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Welcome to the top Texas Lawyers podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the law firm Abercrombie and Sanchez PLLC. You can find us on the internet at www.www.aswlawoffice.com or by calling 1-888-981-7509. Your hosts are Bryan Abercrombie and Samuel Sanchez. Bryan has been practicing law for 18 years, and he’s board certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in the area of Family Law. Sam has been practicing for 13 years, is licensed in both Texas and Florida, and is a Certified Mediator. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and represent the opinions of the hosts. It’s not designed to provide legal advice for your particular legal matter, and it should not replace the advice of competent counsel. Welcome. We hope you enjoy the top Texas Lawyers podcast.
Good morning or afternoon, I guess it’s morning here. It’s morning here for me. Good morning care for you. I guess we’re in the central time zone. Welcome to the Top Texas Lawyers Podcast. I’m your host. Bryan Abercrombie with me, as always, is the other host. Can do it without him. Sam Sanchez, Sam, how are you doing?
Good, good, Bryan. Good to be here. I’m the peanuts to your to your candy bar, man.
Yeah, exactly. How is the Snowpocalypse going?
Yeah, you know, luckily not as bad as last year. Obviously, we did get quite a good dusting. It’s fricking frigid cold.
You know we got no snow, but it’s 28 degrees outside. It’s super chilly.
Yeah, we’re super chilly. We did get a good dusting, though. We got the cold. So nice.
So based on kind of our own evaluation of this podcast, we’ve been on hiatus for a little while. But based on our own kind of evaluation of our podcast and kind of where we’re going for the future, I think we decided to make a couple of changes. Sam, do you want to enlighten us on the changes or do you want me to tell it?
No, I’m totally good with it. I think that, you know, obviously we’ve spent a lot of time talking about very specific legal issues related to not just family law, business law, estate planning, probate, kind of the areas of law that we touch on in our firm. But we also have very strong opinions about obviously things that are just happening in our world. And, you know, while we still will obviously bring the insight and intelligence that our law degrees and our experience in the legal field has given us, we’re really looking to expand the topics that we talk about and touch on to just things that are important and relevant to us in our lives and to the people that we believe are listening and hopefully get some good information and some good talking points.
Yeah. And like I said, we want to touch on. I mean, we’ll bring up, we’ll still cover on, we’ll cover family and probate and business law issues when they come up and and stuff like that. But we want to touch on topics that we think are going to be that people want to hear about. So, you know, we obviously have opinions about different things. So we’re going to share those opinions and we’re also going to, you know, share topics of the day and, you know, welcome comments. If people want to come in and say how wrong we are or whatever and go right ahead. You know, we’re happy to have a we’re happy to have a discourse. Exactly. But that being said, let’s jump into our first topic. So I was talking about, you know, we we both live here in Texas and Texas, is obviously a border state. We’ve had a number of problems with the border this year. I don’t think that’s a, you know, I think everybody can agree that there’s problems, problems down there. I guess the discussion points in the solution, right or lack thereof. But bottom line is we’ve had a massive amount of border problems this year.
I mean, I think the influx of illegal illegal immigrants coming across the border is somewhere in the neighborhood of two million this year. From what they know of and what they’re doing with the method they come across the border is also another bone of contention. But you know, I saw this video that this guy went down. I guess there’s a butterfly sanctuary on the border between what Del Rio there? And, you know, coming down the Rio Grande, Rio Grande, they’ve the environmentalists have, you know, designated an area that they believe to be a butterfly sanctuary, and they were all upset about the wall being built across the butterfly sanctuary. But apparently, you know, the wall wasn’t built there. Obviously, the wall was stopped when Trump left office. So they’re using the the area around the butterfly sanctuary as the ingress point for, you know, illegal aliens come across the border, you know, and it looks to be, you know, trafficked children and, you know, just just a terrible, terrible situation. And I don’t think they intended for the butterfly sanctuary to be used as a the route for a for a for a rat line coming across the U.S., U.S., Mexico border, right?
Yeah, no, I wouldn’t think so. And you know, obviously, you know, both B in Texas, I grew up on a ranch that ran across the Texas-Mexico border line or a large portion of that ranch did. And so, you know, we had a lot of experience with coyotes and drug trafficking and law enforcement and all the issues that that brings up in relation to what. And it was obviously a microcosm as as opposed to what we’re dealing with in this macro situation across the country. You know, it’s a very challenging situation because obviously, you know, when you look at, you know, you’ll hear people say, well, immigrants are these illegal immigrants are a large reason for our population having issues and there are a lot of them. Obviously, we do have obviously much higher rates of crime along the border based on these situations and who’s coming over in the same token, I will tell you that, you know, when you look at the the the our country and let’s just take the state of Texas, you know, a large majority of the people who are coming over. It’s not like they’re coming over to perpetrate crime, you know? These are people are coming over to really work and to try to make money, and most of that money doesn’t stay in the United States, they get sent back home to people that are still wherever they came from. Now, you know, and these are jobs that I would tell you like, it’s not like we’re sitting there going like, Hey, these are the jobs you and I want or, you know, the jobs that people are graduating college and saying, Hey, these are the things I want to do. I want to go dig holes or dig ditches or whatever it is. But the challenge is, is that it? It is a strain on our resources. You know, it’s a strain financially on the state. As far as like, how do we provide for these the children who are coming across, right? So like if we catch them, we’re holding them at the moment. Our political strategy is super interesting.
If we’re not holding them?
Well, right. So like, we’re like, Hey, let’s just let them go free. Ok, well, then they don’t. They can’t register for school. Or if they do register for school, the school isn’t getting any type because the way we do, the way we fund schools for the most part in Texas is through property taxes. Ok. And so the property and corporate tax and business taxes all contribute towards how we are going to pay for a lot of them. A lot of them. Right? Yeah. The first thing, you’re always taxable, but I will tell you that when you look at that situation and you talk about children coming in, how do we provide any type of support for them because we can’t anticipate it’s this huge flood of children who are coming in without parents, right? So whether they’re being trafficked, so now they’re in this sex trafficking rings that are huge in the state of Texas right now, there’s always these kind of huge, massive busts, and most of them are made up of illegal children. Illegals come over. They don’t have any type of support. So they try to like, Hey, is the state going to take care of me? No. These individuals are easy prey for the criminal underworld that’s waiting for them when they come across the border. If that the people who bring them home,
If it’s not happening while they’re being trafficked across the border, and that’s another another big problem they’ve got. You know, children, you know, as young as four, three and four years old being being smuggled across that border. And you know, who knows what life they’re, you know, they’re going into. You’re absolutely right.
You know, and so that really becomes this huge. You know, it’s like the tip of the iceberg when you start talking about the conversation of illegal immigration. And it’s a complicated issue, right? Because you’re not just talking about the economic impact, you’re talking about the socio economic impact, right? Because, you know, a big portion like right now we’re in an election year so you can turn on the TV, turn on the radio. All you’re hearing is political ads, right? And a big piece of the political ad structure right now is people talking about, Hey, we’re going to keep illegals out. Our focus is to build a wall or do whatever the hell you think you’re going to. That’s going to work, which by the wall. By the way, the wall, Bryan, please give me a frickin break. A wall like that is not going to stop people from coming in, but whatever. If it makes us feel better and sleep better at night, let’s build a frickin castle at the corner. I’m just telling you that as human trafficking is existing in our country, it comes from all ports. It comes from all sides. And you know, in Texas, we get to look at it and say, well, along our border, it’s either going to come seaside right down to the Houston area down channel.
It’s going to come across the Rio Grande. It’s going to come under or over the fence. If we think that the fence is secure, we’re fooling ourselves. But here’s the deal behind that. So like, we invest millions to defend it. We invest millions to try to set up a structure. We invest millions to hire more Border Patrol DEA troopers, whoever it is, local law enforcement to be able to try to stem the tide. And the challenge that we have is it’s so overwhelming. We’ve got thousands upon thousands of individuals crossing that border at any given point in time. So, you know, it’s going to have to be, in my opinion, more than just a law enforcement issue. It really becomes a socioeconomic issue. And how do we deal with what’s on the other side to keep them from wanting to come over here? We can’t subsidize Mexico, Guatemala, all the Latin American countries and say, Hey, we’ll give you a bunch of money, keep your people there, just not going to solve them.
The other problem is you have the illegal, the drug cartel element. I mean, they’re making a fortune, you know, forcing I mean, they’ve got they’ve got armbands for people coming across the border. So I guess they know which cartel, you know, owns them so that. And they’re paying them money to to take them across the border. And you know, that’s a very, very lucrative business. From what I read and some of the articles I’ve looked at, it’s more lucrative than than transporting drugs across the border. They give the transporting people across the border, make it makes more money than the drug trade.
Yeah, because that brings money back, right?
Yeah. I mean, the amount of fentanyl alone that’s being transported across the border is enough to kill, you know, who knows how many people? But but I agree with you. I mean, I don’t know that the Wall is necessarily an answer. It’s a combination problem, right? It’s multiple problems on both sides of the border. It’s got a law enforcement element, the people element, a socioeconomic element. I don’t think a wall hurts. You know, I think it does. It does provide some deterrence. It’s not the only thing. I mean, because they’re going to find ways around ways under ways over. So you have to have an increased presence on the border. Does that mean more Border Patrol agents? I guess. But the policy has to change, too. I mean, you’re talking about Border Patrol agents who catch these people and what do they do? They’re told to let them go. And then if they’re lucky, maybe they have a court date in three years. You know, they might have a deportation hearing.
And so, yeah, completely backed up, then everybody has.
This is going to blow your mind. The Biden administration has a policy where if you come across the border and you’re illegal and you have minor children down in Guatemala or El Salvador or Mexico, even the federal government will pay to fly your kids up to you in the U.S., which is absolutely it blows my mind that blows my mind. I mean, we’re I understand people not wanting to be with their, you know, wanting to be with their kids. And I’m not, you know, taking that lightly. But at the same time, I mean. Maybe coming across the border is not the best thing.
No, it’s absolutely not, and you know, the challenge is obviously you have, you know, Trump’s policies, you have Biden’s policies, you know, first it’s we’re going to ship you back then it’s no, we’re not. We’re not going to hold you. We’re going to hold you. We’re not going to ship you back and figure out, maybe do we allow them to apply for asylum? What are those rules look like? You know, you’ve got these immigration courts that are hearing these requests, these petitions to stay that are years back up. You know, then you have the pandemic on top of it. So then you’re like, Hey, you know, what do we do with that? I mean, the challenge becomes, I think as a society is. Very little about. So what they do is they say they take this position well, I don’t think illegal aliens should come over period. Ok, so let’s do whatever we need to do to keep them out. Great. So we’re going to increase your taxes so that we can pay for these things. But wait a minute, I don’t want to pay more taxes. I just want it to happen. Well, what do you want us to do? What can we deploy the military? No, we’re not going to deploy the military along. Do you think Governor Abbott is going to say, hell yeah, bring the federal federal troops into the state of Texas to patrol the border? No way.
I mean, he can deploy the National Guard. But how much money does it cost to keep the National Guard down there?
Exactly, exactly. There’s no way he’s going to do it. It’s political suicide, but it’s a topic that they can. Every politician, at least in the state of Texas, is absolutely looking to use. Right? So look at
I’m sorry, a political ad of George George P. Bush. That’s George W’s nephew. So Jeb’s son, who’s running for attorney general. I guess he’s riding a four wheeler or something down along the way.
What a douche bag. I’m like, would like, give me a freaking race. Like, you’re going to go patrol the border line on your four wheeler? Yeah, I’d love it. That’s our attorney general, dude. On his four wheeler with the sunglasses. Like whoever thought that was a smart idea is a terrible, terrible, terrible advice. But I get it. I get the issue.
They’re all running out there because it’s an election year. Everybody’s running out there saying how tough they’re going to be on the border, but then nothing ever happens and nobody ever does anything. And it’s on both sides. It’s Republicans and Democrats. I mean, the Democrats are just doing it faster. The Republicans pay lip service at least at least pay lip service to wanting to do something about it. But nobody’s getting. If everybody wanted to do something about it, something would’ve gotten done.
One hundred percent, brother, you’re a hundred percent right. And that’s exactly where I was going, because here’s the deal. What you’re talking about is money, right? The heart of that issue is cash money. These people, they’re worth cash to the cartels, they’re worth cash to the coyotes. They’re worth cash to businesses on the other side that are paying them pennies on the dollar. What they would pay an American worker right now is all that illegal. Yes, we’re making money money on it, hand over fist. And so do you think that money doesn’t reach? I would love to tell you that every law enforcement officer out there is just and true and above corruption. That’s just not the case. They’re human beings. They’re taking payoffs from the cartel. They’re taking payoffs from businesses to look the other way. These are all things because guess what, even if they wanted to try to take a stand? They’re one of a thousand that they. What difference can they make? You know, there’s this huge flood and they’re basically holding a finger in the dike that’s already leaking everywhere. So, you know, I understand the challenges of it, but really at the heart of this issue and you and I both know it, it’s money. It’s money. And if you’re going to stem the flow of money, then you’re going to have a lot of pissed off people on both sides. And that’s why people talk about it, but do very little about it.
I mean, my my big, my bigger concern. I have to two big concerns on this is one you cease to have sovereignty as a country when you have no border and basically we have no border at this point. There are so many people coming across. I mean, for every, every ten people they catch, there’s probably two hundred people that get through. Oh yeah. And so we have no, no functioning border at this point. But the federal government’s not willing to do anything about it and the state government’s willing, you know? They might do something that’s limited, this limited what they can even do. It’s really a Border Patrol issue, but there’s not enough Border Patrol agents and they don’t get the support. They get harangued, harangued if they, you know, if they make an arrest and it looks bad on TV, you know. And you know, that’s a hard job to do and that’s a risky job to do. And, you know, would you want to live down across that border and have to live in and live in those towns and to work that Border Patrol job, which is, you know? Yeah, you got to run the risk of being brought up on federal charges for making an arrest these
Days or getting shot by the cartel because you get in the way, right? I mean, like,
You’re just one. I mean, you’re just one agent and they don’t care.
I mean, you’re probably running a stretch for
For the money. And there was an X Border Patrol guy that’s, you know, become a big advocate. And he was talking about one girl that was trafficked across the border and she had, you know, DNA in her from 20 different people. And you know, that’s that’s a heartbreaking story. And she was a minor, you know, minor 12, maybe 12, 13 years old. I don’t I don’t remember what the age was, but it was it was significantly young. And the the human trafficking is just an absolute tragedy. And and I understand that, you know, I understand that America was a land that was made on immigrants hell. You know, my family was immigrants. Your family was immigrants. Everybody. Everybody just about coming. Coming over here was an immigrant. At some point I get that, but at the same, and most of them are looking for a better life with them for a better, you know, a better way to make money and stuff like that. But then there’s this other element that, you know, they have to get involved with some pretty seedy, seedy individuals to get across that border. And that includes drug. I mean, the drug cartels have a business going. I mean, you get your wristband, you pay your money and they take you across and they know exactly how the system works.
They’re very smart, very smart, very savvy business people. You know, it’s, you know, it’s evil. Don’t get me wrong, but they know what they’re doing and they’re making a lot of money off of it. And and like I said, like I said, the worst thing ever is the trafficking element of it. I mean, that’s just absolutely heartbreaking. And then when they come across the border, what I don’t understand is the round in this, this catch and release thing that they got going. But then they’re taking them in buses or taking them in planes and dropping them off. You know, every time the border town, I mean, they’re dropping, they’re dropping people off in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, North Carolina. I mean, I don’t even I don’t understand why that’s. I understand from the standpoint of the Biden administration doesn’t want it to look bad. So they don’t want a bunch of people, a bunch of people all situated along the border, so they’re trying to spread them out. But I mean, there’s got to be a some better solution than, oh, we’re just going to go to Wilkes-Barre, Connecticut, and drop a bunch of people off.
You know, yeah, in the middle. I mean,
Nobody knows what’s going on. Is that in a way, isn’t that kind of participating in the human trafficking problem?
Yeah, I agree. I think they absolutely are. And the problem is, is there’s no cohesive strategy because there’s no cohesion in this country on this issue. There really isn’t right. You know, the challenge is, is you talk to border states and border states are like frickin, we need a wall. We need to keep them out there like destroying the kind of fabric of our our, our socio and political and financial systems right there. Overwhelming state agencies like CPS Child Protective Services, they’re overwhelming welfare systems within the state. They’re overwhelming these educational systems that nobody can afford to do anything because we have this huge influx of children. So nobody can really teach because the classrooms are so big and half of them are having to be taught in ESL classes, which is basically English as a second language class. And so you have to have very specialized teachers. So it’s just this huge pressure. But the challenge is, is that you talk to somebody in Ohio and they give a shit, they kind of look at it and they’re like, Hey, guess what? That’s not my frickin problem. Until every town,
Every town is the border town now, though.
That’s right. Because guess what? In Ohio, that’s where fricking like the cartels dropping people off. But you know, when you look at these large farming communities, these like even let’s use California. California is a great example of this because California has this huge influx of friggin illegals all the time. And guess what?
Too far to farm those fruit crops?
Absolutely. Florida is the same way, and so Texas has a big part of that as well. There’s these areas where ranchers, farmers are looking at it, going like, I don’t want them, but I need them, right? And so how do we keep them out? I want the good ones. I sure as hell don’t want the shitty ones. I don’t want to have this drug trafficking or this human trafficking rings go on. And inclusive immigration strategy, which means that there is a pathway to get into this country, but right now, because of the floodgates are fricking open. Why do you even have to focus on that? Because you’re like, try to get here legally, what are you? What are you worried about just freaking across the border flying and never leave because they’re not going to kick you out? And then when they do,
We’re in this heightened COVID environment, so nobody’s getting vaccinated, nobody’s getting tested. Then these kids are coming to coming to schools with no, you know, no vaccinations, not to take the COVID vaccination out of it. Take the measles, mumps, rubella vaccination. They don’t even have those. So, you know, you’re talking about an influx of disease, and you can’t really turn these kids away from from an education. I mean, that’s it’s free public school. So it’s a it’s a massive problem and it’s it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I mean, you want politicians to, you know, not to pay it lip service and actually actually work on solutions to the problem. I mean, it’s a complicated problem. So it’s going to require a combination of solutions if that means more temporary work visas or more, you know, more things. That’s one thing. And then but there’s also going to have to be, yes, an influx of criminal, you know, criminal investigations and, you know, law enforcement along the border. And there might be a need for a border wall and things like that. There’s no easy solution then. I have a feeling it’s a complicated, multifaceted solution, and it’s going to require every side to give a little
No, hell, yeah. Well, and not only that, but I feel like when people say, Hey, well, it’s because there’s this huge criminal element coming across, there is a huge criminal element coming across. Absolutely, without a doubt. Look at our prisons. If you look at the prison system like these are getting swelled with criminals that are coming from other countries because other countries are like, Hey, you know what, criminal? We’d love for you to go someplace where there’s probably easy pickings and more money. Guess where that is? It’s here. So, yeah, yeah, you got MS 13, you got the cartels. You’ve got all these people who are saying like, Hey, if we can establish a criminal enterprise foothold in the states where now we have it on both sides, that’s what we want and that’s what they’re doing. You know, and so, you know, you know, so you talk to law enforcement, you talk to people who are involved in this day to day struggle and they absolutely want change. But talk to them about solutions to that problem. And it’s incredibly complicated. It’s not just the law, it’s not just politics. It’s really the everyday person and the everyday person right now kind of turns the other cheek and they kind of look at it and go, Oh yeah, it’s a terrible problem. And you know, I’ll vote for somebody and they’ll take care of it. But guess what? That’s not the solution. You know, voting somebody in to think like, Hey, that one person or this one hundred people are going to make the change that’s going to make it fix. The problem is not it. It’s really going to have to take the population as a whole to kind of resolve that situation. In my opinion, we’re just not ready to do it now.
I mean, I do think I do think when Trump was in office, I had read somewhere that about 90 percent of of the problem was starting to be solved, but still 10 percent of the problem there. And there’s still a minimum of 10 percent. And then now it’s obviously now it’s gone. One hundred and eighty in the opposite direction. So it’s probably twice what the what the original problem was. So, all right, I think we’ve tackled that issue. If you have a comment about that, about that issue or something we want to address, we’ll we’ll take it up in the next episode. Just send us a comment. Give us four stars if you want to review us and then give us your comments. We’re happy to. Happy to take questions. Happy to discuss it. I mean, you know, we have opinions. We’re not always right. We’re not always wrong. And, you know, we’re willing to listen. This the next thing on the on the agenda is this it’s really close to home, this is obviously a legal topic. So we’re talking about an election year. We’re talking about a recent Court of Appeals ruling. So just to give listeners a little bit of background, the court of Criminal Appeals is the highest court in the state of Texas for criminal matters. And so it’s basically the Supreme Court, but for criminal matters. So the Supreme Court of Texas deals with civil matters and the Court of Criminal Appeals deals with the criminal cases. So there’s a criminal case that came up and it was dealing with the voter fraud issue and it was decided oddly coincidentally. I don’t really necessarily believe in coincidences anymore, but coincidentally, the sorry, my kids and dog may be in the background.
But anyway, it’s our world man. It’s what we’re living in anyway.
One day after the filing deadline for filing for new candidates to run for the judicial offices of for the next election, the Court of Appeals, which is controlled by the Republican Party, decided eight to one to refuse to allow the Texas attorney general to prosecute voter fraud. So the Texas attorney general at this present time could no longer enforce voter fraud. The. So you’re asking where to where does voter fraud get prosecuted now? Well, it gets prosecuted by your local district attorney. So this is an extremely controversial decision. I mean, my personal opinion is you’ve got the district attorney in Harris County, Dallas County and Bear County. For one, that’s they’re all. They all get money from Soros. They all get money from the George Soros funded PACs to run their run, their their campaigns. So how much voter fraud do you think is going to get prosecuted by the local D.A.? But I can also see where it could also be a problem in a very, very, very small county where there’s a very few lawyers, there’s a DA, there’s a judge, there’s there’s lawyers at practice. I could also see a situation where it’s not prosecuted in a very, very small county because of the good old boy system. And everybody knows everybody, right? Yeah. So I mean, they did. They not only struck down the attorney general’s ability to prosecute voter fraud, they declared it unconstitutional. So I think it’s going to take a constitutional amendment to to to modify that. I don’t understand. The original ruling was from a case from nineteen fifty one, so they overturned a nineteen fifty one case. I don’t understand the legal reasoning behind that ruling. I have to be honest with you. I I don’t understand why a DA and the attorney general can’t have concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute voter fraud in the state of Texas, especially when you’re dealing with federal, you know, federal or statewide races that affect the entire state or the entire country.
Well, and I think that at the heart of the decision is really we in this country and in the states, particularly in Texas, you know, obviously feeling like we were a country before we were a state. We’ve still maintained that mentality, right, which is states rights and in that states’ rights argument is local control. And I really feel like the Supreme Court and I shouldn’t say the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals looked at this and said, Hey, you know what? What do we feel is at the heart of the Texas spirit, right? The Texas political environment, legal environment. Is it do we want Big Brother watching over our shoulders? Or do we want to be able to deal with issues at the level at which they’re happening? And the challenge becomes, to your point, Bryan, who do we trust? Right. So Texas is a red state by red state. I mean, they’re solid. Republican state voted that way for a long time. You know, the transition to early and I guess like the late seventies. But just know that Texas is a very conservative political state, but there are little bastions of these blue democratic cities, right? So wherever there is large populations, urban areas, there is still a swing right. It can be Dallas. It can be maybe Houston, it can be maybe Austin. But the majority of the state is rural and very conservative and Republican.
And so I think what the Supreme Court, I mean, what the Court of Appeals was looking at was really saying, who do we want to deal with this issue? Do we want it to be done at the local level where people are actually going to be more inclined to want to police themselves and their people? Right? Do I want to police my neighbor if my neighbors perpetrating fraud and trying to affect an election? Is it important to me or is it important to somebody who’s sitting at the Capitol building an office at Austin? Well, I think it’d be more important to me because the person who is going to actually make decisions that are affecting. Me on a day to day basis is the person who’s fricking perpetrating that fraud, where I live, where if you talk about the office of the Attorney General like you and I both know this is a frickin office that I’m going to say that that office flies like the flag above the Capitol building. And so whatever direction the wind is blowing, that frickin office is going to chase tail about it. And so if they feel like it’s a border issue, guess what? They’re going to speak up because that office is a launch point. For what, Bryan? If you’re the the attorney general of the State of Texas, what do you have your eyes probably set on?
Well, usually if you’re the attorney general, probably the governor’s mansion.
Hell yeah, you’re looking at. I want to be a governor or I’m looking to be a U.S. senator for the state of Texas. These big offices, that is the launch point for that, and that’s why it’s such a political flag. That’s why they, you know, they pick up the mantle along all these things, why they’re so willing to engage in lawsuits against the federal government to try to stop exactly what we’re talking about the federal government’s hand reaching down and controlling what’s happening at the state level. And I really feel like that’s what the Court of Appeals was doing. They looked at it and said, Hey, you know what, if we’re going to stay true to what we believe in? The state of Texas, which is Big Brother, shouldn’t be watching us. We should take care of our own shit. I think that’s what that decision came down and is trying to say. But the problem is exactly your point, Bryan. It’s a very politicized issue. So if you’re looking at it and going like I’m a Democrat and the way I keep my Democrats in office in Houston is, Hey, let them do their frickin voter fraud and dead people vote or fricking illegals vote because they’re casting, right? They’re casting their vote for my boys downtown. Am I going to prosecute it? Hell no, because I’m part of that old boys club, whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans in that situation, depending on your geographic location in the state of Texas, that’s going to vary. And so that’s really the challenge. I don’t agree with you. I think it leaves it wide open for disreputable individuals to continue to perpetrate fraud on the voter system, which is very sad. But I also think that it’s really kind of one of those issues that I don’t know that we’re ever going to get that solution other than at the local level where people it matters to them.
I mean, what you’re saying about the above a local control, but here’s the deal. I mean, the DA is in Texas. I mean, if you don’t know, I mean, you know this, but I mean for our for our listeners, the DA’s in Texas have a tremendous amount of power. A district attorney has a tremendous amount of power to decide what gets prosecuted or what doesn’t get prosecuted. A good example is the Dallas County DA. I guess they’re not prosecuting theft over under 750 bucks, right? Yeah, they’ve just decided that we’re not going to do anything about it.
So Rob, taking a page out of San Francisco, man, they’re taking a page out of San Francisco.
What you need to take, you know, under seven hundred and fifty bucks, but you know, that has a cost. It has a cost to businesses. It has a cost to people. But the problem is they have such such a tremendous amount of power. And then take my hypothetical of the small town. If the small town da is corrupt and the and the people in that that get voted into office are corrupt. There’s nobody to challenge that. There’s nobody to prosecute, that there’s nobody to deal with that. And I think that that case, the one that was at the Texas Court of Appeals, I think it was out of a smaller county, if I remember correctly. I think you’re right. Chambers County, maybe. Or I don’t remember what county, but don’t quote me on that. But I think it was a smaller county. It wasn’t out of a Harris or a Travis or a Dallas or a parent or anything like that. It was a smaller county and there was there was a voter fraud issue or, you know, and then they declared the law unconstitutional. But I really think that’s a place for a concurrent jurisdiction. If you if you just want to have a check and a balance, because that means you can get with an hour. And maybe this is a larger conversation about where political money comes from and who’s allowed to form PACs and donate money. You know, that’s obviously a large and there’s a lot, a lot of money coming into politics now and a lot of money coming into these local races. And, you know, a million dollars in a local race is a big, big, big campaign contribution. But if that sways, what crimes are going to prosecute? Maybe you do need that check. Maybe you need that attorney general. That’s going to check the is going to be a check and a balance against, you know, against especially things that affect statewide elections or even national elections.
Well, and I think what the court was also trying to do is basically say like, Hey, you know, AG, if you’re going to go after some something, go after corruption, you absolutely haven’t lost the the authority or the ability to prosecute corruption cases. What we’re saying is we don’t want you to get tied up in the minutia of voter fraud. Voter fraud is something that needs to be dealt with at the local level because that is a very local specific issue now. I think I don’t think that they completely barred like, let’s say, it was statewide because one of the things I do want to touch on that we kind of discussed back and forth is digital. Housing the motor system. Ok, now
I have my opinions on that, and nobody’s going to like them.
Well, and you and I both write, so this is the trend. The trend is, hey, yeah, there’s a paper ballot, but we’re not going to really focus on the paper ballots anymore. We want to digitize the system. Well, I’m going to tell you right now that anything is digital can be hacked into, so I don’t care what anybody frickin tells you. If if this digital wall
And plugs into the internet, it can be
Hacked, it can be hacked and it can be hacked remotely. It can be hacked by cell phone. It can be hacked by frickin somebody across the world. And so trying to say that we want to digitize this, but don’t worry, we’ve got a backup system that’s a failsafe if we ever need to. Is a travesty. And I think that’s the thing that’s wreck waiting to happen. Yeah. And it’s happening. That’s that’s where it’s it’s this slow train wreck that we’re all watching happen and we’re like, Damn, that’s going to be terrible when it happens. Wake the fuck up. It’s happening right now, like you’re watching it literally happen. And if we allow that to continue to go forward, I’m saying I know the solution. I’m just saying that allowing it to go unchecked without any type of security, without any type of oversight allows for manipulation. I’ll give you an example. And let’s take it as a statewide election. If it’s all digitized and it says, Hey, guess what? We’re going to write this super complicated algorithm that’s buried in a back door that no one can see that says every, every 15th vote. Ok, we’re going to swing it from from Democrat to Republican. Every 15th vote, OK? Of the millions that happen when you look at an election and our elections have been wicked close, not just our presidential elections, there’s plenty of primary elections where you talk about the difference between candidates, somebody who actually knows what the fuck is going on in the system and somebody who just has a good last name that they think we can fool a bunch of dumb voters by getting them to vote for our last name, whether it’s Bush, whether it’s fricking whatever
Bush, Clinton,
Whatever, whatever your last name is that you think, Hey, you know what? It’s got some currency all by itself. What ends up happening is if that algorithm, we can’t identify it. And if you believe that there is a a failsafe ability for us to be able to just identify those because, hey, guess what? We’d be able to see if it’s being hacked. There’s a reason that there’s all these security updates to your damn phone. All right. I don’t care what phone you have. There’s a reason that they’re constantly doing these security updates, and it’s not because your phone is frickin secure or that the data is secure, or that there’s not all these people trying to figure out backdoor ways to manipulate the system. And so I feel like when we’re talking about the context of the conversation, which is an OAG and attorney general of a state looking at voter fraud, I’d much rather than be looking at, hey, the integrity of the voter system as opposed to going down and saying, Hey, did Joe Henry, who’s been dead for 10 years? Vote in the local election now if there’s one hundred thousand Joe Henry’s because all the dead people in the state of Texas have risen from the dead to vote yes, the Office of the Attorney General should be involved, but those days should still be impartial. I agree with you that that concurrent jurisdiction, but I think there’s a level there that we’re missing, right? Like it needs to be not the micromanaging of the situations, but the macro is really what the Attorney General’s Office and I think that’s what they were trying to say in their ruling. What the effect of that ruling is to say no one’s doing it. That’s really the effect of it. And that’s that’s the that’s the thing you’ve got.
I think you’ve got Abbott’s office, you got Paxton’s office now, all filing motions for rehearing and filing amicus briefs and all this other stuff to try to get that get that ruling readdress, which I doubt it will. I bet you you’re looking at a special session of the Texas Legislature to tackle that issue.
Well, our constitution so fricking clear, like in the state of Texas, we have just as simple as fricking constitution ever. Oh my god, it’s like picking hundreds and hundreds of pages because we continue to do this. So yeah, it’s a colossal mistake. But I would tell you like the warning that I have to anyone who’s listening and you and I both know that brother is that the voter system is inherent into our personal. I mean, you
Go down and I vote on a they go, you vote on a smart tech, or I don’t forget what the name of the stupid thing is. I go down to the thing. I put my little, I do little, turn the wheel and vote for my candidates and push the vote. Then the vote goes somewhere. I don’t know where it goes. I don’t know if there’s a paper copy that backs that up. I mean, you’re relying on these people that work for one day a year as poll workers to get that right. And then the thing I noticed about all the all the. All the cases that were brought around this last election were. Well, if you brought it before the election, it was premature, right? You bring in after the election, after the elections, it latches as as by passage of time. So if you unless you’re unless the lawsuits go going to trial on the day of the election, I don’t know. You’re going to be able to get anything done. I mean, I think that’s I think that’s honestly, I think that’s that’s the court’s punting upon the elections, and I don’t believe courts should be deciding elections. Let me get that out. But I do think that they need there has to be a check and a balance because this this thing has gotten way out of hand, and I 100 percent agree with you that the that the we’re putting a lot of faith in machines that can be, you know, that can be hacked, that can be, you know, manipulated. You know, unless you look at every vote, every paper, everything turns into a paper ballot and you can look at those paper ballots, you’re not going to be able to verify the integrity of of the election. I mean, and and Texas has a history of, you know, voter fraud in elections. I mean, look at what landslide Lyndon. I mean, everybody that everybody that gave Lyndon Johnson the last few votes he needed to win that election. And I’m forty seven or whatever it was, all came in alphabetical order from the order that they were in the phonebook, they believe.
Yeah, I imagine because
All these people came down to the exact order that they were in the phone book and voted for Lyndon.
Well, and that’s exactly and that’s the that’s the that’s the absolute best point in this whole conversation, Bryan, is that if we believe that there wasn’t fraud in relation to the voting system before we digitized it, you’re an idiot. If you believe that that just is magically going to stop because we’re digitizing it, you’re an idiot. Like, these systems are ripe for manipulation. They always have been, and they always will be. And so if we value our vote, which I know every free American does, you believe that casting your vote shouldn’t matter whether it’s one vote a million votes, every person’s vote shouldn’t matter. And here’s the thing you don’t want to change. I sure as hell don’t want my frickin vote change to somebody that I frickin hate. No, you don’t want that. You want your vote to stay what it is. But if we don’t as a society, as a state, as a local entity, really look at that process and value it and get involved. It’s going to continue to be what it is right now. And I’m a firm believer
And I’m a firm believer in every vote should count, not just my, my guy or my lady’s vote. Every vote, every legally cast vote should count, not every vote that counts because not all ballots cast in an election are going to be legal ballots. If you have, if you have somebody, bring you down 10 ballots and kind of throw them on the pile or whatever. I mean, obviously, yeah, no. Every legally cast vote should count. But the problem is, everyone talks about being denied the right to vote over here. But what about vote dilution over here where you know you have five people vote against for the other candidate? And so my vote doesn’t count because five people voted for the other guy?
Oh, gerrymandering, I doing do it. But how does that happen? Yeah, by setting up districts, right? I mean, by the way, we’re, you know, this is a challenge, Bryan. You’re absolutely right. You’re diluting that vote
By fake vote count. You know, if you and I vote for the same candidate, let’s say, and some they come in and throw five fake ballots in there, well, our votes are gone.
It doesn’t matter. You’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. And here’s exactly exactly.
They went by three
Well, and there are so many different ways that this is happening, not just our recreating this fake digital ballot. Potentially, who knows, are we creating fake paper ballots? Are we getting people who are alive to vote as dead people? All that stuff is happening. If you don’t think it is breaking, you’re asleep, you know, but you know, we’re we’re trying to adjust for that in the in the geopolitical world through the policies of like, hey, redistricting fight. Like how does how do we how do how does how does the population shift? And it’s a really big issue. It’s a really big, complicated issue. But just know that if you want your vote to matter, you’re going to have to get involved and educated about this process and whether it’s going to throw you one better.
I think you need to go down and take your take your time and volunteer to work for the election.
My point? Exactly. Yeah.
Part of your civic responsibility should maybe sign up and go down there and work the polls because half the time these poll watchers or, you know, half the time those positions go unfilled and the ninety five percent of them that nobody even bothers to go down there and vote or go down there and work the polls. I mean, usually you have a little old ladies, you know, I work in the polls just just trying to get out.
Daughters of the Confederacy, man,
Whatever it is, you go down there, you know, trying to do their civic duty. I mean, maybe it’s maybe it’s time that citizens take if you believe in your civic responsibility to do various things. You know, one of those things is participating in the voting process. So yeah, that’s. I thought, but like I said, I believe in, you know, it’s funny, it’s the European countries and stuff like that. They’ve outlawed things like machines and I think Canada outlawed machines. It’s all paper ballot and it’s all paper ballot. And, you know, they’ve outlawed voting machines and mail in ballots and all the stuff where fraud is rampant. And I also think the the thing is interesting is 2016, you know, the machines and the and you’ve got Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, everybody complaining about fraud and the machines and fraud in this and Russian interference. And this and that and the elections are illegitimate and Democrats win in 2020. It’s the cleanest election of all time. And then you got the Republicans who were saying the elections cleaned in. Twenty sixteen are saying the election is dirty in twenty twenty. So you know. I know that you have no republic without the integrity of the vote, I know that that’s for sure. If you can’t have an integrity of the vote, then you have no republic and that’s that’s the scary thing about all this. All right. So this is a this is another one. Let’s take let’s get off to the heavy topic and go to a lighter topic like Joe Rogan and the and the Spotify controversy that’s been going on all around the around the airwaves.
You got just to give a little background. You got Joe Rogan, who came up with essentially two episodes, one with Dr. Malone, who has nine patents, and he created basically the precursor to, I guess, the Miranda technology. That’s the basis for the COVID vaccine. And then he also had Dr. Peter McCullough, who is a world renowned cardiologist who’s authored more papers, published more papers than any cardiologist in the history of cardiology. So he had those two guests on, and they talked about some questions and concerns that they had about the COVID 19 vaccines and things like that. And so then you get you get Neil Young involved, and Neil Young is, you know, a rocker from the 70s decides that he’s wants his music taken off of Spotify because Joe Rogan’s on Spotify if Spotify doesn’t get rid of Joe Rogan. So Spotify, I guess, got rid of Neil Young because apparently Joe Rogan, every time he he he publishes a podcast episode, it’s the equivalent of Taylor Swift dropping an album on Spotify. So he gets like 40 million listeners and then cable news jumps in the mix. And then you got I guess I read today that Meghan and Meghan and Harry are getting involved. They don’t want. They may want to be taken off a half of a half of their podcast off of Spotify, even though they’ve got 20. The funny thing about Harry and Meghan is they got twenty five million four for their podcast on Spotify, and they’ve done exactly 30 minutes of podcasting on Spotify. So is that roughly a little less than a million a minute?
That’s pretty good. Boy, that’s good. Return on investment of time. That’s a good gig.
But they’re getting into the mix. Other people are getting in the mix. They want, they want Joe Rogan cancelled or censored or whatever the hell now. Now, Spotify has gotten into the mix and decided they’re going to put a warning label on their podcast about if it’s,
You know, if there’s a controversy information.
And look, I mean, you know, look. I’m all for different points of view coming out, I mean, the science obviously is not settled and that was one of Rogan’s points was hey, look, stuff that would have gotten cancelled six months ago for for COVID misinformation. And I think he cited the example of somebody said, like early last year or whatever it was six or eight months ago that you could still transmit, you could still catch COVID and still transmit COVID even if you’ve had a vaccine. Wow, that was that was heresy and that was whatever and people were getting thrown off of Twitter or Facebook or whatever and for spreading medical misinformation. Well, apparently it’s not medical misinformation anymore, because it’s fact now that actually does happen. So, you know. I’m all for all points of view and letting people make their own decision. I mean, I don’t understand this whole why the cancel culture has to come out for people. I mean, I don’t I don’t really care about Whoopi Goldberg’s comments. I don’t think she ought to be canceled. Just the same as, you know, I don’t think Joe Rogan ought to be canceled for having to two doctors on and hearing their opinion. I mean. I don’t get it. I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
Well, and I think when you talk about the Constitution, right, our constitutional right to free speech, our constitutional right to have our own independent thoughts and express them in the mediums that are available to us and in this digital world, that’s a lot, right? You know, that’s not just a podcast or a YouTube channel or video. And when you talk about censorship of those opinions, you know, it’s difficult because I will tell you, like, you know, let’s take ivermectin. You know, I know that, you know, that’s really where the controversy with Joe comes from at its heart. He he got COVID. He took some controversial treatments that worked for him, and he came back and said, Holy crap, like these things work. I mean, he touted them to friends. He touted them the coworkers. He touted them on his podcast. And so there’s this huge community that says, Oh my God, you’re basically poisoning. People’s minds are going to go out and kill themselves because of what you say. It’s not like Joe Rogan is sitting there saying, I’m the chief surgeon or the head of the CDC, and I’m telling you to go do this. This is a dumb ass frickin imay commentator who used to be a terrible comedian, right? Who’s freaking like? But he’s funny as hell, and he’s got this huge following based on the career that he chose and that he wants to say
That I think his attraction, I mean, honestly, I think his attraction is he’s he doesn’t claim to know everything. He’s an inquisitive person to ask questions, so he asks a lot of questions. He talks to him. He has a conversation with people. And I think that’s where the appeal is because he has all types of people who have people that talk about aliens on the damn show.
Agreed. Agreed. Because that’s who he is. That’s Joe Rogan. And he’s his character. He’s a little larger than life. He’s like a cartoon character on the if you’ve ever watched, you have see or followed him as far as the way he does his comedy. It’s it’s raw, it’s rough. It’s, you know, it’s just kind of who he is. And so that he’s saying something doesn’t mean you need to go, do it right? Can you listen to it? Can you entertain it? Can you research it yourself? Yeah, should you? Absolutely. Does that mean that OK?
He was prescribed ivermectin by a doctor, and that then obviously that was after consultation with his medical professional who examined him and figured they figured out the best treatment course for him based on what he wanted to do and based on what what his body could handle. I don’t think that CNN coming on and calling it horse paced and saying he’s, you know, he’s telling everybody to take horse to warmer, which it is used for horse, for horse to warmer. But it’s also got I mean, a lot of these medicines have human uses and animal uses. There’s a lot of a lot of overlap. You know, that’s if what he’s saying is medical misinformation, and that’s just as much medical misinformation because there are people that this this treatment has helped. So my problem with it is my problem. I guess with this whole thing is, look, everybody’s everybody’s fallback position is Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, whatever. They’re all. Oh, they’re private companies so they can censor whoever they want. No, yes they can. Yes and no. But OK, the larger sense is. Back in the old days, you could go to the town square and you could say whatever the heck you want. You had the free speech rights to go ahead and say, and I guess you still can. But nobody goes down to the town square anymore.
You know, the town square is the town square. Nobody goes down there anymore. The new town square is all digital. It’s all online. That’s the new town square. Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Whatever other social media platforms are out there, that’s the new town square. They have Section 230 immunity from prosecution because there are immunity from from lawsuits based on what the content is. They were given congressional immunity, you know, from from lawsuits so they can publish, they should be able to publish whatever they want. And I’m all for look. The the right information is going to be ferreted out. You know, what I don’t understand is that in this push has been coming in the last year and a half to two years where ever since Cove it started. Really? Everybody’s opinion gets drowned out, and these are the set of facts, these this World Health Organization or the National Institutes of Health or, you know, these people say that these are the facts or they’re the facts that no other nobody, no other doctor who’s treated anybody or anything else can have an opinion about anything because, you know, those aren’t the facts. Those aren’t the facts. Well, the facts keep changing. As this virus mutates and changes, you know, different things happen. I mean, you know, this Omicron variant doesn’t have begun. The vaccine doesn’t seem to work on the Omicron variant when it worked on the other variants or the other the other COVID.
Because the virus is mutating and the symptoms are mutating and the, you know, there’s changes happening all the time. I I always I’m always a believer of the truth. Eventually, ferrets itself out and. You know, you keep you keep censoring people and then people just want to know, you know, I’m going to cut these people off of Facebook, I’m going to ban, you know? Malone got his Twitter, his Twitter account suspended because and he’s a doctor. I mean, give me a break. Ok, fine. Somebody will come on and refute him if what he’s saying is wrong. If what McCullough is saying is wrong, there’s a doctor out there. There’s a lot of smart people out there that will come on and refute him. And I’d like I’m. I’m the type of person that likes to look at, OK, I got this information over here and I got this information over here and I weigh it and evaluate it, and then I make my decision. I mean, that’s that’s ideally what it should be. But we seem to be in this culture where somebody expresses an opinion that you don’t agree with. Get rid of them. They got to be gone. They’ve got to be gone.
Yeah, I think it’s well, I think it’s a little deeper than that. I think that what I think you can go back to the history of this platform is that, you know, people have decided that the digital media that entertains them or that they draw their news from is 100 percent accurate. And that’s just stupid. But it’s the way people a lot of people think. And so what has become widely used? Let’s say you’re talking about Sandy Hook, and it didn’t happen. That’s a hoax. Or you’re talking about COVID and you’re saying that’s a hoax. You know, the virus, it doesn’t kill people. It’s just stupid. It’s just somebody’s disinformation or you take it to race and you say, Hey, you know what? It’s actually black people in the world or Hispanic people or white people that are doing these things. You know, they created this virus. They’re Chinese and Chinese Americans brought it from China, and they disseminated it in the United States. And so what ends up happening is because the nature of this medium is it’s uncensored, raw, pure and immediate. I mean, just like us, right? We create this podcast. We put it out into the netherworld. And if somebody gets it and they’re like, Oh my god, Bryan is like a God. And everything that Bryan says is true and anything that comes out of his mouth, I’m going to do and believe you. Censoring Bryan doesn’t change the moron at the other end, who is believing what he’s hearing. And that’s really what the Constitution, in my opinion, was designed to do is to protect us from the morons of the world who, if they’re sheep, they’re always going to be sheep, they’re going to be led by whoever it is.
That’s a shepherd that’s going to point them in a direction, whether that’s a wolf or a shepherd, right? And the challenge with information right now in the digital world is no one can really trust the truth or veracity behind it. Why? Because it’s constantly evolving. It’s like this virus. It’s constantly becoming something different, and it’s not static. If you believe that the truth is static, you’re an idiot. Because the truth is like an onion. It’s got multiple layers and it’s got perspective. Perspective sways out one way or the other. Somebody’s truth is somebody else’s misinformation or lie because of what they’ve experienced because of their perspective. But to your point, Bryan, it does ferret itself out. Through all this information, we find out that Sandy Hook did happen. We find out that COVID is a frickin virus that does exist. We find out the science behind these vaccines and their effectiveness and whether or not it’s going to mutate and whether they’ll remain effective. Do you know what I’m saying? We’re going to learn all those things, but that doesn’t discount somebody’s ability to have an opinion on it or to be able to express it, even in this digital medium that allows people, whether it’s Joe Rogan or somebody else, to get this information and believe that it’s the gospel truth. You know what I’m saying? Like, it’s not.
I guess what I have the biggest problem with is you have the White House press secretary coming out saying that Spotify or some other medium, it needs to do a better job of censoring people. And then the company is taking, Oh, OK, well, the White House said, I should censor this person, so I’m censoring them. So it’s not the government acting against your free speech, it’s the company acting against your free, free speech. But on the marching orders of Jen Psaki, who says Joe Rogan, the problem, even though the stuff that’s coming out of her mouth is a lie.
You know how. But let’s let’s flip it backwards. So let’s take the 2016 election. Right? So you go back to that and you say, Hey, you OK? Or take the election before you know, when you talk about, is there disinformation? Is there intentional disinformation? Are people using it as a medium to try to to try to push sheep in a direction? They absolutely are. They absolutely are to sit there and say that Joe isn’t trying to push something that he believes that he experienced. He absolutely is because he’s got that perspective and experience. And if you want to take it and politicize it and say, Hey, if I’m a party on the other side or I’m Russian frickin hacker or Korean hacker and I’m sitting back there and my government telling me, Hey, put information out to detract against one candidate or the other. Is that happening? Yes, it’s happening. Are right wing. Our Muslims or Catholics are frickin Protestants are athletes. Everybody is doing. And so it just becomes as an individual on my part, you have to bear some responsibility in this social digital generation, which is if you’re going to believe everything that you hear, you’re going to pick a side that’s who you are. That’s what you’ve chosen to do in the Constitution allows you to do it now. If you’re a private company and you’re going to bow to pressure political pressures from somebody who’s above you in the federal government that says you need a censure of this. Well, hey, look at Facebook or Metta or whatever the hell you want to call them now. You know, all of a sudden they’re like, Hey, I’m not going to allow these ads to be up because they’re disseminating information. That’s not true against the candidate, against a person, against the country. What are they doing? They’re absolutely acting as a government entity on censorship because they
Are acting as an editor, which they’re not supposed to do under Section 230.
Right? But here’s here’s the deal. Here’s the deal on that. I think that you can’t get around it. I don’t think there’s a way to get around it because it’s going to be one side or the other if you let it be a free for all. The problem with the free for all, in my opinion, is that we have eliminated the sources of information at this point in our society and our digital in the world. We’ve eliminated those, those entities that we used to trust to gather information from, whether it’s a printed book or a digital web page or a news media outlet or the federal fricking government.
You are those people that we used to trust. Are they worthy of our trust anymore?
That’s the point. Yeah, because we have so much
Editorializing that goes on in the news nowadays
That, you know, that’s what we love about this digital age is that somebody with a cell phone has become a media outlet. Hey, here’s video. I live streamed it. This is exactly what I saw. Make up your own mind. Did they do it? Did they not do it? But the problem with those is now we’ve come to understand that everything can be manipulated. Let’s go back to our fricking voting example. If in this digital age, there’s one thing that you take away from this conversation, it’s that anything can be manipulated. You are. We, as a people are constantly being manipulated in this digital age. One way or the other. You just have to be smart enough to penetrate it, to do your own research, to spend your own time and energy, to figure out if what you believe or what you hear is the truth. And then you’ve got to make up your own mind to actually do what you all
Good is a good example of my favorite college football team. They the some guy came out with this story that said that they paid $30 million to these players for name and likeness, you name, image and likeness rights to get these five star recruits or whatever over to the school. And. It was some random crackpot guy, and then all of a sudden somebody else picks up on it, somebody else starts reporting it, somebody else. And then by the by the time it gets over to the quote unquote legitimate news sources, there is reports now that A&M has paid $30 million, 20 to 30 million dollars for players. Wait a minute. You know, you trace it back to the source, and there’s some guy who doesn’t know shit from Shinola who’s pissed off that his team didn’t get the star recruit. But but when the snowball starts rolling and I don’t know and I don’t know what’s going to happen with this, with this Rogen thing, the snowballs just started rolling down the hill. I hear Obama’s maybe pulling their podcasts of Harry and Meghan are going to pull their podcast, even though they don’t really do one. You’ve got a Neil Young. You got,
Yeah, they’re pulling music catalogs.
I remember the other one was Janis Joplin. I don’t remember which one wants to pull her, her music off off that. So I don’t know if they’re going to end up cutting him. They paid him a hell of a lot of money. I mean, honestly, I would hate to be a CEO right now of a company because you know, it’s who you’re selling products to, who you’re selling them for. You know, all this stuff. I mean, this is absolutely a crazy world we’re living in. You’re getting pressure from all sides trying to sell a product. I mean, Spotify probably just wants to put their shit out there and make some money off of it. But you know, they’re getting pressure from all sides.
Yeah, now it’s the digital world, and we’ve talked about it a couple of different times. But this is one of those situations where it’s a reflection, a mirror reflection of the microcosm of what’s going on in our society. It’s extremely polarized. It’s extremely politicized.
People don’t understand that. And I don’t know if it’s just a lack of people teaching and learning their basic civics and government class in high school or what. But the but the the purpose of the First Amendment is to protect the speech that you don’t agree with. Right, that’s what it’s there for. You know, you know, you don’t I don’t agree with skinheads or neo-Nazis or all that stupid shit. But, you know, do they have the right to spout their propaganda? Yeah, just as much as I have a right to say, that’s complete crap.
Yeah. The counterbalance to that, though, has always been, at least in the Supreme Court. Is it cannot pose imminent harm to society. You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater where people are going to get trampled and die. That’s not free speech. Right. And so, you know, when you talk about the timing
Of the harm, if you’re if you’re actively persuading people to go shoot somebody and saying, get your pick up your rifle right there. So shoot those people, pick up your rifle, shoot those people. I mean, that’s a different, not protected type of situation, but it’s going to cause an imminent harm to someone or just trying to trying to cause a stampede at a theater. A bunch of people are killed when everybody’s running out of the, you know, out of the theater. And I think not protected. But, you know,
I think that’s a problem. I think that’s what they’re trying to use with Joe is to say, Hey, stupid shit.
You know, it’s unfortunately is protected, right?
But I think that’s the issue with Joe specifically is that they’re looking at him saying, you’re saying something that in our opinion, our medical professional opinion is not true, and it’s directing people towards something that is imminent. Harm has potential for imminent harm. And I don’t believe that that’s true. I mean, if you if unless, yeah, if you’re that moron, if you’re that sheep, who’s going to just do everything that you hear? Yeah, it is. But if you’re Joe Rogan and you’re saying, Hey, here’s my here’s my opinion. Go figure it out for your frickin self.
You ain’t got to have, you know, two of two widely widely known experts to come on there and talk about it. Now, are they talking about every specific case now or are they talking about every individual person? Know everybody’s different, right? But you get these just the same as, you know, the experts over at the FDA or the CDC are saying one thing, too. So, you know, it’s not like he’s just some guy on a street corner, you know, standing on a soapbox. He went and got to experts to have a conversation with and put it out there and said people can take it for what it’s worth. Ok, fine. If you don’t agree with him, get the get the the counterbalance experts out there to come out and say, Well, this is where he’s wrong. He’s wrong, he’s wrong. He’s wrong. The problem is these fact checkers that they go get are really not fact checkers at all. It’s really just, you know, it’s just opinion pieces. And it’s just, you know, it’s academics or people that don’t really have have have the scientific background to to fact check. And then is it up to is it up to the medium Twitter or Facebook to to to be the fact checker? Why should they be the fact checker that Facebook shouldn’t be in the fact checking game, really? I mean, in my opinion, it’d be Twitter should be in a fact checking game. I mean, put it out there. Somebody else could come out there and say, it’s wrong.
Yeah, I think it’s a counterbalance between individual freedom and this free speech element. And then the case rulings that have come out to say, What is that game?
They’re not publishers, their editors. And that’s that’s different.
Well, I agree with you. I agree with you, which is, I think, interesting the way Spotify is thinking about handling it and like put a label out that says, Hey, yeah, we’re going to put out and say, you know, take it for what it’s worth. And if you want to fact check it, here’s some websites. Do your own research.
The problem I have with that is, is they’re not saying that when the when the CDC wants to come out with with their with their podcast
As well, let’s say no, let’s say they do it for everybody. I think it’s a universal policy.
If they do it for everybody, I’m cool with it, but they’re not saying that. They’re only saying that on the on the, you know, on the podcast or whatever that that the medical establishment or the or the Big Pharma is going to disagree with. We’re going to put a warning label on to put a warning label on everything, and I’m cool with it.
But yeah, but that’s not what they’re doing. I I’m with you a hundred percent, but that’s what that’s the kind of pressure that’s going to come from us, right? The individuals, the society, the states that we look at it and say, Well, that’s bullshit. Like you, let us make up our own mind. Give us all the information. I would love to tell you that
Twitter is a great example. They’ve set about what the last two years, you know, throwing people off and, you know, for saying things and and their value. I think their value has been reduced by about half since Jack Dorsey left. I mean, they’ve lost about half of their value, I think, from 70 billion to thirty five billion, which is still mighty valuable company. But I don’t think the stockholders of Twitter are going to be very happy about them losing that much money.
Yeah, it’s definitely it’s going to be an interesting balance for businesses, especially in the digital age. These digital medium businesses, whether it’s social media
Or I’m telling you, brother, whenever whenever there’s going to be a court somewhere that’s going to overturn that, that that Section 230 immunity on on a on a Facebook or on a on a social media outlet. And then the. Floodgates going to be open.
Oh, it’ll shut down companies, brother, if that does happen, I’m going to tell you right now like it’s going to shut down, you know, it’ll change from the digital age to something else. So, you know, whether we go back to the Stone Age with no digital content, I don’t know. But yeah, it’s it’s it’s definitely all these things are interrelated. You know, what we’re talking about is really geopolitical, societal legal issues that are all intertwined, that are putting this in the situations that we’re talking about right now. It’s interesting how they there’s a thread between all of them.
Well, all right, man. I think we’ve killed this topic or these four topics, right? So thanks for the time today, we’ll come back next week while we’ll tackle more entertainment news, you know? Oh, on a side note and the celebrity side note, I mean, Britney seems to leave you living her best life. I’ve seen the Instagram a number of times. She’s out in Hawaii, she’s here, she’s there, she’s dancing around.
She seems rather we’ve seen more of Britney. We’ve seen more of Britney literally all over Britney in the last couple of months. And we’ve ever seen a Britney, and I thought we’d seen a lot of Britney before. So it’s nothing I’m glad I’m happy for. It is really kind of such an interesting topic that we touched on, but you’re right, it’ll be interesting to see how we handle her prenup slash marriage slash divorce in the future. So keep, keep keep an eye out for that one.
All right, brother, we’ll keep warm and have a great weekend. And thanks for the time again.
I’ll talk to you soon. All right.