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- [00:01]
A
Hello and welcome to the Mountain State Liberty cast. I am your host, Ty Ward. And joining me today is Taylor. I forgot the thing I was going to say. Richmond. Hello, Taylor.
- [00:13]
B
Good. Because it was a complete inside joke and it would make me sound terrible. So I appreciate it.
- [00:17]
A
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Old Cosby over there.
- [00:19]
B
That's.
- [00:19]
A
That's right, I remember. Yeah, yeah.
- [00:22]
B
Taking completely out of context. No one knows why.
- [00:25]
A
Well, the context is what you think it is. He's a bad man. Don't vote for him. I'm kidding. So, yeah, speaking of that, Taylor, let's get this from the top. You are running for the state senate of West Virginia in the 13th district against a couple of Democrats. Tell us about what's going on with your campaign.
- [00:44]
B
Yeah. So representing the greater Morgantown and Fairmont areas, probably one of the major contested elections for Senate as there's not very many that there's both a Republican and a Democrat and it's the only one where there's a Republican, Democrat and a Libertarian at the moment. So definitely be an interesting race headed down depending on when this is posted. Today is Tuesday the 14th. I'm headed down to Fairmont this evening after work to attend an anti flock camera rally at the library there in Marion county. And then meeting with wonderful lady who helped run the Mon County GOP headquarters. I'm going to sit down and talk with her and do an interview and discuss her and others frustrations with Mr. Oliverio and the current state of affairs in the Republican Party and their representation down in Charleston.
- [01:42]
A
Sounds good. Yeah. So the. We can talk about flock cameras. I think we were going to talk about that before. We never did, but yeah. So I'm running for the 15th House District for Roanoke County. Yeah, my campaign is going. I mean I'm out here working every day and it's actually become a pretty good way to get out and talk to people and hand out some flyers and get some customers on board with putting yard signs and it's kind of ready made. Door knocking and they pay me to door knock Taylor. It's pretty awesome.
- [02:14]
B
Hey, you can go over to some other states and do that for some candidates too. They'll probably pay you.
- [02:19]
A
Yeah. Hey, I just realized that's probably some sort of campaign finance violation. I was a joke. They're paying me to mow their lawn. Yeah. So yeah, we're doing that. And this podcast is brought to you by the Libertarian Party of West Virginia. We are a value for value podcast. What does that mean? That means if you get value from this Podcast, give us some value back. Share the podcast with friends and family, share it on social media like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. It's available on all your podcasts, pictures, iHeartRadio, Spotify, I don't know, whatever. You listen to it on third party apps. Check us out, subscribe like, share it with your friends. And we are on social media. The, the Libertarian Party is on Instagram, Facebook and X. So see what we're doing there. Getting a lot of engagement there on social media. So yeah, thanks for tuning in. And as we go through this episode, please keep us in mind. So today, Taylor, we're going to talk about a few state issues. Let's start with education. We were just talking about that and I said leave it for the, the episode. But so my current Roane County's board of education, our superintendent was on Talk line. And you know, Roane county is one of the, the many counties in the state that was put into a state of emergency through the state Board of Education. And I think we've talked about a little bit on here, so I won't go through all the details, but basically it's a combination of, you know, dropping population, the funding formula not being, it's serving a system, not students, and basically mismanagement from the previous superintendent and the board of education. Here we were about $3 million in the hole, lots of dumb spending like building a new middle school, turfing the football field, not laying off employees that should have been laid off. But the reality is two of our more rural schools down the southern part of the county ended up being closed. And they probably were always gonna close, but they basically moved up that inevitability by probably two or three years. So, yeah, that's the state we're in. And the county is under obviously advisement from the state school board and they've been trying to basically get the books back in order, make some cuts, save money. And on Talkline, I think Michelle Stellato is her name. Our superintendent went over some of that. I read some of that in from WV News, but I don't know, it seems like they're, they're doing a lot of things that, you know, we would think they should do. Cutting back, having the, the employees at the board office clean the bathrooms, mop the floors instead of paying somebody to do it. You know, making buses last longer, not just buying new buses just because it's time to buy them. You know, selling, selling equipment, stuff like that. But one of the things that you just mentioned to me that she said was a problem is I guess they've been keeping some personnel that. And then I don't know. You can tell me if she went over the details of who those are because Taylor just side note, they talk about these things and it annoys me that these, a lot of these radio hosts don't like ask them questions so the layman can understand because they're. And we've talked about this before but the reason I hate radio is they're constantly crunched on time and you can't get through a conversation with any detail. It's like you're just flowing through the cliff notes. And I would have asked hey, what does that mean? What employees do you have that don't meet some requirements? So you explain what, what the problem was and what she said was going to happen if they don't meet this criteria.
- [06:13]
B
Well, and I'll just say Ty, I think the other issue is, you know, with, with radio is the, because of the time thing. There was the other major story that day was talking about that anti woke program at WVU and in that they threw out the word accreditation like that was an issue or one of the reasons that the thing was having trouble. And it's, that's not actually the case. It's an issue in higher education. But they threw it out there. They misused it. There's no time for them to even realize they misspoke or go back and correct it. So now you put this bug or this word out in the lexicon around an issue and then it kind of just earwig just is now perpetuated down the road. And similarly this happens with the issue with public education as well. But basically what she was your superintendent was explaining was in Section 18A of State Code which outlines school over public education oversight, there's a staffing requirement and ratio of effectively teachers to non teaching personnel. And one of the things that they've done, as you've mentioned, is to cut cost, try to eliminate need of certain non teaching services like janitorial or custodial cleaning of offices and so on and so forth. And like what we saw see in Harrison county and in Brook county, sorry Hancock county, where they have too many professionals over the limit and they haven't cut. What Roane county seems to have done is actually the inverse of that. And they are not meeting the requirement of these professional support positions to the rest of the teachers. And because of that there's now a $1.7 million fine or if I get the exact number, but it's over A million dollars between 1 and 2 million dollar fine that they're going to be facing because they're not doing that. And the conundrum, or really the, I think the canary in the coal mine of how stupid our public education infrastructure or system in terms of how it's set up has become is that if they were then to go hire those positions, it would probably cost them about $2 million worth, because I forget how many it was. But she basically made the comment that, well, I wouldn't actually fill those positions. Then by the time you do salaries and benefits and everything else per annual, it would have been over $2 million. So she's either going to have to pay one point, whatever in penalty, or add to her budget, which she can't afford already, this $2 million in personnel. So it just shows the idiocracy, the asinine way in which we've gotten to be in how our schools are funded or mandated or dictated, et cetera, and really libertarian stance, it stems from the fact that it's done by a bureaucracy in Charleston. There's very little if any local control in terms of identifying and responding to needs and costs and all the rest. And it's done by mandate from some unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat in the Capitol.
- [09:43]
A
Yeah, because I remember when they first started doing a lot of that stuff, there was a lot of older teachers that didn't meet certain criteria and they had to go back and get these certifications. Remember it being a problem, Some of them were grandfathered in or something. But you have like, it's, there's no gray area in all this stuff. And, and I, I, I try not to chastise anybody because I don't know enough about this stuff. And I don't know, you know, how much value really goes into a lot of this stuff. But you and I know, being people that, you know, have college degrees and worked in professional settings, a lot of times when you get these different certifications and stuff, like somebody has like a good intent to make that a requirement, but they never go back and really see if those requirements. And a lot of the time you have these requirements for certain certifications and degrees and stuff like that, that don't really add up to like a value. And like you said, when you have these controls at a level where bureaucrats, a lot of which have never even entered a classroom or haven't been in a classroom for, you know, 40 years, you get a little bit of disconnect between reality of, you know, a principal or a Superintendent or a board of education at a local level can make a determination whether somebody is faculty filling the role adequately, that whatever that role is. And again, I'm just speaking in generalities because I don't know the details. And maybe I should schedule a meeting with Michelle and see what the details are so I could talk about it more cogently as a candidate for house. But you get these things and then people would say, well, there should be exemptions. You should be able to get an exemption if you have a special circumstance. And then what happens, Taylor? The exemption gets abused and basically everybody gets an exemption. And then everybody knows, oh well, you have to go this rigmarole. So basically it's just a bunch of paperwork that doesn't need to happen because the position doesn't need to exist in the way that they're saying it needs to exist to begin with. And that's how government works. And as we've been saying, like it's not a bug in the system. This is how government works because there's too much paperwork and people to ask questions to and get permission from to make any real substantive change when it needs to happen.
- [11:57]
B
All right? And I think that's the issue with this and I think most government related issues oftentimes is that you start out, and again, we said it before, that most of these things are done with altruistic and the right end goal in mind. But it's a lack of understanding of the economics of the situations or, you know, whatever. But like you said, a rule is put in place because there's some issue to be resolved. And then generally speaking, because it's a hard and fast rule that is is black and white, there needs to be some gray areas so they allow exceptions instead. Instead of going back and tweaking that rule, they create subsets or other rules and so on. And this thing just continues to grow like a cancer. There's never any cutting back of it. And that I think has become, become the problem is, and they said it, TJ said it yesterday, it's like if you're an administrator, superintendent or some higher ranking principal or whatever, he said, you couldn't pay me enough to do this because it's an uphill battle. It's Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill because you're continually battling with these asinine requirements and unfunded mandates and all the rest. You're trying to run the school like a business to some extent, like what Roane county is doing. And then you get slapped on the hand and and possibly find or at least, you know, the headline rights itself of not meeting staffing requirements. Roane county doesn't mean staffing requirements. Well, no, that's not actually the truth. What Roane county has done is try to be financially responsible in terms of the money that they're stewards of. But because these stupid rules have ballooned and grown on around themselves like we're discussing, then you have the situation where she's facing a fine almost equal to, if not equal to the amount of cost it would be to adhere to the policy. Meanwhile, she seems to be doing a decent enough job of, you know, keeping the lights on and the trains running on time or the buses running on time. So like you said, that's just, it's not necessarily a bug, it's a feature. It's, it's endemic to generally government run programs and public education is probably the greatest poster child for that.
- [14:08]
A
Yeah, and it's, it goes to, you know, I kind of, when you told me she was on talk line, you know, I had a kind of a negative reaction, but it's because, and this is the problem. I wish more administrators would just be open and honest and more understanding because she has been extremely, you know, standoffish with, with the public and taken, you know, a kind of, she's constantly putting her foot in her mouth. I mean, the first thing she did when she, because she was an assistant to the superintendent and then she got the position as superintendent and basically the first thing she did was go on our local radio station and say, well, if we'd had a county levy, this wouldn't have happened. And like it just, and repeatedly, just constantly like, oh, it's not our fault. Oh, this, that, like never taking accountability for what happened. And she's still never done that. I mean, I think she is trying to do her the best job that she can to correct what's going on, but just a constant, you know, and posting videos, you know, for public education, basically just ignoring the fact that they just closed two schools in our community and basically have devastated these two communities. It didn't get anybody. If this had happened, like, hey, in two years we, These schools are closing. No, it was next year these schools are gone. And, and they've, there's no addressing this situation. Like for you and me, every time you posted something about the school system or what's going on in the future, you know, it would be like, you know, we're seeing progress and, and, and though we know it's been hard for these communities and, and we're trying to do that. Like, you know what I mean? Just an attitude of, like. I don't know how to describe it, but it's just. It's been an issue in the county with her and some of the other administrative staff. And so while, you know me, I'm not trying to say that I'm, you know, a cyborg and don't have emotional reactions to things. You know, I heard what they wrote about and heard what you said and go, yeah, okay, cool. And I have heard that she's been in talks and close communication with the House Education Committee chair. And that's good. I'm glad. That's. I'm glad we have a superintendent that's talking to our legislators and addressing problems that can actually, you know, real world problems that can happen. And I hope something does happen. And if I get in the House of Delegates, I'll be right there to listen to her and ask her and be in communication, not wait for her to contact me. Hey, what's something we can get rid of? How can we strip this down to make this work? Because you and I know we're not educators. That code book is, I don't know, hundreds of pages long, maybe more. And we don't know. We don't know what's affecting this and that, you know, and we don't. You know, I'd even hate to say this. You don't want to get rid of rules that are actually working just because somebody says they don't like them. So it's. We. They need people like that to come in and, like, actually talk about what problems need to be addressed. And that seems like a pretty clear piece of code that needs to be addressed. Like, you're basically, any county that's trying to do the right thing and get itself back is going to get, you know, basically its ankles knocked together and crippled before they can even get back to the race of trying to fix the financial situation. So. And that's a big. What was it, $1.5 million or something?
- [17:37]
B
Something like that. Was the. You talking about the fine they were going to face? Yeah.
- [17:40]
A
That's what. Why? Like, it's crazy.
- [17:43]
B
Yeah. Well, you know, TJ Made the analogy, and it's kind of funny. It's like, well, where does that money go? So if Roane county has to pay a fine of $1.5 million, does it go back to Roane county that obviously probably needs more money? They're already cleaning their own bathrooms and doing everything else. So that one seems like an asinine Mechanism in terms of enforcement of policies that may be good, obviously not this one, but let's say it was a policy that was important. And you find them $1.7 million, $1.5 million, whatever it was. They're already, you know, sure, there's things they can cut, but they're, They're. They're scraping nickels, apparently. It just. He says it'd be like the. The sheriff pulling over the deputy and charging him a. Giving him a speeding ticket. The money goes right, right back into, you know, into the same coffers some extent. But I want to. You mentioned the levy and the other story that came out recently was about Summers county, which is down my neck of the woods growing up and where my family has property. So I'm familiar with, you know, Hinton and Summers County High and a few others, but they, they didn't pass their recent levy. They voted down, and I don't recall if it was a new levy or they just stopped paying it, but either way, a levy was on the ballot and Summers county said, no, we don't want to pay any more money to the government. And so the article, of course, wrote. It wrote itself where it said, failure to pass levy shows cracks in education funding. And I didn't read the article just to understand what exactly the issues Somerset county is facing specifically, but the reason I brought it up is it goes into your point that unfortunately, the solution that everybody seems to have and what you're doing, your superintendent came out and said, you know, when she first came on to their position is just throw more money at this. It's like, oh, well, if you just pass the levy, we wouldn't have these problems. Oh, if we just, you know, increase the school aid funding formula, we wouldn't have. Oh, if we just, you know, kept their income and property taxes where they are or raise them, we wouldn't have it. Or we took the money back from Hope, we wouldn't have it. It's like the only solution that anyone comes up with, even though they will tell you, sit you down, and even in A group, say, 18 and 18A, are too large, too complex, too burdensome, too hard to adhere to. The problem is we just need more money. If we had more money, we could adhere to them. If we had more money, we could follow along. If we had more money, we could understand it better. No, no, no. Let's actually sit down and say, what can we cut from this? Let's peel it back to the bare bones. If not, burn it down and build it back up if necessary. But let's actually take an approach that isn't just throwing more money into this dumpster fire.
- [20:34]
A
Yeah. And I mean, to be fair, they're operating on a paradigm of the current status quo. And while I think the reality is they've been borderline indoctrinated into the current system and that it, this is how it works. And a lot of the stuff, this is the, this is the right way to do it. They've gone to all kinds of classes and courses and listened to all kinds of people with, you know, a doctor in front of their name say this is how it needs to be done and these are the best practices. And so that's the paradigm they're. They're operating in. So that is what they've been told. They don't see the excesses. And even when you talk to teachers who talk, who have been fed this, and I'm saying I see this from experience of talking to people where they don't know the numbers. They don't know the, the, you know, the $16,000, you know, per student spending that we quote on here constantly. They don't know these numbers. So when you, it's the first time they're hearing them. Why would they, why would they think otherwise? They just know that there's not enough money. And they don't know why. We, you know, we know because it's, there's a ton of money being spent on things that doesn't need to be spent on. There's plenty of money in the system, but they don't know that. And, and it doesn't, Just because they're a superintendent doesn't mean that they, they know that we, we know this. I mean, people get pigeonholed. They don't, they don't have time to know everything. So they're, they're operating on the paradigm and they've been told, you know, counties that have levies don't have these problems because they have more money. And our argument is, is you shouldn't need a levy. So, you know, that's, that's the, the disconnect. But the, I forgot the, the second point I was going to make. But what they should be saying is, you know, the legislature needs to fix this funding formula. And if they're, if, if. And again, Taylor, we've talked about on here, you know, if the state does have to cut money and, you know, we, we have an issue where property tax gets reduced. I mean, Roane county has extremely low property tax even in the state. And the state of West Virginia, despite everybody's, you know, conceptions, we have some of the lowest property rate property tax rates in the entire country. You know, aside from the states that have gotten rid of it completely, our property tax rates are minuscule compared to even our surrounding states. So we would say. And I would say, you know, if our county, if our schools, our legislature does the right thing and frees up these counties so that they can start performing, the public school system can actually start performing well. And the people. And this is the thing that people don't talk about. The people elect school boards and go to school board meetings, write letters to their superintendent, complain when things go wrong, praise when things go well, and you have a functioning community that helps hold these public schools accountable. I would vote for a school levy. If we start seeing results and we start. I would vote for giving funding for things. When they say this levy is gonna go to this kind of education, and we're lacking in this, and this is the base school funding formula. But if we want to achieve this goal, we need to be able to have these programs, and these are the results that have been seen across the country with this program. Sure, I'd vote for a levy. I mean, usually a levy's not much per person. But that's the thing is being pragmatic. You understand that if we're going to have a public school system that's mandated by the constitution, that's what we have to have. But you can't have any of these results until the state legislature acts. And, oh, my point was, even the people in the know, the superintendents in the know, the people in the system in the know, they've been trying to get the legislature to do stuff. This isn't a new issue and that. But they won't do anything. The legislature does nothing. They give, you know, teacher raises, 2 or 3% teacher raises, which basically. Just basically meets inflation. And that doesn't help anything. So, I mean, they're just operating on. Well, the state legislature is not going to do it. So if the county's not going to have a levy, we're going to. We're going to have to keep cutting schools. So. And they're not wrong.
- [24:36]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Well, things that, you know, that goes into the whole philosophy, for lack of a better phrase, of the, you know, Congress has like a approval rating that's worse than cancer. You know, I mean, it's something like 8% people approve Congress, but everyone loves their. Their congressman.
- [24:55]
A
Yeah.
- [24:56]
B
You know, you don't want to fire your congressman. And you see that similarly with stuff like this in the legislature, right. It's like, oh man, that damn legislature, they don't get anything done. And we know there's this problem and that we gotta, they gotta go down there, Charles, maybe they need a special session and if they had, they had more time and they'll get this, they'll fix it. And they don't. And they, they say, well, God bless, we gotta just throw all out. But then it's the counties and the House, you know, the state senate districts and the house districts just vote to send people back in, you know, something like 80% of the time. So you have that same problem here in West Virginia. And the other thing is here, you know, I just want to be, you know, very clear, a levy is still a tax. But I agree that, you know, the pragmatic approach is to, instead of taxing everybody based on, on their property to allow at least, you know, without any say on that, is to allow the counties and maybe even more were locally or we move from a county to a school district model or regional model, the ability to vote themselves into a tax that funds that more responsibly. And then it comes up every two years. That's probably property taxes. Those don't come up every two years for a vote. Those come up whenever the legislature decides to possibly do something about them. And sometimes it even requires a constitutional amendment. But a levy, as you were saying, is very efficient and accountable comparatively. And if the school isn't performing or they find out that for whatever reason maybe they do need more money than the county and the school district can vote to increase that if necessary. Again, pragmatically, I think it's a much better approach than what we have now.
- [26:34]
A
Well, and to add on that, there's already, there's already counties in West Virginia, the more wealthy counties that they basically get almost no state money because they have enough property tax and they voted in levies that they basically self fund their public schools. And guess what, Taylor? They're some of the best performing schools in the state. And people will, you know, more people on, on the left side of the spectrum who don't understand economics, they'll say, well, the, the wealthy people, they just have the money to, to spend on it. And so that they're, they're living in this, you know, house on the hill and they don't know how it is for everybody else and that's not fair. And all these poor schools, they don't get the same like, no, no, no. Right. They've decided to invest in their education and they don't need the state. They're helping you. If they don't take money from the state, there's more money to give to you. But your state legislature has decided that it doesn't care about poor kids either because everything, they're spending the same amount of money and the funding formula doesn't change. That's the problem is, sure, if a county doesn't, doesn't have maybe, maybe divide that money that doesn't go to that county into the counties that have less economic. I mean, I understand that's kind of a, that's not a libertarian, you know, paradigm, but none of this is, we're talking about, you know, pragmatism and what will work the best. If you have a state mandate that, a constitutional state mandate that the state will provide a free education, you gotta do it somehow, whether it be the HOPE scholarship or public school, the money's gotta come from the state at some point. And if you have counties with lower economic opportunity for whatever reason and you still have people living there and the state's mandated to do that. Yeah, counties that provide for themselves should get some sort of reward. But I don't, I don't know where I'm going with this. But it's basically the counties. Your point is well made. It's already happening here. I mean, the local, the counties that fund locally and don't depend on the state for their funding, they perform better. And I'm sure they have a more thriving, you know, environment for people actually participating in the democratic process of electing the people to represent them in that system. So, yeah, I mean, and again, anybody who's here in Roane County, I've said it to everybody and nobody can, nobody's going to, unless you're just completely obtuse and don't want to take any accountability. People have not paid attention to what's gone on in this county as far as the public education system goes. And this is the reward we're reaping for not paying attention.
- [29:12]
B
Yeah, well, one thing I wanted to bring up, and we talked about it on the show before, is the, you know, the amount of power and for lack of a better phrase, control that the teachers union has in this state and winning elections or swing elections and all the rest. We talk about how little comparatively money gets actually to the classroom and how much of it is spent, wasted, absorbed at the administrative level. The issue is that the same union has administrators and these paraprofessionals in them as well that are driving and Pushing for a lot of these new codes. Well, they're kind of old now, but when they push for a lot of these funding mechanisms and codes and ratios and all the rest to make sure. Oh, well, for every, you know, 10 teachers, you've got to have some director or some support thing or whatever. And you don't. I mean, we, you know, I was talking with, you know, someone the other day about the deal this federal DOE and you know, made the line of we didn't have the Department of Education. We got to the moon. It's like we don't need all this oversight, we don't need all this bureaucracy. We don't need all these rules. And we were educating folks pretty darn well before a lot of this came into effect. And despite how altruistic or good intentions are paving this road, the problem is causing us more cost putting our funding in the. In the red or the budgets in the red for these counties. And a lot of it, I think, is driven by not legislation always, but these codes and regulations that are pushed by the teachers unions, which are. Have been a large extent corrupted by more professional administrative positions than the actual teachers. And leave the best interest of the classroom out.
- [31:10]
A
Yeah. And that's the funny thing is I saw it was a. I can't remember, maybe it's the Daily Wire, but they were doing a video that sometimes they do as little reaction videos to people saying things on the Internet. But there was a. Michael Knowles was reacting to this article that somebody was talking about this new revelation that this tech company has come up with this new idea for tanker ships and vessels that travel across the Atlantic and Pacific that haul lots of stuff. One way for them to save fuel and be able to, you know, make their less. Less environmental pollution, blah, blah, blah, was they've come up with a way that. To put some kind of kite, some kind of wind kite on the front of these ships that would, you know, during. During peak times when they have. It would detect when the wind was the best. It would. These kites would unveil and create a ship and push these ships across. Yeah. And it's like this new technology and it's basically. Michael Knowles like the sailboat was. Was invented 2000 years ago or something. And it's like this. This thing going on right now is. You know, I've lived in Roane county since I was about 13, but there's this huge history of. And every county in West Virginia is like this. But there was up these different haulers. There was schools that were basically these I don't know how big they were, but they're just, you know, two or three story, basically Lego bricks that are stuck up these hollers that the state built at some point and Left Hand School and it would, it would. Everybody up the, the adjacent haulers would go to this one school. You know, you probably have, you know, Max, at the time in the 70s, 80s, you had, you know, 100 kids that went to each school and they consolidated those schools into what the schools that they've closed now, Gary and Walton schools. And you know, nobody really talked about that being a problem. They just kind of reminisce about when I went to Left Hand School. They never really talk about it being a problem that they closed.
- [33:17]
B
Is that the name of the school was Left Hand School?
- [33:20]
A
Yeah, they, the, the, the area is called Left Hand. So it was a Left Hand school. It's. Yeah. I mean every. There, there, there's a, there's a, there's a place here called Looneyville. So.
- [33:31]
B
Yeah, hey, we had odd.
- [33:33]
A
Yeah, exactly. I mean, West Virginia has a booger hole, you know, all these weird names. But they, I went to, I went to Left Hand elementary and then they would go on to middle school and then high school and then that was the thing.
- [33:46]
B
Yeah, left, Left Foot high.
- [33:48]
A
Yeah. But so that, and now everybody's talking about, well, they're consolidating these schools and, and I point out to a lot of them, you remember those, those brick buildings that are rotting up, all these hollers that nobody did anything with and they closed them. Yeah, that was the first time. That's when people should have put their foot down and said, no, we're not doing this. We're going to find a way to keep these small schools open. And we've basically gone back to the sailboat of people saying, well, the good thing about the HOPE Scholarship is we can open these small schools and do these micro schools and local schools. It's like, yeah, that's what you had and you celebrated that going away and now you're realizing that consolidation doesn't work well.
- [34:30]
B
But also, Ty, I mean, keep in mind, you know, that the fact that back then when Left Hand School was open, more than likely the teachers were paid a couple nickels because at the time the dollar was actually worth something and a family could not only survive but thrive off the income of the husband. So it wasn't. Teacher pay wasn't such an issue that it is right now. And you didn't need a master's degree plus 18 hours to teach kindergarten, which obviously then drives up the demand of pay for individuals who spent six plus years getting this education to go teach kindergarteners how to read and count to 12 or whatever the limit is nowadays. So you have all these embedded costs. So unfortunately, I'm not disagreeing necessarily to your point about the irony of it, but my point is those folks who say those things, oh, you bring back micro schools. Well, you're not going to be able to afford micro schools because you still have all these embedded costs or embedded increased costs that are multiples if not exponentials of what they were 70 years ago in left hand elementary was operating.
- [35:39]
A
You're adding on the point. You're actually, you're actually making the point. You're adding to the point is that. No, no, no, I know the micro schools are added via hope. And what was the thing that the big controversy about six months ago and board president Hardy Hardesty or whatever his name is, what did he do? He held that code book for public schools. He held the code pamphlet for charter schools and held the eight and a half or the five by seven business card for homeschooling. And these micro schools and even private schools, they have a lot less crap to deal with. And basically what you're saying is. Yeah, no, we recognize that we've screwed up this whole system. And like you said, you know, we didn't have the department of education when we went to the moon. And that's the point. When was West Virginia thriving? When we had this, you know, master's +45 requirement for highly qualified teachers and we had the department of Education. You had a code book that thick and whatever, the 18A, whatever requirement for professionals when we're giving $1.5 million fines for not having them? Are they thriving now with that code book or were they thriving when you had left hand school and you had a teacher that basically drove two miles to get to the school and she didn't make as much money, probably even with inflation, she made less money, but she liked what she did. She had 10 kids in her classroom and there was five teachers in the whole school. Everybody knew everybody's name, everybody knew who was going on. And that's the system we had then in West Virginia's economy was thriving. And so there was always poor people.
- [37:23]
B
She actually walked to school uphill, both ways.
- [37:25]
A
Right? Exactly. Barefoot. And that's the thing. The teacher had an eighth grade education. No, that's the thing. And I always say the point. My wife's grandfather had an eighth grade education and he Read every single day. He could do math like better than anybody, better than me. And I have a college degree. So that's the thing is all the value of all this stuff. And you know, we were talking about this in the group chat and I really do believe it. The more educated the people are that seem to be leading us, the more stupid decisions they make. And the people that I talk to that are the most reasonable, who understand you, the principles of what's going on are people that were construction workers, worked in the oil field. You know, maybe they were, you know, a boss of some kind of. Our neighbor ran a. Basically he would be, what would be an engineer now, but he ran oil and gas sites and they called him all the time. And he retired and they keep calling him, try to get him to come back as a consultant. He graduated high school, that's how far his education went. And then he was educated in the job that he did and he worked at it for 35 years and he was an expert in his field.
- [38:34]
B
And.
- [38:34]
A
And then they said, hey, here's some people that just graduated high, just graduated college with a master's degree. And we say they are as qualified as you are. That's, you know, and anybody who has a lick of sense understands why that's not a good thing to do. But that's what we're doing in education. You have a. And you've talked to them. I've talked to them. I've talked to a lot of people that are my age or younger who talk like they've been doing this for a lot longer than they have. And you know, if I've been a parent for 16 years and you're a teacher that's 25, I don't like. I would think you would have, you would be a little bit more humble and understand that just because I'm not a highly qualified teacher, I've seen how these kids learn. My wife has homeschooled our kids on and off my son Michael for 13 years. Well, however long that would be, from kindergarten on, she is homeschooled our son. And he takes a more rigorous standardized test that the West Virginia school system gets. And he's always above his peers. Somehow she's managed to do it. Why is that? She cares. She understands it's her child. She wants him to be educated. It's a one on one situation where she can give him the attention he needs. Now expand that out as, as big as you can, that same principle. And you get the left hand schools, you get micro schools, you get these small community schools that existed all across the country. Even the biggest schools in a lot of these areas. What, in, in New York and stuff, you had, you know, every block there was an elementary school. Right. I mean, we've seen it from the movies and TV shows I go to. What, what, what's the. Oh, the names of the schools were always like, based on like where they were, PCs, 105 or whatever it was. But they were like, I went to that school and they'd say, oh, I did too. Or did you know this person? That doesn't happen now. And that's crazy that in a place like Roane County, West Virginia, you have a school where people live, you know, in Roane county, you could drive from the southern end of Roane county to the northern end of Roane County. It's about an hour and a half drive. Those people have nothing. They don't have anything in common. They don't know the places, they don't know the people, but they're in the school. And people think that that's positive for one reason or another. But it's mostly about saving money. That's what this system is, it's about saving money. Yet they want people to go out. And I mean, how much does a master's degree cost to get? I mean, if you're a public school teacher and you've got your bachelor's degree and you're spending half your time going back to school to get your master's degree, for what? For what? And that's the, that's the problem. It's just we've gone. We're basically trying to create the sailboat again.
- [41:20]
B
Yeah, well, so just one thing I'll just add to that is, you know, the smart people making the rules. Part of it is, again, a lack of understanding of the economics of the situation. Again, I'll give some of them some credit. And they're trying to fix problems the only way they know how and they don't understand the ramification in the downstream, especially financial impacts that some of these quote unquote solutions cause. But also, I also want to point out, we see it in the healthcare industry and a number of others that oftentimes this isn't as altruistic and sometimes it's very nefarious in terms of, oh, well, we actually need to limit competition. We need to make it so that only people like us with the smart papers on the wall are allowed to work in this industry. And it's stuff like that. To your point earlier about your Buddy with the 8th grade education and your grandma who taught the education, you don't always need a smart paper on the wall to do every single task from kindergarten to high school. Maybe, yeah, in high school, you probably need a little bit more education to teach them the levels of math and science they're taking in other disciplines. But for elementary school, I'm sorry, it's a hard sell for me to make you maybe believe that they need a master's degree to teach kindergarten.
- [42:35]
A
Yeah, no, you're right. And that's. And again, I've, you know, I have teachers that are friends that, you know, I'd really. And Taylor gets frustrating for me. Somebody who likes to think in logical steps. That. And trying to understand what I don't know. But what I do know is we have an indoctrination system that has taught a lot of teachers what the right thing is to do. And it's. It's when you get taught how. How to do something, that's how you're told. That's how it's done. And you don't have time. While you're doing your job, you're not trying to invent new ways to do things, but you have teachers that say, you know, I'm finding ways to do what I need to do and educate in the way I was taught to educate, and I can find the ways to do it. And a lot of them aren't questioning, is this what I should be teaching? Is this how it should be done? And so you question that and you go, I don't really know if they're thinking that way. But then I have other teachers that tell me that we're teaching way too much, way too fast. And you've got kindergarteners. My daughter was just in kindergarten, and. And they're learning how to read in kindergarten. And while people will say, oh, everybody's got the story of, well, my son could read when he was 4. Cool. Your kid's an outlier. You've got a lot of kids that aren't capable. Their brains aren't developed enough. They're not developmentally ready to learn how to read at 5 or 6 years old.
- [43:57]
B
Well, and I think that goes to the fact that we can't sustain or we. Not just West Virginia, but society as a whole should not be confined to a one size fits all model of education. Where you start. Where you start to learn at 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever is deemed the appropriate age by, again, likely some bureaucrat or some panel of scientists somewhere that doesn't take into Account that there are outliers both on the positive side and also the negative side. And you cram folks in to these pigeonholes. I joke, I don't know if I told the story on here before but you know, because of I was advanced in math, I got, I took the 10th grade math in 9th grade and that threw my schedule off and they didn't have anything else for me. They couldn't figure out any other solution for me. So they put me in ninth grade remedial science, meaning I was in there with kids who couldn't count, you know, or had very hard time counting in ninth grade. And I was doing algebra too. So you have those kind of situations. But going back to your indoctrination of like the teachers and things, I think part of it is this, the still this self preservation idea of oh, hey, you went to college, you got your bachelor's degree, maybe you got your master's degree, maybe you got special certification, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And how dare some charter school bring in, you know, a former businessman to teach, you know, a basic math class. Because you, you know, he was the accountant for his company. How dare he? He doesn't have an education or degree in education like you do. And they're just going to come for your jobs and this is if they keep allowed to do this. And the next thing you know, we're all going to, you know, on the streets and blah, blah, blah, blah. So they instill this fear and they get this, you know, tribe mentality around the, you know, 55 strong and all the other teacher union mantras and they get this tribe mentality of there can't be any other solution, there can't be any other way forward. But what we're doing here in the public education sphere and if anyone else does it, it's a threat to your job.
- [45:58]
A
Yeah.
- [45:58]
B
Or your lifestyle or you personally. And instead of saying, huh, maybe using the scientific method, which, you know, we're supposed to be a core principle of education, maybe we should realize that they, they're testing something and they're getting different results than what we've done and we can learn from that in some capability. Now obviously you can't take away someone's degree. They've already earned it and got it. But maybe that means we can shift some of our priorities and maybe that person teaches upper division stuff and we can bring someone in with, you know, on the ground training or professional training from their previous line of work and do other things, teach the technology class, teach the business course, whatever it is instead of requiring everyone that's a teacher to have a degree in education. And, you know, maybe those people are just the ones who provide advice on certain things, but they don't have to be in the classroom. And until we get away from this mantra and this notion that anything different is a threat, then I think we're gonna have a hard time moving forward.
- [47:04]
A
Yeah, and that's the problem, is you don't have a. And it works in the private sector, too. But you have. You know, when you have so much money and these people have been, you know, the teachers unions and these outside interests have had control for a long time, and they have the ear of their members, you see charter schools getting put in place, and then you're being told by the people that are supposed to know better that, you know, it is a threat. And it's. They're. They're diverting your funds. And none of that is true. HOPE Scholarship charter schools are not diverting funds away from anything. And the. The money going to charter schools is insignificant compared to what's already spent on public schools. But like I said before, these teachers unions and a lot of these other interests, they're not. They're not being. They're being disingenuous. They're not telling them the problem that we have addressed here with the funding and the $4 billion budget that public schools have, that's being squandered in a lot of ways, and it's going to anything but education. And that should be the thing that they're really upset about. The threat is the bureaucracy. The threat is not charter schools or the HOPE Scholarship, but they're not being told that. They're not being given all the information. So the scientific method, it doesn't work because they're not being presented with those things. And, you know, that's what we're trying to do. And people like, you know, Katie Switzer and the Cardinal Institute, they're trying to give people this information, but it's hard to break that indoctrination because as soon as they see the information, they just, you know, assume it's. It's. There's some kind of bias or there's something, you know. You know what I mean? So it's a hard point to be making. I just want to give, you know, some credit to the people that, you know, you don't know what you don't know, and that is a problem that needs to be addressed. But I have said, and I really do think once the HOPE Scholarship and charter schools have existed for maybe a decade and they don't see that the sky is falling and maybe some of our results go up and people are happy we reach this homeostasis, things will go a little bit better. But I don't think so. If this legislature doesn't do something about this funding formula, it really is, and the code book, I mean, we've got to do a lot of things. Like Michelle Stellato has said, we got to make these actions. When the people on the ground demand change, they've got to change. Or the legislature, the teachers are right. If they're not going to make the changes to improve the public school system, it's very clear that they don't care about public school. They've made that clear. And you and I don't have that perspective. You know, ironically, we're the ones that are supposed to not like public anything, but we, we say if there is going to be competition, they have to be given the opportunity to compete. And we'll agree with teachers there. I mean, you, you are not given the opportunity to compete. We spend in the top, in the top 30 per student and we pay teachers in the bottom five.
- [49:51]
B
That's our outcomes are, are the bottom five as well.
- [49:54]
A
Yeah.
- [49:55]
B
And, and to that, though, Ty, unfortunately, we, we bemoan the fact that it's an unfair, you know, set up for private schools and even charter schools and the rest. Because, you know, we're seeing Hancock county, we're seeing Brook county, we're seeing, you know, these counties who are going to be in the red or in the red based off their funding. And what's going to happen to them, Ty? Are they going to go bankrupt? Are they going to close?
- [50:24]
A
Right.
- [50:24]
B
No. What's going to happen is the state is going to come in, swoop in like Superman and throw money at it to make sure they're at least operating on the same basis they have been, even if it's, you know, maybe they have to cut some of their positions here or there, but for the most part, maybe consolidate a little bit, but for the most part, there, there's not the, you know, important correcting factor that a free market system would have or does have on private schools, charter schools and all the rest. Because if a charter school has this issue or some of these issues, what happens to them? If a private school has these issues or problems, what happens to them? State doesn't come in and throw the millions of dollars at them that they, quote, unquote, say they need. They're just, oh, sorry, Charlie, you're, you Know, you're on your own. Good luck. It was nice knowing you. And they go. They go by the wayside. Right?
- [51:13]
A
And we're seeing.
- [51:14]
B
I would say, even, I would say as a libertarian, that that is supposed to happen. They've either they were teaching, you know, they weren't teaching well enough that people wanted to keep going there and paying them money, or, you know, they were spending money in the wrong areas and the school was falling apart. People didn't want to send their kids there or whatever it may be. The free market will speak and people will vote with their feet in dollars. You don't have that in public schools. And so you've created this basic, you know, again, unfair is not even the word. Lopsided system that you can have terrible administration, you can have poor funding controls and everything else. And the state is basically forced because someone 150 years ago wrote a stupid language into our state constitution that says we have to have free education. And they're going to interpret that to mean, oh, well, if this county's school system is failing so bad, we've got to come in and bail them out. Regardless if it's $1 million, $8 million, $20 million, we got to keep this thing afloat.
- [52:16]
A
Yeah, and that's the thing we're seeing with the HOPE Scholarship. I think it was two or three providers. The HOPE Scholarship Board, they basically took their approval away because they weren't doing the right thing with the funding and they weren't following the proper procedures. So they took. And that's four years into a program you're already getting, and it's the first year that it's been given to everybody in the state. Anybody who's. Anybody with a child is eligible for HOPE Scholarship. And we're already seeing providers having their accreditation taken away by the state board. So it's working. And that's what we're saying is that's the way it should work. If a private school or a provider gets. Isn't doing the right thing or they're not getting results, or they shouldn't. They should be dissolved, the private school will dissolve on its own without any kind of. Obviously, like any business, it's just like anything else. And I understand it's really hard to justify the idea that a public school would be dissolved. But look, you've got to have some sort of accountability or results that mean something, or what's the point of any of this? And you and I will say, this is why you're proving why we're not. We don't just hate anything. Government, because it's government. If government did a good job, you and I would be all for it. You know what I mean? But it doesn't. Throughout history, anything government does. This is not a bug in the system. This is the system. And you simply have to mitigate the bad. The bad's gonna be there because it's government, because it's not people's money. Nobody has a vested interest in success. You get these people who have these failures, and they just keep their job. Our superintendent, who squandered $3 million, is a principal in Clay county now. And get this. The guy, Dr. Duncan is his name. You can look him up. He created the computer system that I think just about every school in every. Every county in the state uses to manage employees and pay and stuff. He created this system. Like, he designed it. I guess he's an engineer, but he created this system. And so Roane county is paying this guy royalties to use this software. The guy that basically killed two schools about three years early is getting paid by the county, and his wife is on. What is that organization? Oh, I can't remember what it's called, but she's on one of this. You know, it's a nonprofit, but they. It's a policy. Some sort of policy coalition. But she's out there talking about what. What schools are doing and what they need and what's costing money. And she's definitely against school choice. And I'm like, the gall of these people, but there's no consequences. He wasn't tarred and feathered and ran out of the county. He went and got a job as a principal in another county. No harm, no foul. Still getting paid. That's the system. This is what we're against, is this. That kind of system does not work. You want to talk about CEO parachutes? At least that's a private company. And while we say the government shouldn't have bailed out any bank in 2008, this is a. This is the system run for the people and by the people, supposedly. This is public money, right? Stolen tax dollars. They're forcing you to pay for this stuff, and there's no accountability. So, yeah, that's the problem, is until we have some accountability. I mean, this system isn't from the state level. Up your legislators, you have to hold them accountable. You're the only one that can. If you keep voting them in and they do nothing, that's on you. That's 100% on you. And I've had several teachers that you know, ask me for yard signs because just. Just by saying Taylor. And this is all I had to say. We have to reform the funding formula and we have to reform the state code book. That's it. That's all I said. And they said, cool, give me a yard sign. And I mean it. I don't know what I can do to get at, like, all I can do is listen to them and sponsor bills. I can't make the leadership actually do anything about it. But, you know, that's all I can say I'm going to do, and I'm going. And unlike our current delegate, I'll let them know, hey, this is the bill I sponsored. I can't do anything more than that. You've got to call Roger Hanshaw and get on his butt and tell him that this needs to happen. That's all I can do. The people have more power than they think they do. If they. If they make a fit about it, at least they can say they didn't. The legislators and Roger Hanshaw, House speaker, and Randy Smith, the Senate President, they can't say they didn't know if you tell them and make a big fuss about it. So, yeah, this episode's turned into an education podcast yet again. But,
- [56:56]
B
well, at least it's not about. What was the other one that data
- [56:59]
A
centers going on about?
- [57:00]
B
Data centers, yes. But if we had data centers, we could just throw more money at this. I was kidding. But, yeah, I think it's an important one, and it's. Go ahead.
- [57:11]
A
I was going to say at the end. We'll just wrap up in about 10 minutes, but since you're talking about the flock thing in Fairmont, you know, it's one of those things that I like to get with the data centers and the power lines going through the state. I like to get, you know, all the information I can before I start making public statements. Because, I don't know, it would probably be better if I just went shot from the hip and read the room and said whatever everybody else was saying, but I just. That's not my personality, because I don't like. I don't like looking stupid when I don't have to. I mean, I'm stupid enough on my own. I don't need to, you know, absorb other stupidity. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. Tuesday, maybe. But so these flock cameras. Yeah. You know, I've heard, you know, delegate Chris Anders say, though, they're. They're unconstitutional. And I go, okay, but why? And so, you know what I mean, you understand where I'm coming from, it's like, I don't want to say something unless I know it's actually true, I think. And so. And you can explain, and if I don't like your answer, I'll correct you. But what are flock cameras?
- [58:17]
B
Well, so they're a combination of either privately owned or publicly owned cameras that are used to take pictures of license plates. And generally they run them against, you know, registries of, you know, offenders, wanted criminals, et cetera, et cetera, looking for vehicles of that are stolen or maybe or, you know, what's the phrase, children trafficking or yada yada, yada, kidnappings, all that kind of stuff. So they say, oh, okay, we're looking for this vehicle. And instead of just having, you know, patrol officers stationed around and trying to remember that and looking for that, well, you know, they actually had these cameras that as you drive by, like what happens at a toll booth if you don't pay your tolls, they snap a camera and they run it against the registry. And the one major proponent here in monn county, then the county commission, I think it was our sheriff, was like, oh, we just busted this, you know, big drug lord down here. He was out of Michigan, and he was moving hundreds of thousands of dollars of some drug. And we were able to catch him because the flock camera picked up his license plate. So that's what it does. Now, the issue is the unconstitutionality of it that Chris and I agree with, and is that it goes above and beyond general understanding of police powers and what it can be used for. And, you know, everyone said slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but with the government, we know that that's not the case. And part of the issue that a lot of folks have with these flat cameras is not only does it, you know, gonna be used to say, okay, we're on the lookout for this drug dealer or this wanted murderer or this child trafficker or whatever, or kidnapper. And then here's their license plate. It's. They're monitoring, you know, through this mass data, kind of like the patriot act and the cell phone data, and they're looking for all this stuff, and they can begin to create patterns and realize certain things. So if Ty Ward is down at the local watering hole, you know, five days a week from 8pm to 12pm More than likely he's had a few too many. And heaven forbid he does anything wrong, we know where likely to find them. We could probably get him for a dec ui and those kind of things. And that goes into then the whole orwellian you know, what China is doing with the social credit score and where are you going, how often are you in this neighborhood, blah, blah, blah, blah, doing these things. And, you know, it's just. For me, it's a bridge too far. It's. Yeah, you can argue that helps catch a bad guy here and there, but it creates the opportunity for the government to have way more information about you than they need or should have. And to that end, violates, in my opinion, the Fourth Amendment.
- [61:08]
A
Okay, so I agree with all that. I'll add to it. The main problem is, and here's the thing, the Supreme Court just decided. We didn't talk about our previous episode, but the Supreme Court just gave an opinion that law enforcement using your metadata to cast a broad net for people. Like when they say, we know whoever committed this crime was in this area, so they subpoena. Well, they don't even subpoena. They go and ask all these cell phone providers, give us all the cell phones that were in this area at this time. And so they go through the people and they start questioning people and whether you had anything to do, you did anything wrong at all, you weren't even speeding. You're now in this net. They have taken your metadata and put it into an investigation. No warrant, no nothing. They can come question you and ask you where you were and all these things. And, and, and the Supreme Court just decided that that's unconstitutional, that you can't just broadly gather all this information. And so here's the deal. That's government doing it. That's the sheriff's department, state police, FBI, whoever going to these private companies and asking them for this information or demanding it or whatever. So the problem here is Flock is a company, everybody. And this is my problem is people have gotten this mantra of any camera they see now as a Flock camera to them, like the cameras on top of stoplights. Sidebar. I don't mean to get distracted, but I worked for a company, signal and light company, that put in signals, basically. Stoplights. That's what the official signals are, what a stoplight is called. Those cameras on top of them, the ones that look like they're, you know, a big cylinder, unless it's some weird exception. Nine times out of 10, that is not a surveillance camera. That's old technology that the signal uses to determine whether somebody stopped at the stoplight. They use radar now, but those cameras go to basically, what, CCTV into that box that's on one of those poles. And it doesn't go anywhere. It's Basically, that computer uses some sort of computing pro. I don't know. I'm not a, you know, computer engineer. But it reads that data, that visual data, and tells the computer whether somebody's sitting at that stoplight to know whether to turn it green or not. That's all it is. I just want to tell people that most of those cameras, they're. It's the grainiest. You could take one off of there and use it as a camera. It's the grainiest black and white footage that you've seen from any, like, terrible. You know, everybody says, why does 711 have such bad surveillance cameras? That's the kind of camera it is. It's not reading anybody's license plate. You can barely see what's even going on. It just can tell that there is a giant block with wheels sitting at that stoplight. So I just wanted to say that.
- [63:51]
B
And to that, Ty, I think even libertarians would be fine, whether local municipality or a private company, maybe in partnership with insurance companies in the area, put cameras like that up also in case there was an accident at that intersection to possibly identify who was at fault. If it was a closed cap, you know, closed circuit surveillance and it was recorded, you know, kept video for 48 hours or whatever in case something like that happened, then you could find out if. If there was an accident between you and I and the camera showed that you hit me, you were at fault, and therefore my insurance company would have a profit incentive to help pay for that. Again, libertarian solution that gets to a very similar end. I think the issue that a lot of folks are having is even the number of these are privately owned, that they are being basically writing partnerships and contracts with either state and or federal agencies that we have no say in. It's not so the comparison is always. My dad made the comments like, well, we have ring cameras. Well, yeah, rings on your house. You have an individual the opportunity to take the ring down. If you don't like what they're doing or how they're operating, and if they were to be selling their data to the FBI or the local police or whatever without your consent, then you could cancel your contract and just take it off your house. You can't, as an individual without facing some kind of crime go and take down a Flock camera.
- [65:19]
A
Okay, that was. I was just making a sidebar to my point, and you're. Everything you're saying is right, but my point was, is Flock is a company like that term Flock Camera comes from the name of the company. So. No, let me finish. That Flock company, whether it's a camera owned by the city, municipality or whatever, the Flock technology is proprietary technology, basically AI that this Flock company uses, they gather the data and then like you said, the municipality, FBI, state police, whoever they have to pay to get that information and any, any organization that wants that information can pay Flock to get that information. You have a private company gathering your data, gathering your license plate. It's not, it starts as a private company and then the government has to pay for the information. This is like any kind of violation
- [66:17]
B
of the fourth Amendment is they are gathering that information about you without a warrant, similar to the Supreme Court case. And again, maybe we need another ruling or maybe it'll be interpreted by a district court or something along those lines that they apply in the same way. The problem that I and a lot of people have in making the constitutionality argument of it is is that the private company, unlike the ring camera, which you have an individual control over, you have no control over what Flock does. If they are selling their information to the FBI, to the county sheriff, to whomever, and are utilizing that in a police power, a violation of the fourth Amendment, you have no control over that. And at the very least, I mean what I'm saying, and I'm going to be saying today at this rally is at the very least not just signing a check and paying Flock. You need to have a warrant to be able to go. And it has to be very, you know, tailored and narrowed to specific time and everything. And then what? And you know, and again, the problem with even that, as we've seen to your point over the big net earlier, is that, man, it's really hard to know exactly what the government, what the individual policing agency does with that extra data. Because, yeah, they looked at the hours between 5 and 6am but both you and I drove through there. Well, again, now I was the criminal. You're just caught up in that net as well. You know, what do they or they don't do with that? It's, you know, people have concerns about. So that's where the issue comes in, is that yeah, they're private and that's fine, but they're giving this information, whether they're paid for it or not, to a local police power without a warrant.
- [67:52]
A
Yeah, and the problem comes in that, like you said, if you got a ring doorbell or you've got a private property and they've got a camera pointed at the road and it's catching license plates as you're going by, the police have to get a warrant or ask the people, hey, do you have this camera? Can we see what's on it? And you know, that's something that police do. I mean, and I don't really have a problem with that. If there is crime that happened in that area, they say, hey, there's a camera here.
- [68:18]
B
Cool.
- [68:19]
A
But like you said, nine times out of 10, the, the, the cities and states are paying for these specific cameras that Flock makes. They're putting them out on public property, and then a private company is operating them and selling the information back to the government. Like, if somebody did, you know, Fourth Amendment be damned if somebody doesn't see why that's a problem and why that's. Like you said, I don't know why. There's a lot of things that people say that I'm like, slippery slope fallacy. It's just smart people trying to come up with the reason to write papers and books. But no slippery slope exists, no matter where you are, government or not. You know, that's the thing is what Palantir. What is, you know, Peter Thiel said, you know, they'll be. Everybody will be on their best behavior because there'll be a camera everywhere. Does anybody have a. Do you think that's a problem? Like, does that sound crazy to you, Fourth Amendment or not? If you want to get into the intellectual and legal argument of whether it's constitutional, like, there's certain things that, you know, libertarians don't like banning things. But if you're going to ban something, a private company partnering with the government to surveil you at all moments of the day and night, yeah, I'm, I'm cool with banning that. I'm cool with that not being a thing. Safety be damned.
- [69:31]
B
And what. And exactly. And you know, that's where, you know, sometimes libertarians get attacked for the, quote, unquote, safety aspect of it. But follow this slippery slope, right? Here's what the argument was made at the recent mon. County Commission meeting when the sheriff got up and he was talking about, oh, well, you know, we just got, you know, a couple of these throughout the county and there. And we need these to make us safer. Okay, well, if a couple of those around the county make us ex. Safe, then wouldn't a dozen or two dozen cameras make us X times too Safe? And wouldn't 100 cameras throughout the county make us X times 100 safe? And why, if we're that worried about how safe we are, why don't we all just wear cameras all the time? Like they have the technology now. Where you just, you can wear a pendant around your neck and it's just constantly recording everything. People are doing that for like meetings and stuff and just to help them remember what they did in a day and who they talked to and yada yada, let's just mandate everybody, which is funny because we can't get police officers to effectively wear body cams, by the way. But anywho, that's how unsafe we are. And that's the goal is to make us so safe and catch all these bad guys. And we should all be wearing cameras at all times of day because you never know when we're going to stumble upon the next drug kingpin coming out of Detroit or the child kidnapper coming down from Canada or wherever trafficking the children. We might as well just all be wearing cameras at all times. That's the logic.
- [70:57]
A
Well, and they'll, they'll even argue if you want. They'll even argue. They won't, they won't argue that it's not even unconstitutional. They won't even make that argument because they don't care if it's unconstitutional. They'll say it's worth it. Right. It's the same. I've had conversation with friends that are in law enforcement that again, this indoctrination. I'll say inspection stickers and vehicle registration is stupid. If you, if you get a title for your vehicle, if you want to, if the state wants you to register at once just so they know what you have for property taxes, this is the system we have. Okay, cool. That's reasonable. Having to get your vehicle re registered and have a sticker on your license plate and have a sticker in your windshield. One, it's about revenue, but two, it's about entrapment. The police want a way to have a reason to pull people over. And they will tell you this. Any police officer that's being honest, they're told this. They use inspection stickers and vehicle registration and other identification from the state that needs to be renewed. They use that as a reason to pull people over to see if they can find other crimes. And they'll say it's altruistic. And they'll say, you know how many child trafficking cases we found, drug cases, people with warrants for, you know, heinous crimes, and they'll use that as an excuse. And you say, but is entrapment illegal? Yes. Well, you have legalized entrapment because, you know, so that it's not for any purpose other than that.
- [72:25]
B
I don't know. I've got to Find out where this guy is. I think his name is Deputy west or Deputy Vest or something like that. Anyways, he's. He's coming up in my TikTok algorithms now. The first one I saw and I had to watch all the way through just to hear his. His stupid ass, you know, logic. But he's sitting there in his, his patrol car, which I can't imagine that's legal, and he's filming this TikTok of cars going by and he's saying, oh, you know, you want to be driving down the highway and you see us in the median, so you go ahead and you flick your lights at the people coming the other way. Let us, let them know that we're here. Yeah, that's the first amendment. You have the right to do that, but you need to think about what you're doing. You're giving that child trafficker a heads up. You're giving that druggie the heads up that we're there and we can't catch them. And then some people ask me, well, how many, you know, child traffickers do I get? Or how many? He goes, well, I've gotten several over all my years of doing, but just one is enough. Just one time I catch one kidnapper and all at every stop justifies it. And it's like, do you not hear your. So if that's the case and bro, pull everybody over, have a frickin like toll on I79 that, you know, everyone has to go through and you dog sniff or whatever you do to make sure that not anyone gets through, that possibly that's where that logic takes you. And if folks can't understand that that's how government has worked and will continue to work, then we probably are anyways. But we're damned, we're doomed because we're just gonna keep death by a thousand paper cuts. But they're not paper cuts anymore, Ty. These are like flesh wounds that we're taking in terms of our liberty.
- [74:03]
A
Yeah. And there's been cases. There's a recent case of a woman who got, you know, they were going to arrest her because there was a package stolen and a flock camera caught her license plate and she was in the area and they were all ready to, you know, arrest her and charge her with the crime of stealing. And, and she came back with, you know, video footage of her car at her house at that time, whatever the time was, and, and basically proved that they were wrong. They didn't apologize to her. They didn't, you know, they didn't say, oh, Our mistake. But this is what the path of least resistance. Police officers aren't free from the same, you know, human, you know, flaws that we all have at doing our job. The easiest thing to do is to find the. Oh, case closed. And so and, and Flock has come out and said it's not our. We're not going to apologize because it's not our fault that the police are misusing the technology. Well, okay, cool. Well, I'm going to ban the technology. How about that? How about we do that? Because I don't want to give people who can't do their job well the more opportunity to. And this is the thing. What did Benjamin Franklin say? The favorite, the famous quote is it's better that three guilty. Three guilty people go free than one innocent person go get put in jail. Like that's the, that's the mantra. This is the mantra that America has lived by is it doesn't like you don't thought crime and pre crime isn't a thing. We don't do that. And if you need any better case, I know it's high profile, but go. Yeah, I've paid attention to it and the Kyle Surfin Show, Steve Baker's been on there. But the Steve Baker who wrote for the Blaze and was a J6 reporter who got arrested. But listen to his Steve Baker on Tucker Carlson's podcast. It's a pretty good synopsis of the case with the J6 pipe bomber. But go listen to that and go listen to what the FBI, supposedly the cream of the crop, best law enforcement agency in the country, what they're doing to this autistic kid who they are saying as a J6 pipe bomber, which he, you know, by all evidence clearly is not the guy. But they're, they're running through, they're railroading him. And, and you know, you coerced in a confession from an autistic kid. And the kid, he's an adult, but you know what I mean? And so go listen to that podcast, listen to Steve Baker and all the data evidence that he's found through all kinds of technology that he's capable of using. And you'll say, why didn't the police do the same investigation and bring him in and gather his. Because they don't want it. It's just like anything else. It's like with the teachers unions in this country. They don't want people helping. They don't want justice once they've reached their conclusion. This is the system and the bias that we deal with. And that's why we don't. We want dangerous freedom because we understand that law enforcement are just people like the rest of us, and they shouldn't have powers that give them undue authority over the rest of us. And that's what these flock cameras are. In all of this technology, Palantir AI Being used to collect everybody's data. And it's becoming more and more obvious that one of the main drivers for these data centers is probably that kind of information gathering. So, I mean, that's. We're barreling towards some kind of utopian surveillance state that 1984 couldn't even have dystopian grasped.
- [77:17]
B
Dystopian?
- [77:18]
A
What did I say?
- [77:20]
B
Utopian?
- [77:21]
A
Well, yeah, if you're. Lindsey Graham is utopia. He's living in utopia now. But the dystopian nightmare of. In 1984 couldn't even have fathomed that this is what we're headed towards. And everybody seems to be applauding it. And there's some people that, you know, as I said in our chat, you've got people that are just observing what's going on, and they're like, hey, man, this is a problem. But all the highly educated lawyers at the state legislature. Oh, no, no, no. The foxes ensured us they're not going to eat the chickens. We're good. We're fine. This is all great. It's revenue, it's. It's technology. We're booming. We're gonna be the. The east coast tech hub. Okay, well. Right. Ohio's already beat us to it, so why don't you let them have the dystopian nightmare and let us continue having our, you know, hills and hollers and. And find some other way to make some revenue or whatever you need to do. But I don't know, man. It just seems so obvious to me that why this is a problem, Fourth amendment or not.
- [78:17]
B
Mm.
- [78:19]
A
So, yeah, I agree. Unless you have anything to add, I think we'll wrap it up.
- [78:23]
B
I think that's a good point to stop, sir.
- [78:25]
A
All right, cool. Well, yeah, thanks for tuning in. And we'll try to get episodes out more frequently. I'm a busy guy, so I get them out when I can. I think about it all the time. But, you know, when you have time to sit down in front of a computer for an hour to upload an episode, it comes few and far between. So bear with us. Volunteer effort again if you want us to, if you appreciate what we're doing, lpwv.org hit that donate button and give us a few shekels we'd appreciate it. But until next time, don't hurt people and don't take their stuff.