Should America Stop Minting Pennies?

This podcast edition of Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness features journalist Brandon Waltens. ( @KennethRWebster )

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Giganic government sucks. The Suit of Happiness radio is DeLux.
Liberty and freedom will make you smile. The a Suit
of Happiness on your radiotele, just as cheeseburgers and a
liberty fries at food.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is terrible. Trump wants the Treasury Department to discontinue pennies. Now,
what will I tip workers at Starbucks? Pennies are produced
at the US Mint, which means many Americans think it
is a place that makes those girl Scout cookies. Hi,
welcome to the show. I'm Kenny Webster. You know who's
gonna be with us at the bottom of the hour.
You obviously don't know. I haven't told you yet. Brandon

(00:43):
Waltons is stopping by. And big things are happening in Austin, Texas.
Your tax dollars are funding them. A lot of them
involve publicly funded officials doing grotesque and disgusting things with kids,
and what we can do to stop that from happening.
So stick around. I know it's crazy to think, but
that's something we're going to talk about on this radio
station in just a little bit. Also, the plastic straw ban.

(01:05):
We're banning the plastic straw, the strap, the plastic straw
ban was a plastic straw man. And we'll get to
all of that in the next day. I do think
the story with Trump and the pennies is fascinating. Did
you know it costs more money? It costs three times
as much money to make a single penny as what
the penny is worth. And nickels are kind of the
same way. It costs more money to make a nickel

(01:26):
than the value of the nickel. Now, I bet nobody
listening to me right now. I mean, obviously maybe somebody,
there's a lot of you know, we have thousands of listeners,
and we're grateful for every one of you. But I
bet almost nobody listening to me right now is any
change in their pockets. Well, why would you what would
you do with it? Kip her barista? That's it? Okay, fine,
that's a good answer. But now for the you don't

(01:47):
need a penny. But also there's a great lesson to
learn in inflation. You ever try explaining inflation to a
stupid person like someone else say, I don't understand, Well,
why's gasoline so expensive? Just make it cheaper? Well, because
it's not that the gas got more expensive. It's that
your dollar lost its value.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
No, I know, there's were relatively similar amounts of oil
and gas out there, I mean not always. Obviously, we
have fuel shortages sometimes, and I get that. But they
keep making more money. They're not making more land. The
amount of land that exists on earth, I mean, with
a few exceptions, is mostly the same. There's not going
to be any more real estate for the most part.
I mean, yeah, they'll build high rises, and you've heard

(02:28):
that the Nation of China is making building artificial islands
and stuff. Technically that's true, but for the most part,
we're not creating more land faster than we're creating new money.
New money is being created all the time, and at
one point the penny was actually worth more than what
it cost to make the penny. But then we kept
making more and more money, until suddenly the cost of
making the penny exceeded the value of the penny. I

(02:52):
assume you understand what that means, but just remember not
everybody does. It's a good litmus test for stupidity. I think,
ask them to explain inflation, and if they can't explain
it to you, you're probably not gonna be able to
talk to them about anything. Liberals often will contradict themselves.
They'll tell you that printing out money is fine, and
then they'll complain about inflation. They'll tell you inflation's transitory

(03:15):
when Joe Biden's president, and then when Donald Trump takes over,
they'll tell you that he's not doing enough to fix
the economy, even though he's only been in office for
about three weeks. Liberals also love to tell you that
everything is racist. Everything is racist, right up until suddenly
they're the racists, and then it's fine. Great example of
this would be Liz Cheney. Breitbart dot Com today reporting

(03:36):
on disgraced former Representative Liz Cheney, a person who claims
to be a Republican from the state of Wyoming, actually
launched into a very xenophobic attack on Elon Musk last week.
Cheney received a preemptive pardon from former President Joe Biden
for whatever crime she may have committed since twenty fourteen.

(03:56):
No one knows exactly, but she reacted to a one
word tweet from Elon Musk. All Elon Musk said was
the word interesting. Musk was responding to another tweet that
revealed Liz Cheney basically began her government career with USAID. USAID,
as you probably know, is the government outlet currently under
fire from Elon Musk's Doge group for its reckless and

(04:17):
unaccountable spending to the tune of billions of tax dollars
for all kinds of ridiculous things we clearly don't need
to spend money on. Liz Cheney, who led Trump's impeachment
and the mass imprisonment campaign against thousands of Trump supporters
was spawned out of USAID. That sentence I just said
was actually a tweet written by Mike Bens, the executive

(04:38):
director of a group called Freedom Forum Online, and Elon Musk,
whose name on Twitter is currently Harry Balls, retweeted it
with the words interesting. Now, apparently Liz Cheney saw this,
obviously felt a little defensive. She's a pardoned warmonger, and
she lashed out at Elon Musk's quote unquote interesting comment

(04:58):
with her verified Twitter count her ex account. She replied,
and she said, damn right, Elon, I'm proud of what
America did to win the Cold War, defeats Soviet communism,
and defend democracy. Our nation stood for freedom. You may
be unfamiliar with that part of our history, since you
weren't yet an American citizen. End quote. Wow. Cheney, who

(05:21):
interestingly enough, lost her seat in the twenty twenty two
Republican primary to a Trump band packed candidate by thirty
seven points, was widely ridiculed for responding to the wrong person.
Elon is at Elon is not Elon Musk. It turns
out she tagged the wrong person on Twitter. Still, it
was revealing the insult from Cheney to attack Musk's Americanism.

(05:44):
Let me think about it, Elon chose to become American.
That tells you a lot, doesn't it. And also, the
Cold War was not solely an American thing. American leadership
may have helped win the Cold War, if you could
even argue that it's over, But Cold War politics was
a global thing, a global fight for freedom versu tyranny.
You do not have to live in America or be
an American to understand those stakes. The Cold War was

(06:05):
about turning the world into a communist state, and many
people fought against it. And interestingly enough, Cheney's comment once
again exposes who the left truly is, which is everything
they accused Trump of being. It's a cheap shot away
to other Elon Musk a McCarthyite smear against his Americanism.

(06:29):
Now here's the thing. Since Cheney is a beloved and
bubbled member of the far left, she need not fear
any repercussions for this kind of talk. Liz Cheney and
her confederates on the left always accused Republicans and Conservatives
of the things they are guilty of. Racism, fomenting violence,
election interference, weaponizing the justice system, fascism, censorship, book banning, McCarthyism, intolerance.

(06:56):
It's kind of an ugly bitch, too, isn't she.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Came king?

Speaker 4 (07:03):
This is Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness on KPRC nine
fifty Houston.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Okay, so McDonald's US sales are down. I'm thinking this
is going to change now that Andy Reid is in
the mood distress. Eat just a guess. Meantime, Starbucks employees
are writing on cups again. Did you know they quit
doing that for a while. Now they're doing it again.
Mine said, I don't get paid enough to come up
with anything to say. Oh, bless your heart, welcome back

(07:30):
from break kiddos. You know Starbucks is a place where
you may get a drink with a straw in it.
And if you are good at predicting what I'm about
to talk about, you know it has to do with
plastic straws. Trump has signed an executive order on plastic
drinking straws. The President yesterday, Donald J. Trump decided the

(07:50):
US government and consumers can still buy plastic drinking straws.
He's pushing back efforts by his predecessor to phase out
using plastic and tackle waste. They said, that's what they say, right.
You know what's funny about that. You know who else
was against it? Presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Now it's true.
Back in September of last year, she made a big
announcement she was against plastic straw bands. Now, for the record,

(08:14):
this was a very dumb moral panic. It never made
any sense when they needed her most. Presidential candidate Kamala
Harris wanted to ban plastic straws. But then that mania
about banning plastic straws subsided and she changed her mind
about it. Interesting, even when Kamala did support the band,
she joked even then about how crappy paper straws are

(08:35):
and they need to come up with better eco friendly alternatives.
Indeed she did. As a matter of fact, she did
make jokes about it publicly. The straw band was the
perfect straw man. You know, it all started back in
what twenty seventeen, Seattle outlawed single use plastic straws, and
people snickered and laughed at them. It was a very
silly example of nanny state excess. And you couldn't help

(09:00):
but wonder where did this all come from? Why do
we suddenly need to ban plastic straws. Well, there was
a statistic about how dangerous plastic straws were, and it
turns out that statistic was made up by a nine
year old boy. Yeah, NPR even admittedly reported on it.
Back of the day. One child's outsized influence on the

(09:22):
debate over plastic straws at the center of these conversations.
As a statistic, they say, each day, Americans use an
estimated five hundred million straws. The number has been used
to illustrate the scale of the issue and to really
demonstrate modern society's reliance on a somewhat ubiquitous piece of
disposable plastic, and statistics like this moved fast. The New

(09:45):
York Times CNN, NPR, even Fox News all sided the
figure as having some environmental effect on things like our
national parks. Turns out that number is imprecise, and it
originates from Milo Cress, a young vironmentalists to research straw
usage to come up with the five hundred million dollar
estimate when he was just nine years old. He's a

(10:06):
very curious fourth grader. He just started an environmental project
to discourage restaurants from providing straws. By default. He said,
give them paper straws, don't give them plastic straws. The
plastic straws can kill sea turtles, he said. Turns out
that's not really true. In fact, studies have found that
paper straws have forever chemicals in them that are probably

(10:31):
arguably much worse for the environment and your health than
the plastic straws. The paper straws are much worse for you.
Study from Belgian researchers published two years ago found that
paper straws had higher concentrations of long lasting, water resistant
forever chemicals. When Kamala Harris was asked about whether she'd
support a ban on plastic straws, she made a stab

(10:53):
at appearing human and folks see by talking about how
much she hated paper straws. She says, it's very difficult
to drink out of a paper straw. If you don't
gulp it down immediately, it starts to bend and then
you know, the little thing catches it. We have to
kind of perfect that one little bit more, she said.
But as it turns out, even a perfected paper straw
might not be a win for the planet. Belgian researchers

(11:15):
published a study in Food and Additives. It's a journal
called Food Additives and Contaminants, and they found that paper
straws contained higher concentrations of poly and perfolorical substances. Thank
you very much, pfash. It's a hard word to pronounce
perfolorical substances anyway. The point is they're forever chemicals because

(11:35):
and they get that name not shockingly, because of how
long they take to break down in nature, much longer
than plastic or steel straws. Incredible. Pfas's are frequently used
to consumer products, also frequently used in industrial products because
they are water and fire resistant. Their use is also
controversial given that they can be toxic at high concentrations,

(11:57):
but even small concentrations can accumulate in the body and
natural environments over time. There's dozens of states that have
already tried to pass laws restricting the use of these things,
which is funny because there's also dozens of cities that
restricted plastic straw use. It's almost like they just don't
want you to suck a liquid through a tube. The
Belgian study found that of the thirty nine brands of

(12:18):
straws tested, those made out of paper and bamboo were
more likely to have these forever chemicals present. Paper straws
also had higher concentrations of pfas is than plastic straws.
The studies authors said the inclusion of the forever chemicals
could be intentional, you know, they water repellency would be
useful in preventing straws from turning into a pulpy mess

(12:38):
when stuck in a drink. But whatever the case may be,
the Belgian researchers argue that the greater presence of the
forever chemicals and paper straws could actually make them less
environmentally friendly than the plastic straws, but also less healthy
for you, you know. Stainless steel straws, which were found
to have no pfas'es No forever chemicals were actually the

(12:59):
truly sustainable alternative. But you don't hear anybody saying we
need to use steel straws. That never happens. Way back
in the late twenty tens, plastic straws became a target
of bands and boycotts and consumer awareness campaigns. It was
all for nothing. It was all based off of fake news.
One little kid just making up a statistic. But it
sounded good. Oh did it sound so good?

Speaker 1 (13:22):
You know?

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Interestingly enough, Britain Vancouver, not Britain, British Columbia, Vancouver, British
Columbia banned the plastic straws back in twenty eighteen. San
Francisco did it, Portland did it, Washington d C? Did it?
New York City did it? Washington DC? Now, why would
Washington DC. There's no sea turtles in Washington, d C.

(13:44):
Why would they do that? British Prime Minister Teresa May
announced plans to ban the little suckers in all over
the British Kingdom. Even McDonald's and Starbucks tried to phase
out the use of those straws. But it was a
very unpopular thing. And there's a reason why it was
so on pop celebrities. Politicians listen to celebrities. As a

(14:06):
matter of fact, my friend Kristin Tate at Reason dot
Com spoke about it very recently in a video.

Speaker 5 (14:12):
Do you enjoy sipping drinks through plastic straws? Well, if
activists get their way, you won't be allowed to any more.
These must be banned, they say, why.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Five hundred million plastic straws are used in this country
every single day, and many in up in the ocean,
polluting water and killing sea life.

Speaker 5 (14:32):
When celebrities speak, politicians listen. Seattle recently banned straws, and
other places want to do the same.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Straw suck, and we are no longer going to allow
for plastic straws here.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
In San Francisco. Their time has come and gone.

Speaker 4 (14:46):
The idea that you're going to ban straws and save
the world is ridiculous.

Speaker 5 (14:50):
Sandala Logo Messini studies environmental issues at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
What will banning plastic straws accomplish?

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Probably nothing at all. It might make some people in
Hollywood feel good, It might make some politicians feel good
like they're doing something. Might sound good at parties, but
it's not going to solve any problems. But thanks to
Donald Trump, that little era, that little chapter of human history.
Pretending that paper straws are better for your health. They're
not better for the environment, They're not protecting you from

(15:20):
plastics in your testicle. Is probably not the case. Actually,
that one might be true. Pursuit of that penis radio
coming now to speak Curve.

Speaker 4 (15:29):
This is Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness on KPRC nine
fifty Houston.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
You gotta love this. As bad as things are in America,
at least at least we're not in Sri Lanka. A
nationwide power outage just occurred in Sri Lanka. Blackouts all
over the country. What happened? Turns out it was caused
by a monkey, a single individual monkey messing with the
power lines. And I guess the man in the yellow

(15:57):
hat is gonna whip his ass. He is really mad
about it. Hi, welcome back. Can break folks Like a
lot of you, I like to know where my tax
dollars go. One of the great things about Doge, We've
learned so much. We've learned so much about the insane
stuff people are spending our money on. From Doge that
some of the fake news that services online, you can't
tell which is satire and which is real. Like I'll

(16:18):
give you an example. We spent millions of dollars on
dei in Serbia. Serbia and like everybody there the same
color and religion. We spent millions of dollars on a
transgender puppet show in India. One of those is real,
one of them's fake. One of them actually contains little
details from a different country that are real, but it's fake.
I don't know how much we spent on transgender procedures

(16:40):
in South Asia, but it was a lot. There was
a fake news story circulating online that said we spent
an absurd amount of money in the nineties convincing Pizza
Hut to revamp their restaurants. Now that's not true actually,
but people thought it was real because all the other
ridiculous news stories. All that being said, here in Texas,
things aren't much different. I know what you're thinking, but Kenny,

(17:01):
it's Republicans in control, well sort of. We don't have
school choice. So in our state, every time a local
school district decides to do something ridiculous, that's your money
that they're using. And there are a lot of examples
of this right now. In fact, one hundred and sixty
Texas teachers are under investigation right now for cheating on

(17:21):
a certification exam. Five Houston area educators have been charged
for their roles in the cheating scandal. I want to
talk about school choice and why that's important. But before
we even get to that, I got my buddy Brandon
Walton's on the line right now from Texas scorecard dot com. Brandon,
why are teachers under investigation for cheating on certification exams?
I mean, I guess it's obvious, right, yeah, I mean, this.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Is the worst kind of cheating, right, is that these
are teachers who I guess otherwise maybe whenn't pass the
teaching certification tests that are required to teach in classrooms
in Texas. Instead, they essentially have police officers and investigating
this in the Houston area in Harris County have prosecutors

(18:05):
charging individuals with orchestrating this scheme where apparently people were
paying money to have somebody else somebody else would go
in and take the test. You know, Apparently the proctors
were allegedly in on this. This was a whole scheme
and literally, you know, for what, so that they could
pass a teaching test and teach you know that our

(18:30):
children that you know, the children of the future.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, okay, so apparently pretty common. I mean literally hundreds
of educators, including here in the Houston area. And if
that doesn't frustrate you, maybe this will.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
You.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Guys had a news story today out of Lake Travis.
Lake Travis ISD. Superintendent is resigning, but they won't explain
why undisclosed misconduct. That's what they said. There's probably more
to this than what they're telling us.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
Oh, certainly. And this happens all the time. I mean,
we've seen their stories where districts have gotten rid of
their superintendent. You know, you would think for cause they might.
In some cases they'll ellude, well, you know, there was
some misconduct, but they won't. They won't talk about it.
Here's why this is a problem. It's a problem for
two reasons. One, the people in the district who are
paying the salary of the superintendent or who had, you know,

(19:21):
their children being being taught in a school district led
by the superintendent, they deserve to know. And by the way,
he's receiving like over two hundred thousand dollars in severance
on his way out. But it's also but it's also
important because guess what happens to people. They don't just
go away. They you know, nine times out of ten,
pop up in another school district. Right, And if there's

(19:43):
nothing out there about why exactly they were fired from
their for their previous job, or why they were dismissed
or quote unquote resigned, whatever the case is, then there's
not a lot for those boards to go off of.
And so you really see the situation where you have
districts sort of asking the trash, and you know, one district,

(20:05):
you know, trash will pop up in another part of
the state, Get another big six figure salary at another district,
and we'll keep on going on without parents in the
district having any idea what kind of misconduct it was
that led to their dismissal in the first place.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Unbelievable, terrible, all right. So here in the Houston area,
klin ISD has been the target of child sex trafficking
and a legal case. In fact, civil rights attorneys are
flying lawsuits against Klein id on behalf of a victim
identified as Jane Doe. Look, this is the Houston area.
This is right over there what I remember talking about
this case, but a lot of people may have forgotten

(20:42):
about this because there's so many news stories about disgusting
sexual exploitation of kids at public schools in Texas. What's
the case here involved?

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Essentially, you had this cosmetology teacher that was arrested back
last year, in the spring of last year, almost a
year ago, on three counts of child trafficking and compelling
prostitution of children under the age of eighteen. Also implicated
in part of this and also arrested and being charged

(21:12):
is her son. And so it seems you had this
horrific mother son situation where they were forcing troubled teams
into prostitution.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah. Unbelievable, and this is one of those things that
should have upset people more. But it feels like other
than you guys in a handful of conservative news outlets,
barely a footnote in the news.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, and unfortunately that's all too common, especially with these
cases of misconduct in criminal activity that we've seen happen
in school districts. But I'll tell you, the more you know,
more and more people are not even needing in some cases,
you know, the news is getting to them anyways. Because
they're living in these districts where this is happening.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, and it happened in Houston as well. Once again,
a story you guys are reporting on that I don't
see anywhere else. And Houston, Ida mother is going to
sue after her daughter's alleged assault by a dance teacher.

Speaker 3 (22:11):
Yes, and you know that's just the latest, right and
so you see, you know it was a dance teacher
in this case. We had a story I believe last
week where I think it was a wrestling coach, you know,
substitute teacher. All of this, I mean, we've had several
stories just over the last two weeks. It's no wonder
why people are looking for alternatives to the comment education system.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah. Absolutely, you know, it's interesting. There are solutions to this.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel,
so to speak. We're actually supposed to have State Senator
Brandon Creyton on the show today, but he got the flu.
Poor guy. But he made big progress for local Houstonians
last week in the Texas State Senate, didn't he.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yes, the Texas Senate passed Senate Built Too, which is
their school choice proposal, essentially the short of it is
that gives up to one hundred thousand students in Texas,
based on the funding that's being allocated towards it, up
to ten thousand dollars to be able to go to
a private school and move out of their public school.

(23:14):
If pass would be immediately, I believe the largest school
choice program in the country, which isn't terribly surprising just
given the size of Texas, right, but this would be
a major step. Senate passed that last week. The governors
made it a priority. The House is moving much slower.
They don't even have committees yet. We'll probably get those

(23:35):
assigned this week. We're now about a month into their
one hundred and forty day session. Then you had just
over the weekend, President Donald Trump taking the truth social
and congratulating the Texas Senate Lieutenant Gunor Dane Patrick as
well as Senator Brandon Creyton on passing that school choice proposal,
saying he's behind it one hundred percent, but also saying

(23:57):
that he'd be watching the Texas House carefully to see
if they do the same. The Texas House has traditionally
been where school choice has gone to die. This time
could be different. You've had quite a bit of turnover
in that chamber. Dustin Burrows, the Speaker of the House,
said that they will pass school choice, and so you know,
we'll see ultimately the proof will be played out over

(24:19):
the coming weeks and months.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
I will say this, it's interesting how things have turned
out so far this session. We're just getting started. There's
still a lot more to go. But the feud between
Burrows and Cook was fascinating. And some of the people
I would have thought would have been aligned with Dustin
Burrows didn't seem to be. You know, local lawmaker Briscoe Cane.
We've pointed I didn't agree with him on the Paxton impeachment,

(24:41):
but apparently he was in opposition to Dustin Burrow's taken over.
House Speaker. Dustin Burrow says he is confident school vouchers
will pass this time. You know, not crazy about the guy,
but I'll tell you I'll support him if this is
a thing he's serious about doing. Do we have the votes?
Where do we stand on this.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Time? You had about a dozen or so Republicans vote
with Democrats to kill school choice. Many I think most
of those members are gone. They either decided to retire
or they were forced out in the primary elections. They've
been replaced largely with people who are pro school choice,
and so I think just looking at the numbers, you

(25:22):
would say school choice probably has the votes now in
the Texas House. But you know, of course, we'll see
what that proposal looks like. You know, will it be universal,
will there be strings attached, et cetera. There's certainly a
lot of specifics left to play out. That is, if
the House decides to do their own thing, they could
just pass the Senate's version and send it to the

(25:42):
governor post haste, but will likely see them try to
make their own version and we'll have to see what
the details actually look like.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Okay, So I just want to for those of you
just turn it on you're ready. I'm talking to my buddy,
Brandon Waltons right now. Brandon is a real journalist. He's
a patriot. He has political opinions. Unlike some of these
journalists to the Texas Tribune and the Houston Chronicle. He
wears his opinions on his sleeve. You're welcome to agree
or disagree with him, but to just really cement how
much better Texas scorecard dot Com is than the Houston Chronicle.

(26:11):
The Houston Chronicle published a story right before the weekend
and the headline is the three biggest powers in the
Texas Legislature the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, and the House Speaker.
And in the article, a journalist named Isaac Hu explains
the role of these three individuals and gives you about
as much information as you would have gotten off of
a Wikipedia article. And they charge money for that. Brandon,

(26:33):
I noticed you guys. Your news outlet's free and it's
actually useful.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yes, we are free. We're you know, we're nonprofit, so
donations are welcome. But all of it's available at Texas
scorecard dot com and brandan.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
We're people to follow you on x obviously our favorite
social media platform. Where might they go?

Speaker 3 (26:52):
Yeah, I'm at d Walton's wa l t e NS.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
I encourage you to follow Brandon Walton's. One of the
things Brandon and I have been doing off the area
with some of our other friends is exposing grifting political candidates.
And it's not really something we talked about on the
radio today, but if you want a good laugh, go
look at some of the stuff we've been tweeting.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
America, the Land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.
Kenny Webster's Pursuit of happiness.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Okay, So Australian scientists have produced the world's first kangaroo
embryo through in vitro fertilization. The reason it's so hard
to get a kangaroo pregnant is apparently they keep jumping
up and down. I'm told next, Australian scientists hope to
determine what is and is not a knife. It's not
a knife, Okay, Sorry, I just just want to make

(27:40):
sure you're paying attention. Hey, there's been a lot of
talk about whether or not it was a good idea
to defund defund USAID, and if you disagree with doing it,
if you're still a fan of USAID, I'm just curious
how you would defend things like this. Apparently, in Afghanistan
we spent one point four billion dollars funding drug production.

(28:01):
Drugs were the elephant in the room during the failed
US war in Afghanistan. Opium was such a large part
of the poor and war torn country's economy that fighting
the Taliban had to be paid for with something, so
the US backed Afghan Republic often often looked more like
a turf war between rival narco gangs. USAID tried to
change this state of affairs by spending one point four

(28:23):
to six billion dollars on alternative development programs from twenty
two to twenty seventeen. They were trying to encourage farmers to,
you know, move away from opium by providing fertilizer and
equipment and other stuff. But some of that money inadvertently
supported making opium. In fact, that's pretty much what it
all went towards. Then there were the child sex abuse

(28:45):
scandals in Africa. We spent twenty nine point six million
dollars through a USAID funded charity in Kenya that was
allegedly covering up rampant sex abuse of children. USAID actually
funded a second charity in the Central African republican month
after the major sex abuse scandal broke. And it sounds
like we did it again. The Child of God Relief Institute,

(29:07):
which ran an orphanage in Kenya and it was children
that were affected by AIDS and that sort of thing.
They got high praise from the US government way back
in twenty thirteen, and USAID gave them twenty nine point
three million dollars. And what did they do they raped kids.
Reason dot Com refers to the next Little Scandal as

(29:27):
the nine point five billion dollar billion with a B
dollar medical supply boondoggle. Maybe you've never heard of this before,
but USAID promised that the Global Health Supply Chain Program
that's what it's called the GHSCP would almost pay for itself.
It was a multi billion dollar investment, the largest in

(29:48):
USAID history, which was supposed to improve target country's ability
to obtain medical supplies. And USAID said it it would
fund something, it would pay for itself, and we would
never have to fund it again. Spoiler alert. That did
not happen. We paid billions of dollars for medical supplies
in foreign countries, and then when we were told that

(30:09):
this would eventually pay for itself, it didn't, and we
kept doing it. Here's a weird news story. USAID insists
they're not involved in any spy agencies, but many in
both Washington, DC and foreign capitals still treat the group
like their spy agency. Since the nineteen nineties, Congress has
budgeted millions of dollars for USAID to undermine the government

(30:32):
of Cuba. In fact, we once send an AID worker
down there just to be arrested is a complete embarrassment
for USAID. The subcontractor's name, by the way, was Alan Gross.
He was arrested in two thousand and nine. Gross had
been sent to set up uncensored internet access for the
Jewish community of Cuba, where the internet access is both
expensive and controlled by the government. He was caught in

(30:54):
his hotel with military grade communication equipment and they were
vincet was there to spy and he went to jail
for it thanks to USAID. Breitbart dot Com today is
reporting a guy named rue t Xeria. He's a Democrat
operative and he's closely aligned with John Podesta and the
Center for American Progress, and he is warning that it

(31:17):
is suicide for Democrats to defend USAID, the unaccountable bureaucracy
independent of any elected official, including the president that has
Wanton Lee spent billions of tax dollars on lunatic programs
that spread DEI and transsexual propaganda throughout the world. At
the request of the elected president Donald J. Trump. Elon

(31:37):
Musk and his team audited USAID and what they ended
up doing was firing a lot of people and moving
what little was left over to the State Department which
is what it always should have been. If USAID is
a part of the government that exists to provide aid
to other countries in exchange for diplomatic relate, a positive
diplomatic relationship, then shouldn't it be part of the State Department. Nevertheless,

(32:01):
this is a hell Democrat eagers leaders are very eager
to publicly die on. Writing for the Citizen Free Press,
this far left activist and operative rue t X Area.
I'm probably not saying his right t X Syria. We'll
just call him Roy and he's lamented that. If you
want evidence that Democrats have learned nothing from their November

(32:22):
fifth shell shocking, just watch this video and here's a
link to the video. Let me play a little. Is
US Senator Chris van Holland of Maryland speaking at a
rally outside the capital to decry the Trump administration in
Elon Musk's efforts to shut down USAID.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
For Isabelle and all the patriotic Americans who helped organize
this rally.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
The video that you're listening to in the background is
described as a protest outside the Capitol last week, at
which Democrat Senator Chris van Holland of Maryland one of
several lawmakers and attendants the chance. Hey, how Elon Musk
has got to go.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
Oh, Elon Musk has got to go, because this is
about the assembled.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Democrats then vowed to protect USAID in the courts or
by threatening parliamentary maneuvers against Trump's nominees. And so the
gentleman writing this article doesn't necessarily disagree with the Democrats,
but he wonders why did USAID grant one point five
million dollars for quote, diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia's
workplaces in business communities. USAID, he thinks, does a lot

(33:32):
of good work, and that DOGE is on a shaky
legal ground. But why are we promoting diversity in Serbia?
You know, part of the reason why there's not a
lot of diversity in Serbia is because there's not a
lot of diversity in Serbia. It's not like there's black
and brown people hiding all over the place. The people
that live in Serbia are get ready for this, mostly Serbian.
Most people aren't migrating to Serbia. If you're not old

(33:54):
enough to remember this. In the nineties, there was a
massive war there Bosnia and serb and you remember that. So, yeah,
that's part of the reason why maybe African migrants haven't
headed to Serbia. The problem for the Democrat Party is
that it's often the extreme left that is the tail
that wags the dog, and that extreme left demands the
party opposed Trump on absolutely everything, including a seventy thirty

(34:18):
issue like this one or an eighty twenty issue. CNN
recently said roughly seventy nine to eighty percent of Americans
think transgender people do not belong in women's sports. Now,
how many Democrat officials do you think agree with that? Exactly?
Most Democrat officials would argue that transactivists should be allowed

(34:39):
in women's sports, and yet, weirdly enough, most Americans don't agree.
So by giving the far left control over the Democrat Party,
Democrats have jumped into bed with a base so far
outside mainstream opinion, they are forced to make fools of
themselves defending this nonsense, blatant in morality, gross unfairness to
women and girls. So I agree with the gentleman that

(35:02):
wrote this article, But what he doesn't consider is what
happens to a Democrat Party that does decide to learn
the lessons of their twenty twenty four election laws. If
Democrats suddenly become sane and reasonable on women's sports, USAID
or protecting the border or jailing violent criminals, they will
lose their political base. When you lose your base, the
bottom falls out forever. That's it. Ask George W. Bush

(35:23):
about that. He didn't limp out of office with a
sub thirty percent approval rating because of Iraq or Katrina.
What bottomed him out was losing his conservative base by
calling for mass amnesty of illegal aliens. Democrats have painted
themselves in a corner. They have no idea how to
escape from it. The party will implode, the money and

(35:44):
volunteer base will dry up, and things will get much
worse before they get better. But hey, what do I care.
I'm not a Democrat. I love you all. Thank you
so much for listening this afternoon. We have a smartphone app,
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(36:06):
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