Why are Texas Republicans trying to legalize gay sex?

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

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Giganic government sucks. Suit of radio is dupes. Liberty and
freedom will make you smile. The a Suda habing and
us on your radio toil, just as cheeseburg is liberty.
Arise it.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh, this is interesting. Kawaisaki, the Asian motor brand Kawaisaki
unveiled a robot horse. It looks so realistic, I said,
it looks so realistic, realistic? Is it? Thank you, imaginary

(00:46):
person in the back of the room. It looks so
realistic that Arby's already tried to kill it for a
sandwich yellow. I'm mister red, I don't know what you're
mad about it. Sure Arby's uses horse meat, but who cares.
It's a leaner, healthier meat. Don't get mad at them,
of course.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous mister.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
M There's a news story today about how there's a
woman who dresses up like a horse and performs at
music festivals in or underwear. And even though I'm pretty
sure that's a sign of the apocalypse, a prophecy from
the end of times, no doubt, I'm still not going
to talk about it on the show. Ah damn it,
I just did. I broke my own role. Now you
know what we will talk about today on the show.
Brandon Waltons is stopping by. He is live that the

(01:32):
Texas Legislature did the Texas House and would you believe
that date fail and you remember Old Dade fail and
not my favorite Texas Republican. He is trying to legalize sodomy.
He wants people to be able to have gay sex
without having to worry about getting interested. So we'll tell
you why and what that entails and what it means.
Stick around for that, and that's not it's not going

(01:54):
to be the main part of the There's also a
budget vote, which I think is slightly more important. And
Ken Paxton's going out to the city of San Antonio.
You're in your attorney general is going to war with
Alamo City. Stick around all that andmore on the way.
In the meantime, flooding struck several states across the Midwest
and the South. It was mainly caused by the tears
of people who check the status of their four oh

(02:16):
one k's yesterday. But there's good news. New York Post
today reporting US stocks jumped after a massive multi day
drought as nations overseas are rushing to negotiate with Trump
on his stiff series of reciprocal tariffs. This is very
good news. The Dow Jones jumped some twelve hundred points
right at the opening, lost thirty five hundred yesterday, so

(02:38):
we're still not quite back at where we are. The
Dow Jones is so low right now. How low is it?
It's almost as low as it was a year ago
when Joe Biden was president. Yeah, I know, that's how
so that's of course why the Democrats are mad. And
of course all this stems from Trump's Liberation Day last week.
Economists have warned this could reheat inflation. They think it's
going to trigger a recession. We'll see, it's too soon

(03:00):
to say for sure. The SMP went up, the Nasdaq
went up. It's not bad, right. Wall Street took a
wild ride yesterday, up and down, up and down volatility.
If you were a day trader and you made the
right guesses yesterday, you actually could have made a lot
of money riding that roller coaster. But anyway, the good
news is today it mostly seems to be up so far,
and I haven't looked at it in the last hour

(03:22):
or two here, but it was certainly doing well earlier. Hey,
speaking from the White House. During an interview earlier today,
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett revealed dozens of countries
or pounding down the door for a tariff deal and
that managing the number of requests for meetings is becoming
very difficult. Here's a little bit.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
I think that right now we're managing a massive number
of requests for negotiations. It's actually logistically quite challenging just
to go through them. As something that I've been spending
a lot of the time this morning doing because at
NSC and NEC, what we have to do is prioritize
the meetings for the president, and there are so many
to go through. The you know, we're actually getting ready
to present a plan for him on you know who

(04:04):
and when. But yeah, he obviously prioritizes two of our
closest allies and.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
Trading partners, Japan and Korea. And the word out of
those conversations was really positive and positive really for American workers,
American farmers. There are a heck of a lot of
concessions on the table. In the end, the President, of course,
is going to be the one who decides whether the
deal is good enough to change his mind.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
So that is Kevin Hasset right now reporting live from
a nuclear apocalypse, apparently according to that siren in the background. Meanwhile,
Trump is already accepting the phone calls from top US
trading partners. Good things are happening. Donald Trump says, I
just had a great call with the acting President of
South Korea. We talked about their tremendous and unsustainable surplus tariff, shipbuilding,

(04:47):
large scale purchase of US LNG, their joint venture in
the Alaska Pipeline, and of course, in fact that my
golf game is looking pretty slick, and payment for the
first big time military protection we provide to South Korea.
On and on here. But if South Korea and Taiwan
and Ukraine and Israel actually value the support that we've

(05:09):
given them militarily, wouldn't you expect them to be the
first ones to bend the knee and kiss the ring
as far as this trade war goes. I'll also add
this to that, I don't know if we should use
language like what I just used. I actually just broke
a role that I told myself I wasn't gonna wasn't
I told myself earlier today as we discussed this on
the radio, we shouldn't use language that makes it sound

(05:31):
like people that have decided to negotiate a deal with
Donald Trump are somehow losing that they folded. We shouldn't
make it sound shameful, right, We're just asking everyone to
be fair. Instead, maybe we should just use words like agree,
resolve that sort of thing. But any rate. A report
today from Jeremy Frankel details how a Trump message for

(05:54):
Americans is stop worrying about the economy, do not panic,
don't be a pannikin. They said that yesterday when it
comes to the economy and the stock market, look at
the whole picture. The fact of the matter is Joe
Biden have the country very much on a downward trajectory.
There's so much damage that was done with the reckless
stimulus spending that caused the inflation. And we can look

(06:16):
at the previous neglect from decades of failure from politicians
of both parties to trade deals things of that nature,
whether it be NAFTA or China's entry into the World
Trade Organization. So the trajectory for the country was not good.
I don't like tariffs. I don't like taxes. I pretty
much built my life around that ethos. But you can't

(06:37):
deny the fact that our enemies are using these massive
tariffs against US enemies, our friends and allies. All we're
asking is equal. That shouldn't be so unfair. Right now,
despite markets fluctuating, oil prices are down, interest rates are down,
food prices are down, inflation drastically reduced, the USA is

(07:00):
bringing in billions of dollars a week from the abusing
countries on tariffs that are already in place. This is
despite the fact that the bigger abuser of them all, China,
whose markets are crashing, just raised its tariffs by thirty
four percent on top of its long term ridiculously high tariffs.
We're not asking for much, guys, reciprocal tariffs. If the

(07:22):
tariff was zero percent, wouldn't everybody be happy? That would
be amazing. That would be the ideal situation. If we
could get anywhere close to that, it would be fantastic.
Pursuit of that penis radio Come in now, you speeker, This.

Speaker 5 (07:35):
Is Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness. On KPRC nine fifty.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Houston Senator Corey Booker was on Colebert last night, and
if you walk into the studio this morning, you'll see
that he's still sitting there talking, just a very determined
to explain his position. Really wants to be the leader
of the Democrat Party. There is a resort in China

(07:59):
that just installed escalators to make hiking easier. Like how
the NFL makes football easier by scheduling games against the Browns.
That's very kind of them. In the last segment, we
talked quite a bit about how things are already improving
with the tariff worm. They seem to be moving in
the right direction. The data, the analytics, it looks positive.
I'm you know, I'm optimistic, I'm hopeful. I hope a

(08:20):
lot of you guys are as well. But with all
that being said, there is more good news this week
happening with the Trump administration that's not really getting the
same news coverage as what's happening with the tariffs in
the stock market. This is one of the best things
that Trump administration has done so far. Biden's efficiency standards.
Do you remember the efficiency standards he put in place
for appliances, things like dishwashers, clothing dryers. Remember he wanted

(08:44):
to outlaw stoves. Decades of efficiency mandates have made dishwashers
weaker air conditioner units, feebler, appliance is more expensive. Trump
rolled back a lot of those unnecessary regulations. Reason dot
com Today report on how last week Trump's administration turned
its chainsaws on the Department of Energy. We cut, we canceled,

(09:07):
we paused a handful of completely useless regulation set to
hobble household in commercial appliances. Anyone who's coughed up a
small fortune for a barely functional machine lately knows the stakes.
I have two ovens in my condo. It's one of
those dual oven things, and a little while back I

(09:28):
calibrated them and I figured out that one of them's
not working right now. The good news is I barely
even use one oven, so the second oven, it's not
the end of the world. But I noticed it didn't
quite keep the temperature correctly. So I reached out to
a local appliance stores to see what this sort of
thing cost. What does it cost to replace a dual oven?
Tens of thousands of dollars for an oven. I was

(09:50):
a little surprised. You know, there's this old Bosh dishwasher
that my mom has at her house. It's a marvel efficient,
precise scouring dishes and forty five minutes like a Prussian
drill sergeant on a deadline. Fortunately, after thirty years, these
things don't last forever. So if you want to replace
it on a new successor some sleek eight hundred dollars model,

(10:14):
you're expecting progress, but you get a two hour grease
smearing farce that leaves forks kicked in the grime of
dashed hopes, another victim of the Department of Energies regulatory
straight jacket. You got an old house from nineteen seventy nine,
you probably got an old heater, an old air conditioner,

(10:34):
some old fans. Those are all bastions of a bygone
era of appliance liberty, and they're teetering because they're getting old, right,
But isn't it amazing they've lasted forty years. Replacing them
likely means paying thousands of dollars for lesser able machines.
That's been the story for decades. As tech leaps forward,
appliances regress, believe it or not. We have the Democrats

(10:57):
to thank for that, and we have the Republicans to
thank for this. In February, Trump's Department of Energy postponed
three Biden era efficiency rules related to central air conditioning
and heat pumps, also walk in coolers and freezers, and
gas and tankless water heaters. It carved a special regulatory
category freeing tankless heaters from Biden's near ban. Just last week,

(11:22):
the Department of Energy cut four more rules outright rules
that impacted ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, external power supplies, the electric
motors that power almost everything. This isn't just red tape
getting slashed. It's a rare wind for choice and function
over dogma. What exactly did we dodge a lot take
electric motor mandates. These rules set everything from your blender

(11:44):
to your garage compressor. They aim to tighten already strict
regulations and expand them to even more motors and everyday appliances.
The goal is to reduce electricity use and emissions. Sounds noble,
right until you realize what it does to the products
we actually use. These motors skimp on low end torque
hobbling appliances that need a quick jolt. Think AC units

(12:07):
gasping to start, are a blender stalling on ice. They're
slower to respond, they're less precise, and because they require
rare earth metals and heavier materials, they make devices bulkier.
Your cordless drill suddenly feels like a lead pipe, but
for some reason, even though it's heavier, it doesn't work better.
Even worse, these high efficient efficiency designs come with a

(12:30):
high efficiency price tag. Costs shoot up in US manufacturers
after burning capital on redesigns and retooling, struggle to compete
with countries that don't play by the same regulatory rule book.
So we've got these proposed charger rules. They carry very
similar baggage. Those familiar bricks were slated by standby efficiency

(12:51):
upgrades which would draw less power when idle, but also
slow charging and tack on extra costs. It's just another
SMA all freedom sacrifice to make a number in a
lab look better. So the point is each of these
rules hit manufacturers with retooling costs, they hit consumers with
higher bills. They hit our homes with clunkier gears. That

(13:14):
old dishwasher that's a poster child a five gallon water limit.
Could you imagine five gallons strangles it That old dishwasher
used ten gallons? What happened. Everything changed. You've got something
made in Germany from twenty or thirty years ago. You
got something a lot better than what we're buying today. Kids,

(13:36):
Hopefully we make a move here. As far as ceiling
fans go, they cost more, they barely move. Dehumidifiers take
too long to stop mold from moving in tankless water
heaters or priced like luxury items but reduced to a trickle.
AC units are bloated with what they call efficiency tech,
but they still wheeze through heat waves, not really cooling

(13:59):
you down, are they? These were all narrowly avoided. Dozens
more remain rules that hike prices, gut performance, drive out
American manufacturers in favor of compliant mediocrity. This isn't about
saving the planet. It's about feeding a machine that's been
running since the late eighties. It's try kids. It all

(14:23):
started back in nineteen eighty seven, so everybody remember who
was the president back then was a guy named Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was prodded by California regulators and general electric lobbyists,
so he signed the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act. What
was that supposed to do? Well? It was meant to

(14:43):
simplify a chaotic state by state patchwork didn't quite do that. Instead,
it handed Washington control of everything from your shower head
to your stove, and by nineteen ninety two, Congress doubled
down with something called the Energy Policy Act. That's when
industry giants like le Pool saw the angle. They backed
the roles, they got the tax breaks, They froze out

(15:04):
smaller competition. Time passed, the New Year's came and went,
and then we found ourselves in the year two thousand.
That's when Bush era energy bills brought green nonprofits and
manufacturers into open collusion subsidies for submission, while cliance life
spans quietly cratered from thirty years to about ten. You'd

(15:25):
be lucky to own appliance for ten years nowadays. So
the Department of Energy boasted that it's nineteen ninety six
rules saved twenty six million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
It's about two percent in national emissions. Now here's the
thing that might sound good, but it's a bloated fantasy.
It's based on lab conditions and imaginary consumer behavior. In

(15:46):
the real world, people ran longer cycles, they re washed
by hand, they used more water, and energy to make
up the differences. They're trying to make it sound like,
if you use these new appliances, it's better for the environment.
But you're using these appliance is more because they don't
work correctly. They don't get the job done, they don't
get your clothes clean, they don't get the home dehumidified.

(16:08):
If you're running the appliances more, are you saving any energy?
Are you doing anything for the environment. These regulations stacked
up like bad sequels, each more expensive, less effective, and
harder to defend than the last. The low flow toilet
that takes two flushes, the washer that needs a second cycle,
the shower head that sputters like a garden hose with arthritis.

(16:30):
Trump's latest cuts nick the beast, but it's still alive.
Last week's rollback swings the pendulum towards sanity. Hopefully. Yeah,
you might have an eight hundred dollars dishwasher that doesn't work.
It mocks you. Maybe your fans and your heater and
your ac they could dodge that fade in the next
year to come. It's a small dent in the decades

(16:51):
of regulatory lunacy that's burdened makers and killed innovation and
trashed our kitchens. But hey, a small st yup, it's
still a step forward. Thank you very much, Donald Trump.
Kang Kang.

Speaker 5 (17:07):
This is Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness on KPRC nine
fifty Houston.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Thirty four percent of people trust chat GPT over human experts.
I split the difference and get my advice from a
human robot hybrid Lester Halt, No, I'm just kidding. I
would never listen to Lester Holt. Also, shoulder pads are
back in style. I think it just shows you never
know when something from the eighties will be cool again.
Except for adam Ant, I don't think he's ever coming back. Hi, everybody,

(17:36):
thanks for turning on your radio. Brandon Waltons is stopping
by in the next segment from Texas scorecard dot Com.
So in this segment, I'm going to try to shove
a lot of information into a small hole and see
how much we can get down your your your gullet hole.
Real quick, let's start off with this. Fifty five percent
of self identified leftists say that killing Donald Trump is

(17:58):
justifiable fifty five. I'm actually surprised it's not higher. Do
you think somebody who believes that killing Donald Trump is
justifiable would have a moral objection to lying about getting
raped if they thought it would stop a Republican official
from taking office. Whoever it may be, Brett Kavanaugh, Matt Gates,

(18:20):
whoever it may be, what do you think? The Federalist
dot Com today is reporting on data produced by the
Network for Contagion Research Institute the NCRI, in partnership with
Rutgers University's Social Perception Lab, and they found a broader
what they call an assassination culture that appears to be

(18:40):
emerging within segments of the US public on the extreme left,
and they have expanding targets now, including figures like Donald Trump.
It's been a year since the assassination taps less than
a year on Donald Trump and the literally explosive violence
against Musk's Tesla electric vehicles that's been happening fairly recently,
so it's no secrets that leftists are ratcheting up violent

(19:03):
rhetoric and acting on it. The more troubling trend is
that an assassination culture isn't just coming from the fringe left.
Listen to this in the report here. It details how
these attitudes are not fringe. They reflect an emergent assassination culture,
grounded in far left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse.

(19:26):
It's all part of this article, this report called assassination culture.
How burning tesla's and killing billionaires became a meme asthetic
for political violence. I mean, we shouldn't be surprised the
Internet is now filled with people who are fans of
Luigi Mangione. NCRI is an independent institution working to quote, identify,

(19:47):
and forecast emerging threats in the area of information disorder.
The report found widespread justification for lethal violence, including assassinations,
among younger, highly online and ideology left aligned users. And
they point out here in the report how the spillover
effect beyond the online world exists. Here they have a

(20:09):
California ballot measure, the Luigi Mangione Access to Healthcare Act.
There are people in California who actually want to pass
a law that basically makes it so that a doctor
gets to decide if funding is cut off for your
healthcare coverage, not the health insurance company. If that doesn't

(20:29):
sound that bad to you, try to consider the unintended
consequences if a doctor wanted to charge you a million
dollars to remove a hangnail. According to the Luigi Mangione
Access to Healthcare Act, which for the record, has not
been passed or signed by the governor, the health insurance
company would be required to pay a million dollars to

(20:51):
remove a hang Now, they don't think it should be
up to the health insurance company to decide if the
funding for the healthcare treatment is cut off or not.
Currently it works the other way. The health insurance company
could look at something and say, your probability of benefiting
from this medical procedure is unlikely to improve your health,
and so therefore we're not going to cover it. That's

(21:13):
how it works right now. But Californians want to change
that into a system in which the health insurance companies
would be spending an absurd amount of money, the likes
of which that would cause your monthly health insurance cost
to skyrocket because of the cost of insurance. And they
want to name that law after a guy who murdered
an innocent person in cold Wood. On Friday, there was

(21:35):
a guy in California that was reportedly quote angry with pharmacies.
He got arrested on charges of murdering a Walgreens employee
days after the Luigi Mangioni Act was filed with the state.
The victim was not a pharmacist, but he was a
dad and a husband. He had two children. It's not
his call whether or not your coverage happis a guy

(21:56):
works at a pharmacy. So NCRI access the violence zeitgeist
with an original survey and data, an open source intelligence
analysis to determine quote, how normalized and justified violence against
the administration has become in public discourse and the short
answer is pretty common shocking stuff. By the way, while
we're in California, here's an interesting report today at the

(22:18):
National Review from Abigail Anthony. There's a California nonprofit that
produces K through twelve teaching materials and according to this report,
they have ties to foreign terrorists. We California is a
weird place, right. The Middle Eastern Children's Alliance MECHA they're
calling it, of course, is a California nonprofit the design

(22:39):
K through twelve curriculum material They have fiscal and personal
ties to US designated terrorist organizations. Yeah, straight up. A
group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
literally a terrorist organization alongside a host of other extremist
anti government actors, all based out of the United Slime

(23:00):
States of America. I don't understand why this is allowed.
Why do you get tax exempt status when you're openly
and publicly aligned with the terrorist group? Well, I guess
because it's California. A little bit of good news today
before we get to our next guest. Have you heard
about what just happened with the dire wolves? I'm going

(23:22):
to know a little bit of movie soundtrack music for
this one. Please thank you beautiful. All Right, who remembers
the plot line New Jurassic Park, Probably pretty obvious what
happened there, right, Scientists use DNA to bring extinct creatures
dinosaurs back to life, and there were grave consequences. Well,

(23:43):
something like that is happening right now. Ronald Bailey Today
reports on how dire wolves, when extinct twelve thousand years ago,
was at the end of the last ice Age. These
are big wolves. The dire wolf is bigger than a
regular gray wolf. They're about one hundred and fifty pounds,
twice the size of today's gray wolves. They roamed both
North and South America. They preyed on ancient horses, and

(24:04):
camels and swaths and bison. There's a private company called
Colossal Biosciences, and they are bringing back from extinction the
dire wolves. It's happened. That's not the only animals. They
also want to bring back the wooly mammoth. They haven't
done that yet, but they did produce three direwolf pups

(24:24):
using genetic editing and cloning. The researchers at the company
extracted and sequenced the genomes of dire wolves from a
thirteen thousand year old tooth from Ohio and a seventy
two thousand year old skull from Idaho. Wow. The researchers
then made fifteen key edits in gray wolf genomes to
more closely match the genomes of dire wolves. The nuclei

(24:48):
of the edited cells were then inserted into the eucleated
dog eggs that were installed in the wombs of surrogate
mother dogs. The result was the birth of four direwolf puffs.
One died after two they didn't all make it. The
two six month old male pups are named Romulus and Remus,
after the founders of Rome, who were raised by wolves.

(25:08):
They claim, I love this. The two month old female
is named Calisi, which, as you know, is a character
from the film Game of Thrones. The new dire Wolves
have thick white coats. They are bigger than gray wolves,
with more powerful shoulders, wider heads, larger teeth and jaws,
and more muscular legs. Right now, the wolves are living
on a private two thousand acre facility at an undisclosed

(25:31):
location somewhere in northern United States. I'm sure that'll be fine,
and some Native nations have expressed interest in eventually providing
land where dire wolves can once again rome freely. Colossal
Sciences Biosciences, excuse me, continues to work to bring wooly mammoths, Dodos,
and the Tasmanian wolves back from extinction. That means we

(25:52):
are one step closer to my dream of writing to
work every day on a Velociraptor.

Speaker 5 (26:01):
This is Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness on KPRC nine
fifty Houston.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
WHOA that rocks hard? Hi, Hey, we're back from break.
This musician is in town tonight. Although I bet most
of you don't care. I can never decide if I
want to go out on a weeknight and see a
band six pm on a Tuesday night doesn't sound like
a late night for some people, but for those of
us that get up at four am, you know, you

(26:32):
could barely even see the opening act when you go
out on a Tuesday. It's tough out here. It's difficult
to be a young man of forty two years of
age who wants to go out and have a good
time on a school night. But you got to get
up early here in the state of Texas, because, after all,
the modern man must hustle. If we don't, who will.
You know a lot of these politicians, they're up to deceptive,

(26:53):
sneaky things behind your back, and sometimes it's just oddly suspicious.
I don't know why, but former Texas House Speaker Dade
Falen is trying to legalize gay sex. He wants to
legalize gay sex. Now, I know what you're thinking, is
that even illegal technically? Sort of. I don't think it's

(27:15):
a law that we have actually enforced in a long time,
but I guess technically Texas has sodomy laws on the books,
so it's probably all right. There are bigger things happening
right now, but let's lead with that, not necessarily from
behind here to explain it to US Brandon Loans of
Texas scorecard dot Com. Brandon, I know you're not illegal expert,

(27:38):
certainly not when it comes to Texas sodomy laws. I'm
just going to guess this has never affected you at
all or anyone you know, but who even realized that
gay sex was illegal until Date Falin brought it up
this week during a legislative session.

Speaker 6 (27:52):
I don't know. I mean, you know, I guess is
one of those laws is fill in the books. I'm
you know, short courts has struck it down long ago.
And it's really it's really interesting that the Dade Field, right,
I mean, he's this is this is his thing. It's
interesting because you know, when date Field was speaker, the
Speaker of the House doesn't file bills, right, and so

(28:13):
now we're starting to see after you know, after he's
been in the speakership or starting to see, Okay, what
issues does date Feeling actually prioritize? And this appears to
be one that's close to his heart. So you know
they're spending time. I think there's a committee hearing on
it today, and you know this is a this is
a Date Feeling priority. So we've got this bill, We've

(28:33):
got the one that we've you know, talked about a
couple of weeks ago that would ban basically memes and campaigns,
and you know, these are the things that have I
guess been weighing on former Speaker day Field.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
All right, today we're having a hearing for HB seventeen
thirty eight, which is going to repeal the offensive homosexual conduct.
And yeah, this is a did fail and bill. You know,
there's always a story behind this, right their head. What happened?
What something must They're not wasting time on this for

(29:09):
no reason. You and I both know damn well if
it's purely speculation. But do you get the impression maybe
for very personal reasons, Dave Phalen doesn't want gay sex
to be illegal. I mean, we don't know, no, you know,
I don't know.

Speaker 6 (29:23):
He hasn't said, you know, who's to fact. But it's
clear that this is a priority for him in the
sense that this is one of the bills that he's
pushing in the limited time we have.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
He's definitely pushing it. All right. So all that being said,
other news today, more importantly, things that do affect people.
Even if gay sex is illegal. I don't think anyone's
getting arrested for it. So whatever bigger problems to reach
around and try to grapple with. Apparently there's a big
budget vote today right.

Speaker 6 (29:55):
Later this week, Thursday is going to be the be
the big budget vote in the Texas House. This is
traditionally like a all day maybe going to the night ordeal.
This year seems to be no different. It's a three
hundred and forty billion dollar budget. We do our budget
on a biennial basis, so it's for two years, three
hundred and forty billion dollars, the biggest budget in state history.

(30:17):
And you know, if you're not really at numbers and
since kind of person, you know, not not that interested
in it. There are other interesting factors about this, which
is that there have been three hundred and ninety three
amendments pre filed and these are you know, basically all
policy sort of issues, right, So people saying, for example,
there's amendments in there that would say, let's take money

(30:39):
away from, for example, the Texas Lottery Commission, let's put
it towards property tax relief so people can members can
vote and make a choice on that. There's others that
would defund some of the you know, Texas university systems
if they continue DEI programs or if they continue radical
gender ideology. And so there's a number of these interesting
policy debates that are being set up, and you know,

(31:01):
we'll see what they end up doing. I expect the
budget will probably pass, but there should be some interesting
debate during that.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
All right, I'm glad you brought up the property tax
relief because that does matter. Maybe people don't care how
much funding is allocated for, you know, outdoor music festivals
and repairing roads in West Texas, but the budget's the budget.
If we take money out of the budget and put
it towards something, that means we can't put it towards
something else. And if we're spending money we don't have,

(31:31):
that means the money has to come from somewhere, and
a lot of money in the state is generated using
things like property tax. Now some have made the argument recently.
I think state lawmaker Brian Harrison said, because we're giving
or trying to give two hundred million dollars to Hollywood
for film project subsidies, that's money that can't go towards
property tax money is fungible. Would you agree with that

(31:53):
argument or do you think maybe that's taking some you
know some it's a little flexible on the logic there.
What do you think about that?

Speaker 6 (32:01):
Well, I think it's no. I think that's exactly right.
I mean, you look at any of these issues, right,
and it's actually five hundred million dollars you know, a
buy indium and they want to do it for the
next ten years. It's two and a half billion dollars
for film subsidies. That's no small amount. But you have
to keep in mind, I mean it's you know, unlike
the federal government where we're talking about deficit spending, Texas

(32:21):
as a state, can't spend in a deficit. Texas has
to pass in fact, this budget, a balanced budget, is
the only thing they're constitutionally required to pass every session.
So I find it kind of funny. You'll see during
campaign season some lawmakers will say I voted to you know,
I voted for a balanced budget. It's like you're legally,
you like, are required to pass a balance budget or

(32:43):
you can't go home. And so you know, Texas doesn't
do that. In fact, Texas we have a surplus, right,
We're always talking about surplus revenue. I think there's off
the top of my head. I think about twenty four
billion dollars give or take in excess revenue, surplus revenue
that was brought in by the state. This is extra money.
This is over taxation, right, and you know, the thought

(33:05):
would be that that money should be returned to taxpayers
rather than continuing to grow government here and there.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
All right, let's talk a little bit about everybody's favorite topic,
schmis schmorshin. For those of you that don't know, that's
what on the radio. Sometimes people get a little uncomfortable
when you talk about dead babies. But that's what an
abortion is, and it's illegal in the state of Texas,
and technically you're not supposed to leave the state to
get one either if you're a resident here. Now, I
have a funny feeling it happens all the time, and

(33:35):
you know, we don't really have the resources or the
time to go out and police that. But the city
of San Antonio is apparently using funding for out of
state abortion travel, which you know, it's a municipal government
in the state of Texas. Whatever your thoughts are on
some woman that lives in the suburbs of Dallas going

(33:56):
out of town, you know, it's like, all right, fine,
maybe that's too much government if we're bothering her when
she's on vacation. But this is a government inside the
state of government. It's a municipal organization using funding to
go out and blatantly defy Texas law. Ken Paxton seems
to have a problem with it. Have you looked at
this case? Do you think there's any there there?

Speaker 6 (34:18):
Oh? I think absolutely. You know, this is a case
where I think the city of San Antonio set aside
one hundred thousand dollars to help pay for out of
state abortion costs for residents. And this is another issue
where you know, the city of Austin, we talk about it.
You know, the City of Austin. It's easy to laugh about,
you know, maybe some of the radical liberal things that

(34:38):
the city will do there. But this is something where
Austin did it first, and then now you're starting to
see some other cities like San Antonio do it now.
Austin was sued back last year on similar grounds. That
case is still you know, going through the courts because
you know, they were paying money for these out of
state abortion travel funds, which is against state law for

(35:01):
these tax stars to go to. So I expect that,
you know, be at Austin, San Antonio, or any other
city that might find themselves in the cross chairs of
the Attorney general on this. I think the law is
pretty clear that that's this is something that's not allowed.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
My brother, it seems like this is pretty obvious. It's
it's it's the city of San Antonio. It's not just
some guy sending his mistress out of the state. I mean,
this is pretty blatantly illegal in the state, and it's
the city of San Antonio doing it. San Antonio very
comfortable with flexing, very flexible with the law though I
noticed they have you ever been to San Antonio? There's

(35:36):
heroin addicts everywhere with their iPhones plugged into city funded
electrical outlets. Why why didn't anybody bothered by that?

Speaker 6 (35:45):
Yeah, I know, I mean, it's it's a it's a shame.
I mean, we're talking about one of the largest cities
in the state and the fact that they're doing that,
or the fact that they're doing this abortion stuff, or
think it's always a problem. It's very easy whenever you see,
like I said, Austin do something, or maybe San Antonio
or Houston. You know, especially if you don't live there.
But you know what these cities are doing today. Those

(36:08):
things tend to spread, and so it's important to nip
it in the bud before these become too common.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Boy, you could say that again, but enough about dad
fail and trying to legalize gay sex. Am I right?
You didn't want to laugh at that. You did not
want to laugh with that. Hey, you know what I like?
I like texas scorecard dot com. You could subscribe to
their email list, chock full of all kinds of great
lone star focused conservative news. Brandon Waltons as a journalist there.

(36:35):
It doesn't cost anything to subscribe to it. Go to
his website today, texascorecard dot com and find him on
X You'll be glad you did. To the rest of you,
I love you all. I hope you have an awesome afternoon.
We'll be back bright and early tomorrow morning for more
of what you bought a radio for.

Speaker 5 (36:53):
You are listening to the Pursuit of Happiness Radio to
the Government when it took kiss

Speaker 6 (37:01):
You're ass when you listen to the show