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- [00:02]
A
Hello and welcome to the Mountain State Liberty cast. I am your host Ty Ward and joining me as always is my co host Taylor Big Dog Richmond. Sorry buddy, I couldn't think of anything clever. Hello Taylor.
- [00:16]
B
I'll stick with Big Dog. How are you sir?
- [00:19]
A
Oh, doing good. The summer's in full swing. It's decided to be monsoon season which I'm happy to see as opposed to the last two years. We didn't hardly get any rain at this point last year. The complete drought conditions from 24. So I'm not going to knock it. I'm always lawns for a living so I'm always going to have a love hate relationship with rain. But we need it. So you know, as the elderly men say. How are you doing?
- [00:49]
B
Yeah, we're actually sitting on our rocking chair. We're sitting in our rocking chairs right now just bemoaning the weather. No, I'm good. It's been been a little while. So. Looking forward to getting in some some West Virginia news.
- [01:04]
A
Yeah, so there is some local news going on. I have to eat a little bit of crow from our last episode where I completely dismissed the worries and the woes of people in your area getting a transmission line running through their forests and hills and, and Cooper's Rock and whatnot. So I recently was informed that I guess there's several paths that it could take but Nova. Well I guess Northern Ohio Valley something they. They're running. I cannot remember what the name of it's called and I need to just up front I need to do a lot more research on this whole thing before I make any real decisions about how I feel about it. But it seems like it's pretty much the same situation as what's going on up there with the. What is it? The MARF Wharf. What is it?
- [01:54]
B
MARL M A R L?
- [01:55]
A
Yeah, sorry, the wharf up there. But it's basically the idea is it would run it from the John Amos power plant down here up through to Pennsylvania and completely bypass anything that has anything to do with you know, improving power to West Virginia. But it's pretty much the same situation of what's going on up there. And my like all my friends and neighbors are all freaking out and it really affect us because the part one of the proposed paths goes right over some of my wife's family's property just over the hill from us over here and we'll likely be able to see some of it from where we live. So yeah, it's a, it's a big thing that's going on. And you know, Taylor, it's kind of weird. The thing I was thinking of because they've got all these proposed routes which means that they've done a lot of like research and surveying. And I suppose a lot of that is done either by you know, like air aerial photography or satellite imagery and stuff. And that makes you kind of. I don't know about you, but it kind of, that kind of bothers me a little bit. I don't know. I guess you really have no right to like not have satellite photos taken. But they're doing pretty thorough examinations of the topography of your property which inevitably will likely lead to eminent domain, which means they've been basically from day one, you know, oh no, this is the property, doesn't matter who owns it, this is what it is. And this is where we're going to put this power line. And it's one of those things that you try not to get. You try not to be one of those people that just has a knee jerk reaction about something. But when you consider what this, these both of these high line, what do they call transmission line, transmit and transmission line paths that they're proposing, either whether it be up in the northern part of the state or right through us from Charleston up to Pennsylvania. It's really hard for me to like play devil's advocate as to why it's good for, for us. Like I could see it being good for wherever the power is going to and you know, the overall national infrastructure. But I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about Taylor, about that whole concept of defending the idea that we need. Because I saw somebody on Facebook say we need to improve our infrastructure because our electrical grid is grossly, you know, under. It's insufficient to the power power needs. And it's also kind of antiquated and needs to be updated. And somebody said, well, I'm not sure how this benefits West Virginia. And I, the person said, well who cares who it benefits and it's going to improve the entire system. Which I'm sure the same thing with like the, the way that made me feel like the hackles up on my back. It probably did to you, Taylor as well. But that whole concept of us being like this national thing and like your, your concerns be damned, this is going to help the greater project. What is that? That sounds a little bit like communism to me, but I don't know. What do you think, Taylor?
- [04:57]
B
Yeah, I mean a little bit. Right. And I always love having that conversation with the more socialistic slash communistic individuals on My, my Facebook or my friends list when they propose, you know, certain improvements or projects or agencies or bureaucracies or whatever it is. Because like, oh yeah, well, it's, it's West Virginia. We can, we can take the water project and the water issues down the southern part of the state, for example. Oh, well, you know, we need to pay all these, you know, millions of dollars so that McDowell county has cleaner water. Well, if you live in Chester or you live in, you know, Berkeley Springs or Jefferson county, that's a long way away from you. And yeah, it's still a part of your state, but that's a long way away from you. And so then, you know, you kind of extrapolate that out. It's like, okay, well we need to do this major thing because someone in or as federal taxes or this federal program because people in California need this thing. It's like, well, California is a long freaking way away from me. And I don't, you know, they mismanaged stuff or things have happened. That's a long ways there. So where does your boundaries lie on how much you're willing to be taxed or how much you're willing to be forced to pay to help somebody else? Why does it stop at a county line, why does it stop at a state line? Why does it stop at a national border? And why does it not extend to the entire globe? Right. So that's why I think, you know, as libertarians, we say, well that's why we shouldn't be forced to pay taxes into these programs and we should, you know, discretionarily spend our money in the projects and nonprofits and charities and programs that we want, see fit, invest, but also likely are going to be closer to home and we can hold more accountable and see the efficiencies of them. So tying that back into this energy thing. Well, part of the issue is, or they say these lines are needed to improve the effectively how clearly or easily power is moved in and around the greater grid in this region. And by allowing new entry and exit points, we're making it easier for various nodes and parts of the grid to be supplied by these energy resources. So while it may not immediately or see a direct impact on Roan county, you know, pressing county or you know, wherever these lines are going to be going through, in an immediate sense, the idea is that because West Virginia is part of this pg, pgm, pjm. Yeah, forget the acronym top of my head right now, but because we're a part of that, we're not a self sustaining entity that we need to, you know, invest in support or otherwise vote for these measures because it's part of this greater grid mentality. And to an extent, I understand that and I think we discussed a little bit last time where unfortunately we've gotten ourselves into this point by, by allowing the government to be the sole proprietor and arbiter of energy resources, water resources, public services, and I'm putting those in air quotes. So therefore we've kind of pigeonholed ourselves into. Well, and TJ has said this on the show and he has a background working in the energy sector. It's like, well, it's, it. The thought of us just going off and doing our own thing right now based on the state infrastructure is like damn near impossible. So it's like we have to do these things because we pigeonhole ourselves into being a part of this grid system, that we need the infrastructure to be improved and there are going to be some cost of that which likely will come about through eminent domain. And obviously I don't, I don't like it, I'm not supportive of it, but I think that's kind of the, for lack of a better phrase, argument for why these are necessary.
- [08:46]
A
Sorry, I found I lost the mute button. Yeah, no, so that's the, that's the problem that we have is, you know, I was talking, I've talked to a few people about this, you know, constituents doing out, talking to them about my candidacy. And, and that's an issue that they're bringing up here now because in the last week or two people are hearing about it and you know, I kind of say, and, and I've not gotten somebody that doesn't disagree with me like on a one, on one level is that, you know, I understand all of it being part of a greater system. And the problem with all that is, is like with all of this broadband stuff, you know, they spend all this money and they take all this time saying that, you know, we want to have Internet up all these hollers. And you know, in reality, most people will say, well, I mean, I'm gonna take it because I want to watch Netflix faster. But like the idea that they're spending this money to like improve the economy up Euler Road, it's a joke. Like there's nobody's gonna open up a business that requires like super high speed Internet up here. All you're going to be paying for is people to be able to watch Netflix better and check their email. So that, that's what they're doing here for that. But at the Same time the people up here, while they say, oh that's cool, like I'm glad that's happening. Nobody lives up these, nobody lives in rural West Virginia because they expect some kind of like super high speed energy that's like gonna power all of their you know, three phase equipment they have and like on their farm or something. Like they, you don't live in rural West Virginia because you expect all this infrastructure to be something that's like perfect and there and the, you know, the, the, the best of the, the new technology and at the same time they're going to put this transmission line through all this property and half the poles up and down these hollers are leaning so far they're about to break off. Or like every time it rains a tree falls on them and, and they don't get, they get patched together and you've got you know, telephone and power lines that haven't been like correctly repaired for decades. And so a lot of the people here are like, what is, what's the point of this? Like you telling them, well we're part of this greater pg. PGM I think is what it is. We're part of this greater system and we have to be able to, we have to be able to respect this and be a part of the solution. And we're, we're a nation and we're a region and. Okay, cool. Well, but the farmer of Bueller Road, like we're getting nothing from this except for again, you know, paying higher utility bills because somebody's got to pay for the maintenance on this stuff. So you've got this giant buzzing highline pole that's going to do God knows what to the, the bees or the cows or you know, any of the wildlife, not to mention it's, it's hideous. And there's going to be a line that you can't build fence on now because you're not allowed to tamper with that right away. So it's like what, what's, what's the real benefit? Like if they don't do it, then what. But the other part, Taylor, that we've talked about, you know, at nauseam on here is okay, well we don't want to be bothered, right? We don't want anybody to be telling us what to do with our property. We don't like imminent domain, but we sure don't have a problem with taking California's tax dollars to put $18 million into a coal fired power plant. We don't have a problem with that. We don't have a problem with them us telling the federal government and taking from other people that way. But if it's power going from Charleston, from one of those coal power, coal fired power plants to Pennsylvania or from Virginia to somewhere else, then we don't want it because that's going to disturb us. So it's like a catch 22 of the priorities. And the moral superiority of well, don't touch our land is a little bit, I don't know, to me it's a little bit hypocritical when these people aren't saying a darn word about $18 million coming from the federal government to pay for a coal fired power plant. If that makes sense.
- [12:48]
B
No, yeah, I was going to say that. The hypocrisy there is what's frustrating to me and maybe some of its cognitive dissonance of not realizing the, for lack of a better phrase, quid pro quo that comes about because of, I don't say these trade offs, but when certain things happen in other states, in California, Texas, a number, those being net importers to the federal budget, you know, that's coming from somewhere. So, you know, I'm not saying it's necessarily a fair trade off, I'm not saying I necessarily support it, but most people don't realize that type of thing is happening behind the scenes. So just to stand on your, on your property and you know, playing your flag without, while also happily taking and cheering on, you know, this pro coal legislation, or not even legislation, just executive order is, is poetically ironic.
- [13:39]
A
Yeah, for sure. And that's, yeah. And I think cognitive dissonance is, is the right word because I don't think a lot of people even consider it. But then, you know, to be fair, a lot of times when I bring up to just average people the idea of inflationary spending and what it means to really take this federal money, I've not met somebody that they, they didn't, you know, understand what I was saying. Like even somebody that you wouldn't assume, like when you say, well, we're spending this money that creates inflation. So when you take all this money, you're increasing the inflation, but what result have we seen from any of it? They go, yeah, that makes sense to me. Now are they going to necessarily say, no, I don't want that money or they're not the next day going to complain about the money getting cut. Sure. But they've made their decision that, that, that they, they think that it's worth that, you know, give and take. Even though I don't Maybe they don't really understand the severity of the problem and what it really means to have your currency be completely debased over a matter of two decades and $39 trillion in debt. Maybe they don't really understand the severity of that. But it's a lot easier to say, yeah, we're getting $18 million for a coal fired plower plant, no skin off my back. But then when they want to put, you know, a giant high line pole through our giant metal structure in the middle of your property. Yeah, well, it becomes real then and it doesn't matter what what we took from what it. That's your property now. That's being destroyed. So yeah, I mean it does make sense that people would have that kind of. Even if it is hypocritical. I mean, sure, it's affecting them directly. So of course they're going to be more mad about that. But that's, that, that's the. One of the issues with the government we have and the size of government we have is people, you know, we're not designed to be able to deal with these kinds of issues and these kinds of consequences is you should only have to worry about what's yours and what belongs in your community. Like you shouldn't have to be worrying about these kind of enormous, you know, multi billion dollar situations that you have no control over. That this line is going through somewhere. Like it's going to go through. Like it'll be. It would shock everybody to death that these two, you know, projects got scrapped. I mean, right? Taylor? I don't. They're going somewhere.
- [15:53]
B
Yeah. And that's going back to your comment about the, the investigation, the research. I think they've obviously done their due diligence to figure out paths of least resistance and where, you know, it's easiest for them to go. But also, okay, well, if Johnny Farmer in Roane county is going to put up a big stink and fight us on this, it might actually be cheaper for us to divert it, you know, 20 miles this direction. I think they've done a number of those kind of calculations and they know where their pain points are is like, no, we've got to go through there. So we are going to buy these people out or, or sue for imminent domain. I wouldn't be surprised, you know, if these projects, before they get to this stage have done most of that work. So they know ahead of time where they can budge and where they can't, where they have to cause a big sink. And yeah, I would be surprised if they don't come to fruition at some point, just a matter of what does that final line look like, how much they've had to pay out to get it to go there and how many lawsuits they've had to settle or how many uses of eminent domain they've had to capitalize on.
- [16:57]
A
Yeah, so that, yeah, I just kind of wanted to bring that up because I had said I didn't have to care because it wasn't, was it bothering me? So now I guess I do have to care. But no, I mean I did care before. I was just being silly. I was being a silly goose. Taylor, I didn't mean it. So care about me now. So yeah, I wanted to another way that the government. I don't know how I segued this, but. So I recently just read an article shared on my campaign Facebook page about the government, a third party entity, plus the West Virginia DoH itself doing an audit, saying that they could save roughly 30 to $50 million every year by changing the way it deals with permitting and accountability for contractors. And there's two things I wanted to address once. What, what they said. So basically I think we talked about a little bit last podcast about the whole data center thing where there's state regulation and then they're basically saying that well, we've got all the bureaucracy so you can't have any of the bureaucracy. Well that's what this, this whole $50 million thing is about is basically like this state. The thing that's costing the money is the permitting process and them taking way too long to do this permitting so that these people are sitting on these materials and stuff and they can't get permits so they're getting charged rent basically to hold these pro these materials to do these projects. And so if they just streamlined a lot of this permitting process and, and basically what they called dirt dirty permitting, which sound me basically like rushing through permits before all the work's actually been done on permitting, they would save 30 to 50 million dollars, which a third party entity did. Came to the same conclusion, but that that's one part of it. And which is bad enough because you're basically saying the only reason that you're losing money and paying more money than you need to is because the government has this permitting process, which I don't know, I, I, I guess some of it probably has some value. I don't, I don't want to say that none of it does. There are mental issue issues that need to be addressed. Obviously I think everybody would come to a, you know, a Median consensus that, like, hey, you need to make sure that this creek isn't going to be completely demolished by putting in this culvert or this bridge isn't going to completely destroy some kind of subspecies of, you know, whatever, something like that. I don't know, I'm not a biologist, but that kind of thing, you know, there is some value to it. But the idea that you have all this, you know, extreme level of permitting and how much you have to pay for it and how long you have to wait and is an issue that people don't deal with when they're building their own private things. Like if you're putting in a driveway or bridge, you don't really have to deal with these issues. So that's one thing that the government has to deal with. So. But $50 million, Taylor, that sounds like a whole lot of money for like delaying permitting.
- [20:03]
B
So how, how are they, or is it explained how they were coming to that number exactly? Lost revenue?
- [20:10]
A
No, it was very vague. It was basically the idea that they're delaying these projects and they've already got the contract signed. And I can speak from experience in working for a contractor for the government is a lot of the time you get a contract and you start buying materials because you have a certain time you're supposed to start this contract. So you buy materials or you spool up some kind of processing or some kind of permitting that you need on your side or equipment is dedicated to a certain project. And so you're sitting there, you, you buy poles. Let's say if it's for high mass lighting, you buy poles and they're sitting on your lot. Well, the project isn't ready to get started. So you're sitting on these poles. Well, the contractor is not just going to eat the cost of these poles, they're going to get paid for them. Plus the space on their lot that's being used to store these poles. So you can see how that can like expand and expand and expand when you have, when you're waiting on a permit for a project that should already be started. So that's, I think that was kind of what they were talking about. They weren't super detailed about the what exactly, because it was a, it was basically generalized overall contracting and not just like specifically bridges or paving or high mass lighting or, you know, these kind of projects. It was all, it's like a generalization of permitting. So I think that's kind of what it was, was just the idea that you're wasting a lot of money sitting and Waiting and things not getting done and delaying projects and stuff like that. And costs rise. If you take six months to do something, costs rise and then your bid is. They start doing change orders. And that's another thing I wanted to get to. But.
- [21:49]
B
Well, it's just, it's just funny to me because, you know, one of the things that I, you know, I'm having a degree in, in some of this and knowing a little bit, it's like, and it's libertarian talking point and pain point for a lot of, a lot of issues is, and probably both, something we're both running on is one of the things that needs to happen is we need contracting reform because a lot of times, a lot, lot of these delays or there's a lot of delays in the starter project at the end of the project, not because of anything besides, oh, well, they just know they don't have to rush because they're paid regardless or things are said. And there's no real, what's the word I'm looking for? There's no pressure to, you know, be you don't have the same profit incentives and, and the rest of the private sector does. So therefore you can know you get your bid and you're good and then, oh, you can generally increase the cost of things as project goes on. And you know, the contracting for these aren't as rigorous or strenuous as they are in the private sector. So it's like, okay, well, yeah, on the front end before this project starts, sure, there's probably. But what about all the millions of dollars that are lost simply because of how inefficient government contracting ends up being anyways?
- [22:57]
A
Well, and that's, that's the next thing I wanted to get to is, is that's what they presented as. But I know, you know, again, working for a contractor and having family members that have worked kind of high up in DoH and doing maintenance and stuff like that. The problem is, even where I worked at the Department of Commerce, you have a ton of institutional knowledge that gets lost on a regular basis because the state doesn't treat its employees very well. It doesn't pay par to whatever the market value is. And you would say, sure, it's a, you know, public servant. You're not going to make as much as an engineer at the state as you would working for like Thrasher Engineering or something. And you say, okay, that's fine. But then you get engineers that need experience, so they get a job at the state and then work there for two years and then quit and go to another job. So every two years, you're having a cycle of engineers coming in, and they don't know what they're doing. So a lot of these road projects and bridges projects, and because every single road project has some kind of, you know, CAD drawing that's engineered, and it's basically telling you what goes where. Well, you have these people that just recycle all these drawings and they add in details and. And they don't really know what they're looking at or doing because they're brand new. And so you're getting subpar materials given to a lot of contractors. And so that's why you see a lot of mistakes being made. And then they have to go back and do change orders. And these contractors depend on change orders to make money. They underbid the project, and then when they. They win the project, throughout the project, they do change orders and increase pricing. So that's how they make their money back. That's like an old secret for contracting. Well, I know that under Jim justice, they. They tried to hamper that a lot, is, you know, basically making it really hard, have to jump through a bunch of hoops to do change orders. Well, all you got there was just people just basically saying, oh, well, we're not gonna be able to complete the project then until you do the change order. And then they would just do it. So it's like there's a huge list of issues with contracting, and it's not just the permitting, it's the contracting itself. And I can tell you from experience, there's a lot of standards and regulations and things that don't make any sense, and they're from the state. The requirements from the state and federal government for our highways and bridges and lighting projects that the state of West Virginia could very well come up with its own regulation to be able to deal with a lot of this stuff, but it's easier for them to go by, you know, a greater national standard. So you're putting in a lot of materials and work and meeting standards that are above and beyond what's actually required, and so it drives up cost. But again, they're not going to report that because that's something that's, again, if you don't know really what you're looking at and you don't have a ton of institutional knowledge to tell you that that's happening, you don't even know it's happening. The only reason I know that is because I've worked with contractors where people have been doing it for 2530 years because they're actually making money. And they go, yeah, well, they changed the standard on this. It used to be its own state standard and then they went to a federal standard which is, you know, basically covers the bases from, you know, if you're digging a footer for a high mass light, well, this covers it whether it's in the sands of Florida or the hard rock of, you know, Indiana or whatever. So it's going to cover anything. So you've got a 30 foot hole you've got to dig and fill with concrete for a high mast footer because maybe it's going to be in sand in Florida with high winds, or it's going to be in West Virginia where there's never ever going to be winds or any kind of movement enough to have any issue with that footer. But it's a, it's overkill. It's above and beyond what we need here. But that, that expands across almost every single standard with, with the highways department is you've got a bunch of standards and practices that are above and beyond what's actually required for, for us to make things functional. But that costs money. Every time you put, you know, 100 foot more rebar in a hole, that's a lot of money. For every single high mass light across the entire state, that's a lot of money. And so those kind of things that, that's not even addressing that, but that's something that we need to have, you know, and the state's not supposed to be where you, you know, you've got the cream of the crop, engineers or inspectors or whatever, but you need to at least treat the employees in a way where people, enough people are there that have the institutional knowledge of, you know, 15, 20 years of experience that can teach the people underneath of them what the reality is of what's going on. And even if you're at the state, Taylor, you and I both know you're always going to have this relationship with a trip where a contractor is going to try to get one over on the state. It's always going to happen. So you need to have people in place that know those things and can be and they're able to, you know, deal and manipulate the opposite direction and say, no, we're not going to do that this time or whatever, you know what I mean? So it's, that kind of thing is going on at every level of the, the executive and the legislature needs to do something about that because I don't, I don't know how they're Supposed to. When you have all these pay standards, you, they can't do a whole lot to be able to pay an engineer more than if an engineer working for the state makes 70 grand and then with two years experience, they can go work at Thrasher for 120,000. I mean, I understand you're not trying to have state workers make the most money that's possible, but you've got to be able to keep people because it doesn't make any sense to have no engineers that know anything about engineering. It makes sense.
- [28:35]
B
Nope. Yeah, I mean, that's, you have more experience there, but I think it's, you know, common sense for, for a lot of folks in the business world to understand how those type of things work and where some of those pitfalls are. But a lot of folks who generally don't, you know, again, take the word of bureaucracy and, and bureaucrats and elected officials about certain things, and it's just like, no, there's, it's a whole, it's a whole racket. And unfortunately, very few people have the, the backbone to stand up and say, no, we need to change this because this shouldn't cost this much money. And they, they point out or they selectively pick or cherry pick things that they can say, oh, well, we need to fix this one thing, little thing over here, and it'll save us some money. And look at me, I'm a good steward. Meanwhile, they know that there are more deep and embedded problems with the process and system that needs repealed, needs fixed, needed overhauled. That could save just as much, if not more. And it's a much more, but it's a much more structural problem in the whole process.
- [29:39]
A
Yeah, and that's the thing is I can speak from experience from, you know, where I worked for the Commerce Department. They, everybody that worked with me that had any experience in what we did, basically when I quit about, I think, I think the total was like 12 people in and around the adjacent area that I worked in, the grants management and grants compliance. About 12 people quit because, you know, basically it was just like a cascade of realizing that nobody was ever going to get a raise and nobody was going to be treated fairly. And there was a lot of things, you know, it was just a bad environment to work in. And so you have all these people that, you know and I know not to get in the weeds, but like, you have a group of people that are highly qualified to do compliance in a certain area which requires a bunch of specific permitting to be able to do this compliance work. And then Almost all of them quit at the same time. And then to be able to get people that are qualified to do that work, they have to shadow and apprentice people that already have that work. So basically, the state is committing fraud because they hire people and they kind of fudge the numbers and funds, the paperwork and get them qualified to do the job, but they're not qualified to do the job because it's not possible for them to be qualified to do the job, because the people that were there before them, they treated them so poorly that everybody left at the same time. So you could see, just from my experience, and I know it's not atypical, so I think that's probably happening all across every single department, across the entire executive branch of the West Virginia government. So that's where you have. Your problem, is you've got a lot of people that don't know what they're doing, doing. You know, you. And I would say a lot of this stuff doesn't even need to happen, but it is going to happen. They're going to do it. There's nothing we can say to them to make them not do these things. So if we're going to be spending this money, we need to change our, our practices so that you have people that are actually capable of being leaders and capable of managing. And I don't know if that's even possible at a state government level because I don't know, you're not actually producing a product or doing anything of value. So it's hard to get people of value to do that. I know that sounds super harsh, but I've experienced it. You get a lot of people that start as secretaries and they end up running entire departments of areas like the Department of Commerce. Like, that's not something that, like, you've got no real world experience. Just because you're able to navigate a bureaucracy better than somebody else, that doesn't mean you have any true leadership ability. And all the people I saw in the Commerce Department that had true leadership ability, they're people that came from the outside world that were like, either appointed or hired in. And they didn't last long, Taylor, because they saw what happened there and they, well, there's. This is pointless. I'm gonna go do something else and make some money. So, like, and that's just one. One department, like one floor of one department of one, you know, sector. And I guarantee you can translate that across every executive branch. And so you can see why you have these problems. In the Department of Highways, I have family members and People I know that work for the, have worked for the Department of Highways for a long time. And they'll tell you that it's just, the bureaucracy is just, you know, numbing. You can't even, you can't do anything without somebody complaining or somebody filing an agreevance or some new policy or like some hoop to jump through that costs money. Like, just the, the bidding process of like buying equipment or buying parts. Like, you've got to go through approved vendors, so you're going to spend 25% more because it's approved vendor for what you could get on Amazon or whatever. So it's just, it's, it's death by a thousand cuts, Taylor. And this whole permitting thing that they're reporting, that's $50 million. I guarantee if somebody sat down and really had an honest assessment of each and every department, if like five people sat down and went over every floor of the Commerce Department, you could come up with. You, you'd probably come up with their, the, the entire budget's worth of, worth annually of waste from all these different departments and what they, what they do so well.
- [33:39]
B
And, and that's why, you know, we, I talked about on the campaign show and I think we talked about here on the, on the podcast. It's like if the state legislature were to impose a 1, 2, 3 5% budget cut across the board and impose a part of that piece of legislation in the budgetary amendment, that the cuts have to be first derived by some type of efficiency measures and not a reduction in services that, like you said, they could sit down and pretty easily come up with either waste or ways to say, okay, well, yeah, we're still utilizing, you know, Microsoft 8 on these computers. And if we upgraded, you know, to some more modern processes and automated mechanisms of doing certain things, you know, we could probably cut our time or redirect our FTEs to do other things and cut back on other delays and costs and yada, yada, yada. There'd be downstream effects and efficiency that bring about that cost savings. You don't, again, don't have to cut actual services because that's always a response that we get, right Ty? So we come out and say, oh, yeah, well, libertarians want to, you know, reduce the tax burden on the, on the citizenry because we want to cut the budget. Oh, well, what, what services are you going to cut? Well, we're not saying you have to come in and cut whole divisions of government. Ultimately, we'd like to get there because we'd like to transition the burden of certain things from the government back to community and private business. But in the meantime, the pragmatic approach is to say cut 5% of your budget and don't cut a service. Tell me how you're going to do it. Businesses do this all the time because they know that their clientele is based off of those services they provide. But they need to do it faster, better, smarter, harder and stronger so that they can out compete against their other rivals or competition do that same thing within the government. You'll find the ways faster, you'll find ways to increase efficiency and you'll be able to reach those goals without actually cutting services. But we don't have legislators or people in the state government that have the back backbone or the balls to say those things and actually expect that, you know, more people come out and say, oh, we're going to audit this, we're going to audit that and we're going to, we're going to sell some of these hospitals to private companies. Okay, sure. But an effective across the board cut to make the state government the most efficient state government in the nation. Why, why isn't that a goal for West Virginia? Talks about this backyard brawl. Why is it we have the most efficient state government in the union? It's not. And if we did, we could easily eliminate the state income tax, we could easily put removing the business inventory tax back on the ballot without worrying about the impact, but they don't want to or aren't brave enough to do so.
- [36:28]
A
Well, and that's the funny thing, because of the Department of Highways, that the director, he basically said that we need a billion dollars for road maintenance to be able to basically repave every road every eight years. So we need a billion dollars a year. And everybody's, you know, that's not possible. Well, here's the thing, I think from what everything we've been talking about, if you like, do, you know, this comprehensive, honest assessment of what's actually going on and what's actually required, and these are state laws, like you can get rid of a lot of these policies and, and make it easier for people to do their job so that it doesn't cost as much to do the job. So maybe the billion dollars goes down to, you know, 800 million. That's a bit, that's, that's, I mean that's still a big number, but that's better than a billion. And if you look years, you've saved
- [37:17]
B
enough to do it again.
- [37:19]
A
If you actually, yeah, if you actually listen to people and say, hey, every county Administrator, you give me a list of everything you can think of for the ways that we could save money and what's being wasted. Now, if 75% of what they give you is just like, oh, well, that's just them airing their grievances. But, hey, this one thing, this is a really good idea, and we could implement this across the entire state. If you have every single county administrator doing that and, you know, every district manager and all these things, like, that's the kind of stuff we need to be doing and, like, really paying attention to what's going on because they have ideas and just. Because, like, well, there's a state law. Cool. You know, I'm the legislator. I'll do. I'm your huckleberry. Like, come to me, man. Whatever regulation you want to get rid of. Yeah, I'm going to make a bill to do that. And then if Roger Hansaw decides he doesn't want to put that bill up for a vote, I'm gonna make it very vocal that, hey, this would have been able to get your roads paved faster. And this guy won't do it. This is what we need. We need people to get in there and say, hey, no, no, these are real things. These aren't your weird, you know, hot pie in the sky economic development things where you think you're smarter than everybody else and you want to run the state. No, this is. People want their damn roads paved. They want to.
- [38:31]
B
And.
- [38:31]
A
And I'm one of them. I have two bent axles on my trailer, Taylor, that I use every single day because I cannot drive slow enough on parts of my road to keep from bending axles on my trailer, Taylor. Like, I'm not kidding.
- [38:44]
B
Like.
- [38:45]
A
Like, it's ridiculous. Like, these roads make my life miserable to drive from location to location. Like, I never know when there's not going to be some crazy pothole, you know, right on the edge of the road that I hit and it feels like my trailer is about to fly off the back of my truck. Like, that's. That. That's ridiculous. It should not be a thing we should be dealing with. But they're going to run a high mass line from John Ames power plant in Charleston to Pennsylvania. Like, no, no, no. Let's. Let's figure this out. Like, okay, you say you want your data centers to bid for all this revenue. Is it going to make a billion dollars revenue? Are we going to have a billion dollars a year revenue for the foreseeable future to pave roads? Is that what you're suggesting? Because part of the problem is you spend way too damn much money to pave roads. You're getting asphalt from a plant in Charleston, you're putting into a giant spreader, and then you're flattening it on the road. It's not rocket science. It should not cost that much money to pave our roads. It's not new technology. It's not anything everybody hasn't done. I've done it, Taylor. I've been on the back of one of those paving machines. It's not rocket science. Just do it. We don't need to spend a ton of money. We don't need a bunch of environmental surveys. We want the roads. The people want the roads. I'm team people. We're all team people. Just do it. We don't care about your permits. Void the permits. Put it to a vote. The people will vote to void the permit to get their damn road paved. Like, we're. To a point where it's like, this is. It's a joke. Like, it's. It's. It's almost like what is happening. Like, is this. Is this kind of sick joke. You drive up 79 every once in a while from Charleston to 7 to Morgantown. It's almost like they're punking us. It's perpetual construction for 30 years. What are you doing? There's bridges between here and Charleston where they've been working on. There's never anyone working on them. What do we do? Like, are you. Is this a giant joke? Like, is this a giant practical joke that states playing on the people, like, nothing's getting done, and you're saying, well, we need a billion dollars a year. I know. Maybe you shouldn't let a contractor spend two years to resurface half of a bridge. Like, I don't know much about resurfacing bridges, but I know it wouldn't take me two years to do it. It's insane. It just doesn't make. Nothing makes any sense. And when you have everybody, even the people I know that, like, actually are in construction and understand these things, they go, no, this is ridiculous. It's all just contracting. It's all just them milking the system. Yeah, that's. That's a problem which could easily be fixed if we had people that held contractors accountable. You're the state government. Have the attorney general sue them and say, we're ending the contract. And they go, well, we'll sue you. Cool. Do. Talk to our attorney general. Sure. Use the power of the state if you're going to use the power of State use it for that.
- [41:41]
B
Yeah. I don't know.
- [41:42]
A
It's just incredibly frustrating.
- [41:45]
B
Yeah. And again, we mentioned on this before or on the podcast before, part of the issue is because the vast majority of the voting public is in the Stockholm syndrome of only the government can. Only the government can pave my roads. Only the government can insert X here. And when you tell yourself that or you're told that enough times, you question any alternative, even if it is possible, ways to improve the current process under the current ownership of the state. We talked about it with, you know, police education. The other thing is also when you go after and say, oh, we need to reform and improve you, you viewed as hating insert, you know, group here as well. So it, it does become tiresome. It does. We get. It does get old pretty quick. But, you know, we got to keep the fight up. We got to help red pill some folks into understanding where some of these cost savings actually lie. And it's not in this cup game that a lot of politicians and bureaucrats are putting in front of our faces. There's some structural things that need to happen.
- [42:51]
A
Yeah. And to wrap this up, we can kind of talk about this part. Dude, the governor, it's like, just like the president, except for he doesn't have as much clout as Trump does. But, you know, they're cutting things like tanf. And their people are, you know, basically saying, oh, they're trying to cut all these family resource centers. And these are things that actually, I don't know if. Did we talk about this on the last episode, but they're trying to cut funding to family resource centers across the state. Every county has one. I think most counties do. Some of them don't, but ours just the last two years, Roane county had one of work. Counties have been in existence for a while, but they, I guess during COVID the federal government increased a lot of its funding for these programs. And so when Covid left, the state didn't reduce the budget, you know, like you do, because you're the government and don't actually have any business acumen. They didn't decrease the budget. So now, you know, Morrissey came his. His administration came out and said, hey, we can't afford to do this forever, so we're going to have to cut these TANF benefits. Well, a lot of these counties, you know, basically most of their programs now are based off of this increased funding from COVID So it's basically what we talk about all the time, Taylor, is, is once government grows, it never does release power I mean, it just keeps on growing. So this temporary funding source has become a permanent thing. So now they're going to pull. They're going to pull this temporary funding source that's become a permanent funding source and people are going to lose the resources that they think are valuable within their county. So that's a huge black eye on the Morrissey administration. And you know, I've been in contact with a lot of these people, the administrators of these programs in Werton Run county. And I basically gotten the up and down, you know, not head, head nod of, you know, this is why you don't depend on federal and state money is because they can do this stuff. And they basically said, yeah, you're right, and work county. I know they, they fund their system, their family resource centers is based on a model of different funding so that they can still operate without it. But I'm not entirely sure about the Roan County Family Resource Center. But you know, I kind of, I think they kind of are understanding the idea that this funding is something that they have to actually pay attention to and that it's not necessarily forever. And I've also had some success with people basically saying, yeah, we probably should set up some kind of fund where we do like an annual fundraiser or something like that, or do like a, I don't know, ball or whatever you call it, some kind of banquet where they raise money for the family Resources Centers every. Every year. And also maybe talking to the county commission to be able to maybe do some kind of levy that if the, the people of Roane and work county thinks that these family resource centers are of value, they should pony up the money themselves on a county level so that the state isn't funding these things. But I digress. The, the, the big thing this week, Taylor, and I don't know if you saw the story, but the state police came out and said, and they posted a picture of the capitol. I guess they're putting together a giant Ferris wheel for the fourth of July celebration. And they came out and said, well, the governor has proposed a $2.5 million cut to the state police budget, and yet he's spending $2 million on this 250 Fourth of July celebration. So.
- [46:11]
B
Well, yeah, that's, that's been the thing he's been held over the barrel for. Like you said, the tan of funding for a number of things is here's all the things they're trying, you know, they want to cut or reduce spending on. And then, oh, by the way, he's starting this 200 or, sorry, this two plus million dollar party 4th of July celebration in, in Charleston. And, and here's the thing that's ridiculous. I mean, it's ridiculous because one, if we had a Democratic governor, they'd be doing the same damn thing for the 205th anniversary, whether it be $2 million or however much it'd be, it would be, it would be definitely up there. So, yeah, let's be, let's be realistic news agencies and reporters about the hypocrisy that you're going on. But two, you got to be smarter than know. It's like, come on, Morrissey, get private donors. You knew you've been in office now for what, a year and a half. You knew that the 230th anniversary was coming up. You knew you probably were gonna do something big for this. You should have started doing some fundraising behind the scenes a while ago, getting sponsors and all the rest to help draw down the cost to be as minimal as possible. So I think it's a failure there. It's a failure in the hypocrisy of the reporting because a Democratic governor probably would have done something very similar, if not identical. So come on.
- [47:33]
A
But they wouldn't have cut tanf.
- [47:36]
B
They wouldn't have cut tan. If they would have, they would have blown it up and made it bigger and raise our taxes to pay for it.
- [47:43]
A
So, yeah, and that's the thing is, you know, when you're, you, you're libertarian like we are, is, you're like, yeah, no, we don't think they should be spending money on any of this stuff. But, you know, we, we also don't say, hey, we, we also are like, yeah, I mean, maybe we should cut $2.5 million from the state police budget. They probably have too big of a budget. They probably could do all the things that the state do. There's probably a lot of waste and abuse. We know this. Like anybody who works for government and thinks if you say there's no fraud in our department or there's no waste or there's nothing we can cut, you're just not being honest. You're, you're completely biased and you, you're not being honest. Everybody who works for the government knows there's things that can be done. And even when I worked for the government, like, my job should have been a part time job, but that's not what the grant said and that's not how the government structures, the state government structures. So my job couldn't have been a part time Job. Like, I could have had a different job and come in every two weeks and done monitoring for these grants and done just as good a job as I did there. But no, I went in every single day and tried to make up stuff to do because there wasn't enough work to do every day. There just wasn't. Like, no matter what I did there, I could. I could go through and read. Read the code every day. But, like, why would anybody do that? Like, who thinks that's, like, you reference code. When you're doing monitoring, you reference code. You don't, like, memorize code. So, like. But we did stuff like that. Like, we would just sit there and read, you know, weird, obscure federal bulletins on weatherization because we had to do something. But you're paying people every day to do that stuff, and it's not. And my job was one of the ones that actually was required by our federal statute from the grants. And we actually had qualifications. And there was like, nobody else could have done our job because we were highly qualified to do our job. And I know how that sounds. I'm just saying it's true. But there's people there that like. Like, now, like, AI could do their job, or a temp service that works out of their basement could do the job. Like, it's just like, there's so much stuff that goes. And I'm not. And I want anybody to lose their job. Like, I don't want anybody to lose their income. But everybody works for the state government. I'm sure. Even you, Taylor, with your job, you know, things that go on and jobs that, like, don't need to exist. But because it's a system that has. It's flush with money, and it's just like, the goal is to just spend the same money as last year so that you can keep growing your budget. That's what government fails. Nobody's trying to save money in a private business. People are trying to save the company money so that they can make more money or whatever. But that doesn't happen in government. And so it doesn't matter who it is. Your budget should probably be cut. Your budget probably could be cut. $2.5 million. That's a lot of money. Maybe not. But if we're down to the point where we're at $2.5 million and the government governor's paying $2 million for a Ferris wheel and churros. Yeah, I could see what people would have a problem with that. Like, that's a PR nightmare. Like, what are you doing, buddy? As Just it's crazy to me and I'm not gonna go, I'm not going to the Capitol for the fourth of July. Like, who's going there?
- [50:55]
B
Yeah. And again, in. And you know, we've given Morrissey a lot of grief on this up on this podcast. Kudos to him where he gets it right. But it's like, you know, you, he comes in, he's talking about, you know, cutting the size of government, doing all this stuff and it's like, we don't, we haven't had that in some time from our governor. And you hate when those individuals. And yes, he's definitely not libertarian. He's probably pretty far from it. But when he's at least moving the Overton window in the right direction in terms of some of the things that say should be doing, fully eliminated the income tax, for example, so on and so forth. And then they make like this obvious novice mistakes. You're just like, dude, you're putting egg on all of our faces because you're feeding into that. Oh well, you know, you guys want to cut all these things and then you blow it on stupid and, and we do, you know, so.
- [51:46]
A
Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing. You go, go back and listen to this podcast from, you know, a year ago, maybe six or seven months ago and listen to what we were saying. We were incredibly white pilled. We were, we were stoked about what Morrissey was saying. The, the vibes he was giving off were very libertarian. We were stoked about it. We were Taylor, I mean, nobody can say we didn't want, we want him to succeed. Nothing would give us like Taylor, I know you and I both, neither one of us want to be in the legislature. We'd be perfectly happy not being in the legislature. But that's the thing. They don't, they won't do their job. They won't do what they say they're going to do. The governor will not do what he promised to do. Just do what you said you were gonna do. Fight the legislature. We want you to do it. We want you to succeed in what you said you were going to do.
- [52:33]
B
That's why our general gripe with the Republican Party is, you know, they can't. Are the good ones or not even the good ones, I don't know how to say it, but the veterans ones that we get us in these positions, like the one we're talking about with Morrissey campaign as libertarians, they say all the things that we know that we're saying right now on the campaign Trail. But once they get down there, they're not principled enough to actually vote that way. They govern like Democrats.
- [52:59]
A
Yeah. And that's the problem is they get. They go, like, pragmatism crazy. Like, you can see, like, being a little bit like, yeah, okay, I'll vote for this, but only if you promise to do this. But then, like, then when they don't hold up their part, you have to be like, no, I'm done with that. Like, you lied to me. Like, we're not going to be pragmatist anymore because you didn't do your part. But they just keep on, like, being like, the people that say all the right things. They just keep on voting for the bad things or doing the bad policies. Like, and they'll say, well, I got to do this to get this. But then they never get the thing they want. It's almost like battered wife syndrome. Like, no, dude, but you're never getting your part. Like, you're never getting yours. So, like, why do you keep giving them theirs? Yeah, rock the boat. Because you're never going to get your thing. So what are you helping? Like, who are you helping? You're still voting for cronyism and growing the inflation. So stop. Stop doing that. Because they're never going to give you your thing. So why don't we get together and say, hey, until you give us our thing, we're going to kill every bill you want passed. You don't need more than, like, what, 20 people? And you can seriously hurt votes.
- [54:04]
B
Yeah.
- [54:05]
A
So it's like, yeah, no, get together and say, hey, if you're not going to reform the funding formula for public education, we're going to kill every bill you put across. Handshot. Every bill that you want through for your agenda, we're going to kill it. Until you reform foster care, until you do something about serious regulation reform, we're going to kill every bill you have. Like, we're not. We're not doing this anymore. We're going to kill all your bills. And it only takes. It doesn't take a lot of people to kill these bills. It really doesn't, because you're going to get every Democrat to vote with you to kill whatever he wants to do. So. Well, I take that back. Unless it's giving money to businesses. For some reason, they love that. I don't know what that is, but, like, Democrats love giving Nucor money. I don't know, like, of all the things you think they would want to do, giving a private business billions of dollars, you think that Wouldn't work, but. But here we are. So. Yeah, no, that's. That's. But. But it is the 4th of July coming up and I wanted to. If we don't get another episode in, I wanted to say that we didn't talk about our political campaigns, Taylor.
- [55:10]
B
Not yet.
- [55:11]
A
No. I've been trying to do the beginning of the shows and I completely forgot. So, Taylor, you are running for the 13th district of the Senate of the state. Of the government of the state.
- [55:23]
B
Yeah, Senate District 13, which is the greater Fairmont, Morgantown areas. You can find me online at richmond4senate.com on Facebook at. Taylor Richmond, the one that's official looking and not my personal account. But add me as a friend on there too. Love to chat with you and be your friend, but follow like the campaign page as well. And yeah, it's been hitting the street, making some phone calls, doing the things. It's been fun getting to talk to some constituents and hearing how ready for a change people are. Hopefully they vote that way come November. But it's been interesting a couple of months thus far. And you are in the 15th House District, correct?
- [56:07]
A
Yeah, buddy. The Greater 15th House District of Roanore County. Sorry, there's wrestling coming to gas away here pretty soon, so I'm gonna have to get in the mood. I'm not going. Why am I saying that? I hate wrestling. But don't. Don't not vote for me because of that. But, yeah. So I'm running for the 15th House District. Ronin. Work Counties. Yeah. So I've been having some pretty good conversations across the district. I've been trying to focus on Work county this summer just because, you know, it gets kind of neglected. And I really do. It's kind of my roots. I grew up in northern Roane county in the, you know, Reedy area. If anybody's listening to this. Which borders Work County. And we'd have to try to drive through Work county to get to Parkersburg. A lot of friends in. In Work County. I did Exchange camper for 4H in work county one year and it was a. It's. It's Work County, Taylor, I'm telling you. Even if you, like, don't have any reason to be there. If you drive through some of the rural areas of Work county, it's one of the most beautiful places in the entire state. It's just a lot of, you know, rolling farmland, a lot of, you know, you drive across a lot of, you know, rolling hill peaks and it's a beautiful place to live. The economy is extremely depressed there. They know this, that they've all informed me greatly of how hard it is for them to be able to self fund anything just because of the economic disparity there. It's the smallest county in the whole, whole state. So I've been trying to get in contact with those people and, and figure out what's going on there and the things that issues they're having. And it's a lot like the rest of the state. But fourth of July, I will be in the Elizabeth Fire Department fourth of July parade. Family's going and a few other people and we're gonna, we're gonna decorate my, my truck and patriotic garb and go full out, play some Toby Keith on the speakers, really do it all out. So if you're going to the Elizabeth 4th of July parade, I'll be there. I'm gonna try to hang out for the festivities afterwards. I mean, from what they're telling me, it's a pretty good little celebration. They've got a lot of, you know, vendors and maybe some carnival rides and stuff like that. So if you don't go to the Ripley fourth of July celebration or whatever nonsense is happening at the Capitol, Word County Elizabeth in the border of Wood County. So yeah, come come see me. I'll be there with my T shirt on and my banners. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. And then I'll be out the rest of the summer. I'm gonna try to focus on work county this summer and maybe go and do some door knocking and, and see that under underrepresented area. So yeah, if you want to follow the podcast, we're on all the podcasters including Spotify, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcast, any of them, if you want to donate. This is Value for Value podcast, meaning we put. But we get no money from this. So if you want to donate to the party, it's lpwv.org hit that donate button. Leave us a little note, leave us some shekels in exchange for what you get out of this podcast. Follow us on Instagram, the party on Instagram X and Facebook. But Taylor, unless you have anything else.
- [59:21]
B
No, those are the big things. Again, if we don't have something before the 4th, or if we record before the 4th and you don't get it out before the 4th, wish everybody a happy 250th Independence Day. Remember that our founding fathers were far more libertarian than they were Republican or Democrats. So if you're, if you're, if you're one of the people who believe what the founders believe and all that. Then go for vote for Ty and I and our good friend Stephanie Buschford who's running over in the Ford center district.
- [59:57]
A
I don't have a soundboard so I just sing it quietly in behind. Yeah. And Travis Bost.
- [60:04]
B
Yeah,
- [60:06]
A
just making sure.
- [60:08]
B
Yeah, he's. He's doing his thing over and he's Senate district something over in Eastern Panhandle.
- [60:14]
A
Senate district, Eastern Panhandle.
- [60:17]
B
Yeah, they've got a couple over there because they're pretty populous. But I forget what number he's going to be in but keep an eye out for him as well. So yeah, we're running and appreciate you and Stephanie and Ty. Sorry. And Travis. I'm Ty, you're Ty for stepping up and doing this. It takes a lot of effort and
- [60:37]
A
I appreciate you, Taylor.
- [60:39]
B
Well, thanks sir. It does take a lot of time and energy and effort to do this and do it effectively, semi effectively or at least 200 some dollars to do it at all. So thanks for you're all's dedication and leading by example.
- [60:57]
A
Oh, you were done talking. Sorry, I need to get a soundboard with Patriarch music. That was good. That was great. Let's get fired up. We're gonna, we're gonna win this. We're gonna do this, Taylor.
- [61:08]
B
Well, we're definitely causing waves. I know that for sure already.
- [61:10]
A
We're doing what?
- [61:12]
B
We're causing waves.
- [61:13]
A
Oh, we're causing waves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I don't know about you Taylor, but I'm seeing, you know, everyone I talk to or people are kind of excited about having some other option. I think a lot of people are really sick of what's going on and, and the closing of the primaries was a huge issue for a lot of people. And you know, I'm not, I've not had anybody basically tell me to pound sand. So that's good. Yeah. So until next time, follow our, our campaigns and follow the party and don't hurt people and don't take their stuff.