As people move around the nation, housing prices keep going up. What’s that going to do to your house payment? All across the country, people aren’t able to afford even to live. As we look at the homeless trends over the past couple of decades, it’s easy to see that the homeless rates are continuing to rise. And it’s fair to say that a lot of those homeless folks started out without much in the first place. Why?

Because in the land of milk and honey, we punish impoverished people. Are you poor? Then your children are going to an underfunded school (most likely). Why is your school underfunded? Because of the way school districts work. Sure, it makes sense on paper. People who use a school should pay for it. But this incurs a penalty against every poor person in the country, and against their children, who have done little more than being born poor. Is this the way we want to be?

Education can lift you up, sure. But who can afford college? And do you know how little those grant programs actually help? It’s wild that in this country, the richest in the world, we stack up blockades in front of people the moment they’re born to prevent them from reaching their potential.

It’s not intentional, granted. And a lot of it makes sense on paper. But it’s naive to believe that the way things are on paper is the way they are in actuality, and the actual story is that if you're born poor, you stay poor. Heck, if you’re born rich, you still have a better chance of ending up poor than matching your parents’ wealth.

We. Must. Do. Better.

More mass shootings. More arguments about gun control laws. Does it matter? Let’s be real for a second. The United States 40% of all guns in the world, 4.25% of the world’s population. That means that if there was any truth at all to the “good guy with a gun” argument, the United States would be the safest country in the world with regards to gun violence. And yet, we aren’t. Okay, so let’s stop talking about that one, shall we?

Another honest moment. The Giffords project (giffords.org) tracks gun laws across the nation. They aren’t pushing gun laws to ban assault weapons on that website. We did an analysis comparing the gun law rating that Giffords discusses, and gun violence in particular states. The results are here, and it’s not surprising at all that the states with worse gun laws are the states with more deaths by gun violence, and these are also (shocker) states with more Republicans.

https://giffords.org/

https://www.rightandfreedom.com/blog/gun-deaths-in-the-united-states

There’s a railroad train of legislation across many states targeting trans (broad-stroke trans) activities, like Drag Queen Story Hour. Why? Nobody knows. There are general “common sense” bias-inspired reasons for it which make little sense. Here’s the kicker: we’re paying for this legislation.

That’s right. We’re paying for legislation that prohibits people from wearing certain clothes. Because apparently, what matters more than the fact that the number one cause of death for children right now is guns, is that some people like to cross-dress. This fear-driven legislation is touted by the entertainment company Fox News. Why?

Again, nobody knows. One thing we do know is that while our congresspeople are writing laws around trans, they are not writing laws around gun control. So the optics are very much: don’t be trans, but shoot who you want (to paraphrase of course). We must do better!

Every so often, Right and Freedom circle back around to the topic of climate change. Today, we’re in the aftermath of a series of tornados that struck in Alabama and Mississippi. We’ve seen the problems of extreme weather along the East Coast and West Coast of the United States.

Surely something so pivotal as climate change is being taken seriously? So certainly Fox News would have some guidance on how to handle climate change. But…that’s not what we found. What we found was a bunch of blame-the-libs articles, culminating in Tucker Carlson’s attacks against the “global climate change agenda.” Let’s be clear on this. Climate change is real. Not preparing for it is irresponsible and reckless, and yet that’s (according to these headlines) the desired stance of Fox News.

Maybe we should stop listening to them before we all die.

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2023/03/26/rolling-fork-ms-tornado-death-toll-at-25-and-rising-categorized-as-an-ef-4/70049576007/

https://www.foxnews.com/category/us/environment/climate-change

Up 22 points in the polls against DeSantis, Trump is still a problem. he might be going to prison, but is that going to stop him? Is there anything in the law that might impact that?

But it doesn’t matter. Trump is sending his acolytes to New York to, I’m sure, “peacefully protest.” And, by the way, he didn’t have sex with Stormy Daniels anyway, even though he already said he did. But you know what? Some folks are ready to believe anything that will vindicate their fearless leader, however much of a lie it is. If he actully is going to be arrested on Tuesday, we at Right and Freedom are all for it. Listen to our previous episodes, and you’ll see that we former Marines tend to have a problem with people who have no respect for our Constitution.

HISD spends roughly $9,491.90 per student on average across their school district. They are a C-rated school according to the State Accountability Report. El Paso, an A-rated school, get’s $13,534.29 per capita (about). Brazos Port ISD gets $32,148.89 per student.

Yet Governor Abbot will tell you that it’s the fault of the leadership within the school district that is the reason why HISD has been underperforming since 2016.

Further, consider this: if you download the Texas State Accountability Report (like we did), then you’ll learn that SB1365 schools are exempt. Why? Because those are disaster declared impacted school districts. But also, if you’re not careful, you’ll overlook the SB1882 schools, which are not graded as part of the State Summary because they have opted to form partnerships with charter schools. A “partnership” means that the charter school takes over and runs the administration of the school. So less a partnership, and more a private take-over instead of a state take-over.

So, less accountability in the private sector, and underfunding of public schools paints an interesting picture, doesn’t it? It’s kind of like the Texas government is setting up incentives to change public schools to private schools. Almost.

You decide.

https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/accountability/academic-accountability/performance-reporting/2022-accountability-rating-system

https://fortworthreport.org/2022/12/13/explainer-how-are-texas-schools-funded/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0vWbtoHp_QIV5xWtBh3YAQa-EAAYAiAAEgJ6t_D_BwE

https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/senate-bill-1365-explanatory-document.pdf

1882 Schools: https://txpartnerships.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Current-Texas-Partnerships-Sept-2022.pdf

Texas Permanent School Fund: https://tea.texas.gov/finance-and-grants/texas-permanent-school-fund

Is anti-LGBTQ+ a Christian thing? No. Absolutely not. That’s cherry-picking the Bible—unless we think that it’s fine to use women as nothing more than collateral (as in offer her up to be… whatever…by an angry mob). Also, there are many Christian churches in the Pacific Northwest and even on the East Coast which allow and even encourage the participation of LGTBQ+ membership. The fact is that Jesus wouldn’t be hanging out with Joel Osteen. Period. He was hanging out with the prostitutes.

If you think your religion allows you to hate gay people, you’re wrong. What’s really going on is that you are *deciding* to hate gay people, and using your religion to justify this fact. It’s not a Christian thing.

It’s a you thing.

And when it comes to it, you get to decide who you hate, and who you don’t. Don’t blame the baby Jesus because you decided to hate the gays.

And, for the record, there are LGBTQ+ people in *every* community. If you don’t know them, that’s probably because they don’t trust you to be an ally and think you’re dangerous.

Texas Anti-Trans Law: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/10/texas-trans-kids-abortion-lgbtq-gender-ideology/

Labor Force Impact on Same-Sex Couples: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lgbtq-people-face-higher-unemployment-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-survey-finds-n1205296

Sexual Orientation Facts: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/sexual_orientation.html

Here we are again. If you’ll recall, it wasn’t so long ago that the subprime market went belly-up. And when that happened, the people who held subprime bonds, and the people who insured subprime bonds, both suffered an inability to pay at the same time. The extent of the problem was global, and America was just a carve-out.

This week, there was a run on Silicon Valley Bank. This is the bank that one of our founders has had dealings with in the past, and which provides startup capital to a lot of startups. But also they do provide banking services to normal people. But it’s not just startups that bank there. And a start-up is less than two people and a payroll sometimes. The repercussions in the region will be long-lasting. And America will feel it, it just isn’t clear now what the extent is.

But this episode isn’t just about the SVB problem. It’s also about how $42 billion dollars was withdrawn in a single day. Who was doing those withdrawals? Listen now to find out what was behind that, and what the implications are in a system that consistently sides with the haves over the have-nots.

References:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/business/janet-yellen-silicon-valley-bank.html

https://www.vox.com/technology/23634433/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-silvergate-first-republic-fdic

https://www.svb.com/private-bank/banking-services/private-banking-services

We give lip service as a nation to equality and equal rights. But what’s the reality? The reality is there’s a gender pay gap in this nation between men and women, even in women-majority professions like nursing for example. We talk about equality based on sexual orientation, and yet LGBTQ+ people face higher unemployment during economic downturns.

There’s documented evidence that socioeconomic system in place puts a penalty on minorities, and women, in the labor market and in so many other aspects of life (legal representation, correctional system, the list goes on…). And if we’re talking about equal rights, why are there laws being put in place to restrict rights of women, of LGBTQ+ community embers, in some red states (like Texas, for example).

No, not those drugs! Life-saving drugs, like insulin, have risen in price to astronomical highs over the recent years. Part of the reason for this is that the the government, through Medicare, has until now had no way to combat price increases. They were legally barred from negotiating for different drug prices directly with manufacturers. Guess who put that in?

Any advanced country has been through enough wars to understand that ultimately, what happens in war is the poor people are sent to die. In some cases, war is necessary. When we think about Afghanistan and Ukraine and other conflicts, then messaging matters, and nobody knows this better than the members of Congress who are continually trying to repaint history. For example, Kevin McCarthy, the Spineless, wasted little time trying to pin the surrender of America to the Taliban on Biden, when the deal was negotiated by Donald Trump. Why?

Coincidentally, the same members of Congress, now that said McCarthy is in a leadership position and has MTG as his heavy, he’s wasting no time in doing more of the same in Ohio, when, again, it was Trump who made the strategic failure with his regulatory rollbacks.

This is a tactic of people without moral foundation and devoid of ideas. And these are the people currently in charge of one of the most powerful institutions in the world. If that doesn’t make you nervous, it should. And another thing that should make you nervous? What do you think Tucker Carlson is going to do as the sole owner of 44k hours of video footage? And a better question is: why would Kevin McCarthy give said footage to Carlson?

Questions they don’t want you to ask…

So this week, MTG decided to nominate Kyle Rittenhouse for the Congressional Gold Medal in H.R.6070. Kyle Rittenhouse, in case you’ve forgotten, left his state, acquired an AR-15, and then proceeded to a riot a state away that was already in progress allegedly in order to protect the property of a friend of his family. This led to the murders of 2 men and injury of a third. In the best case, this is vigilante justice. In the worse, he was looking for some liberals to kill. Either way, this hardly qualifies for the Congressional Gold Medal. For context, the first Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to George Washington in 1776. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think George Washington when I think of Kyle Rittenhouse. You can see the bill here, and read it closely. The language is precise and planned and intends to paint a picture that doesn’t take into account everything that transpired.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6070/text

Also, MTG is a co-sponsor of H.R.1095, which attempts to declare the AR-15 the “National Gun of the United States.” Ignoring that an AR-15 is a weapon and not a gun, what’s striking to the Right and Freedom host is that our taxpayer dollars were spent on her time authoring and pushing legislation that’s ornamental in nature and completely asinine on the face of it. America has never had, nor needed a national gun.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1095/cosponsors?s=3&r=4&q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Barry+Moore%22%5D%7D

When we think about people like Abbot and Cruz, we don’t often think of them as being against us. We think of them as being representative leaders who have our best interests at heart. But they don’t. In this podisode, we discuss how leaders who are not interested in leading destroy our communities. Wondering how? Listen and find out!

We expect a lot from our leaders. We expect them to be brave, stand up to others, and keep our interests at heart. And we expect them to be easy to talk to (i.e. charismatic). What happens when charisma tops the list and we neglect the bit about keeping our interests at heart? Well, that’s a great question. What happens is that the charismatic leader takes us to the cleaners. This happens all the time, more commonly in red states than blue ones, but it’s not about political leaning. It’s about keeping the community in mind.

This year, a Chinese (weather?) balloon was seen over the United States. President Joe Biden shot it down. One would think that would be the end of the story.

One would be wrong. What happened next? The esteemed Senator Marco Rubio suggested that it was too little too late. Any surprise there? A Republican Senator disapproved of the Democratic President’s actions. Never mind that 3 similar events happened under the Republican President before Presided Biden, yet that never made a news cycle.

So what does this mean?

Only that the Republican Congressman is clearly so biased that he can’t even give the President a congratulation when the President does something that his predecessor never got around to: defending national security.

I don’t know how much more there is to say on this one. Really, when it comes down to it, the fact that the Republicans, especially those in Congress, seem to be operating on their bias alone, isn’t exactly new. But it is interesting that they’ve been so willing to drop the pretension. Enjoy this episode of right and freedom!

Do you ever wonder why there is no white history month? When I was back in my Libertarian period, where I thought equality of opportunity was the same as equality in reality, I wondered about that too. Until I finally learned enough to know how little I knew.

A quick history lesson. “Black” is not a thing. As a moniker, it attempts to group all non-Europeans together and at first, when the world was perceived to be smaller than it is, this worked. Eventually, when we came across non-Europeans who looked like Europeans but spoke different languages, the term wasn’t expanded, rather refined to mean people from Africa.

I know.

At this point, you’re probably wondering still why we have a Black History Month if it’s not a real thing. Because of what is a real thing. See, “black” doesn’t begin to qualify all of the plethora of different and unique nationalities and communities that comprise the African diaspora—not by a long shot. But it does create a convenient converse for people who wish to declare their own original nationalities extinct and thereby move up the food chain: white. Polish, German, Italian, Japanese, and other ethnic groups have all struggled to ensure that they get grouped under the “white” label as opposed to the “black” one. Why?

Because as soon as “white” began to solidify as a group, they began to oppress and push down whatever wasn’t “white”. And then, because they knew, as one would have to, that oppressing others is wrong, they then tried rewriting history (in the United States, and other nations as well). The fact is that history doesn’t die just because you want it to though, and there was a sizeable chunk of the American population that wanted history to be remembered. Who?

Well, the “black” people of course. And yet, here we are, still trying to tell the truth of our history as a nation, and still getting pushback. Which brings me to the original question: why don’t we have a white history month? Because every other month of the year is white history month, and frankly, white history month has tended so far to leave out any sign of actual black history. Hence we need a black history month, and frankly, could do with a little less white history.

I believe this is the longest title of all of our podisodes. But this is a legitimate question. In 2020, Haulin’ Josh Hawley tried to introduce a bill to limit the stocks that can be traded by members of congress. (Quick note that in 2012, the STOCK Act did make it into law, and from what I can tell, is pretty much ignored). This bill didn’t make it into law, but there’s currently buzz in some state legislatures trying to do something similar (notably New York) in order to stem corruption.

At the time of this writing, members of congress make more than double the median income for a family in the United States. And, any member of congress who last more than 5 years get retirement at the age of 62, and any who last longer than 20 years get a pension. It’s a pretty sweet retirement plan, when all is said and done. So why, oh why, the need for stock trading?

But, say what you will, there’s an underlying thread here that must be discussed: in what conditions and situations should the United States dictate what its private citizens may own? It seems easy enough to say “members of congress shouldn’t trade stocks”, but given that stocks are actually ownership, what does that say about the right to property?

We discuss all of this and more in our latest podcast episide: why gamble on stocks when you can legislate a sure thing?

Do you remember, as a child, taking a set of dominoes and standing them up end on end next to each other, and then tipping the first over and watching with unrestrained glee as they all come tumbling down? No? That may only be me, but I’m sure you get the concept. It’s all cause and effect: the first domino knocks over the second, and the second the third, and so on.

What does this have to do with politics?

Especially in America, we like to believe we are that shining city on the hill, impervious to anything else that happens in the world. We want to be independent, above all else, and sometimes this desire is so strong and so pervasive that it deludes us into believing that we actually can be. But, no matter what we might want to believe, the truth is that there is no such thing as an independent nation in the modern world. The truth is that if a war breaks out in, say, Ukraine, then the oil prices rise in the United States. Now that we’ve got gas prices under control, it’s tempting to push the narrative that our concerns in Ukraine have somehow diminished, but that would be farther from the truth. In Africa, right now, there’s a hunger crisis that’s linked to the Ukraine war.

This is the truth: we are all interconnected. There are no islands, and there is no way to disentangle if we wish to maintain our envied lifestyles here in the states. And if we’re not feeling the war in Ukraine yet in any real way here in the states, don’t worry…it’s coming. And that famine? 1.3 million people are fleeing their homes because of it, and they all have to go somewhere.

29-year-old Tyre Nichols had a run-in with the police. He’d been driving recklessly and they’d pulled him over. Then there was a “confrontation”. Then there was a chase. Then he was dead.

26-year-old Breonna Taylor was sleeping in her home when police executed a no-knock warrant and shot her dead.

Yet…376 law enforcement officers in Uvalde, Texas failed on all levels to take down one single person.

What do these things have in common?

Police officers not being able to faithfully execute their jobs. At some point, it’s got to be said, and here at Right and Freedom, we’re saying it. The time for change is well past, and we as citizens are absolutely 100% required to get involved and fix our systems. Because if systems such as policing were were going to fix themselves, they’d have done it by now.

For bonus points, what do women bleeding out during labor have to do with overpolicing and lack of accountability? Listen to this podcast and find out!

If you’ve been listening to our podcast for a while, then you’ll know our stance on gun control: it can’t happen soon enough. Yet again, we have a reason to be discussing gun control in America. This time, it came in the form of ten people who will no longer kiss their loved ones, no longer taste a birthday cake, no longer walk the earth, who were taken away from us before their time in Monterey Park, California.

We ask why. The school shooting in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado happened in 1999. Here we are, over twenty years later, and mass shootings are up nationwide over 300%. That’s right. Instead of getting better, we’re actually getting worse. Much worse. Why?

Well, we’ve got some ideas. And we get into it in this latest episode of Right and Freedom called Click, Click, Boom. Here’s a hint: what exactly would it take to change things when we’re seeing night clubs, grocery stores, big-box stores, churches, synagogues,…,basketball pickup games all erupting in gun violence? Listen now and learn how three former Marines, two of whom are actual gun owners, feel about gun violence in the United States of America.