Brewers Stadium Upgrades and Strategy

The Mark Belling podcast is presented by You Line for quality shipping and industrial supp lies, ULINE has everything in stock, visit ULIN. com . The Mark Belling podcast is a production of iHeart Radio podcasts . I've got an example of the perfect story to open the podcast. I've explained in the past what the perfect story is. The perfect story is one that is interesting in and of itself , but it raises much larger questions well beyond the story . This is a good one . There's been versions of the following story that I've been discussing on this podcast for a couple of years in my old radio show for thirty five years . And the issue plays out across the country. Every state has different laws with regard to it But the basic argument is who controls the shoreline ? You know, it could be a lake it can be a river, it can be the ocean . Obviously, we know who controls the water . Pretty clear . And we also know who controls the nearest properties backdoor . But what about that in between . We've got a great case from Southeastern Wisconsin . It's even better because it's Shorewood. I mean Shorewood is just the absolute perfect petry dish to deal with entitled people . It's a spectacular place for stories like this to occur . And we're going to dive into it in a moment here, but it has to do with one guy who owns property on Lake Michigan and another guy who wants to walk his dog along the lakeshore . And the thing that makes the story interesting is the law is very, very unclear as to who can do what ? So we're going to poke into that. And as I say, the story is going to be interesting in and of itself in part because you can tell that both of these people are unbelievably strong willed. You wonder how something like walking your dog along the lake can become a massive court case and get the attention that it's getting. It is on page one of today's Wall Street Journal . So you need two strong will ed people to do this. On the other hand , it's not clear who's right and who's wrong. First, have you ever been offered an add on option for premium or white glove service , ULINE provides only one type of service, the best, from knowledgeable customer service available twenty four seven three sixty five to keeping every product in stock ready to ship the same day. When your business needs quality shipping supplies, reliable warehouse equipment or office furniture fast , contact ULINE and get the best service because ULIN believes service is essential , not an option . They had a trial in municipal court in Shorewood . Now , we're talking very, very close to the absolute bottom of the judicial ladder , except it's Shorewood where there's a lot of affluent people and a lot of lawyers and so the case is probably well decided with very well qualified lawyers on both sides. And the judge who ruled in the case, the municipal judge and that's below a circuit judge, municipal judges handled cases just in a municipality, traffic tickets, stuff like this. The judge said, I know I'm not the final word on this. This case screams out for maybe the Wisconsin State Supreme Court to rule on it. Now, I've heard about this case, but I've also heard there's been a lot of other cases very similar to this . Before I dive into this case, we've had debates, for example, on the interior lakes. Lake Michigan is a lake that we share a border with other states on and so on. The self contains smaller lakes in the state of Wisconsin with regard to people having access to the lake in Wisconsin . We have a law that says all navigable waterways belong to the public. You may have a house on a lake, but that doesn't mean you could stop somebody from going out there on the lake . But then the question becomes how do you get to the lake to get on it ? So there have been those kinds of cases, and how far out can you build a pier? Those two. This is Lake M ichigan . Lake Michigan essentially is an ocean in that you can't see across a giant body of water Everywhere Lake Front Property is more expensive than non lakefront property because you're on the water . Who wouldn't love to have their backyard be a beach onto a lake . We do have a law in Wisconsin, however , which does allow public access to these shorelines , but exactly what the shoreline is that the public can access or not is unclear. Let me quote from the Wall Street Journal story. A recent trial in Shorewood, Wisconsin had all the trappings of a minor legal dispute, a disgruntled neighbor, a defendant representing himself who called his own father as a character witness , a three hundred and thirteen dollars fide . But if academic and devoted dog walker Paul Florsche , he's the guy that's raising all of this , gets his way . The case will go all the way up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court and reshape the contours of shoreline access to one of the Great Lakes. It started when Florescheim started walking his two dogs past the Lake Michigan property of dentist Daniel Domogala , known locally for the time he spent in a teki style bo athouse and deck that doubles as a surveillance post . So right away you can just tell , both of these guys are willing to make federal cases out of things . From there, Domagala monitors traffic and sets off alarms to scare walkers, swimmers, and kayakers away. So here's a guy. He's got a property on the lake . And he doesn't want all the general riffraff of the world coming in and disturbing him . So he's got a monitor in place that he does everything in his bar, including blowing horns to get everybody the hell away from his property on the lake . All right , so now you can imagine what's going to happen when here comes this guy walking his dog up and down the lake sure gets to Domigal's property . Floorsheim repeatedly ignored signs outside the dentist's house that said private property beyond this sign and only water access beyond this point. Namagala kept calling the cops, and the village eventually issued a trespass citation . Rather than pay the fine and walk away , Florescheim dug in . At stake is what right people in Wisconsin have to take a shoreline stroll. Now let me interject . Every state has different laws on this . As you know, I spend four months a year in Florida . I live in a condo that's on the Atlantic Ocean and I'm familiar with that entire beach front all the way from South Beach to Palm Beach . The ocean front is where it's at . In Florida, there is a law and it's reflecting natural law because this is an ocean, not an interior lake, and that is that the public has the right to access the ocean front . I don't care how expensive your house is . The public has a right to spend time on the ocean front and the laws then deal with what the setback is. It varies from place to place because in certain places there's a greater distance from the nearby structures and so on to where the water is . So for example, in my building, which is a high rise , regular old people can hang around behind our building on the ocean front . However , my building does everything in its power to make the people who are residents of the building have it a lot easier than those people . In other in order to get any kind of service like a beach chair or an umbrella or anything, you've got to be a resident of the building. That doesn't mean that people can't haul all of their own stuff and some people do. And they do have a right to be out there and there's a certain number of feet and I don't know what it is set back away from the property itself that they can hang More interest ingly , there are communities in which there are single family houses that are on the ocean . I've talked about this community Golden Beach. It's the richest in terms of property value, average property valuation municipality in Wisconsin, excuse me in America, in America. It's a couple of miles north of where I am . It's massive single family homes, mansions on the ocean front . And those people have, as you can imagine, an incredible valuation because your backyard is the ocean . But people have a right to walk up and down the edge of where your property is on the ocean front, they have the right to access it. All right , that's the ocean and that's Florida . It's a constant battle between property owners and the people who are there over what they as I said, the public has a right to access. But what about somebody who's accessing with a boombox and carrying on and trying to hold a party essentially in someone else's backyard? Conflict all the time. Back now to the Wisconsin case At stake is what right and people in Wisconsin have to take a shoreline stroll. State law is clear that people can wade , swim or boat in state protected waters , but things get murkier out of the water . Florcheim, that's the guy who's walking the dog, who was ticketed for walking on dry sand , just barely, argues that it's absurd to say he could wade past but not put a foot higher up the shoreline . In other words , Shoreward's interpretation is he can walk his dog if he's on water. Now you might say, well, that's ridiculous . Except there's obviously a portion of the beach and sometimes it gets complicated when you have a rocky beach rather than a sand beach and Lake Michigan gives you both . But you can walk on the beach where it's still wet, the edge of where the water is . But if it's dry , that's where he's getting ticketed. And Floreschim, of course, is claiming that this is ridiculous that a couple of inches this way and somehow I'm a t respasser, continuing . Florsteim lost the village at trial, but the judge , Margot Kirchner, indicated the case was far from dead. She said she was obligated to rule for Damagala because of a prior case involving Lake Winnebago. For those of you not from Wisconsin, Lake Winnebago is the largest inland lake in the state of Wisconsin. It's a big lake, but it's self contained Wisconsin surrounding all of it. There's a case from Lakewood from nineteen twenty three . All the lefties made fun of Wisconsin's old abortion law. That's the eighteen forty eight abortion law. Well, this case dates back to one hundred three and years ago on a completely separate lake , Lakewood case. In that case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that a landowner who wanted to water his cattle had priority over the use of the shore , not pedestrians wanting to cross the beach when the water level was low . So this judge, municipal judge in Sherwood found this case and deemed that it was precedent because it was a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling from this guy who wanted to water cattle along Lake One Davago and he had a priority to do that and not people who wanted to access going along the lake just because they wanted to do it. So there was a case in that in nineteen twenty three, and the Sherwood Judge says, I got to honor this because this seems to be the precedent that's in place . Kirchner said that ruling seemed to apply in this case , but indicated a decision favoring the landowner over the public was out of touch with the practices in other states . That's the point. Other states have different laws. In most states, and as I mentioned, Florida , the water the edges of the waterway are public property . But in Wisconsin, this ruling seems to indicate back from nineteen twenty three that the only thing that's public property is the water. Got to be in it. This is why we've had debates about piers, which extend from the land in and so on . So the judge said, quote, perhaps Domel should be overruled, referring to the Winnebago County case , saying it's possible that that case was decided wrongly by the Wiscons in nineteen twenty three. Somebody ought to bring this case back forward and challenge it continuing. Homeowners claim to the beach in front of their property has long been the subject of legal fights. Here we go. In Rhode Island , a case has been ongoing for three years over a law that moved the boundary of a public beach further inland in Florida , the resident of a multimillion dollar Mediterranean compound has been fighting with Palm Beach . This is a big deal in Sherwood. Imagine Palm Beach where the property's a cheaper proper ties worth thirty million dollars on the ocean in Palm Beach , over policy enforcing public access to some of the area's beaches. And as I was mentioning, in Florida, the beaches are public property, a segment of them, at least. Back to the story. Floorsheim, sixty six years old, recently retired from his job as a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Again, I'm not criticizing him, but this guy is just a per you could not come up with a more perfect background for somebody to be legigious and make a stink . And I'm not criticizing him for it because his stink might be proper. I don't know what connection he is to the famous Florstein family and so on , but he's a professor now retired so he's a smart guy, time on his hands and strong willed . Now, obviously, the dentist who's gone so far as to actually put up a choity to be a lookout to scare everybody away. Strong willed as well . Florish, I'm sixty six years old. Really retired from his job as a professor at the University of Consum er. He has been walking on the beach for more than fifty years since his childhood spent in a nineteen sixties ranch house three doors down from Damagala . This is just perfect. There's clearly a history here . His great grandfather, oh, there it is, his great grandfather founded the famous shoe company. Florstein has two dogs . No, you just know before even getting into this, these aren't going to be fu fu dogs. You know that they're not gonna be a two year old German shepherd he calls a bit of a handful . I mean, if he's admitting he's a bit of a handful , imagine what the dentist is going to be saying about this dog . And Rosie, a six year old border collie mix . They need a lot of walking. When I know of border collies in particular, they need to be walked about as much as any dog alive because they have lots and lots of energy, herding instinct and all of that and German shepherds the same thing. These are not dogs for sedentary people and clearly the dog owner Florstein, he's a good dog owner. He knows he wants to walk his dogs and get them alive and of course why, not walk along the lake as opposed to walk on one of the other way too precious streets in overtaxed shortwood, continuing . And remember, his family grew up on the lake and he's part of the Florida family, etc, etc , etc. They need a lot of walking . I do too, he said . He said, he didn't set out to create a legal test case, but he wasn't the kind of person to just pay the fine quietly. As I said, I knew that before he said it. You can tell he's not going to be a guy that's okay, I'm wrong. I'll pay the fine. There's zero chance of this. Now remember, he's up again st the guy that set up a hut right along the thing to chase everybody away, including kayakers . I mean, you go back a hundred , if this was in Shorewood, which is like , as I say, it's just the most precious community that you can imagine. I mean, you would have settled this with a duel . But Shorewood is in Deadwood. Deadwood was a great TV show. Do you watch Deadwood, Dave ? Do you have Dave in for Jason today? Deadwood. David Melch deadwood. David Melch was a genius completely screwed up mentally . Compulsive, I think he's now mentally gone, but there was a dead they did do the Deadwood movie. Yeah they did, they did do it. Anyway , they would have satisfied this thing here and Damagal and Florstein would have pulled all guns and that would have attached to the whole thing, but this is Shorewood, so this is going to be handled after seething animosity. It's going to go to court, continuing. His trial took place in December in front of an audience of mostly silver haired locals . I know who's hacked off about that. The Shorewood Silver Haired Locals I had silver . I think they should have said gray except in Shorewood it really is silver. Gray is what nature gives you. Silver is what the hair style. Anyway , the village called Damagala as a witness. He testified he complained about passersby some remember Damegala is the dentist. Florisheim is the dog walker. Damagal is a witness. He testified he complained about passersby some fifty times last summer alone. Again , this is not surprising. Anytime somebody's going to walk along his property, Damagal is going to call the cops . And again, I'm not saying who's right or who's wrong here. I'm just saying both of these people are strong willed and area what they believe their rights are. Shworeood police said they have responded to his calls for years . Now you could say the Shorewood police probably can't stay this is what Shorewood police do. They're because they bordered Milwaukee, there is some crime in Shorewood, but there's also a whole lot of cats up the tree and this . He often sets off alarms, he said, to scare people from the lounging on it from lounging on his property, which sits about fifty feet from a public beach . They sit around like they own the place, he said . There is I don't know if this is Atwater Beach or not, but there is actual public land that goes up to the lakefront, adjacent and nearby, but then there's his land after that. And of course, the public land, which is a park, is different from the guy's backyard , continuing. They sit around like they own the place because Florestheim had no lawyer . Now in some cases, the people have no lawyer, have no lawyer. I mean, the Daryl Brooks think, you know why those people defend themselves ? They want the attention. Well , that's not wrong, but it's not the primary reason. No, no, you get a public defender. In fact, there's a guy right now in Waucasawa County Court defending himself on murder . It's because the lawyer tells him this is the best way to pursue the case and the client doesn't want to hear it . Brooks decided I'm going to claim I'm a sovereign citizen and there's no aggrieved party so therefore I can move out and kill fifty people. That's usually the reason they do it that they talk to a bunch of lawyers and the lawyers don't will not take pursue the case in the manner that the person wants. They don't believe it's the best way. I don't think that's the case for Floresche.im I think Floorsheim had a couple of lawyers telling well the law kind of says this. No, I've got a point to make it. I don't think Florescheim's doing this because he's a dunce at all. He's capable of pursuing presenting this case because Florcheim had no lawyer. He cross examined his neighbor himself. Oh, can you imagine this? So here the two neighbors are. Now Florcheim loves this because he gets to ask the dentist questions . Why do you want to prevent me from walking across the beach? he said. Damagalas said, he never gave Florstein permission to walk on his property. At one point of the trial he likened his neighbor's shoreline walks to a home invasion. Like I said, you could just imagine both of these guys are going to be over the top Imagine somebody is in your house saying this is not your house, Domigulla said. Locals have generally backedoors Fl heim's view . It's the people's like, said one commenter on Facebook. Now, let me interject. See, that's the problem. That is unclear . It is the people's like. But But is the dry sand the lake ? You see the problem ? In many states, the laws are clear. It's not that clear here . In an interview, fifty eight year old Rebecca Sybans , who lives nearby, said she walks along the shore all the time. I want to give her the proper North Shore Nancy tone of voice. And again, she's probably a very nice lady. I certainly didn't feel I was doing anything wrong either, nor would I certainly think twice about it but she wouldn't . Most of the people involved in this thing are males. I'm just telling you, this thing screams Karen on all sides. But it needs to scream Karen because the only way you can get this thing to court, which is where it needs to be to for a final resolution is to where we are. And if there are people who don't like that, then we need to pass a law that addresses this. And again, there's strong feelings on both sides of these issues with regard to people who live on lakes and in this case Lake Michigan . Florcheim, who is now represented by lawyers from the nonprofit Midwest Environmental Advocates, has appealed this case to a higher court. Damagal the Dentist didn't return requests for comment . That actually surprises me. I just think he'd be somebody who'd want to tell everybody his side, but he might have lawyers telling him not to. A handful of commenters among the hundreds on social media came down on his side . Why is it when people own waterfront properties, others it is okay to trespass one road? Do you like people walking in your backyard . Now , on many of the inland lakes in Wisconsin , it's clear the shoreline belongs to the property owner . You know, I've been in many lakes. You can't just have somebody walking on somebody's backyard on the grass or standing on their dock, standing on their pier . And on many of the inland lakes, it's pretty clear that there are and many of these lakes have public beaches also, a portion where the people can go. Take for example, Pewaukee Lake, you can hang which has a huge beach . Extremely popular . You can stand on that, but you can't stand on Charlie Charlie's backyard two hundred feet, two hundred yards down the road . But see, Lake Michigan makes it a little bit more difficult and a little bit more complicated I think this case screams out for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court to either affirm that nineteen twenty three case or modify it. And then, whichever side does it like, it can appeal to the state legislature and try to pass a law as to whether or not we should give the public the right to access shorelines or not . I'm not going to express an opinion on this. I've always seen both sides in general I side with property owners rights. On the other hand , I accept the premise that the waterways belong to the public . And at some point , if the waterway belongs to the public, that means the ability to actually get to the waterway is going to create this gray area between property owners on a waterway and the water itself. All right We have another case here . It has to do the abuse that has been found and everyone knows has existed with regard to food snaps better wise known as snap . There's an interesting story about this in the epoch tim es . The Trump administration released a report last month that shows one hundred eighty six thousand ad people in twenty nine states are continuing to receive SNAP benefits . The Trump administration is making fraud on government programs like this a high priority JD Vance is running the task force . You can see how easy this fraud is . Somebody's on food stamp benefits, which is what SNAP is. They die . The bureaucrats may not know that that person died and if somebody else is receiving the benefits, you know, they live with a person or a relative, they're in no hurry to tell anybody about it . You think vote fraud is rampant ? Imagine this . Everybody knows that a massive amount of these benefits are fraudulent. The Trump administration is aware of it and they want to crack down on it. Here's the problem. Who pays for this program? The Feds? Who administers it? The states . This is another example of a program, Snap, food stamps, in which the Feds send the money to the states and the states administer the program. So the Trump administration has asked to see the records in all of the states so they can begin the process of purging dead people and for that matter investigating other cases of people that are on there fraudulently . But many of the states, lefty states , don't want the Trump administration seeing these records. As we've seen in Minnesota and many other states, some of these states have a vested interest in letting continue to scam . Democrats for, in particular, have become the enablers of scammers. They don't like the notion of us going into and grabbing the records . So the Trump administration right now is stymied in addressing the problem because they can't go and get the records that the state has because a federal judge has ruled on behalf of states who say that they don't have to turn over their records to the federal government . This problem is existing in almost every area where the Trump administration is trying to clean up corruption that is going on with the federal program administered by the states . I'll tell you where else it's going on . It's going on in the attempts by the Justice Department to address the reality that our voter rolls in America are corrupted. The left keeps saying Trump makes these claims without any proof, without any proof, without any proof, without any proof, without any proof. Yet we see time and again cases in which we know that people are voting that are not allowed to vote. We just had a case from New Jersey that I talked about in the last podcast in which they uncovered numerous non citizens on the voter ro in Newll Jserse y. In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Election Commission is refusing to turn over voting records to the Trump administration department of justice. The media is backing them up because it keeps Trump's trying to claim again that he didn't lose the twenty twenty election without regard to whether or not he's doing that or not. You have a federal law enforcement agency trying to find out whether or not the most basic right that we have in the United States voting is being comp romised by states that are not properly policing their voting records. It's the same problem that we have in this food stamp case. Now to this , the Brendan Swordsby case . There are many who are arguing that college football was killed this past week . This is yet another case here of courts allowing an entity to police itself. The first case the last case that we just mentioned with regard to the federal food stamp benefits . The courts are not letting the feds who pay for food stamps snap to police the program . Brendan Soresby is a college football quarterback. He's a transfer all the players almost all the big time quarterbacks now are transfers if they're not going to start at their school. He's transferring to Texas tech. He's been at two other schools, including Indiana. He was the biggest catch in the off season transfer portal. Soresby has been caught . He is a chronic gambler . He's admitted he's a compulsive gambler and he's been caught betting on games involving the teams he's played for . In all sports this is the ultimate no . Major League Baseball, the punishment for betting on games in which you're in on your sport and in particular games you're involved in is a lifetime ban. Pete Rose got a lifetime ban for it. The biggest scandal in baseball history was the Black Sox scandal world series back nineteen nineteen where the World Series was thrown by white socks players who were paid off by a gambler Arnold Rusty . And now that sports gambling is pervasive where anybody can do it off their phone unless they live in the state of Wisconsin, but in reality you can do it illegally on your phone or the state of Wisconsin by betting with an offshore site. In most states and Wisconsin has now moved to this with the legislature passing a law giving the casinos the right to offer online gambling throughout the state. They have to draw together compacts to get this going, but it's going to be reality here. When anybody can simply open up an account and bed on their phone . It's clear you're going to have a lot of athletes do it . It is not against the law . It's against the rules of that sport . Soresby was suspended by the NCAA once the word came out . Initially he considered simply applying to go into the NFL draft term pro because I know I'm going to be banned at college football. But instead what he did is he went to the courts and appealed to the courts the NCAA ruling banning him . A judge in Texas has ruled on behalf of SORSB andE says the NCAA does not have the authority to ban players . They've ruled that the NCAA is not an actual business that gives out franchis es. For example, the National Football League awards a franchise , and each franchisee has to follow the rules of the National Football League in the same way that a franchisee of McDonald's has to follow the rules set by McDonald's corporate sets or Jimmy Johns or any of the others . The NCAA, however, is simply an association . It's not an entity of itself other than individuals join. It's not direct ly a franchise . The judge ruled that you can't have this organization Texas tech who can play on its teams or not that it's up to Texas Tech to decide or for that matter, Duke to decide or Wisconsin to decide or Marquette to decide or whatever Eddie School is, what their rules are . Texas tech says they want Swordsme to play even though So he's a guy that gambles on his own team . The judge ruled in favor of Soresby . There was a poll this week by the Athletic, which is a major online sports website . They've polled fans as to whether or not will kill college football. eighty five percent said yes If college football can't punish players who gamble on games. Obviously, many will gamble on games . Almost every other college program in the country is appalled by the decision. And it's gotten to the point that many now say that the only thing that they can do is refuse to play Texas Tech . This is to me reminiscent of what's been going on with schools that were allowing male athletes claiming that they were female. Some teams simply said, We're not going to play this team that has a boy claiming to be a girl's volleyball player, whatever it is. You have numerous conferences saying the te ch they are not going to play any one of the big twelve the conference Texas tech is it. The big twelve itself is up at arms because the schools in the big twelve do not want to have a situation in which which teams can have players betting on their own games playing in the sport because it kills the integrity of the sport . Obviously, the problem with athletes betting on their own games is they can bet against their team or even if they're betting for their team, there are now bets that you can place even during a game or on individual players. A player passed for more than or less than one hundred and sixty seven yards. Well, imagine you're a quarterback. Imagine you actually are betting yourself. I would have passed for more than that . The next thing, you know, he's throwing the ball in every play when it should be a running. You see the problem . Now, you might say this ruling won't stand. Here it's the problem with that . The NCAA is appealing in Texas to the Texas Court of Appeals, and they're appealing for an expedited judgment by the full Court of Appeals by a four judge panel. You're not gonna believe this. I'm going to tip off where we're going with this. The four judge panel , all four judges on that panel went to the same college Texas tech. I'm sure there's districts down there, but Texas is a zillion universities . Texas tech is already considered just a bad boy of American college football. Bad boy in that there is no school that is more aggressively embraced paying your own players. Indiana's close. Indiana got a ton of money from Mark Cuban. They've been buying players right and left and they bought a national champ ionship. Texas Tech, which has always kind of been a second tier third tier program in the big twelve, has become a mega powerhouse because they have a massive NIL program . See, there are a lot of big fat cats in the state of Texas. But Texas Tech is a school that has a disproportionate Texas A and M's another one. A disproportionate number of their alumni that are in engineering and drilling and oil exploration and so on . The University of Wisconsin has lots of rich people, but they tend to be in the sciences and stuff like that. It isn't producing the kind of people just saying, okay, I'm going to dip into my wealth and give ten million dollars to buy football players . But Texas Tech has that . And that's how they got SORSB in the first place . So they're already reviled by everybody else because they went from being just an average program for many, many years to the powerhouse in the Big twelve by spend ing all this money and now they're infuriating everyone because they aren't banning a player who gambled and they're not bad it because he's a great quarterback. He might be the best quarterback in college football this coming season. So they're willing to put up with the fact that they have a player who's corrupt and is not pressed worthy to play for them for one season . I do agree . If the courts do not allow the umbrella organization, the NC AA to set standards as to who can play and who can't play . College sports is dead because the next thing is you can't say that somebody is ineligible because they transfer too much. You can't say that they can't play because of this, that or the other thing. Or you can't make any decisions covering this if you don't have any authority . So I think college sports is in jeopard y . If people don't trust the outcomes of the games , it's just wrestling. It's roller derby . The only sport that I can think of, and there may be others. I just think the only one I can think of in which competitors are allowed to bet on their own team is the sport I'm in horse racing. But even then there were rules, not a law, but you are not supposed to bet against your own horse. Now clearly some people do. That's what race fixing is, but it's not allowed to do so . But you can, a trainer , a rider , me as an owner, we get better to own horses But that door has opened that by having that betting available, clearly you can try to have your horse lose if somebody's urging you to do so. And when that's happened, it's been caught and that's a criminal that's criminal behavior . But it's generally been allowed because by and large , you're only allowed to bet on your own horse and why is it a bad thing if you think your horse is going to win? The problem in sports is there's a bigger picture here and you know have all of this in game betting that you can bet on how many rebounds somebody gets on this that and the other thing . And the problem that Pete Rose faced when he was banned for life in baseball is he was betting on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds when he managed managed them. You say, Well, what's wrong with betting for them to win? He's the manager. Well, you know, in baseball, you might not be willing to make a decision that sacrifices for, you know, using every picture you have in a game and burning up your bullpin to win one game screwing up the next three or four . Well, if the manager has a hundred thousand dollars bet in that game, maybe he's willing to do that because he needs to win today to hell with tomorrow . Election news . Graham Platiner one in Maine . Now, I wrote my newspaper column, which is out today about this . The Democrats will vote for anyone that they think will stop Republicans and stop Trump . The Man se'ats is considered to be the most important senate race in the country. Man is a Democratic state, but the seat has been held by a Republican forever, Susan Collins. Susan Collins is a very moderate Republican. She's a rhino . But that's the way that she's been able to survive by getting elected in a Democratic state. So with Susan Collins, you get somebody who votes with the Republicans some of the time. If the Democrats win, you've got somebody who votes with them none of the time, and more importantly, it could be the seat that determines control of the Senate. If you don't have control , not a single bill you support can even be called. Control determines what's voted on and what is it. Every committee is controlled by the party that controls . Platin has a Nazi tattoo on his body . It's a symbol that was worn by Nazi soldiers . He initially claimed that when he got it, he didn't know that that's what it was . But past girlfriends have said he bragged about it and said that he knew what it was. In addition to that , the New York Times, you can't blame this on the Conservatives. The New York Times has run a story quoting numerous of his exes describing his abusive behavior . Plattner has defended , I had PTSD , which maybe he did , maybe he didn't, but it becomes a coverall for people to do things that would otherwise be disqualifying If there was a Republican that's got Nazi symbols tattooed on his body and has a history of abusing women . You can imagine how the media and the lefties would be about that . They're still screaming and yelling about Trump with regard to Jeffrey Epstein even though there is zero evidence that Trump had anything to do with misconduct involving EBST . But Plattner is the poster child for, I mean, hashtag me to all of this stuff. This guy is the poster child for all of it. They keep wanting to claim that Trump is a Nazi. Here's this guy. He's got Nazi symbols tattooed on his chest . They had the Democratic primary, he won . So this is who's going to run against Susan Collin s . And as I said , there are Republicans who bucked other Republicans just for the slightest of reasons. The problems that Republicans have is they just fight about every damn thing that there is . Emocrat in America is going to be okay with this. They will now vote for a Nazi. And I've said they'd vote for a Nazi if they can't opponent it was a Republican. Here you got a guy that's got a tattooed in his body that has views women all of other elections yesterday, South Carolina . One of my predictions is correct . I said there's no way that Nancy Mays is going to win the governor's election going. there Nancy Mace is , I'll admit this, she's interest ing. Republican member of the House of Representatives . Interesting is one word for it, weird is another. I mean I mean she's very conservative , kind of . She's also weird. She's the woman, the one you may recall this . Two, three years ago, she was late for the house ayer Prak Brefast. Is it the national prayer breakfast or the Congressional Prayer Breakfast ? She was late and shows up and her excuse for being late she announces is she just had a quickie with her boyfriend . First of all, that's weird enough for anyone to say to anyone else in public on anything. She said it at the prayer breakfast. Yeah, I'm late because I was hanging in my bed screwing my boyfriend. So she's a weirdo She's also clashed with the leadership on just about everything . And she's broken with President Trump on a couple of things. She carries on about the Epstein Fouls and so on . The governor's seat in South Carolina , a Republican state is open . There are numerous candidates who ran for it. Mace isn't even the only member of the House. Mace gave up her house seat in order to run for governor, so did another member of Congress in South Carolina . Mace not only didn't win , she didn't finish second. South Carolina is a state that has the runoff rule. We've been seeing this discussed in other states. South Carolina is one of those states that you have to get fifty percent of the vote to advance the general to election . So in a multi candidate race , probably nobody's going to get fifty percent and in fact nobody did. The leading vote get her, her name is ti, a she 'ves the Lieutenant Governor, got twenty nine percent. The second place candidate got twenty six percent, they will advance. Nancy Mage didn't even run third . She was doing pretty well at the polls. She was running first or second in most of the polls. She ran fourth with twelve percent of the vote . Now Nancy Mace is, she's, by the way, I want to make it clear. She's nowhere near as despicable as Graham Plattner in Maid , but she's got many aspects to her that some Republicans are not going to approve of her crude tongue, the fact that she's always picking fights with other Republicans, she's got an eclectic personality and so on. Those negatives, even in a conservative state like South Carolina , were a bridge too far, particularly when they had other qualified altern . As I said, the Lieutenant Governor of the State , I actually met her brother in law. This is a small world thing . Her name is Pamela . She got twenty nine percent of the vote. The second place candidate is Alan Wilcox. He got twenty six percent, then Ralph Norman Congressman seventeen percent. I said Nancy Amaz was fourth or I'm wrong. She's fifth. Rom Roddy got fourteen percent Nancy May's fifth at twelve percent of the vote. So the two leading candidates, the two Republicans, Yvette and Wilson will advance to a runoff election and then face the Democrat in the general election, meanwhile in South Carolina, this is an interesting result too. Lindsey Graham, the long time senator, some consider him a rhino . What he is is he's from the wing of the Republican Party that is interventionist He for example, has been a hawk on fighting the war with Iran, at all of those things . But on many issues, he's been a staunch defender of President Trump. Lindsey Graham is one of those guys that has a mixed record if you are a conservative. Many believe that he's a sellout on a number of issues and some of it has to do with whether or not you're a supporter of Israel or not. Graham's a strong supporter of Israel and so on. But Graham is disliked by many American conservatives. In his own state, South Carolina, a candidate ran against Graham from the right in the Republican primary . Graham slaughtered him. He won by so much that there isn't even a runoff. It was a multi candidate race. Graham got I want to get the result here. fifty two percent of the vote . The leading challenger I think was at the numbers here . Correction, Graham got fifty seven percent of the vote. Mark Lynnch, the challenger got twenty nine and then a scattering of candidates, five percent, three percent, and so on. So Graham got over the fifty percent threshold, so there's no runoff and he'll face the Democrat in the November election. So once again, I think you see that among this divisiveness that you see in the Republican Party, the voters themselves are not that divided, furthermore , the media keeps focusing on and wants to harp every time a Trump endorsed candidate loses a Republican primary , except it almost never happens. Who do you think Trump endorsed in the governor's race? A vet ? The one that won , he was never going to endorse Nancy Mays . And he endorsed Lindsey Graham. Now, I'll give you this . I think Trump often endorses the candidate. He thinks he's going to win. So we can say see my endorsement won. Nonetheless , there's zero indication Trump's endorsement hurts. In Iowa, the Trump endorsed candidate did not win the race that they had for governor there . But in almost every case, Trump, the one Trump endorses is the one that does win. It'll be tested in Wisconsin in the Congressional race up north in two months . Meanwhile, in Los Angeles where Spencer Pratt has been knocked out of the mayoral race. He didn't finish in the top two , thanks to the slow motion counting of the late ballots. Two thirds of the ballots were in and Pratt had thirty percent of the vote. Nikaya Raman had nineteen percent of the vote third place, eleven behind Pratt. Karen Basty incumbent mayor was two to three points ahead of Pratt. The remaining one third of the vote was counted and Rockman passed up Pratt, even though with two thirds inch, she was eleven points behind him . The people have been running the numbers have pointed out that in order for this to have happened, Rockmann overwhelmingly run won over the other candidates that remaining thirty three percent of the vote . People are raising questions about the legitimacy of this. I posted on my thread on X . You've got Nick Shirley who is on this case right now. He's the young investigative journalist and he's gotten his hands on some of the California voter rules . There's a woman who's list ed as being a hundred either one hundred and six or one hundred and twenty six years old and voted fifty one times. They went to her door and she said she had no idea who that person is. California does not allow photo ID for vot ing. They don't allow requirement of proof of almost anything to register to vote . The remaining segment of the vote that comes in that they count later and later and later, why would? Now I get the argument that they've made in Milwaukee. The reason why when Milwaukee does its late night dump, the Democrats always gain is , well, Milwaukee's seventy percent Democratic city, of course, the late night dump is going to dump a incredible number of huge democrat votes . But why in Los Angeles ? When they counted the first two thirds, you get two liberals here. Bass, the incumbent, and Roman . Bass in the first two thirds of the vote counted right around election day , thirty three percent rock by nineteen percent. Why would that remaining third go so overwhelmingly for the liberal candidate who did so poorly in the first two thirds that were counted? It is certainly fishy . Now, the Wall Street Journal has an editorial today . Is California election rigged? There's no evidence of fraud , but the state's lax voting rules create openings forward . They misuse the English language here . There is evidence of fraud. The evidence is the bizarre anomalies in the coding evidence, however, is not proof. The word that they should have used is there's no proof, proof it's hard . But there is certainly evidence of it . The very fact they don't have photo ID for voting, it's evidence that there's fraud . Evidence. Trump has come out and said that the elections are crooked and as they say of all the things that he says, the thing that just sets off the media is any attempt to claim that anything with our election laws are amiss . The story the media will not do is its own investigation of voter roles and procedures. They just won't do it . And I know why they won't do it . I think they'd love to be able to go in there and say we didn't find anything. They know that if they started looking into this, they would see fraud These numbers in LA are just weird also in Wisconsin, the late folks that come in with the late night dumps are the non imperson votes . For the longest time, it was mostly Democrats that voted in advance and Republicans who voted election day. That changed in the last election year in twenty twenty four where the Republicans matched the Democrats same day voting . But in Los Angeles , eighty percent of the votes are cast by mail . So there's not a huge difference between the vote the sixty five percent of the vote that were counted on election night and the thirty three percent that trickled in and they count later and later and later and later. Those are the ballots that come in well after election day because in California the ballot merely has to be postmarked by election day so they come in later. There is zero reason why you would have such a disproportionate number of those late ballots breaking one way , where in the two thirds of the votes that were counted earlier they broke , not for that candidate that got the majority of them at all you are listening to the Mark Belling podcast . If you've got a great looking car and you want it to look like very best self, do what I did and take it to Charisma Customs. I wanted to protect my vehicle without doing a lot of maintenance. Charisma Customs makes it simple. Paint protection film for chips , ceramic coating for long term shine, and ceramic tint for comfort and privacy. You'll be stunned by the finished result. Mine looks better than the day I bought it. Charisma customs in Delafield. If you want your vehicle done right . This is the Mark Belling podcast . There's a story that other than maybe a few conservative news outlets .ly Hard anyone saw, and that was the way the supporters of Carmelo Anthony reacted to that murder verdict. For those of you not aware, Carmelo Anthony is a high school track star from Texas . After a track meet, he stabbed a competitor to death . He tried to claim that it was self defense , which was a ludicrous allegation . The case has gotten a lot of attention in part because Anthony is African American and the victim , Austin Metcalf is not. It was also a cold blooded act that was committed in front of numerous witnesses . The jury not surprisingly found Anthony guilty . As I say, the case was as close to open and shut as you could imagine . But Anthony had a number of supporters African American . And after the verdict was announced that he was convicted , they caused a massive ruckus. Now the media doesn't want to show you this they don't want to show that you have a number of African Americans who think that a black kid should simply be able to murder a white kid . In the meantime, the sentence that the jury came down with in this state, the juries can pronounce sentence. In Wisconsin, judges are the only ones that can do a sentence . They sentenced him to thirty five years under the law there . You're eligible for parole after fifty percent of your time , meaning he could be up for parole for cold blood of murder in seventeen and a half years. Now, they tried to make the claim that this was an act in the heat of the moment In other words, a spontaneous act that would be, of course, a softer crime than somebody who set out and planned to kill someone . The fact that he had the knife with him, however , mitigated against that, but the jury did cut him considerable slack. Again, this is a state that often sent people to death to the only thirty five years knowing that eligibility for parole comes up in half the time the family of Metcalf, the victim , they are outraged. So you have both sides outraged. Carmelo's Anthony supporters and for those of you who want this is not anything to do with the basketball player with the same name. It's not even spelled the same. He might have been named after him, but Camera Lewis Anthony's just kid committed the murder after the track beat . You have the victim's family upset that this kid was killed in cold blood . And you have supporters of the killer , furious that he's punished at all . It's reminiscent of the reaction of the OJ verdict. Remember when the OJ verdict came out? OJ one of the most obviously guilty murderers every time I think of OJ and the guilt, I just think of Nor McDonald. You know about the whole Nor McDonald thing? What? Norm McDonald used to do he's dead note. He died very eclectic and funny comedian . Norm McDonald did the weekend update, you know, Chevy Chase started. A lot of people have done it. And during the OJ thing, he would do a joke every week on how OJ was guilty. This was before OJ was convicted. And obviously the sensibilities in Los Angeles overall of that is they were ready for somebody to be saying that especially before the verdict and he'd get it I mean. it, must have been an entire season every single week. And what made it funny is just that he kept on doing it. Eventually he was fired . The guy who ran Saturday NBC Entertainment, Don Omeier was a buddy of OJ, he fired Norm McDonald's story went on to be legendary. Anyway , after OJ was found not guilty, you had all of these African Americans cheering and white people were shocked by this . I recall in my program when it was on the afternoon while I was on the air that the jury came back with a verdict after an hour of deliberation and I said, obviously he's getting off. I was shocked by the reaction of my audience. And again, this people were more innocent than this is ninety seven, ninety eight, whatever this was ninety five . Paul was overwhelmed with calls coming in and say, Mark's wrong. No, they're he's convicted and usually with a verdict in an hour, they are guilty. I say, They're going to let him off . I was way ahead of my time in understanding that the minute that the jury heard that Mark Farmer had used the N word at one point in his life there was no way they were going to convict OJ no matter how guilty he was because in the minds of many people racism is worse than murder. And indeed the next day the verdict came out, and many of I was not shocked. I said, I know that OJ's gonna get off. And I, you know, if those of you who listen to me back in the day will recall that . But there were Americans that were shocked that he got off and shocked that there were black people that were celebrating somebody that was obviously guilty. Now many of those people at the time said no, no, I J didn't do it . They're antibody . Time went along, there was an anybody who didn't accept the notion that OJ did it. Now this story . I'm just telling you this is example number eighty five million of its rem arkable how many guys screw up their lives over a woman. I've been covering examples of this forever and ever and ever. They sort of bemuse me they also make me shake my head. Now you're dealing with somebody here who seems to be marriage phobic if you take a look at me and is wary in relationship. I mean, I get all that . I just can never understand The lengths that some people go to with regard to a woman , knowing that if the behavior that they're involved in is found out about you could be ruined . Here's the latest and I don't know the guy. And I always put this caveat in with prominent people. It's possible I've met him and I just don't remember it. But as far as I know, I've never met this person. His name is Mark Blake. He's a very prominent plastic surgeon. He runs . He's one of the operators of a big clinic on Port Road, which is kind of where Whitefish Bay and Glendale come together. It's just to the north of Bayeshore. In fact, it might even be part of that complex. It's called a Loom Cosmetic Surgery and med spa . Blake, who's fifty one is charged with multiple counts of stalking. He lives in Whitefish Bay, quoting from the GS on line story. It's also on Fox six and all the other sites. He's charged with one count of stalking and three counts of capturing an intimate representation. You can imagine what that is. If convicted on all counts he could face now they never get all of that. According to the criminal complaint, the woman contacted police on april sixth report anded she believed Blake, her boss at this alum cosmetic surgery, had been stalking her for about a year. The woman told investigators that on march fifth, twenty twenty five, after leaving work, she received an iPhone notification indicating an Apple AirTag was traveling with her. By the way, that's just another one of the great things that she did. I think I don't know if the Androids have that. Do you know that yeah, I mean Apple's thing it will an AirTag is something it's like a tracker that you can put on a vehicle. And if you have an Apple account, it will tell you that there's an airtag on there. So her iPhone or a laptop, probably her iPhone was telling her, they're an airtag and it's moving with you, meaning it's on your vehicle . After searching her vehicle, she found an airtag that did not belong to her hidden beneath a floor mat on the front passenger side. The woman told police she believed the airtag had been placed in her vehicle during the workday and alleged Blake used keys from her work locker to access the vehicle and place the device there without her consent. All right . Guy's a plastic surgeon. I mean, he probably deals with attractive women and all of this stuff . He must have some interest in stalking this woman. So he goes and puts this air to just I cannot imagine doing this with anyone. I can't imagine being so obsessed with a woman that I would do that. What about you in there? You're a married guy, Dave. Can you imagine doing this ? Sydney Sweeney, yes, but nobody else. So your wife would give you a pass of the Sneyyd Sweeneet . Yeah, you have to give her a pass a pass as well. You know, someone like me totally airtag . She totally she then used Apple's find my app . This is another reason I use Apple stuff. I lose my iPhone, I can go on my laptop and say where the laptop where the iPhone is. The worst thing though is that it shows that it's in your home and you can't alright now I know it's here as, opposed to I didn't leave it at work. You have to scramble and find where it is there. Find my app to identify information associated with the AirTag and discovered it was linked to a phone number added in three six, which matched the last four digits of Blake's phone number. Blake initially denied placing the ear tail . What do you expect him to do? It comes back to a phone number that has his last four digits . However, after the woman confronted him with the phone number in formation, he apologized and said he was worried about her life decisions. This is right up the alley . I've been very concerned about who you may be seeing , yeah, I bet you were. The woman told police she did not initially report the incident because she believed Blake's behavior would stop . Probably I would too . Wouldn't you think he'd stop? She caught him red handed. Wouldn't you think he'd be scared to death . Yeah, I mean this is , you know, it's like the majority of people who get a first time drunk driving. They're so mortified they 'll never have more than half a drink again. It just I would think for a prominent guy that getting caught red handed and she didn't go to the cops, he wouldn't even look at her in the workplace. But no, the woman told investigators she and Blake had previously been in a relationship and once were engaged. Oh, he's an ex. Here we go. She said the relationship ended and became strictly professional before march twentieth of twenty twenty four. Now remember, she found this air tag early twenty twenty five. So the relationship ended like ten months earlier. The woman told police that between late March and early April twenty twenty six this year, just a few months ago, Blake made comments that led her to believe he was aware of her whereabouts outside of work. Blake referenced a recent coffee outing she had with a friend and made comments about the visit . The woman also alleged Blake discussed her whereabouts with coworkers and questioned one co worker about whether she was romantically involved with another person . Again, I'm the wrong person to assess this because I let it go . She ditched ya . Who in this life has not been ditched at least once? I mean, I guess there are people that met in high school and they got married to live happily ever after and there was never anybody barring that . I know people want what they can't have. Nobody's worse than when I go to a restaurant and they tell me we're out of a couple of things, I instantly think that that's what it was that I want. Why you can't have is the whole reason for aspiration in life. I want a private jet. I can't have a private jet. That makes me want to have a private jet. On the other hand, I'm not gonna steal a private jet. I'm not gonna do anything to wreck this career. Okay, some how woman. Oh yeah, I can't have you. I'm gonna make a jackass out of myself, lose the podcast, lose everything else and be a person in ridicule . The same thing is true of Kitty porn and all of this stuff, but anyway , Blake allegedly told the told coworkers that the woman's car had been parked there a lot, referring to a Milwaukee County home of a person the woman had gone out with for coffee. Because of those comments, the woman became suspicious that Blake was monitoring her movements. She told investigators she reviewed devices connected to her Apple account and discovered an un familiar iPhone eight . That's like a cheap o one. What are we up to now? seventeen . So he's got it so there's an iPhone eight that he's now using a tracker. The woman said Blake had loaded her loaned her an older iPhone while she was on vacation in Bali in twenty twenty four . She told police she was not certain whether she had logged onto her iCloud account on the device . See, that's the thing. If you have an Apple device , all of them are going to be linked together. So I mean, if I'm on one device and I set up a password, all my other Apple devices know it. All of 'em are on the cloud and so on. So he gives her this phone , hoping that she's going to use the phone and go onto the cloud with it, meaning everything that she has is on there with it . Tobali she was not certain whether she had locked onto her iCloud account on the device, but said she never gave Blake permission to access her location in formation or Apple account. The woman told investigators Blake's actions caused her emotional distress of her fear for her safety on may seventh, that's last month. Detectives I don't like to say their names examined the air tag and obtained records from Apple. Investigators learned the air tags had been purchased as part of a four pack from the Apple store at Bayshore Mall in Glendale. The purchase records show the air tag. I am going to name the detective because this is good work. Samuel C rane. The purchase records show the airtag was bought by a credit card ending in, I won't read those numbers. Investigators later determined Blake had a credit card with the same last four digits. So they nailed them earlier on the phone number and now they nailed them on a credit card. During the investigation, Cran, that's the detective, interviewed another employee who said she had observed behavior from Blake that had not been normal and believed that there was some validity of the woman's concerns. The employee described Blake as being very interested in the woman's personal life and said she believed he was upset because the woman was now in a relationship with another man. The story goes on to say that Dr. Christopher Hassian, owner and cofounder of Loom Cosmetic Surg ery confirmed Blake is no longer providing services for the business and that its staff is cooperating with law enforcement. This story is going to follow this guy for the rest of his life. You do Google search on the guy's name and all of this is going to come up because he couldn't handle the fact that this relationship ended . Now is one of those stories that you have to think about beyond its Milwaukee doctor is being accused of inseminating multiple women with his sperm at the at the fertility clinic that he operated forty years ago . The doctor who's now ninety one, Frederick Detman . And this is one of those cases where he may almost wish that he would have died before all of this came out . Quoting the story here, the attorney involved in the case is Al Feckler. Feckler's client said in nineteen eighty two she sent to artificial insemination using sperm from an anonymous owner representative of a medical student. Instead, the law firm claims the doctor used his own sperm. In twenty twenty four, the patient's son, I guess I can name him because he's in the story other report, Joseph Legke did a DNA test ancestry. com. This is how people are getting caught right and left on this misbehavior that occurred many, many years ago . So he runs an ancestry test and the hit comes back to be this guy and she probably and he was probably trying to find out who who his father was. He was a sperm doctor baby. So he's probably trying to find out who's naturally. And he asked, who's this guy and tells the mom, that was the doctor . Now , the doctor's now ninety one. The results revealed biological connections to multiple half siblings with a common biological father traced back to the OBGYN in connection. So apparently there's a lot of half brothers and half sisters around here and they all have the same father because he's running this insemination operation and he's using his own spur . Now first of all you wonder if there's any harm to this . Obviously , if you're doing artificial insemination with an anonymous donor, it can literally be anybody because they're anonymous. So is there any particular problem that it happens to be this doctor as oppos ed to Frank the car salesman from down the strait . I don't know . Then you've got the whole Elon Musk thing. He wants to father as many children as possible. He maintains a relationship with all of them, but he's impregnated zillions and zillions and zillions of women . The fact though is that this was the doctor and he was doing it right and left. Did he have like these delusions of grandeur that he was? And remember, the doctor, the patients went to the doctor , so when the woman has the child, he knows these are his kids . There's apparently no indication that over the years he ever contacted any of them, there's all these kids went around in the community and he knows they're theirs . In the meantime, Depp and Loyer, he's ninety one. He's a respected doctor. He's one of the leaders in his field. This that and the other thing . Forbes magazine runs these lists all the time of the wealthiest people in the world and because it's such a hit for them, they break it down the wealthiest this, the wealthiest that, the wealthiest entertainer. And one of the things that they break down so they can do one of these every month is world's wealthiest self made women . The two Wisconsin show up on the list every year and this year they're one in three . Diane Hendrix, who is the operator of ABC Supply in Beloitte , is the wealthiest self made woman, and Judy Faulkner who owns Epic in Verona, the Big Medical Systems Company is third And self made is they have their criteria for this. For example , in the case of Diane Hendrix, and this is brought up a lot. Is she self made because the business that she started she had run with her husband and the husband was the primary operator of it. Ken Hendrix founded ABC supply. Diane worked with Ken, but it was more Ken , I believe . And then he died. The reason Diane has credited hisself made is when Ken died , the business was a fraction of the size that it is now, similar, I guess to the whole argument with regard to Trump. Trump's father was a real estate developer and turned over the business to Donald Trump . But that business , they didn't have Atlantic City towers and all of the stuff that they had. Trump took a business and grew, I don't know, forty, fifty, sixty times larger. The same thing is accrue to Diane Hendricks that the business became and the fact that A C was involved in the starting of the business with her late husband and secondly , that almost all of the massive growth in Diane's net worth is now at twenty two billion , one of the richest nevermind self made, one of the richest is she the richest woman in the world? Not sure, but she's under the classification of self aid that Judy Fawker. Epic. That was her thing . She created Epic and I just got a couple of medical records that weren't epic. So there must be finally some competitor that's trying to under trying to get in there and that monopoly some of the really small independent clinics won't use epic, but I'm just telling you, I go to the doctor and it's a major. It's always Epic. And Epic has certain products that might shard and my this and so on that are their own thing. But that is you would not think . Like if you hear two of the three in the world from Wisconsin are blank, you just wouldn't think it would be self made women. Would you ? Ellis Walton is see and Le Walton's siblings are broken up as separate because when Sam Walton died, the certain portion . But if you add up all the Waltons together , I think they'd be second or third with Musk obviously number one, but of course the Walton children simply inherited everything and aren't involved in managing the Walmart Empire. Here's an interesting story for you. I did a story on the program. Weirdly, they're both in Gonosha County. That's just coincidence. I was discussing a case in Kenosha where residents of an adjacent community . There was another one in Waucashaw County too, residents of an adjacent community are objecting to plans for development in the community next door This one is especially interesting . We are finally making progress on developing the hard rock casino in Konosha . The potawatomies have been trying and have succeeded for years in blocking the Monomy tribe , which is a poorer tribe building a casino on land they want designated tribal land on the site of the old dog track in Konosah around is it one hundred and fifty eight and highway and ninety four? It's either one hundred forty two or one hundred fifty eight. I think it's one hundred fifty eight was the street of the dog trick. It's one exit to the north of highway fifty, which is the big main drag that runs through Kenosha County. This area is way to the west of the city of Kenosha, but Kenosha annexed the land many years ago. I think it was even annex when it was the dog drag. So the city limits of Kenosha stretch all the way out to this property, even though all around it's two adjacent communities. Summers, I believe, on the east side of I'm not sure of the Summers and Pleasant Prairie are both right around there. Residents of Summers and Pleasant Prairie are objecting to this saying, They are going to be overwhelmed by the traffic and the demand for services because of this casino. Well, maybe they are . But the reality is the casino's in Kenosha . And when Kinosha annex that land, it silence the rights of I think the opponents to object to this. From the perspective of Kinosha, this is the greatest thing in the world for them. They get all of the benefits of the property taxation here on a property that is miles away from the vast majority of the residents of Kenosha who are way off to the east . Now the latest in a continuing series of reflections from Gen Z. This started with observations about this phenomenon of affluent Gen Z members returning to church. And then we moved into the area of the reaction from Gen Z ears over Kevin O'Leary, Shark T ank, his comment that Gen Z's got to shut up about its whining about affordability given the fact that they spend money like crazy and they want to live the lifestyle of a rich person in their fifties at the age of twenty two. And Gen Z just thinks that that take is wrong. Here's an observation from another member of Gen Z. His name is James . He wrote a thing that was so long that he put it created a PDF file for it. Think about the Gen Z is they're very self reflective , the millennials were too. Mark, before I get to the purpose of this paper, I thought I would let you know that I'm a big fan of the show and I've been listening to you since I was in the fourth grade. My mother would often pick me up at the library after school. You know how many times I've heard this? They call themselves Belling Babies and have listened and radios show on while we drove home. I guess that makes me a belling baby. Hopefully with this paper, I connect some dots between Gen Z's rightward shift. It's declining interest in higher education, it's returned to Christianity and even the growing appeal of socialism among some young people . Lately on your podcast, there have been recurring there's been a recurring topic Gen Z versus the Boomers . As a member of Gen Z myself, twenty two years old, I thought I would finally send in my perspective. I think the best place to start is by explaining what Gen Z actually wants. Contrary to what many commentators, including Mr Wonderful that's Kevin O'Leary claim , most of us are not demanding luxury lifestyles or expecting everything to be handed to us . We want what every generation before us wanted, a family , no, let me interject. The millennials didn't want that . There was an aversion to marriage and family with the millennials, but otherwise, I'll grant you that pretty much every generation, this has been the aspiration of the majority , a family, a home, and a stable career. In other words, we want the American Dream. The problem is that for many of us, the American Dream is dead on arrival. Now, many dispute this, continuing. For argument's sake, Gen Z is defined as those born between nineteen ninety seven and twenty twelve. Looking at the timeline of our lives reveals a lot about our political attitudes. In two thousand eight, Barack Obama was elected when the oldest Gen Z members were only eleven years old . In twenty twelve, he was re elected with the oldest among us were fifteen. In twenty twenty, Joe Biden was elected while the oldest Gen Z members were twenty three years old, yet more than half of the generation was still too young to vote. During these periods Obamacare passes , the climate scam takes over, inflation outpaces wage growth, and major indoctrination takes place in our school s. Many Gen Z entered adulthood during COVID. We lost opportunities for first jobs, internships and career launches. Gas prices soared as many of us were getting our driver's lic enses. Here, housing costs skyrocketed, grocery bills climbed, used car prices exploded. By the time many of us reached adulthood , nearly every major milestone had become more expensive and less attainable than it was for our parents. Homeownership is perhaps the best example. It is significantly more expensive to buy a starter home today than it is when our parents bought theirs. Even after adjusting for wages, starter homes remain dramatically less affordable. No , I debate that, but not for the reasons he thinks. So I'm not going to digress into that, but clearly this is a complaint of many of the gen Zeers that I don't want to necessarily start out at a six hundred thousand dollars house, but the starter house we can't afford continue. In previous generations, having a modest home and starting a family were goals that could often be pursued simultaneously. Today, many young adults feel forced to choose between the two , which has been demonstrated by millennials having a house filled with pets , not a house filled with children. What is the government's answer to the declining birth rate? Import people . Higher education has become another major source of frustration. I will admit that some students pursue degrees that have a little value in the job market. However, that does not explain why tuition costs have exploded for everyone. Now he's onto something here. And the UW system again passed another tuition hike. It doesn't matter how much money we give them , they keep raising tuition . And I think that this kid is on to the point twenty two. It's on to the point that all of these problems that are cited, they are indeed all caused by liberals. It's liberals that run the university systems. It's liberals that overstaff them. It's liberals that have colleges that pollute the curriculum with women's studies and all sorts of other very dubious academic pursuits and certainly ones that you don't need more than a handful of universities to offer degrees in back to his piece . Someone pursuing a degree in architecture, computer, science, nursing, or another STEM field often pays the same tuition as someone pursuing a degree with far lower earning potential. We constantly hear that America needs more scientists, engineers, and skilled professionals, yet the financial burden placed on students entering these fields continue to rise, and what is the government's answer? Import people . Many young people graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt before they even begin their careers. Some spend decades trying to escape that debt. It should not surprise anyone that Gen Z is increasingly questioning whether college is worth the cost. Well, I've been questioning that forever. Older generations got degrees for far less costs, I admit that and having a summer job allowed them to pay for tuition. At UW Milwaukee tuition is seven thousand dollars . No summer job can put a dent in that. Now I'll disagree with his use of the term dent . It depends what you mean by dent. I remember what my tuition was in college. It was about fifteen percent of that. And I was making minimum wage and I was in college then which was a fucking half . I thought it made a dent even though that dent was admittedly somewhat minor. It did make it dent. The dent that I felt that it made is it helped me pay for the cost of housing very, very limited because you live with five guys in a shack . Spread that out and food, we ate crap, didn't cost very much . And beer was not very expensive then. But again, his point about making a dent, I question the use of the term dent , but I suppose that's neither here nor there. Continuing, the economic frustration helps explain several political trends occurring at the same time. Many members of Gen Z have moved to the right . They watched government impose lockdowns, close schools, restrict businesses , and exercise unprecedented authority during COVID. Let me interject, he's right. The Gen Zers saw through the COVID crap. It was the millennials that were putting masks on it and terrified of germs and all of that nonsense. It was the younger kids that were kept out of school and locked up and not allowed to play sports and not have a prom that knew that this was a bunch of cra p, particularly when they realized that young people didn't get sick from COVID This is I think this is me now and not the writer, a clear rebellion between the gen Ziers as opposed to the millennials, millennials, the millennials are scared to death of anything that's going to make them sick and the Gen Z were kids who wanted to live. So you're certainly right about that, continuing. They witnessed institutions they once trusted lose credibility. Many also became frustrated with what they viewed as ideological activ ism as schools, corporations and the media. As a result, some sought alternatives in conservatism, Christianity, and traditional values. At the same time, Gen Z's leftward shift towards socialism should not surprise anyone either. While I disagree with all socialist solutions, at least Democrats are acknowledging that serious economic problems exist. Republicans often respond by insisting everything is fine or by blaming young people for spending too much money. Now I'm going to reject . I don't think everything's fine. Trump ran on the fact that there's this divide between the haves and the have nots . But that doesn't mean that even though it isn't finished that there is lack of opportunity , it doesn't mean that you're also not contributing to it by making bad financial decisions. Both things here can be true. And this is why I disagree a bit with the person who's sharing his thought s here . I certainly agree that college has been unaffordable. I certainly agree that we've been pushing people that are taking student loans for useless degrees when we should be pushing way more of them into skilled trades and into other professions in which they're employable . Agree with all of that. But I also agree that there is a problem with regard to spending too much , expecting too much , without going into all of it, I think you take all of this back to Obama. Cash for clunkers is one of the most terrible government programs ever. We destroyed hundreds of thousands of cars that would have become the cheap Beater cards that you could buy for three or four hundred dollars , the kind that most of us always started with. Obama got rid of all of them because he had this social program that had a goal of having younger people less reliant on automobiles for transportation. So he paid this fortune in the name of the saving the environment, but it radically distorted the cost of transportation in the same way . I will argue that illegal immigration is radically distorting the cost of housing by bringing in all of these illegals to flood the housing market at the bottom end , it drives the price of everything else up . Now he's, I think, agreeing with that by saying that the import ing people is one of the solutions that we have, but I contend that with regard to the Gen Z , both things are true . They have more challenges than other generations because of all of the things that they cite the cost of this college, all the stuff, the mandates from government and so on, but there is a problem with Gen Z having expectations that their twenties and thirties they're not supposed to be dirt poor and licking the sidewalks . You're supposed to have it rough , and you're supposed to have to save a long time to get a house . I waited a long time, but I was saving, saving, saving, savings so I could have the down payment. I admit, I didn't have much of a student loan . But I worked all the way through college. It wasn't as expensive . Probably not even inflation adjusted , but my flip side to this is, how many of the students who are claiming this affordability problem went to Marquette or Beloitte or Lawrence or MSOE , private schools with much higher tuition as opposed to going to Platfill or Whitewater. Now they're still too high also , but they are more affordable for in state tuition, and finally concluding his thoughts . If one party acknowledged that housing, healthcare and education are becoming unaffordable, will the other party deny that there is even a problem? And I'll just think I don't think most Republicans are denying that. Many struggling young people would naturally gravitate for the party that at least recognizes their concerns. The proposed solutions by socialists are flawed, but recognition of the problem matters. This brings me to Christianity. What do I think is driving the renewed interest in religion among many young people? In large part, I believe it is in response to the instability and uncertainty we have experienced. Many of us lost friends during COVID, not necessarily to the virus, but to the depression, addiction, and suicide. I agree with that. I talked about what was happening that we were going to turn these people into drug addicts that the isolation and the lack of ability to have fun , they become depressed, B, they turn opiates. All of that happened because we listen to creatinous criminals like Fauci and the public health quacks that thought that we could avoid a virus by locking ourselves up for three years rather than go out there and get exposed to the damn thing and hope our bodies would fight it off, which you'd done with every other illness in the history of Matt. But am I relatigating an old problem? Yes, I am because he does bring it up and his point is valid. And he's saying this is one of the reasons that young people have turned back to religion because of this sense of betrayal by institutions. And I think he makes sense with regard to this. The mental health consequences of isolation were severe. Young people were separated from friends, extracurricular activities, jobs, and normal social development. We watched their families struggle financially while being told everything was under control. For many people , these experiences created a search for meaning, community, and stability. To this day, I still don't think that school board members, politicians have answered for this. Of course they haven't. Evers hasn't answered for his lockdowns. The school board members that closed schools because you had a bunch of cisified teachers too afraid of getting the COVID by teaching in front of kids . I came into the radio station every day. I wasn't going to cower because Paul or somebody else might give me COVID . So he's right about this. There was a sense of betrayal by people who overreacted to COVID and B were so afraid of dying that they abandoned their responsibilities to human beings to keep society functioning . It isn't all about you . He continues, My school had two suicides, my best friends at the time attempted to take her own life and all officials refused to recognize the role that they played in this. Well, he's right about that. When schools reopened, many students felt alienated by what they perceived as increasingly ideological instruction. Again, he's right. Whether one agre es with that perception or not, it is reality for many members of my generation . Some rejected some responded by rejecting traditional institutions altogether. Others turned toward religion and faith communities that offered a sense of purpose and belonging . This most clearly this can most clearly be seen by white males voting overwhelmingly for Donald Trump during the twenty twenty four presidential election. Ultimately, I think the political and cultural shifts we are witnessing among Gen Z can be traced back to one central central issue, affordability and stability. My generation wants the same things previous generations wanted, a home of family, meaningful work , and a chance to build a future. Yet many of us feel those goals are becoming increasingly difficult to achieve. If older generations want to understand Gen Z , they should start there and reflect on how they on how they voted to make this happen. Issues like this don't happen overnight. They happen over generations. All right, it's a good essay that he points out. The one area that I will quarrel with is I contend when I emerged at the age of twenty two the same time he did the, economy was worse than it was now . When I got out of college , mortgage rates were well over ten percent. They were clearly in the double digits . All interest rates were at that level , inflation was running extremely hot, and unemployment was staggering. Now, I admit, not all baby boomers came of age in the Jimmy Carter era, but I did . And it was worse than everything was unaffordable. The noise should have homeownership until you were in your mid thirties unless you had parents who gave you the money, which a lot did . It was not going to happen and housing meant live living in dumps for a long time , which many of us did . And there was this notion that indeed yeah, all of this is accessible , but in a few decades , the The lack of perspective, I think, is the thing that flaws Gen Z. His arguments coming from a conservative perspective about how all of this was the doing of the votes of older people who voted for leftist ? Certainly, that's correct. This is the Mark Belling podcast. How much would it take for you to be wealthy and financially comfortable? Schwab recently asked Americans that question. Most said at least two million dollars . You might have a different number for yourself. Make sense, since you have your own ideas about travel, retirement, and the legacy you want to leave. That means you need custom advice building a personalized plan , the team at Annex Wealth Management is ready to listen and help. Annex Wealth Management give them a call, know the difference . This is the Mark Belling podcast The brewers have and this was coming. I know this is a season ticket holder. I've been getting they give you all these surveys and you can kinda tell that they're driving at something. The one thing that America Well, I won't say the one thing, but one of the things that American family fie hasld lacked is high end seating all across America at sporting venues . The best seats become uber expensive and have all sorts of amenities associated with it. For example, you know, the NBA finals are now going out at New York Madison Square Garden. Front row seats at the garden have always cost a fortune . And they should cost a fortune. It's a front row seat at the garden. And sports teams have been creating premium experiences for the best seats that are out there because they can get the money . The front row of the seats at American Family Field are the same kind of seats that you get in the upper deck. The only seats that are a little bit wider and more cushy are those in the club area. So the brewers have created this thing called the Truss Club. I've been wondering for the longest time what they're building down the right field line. And this is what it is. It's a big two storey club that's going to have high end food and the only people who are going to be able to be members are those who have tickets in the first six rows in the area behind home plate. So they're going to reconstruct the seats behind home plate, take out some rows, make bigger seats, wider seats, add an additional row that's in there and hugely jack up the price. They're talking about the back row being two hundred forty five a ticket. Right now they're around one hundred and ten and go up each row. My guess is that the front row behind the home plate, this is my guess. This is not the brewery's will be in the range of five hundred dollars a ticket . They're going to get it . Those seats will all sell out. It's just like at the bucks game. The more expensive the seat, the likeer it is to be sold. The buck season ticket buck season ticket holders do not buy cheapo seats in the corner of the upper deck even though they're very inexpensive . They spend hundreds and hundreds per seat for every game with better views. So the brewers are going to get it. Now before it actually came out, I said to a friend about, I know who the big loser in this is the big loser is front row Amy. And then I see this story. I think it's that Fox front row Adam is Amy is bitching about the I don't think she don't know if she has the budget to afford the what? Oh, yeah, I just So she may not be in the front row anymore, but the way she got that tick out of it the story's been told forever and ever and ever . Somebody gave up a single seat or it might have been somebody on a block of three , an odd number and she had the interest in buying a single seat and that's how she got that seat in that particular row. So she just goes by herself and has that seat and that seat is just the cost of a front row ticket because while it's a great seat, it's just the same seat with no additional amenity or anything else or no your own parking or anything that anybody else would get in the brew ers are moving in that direction. One of the quick brewer note, the brewers have again struck Atlanta started this and the brewers quickly adopted it and that is take a player still in the minor leagues and sign him to a long term guaranteed contract so that you don't run the risk of losing him in free agency. The first player they did this with was Jackson Shurio. They've done it with a few others earlier this year, Cooper Pratt, the infielder. The reason the upside in doing it is you control the player. He doesn't get to go to salary arbitration for seven years and you don't have to worry about losing him for seven years and his cost is rather affordable. The downside is you're guaranteeing this money to somebody who may not pan out. They've done it again . Outfielder Luis Lara is having one of the best hitting seasons of anyone in AAA baseball . It is risky, however. Laura was never thought of as a high prospect . He was not even in the brewer top twenty five a year and a half ago. His seasons in the minor leagues as he moved up single A class A were blah at best . He's exploded in Perple A. He's only twenty one . The upside for the brewers is you've got somebody who now has potential superstar written all over him. They've locked him up. It's a seven year deal with team options for three , so essentially they control him for ten years if they want to. So the upside for Laurez he starts getting a lot of money now he doesn't have a rookie contract when he makes the major leagues and so on. The downside is he might be a one year wonder . That strategy, however, of lower market teams that have great prospects, tying a player up for ten years , which they've done now with Cheerio with Pratt with have they done it with Terang? I don't think they have . Well, yeah, it's with Trang and I would say I think I know the reason that they don't. They're loaded in their system with infielders and trading Bryce Terang could get them an incredible haul back and Tarang has already played a few years. The cost of that extension would be great. The brewer's model is to get players and keep them until they're thirty and thirty one and then let them go and let their rag arms and bodies fall apart for some other team, which has happened again and again and again and again. The Corbin Burns with his decrepit body, the Devin Williams who can't get anybody out. All of these players that they've allowed to let go while they get all of these great ears out of them by developing talent early and then in the appropriate cases, signing them to these long term deals, which of course carries the risk that the player could get hurt , the player be a bus. I do not believe they've signed Miz kzerios to an extension , have they not? And I think he would be a terrible candidate for an extension. I have a hard time doing it with any pitcher . I just pitchers have a great pitchers have a greater tendency to have their arms fall apart than some guy running around. I still don't even know how you can get hurt playing first base. I played first base. I played third base. I didn't appreciate. I mean, I'm a slow white guy . I admit that. I don't even know how it would have been possible to get hurt . Well, I wasn't overweight. I was a skinny reel and so on, but some of these guys, I mean, I get that they're all muscle bound and they can pull muscles and turn ankles and this that and the other thing . I just think that baseball has got to be like the least risky sport out. I don't know why they all get hurt. Pitchers, I understand why they get hurt. They're throwing fastballs at one hundred and four miles an hour. They're throwing sliders . Mr Rowski throws a cutter at ninety nine that is defying physics. So no, I wouldn't give him a long term contract. I just wouldn't. I mean, you got control of him for seven years after this end , but signing on a thing that guarantees it and keeping it for ten . The Yankees can do that. The Dodgers can do that. Milwaukee can't afford to make a mistake that costs them two million dollars over someone that gets injured anyway. They did this again with Luis Lauren and so far there have been no misses on this. Atlanta started, I think Ronald Kunya of Atlanta was the first guy to do this . Tampa Baited . There are certain smaller, if not small market teams that thrive. Tampa Bay and the Brewers are the same operation basically . They tie up players for a long time. They draft brilliantly and they do a better job than most teams of developing players and then improving players once they get there. That's it for today . Have another podcast release on Thursday. Talk to you then