The Listening Tube with Bob Woodley -- Liberal support of Immigration; Fraud and CBS Radio News

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This is the listening tube.

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Hello, and thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley.

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He's a nutshell, but he's still sharp.

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On this episode, we'll hear about the Sedition Act, nickels, royalty, and fraud. Plus, some changes are coming to the listening tube.

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But first, not the headlines.

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I would like to recognize the end of CBS Radio News, finishing its nearly 100-year-old service on May 22nd. I really can't put into words how the news that CBS was eliminating the entire radio news staff made me feel on a personal level. I worked at a CBS affiliate in Las Vegas, Nevada, called KNU or K News Radio. CBS gave me the opportunity to share events of Las Vegas with the world, including social, historical, and sporting events. Some of my fondest memories are calling in reports for Oakland A's games, the year they played their first seven home games in Las Vegas because their stadium in Oakland was undergoing repairs. Or reporting on boxing matches featuring legends like Reddick Poe, Evander Holyfield, Butterbean, Julio Cesar Chavez, Oscar de La Hoya, and Iron Mike Tyson. When Tyson beat some British guy at the MGM Grand Garden, I had most of the script pre-written, assuming Tyson would win. I told the story of how the fight began with the playing of the American national anthem, which recalled a previous battle between these two nations, and how the result was the same. When Tyson won, Don King announced that the post-fight press conference would be held the next day. So I filled in the blanks of the script, called in the report, and when I was driving out of the parking garage at the MGM Grand, along with everybody else, I heard myself deliver the top story of the hour for the entire CBS radio network. I had the top down on my Mercury Capri convertible and I threw my arms up in happiness. I had the privilege of telling the world what I just saw, and CBS Radio News gave me that opportunity. Plus, I got paid for it. I almost forgot about that part. If you submitted a story that they used, they'd send you a check. So there was an incentive to submit stories, even if it wasn't a major event. Radio news worked because it was able to be immediate. Radio brought the world into living rooms in a way that newspapers couldn't, at a much faster pace. The only improvement made to radio news was adding video. Of course, that's television. But when it comes to immediacy, radio was king. It still is. CBS said that the need it now mentality of news made the radio product obsolete. But the only thing faster than radio is light. Prove me wrong. CBS gave up on radio because they forgot how to use it, not because something else is better. There were about 700 affiliates across the country, each of which had the opportunity to call in reports of all kinds, several a day, potentially thousands of reports from the far reaches of where anything was happening, and the ability to accurately report on it within minutes. Even provide timely updates as needed to a device that everyone has. You have a radio in your car, in your home, and on your phone if you download the right app. I have my local radio station app on my phone, but I never use it because it's much easier to use a radio. Unless you're still using the kind we used to carry around in our shirt pockets, you can program it to keep track of the stations you like. If you made one of them a news station, you could keep up in real time much better than following something on the internet. So where is the disconnect between the speed of radio and the desire for up-to-the-minute news? Well, let me start by describing one way, assuming that I'll think of another way before I finish describing the first way. Radio is terrible at promoting itself. That's nothing new. Sometimes it's hard to justify promoting yourself, especially if you do it on some other form of media. You're almost admitting that there's an audience out there that you can't reach. And media relies on advertising, so you don't want to diminish your product by using another media for promotion. And there are some who think it's in poor taste for radio to promote itself at the expense of somebody who's already a listener. Whatever the reasoning, radio does not promote itself enough for people to appreciate and realize the value and immediacy they desire. It's not like radio isn't keeping up with the times. To the contrary, radio stations promote themselves very well on social media. I know the stations in my town have a lot of followers there. But radio is so much faster than social media that by the time someone sees it, it already happened and it's history. So, in a sense, radio makes social media obsolete. The randomness of algorithms and people's habits often result in someone actually seeing a post on social media in a speed commensurate with a live event on the radio is negligible. Live feeds may attract viewers, but radio isn't about the viewer, it's about the listener. And as for timeliness, online feeds of radio stations are actually behind the actual over-the-air signal that you get from your AM or FM radio. That's right. Radio's faster than the internet. And I did think of another reason. It's actually a two-part reason. Consolidation has changed the dynamic of what radio provides. It's still the fastest at delivering information, but the content has been homogenized by removing the local involvement. Large groups of radio stations eliminate local talent for syndicated programming or live feeds of personalities in faraway cities. Piped in jukeboxes with inane commentary about generic topics. Radio tries to compete with streaming music services instead of doing what it does best. Bringing you immediate information about what's happening around you and playing songs in between. Or bringing you news from hundreds of places around the world, often in real time. A company called Red Apple Media has a plan to fill the void left by CBS Radio News. Perhaps they'll remember how radio works instead of trying to turn it into something it isn't. With proper management, they just might be able to promote themselves in such a way that we remember that radio is the easiest way to keep up with the world in real time. If you want to get more in-depth information about any particular event, you can always find it later on the internet. You know, like the way we would with the newspaper. CBS has relegated itself to a slower method of delivering news by abandoning radio. iHeartMedia has no interest in news gathering outside of celebrity gossip. Maybe the disconnect isn't the speed of the delivery as much as the content of the products. News from local affiliates is raw truth. It's a reporter on the ground telling the story about what just happened. It's not raw footage open to interpretation and presented in a way to mislead. It's a voice describing what happened, telling the story, reporting as a witness, or someone arriving on the scene and asking questions and getting statements from officials or witnesses. The reporter provides context and describes senses that video can't convey, like the smell in the air. Maybe it's too real. It isn't controlled enough. It hasn't gone through the proper channels for approval to distribute to the masses. It has to convey the right message in a way that promotes our agenda. Do local reporters have an agenda? Some might, but more just want to tell the stories of what's happening in their community. I was lucky enough to be able to tell the stories of what was happening in Las Vegas, Nevada for a short time in the grand scheme of things. And that's a great place to find stories to tell. Politics really didn't play a role in what stories we told or how we told them. And radio doesn't bind you to stories that need video. You can tell any story on the radio, and the listener will see it in perfect color and focus in their minds. CBS Radio News did a great job of bringing us the stories of America and the rest of the world with the World News Roundup and reporting from affiliates everywhere. Bringing news and information to millions of people everywhere for almost a hundred years is a great accomplishment, and I'm proud to have been a blip on the radar of that history. Sincerely, the listening to you may have noticed there's one thing that really divides the people of the United States of America, and that is immigration. There's a lot about how the press presents it to us that is misleading or meant to cause confusion. The same goes for those on the left who believe America should have open borders. They never differentiate between legal immigration and illegal immigration. The left believes that if you're able to make it here, you should be considered a neighbor and treated as if you followed all the rules to live in the United States. Democrat politicians will say things like, we'll protect everyone who lives here, and immigrants built this country. Well, everyone should be protected, and immigrants did build this country. To be more precise, not everyone should be protected from law enforcement. And what the Democrats are doing is insisting we don't enforce immigration laws. We knew as soon as Joe Biden was elected president, the t-shirt saying, Let us in, Joe, started circulating around the world. Not only did the Biden administration open the borders of the United States, but it also took specific measures to help migrants enter the United States, such as suing the states of Texas and Arizona to remove barriers set up by the states, demanding the barriers come down because only the federal government has the authority to enforce immigration laws. Clearly, the Biden administration didn't want them to be enforced. We all know what the result was: tens of millions of people coming into the United States without being vetted or following any procedure that meant anything, status hearings set for years away, while the country was overwhelmed with immigrants from all over the world in the middle of a pandemic. While American citizens were ordered to wear masks and get shots, unvetted migrants flooded our borders with no requirements remotely related to public health and safety. Our schools were overwhelmed, our hospitals were overwhelmed, our housing was overwhelmed. Money flowed out of the Biden administration in the form of stimulus checks and subsidies for the needs of illegal immigrants in cities across the nation. Inflation skyrocketed because the federal government flooded the citizens with cash. I even remember my wife asking me if there's a way to refuse the stimulus checks. There wasn't, as far as I know. I only encouraged her to spend the money locally instead of online. Preventable crimes, including murder, permeated the sanctuary of our communities, leading to the title of Angel Mother for too many. So many, in fact, that they held a luncheon at the White House for them recently, along with Gold Star Moms. But the progressive left makes excuses for it, or outright denies it, or simply calls it something else. Anything but acknowledge it. The Democrats under Joe Biden opened the border, and the Democrats today want to keep everyone they let in be allowed to stay. Regardless of what our nation's laws say we're supposed to do. By now you might be thinking, but Bob, all that stuff is over. Why are you still talking about it? Because it's not over. As recently as a few weeks ago, a Democrat representative from Georgia couldn't even give grieving mothers who lost children to crimes committed by illegal aliens a bit of sympathy, calling the hearing a stunt and a way to stir up prejudice against people of color. Perhaps not even noticing that one of the mothers was a person of color. Hank Johnson found two ways to be a bigot in one sentence. In some cities, illegal aliens have more rights than citizens. Sanctuary cities like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York are havens for the decay that saturation of illegal aliens creates. They're more likely to be let out on the street after committing a crime than a citizen as a result of policies that penalize following the rule of law and activist judges who don't have the public safety as a top priority. The district attorney of Lauden County, Virginia, was just brought before a congressional subcommittee and was confronted by Congressman Jim Jordan about the policy. Because the guy beside you wouldn't prosecute him, right?

SPEAKER_05 15:34

You'd have to talk to him. So this guy, the guy beside you wouldn't prosecute the guy who's an illegal migrant, who'd been charged with six different crimes, who was arrested for murder in 2020, who in 2023 assaulted a police officer, and who in September of 2025 was charged with aggravated malicious wounding and brandishing a gun. And that guy's released, you can't hold him because he's not going to be prosecuted. Is that right? I'm not sure about, you know, that's why you told us you sent us a letter on March 11, 2016, addressed to myself and Chairman McClintock, and you said on December 16, 2025, the Commonwealth's attorney moved to not prosecute the charges of aggravated malicious wounding and brandishing a firearm by Mr. Morales Ortiz. So you had to let him out, didn't you?

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Through a court order by a judge, yes, I did.

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You had to let him out.

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I was ordered to release him by a judge.

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Is um I see you got some of your deputies behind. How's morale in your department, Sheriff?

SPEAKER_03 16:35

Is it good? I didn't know I was here to talk about morale, sir, but um based on the You're here to answer the questions we ask you. That's what you're here for. Of course I am. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 16:47

Well, I'm I'm I'll I'll refer you to a statement you made in August. Fairfax County Sheriff, Stacey Kincaid. Democrat also told seven news reporter Nick Minick, it's shameful the way things have not been prosecuted. You stand by that statement? If that's what was written, I do. No, I'm not asking if that's what's written. I'm saying, do you did you say that and do you stand by that? And is that having an impact on morale? Because most of the police departments I know and sheriffs and deputies that I know, when they get the bad guys off the street, they like to see them prosecuted so they don't come back on the street, harm the community you're supposed to protect, and make their job tougher because they gotta go get them again when they commit some other crime. That's why I asked the morale question in light of your statement just a few months ago, where you said it's shameful that the guy beside you is not prosecuting people. I did. You said that? I did. Okay, good. Mr. Descano, why'd you change your website?

SPEAKER_04 17:37

Sir, first of all, let me address what you had said.

SPEAKER_05 17:40

No, no, no, you answered the question, you answered the questions we asked, asked a simple question. Why did you change your website last month?

SPEAKER_04 17:46

Well, sir, your statements about we're not don't want to prosecute guys is absolutely false. And my policies are in this. Are you saying what the sheriff wrote me is is wrong? No, what I'm saying is that the way that my policies have been presented in this are outrageous.

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She said the Commonwealth's attorney, that's you, chose not to prosecute Mr. Morales Ortiz on December 16th, and they had to release him, they had to do their job because you wouldn't prosecute. What happened on December 17th, Mr. Descano? Well, sir, for let's talk about December. That's the question. What happened on December 17th? This guy murdered somebody, and I'm asking you, why did you change your website?

SPEAKER_04 18:24

Well, do you not want me to talk to you about the the the actual case? I want you to answer the first question I said. Which is about the case. Change your website. Well, sir, because the website is not my policy. My policy is you were voters might be campaigning. The voters might be interested in that.

SPEAKER_05 18:43

This is your campaign website where you said our office will take immigration consequences into account when making charging and plea decisions. Immigration consequences were certainly part of the game here, part of the issue here with Mr. Morales Ortiz.

SPEAKER_04 18:55

No, they weren't. You decide to do that. Absolutely or not. You are you are assuming something that is not that is in fact untrue, because you are misrepresenting my policies. My policies do not say that we do not prosecute people. Because that's not my policy. As I told you, sir, that's a campaign statement that I made.

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It had been up for six years, a week after we send you a letter saying we want you to come testify, Shazam, you change it. Because you're asking, is that coincidental?

SPEAKER_04 19:25

Because I could not believe that somebody that people were so obtuse that they could not realize what the difference between a campaign statement and an actual office policy was. So when you make campaign statements, that's not those aren't true. You're not being honest with your voters? That's not what I'm saying at all, sir. Sir sounded like it. Sir sounded like it. That's absolutely not. What I'm saying is that when you still haven't told me why you still haven't told me why you took it down. Because I was hoping to come here to talk about my office policies, not be distracted by a campaign statement that was.

SPEAKER_05 20:01

This is almost laughable. This is your policy. You said it right here. You told the voters if you elect me, I will take into account immigration consequences when making charging and pleasing. This is my policy, not what you have in your hand. Oh, okay. So what you said to the voters is not not real, it doesn't count.

SPEAKER_04 20:16

No, sir. What I'm saying is that as an office holder, I didn't know.

SPEAKER_05 20:19

My office is run by my policy. Your sheriff said you wouldn't prosecute, this guy gets released, kills someone the next day, we start asking about it, you change your website and take down the statements that that say you're gonna take into account immigration consequences when you decide what you are going to tell you.

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Gentleman's time has expired.

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The left is constantly calling for abolishing immigration and customs enforcement, the very agency tasked with controlling both legal and illegal immigration. The longest government shutdown in American history was because the Democrats refused to fund the agency. They literally want there to be no immigration enforcement in the United States of America. To the point that they believe violence is justified to protect people who are in the country illegally, even those who commit heinous crimes like rape and murder, interfering with law enforcement by tossing projectiles, assaulting them and damaging government vehicles, impeding their progress, all in the name of protecting people who don't give a damn about them. Two people in Minnesota were killed as a result of their reckless activism. Violent protesters are trying to take the law into their own hands, and they find out it isn't as easy as it was in the summer of 2020. But following the law isn't an option for them at this point, because they've already fallen off the deep end of progressivism, and there's nothing left for them to grasp and pull themselves. Out. So violence becomes the answer, and it becomes justified by the words they hear from the radical Democrats with the biggest mouths.

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And you can hang your hat on that.

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What's the reason the topic of immigration is the one that trips the switch of the left? Why is immigration the hill they're willing to die on? Why are sanctuary policies so important to the Democrats? Two reasons. One for now and one for later. The Democrats want to keep the illegal people in the country and concentrate them in sanctuary districts. They're the pawns and the chess game the Democrats are playing. Ironically, the governor of Texas helped them along by shipping all of the border crossers to sanctuary cities. Keep them there until the next census, and they get counted towards congressional representation at the federal level. It won't matter that they can't vote, because the politicians are going to do what they want anyway. It won't matter that the immigrants might not agree that men should be able to pretend to be a woman in order to compete against them in sports. Because they can't vote. But they still gain representation for the district, and if there are enough of them, even a new district. Their vote doesn't matter. But their kids will be able to vote. All the Democrats need to do is continue to indoctrinate our kids in school through the teachers' unions and continue to teach the new kids how repressive America is, even though their parents came here voluntarily, and the only way to rid the country of repression is to accept socialism. And boom, you got a whole new crop of voters. There's a good chance they're also very familiar with the government welfare systems, too. And the Democrats have been using government assistance as a lure to voters for a very long time. Reliance on the government often leads to a reliance on other things as well, and can turn into a vicious cycle, sometimes lasting for generations of broken families. That seems to be the kind of America the progressive Democrats and the Socialists want. Moderate Democrats are being squeezed out of the party. This week in 1866, the U.S. Congress eliminates the half-dime coin and replaces it with the five cent piece or nickel. So what's the difference? Well, the halftime was made from silver, and the nickel is made from 75% copper and 25%, you guessed it, nickel. Just as there were a variety of designs of the halftime, there have been a variety of designs for the nickel as well. Wikipedia says there were three years when no nickels were minted, 1922, 1932, and 1933.

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The 1900s.

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You could not say or write or publish anything that might hinder the military or military recruitment efforts. You could not say anything bad about the form of government or the Constitution. You could not fly a flag of an enemy country. There were other types of behavior that were also forbidden by the Sedition Act of 1918. It didn't last long, though. Its obvious violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution led to it having a very short life as a law. It was repealed in 1921. This week in 1954, the United States Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The result was that American schools could no longer be segregated by race. Until then, they were, under the separate but equal precedent set by the Supreme Court 60 years earlier. The court found that the segregation was a violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. It's the same reasoning the current Supreme Court used to declare part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional in relation to congressional districts. This week in 1984, Prince Charles calls a proposed addition to the National Gallery in London a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend, sparking controversies on the proper role of the royal family and the course of modern architecture. More on the royal family in a moment. This week in 1988, a report by United States Surgeon General C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine. You may have noticed something missing from those comparisons. Marijuana. Once vilified and labeled a gateway drug, certain marijuana products have been reclassified by the Trump administration as Schedule III, meaning they aren't as restricted as drugs like heroin and cocaine. Marijuana is now being used to treat all kinds of maladies, both physical and psychological. C. Everett Koop must have recognized the potential back in 1988, or he would have lumped it in with cocaine, heroin, and nicotine. As it turns out, the gateway drug was never marijuana. It was always nicotine. And it still is. This week in 1991, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress. Her son, the current King Charles, recently addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress as well. The impact of what a king said to the U.S. Congress pales in comparison with the tremor caused by his architectural opinion as a mere prince.

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The listening tube will return at the speed of sound. Send email to thelistening tube at outlook.com.

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Pretty much any time you look at what Democrat-run states are doing when it comes to how our tax dollars are spent, you're going to find that your money isn't being spent on stuff that benefits you, but is more likely being siphoned off by fraud. Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency did a lot to expose fraud, waste, and abuse at the federal level, but the fraud at the state level had yet to be discovered. A lot of it is now coming to light. Vice President J.D. Vance has been appointed to be the fraud czar, in much the same way that Kamala Harris was appointed to be the border czar. It will be interesting to compare the results of their work. The former Vice President didn't set the bar very high, so the current Vice President should be able to do well. Let's face it, Kamala should be called Collander for how much the border leaked under her watch. Vice President Vance has already held back billions of dollars in subsidies to states that haven't gained control of obvious and sometimes encouraged fraud. Case in point, a report was released recently by Minnesota Fraud Prevention and Oversight Committee of the Minnesota House of Representatives. It says after two dozen hearings with dozens of witnesses, hundreds of whistleblower reports, and reviewing hundreds of documents and reviewing years of reports, it is clear that the breadth and depth of fraud in Minnesota is much worse than anyone thought possible and stretches across multiple agencies in the Walls administration. Tim Walls, the governor of Minnesota and former Democrat nominee for vice president of the United States of America, has been fleecing American taxpayers for years. Maybe he didn't get direct cash payments, but his agenda was to finance anyone who would continue to support him. Money flowed in all directions, and Tim Walls knew that what he was doing was wrong. Not only did he let it happen, he encouraged it and punished anyone who brought attention to it. The report specifically states that by 2019 senior officials in Governor Walls' office, DHS, and Attorney General Ellison's office knew that large-scale fraud was likely occurring in the Child Care Assistance Program and by 2020 within the Minnesota Department of Education. The Waltz administration ignored and consciously downplayed shocking levels of fraud across more than a dozen Medicaid waiver programs. The report goes on to list some and ends with, and many others. It goes on to say that Governor Waltz created a culture that enabled fraud by failing to hold anyone in his administration accountable, despite years of credible whistleblower and OLA reports, and actual federal criminal indictments and convictions. So the federal government had already exposed the fraud and had taken action. The Waltz administration did nothing. Instead of addressing the problem directly early in 2019, he downplayed or ignored the evidence and closed the criminal investigation unit that was having the greatest impact. That's right from the report. Over the eight years he has been in office, he has sought to shift blame rather than take responsibility and solve problems. A prime example was during the height of the Feeding Our Future scam when Governor Walls tried to blame a court order for his failure to stop payments to fraudsters, despite significant evidence of fraud. This tactic was repudiated by the judge. This is in the report.

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And if that wasn't enough.

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By the way, this is only the beginning of the executive summary of the whole report. Just a few paragraphs to sum it all up. The reader's digest version, if you will. But there's more. It goes on to say that despite having sufficient authority to take action to prevent fraud and the authority to place new controls when necessary, the Walls administration allowed the fraud to explode to unprecedented levels. All of these failures have created opportunities for serial fraudsters to steal billions from Minnesota taxpayers across multiple programs for years. The Walls administration has been lax and permissive, allowing indicted fraudsters and their associates to continue stealing from Minnesotans in other programs. This malfeasance and incompetence has cost Minnesotans $300 million in federal meals fraud and up to $9 billion in Medicaid fraud. These numbers do not include potential hundreds of millions more in fraud in childcare and SNAP benefits. That's all directly from the report. Is all this messed up? Hell yeah. The sad part is this is just business as usual in the progressive government playbook. I've said it many times before. Whoever is in charge decides which laws are enforced. When progressives are in charge, fraud is legal and encouraged. As has been demonstrated by Minnesota Governor Tim Walls and his Attorney General Ellison and the Democrats who refuse to even allow hearings to examine where the fraud might be. That's right, Democrats have actually blocked people from investigating fraud. I don't personally need a lot more proof to convince me that there's a concerted effort to defraud the American taxpayer in multiple states around the country of what it means to govern by using our tax dollars to, in some ways, buy votes. When you allow fraud because it will benefit a person or a particular group of people at the expense of others in order to maintain control, then it's wrong. It's now being revealed for what it is fraud. The progressive establishment is trying to create a government-sponsored underground social support system. One that's never been approved by the legislature or signed into law, but is still sanctioned by progressive governments eager to let supporters suckle from the government teat in exchange for looking the other way or even taking measures to accelerate the fraud. Government-sponsored fraud is grounds for not only removal from office, but criminal prosecution. It's about time we witness the fraudsters in our governments be held responsible for the damage they cause. This is the last episode of season 14 of the listening tube. There are some changes coming down the pike, too. If you're a longtime listener, you may have noticed that there are generally three parts to each episode. Not the headlines, let's go back through the listening tube, and an epilogue or interview. Sometimes, when the interview is a little long, I won't have time for the history segment, and I know there are people who really enjoy that part. Then one of my past guests, Russell Van Brocklin, confirmed that I did indeed have three podcasts all wrapped up into one. So going forward, I'm going to separate them. They will all still exist under the listening tube umbrella, but each will have its own slate to state which part it is. Basically, I'm going to create a way for you to be able to listen to the parts you want and not the parts you don't. This will provide me the opportunity to generate more content, react more quickly to topical events, and not be relegated to a specific schedule. Releases will be shorter in length as well. So if you get an alert that a new episode is out, it's true, even if it isn't Sunday. The listening tube is written and produced by yours truly, copyright 2026. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'll be back in a couple weeks after a brief break for the retooling. Until then, I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Thou at Infinitum.