Hour 1: Would getting congressional approval to attack Iran have ruined the effectiveness of the operation?

0:00Hi, I'm PJ Vote and I want to tell you about my podcast Search Engine. We try to make sense to the world, one question at a time. No question too big, no question too small. We will even answer your questions if you send them in. Stuff like, what happens when a cemetery goes out of business? What should we do about teens using AI to do their homework? Who buys luggage at the airport luggage store? Follow and listen to Search Engine in partnership with Odyssey, wherever you get your podcasts. Good morning folks, the second day of March at month of February just went flying by as we finished up the Mardi Gras season and a whole lot of things going on. And this was an incredibly busy weekend and we'll spend some time talking about that. But we've got a great share lined up for you today. We will visit with Guy Williams, Chairman and CEO of Gulf Coast Bank and Trust. And we'll talk about AI productivity gains. Three Southern states recognized by the New York Times for education improvement.

1:02We'll talk about the real state of the union. We'll also talk about pension problems that are looming out there and what they mean to budgets and the like. At 11.30, Colonel Jeff McCoslin, CBS military analyst, we'll talk about the war with Iran. This kind of took everybody by surprise. We knew there was a lot of saber rattling going on, a lot of military assets moving to the region. We just had the state of the union, not a whole lot that was revealed. And hindsight, we noticed that there were probably a bunch of head fakes. And we'll talk about that and more with Colonel Jeff McCoslin. Matthew Willer joins us, Nolan City Council at large, division one. George Russo the other day went before the budget committee hearing and revealed some very troubling statistics. Hopefully they've improved by now.

2:03But it kind of gives us a flavor of what I've talked about this culture of noncompliance. And it's going to be interesting to see how we ultimately end up addressing same, especially on the sales tax side. We'll get into a deep conversation at a granular level. Matthew Willer, he's a new member to the council to see what he's thinking about. Whether or not he's got some out of the box, maybe some shock and awe thinking about what it is that the city ought to be doing. We're going to visit with Stephen Cates from bank rate. He's a financial analyst there. The January producer price index numbers were released Friday, this past Friday morning. We'll talk about those and what they mean to the economy as well. Just a reminder folks, our FM tower has been now fully functional. We thank you for your patience as we made improvements and got everything updated.

3:07We had a distress signal there for a while, but it is up and running and enhanced. So we're very excited about that. We thank you for your observations to us. But more importantly, we thank you for your patience for sure. So we arose the other day to find out that United States, Israel bombed Iran and killing the Ayatollah Ali Hamani, his wife and many other of the leaders that were co-located at one particular location, which is probably indicative of what happened last time, where the Masad having undercover individuals on the ground, being able to direct the bombing, sharing information as to when all of these individuals were in one building or another

4:07in order to get the maximum impact and output of bombing these facilities. Obviously, Iran responded by sending ballistic missiles to five or six different countries. And we'll talk more about that with Colonel Jeff McCawson and what the downstream implications of that may be, and whether or not they're creating a more symbiotic relationship with these, the United States and these countries in fighting Iran. And we also learned that a lot of Iranians went to the streets, enjoy. A lot of Iranians went to the streets here in the United States, enjoy. Thanking the administration and others for taking out Hamani, who caused a lot of people to leave Iran, who has punished a lot of people, killed a lot of people. He's killed a lot of U.S. citizens. He was known for saying death to the U.S. and death to Israel.

5:09There was a lot of that that was going on there, and they obviously were reluctant on many fronts. This will continue to be a debate this week in Congress. I would hope that it would be one that would be measured. I hope it is one where we stick to the facts. And I hope that we look at history and recall what we said then as a precedent. So I'll remind you that Obama went into Libya, did not have congressional approval. Clinton went into Kosovo, did not have congressional approval. Bush went into Panama, did not have congressional approval. Reagan went into Lebanon, did not have congressional approval.

6:10Some of them got it after the fact, but they did not get it before. With a lot of sketchier details and a lot of the articulation of why they were going, I think a lot less here than what we're dealing here with Iran, both historically and most recently with some of their activities. Obviously, the best course action is always to get congressional approval. But the problem is, is we've become so partisan, it used to be that you could have these conversations, and there wouldn't be these leaks, everybody understood how important this was. We didn't want to forecast what we were actually thinking about doing before doing it. We wanted the element of surprise, and anytime we want the element of surprise,

7:10in modern times, unfortunately for us, the worst place to go is Congress. Because that information will leak out like a sieve, we have those that are borderline always complaining in anti-US activities in so many different ways. They view their greater good as sending information out to forecasts and to reveal to other people what's about to happen. Because they believe that their role is bigger than what it is, and they don't really owe, many of them feel like they don't really owe much allegiance to the United States at all. In fact, when asked of the question, do you believe that the obligation of the U.S. is to its citizens first before illegal aliens, they couldn't find themselves to stand up.

8:12So, one has to wonder how you share battle plans, attack plans, and things of that nature, with a body that is partisan in nature and is looking to undermine what the U.S. activities may be as opposed to having a serious debate about these issues back and forth, thinking about the pros, the cons, and this and that, and otherwise, without this being forecast around the world. I got to imagine Barack Obama went through that same mindset, conflict, trying to resolve it, Bill Clinton, I'm sure, did as well. Climate was probably every bit as caustic during those administrations, Bush, too, as well as Reagan. And, you know, they chose a very limited attack status, and they ultimately,

9:18they didn't go to Congress beforehand. Some, as I pointed out, did go to Congress after the fact to embrace the action of the military. But back home, we also have a serious issue that we have to think about. It doesn't mean that it is absolutely clear and convincing that there's something going on. I suspect there probably is, based on my experience in having served on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and having a security clearance, I was exposed to a lot of information that most people are not exposed to. And, you know, you see things, and you hear things, and you begin to understand things, you understand how things operate in this country, how other countries penetrate this country, and exhibit incredible patience, sitting, and waiting, and just training,

10:25and consuming information, forwarding it back to their mother country, and so forth, and helping in the development of intelligence information. And at the same time, radicalizing other people that live in this country. So, this whole notion, when you see Cash Patel with the FBI, or you see former FBI agents, or you see security analysts that say that there's a possibility of sleeper cells being in this country, take them seriously. FBI Director Cash Patel said Saturday that the US counterterrorism and intelligence apparatus, its agents were placed on high alert as this campaign in Iran kicked off. He said, teams nationwide are working 24-7, as always, to address and disrupt any potential threats

11:31on US soil. Their focus will become a lot more limiting in these days after these bombings. Looking for information, the old adage, if you see something, say something, notify your local FBI office, you may save many, many lives. It's very important for that. So, what do we know for sure? Well, we know that they have cells here. There's no doubt about that. We've uncovered cells here over the past several years and continue to do so. And we know that they're alone actors, right? We know that there are folks that are radicalized on the internet, and they're likely to act upon that radicalization. We know that they're on the internet. We know they're on the dark web. They know that there are people trying to push their buttons in order to get them to do something

12:33in order to send a message. It's not a question really of if these folks are out there, if something's going to happen, it's more so when, right? So, the threat is real to a certain extent, no doubt about it. We just have to be aware. Act on your gut. I say this all the time. Act on your gut. If you see something that just doesn't appear right, call the sheriff's office, call 911, they have a direct line to JTTF, the FBI, they have information, they have individuals that are assigned to them, that speak the languages that are utilized in the Middle East, they, we had several individuals from the sheriff's office assigned to the JTTF for years, and I think they're probably, if they're still employed by the sheriff's office, I would imagine they're still assigned to the JTTF in dealing with those issues. What makes our situation even a

13:37little more difficult right now, and this speaks to, you know, and I hate to bring this up because everybody knows where I stand, but over the last four years, the amount of people that we let into this country undocumented without an interview, without understanding who they are, what they are, why they are, without understanding or getting a clear explanation as to what they intend to do in the US, meaning, you know, what are their skills, what are their trades, where will they locate in the US or otherwise is dangerous, especially when it comes to situations like this, because the more you know about the folks that come to this country, the better off you are, because you have starting points, languages that are spoke by particularly individuals, which are indicative of them having been raised in certain areas of the world.

14:38Great starting point, but when you don't have this, when you know nothing about individuals, and we know they're here because we have put our hands on them over the past four years, we know that they're here, do we know their numbers? No, it could be a few, could be a lot more than we ever anticipated. So it's hard to put your finger on it, but I don't know about you, but if you're thinking about safety and security of your communities, your state, your schools, your home, these are things that we should be concerned about. This series of concentric circles of security protocols that are put in place, where you start broad and you start winding down and getting more and more restrictive and restrictive and restrictive relative to the utility of what you're doing, relative to how you come to this country, your status or otherwise, you may not

15:40think it's important, but it's at times like this, it is real important. Information is power, and the more that you have about individuals coming in and leaving this country, the better off you are. And with the utilization of these terrorist cells that are out there, which Iran has been known to use them for years, Hezbollah's used them, Hamas's used them, a whole bunch of other terrorist organizations in the Middle East, they've used them. Hence, we know all about 9-11, right? I mean, we've experienced it. We've seen it. How they went around pilot training, how they went around planning this, how we went around

16:40planning that, right in front of us. And at many points and times, individuals thought, a little odd. What should I do with this information? Some chose to do nothing. Some actually passed the information on. Law enforcement fumbled. Didn't connect the dots. Some law enforcement passed it on. Federal government fumbled. Didn't connect the dots. And it wasn't until the aftermath of 9-11 that we restructured how all of this information flows would go. And for the longest time, it would be rare for a local to have any type of clearance to go sit on a joint terrorism task force with federal law enforcement partners and see sensitive information. Up until that event, that never happened. They would speak in code to you about what was kind of going on or otherwise.

17:43This was all done in order to create a situation where the homeland was secure because things were changing. All habits die hard, especially of those in the Middle East. So I don't say this this morning to scare anybody. I just say this. Be alert. There's no community immune. None immune at all. So just be alert. Think about it. Act on your gut. Your gut is usually a good place to start. Your instincts. What fits in your neighborhood? What doesn't fit in your neighborhood? You may see some things that may be unique. Just pass it on. Law enforcement is trained how to handle this information. Let them deal with it. If there's something else that occurs in the aftermath of your initial report that you see or otherwise pass it on again. That's what you pay them to do.

18:49It's amazing how many times victims have seen their perpetrators in crime here in America on a day that an incident happened and how many times I had the opportunity to speak to victims and tragically they would tell me and you could see it in their face. I saw my perpetrator several times that day. And typically the follow up question is well why didn't you call? Well I know y'all are busy. I didn't want to bother you. I didn't think much of it. What did your instinct tell you? My instinct told me that something was out of sort but I really couldn't put my finger on it. Bingo. If you're there pick up the phone. Give law enforcement a call. We'll be right back. Stay with us. What's up? It's Draymond Green. Back from my 14th NBA season and the new season of

19:51my podcast, The Draymond Green Show. I'm filtered takes real hoop talk and big time guests. There's no holding back on the court or on the mic. Follow the Draymond Green Show wherever you beat your podcast. Welcome back folks. We are joined by Stephen Cates with bank rate. He's a financial analyst there and the January producer price index was released this past Friday morning. Steven welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So Stephen if you would for the benefit of listening audience please describe what the producer price in index measures and why it's important and why you guys follow it. Absolutely. So this is not to be confused with the consumer price index which is another measure of inflation. The producer price index as you might guess is focusing on producers. It measures the change in the prices of goods sold by manufacturers and it is the prices that companies are typically

20:54selling to other companies rather than directly to the consumers. So it can be a leading indicator for the consumer price index. What we see today could flow into prices that consumers see in a few months and that's one of the reasons that we we focus on it because we want to see what's coming down the line. So in other words this tracks what wholesalers might be selling to retailers or manufacturers to retailers directly or manufacturers to wholesalers. Correct. So it's kind of that middle transaction before it gets to the brick and mortar retailer that's selling this. Yes. So this is something that you know for consumers they should not worry about tracking this readily. This is not something yet on a monthly basis. Everybody needs to look at what has happened with the producer price index and how should I accommodate my future spending because it doesn't always translate one to one but it can give us an indication especially with this recent reading

22:01which came out a lot hotter than everybody expected. That is potentially concerning it's something that policymakers such as the Federal Reserve which meet in just a few weeks they're going to be watching closely because they want to make sure that they can stay ahead of or on top of what might be happening in the economy later. So this might be a place that we see the impact of tariffs early onset. So they can be a factor here but these aren't necessarily incorporating tariff costs of the businesses necessarily but it does show us that you know as margins rise for some of these companies that that might be passed on to consumers down the line and one of the things that could be happening is that a lot of companies that had kind of eaten some of these costs higher costs in 2025 are now beginning to reset their prices in 2026 with crossed over into a new year and they're making changes that could start to kind of flow down the ladder to to

23:06consumers and that's something that does happen a bit you know in January on a relatively regular cadence but as we cross through a new year that prices reset cost reset and that's something that here we're seeing but we're seeing it quite a bit more than usual. Yeah I don't know about you I guess the first place that I saw it was in my coffee shop obviously coffee's not something that's grown here in the United States there was a general tariff on most coffee producing countries some more than others and it didn't seem like it was all happening at once but it was almost like every week it was inching up you know a dime 15 cents or something like that for a cup. And and that did happen with some categories last year in 2025 you know good groceries you know things that are perishable things that are are consumable the turnover of those inventories

24:07happens much faster than it would for something like auto parts which can sit on the shelf almost indefinitely and so as we do see more retailers more brick and mortar consumer facing companies turn over these inventories especially ones that don't turn over as fast as consumables or groceries that's another sort of lever for higher prices because as they refill their inventories now under higher costs under tariff impacted goods that that's going to eventually kind of flow through the distribution chain. So let's jump into what the report actually revealed. So what we saw is that you know in both headline producer price index which includes the sometimes more volatile food and energy prices that includes everything that headline came in at half a percent increase from January from December to January that was two tons of percent

25:09higher than expected but that means as a manual basis it was about 2.9 percent annual inflation versus the expected 2.6 so that's a relatively large monthly jump and again all of this shows that you're still well above the federal reserves 2 percent target and and that's the bogey that we're targeting the longer we are above that and the higher above that we are the more concerned policy makers such as the federal reserve are going to be about inflation being the bigger risk than something else like the labor market and then when we remove food and oil what do we do yeah and energy excuse me what do we find yeah unfortunately I was even worse it was actually food and energy actually reduced that that measure in the in the headline inflation the core inflation which removed those things and and focuses more on goods and services that was

26:1328 percent month over month versus again an expected 0.3 and that translates to 3.6 percent annual inflation versus expected 3.0 so that came in very hot and that is the biggest concern is that services inflation goods inflation you know are still rising at a steady clip and services being the major the major culprit here and that shows some you know some inflationary pressure that has built up you know within that that distribution chain the producers are expecting to or increasing prices you know above their costs and that's what's common for us so when we look at this obviously this is not something that would be considered favorable for the open fed open market committee to even consider reducing rates at this point Tom if they were to get a series of these producer price index reports similar to this one it is very unfavorable the

27:17target measurement that the federal reserve looks at most closely is the personal consumption expenditures or PCE the weightings of that are different than the consumer price index but there are overlaps between the PPI producer price index the CPI consumer price index and the PCE personal consumption expenditures so there are commonalities amongst all those while the federal reserve isn't looking at PPI for everything it informs what is coming for those other two and this is obviously concerning to see that hotter print for the the inflation report means that they are likely expecting that we're going to see higher inflation or at least very sticky inflation over these next few months so I do not expect that we're going to see rate cuts anytime soon certainly not before the second quarter of this year and in my gut I tend to think

28:20that we're going to perpetually be one or two meetings away from a rate cut to the point that this may like it was in 2025 keep going with no cuts for quite a while so there are those that are saying that this this report is indicative of and they expected this some folks are saying they kind of expected this because of the tariffs and they believe that the tariffs are pushing some of this when you look at steel you know when you look at like heavy equipment and that going up and because it is a steel dominant product right and we know that there were tariffs that were placed there we also know that the utility and the consumption it out is fairly quick from the you know the time of production to the time of utilization unlike some of the other things that you talked about and with the recalculation of the tariffs that was done by Trump here recently

29:21is there enough relief there I mean I know there were tariffs under the Biden administration what is the delta between where we are generally now and where we were with the Biden administration as it relates to tariffs well compared to the Biden administration we are significantly higher I mean we could we're slightly lower than we were and let's say the first of the year when we were under the original you know liberation day tariff regime now that the Supreme Court has struck that down and the Trump administration has reintroduced new tariffs under new legal authority the section 122 tariff we're slightly lower you know all in on on an average tariff rate that went from somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 or 13 to maybe about 10 percent the Biden administration under the Biden administration we were closer about two and a half percent

30:23so it's significantly higher than it was still but it's slightly lower than it was about a month two ago we're visiting with Stephen Cade's from bank radius of financial analyst there Stephen what confuses me is you know listen to Scott Bessent as to how he explains this and he thinks that a lot of you know the tariff thing is going to fall off in 2026 not the tariff itself but the impact and that we're going to see better days but when you look at reports like that how do you separate yourself from that with with the messaging that you're giving I mean I it doesn't make too much sense to me I mean what is going to be the disruptor that's going to turn that around so there's I think I'll I'll say two things one is I short a little bit with the disconnect between the messaging now I think from the beginning with tariff there was a variety of messages being being given about what the purpose of these were for and what people should expect in terms of the impact through a lot of 2025 the administration talked about how little impact there was and

31:29that tariffs were not passing through you know in a major way to consumers and that you know this been overblown but a low impact in 2025 when we know companies are obviously facing these means that that impact will come it just hasn't yet and so you can't really say that there was no impact in 2025 and there'll be no impact in the future because companies are paying these they're either going to eat them completely which doesn't really align with the way most American companies work they are very good at making money and they're very good at maintaining their margins we know that overall company margins are at their highest levels they've ever been when you look at the the S&P 500 earnings and so if the impact hasn't happened yet it will happen in the future and that's something that we just all have to be prepared about and that wins itself towards higher and stickier inflation you know it's interesting because you know

32:35you just said it a couple of times and I've heard others with the administration say it let's assume for a moment that the company eats it well that's not a positive thing that doesn't ever I can't think of a positive outcome from a company doing that I mean other than it doesn't impact the consumer but from a company perspective it's got to have some negative downstream implications right like less capital maybe more wage suppression maybe not as healthy benefits maybe we change the funding of our health care plan but the company itself is not going to keep everything rocking along and just continue to take less revenue you know that worked. You're 100% correct and that's that's the fact that we saw with the labor market in the back half of 2025 hiring was slower layoffs picked up they're still layoffs are still relatively low

33:38but they picked up and hiring very very slow job growth has been very very stagnant reducing labor cost is one of the ways the companies can offset their total cost when they have higher input costs for goods and services they can reduce costs in other areas whether it's by reducing benefits reducing overall employment you know figuring out a way to squeak out more profit from their existing operations is something has to give because we know for a fact that when you look at S&P 500 earnings and revenue they're doing really well they're near the highest level they've ever been margins are excellent and so those margins are coming from somewhere it's it's if they're eating the cost of tariffs and they're reducing cost elsewhere and that often means cutting back on many things that workers depend on it's one of the reasons that we are seeing stagnation in the in the job market. So this question's going to sound crazy but I've yet I

34:43read a lot and I keep looking for these answers so when we charge these tariffs and we actually take control of you know money where where does it go and who controls it who controls where the money goes. The tariff money the tariff money that's paid where where does it go who controls it the other day the president said that he gave a bonus paid a military folks and it's not that like I'm not opposed to that but you know $1,700 and $1,776 in bonus pay I get he was able to do that on a whim I mean typically there's an appropriation and the executive branch spends the money but he was able to tap some fun where this money goes and just decided that that's what he wants to do. So I had this is a great question because I think that this is a really confused it is really confusing as to why was that possible but something like a tariff

35:45dividend paying back checks to the American people is harder to do and the reason for that is that there was money appropriated for military purpose I believe it was for military housing and that was repurposed to give out the checks to to military members that 1776 warrior dividend I think it was dubbed the aim is not true of the tariffs. I'm Dr. Mary Clare Haver ready for honest conversations about thriving in midlife listen to and follow my new podcast unpause available now wherever you get your podcasts because it does take took but he let he let everybody to believe that the reason he was able to do that was because of the tariffs it was tariff money but then that that's not true then right I would say that that is not true I mean I think if you if you look at the broadest in the broadest sense of the government is getting tax revenue in and some of it's now going back to military members and if you look at everything

36:49in one big pool well then you could say sure tax revenue came in we have more and so we gave some back but the appropriations of money is very important and very detailed the president does not have unilateral authority to cut checks to the American people they require congressional approval there was that pool of money available for military members it will be far harder to get Congress to pass something for tariff dividends to cut checks through a much larger proportion of of the of the populace from the tariff revenue yeah interesting the messaging doesn't actually align to the activity yet again I guess I shouldn't say it's interesting there's certainly some message massaging there and you know that's that's the political nature of some of this I don't think that there's going to be the political will within Congress to cut checks after there was so much made of the fact that all the checks that were given out during COVID did create some of

37:54the inflation we had yeah no doubt as always Stephen Kates thank you so much for your time your insight truly appreciate all the work that you guys do over at bank rate keep up the great job my pleasure thanks for having me thank you sir we'll be right back 504-260-1870 on the open hard jewelers talk and text lines stay with us the NFL offseason is here but the action never stops the draft is right around the corner and heed the call NFL podcast with Dan Hanzis and Mark Cessler is your pro football destination prospects team needs and pick by pick coverage of draft weekend heed the call covers all things NFL and we have fun no fake hot takes or boring data dumps here just entertaining football talk from your favorite buds at the bar so come hang out with the heed the call heroes for football news analysis and mirth all the mirth follow and listen to the heed the call NFL podcast wherever you get your podcasts