Flock Cameras, Property Taxes, and Jessi Cowart for Texas House District 15

This is episode number 359 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We are so glad that you could join our live episode here in The Homeowner Show studios. How you doing, Kev?

You know, I guess I'm doing all right. I mean, it's still, still pretty hot outside.

It's ridiculous.

I mean, well, they kept saying, oh, it's gonna rain. Well, it did here and there, but not here at my house.

There was that massive storm that went through spring and it like danced around my property. There was like thunder and lightning everywhere and they're like, oh, it's flooding. And I'm like, I wish it would.

Yeah, we should do something like ours. Like we saw this big you know, the big disturbance, as they call it, coming down. And then it like just dissipated and went to the side. And I'm like, what is happening right now? It's awful.

Not only that, we didn't get the storm, but then last night, uh, one of my neighbors, they had a transformer blow up in their yard and it lit their yard on fire.

Oh no.

And it was— that was the second one that I heard of because the night of the storm, one of my employees called me and said, hey, my next-door neighbor's house's transformer just exploded. And it caught their house on fire.

Oh, that's terrible. Well, unrelated to the storm. Uh-huh. Just randomly, I woke up about 2 weeks ago and my mother-in-law goes, hey, when did this happen? I was like, I don't know. Massive limb on one of our trees fell. Oh, and when I say massive, like, this is a huge oak tree. And where it forks for the first time.

Yeah.

one of those fell. And I mean, it's like, I can't put my arms around it big. And so I'm like, and it kind of fell. It's on our, on our property line, basically. There's a lot of brush there and it's hard to get to just because of the brush and everything. But I was like, okay, all right, Kevin, it's time to buy big boy pants. Time to buy a chainsaw. Like, I put it off for so long and I'm like, because I keep calling, because most of the time it's a whole tree that needs taken down and I'm not doing that.

Right.

Um, but I, yeah, definitely. I was like, all right, I'm, I'm figuring this out. Uh, and so we'll, we'll talk about it in another episode, but I got an ego.

I was going to ask. I figured.

Yeah, I, I did go electric for lots of reasons.

Well, yeah, you don't have to pull start that booger, dude.

And not only do I not have to pull start it, like I it's not going the whole time you're trying to do anything. Oh man!

How'd it go?

It was well. I didn't hurt anything. Uh, I didn't hurt myself.

Uh huh.

And so we'll we'll talk about it. It'll be a whole probably an episode that we can at least half an episode as long as we get that sound again. Yeah, no, that's a good sound. That's a good sound. It's a sound I like.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, testosterone in there.

Well, you know, uh, but the other thing is live right now on our website.

Are we?

Are we? Are we?

Yes.

We're live right now on our website, homeownershow.com. So you can find us on Facebook, on YouTube. And when we go live now, it on our website automatically, like I'm seriously just sitting here on the Homeowner Show website and it popped up.

That's awesome.

So if you want to go check out our new website, it is vastly different than it was. You can see all of our episodes. There's show notes, transcripts, information about what we've talked about before.

Look, I like the search feature.

The search feature's pretty sweet.

After 360-some-odd episodes, I've forgotten what we've talked about.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's pretty cool. You can literally type in, you know, appliances and every episode that we've ever talked about an appliance, it'll show up there. So, and also, like, on our, on our page right now, like, you don't— just because you don't have to go search for it, it's super easy, but you can chat with us live on the show right there. So anyway, pretty cool. Uh, check it out, homeownershow.com. And, uh, yeah, how are you doing, man?

I'm doing good, man. I'm excited because we have a fun guest tonight. We got Miss Jessie Cowart in the house. She is running for House District 15. Is that right?

That's right.

All right.

Nailed it.

That's right.

Over there in Oak Ridge North for the Libertarian Party. And she came across our radar because all of you suckers decided to chime in about flock cameras.

That's right.

And she has a little something to say about that that we'll get into later. But right now, I want to just give her the chance to say hello and tell everybody a little bit about her.

Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me. Jesse Cowart, like you guys said, I'm a lifelong Montgomery County resident, live in Oak Ridge North, decided to run for public office. I've been kind of on the political periphery for a number of years doing party leadership stuff within the Libertarian Party. So I was previously vice chair of the Libertarian Party of Texas, still sit on that executive committee, but had been kind of contemplating making that leap from party office to public office for some time. And the stars just kind of aligned. My kids graduated high school in 2023. They're now up at Sam Houston in Huntsville. And right around that time, Steve Toth decided that he was going to run for US Congress.

Yep.

So he has successfully primaried Dan Crenshaw, and there is now not going to be an incumbent for that race in House District 15. So I have a little bit more time on my hands since my kids are adulting.

Yeah.

Nice.

And, uh, yeah. So I wonder what that's like.

Give it, give it 10 years.

Yeah, maybe.

Well, I mean, real quick, because you mentioned it, I, it's so crazy to me that Crenshaw got primaried. I mean, like, I know he had done some stuff that made him, you know, unpopular to a lot of people, but like, if you can like knock off like a former one-eyed Navy SEAL.

Yeah.

I mean, you've either done something really bad or the other guy's really good.

Yeah.

And I don't know which one it is, but like, it, it was, was it even close? I don't remember. It was not close.

It was not very close.

Yeah. That's no good. So, and he like, look, Crenshaw was crazy popular.

Yeah.

For the longest time.

Yeah, it was.

So, man, I don't know what happened there, but no.

Well, we got, we, I mean, we have some questions, but I would like to, I guess, to start off with like, what are some things that for you are a big deal? Why would, why would someone even get interested in your campaign and what you're about? Because we've done a little bit of research, but we'd like to hear from you. What are your things?

Yeah. One of the reasons that I decided to get off the bench was just that the political landscape is just so toxic right now. Everybody has just gone to the far polar ends of the political spectrum in terms of how extremely left or right they can be. And just biting at each other, you know, talking down. And I really want to bring statesmanship back to the table and put people over partisan politics and really just kind of be the adult in the room and demonstrate that as a leader, you do have to work with people on both sides of the aisle.

Yeah.

And you do have to build consensus. You have to listen. You may have to sometimes, you know, contemplate trade-offs and compromise. And I really feel like that's gotten lost in politics, and particularly in Texas. It's just, you're a RINO or you're a leftist. There's all these things that people—

Monikers that people—

Yeah, you toss it around like candy, and people just eat it up. So one of the things that I really wanted to highlight as part of this campaign is just that Hey, you can come with solutions, and you may not agree with person on the right or person on the left, but we're in this for the people of Texas, not to serve our self-interests or to try to gain and maintain political power for any particular political party.

Right.

Yeah.

So with it being essentially like a third-party candidate, I mean, And this is not like— I'm not like, if you don't know, it's okay because I don't either. How many libertarians do we actually have in the Texas House?

Do you know?

We don't have any in the Texas House. Yeah. Not people who are actually running under the Libertarian— as a libertarian.

Right.

So we've got libertarian-leaning people in the Texas House.

Okay.

Certainly. Yeah. But they're not running as libertarians. So I'm actually running as a Libertarian. So—

But we've had some in the past though, right? We've had— not in the Texas House?

Not in the Texas House. I would be the first.

So this is, this is the thing that always bugs me is everyone always says like, well, you know, this is stupid that we just have a 2-party system where, you know, we only have— we essentially only have 2 choices. And so like you can't go outside of that. I mean, like we always, you know, especially in the presidential election, we typically have like, you know, the Green Party, Libertarian Party, I'm trying to think of some of the other ones that, um, because it's like Ross Perot, I don't— he had kind of had his, his own party.

Yeah.

Um, it was like the Reform Party.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so, but, and so like there's other options, but like when it comes down to it, people are like, well, I don't want to throw my vote away because it's a third party. Like, how do you, how do you combat that?

Yeah, it's, it's really hard to get over that, that wasted vote fallacy because a lot of people honestly do believe that, you know, if, if I vote for a Libertarian, I'm taking a vote away from the Republican or a vote away from from the Democrat. And it's really trying to get people to understand that a vote of principle, a vote of conscience, that's the best vote you can do. Your vote is yours. There's no such thing as a wasted vote. If you vote for a Libertarian, you're voting for a Libertarian or a Green or Constitution Party, what have you, full stop.

Right.

You're not taking away a vote from anywhere else. And really just kind of trying to emphasize to people that we're not going to get different results by voting the same way. So that's—

If you're happy with the status quo, then carry on by all means, right?

Right.

Okay. So, but, and then on the other side of that is like, say you win, how difficult is it gonna be for you to actually get anything accomplished? I mean, I know you say that you're happy to work with compromise, and which I find refreshing because to your credit, what you're saying is, it's become so toxic that people are saying, I'll never compromise. I'd never work with them. I'll never do all that kind of stuff. And it just creates this quagmire, I think. There's all sorts of reasons behind that. I get that. But how difficult is it gonna be for you to actually get some things accomplished for what you wanna do?

It's really gonna be trying to focus on the areas where we do have nonpartisan agreement on things. So there are some things where, Flock is one of them, right? Ending civil asset forfeiture, another one that if you look at the platforms for the Republican Party, Democrat Party, Libertarian Party of Texas, everyone on paper agrees with ending civil asset forfeiture. So let's get it done. So trying to look at those areas where we do have kind of that tripartisan or nonpartisan consensus and focusing on those areas.

Well, let's get into that then. So what, like where we have a lot of consensus amongst the 2 parties and the 3 parties, Like, what— for people that don't know, what is that?

Yeah, so, uh, for civil asset forfeiture, um, basically what this is is legalized theft. But basically it is where law enforcement can seize your property, um, if you have been, you know, pulled over and arrested and you have been— they have a suspicion that maybe whatever you have in your vehicle, whether it be your, your your firearm or your money or what have you, if they think that that's being used for nefarious purposes or criminal purposes. But they are able to do that before you've actually gone through the due process of the law.

Okay.

And so law enforcement can use this to kind of build their coffers. And there's a lot of a, consternation about that, just because you really shouldn't be able to have your property taken away from you if you have not actually been convicted of a crime. That would be criminal asset forfeiture, which is fine, right?

Mm-hmm.

Civil asset forfeiture is a totally different thing. And really, whatever is seized in that case should really only be used in restitution to the victims.

Yeah, I mean, and one of the questions I've got that, like, if something's seized and you're, uh, deemed not guilty, how difficult is it to get that property back?

Incredibly difficult.

Because that's, that's the thing that's so stupid to me is like, okay, you're, you're innocent until proven guilty per our law. And yet you've been violated by your stuff taken, even though you're, so it's really, it's really guilty until proven innocent.

Yeah.

is really how that feels.

Well, that's how we play it out in the media right now anyway. Oh, it is. My question to that is how granular do we get on this? Because I hear you say that and I'm like, okay, so if there's a bloody knife in the backseat, can they take that?

That's evidence.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, 'cause that to me is like, okay, yeah, we need to be able to take that. We need to be able to get evidence from that and blood evidence and all. If we are suspicious of someone, But like, they haven't been convicted of anything, but we're still taking their property.

Yeah, but that, that's evidence. That's, that's, that's part of due process is going through that. I'm talking about like, hey, this guy got pulled over and he's got, you know, $5,000 cash on him. And the cop's just like, oh, well, why are you rolling around with $500— $5,000 of cash? Sure. You must be a drug dealer.

Right.

Or you must, you must have some kind of, you know, you know, malfeasant reason to be carrying around this amount of cash. I'm going to take that and I'm going to hold on to it for you. while you go through however many months it takes to try to, you know, get through.

So are the people who are pushing back on this, is this typically like law enforcement unions and things like that? I mean, who's—

is that the pushback on the law enforcement lobby?

And is their argument kind of what I'm giving to you is like, well, we need to be able to, you know, acquire evidence. Is that kind of what they're saying? Is the argument for keeping that in place? Is that—

No, it's not even so much about like the evidentiary piece, everything it is. The way that the Texas law is written, and this is getting into the weeds, guys.

No, we like the weeds.

We like weeds.

Not weed, but the weeds. Right, yeah.

But the way that the law is written is that it's not the plaintiff that is filed against. The property itself becomes the defendant. the actual defendant in that situation. Like, okay, an inanimate object, not an actual person, is, is what you would have to file against because that is the way that the law is written. It's basically a loophole.

Okay. And so did that stem— I'm just wondering if it stemmed from something reasonable. Like, I'm thinking, like, we see horses get seized from people who are being abusive. Right. And that's a, that's a, that would be a theft of property from the individual who owned it, even though they're, because they're being negligent, the state steps in or the county steps in or whatever, the city steps in and takes that property from somebody. Is that, is, is that like the, the place where something like this stems from, or is it something completely different?

I think it's something completely different. This is usually whenever we're talking about the civil asset forfeiture, and I say usually, it is usually from traffic stops. So property that's seized is part of a, a law enforcement action.

Gotcha. Okay. And they just saw something suspicious in the car and like, I want it. So they took it.

Yep.

Got it. And they don't, do they not have to give like probable cause or?

The burden of proof is incredibly slim. So that, that's another piece of the, the Texas statute that really needs to be revamped is there, there's almost no burden of proof.

Oh, wow. I mean, I'm wondering how, how deep that goes like, let's say that you're, you're speeding to a point where you could get arrested. It's like, I don't know, in Texas I think it's like 25 miles over. I think you can get arrested for that.

Um, that seems reasonable.

Yeah, it does. But let's say, let's say that's what you're doing and you got an AR in the back. Can they take the AR at that point and say it's because you were speeding?

Well, I think he— because he would be arrested, like, at that point he's You know.

Well, but, but I think that's the point though, is like they can seize property that's not connected to what they were arrested for.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's my point. So they would be able to probably take that gun and if they wanted to, right?

Yeah. If they could, if they could try, if they could build a case that said, and again, the burden of proof is very low, but if they could formulate some kind of narrative to say like this AR was, we suspect that this was going to be used in criminal activity. This guy was driving 25 miles over the speed limit so he could go shoot someone.

I mean, sure.

Then, I mean, it's crazy. It's feasible that that could happen.

He was gun running. Yeah, right, right.

I mean, look, I mean, like, but I mean, I think that's the point is like now, I mean, because, and I use that example because there's a lot of people, especially whenever it comes to political parties, that guns are a big, they're a big hot topic in general. And so it's like, there's some people that'd be like, yeah, take his guns, but then they wouldn't want their $5,000 taken. You know, so it's a, it's, it is a very weird side of the fence to be playing on.

So if you could, if you could like steelman the opposition to something like this, which it sounds like there's not much, but like if you could steelman their position, what would you say?

Steelman their position?

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, like what would be, what would be like their best defense? Like, no, we need to keep this.

I don't know that there is a good defense other than they, well, you have to go through, you know, the, the the process as it's outlined in the legal code to try to get this property back. And good luck to you. I mean, I think that's basically what it is, is that we're happy to give it back to you, but you have to jump through 5 miles of bureaucratic red tape to do it.

And is it a situation where if they've had it for so long, eventually it just becomes property of the state or something like that? And then they—

That I don't know off the top of my head, like how that works.

But—

Well, but the reality of it is it's one of those deals where it's like, we're obeying the law. Like, we're by law, we're, we're able to do this, right? So we're happy to give it back as long as you do what you're supposed to by law. And so, but this is where your, your position would be, get rid of that. That's a terrible law, right? Like, we gotta, we gotta take care of that again.

Yeah. And, and again, it's something that Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians all agree about, in every single legislative session, there's at least a couple of bills that get filed to either reform it or abolish it outright.

Yeah.

In every single legislative session, it dies. Why?

Yeah, that'd be my question. If we all agree, then why is it? Is it because it's like bunched up with a bunch of other stuff that like they all disagree about? Is that what it is? I mean, because that's, that's typically how a lot of things die is like, well, yeah, we're— we wanted to get rid of this, but we also wanted to like ban guns and prayer in public or whatever it is. Like, you know, it's like, you know, we're gonna put all this pork around this thing and so it doesn't pass. We can say, well, look, I tried. You know what I mean? Is that, is that kind of what's happening or?

No, these are, these are single-issue bills. I, I think that what's happening here is law enforcement lobby dollars. That, that goes a long way. And don't get me wrong, like, I'm not anti-law enforcement. I want to make sure that I clarify that from the get-go. But I mean, That, that is a very powerful and rich machine here in the state of Texas.

For sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, so in like, as long as we're gonna be pissing off police officers, let's go ahead and talk about flock cameras. Yeah.

Let's go there.

Making all kinds of friends today.

Well, that's the thing is if you get pulled over on the way home tonight, I, I just don't know that police officers would be pissed off about it. Like, I mean, I, I don't think some of them will. Some of them will. Look, there are some, there are some that we know are using them for their gain.

But here's, here's what I'll tell everybody. The last time we talked about flock cameras, a lot of you sent in some funny and interesting comments.

Yeah.

But I also got a lot of private messages from police officers and other individuals that had things to tell me that I can't share on the air about these cameras. And so there's, there's a lot. And I will— I just— I'll say this. The— there are some police officers who are overutilizing the flock cameras and not actually doing their job. I'll just put it that way. Yeah. So that, that exists and that's a problem.

Sure it is.

Other than the problem that we have these invasive cameras.

So, but everywhere, everywhere, like, literally, I cannot go anywhere. Every time I turn around, I'm like, there's another one, like, everywhere.

Well, and I want to let you have your say, but I do want to point out the history of this kind of stuff because we used to have a lot of red light cameras.

Yes, we did.

And then people got real pissy about that and we got rid of them.

Yep.

Um, I remember 249 and, uh, 2920 used to be like a hotbed of red light cameras and people were getting tickets left and right. I mean, they were writing them tickets for rolling stops and all kinds of stuff.

Well, because the problem with those is you didn't have to get pulled over to get a ticket, right? Like they would just send you one in the mail. And if, by the way, you just lost that piece of mail, now you can have a warrant out for your ass.

Nice little bench warrant.

Like, it's a, yeah, it's a, it's a problem. I mean, I, I had a, had a former police officer once tell me, uh, I was like, ah, I've got a jury summons. He was like, ah, throw those away. And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, they can't prove that I ever got it. And so he's like, I, they literally can't prove that I ever got it. So what are they gonna do to me?

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, But an actual ticket is different in many ways. And so, yeah, this is what was happening. It was a big problem because people were like, I'm not paying that. Right. And they get pulled over a second time and it's like, wait a minute, why are you— why are you cuffing me? You know, like, we got bigger issues, you know? So, yes, we got rid of those. And they're like, you know what? I see your takeaway, the, the red light cams, and I'm going to raise you to flock cameras.

Right.

And we're going to put them not just at red lights, We're gonna put them everywhere. Screw you, person that doesn't want red light cameras.

Like, but yeah, so anyway, I know, I know that you, you have strong feelings about this one. I mean, how long have you known about the flock cameras?

Just, I guess I've, I've really gotten a little bit more involved in the movement, I'd say, here within the last year or so. Just, you know, starting to get, uh, really familiar with it. I mean, mass surveillance isn't anything that's new, but to your point, they always come out with new and exciting ways to surveil us. So yeah, that's, I guess it's probably been about a year or so that I'm looking into this.

Are they, 'cause I know where you live is kind of like a little partitioned off its own city. Do they have them in your city?

We do, in fact. Yeah, I stood under one just yesterday that's right across the street from the city hall.

So yep.

Right in my hometown.

Well, and so from your perspective, what's the, what's the big problem here? I mean, like, because— and I'll get into some of the pushback from why the pros of it, but like, what are your problems with it?

I mean, off the bat, it's, it's a Fourth Amendment violation, in my opinion. So, I mean, the Fourth Amendment exists to limit government surveillance. And I just, I don't think that illegal search and seizure.

Correct.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think that it does constitute a Fourth Amendment search. And I know that, you know, the proponents of Flock cameras are like, well, you know, police officers can see your license plates in public. You know, what's the problem? Well, of course they can. But it's the aggregate of that data. It's using that data to create a searchable database of your movements and be able to know where you live, where you work, where you worship, who you associate, build that aggregate, that mosaic of your movements, that's where it gets to the violation. And I just, I don't believe that the Fourth Amendment allows for government to have that kind of power just simply because technology has made it cheaper or

easier. You know, I get, you know, law enforcement are probably gonna say, well, we can do so much more. You know, we would never have the manpower to do some of these things. And I hear that.

Right.

But my freedom doesn't stop where, you know, someone's sense of public safety starts.

Sure. Yeah. Well, and I know that most of the people, because everything gets discussed in the extremes, right? And so what I think everybody who's in favor of it will go to, well, what about child abduction?

Sure.

What about a Silver Alert? What about an Amber Alert? All those kinds of things. And, you know, I understand. Like, I want those evil people who take children to be caught and done horrible things to that I can't express over the airwaves. But so I understand that perspective, but I'm very similar to you in that I don't wanna give up my liberty for safety.

Well, yeah, because I think to your point, it's like, I mean, you're not a child abductor. You're not, you're not in need of a Silver Alert or an Amber Alert right now. I, I think that's the problem, is like we're putting everyone in the same category as a child abductor or a Silver Alert issue, or a— you know what I'm saying? Like everybody then becomes suspect.

Yep.

In everything. And I'm not talking just few people, everybody. So this is the same thing that we would we would disagree with in every other place of our life, that the exception doesn't get to provide the rule. But that's what's happened.

Yeah.

Yep.

You know, well, so this is, to me, this brings up sort of the philosophical question. Okay.

Which one?

You know, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody's there, does it actually make any noise?

You're right.

That kind of a thing. And to me, the flock cameras sort of answer that question by saying, if you run a red light and there's no one that sees it and there's not a cop around, did you actually commit a crime?

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Well, the answer is yes. But now it's on camera. That's the difference, right?

That's what I'm saying. In practicality, you did, but you didn't because you didn't get caught.

Yeah.

That's— sure. And I'm not, I'm not saying that's a good thing, but like, that's, that's kind of the problem is now we don't, we don't have a person observing this. We have a machine that's going to be And, and let's just be honest, we have a machine that's reporting the things that we're doing, and can machines now create information that look just like us? You know, and so like, if we're presenting these things as evidence, who's to say that that evidence wasn't produced not from you doing the thing, but them taking a picture of you and then manipulating that to make it look like you did something in order for them to be right? To me, that's, that's one of the big problems here is like with surveillance, because I don't know if you guys have

looked at it, but it's not like 4K. I mean, like, you could— this is not difficult stuff to reproduce.

Sure.

So like my suspicion level goes way high and like, okay, so like now we're— we can literally create crimes out of the ether. So, and that's the safety of being able to commit one without anybody seeing.

Sure.

Um, is like you typically need an eyewitness, you typically need evidence, and like this thing's actually giving us the ability to manufacture evidence.

Yeah, no, I, I'm completely against them as well. I think, I think that, I, I think that the violation of your rights is the biggest problem.

Yeah. So I think if you could trick your opponents into being pro-flock, I think you got this thing in the bag.

Well, one of my opponents is on a record saying my friends at flock.

Oh my gosh. Oh, this— you just need to put that on a video and put it on repeat.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah. The Woodlands actually, uh, in December approved a, uh, I think it was like $109,000 investment into like 30 more flock cameras that, you know, would just go to—

3 or 30?

30.

Okay, $109,000 for 30 of them?

For 30 of them, which would be an ongoing annual cost of $90,000. And that was approved, approved by The Woodlands Township back in December.

I mean, that is unanimously, that is a ridiculous amount of money for something that has a solar panel attached to it.

But you're right.

I mean, I can right now, there's a reason I know this. I can right now go buy a, uh, a stadium light with 60,000 lumens on a solar panel for $160. That's cool. It's unbelievable, actually.

Where is this?

Amazon.

I need this for like my round pen. Yeah, you do.

No, you really do. I'll show it to you. It's incredible. And you're talking like thousands and thousands of dollars for each one of these things. Like $3,000 apiece. I'm not really good at math, but I'm decent. That's a lot of money for something with a solar panel attached.

Well, one, The Woodlands isn't hurting for money. No, they're not.

But I mean, the people of The Woodlands ought to be incensed by the amount of money that their taxes are being spent on, you know?

Fact-check me on this real quick because somebody was just telling me this this afternoon, is apparently The Woodlands just paid the city of Houston $50 million as a stop to never annex them. Is that— have you heard this?

I have. I'm not sure if it was a done deal. I know that there was a meeting, a township meeting about that this week, but I'm not sure how that shook out.

Yeah, somebody, somebody was telling— yeah, is that—

so yeah, so what I, what I just found was The Woodlands Township Did they vote unanimously? Unanimously approved a $50 million agreement to permanently eliminate the city of Houston's right to annex the community.

There you go.

That's a— that's not a small amount of money.

No, but like, to keep Houston out of your pockets.

Oh yeah.

It's money well spent, in my opinion.

Well, it would probably pay off. That's the thing. They've probably done the numbers and they're like, no, it's worth our $50 million.

Well, the alternative would be for The Woodlands to incorporate itself as a city. And that actually went to ballot in, I think it was 2021. And they voted it down.

Okay. They liked the township.

They liked the township.

Well, what they liked is not being Kingwood.

Sure.

Well, also your taxes increase whenever you have to have your own police force, your own, you know, they have a lot of Montgomery County resources that they use because they are a township. They're not an incorporated city. Whereas me on the other side of 45 in Oak Ridge, My property taxes are through the roof because we've, we do have, you know, our own police force, you know, our own, you know, city water.

Y'all better had some major improvements go on the backside over there.

Yes.

It's nice now.

It's real nice. Well, cause we, my son plays ball out at the scrapyard and it's like, oh, we can actually drive through the city of Oak Ridge North and not be there for 9 hours.

Right.

Are you trying to get to the scrapyard?

Yeah. It's like, there's actually 4 lanes for a while. It's really helpful, you know?

So high taxes can suck, but when they actually do something that's helpful, it's, it's not terrible.

Not terrible.

But hopefully they come back down after now that the project's— we'll see.

Well, and I, I don't know. Do we have more to talk about on flock cameras? Because now we're into taxes and like, I feel like we're, we've got this natural progression because another thing, um, that I feel like I, I read somewhere is that you are looking to eliminate property taxes for a certain segment of people. Uh, love to hear more about that.

Not for a certain segment of people, for everyone.

Okay, for everyone.

Yeah, yeah. And just to put a nice pretty bow on the, the flock thing before we do move on, I did want to just, uh, plug that I announced yesterday that I have drafted legislation called the Texas Automatic License Plate Reader Prohibition Act that would outright ban governmental use of ALPRs and other vehicle identifying things. So I don't want to go into a whole lot of detail on it. I am going to be releasing the actual legislation here in the next couple of weeks. It's already been shopped around to a couple of select folks in Austin just to kind of have folks put eyes on it. But this would be a ban for the government And it's got teeth. It's got anti-circumvention

verbiage in there. For sure.

Yeah.

So I'm really, really proud of that. It's something that my team and I worked very, very hard on for a long time and really excited to see if this gets anywhere. So if I'm elected on November 3rd, bill filing opens on November 9th, and that will be my first order of business.

Okay.

Awesome.

Love it.

And that, I mean, that, that's this year, right? I mean, I just wanna make it—

that's here. Okay. This year.

Yeah.

Okay. So, well, so, okay. You wanna eliminate property taxes? I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm here for it. I'd like to be, I'd like to be walked through the math because I mean, if we eliminate property taxes, then what replaces that revenue? You know, without simply, you know, shifting the same tax burden to something else.

Yeah, no, it's a fair question. And really there's, there's really no property tax plan without spending cuts. Without that, then it's just smoke and mirrors.

Sure.

So it's got to be a multi-pronged plan. So first, with property taxes, I think we're 7th in the nation, depending on which, you know, kind of think tank you're looking at.

It feels right.

You know, for property taxes, which makes sense, right? Because we don't have a state income tax.

I was going to say, that's why.

I mean, so property taxes are a huge part of the income. But also the property taxes have been rising at a rate higher than, say, population plus inflation or something like that. So it's not, we're not rising in an equitable way.

Well, I mean, there's a reason that there's private businesses now in the state of Texas that their sole goal is to help you fight your property taxes.

Yes.

Oh yeah.

I mean, oh yeah.

And I, and I, I subscribe to those places.

Yeah.

And because, because I, I've done it for 2 years now and I've gotten money off of what I would've had to pay otherwise. Uh, but, and, and to your point, so I lived in Arkansas for 10 years where there is state income tax.

Mm-hmm.

And, and I will tell you that the, the way the government is set up in most states, they're gonna get the money they need.

Mm-hmm.

whether it's through property taxes or state income tax. And Arkansas still has property tax, and, and it alarms people whenever I told people them. I'm like, yeah, uh, I had to pay property tax on my vehicles. I had to pay property tax on my RV.

Mm-hmm.

You have to pay property taxes on, uh, like a, a four-wheeler. Like, there, there, these are things you have to pay property tax on in Arkansas at least. But if you combine property tax plus state income, not even close to what the property tax is here in Texas. It's not even close.

I believe it.

With those combined. I believe it. So eliminating— so you're saying we're just gonna have to stop spending other places so that you can absorb that. It's what you're saying.

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, one thing that a lot of people don't realize about Texas is that we're just— we're sitting on a mountain of cash. So I think, um, when the Comptroller, or then Comptroller Glenn Hegar, back at the beginning of last session in January, gave his biennial report, we were sitting on like $27, $28 billion. Oh my goodness. And that's not counting our rainy day fund either. And what we've seen is that because we are so flush with cash, our legislators started to spend like drunken sailors and do things like Senate Bill 22 last legislative session, where we made a $1.5 billion investment over the next 10 years to fund Hollywood filmmaking in Texas.

Oh.

Because Hollywood needs our money, right?

Yeah. Oh my goodness. I was unaware of that.

Oh yeah. Oh, one of the most egregious things that came out of the last legislative session. But As far as the property tax, what I propose is using that budget surplus and actually giving it back to the people in the way of property tax relief. So using that budget surplus or even maybe portion of the rainy day fund to start buying down school district M&O tax debt, which is huge. If you, if you look at your property tax bill, school district taxes are probably half of your property tax bill. So let's start buying that down. And let's start cutting spending. And whenever I say cut spending, I mean across the board. So the state of Texas, for example, we've got 5 spending limits.

I think there's 4 constitutional, 1 statutory. But if you look at the code for local municipalities, spending limits, zero.

No.

There are no local spending limits. And as a libertarian, I usually advocate for a decentralized approach. You know, I want things to work, you know, bottom up. I think, I think communities know what they need best and local governments know what they need best. But in this case, I do feel like this is a place where the state does need to step in and say, all right, local municipalities, we have spending limits for you so that they can't, you know, go off the rails. So that would be city governments, MUDs, school districts, you name it, and actually put some guardrails in place because that's what happened in 2023. In that legislative session, they did do some things that looked good on paper from

a property tax perspective. They did some compression. It wasn't like your standard milquetoast homestead exemption that just doesn't move the needle at all.

Sure.

You know, it just makes people feel good and allows them to say that they're doing something, right?

Yeah.

But it did look good on paper, but If appraisals just continue to rise and spending just continues to rise, then it doesn't matter what you're doing from a compression perspective legislatively. So it has to rein in that spending while also applying that compression. It can't be one, it's got to be both. And that gets back to that multi-prong approach I was talking about. And if we do that, if we do that, I do feel like it is realistic that we could do the elimination of property taxes in 5 years.

Oh, wow.

Wow. Because you have to, you're talking about starting somewhere and then just seeing how it goes to be able to continue to increase that over time, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Not tomorrow. Not tomorrow.

Like we're going in and we are going to do this. We're going to start reining in spending. We're going to put in spending caps and actually start exercising fiscal responsibility.

Yeah.

And if we do that, we can get to a place. Now, back to your question, as far as, okay, well, what happens after we eliminate property taxes? Like, how do we fund things like basic infrastructure and everything? Then I think that we go to more of a sales tax model. And at least with sales tax, and the reason I like this is it's transparent. It's not like property taxes, which is going to, you know, arbitrary appraisal or something like that where you really never know what you're gonna get until you get your bill at the end of the year, right? But with sales tax, at least you know what you're gonna get.

Certainly.

But I don't wanna rob Peter to pay Paul, right? I don't wanna like increase sales taxes astronomically to, you know, compensate for property taxes. And that's why reining in the government spending is going to be critical as well, because we want to kind of shift that to the sales tax, but we don't want to materially increase that sales tax too and just, Basically, shipped it from one place to another.

Yeah. I mean, I think that one of the things that's interesting to me about that is that I may pay $10,000 in property tax one year, which is not unusual.

Sure.

$10,000 in property tax, but my next-door neighbor is renting that property instead of buying it. They're not personally paying the property tax, even though their, their rent probably includes what it should cost for the, for the homeowner. Mm-hmm. To, to pay it. Um, but they're not, they're not the ones responsible for paying the property tax.

Right.

So the thing that, that's interesting to me is, is twofold. Number one, shifting it to property, uh, from property tax to sales tax. would spread out the responsibility to people that are homeowners and not homeowners. I think that's one thing that's interesting to me. The other thing that's interesting is that they're, you know, whatever side of the coin you wanna be on, on this, there's a lot of people that are paying thousands of dollars in property tax that are going to the schools that homeschool their kids.

Mm-hmm.

And so they're, they're not getting any benefit For other than, other than city infrastructure, which I think is there, there's something to be said about that for sure.

Sure.

That the, whether you, whether you want to admit it or not, your property taxes going to the school system is providing city infrastructure, um, for lots of reasons. 'Cause it brings other people in, right? There, there's lots of reasons, but they're not, they're not sending, not getting any personal benefit. from their family getting educated by paying those property taxes. So it does to me, that shifting would potentially even the playing field just a little bit, I think.

Yeah. I mean, like, probably over the last 5 years or so, on average, you just homeowners, their property taxes have increased probably about $1,500. But if you get into small businesses, we're looking at like $5,000 to $15,000 on commercial properties and everything too. So it's not even just about like the homeowners or the renters who would benefit from this too, kind of in an indirect way. But if we're serious about supporting small business and entrepreneurship in Texas, and that's what we're supposed to be about, right?

Yeah, for sure.

Then this is really going to be a boon for our small businesses as well.

Yeah, because all of a sudden they have greater ability to pour into their business to, to grow the thing that we say we're, we're about, right?

Right. Yeah. And then really at the end of the day, if, if we're talking about true property ownership, should you have to pay the government in perpetuity for land that you've already owned? So, I mean, imagine you've spent your life and you've paid down a 30-year mortgage and you're like, I own this. I own it now. I did the thing. And now you still have to pay X thousand dollars to the government, it's basically having to pay rent on property that you own. It's not true property ownership. So it also gets down to the principle of the matter too. True property ownership means that once you own it, you own it.

This has always been my issue with part of the American— is because we made it life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that was not— was it Adam Smith? I think it was Adam Smith.

I think you're right.

His original proposal was life, liberty, and property.

Yeah.

You know, and like, because he saw that as a fundamental right that we all needed to be able to have. Well, the problem is, is if you're renting your property from the government through taxes, it's not your property.

Right.

Right. And so like, I, I'm wondering, and, and again, I can see why, why this wouldn't at all be helpful for your platform, but do you see a scenario where maybe it's like, look, you own your property, without paying property taxes once you've paid the mortgage. Like once you've— once you're free and clear of the actual note, then you're free of taxes.

I mean, if it was, if it was that or nothing, you know, I'm, I'm pragmatic in the way that, you know, I realize that Texas kind of does things in baby steps, right? Sure.

Yeah.

Incremental change. It's frustrating. But we've got to get away from just the kind of the milquetoast homestead exemptions and everything. So I mean, I guess that might be something I would consider. I wouldn't be thrilled about it because— and really, the reason that I would hesitate on something like that, because it does sound like common sense whenever you just say it, but it doesn't remove the tax burden. It's just shifting it from one set of taxpayers to another.

That's for sure.

Which is For example, we had, I think it was 17 constitutional amendments on the ballot last November, right? And I think 6 of them had to do with property taxes. And some were about raising the homestead exemption for the elderly and the disabled. And then you talk about these things and it's a feel-good thing.

Mm-hmm.

They're like, well, of course we want to help the elderly and the disabled. Why wouldn't you want to do that? But I don't think that people really understand that you're just shifting that tax burden. You're taking it from here and you're putting it here. And maybe some folks may be okay with that, but how you get consent from however many billion people we have here?

It doesn't work because, I mean, I'll tell you, we got a little bit hoodwinked and I'm not in any way going to throw my mortgage lender under the bus, although they're probably the ones to be thrown under the bus, is that—

Let's just do it.

Yeah. I'm not going to name them.

Just go out back and burn them in effigy later.

Well, don't think I hadn't thought about it. But the problem is we bought our house and it's on about 3.5 acres, and we bought it from an older lady, single woman. And we had our mortgage, we had everything kind of locked in, everything's good. We're happy with the rate. We're happy with everything that we've got ready to buy the house. We buy the house. 2 years in. So right at that second year, we were told, you haven't been paying enough money in taxes because she had a 65 and over exemption, which froze her taxes when she filed for that. which was like 10 years ago. And so wherever her property taxes were then, that's the, that's the most she ever had to pay from then on. And

here we are, we've been paying however much, uh, for the 2 years. And they were like, you owe us back taxes on that.

Oh my gosh.

So our mortgage went up $800. for a full year. And then after that, it reverted back to only $400 extra per year, which is a grand total of almost $5,000. Like doubled our property taxes because of our age.

Yeah.

Like there, there's no rhyme or reason to it other than they said, well, if you're over 65, then theoretically you're retired. You don't have income other than, you know, whatever you've got stored away. And so we're gonna give you that break. And I'm like, well, but we're not getting any break when we talked about this just last week, whenever it's like, you know, you got inflation at 6 to 8%. And if you're, you're lucky if you get a 3% raise, we're not keeping up with inflation at all. And so that in our property taxes going up 15 to 20%, like you're talking about, like we're, we get to a point where it's like, this is not

affordable anymore.

It's not sustainable.

It's not sustainable. And I think it, I just, I think, okay, same property, exact same property. I have to pay more for it.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and what you, what you're proposing is essentially a consumption tax. I mean, very similar to what Ted Cruz was trying to do nationally, I mean, several years ago when he was running for president, right? I mean, like he was, because he was proposing like a nationwide flat tax for the IRS. I mean, is that similar to like what we're talking about?

No.

No. Okay.

No, no, it's really just shifting where the money is going to the government. And I'm saying that eliminating the property taxes, getting us to true home ownership, over a period of time by leveraging the mountain of cash that we're sitting on, and then transitioning that to sales tax, while at the same time instituting serious spending caps so that we can actually make it there.

So what are, like, and you said we had to tie that up with cuts. So what, like, what in your mind are the biggest cuts that we need to make then?

$1.5 billion for Hollywood filmmaking in Texas. Okay. So, yeah, that's a good place to start.

That's a good place to start. The All Right, All Right, All Right Bill.

Yeah, it is.

That is the All Right, All Right, All Right Bill. Yeah.

I mean, I, well, I, I think, oh man, to your point, I, if I, if I'm hearing you correctly, you're kind of going, look, if it's possible to eliminate property taxes by not doing anything but getting rid of superfluous spending.

Yes.

Spending that shouldn't happen to begin with. We're not talking about like building roads where we need to build roads. We're not talking about, you know, the inability to continue to benefit our state. We're talking about ridiculous spending. Like you said, that's $1.5 billion over that. Like, to me, that makes a lot of sense. But then I also, in the same breath, hear you talk about raising sales tax. What do you propose that to look like?

Not necessarily raise sales tax.

Okay.

I mean, I think it probably would raise sales tax a bit, but I'm not talking about astronomical. That's why the spending cuts have to happen too. That's why we have to move all the regulatory barriers, all the bureaucracy that we've built in the state of Texas over the past several years, and just really kind of force the Texas legislature to do what we do as families at the kitchen table, is sit down and budget, and we decide what is a want versus a need, And then we spend accordingly. I mean, why can't the state balance their checkbooks like we can?

Wait a minute.

Showing my age here, balancing checkbooks.

Well, but wait a minute. You said, wait, I'm just trying to make sure I understand you correctly. You're trying to put logic to this. You're trying to be logical here and go, oh, I have $12. I can't eat at Bar-A Barbecue.

Right.

It costs too much.

Yeah.

I would love to. It's delicious.

Yeah.

But I can't.

Well, but like, I, I can sort of see like a cascading series happening here because like, if, if people are no longer paying property taxes, they're gonna have a lot more money in their wallets, which means they're gonna be more apt to spend more money in the marketplace.

Sure.

Which means that we're gonna be able to collect the taxes from the sales tax.

Mm-hmm.

On the things that we're actually wanting to spend our money on. Whereas before we were restricted because we were spending—

You got it.

Gobs of money in property taxes. And it sounds like you're kind of wanting to like Office Space the tax code here a little bit. It's like, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, no, I don't want like 10%. I want like a penny. And like, there's so many of us that it's just gonna make that big of a difference. Is that kind of what I'm—

Absolutely. It would feel great to be a gangster on the tax code.

Feels good to be a gangster. Well, I mean, I look, Here, I, I would tell you that for a platform, that's huge because there, those of us who own property, and I would even say, you know, people that own, you know, portfolios of properties.

Sure.

They would even be able to, to expand what they're doing. And, and overall, I'm, I'm sitting here looking at it from, from a place of like, okay, I just mentioned inflation being at the rate that it's at and then raises being at the rate it's at, if you even get a raise, this is a massive opportunity to provide a raise for a family, like to help compensate for inflation. Over, you know, we're, we're already, we're probably seeing over, I mean, goodness gracious, $110,000 for 30 Flock cameras that nobody wants. Like, that's a, to me, that's egregious.

Yes.

So there's so many ways that you want, you wanna start limiting spending. Well, let's, Let's find a way to actually do it.

Yeah. I mean, and then it also gets down to just basic affordability. I mean, I think about, I became a homeowner for the first time when I was 24. My kids are 21 right now.

Okay.

Yeah.

Homeownership is not in the cards for them at 24. There's no way. We're talking about, I think in my district, HD 15, median income's about, you know, household income's $120,000. Median house, $400,000. It's absolutely insane.

Yeah.

I mean, and property taxes is obviously a portion of that. There's other factors that need to be taken into account as well. But I mean, there's no path for homeownership in the way that we're at right now. There's—

Well, but I'm guessing that, I mean, I'd have to go back and look, Or not in the area.

If you want to live in the area you grew up in and you grew up where I grew up, owning a home at 24 is—

It's not happening.

That's going to be a tough cookie.

Yeah.

But for me personally, and I realize I bought the house that I chose to buy, right? But probably a grand of my mortgage every month is just going to property taxes. That's a lot of money that I could do things with.

Yeah.

That would really, I mean, I could start putting money back to help my, to help my kids be able to buy a house. Like there's, even if I want to go that route, like there's so many ways that you can, can, like you said, spend it, save it, do whatever.

Yeah.

Be a moron.

I don't care.

I don't care. But, but you at least have it.

Yeah. Right. It's available.

Yeah.

So one, one of the questions I have with this, because I know pushback from 'Cause Texas school districts are weird compared to other states. Like every time somebody comes in from outta state, I was like, okay, we have to have a talk about school districts, independent school districts. That just doesn't happen in other states. And so how does the funding work if you do something like that? Because right now the property taxes for the school district that you live in, all that money that's allocated for the school goes to the school. But if I go buy a candy bar in downtown Houston, giving those taxes, like my 2 pennies or whatever, that's going to— is that now going to HISD? Or like, how is that getting allocated? You know, because that's, you know,

we hate to say that there's no school district that's different in Texas, but they are because of the amount of money that they get based off the property taxes.

Yep.

And like, we upend this and like, who's gonna be coming after us? But no, you know, none other than the fun old teachers union. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, I mean, and I think that kind of gets to where the school districts have to identify, you know, wants versus needs too and everything. They've been getting a whole lot of money in property taxes and there's a lot of administrative bloat and everything. And again, I'll just kind of give the caveat, like teachers and administrators, it's a thankless job. And I do support those who, who were in public education day in, day out. But I also think that part of a school board's responsibility is not just to students and teachers, but also to the taxpayers in that community and making sure that they are being very diligent with every educational tax dollar. So to that point, and this kind of gets into a broader conversation about how I feel about

education as a whole, I do think that money should follow the student and not necessarily go just to the school district. So we had a big thing in Texas last— we have now the Texas Education Credit Freedom Accounts.

Yeah.

So, and I think that was a good step. I don't think it went far enough. I think there's too many people out there that still couldn't get funding It was whole lottery-based and everything. But if the student is homeschooled, then the money should go to the homeschool, to the home, or to the co-op, or what have you, right? Not to the school district in which that homeschool student lives in. Like you were saying earlier, it needs— the money needs to follow the student, whether that's a private school, a charter school, a homeschool, or a public school.

Right.

As long as the money is going where the student is, then I think that that is the way that it needs to go. But I do think that the educational choice movement, I'm very supportive of that because I do think that with public education, it's almost like a monopoly in some areas where there's not a whole lot of incentive, right? I mean, I think competition creates better outcomes. It's basic free market principles, and you can apply it to education too. And we have to make sure that we're using those educational tax dollars. And because everybody says, but it's for the kids, it's for the kids. And it's kind of like we were talking about with the property taxes, wanting to help the elderly and the disabled and everything.

Yeah.

It's for the children. And of course we want the children to thrive and we want them to have a good educational experience and everything they want. But do we really need to have like a billion-dollar natatorium? I don't, I don't know that we do. You know, it's—

We just didn't, we didn't have one.

Look how we turned out.

Yeah. Look at us. But I will tell you, like, you, you drive around, you know, Houston, the DFW area, San Antonio, wherever, you know, these big districts. Um, the, the, whenever you've got a billion-dollar football stadium up in McKinney, Texas, you start to ask questions.

Yeah.

Like, why do you need that? And, you know, I agree with you on some of those levels. And, you know, again, there's other sides to that that you have to look at and go, okay, well, whether you like it or not, there are people moving into that city because of a billion-dollar stadium. There is that happening. And so, You know, you've kind of, you got to weigh some of those things, and I don't have all the answers, and you probably do, because, you know, but I think that's the challenge of all of what you're talking about, right?

Yeah, yeah. And just to say it, like, I'm not trying to take a dig at Conroe ISD about the natatorium or anything, or Woodforest Stadium. Like, that's shared across the entire district. I mean, I'm talking about, there's places where that's being done at the school level. Like, we've at least, you know, kind of built a shared infrastructure. But yeah, no, I think it's just really scrutinizing our spending and making sure that we are staying within budget and doing things that are actually adding value.

Yeah.

So, and I tend to agree with you on this, but to play devil's advocate, like what about, and I'll use, the Nick Shirley of it all. You know who he is?

No.

The investigative reporter in Minnesota that's been uncovering all the government fraud in the daycare centers.

Oh, okay, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that, I think some people who would like oppose you on this idea was it opens us up to more fraud. You know what I mean? Like, especially like with homeschoolers and different things. How do we know that these funds are being allocated for education? And how do we know that they're being used properly? How, you know, like, And with private schools, we can't control necessarily their curriculum, all these kinds of things. And so freeing up that money could potentially expose us to fraud.

Yeah, but from what I understand, the Texas Education Freedom accounts, I think there is now a marketplace that's open. And so there has to be submissions. I think there's approval processes and everything before—

Oh, for sure.

I mean, the comptroller will approve the funds to be released and everything, but I think that there's a process there. But so, I mean, I think, I don't think anything's completely fraud-proof.

No, 100%.

But as long as we make reasonable accommodations and have checks and balances in there to be able to validate those things, then—

Well, I was really making the argument more like, because I think you were expressing we need to push it further to where it's available, not necessarily a lotto system, but it just needs to be available to everybody, right?

Well, yeah, but that becomes difficult with funding too, right?

Sure.

You have to be able to fund something like that. And I think that there's a very real concern with rural communities where there's not a whole lot of co-ops or private schools or charter schools. The public school, that's it. That's it.

Yeah.

So I understand—

Unless you got a good Catholic parish in there.

And most don't. I mean, where I grew up, it's all farmers.

Right.

Like, like what are they gonna do? Like, first of all, you, there's 2 options. You either come to the farm with me. Mm-hmm. Or you, uh, go to school.

Yep.

And, you know, I guess what, you're riding the bus there, you're riding the bus home because I don't know when I'm gonna leave and I don't know when I'm gonna get home. So, right. That's, that's the way we lived and, you know, rural West Texas. And so you're right. I mean, it, it, the city is such a different animal altogether. Then once you start getting into some of these smaller school districts, it's like, what are we supposed to do here? And, and we've already, I mean, for years we've had the Robin Hood Act, right? Like all the things where it's like, okay, the, the bigger, you know, the, the schools around here are having to take some of their dollars and give them to smaller schools. Smaller schools.

Yeah.

It's still happening though. That's not something that has gone away. And that's been happening since I was born. So like, or probably close to it. So like, um, we, we've got some of these things in place, right? Whether you like them or you don't, it is kind of the way things are. And, and I think the one thing that I do appreciate about your, uh, your stance on some of these things is like, could we just like consider some things? Could we just think about it?

No, I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm all for that. You know?

Because I don't think we do sometimes. It's like it's a whole lot easier to spend $1.5 billion. It's a whole lot more flashy. It's a whole lot more interesting than just going, well, what if we didn't do that one thing we've been doing for 35 years or 40 years? Yeah.

You know, it's actually doing what you campaign on. And I think that's the biggest rub for me is that we hear these things over and over, like it's election season right now. Oh, yeah. So, you know, we've got Abbott talking about halting flock and everything. And he's got this big property tax plan. He has been in office since when? 2012?

Too long.

Come on, man. Too long.

And it's— I don't know if it's— they just— it feels too hard and they just feel like the problem is too big to tackle. And so they just kind of kick the can down the road or if it's legitimately that just like, okay, well, if we solve this, we don't have anything to campaign on. I don't know which it is. But I hate that somebody's got to get in there and actually try to kickstart some things.

Kick something.

Yeah, kick something. For real.

Well, it's always easier to do nothing. Yeah, it really is. I mean, you don't ruffle any feathers typically. And then it becomes like, do I want to get reelected? All those things go into those decisions of, am I actually going to do something about this?

Right.

And I think most of 'em, and I know it's not true of all elected officials and things like that, but most of them don't really mean what they say. They know that there's things that they can say to get elected and hold a position. And so they'll say those things.

Yeah.

With no intention of actually doing them. They just sound good as a news spot or a hit point on an interview or things like that. But the people that actually wanna get stuff accomplished also just get frustrated because all they have are these people around them that are unwilling to act.

Right.

So I actually feel for you if you get elected.

I don't know what's—

Well, but I think the thing that's interesting, and this is just, it's tough whether you like it or not, running as a libertarian's tough.

It is.

Because you're, you're putting in as much time, energy, and your own money and campaigning and all this stuff as a Republican or a Democrat is. And at the end of the day, you're going, am I going to get the votes? And you don't know.

Yep.

You work toward it and you do what you can to get there, to inform people. You come on podcasts to try to get the, the, the word out there and those sorts of things, which is great. Um, but I, I think it really does come down to like, are you going to be the person that you say you're going to be? And I feel like that's one of the things that is just— people are so frustrated with people saying they're going to do something and you trust them and you, you vote for them they get elected and then they just disappoint you over and over and over. Now, and I, I do understand that, like, like you said, I mean, you, you

present a piece of legislation, you do all the things you can to get it pushed through. If it doesn't get pushed through, then someone who just completely uninformed, uh, might go, oh, well, she said she was gonna do all these things and nothing ever happened. You're going, I tried.

Yeah.

Like, I did everything I could. Like, I— let me show you the things that I actually did. And they're like, oh, but nothing actually did happen. And so I, I think that that's a, a problem that we run into is like, we've got, we've got good government officials, we've got terrible government officials. And it's like, okay, I don't know what, I don't know what the answer is to all that. But, um, I know that there are a lot of issues that I don't, I don't fit anywhere with.

Yeah.

I don't fit in a category. I fit in Uh, well, I know where my category fits, but it's not necessarily government-based. It's, it's a citizenship that I put in heaven, not in— not here on earth. But that being said, like, it's a, it's a challenge to try to take those values that you have and put them in a box.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? I don't know what to do with that. I'm just, I'm just getting on a soapbox for a minute.

Have you always been a libertarian? I mean, like, how did, how did you grow up? Like, What was your political upbringing like?

My parents weren't very political. I mean, I didn't come up in a political household, so I kind of fell into it. I was at University of Texas circa 2002-ish, right after 9/11. So I was an undergrad at that time, and I was very big in the anti-war movement on the University of Texas campus. And a lot of the folks that I was in that movement with, I very clearly did not align with ideologically other than being anti-war.

That issue.

And I wasn't really sure what I was. I knew I wasn't a socialist. I knew I wasn't wholly Republican. I didn't think I was a Democrat. I was like, I guess I'm an independent. I felt kind of politically homeless. And a buddy of mine invited me to go to the LBJ School of Public Affairs to see Ron Paul speak.

Okay.

And that was the first time I had ever heard about the Libertarian Party or libertarianism in general, is whenever I went to go see Dr. Paul speak for that first time. I think it was 2002, 2003, somewhere around in there. And I came away from that. I was just like, that's it.

That's my guy.

That's it. That is me.

Yeah.

That. And so, and I spent a number of years just kind of being on the periphery and kind of falling into that third kind of wasted vote fallacy. Like, ah, I would maybe vote Libertarian on the down-ballot stuff, but I was like, oh, well, the federal stuff is too important, which is ridiculous. It's really the local elections that matter and actually affect your day-to-day life.

Sure.

So I've definitely grown and learned from that perspective. But yeah, That's where it was for me. It started just being anti-war, and then kind of discovering and growing in libertarianism.

So do you find that it often gets lumped in as like Republican plus, or like, you know—

The Republican JV team?

Or, you know, like a Tea Party, you know, like, you know, it seems like they all sort of like—

Potheads who like guns?

Yeah. Really? I mean, is that, And the reason I ask is because I think it was, to me, there's some negative connotations around the Libertarian Party that I've seen over the years.

Sure.

For me personally. Like when Jo Jorgensen ran for president, I was so excited. Like I wanted to vote for her. And then she came out with all of her stuff about prostitution, and I was like, nope, I'm out. And I just can't go there morally.

Yeah. But that's the exercise though, right? accepting, like, I don't think that this is right morally. I don't want this for myself. I don't want it for me or mine.

Right.

But I also don't think that it's the proper function of the government to regulate what's done between consenting adults. And that's the part that I think takes mental toughness and that a lot of people struggle with when it comes to libertarianism, because there's a lot of things that we say, all right, well, that should be legal, We don't necessarily condone it. We're just saying that's not where— that's not the government's lane. That's 2 consenting adults, and the government doesn't exist to protect us from ourselves or to legislate morality.

Yeah, well, my— okay, so my push— my immediate pushback on that is it's rarely 2 consenting adults. Most of the time, the woman is being forced.

Yeah, if we're talking about trafficking or something like that, it's a horse of a different color. I understand your point of view.

And I don't know any other way to— to stop it other than just to make it illegal outright. I mean, 'cause like, who's gonna— like, you're gonna go in and like ask her intent? Like, she's gonna lie, you know what I mean? And so I don't, I don't know how to police that other than just— and that's—

It's a tough one.

Yeah, and that's— that for me, that was just the line in the sand for, for that, because I have such a strong— I've worked with too many human trafficking organizations. I've seen too many little girls go through horrific situations where I'm like, nope, nope, don't even wanna play around with that. Not gonna dip my toe in the sand.

Sure.

But I understand the sentiment, I really do, because I do feel that way about most drugs. You know, it doesn't bother, like, it wouldn't bother me at all to make pot legal in Texas, but like, I'd be hard-pressed to like be in the affirmative for like heroin.

Sure.

You know, and I think most libertarians would, I don't know, I mean, is it all drugs or is it like, most?

Yeah, no, I think you'll find a spectrum of opinions on that. That's what I would assume, the Libertarian Party, you know. I mean, I think as far as marijuana goes, I think everybody is in favor of legalization there.

Well, I mean, we've done it like pretty much anyway. Yeah, I mean, it's there. We, we had a whole episode where I drank Willie's Remedy on the show, and that did not go well.

It was fantastic. It was so fantastic.

I'm sorry I missed that.

Uh, well, you can go watch it.

Um, well, there's not much to see. see for him.

That's true.

He wasn't really present.

I sort of melted into the seat.

Um, however, it was so good.

My post—

my postmortem review of it is like the number 2 or 3 video on YouTube right now for, for Willy's Remedy.

Yeah.

Um, I'm gonna check that out. Yeah, you should, for sure. It's good if you haven't tried it.

Um, just in, in, uh, the right quantity.

In the right— yeah, yeah, the dosage matters.

But the thing is, he was in the right dosage. So like, he was, he was safe.

Yeah, to the moon, Alice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So no, I'm— I, and I think, I think most everybody in Texas these days is like, look, everybody's— if, if they're doing it illegally, like, why? Because it's legal, legally available in so many forms and fashions. Like, look, it's like alcohol. Like, we're not going to outlaw that, right? We're not going to Prohibition again. So just go ahead and do the weed. But like, we have so many problems with fentanyl. Like, I don't think anybody's gonna be like, you know what, we need to legalize fentanyl.

No.

Yeah. It's, you know, so like, and I, so I appreciate that because I think there are nuances to liberty.

Yes.

So, and I don't know where you fall in all that or if you even wanna talk about it 'cause it's kind of controversial stuff, but. No, that's fine. So like on drugs then, I mean, like, are you wanting to like legalize all of them in Texas or like where do you fall on that?

That would be another one of those things where I think it needs be done incrementally, right? Like, let's do the marijuana. Let's make sure, prove to everybody that we're not going to all fall into reefer madness. And then—

This is a great episode of The '70s Show.

Yeah.

It's one of my favorite shows.

Yeah.

Thank you. But yeah, but then we can take it a step and then we take a step and then we can take it a step and see how it goes. I will say that there are places, Portugal comes to mind, where they have just legalized everything and really put a focus on rehabilitation and making sure that they are not— it's not so much incarceration, but rehabilitation that they're doing with that.

Yeah.

And there has been good progress and good metrics and showing on that. I don't know if we're ready for it in Texas, just to say it, but it has been tried and it has seen some success in other places. I don't know. I don't know. But I mean, it's apples to oranges, right? Like, there's a whole lot of things that I would need to deep dive on, you know, as far as like culture and, you know, things like that to know whether that would work here.

But yeah. Because I think if we just went straight nothing's illegal, I, I think where America would go is, well, okay, now we need to regulate it. And I think that would naturally just move it over to the pharmaceutical companies, which I don't want to do that either.

Exactly.

I like it. So I'm trading one devil for the other at that point. Um, so I, I don't— I, I'm with you. I don't know what the answer is. I, I know that there's some that I would probably just never make legal. Um, but I, I can, I can be sort of black and white like that. But I, but I understand the— but like, at the same time, there's ones that are illegal that I think are silly, like psilocybin. Like, why, why are we not testing that stuff? Why are we not researching? I mean, it's mushrooms. Like, these, these are things that have been proven to be helpful for guys dealing with like PTSD.

Absolutely.

Um, and things like that. Ayahuasca is another one. Um, there's several of them that are— I— what is it, Schedule—

Schedule 1.

Schedule 1. I mean, like the marijuana Schedule 1, that's ridiculous.

Yeah.

I mean, so anyway, yeah. So on the homeowner front, and I, 'cause I know you're talking about your kids not being able to afford a house in the town that they grew up in, what in your mind could local government do to help do that? Because I think we have a couple problems at this point. One is we have had a massive influx of people from outside the state of Texas that have purchased real estate at a higher inflated rate. And so now if we go through and take steps to actually drastically reduce the value of that property, they're going to be upside down on loans that they can never get out from underneath of. So I feel like we've kind of put ourselves in a bear trap where like we can't, we almost can't reduce property

values in order to make them affordable for other people because of the amount of people that we would actually injure, like financially. But, you know, at the same time, I don't want it to be overinflated. So like, what do you think about that?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that we could do is really put more of a focus on smaller starter homes and even, you know, things like duplexes, condos, apartment complexes. And I'm not saying let's just, you know, flood with, you know, large capacity, you know, things, because I mean, folks are going to have, you know, take issue with that.

Oh, they'll have a connection.

Oh yeah, that's going to bring in crime. Things like that. But I think if we can take a more balanced approach where we're not doing the same development on every parcel, like single-family home, and really trying to put more focus on smaller things like that that could be more affordable, I think that would be huge. The other thing that I think would be helpful is to streamline permitting. So I'm a huge sports fan, so I don't know if you guys are familiar with shot clocks. pitch clocks, everything. We need to have a permit clock because with developers, with the permitting that they have to go through in terms of like financing and engineering and all of that stuff, that takes a very, very long time. And

that cost gets passed along to the consumer, to the home buyer.

Right.

So if we can streamline that permitting, make it a one-stop shop, I think that would be huge. And going back to the small business point, I think that would help small business construction companies as well, because those kind of delays and just bureaucratic red tape, like a D.R. Horton, they're fine with that. They can outlive that thing. But John Q. Homebuilder down the road, he's got food to put on the table. He can't do that.

Right.

So yeah, if we could try to streamline that permitting and everything, I think that would be a huge benefit as well. And then to the extent that we do need to have fees associated with the actual development of property and everything, I think the people who are driving the demand should be the ones who are paying the fees, not the taxpayers, right?

Mm-hmm.

So if there is a new development going in, we don't raise property taxes to fund that development. The developer needs to fund that development and the infrastructure thereof, that shouldn't get passed along to existing property owners.

Sure.

Right? So, and that can dovetail into a number of different things as far as like, you know, development and making sure that the developers are paying that and not passing it along to the taxpayers. But those are just some things kind of top of mind that I think would make material gains in being able to make housing affordable again. give this next generation a chance to actually be homeowners.

Yeah. I mean, we, we actually talk about this all the time because whenever we say like, there's no excuse for you not to own a home if you really want to own a home.

Yeah.

Because most of the time people are making decisions based off what they feel like they need rather than what they actually need.

Or what they had with their parents.

What they had with their parents. Yeah. To me, it's, it's silly as like a young married couple without kids that you feel the need that you need a 4/2. You know, like, why do you need that?

You don't.

Like, I mean, unless you're just like, you got twins on the way, I don't know. But like, you really don't need that.

Right.

You know, I've met plenty of families with—

But finding it.

Finding it for sure. But like, I've met families with 8 kids that are living in a 3/2. You can make it work. It's not pleasant, but like, it's doable. But if you're just young and married and it's just the two of you, like, they make beautiful 2/1s. They do. They do. And, and like, they're not, not, they're not making them in mass production, but I think that's coming in the marketplace just because exactly what you're talking about, that's what's gonna be in demand because they're not gonna be able to move all these other ones because they're too expensive.

Yeah.

And then, and then the young people that, you know, because the, I mean, just, I think this year the data came out that the median age of a first-time home buyer is now 40 years old, which is insane.

That's nuts.

Insane.

I hadn't seen that data yet.

Yeah, yeah.

That's heartbreaking.

Yeah, sad.

But like, that's the reality of the situation. And so like, I sympathize with people that feel like they can't. I'm telling you that you can if you're willing to give up some of the stuff that you think you're entitled to.

Oh yeah.

You know?

No, agreed.

You know, it drives my wife crazy, but when we first got married, I think one of the first houses I took her to look at, I mean, like, it had holes in the floor, you know? But that's what we could afford. And I was like, I wanted land and that's why I wanted that. I was like, I didn't care what the house looked like. I just wanted dirt. And she's like, I'm not living there. So we compromised and got a starter home someplace else. But I would've totally lived in that house and just fixed it up. And I think some people just need to be willing to make those compromises on what their expectations of their first house is gonna be like.

Absolutely.

And I was listening to some, and this was, I was telling you I had to clip this 'cause Dave Ramsey's been copying us. He started a whole real estate show just to sort of talk about like home improvement and how you do your finances. And he had a guest on and he was saying like the market right now is so ridiculous. And he was talking about when he was a first-time home buyer, he goes, every new homeowner right now has the expectation that it's gonna come with a refrigerator, a dishwasher, a microwave, a washer, a dryer.

Mm-hmm.

He goes, I bought my first house. You know what I went and did? I had to go buy every single one of those appliances because that house was empty.

Yeah.

Because the person I bought it from took everything.

Yeah.

He took the stove. I didn't have a stove.

Wow.

I had to go buy a stove. And like, but like, we're also spoiled with the, you know, these developers that they add them, they add them in there. And so everyone's expectation is like, oh, it should come with that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, we don't, we have a skewed view of what homeownership really is. Yes. And, and I think that, I think that it's a problem whenever you said, oh, I can't get what my parents had. Well, most of your parents didn't start there. Most of them didn't. And you build up to that. And I mean, I remember growing up, we lived in a 2/1 with 5 people. And that was until we moved and we were able to get something a little bit bigger, but like—

Probably not much bigger.

It was not much bigger. We had a, it was a, yeah. It was a 3-bedroom at that point. My brother and I still shared a room our entire lives. So it's one of those things that it's interesting, like the house that we live in right now, it's a 4/2. And most people would say, oh man, because most the bedrooms are like 10 by 10. The 3 extra bedrooms are 10 by 10. So they're small.

Yeah.

They're like, man, those, those bedrooms are really small. And I'm like, I don't care. We don't live there. We live in our living room. Yeah. We sleep there. We live in our living room and our kitchen and the other spaces around our house. And, but that's the thing is like, oh, we need the big this, the big that. And it's like, no, you don't.

Go outside.

Go. Yeah. No, for real. And, and so there's a lot of things surrounding homeownership that we talk about all the time on the show. Um, and, and we think we love the idea of duplexes or triplexes or quadplexes because there's, there's an opportunity for you to live and not have to pay for it.

Yep.

Uh, if you, if you rent out the right way, you know, so there's opportunity there, but you gotta be able to buy it to begin with. But I, I will say that like, there's not tons of those out there.

Yeah.

They're just not.

But you can also be creative. I, one, one of my employees, uh, he's a, he's a young man. I think he's 24. 25 or 26, bought his first house this year, downtown Conroe. He bought a 3/2. It's actually more of like a 4/2, 'cause it's got like one of those offices that has a closet. Well, before he closed on the house, he had 3 roommates lined up.

Oh, perfect.

So he's paying next to nothing for the house. I mean, like the guys are paying rent and he smartly set it up where he was gonna have people paying the mortgage for him.

There you go.

Yeah, he— I mean, he's obviously paying his fair share of the utilities and all that kind of stuff, but like, he was able to get himself into a higher-class asset by having himself set up intelligently with roommates, right? And that was a sacrifice he was willing to make in order to be able to own the property. And that— I mean, at the end of the day, that's what you and I mostly are talking about.

Yep.

I think you'd probably agree, like, there's ways to get it done.

Sure, it may not be your preference, it may not be the Absolute, you know, was it doesn't have to be like your end goal.

No.

Yeah. You're, you're starting.

That's why they call it a starter home.

The starter home.

Yeah. And, and I will tell you when we, when, when I got married, we bought our first house. My wife and I were like, we don't want a starter home, but we were also not in a place where buying a home was $400,000.

Yeah.

Like our first house was $148,000, I think. And it was a 4/2.5. Like, it was a decent-sized house. It was old. It was like built in the '40s. But again, it's like, okay, we bought an older home in an established neighborhood, and the house cost wasn't as much as it was now. So we didn't have to buy a starter home. Like, that's the other thing. You don't have to buy a new build.

Yeah.

You don't have to buy a new build. Uh, you know, there, there's plenty of places that have been around for a while that maybe you fix up a little bit.

I think my house was built in 1974.

There you go.

Yeah.

Another one.

I've been there for 15 years, but I'm also, could I afford a bigger, fancier house? Absolutely. But I also have been able to put my kids through college with saving 529 plans with them not having to take on student loan debt. I've been able to invest in my 401 and IRA between my husband and I. We have a robust retirement portfolio and everything. Like, it's prioritizing and saying like, I don't need something big and flashy just because I can't afford it. And being able to put those things into other things. And now we're really getting into Dave Ramsey territory. But I mean, it's just having that kind of like financial acumen. Yeah.

And that's what you've been talking about this whole time though. Like you've been talking about a financial acumen the whole time of like, you're You're, one of your biggest platforms is, could we please reduce spending so that other things could actually flourish?

Yeah.

And, and I think that as, as humans, it would benefit everyone to figure that out because you do get a raise, you're typically going to go buy more stuff. You do, you know, get a bonus, you're just going to buy it, buy more stuff, right? I think that we need to get into a place where it's like, no, let's, let's make smart financial decisions, not just for today.

Yeah.

But for tomorrow and for the, the next tomorrow after that, you know, whatever that looks like.

Which, that's the crazy thing about his whole platform is it's, it's popular because it works for everyone.

Uh-huh.

I'm not saying it's the best way to grow wealth. I'm not saying it's like the best way to use your money. I, because I don't agree with him about that, but I also know that like what I would do, I would not recommend that a lot of other people do because they don't have the financial acumen to make it happen. Whereas you follow Dave Ramsey's advice, it's gonna be successful every single time, which is why I think our government should probably be following something very similar that actually makes sense.

Absolutely.

That everybody can do, that makes sense to everybody.

That's that ground-up approach, right? It's like we start with a $0 budget.

Yep.

And we figure out what we need from there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, we should, we should look, maybe you could like pass the envelope bill.

Um, maybe, maybe, maybe. But I mean, we do that all the time. It's like, well, last year we had this budget and so we need more. Why? You misused last year's budget. Like, why would I give you the same amount? But we do. We just expect it.

Yeah. One of the things I thought was interesting is Abbott recently said, okay, I'm putting out a directive for everybody to decrease their budgets by 3%.

Okay.

That's just decreasing the budgets, not decreasing the spending.

Spending, yeah. No, right. Yeah. But it looks good.

Yeah.

Looks good.

It got a headline.

Mm-hmm.

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So close.

So close. You're so close to having a good idea.

Yeah. Because it, because if you change the word budget to spending, everything changes.

That's a horse of a different color.

It is. Everything changes because guess what? I mean, this is one of those, this is one of those easy, easy solutions is like, you really want the solution, go to the problem. And the problem is spending. You want to decrease the budget, decrease spending. Yeah, it's, it just, but it, but people don't think that way.

What I think the part, the problem is, is we, we now actually have a proof of concept with this, right? Because, and I'm not saying it's the same thing, but like when, when Trump went through and started gutting everything through USAID, like it was shrieks of horror.

Yeah, it was.

You know, they're taking their money and like, don't you realize all these things are gonna go away? And we're like, I mean, like some of them, I don't even care.

Yeah.

Like if it's being spent—

Frivolously.

Yeah, like just take it away.

Yeah.

And I think that's most politicians' fear is the shrieks of horror that are going to come when you say like, you're going to take my money away.

Yeah.

You know, and which should tell us everything that we need to know.

Yeah.

It's attached to the money. Follow the money, we'll figure out exactly what's happening. When you take it away, then we'll find out who the— who the true ones are.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Well, what— we've been going for a while now. What have we not hit on that you're like, I really wish we would have talked about that?

I think we've actually hit on my top topics. We hit the mass surveillance, we hit the property taxes, we hit the government spending. I'm open to talk about anything else, but those would be the things that— those are my big 3.

I, my favorite one of yours is, is property tax.

Yeah.

To be honest. I, I think that's, that's one of the prevailing things that we have in our system right now that prevents people from actually producing generational wealth.

Mm-hmm.

Is the inability of people to hand off property from one generation to the next. Because every single time there's like a death tax or there's a property tax that you're inheriting. And you, you see, you see children all the time sell property because they can't pay the taxes. on it. And their only means to get out from underneath it after their parents pass away is to sell the property.

Yeah.

You know, and you see all the time some young people like, well, I'm, you know, there's 2 generations before me all owed a home. Why didn't anybody leave me one? And it's like, well, they couldn't.

They couldn't. Well, I mean, it's like my, I mean, this is a rudimentary example, but my grandparents invested in, and I say it that way because that's the way it was pitched to them. they invested in timeshare and they had enough, they had enough points purchased, paid off, that they had 4 weeks a year that they could go vacation, uh, with, with the accommodations being paid for, right?

Mhm.

Great. It's beautiful. Uh, the, just to own those there was about $2,500 a year of money they had to pay just to own those points. And so when, so they'd spent all this money, like probably $60,000, $70,000 in this. They were too old to use them anymore. And my grandma said, I can't sell these, uh, these points. I will give them to you, but you're gonna have to pay the $2,500 a year to be able to own them. And we couldn't do it. Yeah. And so we had to— they literally just went away. Went away. It just fluttered away.

Yeah.

And I wish that they would've been able to pass that investment that they thought they were buying down because they could have deeded that to us.

Yeah.

But it's the same type of thing. We cannot keep that stuff because we can't afford the taxes on it. And that's really what it winds up being is taxes. And they, they, they, you know, they couch it in all these other ways. And I'm like, Yeah, but it's just you're, you're preventing opportunity is what you're doing. And, and we say we live in a land of opportunity, uh, depending on if you just really like buying clothes and cars. If you like buying clothes and cars and eating good food, you're probably in a land of opportunity. But when it comes to owning property, it's tough. You should. We still believe in it, but the long-term viability of it's the problem.

Yeah.

Yeah. We believe in it-ish.

Yeah. We, we wish that it was remedied in the right ways.

Well, I, I, I think property taxes have just become so normalized that no one even realizes that it's a, I mean, I mean, like the way you would put it would be theft.

Yeah.

It's property theft.

Right.

Or property renting.

Yeah.

I mean, well, and, and the way, you know, you talked about the, the basically lawyers that go after getting your property taxes lowered. year to year. Um, I will tell you the biggest concern about that is now on paper my property is worth less.

Yep.

That's the only way to do it is to go, no, you say my property is worth this much and I'm fighting you on how much my property is worth so I don't have to pay you as much.

Yeah.

That's, that is a weird game to play. And it feels really ugly whenever I get that, like, oh, we've reduced your, your property tax by this much. Congratulations. And I'm like, great. Oh, my house was worth this and now it's worth that.

Yeah.

That's, that's just sad. But I'm happy about it because I don't have to pay more property tax. Like, it's just a weird game.

But it reduces your ability to borrow.

It does. No, it does. Yeah, I, it's just a, I don't know, it's a weird game. I don't like it.

Yeah. Well, like, like the property taxes. I remember one time I got called, our, our company got called out to an office building cuz they had a massive wasp infestation. Um, and it was up on like the 6th floor of this office building. And I get up there and, and yeah, it was, it was really bad, but it was an entire call bank center and their one job was to reach out to people with timeshares and their business was fighting to get people out of them because people had gotten upside down. I mean, if you don't know, timeshares are just a—

Oh, they're, they're awful.

They're a scam.

There's only one that's decent.

Uh, I don't even know if I'd buy it just because I've heard so many horror stories. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I, that— I hate stuff like that. I hate stuff like that.

I do too.

It just irritates the Jesus out of me.