The Founders Show #498

You are invited, and so join us for a CUP of TEA, Hot and Spicy, to Listen to and/or Talk on The Founders' Show, a Politically Incorrect Christian Talk Show, with your host, the Spingiree Baba of New Orleans, Chaplain Hy McEnery and Christopher Tidmore.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Battles the politicians addressed of digitators andmagicians. Who's to see the money they
did? Don't there's nothing to feelthe holes while then are filling their pockets
bide holes. The politicians mountain downthe road. Everybody's wish for No moment,

(00:26):
corruption and its functions is gonna takeyou. Divine is avention the top
ten Louisiana stories of twenty twenty three, at least according to Hi McHenry and
Christopher Tidmore. Here on the Founder'sShow, and God bless you all out
there. You are now listening tothe founders, So the voice of the

(00:46):
founding fathers. You are Founding Fatherscoming to you deep within the bowels of
those mystic and cryptic alligator swamps ofthe Big Easy, that old Crescent City,
New Orleans, Louisiana, and highup on top of that old Liberty
Cypress tree draped in Spanish moss andstill with the Christmas decorations. This is

(01:08):
none other. Then you'll spend garybyby other republic Chaplain Hi mcgnry, who
with Christopher Tidmoreria roving reporter, residentRadical Moderate and associate editor of The Louisiana
Weekly newspaper At Louisiana Weekly dot Net, our annual story of how the year
ends. We look back at someof the biggest stories of the year and

(01:30):
we go at sort of a littlebelow the news. Maybe there're stories you
haven't heard too much about, butthey're actually ones that are going to influence
our politics here in Louisiana. They'replaying national stories and actually the first one,
though, is kind of a nationalstory. High picked it. Hang
on, folks, these are thetop ten for Louisiana, our state.
It's gonna be exciting, Christopher.But the first one, of course,

(01:51):
this was one high picked out andit was actually one I said, yeah,
it has to be this, andit has to do with Jeff Landry.
But it's a bigger idea folks,win number one with the number one
red state in the entire Union today, based upon our legislature, the recent
elections, and how strong our legislatureis for being constitutional conservative legislature, By

(02:15):
the fact that we've just elected oneof the strongest constitution conservative governors and a
big Trump supporter we're talking about,Jeff Landry, By the fact that we
now have the Speaker of the Houseis from Louisiana Mike Johnson. The whip
is Steve Scalise at the federal level, but these are all Louisiana boy as,

(02:35):
folks. And then the state officers, you know, treasurers and secretary
of State and all that. They'reall very very strong, you know,
constitution conservatives. So we are nowthe strongest. And I don't know about
our Supreme Court. Maybe Christopher canaddress that, but we are an extremely
strong conservative state, not constitution conservativestate, the number one red state in

(02:58):
the entire Union. Oh, SantaClaus be so happy with all that.
Read well, there is a debateas to West Virginia and a few other
places kind of beg to differ.But I think High is actually on to
something here. And what I meanby that is I love it or hate
it, Folks, Louisiana has decidedto be not just Republican, but maga
republican. You could see it inthe supermajorities in the legislature, and our

(03:23):
Senator Kennedy, when the most outstandingsenators in the entire Senate. Folks,
everybody knows about him a fog horn. Look, I've watched John Kennedy go
from being a liberal Democrat to aconservative Republican, all whilst running for the
US Senate. So it's just he'sbeen a lot. I don't know if
he quite He certainly talks to talkin a way that John Kennedy doesn't normally

(03:45):
talk like Fox Ann does. Indeed, I would point out that in our
list, actually Bill Cassidy's gonna comeoff a little bit better. But that's
a little further down. But what'sinteresting about this is, let me take
the step a little further. Therepublic You can say, well, it's
not like louis Causiana just has becomea Republican state. And you can make
that argument going back to Mike Foster. I mean, Dave Train was the
first Republican governor, but that wasstill a Democratic time. But Mike Foster

(04:09):
started to get majorities. Certainly youhad Republican majorities by the time Bobby Gendall
came in. Yeah, but yougotta understand, the Republican Party has undergone
a change in the state, justlike it has in the rest of the
country. The Republican Party in Louisianaup until this last election was kind of
a coalition. It ran from suburbanmoderates to rule populist. It was something

(04:30):
that you could have I won't saya wide group of disagreements, but definitely
disagreements from various Republicans. It's veryhard now to find anybody that approaches being
a moderate of what we would havecalled a moderate ten or fifteen years ago.
I mean, I went one KennaRace came down to the guy.

(04:53):
The only blemish quote quote if you'vefound him for the far right on his
record was the fact that he votedagainst the transgender bill, and only because
we're going to lose the NCAA andhe said the state laws for sports already
said you couldn't have boys. Hesaid it was repetitive. And that's the
he was defined as a rhino,and he had one hundred percent conservative voting

(05:13):
record. So that gives you anidea, that example proves the rule that
it's the state has become overwhelmingly andit's it's another way of looking at this.
Of course, just looking back atthis is the fact that if the
former head of the Louisiana Association ofBusiness and Industry had run in any other
election, he would have been oneof the prime contenders. Steve Wagon's back

(05:35):
was chief of staff to Bobby Jendall, he was a player. He had
more money than God, he hadevery industrialist behind him. He got a
whopping six percent of the vote.And it's not because he ran a bad
race. It's because the Magna Partyin Louisiana had already decided on their candidate
with Jeff Landry. He handled it. I mean, I don't If you

(05:55):
don't like Jeff Landry, that's fine. I'm going to tell you something.
I sometimes disagree with him too.There was not a better way to run
this race. Every decision he made, which any of which could have backfired,
not showing up for the debates,not doing this, but they didn't
because they actually were very strategic.And so the Magi takeover of Louisiana.
It comes in interestingly, when Iwrote this column, I originally put in

(06:19):
that, you know, not everythinghas gone to the far right. For
example, Jeff Landry is not hasalready said he's not going to repeal John
Bell Edwards's medicaid expansion. In whathappens, well, right after I wrote
the column, it comes out thatyou know he's got they're exploring the work
requirement thing. Now, this didn'twork very well in Arkansas. My Kakabee's

(06:40):
daughter, Kacabye Sanders became governor.She they passed a work requirement regulation,
and it was it's so convoluted becauseI'll give you a perfect example. What
happens if your mother who has children, and your home, well, technically,
under the work requirements, you don'tdeserve healthcare because or home. I
mean, some of this is it'sit's you're like, well, shoul always

(07:02):
working. It's a lot more complicatedthan you might think, folks. Anyway,
it got so convoluted that a judgethrew it out. He wasn't a
particular liberal judge. He said,none of these regulations make any sense.
It's it's so so. I don'tknow if that's a go anywhere, but
it does show that Landry, atleast when it came to the signature achievement,
which has brought Louisiana to ninety threepercent healthcare coverage. Think about this.

(07:25):
We used to be a state thathad like what forty percent unsure.
Now we've got ninety three percent.Wow, that's great, that's great.
So it's a success. I pointthat out because our number two story is
kind of interesting. It could andwe see the evidence it also happen in
these elections. Hi, African Americanmen, not all of them, but

(07:48):
a large minority is are actually votingRepublican. Well yeah, man, they
saw what the man did to theman. Donald try Well, I mean,
and there's whether or not it comesin. Now this is fast,
No syseaid. African American men,black women, they're voting for Republicans or

(08:11):
anything but Democrats. Is point zeroone percent? Is? It is a
statistical Anominally you can't, but AfricanAmerican men over fifteen percent of African Americans
in general voted for Republican candidates.Some of the highest before that had been
like seven or eight percent, soit's more than double. Now understand that's
still not a huge majority. Butwhat it translates to is about twenty five

(08:37):
percent of Black men, roughly becauseblack men vote less than black women ended
up voting for Republicans. What's interestingabout that statistic is it's also the number
that Donald Trump is getting about twentyfive percent. Christopher. That means you
win the election, you only needone or two percent, and that's small
percentage can make up that one ortwo percent that you need to actually push

(09:00):
you past the fifty percent. Arguably, that's that percentage of black men as
the reason why Jeff Landry won itin the first there was overwhelming support.
It's it pretty much doomed the Democratsand all the down ticket races in the
runoff. But what I'm curious aboutis, and that's the one percent.
What is twenty five percent of AfricanAmericans in the state of Pennsylvania. Well

(09:22):
that I guess what, it's morethan ten thousand votes, you know,
which was the margin in the lastrace. So this this is one of
those things that Democrats are very worriedabout, and it not only was shown
in Louisiana, but it actually couldplay a very major role in next year's
election, especially if there's a thirdparty candidate. I wonder if that's why
that's so desperate to get all theseillegals in so they can get them to

(09:45):
vote. Think of that, Iwould say it's a little bit more complicated
than that, But that's that isswinging. Say this that one of the
main reasons in exit polling African Americansare turning. And remember this is still
small, this is still fifty percentof the whole population. We're not talking
massive mounts but its turning is actuallyimmigration. Illegal immigration is something that black

(10:07):
people do not like because usually itaffects jobs in the black community, and
so that plays its That's the numbertwo reals is growing numbers of who voted
for the GOP ladies and gentlemen.As we as Hi McHenry and Christopher Tidmore
proceed on this Top ten Stories ofthe Year twenty twenty three, we got
to stay on the subject of minoritymajority districts. We are definitely going to

(10:31):
draw two African American congressional districts bythe middle of February. The appellate courts
had said that has to be done. But why we think it's an interesting
story is you're going to get aninteresting tale of Gerrymander. Why are we
saying this is interesting, Well,let me explain. Technically, you don't
have to have a majority of blackpeople to make a black majority district because

(10:54):
technically it's not a black majority district. It's a minority majority district. It
just can't have a majority of whites. So one of the things Jeff Landry
wants to do is take the BatonRouge seat held by Garrett Graves. Unlike
Garrett Graves and Garrett Graves is notvery popular with either Mike Johnson or Steves
Galie and Congress right now, andhe wants to take Garrettraves supporting Steve Wagon's

(11:16):
back. He's sort of an oldline Republican and he wants to take that
seat and turn it into a minoritymajority seat. Now we've explained this on
the show before. It's not thelogical seat to do that. Julia Letlowe
in North Louisiana, whose district runsliterally along the Mississippi River all the way
up to Monroe, is the oneyou should probably change because it has a
higher percentage of African Americans, it'seasier to get to fifty percent. But

(11:39):
if you do the Baton Rouge district, what you have to do it's got
about twenty seven percent Black vote twentyeight percent, is that you actually have
to take a piece off of theNew Orleans district held by Troy Carter because
that district actually goes all the wayinto North Baton Rouge. And if you
do that, you get two districtsthat have under fifty percent of Black votes.

(12:00):
And there's an argument you can godown as low as forty six or
forty five percent. If you gothat low and you've got fifteen percent of
African Americans voting Republican, then aweird thing starts to happen in a southern
state that couldn't happen in northern state. They become swing districts. They're not
necessarily majority majority districts. We hadMike Baham on the show a while back

(12:24):
and he pointed out why they askedhim why he was opposed to it.
He said, because you end upwith two white Democratic districts effectively. But
there's an interesting play of how thelegislature will draw these and they've already sued.
Let's say they draw them forty fiveeach. Well, that goes to
the courts, That could go allthe way to the Supreme Court again,
and you have another election. Whyis this important? Republicans only have a

(12:45):
five seat majority, and it's evenless with Santos Goan, so they need
every single seat. You take awaya seat in Louisiana, you take away
a seat in Mississippi, which iswhere you take away a seat in Alabama,
and you take away a seat inGeorgia. That's four seats. Suddenly
the majority for the GOP starts togo away. So this is high stakes
poker. They're playing across the sunBelt right now. When you add in

(13:09):
the New York state seats that maybe redrawn, the Republicans are going into
a good year, but a yearwhere Trump could win the White House,
the Republicans could win the Senate andlose the House based on simple math.
When we come back, we're gonnago into something and I'm gonna get one
more story before we hit the numberfive. The number four story is going

(13:30):
to surprise some people, but itstrikes me as the biggest story below the
radar, except if you live inSaint Bernard, where everybody talks about it.
And what is that? It's theSaint Bernard container Port. We just
got just this past week seventy threemillion dollars towards the one point eight million
dollars. We're getting serious money.But why is it such a big deal?

(13:52):
Well, supporters will point out somethingvery basic. We can't have big
container ships that would go through thePanama Canal, come from the east,
go under the Mississippi River Bridge.We can't have them go all the way
up the river to Napoleon Avenue.We need a container port closer to the
Gulf of Mexico and is This wouldbe an area connected to all of our
rail links. We've got four majornational rail links that come through New Orleans

(14:16):
and connect to the Republic Belt.It would be a major economic development move,
except it's going to be built inViolet, which is a predominantly black
area of Saint Bernard. There's accusationsof environmental racism because they build it right
on top of a black cemetery.And forget it, this is an a
racial thing in Saint Bernard. Everybodyhates it, blacks and whites because they

(14:39):
don't see away. They see theseeighteen wheeler trucks that are going to be
on Saint Bernard Avenue and Judge Perezon Saint Claude, and basically they're going
to lock out their communities. Sopeople in Saint Bernard are almost universally against
the port, but they can't stopit. The Port of New Orleans has
a special constitutional writ It bought theseventeen hundred eight to build this container port

(15:01):
down near Violet the state. It'sgoverned by the state. Literally, there's
nothing Saint Bernard can do on theparish level. It was a major issue
in the parish president's race, andone of the things they've asked for Parish
President Guy McGuinness, who's got abouta week and a half left in his
term, is very He would havewon a third term if he had run
again, easily, fourth, fifth, seventh. He said, you've got

(15:24):
to finish a promise that was madeto us back in the eighties seventies.
Really, yeah, Interstate five toten, which comes off the E ten
and goes to Saint Bernard, wassupposed to go all the way to the
river. And he's like, justbuild the interstate connection for this. You
got, but it's not cheap.You'd have to build it over a wetland,
you'd have to build it raised.And if they did that, then
this port basically doesn't have the traffic. It doesn't affect the communities. The

(15:48):
problem is in this legislative session,nobody really wants to build this all the
way to the port because, frankly, the Saint Bernard doesn't have the stroke
it used to have. And thisis going to be one of the major
political issues because the Port of NewOrleans, in order for them to be
internationally competitive, has got to builda Saint Bernard container Port. But at
the same time, the people ofSaint Bernard are gonna be rioting in the

(16:10):
capitol against it, and literally hundredsof millions and billions of dollars are at
stake, and nobody's really talking aboutthis. What's strange about this is and
I still don't understand the Saint Benardmentality. They've had so much industry down
there. I mean, when yougo down there, it's like, you
know roads, and you know endlessfactories and old sugar mills and the Kaiser

(16:33):
aluminum mill and all these different industriesdown there. They've been there forever.
No one complained or squawked about that, and so if they know, they've
got to put that interstate and it'sjust got to go in. But with
that, if I was there,I would see it as an enormous blessing
because it's bringing all that industry andall that money to my parish, opening
up doors for all kinds of businessopportunities, economic opportunities for the people in

(16:57):
Saint Bernard, everybody from you unskilledlabor up to you know, big contractors
or whatever. I mean, itjust seems like an enormously wonderful opportunity for
Saint Bernard. I can't imagine howthey would ever want to not have that.
I don't know what's going on.Somebody needs to have serious talk with
these folks. Churs buck Well,maybe they're listening to this show, please

(17:18):
listen to our show. Well,let me help you with that. First
of all, ports are highly automated. They're saying that we're to create hundreds
of jobs. It could be aslow as seventy jobs. That's according depending
upon whose estimates. But the secondpart is more basic. Everybody wants big
industrial economic development. Nobody wants itin their backyard. And Saint Bernard has
been undergoing something. Let's you know, we used to joke about Chalmatians and

(17:41):
all this. Saint Bernard's been goingundergoing a renaissance. If you haven't been
out there, I highly encourage you. At the beginning of March is these
Lanos Festival. It's incredible. There'sall kinds of stuff, these Lenos Italian
Parade, right after Marty Graus,even Marty Graus and Saint bart it's fantastic.
But one of the things that's beenhappening is people who can't afford to
live in buy water in the marinehave been moving into Araby. It's become

(18:03):
an art center, it's become aplace that you can have every element of
living close to the city without essentiallythe crime or the you know, or
you can afford a house. It'snot eight hundred thousand dollars to buy a
shotgun. A house, not ashotgun. But you don't need a shotgun
because it's safe. And the pointis that in St. Bernard has a

(18:25):
shotgun. Chris, come on.But the point is it's a suburban community
right next to the city and they'recoming into their own. It's one of
the reasons the demographics, which isone of our stories coming up, has
been changing. Saint Bernard. Twentyseven percent of the population is black in
what used to be lily white SaintBernard. Saint Bernard is ten percent,
almost twenty percent Hispanic. So it'snot this, it's not your daddy Saint
Bernard, it's not Judge Perez's SaintBernard. But it's a place that they're

(18:48):
saying we need to protect our community. And so I get this intellectually.
I actually do think. I mean, you'll have I'll give you a couple
of examples, even if you buildthe interstate level road, which I think
is a necessity. I think itis kind of absurd that you would build
a full port without an interstate.But I will also say the public built
trains cross Saint Claude and the amountof traffic, intermodial traffic, would shut

(19:12):
down Saint Claude Avenue most of theday, So one of the major egress
routes out of Saint Bernard would beclosed down a lot more than it is
now. They're train routes that youjust pass them, you cross over them
multiple times as you go on St. Claude. Put an overpass, say
then, Chris, So there's away of dealing with that. There really
is. If you ever had todeal with overpasses for trains and the training

(19:33):
companies, you know it takes youyears and years. In other words,
what they're afraid of is the factthat you build this massive port, but
you don't build the infrastructure to supportit. And I gotta tell you this
is Louisiana. We built a billiondollar terminal and we couldn't build a road
for almost another seven years to getto it. They just open the fly
rates to the airport, so it'snot like they don't have a point when

(19:56):
they come down to it. Andspeaking of a point, we have a
lot more points to make, twofolks. But right after this commercial break,
you're listening to the Founder's Show withHi McHenry and Christopher Tidmore, and
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And we were going through the topten stories at least Louisiana stories that

(23:42):
we see the high and I seeis going to influence the politics and not
just last year but the year tocome. And of course one of the
things that we're both fascinated by isit seems like the State Police's returned to
the French quarters of FATA complete.I thought this was gonna be a lot
more controversial. When the State Policefirst came to the French quarter a decade
ago, it was this was abit of a fight, and even then

(24:06):
people were questioning about it and soand so forth. But believe it or
not, now the new head ofthe NPD, Chief Fitzpatrick, thinks it's
a good idea. And once theState Police not only take over the French
quarter, but all the interstate routes, all the police other things. Retasked
the NPD to high crime neighborhoods.The thing that's important though, that's never
happened before, and it has gottenno coverage except as far as I can

(24:30):
tell one story in The Times SpeakingUnion this radio show is the fact that
Jason Williams, the District Attorney ofNew Orleans, the supposedly far left progressive
liberal Darling, has said anyone arrestedby the state police can be prosecuted by
the new Attorney General, Liz Morel. Liz Morel, for those that don't

(24:51):
know, was Jeff Landry's top deputy, one of his closest political proteges.
One of the reasons Jeff Landry isgoing to be a pretty powerful governor is
the Attorney General's office is going todo what the governor says, which is
rare in Louisiana most of the time. Their logger has they certainly were for
the last eight years. And Morellis going to take over the prosecution of

(25:11):
anybody arrested for crime in and aroundthe French Quarter, the downtown area.
That means that there's an unprecedented amountof power that's affected to the AG's office
on crime coming folks tough on crime. I know that one folks that don't
like that. Constitutionally, the AttorneyGeneral's office can't do anything about crime unless

(25:33):
the attorney, the district attorney ofa power says you can, you can
take it over. No one's evergiven the AG's office the blanket authority that
Jason Williams has. And it's soit's going to be state patrolled. Say
this, and it could be.And this is what I'm hearing more than
just the French Quarter. There's alimit on the number of state police officers
we have. We've got recruitment problemsin the state police too, just like
an MPD, but it's not nearlyas extreme. And the argument that people

(25:57):
are saying is here in New Orleansand up in Street, we have the
distinction of not only leading the countryin the highest per capita murders in New
Orleans and Shreveport, but pretty muchthe most number of murders in the United
States. We're in the top ten, two of the top ten in Louisiana,
state of four and a half millionpeople. So this is going to
be a major issue. It isone of the two reasons for the special

(26:18):
session that starts on January fifteenth,it's going to be on crime. You're
going to see a lot of crimerelated legislation, and you're going to see
more activity from the state. Inthe city of New Orleans. It's starting
to get some blowback. There arecivil libertarians who are worried because the state
police will not operate under the consentdegree, that arrest may be more aggressive,
so and so forth. What Ifind fascinating is there is no blowback

(26:41):
in the French Quarter. There's noin the area. It's amazing. Unlike
a decade ago where people were deeplyskeptical of this idea under Bobby Jingle,
no one and pretty much every eventhe most liberals like I just want the
streets to be safe. It's amazing. So number six Top ten Stories of
the Year twenty twenty three's tax reform, major to income tax reform. That's

(27:07):
something that was pretty much absent fromJeff Landry's platform. Jeff Landry actually didn't
talk about economic issues when he ranfor governor. He barely talked to any
He is the first Republican to haveoverwhelming support, not just money, but
endorsements from the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Associationbecause he didn't seem to care. He
talked about crime, he talked abouttransgender issues, he talked about cultural issues,

(27:27):
he talked about abortion, But hedidn't talk about taxes or spending.
Was it in his platform? Imean, he gave like, I'm a
Republican for lower taxes, but whatdoes that mean if you don't actually have
a program, And so most peopledidn't think he really cared about it.
Well, we mentioned a couple ofshows ago that he appointed one of his
former opponents, one who did dropout and endorsed him before the primary election,

(27:51):
Representative Richard Nelson of Mandeville as thenew head of the Department of Revenue,
that's the chief tax collector of Louisiana. What did Richard Nelson run for
governor on? He had the mostsophisticated plan to phase out the Louisian income
tax, and it went after somesacred cows. He actually proposed lowering the
homestead exemption to twenty five thousand dollars. That's not gonna happen, but that's

(28:11):
always He proposed taxing corporations for propertytaxes. He said, if you're going
to do this, we have tomake up the money somehow. But he
talked about really getting rid of theincome tax. I don't think those level
of changes will happen, though JeffLandry has said he one of the things
he supports John Bell Edwards is thattwenty percent of corporation should not be exempt
from tax. The industrial tax exemptionshould not be one hundred percent. But

(28:33):
with Richard Nelson office, you're goingto start seeing ideas seriously entertained by the
Landry administration that are probably politically feasible. What are some of them? Phasing
out income taxes and retirees anybody overthe age of sixty five. That could
be done in a phase out overthe next ten or twenty years to make

(28:55):
Louisiana retirement heaven. What's another idea, actually putting a cap on income taxes.
Pay the most anyone in Louisiana paysand income taxes is about thirty thousand
dollars. That's Gale Benson. That'swhatever's because they put their assets elsewhere.
And most people who get rich inLouisiana don't live in Louisiana long They move
over to Houston, they move overto Galveston. Why there's no they move

(29:17):
out to Florida. There's no incometax, and so if you you tax
cap it at what we had,doesn't cost a state any money. While
there's a lot of economic arguments inthe sense from the budgetary left against doing
this, it actually doesn't cost thebudget anything. It's you can budget it.
For those that say, well,that's just pie in the sky,

(29:37):
I point out, why were weseriously talking about getting rid of the corporate
franchise tax. The bill passed thelegislature was vetoed by John Bell Everard's But
why did it pass so easily?Because a decade ago we capped the amount
of money that could be collected fromcorporate income and franchise taxes. It was
we capped it at twice of whatthey were collecting then, so it passed

(30:00):
easily. Everything above that amount hasto go to pay off debt or go
in the Great Day Fund. Sofinally they said, well, we can't
spend the money anyway, we mightas well start phasing out one of the
taxes to pay for it. AndEdwards didn't agree. He wanted the budgetary
I will tell you right now,Jeff Landry is not going to fight out
and die in that hill. He'sgoing to sign that into legislation, So

(30:21):
you're going to see some major taxreform changes, and it's done by basically
saying this is the maximum amount we'llcollect for the future, and will phase
out taxes or phase down taxes basedon it. Number seven and this is
the most esoteric of our top list, And if you are a resident of
Orleans Parish, it is literally,other than crime, the most important thing

(30:45):
that we are going to be talkingabout today, more important than Jeff Landry
being governor or Donald Trump being president. What do you think that is high
esoteric meaning like spiritual, like abstract, like intuition, Christopher, I can't
wait to find out about this one. I was thinking esoteric as in so
far out of the mainstream that nobody'stalking about it. But this will actually

(31:07):
have more impact on your life.Here's the truth of life, folks.
What happens at your local school boardand your local city council really has more
to do with what happens in yourlife than whatever happens in Congress. And
what happened what do we care aboutin New Orleans? Well, if you
live through Christmas Day, Christmas Eve, you saw that a lot of streets
flooded, our pumps were not upto capacity. We are. We have

(31:30):
a destroying a sewage system where fiftypercent of the water is lost and guess
what happens to it. It causessinkholes in streets. We call them potholes.
So for the average person, whathappens on their streets between getting flooded
getting their car ripped out in forpotholes, you know all this this matters
more. Here's the problem. Ifwe tried to raise property taxes to what

(31:52):
it would do to rebuild this system, we'd have some of the highest property
taxes in the country. We've gotbillions of dollars it would take. And
nobody really try us the sewage andwater board to spend this money. All
that well, let's be honest.I think it's unfair because the current head
the Sgian water Board. I've haddinner with my Menum. He's a brilliant
engineer. He rebuilt the system inMilwaukee. We brought in a real professional.
He knows what he's doing well.He has a simple idea, and

(32:15):
it's a simple idea he and Ihave been talking about for the last twelve
years. You know why taxes areOne of the reason taxes are high in
New Orleans because three fourths the propertyin the city of New Orleans can't be
taxed at least with property taxes.So we have a small group of homeowners
and renters and small business people thatbasically carry the entire tax load for the

(32:37):
city. And let's say, whatare some of these groups. Some of
it is government, but some ofthem are pretty powerful institutions, Two Lane
and Loyal universities, the Roman CatholicChurch, church properties, schools. The
idea that is being proposed is what'scalled a drainage fee. Get rid of
all property taxes for the Sujian War, but all of them. Put a

(32:59):
drain in fee on every property inNew Orleans. The average homeowner will pay
the same or probably less. Actually, every estimate says your bill, your
bill to the Susian water Board,when transferring from a property tax to a
drainage fee, will go down byabout twenty percent. However, guess who
has to pay it? The universities, the churches, and most importantly,

(33:22):
the federal government. It is theonly way we have in New Orleans to
tax the federal government for sewage.Drainage fees are allowed. It's a user
fee. It's like paying an electricbill, and we've never used it.
Other cities have, but we've nevergotten around to do it. So you
might actually see your drainage bills,your sougion water bills go down for once
in your life. And yet wecollect billions of dollars to rebuild the sewer

(33:45):
systems that will have more of animpact on your life than almost anything else
in this list we're talking about.If you live in Orleans Parish, that's
great, Christopher, And yes itis quite esoteric. The Surge of water
board. Y'all probably heard the joke, but an't resist. What's black and
yellow and sleep six. You gotit, folks, a surgeon waterboard truck.

(34:07):
And I got a quick little storyto tell you about that. There
was a you know, construction goingon Surge water board on Henry Clay No,
I'm sorry, in Nashville, andin fact, right right near the
Park Memorial Church air and there wasa fello there. He was directing traffic
for the Surgeon water board. Oneof the workers he was in a lawn

(34:28):
chair leaning back while he's directing traffic. Kind of got people upset a little
bit, to say the least.And they had this elderly African American lady
who came walking past, and shesaid, young man, what's wrong with
you? And he said, oh, I got an ailment? I got
an ailment? Said what he said? The doctor says, he really was.
I had a bad knee or somethinglike that. He couldn't hardly stand,

(34:52):
couldn't hardly get around. And hisworkers knew it. They all knew
it. And you could see him. He had a really hard time getting
around. She said, a youngman, in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ, do you rise andgo back to work? And you know
he did. Everybody was amazed.I want to find this old African American
lady. I need her. Whata story. If she can make a

(35:15):
government bureaucrat walk, I mean,that's a level I don't know if Jesus
has at that level of spiritual powerto make a bureaucrat actually go to work.
So you say, we got veryesotericated in we Kwisvah speaking of something
that's not esoteric. I remember,little things make a difference. Well,
believe it or not, folks,the digital divide may end first in the

(35:36):
whole United States, right here inLouisiana. And what do I mean by
the digital divide. Well, thefact is you can't do anything in life
these days without the Internet. Trytry to do something with a bank without
a cell phone. Try to Andthe average person, if you're poor,
you can't afford one hundred plus dollarsa month or more to have a cell
phone. And it's a perpennial problem. Well, in some places in Europe

(36:00):
there's public internet everywhere, so youcan just happen in the Internet and you
can use your phone and it's notquite as bad. In the United States
generally that has not been available andnot but for the first time, Louisiana
could be one of the first statesthat actually has free both free internet in
urban and rural areas that have verylittle internet access and has broadband internet in

(36:23):
every rule community. We received onepoint three five billion dollars to create this
high speed network. It was partof a federal program that came out of
the Infrastructure Act called the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program and John Bell
Edwards's last official Act. He gotit from the Biden administration via one of

(36:44):
the authors of that bill, whois one of the reasons he supported it.
Bill Cassidy got a lot of thingfor supporting the Infrastructure Act. He
cared about this issue, and herealized Louisiana stood to gain more than almost
any other southern state by putting this, and so they got together and put
this money together. And you're goingto start seeing internet, high speed digital

(37:04):
infrastructures available. Some of it willbolster the commercial side, but a lot
of it will be You'll be ableto go in a lot of street corners
on every school district, every library, every public place, grocery stores,
and if you don't have cell phone, you can tap into the Internet and
be able to download your email,to your banking do whatever. And that
could happen as soon as the nextthree years. Understand how much one point

(37:28):
three to five billion dollars is forthis, folks. We're state of four
and a half million people. That'slike saying, I mean that's a billion
is one thousand million? So startdoing the math of how much is being
spent by every Louisiana in this.And we're the showpiece because if they if
Biden can pull it off in Louisiana, he can show it to the rest
of the country. We're not anespecially huge place, we're big enough.

(37:50):
We have a lot of people inNew Orleans forget about this, but we
have a lot of huge rule communitiesthat are very disconnected. How long would
it take it to get put in, Christopher install It all happen the next
couple of years, and some ofit will be put in by private contractors.
But this is Louisiana. We dohave a way of kind of extending
timetables where rebuilding streets that were paidfor after Katrina. I mean, I'll

(38:13):
give you that. Having said that, we will have with this money,
because it's so much money even wecan't blow it, we will actually have
a better infrastruct internet infrastructure than almostany state in the Union. That cleans
California, New York, Chicago,the whole works. And this is incredibly
hopeful. If if you were akid at home and you didn't have money,
the pandemic was bad on so manylevels, but one of them is

(38:36):
you might not have had internet fastenough to be able to get your lessons.
I mean, this is this affectseverybody these days. Now, it's
it gonna be like done through towers, Christopher, It'll be done through towers.
It'll be done through both broadband,ground wires and through towers. It's
a whole variety of programs and thisis going to start hitting in the next
few years. And so folks,this is this is where we could be

(38:57):
on the cutting edge, but itmay not be the only area. We're
in the cutting edge. And thistime, because we don't have enough money,
the RTA in New Orleans and Kennerand the communities of Orleans and Jefferson
that it serves is cutting routes,cutting bus routes. The reason is the
bus is wearing out, almost allthe buses. The Regional Transit Authority has

(39:20):
came after Hurricane Katrina. Well,the buses are wearing out, and so
the proposal is to cut the busroutes considerably. There's also been argument about
cutting the ferry routes to where youcan't take the ferry at night from across
the river, which is a badidea. The city is trying to find
three million dollars to make that upbecause at least our ferries are brand new,
but our buses are wearing out andwe don't have the money to buy

(39:42):
new buses. We do have operatingcapital, though it's kind of this weird
thing, and so they're spending somuch time repairing buses. They basically said
on a lot of routes they willwhat used to be the daytime route will
become the Saturday route, so they'llcut the number of frequency. Well,
if you don't have a car,what that means is you don't get to
work on time, you don't dothings. Except this was actually there's one

(40:05):
place. There's been a few placesin the country they've tried this, but
where they've actually tried it was MetoriRoad in Jefferson Parish. Historically, Metori
Road always had a bus route.Now, if you know anything about old
Metory is the fact is that mostpeople who live there don't have to take
the bus. It's not well used, but it actually is for service personnel.
It used to be the maids whocame to the houses, but also

(40:27):
people who worked in the shops,the groceries, and they needed that bus
route. But it wasn't a highroad. It wasn't enough people to support
it, so it was critical,but it wasn't worth having a big bus,
and they talked about having a smallerbus and this and that, and
finally a member of the Council ofscott Walker count and said, you know,
for people who buy a month's pass, we could just buy them all
ubers and on that route, andit's just that we'll subsidize Uber on that

(40:51):
route and it's related neighborhoods and theycan come as they need them. And
so it's been tried on a trialpilot basis. It's been very successful.
So the discussions that has been privatelybrought up in the New Orleans City Council.
If you take the working buses andput them in the really high traffic
routes Claybourn Avenue and others, whatif you took these smaller routes and said,
essentially, if you bought a monthplan, you have access to Uber

(41:15):
at a very low cost, maybea dollar or two. Provide well a
month plan. It would cost somemoney up front, but it costs a
lot less than buying a new bus. And because of this, folks,
we actually, for our poverty,have a chance to be on the cutting
edge. And for those that say, well, how would you call it?
You know most people have cell phones. I got news for you at

(41:37):
this point is how I can saythe kid in the inner city who can't
buy clothes as a cell phone theymay not be able to forward sell service,
but they have a phone. That'show much it's become part of life.
And you could find a kid inthe ghetto who barely can read,
he knows how to use an Uberapp to this day. I might be
able to afford it, but heknows how to use it. And so

(41:58):
this is two ways, both witha lot of money and very little.
Louisiana could be on the cutting edgein the coming year of twenty twenty four.
And these have been the top tenstories of the year twenty twenty three
that will continue to occupy us intothe next year. Wow, folks,
that's exciting. Thank you Christopher.Top ten stores for Louisiana. You got
it right here on the Founders Show. It's time for us to take another

(42:19):
break. We'll be shortly returning.Check out the great after Christmas sales going
on at twenty seven to twenty sevenPritannia. That is the rink where the
Garden District book Shop, Judy's,Liam John and the wonderful stores Masonette of
the Rink are folks. Best dealscoming in right in the Garden District.
Come to the Chickory House, havelunch, have a salad, have a

(42:43):
cocktail, leisurely shop through the evenings, come to one of our great book
events that are four nights a weekand available to be found out of the
Gardendstrict Bookshop dot com. All ofthat available at twenty seven to twenty seven
Pritannia. Over forty places for offstreet parking. Check them out and tell
him you heard it here on WRNS, WSLA and the founder show. Well.
Hello, folks, it's Chaplin higmcenry and I'm here to tell you

(43:05):
about our ministry, LAMB Ministries.We are an inner city ministry with an
inner city focus and Formula four innercity folks. Please check us out,
go to our website LA nb LAdot com, Lambanola dot com and find
out all about it. So justcall me Chaplin high McHenry at area code
five zero four seven two three ninethree six nine. Folks, it's a

(43:30):
very challenging ministry. We have lotsof exciting things happening. We've seen close
to five thousand kids come to Christand some adults, and we've seen hundreds
more kids going to live very productiveand resourceful lives, get doing just the
things that every American citizen should bedoing being a credit to their communities,

(43:50):
getting good jobs, finishing school,stay out of trouble with the law,
the whole things, the things thatmost of their folks don't do, all
because Jesus makes the difference. Sowe need all the help we can get.
It's a very challenging ministry working withurban poor and inner city kids.
We need financial support, we needprayer warriors, and we need volunteers.
So if you have any interests,please contact us again. Go to our

(44:14):
website Lamanola dot com, l AM b n O LA dot com.
We have watched the growth of thisministry and the development of all these kids
getting up to now we're on tothe third generation coming to our ministry over
the past twenty seven years. Soplease check us out and thank you so
very very much. Ohs shows well, folks were back and this Chaplinhei McHenry

(44:40):
and you are listening to the Foundersshow, and it's not time for us
to go into our chaplain by bahpatriotic moment. We just take a brief
moment to remind you of the biblicalfoundations of our country, our Judeo Christian
jurisprudence, and today I want totalk about Virginia. The founding of Virginia,
the first English settlement in the NewWorld in America, four of the

(45:01):
original thirteen colonies. On April twentysix, sixteen oh seven, at the
sight of Cape Henry, which isright across from where Jamestown would go,
the English colonists arrived and they madetheir first proclamation by Robert Hunt in a
prayer he made and a dedication tothe New World of this new land where

(45:21):
they erected across and had a prayermeeting. This is what he said,
We do hereby dedicate this land andourselves to reach the people within these shores
with the Gospel of Jesus Christ,and to raise up godly generations after us,
and with these generations take the Kingdomof God to all the earth.
May this covenant of dedication remain toall generations as long as this earth remains,

(45:44):
and may this land, along withEngland, be the evangelists to the
world folks. I think they reallywanted to make sure America was dedicated to
God. Virginia Course is named afterQueen Elizabeth, virgin Queen and sixteen oh
six. Before a year before theylanded, they had put together the Virginia

(46:04):
Covenant, I'm sorry, the VirginiaCharter, and it read like this,
greatly commending the desire of the furtheranceof so noble a work which made,
by the providence of Almighty God,hereafter tend to the glory of His divine
majesty in the propagation of Christian religionto such people as yet live in darkness
and miserable ignorance of the true knowledgeand worship of God. Folks, I

(46:25):
think those founding fathers certainly had everyplan of keeping God in government. And
now don't you wish we were keepingGod in government today like they had their
plans were back then, And asthis ongoing effort to always keep God in
the center of government that has beenan American characteristic from the very beginnings,

(46:46):
as you can see. So itis now time for you, folks,
because we've just talked about America.But what about you? Where are you
and all this? You know,you could be the greatest patriot that ever
lived. But if you died andwent to hell, what good would it
do you? Folks? That doyou no good? So now we're gonna
go into our chaplain. But bya gospel moment, where I just show

(47:06):
you how you can know that.You know that, you know you are
God's child, You are safe fromhell, and you are guaranteed heaven.
And it all starts off with God'slove. You know, the Bible says
God loves you with an everlasting love. But we got to love problem,
folks. It's called sin and death. Actually it's broken up into two things,
sin and death. You know whatsin is anything we do say or
think that's wrong. Everybody knows whatsin is. If you have any questions

(47:30):
about that. Whenever you're the victimof sin, all of a sudden you
know exactly what it means. Aslong as you're delving it out. Yeah,
it may not be sin, butall of a sudden, when you
become the victim, you know exactlywhat sin is. That's the golden rule,
folks. And so you know doingto others as you would have them
do unto you. Sin is aterrible thing. It destroys our lives.
It separated us from God. AndGod can never let sin get into heaven

(47:52):
because it's such a wonderful place.It would destroy heaven, it would turn
heaven into hell. And then we'vegot a death problem. And again,
heaven's not about death, it's aboutlife. So God, these were our
two great problems. God knew we'dnever be able to fix them, so
he came up with a fix,some plan. He did that by becoming
a man. That man's name isthe Lord, Jesus Christ, God the

(48:13):
Son. He's perfect God and perfectman. All the way God and all
the way Man. He came tothis earth to take care of this terrible
love problem we have of sin anddeath. He did it when he died
for our sins and the cross,and the Bible said his blood washed away
all of our sins. And thenhe rose from the dead to win for
each and every one of us hadprecious, free gift of resurrection, everlasting
life. The scripture says, ifyou will repent, and that means to

(48:37):
believe that you can't save yourself.You're never going to be good enough,
religious enough, holy enough, smartenough, rich enough, whatever it is,
folks, cool enough, you know, charming enough. You're never going
to be good enough for God.You're just not. In this fact,
that scripture says, all of ourrighteousness are as filthy rags. Folks,
You and I are just not goodenough. And that's okay, because Jesus

(48:58):
was and is good enough for usand will be forever. So, folks,
what you got to do is believeyou can't save yourself. There you
go. You just repented, andthe next step is another step of faith,
another step of belief. The secondstep of belief, believe that only
he can, that only he did, and then he will save you from
a burning hell and guarantee you heavenbecause he died for all of your sins,

(49:19):
was buried and rose with dead folksto win for you that his precious
free gift of resurrection, every lastinglife. Folks, when he died for
your sins of Bible says he wasmade into your sin. I mean,
that's how up close and personal Jesushas become for each and every one of
us, each and every one ofyou. He was turned into your sin,
my sins, the sins of thewhole world. That's really going all

(49:42):
the way, folks, I don'tknow how you can go anymore. Then.
That's the verse that I have thehardest time comprehending and understanding. It
is so powerful, it is sodeep, it is so strong, folks.
He did all of that for youand me. Now what do you
have to do. Why don't youjust with the faith of a little child,
put faith alone and Christ alone,really believe that He did die for
our your sins and rosa dead.And the moment you do that, you

(50:02):
are born again. You have becomeGod's child. Your dead and dye spirit
has just become alive with a newbirth, this second birth. So you'll
never see the second death that's eternaldamnation into burning hill. Now, folks,
you know this is all good toknow, but this one other thing
you really ought to know, notto get into heaven, but to get
excited about the heaven that's coming.Folks. Jesus is coming back, and

(50:22):
he's coming back soon. As wenow go into our chaplain by by a
watchmen on the wall. You knowone of the scriptures, they're over one
hundred scriptures prophesying that Jesus would comethe first time. We've just celebrated that
this Christmas. But you know they'reover two hundred prophecies telling us he's coming
again. I mean, that's alot that must mean. That's really really

(50:43):
important, folks, And it isreally important because he really is coming back
soon. He gave us we haveover two hundred prophecies, two hundred signs.
Jesus said, pay attention to allthese things, because when I come
back, I'm coming back in covertfashion, like a spy, like he
said, a thief and the knifenight. Don't get caught unawares. Be
ready for him, he says.And we can be ready, because he

(51:05):
says, He's given us all thesesigns, so it won't catch us unawares.
So here's one of the many,many science. Of course, we
don't have time to go into themall, but here's one of them.
Folks. The scripture says knowledge willincrease in the Book of Daniel. What
does that mean? In the wordthere means increasing exponentially, rapidly, quickly
in the end, Well, let'slook at knowledge. All the knowledge of
the world back in the Middle Agescould be put into just a couple of

(51:30):
books. All the knowledge of theworld just a couple of books, folks.
That's that's really not a whole lotof knowledge, is it. Print
and press comes along, and allof a sudden knowledge is increasing, and
science is increasing, and all kindsof things are increasing. So the books
of knowledge are increased, and allof a sudden we're getting encyclopedias and dictionaries.

(51:51):
Now encyclooped has doubled in triple,quadrupled to ten times, et cetera.
And then do you know that todaywith the advent of computers of course
and all that just doubling like everyhour, do you have any idea of
the exponential effect of that. It'sso huge. And because of now that
we're doing AI, it means thatthis stuff is getting out of control.
I mean, it's time for theterminator, folks. It's getting that bad.

(52:13):
It's getting out of control. That'show rapidly knowledge is increasing. Are
you going to tell me that didn'tcome true, Well, of course it
has. It's in fact true tobeing out of control, true, folks.
Jesus is coming back so soon,and he said it's going to be
bad when he gets back here,because the human race will have gone crazy
and wild. AI may be takingover the AI apocalypse. Who knows all

(52:36):
the bad stuff that's going to becoming, wars and rumors of wars,
pestilences, you name it, thewoar horse one of the apocalypse raging around
the planet. Folks. It's goingto be so bad. It's so bad,
Jesus said, go to the mountains, flee of the mountains, getting
a cave, hide in the cave, et cetera, et cetera, you
know, or make your own cave. Get a bunker going. Well,
if you need a bunker, I'mgoing to recommend the best you can get
made by Heavenly Manufacturing Company. Andthe name of the cave is the Lord

(52:59):
Jesus Christ. Go to him rightnow, folks. Make him your safe
house, make him your bunker,and you can't lose. Believe that he
really did die for all your sins, was buried and rose from the dead
this split second. You do that, you got your safe house forever and
you and you'll be excited about hissecond coming. Well, Folcus, not
for time for us to close.We close with the Mond Saint Martin singing

(53:21):
a creole goodbye, and God blessall of you, call you cREL goodbye.
They think we're just wasting out thetime. All three siby, there's

(53:49):
time for a creo goodbye.