July 14, 2025 • 32 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The reality is.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Many people are going to be affected positively or negatively
by the One Big Beautiful Bill. The reason the President
called it the One Big Beautiful Bill is that it's
an omnibus bill. In order to get some of the
things you want, you've got to put a lot of
(00:23):
things in there. You've got to appease a lot of people.
And there's some stuff that you need to put in
there that wouldn't get passed otherwise. But you attach them
to a bill that it's hard for a congressman to
vote against because this is the only thing Trump supporters
were asked to support, and so you get a guy
that it makes it very hard for a guy to
(00:45):
vote against that. So you're going to hear lots of
stories of people who are negatively or positively affected by
the One Big Beautiful Bill. Here is a great example.
You may not know because you don't gamble much that
(01:08):
if you are a professional better a gambler, and there
are people who make their living. We actually sold a
house years ago. A couple bought a house from us,
and we're at the closing table.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
What do you do for a living?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I'm a professional gambler, And it turns out that he was.
I can't imagine paying my bills in that manner. I mean,
how do you know when you're going to lose it all?
But not for me to decide. So presently, a professional
gambler can deduct one hundred percent of their gambling losses.
(01:47):
They only pay taxes on their winnings. So for whatever
you make money on, you pay taxes. Whatever you lose
money on, that's fine.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
But start next.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Year, only ninety percent of gambling losses.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Will be deductible.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So let's say a professional gambler wins one hundred thousand dollars,
but then in the course of a year, he wins
one hundred thousand dollars, but he manages to lose that
exact amount one hundred thousand dollars the same year in
twenty twenty five before the one Big Beautiful Bill. Because
(02:26):
it takes effect next year, he would owe no taxes
because his losses offset his gains. Beginning next year, his
losses would still require that he pay ten percent on
them if they come from gains, so he would pay
(02:48):
ten thousand dollars. He's at a net zero, but he
would pay ten thousand dollars on those earnings. And it's
even possible that a better could end up paying ten
axes even if they finished with a net loss. I
can't imagine anybody's crying tears for professional gamblers because they
(03:08):
probably didn't even know they had that benefit. But I
saw a quote from a pro poker player named Phil Galfond,
and he told The New York Times, this makes it
impossible to gamble for a living. I wonder how many
people know that you can gamble for a living.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Who knew? Who knew?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
The Nevada based accountant Russell Fox told The Washington Post,
this is a bad long term deal for the casino industry.
It's bad for gamblers. It's actually bad for the irs too.
We need a less complex tax system. What's interesting about
this is nobody can figure out who put it in.
(03:53):
There's nobody claiming credit for this new tax. And I
know most people don't care because it doesn't affect you.
But shouldn't it worry us a little bit that here's
a provision that is going to effect one small segment
of society and nobody knows who wrote it. The tax
bill is nine hundred pages long. They asked some of
(04:19):
the top Republican brass who put this in here?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Who was for this?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
And not only could they not explain it, they said
they didn't realize. Suggestions are that a congressional staffer put
it in there, according to the Washington Post, to meet
a requirement that tax legislation passed through reconciliation must have
an effect on revenue. The House introduced bipartisan legislation last
(04:49):
week to overturn the provision. But that's not the only
reverse card being played. Household staple Uno is reportedly becoming
a Las Vegas table game.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Did you imagine?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Trump announced thirty percent tariffs on Mexico and the EU
over the last few days, which would be effective August first.
August first, thirty percent tariffs for Mexico and the EU
(05:26):
and more to come. The Superman reboot on the weekend
box office, which is good news for DC Universe. One
hundred and twenty two million dollars in ticket sales domestically
the third largest debut of the year, behind a Minecraft
movie and Lelo and Stitch.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Is that Leelo Orlilo? Jim?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
How has it been since you've been to the movies
to see a new movie that is debuted at the
movie theater. You watched Superman this weekend?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Is it good? You left in the middle? How awful
was it? Wow? The CGI was bad? The dialogue.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I've only to my to my memory, I've only ever
gotten up and walked out of a movie one time,
and that was Tron And I think, I don't.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I don't deal well.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
My kids don't like to go to the movies with
me because Dad goes into the movies, and I like
to go to like river Oaks Theater, you know, the
real comfortable they give you the blanket. People will tell
me you put that blanket on you. Oh, yes, the pillow. Yes,
I put that pillow, the blanket. I get all snug
as a bug in there, and then I get me
(06:51):
a bourbon and I get a couple of SIPs in
I watched the first few minutes of the movie, and
I get me a good daytime. Now that's the best feeling,
because I'm Superdad because I brought my kids to the movies.
Of course, they don't need me to take them to
movies anymore, so I don't get to do this. But
for a little while there, we'd go to whatever was
playing at river Road Theater. I would I'd be glad
(07:11):
to take you. It's ipis actually not Rivera Steter. I
picks over off West timor tilmenions now and I'd go
over there and uh, whatever they want, whatever, goofy. You
know movie that little boys young boys want to watch,
the Marvel Superheroes or DC.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I don't know the difference between any of them.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Get me a little bourbon, finish my bourbon. My blanket
on there, and people would say, oh, those blankets are
so nasty. They don't you don't want to listen. If
I started counting germs all day, every day, I wouldn't been.
I enjoy my little blanket. I enjoy my pillow. Don't
bother me, all right, Jim, here's your question. Coming into
the next segment. The biggest complaint from car owners of
(07:54):
new callings something about the console they don't see if
you can guess what it is.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I was Bodings and wants me to see it.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I will look at the outside and how it looks.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
That's fine.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I will pretend to be interested in what's the under
the hood. I'm not a gearhead.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I don't know. During Fini Straight six v.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Twelve of the eight of three twenty eight three nineteen
and three fifty two or three. I mean, once they
explain it, Hey, this is better than this. Okay, fine,
and people I'll get emails.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
To that I can't believe you don't know. Well, there's a.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Few things I know that you don't. Shall we have
that discussion. It's a thing that.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
People care about.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
A certain type of people care about more men than women.
What's under the hood, How does it perform? People will
take a brand new suburb to go see John Hennessy
because when they go to get up on the freeway
from the feeder, they don't want to have to wait.
(09:10):
They want some performance under the hood. And it's not
cheap ten twenty thousand dollars to give you a boost
when you're trying to speed up at a moment when
you need it. And we're not talking about performance cars.
We're talking about suburbans that hold a bunch of kids
and their gear and their baseball and lacrosse and sports gear,
(09:35):
or getting ready to go to the lake or the
ranch or the farm or whatever that is. I don't
really care about that. I mean, it matters. You don't
want a vehicle that you hit the gas. But that's
not what I care about. I don't go for the ride.
I've got a buddy that has a Tesla plaid. We
go for a ride in it, and he wanted me
to drive it. And he said, we get up to
(09:58):
a stoplight and there's nobody in any different das when
it turns green, I want you to hit it. I
already knew that's a bad idea. I'm not a need
for speed guy. I get that other people are. You're
more manly than me.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
What can I say? You win?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Not something I want to do where I'm flipping over
something because a vehicle got out of control. I can
be impressed with it, and it is impressive. It's an
off the line start that I've never experienced before in
an internal combustion engine, not even close nothing. And I've
been in some pretty fast cars and come off the
(10:34):
line pretty fast. These things are amazing. They're just incredible.
I can appreciate the styling of a vehicle a lot.
That matters a lot to me. But in new studies
coming out over the last few years, and this year
more so than ever, the thing that has moved up
(10:56):
the charts from number seven to number three choice of
what bothers people most in their vehicle. And I will specify,
jim to make it simple. It is a cockpit related issue.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I like to sit in people's cockpit. All right, Let's
see what the console looks like.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Let's see what kind of storage we got in the door?
Speaker 1 (11:15):
How easy to get in and out of it? Is it?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Where does everything fit in relation to me as the driver?
Can you guess what item matters the most? Jimbo The
cup holder? It is the cup holder is now the
thing that companies are spending the most time on, and
(11:39):
as it turns out, that is incredibly important, incredibly important.
They do a follow up study JD Power, the initial
quality study, and that's what tells a car company, this
is what people don't like about the car now that
they've bought it and driven it off the lot. AUDI
(12:01):
had the worst report, with two hundred and sixty nine
problems reported per one hundred vehicles. The other major issue,
and I agree with this one as well, lack of
physical buttons. Now, if you were to ask my kids
who were eighteen and nineteen, they don't have any tactile loyalty.
(12:25):
They don't need to turn a knob my wife's vehicle.
You turn on the air conditioning, I can't find it.
It's on a screen and then you scroll, you slide
left to right to turn the fan up. When it's hot,
(12:45):
when it's Houston hot and I'm driving and I'm trying
to turn the air conditioning to a higher setting or
turn the music to a lower setting, I want to
have a knob that I I can very simply grab
and turn. That's intuitive. GM vehicles, for the longest time
(13:09):
had a consistency, as did Mercedes for that matter, as
did Volkswagen for that matter. If you get into a
Mercedes today, I don't know if it's true today today,
but within the last couple of years, if a friend
of mine had a Mercedes, I could tell you exactly
where the seat movement was going to be. It's going
to be on the door, and it's going to be
(13:29):
that l shape. And what they've not changed that, I
don't know. It's thirty years they've not changed that setting.
It's consistent across their vehicles. The thought of having to slide,
and that's the whole Tesla thing. If you ask Chance McLean,
it's the greatest thing ever. He and I were riding
to the Astros game last week and I said, I
(13:53):
need a little more AC here, and I can't figure
out how to do it. Don't do it for me,
but give me some guidance on what we're doing. So
you look at this big, massive screen and he points
to it, and I guess you had to hover your
hand over it. And then you move this, and you
slide this, and you if I was driving, I couldn't
(14:14):
do that. Whereas my entire life, thirty eight years of driving,
my entire life, I could turn up the volume, down
the volume, or turn up the AC and down the AC,
which is the two things that matter the most. I
could do that without ever touching anything on a screen.
(14:35):
I could do that by feel, and most of you
could as well. And then and then they went from
not only that, let's you're American, you shouldn't have to
reach over and turn that. We'll just put it on
your on your steering wheel, and we'll put your adaptive
cruise control there, and we'll give you the heads up display.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
You'll you'll never even be bothered to have to lean.
I'm okay with that too, Michael Berry. Just to say
the word and I'll throw it down. Christine.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
In the finance world, as the Q two earnings will
be released from some of the heavyweights.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
This is of course April.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
May and June, it being two weeks into July. Those
reports will be released. Tomorrow. We will get earnings on
JP Morgan Chase, Black Rock, City Group, and Wells Fargo.
Then on Wednesday Goldman, Sachs, Morgan, Stanley, Bank of America,
Then on Thursday, PepsiCo, Netflix, and Abbott Laboratories, and on
(15:47):
Friday American Express, Charles Schwab and Truest. And the consumer
Price Index comes out tomorrow, and on Thursday we will
get the first look into retail sales for the quarter,
which should be very interesting. Indeed, all of this matters
(16:10):
because the argument Trump is making is we're seeing economic
activity increase without inflation, Inflation being the cost of goods
for the same dollar stabilized, simply put. And if that
is the case, increased economic activity without inflation the devaluation
(16:36):
of your dollar, then his argument is the interest rates
that were raised to slow or reverse inflation are no
longer needed. Bring those interest rates down quick recap. And
I know you know this. The money supply affects inflation.
(16:59):
If pump a bunch of money into the economy, then
the price of things are going to go up because
everybody has more money. Except it's not that everybody has
more money, it's people who borrow money have more money,
and then the people with whom the people who borrow
money spend money are going to have more money. So
(17:20):
in an ideal, perfect academic environment, everybody would have more money.
But we all know that's not true because the inflationary
effects hit people hardest who are on fixed income, people
who don't have an upside potential. But what we're looking
at is interest rates that are slowing the purchases of houses.
(17:47):
If you've got what they call a six handle, you've
got a six in front of your interest rate you're
being offered at the bank, or if you don't have
great credit, a seven handle or eight handle. It makes
buying the same two hundred and fifty thousand dollars house
cost a lot more. When we had a real estate
brokerage firm, I used to spend a lot of time
(18:09):
explaining to people that there are a number of factors
that go into the purchase of your home. There is
the price that the seller will offer to sell to
you at. That's the list price. Let's take three hundred
thousand dollars. If they list their house at three hundred
(18:29):
thousand dollars and you buy the house at their list
price of three hundred thousand dollars, what you end up
paying for that house, whether it's cash three hundred thousand
dollars or if you finance it. The longer you finance it,
the more you're going to pay an interest rate, and
typically it's going to be a higher interest rate the
(18:51):
longer the term. So people look at that as a
thirty year purchase. When you look at that thirty year
purchase of what three hundred thousand dollars is going to
cost you, you're going to end up paying more money
in interest than you are for the house itself, but
you're doing so over the course of thirty years. When
you look at your life, you step back and look
(19:13):
at what you have right now, what you make right now,
what you can afford per month right now, which is
a trick you never want to fall into. When you
look at that number, you're not getting the better scale
of your overall financial good health. If you looked at
that house over a thirty year period, assuming you stayed
(19:34):
there and paid it off, which nobody today does.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
That's old fashioned. My parents did that.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
But when you look at that house for thirty years
and what it's going to cost you, and you look
at what you're going to make over those thirty years, now,
you're getting more of an apples to apples comparison. Because
if you're thinking of that three hundred thousand dollars house,
as I'm going to pick some number, I don't run
the number lately as twenty five hundred dollars or two
thousand dollars per month, and you go, I can afford
(20:01):
two hundred thousand dollars I mean two thousand dollars per
month for how long? What if that same house that
you buy for three hundred thousand dollars, what if the
interest rate drops sufficiently that on a thirty year mortgage,
instead of costing you two thousand dollars a month, it
costs you fourteen hundred dollars a month. That's six hundred
(20:23):
dollars a month, seventy two hundred dollars a year. The
house didn't change in order to get your note five
six hundred dollars lower. They didn't change out the doors
to make them cheaper. They didn't rip out the landscaping.
They didn't replace the higher quality windows or remove the garage.
(20:44):
It's still the same exact house. So the flip side
of that is, if you bought at a better interest
rate and now you were to try to ref at
a higher interest rate, you wouldn't change your house. You
would just pay more money, so nobody can refin. Well,
you got a lot of people that are in an
arm an adjustable rate mortgage, and you may be in
(21:06):
one of those. An adjustable rate mortgage is is an
easy trick to fall into, and it's not always a
bad thing, just as pawn shops and money lenders and
check cashing places are not always bad things. People will say,
we ought to do away with check cashing places because
(21:30):
they charge twenty nine percent interest.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
All right, who uses a check cashing place? Do you? Oh?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Hell no, I'm not paying twenty nine percent interest on
a loan that you know, on a thousand dollars you
know loan. Okay, So you wouldn't pay twenty nine percent
on a check that you're planning on getting in a
few days. Why because the rate's too high? No, because
(22:00):
because you don't need that amount of money that desperately
that sensitive to time.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
If you did, you would do it.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
We reduce ourselves to things like that because we are
in danger an emergency. Nobody willingly says, I want to
get a really really bad deal. People that have horrible
credit and need cash fast fast do so. You're sitting
(22:34):
in Austin and you go, well, we shouldn't allow them
to do that. Those rates are too high. In fact,
we ought to put the check cashing places out of business.
That's fine, let's do that. So when there's not a
check cashing place on every block in poor neighborhoods, do
you think people all of a sudden no longer need
cash real fast because they're no longer in emergencies? Do
(22:57):
they now just wait around and that their money. That
was a dumb thing to do, to take a twenty
nine percent interest on a small amount of money. That
was real dumb. If we don't let them do dumb things,
then they won't do dumb things. In many cases, they
didn't do dumb things because it was dumb. They did
(23:17):
dumb things because they were in an emergency. So take
away the ability for them to do that legally, and
now what do they do? They still need the money
they're still in an emergency. So now they go to
loan sharks, Now they go to Mafiosis, Now they go
to the cartels. If this is how bad bills are
(23:37):
passed to try to make decisions for people that we
don't agree with without.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Understanding that they're going to go around that.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Low and it's going to be far worse for them.
I may Mispronocean, it's in the spirit of what is right.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
There is a fellow.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
By the name of Bob Reehack or Rehawk. I don't
know r Ehak, I'll say Rehack, and he operates a
website called Reduced Flooding dot com reduce Flooding dot com.
(24:15):
Several people over the years have recommended I talked to him,
Marissa Hanson. Bob showed a number of you have sent me.
I got two emails this morning. He is described as
a retired Kingwood resident, but my understanding is that he
(24:41):
has a specialized experience base of flooding engineering and maybe
government documents. There are so many great re sources out
there of people like this guy who for no personal
(25:07):
gain because they are completely nerdy, dorky do gooder accountability people.
They're always engineers or accountants and they will spend untold
number of hours digging through government documents, and they always
(25:29):
catch the politicians because the politicians don't actually know what
last year's budget had in it, much less ten years ago.
The politicians don't read any of the reports that are
generated that are then put through the pr ringer to say,
you know, make it all sound great, And so when
they're when nothing ever happens as a result of money
(25:52):
that is spent on public problems, nobody has the assets
to question elected officials. But then you get guys like
this Bob Rehack or Bob Shot or Marissa Hanson. There
are plenty of others, and they're the greatest enemy to
(26:17):
them being able to do any good is a lack
of awareness that they exist. An enterprising reporter should should
get right up next to this Rehack fella and say, hey,
how about this. I love what you're doing. Can you
(26:37):
feed me what you're doing and I'll talk about it
and do story after story after story after story. My
understanding is this over eight thousand dollars in expenditure from
from Peterson, the woman at the flood Control District, that
(26:59):
that was a result of Bob Rehack making that information
available to some people. I have tried to get him
on the show as a guest.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I don't know if he's ill ready.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And some people are great with the written content but
sees up when they have to speak into a microphone.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I don't know, but I.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Will tell you that his stuff. Here's one revised Harris
County Flood Control District report still contains discrepancies totaling hundreds
of millions of dollars. Harris County Flood Control District admits
that it made a huge mistake in its twenty twenty
five first quarter flood bond update.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Released two weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
The report showed accounting discrepancies totally more than a billion dollars.
As a result of media attention, the district released a
revised Q one report late yesterday afternoon. Oops, we missed
a billion dollars. I'm sure Rodney nor anyone else stole
(28:03):
any of it or handed it to their friends, But
many discrepancy still remained, both within the revised report itself
and when comparing the revised report to the twenty twenty
four year in report. What a quaint notion. Some guy
sitting at his house in Kingwood compares last year's document
(28:25):
to this year's document and says, uh, the ledger doesn't
add up. Oh well, none of those numbers matter anyway,
Why are you bothering us? Bond funds one hundred seven
million partner funds, two hundred and eighty nine million secured funds,
three hundred and seventy million funds spent two hundred and
(28:46):
fifty two million HCFCD. Harris County Flood Control District also
claims to put five hundred four million dollars bond dollars
to work in the first three months of this year
without a explaining where the money went, Nor does the
revised report explain what the director, doctor T. Peterson, claims
(29:06):
is a one point three billion dollar shortfall in funding
needed to complete the bond. So do you think a
woman who asked for over eight thousand dollars to go
to a conference where even the basic report showed you
(29:28):
could go, not that you needed to for less than
two thousand dollars? Do you think she should be trusted
with billions of dollars?
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Because she is.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
And the only thing worse than that is that this
person is being trusted with billions of dollars and is
not accountable and is getting the numbers off by more
than a billion dollars in one year, and no buy
(30:00):
he's noticing if this fellow bob Rehack in Kingwood doesn't
bring it up. So what if bob Rehack doesn't exist,
or let's model this out. What if bob Rehack exists
but nobody listens to what he writes, Or if bob Rehack,
(30:25):
who's focused on flooding, can expose a billion dollars missing
from just the Harris County Flood Control District. You don't
know who the flood control District is, and.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Neither do I.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Nobody does, nobody at the Chronicle, does nobody at ABC thirteen,
khou KPRC. Not because they're bad people, because there's a
lot going on. There's money floating around everywhere, and there
are people who are very I watched it on City Council.
(31:01):
I watched it in frustration and in awe. There are
people whose job it is they're kind of a cross
between a consultant and an operative, and they've generally worked
for in government and out of government. They contribute to campaigns,
(31:23):
they serve on some boards, and these people move in
and out of public and private sector, and they have
relationships with the companies who do the work where they do,
whether that be the financing or the engineering, or the
architectural or the governmental compliance. And there's billions and billions
(31:47):
of your dollars. And the sad part is all they
care about is how much they can scoop away for
them and their friends, not the actual services rendered. And
that's why when you see a hurricane Harvey and you go,
how in the hell did this happen? We spent so
many billion dollars avoiding this happening. No, you didn't spend
(32:12):
billions of dollars avoiding a damn thing other than them
people going poor. The money is not spent with any
regard for stopping that level
The reality is.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Many people are going to be affected positively or negatively
by the One Big Beautiful Bill. The reason the President
called it the One Big Beautiful Bill is that it's
an omnibus bill. In order to get some of the
things you want, you've got to put a lot of
(00:23):
things in there. You've got to appease a lot of people.
And there's some stuff that you need to put in
there that wouldn't get passed otherwise. But you attach them
to a bill that it's hard for a congressman to
vote against because this is the only thing Trump supporters
were asked to support, and so you get a guy
that it makes it very hard for a guy to
(00:45):
vote against that. So you're going to hear lots of
stories of people who are negatively or positively affected by
the One Big Beautiful Bill. Here is a great example.
You may not know because you don't gamble much that
(01:08):
if you are a professional better a gambler, and there
are people who make their living. We actually sold a
house years ago. A couple bought a house from us,
and we're at the closing table.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
What do you do for a living?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I'm a professional gambler, And it turns out that he was.
I can't imagine paying my bills in that manner. I mean,
how do you know when you're going to lose it all?
But not for me to decide. So presently, a professional
gambler can deduct one hundred percent of their gambling losses.
(01:47):
They only pay taxes on their winnings. So for whatever
you make money on, you pay taxes. Whatever you lose
money on, that's fine.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
But start next.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Year, only ninety percent of gambling losses.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Will be deductible.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So let's say a professional gambler wins one hundred thousand dollars,
but then in the course of a year, he wins
one hundred thousand dollars, but he manages to lose that
exact amount one hundred thousand dollars the same year in
twenty twenty five before the one Big Beautiful Bill. Because
(02:26):
it takes effect next year, he would owe no taxes
because his losses offset his gains. Beginning next year, his
losses would still require that he pay ten percent on
them if they come from gains, so he would pay
(02:48):
ten thousand dollars. He's at a net zero, but he
would pay ten thousand dollars on those earnings. And it's
even possible that a better could end up paying ten
axes even if they finished with a net loss. I
can't imagine anybody's crying tears for professional gamblers because they
(03:08):
probably didn't even know they had that benefit. But I
saw a quote from a pro poker player named Phil Galfond,
and he told The New York Times, this makes it
impossible to gamble for a living. I wonder how many
people know that you can gamble for a living.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Who knew? Who knew?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
The Nevada based accountant Russell Fox told The Washington Post,
this is a bad long term deal for the casino industry.
It's bad for gamblers. It's actually bad for the irs too.
We need a less complex tax system. What's interesting about
this is nobody can figure out who put it in.
(03:53):
There's nobody claiming credit for this new tax. And I
know most people don't care because it doesn't affect you.
But shouldn't it worry us a little bit that here's
a provision that is going to effect one small segment
of society and nobody knows who wrote it. The tax
bill is nine hundred pages long. They asked some of
(04:19):
the top Republican brass who put this in here?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Who was for this?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
And not only could they not explain it, they said
they didn't realize. Suggestions are that a congressional staffer put
it in there, according to the Washington Post, to meet
a requirement that tax legislation passed through reconciliation must have
an effect on revenue. The House introduced bipartisan legislation last
(04:49):
week to overturn the provision. But that's not the only
reverse card being played. Household staple Uno is reportedly becoming
a Las Vegas table game.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Did you imagine?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Trump announced thirty percent tariffs on Mexico and the EU
over the last few days, which would be effective August first.
August first, thirty percent tariffs for Mexico and the EU
(05:26):
and more to come. The Superman reboot on the weekend
box office, which is good news for DC Universe. One
hundred and twenty two million dollars in ticket sales domestically
the third largest debut of the year, behind a Minecraft
movie and Lelo and Stitch.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Is that Leelo Orlilo? Jim?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
How has it been since you've been to the movies
to see a new movie that is debuted at the
movie theater. You watched Superman this weekend?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Is it good? You left in the middle? How awful
was it? Wow? The CGI was bad? The dialogue.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I've only to my to my memory, I've only ever
gotten up and walked out of a movie one time,
and that was Tron And I think, I don't.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I don't deal well.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
My kids don't like to go to the movies with
me because Dad goes into the movies, and I like
to go to like river Oaks Theater, you know, the
real comfortable they give you the blanket. People will tell
me you put that blanket on you. Oh, yes, the pillow. Yes,
I put that pillow, the blanket. I get all snug
as a bug in there, and then I get me
(06:51):
a bourbon and I get a couple of SIPs in
I watched the first few minutes of the movie, and
I get me a good daytime. Now that's the best feeling,
because I'm Superdad because I brought my kids to the movies.
Of course, they don't need me to take them to
movies anymore, so I don't get to do this. But
for a little while there, we'd go to whatever was
playing at river Road Theater. I would I'd be glad
(07:11):
to take you. It's ipis actually not Rivera Steter. I
picks over off West timor tilmenions now and I'd go
over there and uh, whatever they want, whatever, goofy. You
know movie that little boys young boys want to watch,
the Marvel Superheroes or DC.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I don't know the difference between any of them.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Get me a little bourbon, finish my bourbon. My blanket
on there, and people would say, oh, those blankets are
so nasty. They don't you don't want to listen. If
I started counting germs all day, every day, I wouldn't been.
I enjoy my little blanket. I enjoy my pillow. Don't
bother me, all right, Jim, here's your question. Coming into
the next segment. The biggest complaint from car owners of
(07:54):
new callings something about the console they don't see if
you can guess what it is.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I was Bodings and wants me to see it.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I will look at the outside and how it looks.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
That's fine.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I will pretend to be interested in what's the under
the hood. I'm not a gearhead.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I don't know. During Fini Straight six v.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Twelve of the eight of three twenty eight three nineteen
and three fifty two or three. I mean, once they
explain it, Hey, this is better than this. Okay, fine,
and people I'll get emails.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
To that I can't believe you don't know. Well, there's a.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Few things I know that you don't. Shall we have
that discussion. It's a thing that.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
People care about.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
A certain type of people care about more men than women.
What's under the hood, How does it perform? People will
take a brand new suburb to go see John Hennessy
because when they go to get up on the freeway
from the feeder, they don't want to have to wait.
(09:10):
They want some performance under the hood. And it's not
cheap ten twenty thousand dollars to give you a boost
when you're trying to speed up at a moment when
you need it. And we're not talking about performance cars.
We're talking about suburbans that hold a bunch of kids
and their gear and their baseball and lacrosse and sports gear,
(09:35):
or getting ready to go to the lake or the
ranch or the farm or whatever that is. I don't
really care about that. I mean, it matters. You don't
want a vehicle that you hit the gas. But that's
not what I care about. I don't go for the ride.
I've got a buddy that has a Tesla plaid. We
go for a ride in it, and he wanted me
to drive it. And he said, we get up to
(09:58):
a stoplight and there's nobody in any different das when
it turns green, I want you to hit it. I
already knew that's a bad idea. I'm not a need
for speed guy. I get that other people are. You're
more manly than me.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
What can I say? You win?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Not something I want to do where I'm flipping over
something because a vehicle got out of control. I can
be impressed with it, and it is impressive. It's an
off the line start that I've never experienced before in
an internal combustion engine, not even close nothing. And I've
been in some pretty fast cars and come off the
(10:34):
line pretty fast. These things are amazing. They're just incredible.
I can appreciate the styling of a vehicle a lot.
That matters a lot to me. But in new studies
coming out over the last few years, and this year
more so than ever, the thing that has moved up
(10:56):
the charts from number seven to number three choice of
what bothers people most in their vehicle. And I will specify,
jim to make it simple. It is a cockpit related issue.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I like to sit in people's cockpit. All right, Let's
see what the console looks like.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Let's see what kind of storage we got in the door?
Speaker 1 (11:15):
How easy to get in and out of it? Is it?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Where does everything fit in relation to me as the driver?
Can you guess what item matters the most? Jimbo The
cup holder? It is the cup holder is now the
thing that companies are spending the most time on, and
(11:39):
as it turns out, that is incredibly important, incredibly important.
They do a follow up study JD Power, the initial
quality study, and that's what tells a car company, this
is what people don't like about the car now that
they've bought it and driven it off the lot. AUDI
(12:01):
had the worst report, with two hundred and sixty nine
problems reported per one hundred vehicles. The other major issue,
and I agree with this one as well, lack of
physical buttons. Now, if you were to ask my kids
who were eighteen and nineteen, they don't have any tactile loyalty.
(12:25):
They don't need to turn a knob my wife's vehicle.
You turn on the air conditioning, I can't find it.
It's on a screen and then you scroll, you slide
left to right to turn the fan up. When it's hot,
(12:45):
when it's Houston hot and I'm driving and I'm trying
to turn the air conditioning to a higher setting or
turn the music to a lower setting, I want to
have a knob that I I can very simply grab
and turn. That's intuitive. GM vehicles, for the longest time
(13:09):
had a consistency, as did Mercedes for that matter, as
did Volkswagen for that matter. If you get into a
Mercedes today, I don't know if it's true today today,
but within the last couple of years, if a friend
of mine had a Mercedes, I could tell you exactly
where the seat movement was going to be. It's going
to be on the door, and it's going to be
(13:29):
that l shape. And what they've not changed that, I
don't know. It's thirty years they've not changed that setting.
It's consistent across their vehicles. The thought of having to slide,
and that's the whole Tesla thing. If you ask Chance McLean,
it's the greatest thing ever. He and I were riding
to the Astros game last week and I said, I
(13:53):
need a little more AC here, and I can't figure
out how to do it. Don't do it for me,
but give me some guidance on what we're doing. So
you look at this big, massive screen and he points
to it, and I guess you had to hover your
hand over it. And then you move this, and you
slide this, and you if I was driving, I couldn't
(14:14):
do that. Whereas my entire life, thirty eight years of driving,
my entire life, I could turn up the volume, down
the volume, or turn up the AC and down the AC,
which is the two things that matter the most. I
could do that without ever touching anything on a screen.
(14:35):
I could do that by feel, and most of you
could as well. And then and then they went from
not only that, let's you're American, you shouldn't have to
reach over and turn that. We'll just put it on
your on your steering wheel, and we'll put your adaptive
cruise control there, and we'll give you the heads up display.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
You'll you'll never even be bothered to have to lean.
I'm okay with that too, Michael Berry. Just to say
the word and I'll throw it down. Christine.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
In the finance world, as the Q two earnings will
be released from some of the heavyweights.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
This is of course April.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
May and June, it being two weeks into July. Those
reports will be released. Tomorrow. We will get earnings on
JP Morgan Chase, Black Rock, City Group, and Wells Fargo.
Then on Wednesday Goldman, Sachs, Morgan, Stanley, Bank of America,
Then on Thursday, PepsiCo, Netflix, and Abbott Laboratories, and on
(15:47):
Friday American Express, Charles Schwab and Truest. And the consumer
Price Index comes out tomorrow, and on Thursday we will
get the first look into retail sales for the quarter,
which should be very interesting. Indeed, all of this matters
(16:10):
because the argument Trump is making is we're seeing economic
activity increase without inflation, Inflation being the cost of goods
for the same dollar stabilized, simply put. And if that
is the case, increased economic activity without inflation the devaluation
(16:36):
of your dollar, then his argument is the interest rates
that were raised to slow or reverse inflation are no
longer needed. Bring those interest rates down quick recap. And
I know you know this. The money supply affects inflation.
(16:59):
If pump a bunch of money into the economy, then
the price of things are going to go up because
everybody has more money. Except it's not that everybody has
more money, it's people who borrow money have more money,
and then the people with whom the people who borrow
money spend money are going to have more money. So
(17:20):
in an ideal, perfect academic environment, everybody would have more money.
But we all know that's not true because the inflationary
effects hit people hardest who are on fixed income, people
who don't have an upside potential. But what we're looking
at is interest rates that are slowing the purchases of houses.
(17:47):
If you've got what they call a six handle, you've
got a six in front of your interest rate you're
being offered at the bank, or if you don't have
great credit, a seven handle or eight handle. It makes
buying the same two hundred and fifty thousand dollars house
cost a lot more. When we had a real estate
brokerage firm, I used to spend a lot of time
(18:09):
explaining to people that there are a number of factors
that go into the purchase of your home. There is
the price that the seller will offer to sell to
you at. That's the list price. Let's take three hundred
thousand dollars. If they list their house at three hundred
(18:29):
thousand dollars and you buy the house at their list
price of three hundred thousand dollars, what you end up
paying for that house, whether it's cash three hundred thousand
dollars or if you finance it. The longer you finance it,
the more you're going to pay an interest rate, and
typically it's going to be a higher interest rate the
(18:51):
longer the term. So people look at that as a
thirty year purchase. When you look at that thirty year
purchase of what three hundred thousand dollars is going to
cost you, you're going to end up paying more money
in interest than you are for the house itself, but
you're doing so over the course of thirty years. When
you look at your life, you step back and look
(19:13):
at what you have right now, what you make right now,
what you can afford per month right now, which is
a trick you never want to fall into. When you
look at that number, you're not getting the better scale
of your overall financial good health. If you looked at
that house over a thirty year period, assuming you stayed
(19:34):
there and paid it off, which nobody today does.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
That's old fashioned. My parents did that.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
But when you look at that house for thirty years
and what it's going to cost you, and you look
at what you're going to make over those thirty years, now,
you're getting more of an apples to apples comparison. Because
if you're thinking of that three hundred thousand dollars house,
as I'm going to pick some number, I don't run
the number lately as twenty five hundred dollars or two
thousand dollars per month, and you go, I can afford
(20:01):
two hundred thousand dollars I mean two thousand dollars per
month for how long? What if that same house that
you buy for three hundred thousand dollars, what if the
interest rate drops sufficiently that on a thirty year mortgage,
instead of costing you two thousand dollars a month, it
costs you fourteen hundred dollars a month. That's six hundred
(20:23):
dollars a month, seventy two hundred dollars a year. The
house didn't change in order to get your note five
six hundred dollars lower. They didn't change out the doors
to make them cheaper. They didn't rip out the landscaping.
They didn't replace the higher quality windows or remove the garage.
(20:44):
It's still the same exact house. So the flip side
of that is, if you bought at a better interest
rate and now you were to try to ref at
a higher interest rate, you wouldn't change your house. You
would just pay more money, so nobody can refin. Well,
you got a lot of people that are in an
arm an adjustable rate mortgage, and you may be in
(21:06):
one of those. An adjustable rate mortgage is is an
easy trick to fall into, and it's not always a
bad thing, just as pawn shops and money lenders and
check cashing places are not always bad things. People will say,
we ought to do away with check cashing places because
(21:30):
they charge twenty nine percent interest.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
All right, who uses a check cashing place? Do you? Oh?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Hell no, I'm not paying twenty nine percent interest on
a loan that you know, on a thousand dollars you
know loan. Okay, So you wouldn't pay twenty nine percent
on a check that you're planning on getting in a
few days. Why because the rate's too high? No, because
(22:00):
because you don't need that amount of money that desperately
that sensitive to time.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
If you did, you would do it.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
We reduce ourselves to things like that because we are
in danger an emergency. Nobody willingly says, I want to
get a really really bad deal. People that have horrible
credit and need cash fast fast do so. You're sitting
(22:34):
in Austin and you go, well, we shouldn't allow them
to do that. Those rates are too high. In fact,
we ought to put the check cashing places out of business.
That's fine, let's do that. So when there's not a
check cashing place on every block in poor neighborhoods, do
you think people all of a sudden no longer need
cash real fast because they're no longer in emergencies? Do
(22:57):
they now just wait around and that their money. That
was a dumb thing to do, to take a twenty
nine percent interest on a small amount of money. That
was real dumb. If we don't let them do dumb things,
then they won't do dumb things. In many cases, they
didn't do dumb things because it was dumb. They did
(23:17):
dumb things because they were in an emergency. So take
away the ability for them to do that legally, and
now what do they do? They still need the money
they're still in an emergency. So now they go to
loan sharks, Now they go to Mafiosis, Now they go
to the cartels. If this is how bad bills are
(23:37):
passed to try to make decisions for people that we
don't agree with without.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Understanding that they're going to go around that.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Low and it's going to be far worse for them.
I may Mispronocean, it's in the spirit of what is right.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
There is a fellow.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
By the name of Bob Reehack or Rehawk. I don't
know r Ehak, I'll say Rehack, and he operates a
website called Reduced Flooding dot com reduce Flooding dot com.
(24:15):
Several people over the years have recommended I talked to him,
Marissa Hanson. Bob showed a number of you have sent me.
I got two emails this morning. He is described as
a retired Kingwood resident, but my understanding is that he
(24:41):
has a specialized experience base of flooding engineering and maybe
government documents. There are so many great re sources out
there of people like this guy who for no personal
(25:07):
gain because they are completely nerdy, dorky do gooder accountability people.
They're always engineers or accountants and they will spend untold
number of hours digging through government documents, and they always
(25:29):
catch the politicians because the politicians don't actually know what
last year's budget had in it, much less ten years ago.
The politicians don't read any of the reports that are
generated that are then put through the pr ringer to say,
you know, make it all sound great, And so when
they're when nothing ever happens as a result of money
(25:52):
that is spent on public problems, nobody has the assets
to question elected officials. But then you get guys like
this Bob Rehack or Bob Shot or Marissa Hanson. There
are plenty of others, and they're the greatest enemy to
(26:17):
them being able to do any good is a lack
of awareness that they exist. An enterprising reporter should should
get right up next to this Rehack fella and say, hey,
how about this. I love what you're doing. Can you
(26:37):
feed me what you're doing and I'll talk about it
and do story after story after story after story. My
understanding is this over eight thousand dollars in expenditure from
from Peterson, the woman at the flood Control District, that
(26:59):
that was a result of Bob Rehack making that information
available to some people. I have tried to get him
on the show as a guest.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I don't know if he's ill ready.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And some people are great with the written content but
sees up when they have to speak into a microphone.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I don't know, but I.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Will tell you that his stuff. Here's one revised Harris
County Flood Control District report still contains discrepancies totaling hundreds
of millions of dollars. Harris County Flood Control District admits
that it made a huge mistake in its twenty twenty
five first quarter flood bond update.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Released two weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
The report showed accounting discrepancies totally more than a billion dollars.
As a result of media attention, the district released a
revised Q one report late yesterday afternoon. Oops, we missed
a billion dollars. I'm sure Rodney nor anyone else stole
(28:03):
any of it or handed it to their friends, But
many discrepancy still remained, both within the revised report itself
and when comparing the revised report to the twenty twenty
four year in report. What a quaint notion. Some guy
sitting at his house in Kingwood compares last year's document
(28:25):
to this year's document and says, uh, the ledger doesn't
add up. Oh well, none of those numbers matter anyway,
Why are you bothering us? Bond funds one hundred seven
million partner funds, two hundred and eighty nine million secured funds,
three hundred and seventy million funds spent two hundred and
(28:46):
fifty two million HCFCD. Harris County Flood Control District also
claims to put five hundred four million dollars bond dollars
to work in the first three months of this year
without a explaining where the money went, Nor does the
revised report explain what the director, doctor T. Peterson, claims
(29:06):
is a one point three billion dollar shortfall in funding
needed to complete the bond. So do you think a
woman who asked for over eight thousand dollars to go
to a conference where even the basic report showed you
(29:28):
could go, not that you needed to for less than
two thousand dollars? Do you think she should be trusted
with billions of dollars?
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Because she is.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
And the only thing worse than that is that this
person is being trusted with billions of dollars and is
not accountable and is getting the numbers off by more
than a billion dollars in one year, and no buy
(30:00):
he's noticing if this fellow bob Rehack in Kingwood doesn't
bring it up. So what if bob Rehack doesn't exist,
or let's model this out. What if bob Rehack exists
but nobody listens to what he writes, Or if bob Rehack,
(30:25):
who's focused on flooding, can expose a billion dollars missing
from just the Harris County Flood Control District. You don't
know who the flood control District is, and.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Neither do I.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Nobody does, nobody at the Chronicle, does nobody at ABC thirteen,
khou KPRC. Not because they're bad people, because there's a
lot going on. There's money floating around everywhere, and there
are people who are very I watched it on City Council.
(31:01):
I watched it in frustration and in awe. There are
people whose job it is they're kind of a cross
between a consultant and an operative, and they've generally worked
for in government and out of government. They contribute to campaigns,
(31:23):
they serve on some boards, and these people move in
and out of public and private sector, and they have
relationships with the companies who do the work where they do,
whether that be the financing or the engineering, or the
architectural or the governmental compliance. And there's billions and billions
(31:47):
of your dollars. And the sad part is all they
care about is how much they can scoop away for
them and their friends, not the actual services rendered. And
that's why when you see a hurricane Harvey and you go,
how in the hell did this happen? We spent so
many billion dollars avoiding this happening. No, you didn't spend
(32:12):
billions of dollars avoiding a damn thing other than them
people going poor. The money is not spent with any
regard for stopping that level
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