Houston Pay Raises Under The Microscope

Houston is full of “big moves” right now, and some of them land a lot closer to your wallet than you might think. I start with a quick community invite for our Pistols and Pizza event at Aegis Arms, then we pivot into the kind of local politics story that always raises eyebrows: major pay increases for City of Houston and Harris County elected officials, including new salary caps and large countywide bumps. Raises are not evil by default, but it hits differently when budgets stay tight and taxpayers keep hearing that more revenue is needed.

From there, I dig into two accountability fights that touch everyday life. First, the debate over religious accommodation in Texas airports, and what “equal treatment” actually means in government-owned facilities. Then, a consumer story with real grocery-store consequences: after a UC Davis study found many processed foods labeled “made with avocado oil” may contain undisclosed oils, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launches an investigation into potential deceptive trade practices. If you’re paying premium prices to avoid seed oils, labeling honesty matters.

We also bring on Justin White from Senior Health Services for Medicare Monday. We talk about why most people still don’t have an active Medicare agent, how plans change over time, and how a simple phone call can lead to meaningful monthly savings while keeping the coverage you need. Then we close with Texas lawmakers looking at social media’s impact on minors, focusing on addictive product design like infinite scroll, autoplay, and algorithms, plus what parents can realistically do when they “can’t outparent an algorithm.”

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

Transcript

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Welcome And Saturday Event Invite

SPEAKER_10 0:08

The voice of reason. It's the most dark conservative Michael Wilson.

SPEAKER_12 0:30

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative here on Patriot 920. Welcome to another week, really coming up almost on another month. Technically, we'll we'll still be in the month of August. At the start of next week, but not really. I mean, does it count? We're getting one day of August, right, for the show next week. So it doesn't really count. This is basically the last week of August. And before anybody says anything, no, I can't believe it either. I cannot believe we're already going to be in September within the next eight days. Uh what a surprise. But sooner than eight days, much, much sooner than eight days, we have on August 29th an upcoming, very exciting event. I'm sure you guys know all about this because I've teased it maybe 10 times in the past couple weeks. That's for a reason. It's coming up now this Saturday. That is August 29th, this Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., we will have our pistols and pizza event that you will not want to miss. I mean, the name alone kind of gives it away. I can I can tell you what we got, but I mean the name Pistols and Pizza, you you probably know what it is that we have. We have pizza for free, use of the range with your pistols for free. And we actually have a raffle for a free firearm. The key word there and all that free. You get free stuff just for showing up. So, oh, and I'll do a free live broadcast. Not that you have to pay for any of the other ones, um, but it will be live and in person. So if you'd like to come over, say hi, uh, the president and owner of the station will be there. Some other people will be there, but it'll be a really good time at Aegis Arms Indoor Gun Range. That is right near the Beltway in 288. If you know the huge Bass Pro Shops, right over there. Um, we'll be we'll be there on Saturday again. That's from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. this Saturday, August 29th. That is only five days away. So very exciting stuff. I'm glad to be able to finally say it's this upcoming Saturday. I've been teasing it for like four weeks. So that feels very good. Hopefully, you guys already have it on your calendar. If not, make sure you put it there. Make sure you are ready to come on Saturday. Now, we have quite a few stories to get into today, as do we every day. There's always stuff going on in the greater Houston area and in the great state of Texas. Just to give you an idea of where we're gonna go today. Um, in the second segment, probably. I I haven't fully decided on the order. More than likely, we're just gonna go over uh raises for city of Houston and Harris County officials, elected officials specifically. Because of course they're getting big raises. They always are. Um, that's always the goal of politics these days. It's not to serve you, the people. No, no, no. It is to make more money, gain more notoriety and fame. Really, I think most politicians secretly just wanted to be actors, but they weren't attractive enough. Trump is the exception, because of course was an actor. But but for everybody else, it's like they wanted to be celebrities. That was kind of the goal. That's why a lot of them start podcasts and all these things. And I don't mind that, right? Like that's I get it. I'm in the media side of politics, so I understand, you know, you know, wanting to speak instead of vote on bills. But it seems like a lot of them felt like they wanted to go and be famous. They they look at somebody like Robert Downey Jr., right? They're like, okay, that guy's making $35 million from this movie, and everybody knows who Robert Downey Jr. is. I want to be that guy, uh, but look at look at me, right? I can't. There's no world where I'm gonna be able to do it. I don't have the talent, I don't have the looks, I don't have the charisma, whatever it is. I don't I don't got it, right? So instead, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna I'm gonna run for office. And I'm gonna get elected. And then I'm gonna screw over all the people in the district that I claim to serve, and instead I'm just gonna sit here and and do make make make myself get richer. That's that's what I'm gonna I'm gonna vote over my own raises. We know Congress does that all the time. You know, you have a big government shutdown, it's always so funny because the government doesn't shut down. Everybody still works, all the essential employees are still going in. And unlike all the essential employees who are not getting paid, Congress still does, of course. They still get their paychecks, they they still get to enjoy their life. That's how politics has has kind of become. It's kind of turned into this where it all seems to be celebrity-based. Can I be popular and famous and rich? And and it's it's their own personal greed, it's their own personal desire for enrichment and for fame that drives them. And I'm not saying that that's true of every politician. I think there are plenty that do care. I think there are a lot of politicians that probably do want to do good, but unfortunately it seems like it's becoming few and far between. And it's really sad. We'll get into those races in the second segment. We're also gonna talk about Paxson, because he's now investigating. I brought this story up a couple weeks ago when it when it when the study first came out, because I read the study and I I kind of brought it up as uh I don't want to say a tangent, but it was it was not its own story. I just kind of went over it. But Paxson is now saying that he's gonna investigate the made with avocado oil labeling claims, given the UC Davis study, where 89% of processed foods labeled as avocado oil, labeled that they they contained avocado oil, and that was the only ingredient in terms of oil, were actually cut with other oils, with the avocado oil, and didn't label them with the other oils. So he's gonna investigate that. We'll go over that. Um we have some situations going on with um lawmakers talking about social media's impact on young people's sort of mental health and what's going on there. Also, we have an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle kind of going over why Houston protests over Lorenzo Salgado are not kind of um, let's say they're not doing enough, is what this op-ed claims. That in Houston, we're not rallying enough for this shooting. Other cities are actually rallying more than we are. What's going on with that? We'll talk about that as well. We'll talk about an update on the uh Lamarck Mayer, who, if you did not know, uh was was arrested uh for indecent exposure in Brisbane County. And he's now posted his bond. We'll kind of go over that strike because we didn't think we got to go over it when it originally dropped.

Airports, Religion, And Equal Treatment

SPEAKER_12 6:56

The bigger issue, much bigger than any sort of Sharia law at all, is the Islamic infiltration and influence of the U.S., a much larger problem, and one that is at the root of the problem. So we're gonna go over this update on what's going on with Islamic influence and and infiltration of the U.S. Because again, it is a much larger problem than Sharia. Sharia is, of course, the end goal, but it's not where we're at now, and it's it's not gonna solve the problem whatsoever to go after Sharia law. Here's one of the examples. Governor Gregavan has now asked the U.S. Department of Justice, the DOJ, to investigate voodoo ablution footwashing stations in Texas airports. The request came in a letter over the weekend addressed to U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanch and U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmit Dillon. He addressed the presence of abolition stations in the DFW airport and Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport by issuing a review of grant funds allocated to entities that operate airports in Texas. If an airport operator is determined to have violated anti-discrimination law, the result could be, doesn't have to be, but it could be a revocation of grant funds issued by the state of Texas. And so in a letter that he wrote uh before to airport CEOs, he said these abolition facilities appear designed to single out one subset of the population for special treatment based on religion. He said, I am unaware of either airport installing standalone facilities to meet the particular needs of the many other religious groups represented in Goster Texas. That is illegal. Both airports, IH and DFW, are government-owned facilities. DFW airports quickly announced that they would not be moving forward with the consideration of new stations. However, no announcement was made on those already installed from either airport, by the way. And so he said, that's why he sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, saying, hey, listen, this is taking place. It is in violation on discrimination on the basis of religion. He also said that once somebody is doing something inside the TSA checkpoint, that is controlled by the federal government. And so in his letter to the DOJ, Abbott explained the situation and its incompatibility with federal law. He said these ablution stations are not comparable to any existing interfaith chapels, which are open and available to all, because in these particular instances, the stations are clearly purposed to benefit the Muslim population alone. It goes without saying the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from facilitating this sort of discrimination. Abbott noted that the federal government is the primary authority overseeing all airports in the nation, including the authority to inspect and regulate terminal facilities. He said to put it simply, it is clear that these government-owned airports have used and continue to use funds charged to the public to finance, maintain, advertise, and operate Muslim-only spaces on property that should be open and accessible to all citizens. Abbott also notified Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, Aaron Wrights, and U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Ryan Raybold, in the letter. He's requesting that the U.S. Department of Justice immediately review these discriminatory facilities at DFW and IAH and take appropriate corrective action. He said airports can no more offer Muslim-only bathroom spaces than they can maintain white-only bathrooms. I look forward to working with Blanche and Dylan, and I'm committed to ensuring that all citizens, regardless of their religion, are treated equally in Texas airports. Now, as I mentioned before, there's something that I need to clear up here because I think there's a little bit of confusion. I know that it's easier to boil it down to that because that's where our court system is. That's where the mainstream interpretation of the Constitution is at. And so it's resulted in this sort of mess. And so I do understand the argument that someone like Governor Rabbit is making. I do get it. The argument primarily right now rests on an argument that religious discrimination is always bad. It's always wrong. Now, do I believe that? I don't. I don't think that the founders believed that. I don't think that was ever in their vision for the United States of America was to ban all forms of religious discrimination. I think they actually would have looked at that and said that that was absolutely insane and counter to the values of the nation that we became. That our nation was actually explicitly Christian in its form, in its function, in its sphere of influence, and in the way that it operated. And to pretend otherwise is put simply historically illiterate. It ignores the entire basis of our founding. To pretend as though our government was some amalgamation of religions and cultures, that is a new development, ladies and gentlemen. That is new. That is not what our constitution is rooted in. That is not what our legal system is rooted in. That is not what our government is rooted in, and that's certainly not what our constitution is rooted in. When you look back to all of the rights that we have, where do they come from? I'm saying, even in the statements from the founders, read the Declaration of Independence, our literal founding document, more founding than the Constitution, right? In terms of the government that we were becoming, our our original document, what did the Declaration of Independence say about our rights? That they are inalienable, granted to all men by who? Our creator. They come from our creator, these inalienable rights. Who's the creator? Because if it's just some religiously neutral term, well, what about atheists? They don't think we have a creator. So no creator could grant us rights. Atheists would say that our rights are intangible, abstract concepts that we have to debate. That's certainly not what the founders thought. They thought these rights, again, the term inalienable, I know this is confusing, is that it's granted automatically by nature of existence that you have a right that cannot be stripped away from you. If we believe that, then they have to come from somewhere. There has to be some objective standard by which we judge them. You can't just say, you got them, I guess. I guess they're there. I I guess I guess that's what we decided. That wasn't the standard. Our rights came from somewhere, came from someone. And the founders believed that. The documents certainly claim that. So who was it? Who gave us our rights? Who was the creator that's being referenced? Well, of course it was the God of the Bible. Again, the founders would have adamantly defended that. They did adamantly defend that. They were very clear about it that the creator they were referencing was the God of the Bible, the the God of Christianity, the one true and living God, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords that rules over every nation, but is contained in our own documentation. And so the issue, when you talk about Islam, when you talk about Hinduism, when you talk about Buddhism, when you talk about all of these foreign pagan religions that have made their way into the mainstream of America, the issue is not religious discrimination. The issue that I have with footwashing stations designed for Muslims is not that we have religious discrimination. Is that bad in this can in this context? Sure. This type of religious discrimination is bad, but it's not bad on the basis that it's religiously discriminatory. And I can say that very clearly because again, I would have no issue with an airport having a Christian chapel. I would have no problem whatsoever with an airport hiring a Christian chaplain. I would have no problem whatsoever with setting up a nativity scene during Christmas time with no other religions represented in our Christmas decor. Why? Because again, the issue is not what it's not it's not will there be religion. It's which one is true. Which one is allowed to discriminate against the rest. And if you go to a Muslim country, if you go to a country that is primarily Muslim, you know, you're gonna find there's certainly religious discrimination there. We absolutely believe that there is discrimination in our in in all these Muslim countries. We recognize that. That's that's certainly you know where where we're at. But here in in America, we're not a Muslim nation. We're not a nation that's that's rooted in Muslim values or Muslim principles. And so of course we shouldn't have Muslim-only stations anywhere in the country. Can we have Christian only stations? Absolutely we can. That's not a problem at all. But the problem is that we live in this sort of we we live in an egalitarian time where our government and the people of our government have so blatantly misconstrued the Constitution that so many people are confused by what it actually means. They think that, well, any sort of religious discrimination at all, well, that must inherently be wrong. That must inherently be bad. That means if you put up nativity scenes, but you don't put up things for all the other holidays, that's that's not good. Right? That must mean that you have to entertain every religion an equal amount. Your interfaith chapel has to have every book from every religion, which is impossible given the number of religions in the world, by the way. That's that's literally impossible to have every book from every religion. You can't do it, but that would be the claim that you have to you have to represent everyone equally. It's it's completely religiously neutral, that everyone is represented the same. And that's again, not what our founders designed, not what our founders envisioned, not what this country is rooted in, not the historic belief of any of our people that created this great country, certainly not the belief of many of us as conservatives. And it's because the Constitution and the rights which we have fundamentally come from God. And therefore, that God is by nature discriminatory. Because if you don't believe in that God, well, where do your rights come from? Do we still protect them? Sure we do. But the basis for the rights you don't believe in. So for you, you have a different set of ideals. You have a different set of rights that you believe in. Again, go to a Muslim country and find out what rights you have there. Different ones. You may have some rights in a Muslim country if you're a Muslim, but the rights are different. They're granted differently, they look different, they function differently, in accordance with the Quran, in accordance with their own religious set of rules and guidance. And that's totally how that's that's fine for them. They get to do that, that's their country, whatever. This is ours. This is a Christian country run by Christians. And I'm I'm really fed up. We had a text in, and it's kind of how I feel about the whole situation. It says, it says, if I hear about the foot Washingtations one more time, I'm gonna lose it. That's how I feel. This just needs to be done with. What we need to say is, yeah, that's obviously not American. That's obviously not something that a first world civilized Western nation should have, point blank, period. That that's that's counterintuitive to every standard that anybody believed in prior to the last 60 years. It's it's adamantly opposed to any standard that was set up by our government, by any standard that was set up by our founders, it's completely backwards. And instead of coming in and saying that, instead of saying this is obviously violating the principles that we were founded upon, instead we have to we have to do this so differently. Our government has to say, no, no, no, actually, well, the problem is that it discriminates. You you can't have anything that religiously discriminates, which isn't true, but they have to make that argument because we have such an ob an obvious misinterpretation of our documents. We have an obvious misinterpretation of our country. We we don't know our own heritage, we've lost sight of the inheritance that we were given by God and by our forefathers. And that's a horrible thing to have. This is why I say that history is so critically important to the study of politics. History is so important, it's so crucial to understanding the present of our nation and the future of our nation. Because if you don't know the past, how can you correctly interpret things from that past? Well, I may not have studied history, but I know about the constitution. Do you? Do you know about the constitution? Because it doesn't sound like the way that you're saying things, it doesn't sound like you actually understand the constitution at all. Well, these are state-owned government facilities. They are. They absolutely are. So we can't discriminate. Well, yes, you can. But do you how do you want your state to discriminate? Because you're always going to. You can't ever actually have they've tried it. You can't it doesn't work. You can't ever actually have a totally religiously neutral place. It doesn't work that way. You can want it to work that way all day long. It will never work. It will never function. Because that's not how people were made. We don't we don't align that way. We have vastly different ideological values. We will never be able to operate in some sort of neutral limbo state. It's not gonna work. And you have to pick one. And we already have. Just like the Muslim nations have already picked theirs, we already picked ours, and we're trying to be told, well, you made the wrong choice, let's go back and try again. And we need to stand up and say, no. The issue is not that fush that foot washing stations are discriminatory, religiously speaking. The issue is that they're discriminating against the people of this country. They're discriminating in favor of Muslims against Christians. My issue is that this doesn't, it's not that this doesn't apply to Hindus or Buddhists, is that this is obviously discriminating against the population of America. It's discriminating against Christians. It is a Muslim station. And that's why it's wrong. Not because all religious discrimination is created equally, it's not. It's because of who and how it discriminates. That is the problem that they don't want to talk about because it would require a very difficult conversation on what religion is and on what our nation believed for a very long time. And it would require historical knowledge. But with that being said, we do have to get to the next segment. We do have some stuff to go over, and that is Houston Harris County elected officials that are getting that are getting I'll say big raises. Um we're gonna see how much they make in the next segment, how much has changed. How again, I mentioned in the first segment, these these people seem less like they actually care about you and more like they just want celebrity status. Celebrity status for everybody. We just we just want to be popular and make a lot of money. You're in the wrong, you're you're really in the wrong sport. You're you're really in the wrong stadium. 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 on any of the stuff we're covering, any of the stuff we're not covering, anything that you'd like to see us go over, um, all you have to do is text in at 713-23. 779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and Lord willing to be right back with those raises after this short break. So stick around. We'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_15 22:20

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The Medicare Minute with Justin White is brought to you by Senior Health Services.

SPEAKER_03 23:41

We talk to a lot of people who will literally come up and say, I hate shopping for Medicare plans so much. And I'll say, What's happened? And they'll say, My gosh, my phone won't stop ringing. I've got people showing up at my door. My mailbox is full of garbage. It's just so unpleasant. And I'm like, I get it, and I'm sorry. But you know what? Don't let that keep you for demanding the best out of the plans that you have. These are available to you. You earned these. So do not allow those practices to discourage you from reaching out to somebody who can help you understand what your options are and change each year when it's appropriate to do so. Did you know that these plans they change kind of a lot? So if you've been in a plan for a long time, there's a good chance that thing is degraded a lot since you put it in place. Not a guarantee, but you got to get it reviewed so you know because you deserve to be in a plan that is on the cutting edge of whatever your needs happen to be. So pick up the phone, call a trusted agent, or call senior health services. We do this every day for free. There's no reason to fear it, and do not settle.

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SPEAKER_14 26:07

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Houston And Harris County Salary Hikes

SPEAKER_12 26:29

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. Many Houston area elected officials are set to receive substantial raises this year. Elected officials at City Hall got their first raises since 2013 in July after state lawmakers increased state district judge salaries, automatically lifting the city's salary caps. Harris County Commissioners, meanwhile, approved raises for most countywide elected officials as well, which will take effect with the county's new fiscal year that starts October 1st, which is only a little more than a month away. And so let's let's go over some of these raises. Well, first of all, the the commissioners approved raises for most countywide elected officials to $305,000 a year. That's already a massive amount. Most Houston City councils saw their maximum salary rise from about $63,000 to jump from about $158,000 a year to $200,000 a year. Harris County judge Lena Dalgo, as well as her four commissioners, I say her because she is actually in charge, uh, are among those whose salaries would remain unchanged. T. Some mayor John Whitmire declined his salary available to him and continues to make about $237,000. Which can I just go ahead and pause for a moment before we get into the rest of this and say look, you can disagree fundamentally with a lot of what John Whitmeyer says and a lot of what he does. And I do, right? He is a Democrat, which means there are a lot of things that him and I do not see eye to eye on, that I actually think are really grievous problems. Uh the thing associated with LGBTQ, the the stance that he's taken on immigration in a variety of times, I think a lot of them are dangerous and wrong. But as far as a mayor of a big city goes, especially a Democrat mayor, I I gotta say, he's one of, if not the best. We could have gotten much worse. If you compare this to other large city mayors, if you were to look at Chicago or New York City, and you were to just compare the the two mayors from any of those cities, from Houston and basically again any other large city in a top ten, uh you're gonna find very quickly that Mayor Whitmeyer is, again, certainly number one in that list. Does that mean that we should be content with that and shouldn't try to be better? Of course not. We definitely want better. Uh but we've we've heard John Whitmeyer be anti-raising taxes, try to keep everything in a certain kind of spending budget, balance things out, use other means and methods, and now we see the opportunity he could have made $300,000 a year and he turned down a what would that be? Like a $63,000 race. He's gonna make $237,000 again. He said, I don't want the race. Don't give it to my office. We don't we don't need it. I I don't need to make more. Uh three council members also accepted races, but have chosen to take less than the maximum salary available to them. Um but let's just go over some of the offices. Sheriff Ed Gonzalez is making $330,000 a year. The constables are all making, every constable, that includes Alan Rosen, Jerry Garcia, Sherman Eagleton, Mark Herman, Terry Alberton, Sylvia Trevino, James Phillips, Philip Sandlin, all of them uh made will now make $305,000 a year. Uh Mayor Whitmeyer, again, he turned down his $63,000. I think he's the only person that actively turned down other than I think the only there were only three other people who turned down their salaries, who turned down the possible upgrades. That would be Fred Flickinger, District E council member, and he didn't turn down all of it. He took a small raise, but turned down the the bulk of the raise. District, uh that would be District L Council member Julian Ramirez, who turned down $40,000 of the raise, uh, but is still going up a little bit. And Alejandro Salinas, who turned down $70,000. Those are the only people who turned down raises, right? District Clerk Marilyn Burgess got a $126,000 raise, took it. Uh County Clerk Tanisha Hudspith took a $126,000 raise, took it. County attorney Abby Kamen, who's just in the position, got an $88,000 raise. Shantier, $88,000 raise. Uh Chris Hollins, again, that was a $42,000 raise. All of the city council members, other the ones I mentioned, all took pretty solid raises, putting them up to $80,000 a year. So again, it's pretty wild to see all of this going on. Because we have to remember, all of those things, it's not inherently bad to get raises in any position, by the way. In fact, I think raises are good, especially if you're doing a good job. That's how raises used to be. You got raises if you did well. It was an incentive structure. You knew that the longer you worked and the more good that you did, the more money that you made. That was a benefit. That is a benefit of capitalism primarily, that you make more money when you do more work, when you get more done, and when you succeed. But that's not the standard for politics. That's why a lot of these people like being in politics, because the standard's not based on how good you did. It's not based on how much you got done, on how you balance the budget, on how you best serve the people. None of those things are relevant whatsoever to the amount you got to raise for. You just balance things. They just say, Well, they got raises, so I get raises. They didn't look at the constables and say, Well, that constable is doing a great job, so he gets a raise. That one, that one doesn't, he serves a smaller district. No, no. Has to be pay parity, has to be equal, right? Everything is everything is egalitarian and equal now. So no, everybody gets raises. We're gonna give out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to people that maybe didn't earn it, maybe don't deserve it. While at the same time, we're complaining every year that our balance, that our budget isn't balanced, that that we are in this massive, this massive crisis, this massive fiscal and budgetary crisis, uh, with these not surpluses, no, no, no, of course not, uh, with these massive holes. Yeah, we're constantly losing money. We're constantly in the negative. And they tell you that every year. I'm so sorry, but we do have to raise your taxes. Unfortunately, we do have to get more of your money to balance our budget. Don't look at the fact that people are making we're we're adding hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to our our budget every year for for raises. That's not relevant. Don't pay attention to that. No, no, no. The issue is just money doesn't go as far as the use, so we have to tax you more. We have to get more money. And at some point, this is what's going to happen because it's happened all throughout world history. This is not a new phenomenon. When you find that the ruling class of people is continually making more and more money while the quality of life in your country of the average citizen is getting worse, which is what we've seen for years. When that happens, at some point, those average people who feel compelled to say, This is not good, this is not working, I'm not making enough, the economy's not doing so well, but you guys, you guys are making more money, you're getting raises. You know what's going to happen? And it's always happened, is there is some sort of uprising. It it always happens. And I'm not saying I support that. I'm not saying I want that to happen. I don't want that sort of thing. We can keep that out of our country. But that's that's nearly inevitable by any historical standard if we don't start fixing the problem and saying, you know what, we cannot tax people harder so that we get to make more money. That's not gonna work. It's not gonna function. No one's gonna be happy with that setup. And that's what they're setting things up for. And again, it's not just your city, it's your state legislature, too. With that being said, we get back from the break. We're gonna give you guys an update from this op-ed. Uh, why protests in Houston over the ice shooting of Lorenzo Salgado are not enough. Other cities are doing far more. What why why are we lagging behind? Why are we not protesting hard enough with an We'll talk about it when we get back. If you'd 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. Lord William, I'll be right back with the rest of that story after this short break. So stick around. We'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_09 34:50

If you're a conservative but you say you're a Christian first, I got a show for you. It's Eric Jurks, and join me tonight at 9 on Patriot Talk 920 and online at Patriotalk920.com.

SPEAKER_08 35:03

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

SPEAKER_01 35:09

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

SPEAKER_18 35:33

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SPEAKER_21 36:04

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SPEAKER_19 36:35

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SPEAKER_20 36:52

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SPEAKER_06 37:50

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SPEAKER_14 38:20

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

Why ICE Shooting Protests Stay Small

SPEAKER_12 39:05

Said that low turnout at Houston area ice protests in the weeks since Salgado was killed has disappointed her. They pointed to several barriers: fear of ice surveillance and retaliation, limited transportation, divisions among advocacy groups, and conservative statewide leadership that restricts some protests. They said that ice shootings in LA, Chicago, and the Twin Cities have drawn far wider public outrage in the streets, with thousands ending rallies to protest the violence. Organizers in those communities have been able to rely on labor and immigrant rights networks built over decades while Houston is still developing a lot of that infrastructure. Frida Adam, former uh founder of We the Lucha, this grassroots organization that apparently just launched after the shooting, which isn't suspicious at all, said unfortunately it's not enough. It's not enough for what we're fighting for, and I do believe that it's going to take all of us working together. And it's not like to be clear, this isn't like it's some, well, you some who Houstonians just don't protest. Well, that's not true. You had thousands rallied uh back in 1978. Uh we know it went on in the No Kings demonstrations, right? We had quite a massive turnout there. So the question is, why not here? A question they're still trying to understand. And so uh I I don't have an answer for it, right? I couldn't tell you the main reason. They want to say it's because, well, people are scared of ice. I I don't think that's it. Right? Never before have the leftists been genuinely scared. This is why the uh some of the shootings have even happened, is because leftists should have a little bit of natural fear for authority structure, right? You don't approach someone that's carrying a weapon who's doing their job and threaten them and push them and shove them and hit them. You don't do that. That's unwise. There should be enough fear to say I won't do that, right? A little bit of legal fear, at least. There should be some. But I don't think that that actually explains why people aren't showing up for protests. Uh maybe part of it is that a lot of people are fed up with this seemingly endless cycle of retaliatory anger. People are kind of saying, Well, we're not achieving anything. Nothing's getting better, nothing's changing. Why would I show up? Or they see who's leading a lot of these charges and they say, You guys are just profiting in a lot of these cases off of our in in off of our frustration. You get us to go out there and then you use it for fundraising, and then the fundraising doesn't make the differences that we talked about. And we have to wonder, again, are you doing this for personal enrichment? And that's a problem on both sides of the political aisle. I think that's the more likely scenario here is that people are kind of tired of being pawns in a game of the political ruling class. The people that start these NGOs, people that start these nonprofits, people that start these organizations. People are kind of tired of having to play in someone else's game that is clearly not benefiting them. It provides no tangible benefit whatsoever for the people involved. And at some point, they have to say, well, then why in the world would I would I sacrifice my time and my energy for this? What why would I do that when I'm not achieving anything of note? Nothing's getting better, and there are better, more useful ways I can spend my time. If you want to know the answer, you Houston organizers, understand that you have to pick your battles. Also understand that you have to five or things to people actually believe in. You haven't even waited for any sort of investigation to be completed. You didn't wait and find out, okay, yeah, see, this was this was bad. Let's protest. You just started protesting automatically and villainize someone who may not even have done anything wrong. You have no idea. And you assume they did. And the result of that is you didn't get a lot of people to show up. And you can be upset about that, but people in Houston saw what happened, they know what happened, and they say, We gotta wait for more details. And we're not gonna play your game where it's it's obviously a game to you. Otherwise, you would have waited for for the culmination of the investigation to come out. If this was more than a game and you actually cared, then it would have been about the particular scenario you're talking about, and instead you're using it as a political ploy with very limited knowledge in order to further your narrative, and everyone knows it. With that being said, to wrap up the first hour of the show, we get back. We're of course gonna go over the weather report. Well you need to know now that we're in a new week, how the weather's looking. I a little teaser on that, a little maybe it's a shocker to some of you. Uh it's hot. It's gonna be hot. We're still in the same weather pattern we were in last week. We'll talk about it when we get back. Text in 713-779-5978. One more time. That is 713-779-KYST. You are listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. We'll really be right back to wrap up the first hour of the show with your weather report after this short break. Don't go anywhere.

SPEAKER_15 44:01

Houston, this is Tom Gresham, inviting all gun owners to join me live every Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. for gun talk. Call in with your questions or range reports and let's tackle everything Second Amendment. Here on Houston's Leader for Gun Owners, Patriot Talk 920.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

My doctor won't take my plan anymore. Why is my Medicare supplement so expensive? My prescription drug plan sucks. When you need some help with Medicare, go to SeniorHealth Services.com.

SPEAKER_03 44:34

In all stairs, since we know you're frustrated, but if you'll call 281-894-7540, we'll help you with your Medicare and we'll do it for free. Plus, we're not with the government and we are fully licensed to help.

SPEAKER_08 44:47

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

SPEAKER_01 44:53

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

SPEAKER_07 45:18

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SPEAKER_20 45:49

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SPEAKER_05 46:18

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SPEAKER_13 46:48

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SPEAKER_11 46:56

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SPEAKER_12 47:13

Saturday mornings the 6th on Patriot Talk, 920.920, the Lone Star Conservative.

Heat Dome Forecast And September Tease

SPEAKER_12 47:42

A strong area of high pressure, also aptly called a heat dome, is going to keep temperatures well above normal and live in and limit any sort of afternoon storms. Highs in the Eastern area could reach 100 to 104 degrees, while temperatures near the coast remain in the lower to middle nineties. King's values of 110 degrees or higher is likely to keep those heat alerts going through early this week. The hottest conditions of the week are going to occur from Monday, that's today, through this upcoming Wednesday, when mostly sunny skies allow temperatures to rise quickly during the afternoon. Now, a few isolated showers or thunderstorms could develop later in the week, but again, most locations, even through then, are going to remain hot and dry. That is at least currently the plan. Temperatures may ease slightly beginning Thursday in the next weekend as the center of the ridge shifts west. Highs could fall from the 100-degree range to the upper 90s instead. But the European model's ensemble forecast, which combines multiple models to kind of give you a sort of average, the range of possible outcomes, uh, suggests that temperatures could eventually settle into the mid-90s, while other models say that the ice could stay closer to 100 for longer. So of course the timing and the strength of that relief remain uncertain. Either way, we're going to stay in that upper 90s to low hundreds range during the day and the upper 70s, low 80s at night. Now, I was doing the thing that I start doing as we get close to the fall winter season, which is what I I like to do. I go to the accueather monthly forecast. I start looking at months out, right? I'll start saying, well, what does September look like? I am seeing that right around September the 6th or 7th, uh, which by the way is only about two weeks away from now. We're going to drop from those highs in the mid to upper 90s, potentially down into the upper 80s, low 90s, which will all stake those lows down in the low to mid-70s instead of upper 70s, low 80s. Now again, that's two weeks out. How accurate is it? Probably not, but it's fun to start going ahead and doing that. Then over the first hour of the show, we can get back. Of course, we're gonna have Justin White for Medicare Monday from Senior Health Services. You won't want to miss that. Text in 713-779-5978. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and the Lord, I'll be right back at the top of the next hour. Don't go anywhere.

SPEAKER_10 50:09

From 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.

SPEAKER_17 50:21

I'm a bandit. Your bandit. Let's all get a bandit.

Medicare Monday And Real Savings

SPEAKER_12 50:36

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative here on Patriot Doc 920. And joining me is our good friend Justin White from Senior Health Services. We each week, every Monday, go over what we call Medicare Monday. We talk about all the issues kind of plaguing you when it comes to Medicare, what you can do about it, where you need to go, all that and so much more. Welcome to the show, Justin. Hey, good morning as always. Good to be here as always. Absolutely. And I'm I'm very excited for today because it's something that we kind of tease almost every week, where we kind of mention this concept where we say, look, there are an infinite number of topics we can go over on Mondays. Uh, but regardless of the number that we hit on, we're never going to be able to address every single person's specific scenario and specific problems that you have to have an agent to do that. And I want to walk through because we're finally dedicating an entire portion to going over what that looks like and why that's so important.

SPEAKER_04 51:32

Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, I got a good example for you. So I had a young lady call in last week and was just saying, Man, I've I've got I just got a problem, and she uh happened to get me, you know, what's going on? And she's on a Medicare supplement, and she's in her early 70s. And uh, you know, on the most popular plany, and her premium was already between $350 and $400 a month, which is very hard for somebody in that age. Younger, that's just that's ridiculous. And so we looked at it and answered some questions about she was uh healthy enough where I thought it justified looking around, and sure enough, I was able to place her in the exact same plan with a different carrier. She answered all the health questions and passed the underwriting, and her new premium is $196 down from the $350 or so that she was with before. So huge win, and all she did was pick up the phone and ask, and that's $150 a month savings.

SPEAKER_12 52:43

Right. You're saving thousands of dollars a year. Uh you're saving a significant portion of your income, which again, I remind people, once you're on Medicare, right? And I'm sure you already know this if you're on Medicare, but if you're, you know, you're getting up towards that range and you're saying, hey, I don't know how this is going to all work, you have to keep in mind that, you know, it's one thing to deal with expensive premiums when you're in the workforce, right? That's already a big enough problem. Once you're out and you're on a fixed income and you're dealing with all the other stresses of being retired, you really especially don't want to have any stress once you're retired. That's kind of the point of retirement. Um and so everything we can do to kind of reduce that in general, but you're on this fixed income and you're looking at your plan and you're saying, This is just so expensive, especially when it appears like, in a lot of cases, it doesn't need to be. Um You mentioned before we came on the show, and I want to get the statistic. This was pretty wild to me of how many people don't have agents. How many people are just kind of doing it themselves hoping for the best?

SPEAKER_04 53:34

Oh, it's it's most of them. You know, only three out of ten people out there that are Medicare qualified actually have an active agent. And that could mean that they're they're talking to phone people, or it could mean that they're calling one-800 numbers they see on television, or you know, it could be they're trying to figure it out on their own, or a lot of people, and this is absolutely a fact I see this all the time, they get into a plan and they just sit there hoping that it's not gonna change, and they just they just are very hesitant to call because they don't want to get some some idiot on the phone that's gonna sell their information somewhere. And I absolutely don't blame them for that. But the problem is they sit there and then when they do need help, it's not as easy for them to get. And sometimes they don't get the help they need, and so they sit there and they accept it's a situation that's much less than what they could otherwise have if they just knew where to go and who to call.

SPEAKER_12 54:30

Absolutely. And I'd remind everybody, this qualifies in a variety of ways, right? Of course, saving money is is on that list, but there's other things too. Maybe it's not saving money. Maybe it's that your current plan, uh, even though it's the same money, the same amount of money as another plan, doesn't benefit you in the same way. That there are specific health concerns that you have, that the plan you're on or the carrier what you're with, whatever it may be, doesn't impact your quality of life the same. That you say, hey, I struggle with this particular thing. I need this particular medication, and it's much more expensive to get it under this plan. Is there another plan that would be similar in price, but that I save the money in what I'm spending elsewhere? I think there's probably a lot of people that come in with that concern too.

SPEAKER_04 55:08

Totally. Well, I mean, things change. I mean, to think that everything's gonna remain static, I mean, you know, life doesn't remain static just in the everyday stuff. So why in the world would it happen with your health insurance, with your Medicare? And logically everybody knows that, but it is you know, the life the advertising in Medicare has gotten so bad in recent years that it is completely understandable why they don't reach out like they could. To be an orphan policy holder and just be sitting there allowing yourself to be humbled by changing circumstances and and not really know what to do, well, that's not very good either. So you can always tell people, look, you know where we are. You don't even trust an agent. We'll let you answer questions that we'll answer and not charge you money. And you know, we we just we're free, we offer advice for free. When you we get paid, the carriers pay us. And so we are your ready resource, an advocate. You can call and not have to worry about having to write a check to anybody and just get answers and help if and when you need that.

unknown 56:13

Right.

SPEAKER_12 56:13

And I like to remind everybody that you have that sort of you know position to say that because again, you guys are local, you're here, you actually like meeting with people, and it's very obvious how you operate. It's very clear. So again, I get it with all of the advertisements and all of the you know, people that are that are actually being fraudulent, right? That have these offshore call centers and everything else that are a frustration for a lot of people that say, I don't want to, I don't want to deal with anybody, I just want to handle it myself. And as I mentioned, we do this every Monday, but we usually cover these kind of more with broad strokes, right? Because we have to to kind of, you know, talk about the most number of problems, the most obvious problems, the ones that you should call about, but there's just no way to analyze every case-by-case basis in the way that you guys do on a daily basis. And so as you mentioned, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 56:57

No, I just can say exactly right. And and we can spend some time on individual cases moving forward. Because I know people like hearing, you know, the whole proofs in the plitting thing. And uh there's absolutely no doubt that we can do that.

SPEAKER_12 57:11

Yeah, absolutely. But again, I remind everybody that that's limited, right? Your case is gonna be different than the next guy, even if you have the same condition and the same thing, things are gonna be different, and your particular case needs a particular solvent. And you can't get that from any interview. You can only get that by calling Senior Health Services. Justin, as always, we greatly appreciate your time coming on the show, being a part of the show every week. And Lord willing, we'll talk to you again next Monday.

SPEAKER_04 57:35

Hey, man, I look forward to it. Love your show, love your listeners.

SPEAKER_12 57:39

You guys stay cool out there, and we'll talk to you next week. Absolutely. With that being said, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to give them a call, which again, as he already mentioned, is completely free of charge. Costs nothing to call, costs nothing to get some questions answered, uh, which is very important. Give them a call at 281-894-7540. That is 281-894-7540. You can go to senior health services.com as well to see more information. They got videos up, they got information about us pages, all those sorts of things that you need and so much more. Or again, the most efficient thing you can do, if you have any questions at all, is just to give them a call. It's completely free. And really, even if you go through the whole process and you end up calling and more than just answering your question, you realize, hey, I want I want these guys to represent me. All right, I want to actually have an agent who's who's able to take care of me moving forward through the process, that's still free. Nothing ever costs you anything because they get paid again by the carriers because of the way the process works. So give them a call at 281-894-7540. And I guarantee you they'll help you out as much as they can. It doesn't always mean they're gonna get the best thing that you, you know, that that you're gonna get somebody that doesn't exist. They can't make up a new plan for you. But I I promise you, nine times out of ten at least, that they will significantly fix whatever your burden is in ways that you might not have known on your own. Uh, and so it's very helpful to have that aid. And that's why we partner with NGL services to help you guys best we can. With that being said, we have a few minutes left before the break, and I want to go over this Paxton story, very important story.

Paxton Targets Avocado Oil Labeling

SPEAKER_12 59:08

And again, I mentioned I brought this up last week, I think was the first time we talked about it. And this is a wild turn of events because you know, a lot of people, especially after the Make America Healthy Again movement really got off the ground, a lot of people wanted to become a part of that movement. They they I guess it woke them up to the reality that the food they were eating, the stuff they were putting in their bodies, probably not the kind of stuff that people should be eating, right? I don't talk about seed oils, it's one of the biggest, obvious known ones. Uh that by the way, the medical industry and the pharmacology industry they still want you to believe that seed oils are good. If you read the stuff coming out from a lot of these people, they still want to claim that seed oils are good for you and that all of the stuff that we've read and that we've heard and that we've learned, that all of it is actually just bogus pseudoscience, which is not true, right? You can read the studies for yourself, make your own determinations, right? Don't just trust the word of a radio host. But I can guarantee you, I put a lot of money on it, that the whole seed oil thing is a scam. It is the reason that they are promoting seed oils is because it makes them money. Because seed oils are significantly cheaper. And you know this. If you've ever been to the the the oil aisle for for making, you go to buy oil and you look at the price difference between like actual good oil, like avocado oil, coconut oil, olive oil, the stuff that you need, and you especially start looking at high heat uh oils, oils able to cook at higher temperatures, you're gonna find you're gonna save a whole lot of money by using seed and vegetable oils that are really bad for you. And it's a profit scheme. That's what a lot of this is when it comes to these companies. And so let me ask you a question. So we know that avocado oil is more expensive than its competitors in the oil industry, right? Than its competitors in the vegetable oils, the seed oils, whatever seed oil they ended up using. We know that. So just as a logical conclusion of that, what do you think costs more money? Right? Imagine that you have a a brand of chips. And when you when you cook the chips, you gotta use an oil, right? I guess you could air fry them, but nobody's doing that. I don't know how that would even work for packaging and everything else. So you you're buying chips and the company has two options. They can either use 100% pure, verified avocado oil, right? Seed oil-free, nothing in there. Or they can put, say, say we don't know the exact percentage. Say they put 51% avocado oil in there. But then they mix the avocado oil with 49% other oils that are cheaper, they mix it all up, and they say, well, this is our avocado oil. Even though there's other stuff in it, the ingredient itself, we just call it avocado oil. What do you think is cheaper? Well, obviously it's the cut oil. It's the one that's only 51% because they're saving a lot of money on the other 49%. They're cutting maybe half their profit margin. Right? Or they're adding half, right? That's very beneficial. It's also straight up lying, is what it is. He's also straight up being dishonest with your consumer base by saying this is avocado oil when we all recognize, well, uh not really. I mean, it has avocado oil in it, but those other oils you put in there aren't listed in the ingredients because you've made an amalgamation that you're calling avocado oil, which is maybe a majority avocado oil. We're not even guaranteed of that, by the way. I'm just I'm being charitable here. That you're you're calling it avocado oil, but it's all these other oils mixed in. You're just saying the final conclusion of all those oils mixed together is a majority of avocado oil, so we're gonna just call it avocado oil. And that might sound to a lot of people like blatant fraud, and it should. But here's the crazy part of that is that that's not a fake hypothetical that I'm just conjuring up out of thin air. I meant over the UC Davis study uh last week or the week before, and in this study they found that it was, I think it was 89% of processed foods. I think it was like 83% of chips, 71% of something else. It was like 100% of tested salad dressings. So not the oils themselves, but products, foods that used avocado oil as the supposed ingredient that labeled these things as avocado oil, but they actually contained other oils that weren't avocado oil and didn't list them. And so Attorney General Ken Paxton has now launched an investigation into food companies that market products like made with avocado oil, following reports that they may contain undisclosed seed oils and other ingredients that are not listed on the product label. The use of avocado oil has become increasingly popular, right, following the advent of the Make America Health Again movement. We all know that. For a lot of us, we were doing that before there was a movement, before it was a political thing. Back when, you know, a few years ago, before you had RFK Jr. speaking out on these things, there were a lot of us who already were big on that boat, right? We were already saying, yeah, we we we we drink raw milk, we buy these foods, we bake with this, we mill our own flour, right? That that sort of stuff that's that's become increasingly popular, which is a good thing. But of course, with increased popularity, that means that big companies to continue competing have to now have marketable products in the new industry for people that are looking for healthier food. And so these big companies, what do they do? Well, they don't want to sacrifice all the profits they're used to. So what's the alternative? Well, what if what if we caught these with other oils, but we call it avocado oil? That's what's happening. Dyson's office directly cited that study conducted by UC Davis that investigated processed foods labeled as solely using avocado oil. Researchers found that the majority of products tested included other oils as well. According to the study, it was discovered that, oh, here's here are the exact percentages. Of the products tested, 93% of chips, 71% of mayonnaise, and 100% of salad dressings labeled as authentic avocado oil contained other oils. Cam Bacton came out and he said this consumers should not have to worry if they are being deceived by labels when trying to choose healthier options at the grocery store. I will not allow companies to fraudulently mislabel products. My office will hold accountable any company that violates the law and misleads Texans about what is actually in their food. When Richards has applied the same um test, the same purity test to olive oil-based processed products, only one out of twenty failed. So if you are looking for uh stuff right now, you're better off finding an olive oil-based processed food. I don't know if they've done a study on tallow, beef tallow, but I do know that that's also generally considered less adulterated uh than other oils. Uh beef tallow, because of the way that it binds to stuff, it's harder to cut it with other oils. And so if you find beef tallow based chips or or whatever, you're also more likely to not be dealing with seed oils. Regardless of that, UC Davis argues that the gap between olive oil and avocado oil based products, because the authenticity of olive oil has been study tested and Scrutinized for decades, and avocado oil is a relatively new product that has not been monitored at the same level. And so they're able to get away with a lot of this because there's not been enough tests and studies for them to get in trouble over. And so the Attorney General's office has issued civil investigative demands, CIDs, to these companies Primal Kitchen, CSA Foods, and Chosen Foods, with additional companies to possibly follow. The investigation will determine whether the companies violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by deceiving consumers. Now, in a public statement, and this is a wild way to go about this, I kind of expected they'd say, Well, we didn't know. I expected that that to meet the demands of the investigation, they would say, we were unaware. UC Davis clearly had more resources at disposal than we use for our research. We weren't, we weren't aware. This stuff is so new. That's our bad. We'll fix it right now. We weren't doing this intentionally. Maybe where we bought our avocado oil from was the thing that was cut. We didn't cut it ourselves. That would be the direction to go if you had any sort of common sense. If you were trying to win this fight in any sort of legal sense, and and by the way, this isn't just a legal fight, though it should be one. It's also a cultural one, right? Because you know brand reputation is everything these days. If your brand is caught with your pants down like this, at some point you gotta kind of come out and have some sort of argument for why you did what you did. And well, profit margins, let me tell you, are not a good methodology for going to consumers. So I expected that these companies that were named, I thought that that most of them would come out and say, that's our bad. Take full accountability for it. Say, it is we didn't know, but it is still our fault. We apologize for the indiscrepancy here. The testing that we were doing was clearly not methodical enough. We thought it was, but again, these oils are new. We're not used to this industry. We are gonna go back and pull all our products from shelves. We're gonna do a testing period and we're gonna get back out there with pure avocado oil. That would be an easy way to maintain brand reputation. I I I should be some sort of like press communications office for these companies. That would maintain brand reputation. It would make you look like the good guy for taking accountability. I say this all the time. It happens in politics too. When you have a politician who gets caught in some sort of scandal, and the response is to plead not guilty, when it's so obvious to the public that you did the thing you're accused of, it just makes you look worse. I know that you want to pretend like, well, if we hold out our dignity, we can prove right that we didn't do the thing we know we did. It doesn't work that way. People actually value honesty a lot, actually, as it turns out. If you're just honest about what happened, to some degree. You know, I mean, you could even say we didn't know when you did. That would be lying, but I mean, whatever. These companies are lying anyway, then you could maybe fix your brand reputation. But they're not doing that. Chosen Foods came out and they said uh essentially that the study's claims are not true, adding that they never add seed oils of any kind to any of our products. The company said that it is committed to providing high-quality products and accurate labeling and is aware of the announcement and will cooperate with any appropriate inquiries. Neither Primal Kitchen nor CIA Foods responded to any requests for comments. But again, that's not your that's not the direction. The the odds of a major peer-reviewed study that come out just being dead wrong, despite having, again, they had multiple rounds of testing with multiple of your foods and found the same thing over and over again. The odds of that's just not true are possible, but what what are they? One and a I mean, it's less than one percent likelihood. They're very they're very sure about their results. You know how much trouble they're gonna get in if their testing methodology was off? Not uh a lot. They're gonna get in a lot of trouble. They're gonna be filed for slander against UC Davis is gonna have to go undergo a massive scandal. That didn't happen. The odds are that they're right and that your company did this thing, right? That's the odds. Play the odds. Say, hey, we didn't know. You didn't have to admit wrongdoing. You could say, well, we weren't aware of this. This doesn't make any sense. Uh we we were very sure about what we were putting in our foods, but we're gonna go back and we're gonna do methodical testing and find out where this problem is and whatever part of the supply chain is causing this, we're gonna rectify that right away. We apologize. It's so simple to run a business that way. Right? We've done this. When I know about Patriot 920 being an upstart, which we still are, by the way, I always remind people that one of the big things that we do that other companies don't like to do is not only do we take accountability, but we want to be involved in the community. If you guys have concerns or you guys have disagreements, or there's something that you don't like, we want to know about it. We don't want to shut it down and say, no, we didn't do that. Shh, shh, stop talking. We don't want any of that. We want people to be able to conversate with us. We we want to be a change of culture in the community. We want to be a breath of fresh air for people where you come to this show, you say, wow, this is different. We're getting something we didn't get somewhere else, right? Not only are we getting maybe stories that aren't being reported elsewhere, are we getting, you know, Houston local news and statewide news from this show. But in addition to that, we can text in any time. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the text line is open. You get responded to, I think every text, uh maybe I've missed a couple here and there. Almost every text of all time has been responded to. Why? Because we believe in what we do. We have a passion for it, and we're not playing some sort of business, you know, propaganda. We just try to, well, how can we make money? Do we want to make money? Sure. Any any business does. That's not a bad thing, by the way. The pursuit of income is not bad. In fact, the Bible is very clear that a man that does not provide for his household is evil. That's not good. You should be working hard to make money. But if you prioritize profit to such a degree that you don't care about who you're hurting, that you don't care about how you're operating, that you don't have integrity, then you've you've lost the point of it in the first place. You've lost the morality of what you're doing. And we don't believe in that here. And a lot of these big mega corporations that are I remind people, Ciette Chips is a great example of this. Ciette, the brand that is under investigation by the Attorney General's office and was found in this study. Can I remind everyone? There's a story I saw a post about it and I was reading up on it. So there is another company that was used by UC Davis as essentially the benchmark for pure avocado oil to test against. That company was called Mariam's. If you've not heard of them, they're they're again in the Make America Healthy Again movement, but they've been around for a very long time, multiple generations, family-owned and operated. And they were used as the benchmark for what pure avocado oil looks like because they're unwilling to sell out. They're unwilling to do that. Family owned and operated. CITA Chips, contrast that. They were started as a family-owned company. Family owned and operated. They were started a little while ago, much newer, but still. And they were bought by PepsiCo for like two billion dollars. It was in the billions. I don't know, maybe it was 1.2. Somewhere in there, they were bought for a very high price by PepsiCo as a subsidiary. And now here you go, this mega corporation now owns this so-called healthy foods option. And the study comes out, wow, they're cutting their stuff with fake oils. They're cutting themselves with engine lubricant, right? Well, that's not good. But that's what you expect from a mega corporation. Why? Because again, when you have these big corporations, and this is the same thing with BlackRock, same thing you see in buying family, single-family housing, same thing that you see in a lot of these schemes, these massive companies that are operating really as an oligarchial state, they don't care about you. This is no longer the sort of business you had 100 years ago where everyone knew each other and cared about one another and they wanted to have integrity, wanted to put out good products, they expected to make money, not because money was their ultimate goal, but because they did something worthy of the money they were earning. Money was a trade-off. That's how capitalism works. You give a service and I pay what I think that service is worth. And if I don't think it's worth it, I don't buy it. And now it's transitioned into if we can own everything, right? It's almost a non-government form of communism in a sense. If we can own all the different companies, that's why you look at a lot of the big companies, and they all have the same parent company. Even the big ones have some of the same parent companies. When you own the entire industry, you get to choose what you do. You get to make the rules yourself, and you're still going to make all the money in the world you could possibly ever want and significantly more. And that's what's happened. That's why when I speak about capitalism, I'm very cautious and I warn people, I say, look, capitalism is good. It is the best economic system that I would argue has ever existed in the history of the world. But even that can be weaponized if it's not regulated properly. If you just let it go, let it go to its ends, and let anyone do whatever they want, with no rules and regulation on the market at all, you're gonna find fraud, you're gonna find greed, you're gonna find lying and deceit, you're gonna find things that are marketed as healthy that are obviously not. You're gonna find that over and over again because profit becomes the main motivator of any sort of success at all. And people will lie and cheat and steal to do whatever they have to to make that. And so we have to be very cautious when we approach any economic conversation that we uh uh announce and address the reality that people are evil. There are evil people that don't care about you. And that's why I argue capitalism is great, but you should still buy family-owned. You should still buy American-made stuff, you should still as much as possible buy from local, buy local beef, right? I say that all the time. There are plenty of farms around the Houston area that you can buy beef straight from. There are raw milk dairy farms around the Houston area that you can go and you can buy raw milk from. Totally legal, totally fine, no loopholes. You're allowed to do that. You should do that. You don't have to buy, and I know, as it's more expensive. And in the modern economic landscape, I get it, right? So that means I can't afford that. Okay. That's fine. Some of us can't. I get it. But we have to be honest about what's going on here. And it is these big corporations over and over and over again that just seem to get away with this stuff, and we we need to stop letting them do that. We need good attorney generals, attorneys general, we need good legislators who say that should be illegal, that's fraudulent. Well, capitalism, we can label it however they want. If people don't like it or they feel like it's not true, they don't have to buy from us. That's not capitalism. That is unhinged. That should be illegal regardless of what economic system you have. Whether you have communism or socialism or whatever you have, that should still be that should be a principle. You don't get to lie to your consumers. With that being said, we can get back from the break. We're gonna go over Texas lawmakers who have now been examining social media's impact on the health of minors. Um, you guys probably know that we've been talking about this here on the show for a while. I I've even said, I've come out numerous times we talk about predators on social media, we talk about comparisons that people make on social media, the influence of propaganda on social media. I I've said over and over and over again, social media really isn't good for almost anybody, right? Realistically, as they exist now, right? There was a time where social media was better when it was just people that you knew. But the way that social media works nowadays, it's all a competition, it's all influential, it's all propaganda, and it's not really good for most people, if anyone, but especially not for young people. It is especially disastrous in the minds of young people to have access to these things. And so we'll talk about what Texas Lawmakers are saying when we get back from the break. As always, if you would like to text into the show, the number is 713-779-5978. One more time, you can text in at 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You are listening to the Lone Star Conservative. And Lord William, I'll be right back with the rest of that story after this short break. So stick around. We'll talk about it very soon. Don't go anywhere.

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Social Media Design And Teen Mental Health

SPEAKER_12 1:21:43

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You are listening to the Lone Star Conservative. So Texas House lawmakers discussed possible state action to strengthen parental controls and protect minors online following testimony that social media platforms design features could be contributing. They are, by the way, could be, is what they have to say legally. They are contributing to a growing youth mental health crisis. The House Committee on Public Health met late last week to examine social media's impact on minors' health and well-being. Witnesses urged lawmakers to focus less on individual content moderation and more on the platform features themselves, including personalized algorithms, infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications, and data collection, they argued are designed to keep young users engaged.

unknown 1:22:29

Dr.

SPEAKER_12 1:22:30

Daniel Flint, he is a pediatric psychologist who treats adolescents with eating disorders, told lawmakers that parents cannot simply outparent an algorithm. Flint said the reward centers in teenagers' brains develop before the parts responsible for self-control and long-term judgment, making minors especially vulnerable to platforms engineered to maximize attention. He asked one patient has made her daily screen time, the teen guest 10 hours. Which, by the way, if you yourself were acknowledging that you're spending 10 hours on your phone, you know that there's a problem. And I acknowledge that, right? I say I work in an industry where my phone is one of my main avenues between emails and texts and scheduling interviews and, you know, getting in contact with people and keeping up to date on a lot of the news, which comes from social media platforms these days, independent journalists on social medias that are that are giving out information, all of that. And I have nowhere near a lot of these teenagers. I think I have like six and a half to eight hours a day, which is already, again, I acknowledge that's a high number. I wish I was on it less. This teen guessed 10 hours, and she actually showed 14 hours on her screen time. He said if she were sleeping every night, which she probably isn't, that leaves her two hours per day left of real life. You do the math out. If you sleep eight hours a day, right, which as a teenage girl, by the way, you should probably be sleeping more than that. I think the studies they've done show that really nine to ten hours is the good sweet spot for women, as opposed to seven to six to seven to eight hours for men. If you're a teenage girl and you're sleeping the number of hours that you should be, say nine hours, just to just to be conservative, you sleep nine hours and you spend 14 hours on your phone, you have one hour not on your device. And again, this is active screen time. This is not Spotify playing in the background. This is active time she's spending looking at a device. That does not include if she has a computer. That does not include if part of that time she was on a TV that she had her phone off, if she was watching a movie or a TV show. None of that stuff is included. She's spending 14 hours on her phone. And this, by the way, I'm I'm I you know you could say, well, that's anecdotal, that's a lot, but nobody else is. No, that's that's not uncommon. But I guarantee you, you go to your average teenager today who's given a device and and basically unadulterated access to social media, and you're gonna find very similar numbers. I I could go pick up almost any I don't want to, I can't say I can't say it like that. I could go find any teenager on the street that that's just going to school, whatever, I guarantee you it would be very similar numbers. It would be almost the same thing. Uh and so he testified that social media use is associated with depression symptoms in teenagers, particularly girls, and said that younger children are more vulnerable to harmful effects. He also cited research linking social media and screen use to disordered eating, fear of weight gain, low self-worth, and binge eating among young adolescents. Because again, I've said before, there are a lot of problems with social media when it comes to predators, 100%, right? But there are other parts of social media that are just as bad. The reward centers in the brain, the dopamine that you get, that by the way, fries your dopamine centers, they can be healed. Absolutely. I was reading a case study from a guy just maybe it was this morning. Is I did this morning because I'm over the weekend. I don't I don't actually remember when I read it. But he was going over how him and his wife did, they had been on social media basically their not their whole lives, but since they were teenagers, they'd gotten phones. They were young. And he they did a little case study on themselves to find out, okay, so clearly we're spending too much time on our phone. They looked at their screen time, it's pretty high. We need to get off our phone. Even when we're not on our phone, we're watching TV. What if we just cut out these entertainment venues for three weeks? That's it. Three weeks, we say, no, we're not gonna be on our phones for entertainment. If we have to take a work call or whatever, fine. If we have to respond to emails, fine. But no entertainment. So we're not scrolling social media, we're not watching TV shows, we're not watching movies, we're not watching YouTube on our iPad, none of that stuff. We're gonna stay off of all that. And the the withdrawal symptoms that they displayed were unbelievable if you don't have that problem. If you've never tried if you've never been on your phone that amount uh or or you know, being entertained by screens that much and tried to come off of it, you you wouldn't even believe it, how much they struggled with getting up, with daily energy, with enjoying life, life general life enjoyment, because your centers that that your brain, designed by God, are very good at at finding joy in the things that you do, whatever your life may look like, right? God calls us all to be joyful in all things. Well, God designed our brains to operate that way. And so whatever your life looks like, your brain adapts. Well, when your brain adapts to the fast-paced nature of online content, and then you try to come off of that to to enjoy, you know, the the morning breeze or to enjoy the beach, you find out very quickly that those things don't have the same they they don't reward your brain the same way. Because your brain isn't designed to reward that sort of slow burn views and beauty in the same way that it's designed and has adapted to enjoying second by second entertainment. They're very different things. And so it took, I I believe it was the whole three weeks of that case study they did. It took them the whole three weeks to even moderately enjoy not being on their phone. To even moderately enjoy. And I've said the same thing about people that struggle with reading. People that that just don't, they're like, oh, books just aren't it anymore. Well, how many movies are you watching? How many TV shows are you watching? How much time do you spend on your phone if you don't enjoy reading a book? Reading a book is one of the most enjoying things that we've had for hundreds of years. Well, obviously there's something going on here. That's on adults. That was an adult case study. Imagine a teenager whose reward centers are even more malleable, whose struggle with emotional self-regulation with things like being depressed and anxious and frustrated and upset are even less adequately functioning. How much worse do you think it is for them? Maureen Moloch, co-founder of David's Legacy Foundation and Parents SOS, testified about the death of her son, 16-year-old his name was David, who died by suicide after what she described as a year-long struggle with social media and online gaming, as well as months of cyberbullying, which prompted a 2017 law that we passed here in Texas, the cyberbullying law, known as David's Law. She said that online harm-facing children can involve cyberbullying, dangerous viral challenges, illegal drug sales, sex tortion, AI chatbots, which, by the way, that's a whole nother conversation. How AI is now playing into this stuff. It just gets so much worse. But she said these harms that Arson experienced were driven by platform design choices, not even just the content. She urged lawmakers to build on recent Texas laws by requiring child safety settings by default, limiting the collection and sharing of miners' personal data, restricting addictive feeds driven by that personal data, enacting protections addressing the growing use of AI. You also had that guy, the the psychologist, who called on lawmakers to require platforms to disable inherently addictive features, including infinite scrolling and personalized algorithms by default for minors. Flet also recommended clearer standards for addressing minors' exposure to self-harm and pro-eating disorder content, as well as evidence-based warning labels for parents and adolescents. But again, here would be my major encouragement if I if I had to give one. Actually, let me let me finish this up. You also had David Dunmoyer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation who argued that these harms, it's not even that they're out there, because they obviously are. We have so many studies that showcase it, but that they're actually intentional. Um, he he said that social media companies create a choice architecture intended to keep minors on their products longer, collect more behavioral data, and improve systems that serve personalized content. He cited reporting on internal Facebook documents and argued that platforms have known about the risks to young users, especially teenage girls. He also described how TikTok recommendation systems identifies the content that you linger on and can steer you toward increasing material in that, even if it's considered harmful. He said their vulnerability is language that platforms use to identify what can hold their attention. And so lawmakers essentially press the witnesses on what Texas can do if federal lawmakers don't pass comprehensive online child safety legislation. Witnesses pointed to the state's App Store Accountability Act, which requires age verification at the App Store level and parental approval before minors download apps. He said that the framework treats account creation and app downloads like any other contracts involving minors, where parental consent is normally required. He also suggested that lawmakers consider extending that framework to AI chatbot services and revisiting proposals to limit social media access for children younger than 16, especially vulnerable young teenagers. Lawmakers also question whether existing parental controls actually give parents meaningful authority. One of these individuals testified that certain platforms require a child to approve a parent's effort to supervise their chase and settings on the account, allowing the minor to reject or later remove that oversight themselves. And so the Texas Medical Association and Texas Pediatric Society saw your research associated more than three hours, more than three hours of daily social media use with a higher risk of depression and anxiety symptoms while calling for additional research and safeguards as AI become more common among teens. But again, that's three hours. And if your average teenager is spending anywhere from eight to twelve hours a day on social media, I don't know what the average is now, it was like 10 hours last a year or two ago, and I'm sure it's gone up even more post-COVID as time moves on. If you're at eight to twelve hours and we know that three hours is the line, let me give you an example of this. If we did a study on smoking cigarettes, and we said that smoking more than one cigarette a day, let's just say that was the number. I'm making this up. This is not a real study. You smoking more than one cigarette a day increases your likelihood of developing lung cancer. Right? We said that hypothetically. Okay. What about the people that are smoking 10 cigarettes a day? Well, not only are their lung cancer chances increased, right? But increased a large amount. We would obviously say that's a massive increase, likely, over the number that we studied. If it was one or two that contributed to this, and you're smoking 10 or 11, well, that number is drastically more devastating. And so if all our studies are saying, well, more than three hours of social media use every day is really bad for young people. And most young people are spending 10 hours, you have to imagine that gets exacerbated and exponentially worse the longer they spend. And again, this is I've heard I've heard the argument from people on the right, even, by the way, that say, well, this isn't the government's business. This is the parents' business. And to a degree, I agree that this primarily is the concern of parents. And that's why, if I I was going to say this a minute ago, I'll say it now. If I had one piece of advice to offer to parents when it comes to social media use, my number one piece of advice would be don't let them have it at all. Don't even let them have the capability of having that. Don't give them a phone that can even access social media in the first place. And you don't have to worry about any of this. Right? You give them, I'm okay even if you want to give them some sort of dumb phone. They make plenty of it now between the light phone and there's other companies and there's flip phones that you can still purchase. Give them a phone if you need to, right? Especially as they're getting old enough to leave the house without you. Or they can contact you, where they can text or call, and they can let you know what's going on and keep you updated and call you if there's an emergency, right? Those are good things. So that's that's open availability. But don't give them devices that access Google and the internet and social media. It's absolutely awful for them. But to answer the question of those concerned people who are concerned about government influence and affairs that belong to parents, here would be my number one argument for those people. The issue is not whether the government has authority to determine what your kids can access. That's not even the point of the conversation. The point of the conversation is that parents actually don't have that right right now. That once you give your kids access to that phone, there's almost nothing you can do. The way these algorithms are designed, the way these platforms operate, and the way you get parental control set up on them are that they're that your child can just go through and around all of them. There's there's nothing in place that actually protects them or defends your authority. And so, yeah, should the government be able to tell Instagram what content can be on the page? No, I don't think so. But also, there is a limit to that. And especially when it comes to do you as a parent actually have the control under the law? Well, you should. And the government should be defending that in in legislative sessions. They should be saying you do have that right and making sure that you're actually able to do the thing that you're upset that you're that the government is trying to tell you you can't do. That's the whole problem, is that you don't currently have the ability to do it in the first place. And that means right now, your really only methodology for fixing the problem is just don't give your kids the thing at all. They don't need smartphones. There's basically no tangible benefit whatsoever, and the risks are incredibly high. And yeah, predators are on the list. Certainly, the social media use itself, even apart from predators on the internet, is itself a concern. The algorithms, the dopamine reward centers in their brains, the things they're seeing, the propaganda they're seeing on social media, right? They talk about the eating disorders and all the it's because of this comparison they have to these girls on social media that they think are prettier than them. There's so many different problems. And even if the government does everything it can within its sphere of influence to give parents greater control, there's always going to be those problems. They're not gonna go away. And so again, for the average listener to this show, right, I would say, yeah, does the government need to do these things? Absolutely. Is this a good thing? Absolutely. Should the government have greater standards for who can download? Absolutely. But the number one thing you can do, regardless, right? Even if the government does everything it can, it's still in you and your child's best interest to just not let them. Let them grow up in the world that most of us, you know, that most people grew up in. Let them grow up normal with real childhoods where they're not engrossed in a screen, where they're not finding all their entertainment and their joy from constant stimulating entertainment, where they enjoy going outside and climbing trees and going to the beach and and and you know, reading books, spending time in the Word of God, eating dinner as a family at a table, not with a screen in front of them, going out to dinner. How many times have you guys gone out to a restaurant recently and you saw a kid on an iPad? It's way too many. Where they're they're able to interact. I I I I don't you know bring my kids up often on the show. I just don't like to bring my family into this stuff. But I I the number of times that I've gotten comments, genuine comments from people about how, wow, your kids are so smart. And I go, Yes, thank you. Appreciate that. But the reality is that the way that my kids operate is primarily because when we've gone out to eat, we are talking to them. We are a family, we communicate. Well, they're great at talking. How are they so enunciated? Because they weren't on iPads, they were talking to us. Because we were treating them like they were people. We didn't try to intoxicate them and and neuter them and castrate them with devices so that we didn't have to be parents. You know what we did? We hung out with our kids because we love them. And social media is devastating to them. And constant simulation is devastating to their their brains and their development. And it's very tough to fix after. It's very difficult to get them off of it. That would be my encouragement. We're gonna be wrapping up the show when we get back, and we have kind of a short segment, so I'm just gonna tell you guys a little bit about Chick-fil-A because I'm excited about this. It's not political, it's not really new. I mean, I guess technically it's news. It's news, uh, but it's not gonna be political other than the fact that Chick-fil-A is the Lord's chicken, despite some of their obvious missteps. It's still the Lord's chicken, and Chick-fil-A has a very exciting update that I personally am very excited about. Uh, you guys better be excited too. You guys aren't standing and cheering in your car. There's a problem. This is very exciting news from Chick-fil-A after the break. If you'd like to text in, the number is 713. This is your last chance, by the way, to text in during the show. 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 to be right back to wrap up the show after this final break. So stick around. Hang tight, and I'll be right back.

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Welcome

Chick-fil-A Chicken And Waffles Finale

SPEAKER_12 1:41:19

back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. This is a very, very, very short segment, shorter than I think we've ever had a final segment, but we have to do this. We have to get into this. This is why I saved this. Starting today, that is August 24th, today is the first day. Participating Chick-fil-A restaurants nationwide, including, of course, locations here in the Eastern Area. It's a nationwide thing, are going to begin serving a brand new couple of sandwiches as part of a limited time menu lineup starting today through November 14th. Now, I would say you should go today. Who doesn't want to try this right off the bat? I'm on the list of people that will be there. I don't want to say that I'll be there today. I don't know. Maybe, maybe I'll be there today. Regardless, the new lineup is putting a sweet and savory spin on Chick-fil-A's classic chicken sandwich. For breakfast, they're going to have the Chicken and Waffles breakfast sandwich, which is going to have maple-flavored waffles, a breakfast-sized Chick-fil-A chicken filet, applewood smoked bacon, honey butter spread, and a side of syrup. The breakfast sandwich will, of course, be available from opening until 10:30 a.m. for lunch and dinner. The Chicken and Waffles regular sandwich is going to be basically the same thing, but a little bit bigger, which will be open the rest of the day. Starting today, the November 14th, you can finally get a chicken and waffle sandwich. Don't ask me why they didn't do that sooner. They should have. This should have been going on for a very long time. But now here we are: the chicken and waffle sandwich from Chick-fil-A. Very exciting stuff. If you already like Chick-fil-A and go there even remotely regularly, so go check it out. Maybe text me and let me know if you try it, how you like it. That'll do it for the show today. Thanks everyone for tuning in. It's been a pleasure. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. Lord will be back tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your Monday and Godspeed.