The Last Penny

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• The last penny ever
• The shutdown is over

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
What we need is more common sense.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
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 common sense for Houston. From Houston Way
dot com. This is the Jimmy Barrett Show, brought to
you by viewind dot com. Now here's Jimmy Barrett. All right,

(00:32):
the end of an error today. Happy Thursday, by the way,
The end of an error today. The very last penny
yesterday was minted in Philadelphia, the last penny ever. I
had Kenny Duncan Junior from US Coin and Jewelry on
our morning show at at the tail end of our
show this morning, and I was asking him about whether

(00:55):
or not the value of pennies in general go up
now that they're not being made anymore, and it's like
everything else, it all depends what kind of pennies do
you have, what kind of condition are they in. But
the more specific answer that I thought was very interesting,
and somehow I guess it doesn't surprise me, is what
is that last penny worth? And the answer was north

(01:19):
of a million dollars? Can you imagine you're how tempted?
Would of course everybody's eyes were on. You couldn't possibly
steal that, right, You couldn't possibly get the last penny
and say, okay, here's I'll give you a nickel for
this last penny because they know what it's worth. So
I'm sure that Kenny thought that we'll give some information

(01:41):
here in the next week or two about some sort
of an auction, probably the last five pennies to ever
be minted, and then they will you know, they'll all
be very, very valuable to coin collectors. Certainly there will
be somebody out there that collects coins who's going to
want to get their hands on the very last penny

(02:01):
ever minted in the United States. It is probably willing
to spend more than a million dollars to get get
their hands on it. It's funny to me what some
people find collectible and what they're willing to spend on it.
I guess it's all relative. Right, If you're a billionaire,
and I'm guessing a billionaire would be somebody who would
be interested in getting their hands on the last penny.

(02:22):
A million bucks is no big deal, right. If a
million dollars is no big deal, then why wouldn't you
spend a million dollars to get your hands on the
very last penny in the United States, last one made
in the United States. I just wonder if my jar
full of pennies sitting on my dresser at home, did
the value of any of them go up as a
result of this? And I also asked Kenny about, you know,

(02:45):
whether or not if we continue to move towards a
cashlest society, if we ever get to the point where
we just we aren't using bills or coins anymore, what
that does to the value. Does that increase the value
or does that decrease the value? And that's really an
unknown quantity, he said. You know, what we don't know
is if we ever did go to a cashless society,

(03:07):
does that something do our younger people, some of whom
are going to be born in an age where there
is no cash per se, everything is digital? Will they
want to collect something like that or will that not
have any value to them? And that's something that you
just you can't predict it. You just don't know. Now,
here's another story that we've talked about in this show

(03:28):
several times, and that is are we on our way
towards an American Civil war? Our second Civil war? It
would be anything. It would be unlike anything that we
experienced in the eighteen hundreds. We're in a whole different place.
We're not agrarian society. We're not living on farms making
our own food. We're not riding horses, We're not using

(03:54):
rifles and cannons in order to wage war. It's a
much more to get a technological world that we live
in in a much more messy world, I would think,
much messier than the eighteen hundreds as far as fighting
a war. So would it be like the American Civil War?
I don't think so. It wouldn't be anything like that.
But I really do still feel that unless something drastic changes,

(04:19):
we're on our way to being in a divide that's
just not conquerable. That there's nothing that somebody from California
or Texas have in common. That we run into a
situation where maybe we just can't coexist anymore. As the
left goes further to the left and more towards socialism,
and conservatives go more towards the right and being conservative,

(04:45):
the gap just gets to be, you would think, at
some point too big to bridge. And I'm evidently not
the only one who feels that way. Anymore. Joe Rogan
on his podcast within the last day or two is
pretty much said the same thing. Of course, he was
referring to the Charlie Kurr assassination and the reaction that
that has gotten from the progressive left. But also, you know,

(05:06):
we saw the Turning Point USA. Of course it's cal Berkeley,
so you know you expect to have the far left
at cal Berkeley, but you've got people rioting over the
idea of setting up a Turning Point USA chapter at
cal Berkeley. Here's Joe Rogan in some reaction from Leslie Marshall.
Now Leslie Marshall, who doesn't think we're on their way

(05:26):
towards the civil war. She's a liberal, she's a California liberal.
She takes her kids getting ready to enroll at cal Berkeley.
So I'll let you know where she's coming from. But
let's take a listen first to Joe Rogan. Okay, try
it again. Here is Joe Rogan.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Charlie Kirk gets shot and people are celebrating, like whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa whoa? You want people to die that you disagree with?
Like where are we right now on the scale of
one to civil war. Where are we are? We had
seven because I thought we were five. There were like four,
four or five. But after Charlie kirktoon, I'm like, oh,

(06:06):
we might be like seven. It's might like step seven
on the way to a bona fide civil war, Leslie.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Is he right? No?

Speaker 4 (06:16):
And as a broadcaster, I think it's irresponsible to even
put that out there. You know, we're a great nation
and one of the things that makes us great is
that we can live together with all of our different
ethnicities and cultures and religions and political ideologies. There aren't
just too.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Isn't just left and right.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
As we can see from primaries.

Speaker 4 (06:34):
Right, there's left of left and there's right of right.
University of Berkeley has forty six thousand students and on
my radio show, we had a man on the ground,
you know, the man on the street, go and talk
to people, and it's amazing how many students didn't even
know this was going on. They didn't even know. The
campus is ninety eight acres. It's really huge. This is
happening on one end of the campus. Also, if you

(06:56):
look at all the footage, there are some older people
that we're there. I find it hard to believe they
were students. So I just want to say I don't
want the kids that you see Berkeley to all be demonized.
I don't believe that everybody there with students. Again, violence
is never Writing's never the answer, you know, regardless of
your political ideology, and every campus should welcome other opinions

(07:20):
like liberty. Let some atheists talk, you see Berkeley, Let
conservatives talk. I believe in that free speech, and I
believe that's how we become more united and don't have
a civil war.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Really, you think that all the free well, I agree
that free speech is important, but I don't see that
as a uniting mechanism at this point. And I think
if you don't think that there's a I don't think
think there's anything irresponsible at all about a broadcaster this
This broadcaster included and mentioning the possibility, because I think

(07:50):
it's I think the possibility is real, and the best
way to prevent it from happening is to recognize that
it's a possibility and alert people that this is the
path we're on unless we start to change the rhetoric
and all the other things that are adding to the issues.
All right, quick little break We're back with more in
a moment Jimmy Barrett Show, You're a Name, nine fifty KPRC.

(08:27):
All right, I got a bit about well, I always
get up around two fifteen in the morning. By the
time I got out to the living room after you know,
just kind of you know, brushing my teeth and chiseling
the sleep out of my eyes, it was probably about
two thirty in the morning. And Elizabeth left Fox News

(08:50):
on on the on the TV out there last night.
Evidently Swiper likes the TV on, at least that's what
I'm told. Do you leave the TV on for your pets?
Your pets watched TV? I mean, Swiper will look at
the TV every now and again if there's a dog
on there barking or doing something, but less time I checked.
I really don't think he's watching Fox News. I mean,

(09:11):
he and I can communicate with each other, but I
don't think that he understands what President Trump is saying. Well,
he's signing a bill to reopen the government, I'm pretty sure.
But evidently Elizabeth thinks that he likes Fox News and
he wants to watch it, or at least he wants
to have something on the TV. So there you go.
And anyway, it's on the TV's on, and I'm out there,

(09:32):
and I turn around and I look and it's Trump
signing the bill to reopen the government. And I'm thinking,
what time was He's not doing that now, is he?
Because it said live, but it wasn't really live. It
was the live stamp from when he actually when they
carried it at like ten fifteen Eastern time last night.

(09:59):
I thought, just now getting around to signing that thing.
And then I realized, well, you know, in addition to
all the procedural votes before the actual vote in the House,
and then the vote in the House taking I don't
know how long it took to you know, to poll
you know, two hundred some odd members or four hundred
some odd members of the US House of Representatives. That

(10:20):
takes a little while in order to be able to
do the vote. And then of course after that you
have to make sure it's all the paperwork is there,
and then you got to march it over the President's
office and blah blah blah and photo ops and press
and all that all that kind of stuff. All that
stuff takes time. So it was nine fifteen ish Central
time last night, when he actually got around to signing
this thing which officially reopened the government. Now, you're not

(10:43):
going to notice any difference today because it's going to
take a while to unwind all these things, especially air travel.
In fact, we'll get to Sean Duffy in just a moment,
just kind of warning everybody that don't expect that just
because this got signed last night. You know, all of
a sudden, all the all the air traffic controllers are
back up work, and all of a sudden, you know,

(11:04):
everybody's flights are on time and in none of the
flights are canceled. Because that's not going to be the case.
It's going to take probably right up to Thanksgiving to
try to get things somewhat back to normal. But here's
President Trump last night. Here's what he had to say,
and he took a few potshots as well. He should
Democrats for the shutdown in general. So here's a little
bit of what he had to say and him signing

(11:27):
the agreement to reopen the government the scene before.

Speaker 5 (11:30):
Today, we're sending a clear message that we will never
give into extortion, because that's what it was. They tried
to extort. The Democrats tried to extort our country. In
just a moment, I'll sign a bill exactly like we
asked Democrats to send us all alone many days ago,
just across the country one point five trillion dollars this

(11:51):
little excursion that they took us on. Republicans never wanted
a shut down and voted fifteen times for a clean
continuation of funding. There's never been a time when one
or the other party ever didn't sign a continuation. It's
just a continuation, not a big deal. It's a continuation

(12:12):
and we'll talk later. Yet the extremists in the other
party insisted on creating the longest government shut down in
American history, and they did it purely for political reasons.
I want to thanks Speaker Mike Johnson, Center Majority Leader
John Tune as well as House Majority of Leader Sievescalise
Majority Whip Tom Emmer, and numerous other great Republican leaders

(12:36):
and Congressmen and senators who are here who frankly spent
a long time in Washington getting his.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
Thing to go away.

Speaker 5 (12:44):
I also want to thank the broad coalition of Americans
that stood with us in this fight to reopen government,
including the Teamsters, the American Federation of Government Employees, the
Fraternal Order of Police AMBS, the National Small Businesses Association,
the American Farm Bureau of the American Trucking Association. These

(13:05):
are all incredible pictures. The Airlines for America, the Allied
Pilots Association, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, and many,
many of these unions and non unions. I just want
to tell you the country has never been in better shape.
We went through this short term disaster with the Democrats
because they thought it would be good politically, and it's

(13:27):
an honor now to sign this incredible bill and get
our country working again.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Thanks all right, all right, it is signed and the
government is open. But as I said, the Transportation Secretary
is warning us not to expect miracles. There will be delays,
there will be cancelations that will have to be dealt with.

Speaker 6 (13:50):
And if you're going to see Grandma this Thanksgiving, it
could still get screwed up. Sean Duffy is warning the
flight Mayre will still continue.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Well, taking a shot Mayor Pete.

Speaker 7 (14:01):
They're eighty five near MISSUS Sean and the Potomac. Before
the DCA aircrash, Pete did nothing. He spent eighty billion
dollars on DEI and on climate change, he lowered the
standards for training at the FAA. He focused on pronouns
at the fa changing those things, but never worked to
fix the air traffic control system, didn't work on bringing

(14:23):
more air traffic controllers into the system. And so what
he's trying to do is rewrite his record because he
wants to run for president.

Speaker 6 (14:30):
It's going to just happen again and again. Why can't
we go back to before nineteen eighty when this didn't happen.
What does it say about the current state of our government,
our political system that we're just saying, Okay, we're just
going to live with this thing, and every like so
many months, we're going to have a government shutdown because.

Speaker 8 (14:47):
There are no consequences. Yeah, and you know, we would
have to go back to the Reagan era. You know,
obviously it just shows what a wonderful president Ronald Reagan was.
But also he was the one who stood up and said, fine,
you're going to go on strike. I'm going to go
ahead and fire all of you. I wish, you know,
and I think a lot of people in the country
field this way. I wish we could fire just about
everybody in Congress because it's an abdication of their responsibility.

(15:11):
So they need to balance budgets, They need to bring
programs back into alignment with reality and costs and the ACA.
This is not a benevolent program. This is something that
was destined to fail because it was set up to
be really really expensive down the road when Obama wouldn't
be an office anymore. And it's not a win that

(15:34):
we're going to extend these subsidies. I mean, think about
it in terms of other things that we had during COVID.
We had mask mandates, we had schools and businesses shut down,
we had churches shutdown. Should we shut those things down
again just because that's what we did during COVID. No,
that showed that we had a bad response and it
created broken systems.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Okay, that's Kennedy by the way, on the five. Yeah,
the no recrimination thing is it's a tough thing to
deal with. What are you going to do? Are you
going to every time there's a government shutdown? Are you
going to determine who is responsible for the shutdown and
fire them from Congress they're voted in? Uh, you can't
really do that. Senator John Kennedy had put a bill

(16:20):
in that would prevent congressmen and women from being paid
during a government shutdown, but he couldn't get anybody to
vote for that. Then again, they vote for their own
pay raiss. Right, That's one of many things that's wrong
with the way Congress is set up. Nobody should be
in a position where they can vote for their own
pay rais, but Congress is certainly in that. Just like

(16:42):
Congress doesn't have to have the same healthcare that you
or I have, they have great health care. They're not
worried about Obamacare and how much Obamacare costs. So I
don't know how we get around the fact that Congress
has decided that they're going to treat themselves differently and
more special than the rest of us. And you know

(17:02):
what we can do about The only thing we can
do about it is vote them out, or at least
not vote for the people who do this. But as
we found, that doesn't work particularly well either. So I
don't really have a good answer for how we prevent
this from happening again. We have another potential government shut
down at the end of January. If it happens again,

(17:25):
then I guess you won't have to worry about the
airports because they'll be paying air traffic control. You won't
have to worry about some of the other things, the
SNAP program because that is funded through the end of
twenty twenty six now, so you don't have to worry
about that. And with those two things off the table,

(17:45):
I think the idea of getting those two things off
the table for Republicans is is let's not give them
an excuse to walk out again, because if they walk
out again, let's make sure that there's something that's not
going to hurt very many people, and it won't matter
if they walk out. I go. There are plenty of

(18:06):
government employees that have been impacted by this and would
be impacted by another walkout, obviously, because you're not gonna
pay everybody, but you know, if you're average American, they're
not going to care. I didn't really care. I didn't
really care this much because I use very little government services.
I don't like being dependent on the government. I've never

(18:26):
understood that mentality. To me, that's the scariest thing in
the world is to think that my next meal is
coming from the United States government, and if something happens
with the United States government, I don't eat I don't
know why anybody would want to live that way. All right,
quick little break back with more in a moment, Jimmy
Bart Show here an Am nine to fifty KPRC. Let's

(19:09):
talk garbage. Let's talk about your trash. I'll be glad
we talked about my trash. I live the suburbs. I
don't live in the city of Houston. I don't have
a trash problem. We have a private company that we
pay for as a part of our HOA dues. It
comes out twice a week. They come out to my house.

(19:30):
The garbage gets picked up on Tuesdays and Fridays, and
recycling comes on Fridays. I'll get to recycling here in
a few minutes, because to me, recycling is a joke.
And I'll tell you why and you'll hear soon enough.
I have Mike Knox on our program this morning on
kt R H forvart City councilman in Houston. They're they're,

(19:53):
they're they're going to do a pilot program evidently in
the city to try to improve the garbage collection services.
And to me, the whole idea, but needing to do
a pilot program for garbage collection, what kind of a
joke is this. How is it that one of the
core city services that they've been doing for what hundreds

(20:17):
of years at this point, in one form or another,
picking up the trash. How is it it's gotten so bad. Well,
to me, one of the reasons why it's gotten so
bad is run by the city. The city is not
good when it comes to customer service. The city is
not good when it comes to efficiencies. Government in general
is not good at these things. Yeah, some things are

(20:39):
better left to the private sector. So here's my conversation
this morning with Mike Knox, the former city councilman, about
what's wrong with garbage collection in the City of Houston
and what are the best ways to fix the problem.
It doesn't seem like it should be a complicated issue.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Mike, Well, you know you're right, Jimmy, And by the way,
thank you for having me on your program this morning. Yeah,
we were dealing with that back when I was on
council and uh, the the issue is that's everybody wants
to bandiate it, and this new program basically it reduces
it makes it easier for the city to not pick

(21:18):
up your trash. In other words, it's up to you
to call the trash department and tell them when you're
ready for your heavy trash to go. That's like, that's
like self checkout.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Right now.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
We pay taxes. We pay taxes and the property taxes,
and part of that goes to garbage collection. And so
the rub here is you're paying taxes, the city's supposed
to pick up your garbage. Well, the city wants to
go to a garbage fee system, which is what most

(21:51):
cities and counties in Texas do, where you have to
pay extra for garbage collection. Uh, the problem is it's
in it's it's a you know, melded into our property taxes.
So why am I paying more for the same service
I'm supposed to get. The other problem is the city's
just not very good at There are certain things that

(22:11):
governments are good at and the other things they're not.
And providing customer service is not one of the things
government's really good at. So I think, you know, it's
a nice run a band aid for the mayor to
do this, but I think ultimately they're going to have
to go with I. I was always an opponent of
the garbage fee because they wanted to use the city department.

(22:34):
The city trash department to spend that money. I think
if we're going to go with a garbage fee, we
need to hire contractors, get mad at and fire.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Why not privatize it? Why not? If that's what I mean,
The problem is not that we're not spending enough money
that the problem is we're not getting the service, or
we're broken down trucks or whatever the problems are. Let's
hire private companies in order to take care of the problem, right.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
And let those private companies comat for sections of the city.
In other words, uh, you know, you could have multiple
contractors working the entire city.

Speaker 7 (23:07):
Now.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
The thing is business is motivated for customer service. If
you're not satisfied with your garbage collection service, then you're
going to hire another contractor where the current contractor wants
to keep you happy, so they're going to show up
on time, They're going to pick up the trash room.
Why even get trash more than once a week? So

(23:27):
but right now you have once a week garbage collection,
once and yard pick up, and then every other week
you have recycled and then once a month you have
heavy trash. Well, you could do a contract for the same,
probably the same amount of money. And get that every week.
You know, you could get all three of them every week.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Right, you don't have to don't have to have employees
working in the sanitation department, You don't have to provide
all those benefits. You don't have to. You don't have to,
you know, continually have to replace trucks and buy new
equipment and repair equipent to take a big burden off
off the city.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
And you could do a rebate on your property because
you're not paying for that service anymore. Right now, that's
not going to happen. I can tell you, though, Joe,
we did need extra well probably need a garbage pickup
a city run department in the case of an emergency
like a hurricane or a flood or something where we've
got to pick up extra crash. But during the off season,

(24:21):
when we don't have those disasters, maybe that department could
go around picking up some of these dump sites that
fester around the city. They could just randomly drive around
and pick up dump sites and make the city a
lot cleaner. I mean, there's a lot of options that
I presented when I was on the council to solve
these issues, and the course that didn't happen.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Right now we are here, says, let me quickly ask
you about this because we're running around time. But it's
a question I always like to ask because the answer
always usually surprises me or surprises those others when they
hear it. Recycling. What happens with recycling from the City Houston.
Where do those recycled materials go and how are they treated?

(25:05):
Do they end up in the landfill with the garbage?

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Absolutely they do because there's no market for the recyclable material.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
So why do we recycle them? Why do we recycle because.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
It makes people feel good. They just feel like you're done.
Here's the cost to the city. This is something that
people need.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
To think about.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
It costs twenty five dollars a ton to deliver garbage
to the landfill. It costs eighty five dollars a ton
to pick up and process your recycling. Now, we're supposed
to get a rebate when they sell the material. The
city's supposed to get a rebate, and that brings it
back down to around twenty five dollars a ton. But
there's no market, so the recycling facilities hang on to

(25:48):
this garbage as long as they can.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
When they need more room.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
They pick up the recycled trash and they take it
over to the dump and charge us another twenty five
dollars and that you and dollars of time to put
garbage in the landfill where it was costing you twenty
five dollars. So that's but it makes people feel good.
People feel like they want to be able to do that.
And there's just not a market. I mean, when China

(26:12):
stopped buying cardboard, there's not even except for heavy metals,
you know, or ferris metals. There's really no market well
where you know, for glass or paper, any of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
How does that make you feel good? Does that make
you feel good to know that you took the time
and the trouble to sort your recyclables, put them in
the recycling bin, put it out next to your garbage
where a separate truck and separate workers are going to

(26:47):
come and pick it up and they're going to take
it to the recycling center, or so you thought. And
it's going to be Those cardboard boxes are going to
be made into new cardboard boxes. Those plastic bottles and
cans are can to be made into new plastic bottles
and cans. No they're not. They're only that only happens

(27:08):
if somebody is willing to buy the material, and there's
nobody buying that material right now. Recycling is nothing more
than a we made you think that the things that
you are saving are not going into the landfill, But
they are. They're going into the landfill, at least the

(27:31):
vast majority of it is. And I have asked everywhere
I've been, any time I've had a segment having to
do with recycling or garbage collection, I've always asked the
same question, the one I just asked Mike Knox, And
the answer has always been the same, verbatim, every single

(27:56):
time I've asked it. Where does the recycling material end up?
The vast majority of it ends up in the landfill
with the garbage. So who are we trying to fool?
And do people not understand this? How many? How many

(28:18):
of us go to the trouble of getting that recycling
bin and doing our due diligence and separating the things
that are recyclable from not recyclable. Hey, even even the
people on the recycled truck, maybe they don't know. You
would think they would know, because they always they'll they'll
take a look at your recycle bin, and if they

(28:39):
see something in there that's not recyclable, they'll take it out.
They'll take it out. But why why bothered to take
it out if it's all going to end up at
the same place anyway. I have nothing against recycling, I
just have something against wasting money. You heard how much
more it costs to recycle versus handling it is garbage.

(29:04):
If it ends up being garbage, this is just not
a good use of taxpayer dollars. If you are paying
for recycling, your material ought to be recycled, and if
it's not gonna be recycled, you shouldn't have to pay
for it. And as far as the city goes, or
any other city that wants to run their own garbage
trucks and maintain them, wants to hire their own crews

(29:27):
and to pay them and to pay them benefits and
all the things that they go along with it. Why
why do you feel the need to do this? Why
don't you just hire, for the same money, or maybe
even less, a private company whose job it is to
make the customers happy. And you can, in as big
as Houston is, you could hire three, four, or five

(29:49):
different companies give them different, as Mike say, given them
different sections of the city. And if it turns out
they're not getting the job done and the citizens aren't
happy with the work they're doing, you can fire them again.
It's somebody else instead of wasting your time. It's the city,
all right, quick a little break back with morning Moment
Jimmy Baird show here a name nine fifty KTRC. I

(30:23):
don't know if it's because of the stories we've been
doing from our newsroom on ktr's newsroom, I should say
lately about this topic, or if John Whipmeyer's honestly just
had enough, but he is tired of the mainstream media
here in Houston bashing the Houston Police Department for cooperating

(30:46):
with ICE. I mean they, I mean they don't relish
the fact that they're doing it. Certainly, there are plenty
of liberals in our city who are are I don't
agree with the politics of what's going on with ICE.
I don't have to be one of those. I agree
completely with what ICE is doing here in Houston and
all across the country, but there are liberals here in

(31:07):
our art city who don't. But the difference between the
liberals here in Houston most of them anyway, and the
liberals in places like California, in New York, in Chicago,
is that we're not willing to break the law in
order to protest what is lawfully happening. When ICE puts

(31:28):
out a warrant for somebody, the law says, you turn
that somebody over to ICE. And they're not doing that
in Los Angeles and Chicago, in these other blue cities.
Houston is a blue city in a red state. They
are cooperating. The Sheriff's Department is cooperating, the Houston Police
Department is cooperating. They're following the law. That's all they're doing.

(31:52):
They're not saying they like doing it. They're not saying
they support what ICE is doing. They're just following the
law anyway. John Whipmeyer, mayor Whitmyer, finally had to address
this at city council the other night. Here he is
talking about why he's concerned that people are vilifying the media,
in particular villifying the Houston Police Department for following the

(32:13):
law and doing their job. We're all in this together.

Speaker 9 (32:16):
We didn't ask for this challenge. We can strongly disagree
with the actions of the federal government. But we're here
to follow the law. We've been very consistent from day
one when I was sworn in. We're going to follow
the state and city laws, like every jurisdiction in this state,

(32:39):
like Ed Gonzalez is doing, like Sean Terierry's doing. When
there's a war for someone's arrest, we had no choice
but to submit them to the agency that has the warrant. HPD,
under the leadership of Chief Thais, has done professional job.

(33:01):
It's a complex issue. I've been on surgees at the
after hour clubs. Fifty one hundred immigrants will pour out
of the club at four in the morning. No one
with HBD inquires us to their immigration status. Individuals are

(33:26):
checked for drugs and firearms and then sent home. When
people are pulled over, they're never asked about their immigration status.
That has been the policy since day one. It was
under the Biden administration, it's under the previous chiefs, previous mayors,

(33:49):
and so now the opportunity for people to respond responsibly
over the weekend, where the rhetoric be accurate, what's the

(34:10):
incentive to badmouth HPD?

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Well, what is the incentive to badmouth HPD If you
are the liberal media in our town. The incentive is
is that that is your personal belief system. It is
the personal belief system of virtually everybody you work with.
It's the personal belief system of the management of the

(34:34):
television station you're working at, or the newspaper you're working at,
the kron So, yeah, that's well. They all believe that.
So they consider what's going on to be criminal. They
consider it criminal for the Houston Police Department to turn

(34:56):
over criminals who have a warrant for their arrest. That's
what the law says they're supposed to do. It is
not up to the Houston Police Department to determine innocence
or guilt. It is up to them to arrest people
where there's a warrant for their arrest, wherever that warrant

(35:16):
may be coming from, the legal system takes care of
it after that. The Houston Police Department is not the
legal system. They don't have the right and quite honestly,
no police department should have the right to determine guilt
or innocence, or do determine which laws will be followed
and which laws will be ignored. If it is a
law that's on the books, the law needs to be followed. Now,

(35:40):
police departments have had a certain level of discretion when
it comes to some things, at least in the past.
You know they can make a decision. When you've got
somebody who's weaving all over the road and you suspect
that they may have had too much to drink, then
you may have a little bit of leeway in what
you decide to do with that person, at least you
used to. But the law is the law. Driving under

(36:03):
the influences against the law. And unless unless it's somebody
who you owe a big favor to as a police officer,
I don't know why you wouldn't just do your job.
You're not there to discriminate against somebody. I'm not here
to discriminate against you. I'm here to tell you that
you're driving under the influence and that is against the law.
I'm sorry, you're going to have to rescue. That's what

(36:28):
the police department is there for. That is what they're
supposed to do. I don't know why that needs to
be controversial in any way, shape or form. So I
salute the Houston Police Department for doing their job. I
salute Mayor Whitmyer for doing something that he probably doesn't
necessarily agree with politically, although I don't really know for

(36:49):
sure because I know how big public safety is to him.
I think what he said where it sounded like, you know,
in the beginning anyway, like he wasn't saying that. I'm
not saying I agree with what they're doing. I think,
you know, the federal government, baba, he's you know, he's
got to pander a little bit to the left in
his party two in the city. He can't come out
even if he believes that arresting illegals with warrants, especially

(37:14):
illegal criminals, is something that should happen, and he's glad
it's happening in many different respects. I understand why he's
not coming right out and saying that, and I understand
why it took him a while to come out and
say what he did say. But at least he did
come out to defend the HPD as well he should.
And again I commend Harris kind of shares department for
doing their job and HPD for doing their job when

(37:36):
it comes to this issue as well. All right, listen
off tomorrow taking a long weekend, We'll have a best
of show for you hope to see you Monday morning,
bright nearly five over on news Radio seven forty KTRH.
We're back here at four, I think nine fifty KTRCAS

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Impot for the bad