A Debt Ceiling Agreement

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• A debt ceiling agreement
• TPPF's Greg Sindelar on the closing of the Texas Legislative session

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Well, what we need is morecommon sense common We got the youth plain
old comge breaking down the world's nonsenseabout pow American common sense. We'll see
us through with the common sense ofHouston. I'm just pro common sense for
Houston. From Houston. This isthe Jimmy Barrett Show, brought to you

(00:27):
by viewin dot Com. Now here'sJimmy Barrett. All right, hope you
had a great Memorial Day, alittle pool time over here, hanging out
just kind of chill and getting alittle sun doing all the things that the
dermatologist tells me not to don tellsme not to do. Sam, I'm
a firm believer in two things aboutsunshine. It's natural. It's all natural.

(00:50):
It's vitamin D and that's good foryour soul, among other things.
But all things in moderation. SoI don't have a problem with that.
I don't have a problem at allwith coming out there and go ahead and
yeah, get a little sunshine,get things going the way they should.
Hope you feel good. Today's weget past the Memorial Day holiday. Next

(01:11):
holiday is fourth of July. Okay, have a ways, we have a
ways to wait till the fourth ofJuly. In the meantime, let's see
if we can bring you up todate on the retail environment politically speaking.
I don't know where you do yourshopping, but the list can continues to
get shorter and shorter. For me. Now, in full disclosure, I

(01:33):
can't remember well within the last yearI've been inside of a Target. No
Target targets. It's a decent store. I don't have a lot of vacation
to shop there, but every nowand again my wife will drag me there,
and you know, it's always beena pleasant experience, and the stores
are always clean, and the merchandiseis decent and right on down the line.
But as you know, Target orTarge loves these days to put on

(02:00):
political face. Now here's the placeI used to shop all the time.
Add Coals to the list. Coalsfacing Shopper Upper or after becoming latest retailer
to market LGBTQ clothing to children tochildren. Don't mind, don't mind the
Pride Month thing. Don't don't mindthat they want to put up some merchandise

(02:20):
for for uh, you know,for for adults who are inclined to support
those types of things. But they'remarketing to kids they're doing jumpers and and
you know, bibbs and and anythingyou can possibly imagine body suits with,
you know, happy pride um.What are some of the other ones that

(02:42):
say, um, be proud,ask me my pronouns. Hang on a
second, I'm gonna ask a threemonth old their pronouns. There's a three
month old half a pronoun shouldn't shouldn'thave a pronoun. But these companies are
doubling and tripling down on this stuff. It's like they're all in competition for
one thing. They only seem tocare about what the LGBTQ community is going
to rate them. And I'm notsure why that's so important. Maybe that

(03:06):
should be the question we ask iswhy has that become so important? Why
is it more important for the CEOof Target to get high up on the
list of companies that are woke?Why is that more important for a company
now to be woke than is toservice customers. There's got to be financial
tide to that. We just needto figure out what that is. In
the meantime, here is the CEOof Target, his name is Brian Cornell,

(03:30):
doubling down on woke policies at Targetand with a little follow up,
by the way on Fox from JoeyJones. I'm really proud of the work
we've done in the D and Ispace. When you walk into a store
and you feel at home and itrepresents the community, it makes a huge
difference. I think those are justgood business decisions and it's the right thing

(03:52):
for society, and it's the greatthing for our brand. When you look
at the story, Target took astand on bathrooms when North Carolina's bill I
think it was the NCAA pulled outin North Carolina. Target took a stand,
so we're gonna have multi gender orall gender bathrooms. That was a
big thing they took a stand on. A few months ago, maybe about
a year ago. I walked inand there's transgender books for kids right there

(04:14):
on the front section. That wasa little bit of a social media uproar,
but not a big one. Theytook a stand. Then. Why
are they taking a stand now?Why are they deciding now that the stand
they've taken is no longer worth thempushing on? Maybe it is the purchasing
power people disagree with them. Maybeit's what happened with bud Light the beer.
But the end of the day.Listen, if you take a stand
and you make half the people inAmerica mad, all you can do is

(04:34):
make the other half mad by goingback on it. If Target believes in
this, they should push on itand let the consumer fall where they may.
Hobby Lobby in Chick fil A donot apologize for being a Christian front
organization. Hobby Lobby needs to takea Target needs to take whatever stand they
want to take. But the thingsthat people got mad about weren't simply pride
oriented things. We're talking about thingsthat people felt was a bad influence on

(04:57):
their kid or influencer kids and thingsof that nature. The devil's in the
details, and Target doesn't want toshare those details right well, and they
here's the thing. That's the otherthing with coals. That's that's where the
complaint is. The complaint is notthat you want to have gay pride.
The problem is is that you wantto market this little kids. And I'll
take it a step further as itrelates to Target. Target has been donating

(05:18):
money for about ten years to anorganization called Gleason. G l se N
is the acronym. You can lookit up if you want to look at
up. But basically what they dois they push gender ideology onto school kids.
That's what the activist organization does.Now, I'm not saying this is
what Target is doing, although itseems like they're beginning to do that,

(05:40):
but Target has been funding this activistgroup that is doing it. As far
as trying to get these issues intothe schools at younger and younger ages,
there's clearly an agenda work here.My question becomes for Coals, and for
Targets, and for Budweiser and anybodyelse who wants to participate in this stuff.

(06:03):
Clearly it has become critically important tothem to make the gay community happy.
They get a high rating as relationsto the gay community as a corporation,
so my question becomes, why arethey doing that? And I hate

(06:26):
to be a cynic, but Ithink it's got a whole lot more to
do with making money than it hasto do with the gay pride. Now,
I don't know how you make muchmoney when you upset your core audience,
and when you lose billions of dollarsin stock value, I don't know
how that helps you out as acorporation. But these people didn't get to

(06:51):
be CEOs. These people didn't getto be the CEOs of these company by
being stupid. These are not stupidpeople. So there's obviously something of work
here. There's a reason, there'sa motivation behind it, and it's not
just targeting kids don't. I don'tknow anything about Brian Cornell, but I
doubt very much if he's the kindof guy who sits around trying to think

(07:13):
of evil ways to influence children.I don't think that's what he does.
I think it's got more to doabout making money for Target. The question
is how does this make money orsave money for Target? Do they know
something we don't know about not thatfar down the road? And what's going
to take for corporations to get financialbacking? Does it have anything to do

(07:34):
with the financial backing corporations we'll beable to get in the future, this
rating that they get from the gaycommunity. I wonder I have to wonder.
All right, back with more ofa moment, Jimmy Barrett show here
in nam nine fifty KPRC. Allright, here we go number two today.

(08:00):
You're on a nine kpre set,so we're catching up from the weekend
here. We had the long weekendWe had Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
Monday. That's a four day weekend. Why does it feel like I wasn't
really gone for very long. Man, that four days went fast. It's
going faster all the time. Butwe did miss a few things. One
of the things that we were goingto promote for the morning show, and

(08:24):
I thought better of it, waswas the debt ceiling deal. Do a
little tease for the Monday, youknow, for the Tuesday show. Well
see where we're at with the debtceiling. But something told me something would
come up. For one thing,it was going into holiday weekend. And
it's amazing how many big stories inthe world of politics happen on weekends.
Are going into a holiday weekend becausethey know that your mind is going to

(08:46):
be somewhere else. So I can'thelp but think that that was done on
purpose. Now, the motivation forbreaking a debt ceiling deal going into a
holiday weekend, the motivation would be, I think basically the same for Republicans
and Democrats, which tells me thatthis is probably one of those deals that

(09:07):
neither side is completely happy with,and therefore they would just assume, go
ahead, get it done. Forgetabout as quickly as possible, hope that
you don't pay any attention to thefiner details, and move on. Now.
The reason why Democrats would want thatis because they made this big stink
about not showing any cooperation with Conservativeswhatsoever in coming up with the dead Sailing

(09:31):
deal. They were not going tocooperate. Biden wasn't going to give in
on anything. They weren't going toget a deal, blah blah blah blah
blah. And then the reality hitthat they were going to have to come
up with a deal and they weregoing to at least have to make some
concessions in that deal so that theRepublicans could go back and say we got
what we wanted. Now, asfar as the Republicans go, I don't

(09:56):
think they really got exactly what theywanted. They they got a deal where
they could say we we have cutgovernment. We have got cut government spending,
even though they really all they cutwas that. It's the same old
story, folks. They cut futuregrowth and that's only temporary. So did

(10:16):
they cut government, No, didthey eliminate any jobs? No? Did
they cut the budget? Well,they cut they cut some of the future
spending that was in the budget.So the budget increases by one percent.
Now, by government standards, onepercent probably doesn't seem like a lot until
you had up how many how manytrillions of dollars the government spends, and
then before you know, one percentit's quite a bit. But at the

(10:39):
end of the day, Republicans cansay that this is the first bill blah
blah blah blah blah that does notexpand government spending. So they got some
of what they wanted. Democrats gotvery little of what they want. I
guess if anybody got something out ofit, it was probably Republicans got a
little bit of something out of it, but certainly not the kind of bill
that everybody's going to get excite Idid about it. It's not it's not

(11:03):
a clear message that going forward we'regoing to cut spending, not by any
stretch of the imagination. So Ithink I think, you know, Kevin
McCarthy's trying to put a really positivespin on it, and I can understand
why he's trying to do that.Chip Roy is not really interested in this
bill, doesn't really think much ofthe bill. So there's plenty there's plenty
of Freedom Caucus Party members who areeither against this or are being quiet.

(11:28):
Troy Nails, for example, he'sFreedom Caucus guy. Having heard a word
out of him on this one,he's being very very quiet, keeping it
close to the best. I thinkhe's I think he's like most politicians.
He's trying to figure out it oror or judge the reaction that's coming in
before he says much of anything aboutit. But Kevin McCarthy was on Fox

(11:50):
News Sunday yesterday, Harry is puttinghis positive spin on this debt ceiling deal.
We finally were able to cut spending. We're the first Congress to vote
for cutting spending year over year.So you cut that back, you fully
fund the veterans, You fully funddefense, which you take that non defense
spending all the way back lower thantwenty two levels. Now you get work

(12:13):
requirements for Taneff and staff, wherethe Democrats said that was a red line.
Now you're able to reform NIPA.How frustrating we are. It's been
forty years since you could streamline it. To build a road in America takes
you seven years a review. Wenow limit that where it's focused, where
you can only review it for oneto two years, We're going to get
America working again. We get theprocess working again, where we always have

(12:37):
these omnibuses at the end of theyear, we penalize the Congress if they
don't get their jobs done. Thereis so much in this that's positive,
and measure it to all the otherdebt ceilings. When Republicans had the presidency,
the Senate, and the House,that they ever cut spending, No,
they increased it. We were ableto do this when the president said
he wasn't even going to talk tous. This is really a step in

(13:00):
the right direction. It puts asa trajectory that's different. We put a
statutory cap on only spending one percentfor the next six years, so we
let government grow, but at aslower rate. You have a statutory cap
on there. We've got to beable to stay in the majority. Then
we could have a rule to beable to keep it going forward. The
other thing you have here too isfor the very first time, if you
have administrative paygo We had a presidentthat spent another one point five trillion around

(13:24):
Congress. That can no longer happens, meaning if he takes executive actions,
he's got a cut to be ableto go to it. He doesn't have
to talk about it, he hasto do it. That would have saved
as one point five trillion in thefirst two years of this presidency. That's
a major savings that has never beenin law before, and now it's being
put into law. If you lookat each movement here, this is a

(13:48):
whole new direction. Just think abouthow this even came to fruition. Normally
you have a thousand page bill.This is going to be less than one
hundred and fifty pages. Normally thecountry doesn't know about it till after it's
passed. No, we'll wait seventytwo hours. This is worthy of the
American people. I want him toread it. I want him to understand
it. We only have the majorityin one House, with a five seat

(14:09):
majority, with a president who saidwe would never talk about this, who
had Chuck Schumer said this would bea clean debt ceiling, we would just
raise it. That's not the case. You've got work requirements to help people
out of poverty into jobs. You'vegot reforms that we can build things,
cut the red tape. We cappedso the president can't just spend money wildly.

(14:30):
We're actually spending less than we spentlast year. That hasn't happened in
Congress. See, there are somethings in there to like. I mean,
I do like the idea that ifBiden wants to do something by executive
action, he has to find away to pay for it, and the
way he has to pay for itis by cutting somewhere else. So,
to use McCarthy's example, he spentone point five trillion dollars out of executive

(14:54):
order. He would have had totake that one point five trillion out of
the current budget and find other placesto make cuts. So that that's how
you keep a budget from growing outof control. So there's, like I
said, there's some things to likeabout it. There's are there's many couches
we would like. No, notnearly, not nearly, considering the fact
that there's so much waste. Butat least it's it's headed in a better

(15:18):
direction. I'm not gonna say theright direction, but it's headed in a
better direction. All right, Let'sget another Republican who's not one hundred percent
maybe convinced, but is you know, kind of leaning towards supporting this bill.
Florida Republican Representative Brian mast Here's whathe had to say about the dead
Deal, It's not is it astep forward? It is a conservative step

(15:39):
forward. It is a step forwardfor Republicans the bill, no doubt.
The question that everybody's struggling with thisis it enough? Is it enough given
the weight and the opportunity that youhave with the dead ceiling and what you
can negotiate out of that. Andthankfully Kevin McCarthy and I give him nothing
but praise for this. He's stickingby the seventy two hour rule, making
sure that we got the text ofthe bill last night, and we're going

(16:02):
to be voting on this probably onWednesday. Everybody has the opportunity to review
this roughly ninety nine one hundred pages. I haven't committed yes or no yet.
I'm taking that seventy two hours toreview it and decide for myself.
You know, we talked about studentloan bailout. Is it enough to say
that we're going to make students startpaying back those loans in sixty days and

(16:22):
let the Supreme Court deal with that. Is it enough that we're not ending
the eighty seven thousand IRS workers forever, but that we're taking care of it
for the next year. Those arekind of the way some of these things
are being looked at. Their absolutelyadvances forward. It's conservative policy, it's
good things. I can't say thatI've read anything negative in it whatsoever.
The calculation, I think for everybodyis simply is it enough? And I

(16:47):
would argue that probably it's not.But there's two more items there that are
worth mentioning. Our requirements start repayingstudent loans. Student loan debt forgiveness would
be off the table people, Imean, just outright for giving the loan.
But then again they're waiting on theSupreme Court. The Supreme Court's going
to have to make the final ruleon this, but it would require repayment

(17:08):
of student loans here starting shortly.The other item that he mentioned is the
IRS. It puts a delay onhiring all those IRS agents. Does it
eliminate it completely, No, itdoesn't. But it puts a delay on
it for the next year, whichhopefully it's enough time for Congress to act

(17:29):
to get it to get it removed. I don't know if they will remove
it, there's no guarantee that theywill, but at least it delays those
additional IRS agents and the money topay for those IRS angels, which is
a significant sum of money. AndI think we all feel pretty confident how
that how the IRS was going tobe used, Why what those agents were
going to be for. All right, take a little break back with morning

(17:51):
Moment, Jimmy Barrett show here ata nine fifty KPRC. All right,
Well, the I was gonna say, the the eighty eight session of the

(18:12):
Texas State Legislature is wrapped up andit's over and it's done, but it
is not. It is going tocontinue. It's going to continue because the
governor has called an immediate special sessionto go over border security, property tax
reform, school choice, a wholevariety of different issues that did not did
not get dealt with in the statelegislature. And it's a it's a huge

(18:33):
number of things when you get rightdown to it. Joining us talk about
it from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, as Greg Sindelar, Greg, welcome
back to a nine fifty KPRC.Are you surprised they left so many things
on the table that the governor wantedto see get done. You know,
I'm not sure if I'm surprised.It kind of happens every year where there
are things that they down crunch time, they don't quite make it across the

(18:55):
finish line. Um. It isdisappointing though, but I do think we
need to recognize as a conservative alot of good things that did happen.
But there are some really big thingsthat remain unfinished, and I'm glad that
the governors is bringing them back toaddress those right away. All right,
well, let's be glass half fullto start. But what were the things
that you were particularly pleased about theTexas legislature dealt with during the regular session.

(19:21):
Yeah. Well, I think firstand foremost, we did a lot
to really protect children. Right Ifyou look at HB nine hundred, which
is the pornographic books in libraries andmaking sure that your parent can sent on
that, that is a great bill. When it gets to HB eighteen,
which is kids online and protecting them, and then there's also bills on making
sure that you confirm your age whenit gets into pornographic materials, I think

(19:45):
those are all really good things.I also think some of the really important
things that we have kind of missedis what's happening in higher education, because
we would reformed tenure in this statefor the first time that I'm aware of
in a long time. And wehave the strongest ban on diversity, equity,
inclusion programs and higher education, whichwill actually make our institutions of high

(20:06):
education go back to teaching students asopposed to indoctrinating them. Okay, now
the things that didn't get dealt withand how close they came as far as
property tax reform, how close wouldthat come to being a gun deal?
And where do we have issues betweenthe Senate version and the House version that
they're going to have to figure outhere pretty soon? Yeah, I think
the misses obviously proper taxes big oneI would say border security and school choice

(20:30):
or the other two main ones.But on the property tax side, it
is very frustrating, and I thinkthey really tried, and they tried really
till the end until they realized theycouldn't get there. But the Bay thing
is both chambers agree that compression isa good thing, and that compresses the
compressed the tax rate. Where theydiffer is the House was really focused on
putting an appraisal cap, lowering theone that's currently on homesteaded properties and then

(20:53):
applying that to all other properties,while the Senate was actually looking at increasing
the home stead exemption and so beingable to reduce the value that is taxable
for homeowners, and they just couldn'tcome to agreement on that part. And
so I think that's why I've seenthe Governor really focus on compression on his
call, is because they did agreeon that. We'll see if he broads

(21:15):
that a little bit because a littlebit more wiggle room. But I think
you're going to see a lot ofstuff really move and move quickly on the
property tax side, because both sides, both chambers know that they need to
get something done and Texans need tosee lower property tax bills, all right,
So that one's not so far apartthat one we can see getting resolved
relatively quickly. Well, I hope. So, you know, I think
when you're ninety five percent the waythere, but you know, I've also

(21:37):
built you know, if you've everbuilt a home or building anything like that,
you know sometimes that last five percentis the toughest. And but my
hope is that being here and beingcalled back immediately makes them recognize that this
is important, it's important thing toget done for Texans. And I know
there's there's a lot of great mindsworking on this in the House and the
Senate, and I have every faiththat the Speaker and Lieutenant Governor will come

(21:59):
to an agreement and figure that out. Okay, border security, how far
did we get on that? Howfar have we left to go? I
would say we have quite a bitways to go, And I think it's
why you saw it on the initialcall. You know, we did get
vastly more resources appropriated in the budgetfor border security, but I think that
there could have been a lot moreto done, like that could be done.

(22:22):
You know, we did not advancethe border force that would have been
a dedicated force that would have beenalong our border and helped really the communities
down there and been at where thecrisis is emanating from. Um. We
also didn't increase our laws when itcomes to human smuggling trafficking. Are the
legal entry side to give more toolsin the toolbox or law enforcement officials and

(22:45):
the governor as they try to handlethis crisis. So I think what you'll
see the governors in initially on hiscall has the human smuggling aspect on there,
but I would hope that he willkind of add to that as we
get things done, because there's alot more tools that we could give to
the state to address the issue thatputtle goronment's unwilling to address. Okay,
school choice. Where how far arewe away on that particular aspect? What's

(23:08):
left to do as far as schoolchoice? I know that's one of the
things the governor really wanted to dealwith in this last session. Yeah,
and it's a very important issue tonot only TPPF, but also you know,
the vast majority of Texans agree thatthis is something that they want,
and you're starting to see a lotof other states enact school choice across the
country, and so I think we'llget there. You know, it did

(23:30):
pass the Senate, died in theHouse, and then the Senate revived it
as part of the school finance packagethat was put forth, and then it
died in the House. You know, the real rub there is you do
have certain members of the House,mostly on the rural Republican side and a
Democrats that that don't want to seethis pass. I think there's just a
misunderstanding about what the bill actually doesand what school choice would actually mean,

(23:53):
which is realizing the potential of thesix million kids that we have in this
state. So I think will ultimatelyget there. The governor has been all
in, has been leading. Thecharge of Lieutenant governor is incredibly strong,
and they're really good leaders in theHouse on this issue as well, including
in leadership, and so my hopeis that we'll figure this out because it's
too important of an issue not toget done for the kiss Texas. Let's

(24:15):
talk a little bit more about this, because we had Representative Steve Toth on
our morning show and Katirah this morningtalking about those World Republicans, and you
know it was he said, basically, this, this whole school choice thing
got simon not just by World Republicans, but rural democrats. The rural politicians
were the ones that seemed to bemost concerned about it. And that kind
of struck me for some reasons,being a little bit strange because these rural

(24:37):
systems, you know, they havea far fewer students. I would think
they have a far higher satisfaction rategenerally speaking, where they're public school systems
than the ones in the big citiesdo. Unless I'm reading that completely wrong.
What kind of competition are they worriedabout up in sticks? Yeah,
well, that's the thing. That'swhat I think it gets confusing to folks,

(25:00):
right, is is the likelihood thatyou're going to see students leave a
lot of these rural schools is verylow? Right, Like the rural schools
are oftentimes the centerpiece of it.But what they could be doing, and
I think this is the part thatthey miss, is there are workforce shortages
across the state, but especially inour rural communities. And you could be
using education savings account school choice dollarsto actually improve workforce development amongst amongst these

(25:30):
communities. And that's what we wouldhope, and I think that's the actual
real change you would see. Yes, you might see some kids here or
there that would go to either amicro school or you know, some of
these communities do have maybe approach realschool or something, But I think for
the vast majority of them, wherethey really would would benefit is their ability
to take that money to a communitycollege Texas State Technical College are maybe a

(25:52):
public private partnership where they can getsome workforce training and fill some of these
workforce needs that we're seeing in thesecommunities. The other thing I've heard about
a great sindal or maybe maybe andmaybe this was taken out and you can
set me straight. If that's thecase, But the last time I heard
on this bill that there was moneyin there that the actual public school systems
were not gonna lose any money ifthey had a student who took their savings

(26:15):
account somewhere else to go to adifferent school. They got reimbursed for the
same amount that that student would havebrought in, and then some something like
fifteen thousand dollars per pupil would staywith the school system even if that student
left. Did that get removed orwas that still in there? You know,
as HP one hundred was amended atthe very end when we tried to
Billy, I'm pretty sure that theyput in the version that did include that,

(26:38):
because the SBA dos passed out theSenate did include what we call a
whole harmless for these smaller communities.In case they did, because you can
understand, hey, a couple ofstudents leave, well, that's you know,
you know, significant amount of moneythat could be a job and you
don't have a lot anyways, sowe understand that and then it papers off
over time. My understanding, basedon the last version of the bill is

(27:02):
they put in the what what passedout of the Senate and that that that
Senate bill did include a whole harmlessfor these communities. Okay, so why
if you're a rural school system,why would you be worried if you have
the ability to make just as much, if not more money, even if
you lose a few of your pupilsin the process, Why would you be
concerned about this? Well, you'renot. You know, it tapers off,

(27:22):
so eventually you wouldn't have that money, but you would have it for
a few years until and it wouldallow you to adjust. But I think
ultimately you're concerned because competition, Right, if you have a monopoly on something,
you're worried about having to any sortof competition that could be introduced into
that. And so I think that'sultimately the fear and change is a big
deal. You know, these communitiesthat have had their schools at the heart

(27:45):
of their community, they're worried aboutanything I could damage it. And I
actually think that it would actually strengthenit. But they're they're concerned about any
change that could perhaps change the dynamicsof that. And so I think it's
just change of hard for people.And um, they're worried about anything messing
with the what they have in theircommunities, because, as you said earlier,

(28:06):
many of them are very satisfied withit um. But what we have
to understand is even in good schools, there are students that are not passing
and are not making the grade.Are it's not the right environment for them,
and so our focus should be onwhat is best for the students,
not what is on what is bestfor the schools. All right, Well,
I would agree with one hundred percenton that. So so when do
they get back. Are they officiallyback in session now or are they are

(28:27):
they waiting to go ahead? No, they're they're back there. The call
started at nine pm last night.They now neither house has gabbled in yet.
Well, actually they're gabbled in atnoon today, so they're they're back
to work. I think you're goingto see a lot of movement this week
and next, and the hope atleast and the members I've talked too,

(28:48):
that they'll make significant progress really quickly. I guess we'll see. Greg.
Thanks has always been appreciate your time. Thank you anytime. Thanks to me,
you bet. Greg Sindel argues withthe Texas Public Policy Foundations back with
more than a month and Jimmy Barrettshow here at nine fifty KPRC. I

(29:14):
were just back from the Memorial Dayweekend holiday. I hope you had a
great one. You know, Iwas struck by something this weekend, and
maybe maybe maybe the fauldest mine.Maybe the problem is mine. Maybe it's
just my perception. Maybe my perceptionis off. But um, this felt
less like a traditional Memorial Day tome than any time in recent history.

(29:41):
And maybe that's my fault. Idon't know, but I do know it
felt very strange to me that itdidn't It just didn't feel like Memorial Day
yesterday. They're really I mean,maybe it's because every business and their brothers
open. Nobody takes the day offof these holidays anym or I saw very

(30:02):
You know what I would surprised mea little bit is I saw I saw
a few people, but I sawrelatively few people wearing red, white and
blue, or American flag stuff,or or things that you would consider to
be patriotic. Maybe part of that, I wondered myself, because I really
didn't feel like getting all dressed upin red, white and blue either.
And I chalk my malaise up tothe fact that that I am one of

(30:25):
those people who's not really very happywith the direction this country has gone in,
and therefore I'm not feeling particularly patriotic, So I kind of have to
wonder if that's part of it too. But you know, for those of
us who can remember our own youth, not that anything is the same as
when you were a youngster. Thingsnever stay the same, things always change.

(30:47):
But I remember Memorial Day, MemorialDay weekend is a kid growing up
in Michigan, and I remember itvery well, and I have there's a
couple that I remember in particularly.There's one Memorial Day. I'm not sure
what that would have been, butmy parents were both from the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan. And for those ofyou that are not familiar with this state,
you have the Lower Pennsulan in theUpper Pennisula. The Upper Peninsula is

(31:08):
like Canada. It's really you know, from Detroit to not a big distance
in Texas terms, but from Detroitto for example, to the middle of
the Upper Pennisuls like three hundred andfifty miles, So it's a whole different
world up there. It's it's um, there's a lot more winters, wintry
as the rest of the state canbe. There's a lot more winter up

(31:30):
there. And I do remember oncebeing up there for Memorial Day and going
to a Memorial Day parade and it'ssnowing, I mean not sticking to the
ground snowing, but snowflakes and towardsthe end of May. Now that's that's
unique and unusual that that that wouldvery rarely happen even way up there.

(31:52):
But I just remember that because going, oh my god, it's snowing.
Um. And I remember as akid, because you know, I grew
up you know, in a ina quintessential small town. I think maybe
twenty thousand people lived in the townI grew up in, and we had
a Memorial Day parade. And Iremember my dad always, who always had

(32:15):
two jobs. Always one of thejobs who was teaching, and the other
job was at this time, hesold cars. And I know that one
of the things he did on MemorialDay is they would, you know,
the dealership would donate a car tothe parade, and my dad would drive
it and you know, they'd havethe miss whatever and her court in the

(32:37):
back of the car, and Igot to run it right in the front
seat with my dad down the paraderoute, and I remember that was such
a you know, I remember thatvividly as a kid. That was kind
of a big deal. You know, We're driving in this really nice convertible
and you know, I had thesepretty girls in the back end, and
you know, I had all thesemarching bands and all these other things going

(32:57):
on. And thing I remember aboutit is that we had a neighbor across
the street, mister Willoughby, whoowned a shoe store downtown, and he
used to dress up for the Fourthor July parade and the Memorial Day parade.
Used to dress up like a clown, like a nurse, you know,

(33:22):
with these big balloon boobs and bigclown feet and the nurse's outfit in
the big long eyelashes and the andthe clown stuff. I think that I'm
not sure one hundred percent sure,but I think that might have been where
I sort of started to develop myphobia about clowns. Was was during that
particular time frame, but Memorial Dayused to be kind of a big deal.

(33:43):
You know, wave the flag andmarching bands, and it was a
big deal. And slowly, overthe course of time, just like the
fourth or July it is slowly,maturely lost. It's cache. It's just
not the holiday that it used tobe. And part of it, I
think too, is just, youknow, American values. American values have
changed. We don't have the sametraditional American values we used to have.

(34:07):
Victor Davis Hanson was a box overthe weekend talking about it. Here.
He is, I don't know exactly, but I think they feel that if
they're correct ideologically, then they geta pass on every type of behavior,
and that behavior leads to sort ofthe destruction of institutions. And that's not
necessarily a bad thing because they feelAmerica was flawed and its origins. So
you take our here in California,we're facing thirty two billion dollars in debt.

(34:30):
Why would a council or commission onreparations say that we're going to get
eight hundred billion dollars? Why nota trillion? But to African Americans when
we were a free state that's eightgenerations ago. And then when confronted with
those realities, the commission says,well, we're willing to take it on
installment Or I was just reading,you know, we're looking up at the

(34:50):
tragic death on the subway, andI thought, wow, this guy looks
like he's a career criminal that waskilled. I thought maybe he had a
risk of five to seven. Howdoes somebody in the criminal justice assistant have
an arrest record of forty arrests includingviolent assault, lewd conduct. And then
his uncle weighed in, and Ithought, wow, he's weighing in in
support of his deceased nephew. Maybehe has a criminal record. He's been

(35:13):
arrested seventy time. What kind ofcriminal justice system? I guess ideologically just
excuse felony behavior seventy times. Orwe look at the border, I thought,
wow, it might be poorous.We might under the Biden administration have
one hundred thousand or two hundred thousandillegal entries, but they just blew it
up. It doesn't exist. Wecan't even imagine six and a half million

(35:36):
illegal entries. And we look atthe Los Angeles Dodgers. You know,
Greater Los Angeles has probably got thelargest city in North America of people of
Mexican American or Central American or Hispanicheritage, the majority or Catholic. Most
are still observant. Baseball, alongwith soccer's the national past time and the
Spanish speaking communities here and elsewhere.Why would the Los Angeles Dodgers, who

(35:59):
can pens on this constituency at atime when people are you know, audiences
for professional sports or in decline.Why would they invite the Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence when their stock and create asperformance art blasphemy, simulated sex, pornographic
attacks on the Trinity the Catholic Faith. What makes them do that is that

(36:21):
they're hiring people out of NBA programsthat are woke or they don't care.
But the general theme in all ofthese incidents is that certain people feel they
can take it to the ultimate levelto insult traditional America and there's no consequences.
Well, and there's no there isno consequences for the most part.
Is there What are the consequences forinsulting traditional American values? Dart None.

(36:49):
I mean, there's been there's beenminimal ones for some of these companies that
we've talked about a lot lately,you know, the Targets and the Coals
and the bud Light people and allthat. But generally speak can you know,
you're you're you're you're pretty much allowedto speak any what you want about
American values and nobody will hold youaccountable. I hope we get back to

(37:10):
a point where we can take somepride in who we are and where we've
been, and hopefully get back alittle bit more to who we're supposed to
be. All Right, y'all,have a great day. See tomorrow morning,
bright and early five AM a shareover on news Radio seven forty ktr
H. We are back here atfour on AM nine fifty KPRC.