A $33 Billion Grid Plan Could Raise Bills Without A Clear Vote

A school reading list turns into a proxy war over truth, heritage, and who gets to define “education” in Texas. We take on the State Board of Education fight over TEKS curriculum changes, including classic literature, Texas history, and controversial debate around Bible passages in classrooms. The bigger question isn’t a single book. It’s what the goal of public education is supposed to be, and whether “diversity” and teacher autonomy are being used as cover for ideological control.

Then the lens widens to accountability. We break down a Montgomery County embezzlement case involving a former CFO accused of stealing millions, and we ask what justice should actually look like when theft is financial instead of violent. From there we cover an FBI-led raid in East Houston tied to drugs and guns, plus why law enforcement wins don’t matter much if the justice system turns consequences into a revolving door.

In the second hour, Texas Scorecard journalist Robert Montoya joins us to explain the Permian Basin Reliability Plan, a massive transmission project estimated around $33 billion. We talk ERCOT, the Public Utility Commission of Texas, how the plan expanded beyond what lawmakers intended, what it could mean for eminent domain and property rights, and why Texans may be told the real price after construction starts. We also cover a Baytown AI deepfake case involving a minor and the uncomfortable reality of deepfake pornography, social media exposure, and tech that outruns moral limits. We close with a hard look at taxpayer-funded lobbying and how government can use your money to lobby for more of your money.

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Listen every day to our strong conservative programs on Patriot Talk 920 AM.  Tune-in on your radio in Houston to KYST 920 AM or download our app by visiting 920app.com or search for "Patriot Talk 920" from your app store!

Transcript

Welcome And Stories Ahead

SPEAKER_11 0:09

The voice of reason. This is the most dark conservative Michael Wilson.

SBOE Fight Over Reading Lists

What Schools Should Actually Teach

Reading List Vote Still Pending

SPEAKER_16 0:31

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you are listening to the Lone Star Conservative brought to you by Texellent AC Service. It is now Wednesday, so a couple of things to note. First and foremost, at the top of the second hour, we're going to have Texas scorecard coming on, and we have some very exciting stories to get into. Specifically, we're actually going to go over some money, some power grab issues. Specifically, senators questioning this$33 billion power grab uh in the Permian Basin. We'll go over all the details. If you heard that and you're like, what are you even talking about? Well, I guess you'll see at 7 o'clock, right? You're going to find out. So don't worry. Don't worry. We'll get to it at 7. In the meantime, I want to go ahead and kind of tease where the show is going today. And sometimes I regret doing this because then I realize we're not going to get to these. But I do hope to get. I'm only going to list the ones I think we're actually going to get to. We can play like a little game. Let's see if I'm able to uh get through these stories. We're going to kick it off going over the State Board of Education, because right now, of course, you guys know there was the testimonies, people talking for the shift in the English language arts, reading, and social studies curriculum. And so I believe yesterday was when they really heard a lot of that testimony going over what parents want, what community members want. Of course, we knew that the Council on American Islamic Relations is going to be there, but this is just supposed to be a tease. So we'll get to it. We're also going to cover how this former CFO of a company up in Montgomery County has now been arrested and charged in a multimillion dollar embezzlement scheme, which I know it happens, but it feels kind of movie-esque when your CFO like takes all the money, tries to run to the Bahamas. We'll talk about that one as well. We also have a massive FBI operation. You might have actually seen this one if you even if you don't generally read the news because it's been all over everybody's timelines on Facebook. It's just been basically everywhere. Apparently, the FBI was doing a massive operation, searching through an East Houston neighborhood in a court authorized operation, and uh they were carrying boxes of evidence, drug charges, raids. We'll talk about all of that. We're also going to get into how much money we're spending on taxpayer-funded lobbying, which they say has surged here in the state of Texas, which big shocker there. Also, there's a college educator in Baytown who has now been charged with creating AI-generated explicit images of a minor, which again, we'll we'll get into technology and the aspect of all that sort of stuff. And then the rest is kind of time permitting. It's up in the air. I'll go ahead and tease a couple of them, but I want to be clear, we may not get to these. These are ones we may not get to. Uh, for instance, Conroe ISD has had to cut some programs uh as their dropping enrollment is creating an 8 million budget shortfall. And I know what you're gonna say. I know what I thought when I first read this.$8 million, that's it. How bad do things have to be with inflation and with budget deficits, both of those things working in tandem for us to hear? And maybe you didn't hear it. Maybe, maybe when you heard it, you didn't think this. But I heard$8 million and I thought, man, wouldn't it be nice if you move that a little south and we just had$8 million? If if city council came out and said, Oh man, we have an$8 million budget deficit. I don't know what we're gonna do. That would be like excellent news. If Harris County said, yeah, eight million dollar budget deficit, uh, we're gonna have to cut something. No, it's like$300 million.$8 million starts to feel like uh small potatoes. Uh apparently the winter storm Uri lawsuits have also been dismissed en masse. Like 20,000 plaintiffs have just been basically thrown out. Um and then and then we have a couple more stores. There's a pair uh stores. I heard it was a it was a Walmart, and so I read the store instead of story. The story is a Paraland Walmart was evacuated after a bomb threat, and then uh an undercover video was taken, uh, which shows that there is still ongoing DEI at UNT, which is not a surprise. We know they're still trying to do as much as they can in the DEI realm uh in regards to our college universities in regards to our higher education indoctrination campaign. But uh it's now on video, so we know it's happening. But we're gonna kick it off with the State Board of Education. Now that we've kind of teased the stories, where you know the show's going today, you can decide if you want to stick around. If that stuff sounds interesting enough, that's why I teased it. It does, by the way. Stick around. We're gonna be here for a couple hours, shooting the breeze, talking about what's going on in the Houston area and all across the state of Texas that impacts us as the taxpayers, us as the people. And we'll kick it off with the State Board of Education. So, yesterday, during their meeting, the State Board of Education members heard testimony regarding the proposed Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for English, language arts, reading, as well as social studies. As the state mandated curriculum standards that outline what we teach, what our students are expected to learn in each subject and grade level, the proposed, it's called texts, for English language arts and reading would add a list of literary works to be taught in each grade level as required by a new state law. The list include titles focused on classic literature, U.S. and Texas history, and, by the way, passages from the Bible. Now, critics, of course, uh spoke all about their concerns over the proposed focus on Christianity, the lack of racial diversity representation. It's up to you to decide what that even really means, and a lack of teacher autonomy. We'll we'll get into those things, because each of those things is is pretty bad. Quote: This list lacks racial and cultural diversity. Having works predominantly written by white Christian men and a few women and people of color does not fairly represent the diversity of this state. This gives the idea that one voice is more important than the others. Implementing this small-minded perspective into the curriculum will be damaging the way kids see themselves in the future. Now, can I can I say something radical? I was talking with a guy a few days ago on the Todd Starnes Newsmax program, and he said something that kind of struck a nerve. Uh he said, I'm really glad there is a black astronaut in space because now young black children will be able to see that guy and and kind of emulate that. It'll prov it'll create more engineers, more rocket scientists, more astronauts, more people who once they see themselves represented up there, uh can believe greatness in themselves. Now, maybe this is a personal dilemma here, but I've actually found a lot of times that when there's someone who hasn't done something, you're actually driven to do the thing more. Actually, when there's a level of there's a hole here that you can fill that I actually think is a bigger driver. Hey, no one's done this. You could be the first. You could pursue greatness. I think it's a good thing. It's also a good thing to see, you know, you know, see see people succeeding. But this whole claim, I I don't want to spend too much time on it because it's just so insane. But I want to highlight the the absolute insanity that it is. Because when you hear that, one thing that you should immediately think, that you should immediately question is what is our goal in education? That should be the main question that's being asked by the State Board of Education and that's being answered by the curriculum that we produce. And if we're going to discuss what books we should teach, what books should be included in classic literature, what books our children should be required to read, the main goal, really the only goal, should be what is the most educational, what produces the highest levels of intelligence, what educates them well, what teaches them what they need to know about the world. Now let me ask you a question. For much of Western history, who were the main writers in the West? I I hate to spoil it, but it was white Christian men. You you don't have to like that. You can call that racist if you want, but I I hate when claims of racism get thrown around based on pure fact. It just it just irks me so much. Because if the facts themselves are racist, then our outcomes are racist. And then if you're just literally speaking the truth, then you are a racist by nature. Right? Racism used to be reserved as a word uh for some sort of hatred. It used to be looking down on people. It used to be having some sort of and not just a superiority complex in and of itself, but it used to mean uh that you had a genuine hatred for people based on the color of their skin. That used to be what racism was reserved for. You you hated people because they looked different than you. Racism has morphed into something nasty now, right? Where that term gets thrown around to describe any time that anyone says anything in regards to race at all. Uh not even if you don't say it, if it just happens to be a part of the reality, right? If you say, hey, I want to hamper down on crime, and then you say, where do we need to go in order to do that? And then you find out that say, say, for instance, the the FBI statistics, which we have, uh, which show that unilaterally, right, black Americans commit the vast majority of crimes, right? Especially given the population densities. Well, we would say, well, we need to go into a lot of these neighborhoods that are committing the crimes. And by nature, many of those neighborhoods would ended up being black neighborhoods. Does that mean that we're targeting black people? No, absolutely not. That if we said only by nature the fact that they're black we're gonna target them, that would certainly be racist. But if you say we're gonna target criminal areas, and it just so happens that because the majority of crimes are coming out of black neighborhoods that we go into black neighborhoods, is that racist? Well, the left would tell you, of course it is. Yeah, absolutely it is. Whereas a normal sane person would say, no, it's just so happens to be the case that if we're going to hamper down on crime, it's going to include uh the people who commit the crimes, which of course is going to include a majority population of black Americans. Now, we could get into the cultural ramifications of that, why that's happening, fatherlessness in homes. We get into all of that. But the real driving issue is the question of what is considered racist. And when you're addressing this sort of racial diversity in your education system, the issue that I have here is well, you're you're primarily reading books from white Christian men. It's like, yes, right, white Christian men wrote much of our classic literature in the West. A lot of Western history is filled with white Christian men because you want to know what the West was made up of? What do you think West was? It was Europe. And back before we had mass immigration, of course, the vast majority of Europe was white men, especially those that were well educated and writing books. If we went into Asia, if you want if you went into Japan and you were trying to read Japanese history and somebody came in and said, Well, there's not a lot of racial diversity in in the Japanese history. You're just talking about how the Japanese did this and this Japanese man did this and this samurai did that and this emperor did this. It's it there's no racial diversity, it's just Japanese people everywhere. You go, yes, because we're living in Japan, that would be the expectation. That would not come as a surprise. That's not a shock, that's not racism. That's just studying the history of your particular heritage. If you're in the West, if you're part of Western civilization, much of your heritage is rooted in white Europe. That's not a racist claim. It is a factual one. And if facts start getting treated as racist by our school boards, by our education system, we're doing a massive disservice to educating any child who deserves to know real history, who deserves to read books of classic literature in the West. And by nature, there's not going to be a lot of racial diversity because there wasn't a lot of racial diversity. I mean, that's just how natural things happen. The other claim, of course, this teacher that made is well, there's also not a lot of teacher autonomy. Yeah, I don't want there to be, actually. Actually, I want there to be pretty standard curriculum. I don't trust teachers enough, not because I dislike them or think that all of them are crazy, but because we should have a unified standard that we expect our teachers to be held to. And they don't get to go outside the bounds of that to teach whatever they want. That's a good thing, by the way. You wouldn't like it if a teacher was indoctrinating their kids further in things that you don't appreciate. So why in the world would we give teachers the autonomy to decide these things? It doesn't make any sense. It's it's just an insane claim. Nevertheless, you also have Vanessa Sibage, the president of Protecting Texas Children, who spoke during testimony yesterday and said, I would just like to say that our strength is not found in our diversity. It is found in our unity surrounding our shared heritage, our American values, and the things that have made America the greatest nation on the face of the planet. That is where our strength lies. It's not in our diversity. It's not that diversity cannot ever coexist. It's not that you can't have a level of diversity. It's just that that's not what made America great. That is a false claim. It's rooted in modern mythology, essentially. It's it's the modern myth of the left that the greatness of America was rooted in some sort of diversity that didn't exist. Again, the question is: do you want to teach the truth or do you want to teach your skewed version of reality that's not true in an effort to produce the results you want? And that's not what our education system should be focused on. You also have uh Rick Green, uh, who spoke out. He said uh that he wanted to thank the board members for what they are doing to improve and continually preserve an education system that will actually teach our children what it means to be a Texan and to be an American and why that value system is the best in the history of mankind. He also urged board members to keep the foundation of Christian values that created Western civilization and the stories of the individuals who founded our nation in the reading lists. He said, even Benjamin Rush, father of our public school system under the Constitution, said the Bible should be the primary textbook of our schools. It's not just for philosophy or religion or some of the other things people have said, it's because it works and it produces a good moral society. You also had uh uh Abraham George, he is the Republican Party of Texas chairman. And uh you also had the True Texas Project president Fran Rhodes, as well as Bonnie Wallace, who you might remember, she got kicked out of an HIST school board meeting uh a couple months ago. They spoke out against the inclusion of any of Islamic promoting materials in the standards. Wallace uh said the TEA reading list is significantly better than the list suggested by some of the members of the board. She advised the board to also create a prohibited book list in order to assist in removing inappropriate content from government schools. And so the motion to approve the reading list was left pending, with members expected to take it up later due to time constraints yesterday. We don't know exactly when that will get uh uh finalized, voted on, but I do promise you that that will get updated here on the show. Uh one of these mornings when we find out the information, we will talk about it. We will let you know what happened. But again, you can kind of contrast these testimonies. It's very interesting because a lot of the testimonies you'll find from the left are a desire, and they they admit this: a desire to revise real history or to highlight very random facts that are not actually rooted in history, that are not rooted in anything that educates children, but are instead only rooted in a specific agenda. The very thing, by the way, that the hypocritical aspect of this, of course, is that's what they're accusing us of doing. But then you contrast that with those who are on the right by nature of the right being true, who come out and they say, No, no, no, we're not fighting for any agenda, we're not fighting for any specific set of just mere out there random beliefs. We're fighting for the things that have worked, we're fighting for the things that have been in this country, we're fighting for teaching our children the things that they were taught for a very long time, uh arguably millennia, by the way, if you consider European history to be our own. We're fighting for the things that have consistently worked, produced good people in good civil societies. We're teaching the things that we have been teaching for a very long time in American and European history. Again, Benjamin Rush, very clear, you can look at the New England primer, uh, even before the founding of the U.S. when you had British colonies, very clearly was teaching massive passages of scripture to children. That was the primary mode of education back then. This is not new. We're not taking this up to produce some sort of new agenda. Hey, let's try this out. Let's see what happens if we No, no, we're rooting this in what our country has always been about. The the values that our country was founded on. That's not radical, that's not new, that's not changing, that's not trying to uproot hundreds of years of American history. It is attempting to return to the very things we know have succeeded. Because if you look around in the public school system today, you might be shocked to know it's not doing so hot. We have a lot of variety of issues that are producing children who largely are uneducated, unintelligent, they lack critical thinking, they're unwise, and they're incapable largely of doing the things that their forefathers would have done. They're not being educated well. They're not well, they're not well read. They're they're not as bright as they could be if we'd focus on their education correctly. And so obviously, whatever we're doing right now is not working. Whatever we're doing in this exact moment in our public schools is not creating the success that we desire to see. So something's got to give. Something has to change. And you have a couple options. Option A, you can per push further in the direction of indoctrination campaigns. You can say, well, it's not successful because we haven't gone hard enough at teaching the things that suit our agenda. Or, or alternatively, you can do, I think what everyone knows is the right thing to do and say, hey, what historically has worked? I mean, we we have a we have a literal textbook for knowing what worked. We can just look at history and see, hey, what has been proven time and time again to be successful? What actually works? Because we already know. If you're trying to find out, hey, which tires work best for my car? And you you know, 99% of your driving is on the road. You might go down a dirt trail every once, but 99% of your driving is on the road, and you tried these great road-ready tires a couple years ago. And you got great gas mileage, your car was in good shape, you didn't have to drive it hard at all. And since then, you've switched those out for all-terrain tires, off-road tires, and you're trying every sort of tire under the sun, and your gas mileage is going down, the driving is rougher, it's not enjoyable. And someone comes to you and they say, Hey, you know, you know what you should do? You should get even more off-road tire. You you should get a tire that's that's even more hefty, even more designed for off-roading. You'd say, Well, you know, I'm not so sure that that's gonna work, actually. It seems like we already tried the thing that worked years ago, and maybe we should just go back to that. Maybe we already have a formula that we know creates what we want to see. And it just so happens when it comes to our education systems, we have that. We know what works. We know what's suitable for children. And it just so happens that the pornographic libraries and the radical indoctrination campaigns have not thus far been successful. There's no reason to assume that running them even harder would be more successful than they are now. In fact, arguably, I think the logic would show that it's going to get worse if we do that, as opposed to a simple return to a time of real education, to where we teach classic literature, we teach the things that children deserve to learn, we teach the things that made the country great, we teach the values this country is founded upon, we teach real history, not revisionist history, teach real history as to what actually happened, which includes teaching the Bible because much of our ethics and our legal system is rooted in the framework of scripture. We teach those things, and you might be shocked to know your kids are probably going to be smarter. In fact, that's why a very large number of people have turned to homeschooling, because they don't trust the curricula that comes out of the public school system. They say, hey, you know, I think it'd be better if we taught these things from a Christian Western perspective. I think that would be more successful. It always has been. Why wouldn't it continue to be so? Nevertheless, that was the testimony from yesterday. And again, we don't have the update on exactly what we expect to come out of that. There's not really one way or the other in terms of where we see this going. Nevertheless, when we get back from the break, we're going to jump over and talk about the former, obviously, chief financial officer, the CFO of a company that is headquartered in the Woodlands, who has been arrested and accused of embezzling millions of dollars in company funds and using them, of course, for personal expenses. If you'd like to hear more about that story, feel free to stick around. In the meantime, we'd love for you to text in. Let us know your thoughts on the stuff we're covering or the stuff that we are not. You can go to 713, text at 713-779-5978. One more time. Text in at 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. And I'll be right back with the embezzling case up in the woodlands after the break.

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CFO Arrested In Embezzlement Probe

SPEAKER_16 25:56

So the investigation into this chief financial officer up in the Woodlands started back in October of last year, which was not that long ago, only a few months ago, and focused on Jeffrey Solew, 44 years old, who had been recently terminated from his position as the CFO of Bawater Pipeline. Over the course of several months, detectives from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office reconstructed years of financial records to uncover a pattern of systemic misappropriation. The investigation revealed that Solew allegedly used company funds for unauthorized personal expenses ranging from luxury goods to high-end vacations. The Montgomery County District Attorney's Office reviewed the findings, and an arrest warrant for first degree felony theft was issued. This week, he was arrested in Round Rock, Texas, is currently awaiting transfer back to Montgomery County to face those charges. And so the Sheriff's Office came out and said detectives working white-collar fraud and theft cases of this magnitude spend months gathering financial data that can span years, creating a comprehensive timeline of events to trace the flow of funds through a detailed reconstruction of numbers and expense categories. The investigation remains ongoing, and detectives are continuing to look through financial documents and evidence to determine the full extent of the theft committed by Salu. It is estimated that the total amount could be multiple millions of dollars. Now, obviously stuff like this happens, right? Embezzlement is unfortunately not that uncommon. And it's it's absolutely wild to me because it seems like, and I could be wrong on this, they talk all the time about how crime is driven by people who are socioeconomically challenged. In my estimation, it seems like actually, uh that that may be a minorly common thread, but there is a lot of white-collar fraud. One of the main differences is one, white-collar flaw white-collar fraud often goes unnoticed. Primarily because the people that are working in the white-collar industry are often, at least educationally, more intelligent than their socioeconomically challenged peers. And so, you know, they're able to get away with it. But what you'll find is I think there's a far more common thread among criminals, especially criminals when it comes not just to violence in general, uh, but specifically when it comes to theft, regardless of the type, whether it's armed robbery, burglary, vehicle theft, or some sort of white-collar f fraud like embezzlement or cheating your taxes, right? What I find is the most common thread among these sorts of people is not related to their socioeconomic status. It is not related to what class they're in, it is not related to how much money they make. All of those things seem like minor side issues compared to what is actually the most common threat among all of them, which is you might have guessed it, discontent. It is people who are not content with what God has given them, who are not getting with their status in life. And by the way, I don't have an issue with, to a degree, a desire for more than you have now. I I want to be very clear because the Bible's also very clear on this. You know, you'll hear a lot of people, uh and it it's I I say this often, but there's there's ditches on both sides of the truth. You can go, you can go far to the right of the truth and you can go far to the left of the truth. There's not just one ditch on one side and the other side is just open road. Uh, there actually are two ditches. And so on the one hand, of course, you have prosperity preachers who say, Hey, if you pray and you give our church lots of money, you too will be rich. God will financially bless you. Not found in scripture, but not true. It's all a lie. And the other ditch, you also have a lot of pastors in the church uh who've done this thing where they talk about how it's good to be poor, where it is a good thing to not have money because money is the root of all evil. To which I always say, actually, that's not what the Bible says. The Bible, again, is very clear on this. It says the love of money is the root of all evil. And of course it is, right? That's what greed is. It's the love of money. Discontent largely is the love of money. And so the common thread here is not how much money you have, it's how you view money. Do you love it? Are you discontent with what you have? And discontentedness is is different from some level of, hey, I'd like to have more than this, right? And I I get this. If you're making, you know,$20,000,$30,000 a year, you're in the very lowest income bracket imaginable. I think it is totally reasonable to say, hey, I want to work hard and one day do better. I mean, the Bible even talks about the fact that if you do not provide an inheritance for your children, you're evil. Like we're called to do that. We're called to work hard and save and be good budgeters and good stewards of what God's given us so that we can give our children things. Right? It used to be common, it used to be very common in our world and in the West specifically, uh, to leave your children with a home, right? To give your children land, to to offer them assistance as they came into adulthood, especially. That used to be normal. That used to be just an understood thing that we did. Uh the Bible talks about it. And now we're in this world where it it's seemingly horrendous to save your money. It's seemingly nonsensical to leave things for your I just want to give all my money out to charity, I don't want to leave anything for my kids. I think that's actually very nefarious, very evil. Um, I think it's very disordered. But on the other ditch, of course, you have people that nothing will ever be enough. I think white-collar crime, especially, kind of highlights that. You have to imagine uh if you're working as the chief financial officer for a company that's making enough profit that you can get away for years with stealing millions of dollars, clearly you're working for a pretty sizable company. And furthermore, you're probably making pretty good money. Probably more than enough to not only survive, but to thrive, to take some of those vacations, to enjoy your time, to have a nice house, to have a nice car. I can imagine if you're if you're willing to budget, you make more than enough money to do those things. And so white collar fraud especially kind of highlights this. It's this level of discontentedness that people have with whatever they have, and nothing will ever be enough. Now, with that being said, before we go to the break, real quickly here, kind of harping back to the State Board of Education, because we got to text in. We're about to go to the break, but we got a text in. It says, crazy spiritual warfare at the hearings. I'm sure you got your sources, but I got a lot of footage. I took notes if you have any questions. The angle most people took in opposition was that there was too much curriculum for students to fully comprehend the material. But there were a lot of interesting things from both sides. I got on film, one Muslim tried to say that they ended slavery first. Also, he did a moment with Bonnie Wallace, getting to reclaim our time when talking about explicit material in schools. And I got an interview with her, the video goes up on my channel at nine o'clock. And yeah, Bonnie Wallace, first of all, incredible, an incredible witness for Christ, does a great job promoting the end of explicit pornographic material in our schools. But furthermore, you're you're absolutely right about the spiritual warfare stuff. This is why people come at me and they say, Michael, this is a political show, not a not a religious show. Why are you always spending so much time on theology and and we're talking about white-collar fraud and you're diving into things about religion and sin and what God has called us to? Yeah, because as it turns out, uh there's no such thing as religious neutrality. As it turns out, our politics should be driven by Christianity. That should be the bedrock of everything else. Everything else we believe about the world flows out of our beliefs about Christian faith. Everything else. And I think it's impossible to have a good faith conversation about politics where we are not introducing the themes and the concepts from scripture all the time. You can be as upset as you as you'd like that my show is pretty religious, that we talk about Jesus pretty often, which we do. That's not going to change because I don't think there's a fair way to dissect the political spectrum without understanding what we're actually facing. And we're not facing some random conglomerate of people who disagree with us. We are facing a spiritual war. That is, that is what we're in. The Bible says that, evidence shows that everything we're facing showcases it every single day at things like the State Board of Education meeting, in the crimes that are being committed, in the way that our just system operates, in the way that our judicial activism is on display, all these things are religious claims and religious issues. And I think it's a massive disservice to not only our listeners, but to listeners of everybody else in the country when we don't properly address what's happening and why it's happening. It's not happening just because people disagree with you. It's not happening just because, well, your truth and my truth. No, it's happening because there is truth and people hate it. It's happening because there is something called objective reality that we can glean and we can know, we can learn, and we can understand. And when you put yourself on that level and you say, Hey, my job is to speak the truth, that's what I'm going to do. You're gonna face a lot of pushback. On by the way, I promise you, both sides of the political spectrum. I get pushback from people on the right. I've had people who consider themselves conservative that have complained at how much I talk about Christ on my show, and I'll give them the same answer I'll give anybody, which is one, that's never going to change. And two, I it's not going to change, not only because I think that God has called me to do that, but furthermore, because there's there's no logical way to produce the kind of show you're that I want to produce without it being explicitly religious in nature. You can't do it. How how how are you gonna go after the pornographic material if your standard for why it's wrong is not rooted in something bigger than you and your opinion? It's rooted in something. And I happen to believe and to know that what I root my beliefs in is the truth. And so we're we'll we'll talk about that and and we'll be very clear about it. With that being said, when we get back from the break, we're going to address uh this FBI raid here in the Houston area uh that happened yesterday. We'll go over the suspects, the drug charges, the raids, uh the court authorization, all of that when we get back. As always, if you would like to text into the show, let us know your thoughts on anything going on. You can text in at 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wills. I'll be right back after the break. So stick around.

SPEAKER_18 36:38

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SPEAKER_11 36:54

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SPEAKER_04 37:24

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SPEAKER_06 39:56

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SPEAKER_13 40:25

Patriot Talk 920 is your Houston base camp for the America First Movement. I'm Todd Starns, and join me weekdays at 11 on Patriot Talk 920 and online at Patriot Talk920.com.

Restitution Versus Prison Time

FBI Raid Hits East Houston

SPEAKER_16 40:53

We get a text in it says, I know you don't like prison, so what would you do with someone who embezzles millions of dollars? Well, that's actually very easy. I'm glad you asked, because I I actually meant to say that in the last segment and I didn't. We were just going to move on. But since you asked, I'll provide my answer here quickly before we talk about the FBI rates. I think it's very clear what we should do with people like this. Uh they one, obviously should lose their job. That's very clear. They also now should, whatever they embezzled and they spent, they must pay back. And I actually think it's fair to say, especially with how in our modern culture we've we've jeopardized this so badly, I think at least for a time, I think it's worth visiting and saying, hey, maybe we do a double reimbursement, uh restitution twice the amount you stole, uh, which means very likely that means forced labor, possibly for the rest of his life. He could be a lifelong slave. Not Chattelle slavery, but indentured servitude. I think it's a totally fair response for a thief. I I think it's just. I think that part of justice is making the victim whole as much as is possible. I think that full or double restitution would do that in this particular case. Uh I think that prison is unfair because you're not going to get your money back. The guy that stole from you, you're now gonna pay to house and feed him. I think it's crazy. I think it's lunacy, actually, as opposed to something like restitution. But nevertheless, that that answers that question. Let's get into this. So a major federal law enforcement operation was underway yesterday in the Clinton Park neighborhood in East Houston, where multiple agencies were executing court authorized search warrants. Uh, the coordination was being led by the FBI Houston's violent crime task force, with agents working apparently across several locations as part of an ongoing federal investigation. Hours after the raid were first confirmed, a law enforcement source said that multiple suspects have been arrested on charges involving guns and drugs. They said that an official update is expected from the U.S. Attorney's Office related to the exact number of arrests and specific charges. Alongside FBI Houston, the operation included assistance from FBI San Antonio investigators, the U.S. Marshals Service, Texas Department of Public Safety Troopers, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Agents, the Houston Fire Department, and multiple SWAT teams. Investigators were working at four separate locations with confirmed activity along Delaware Street, Calawa, Callaway Street, and Fidelity Street. We also had some news coming out of a chopper from KPRC that apparently captured scenes of the raids, heavy law enforcement presence, uh, boxes, evidence bags, other items back to their vehicles. They have not released additional details about the suspects themselves or the broader scope of the case, right? Because obviously, yeah, you're gonna find drugs in a lot of neighborhoods, but what drove you to these neighborhoods specifically? What problem was there that kind of launched this investigation? We don't know those details as of right now, though I'm sure we'll get them soon. Uh officials continue, of course, to stress that the operation is court authorized, and there is no threat to public safety, though residents should have expected a significant law enforcement presence for several hours yesterday. And so I I think this is a good thing. Again, I keep saying it. Have to do better with our our law enforcement with criminality. The next step in this, obviously, and arguably the more important step right now is that we get our justice system back in line. Uh it the these these seizures and arrests ultimately are meaningless if we give all these criminals who do these things a slap on the wrist and then let them back out for them to then go back to jail again one day and so on and so forth. Obviously, there is a growing need for a strong justice system to come in and actually do their job, to provide punitive damages to people who commit crimes. Say, hey, you know what? You're gonna face much harsher repercussions than we used to give you. Because this, as we mentioned with public school, this is not working. And interestingly enough, we have a formula for things that we know work better. So I don't know why we're still trying our hand at the whole rehabilitation nonsense. It's not been successful. It's not going to be successful, and it ignores the intent of justice in the first place. Just in principle, it's bad. It's bad all I mean, it's bad. Well, however you look at it, it's bad. Every way, imaginable, it's bad. That's it. And so our criminal justice system has got to do something. We've we the arrests are great. I'm very appreciative for the work of the FBI, for the work of our marshals, the work of our SWAT teams and our fire departments and our police departments. But those things are only as successful as the judges that then actually pursue justice. With that being said, to wrap up the first hour of the show, when we get back, we're gonna jump over and we're of course going to cover the weather, our weather report that covers not only this morning, but what we expect coming out of the rest of this week, as we're now in the middle of the week. And after that, of course, we have Texas Scorecard coming on at the top of the next hour. So stick around. You're listening to Lone Stark Conservative. Text in at 713-779-5978. That's 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. And we'll be right back with the weather report after the break.

SPEAKER_15 46:02

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SPEAKER_13 49:45

Patriot Talk 920 is your Houston base stamp for the America First Movement. I'm Todd Starns and join me weekdays at 11 on Patriot Talk 920 and online at PatriotTalk920.com.

Houston Weather Turns More Humid

SPEAKER_16 50:23

I got a text in, by the way. It says, Good morning, Michael. As Christians, we can't put our faith in a compartment that we only bring out on Sundays. As you said, all part of our lives are guided by faith. Keep up the good work. I've heard many politicians who've made that claim, by the way. Well, I just leave my faith at the door when I walk into the House or I walk into the Senate to do my votes or to write my bills. Uh no. Because if your faith exists, if it's real, then of course it's going to reach to the furthermost. Of course, it's going to result in a change of beliefs about what's good. If if the Bible's true and you believe that, then wouldn't your definition of what's good and what's bad be different than someone who thinks the Bible isn't true? Case in point. Thanks for the decks in, by the way. We always appreciate it. We're going to cover the weather here. We only have about a minute, so I'm going to get through this as fast as I can, give you the biggest updates. Um, the stretch we've had of mild, mostly quiet weather is about to turn more humid. It will appear gradual at first with rain chances increasing by tomorrow. Those rain chances are going to peak on Friday. We're expecting severe weather to stay well north and west of Houston, though we ha could have periods of rainfall, very heavy rainfall, that could lead to slick roads, minor street flooding. Humidity is going to be the main thing here. Um, it's gonna stay closer to the coast today, uh, but that atmospheric moisture is going to move through the Houston area with those highs climbing into the lower 80s. By tomorrow, that moisture is going to deepen, and we're gonna have a weak coastal atmospheric disturbance that's going to set the stage for more widespread activity. Showers could begin as early as tomorrow morning near the coast before expanding inland through the afternoon. The best chance of a rain are gonna be near and south of the IT corridor, with some storms lingering into tomorrow night. And of course, by Friday, that's when that increases. Um, isolated strong storms could develop a little bit north and west. Friday through Sunday, we could have some upper atmospheric disturbances that are gonna move across the United States, including here in Houston. Uh, we'll keep you guys more updated as we get through that tomorrow. In the meantime, that'll do the first hour of the show. When we get back at the top of the next hour, we're gonna have a Texas scorecard coming on to talk about some looking into where our spending is going. All of that, when we get back, do that to text in. The number is 713-779-5978. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and I'll be back at the top of the next hour.

SPEAKER_11 52:47

From deep in the heart of Texas, you just God loving Patriot, the voice of reason.

$33 Billion Permian Grid Expansion

SPEAKER_16 53:13

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative brought to you by Textellant A C service. Welcome back. There's a major development right now unfolding here in the state of Texas that could impact your property rights, your energy bills, uh, really the whole future of our power grid. A massive transmission project known as the Permian Basin Reliability Plan is being pushed forward. And lawmakers are, of course, starting to raise some pretty serious concerns about how it's being handled. Joining me right now, the journalist who's been covering this story very closely, that would be Robert Montoya from Texas Scorecard. Robert, thanks for being here this morning.

SPEAKER_09 53:48

Thanks for having me here, Michael.

SPEAKER_16 53:49

And I'm very excited to get into this. Let's let's kick it up pretty simply, kind of giving a little bit of background to our listeners who who may not have been following this story, myself included. What what exactly is the Permian Basin Reliability Plan and why should we care about it? What is it?

SPEAKER_09 54:04

Well, it lawmakers uh originally intended to authorized for this to be just a limited fix for a specific reason, namely the Permian Basin. But the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which is a statewide bureaucracy state agency, they expanded something far, far larger. And why this whole situation matters is agencies that involve this process have done this with minimal public input. And what this means for Texans is look, this could lead to increased costs, and more agencies probably taking similar actions with little direct accountability.

SPEAKER_16 54:43

Right. And so, of course, you mentioned there uh that lawmakers originally targeted this or are authorized this as a sort of targeted fix, a regional uh solution for the premium basin specifically, but now it's turned into something that's much bigger, not just in terms of the spending, but the project itself, the scope of the project. How how big are we talking? What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_09 55:02

Well, so you down to actual numbers. What the Public Healthy Commission of Texas and other organizations have done now is they've taken this plan, and what they're gonna do is they're going to build extra high voltage transmission lines into the Permian Basin, which is an energy resource-rich area. And the cost of it to be close to right now tends to be$33 billion, which some people have said that's gonna be the cost of about more than$200 a year for typical household under the current cost allocation method.

SPEAKER_16 55:41

Right, so I think it's fair to say that this went from a localized solution that maybe was justifiable, uh, to one of the largest transmission expansions, possibly in Texas history. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_09 55:52

One thing we do know is that uh it has been stated in uh administrative hearing uh early last March that the company that's gonna be doing the building encore, they have absolutely no experience building these extra high voltage transmission lines, which are six 765 kilovolt watt lines.

unknown 56:12

Right.

SPEAKER_16 56:12

And so one of the more concerning parts, and you've already kind of said it, uh, is how the expansion itself happened. Not just the original regional, you know, localized solution, but it's sort of how this expansion kind of got going. Um you mentioned that there hasn't been a lot of public input, and and I want you to kind of walk us through that. Who actually made the decision then? Because the lawmakers, of course, intended it to be this targeted solution. Uh the people have not had a lot of input. So where's the decision coming from then as to scale this project up, especially to much larger than it was originally?

SPEAKER_09 56:42

Well, the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas, also known as ERCOT, which is supervised by the Public Utilities Commission of Texas, they both gave their blessing to Encore, which everyone should know that have probably heard that name at least once or twice. It's an electricity delivery company. They gave their blessing for Encore to more fit project far beyond its original intent. And even when this was announced, lawmakers started communicating saying, hey, we didn't intend to do what we intended the original solution for permeant basin and do this entire statewide project or building the transmission line, actually transmission line into the perme invasion, which is rich with natural with natural gas.

SPEAKER_02 57:29

Right.

SPEAKER_09 57:31

American Stewards of Liberty, you know, got this entire resource problem. American Stewards of Liberty, which opposes this, they said that you know this project is akin to hauling water to the feet.

SPEAKER_16 57:44

Yeah, it feels pretty insane. One one question that I have on this, um, since we're talking about Encore, the Public Utility Commission, Urcot, um, I want to be clear, I want to get your your position on this. This doesn't, at least the expansion itself does not seem to be something the legislature explicitly voted on at this expanded level, right? This this was voted on at the regional level and has morphed into this only from the top down, correct?

SPEAKER_09 58:07

That's been the criticism that lawmakers did not intend for this to happen, and now these agencies, these bureaucrats, are kind of just doing their own thing and going far beyond what they were originally told to do.

Eminent Domain And Property Rights

SPEAKER_16 58:21

Right. And I think this is where rightfully people are going to get a little uneasy because you've got now billions of dollars and massive infrastructure decisions being made uh without the input of the people and possibly just as important, without direct legislative sign-off and approval. Uh and so you've got big it seems like companies and commissions, uh, and this is again the sort of bureaucracy that I think people are frustrated by, where rather than it being a we the people, by the people for the people, what rather than it being led by the people and those people who represent the people who are elected to do so, you've got this unelected bureaucracy who's now making these decisions to spend, again, billions of dollars that's going to go back to Texans uh without the legislative sign-off to do so. Now, kind of getting into that, I don't want to go too far into this, but I want to get your position on it. Uh, you have uh Kevin Sparks, state senator, who has been raising alarms about eminent domain, uh saying that he's been getting calls from landowners. Obviously, any sort of massive project, infrastructure-related, land-related, can result in eminent domain. What do we think about private property impacts?

SPEAKER_09 59:25

Well, there has been a broad coalition building with concerns about private property. The hearing I mentioned earlier, the one in March, that was an administrative law hearing at the state office of administrative hearings. And there you had dozens of parties, including landowners, lining up in opposition to this plan, concerned about it, and at the very least, saying, Look, listen to us. This is our property we're talking about here. So for the fact they would be motivated to say, look, we're going to contest this and we're going to participate in a hearing in front of three administrative law judges, uh, that shows you how private property owners in this area are deeply concerned about this.

SPEAKER_16 1:00:05

Right, I think they should be. It's not just theoretical. I mean, this could mean things like eminent domain, government taking easements across private land. And really, once that process really kicks off, there's not a whole lot of leverage, as we've seen in many past cases for landowners at that point. And so I think it's very, very cautionary how we approach this because once we start doing that, um, especially given that there's not the legislative approval for the expansion, I think that's very concerning, as you've seen in the testimony from landowners, private property owners.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:34

And the question again is again, this was never explicitly authorized by state lawmakers. So you have the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT uh seemingly uh just jumping abroad and just doing what they wish without explicit approval from lawmakers and minimal public input.

How Ratepayers Get Stuck Paying

SPEAKER_16 1:00:53

Right. And so I think another uh another aspect, and you kind of talked about it, you kind of went by it, but I want to dive into it uh because we have to talk about cost. Obviously, it's not just the imminent domain, it's not just the lack of legislative approval. Texans, of course, care about how their money's being spent and where that money is going to come from. I think your reporting shows this could cost somewhere in the ballpark again of like$33 billion. Uh, who and where is that money expected to come from?

SPEAKER_09 1:01:18

Well, previously reported, um, it's the people have found that about it's gonna cost about three billion dollars annually, which breakdowns are more than two hundred dollars a year for typical household. Um time before they even finalize what the actual rates will be. First, he said, you know, we have to finish construction, it could take three years. Then they would be able to get the information to show what the costs actually are, and then a rate case will be filed when they start determining what the rates will be. So this could go even higher, and we don't have a finalized answer yet.

SPEAKER_16 1:02:28

Right. And so the original of$200 a year, I think, was already mind-blowing for people. Uh paying an extra$200 a year in rates is already crazy for the typical household, and lawmakers are now kind of making clear that we're more moving forward pretty quickly on construction without finalizing that cost allocation. So, Texans, I think, is this fair to say that Texans are essentially being told, we'll figure out what you owe after we build it.

SPEAKER_09 1:02:52

Well, another thing critics would point out is that this project seems to be going way fast at an accelerated rate. Which raises the question of why? Why the need for this speed, why not delicately take our time and make sure that this project is being built in a very wise way where it's affordable and will actually benefit taxes.

Transmission Lines Without New Generation

SPEAKER_16 1:03:15

Right. So I think this is also where it gets really interesting. The justification for this project, we mentioned that it's the reliability, right? Uh, but you mentioned this administrative law hearings, uh, the Senator Sparks questioning people. Uh I think Senator Sparks also raised concerns uh that on top of the cost allocation, on top of not knowing the rates, on top of not knowing eventually what this means for private property owners, I think there's also concerns that we may not even have the kind of power generation needed to justify the lines in the first place. Can you kind of give us some background on what that means?

SPEAKER_09 1:03:45

Yeah, and one of the key things to remember is we're talking about building transmission lines. Building transmission lines, not regeneration transmission lines, something to transmit something that exists. And response to your point, when you were talking with uh Mr. Gleason of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, he referenced a University of Texas presentation that showed that by 2029, our state's energy generation has to be up to 52% of the solar wind and batteries. And the only reply that we could have was like, well, um the mark design doesn't it currently it currently doesn't incentivize reliable energy sources like natural gas. And that they need a long-term solution in order to do that. They have something called the Text Energy Fund, which says it's helping in the short term, but in the long term, uh they need to be another solution.

SPEAKER_16 1:04:54

Right, no, absolutely. So in plain English, to kind of boil that down for our listeners, we're building, you mentioned the transmission lines, we're building these massive lines, massive infrastructure, again, billions of dollars, but we may not even have enough reliable always-on power to send it through them, which would be the main justification for doing this in the first place, even if you said this was a good project to undertake. The justification, the background for why that would be the case is that we have a reason, a justifiable reason to do so. And so, uh, you know, you mentioned earlier it's kind of like hauling water to the sea because we already have abundant natural gas there. I I think the argument is fair that we're we're kind of solving the wrong problem.

SPEAKER_09 1:05:29

Yeah, at the end, like what we're talking about here is building transmission lines, not new reliable generation. And you have to remember, it wasn't that long ago we had something called a winter storm and the blackouts in 2021. And one of the causes one of the key causes of that was that we had far too much unreliable energy in our state uh energy mix. And now we're projected to have up to two sixty percent of unreliable energy in our mix by twenty twenty nine. Why are we talking about transmission loss?

SPEAKER_16 1:05:57

Right, especially when it's going to cost us, and then Gets into the pushback here. Uh, we talked a little bit about how opposition is kind of forming from landowners, organizations, multiple parties that are contesting this. How significant do you see that pushback right now?

SPEAKER_09 1:06:19

Yeah, you put in front of the people.

Key Deadlines And Where To Track

SPEAKER_16 1:06:51

Right now, this is in front of the administrative logic just now. So in terms of process and where things go from here, what is the expectation as to how things are going to continue to develop in this case?

SPEAKER_09 1:07:09

Um final order 68 weeks after that. So we will see what happens. The hearing was uh March 2nd through the 4th, so the clock is ticking right now.

SPEAKER_16 1:07:39

Right. So now the final question I've got here as we're wrapping up, what should Texans be watching for over the next few months? Uh like what are the key moments where this could move forward, get slowed down? Um, that means like application filings, approval process, what do we need to be paying attention to, especially if we want to have any input or or any effect on what's happening, that we want to have a say in this?

SPEAKER_09 1:08:00

If you're concerned about this, maybe you're probably thinking, like, wow, you know, we've got a backup trying to end the domain that you've never heard of. And even after that, um, PUC will be where to keep your eyes on. And we at Texas Scorecard will be watching this and we'll be trying to bring the best information we can to you about it.

SPEAKER_16 1:08:30

Perfect. And speaking of, uh as I was about to ask, as my final wrap-up here, how do people pay attention? Of course, they can they can watch the city administrative hearings, pay attention to that, have their input. How do people keep up to date with all the reporting that you guys are doing on this case and so many others?

SPEAKER_09 1:08:45

Well, just go to TexasScorecard.com. You also find us on X, Facebook, and wherever you like to get your social media.

SPEAKER_16 1:08:51

Perfect. Well, as always, Robert, I appreciate you coming on, giving us your time this morning and for staying so involved in this reporting so that people can stay up to date on what's happening all across the state.

SPEAKER_09 1:09:01

Thank you very much, Michael.

SPEAKER_16 1:09:02

Absolutely. With that being said, ladies and gentlemen, when we get back from the break, we're gonna jump over to that Baytown store. We have a college educator who's now being charged with creating AI-generated explicit images of minors. We'll talk about it when we get back from the break. As always, if you would like to text in, the number is 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and I'll be right back with that Baytown College professor after the break.

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C.S. Lewis Warning On Tech Power

Why AI Is Not Like Guns

SPEAKER_16 1:13:44

So this guy out in Baytown is being accused of using artificial intelligence to create sexually explicit images depicting a minor according to a criminal complaint. Ruiz's girlfriend told police she found the images on his phone and then reported them to authorities. Good on her. The complaint states the images were created using screenshots from the victim's Instagram account, who is a mutual friend of Ruiz's girlfriend. Reese is accused of using AI to create a person who appears to be a child. He then reportedly created sexually explicit videos. Investigators said the images also involved involved an adult complainant who told believe she did not give consent for her image to be used, and she did not know who the child in the content is. Now, record Joe Ruhese is corrected both connected to both the Lee College and Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District as a staff member. He is listed as the head debate coach of Lee College, according to documents. In that position, he had contact with Goose Creek ISD high school students who are enrolled at the early college high school program, impact, they're at the college. So he was interacting with high school students as well as college students. Lee College confirmed that he is an employee has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. In a statement, they said the college is cooperating with the Baytown Police Department investigation of an employee who's been arrested in charge of the misdemeanor. They have been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. The college said it is conducting an internal review in accordance with its policies and applicable laws, including Title IX. Meanwhile, you have a spokesman uh for Goose Creek ISD, just highlighting, of course, that he was not employed. They said uh that the district is going to follow up with families, the safety and well-being of their students remains a top priority. Uh, and they said that he's not been employed by them, even though there might be some connection there. And so Texas law, of course, makes it clear, this is a relatively recent update, that you cannot create or share AI-generated sexual assisted images of someone without their consent, period. Much less, of course, including children. Uh a law passed in 2023 and then expanded during the last legislative session back in 2025 bans the production or distribution of deep fake pornography that appears to show a real person engaging in sexual activity they did not actually participate in. It also criminalizes threats to create or share that material for harassment, coercion, or extortion. Cases can be charged as misdemeanors or elevated to the felonies, particularly if the victim is under 18, and courts can order restitution for victims. At the federal level, protections are even stronger when minors are involved, with existing laws banning sexually explicit images of children, including realistic computer-generated content. For adults, uh, there isn't really a single comprehensive federal law. It's all kind of down to the state, leaving victims to rely on again, state law, civil action, et cetera. Now, uh, they talk kind of about how to prevent being a victim, audit your social media. And I said this before, keep your kids off of social media as much as possible, right? If you have a private page that you have just close friends and family, even then, of course, it's always or often someone that you know. Uh, but be very cautious where there's pictures of your children in general. This stuff is being created all of the time. Very few people are caught, if any, and it results in this where people are viewing your children in that way, even if you never uploaded anything sexual at all. I mean, it can be as simple as an innocent picture of of what happened at Easter and this sort of stuff is happening. It's why I tell people you know, photos of my children are not going to be found almost anywhere on the internet unless you're you're on private pages, right, where I've kept this stuff locked down, hidden under lock and key, because I know how big of a problem this actually is. But I think this also gets into a lot of the issues with AI in general, with technological innovation, right? It's it's not just the deep fake pornography that is at play in these particular issues. I think in a lot of cases, when you're looking at AI and you're looking at technological innovation, I think there is uh there's actually a phenomenal book written on this. Uh C.S. Lewis wrote a book called That Hideous Strength. I think it's the third book in like a space sci-fi trilogy. Um, but it gets kind of pulled on pretty often because he he dove into how in this sci-fi reality, the scientists and the innovators, the entrepreneurs in the technological realm were basically commuting with demons. And of course it's it's fiction, it's a work of fiction, it's scientific fiction. But I think it has uh a lot of a lot of things that are are connected here. And so I want to I wanna kind of contrast this because C.S. Lewis, again, much wiser man than I, and he said some crazy things. First of all, he said when intelligence, power, and systems detach from moral truth, they don't elevate humanity, they begin to reshape and control it. If that's not what's happening with AI right now, I I I don't know what to tell you. That's the exact tension that we're in right now. In the book, That Hideous Strength, uh, he has what's called the NICE. It's this scientific, technocratic institution which claims to act for progress and efficiency, which I'm sure you're hearing all the time, but it operates above public accountability, which I think maps very cleanly onto big tech companies, AI labs, government tech partnerships. In the book, these groups build powerful systems, they then set the rules for their own systems and then often move faster than public understanding or oversight. And so his warning there is that power concentrated in experts without moral grounding becomes dangerous even if it sounds rational at the outset. You also have his broader philosophy from C.S. Lewis highlighted in The Abolition of Man, uh, that once objective morality is rejected, humans stop being treated as ends of themselves and become means. Humans are reduced to data points, uh, their behavior gets predicted, nudged, optimized, investigated, and then you have content designed to manipulate their attention, manipulate their emotion. Uh the parallel there, of course, is that in the books, uh, this group seeks to remake humanity through science. Uh but AI is doing that right now. That's exactly what we see happening. Um in the novel, decisions that affect millions are made by people who don't face consequences, who don't answer to the public, and who believe they are justified by their pursuit of progress. AI, I think, raises the exact same issues, right? Who's accountable? Who is accountable when AI causes harm? Because of course, you can go after individual people who used AI to do that, um, but but who decides how it shapes speech, how it shapes thought, how it shapes culture? And Lewis's insight on that was very clear. He said the more abstract and system-driven that it power becomes, the easier that it is for anyone who has any sort of power to evade the moral responsibility and culpability for the actions they're doing. And so the illusion to progress, I think, is the main highlight here. In the book, this technocratic group called NICE presents itself as rational, scientific, and forward-thinking. But underneath that, you can very clearly see through his writing that they are manipulative, they are dehumanizing, and they're hollow in any spiritual sense. AI is often framed in exactly the same way. Efficiency, innovation, no emotion, right? Take all those things out of it. But the real question I think that Lewis would ask if he were around today to ask it, given what's happened. I mean, it's it's the predictions and prof the prophetic nature of this book is insane. I think he would ask, does this make man better or simply more controllable? Does it benefit us, or is it causing long-term issues? And so in that hideous strength, he warns about a future where intelligence and power get separated, they become disparate from morals, from any sort of code of ethics, where you have these elite institutions that are using technology and science to sort of reshape humanity in the name of progress and innovation, in the name of, well, it's more efficient, it's more helpful, it's more beneficial. But that's exactly the kind of question that we're now facing with AI. Not whether it's powerful, I mean it is. And we're not gonna deny that it's very good. It's getting better day by day. It's it's it's compounding, it's exponential growth. If you look at AI where it was five years ago and compare it to today, you look at where it was six months ago. I mean, we've grown in the past year more than we grew the the previous four years combined, it has been absolutely explosive growth. So the question is not, hey, is it working? Right? The question is, how's it working? What is it actually doing? Uh whether it is it guided by truth, by accountability, and by human dignity. Because Lewis's warning was very simple to us. When power sorts starts to outrun morality, it doesn't liberate people, it doesn't make people better. It abolishes us, it changes us, it transforms our culture. AI is exactly what Lewis was warning about. Not evil in some sort of cartoon, Dr. Doofenschmurtz's way that you see in the kids' cartoons, uh, but systems of power ultimately that sound intelligent, they look efficient, but they slowly strip away humanity from people. Right. I'm not saying that Lewis predicted AI specifically, but I think that Lewis well diagnosed the pattern of danger that we're now seeing through AI. Right. I think it's fair to say that what Lewis was warning about is what we're having today, not in the sense that he predicted that we would have these sorts of algorithms and the ability to create deep fake pornography, right? Lewis didn't say any of that. I'm not gonna try to make it extra hyper uh hyperbolic and say that's what happened. But it's very clear that this is a real and present danger. And I I've been warning about this for a long time. I've said, look, I think there are many tools that AI is very useful for, right? Uh everything from proofreading to thought analysis, business plans, Excel spreadsheets, computer programming. There's lots of ways that AI is beneficial. There are lots of ways that it can be efficient. Right. And sometimes that is good. I'm not saying that efficiency in progress is always bad, but this is the same question I've had for the left for years. I I had this conversation in high school. Is progress an end or a means? Because if you treat progress as the end, you will do terribly evil things in the name of that end. You'll justify, well, this is good because it progresses us without pausing to think, hey, maybe we're progressing in the wrong direction, right? Imagine, let me give you a very clear stated analogy. I'm driving a car. What's the goal of driving? And I'm not talking about, you know, just going on a joyride. You're trying to get somewhere. Well, obviously the goal is to get to a specific destination. What if I say, no, the goal is just to drive? The goal is just to move forward. Well, now, you know, you're driving on I-10 out west and you end up on one of those mountain ranges as you get closer to California and you drive straight off the edge of the cliff. You could say, Well, I I was just driving in that right direction. I was progressing, I was going towards my destination. But you started treating the driving that direction as the as the benefit rather than the arrival of where you're trying to go. Progress is doing the exact same thing. And that can be cultural progress, it could be technological progress, i any number of types of progress. They're doing the same thing. Hey, instead of focusing on, hey, what should our goal be? I think our goal should be to make mankind better. I think it should be that we get smarter. I think it should be uh that we grow in maturity and responsibility and stewardship, that we become more moral, that we become sanctified as a culture, that we grow in our faith, uh, that we become more virtuous. I think that's a good goal to pursue what is good, true, and beautiful. That I think is a good form of progress. If you don't stop to question that and you just say, no, no, no, no, no, I just want to move forward, what does forward actually mean? How about we stop and ask, hey, is AI getting to a point where it's no longer merely benefiting, but it's just progressing for the sake of it? Because if you're able to make, if you're able to use a tool that can efficiently make child pornography, does no one think that maybe that's a pretty dangerous tool to just have out in the ether? Does no one question that maybe the tool is part of the problem itself? And I get it. I'm gonna get those people out there because I I'll contrast this real quick. Well, Michael, you're a big, you know, you're a big fan of guns, right? In the Second Amendment. You said millions of times that tools are by nature neutral and it's the people who hold them. Guns have never shot anyone. People have used guns to shoot people. Those things are not comparable. It's comparing it's not just apples and oranges. You're comparing apples and squirrels, right? You're comparing apples with the moon. Those two things could not be further separated by by any metric. Guns are a very specific tool used for a very specific purpose. Guns are very different from a nuclear reactor. If I try to build a nuclear bomb in my basement using uranium, I'm going to have a mass investigation. I'm probably going to go to jail. You know why? Because we understand that the Second Amendment does not mean that you can build a nuclear bomb in your basement. It's a specific kind of tool. Just like we say, the technology in general is not the issue. It's a very specific type of that technology that's causing specific problems. AI is that particular technology, it's the nuclear bomb. Yeah, I'm just studying nuclear physics. No, no, you're not. I would love if that's what you were doing. That's why we have standards. And when those standards are broken, and you see people that are creating this sort of stuff, I think there's a real conversation that it it the tool is becoming, it's outrunning its usefulness, right? It is it is progressing faster than the morals that it should be attached by. But to contrast that, guns are not the same way. Okay, it's not the same thing. They truly are a neutral tool used for a very specific purpose. Can they be abused? Sure, they can. Uh but it's not even remotely applicable here. And the reality is that, of course, the left, the hypocrisy here, the glaring hypocrisy. Is the left who uh is big on board with AI and progress and all these sorts of things is the very same left that does want to limit your gun rights, which is why it is essential toward our sponsor, Gun Owners of America. You see, Gunners of America understands that your Second Amendment rights are actually a a moral, human right given to you by God and enshrined in the United States Constitution. They believe wholeheartedly that the Second Amendment should be supported and defended at every level state, local, federal, and so on and so forth. And they do that by campaigning for good candidates to win offices, to promote the Second Amendment. They do that by lobbying for good bills and lobbying against bad ones. They do that by, if need be, suing the government for policies that violate your rights. But that is not free. It comes at a cost. And the cost is actually your membership. You can go to goahuston.com to become a member. That is goahhouston.com. It's a$25 annual membership,$25 per year, which goes right back to continuing that fight at every level. Again, that is G-O-Ahouston.com. With that being said, we only have a couple segments left. So when we return from the break, we are going to jump over and we are going to talk a little bit about this taxpayer-funded lobbying. Because spending on taxpayer-funded lobbying has, of course, been surging here in the state of Texas. Uh, expected to grow to as much as, I'll tease this,$111.5 million during the most recent session. We'll talk more about the details of taxpayer-funded lobbying and how evil it is when we get back from the break. If you would like to text in to the show, let us know your thoughts on anything we're talking about, anything we're covering, or if you want something that you want us to cover, feel free to let us know at 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. You are listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. Don't go anywhere because we'll be right back to talk about taxpayer-funded lobbying after this short break. We'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_18 1:30:08

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Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying Explodes In Texas

SPEAKER_16 1:34:18

Taxpayer funded lobbying in Texas has more than doubled in recent legislative sessions, according to a new report, as efforts to ban the practice continue to stall in the Texas House. Big shocker. The analysis, which was published by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the TPPF, found that taxpayer-funded lobbying expenditures grew from an estimated$20.7 million to forty seven and a half million dollars during the 85th legislature back in 2017. So it kicked off before 2017, being around$20.5 million. That was$20.5 million, by the way, too much. Zero dollars is the baseline. That's what we should be striving for. No money should be spent on this. I mean, the the the whole concept of it is insane in general. But nevertheless, let's get into this story. We'll probably have to pick this up in the final segment. Because during the most recent session, all the financial expenditures are showing that we spent as much as a$111.5 million. Right. Just to clarify, given that we were at$20.5 million back in what, 2015, over the course of 10 years, um, we multiplied our expenditures by over five times, specifically when it comes to taxpayer-funded lobbying. Now, of course, to be clear, to give some background, taxpayer-funded lobbying, uh, just to you know, make sure we all understand are on the same page about what we're discussing, refers to the use of tax dollars, your money, by cities, counties, school districts, and other political subdivisions to advocate for or against legislation. These efforts can take several forms, including hiring contract lobbyists, employing in-house government relations staff, or funding associations that lobby on behalf of their members. Unlike state agencies, which face very strict limits on lobbying activities, local governments here in Texas retain very broad discretion to spend your money on advocacy in the legislature. One of the most prominent vehicles for that advocacy is, of course, government-backed associations like the Texas Association of School Boards, uh, which is again funded by dues paid by public school districts and engagers in lobbying on educated related legislation. And so the report finds that education policy, uh, especially that refer you know that that affects school districts, has been a consistent focus of opposition from taxpayer-funded lobbyists. That includes high-profile debates over school choice proposals, which again were lobbied against using your money. And so you also have lobbyists uh in legislation involving property taxes, local regulatory authority, civil liability. Uh, and in many cases, the report finds that those lobbyists op opposed measures that would limit local government's taxing power, spending or regulatory control. It is such a circular argument. Yeah, we're gonna spend your money to then stop us, or to then stop you from telling us we can't spend your money. We're gonna spend your dollars to stop you from passing measures that would limit how we spend your dollars. I I mean it is one of those clinically insane aspects of public spending I I think I've ever heard of. Uh, but we're going into the last segment here. We have one more break to get through hearing from our from our sponsors before we wrap up the show. We'll kind of round out this story, give my position on taxpayer funded lobbying, why it's evil in general, all of that uh to wrap up the show. This is your last opportunity, by the way, if you would like to text in. That number, as always, is 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You are listening to the Lone Star Conservative. And Lord Willing, I will return right after this short ad break to wrap up the morning show. So stick around. We'll talk soon.

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SPEAKER_06 1:39:40

Aegis Arms Indoor Gun Range invites you to visit us at 3915-South Sam Houston Parkway East in Houston and see all what we have to offer. You can have our on-site gunsmith adjust your personal firearm, sign up for our various classes, plan your next event, and use one of our clean ventilated lanes to practice or to cite in a new purchase. You can also give us a call at 713-503-7645 or visit AGISARMS.com. That's AGISARMS.com.

SPEAKER_16 1:40:10

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SPEAKER_11 1:40:50

Texellent AC Service isn't your average HVAC company. We don't just fix AC. We engineer comfort. Call TexLent AC Service today at 281-402-5100. That's 281-402-5100.

SPEAKER_10 1:41:06

Here's Jim Dotton, host of Texas Home Improvement and owner of Dew West Foundation Repair.

SPEAKER_17 1:41:11

It's no secret, this year has brought us a lot of rain. And that means your foundation is about as good as it's gonna get. So if you're still noticing cracks in your walls and doors that are sticking, call us today so we can help correct the problem before it gets out of hand and more expensive. Call the best. Call Dew West Foundation Repair 713-473-7156. Online at du-west.com.

SPEAKER_13 1:41:36

Patriot Talk920 is your Houston base camp for the America First Movement. I'm Todd Starns and join me weekdays at 11 on Patriot Talk 920 and online at PatriotTalk920.com.

Circular Corruption And Closing Message

SPEAKER_16 1:42:09

You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative, and I'm your host, Michael Wilson. As we wrap up the show this morning, let me explain something that should make every single American, and this isn't even in like a partisan thing. Most things that people say are bipartisan aren't actually bipartisan, but I mean it. This should make everybody angry. We have created a system where the government takes your money and then ultimately ends up using it to lobby itself for more of your money. That is, that is, I mean, the word inefficiency does not do justice to what this is. It's it's not inefficient. It is it is inefficient, but it's not just inefficient. It is wasteful, it's not just wasteful. It is literally let's go with alliteration. It is circular corruption. Think about it. You have a taxpayer funded entity, usually that's a city, uh, rarely it's a state agency, but it's usually like a city or a university or local government or a school board, whatever it is. They hire lobbyists. Those lobbyists go to the legislature, and often, in one way or another, they're arguing for bigger budgets, more programs, or more authority. Right? It's either power or money. It's either power or money. That's usually what it comes down to. And where do they get the money to do that? Well, it comes from you. So you pay taxes so the the government can pay someone to convince itself to take more of your money. That is a closed loop. That is a single circle, a self-feeding machine. Uh and here's the part that makes it worse. It also removes a lot of accountability. Uh, in a normal system, or the way the system should function, maybe I won't call it normal because this has become normal. In a in the way the system should work, if someone wants more money, they should have to persuade the public for it. They have to make a case, they have to justify it. Why should we, the people, give you more money? In this taxpayed lobbying system, they skip you entirely. They use your money. Right? They they they take out the you and just replace you with your money. They take out your money to hire professionals whose entire job it is to navigate back channels, pressure lawmakers, and grow government without your approval. It is it is insulation against any sort of accountability whatsoever. And that is how government continually expands without any sort of consent. Not often through these massive big bills, though they do try to do that, but oftentimes through these technical inside-the-room lobbying campaigns that you'll probably never even hear happened. And the moral is here is very simple you should never be forced to fund advocacy that is used against your own interest, financial or cultural. Right? When you're paying lobbyists who lobby for abortion causes or who lobby for more or or who lobby for for more power to public school districts uh to allow pornographic material, we see this over and over and over again. It is it is quite evil, it is quite circular, it is quite wrong, uh, and it simply doesn't make any sense. Uh and and especially when you when you take in that it's not twenty million dollars, it's not five million dollars, it's now over a hundred and ten million dollars, and it's growing every session. It's probably going to get bigger until it's snipped in the bud down to zero dollars. That will do it for the show today. As always, I want to thank everyone for tuning in. You've been listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. I hope you had a great morning. Lord willing, I'll be back bright and early tomorrow at 6 a.m. Uh for tomorrow's morning show. In the meantime, I would encourage all of you to enjoy the rest of your Wednesday before we have some rain coming tomorrow. Get outside, enjoy the weather, and Godspeed, ladies and gentlemen. Godspeed.