January 24, 2025 • 33 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A time, Time, luck and low. The Michael Verry's Show
is on the air. It's Charlie from BlackBerry Smoking. I
can feel a good one coming on. It's the Michael
(00:20):
Berry Show. Oh yes, it is. What a great week?
What a wee can fend?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I got to cut in early because we got a
lot going on today and there is an issue I
have been wanting to get to that I don't want
to miss out on, and that is the anger that
the media has that what they are now calling the
tech bros, it's a way of insulting them for being
(00:46):
all but one white, for not being minorities. When they
call them bros like that, they don't mean short for brothers.
And they are very upset that the people that they
have used to keep the peasants down, the technology crowd
has now seen the writing on the wall and have
(01:06):
now paid tribute to Donald Trump. I played two of
these earlier, but I'm gonna play all of them back
to back because I think it's going to make a point.
Jake Tapper was not happy to see the tech bros
attending Trump's inaugural church service.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Listen to how petty he sounds.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah, if I could just before I throw out to Anderson,
just bring back that photograph of the tech bros inside
Saint John's Church. It's just one other thing I want
to show. So we see Mark Zuckerberg on the left
there with the curly hair CEO of Meta, Tim Cook,
his faces blocked me as the white hair CEO of Apple,
Jeff Bezos on the right there the ball gentlemen looking
to his right CEO of Amazon. The gentleman behind Mark
(01:44):
Zuckerberg is Sundarpachai. He's the CEO of Google. And Anderson.
Between those four people plus East Elon Musk from Twitter
or X, those five people that I just mentioned, the
four in the photograph and also Elon Musk control so
much of the information that we receive. So much is
(02:09):
in their hands when it comes to ascertaining, monitoring or
refusing to monitor, monitor what is real what is not real.
And we're about to enter an era of deep fakes
and all sorts of misinformation. And the degree to which
those five gentlemen play a role or do not play
a role, will be pivotal in terms of where the
(02:32):
American people are four years from now, in terms of understanding,
in terms of understanding what is true and what is false?
Speaker 4 (02:37):
You're also you said we uh not. You're not just
talking about we the United States. We're talking about the world,
all the human beings on the planet. They control access
to information.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
They are the gatekeepers in many ways to information for
the entire planet.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Hell, hath no fury like two prissy little bitches who
feel betrayed.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
And that's what this is.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Y'all are supposed to be on our team. You can't
be over there with MAGA. We'll never win. I played
you what Jen Psaki of MSNBC said about it.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
So, these CEOs and these industries help Donald Trump, and
then he returns the favor.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
That's how it goes.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
Elon Musk spent a quarter of a billion dollars to
help reelect Donald Trump and use the reach of his
own social media platform to push MAGA talking points, and
in return, muskle and now be an unelected official in
the new Trump administration and is expected to even have
office space at the White House Complex.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
So I guess the influence that this.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Small collection of billionaires will have is something new this
time around, and it will be a new challenge to
explain why this agreement between tech billionaires and Donald Trump
is a real danger. And on that point, my friend
Rachel Maddow may have put it best.
Speaker 6 (03:57):
We haven't yet had the discussion in this country about
why oligarchy is bad. It's bad for your economy, it's
bad for your democracy, yes, but it's also bad for
individual people, for the regular things we need to do
in order to protect our families and live the kind
of lives that we want to live. Oligarchy suck for
ninety nine point ninety nine percent of people who live
(04:18):
in them.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Oligarchies suck for ninety nine point nine percent of people
who live in them. They're great if you're a billionaire,
how many of those are there out there? Bad if
you're basically anyone else. And while this agreement may be
playing out very openly, it's on all of us to
explain why it matters, and oligarchy suck isn't a bad
place to start.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
MSNBC's Katie Fang says Trump won't have the crowd he's
obsessed with, but he'll have the warm company of the
tech bros. Sounds like you missed the tech bros.
Speaker 7 (04:49):
About forty eight hours from now, President elect and convicted
felon Donald Trump will be sworn in as the forty
seventh president of the United States, but it's not shaping
up quite as he may have wanted. Today, Trump will
arrive here in the DC area, where he's throwing himself
a party at his Virginia golf club, complete with fireworks
and five hundred of his closest donor friends. But come Monday,
(05:14):
the man who obsesses over crowd sized will surely be disappointed,
as frigid winter temperatures have led to his inauguration ceremony
being moved indoors to the Capitol Rotunda. As for who
will be in attendance, Presidents Obama, George W. Bush, and
Bill Clinton are scheduled to come, but none of the
former presidents is expected at the inaugural luncheon. But don't worry,
(05:38):
Trump will have the warm affection of the big tech bros,
from Mark Zuckerberg to Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, who
have all confirmed that they'll be in attendance.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Not only have they lost the tech bros, but black
people are not staying down like the media told him to.
You people are stupid and and the whites hate you,
and only we protect you. Don't have opinions for yourself.
CNN went to two black men in the crowd waiting
along the inaugural parade route and asked what brought them
(06:14):
there from Arizona, because surely black people can't be happy
about Trump, right.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Trey and Willie, thank you so much for being with me.
We were live on the air on CNN.
Speaker 8 (06:26):
What brought you all the way from Arizona to twenty
degree weather.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Here in DC to watch Donald trumpet inaugurated?
Speaker 9 (06:32):
Well, retired military did twenty six years, twenty four years
in the military, and so man, listening to Donald Trump,
we were like, that's our guy.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And plus, man, we love Jesus. So we came out
to support the president and Wally, what is the day
like us?
Speaker 9 (06:44):
We know it means a lot because it shows us
is unity a lot of the things that we're been
seeing and been talking about a lot of times. You
just need to get here, yeah, and stop just listening
to what everyone else is saying in America. We are
all better to get than we are apart. Yeah, So
it means a lot to me. That is supposed to
(07:07):
just be how white people talk.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
If blacks are now going to be value voters joining
Hispanics and whites and Asians.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Democrats will never win again.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
You'll be left with prissy, bitchy white liberal Democrats. You
will be left with the pointy head, very angry because
Daddy didn't love them, dysphoric, confused, therapy riddled white liberals
(07:41):
and on their own without their powerful media occupied by
people like them, and big tech and the minorities that
they lead around by elish, they can't win an election.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
This is the Michael Verie Show.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, talking about the failures of California government, the snail
darter and the reservoirs that weren't full, and the hydrants
that didn't have any water, and now the zoning restrictions
and the development and all of this. We've been talking
(08:15):
about the failures of so many people, and the criminal
actions by people who've started these fires, and the idiots
who want to blame it on climate change, a global warming,
when much of it is man made. But I want
to make sure that in so doing we don't miss
out on something else that is very important, and that
(08:37):
is the good people, very good people who jumped in
there to fight the fires, many of them citizens, many
of them homeowners themselves, and the people who do it
for a living, which makes it no less noble. There
are people from my state and for many states. Texas
sent a lot of folks to help fight those fire
(09:02):
I have a nephew who's also named Michael Berry, who's
a firefighter, and I'm incredibly proud of him. It's what
he's wanted to do since he was a kid. Is
fight fires. Be a fireman. It's a culture. It's a calling.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
It really is.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It is a ministry, it is a calling, it is
a service. A listener named Martha sent me an email
a few days ago and asked if I had ever
heard Paul Harvey's tribute to Fireman.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
I had, but she wouldn't know this.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to studying radio grades,
and Paul Harvey is a radio great. And that doesn't
mean we're not going to play it, Ramon. I'm just
answering her question. Yes, of course I had heard of
Paul Harvey. No, I don't think that makes me a
big shot. Can I tell my story. I love Paul Harvey.
(10:04):
I love everything about it. I actually thought, and I'm
in the minority in this, I actually thought that when
his son took over for him when he died. His
son did a pretty good job at it. He writes,
like Jimmy Mike Rowe. Mike Rowe's whole deal is patterned
on Paul Harvey. Okay, Yeah, Ramon has it and he
(10:25):
wants me to play it and he wants me to
stop talking.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
So here it is.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
It's it's Paul Harvey's rest of the story on the fireman.
Speaker 10 (10:37):
Nobody knows why fireman or fireman. Not even they can
tell you why, but it is signed somebody.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Fire.
Speaker 10 (10:46):
Firefighting is the most risky I've all get into jobs,
yet also the one where most workers are most likely
to early. It's hard enough to believe that it's impossible
to explain it. Fire and ice are uncomfortable separately or together.
(11:06):
Wives hate the hours, kids love the noises, Fire and
ice any day. Get the firehouse to beil from hell.
Puts the respatcher on the horn with a tenement kinder
box address into bunker pens, rubber, turnout coat, grab the
mask and go. Minutes later you're on site. As others run.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Out, you go in.
Speaker 10 (11:24):
If you'll need all you can carry. The four pound
acts a six foot cook. The Eligan prie bar the
ceiling concealing the smoldering has to come down, and it's
one of those stubborn tin ones in the scary park.
With eating your ears, you're gouging out and carrying loose
and pulling apart, dumping hair and tasing black. Your windpipe
(11:44):
is closing and you've lost track of which way is out.
Is it really worth it? They've budgeted and cut your
ladder company from six men to five, so now everything
you do is sixteen point sixty seven percent more than
golden more danger. Your air is low inside your mask,
you're throwing up. There's a searing ember down your neck,
(12:08):
towing gloves exposed, a snaiced hand. So you emerge from
the holocaust hugging with your elbows. Somebody's singed, kitten. If
you had minutes of exhilaration on the bouncing rear, amount
of the screening one hundred foot ce grade, hours of
using all you've learned and learning more.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Now you're back.
Speaker 10 (12:26):
At the station house and you've unstupped your nostrils with
soapy fingers. You can almost breathe again. Next come to
tedious hours as you and Willow gang up on grimy tools.
They clean up. Crew at the firehouses. You when windows
need washing and toilets need cleaning, and floors need mopping
and beds need making, you do it. Fire and eyes
(12:48):
they both go with the job. Then there's that night
another engine company gets there first. You see this weather
and rookie hot dogging ahead. His academy boots are still shining.
You're losing inside the crackling You forget about him until
your helmet warning bell says, get up. The battalion chief
is calling you off. You get out.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
The other guy didn't.
Speaker 10 (13:10):
He'd heard a scream from the bottom of burning basement
stairs and he'd headed down there went on the bubbling
tar paper roof the three ton compressor broke through that
day we lost two storious fireman cry but only briefly,
because now comes the inevitable and ever more paperwork, just
(13:31):
in case OSHA complains or somebody sees is it worth it?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Your b crew pumper.
Speaker 10 (13:37):
Swapped his day shift so some family guy could be
home for his kid's birthday, and then out down toward
a falso arm. Your buddy gets blindsided by a hot
rod driven by a drunk.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Fire and ice.
Speaker 10 (13:49):
The intercom wright say again, this time at the warehouse.
A big bat multiple blaze probably torched on side engine
mandrake with icicles dragging a three quarter pre connect pros
hose are waiting for your big line. Layman can't make
the building without you, search, rescue, ventilate. Eventually it's over
and out. You smoke some margitan sleepers and grung out
(14:12):
of this one. You won behind graffiti followed walls. You
saved what you could, but the raging blaze that wanted
to consume adjacent buildings did not, And it did not
because you were there. I get to buy a house
before clean up. You and the guys should have spelled
tired but stimulated, drinking coffee, laughing, feeling good about one another.
(14:34):
Nobody outside your world can never know this feeling. In
any other uniform, you get streets named after you for
killing people. In this one, you risk your life to
save people until one day you run out of chances,
and in one final fire, either you buy it or
you don't. If you don't, it's only eventually they brushed
(14:55):
off with the punity tension. And yet there is no
third way that ever leave this job, and you're doubting
even God knows why you're out of the shower. Now
most of the grime and some of the cynicism are
down the drain. When you hear a strangely from in
your voice saying it is worth it, It is worth it,
(15:16):
And you're hearing this voice, and there's nobody there but you.
It's a quiet voice from nowhere saying for salvage and
things and people from planes. I have to rely on
your hands. And you look around, still nobody. But when
(15:43):
you get over your incredulity, you feel better. Suddenly, today's
crew cook in the kitchen, dollars chow. It's time to
eat snows by gross Beet today. That'll be good. You'll
eat fast. You'll want to eat fast for any next salon.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
You'll want to be.
Speaker 10 (15:56):
Ready, all hearty.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Out the world as we know in the world.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
We just played he just tuned in. We just played
Paul Harvey's tribute to Fireman. And I will tell you this,
I could play Paul Harvey for you all day long,
because there's two types of people. The people who've never
heard Paul Harvey and they're going to go, wow, that's interesting.
And then there's the people who did hear Paul Harvey,
(16:33):
listen to him every morning and they miss him, just
as we do with Rush Limbaugh. We honor and pay
tribute to those who came before us, not just because
we make a living doing what they did, but because
they are icons. They're part of our lives, they're part
of our histories. I would like to play a rest
(16:57):
of the story from Paul Harvey. We pay tribute to
Paul Harvey. We haven't done it in a while a
fair amount, because he's part of the reason we get
to do what we do, and we think it's important
to do that, but also because we find it very entertaining,
and we think you will too. I've said all along,
I don't believe a quote unquote talk show has to
(17:21):
only be the host talking and giving his opinions the
entire time, or interviewing guests the entire time. What I've
always wanted to be is kind of the conductor of
an orchestra of awesome things happening on the radio. So
(17:43):
if it's a guest who has something interesting to say,
even if I already know a fair amount about that subject,
but they can offer a perspective, then we're going to
do that. But that's also why we spend a lot
of time consuming other content and sharing with you that
were said by other people in their own voice, Because
(18:03):
I think, I think that's how you pay tribute. I
think that's how you honor those people. I really do so.
In the course of an average show, especially the evening show,
we will play five to ten audio clips, sometimes more
than that. And some people think, are you being lazy?
You don't know me, Ask my family, ask my friends.
(18:26):
I can talk all day, every day, and I love
to do it, but I feel it's a little dishonest
when I'm listening to someone's opinion on something and I go,
that's a very interesting point, and then I steal it
as my own. A lot of people in media do that.
I think it's a bad thing. I really do. I
think it's a bad thing to do. I think it
(18:48):
is plagiarism at a minimum, and I think it's deceitful.
I think it's a sign because look, everything is derivative
of something else. None of us landed here the smartest
person in the history of the world, and none of
us arrived at our own opinions completely on our own.
(19:11):
No man is an island Milton sort of stuff. We
had teachers, parents, coaches, writers, novelists, movie characters, and from
those things we developed our opinions. And and many times,
you know, it's funny. I go back and listen to
(19:31):
a lot of old audio of Rush, of Paul Harvey,
and many as the time I will hear them say
something that I almost think to myself, you ripped me off,
Paul Harvey, I said that, or you ripped me off Rush,
I said that, and then I realized, no, I ripped
him off. Didn't even realize it. How many times? How
(19:56):
many times have you said something that when you said it,
you heard your mom or your dad, or your grandma
or your grandpa, or your coach or your teacher or
your first boss, You heard their voice and you realize
that stuck. I didn't intentionally mimic that person. It just
(20:17):
kind of stuck. Isn't that weird how that happens, But
that's how we all ended up here. This isn't a
you didn't build that moment. This is a I'm giving
credit to the people who are really good at what
they do that helped form what we do. Plus, I
hope I'm sharing something with you that you go, well,
this is a This is a great way to get
home today, Michael. You don't have to talk politics all
(20:39):
day every day.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Now. The rest of the story.
Speaker 8 (20:44):
Mr Was a twenty one year young inmate at San Quentin,
charging restlessly in his cart after lights out kids set
foot on the road to prison. Years before, it had
started with petty theft and bad checks.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
And then stolen car.
Speaker 8 (21:00):
Finally got himself drunk and tried to knock over the
roadhouse near Bakersfield, and that's what brought him his stretch
in the joint. By now there had been several months
long enough to see it all. He'd seen one con
kill another over a simple insult, yet another inmate purposely
scalded to death in the prison laundry. And the more
(21:22):
such he saw, the more he wondered whether he'd ever
see the other side of those tall.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Gray walls again.
Speaker 8 (21:29):
So Mr was lying awake that night, tossing and turning,
trying to fight off every thought but the planet hand.
Because although in thirteen years there'd not been an escape
from San Quentin, come sent up, em I would have
his chance to do just that. You see, in the
prison furniture factory, inmate craftsmen had been making a desk
(21:52):
for a judge's chamber in San Francisco, an enormous desk
weighed about one thousand, five hundred pounds.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Next morning it was due to be picked up and
trucked down.
Speaker 8 (22:04):
But what prison authorities did not know was there was
room in that huge test for two full.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Grown men to hide.
Speaker 8 (22:13):
One of the cohns already booked for passage was Jim Hendrix,
known to his buddies as Rabbit, and the other that's right,
The other was Mr. Rabbit liked Mr did his best
to talk the younger Khan out of escaping. The elder,
serving two five to life sentences back to back, felt
(22:36):
that he had nothing to lose, but Mr. Well, he'd
be out in a couple of years. The risk wasn't
worth it. But MR's mind was made up. He had
been over and over the plan.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
In his mind. He was sure there was no way
it could fail, and it did not.
Speaker 8 (22:52):
The judge's desk was picked up on time, The presiding
gate opened wide for the delivery truck.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
The getaway car was waiting near Oakland the.
Speaker 8 (23:00):
Bay Bridge, and so Rabbit became the first con in
thirteen years to break out a sand quin and Mr.
He stayed behind funny thing. He was all set to go.
He was looking forward to his freedom, but at the
last moment he got cold feet and turned it down.
(23:20):
Weeks later, a highway patrolman stopped Rebbit for a minor
traffic violation. Rabbit panic, He shot the officer dead, and
not long after that they caught Rebbit and sent him
to the gas chamber.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Now and Mr escaped with Rebbit.
Speaker 8 (23:40):
He'd probably have been there when his buddy pulled the trigger,
and that would have made him an accessory. But instead,
when Rebit ran the Mr stayed and served his time
to a parole two years later, and he went straight.
It would have been so easy to sneak out in
the judge's desk. When Mr came to the crossroads, he
(24:03):
chose the right road. He lived to build a career
which has thrilled the country music lovers ever since. For
more than forty years, you have been humming into tunes
of Mr Merle Ronald Haggard, besh ride Merle Haggard. Only
now you know him flurish of the story.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
There's a job. Don't use that tone to me. Not
a joke, that's sarcastic.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Contemptuous tone that means you know everything because you're a man,
and I know nothing because I'm a woman.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
That is not a joke. That is a natural fact.
The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
We're in The Michael Berry Show love Paul Harvey, and
we have decided to play some more Paul Harvey for
you today, mostly because we also want to listen to it.
The craft of storytelling, which I believe to be a
very important thing.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Many of you have heard me say this again and
again and again.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Teach your children to tell stories, and people will even
how I do that. Okay, if I told you raise
your child to be a self respecting adult, you got
to figure it out. But once it's planted in your
mind how important this is to do, then you will
(25:32):
start thinking about ways to do it. What I do
with my kids is start with tell me about your day.
And I know what you're going to say, Michael. When
I asked my kids tell me about it, it is fine.
What happened nothing? What'd you do?
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Not much?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
You've got to get better at asking your questions and
you've got to tell them, hey, look, I'm gonna find
out what happened today, and in the process You're gonna
get better at answering questions because you're gonna have to
answer questions from your spouse, from your kids, Why Daddy,
why mama?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Why?
Speaker 2 (26:10):
You're gonna have to answer questions during an interview, You're
gonna have to answer questions your entire life, from your boss.
You might as well learn to get good at it.
So let's take a new approach, because I'm going to
sit here and ask these questions one hundred different ways,
and part of me being a parent is teaching you
to respond to questions.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Now, if you can do it in such a way
that you.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Tell a story, oh the meek shall inherit the earth.
But I think the storytellers, I think they just grab
hold of it and take it. A good salesman is
always a good storyteller. A good pastor is always a
good storyteller, A good coach storyteller. When you wooed your
(26:52):
girlfriend to be your wife, you told a story. You
don't realize it. You might not have call to the story,
but that's what you were doing. I study Paul Harvey.
I want you to listen, to enjoy, but I also
want you to think about how he tells a story.
How have previous nations gone from being strong, prosperous nations
(27:15):
to a crumbling.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Shell of their former selves.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Here is Paul Harvey giving a history lesson in a
piece called Freedom to Chains.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
This is as good. Mark this one. Go look it
up on YouTube or rumble or.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Wherever you get your content, and share it, because this one,
this is good right here now?
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Then, what makes a nation strong? Taxes?
Speaker 8 (27:40):
There's nothing new about those e The the first income
tax was paid by Abraham, was written on a rock
by the hand of Divinity and handed to Moses at
the top of Mount sign You and you might want
to remember this. It was at the flat rate of
ten percent that promised the wrath of God on anybody
who tampered with or violated that law. Christ was born
in Bethlehem because Joseph was on his way to pay taxes.
(28:00):
Joseph was a relatively well to do landowner of the
house and lineage of David. Yet the taxes exacted by
Caesar Augustus were so exorbitant that he didn't have enough
money left over to employ a trusted messenger for the mission. So,
though his wife was great with child, he made the
journey himself. And Christ was born in Bethlehem because Joseph
was on his way to pay his taxes. And Christ
(28:22):
was born in a manger because there was a housing
shortage when he got there. Our problems are not new.
At Running Meade. The Magna Carter was handed to King
John on the end of a sword, denying to royalty
the right of unlimited taxation. Yet you know it was
for us, the American people, to become the first and
recorded history ever voluntarily to surrender our rights to private property. Yes,
(28:47):
we did with an innocent sounding constitutional amendment, the sixteenth,
which says that Congress will have the power to lay
and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived. And
we forgot to put any limit on the extent to
which we could tax us. Conceivably, we could be taxed
out of all private property. We could be taxed up
(29:07):
ninety percent, but one hundred percent. We could awaken one
morning and find that the government owns the farm and
the house and the car, and has a mortgage on
the church.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Legally, historically, whenever any.
Speaker 8 (29:17):
Nation has taxed its people more than twenty five percent
of their national income, the initiative was destroyed and that
nation was headed for economic eclipse. Presently, the American people
are being taxed thirty three percent of their total income.
History says, We'll roll forward on momentum for a little while,
but we'd better get some more gas in the tank
(29:39):
pretty quick. You see, ours is not the first by
George good government to arise on the world stage.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
There have been several Rome, Spain.
Speaker 8 (29:48):
And Greece and China, and each enjoyed about one hundred
and fifty years at its zenith, that's just about our
time in the New World. And then each decayed away.
Not one of them was ever destroyed by anybody else's
marching legions. Each rotted away morally, socially, culturally, economically simultaneously.
Speaker 9 (30:13):
You know.
Speaker 8 (30:13):
One of the most cruel paradoxes of history is this.
Because each was a good government, it bore bountiful fruit.
And when it bore bountiful fruit, the people got fat.
And when they got fat, they got lazy. When they
got lazy, they began to want to absolve themselves of
personal responsibility and turn over the government to do for
them things which traditionally they had been doing for themselves.
(30:37):
At first, there appears to be nothing wrong asking government
to perform some.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Extra service for you. But if you ask.
Speaker 8 (30:43):
Government for extra services, government, in order to perform its
increasing function, has.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
To get bigger.
Speaker 8 (30:48):
Right, And as government gets bigger, in order to support
its increasing size, it has to what tax the individual
more So the individual gets littler. And to collect the
increased taxes requires more tax collectors.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
So the government gets bigger. In order to pay the.
Speaker 8 (31:04):
Additional tax collectors, it has to tax the individual more.
So the government gets bigger, and the individual gets littler.
And the government gets bigger and the individual gets littler.
Until the government is all powerful, the individual is hardly
anything at all.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
The government is all powerful, the people are cattle.
Speaker 8 (31:25):
Some believe that the need is for a vigorous strong
man to arise on the scene to regulate and regiment
the affairs of men. Yet history tells us there have
been several such. Once upon a time there was a
nation great and powerful and good. She was suffering from
the aftermath of war, from a depression, And then came
(31:45):
upon the scene a leader and idealist, self confident, intolerant
of criticism. Wisely, he limited his early activities to combating
the financial depression.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Nobody could argue with that.
Speaker 8 (31:56):
But in a while he began to regulate business and
to establish new rules to govern commerce and finance, some
of them in diametrical disagreement with the God made laws
of supply and demand. But anybody who disagreed with those
new rules was promptly fired. The new leader saw that
under the old system of free enterprise, landlords prospered, so
(32:16):
he levied new taxes to take away their profits and
destroy it. He called the monopoly of capital. To please laborers,
he controlled prices. To win the favor of the farmers.
He gave him loans and subsidies. The national debt mounted alarmingly.
Whenever anybody tried to tell him that governments, even as people,
can go broke when they stand beyond their incomes, he said,
(32:37):
they just didn't understand deficit finance. What do you say,
did he build on rock or on sand? I say
on sand. For you see, this was the story of
Emperor Su tung Po, who led China to its doom
(32:58):
more than a thousand years years ago. I am satisfied
with all my heart that if Uncle Sam ever does
get whipped here too, it will have been an inside job.
A time, Time, luck and low. The Michael Verry's Show
is on the air. It's Charlie from BlackBerry Smoking. I
can feel a good one coming on. It's the Michael
(00:20):
Berry Show. Oh yes, it is. What a great week?
What a wee can fend?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I got to cut in early because we got a
lot going on today and there is an issue I
have been wanting to get to that I don't want
to miss out on, and that is the anger that
the media has that what they are now calling the
tech bros, it's a way of insulting them for being
(00:46):
all but one white, for not being minorities. When they
call them bros like that, they don't mean short for brothers.
And they are very upset that the people that they
have used to keep the peasants down, the technology crowd
has now seen the writing on the wall and have
(01:06):
now paid tribute to Donald Trump. I played two of
these earlier, but I'm gonna play all of them back
to back because I think it's going to make a point.
Jake Tapper was not happy to see the tech bros
attending Trump's inaugural church service.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Listen to how petty he sounds.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah, if I could just before I throw out to Anderson,
just bring back that photograph of the tech bros inside
Saint John's Church. It's just one other thing I want
to show. So we see Mark Zuckerberg on the left
there with the curly hair CEO of Meta, Tim Cook,
his faces blocked me as the white hair CEO of Apple,
Jeff Bezos on the right there the ball gentlemen looking
to his right CEO of Amazon. The gentleman behind Mark
(01:44):
Zuckerberg is Sundarpachai. He's the CEO of Google. And Anderson.
Between those four people plus East Elon Musk from Twitter
or X, those five people that I just mentioned, the
four in the photograph and also Elon Musk control so
much of the information that we receive. So much is
(02:09):
in their hands when it comes to ascertaining, monitoring or
refusing to monitor, monitor what is real what is not real.
And we're about to enter an era of deep fakes
and all sorts of misinformation. And the degree to which
those five gentlemen play a role or do not play
a role, will be pivotal in terms of where the
(02:32):
American people are four years from now, in terms of understanding,
in terms of understanding what is true and what is false?
Speaker 4 (02:37):
You're also you said we uh not. You're not just
talking about we the United States. We're talking about the world,
all the human beings on the planet. They control access
to information.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
They are the gatekeepers in many ways to information for
the entire planet.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Hell, hath no fury like two prissy little bitches who
feel betrayed.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
And that's what this is.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Y'all are supposed to be on our team. You can't
be over there with MAGA. We'll never win. I played
you what Jen Psaki of MSNBC said about it.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
So, these CEOs and these industries help Donald Trump, and
then he returns the favor.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
That's how it goes.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
Elon Musk spent a quarter of a billion dollars to
help reelect Donald Trump and use the reach of his
own social media platform to push MAGA talking points, and
in return, muskle and now be an unelected official in
the new Trump administration and is expected to even have
office space at the White House Complex.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
So I guess the influence that this.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Small collection of billionaires will have is something new this
time around, and it will be a new challenge to
explain why this agreement between tech billionaires and Donald Trump
is a real danger. And on that point, my friend
Rachel Maddow may have put it best.
Speaker 6 (03:57):
We haven't yet had the discussion in this country about
why oligarchy is bad. It's bad for your economy, it's
bad for your democracy, yes, but it's also bad for
individual people, for the regular things we need to do
in order to protect our families and live the kind
of lives that we want to live. Oligarchy suck for
ninety nine point ninety nine percent of people who live
(04:18):
in them.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Oligarchies suck for ninety nine point nine percent of people
who live in them. They're great if you're a billionaire,
how many of those are there out there? Bad if
you're basically anyone else. And while this agreement may be
playing out very openly, it's on all of us to
explain why it matters, and oligarchy suck isn't a bad
place to start.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
MSNBC's Katie Fang says Trump won't have the crowd he's
obsessed with, but he'll have the warm company of the
tech bros. Sounds like you missed the tech bros.
Speaker 7 (04:49):
About forty eight hours from now, President elect and convicted
felon Donald Trump will be sworn in as the forty
seventh president of the United States, but it's not shaping
up quite as he may have wanted. Today, Trump will
arrive here in the DC area, where he's throwing himself
a party at his Virginia golf club, complete with fireworks
and five hundred of his closest donor friends. But come Monday,
(05:14):
the man who obsesses over crowd sized will surely be disappointed,
as frigid winter temperatures have led to his inauguration ceremony
being moved indoors to the Capitol Rotunda. As for who
will be in attendance, Presidents Obama, George W. Bush, and
Bill Clinton are scheduled to come, but none of the
former presidents is expected at the inaugural luncheon. But don't worry,
(05:38):
Trump will have the warm affection of the big tech bros,
from Mark Zuckerberg to Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, who
have all confirmed that they'll be in attendance.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Not only have they lost the tech bros, but black
people are not staying down like the media told him to.
You people are stupid and and the whites hate you,
and only we protect you. Don't have opinions for yourself.
CNN went to two black men in the crowd waiting
along the inaugural parade route and asked what brought them
(06:14):
there from Arizona, because surely black people can't be happy
about Trump, right.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Trey and Willie, thank you so much for being with me.
We were live on the air on CNN.
Speaker 8 (06:26):
What brought you all the way from Arizona to twenty
degree weather.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Here in DC to watch Donald trumpet inaugurated?
Speaker 9 (06:32):
Well, retired military did twenty six years, twenty four years
in the military, and so man, listening to Donald Trump,
we were like, that's our guy.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And plus, man, we love Jesus. So we came out
to support the president and Wally, what is the day
like us?
Speaker 9 (06:44):
We know it means a lot because it shows us
is unity a lot of the things that we're been
seeing and been talking about a lot of times. You
just need to get here, yeah, and stop just listening
to what everyone else is saying in America. We are
all better to get than we are apart. Yeah, So
it means a lot to me. That is supposed to
(07:07):
just be how white people talk.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
If blacks are now going to be value voters joining
Hispanics and whites and Asians.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Democrats will never win again.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
You'll be left with prissy, bitchy white liberal Democrats. You
will be left with the pointy head, very angry because
Daddy didn't love them, dysphoric, confused, therapy riddled white liberals
(07:41):
and on their own without their powerful media occupied by
people like them, and big tech and the minorities that
they lead around by elish, they can't win an election.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
This is the Michael Verie Show.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, talking about the failures of California government, the snail
darter and the reservoirs that weren't full, and the hydrants
that didn't have any water, and now the zoning restrictions
and the development and all of this. We've been talking
(08:15):
about the failures of so many people, and the criminal
actions by people who've started these fires, and the idiots
who want to blame it on climate change, a global warming,
when much of it is man made. But I want
to make sure that in so doing we don't miss
out on something else that is very important, and that
(08:37):
is the good people, very good people who jumped in
there to fight the fires, many of them citizens, many
of them homeowners themselves, and the people who do it
for a living, which makes it no less noble. There
are people from my state and for many states. Texas
sent a lot of folks to help fight those fire
(09:02):
I have a nephew who's also named Michael Berry, who's
a firefighter, and I'm incredibly proud of him. It's what
he's wanted to do since he was a kid. Is
fight fires. Be a fireman. It's a culture. It's a calling.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
It really is.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It is a ministry, it is a calling, it is
a service. A listener named Martha sent me an email
a few days ago and asked if I had ever
heard Paul Harvey's tribute to Fireman.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
I had, but she wouldn't know this.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to studying radio grades,
and Paul Harvey is a radio great. And that doesn't
mean we're not going to play it, Ramon. I'm just
answering her question. Yes, of course I had heard of
Paul Harvey. No, I don't think that makes me a
big shot. Can I tell my story. I love Paul Harvey.
(10:04):
I love everything about it. I actually thought, and I'm
in the minority in this, I actually thought that when
his son took over for him when he died. His
son did a pretty good job at it. He writes,
like Jimmy Mike Rowe. Mike Rowe's whole deal is patterned
on Paul Harvey. Okay, Yeah, Ramon has it and he
(10:25):
wants me to play it and he wants me to
stop talking.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
So here it is.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
It's it's Paul Harvey's rest of the story on the fireman.
Speaker 10 (10:37):
Nobody knows why fireman or fireman. Not even they can
tell you why, but it is signed somebody.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Fire.
Speaker 10 (10:46):
Firefighting is the most risky I've all get into jobs,
yet also the one where most workers are most likely
to early. It's hard enough to believe that it's impossible
to explain it. Fire and ice are uncomfortable separately or together.
(11:06):
Wives hate the hours, kids love the noises, Fire and
ice any day. Get the firehouse to beil from hell.
Puts the respatcher on the horn with a tenement kinder
box address into bunker pens, rubber, turnout coat, grab the
mask and go. Minutes later you're on site. As others run.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Out, you go in.
Speaker 10 (11:24):
If you'll need all you can carry. The four pound
acts a six foot cook. The Eligan prie bar the
ceiling concealing the smoldering has to come down, and it's
one of those stubborn tin ones in the scary park.
With eating your ears, you're gouging out and carrying loose
and pulling apart, dumping hair and tasing black. Your windpipe
(11:44):
is closing and you've lost track of which way is out.
Is it really worth it? They've budgeted and cut your
ladder company from six men to five, so now everything
you do is sixteen point sixty seven percent more than
golden more danger. Your air is low inside your mask,
you're throwing up. There's a searing ember down your neck,
(12:08):
towing gloves exposed, a snaiced hand. So you emerge from
the holocaust hugging with your elbows. Somebody's singed, kitten. If
you had minutes of exhilaration on the bouncing rear, amount
of the screening one hundred foot ce grade, hours of
using all you've learned and learning more.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Now you're back.
Speaker 10 (12:26):
At the station house and you've unstupped your nostrils with
soapy fingers. You can almost breathe again. Next come to
tedious hours as you and Willow gang up on grimy tools.
They clean up. Crew at the firehouses. You when windows
need washing and toilets need cleaning, and floors need mopping
and beds need making, you do it. Fire and eyes
(12:48):
they both go with the job. Then there's that night
another engine company gets there first. You see this weather
and rookie hot dogging ahead. His academy boots are still shining.
You're losing inside the crackling You forget about him until
your helmet warning bell says, get up. The battalion chief
is calling you off. You get out.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
The other guy didn't.
Speaker 10 (13:10):
He'd heard a scream from the bottom of burning basement
stairs and he'd headed down there went on the bubbling
tar paper roof the three ton compressor broke through that
day we lost two storious fireman cry but only briefly,
because now comes the inevitable and ever more paperwork, just
(13:31):
in case OSHA complains or somebody sees is it worth it?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Your b crew pumper.
Speaker 10 (13:37):
Swapped his day shift so some family guy could be
home for his kid's birthday, and then out down toward
a falso arm. Your buddy gets blindsided by a hot
rod driven by a drunk.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Fire and ice.
Speaker 10 (13:49):
The intercom wright say again, this time at the warehouse.
A big bat multiple blaze probably torched on side engine
mandrake with icicles dragging a three quarter pre connect pros
hose are waiting for your big line. Layman can't make
the building without you, search, rescue, ventilate. Eventually it's over
and out. You smoke some margitan sleepers and grung out
(14:12):
of this one. You won behind graffiti followed walls. You
saved what you could, but the raging blaze that wanted
to consume adjacent buildings did not, And it did not
because you were there. I get to buy a house
before clean up. You and the guys should have spelled
tired but stimulated, drinking coffee, laughing, feeling good about one another.
(14:34):
Nobody outside your world can never know this feeling. In
any other uniform, you get streets named after you for
killing people. In this one, you risk your life to
save people until one day you run out of chances,
and in one final fire, either you buy it or
you don't. If you don't, it's only eventually they brushed
(14:55):
off with the punity tension. And yet there is no
third way that ever leave this job, and you're doubting
even God knows why you're out of the shower. Now
most of the grime and some of the cynicism are
down the drain. When you hear a strangely from in
your voice saying it is worth it, It is worth it,
(15:16):
And you're hearing this voice, and there's nobody there but you.
It's a quiet voice from nowhere saying for salvage and
things and people from planes. I have to rely on
your hands. And you look around, still nobody. But when
(15:43):
you get over your incredulity, you feel better. Suddenly, today's
crew cook in the kitchen, dollars chow. It's time to
eat snows by gross Beet today. That'll be good. You'll
eat fast. You'll want to eat fast for any next salon.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
You'll want to be.
Speaker 10 (15:56):
Ready, all hearty.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Out the world as we know in the world.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
We just played he just tuned in. We just played
Paul Harvey's tribute to Fireman. And I will tell you this,
I could play Paul Harvey for you all day long,
because there's two types of people. The people who've never
heard Paul Harvey and they're going to go, wow, that's interesting.
And then there's the people who did hear Paul Harvey,
(16:33):
listen to him every morning and they miss him, just
as we do with Rush Limbaugh. We honor and pay
tribute to those who came before us, not just because
we make a living doing what they did, but because
they are icons. They're part of our lives, they're part
of our histories. I would like to play a rest
(16:57):
of the story from Paul Harvey. We pay tribute to
Paul Harvey. We haven't done it in a while a
fair amount, because he's part of the reason we get
to do what we do, and we think it's important
to do that, but also because we find it very entertaining,
and we think you will too. I've said all along,
I don't believe a quote unquote talk show has to
(17:21):
only be the host talking and giving his opinions the
entire time, or interviewing guests the entire time. What I've
always wanted to be is kind of the conductor of
an orchestra of awesome things happening on the radio. So
(17:43):
if it's a guest who has something interesting to say,
even if I already know a fair amount about that subject,
but they can offer a perspective, then we're going to
do that. But that's also why we spend a lot
of time consuming other content and sharing with you that
were said by other people in their own voice, Because
(18:03):
I think, I think that's how you pay tribute. I
think that's how you honor those people. I really do so.
In the course of an average show, especially the evening show,
we will play five to ten audio clips, sometimes more
than that. And some people think, are you being lazy?
You don't know me, Ask my family, ask my friends.
(18:26):
I can talk all day, every day, and I love
to do it, but I feel it's a little dishonest
when I'm listening to someone's opinion on something and I go,
that's a very interesting point, and then I steal it
as my own. A lot of people in media do that.
I think it's a bad thing. I really do. I
think it's a bad thing to do. I think it
(18:48):
is plagiarism at a minimum, and I think it's deceitful.
I think it's a sign because look, everything is derivative
of something else. None of us landed here the smartest
person in the history of the world, and none of
us arrived at our own opinions completely on our own.
(19:11):
No man is an island Milton sort of stuff. We
had teachers, parents, coaches, writers, novelists, movie characters, and from
those things we developed our opinions. And and many times,
you know, it's funny. I go back and listen to
(19:31):
a lot of old audio of Rush, of Paul Harvey,
and many as the time I will hear them say
something that I almost think to myself, you ripped me off,
Paul Harvey, I said that, or you ripped me off Rush,
I said that, and then I realized, no, I ripped
him off. Didn't even realize it. How many times? How
(19:56):
many times have you said something that when you said it,
you heard your mom or your dad, or your grandma
or your grandpa, or your coach or your teacher or
your first boss, You heard their voice and you realize
that stuck. I didn't intentionally mimic that person. It just
(20:17):
kind of stuck. Isn't that weird how that happens, But
that's how we all ended up here. This isn't a
you didn't build that moment. This is a I'm giving
credit to the people who are really good at what
they do that helped form what we do. Plus, I
hope I'm sharing something with you that you go, well,
this is a This is a great way to get
home today, Michael. You don't have to talk politics all
(20:39):
day every day.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Now. The rest of the story.
Speaker 8 (20:44):
Mr Was a twenty one year young inmate at San Quentin,
charging restlessly in his cart after lights out kids set
foot on the road to prison. Years before, it had
started with petty theft and bad checks.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
And then stolen car.
Speaker 8 (21:00):
Finally got himself drunk and tried to knock over the
roadhouse near Bakersfield, and that's what brought him his stretch
in the joint. By now there had been several months
long enough to see it all. He'd seen one con
kill another over a simple insult, yet another inmate purposely
scalded to death in the prison laundry. And the more
(21:22):
such he saw, the more he wondered whether he'd ever
see the other side of those tall.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Gray walls again.
Speaker 8 (21:29):
So Mr was lying awake that night, tossing and turning,
trying to fight off every thought but the planet hand.
Because although in thirteen years there'd not been an escape
from San Quentin, come sent up, em I would have
his chance to do just that. You see, in the
prison furniture factory, inmate craftsmen had been making a desk
(21:52):
for a judge's chamber in San Francisco, an enormous desk
weighed about one thousand, five hundred pounds.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Next morning it was due to be picked up and
trucked down.
Speaker 8 (22:04):
But what prison authorities did not know was there was
room in that huge test for two full.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Grown men to hide.
Speaker 8 (22:13):
One of the cohns already booked for passage was Jim Hendrix,
known to his buddies as Rabbit, and the other that's right,
The other was Mr. Rabbit liked Mr did his best
to talk the younger Khan out of escaping. The elder,
serving two five to life sentences back to back, felt
(22:36):
that he had nothing to lose, but Mr. Well, he'd
be out in a couple of years. The risk wasn't
worth it. But MR's mind was made up. He had
been over and over the plan.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
In his mind. He was sure there was no way
it could fail, and it did not.
Speaker 8 (22:52):
The judge's desk was picked up on time, The presiding
gate opened wide for the delivery truck.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
The getaway car was waiting near Oakland the.
Speaker 8 (23:00):
Bay Bridge, and so Rabbit became the first con in
thirteen years to break out a sand quin and Mr.
He stayed behind funny thing. He was all set to go.
He was looking forward to his freedom, but at the
last moment he got cold feet and turned it down.
(23:20):
Weeks later, a highway patrolman stopped Rebbit for a minor
traffic violation. Rabbit panic, He shot the officer dead, and
not long after that they caught Rebbit and sent him
to the gas chamber.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Now and Mr escaped with Rebbit.
Speaker 8 (23:40):
He'd probably have been there when his buddy pulled the trigger,
and that would have made him an accessory. But instead,
when Rebit ran the Mr stayed and served his time
to a parole two years later, and he went straight.
It would have been so easy to sneak out in
the judge's desk. When Mr came to the crossroads, he
(24:03):
chose the right road. He lived to build a career
which has thrilled the country music lovers ever since. For
more than forty years, you have been humming into tunes
of Mr Merle Ronald Haggard, besh ride Merle Haggard. Only
now you know him flurish of the story.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
There's a job. Don't use that tone to me. Not
a joke, that's sarcastic.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Contemptuous tone that means you know everything because you're a man,
and I know nothing because I'm a woman.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
That is not a joke. That is a natural fact.
The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
We're in The Michael Berry Show love Paul Harvey, and
we have decided to play some more Paul Harvey for
you today, mostly because we also want to listen to it.
The craft of storytelling, which I believe to be a
very important thing.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Many of you have heard me say this again and
again and again.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Teach your children to tell stories, and people will even
how I do that. Okay, if I told you raise
your child to be a self respecting adult, you got
to figure it out. But once it's planted in your
mind how important this is to do, then you will
(25:32):
start thinking about ways to do it. What I do
with my kids is start with tell me about your day.
And I know what you're going to say, Michael. When
I asked my kids tell me about it, it is fine.
What happened nothing? What'd you do?
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Not much?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
You've got to get better at asking your questions and
you've got to tell them, hey, look, I'm gonna find
out what happened today, and in the process You're gonna
get better at answering questions because you're gonna have to
answer questions from your spouse, from your kids, Why Daddy,
why mama?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Why?
Speaker 2 (26:10):
You're gonna have to answer questions during an interview, You're
gonna have to answer questions your entire life, from your boss.
You might as well learn to get good at it.
So let's take a new approach, because I'm going to
sit here and ask these questions one hundred different ways,
and part of me being a parent is teaching you
to respond to questions.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Now, if you can do it in such a way
that you.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Tell a story, oh the meek shall inherit the earth.
But I think the storytellers, I think they just grab
hold of it and take it. A good salesman is
always a good storyteller. A good pastor is always a
good storyteller, A good coach storyteller. When you wooed your
(26:52):
girlfriend to be your wife, you told a story. You
don't realize it. You might not have call to the story,
but that's what you were doing. I study Paul Harvey.
I want you to listen, to enjoy, but I also
want you to think about how he tells a story.
How have previous nations gone from being strong, prosperous nations
(27:15):
to a crumbling.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Shell of their former selves.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Here is Paul Harvey giving a history lesson in a
piece called Freedom to Chains.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
This is as good. Mark this one. Go look it
up on YouTube or rumble or.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Wherever you get your content, and share it, because this one,
this is good right here now?
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Then, what makes a nation strong? Taxes?
Speaker 8 (27:40):
There's nothing new about those e The the first income
tax was paid by Abraham, was written on a rock
by the hand of Divinity and handed to Moses at
the top of Mount sign You and you might want
to remember this. It was at the flat rate of
ten percent that promised the wrath of God on anybody
who tampered with or violated that law. Christ was born
in Bethlehem because Joseph was on his way to pay taxes.
(28:00):
Joseph was a relatively well to do landowner of the
house and lineage of David. Yet the taxes exacted by
Caesar Augustus were so exorbitant that he didn't have enough
money left over to employ a trusted messenger for the mission. So,
though his wife was great with child, he made the
journey himself. And Christ was born in Bethlehem because Joseph
was on his way to pay his taxes. And Christ
(28:22):
was born in a manger because there was a housing
shortage when he got there. Our problems are not new.
At Running Meade. The Magna Carter was handed to King
John on the end of a sword, denying to royalty
the right of unlimited taxation. Yet you know it was
for us, the American people, to become the first and
recorded history ever voluntarily to surrender our rights to private property. Yes,
(28:47):
we did with an innocent sounding constitutional amendment, the sixteenth,
which says that Congress will have the power to lay
and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived. And
we forgot to put any limit on the extent to
which we could tax us. Conceivably, we could be taxed
out of all private property. We could be taxed up
(29:07):
ninety percent, but one hundred percent. We could awaken one
morning and find that the government owns the farm and
the house and the car, and has a mortgage on
the church.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Legally, historically, whenever any.
Speaker 8 (29:17):
Nation has taxed its people more than twenty five percent
of their national income, the initiative was destroyed and that
nation was headed for economic eclipse. Presently, the American people
are being taxed thirty three percent of their total income.
History says, We'll roll forward on momentum for a little while,
but we'd better get some more gas in the tank
(29:39):
pretty quick. You see, ours is not the first by
George good government to arise on the world stage.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
There have been several Rome, Spain.
Speaker 8 (29:48):
And Greece and China, and each enjoyed about one hundred
and fifty years at its zenith, that's just about our
time in the New World. And then each decayed away.
Not one of them was ever destroyed by anybody else's
marching legions. Each rotted away morally, socially, culturally, economically simultaneously.
Speaker 9 (30:13):
You know.
Speaker 8 (30:13):
One of the most cruel paradoxes of history is this.
Because each was a good government, it bore bountiful fruit.
And when it bore bountiful fruit, the people got fat.
And when they got fat, they got lazy. When they
got lazy, they began to want to absolve themselves of
personal responsibility and turn over the government to do for
them things which traditionally they had been doing for themselves.
(30:37):
At first, there appears to be nothing wrong asking government
to perform some.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Extra service for you. But if you ask.
Speaker 8 (30:43):
Government for extra services, government, in order to perform its
increasing function, has.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
To get bigger.
Speaker 8 (30:48):
Right, And as government gets bigger, in order to support
its increasing size, it has to what tax the individual
more So the individual gets littler. And to collect the
increased taxes requires more tax collectors.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
So the government gets bigger. In order to pay the.
Speaker 8 (31:04):
Additional tax collectors, it has to tax the individual more.
So the government gets bigger, and the individual gets littler.
And the government gets bigger and the individual gets littler.
Until the government is all powerful, the individual is hardly
anything at all.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
The government is all powerful, the people are cattle.
Speaker 8 (31:25):
Some believe that the need is for a vigorous strong
man to arise on the scene to regulate and regiment
the affairs of men. Yet history tells us there have
been several such. Once upon a time there was a
nation great and powerful and good. She was suffering from
the aftermath of war, from a depression, And then came
(31:45):
upon the scene a leader and idealist, self confident, intolerant
of criticism. Wisely, he limited his early activities to combating
the financial depression.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Nobody could argue with that.
Speaker 8 (31:56):
But in a while he began to regulate business and
to establish new rules to govern commerce and finance, some
of them in diametrical disagreement with the God made laws
of supply and demand. But anybody who disagreed with those
new rules was promptly fired. The new leader saw that
under the old system of free enterprise, landlords prospered, so
(32:16):
he levied new taxes to take away their profits and
destroy it. He called the monopoly of capital. To please laborers,
he controlled prices. To win the favor of the farmers.
He gave him loans and subsidies. The national debt mounted alarmingly.
Whenever anybody tried to tell him that governments, even as people,
can go broke when they stand beyond their incomes, he said,
(32:37):
they just didn't understand deficit finance. What do you say,
did he build on rock or on sand? I say
on sand. For you see, this was the story of
Emperor Su tung Po, who led China to its doom
(32:58):
more than a thousand years years ago. I am satisfied
with all my heart that if Uncle Sam ever does
get whipped here too, it will have been an inside job.
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