February 5, 2026 • 30 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time time, time, Luck and load. The
Michael Varie Show is on the air. The entirety of
(00:37):
the time I came to Houston from nineteen eighty nine,
Commissioner's Court was Republicans. Harris County is a massive county.
It's broken into four districts. They're called precincts. For the
sake of conversation, let's call it north. It's call it northway, northeast, southwest, southeast,
(01:01):
not exactly accurate, but close enough. And then you have
what is the equivalent of the mayor for the county,
who doesn't represent a precinct is known as the county judge.
That's Lena Headalgo. The entirety of the time I was here,
almost the entirety of it, it was four Republicans, three
of the four precincts in the county judge. That was
(01:23):
John Lindsay, Then that was Robert Eckles, and then that
was at Emmett. And then there was a fluke. Emmitt
was beaten by Lena Hidalgo. It was a Democrat turnout.
Nobody saw it coming. I had Democrats called me the
next morning, Who's Lena Hadalgo? Hell if I know you
are a Democrat. People would be shocked to know you
(01:44):
just asked me that question. We never heard of her.
Rodney Ellis took over the one Democrat seat on County
Commissioner's Court. It was the seat that al Franco Lee held.
In fact, el Franco Lee, going back to nineteen eighty
four had beat Sylvester Turner and Sylvester Turner's first race
for that seat. But Elfranco was old boys club kind
of guy. He didn't rabble roused too much. He'd know ever,
(02:06):
so offered maybe raise a race claim, try to fight
bat in court in the elevator. But fine, fine, large
ol Franco was going alone to get along. And when
Rodney came in, Rodney decided he was going to be
the godfather of Harris County. Damned if he didn't do it.
He got Lena in as county judge, He redistricted Cactus
(02:29):
Jack Cale out of his district and put Brioni's in there. Now,
the Adrian Garcia precinct, which is southeast, has gone back
and forth Democrat Republican a little bit, but it still
leaned Republican prior to this point. And then you had
one safe seat and that was held by or Now
you have one safe seat left. The last Republican left,
(02:50):
so a four to one Republican majority is now a
four went Democrat majority. The last Republican standing is Tom Ramsey.
And I'm a fan. I knew Tom Ramsey for my
days on City Council because he and Wayne Klotz had
one of the most respected engineering firms in the country,
Clots and Associates, And it was a firm that you
(03:10):
could ask an opinion, Hey, do we need to be
is this project makes sense or not? Is this the
right budget for this project? And they would give you
honest answers. They were competent in infrastructure, which is very
rare for people, for people in public life, it's very
rare for a county commissioner to have a background owning
an engineering firm. Very rare, indeed, because most of what
(03:32):
city and county government does, believe it or not, is infrastructure,
roads and bridges and well culverts and drainage and mitigation
and these sorts of things. That and policing, those are
the biggest tasks. I think Tom Ramsey does a good job,
and in fact, I don't think we need to have
him on.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
I think I've said enough about him. I don't think
we need to have him on. I'm just kidding. This
is Tom Ramsey talking about this new pay equity policy,
Rodney ls deal. This is again more of this, this
sorrow's bullcrap, left wing stuff. Listen to this.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
But when departments raised their hand, and I've had several
raise their hand and said, you know, when you look
at job descriptions and positions and they just don't make
any sense, and we want to get it right. When
another department says ninety five percent of the people at
work that won't be getting an increase, yet they get
(04:25):
a letter saying they're going to get an increase, I
think it's just been a problem. The County Attorney's office
opted out of the process. But all those reasons that
you opted out, those reasons exist for a significant number
of the other departments. We're not ready. I think it's
what everybody's raising their hand and saying, we're simply not ready.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Commissioner Tom Ramsey, what in the world is going on here?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Well, Michael's good to be here. This is a example
of a progressive agenda item where they read about it
in Chicago or LA or New York. And they say, yeah,
we're going to do pay acting. Well, I don't think
(05:17):
that word means what you think that word means. And
so they start a program. They hire firm Gallagher Pay
Pay Gallagher one point two million dollars to define for
us pay equity. The objective is that really we need
to be sure that there is fairness and how everybody's
getting paid. We know, I've commented when we hired Gallagher,
(05:42):
I said, you know, the county has always been a
preferred place to go to work, mainly because of our benefits,
mainly because of our stability, And maybe we should focus
on our benefits in our stability and not come up
with a sum fabricated program to try to get pay raises.
(06:05):
So they came up with a program. They defined over
seven hundred and sixty differnt project types of position types.
In other words, they had position descriptions seven hundred and
sixty and they were going to compare what someone did
(06:25):
in the health department with what somebody did in the
engineering department. Was what somebody did in the perenci department.
You can't do that. Any idiot knows you can't do that.
I said, this won't work. Those of us from the
private sector can tell you how people are organized is different,
(06:48):
and when you try to come up with project descriptions
or position descriptions based on well, this person is just
like an engineer. Project manager in engineering is the same
as a project manager in the health department. So it
didn't work. It took a year. They charged this one
point two million dollars and it's the biggest joke in
(07:10):
disaster you can ever imagine. But the bad and sad
thing is they are going to spend forty two million
dollars this year on pay rates based on a really
flawed program, a flawed consulting effort, and they're going to
(07:33):
spend another seventy six million next year. And it's not
gonna be merit based. It's not going to be fair,
it's not going to make sense to any of the employees.
And so I think it's a disaster. It continues to
be a disaster. Yet they go right down that road.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Commissioner Tom Ramsey, I'm just glad to know you're there.
Gives me home. I got dark you scene side right,
he's looking at that girl over there, So I'm really cute.
This happens they barton it. Oh yeah yeah, let me
(08:17):
give you a suggestion on her. Here's what you want
to do, here's what you don't want to do. That's
good song. That's good writing right there? Who wrote that? Fore? Remember,
are we going to give you an opportunity? By the way,
my votes are at Michael Berryshow dot com Michael Berryshow
(08:40):
dot com. Remember when you go into the voting booth,
which is not for twelve days. The earliest you can
early vote is February seventeenth through the twenty seventh. You
cannot open your phone while you're in there. If you
like Uncle Jerry with one of those goofy flip phones
that opens up up into it being a bigger screen
(09:01):
and it's in the middle. It looks all plastically and awful.
You Android people, you can't open that or your iPhone
or anything else digital. But you can print what's known
as a pony or a slave, or you can take
printed materials with you into the ballot box, into the
voting box. You can so if you want to use
(09:23):
mine or anyone else's voting suggestions, you are free to
print those out if you receive them in the mail.
You can bring them with you. Let me go ahead
and warn you now, because there's always this type, you
know who you are, there's always this type that loves
the drama about getting kicked out of a campaign booth,
(09:46):
a voting location. I don't find that interesting. I understand
that for some people that's real interesting. Mickael I went
up there with a sign and said, Trump is my president.
I love mercle and they kick me out. Michael, they
kicked me out. Okay, did you show up to vote
or did you show up to hopefully create a stir?
I just I just don't have patience for it. Should
(10:09):
you technically be able to vote because he's not on
the ballot? Yes? Am I interested in it?
Speaker 3 (10:14):
No?
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I can't be interested in everybody's thing. Every day there
is an email from one hundred and seventy five different people.
I know what you gonna say every moment. That's why
you should read your emails from one hundred and seventy
five different people. And it goes like this, Michael. I
turn on TV day and I was watching John Wayne
movie and enduring the break there was a man dresses
a woman and Michael, it's in the war now, Okay,
(10:38):
I gotta be honest with you, I cannot focus on
that right now. I'm glad that that ruined your day.
I'm betting if that didn't ruin your day, that might
be something else. We've got an alternative to the Bad
Bunny at the NFL halftime show that that turning Point
is doing with Kid Rock and some others, and I
got people email, I'm gonna watch this. I'm gonna watch
(10:59):
Bad Bunny, mark my words, because it's very easy to
look back. There are gonna be people who cannot help themselves.
They got to peekaboo, got to peekaboo. They're gonna flip
over a turning point and they're gonna go. I wonder
what bad Money's don over. I they say, much of
queer stuff, bunch of anti American butt sex, awful, horrible stuff.
(11:21):
I bet he is. I'm gonna switch over and watch it,
and then they do. Because deep down, rage is an
intoxicating emotion. You're alive when you're raging. I'm starting to
think the only thing worse than the naive, nice neighbor
who's never bothered by anything is the person who is
living on the constant adrenaline of being bothered by everything
(11:44):
because he gets upset that I can't keep up. I
cannot be pissed about everything all the time, not and
be a decent father, talk show host, businessman, friend, husband.
I just can't do it. So you are free to
call and share your vote, vote for which ever. Tell
the name of the person and the race that they're in.
(12:04):
Get right to it, because we're going to turn the
calls over seven to one, three nine nine nine one
thousand seven one three nine nine nine one thousand. The
Houston Chronicle doing the bidding of John Cornyn's campaign in
the establishment, referring to Wesley Hunt as quote, little known
Houston Republican. Really, really, he's tied for second place behind
(12:32):
Paxton with John Cornyn, the senator from for twenty four years,
little known Houston Republican really. Chronicle hack Jeremy Wallace doesn't
properly credit us for our interview this week with Wesley Hunt,
which is fine writing they're scared because we're clearly a
(12:55):
threat to them. Hunt said in a radio interview on
KTRH inu houon Oh yeah, technically, I guess it was
on KTRH in Houston. You can go ahead and save
my name because everybody knows whose short it was. But
that's all right, that's all right. We're not mad. We're
not trying to get credit from the Houston Chronicle because
(13:17):
we don't read it anyway, and I don't know anybody
who does. I really don't anymore. It's become like the view.
And I'm happy because they went so far left. But
I'm kind of bummed out because I missed the days
of the good newspaper. I missed the days I loved
the newspaper as a kid. That was the greatest indulgence
(13:37):
in the very home. We got the Orange Leader and
the Bowman Enterprise. Oh yeah, big time. We got that
big city paper. Loved it, loved reading it. And on Saturday,
by about noon, if my dad would say, you see
where that city councilor got in trouble and he did this,
this and this, and you'd say, no, send a paper,
(14:00):
the paper, because reading the paper. For my dad, who
did not go to college, his theory was, everybody can
read the paper. You might not go to university, you
might not can have a fancy job, you might not
walk in the halls of power. But everybody can read
the paper. You can know what's going on. They can't
hide from you what's going on. It's all right there
(14:21):
in the paper. So read the paper that was the idea,
and then like every other great American institution that left
destroyed it all right. Seven one, three, nine, nine, nine,
one thousand. Who are you voting for? You'll sleep like
a superior. My financial advisor team at Steve or Mark Lopez,
(14:44):
John Carolyn and Andy McGee at my request or putting
together an evening at Federal American Grill on February twenty fifth.
If you are interested in email me. They have created
what is known a family office practice and for and
(15:04):
this will not be for everybody, so you don't need
to scream and holler. There are some things I do
for rich people. That's okay. There are there are there's
there's something known as a family office where wealthy families
will have an office after they've sold off the business,
(15:25):
private equities brought them out, or if it's inherited wealth, whatever,
they'll have a family office and that office will have
a team of people who handle the accounting and the
strategic planning, and they'll have somebody who handles philanthropic charitable contributions.
And that's because the amount of money they give away
per year is so significant that they literally have to
have a full time person and sometimes team two to
(15:50):
give that money away. And that's the Browns and the
Cullens and the Cockrolls and the Robertsons, and and it's
a good thing they do that. In fact, there's a
lot in Houston that wouldn't happen if it wasn't for
those families and their charitable donations, the like Jones Theater
(16:10):
and Cullen Hall and Robertson Hall and Cockrell Butterfly Museum,
and on and on on these families. If they did
not have a long standing tradition toward philanthropy, a lot
of things that we the public enjoy would not be there,
whether that be opera or a butterfly museum, or Boy
Scouts or musicals or high school activities, sporting events, stadiums,
(16:36):
you name it. So I talked to our guys because
they built a practice the last few years, they have
really converted their practice with about with over half their
time into this idea of somebody who's not who hasn't
sold their company for hundreds of millions of dollars, but
has done well and I know a lot of people
(16:57):
in this category that they've done well and now they're
at an age where they're transitioning into looking at their
legacy and looking at what life looks like when they're
no longer actively engage fourteen hours a day in their business,
but they still want their wealth. We use the word
wealth loosely. We all have wealth, their wealth to continue
(17:20):
to grow through smart investments, usually with a lot less risk.
As you get older, you want a little more security
because you don't want to lose it all because you
can't make it back, but also looking at things like
charitable contributions, both from a strategic tax advantage approach, but
(17:42):
also things that you care deeply about. A lot of
these are the guys that have come to me and said,
I want to help camp Hope. This is my budget.
How do we do that. Obviously that's meaningful to me
because I know where it goes. It makes a difference,
But also other aspects of this a state plan. Very
common situation. Man starts a business man works as an engineer, surveyor,
(18:07):
CPA construction company superintendent, works in a business un till
he's thirty thirty five, leaves, starts his own business. He's
married to the woman he's been with since they were
high school sweethearts or twenty years old. Starts the business
at thirty five, and it's kind of like that middle
aged crazy song by Jerry Lewis. The flame's gone out,
(18:31):
but she's worked alongside him that business. She's as responsible
for the success of that business as he is because
she bore his children, she kept his house, household going.
She took the risk with him. And there's tough times,
you know. You see these guys, they are thirty five
years old. They leave a job making back then in
the seventies, I'll do today's numbers, you know, making three
(18:53):
hundred thousand dollars a year. That's real money, and they
start a company on their own and that first year
don't make a dime. Well, people that have never seen
any money will say, oh, well, you had all the
money where you got No, it's not how it works.
You spent your money and you've got kids. And now
by this time, the kids are in middle school or
high school, and so the family's going through a great
deal of stress as a result of dad starting his
(19:14):
own business. So those high school years are real tough.
Maybe the kids go off to college, and there's real
concern with whether the parents are going to be able
to pay for the college. So, okay, used to mommy
and Daddy were going to pay for college. Now we're
going to take out loans because they're low interest rooms
and Daddy says, I'll pay for them later. I always
wanted to pay for your college, but I'm not now, okay.
So you know, he gets into his forties, into his fifties,
(19:38):
the kids are all gone, and maybe she files for
divorce because she stayed till the kids were there, or
or he files for divorce one way or another. In
short order, he's going to start dating women in their
late twenties early thirties, usually divorcees. Nice rack, big fluffy,
plump lips, a lot of work, very very high maintenance,
(19:59):
very expensive, but a show piece on his arm. And that's,
for whatever reason, what he wants. At this point, it's
very common thing. So then now he's entering his sixties,
he's dating this woman who's mid thirties. Maybe by this
time they've been dating a few years. He gets married.
(20:20):
The kids from the first marriage, one or two of
them have joined his company and they are rising through
the company, and his dream is to hand the company
off to them. They're still his kids. He loves those kids.
He doesn't hate his ex wife. She's just not married
to him anymore. She may have gotten remarried or in
many cases hasn't. And then he's got this business that
(20:43):
he wants to hand over. This business might have some
debt on it, but it's got some assets. It could
be sold. There's a lot going on in his life,
and he's had cancer once that he survived. Maybe he's
getting to be mid sixties, ate sixties. He starts worrying
about what's going to happen if he dies, because, in
(21:07):
a moment of laziness, his estate planning was he'd get everything,
he'd get it, he'd give everything to his wife. And
he now realizes since she wanted to have a kid
with him, she's smart. She wanted to have a kid
with him, very strategic move. Now they have a kid together,
that's ten. He's sixty eight, kid's ten. She's maybe thirty eight. Forty.
By this time, he's worried that his kid, who from
(21:31):
the first marriage is not is going to get cut
out of all this. The equity of the business. His
daughter from the first marriage is not going to get
anything of his because she's going to cut them out
and he's going to be dead and it's gonna be
nobody to hold her accountable. So this estate might be
worth ten or twenty or thirty or forty or fifty
million dollars, which is not as much as it sounds like.
(21:51):
It sounds like it's a lot, but you'd be surprised.
And so I said to those guys, Hey, here's a
profile of a lot of guys that I see and
they need somebody. Oh and by the way, private equity
has come knocking, maybe he'll sell his company. Anyway, at
the end of the month, we're going to have an
evening for people that might not be all your situation,
(22:13):
where they're gonna sit down with me and our team
of estate planning CPA and all that. If you're in
that situation where you're thinking about selling your company and
all that, email me and we'll invite you to the dinner.
A friend of mine texted me who fits that entire profile?
And he goes disturbingly specific Michael, And here's the worst part.
(22:40):
I said, I have no reason to lie to you.
I swear I had forgotten you were lingering out there
that was not intended for you. I just like to
paint pictures, and I pick and choose from various people, movies, books, literature, stories, tells, legends.
(23:07):
It's so funny because there are people who think that
I'm sitting here with a picture of them on the wall,
telling stories about them but not saying their name, to
torment them. And then they run, and some of them.
There's one guy in particular, who then runs to everybody
(23:29):
who knows me, Michael's talking about me again, and they
have to tell him, Dude, I assure you you are
the last person he's talking about. How you know, because
he doesn't think about you. You're clearly obsessed with him.
He doesn't think about you. Maybe change the dial, you know,
maybe think about moving on down the line. Maybe he
(23:52):
thinks you're just kind of odd and doesn't want to
be around you. But you need to get over that.
But there are people who think that I am sitting
here coming up with stories about them. But hell, I
tell stories that I know a lot of people. So
if I were to say, you know, you could be
walking down the street and slip and fall, and I've
(24:14):
got at least ten friends going to do that's uncalled for.
You know, I know what you're doing. What am I doing?
You're talking about me? Did you slip and fall? Remember
last year you made fun of me. I slipped and fell.
By the way, had dinner with my cardiologists last night.
Got to find a new cardiologist. Now yeah, yeah, well
(24:34):
you decide. I'll let you decide. So my wife hosted Majong.
Apparently we are a Majong family. Now, I didn't know
that's supposed to be for Tanglewood women. I had no
idea that we were running in the Tanglewood white women
crowd now, but apparently we are. And they had a
Majong instructor, which is another one of the moms of
(24:57):
the kids. But she comes listen this from we're in
our own business. So there were eight people playings eighty
dollars each for two hours of instruction. Okay, you're listening.
Eight people eighty dollars. She made six large plus forty,
six hundred and forty dollars for two hours of my jogging.
(25:18):
Tell you about that. That's not six large, six thousand
and six large. What do you cost six hundred six honey?
There's still a lot of money. Okay. So one of
the people my wife invites is Stan Dukman's Beautiful Life Lisa.
So Stan habits to be my cardiologist. They just went
(25:40):
to the Holy Lamp. He's really excited about it. I've
never had any friends go to the Holy Lands. I'm
kid and I've had ten thousand, so I know how
this thing's gonna go. I'm gonna have to look at
a bunch of pictures of the Holy Lamp. But if
I go to the Holy Land and we have dinner,
you're gonna have to look at my pictures. That's part
of it. That's part of the deal we make. Otherwise
you're evil. You have to. So he says, hey, I'm
(26:07):
gonna pick up my fallow in law. His follow law
is ninety one years old, Lisa's dad. He was a
doctor as well from the Philippines. And so Stan says,
I'm gonna pick you up for dinner. I think he
was seven thirty, and well, the ladies are having that
and we'll go to dinner. How's that sound. We'll go
to Kara Bazzy. Okay. So I go in for the
(26:31):
hug when I meet him, and he does a real soft,
stop side, and he says, I broke my ribs. Huh
actually no, no, no, no, no, before that, that's when I
was leaving. So I walked them into the house and
I said, ladies, this very handsome doctor right here is
(26:54):
my friend Mike. That's his follow and the other guy
is my cardiologist, du Hi bye. So we go on
our way. They're playing my young You know when women
get to a certain age, they don't really care for
the guys anymore. They were like, could y'all please leave?
We're having rose in playing majong. So we go to dinner.
(27:16):
I thought he was saying he said something about broken ribs. Well,
your fallaw's ninety one. He probably broke his ribs because
that's what old people do, right They fought. He oh,
fell and broke ribs. That's what I heard. Couldn't hear
very well. So I thought it was his farm mall.
And so we're at dinner and I said, Dan, I'm
glad you told me that Mike broke his ribs, because
(27:37):
I would have you know, I'm not shaking his hand
too hard. And he said, no, I broke my ribs.
How'd you break your ribs? Like if you're Dan Pastorini,
You're going you know what? We got a we got
a good old line. But me and Jean, I mean
me and Joe Green. He's a batmana jam will he
hit me? You saw what Dan Pastorini said in that
(28:00):
Love You bumb movie that I'm in. Four times? He said,
first time, mean Joe Green hit me. I couldn't poop
for a week. I asked him if that was true.
He goes, no, exaggerated it was four days, though. So
if you're dam Pastorinium, you got shattered ribs. You got
hit by mean Joe Green, you got hit by Jack Lambert.
You got hit by some of the meanest, toughest, baddest
(28:23):
dudes in history. Right, you write a book called Take
Him Flag. Everybody talks about your ribs. You're a tough guy.
Dukeman broke his ribs falling down the stairs. I said,
were you drunk? He's got a winery. I've never seen
him drunk, but he's a wine expert. Were you at
(28:44):
least drunk? No, I'm a stone culs over. Oh my goodness,
what happened? Somebody left a banana peel? He said? I
was wearing a new pair of shoes. He's kind of
a dandy dresser, so you know, you dandy dressers are
gonna slip and fall on fancy new leather shoes. So
he said, I was on the wood staircase at some
(29:07):
place called vne Guard. I don't know what that is.
I bet we're gonna know, because I bet they're gonna
get sued, probably some wine place. Anyway, So he said,
I had new purse shoes and they were I guess
they were slipped in the in the wood must have
just been polished, and I slipped and I fell and
I hit my ribs several times. I said, oh my, okay,
(29:30):
how's that going? And he said, well, the worst part
today was I sneezed, And so I went online to
figure out how you cannot sneeze, trying to come up
with strategies to not sneeze. I said, oh no, I
think I need a new cardiologist, because think about this.
If you're cardiologists cannot navigate the stairs without breaking their
(29:54):
ribs and you're laid out and he's got you wide open,
I don't want him kind of knocking around inside there, right,
So I said, well, did you at least get some
pain meds. He said, no, I'm still seeing patients. I
can't take anything. I got to suffer through this with
no pain meds. So I said, here's the deal. Prescribe
(30:19):
yourself some pain meds, but don't take them, because that's
a no no. You're you know, passion medicine. Give them
to me. He didn't think that was a good idea.
I'm not really a pain meds guy, but I like
the idea of it. Like when you find out somebody
has been kind of, you know, pharmacy shopping and they
have a little pain med pro hom I'm never mad
(30:41):
at that guy, are you? It's not me because I'm
an addictive personality and I ended up just zunk out
all the time. Lots of emails ask him where we're
going to be tonight. Contact with Steve told campaign online
for that and our votes are up Michael Berryshow dot
com
It's that time time time, time, Luck and load. The
Michael Varie Show is on the air. The entirety of
(00:37):
the time I came to Houston from nineteen eighty nine,
Commissioner's Court was Republicans. Harris County is a massive county.
It's broken into four districts. They're called precincts. For the
sake of conversation, let's call it north. It's call it northway, northeast, southwest, southeast,
(01:01):
not exactly accurate, but close enough. And then you have
what is the equivalent of the mayor for the county,
who doesn't represent a precinct is known as the county judge.
That's Lena Headalgo. The entirety of the time I was here,
almost the entirety of it, it was four Republicans, three
of the four precincts in the county judge. That was
(01:23):
John Lindsay, Then that was Robert Eckles, and then that
was at Emmett. And then there was a fluke. Emmitt
was beaten by Lena Hidalgo. It was a Democrat turnout.
Nobody saw it coming. I had Democrats called me the
next morning, Who's Lena Hadalgo? Hell if I know you
are a Democrat. People would be shocked to know you
(01:44):
just asked me that question. We never heard of her.
Rodney Ellis took over the one Democrat seat on County
Commissioner's Court. It was the seat that al Franco Lee held.
In fact, el Franco Lee, going back to nineteen eighty
four had beat Sylvester Turner and Sylvester Turner's first race
for that seat. But Elfranco was old boys club kind
of guy. He didn't rabble roused too much. He'd know ever,
(02:06):
so offered maybe raise a race claim, try to fight
bat in court in the elevator. But fine, fine, large
ol Franco was going alone to get along. And when
Rodney came in, Rodney decided he was going to be
the godfather of Harris County. Damned if he didn't do it.
He got Lena in as county judge, He redistricted Cactus
(02:29):
Jack Cale out of his district and put Brioni's in there. Now,
the Adrian Garcia precinct, which is southeast, has gone back
and forth Democrat Republican a little bit, but it still
leaned Republican prior to this point. And then you had
one safe seat and that was held by or Now
you have one safe seat left. The last Republican left,
(02:50):
so a four to one Republican majority is now a
four went Democrat majority. The last Republican standing is Tom Ramsey.
And I'm a fan. I knew Tom Ramsey for my
days on City Council because he and Wayne Klotz had
one of the most respected engineering firms in the country,
Clots and Associates, And it was a firm that you
(03:10):
could ask an opinion, Hey, do we need to be
is this project makes sense or not? Is this the
right budget for this project? And they would give you
honest answers. They were competent in infrastructure, which is very
rare for people, for people in public life, it's very
rare for a county commissioner to have a background owning
an engineering firm. Very rare, indeed, because most of what
(03:32):
city and county government does, believe it or not, is infrastructure,
roads and bridges and well culverts and drainage and mitigation
and these sorts of things. That and policing, those are
the biggest tasks. I think Tom Ramsey does a good job,
and in fact, I don't think we need to have
him on.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
I think I've said enough about him. I don't think
we need to have him on. I'm just kidding. This
is Tom Ramsey talking about this new pay equity policy,
Rodney ls deal. This is again more of this, this
sorrow's bullcrap, left wing stuff. Listen to this.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
But when departments raised their hand, and I've had several
raise their hand and said, you know, when you look
at job descriptions and positions and they just don't make
any sense, and we want to get it right. When
another department says ninety five percent of the people at
work that won't be getting an increase, yet they get
(04:25):
a letter saying they're going to get an increase, I
think it's just been a problem. The County Attorney's office
opted out of the process. But all those reasons that
you opted out, those reasons exist for a significant number
of the other departments. We're not ready. I think it's
what everybody's raising their hand and saying, we're simply not ready.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Commissioner Tom Ramsey, what in the world is going on here?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Well, Michael's good to be here. This is a example
of a progressive agenda item where they read about it
in Chicago or LA or New York. And they say, yeah,
we're going to do pay acting. Well, I don't think
(05:17):
that word means what you think that word means. And
so they start a program. They hire firm Gallagher Pay
Pay Gallagher one point two million dollars to define for
us pay equity. The objective is that really we need
to be sure that there is fairness and how everybody's
getting paid. We know, I've commented when we hired Gallagher,
(05:42):
I said, you know, the county has always been a
preferred place to go to work, mainly because of our benefits,
mainly because of our stability, And maybe we should focus
on our benefits in our stability and not come up
with a sum fabricated program to try to get pay raises.
(06:05):
So they came up with a program. They defined over
seven hundred and sixty differnt project types of position types.
In other words, they had position descriptions seven hundred and
sixty and they were going to compare what someone did
(06:25):
in the health department with what somebody did in the
engineering department. Was what somebody did in the perenci department.
You can't do that. Any idiot knows you can't do that.
I said, this won't work. Those of us from the
private sector can tell you how people are organized is different,
(06:48):
and when you try to come up with project descriptions
or position descriptions based on well, this person is just
like an engineer. Project manager in engineering is the same
as a project manager in the health department. So it
didn't work. It took a year. They charged this one
point two million dollars and it's the biggest joke in
(07:10):
disaster you can ever imagine. But the bad and sad
thing is they are going to spend forty two million
dollars this year on pay rates based on a really
flawed program, a flawed consulting effort, and they're going to
(07:33):
spend another seventy six million next year. And it's not
gonna be merit based. It's not going to be fair,
it's not going to make sense to any of the employees.
And so I think it's a disaster. It continues to
be a disaster. Yet they go right down that road.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Commissioner Tom Ramsey, I'm just glad to know you're there.
Gives me home. I got dark you scene side right,
he's looking at that girl over there, So I'm really cute.
This happens they barton it. Oh yeah yeah, let me
(08:17):
give you a suggestion on her. Here's what you want
to do, here's what you don't want to do. That's
good song. That's good writing right there? Who wrote that? Fore? Remember,
are we going to give you an opportunity? By the way,
my votes are at Michael Berryshow dot com Michael Berryshow
(08:40):
dot com. Remember when you go into the voting booth,
which is not for twelve days. The earliest you can
early vote is February seventeenth through the twenty seventh. You
cannot open your phone while you're in there. If you
like Uncle Jerry with one of those goofy flip phones
that opens up up into it being a bigger screen
(09:01):
and it's in the middle. It looks all plastically and awful.
You Android people, you can't open that or your iPhone
or anything else digital. But you can print what's known
as a pony or a slave, or you can take
printed materials with you into the ballot box, into the
voting box. You can so if you want to use
(09:23):
mine or anyone else's voting suggestions, you are free to
print those out if you receive them in the mail.
You can bring them with you. Let me go ahead
and warn you now, because there's always this type, you
know who you are, there's always this type that loves
the drama about getting kicked out of a campaign booth,
(09:46):
a voting location. I don't find that interesting. I understand
that for some people that's real interesting. Mickael I went
up there with a sign and said, Trump is my president.
I love mercle and they kick me out. Michael, they
kicked me out. Okay, did you show up to vote
or did you show up to hopefully create a stir?
I just I just don't have patience for it. Should
(10:09):
you technically be able to vote because he's not on
the ballot? Yes? Am I interested in it?
Speaker 3 (10:14):
No?
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I can't be interested in everybody's thing. Every day there
is an email from one hundred and seventy five different people.
I know what you gonna say every moment. That's why
you should read your emails from one hundred and seventy
five different people. And it goes like this, Michael. I
turn on TV day and I was watching John Wayne
movie and enduring the break there was a man dresses
a woman and Michael, it's in the war now, Okay,
(10:38):
I gotta be honest with you, I cannot focus on
that right now. I'm glad that that ruined your day.
I'm betting if that didn't ruin your day, that might
be something else. We've got an alternative to the Bad
Bunny at the NFL halftime show that that turning Point
is doing with Kid Rock and some others, and I
got people email, I'm gonna watch this. I'm gonna watch
(10:59):
Bad Bunny, mark my words, because it's very easy to
look back. There are gonna be people who cannot help themselves.
They got to peekaboo, got to peekaboo. They're gonna flip
over a turning point and they're gonna go. I wonder
what bad Money's don over. I they say, much of
queer stuff, bunch of anti American butt sex, awful, horrible stuff.
(11:21):
I bet he is. I'm gonna switch over and watch it,
and then they do. Because deep down, rage is an
intoxicating emotion. You're alive when you're raging. I'm starting to
think the only thing worse than the naive, nice neighbor
who's never bothered by anything is the person who is
living on the constant adrenaline of being bothered by everything
(11:44):
because he gets upset that I can't keep up. I
cannot be pissed about everything all the time, not and
be a decent father, talk show host, businessman, friend, husband.
I just can't do it. So you are free to
call and share your vote, vote for which ever. Tell
the name of the person and the race that they're in.
(12:04):
Get right to it, because we're going to turn the
calls over seven to one, three nine nine nine one
thousand seven one three nine nine nine one thousand. The
Houston Chronicle doing the bidding of John Cornyn's campaign in
the establishment, referring to Wesley Hunt as quote, little known
Houston Republican. Really, really, he's tied for second place behind
(12:32):
Paxton with John Cornyn, the senator from for twenty four years,
little known Houston Republican really. Chronicle hack Jeremy Wallace doesn't
properly credit us for our interview this week with Wesley Hunt,
which is fine writing they're scared because we're clearly a
(12:55):
threat to them. Hunt said in a radio interview on
KTRH inu houon Oh yeah, technically, I guess it was
on KTRH in Houston. You can go ahead and save
my name because everybody knows whose short it was. But
that's all right, that's all right. We're not mad. We're
not trying to get credit from the Houston Chronicle because
(13:17):
we don't read it anyway, and I don't know anybody
who does. I really don't anymore. It's become like the view.
And I'm happy because they went so far left. But
I'm kind of bummed out because I missed the days
of the good newspaper. I missed the days I loved
the newspaper as a kid. That was the greatest indulgence
(13:37):
in the very home. We got the Orange Leader and
the Bowman Enterprise. Oh yeah, big time. We got that
big city paper. Loved it, loved reading it. And on Saturday,
by about noon, if my dad would say, you see
where that city councilor got in trouble and he did this,
this and this, and you'd say, no, send a paper,
(14:00):
the paper, because reading the paper. For my dad, who
did not go to college, his theory was, everybody can
read the paper. You might not go to university, you
might not can have a fancy job, you might not
walk in the halls of power. But everybody can read
the paper. You can know what's going on. They can't
hide from you what's going on. It's all right there
(14:21):
in the paper. So read the paper that was the idea,
and then like every other great American institution that left
destroyed it all right. Seven one, three, nine, nine, nine,
one thousand. Who are you voting for? You'll sleep like
a superior. My financial advisor team at Steve or Mark Lopez,
(14:44):
John Carolyn and Andy McGee at my request or putting
together an evening at Federal American Grill on February twenty fifth.
If you are interested in email me. They have created
what is known a family office practice and for and
(15:04):
this will not be for everybody, so you don't need
to scream and holler. There are some things I do
for rich people. That's okay. There are there are there's
there's something known as a family office where wealthy families
will have an office after they've sold off the business,
(15:25):
private equities brought them out, or if it's inherited wealth, whatever,
they'll have a family office and that office will have
a team of people who handle the accounting and the
strategic planning, and they'll have somebody who handles philanthropic charitable contributions.
And that's because the amount of money they give away
per year is so significant that they literally have to
have a full time person and sometimes team two to
(15:50):
give that money away. And that's the Browns and the
Cullens and the Cockrolls and the Robertsons, and and it's
a good thing they do that. In fact, there's a
lot in Houston that wouldn't happen if it wasn't for
those families and their charitable donations, the like Jones Theater
(16:10):
and Cullen Hall and Robertson Hall and Cockrell Butterfly Museum,
and on and on on these families. If they did
not have a long standing tradition toward philanthropy, a lot
of things that we the public enjoy would not be there,
whether that be opera or a butterfly museum, or Boy
Scouts or musicals or high school activities, sporting events, stadiums,
(16:36):
you name it. So I talked to our guys because
they built a practice the last few years, they have
really converted their practice with about with over half their
time into this idea of somebody who's not who hasn't
sold their company for hundreds of millions of dollars, but
has done well and I know a lot of people
(16:57):
in this category that they've done well and now they're
at an age where they're transitioning into looking at their
legacy and looking at what life looks like when they're
no longer actively engage fourteen hours a day in their business,
but they still want their wealth. We use the word
wealth loosely. We all have wealth, their wealth to continue
(17:20):
to grow through smart investments, usually with a lot less risk.
As you get older, you want a little more security
because you don't want to lose it all because you
can't make it back, but also looking at things like
charitable contributions, both from a strategic tax advantage approach, but
(17:42):
also things that you care deeply about. A lot of
these are the guys that have come to me and said,
I want to help camp Hope. This is my budget.
How do we do that. Obviously that's meaningful to me
because I know where it goes. It makes a difference,
But also other aspects of this a state plan. Very
common situation. Man starts a business man works as an engineer, surveyor,
(18:07):
CPA construction company superintendent, works in a business un till
he's thirty thirty five, leaves, starts his own business. He's
married to the woman he's been with since they were
high school sweethearts or twenty years old. Starts the business
at thirty five, and it's kind of like that middle
aged crazy song by Jerry Lewis. The flame's gone out,
(18:31):
but she's worked alongside him that business. She's as responsible
for the success of that business as he is because
she bore his children, she kept his house, household going.
She took the risk with him. And there's tough times,
you know. You see these guys, they are thirty five
years old. They leave a job making back then in
the seventies, I'll do today's numbers, you know, making three
(18:53):
hundred thousand dollars a year. That's real money, and they
start a company on their own and that first year
don't make a dime. Well, people that have never seen
any money will say, oh, well, you had all the
money where you got No, it's not how it works.
You spent your money and you've got kids. And now
by this time, the kids are in middle school or
high school, and so the family's going through a great
deal of stress as a result of dad starting his
(19:14):
own business. So those high school years are real tough.
Maybe the kids go off to college, and there's real
concern with whether the parents are going to be able
to pay for the college. So, okay, used to mommy
and Daddy were going to pay for college. Now we're
going to take out loans because they're low interest rooms
and Daddy says, I'll pay for them later. I always
wanted to pay for your college, but I'm not now, okay.
So you know, he gets into his forties, into his fifties,
(19:38):
the kids are all gone, and maybe she files for
divorce because she stayed till the kids were there, or
or he files for divorce one way or another. In
short order, he's going to start dating women in their
late twenties early thirties, usually divorcees. Nice rack, big fluffy,
plump lips, a lot of work, very very high maintenance,
(19:59):
very expensive, but a show piece on his arm. And that's,
for whatever reason, what he wants. At this point, it's
very common thing. So then now he's entering his sixties,
he's dating this woman who's mid thirties. Maybe by this
time they've been dating a few years. He gets married.
(20:20):
The kids from the first marriage, one or two of
them have joined his company and they are rising through
the company, and his dream is to hand the company
off to them. They're still his kids. He loves those kids.
He doesn't hate his ex wife. She's just not married
to him anymore. She may have gotten remarried or in
many cases hasn't. And then he's got this business that
(20:43):
he wants to hand over. This business might have some
debt on it, but it's got some assets. It could
be sold. There's a lot going on in his life,
and he's had cancer once that he survived. Maybe he's
getting to be mid sixties, ate sixties. He starts worrying
about what's going to happen if he dies, because, in
(21:07):
a moment of laziness, his estate planning was he'd get everything,
he'd get it, he'd give everything to his wife. And
he now realizes since she wanted to have a kid
with him, she's smart. She wanted to have a kid
with him, very strategic move. Now they have a kid together,
that's ten. He's sixty eight, kid's ten. She's maybe thirty eight. Forty.
By this time, he's worried that his kid, who from
(21:31):
the first marriage is not is going to get cut
out of all this. The equity of the business. His
daughter from the first marriage is not going to get
anything of his because she's going to cut them out
and he's going to be dead and it's gonna be
nobody to hold her accountable. So this estate might be
worth ten or twenty or thirty or forty or fifty
million dollars, which is not as much as it sounds like.
(21:51):
It sounds like it's a lot, but you'd be surprised.
And so I said to those guys, Hey, here's a
profile of a lot of guys that I see and
they need somebody. Oh and by the way, private equity
has come knocking, maybe he'll sell his company. Anyway, at
the end of the month, we're going to have an
evening for people that might not be all your situation,
(22:13):
where they're gonna sit down with me and our team
of estate planning CPA and all that. If you're in
that situation where you're thinking about selling your company and
all that, email me and we'll invite you to the dinner.
A friend of mine texted me who fits that entire profile?
And he goes disturbingly specific Michael, And here's the worst part.
(22:40):
I said, I have no reason to lie to you.
I swear I had forgotten you were lingering out there
that was not intended for you. I just like to
paint pictures, and I pick and choose from various people, movies, books, literature, stories, tells, legends.
(23:07):
It's so funny because there are people who think that
I'm sitting here with a picture of them on the wall,
telling stories about them but not saying their name, to
torment them. And then they run, and some of them.
There's one guy in particular, who then runs to everybody
(23:29):
who knows me, Michael's talking about me again, and they
have to tell him, Dude, I assure you you are
the last person he's talking about. How you know, because
he doesn't think about you. You're clearly obsessed with him.
He doesn't think about you. Maybe change the dial, you know,
maybe think about moving on down the line. Maybe he
(23:52):
thinks you're just kind of odd and doesn't want to
be around you. But you need to get over that.
But there are people who think that I am sitting
here coming up with stories about them. But hell, I
tell stories that I know a lot of people. So
if I were to say, you know, you could be
walking down the street and slip and fall, and I've
(24:14):
got at least ten friends going to do that's uncalled for.
You know, I know what you're doing. What am I doing?
You're talking about me? Did you slip and fall? Remember
last year you made fun of me. I slipped and fell.
By the way, had dinner with my cardiologists last night.
Got to find a new cardiologist. Now yeah, yeah, well
(24:34):
you decide. I'll let you decide. So my wife hosted Majong.
Apparently we are a Majong family. Now, I didn't know
that's supposed to be for Tanglewood women. I had no
idea that we were running in the Tanglewood white women
crowd now, but apparently we are. And they had a
Majong instructor, which is another one of the moms of
(24:57):
the kids. But she comes listen this from we're in
our own business. So there were eight people playings eighty
dollars each for two hours of instruction. Okay, you're listening.
Eight people eighty dollars. She made six large plus forty,
six hundred and forty dollars for two hours of my jogging.
(25:18):
Tell you about that. That's not six large, six thousand
and six large. What do you cost six hundred six honey?
There's still a lot of money. Okay. So one of
the people my wife invites is Stan Dukman's Beautiful Life Lisa.
So Stan habits to be my cardiologist. They just went
(25:40):
to the Holy Lamp. He's really excited about it. I've
never had any friends go to the Holy Lands. I'm
kid and I've had ten thousand, so I know how
this thing's gonna go. I'm gonna have to look at
a bunch of pictures of the Holy Lamp. But if
I go to the Holy Land and we have dinner,
you're gonna have to look at my pictures. That's part
of it. That's part of the deal we make. Otherwise
you're evil. You have to. So he says, hey, I'm
(26:07):
gonna pick up my fallow in law. His follow law
is ninety one years old, Lisa's dad. He was a
doctor as well from the Philippines. And so Stan says,
I'm gonna pick you up for dinner. I think he
was seven thirty, and well, the ladies are having that
and we'll go to dinner. How's that sound. We'll go
to Kara Bazzy. Okay. So I go in for the
(26:31):
hug when I meet him, and he does a real soft,
stop side, and he says, I broke my ribs. Huh
actually no, no, no, no, no, before that, that's when I
was leaving. So I walked them into the house and
I said, ladies, this very handsome doctor right here is
(26:54):
my friend Mike. That's his follow and the other guy
is my cardiologist, du Hi bye. So we go on
our way. They're playing my young You know when women
get to a certain age, they don't really care for
the guys anymore. They were like, could y'all please leave?
We're having rose in playing majong. So we go to dinner.
(27:16):
I thought he was saying he said something about broken ribs. Well,
your fallaw's ninety one. He probably broke his ribs because
that's what old people do, right They fought. He oh,
fell and broke ribs. That's what I heard. Couldn't hear
very well. So I thought it was his farm mall.
And so we're at dinner and I said, Dan, I'm
glad you told me that Mike broke his ribs, because
(27:37):
I would have you know, I'm not shaking his hand
too hard. And he said, no, I broke my ribs.
How'd you break your ribs? Like if you're Dan Pastorini,
You're going you know what? We got a we got
a good old line. But me and Jean, I mean
me and Joe Green. He's a batmana jam will he
hit me? You saw what Dan Pastorini said in that
(28:00):
Love You bumb movie that I'm in. Four times? He said,
first time, mean Joe Green hit me. I couldn't poop
for a week. I asked him if that was true.
He goes, no, exaggerated it was four days, though. So
if you're dam Pastorinium, you got shattered ribs. You got
hit by mean Joe Green, you got hit by Jack Lambert.
You got hit by some of the meanest, toughest, baddest
(28:23):
dudes in history. Right, you write a book called Take
Him Flag. Everybody talks about your ribs. You're a tough guy.
Dukeman broke his ribs falling down the stairs. I said,
were you drunk? He's got a winery. I've never seen
him drunk, but he's a wine expert. Were you at
(28:44):
least drunk? No, I'm a stone culs over. Oh my goodness,
what happened? Somebody left a banana peel? He said? I
was wearing a new pair of shoes. He's kind of
a dandy dresser, so you know, you dandy dressers are
gonna slip and fall on fancy new leather shoes. So
he said, I was on the wood staircase at some
(29:07):
place called vne Guard. I don't know what that is.
I bet we're gonna know, because I bet they're gonna
get sued, probably some wine place. Anyway, So he said,
I had new purse shoes and they were I guess
they were slipped in the in the wood must have
just been polished, and I slipped and I fell and
I hit my ribs several times. I said, oh my, okay,
(29:30):
how's that going? And he said, well, the worst part
today was I sneezed, And so I went online to
figure out how you cannot sneeze, trying to come up
with strategies to not sneeze. I said, oh no, I
think I need a new cardiologist, because think about this.
If you're cardiologists cannot navigate the stairs without breaking their
(29:54):
ribs and you're laid out and he's got you wide open,
I don't want him kind of knocking around inside there, right,
So I said, well, did you at least get some
pain meds. He said, no, I'm still seeing patients. I
can't take anything. I got to suffer through this with
no pain meds. So I said, here's the deal. Prescribe
(30:19):
yourself some pain meds, but don't take them, because that's
a no no. You're you know, passion medicine. Give them
to me. He didn't think that was a good idea.
I'm not really a pain meds guy, but I like
the idea of it. Like when you find out somebody
has been kind of, you know, pharmacy shopping and they
have a little pain med pro hom I'm never mad
(30:41):
at that guy, are you? It's not me because I'm
an addictive personality and I ended up just zunk out
all the time. Lots of emails ask him where we're
going to be tonight. Contact with Steve told campaign online
for that and our votes are up Michael Berryshow dot
com
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