April 7, 2025 • 38 mins
Listen to The Next-Gen Report live! Sundays at 7:00 p.m. on AM950, KPRC.
The future can be a scary thing, but the closer we get to it, the more it starts to look a lot like the past. We'll talk about what that means for your money.
Violent crime continues to destroy lives across Houston, Texas, and the United States of America. We’ll take a look at why that is, and crime victim advocate April Aguirre will join us to talk about what we can do to stop it.
Find April on X: @AprilAguirreTx
For the latest news, follow me on Instagram, and X:
@the.ethanbuchanan
@_ethanbuchanan
The future can be a scary thing, but the closer we get to it, the more it starts to look a lot like the past. We'll talk about what that means for your money.
Violent crime continues to destroy lives across Houston, Texas, and the United States of America. We’ll take a look at why that is, and crime victim advocate April Aguirre will join us to talk about what we can do to stop it.
Find April on X: @AprilAguirreTx
For the latest news, follow me on Instagram, and X:
@the.ethanbuchanan
@_ethanbuchanan
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Alrighty, Hey, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to
the Next Gen Report. I am Ethan Buchanan. You can
find me on X Underscore Ethan Buchanan or on instagramv
dot Ethan Buchanan. Feel free to reach out to me.
I'd love to talk to you. This is the Next
Gen Report. As I have already said, I want to
talk a little bit about common sense. It's a lost art.
(01:03):
I've realized this the more and more I spend time online,
and of course I grew up online. I'm part of
that generation. So you know, this isn't necessarily a new
discovery for me. I've known it for some time. But
it doesn't get any more difficult to bear the weight
of the fact that nobody in society these days has
(01:25):
the simplest amount of common sense. It gets harder and
harder every day, I think, just because I expect people
to learn and they don't. So I want to give
you an example of this that I found, of course
on X. Think about cash. Now, if you buy something
with cash, you don't necessarily have a whole lot of
protections like you do with a debit card. That's one
(01:46):
of the reasons that I would prefer to use debit
or credit cards over cash, just because I know, hey,
worse comes to worse. If the thing I bought isn't
what I thought it was, I can you know, dispute
the charge, claim, fraud, whatever. There's protect in place for
my money. Cash, of course it has a lot of advantages,
but that's one of the disadvantages, right. You know, if
you buy something with cash, it's not traceable. There's no
(02:10):
way to say, hey, there is you know, fraud on
my account, fraud on the part of the cellar. You know,
there was some level of deception here and I got tricked.
So can you, as whatever antity, protect my money with cash?
You just don't have that.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Of course, a lot of people still prefer to use cash,
and that's fine. You just kind of assume that risk.
And you know, people have different levels of risk they're
willing to assume and bear, and that's completely fine. But
you assume that risk. Now here's where we get into things. Apple.
Your iPhone has something called Apple Cash. It's essentially a
debit card that functions exactly like cash, hence the name
(02:48):
Apple Cash. It's just essentially digital cash. So of course
you would assume you have some of the similar risks
with Apple Cash as you would with regular cash, because again,
the word cash is in the name Apple markets this
as being as close to cash as digital currency can get.
Yet some people are still surprised when Apple Cash emphasis
(03:11):
on the word cash does not include the same levels
of protection that you know a debit card or credit
card does. It's in the name, bro, it's cash. Here's
this guy discovering this the hard way, discovering something that
should have been obvious by the name cash, but he
missed out on somehow. Take a listen. Fun fact, I
(03:32):
just got off the phone with Apple Support.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
And if you pay for something with Apple Cash and
the merchant just ghosts to you, like, doesn't deliver your product,
doesn't respond to your emails, doesn't answer on the chat,
just says, oh yeah, your orders in fulfillment stage, you
can't dispute that charge in Apple Cash. And so the
support specialists literally told me, as long as they definitely
ignore me, they get.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
To keep that money and I can't dispute it.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So long story short, MPSA, if you need a good scam,
set up a bogus website with Apple cash.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
That's a joke and not actual advice. And then the
other part of it is.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I'm not gonna use apple cash anymore in PSA.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Again, I cannot stress this enough. All of these things
that he just said should be obvious. It's in the
name apple cash. I don't know. I don't know where
society's going these days. Now, why am I telling you this.
I'm not telling you this to scare you, because a
lot of people might look at this and say, oh
my god, digital currency is just rife with scam opportunities.
We're all going to be destroyed. We need to stick
to the cash dollar forever. No, you're getting the wrong
(04:34):
message from that. My point with this is things are changing,
but they aren't. Really. The risks that exist with digital
currencies like apple Cash are really the same risks that
exist with regular currencies, cold hard, printed dollar bill cash.
Right now, it's exactly the same. You could go right
now with cash in hand, place an order from somebody
(04:57):
at some sort of business and they'll say, oh, we'll
deliver this to you right now. We don't have it
in stack here. Pay cash, and if you know, you
don't get a receipt or if this is a disreparable business.
You could get screwed by that business right now, even
with cold, hard cash. And I say this to point
out that the future is actually a lot less scary
than we think it is. There's all these unknowns about
(05:18):
the future, and that is scary. There's all these unknowns
about how digital currencies will or won't work in the future.
And the fact of the matter is, I think what
we're seeing over time is that they'll work exactly as
every other currency throughout all of time have worked.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Well.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
There'll be gaps in the systems and opportunities for exploits
and scams. Of course, there will. That has always been
the case, that will always be the case. But is
there anything uniquely scary about digital currency. I don't think so,
because there are ways to kind of protect yourself from
being scammed online. PayPal is a very great tool for that.
(05:52):
PayPal has all sorts of systems and redundancies to protect
people who are buying things from merchants from being scammed.
And I think that's a great thing. It just really
goes back to that point that there really is nothing
new under the sun. History is very cyclical, just like
now we are moving from the Age of you know,
physical money to digital money. To a certain extent, a
(06:14):
couple hundred years ago, we started moving from the age
of you know, metal money to paper money. Now I
think that was a big mistake, obviously, because we've seen
the results. The dollar has inflated beyond belief because we
don't have it tied down to anything of actual value.
But you know, that's a whole nother discussion for another time.
But my point is society, despite the fact that people
were scared of it at first, and people were worried
(06:35):
about the fact that they would have gotten scammed, over time,
our society adapted and we learned to live with it
and mitigate those risks and live with the risks that
we couldn't mitigate. And we've seen the same things happen
with you know, industry. As you know, business becomes more industrialized,
more mechanic, a lot of people, you know one hundred
years ago worried about how they were going to keep
(06:55):
their jobs. Well, you know, the jobs changed as technology developed.
The work we do and how we do it developed
with it, and people were scared of that at the time.
But look where we ended up. We handled it, We survived.
So what I want you to do with this information
is just kind of take it and try to put
everything into context. I try to look a lot at
where we have been as a society, as a nation
(07:18):
and use that to inform where we are going. I
can't emphasize this enough. Context is everything, and I think
when you put stuff in context, you'll realize the future
is gonna look a lot more like the past than
you think. All right, stay tuned. We got a great
show coming up. We're gonna be very crime heavy today.
Crime Victim Advocate April Acguire is gonna be joining us
to talk a little bit about what we're seeing here
in Harris County with violent crime. It's really bad, but
(07:41):
there is a reason for it, and it is a
problem we can solve. So she's gonna be joining us
to talk about that. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
It's gonna be a great episode. Stay tuned. This is
the Next Gen Report right here on AM nine POT
fifty KPRC. All Right, we have got a serious problem
(08:17):
in this country, and it is a serious problem, and
it's one we didn't used to always have. We've always
had crime in the United States of America. That's no secret.
Just look at the wild West. We very much sort
of idealized crime. We made it kind of legendary in
the wild West, but it was always punish right. I mean,
(08:37):
nowadays we look back at the wild West and that
was you know, over one hundred years ago, and we
look at that and we say, oh, those were cool outlaws,
you know, running around gun slinging, Robin Banks and stuff,
and we make movies about it and whatnot. But the
reality is those crimes were always punished, and even at
the time, the people doing those crimes we're always I
(08:59):
shouldn't say all, they were usually not looked at by
the people as the good guys. I think really the
only exception would be Jesse James. Of course, he got
his start doing crime right after the Civil War, and
his whole thing was during reconstruction, the Southern people were
being taken advantage of, we'll say, by you know, the
(09:19):
people that were coming in from the north and basically
rebuilding the South. So after the Civil War, obviously that
had wrecked the entire South, so you know, investors and
officials from the north came in and basically took control
of the entire half of the country and started rebuilding it,
oftentimes on the backs of you know, Southern civilians, and
they didn't like that, and people like Jesse James, who
(09:41):
had been a veteran of the war, that said, well,
we might as well just keep fighting, why not, And
so that's what they were doing, and they were kind
of looked at as folk heos for a while, but
even that didn't last forever.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Eventually they started kind of going a little bit too far,
and even the Southern people that had initially liked what
they were doing turned on them. And my point is,
with very few rare exceptions, crime has never really been
normalized in the United States, especially not super violent crime
like you know, robbery and murder. But nowadays that's something
(10:12):
that we look at as just a normal thing that
happens all the time. And what what are you gonna do?
First of all, protect yourself. I've talked about this so
many times. I will never stop talking about it. This
is the most important thing a single person could ever
do in order to take care of themselves and their families.
And if you're a man, this goes doubly because whether
you like it or not, whether society likes it or not,
(10:32):
it is your responsibility to defend those around you. Buy
a gun, know how to use it, and keep it
on your person whenever possible, because, however slim the chance
might be, there is a chance that you will be
put in a place where you have to step up
and defend the lives of yourself or your family. And
when that happens, you better be ready to do it.
You better be ready to do it. The second thing
that we can do is stop normalizing it. Stop pretending
(10:56):
that this is just something we have to live with
and there's nothing we can do to crack down on it.
That's where we've gotten in society, and it's ridiculous and
it's costing us lives. It really is, because we've normalized
it and made so many excuses for it. The people
who commit crimes are not shunned and punished by society
like they should be, and so they come back and
(11:17):
they do it again because they know they can get
away with it. And I have to emphasize these are
real people, real lives that are being affected by all
of this crime that we as a society have just
kept making excuses for and allowing. These aren't just numbers,
These are people. These are real people. I think the
case that makes the perfect tragic example of this is
what we saw this last week in Frisco, Texas, my
(11:40):
home state. Here in Texas, a teenager was stabbed and
murdered over what appears to be just an argument over
some other person from some other school. Was that a
tent that he shouldn't have been in. We don't know
all the details in this case at this time, but
it does seem pretty simple. Here's the Fox News report
about it. Authorities have charged Carmelo Anthony, a student athlete
(12:01):
from Frisco Sentenel High School, with murder after he allegedly
stabbed seventeen year old Austin Metcalf, a junior at Memorial
High School in Frisco, to death on Wednesday morning over
a seating dispute. A seating dispute. A school resource officer
was the first to arrive at the scene and confront Anthony,
according to an arrest report obtained by Fox Ford Dallas
Fort Worth. Again, we'll have to wait for some more
(12:23):
official details from the court, but it looks like the
suspect here is claiming self defense. He says that Austin
Metcalf put his hands on him, quote unquote, I don't
know what that means. I'm not sure. We'll have to
wait and see what other details come out during the
court proceedings are but it looks like the suspect, Carmelo Anthony,
is saying this was self defense. He put his hands
(12:44):
on me, so I stabbed him. Whoa, whoa woa. Let
me stop you right there. How do we get to
a point where two teenagers scuffling at a school track
meet leads to one of them getting stabbed to death.
I tend to be of the opinion that, you know, teenagers,
to a certain extent, within the bounds of reason, should
be allowed to kind of scuffle with each other a
little bit and that not lead to one of them
getting stabbed. But we've normalized extreme violence to such an
(13:07):
extent that a seventeen year old says, oh, this guy
is allegedly putting his hands on me, so I'm now
justified in taking out a knife and stabbing him in
the heart, which is what happened here. And he's admitted
to it. By the way, I'm still using the term
alleged because I think legally you're supposed to but he's
admitted to it. Even he himself allegedly told the cops
that arrested him. Don't say alleged I did it. I
(13:28):
mean just the fact that he's so nonchalant about it
and open about it. Listen, even if you are forced to,
like life or death situation, you have to take a life,
even if it's a justified taking of a life, you
should still feel remorse about that because human life has value.
Even if you have to take a life, even if
it's morally right to do so, because that person is
(13:50):
putting other people at risk, which in my opinion, in
my view, justifies taking that life in a self defense situation,
you should still kind of feel remarre tragedy because human
life has value. And again, these are real people that
these crimes affect. These aren't just news stories, These aren't
just headlines. These aren't just statistics. There are lives that
(14:11):
are ruined by this. Take a listen to this interview.
This is from ABC eight. I believe that's the local
ABC affiliate in Frisco. This is the twin brother of
Austin Metcalf, the kid that was murdered, talking to them
about you know, he was right there next to his brother.
His brother bled out in his arms and here he
is talking about that.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
There was this kid before I knew his name. Now
this kid's under our our tent at the track. He
asked him to move. He started getting aggressive and talking reckless,
and my brother said that is said he needs to move,
and he's like, make me move. Austin grabbed his backpack.
This kid. I try to lop around as fast as
(14:52):
I could, but I didn't see the stab. But then
how look are now look at my brother and then I'm
not gonna talk.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
About the rest. Just that's that's just what I saw him.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
I mean, I try, I try it out of them,
but sless it was. It was really senseless. Really, I
don't know why my person would do that to someone
just over that well the argument, it's just it's just
crazy in this world nowadays, how people just up and
do that. Like a man of the family, that man
that has people that care about them all the time.
(15:23):
And he did.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Everything for our family too.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
He was a strong man. He was a strong, strong kid.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Insanely tragic case, insanely tragic. And this happened because we
as a society have normalized it to such a ridiculous extent. Again,
We'll have to see what the details of this case are,
but this looks like just another senseless act of violence
that should never have happened, but it did because we
as a society have gotten to a point where we
just put it into the minds of young people that
(15:48):
it's okay to murder people, or it's normal to murder people.
It's not okay. I want to take a step back
from that and point you to another case in the
same area, in the for Worth area. This guy just
wanted to be a good Samaritan, you know, get a
homeless person a meal, which I think is a noble thing.
Taking care of the homeless. That's a good thing. Charity
is good. He steps out of his car, He's gonna
get this homeless person a meal, and the homeless person
(16:09):
attacks him. Take a listen to this.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
He is just trying to get some food.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
Altman's decided to order the man food.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
I opened my car, is gonna go get him some food.
And literally the second I opened my door to step out,
he just like starts stabbing me.
Speaker 6 (16:22):
Fort Worth Police Apartment, says Quindarius Cartwright is the man
who cut Altman's in the face and to chest. Photos
of the bloody gash are too graphic to broadcast.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Genuinely thought I was gonna die it was so much blood,
and walked in waffle house. They were freaking out. I mean,
I'm sure it's probably a traumatic thing for anyone to watch.
Speaker 6 (16:40):
Video of Altman's recovery shows his swollen face and stitches.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
And most of the stab wounds, like to the body
weren't really too bad. It was just when he stabbed
me in the face that was like, it was really bad.
Speaker 6 (16:51):
On top of injuries, Cartwright reportedly stole Altman's car and
DROI wrote it to a strip club in North fort Worth.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Well, how does that happen? You may ask. I guarantee
you that guy that attack this man, who is just
trying to buy him a meal, has done similar things
in the past. This is an example of the fact
that we're not punishing crime like we should be. Why
was this guy out on the street. Clearly there's something
wrong with him. I would bet good money he has
other crimes on his rap sheet. And this is what
we're gonna talk to Aprilguire about in just a second.
(17:20):
The fact that crime is not being punished like it
should be, and that leads to people who should be
in jail being out able to attack more people. I
cannot stress enough how not normal this is. We should
not be accepting this as a society. We should be
putting these people in jail. We should be shunning murder.
We should be looking at people who murder people and
(17:42):
saying you should not be allowed back in society because
you have done the unthinkable and taken a human life
for no reason. And we're not doing that. And these
are the predictable results. All right, stay tuned. We're gonna
talk to April Guire about all of this in just
a second. All right, We've been talking so much about crime,
(18:13):
and there is a case specifically that happened recently here
in Houston this week that I think is the perfect
example of everything we've been talking about how preventable a
lot of the crimes that we see are. We look
at these crimes and we think, oh, there's nothing we
can do, But there is there is something we can do,
especially in this case of this murder suicide that happened
here in Houston. This guy I believe killed his girlfriend
(18:35):
and then killed himself in their apartment. This is something
that was obscenely preventable. And here to talk about that
is April Lagiria. She's a crime victim advocate and she
has been all over this case. April, good morning or
good evening? How are you?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Good morning? Yes? So I have a quote that I
repeat over and over again. We may not be able
to stop crime, but we have responsibility of how we
respond to crime committed. And right now the responses that
we're giving are not working.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, So let's dig into this case a little bit.
This guy, uh twenty nineteen drug deal gone bad killed
a person, and this has all worked its way through
the courts. He pled guilty to this, and he was
waiting sentencing for crime that was done in twenty nineteen,
and during that time he was out on bond, and
then on top of that, he violated his bond multiple times.
(19:36):
How ridiculous is that? Talk to me a little bit
about all that.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Absolutely, so number one thing here that we need to digest.
As the original murder took place in twenty nineteen, doesn't
it just seem like an eternity ago. He remained free
on bond twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two,
twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five. Now,
in this period of all these years, my question, how
(20:00):
many other crimes did he commit that he was not
caught doing right? Okay, there's that aspect of it. And
in this time he had six bond violation reports on
his file and at no point did Democrat Judge Hillary
Unger of the two forty eighth revoke his bond. Can
(20:21):
you imagine if you didn't show up to work six times,
what would happen to you? Or you know, there would
be consequences. So my question is, why isn't Hillary Unger
doing her job? You have a criminal here who's showing
you blatantly that they are not going to follow the
conditions of the court. Why are we continuing to allow
(20:41):
this individual to remain free? And this is why this
death was very preventable. Now it gets worse. This guy
was convicted and was awaiting sentencing for that twenty nineteen murder,
and he signed his plea agreement in December of twenty
twenty four. The whole aspect and purpose of bond is
(21:05):
because you have the right to remain free because you're
innocent until proven guilty. This individual not only had already confessed,
had already pled guilty. So this whole aspect of innocent
versus guilty doesn't exist anymore. Why was he able to
remain on bond between the time that he was given
(21:28):
his plea deals to the time that he was going
to be sentenced, So that is a big issue. At
that point, bond should no longer be on the table.
It's over.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, And there's something to be said here for the
fact that just it took so long. I mean, this
is something that happened in twenty nineteen, that was years ago.
That was a COVID nineteen ago. How in the world
do we get to a point where our criminal justice
system has got this guy who essentially admits to the crime, confesses,
he pleads guilty, and yet it takes what six seven
(21:59):
years for him him to actually get sentenced and put
in prison.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Correct. Correct, And we have a system that's not working.
And what I call these judges is activist judges. They
don't believe in incarcerating people. So what they do is
they let the clock run hoping that something falls through.
Witnesses don't no longer want to participate, the evidence gets last,
(22:24):
the case weakens, every single month that it ages. So
these judges, at the end of the activist judges do
not want people in jail, and that is the point.
This is why this individual was able to violate his
bond positions six times and his bond was not revoked.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, that really speaks to the fact that you know,
we've allowed them to do this. I don't understand why
we don't have it in Texas law that Listen, there
are conditions to your bond if you violate that, especially
if you violate it multiple times, again and again and again.
I mean I looked at the documents you sent over
to me and thank you for that. By the way,
the first one was he let his battery on his
(23:06):
ankle monitor die. Okay, to a certain extent, I understand
that that can happen. You get caught up in the
business of the day and you know your ankle monitor
dies and the next day he had recharged it. Fair enough,
maybe you let him slide on that one, But then
you violate a curfew and then you violate it again
and then again and again, and yet still the law
(23:27):
allows this judge to say it's no big deal whatever, No,
that is a big deal.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Well, I tell you what, we have never in the
history of Harris County have had activist judges. Judges in
the past used to do their job. So now we
have to strengthen our laws to protect ourselves from activist judges.
For example, one of the legislative sessions, the next legislative session,
(23:54):
the nightieth legislative session, we're going to push now or
defendant after they sign a plea agreement that they of guilt,
that they can no longer receive bond. We should not
have to change our laws to reflect that. However, now
we have to because activist judges are on the bench.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, and that gets to the elections of it all.
We made some progress in the twenty twenty four elections.
This has been a big issue for a long time.
I want listeners to understand this isn't a new problem.
It's a new problem in context of the last you know,
twenty or thirty years. But if you dial it back,
we've had these people on the bench for what ten
years at this point. We made progress in twenty twenty four.
(24:41):
Talk to me a little bit about that and where
are we looking to go forward in terms of who
we're trying to see elected. You know, in twenty twenty six.
We have made terms coming up or their elections there
that people can be paying attention to correct.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
So in twenty eighteen, the Democratic Party did a clean
house of every single Republican judge in Here County. There
was not one single criminal district court judge Republican that
was elected into office. They were all Democrats. Okay, Then
a lot of these Democrats in twenty twenty two were
reelected because they were unopposed, not necessarily because of you know,
(25:17):
people wanting to re elect them. The Republican Party did
not have a candidate to oppose them. So come now
they are these this same batch of folks that got
re elected in twenty two come up for reelection in
twenty six. So what we are trying to do is
to encourage good, wholesome Republican lawyers two that are eligible
(25:41):
to put in the name and the hat to be
judge in twenty twenty six. And we're also asking for
the public to support their judicial candidates and show up
to the ballot. We got to vote for better judges.
You can disagree with federal problems, you can disagree which
state problems, but what locally right now? Dispatch of democratic
(26:04):
judges are not doing us any favors. Unfortunately, they are
responsible for a lot of the chaos that is happening
because of their leniency with criminals.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
All Right, we got a couple of minutes left, so
I want to talk a little bit about the kind
of personal side about this. We talked about this in
the last segment this case in Frisco. We saw the
videos come out later of his family in tears talking
about this, and I don't think people pay attention to
that enough. Crime effects real people, It ruins real lives.
Your crime victim advocate, talk to me a little bit
about that in this last minute or so that we have.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
So I became a crime victim advocate after my niece
was shot and killed and we were thrusted into those
criminal justice system that is very very very very confusing.
The criminal justice system in our case did not want
to prosecute the murderer of my nine year old niece.
We had to fight and almost bend their arm to
(26:59):
do what they needed to do and what was right.
You can be sorry all you want, but if you
put a bulletins in a nine year old child's head,
you need to be held accountable. Our murderer was initially
no built. We had to fight very hard to have
the case not only reopened, but represent it to a
grand jury and have them find him find enough probable
(27:23):
cause for murder, which they did, and now we're awaiting
trial come August twenty five and we are nervous, but
we are grateful for the opportunity for our niece to
have her day in court, which is the very least
that we all deserve, is a form of justice in
a country where we're supposed to be have law and order,
(27:44):
and it's been very difficult. We take other crime victims
by the hand and now we help them navigate the
criminal justiceis them, so they're not as last as we were,
and we give them a starting point where they at
least understand what's going on.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
All righty, well, hey in this last minute, you do
great work. Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
I am on Twitter. I'm very active there April of
Giary Texas Double Arms A p R I L A
g U I R R E Texas on Twitter, and
you know, I try to keep everything very organized there
and keep everything up to date. As far as crime,
we keep it very focused and I will be sharing
a lot of information coming this selection season for twenty
(28:26):
twenty six.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
All righty well, hey April, once again, thank you very
much for taking the time to join me. This is
very important issues.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I want people to understand we can solve these problems.
We just have to get up and do something about it.
That's it. And thank God people like you are out
there trying to do that. I hope we're successful. And
obviously we'll be praying for you and your family over
the course of your case coming up. Thank you once again,
God bless thank you much. All right, let's talk about it.
(29:19):
Tariffs Liberation Day. We got to bring it up. We
have to talk about it. I submit to you that
we are continuing to overact to all of this. I
really think it'll be fine. I really don't think it's
that big of a deal. Maybe this is short sided
of me. I prefer to think of it as longsighted.
I think in the long term, all of these deals
(29:40):
will be cut. We're already seeing it happening. Donald Trump
is on the phone with people, deals are being made,
Manufacturing and investment is already coming back into the United States.
We've seen this in the you know, several months since
Donald Trump came back into office. It really didn't take
long for you know, all of these different countries to
start trying to you know, invest into the United States
(30:01):
and make deals with Donald Trump and what have you.
I'm not that concerned about it, but nevertheless, people are
losing their minds about this. I found this article. My
boss actually sent it down to me. My kid needs
a new bike. Trump's tariffs crushed her birthday dream. This
is an opinion article in the Houston Chronicle. And you know,
I really think this is the definition of overreacting. Now,
(30:26):
at first, you might think, okay, yeah, that makes sense. Bicycles,
like a lot of other things, are probably manufactured everywhere else,
so you know, having a tariff will probably make it
more expensive to buy a new bicycle. But then you
would think, well, wait a minute, hold on, aren't there
bicycles already in the United States that a tariff wouldn't
(30:46):
necessarily apply to. Couldn't you just buy one of those?
Because those bikes have already been imported, that extra cost
wouldn't apply, So just go get one of those. But
it gets even worse. Let's dig into the article. How
do I explain to my seven year old that dog
Trump's trade policies will delay her eagerly anticipated birthday present.
First of all, let me answer that question for you.
It's really easy, hey, sweetie. Unfortunately bikes are a little
(31:10):
bit more expensive, so we're gonna go with a different
birthday gift for you this year. Just like that, it's done.
Your seven year old doesn't need to know the details
of Donald Trump and post a tariff on China. Ladi
daia j. It's more expensive. We're gonna go with something else.
It's a little bit out of our price range this
time around. There you go, it's done. I hope I helped.
Thank you very much. But the author continues. He says,
this dilemma wasn't what I expected. On a recent Saturday
(31:31):
on the way to Blue Line Bike Lab in the Heights,
it's a sweet independent retailer where three years ago I
bought her a solid sixteen inch peach colored batch bike
with training wheels. Now, though her long limbs make her
cute little beginner's bike look like a tricycle. All right,
we got to dig into this specifically. I don't know
how much you may or may not know about retailers
(31:52):
across the Houston area. Or specifically the Heights. But the
Heights is typically where you go to get really nice, fancy,
expensive stuff. Everything there is expensive. If you buy a
cup of coffee in the Heights, you're paying thirty dollars
for it. It's ridiculous and that's hyperbole, but you get
my point. So here's a thought for you. Even though
it's great to support small local businesses, if you really
(32:15):
want to get your daughter a bike that badly, maybe
instead of writing an article complaining about it in the
Houston Chronicle, you just go to Walmart, where they have
tons of bikes on the rack for not that much money,
and just buy her a bike there instead of getting
her a fancy designer bicycle at this Houston bike shop
(32:36):
Blue Line Bike Lab. And hey, I don't want to
crap on local businesses, but I'm just trying to be
practical here. He then goes on to say, you know,
he pushed open the shop's doors, her two wheel dream
was crushed. He expected to see a rack full of
multi huge children's bikes. Instead, there were only four children's
bike in stock, none of which fit her suddenly lanky frame. Panicky,
(32:57):
I realized I had just committed the cardinal sin of
over promising to my child on her birthday. No less,
he goes on to elaborate that he could not find
the specific bike that his child wanted, and the store
called around to a couple of different bike stores. They
didn't have it either, and you know, even if they did,
it would be too expensive. So what are we gonna
do now? I would understand being upset about this if
(33:19):
this wasn't a completely made up problem. How do I
know this was a completely made up problem? Because in
no less than two and a half minutes on Google
I solved this man's crisis for him. Magically. I might
be a genius. I might be, but maybe I'm just
kind of a practical person who knows how to use Google.
Either or I'll take genius if y'all want to give
me that title, but I'm going to lean towards I'm
(33:40):
just practical because I'm just so humble. So throughout the
course of this article, the author explains that his daughter
wanted specifically a twenty four inch pink or purple bicycle. Okay, well,
first of all, I went to Blue Line Bicycle Laboratory
to their website, and I found specifically twenty four inch
Youth Lifestyle by s four nineteen ninety nine, four nineteen
(34:02):
ninety nine, four nineteen ninety nine. They've got a couple
of different brands here that are all the exact same price. Now,
one of these it looks like a sort of reddish pink.
I don't know exactly. That might not be specifically the
color she wanted, but it looks about that. But hey,
you might say she's really specific about the color. And
even if she wasn't those prices four nineteen ninety nine.
(34:25):
That I mean, that's darn near five hundred dollars. When
you factor in taxis, it probably comes out to around
five hundred dollars. So, yeah, that's expensive. That's probably out
of a few people's price range. Fair enough, Let's go
to Walmart. I'm not kidding. Let's go to Walmart. Bear
in mind, every bicycle I have ever owned in my
twenty two years, and I've had several, have all come
from Walmart, and they have all been fine. So I
went to Walmart and I said, hey, let's see if
(34:46):
we can find some twenty four inch kids bicycles. And
wouldn't you believe it?
Speaker 4 (34:50):
I did?
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Isn't that amazing? Not only did I find twenty four
inch kids bicycles, I found several of them right here
at my local Walmart, which is not far from the Heights.
I think it's actually technically in the Heights. But here
we go. Here's a pink twenty four inch bicycle for
one to ninety five. They have eight of these in
(35:12):
stalk right now, and you can order one online and
it'll get here in three days. And yet this guy
is losing his mind because he just can't get a
twenty four inch pink bicycle for his daughter. Yes, you
can just go to Walmart. This is not that difficult.
It's right here on the website. It took me thirty
seconds to find this. I even double checked and make
sure that it was a Walmart in the area. This
(35:34):
is the Walmart on Yale Street, the Supercenter on Yale Street,
but here it is. It's the perfect example of the
left wing freak out over these tariffs being completely overblown.
I just can't find a bicycle, Yeah, because you went
to one shop. Go to Walmart, dude, they have plenty.
I think this kind of goes along with the leftist
inability to just zoom out and put things in context.
(35:55):
Even a little bit. I mean they've been pointing to
the stock market too as an example of how terrible
Donald Trump's plan is, how terrible these tariffs are. And
they look and say, look, over the last four days,
the stock market has tanked. I mean, look at the
Dow Jones industrial average. It's gone from what like forty
two thousand all the way down to around thirty eight thousand.
(36:15):
What a terrible tragedy this is. We're all gonna lose
all of our money and all our retirements. Everyone will
be destroyed. There's gonna be a recession. Okay, how about
we zoom out a little bit, because that's five days.
What are we looking at? You know, over the last
five years, Over the last five years, the Dow Jones
industrial average has skyrocketed. Let's look at the start of
(36:36):
Joe Biden's term. On January twenty second, just after Joe
Biden took office in twenty twenty one, the Dow Jones
Industrial average was just under thirty one thousand. Since that time,
it climbed all the way up to forty four thousand,
almost forty five thousand, so you know, big, big, big gains.
Now it's down to just about thirty eight thousand. Remember
(36:58):
when we started, we were at about thirty thousand, just
under thirty one thousand. We're still at thirty eight thousand
on the Dow Jones Industrial average. So has the economy
completely collapsed? No, it really hasn't. And bear in mind,
throughout the course of Biden's presidency, it actually fell even
lower than it is right now. But nobody freaks out
about that. Isn't that weird? September thirtieth, twenty twenty two,
(37:21):
it was around what twenty eight thousand, little bit higher,
but that's a significant drop off from where it was
at almost thirty one thousand. But did the left lose
their minds over this? No, they didn't because they realized, Okay,
the stock market is cyclical. It goes up and then
it comes back down, and then it goes right back
up again, and then it'll coming a little bit more down,
and then way way up and then a little bit down.
This happens all the time, and nobody loses their mind
(37:43):
about this until Donald Trump comes into office. Listen, this
is going to come back up as deals are cut
with other nations and the market kind of cools off
a little bit. This is just people losing their minds
over headlines. That's all.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
This is.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Calm down, You and your money will be fine. If
I were doing anything right now, be buying Buy these
stocks while they're cheap, because as Trump cuts deals with
these countries and these tariffs are rolled back, these stocks
are going to go back up. How do we know that,
because that's what always happens, and deals are already being cut.
Vietnam I believe has already had a phone call with
Donald Trump about this net and Yahoo of Israel will
(38:17):
be having a conversation with Donald Trump on Monday. I
believe negotiations are underway with even India as well, So
this appears to be working. I mean, it's not going
to work overnight, we know that, but just hold on,
think long term and listen. You'll be fine. All right.
Once again, my name is Ethan Buchanan. This is the
next generalport If you missed anything, the full show will
be available Monday morning wherever you get your podcasts. Don't
(38:39):
forget to check back. We've got a special Wednesday podcast
as well. Find me online Underscore Ethan Buchanan on x dot,
Ethan Buchanan on Instagram, and we'll be back next Sunday evening,
starting at seven pm. Thank you very much for listening,
Have a blessed night.
Alrighty, Hey, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to
the Next Gen Report. I am Ethan Buchanan. You can
find me on X Underscore Ethan Buchanan or on instagramv
dot Ethan Buchanan. Feel free to reach out to me.
I'd love to talk to you. This is the Next
Gen Report. As I have already said, I want to
talk a little bit about common sense. It's a lost art.
(01:03):
I've realized this the more and more I spend time online,
and of course I grew up online. I'm part of
that generation. So you know, this isn't necessarily a new
discovery for me. I've known it for some time. But
it doesn't get any more difficult to bear the weight
of the fact that nobody in society these days has
(01:25):
the simplest amount of common sense. It gets harder and
harder every day, I think, just because I expect people
to learn and they don't. So I want to give
you an example of this that I found, of course
on X. Think about cash. Now, if you buy something
with cash, you don't necessarily have a whole lot of
protections like you do with a debit card. That's one
(01:46):
of the reasons that I would prefer to use debit
or credit cards over cash, just because I know, hey,
worse comes to worse. If the thing I bought isn't
what I thought it was, I can you know, dispute
the charge, claim, fraud, whatever. There's protect in place for
my money. Cash, of course it has a lot of advantages,
but that's one of the disadvantages, right. You know, if
you buy something with cash, it's not traceable. There's no
(02:10):
way to say, hey, there is you know, fraud on
my account, fraud on the part of the cellar. You know,
there was some level of deception here and I got tricked.
So can you, as whatever antity, protect my money with cash?
You just don't have that.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Of course, a lot of people still prefer to use cash,
and that's fine. You just kind of assume that risk.
And you know, people have different levels of risk they're
willing to assume and bear, and that's completely fine. But
you assume that risk. Now here's where we get into things. Apple.
Your iPhone has something called Apple Cash. It's essentially a
debit card that functions exactly like cash, hence the name
(02:48):
Apple Cash. It's just essentially digital cash. So of course
you would assume you have some of the similar risks
with Apple Cash as you would with regular cash, because again,
the word cash is in the name Apple markets this
as being as close to cash as digital currency can get.
Yet some people are still surprised when Apple Cash emphasis
(03:11):
on the word cash does not include the same levels
of protection that you know a debit card or credit
card does. It's in the name, bro, it's cash. Here's
this guy discovering this the hard way, discovering something that
should have been obvious by the name cash, but he
missed out on somehow. Take a listen. Fun fact, I
(03:32):
just got off the phone with Apple Support.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
And if you pay for something with Apple Cash and
the merchant just ghosts to you, like, doesn't deliver your product,
doesn't respond to your emails, doesn't answer on the chat,
just says, oh yeah, your orders in fulfillment stage, you
can't dispute that charge in Apple Cash. And so the
support specialists literally told me, as long as they definitely
ignore me, they get.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
To keep that money and I can't dispute it.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So long story short, MPSA, if you need a good scam,
set up a bogus website with Apple cash.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
That's a joke and not actual advice. And then the
other part of it is.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I'm not gonna use apple cash anymore in PSA.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Again, I cannot stress this enough. All of these things
that he just said should be obvious. It's in the
name apple cash. I don't know. I don't know where
society's going these days. Now, why am I telling you this.
I'm not telling you this to scare you, because a
lot of people might look at this and say, oh
my god, digital currency is just rife with scam opportunities.
We're all going to be destroyed. We need to stick
to the cash dollar forever. No, you're getting the wrong
(04:34):
message from that. My point with this is things are changing,
but they aren't. Really. The risks that exist with digital
currencies like apple Cash are really the same risks that
exist with regular currencies, cold hard, printed dollar bill cash.
Right now, it's exactly the same. You could go right
now with cash in hand, place an order from somebody
(04:57):
at some sort of business and they'll say, oh, we'll
deliver this to you right now. We don't have it
in stack here. Pay cash, and if you know, you
don't get a receipt or if this is a disreparable business.
You could get screwed by that business right now, even
with cold, hard cash. And I say this to point
out that the future is actually a lot less scary
than we think it is. There's all these unknowns about
(05:18):
the future, and that is scary. There's all these unknowns
about how digital currencies will or won't work in the future.
And the fact of the matter is, I think what
we're seeing over time is that they'll work exactly as
every other currency throughout all of time have worked.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Well.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
There'll be gaps in the systems and opportunities for exploits
and scams. Of course, there will. That has always been
the case, that will always be the case. But is
there anything uniquely scary about digital currency. I don't think so,
because there are ways to kind of protect yourself from
being scammed online. PayPal is a very great tool for that.
(05:52):
PayPal has all sorts of systems and redundancies to protect
people who are buying things from merchants from being scammed.
And I think that's a great thing. It just really
goes back to that point that there really is nothing
new under the sun. History is very cyclical, just like
now we are moving from the Age of you know,
physical money to digital money. To a certain extent, a
(06:14):
couple hundred years ago, we started moving from the age
of you know, metal money to paper money. Now I
think that was a big mistake, obviously, because we've seen
the results. The dollar has inflated beyond belief because we
don't have it tied down to anything of actual value.
But you know, that's a whole nother discussion for another time.
But my point is society, despite the fact that people
were scared of it at first, and people were worried
(06:35):
about the fact that they would have gotten scammed, over time,
our society adapted and we learned to live with it
and mitigate those risks and live with the risks that
we couldn't mitigate. And we've seen the same things happen
with you know, industry. As you know, business becomes more industrialized,
more mechanic, a lot of people, you know one hundred
years ago worried about how they were going to keep
(06:55):
their jobs. Well, you know, the jobs changed as technology developed.
The work we do and how we do it developed
with it, and people were scared of that at the time.
But look where we ended up. We handled it, We survived.
So what I want you to do with this information
is just kind of take it and try to put
everything into context. I try to look a lot at
where we have been as a society, as a nation
(07:18):
and use that to inform where we are going. I
can't emphasize this enough. Context is everything, and I think
when you put stuff in context, you'll realize the future
is gonna look a lot more like the past than
you think. All right, stay tuned. We got a great
show coming up. We're gonna be very crime heavy today.
Crime Victim Advocate April Acguire is gonna be joining us
to talk a little bit about what we're seeing here
in Harris County with violent crime. It's really bad, but
(07:41):
there is a reason for it, and it is a
problem we can solve. So she's gonna be joining us
to talk about that. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
It's gonna be a great episode. Stay tuned. This is
the Next Gen Report right here on AM nine POT
fifty KPRC. All Right, we have got a serious problem
(08:17):
in this country, and it is a serious problem, and
it's one we didn't used to always have. We've always
had crime in the United States of America. That's no secret.
Just look at the wild West. We very much sort
of idealized crime. We made it kind of legendary in
the wild West, but it was always punish right. I mean,
(08:37):
nowadays we look back at the wild West and that
was you know, over one hundred years ago, and we
look at that and we say, oh, those were cool outlaws,
you know, running around gun slinging, Robin Banks and stuff,
and we make movies about it and whatnot. But the
reality is those crimes were always punished, and even at
the time, the people doing those crimes we're always I
(08:59):
shouldn't say all, they were usually not looked at by
the people as the good guys. I think really the
only exception would be Jesse James. Of course, he got
his start doing crime right after the Civil War, and
his whole thing was during reconstruction, the Southern people were
being taken advantage of, we'll say, by you know, the
(09:19):
people that were coming in from the north and basically
rebuilding the South. So after the Civil War, obviously that
had wrecked the entire South, so you know, investors and
officials from the north came in and basically took control
of the entire half of the country and started rebuilding it,
oftentimes on the backs of you know, Southern civilians, and
they didn't like that, and people like Jesse James, who
(09:41):
had been a veteran of the war, that said, well,
we might as well just keep fighting, why not, And
so that's what they were doing, and they were kind
of looked at as folk heos for a while, but
even that didn't last forever.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Eventually they started kind of going a little bit too far,
and even the Southern people that had initially liked what
they were doing turned on them. And my point is,
with very few rare exceptions, crime has never really been
normalized in the United States, especially not super violent crime
like you know, robbery and murder. But nowadays that's something
(10:12):
that we look at as just a normal thing that
happens all the time. And what what are you gonna do?
First of all, protect yourself. I've talked about this so
many times. I will never stop talking about it. This
is the most important thing a single person could ever
do in order to take care of themselves and their families.
And if you're a man, this goes doubly because whether
you like it or not, whether society likes it or not,
(10:32):
it is your responsibility to defend those around you. Buy
a gun, know how to use it, and keep it
on your person whenever possible, because, however slim the chance
might be, there is a chance that you will be
put in a place where you have to step up
and defend the lives of yourself or your family. And
when that happens, you better be ready to do it.
You better be ready to do it. The second thing
that we can do is stop normalizing it. Stop pretending
(10:56):
that this is just something we have to live with
and there's nothing we can do to crack down on it.
That's where we've gotten in society, and it's ridiculous and
it's costing us lives. It really is, because we've normalized
it and made so many excuses for it. The people
who commit crimes are not shunned and punished by society
like they should be, and so they come back and
(11:17):
they do it again because they know they can get
away with it. And I have to emphasize these are
real people, real lives that are being affected by all
of this crime that we as a society have just
kept making excuses for and allowing. These aren't just numbers,
These are people. These are real people. I think the
case that makes the perfect tragic example of this is
what we saw this last week in Frisco, Texas, my
(11:40):
home state. Here in Texas, a teenager was stabbed and
murdered over what appears to be just an argument over
some other person from some other school. Was that a
tent that he shouldn't have been in. We don't know
all the details in this case at this time, but
it does seem pretty simple. Here's the Fox News report
about it. Authorities have charged Carmelo Anthony, a student athlete
(12:01):
from Frisco Sentenel High School, with murder after he allegedly
stabbed seventeen year old Austin Metcalf, a junior at Memorial
High School in Frisco, to death on Wednesday morning over
a seating dispute. A seating dispute. A school resource officer
was the first to arrive at the scene and confront Anthony,
according to an arrest report obtained by Fox Ford Dallas
Fort Worth. Again, we'll have to wait for some more
(12:23):
official details from the court, but it looks like the
suspect here is claiming self defense. He says that Austin
Metcalf put his hands on him, quote unquote, I don't
know what that means. I'm not sure. We'll have to
wait and see what other details come out during the
court proceedings are but it looks like the suspect, Carmelo Anthony,
is saying this was self defense. He put his hands
(12:44):
on me, so I stabbed him. Whoa, whoa woa. Let
me stop you right there. How do we get to
a point where two teenagers scuffling at a school track
meet leads to one of them getting stabbed to death.
I tend to be of the opinion that, you know, teenagers,
to a certain extent, within the bounds of reason, should
be allowed to kind of scuffle with each other a
little bit and that not lead to one of them
getting stabbed. But we've normalized extreme violence to such an
(13:07):
extent that a seventeen year old says, oh, this guy
is allegedly putting his hands on me, so I'm now
justified in taking out a knife and stabbing him in
the heart, which is what happened here. And he's admitted
to it. By the way, I'm still using the term
alleged because I think legally you're supposed to but he's
admitted to it. Even he himself allegedly told the cops
that arrested him. Don't say alleged I did it. I
(13:28):
mean just the fact that he's so nonchalant about it
and open about it. Listen, even if you are forced to,
like life or death situation, you have to take a life,
even if it's a justified taking of a life, you
should still feel remorse about that because human life has value.
Even if you have to take a life, even if
it's morally right to do so, because that person is
(13:50):
putting other people at risk, which in my opinion, in
my view, justifies taking that life in a self defense situation,
you should still kind of feel remarre tragedy because human
life has value. And again, these are real people that
these crimes affect. These aren't just news stories, These aren't
just headlines. These aren't just statistics. There are lives that
(14:11):
are ruined by this. Take a listen to this interview.
This is from ABC eight. I believe that's the local
ABC affiliate in Frisco. This is the twin brother of
Austin Metcalf, the kid that was murdered, talking to them
about you know, he was right there next to his brother.
His brother bled out in his arms and here he
is talking about that.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
There was this kid before I knew his name. Now
this kid's under our our tent at the track. He
asked him to move. He started getting aggressive and talking reckless,
and my brother said that is said he needs to move,
and he's like, make me move. Austin grabbed his backpack.
This kid. I try to lop around as fast as
(14:52):
I could, but I didn't see the stab. But then
how look are now look at my brother and then I'm
not gonna talk.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
About the rest. Just that's that's just what I saw him.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
I mean, I try, I try it out of them,
but sless it was. It was really senseless. Really, I
don't know why my person would do that to someone
just over that well the argument, it's just it's just
crazy in this world nowadays, how people just up and
do that. Like a man of the family, that man
that has people that care about them all the time.
(15:23):
And he did.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Everything for our family too.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
He was a strong man. He was a strong, strong kid.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Insanely tragic case, insanely tragic. And this happened because we
as a society have normalized it to such a ridiculous extent. Again,
We'll have to see what the details of this case are,
but this looks like just another senseless act of violence
that should never have happened, but it did because we
as a society have gotten to a point where we
just put it into the minds of young people that
(15:48):
it's okay to murder people, or it's normal to murder people.
It's not okay. I want to take a step back
from that and point you to another case in the
same area, in the for Worth area. This guy just
wanted to be a good Samaritan, you know, get a
homeless person a meal, which I think is a noble thing.
Taking care of the homeless. That's a good thing. Charity
is good. He steps out of his car, He's gonna
get this homeless person a meal, and the homeless person
(16:09):
attacks him. Take a listen to this.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
He is just trying to get some food.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
Altman's decided to order the man food.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
I opened my car, is gonna go get him some food.
And literally the second I opened my door to step out,
he just like starts stabbing me.
Speaker 6 (16:22):
Fort Worth Police Apartment, says Quindarius Cartwright is the man
who cut Altman's in the face and to chest. Photos
of the bloody gash are too graphic to broadcast.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Genuinely thought I was gonna die it was so much blood,
and walked in waffle house. They were freaking out. I mean,
I'm sure it's probably a traumatic thing for anyone to watch.
Speaker 6 (16:40):
Video of Altman's recovery shows his swollen face and stitches.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
And most of the stab wounds, like to the body
weren't really too bad. It was just when he stabbed
me in the face that was like, it was really bad.
Speaker 6 (16:51):
On top of injuries, Cartwright reportedly stole Altman's car and
DROI wrote it to a strip club in North fort Worth.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Well, how does that happen? You may ask. I guarantee
you that guy that attack this man, who is just
trying to buy him a meal, has done similar things
in the past. This is an example of the fact
that we're not punishing crime like we should be. Why
was this guy out on the street. Clearly there's something
wrong with him. I would bet good money he has
other crimes on his rap sheet. And this is what
we're gonna talk to Aprilguire about in just a second.
(17:20):
The fact that crime is not being punished like it
should be, and that leads to people who should be
in jail being out able to attack more people. I
cannot stress enough how not normal this is. We should
not be accepting this as a society. We should be
putting these people in jail. We should be shunning murder.
We should be looking at people who murder people and
(17:42):
saying you should not be allowed back in society because
you have done the unthinkable and taken a human life
for no reason. And we're not doing that. And these
are the predictable results. All right, stay tuned. We're gonna
talk to April Guire about all of this in just
a second. All right, We've been talking so much about crime,
(18:13):
and there is a case specifically that happened recently here
in Houston this week that I think is the perfect
example of everything we've been talking about how preventable a
lot of the crimes that we see are. We look
at these crimes and we think, oh, there's nothing we
can do, But there is there is something we can do,
especially in this case of this murder suicide that happened
here in Houston. This guy I believe killed his girlfriend
(18:35):
and then killed himself in their apartment. This is something
that was obscenely preventable. And here to talk about that
is April Lagiria. She's a crime victim advocate and she
has been all over this case. April, good morning or
good evening? How are you?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Good morning? Yes? So I have a quote that I
repeat over and over again. We may not be able
to stop crime, but we have responsibility of how we
respond to crime committed. And right now the responses that
we're giving are not working.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, So let's dig into this case a little bit.
This guy, uh twenty nineteen drug deal gone bad killed
a person, and this has all worked its way through
the courts. He pled guilty to this, and he was
waiting sentencing for crime that was done in twenty nineteen,
and during that time he was out on bond, and
then on top of that, he violated his bond multiple times.
(19:36):
How ridiculous is that? Talk to me a little bit
about all that.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Absolutely, so number one thing here that we need to digest.
As the original murder took place in twenty nineteen, doesn't
it just seem like an eternity ago. He remained free
on bond twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two,
twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five. Now,
in this period of all these years, my question, how
(20:00):
many other crimes did he commit that he was not
caught doing right? Okay, there's that aspect of it. And
in this time he had six bond violation reports on
his file and at no point did Democrat Judge Hillary
Unger of the two forty eighth revoke his bond. Can
(20:21):
you imagine if you didn't show up to work six times,
what would happen to you? Or you know, there would
be consequences. So my question is, why isn't Hillary Unger
doing her job? You have a criminal here who's showing
you blatantly that they are not going to follow the
conditions of the court. Why are we continuing to allow
(20:41):
this individual to remain free? And this is why this
death was very preventable. Now it gets worse. This guy
was convicted and was awaiting sentencing for that twenty nineteen murder,
and he signed his plea agreement in December of twenty
twenty four. The whole aspect and purpose of bond is
(21:05):
because you have the right to remain free because you're
innocent until proven guilty. This individual not only had already confessed,
had already pled guilty. So this whole aspect of innocent
versus guilty doesn't exist anymore. Why was he able to
remain on bond between the time that he was given
(21:28):
his plea deals to the time that he was going
to be sentenced, So that is a big issue. At
that point, bond should no longer be on the table.
It's over.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, And there's something to be said here for the
fact that just it took so long. I mean, this
is something that happened in twenty nineteen, that was years ago.
That was a COVID nineteen ago. How in the world
do we get to a point where our criminal justice
system has got this guy who essentially admits to the crime, confesses,
he pleads guilty, and yet it takes what six seven
(21:59):
years for him him to actually get sentenced and put
in prison.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Correct. Correct, And we have a system that's not working.
And what I call these judges is activist judges. They
don't believe in incarcerating people. So what they do is
they let the clock run hoping that something falls through.
Witnesses don't no longer want to participate, the evidence gets last,
(22:24):
the case weakens, every single month that it ages. So
these judges, at the end of the activist judges do
not want people in jail, and that is the point.
This is why this individual was able to violate his
bond positions six times and his bond was not revoked.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, that really speaks to the fact that you know,
we've allowed them to do this. I don't understand why
we don't have it in Texas law that Listen, there
are conditions to your bond if you violate that, especially
if you violate it multiple times, again and again and again.
I mean I looked at the documents you sent over
to me and thank you for that. By the way,
the first one was he let his battery on his
(23:06):
ankle monitor die. Okay, to a certain extent, I understand
that that can happen. You get caught up in the
business of the day and you know your ankle monitor
dies and the next day he had recharged it. Fair enough,
maybe you let him slide on that one, But then
you violate a curfew and then you violate it again
and then again and again, and yet still the law
(23:27):
allows this judge to say it's no big deal whatever, No,
that is a big deal.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Well, I tell you what, we have never in the
history of Harris County have had activist judges. Judges in
the past used to do their job. So now we
have to strengthen our laws to protect ourselves from activist judges.
For example, one of the legislative sessions, the next legislative session,
(23:54):
the nightieth legislative session, we're going to push now or
defendant after they sign a plea agreement that they of guilt,
that they can no longer receive bond. We should not
have to change our laws to reflect that. However, now
we have to because activist judges are on the bench.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, and that gets to the elections of it all.
We made some progress in the twenty twenty four elections.
This has been a big issue for a long time.
I want listeners to understand this isn't a new problem.
It's a new problem in context of the last you know,
twenty or thirty years. But if you dial it back,
we've had these people on the bench for what ten
years at this point. We made progress in twenty twenty four.
(24:41):
Talk to me a little bit about that and where
are we looking to go forward in terms of who
we're trying to see elected. You know, in twenty twenty six.
We have made terms coming up or their elections there
that people can be paying attention to correct.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
So in twenty eighteen, the Democratic Party did a clean
house of every single Republican judge in Here County. There
was not one single criminal district court judge Republican that
was elected into office. They were all Democrats. Okay, Then
a lot of these Democrats in twenty twenty two were
reelected because they were unopposed, not necessarily because of you know,
(25:17):
people wanting to re elect them. The Republican Party did
not have a candidate to oppose them. So come now
they are these this same batch of folks that got
re elected in twenty two come up for reelection in
twenty six. So what we are trying to do is
to encourage good, wholesome Republican lawyers two that are eligible
(25:41):
to put in the name and the hat to be
judge in twenty twenty six. And we're also asking for
the public to support their judicial candidates and show up
to the ballot. We got to vote for better judges.
You can disagree with federal problems, you can disagree which
state problems, but what locally right now? Dispatch of democratic
(26:04):
judges are not doing us any favors. Unfortunately, they are
responsible for a lot of the chaos that is happening
because of their leniency with criminals.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
All Right, we got a couple of minutes left, so
I want to talk a little bit about the kind
of personal side about this. We talked about this in
the last segment this case in Frisco. We saw the
videos come out later of his family in tears talking
about this, and I don't think people pay attention to
that enough. Crime effects real people, It ruins real lives.
Your crime victim advocate, talk to me a little bit
about that in this last minute or so that we have.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
So I became a crime victim advocate after my niece
was shot and killed and we were thrusted into those
criminal justice system that is very very very very confusing.
The criminal justice system in our case did not want
to prosecute the murderer of my nine year old niece.
We had to fight and almost bend their arm to
(26:59):
do what they needed to do and what was right.
You can be sorry all you want, but if you
put a bulletins in a nine year old child's head,
you need to be held accountable. Our murderer was initially
no built. We had to fight very hard to have
the case not only reopened, but represent it to a
grand jury and have them find him find enough probable
(27:23):
cause for murder, which they did, and now we're awaiting
trial come August twenty five and we are nervous, but
we are grateful for the opportunity for our niece to
have her day in court, which is the very least
that we all deserve, is a form of justice in
a country where we're supposed to be have law and order,
(27:44):
and it's been very difficult. We take other crime victims
by the hand and now we help them navigate the
criminal justiceis them, so they're not as last as we were,
and we give them a starting point where they at
least understand what's going on.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
All righty, well, hey in this last minute, you do
great work. Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
I am on Twitter. I'm very active there April of
Giary Texas Double Arms A p R I L A
g U I R R E Texas on Twitter, and
you know, I try to keep everything very organized there
and keep everything up to date. As far as crime,
we keep it very focused and I will be sharing
a lot of information coming this selection season for twenty
(28:26):
twenty six.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
All righty well, hey April, once again, thank you very
much for taking the time to join me. This is
very important issues.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I want people to understand we can solve these problems.
We just have to get up and do something about it.
That's it. And thank God people like you are out
there trying to do that. I hope we're successful. And
obviously we'll be praying for you and your family over
the course of your case coming up. Thank you once again,
God bless thank you much. All right, let's talk about it.
(29:19):
Tariffs Liberation Day. We got to bring it up. We
have to talk about it. I submit to you that
we are continuing to overact to all of this. I
really think it'll be fine. I really don't think it's
that big of a deal. Maybe this is short sided
of me. I prefer to think of it as longsighted.
I think in the long term, all of these deals
(29:40):
will be cut. We're already seeing it happening. Donald Trump
is on the phone with people, deals are being made,
Manufacturing and investment is already coming back into the United States.
We've seen this in the you know, several months since
Donald Trump came back into office. It really didn't take
long for you know, all of these different countries to
start trying to you know, invest into the United States
(30:01):
and make deals with Donald Trump and what have you.
I'm not that concerned about it, but nevertheless, people are
losing their minds about this. I found this article. My
boss actually sent it down to me. My kid needs
a new bike. Trump's tariffs crushed her birthday dream. This
is an opinion article in the Houston Chronicle. And you know,
I really think this is the definition of overreacting. Now,
(30:26):
at first, you might think, okay, yeah, that makes sense. Bicycles,
like a lot of other things, are probably manufactured everywhere else,
so you know, having a tariff will probably make it
more expensive to buy a new bicycle. But then you
would think, well, wait a minute, hold on, aren't there
bicycles already in the United States that a tariff wouldn't
(30:46):
necessarily apply to. Couldn't you just buy one of those?
Because those bikes have already been imported, that extra cost
wouldn't apply, So just go get one of those. But
it gets even worse. Let's dig into the article. How
do I explain to my seven year old that dog
Trump's trade policies will delay her eagerly anticipated birthday present.
First of all, let me answer that question for you.
It's really easy, hey, sweetie. Unfortunately bikes are a little
(31:10):
bit more expensive, so we're gonna go with a different
birthday gift for you this year. Just like that, it's done.
Your seven year old doesn't need to know the details
of Donald Trump and post a tariff on China. Ladi
daia j. It's more expensive. We're gonna go with something else.
It's a little bit out of our price range this
time around. There you go, it's done. I hope I helped.
Thank you very much. But the author continues. He says,
this dilemma wasn't what I expected. On a recent Saturday
(31:31):
on the way to Blue Line Bike Lab in the Heights,
it's a sweet independent retailer where three years ago I
bought her a solid sixteen inch peach colored batch bike
with training wheels. Now, though her long limbs make her
cute little beginner's bike look like a tricycle. All right,
we got to dig into this specifically. I don't know
how much you may or may not know about retailers
(31:52):
across the Houston area. Or specifically the Heights. But the
Heights is typically where you go to get really nice, fancy,
expensive stuff. Everything there is expensive. If you buy a
cup of coffee in the Heights, you're paying thirty dollars
for it. It's ridiculous and that's hyperbole, but you get
my point. So here's a thought for you. Even though
it's great to support small local businesses, if you really
(32:15):
want to get your daughter a bike that badly, maybe
instead of writing an article complaining about it in the
Houston Chronicle, you just go to Walmart, where they have
tons of bikes on the rack for not that much money,
and just buy her a bike there instead of getting
her a fancy designer bicycle at this Houston bike shop
(32:36):
Blue Line Bike Lab. And hey, I don't want to
crap on local businesses, but I'm just trying to be
practical here. He then goes on to say, you know,
he pushed open the shop's doors, her two wheel dream
was crushed. He expected to see a rack full of
multi huge children's bikes. Instead, there were only four children's
bike in stock, none of which fit her suddenly lanky frame. Panicky,
(32:57):
I realized I had just committed the cardinal sin of
over promising to my child on her birthday. No less,
he goes on to elaborate that he could not find
the specific bike that his child wanted, and the store
called around to a couple of different bike stores. They
didn't have it either, and you know, even if they did,
it would be too expensive. So what are we gonna
do now? I would understand being upset about this if
(33:19):
this wasn't a completely made up problem. How do I
know this was a completely made up problem? Because in
no less than two and a half minutes on Google
I solved this man's crisis for him. Magically. I might
be a genius. I might be, but maybe I'm just
kind of a practical person who knows how to use Google.
Either or I'll take genius if y'all want to give
me that title, but I'm going to lean towards I'm
(33:40):
just practical because I'm just so humble. So throughout the
course of this article, the author explains that his daughter
wanted specifically a twenty four inch pink or purple bicycle. Okay, well,
first of all, I went to Blue Line Bicycle Laboratory
to their website, and I found specifically twenty four inch
Youth Lifestyle by s four nineteen ninety nine, four nineteen
(34:02):
ninety nine, four nineteen ninety nine. They've got a couple
of different brands here that are all the exact same price. Now,
one of these it looks like a sort of reddish pink.
I don't know exactly. That might not be specifically the
color she wanted, but it looks about that. But hey,
you might say she's really specific about the color. And
even if she wasn't those prices four nineteen ninety nine.
(34:25):
That I mean, that's darn near five hundred dollars. When
you factor in taxis, it probably comes out to around
five hundred dollars. So, yeah, that's expensive. That's probably out
of a few people's price range. Fair enough, Let's go
to Walmart. I'm not kidding. Let's go to Walmart. Bear
in mind, every bicycle I have ever owned in my
twenty two years, and I've had several, have all come
from Walmart, and they have all been fine. So I
went to Walmart and I said, hey, let's see if
(34:46):
we can find some twenty four inch kids bicycles. And
wouldn't you believe it?
Speaker 4 (34:50):
I did?
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Isn't that amazing? Not only did I find twenty four
inch kids bicycles, I found several of them right here
at my local Walmart, which is not far from the Heights.
I think it's actually technically in the Heights. But here
we go. Here's a pink twenty four inch bicycle for
one to ninety five. They have eight of these in
(35:12):
stalk right now, and you can order one online and
it'll get here in three days. And yet this guy
is losing his mind because he just can't get a
twenty four inch pink bicycle for his daughter. Yes, you
can just go to Walmart. This is not that difficult.
It's right here on the website. It took me thirty
seconds to find this. I even double checked and make
sure that it was a Walmart in the area. This
(35:34):
is the Walmart on Yale Street, the Supercenter on Yale Street,
but here it is. It's the perfect example of the
left wing freak out over these tariffs being completely overblown.
I just can't find a bicycle, Yeah, because you went
to one shop. Go to Walmart, dude, they have plenty.
I think this kind of goes along with the leftist
inability to just zoom out and put things in context.
(35:55):
Even a little bit. I mean they've been pointing to
the stock market too as an example of how terrible
Donald Trump's plan is, how terrible these tariffs are. And
they look and say, look, over the last four days,
the stock market has tanked. I mean, look at the
Dow Jones industrial average. It's gone from what like forty
two thousand all the way down to around thirty eight thousand.
(36:15):
What a terrible tragedy this is. We're all gonna lose
all of our money and all our retirements. Everyone will
be destroyed. There's gonna be a recession. Okay, how about
we zoom out a little bit, because that's five days.
What are we looking at? You know, over the last
five years, Over the last five years, the Dow Jones
industrial average has skyrocketed. Let's look at the start of
(36:36):
Joe Biden's term. On January twenty second, just after Joe
Biden took office in twenty twenty one, the Dow Jones
Industrial average was just under thirty one thousand. Since that time,
it climbed all the way up to forty four thousand,
almost forty five thousand, so you know, big, big, big gains.
Now it's down to just about thirty eight thousand. Remember
(36:58):
when we started, we were at about thirty thousand, just
under thirty one thousand. We're still at thirty eight thousand
on the Dow Jones Industrial average. So has the economy
completely collapsed? No, it really hasn't. And bear in mind,
throughout the course of Biden's presidency, it actually fell even
lower than it is right now. But nobody freaks out
about that. Isn't that weird? September thirtieth, twenty twenty two,
(37:21):
it was around what twenty eight thousand, little bit higher,
but that's a significant drop off from where it was
at almost thirty one thousand. But did the left lose
their minds over this? No, they didn't because they realized, Okay,
the stock market is cyclical. It goes up and then
it comes back down, and then it goes right back
up again, and then it'll coming a little bit more down,
and then way way up and then a little bit down.
This happens all the time, and nobody loses their mind
(37:43):
about this until Donald Trump comes into office. Listen, this
is going to come back up as deals are cut
with other nations and the market kind of cools off
a little bit. This is just people losing their minds
over headlines. That's all.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
This is.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Calm down, You and your money will be fine. If
I were doing anything right now, be buying Buy these
stocks while they're cheap, because as Trump cuts deals with
these countries and these tariffs are rolled back, these stocks
are going to go back up. How do we know that,
because that's what always happens, and deals are already being cut.
Vietnam I believe has already had a phone call with
Donald Trump about this net and Yahoo of Israel will
(38:17):
be having a conversation with Donald Trump on Monday. I
believe negotiations are underway with even India as well, So
this appears to be working. I mean, it's not going
to work overnight, we know that, but just hold on,
think long term and listen. You'll be fine. All right.
Once again, my name is Ethan Buchanan. This is the
next generalport If you missed anything, the full show will
be available Monday morning wherever you get your podcasts. Don't
(38:39):
forget to check back. We've got a special Wednesday podcast
as well. Find me online Underscore Ethan Buchanan on x dot,
Ethan Buchanan on Instagram, and we'll be back next Sunday evening,
starting at seven pm. Thank you very much for listening,
Have a blessed night.
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