Does it feel like Summer?

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• Summer is approaching, traveling will follow
• Which are the happiest of the federal agencies?

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Well, what we need is morecommon sense, the youth breaking down the
world's nonsense about how American common sensewill see us through with the common sense
of Houston. I'm just pro commonsense for Houston. From Houston. This

(00:24):
is the Jimmy Barrett Show, broughtto you by viewind dot Com. Now
here's Jimmy Barrett. Oh okay,closer the holiday weekend Memorial Day? Can
you believe us? I think Ialready said this this week. I can't
believe it's Memorial Day already. Where'sthe gear going? It's the unoff the
quote unquote unofficial beginning to summer.Of course, to me, summer used

(00:46):
to be when it gets hot.Now that now we live in Houston,
you know it's hot more often thanit's not, So that's no longer means
summertime. Kids are getting out ofschool this week, that that's a sign
of summer, right, Supper vacationsare starting to be starting this weekend.
If people will be traveling, We'retold this is going to be a super
huge busy travel weekend, especially atour nation's airports. And I'm struck by

(01:11):
something because I saw another story abouthow some of the airlines are changing their
fee policies in order to try tobe able to make more money. Now,
there were already on record as gettingready to have the busiest summer travel
season perhaps we've had ever, andand and that's that's that that part of

(01:34):
it, I guess I understand,you know, we toda. I used
this analogy this morning. I don'tknow, when you were a kid,
did your parents ever put you ona bus to send you somewhere? I
remember as a kid, of course, I grew up in Michigan, and
my parents were from the Upper Peninsula, Michigan, which is about three hundred
and fifty miles north of where Iwas growing up, outside of ann Arbor.

(01:59):
And when I was a kid,the only family vacation we ever took
when I was a kid until Iwas probably a teenager was a trip up
north. We did that every summer. We went up for two weeks and
we stayed on a cottage on alake outside of Newberry, Michigan. Really

(02:20):
small little town. Of course,they're all a little, small little towns
in the Upper Peninsul of Michigan,so like going into a whole whole different
world. But anyway, they wouldalways, you know, they would usually
send me up there ahead of everybodyelse, at least I remember a couple
of summers doing that. And theway they got me up there was to
put me on a Greyhound bus.Now, back then, you know,

(02:42):
you didn't worry about the security aspectof it so much. You didn't really
worry that somebody was going to doyou harm or get you, you were
going to get kidnapped. You neverhad to worry about that kind of stuff.
So they would put me on abus and I'd be on that bus
all days. They went to theupper so then my relatives at the other
end would pick me up. That'show we got around. We either drove

(03:04):
on vacation or we took a bus. We never took a plane. I
didn't know what a plane was untilI was a senior in high school.
I mean, as far as goingon a plane ride. That's the first
time I ever got on board aplane. And I used to like the
simplicity of flying. It's really simple. You either are buying in first class
or you're buying in coach. Thoseare your two choices. You know,

(03:28):
there was no extra fee for youknow, sitting in an exit row.
There was no extra fee for sittingtowards the front of the plane. There
was no extra fee. If youwanted to check a bag, there was
no extra fee. If you wantedto have something to eat, there was
a flat feed. This is howmuch it is for first class. This
is how much it is for coach. And it was nice and it was

(03:51):
simple and it wasn't really really hardto figure out. But that's not the
way airlines are going about it thesedays. They are doing all kinds the
crazy things. Frontier Airlines, forexample, is now they got two They
went from two fair classes to four. You can either book basic, Economy,

(04:11):
Premium or Business. I guess businessesthat close to the first classes you
can get on Frontier. The highestthree fair classes offer no change or cancelation
fees when you have to modify yourtravel other than the difference in the fair
In other words, if the ticket, if the ticket at a different data
is more expensive, you have topay the difference, but you don't have
to pay a penalty for changing it. The basic option, they charge you

(04:34):
a ninety nine dollars cancelation fee andthen a forty nine to ninety nine dollars
changing your flight fees, so itcould cost you the better part of two
hundred dollars more. Spirit Airlines saysthey had gotten rid of their changing cancelation
fees. Previously those would cost theaverage passager one hundred nineteen dollars. But

(04:54):
every airline now has a different policy. They have a different policy on how
much the airfare is. You know, how they how they identify, you
know, the class of the planethat you're in. You know, whether
or not they charge you a bagagefee, whether or not you get a
meal. And we all know ifyou buy a meal, it's it's really

(05:15):
expensive. Like drinks, well it'sbeen that way for a long long time.
On drinks, you know, youwant a beer, it's like five
bucks or six bucks for a beer. It's like going it's like going to
the mini made to buy a beer, or you get a little tiny beer
on the airplane. And and Ijust I just longed for a simpler day,
you know, when you you didn'thave all that to deal with,
you just you know, you justyou booked it. You didn't have to

(05:39):
worry about that stuff. And andand I and I guess I would understand
if the airlines were trying to generateyou know that much more income if if
they weren't being used, that theyweren't being blown on. But they are
because as I said, airplanes arethe new buses. It's a flying bus
in many cases. You you goto the airport's the way the bus station

(06:00):
used to be. You see allkinds of people wearing all kinds of different
kinds of clothing. It's not it'snot the dress up experience of when I
was a little kid, it wasa big deal to fly in a plane.
People would get dressed up to flyin a plane. You know,
they would serve you. You know, if they serve you meal, they
would serve it on real dishes,and they would serve you real food.

(06:24):
Maybe they might even give you anice cream Sunday at the end of the
thing. Yeah, it's not it'snot a special thing to fly anymore.
Airports are crowded and dirty and nasty, and it's ceased to be the experience
it once was. But it's howwe travel now, and a lot of
people don't know any different. Theydon't remember or they didn't travel back in

(06:46):
the day when when flying was abig deal and a different kind of experience
than what it is now. LikeI said, it's a glorified bus.
Well what choice do you have though, right, I mean, you're not
going to take the bus. That'sa scary proposition to ride on a bus
these days. And nobody wants todrive. I mean, I wouldn't want
to drive to Michigan or drive itback to Virginia to visit folks. I

(07:11):
mean that's a long drive, that'sa lot of time in the car.
That's you know, get back fromhere to Virginia. That's a two day
trip unless you just you know,are going to drive like eighteen hours straight.
And who wants to do that?So you really don't have any other
choice. So I get they gotyou where they want you, I guess,
is what I'm trying to say.All right, so think about that
as you're making your plans. Ifyou haven't already for your summer vacation.
I know there's a lot of peoplebecause like I said, schools are getting

(07:34):
out this week. There'll be alot of teachers going on vacation. You
know, we got the beach housewe ran out of that that's starting to
get busy. So I you know, people people are thinking about getting away
and taking a little time off allright, quick little break back with more
in the moment. Timmy Parrotts showhere on a nine fifty KHPRC. All

(08:09):
right, we're gonna talk a littlethe government in this segment, but we're
gonna talk about government that's miserable.Yes, miserable government. A couple couple
of stories I saw about that.One of them involves the fdi C.
I'll get to that one in justa second. That one, I will
caution you that there's some sensitive languagein there, but I still think you

(08:31):
should hear it, So we'll we'llwork on that one. Senator John Kennedy.
Somehow it doesn't sound quite as nastycoming out of his mouth, but
it's still it's still you know,it's still kind of crazy. Anyway.
They surveyed once again. They surveyevidently every year the seventeen different federal agencies

(08:52):
to try to determine which workers arethe happiest and the most productive in which
are the worst. And it seemslike every year turns out the same,
every year, the best federal agencyas far as people being satisfied with their
job, people being happy with theirjob, people enjoying their job, and

(09:13):
wanting to work at their job.It's NASA. NASA, Well, you've
got a lot of You've got alot of very educated people working for NASA.
The numbers of people working for NASAare not you know, crazy huge
like it is in some departments.So people have a tendency to, you
know, to be fairly satisfied towhat they do. Just like every year,

(09:35):
every year, the Social Security Administrationcomes in dead last. They have
the lowest rating. The satisfaction rateat NASA number one is like eighty two
point five percent. The satisfaction rateof the Social Security Administration is like fifty
two point one percent. So you'vegot about half and a half between people
are fairly happy and people are completelydisgruntled. And it's interesting. I've talked

(09:58):
about this a little bit on themorning show today in KTRH, and I
got an email from one of ourlisteners, Jody, who wrote this to
me, good morning Jimmy. Fromtwenty ten to twenty nineteen. That was
a pairalegal for an attorney who specializedin social security law. I can confirm
the personnel are miserable. The reasonto me was clear, nobody knows what

(10:20):
the hell anyone else is doing.The more comfortable and confident you are with
your job, the happier you are. I think that's right. That's true,
that's true. You know, ifyou are if you feel like you
have a direction, if you knowwhat your job is, and you are
an expert at doing your job,then you have a good chance of being
very happy as long as there areother people around you who are the same

(10:41):
way. So you could be reallyconfident and really good at your job,
but surrounded by a bunch of peoplewho aren't, and that'll make you miserable.
She went on to write, wehad no special telephone number. When
we call the Social Security Administration.We withstood the wait time just like anybody
else. The average weight time wasthirty to four minutes. If you were

(11:01):
lucky the phone didn't cut you off, then you'd have to start all over
again when you finally got through tosomeone. Only one or two very experienced
people knew how to decipher the rules, why any given person would receive a
certain amount when they could expect theirpayment, why their payment suddenly changed,
etc. Moreover, I would routinelycall three to four times, talk to

(11:22):
three to four different people, askthe same question and get a different answer
from each person. The folks thatwork at the Social Security Administration are put
in a position to answer questions theycan answer from people who've been told,
or have been on hold for verylong periods of time to speak with someone
to clarify a confusing boiler play letterthey received. Ultimately don't get an answer,

(11:46):
and they end up hanging up justas confused as when they initiated the
call. Naturally, people are veryangry, which is reflected in the happiness
level of the Social Security Administration employees. It is a horribly administered office.
Well, hey, she's got experiencewith it. I guess she knows.
They're miserable of the Social Security Administration. Now. I haven't had a deal

(12:09):
with them yet, but at somepoint I'm going to start collecting my social
Security right, I wonder what that'sgonna be like. They're online. The
online experience seems to be okay,But I wonder, you know, if
I isn't that nice to know thatif you ever do have a question and
you needed to talk to somebody,you can look forward to minimally being on
hold thirty to forty minutes and talkingto somebody who probably doesn't know the answer.

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I have to admit that I thoughtfor sure the United States Postal Service
would would end up being number one, and they're probably towards the top,
but I should say towards the bottomof the satisfaction level. I think Health
and Human Services came in second toNASA as far as one of the better
parts of the federal government to workfor all. Right, now we've got

(12:56):
the FDIC. The FDIC isn't reallya federal agency. They're the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation. They're basically an insurancecompany that insures deposits at banks. Therefore,
you would think that you've got alot of people with banking background,
right that are working for you,which means that I would think that you

(13:16):
would think it's a pretty straight lacedgroup. Turns out that's not the case.
It turns out there's a lot ofa lot of bullying going on at
the FDIC. There's a lot ofsexual harassment going on at the FDIC.
Yeah, I know, it doesn'tseem like to kind of place something like
that would happen, but evidently itis. And there was testimony from the

(13:41):
head of the FDIC, who nowsays he's going to resign in light of
all these findings, he's going toresign, but he's not going to leave,
not going to resign until they pickhis replacement, and that replacement has
been voted on by Congress. Sohe's not going anywhere anytime soon. So
Senator John Kennedy, this is beforethe head of the FDIC agreed to resign.

(14:05):
Senator John Kennedy on the floor ofthe Senate. This is yesterday talking
about the FDIC and some of thethings that they have been accused of doing.
It is really quite eye opening.The report tells us that nearly one
in ten employees one in ten atthe FDSC has experienced sexual harassment, racial

(14:31):
discrimination, verbal abuse, or otherinappropriate behavior while working at the agency.
I want you to listen to this. I hate to have to say it,
but I want the American people tounderstand what's been going on under mister

(14:54):
Grunberg's leadership at the Federal Deposit InsuranceCorporation. This is what the report told
us. One Hispanic employee told investigatorswith the clear he got leave law firm
that his FDI supervisor made him recitethe pledge of allegiance at work to quote

(15:22):
prove that they were American. AnotherFDIC employee reported that her supervisor told her,
quote, you're a mother. Youdon't belong in the workplace. End
quote. The report goes on onesenior FDIC official, who had a reputation

(15:50):
for visiting brothels during his work trips. Isn't that special? Sent his co
worker a photograph of his penis Anothersenior FDIC official who allegedly was thrown out

(16:11):
of a strip club during a worktrip because he grew up the dancers.
This official, the same day askedhis female co worker, quote does your
husband eat? You? Say?What? These things could not happen in

(16:38):
a normal workplace. How are theyhappening in a government workplace? Well,
I guess it's not. Technically it'snon government workplace, right, the FDIC
is a separate entity. But still, now you may be curious. I
was curious about it. How many? How many people work for the FDIC.
They have a permanent workforce of fiveand eighty people, forty three point
two percent of women. They alsohave attorneys five hundred and twenty attorneys working

(17:06):
for them thirty eight point two sevenpercent of women. And they have two
thousand, eight hundred and sixty eightfinancial institution examining employees. So you start
working all that together. You're talkingabout over eight thousand people who work for
the FDIC, and this is what'sgoing on, you know, making business

(17:29):
trips and going to brothels and stripclubs, you know, taking pictures of
their junk and sending it to otheremployees. It sounds like a frat house.
This is this is like frat housebehavior going on what is supposed to
be a professional institution. And thesefolks get paid decent amount of money.

(17:49):
Average FDIC salary ranges from about youknow, forty seven thousand dollars a year
for a security officer to two hundredand fifty two thousand dollars per year for
assistant general counsel. Those councils whichI said, how many, I say,
there was like two thousand of them, they're all making over a quarter
million dollars a year. A clerkthere will make seventy two hours per hour,

(18:11):
seventy two bucks an hour. Sothey're you know, they're not poorly
paid, but evidently they are poorlysupervised. All right, quick a little
break back with more in a momentJimmy Bartt show here an am nine to
fifty KPRC. All right, beforeall the day here and a couple more

(18:41):
stories to get to here on ourshow. One of them has to do.
The reason why I'm going to playthis clip is twofold. Number one
is we was done and I youshould set this up a little bit.
It was done in twenty nineteen.It's an interview that then Vice President Joe
Biden gave about. It wasn't twentynineteen, it's twenty sixteen. Pardon me,

(19:04):
it's the vice president. No,I wasn't twenty nineteen. That's right,
twenty nineteen. He's vice president,former Vice president Joe Biden. He's
talking about the trucking industry. He'sdoing an interview talking about the trucking industry,
and for some reason, I guessbecause he was so wrong. For
some reason, this video is sortof resurfaced and now it's gone viral again.

(19:29):
He's talking about trucking jobs in aninterview he did in Iowa with the
Des Moines Register, and basically whathe said was, well, I'm going
to play the clip for you,but basically what he said was that everybody
knows, everybody with half an educationin the trucking industry knows those jobs are
going away, and of course truckersare in demand now more than they ever

(19:53):
have been. He couldn't have beenmore wrong. So here's that interview.
There's two things that struck me aboutthis, and I'm guessing we'll strike you
about it too. Number one thathe was so wrong about the trucking industry.
And number two, listen to theway he sounded in twenty nineteen.
Though that's that's five years ago,and you can tell how far he's deteriorated

(20:14):
in the last five years. Wedon't treat these people with respect. We
think they don't listen to the news. Guess what every trucker out there with
they have an eighth grade education orhigh school education, knows they're likely not
to have a job in the nextthree, four or five years. So
how do you address that. Asfrom you address that, you've got to
provide alternatives. What you do isyou have to miss is the hard part.

(20:36):
You got to go and say,but there are a lot of jobs
out there, but you're going tohave to go back and be retrained.
Imagine if you didn't like school tobegin with, being told of fifty years
old, you're going to go backbecause the everage salary of those people lost
those retail jobs with fifty grand apriest and average age forty nine, and
so you got to go back.So when the President asked me, the

(20:57):
President used to love to it turnedto me in those states of the Union
saying Joe is going to do Henever tell me ahead of times. No,
you think I'm joking. He thoughtthat was really great. Sheriff Joe's
going to handle nine hundred million dollarsRecovery Act. The Sheriff Joe's going to
do analysis on jobs in the future. Well, there's a lot of jobs
out there. We're short on peoplewith the training. So it was Joe's

(21:22):
analysis of the future. The truckingjobs are going away. These people are
going to be unemployed. And thefact of the matter is we have a
shortage. We continue to have ashortage of truck drivers. And it remains
a very high paying job, relativelyspeaking, a high paying job that is
in demand. We don't have enoughpeople to fill it. He couldn't have
been more wrong, but notice howhe was able to. Biden was able

(21:45):
to He may have been wrong,but at least he was able to put
together a comprehensive thought. He's ableto express himself well, you know,
stuttering and staering. That's just infive years. In five years, how
much he's gone downhill. That's thebiggest thing. If if if people saw,
I mean, I think people realizehow far downhill he's gone. But

(22:07):
if you were, if the mediawould play more of these things, maybe
that's part of the reason why thiswent viral. If the media would play
more of some of his interviews andpress conferences and what have you from the
past, you would see just howfar downhill he's gone. All right,
I thought this was interesting, SoI'm gonna share this with you because as

(22:27):
a young person, I was aprolificeer of ice. And I don't know
why. I can't explain it toyou. Yes, I know, if
not good for your teeth, youshouldn't do it. But I saw this
stork and I thought I needed tocheck this out because I used to chew
ice all the time. It's theheadlines. A lot of people chew ice.

(22:48):
Here's why top Dennis say you shouldn't. And I thought, well,
why would I read that? Iknow why Dennis would say you shouldn't.
Shouldn't chew ice? It's bad foryour teeth. You know, you get
a hard piece of ice, youcould, you know, crack your tooth.
But they go into, you know, sort of the neria. I
didn't think they were going to gointo it, says while some people have
heard of piica, and you're goingpika, What the heck is pika or

(23:12):
pica? I'm not sure which howyou pronounce it. It's a mental health
condition that causes people to want orchew or eat substances of no nutritional values,
such as paper, clay, ordirt. Now, I would argue
that maybe ice has some nutritional value. It's water, after all, our

(23:33):
bodies need water. It does itcan cool you down. I think that's
one of the reasons why I chewedice as a kid. Is I like
I like the way it felt onmy teeth. For whatever reason, I
like the way it fell in mymouth and it cooled you down. That
doesn't seem so crazy. But evidentlythere's also a subtype of the condition called

(23:53):
pagiophlia. I'm not sure that's howyou pronounce it either, all these medical
terms. Anyway, It's considered lessserious than peka, but it is recognized
as compulsive ice chewing, which theythink might be linked to an iron deficiency.
So if you're somebody who choose alot of ice, maybe you need
to find out if you have enoughenough iron in your blood. Maybe you

(24:15):
need to increase your iron intake.I don't know. There's there's a lot
of reasons why people chew on ice. I used to chew on straws too,
which is also not good for yourteeth, you know, plastic straws.
I think I think it's I thinkit's more of a stress anxiety thing

(24:36):
personally. I think I think that'swhy a lot of people chew on things
like that, is that it somehowit's comforting, somehow it uh, you
know, it helped release a littlebit of stress. But one more quick
one here, because we're rapidly runningout of the time, and I wanted
to mention this because I think thisis a big, big mistake. You
know, fast food restaurants are tryingto come out with these budget meals.

(24:57):
I think Wendy's announced like a threedollar breakfast item that they're going to have
where you get like a breakfast sandwichthat is basically English muffin size, which
is not very big, and youalso get a few potatoes a small potato
order. I have no idea howmany potatoes you get, maybe you know,

(25:17):
three or four little pieces of potato. And it didn't seem to include
a drink. It was for threebucks. So they're trying. They're trying
to appear to be more conscious ofthe fact that a lot of people who
frequent their businesses are having a moredifficult time affording what it is they're selling.
But McDonald's, I think, isreally on the wrong path here.
Now. I understand that there area lot of places that you don't get

(25:37):
free refills, but most fast foodrestaurants have set themselves up so that they
have a self served beverage area whereyou know, don't give you your initial
drink and you get your own refills. I think that's probably for manpower purposes.
And in the past, anyway,soda is not that expensive, you
know, soda fountain is not thatexpensive to operate. But now McDonald's as

(26:00):
they're going to slowly remove those selfserved beverage stations from all of their US
fast food restaurants in an effort totry to I assume to try to save
money. In fact, they saysome of their franchise holders have already begun
the transition away from seft served drinks. Now it works for Chick fil A.
Chick fil A, you know,there's no self served beverage at Chick

(26:21):
fil A. It works for them, but they never had it. It's
one thing to never have it,it's another thing to take away something that
people are used to. I thinkthere's going to be a revolt on this
one. All right, listen,you all have a great day. What's
left of Wednesday. I'll see youtomorrow morning, bright nearly five am on
news radio seven forty k t RH. We are back here at four on

(26:41):
a nine fifty KPRC