Illinois $420 Billion Pension Debt: Ex-Currency Trader Exposes State's Fiscal Collapse

Ted Dabrowski [00:00:00] You know, there's, there's no sign from our politicians that they want to do anything about reforms. Governor Pritzker says, reform of pensions is a fantasy that it will never happen. It'll never pass legal muster. So he ignores it. We've got some Republican candidates that are ignoring pension reform for governor, Republican candidates for governor. They're saying, let's just grow our way out of it. And, and it, it's silly, silly, you can't grow your way out of a mess like this.

Vance Crowe [00:00:26] I'm Ashley McFarland, a nonprofit executive living in Duluth, Minnesota, and you are listening to the Vance Grow Podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. We talk to a very interesting guy. Ted Dabrowski is a former currency trader with Citibank who lived in Mexico and Poland. He's a child of immigrants and he is in the state of Illinois doing what I think could be described as Don CTE's work to try and root out corruption and the horrible problems that Illinois government is contributing towards, which is making people flee the state and leaves me sitting over here in the state of Missouri just hoping and praying that they will sell us Cahokia mounds. This is a fun conversation, and it was one of those that was suggested to me by a former podcast guest that you're probably familiar with, a guy named Jeremy Osh, who has become one of my favorite guests to have on the podcast and a member of the Articulate Ventures network. So in that network, we always have people saying, Hey, I really think this might be a good fit for you. And boy, Jeremy was right. I absolutely love talking with Ted. You'll hear in this conversation, we talk about what is the problem with the state of Illinois? Why should other people in other parts of the country care about this? Because so goes Illinois, so grows the rest of the world. And then we have a relatively intense conversation about what happens when the money's buying power runs out.

Vance Crowe [00:01:57] And what happens in a system when you have so much corruption, corruption that the only way to see it get out is some form of a revolution, which were my words, but definitely not his. He is a very balanced and interesting guy, and I think you're going to enjoy this. If you are interested in some of the things that we're doing, either in the Articulate Ventures network or you're interested in some of the classes that we're producing. I hope you'll sign up for our newsletter this month. I am coming out with a class on introductions, which is how do you introduce yourself in a way that makes people interested in what you have to say, makes them understand what it is that you do for work and prompts them to come up and start the kind of conversations with you that are fun and enjoyable and easy. So this is a class that we developed inside of the Articulate Ventures Network. And if you don't want to join the network, well, you can always just buy the class. And the way you can get on that mailing list is going to Vance Crowe dot com slash podcast and sign up for our newsletter where when we publish the course, this one on introductions, and in a few weeks one on negotiations, we'll be happy to send you that notice. So we're gonna get to this interview with my new friend, Ted Dabrowski. Ted Dabrowski, welcome to the podcast. Well,

Ted Dabrowski [00:03:12] Thanks for having me on, Vance,

Vance Crowe [00:03:14] You come highly recommended from probably one of the most popular podcast guests I've ever had, a man named Jeremy Osh, who is hyper-focused on governance and the state of Illinois and what's going on in the state. And Jeremy is often says that, you know, what's going on in Illinois is just the bellwether for what's going to happen in other places. So he said, if you wanna know what's going on, you really ought to sit down and talk with Ted. So if you were gonna talk with a person that had no idea the economic situation of of the state of Illinois, what would be your kind of short rundown of it?

Ted Dabrowski [00:03:48] Well, my short rundown would be, gosh, you know, my, my parents were both immigrants to, to Illinois back in the late fifties. My dad came from Poland, but he escaped, you know, communist Poland, risk his life to get here. And where did he choose to go? Illinois, Chicago. My mom was a 19-year-old Ecuadorian, and, you know, wasn't sure what she was gonna do with her life, but she came up to, to, to America, had a brother up here and you know, this is where she ended up finding her future, her freedom, the American dream, you know, she was 19 and just came, came to Chicago. And so they met, my parents met, and you know, they, they had three children and, and you know, they lived the American dream in, in the way that it's defined. And life wasn't easy for them, but they, they knew how to grid it out in, in Illinois. And their story was the same story that that was happening for, for millions of people. They were coming from all over the world to come to Illinois. And also the, the, the great migration from the south people came to Illinois for work. And so that was then, today we are the state that's shrinking the most in the country. People are fleeing Illinois like no other state. We compete with New York on that, but we've shrunk more than any other state since 2010 in the last decade. And people can't find their opportunity here. So they're fleeing to go to Texas, to Florida, to Indiana, Wisconsin, wherever they can go. And it tells you a sad state about what's happened in Illinois. It's a governance issue. It's a, it's a policy issue. It's a cultural issue, a political culture issue. And it's destroying the lives of people. It's destroying their home values, it's destroying their family values.

Ted Dabrowski [00:05:20] And that's why people are leaving. And there's a few of us here fighting to, to take it back.

Vance Crowe [00:05:25] Well, so we live in a democracy. You, there are people that can vote for the policies. Why, if there are so many people streaming outta the state, doesn't a majority just get together and take back the state and do what they they need to do to make it right?

Ted Dabrowski [00:05:39] Well, and that's the right question. I think what's happened is it's become so corrupt here. So, you know, if you look at the political infrastructure, they own almost everything. They own, they own the, the politics. They, they, the political leader's, they, who's, they? They, it's a good question. It's the, the, what you might call the Chicago machine, you might call it the Illinois machine. It's both sides have owned the political infrastructure. And you know, they're not, they're not for the democracy that you and I would understand. They're, they're much more for machine politics. They control the media, they control the corporate elite because a corporate elite doesn't want to, doesn't want to, to, you know, ruffle feathers of the political elite. They control the judges, they control the maps, they control everything. And this is why I think what you see is you're seeing a lot of what would be the, the freedom fighters, if you wanna call 'em that in Illinois. They say, we can't win here, we're leaving. And that's why we've lost so many people. So I think we're losing the normal people who would vote against stuff because they're just voting with their feet rather than at the ballot.

Vance Crowe [00:06:37] So you said something, you know, rather bold, like things like all the media is owned by the, this, you know, cabal of people. I grew up in central Illinois. Are you saying that WEK and you know, these WHOI, these are controlled by some mastermind group?

Ted Dabrowski [00:06:55] Well, you know, you can't say I'm being, you know, I'm painting with a broad brush, right. Obviously, no, there are some pockets of, of good, of good media, but they're small. When you look at the, the majority of media, right? And, and if you look at, of course, Facebook and everything else that's out there, they're controlling what, what people read every day. And so you do have good talk radio out there for sure. And, you know, that's where we find our voice and that's how we find, you know, our listeners who listen to the stuff about the things on, on property taxes and pensions and things like that. But the overwhelming, overwhelming majority is, is owned. You know, let's take a step back. Most of the small media has been wiped out, right? Our newspapers across, you know, small city newspapers gone. You might have a person out, rather than having a team that covers an issue and can open up a, a government document to find out what's happening with, with the budget or property taxes, they can't do that anymore. 'cause they're, you know, they're carrying a camera. If it's one person carrying a camera and trying to write the story, they're stretched. They have no idea what's happening in the finances. And this is why a group like Wire Point survives and Lips is because we're replacing that. We're providing the data and the information that otherwise wouldn't be out there. But yeah, we have to battle the, the, the cancel culture that's out there. And it's, it's powerful here.

Vance Crowe [00:08:04] So let's, let's start right there. What is wire points? I got a chance to check it out prior to the interview. It's a very interesting spot. One that's kind of rare. It, it is reminiscent a little bit of drudge report in the fact that you have so much on there and stuff that I don't normally see in other places. I mean that in a complimentary way, what is wire points?

Ted Dabrowski [00:08:24] So, you know, it started a few years back, my partner Mark Glenn, and he was frustrated that the, the, the news wasn't being covered properly by any of the, the major media. And he, you, he started aggregating other news that, that other people had written that actually told the truth, or at least told partial truth. And he started aggregating news, then he got more frustrated and he said, he started writing some pieces to try to tell the truth about what was happening. I was working at another group and we, we decided to hook up and say, Hey, we gotta tell the truth. We're not political. We, we think both sides are complicit in the failure in Illinois. It's, it's been a, a big joint venture between Republicans and Democrats. And so we got together and we started writing and providing the data. I'm, I'm a pretty dad obsessed guy, and so if we make a claim, we wanna make sure that the data's right behind it so people can see why we're saying it and what we're saying, and they can, you know, take us on, which is, you know, we want a good healthy debate. But, but I think a key differentiating feature in addition to the data is we're gonna tell it just like it is. We're not worried about whether we upset a Republican or a Democrat. We don't care. What we wanna do is make sure that people understand what the truth is. And, you know, that COVID allowed us to really kind of show off our, our work because it allowed us to grab the data and say, you know, the government's not telling you this. Here's what you should know.

Vance Crowe [00:09:42] So gimme an example. What did you guys uncover that the, that the government was saying one thing and you guys discovered something else? Well,

Ted Dabrowski [00:09:48] You know, right off the bat, you know, we, we, we started to, you know, the whole, the whole notion in Illinois was that our government was gonna gonna be run by, by, by the governor, governor Pritzker with executive orders. And, you know, and of course the, the fear in Illinois was that is all about cases. You only heard about cases. You never heard about deaths in hospitalizations, or I should say differently. They use cases to scare you and, and, and, and, and invoke fear. And so we started saying, we, we didn't even report cases on wire points. We created our own alternative data using government data and started reporting it, but showing it in a way that, that we thought was the way you should see it. And we led with hospitalizations and we led with deaths. And we didn't even include cases in our data for a long time because we said that was not, not the right kind of data. And, you know, wow. People, people loved it. Our, our volumes just went through the roof. Then we challenged Governor Pritzker, why he wasn't publishing antibody data. You know, this is, this is data that other states had started to publish and the government wouldn't publish it. Then we took them on, on, on, on other data, like, why aren't they showing the, they actually weren't reporting hospitalizations that weren't reporting several pieces of data. We challenged them, we, we foya for it. We started reporting the data, which forced the government to then report the data. So, you know, people were just happy to see that there was an alternate site that said, wait a minute, think about it this way. And of course, that led us into talking about school openings and all that, which, you know, people, people really appreciated the, the data we put out.

Vance Crowe [00:11:19] And what was your data telling people that they weren't, that they didn't understand prior to having that data?

Ted Dabrowski [00:11:24] Well, you know, let, let's take the, the example of Chicago Public schools, right? Massive school system shut down March of, of last year and did not reopen until just a few weeks ago. So basically you had something that's, what is it? 80 something percent minority, right? So here you have a, a class of children who are already massively behind with, with, with learning gaps, you know, huge learning gaps, which mean in the future, huge earning gaps, right? When they're older, they're being kept outta school. And a big part of that was the fear that was being invoked about, about COVID. And, you know, a few months ago, we, we took the data, we showed the number of kids that were under the age of 18 that had died in Chicago from COVID. And I, I can't remember the numbers now because it's, at the time it was either two kids or four kids under the age of 18 that had died of COVID. And then we showed the number of kids that had died from under the age of 18 from gunshots. And it was something like 50 and later, later it became 90, it became eight deaths of COVID versus 90 deaths, or a hundred deaths is actually a hundred deaths from gunshots. We said there's much more risk of the kids not being in the classroom and being out in the streets. Let's get them back into the classroom.

Vance Crowe [00:12:37] That's

Ted Dabrowski [00:12:37] The kind of stuff, right? You know, you gotta, you gotta show the numbers and put some perspective on it.

Vance Crowe [00:12:42] So, I mean, that is one of those things that's jarring to the point of like a dark dystopia, right? That's, that's like who on earth would, would at first guess that? And then two, what, how did people respond? As you put that out there, certainly your viewers started to like it, but then you start putting that up in front of people and making them look at what they're doing. Did that impact them?

Ted Dabrowski [00:13:04] Well, you know, it was hard to impact Chicago's such a big place and it's so politicized. But yeah, it had an impact. And I think, you know, we're always breaking the narrative, the, the, the narrative that the governors always wanted to use, which is, you know, shut down lockdowns. I think we had much more impact in the suburbs because, you know, there you had in the, you're talking about the Chicago suburbs, where you have wealthy, wealthy school districts, including where I am. They didn't wanna open up, but they didn't wanna open up much. And so we started showing all the, all the data of, well, let's look at the people 50 and under who have died from COVID and, and you know, and if they didn't have comorbidities, it was a teeny number. And so these unions, the teachers unions were using their huge power to keep schools closed. And we just kept hammering the data, no children are dying. You know, the, the number of, number of teachers who might be under the age of 50 is a, is a very small number. And then we also showed, well, don't forget, a majority of teachers, like 77% of the teachers in, in the school district I'm at, are under the age of 50. You can be in the classroom, you can manage this. And of course you start showing data on the private schools who are open all the time, and they weren't having, there's no transmission. So we started reporting on the lack of transmission, all those things, you know, if you report the facts and the data and present them in a fair, honest, and in, in a, you know, non hyperbolic way, it, it, it can go a long way to changing minds and, and getting, you know, getting buy-in. And I think we had a, a big impact on getting schools open in the suburbs.

Vance Crowe [00:14:33] How did people find out about wire points? You know, one of the interesting things that I think COVD and the latest election have shown is that there are certain perspectives that even if all they're doing is showing, hey, this is data, hey, this is us going to a physical location where, where they said there were voters coming from and now they're not here. Those people are getting booted off of social media. And I would guess probably throttled pretty significantly prior to that. So how in the world did you find an audience?

Ted Dabrowski [00:15:03] Well, you know, I, I say one of the things we've done, and it, it's, it's, it's a, i I think it's a sad part of, of, of our, what do you wanna call it? Battles in, in, in the culture battle we're having is that I, I think we, we, the, we can win the arguments based on the facts and, and logic and reason. And, you know, we are, we're, I'm, I'm highly against the hyperbolic name calling all that. I, I don't like any of that. So we really avoid it because once you do that, then you've, you know, you, you, you're just like everybody else, right? And so we're, we're direct. We're certainly direct. We certainly mean what we say and say what we mean, but we don't do it in a way that tries to put you down or, or calls you stupid. We just putting the facts out there and, you know, and you can, if you have good data behind you, at least you can have a, a decent discussion, right? You can disagree on the data some and all that. But we just, you know, we were a small team through COVID. We had three people and we worked our butts off. But, you know, we we're good at taking the data, we're good at describing it, and we worked hard to get it out into Facebook and Twitter and, you know, it's hard work. We didn't spend any money to, to, to, to promote it. We just, you know, tried, tried our best to get it out there, but I think people liked it. And so far so good.

Vance Crowe [00:16:16] One of the big things that we've had other guests on the podcast talk about the pension problem in the state of Illinois, and it's not so much the, it it, it was basically like making promises for the future, which was how they bargain for things, which then ended up making Illinois, you know, a slave to the amount of debt that was mounting. What is it that people should understand about how the pension situation has crippled the state of Illinois? Hmm.

Ted Dabrowski [00:16:41] You know, it's, it's a complex discussion. You know, most of the time when you talk about pensions, people's eyes over because it's, you know, it's just boring. It's a, you know, it's retirement stuff, but you know it, at, at the, at the root of it is, is we got so many promises our government has made, and we'll come back to that as to how you, how you get there. You, you got a government that makes so many promises to, to the public sector, which is the same public sector. That's then, as I mentioned, the control of, of government, the, the unions support the government, the government supports the unions. You got this great back scratching going on in Illinois that maybe is, maybe you find similar competition for that kind of behavior in New Jersey or maybe Louisiana or something. But it's, it's a, you know, it's a really, it's a legally corrupt system. Everything that's done is legal and is highly corrupt. And so what's happened is, is you've got this massive amount of debts and it's, they have destroyed, i I I would argue they have destroyed the, the future of Illinois. There's very little time to figure out how to get around all this debt that we have. And what that means is that, you know, think about it, when you have debt, somebody's gotta pay it off, assuming that there's no, we can talk about the federal bailouts and all that, but assuming there's no federal bailout, then it's the ordinary, ordinary people of Illinois who are on the hook for paying it back. The, the, the, the, the problem is that debt's gotten so large and we've made, we've made the argument at wire points. There's no way to fix Illinois without cutting that debt, either through, either through bankruptcy or through some kind of reforms and negotiation with the unions or through some legal mechanism to cut those debts.

Ted Dabrowski [00:18:20] Because it's so much that to try to make people pay it off. Unless you build a wall around Illinois, people will just continue to leave. And

Vance Crowe [00:18:30] Every time, how much is it when you say it's so much? Oh, sure. Help me understand that. Put it in

Ted Dabrowski [00:18:33] Perspective. Yeah. So, so, okay, there's Moody's, Moody's rating agency, everybody knows who that is. You know, they, they rate Illinois. There's, they add up all the pension debt because they, they, there's official numbers, right? The state puts out official numbers, nobody believes them. They're, they're too low. Moody's does its own calculation. And when you add up all the pension debts and retiree health insurance debts, which pensioners get, and you add 'em up for Chicago, for Cook County, for, you know, all every local go government in, in the city, in the state and the state level, it's about $420 billion. Now, that's a big number, but it means nothing. Four $20 billion is about $90,000 a household. So imagine that you're living in, in Missouri and you're thinking about moving to Illinois. Well, if you move in, you're gonna assume in some way $90,000 of additional taxes to pay down. Not for, not for current services, not for better roads, not for not for your schools. It's to pay down simply the old pension debt for services, all for services already rendered. So it's $90,000 a household. Well, think about that, that that's a massive number. And you know, the number's actually worse than that. Why? Because, you know, at least a quarter of the population is in poverty, so they'll never pay into that, into that $420 billion. So that means there's people like me and others who have, means they'll have to pay it. So that number, what is it, 150,000, 200,000 per household. People just won't pay it. Not to a corrupt government that won't fix things.

Ted Dabrowski [00:20:06] And that the numbers only grow the, the, the numbers only grow every, every year. The debts are billions more than the year before. And yet the state says we always have balanced budgets. It's never true. So, so, you know, the way this plays out is, is that it's so much debt that people just flee it. And when people flee, it's the same amount of debt on fewer people. And so the number spirals up until, you know, I don't know, do we, do we have to hit a Detroit? Do we have to hit a, a Puerto Rico where so many people leave and then the debt sow onerous that nobody can pay it?

Vance Crowe [00:20:38] Yeah, I mean, one of the, you know, you and I, before the show talked about the Peter Teal paradox and my Peter Teal paradox has been for a while, although it no longer works because people agree with me, is Missouri ought to just set a little money aside and wait for the state of Illinois to eventually crumble. And then we should buy Cahokia mounds, which I think is a national, you know, international treasure. And do you think it will get to that point that the state of Illinois will be forced to sell off important parts of it? Will that ever sell off land itself?

Ted Dabrowski [00:21:07] Well, so, so this is where it gets complex and, and, you know, COVID, COVID, COVID changed the rules of the game for everything. Alright? So here, here we had Illinois, you know, the most, so the credit rating, first of all was by all three rating agencies, s and p, Moody's and Fitch, one notch above junk. Now no state has ever been rated junk ever. Detroit, of course, is a great example of something that became junk. And it was, you know, there's a bunch of notches of different ratings. And, and Detroit became bankrupt and, and, and junk rated. Well, Chicago public schools today is rated lower than Detroit, so it is at a lower level of junk than Detroit. The city of Chicago is already junk rated, and the state by all three rating agencies is right at the verge of junk. So, so what happens, right? So we were already on a path to to, to become junk rated. And, you know, there's, there's no sign from our politicians that they want to do anything about reforms. Governor Pritzker says reform of pensions is a fantasy that it will never happen. It'll never pass legal muster. So he ignores it. We've got some Republican candidates that are ignoring pension reform for governor, Republican candidates for governor. They're saying, let's just grow our way out of it. And, and it it's silly. It's silly. You can't grow your way out of a mess like this. And so, so before COVID, there was a chance that things were gonna get so bad that either the government would be forced to do reforms or you just have chaos on the streets. And, you know, you know, Milton Friedman always said, what you wanna do is force bad, you know, bad actors to do the right thing.

Ted Dabrowski [00:22:45] And I think that the, the, the trajectory that Illinois' numbers were going and the out-migration and all that was gonna force change. But then COVID came along and it really did expose how bad Illinois was. Right at the beginning of COVID, we had our state Senator Don Harmon, right off the bat, ask for a $42 billion bailout from the federal government before there was even discussion of federal money coming to, to states. So he proved that the Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, she asked Governor Pritzker, she said, governor Pritzker, will you assume please all of Chicago's pension debts, we can't pay them down. And Governor Pritzker had to say no, because if, if we the state assume those, those pension debts we'll become junk rated. So you could see that, that the ability to, to do anything about this problem is disappearing. But then of course, all these federal aid packages came along and they have in a way bailed out, at least in the short term, Illinois, from having to, to fix its problems. And the latest package that just came through the, the 1.9 trillion will give Illinois about $25 billion in total across all governments. And so, you know, it's not enough money to make a difference, but it does buy the politicians two more years probably of of time to kick the can. And so we're, we're, we're trying to figure out where does Illinois go go with all this money coming in? Will will, will people like President Biden and others then try to federalize Illinois' debt? Will they try to keep trying to give it more and more money so that the problem goes away? You know, the way we're printing money at the federal level means perhaps they'll try to do that.

Ted Dabrowski [00:24:20] So it's a, it's a confusing time for us in terms of how we handle Illinois' problems.

Vance Crowe [00:24:25] Yeah, this actually brings, so just the other day we had what we call the circular firing squad in a network I run, which is this debate program where the goal is not necessarily to win, it's to figure out how to have good vigorous debate among people on different principles. And we were talking about inflation, and one of the things that I find very striking there is if you can print money infinitum without inflation, then why don't we just print all the money and, and get New York outta debt and get Illinois out of debt? And the people that are saying, we don't have to worry about inflation don't seem to have a good answer for that. What do you think? Why, why, why? If people are saying the bigger thing that we have to worry about is deflation, can't we just print our way out of this?

Ted Dabrowski [00:25:09] You know, it, it's, you know, I I, I lived in my world, my financial world before I did this stuff that I'm doing now. I was, I was a Citibank and I, I was a, in Mexico trading emerging markets currencies. And you know, I ran treasury floors and so we were always, and then I was in Poland for nine years and always in the markets. And you know, if there's a truth you learn out there is that you can get away with bad behavior for a long time, right? You can always get away with bad behavior. It happens. It doesn't matter what thing we're talking about. People, people can act bad, but eventually, usually, right? Usually eventually they pay a price. And so, you know, I was in Mexico in 1994 when we had the tequila crisis. Most people won't remember that, but that's when, when Mexico was borrowing hard currency like crazy, people were lending it to them. And it was a big party because you got a lot of, you, you got a huge interest if you lent money to Mexico, and as long as Mexico could pay you back, man, you were making tons of money. But everybody knew, everybody knew that one day Mexico would, would not be able to keep it going. There would be a massive deflation of the peso. And, and, and it happened in 1994, it happened. And so I remember some, some lady who, who was a friend of mine had been investing in Mexico and after, after the peso devalued and she lost a ton of money, she goes, but, but I was told that that would never happen. Right? Because she, she, she believed that the game would just go on forever and, and it didn't. And you know, and eventually the Im IIMF and, and Clinton came out and bailed out Mexico with $50 billion.

Ted Dabrowski [00:26:43] My next job was in, in Poland in, in, in 1999, right after I got there, Russia, you know, had, had done the same thing. They borrowed so much money and then they couldn't pay it back. So eventually you pay the price. So, you know, you can try to print as much money as you want to try to get away with it, but when you print trillions and trillions and trillions, you know, there's no free launch. And then that's, you know, that's a life lesson I've, I've learned, you know, in a lot of, in a lot of ways.

Vance Crowe [00:27:08] Yeah. I mean, I think it's a good adage to hold the idea that you don't get away with anything ever. You will always pay for your sins. Yeah.

Ted Dabrowski [00:27:15] And

Vance Crowe [00:27:15] It starts to try and keep you on the up and up. And I, you know, during that inflation discussion, somebody brought up the point that the way that this plays out is you have, well, one of the ways that it could play out is, is that people start all these projects because there's no end to the amount of money that people can promise that banks can put up. And then you start having so much money chase after goods like steel where they're, they've not, they're just not available. Like, you know, I heard the other day that steel prices in December went up 40% and prior to that, in the, in the ag barn building industry, the most they'd ever gone up in a single year was 8%. So you're talking about real prices going up, the value of the ability to be able to purchase these things. And what will happen is people will start these projects, get them a quarter of the way through a half the way through, and then just not be able to get goods or not be able to afford, afford the, the structural materials to finish building them. And then

Ted Dabrowski [00:28:10] Yeah, you, yeah, you remind me, you remind me of my days in Mexico where you drive around and you see these unfinished buildings for 25 years, there's this massive building right in the middle of Mexico City and you can drive by and see, you can see right through it. They never finished it. And you know, and that's probably an example. And there were many examples of like that in, in Mexico where, you know, where you get where you get market disruptions and things, things are left alone. But I think, you know, Vance, an important point about all this too is, you know, let, lemme tell you about who always got screwed or who, who always suffered, you know, in Mexico when we had that big eval, you know, the, the wealthy people always make out. They, they know how to figure it out. But the poor, I mean the, the low income people, they get destroyed, right? They, they, they're not protected. And you know, it'll be the same thing here where, where, you know, we, we can, we can print, print, print and have this inflation, but you know, it's not real. It's not, it, it it's fake, right? Any, you know, if you, if you do, if you build an economy based on, on, on printed money, it's not real. And eventually, you know, it's a house of cards that it comes down, it's always the little guy that gets hurt.

Vance Crowe [00:29:08] Yeah. It's that, what is it called? The cantilever effect where the people closest to the money that are being printed, they do just fine. They take their turn at the trough and put it into equities or things that can float along with it. But the people that get the dollars last are the, are the people that are left holding the bag. They have a bunch of worthless paper and the other people have already grabbed the value out of it. And, and then you have a, you have a deepening crisis and eventually the gap between the poor and the rich must be reconciled. And I think that that's, that's something you can go and look at, you know, so many ancient texts all the way down to the Bible that say like, if you go too far, where the poor get too disassociated from where the wealthy are, eventually bad things happen.

Ted Dabrowski [00:29:54] Yeah. And, and that's an interesting, it's a good point and interesting point. And but I I, I do get into that discussion sometimes where, you know, I, I don't think, I don't think that that the people getting wealthy, right? People getting wealthy through, through good ways and through through innovation and through, through through, what do you wanna call it? Just, just good growth in the economy. That's fine. And, and, and, and everybody participates in it. It's when we create a, a false economy where it, it no longer makes sense and people can't, you know, this whole thing, this whole thing right now where we're printing money, giving people money not to work, right? Or eventually they're incentivizing 'em not to work. All that stuff is setting us up for failure. 'cause people are losing their skills. You know, there's plenty of things to talk about there. But, but yeah, I, you know, what we don't wanna do is create a false economy that, that then people are, people are ticked off about because, you know, payback is hell.

Vance Crowe [00:30:43] So one of the things, I have a few listeners that are owners of property and they're, they're renting their property out, you know, in the form of apartments and they have people that just don't have to pay and there's no way to evict them. Which seems to me to be the very foundation of private property all the way down to John Locke is if I choose to rent to you, you have to pay to me. And anybody that interferes with that is interfering with the foundational right of civilization, which is property. What are your thoughts on this eviction moratorium and then the CDC stepping in and saying, we agree and it should go on nationally for months and months more.

Ted Dabrowski [00:31:22] Yeah, so, you know, here's, here's where you get to Illinois in the next kind of comparison of things. I was, I was in Florida last week and I was there for a week on vacation and you, you know, you rapidly see the difference in, in, in two economies. One that's an open economy and, and, you know, tries to keep things going and try to do things the market way. The other is Illinois that, you know, that shuts down, stays shut down, keeps doing more lockdowns, and, and, and then because of that has to do more rent control or rent, you know, or, or, or things like you're mentioning. And so therefore you get into a false economy again. And, you know, I the owner of property suddenly can't get paid, but I also can't, you know, but the economy's not open so that people can have their jobs and, and make their payments. And then you have the government fill in, fill in the missing earnings with these, you know, extra payments, you know, unemployment, insurance and extra payments. And it becomes, it becomes a wacko, a wacko economy. It's not a real economy. And you know, I I, I, as I mentioned, I spent nine years in Poland. I I got there in, in 1998 just to, you know, not too many years after the wall came down. And you know, we, we, we, some people don't, okay? People think of communism and, and, and whatever happened is something long, long time ago. No, you know, it wasn't that long ago. I mean, just, just a few years back, I was, I was in Poland where there were unwinding 50 years of, of economic destruction, 50 years of indi, you know, individual property and individual rights were destroyed. And, and, you know, Poland was working, it was amazing time to be there because they were working to give back the powers to the individual.

Ted Dabrowski [00:32:59] They're working, you know, hard to get laws that gave private property rights back to the people again. And here we are in Illinois and in many parts of the country doing the exact opposite. I mean, it could, it could not be weirder that, you know, that was, that was 20 years ago. I was doing the opposite of what we're doing now here in Illinois. It's, it's fascinating and, you know, and it will work.

Vance Crowe [00:33:19] You know, that really strikes me, something I'd never thought to look into is I kind of have the short man's view of, of history, because I always think of, I knew that Russia and Poland had a communist revolution and then they brought them in. But I always thought like, oh, it just was there. But I never really thought about how did communism get stacked on what were the, what were the ways that it came on? And I would have to imagine that it, it has something to be like what it is right now where people are like, no, no, no, this is still, you know, a democratic capitalistic situation. Don't worry about it. These are just things we're doing in the short term. And then eventually you wake up and you've been lulled into this sense where so many things have changed that take it away from the private property system that you may call it a capitalist system, but in effect it's communism. Yeah,

Ted Dabrowski [00:34:07] No, you're absolutely right. And you know, they'll even use the words of democracy to put on those bigger restrictions, right? So to, to have a better democracy, we need this, this, you know, rent control or, or, or, you know, or the, you know, all all these different things that are happening today. You know, we've, we've had in Illinois, I don't know how it's been where you are, you know, we've had Governor Pritzker run the state with some 70 something executive orders and 13 or 14 months straight of, of one man rule on how to, to run the economy. If you think about it, he's choosing how to run the economy, something that we've worked, you know, hundreds of years on it, thousands of years, right? To figure out what's the, what, you know, how do we determine how to get what kind of bread on a, on a shelf, right? Or, or how many loaves of bread on a shelf. The markets figure that out. And here you have Governor Pritzker deciding what to open, what not to open. And we've seen all the discrepancies, right? You, you're allowed to have this kind of store open, but not that kind of store things that don't make sense. And here we are, you know, adding all kinds of decisions now and giving people more money based on this or that. And, you know, it, it's, it's, it's bastardizing the economy and where we've been, and I, it's gonna be hard to figure out how we unwind all this may, maybe it just becomes so mocked up that, that the unwind happens.

Vance Crowe [00:35:28] Yeah, I'm in the state of Missouri and I, I had the attorney general on Eric Schmidt, and I, I really think that one of the powerful things about the state of Missouri is how decentralized power is, you know, Eric really is responsible for making sure laws are adjudicated and he's willing to take people to task if they don't do it. You know? And you have these situations where the city of St. Louis is following different rules than the county, and the county is following different rules than the rest of the state. And for my principles, that's exactly the way that you want it. Sure, you want to have different groups, and if people in the city of St. Louis wanna run their city that way, fine. But that way I can leave it without having to leave every part of my state behind One of the thoughts that I had, you wrote an article about a guy in Florida that left kind of as this nomad to get out of Illinois. And while I was reading it, i i, it dawned on me that the state of Florida, the, you know how there's always those articles that are like, you know, a Florida man does X and it's this wild, crazy thing. I actually think that maybe for a long time we've been a little bit gaslighted about the state of Florida. I really took, took them to be kind of toothless hillbillies and a bunch of really wealthy people at the bottom, you know, tip. But they do have an element of freedom there and a, and a way of thinking about not having this sort of centralization of government that isn't going on in the rest of the country. And that might be why they're so openly mocked.

Ted Dabrowski [00:36:50] Yeah, you know, I, I would say that, you know, one of the lessons learned about Illinois, and if, if, if I could share that with the rest of the country is, you know, you don't want things centralized because, you know, one size fits all come from the top, you know, if it's good stuff, right? We love it, you know, collectively, if it's working, we love it. But you know, it, it just doesn't work that way because eventually, you know, one guy comes a longer gal and their policies are upside down or they don't know what they're doing. And, you know, we've got so many mandates and, and you mentioned the gentleman you mentioned at the opening of the show. I, I think Illinois is, is kind of the, the, the, the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country. And Obama got elected president, right? He took a lot of the stuff, and you know, the, the, I would say the Illinois politics and the Illinois machine, he took a lot of that with him. You know, rah Emanuel was up there, you know, they're experts at this stuff. And what what it comes down to is, you know, they know better than everybody else and they, they love to centralize decision making and you know, and they want to take care of you. You know, they're very paternalistic. And that's not, that's not, well that's not the America that most people want. Maybe in the big cities that's come to be, but, but, but what we have is we have mandates on all, you know, the stuff we're talking about, pensions, it's all mandated at the top level. Cities can't really do anything to get themselves out of the mess. And so every, every city is becoming rotten because of the, of the state mandates from the top. And it's, it's not just the pension, it's the collective bargaining laws, which I think are, you know, watch out the rest of the country.

Ted Dabrowski [00:38:20] Because if, if, if Illinois collective bargaining laws are spread everywhere, you know, people will have no freedom because the unions will have all the powers, the public sector unions. And so, so your point was about Florida. So what's fascinating about Illinois is if you talk about, let me bring an example. We had a, we had a, he was a small city mayor, and he, he actually did some good things here in Illinois. He lowered some taxes. Most, you know, in Illinois we only raised taxes. We never lowered them. And so when this guy lowered taxes, you know, he, he, he actually caught a lot of grief for it, and he decided finally to leave. And he, he chose to go to Alabama. And you know, if you, if you say that somebody moves to Alabama from Illinois, they're, they're like, good riddance. You know, they, they think that Alabama, you know, doesn't have, they have no schools, they have roads only and, and you know, to just think very poorly of it, it's a really arrogant way to think. But if you know anything about Alabama, especially northern Alabama, it's booming. It's booming, huge investments. Billions of dollars of investments are going on and people are saying, Hey, I can buy a house, huge house, big property, maybe a swing pool and pay a quarter of the property taxes I pay in Illinois, I'm outta here. You know, same thing in, in Florida, right? It's a, it's a state that, you know, manages to grow much more. There's a lot more jobs. If you saw some of the data we posted in that piece, you know, they, they far outperform Illinois on jobs. They far outperform people on, on attracting people, right? It's a growth state. Illinois is a shrinking state.

Ted Dabrowski [00:39:52] And I think in Illinois, we're just so arrogant. We think that, you know, whoever leaves good riddance and we, we can do on our own. But it's a, it's a, it's a fools thought

Vance Crowe [00:40:01] A few months ago, the book club that we run in this network read 1984, which was like a really big splash for me. I had forgotten. I, you know, I kind of, when I was in high school, read the book and I didn't really realize that one of the major points in that book is the distinction between the inner party and the outer party and how the outer party are the people that are doing all the censoring. They're the ones that are, you know, a part of the whole machine that makes the whole thing work. And the reason that they do it is that they expect that one day they will be called up to be a part of the inner party. They will one day get into it. And as I, as I think about how this has played out in the us I think in a lot of ways this is when, when we started to say students should take on massive amounts of debt to go to college, that was when we really started to accelerate this. Because you start having this sort of elite candidates, right? They wanna be a part of the elite, but they're actually just candidates for it. They've put themselves in the position to have the degree to be a part of the thing, and now they're just waiting for their chance to, to get the step up to be a part of the Clinton global initiative to, to participate in the political machine. And that really, it's just a way to, to keep the system perpetuating. What are your thoughts on that?

Ted Dabrowski [00:41:22] Oh, I I you, you're, you're hitting it head on and it's, it's what we see in Illinois all the time and it's, you know, let, let me start with the political parties first. You know, the Republicans used to, used to be a, a party of, of power here, you know, a long time ago in Illinois, but over time, I think their brand got, you know, they, they started to, to take care of the unions as much as the Democrats did. And so there was a lack of differentiation between the two. But over time, Republicans, the, the super minorities right now in, in both chambers, and so they hardly exist. And so I think so much of it has been that they've wanted to seat at the table, they wanted to, to be part of, of the decision making kind of thing. And so they've joined in on all the bad things. And so now it's kind of hard to tell the difference between them and, you know, they're, they, they haven't figured out how to rebrand themselves as, as the reformers and the the ones who are gonna do things differently. So when it comes back to, back to the, to, to the broader thing, not just politics, but it's the same thing across school districts, across households, you know, people, people, yeah. You, you feel like you, you, you have to keep wanting to be in the club. Well, in Illinois in particular, you figure, well, I can't, I can't beat them. So if I don't leave, I might as well join them. So how do I get, how do I get my share of the spoils? Let me join, let me join one of these public sector unions. Let me, let me get a gig. This is how, this is how the corruption, legal corruption has started. We've got the most units of government in the country. We have 7,000 different taxing bodies that's far more, you know, in, in number and in per capita than California or Texas or, or Florida.

Ted Dabrowski [00:42:58] And, and what it does is it creates all these governments where people wanna be a part of it so that you can participate in the spoils, whether it's a pension or, or some of the benefits. And, and, and, and that group becomes so big that it almost becomes like a huge voting block. And that voting block, especially in the small local elections, outnumbers the people who aren't paying attention. And then that's how we end up with the highest property taxes in the nation, which is what we've got. And we've got a situation where we just can't get ourselves outta this, this mess. And, and, and people are now shaking their heads and saying, what do we do?

Vance Crowe [00:43:31] Yeah. I don't think people realize that the largest employer in the United States is a federal government and probably within each state. Well, a state like Illinois, I imagine a huge percentage more than any other single employer is probably the state itself.

Ted Dabrowski [00:43:45] Yeah. You know, there, they're, they're a big source of jobs. And, and once you figure out the benefits, look, you know, you can retire in your fifties being a, a, a state state worker full pension in your fifties, then you can go out and do some more work and, and you know, pad that, and I just wrote about our, our, our, our superintendent from the area that I lived in, I was curious to know where, what was I doing? I was doing some pension research on, on, you know, the big pensioners. And when I was looking up his data, he's got a, I forget the numbers now, you know, a couple hundred thousand something pension up a year, you know, he'll get about 6.6 million in lifetime pension benefits if he lives to, you know, be the normal age. And, and I found out that he had taken on a part-time job, a halftime job at another school district not far away. And he was teaming up with another retired pensioner and they were half, half and half teammates to make up a full superintendent. But if you work 0.49 years, you can still work and get your pension. And so, you know, it's double dipping. And, and so then I looked, I said, well wait a minute. Well, I found out he did that last year and he did that the year before. And the guy that he's doing with has been doing this for like 10 years. So they figure out how to get massive pensions and they continue working while they receive their pensions. It's, and then we found a whole bunch of other people doing it, then we found out it's even bigger than that. And again, this is how you make things work in Illinois. And and the sad part is, is that the little guy in, in East St.

Ted Dabrowski [00:45:18] Louis or in Harvey or in Rockford who's working hard somewhere, paying his, his income taxes part of it, his income taxes are going to pay for that superintendent who's double dipping. And that's how screwed up it is.

Vance Crowe [00:45:30] You know, if you've used a word several times, it's a very bold word, corruption. And it's actually one of the things that I studied in graduate school, how do you get rid of corruption? Particularly I was focused on Sub-Saharan Africa. 'cause I had lived in Kenya and saw that there is no possibility that those people will raise the bottom quarter of, of the population out of poverty until they get rid of corruption. And I became somewhat of a cynical person around corruption in that. I think that there's very few ways to root it out without a full scale revolution. Do you have a different opinion on that? Can you get rid of corruption without some massive upheaval?

Ted Dabrowski [00:46:10] Well, you know, it, it, okay, so let, let me take you back to my Mexico experience when I first got there. You know, you, I lived in Mexico City, I was there about with six years. And you know, as you're driving around, you'll eventually get stopped by that, that that little guy, he's on the corner, he's gonna say, come here. When he, when he asks you to come over and you're driving by, you pull over. Yeah. You don't, you don't keep going 'cause you don't want that kind of problem. And you know, you did invariably did something wrong, something small. And so you hand over 20 pesos and you know that, that, you know, once you learn that, that's part of the system, it's, it's a system where you pay that guy, he pays off his bosses and everybody enriches himself from that small level corruption, right? But it happens everywhere. And that's just how it works. Those are the rules of the game. Call it legal, call it illegal, call it what you want. I argue that in Illinois, that's why I use that word legal corruption. We've got a system similar to that where we have, as I mentioned, all the u units of government and they all know that once you get into that gig, it's good, but you gotta protect it. So you gotta vote for the right people, right? You gotta vote for the right people who will promise to, if, if you vote for them, they will take care of your benefits even through higher cost of living adjustments, some form of another additional benefit, they'll grow programs. And so, so it's that group and, and they become a huge voting block and they become the distribution of, of, of information and, and you know, talking points across the state.

Ted Dabrowski [00:47:41] So it's a system that it's really hard to break and it's, it's, it's, you know, powerful and wonderful when you look at it from a, from a construction perspective, you know, how do you build something like that? You know, it takes a lot of time. Guys like Mike Madigan, if you've heard of him, you know, state, state house speaker for some 30, almost 40 years and was in, was in power for 50 years. You know, it took a long time to build that, but, okay, how do you break it? You know, at at wire points we're pushing for the reforms. We're laying out the reforms. We've laid out a, a massive pension reform plan that we think can make a huge difference if it's done sometime in the near future, where we're talking a lot about the collective bargaining reforms that have to happen. We're not foolish to think they're not gonna happen anytime soon because the powers that, the powers there are never going to take on those reforms because it would go against their own interest. Right. It would be they'd have to break their own corruption, their own legal corruption ring. So they're not gonna do it. So our arguments argument at wire points is, look, unless, unless something changes in some, some, you know, fortunate way, those changes are only gonna happen when so many people have fled and, and, and there's just no way out that, you know, you have some kind of, I i I would call it revolution, right? But some kind of massive disruption. And only then can you change the laws that break a lot of this stuff. When fi when people finally realize that the math doesn't work. And I, and I give you the example of Poland, you know, you know, they, they were massively destroyed by, by the socialist and communistic policies that were in place.

Ted Dabrowski [00:49:16] But Lech Valencia in 1980, so you're talking about 10 years before the wall came down, you know, solidarity movement smelled that the math didn't work. And so they started rising up a good 10 years before, eventually it all crumbled, but, you know, they were wise enough to to, to do the, the proper civil disobedience and struck rising up against the math. And, you know, I I, I think that that's what groups like us and a few others are doing who are speaking up. Now, it might take us 3, 5, 10 years, but this math isn't gonna work. And then to your point, it's gonna take, hopefully it's not some kind of revolution, but it's gonna take something ugly to fix this place.

Vance Crowe [00:49:54] Yeah. And, and it's really difficult because you can't do it alone. I, so in Kenya, they have this thing called tui Dogo, just gimme a little something. And I was on a little transport bus one time and they asked for everybody to hand over a little tui dogo. And I was like, well, I'm, I'm the white American, like, I'm not gonna pay it. Well, the army pulled me out of the, out of the van and they were like, well, we're just gonna hold the van here until, you know, somebody pays it. And it ended up being that the other Kenyans wanted to get where they were going and really didn't want to be around the Army. So they took up a collection and paid it. And now I look back and see how foolish I was. Right. I had no business doing that. But you, you, the other lesson I saw there is, there is no way to stop the inertia alone. You must find a big enough block of people that are all gonna say, we're not gonna do this. Because without it, you know, the, the machine itself of corruption goes on without you just steamrolls you.

Ted Dabrowski [00:50:50] Well, again, that's, that's what's fascinating about the whole cancel culture right now, you know, in Illinois, you know, we, we've, we're, we're in a, in a big battle right now over a lot of the imposition of critical race theory. There's, if you look at the, the laws, they're all including this equity lens, equity angle, you know, the, the language is, you know, steep in, in white, white supremacy. And, and so it's, it's an everything. And like you say, wow, it's like, geez, can I really speak up against it? I don't, you know, some of us are saying, well, hang on, this critical race theory is not really the right way to go about trying to solve some of the race issues we have in this country. And actually, we think that critical race theory is actually making it worse. But gosh, you know, if you say that alone, right? Then you get canceled, you get abused. And what we're finally seeing is that the people are getting together, I was on a radio show the the other day, and we're talking about this, get together with, with your neighbors, get together with a small group. It's harder to attack a group than it is, you know, one person speaking up. And that's what it takes to, to take on this cancel culture that's going on. You've got to get together with other people. Again, do it with logic, do it with reason, do it with, with respect, not with, you know, hyperbole and, and, and name calling. But it can be done. But, but you're right. It's a, it's a, it's really hard to break.

Vance Crowe [00:52:11] Yeah. I now have kind of a little personal philosophy of if I see somebody has been canceled or kicked off something, I immediately go read their source material. What, what is it that this person literally put out now? What are people saying about him? And I would say, nine times outta 10, maybe 99 times out of a hundred, this is usually somebody saying something interesting. Every once in a while you'll find somebody, they're like, I don't, you know, I don't, I would never advocate for you to be canceled, but I'm not gonna go outta my way to to find you. But, you know, I found a guy named Jim Rutt this way. Jim Rutt is the former CEO of Network Solutions. And his Facebook group had been confused for being some sort of Q Anon group on Facebook, and he'd been banned, boom. And so luckily I have this heuristic of, if I find out somebody's been banned, I'm gonna go read about them. And you discover all these interesting people. So in one respect, cancel culture is a hell of a sorting algorithm because it tells you this, this person did something enough to make the, the eye of Soran point at them. And so you might want to go look them up.

Ted Dabrowski [00:53:16] Sure. And, you know, and, and speaking up, speaking up helps, right? It's, it's, it allows, it emboldens other people to speak up. And I think that's where we are right now, where we've gotta speak up and, and, you know, defend, defend things that, that, that, that matter to us.

Vance Crowe [00:53:29] So we talked a little bit about my own Peter Teel paradox, where I want the state of Illinois who's not been a good steward to sell the state of Missouri Cahokia mounds. Do you have a Peter Teel paradox, something that you believe that very few other people would agree with you on? And I mean, extremely few people?

Ted Dabrowski [00:53:47] Well, you know, I might as well lean into what, what we've been talking about is, is reforming Illinois people, people think that, you know, Ted, what, what the hell are you doing? Right? I mean, why don't you just do like everybody else, just leave and, and you know, I'm, I'm a stubborn guy, I guess I do think that Illinois can be, can be reformed. I don't know what it looks like and how long it takes and how ugly it has to be. You know, the, the optimistic side of me says, oh, at some point we're gonna all just wake up and be smart and we'll we'll fix it. But, you know, that's, I, I don't expect that. I expect that we have to kind of fall down, you know, hurt ourselves sadly, and, and then get back up and be stronger. But, you know, I, I do get my motivation from, from what I saw in, in emerging markets where countries screw up all the time and, you know, the financial markets globally punish the hell out of, out of countries that, that do stupid things. It's sad, but in, in many cases, they get back up and, and in many cases they're better. At least they're better for a while. The, the question is, can we, can we put better institutions and, you know, if, if Illinois falls and it will, can we, can we create better institutions or do we, you know, just fix things for a while? But we were never a great state again, I I, I think I'm optimistic, you know, you know, think about Illinois and, and, and I I look a lot at, at, at a place like Poland, right? Illinois is in the middle of the country, much like Missouri. We've got great soil, we've got, we've got the Lake freshwater's gonna matter a lot at some point.

Ted Dabrowski [00:55:19] We've got the great, great college institutions that, that compete with any in the, in the, in the country or the world. We've got O'Hare and the infrastructure that, you know, anybody would die to have. And we've got a great history of, of grit and success. And, you know, it's a little bit like Poland and it's, you know, when you have those kind of assets, you've got a great base. And it's not like we are some weak poor, you know, we've got great, great companies here. So the, the potential is massive. I mean, there's no reason why we're not a top five state just booming on all cylinders. If, if we wanted to be, right? If you took a, a Ron DeSantis type and stuck him in Illinois, now of course, how do you get a Ron DeSantis type in the, in there, in the first place? But that's a, you know, a longer story. But, you know, this place could be amazing, amazing for people, amazing for poor, amazing for low income, amazing for immigrants, amazing for anybody. We just don't think that way right now. And, and, you know, how do we flip that switch? That's, that's the big thing. But I argue with, with, you know, reforming pensions, changing these, these collective bargaining laws, laws that give the unions all the power and, and the normal little guy, no power flip that you go a long way to having and, and then pro-growth strategies, you know, watch out rest of the country. We're, we're back, but we're far away from that moment right now. So, yeah. So, so I'm alone. I'm alone with a, with a few people.

Vance Crowe [00:56:40] Yeah, I, you know, I would say that I, I think that is actually a perfectly acceptable Peter Teel paradox because as I hear you talking, you do sound in some way like Don Kete, but at the same time, like nothing has ever been built that is truly important without having an a rational optimist standing behind there saying, Hey, you know, it may not look good, but I'm gonna keep pushing through. So if people wanted to support what you're doing, learn more about it, where should they go?

Ted Dabrowski [00:57:07] Well, so we're wire points.org. You'll find our website there and you can, you know, read about what we do. And we we're developing a lot of new data and a lot of, you know, things that we wanna do going forward. And we're also on Facebook and Twitter at wire points. And we, we'd love any support, we'd love follows. We have a daily newsletter where we aggregate news that we think you're not gonna see unless you get it from us, because the traditional media's not gonna show you some of these things. And our newsletter's a big way to start. And of course we love support because what we do is hard work and, you know, it takes a lot of money to distribute and, and create. So we'd love that.

Vance Crowe [00:57:46] Well, thank you so much Ted Dabrowski for coming on and talking so candidly about your, your Passion project.

Ted Dabrowski [00:57:54] Well, thank you Vance, for, for having me on. And you know, congrats on what you're doing.