Do you like toll roads?

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• Texans for Toll-free Highways' Terri Hall on toll roads

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, what we need is more common sense.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Common breaking down the world's nonsense.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
About how American common sense will see us through.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
With the common sense of Houston, I'm just pro common
sense for Houston. From Houston. This is the Jimmy Barrett Show,
brought to you by viewind dot Com. Now here's Jimmy Barrett.
Well it's Friday. Thank god we made it to Friday.

(00:35):
We've got a lot of things to talk about today.
Here's what the school schools started, right, And I'm kind
of wondering, have you noticed this like I've noticed this,
which is just the do you live anywhere near especially
in elementary school although middle schools and high schools are
not any better, but there's nothing worse right now than
an elementary school. If you live in a neighborhood where

(00:56):
there's an elementary school and you need to take the
road that goes past that elementary school in order to
be able to get to your house, then you're looking
at a backup situation if you happen to do it
during the time that they're releasing the kids. You got
to deal with the buses. But more than the buses, now,
you have to deal with the parents. You know, It's

(01:20):
amazing to me how many moms in particular, but parents
in general, are picking up their kids from school versus
allowing their kids to walk, even if they live right
around the corner. They're afraid to let the kids walk
home from school. And virtually everybody now gets a bus.
You don't have to you don't have to live that

(01:40):
far away. When I don't know about you. When I
was in school, what was the world, it was like
two miles You had to live two miles or more
away from school to qualify for the bus. But nobody
seemingly has taken the bus anymore either. Everybody's getting picked
up at school with two parent households where both parents
are working. How's that happening? Car pooling maybe, I guess,

(02:02):
but he would think carpooling would bring about less traffic.
But nope, everybody and their brother is getting picked up
from school, and that means that the traffic is just
horrendous and the wait times are amazing. You know, their
parents that are waiting in line to pick up their
child from school for hours or at least forty five

(02:24):
minutes to an hour or more. It won Houston HISD
Elementary School. They had a big problem the first couple
of days of school, and these parents were waiting in
line for like three or four hours to pick up
their kids. Here is the report from our television partner,
a KPRC.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Two disorder outside the doors of Houston's Piney Point Elementary
the last few days.

Speaker 4 (02:48):
The first day was May Carla.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Which should have been an easy pickup and what was
your first day of school to their kids? Was far
from it.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Parents lining up here blaming the new principal for changing
pick up procedure.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
It's shuffling more kids out the same doors, leading to
even bigger backups.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
I sent the principal an email I try to reach
out to her, but she hasn't even responded.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
This all leading to parents spending hours sitting waiting, sweating
as they wait for their kids to be let out.
What time did you get here? One o'clock? You got
here at one o'clock. Your kid doesn't even get out
so three?

Speaker 5 (03:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Why because of the exact reason of the first day
of school.

Speaker 6 (03:27):
They wouldn't release them until almost four.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
There's a famous quote from a news story that says,
ain't nobody got time for that?

Speaker 2 (03:38):
And that's the truth.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
But the good news is that it was a lot
smoother today. If we were here yesterday the first day
of school, there's still would have been a line the
principal actually out here parents and putting out the principal
to me earlier she was out.

Speaker 7 (03:49):
Here holding kids' hands, making sure they got to the
right car, trying to get that process much more efficient.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
I just heard back from HISD. They says they've been
refining this process since a new process been put in.
That's what parents tell us. It's a new process.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
District says they're refining the process and it's already going.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
A lot sweeter. We're refining the process. That is corporate
speak for you know, what was the rest of the statement.
You know, we take we take the safety of our
children very seriously here at hi SD. Therefore, we have
implementated some new policies. But LU, if we are refining
the process, what you're telling me is is that whatever

(04:30):
process you came up with didn't work as far as
getting the kids quickly to their cars and getting the
traffic out of there, they didn't work. And I can
almost assure you that there's a new in fact, I
know and from this story, there was a new principal involved.
See part of part of the reason why so many
schools are having these hiccups in the first week of

(04:53):
school is because many of them have new a bunch
of new teachers and a bunch of new principles. U
My wife, the lovely and semi talented a Sicilian princess,
quit her job. She'd had enough, she'd had enough of
working in the public school system. They in the school
she was at. Now they have a new principal, they

(05:13):
have a new lead counselor, they have a ton of
brand new teachers. It's like starting from scratch almost every
school year now. And you know what happens when you
bring a new principle in, right, new principal thinks that
they can do it a better way. They think they've
got the right idea. Well, I'm here now, this is
how we're going to do things. I don't care how

(05:35):
you did it last year. Yes, but last year went really,
really well and we didn't have any problems. I don't
care how you did it last year. We're doing it
my way this year. And then of course it doesn't
go so well, and then doesn't go so well again,
and then they go back to the way they did
it the year before. It's like getting a new boss
at work, right, every new boss feels like they have

(05:57):
to put some sort of stamp on the fact that
they're the new boss. They have to come up with
some sort of policy that was different than the old boss,
even if there's nothing wrong with the way the old
boss was doing things. They have to come up with
a different, quote unquote better way of doing things. Better
is not always a better way of doing things. Sometimes
it's just different, and different does not necessarily mean it's

(06:18):
going to work. By the way, hey listen, I should
have more patience. But the thing that again surprises me
about all this is how many parents are picking up
their kids. Are we afraid? I do know that we've
had a lot of you know, school bus accidents stories
this week. Are parents afraid to put their kids on
school bus? Is it the amount of time that it

(06:43):
takes for the school bus to make its rounds before
the child actually gets home, or is it you know,
just a parent who's home and has nothing better to
do anyway, so I'll go wait in line to pick
up my kid up at school. Could be I guess
it could be. Maybe all of those things a little
bit of all of those things. Hey, coming up a
little bit later, just to plug it a little bit
later on our show today, we're going to talk to

(07:06):
a woman by the name of Terry Hall. Terry is
founder of Texans for Toll Free Highways. Two eighty eight
is going to have a big reduction starting I think
September the first, and it's toll that's a good thing,
but the bad thing is it's a toll way and
it probably will always be a toll way. You know,
we get sold on the idea of building toll roads

(07:29):
because number one, that's the only way we can afford
to build the road. And number two, you know, we'll
just go ahead and once we pay it off, we'll
take the toll away. Well, that day never comes for
some reason, either they never pay it off or they
switch to up. Well, now we're just going to We're
going to spend the money on maintaining the road, and

(07:49):
of course you have to maintain the road for as
long as the road is there. The tolls, once they start,
they just never go away. Back with Morti Mom a
Jimmy Barrett show here on name of nine fifty KPRC.

(08:14):
The wholesale Price Index came out this week, and when
it first came out, it was up zero point nine percent,
which is quite quite a bit for just one month.
And I think people got confused with the consumer price
index and the wholesale price index and thinking they're one

(08:36):
of the same, that that somehow that both look at
that inflation. Look at that inflation. See the FED was right,
look at that inflation. But you got to remember something,
and that is that the wholesale price index is you know,
like the term I can get it for your wholesale,
it's it's what the company that's going to sell that

(08:56):
product paid for that product from the person who manufactured it.
It's not the retail price. So the wholesale price went up,
and no doubt went up because of tariffs, but the
retail price the consumer price index was unchanged. So for
the vast majority of these companies, what they are doing

(09:19):
is they are not adding the extra cost to the
price that you and I are paying for a particular product.
There's a little bit of that going on, but not
all that much. They're eating a lot of the cost,
which is not to say that it's going to stay
that way forever. At some point in time, they'll have
to be charging a little bit more, but it may
very well be within the realm of what normal inflation

(09:40):
would be anyway. Anyway, here's a little bit of an
economic analysis on this zero point nine percent because Wall
Street reacted badly to it. A lot of people reacted
badly to it because I think they confused whole seale
price index with consumer price index. Here's Baron's senior writer,
Nicole Goodkind.

Speaker 6 (09:57):
I was surprised, and I think Wall Street was surprised
as well, and it was certainly an unwelcome surprise. So
the producer price Index, which is basically the cost of
wholesale goods and services, rose zero point nine percent in July,
little under one percentage point. Economists thought it would be
point two percent. So that is much higher than the

(10:20):
consensus forecast, and you know, higher than basically every estimate
I saw. So that's not good news. And that's because these,
you know, costs of wholesale goods and services, basically what
businesses are charging each other and getting charged, are where
rising inflation tends to show up first before it's passed

(10:41):
on to consumers. So you can see there was a
little bit of a negative reaction in the markets today,
and there was a you know, some wavering about what
the Federal Reserve might do come September. Well, if you
look at the CME Fedwatch tool, which is what we
typically use, and that's kind of how markets are pricing
in the chair, it's a very hike. It's still pretty high.

(11:02):
I think we're in the low nineties right now. But
you know, if you looked at it yesterday, a lot
of investors, or some investors at least, we're pricing in
a chance of a half a percentage point rate cut
in September. And we saw Treasury Secretary Scott Besson talk
about that as well. It doesn't look like they think
that's going to happen anymore. And we also see some

(11:23):
some you know, pretty prominent economists now questioning whether or
not September can will happen or you know, if there
could be there might not be any rate cuts at
all this year. It's all speculative, you know, FED governors
and Cherpewell himself has said that September is very much
a live meeting. So I think that this news makes
it more live than it was before. We'll see what happens,

(11:46):
but I think that when you look at the odds,
they're still very much in favor of a September rate cut.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
All right, I'm listening to all this, and I'm thinking,
you know, this is a prime example of why Wall
Street is nothing more than than legal gambling. You know,
they're they're they're they're all trying to figure out what
the Fed is going to do next. They're all trying
these economists are all coming up with these predictions of
what's going to happen. These economists are wrong far more

(12:13):
often than they're right. So why why why do we
concern ourselves with what they have to say? It appears
very just as likely to me that corporations will, at
least to a certain extent, continue to eat some of
these tariff costs, or find different sources, or start manufacturing

(12:38):
more of it in the United States. See, nobody seems
to want to talk about that factor, which to me
is the best news of all. You have all these
companies that are coming back to the US. I mean,
they're still in the United States. They always have been
in the United States, but now they're talking about bringing
back some of the manufacturing facilities. Who was it I
heard one of the major makers of washing machine means

(13:00):
and dryers and those types of things. Those are almost
all made outside of the United States. But one of
the major manufacturers is going to you know, build a
facility or revapp a facility and bring a lot of
that manufacturing here, because that's the biggest thing from the tariffs.
I can put up with a little inflation, but if

(13:21):
we are creating tens of thousands of good, high paying
blue collar jobs by bringing manufacturing back, that is far
more important to me than a little bit of inflation.
And that really seems to be what's going on here.
More and more companies talking about building in the United States.

(13:43):
They don't have to that way, they don't have to
pay the tariff. The tariffs are making building in the
United States more affordable, ironically, because now we're on an
even playing field. We can build it here for the
same price that we can get it overseas when you
add the tariff to it. Now there's no reason to
do it overseas. Who was it was it President Obama

(14:05):
who said that we all need to learn how to
write code, because only jobs you're going to have here
in this country are going to be you know, computer
related programming type jobs. Manufacturing is dead, you better learn
how to do something else. Manufacturing is not dead. You
never had to die. All we had to do was

(14:26):
to provide the proper incentives. Now, MS goodkind from barons
has I think a bit of a pessimistic view of
what's going to happen thanks to the wholesale price index.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy got asked about it yesterday. He
sounds a little bit more optimistic in.

Speaker 4 (14:44):
The corporations that I'm speaking to, the CEOs that I
talked to Maria. Again, this has not been an issue
that's raised. So if it's in the construction side of transportation,
I hear a lot about the delays and time is money,
and the costs have gone up over the course of
the last seve years of these projects, you know, didn't
start turning dirt right away. So I hear that. But
on the airlines and other places, I'm not hearing the

(15:08):
concern on the on the producer side. And by the way,
on the airline front, you look at the decrease and
energy saving real money for our airlines, and so listen,
I was with the President last night. Again, there's there's
a philosophy that a lot of the costs of the tariffs,
which is where the left will go on this conversation,
is being eaten by the corporations that import. But also

(15:32):
in the US, they're absorbing a lot of the additional
additional costs. And so the question will be if we
have increases on the producer side, does this go to
the consumer side? And again, we haven't seen that yet,
and I think the administration feels pretty good about where
we're at that these tariffs aren't going to impact the
the end consumer. What the President wants is more companies

(15:52):
to produce in America, to drive American jobs. Let's make
more things in this country and then we have less
impact from tarra And we don't have that. We don't
we don't have to have the conversation, but who's going
to eat the cost of tariffs because we make these
products in America? Again and again, I can't think the
President enough for driving this policy because he cares about

(16:13):
the American worker, which we haven't had presidents or congresses
that have fought like that for a very long time.
Thank god we have one right now.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
You know one thing that that I gather from that
though he brought up airlines and that the airlines are
making more money because the price of fuel has come down,
And I'm sure that's true, but I also see stories
about how ridership is down, the passenger count is down,
which seems kind of strange because I don't know about you.

(16:41):
For whatever reason, I'm flowing a lot this summer. I
have been on like three flights in the last three months.
Every single flight I took was jammed, in several cases
over sold. So if fewer people are flying and all
the planes are flying full, which they seem to be,
the only thing left is they're not flying as many flights.

(17:05):
So at some point you got to wonder, now, are
they not flying as many flights because they're trying to
keep the airfare prices artificially high? Are they doing it
because they don't like flying planes that are only half full?
You know, they're also flying smaller planes, and they started
doing that when fuel prices got high. They start, you know,

(17:25):
flying smaller planes. My mother in law is coming in
for a visit from Detroit today and she's on basically
an express jet. You know, that's that's that's a rather
that's like a two hour flight. You would think it'd
be a bigger plane. They think there'd be more traffic
going back and forth. But you know, even to big

(17:45):
cities from one big city to do other big city,
there are a lot of express jets that are flying
right now. They're smaller, and they're and they're crap, but
they're more fully efficient. But again, I just kind of
have to wonder, are we trying to keep if we're
an airline and were just trying to keep airfare artificially
high by not having enough seats out there, So there's
a you know, there's a big demand for what seats

(18:06):
are available. Maybe all right, quick little break back with
borning mom and talking toll roads. Next, you're an AM
nine to fifty kPr seeing the Jimmy Barrett Show.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yo.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
If there's one thing we have a lot of in
Texas that probably most people don't particularly care for, it's
toll roads. I don't know anybody who's a big fan
of a toll road, but we have a lot of
them here in Texas. Terry Halls with Us, founder of
Texans for Toll Free Highways. How did we get into
this mess with all these toll roads? To beginning with
Terry well, it.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Really became a baby of Rick Perry, our former governor,
who was trying to find a way to get more
road funds to our state highway fund without quote quote
raising any taxes. But that didn't work out so well
because toll roads are aborbitantly more extensive than your guest
tacked funded three way system. So it ended up turning

(19:13):
into an absolute nightmare for the average community or across
our state. And Houston is no different where we're now
covered up in toll those everywhere you go, and efficiently
you now have to pay scads of money in order
to get anywhere on time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
I'm originally from Michigan, who prides itself on being made
I don't know if it's the only state in the country,
but certainly amongst the minority, there is not a single
toll road in the entire state of Michigan.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Well how about that, we're the ones that would toll free?

Speaker 2 (19:45):
I think I think, I think yeah exactly, because we
have a whole lot more freedom in Texas than they
do up in Michigan. But I think they're the ones
that do.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
Our elected officials love to talk about how the lone
star state is the begon of freedom. Yet these tolls
are like news around everyone's neck, squeezing us and morning
commuters every single day for more and more and more
simply to get to and from or we need to
go to live dairy life.

Speaker 8 (20:09):
And it's wrong and it needs to stop.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, I think Michigan also coined the term freeway because
for that there for that very reason. But here's the thing.
Why why is it that politicians don't seem to understand
that we're paying a toll to drive on the road.
It's a tax.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
I know, it's basically a way that they can write
a new narrative where they think they're fooling people, But honestly,
none of us buy it. A toll is a tax,
and it's a tax for every mile to drive. And
it's not even the way that old turnpikes used to
be that were somewhat more affordable, if you will.

Speaker 8 (20:43):
Those used to be maybe eight or nine cents a mile.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Still compared to gas text on the roads, which is
one to three cents per mile, that's still a huge increase.
But I can tell you this now with this congestion
tolling where they charge you more based on the level
of traffic on the free lanes surrounding those tool lanes. Well,
now it's Katie Barbador. I mean they can charge you
virtually anything with no calf, no limit on how high

(21:07):
those tools can when it's during the peak hour that
everybody has to drive to get to and from work.
I mean, most people don't have a choice when they
have to be in the office. So it really is
gouging our citizens every time they have to go to work,
and it's not right. That's discouraging the behavior that keeps
Our Cindy going.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Well, you know, Terry, it is one of those things
that you don't really even notice how much you're spending
on tolls. Most of us have an easy pass, and
the easy pass is connected to a credit card or
a debit card, and that they take out that amount
every month automatically, and it just it's like set it
and forget it. You don't realize how much you're spending.

Speaker 8 (21:45):
It's so true.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
It's kind of like Mission creep right where you realize,
oh no, this thing is getting out of hand and
you might be paying hundreds of dollars a month and
toll these that are now a huge tax bill at
the end of the year.

Speaker 8 (21:58):
I mean, I wish that there was a way that we.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Had to go back and even though it's inefficient to
go put those coins in the basket, because it does
it's pain, right, It's like pain calls that have to
release yourself from all that money, and it becomes too
easy when it's all electronic, which is why they pushed
for it to become electronic tolling, because it would be
something that would just become part of your normal monthly

(22:20):
pain bill cycle, so that you wouldn't have the you
wouldn't notice how exordantly higher the toll has gotten under
congestion pricing.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
We're talking to Terry Hall. She's the founder of Texans
for Toll Free Highways. I want to ask you too
about foreign ownership of toll ways, and if you don't mind,
I'll tell a little story of an experience I had
in Virginia that I think is kind of the tell
all of why these toll roads that are owned by
foreign companies charge such huge, high, exorbitant tolls. There was

(22:53):
a little tiny tollway, a toll bridge almost, if you will,
that was building Richmond, Virginia to connect the downtown area
to the airport. It was a workaround so that it
would it would cut the distance I think by six
miles to drive to the airport if you were going
through downtown or coming from downtown, and it costs like

(23:13):
ten dollars or more. When they first opened it up
to do the toll, well, people weren't paying the toll,
they weren't using the bridge. They were using the workaround
so they didn't have to pay the high toll. Well,
the company that owned an Australian company, the kept raising
the tolls, like every year they'd raised the toll and
fewer and fewer people were driving on it, and they

(23:35):
kept raising the toll. And if you'd ask them, well
why are raising the toll, well, we have to make
the money back, so if we can't, if not enough
people are going to use it, we're just gonna have
to charge everybody else more. I mean, how's that going
to encourage people to use the tollway.

Speaker 8 (23:48):
It sure doesn't encourage people to use a tollway.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
It's the exact opposite of the way free market economics
actually works, right, absolutely, that really is how we've ended
up with this system where has it's like monopoly, where
there's only one bridge or only one highway that takes
you a certain place.

Speaker 8 (24:05):
And now this one was a unique one.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
I do know the bridge you're talking about in Virginia,
and it was truly an alternative roadway. So what's happening
now is they're taking over existing highways or freeways and
adding a cold express lane down the middle and then
charging you through the nose during peak hours to take
that lane simply because it's congested. It's like, well, who's
falls it that is congested? I mean, you know, at

(24:29):
some point, the central planners in Austin need to bear
some responsibility for this.

Speaker 8 (24:34):
You need to expanding our.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Highways to generally try to keep pace with the increase
in traffic in certain areas. They're the ones that are
all the central planners, and yet they can't seem to
figure out how to get free flowing traffic again. And
you know, there's a lot of arguments back and forth
about well, if you just keep expanding and you end
up like the Katie Freeway where there's sixteen lanes wide.
But at some point most people will either change where

(24:57):
they live or where they were in order to have
their commute stay about fifteen or twenty minutes. And so
what we're having now is just an absolute price gouging
in fest on commuters every single morning for things that
they can't control or have.

Speaker 8 (25:13):
They're not it's not their.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Fault, you know. So now we're just trying to capitalize
and exploit traffic instead of solve traffic problem. And that's
what we need our leaders to be doing, and that's
what they're not doing because now government has the incentive
to just keep charging you money to get to and
from where you need to go. And these private companies
haven't figured it out either, other than they get a

(25:35):
monopoly usually by these privatized tollings in the middle of
a freeway and they get a fifty year contract and
they don't have any cap or limit on how high
those tool rates go, and they just get.

Speaker 8 (25:45):
The gravy train.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
So even if they.

Speaker 8 (25:49):
What would seems to us crazy pricing, you.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Know that most people aren't going to be taking that lane,
they make enough off of those who do pay it
that they actually do bring in billions of dollars off
of these toll facilities even when so few people take it,
and so really it's a rich man's game.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Well, you know, Terry Hall. Despite the fact that we
build all these tollways, we still have amazing traffic congestion
here in Houston. I know you're up in Dallas and
you have horrible traffic congestion up there as well. So
what is the answer going forward? Are we just going
to keep building these toll roads and charging people more?
If that's not the answer, how do we get the
roads built? How do we afford to build more roads
and not charge people to use them.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Well, we've had a gas tax funded system since the
dawn of the interstate highway system. Every time you fill
up at the pump, you're putting money into the state
Highway Fund as well as the federal Highway Trust Fund.
So if the gas tax isn't keeping up, they need
to be looking at that. I mean, I'm telling you
I am certainly not for increasing taxes, but a gas
tax funded system is far from or cheaper than anything

(26:48):
that we see with tollrads. But here in Texas we
really took care of a lot of that funding problem
without raising taxes by increasing funds to the state highway funds,
basically taking money we were already paying, like vehicle sales tax.
You know, that is a huge has to be sum
that a lot of people pay when they have to
get a new vehicle, and that was going to the
general fund instead of into our state highway fund. So

(27:09):
slowly we've been moving those funds over and now Textile
is truly washed with cash. There's really no excuse why
they're not keeping up other than the fact that we
have a lot of people moving here very quickly, and
so that influx does create more suggestion than anticipated. But
at the end of the day, these guys have the money.
And in fact, there's orange counts everywhere all over the state,
and you see it both in the mesaplex and in

(27:30):
the Houston area and across the state. And it's really
a matter of trying to how we keep up right
and how do they plan where that congestion is going
to take place first and address that in order of priority.
And that's what these guys that have been trained to do, that's.

Speaker 8 (27:47):
Why they go to school and all of these you know.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
There's all these traffic planners and engineers out there and
civil engineers. That's their job. And so we need to
get back to plane, Demila. Let's get those highways expanded.
Let's anticipate, hey, where those areas of growth are going
to be, and let's get it done because it's certainly
not because they don't have the money.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
All right, Terry Hall, thank you, pleasure to talk to
you as always. You take care. Thanks, Jimmy, stay out
of the traffic jams. Terry Hall, founder of Texans for
Toll Free Highways. Back with more in a moment, Jimmy
Bart show. You're an AM nine to fifty KTRC.

Speaker 5 (28:34):
All right.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
I thought we talked a little culture to wrap up
our show today, the culture war here in the US
and the Kennedy Center Honors. I guess let's start with
the Kennedy Center honors. You saw that list from President Trump.
President Trump now heads up the Kennedy Center. He's the chairman.
He has gotten work done there to get the place

(28:58):
back up, to back up the stuff as far as
renovating it. He has put together a board of advisors,
including Lee Greenwood, who we're going to hear from here
in just a second. You know, the God blessed the
USA guy. He's on the board. Sylvester Stallone is going
to get a Kennedy Center honor. Also, Kiss is going

(29:20):
to get a Kennedy Center honor. Gloria Gaynor is going
to get one, and the progressive left is urging Gloria
Gaynor to boycott the Kennedy Center Honors. Please don't go
and accept award from that nazi Donald Trump. Of course,
she's African American, right, So I guess they think that
of all the people, the rest of them are white dudes.

(29:43):
Stallone is a conservative, he's a Trump supporter, So they're
not going to convince Stallone not to do it. So
they're going to try to find somebody who's willing to
boycott the awards. Lee Greenwood got asked about that. Here
is Lee Greenwood yesterday.

Speaker 5 (29:57):
I defend, of course, Gloria, and she just this wonderful honor.
I really am so proud of the President honoring these
five great artists. And as a member of the board
at the Kennedy Center, we couldn't have got five better
appointees into these Kennedy Honors this year for twenty twenty five.

(30:19):
So thank you, mister President for getting that done. And
by the way, the reconstruction of the building, the fatuous
building that for so long has been the premier performing
arts center for the United States of America.

Speaker 8 (30:29):
It's back to its greatest very shortly.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Really.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
Some say he shouldn't be involved in the Kennedy Center
at all, and that it's really a waste of time.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Watch this.

Speaker 7 (30:38):
Every minute in the White House you're not spending on
top priorities is a minute loss for the American people.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Which drives me nuts about this. Whether it's the Kennedy Center, whether.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
It's the South Lawn, whether it's the ballroom, is there's
so many resources being spent on not the right stuff.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
All of this effort on.

Speaker 7 (30:56):
This ridiculous stuff is taking away from all the resources
that could be put on actually prioritizing the kitchen table
issues for American people.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
You know, I see that as shortsightedly. The culture is
important and the president does have influence on it, and
goodness knows, a guy is a cultural center and taste maker.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Your reaction to that.

Speaker 5 (31:16):
President Trump is also a human being, and you can't
just work, work, work, work work. He doesn't sleep much,
and he does have his hands on almost everything that's
going on. When any interviewer asks him a question, he
always has the immediate answer. For him to take a
moment to be artistic, and he is artistic. He's a
good judge of music. He told me he was, and
I believe him too. And to have charge of the

(31:38):
Kennedy Center, I'm so proud to work with them.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
That's liger in a leaguering would have God blessed the
Usay all right. The thing I resent about that whole commentary,
which came from MSNBC, by the way, is they can't
come up with any other reason to criticize what he's
doing with the Kennedy Said or other to say, well,
he can't possibly have time to do house these to
be president of the United States, and he's gonna, you know,

(32:02):
host a show Kenny Center honors and pick these people
and blah blah blah blah blah. Listen, this guy has
already proven time and time again he's a dynamo. He
can do anything. He can walk in chew gum at
the same time, he can handle it. He has done
more in his first not even nine months yet in

(32:23):
the White House than his predecessor did in four years,
or the or any of his other predecessors. Nobody has
gotten the amount of things done in such a short
period of time as President Trump has. It's just, you know,
you're barking up the wrong tree, y'all. All right, one
more for you here, because I always liked to end
Friday's with a little bit of a chuckle if we can.
And that's Greg Guttfield. You know, this kind of follows

(32:45):
nicely with the whole Kennedy Center on the thing because
President Trump does seem to be shifting the culture, and
that's a good thing. Here's Greg Guttfield talking about the
culture shift he thinks we're going through right now.

Speaker 7 (32:59):
The culture is shifting, and you can feel it, can't you.
It's like when Nirvana came around and suddenly I could
book Motley Crewe for my birthday party. For years, the
left owned the culture. They told us what was funny
and what was offensive. At any moment, you'd be canceled
for outlandish opinions like maybe that Miss America shouldn't be

(33:20):
able to pee standing up. But then it happened the
flip together. We told the woke left to stick their
scolding where the sun don't shine, you know, Michael Moore's feet.
And it's more than satisfying, it's liberating because America is
fun again. For instance, Trump's planning a UFC fight at

(33:42):
the White House. I hear, I hear, all right, right,
I hear they're gonna make Nancy Pelosi the ring girl
and hold up the number of facelifts she had this week.
Then there's the Kennedy Center Honors where Trump honored Kiss

(34:04):
and sliced alone. You know, if it were still Joe Biden,
he would have picked his favorite band, The Visiting Angels.
They do a killer rendition of sarahwa to Heaven. Hollywood

(34:25):
must feel like a cannibal at potluck because they keep
getting served middle fingers. Director Taylor Sheridan is making anti
woke shows that dominate the ratings. Yellowstone became a huge
series that spawned two prequels and five spinoffs. And who
can forget this moment from Landman.

Speaker 9 (34:42):
You want to guess how much all it takes to
lubricate that thing? Or Winter Rison and his twenty year
lifespan ey won't offset the carbon footprint of making it.
We have one hundred and twenty year petroleum based infrastructure.
Our whole lives depend on it, and hell, it's in
everything road. We came in on the wheels on ever

(35:02):
car ever made, including yours, sent tennis rackets and lipstick
and refrigerators and anti histamines, soap, handloation, garbage bags, fishing boats,
you name it.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Every Wow.

Speaker 7 (35:23):
On Netflix, a defense of fossil fuels.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
That's pretty basic, isn't it? And well overdue, well overdue.
Hey listen, you'll have a great weekend. Thanks for listening.
I'll see you Monday morning, bright, early five am over
our news radio seven forty KTRH. We are back here
at four on a nine fifty KPRC