Idaho Prop 1, Grocery Tax Repeal & $2 Billion in Pork

Bob Neugebauer Welcome to the Idaho Post. This is your favorite person. Tea party Bob, bringing you quality information about what is happening in the great state of Idaho today. We will once again be joined by our good friend Ron Nate, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, who just returned from a journey to Spain. I assure you, he was not bullfighting. Good morning, Ron, and welcome back to the Idaho Post. We missed you last week, but I understand you just returned from a great trip to Spain, and we are waiting with bated breath to hear what you have to say about what your little trip was like over there.

Ron Nate Oh, yeah. Um, my wife and I were celebrating our thirty fifth wedding anniversary and her birthday at the same time. That’s right. We got married on her birthday thirty five years ago. That’s a pro tip for those young couples out there thinking about getting married. Choose your wife’s birthday. One date to remember. And if you. It’s a triple bonus if you can find a girl who was born on Valentine’s Day. Even better. But, uh, thirty five years. Uh, my wife, Maria and I, we went and had a great time in Madrid, Spain and visited some little cities like Toledo and Segovia. But, uh, you know, as an economist and policy guy, I’m always observing the state of the nation to in what’s going on in their policy and politics. And it was enlightening. It was enlightening. You want to hear what it’s like, uh, compared to the US?

Bob Neugebauer Only if you’re not going to throw us the ball. You didn’t get to a bullfight, did you?

Ron Nate Oh, we missed the bullfights by a week. Right.

Bob Neugebauer Okay.

Ron Nate But, uh, anyway, I would have gone, uh, what’s, what was fascinating. Um, first of all, Madrid is not blowing up like Paris and other European countries right now. So I guess we picked we got lucky and picked the right one and the European Riot City lottery. Um and so, um, but there’s, it’s still not void of discontent in Madrid. There was one of the classic historic plazas. There, um, was a shanty town, tent city built up there that’s going to last for weeks through election day and basically talking about social policy. Things aren’t affordable. Housing is too expensive, not enough jobs, not enough pay for jobs, all those social ills that you hear about while we were there, public school teachers were out protesting, uh, you know, taking a day or two off of school and going out and protesting about their low pay. And it’s true. I mean, these same economic concerns exist in the United States. But when you have a history of being a, I wouldn’t say socialist, but socialist leaning country that the government has control of such a large segment of the economy. Then really the only people to complain to is the government. When the government’s responsible, the government gets the flak and the government is typically the least responsive, because if you want government to do something, if you want them to take care of the housing problem or the jobs problem or whatever. Where does government get the resources for that? Government doesn’t create wealth. Government only draws wealth from those who are creating wealth. And

Bob Neugebauer Oh.

Ron Nate in a largely socialist economy, there’s not many wealth producers.

Bob Neugebauer But that’s not what the Democrats are saying.

Ron Nate Yeah. Where do they say the wealth comes from?

Bob Neugebauer Well, they think wealth comes from taxing everybody. And therefore the government is the one who takes care of everybody.

Ron Nate Yeah. But if if the government takes such a large segment of the economy that there’s fewer wealth producers out there. Eventually you’re going to run out of other people’s money. And that’s what we find out happened in Greece back, you know, a few years ago. Spain. Now Paris is blowing up for other economic issues. But that this is the conundrum of the leftists is that you want government to do everything. But the more government does, the less resources are produced, the less goods and services, the less wealth is produced to be redistributed. And so redistributing less is worse than no redistribution and massive wealth left for people to be charitable with rather than taken from.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I think the unfortunate part is that both Spain, Germany and France, of course, England have been under the gun for quite some time, especially from an economic standpoint, but even more so from the fact that they all are having a very difficult time borrowing money. And you can’t run a government without money.

Ron Nate Oh was it the US? Well, we’re no better on those grounds, right. I mean

Bob Neugebauer I

Ron Nate my

Bob Neugebauer agree.

Ron Nate my my trip to Spain was it’s a cautionary tale of what happens when you cross that Rubicon of being a largely capitalist economy to being a largely planned economy. And once you become a largely planned economy, it’s hard to go back. It’s hard to go back without bloodshed, because so many people become dependent on the redistribution economy and demanding of those who are feeding into it versus those who are taking away from it. And it is, uh, United States is headed that way. We ought to look to Europe and say, you know what? This is our future. When you’re upset with something, who do you want to complain to? You plane, you complain to government. The bureaucracies don’t care. The politicians don’t care.

Bob Neugebauer Well, let me ask you a very quick question. What do you think uh, of the fact that we see all of these countries, including the United States, not only very high with very high debt, but with all of the turmoil that’s currently going on and it’s moved towards socialism and communism. Do you think this is pretty much a conspiracy that has been set in motion maybe a couple of years ago?

Ron Nate Well, I don’t know. I, I hesitate to go there because conspiracy gives them too much credit that, uh, you know, this is so bad that I, I don’t think somebody could have planned how bad this could be, you know, and so, you know, it, it almost gives them too much expertise in destroying things that, uh, I think that, that they destroy things, uh, inadvertently. Um, I was going to say in their attempts to do good, but they’re not all that virtuous. Some, some just want to grow the system even though it hurts people.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I don’t, I haven’t seen what I would call a virtuous president since Ronald Reagan. And the last one we have right now, which is Trump, who is actually trying to turn things around economically and otherwise, uh, trying to bring the nation back to what it used to be. But I see so much resistance that it just must be devastating to him to see what’s happening. And, you know,

Ron Nate Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer it’s like turning the wheel on a ship, but the rudder don’t move.

Ron Nate Yeah. Back to Spain. Their president, uh, when he was running for office, promised something like two hundred and sixty five thousand new housing units. Because what’s going on is it’s hard to run apartments because when you run an apartment, somebody doesn’t pay you almost. It’s almost impossible to evict them. So fewer or fewer people pay. So apartment owners, once they do get, um, a vacancy, they turn them into Airbnbs. And then people are complaining that it’s all Airbnbs. Now there’s no apartments and rents are so high and they can’t find apartments. So this president promised two hundred and sixty five thousand new housing units. He’s only delivered on less than forty thousand of that. And so people are upset and furious. Well, how is he supposed to create housing units out of thin air from them, making them pay more in taxes? I see there’s there’s no solution to how this works without drawing more from the people you want lower rents? Well, we’re going to raise your taxes to build more units so you can get lower rents, but you’ll have higher taxes. It’s a no win situation. Government does not create wealth. Government is a parasite on wealth creation.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I think we’ve seen a lot of that right here in our own little Idaho

Ron Nate Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer where

Ron Nate It’s.

Bob Neugebauer our, our, our legislators just keep spending and spending until we’re going all going to be broke.

Ron Nate That’s why our Idaho Freedom Foundation exists, is that we don’t want to become Spain. Certainly we don’t want to become Colorado. We don’t want to be California in a lot of ways. We don’t want to be Oregon, Washington or Utah. They, um, people think that Idaho is the last oasis of freedom. And in some ways it is, but it is always under threat, even in our eighty five percent, uh, so-called Republican legislature. I am astounded at the amount of liberal thinking that comes from them, and the amount of voting on budgets, the amount of voting on leftist things, on government control that comes out of Idaho legislature. We are the only ones holding folks accountable. I see. Other think tanks just applauding legislators who have voted to take away freedoms and wealth from the society. We, um, want want to champion those who have the principles of limited government people keeping their own wealth, producing their own wealth, and having the incentives to do so.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I tell you, I give you accolades for all the work that you’re doing. But unfortunately, I look at the fact that we have not only the ag industry, but big corporations that are out there and they are going totally against you.

Ron Nate Oh, absolutely. And it’s the same as it ever was. If you hear people criticizing Idaho Freedom Foundation for being too extreme, or even the L word being libertarian, uh, we haven’t changed. We’ve been the same. Uh, and it’s always been. Thus the establishment calls the freedom folks extreme or libertarian or radical. And, uh, so as you see, a legislator wants to tag us with one of those derogatory labels that tells you more about the legislator than about if, because if we use our same metrics of freedom, we use them consistently and unapologetically. And we are the, we are the, the beacon of freedom here. We’re going to tell you how it is so that you know what your legislators are doing and whether or not you should vote them back into office or find someone better.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I’m still very disappointed in the fact we lost five of our most conservative legislators in the last election. Um, and I’m even more worried about what’s going on currently with the, the development of this huge micron project, uh, down in Boise where they’re not going to be paying a lot of the taxes that they are actually responsible for.

Ron Nate Oh, I’m all in favor of huge business projects. Build a new micron. Heck, build a data center out in the middle of nowhere, but don’t expect tax breaks for it. And, uh, by doing what you’re doing, you’re adding to the economy. We shouldn’t have to pay you to do that. You shouldn’t have to demand certain, um, gifts from the government to do that, in other words, from the people. But I’m, I’m all for free enterprise. Let’s just make sure we keep it free. And if Idaho is that place that offers free enterprise, those other states that want to offer tax cuts in certain subsidies and whatever, and impoverish themselves to attract big business. It’s a short term gain for a long term loss. We will just say, you know what? What we can promise you is this. Come to Idaho. You won’t be overtaxed because we’ll keep all taxes low, and you’ll have the freedom to do what you want without having to ask permission at every turn. And that’s an attractive business proposition.

Bob Neugebauer Well. I wish you well in getting that accomplished, because what I see happening right now with this new four hundred million dollar cap on any project that’s over a billion dollars, as a serious misuse of the authority of our legislators to benefit large corporations like micron.

Ron Nate Yeah, I think it’s shortsighted, misguided. And, uh, we can do better. We can do better. Hey, did you know that, uh, speaking of government waste, fraud and abuse, malfeasance, corruption, whatever bad word you want to put in there, our twenty twenty six Pork report is out. You can go to our website, Idaho freedom dot org. You can click on the Pork Report. You can order a hard copy of it or see the PDF of it right there. It’s awesome.

Bob Neugebauer I’ve been thumbing through and I was curious as to. You had one section in there about the cost of immigration. Um, but it seems to be broken down more, uh, by the legislature into separate entities so that they don’t have to discuss it in one fell swoop.

Ron Nate Oh that’s right. And so this is the thing the government does is, uh, you know, you, you might have seven different agencies doing, uh, jobs programs. I think, uh, at the federal level, I think they counted like twenty six different agencies doing jobs creation programs, which is just hilarious that there’s no coordination and no, uh, consolidation there. And so you’re right, when we talk about immigration, the cost of immigration, and the waste, fraud and abuse that of taxpayer dollars that are directed toward it. It doesn’t come from just one source. And by the way, our pork report. Uh, we do our best to uncover everything we can, but even we recognize that we’re probably just scratching the surface on what’s really going on. We identified over two billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in Idaho. Keep in mind that our overall state budget federal, state and local, uh, fees fourteen billion overall. So if we’ve identified two billion, that’s, that’s, you know, uh, one seventh of it, fourteen percent.

Bob Neugebauer A quick question for you. Uh, we keep talking about the fact that there’s a continuous forwarding of all the costs that we have every year. Is that included in the fourteen billion or is that an addition? Because we’re talking about four billion there.

Ron Nate Yeah. We try and keep things on an annual basis. And so we’ll point out that the Rural Health Transformation Fund, even though it’s one hundred and ninety seven million dollars this first year, they plan to do that again for four more years. So it’s approaching a billion dollars for one program. And so we try and be as clear as we can report annual numbers, but also report the overall costs over time. And so in annual terms, we’ve identified two billion dollars this year.

Bob Neugebauer So actually our budget is a lot bigger than what they’re talking about, what they’re projecting or telling us.

Ron Nate Absolutely. And as I pointed out before, if we could get this waste, fraud and abuse handled and also the growth in government handled, we could abolish property taxes within six or seven years. And that’s without that is without raising another tax.

Bob Neugebauer You know, there’s a good chance I might still be alive, so let’s get that done.

Ron Nate Uh, don’t hold your breath, old man. Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer Yes.

Ron Nate Because it’s

Bob Neugebauer Thank you.

Ron Nate probably not going to happen. Um, the, The other thing we have going on Idaho Freedom this week is we’ve released our series of lava hot springs and what’s been going on there. And I don’t know if you’ve been tracking it, but go to our website. We have four of five stories already posted. There’s another one to come, but we’re verifying some facts. We want to make sure we get it all right, but we have, uh, lava hot springs, you know, the comptroller’s office, uh, really letting them get away with noncompliance over the years, letting deadlines pass, uh, backpedaling on, on, uh, what they’re doing with development policy and the nepotism and, and the development shenanigans going on there over a sewer project. And also, uh, governor little choosing lava hot springs non-compliant for years to be the capital for a day. I don’t know how they make these choices, but why lava hot springs should be their their shining city on a hill for a day.

Bob Neugebauer Well, for the same reason that he continues to tell us about how cheap groceries are here in Idaho.

Ron Nate Yeah. And so yeah. Hallelujah. How how cheap are our groceries here in Idaho? I, I don’t know, I guess six dollars a gallon groceries, eggs, you know, milk all through the roof. I don’t know, people are feeling it.

Bob Neugebauer I often wonder whether they’re paying the chickens for their eggs.

Ron Nate I don’t, I don’t even know what to say to that. Good one.

Bob Neugebauer Yeah, well, you just you just have to laugh about some of the things that are going on in this state, because

Ron Nate You do,

Bob Neugebauer it doesn’t make any sense.

Ron Nate you do. Um, also another topic I want to talk about is proposition one. This is the proposition to make abortion on demand legal in Idaho. Again, going back to fifteen hundred babies a year being sacrificed on the altar of liberalism. If prop one passes, don’t believe the lies being told. Proposition one will allow abortion without parental notification or consent. Will allow abortions to be done by, quote unquote, healthcare professionals. And that doesn’t limit it to doctors, dentists, EMTs all fit that category. Um also removes any limitations on the timing of it by obscuring the definition of viability. And, uh, I, I don’t trust our liberal courts. They could determine viability doesn’t exist until the baby can survive on its own without any interventions. And that’s basically up through the ninth month of allowing abortions. It’s an extreme measure. Doesn’t belong in Idaho. But, uh, even worse than that is this is an initiative. And this is what I want to talk about with this. Initiatives are just bad policy. We have yeah. Go ahead.

Bob Neugebauer You know, actually, we’ve been through them before. Um, and for my own sake and for the sake of Idaho, I’m praying that this one doesn’t go through. But I do believe that you have enough people in Idaho who are just not going to stand for this type of a movement.

Ron Nate Yeah. I, I would like Idaho to send a message and go, you know what? Uh, sacrificing babies for the liberal agenda just doesn’t work in Idaho. Take your dollars and go elsewhere. Did you know by the end of this? Right now, we’re at about nine point seven million dollars that flooded into Idaho on both sides of this battle. Those who are fighting for prop one to pass, in other words, for abortion in Idaho, liberals like Michael Bloomberg and Gwyneth Steinem, whatever her name is, and some national pack out of Washington, D.C., flooding money into Idaho to legalize abortion in Idaho, because they know that if they can get Idaho to fall, pretty much they can get any state to fall. So there are millions of dollars flooding in. On the other side, we have churches sending millions of dollars into Idaho to defend it. Is this so? In the end, whatever the result of this vote is, do you really think it’s the Idaho vote, or is it the result of a giant abortion war having a proxy battle on the fields of Idaho? Is it really the will of Idaho that’s going to come to the fore? Or is it the millions of dollars at work here? Because the deception and the lies are real. We got Medicaid expansion this way. It’s not good policy. It’s not good for Idaho. But Idahoans were lied to and most Idahoans voted for it.

Bob Neugebauer Well, when you think about it, a nine million dollars is not yet the end of the, uh, donations that have been put into this. But when you, you sit down and think about the last three elections, that’s more money that has been spent in the last three gubernatorial elections.

Ron Nate It’s crazy money. It’s crazy money. And, and, uh, and the fact that it’s coming from outside tells you that our initiative process is broken. And I think that if our threshold was like Florida and it took sixty percent to get an initiative to pass or even better, sixty seven percent just like school bonds or something like that, then, uh, these battles would be fought as hard in a state like Idaho because it’s hopeless to begin with. You just look at the numbers. Idaho is reflective of a conservative state that doesn’t want abortion. But if they can get the threshold at fifty percent, they’re thinking a few million dollars can move enough votes to win a simple majority. And the initiative process is bad policy because direct democracy should not determine the life of anyone.

Bob Neugebauer Well, you know, we are having that transition take place in this state, and I’ve been watching it for the last thirty three years that I’ve been here. But when it really strikes home is when I drive around my own development, which I presume to be pretty much conservative. And I see signs that they’re supporting prop one. That bothers me to no end. And when I see signs supporting somebody like Achilles as a supposed independent, this is

Ron Nate Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer the push that’s being made. And if we don’t stop it now, it will continue.

Ron Nate It’s really disturbing to see doctors in favor of this, because first of all, don’t be fooled by the rhetoric out there. Idaho law already allows for the exceptions of medical necessity, for dire circumstances, for the mother that’s already there. The video ads I’ve seen in favor of prop one simply lying to Idaho about that. But any doctors who are promoting proposition one. Um, they’re violating their, their Hippocratic oath first do no harm. And when a pregnant woman comes into a center wanting an abortion, there’s two patients that enter and a doctor that runs a procedure and allows only one patient to leave that place alive, uh, has done harm, and they should know better. Remember during Covid, doctors who were saying, you know what? Ivermectin works. Uh, we don’t need to have the untested jab or whatever. The leftists wanted to come after those doctors licenses. They wanted to put them out of business because they were promoting something dangerous. Well, let’s put all the abortionist doctors out of business. Anyone who’s promoting proposition one should not have a medical license because they are first doing harm. They’re violating their oath.

Bob Neugebauer Well, indeed, I see the changes that are taking place here little by little. And, uh, if we don’t stop it. And I do think that if we put down this prop one, that they may go away for a time, but don’t think they’re going to give up. I watched what they did in Denver and in Colorado. Uh, and it was, you know, purposefully they would give up for a year or two and they’d come back with the full force again. And as they had more and more people move in because of the marijuana laws they released, they could they could get the people to move in. And as the population changed, they got what they wanted a liberal state.

Ron Nate That’s right. And let me tell you this. I’ve had some people ask questions about H.j.r. Four which is also on your ballot now. H.j.r four is simply a change in the Constitution about how drug laws are made. And it says that the only entity that can make, uh, these schedule one drugs, these psycho, tropic, psycho, whatever drugs,

Bob Neugebauer Psychotropic.

Ron Nate um, legal. Uh, yeah, it would be the legislature. And what that’s really doing. If you think about this, this isn’t really about the drugs necessarily. It’s about taking a whole section of law out of the initiative process, because I think a lot of Idahoans are frustrated by the amount of money flowing in on proposition one, trying to decide abortion in a proxy war with all these outside dollars coming in. And what Hjr four does is says, you know what? We don’t want to have that on legalization of of marijuana. And could you imagine that if if somebody puts we’re going to have a proposition to legalize marijuana on the ballot, the amount of dollars flowing in from other states to influence Idahoans, to lie to them about what it does or what it doesn’t do and try to win, uh, either legalization or prohibition on a vote of the people. But it’s not really the people. It’s based on all these millions of dollars. All Hjr four does to say we don’t want those proxy battles on the drug issue. We don’t want Reclaim Idaho every two years to have legalizing marijuana on the ballot. The legislature is there for a reason. Representative government. It’s the most efficient and protected way to make those decisions.

Bob Neugebauer Well, well, I agree with you in principle. I worry about the legislature because as we look at our legislature and we see how liberal they have become, they’re all Republicans. Yet you had fourteen bills that couldn’t pass on immigration.

Ron Nate Yeah. And you know what? And it’s and it’s not because the legislature voted against those bills. It’s because a chairman, a few chairmen, put those bills in drawers, would not let the bills get voted on. We had immigration bills passed, the House of Representatives committee and the floor of the House of Representatives, but end up in Senator Jim Guthrie’s drawer.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I’d like to know why. There was a certain, uh, leader of the house who was upset because there evidently was on Facebook the fact that several of our legislators got a trip to the Governor’s Cup in Coeur d’Alene to play golf, and it was at the hospital’s expense. Who happens to be a non-profit hospital?

Ron Nate They’re a nonprofit in the strict sense of profits, but they certainly take a lot of public money and, uh, and are rolling in the dough, so to speak. You see, Saint Luke’s and Saint Alphonsus and some of these big hospitals and the medical insurance companies rolling in the money from all the Covid money and state money that’s flowed into them. And sure, they’re going to spend a lot of lobby money to go and influence legislators or the Governor’s Cup in the name of scholarships. But what they’re really doing is going there and, uh, rubbing elbows and, And glad handing the legislators for three or four days of a Governor’s Cup. Uh, the governor has done this, you know, for years, decades, the Governor’s Cup, all under the auspices of creating scholarship money. But what it really is, it’s a big, uh, lobby palooza with legislators and lobbyists to go and and what what does that want, burning man? It’s burning dollars out there with legislators and lobbyists for a few days, um, to, uh, to just swim in the socialist mindset.

Bob Neugebauer I would have to ask you why we would have to have a Governor’s Cup and lobbyists, when there’s seven hundred of them dealing with only one hundred and five legislators during the entire legislative year.

Ron Nate I know, I know, I served in the House of Representatives for three terms, six legislative sessions. I’m proud to say I didn’t, uh, didn’t go to one Governor’s Cup.

Bob Neugebauer I can tell that you’ve kept your svelte figure. You haven’t been eating with those lobbyists.

Ron Nate That’s true. Yeah. I, I, I’m a starving politician. And that tells you something. I, it got to the point where, you know, I, I would see these lobbyists come into the cubicle section, the office section of the Capitol all the time. They’d go and visit, uh, colleagues, a lot of Democrats, a lot of squishy colleagues. But, uh, after a few sessions there, I didn’t have lobbyists in my office hardly at all. They, they did not want to visit with me. They already knew, um, that I’m immovable on a lot of these principles. And so you’re right, there’s fat cat politicians and there’s, there’s others who, uh, just would rather work for the people, I think.

Bob Neugebauer What happens when an irresistible force hits an immovable object?

Ron Nate There’s a joke in there and I’m not going to touch it. You want me to get in trouble? I’m not going to do it.

Bob Neugebauer Okay, okay, I’ll let you off the hook. I’m glad you got back here from Spain. And it’s nice to have you back on the Idaho Pulse. Um.

Ron Nate It’s great. Yeah. Thank you for having me on. Uh, eye opening to go to Europe. I encourage anyone to do that as a fact finding mission, if nothing else. But there’s a lot of great history in buildings and culture to see. Uh, the food was awesome.

Bob Neugebauer I still have yet to see most of Idaho, so I’m not ready for Europe. I need more to more, uh, trips around the area so I can find out what’s going on in my own state.

Ron Nate Yeah. That’s good, that’s good. So, uh, yeah, we’ll we’ll stay ever vigilant. The Idaho Pulse, Idaho freedom Foundation. We’re we’re doing the work.

Bob Neugebauer Thank you, my friend. I hope we have you back next week and we can have another discussion about the immovable objects.

Ron Nate Excellent. Peace out, my friends. Have a great day.

Bob Neugebauer Take care, my friend.