The 4th of July Eve

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• David Holt on energy and food costs

Episode Transcript

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

(00:24):
This is the Jimmy Barrett Show,brought to you by Viewin dot Com.
Now here's Jimmy Barrett. It isfourth of July. Eve. Is
there such a thing? I guessthere is. I was very happy by
the way last I don't know ifsaying something on the air actually did a
good or night. It probably didn't, but I was very happy last night

(00:44):
that I didn't hear a single testshot of a firework, so I would
appreciate that. But whoever was testfiring on Monday night, at least they
didn't do that to me last night. I don't know if I'll be as
lucky tonight, and I certainly knowI won't be lucky tomorrow night. So
I only mention it because again,you know, we've got pets at our
house, and we've got a dogwho's very, very afraid of fireworks,

(01:06):
and that is not unique or unusual. And again, I'd just like to
get the message out. I don'twant to you know. I don't want
to harsh your Fourth of July buzz, but I would appreciate it if you
would be a good neighbor and notshoot off your fireworks after let's say ten
pm. So those of us whodo have to get to bet at a
decent hour can still get to betat a decent hour and don't have to

(01:26):
worry about the pets being up allnight listening to all that racket. All
right, I do love food.I'd love to you know. I love
food, I love talking about food, and I love Bluebell ice cream.
I discovered Bluebell ice cream when Iwas living in Virginia. And the reason
why I discovered it in Virginia isthat it's interesting. There's a lot of
back and forth between people who livein Richmond, Virginia and people who live

(01:49):
here in Houston. And we actuallyknew some people who had moved from Houston
to Richmond and vice versa and endedup moving back, and it was interesting
that there seemed to be this littlepipeline connection between the two cities. There's
also media too. There's a lotof TV people here in Houston that used
to be in Richmond, Virginia,and I always thought, well, that's

(02:10):
an interesting little connection between the two. So that's how I learned about Bluebell
ice cream. Were former Houstonians livingin Richmond, Virginia, because we didn't
have Bluebell ice cream for a longlong time until they finally announced that Bluebell
ice cream was coming. And thesepeople got so excited. Blue Bell,
We're gonna have blue Bell in Virginia. Oh my god, blue Bell.

(02:35):
I thought, hang on a second, is that store bought ice cream?
Yes, well, if I canbuy it at the grocery store, how
can it be How can it bethat good? Because you know, I
was used to you know, yourtypical store bought ice cream that it tastes
like storebolled ice cream. You know, it didn't taste like it came from
like a dairy or anything. Itdidn't. It didn't taste like it came
from from an ice cream shop.But sure enough it came in. I

(03:00):
thought, hey, listen, thesepeople are raving about that. I'm gonna
give this a try. And Ican't remember, for the life of me,
I can't remember the first flavor Itried. But we tried blue Belt
Elizabeth and I tried Bluebell ice creamwent oh, my god, for store
Bolled ice cream. This is amazing. Now since then, you know,

(03:23):
I've gotten hooked on Geloto more thanI am. I'm blue Belt, But
if I were to buy his Storebelledice cream, it's tough to beat Bluebell
ice cream. You know, theonly thing that kind of slowed them down
on my mind is when they wentthrough that little hysteria scare, as many
other companies have gone through. Sowhen I see a story about blue Belt,
I kind of pay attention to itbecause blue Belt what blue Belt has
been very good at it, Andit's kind of like what Bluebell and what

(03:45):
a Burger have in common. Andwhat they what they seem to have in
common is they're very good at introducinga new type of product for a limited
time. Right, this is fora limited time, and then no matter
how well it sells or how muchyou like it, after a limited time,

(04:06):
we're going to take it away fromyou. And you sit there and
go, I can't get this anymore, no service for a limited time.
When will it be back? Well, we don't really know, they haven't
told us yet, And so yousit there. It creates a demand in

(04:27):
your mind. It always becomes likea cult following. You know, whatever,
whatever the burger was, whatever theice cream flavor was. Oh man,
I used to really love that flavor. Why'd they take that flavor away?
Well, part of it is probablybecause, you know, like anything
else, you're limited in how muchof anything you can manufacture. So you

(04:49):
manufacture it for a while, andthen when the demand starts to fall off,
you take it away, and thedemand starts to go back up again,
because people always miss something when it'sgone. So I found the way
that Bluebelt, well, the wayBlue Belt conducted their business on this,
I thought this was brilliant. Theydid sort of this little contest thing where
they set up almost like an NCAAtournament bracket of discontinued flavors. These are

(05:14):
flavors at Bluebell but that they hadhad that they decided to take them away,
and now they decide, well,we're going to bring one flavor back,
and here are the choices of allthe flavors that you can choose from,
and they set it up like atournament bracket. They had eight groups
of two like sixteen, the finalsweet sixteen, and then the flavors faced

(05:39):
off in a head to head andthen ended up with a final four,
and then a Final two, andthen a final winner. These are the
flavors, the discontinued flavors that competed. They had strawberry cheesecake versus blueberry cheesecake.
Wouldn't you think you'd always have strawberrycheesecake and blueberry cheesecake. Groom's cake

(05:59):
versus red velvet cake, hot fudgebrownie versus raspberry fudge brownie, Cherry almearetto
cordial that's really specific versus gingerbread house. I don't know if i'd like that
one. Mocha Madness versus Timasu,Creole cream cheese versus key lime pie,
cookie cake versus lemon bliss, andtriple caramel versus or caramel if you prefer,

(06:26):
versus triple chocolate. Again, allflavors that you would think would always
be around, right, but weren'tthose They had discontinued them. So then
they ended up, you know,slowly but surely eliminating some of the flavors
until you got down to the finaltwo. And the final two were grooms

(06:46):
Cake versus cookie cake, and thenthey proclaimed the winter was grooms Cake.
One woman wrote, I am soexcited, I've been hoping grooms Cake would
come back for years. Years.How long has it been gone? Years?

(07:08):
Evidently you don't know how happy thismakes me grooms Cake. So what
is grooms Cake? I guess it'slike a chocolate strawberry combination thing. It's
like a chocolate ice cream with strawberryhearts and a strawberry swirl. It's a
combination of chocolate and strawberry. Andthen we have other people saying, hey,

(07:30):
that can't be right. Cookie Cakewas winning by a long shot.
So here's how blue Belt responded andexplain how the results were counted for.
The total votes are a combination ofall social media accounts and the voting on
our website. Ultimately, grooms Cakewas the winner. There's always a chance
cookie Cake could return one day.So there you go. You know,

(07:54):
you get people talking about flavors thathaven't been around in a number of years,
and I'm assuming one of we sincethey haven't it's because they weren't selling
all that well. And then allof a sudden you're building demand back up
again, just like what a burgerdoes with hamburgers. My wife has been
pining away, waiting for the mushroomSwissburger to come back for months, if
not at this point more than ayear. She's going when did they bringing

(08:16):
that back? They great demand.It's smart marketing, all right, quick
little break back with Morning Moment JimmyParts show here an am nine fifty KPRC.

(08:41):
I thought that July starts tomorrow,which means, of course that my
dog's suffering will start tonight, probablywhen the fireworks get started. But that's
not the only pain that you're gonnahave over the weekend. If you're having
some folks over to the house andyou're gonna have a holiday cookof and you
haven't been in the store yet toto buy the ingredients you need in order
to do it. Depending on exactlyhow generous you want to be with the

(09:05):
food, this could end up beinga pretty expensive holiday. We had one
of our listeners said they had recentlyhad a cookout for a group of ten
and the served steak. I thinkthey had steak and a side dish and
some adult beverages. And they spendover four hundred dollars feeding ten people.
That's not unusual. David Holt joinsas president of Consumer Energy Alliance, and

(09:26):
you may say, well, whatdoes he know about high food prices?
Listen, energy costs or what drivehigh food prices in just about every other
high price that we're dealing with rightnow, right David, you said it.
You know, if you're just takeshopping for example, you were talking
about the fourth of July. Youknow, we every time we've gone to
the grocery store for the last threethree and a half years, we've seen

(09:48):
and paid more for bread, milk, eggs, and obviously this week we're
paying more for meat and chicken andpork and all the rest. So it's
getting us really from consumer Enginelyance's perspective, what we've done is just look at
energy policies. That's our primary focus. But energy policies that have increased energy

(10:09):
prices in the last three three anda half years is really one of the
big drivers. And if you justthink about it, just take diesel fuel
for example, everything that goes toa grocery store, every article of clothing,
if you're doing a remodel in yourhouse something like that, all the
wood and sheet rock and all therest is all delivered by diesel truck.

(10:33):
And now that diesel fuel prices area dollar fifty dollars seventy five more today
than they were in late twenty twenty. All that extra cost gets passed on
to those products, whether it's eggsor milk or bread. And if you
think about it from a farming perspective, fuel for farming equipment, electricity and

(10:54):
air conditioning. If you have aclimate controlled environment for the chickens that are
laying the eggs, all that increasedcost then gets passed on. So it's
this ripple effect throughout the whole economy. So if our electricity is more,
if our gasoline is more, ifour diesel is more, then we're just
going to pay more for everything else. So unfortunately hitting the pocketbook for this

(11:16):
Fourth of July, but hopefully thatdoesn't slow us down from trying to celebrate
with family and friends just a littlebit. Just know that you're going to
pay more. I'm glad you mentionedthe diesel fuel thing, because I think
most of us don't use diesel fuel. You know, we go and we
get you know, regular gasoline atthe gas station. Those prices haven't been
so bad. But while those priceshave been fairly decent lately, the same
cannot be said about diesel fuel releasingyou know, from the strategy oil reserve

(11:41):
or shutting down that facility in theNortheast that was storing gasoline after the Hurricane
Sandy. I mean, that's that'snot going to help with the diesel fuel
price, is it? Nett No, it really isn't. And you know
it's there's really been a local,state, and federal regulatory on lot in
the last several years. And youknow that's kind of they've really viewed it

(12:05):
from a very narrow perspective. Andand I think a lot of policy makers
forget if energy prices go up,if energy is less affordable, then you
know, the poorest among us,those on fixed incomes are the ones that
are hurt the most, that haveto make that hard choice between the gallon
and gasoline are a gallon of milksomething like that. But you know,

(12:26):
when when fuel prices go up,when diesel prices go up, you know
the price of everything goes up.And we just need to realize that.
And and if you look at energyreliability, that's another thing that consumer and
Juliance is increasingly concerned about. Uh, and that means likelihood for more brownouts
and blackouts. And with what Californiais doing with what we're seeing in the

(12:46):
Northeast States, restricting different forms ofenergy, not creating enough what I'd like
to call always available energy like naturalgas or nuclear. There's not enough of
that in those states that are comingonline, and demand keeps going up.
So I think we're we're looking forWe're starting to get worried about in kind

(13:09):
of California and Northeast states. Youknow, much more frequently brought blackouts,
which is not going to help anybodyeither. You know, I'm driving along
the Hardy esday headed home, andof course, you know, right next
to the Hardy is the train tracks. You know, all the freight moving
in and out of Houston, andand the and the trains were all loaded
the flatbeds were all loaded up withwindmill turbines. I mean as far as

(13:33):
the eye could see. So I'massuming that those are headed to West Texas,
and I see them every year.I don't know how much we're spending
erecting turbines here in Texas, butI do know this, we're spending a
lot of money on that because thereare economic incentives to do it at the
state level, while there are noeconomic incentives for us to build a nuclear

(13:56):
power plan, or for us tobuild a gas fired a power plant,
or having forbid a coal fired powerplan, even if it's a clean plant.
We are making any strides or anyimprovements here in Texas when it comes
to traditional reliable power are we youknow, we're not doing enough, clearly
not going to do it, notdoing enough. I think the next legislative
session here in Texas, there's there'sbeen already some discussion about rectifying some of

(14:20):
the inconsistencies and our power generation,you know, but demand is going up,
and when you add in AI andyou add in all these new data
centers that have to go on andgo come online to you know, power
our phones and all our computing equipmentand bitcoin and all that electricity demand is
going to significantly go up in thenext several years, significantly like double,

(14:46):
it's not triple. So we needkind of all the energy we can get.
So a little bit of WIN,a little bit of a little bit
of WIN, a little bit ofsolar is not a bad thing. But
they're intermittent, as you said,So you have to to bring on natural
gas, and you have to bringon nuclear because those are always available and
can always be ramped up in akind of the extreme weather days. So

(15:13):
we're not doing enough of that inthis country. It's not just a Texas
situation. It's really really bad inCalifornia and some West coast states and some
northeast New England states, and they'resetting themselves up to have a bad situation.
We're talking to David Hole, presidentof the Consumer Energy Alliance here on

(15:33):
AM nine fifty KPRC. What doyou think needs or hopefully likely will happen
in the state legislature to change this? How can state laws help change the
trajectory we're on As far as powerhere in Texas well, I think there's
been some discussion about adding more nuclearThat's something that hadn't been a serious conversation

(15:56):
in the state of Texas for awhile. I know the U see the
Public Utilities Commission has a working groupthat's looking at citing spots and where nuclear
facilities could possibly go. And thesewhat they're called small modular reactors are you
know, kind of a quarter ofthe size of a traditional nuclear facility,

(16:17):
but produce much less waste and arevery efficient. And so again always on
also looking at ways we can providesome incentives our marketplace opportunities to add more
natural gas power plants while we're continuingto look at you know, wind and
solar, so versifying the energy mix, not restricting energy, not mandating one

(16:41):
form of energy over another, makingsure that consumers, families have energy choice.
We have, we have full fullchoice of all the energy that we
may want to use. Because youknow, different individuals have different needs and
kind of want to look at energyfrom different perspectives. But if your policies
are increasing energy costs unnecessarily, you'rehurting Americans, particularly those that can at

(17:10):
least afford it. And if you'remaking energy if if you're restricting energy choices,
you're making energy less reliable, whichis going to increase the likely blackout
some brown ups. Uh. Youknow, obviously there's a lot of David,
a lot of federal incentives for windand sol there that don't exist for
things like natural gas power plants.Is this an area where the state could

(17:30):
step in and provide the necessary incentivesin order to get these plants built.
Sure, you know, there's there'sa lot of different ways to look at
it. There's going to be youknow, free market incentives, market opportunities
there's ways that the state can helpspeed up the process with incentives. There
are different tax structures that will needto be put in place, you know.

(17:55):
Just give you another example is,you know, carbon capture and storage,
which a lot of these big emittingentities in East Texas along the Gulf
are looking at ways that they cancapture their carbon for their future you know,
emission plans. So that's also goingto require kind of a regulatory structure

(18:17):
and what the local communities get froma tax basis out of that, what
the state gets from a tax basis, how is that regulated. Louisiana is
well ahead of Texas in that regard, so Texas is probably gonna have to
take that up in the twenty twentyfive session as well. So nuclear,
natural gas, carbon capture and storage, pipelines, infrastructure transmission, all these

(18:41):
things are critically important to ensuring thatwe have enough power to meet our future
needs which are going to significantly increase, and then importantly keep energy costs,
fuel costs low and energy costs lowfor farmers and manufacturers and all the rest,
so we don't see this high inflationthat we've seen and these high food

(19:02):
prices that obviously we're seeing this weekwhen we're going that Fourth of July barbecue.
Yeah. In speaking of which,Jerry, even if we were able
to remove all of all the problemsrelated to energy in this country, get
back to you know, President Trump'sprogram of drill here, drill now,
drill, you know, drill baby, drill, even if we can continue
to get the price of the energyto go down, it's kind of finding

(19:22):
an uphill battle to get the pricesto retreat again. Right. It's it's
one thing to stop the inflation,it's another thing to get the inflation to
go back to, you know,to pre Biden levels. Do you think
we ever get back to that thatpoint, especially as relates to food.
Yes, yeah, that's that's agreat question. But I think you know,
from our perspective, consumer energy Alliancesperspective, when you look at it

(19:44):
from an energy standpoint, and theUnited States is blessed. We have abundant
resources, we have great ingenuity,we have great constantly advancing technology. There's
absolutely no reason that we can't seea reduction in the price a gallon of
gasolene, a price of a gallonof diesel. And if you help get
those prices back to the dollar fiftydollars thirty we saw just a few years

(20:10):
ago. I mean, it hadn'tbeen that long, but the price is
since early twenty twenty one, forwhatever reason, the price has been significantly
higher. And you just look atall the regulations that have been added to
the mix that make it more difficultto refine fuel and make it more expensive
to deliver that fuel. So youknow, you remove those barriers without sacrificing

(20:32):
our environmental performance. No one's talkingabout that, but you make regulation sensible,
practical, and you ensure that fueland energy and electricity they're all affordable.
So that's the key. If wecan get gasolene, diesel prices down
again, lower electricity costs, withenergy diversity and energy choice and all the

(20:52):
rest we've talked about, there's noreason to see to think that the price
of all commodities, food, clothing, everything else couldn't come down just a
little bit as well. All right, David, have a happy forward.
Thanks for joining us today. Pleasureto talk to you, sir, appreciate
it always pleasure. Thanks you,bet David Holt, he's president of the
Consumer Energy Alliance. We are backwith more in a moment Jimmy Barrett Show

(21:15):
here running M nine fifty eighth theRC. All right, I've done my

(21:41):
level best because it is fourth ofJuly coming up to tomorrow, obviously,
and I'm trying not to spend anyyou know, great certainly not a great
deal of time talking about politics.But you know, there's a couple of
things I feel like I need tothrow into the mix here, uh,
just just to counteract the fact thatthis is happening. Although yeah, there's
nothing I can really do to counteractit. When you have talking heads in

(22:03):
the mainstream media that are just tellingcrazy, impossible lies about what the Supreme
Court ruling means, I don't knowhow you counteract that. Because the people
who are watching MSNBC and and Cand N in these these other stations,
I mean, they that's what theywant to believe. They want they want

(22:26):
to believe that this is the SupremeCourt, you know, colluding with Donald
Trump, uh, to to beable to make him a complete dictator where
he can do anything he wants.He can use Seal Team six to take
out his political enemies. No,he can't. That's not at all what
the Supreme Court did. So GregGuttfeld, the thing I appreciate about Greg

(22:48):
Greg Guttfeld on Fox. The reasonwhy I like him so much is it
is I like it. I dolike a smart ass sense of humor.
I do. I got a littlebit of that in me myself, so
I can appreciate that. And numbertwo is he can take a topic like
that and make it entertaining, becausequite honestly, that's how you get people
to pay attention to it, Iguess, is to make it entertaining.

(23:10):
So here is Greg Guttfeld talking aboutthe Supreme Court immunity ruling and how the
Left is reacting to it. Herewe go be pigs. So we live
in an incredible moment. It's notoften we get to see a massive hoax
exposed before us and the world.That sort of thing when those in power

(23:30):
is shown as evil liars that onlyhappens in movies and well just every Scooby
Doo episode ever made. It's aperfect metaphor for this Biden mess where we're
told the villain is one thing,but it always turns out to be something
else. Consider yesterday's Supreme Court decisionon presidential immunity. In the Descent So
to My Earth, hilariously frets abouthow far Trump would take it. She

(23:53):
writes, quote, he will nowbe insult He now will be insulated from
criminal prosecution, orders the Navy SealTeam six to assassinate a political rival,
Immune, organizes a military coup tohold onto power. Immune, takes a
bribe in exchange for a pardon ImmuneImmune Immune Immune. But that's all bs,

(24:14):
and it's scary coming from a SupremeCourt justice some Wise, Latina,
She makes AOC seem like FDR everything. She suggests the president would face impeachment
for and then a trial. Butsurprise, the media played along. But
the Libs once again rely on extremefantasy. The president can use Seal Team
six to take out critics, Well, if he uses it on the view,

(24:37):
they'd be called Meal Team six.How would Trump take out Biden?
Make him climb stairs when he slippoison into Pelosi's botox? Switch out Jerry
Nadler's depends with a suicide diaper anda perfect act of karma. He could
time it Romney to the roof ofthe presidential limo. Or maybe Trump could

(25:00):
prosecute his political enemies on charges.Nobody can even explain that'd be new right,
But this decision is easily explained.On one hand, if the president
has no immunity for official actions,we end up with a leader weighing options
on whether he'll have to defend themin court. Someday he'll be more gun
shy than Alec Baldwin's assistant. Butdo we want a president who's immune from

(25:23):
all prosecution? That's all? Thiswas a guide on the limits of presidential
power. But how do you expecta man with one foot in his mouth
and the other in the grave tounderstand that? Yeah? Well, you
know Biden again, you know,helped feel the fire too in making his
explanation of what it all meant.Speaking of Bromney, you talking about Mit

(25:45):
Romney. Mitt Romney with the dogcarrier, you know, tie to the
top of the family family truckster onvacation kind of a thing. Did you
see there's this? There's this,there's a story running. They claims that
RFK junior ate a dog. Ateit, seriously ate it. No,

(26:07):
it's not really serious. RK Geniussays that that's not a dog, that's
that's that's a goat. He wasin some I don't know, Polynesian type
country and he was invited to abarbecue or whatever, and they took a
picture, and this the picture ofhim holding up, you know, a
barbecue animal of some sort, andI guess I could see where you might

(26:30):
think, Okay, maybe maybe thatdoesn't look like that. That could have
been a dog. He says itwas a goat. So, and he
wasn't eating it. He was pretendinghe was eating it. So. But
but these are the kinds of thingsthat happened in the world of politics,
and if you're running for president,people just make stuff up, and then
of course it's up to you totry to prove that they made it up.

(26:52):
And you know, it's like thenewspaper retraction right where they run the
headline story Jimmy Barrett killed his wife, and then it turns out that it's
not true, and so they're askedto print of retraction and they put that
on the back page. It turnsout Jimmy Bird didn't kill his wife,
but it's a small print on theback page. So the story that sticks
is the more sensational story that wason the front page. To begin with,

(27:15):
politics is pretty much the same way. The stories that stick are the
ones that just grab your attention.And may go, whoa wait a minute,
did that really happen? And evenif you were a heart at heart,
you say yourself, Oh, thatcouldn't happened. That can't be true.
Well, there's still some people whoare gonna buy into it. Did
you see, by the way,that Hunter Biden evidently is sitting in on

(27:38):
White House meetings? What do youthink that's all about. I know that
Hunter's dad's right hand man, butdon't you kind of feel like maybe he's
there to kind of protect the oldman At this point, you know,
you've got Democrats, congressional democrats wantinga meeting, governors wanting a meeting,

(27:59):
to go in try to talk,not a running. Is he there to
like escort them out when they startasking him to get out of the race.
Is he there to answer questions becausehis dad can't answer any questions,
or he isn't really one hundred percentsure about what's going on? Who knows?
Who knows? But they're always worriedabout having a convicted felon in the
White House, and they've got oneand we haven't even had the election yet.

(28:22):
Listen, happy fourth of July.I hope you get a chance to
spend some time with family and friends, eat some good food, drink some
good drink, set up some fireworks, but not after ten pm. Don't
scare my dog, but truly havea great, great weekend, and we
will see him Monday morning, rightnearly five am over on news radio seven
forty KTRH and back here at fouram nine fifty KPRC has Ald