on them.

And that’s, you know, most people expect that the government, the court system is going to protect the most vulnerable. And I would say in a lot of cases it does. But, you know, the probate court system and frankly, I wouldn’t even say it’s any fault of necessarily the judge.

It’s just the structure. The structure does not have a vetting system. It does not have a check and balance system that, you know, would allow for you to see these things just from your own observation.

If you were in this court system, especially when it comes to an individual like this, who essentially had no immediate family that was anywhere close to be able to review, just look at the actions. And by the way, when some people did make inquiries, including yourself, into certain information, what did Ms. Kornak do? She said, no, I’m not going to provide it to you. Right.

She blocked. She hid. And thank goodness for the effort that you put into this, Charlie.

And, you know, I will say that between your effort that you put in and then the conversations we had in, in us, you know, believing in what you had reported and doing our own dig to validate and verify. I think when we really did that double exposure, it left no decision or no choice for, frankly, the Kent County prosecutor. Thank goodness.

And you got his investigative notes because this went on forever and they were shocking because in the notes, the adult protective services at the sheriff’s department, they were watching this go on in real time for years. Nobody put a stop to it until she was dead. Correct.

And so we were talking about probate. That was the beginning. Now the probate judge has said everything that my predecessor did, the previous judge, when Kornak would give yearly filings, there’s just a motion to rescind all that.

We’re going to go back in all the way back. Yeah. I think they’re going to do a full audit all the way back.

Yeah. This disturbing thing for me to take it into my role as the chair of house oversight committee. Um, you know, it’s not, our role as the oversight committee is, is not to go into the private world and do investigations.

Our role as the oversight committee is to look at the operations of government and are they operating within the law? Are they operating within statute? Are they operating within the ethic, the expected ethical standards of the department, if you will. And the reason that this was so disturbing to myself and you know, the majority of the oversight committee is that this case had been turned over to Dana Nestle’s office. Um, the, the information was provided to Dana Nestle’s office.

By the way, every piece of information that you’ve talked about, every piece of information that the Kent County prosecutor has was turned over to Dana Nestle’s attorney general’s office in a matter of, you know, I’m rounding a little bit here, but in a matter of about 60 days, plus or minus, they decided there was nothing to see here. Right. And Dana Nestle wasn’t supposed to be involved.

We find out she was involved. It’s supposed to be an ethical firewall. They just let it go.

Correct. And that’s what you were looking at. Correct.

And then she didn’t cooperate with your committee. Correct. And your committee had a motion to take to the, to the floor to, uh, hold her in contempt.

Contempt. Yeah. And that never happened.

It hasn’t as of now. No. Why? Um, I don’t know.

I think that probably it’s, it’s the legality. There’s a legal case going on. They’re trying to make a determination if they believe that if that act would interfere with that legal case, it’s bullshit.

It’s politics. It could be, you know, when you get up to that level, there’s no difference to me. You mark contempt and do what’s right.

Yeah. I mean, come on. It’s so hard.

You ate it. And that’s so what a fucking Ginda loon. What a fucking nincompoop hit me.

What a dipshit. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to have a party though. We’re done with her.

Worst attorney general I’ve ever seen. And I covered Elliot Spitzer. It’s concerning to me, Charlie, because, you know, an attorney general, a secretary of state, you’re supposed to, of course it’s a partisan office.

You’re elected, you know, as a partisan candidate, but those roles, once you’re sitting in that office, they should not be, you should not be using that office for political expedience and political gain. Um, that completely undermines everybody’s confidence in those offices when you do that. And when you find out that Dana Nessel, you know, turned over the case file to active case file to Tracy Kornack, uh, because it was requested that Tracy Kornack received that file because she was up for an appointment to be a judge.

Potentially women was going to make her a fucking circuit court judge. Yeah. The woman going to sit in judgment of us.

So they gave her the case file during the active, you know, investigation. Um, and as it turns out, uh, although Dana Nessel claimed that she had a firewall in place to protect her, she, she had her fingers all over it. She was on the inside.

She was sending emails. She was requesting data. Um, it’s a complete ethical violation of the role of attorney general and no punishment.

Come on. Yeah. Before you leave, you got to drag this over the finish line.

I’ll do whatever I can do. So, um, did Tracy Kornack get the judgeship? No, that’s right. Thank goodness.

That’s right. Which you got was a criminal case. She going to trial.

That’s right. They just set the trial date. When is it? Yeah, I believe it’s June 27th.

I’m going by memory, but I think it’s June 27th. Is it sorry? June, January 27th. Excuse me.

January 27th. Yeah. Okay.

We’ll be checking it out. I don’t want to be there for jury selection, but you know, I’m going to be there. And when I do the video, I’m just going to tell you right ahead of time, watch the video and Kornack’s going to be sitting there right at the table with their lawyer.

And if you look over her shoulder, you look over Kornack’s shoulder, this is in the future. You’re going to see me going, do not fuck with our old people. Now they’re all shuffling off to Buffalo now.

Right? Right. Whitmer Nessel. What about the old people that died in the nursing homes? This is where it all began.

Right? Like, you know, we proved it on this program and at the Michigan enjoyer, that was a cover up. You, you knew that you couldn’t count the old people who died because we’re just incompetent as you, you couldn’t do it. You kept on giving the public bogus data.

I blew it up. You co-mingled old people in the nursing home. Then they went to a nonprofit Institute run by the former head of the state health and human services department, an insider.

And they took the shit data and said, no, actually this works better that all alive. And now the studies are coming out. Like the death rate is twice as high in nursing homes where you co-mingle people and nobody’s asking a fucking thing.

I do not forget. Did you ever get your FOIA on, uh, on the, the data from the nursing homes? Oh, you mean my, uh, what was it when I paid $3,147 and 90 cents? Yeah. You know what I got? 600 blank redacted pages.

Unbelievable. So, you know, I had a sleuth up during Lansing and then I got 50,000 pages and that’s when I found it. Gotcha.

But no media followup. They don’t care. You know, the disappointment from the oversight committee’s perspective is that while we were working on the Tracy Kornack case, um, and doing our own investigation, by the way, I got to give credit to my staff that put countless hours into it.

Um, you know, there was another issue, which was a campaign finance violation that had been sent, uh, wait, can we do this before we do that one? Yeah, sure. You’re in charge. This is your show.

Okay. So Nestle, oh, sorry, Flint. You got fucked too.

Forgot about that. Yeah. Remember the worst? Gimbaloom.

Ninkum. Dummy. Hit it.

You are girlfriend. You are, you are dope. What a dope shuffle off the Buffalo.

No, I like people in Buffalo. Don’t do that. Get to LA.

No, I like LA. Nevermind. Just get out.

Um, all right. So before she goes, remember her big elder abuse task force. Ooh, she’d given out gold stars.

Pull that up, Mark. I can’t even read. Let me get over there.

Let me see here. Press release. Michigan.

I’m like, uh, I’m like Elizabeth’s dog, Georgie. You know what he was doing? And he had, she’s so broke. I think no one even got a, uh, a dog ball.

He was Michigan attorney general Dana Ness has announced that Scott Teeter, a division department chief in the Michigan attorney general’s office has received this year’s courage and heart award. The award from the Michigan elder justice initiative, recognizing people whose work exemplifies the dedication to improving the lives of older adults and people with disabilities. That’s the dude that was in charge of the Cornette case and made it go away.

Correct. Fuck it. I’d like to know who that organization is.

Do we know who that organization is? Or is that just a made up? You got the subpoena power, bro. Organization. I get to know everything.

Yeah. You want to look that up? Sure. You’re going to do that gladly.

Okay. There’s that hit me. We got more.

Part two, Jay DeBoyer, chairman of the house of representatives, state of Michigan oversight committee part two on this. So, you know, while we were doing the investigation, uh, with the thing, uh, we also looked into a campaign finance violation. Uh, we received some emails through some subpoenas and requested documents.

There was a campaign finance violation that had been filed with the attorney general’s office from the secretary of state’s office. So it wasn’t a, just a citizen complaint. This was a formal referral of criminal potential criminal activity to the attorney general’s office, uh, that involve the attorney general’s wife.

And, uh, the attorney general’s office slow walked it. And then Dana Nessel herself picked up a phone and directly called Jocelyn Benson directly one-on-one. So two department heads having a conversation about, I would like you to take back this referral.

And I’m not, this isn’t conjecture. This isn’t speculation. Um, this is, this is an email.

He brought this. Um, if you don’t mind, if I read here, Charlie, looks to me like the email, the email is dated, um, February 22nd, 2024, 3 41 PM from Mrs. Danielle Hageman Clark, which I believe is the head of the criminal division. If I remember correctly in it’s to Mike Brady.

And again, I’m going by memory. I think Mike Brady was the council. He was a chief legal counsel for Jocelyn Benson.

Let me just throw this in before that he was chief legal counsel for the Detroit land bank. The one that the FBI is now investigating and indictments are expected after the election. I’m sorry.

So the email is short and sweet. It says, good afternoon, Mike. I was informed the AG Dana Nestle reached out directly to the secretary, Jocelyn Benson, and that the secretary agreed to take this matter back for further review.

I mean, he killed the referral, like the investigation. Correct. Okay.

Correct. Now, now I’m going to remind you this referral in question is about Dana Nestle’s wife. Um, my first question is, is where’s the firewall? Did she say there was one? Of course she did, but, but she took the time to call directly to Jocelyn Benson to ask for it to be taken back.

And according to their own words in their own email, Jocelyn agreed to take it back for review. And then can you make that call? No. Would they, would they, would Jocelyn take that call from you? No.

So this is, this is the problem. And it’s a bigger issue than Jocelyn Benson and Dana Nestle. The problem is that we as citizens have an expectation of fairness and impartiality and it doesn’t exist.

Right. There’s one simple example. We all know this though.

That’s the frustration. And what’s interesting is the referral. It basically went like this.

Correct me if I’m wrong. They were using a social welfare account of 501 C four. Was it? Yes.

Okay. Well, cause we’re going to talk about Dan Gilbert and his new 501 C four. They were funneling money from donors in directly into Dana Nestle’s wife’s ref, uh, referendum, right? Correct.

Another conservative group did the exact same thing. Correct. And people got charged with felonies.

They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers. Heck, I think it was more than hundreds of thousands, but yeah. In fact, the original complaint going to Benson to have her take a look at it was from that group, a guy from that group.

And here’s what he told me from the conservative group. He goes, we actually, if you put the two complaints side by side, we just took the one they did on the conservatives, which was basically open Michigan, rescind, uh, Whitmer’s emergency powers. They all got hit with felonies.

They took their complaint and word for word refiled it. Just changing the name to Dana Nestle’s people and the, and the dollar amount word for word. And yet nothing.

And when you asked Nestle’s office for the documents in this case, what was the answer? Yeah, no, can’t have them. Didn’t you guys again move to file contempt charges? Uh, that was all in one, all one, all one big failure to do your job moment. Yes.

And nothing. Yeah. Nothing from the Republican led legislature.

Nothing.

I’ll be at House, not the legislature. They got the Senate. What are you going to make us a promise you’re going to try? I’ve, I’ve been trying, I’m going to continue to try.

I think it’s important that the people know that there are, there are individuals, there are individuals in Lansing that actually care, for real. And sometimes, you know, we want justice in the form of a criminal charges and a conviction, but I’m going to tell you in the court of public opinion, sometimes the best thing you do is just make sure people are aware of the facts. These are irrefutable.

These aren’t, these are undebatable. And so this is a culture that has been going on in Lansing. And this is a very clear example of, you know, one department head, elected department head, using their influence with another elected department head to protect their family member.

That’s, I don’t know how much more corrupt you can get. Well, another here’s, let me wrap it in a big bow here. Another subject of that criminal referral from Benson to Nestle included, you know, the 501c4 go between, which was run by Richard Zuba, however you pronounce it, who is the main pollster used by the television stations here, the newspapers.

I’m like, how is this remotely possible? How are you using this guy? Right. Just the information they use to spin the selection that you’re in the middle of, this is not, in my opinion, a credible person. No.

And I would say that. And it was never reported. And it was never reported.

This guy and Nestle’s wife, except by me. But there were barrels of ink spilled on the unlock Michigan conservative barrel. They sat in the courtroom.

Correct. What the fuck? Fuck you. I’m sorry.

Yep. Yep. And, you know, to respect your position of, you know, no, yeah.

But to respect your position on the political side of things here. I just want to say that to the people that watch and pay attention and are concerned about these things, the hot button issues that people get lit on fire about make up about one or 2% of the world in politics. The rest of it is actually executing your job and doing it well and doing it for the good of the people.

And all I can say to the people out there to listen to your podcast is pay attention to the differences on how people do their jobs and how well they do their jobs. And you may disagree with me, frankly, on some policy issues here and there, but the truth is, is 98%, 95% of the time, you’re going to agree with me. We’re all going to agree with each other.

Those are the things that you should be looking at the people you’re going to choose to put in office. Those are the measurements. And when you watch this kind of behavior out of elected department heads, there should be no question that they’re not qualified when you see that kind of behavior.

Yeah, Jesus. I mean, you got Southern Poverty Law Center. What? Dead people out of the rolls.

Hold on. I’m noticing here that the light, he’s a little bit shiny. Polish that for me? You’re going to doll it up for me? Should I have powdered that before I came in? Powder your head and butter my ass, buddy.

Let’s hear from American Coney Island. I’m Grace Carols, and I’m third generation of American Coney Island. People say Detroit’s a comeback city.

I say, where you been? We’ve been here for over 100 years. My family’s been here on the same corner, serving our famous proprietary American Coney Island hot dog. So like always, we’re keeping things fresh, updated, and new.

We’d love to have you come downtown and visit us. But if you can’t, you can always go to AmericanConeyIsland.com, order a Coney kit, get it delivered fresh right to your door. Hey, Jay, what about car insurance rates? You guys blew it up there.

We did auto reform and nothing happened. Highest rates, darn near in the country, I think, in Michigan. Yeah.

And you know why that is? Well, the reforms that they said were going to make it cheaper. Yeah, we did. The PIP, right? But it’s because the system prices people on everything, but they’re driving.

Is this correct? That’s correct. This is correct. Yeah.

Cure came to Michigan to do it differently. Your rate is priced mainly on how well you drive, not your credit score. What? You’ve been driving these roads your whole life.

Get priced like it. Drivers who switch see an average savings of over 40%. Go to Cure.com right now and see what your driving is actually worth.

Cure.com. We haven’t fixed the roads. We haven’t fixed the insurance. We got power bills going up the ass.

And this is why the power bill’s going up the ass. You tell me if I’m right or wrong. We passed the Green New Scam.

And I’m a greenie. I’m from Michigan. I live on the lakes.

I live in the city and in the wild waters. So am I. 100%. All of us really value our environment.

But the Green New Scam, what is it? By 2040, it’s got to be carbon neutral, right? Correct. So that means we’re going to invest in windmills that are not carbon neutral, and they don’t really produce. We’re going to invest in… Are we going to do nuclear power plants? We probably should.

Well, I hope so. So in the end, to build this stuff, that’s how DTE makes money. He’s building stuff, whether it works or not.

Am I correct? Absolutely. Think about infrastructure transmission lines by themselves when you’re pulling it from multiple windmills and multiple solar panels, as opposed from one production facility. Just think about the cost difference to do that.

Yes. I have an answer. I know people want answers.

I think I have one. High-speed rail. High-speed rail.

Takes more energy. You know, we did pass. We did pass in the House.

We did pass bills. Don’t you fucking think you guys passed the wind? We did pass bills to address this issue, and they’re laying in the Senate right now. So, you know.

Oh, my God. You see how angry people are? Yep. And the fact is, even in the New York Times, underneath Trump’s an asshole, they’re 15 stories Trump’s an asshole, but actual wages, real wages, until the gas went up because of the war, okay, but your real wages, which includes inflation and tariffs, we’re actually setting records since NAFTA.

Unshoring and budgeting people to bring stuff here works for us all. This kind of nonsense, high-speed rail, carbon neutral is killing us. Yeah.

Michigan ranks 46th collectively as a state in attractiveness from all the metrics. Education, cost of living, job attractiveness, desire for businesses to do business. We rank 46th, Charlie.

They turned us into Mississippi, didn’t they? I don’t know how we dig out of it. Honestly, I was reading this pretty deep article. She’s actually a law professor at Yale, but it’s a pretty sophisticated analysis of the economics going on.

I’m really worried for my daughter. And they carry this anxiety. My wife and I have four kids that are in their early 20s, and we’re concerned that they’re going to stay in Michigan for their careers.

Now they’re going to run for the hills. They’re going to run for the hills. Any hill, not called Farmington or Rochester or Auburn, they’re going to the hills and it ain’t ours.

Right. It’s concerning. Well, that’s because we elect dopes.

And I never was interested in politics until I saw what politics can do to you. Like it all starts and stops with politics. That’s the law.

Yeah, now, what is the deal with you guys and Gilbert and the giveaways, the corporate welfare, the corporate socialism? You aware of the deal going on here? I mean, I’m aware of it. You probably have more nuts and bolts details on it than I have in front of me at the current moment. Should I try? Sure.

I mean, at this point, you know, there’s only a couple of tens of thousands of people watching and nobody gets through to this part. So I’m going to do it because Mark asked me. So I did some reading and some calls.

I’m going to give this a try. So we got the Renaissance Center owned by GM and GM and Dan Gilbert. Basically, Dan Gilbert is, you guys passed the law to give them, well, including Detroit’s portion, the tax breaks, the tax collection down here in the business to about 550 million.

Right. He’s going to put in a billion and GM is going to put in 250 million. They come out, they do the press conference.

It’s in the Brownfield shit you’re talking about. Okay. Oh, it’s going to be a nonprofit.

It’s going to be for the city. It’s going to be terrific. You know, we’re really doing it for the people.

Okay. Let me start by this. If GM is going to throw in 250 million dollars, if you demolish the Renaissance Center, I talked to a lot of experts, it’d be all of them, all the towers, about 300 million dollars.

So GM’s already got 250 million dollars. You clear the property, that’s 60 million dollars. That’s 310.

You get what I’m saying here? Why are we going to backstop some development that they say is going to take 10 years? This fucking skyscraper, this erector set, shitload of public money, they broke ground on that nine years ago. So they say this new development at the Renaissance Center, it’s going to take 10 years. I call bullshit.

Here’s how I see it. What Dan Gilbert is going to do is he’s going to create a 501c4, which is a social welfare fund, which is different from the 501c3, which is a charitable fund. Now, here’s the tax dodge.

Dan Gilbert’s not going to live forever. He had a stroke. You have a, let’s say he has a billion dollars cash, which he doesn’t.

But if he dies, Uncle Sam’s taking 400 million of it, right? That’s the estate tax. If you put it into a foundation, there is no tax. There’s no tax on what you put in there.

There’s no tax on the earnings inside there. So wait a minute. More likely what he’s going to do is take his rocket company’s stock and seed it with that.

Therefore, you divest your family of it. There’s no capital gains tax on it, which is 20%. So if they cast out a billion in stock, Uncle Sam’s taking 200 million.

So his family is going to save money. It’s not their money, however, right? So it’s a foundation, but they are allowed to control it for generations. It’s different than a charity.

They’re allowed to take a salary. They’re allowed to take this foundation and make improvements down here. The Renaissance Center being one, but they want 18 acres next to it.

We’ll buy that. So they start buying up more of Detroit. This time, it’s not the private arm of his company, Bedrock.

It’s the foundation. The foundation can buy buildings. So basically, he can use this foundation to improve the value of everything he’s holding down here.

That’s what this is about. Now, that boosts his property values. They get to keep total control.

And they’re allowed to lobby. Charities are not allowed to lobby. So if they want Jefferson gone, they simply go up to Lansing with all the nincompoops.

The foundation starts throwing money around. And here we are. I say, whatever happened to capitalism? Did they ever try selling the Renaissance Center? Did they take requests for proposals? Why are we the people on the hook for over a half a billion dollars with no guarantee to a guy that’s worth 25 billion? Explain to me.

I don’t know that I can explain it to you. Does that make sense to you, Mark? It does. What I can tell you is, from an economic development perspective, I’m just giving you kind of the way I’ve looked at it.

And I would think that John, someone that I’m close with would look at it, is that economic development can be a net positive thing, but it has to actually produce demonstratable financial and job results at the end of the day. You and I have talked about the Michigan Economic Development Council scheme, and $1.5 billion in one of their latest ventures that produced about 600 jobs. And if you do the math on that, you’d have been better off to just write all those 600 people a check, right? Because they would have financially been better off than creating their jobs.

That’s how absurd it has gotten on some of this economic development stuff. So I would say that economic development is not a bad thing. It’s a great thing.

If it’s done appropriately. If it’s done with market principles. And not a damn thing down here is being done that way.

Here’s the scam on this. Hey, listen to me, folks. It’s the Brownfield Authority.

It’s tax incremental financing. I know, but here’s the deal. No, this is Mike Duggan.

We don’t write any checks. How this works is you build it, you bring jobs, then we’ll let you capture some of the sales tax, some of the income tax to pay you back for all these great jobs. Okay, not exactly.

Here’s the hustle. When you’re doing remediation, when you’re cleaning up the soil, when you’re demolishing, the developer, in this case, Dan Gilbert, you file your expenses every month to the Treasury Department or MEDC, who’s in control of the Brownfield Authority. And you say, it costs me this.

This is how many guys I had working there. Now you’re going to capture 50% of their income tax that was formerly being paid to the state. And you give it to the developer to pay for his remediation.

Okay, so we are paying for it. Here’s the thing. They’re in court.

This Hudson’s Tower, he was given his receipts to the Treasury Department to get reimbursed. But he couldn’t show he actually had 1,000 workers there full-time. And so the newspaper wanted it.

And the state said, no, that’s private tax information. So now we’re in court. Because if you’re getting a check for reimbursement for 1,000 ghost employees and it’s self-attestation, nobody’s actually looking in the books.

They just sign an affidavit. That’s it. And we pay.

Which is one of the guardrails that needs to exist. As we talked about the other subject, we talked about probate court and all those things. This is the disaster that we’ve seen in government.

I’ve seen since I’ve been there in four years is that there are no parameters by which we validate and verify, right? That should be done first before money flows. Validate and verify. And that’s a great example of, you know, there’s legitimately probably no process in place to do what you and I believe to be, from a free market perspective, a common sense thing that you would have in place.

And that’s what needs to happen. And if you had no public largesse, that’s exactly what you’d do. Because I remember working for the New York Times and profiling a new building, a new skyscraper going up in Times Square.

You take nine years to do a skyscraper, you just lost your ass. Unless, of course, you can get a backstop by a never ending spigot of public money that no one’s looking out for. And that’s, folks, that’s why you’re angry.

That’s why you’re worried about your kids. Because we just laid out the power hustle, the development hustle, the legal hustle. Wow, right? The political funding.

Dana Nessel, Jocelyn Benson, Criminal Referrals, Act Blue, this old lady. Wow. Okay, so you wonder who another dope is? There’s more.

Elissa Slotkin. Elissa Slotkin just came out and basically threatened young conservatives. I like young conservatives.

I like young liberals. I used to be one. But it’s a veiled, not so veiled threat that if you go work for Trump, then you may be the subject of investigations.

But this, by the way, she’s a nincompoop. Oh, the CIA agent. Remember the famous beat down that he ran, what’s his name? He ran for president against Obama first time around, McCain, John McCain.

He famously just drilled her as being an empty suit, a dummy. Either you’re not smart or you’re not telling the truth. So this is what she said last year? Yes, last year.

This came from the internet. It was very good. I don’t remember who did it.

It’s a comparison, one year ago versus- I like to give people credit their site. I don’t like stealing their shit. As a CIA officer, the idea that intelligence officers could be asked to target Americans turns my stomach.

And it would shift us into a modern day surveillance state. Turning the federal government against Trump’s enemies goes hand in hand with his use of force in American cities, both federal law enforcement and the military. So that’s what I’m saying.

I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him. I want young people coming out of school to say, should I go work for the Trump administration? That sounds fun. I might get an opportunity.

I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want. And so let me avoid participating in that. I want that deterrence message.

What does that mean? I mean, that’s a person of no principles. Whatever narrative fits your cause is what that is. It’s political expediency.

We win at all costs. Just create mayhem. What an airhead.

Old Ozempic Alyssa. You know what I’m saying? Who comes home, never voted here, is basically an out-of-stater, and then lies about her mother’s health care, and then goes up there and does nothing about anything. Charlie, that’s the point I’m trying to make when I say to people who are voting that you’re never going to agree with policy with anyone 100%.

At the end of the day, who actually is being honest and telling you the truth? Who can you trust? I happen to be a Republican, and back in my hometown, there’s plenty of Democrats that support me. In fact, one of them, it was a great conversation and story. At the end of the day, he said, hey, I don’t agree with a lot of your policies, but I trust that what you tell me is going to be true.

That’s really the core of what you need to be looking for when you’re looking at who you might be casting your ballot for. I don’t know if I agree with that, because a lot of people, they’re so fed up. Because of their fantasy football, they don’t worry about statistically, salary caps, dead space.

They don’t worry about that, how their governments run. I’m only about policy. I just don’t know how a serious person runs without having to attach themselves to one of these parties.

Because if you do it that way, you’re not going anywhere. No bill’s getting sponsored. You’re having a broom closet for an office.

Your staff’s going to be underfunded. You can’t do it that way. That’s why you need to know the person though.

We live in a great place in the world. We get to watch these freighters go by on a daily basis down the Detroit River. I happen to be up by the St. Clair River.

I watch them go by. You can’t stop a freighter in 100 yards. It takes commitment and it takes effort.

That’s why I tell people who I talk to all the time, just take the time to understand what they’re all about and who they are. And if we have enough individuals that do that, Charlie, eventually you will have people voting for individuals because they deserve to be elected as opposed to they just told them something that they wanted to hear. Yeah.

I mean, they’re going to need up there in the street across from Sarnia, they’re going to need, I don’t know how much it’s going to cost, a new matter baby. You know? A matter baby? Yeah. What’s a matter baby? Nothing.

What’s the matter with you, sugar? All right. That’s it. Good luck, man.

You got to give it to Lansing. That was a good one, Charlie. Thank you, man.

Was it? Dad jokes. All right. We’ll see you next week.

THE WHOLE DAMN RACKET!

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