Feeding the Firefighters

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• Feeding the firefighters
• 51st State

Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:07):
The youth common breaking down the world's nonsense about how
American common sense.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Will see us through With the common sense of Houston,
I'm just pro common sense for Houston.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
From Houston. This is the Jimmy Barrett Show, brought to
you by viewind dot Com. Now here's Jimmy Barrett.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
All right, welcome to our show today. Sorry, mister, yesterday
I was doing. It was embaseing an event for the
Spring Fire Department. We live in Spring and one of
the things that we did when we first moved here
nine years ago now is we wanted to kind of
get in touch with our first responders and see what

(00:54):
we could do to just become a part of the community.
And so we decided Elizabeth decided this was her idea
that she wanted to feed the firefighters. I said, well,
first of all, do you understand how much food these
people eat, because you're not making a little batch. If
you're gonna go to a firehouse with whatever it is,

(01:14):
you're gonna be making it by the gallon. Okay, just
so you understand that. She said, no, that's fine. I'm Italian.
I know how to cook for lots of people. I
just don't know how to cook for two people, Okay,
So we decided that we're going to feed the firefighters
spaghetti because my wife, as you can imagine being Sicilian,
makes pretty good spaghetti. And she decides she was going

(01:35):
to do that. And then as it turned out, well,
we had one firehouse that we were going to adopt.
That's the firehouse that serves the area that we live in.
So if we ever had a fire, those would be
the firefighters that would be responding. And we you know,
there were gonna be five or six guys, but they
had like three or four different shifts.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
So we did.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
We came back like four times, you know, with just
huge vats of spaghetti every time we did it, and
eventually we managed to feed all the firefighters and then
word got around and before you know it, every firehouse
in Spring one and f spaghetti. So we couldn't we
couldn't fulfill that. That was just that was just crazy

(02:15):
to try to do that. But we've had we've had
a close relationship with them ever since. And they opened
up a new firefighter training center, the WW Cotton Center
Training Facility for Spring Fire Department. They had their grand
opening yesterday and they asked to me, bye, we come
out m see it. It was like at ten o'clock
in the morning, and that would normally be when I'd

(02:35):
be working on this show. So that's that's where I
was yesterday. I hope you don't mind, just trying to
help out our first responders in the spring. So today,
let's get caught back up again. We've got the president
who is in China. Yesterday they had a Summa meeting,
and then they had a state dinner last night. No,
not a steak dinner, a state dinner last night. I

(02:58):
don't know what they had on the menu. And they
were toasting each other and you know, make it out like, oh, yeah,
we're you know, we're you know, uh, China's president's talking
about how we need to have a closer partnership and
a relationship and blah blah blah blah blah. And I
don't buy that for a New York minute, because the
only reason why China would want to get close to

(03:18):
US is to steal our technology and then use it
against us, because that's what China does. That's what China
wants to do. China is not our friend. China's not
ever going to be our friend. At least in my estimation,
they're never going to be our friend. And maybe maybe
President Trump has a similar motivation. I don't know. He
took all these business people with him, I mean, just

(03:39):
a ton of CEOs, apples, CEO Elon musk Is on
the trip. Presumably, I guess to talk about technology and
AI and I don't know if they're going to bring
up the topic of stealing our technology or not, but
I think there may be. The business owners are trying
to figure out because that's a big, huge market, they're
probably trying to figure out, well, how can we make

(03:59):
money for this? How can we turn this into a
money making adventure for our business because there's like a
bazillion people in China and if we can, if we
can sell our products to them, then yeah, that'd be great.
Wouldn't it be nice if they bought more stuff from
us and we bought less stuff from them. In an
ideal world, that's you know, we'd even out the trade imbalance.

(04:19):
That would be a good thing. And in an ideal world,
China would stop buying oil from Russia and from in
particularly Iran, especially Iran, and we'd start buying oil from
US instead, and and that would make sense. So there
are some things that do make sense. So I thought
we'd talked about it a little bit today. Let's let's

(04:39):
start with this one. Here is a guy, former Navy
captain of his name is Brent Sadler. He seems to
think that we have all the leverage when it comes
to negotiating with the Chinese. I don't think that's the case,
but he seems to think so. So here are his
thoughts on where negotiations are at and could be going.

Speaker 5 (04:59):
But China, this is not a quid pro quo exchange
the Chinese.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Right now.

Speaker 5 (05:04):
We're in a very weak position international law and actually
in the military balance in this case is all on
the US side. And so the Chinese that need to
find a way in which they can accommodate this new
reality and try to secure their interest. It's really not
I think appropriate this time for the United States to
be considering any concessions to get that from the Chinese.

Speaker 6 (05:26):
Now, the new price tag for the around war is
gone up twenty nine billion dollars. That's what four billion
higher than what the administration told lawmakers last month.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Twenty nine billion?

Speaker 6 (05:38):
Is there not political support to keep paying out this
kind of money.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Well, I think so.

Speaker 5 (05:42):
I mean, a lot of that cost is to replenished
munitions that we've needed to do for many years. So
this is a compounded cost. It's now finally getting the
daylight that it deserves. But it's a small down payment
on actually getting ourselves in a very strong and I
guess resilient posture with in regards to the Chinese, as
we're in a very long term new Cold war that

(06:04):
some people would say, so we have to make some
of these investments so that we're not into a bigger war.

Speaker 4 (06:10):
Okay, So twenty nine billion is what the price tags
up to right now in Iran. That's a lot of money.
And along with that those are your taxpayer dollars. And
along with that, of course, we're all spending more money
on gasoline right now because of the conflict in Iran.
And I'm not saying that we shouldn't be doing it,
quite the contrary. I mean, we know what Iran's intentions

(06:32):
are for us, But as you take a look at
what Iran's intentions are for us, don't we also need
to look realistically at what China's intentions are as it
relates to their relationship with the United States, and that's
why I asked our listeners this morning, how do you
feel about potentially doing more business with China? Is this

(06:56):
something you want to do? Do you want to sell
technology to China? Do you want them to be able
to compete on things like AI with us? Do you
want them to have more American products? In fact, they
had to like a trade deal that they finally renewed

(07:16):
involving US beef, and I'm thinking to myself, at wait
a minute, why are we going to send us beef
to China? Beef prices already high enough. We don't have
enough beef supply in our own country to export it
to China right now, at least not until we get
our herds back up to where we need them to be.
So anyway, asking our listeners this morning their thoughts on

(07:36):
doing business with China. Do you want to do business
with your enemy?

Speaker 7 (07:39):
Hey, Jimmy goes from granger Land Regarding China, I think
it's one of those things of you keep your friends
closed and your enemies closer. Bobby for Mumble, My thought
is we are first world country. We might as well
act like it and service the world. So I say, yes,
keep your friends closer, enemies closer. That's all so what

(08:00):
I say. And since it's known that they're an enemy
at least when it comes to the government aspect of it,
and might as well keep them in your back pocket,
know where they are and what they're doing, how they're
doing it.

Speaker 8 (08:13):
See Jimmy Sean from pass It.

Speaker 9 (08:14):
You know, I think it's a great idea. China could
be our fifty first state.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Yeah, I had China. Canada could be our fifty first state.
Who else? Iceland, Greenland, Venezuela, Venezuela cold be our fifty
first state. How about China? That'd be That would be
a big state. We already have enough socialists in this country.
We don't need to bring. We don't need to import anymore.

Speaker 10 (08:42):
David and Oakridge.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Should we be doing business with China?

Speaker 9 (08:46):
What's the old saying keep your friends close, your enemy's closer.

Speaker 8 (08:50):
Skip from Webster. I think we're pretty well stuck with China.
A lot of American manufacturers moved over there because labor
was cheap. We could doing business with China, and the
way we hate high gasoline right now, everything that we touch,
every commodity we use would be like the way we
feel about high gasoline.

Speaker 4 (09:09):
Right now, all right, I guess we're going to stick
with keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Huh. Okay,
take a little break back with Morning Mama Jimmy Baird
Show here on AM nine fifty KPRC. All Right, So

(09:42):
I brought up the fifty first state thing in the
last segment because we have a lot of people that
President Trump are a lot of countries that President Trump
has touted as a potential fifty first United State, including
the entire country of Canada. The Canadians did much care
for that, Iceland Greenland for strategic reasons. Venezuela. Yeah, the

(10:09):
President actually did bring that up. Venezuela. I'm assuming that's
because of all the oil any any country that has
something that we really want either from a security standpoint both.
I guess it's all security. Whether you're talking about, you know,
trying to keep missiles from coming into the country or
you're talking about fossil fuels, it all has to do

(10:32):
with security. So we had a guest on this morning
on a morning show on katr. H's name is Ben Whedon,
chief political correspondent at just the News. Here's my conversation
with him about whether or not he really thinks Trump
is serious when he says Venezuela should become the fifty
first state. Should we should we add Venezuela to the

(10:52):
list of Iceland and Greenland and Puerto Rico and all
these other places that we keep talking about making the
fifty first date.

Speaker 10 (11:03):
Well, President Trump seems to think so so.

Speaker 11 (11:05):
Earlier this week, he spoke to Fox News and said
he was seriously considering it.

Speaker 10 (11:09):
Now what to make of that?

Speaker 11 (11:11):
This is hardly the first time he's talked about, you know,
adding additional territory to the US, and he's doubled down
a little bit this week by posting pictures of maps
with Venezuela covered in the American flag and other such things.
But this is not the first time that he's made
some kind of mention of it, So it's not exactly
a one off comment, and people are making more of

(11:33):
it because he's previously suggested that after he's done with
his time in the White House, he would consider running
for president of Venezuela against Delsi Rodriguez, that's the current
acting president.

Speaker 10 (11:46):
And you know, he's insisted that they really love him
down there.

Speaker 11 (11:49):
And you know, if you go by any random TikTok trend,
which is, you know, after Nicholas Manderro got ousted, he
may have a point. There's certainly a good degree of
popular sentiment among the Venezuelan xpac communities. So how indicative
of that in the inside Venezuela itself.

Speaker 10 (12:10):
Who knows. But broadly speaking, I don't see.

Speaker 11 (12:13):
It as a literal we're going to add Venezuela in
the sense that it will be the same color on
the map.

Speaker 4 (12:19):
Right.

Speaker 11 (12:19):
But he's but if you take a look at what's
been going on with some of these other places he's
talked about bringing into the fifty first state or annexing,
because you remember the Panama Canal story.

Speaker 10 (12:31):
What winds up actually happening when he.

Speaker 11 (12:34):
Talks about this is he secures some kind of deal
where the US gets military or economic access that they
didn't previously have in Greenland. They were mostly able to
settle that the original issue with annexing that territory was
really natural resources in military security in the Arctic Circle

(12:56):
against Russia. And after all of that fuffle with are
we going to buy it or are we just going to
take it.

Speaker 10 (13:03):
They ended up making a little bit of the deal.

Speaker 11 (13:05):
To expand American access and economic opportunities up there in
the Panama Canal.

Speaker 10 (13:12):
After he said they were going to annex that, he wound.

Speaker 12 (13:15):
Up securing a deal to buy a plant of course,
that were under the control of the planet at the time,
and you wind up securing economic access to this critical waterway.
Most likely anything we'd see in Venezuela would follow that
kind of pattern.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
Yeah, and I see this as a negotiation tool. Ben Whedon,
what do you think. I think this, with all these cases,
is about negotiating something he wants for the United States.
Like tried the same thing. He was going to make
Canada the fifty first state, and the Canadians didn't seem
to appreciate it as much as some of these other
countries did. I don't that may have backfired as a
negotiation tool with Canada.

Speaker 11 (13:52):
Yeah, I mean, it definitely makes sense as a negotiation tool.
And with the Venezuelans, who you have just had their
president evact right out of the right out of the
presidential palace, they have a little bit more reason to
maybe take some of what he has to say seriously.
And you know, Where where things are with Venezuela now
is we're trying to negotiate American companies coming back into

(14:16):
the country. This is a major oil supply area and
and that's going to have a lot of long term
geopolitical ramifications. So the idea would be get American companies in,
get the oil production boosted back to where it was
at least before Hugo Chavez, the original socialist takeover in

(14:36):
Venezuela that started seeing a lot of the cronyism and
the decline in their production. So from a broad standpoint,
if you're Delsi Rodriguez and you're in Caracas, you're running
the government and your predecessor, you know, special forces from
America just showed up and he yanked ab out of
there to go up to New York to face trial,

(14:59):
which is a not unprecedented but pretty crazy thing when
you think about it. And this was only a few
months ago. So when he has when Trump is talking about, hey,
Venezuela's going to be the fifty first state and you're
in her position, that doesn't seem quite as far fetched
as it might from the.

Speaker 4 (15:18):
Mike might actually believe it is what I think he's
trying to say yeah, both maybe, I mean I think
we know better. Hell, Puerto Rico, we haven't even made
Puerto Rico the fifty first state, nor quite frankly, do
we want to. Democrats want to. But from a practical standpoint,
they these things that are all listed is fifty first state.

(15:40):
The only one that he mentioned as a potential fifty
first state that we really have quite a bit in
common with would be Canada, because the language is the same,
our heritage is pretty much very similar. We're both assended
from the British Commonwealth. But that's pretty much where the

(16:01):
similarities end. Certainly Venezuela. We don't even speak the same
language as Venezuela. So from a practical standpoint, now that
it doesn't make sense. But then again, this is not
about practicality, right, This is this is about trying to
negotiate or getting some things that you want from somebody,
and it's just a findly veiled threat that, hey, you know,

(16:24):
either you go along with what we're trying to accomplish here,
or we're going to talk about taking you over. Kind
of a thing. It worked with, as he just said,
it worked with with Greenland. We ended up getting you know,
the cooperation we needed from them. All right, as long
as we're on that topic too, yep, And back to
China here for just a second. What is the goal?

(16:46):
What is the goal with these Chinese negotiations? Is the
goal to do more business with them? Is the goal
to try to smooth things over as it relates to Taiwan?
Is the goal to get their help in dealing with Iran?
They were talking about it on The Big Money Show
on Fox Business, and basically what it comes down to,

(17:07):
they think the goal is all about just trying to
get China to open up.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
What I love about this, just from the jump here,
is that President Trump is handling his own messaging. So
he's setting the stage for who he's with, who he's bringing,
why he's bringing them, and what he plans to speak
to President she about. He's not going to let the
media or anyone else set the stage for what's going
to happen.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
He's telling us. So what do we come away from
this with?

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Clearly both men have to come out on top to
the two most powerful men in the world. Neither one's
going to give in necessarily. But I think President Trump's
plans have an open China is a win, yes for China,
but a bigger win for the United States and the
rest of the world. If you had a more more
of a democracy, more capitalism in China, how does that

(17:54):
help our economy? So I think there's a lot of
upside here, and if he just plays it the way
he set it out, I think it's going to be
a win.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Okay, well, we'll see. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:05):
Certainly, certainly Trump does something better than any other Republican does,
and that's the messaging part of it. That's something Republicans
have never been good at. But I have to say
that the President is pretty good about that. All right,
coming up in our next segment here because I'd like
following through on stories, especially stories as big as COVID
nineteen in the pandemic and the lockdowns and the vaccines

(18:26):
and all of that. Was the Senate held a hearing
yesterday where they had a CIA whistleblower who came in,
you know, Central Intelligence Agency, who came in and basically said, yes,
there was a COVID nineteen cover up. Not that any
of this is going to surprise you or me, We
get it. There was a cover up. And that also

(18:46):
Anthony Fauci was behind it. So will this be enough
to potentially bring some charges against Anthony Fauci. We'll share
some of that testimony with you coming up next here
on AM nine to fifty KPRC and the Jimmy Barrett Show.

(19:13):
All right, so head a whistleblower from the CIA, By
the way, doesn't that strike you as a really difficult
position to put yourself in. I mean, when you think
of all the things that the CIA has been accused
of doing over the decades, including whether or not they
may have had any involvement in a couple of assassination plots,

(19:36):
I would think that being a whistleblower there would be
kind of a tricky thing to do. That that strikes
me as the kind of thing that could get you disappeared, Yeah,
wiped off the face of the planet. But this guy
has come forward. His name is not that this name
would mean anything to you. James Erdman, the third. He

(19:58):
came forward to talk about cover up involving COVID nineteen
and doctor Anthony Bounci's involved in it. In fact, let's
begin here with at least a portion of his opening
statement to the Senate.

Speaker 13 (20:10):
I'm here today to discuss the COVID cover up, the
national security implications associated with the DIGS investigative findings, and
CIA refusal to comply with lawful oversight, as well as
how we remedy these problems. Intelligence community leaders and senior
analysts downplayed the possibility that the COVID pandemic originated as

(20:32):
a result of a lab incident. Motives are difficult to
define given the scope of the DIGS review. Intentional or not,
the ices actions resulted in cover up, wasted resources, and
a failure to properly inform policymakers. Public health policy would

(20:52):
have been very different had the American public been made
aware that a virus from a lab in China was
going to serve as the foundation for an Emergency Use
Authorization mRNA products being mandated by the former administration. Doctor
Fauci's role in the cover up was intentional. Doctor Fauci

(21:14):
influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position
to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of
curated subject matter experts, public health officials, and scientists. This
included some of the authors of the paper The Proximal
Origin of SARS Cove two and other public health experts

(21:37):
who have been in his orbit for the last twenty
plus years. Some of the scientists were part of the
Biological Sciences Experts Group or the b SEIG, an Office
of a Director National Intelligence Advisory body whose members often
received considerable funding from NIAID and.

Speaker 10 (21:56):
Public health agencies.

Speaker 13 (21:58):
The b SEG scientists influenced national laboratory WMD research policy decisions,
finished analysis, and other intelligence matters, creating misaligned incentives and
conflicts of interest.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
I don't think he said in that opening statement that
the motives are difficult to ascertain what the motives are.
I don't think it's hard to figure out what the
motives were in this. Let's start with covering up that
the pandemic began with a leak at the Wuhan lab.
What would be the motive to cover that up? Well,

(22:34):
if your Anthony Fauci, the motive is you funded it.
It's research you funded at a Chinese laboratory that you
don't want to have to take responsibility for a worldwide
pandemic for so you don't want anybody to know about
your involvement, so you covered up. So the first thing
you do is you discount that it came from the

(22:58):
lab and you bring a bunch of people in and
we're willing to back you up. No, No, this came
from other This came from nature. This didn't come from
a laboratory league, so that it doesn't look like it
had anything to do with the laboratory that you funded.
Fauci is just covering his ass with that. That seems
pretty obvious. Now, what are some of the other motivations here?
The scientists who are willing and I'll put that in

(23:18):
air quote, the scientists who are willing to back up
Fauci in the lie all are getting funding from from
Fauci's office, So they have a pretty strong financial reason
to cooperate with doctor Anthony Fauci. They don't want to
do anything to endanger their funding. They don't want they
don't want to miss out on any grant money. They

(23:40):
want to make sure they get their funding, so they're
willing to go along with it. And then you've got
an additional motivation here, because because we get right down
to it, you know, it's all about money. It always
is all about money. You know, you've got an excuse
for how you can go ahead and fast track this
MRN technology you know, for the vaccines, for these drug

(24:02):
companies who are going to make a ton of money
off of this and not have to accept any liability
if something goes wrong. It's it's the perfect storm when
you think about it. And I'm sure Anthony Fauci is
getting some kickback money when it comes to the to
the drug companies who are going to manufacture or did
manufacture the vaccine. So what there's a lot of motivation

(24:25):
there to do. Now, what you have to do is
you've got to figure out how you can prosecute Fauci
for his role in all this and if you can.
And that's the part that always disappoints, that's the part
where we always get let down is people never get punished. Now,
some might say that Fauci's getting punished because you know,

(24:47):
he's got to worry about whether he's going to be
prosecuted or not. If he does get prosecuted, it's like
like James, you know, like James coming, You've got to
hire attorneys, you got to spend money to do that. Okay, yeah,
but but does that punishment meet the crime because it
seems pretty lenient just having to absorb at turning fees

(25:07):
and worry about your reputation. Seems like a small price
to pay if you manage to get rich off of
doing something like this and to lie about it all
every step of the way. All right, So let's continue
with some testimony here, because as usual, Senator Josh Holly
is a pretty good questioner, and here he is talking
to this whistleblower getting some more of the specifics of

(25:28):
what might have happened.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Thank you very much, mister chairman, Miss Serbman, thank you
for being here. In March of twenty twenty three, the
Senate unanimously past legislation requiring the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence to declassify all I believe the exact
language is declassify any and all information related to potential
links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins

(25:50):
of COVID nineteen. I have some familiarity with this legislation
because I wrote it. It passed the House unanimously. President
Biden signed it into law under I think popular arrests.
As you may remember. Well, first of all, are you
familiar with US law?

Speaker 12 (26:04):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Of course yes, As you may recall, it set a
statutory deadline of just a couple of months later, which
the Biden administration promptly ignored and blew through. When they
finally did release the report, I think we've got a
picture of it here that will appear over my shoulder.
It was all of five pages. Here it is, wait
for it, five pages. Remember the laws is any at
all information? Five pages? Heavily redacted. Even the five pages

(26:27):
the National Intelligence Council was at the time that the
law pass was doing a thorough review or doing a review.
We don't know how thorough, how many how many pages
you've been on this task force, you've gotten a sense
of If it's not five pages, how many pages worth
of information would you guess the United States government was
in possession of related to Wuhan lab and COVID possible links.

Speaker 13 (26:49):
I can tell you that Director Gabbert is working through
I believe two thousand pages. That two thousand they're trying
to get released in the first batch. This is a
the the law states, yes, any and all, but there's
still the requirement to run it through the different agencies
to ensure that there's not some sources of methods. But
there's there's like two thousand pages.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Two thousand pages, two thousand pages. I want to show
you what Avril Haines, Director Haines said to me when
I wrote to her Cinder Bron and I wrote to
her following this outrageous, ridiculous report. She wrote back to
me and said, well, we only we classified. We declassified
only what we could without endangering sources and methods, only
only what we could five pages of summary that itself

(27:33):
has redactions. The five pages have redactions. And you're telling
me there are literally thousands of documents. Why are they
hiding all of this material?

Speaker 13 (27:44):
I can tell you that the interagency process of declassification
is highly bureaucratic, and that is being worked. And I
think you'll saw you saw just a few days ago,
Director Gabbert released some information about the lab.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Was it was director Haines?

Speaker 1 (27:57):
Everril Haines, Was she involved in making the decision not
to release the material.

Speaker 13 (28:03):
I don't have any proof that she was involved in
the direct decision. I have no emails saying that directly.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
But it's her.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
It was her, it's her office, it's her signature on
the letter to me, it's her office that sent the
five pages, and she's the one who said this is
what we have this is all we have. You're telling
me there were two thousand plus documents.

Speaker 13 (28:22):
The first swath of documents that was looking to there's more,
many more than that.

Speaker 4 (28:28):
Yeah, many, many more than that. Thousands and thousands of
pages reduced to five Yeah, I don't think so. Like
I said, the CIA, he is obviously involved in the
cover up as well. I think the CIA is involved
in a lot of cover up stories. And their excuse

(28:53):
always seems to be, you know, their their methods, how
they go about they have to redact all the information
because they have to protect sources and methods and all
that kind of stuff. That's a convenient excuse. How does
that play into this? What sort of classified material could
be included in those thousands of pages that just has

(29:15):
to be retracted to the point where you no longer
can read what's going on. It shouldn't be that complicated.
For COVID nineteen. We're not talking about an actual spy
story here. We're talking about a pandemic and whether or
not somebody working for the United States government or people
working for the United States government had anything to do

(29:35):
with covering up the source of COVID nineteen. I don't know,
do you ever think we get to the bottom of this,
fully to the bottom. Hard to say. All right, quick
little break, We're back with war in a moment, ej
and Tony will join us. The Post Office lost two billion,
that's with a bee just in the last quarter. Another
two billion dollars loss. There's no fixing it. So are

(29:56):
we ever going to get rid of it? Back with
that in a moment?

Speaker 12 (30:11):
All right?

Speaker 2 (30:11):
For some people, this will.

Speaker 4 (30:13):
Just seem like another opportunity for Jimmy to bash the
United States Post Office, and that really that's not really
what I'm all about at this point. You know, I've
said as many negative things as I could think of
to say about the US Post Office. The thing that
I find frustrating, it's not the fact that it takes
so long to get mail delivered.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
It does. It's not the fact that we get our
mail stolen.

Speaker 8 (30:36):
We do.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
It's the fact that we just continue to spend billions
upon billions of dollars to run a business that just
doesn't run very well. It's very expensive to run it.
We have way too much money tied up in it,
and we have way too many alternatives, better alternatives to
replace it. So why do we have to continue to

(31:00):
do this. I had Heritage Foundation economists ej Antoni on
our program to talk about this latest report on two
billion dollars lost in the last quarter by the US
Post Office and what we can do about it. Here's
my conversation with him. Why is it that the US
Post Office can at least break even, EJ.

Speaker 9 (31:19):
Well, Jimmy, imagine that the government not running something efficiently.
Have we ever heard of this before? Look, A big
part of the problem is just simply the fact that
the management does not have a profit incentive to actually
earn a profit, and so they don't care about things
like what the actual cost versus benefit is of delivering

(31:41):
a letter, in other words, how much revenue they're getting
from the customer versus how much it costs to actually
get that letter in a mailbox. They don't care about
how much it's actually going to cost. In terms of
these pension programs, they don't care about efficient efficiently managing
the assets in those pensions, etc. The end result is well,

(32:03):
the UPS as opposed to the USPS. While FedEx, while Amazon,
while Walmart, while home Depot can deliver all kinds of
things to your doorstep for a profit. The Postal Service
still is not able to do so well.

Speaker 4 (32:19):
They continually raise prices. They seem to be I hate
to say it, but I think the caliber well, the
customer service has never been great, but the caliber of
the products has gone down significantly in the last ten years.
I don't know if it's the people who are working
these days for the US Postal Service, if it's the
management of the US Postal Service, but they don't seem

(32:41):
to be particularly concerned about losing mail. They don't seem
to be particularly concerned about how long it takes to
deliver the mail, and they have in some cases. We've
seen it right here in the Houston area. We've got
thieves working at the post office. They're stealing checks.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Oh absolutely, Jimmy.

Speaker 9 (32:57):
It's become a huge, huge them and it's part of
the reason, by the way, that increasingly businesses are not
sending things by the Postal Service anymore. They're increasingly doing
it electronically or they're using private carriers to.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Make it happen.

Speaker 9 (33:14):
And look, I actually know some postal service workers personally,
and I can tell you what good people they are
and what a good job that they do. But the
fact of the matter is there are a lot of
bad apples that are spoiling it. You can say for
everybody else. And again, that's why you have so many
businesses choosing to do business with other businesses instead of

(33:37):
with the postal service. And by the way, when the
founding fathers decided we needed to have a postal service,
it was because you didn't have any infrastructure in this country.
It was because you didn't have any private alternatives.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
But now you do.

Speaker 9 (33:52):
Now there is no reason to have to keep a
public entity like the postal Service going. The free market
has already provided the alternative.

Speaker 4 (34:01):
Problem is is that Congress doesn't seem to want to
let it go. What is it going to take for
Congress to just say we needed to couple ourselves from
the US Postal Service, We need a phase out plan
for this.

Speaker 9 (34:12):
Oh goodness, I've probably some kind of financial crisis. Unfortunately,
it'll probably take something really severe where people in Congress say,
oh my goodness, we need to start cutting spending wherever
and whenever possible. Because outside of that, every time the
Postal Service does get itself into trouble, what happens Congress
just gives them a bigger appropriation. They just write them

(34:35):
a bigger check, and that, unfortunately has been the pattern,
not just recently, but for decades.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Is there.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
Is there a way to privatize the postal service, in
other words, take no longer be officially a government function,
not funded by the government. They have to well, they'll
have to fund themselves, and if they run on the money,
they go bankrupt like any other company.

Speaker 10 (35:00):
Absolutely.

Speaker 9 (35:01):
In fact, Jimmy, we're actually seeing that happen right now.
It's just happening in slow motion, unfortunately, where you have
so many businesses again who are finding cost effective ways
to do this through the private sector, whether it's FedEx,
whether it's you know, the UPS or a handful of others.

(35:22):
And then you also obviously have other companies like Amazon,
whose logistics networks are so incredibly large and efficient that
they're able to ship not just letters but actual packages
very in a very very cost effective way. So as
all of those things keep happening, and as the USPS
is volume continues to shrink, you're going to you're going

(35:46):
to eventually get to a point where it's it's already
become the reality that the USPS effectively doesn't even exist anymore.
Their volumes are going to become so small that it
will be it will be de facto elimination.

Speaker 4 (36:00):
Yeah, except they'll still lose two billion dollars his lugs.
As long as somebody funds them, they'll still lose money.
I'm talking about, how do we how do we bank
it disappear? How do we allow it to go bankrupt
like a real business, sell office assets and it no
longer exists? It takes an act of Congress. You think
we can ever get Congress to agree that we can

(36:20):
do without the United States Postal Service? Not in my lifetime. Probably.
All right, that's it for today. We are out of time.
Thank you so much for listening. I do appreciate it.
We'll see you tomorrow morning, bright nearly at five am.
Hope to see you this afternoon, or might make that
tomorrow afternoon. I've already been here at four today. Let's
do tomorrow afternoon for here on AM nine fifty KPRC