S12, Ep. 38: Kicking The Circle

On this Salcedo Storm Podcast:

Daniel Greer is the CEO of Texas Scorecard.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, I'm you happy people, Neil Smith and old Buck Buddy.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Are you hearing Neil? Neil? I miss you, Man Donnes,
I have a question. We respect for me.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Down by breaking a major story.

Speaker 4 (00:16):
Chris, congratulations.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Listen to a single score podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Today.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
I'm recording this podcast, Folcus to day after the twenty
twenty five elections, and there are some things that we
learned in this election, and I want to basically summarize
a couple of the things I think that we gleaned
from this election. First, despite what you heard, this was
not a blue Americans. Now, I do believe have proof

(01:04):
of a threat to our existence and those behind the threat.
It's what I dubbed on Newsmax as Election twenty twenty five.
Now we know I made this a subject of a
preamble there, and I'm going to recap basically when I
went over. First, let me deal with the absurdity that
it was a blue wave. The leftists in the press

(01:24):
are making this specious claim all over the place. But
you folks in my beloved audience know it's really bs
Democrats won in left wing blue states. That's hardly what
I would classify a wave. The Democrats simply held territory.
But Democrats also provided a clarifying moment for Americans, and
this is something that I think is of value. First,

(01:48):
multiple Democrat candidates took money from sources linked to Communists China,
and despite knowing their candidates owed foreign interests, Democrat voters
elected them anyway. The next thing to take away is,
while speaking of communists, to the Rotten Apple elected a Marxist.
They knew this guy, Marxist Memdanni. They knew this guy

(02:12):
was a cop hater, an anti prosperity guy. He was
invested and dedicated to government rule over the people. They knew.
Counter what the Wall Street Journal was saying here of
the last couple of weeks that the Democrat Party is
the home of anti Semitism in America. And Democrat voters

(02:32):
elected Zorhan Mamdani anyway. And lastly, this is the last takeaway.
Democrat voters pulled the lever for a guy in Virginia
who wished death on his political opponents and the death
of his political opponents children. So in fact, they thought
a violent, unhinged, arranged guy like this belongs in the

(02:54):
state's attorney general's office as the chief law enforcement official
in the state of Virginia. Folks, this is exactly like
left wing jurisdictions that hire illegal aliens to be in
government or in law enforcement. It's the same bat guano
crazy mentality. Now there's another side of this election. I
want you all to consider. And this is something that

(03:16):
Carl Demiel brought up a very good point on the
Chris Alsado Show. He's from California, he's a representative out
their former talk show host still does a podcast, I think.
And even though he was saying, look, I understand why
you're saying it wasn't a blue wave, but it was
a blue wave in this respect, he told me Republicans

(03:39):
didn't show it's right if Trump isn't on the ballot,
Republican voters don't care why because Republicans give us nothing
to vote for. They inspire nobody. So this is the
other side that I detailed to the audience. Said, and

(04:00):
Trump and the America First Coalition was not on the ballot,
and absent President Trump, the GOP couldn't beat China backed
Marxists who wish death upon their political opponents and their
opponent's children. Now that shows you the sorry state of
the Republican Party in these states, headed by rhino squishes

(04:21):
like John Cornyan, like Dade Feeling like Dusty the Democrat boroughs.
These Republicans inspire nobody. They have no unifying American principles.
They have more in common with leftists Marxist Democrats than
they do with the American people. So to bottom line

(04:42):
this all in all, I think election twenty twenty five
was a net win for real Americans Democrats held under
their diminishing political real estate. We now have definitive proof
that Democrats have fully rejected all American values. As I've said,
they no longer wish to be Americins. We know the

(05:02):
problems in America are caused by these Democrats, by these socialists.
We also know that a GOP that is absent the
backbone of america first principles is not the solution to
America's Democrat problem. Knowledge is power, my friends, and I
hope you use this knowledge going into the primaries. They're
right around the corner. Real Americans should show those who

(05:25):
are hurting this nation and those who don't want to
solve that problem the proverbial political door. Only you can
save this country.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Folks.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
We outnumber them. Take it on the folks who fancy
themselves the ruling class. That's next on the Salcedo Storm podcast.
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Speaker 2 (09:03):
The establishment media is out of touch with the real
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Speaker 4 (09:17):
Folks, I want to bring on somebody that has been
on the podcast before, but never in his current capacity.
Daniel Greer is his name. He is now the brand
spanking new shiny Penny, as it were, the CEO of
Texas Scorecard. Congratulations on the promotion, man, and welcome back.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Thanks for having me, Chris.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
So, you and I are.

Speaker 4 (09:39):
Talking about something today that I'm gonna be completely honest.
I have no idea what Kicking the Circle is about,
but you're gonna tell me.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
I mean, I'd be happy to tell you.

Speaker 5 (09:50):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
So, I got a call in May from a group
of citizens in Blanco County, which is just southwest of Austin,
and they were trying to incorporate a city and they
were having a hard time of it because of a
county judge and the way that he was interacting with
them while they were trying to.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Incorporate this city.

Speaker 4 (10:09):
Okay, And.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
What ended up happening and is the subject of the documentary,
is that they lost this election. And so the documentary
is about me going in and trying to figure out
what the heck happened. And I'll tell you, I traveled
to state, I talked to lots of people all over
the place, and the stories that I hear all over.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Sounded a lot.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Like what I was hearing in Blanco County. And so
that's why I made this documentary about a local election
just outside of Johnson City, the birthplace of one of
the most powerful and also most corrupt politicians that we've
ever seen lbj LB.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
Yeah, okay, so now you got me curious. So they
just wanted to incorporate their little town into a city,
right Is that is that kind of what they wanted
to do.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Or yeah, that's it.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
And so the you know, Johnson City in Blanco County
is close to Austin, and there's a bunch of the
cities creeping that way, and so the locals are worried.
They're concerned about their way of life. They want to
preserve it. They understand that, you know, growth is going
to happen, and they're not strictly anti growth, but they
like to have a seat at the table for when

(11:26):
that growth comes their way. So if you've got a
city and tech stot wants to come through and do something,
they've got to reach out to you and tell you, hey,
here's what we're planning on doing. And that way, at
least they'd have they'd have a say in how things
were being developed. Okay, And for the life of these people,
they couldn't figure out why the judge was.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
So bent on stopping their incorporation.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
And mind you, this may when the election, the latest
election was wasn't the first time they'd tried to incorporate it.
They'd actually tried to do so to two years prior
in a prior election, and he had just not allowed them.
He just had not called for the election. They took
him the application. It's supposed to be really straightforward. You

(12:11):
find two hundred and fifty people in an area, you
get a certain percentage of those people to apply to
create the city, and then the judge is supposed to
by law just call for the election, and he didn't
do it.

Speaker 4 (12:21):
Okay, So folks, okay, Just so everybody's clear. So we're
going to a judge that they can't get an election.
It's something they went to an election and lost. They
are trying to have an election and they need to
have this judge approve it. So this is going to
beg the question, how can the judge lawfully deny it?

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Well, that's a great question.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
I'll say that in the first instance, they didn't even
challenge it. They took him the application, he didn't he
denied it, and they just left it. But then they
redoubled their efforts and came back and they forced the
issue and they eventually had the election.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
But there was a lot of.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Rigormarole in between them bringing the application and then the
election actually happening, and a lot of strange things went on,
strange things that I see in other places. So you know,
there are people that are getting calls about, hey, maybe
you shouldn't do this. Maybe a constable is kind of
sitting at the end of the block and every once

(13:25):
in a while just rolling by, is you just check
it up on things?

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Is this intimidation?

Speaker 3 (13:31):
And I'll tell you when I went out there and
started asking questions, the majority of people I talked to
didn't want to go on the record because they were
afraid of the retribution. They were afraid of kicking the circle.
And this is a terminology that I had never heard before.
I think normally people think about the good old boys network,

(13:51):
and that's the normal verbiage that we use when we
talk about corruption and local especially local politics, but just
politics in general.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
It's a good old network.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Well, the first interview I had, and so the gentleman
who's featured in the film, his name is Paul, I
talked to him in May, and he recalled this conversation
he had had with his friend, and his friend had said, Paul,
don't you understand what you've done. You've kicked the circle.
And once you kick the circle, there's no going back.
And it's this concept of there's a circle of power

(14:23):
and if you disrupt what they're trying to do, then
they're going to retaliate.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
Even though your motives might have been pure, even though
you're just trying to do what's best for your community,
that these people are going to take you out because
you're doing things that they don't want you to do.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
Your motives might even align with theirs, which is actually
what I found to be the case with a lot
of people that I talked to in Johnson City in
Blanco County that the people that were in the circle,
the people that are in power, are also worried about expansion.
They're worried about losing their way of life. But this

(15:04):
wasn't their plan. They want the power, They want to
say when things happen, and they don't like it when
other people do it. And so a lot of times
what you'll see is the people in the circle will
push back against you and retaliate just because you dare
to do something without their permission.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
Okay, Daniel Greer our guest right now, folks. He is
the CEO of Texas Scorecard and Kicking the Circle. It's
a documentary that has been put out by Texas Scorecard
and it's about small Texas communities and the good old
boys club that is stopping well, I guess civic engagement

(15:42):
because you're not part of the club, I suppose and
we see a lot of this around that those who
believe that there are those who make decisions and those
who were chattel those who work. You know, this kind
of class conception that is so anti American. Then so
let's so there was a petition of the judge. You
turned it down. Then he was forced, I guess to

(16:03):
allow the election, because you're saying the election happened and
then it failed, and your and the allegation is that
it failed because of intimidation and coercion.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yes, well, there's lots of things that happened between when
they came to the judge the second time, which would
have been in November actually leading anticipated they had planned
to have the election that took place in May in
November of last year, and so they went to the
judge again with the petitions, but this time they forced

(16:35):
the issue. They actually took the matter to court. But
when I say judge, I do want to clarify, I'm
talking about a county judge, not a black Robe judge.
Though yeah sometimes even though sometimes in these rural settings
they can actually do both and actually sometimes do both.
But in this case, eventually a judge from a visit

(16:57):
a neighboring county was called in to actually oversee an
administer of the election, and that's that is how it
was eventually held. But you, oh, no, the shenanigans that
took place and the again, the intimidation and the wishes
from the circle of power were very clear, uh, And
and they they they they got the outcome that they

(17:22):
wanted and it wasn't just so this is like you
see in other places around Texas when you see people
in power that are doing things that insist on having
a lot of control. It's not just one thing. And
so when I was visiting with people around the county,
I heard stories about all sorts of issues that are
falling through their cracks.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
And the one of the other very big things that even.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
The judges supporters were critical of him of was his
handling of the restoration of the county courthouse. The county
courthouse in Johnson City is actually it's a pretty big
deal for the local economy. They have several events there,
but one at Christmas every year that accounts for a
massive influx of sales tax to these local businesses. And

(18:09):
the judge has been according to even people again there
are his supporters been mishandling, the restoration of the courthouse,
which is uninhabited because of the danger. It's a hazard
for people to be in it because basically the rotunda
is falling down as it were. So, you know, it's
it's just like lots of things. It's not you know,

(18:30):
it's not just a story about an election and in
one where the judge you know, applied himself unduly, But
it's lots of other things that are happening all around
and they culminate in I think hopefully people feeling empowered,
rising up and swapping out their leadership or bringing it

(18:52):
in check.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
And this is a model.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
This documentary is meant to be something that people can
look at and say, oh, this is happening in my community,
and it's meant to show them the way to empower
them to outline it, bring it up and.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Call for change.

Speaker 4 (19:10):
For those of you outside of Texas listening to the podcast,
county judges are kind of like from you folks in
California County Board of Supervisors. That is what they do.
They oversee a Commissioner's court, which oversees county business. So
when we call that in Texas, we call the head

(19:31):
of that Commissioner's Court, a judge, even though not the
kind in a black robe as Daniel was talking about.
Daniel Greer is our guest right now, CEO of Texas Scorecard.
So when folks watch the documentary, they're going to enter
a world of dark and cedy politics that sometimes can
align with the people's best interests and sometimes do not.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
What is the.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Takeaway, Well, hopefully the takeaway is that, Uh, what we
come up with is we come up with people who
are who will step forward, who will tell their stories,
and then we also have structures and systems in place
that we can bring to bear changes reforms that we

(20:19):
can implement that will stop these things from happening. The
first part of any problem is figure is diagnosing it. Okay,
where what where are things breaking down? Okay, Uh, maybe
it's election administration. Maybe it's very clear, Uh, maybe it's
more transparency.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Maybe it's very clear rules around these things.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Maybe in another county that we're looking at right now,
it's uh miss misapplication of funds in a in a
mud and a mutility municipal utility district, uh, and people
asking questions about that, and then retaliation against the people
that are asking these questions, audits, you name it. There's

(20:59):
so many many different reforms that could be brought to
bear on these situations that wouldn't just help on one
county or one city because we've got hundred fifty four
counties in the state of Texas, thousands of city If
we just went one by one, that's not a sustainable
or scalable way to deal with the problems that we
see over and over again. So establishing a pattern of

(21:22):
behavior across counties and cities in the state and then
coming up with a set of solutions that we can
apply systemically so that everyone benefits from the lessons we
learned from the bad apples.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
And there's bad apples all over the state.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
Yeah, and that's see. And this is where the politics
comes in because, as you know, any type of solution
that would be bandied about would have to come from
Austin because if you want to apply it statewide, if
you find this widespread good old boys network which exists,
there's a reason why it's been allowed to and that's

(21:59):
because because so many of these guys in the state
level don't want to be challenged by these guys in
their particular little fiefdoms on the local level, and they
can actually, you know, inspire several of their supporters to
make that kind of successful run. How much do you
think you're going to get help by exposing the small

(22:21):
fish who are very happy to be the small fish
in the Yeah, the small fish in the small pond,
which makes them a big fish and not And how
much help do you anticipate on getting up the ladder
in Austin?

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (22:35):
Well, I mean the big fish in the small ponds
are sometimes connected to the small fish in the big
pond up in Austin.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
There's interactions here. But you know, eventually you you raise
the you.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Raise the profile of these people to a point where
they disassociate. Where you break these you break up these
connections and you call for as that are could be
seemingly innocuous, but they can have a major impact. So
people at the state level might look at them and say, well,
this is like, uh, this is not going to impact me,

(23:10):
This is not going to impede my way of life.
Of course, they might get some calls from people in
the circles of power that are local who will fight
push back against them.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
That's nothing new. We do that every single legislative session.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
But the idea would be to make these reforms so
easy to pass that they couldn't they couldn't help but pass,
but they could have a major, major knock on effects.
That's that's the model that that I think people ought
to pursue. That can be pursued and that can lead
to some lasting change.

Speaker 4 (23:42):
Well, just tell me that when you show up, they're
not they're kind of like aggravated, rolling their eyes, maybe
perturb it's seeing you at Texas Scorecard that because you know,
you got to you got to be honest, you are
really disrupting their good thing. You know, this is this
is a disruption they don't like. They don't like the
transparency that comes with an aggressive media. Just tell me

(24:05):
they're not happy to see you.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, I know that.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
And that's the other thing about all of these people
and the people that we cover on a weekend, day in,
day out, weekend, week out, basis there's a media out
there that's, you know, the legacy media.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
Everybody assumes that my people are doing.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Fine because what they see is a glossed up, shined
up image of the people that are their local elected
officials or statewide elected officials, their national officials, but then
if you can come and say like, oh, here, actually,
here's here's the thing you may not have known about,
and here's how this person reacted to it.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Here's how they are.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
You know, when people, when your neighbors are asking questions,
here's the intimidation they're facing. That that's the that's the
work that we're doing. That's the work that you're doing.
That's the work that more people need to be doing
across the state. When it comes to you know, city
and journalism, activism, that's our role to play. And I've
just seen it work time and time again, where when

(25:07):
you do the work, when you expose things, and you
expose things uprightly, that it pays off.

Speaker 4 (25:15):
Daniel Greer, CEO of Texas Scorecard. If folks want to
check out Kicking the Circle, the new documentary and other
fine things going on, what part of Texas Scorecard can
they find that?

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Ah?

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Sure, you just go to our homepage texascorecard dot com
and click watch it'll be It should be right there
at the top.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
All right, man, Thank you very much, Daniel Greer, great
to catch up with you again. Congratulations and the promotion.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Thanks Chris, thought you sir.

Speaker 4 (25:39):
That's a wrap on this Sol Sadlestorm podcast till we
visit again. My friends, remember this, A society's worth isn't
measured by how much powers stolen by government. A society's
worth is measured by how much power is reserved for
you and me. In short, we the people. Go ahead
and pick up the book, my friends, The Rise of
the Liberty Loving Latino on Amazon, and keep fighting for
freedom out there.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yah,