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- [00:01]
A
Hello and welcome to the Mountain State Liberty Cast. I am your host Ty Ward and as always I am joined by my co host Taylor Magically Delicious Richmond. Hello Taylor.
- [00:13]
B
Good morning sir.
- [00:15]
A
Yeah, so Taylor, let's get this out of the way at the. At the top. This podcast is available on all Apple, Spotify, YouTube audio, any, any podcast catcher that you have. You can listen to this podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the Libertarian Party of West Virginia. This podcast is about liberty in West Virginia and across the country. So if you get value out of this podcast, you can donate to the podcast by going to lpwv.org and hit that donate button to Taylor, I hear that you might be running for office. Is that true?
- [00:58]
B
Oh, I'm running. That's true. For office or what? I don't know yet, but the rumor is it's for Senate 13, which is Morgan Town in Fairmont. Probably one of the most contested races in the state this general session. So appreciate anyone has the time to check out my website@richmondfirst senate.com that's richmond, the number four senate.com. reach out if you'd like to volunteer or help the campaign anyway. And of course there's a wonderful, magically delicious donation button on that site as well that you could help put some liberty in Morgantown and Fairmont this November by supporting my campaign. I greatly appreciate it.
- [01:45]
A
Just in time for Pride Month. And Taylor, since you asked, I am running for office as well. I'm running in the 15th House District for the West Virginia House of Delegates that represents Roan and Work County. I do not have a website but you can find me on Facebook@tywardford WB House. And there's a donate button there as well. Campaign full swing. Hitting it in the summer. So yeah, if you want to support either of us with words of encouragement or have any ideas, let us know. Today, Taylor, today we want to talk a little bit about West Virginia's addiction to federal money and central planning. So Taylor, oh, this week we got a. Well last week we got an announcement from the Morrissey slash Trump administrations that West Virginia's beginning 18 and some change. Million dollars. Billion. Million. Is that all? I can't remember if it's millionaire, but that's, that's how our government works. I think it's a million million dollars to open up a new coal fired power plant. Oh yes, and, and that is a part of Trump administration spending 400 million on getting the country back on coal or something. I don't really know.
- [03:17]
B
700 million.
- [03:18]
A
700700 million billion dollars. And so everybody's praising this. The chair of the West Virginia gop, Josh Holstein, was posting how great this is on social media. And Taylor, I mean, I don't. It kind of feels like I'm being punked a little bit sometimes. I mean, this is supposed to be the party of fiscal conservatism. And it seems every other month or, you know, every other week, we're seeing a announcement from the Morrissey administration that we're getting more federal money for being super conservative. I don't know. Well, want to talk a little bit about what, what we think that means and why we think it's negative, but have you noticed that, I mean, these, most of the, the things that we've talked about as far as the Morris administration with coal and stuff, you know, we've seen them bragging about, you know, private investment into power plants and, and refurbishing them and stuff like that, which, which we support. I mean, if it's a company deciding to put their own money back into their infrastructure, we think that's great. And if the Morrissey administration can help facilitate those deals and make that happen, we're all for it. But.
- [04:34]
B
Well, let's, let's be, let's be clear. When we say facilitate, we, we are very specific in, you know, brokering, in a sense of bringing people together and that kind of thing. Oftentimes, unfortunately, though, that facilitation often comes with, you know, sweetheart deals and, and other things that we don't support. So there's, there's definitely a, a thin line of where we come down in supporting this and, and where we don't.
- [05:02]
A
Right. And I think, I think most of what they did was, you know, kind of ensuring them that they weren't going to, you know, I don't do anything as far as environmental regulation and, and fast track some, you know, permitting stuff like that. I don't know. It's. It's stuff that we don't think really should exist to begin with. But, you know, the Morrissey administration saying the government's going to help you do whatever they need to do to make it happen. So. Yeah, and, and that is. That is a good point. I mean, when I say facilitate, that's what I mean, because it's hard to tell based, based on what I said to start this conversation off. But, Taylor, go ahead and explain in your perspective, the. I don't know, why is it bad that the West Virginia state government seems to be obsessed with taking federal money?
- [05:48]
B
Why is coal bad? No. Well, first Let me just say that I think it is important to recognize what the state GOP and especially Governor Morrissey, but at the time Attorney General Morrissey has done in terms of the coal and just in general natural resource industry, which is reduce a number of regulations at the state level to like you said, fast track permitting and the rest wherever possible. But also led the charge to sue the EPA in a landmark case, West Virginia vs EPA, which according to a lot of legal experts was a death nail in the long standing Chevron doctrine, which gave administrative discretion to or just general destruction to administrative agencies and a whole host of things. And although we really haven't seen the fruits of that ruling just yet, some of these things do take time. It was a big win for liberty in the marketplace that unelected bureaucrats can't dictate rules down based on their own quote unquote expertise and, and decisions on how things should be run. The market should be the deciding.
- [07:18]
A
Well, I think I lost Taylor.
- [07:21]
B
Okay. I don't necessarily that either that representative democracy is still democracy in the, in the bad sense of it. But anywho, there's a lot of steps in the right direction. So kudos to all work pushing the Overton window in that direction. I think what's frustrating for me, Ty, is you and I aren't too terribly different in age. But when I was becoming very politically active and aware, I remember the siren call or the alarm bell or the clarion calls, excuse me, for the socialist regime and agenda that the Obama administration was wavering in with all the federal spending and support that was going to companies like Solyndra and wind farms and solar farms and all the rest. And it was going to be this bullet, this final bullet into the coal industry, the war on coal. I remember the billboard signs everywhere, all the things that they were doing. But one of the biggest things that they were complaining about was the millions and billions of dollars being invested in the precursor to the Green New Deal and how that was just rampant socialism. The government shouldn't be involved in the marketplace like that. If green energy is going to be a replacement for how we power our country, then it should happen naturally. The market should decide and so on and very free market capitalist of the GOP and Republicans at the time to call out what it was. But it's just if it wasn't so infuriating it would be funny the hypocrisy that so long as the government, the federal government and or the state is investing in air quotes, investing, if they are taking your tax Dollars and throwing it at things that you like, industries that you like, industries that support your community, your brother's, you know, father, cousin, uncle, sister, mother, whatever, because they work in that industry, then if the federal government dumps millions and billions of dollars into it, oh, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. And the word socialism couldn't be further from your mind. And the whole problem with central planning aside, and you can talk about that if you like. For me, it's the hypocrisy that the Republicans will spend eight years crying the Obama administration for doing this in renewable energy. But yet as soon as Trump comes in and does it for coal and, or natural gas, then it's the appropriate approach for sustaining this valuable industry.
- [10:05]
A
Yeah, and that's the thing. The reason why central planning is always what I talk about the most is because none of it would be possible without the, the government taking that role in doing all of the, the planning for just about everything. Now the, you know, and, and it's an, it's an entrenched historical thing that the, you know, the federal government decided to let the states create these commissions to control what happens with energy production and, and facilitate the, the administration of that industry. And, you know, these boards decide on a whim based on their politics, how it's going to go and what needs to be prioritized. And, and like you said, under the, you know, the previous, you know, administrations, we've had, you know, more move towards, you know, solar and wind and stuff like that. And then, you know, kind of as, as this, you know, regime would characterize that they've kind of let the, the coal part of it go stagnant. And we saw a move towards natural gas production. And now the coal is the big thing. And you can say some of it is based on different, you know, variables, like them seeing coal as being better for West Virginia's economy and that, you know, coal is good for West Virginia. It's. If they didn't take that role and we didn't allow them to have that role, then it wouldn't be an issue. And, you know, everybody's obsessed with talking about, you know, electricity rates. And it is a problem. I mean, a lot of families are seeing their bills go up significantly and, and as I, I don't. It's stuck in my craw because it was such a strange answer. But there was a delegate on a radio program and they asked, well, you know, why are electricity rates going up? And they said, well, has a lot to do with West Virginia's population Drop. And the host was, well, how's that? What do you mean? And they were like, well, you know, it's just a, it affects it and it really hasn't. They don't have any. The delegate had no idea. They just heard somebody say that and it came out of their mouth and then they realized they didn't understand why. And, you know, and I understand that it is part of the problem because the less people you have, the more, the less people you have to spread the cost of, you know, infrastructure improvement and stuff like that. So it's got to be divided among fewer people, so they're going to have to pay more. So that just makes sense. That's just math. But, you know, one of the issues is the, you know, when they approve the rates or they approve the projects like solar farms and windmills, those things cost money. And the electricity companies aren't just going to eat that cost, so they allow them to spread that cost over the ratepayers. So the, you know, 10 years ago, you have all these infrastructure, you know, upgrades or changes, and that does trickle down to the, to the ratepayer. And those are decisions made directly by these boards of unelected bureaucrats that make these decisions. And it's central planning and, you know, we can maybe talk a little bit later. But all of these things where you take this money from the federal government, it's the state government that has the purview to, to take that money. And they're the ones that are facilitating all of this money being taken and where it goes and what money they take and don't take. But to be fair, Taylor, we've seen in the past, you know, five or six years, the West Virginia gop, their equal opportunity, their principles evidently mean nothing. I mean, we have two Nucor and Forum Energy. They were both, you know, projects that were in incentivized to locate in West Virginia based on Biden's, you know, Green New Deal or the Infrastructure Improvement act or whatever they called it. And that was all, you know, basically green money that they were trying to incentivize states to get more green projects in their states. And the GOP took that money and again, central planning and, and so that here we are. But the, the big thing for me, that it's hard to get people whose livelihood depend on coal and whose families have depended on coal for a long time, even if they don't currently, to think it's a bad thing to improve the prospects for coal in this state. But for me, the big thing is our GDP to debt ratio is close to over 100%. Meaning we take. Our debt is way more than the money we take in annually. And most of our tax dollars go to paying the interest on the debt we have. So what does that mean? It means most of this money, this federal spending that gets allocated is all, you know, fake money. It's all debt money. And when you accept this money, you're saying, keep doing it. And what does debt spending do? Increases inflation, which makes everything cost more. So you get your, your $10 gallon of milk and you get that. That's a little inside joke. Milk clearly doesn't cost $10 a gallon. But, you know, the, the rising costs of everything, groceries, everything you buy, jeans, T shirts, everything is going up. And it's all because of inflation. And despite what, you know, the government tries to tell you, inflation is caused by printing money and increasing the amount of dollars in the system. And that's all we're doing here. We're making it harder for West Virginians who are already struggling to purchase things by taking all this federal money and spending it. So that's the, that's the big thing for me. I mean, we don't like central planning and, and, but there seems to be no end in sight for how that, that operates. And so, so that's the thing. The more money they take, the harder it is to fix the problem because they just keep on perpetually making it worse.
- [16:16]
B
Well, let me just add on to it, because I think one of the things that's missing the central planning debate, especially around things like coal and larger industries and more entrenched industries like this, is the lack of the marketplace to be able to compete and improve. So what I mean by that is in thinking about local schools, and they went out and they spent your tax dollars and thousands of your tax dollars to buy your kids iPads. Well, within a year, that iPad is likely out of date. And then some newer thing is coming around, Chromebooks or whatever it is, Right, because technology moves very quickly because it's an industry not generally regulated and impacted by the government like energy is. But things advance and improve pretty rapidly. And you can see more clearly and more immediately how government spending becomes outdated. Right? With something like energy, we don't see that one because coal and coal power plants generally are already established and things like that are already in place. So you're propping them up instead of large investment in the sense of standing it up from scratch. But what happens is when you do that, you lack of a better phrase, inflate the market so that your rates come down and there's no desire for these energy companies or entrepreneurs of any type to come in and say, oh, maybe we need to look at natural gas more or less, or green energy or nuclear because your rates are low. When costs of things are inflated down, deflated down because of government subsidies in the central planning, then there's no incentive that's generally in the marketplace for the research and development into alter alternative options for you. Whether that's exploring, you know, more natural gas, whether it's nuclear, whatever it is, it's just not there. And that one of the things that does is it siamese down the road innovation that could make our lives better and things cheaper in the long run. Because what happens is eventually that $700 million or whatever it ends up being for West Virginia will dry up and then prices will go back to the general market share that's regulated by the cost of doing business, the inflation that you mentioned and so on. And then we're going to be in a very similar pickle. We're like, oh man, energy rates are high again. I guess we're going to need another $700 million from the federal government, but we probably will have a different administration by that point who might not be willing to cut that same check. If we would have let the short term pain of high costs of energy drive innovation to maybe on their own invest in new coal burning technology, new coal mines, new power plant, natural gas, further research and open up the marketplace for nuclear, then we could have more longer lasting decreases in the rate of things because the marketplace would want generally drives towards that outcome. But by just dumping money in a socialistic central planning manner into the marketplace, it's going to take longer for us to realize that negative impact of those actions because an industry like energy and coal are more entrenched and harder to see the technological changes as you would in things like computers and electronics. So that's the other thing. It's a less realized negative of this type of government overreach and government spending and central planning, but it exists and it's only a strain or a handcuff on our capability as a society to move forward in whatever industry you're inflating or deflating with central money.
- [20:23]
A
Yeah, and that's, and that as you said, like we're not against coal. I mean obviously coal, as they say, built this state and you know, we've seen plenty of negative ramifications. You know, the big thing over the past year has been the, the water in southern West Virginia. And, and again, a different kind of central planning of, of them basically letting coal companies run roughshod because they did have such a positive economic impact that they let them do a lot of things that were irresponsible and they didn't see their day in court, and a lot of people were harmed by that. And so you have an equilibrium that hasn't been reached that, you know, coal is still one of the best forms of energy production. And, and that's fine. And if that's what the market decides, that's great. And we do agree that there are far too many regulations on how that's done. And if we had a robust judicial system, we would be able to figure those things out more naturally in a market environment where if they harm people, then they have to pay the ramifications for doing that and they're incentivized to do the right thing. And as we say, everybody acts like because we have regulations, suddenly everything's safe. I mean, there's been tons of regulations on the coal industry for a time, and people still die, you know, every year in coal mines. And that's a terrible thing, but it happens whether you have regulations or not. And so instead of, you know, figuring out all the ways that we're maybe keeping that industry from growing or maybe producing more jobs that way, or incentivizing through market principles, we just take the easy route and take a bunch of money from the federal government and maybe, you know, coal has reached an equilibrium. And what does that do? What are the ramifications of forcing? The point, that's all we're saying is we think coal, you know, obviously is always going to be a part of West Virginia's economy. But we've seen this in the past, and they just don't learn the lesson that when you try to force this stuff, you end up, in the long term, hurting your state. Because, you know, we have these booms. I mean, what was Welch and McDowell County? It was the, the second biggest city in the whole country, Right? That's what they say. And, and now it's, you know, it's a. It's nothing. It's a slum. And, and that's because they didn't diversify the economy, and they created a. A situation where people created these generations of, of, you know, farms and houses and property that people own that they can no longer maintain because there's no jobs down there. And that's, that's what you get when you have this kind of. This kind of central planning. And, and that's my big problem. And they, they've been. They create all these fun fancy terms like economic development, and basically we've said it a million times on here, but they're pro business. And when they say they're pro business, they're not pro business, but they're not pro capitalism, they're not pro property rights, they're not pro market principles, they're pro centralized planning, and they're pro whatever the business wants. And the big S word that, you know, we don't say a lot on here because it's kind of hyperbolic, but when you have the government, you know, basically paying for industries to operate and then they, they create contracts where they own the property if they leave. What's that called, Taylor? Socialism.
- [23:52]
B
Socialism.
- [23:52]
A
And, and it's socialism by another name because everybody associates socialism with, you know, maybe as they call it, entitlement programs, but honestly, at least that is something that's intended to, you know, give direct assistance to people from taxation. And while we don't agree with that either, either, that's more. I don't know. I don't, I don't know if it's better or not, but more gooder. It's more gooder. This is just the government directly own owning the means of production. Like if, if the entire, if the entire means of production is, is dependent on federal money from other states, that's. That's socialism. It just is. That's by definition socialism. I mean, when you look at what the Soviet Union did, I mean, how is that much different than what we're doing right now? I mean, they made investments with, you know, state money that ended up not being the best moves because no matter how smart people are, they're not capable of, of, you know, seeing all the different variables into the future. And that's exactly what we've done in this state for a long time. They seem to be doubling, tripling down on that. Those bad concepts. So, and, and they, the thing that drives me crazy, Taylor, is how proud they are of it. Oh, y. I know Patrick Morrissey's not a dumb guy. And you know, they say all the right things, as we always say on here. You know, they, as you've coined, they run as Ron Paul and then. And govern as pro life Democrats. Like they know the things to say, so they know these principles exist and then they just completely ignore them. So is it just because it's easy or do they really just not believe in markets and capitalism?
- [25:32]
B
Well, I, I think they, they prey upon. I don't want to say Ignorance, but that, you know, sounds very derogatory. But the Joe Q. Public, John Six Pack, not, you know, recognizing the difference between the socialism of Solyndra and the socialism of, you know, Nucor and, you know, this coal program and everything else, they just see, oh, coal was West Virginia is getting support. We've been attacked for so many years and now the federal government is finally coming to help us out. That's how they campaign it. That's how folks see it. And yeah, sure, if you don't take a step back and compare and contrast the two situations on an economic principal basis, it's very easy not to see that. And that's what these folks, Morrissey, Brian Helton and the like have an easy time doing because no one pushes back on them. On this point of it's just as socialistic for Obama to give green energy a billion dollars as it is for Donald Trump to give coal $700 million. The difference might be the dollar amount, but the principle of the fact is the same. It's still the government meddling in the marketplace, sustaining, supplementing, whatever you want to call it, industries that for whatever reason, they chose to be the winner in this current phase of the game. But it's not allowing the marketplace to level itself out. Now, the obviously counter to that is something I just alluded to is, oh, well, you know, the war on coal has been this and we got to make things fair. But, you know, it's the old saying that your mom or your grandma would always say two wrongs don't make a right. If the federal government did, you know, certain things to promote one side of the industry, the energy industry, or they put regulations on coal to hamper it. The, the answer is not to regulate green energy or to dump money at coal. The answer, the free market, capitalistic answer, is to remove the regulations on coal and stop giving money to the green energy and allowing them to compete in an open marketplace. And in some places like the west, where they maybe don't have as much coal, there's some places that do, obviously, but they've got these desert areas where they probably got all kinds of sunlight. Maybe solar power can really take off out there, if not bridled by regulations and not my backyard legislation. And here we don't have as much sun. We've got the mountains blocking a lot of it during certain parts of the day. We've got a boatload of coal still. Get the government out of the way and let us mine and allow that to happen and allow the various regions and states to compete and do what is best based on, you know, what God has provided for them in that area. And don't keep doubling down on, oh well, to make things fairer, we need to regulate the other, the enemy's industry and we need to dump tax dollars into hours. That's the opposite of the right answer in a free market capitalistic system.
- [28:57]
A
Yeah, and the, the thing is two points. We were just talking about solar panels out west. I mean, a lot of these places all across the country, you know, they, they see solar panels and they go, okay, yeah, there's all this free space, but then it costs a lot of money to put them in. And then they, they calculate because everybody who knows anything about weather, they say, well, these solar panels are very vulnerable to weather and you know, things like that and objects hitting them and then it being really expensive to replace them. And you saw this big, you know, influx of solar farms because of the money the federal government was giving out. And you know, you keep, you keep hearing stories about out west and you know, in the, you know, tornado belt there that they put up these big solar farms and then a big storm comes through and destroys the whole thing and then it's a 50 million dollar, you know, trash heap sitting there. But these companies say, all right, well, I mean, we did the calculation before that and we decided it wasn't, you know, a sound investment. But then the federal government said, we're going to give you all this money. So we said, okay, well that removes that variable. And then they're like, okay, well, no harm, no foul. We didn't spend the money on it. Well, meanwhile, back at the ranch again, they've inflated our currency by spending this money and now we have, you know, multi, hundreds of millions of dollars of solar panels that don't work because they're all damaged to the point where they no longer function. And, and that's the problem is, and I'll say this, Taylor, the other point, I don't entirely put the, the issue on government and people like Patrick Morrissey because our voter base has given them the incentive politically that if they don't get something done in the short time they have, you know, four years is the governor's term, four years is the president's term. If they don't get something done immediately, then everybody hates them and they don't, they won't vote for them again. So you have this incentive for them to do things as quickly as possible. And markets, especially like energy, they don't move quickly. If you want a natural free market Movement, they don't move quickly. And four years is not a long time for markets to move. So you have them incentivized to make these moves as quickly as possible. But the problem is, you know what they say with the Iran war, short term pain for long term gain. Well, these decisions we're talking about, it's short term gain for long term pain. And we've seen it all across the state. Again, the water you have all these issues with, you know, you and the solar panels I was just talking about, you get this money and you pay for this infrastructure and then the money leaves because a new administration comes in or they've invested that one time money and then they don't have the money to maintain whatever it is. And that's the cycle we go through. The short term gain for the long term pain. And, and we see this repeatedly over and over and West Virginia is terrible with it. And, and to your point about, with the point we were making about people not understanding things because I really don't think the general public understands how this stuff works. I saw somebody post about, you know, Riley Moore had submitted for a big chunk of money for southern West Virginia's water and it got rejected by the federal government and everybody was saying, oh, they hate West Virginia, they don't care, blah, blah. And you know, my point, I, I caught somebody posted, well, if everybody thinks it's just about the economy, because that was the, I think it was, I'm remembering on at the moment, but it was Metro News had written the article that basically making the point that I've been making that southern West Virginia's water issues have a lot to do with the fact that their economy is stagnant and there's not money to pay for this infrastructure. You know, novel concept. And somebody posted that, you know, the water source had been tainted by the coal industry. And that's not about the economy. You know, when the coal company is negligent and taints their water source, what do you want them to do? It doesn't matter how much, you know, economy they have if that happens. And I just asked, well, how does a big chunk of federal money fix negligence from these coal companies and the state allowing them to do it? How does money fix that a corrupt system isn't fixed by $18 million of federal money. And they just came back with, well, they've said that they need to replace a lot of the infrastructure and get a new water source. Like that doesn't address my question. The corruption isn't addressed by replacing the water Source, by your logic, they're just going to go pollute the new water source. So how is that addressed with money? You have a government that is not doing its job. We've decided that it's the government's job to regulate this industry and they're not doing their job. How's that fixed with replacing infrastructure? If you put, you know, pipes to some other part of the river and then the coal company just comes through and pollutes that, how's that fixed by new infrastructure? So that's, that's the thing is people don't really understand the principles of, of what's going on here in the role of government, that the federal government, sure, if you're going to say give them a plan on how this money is going to be invested, but the government's not a company. The government doesn't care about an roi. The money isn't precious to them. They just want votes. And these people don't understand these principles. So their votes are dependent on you just giving them money. And that's, that's the big problem I see with the constituency is we're not doing our job of understanding how any of this works because nobody's ever told them how economics works. On a basic level, it's just money equals good. And that's just not true. I mean, it can be harmful in the long run if you're putting infrastructure and money towards something that's not going to be maintained because you can't. I mean, if you put $3 million to a new water system in, in whatever Boone county, and then they don't have the economy to maintain it, it's in 20 years, you're just going to be back to where you were.
- [34:52]
B
So yeah, and to that what you see now, Ty, is you see the party that is generally, generally, because we just pointed out Republicans, hypocrisy in this, but the party that is generally in favor of throwing money at problems then becomes the popular option in the next election cycle. And you see people, Democrats running for Congress and local offices who point to that this is not getting solved. We need money to fix this. And I'm the candidate who's going to go and get us all this money. But they're probably not actually going to do that. I mean, you saw that Riley Moore, a pretty liked Republican congressman and a GOP super majority, you know, federal government can't get money for this. What makes you think that, you know, lone Democrat from West Virginia is going to do anything different? But anywho, then they become the Popular option. Because they're the ones saying, oh, well, the solution to this obviously is we need to throw large barrels of cash at it. And yeah, that might sound great, but then you elect them. And they also have other terrible policies around everything else that causes more downstream negative impacts and implications for the marketplace and are generalized and so on. Because again, people don't understand the economics of the situation. They just think, oh, more money, good. And we need tax or we need state or federal tax dollars to solve this problem. It's the only way to solve it. And therefore I'm going to vote for the person who is saying what I want to hear, which is bring money here to fix my water.
- [36:29]
A
Yeah. And the Republicans don't do themselves any favors because when they have no problem with taking money for building a new coal fired power plant or other things, and then they say, oh, well, we just couldn't do it for the water, they clear. The GOP clearly doesn't have a problem with taking federal money and doing what I'm saying. So if they want to do it for one thing, but not the other that everybody's screaming about, then yeah, you put fuel on the fire that you clearly don't care about people's clean drinking water. You don't have a problem with taking federal money and spending our money on things. So if you're gonna central plan, what's, why aren't you central planning? This, this water issue, it's, it's always a, you know, about. Even in the, during our last legislative session, the water thing was kind of to the side. You know, they're just, you, oh, well, I think we're gonna try to give them, you know, 5 million bucks. You know, we'll try. Okay, well, I mean, you're not helping anything by, by doing that. And you know, and it's, it's wild because, you know, we saw, you know, Morrissey do a bunch of cuts in the, in the budget and what's the first thing he cut? The waste. They found it's all entitlement stuff, the tanf, whatever that is, you know, and they've cut food stamp spending and the federal government has cut food stamp spending. And, you know, they're cutting these things and it's like, that's the first thing you go to. And you wonder why they think you don't like poor people. Like, of all the things you can cut spending on. Because they believe, and that's a wild thing, Taylor, again, back to the point. They do not believe in free market economics. They believe in government Run economies that their logic is. And they fully believe this. And you, you know, they do that. They believe, oh, no, we need to cut that stuff so we have more money to. To fix the economy. We have to provide. Provide jobs. We have to provide economic growth and revenue for the state. That's what we have to do first. That's the priority, because that's how economics works. They genuinely believe that the state government's job is to create jobs. Literally create jobs by. They've just completely. And I. Somebody pointed, I think it was John Buckley, friend of the party. He pointed out, you know, this is a fairly new concept, this whole economic development thing is. And you can remember it, Taylor. It was never like, it was always a tax cut or, you know, them leasing them state property or something like a little bit more disconnected. No, they're just directly cutting checks now. Like $300 million to Nucor. Like $300 million. Well, most of that's federal money. Okay, cool. That doesn't mean anything. Why aren't you cutting federal money to water projects? And, you know, that's the other thing, Taylor. And everybody. These data centers do. Does anybody know what Nucor does? They recycle metal. Do you think that's not an economic. That's not an environmental impact? That's off topic. But it just drives me crazy how illogical. Everybody, from every level, from bottom to top, everybody's just. There's no rational thinking. There's no, like, you know, principle of, like, well, this equals this and these equals that. And then you get this. It's just whatever the whim of the, the, the entity or person is, it's. That's what they base their entire logic on, whether something should be supported or not. Cole. Good. Give them $18 million. And it's like, where's the principle here? I think it's just fly. Everybody's flying by the seat of their pants, it seems like.
- [40:03]
B
Yeah, no, that's. I mean, that's definitely what's happening. And, you know, you hear all the boomers like, oh, we need to go back and back and teach civics. It's like, well, yeah, that'd be nice. And teaching some economics to some basic understanding of macro economic principles would be fantastic for people to understand a lot of what's happening here. But alas, that's.
- [40:26]
A
The government officials need to take those classes.
- [40:29]
B
Well, I know he needs to take those classes, go back in time and teach them as well. But. But again, some of the people aren't dumb. They. They're. They're playing the, the game of, of staying and getting elected. They know what needs to where the pork, you know, need to come in and that you were talking about that earlier, I just remembered the, you know, old Roberts, he bird and how everyone loved him because he was, you know, bringing in the pork. And that's all this effectively is. It's just a different guise and it's, you know, it plucks out our heartstring because it's coal. And that's the, that's the backbone of our economy effectively here in the state. So this is just bringing home pork in a different, in a different sense. But again, when you don't understand or don't realize the downstream long term effects of this, then it's easy to clap and cheer. And I, I just, you remember the Family Guy episode is one of the early seasons when Lois runs for like mayor or city council, whatever, right. And she was, she's trying to talk about all the principles of the things and why things are the way that they are. And then like no one's like, everyone's in the audience like, like, oh, what is she talking about? Like, boo. You know, and then all of a sudden she goes, 9, 11 and terrorists bad. And everyone says up and starts clapping. And that's kind of what's, what happens, right. In a large macro sense is people hear, oh, millions of dollars going for coal because the coal industry is dwindling and we're losing jobs and everyone just stands up and claps and they don't care to know about, well, what does that mean for them down the road? What is the inflationary impact of that $700 million on their $10 milk or, you know, whatever it is. They just see, okay, the things that I care about are getting supported. So I'm going to be in favor of this. And that's just the short term effect most people have because they're not nerds like us. They don't, you know, read this stuff all the time. They don't pay attention to it daily. And it sounds like I'm being very derogatory, negative. It's not people actually have lives, unlike me and you, that they do things and care about other things. But when you don't pay attention to the stuff and you don't understand and you allow those type of slogans and strategies to be effective, there are negative repercussions. The cure is worse than the cancer. And a lot of times how this happens plays out.
- [43:00]
A
Yep. I would just, you know, you and I, if we get elected, we'll try to be a voice of reason in there, but it's. It's hard because you. So many people seem to support it. It's. It's kind of discouraging. But I don't know. I think maybe. I don't. I don't know. I've got nothing. I was going to try to put a positive spin on it, but I've got nothing. Yeah. So.
- [43:24]
B
Well, but to, to your point about the race, though, I mean, that's. How easy is it for, for you and I to go out, stand up and say, especially in West Virginia, hey, what Trump just did is terrible and stupid and socialistic. That not necessarily in itself is a death knell. But it's easy for a general, a standard normie Republican, to get up and just be like, well, look, he hates coal. And then that's the mailer that hits everyone in Roane County's mailbox the next day is Ty Ward hates Cole. He wants. He doesn't support the local miners. And then you're. You're done. Right. And even if you win and go down to Charleston and get time on the floor, maybe a little bit more air in the room, doesn't matter, that's immediately sucked out the next election cycle because you voted against something, any kind of downstream legislation from this, and that's, that's the mailer. You've got to be 100% on board or you'll be the next, you know, target for a primary or for us, a general. And the campaign ads or the attack ads write themselves.
- [44:33]
A
Yeah, well, if we get mailers and attack ads written about us, you know, we're doing something, so that's a positive. Yeah. Okay, well, we're, that's, we're about 45 minutes, so we'll wrap it up on this one. But, yeah, just educate yourself, guys. And these are. Listen to this. And here's a few arguments you can make. I mean, it's. Inflation's the big one that I've seen people really can understand about, you know, the federal spending and the idea of central planning is that you've seen all these things, all these promises come and they. They don't come to fruition, and then the money's gone. So, yeah, just try to be kind to people and meet them where they are. And when you have these discussions, try to use, you know, their own benefit to make the argument. And, yeah, that's all you can do. But, Taylor, there's nothing going on in the party. But. What. You got anything to close up on?
- [45:30]
B
No, I would just say to keep an eye out for our campaigns we've got which are over In Senate District 4, our good friend Travis Boss to be launching his campaign here soon as well. So just keep an eye out for the party social media as those folks get up and running also and pre support as well. And again riffin4senate.com ties on Facebook please reach out and help. I know I'm going to be I've already been making phone calls and doing that, but I'll be out door knocking here probably starting this weekend. So if you see us out, please give us some words of encouragement or join us at some events. I know I've got a number of ones that I'll be attending here very soon as well. So don't hesitate to reach out if you even if we're not in in your district, we're not going to we wouldn't be representing you. You know like share all that our social medias and invite your friends to support us if they do live in our district or at least just to follow us for the next five months or so so they get an idea of who we are, what we stand for and the contrast we're trying to bring to this election cycle. Yep.
- [46:37]
A
Very well said. All right, until next time, don't hurt people and don't take their stuff.