July 10, 2025 • 31 mins
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Got an email from a former news reporter in the
Greater Houston community. I don't want to give out this
person's sex or name which would identify them, because I
don't think their career is entirely over in media per se,
and I'll leave it there. I had very good relations
(00:23):
with members of the media from when I started running.
My first election was my election where I first got
elected was November of one. I started running just after
the elections of ninety nine, so two years there and
then six years in office. And after that I was
(00:44):
full time at KTRH doing a show actually it was
KPRC at the time, and running the three AM stations,
and so I worked a lot with those reporters for
almost ten years. After I left politics, I had some
great relationships with the folks who were in local news.
(01:05):
It's why I often argue when someone will attempt to
paint with too broad a brush that media is all
left when TV media is all left wing, and I
have said repeatedly many people don't agree with me, not
the local media. There are some, but most of the
folks in the Houston media, at least during the time
up until a few years ago, when I've kind of
(01:27):
fallen out of touch. It's a whole new crop now.
Most of the folks that were there when I was
there stayed a long time. There were some real stalwarts
who were there for a very long time, and I
didn't find them to be particularly partisan. I found them
to be open minded, truth seekers, honest storytellers, and that's
the truth. There were a few exceptions, but mostly that
was the truth. So anyway, this individual would have fit
(01:50):
into that. And this person said, Zora, I was listening
to your show yesterday and the remarks you made at
the end of your first segment hit home for me.
You were talking about the way the news media approached
the victims of the Texas floods, holding them at their homes.
I started hounding them at their homes just to get
a story. That's one of the reasons I left the
TV news industry. After quite some time of waking up
(02:14):
at three am to hit the streets as a TV
morning news beat reporter, I had enough of asking families
how they felt on possibly the worst day of their lives.
Towards the end of my daily newsbeat career, I remember
getting into an argument with a photographer because I didn't
want to chase kids down on their way to classes
at a high school after one of their friends died
(02:34):
overnight in a tragic car crash. He said, go out
there and get the sound bite. Everybody else is doing it.
At that point, I dreaded going into work every morning,
and I knew it was time to go. One of
my last stories involved a morbidly obese man who had
died in his home overnight. Firefighters called for a heavy
forklift to get his body out of the home and
(02:55):
had to carve a hole in the side of the place.
I got out there, the family was rightfully living with
us and asked us to leave. We were the only
ones on the scene. I told the station, this is
not a story. The producer disagreed. They sent the helicopter
to get shots overhead for the five am live shot.
(03:16):
I feel your frustration. Keep fighting the good fight. So
if you have been unfortunate enough to have a tragedy
happen in your life, it's one thing when you have
an ailing parent, and death is almost a blessing for
them and for you. I never understood that when I
(03:36):
was younger. Forgive me for repeating my stories, but it's
still fresh and we're all. My mother called me and
she she called my wife and said, can you and
Michael come up to the hospital tonight. And it was
already nine o'clock and maybe later, and she was in
(03:56):
the med center and my wife said, Mom will be there.
Are you okay? And she said, yeah, I'm fine. I
need you'll to come up here. Well, I'd already talked
to her doctor, a wonderful, wonderful lung doctor by the
name of Tim Conley. He was referred to me by
(04:17):
Stan Dukeman, my dear friend and cardiologist, and I had
checked around and there were several other doctors who said,
there are several good pulmonologists in town, but Tim Conley
is going to be in everybody's top three. Yeah, he's
You're good with him. He was so loving and tender
and caring for my mother and just wonderful to her.
(04:41):
She said, you know, Michael, I'm so grateful. These people
make me feel like a queen. And mind you, she's
in a lot of pain at this point. But my
mother loved to be fussed over. I guess that's where
I get it. And she loved coming to the Houston
Hospitals because I would have all my doctors treating her,
and they come by there. Dukeman would come by and
(05:03):
say he was bringing her a wedding ring the next day.
I mean, he just really ham it up, and she
loved it. It's a good looking guy, and she just
loved the attention and it distracted her from all the
pain and suffering she was going through. And she called
us up there and she said, I don't want any
more treatments. I want to go home. I'm done. I'm
going to peel off. I don't want this journey anymore.
(05:24):
I want to go home. I'm discontinuing the treatments. I
can't I can't do this anymore. Well, she didn't know,
but I had been called that evening at about seven thirty,
actually was right after seven, because he waited till the
show was over by Tim Conley, and he said, I
just want you to know how tough your mom is.
And I said, well, I know she's made of ruddy stock,
(05:44):
a German peasant stock. She is tough. And he said, well,
let me tell you what happened. We had to go
in with this very long needle. It's excruciatingly painful and
I hate doing this procedure, but we needed to do it.
We had to do it three times. Wow, and your
mom took it. So I can't remember why I started
(06:06):
that story. Oh I owned, Yeah, I know where that's going.
Hold on. One fellow emailed and said, Yep, the media
just loves the dirty laundry. You know, when you go
(06:27):
into a burger joint, the person who owns that burger
joint does not necessarily love burgers. They may love customer service,
they may love the engagement. They almost certainly love the
(06:48):
ability to pay their own bills because you buy burgers
for more than it cost them to make them. They're
not serving burgers because they love burgers. They're serving burgers
because you buy burgers. Members of the media may or
may not love the chase. They may or may not
(07:09):
love stepping on people's toes, invading their private moment, airing
their dirty laundry, giving them no space to grieve. They
may or may not enjoy. That process doesn't really matter,
because the public does. And if you don't believe me,
(07:29):
notice how much time you spend watching it. Notice how
much time the reason they show you the school shootings
and these floodings, and they stay on the visual of it.
Even during a press commerce still got to see that
awful visual. So economics uses the term utility instead of enjoyment.
(07:57):
People will say, no, oh, Michael, I don't like that.
You may not like may not like it, but you
find utility in it. Most heroin addicts won't tell you
they love heroin. In fact, they hate heroin. It has
destroyed their lives, but they are addicted to it. They
(08:17):
cannot put it down. So in that sense, they would
tell you that Heroin's horrible and they hate it, and
ten minutes later they'd sell their child to get another
hit if people stop following it. Years ago, it's been
over fifteen. I said I'm not going to cover school shootings.
(08:40):
And I had a program director in a small market
called the show, say five point thirty, Michael going to
talk about this school shooting. Now, mind you, this station,
which interesting love, interestingly enough, is still in our stable
of sixty something stations. That program director is not. But
(09:03):
that program director called barked in Ramon's ear, is Michael
going to cover the school shooting? And without revealing which
station it was. The school shooting was five six, seven, eight,
nine states away from this. It's not like it was
in that community, right, it's not like dear in Kerville
and the floods have just happened. And he said, no,
he doesn't do breaking news and he certainly doesn't do
(09:26):
mass disasters in real time. What. Yeah, that's the policy.
He says it on the air. He's very clear he
doesn't want this hat, he doesn't want this phone call.
That's ridiculous. We are a news talk station. I understand
he's the talk part. You're the news part. Have a
news reporter report on it. But people want to hear
(09:47):
him talk about it. No, they don't. He never ever
has anyone say, how come you're not talking about the
school shooting. Ever, we might bring up after the fact
failings in their response, failings to identify the shooter. Well
(10:07):
that's never the case, failings having identified the shooter to
deal with them, because the FBI always knows these people.
They always know these people. They were on their radar,
that's the line. They were on their radar. They went
to their house, they talked to them. They were aware
of their positions, they were aware of their violent past,
they were aware of their intentions. Don't do anything about it.
(10:29):
So as long as we crave this crap. We will
get more of it. And God help you when you're
the person in the crosshairs of an enterprising reporter, determined
to throw onto the screen that which will further their
career without regard to your emotions. It makes me so
(10:56):
mad when I will see a picture on a ski
green somewhere, you can go back and look at all
of them, look at so many of them of a
person grieving, a mother grieving as she's walking into the school,
and you know there's somebody on both sides of her
and her her face, her head is bobbing and her
(11:17):
face is sort of down, and maybe her hands are
slapping her face or holding her face, and her body
is convulsing. It's it's a deep, deep form of grief
and shock and reaction and anger and nausea. And they
just lock in on that, and the newspapers will take
(11:40):
that and put it to top of the after nine
to eleven, those were the photos we saw. Interesting thing happened.
There's a great article. I believe it's in the New Yorker.
I'll give it to Kunda or maybe he can find it.
And it was called I think it was called the
Jumper and there was a guy who jumped out of
a skyscraper during eleven, out of one of the twin towers,
(12:04):
and they were trying to figure out who he was
because you know, photograph is not perfect. It turns out
he was one of the chefs at the restaurant at
the top of the building and he had jumped, and
people became obsessed with these jumpers. Something interesting happened. The
major networks decided that they would stop airing footage of
(12:29):
the people jumping because their own staffs, they were headquartered
in New York, their own staffs all had a connection
to the nine to eleven disaster, and they said they
didn't want to see one of their family members. They
didn't want to on their network. They didn't want to
see somebody jumping that was one of their family members.
Isn't that interesting? So what that means is as long
(12:54):
as the people jumping out of a out of a
high rise to their death their families at home or watching,
as long as they're in Sioux City, Iowa, or Topeka, Kansas,
or Gloucester, Mississippi, that's fine. But we don't personally want
to suffer that fate. Isn't it interesting? If it was
(13:18):
good enough for Denim Springs, Louisiana, that's good enough for you.
Watch the TV, what's your loved one jump to their death?
Because that's the attitude you've had about every other family.
One of the most frustrating things I find is people
who base their support or opposition for government policy based
(13:41):
on whether that affects their own vice, their own habit,
their own investment. So if they don't do they don't
use THC products, They don't care if the mulla's in Austin.
You know, if the ayatola takes away your ability to
do it, don't take away their ability to play bingo,
(14:01):
because they'd no, no, take it all the way I
realized where I diverged in a wood, when I took
the one less traveled by. I was talking about my
mother's illness to say, you reach it. You reach a
certain age when you say things like this, And as
(14:25):
a young person, you'd never find yourself saying this, and
you would think ill of people who did. But my
mother's passing was a blessing or her. She was ready,
she made the decision. She was suffering terribly horribly. When
doctor Conley, the lung doctor, called me. He said, I'm
(14:48):
going to be completely honest with you. After complimenting my
mother's strength and toughness, which was true. He wasn't making
that up. She's a very very tough lady, extraordinarily tough lady.
And when he said, your mother has gone through more
today than most people will go through in years, we
(15:10):
had to stick her three times. It was awful, but
we made the decision jointly that while we had her prep,
let's do this, let's get it right. Her body is
failing her horribly, which was what part of the big
problem was. She tolerated the pain. Michael. She is so strong,
I said, I appreciate you telling me that. I'm not surprised.
(15:32):
I'm happy when someone tells me my kids are respectful.
But you don't have to say it twice. I know
it because I know how they are, I know how
their mother has raised them, I know their character. I
expect that to be the guest. I still love to
hear it. I expect it to be the guest, so
he said. So I thought, well, I'll go in tomorrow
(15:53):
after the show at noon, and you know, we'll talk
about it and see how she's feeling. But when she
tells me how bad it was yesterday. I will know
based on her own doctor's estimation, that she went through
a living hell yesterday. So when I get to call
that night and I go up there and she says,
I'm ready to go home, ready to die. She said,
are you okay with that? I said, I absolutely am.
(16:15):
You have been suffering. This is your decision. I'm not one.
I didn't raise my kids that way. I'm not burying
my parents that way. It's your decision. You have agency.
You get to decide if you don't want to take
further treatment, that's fine, okay, that is oddly enough. That
is a process of bereavement, processing grief. I always say
(16:43):
there's two ways to die. You can either die quickly
and leave everyone else miserable, or you can die slow
and make it easy for everyone else and you be miserable.
Those are your options. You don't always get to choose.
So we got to say goodbye. I left nothing unsaid.
There's nothing that I need to tell my mother that
(17:06):
I didn't tell my mother, and I didn't wait until
that night. But that night we had a good heart
to heart and we talked it all through. We planned
her funeral. We did everything, We left nothing unsaid. She
told me what she wanted done with my dad. Everything
related to everything. But when you lose someone tragically, especially
(17:29):
a child, I mean some major component of the grief
is that there's so much undone. You know, Like if
you had to walk out of your house tomorrow and
never go back and you didn't have time to plan,
(17:50):
you'd say, but, but, but but but I didn't even
make the bed, I left the pillow on the floor.
I uh, I gotta No, you never get to go
back there again. We cannot go back in that house
ever again. But I needed I got my gun. Clian. No,
you can never go back there again. There would be
a process of separation, maybe not grief, but separation, anxiety,
(18:12):
frustration because things were left undone. Thing You've now been
separated from the emotion of this loved one. So how
do you justify putting a camera in front of that
person who doesn't want to speak. They've not called a
press release a press conference. I told you about the
(18:32):
family that on the west side, in one of the villages,
that they have their own police department over there and
they have been cycling officers through to keep the media off.
Keep the media out of those people's lives. I mean,
can you imagine. I had a number of conversations with
people who were mutual friends with the parents of some
(18:55):
of the little girls who passed, and I said, I
want to stay this very clearly. I'm not asking for
an on air discussion. I'm certainly not pushing for it.
But if they want an outlet where they can share
whatever they want to share, just let them know. Whenever
that is, I'm here and I won't ask munch of questions.
(19:21):
It will simply be their opportunity to say publicly, on
their terms whatever they want to say. If that moment
comes and friends of mine would say, well, I'll check
with him, and I would say no, no, no, no, no,
They're getting enough of that. I just want you to
work it into conversation that they have in their back pocket.
(19:42):
And it might not be tomorrow, it might be a
month from now, it might be a year from now.
Just know that if they want that opportunity, it's not
a ratings boost. None of the money I make or
the success I have is based on ratings. I don't
chase ratings. It's not what I need. I don't need
the big exclusive interview. I don't need that moment. We
(20:06):
tell stories. That's what we do, That's what our show is.
We tell stories. Some of them meander, some of them
are pointless, some of them contradict themselves. I understand that.
But we tell stories, and it's a story. It's a
story that we all can learn from, to hear from
those parents. And so I just don't understand how you
(20:29):
live with yourself harassing these people in this manner. I
just I don't understand it very quickly. The One Big
Beautiful Bill. One of the things in there that will
help a lot of folks, and you may be one
of them, is the ability and it probably will help
our friends at lone Star Chevy Mike batchis at Eldridge
(20:50):
in two ninety. Is that and it'll probably help the
Carpro too, because Carpro helps people no matter what kind
of car you're buying. Com they have the person waiting
at the lot when you get there to help you.
So you're not going to buy a car and you
can't find somebody there, so you can write off your
(21:12):
car Loan interest with the One Big Beautiful Bill. But
let me give you some of the details. Maximum deduction
of ten thousand dollars for auto loan interest. That's an
interest paid per year on a loan that is qualifying.
There are some stipulations here. Don't just go run out
and buy a car without knowing all this. You don't
(21:33):
have to itemize your deductions. You can take the standard
deduction along with this deduction makes it a lot easier.
People don't want to itemize anymore. You have to qualify
as an individual. Your vehicle and loan have to qualify.
You get the full ten thousand dollars deduction up to
you making one hundred thousand dollars single or two hundred
(21:56):
thousand dollars married. The deduction is phased out after one
hundred thousand. You can still get some of it by
two hundred dollars for every thousand dollars over the limit.
If you're quick with math, you know that if you
make up to one fifty single and two fifty married
at that point, you get none of the deduction. The
loan has to begin January first of twenty twenty sixth
(22:20):
he goes through the end of twenty twenty eight. You
can do a refi, but not for more than the
original value. A couple other things. I'll go over these.
So back to the car loan interest being deductible. You
have to qualify. Your car has to qualify. The loan
has to qualify. By the way, don't take tax advice
(22:44):
from the guy on the radio. I'm just telling you
to go talk to your CPA about this. If you
need a good CPA, whether it's for your personal taxes,
I'll send you to the guy that took care Ofbin
for thirty years. Or if you are a business or
a high networth individual, I'll send you to de Roche
(23:07):
because you need more people working on your file. But
either way, in fact, most anything you ever need a
referral on if you send me an email. Even if
I don't have a show sponsor who does that, I
spend a lot of time. If you've got some weird
medical malady and I don't have a show sponsor who
handles that, I will generally kind of triangulate between three
(23:31):
different doctors that I trust and ask each one for
a referral. And if somebody pops up on two of
the three, and sometimes it's all three, then that's who
I will refer you to. I can't always find you something,
but that's true in finance, medicine, home improvement, schools, automobiles,
most everything else. I love to send you to my
show sponsors. But even if I don't have a show
(23:53):
sponsor in that field where I can, I will track
you down somebody and I will make the connection. And
sounds arrogant, but it happens to be true, As Darryl k.
Royle said, it ain't bragging. If it's true, those people
typically want us to send them more business. So they
want to take really, really, really good care of you.
(24:16):
So as an individual, you have to qualify, which means
you can make up to one hundred thousand single two
hundred thousand married, but you don't lose it. If you
make one hundred and ten thousand, you begin to lose
two hundred dollars of the deduction for every thousand dollars
you make over one hundred thousand, So fifty thousand times
(24:37):
two hundred means that at one hundred and fifty thousand,
you can no longer take any of the deduction. That's
if you're filing single two fifty. If you're filing married jointly,
the qualifying auto loan it has to be a new loan,
not a new car, as I understand it, I'm confirming
(24:57):
that has to have two wheels, no motorcycles. It has
to be made for a public road use. So it
can't be an off road. It can't be an ATV.
It can't be a trailer, it can't be a camper.
It has to weigh under fourteen thousand pounds. Now, some
of you think in terms of how much a car
truck weighs. I don't, So that's going to disqualify some automobile.
(25:21):
I don't know which those are, so you can figure
that out yourself. You have to take the loan beginning
January first of twenty twenty five. Oh wait, I wrote
that down wrong. The loan must be incurred after December
thirty first, twenty twenty four, or not before. That would
(25:44):
mean you'd be able to write off loans that you
took this year. So even if you financed a new
car in December of twenty December fifteen, twenty four, you
cannot deduct the interest. The vehicle also must be for
personal use only, so no commercial vehicle, so no fleet sales,
no bulk buying, no lease financing. It only applies to
(26:06):
purchases not leases, and no salvage titles. So that's I
believe that's cars that have been totaled, and you know,
the people that buy cars have been totally doesn't mean
that they can't be driven or used, and the final
assembly of the car must take place in the United States.
(26:27):
And it's expected that the IRS will release a list
of vehicles that qualified, just that's what they did with
electric vehicles. So when people wanted to get the electric
vehicles subsidy, there are cars that are hybrids. There are
cars that you weren't sure if they would qualify, and
(26:48):
that affected your decision because I think it was seventy
five hundred bucks. So they released it a list, they
released it. They released a list said if you're one
of these vehicles, then you can you can get the deduction.
By the way, I'm sure you know this by now,
but the no tax on tips is not literally no
(27:08):
tax on tips. It is a deduction. The no tax
on overtime is not literally no tax on your overtime.
It's a deduction at the end of the year. It's
never going to be as much fun or facile as
it would seem at it's you know, on the campaign trail,
you will still get a deduction. They also put extreme
limitations on whether you can take these things. If you
(27:32):
make more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars as
a couple, and certainly if you make up more than
four hundred thousand dollars a couple, all the things that
politicians campaign on, you're getting none of those. You're getting
none of child tax credit, none of them. And that's
but it's something they promise, and in some cases it's
something they deliver, it just won't ever be delivered to you.
(27:53):
If you're part of that, you can still deduct the
interest on a refi. Yeah, I did find that as
long's it's for an initial loan taken out after December
thirty first, twenty twenty four, and only on the portion
of the loan amount that does not exceed the original
loan balance being refinanced, So you cannot refile for a
(28:15):
higher balance to get a tax free loan, which is
basically what you'd be getting. So example, if you bought
a new car that qualified on January eighteenth of this
year for fifty thousand dollars with a five year loan
at a six and a half percent interest and you
(28:36):
put twenty percent down with a forty percent loan. Because
you put ten thousand down, the interest in the first
year is about twenty four hundred bucks. If you're in
the twenty two percent marginal tax bracket, that could save
you five hundred and thirty dollars on taxes. So you're
not going to get rich, but's not nothing. That is
(28:56):
only available from January first, retroactively thish year through December
thirty first, twenty twenty eight. Two reasons they do that.
Democrats do it so you won't be able to get
it if they win, because they won't let you have
it the next time. Republicans do it because they sunset
all of their tax advantages, so you have to elect
(29:18):
them again to get it again. They could make this
into perpetuity, but why do that. Then you won't need
them anymore. Auto lenders, credit unions, banks, and the like
will be required to send you what's called a Form
ten ninety eight, similar to your mortgage statement. You've probably
received one before reporting your car interest for the year,
(29:40):
and that's what you will include with your taxes or
you CPA will include that. Does that make sense? I
hope it does. Adobe wants to talk about putting NBA
cameras in the putting in the NBA Finals, putting cameras
in player spaces. I don't have time to take the call,
but I will speak to that. And that is this.
(30:03):
I hate the idea of in the middle of the game,
you know, there's a time out and they go over
to the coach, Hey, coach, what's you gonna do? What's
you taking? What's you think about? Team? Well, you know
we're gonna do our best. It ruins the game. I
don't need access to everything all the time. There's a
certain magic to not knowing what they're talking about. Let
(30:26):
the coach, coach and the players play. This voyeurism that's
played out in sports and politics, this desperate need to
know everything about other people's lives. You know what that's
you know what's that's a manifestation of a person with
a vacant life. They're trying to fill their their empty
vassal with the lives and details and peccadillos and addictions
(30:50):
and cheating and drugs and violence and betrayal of other
people's lives. That's why people will sit down and watch
reality TV and watch other people live off the lives
because they don't. That's sad. Go live your own reality
TV life ever. Watch that Love Island thing that's where
all the kids are watching now. Did you know that
Got an email from a former news reporter in the
Greater Houston community. I don't want to give out this
person's sex or name which would identify them, because I
don't think their career is entirely over in media per se,
and I'll leave it there. I had very good relations
(00:23):
with members of the media from when I started running.
My first election was my election where I first got
elected was November of one. I started running just after
the elections of ninety nine, so two years there and
then six years in office. And after that I was
(00:44):
full time at KTRH doing a show actually it was
KPRC at the time, and running the three AM stations,
and so I worked a lot with those reporters for
almost ten years. After I left politics, I had some
great relationships with the folks who were in local news.
(01:05):
It's why I often argue when someone will attempt to
paint with too broad a brush that media is all
left when TV media is all left wing, and I
have said repeatedly many people don't agree with me, not
the local media. There are some, but most of the
folks in the Houston media, at least during the time
up until a few years ago, when I've kind of
(01:27):
fallen out of touch. It's a whole new crop now.
Most of the folks that were there when I was
there stayed a long time. There were some real stalwarts
who were there for a very long time, and I
didn't find them to be particularly partisan. I found them
to be open minded, truth seekers, honest storytellers, and that's
the truth. There were a few exceptions, but mostly that
was the truth. So anyway, this individual would have fit
(01:50):
into that. And this person said, Zora, I was listening
to your show yesterday and the remarks you made at
the end of your first segment hit home for me.
You were talking about the way the news media approached
the victims of the Texas floods, holding them at their homes.
I started hounding them at their homes just to get
a story. That's one of the reasons I left the
TV news industry. After quite some time of waking up
(02:14):
at three am to hit the streets as a TV
morning news beat reporter, I had enough of asking families
how they felt on possibly the worst day of their lives.
Towards the end of my daily newsbeat career, I remember
getting into an argument with a photographer because I didn't
want to chase kids down on their way to classes
at a high school after one of their friends died
(02:34):
overnight in a tragic car crash. He said, go out
there and get the sound bite. Everybody else is doing it.
At that point, I dreaded going into work every morning,
and I knew it was time to go. One of
my last stories involved a morbidly obese man who had
died in his home overnight. Firefighters called for a heavy
forklift to get his body out of the home and
(02:55):
had to carve a hole in the side of the place.
I got out there, the family was rightfully living with
us and asked us to leave. We were the only
ones on the scene. I told the station, this is
not a story. The producer disagreed. They sent the helicopter
to get shots overhead for the five am live shot.
(03:16):
I feel your frustration. Keep fighting the good fight. So
if you have been unfortunate enough to have a tragedy
happen in your life, it's one thing when you have
an ailing parent, and death is almost a blessing for
them and for you. I never understood that when I
(03:36):
was younger. Forgive me for repeating my stories, but it's
still fresh and we're all. My mother called me and
she she called my wife and said, can you and
Michael come up to the hospital tonight. And it was
already nine o'clock and maybe later, and she was in
(03:56):
the med center and my wife said, Mom will be there.
Are you okay? And she said, yeah, I'm fine. I
need you'll to come up here. Well, I'd already talked
to her doctor, a wonderful, wonderful lung doctor by the
name of Tim Conley. He was referred to me by
(04:17):
Stan Dukeman, my dear friend and cardiologist, and I had
checked around and there were several other doctors who said,
there are several good pulmonologists in town, but Tim Conley
is going to be in everybody's top three. Yeah, he's
You're good with him. He was so loving and tender
and caring for my mother and just wonderful to her.
(04:41):
She said, you know, Michael, I'm so grateful. These people
make me feel like a queen. And mind you, she's
in a lot of pain at this point. But my
mother loved to be fussed over. I guess that's where
I get it. And she loved coming to the Houston
Hospitals because I would have all my doctors treating her,
and they come by there. Dukeman would come by and
(05:03):
say he was bringing her a wedding ring the next day.
I mean, he just really ham it up, and she
loved it. It's a good looking guy, and she just
loved the attention and it distracted her from all the
pain and suffering she was going through. And she called
us up there and she said, I don't want any
more treatments. I want to go home. I'm done. I'm
going to peel off. I don't want this journey anymore.
(05:24):
I want to go home. I'm discontinuing the treatments. I
can't I can't do this anymore. Well, she didn't know,
but I had been called that evening at about seven thirty,
actually was right after seven, because he waited till the
show was over by Tim Conley, and he said, I
just want you to know how tough your mom is.
And I said, well, I know she's made of ruddy stock,
(05:44):
a German peasant stock. She is tough. And he said, well,
let me tell you what happened. We had to go
in with this very long needle. It's excruciatingly painful and
I hate doing this procedure, but we needed to do it.
We had to do it three times. Wow, and your
mom took it. So I can't remember why I started
(06:06):
that story. Oh I owned, Yeah, I know where that's going.
Hold on. One fellow emailed and said, Yep, the media
just loves the dirty laundry. You know, when you go
(06:27):
into a burger joint, the person who owns that burger
joint does not necessarily love burgers. They may love customer service,
they may love the engagement. They almost certainly love the
(06:48):
ability to pay their own bills because you buy burgers
for more than it cost them to make them. They're
not serving burgers because they love burgers. They're serving burgers
because you buy burgers. Members of the media may or
may not love the chase. They may or may not
(07:09):
love stepping on people's toes, invading their private moment, airing
their dirty laundry, giving them no space to grieve. They
may or may not enjoy. That process doesn't really matter,
because the public does. And if you don't believe me,
(07:29):
notice how much time you spend watching it. Notice how
much time the reason they show you the school shootings
and these floodings, and they stay on the visual of it.
Even during a press commerce still got to see that
awful visual. So economics uses the term utility instead of enjoyment.
(07:57):
People will say, no, oh, Michael, I don't like that.
You may not like may not like it, but you
find utility in it. Most heroin addicts won't tell you
they love heroin. In fact, they hate heroin. It has
destroyed their lives, but they are addicted to it. They
(08:17):
cannot put it down. So in that sense, they would
tell you that Heroin's horrible and they hate it, and
ten minutes later they'd sell their child to get another
hit if people stop following it. Years ago, it's been
over fifteen. I said I'm not going to cover school shootings.
(08:40):
And I had a program director in a small market
called the show, say five point thirty, Michael going to
talk about this school shooting. Now, mind you, this station,
which interesting love, interestingly enough, is still in our stable
of sixty something stations. That program director is not. But
(09:03):
that program director called barked in Ramon's ear, is Michael
going to cover the school shooting? And without revealing which
station it was. The school shooting was five six, seven, eight,
nine states away from this. It's not like it was
in that community, right, it's not like dear in Kerville
and the floods have just happened. And he said, no,
he doesn't do breaking news and he certainly doesn't do
(09:26):
mass disasters in real time. What. Yeah, that's the policy.
He says it on the air. He's very clear he
doesn't want this hat, he doesn't want this phone call.
That's ridiculous. We are a news talk station. I understand
he's the talk part. You're the news part. Have a
news reporter report on it. But people want to hear
(09:47):
him talk about it. No, they don't. He never ever
has anyone say, how come you're not talking about the
school shooting. Ever, we might bring up after the fact
failings in their response, failings to identify the shooter. Well
(10:07):
that's never the case, failings having identified the shooter to
deal with them, because the FBI always knows these people.
They always know these people. They were on their radar,
that's the line. They were on their radar. They went
to their house, they talked to them. They were aware
of their positions, they were aware of their violent past,
they were aware of their intentions. Don't do anything about it.
(10:29):
So as long as we crave this crap. We will
get more of it. And God help you when you're
the person in the crosshairs of an enterprising reporter, determined
to throw onto the screen that which will further their
career without regard to your emotions. It makes me so
(10:56):
mad when I will see a picture on a ski
green somewhere, you can go back and look at all
of them, look at so many of them of a
person grieving, a mother grieving as she's walking into the school,
and you know there's somebody on both sides of her
and her her face, her head is bobbing and her
(11:17):
face is sort of down, and maybe her hands are
slapping her face or holding her face, and her body
is convulsing. It's it's a deep, deep form of grief
and shock and reaction and anger and nausea. And they
just lock in on that, and the newspapers will take
(11:40):
that and put it to top of the after nine
to eleven, those were the photos we saw. Interesting thing happened.
There's a great article. I believe it's in the New Yorker.
I'll give it to Kunda or maybe he can find it.
And it was called I think it was called the
Jumper and there was a guy who jumped out of
a skyscraper during eleven, out of one of the twin towers,
(12:04):
and they were trying to figure out who he was
because you know, photograph is not perfect. It turns out
he was one of the chefs at the restaurant at
the top of the building and he had jumped, and
people became obsessed with these jumpers. Something interesting happened. The
major networks decided that they would stop airing footage of
(12:29):
the people jumping because their own staffs, they were headquartered
in New York, their own staffs all had a connection
to the nine to eleven disaster, and they said they
didn't want to see one of their family members. They
didn't want to on their network. They didn't want to
see somebody jumping that was one of their family members.
Isn't that interesting? So what that means is as long
(12:54):
as the people jumping out of a out of a
high rise to their death their families at home or watching,
as long as they're in Sioux City, Iowa, or Topeka, Kansas,
or Gloucester, Mississippi, that's fine. But we don't personally want
to suffer that fate. Isn't it interesting? If it was
(13:18):
good enough for Denim Springs, Louisiana, that's good enough for you.
Watch the TV, what's your loved one jump to their death?
Because that's the attitude you've had about every other family.
One of the most frustrating things I find is people
who base their support or opposition for government policy based
(13:41):
on whether that affects their own vice, their own habit,
their own investment. So if they don't do they don't
use THC products, They don't care if the mulla's in Austin.
You know, if the ayatola takes away your ability to
do it, don't take away their ability to play bingo,
(14:01):
because they'd no, no, take it all the way I
realized where I diverged in a wood, when I took
the one less traveled by. I was talking about my
mother's illness to say, you reach it. You reach a
certain age when you say things like this, And as
(14:25):
a young person, you'd never find yourself saying this, and
you would think ill of people who did. But my
mother's passing was a blessing or her. She was ready,
she made the decision. She was suffering terribly horribly. When
doctor Conley, the lung doctor, called me. He said, I'm
(14:48):
going to be completely honest with you. After complimenting my
mother's strength and toughness, which was true. He wasn't making
that up. She's a very very tough lady, extraordinarily tough lady.
And when he said, your mother has gone through more
today than most people will go through in years, we
(15:10):
had to stick her three times. It was awful, but
we made the decision jointly that while we had her prep,
let's do this, let's get it right. Her body is
failing her horribly, which was what part of the big
problem was. She tolerated the pain. Michael. She is so strong,
I said, I appreciate you telling me that. I'm not surprised.
(15:32):
I'm happy when someone tells me my kids are respectful.
But you don't have to say it twice. I know
it because I know how they are, I know how
their mother has raised them, I know their character. I
expect that to be the guest. I still love to
hear it. I expect it to be the guest, so
he said. So I thought, well, I'll go in tomorrow
(15:53):
after the show at noon, and you know, we'll talk
about it and see how she's feeling. But when she
tells me how bad it was yesterday. I will know
based on her own doctor's estimation, that she went through
a living hell yesterday. So when I get to call
that night and I go up there and she says,
I'm ready to go home, ready to die. She said,
are you okay with that? I said, I absolutely am.
(16:15):
You have been suffering. This is your decision. I'm not one.
I didn't raise my kids that way. I'm not burying
my parents that way. It's your decision. You have agency.
You get to decide if you don't want to take
further treatment, that's fine, okay, that is oddly enough. That
is a process of bereavement, processing grief. I always say
(16:43):
there's two ways to die. You can either die quickly
and leave everyone else miserable, or you can die slow
and make it easy for everyone else and you be miserable.
Those are your options. You don't always get to choose.
So we got to say goodbye. I left nothing unsaid.
There's nothing that I need to tell my mother that
(17:06):
I didn't tell my mother, and I didn't wait until
that night. But that night we had a good heart
to heart and we talked it all through. We planned
her funeral. We did everything, We left nothing unsaid. She
told me what she wanted done with my dad. Everything
related to everything. But when you lose someone tragically, especially
(17:29):
a child, I mean some major component of the grief
is that there's so much undone. You know, Like if
you had to walk out of your house tomorrow and
never go back and you didn't have time to plan,
(17:50):
you'd say, but, but, but but but I didn't even
make the bed, I left the pillow on the floor.
I uh, I gotta No, you never get to go
back there again. We cannot go back in that house
ever again. But I needed I got my gun. Clian. No,
you can never go back there again. There would be
a process of separation, maybe not grief, but separation, anxiety,
(18:12):
frustration because things were left undone. Thing You've now been
separated from the emotion of this loved one. So how
do you justify putting a camera in front of that
person who doesn't want to speak. They've not called a
press release a press conference. I told you about the
(18:32):
family that on the west side, in one of the villages,
that they have their own police department over there and
they have been cycling officers through to keep the media off.
Keep the media out of those people's lives. I mean,
can you imagine. I had a number of conversations with
people who were mutual friends with the parents of some
(18:55):
of the little girls who passed, and I said, I
want to stay this very clearly. I'm not asking for
an on air discussion. I'm certainly not pushing for it.
But if they want an outlet where they can share
whatever they want to share, just let them know. Whenever
that is, I'm here and I won't ask munch of questions.
(19:21):
It will simply be their opportunity to say publicly, on
their terms whatever they want to say. If that moment
comes and friends of mine would say, well, I'll check
with him, and I would say no, no, no, no, no,
They're getting enough of that. I just want you to
work it into conversation that they have in their back pocket.
(19:42):
And it might not be tomorrow, it might be a
month from now, it might be a year from now.
Just know that if they want that opportunity, it's not
a ratings boost. None of the money I make or
the success I have is based on ratings. I don't
chase ratings. It's not what I need. I don't need
the big exclusive interview. I don't need that moment. We
(20:06):
tell stories. That's what we do, That's what our show is.
We tell stories. Some of them meander, some of them
are pointless, some of them contradict themselves. I understand that.
But we tell stories, and it's a story. It's a
story that we all can learn from, to hear from
those parents. And so I just don't understand how you
(20:29):
live with yourself harassing these people in this manner. I
just I don't understand it very quickly. The One Big
Beautiful Bill. One of the things in there that will
help a lot of folks, and you may be one
of them, is the ability and it probably will help
our friends at lone Star Chevy Mike batchis at Eldridge
(20:50):
in two ninety. Is that and it'll probably help the
Carpro too, because Carpro helps people no matter what kind
of car you're buying. Com they have the person waiting
at the lot when you get there to help you.
So you're not going to buy a car and you
can't find somebody there, so you can write off your
(21:12):
car Loan interest with the One Big Beautiful Bill. But
let me give you some of the details. Maximum deduction
of ten thousand dollars for auto loan interest. That's an
interest paid per year on a loan that is qualifying.
There are some stipulations here. Don't just go run out
and buy a car without knowing all this. You don't
(21:33):
have to itemize your deductions. You can take the standard
deduction along with this deduction makes it a lot easier.
People don't want to itemize anymore. You have to qualify
as an individual. Your vehicle and loan have to qualify.
You get the full ten thousand dollars deduction up to
you making one hundred thousand dollars single or two hundred
(21:56):
thousand dollars married. The deduction is phased out after one
hundred thousand. You can still get some of it by
two hundred dollars for every thousand dollars over the limit.
If you're quick with math, you know that if you
make up to one fifty single and two fifty married
at that point, you get none of the deduction. The
loan has to begin January first of twenty twenty sixth
(22:20):
he goes through the end of twenty twenty eight. You
can do a refi, but not for more than the
original value. A couple other things. I'll go over these.
So back to the car loan interest being deductible. You
have to qualify. Your car has to qualify. The loan
has to qualify. By the way, don't take tax advice
(22:44):
from the guy on the radio. I'm just telling you
to go talk to your CPA about this. If you
need a good CPA, whether it's for your personal taxes,
I'll send you to the guy that took care Ofbin
for thirty years. Or if you are a business or
a high networth individual, I'll send you to de Roche
(23:07):
because you need more people working on your file. But
either way, in fact, most anything you ever need a
referral on if you send me an email. Even if
I don't have a show sponsor who does that, I
spend a lot of time. If you've got some weird
medical malady and I don't have a show sponsor who
handles that, I will generally kind of triangulate between three
(23:31):
different doctors that I trust and ask each one for
a referral. And if somebody pops up on two of
the three, and sometimes it's all three, then that's who
I will refer you to. I can't always find you something,
but that's true in finance, medicine, home improvement, schools, automobiles,
most everything else. I love to send you to my
show sponsors. But even if I don't have a show
(23:53):
sponsor in that field where I can, I will track
you down somebody and I will make the connection. And
sounds arrogant, but it happens to be true, As Darryl k.
Royle said, it ain't bragging. If it's true, those people
typically want us to send them more business. So they
want to take really, really, really good care of you.
(24:16):
So as an individual, you have to qualify, which means
you can make up to one hundred thousand single two
hundred thousand married, but you don't lose it. If you
make one hundred and ten thousand, you begin to lose
two hundred dollars of the deduction for every thousand dollars
you make over one hundred thousand, So fifty thousand times
(24:37):
two hundred means that at one hundred and fifty thousand,
you can no longer take any of the deduction. That's
if you're filing single two fifty. If you're filing married jointly,
the qualifying auto loan it has to be a new loan,
not a new car, as I understand it, I'm confirming
(24:57):
that has to have two wheels, no motorcycles. It has
to be made for a public road use. So it
can't be an off road. It can't be an ATV.
It can't be a trailer, it can't be a camper.
It has to weigh under fourteen thousand pounds. Now, some
of you think in terms of how much a car
truck weighs. I don't, So that's going to disqualify some automobile.
(25:21):
I don't know which those are, so you can figure
that out yourself. You have to take the loan beginning
January first of twenty twenty five. Oh wait, I wrote
that down wrong. The loan must be incurred after December
thirty first, twenty twenty four, or not before. That would
(25:44):
mean you'd be able to write off loans that you
took this year. So even if you financed a new
car in December of twenty December fifteen, twenty four, you
cannot deduct the interest. The vehicle also must be for
personal use only, so no commercial vehicle, so no fleet sales,
no bulk buying, no lease financing. It only applies to
(26:06):
purchases not leases, and no salvage titles. So that's I
believe that's cars that have been totaled, and you know,
the people that buy cars have been totally doesn't mean
that they can't be driven or used, and the final
assembly of the car must take place in the United States.
(26:27):
And it's expected that the IRS will release a list
of vehicles that qualified, just that's what they did with
electric vehicles. So when people wanted to get the electric
vehicles subsidy, there are cars that are hybrids. There are
cars that you weren't sure if they would qualify, and
(26:48):
that affected your decision because I think it was seventy
five hundred bucks. So they released it a list, they
released it. They released a list said if you're one
of these vehicles, then you can you can get the deduction.
By the way, I'm sure you know this by now,
but the no tax on tips is not literally no
(27:08):
tax on tips. It is a deduction. The no tax
on overtime is not literally no tax on your overtime.
It's a deduction at the end of the year. It's
never going to be as much fun or facile as
it would seem at it's you know, on the campaign trail,
you will still get a deduction. They also put extreme
limitations on whether you can take these things. If you
(27:32):
make more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars as
a couple, and certainly if you make up more than
four hundred thousand dollars a couple, all the things that
politicians campaign on, you're getting none of those. You're getting
none of child tax credit, none of them. And that's
but it's something they promise, and in some cases it's
something they deliver, it just won't ever be delivered to you.
(27:53):
If you're part of that, you can still deduct the
interest on a refi. Yeah, I did find that as
long's it's for an initial loan taken out after December
thirty first, twenty twenty four, and only on the portion
of the loan amount that does not exceed the original
loan balance being refinanced, So you cannot refile for a
(28:15):
higher balance to get a tax free loan, which is
basically what you'd be getting. So example, if you bought
a new car that qualified on January eighteenth of this
year for fifty thousand dollars with a five year loan
at a six and a half percent interest and you
(28:36):
put twenty percent down with a forty percent loan. Because
you put ten thousand down, the interest in the first
year is about twenty four hundred bucks. If you're in
the twenty two percent marginal tax bracket, that could save
you five hundred and thirty dollars on taxes. So you're
not going to get rich, but's not nothing. That is
(28:56):
only available from January first, retroactively thish year through December
thirty first, twenty twenty eight. Two reasons they do that.
Democrats do it so you won't be able to get
it if they win, because they won't let you have
it the next time. Republicans do it because they sunset
all of their tax advantages, so you have to elect
(29:18):
them again to get it again. They could make this
into perpetuity, but why do that. Then you won't need
them anymore. Auto lenders, credit unions, banks, and the like
will be required to send you what's called a Form
ten ninety eight, similar to your mortgage statement. You've probably
received one before reporting your car interest for the year,
(29:40):
and that's what you will include with your taxes or
you CPA will include that. Does that make sense? I
hope it does. Adobe wants to talk about putting NBA
cameras in the putting in the NBA Finals, putting cameras
in player spaces. I don't have time to take the call,
but I will speak to that. And that is this.
(30:03):
I hate the idea of in the middle of the game,
you know, there's a time out and they go over
to the coach, Hey, coach, what's you gonna do? What's
you taking? What's you think about? Team? Well, you know
we're gonna do our best. It ruins the game. I
don't need access to everything all the time. There's a
certain magic to not knowing what they're talking about. Let
(30:26):
the coach, coach and the players play. This voyeurism that's
played out in sports and politics, this desperate need to
know everything about other people's lives. You know what that's
you know what's that's a manifestation of a person with
a vacant life. They're trying to fill their their empty
vassal with the lives and details and peccadillos and addictions
(30:50):
and cheating and drugs and violence and betrayal of other
people's lives. That's why people will sit down and watch
reality TV and watch other people live off the lives
because they don't. That's sad. Go live your own reality
TV life ever. Watch that Love Island thing that's where
all the kids are watching now. Did you know that
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.