Chuck DeVore, Texas Public Policy Foundation Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're joined by truck to board Texas Public Policy Foundation.

(00:03):
So what happened with us Austin Farm, Chuck, You guys
were all set to bring a group of young people
out there and they canceled on you.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Well, that's essentially it. It was about ten days ago
and when the Reddit community found out about it, this
online social social networking entity, I tell you, it's got
hot really fast, including according to the owners of the farm,
death threats against the owners of the farm and their employees.

(00:33):
And then, I guess, in the classic Maoist struggle session way,
the farm figured that the way they could somehow claw
their way back into the favor of the far left
was to throw us under the bus and reference us
as a quote monster and somehow that we were, you know,
had no idea of the terrible monster we were, and

(00:55):
that we were fascists, and so kind of you know,
slammed the door in our on the way out, and
we were able to reschedule and we just ended up
doing the event at our place, at our theater. But
the reason why we wanted to go to the farm
was because number one, are forty an undergroup that Liberty
Leadership Council, which we have all over the state. We've
got someone in Houston wanted to learn about sustainable farming

(01:19):
and they wanted to hear from from mistake on one. Now,
what's interesting about Helen Kerwin is she's the mother of
the US Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, by former boss
at the Foundation, and she had a bill to ban
p FAST or to begin the process to ban p FAST.
These are these forever chemicals that are finding their way

(01:43):
into our food chain because they get into the municipal
sewage and then that sewage is turned into a mulch
that is distributed not only at nurseries but sometimes in
large amounts for farms. And we found some problems with
that where it's been poisoning Texas farmland. And so you
would think that's something like looking at pfasts would unite

(02:08):
both the left and conservatives here in Texas, but I
guess not.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Evidently not okay, So they would they've decided that they're
going to buy into that narrative, and not only buy
into the narrative, that they're going to hop on board
and join in on the narrative themselves. So who is
this farm and and have they turned other groups away.
I mean, is there any legal recourse there? Do you
at this point you care about having any legal recourse?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, I don't think there's any necessarily any civil recourse.
Through their own business, right, they're Boggy Creek Farms. There's
a small family owned organic, you know, sustainable farm in
the Austin area. And of course they have to you know,
operate within the environment that they're in, which is of
course an Austin left of center. But what I find

(02:56):
interesting is that they've hosted events, for example, for the
Tracks County Democratic Party, who during the one hundred day
mark for the new Trump administration, came right out and
called the Trump administration fascist. And the thing the reason
why that sort of incendiary language is so dangerous, Well,
first of all, it's historically illiterate, because there's no connection

(03:20):
between the policies of Mussolini or even Hitler and the
Trump administration. But number two, what do you do with fascists? Right?
Will you punch them in the nose or you shoot them?
As in the case of the assassination of Charlie Kirk
where one of the shells shell casings found said what hey,
fascists catch right? So that's the challenge that we're seeing here,

(03:45):
is that the use of this superheated rhetoric that implies violence,
or in this case, they threatened actual violence. So back
to your question, I suppose if the owners wanted to
file a police report, they could. It's not legal to
threaten people with death here in the state of Texas.
But I'm going to guess that they're not going to

(04:06):
do that because the people that threaten that are on
the left and this farm is.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
On the left right, and I would not describe them
as left of center. I would just say that they
are far left. Got to leave it at that, chuck,
but thank you for sharing that with us. That is
Chuck to Bord, Texas Public Policy Foundation