Idaho Prop 1, the 2026 Pork Report & Who Pays the Taxes

Bob Neugebauer Welcome to the Idaho Post. It’s your host, Tea Party, Bob here once again to bring you important information on what is happening in the Great Gem State. Joining me today is our good friend and president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, Ronald Nate. And he has some interesting items to discuss that most of our politicians try to avoid. So let’s get on with the show and introduce our guest, Ron. Nate. Welcome, Ron, to the Idaho Pulse.

Ron Nate Hello, Bob. It’s great to be on the Idaho Pulse again. And, uh, lots going on in Idaho. It’s October twenty twenty six. There’s an election coming up in four weeks, four weeks from today, important midterm elections, nationally important elections in Idaho for the state House and state officers, and also a few ballot measures that are worth discussion. So lots what’s going on?

Bob Neugebauer Well, looking at your list that you sent me today, I see we have some really interesting topics to talk about. So why don’t you start us off? And, uh, boy, let’s talk about that prop one. It’s really getting interesting, is it not?

Ron Nate Yeah. Prop one Idaho finds itself as the latest battleground in the abortion fight since Roe v Wade made abortion illegal or made abortion legal pretty much all across the country. And then it was overturned with the Dobbs decision in twenty twenty two. It returned that law making authority to the states where it should have resided all along, because it’s not really a federal issue. It’s a state issue. And, um, so Idaho’s trigger law went into effect making abortion illegal in Idaho. Abortion on demand is illegal in Idaho. Idaho statutes already has some exceptions for health of the mother, medical emergency and whatnot. And so, um, despite the ad campaigns, you see to the contrary, Idaho statutes already cover those edge cases. Really, the question is on prop one. Are we going to go back to abortion on demand and allow the, the, uh, the abortion, the killing, the murder of fifteen hundred plus babies a year in Idaho? Because that’s really the question at hand. The, uh, proposition one was written poorly. It includes the word viability without actually defining it. And so is viability mean that the baby can live outside the womb with medical intervention or without it, or can only live on its own. Leaving it undecided in the language leaves it up to the courts. And you know what liberal courts will do with that? Basically, abortion on demand through nine months.

Bob Neugebauer Yeah, but let me ask you something, Ron. If you’re talking about viability, you’re already indicating that there’s life.

Ron Nate That’s right. To be viable means to to be alive and self-sustainable. To be unviable might be to be alive, but not sustainable. Um, you know, and so yeah, you’re right. They, they give away the, the argument when they talk about viability because they’re talking about whether that life can be sustained outside the womb.

Bob Neugebauer Well, is that considered murder? It’s a

Ron Nate I

Bob Neugebauer life.

Ron Nate would think so. I would think so. If you murder a pregnant woman, you can have two murder charges against you because of the baby as well. But then for some reason, when we talk about abortion, they they don’t want to call that a life anymore. So it’s inconsistent. Two other big issues I have with prop one are the the treatment of parents in this. Especially when we’re talking about young girls considering abortion, parents are not required to be notified nor consent for their daughters having an abortion. So in essence, do you want to live in a state where your fifteen year old daughter can go get an abortion and the doctor, so-called doctor or provider, whatever, does that abortion without letting you ever know? Uh, I don’t think anybody should be advocating for parents to be left out of the equation altogether. If you really care about the girls health and mental state, you’d want the parents involved.

Bob Neugebauer Well, what’s the age of consent in Idaho? To be able to do something like that.

Ron Nate Uh, there’s no age limit left. There’s no age limit in the in the abortion proposition. So it’s wide open that way, wide open, and no parental consent required. Also the the the last and big issue too, is that the law was written so poorly. It just says the. The persons who can commit abortions are licensed healthcare professionals. Doesn’t say doctor doesn’t define. Doctor doesn’t define licensed health care professional arguably could be an EMT, a dentist, a nurse, uh, who, you know,

Bob Neugebauer A plumber.

Ron Nate licensed health care professional. So

Bob Neugebauer Oh.

Ron Nate there you go. But but anyway, so you see, there’s three big issues with it, but the biggest issue I have with it is, is just getting down to the basic, are we going to live in a state that is a culture of life where we respect innocent life. We want to protect innocent life. We want to cultivate innocent, innocent life, or do we want to live in a state that’s a culture of death where for convenience, you can kill a baby that you view might, uh, might change your life in some way. And so, um, are we going to go back to abortion on demand? Are we going to go back to a state that has Planned Parenthood sprinkled throughout it and kills one hundred and fifty three babies a year or more? And, um, that that’s for babies a day. By the way, do you want to live in a state that just says, you know, for babies a day? Yeah. Go ahead, I don’t.

Bob Neugebauer Listen, they’re having a hard time figuring out how to kill somebody that was supposed to be on death row.

Ron Nate Cool. Yeah, I

Bob Neugebauer I

Ron Nate know.

Bob Neugebauer mean, what’s going on in the country right now is extremely disturbing because it just depends on what state you’re in and who’s running it as to whether you get something done or don’t get something done, whether you die or live, whether you get taken care of. You don’t get taken care of. I’m tired of listening to it. Can’t we have one rule for everybody?

Ron Nate Exactly, exactly. And you know what? Idaho can be that beacon of freedom. And I, I argue you can’t be free without that first prerequisite. Right? Right. To be alive. So if you don’t have a right to life, you don’t have a right to liberty. And so if we can’t protect life, liberty doesn’t matter, right? So, um, I’m counting on my fellow Idahoans to, to see through the lies that are being propagated on advocating for this proposition and knowing that it really is simply a, a proposition to allow the killing of innocent babies or not allow. Stop talking about edge cases. Those are already considered in Idaho. Statutes. Don’t fall for the lies.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I’ll tell you. I thought about this, uh, looked at some of the statistics. Idaho has always had one of the lowest states as far as abortion goes. In any case, at least in the lowest five. Um, but I doubt very seriously that with the religious values and the conservative people that we have here in the state, that this proposition will pass.

Ron Nate I’m betting it, won’t I?

Bob Neugebauer I’m, I’m betting the same way as you. I just don’t see it happening. Uh, I don’t think there’s a real taste in anybody’s mouth for this one.

Ron Nate Yeah. I know there’s a there’s a few independents, maybe even a few, uh, uh, bleeding heart conservatives out there that fall for some of these lies. But I think that by and large, Idaho is, uh, is a state that is God fearing, uh, Christian oriented and, uh, wants to protect innocent life and, and not adopt that culture of death. I mean, our, our laws would become Probably more liberal than California. If this proposition is passed, and I don’t think anyone in Idaho wants to become anything like California in

Bob Neugebauer No, I don’t

Ron Nate terms

Bob Neugebauer think so either.

Ron Nate of

Bob Neugebauer But what I

Ron Nate policy.

Bob Neugebauer have seen over the last, uh, I don’t know, maybe five to ten years is a very, uh, strong shift. Um, and not always, uh, a quick shift to the left, but a slowly moving shift to the left, especially by the younger people. Uh, everybody says that they aren’t doing that, but I don’t see it out there. I see, uh, a different perspective is that the left is making inroads with their continuing beating of the drum from every liberal orifice that we have in this country. And that’s what scares the daylights out of me.

Ron Nate I know, I know, the left are very active, very activist. When there’s a rally at the Capitol, the same two thousand show up. I I’ve been to them and interviewed them. It’s every time they have a rally at the Capitol. It’s the same two thousand. And they’re the the Boise liberals from the North End, the East End, and right around downtown Boise. When the conservatives have a rally, you get the the the few that have some time off during the day because conservatives, for the most part, are working. Right. And so there are times where they’re with their family or whatever they they don’t have the time. It is not their hobby. It is not their past time to go and be protesters at the Capitol. So the ones who do show up, good for them, and I’m one of them. It’s good to show that there is another side here. But also the Liberals show up to do counter protests and it’s the same ones. Same folks do that. And so it’s in terms of getting out there and protesting and spreading the message, it is not the conservative, our wheelhouse to go and stand on the Capitol steps from time to time. We do it for important issues, but that is not our pastime. We go to the polls, we raise our families, we go to work, we stay informed, and we go to the polls and vote. So when you look at at the protesters, don’t be fooled by the fact that you have the same one to two thousand protesters that just want to dress in their rainbows and their wigs and their and their nose rings and then go and and shout on the Capitol steps. They’re not representative of Idaho. They’re representative of a small counterculture, mostly in Boise.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I wish you could change the rest of the states to feel the same way, but I don’t see that happening.

Ron Nate I know, but you know what? We keep working. We are we we keep pushing that rock up the hill and. But you know what? We’re pushing a lot of rocks up the hill and, and in a few cases, we get that rock to the top of the hill and push it over the top. And so that’s why we keep working. There’s some rocks that seem intractable, but other rocks we’ve got the we’ve got the action going. So we’re staying engaged. And I, I appreciate my fellow Idahoans who seek the truth out there and want to push alongside us.

Bob Neugebauer Well, can you explain to us about all the rocks in that bag of pork that we have been looking at here lately?

Ron Nate Yeah. It’s a it’s an even year. It’s twenty twenty six. So every every other year, Idaho Freedom Foundation produces our, our report on government waste in Idaho. It’s our twenty twenty six report, also known as the Pork Report. And so this year we have forty four pages of sad examples of how government has has wasted your money, defrauded Idahoans, or abused the system for their own benefit. Forty Uh, four pages of examples amounting to billions of dollars. I think one line item is one point three billion. It’s probably all totaling over two hundred billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse that’s happening in Idaho government. Uh, some fascinating examples in there to hiring zookeepers at a tiny zoo in downtown Boise, uh, to, um, you know, waste on, on highway district’s waste on abandoned and, and, uh, and, uh, disrepair, transportation buildings, um, education initiatives to teach teachers how to teach something that they should have known how to teach before they got hired to be a teacher.

Bob Neugebauer Me like reading.

Ron Nate Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m not trained to be a teacher in, in elementary school at all, but I think that knowing how to read myself and knowing what the letters say is enough to qualify me to teach phonics. But no, Idaho thinks it needs to spend seventy two million dollars to teach our teachers how to teach reading.

Bob Neugebauer Yeah, but isn’t that Stereophonics that they’re teaching now?

Ron Nate I don’t even know what that means, but.

Bob Neugebauer That’s more money because it’s twice as much.

Ron Nate It sure is. But anyway, our pork report is fascinating. It’s, uh, you look at it and you go, wow, I can’t believe some of these things. Other ones, you shake your head. Um, but it is a constant reminder that the dollars that you’re sending to Boise and to your local governments are not always well stewarded that we have to have a watchdog out there. Idaho Freedom Foundation is your watchdog. We’re great at state legislative accountability. Governor, accountability. We’re moving into local government accountability. And the Pork report is just one example of that.

Bob Neugebauer Well, one of my pet peeves and I have to ask you about this is the illegals and how much are we spending on them this year? Do you have any idea?

Ron Nate I don’t know, because it is a patchwork of of spending. And I think a large chunk of it is federal spending for refugee or immigrant programs or grants through NGOs that fund this, you know, quality learning centers, the, the, you know, the daycare centers that, that don’t teach any kids but are getting the money and the money’s largely going to illegal immigrants that are here. And so there’s, there’s lots of funneling schemes out there that even in Idaho are bringing immigrants to Idaho, funding their housing and their startup. And, uh, um, it is hard to track. It’s hard to figure out. And so yeah, you’re right, it waste, fraud and abuse right there.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I’m looking forward to seeing that report, so please don’t forget me.

Ron Nate Oh, we won’t. And I’ll just tell your listeners, Idaho freedom dot org. I think tomorrow we will post the link for you to order a printed copy of the Pork Report or to see it online. But it’s very close. We’re just doing the last touch ups today. So excited to get this pork report out. It’s the best one we’ve done yet. And sadly the content for this grows. It’s not shrinking. So we we have to keep doing this every two years.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I’m looking forward to your special deal down there on the shredder on Thursday at, uh, uh, your new,

Ron Nate Oh right.

Bob Neugebauer uh,

Ron Nate I forgot

Bob Neugebauer offices.

Ron Nate to put that on my list. Today

Bob Neugebauer Yeah.

Ron Nate is October sixth. And on October eighth. You know, if we’re cleaning out some of our storage, some of our old documents and stuff and, uh, is, is, is, is the target of many liberal attacks. So we can’t just throw our old documents in the trash and expect them to to go unnoticed. Somebody will try and pull them out. So we shred, we shred. And so since we were doing a shredding party for ourselves, we said, hey, you know what? If there’s other folks out there that want to come and shred, come and come and do it. Come and dump your stuff in the shredder alongside ours, and we’ll just have a shredding party. Eleven to one p m Thursday, eight oh two West Bannock Street, downtown Boise. That’s that’s where we’re located. And bring your boxes, shred them up. You can watch them go into the shredder. You don’t have to. You don’t have to worry that they’re, they’re going to end up being blowing in the wind. Uh, yeah. Stay and watch them get shredded and, and enjoy a little conversation and talk a little policy and, and, uh, have a great time.

Bob Neugebauer Now, can I bring down plastic boxes or do they have to be cardboard boxes?

Ron Nate Oh, crap, I don’t know. Uh, I think we’ll be shredding the documents. I’m not sure if it shreds the the boxes either. I’m not sure. Bring bring them either way. And we’ll just we’ll just shred what we can shred and send you back with the rest.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I tell you, I’m loading up my truck this afternoon with ten boxes, so I’ll be there with bells on.

Ron Nate Oh, we can’t wait. This will be great. Be good to see you, Bob.

Bob Neugebauer All right, let’s get on with the show. Here we have econ one hundred one you wanted to discuss.

Ron Nate Oh, yeah. It’s another episode of my econ one hundred and one. Um, we have been talking about the role of economic profits in directing resources to their highest and best use, and competitive markets are the best for that. Because when, when there is, uh, a endeavor that is profitable, people want to, you know, people want to earn profits in a competitive market setting. If you’re deciding to start or grow a business, if it’s if you see other businesses generating profit there, it attracts new competitors. And so the resources are attracted there too. And so that is the important role of the profits in a competitive market is that they are the director of resources. Now, today, I want to shift the conversation just a little bit to long run perspectives on this. If we recognize the important role of profits, directing resources to what people demand the most, it is a great thing that if if we want, you know, if if suddenly skateboards are a big fat again and all the kids want skateboards, then the skateboard industry gets more profitable as kids are trying to buy up skateboards. Um, it would be sad to see kids run out of skateboards or firms run out of skateboards, even though the kids want them because they want to go and do something besides be on their phone. But the wonderful thing about markets is the profits that are generated from producing skateboards attract other producers, or attract other resources to the existing producers, so that the profits respond to the demand and get the get the things produced that people want. Now, in the long run, here is the beauty of. Of competition is that if there is a profitable endeavor and maybe skateboards is a little too ethereal out there, let’s talk about housing, something that we can all relate to right now. We see the price of housing is going up dramatically, going through the roof, and a lot of part a lot of that is permitting and government regulations, but a lot of it is the demand for housing in Idaho is high. The demand for housing in California is lower. And so they are having people exit California. We’re having people enter Idaho. So our price of housing is going up relative to California. Well, you know what that does that you know, that that makes housing more profitable in Idaho, which attracts more contractors, more builders come to Idaho. If the prices are higher and if it’s a competitive market with zero barriers to entry. The beautiful thing about competitive markets is that prevents the price from going up so dramatically that it becomes an, uh, what should I say? There’s a term we have in economics called economic rent, which is getting revenues over and above the basic costs of your resources. In other words, you’re getting an economic rent because you’re in a scarcity market, not just a producing for what people need market. And so economic rents are exactly those things that attract new producers. And so in the long run, economic rents are competed down to zero. And so the profitability of a of a fully functioning housing market would, would be about the same as the next best alternative for a contractor building something else or being in another industry. Here’s the problem, though. When government policy gets in the way of new firms entering a market that tends to drive up the cost or the prices in that market and create these economic rents that people start to despise about markets. I hear people talk about, oh, the price of gas is super high. You know, who’s benefiting? Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum, whatever those

Bob Neugebauer Chevron.

Ron Nate yeah. Those are the ones who are profiting. And they think they’re unfair profits because this price doesn’t reflect competition. They’re just milking the American consumer. Well, I would say in a competitive market, you can’t overprice it because other competitors come in and will underprice you. The price has to always be competed down to the subsistence level of production in a truly competitive market. But I think Americans are right in some ways that the petroleum market is not truly competitive. It is hard to enter. Government makes it hard to enter. They have limited drilling permits, limited production permits, the regulations on transportation, the regulations on everything associated with that market creates barriers to entry so that we’re left with three or four or half a dozen big producers and no opportunity for competition entrants to compete down those profits.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I would agree with you that in today’s world, when we’re dealing with world markets, we’re not dealing with the markets here in the United States. And

Ron Nate Right?

Bob Neugebauer the the fact that we have so few refiners for all of the oil that we are now trying to accommodate, uh, to bring prices down, it’s almost impossible. In

Ron Nate Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer fact, you, you, you are seeing aberrations in the price. Uh, not so much because of supply, but more because of the distilling of these

Ron Nate Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer oils.

Ron Nate And so I would say Americans, get your anger directed in the right place. Yes. The the oil and gas companies are profiting from this. They are enjoying these economic profits based on barriers to entry, protecting them from low cost competition. And so the anger, I mean, they’re doing what a rational economic agent would do. The anger should be directed at the governments that are getting in the way of new entrants coming in and competing down prices. And so direct your anger at those who are protecting those oil companies, even if unintentionally, through bad government policy. Let me tell you something else that is very good about open competitive markets, uh, driving what’s being produced if you have zero barriers to entry? Two cool things happen. You have what’s called productive efficiency that the price of the good is competed down to the the very subsistence level of production costs. Because if the price is too high and there is a lot of room for profit, new entrants will come into the market and compete for some of those profits. So as long as there’s profits being generated in an economic sense, new firms will come in and compete for those profits and it competes the price down to the lowest sustainable price that that market can bear. That’s good for customers. I love it when firms compete for my business by trying to continually lower the production costs and therefore lower the prices for me. That’s great. That’s how we get low cost fast foods. That’s how we get low cost gasoline when the market is most competitive. That’s how we get, uh, low cost television sets. You know, when you go to Costco. Another thing, too, is we get the right amount produced that you don’t go to the store and see empty shelves because as long as there’s profitability there, new entrants, new producers, existing producers want to produce as much as the people want, and the price will adjust to make sure that the amount that people want is satisfied by the amount produced. If there’s a shortage, price will go up. If there’s a surplus, price will go down, there’ll always be enough produced.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I’ll tell you, I, I you’re one hundred percent right in what you’re saying. But then I take a look at something like the insurance industry. Okay. That’s been around for God knows how long. Everybody

Ron Nate Mhm.

Bob Neugebauer wants insurance on something, and all of a sudden the rates continue to climb on home and auto insurance at an unbelievable rate. When

Ron Nate Mhm.

Bob Neugebauer I talked to my daughter, she’s paying almost as much for her insurance on a house. The fire and liability. She lives around the corner from a fire department.

Ron Nate Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer I live, I live in a very rural area with lots of trees around me and always a danger of forest fire, but my rates are only two hundred dollars more than hers, so there’s disparities here. Here’s a place where you would think there’d be more entries into the market, but I don’t see it happening.

Ron Nate Do you want to hear my answer? You ready for it?

Bob Neugebauer Sure.

Ron Nate If if if insurance firms are, quote unquote, bilking their customers, charging rates that are above what’s necessary, the economic answer is, you know what? New insurance firms should be entering that market and competing down those costs. Because if they are overcharging, there’s room for a firm to come in and charge a little bit less and still be profitable. And what’s stopping a firm from doing that? The only answer must be some barrier to entry, and that is that these big insurance companies have constructed it. So they are the big providers. And new firms can’t enter because they’ve manipulated laws in the public policy process to make it hard for somebody to start a new insurance company. And let me give you an example of why. Why this entry and low barriers to entry are so important. If you look back in history, the worry about the big firm has always been misplaced. If the big firm is there because they’re doing something well, great. If they’re there because they have a barrier to entry, that’s a public policy problem. If you look back, oh gosh, seventy years ago, you would say that Sears is dominating America. Nobody will ever be able to compete with Sears. It is too big. We need to divide it up. Well, you know what policy at that time did not prevent competition. And where is Sears today?

Bob Neugebauer I don’t know where they go,

Ron Nate It’s

Bob Neugebauer boys.

Ron Nate dying. It, uh, they got competed against by by Kmart. They got competed against by Fred Meyer, target, Walmart. Uh, all of these other firms have started up. And just, just a decade or two decades ago, I was hearing things like, Walmart is too big. They, they are dominating the market. They move into neighborhoods. People don’t like them. Walmart is, is so big. We need to regulate it. Well, you know what? The market was still free enough that other competitors came in, right? They had to deal with Fred Meyer and Target and they have to deal with Amazon and and other online providers. And so now it’s Walmart the big dog. No. Now everyone talks about Amazon being the big dog. Now we got to regulate Amazon. Well as long as we have open and free markets, the next best alternative comes along that people like and we’re constantly evolving. Twenty years ago, um, who was the biggest cell phone cell phone provider, say in two thousand and two? Do you

Bob Neugebauer Probably

Ron Nate remember?

Bob Neugebauer for Verizon or AT&T.

Ron Nate Yeah. I’m not talking about the provider of the cell phone services. I’m talking about the cell phone itself.

Bob Neugebauer Oh,

Ron Nate Do you

Bob Neugebauer there

Ron Nate remember the early the early

Bob Neugebauer there

Ron Nate front

Bob Neugebauer were

Ron Nate runner?

Bob Neugebauer there were three different types of cell phones in those

Ron Nate There

Bob Neugebauer days.

Ron Nate were the early one was Nokia. In

Bob Neugebauer Yes.

Ron Nate fact, if you were around in two thousand and two, two thousand and three, you’d have said Nokia is going to be the sole cell phone provider in the world because they had such a big market share. They were sponsoring the Sugar Bowl. They were sponsoring all sorts of events. It was Nokia. And, uh, and you would have said, man, somebody’s got to regulate Nokia. But you know what? The cell phone market stayed pretty much competitive. And we have all sorts of other providers out there. Now we have Samsung, we have Apple. Uh, they were hardly a blip on the map at the time. Nokia was driving things. Motorola was out there. There’s there’s other cell phone providers now. I think people might say, well, it’s dominated by two big companies. Well, as long as we keep markets free and competitive, I don’t have to worry about being ripped off by Apple or by Samsung, because if there is a profit margin there to be competed, keeping the market free and competitive means that somebody will find a way to do it better and cheaper. And, and I like trusting markets to do that better than government trying to tell us what companies should survive and shouldn’t, because government gets it wrong all the time. And I’ll give you one case in point. The Affordable Care Act. Did that make things affordable?

Bob Neugebauer Made him very unaffordable.

Ron Nate It did. It did the opposite of what it promised. I would love to go back to a system of healthcare in two thousand and eight where, yes, everything was cheaper, you had cheaper premiums, you had better deductible, you had better coverage. But I think the the complaints of the left would be, but there were so many uninsured. I would argue it is easier to insure them through charity, in a system of affordable health care than to insure them through government fiat in an unaffordable healthcare scenario that we have today.

Bob Neugebauer I think we all can pretty much agree that socialized medicine, uh, is not very socialized and it’s not very sociable. And the point is that it would cost, and the estimates are somewhere between forty and forty five trillion dollars to run a health care system that is run completely by the government.

Ron Nate Do you trust government to run any industry? I mean, I,

Bob Neugebauer I.

Ron Nate I.

Bob Neugebauer I don’t trust government to run anything. They’re not supposed to be running anything.

Ron Nate I know. Uh, I, I saw a little video once. Case in point. It, it talked about the phone industry in the eighties and 90s. And if you look in America with a competitive phone industry, you saw phones getting better. You saw cordless phones, you saw even little video phones back in the nineties and you saw, um, better ways to handle it. You know, you saw car phones invented, uh, in France. Uh, the government took over their phone industry thinking they would make it better for, for France. And so instead of having competitive phone companies, the government provided phones and, you know, the innovation they did over those twenty years, they offered the phone in six colors.

Bob Neugebauer I thought they would offer it in the shape of a croissant.

Ron Nate Possibly. But they certainly didn’t make it better. They made it different colors.

Bob Neugebauer Yeah.

Ron Nate So anyway, um, that’s my econ lesson one hundred and one for today is that if you’re worried about big companies being too big and, and prices being too high, don’t blame the big companies. They’re being rational. Economic actors blame the government for providing these barriers to entry, and blame them for kowtowing to the big companies who always want barriers to entry. And so, uh, it’s when government is irrational that you get these bad outcomes. Economic actors will always try and maximize profits. And in a competitive market, that’s good for consumers in an uncompetitive market, it’s bad for consumers, but good for the fat cats in government.

Bob Neugebauer I’ve got one more question to answer you here that is about your little tease on Lava Hot Springs. What is that all about?

Ron Nate Oh, next week we will have a series of articles on what’s going on in Lava Hot Springs. Our, uh, a local government accountability reporter, Aaron Van Natta has been tracking a development, a sewer expansion and development in Lava Hot Springs and and how that went down. Some potential nepotism and waste fraud and abuse going on with that. She’s interviewed some of the council members, and they give her comments and shows she’s ready to print them. And then they call her up and say, oh no, I didn’t mean that. I want to change my quotes. And it’s always a tell when they want to call up and change their their quotes. She went down there and Brad Little was doing capital for a day declaring Lava Hot Springs, the capital of Idaho for that day. And so they had the state officers there. And it was interesting. They picked lava hot springs because Lava Hot Springs has been out of compliance with transparency for its reporting to the state for years, yet they were picked as capital for the day. The governor had a hard time fielding a question about why you pick lava hot springs when they have compliance issues, but we have a series of like five articles next week. You’ll want to you want to get, uh, get online and check us out for, um, you know, the story of a small town. And by the way, Lava Hot springs is not unique. We’ve cataloged events going on in Bannock County in Nampa, in one’s coming up in Donnelly, in salmon, Idaho. Uh, small towns have have particular waste, fraud and abuse problems too.

Bob Neugebauer Well, you see, the point is, is that when the governor goes to a place like Lava Hot Springs,

Ron Nate Mhm.

Bob Neugebauer they’re bringing all of that garbage with them that they have at the Capitol.

Ron Nate Yeah. But, you know, the the mayor and the city council get a get a rub elbows with the with the big wigs from Boise. And so they feel all important for a day. And, uh, I don’t know,

Bob Neugebauer See?

Ron Nate I don’t

Bob Neugebauer See,

Ron Nate know.

Bob Neugebauer I think they’re they’re just rubbing a couple of quarters between their fingers saying, where can we get some more money from these taxpayers?

Ron Nate Well, uh. Anyway. Yeah. Where can they get more money? I don’t know. I think that, you know, there’s a view there that government is, is always efficient and, and perfect, but I, I don’t see it. And so when I talk about tax cuts and like wanting to repeal the property tax, um, I’m not looking to replace those tax dollars with something else. I’m looking with, with, with some other tax dollars or a higher fee or higher taxes elsewhere. I’m looking at ridding us of waste, fraud and abuse and therefore returning the the change to the Idaho taxpayer in the form of no property tax. That would be awesome.

Bob Neugebauer Can I ask you one question before we close out?

Ron Nate Sure.

Bob Neugebauer Um, micron. Okay. They’re building this new fab. It’s going to cost Fifteen billion.

Ron Nate MM.

Bob Neugebauer However, they don’t have to pay any sales tax on any things they’re buying to build this building. Nor do they have to pay the full tax on the fifteen billion when it’s built. They only have to pay a tax on four hundred million of the project. So who’s going to get caught with all that extra cost. Because they’re not going to bear the tax burden. It has to be placed on the people.

Ron Nate Yeah. Um, like I was mentioning earlier, I am a fan of free markets that, uh, markets, uh, should be allowed to operate freely. And to the extent that we have government picking winners and losers by offering tax breaks or offering tax increases for some industries it doesn’t like. Um, then, uh, I, I think it distorts the, the will of the free market. And so, you know, growth I guess should pay for growth. But we we shouldn’t give certain tax breaks to certain big wigs. You know, I liked what DeSantis did in Florida and said, you know, Disney’s been getting all these breaks. Uh, they should be treated just like any other business. But that said, if if we didn’t offer special tax breaks to the big wigs, we could offer lower taxes to everyone overall. And I would like to see us in a, in an environment where we’re lowering taxes, getting closer to zero, rather than raising taxes on everyone because we’re offering tax breaks to just a few.

Bob Neugebauer Well with that kind of policy, I don’t see why everybody in Idaho doesn’t join the Idaho Freedom Foundation.

Ron Nate Idaho freedom dot org. Come and join us. Uh, pick up our pork report. Uh, I guarantee it on Thursday, but probably sometime tomorrow. We’ll have it posted.

Bob Neugebauer Well, Thursday I’ll be seeing you with my ten cartons of paper.

Ron Nate Shred those documents. And by the way, I should say, yeah, bring your documents, come and visit us and and shred us. Uh, government wanting to shred government documents. Not welcome.

Bob Neugebauer Can I ask you how the parking is down there? Is it tough to get parking?

Ron Nate Uh, there’s parking on the street. Mayor McLean here has been turning lanes of traffic into parking spots and make some revenue

Bob Neugebauer Oh.

Ron Nate generators for the city, but there’s there’s some on street parking available. Uh, a couple blocks away. There’s some streets with with free on street parking, like on Washington. So.

Bob Neugebauer Then I should bring my hand truck with me. Right.

Ron Nate That’s right. Well, just come and drop off the boxes, then go park and then we’ll, uh, take care of that shredding.

Bob Neugebauer I got you. I will see you there, my friend. Thank you so much for your time. Again. We do appreciate having you on the Idaho Pulse.

Ron Nate Thank you. Bob, I appreciate you and your team. Have a great day.

Bob Neugebauer Take care, my friend.

Ron Nate You too.