May 13, 2025 • 40 mins
This podcast edition of Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness features journalists Brandon Waltens and Holly Hansen. ( @KennethRWebster )
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jack GANA government sucks.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Suit of Happiness Radio is deluxe.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Liberty and Freedom will make you smiles. Of a Suit
of Happiness. Us on your.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Radio to hel justice.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Jeese burgs a.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Livy rise at the food.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
This is interesting. The top two baby names in the
United States last year were Liam and Olivia. Yeah. Interesting right.
Apparently the least two popular names were Jasmine and aoc.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I know nobody wanted to name their kids those things. Hi, everybody,
Kenny Webster, thanks so much for tuning in this afternoon
to another edition of Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness. Good
to be here with you. Today's show is going to
be all about Texas and Saudi Arabia. And I'm sure
you know why. We're wrapping up the legislative session. All
the bills have to be moved out of committee in
Texas in Austin by midnight Thursday. I believe all we'll
(01:00):
get to all that real soon. Brandon Waltons this year
live from the Texas State Capitol, also with us. It's
afternoon Holly Hanson reporting not only on this legislative session,
but some news from the Texas Supreme Court involving the
principle of no taxation without representation. Apparently it was happening
in none other than College Station, a crazy court hearing
(01:21):
this week. We'll get to all of that very soon,
but before we get to any of it, can we
just start the show off with this. Donald Trump has
arrived in Saudi Arabia for this big trip. He is
there right now to secure a trillion dollars in investments.
This is a big damn deal, everybody. It's huge, so
humongous deal. He's going to get Arabic investors, people from
(01:42):
around Saudi Arabia to invest in the American government. And
that's fantastic. Donald Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia to flags
and trumpets and the Crown Prince greeting Donald Trump at
the Royal Court along with Donald Trump. Elon Musk, Pete
Hegseth was there, Marco Rubio. Now, it's interest saying that
Hegseeth and Rubio are there because the very fact that
(02:04):
they're moving along with Trump on the trip, the fact
that they're going along with him to Saudi Arabia, actually
disproves something that the liberal media is claiming right now
about Trump. They're claiming that this trip is just economic
that it has nothing to do with diplomacy, with negotiating
an end to the war in Israel and Gaza, or
(02:24):
even the war in Russia and Ukraine, which is a lie,
of course it is. That's why he brought Rubio, That's
where he brought Hegseath. After he's done with this meeting,
he'll be traveling around the Mid East, going to Katari
in places like that. But he's also going to Turkey
to talk with Putin and Zolenski. Now that's very interesting.
Zolensky and Trump are supposed to be at the meeting.
Putin agreed to the meeting but has now gone radio silent.
(02:47):
We haven't heard anything from him recently on what that
entails or what is going to happen. But of course
business is obviously a big part of this. Trump's itinerary
includes countries in which the Trump organization has real estate projects,
and of course that's a touchy subject for some people.
But remember, he has real estate projects happening all over
the world. So what he's supposed to ignore the Mid
(03:09):
East because his sons are building towers there. That seems
a bit silly. Elizabeth Warren's very angry about what's going
on right now, and there's been some discussion about the
tariff war. Trump and Mohammed ben Salam, the Crown Prince
of Saudi Arabia, signing an economic partnership agreement. It's more
than just a strategic economic partnership, but that's the biggest
(03:30):
part of it. The US signed a letter of intent
to help develop the capabilities of Saudi Arabia's armed forces.
According to the summary, the memos involved plans for cooperation
between the Saudi Ministry of Interior and the FBI, and
between the Saudi Ministry of Justice and the DOJ. Another
promise cooperation concerned mining and mineral resources between the Ministry
(03:52):
of Industry and the Department of Energy, and still another
involved medical research related to infectious diseases. So obviously this
is more than just an economic meeting. Clearly there are
other things happening here. We're developing medicine and we're trying
to figure out what to do with minerals. So that's
a big deal. But the White House says Saudi Arabia
has already committed to investing six hundred billion dollars in
(04:15):
the United States. That's terrific. That's fantastic. While he's there,
he'll be meeting with other business leaders, people from the
energy sector up presumably, obviously, and that is great news
to the American workforce. Now, obviously, there are critics of
all of this. Chuck Schumer says he's placing a hold
on Trump's DOJ nominees because of questions over the Cutter
(04:36):
luxury jet gift. Trump's getting a jet, a Boeing aircraft
from Cutter, and the reason he's doing it is we
want to update air Force one. The problem is air
Force one's forty years old, isn't that amazing? Air Force
one is almost as old as I am, and I'm
forty two. But it doesn't run well. It has a
(04:58):
lot of issues. I think Donald Trump's missing out on
fantastic argument here. He should just tell the Liberals we
need a new Boeing aircraft because the old one has
emissions problems, it's not eco friendly, it's not green. The
newer Boeing aircrafts are better for the environment. The old
ones are bad. If he said that to the Senate
Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, I gotta think Chuck wouldn't be
(05:20):
able to argue with that. Anyway, it's still not really
even clear if it's a gift or if it's just
on loan. So a lot of misinformation there. Trump is
going to meet with the Syrian president in Saudi Arabia tomorrow. Now,
this is the new Syrian president, Ahmed al Shara, it's
not the old one. The old guy, Bashirasad is gone.
He has taken off. I think he's hiding out in
Russia now. And Donald Trump has actually been speaking live.
(05:43):
I've got a little bit of audio from his speech today.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
It's an honor to be here. What a great place,
What a great place, but more importantly, what great people.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
I want to thank his Royal Highness the Crown.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
It's for that incredible auction. He's an incredible man. Known
him a long time now, is nobody like him.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Appreciate it very much, my friend. And it's a tremendous
honor to return to this beautiful kingdom and be welcomed
back with such extraordinary generosity and warmth.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I've never forgotten the.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Exceptional hospitality show to us by King Solomon, Who's just
we talk about a great man.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
That is a great man, that is a great man,
a great family. You get the idea now of all
the things taking place there. There's one really interesting detail,
a little special bonus. When Trump signed this major deal
with Saudi Arabia, obviously he landed there, he went and
met up. They discussed the six hundred billion dollar commitment
(06:51):
Saudi's investing in the United States, building on Trump's record
in twenty seventeen of securing billions of dollars in commercial
deals and agreements with Soft Arabia for defense and energy
and technology and infrastructure. That's all great, But as a bonus,
the United States is going to receive an Arabian leopard
at the Washington d C. National Zoo. It's a very
(07:14):
cool thing. It's a beautiful animal of a cute, adorable
Arabian leopard. I don't think you could pet it and
probably bite your hand. But Trump is on a four
day swing through the Mid East. He'll visit the United
Arab Emirates and Cutter. He'll probably be stopping in Turkey
to meet with Putin and Zowinsky. And when he gets
home from the Strip, America will have a brand new
pet leopard. Pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Li from Texas Broadcasting across the people set topic of America.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
This is preceeds of How It Is Radio with Ken Webstern,
Jinia Akay producer Kenny keep it here. Well, we are
racing towards the finish line here, running out of time
for the Texas House. The list legislatives session is coming
(08:01):
to an end very soon and the Senate, the State Senate,
has accomplished a great deal this legislative session. The Texas
House is I guess as dysfunctional as ever, there's no
other way to explain that. Here with the latest news
from the Texas. Let's start off with this. The Texas
House is rejecting a Mexican guest worker problem Brandon Walton's
(08:21):
Texas scorecard dot Com. Welcome back, my man. What is this?
What happened?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yes? Yes, so you know we're here now, Just so
folks can get an idea, we're here now and basically
in two days we're going to hit the deadline for
the House to pass House bills, which is a big deadline.
So any bills that House members have filed that aren't
voted on by midnight on Thursday are going to be dead.
And so what are they doing during this time? Well,
they've stacked up the calendars, not with unfortunately full of
(08:49):
Republican priority legislation. There's been a little bit of that,
but most of it has been either very small things
that probably could have been done earlier in the session,
or you get issues like this. This is a Democrat
authored bill that was placed on the calendar. It was
actually placed on the calendar for Friday. They didn't get
around to it until yesterday because of that far behind
(09:10):
on their schedule. But it would allow the governor to
enter in and create this temporary guest worker program with
Mexico to bring in more cheap point labor into the state. Now,
this is something that Republican Party of Texas has rejected
that you know, you might remember George W. Bush like
floated this idea twenty years ago. Conservatives didn't really love
(09:32):
it then, and so it was, you know, didn't really
have much of a chance of passing it. Indeed, they
did vote it down, but not before spending a couple
hours debating it, right, which some might say, maybe that's
the purpose, right because when you hit these final deadlines,
if they're spending a couple hours talking about a bill
like this, it has no chance of passing the Senate
(09:52):
and very little chance of passing the House. That's time
that they're not spending talking about border enforcement legislation, talking
about everifying things in state tuition for legal aliens, things
that would actually stop or help the problem with illegal
immigration in Texas, instead of talking about bringing in more
cheap foreign labor.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Who is it that is proposing this bill? I mean,
this is nobody wants this right, I mean, why it's
a Republican controlled state. This is obviously an unpopular idea.
Why is this even up for consideration?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, well it's authored by a Democrat, Democrat Ray Lopez
from San Antonio. It's his bill. It was his bill
who's voted down. But I'll tell you this, I was
kind of surprised. You had nine Republicans actually joining Democrats
and supporting the bill when they voted.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
On it yesterday, and anybody we would know, you know, I'll.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Tell you this, the people you would know, people like
Dave Feeling and people like that, they did vote against this,
So you know, it was kind of a shocking. I mean,
you had some of the Republicans that from South Texas
were seemingly in support, and a few other random ones
that I guess we're just appealing to their chambers of
(11:05):
commerce that have always pushed for cheap labor at the
expense of Americans.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
All right, let's talk about this. A D transition coverage
bill has cleared the Texas House. It is now heading
to the Governor's desk. This would provide funding for people
that want to undo their trans procedures.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah. So, essentially, if an insurance company covers gender mutilation procedures,
they will now have to cover D transition procedures as
well as any medical treatments relating to complications from the
gender mutilation procedures. You know, essentially, you know what this
is is if you know insurance companies are going to
(11:43):
are going to sign off and people doing these these
harmful procedures, particularly when they're children, right, sure, but at
any age really then that you know, they should be
equally responsible for the D transition portion. Now you know,
if an insurance he doesn't cover this and they're not
subject to it. This is something that passed the Senate
(12:04):
last month. The House gave approval to it over the weekend,
the final approval to it yesterday, and now it's headed
to the Governor's desk.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
All right, I'm going to climb out on a limb
here and guess that there were insurance companies that would
cover the transition but not the de transition.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Right, well, exactly exactly right.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Do we know which healthcare companies which insurance covered companies
they were?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I think I think it depends on. You know, obviously
there's a lot of factors. So it depended on like
the plans and different things like that. So I don't
want to put any single insurance company up. Last night
it depended, but now they all will have to.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Apparently one of them was Medicaid. Wow, so the federal government.
That's amazing. Okay. Meanwhile, in the Texas Senate, the senators
State senators have approved a measure to strengthen the right
to self defense. It looks like even Democrats voted for this.
It passed twenty six to three to too. What does
it do? What is Senate built seventeen thirty three is
supposed to accomplish.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
There's a central seventeen thirties by Senator Bob Paul. Essentially,
whenever someone's in a self defense situation right where they're
justified use of force or deadly force, this would prohibit people,
you know, from recovering civil damages if the grand jury
has thrown out the criminal chargers. So there's some practical
places where this has happened. Think of somebody like Kyle
(13:25):
Rittenhouse who was obviously as we know, acquitted after the
after he had to defend himself against the writers a
few years ago in Wisconsin. But even after that, because
somebody you know was was you know, still alive after
the shooting, that that person you know now suing right,
(13:46):
suing Writtenhouse for wrongful injury. This would take that out,
so that you know, look at these criminal charges are
dismisster thrown out or they're found out guilty, that know,
you can't sue and get damages.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
All right, let's talk a little bit about the attorney
general for a minute and election fraud. Last week, Attorney
General Ken Paxton indicted and arrested six people, including five
public officials, for vote harvesting in Freo County. It is
part of his years long election integrity investigation. Oddly, and
I was a little confused when I heard this. I'm
glad Paxton's doing this. It sounds like there, it sounds
(14:22):
like something was going on over there, So I'm glad
he got involved, but technically he lost his power to
prexit prosecute election crimes, at least I thought so. Now
the Texas House is moving to restore his ability to
prosecute election crimes. So obviously this is a two part question.
What is the law change, but also what are his
current abilities? Because I thought he wasn't able to do
(14:44):
the thing he just did.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Well, the reason he was able to do the thing
he just did, and that was in Freo County, is
because the local DA there referred the investigation over to
Pexton's office. What he's not able to do is you'll
latterly go after election fraud. And the reason why that's
a major problem is because in many of these locations,
(15:07):
the district attorney is often tied in to maybe some
of the local political groups or political organizations that might
be potentially involved in some of the voter fraud right
or election integrity violations. And so in this case, the
Frio County DA referred the investigation to Attorney General packs
and that's why we've been able to see movement in
(15:28):
that case. But it was the Court of Criminal Appeal
several years ago that ruled that the Attorney General had
to have Essentially that was the only way it could
happen that the ag couldn't go after it himself. Now,
with legislation that's making its way through, it's been approved
by the House and the Senate, but there's been some
differences between the two, so there's still some more steps
in the process to come to an agreement on it.
(15:50):
But it would essentially allow the Attorney General to go
after election fraud if the local DA refuses to. And
so this opens up, you know, big opportun for places
like say Harris County that has been you know, the DA.
There is not somebody who's probably going to refer potential
election fraud to the Tourney General, especially Ken Paxton. This
(16:11):
would open up the door for that.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, it's weird too because I don't understand it. Paxton
dropped the charges months ago against Lena Headalgo's staffers for
that infamous COVID vaccine outreach case. I always wondered what
the story was behind that, but we never found out,
did you.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Essentially what the Attorney General's office had said, and they,
you know, I think keep you know, they can't say
too much because there could be future right, the future
action and I guess they want to save the potential
for that. But essentially my understating there was that once
they had all the data, all the facts together, they
didn't have enough they felt, I guess, to successfully prosecute
(16:53):
it in court. Obviously it's a big burden, and so
they decided to keep their powder dry there. I don't
know if they'll try to take another bite at the Apple,
if they're just moving on, but I do remember that.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm just curious about that. You mentioned
Hidalgo and Paxton. That's the last time I thought about
the two of them in context together. Meanwhile, AG Paxton,
General Paxton has just secured a record one point three
hundred and seventy five one point three seventy five billion
dollar data privacy settlement from Google. I've heard there's similar
(17:24):
lawsuits going on right now with Apple, but this one
is unique because it's specifically for a Texas lawsuit accusing
Google of violating state privacy laws. And if I'm not mistaken,
some of us might be entitled to some money from
some of this.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
What exactly happened, Yeah, So this was going after Google
for a series of privacy violations, things like taking users
biometric data they're you know, facial recognition things like that
without their permission, you know, tracking users data when they
were using you know.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
The so called incognito mode is not actually incognito as
a as a PSA. I guess for some people listening
the uh uh you know, they were looking at that
and they were using that data, and so there were
a series of these violations. Attorney General goes after them.
And this is a huge settle. I mean, nearly one
point four billion dollars that's going to be collected in
(18:16):
for the state. Right, you'd like to see that money, right,
go right back to the people. And it's not the
first one that we've seen. In fact, last year there
was a big settlement with Meta right, you know, formally
known as Facebook, for almost the same thing. It was
very similar. I had to deal with privacy and then
collecting data on users without telling them, and that was
(18:39):
a similar I think in that case, it is about
one point three billion dollars and so h this is
a pretty big win and pretty consequential for uh, you know,
some of these bigger companies.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Any idea how much money we get for people that
apply for it?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Uh, you know, It'll be interesting to see exactly how
they handle it. I don't know that it's going to
be like a you know, one of those called the
class action lawsuits. Everybody's going to get a check for
fifty bucks. But you know, you hope that it goes
to some good use.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Okay, one more question for you. Are you at the
capitol right now, Brianon, Is that where you are today?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yes, yes, I am.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
You've been there. You've been following all the votes, all
the debates, all the little conundrums and debacles and meles
and francases and that sort of thing. Have we actually
passed any kind of property tax relief this session? Does
it look like that could happen before Thursday?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Well, you know, the Senate has the House has it.
Now they have a little bit of time because the
deadline for passing House bills is Thursday. But the House
had pass bills that come over from the Senate. They
get another couple of weeks to do that, and so
there's still a little bit of time on the clock
for something like the property text build. They've supposedly come
to an agreement raising the homestead exemption I think to
one hundred and forty thousand dollars. You know, people are
(19:53):
looking at this, they're say, this would be about six
billion dollars give or take of property tax relief. It's
in a year where the state have a surplus of
twenty four billion dollars. So you know, it's well less
than half. It's like a quarter of what they actually have.
And interestingly, it's less than what Governor Abbitt said he
wanted to see the legislature accomplished at the beginning of
(20:13):
the session. He said he wanted to see at least
ten billion dollars. So you know, this deal that's being
floated right now seems to come short of it. We'll
see if they maybe find a little extra money to
throw towards towards it before we get to the final
days of the session here in a few weeks.
Speaker 6 (20:28):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Frustrating, But just a quick reminder, folks, to those of
you that do want to challenge your property taxes. I
think you have two days left for that. That's May fifteenth,
if I'm not mistaken, So get going on that. Boy
is that is just frustrating how expensive property taxes become
in this state. It doesn't look like it's getting any better.
Brandon but your reporting has been fantastic lately. I thank
(20:48):
you for your time, Sir Brandon Walton's texascorecard dot com.
Follow him on x find him on social media, go
to their website, subscribe to their email list. It's like
getting the Houston Chronicle without paying for it if it
was right leaning news organization. Fascinating.
Speaker 7 (21:04):
You are listening to the pursuit of happiness radio pursuit
of happiness.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
We don't have that in Mexico. Bill Gates, professional lizard person.
Bill Gates wants to give away his entire fortune in
the next twenty years, he says. Then he bought a
dozen eggs and said, never mind, I'm tapped. Ah, poor
Bill Gates. Can we talk about NBC News for just
(21:29):
a little bit here? Well, it's sort of NB said
Chuck Todd. Remember he used to be the host to
Meet the Press. He's not anymore. He got fired for
a DEI hire. That's sad. But Breitbart dot com today
reports that Chuck Todd basically just admitted reporters blindly believed
their sources regarding Joe Biden's obvious mental frailty just fantastic
(21:51):
for so many different reasons. How could you not know
his brain was broken. You were there with him in
the White House, you were walking around, you saw him
in person. The rest of America knew in twenty nineteen
that the guy wasn't right. Somehow, the people in Washington,
d C. Surrounding him, covering news on this guy every day,
they didn't know. They didn't know. Most journalists in Washington,
(22:12):
d C. With the exception of some of the conservatives
in the independent journalists, are basically just stenographers. They're not
there to challenge ideas. They're not there to investigate, they're
not there to fact check. They're just there to repeat
what they've been told and show it to you like
a court stenographer. But there are three reasons check Todd
pointing this out about reporters blindly believing their sources is
so fascinating. Number One, Todd contradicts what he said ten
(22:36):
days ago. Ten days ago, check Dodd insisted without evidence
that the regime media did report on Biden's diminished capacity. Hell,
just last month, he was furious about the suggestion the
media didn't report on this. The media, he said, quote,
didn't miss this story, Chuck Todd said, quote. David Ignatius
(22:57):
wrote a very high profile column in October of twenty
twenty three, saying, quote, is he really running again? This
doesn't seem like a good idea end quote. Chuck Todd continues,
people like me were promoting Dean Phillips his campaign because
Biden was running. Wow, things sure have changed since Chuck
Todd's viewed that anti science nonsense. Listen to him yesterday.
Speaker 7 (23:19):
The real culprits are the people who are supposed to
be our sources on all these things, who were constantly
reassuring us behind the scenes. No, no, no, no, it's
better than you think.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
But I think.
Speaker 7 (23:30):
I mean, I remember Jeffy Katzenberg just, oh no, he's
going to be great at the debates. He's already debated
this guy a couple of times.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
He knows what he's doing.
Speaker 7 (23:40):
He's out there tell and this isn't off the record
settings and you're like, really, okay. I mean so to me,
the cover up is the people closest to him in
the Democratic Party. Yes, you could say there were members
who were essentially Democrats first who happened to be employed
by media companies. But I just sort of this, I mean,
this is the slipper slope of what's happened to the
(24:01):
press corps?
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Right?
Speaker 7 (24:02):
There's so many pundits who become members of the media
and stay there that you can't expect the.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Consumers to be able to disaggregate the two. Wow. The
real culprits are the people who are supposed to be
our sources on these little things, he said, quote, who
were constantly reassuring us behind the scenes. No, no, no,
it's better than you think. But I thought the media
didn't miss this story, Chuck. This actually brings us to
our second point here. Todd is saying out loud what
(24:32):
we already knew. There's no journalism in the corporate media anymore.
Those who claim to be reporters are nothing more than
stenographers for their sources. And we all know who their
sources are. It's their pals in the White House. Who
else could tell them Joe is okay? Other than those
close to Joe activists and propagandists parroting like good little dogs.
(24:57):
Real reporters dig and dig and dig and double check
and try ripple check. That's not what they do. That
would require work above and beyond clinking glasses at a
cocktail party, which is what they're really doing. This would
require having the moral courage to look for an answer.
Your leftist self might not want a report. They don't
want to tell you the truth. The truth would hurt them.
(25:18):
And here's the third point I want to make about
Chuck Todd and his little eye.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Here.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
What I find es specially hilarious about Todd's admission is
that Biden's mental collapse was blatantly obvious to anyone who
saw him in action for more than thirty seconds. You're
listening to me on the radio right now. You knew,
I know, you knew, I knew, We all knew. We
all knew when he was inaugurated, we all knew when
he was pretending to run for president from a basement,
(25:44):
we all knew when they were using AI content to
make it sound like he was healthy. So the idea
that these useless, corrupt people who claim to be reporters
want us to believe their sources convince them to ignore
their lying eyes and ears, it's just laughable. Would have
to be a moron to believe that, And Chuck Todd
thinks we're morons. You know what, the bottom line is,
(26:05):
they're still lying to us. The regime media were not
fooled by their sources. The regime media were not falsely
reassured by their sources. The regime media all knew Biden
was unfit to be president. The only reason they admitted
it is because they knew. You knew, They knew he
was unfit. They knew he wasn't capable of serving a
(26:27):
second term. Hell, there's a book that's about to come
out from Jake Tapper where people who worked in the
White House claimed if Biden got reelected, he would have
to sit in a wheelchair. They were going to give
us a disabled, crippled president. No offense people in wheelchairs. Look,
I'm an advocate for helping people in wheelchairs wheelchairs for
Warriors dot org. Please make a donation today. It's important.
(26:48):
And it's not as if he couldn't do his job
if he was in a wheelchair. We live in a
state where our governor is in a wheelchair. And I'm
not the biggest fan of Governor Abbitt. But it's not
because he's incapable of doing his job. I just don't
agree with all of his policies. Joe Biden was both
of those things. He was incapable of doing his jobs
and his policies were bad. These people effectively and actively
(27:10):
cooperated in a conspiracy. They hoped they could get Biden
over the finish line to forever vanquish Donald Trump. The
corporate media are evil. They're not just evil, they're dishonest.
They would back their prius over their own mothers if
it would further the cause. They're not stupid. They're evil,
but they're not as smart as they think they are.
(27:32):
They're just not stupid. They knew, they knew, They knew
Biden's brain was jello. Of course they knew. Anyone with
eyes and ears knew. This is how the corporate media
operates today. To justify spreading lies and misinformation, they find
sources that are willing to tell them what they want
to hear, and then they hide behind those sources. That's
(27:54):
what Chuck Todd is doing right now. In a world
where actual journalism is practiced, if a source lies to you,
you out the liar, You name the source who lied
to you. This allows the reporter to regain his credibility.
It allows him to put sources on notice that there
is a price to be paid for lying. Propagandists don't
(28:16):
do that. Propagandists write with their ideological pales in the
Biden White House, tell them to write even when what
they're being told to write is outrageous as this sharp
as attack bs the regime media hoard themselves out, and
they should not be forgiven until they fully confess, until
(28:37):
they apologize, until they admit that they're not real journalists.
And I got to think that's something they're never going
to do. The fact that Chuck Todd is not naming
the names of those who lied to him about the
Biden mental fitness scandal, one of the biggest scandals of
our lifetime in politics, reveals more about Chuck Todd than
the actual liars. Of course, the same is true for
(28:58):
all of them. Free special leagues on.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Right here on proceeds Unhappyness Radio.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Exciting news from the Far East. China has unveiled their
version of the cyber truck. It's just like the US version,
but it was assembled by Toddlers. That's fun. Great job there,
little kids. I am, like a lot of you, concerned
and frustrated right now with what has been going on
in Austin. We have been giving a lot of coverage
to this legislative session this week because they're wrapping it up.
(29:34):
Why don't we discussed that earlier in the show? Not
a lot of time left. I want to get to
that in just a little bit. Abbott's Priority bail Reform Bill.
What does it mean? We'll get to it in a second,
But first, an interesting headline I saw in my news
feed yesterday the Texas the Texas Supreme Court has overturned
a ruling in the College Station extra territorial jurisdiction case. Wow,
(29:57):
that's a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo. Holly Hansen from
the Texan Dot News, What does that even mean?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, that's a lot of big words, right, But what
happens is you have these cities that have the power
to annex areas that are not within city limits. And
what happens is they can impose taxes and ordinances on
these residents, but those residents don't get to vote in
city elections. So there's been a legal challenge that was
(30:25):
filed in twenty twenty two against the College Station where
they're trying to show that this is on constitutional, this
is not in accordance with the quote republican form of
government that is outlined in the Texas Constitution. But along
the way while there's this case is winding its way
through the courts. The Texas legislature passed this law saying
(30:47):
that residents can can say we want out of these
extra territorial jurisdictions. They're called etjs for short, and so
the Supreme Court said, you know what, these people can
use this law.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
The interesting thing is that College Station kind of tried
to have it both ways. They tried to argue in
court that this couple that was fighting them didn't have
a case because they could use the new law. But
they're also challenging challenging the new law in another court
case because they don't want these residents to be able
(31:23):
to leave their ETJ. They want to continue to collect
taxes and exert control over their properties and what they
can do with their private property. But this case is
interesting because it's the signifies that possibly the Supreme Court
of Texas is going to say no to College Station
and other cities who want to keep doing this and say,
(31:46):
you know, people have a right to not be a
part of these etjs, which is, you know, kind of
taxation without representation. Seems like we fought a war over
that a long time ago.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Yeah, I mean it's textbook taxation without representation. How is
this been up for debate. I mean, it's twenty twenty five.
I feel like we're centuries past solving this problem. How
did this even happen in the first place.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Well, well, it came about during a time where there
was this incredible growth in Texas, and a lot of
these municipalities still point to this. You know, they want
to be able to control you know, crazy development and
things like that, and you know there's something to that,
but that that time has passed and again we're looking at,
you know, what are the rights of the citizens of
(32:30):
the state of Texas. And it's really interesting that in
this Supreme Court ruling that came out last Friday, it says,
in our Republican form of government, the legislature retains the
power to bring the local government to heal and then
all things remain accountable to the people for its judgments.
So it seems like they're siding with the legislature in
(32:50):
this and what they've determined is best for the residents
of Texas.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Were there any dissenting opinions anybody that was against the.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Ruling, Well, a fun one. He wasn't actually against it.
Per se. But there was one justice who wrote an
opinion that it is. It was part concurring and in
part dissenting because he just didn't like the fact that
the court said that these people had to go back
(33:18):
and apply to leave the ETJ. That he thought they
should be able to continue to fight their case on
the grounds that the whole thing is unconstitutional and unconstitutional
regulatory structure. And Justin Sullivan kind of ends his opinion
with a warning, with advice for both the planets and
a warning for the city. He says, now that this
court is spoken, the plaintiffs are bound to get the
(33:40):
message release as a matter of pay for work, because
the city's going to have to comply with this law.
And then he says, here's hoping the city can read
the writing on the wall too. Okay, it sounds like
a little warning here, all right.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
If I'm not mistaken, Guys, I've seen Justice James P. Sullivan.
That's what you're talking about, right. Yeah, he has a
lot of beard, and isn't he also a ginger? He's
a redhead, right.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
He is? He is, and he's pretty funny. Part of
his opinion refers to a previous case where they actually
quote The Simpsons the TV show, saying stop stop, he's
already dead and in a reference to Homie the Clown,
I think episodes. So he's kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
There's a lot going on right now in his community
this week, the ginger community. Apparently Gingers are black.
Speaker 6 (34:30):
Now I just need to remind y'all again everyone who
is ginger, who has red hair, those are black people.
All Gingers are black people. If they have red hair,
they are black.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
What's up my Ginger? It's very exciting news, Holly. Maybe
he's just been distracted by all the big revelations in
his personal life lately. There's you know, no way to know.
All right, let's move from that. You shouldn't, it would
be bad for your career. Let's move to this. Governor
Abbott's priority bail ref constitutional amendment has passed a House
committee and a bipartisan deal. Right Apparently twelve Democrats, at
(35:07):
least twelve Democrats were needed to pass this. What is
it and will it make it to I mean, does
this get passed before the end of the week.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
We only have till Thursday, right, Well, you only have
until Thursday to get things out of committee in time, right,
So the timelines are a little more complicated than that.
They got this out of committee last night. It was
just a really interesting, dramatic series of events yesterday and
really a big win for those who are advocating for
(35:36):
some bail reform that would keep more violent repeat offenders
off the street.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Can you explain that, by the way, the term bail
reform has completely been redefined from what it was a
couple of years ago. For the last few years, bail
reform meant letting criminals out of prison. Now it means
the opposite, right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
So what this bill is doing is it's making it
mostly mandatory to detain certain suspects. And these are suspects
were accused of murder and capital murder and rape and
some aggravated cases, and that has not been in the
constitution before. So now judges pretty much have to default
(36:16):
to detaining these people. Now, there are some caveats. They
have to have a bail hearing, there has to be
evidence proving that the suspect is a danger to the
community in law enforcement and victims, and is not likely
to appear for their court appearances. And then if a
judge decides to release them on bail. Anyways, the judge
(36:37):
has to provide a written statement explaining their findings the
fact in the justification for releasing this person. So it's
really going to kind of rein in some of these
rogue judges we've seen in the Houston area who release
even capital murder suspects on bail, and sometimes even in
the case of one of the judges released the suspect
(36:57):
who had already been convicted of murders. So this is
a way to crack down. Now, this is a constitutional amendment,
so it needs two thirds of each chamber to pass,
and so in the House you had to get twelve
Democrats to sign on. So there's been a lot of
back and forth negotiations over the past few weeks to
get this deal done. It continued last night. The first
(37:20):
committee hearing was scheduled for six pm, and it kept
getting delayed while they were going back and forth on
the details of the bill. But just after nine pm
they did hold that hearing excuse me, not of hearing
a formal meeting to go ahead and vote this out
of committee. And interestingly enough, it's a ten to one
vote on that committee, including some very prominent Democrats such
(37:43):
as Jean wu who was the chair of the Democratic
House Caucus, and Jelon Deluke Jones out of Houston. And
these were two of kind of the holdouts and who
were negotiating for some things that they were concerned about
in the bill. So it really was a historic win.
And the fact that those two individuals, along with Joe
(38:05):
Moody out of Elpasso, the fact that they voted for
this indicates that it is very likely to pass on
the House floor. It has not yet been scheduled, but
we expect that vote to take place here within the
next couple of weeks.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
And I guess the Democrats rebuttal to this would be,
why do you hate black people? Or something like that.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Well, you know, I don't know. You know, they were
advocating for some things that they were concerned about, And
to be fair, there were some Republicans who were a
little worried about some of the language that was in
the original version of the Still there was a concern
about the charge of aggravated assault being included as a
crime for which you could be tained without bail. And
(38:46):
the problem with that term is that it kind of
grabs a whole lot of different allegations. I mean, if
I hit you in the head with the shoe, I
could be accused of aggravated assaults. So they wanted some
stricter death pinicians there, and what they got is the
definition of aggravated assault when it's done with the weapon
or causing serious bodily injury. So I'd argue it's a
(39:10):
pretty good compromise in that respect.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Wow, Okay, Holly Hanson fantastic reporting. I am a huge
fan of the work she does at the Texan do News.
You would be as well if you subscribed to the there.
You can sign up at their website and become a
member for a marginal v not terribly expensive. You can
also follow her on social media that costs nothing. If
you find Holly S. Hanson on ax finder, it's not
that difficult. Hey, before we run, quickerminder, folks, Me and
(39:35):
Jesse Payton are coming back to Jackson, Mississippi, May twenty second, Mandeville, Louisiana.
That's Friday, May twenty third, and Metaie, Louisiana, Saturday, May
twenty fourth, that's going to be Memorial Day weekend. We're
doing something called couples Therapy. It's a relationship themed comedy
show for Memorial Day weekend. Come on out date night,
cheap fun entertainment. Drink some cocktails. We'll make fun of
(39:59):
you your partner live on stage. You're gonna love it.
You can get tickets to Jesseisfunny dot com or check
out my x account. You'll find a link right at
the top of the page. I'm Kenny Webster. I love
you all. Thank you so much for tuning this afternoon.
We'll see you back here bright and early tomorrow morning
for more of which you bought a radio for.
Speaker 7 (40:20):
You are listening to the Pursuit of Happiness Radio. Tell
the government to kiss your ass when you listen to
this show.
Jack GANA government sucks.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Suit of Happiness Radio is deluxe.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Liberty and Freedom will make you smiles. Of a Suit
of Happiness. Us on your.
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Radio to hel justice.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Jeese burgs a.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Livy rise at the food.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
This is interesting. The top two baby names in the
United States last year were Liam and Olivia. Yeah. Interesting right.
Apparently the least two popular names were Jasmine and aoc.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I know nobody wanted to name their kids those things. Hi, everybody,
Kenny Webster, thanks so much for tuning in this afternoon
to another edition of Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness. Good
to be here with you. Today's show is going to
be all about Texas and Saudi Arabia. And I'm sure
you know why. We're wrapping up the legislative session. All
the bills have to be moved out of committee in
Texas in Austin by midnight Thursday. I believe all we'll
(01:00):
get to all that real soon. Brandon Waltons this year
live from the Texas State Capitol, also with us. It's
afternoon Holly Hanson reporting not only on this legislative session,
but some news from the Texas Supreme Court involving the
principle of no taxation without representation. Apparently it was happening
in none other than College Station, a crazy court hearing
(01:21):
this week. We'll get to all of that very soon,
but before we get to any of it, can we
just start the show off with this. Donald Trump has
arrived in Saudi Arabia for this big trip. He is
there right now to secure a trillion dollars in investments.
This is a big damn deal, everybody. It's huge, so
humongous deal. He's going to get Arabic investors, people from
(01:42):
around Saudi Arabia to invest in the American government. And
that's fantastic. Donald Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia to flags
and trumpets and the Crown Prince greeting Donald Trump at
the Royal Court along with Donald Trump. Elon Musk, Pete
Hegseth was there, Marco Rubio. Now, it's interest saying that
Hegseeth and Rubio are there because the very fact that
(02:04):
they're moving along with Trump on the trip, the fact
that they're going along with him to Saudi Arabia, actually
disproves something that the liberal media is claiming right now
about Trump. They're claiming that this trip is just economic
that it has nothing to do with diplomacy, with negotiating
an end to the war in Israel and Gaza, or
(02:24):
even the war in Russia and Ukraine, which is a lie,
of course it is. That's why he brought Rubio, That's
where he brought Hegseath. After he's done with this meeting,
he'll be traveling around the Mid East, going to Katari
in places like that. But he's also going to Turkey
to talk with Putin and Zolenski. Now that's very interesting.
Zolensky and Trump are supposed to be at the meeting.
Putin agreed to the meeting but has now gone radio silent.
(02:47):
We haven't heard anything from him recently on what that
entails or what is going to happen. But of course
business is obviously a big part of this. Trump's itinerary
includes countries in which the Trump organization has real estate projects,
and of course that's a touchy subject for some people.
But remember, he has real estate projects happening all over
the world. So what he's supposed to ignore the Mid
(03:09):
East because his sons are building towers there. That seems
a bit silly. Elizabeth Warren's very angry about what's going
on right now, and there's been some discussion about the
tariff war. Trump and Mohammed ben Salam, the Crown Prince
of Saudi Arabia, signing an economic partnership agreement. It's more
than just a strategic economic partnership, but that's the biggest
(03:30):
part of it. The US signed a letter of intent
to help develop the capabilities of Saudi Arabia's armed forces.
According to the summary, the memos involved plans for cooperation
between the Saudi Ministry of Interior and the FBI, and
between the Saudi Ministry of Justice and the DOJ. Another
promise cooperation concerned mining and mineral resources between the Ministry
(03:52):
of Industry and the Department of Energy, and still another
involved medical research related to infectious diseases. So obviously this
is more than just an economic meeting. Clearly there are
other things happening here. We're developing medicine and we're trying
to figure out what to do with minerals. So that's
a big deal. But the White House says Saudi Arabia
has already committed to investing six hundred billion dollars in
(04:15):
the United States. That's terrific. That's fantastic. While he's there,
he'll be meeting with other business leaders, people from the
energy sector up presumably, obviously, and that is great news
to the American workforce. Now, obviously, there are critics of
all of this. Chuck Schumer says he's placing a hold
on Trump's DOJ nominees because of questions over the Cutter
(04:36):
luxury jet gift. Trump's getting a jet, a Boeing aircraft
from Cutter, and the reason he's doing it is we
want to update air Force one. The problem is air
Force one's forty years old, isn't that amazing? Air Force
one is almost as old as I am, and I'm
forty two. But it doesn't run well. It has a
(04:58):
lot of issues. I think Donald Trump's missing out on
fantastic argument here. He should just tell the Liberals we
need a new Boeing aircraft because the old one has
emissions problems, it's not eco friendly, it's not green. The
newer Boeing aircrafts are better for the environment. The old
ones are bad. If he said that to the Senate
Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, I gotta think Chuck wouldn't be
(05:20):
able to argue with that. Anyway, it's still not really
even clear if it's a gift or if it's just
on loan. So a lot of misinformation there. Trump is
going to meet with the Syrian president in Saudi Arabia tomorrow. Now,
this is the new Syrian president, Ahmed al Shara, it's
not the old one. The old guy, Bashirasad is gone.
He has taken off. I think he's hiding out in
Russia now. And Donald Trump has actually been speaking live.
(05:43):
I've got a little bit of audio from his speech today.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
It's an honor to be here. What a great place,
What a great place, but more importantly, what great people.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
I want to thank his Royal Highness the Crown.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
It's for that incredible auction. He's an incredible man. Known
him a long time now, is nobody like him.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Appreciate it very much, my friend. And it's a tremendous
honor to return to this beautiful kingdom and be welcomed
back with such extraordinary generosity and warmth.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I've never forgotten the.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Exceptional hospitality show to us by King Solomon, Who's just
we talk about a great man.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
That is a great man, that is a great man,
a great family. You get the idea now of all
the things taking place there. There's one really interesting detail,
a little special bonus. When Trump signed this major deal
with Saudi Arabia, obviously he landed there, he went and
met up. They discussed the six hundred billion dollar commitment
(06:51):
Saudi's investing in the United States, building on Trump's record
in twenty seventeen of securing billions of dollars in commercial
deals and agreements with Soft Arabia for defense and energy
and technology and infrastructure. That's all great, But as a bonus,
the United States is going to receive an Arabian leopard
at the Washington d C. National Zoo. It's a very
(07:14):
cool thing. It's a beautiful animal of a cute, adorable
Arabian leopard. I don't think you could pet it and
probably bite your hand. But Trump is on a four
day swing through the Mid East. He'll visit the United
Arab Emirates and Cutter. He'll probably be stopping in Turkey
to meet with Putin and Zowinsky. And when he gets
home from the Strip, America will have a brand new
pet leopard. Pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Li from Texas Broadcasting across the people set topic of America.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
This is preceeds of How It Is Radio with Ken Webstern,
Jinia Akay producer Kenny keep it here. Well, we are
racing towards the finish line here, running out of time
for the Texas House. The list legislatives session is coming
(08:01):
to an end very soon and the Senate, the State Senate,
has accomplished a great deal this legislative session. The Texas
House is I guess as dysfunctional as ever, there's no
other way to explain that. Here with the latest news
from the Texas. Let's start off with this. The Texas
House is rejecting a Mexican guest worker problem Brandon Walton's
(08:21):
Texas scorecard dot Com. Welcome back, my man. What is this?
What happened?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yes? Yes, so you know we're here now, Just so
folks can get an idea, we're here now and basically
in two days we're going to hit the deadline for
the House to pass House bills, which is a big deadline.
So any bills that House members have filed that aren't
voted on by midnight on Thursday are going to be dead.
And so what are they doing during this time? Well,
they've stacked up the calendars, not with unfortunately full of
(08:49):
Republican priority legislation. There's been a little bit of that,
but most of it has been either very small things
that probably could have been done earlier in the session,
or you get issues like this. This is a Democrat
authored bill that was placed on the calendar. It was
actually placed on the calendar for Friday. They didn't get
around to it until yesterday because of that far behind
(09:10):
on their schedule. But it would allow the governor to
enter in and create this temporary guest worker program with
Mexico to bring in more cheap point labor into the state. Now,
this is something that Republican Party of Texas has rejected
that you know, you might remember George W. Bush like
floated this idea twenty years ago. Conservatives didn't really love
(09:32):
it then, and so it was, you know, didn't really
have much of a chance of passing it. Indeed, they
did vote it down, but not before spending a couple
hours debating it, right, which some might say, maybe that's
the purpose, right because when you hit these final deadlines,
if they're spending a couple hours talking about a bill
like this, it has no chance of passing the Senate
(09:52):
and very little chance of passing the House. That's time
that they're not spending talking about border enforcement legislation, talking
about everifying things in state tuition for legal aliens, things
that would actually stop or help the problem with illegal
immigration in Texas, instead of talking about bringing in more
cheap foreign labor.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Who is it that is proposing this bill? I mean,
this is nobody wants this right, I mean, why it's
a Republican controlled state. This is obviously an unpopular idea.
Why is this even up for consideration?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, well it's authored by a Democrat, Democrat Ray Lopez
from San Antonio. It's his bill. It was his bill
who's voted down. But I'll tell you this, I was
kind of surprised. You had nine Republicans actually joining Democrats
and supporting the bill when they voted.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
On it yesterday, and anybody we would know, you know, I'll.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Tell you this, the people you would know, people like
Dave Feeling and people like that, they did vote against this,
So you know, it was kind of a shocking. I mean,
you had some of the Republicans that from South Texas
were seemingly in support, and a few other random ones
that I guess we're just appealing to their chambers of
(11:05):
commerce that have always pushed for cheap labor at the
expense of Americans.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
All right, let's talk about this. A D transition coverage
bill has cleared the Texas House. It is now heading
to the Governor's desk. This would provide funding for people
that want to undo their trans procedures.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah. So, essentially, if an insurance company covers gender mutilation procedures,
they will now have to cover D transition procedures as
well as any medical treatments relating to complications from the
gender mutilation procedures. You know, essentially, you know what this
is is if you know insurance companies are going to
(11:43):
are going to sign off and people doing these these
harmful procedures, particularly when they're children, right, sure, but at
any age really then that you know, they should be
equally responsible for the D transition portion. Now you know,
if an insurance he doesn't cover this and they're not
subject to it. This is something that passed the Senate
(12:04):
last month. The House gave approval to it over the weekend,
the final approval to it yesterday, and now it's headed
to the Governor's desk.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
All right, I'm going to climb out on a limb
here and guess that there were insurance companies that would
cover the transition but not the de transition.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Right, well, exactly exactly right.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Do we know which healthcare companies which insurance covered companies
they were?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I think I think it depends on. You know, obviously
there's a lot of factors. So it depended on like
the plans and different things like that. So I don't
want to put any single insurance company up. Last night
it depended, but now they all will have to.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Apparently one of them was Medicaid. Wow, so the federal government.
That's amazing. Okay. Meanwhile, in the Texas Senate, the senators
State senators have approved a measure to strengthen the right
to self defense. It looks like even Democrats voted for this.
It passed twenty six to three to too. What does
it do? What is Senate built seventeen thirty three is
supposed to accomplish.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
There's a central seventeen thirties by Senator Bob Paul. Essentially,
whenever someone's in a self defense situation right where they're
justified use of force or deadly force, this would prohibit people,
you know, from recovering civil damages if the grand jury
has thrown out the criminal chargers. So there's some practical
places where this has happened. Think of somebody like Kyle
(13:25):
Rittenhouse who was obviously as we know, acquitted after the
after he had to defend himself against the writers a
few years ago in Wisconsin. But even after that, because
somebody you know was was you know, still alive after
the shooting, that that person you know now suing right,
(13:46):
suing Writtenhouse for wrongful injury. This would take that out,
so that you know, look at these criminal charges are
dismisster thrown out or they're found out guilty, that know,
you can't sue and get damages.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
All right, let's talk a little bit about the attorney
general for a minute and election fraud. Last week, Attorney
General Ken Paxton indicted and arrested six people, including five
public officials, for vote harvesting in Freo County. It is
part of his years long election integrity investigation. Oddly, and
I was a little confused when I heard this. I'm
glad Paxton's doing this. It sounds like there, it sounds
(14:22):
like something was going on over there, So I'm glad
he got involved, but technically he lost his power to
prexit prosecute election crimes, at least I thought so. Now
the Texas House is moving to restore his ability to
prosecute election crimes. So obviously this is a two part question.
What is the law change, but also what are his
current abilities? Because I thought he wasn't able to do
(14:44):
the thing he just did.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Well, the reason he was able to do the thing
he just did, and that was in Freo County, is
because the local DA there referred the investigation over to
Pexton's office. What he's not able to do is you'll
latterly go after election fraud. And the reason why that's
a major problem is because in many of these locations,
(15:07):
the district attorney is often tied in to maybe some
of the local political groups or political organizations that might
be potentially involved in some of the voter fraud right
or election integrity violations. And so in this case, the
Frio County DA referred the investigation to Attorney General packs
and that's why we've been able to see movement in
(15:28):
that case. But it was the Court of Criminal Appeal
several years ago that ruled that the Attorney General had
to have Essentially that was the only way it could
happen that the ag couldn't go after it himself. Now,
with legislation that's making its way through, it's been approved
by the House and the Senate, but there's been some
differences between the two, so there's still some more steps
in the process to come to an agreement on it.
(15:50):
But it would essentially allow the Attorney General to go
after election fraud if the local DA refuses to. And
so this opens up, you know, big opportun for places
like say Harris County that has been you know, the DA.
There is not somebody who's probably going to refer potential
election fraud to the Tourney General, especially Ken Paxton. This
(16:11):
would open up the door for that.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, it's weird too because I don't understand it. Paxton
dropped the charges months ago against Lena Headalgo's staffers for
that infamous COVID vaccine outreach case. I always wondered what
the story was behind that, but we never found out,
did you.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Essentially what the Attorney General's office had said, and they,
you know, I think keep you know, they can't say
too much because there could be future right, the future
action and I guess they want to save the potential
for that. But essentially my understating there was that once
they had all the data, all the facts together, they
didn't have enough they felt, I guess, to successfully prosecute
(16:53):
it in court. Obviously it's a big burden, and so
they decided to keep their powder dry there. I don't
know if they'll try to take another bite at the Apple,
if they're just moving on, but I do remember that.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm just curious about that. You mentioned
Hidalgo and Paxton. That's the last time I thought about
the two of them in context together. Meanwhile, AG Paxton,
General Paxton has just secured a record one point three
hundred and seventy five one point three seventy five billion
dollar data privacy settlement from Google. I've heard there's similar
(17:24):
lawsuits going on right now with Apple, but this one
is unique because it's specifically for a Texas lawsuit accusing
Google of violating state privacy laws. And if I'm not mistaken,
some of us might be entitled to some money from
some of this.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
What exactly happened, Yeah, So this was going after Google
for a series of privacy violations, things like taking users
biometric data they're you know, facial recognition things like that
without their permission, you know, tracking users data when they
were using you know.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
The so called incognito mode is not actually incognito as
a as a PSA. I guess for some people listening
the uh uh you know, they were looking at that
and they were using that data, and so there were
a series of these violations. Attorney General goes after them.
And this is a huge settle. I mean, nearly one
point four billion dollars that's going to be collected in
(18:16):
for the state. Right, you'd like to see that money, right,
go right back to the people. And it's not the
first one that we've seen. In fact, last year there
was a big settlement with Meta right, you know, formally
known as Facebook, for almost the same thing. It was
very similar. I had to deal with privacy and then
collecting data on users without telling them, and that was
(18:39):
a similar I think in that case, it is about
one point three billion dollars and so h this is
a pretty big win and pretty consequential for uh, you know,
some of these bigger companies.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Any idea how much money we get for people that
apply for it?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Uh, you know, It'll be interesting to see exactly how
they handle it. I don't know that it's going to
be like a you know, one of those called the
class action lawsuits. Everybody's going to get a check for
fifty bucks. But you know, you hope that it goes
to some good use.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Okay, one more question for you. Are you at the
capitol right now, Brianon, Is that where you are today?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yes, yes, I am.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
You've been there. You've been following all the votes, all
the debates, all the little conundrums and debacles and meles
and francases and that sort of thing. Have we actually
passed any kind of property tax relief this session? Does
it look like that could happen before Thursday?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Well, you know, the Senate has the House has it.
Now they have a little bit of time because the
deadline for passing House bills is Thursday. But the House
had pass bills that come over from the Senate. They
get another couple of weeks to do that, and so
there's still a little bit of time on the clock
for something like the property text build. They've supposedly come
to an agreement raising the homestead exemption I think to
one hundred and forty thousand dollars. You know, people are
(19:53):
looking at this, they're say, this would be about six
billion dollars give or take of property tax relief. It's
in a year where the state have a surplus of
twenty four billion dollars. So you know, it's well less
than half. It's like a quarter of what they actually have.
And interestingly, it's less than what Governor Abbitt said he
wanted to see the legislature accomplished at the beginning of
(20:13):
the session. He said he wanted to see at least
ten billion dollars. So you know, this deal that's being
floated right now seems to come short of it. We'll
see if they maybe find a little extra money to
throw towards towards it before we get to the final
days of the session here in a few weeks.
Speaker 6 (20:28):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Frustrating, But just a quick reminder, folks, to those of
you that do want to challenge your property taxes. I
think you have two days left for that. That's May fifteenth,
if I'm not mistaken, So get going on that. Boy
is that is just frustrating how expensive property taxes become
in this state. It doesn't look like it's getting any better.
Brandon but your reporting has been fantastic lately. I thank
(20:48):
you for your time, Sir Brandon Walton's texascorecard dot com.
Follow him on x find him on social media, go
to their website, subscribe to their email list. It's like
getting the Houston Chronicle without paying for it if it
was right leaning news organization. Fascinating.
Speaker 7 (21:04):
You are listening to the pursuit of happiness radio pursuit
of happiness.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
We don't have that in Mexico. Bill Gates, professional lizard person.
Bill Gates wants to give away his entire fortune in
the next twenty years, he says. Then he bought a
dozen eggs and said, never mind, I'm tapped. Ah, poor
Bill Gates. Can we talk about NBC News for just
(21:29):
a little bit here? Well, it's sort of NB said
Chuck Todd. Remember he used to be the host to
Meet the Press. He's not anymore. He got fired for
a DEI hire. That's sad. But Breitbart dot com today
reports that Chuck Todd basically just admitted reporters blindly believed
their sources regarding Joe Biden's obvious mental frailty just fantastic
(21:51):
for so many different reasons. How could you not know
his brain was broken. You were there with him in
the White House, you were walking around, you saw him
in person. The rest of America knew in twenty nineteen
that the guy wasn't right. Somehow, the people in Washington,
d C. Surrounding him, covering news on this guy every day,
they didn't know. They didn't know. Most journalists in Washington,
(22:12):
d C. With the exception of some of the conservatives
in the independent journalists, are basically just stenographers. They're not
there to challenge ideas. They're not there to investigate, they're
not there to fact check. They're just there to repeat
what they've been told and show it to you like
a court stenographer. But there are three reasons check Todd
pointing this out about reporters blindly believing their sources is
so fascinating. Number One, Todd contradicts what he said ten
(22:36):
days ago. Ten days ago, check Dodd insisted without evidence
that the regime media did report on Biden's diminished capacity. Hell,
just last month, he was furious about the suggestion the
media didn't report on this. The media, he said, quote,
didn't miss this story, Chuck Todd said, quote. David Ignatius
(22:57):
wrote a very high profile column in October of twenty
twenty three, saying, quote, is he really running again? This
doesn't seem like a good idea end quote. Chuck Todd continues,
people like me were promoting Dean Phillips his campaign because
Biden was running. Wow, things sure have changed since Chuck
Todd's viewed that anti science nonsense. Listen to him yesterday.
Speaker 7 (23:19):
The real culprits are the people who are supposed to
be our sources on all these things, who were constantly
reassuring us behind the scenes. No, no, no, no, it's
better than you think.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
But I think.
Speaker 7 (23:30):
I mean, I remember Jeffy Katzenberg just, oh no, he's
going to be great at the debates. He's already debated
this guy a couple of times.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
He knows what he's doing.
Speaker 7 (23:40):
He's out there tell and this isn't off the record
settings and you're like, really, okay. I mean so to me,
the cover up is the people closest to him in
the Democratic Party. Yes, you could say there were members
who were essentially Democrats first who happened to be employed
by media companies. But I just sort of this, I mean,
this is the slipper slope of what's happened to the
(24:01):
press corps?
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Right?
Speaker 7 (24:02):
There's so many pundits who become members of the media
and stay there that you can't expect the.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Consumers to be able to disaggregate the two. Wow. The
real culprits are the people who are supposed to be
our sources on these little things, he said, quote, who
were constantly reassuring us behind the scenes. No, no, no,
it's better than you think. But I thought the media
didn't miss this story, Chuck. This actually brings us to
our second point here. Todd is saying out loud what
(24:32):
we already knew. There's no journalism in the corporate media anymore.
Those who claim to be reporters are nothing more than
stenographers for their sources. And we all know who their
sources are. It's their pals in the White House. Who
else could tell them Joe is okay? Other than those
close to Joe activists and propagandists parroting like good little dogs.
(24:57):
Real reporters dig and dig and dig and double check
and try ripple check. That's not what they do. That
would require work above and beyond clinking glasses at a
cocktail party, which is what they're really doing. This would
require having the moral courage to look for an answer.
Your leftist self might not want a report. They don't
want to tell you the truth. The truth would hurt them.
(25:18):
And here's the third point I want to make about
Chuck Todd and his little eye.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Here.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
What I find es specially hilarious about Todd's admission is
that Biden's mental collapse was blatantly obvious to anyone who
saw him in action for more than thirty seconds. You're
listening to me on the radio right now. You knew,
I know, you knew, I knew, We all knew. We
all knew when he was inaugurated, we all knew when
he was pretending to run for president from a basement,
(25:44):
we all knew when they were using AI content to
make it sound like he was healthy. So the idea
that these useless, corrupt people who claim to be reporters
want us to believe their sources convince them to ignore
their lying eyes and ears, it's just laughable. Would have
to be a moron to believe that, And Chuck Todd
thinks we're morons. You know what, the bottom line is,
(26:05):
they're still lying to us. The regime media were not
fooled by their sources. The regime media were not falsely
reassured by their sources. The regime media all knew Biden
was unfit to be president. The only reason they admitted
it is because they knew. You knew, They knew he
was unfit. They knew he wasn't capable of serving a
(26:27):
second term. Hell, there's a book that's about to come
out from Jake Tapper where people who worked in the
White House claimed if Biden got reelected, he would have
to sit in a wheelchair. They were going to give
us a disabled, crippled president. No offense people in wheelchairs. Look,
I'm an advocate for helping people in wheelchairs wheelchairs for
Warriors dot org. Please make a donation today. It's important.
(26:48):
And it's not as if he couldn't do his job
if he was in a wheelchair. We live in a
state where our governor is in a wheelchair. And I'm
not the biggest fan of Governor Abbitt. But it's not
because he's incapable of doing his job. I just don't
agree with all of his policies. Joe Biden was both
of those things. He was incapable of doing his jobs
and his policies were bad. These people effectively and actively
(27:10):
cooperated in a conspiracy. They hoped they could get Biden
over the finish line to forever vanquish Donald Trump. The
corporate media are evil. They're not just evil, they're dishonest.
They would back their prius over their own mothers if
it would further the cause. They're not stupid. They're evil,
but they're not as smart as they think they are.
(27:32):
They're just not stupid. They knew, they knew, They knew
Biden's brain was jello. Of course they knew. Anyone with
eyes and ears knew. This is how the corporate media
operates today. To justify spreading lies and misinformation, they find
sources that are willing to tell them what they want
to hear, and then they hide behind those sources. That's
(27:54):
what Chuck Todd is doing right now. In a world
where actual journalism is practiced, if a source lies to you,
you out the liar, You name the source who lied
to you. This allows the reporter to regain his credibility.
It allows him to put sources on notice that there
is a price to be paid for lying. Propagandists don't
(28:16):
do that. Propagandists write with their ideological pales in the
Biden White House, tell them to write even when what
they're being told to write is outrageous as this sharp
as attack bs the regime media hoard themselves out, and
they should not be forgiven until they fully confess, until
(28:37):
they apologize, until they admit that they're not real journalists.
And I got to think that's something they're never going
to do. The fact that Chuck Todd is not naming
the names of those who lied to him about the
Biden mental fitness scandal, one of the biggest scandals of
our lifetime in politics, reveals more about Chuck Todd than
the actual liars. Of course, the same is true for
(28:58):
all of them. Free special leagues on.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Right here on proceeds Unhappyness Radio.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Exciting news from the Far East. China has unveiled their
version of the cyber truck. It's just like the US version,
but it was assembled by Toddlers. That's fun. Great job there,
little kids. I am, like a lot of you, concerned
and frustrated right now with what has been going on
in Austin. We have been giving a lot of coverage
to this legislative session this week because they're wrapping it up.
(29:34):
Why don't we discussed that earlier in the show? Not
a lot of time left. I want to get to
that in just a little bit. Abbott's Priority bail Reform Bill.
What does it mean? We'll get to it in a second,
But first, an interesting headline I saw in my news
feed yesterday the Texas the Texas Supreme Court has overturned
a ruling in the College Station extra territorial jurisdiction case. Wow,
(29:57):
that's a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo. Holly Hansen from
the Texan Dot News, What does that even mean?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, that's a lot of big words, right, But what
happens is you have these cities that have the power
to annex areas that are not within city limits. And
what happens is they can impose taxes and ordinances on
these residents, but those residents don't get to vote in
city elections. So there's been a legal challenge that was
(30:25):
filed in twenty twenty two against the College Station where
they're trying to show that this is on constitutional, this
is not in accordance with the quote republican form of
government that is outlined in the Texas Constitution. But along
the way while there's this case is winding its way
through the courts. The Texas legislature passed this law saying
(30:47):
that residents can can say we want out of these
extra territorial jurisdictions. They're called etjs for short, and so
the Supreme Court said, you know what, these people can
use this law.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
The interesting thing is that College Station kind of tried
to have it both ways. They tried to argue in
court that this couple that was fighting them didn't have
a case because they could use the new law. But
they're also challenging challenging the new law in another court
case because they don't want these residents to be able
(31:23):
to leave their ETJ. They want to continue to collect
taxes and exert control over their properties and what they
can do with their private property. But this case is
interesting because it's the signifies that possibly the Supreme Court
of Texas is going to say no to College Station
and other cities who want to keep doing this and say,
(31:46):
you know, people have a right to not be a
part of these etjs, which is, you know, kind of
taxation without representation. Seems like we fought a war over
that a long time ago.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Yeah, I mean it's textbook taxation without representation. How is
this been up for debate. I mean, it's twenty twenty five.
I feel like we're centuries past solving this problem. How
did this even happen in the first place.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Well, well, it came about during a time where there
was this incredible growth in Texas, and a lot of
these municipalities still point to this. You know, they want
to be able to control you know, crazy development and
things like that, and you know there's something to that,
but that that time has passed and again we're looking at,
you know, what are the rights of the citizens of
(32:30):
the state of Texas. And it's really interesting that in
this Supreme Court ruling that came out last Friday, it says,
in our Republican form of government, the legislature retains the
power to bring the local government to heal and then
all things remain accountable to the people for its judgments.
So it seems like they're siding with the legislature in
(32:50):
this and what they've determined is best for the residents
of Texas.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Were there any dissenting opinions anybody that was against the.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Ruling, Well, a fun one. He wasn't actually against it.
Per se. But there was one justice who wrote an
opinion that it is. It was part concurring and in
part dissenting because he just didn't like the fact that
the court said that these people had to go back
(33:18):
and apply to leave the ETJ. That he thought they
should be able to continue to fight their case on
the grounds that the whole thing is unconstitutional and unconstitutional
regulatory structure. And Justin Sullivan kind of ends his opinion
with a warning, with advice for both the planets and
a warning for the city. He says, now that this
court is spoken, the plaintiffs are bound to get the
(33:40):
message release as a matter of pay for work, because
the city's going to have to comply with this law.
And then he says, here's hoping the city can read
the writing on the wall too. Okay, it sounds like
a little warning here, all right.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
If I'm not mistaken, Guys, I've seen Justice James P. Sullivan.
That's what you're talking about, right. Yeah, he has a
lot of beard, and isn't he also a ginger? He's
a redhead, right.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
He is? He is, and he's pretty funny. Part of
his opinion refers to a previous case where they actually
quote The Simpsons the TV show, saying stop stop, he's
already dead and in a reference to Homie the Clown,
I think episodes. So he's kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
There's a lot going on right now in his community
this week, the ginger community. Apparently Gingers are black.
Speaker 6 (34:30):
Now I just need to remind y'all again everyone who
is ginger, who has red hair, those are black people.
All Gingers are black people. If they have red hair,
they are black.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
What's up my Ginger? It's very exciting news, Holly. Maybe
he's just been distracted by all the big revelations in
his personal life lately. There's you know, no way to know.
All right, let's move from that. You shouldn't, it would
be bad for your career. Let's move to this. Governor
Abbott's priority bail ref constitutional amendment has passed a House
committee and a bipartisan deal. Right Apparently twelve Democrats, at
(35:07):
least twelve Democrats were needed to pass this. What is
it and will it make it to I mean, does
this get passed before the end of the week.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
We only have till Thursday, right, Well, you only have
until Thursday to get things out of committee in time, right,
So the timelines are a little more complicated than that.
They got this out of committee last night. It was
just a really interesting, dramatic series of events yesterday and
really a big win for those who are advocating for
(35:36):
some bail reform that would keep more violent repeat offenders
off the street.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Can you explain that, by the way, the term bail
reform has completely been redefined from what it was a
couple of years ago. For the last few years, bail
reform meant letting criminals out of prison. Now it means
the opposite, right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
So what this bill is doing is it's making it
mostly mandatory to detain certain suspects. And these are suspects
were accused of murder and capital murder and rape and
some aggravated cases, and that has not been in the
constitution before. So now judges pretty much have to default
(36:16):
to detaining these people. Now, there are some caveats. They
have to have a bail hearing, there has to be
evidence proving that the suspect is a danger to the
community in law enforcement and victims, and is not likely
to appear for their court appearances. And then if a
judge decides to release them on bail. Anyways, the judge
(36:37):
has to provide a written statement explaining their findings the
fact in the justification for releasing this person. So it's
really going to kind of rein in some of these
rogue judges we've seen in the Houston area who release
even capital murder suspects on bail, and sometimes even in
the case of one of the judges released the suspect
(36:57):
who had already been convicted of murders. So this is
a way to crack down. Now, this is a constitutional amendment,
so it needs two thirds of each chamber to pass,
and so in the House you had to get twelve
Democrats to sign on. So there's been a lot of
back and forth negotiations over the past few weeks to
get this deal done. It continued last night. The first
(37:20):
committee hearing was scheduled for six pm, and it kept
getting delayed while they were going back and forth on
the details of the bill. But just after nine pm
they did hold that hearing excuse me, not of hearing
a formal meeting to go ahead and vote this out
of committee. And interestingly enough, it's a ten to one
vote on that committee, including some very prominent Democrats such
(37:43):
as Jean wu who was the chair of the Democratic
House Caucus, and Jelon Deluke Jones out of Houston. And
these were two of kind of the holdouts and who
were negotiating for some things that they were concerned about
in the bill. So it really was a historic win.
And the fact that those two individuals, along with Joe
(38:05):
Moody out of Elpasso, the fact that they voted for
this indicates that it is very likely to pass on
the House floor. It has not yet been scheduled, but
we expect that vote to take place here within the
next couple of weeks.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
And I guess the Democrats rebuttal to this would be,
why do you hate black people? Or something like that.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Well, you know, I don't know. You know, they were
advocating for some things that they were concerned about, And
to be fair, there were some Republicans who were a
little worried about some of the language that was in
the original version of the Still there was a concern
about the charge of aggravated assault being included as a
crime for which you could be tained without bail. And
(38:46):
the problem with that term is that it kind of
grabs a whole lot of different allegations. I mean, if
I hit you in the head with the shoe, I
could be accused of aggravated assaults. So they wanted some
stricter death pinicians there, and what they got is the
definition of aggravated assault when it's done with the weapon
or causing serious bodily injury. So I'd argue it's a
(39:10):
pretty good compromise in that respect.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Wow, Okay, Holly Hanson fantastic reporting. I am a huge
fan of the work she does at the Texan do News.
You would be as well if you subscribed to the there.
You can sign up at their website and become a
member for a marginal v not terribly expensive. You can
also follow her on social media that costs nothing. If
you find Holly S. Hanson on ax finder, it's not
that difficult. Hey, before we run, quickerminder, folks, Me and
(39:35):
Jesse Payton are coming back to Jackson, Mississippi, May twenty second, Mandeville, Louisiana.
That's Friday, May twenty third, and Metaie, Louisiana, Saturday, May
twenty fourth, that's going to be Memorial Day weekend. We're
doing something called couples Therapy. It's a relationship themed comedy
show for Memorial Day weekend. Come on out date night,
cheap fun entertainment. Drink some cocktails. We'll make fun of
(39:59):
you your partner live on stage. You're gonna love it.
You can get tickets to Jesseisfunny dot com or check
out my x account. You'll find a link right at
the top of the page. I'm Kenny Webster. I love
you all. Thank you so much for tuning this afternoon.
We'll see you back here bright and early tomorrow morning
for more of which you bought a radio for.
Speaker 7 (40:20):
You are listening to the Pursuit of Happiness Radio. Tell
the government to kiss your ass when you listen to
this show.
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