To start the show, Jason Hartman answers listener questions about depreciation and appreciation, Land to Improvement Ratio, and how to keep score as an investor. Then, he interviews James Rosen, Fox News Chief Washington correspondent and author of “Cheney One on One: A Candid Conversation with America’s Most Controversial Statesman.” James shares that Dick Cheney is a deeply analytical person who has studied US history in search of clues from the past which may lead us into a brighter future. In the book, he reveals Cheney’s spiritual beliefs through the years and how he ran the federal government directly after the 9/11 crisis.
Announcer 0:00
This show is produced by the Hartman media company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit Hartman media.com.
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Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it on now. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution. Real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 1:03
Welcome Welcome. Welcome to the creating wealth show. This is your host Jason Hartman episode number 643 643. Thank you so much for joining me today from around the world 164 countries. It’s great to have you here. Let me ask my co-host today who our guest is. Hey, hey, Coco. Coco. Yeah. Who’s our guest today?
Jason Hartman 1:27
Oh, you know, Coco is my dog. Many of you know Coco, because you’ve met her at our events. One of the few educational real estate guru guys where you can go and you go to his events and there’s a house dog. Not always but she comes to many of them. So anyway, yeah, Coco tells me our guest today will be James Rosen. Fox News chief Washington correspondent, author of cheney one on one candid conversation with America’s most conscious Virtual statesman. Given that it’s election year, we got to talk about a few political issues here and there and waiting to hear the next one that’s coming up. Oh, boy. You want to talk about controversy? Wow. Wait till then wait till the next episode. It’s gonna get even crazier than this one. Hey, I got some great questions from all of you listeners. And I just want to quickly see if I can get through a few of them before we can get to our guests. Thank you so much for putting these in. When you registered for the Salt Lake City event, which is coming up in less than a week. Gosh, I am leaving on Wednesday to fly out to Salt Lake City. And I will see all of you who are attending on Saturday. It’s going to be a great event. J Ah, you live Jason Hartman University live, certainly not a real University. Because how much is it like 297 bucks or something? No real university would be like $200,000 and you’d learn a lot of stuff you can’t use in real life. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Hopefully if you have kids going off to college, you are guiding them and you are not paying to finance these crazy liberal arts degrees that nobody is hiring for. There are no jobs.
I met a cute young girl the other day, and too young for me. But I asked, I was talking to her for a few minutes. And I said, Well, you know, she told me she’s going to school and I said, What are you what are you studying? And she goes engineering and I’m thinking, yeah, engineering. Now that’s a real degree. You know, go get a degree in something real that the world needs and create some new swanky gadget or build a bridge or something. Engineering that’s that’s a real thing. A lot of these other degrees they’re just sadly not real things. You know, they’re interesting. Hey, listen, I love when I was in my teens and 20s one of my favorite subjects to study was philosophy. I love studying all the philosophers and learning about them. I remember in high school, I read Plato’s Republic. Look, looking back on that, as I recall, I may not be recalling it correctly. But that was like the blueprint for a communist dictator, you know, everybody should be in a certain role and stuff like that. But all that stuff like Karl Marx, Das Kapital it all looks so good on paper yet it just never works out in practice, kind of like multi level marketing looks so good on paper, but it just never seems to work out that well in practice. Well, it works out really well for the people at the top, but then again, so does communism and socialism. Okay, multi level marketers don’t get mad at me, don’t get mad at me. You know, it’s like, that’s a really good business model. That real estate investing and franchising, I think those are some of the really awesome business models. And then of course, all these various permutations of Internet Marketing. That reminds me to I did a show you know, I’ve been on hundreds and hundreds of other people’s radio shows podcasts, some TV shows sprinkled in there. I’ve been on On television in Hong Kong, Australia, and you know, once in a while I get one of these hosts that just just they’re so clueless.
I remember last week I was being interviewed by this child. I mean, he was, he was, he was a childish idiot. Really? He of course would not let me get a word out edge wise, you know, this is this is probably the problem of too much testosterone. That is a problem in the world. Think of all the stuff it does, you know, the violence it causes and impatience and, you know, I mean, there’s certainly we’ve none of us would be here without it. That and probably a little smattering of alcohol, you know, figure that one out. But because your ancestors, they probably had some alcohol here and there and that got people together. That’s why it’s called a social lubricant. Anyway, this guy, this kid would not listen, I couldn’t tell him anything. He knew everything. And he said, Well, I don’t get it. How do your properties make any money if you don’t pay them off and you don’t have positive cash flow? And I said, well think for a moment. This is the concept and the beauty of leverage, right? It’s using OPM other people’s money. If you put $5,000 down on a property, and you only make 100 bucks a month in positive cash flow or say for example, you don’t make anything yet, behind the scenes, you have leveraged appreciation, you have tax benefits, you have future cash flow streams and doing that if you use the property tracker software, you can calculate and look at the 10 year projections and calculate the holy grail of investment return metrics. What is that listeners? I hope you know it. It’s It’s a hard one now, but it is the holy grail of investment return metrics. It is the IRR, the internal rate of return that takes into account The time value of money. In other words, inflation’s impact on money, streams of cash flows over the course of years.
Jason Hartman 7:12
And all of the other things that we’ve talked about in many prior episodes, and by the way, whether you have or haven’t watched this, please spend 27 of the most valuable minutes of your life, and go to Jason hartman.com. And watch my video of on how to analyze a real estate investment, and how to read a performance. That is, I mean, listen, if you do nothing else, if you don’t want to listen to my blabbering all the time, three times a week, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and if you don’t want to go back and listen to 642 episodes, just please do yourself a favor, even if you’ve done it already. You should do this. Every, every few months, maybe every three to six months, you know, depending on your level of experience in real estate investing. Just go watch that video. It is I mean, I tell you Yeah, that just sums it up. That sums it up, folks. Not everything, but it sums it up pretty good. You really learn to analyze real estate investments by just watching that little 27 minute video. You can also find it on YouTube. But of course, it’s really easy. It’s right on the front page of our site at Jason Hartman, calm. So this kid knew everything. I couldn’t tell him anything. The listeners probably thought I was the idiot, because he wouldn’t want me to get a word in edgewise. It’s just one of these things. But you know what?
Jason Hartman 8:29
It’s kind of like that great, undiscovered place that you might live or that great restaurant that you might know about? Or that great housekeeper you have, you know, selfishly, do you really want everybody to know, because if everybody knows, then they’re going to come in and they’re going to suck up all the opportunities. So maybe it’s just better that the fools of the world like this child is a child because he was like in his 20s Early 20s, mid 20s maybe it’s better that they don’t get it, because then there will be less fewer people out there offering properties for rent. You know, he just he just thought he knew everything. We all suffered from that. I certainly did. I don’t know, when I was 17. I probably knew everything. When I was 21. I got a little dumber. When I was 25. I got even dumber. And then by the time I was 30, or 35 years old, I just realized all the stuff I didn’t know. And I guess that just gets more that way every year, you know, so we shall see.
All right, let’s jump in and answer a couple of these questions then get to our guests. Gerard asked us, is there any way to sell a property without doing a 1031 exchange and not having to pay the capital gains? Yes, there is Gerard. Here it is. sell a property that hasn’t appreciated and that doesn’t have any depreciation recapture and you won’t have The paying capital gains. But I assume your property has appreciated like my boy, that Houston property that I just sold. I can’t believe it that thing I didn’t even know it had appreciated so much. You know, that’s the beauty of this income property stuff, you just sort of let it sit, you don’t think too much about it. A few years go by, and suddenly Hey, you’re in the money, you didn’t even realize it right? And so I’m doing that one I’m selling it on a 1031 tax deferred exchange. And I’m gonna buy two more properties in good old Memphis because remember one of the mistakes and I make many mistakes. One of the mistakes that I have freely admitted I have made is that I over diversified you know, I had properties in 11 states 17 cities over diversify Jason three to five markets. That’s good enough. So now I’m you know, slowly but surely unwinding that and I am I’m diversifying, I want to get to a reasonable amount of diversification. And that means, really for me for you know, someone with my number of properties, I mean, I got a lot of properties, obviously, or I should say a lot of units, five cities, six, seven cities, if I can get it down to that, I will find it easier to manage my portfolio. So don’t over diversify. So the answer to gerards question is, there is no way that I know of, to sell a property that either has appreciated or has what’s called depreciation recapture. Meaning that you took this tax write off through depreciation on the property for a number of years or maybe just one year, whatever amount of time, well, when you sell that property, if it didn’t depreciate in real life, that is a tax liability to you. So the beauty of the 1031 tax deferred exchange is that you can have all that appreciation and all that Beautiful because income property is the most tax favored asset in America, all that beautiful depreciation tax benefit that you’ve taken. And you can roll it right into the next property or the next set of properties, the next multiple set of properties that you buy through the 1031 tax deferred exchange. So it’s a beautiful thing. Now there are some things that you can do with like charitable remainder trust if you want to basically donate the property to charity through a charitable remainder trust a CRT, and I am no expert on that. That’s a complicated area. So I’m not even going to pretend to tell you how that all works. But basically, you’re you’re giving the property away. So you know, that’s, I’m sure not your intent here. You want to keep it for your portfolio and build that portfolio over time.
Okay, Edward Edward asked another question. He says, In the short term, are you worried about a real estate bubble like seven years ago With all the foreign investors piling up properties here, hmm, another good question. You know, it depends where Edward, it really depends where? Because if I was to answer that question on a national basis, and you know, and all of you listeners know that there is no such thing as a national housing market in a country as large and diverse as the United States. But if I was to answer that on a nationwide Well, actually, no, I don’t even want to say that. Let me correct that. If I was to answer that on a Case Shiller index basis, okay. Now, the main K, they’ve expanded the Case Shiller index, thank God, it was about time totally overdue. I mean, everybody was going by this idiotic index that only only evaluated 20 markets, and of those 20 markets, depending on how you look at it, you know, 15 of them, were given Take one or two would be considered cyclical markets, the high flying markets that I wouldn’t even touch I wouldn’t even recommend those. So do I think there’s a real estate bubble? In the Case Shiller index, the primary one that does the 20 markets? Yeah, I say we’re we’re getting near that. You know, I don’t know if we’re there yet. But I’d say it’s something to be very cautious about and be very considerate of. And that means that that index is obviously weighted with, you know, 14 1516 of its markets, being the cyclical markets that we don’t recommend, okay, we want the linear markets, or at least the hybrid type markets, and those would be good.
Now. One that I want to mention this, just understand that what I’m about to say is a relatively minor concern of mine. But again, I pride myself on being very transparent telling you about my foibles and mistakes, and I have many and I’m going to talk to you on future shows about some bad little investments I’ve made here and there with, you know, some risk capital. I mean, look, I, you know, I freely admit I have some money to gamble with, and I gamble a little bit now and then not gamble gamble. I don’t like gambling, but, you know, I’ll do some sort of exotic investments, if you will, and they’re not really that exotic, but for my conservative mind nowadays, I would call them a little bit exotic. I’ll tell you about some of those on future episodes. I’ve talked about some of those on past episodes where I’ve learned my lessons. So in the Chicago land area, you know, people have asked, Are you concerned about the financial problems that that area has? And yes, we are somewhat concerned about it, but not terribly so. Because there might be a movement toward increasing property taxes, you know, in addition to what’s already happened, they have high taxes, they’re right and, you know, this is is a relatively small impact on your overall investment. It may is say, for example, say this happens, say your property taxes on on a given property go up by 500 or $1,000 per year, for example, you know, you’re going to look at that and think, well, that sucks, right? But in the overall scheme of things, if you were to use the property evaluator app that is in the apple or iTunes App Store, for your iOS device, your iPad, your iPhones, or you were to go to property tracker, comm and use that software to evaluate your real estate deal. You would see that that is a relatively minor impact, right? But emotionally, you know, it might it might bring your return down by a few points. But the emotional impact of getting this higher tax bill and thinking oh my god, my taxes went up by $500 or $1,000 per year. You might think This really sucks.
But when you really and this is why it’s so important to know how to keep score as an investor, because most people who call themselves real estate investors, they don’t standardize their data. They don’t use good software. And they, you know, they’re using Excel spreadsheets and calculators and they just don’t know or, or they’re using their brain, which is probably the worst tool in some cases. And they just don’t know how to keep score. They don’t know how to evaluate a real estate investment, like that idiotic kid I was interviewed by last week. So use property tracker used property evaluator and know how to keep score standardize your data. Okay. And you will be much better off short term bubble. Yeah, I would say I’d be worried about that. And in cyclical markets in the high flying markets, what are those just to review the expensive Northeastern markets, South Florida, virtually all of California virtually all the all of the Pacific Northwest region. Any expensive market with bad LTI or land to improvement value ratios? Okay.
And then the next question from john, and this will be the last one, we’ll get to our guest. The next question from john ties right into it. So john, thank you for this one. He says, Why no properties in any western states? I think I just answered that. What do I mean by that, john? Well, why no. Why no properties in any western states, because those are the cyclical markets. Those are the markets with bad land to remember I coined the metric I made this one up, okay. I’m just making this up as I go, folks. Just kidding. I coined this metric, the LTI ratio, the land to improvement ratio. So in western states and markets with high land values, those markets just don’t work. Okay. We want low land values and high improvement values, as a ratio of the overall equation. Remember, when you buy a property, you’re buying two components, the improvement, that’s the house or the apartment sitting on the land, and the land, we want that land value to be cheap or free. We want the improvement to be most of the value in that equation. Because when you use the Hartman, risk evaluator metric, you don’t know what that is go to Jason Hartman calm and there’s a little search bar right up on the website, type it in and search it. Hartman, risk evaluator great tool took me 19 years to figure that out. It’s just totally unique to to my philosophy of real estate investing. No one else is talking about that. Unless they’re copying me, which I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And there are many imitators out there. But yeah, these markets, they just they’re the cyclical markets of the markets where they’re more bubble ish. They’re more frothy and you can’t get the cash flow. We have toyed with the idea of looking in Phoenix again, still, you know, we’ve been in and out of Phoenix a few times. Over the years, and of course, I live in Scottsdale, which is a suburb of Phoenix, and love it here. But you know, it’s a little too expensive. It just doesn’t work. And if we can find any inventory and a good team to help us make it work, we will be recommending it again, but so far haven’t been able to do it. Alright, that’s all we have time for.
Let’s get to our guest. I know don’t hate me for talking about politics, folks. It’s an election year politics influence our financial lives in so many intense, deep ways. We have got to be political, you cannot avoid it. It’s a big part of life. All right. It is the context in which we live and invest. That’s enough said, Okay. If you want to come join us in Salt Lake City, go to Jason hartman.com. Click on events and join us there. The we’ve been getting a lot of registrations lately. So we’re looking forward to seeing you all there. March 12, Saturday, downtown Salt Lake City, we got a great hotel, great venue. All that information will be emailed to those people after they register. Jason hartman.com. Click on events, click on the properties section, look at properties, learn how to read those performance, check out the video on there. And let’s go to our guests James Rosen. And let’s talk about a controversial statesman.
It’s my pleasure to welcome James Rosen. He is the Fox News chief Washington correspondent. He’s the author of Cheney One on One, a candid conversation with America’s most controversial statesman. James, welcome. How are you?
James Rosen 21:35
Good to be with you, Jason. Thank you.
Jason Hartman 21:37
Good to have you on the show. So Cheney. Gosh, I tell you how, you know, between Bush and Cheney. They’ve had they’ve been picked on quite a bit. Is it fair? All this stuff you hear about Cheney, Halliburton making money off oil in the war in Iraq and all this stuff? I wonder if it is I think a lot of those criticisms seem unjust to me, but I’m not sure.
James Rosen 21:5/
Well, first, great to be with you, too. And I’m happy to talk about my book Cheney one on one, I interviewed the former Vice President for 10 hours, across three days, this past December in the man’s own study in his own home in Northern Virginia shortly before he was to turn 74 years of age, and I can promise you and our listeners that you have never heard Dick Cheney open up the way he did, and he’s 10 hours with me in his own home. And in this book, there was a lot to your question in terms of what’s true and isn’t true. Specifically, the the idea that Chinese service as the CEO of Halliburton, the energy company, in between the two Bush administration’s somehow informed his decision making up in and around the Iraq War, has been fairly thoroughly debunked even by the most hostile biographer to dick Cheney. There was a prosecutorial book about him published some years ago called anger by a very well respected Washington journalist Barton Gellman and even Galvin came to the conclusion where sees very little Otherwise to admire and big Chinese career that never were Cheney’s decisions, apparently influenced by any desire to line his own pockets that in fact, Cheney for went millions in stock options and other benefits from fellow Burton to assume the vice presidency. But I do agree with you, Jason, that Dick Cheney has been subject to a lot of misidentification, a lot of vilification and part of my aim really, in writing Cheney one on one was in the realm of caricature for the realm of Darth Vader, because he’s too important for that.
Jason Hartman 23:34
Yeah, definitely, definitely an important figure in history, no question about it. Just to finish up on that Halliburton and Iraq issue. I never understood it anyway. I mean, you know, I assume maybe he had, you know, a good amount of stock, but would that really trickle down that much? And did he even own stock? I mean, he certainly wasn’t working there at the time he was vice president. Do you want to touch on that a little bit more or clarify that for the listeners.
James Rosen 24:00
I just think that the the notion of connecting Halli burton, to the Iraq war to the Cheney vice presidency has been, as I say, fairly thoroughly discredited, even by historians, journalists who are largely unsympathetic to Dick Cheney. But I did discuss with the former vice president in Cheney one on one in great detail of the Iraq war. And its various stages, the planning stage, the execution stage, the reconstruction stage, each of which stage is the fault of the former vice president was very candid, in acknowledging to me mistakes that he and George W. Bush made. You have to remember that dick Cheney 10 years earlier when he was defense secretary, serving alongside Colin Powell, who was then the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both serving under the first president bush and helped lead the nation to victory in the Gulf War. 10 years later, policymakers operated in the run-up to the Iraq war with on the basis of certain assumptions inherited from the public. About how Saddam Hussein would likely behave. They assumed he would torch the oil fields that he would attack, advancing US troops with chemical weapons. And as Cheney puts it to me, in Cheney one on one, there’s no question about that there were things we anticipated that did not materialize. And there were things we fail to anticipate that didn’t materialize. But he’s still remained steadfast in believing that overthrowing Saddam Hussein has made the world a better place. And that Iraq for all the myriad problems that faces today is a better place for exhibiting as it does the signs of a flourishing democracy.
Jason Hartman 25:35
Yeah. Tell us about the man. Tell us about his early career, if you would, I mean, he dropped out of Yale, he became White House Chief of Staff at an early age. Give us some of the background. I don’t think many people hear about his younger years at all.
James Rosen 25:48
Sure. And again, it Cheney one on one we really span in the 10 hours of interviews, Cheney’s entire life in probing detail, often in much greater detail than he’s ever granted any place. So we talked about his childhood in, in Wyoming he was born in, in Lincoln, Nebraska, but raised in Casper, Wyoming, talks about his relationships with his parents, how he influenced him, and also about his spiritual journey. This is something you simply don’t hear Dick Cheney discussed anywhere else. But talking to me about his Sunday school experiences at the Methodist Church in Casper, where he was raised his own denominational migrations over the years, his innermost beliefs about faith and to hear Dick Cheney survivor of five heart attacks and heart transplant shortly before turning 74 years of age, in his own study, to say him to hear him say to me, I’m a Christian. I believe in a life hereafter. It was very striking stuff. And it’s only in training one on one.
Jason Hartman 26:45
Very interesting, very interesting. It seems like the left is so nasty to him. We talked about that at the beginning in the opening of the show, but you know, do you want to elaborate any more on a Darth Vader metaphor on you know, I mean, I’ve seen things on social media, you know, I hope this guy has a heart attack again, and this time it gets them. And I mean, just really nasty stuff that must really weigh on him. I would assume.
James Rosen 27:10
To the contrary, you know, the final question, Jason that I asked Cheney at the end of our 10 hours together. Again, we were supposed to only do six hours together, and he extended each session to longer because he realized that we were covering the ground, exploring important territory, and making real contribution to the history and legacy of our times. At the very end, I finally allowed that phrase Darth Vader to escape my lips. And I asked the former vice president if he believes that that caricature is going to prevail in historical memory of him. And as a consequence, whether he believes themselves to be popularly or widely misunderstood. And he told me that he just feels privileged to have taken part in so many historic events that Cheney after all, stood almost uniquely at the center of power in this country for four decades from the Watergate era right up through 911 and 12. And beyond, and that he doesn’t feel unduly criticized he doesn’t feel sorry for himself. And generally speaking, he doesn’t pay too much attention to his critics at all. No. throughout much of our 10 hours together, there was a gorgeous yellow Labrador named Nelson Cheney’s dog sitting in on the sessions with us. On the recordings, the animals, heavy, panting can occasionally be heard. And at one point, this sinister Darth Vader character, this menacing, man rises from his chair in his study and announces to me that we have to pause the recordings, because, quote, I got to go get my dog into doggy daycare. It’s just not the kind of sentence you expect to hear if you pick Cheney, and it shows that this man is flesh and blood, enjoys a good joke. He’ll have a drink with you and he is garrulous when you know how to get him talking, in short, that his sensuality to American life and politics and government for so long. Really makes him too important for us to consigned into the the category of caricature.
Jason Hartman 28:56
Yeah, yeah, definitely agree. Talk to us a little bit about 911. In the world on terror and Cheney’s, Cheney’s role in everything.
James Rosen 29:03
Sure. Well, the readers when you’re when your listeners go out and buy Cheney one on one, they will be treated to Dick Cheney really almost narrating his day on 911 his singular experience on that horrific day almost in a minute by minute fashion, all of us on 911 whether we had a direct connection to the events or not felt grief, of shock of anxiety of terror. Only one American had a thrust on his shoulders the responsibility while President Bush was hopscotching about the country on Air Force One looking for a secure place to land of running the federal government during those crisis hours in the early aftermath of the Twin Towers falling from a bunker below the White House and that was Dick Cheney, who was doing that. And what kicked in for Dick Cheney, first of all, he talks about how Secret Service agents bust into his offices vice president literally physically take him out of his chair by the seat of his pants and drag him out of his office down to this bunker. The President Emergency Operations Center below the White House and you’ve seen weapons get passed around there. He said the entire staff was was was stunned. And he used a specific phrase with me, Jason that really stays with me. He said that the entire staff was in a state of shock and all, which, of course, is a phrase we ordinarily associate with the Iraq war. And they’re operating under terrible Fog of War conditions. The communications facilities net bunker were not up to 20% through scratch. They were getting reports of pipe bombs going off to the State Department and six planes not for being involved in the attacks and will kick the interdict cheney thrust with these responsibilities on his shoulders. In the President’s absence was the classified training sessions he had taken as a congressman back in the 1980s when it was contemplated that the United States might face an all out nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. And the goal of the training was to preserve the continuity of government. What does that mean? It means keeping the government functioning and operating that kind of All Out crisis. And the first key of that to that is to preserve the line of succession from the president to the Vice President, to the house speaker. So the first advice Dick Cheney gave George W. Bush on that horrific day of 911. And Cheney tells me in these interviews that bush resisted it didn’t like it, fought it, but eventually listened to Dick Cheney was to stay out of Washington. Let’s preserve the continuity of government. Let’s preserve the line of succession. And have you stay out of Washington until such time as we have arms wrapped around what we’re dealing with here. riveting stuff, and it’s in cheney one on one.
Jason Hartman 31:31
Wow, amazing. That’s got to be just just incredible. So how long was bush out of Washington new Do you recall? I don’t. I remember that first stage.
James Rosen 31:42
Several hours. Yeah. And eventually gave a gave a public statement from an Air Force Base. But as we all remember, he started out the day reading to children in a classroom in Florida.
Jason Hartman 31:53
How current did you get with Dick Cheney? When you were interviewing for the book? Did you come right up to present day at the time, the interview and, you know, what does he think of what’s going on in Syria? And I mean, I’m I don’t know that you have any information about the more recent Paris attacks, but from him, but just in general.
James Rosen 32:11
You know, the interviews took place in December 2014. And so they predate the Paris attacks. But I made it a point to ask Dick Cheney, not just about his singular history, at or near the center of power for so long, but also about what’s happening today. Because I wanted the benefit of his experience and wisdom on current contemporary subjects. So I asked Dick Cheney about the racial unrest in Ferguson, I asked him about the Tea Party, the immigration debate, the demographic future of the Republican Party, the digital age, and what that is going to mean as it unfolds going forward for American labor markets, and deliberately made a point of taking them outside of the so called comfort zone. And so that’s why I say if you care about where our country has been for the past 40 years, where you care about where it’s going, you’re going to want to read this book, Cheney One on One, because it gives you insight into this man’s experiences and his mind. And how profound has been his impact on our time?
Jason Hartman 33:08
Yeah, really, really. It has. Well, we’ve got a few minutes. I mean, please comment on some of those things. I mean, you mentioned a bunch of interesting things. You know, you’re talking about Ferguson, the digital age. I’ve been talking a lot on the shows recently about the impact of robotics and technology on employment issues. And what I mean, I don’t know we’ve always had technology disrupt things, but it seems like this time, it may be a lot more intense. I’m not sure. But I’d love to hear some of Cheney’s views on these things.
James Rosen 33:37
Sure. Well, again, when your readers go out and get this book, Cheney One on One, they’ll see Dick Cheney turning his his analytical prowess, because he’s a really a deep strategic thinker, and a longtime consumer of American intelligence product. So he has really a distinct approach to assessing data and information. You’ll your readers will your listeners will see how he brings all that to bear on contemporary problems and where the digital revolution is concerned. He mentioned that it may be observable so far with the digital digital revolution, perhaps in its infancy, that previous revolutions such as the Industrial Revolution have broadly served to expand employment opportunities. But that so far, what appears to be the case in the digital revolution is that it is not. In fact, perhaps potentially contracting them. And he drew attention to the statistic that is fairly new in our economic discourse. Your time was where everybody focused on the unemployment numbers, what is the unemployment rate, but increasingly, people are focusing on in the digital age, the statistics of the labor participation rate, what percentage of people are actually who are eligible to work are actually participating because you won’t be counted in.
Jason Hartman 34:57
And, and rightfully so. I mean, the unemployment rate like, so manipulated.
James Rosen 35:01
if you just if you drop out of the labor market doesn’t mean you can’t work, it just means you stop looking for one reason or another.
Jason Hartman 35:06
Right. Right. You’re discouraged gave up.
James Rosen 35:08
That’s right. And that participation rate today is the lowest it’s been since 1978. And he drew attention to that as well. You know, at one point I asked the former vice president if he thought that the internet is intrinsically a force for democracy, democratization, in the sense that wherever there is a freer flow of action that will redound to the forces of good. And he was reluctant to make that leap of saying that, that governments that our blind can also use information, new information streams and the internet for the purpose of suppression. So yeah, we could get into a lot of these issues with him.
Jason Hartman 35:48
The unemployment rate, the inflation rate, I mean, all of these statistics are so manipulated and people just do not understand them because, like you so rightfully pointed out with the labor participation rate, much more accurate metric. And also the I mean, the part-time workers, you know, I was just, I was just on an Uber ride last week. And I asked the driver what he did before Uber, and he said he was a UPS driver. And I said, Oh, well, you know, I hear that’s a pretty good company. And, you know, how was it? And he said, Well, it was good until Obamacare came in, and they made everybody part-time. So you know, there, there are so many nuances to these issues. And even if people are working, are they really working? You know, are they working that $70,000 a year job? No, they’re they’re 30 hours a week. Now, you know, it’s just, it’s a different world. And it’s definitely, definitely a lot of challenges out there. No question. What does Dick Cheney think about the war on terror more, more recently, you know, when and what we’re doing in Syria, and just any thoughts on the Middle East. I mean, this is so impactful.
James Rosen 36:54
We did talk about Syria, and he made the point that during the second Bush-Cheney term, the North Koreans were discovered to have built a nuclear reactor for Syria in the deserts of eastern Syria. And he Dick Cheney, once confronted with the intelligence of this, as passed to him directly from the Israelis, argued to President George W. Bush that the United States military should destroy that reactor. This is around 2007. And Bush ultimately was persuaded by Condoleezza Rice, her advisors that we should just let the matter be handled by the UN Security Council. And in Cheney One on One, Cheney recalls listening to this during the debate, presided over by the NSC with the President of the United States sitting there saying to himself, well, the Israelis are never going to sit still, for this to be brought to the UN Security Council and indeed, the Israelis in September 2007. And overnight strike destroyed the Syrian nuclear reactor completely. And as Cheney makes the point to me and training one on one territory, in eastern Syria, where That nuclear reactor stood is now controlled by ISIS. And he raises the question, can you just imagine if ISIS had been in possession by now of a functioning nuclear reactor? And so how grateful the world should be to the Israelis for having taken it out?
Jason Hartman 38:16
That’s one of the things I am constantly talking about on the show when we talk, especially about economics issues, and I think it’s one of the most important principles in life in general, you can’t hear the dogs that don’t bark. And see, Cheney and Bush would never get credit for something like that. Because it’s, it’s, it’s a vacuum, it’s something that never happened, because it was prevented. And wow, you know, that’s, that’s so unfortunate that history history will never give them credit for that.
James Rosen 38:45
And and sometimes there is some some value to be derived from engaging in what historians will call the counterfactual, what is the exit door. What if why it happened differently. And and, and there is In that, and I will say that cheney is an avid reader of history to sit in his study with him. And just look at the 350 or so works of military, political and diplomatic history lining the shelves, all neatly aligned at shelf edge. And you would turn your head clockwise around the room and see that the books were in fact organized chronologically with the Eisenhower books slowly giving way to the Kennedy books yield. And as you proceed clockwise to the, to the the Johnson and Nixon books and so on. He’s read these books. And when I actually sat down with him, he was in the middle of reading a 1990 biography of George Marshall by Ed Cray, which he recommended highly. So he is constantly looking to history for valuable lessons that can be applied to contemporary issues and problems. And the question I think dogging him is whether Americans are inclined to do that as well and learn appropriately from their history.
Jason Hartman 39:59
Very Very good points. So he’s a he’s a well read man and a student of history, you know, very, very powerful stuff. Well, you know, maybe there’s a question I didn’t ask you, James, what else would you like people to know that, you know, maybe we didn’t discuss?
James Rosen 40:14
Well, I appreciate it. And simply by way of conclusion, again, if you go out and you buy Cheney One on One, you’re going to learn how this man’s mind works. And you’re going to get real insight into beyond the Darth Vader caricature into how he operated, why he made the decisions he did and how incredibly important he has been to so many decades of American life. And if you love Dick Cheney, or you hate Dick Cheney, or you’re younger, maybe and you’re just learning about 911 and Iraq and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, this book Cheney, one on one is going to help you understand this man, and our times.
Jason Hartman 40:51
Excellent. Of course, the books available on Amazon and all the usual places. Do you have a website that you’d like to give out? Of course, you’ve foxnews.com but do you have your own website
James Rosen 41:00
Sure my, my Twitter feed at James Rosen FNC that’s at James Rosen FNC, this coming Saturday, November 21. I’ll be at the famous politics and prose Bookstore at 6pm in Washington, DC, to discuss the book and selling copies.
Jason Hartman 41:14
James Rosen, thank you so much for joining us and helping us learn about this very important person who is far too vilified, in my opinion. So very interesting discussion. Thank you so much,
James Rosen 41:24
Jason. Thanks for being so kind.
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