The Lone Star Conservative
Join Michael Wilson as The Lone Star Conservative every morning from 6am - 8am on Patriot Talk 920 AM in Houston, TX. Michael will bring you the latest political news from the Greater Houston Area and around the country while providing commentary from a Christian conservative perspective.
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The Lone Star Conservative
Paxton’s H-1B Fraud Probe And Houston’s New Trash Fee
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Houston wakes up to a packed Friday news cycle, and we dig straight into the stories shaping Texas policy and everyday life. We start with Attorney General Ken Paxton expanding a Texas H-1B visa fraud investigation into dozens of businesses, including allegations of “ghost office” operations that exist on paper but not in practice. I lay out why work visa loopholes matter, how fraud can thrive when incentives are broken, and what it means for American jobs and trust in the immigration system.
Then the show turns sober. Court documents describe a Cypress-Fairbanks ISD case involving a nonverbal autistic student who died after a choking emergency, with allegations that a behavioral specialist used excessive force captured on surveillance video. From there, we track the Texas Education Agency’s push for stronger educator misconduct transparency, including more visible reporting and the kind of accountability parents can actually use when deciding where their kids are safe.
Hour two brings our weekly local recap with Charles Blaine from Urban Reform: Houston’s proposed first-ever trash fee, the city’s budget deficit and financial workarounds, and the controversy over reported City Hall podcast spending. We also talk school choice impacts for Houston ISD, Harris County governance red flags, and a new HPD patrol support team using drones and specialized tools to help response times. We close with the Epic City fair housing legal fight and a major multi-agency seizure of guns and narcotics in Houston.
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Friday Kickoff And News Preview
SPEAKER_08His jelly voice of Reson, jail Michael Wilson.
SPEAKER_21Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. We've made it to Friday. Happy Friday, everybody that's that's tuning in this morning. And that means a couple of things. In general, of course, that means we've got the weekend coming up. We're also on the first day of May. We've officially made it to the month of May, which of course is going to be busy because we're launching. Really, I know that things get warm in April. I know that I don't know, actually, I don't know what day summer officially starts. But May, I think, has always, at least to me, sort of felt like the kickoff of summer. I think it's a fair, I think it's a fair way to look at it. Uh May, it almost always, at least where I grew up, which was close enough to Houston, we could just call it Houston, I think always was warm enough that that it was considered to be summertime. You could finally roll the windows down, enjoy going outside, go to the beach. That that was the kickoff of May. So we made it to May. We made it to the weekend, nearly, and we've got uh I'll say major cool front pouring in, alongside, of course, lots of potential storms and rain and and all this other stuff that I will, of course, keep you guys updated on at the bottom of this first hour, just to make sure you guys are prepared uh before we actually get to the weekend. Especially given this will be the last show until Monday. So anything you need to know about today, tomorrow, or Sunday will only be available today. Of course, you can go elsewhere for your for your weather. There are websites, there are other news reporters, there are other meteorologists. I'm not even a meteorologist, so it's it's kind of irrelevant to say there are other ones, but there are other ones so that you can go check out over the weekend if you need to check back in as to what the weather will be doing. Either way, we will cover the weather report at the bottom of this hour. Of course, at the top of the second hour, that's 7 a.m. Jot this down if you don't already know. If you're not a longtime listener, uh, we have a very exciting guest coming on, and that is none other than Charles Blaine from Urban Reform bringing us the weekly local recap. Every Friday with Charles at 7 o'clock, we kind of go through some of the biggest stories uh that that Charles has compiled with Urban Reform throughout the week. Sometimes it'll be stuff that I've kind of touched on, other times there'll be plenty of things that I didn't I somehow I missed. I it happens all the time. I said it's crazy because there will be plenty of times that I'll have covered a ton of stories that Charles is like, oh, I didn't see that happened. And I'm like, this was massive. What do you mean? And then he'll bring up stuff that was equally huge in terms of news. And I just, I don't know how I missed it. I didn't know that happened. And so it's really fascinating to do those weekly local recaps. One of my favorite segments, not just, you know, interviews, one of my favorite segments of the week. And so we'll do that at 7 o'clock. With that being said, we have lots of news to get into. And I'll go ahead and tease a little bit of it. It's Friday, kind of give you an idea of where we're headed with the show today. Kicking it off, we're gonna talk about Ken Paxton. Uh, our attorney general is now expanding a fraud investigation into H1B abuse, right? The H1B program, just as a bit of a reminder, is the program that allows people, foreign nationals, to come over to our country and take American jobs. I'm sure that's not how they describe it. I'm sure that's not how the government would describe it, but that's what's happening. And so he has now expanded that investigation to nearly 30 Texas businesses. Meanwhile, we have a sci-fair student with autism who's now died after being assaulted by a behavioral specialist, according to court documents. Yeah. Insane. With that, I'm kind of attaching that to a second story because we have updates coming out from the TEA right now regarding that they're gonna have even more educator misconduct transparency. I know you guys might remember on Wednesday we talked with Aaron Anderson, we talked a little bit last week about how the TEA and the SBEC, how they're trying to be more transparent with educator misconduct, right? They're trying to say, hey, you know, it is kind of actually our duty to uh inform parents as to what's going on in their school districts, make sure they know, make sure everyone's clear on the accountability so that we can be held accountable ourselves. And that that has not gone on very long. That's sort of a new development, especially with the Inspector General's office for educator misconduct. But apparently we've got even more on the way from the TEA, the Texas Education Agency. Additionally, HPD has now created their first tactical unit built to specifically support patrols using drones, tools, and specialized backup. And we also have a multi-agency operation which has seized 31 firearms and drugs that includes methamphetamine, Xanax, and other s and other narcotics, right here in Houston. And after that, apparently, I'm hearing news that Mayor Whitmeier might be proposing Houston's first ever trash fee. If you're hearing this for the first time, I'm sure this is a little bit of a you're kind of listening in the background while you're making coffee in the morning. And you just heard, wait, what did he just say? Yeah. Potentially proposing Houston's first ever trash fee to tackle the deficit. So we'll we'll again we'll get into all of that. Oh, and and the epic city developers, you know, the Islamic Epic City, the meadow, the place where they want this Muslim enclave without calling it a Muslim enclave. Uh apparently the latest stumbling block uh for the planned community comes from the Texas Workforce Commission, specifically in regards to fair housing and development. So we'll we'll dive into that holdup um as well as uh time permitting, because you guys know how we get with some of these stories. Sometimes the stories are supposed to end in five minutes, and I take 20 per story. But the FBI is also detailing that alleged Chinese hack of the UTMB COVID-19 researchers early in the pandemic. We knew this happened, but they're giving us way more details given that the person's, you know, you know, been here now, and so we've got access. We're hearing way more about what happened, far more details, far more detail-oriented in regards to releasing to the public, which is very exciting. But I want to kick it off since we're, you know, we're already we're already seven minutes into the show. So we're we're wasting our time just twiddling on our thumbs. Let's actually talk about
Paxton Widens H-1B Fraud Probe
SPEAKER_21something. Specifically, Attorney General Ken Paxton has a probe, and this is not new. It's relatively new, but it's not the update with how many businesses are going to be part of the probe is very new. Uh, but but the probe itself has been going on for a little while now, uh, into of course the alleged abuse, the fraud of the H1B visa program. And a new announcement, back to that office has now issued additional civil investigative demands, uh, those are called CIDs, to a growing list of companies believed to be essentially exploiting the visa by misrepresenting their business operations. These are sometimes, by the way, if you don't know, these are sometimes called ghost office schemes, uh, where these people will essentially have no business at all, they'll rent a facility or or have some sort of office lease, and then they'll do literally nothing. In fact, their actual business is to pretend they have a business so they can import foreign nationals on visas who then pay them a pretty sum. So their job is actually smuggling people into the country, essentially. That's that they're human smugglers. They try to find legal loopholes to do the smuggling, but it's the same thing. That's what these operations are all about. Their money comes because they get paid by foreign nationals who want to come to the U.S., have no way to get here legally, so they open up this business and they say, Hey, I need help from foreigners. And the U.S. government says, okay, rubber stamp of approval, and they get to come here. And so he's named I believe we now have about 30 North Texas businesses that are now under scrutiny. Uh, the robe was initially much smaller than this, and so it's rapidly expanding. And I'm assuming, I'm this is a guess, that there could be significantly more coming, given how fast this whole thing is happening. Nevertheless, among the entities named are Tech Pro IT, Fame PBX, first ranking technologies, qubit's tech systems, blooming clouds, virate solutions, oak technologies, tech path, and techwincy. You might notice you've heard of none of those. Part of the reason may be that they aren't actually real businesses. That might be part of why you've never heard of their stuff, because they don't do anything, allegedly. And so reports cited by the attorney general indicate that some of these businesses may be operating, again, out of non-existent or inactive locations, listing residential homes, non-operational sites as offices, while, of course, sponsoring H-1B visa holders. And so Pagson came out and he said, I will not allow the H1B program to be abused by bad actors seeking to use it as a loophole for allowing foreign nationals to invade Texas. My office will continue working to uncover and put an end to fraud within the H-1B program. And so again, there was originally an investigation back in January where Paxenterville's office had begun, you know, already examining a handful of North Texas companies, but again, it was much smaller when it was originally announced. And at the time, the office kind of pointed to evidence that some firms maintained, again, polished websites, nice advertising services. They looked official on the internet. They looked official where they need to look official in order to bring in foreign nationals. But then they had, again, vacant homes, unfinished businesses, unrented offices listed as their places of business. And you might think to yourself, you know, it seems like they're not doing anything. They're not. They're they make money by smuggling people in. That's the whole point. And so that's not much of a surprise, by the way. Of course. Of course. Of course, if you're going to have a law that has a very clear if you're gonna have okay, let me rephrase this because I think there's actually an even better way to put it that's even clearer. The law surrounding H1B, the the the legal process surrounding work immigration right now is incredibly broken because the whole goal, and I know uh we you're like, this sounds very, very familiar to yesterday. It is, but it's important because this is still happening. It's not changing. I mean, it's changing in the sense that we have investigations that hopefully places like this continue to be shut down, but it needs to be a massive cultural conversation in regards to, hey, it's not just the fraud that's the problem. Do you know why the fraud is happening? Because of course, that's how these people view things. Of course. They get to come to America. You're giving them that opportunity, and they'll do anything to get it. The problem is that opportunity shouldn't be offered at all. The fraud is available because you've you've created the program. A program that, by the way, in its very essence, really is fraudulent. Let me be clear. How do we define fraud? Right? How how do we decide if something is abusing a program or if the program itself is abuse, right? How do we decide that? What's the what's the standard that we use to determine if if something is fraudulent? I would argue if it produces these sorts of negative results, right? If if we were to you know, if we were to look around and say, hey, how how how do you decide whether something is is fraud or I think that it is, I think it is a dishonest act, right? It is a dishonest process, dishonest result, whatever you call it, um, and and a level of deception I think is involved in order to gain some sort of benefit. Obviously. Well, let me tell you something. By that definition, by our definition of fraud, the H1B program itself is fraudulent. The system is fraud because you are using dishonesty and deception, you are, in order to convince the American people that we need help from workers in other countries so that you can benefit, you can pay people less, you can import foreign labor, you can change the culture. No, thank you. Actually, I don't want that. So I actually believe it's not just fraud within the H-1B program. I actually think the H1B program by nature is fraud. You are being dishonest. We don't need help. We actually have it quite covered at this point. We actually have plenty of people here, we have plenty of Americans, we do not have a shortage of high-skilled workers. And if we do, it's not because we have a shortage of potential high-skilled workers, it's because we're not investing in high-skilled workforce. And you know why? Because you don't need to, because you've created a vicious cycle by importing the third world. And it's it's gross. And it really is. By any standard, it's fraudulent, it's unethical. You're you're gaining these benefits by being dishonest with the American people deliberately. Uh and I think it's fair to say that that this is destroying our country from the inside out. All of these different forms of immigration. And it's not just the H1B. I I know that that one's the mainstream program, right? I know that H1B is the one that you'll you'll see, you know, all over the news. It's the one that's been reported on, right? But there's there's so many other programs. I mean, you have the O one, which the O one's a little better because at least we we could talk about it sometime. But you have the O one, you have the L1, uh what else? You have the the the We've got one specifically for certain countries. I I know we have one for Canada and Mexico, we've got one for um I think we've even got one for Australia. Uh but we have we have a ton. They have like J-level trainee visas. Um uh anyways, I'm I'm getting around the point. The point is it doesn't matter which program it is. Almost all of these programs, if not all of them, are fraudulent. They are taking away jobs from the people whose jobs they should be. They are taking away jobs from people who deserve them, from people who live in the country. And you can say, well, Michael, that feels a little entitled. Yes, actually. Yes. Entitlement is really bad when it produces a spoiled child. Sometimes entitlement is good. Like believing that the government shouldn't take a share of the inheritance that my father leaves for me. Right? That's that's actually not good for the government to do that. And it's not it's not entitlement to assume I should get to keep that. No, actually, it's not. My father worked hard his whole life to provide that. That's not entitlement. That's how the world works. And on that note, my forefathers worked very hard to create this country, to protect this country, to keep this country. So, yeah, I feel a little bit of entitlement to this country. And I feel like everybody else in this country that's actually an American should feel a little bit entitled to its jobs, to its economy. Because this is our home. This I know they want to treat it, this is an economic zone of opportunity. No, it's not. This is our home. We're not numbers on a page, ladies and gentlemen. We're not, we're not just we're not just figures on an Excel spreadsheet where they define the the gross nature of, and I don't mean gross in the gross sense, I mean gross in the you know cumulative sense. We're not just exposing the gross nature of of economic success. Right? The goal is not just, oh man, the country's doing so good. And then you look, and people are in poverty, and we're not fixing homelessness. You know why? Because while while we're debating what an American is, the left is still importing the third world. They're just doing it differently. In fact, they're doing it even, as I mentioned yesterday, more with more sinister background. Because, of course, once you make it legal, that's a whole different thing. This is the same argument they made for abortion. You guys remember, if you don't legalize this, they're gonna use coat hangers, right? They they said that on national television. If you don't do this, women are gonna die trying to do abortion to themselves. That was their justification at the time. And I always said, this is insane. Yeah, people are are gonna do really bad things that are illegal. That's true. We don't legalize the thing, that's not how it works. Yeah, you know, I know that people are just gonna steal anyway. So I should make stealing legal that way when they steal, they don't get in trouble, no one's gonna get hurt, no one stands up to them, and there's no violence as a result. You know what would happen to a country that did that? Take a look at California and and you have your answer. And so with this whole immigration thing, it is actually the same. We have so many illegal immigrants here. Might as well just make them legal. That's that's the that's a good idea. You know what? Why didn't I think of that? Because I actually love my country. That's that's why I didn't think of that. Because I actually appreciate my country. I actually think that countries are for peoples and peoples are for countries. And I think that if you're you know from India, you have a you have a home that you should love and desire to fix. If you're from China, you have a home that you should love and desire to fix. If you live in in almost any country in the world, you have a home other than France. Man, those guys messed up. But anywhere else, you have a home that you should love and desire to fix. And in America, we have a home that we should love and we should desire to fix. We have a people. And replacing those people with foreign workers is actually incredibly evil, in my opinion.
Autism Student Death And Assault Allegation
SPEAKER_21Now, with that being said, speaking of incredibly evil, um, there's according to these allegations, this sci-fi student with autism, um, he apparently he apparently he was 16 years old, he was non-verbal, so not like you know, it autism, of course, like a lot of mental disorders, is it on a spectrum. And so a lot of times you'll meet someone who is is has autism, but it's not overly noticeable because I mean for a variety of reasons, it's it's like any spectrum. Sometimes it's it's really, really noticeable, and other times it's not really noticeable at all. Nevertheless, um apparently this 16-year-old special needs student uh died choking on food. And I guess through the investigative process, they kind of they kind of came to the realization that this behavioral therapist for Cypher ISD uh apparently assaulted this student, not related to the actual death itself, but did assault this 16-year-old nonverbal autistic student. We'll talk kind of about what happened, the background of that when we get back. As always, if you would like to text into the show, the number is 713-779-5978. One more time. That is 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. And I'll be right back, board willing, after this short break. So hang tight. We'll talk soon.
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SPEAKER_21Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. Thanks everybody for tuning in. If you would like to text in during the show, let us know your thoughts on anything we're covering. Friday is kind of a good time because I guess I used to think I remember when I first started doing radio, and one of the pieces of advice I got from somebody was like, you know what's cool about Friday? You're like, what's cool about Friday is that you're right before the weekend, people are a little more relaxed because they have the weekend coming up, so you can kind of take it more relaxed, more conversational, respond. And at first I was like, that's a good idea. That's a great idea. I'll have a relaxed Friday. And then I I got into radio. It's not that I didn't take the advice. It's just, I feel like every day we just talk. And try to pretend like Friday is some special, we're chilling, we're we're relaxed, we're but I feel like every day's that way. And I don't feel like this is an overly, I don't want to say it's it's not a serious show. It's a very serious show. We cover a lot of very serious topics very seriously. But but this is never really I don't do this lecture style. I don't do this like it's a podcast. I don't, I don't do this like it's a rehearsed, scripted, you know, social media post. This is done ad-lib the whole time. Other than the actual reporting, like the meat of the story that of course I have kind of prepped out for the actual you know timeline of events, what explicitly happened, all of the commentary, it's all ad-lib. I I want it that way. I prefer it that way. I think it's better that way, but it results in the fact that I always try to pretend it's Friday, so we're relaxing. No, it's just that's just a lone star conservative. That's just the show. Uh, but if you'd like to text in, the number is 713-779-5978. We'd love to hear from you. So let's get into this. Court documents indicate that Donald Cameron Perkins has been charged with injury to a disabled individual, which is a third-degree felony. The incident happened about about a week ago, a little more, it was last Thursday, I guess, um, on April 23rd at the Carlton Prevocational Center. Sci-Fair ISD police were called to investigate a serious medical emergency involving a child. Now, court documents indicate the police spoke to the child's mother and father, who said he was diagnosed with autism at a very young age and was essentially nonverbal in his daily life. Which I guess you can probably garner this from the term nonverbal, but it means that the autism was developed enough that he had a hard time communicating um effectively. Now, police spoke to the principal and also to Perkins, um, because of course they they want to hear from the behavioral therapist in the room, uh, who was in the room with the child when the child had the medical emergency. I think that's a fair, not only because he's a behavioral therapist, though I think that's good to talk to, but also because he was present, right? And so Perkins allegedly told police he had been summoned to a bus after the student took a piece of food from the bus driver. He stole the food, allegedly, and shoved it into his mouth. After arriving, Perkins said he took the child off the bus to an exterior door of the school where the student fell to the ground. Perkins said he then escorted the student to his classroom where he went to his seat before moving around the room and taking his clothes off. The staff in the room told Perkins the student wasn't behaving normally, and one of them said they thought he was choking on something. Perkins said that he attempted the Heimlich maneuver on the student. Officers later learned that Perkins allegedly omitted some information, probably intentionally, from his statement. Court documents state that an officer viewed surveillance video and saw Perkins walking with the student in his grasp to the classroom. The video allegedly showed Perkins increasing his intensity of handling the child as they approached the classroom. The documents state that the officers saw that it appeared Perkins pushed the child from behind while entering the classroom. Video from the bus also did not show the child falling outside the door of the school, as Perkins had said. After reviewing another video, officers noted Perkins pushed the child with significant force. The documents state the child became slightly airborne before landing on his chest with his knees and hands hitting the tile floor. So again, I I know that we have a tendency to say that T uh in a lot of ways, children have become too soft. In a lot of ways, you can't, you can't you know, it used to be like in school you could get your hand slapped with a ruler or something, you know, harder than a ruler. And now, and I get this, because I taught uh martial arts when I was in in high school. And I remember I was I was going just in the phase that that gentle parenting was becoming popular. And it was so annoying because when I was coming up through through the ranks, I would I'm not gonna say I was beat, but I was beat, right? Like the there were certain things that were you were allowed to do. Uh if I wasn't doing the stance correctly, you could take a bow stamp, you could take a little, you know, thing, and you could pop my leg with it. That was totally fine. That was no one was gonna sue for that. Nobody cared. In fact, if you're going to martial arts, there's the expectation that you're gonna become disciplined, and sometimes discipline requires a little bit of chastisement. Nobody had an issue with that back then, by the way. I'm not coming up and being like, I was abused. I don't care. In fact, I think it was very good for my development, actually. But I was I was teaching, and you know, coming up at that time, and I was I I started teaching right around the phase where parents started saying, I don't like this. I think you're being a little too rough on my kid. Oh, I don't like how you're treating him, I don't like how you talk to him, I don't like how much you made him do. And so I'm always a little bit, I'll say I don't want to say defensive, but I'm always a little bit sympathetic for when people are trying to kind of say, Hey, we need better discipline. We need people to behave, we need people to act right. And no one else is making them do it. However, there are lines to that. There are things you are not allowed to do, especially not as the parent, and and someone that the parent is not granted consent to do that, you know. Uh especially when the child that you're dealing with has some sort of mental disorder, right? Where where they can't they they don't they won't behave the same. They may never leave home, right? There are different expectations. That's why, you know, you have special needs classes and and and the like because you have to deal with them a little bit differently. Uh, but it's pretty crazy because this is not a case where it was, well, we have discipline here. He didn't just kind of like push him towards the door. Apparently the child was shoved so hard that he he hit the ground. He went into the air and then hit the ground. I mean, it it's insane here. The officer state in the court documents that this was excessive and that Perkins knew the child, still had food in his mouth, and a history of potential choking hazards. And and by the way, I want to say he may have known those things. I I want to make it very clear from everything I'm reading, even among the allegations, it does not seem like there was any level of at most that I think criminal negligence plus assault, right? I don't think there's any evidence, and this is why they're not charging you with it. But I want to be clear, it doesn't seem like he was, you know, well, he knew that the child had a history of choking. He knew the child still had food in his mouth, and he pushed him. He w he was willing to No, there that that that those things did not go together. He may have known them at a time. I don't think that's entirely relevant to what he was doing, because I don't again, I don't think there was any level of intent there. Other than if you're gonna start talking about how he needs to be very careful, you know, where we where we put him, which he should be fired anyway, so that doesn't really matter. Uh the documents state that staff noticed the child was choking when he began to remove his clothes and brought a trash can thinking he was going to throw up. The child went limp and Perkins attempted the Heimlich maneuver but was unsuccessful. The child was transported to Memorial Herman Cypress Hospital and later flown by helicopter to Texas Children's Hospital in the Texas Medical Center. Quote documents say officers learned the child went through a significant period of oxygen deprivation. Brain scans also showed no brain activity, and officers learned the child died. Perkins is taken into custody. The district says he is currently on administrative leave. Uh, he's been employed by Cypher ISD since August of 2018. And SciFair, of course, put out their own statement. They say, quote, student safety is our top priority. The district does not tolerate conduct that compromises the safety of our children, and we thoroughly investigate any allegations of staff mistreatment of students. We are currently investigating a serious incident involving a student and staff member at the Carlton Center. Upon learning of the allegation, the district took immediate action to remove the staff member and place the individual on administrative leave. They continue. CFISD is cooperating fully with law enforcement to ensure a comprehensive investigation and will take all necessary actions based on those findings. We are devastated by the loss of one of our students. My most sincere prayers are with the family, and we grieve alongside them during this heartbreaking time. Due to the active investigation and student privacy laws, the teacher cannot provide further details. Uh but again, this this is a tragedy. I mean, genuinely, that this is this is horrible. And especially when you have someone, not that you can blame, but when you have someone that you can look at who should have known better. By by every available metric, he should have known better. And he did it. And because he was it appears like there was some level of anger, frustration. And by the way, we're we all get it, right? This happens all the time. I don't want to say all the time, but there's a reason that you have to undergo a lot of special training to work with special needs students. Because you're not dealing with a normal student. And that doesn't make them worth any less. I mean, that's not that does not make them, you know, less valuable, but it does mean that you have to have better training in order to handle them correctly, in order to know how to operate, in order to know how to be good, how to benefit them, right? As a teacher, as a therapist. And so part of that conversation centers around the fact that you have to be prepared, that your patients probably needs to be a little thicker, right? That you you have to be more equipped to handle frustrating moments, that you have to be very patient. And what you cannot do food and food, you know, food out of the conversation in general, you can't push any student. But pushing a special needs student isn't gonna help anybody. Shoving one under the ground, I mean, it's just this none of this, none of this is how the teacher ever should have operated. None of it. And then you throw in the fact that there were dangerous conditions, and now there's the child is gone like dead. That is a a human life that has been taken away. And whether or not he thought about it or whatever, there is a very clear evidence that you may have had something to do with it. That that that I don't want to say it's your fault, because we don't know. He may have started choking after he walked into the classroom. It may have been a step that he took that he swallowed wrong, and we don't know when the choking started. But you have to I mean, even as a person, you gotta think, hey, did I have something to do with this? Did did I have an i did I have an impact? And so I think it's I think it's very evident, I think it's very clear that stuff like this is happening in our schools, and we need to start doing a better job at rooting it out and promoting teachers and making sure we qualify that the teachers that we have have to be, have to be patient, they have to be good, they have to be well qualified, that we have to do better background checks. And so, in the next segment, we're gonna talk a little bit about the TEA uh and and them coming with more transparency. In the meantime, text in 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. And you better stick around because I'll be right back talking all about the TEA, the Texas Education Agency, and their added transparency after this short break.
SPEAKER_09Patriot 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 PatriotTalk920.com.
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TEA Plans More Misconduct Transparency
SPEAKER_21Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. So we have more educator misconduct transparency coming on the way from the Tax Education Agency. Inspector General Levi Fuller outlined new plans. I don't know if you guys can hear that through the microphone. I've just got a huge boom of thunder. They're just kind of spread throughout the facility. Anyways, uh apparently outlined plans for more transparent reporting and stronger enforcement of complaints against employees of Texas schools, which has been, we've expected a lot of this to come out. Um Texans can, they're saying expect even more transparency and accountability when it comes to school employees who harm students, according to the man who is in charge of enforcing educator misconduct rules. The TEA's first inspector general for educator misconduct, his name is Levi Fuller, started his new job a couple months ago. This this officially kicked off back in February. Now, uh over the last couple days, Fuller has been speaking, uh specifically with Abraham George, the if you don't know that is the chairman of the Republican Party here in Texas, about the challenges that his office is tackling right now. Uh Fuller actually credited, and we talked about this, Texas Education 911's state-sponsored child abuse report. If you guys remember, we covered that story when it broke. It was called State Sponsored Child Abuse. And I remember we went over it, I think this was back last year, maybe, and and they talked about opportunistic predations, they talked about uh failures, the TEA data, the system deficiencies, their recommendations, proposed solutions, how many people were, you know, there were quote unquote investigations against, there were complaints that the TEA never got to, or they never followed up on, or they just gave them a little slap on the wrist because they didn't have the time to really deal with them. That was all that was stuff that was going on. And so he he said that he credited their report and a lot of mobs for bringing the misconduct issue, especially sexual and physical abuse of students in taxpayer-funded schools, to the legislature's attention and prompting creation of his job position, the inspector general for misconduct. Now, before taking the job, Fuller said he asked himself, what do I need to do here to be successful, to protect everybody's kids, my kids included? He came up with a three-part plan that includes transparency, accountability, and proactive prevention. He said we need to identify the bad things that are occurring in our schools. What that means is essentially we have to boost transparency from the TEA, but also make sure that we're holding administrators accountable if they fail to report everything. And we're well underway with that. He said part two is accountability, bringing the absolute hammer down on everybody that violates our educator code of ethics, or God forbid violates the law. If you are trying to obfuscate and hide for whatever ridiculous reason, I have zero sympathy. We will absolutely come down on you with the full force of the state. He said, and then part three is what do we do to get proactive? He said, by the time the TEA gets involved with these cases, the damage has already been done to the child, to the family, to the community. We need to figure out what we can do to keep these people from getting into schools in the first place. And so he said transparency is absolutely essential for parents to make informed decisions that impact the safety of their students and for maintaining any level of trust and credibility within the communities of these of these schools. And so we already made public reporting of disciplinary actions uh more transparent by adding information about the allegations specifically available online, uh meaning that you know way more about who was sanctioned, where they worked, what they were specifically sanctioned for. Um Fuller also said that he wants to make the quarterly reports that come out from the SBEC. He wants to make them monthly instead of quarterly. So instead of it being every three months, it'll be every single month. Um and he said that'll also be complemented by a soon new to release educator misconduct reporting dashboard uh that he previewed, uh, which is supposed to display publicly available data on the number and types of misconduct reports submitted, cases under review, disciplinary actions, number of individuals placed on the do not hire registry, so it's all easily accessible for the taxpayers. Because again, Step one in accountability, in solutions, in fixing any problem is being aware of where the problem is, how widespread the problem is, and what we're actually dealing with. And so I'm very excited to see that this is kind of that the trajectory of our schools is changing. This has been one of my biggest complaints. Now, now all we need, we're doing, we're heading in the right direction. Our schools are going the right way on this side of things. Now we need an office of inspector general for bad test scores. That's that's all there was really left, right? And we if we fix the physical and sexual abuse of children in schools, which we're well on our way to doing better on, once we do that, our our that that of course is the highest priority. It's more important that you're safe than anything else. That's it it's like uh Winslow's you know, order of hierarchy. You have to make sure that you have the base needs, right? Not being abused is on the base needs. Once we do that, we can start focusing on producing education again. We can we can really really we should be doing it at the same time, to be clear. You can walk and chew gum at the same time, you can focus on both, you can do both things. We need to start working on, hey, you know what? Now that they're safe, we also want them to not be dumb. That's next on the agenda. Tomorrow, we'll be we'll be dealing with that. That needs to be the next goal. That's serious, though. We need to start fixing, we need to start you know approaching and dealing with the fact that no one's being educated well. The tests show that, the college graduation rates show that, the career workforce shows that, everything shows it. We need to start working on education. With that being said, when we get back to the break, of course, we're coming up to the bottom of the hour, meaning we're going to have the weather report in the next segment. Uh, before we wrap up the first hour of the show, as always, you can text in at 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You are listening to the Lone Star Conservative, and I'll be right back to wrap up the first hour of the show with the weather report after this break. Hang tight.
SPEAKER_09Patriot 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 PatriotTalk920.com.
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Flood Watch And Weekend Weather
SPEAKER_21Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. So May is of course arriving with a reminder of one of the most dangerous weather threats that we get here pretty frequently, which is actually flash flooding. A cold front moving through Southeast Texas today is going to bring the highest risk of heavy rainfall and localized flooding so far this week to the Houston area. Widespread rainfall totals of at least two to four inches are possibly likely, with again there being pockets exceeding six inches of rain. The National Weather Service said that a flood watch is issued when forecasters believe weather conditions will make flooding possible within the next twenty-four hours. Not everyone's gonna see very heavy rainfall, but again, you're gonna have isolated street flooding. And then we have cooler air arriving later today, with highs dropping into the 70s this weekend. Now, as the cold front pushes into the Houston region, it will continue to act as a trigger for thunderstorms throughout the day and into tonight. Moist air in place will support heavier, more persistent storms. In some spots, rain could fall repeatedly over the same areas, allowing rainfall totals to climb relatively quickly. Including Houston, by the way, is under a level two out of four risk, which means a higher chance of excessive rainfall. Means scattered flash flooding is possible, again, especially in areas uh that are low-lying or prone to flooding. And so be aware that that Friday's setup is just an explanation for kind of how May tends to go a lot of the times. I think uh between 2013 and 2023, Texas recorded nearly 1,200 flash flood reports during the sti the the month of May alone for those years. 1,200. And so between there being these spring storm systems, deep tropical moisture from the Gulf this time of year, it creates really good conditions for that. Uh nevertheless, sunshine's returning this weekend. Highs in the 70s. It's gonna be a beautiful weekend to get outside. Highly recommend it. Um temperatures are gonna fall. Again, some areas are gonna struggle to get out of the 60s, low 70s, uh same over the weekend with sunny skies. It'll be very nice. Lows overnight will be nice enough to wear, you know, sweatpants and a hoodie outside, all that good stuff. With that being said, that only for the first hour of the show. We get back right now, Charles Blaine from Urban Reform for the weekly local recap. Text in 713-779-5978. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You are listening to the Lone Star Conservative and orator Charles Blaine at the top of the next hour.
SPEAKER_08From deep in the heart of Texas, it's Houston's God-loving patriot, the voice of reason. This is the Lone Star Conservative, Michael Wilson.
Weekly Local Recap With Charles
SPEAKER_21Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. On the air, we have our good friend Charles Blaine from Urban Reform coming on for the weekly local recap. Welcome to the show, Charles. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_13As I as I uh just walked into my office is just in a pile of solid poop because my dog uh both be up in that this morning. So good morning.
SPEAKER_21Wow. What a good which one do you which which opening do you prefer? Do you prefer it starting that way or when I said welcome black? Uh introducing you. I don't know which is worse. Both are bad.
SPEAKER_13You know, listen, I I will take that one because now I do not like what is on the bottom of my foot. So this is a great way to start a pride.
SPEAKER_21So hey, you know what? It's the weekend. It's it's gonna the weather's nice. We'll we'll we'll get over it. Um speaking of things people won't get
Houston’s First Trash Fee Plan
SPEAKER_21over. I for the first time ever, right? We have a Houston garbage fee. Uh I want to know what this is. I remember people were talking that it was maybe a proposal, that maybe it would be starting at $5. Can you kind of give us the whole deep dive on what's going on here?
SPEAKER_13Yes, this is like you said, first time ever Houston's getting a garbage fee. Um, the mayor, as many will remember, has long said that he was not going to bring any new taxes or fees until they rooted corruption out of the city. So I'm guessing now corruption is rooted out of the city because we are getting a tax on the fee. And so it's going to be um a $5 garbage fee that should come with this next budget. We'll see what happens. Um, obviously it had to be voted on, but it's going to be baked into the budget. So, what that means is that uh council members who don't want to uh approve the fee aren't really gonna have a choice because they're gonna have to approve the budget. So it's either say no to the whole thing or yes to the whole thing. And so what this is gonna look like though is that it's gonna stay five dollars for the first two years, from what I'm hearing, and then after that it will gradually go up. And the idea is that it's gonna end at around $25. Um, and at the same time, they're gonna take solid waste and move it into like a special revenue fund to kind of fund it differently. So all that to say the big question is is trash service gonna be better. And I don't think that answer has been given too often.
SPEAKER_21And if that's the case, then I think the word we quite up to Right. Uh because I understand that Mayor Whitmeyer's position is for a long time, and I I appreciate this, has been I don't want to raise taxes. I don't want to put any new fees, but I certainly don't want to raise taxes. That's number one. And so I think this is sort of a way to say uh because really this is gonna be an extra tax of $300 by the time you get to $25 per family for per home, this will be $300 a year that you're paying. Um and so $300 a year is a tax of its own sort. Oh, absolutely. Yes. 100%. And that might be justifiable if we were getting new services for it, right? The problem is my big concern is that we're not gonna get that at all, because it seems like this is actually more of a way to balance an already really high deficit budget um without calling it a tax. This seems like a way to say, hey, I'm gonna tax you without taxing you, instead of it being, hey, we want to do better services, so we need more money.
SPEAKER_13Well, well, yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the thing. Like, you know, at the end of the day, I don't think we're gonna see a significant increase in the the service. And and that's because five dollars isn't really gonna if they if they they're gonna say that that's what's gonna increase the service, then what you're telling me is that that's the cost of the service. And that's not what it costs. It costs more than that. And so we're not gonna see that significant increase because that money's gonna go into it and kind of just fall into a big bucket. But the problem is that um it is intended to cover these other costs $170 million deficit, the $10 to $12 million that we're gonna have to give to firefighters because of the recent arbitration ruling, the overall budget uh uh uh excuse me, uh collective bargaining uh agreement from the firefighter. Like all these things baked in is what we're paying for. And so you I don't expect we will see a significant increase in trash service, just a significant increase in the fees we pay to it.
SPEAKER_21Right. Which is the worst of both worlds. Uh because really the 311 line when it comes to to I know that that also includes like other issues. Uh, but the the those are a lot of the complaints about Houston is like, hey, I have issues with trash pickup, I have issues with heavy trash pickup, and those have been big complaints for a while. I remember they did a ton of stories on how they wanted to increase the number of trucks and all these things. And you'd expect if we're gonna pay an extra $25 a month, that okay, so we're gonna get much greater services. Things aren't gonna be as complainy. No, it's just to cover a deficit without taxing you. So so it is just a tax. Right.
SPEAKER_13It's just a tax at the end of the day, unfortunately. Um, but we'll see. We'll see. I don't want to get ahead of what he's gonna say on Tuesday. You know, maybe there's more to it that I'm unaware of, but it's I mean, I've been aware of the majority of it for a couple weeks, and that's all I've heard. So if there's more to it, we'll find out.
SPEAKER_21Look, I gave him more of the benefit of the doubt before the whole ice debacle. That I I used to be like, no, I'm sure he's got a plan. And now I'm like, I'm not sure actually that he has a plan. This is supposed to be 4D chess. What are you doing? Um so well, let's let's actually, with that segue, let's let's talk about the budget in general.
Closing Houston’s Budget Deficit
SPEAKER_21What's what's going on with the budget?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, so like we said, um, it's gonna be this $170 million deficit that's gonna be closed through a number of different ways. Um, none of them are going to well, you'll hear on Tuesday when and and what you'll hear Tuesday night, Wednesday, as all of the budget talks goes on, it'll be as we've closed the budget. There's no budget deficit. This is a structurally balanced budget, and it's not, it's not gonna be structurally balanced. It's gonna be balanced for this year, and then next year expenses are gonna outpace revenue. And so um we're we're gonna see them close it through unique ways. I mean, the garbage fee is gonna be one of them. Another one is they're gonna charge the uh combined water utility to uh essentially they're gonna charge the city's water service. So the city has a water service, it is technically the city service, but under the municipal governance code, it's its own entity. And so they're gonna start charging a fee to it, which will then generate more revenue. And so they're doing these like kind of interesting things, unique things, some flights of hand to generate more revenue. Um, but at the very least, I guess people can be happy that the most that they're gonna see in an increase is is the $5 fee and kind of whatever you you increase because of appraisal for year to year.
SPEAKER_21Right. Well, I have a question for you that might be a low information voter question. Why can't we balance the budget before we ever get to it by just saying here's how much we have, let's not spend more than that? Is that is that just not a thing that government can do? Like I I understand that like government operates differently than a household, but it's just a really big household in terms of it's just money. Why like when I balance my budget? You know, I don't I don't say, I guess I need to go get another job. I usually say, hey, maybe I need to cut back on this and that. And I balance my budget by just not spending an extra hundred and seventy million dollars every year. Uh, why can't our city do that?
SPEAKER_13Because it's not their money and it's doing it and they don't have to worry about it. I mean, if it were their household and their money and coming out of their pockets, they would be able to figure that out just like the rest of us do. But it's not theirs, and they know that there's an an infinite resource that is going to continue to come, and all they have to do is kind of suck it up and tell the taxpayers they're they're gonna increase taxes or kind of make up an excuse and then it fades away. And so I think that's why, but I really do think that it starts to become unsustainable. I think we've reached that point a couple times in Houston. Um, back in 2014, 2015, when they were doing the pension reform, uh, because the city was about to go insolvent. That was one of those points. And I think as long as we keep kicking the can down the road, every five to seven years, we're gonna hit another one of these inflection points. And so something's gotta give at some point. Um, I think the county might give before the city, but who knows?
SPEAKER_21Speaking of something's got to give, can you also there's something that I reported on a couple days ago that I just want to get your take on, given that we're dealing with a budget deficit and possible garbage
City Hall Podcast Price Tag
SPEAKER_21fees. Because people are gonna be looking at like all of the different spending and saying, hey, is all of this worthwhile given the fact that we're in a budget deficit? Every little penny is gonna be looked at and said, is this good? Is this is this something that we should be spending money on given where we're at? One of those things that's big right now is the fact that apparently we're spending $60,000. I don't even know what the timeline is for that. I don't know if anybody knows, but we're spending $60,000 on a podcast right now. What what what gives there?
SPEAKER_13So the uh the mayor has chosen to um launch a new podcast called 91 Bagby, just the the address to City Hall, and it is a podcast of him discussing Houston city related issues with a host. Um I don't I can't remember the guy's name, but apparently news is reporting that he's a former colleague of the mayor's first secretary. So uh and so $60,000 is how much you're spending on it. And as of right now, they've got three episodes out, and I think something like you have to remind me of something like 130 episodes, I mean reviews and episode or something. Like I mean, it's a it's a pretty abysmal amount. And and what makes it worse. My argument when I first saw this was actually when I first saw it, I was excited before I knew this, we spent $50,000 on it. But then when I found that out, I was like, this makes no sense because we have uh we have three radio and TV or radio stations uh in the city of Houston that are run by schools. We have 13 TV stations, we have, I think, seven public access stations. And then on top of all that, the city has a television station. So why are we what are we spending $50,000 for? Go to your TV station, HTV, and record a podcast for free there. And uh it's you know, it just it doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_21Right. And again, I think it would, it would, uh it wouldn't make sense. It would still be a waste of money, I think. But if you had, I mean, if you add, you know, 10 to 50,000 views or 100,000 views, I think it'd be fair to say, okay, so we have a lot of Houstonians that are being informed by this in a way they may not be informed otherwise. But you do the math out, and because of the views, you're technically spending per per view, you're spending something like $375. So the garbage fee that you're paying, your garbage fee alone is paying for one person to listen to that podcast.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, as well. When you put a one-to-one like that, I don't think people are gonna like to hear that too much. But it's true, it's bad. I mean, it's that's what we're spending money on, and we really shouldn't. And I think this was a I I don't know who encouraged the mayor to do this. I think this was a bad move, particularly given where he is in his tenure. You know, he's quickly approaching re-election, so it makes it even look even more like it's an attempt to kind of clear up his image using public funds to do so. So I just don't like this. When Turner was at the end of his term, he spent $125,000 of his campaign funds on a um uh like an autobiography that he printed of himself, and he asked Houston first to repay the money, and and everybody was up in arms, and and as was I, because I thought it was an inappropriate use of money. Uh, he ended up not getting Houston first to pay for it, and he paid for it out of his campaign. But nonetheless, I still thought it was a stupid, stupid thing to do. And so this is kind of the same thing. I I don't know why why they're doing this.
SPEAKER_21Yeah, it's it's pretty wild again, especially given a mul a variety of factors like where the budget's at, like how many views you have, all those things go in to create uh a mess.
School Choice Losses For HISD
SPEAKER_21Now I want to talk about another mess uh because school choice is now we're gonna we're gonna actually have it. I mean, it's already launched in the sense that we have we have people, the application window closed. They've already done, I think, the first wave um out to special needs students and their siblings uh with more waves coming. But we're already hearing this is gonna have at least some sort of impact on a lot of major cities. I think Houston is the biggest one. What's going on there?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, so HISD um is is the number one district with the most kids who have been accepted into the into the quote unquote lottery or the school choice school choice program. How many of them take it? It's it's TVD, but um they've had the most accepted. And what they're uh now projecting is that if HISD students accept it and if um all the other Houston area school students who've been accepted accepted and then go into the program of their choice, that um the 10 uh districts within our region are getting the highest losses, if you will, of students outside of the public district into uh different charter schools and things like that. Because um they're arguing because of school choice. I think it's because the schools have not learned how to compete and they're providing the results that parents don't want. However, you look at it, they're gonna be the biggest losers. And so um I hope that what that encourages is that the school districts will take a kind of look at themselves and figure out what they can do differently. But um kind of like the public money and why they don't balance the budget. I don't think they're gonna use a civil school district because they're gonna just keep saying, well, we still got a school district, we've still got a board, you know, we got tax revenue coming in, so let's just double down on what we did.
SPEAKER_21Which by the way, I hoped for a long time, and this is my claim, it still is. I think that at some point, uh I think school choice is gonna continue to grow. I think at some point it's gonna become very evident that if they they want, at some point, you know, they have tax revenue coming in, but if the tax revenue is then split out and it's not going to the district because it's going to school choice and that money's taken away from the district, at some point, as it continues to grow, they're gonna say, we won't have any money at all if we don't start competing. So hopefully, even if it's not right now, at some point that will produce better results for the school system. That's what competition and capitalism is supposed to do in general. And so we'll we'll we'll see. Um fingers crossed, seriously.
County Unionization Push Explained
SPEAKER_21What what's going on with the unionization stuff at the county level?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, so uh we don't I know you're more uh we can have this union consultation policy, which is a way for the uh unions to come in and say we want to be the representative, we're gonna go and talk to uh employees and try to get enough signatures to become that. And so what we're doing is the American Federation of I don't know, they have any information there. Um the largest public union in the country is really leading in that charge. But what's really interesting is that when you look at this, African is one of the groups that have like fully the Democrats. I mean, generally public sector unions do, but they give 99.1% to Democrats. And if you're coming in a year when Democrats are also a free election commissioners for it, not that they've got the most hardest of challenges, but if you look at this at the grand scale, which it seems like it's a kind of like a quick pro, they're opening the door for African to come in so they can expand their base, their union selections, their kind of organizing workforce, and then the county on the other side gets the support of African unions as they head into this re-election. Probably not necessarily for the county uh court of uh elected officials, but definitely will help the down ballot Democrats. And so it seems like a little bit of a quid profile. We'll see what happens, but they're doing this around the state. They're actually trying to expand their union um representation by going and doing these consultation agreements. So I think this is gonna be a phenomenon that's starting now that we might hear of next legislative session as well.
SPEAKER_21Right. We'll we'll talk more about that as we get into it. One more thing I want to talk about before we go to the break uh and wrap up this weekly local recap is this Harris
Harris County Audits And Waste
SPEAKER_21County rundown. Can you kind of give us some details on what this is?
SPEAKER_13Yes, I was going through, I'm gonna read these fast. I was going through some audits from the county that really got no attention last year. And I was actually shocked to see kind of how bad some of the things that happened in Harris County were. So um the Harris County uh, starting with the auditor's office, they found that the sheriff's office, I think people heard about this one, they held $888,000 in funds belonging to 50,000 inmates and just didn't give those money back. They're supposed to, according to state law, give that money back. They did not. And then another audit found that they took no significant steps to actually do that. And then another audit um for the Harris County Flood Control District found that they were uh not filing conflicts and interest disclosures and cannot explain vendor selection criteria for their server contract. And so they were handing out all this money and didn't have any sort of conflict and interest onboard, no foreign documents, no collection committees, the written reasons, nothing whatsoever for why they collected the people that they collected. Um and then next you have the financial miseries of the county of $75.4 million with misclassified in an investment in the uh in the annual uh comprehensive financial report, which is the document that they do at the end of the year where they reconcile everything and they weren't went, they misallocated $35 million in that, and that didn't really get any news because it came out right around Christmas. Um previous county attorney uh controlled for taking $358,700 worth of uh federal fees and forfeited effects that weren't intended for that office, and they use it in a manner that honors characterized as impermissible use of federal fees and foreheaded funds. I don't know how they get that one under the rug, under the rug. Um, and then we all hear about the total road authority things, and then I mean the list goes on. There's just been a number of things that have gone on in the county that we don't seem to know about. Um, and I I have like five more on this list. And I think the reason I wanted to run through those is because that's it. We only talk about Harris County and the issues, but I won't be recognized how that there are significantly more issues, and there's more of a reason to be involved because it never ends at all. It just keeps going.
SPEAKER_21Right. And again, this is year over year. This is just from last year, and so I think we're gonna have more audits coming out this year. And by the way, the audits themselves, a lot of times, are costing money. Like how many like we have a consultation with the sheriff's office that was supposed to cost how many millions of dollars that they've done multiple different times, with again, as more audits are highlighting, have done nothing. And and so it's just money on audits, what the audits expose that is extra money. It's just so much money. And it goes back to the same thing. We could fix all of this by just saying, here's the money that we have in, here's what we get to spend, and let's prioritize. But our government seems wholly incapable of doing that. Uh because as you highlighted, it's not their money. They don't view it that way. They view it as your money that they get to spend willy-nilly, and if they need more, they'll just tell you you have to give them more. Exactly.
SPEAKER_13And then we will do so, and most of us will just go along with our day quietly like we usually do.
SPEAKER_21Yeah, we'll do we'll do a segment on it, and then nothing will ever change because we have to start saying enough is enough, and we have to start dealing with this. Um, with that being said, Charles, how can everyone find everything that you're doing over at Urban Reform when you're not here for the weekly local recap and people can keep kind of up to date with a lot of this stuff?
SPEAKER_13You just check out TJ Blaine 10 all across social media and urban form org all across social media, and they'll see you on the end.
SPEAKER_21Perfect. Well, as always, we greatly appreciate you coming on, and Lord willing, we'll talk to you again next Friday. All right.
SPEAKER_13Thanks for having me. Talk to you next Friday. Of course.
SPEAKER_21Yeah, I know. Be careful, be careful. With that being said, ladies and gentlemen, when we get back from the recording jump over and talk about HPD creating their first tactical unit uh built to support patrols using drones, tools, and specialized backup. As always, if you would like to text in, the number is 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. We'll be right back in the next segment. Don't go anywhere.
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HPD Patrol Support Team And Drones
SPEAKER_21Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. Houston police have added a new layer of specialized officers to the streets designed to respond to higher priority 911 calls, help locate suspects, and relieve regular patrol officers so they can get back in service even faster. Now the Houston Police Department calls this new this new group of officers the patrol support team, and HPD leaders say it's the first tactical style unit in department history created specifically to assist patrol officers. Now, for some background, HPD says that patrol support officers are trained on a bi-weekly basis and equipped to step into complicated, high-risk, or resource-heavy scenes, functioning sort of as an intermediary between regular patrol and specialized units like SWAT teams, for instance. And so Captain Jason Roseman, who's leading the unit, said when patrol officers are overwhelmed with any scene, these officers are there to assist. They're there to help them. And so officers assigned to the unit are going to wear Army Green tactical style uniforms and respond in vehicles that are configured differently than a typical patrol car. And so unlike many regular patrol units, the support vehicles are not designed to transport suspects. They're again since they're just there as assistance, he said these vehicles can be better out, you know, outfitted with specific equipment. And the HPD is saying that that equipment includes drones for indoor and outdoor use, uh, which is again useful in situations uh where safety is a concern or where you have weather that keeps a helicopter grounded. You need air support uh to track down suspects or what have you, but you have bad weather and it's it's dangerous conditions, you can't fly. Well, you could take a drone out on that. They're also going to have breaching tools that can break glass, cut wires, uh, and less lethal weapons so that you can actively deal with a suspect without that sort of concern. And so the goal, according to HPD, is to deliver faster, more specialized help-to-priority calls without immediately escalating it to SWAT deployments that may require calling officers in on overtime, that often will, even if it's necessary, often will escalate issues. This is supposed to be a sort of de-escalation tactic uh designed for largely it seems officer safety, which I think is a good thing. He said with patrol support being there, being that intermediary between patrol and SWAT or another specialized unit, we're able to bridge that gap before we end up making that call. Uh and so apparently the team has already been operating in Monstros where officers launched a drone while searching for a suspect accused of stealing a catalytic converter. In Northeast Houston, patrol support officers helped establish a perimeter while a K-9 team tracked down a man wanted for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend. And so HBD says the overarching aim is to take the pressure off of regular patrol, allowing officers to clear the scenes sooner and get to the next call. Because we know you've had issues with response times, the number of cases that have been left by the wayside. That's been a big deal in recent years. How many cases have just been ignored, turned cold, et cetera? And so he said it provides an additional safety net for citizens. They can feel comfortable when we arrive, knowing that they have some specialized officers out there that are highly capable and trained to do that. Right now, HPD says the patrol support team is working evening shifts, but the department plans to expand the unit to operate 24-7. Uh you have the University of Houston Downtown Assistant Professor, Dr. Elizabeth Gilmore, who called the concept promising but suggested that we need an ongoing evaluation. She said it makes a lot of sense to have a specialized unit that's already out there so you don't have to call in people from overtime and have a delay. There can also be potentially some concerns about the cost associated with calling in people for specialized situations and not only just the cost, but the time delay. So from my perspective, it sounds like an excellent idea if you're talking about timelines, because sometimes in policing, even five minutes can make tremendous differences. So you know that policing innovations generally come because departments recognize a gap and point to the size and geography of Houston as a possible justification for the specialized unit. HPD says you'll know patrol support is on scene if you see officers in green tactical uniforms. Uh they also emphasize the new unit is not taking jobs away from other divisions. And that officers coming out of Academy are backfilling patrol positions. So anyone who is taken out of patrol for the patrol support team, their position will be filled. You're not gonna have less patrol officers uh and then sort of being replaced by this uh, you know, d uh, you know, sort of dread situation. It's it's it's more so that you can have additional support. Now, a lot of questions I think are gonna remain. Because in in theory, I I kind of agree with the professor here, in theory, right, this is a very promising endeavor. I think there's a lot of ways doesn't go very good. But there are questions that need to be answered well. With anything that you add, anything that you take away, anything that you change, there's two, I think two of the biggest questions we'll ask is are coming up on a break. There are two very big questions that I think need to be answered suitably before we can say this works. Question number one is ultimately what is this going to cost? What does this cost? Because there are a few things. One, you may not be having overtime, but since you are not replacing the officers, right? Since you're having all of the positions ultimately replaced, uh, in terms of if you pull someone out of patrol and put them in patrol support, someone else will backfill that original position. Well, that means that you're for every patrol support member, that is one additional officer. And I don't have an issue with that, but it drives home the question, how much will it cost? Because every person you have, especially if you want to expand for it to be a 24-7 operation, that means 24-7, we have a whole new department with a whole new slew of officers. What does that cost us? You also add in the c the fact that we're having extra vehicles, extra uniforms, uh, extra tools like the drones, like the specific, you know, uh weapons, like the stuff that's associated with with these resources. How much does that cost? So we need an overall, at least general estimate of how much are taxpayers paying uh for this team in general. The other question that I think must be answered before we can call it a raging success is is it successful? Right? Yeah, yeah, it sounds like it'll be good. Yeah, it sounds like it could be a beneficial thing to the department. Sure, all of that's true. I want to hear actual metrics. And we can't get those yet, obviously, because again, they're only operating evening shifts, it's still a relatively small department. So I think cost is of course the most pressing issue before anything else. Because you can't know, you can predict, but you can't know how successful something's gonna be until it's been done. Right? Until you've tried it. And it's like you won't know if you like it until you try it. It's kind of the same here. You can't know if it'll work until you try it. Even if all the predictions say it won't work, it could. And all the predictions say that this could work, it may not. So we won't know until it's actually applied whether or not it'll be successful. And the first step in that is we need to apply it. But before we do that, we need to know all the costs. And so we need to know the cost. And then as soon as it is applied, we need to start tracking all the metrics uh to find out I think the main question, given that they're supporting, is are officers safer? Right? That's number one, uh, as sort of a sub-question. And number two, is this uh decreasing the amount of time that a scene takes? Are officers actually getting back on the road more quickly? Are they responding to scenes more efficiently? Are there more officers that are part of the patrol division, not the support, but the actual patrol division that are able to make it to more calls in a given day because of the support? Those will all be questions that'll need to be answered. Again, all of this culminatively has to be answered in order for us to say that it works. Because all of this sounds really cool. Oh, when helicopters are grounded, we can use drones. Drones can go inside, they can go outside. Uh, this makes it safer because of the type of weapons that we use, uh, the the way that we operate, it makes everybody safer. It's just a support team. It sounds really good. It sounds theoretically very promising. But we have a lot of questions that need to be answered before we decide if it's actually a success. Now, with that being said, when we get back from the break, we're gonna jump over and uh we're gonna talk a little about the epic city. You know, the Islamic enclave that they try to say is not an Islamic enclave, but you do nothing differently if you wanted to try to legally create uh uh an Islamic enclave. And so uh you know, we they've had issues at the county level, they've had issues with the MUD, the municipal utility district. That's been a whole debacle that we've been covering. You probably heard it here on the show through interviews and through my reporting specifically going into, you know, all of the ins and outs of the different levels of issues that they're facing trying to get it started. Well, now there's another one, uh, and that is that they're now developing fair housing as a holdup. We'll talk about it when we get back. As always, if you would like to text into the show. This is the final day of the show this week. So if you want to have your thoughts heard, feel free to text in at 713-779-5978. That is 713-779 KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. And Lord willing, I'll return with the update on the Epic City uh holdup after this short break. Don't go anywhere.
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Epic City Fair Housing Legal Battle
SPEAKER_21Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. Now, before we get into this story, I have a video that I want to play coming from uh this creator on social media who went to uh an event and essentially it was on a college campus, and they were on a public campus talking about open borders and how problematic this stuff was. And this this individual, this guy, comes up and says they have to leave. This this college student who's dealing with enforcing that there's it's reserved for a private event. You can't be here. Listen to how this plays out.
SPEAKER_12What do you mean, oh you have borders on this campus?
SPEAKER_18No, we have this space reserved as an official event.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, so you have borders. Where do your where's your borders at?
SPEAKER_18Uh this whole green area right here.
SPEAKER_12Oh, so you want to control who comes in and out, like an ICE agent or a border patrol agent. You wouldn't dare act like a fascist, would you? I would really encourage you on a rally on a campus, this is an event for sanctuary campuses. You probably shouldn't act like a fascist border patrol agent. You should take down your borders and let whoever wants on the space, okay. Why is your lip quivering? Because you've been called out on how you're acting exactly like how you don't what what you're advocating against, you're acting just like them. So if you believe in illegal aliens allowing uh to have sanctuary on this campus, put your money where your mouth is, leave me alone, and let me have sanctuary on this campus, okay?
SPEAKER_21That I mean was was uh really a masterclass on how to deal with these people is to make them realize how hypocritical they are. And so it's the same thing with our country, right? Our country is a private space for an event. You know what the event is? America. It's ours. It's the same exact principle, just played out on a larger scale. It's not a college campus, but it's reserved for something specific. And in the case of America, it's reserved for Americans. It is a private space. And you understand it, right? This is the this is the the issue that I always had. You can apply this, by the way, the same principle out to gun control. When you look at all the big leftists that are promoting gun control, gun bans, gun buybacks, all the different policies they promote. One of the crazy things about it is these are the same people who, while they're calling for your guns to be taken away, they still have armed security. They still carry, they still make sure their house is safe with their security systems and their gated communities. They hate borders, supposedly, they hate guns, supposedly, but then they have gated communities with armed security because they don't actually believe in those things. It's just the policy that they want to use to manipulate the people into giving them more power. And if you want to stand up to that power, then you should go become a member of our sponsor, Gun Owners of America. Gunners of America doesn't even need to highlight the hypocrisy. All they need to do is say, hey, this is a fundamental, God-given, constitutionally entry right, which you cannot strip away, you cannot infringe upon. And they do that in a variety of ways. Of course, they're willing to and do campaign for good pro-Second Amendment candidates. They then additionally lobby once we get into the legislative session. But lobbying, by the way, doesn't just mean doing stuff inside the legislative session. It actually means far more than that. Because in order for you to lobby, you have to know what you're lobbying for, what bills there are. And so that means doing deep dives into research really at the end of every legislative session for the next one until it starts. And so, of course, they're doing that. And then if there needs to be a lawsuit, because there is some sort of tyrannical policy ordinance or law, they're willing to sue to get it taken down, to get it stopped. And so if you would like to become a member, you can go to goahahuston.com. That is G-O-A-Houston.com. It is a $25 annual membership, $25 per year, which allows gun owners of America to continue operating, to do all the things we just talked about and continue defending your God-given rights. No compromise. That is G-O-Ahouston.com. Now, with that understanding of gun control borders, how all these things are hypocrisy, let's talk a little bit about Islam and Epic City specifically, because of course people are gonna say, even on the right, well, they they're not illegals. Well, no. Uh but as I pointed out before, legality is not our main determinant of what's moral and what's good. And actually it should be the opposite, that we change laws based on what's moral and what's good. Right? Like the abolishment of slavery, for instance, uh Chattelle slavery specifically. Obviously, we shouldn't abolish certain kinds of enslavement, like restitution is a form of slavery. But Chattelle slavery specifically, man stealing, uh, the purchase of human beings. Bad. And even though it was legal, that didn't change the morality of the thing. And so even though you have illegal immigrants who are coming in trying to make Islamic only enclaves, that's bad. It's immoral. It's wrong to do that to a Christian country. And we should be able to say, hey, this is evil, even if it's currently legal. This is still wrong. It's still bad. And that if it if it is legal, then that means we need to change the laws. And so developers of this community, that is certainly uh an Islamic enclave, it's catering to Muslim families, they're now facing uh a more additional legal hurdle, specifically over fair housing rules. Uh, a Democrat judge in Travis County ruled this week, of course, in favor of community capital partners, that's the developers of the proposed Islamic community known as Epic City or the Meadow, who have been blocked in their efforts by the TWC, the Texas Workforce Commission. But the TWC immediately appealed, right? You had the Democrat judge who said, No, no, no, you're totally fine. And the TWC said, That's ridiculous. We're going to appeal that decision, placing further action on that issue on hold for the meantime. And Degan McGregor Abbott wrote in response to the appeal, this development will never see the light of day. Community Capital Partners, of course, say that the Texas Workforce Commission is violating a settlement agreement signed last year, resolving complaints that the project violated the Texas Fair Housing Act. Plans for Epic City, an expansion of the East Plano Islamic Center that later rebranded, of course, as the Meadow to make it seem better, include a residential community with a mosque, a school, and other amenities catering to Muslim families to be built on more than 400 acres in unincorporated parts of Hunt and Collin counties. The developer's original marketing materials suggested that the community was exclusively for Muslims. Uh and so both CCP and the Epic Real Properties sued Texas Workforce Commission officials back in February, claiming the agency is illegally refusing to review new plans submitted by the developers to comply with the settlement, including fair housing marketing plans, policies and procedures, website content, lottery methodology, et cetera. State law requires the Texas Workforce Commission to either approve those submissions or issue written objective reasons for disapproval tied to statutory, regulatory standards. Hey, here's why we're not approving it. If we're not going to approve it, you have to put down why you're not approving it. And so uh Community Capital Partners, who's running the operation, essentially said that the Texas Workforce Commission has done neither of those and is using a new complaint as a sort of stalling tactic. The lawsuit says this is not due process. Neither Chapter 301 nor the conciliation agreement permits the Commission to create its own allegations and then rely on those allegations to unilaterally and indefinitely suspend its own legal duties. And so District Court Judge Lori Iserlow in Travis County ruled a couple days ago in favor of the developers, ordering the Texas Workforce Commission to comply within 14 days. She also denied the motion to dismiss the lawsuit. And so they immediately appealed to the 15th Court of Appeals, halting further action, meaning they don't have 14 days to comply because it's been appealed until that appeal gets resolved. And so all the recent updates coming out have said that they've been blocked by utility districts, they've been blocked by county-level stuff. Um I think the most recent one on that side of things is that you had a Collin County judge who blocked further action by the utility district, slated to service to the controversial plan community, and a trial in that blockage is set for November 16th. That's when we'll hear all the updated details regarding where that side of the issue goes. In the meantime, we'll, of course, keep updated on the appeal with the Texas Workforce Commission. But again, these people shouldn't even be here. I I don't know why we thought it was a good idea to mass immigrate Muslims. I mean, I I know why, because for a time it granted Democrats more power and that's what they desire above all else. And so it's given them that power, that authority. That's why you have, of course, a Democrat judge who's largely the one ruling in favor of the epic city of the meadow. But this is a form of fraud. It certainly is. When you when you bring people to our country, a Christian country, a Christian country of European heritage, and you bring people from all these different countries that hate American values, that hate the values of Christianity, and have hated the values of Christianity for well over a thousand years, they're going to do things like this. And when in certain cases it seems like judges and the law is protecting them, it's because our law was not written for Muslim immigrants. Our law was written for Christian Americans. And so we never expected to have to deal with this issue in the first place, which means now that we've unfortunately done this, our laws are going to need to change in order to deal with this sort of evil. That being said, to wrap up the show for today and this week, when we get back from the break, we will talk a little bit about this multi-agency operation that's now seized 31 firearms, uh, drugs like methamphetamine, Xanax, and other narcotics, as well as two arrests having been made. It was this coordinated law enforcement operation here in Houston. We'll talk about it when we get back from the break. As always, if you would like to text into the show, let us know your thoughts, any questions, any concerns, or something that you would like to hear more about, 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. And Lord willing, I will return to wrap up the show for today and this week after this final break. So stick around, ladies and gentlemen, and we'll talk soon.
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Multi-Agency Gun And Drug Seizure
SPEAKER_21Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. A coordinated law enforcement operation in Houston led to the seizure of dozens of weapons and narcotics. Officers with the Houston Police Department, including its gang, narcotics, and South Gestner Divisions, partnered with several agencies to carry out this effort. Those agencies that they kind of had this multi-agency go with included the FBI Houston Field Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration, that's the DEA Houston Division, the uh TDPS, that's the Texas Department of Public Safety, South Texas Region, and the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Authorities said that the operation resulted in the removal of 31 firearms, including illegal weapon modifications, along with large quantities of methamphetamine, Xanax, and other narcotics. Two suspects were arrested and are facing multiple charges. Officials say the effort is part of an ongoing push to reduce violent crime and drug activity across the Houston area. One of the reasons that I brought this story up that I want to highlight is that this sort of stuff is the stuff that is destroying our country. And of course, there are a variety of things that we have to deal with. And as I always I like I love uh the term you can walk and chew gum at the same time, because I think it it perfectly kind of highlights exactly my position on a lot of the fixes that need to happen. Should we be tackling illegal immigration? Absolutely. Should we be tackling really the fact that we have a massive problem with legal immigration? Absolutely. Should we also be tackling the fact that we have a massive drug drug epidemic? And then by extension, be largely because of the drug epidemic, we have a massive homelessness crisis. That should be tackled as well. Should we be tackling the fact that we have these unbalanced budget deficits? Yes. Should we be tackling government corruption, insider trading? Right? The list goes on and on and on of things that we need to be dealing with. And we don't just have to pick one, we can pick all of them at the same time with different divisions and different departments to do all this important work. And it's not a money issue, I promise you, because as I've highlighted before, nearly 40% of our federal budget is spent on welfare programs. Okay. We have trillions of dollars dedicated to welfare programs. We have plenty of extra money that if we wanted to in an instant, if we wanted to do things the right way, but actually be cheaper than what we do already, you could tackle all these issues in in one go. You could deal, you could immediately with the with the legislature, if we had the authority and the power, we could say, all right, illegal immigration, done. Deportations, mass. Legal immigration, dealt with. Homelessness is really a byproduct. Again, chronic homelessness, as I've highlighted, is a byproduct of the drug epidemic. Drugs, all drug dealers, these guys right here, put to death. Right? We start doing that across the board. It would not be that expensive. It's totally doable if we're willing to have really the backbone to do it, and we'd fix all these issues in just a few years. It could be done if we're willing to do what it takes. Nevertheless, that we're coming up on the break, so that'll do it for the show today. And of course, this week. As always, I want to thank everyone who tuned in uh today, the rest of this week. If you miss part of today's show or any show throughout this week, you can go check out the Lone Star Conservative on Apple and Spotify podcasts. In the meantime, I would encourage you all to enjoy the rain that we're getting today. Uh, then of course, enjoy your weekend. It's going to be some beautiful, sunny, rather cooler weather, so enjoy that. Lord, I'll be back bright and early Monday at 6 a.m. in the meantime. Enjoy your weekend and Godspeed.