July 30, 2024 • 37 mins
This podcast edition of Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness features Harris County Republican leader Alex Mealer and victims rights advocate April Aguirre. ( @KennethRWebster )
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Jigana government sucks. Suit of happiness radio is DeLux
Liberty and freedom will make you smile. A suit of
habing and us on your radio toil just as cheeseburgers
a liberty prize at for food.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Happy birthday to Henry Ford, a great American. Henry Ford
born on this day. If he was alive today, he
would be one hundred and sixty one years old and
probably also very surprised that his boyhood friend Joe Biden
is now President. Hi, thanks for turning on your radio.
I have a couple of incredible guests joining me at
the bottom of the hour. They're very beautiful and brilliant.
(00:42):
April Leguire and Alexandra Mieler both stopping by. They're fired up,
very angry at Center Point Energy. They're teaming up with
people like Grizzy Hood News and Mattress Mac and lots
of other friends of the show to get rid of
the CEO of Center Point Energy. If you're still mad
about that, there's even a a petition you could sign.
If you look at my social media accounts, you'll find
(01:03):
a link to it on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, respectively.
But before we get to any of that we are
going to be talking about what just happened to the
New York Times with red state conservatives and the silliness
that is ensuing there. And before we get to that,
in fact, I think the first half of this show
today is going to be all about dissecting the absurd
(01:24):
things that the liberal media does. We'll start with this.
I haven't watched MSNBC in a while, but I always
like to say I turn it on sometimes so you
don't have to and let you know what's happening there.
And in this case, townhall dot Com just published a
report about something they did. It's quite frankly fascinating. It
was obvious from the moment Vice President Kamala Harris became
the Democrats' apparent replacement for Joe Biden on the November
(01:47):
ballot that this election would become one of the most
racialized in history. And you can thank the Democrats and
the leftist activists and their mainstream media allies for that,
because they don't have anything else to say. All they
can tell you is if you don't like Kamala e
racist or sexist or both. So they did this segment
(02:08):
on MSNBC's Morning Joe. This happened yesterday when a network
contributed to name Molly jong Fast appeared on a panel. Now,
if you don't know who that is, it's my understanding.
She was one of the people that helped launch Gamergate
years ago. You remember what Gamergate was, and there were
liberal journalists teaming up with video game journalists to try
(02:29):
to make video games less toxic, masculine or whatever term
it is that they use. I don't know, don't ask
me to explain it. But she was one of those
people from back of the day who said video games
are two male oriented. We need more video games for
queer women. Then you know how popular those have become
in the last decade. Anyway, she launched into this insane
(02:50):
rant on MSNBC yesterday about Republican VP nominee jd Vance.
She says jd Vance only wants white children to be
born in a Mayora, And this was in response to
a question related to Americans who don't want to have kids.
Jd Vance recently made a point about childless cat ladies,
and boy, that really upsets some people. Now, Molli jong
(03:12):
Fast says Jade Vance only wants white children to be
born in America. I think I have a SoundBite of
this that's are there more.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
And more Americans choosing not to have kids, which again
emphasizes why JD Vance's comments about childless Americans childless cat
ladies could be so politically damaging. Well, so, what's interesting
is this is this natalism that comes from an authoritarian playbook, right,
that there need to be more white children.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Right, that's the idea that there's you.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Know, this is about great replacement theory racism, right, this
is what this is. So don't misunderstand it. For him
wanting more children, he wants a certain kind of you know,
racist thing.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
What am I about to say? Who knows?
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
How many of you know, show a hands? What is
it about what Mollie jong Fast just said. That doesn't
make any sense. Jdvance's children, he has children, are anybody
not white, that's correct. He married an Indian woman. His
kids are brown. His wife is brown. By the way,
I still find it weird that we call them brown.
(04:12):
But anyway, that's what you're supposed to say. Not exactly
eloquent in her delivery, What Molly is claiming is that
JD Vance wants more families with more kids in the
United States, that are just white. Not only is that
ludicrous on its face, but it's easy to hilariously debunk it,
just simply by pointing out the fact that his Indian
American wife Usha and him have three biracial children. Now,
(04:37):
this is from the same people who claim the social
justice mantle of Martin Luther King Junior, while shunning his
dream of a country where citizens are judged on the
content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
Liberals love to obsess over the color of your skin.
Why is it that those most obsessed with finding and
(04:57):
often manufacturing racism and up being the most racially unhinged.
Maybe you could even say the most racist. If Molly
john Fast and MSNBC want to find this apparently fearsome
specter of white children in America, perhaps they could pay
a visit to Kamala Harris's step children. Uh oh, what
(05:17):
does he do?
Speaker 5 (05:19):
According to a new report, exaggerated statements are up by
like a billion percent and now more. Of the highest
rated show on radio, Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness, it.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Is pretty popular. There's a new report claiming that only
a handful of very successful podcasts are making any money
in the podcast space. Wait, you mean my cousin's husband's
podcast about the history of Arby's Sauces unlikely profitable? Wow,
I am shocked by that. I know you've heard this before,
(05:54):
that you can make money by podcasting, And as somebody
that has a profitable podcast, I can tell you it
takes a while to get it off the ground. But
even still, I encourage you to do it. I know
it probably sounds weird, right, Like Kenny, you're a talk
radio host, you're a podcaster. Why would you want us
to compete with you? Andrew Breitbart one said with more voices,
we are stronger. That wasn't quite how we said it.
(06:16):
I'm paraphrasing, but yeah, that as individuals we can only
accomplish so much. But when there's more of us out
there writing tweets or blogs or podcasting, or organizing protests
or putting petitions together, for example, we can make a
bigger dent in the liberal monstrosity that is the leftist
power elite. So yeah, do it. I'll give you a
(06:37):
great example of that coming up in the next segment.
Alex Mueler is stopping by with her friend April Laguire
and if you don't know who they are. They are
two local conservative voices. They happen to be Hispanic women
who are not pleased with Kamala and Joe. They're not
excited about the movement of neoliberalism in America, and they're
really angry about things like the government createdly that is
(07:00):
Center Point Energy, where the politicians that work there seem
to donate a lot of money to people like Dan
Crenshaw and Lizzie Fletcher. But that's besides the point. April
and Alex are teaming up with Grizzy from Grizzyhood News
and Mattress Mac and lots of other people. They want
to get rid of the CEO of Center Point Energy.
And if you're from Houston and you remember what happened
(07:22):
with Hurricane Burrow, I don't have to tell you why.
You already know. But before we get to any of that,
I just read this report on Breitbart about something that
The New York Times did. I don't subscribe to The
New York Times, so I went out to their website
to look at the article, and even though it's behind
a paywall, I was able to get to it. There's
a way to do that. I won't tell you how.
But there are links on the internet. You can click them,
(07:45):
you can find them. Never have I read an article
based on such a false premise as this one from
the far left New York Times over the weekend. Listen
to the headline quote headline quote, Hollywood's message to Red States,
Our movies are for you.
Speaker 6 (08:01):
What.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I'm sorry what the New York Times is saying that
Hollywood is catering to red state conservatives. Here's what the
report says. For nearly two decades, Hollywood has seemingly missed
no opportunity to sound the alarm about climate change. So
it was startling when the weather focused Twisters arrived from
Universal Pictures this month with no message of climate change
(08:23):
at all. I'm sorry, you're mad that somebody made a
movie about tornadoes and they didn't make it a political crapfest. Okay,
here's some more from the article. Trend spotting in cinema
is a hazardous pursuit. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. Twisters, however,
is emblematic of a clear shift in Hollywood. After a
period of openly using movies to display progressive values, sometimes
(08:47):
with success at the box office, then they use Barbie
as an example, but often not, and then they list
strange world, the marvels, the color purple. Studios seem to
be heating a message that many ticket buyers, especially in
the center of the country, have been sending for a
long time. We just want to be entertained, no homework attached.
End quote. Okay, I actually agree with that. I think
(09:10):
they have a valid point there, But here comes the
lie quote. Put it bluntly, it amounts to an attempt
by Hollywood to bend the red state audiences. Ha, what
in the hell are they talking about? All right now? Granted,
this dumb news outlet is not wrong that movies aren't
long last less becoming political less political, and that that's
(09:32):
paying off at the box office. Look at a Deadpool Wolverine,
for example. Last weekend broke every record. All it is
is an R rated film about two superheroes going out
kicking ass, taking names. Nobody goes to the movies to
be insulted. Nobody goes to the movies to be scolded.
There's nothing wrong with exploring big ideas in movies, but
(09:53):
this should be done with art, theme and subtext, not
divisive Lectures are supposed to be about story in the
amount you break the storytelling, the more you break the
story telling spell, you have failed as a filmmaker. Now,
let's talk about what the dim bulbs the New York
(10:14):
Times get horribly wrong, terribly stupidly wrong. Urban leftists hate
woke movies every bit as much as us deplorables do
those of us maga lovers in the middle of the country.
We don't like woke movies. And you know who else
doesn't like it, inner city liberals. How do we know this?
It's just simple math, guys. Sixty six million people voted
(10:36):
for Hillary. Supposedly eighty million people voted for Joe Biden.
Why aren't those people showing up to watch woke crapfests?
Because they don't want to be bored In a country
where sixty six million people voted for Hillary, Hollywood does
not need a single Red state customer to make a profit.
Right Hollywood's problem is not that Republicans refuse to pay
(10:57):
for this woke trash. Hollywood's problem is that not even
their own lefties are interested in paying for woke trash.
If Hollywood made movies only to appeal to Hillary voters,
to Democrats, that pool of customers would be more than
large enough to create one box office head after another.
If you add in all their kids that go see
the movies with them, you're talking about blockbuster after blockbuster,
(11:21):
billions of dollars in revenue. What the New York Times
cannot face is the simple fact that no one wants
to watch this crap. No one, and that includes people
in their own tribe. We are all human beings, human
beings from our storytellers. We are hardwired to ask only
two things. Number one, cast a spell. Number two, don't
(11:43):
break that spell. That's what storytelling is. That is a
universal part of the human condition. This means that even
though woke is aimed at the left sweet spot, it
violates rule number two. And while leftists might appreciate Hollywood propaganda,
they still won't pay for it with their own hard
earned time and money. So no, it's a lie to
(12:05):
claim Hollywood's catering its latest releases to Red state audiences.
All Hollywood's doing right now is slowly, begrudgingly removing the
woke tartagery everybody hates, which, as the math proves, is
pretty much everybody. We're not passive aggressive like some people.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
We know.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
This is Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
There is an old song about Houston. It was very
different back in the day when they recorded it. I
had imagine Houston's changed quite a bit since then, But
I don't know. Maybe there are some similarities. Like back
in the day, I mean one hundred years ago, people
in this city didn't have access to modern conveniences like
electricity and indoor plumbing. And after the recent hurricane, the
reason Category one hurricane that actually happened to us again, huh,
(12:58):
it's very nos algic if you will now. Yesterday, Center
Point Energy leaders appeared before state senators in Austin to
discuss the power outages post Hurricane Burrell. The Texas Senate
Special Committee reviewed weather, state and electric utility companies like
Centerpoint were prepared to respond to hurricanes and tropical storms.
(13:19):
And I bet that was an easy question to answer.
Mayor John Whitmyer said he would be there.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Was he there?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Alex Mieler's here with a local community activist, Apriliguire. Was
Whitmeyer at this thing yesterday?
Speaker 6 (13:30):
He was?
Speaker 5 (13:30):
Was he he?
Speaker 7 (13:31):
You know, he managed to be there. Obviously noted absence nothing.
We're not used to our County judge was not.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Huh, Lena Hidalgo missing an action she's been on social media.
Now Biden's in town? Now is that right? Is ed
Weesh managed to make that Huh. I was worried she
was back in a clinic because I worry about Lena.
I care about Lena's mental health. It's very important to me.
Her Uh, her purported substance abuse issues, we don't know
if that's true or not. And I care about her apples.
(14:00):
But she cared about a photo op with Joe Biden.
Speaker 7 (14:02):
Huh exactly. And so what was positive to see is
at least our mayor and all of our Harris County
state senators Democrat and Republican, made it explicitly clear to
Centerpoint management that their failure wouldn't be tolerated. Unfortunately, what
we saw from the Center Point leadership was more excuses.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah. Now, a lot of our listeners know Alex Mieler.
In my humble opinion, I think you had the Harris
County judge position stolen from you, but they may not
be as familiar with April. Who is here today, April?
Like guire, April, how do you describe what you do?
Speaker 6 (14:36):
So I'm a crime victim advocate. This is kind of
out of mymo dealing with Center Point, But when you
have this many deaths, it almost becomes borderline criminal. And
I see centerpoints failures as intentional and preventable.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
All right, So this gentleman from Centerpoint, Jason I believe
his name is Jason Wells. He's the Centerpoint CEO. He said,
we ought not do what we're doing right now. I
don't know if you guys noticed, it's very chilly in
the studio. Women usually don't like coming in here. It's
sixty seven degrees. Is everyone comfortable?
Speaker 8 (15:06):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (15:06):
Doing just great?
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Okay, just want to make sure because people think it.
But I guess he does not follow his own rules.
He says, keep the temperature on your thermostat at seventy eight,
and we're well below that right now, so we're outlaws,
I suppose.
Speaker 8 (15:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (15:18):
And when he publicized this photo there was still a
million people without power. This photo op of him sitting
in front of the thermostat at seventy degrees is really
insulting to a lot of folks.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Isn't that bizarre that this is the strangest instructions and
yet they're not even following them. Don't set your thermostat
to seventy. I think most people would agree. Seventy is like,
isn't that the average everybody likes seventy? Right? Some people
like colder, some people like hotter, but most people are
comfortable at seventy. That you were not supposed to do, unless,
of course, you're a very important elitist like Jason Wells. Right,
(15:50):
rules for thee but not for me always the case. Yeah,
I got to imagine he didn't wear a mask either,
and is he even vaccinated? Lord only knows.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
So.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Now April and our friend Grizzy from Grizzy News and
Alex Meeler and a gentleman who owns a furniture company
that Lena Hidalgo says, it's just a local furniture salesman.
I don't know if you know who that is. Have
all got together, you guys, have a petition.
Speaker 8 (16:10):
I love.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I've never started a petition, but I love signing a petition.
Speaker 6 (16:14):
A lot of people are upset, and instead of just
saying we're upset, let's show the numbers. Right, And with
our good friend here, Alex Mieler, we cooked up this
plan and we've executed it, and we put two of
the best people here that are present Houston, which is
Mattress Mac and Grissy Hood News and they've done phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Okay, so yesterday they have Sorry, this is Paul betton Court.
I didn't mean to start playing the audio. You guys
aren't wearing headphones anyway, so you didn't know, but I
started playing audio. Center Points CEO Jason Wells was asked
by State Senator Paul Bettencourt yesterday about resigning. Do you
want to set up this SoundBite for us?
Speaker 7 (16:47):
No, exactly, so you know, in the aftermath now of
the storm, just some of the key points in center
of Benancourt really has taking point here. We found out
they spent eight hundred million dollars on mobile genner that
aren't so mobile.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
No, they're not mobile at all.
Speaker 7 (17:03):
No, and so they weren't used and then.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
They're immobile generators from the center pointless energy.
Speaker 7 (17:09):
And what April touched on is, you know, the possible
criminal sort of levels of negligence. We also found out
in this hearing and so this will wait. It doesn't
look like a very competitive bid process. Also, we've paid
for generators that were twenty to fifty percent more expensive
than other competitors that were more widely known. Sort of
sounds a little bit like our COVID bid rigging that.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
It does sound a little familiar, doesn't it. I'm sure
that's just a coincidence, and so.
Speaker 7 (17:36):
To that, we'll find out how fair the process is.
But what is extremely clear is we weren't prepared for
the storm. And so one of the issues is, listen,
this is not free markets at work. No, you know,
this is a government granted and regulated monopoly.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
This is a government created monopoly, absolutely.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
And one of the issues that's coming out to light,
and why I feel so strongly about this, is that
they earn a little over ten percent return for any
kind of growth project. So buying those generators, yeah, guaranteed
ten percent return. Now when you actually do maintenance, and
it's a huge issue. One of my biggest things with
our local government is deferred maintenance as a crime, something
(18:16):
our Loan Republican always says. And so what they've been
doing is juicing their returns.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
That's a good intended that was great, yeah, juice, and
you can't help myself.
Speaker 7 (18:28):
But what they've done is they've skimped on that preventative
maintenance that keeps the lights on and so h center
Point with vegetation maintenance used to be on a yearly
schedule over the last decade. Then it bumped to a
three year schedule, and now we're at a five year schedule.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Huh. And so just think about that.
Speaker 7 (18:46):
And meanwhile, while they've reduced the number of miles that
they're actually maintaining, while the system has grown, so it's
like a smaller piece of the pie. And what happened
here was we were devastated by you know, overgrown trees,
dead branch's limbs disrupting it. So they violated their social
(19:06):
contract at the expense of juicing returns. And so that's
really why have felt so strongly about the need for
a leadership change and what most wouldn't have realized, and
I didn't until I started digging. This company has had
four CEOs and four years.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 7 (19:23):
But this is not the center Point of yesterday. A
new management team came in. Jason Wells is by all
accounts a bean counter thirteen years at PG and E
in California as the CFO. So pure counting background comes
back in here to center Point gets appointed, CFO gets
selected to be CEO, pushes out all of his operational competitors,
(19:47):
and now the leadership team of Centerpoint. When you look
at it, it's hr government affairs that that's the lobbyist,
the one that hands out the bags of cash to
all the regulators to make and then the CFO. Nobody
is operational experience running this organization.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I noticed there's nobody on the board who is an engineer.
Nobody on the board with a science background. There's no
meteorologist or anything like that. All right, well here's the
sound bite. Hang on a second, let's have a listen
to this.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
We have a situation where we couldn't even invest in
a online tracking system for millions of us. Now, what
would you say to the average person like Mattress Mac,
which is a well known personality in Houston, probably one
(20:34):
of our city you know, you know, city treasures, that
you should resign.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
What do you say to him.
Speaker 9 (20:48):
I've already been out of the community talking with some
of the communities that were most impacted by Hurricane Barrel,
and what I have felt from those conversations is a
deep sense of anxiety that we are early in hurricane
season this year, that all the weather reports are predicting.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Kaiaks All right, I'm just going to cut to the
chase here. I don't think he says he's going to
resign now in the translation.
Speaker 7 (21:12):
Is I won't resign because you should trust me to
fix the problems I created.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Do you know what? Do you know what Paul Bennencord
just did to him? He just too bobbed him. Do
you remember the two bobs? Hang on? I think I
got a SoundBite of this. Hold on, everybody? Hold on?
What would you say you do here?
Speaker 9 (21:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
What do you? What do you do here? Exactly? Nobody
seems to know. Well, what does Jason Wells do? All right?
Here's another SoundBite. Center points communications to customers. Carol Alvarado,
another lawmaker, says that Center Points communications to customers after
Hurricane Burrell were totally inadequate. And here's a little bit
from her yesterday.
Speaker 8 (21:47):
Just this whole cloud about communications. I see that you're
going to hire a head of communications.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (21:54):
That's correct?
Speaker 8 (21:55):
Okay, you need to really ramp that up, because optics
mean something. And when people you know this picture and
people see you with the temperature at seventy degrees, it's
not good optics.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
It's okay, Now on, is this the right SoundBite? I
think I'm playing the wrong one. Is this the one
that you wanted? Was this one? Hold on?
Speaker 8 (22:18):
And are you planning to go to the PUC on
this storm and ask for a right increase?
Speaker 9 (22:27):
Yes, we would intend to propose for recovery the costs
associated with this restoration here.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
What did you just say again? Competing? All right, let
me just explain this one. Centerpoint plans to increase their
rates so that they could deal with the fact that
they screwed everything up. You know, it's I know that
everything's not supposed to be made for radio, but is not?
Are they always chatty in the background like that. We're
trying to get soundbites for the radio here, and these
people are having conversations.
Speaker 7 (22:56):
Ironically, the hearing that was going on because of the
lack of power also blacked out because whatever vendor was
recording it, we lost the live stream. So, you know,
for the quality, I think we unfortunately pretty well because
for several hours no one could even see the commedy.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
All right, there's another fun moment here, not to get
off topic. So Biden's in town and it's kind of
funny here. Lena saw that John Whitmyer, our mayor, and
Biden were getting chummy together out on the current tarmac,
and she pulled a she Jack, didn't she?
Speaker 1 (23:27):
She?
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Now that we don't have Sejack anymore, we have Lena
hit dalgo to hop in for photo ops. Can you
explain what happened to her April? Why don't you'd explain
it to you?
Speaker 6 (23:35):
You know, she won't get off of the Biden train.
You know, she's still right there with him. And even
though he is kind of going down with the ship
like the captain, she does not want Whitmeyer too friendly
with him at all.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
All right, Biden's in town to pay respects to Shila jacksone.
He's not going to fix this issue with the power
or anything like that.
Speaker 7 (23:56):
And that's just where I would go. And this is
just against somebody who has local office. One of the
few statutory responsibilities is to lead our emergency response, and
time and time again wants literally nothing to do with
her actual role and is still governing for DC, not
for Harris County.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Where has she been? Who knows where? During the hurricane
she leaves town, shows up just in time. Kamala is
in town last week? Where's Lena? And that odd? Come on,
she loves Kamala. Don't we have journalists and reporters in
this town that are supposed to ask these questions.
Speaker 6 (24:29):
I just always ask a question, how much time does
she actually spend here in Harris County?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Must be nice to have the Harris County taxpayers fund
her trips around the country while she's going off to
pal around with climate change lobbyists. There's a lot of
money in that. I wonder if they fly around a
private jet when she's going to those conventions and hearings.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
In My question is so she take the private security
and are we paying for it?
Speaker 7 (24:49):
And we are that part?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
We do know? Actually, well, why don't wait? Maybe our
listeners couldvolunteer to do it and then we could save
some money on that. Does anybody out there want to
guard Lena?
Speaker 8 (24:57):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (24:57):
You know, it's ironic that she doesn't want the constables
to do She wants somebody else. But she doesn't want
citizens to have constable. She wants citizens to be stuck
with the sheriff's office, who's very understaffed.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
It kind of reminds me of that lawmaker from ferguson
what's her name, Corey Bush? Didn't she have a romantic
relationship with her bodyguard? The mayor of New Orleans did
this too. There's been a few of these incidents. Far
left progressive Democrats don't want to be protected by cops.
They want their bodyguard to protect them, who just so
happens to be their boyfriend. Of course, I guess I
(25:27):
don't know if it's.
Speaker 7 (25:27):
A little bit of a separate issue of corruption how
people funnel their campaign dollars short lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Sure, you can't pay someone to have sex with you,
but you could pay them to be their bodyguard. I'm
listening to a pursuit of heath in this.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
This is Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness on KPRC nine
fifty Houston.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
It's kind of intimidating in the studio right now. I
often say there should be a minimal amount of beautiful,
brilliant women in my studio at once. Or it's intimidating
me as a man, because it's hard for me to
man explain to the both of you when you're both
probably smarter than me. Alex Mieler here, a very good
friend of mine and local community activist April Laghire usually
doing victims' rights outreach, but this week you have decided
(26:13):
to help step in and assist people like Grizzy Hood
News and Mattress Mac and a handful of other people
that are pretty upset about this thing with Center Pointless Energy.
And I got to think there's not a better name
for what we would call that. Alex. You're a free
market person. What do we do about if Alex was
in charge? What would we do?
Speaker 6 (26:30):
Well?
Speaker 7 (26:32):
Because of the unique nature, right, they're responsible for distributing
the energy, so understand why we have the government regulation oversight. Yeah,
but it's a mismatch here because you've given them this
unique contract bomb that said, we are creating a government
monopoly for you to reliably distribute this power, and then
(26:53):
we incentivize them for these growth projects. And what they
did is they broke that contract right by trying to
maximize financial returns but at the sake of the reliability
and the resiliency of the grid. And so that's why
I've been very strongly advocating is one. Where is the
board here? So everyone on this board cleared over three
hundred k last year to sit on this board. And
(27:14):
they have been silent and you can a lot of money. No,
that's what I'm just saying. So one, where is the board?
If they don't have an opinion on this, probably need
a full new board. You know, in the private sector
you would have an activist, you know, hedge fund, go
and do a proxy campaign and get them all kicked off.
And so that's what we've been essentially doing here. What
about well, what does he make don't know the full
(27:36):
for this year, but several million, several.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Million dollars and then how many people died at.
Speaker 7 (27:42):
Least seven here in Houston for heat cat directly related
Then if you don't.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Add in all million for every dead body, wow.
Speaker 7 (27:51):
So that that's the issue is. You know, they focused
on one performance measure and I would say, at the
expense of what this government mandated monopoly was for. And
so you know, when they brought on Jason Wells, it
was all about energy transition and the reorganization. You know,
(28:11):
there's big press releases that came out when he took
over about a new streamlined organizational team and people that
had thirty years experience kind of running the company. Significant
changes they were all pushed out and then this last Friday.
What really bothered me is you know doing in the
Friday news dump no explanation of why the VP of
(28:32):
the utility business was pushed out. It's like, well, you
Jason Wells, a CEO or the one that selected her
to be the VP, pushed out the person that had
been there before. So where is the accountability with this
board and this executive management team?
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I know this is anecdotal, but you can look up
on there's this website OpenSecrets dot org. Do you guys
know what that is? And all it shows you is
public records of who people are making political donations to
the Center Point people. Appears as though most of their
donations were given to Fletcher, Lizzie Fletcher and Dan Crenshaw.
What do you all make of that?
Speaker 6 (29:02):
There has to be accountability. So just because you're being
paid doesn't mean that they buy your silence because primarily
the reason why you're in those positions is to represent
the public.
Speaker 7 (29:12):
And I actually think as they're looking at legislative changes,
Centerpoint should be prohibited from political activity. You need to
have incentives aligned, you know, that's part of what the
free market works so well. And obviously we don't have
it in this case. And so you know, if you
want to donate earningston All profits, great, but you shouldn't
be in the position to influence regulators.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
I see. The only tweets from Dan Crenshaw at Center
Point Energy are tweets he made in the middle of
the hurricane promising people to get their power back soon.
Nothing critical about it, and he links to that website
that didn't work that's supposed to track power outages.
Speaker 9 (29:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Wow, way to go, Dan, Way to be on the
right side of this thing. Anybody shocked by this, No,
I know, not really, it's.
Speaker 7 (29:54):
Just average political being. And just to reiterate, the silence
of this board is deafening. Yeah, it really if you
bring in your outside PR firm crisis management all of
a sudden now after the storm, Jason Well's talking about
the heartfelt emotions and things, but it's clearly somebody made
a decision to cut the budget. You know, sorry, and
obviously pure dollars technically went up for vegetation manage, but
(30:17):
actual miles of lines being maintained dropped over twenty percent.
You know that was a deliberate management choice to say nope,
one year isn't good any nothing more. I mean that's
what we had during much more significant storms and then
three years. No, I really want to make sure I
hit those financial returns. And why do those matter? Because
their incentive compensation, the extra equity that they get is
(30:39):
based off hitting financial returns, all right.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
In addition to the electrical issues we've had around the city,
something I hear I've heard a lot from is problems
at the water. Now, this is unrelated to their hurricane.
This predates that is people getting these absurdly large water
bills and they go completely changingly large, life changing, and
then the city's solution. Were you the one that told
me this? The city solution to deal with these bills
(31:02):
was to take money out of a fund that was
put aside for low income residents who couldn't pay their
water bill, and instead of correcting the mistake, take money
out of that fund and just pay themselves with it,
pay the water company.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
So, now today we learned from a report from kprc's
Amy Davis, Patricia Lee Patricia Lee is her name, She's
Turner's former head of the water department, was running a
fake charity where city contractors were giving her kickbacks. According
to the report, the charity wasn't an actual charity, it
was an LLC, so no public spending records are available.
(31:36):
This sounds illegal to me.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
Oh, it's very illegal.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
And she's not the only one.
Speaker 6 (31:40):
Not only were they getting kickbacks from contractors, but they
had family members create contracting companies that were going out
and servicing our water line. So there's no telling how
many repairs were done inadequately and that have actually tainted.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Our water supply. And then you see these videos of
places where there's a busted pipe and there's just water
bursting out, and we're not the only ones. I guess
Dallas has this problem too. Have you guys seen this video?
In Dallas, they have a swamp of very crystal clear
water and it's not supposed to be there, and it's
just got water gushing out and out all the time.
(32:14):
And then what is it called Nutria?
Speaker 5 (32:16):
You know what that is?
Speaker 2 (32:16):
The nutrier are living there because it's like living in
a swimming pool. To them, it's the cleanest, freshest water.
People in Dallas were outraged over this, and when I
saw the video, I thought, yeah, it's probably happening in Houston.
All over the place and nobody does anything about it.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
I guess what's the scariest part is we're thinking about
water coming out. What about contamination going into our pipes
right into our homes.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, it kind of makes people worried about fluoride and
the drinking water seem kind of mundane by comparison, Rodney
Ellis had this famous African art collection he was secretly
housing in Harris County in a Harris County owned business
taxpayer expense, of course, and that's supposed to be auctioned off.
But for the second time unless than four months, a
(32:57):
judge halted the auction at the eleventh hour. Fourteen hundred
pieces a very expensive African art owned by Sam Nijnuri,
which is a friend of Rodney Ellis. He's been granted
a temporary restraining order to prevent the court ordered auction
of the collection. This is all related to a Chapter
thirteen bankruptcy case. There's a just explaining it out loud,
(33:19):
it sounds suspicious, but you know it's worse than it sounds.
Speaker 7 (33:22):
Right, So what's so bad about this on many levels
is several years back Rodney actually used taxpayer dollars to
go and rehab this warehouse Precinct one warehouse for the
only purpose of storing that African art collection. A green
jury did not find enough evidence to move forward. But
(33:43):
what's really bad about that was information provided about who
owned the art was incorrect.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Why why would he lie about that because we all
found out it's and then now it's all over the news.
Speaker 7 (33:54):
Well, and that's part of the delays here is there's
still disputes over who really owns the African art collection,
which it's back to the original information that grand jury received,
what was not accurate or timely, And so once again
Rodney figures out how to walk on something that was
in this case. Most of what he does is obviously
on ethical, but in this case it actually was criminal
(34:17):
in free Pass.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Most people don't understand Rodney Allis is basically running Harris County.
Speaker 7 (34:22):
Not basically he is. I would say he is one
of the most powerful people in the state of Texas
in terms of.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Politics, in terms of money in politics.
Speaker 7 (34:32):
Yes, County commissioner right now, six million cash on hound.
That's a little interesting.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
That's a little interesting for the guy who's not even
technically in charge of the county courts and.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
There's the power of Rodney. Any Democrat that wants to
be a judge, and we'll talk about some of them,
knows that if you don't run Rodney's bail reform, which
his version of it is the most extreme in the country,
you will lose your primary. So it's not just the
cash on hand, although even Lena still has a loan
out to him.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Interesting we think about that.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
Here you are, you're voting on things supposedly for the
county's interest favor to somebody, and you still have and
the loan is actually more than her cash on hand,
So I think it's like a sixty thousand he had
loaned Leslie Brionez and Lina Hidalgo one hundred k. But
these are big amounts in local races of interest.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
In local races. That's huge, right, Yeah, it is a
conflict agwer.
Speaker 7 (35:28):
And then he also is very instrumental in Texas Organizing Project,
which is this whole paid advocacy group. But they're door knockers.
So when Rodney comes on board with you, not only
do all of a sudden all of the a f
l CLO various union endorsements flood with it, but also
you get a full team of campaign workers, and.
Speaker 6 (35:49):
So he's a full package. You want to add to
this is this you know about the African art. Really,
what does that have to do with county operation and
tax dollars? And this is where we have the inefficiency
of spending our tax dollars and it has to stop
when obviously we have very serious things like the conditions
in the jail.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yeah, and I got to think part of the reason
why we're even talking about this is simply because this
is just the stuff we know about, right I mean,
if they were doing this, imagine what else was happening.
I always hate when we own the show on a
down note, and when it comes to Harris County and
Houston politics, there's not a lot of positives happening right now.
I guess the astros are back at first place. I
don't know. I don't know. I don't know how to. Hey,
(36:32):
if people want to keep up with the work you
guys are doing, April, You're on Twitter.
Speaker 6 (36:35):
I'm on Twitter April Gary, Texas.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yeah, And of course, Alex Mueller, I retweet you all
the time, so I know our listeners know that. Hey,
to the rest of you, I love you all. Have
a safe and awesome afternoon. We'll be back bright and
early tomorrow morning for more of what you bought a
radio for. You are listening to the Pursuit of Hapiness Radio.
(36:58):
The government to kiss your ass when you listen to
the show.
The Jigana government sucks. Suit of happiness radio is DeLux
Liberty and freedom will make you smile. A suit of
habing and us on your radio toil just as cheeseburgers
a liberty prize at for food.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Happy birthday to Henry Ford, a great American. Henry Ford
born on this day. If he was alive today, he
would be one hundred and sixty one years old and
probably also very surprised that his boyhood friend Joe Biden
is now President. Hi, thanks for turning on your radio.
I have a couple of incredible guests joining me at
the bottom of the hour. They're very beautiful and brilliant.
(00:42):
April Leguire and Alexandra Mieler both stopping by. They're fired up,
very angry at Center Point Energy. They're teaming up with
people like Grizzy Hood News and Mattress Mac and lots
of other friends of the show to get rid of
the CEO of Center Point Energy. If you're still mad
about that, there's even a a petition you could sign.
If you look at my social media accounts, you'll find
(01:03):
a link to it on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, respectively.
But before we get to any of that we are
going to be talking about what just happened to the
New York Times with red state conservatives and the silliness
that is ensuing there. And before we get to that,
in fact, I think the first half of this show
today is going to be all about dissecting the absurd
(01:24):
things that the liberal media does. We'll start with this.
I haven't watched MSNBC in a while, but I always
like to say I turn it on sometimes so you
don't have to and let you know what's happening there.
And in this case, townhall dot Com just published a
report about something they did. It's quite frankly fascinating. It
was obvious from the moment Vice President Kamala Harris became
the Democrats' apparent replacement for Joe Biden on the November
(01:47):
ballot that this election would become one of the most
racialized in history. And you can thank the Democrats and
the leftist activists and their mainstream media allies for that,
because they don't have anything else to say. All they
can tell you is if you don't like Kamala e
racist or sexist or both. So they did this segment
(02:08):
on MSNBC's Morning Joe. This happened yesterday when a network
contributed to name Molly jong Fast appeared on a panel. Now,
if you don't know who that is, it's my understanding.
She was one of the people that helped launch Gamergate
years ago. You remember what Gamergate was, and there were
liberal journalists teaming up with video game journalists to try
(02:29):
to make video games less toxic, masculine or whatever term
it is that they use. I don't know, don't ask
me to explain it. But she was one of those
people from back of the day who said video games
are two male oriented. We need more video games for
queer women. Then you know how popular those have become
in the last decade. Anyway, she launched into this insane
(02:50):
rant on MSNBC yesterday about Republican VP nominee jd Vance.
She says jd Vance only wants white children to be
born in a Mayora, And this was in response to
a question related to Americans who don't want to have kids.
Jd Vance recently made a point about childless cat ladies,
and boy, that really upsets some people. Now, Molli jong
(03:12):
Fast says Jade Vance only wants white children to be
born in America. I think I have a SoundBite of
this that's are there more.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
And more Americans choosing not to have kids, which again
emphasizes why JD Vance's comments about childless Americans childless cat
ladies could be so politically damaging. Well, so, what's interesting
is this is this natalism that comes from an authoritarian playbook, right,
that there need to be more white children.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Right, that's the idea that there's you.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Know, this is about great replacement theory racism, right, this
is what this is. So don't misunderstand it. For him
wanting more children, he wants a certain kind of you know,
racist thing.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
What am I about to say? Who knows?
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
How many of you know, show a hands? What is
it about what Mollie jong Fast just said. That doesn't
make any sense. Jdvance's children, he has children, are anybody
not white, that's correct. He married an Indian woman. His
kids are brown. His wife is brown. By the way,
I still find it weird that we call them brown.
(04:12):
But anyway, that's what you're supposed to say. Not exactly
eloquent in her delivery, What Molly is claiming is that
JD Vance wants more families with more kids in the
United States, that are just white. Not only is that
ludicrous on its face, but it's easy to hilariously debunk it,
just simply by pointing out the fact that his Indian
American wife Usha and him have three biracial children. Now,
(04:37):
this is from the same people who claim the social
justice mantle of Martin Luther King Junior, while shunning his
dream of a country where citizens are judged on the
content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
Liberals love to obsess over the color of your skin.
Why is it that those most obsessed with finding and
(04:57):
often manufacturing racism and up being the most racially unhinged.
Maybe you could even say the most racist. If Molly
john Fast and MSNBC want to find this apparently fearsome
specter of white children in America, perhaps they could pay
a visit to Kamala Harris's step children. Uh oh, what
(05:17):
does he do?
Speaker 5 (05:19):
According to a new report, exaggerated statements are up by
like a billion percent and now more. Of the highest
rated show on radio, Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness, it.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Is pretty popular. There's a new report claiming that only
a handful of very successful podcasts are making any money
in the podcast space. Wait, you mean my cousin's husband's
podcast about the history of Arby's Sauces unlikely profitable? Wow,
I am shocked by that. I know you've heard this before,
(05:54):
that you can make money by podcasting, And as somebody
that has a profitable podcast, I can tell you it
takes a while to get it off the ground. But
even still, I encourage you to do it. I know
it probably sounds weird, right, Like Kenny, you're a talk
radio host, you're a podcaster. Why would you want us
to compete with you? Andrew Breitbart one said with more voices,
we are stronger. That wasn't quite how we said it.
(06:16):
I'm paraphrasing, but yeah, that as individuals we can only
accomplish so much. But when there's more of us out
there writing tweets or blogs or podcasting, or organizing protests
or putting petitions together, for example, we can make a
bigger dent in the liberal monstrosity that is the leftist
power elite. So yeah, do it. I'll give you a
(06:37):
great example of that coming up in the next segment.
Alex Mueler is stopping by with her friend April Laguire
and if you don't know who they are. They are
two local conservative voices. They happen to be Hispanic women
who are not pleased with Kamala and Joe. They're not
excited about the movement of neoliberalism in America, and they're
really angry about things like the government createdly that is
(07:00):
Center Point Energy, where the politicians that work there seem
to donate a lot of money to people like Dan
Crenshaw and Lizzie Fletcher. But that's besides the point. April
and Alex are teaming up with Grizzy from Grizzyhood News
and Mattress Mac and lots of other people. They want
to get rid of the CEO of Center Point Energy.
And if you're from Houston and you remember what happened
(07:22):
with Hurricane Burrow, I don't have to tell you why.
You already know. But before we get to any of that,
I just read this report on Breitbart about something that
The New York Times did. I don't subscribe to The
New York Times, so I went out to their website
to look at the article, and even though it's behind
a paywall, I was able to get to it. There's
a way to do that. I won't tell you how.
But there are links on the internet. You can click them,
(07:45):
you can find them. Never have I read an article
based on such a false premise as this one from
the far left New York Times over the weekend. Listen
to the headline quote headline quote, Hollywood's message to Red States,
Our movies are for you.
Speaker 6 (08:01):
What.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I'm sorry what the New York Times is saying that
Hollywood is catering to red state conservatives. Here's what the
report says. For nearly two decades, Hollywood has seemingly missed
no opportunity to sound the alarm about climate change. So
it was startling when the weather focused Twisters arrived from
Universal Pictures this month with no message of climate change
(08:23):
at all. I'm sorry, you're mad that somebody made a
movie about tornadoes and they didn't make it a political crapfest. Okay,
here's some more from the article. Trend spotting in cinema
is a hazardous pursuit. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. Twisters, however,
is emblematic of a clear shift in Hollywood. After a
period of openly using movies to display progressive values, sometimes
(08:47):
with success at the box office, then they use Barbie
as an example, but often not, and then they list
strange world, the marvels, the color purple. Studios seem to
be heating a message that many ticket buyers, especially in
the center of the country, have been sending for a
long time. We just want to be entertained, no homework attached.
End quote. Okay, I actually agree with that. I think
(09:10):
they have a valid point there, But here comes the
lie quote. Put it bluntly, it amounts to an attempt
by Hollywood to bend the red state audiences. Ha, what
in the hell are they talking about? All right now? Granted,
this dumb news outlet is not wrong that movies aren't
long last less becoming political less political, and that that's
(09:32):
paying off at the box office. Look at a Deadpool Wolverine,
for example. Last weekend broke every record. All it is
is an R rated film about two superheroes going out
kicking ass, taking names. Nobody goes to the movies to
be insulted. Nobody goes to the movies to be scolded.
There's nothing wrong with exploring big ideas in movies, but
(09:53):
this should be done with art, theme and subtext, not
divisive Lectures are supposed to be about story in the
amount you break the storytelling, the more you break the
story telling spell, you have failed as a filmmaker. Now,
let's talk about what the dim bulbs the New York
(10:14):
Times get horribly wrong, terribly stupidly wrong. Urban leftists hate
woke movies every bit as much as us deplorables do
those of us maga lovers in the middle of the country.
We don't like woke movies. And you know who else
doesn't like it, inner city liberals. How do we know this?
It's just simple math, guys. Sixty six million people voted
(10:36):
for Hillary. Supposedly eighty million people voted for Joe Biden.
Why aren't those people showing up to watch woke crapfests?
Because they don't want to be bored In a country
where sixty six million people voted for Hillary, Hollywood does
not need a single Red state customer to make a profit.
Right Hollywood's problem is not that Republicans refuse to pay
(10:57):
for this woke trash. Hollywood's problem is that not even
their own lefties are interested in paying for woke trash.
If Hollywood made movies only to appeal to Hillary voters,
to Democrats, that pool of customers would be more than
large enough to create one box office head after another.
If you add in all their kids that go see
the movies with them, you're talking about blockbuster after blockbuster,
(11:21):
billions of dollars in revenue. What the New York Times
cannot face is the simple fact that no one wants
to watch this crap. No one, and that includes people
in their own tribe. We are all human beings, human
beings from our storytellers. We are hardwired to ask only
two things. Number one, cast a spell. Number two, don't
(11:43):
break that spell. That's what storytelling is. That is a
universal part of the human condition. This means that even
though woke is aimed at the left sweet spot, it
violates rule number two. And while leftists might appreciate Hollywood propaganda,
they still won't pay for it with their own hard
earned time and money. So no, it's a lie to
(12:05):
claim Hollywood's catering its latest releases to Red state audiences.
All Hollywood's doing right now is slowly, begrudgingly removing the
woke tartagery everybody hates, which, as the math proves, is
pretty much everybody. We're not passive aggressive like some people.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
We know.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
This is Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
There is an old song about Houston. It was very
different back in the day when they recorded it. I
had imagine Houston's changed quite a bit since then, But
I don't know. Maybe there are some similarities. Like back
in the day, I mean one hundred years ago, people
in this city didn't have access to modern conveniences like
electricity and indoor plumbing. And after the recent hurricane, the
reason Category one hurricane that actually happened to us again, huh,
(12:58):
it's very nos algic if you will now. Yesterday, Center
Point Energy leaders appeared before state senators in Austin to
discuss the power outages post Hurricane Burrell. The Texas Senate
Special Committee reviewed weather, state and electric utility companies like
Centerpoint were prepared to respond to hurricanes and tropical storms.
(13:19):
And I bet that was an easy question to answer.
Mayor John Whitmyer said he would be there.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Was he there?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Alex Mieler's here with a local community activist, Apriliguire. Was
Whitmeyer at this thing yesterday?
Speaker 6 (13:30):
He was?
Speaker 5 (13:30):
Was he he?
Speaker 7 (13:31):
You know, he managed to be there. Obviously noted absence nothing.
We're not used to our County judge was not.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Huh, Lena Hidalgo missing an action she's been on social media.
Now Biden's in town? Now is that right? Is ed
Weesh managed to make that Huh. I was worried she
was back in a clinic because I worry about Lena.
I care about Lena's mental health. It's very important to me.
Her Uh, her purported substance abuse issues, we don't know
if that's true or not. And I care about her apples.
(14:00):
But she cared about a photo op with Joe Biden.
Speaker 7 (14:02):
Huh exactly. And so what was positive to see is
at least our mayor and all of our Harris County
state senators Democrat and Republican, made it explicitly clear to
Centerpoint management that their failure wouldn't be tolerated. Unfortunately, what
we saw from the Center Point leadership was more excuses.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah. Now, a lot of our listeners know Alex Mieler.
In my humble opinion, I think you had the Harris
County judge position stolen from you, but they may not
be as familiar with April. Who is here today, April?
Like guire, April, how do you describe what you do?
Speaker 6 (14:36):
So I'm a crime victim advocate. This is kind of
out of mymo dealing with Center Point, But when you
have this many deaths, it almost becomes borderline criminal. And
I see centerpoints failures as intentional and preventable.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
All right, So this gentleman from Centerpoint, Jason I believe
his name is Jason Wells. He's the Centerpoint CEO. He said,
we ought not do what we're doing right now. I
don't know if you guys noticed, it's very chilly in
the studio. Women usually don't like coming in here. It's
sixty seven degrees. Is everyone comfortable?
Speaker 8 (15:06):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (15:06):
Doing just great?
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Okay, just want to make sure because people think it.
But I guess he does not follow his own rules.
He says, keep the temperature on your thermostat at seventy eight,
and we're well below that right now, so we're outlaws,
I suppose.
Speaker 8 (15:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (15:18):
And when he publicized this photo there was still a
million people without power. This photo op of him sitting
in front of the thermostat at seventy degrees is really
insulting to a lot of folks.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Isn't that bizarre that this is the strangest instructions and
yet they're not even following them. Don't set your thermostat
to seventy. I think most people would agree. Seventy is like,
isn't that the average everybody likes seventy? Right? Some people
like colder, some people like hotter, but most people are
comfortable at seventy. That you were not supposed to do, unless,
of course, you're a very important elitist like Jason Wells. Right,
(15:50):
rules for thee but not for me always the case. Yeah,
I got to imagine he didn't wear a mask either,
and is he even vaccinated? Lord only knows.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
So.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Now April and our friend Grizzy from Grizzy News and
Alex Meeler and a gentleman who owns a furniture company
that Lena Hidalgo says, it's just a local furniture salesman.
I don't know if you know who that is. Have
all got together, you guys, have a petition.
Speaker 8 (16:10):
I love.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I've never started a petition, but I love signing a petition.
Speaker 6 (16:14):
A lot of people are upset, and instead of just
saying we're upset, let's show the numbers. Right, And with
our good friend here, Alex Mieler, we cooked up this
plan and we've executed it, and we put two of
the best people here that are present Houston, which is
Mattress Mac and Grissy Hood News and they've done phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Okay, so yesterday they have Sorry, this is Paul betton Court.
I didn't mean to start playing the audio. You guys
aren't wearing headphones anyway, so you didn't know, but I
started playing audio. Center Points CEO Jason Wells was asked
by State Senator Paul Bettencourt yesterday about resigning. Do you
want to set up this SoundBite for us?
Speaker 7 (16:47):
No, exactly, so you know, in the aftermath now of
the storm, just some of the key points in center
of Benancourt really has taking point here. We found out
they spent eight hundred million dollars on mobile genner that
aren't so mobile.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
No, they're not mobile at all.
Speaker 7 (17:03):
No, and so they weren't used and then.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
They're immobile generators from the center pointless energy.
Speaker 7 (17:09):
And what April touched on is, you know, the possible
criminal sort of levels of negligence. We also found out
in this hearing and so this will wait. It doesn't
look like a very competitive bid process. Also, we've paid
for generators that were twenty to fifty percent more expensive
than other competitors that were more widely known. Sort of
sounds a little bit like our COVID bid rigging that.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
It does sound a little familiar, doesn't it. I'm sure
that's just a coincidence, and so.
Speaker 7 (17:36):
To that, we'll find out how fair the process is.
But what is extremely clear is we weren't prepared for
the storm. And so one of the issues is, listen,
this is not free markets at work. No, you know,
this is a government granted and regulated monopoly.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
This is a government created monopoly, absolutely.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
And one of the issues that's coming out to light,
and why I feel so strongly about this, is that
they earn a little over ten percent return for any
kind of growth project. So buying those generators, yeah, guaranteed
ten percent return. Now when you actually do maintenance, and
it's a huge issue. One of my biggest things with
our local government is deferred maintenance as a crime, something
(18:16):
our Loan Republican always says. And so what they've been
doing is juicing their returns.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
That's a good intended that was great, yeah, juice, and
you can't help myself.
Speaker 7 (18:28):
But what they've done is they've skimped on that preventative
maintenance that keeps the lights on and so h center
Point with vegetation maintenance used to be on a yearly
schedule over the last decade. Then it bumped to a
three year schedule, and now we're at a five year schedule.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Huh. And so just think about that.
Speaker 7 (18:46):
And meanwhile, while they've reduced the number of miles that
they're actually maintaining, while the system has grown, so it's
like a smaller piece of the pie. And what happened
here was we were devastated by you know, overgrown trees,
dead branch's limbs disrupting it. So they violated their social
(19:06):
contract at the expense of juicing returns. And so that's
really why have felt so strongly about the need for
a leadership change and what most wouldn't have realized, and
I didn't until I started digging. This company has had
four CEOs and four years.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 7 (19:23):
But this is not the center Point of yesterday. A
new management team came in. Jason Wells is by all
accounts a bean counter thirteen years at PG and E
in California as the CFO. So pure counting background comes
back in here to center Point gets appointed, CFO gets
selected to be CEO, pushes out all of his operational competitors,
(19:47):
and now the leadership team of Centerpoint. When you look
at it, it's hr government affairs that that's the lobbyist,
the one that hands out the bags of cash to
all the regulators to make and then the CFO. Nobody
is operational experience running this organization.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I noticed there's nobody on the board who is an engineer.
Nobody on the board with a science background. There's no
meteorologist or anything like that. All right, well here's the
sound bite. Hang on a second, let's have a listen
to this.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
We have a situation where we couldn't even invest in
a online tracking system for millions of us. Now, what
would you say to the average person like Mattress Mac,
which is a well known personality in Houston, probably one
(20:34):
of our city you know, you know, city treasures, that
you should resign.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
What do you say to him.
Speaker 9 (20:48):
I've already been out of the community talking with some
of the communities that were most impacted by Hurricane Barrel,
and what I have felt from those conversations is a
deep sense of anxiety that we are early in hurricane
season this year, that all the weather reports are predicting.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Kaiaks All right, I'm just going to cut to the
chase here. I don't think he says he's going to
resign now in the translation.
Speaker 7 (21:12):
Is I won't resign because you should trust me to
fix the problems I created.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Do you know what? Do you know what Paul Bennencord
just did to him? He just too bobbed him. Do
you remember the two bobs? Hang on? I think I
got a SoundBite of this. Hold on, everybody? Hold on?
What would you say you do here?
Speaker 9 (21:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
What do you? What do you do here? Exactly? Nobody
seems to know. Well, what does Jason Wells do? All right?
Here's another SoundBite. Center points communications to customers. Carol Alvarado,
another lawmaker, says that Center Points communications to customers after
Hurricane Burrell were totally inadequate. And here's a little bit
from her yesterday.
Speaker 8 (21:47):
Just this whole cloud about communications. I see that you're
going to hire a head of communications.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (21:54):
That's correct?
Speaker 8 (21:55):
Okay, you need to really ramp that up, because optics
mean something. And when people you know this picture and
people see you with the temperature at seventy degrees, it's
not good optics.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
It's okay, Now on, is this the right SoundBite? I
think I'm playing the wrong one. Is this the one
that you wanted? Was this one? Hold on?
Speaker 8 (22:18):
And are you planning to go to the PUC on
this storm and ask for a right increase?
Speaker 9 (22:27):
Yes, we would intend to propose for recovery the costs
associated with this restoration here.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
What did you just say again? Competing? All right, let
me just explain this one. Centerpoint plans to increase their
rates so that they could deal with the fact that
they screwed everything up. You know, it's I know that
everything's not supposed to be made for radio, but is not?
Are they always chatty in the background like that. We're
trying to get soundbites for the radio here, and these
people are having conversations.
Speaker 7 (22:56):
Ironically, the hearing that was going on because of the
lack of power also blacked out because whatever vendor was
recording it, we lost the live stream. So, you know,
for the quality, I think we unfortunately pretty well because
for several hours no one could even see the commedy.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
All right, there's another fun moment here, not to get
off topic. So Biden's in town and it's kind of
funny here. Lena saw that John Whitmyer, our mayor, and
Biden were getting chummy together out on the current tarmac,
and she pulled a she Jack, didn't she?
Speaker 1 (23:27):
She?
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Now that we don't have Sejack anymore, we have Lena
hit dalgo to hop in for photo ops. Can you
explain what happened to her April? Why don't you'd explain
it to you?
Speaker 6 (23:35):
You know, she won't get off of the Biden train.
You know, she's still right there with him. And even
though he is kind of going down with the ship
like the captain, she does not want Whitmeyer too friendly
with him at all.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
All right, Biden's in town to pay respects to Shila jacksone.
He's not going to fix this issue with the power
or anything like that.
Speaker 7 (23:56):
And that's just where I would go. And this is
just against somebody who has local office. One of the
few statutory responsibilities is to lead our emergency response, and
time and time again wants literally nothing to do with
her actual role and is still governing for DC, not
for Harris County.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Where has she been? Who knows where? During the hurricane
she leaves town, shows up just in time. Kamala is
in town last week? Where's Lena? And that odd? Come on,
she loves Kamala. Don't we have journalists and reporters in
this town that are supposed to ask these questions.
Speaker 6 (24:29):
I just always ask a question, how much time does
she actually spend here in Harris County?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Must be nice to have the Harris County taxpayers fund
her trips around the country while she's going off to
pal around with climate change lobbyists. There's a lot of
money in that. I wonder if they fly around a
private jet when she's going to those conventions and hearings.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
In My question is so she take the private security
and are we paying for it?
Speaker 7 (24:49):
And we are that part?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
We do know? Actually, well, why don't wait? Maybe our
listeners couldvolunteer to do it and then we could save
some money on that. Does anybody out there want to
guard Lena?
Speaker 8 (24:57):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (24:57):
You know, it's ironic that she doesn't want the constables
to do She wants somebody else. But she doesn't want
citizens to have constable. She wants citizens to be stuck
with the sheriff's office, who's very understaffed.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
It kind of reminds me of that lawmaker from ferguson
what's her name, Corey Bush? Didn't she have a romantic
relationship with her bodyguard? The mayor of New Orleans did
this too. There's been a few of these incidents. Far
left progressive Democrats don't want to be protected by cops.
They want their bodyguard to protect them, who just so
happens to be their boyfriend. Of course, I guess I
(25:27):
don't know if it's.
Speaker 7 (25:27):
A little bit of a separate issue of corruption how
people funnel their campaign dollars short lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Sure, you can't pay someone to have sex with you,
but you could pay them to be their bodyguard. I'm
listening to a pursuit of heath in this.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
This is Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness on KPRC nine
fifty Houston.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
It's kind of intimidating in the studio right now. I
often say there should be a minimal amount of beautiful,
brilliant women in my studio at once. Or it's intimidating
me as a man, because it's hard for me to
man explain to the both of you when you're both
probably smarter than me. Alex Mieler here, a very good
friend of mine and local community activist April Laghire usually
doing victims' rights outreach, but this week you have decided
(26:13):
to help step in and assist people like Grizzy Hood
News and Mattress Mac and a handful of other people
that are pretty upset about this thing with Center Pointless Energy.
And I got to think there's not a better name
for what we would call that. Alex. You're a free
market person. What do we do about if Alex was
in charge? What would we do?
Speaker 6 (26:30):
Well?
Speaker 7 (26:32):
Because of the unique nature, right, they're responsible for distributing
the energy, so understand why we have the government regulation oversight. Yeah,
but it's a mismatch here because you've given them this
unique contract bomb that said, we are creating a government
monopoly for you to reliably distribute this power, and then
(26:53):
we incentivize them for these growth projects. And what they
did is they broke that contract right by trying to
maximize financial returns but at the sake of the reliability
and the resiliency of the grid. And so that's why
I've been very strongly advocating is one. Where is the
board here? So everyone on this board cleared over three
hundred k last year to sit on this board. And
(27:14):
they have been silent and you can a lot of money. No,
that's what I'm just saying. So one, where is the board?
If they don't have an opinion on this, probably need
a full new board. You know, in the private sector
you would have an activist, you know, hedge fund, go
and do a proxy campaign and get them all kicked off.
And so that's what we've been essentially doing here. What
about well, what does he make don't know the full
(27:36):
for this year, but several million, several.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Million dollars and then how many people died at.
Speaker 7 (27:42):
Least seven here in Houston for heat cat directly related
Then if you don't.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Add in all million for every dead body, wow.
Speaker 7 (27:51):
So that that's the issue is. You know, they focused
on one performance measure and I would say, at the
expense of what this government mandated monopoly was for. And
so you know, when they brought on Jason Wells, it
was all about energy transition and the reorganization. You know,
(28:11):
there's big press releases that came out when he took
over about a new streamlined organizational team and people that
had thirty years experience kind of running the company. Significant
changes they were all pushed out and then this last Friday.
What really bothered me is you know doing in the
Friday news dump no explanation of why the VP of
(28:32):
the utility business was pushed out. It's like, well, you
Jason Wells, a CEO or the one that selected her
to be the VP, pushed out the person that had
been there before. So where is the accountability with this
board and this executive management team?
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I know this is anecdotal, but you can look up
on there's this website OpenSecrets dot org. Do you guys
know what that is? And all it shows you is
public records of who people are making political donations to
the Center Point people. Appears as though most of their
donations were given to Fletcher, Lizzie Fletcher and Dan Crenshaw.
What do you all make of that?
Speaker 6 (29:02):
There has to be accountability. So just because you're being
paid doesn't mean that they buy your silence because primarily
the reason why you're in those positions is to represent
the public.
Speaker 7 (29:12):
And I actually think as they're looking at legislative changes,
Centerpoint should be prohibited from political activity. You need to
have incentives aligned, you know, that's part of what the
free market works so well. And obviously we don't have
it in this case. And so you know, if you
want to donate earningston All profits, great, but you shouldn't
be in the position to influence regulators.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
I see. The only tweets from Dan Crenshaw at Center
Point Energy are tweets he made in the middle of
the hurricane promising people to get their power back soon.
Nothing critical about it, and he links to that website
that didn't work that's supposed to track power outages.
Speaker 9 (29:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Wow, way to go, Dan, Way to be on the
right side of this thing. Anybody shocked by this, No,
I know, not really, it's.
Speaker 7 (29:54):
Just average political being. And just to reiterate, the silence
of this board is deafening. Yeah, it really if you
bring in your outside PR firm crisis management all of
a sudden now after the storm, Jason Well's talking about
the heartfelt emotions and things, but it's clearly somebody made
a decision to cut the budget. You know, sorry, and
obviously pure dollars technically went up for vegetation manage, but
(30:17):
actual miles of lines being maintained dropped over twenty percent.
You know that was a deliberate management choice to say nope,
one year isn't good any nothing more. I mean that's
what we had during much more significant storms and then
three years. No, I really want to make sure I
hit those financial returns. And why do those matter? Because
their incentive compensation, the extra equity that they get is
(30:39):
based off hitting financial returns, all right.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
In addition to the electrical issues we've had around the city,
something I hear I've heard a lot from is problems
at the water. Now, this is unrelated to their hurricane.
This predates that is people getting these absurdly large water
bills and they go completely changingly large, life changing, and
then the city's solution. Were you the one that told
me this? The city solution to deal with these bills
(31:02):
was to take money out of a fund that was
put aside for low income residents who couldn't pay their
water bill, and instead of correcting the mistake, take money
out of that fund and just pay themselves with it,
pay the water company.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
So, now today we learned from a report from kprc's
Amy Davis, Patricia Lee Patricia Lee is her name, She's
Turner's former head of the water department, was running a
fake charity where city contractors were giving her kickbacks. According
to the report, the charity wasn't an actual charity, it
was an LLC, so no public spending records are available.
(31:36):
This sounds illegal to me.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
Oh, it's very illegal.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
And she's not the only one.
Speaker 6 (31:40):
Not only were they getting kickbacks from contractors, but they
had family members create contracting companies that were going out
and servicing our water line. So there's no telling how
many repairs were done inadequately and that have actually tainted.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Our water supply. And then you see these videos of
places where there's a busted pipe and there's just water
bursting out, and we're not the only ones. I guess
Dallas has this problem too. Have you guys seen this video?
In Dallas, they have a swamp of very crystal clear
water and it's not supposed to be there, and it's
just got water gushing out and out all the time.
(32:14):
And then what is it called Nutria?
Speaker 5 (32:16):
You know what that is?
Speaker 2 (32:16):
The nutrier are living there because it's like living in
a swimming pool. To them, it's the cleanest, freshest water.
People in Dallas were outraged over this, and when I
saw the video, I thought, yeah, it's probably happening in Houston.
All over the place and nobody does anything about it.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
I guess what's the scariest part is we're thinking about
water coming out. What about contamination going into our pipes
right into our homes.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, it kind of makes people worried about fluoride and
the drinking water seem kind of mundane by comparison, Rodney
Ellis had this famous African art collection he was secretly
housing in Harris County in a Harris County owned business
taxpayer expense, of course, and that's supposed to be auctioned off.
But for the second time unless than four months, a
(32:57):
judge halted the auction at the eleventh hour. Fourteen hundred
pieces a very expensive African art owned by Sam Nijnuri,
which is a friend of Rodney Ellis. He's been granted
a temporary restraining order to prevent the court ordered auction
of the collection. This is all related to a Chapter
thirteen bankruptcy case. There's a just explaining it out loud,
(33:19):
it sounds suspicious, but you know it's worse than it sounds.
Speaker 7 (33:22):
Right, So what's so bad about this on many levels
is several years back Rodney actually used taxpayer dollars to
go and rehab this warehouse Precinct one warehouse for the
only purpose of storing that African art collection. A green
jury did not find enough evidence to move forward. But
(33:43):
what's really bad about that was information provided about who
owned the art was incorrect.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Why why would he lie about that because we all
found out it's and then now it's all over the news.
Speaker 7 (33:54):
Well, and that's part of the delays here is there's
still disputes over who really owns the African art collection,
which it's back to the original information that grand jury received,
what was not accurate or timely, And so once again
Rodney figures out how to walk on something that was
in this case. Most of what he does is obviously
on ethical, but in this case it actually was criminal
(34:17):
in free Pass.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Most people don't understand Rodney Allis is basically running Harris County.
Speaker 7 (34:22):
Not basically he is. I would say he is one
of the most powerful people in the state of Texas
in terms of.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Politics, in terms of money in politics.
Speaker 7 (34:32):
Yes, County commissioner right now, six million cash on hound.
That's a little interesting.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
That's a little interesting for the guy who's not even
technically in charge of the county courts and.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
There's the power of Rodney. Any Democrat that wants to
be a judge, and we'll talk about some of them,
knows that if you don't run Rodney's bail reform, which
his version of it is the most extreme in the country,
you will lose your primary. So it's not just the
cash on hand, although even Lena still has a loan
out to him.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Interesting we think about that.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
Here you are, you're voting on things supposedly for the
county's interest favor to somebody, and you still have and
the loan is actually more than her cash on hand,
So I think it's like a sixty thousand he had
loaned Leslie Brionez and Lina Hidalgo one hundred k. But
these are big amounts in local races of interest.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
In local races. That's huge, right, Yeah, it is a
conflict agwer.
Speaker 7 (35:28):
And then he also is very instrumental in Texas Organizing Project,
which is this whole paid advocacy group. But they're door knockers.
So when Rodney comes on board with you, not only
do all of a sudden all of the a f
l CLO various union endorsements flood with it, but also
you get a full team of campaign workers, and.
Speaker 6 (35:49):
So he's a full package. You want to add to
this is this you know about the African art. Really,
what does that have to do with county operation and
tax dollars? And this is where we have the inefficiency
of spending our tax dollars and it has to stop
when obviously we have very serious things like the conditions
in the jail.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yeah, and I got to think part of the reason
why we're even talking about this is simply because this
is just the stuff we know about, right I mean,
if they were doing this, imagine what else was happening.
I always hate when we own the show on a
down note, and when it comes to Harris County and
Houston politics, there's not a lot of positives happening right now.
I guess the astros are back at first place. I
don't know. I don't know. I don't know how to. Hey,
(36:32):
if people want to keep up with the work you
guys are doing, April, You're on Twitter.
Speaker 6 (36:35):
I'm on Twitter April Gary, Texas.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yeah, And of course, Alex Mueller, I retweet you all
the time, so I know our listeners know that. Hey,
to the rest of you, I love you all. Have
a safe and awesome afternoon. We'll be back bright and
early tomorrow morning for more of what you bought a
radio for. You are listening to the Pursuit of Hapiness Radio.
(36:58):
The government to kiss your ass when you listen to
the show.
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