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Navigating Leadership in Congress and Energy | A Noble Conversation with Congressman Bill Flores
Join us on a captivating episode as we journey with our distinguished guest, former US Congressman and astute businessman, Bill Flores. His compelling story of ambition and determination, that sprouted from a tiny town and led him to Capitol Hill, will leave you inspired. We dissect the invaluable leadership lessons he's amassed from his stint in business and Congress - lessons that could be a game-changer for young professionals on the cusp of their careers.
We also discuss the polarization in our country right now. We talk about the potent power of respect, accountability, and the necessity of finding common ground.
All right, all right, all right. So today our guest is Bill Flores, and believe me when I say that Mr Flores does not need much of an introduction, but I will be doing a disservice to you all if I did not go ahead and dive a little bit into some of his experience and what we're going to expect in today's conversation. So Bill Flores is a former US congressman who represented the 17th Congressional District, which includes Waco, college Station and Bryan, from 2011 to 2021 in Texas. He came into office wanting to only serve six terms because he believed that he would serve the American people best if he limited his own term. Prior to Congress, mr Flores was a successful businessman in the energy sector, where he served as CEO of Phoenix Exploration Company. Before that, he served as CFO of two publicly traded energy service firms. He was also a former commissioner of the Texas Real Estate Commission, appointed by Governor Rick Perry. Currently, he serves as vice chair of ACOT. So ACOT stands for Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which supplies power to more than 25 million Texas customers and represents 90% that's 90% of the state's electric load.
Speaker 2:Now this episode.
Speaker 2:We talk a little bit about the energy transition, which is what is shipped from fossil based systems of energy, like oil and gas, to renewable sources like wind and solar, would require. We also dive deep into who Bill Flores is and what drives him as a person, basically what informs the work that he does, and we talk about leadership lessons from his time in business as well as Congress, which I think will be very, very, very valuable to you all, especially as young people going into our careers, learning how to manage teams, but also learning from someone who's done it both in the private sector as well as the public sector. Lastly, we talk about the division that exists in the country, and we don't have perfect solution, but we do discuss what it would look like if we were to address some of the problems that we have in terms of division and how to move forward. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, bill Flores Hi, mr Flores, we're live.
Speaker 2:So usually there are three questions that we ask guests, just fun questions at the beginning, before we dive into the serious conversation. I'll give you three and you pick one.
Speaker 2:So I'll answer one question, like we're done, if you can answer all if you want to, but so the first one is what's your favorite joke to tell? Second one is what was the last thing you ate? And the third one is what's something that you've been dying to tell someone this week? And I mean, here's a platform. Feel free to share that if you want to.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what was the first question? Again, your favorite joke to tell. Favorite joke to tell oh my goodness, I'm not really much of a jokester. I've never found myself to be very funny. All my jokes fall. Oh goodness, I mean I was funny when I said that. Here's one. Here's one. I saw this on a t-shirt that popped up. I don't know. I was shopping on Amazoncom or something the other day and this t-shirt popped up and it was a pig, a cow and a turkey walked into a barbecue joint the end.
Speaker 3:That's a good barbecue, that's a good barbecue.
Speaker 2:I wasn't expecting it to be that short.
Speaker 1:I was. You said it louder than I can remember, so I was like it'd be like a one minute long story.
Speaker 1:Oh, I got a short attention span. I can't do that. Well, let's say it is something I haven't really eaten yet. It's this turkey sandwich that I'm going to go on. Look at that. Stories over with, I think, when you and I had breakfast a few weeks back and they got told you and you observed it. I'm on this weird diet where I'm trying to lose a third of my body weight and I'm actually halfway in toward my goat now. So that's me Across the big threshold. This morning, when I weighed that I had achieved half of my weight lost goal. I'm pretty excited about that.
Speaker 2:If you don't mind sharing what was that goal number?
Speaker 1:I'm not going to tell you the goal number. Let me put it this way. Let me say it this way when I graduated from A&L, I was in a pretty good fighting mode. I'd been in the court, I'd been in physically active and, of course, the young college student you get this awesome attack. Let us eat anything you want. So I was in a pretty good way and I stayed that through that. Two years later I got married and I was still at that roughly that same weight. But then over the next several years or decades actually, that weight went on by 50% and I stepped up on the scale of Christmas. I thought A, that's stupid, and B, it's just, it doesn't feel good, it doesn't look good.
Speaker 1:And I had a doctor friend in Waikoo who was one of my former constituents when I was in Congress and he had done a program and it just did amazing things for him and, believe it or not, his metrics were the same. He weighed 200 pounds when he got out of medical school and he weighed 300 pounds when he stepped on the scale. Now, those were not weights. So, yeah, it's okay. But he went through this program, hired a coach and got down to 200 pounds, Got off all his medications and he got off a CPAP, which is a machine that you need to help you sleep so you don't have to sleep at hand. And I would even blow away by what he did. And so I called him up and said, hey, brad, tell me what you did. And he told me about this coach.
Speaker 1:And so, on February the 9th, I hired a coach and I have been going through that since then and, yeah, at first, you know, everybody says, well, what's the secret? And I said, hey, you know what the secret is? I had an exercise. It's really simple. You get on the treadmill for an hour each morning and then you walk in, watch what you eat and the weight comes off.
Speaker 1:I will tell you this I'm looking forward to the day when I hit that target weight that I want, because it was the longest I can keep the treadmill. Then I shouldn't be able to eat or go back to a more. You know I'm better eating better than I have to diet. I mean, like we have black coffee in my eye, these little espressos each morning and the. Yeah, it's just hard to do that with that little crane and little shirt, and I haven't got to run to it Anyway. So the gist of the diet is certain green veggies, lots of lean protein and no sugar, no fat, no very little clout, and that's about it. I mean, I've made a pretty simple diet. Make sure something's absolutely oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And I mean, like you know, so there's a diet, there's an exercise and it's a consistency which you've been able to do, but I think we have a consistency, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I got this fancy scale that tells me, you know, it has an app with it, and so put the app next to me. I stand on the scale and, based on the ring tone, I get back out of it. It tells me I'm a gain or loss weight, Anyway. So that's it. So let's see the last thing. What was the last question? Again?
Speaker 2:So last, question was what's something that you've been dying to tell someone this week?
Speaker 1:Basically what we're talking about before you hit the record button, and that is the vulnerability of the US grid to the policymaker activities coming out of Washington. As I think I told you when we got the breakfast a few weeks back you know the things that I do is I'm going, I give them a lot of speeches, and some of those speeches are about you know motivation being successful. Some of those are about you know how to be a good leader in a business, but the one I principally focus on is the future of the grid, the current status of the grid, the future of the grid primarily in Texas, but also around the country. So I'm going to take the things I learned this week at the IRC meetings that we had and bake that into my speech to try to make it I don't know how to say this maybe a little searier, to try to get people's attention, because science and economics cannot be ignored when you make policymaker decisions and unfortunately, there's this huge disconnect where policymakers have these fantasies about what they can do legislatively or through the rulemaking process that are going to be erected, if you will, by science and physics and economics, and it's going to be ugly when it happens. And so I'm not. I'm not trying to say this is full reading. I'm like that is not. It's just that you'll begin to see greater and greater let me rephrase and you'll see lower and lower reliability of US grids. Some are more vulnerable today than I mean they're. Well, let me put this for the right on the edge of vulnerability for reliability challenges today, and they're going to hit. They're going to start seeing these hiccups sooner than the rest of us, but our cost is going to be to that.
Speaker 1:But electricity is a really interesting resource. It's just in time. The electrons have to come on the system right when the electrons are needed, and that's the staying perfect balance. And if you violate that balance, bad things happen. Again. It's the physics that rule and there are a bunch of laws that get it no hard. You know, second law of thermodynamics. You just go down the list and I list these things and so that's what I'm dying to tell people. Share with people is the impact of all these things.
Speaker 1:So on one hand, you've got the EBS and okay, we're going to just turn fossil fuel off. It's we're going to do these rules that don't say you're going to turn fossil fuel off. What they do is they say we're going to make your power plant uneconomical, so you, the owner, will turn it off for us, okay. And then, on the other hand, then you've got the tailpipe emissions rule that says, okay, no more internal combustion engines, but people are still need transportation, so where are they going to turn to? They're going to turn to EVs. What do you need to operate Electricity? Okay.
Speaker 1:So I want to end you. I want to set a rule that impairs the supply of electrolytes going to the grid. On the other hand, you got a rule that says we need more electrons, and not only on that. You know, they only have eight pumps, which I like heat pumps. I'll put one in our house in Colorado, and you can't have gas, though is you got to have an electric stove and just, and all that stuff takes electrons, and all those electrons need to be generated somewhere. They just don't, you know. Fly out of the air and attach to the wire and say you're power, you know, I'm going to power your house for you, yeah. And so, again, we've already talked about the vulnerabilities to come.
Speaker 1:But when it's over, that's the reason I love nuclear so much. There's a great documentary that the audience ought to consider listening to, to watch or whether, and it's called Pandora's Promise and it's really good. It's about an hour and 40 minutes and you get it on any of your normal you know podcasting typesites or the. You know YouTubes or iTunes or whatever, but it's really good. A friend of mine named Ray Wothrock is an Aggie class 77 who is a very engineer and now a venture capitalist in California, in Silicon Valley, that helped underwrite this and he came to Washington and saw me early in my time up there at Washington and told me about this and I've and I that I have had 2000 people watch that since. I've told them go watch this because it'll set the truth, tell you the truth about nuclear. So those were a really short answer, two short, really short answers and one really long answer to your three questions.
Speaker 3:Oh, we love them. We love them, yeah. So I'm actually kind of curious. You know you talked about what would happen, I guess, to the grid in that case. So I actually have two questions for you. What does that look like? You know, pushing the grid that close? You know, with everything moving to EV, you know, especially with our issues we have during the summertime, the use of energy, I mean, what does that look like? You know, in needle time and you know, also going to that, I guess, how much energy does ERCOT contribute to the national grid? Kind of just curious on that one. What does that look like? If that's Okay?
Speaker 1:Well, first of all let me say this A grid operator will never let the grid get out of balance, because bad things happen. You know, in the United States our grid operates at a 60 cycle frequency and there are boundaries to that. So it can go up a little bit, it can go down a little bit, and if you have, let's say if you start losing load or gaining demand, the operator has to bring that back in balance, either by bringing on more supply or demand. And the horrible bad is usually you know we do it here in the state by asking people to voluntarily reduce their load, or we have low reduction limits with large users. But if you get to the point where you've run out of that ability to have that voluntary load shed, then you have to do involuntary load shed, and so you can think of winter storm URI, because in winter storm URI we lost tons of supply and you had to bring that down. If you don't, that starts getting damaged generation equipment, transmission equipment, load equipment and you get. So basically there you go back to a 1700s type of economy with no electrons flowing anywhere and you get into a black star situation. Okay, where and again, if you think about the grid has to be balanced. Electrons and happy electrons out and black star. You start at zero. You bring a little generation and you bring a little load at the same time and you keep working your way back up to you, but it takes weeks or months. So, and then in the meantime you've got, you know, a big chunk of your population that is having to live in a century that they were, they don't have any familiarity with.
Speaker 1:Now Texas is independent of the rest of the US grid and we've got other ISOs around the country and RTOs that are connected in to Eastern Intercontact, western Intercontact. Texas has a standalone grid. We do have what are called DC ties, which where we, instead of using alternating current to tie to another grid, which would cause well, instead of using having AC, we use DC. So we take the AC and we convert it to DC and then on the other end it's inverted back to AC and that way you don't have frequency management challenges trying to balance what's. You know the cycles going through the Eastern Intercontact versus Western Intercontact. So we're writing a bill about the Intercontact.
Speaker 1:So we and as far as the percentage of the grid that we are there, I mean if you looked at as if we were all one great big national grid in the country. I don't. I couldn't tell you what percentage of that we are. I will tell you what. We hit our peak summer day, demand day, last July 20th, because there was an exceptionally hot summer. We had an 80 gigawatt demand day and that was bigger than the other California put together, give you an idea. And, as we said before the recording started, we're a third largest grid in the country in terms of peak demand. But we, you know, on any given day in the summer, we generate and use more power in this day than the other California put together. And you asked a question about what it, what it looks like in terms of adding all this extra demand in terms of EVs and electrification. So we're you look at California last summer when they were saying, oh, please, don't charge your EV during this time of the day. You know, so you know it's funny. They will say we want to shut down our fossil resources and we want to go to EVs but don't charge them. Yeah, so they don't go very far without charge.
Speaker 1:I always, when I talk about met policymaking, I always refer to what's happening in Germany, because their emissions are going up because they're shutting down next time because they're having to go back to coal and they're paying really high prices for it.
Speaker 1:So they're deindustrializing as a country because they can't afford to have an industrial base with super high power prices. So you know, they were going to go a full green by going all wind and solar and I had a pretty decent nuclear fleet but then they decided to shut it off because they wanted to go it gives. The green party didn't want to be free. So they they're using coal. So I use as an example, I use the example of the ARC, where they became anti nuclear and so they shut down their nuclear power plant in Indian point, I think was the name of it and they had to replace it with natural gas. So then emissions go up, which, if you don't like CO2 emissions, why would you do something to increase your CO2 emissions? And so those are both examples. And then you've got California, which has super high power prices compared to the national average in the Texas, and they have reliability challenge, resilience challenges because of the policy decision segment.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let's backtrack a little bit. I mean, you showed us the fantasy, like the solar and wind and how everyone thinks that you know fall, like when they think about falsely full that's bad and all that. So you worked in energy and you've worked in Congress and you're, you know now on the board of air caught. So when you think about you know bill for us, when you think about yourself, what, what, what comes to mind like in terms of who you are as a person and how that has led you to pursue a career within energy, within Congress, as well as.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you describe bill for us? Okay, well, I haven't had to answer that question. If I were to describe me, you'd have to know a little bit about my background. So I think you know I grew up in a very modest space. I mean, there were a few nights and when I went to bed or we were hungry, and you know your dad's paycheck doesn't bring the money over the food and there's nothing to eat, and that's what happened.
Speaker 1:So I guess I grew up with a this bug in the back of my mind to not be poor. It wasn't that I decided I wanted to make a lot of money or to be wealthy or anything like that. I shouldn't be poor. And so what was really interesting about my dad's, my family's, life is my dad worked as a day laborer when he got into the Air Force for a few years, and then he was able to start a second career and became very successful at it, and then we also ranched as well. And so I grew up in a small town in Texas 10, and was started out for and then got my family got better off. We never lived extravagantly, but we became economically more viable, if you will, because of what he the decisions he made, which were good decisions, smart decisions. And so, with that as the background, I would describe myself as a small town kid with all the roots that was always worried about, with this ambition to be poor. And so one day in the end, I figured out one degree will get yeah, one degree program will get me a job where I can have a good paycheck. And the choices for me were engineering or business. And so I chose business. There were times I wish I'd chosen engineering, but I'm happy with the outcomes.
Speaker 1:So the somewhat day in M with that view that, and when I graduated, I sat down with a yellow legal sheet of paper and wrote out my one to five, 10 and longer term goals. And I think you know, you guys in a Titans glass of good, you know, listen to Brett talk about those types of things. Well, now I keep all that in here, but I wish I still had that, that same piece of paper, because that's what drove me. And so I had all of these goals in one, five, ten and longer term, and but it's which is tip. But the thing that's typical with people that make goals like that is God sort of laughs at them. You know, because I had this, you know I had this very straight line about all these things I was going to do. I was going to go to business school and then I was going to do this to have a family and all these things, and you know, I checked every box, man.
Speaker 1:The journey was different, yeah. So I guess the way I describe myself is I've always had a destination in mind about man. The journey has been a while. Right we get there. You know, I never dreamed I would do the things I was able to, but you know, it don't matter how, where I would. No matter what journey I took, I was still always heading to sort of the same destination, that was to make an impact. If I grew up, my dad used to say when I walk out of the house every day, say, go make a hand and that was sort of his West Texas cowboy ways and go make the world a better place. Go and die you go, go change people's lives for the better. And so I guess the way I would synthesize this long story is to say that Bill Forrest is a small town guy with a big ambition to make a world a better place.
Speaker 2:So when you were thinking about the ambition to make the world a better place and you had those goals was energy, politics and all of that in the picture. How did you know?
Speaker 1:My yellow seat bike I had. That was telling about. What I wanted to do was well, I first shop at A&M with an accounting degree was to go to work with the only big eight accounting from that office in Amarillo. Because I wanted to learn agricultural accounting and learn from the best of the ag operators in the area. Because I wanted to build a vertically integrated ag operation where I would own the land that grew the crops, the feather cattle, the feather cattle on pasture land, the feather cattle in the feed yard and then send them to the packing plant. Maybe I would have even known the packing plant, the meat processing plant as well, but I wanted to have a vertically integrated ag operation and it didn't happen that way.
Speaker 1:So I went to work at Amarillo and then we just again. It's just life, it's the way the doors open, doors close, and they say you know, I was being transferred to Houston, to the Houston office. And so here I am in the energy capital world working for a big accounting firm, and if you think about our client base, they're going to be energy clients. And so I spent a lot of my time on energy clients, on banking clients and the financial services sector, and so I learned about areas that I never really thought I'd learn about, and so it just made sense that I went down the energy sector route. And again, it wasn't my design, it was one of those accidents that happened, but I became pretty good at it so I was able to. I mean, I was brought in to build companies and get them in position to sell, or to fix companies and get them in position to sell, and that's what I did. Just time after time and effort.
Speaker 1:Again, one, my very first the energy company. We sold it. I mean, we built it, then we sold it, and actually the company that bought it hired me to be their CFO. So usually, even when you're the company that's acquired, they shoot you and throw you out the window. I mean, I guess they liked me, and so then we it immediately. It apparently had some underlying structural issues that made it vulnerable really quickly, and so we didn't. We didn't do diligence, but then accommodation of low energy prices, coupled with the kind of a crappy balance sheet, caused that company to be vulnerable financially, and so I became a workout guy and so I restructured that company and it became hugely successful and then ultimately it was sold to somebody else.
Speaker 1:And then I was hired to go to work for another, much larger energy company and we knew up front. The board told me what they wanted me to do and that was to get the company rated a sell. It didn't just complete the saturation of its energy operations from its industrial automation operations, and I and I was only one of two people inside the organization the CEO and I were the only ones who knew that and so we had to get it ready and I went ahead a fantastic amount of money for the shareholders, the employees and that organization by positioning company and then selling it to another large energy company. And then I went to a private equity funded company I'd worked with the same private equity partners before back in earlier times and we built an oil and gas company and sold it to an oil and gas company out of Australia. And then some of the people I worked with there called me. I was going to retire.
Speaker 1:Then I was done and we had already made our decision to do it in college station. And they called me, say, hey, come down to Houston. I had lunch with this. So I went down to Houston, I had lunch. They said let's do it again. I said, okay, what are you going to do? And I love these guys, they were great, they, I mean, they were world class leaders, world class technicians. And they said what do you want me to do? They said we want you to be CEO. I said sign me up. And so we went out and raised the bubble of private equity and capital and I think we raised $350 million in private equity capital and $300 million debt facility, put that together in a few weeks and we were off to the race, did a $200 million transaction and then sold the company. Right about the time I went to Congress and so it became part of. So we built it, made a great private equity return, everybody was happy. We don't know how to run.
Speaker 1:Now you talk about politics. That's where it gets fun. The last time I held public office before I was in Congress, I was the. I was the, I was the student body vice president of finance. Today and now for the student body, and that's the last public office I've ever thought I'd have. I mean I didn't.
Speaker 1:You know, a lot of people get out of these. I'm going to do this. I will run for county commissioner, then I want to do this and I want to be state rep and then I'll run for Congress. That's it. That was never my idea. So I was in my office in June of 2009 and the house representative passed a really bad piece of legislation. I thought, those idiots again it's all policymaker versus fanat, policymaker versus fantasy versus real world. They don't understand real world economics. Somebody's got to stop them. Well, that planted that little seed, and you know, that little seed wasn't on that L sheet of paper I was studying about a few months ago. It just kind of grew and I thought, you know, somebody's got to, somebody's got to go up there and stop what's happening in Congress.
Speaker 1:So I you know, before you do anything, if you're a smart person, before you do anything, you'll say what does it take to do something new and to be successful at it? And so you, you do your research and then, after you think you've done your research, you build your plan. And a campaign plan is just like a business plan. You've got to have so much of the way. You got to have a target, and a target for a election is really easy. It's a certain number of votes on a certain date. It's real simple. And this is the challenges we're going to get those votes, how much is going to cost, how much people powers you're going to take and how many volunteers do you have to have and what's your messaging. And so I designed I didn't do it on my own, I hired a general consultant and we worked together and we built a campaign plan and we went out and raised the money and hired the people and got the volunteers, got the messaging right, did the polly, hired the media consultant and the mail consultant and the. You know all the other stuff you have to do.
Speaker 1:And then I spent the next 10 months, you know, working six days a week, 12 to 18 hours a day, running for office and we were successful. And then. So I caught that bus and then I had to figure out what do you do next, and so I worked real hard to be a good Congress person and I remember that you know, in the private sector, customer service is really important, and so what do you do to take care of your customer and the elected office will issue your customers, your constituents, or your boss really. And so I had to figure out what do we do to deliver a first class cut the constituent service and to do the right thing from a policy perspective. And so we you know, I had to lead a team of 16 people that's a typical congressional office and we had a budget, and so I painted this big target of all this is what we want to have, these are the goals we want to achieve, and customer services and our constituent services, this is what we want to achieve policy wise, and let's go do it. And that's what we did.
Speaker 1:And so then, yeah, it was the same deal six days a week, 12 to 18 hours a day, and we felt like we had a pretty good congressional career. But I told everybody up front I was he, I didn't want a second career, I wanted to go serve. And so we told everybody up front we're not going to refer to in six terms. And ultimately we did it in five because I needed to spend more time dealing with my parents who were getting deeper into their seniors. So that's the reason that we only ran for five terms. Okay, no, it's okay. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:No, you're a student body vice president of finance, and so I met Adrian at Alson Community College and he was student body vice president there. So oh, wow.
Speaker 1:So her fellow politicians that I use going to be a Congress. Yeah, I said I know you. I don't hate to use the word politician, I use elected official because the politician is just such a slimy sound to it. Yeah, so let's say we're a federal elected officials, an inf, a case farmer, but anyway, you know it's really funny though people I still get introduced as Congress how poor is, and it just it's hard for me to wrap my brain around that because I, you know, I don't know how to describe it. I remember the night that I won the big election, november of 2010,. People started calling me, coming up to me. So congratulations, congress. I said wait, stop, I used my first name. My first name is still Bill. They're like the 14 years.
Speaker 2:Wow. And so, when I mean when you were in the private sector, it sounds like you were really good at finding problems and fixing it and turning companies around. When you went to Congress, you talked about having a team of 16 people, you know, having set goals for customer service and which is, in this case, would be constituent service. That ability to find problems and fix them, how did that transfer from the energy, or at least the private sector, to the public sector?
Speaker 1:as a congressman, Well, it was on the constituent service side. It was pretty easy because you know what type of people are going to be good team members, and so you know, my idea of hiring really good people is people that believe in the same things. I just saying aspirations, that I how do I say this? Seeing leadership skills, that I believe in you know, and things like be a self-assertive, that be humble Remember that you are no different than the person that takes the trash out of your office at night and so I believed in those types of things I believed in you know artwork, excellence, integrity I'm just thinking about the value values, excellence, integrity, loyalty, leadership, self-service and so forth, and so those types of people I looked at. So, on the constituent services side, we found people to do that, and also the constituent outreach folks, and you find them and they make sure that they know what their goals are and that you incentivize them correctly and so that everything's aligned, your values are aligned with your goals and your incentive structures and all push you the same direction.
Speaker 1:I watched what happened, what went wrong in Enron and other brilliant companies, where you know they'd have a vision and a mission, but the values didn't match up with that and the incentive structure sure didn't match up with that. And so the incentive structure took people in one direction, even though the values and the vision were over here. And so you know we were. We always had all that fully light on the policy side. The policy making side. I had to get people that if they didn't know a subject area and most of my staff didn't know the energy subject area as well as I did, and I didn't expect them to, but I expected them to learn and do the research the same way that I had to. But they hadn't do it really quickly because I had multiple years, you know, I had three decades in that and that energy business. They had to get up to be weeks, but they were young. It's a good thing about being young you got the bright bias and you can just burn through research material really quick and retain it. And so we built the team of people that understand my aspirations for policy making and were similarly like mine. And I mean, if you have somebody who has different aspirations for policy making then ours, well, that wouldn't be a good fit and you can't fake that very well. And so you know when that happens if you find people that don't really fit your policy making ideals or the mission vision values of your organization, it's usually better to part ways, and the sooner you do it the better. Yeah, it's better for them because they get to go do what they want to. It's better for the rest of the organization so that they don't get hamstrung by having some way that it's not not pulling the same gracious everybody else on the train. So that was it.
Speaker 1:The other attribute I always look for is people that you know remember God gave us two years and one amount and to respect that ratio, particularly an elected office. So you don't see that in elected office for being very often you have people that talk all the time, like I am in this conversation by sorry, so sure, I'm talking about listening to that and don't know all the other things. Yeah we, yeah we. I guess you did. I mean, it'd be a podcast, so I guess that's the and. So that's one of the other attributes you know, particularly, like I said, sometimes when people come up to, when your constituents come up to you, they just want you to listen, they just want you to hear their problem, hear where they're coming from in their life. You don't necessarily have to fix it, but just listen and they will appreciate that you listen and you learn from them. And to the extent that Jerry will chase it, that's great, but at least they still value it. The other day, that was that's when I tried to convey to everybody on a date Everybody has value, understand that value and respect that value and honor that value. And we just we always had a heck of a team.
Speaker 1:If you look at the Flores Alumni Association and Congress today they are everywhere. I mean I've got them in the speaker's office, the majority leader's office, the conference office and some working in the White House. You know it's today. They're in arts organizations that are respected organizations in Washington. And it's because the people that I worked with and Washington realized that we built first class teams. And now, and I don't know that, the people that worked with me at the time realized the education they were getting and the sort of the Flores alumni, you know the handprint they were getting that made them so valuable. But they, they realized it today that it was, it was there was value to being part of the Flores team, and so I'm so humbled by the success of those folks because we all got to work together to take care of the people in Texas.
Speaker 1:So, dana, it just, it just just makes you feel good. I mean, and again it goes back to you know what you who's Bill Flores? You know that I tried to to make the difference, and so you know, I made a difference, not only as me in the energy business, but me as a Congress person, but probably most importantly, me as the leader of teams through my career. When I look at people out serving in CEO roles or board roles or in important positions in Washington, and that's kind of the way I view probably my biggest impact, and plus my family, I mean you know I've got two great sides. You got four great grandkids. I've got one in law and one in law on the way, and you've got an awesome wife, and so I she's got a side of her office that says behind every successful man there's a woman rolling her eyes.
Speaker 2:It's a rolling her eyes. Yeah, so I have to use.
Speaker 1:Every time I speak publicly, if we get out for some reason, I always bring that up. It's a woman rolling her eyes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds like you led a great team within Congress because I mean you see allies is out there, the White House, because office different places that leadership skill right. I mean you said you developed it through working in teams and lead in teams. What are some of the practical things that our listeners could do to improve their leadership skills? And so that's one and two. Were there any you know mistakes or that in terms of leadership that you caution or that maybe you experienced that you would caution our leaders or audience against?
Speaker 1:Let me, let me see this. Let me start out the leadership discussion with the negative, so things to don't do. I have watched more career destroyed by pride excessive pride than almost any other thing. I mean, you see people go out and they do stupid things. They make business decisions that are wrong, they make personal decisions that are wrong, but usually behind that there's some underlying factor and it's usually excessive pride. They think you know, I'm pretty good at something, I'm better than everybody else, so maybe the rules don't apply to me, and so or they behave in a way that basically tears teams down versus built teams up. And so because if you think about the progression of pride, pride leads to arrogance. How many of you like people that are arrogant? None of us do. And then areas leads to narcissism.
Speaker 1:Narcissism has a low cure rate and a really high recidivism rate, and I worked with a ton of people in Washington and you can recognize, and they walked down the hallway and they look in every mirror and when they look in that mirror they see somebody totally different than the folks back home. You saw our costs. That lay that advised everybody lift your. We're doing some heady stuff here. We are important people, we're doing important work, but we are no more important than a person takes out that trash at my dinner offices, and remember that. We're no more important than the manner of women just trying to get their family fed and a balance of checkbook. That's what we need to remember. And so I start with that ammunition. First, because I was. I remember I was in my office the day that Enron failed and watching these hundreds, thousands of people stream out of the Enron building to get it with a box of all their, you know, professional possession, the getting of the yellow cab, a line of yellow cabs to be hauled home because some people at the top were narcissistic and ruined that company. And you know you watched it with several of us. So that's just why pet peeve is just narcissism. So anyway, on the positive side, one of the things that we should strive to do to okay, we earn one minute ago.
Speaker 1:Listen. You know God gave me two ears, one mouth, so there's one good thing about you honoring that ratio is you're not going to show how stupid you are if you don't know such. So I mean I'll be part of a conversation. I hope they're talking about it. So it's good time not to talk and listen, because if I listen to them, if I learn, and then I'll go research that and then I'll become the subject matter, if that's, you know, and I'm kind of a geek, I went up doing that all the time. So listen, you know, listen a lot, speak a little bit and then honor those values that are good for almost everything, like we talked about in our Aggie Core values respect, excellence, leadership, loyalty, integrity, selfless service. I will say, if people do those things, take those six core values, add in being a good listener and then add in adding in to always having a fireball up against fried. It's hard to go wrong. Okay, Now one of the mistakes. So I'll be candid on my mistakes.
Speaker 1:You know, pride is a hard thing and there occasionally ties when you feeling pretty, you know, pretty important. You know. I remember shortly after I got elected I thought, dang, I'm a member of Congress now, this is pretty cool stuff. And then so my life picked me up. I flew in the college station after being in Washington for a week and picked her up and I was telling her about everything that had happened in Washington that week and she said I kept using it. I did this, I did this and she counseled me. She said what is it you talk about with pride? And when I sent me back on my heels I thought you know, pride is insidious. It gets just a little bit, gets in you and it will just destroy you. I mean it'll destroy your relationships, it'll destroy your career. So so that I'm an addition about pride. So again, six, four values, listen and watch it for the right to build a fireball against pride and you'll be successful. And you know, nor are you going to. I mean, you know it's like the yellow ad that I had. You kind of got to. You got to paint your destination and go ahead and draw the journey. You just realize that the journey God's going to have that journey, but have a destination in mind, know where you're going at all times and realize sometimes there's a roadblock that's thrown at where it says maybe I'm not going to get the dad destination, maybe my destination's over here, and just react to the fact that that door is closed and another path is open and then follow that new path.
Speaker 1:The other mistake I made is that sometimes if you, if you have a person that you're working with and it's not going to work out, it's better to recognize that and deal with it early on and sever that relationship. It's better for them, it's better for your team, it's better for you than to keep trying to make something worth it starting on to work. I mean in no way is like the lemon law example with cars or anything like that. I mean some people don't fit in certain teams and just recognize that and help your team out. Help that person out and separate that person.
Speaker 1:Be fair, you know, don't be vindictive and try to help them. You know, get on with whatever that next destination is in their life, that next journey they need to take. You know you can have those discussions and take care of those activities without destroying them, and so that's what I try to do. And then, but again, the mistakes I made were when I was too slow to do that. And you know, sometimes it would cost me in terms of the performance of a team or I would lose a good person because I had a bad person working with me. And so I became, as I got later and later in my career, particularly my career, I didn't tolerate that very long. I'd usually pretty quick to say we've got a challenge here and we're going to address it today.
Speaker 2:Man, thank you so much for sharing that. That was, I mean, I think, the pride specifically like that was. That's something that you know I think about a lot too, in trying to make sure that I'm staying as humble as I can show. Agent you know would agree is absolutely himself too, but when remaining humble was a big one too.
Speaker 3:You know, I thought that was very insightful. Just thinking about you know, you being a congressman and having that approach to not only your staff members but also the constituents too, Because you know that term politician people would just leave that a certain time and say, you know, I'm no different or we're no different than the person taking out the trash that's here. Doesn't matter who they are, whether you're someone working in a factory or in the oil field, on the rigs, you know, trying to feed your family, we're all the same I'm here to serve you. That's right. And I think that public service or that servant attitude I mean that's you just can't match that. I think it's something that one. I think we don't see enough, like you said in general.
Speaker 3:You know, I spent a little bit of time at the Texas Capitol and that was one thing I noticed early on was, you know, there were some people that you know you could tell, like you said, they would look in the mirror and that's all they were concerned with. But I met some people that were amazing. Same mentality, you know, it's not about me, it's service, you know. So it was really great to hear that from you and inspiring, if anything.
Speaker 1:I mean thinking about all the dumb things that you've been oh well, how do I rephrase this? Thinking about all the interesting news has come out of buying the people in Austin this year. I mean, we already always expected them to watch you done, but so we. Once they sent her, they got caught having his second affair, this time with another little representative over in the other body. And then that same senator winds up getting a DWI, and so the next day he's supposed to be cheering as a committee here. He's still in the slammer, and you've got another representative who's a mess around with an entire yeah.
Speaker 3:And what?
Speaker 1:caused all that is because you get arrogant, you get to think you are better than everybody. I am narcissistic, I can get away with that and that it's just some worst disease you're gonna have, because not only does it kill you at the other day, it kills everybody you're with, and I mean your relationships. It kills your effectiveness. I mean, I just don't want to have that. Here's Bill Flores. He died in an arsonist or anything like that on my tube stone. Yeah, so that's what everybody needs to think about is you got it on your tube stone. You got a date. When you're born date you die. And what's all in this middle? What's a dash? Look like that's right.
Speaker 2:That's right, we're coming up on time. I don't know how much time do you have left, sir, okay.
Speaker 1:Oh, my sandwich is already cold, so we're good.
Speaker 3:Well, I was gonna ask you, having that mentality and being from Texas, especially in the panhandle I got some family over there and for you to go up to DC and work with these different personalities from all over the country, I mean, what was that like? I mean, I'm sure there were times where you maybe butted head with individuals, that's you know. I'm sure that was a good challenge.
Speaker 1:Well, you, I gotta say this there are a lot of people up there that all think that the world's smartest person, and so you have to find a way in the, you know. So you've got 100 of us in it and you got 435 in the house, of course. Then you got some dudes down in the White House and a lot of the people, a lot of those people. They think they're the world's smartest people and they've got all the best ideas, and or they've got teams of people that feel that way. You have to find the areas where you have common agreement and try to work on those. Yeah, that's one of the reasons. One of the things that makes Washington so dysfunctional today is that the parties up there, you will, are focused on the areas where they disagree. If you focus on areas where you disagree, you can't develop solutions for the country, for the folks back home, right, and so what I always tried to do it was, to be honest, to that focused on the areas where I agreed, and so, for instance, on energy policy, there were Texas Democrats that agreed on certain aspirational goals for Texas energy, and so I would go find them and seek them out and work together at the beginning to build that foundation of trust and common agreement to try to move forward, and then, invariably, you're gonna get the point where, okay, we disagree, and so you come back to where you agree and you still have a policy solution there. That doesn't happen in Washington today. You just so think about the destiny of discussion where those started. So I'll start with my party. First the Republicans. They wouldn't put together an idea and said you know, we're not gonna raise it until you do something about it. And then the other side said no, I'm clean this thing and we're not gonna negotiate. Well, yeah, if everybody has to check those same positions, nothing would happen. So the Republicans are there at Reddit, asked the bill in the house, and it was pretty different than what the president wanted, is he didn't want to negotiate, and his colleagues in the Congress were telling him the same thing. Everybody agreed you don't want to break the debt ceiling, you don't want to exceed that, and so they finally agreed on that. And so the president was in a tenuous situation because the country in the polling he was starting to lose in polling in terms of country said you know, don't stop the spending. And so, because the Republicans have put some piece of paper, they had an area where they'd look forward, and so they're finally moving forward. That's a little late in the game but, you know, it looks like they're gonna get something across the finish line.
Speaker 1:But if we do things like that, if we as a people whether we're in, you know, the County Commissures Court, or if we're on city council or school board or in Congress, we're thinking about where do we agree and what are the things that will be back home, then, gosh, the world will be a lot better place. You know, like I grew up in small town, so you knew everybody, everybody knew you. Every time I got in trouble, every time I drove my mother's station, I couldn't do fast, I got trouble. So, yeah, I got caught. And so if everybody had, if everybody behaved as if they had grown up in Salt Town, it would be a better place. I tell everybody that. You know, if everybody grew up in Salt Town, we wouldn't have the housing or it would be ended Now with people busted in the schools of shooting. I'm like that. Then it just let's find a way to start working together and find where we agree and start listening to each other, right, right.
Speaker 2:And how do we get to that point at this point, where finding common ground is a little bit difficult, and how do we move past that to where we're focused on the common ground as opposed to the differences?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know how good my answer is going to be on this. I gave a speech, I was the keynote speaker, to Salvation Army banquet last summer and the title of the speech was something along the lines of selfless, of a servant leadership in a polarized world. As I started by asking the audience how many of you listen to MSNBC all day long? And a few people held their hand up and I said how many of you listen to CNN all day long? How many of you listen to Fox all day long? And a bunch of people held their hand up and I said how do you feel at the end of the day? Are you happy with them, earl? And they all kind of go, oh no, no matter what your ideology is, but if you've gone through, if your ideology is left or right or somewhere in between, if you only get fed that news, at the end of the day you feel like crap Right, because you've just stayed in your little circle. And I said why don't you turn the damn news off and go hug your neighbor and talk to your neighbor, and maybe the world take that step first and maybe the world will be a little better place, and instead of focusing on the conversation with you.
Speaker 1:We're about redistricting, don't re-agree. Talk about that you need to agree to repaint the street signs or that you need to work together to claim the yard and the elderly lady across the street Right, and do things like that instead of just staying in your silence. That's it, and that's one of the beauties of growing up, or else fall down. You didn't have the luxury of being in a silent and you didn't have the luxury of trying to show off to everybody else, because I didn't add nothing to show off. You just had to get up in the morning and push fans on and go to work, and that's one of the other examples. You know I talked about trash. Can example about people taking out trash is you put fans on the same layer, but every day, the same way everybody else does.
Speaker 1:So I just wish we as America, we as citizens of the world, could start thinking about that. You know we go back to the early, early part of this discussion, when we were talking about energy solutions. Why don't we, if we can, get policy workers to sit down and say where do we agree? Reliability yes. Check Presence is important yes. Affordability yes. Low emissions yes. Okay, what is this Right? Yeah, that is I should be so much easier. It's easier and you wouldn't have to have my fights in the hallways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. So, adrian, you mentioned being from a small town, mr Florizer from a small town as well. So I'm from a small town in Nigeria as well, called Uyosha. I definitely know what you're talking about in terms of that. You know, small town, I would say accountability to one another.
Speaker 1:Right. So you know you raise something important there. Small town accountability, that's one of the key factors. But small town respect, Right, you know you shouldn't be disrespectful to somebody and get away with it because there were too many in people around that would tell you that's the wrong way to behave, that you had to be respectful. You just value system.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean. Social media also makes it a lot more difficult to be respectful, because when you're sending out tweets or posting things online, you're not interacting with someone in person.
Speaker 1:And I saw that first day and when I made my career shift to the political world. You know, in course of the way the political process works, when you're out for Congress, you have to run a primary, you get people of your own party and then you run against. You get into the general election, you run against somebody at the other party. Well, so here and I, bill's decides he's gonna run for Congress and he starts. Bill says can't pay plan. And he starts running down the road and thinking, well, everybody's gonna vote for him, it's not gonna be hard. And we all, everybody in the Republican primary, they signed these agreements that we're all done. We were not going to run negative advertising, we're not gonna be negative by anybody else. So I just expected everybody to do that. Well, we're all dude, this is good. So now the other people that signed those documents. They were nice to your, you know, they were nice and generally not critical. But boy, they had legions of people who went back around and they were all over social media. Just hammered you. But anyway, so that's where I was going with this.
Speaker 1:I would see some post on social media where somebody said something just crazy wrong or just inflammatory. But I knew those people. I'd see them in a bent and a face to face and they were nice and cordial, mature, we could have a good conversation. And then, you know, when I won the primary elderly, then they kind of joined on my side and so the social media ran stop. But then they started from the other side, you know, and I saw these social media and then I see those people and then I was like you know, we're just people.
Speaker 1:You know, you're a guy, I'm a guy and we're having a conversation and you're in D, I'm an R, so what, you know, we're still people and we can have a social media conversation, but then you go back and you know it's you tweets or face us, whatever, and just be mean to say and anyway. So I saw the difference between social media behavior and interpersonal behavior, and the early part of the campaign when I was going is this it's fast forward, 10 years later and the behavior from social media morphed over and became the behavior in person and people. You know everything from death threats to just, you know, coming up and you know, to assault in your yard or just being rude and ugly at a public setting. We've just become a very coarse people and I think some of that is driven by social media, and it's a shame, because we should go back to that fundamental respect we have for each other and it just seems to be escaping us right now. It's really sad.
Speaker 3:I agree and I think you know Some of that, I think is the community aspect you talked about. You know you mentioned accountability and I think we used to have, even when I was growing up, you know, a more cohesive community. You know you talk to your neighbors, you visit each other, people knew each other and people talked and you know, like you said, you know social media has kind of driven a wedge through that and open up a whole different can of worms when it comes to the way that communities interact with each other. And you know it's, it's I see it every time, you know, I'm at work. People don't even know their neighbors. They never talked to them, never. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean it's so bizarre to me because grew up on smaller ranches in middle of nowhere and we hadn't know our neighbors, because, yeah, it's watching your stuff, you know guys, he was feeding the goats or the cattle. I mean there's, you don't have that anymore, and I think it's small town kind of logic and I think that's a big thing we're missing.
Speaker 1:Personally, I mean, if everybody would you know what I see is you know, people walking around here, is that little looking at it, and that's Conversation. We got a ball in your face, yeah. And so if we, we, if we is is People, maybe we start this on this podcast. This is our new deal. I really put this down for 10 minutes. You'll find somebody to talk to. Yeah, and you know, the easiest way to have conversation with somebody Is to ask questions. Right, you're like too many about you. What is it that you're interested in? What keeps you awake at night? You know, you know, where do you want to have lunch? Whatever? Just start with the simple stuff and Listen to what they say.
Speaker 1:I see so many people today. Yeah, they do have a conversation. There's already a tell about them that they can't, they're not listening and and, yeah, I, you know, look, I'm pretty shy, I'm an introvert believer and People would say called BS on that, but it really is true. But you know the the reason is the way I try to carry on a conversation. It's easier to carry on a conversation, yes, somebody to tell if you ask questions and let other beings it does a couple of things. What is it? I don't have to come up with anything to say. And let's say I speak a question and, and you know, I don't know if he's small talk, so I don't have to come to a small talk, I can see you let them talk and it's, you got it. Yeah, it's gonna have fun everybody's and they walk away from the conversation thing. Man, I like that guy cuz he, he listens to me and or he knows my story and and he asked roaming questions. You know, yeah, it was really bilateral. They do the same thing for you, but you know, so does this humans, or I think she does anyway, I.
Speaker 1:I learned so much that way just by asking questions, and I've got a book my Simon Maybe on the book up here. So with why, yeah, sir, with one yeah, and yeah, well, it's so much fun, I mean just to ask questions. Learn about people, you might learn things you didn't know before. Yeah, like a little things I've shown my life I've not had a lot of larger plugs. Yeah, I've got pretty good at it. Do the eyes like on the end of your year? Yeah, sir, or until I am one at a lot. Sure, I've rewired my ID closet and people think, man, that's not even just to me.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna be yeah, yeah, I'm curious about something is said, so we I think we talked about this when we had breakfast, but for for the audience what? What keeps you up at night?
Speaker 1:Hmm, polarization that we, as a people, I hate to. I hate how we focus on our differences. You know we've got so many different types of hyphenated Americans down and look, we're all Americans and you know we don't have different beliefs. I mean, you know where there's religious beliefs or gender beliefs or whatever, but we're all Americans. Why don't we focus on those areas where we agree? We all want to have a safe country, we want to have safe communities, we want to have people that are financially secure, we want them to have good electric average. So focus on those. Those things are we're like and Then try to figure out one of the areas we agree on how to help us all get there. I should be. That's what T J Wigan, that is, nobody's doing that. Everybody's focused on what divides us.
Speaker 1:How can I, how can I take myself and put myself into a splinter group and then call myself a victim? We all yes, it was like that's the thing is America's out find a way to identify yourself so you can call yourself a victim and then to tell you one step further who victimized me, that person victimized me or that group victimized me. If you can't be successful, if you casting, if you're carrying this victim on your shoulders and Blaming it on somebody else. What we shouldn't be doing is saying I may have, even if I was a victim on something, I'm not gonna live with that, I'm going to pull myself out, instead of trying to blame somebody else and say that they need to pull me out. I'm going to pull myself out, I'm gonna make myself better and so, and then try to find a way to Share that passion so that we all pull the rest of their room out. You know of that. That's the way we need to do it. I mean, it's it's. You know. It seems like everything's become Winners and losers, and victims and victimizers, and we are not gonna be a successful society. That's the way we believe in things.
Speaker 1:I think that those people who need help, those of us are able to help should try to help them. I and I don't think it's necessarily government forces that to happen I think we ought to do that on our own. Yeah, if you look at like one of the endowed scholarships that Gina and I have at A&M, it is for first generation teachers and if you think about that, that's typically going to be a community of color, and if you think about the life change that can happen there by you get, you, pluck that, that young Woman, hispanic woman out of South Texas. You bring her Texas and give her teacher in. Then she goes back, she becomes an again through his family and for community. Or you get that inner city guy from Houston and and bring him up to A&M and he goes back in his community and pretty soon he not only is the example and he teaches them to do things there.
Speaker 1:But that's the way I think we, if we as America has tried to start thinking about how can we end value to people to Endless fortune conditions and not teaching them to be victims. I mean, that seems to be the thing that gets taught now is yeah, how can we identify you as a victim? And then how can you carry that grudge against the people that think Made you, that you think victimized you? You can't be successful if you're carrying that around your psyche all day long.
Speaker 2:So you can talk about how could we help people who are less fortunate Positions? Wasn't someone say I don't remember who exactly it is? Is that the goal is to find ways to help people without hurting their ability to help themselves? Exactly?
Speaker 1:you know themselves. I mean, you know memory play is. You know, teach them to Fish and they'll feed themselves in our family. If you just give them a fish, you know they're hungry a few hours later. Now think about things like the habitat for you money Excuse me, habitat for humanity program.
Speaker 1:That exists a lot in communities, including here, around conversation. The people that Are going to get the house have to put in sweat equity into building that house, and Then they also have to learn about the financial responsibilities that come with owning a home Before they ever get the keys to that home. And what does that do to them, for them? Hey, they, they understand They've got that equity built into it so they feel like an owner of that home. And they, they, they'll have an appreciation board. They wouldn't have. Somebody just gave me keys to a unit of public bowling complex and they, they, you know, possibly in order to trade at the same time. I Watch that. If we have, we have helped people. You know, through the amatric field will throw a lot of different mature organizations, brown color station, but the ones who we support are always the ones that help somebody, help themselves out of that situation so that they've got sweat equity in what it took to get out of their particular. Um, what a rechallenge your facing life.
Speaker 2:So how would you respond to Someone who says that, well, there may be times where maybe a particular individual or people are Maybe temporarily not able to help themselves? Is that.
Speaker 1:That's where you know. I believe that we should have a safety in that program For people who are in a situation through no fault of their own. So let's say somebody Was born and they've got down syndrome Okay, did they put themselves in that situation? No, they did. They made no choice to do that, and so we should have an educational program that supports their ability to be a, a successful person. In some words, they'd be successful with that for the condition. Or let's say that you have Person that gets hit by a chrome driver, and they can, and they're disabled and they look can no longer work. Well, there should be a. You know, we ought to have a safety net as a community to be able to help those folks To, to, to be, you know, to be all they can be, whatever that is. But you know, you, you think about you. Look at one of the discussions that's going on with the young and the death scene. In a day Conversation we've got 10 million able-bodied males. So that means they don't have. You know, they they're not, they don't have.
Speaker 1:Give us site between 1849 that are on, well there, that are worth her, and then our working. Okay, they should. I mean that. Are we helping them? No, no, they're because they're set around. And so think about what would happen if that 10 million people had to work for that welfare. They either had to be getting educated or they had to be looking for a job or they had to have a job. Thinking about how much better they would be, all that, how much better off they would be. How much better because they're working their interest in, but how much better the economy would be. Just, we're short on on labor. Think about how much more money would be going into the tax golfers of the country, because you've got people. They're now contributing to the economy instead of pulling from the economy. And then the thing about you know, now that you got more money going into the Treasury, how much more support you give the people that are In those safety net positions Because of no fault of their own. So you know, I, I believe in safety nets. People that didn't Volunteer.
Speaker 1:He decided, voluntarily, decided, being a second, that yeah, the safety in programs in the country kind of been turned into King size. Then you know, honlows, you had those fancy mattresses. So, yeah, mattress for you say what? So you know, that's fine. That's kind of my view of the word the, and I think I think most people agree with that. But when you start having that discussion, boy, that's when the rhetoric comes out, you know. So the first thing that comes out of the discussion about the and the death sentence, conversations about trying to make 18 to 49 year old males with no children Work for their food stamps, you know, the first rhetoric comes out of the other side is you're making children go hungry. No way, my definition they don't have any kids is so I mean I did. You can't solve things, so the rhetoric becomes a plan before you like that, right, hey, yeah, what's all that? Something behind you guys, you got a guitar, guitar case, let me know, is innocent drawings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, so it's just a guitar in the skate.
Speaker 1:Well, it's skateboard. Okay, I couldn't tell from here, right.
Speaker 2:Well, this is calls Calls call studio. Okay, I said I should tell you hi. By the way, don't mess it out, he I will, I will, and so he talked about, I don't know. He talked about some helium network thing that he has in his here in his studio. I don't know if you're familiar with that, because I think he told me you're familiar with that a little bit.
Speaker 1:Now, well you're, you did funny things in Congress, so here's my story about helium.
Speaker 1:So, again elected to Congress, and then one of the things we find out is that the federal government, the taxpayers, all the helium in the country, all the helium reserves in the country, for the most part, almost all the reserves in the country, and that we're going to run out in the near term because the prior statutes related to helium were faulty and so we had a broken helium market again, as well as fantasy design policy makers, and that we're going to run out.
Speaker 1:And if you think about where helium is used, it's used everywhere, from the manufacturing of chips to you, the cooling, the magnets and MRI machines. You just you name it. Helium is used everywhere. It's used in inert gas and as specialized welding, and so we had to work together to we worked together and this turned out to be bipartisan. We worked with the committee of jurisdiction that I was on at the time, and we rewrote the helium markets bill, and so we fixed helium, fixed the helium market, and I haven't heard a word about it and I'll never get credit for it. And even if I'm credit for it, nobody knows what the hell it is.
Speaker 1:So when you say you fixed the helium market right for like well, basically we said that it had to be a market base, that we were selling helium way too cheaply and, as a result, there was no investment and finding the helium resources. So what we had to do is fix the market so that it was market price, so that you know we weren't subsidizing industrial use of helium because it was in it. It was a taxpayer on that set. So basically, some juxtaposition, supply and demand, just like everything else in economics, yeah. And again, if you go back to the core sciences of economics or physics or you know metallurgy or whatever and whatever field it is, and you fit your policymaking to the science, things work. It's got a miracle, yeah. So if you don't, if you have a fantasy policy that is not tied to underlying science, whether it's economics or the basic sciences, that things happen, yeah. I kind of want to go back a little bit.
Speaker 3:Sure, getting to our discussion, you were talking about nuclear energy. Now you mentioned how you know so many cities have abandoned, or you know California tried to abandon at one point. What is the fear? What is the logic there? I don't know if that's tied into the fantasy viewpoint or if there's a genuine fear there. I mean, why are people abandoning an energy source that seems to make the most sense as a part of the blended network of energy?
Speaker 1:There are two, I mean probably three stressful areas that cause people to be anti-nuclear. One is they don't understand it, and two is they have these dreams of you know. They think every nuclear plant is a nuclear bomb waiting to go off. And then the third thing is what do we do with the waste? And so there's this giant misunderstanding about the impact of nuclear. And that's what I encourage people to go watch the documentary Pandora's Promise.
Speaker 1:We've had, you know, three major hiccups in the world on nuclear power. Nuclear like electric generation. So you had Three Mile Island, back about the same time that we had a movie with Jane Fonda and it called the China Syndrome, where you had it melt down of a nuclear plant. And then you had Chernobyl in Russia, and then you had Fukushima in Japan. If you go look at the actual impact on people, it was negligible. More people die of over exposure to the sun than have died from nuclear radiation accidents.
Speaker 1:So anyway, but because those say makes headlines, it's easy to scare people about nuclear power and particularly if you look at current generation of nuclear power, it is really hard to manage. But it's been done safely for, you know, millions of hours now and it provided huge power impact. You know huge positive power benefits with no environmental impact in the world. And then, but more importantly, next to the future, generations of nuclear they're under development research right now are credible because they're almost failsafe. You know they're much in here. Safety is much more inherent in those systems than today. And then they have slower waste profiles when it comes to waste for current generation of nuclear. I mean we set this place in Nevada called Yucca Mountain I've actually been there myself and we spent billions of dollars in research and construction and that's been blocked. It's not being used because the politicians in Nevada have tried to use scare monitoring to keep that the nuclear waste out of their stack. But if we had any incidents from nuclear waste, what we do is we take the nuclear waste, the spandex that come out of today's nuclear plants and we put them in cast concrete, cast and they stay there on site.
Speaker 1:If you took all the nuclear waste from all the nuclear plants in the country from the beginning of nuclear electric generation, you put them on a football field that stand about. It fell one football field about six feet high. That's how we talk the impact. Now, the other hand, you take a piece of uranium that big that replaces a tonic hole. So I mean, the energy density of nuclear energy is so intense compared to all our other energy resources. In order to take the nuclear energy from that and replace them with one farm, you've got to cover acre-snaker-snaker with the wind farm or solar field or whatever. Look, if we did what France did back in the 70s, we could have super low emissions and super reliable energy at an affordable cost. And that's, you can just ignore your story. It's super safe too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Pandora's Promise, that's something that the Oris Promise has taught us. Okay, hi, Mr Boris, thank you so much for your time. We really you should use this.
Speaker 1:Mr Crab so. I'll put it there. I meant to correct you on that earlier, but I didn't Not correct. Talk to you about that, so yeah, thank you.